Opinion

an organic farm cultivating locally found ingredients to a paper mill where artisans folded dyed scraps into sculpture that echoed the light, leaves and petals that framed my time in the town. —Rebecca Conway auroville.org Auroville – OPINION: SEEN ON SCREEN 168 p. Writer’s note: I couldn’t believe that there’s no definite inventor of googly eyes. Learning that has added an air of mystery to their plastic gaze. I also learnt that the largest pair are

. 6 m wide. If you could stick them anywhere in 3 the world, where would you choose? —Sharon Lam ADVERTISERS p. 15 bocci.ca Bocci –6 7 pp. Brunner – brunner-uk.com 3 2 pp. Carl Hansen – carlhansen.com p. 18 convene.com Convene – 4 5 pp. Ege Carpets – egecarpets.com p. 17 laufen.com Laufen – outside back cover Maharam – maharam.com p. 8 Muuto – muuto.com p. 13 Poliform – poliform.it p. 11 Rimadesio – rimadesio.it p. 1 , inside front cover Vitra – vitra.com Vitra Design Museum – design-museum.de inside back cover p. 23 Zanat – zanat.org

REPORT: UNITED BY DESIGN 123 131 pp. Writer’s note: It’s always an honour as a reporter when people trust you to tell their stories. There were so many shocking details that I couldn’t include because the behaviour from famous studios was so egregious it would have identified my sources. But you can’t libel the dead, so I can put Frank Lloyd Wright on blast for using his students at Taliesin West – who paid for the privilege – as free labour on his projects. Exploitation has been baked into the system for decades, but it’s not too late to redesign it. —India Block The Architecture Lobby – architecture-lobby.org Architectural Workers United – architecturalworkersunited.org fafront.co – Future Architects Front United Voices of the World Section of Architecture – uvw-saw.org.uk INTERVIEW: BETTER SENSATION 146 132 pp.

OBJECTS IN REVIEW: PIPE DREAMS p. 98 Writer’s note: While the Pot Variations are painstaking pieces of kiln-cast glass art, the last thing J. Hill’s Standard founder Anike Tyrrell wants is for pieces like Hopstep to sit in a cupboard for most of the year. “I don’t believe in only pulling out the crystal on special occasions,” she says. “Use it; enjoy it; make it a part of your life, even if it’s putting your teeth in it at night.” —Lauren Yoshiko Aldo Bakker – aldobakker.com jhillsstandard.com J Hill’s Standard – MATERIAL: FIBRE TO FORM 112 99 pp. Writer’s note: One of the most pleasant parts of looking out over the rolling hills outside La Grange was to see a herd of white cows move closer and closer to the house as the day wore on. They started o

at the edge of the ff forest and ended up just outside the back door by dinner time. —Johanna Agerman Ross

Photographer note: What looked like a pleasant summer’s day ended up being a battle against heat. Well done to our models for casually wearing warm fleece-like clothing and big leather boots. —Theresa Marx A. A. Spectrum –

aaspectrum.com awake-mode.com A.W.A.K.E Mode – Bridges & Brows – bridgesandbrows.com helmutlang.com Helmut Lang –

lvarchitectes.com Le Dévéhat Vuarnesson Architectes – bouroullec.com Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec –

manuatelier.com Manu Atelier – nike.com Nike –zoehorgan.com Zoe Horgan –OBJECTS IN REVIEW: CLINGING ON p. 147 Writer’s note: An idea Tom Chung had when developing Piton was to produce an open-source zine, inspired by 80 s DIY books, which would feature a breakdown of hacks and rigs. “But it’s hard to combine a commercial product with something that’s a bit more conceptual,” he told me. “Especially now, with so many similar objects coming out so quickly, it’s di ffi cult to get people to slow down and look closely at a project in a way that isn’t just… ‘Oh, there’s another lamp I can buy.’” —Kristina Rapacki muuto.com Muuto – Tom Chung Studio – touching.net TRAVELOGUE: THE ROAD TO UTOPIA IS NOT SMOOTH 148 163 pp.

OBJECTS IN REVIEW: IT HIDES A MESS! p. 113 Writer’s note: Ariake worked hard establishing a rapport factories despite between their Japanese and Italian systems. Tan described contrasting manufacturing “the Italian factory is more like a finishing factory how which does assembly, painting and lacquering,” working case He cited the smaller workshops. in conjunction with of “a guy with a CNC machine in his garage. Apparently he can produce 200 chair parts a day!” The Japanese “You have 25 50 factory, by contrast, is an attuned hub: people working, each one specialised, but all wearing —Evi Hall the same uniform.” ariakecollection.com Ariake – ingasempe.fr Inga Sempé – REVIEW: EMBRACE THE WEIRD 114 122 pp. Writer’s note – While researching the ear-cleaning genre of ASMR videos, I was reminded of a time when someone I was dating asked, suddenly brandishing an otoscope, whether they could perform an ear exam. I turned him down, doubting his IRL skills, but could definitely picture his ASMR video now. —Sophie Tolhurst ArkDes – arkdes.se designmuseum.org Design Museum –Photographer’s note: In woodland and at the end of winding trails, Auroville’s crisp and sometimes otherworldly buildings peek through branches and hover above a riot of flowers – a visual metaphor for the community’s quest to develop a utopia that honours the environment, and where photography took me from

Seen on Screen

Words Sharon Lam Illustration Leonhard Rothmoser

There is a lot happening in Everything Everywhere All at Once, the arthouse sleeper hit from directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. There are onyx butt-plug trophies, erotic sausage-fingers, dogs used as nunchucks – all set across a gazillion universes. Amongst all of this, however, is a deceptively simple object that comes to represent the spiritual message of the movie – the googly eye.

We first see googly eyes early in the movie, when Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan) sticks them to laundry bags in an attempt to bring some levity to the daily stress of his wife, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh). At this point, however, Evelyn has no time for whimsy and simply brushes off Waymond’s plastic interventions: they serve no function in Evelyn’s world of laundry and taxes.

For all the googly eye’s famliarity, no one seems to know who invented it. There is no patent, no record of a designer. At most, there is the early 20th-century comic strip character, Barney Google, whose hallmark gaze brought the term into the mainstream. There is also the Weepul, invented after a bored toy factory heir glued googly eyes to a cotton ball: a design typically credited as the first to maifest the wobbly gaze in a physical medium.

Googly eyes are an emotive motif that runs through the core of Everything Everywhere. As Evelyn is introduced to the multiverse that is central to the movie, she begins to see Waymond differently. Amongst Evelyn’s multiversally misguided decisions and their daughter Joy’s (Stephanie Hsu) fast descent into nihilism, Waymond’s kindness moves from childish play to a source of strength. In cinema’s most tear-jerking silent conversation, in which Joy and Evelyn are embodied as two rocks, Everything Everywhere gives both boulders googly eyes. It’s just the two of them, but it’s the kitschy eyes – symbolising Waymond’s presence and, therefore, the presence of empathy – that allows the rocks to see each other.

Comedy pieces of plastic tat come to embody a love that can span a million parallel universes in the film’s climactic fight scene between Evelyn and Jobu Tupaki, Joy’s alter ego. During the fight, Evelyn attaches a single googly eye to the centre of her forehead – the third eye. Usually invisible, the third eye represents extraordinary vision and perception. The googly eye is about as non-traditional a third eye as you can get, yet Evelyn is now able to replicate Waymond’s belief in kindness. Evelyn fights off Jobu’s followers with empathy, eyes exploding from her body as she sees them for who they are. Jobu, by contrast, sports a bagel topknot. It’s a black circle vs. a black bagel; a central solid vs. a central void. Jobu’s bagel has everything on it, and nothing at its heart.

The googly eye is nothing except heart. In our own universe, there were reports of googly eye shortages following the film’s release, with fans raiding craft stores to get their fix. This demand may suggest that kindness could be all around us, yet the object’s plastic reality also offers a warning: kindness can become disposable. It is a teetering perception. Perhaps the world’s googly eye shortage is because of supply-chains issues; or perhaps it’s because everyone everywhere is seeking kindness all at once.