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Toward a
Design Dialectic
TEXT BY SHIRLEY SURYA IMAGES COURTESY OF MARCEL WANDERS STUDIO, KARIM RASHID INC., MAD AND MADA s.p.a.m
Media coverage of the following design figures may seem saturated and hyped up to some. But iSh believes that Marcel Wanders, Karim Rashid, Ma Yansong and Ma Qingyun must have more than enough substance to feed the hype and to reveal much more to us. Since they were the cause of much anticipation at the Singapore Design Festival and Archifest in 2007, iSh was bent on peeling off more the multiple layers of these well-endowed minds through uncharted questions. All four are known for their extremities and have received their fair share of the design community’s flippant criticisms such as “I don’t like his style”, “he’s just too commercial”, or “he’s hardly built a thing”. But these conversations prove that even if their work may not fit our rules and preferences, each has undergone a rigorous thought process and challenging socio-economic realities to form the basis for their convictions and decisions. They are bold visionaries of humble confidence, with no sense of complacency, relentless in their pursuit of personal and professional growth to contribute to the greater public. By comparing the viewpoints of two product mavens of the West (Wanders and Rashid), and those of Ma Qingyun and Ma Yansong, two of China's new prominent breed of architects, we hope the dialectic and parallels that emerge will make you look beyond their forms into their motivations; not singularly, but in the context of their peers, and of the process, means and ends of design, locally and globally.
On capturing the contemporary zeitgeist versus the sense of history in one’s work MW: It’s not so much history that I consider important in my work. But the fact is that there is the past and the future. Design is not just about the future but also who we have become and who we are together as a group of people. A big part of culture is the collective thing that we’ve done in the past. I think we’ve tried to push it away for a very long time. That’s a loss and a pity.
KR: The ideas I have synthesised into reality are very much based on navigating in this highly communicative digital age. At the end of the day, it’s about doing work that is more relevant to the age that we live in if you are perceptive in working in the present. Of course, we have to hold on to a lot of things in history. We use it as a platform, a springboard. You can’t recreate history, reproduce it or make derivations of it. We should take advantage of history and move from there. There’s no need to repeat it but there’s a lot to learn from it.
On developing a personal language of design MW: I’ve always wanted a type of design that is more romantic and warm. It’s strange that we create designs that are so distant from the understanding of people without visual education and from what normal people think is beautiful. Since school, I have realised that there is this strange notion of design that’s only going forward. I’ve been thinking of why that is and have increasingly formed my conclusions. In different stages of my life, I wrote about this "baby-face fixation" (the syndrome of making products that bear no reference to the past) and how to create durable objects that are more in tune with culture while being respectful of the past. Pretty
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fast after that, this idea came to be an integral part of my work, and the conscious knowledge of it has grown over time. KR: Honestly, it really came about in my 40s. It was in the last seven years that my language turned mature. How we learn is by copying others. There’s nothing wrong with that. The traditional school of painting is that you’d copy a master, like you’d copy a surreallist painter and learn about surreallist painting. It’s inevitable. Some people find themselves at a younger age, some older.
"If you cannot make it a fantastic idea for someone else, you probably can’t make it for yourself. So I challenge the idea that you can be a designer without a business sense because you are creating a business." 3 things to know about MARCEL
WANDERS
• Tossed out of Design Academy Eindhoven but roped into the famous Droog design collective in the 1990s • Adores Philippe Starck • His Airborne Snotty Vase is based on transforming a 3D-scan of a sneeze into solid form using a microtech imaging device
On design process
On approach to crossing design disciplines
MW: It’s not so much a process but a map. In each of our brains, there are a million things important to us to help us decide what to do. I try to visualise a structure to make sure that it’s not only chaos. That’s the only way that you can grow the quality of your work – by knowing and learning how you can repeat the same good idea over and over again. I started seeing lines of consistency across my work. I divided them into three areas through which I collect information. These give me strength for the next step. First are the things that I really want to do, second are the time-challenging ideas – what we want to achieve in the next ten years, and third are the strategies – a specific intelligence or structural idea that is important and interesting to people in one project that I can use again for another.
MW: For ten years I did only product design. At some point, I felt that the next logical step was to go into interior design. Designers should always go where they haven't been before. You have to do something that’s difficult for you to get all the best energy and power out of you, because you need it! I think interior design is a far more alive process. You don’t just have one idea and start making – the ideas are all connected like a musical composition. It’s a different process of making and a different set of rules that we’re learning from scratch, which is good. Why would I do interior if it’s the same as what I was already doing? But I wouldn’t call myself an architect or interior designer and I shouldn’t compete with them. When I build a house, I want to use an entirely different vocabulary and intention.
KR: My process is a constant balance of the left and right brain, theory and practice, the constant back and forth of artistic expression and practical human experimental issues and concerns. Design is about shaping contemporary human experiences, not about styling. It's about finding the criteria, opportunism, searching out possibilities, issues, conditions, material and production potentials to inform the form. If we sit and draw form for form’s sake, we'll never go beyond what we already know and we wouldn’t push or find a new language. So let the language be inspired by the concepts.
On business and design MW: Design may have very different faces but the core of it is to create products that people buy. Whether you make and sell it yourself, or if you make it and someone else produces it to sell, it makes no difference. If you cannot make it a fantastic idea for someone else, you probably can’t make it for yourself. So I challenge the idea that you can be a designer without a business sense because you are creating a business. I'm not saying that you have to become the person to create the business. But you got to make sure you understand it and that you can explain to businessmen what you want to do. If you can’t, then you probably didn’t think enough about it.
KR: I use the same points of entry into all my projects: criteria, human experience, the context, etc. I don’t see the difference between space, object, architecture, or jewellery. I’ve been encouraging a lot of designers to cross disciplines, especially considering people like Le Corbusier who’s a painter, an architect and a watchmaker. There is a term about the Renaissance man as the artist who is interested in exploring all the boundaries, though there’s always some sort of boundary. But I’m trying to explore immaterial design by developing my own music.
KR: Designers are the necessary liaison between industry and human life. I bring differentiation, innovation, human needs and desires to companies, which are all necessary in business today. Without these, brands will not survive in our shrinking and highly competitive global marketplace. Remember that compromise is not a bad thing. Compromise is about two cultures working together – the culture of the company I work with and my sensibilities. The best work comes out when we listen to each other like in a good marriage. There is about US$200 million of my work sold yearly by about 75 companies. I wish they were all commissions! But they are not. So I do not have a sprawling resort anywhere, yet. Actually I would not want a sprawling resort, just a perfect soft pink clear blob home that rotates.
On critics who call Wanders the “Damien Hirst of furniture” and “sensationalist” and finds Rashid’s “highly stylised design vocabulary and rampant ego a distaste”
"Don’t chase fame. Chase originality, chase innovation, chase beauty." 3 things to know about KARIM
RASHID
• Credited by Bruce Sterling for coining the term "blobject" • Designed some 2,500 objects put into production to date • His OH chair for Umbra has sold over 1 million and Garbo waste can - over 4 million - in the States
MW: If people complain that the Snotty Vase is not functional, they have a very limited idea of functionality. I try not to criticise others but I tend to be critical of myself. I would be interested if someone tells me "Listen Marcel, you made a glass, but it doesn't fit your own rules". Then I can learn something. Maybe there's discrepancy in my thinking. But there are a million views out there. I'm not going to follow their rules. You can't blame me for having my own. You can be critical about my rules, but not the object. Some think making an object that's very theatrical is wrong. They have probably never gone to the theatre, have a boring life, and they like it. But the piece does more than what you expect from it. To me design has a lot of opportunities and one of them is to communicate. Some of my work has been considered useful, like the Container Table. But the Snotty Vase has a totally different potential. I didn't expect a thousand people to buy it but it's a great communication tool because it speaks of what can be changed about design. I call it virtual design. Like the
Knotted Chair, it has been seen a billion times on print. I've also made 200 of those chairs. Which of the two would have more impact? I'm sure it's the virtual one.
On celebritisation of designers
On personal development
MW: It’s fun. We’ve always tried to do something important, and we fail. We should be so happy that finally we can see design grow to be important for people. Obviously there are a few things that go with it. If you don’t want to be a celebrity designer, it’s very easy, just don’t put your name and cut out the pictures. If we put our names on things, we have to make sure that it’s a good thing. If it’s by Marcel Wanders, the sculpture should be beautiful. But if it’s a boring vase, then it’s better not to put your name.
MW: Personal development is the most important thing. If I don’t grow I want to quit. Personal and professional development are different things but they are very related. Professionalism builds personal growth and vice versa. You can’t be a better person, if you don’t grow as a profession. I want to grow harmoniously as a whole – personally and professionally.
KR: Don' t chase fame. Chase originality, chase innovation, chase beauty. If an athlete, an author, a film director, a musician, and other creative fields can have celebrities, why not design? I am a celebrity and it affords me to make design a public subject.
KR: I must say I hardly find any real critic in this profession anymore. The profession is full of decorative and style magazines. The world is nostalgic and I find that the worst distaste. I do not expect everyone to like my work by any means. I speak, teach, and write about design because I believe in design being a public subject instead of the marginal one that it has been for the last century. The design profession is so steeped in its narrow nepotistic insular world and I don't believe in that. I don't believe in a school of thought anymore. In fact, there is no "good design" versus "bad design" in the 20th century clichéd way. The world is changing, and so are we. I am pleased to see my products in non-design magazines, in average homes, in every corner of our lives. I do not worry about museums, accolades, etc. Design is in every part of living – no rules!
KR: I try to educate myself constantly. There’s one thing I used to teach a lot: the notion of “learn to learn”. Once you’re in that frame of mind – eager, passionate and interested in learning – it never ends, you’re always learning. You don’t get to a point in your life where you go “Okay I know everything”. If anything, you learn so much you start to realise how little you do know because you know there’s just so much more to learn. 109
On American architectural education and if you’ll encourage young Chinese architects to go MY: What’s important is for a person to try to change no matter where you go. When I was in college, most people tend to go on the normal track of going abroad. But there are some young designers and artists who never go anywhere, but they’re still very good, always trying to do something different outside of the system in their career. Yale is a good school. Its principle is very open at the individual level. It doesn’t have a very strong style to form you. They invite well-known but different international architects, some modernists and some post-modernists, who sometimes fight. As a student you see different things going on. You choose what you like. You like Zaha Hadid, you go to her class. I won’t necessarily encourage young Chinese architects to go abroad. The important thing is you must know what you want. It’s nice to visit different places but you don't have to study in the States. In China, the artists’ scene is more active. Contemporary Chinese art started in the 1980s. Architecture is very slow compared to them. The pioneering artists don’t treat art like style, unlike architecture, but they really work with the situation in China. Modern Chinese architects should do that. You can learn about the Western style, but after you
understand its history, you should generate something new by researching on your own problems. MQ: The biggest influence of American architectural education is how it developed the process of ideation. Once you have it, you can always absorb ideas and transform them to work. But what’s sad about the American system is that ideas that are being processed are often irrelevant. So you build skills to process the ideas, but most of the ideas are irrelevant. So it can only be substantialised if I return to Asia where ideas are put into practice. Another influence is the inherent care in the quality of ideas, though the idea could be detached from its social context or reality. So I’m still struggling with the issue of whether the purity or quality of ideas, or the relevance of ideas is more important. I’m glad to have the chance to bring that struggle back into education as dean at USC. Of course I encourage people to go to the States. Not entirely because of the direct benefit from the difference of education per se, but more for the different life experience, putting yourself in contact with the world. I think the beauty of education is not in the knowledge, but in the contact.
On the nature, concerns and priorities in your approach as an architect MY: I’m still in the process of self-discovery. When we started the practice, I realised it made no sense to just be doing some imported work! In the first two years, we didn’t have projects, so we took part in many competitions. We worked a lot with local contemporary artists on shows to build art installations and learnt a lot from them like problems in Chinese urbanism and architecture. Then we started to question ourselves constantly: Why should we do this? What’s the meaning of our existence? Most of the artists’ works are related to socio-politics. I think architecture should be more sensitive to these issues. We also discovered more of ourselves from this fish tank project. We researched the behaviour of the fishes and discovered that they didn’t like their cubic space. So we deformed the cube to form a new fish tank. That “building” for the fish got us many prizes. But in reality, we don't really research as architects. We only serve the third party – government or developer – who decide what the city should be, though the right thing is to serve the community. This is the biggest problem in China where traditionally, architects never see this as a form of responsibility, or having the power to serve the user because architects here are not supposed to engage in ideological discussion, you just do it. So we try to treat every project in a manner that unearths what the cultural or political problems are and address them.
MQ: My real concern is what is in the client’s heart, not in their mouth. They can tell me they want social status, financial maximisation, or personal obsession through the building. Good. As long as I’m connected to what they want in their heart, I always get the job done nicely. Depending on who it is, I tend to be really honest. I’ll say, “Maybe you don’t know how to tell me yet. Let me tell you how you want it. If you hate me for it, good. I like to be hated. But at least I care about what you wanted. This written thing, I know it. But what exactly do you want? You gave the same brief to a hundred people. I’m not that hundred people. You can tell me, 'I’m going to demolish this building in five years, so give me the maximum profit gain in five years.' I’ll do it for you. But you have to be true to your idea." The truthfulness to your own idea and being responsible to the client creates absolutely the best work. As a dean, curator, and head of my firm, my priority is the message I’m forming and communicating to society. My enterprise that I’ve slowly come to terms with is to constantly detect new things and announce new ideas. Building is only one means to do that. To me a building is not an artifact but a medium of communication, not a heavily workedout sophisticated art object. The biennale, exhibitions, and education are the same. Therefore they all have the same focus, but manifested in different ways. It’s very easy for me to manage them when seen in that way.
On how others have characterised Ma Yansong’s work as “Zaha Hadid-ish” and Ma Qingyun’s work as “megastructure” and “programmatic density” MY: I think Zaha is an artist. When I was in school, she was my teacher. I did this floating thing for the Ground Zero project which was totally different from her work then, which was characterised by lines and corners. But she liked it and gave me many books on contemporary art to read. So it’s good that she’s really sensitive, very artistic and personal. Her practice is another story. Now it’s getting very big and the form becomes very stylish. But I think her real self is not like that. She likes to do small things, like art installations, and to express her own feelings. I feel that Chinese architects still lack the ability to be very personal and original. We may be original compared to other Chinese, but we are still learning a lot. People still think I’m "Zaha Hadid-ish". People see form and they discuss form. We have something totally different behind our forms. It’s important that we are aware of this. Two years ago, I may not have known this. But today I do and I’m discovering more about myself.
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I think that’s the engine that can drive us to the future, when we can do something different. Most importantly, we must realise we are not yet that original. MQ: The word “mega” is really about economy of critical mass. "Megastructure" is the most effective economical strategy in the emerging market. For me it’s not theory. I have to help my client, I have to be most responsible for their budget. What’s most beautiful about "megastructure" is that it creates the maximum flexibility. I think the density of changes is more important than the density of substance. Therefore hyper-density for me is the density of activities, and that is manifested by flexibility.
"If there was to be a trait that defines us, our common challenge will be to avoid that common trait." 3 things to know about MA
YANSONG
• Apprenticed under Zaha Hadid and Eisenman Architects • Recipient of the Samuel J. Fogelson Memorial Award for Design Excellence and Young Architects Award from The Architecture League of New York • MAD is the first Chinese-based architecture firm to win an international competition outside of China – to design a 50-storey tower block in Mississauga, Ontario
On Beijing versus Shanghai
On the place of history, memory and nostalgia under China’s rapid urbanisation
MY: I like Beijing. I know many people from Shanghai and all over China who move to Beijing. Some are designers and artists. Beijing is more original and local, with more new thinking. I think Shanghai is more commercial, even the art. It is more international.
MY: It’s important for a metropolitan city to have diversity – the new and the old. As an architect I like old buildings but without people living in them, without life, it’s sad. When they become bars, it’s okay. In fact it’s more interesting that what was designed as a house, you changed it into a bar. But I think Beijing’s hutongs (narrow back alleys) should still be about the people who live there. I grew up in a hutong. In the past, one might not like the poor conditions of the hutong and how it wasn't fashionable. But when you grow up, you still like it because it’s part of your memory. Beijing is an old town, so the city is very sensitive to time. Time makes you calm if you slow down. I think that’s what a metropolitan city needs. If you still have them, keep them. Not replicate them. We still need to create more diversity.
MQ: I think Shanghai is hopeless now. Beijing has all the hope. Shanghai thinks it has no problem – that's the problem. It has lost the courage to search for new paradigms due to political reasons, increasing fame and self-consciousness. Shanghai should get rid of its sense of self-satisfaction. Beijing is behind, which is why it hasn't reached its hopelessness. Shanghai is so advanced it's reaching a point of difficulty. But Shanghai's challenge will be much bigger than Beijing. I anticipate 500 million people urbanised in 20 years. Around Shanghai there'll be about 100 million people urbanised. If they're not creative in reaching for new paradigms, it's going to be a problem.
MQ: I’m actually encouraging the idea of rapid urbanisation. It’s the proper natural lifecycle that cities need. It’s a mistake that people today are involved in the business of preserving what they like. You’re artificially elongating something beyond their life cycle. We have to leave it to the future to make the decision. What we can do now is to work intelligently, responsibly and
economically to fulfil the life cycle. The fast change is not artificial. It’s what the economy is making it to be. If the energy makes it reckless, then let it be because it’s not your decision to make it so. It has its own mechanism. You must then make that recklessness intelligent. Even the sensitivity to time and context I had for my projects was not meant to preserve, but to help the place go through its lifecycle. From the surface it seems to refer to the history, it’s not. If the sensitivity toward the project helps the city to regenerate its energy – financial, political, and social life – it’s not preserving but rather contributing to the economic circulation today. Nostalgia is a noble sense, but it really should just exist in time, not in space. Space doesn't affect the notion of time. The notion of time is the memory of time you spent with people. When I miss my parents, I never remember the place but their faces, sentiments and words. Even if I employ Chinese typologies, it's not to preserve history but to fulfill the building’s programme. The kind of heritage nostalgic quality should not be reflected in space and objects. Nostalgia is an argument people like to hear, but in my heart, it doesn’t really matter. Nostalgia has no place in my work. Whoever has that argument for architecture, they’re either lying or they haven’t gotten the idea.
On dealing with the scale and speed of projects in China MY: You just have to react fast. It’s not difficult. The most difficult is in discovering what kind of person you are. But if you already have a certain idea about the situation, when your clients ask you something, you can answer immediately. Sometimes we can also change other people’s mindset. That’s why I say architects should be involved in ideological discussion. When we work with government officials or high-level developers, they don’t know what they want. They may have a very clear vision but you can feel the weakness of the idea. There was a client who wanted a temple on top of a high-rise building. I told him, “You will fail.” He was not happy. Then I asked him out for tea and invited artists and cultural critics to join us. We had this chat for a couple of weeks and he changed! I think you really have to go through real conversations and communication. Architects are in this middle platform. You know the problems and wants of the public, then you’re also dealing with people who have the power to decide what to do. You can give up and not care about what these people want, but sometimes by being in conversations with them, you’re already involving more members of the public in making the city.
MQ: Speed is a strategy at a certain period of social development. It is the ultimate form of control. You cannot control slowness but you can control speed. For a society, it's largely coordinated better when it’s done in speed. When it’s slow, it starts to dissolve, deform, disappear. That costs a lot of waste. Speed creates efficiency and coordination. In the strategy of speed, things have to be cheap. Quality has different foundations. Quality driven by speed and cheapness is one type of quality that is not meant to be permanent but to be replaced. We can open a whole discussion on permanence and temporality. Every designer wants their building to be permanent but fundamentally, in the philosophical sense, you have to build into your system the idea that whatever you build will disappear. That’s difficult. But once you allow disappearance in anything that you create, you become a lot more intelligent and responsible. Responsibility comes out of the sense of disappearance. My buildings will surely be replaced by other buildings. Why does what I build have to be there forever? I don’t intend and don’t pretend I didn't know it. So the only thing I can do is to deal with that given lifespan. So spend less, be very efficient, do not waste and make it light.
On the role of China’s new generation of architects
"I think the kind of Euro-centric mainstream has run through its course. Not just Chinese, but the East-Asian mentality must offer an alternative cultural strategy." 3 things to know about MA
QINGYUN
• Collaborated with Rem Koolhaas on the first Harvard Project on Cities, resulting in The Great Leap Forward, Beijing CCTV Tower and Shenzhen's Stock Exchange • Profiled as one of the "Design Vanguards" in 2003 by Architectural Record and "Emerging Design Talents" by Phaidon • Became the first Asian dean of University of Southern California (USC) School of Architecture in January 2007
MY: If there was to be a trait that defines us, our common challenge would be to avoid that trait. The older generation always tries to present “Chinese architecture”. That’s impossible. Chinese architecture should be denominational with different interests and thinking, not about style or bamboo. Right now, I don’t see many of these, even for myself. We have to continue to refresh ourselves and rethink by working with real situations, because the challenges and problems in China are very fresh every day. When the problems get tough, you are tempted to do something easy by grabbing solutions from elsewhere. That’s dangerous. To be original, it’s not about being original in form, but about being truly influential Chinese architects. You cannot point that out about anyone now. It’s about being influential like the masters of the past who have contributed so much good to human society. Their fame is not marked by their nationality. Some Chinese architects are in the scene not because we’ve reached that level but because people are interested to
know what we’re doing in China. But compared to Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, we have a long way to go. The basic thing before anything is that we have to find ourselves. MQ: It should not be about making our buildings as nice as Swiss architecture, or as permanent as Greek temples, or making our presentation as articulate as those of American sociologists. I think our role is to offer an alternative to the mainstream worldview. We have to constantly be reminded that we must provide an alternative. I think the sort of Euro-centric mainstream has run through its course. Not just Chinese, but the East-Asian mentality must offer an alternative cultural strategy. Anti-permanence. Anti-perpetuality. Fast, light and cheap. Cheapness is the ultimate green strategy. Being cheap is green. That’s how Chinese culture has existed for thousands of years. It’s not even related to Chinese-ness, but the difference we can offer from mainstream Western thinking.
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