Architecture | Branding | Design | Interiors | Technology
Co-working space for architects and designers
April 2017
How a Barcelona warehouse was transformed
MILAN DESING WEEK A Pavilion Made from Felt
CONTENTS ISSUE / 01 / APRIL 2017
DEPARTMENTS
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Letter from the Editor The world of Design needs to defend it’s indentity.
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Back Story How UX designers can gather better info.
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LIKES The best work in branding from new designers around the world
15 FEATURES
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Co-Working Space For Architects and Designers By Lizzie Fison
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A Pavillion Made of Felt By Rima Sabina Aouf
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Milan Design Week
Letter From the Editor
Letter From the Editor “ The increasing corporatisation of tertiary education and the commodification of qualifications is leaving less room for students and faculty to develop and stage distinctive creativity”
D E S I G N A C A D E M Y E I N D H O V E N H A S been without a leader for seven months, since its former creative director stepped down in October 2016 after resigning in June earlier that year. The situation makes for an urgent reflection on the limitations of the Dutch school and the future of design education. Simply put: can the Design Academy give rise to a new avant-garde? One of the most important incubators for design, arts and architecture of the last century was Black Mountain College in North Carolina, USA. The school prioritised an interdisciplinary arts education as central, but also strove for self-sufficiency with both students and faculty working together on the farm, in the kitchen and on construction projects. In the 1940s and 1950s, the educational institute attracted teachers such as Josef and Anni Albers, Buckminster Fuller, Walter Gropius, while graduates included John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly. The communal responsibility to develop the curriculum and the school in general led to a conducive learning environment that would give rise to many of the 20th-century pioneers that revolutionised modern art. The situation makes for an urgent reflection on the limitations of the Dutch school. The contrast between Black Mountain College and today’s design schools, such as Design Academy Eindhoven, is stark. The increasing corporatisation of tertiary education and the commodification of qualifications is leaving less room for students and faculty to develop and stage distinctive creativity, personal growth and radical innovation. While these financial and management limitations are not unique to design education, what is at stake when it comes to design and creativity is the very skill that differentiates human intelligence from artificial intelligence. What has preserved some degree of creative autonomy for students and teachers of Design Academy Eindhoven up until now is that it has not been led by a manager, nor an education specialist. Steering the institute and challenging department heads has always been a creative and cultural figure. It makes all the difference and is something we need to evolve.
— Jules van den Langenberg
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Back Story
What Makes a Good UX Designer?
By Hugo Carneiro
is understanding people. Sounds simple right? Well… it’s not that simple, every person is unique, think differently therefore a good UX designer has to be good at managing users’ expectations. Use empathy to their advantage to understand the users’ needs and come up with a solution to a problem. Being able to ask for, listen to and use feedback effectively is also a must have for any good UX designer. Always asking for feedback — on designs, after a project ends, when they work with people in other roles. Good UX designers are genuinely interested in how they can improve and become better. Don’t just collect the information and lock it away. Use it. Take the time to think about the feedback you just received and act on it. Good UX designer will use the feedback in the future. It’s a role where you
T H E M O S T I M P O RTA N T S K I L L
“ Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs are constantly learning and growing as a professional. That’s why I love it! I work at a startup in London and we have what we call “Feature Friday”, every two weeks the whole Fliplet team, all the departments, gather together and the product team, myself included, presents new ideas such as new layouts and news features, for the purpose of
gathering feedback and spark internal discussions to take the product to the next level. I use these occasions to show different things, get other people to see it and interact with it, and get as many feedback as I can and also pay close attention on how people explain problems to me, this not only shows me how they think and what they were expecting, but also enables me to come up with a better solution. Have a process when designing something! There are 4 important steps that a UX designer should take when working on designing or redesigning a project: User Research, Design, Testing, and Implementation User research should be every UX designer’s starting point for a project. Research teaches us about the users, their behavior, goals, motivations, and needs. It also shows us how they currently use our product, where they come up against problems and, most importantly, how they feel when interacting with our product. Being a good UX designer sometimes means putting your personal taste aside because what you think is intuitive might not work for your users, which is why doing research with the actual users is very important to the success of your designs. You should know that sometimes companies don’t really have a way to research with actual users, in this case base your decisions on research done by others. Empathy is key here. Your job is to try to understand why users are behaving the way they are when engaging with your product, not to try to change that behavior or influence it, but accommodate it within the product. As a beginner in UX design, it’s something that I’m still trying to master myself at every given opportunity. Designing a satisfying user experience involves meticulously planning a Customer Journey for the users and helping them find what they are looking for through an intuitive process. The design of your product revolves around functionality and usability, rather than colours or pictures. Having established during your user research what your users expect from your product or site, what their goals are and how they like to operate a system, it is functionality and usability that always comes first. April
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Likes
Food Driven By Armin
Primos by Paloma Nieri Primos Chicken Bar is a rotisserie chicken joint in Lima, Peru, where the chicken is a rock star (figuratively speaking) and where they have dedicated a wall to faux concert posters with chicken motifs. Designed by local designer Paloma Nieri in collaboration with creative director Roni Heredia, illustrator Israelo del mundo de papel, and letterer Lu Nolasco, the restaurant is a wild mix of chicken illustrations and lettering that makes eating rotisserie chicken quite exciting. Keeping all the disparate elements together is the condensed Primos wordmark and a Bauhaus-meets-AC/DC chicken icon that surely knows how to take things up to 11.
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A collection of crisp projects, with work from Lima, Berlin, and Monterrey.
Feiner Herr by Sebastian Haus and Feiner Herr is a food truck roaming the streets of Berlin, Germany, serving modern takes on the pancake. Far from the IHOP aesthetic, the identity designed by Hamburg, Germany-based Sebastian Haus and local Hojin Kang, brings to life the name (which translates to “Fine Gentleman”) with a Bauhaus-meets-Downton Abbey logo that makes for a great spokesman. The crisp, geometric icon is complemented by a series of Art Deco, abstract-pancake tiles that provide lovely textures and things to ogle at while you wait for some fluffy, high-end pancakes.
Winter Milk by Anagrama Winter Milk is a chain of ice cream shops in Monterrey, Mexico, that has just gotten a Bauhaus-mee… no, sorry, it doesn’t work on this one. Designed by Anagrama, the identity has a deliberate Wes Anderson vibe with a lot of spacedout Futura and a peppy color palette. As usual, the typography all around is great, with some complementary script and condensed Futura variations thrown in for good measure. Most of the identity elements are straight out of 1950s diners so there is nothing new per se but everything is so well calibrated and modernized that it’s hard not to enjoy it.
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Co-Working Space For Architects and Designers Barcelona-based studio Appareil integrated furniture into the walls to open up this creative co-working space, specifically designed to suit the needs of architects and designers. By Lizzie Fison
Photographs by JosĂŠ Evia
The space is located on the top floor of a warehouse in Poblenou, the city’s former industrial quarter, which is now part of the 22@Barcelona urban renewal area. The project serves as the Barcelona-based studio’s new office, but is also rented out as a co-working space for other creative industries, as well as for the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. Appareil pared back the typical warehouse space to create simple, open working areas that would suit architects, designers and similar creative professionals.Two milled timber multifunctional walls line the length of the space, housing equipment and providing temporary working areas.The only pieces of furniture in the middle of the room are floating tables and lightweight stools, which can easily be moved aside to open up the space for cultural activities. “Designed and constructed on site, the refurbishment is a live test for professional interactions in this multidisciplinary melting pot of a district,” said Appareil. “It embraces the concentrations of makers, designers, architects, entrepreneurs and various crafts... a swarming creative hub within a hub.” The mostly white palette is combined with neutral tones from the grey concrete floor and wood cabinets, while splashes of blue come via stools and tabletops.A simple timber-surfaced kitchen with concealed storage and a bathroom are located at one end of the level. At wthe opposite end, a floor-toceiling window encloses a winter garden and balcony that looks out onto the sea.The minimalist decor is structured around the existing concrete columns that line the centre of the space. Appareil is a young practice that embraces new design tecnologies and craft with a focus on compu10
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tational design and fabrication. The members of the firm are all also involved in academia, teaching in several European universities. Appareil pared back the typical warehouse space to create simple, open working areas that would suit architects, designers and similar creative professionals.Two milled timber multifunctional walls line the length of the space, housing equipment and providing temporary working areas.The only pieces of furniture in the middle of the room are floating tables and lightweight stools, which can easily be moved aside to open up the space for cultural activities. “Designed and constructed on site, the refurbishment is a live test for professional interactions in this multidisciplinary melting pot of a district,” said Appareil. “It embraces the concentrations of makers, designers, architects, entrepreneurs and various crafts... a swarming creative hub within a hub.” The mostly white palette is combined with neutral tones from the grey concrete floor and wood cabinets, while splashes of blue come via stools and tabletops.A simple timber-surfaced kitchen with concealed storage and a bathroom are located at one end of the level. At the opposite end, a floor-to-ceiling window encloses a winter garden and balcony that looks out onto the sea.The minimalist decor is structured around the existing
Designed and constructed on site, the refurbishment is a live test for professional interactions in this multidisciplinary melting pot of a district April
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concrete columns that line the centre of the space. Appareil is a young practice that embraces new design tecnologies and craft with a focus on computational design and fabrication. The members of the firm are all also involved in academia, teaching in several European universities. for the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. Appareil pared back the typical warehouse space to create simple, open working areas that would suit architects, designers and similar creative professionals.Two milled timber multifunctional walls line the length of the space, housing equipment and providing temporary working areas.The only pieces of furniture in the middle of the room are floating tables and lightweight stools, which can easily be moved aside to open up the space for cultural activities. “Designed and constructed on site, the refurbishment is a live test for professional interactions in this multidisciplinary melting pot of a district,” said Appareil. “It embraces the concentrations of makers, designers, architects, entrepreneurs and various crafts... a swarming creative hub within a hub.” The mostly white palette is combined with neutral tones from the grey concrete floor and wood cabinets, while splashes of blue come via stools and tabletops.A simple timber-surfaced kitchen with concealed storage and a bathroom are located at one end of the level. At wthe opposite end, a floor-to-ceiling window encloses a winter garden and balcony that looks out onto the sea.The minimalist decor is structured around the existing concrete columns that line the centre of the space. Appareil is a young practice that embraces new design tecnologies and craft with a focus on computational design and fabrication. The members of the firm are all also involved in academia, teaching in several European universities. Appareil pared back the typical warehouse space to create simple, open working areas that would suit architects, designers and similar creative professionals. Two milled timber multifunctional walls line the length of the space, housing equipment and providing temporary working areas.The only pieces of furniture in the middle of the room are floating tables and lightweight stools, which can easily be moved aside to open up the space for cultural activities. “Designed and constructed on site, the refurbishment is a live test for professional interactions in this multidisciplinary melting pot of a district,” said Appareil. “It embraces the concentrations of makers, designers, architects, entrepreneurs and 12
Consilium
“ it embraces the concentrations of makers, designers, architects, entrepreneurs and various crafts... a swarming creative hub within a hub.”
April
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A Pavilion Made from Felt By Rima Sabina Aouf
A group of MAarch students from the Bartlett School of Architecture have devised a method of turning felt into load-bearing structures that they hope to build into an fabric pavilion.
Students Noura Mheid, Hameda Janahi, Minzi Jin, Zoukai Huo found inspiration in the traditional craft of felt-making as well as the differential growth patterns found in nature – which is what gives their finished structures their distinctive, seaweed-like curls.After exploring the load-bearing potential of these structures by crafting them into chairs they could sit on, they finished the project by presenting a fabric wall unit. The unit forms one side of what they hope they can one day extend into a full pavilion.Flextiles by the Bartlett School of Architecture Their process stands in contrast to most current fabric architecture, which usually features soft fabric attached to a support structure. The Flextiles structures can be soft in some places and hard in others, transitioning smoothly from one to the other. "Unlike traditional uses of fabric in construction, this technology introduces a new perspective on how to integrate structure into a soft material such as fabric and go beyond the typical disintegration between the draping of fabric onto a completely segregated support," Mheid told Dezeen. "By taking advantage of the hidden potentials of customising textiles to increase overall performance and structural ability, such a flexible material composite can create self-standing, lightweight structures that redefine the use of fabric in architecture as a whole," she continued. The students fabric architecture as particularly useful for spaces where it might be desirable to block out light or sound. Felt's sound-absorbing properties are already widely recognised, and it is having a resurgence in office furniture as a way to dampen noise in open-plan offices. "Functions such as museums, office spaces, theatres could all be redefined with more unique spatial 16
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and visual experiences," said Mheid. "Eventually, the final designed pavilion explored these aspects into a leisure centre to create a relaxed environment for visitors to enjoy the sunlight and have a sense of scale and tranquility within the hustle and bustle of the London atmosphere." Furthering another Bartlett project that saw students make tubular furniture using a felt resin composite, the Flextiles structures are developed with the assistance of digital modelling tools and robotic sewing machines. The curly Flextiles forms were generated through parametric modelling software, allowing the students – part of Bartlett's MArch Architectural Design postgraduate programme – to experiment with various thicknesses and layers of material. When it came to designing the chairs, the group first used the software to create a pattern for the frame, then put it through a load analysis step that would optimise its positioning to bear the weight of sitter. The curly-edged surface was modelled on top of that. An ABB 120 robot prepared fabric for use in the process by interlocking fibres into felt sheets. The team then constructed models manually, sewing patterns into the felt sheets, laid flat, to create an inner tubular structure. They embedded this tubular structure into further coats of fibres, using wet felting techniques to fuse them together. They then arranged the model into a three-dimensional shape within a bonding box, and at this point inserted the expandable foam to reinforce the structure.
Museums, office spaces, theatres could all be redefined with more unique spatial and visual experiences April
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