Something I’ve been looking forward to:
LDF 2015

I always try to keep a few days to scour the London Design Festival, but this year’s has been busy in a wonderful and unexpected way (well, long story).

Still, I managed to make it to the Brompton Design District, a personal favorite for experimental and conceptual approaches to design.

I summarised my marathon tour of the district on a board for Curator Journal, but you can also catch glimpses of other districts on my shiny new Instagram feed, which is also a good place to say hello.

Portrait/Interview:
Riya Patel

The guests of this Portrait/Interview issue are Riya Patel & Ariana Mouyiaris.

A former senior editor at Icon Magazine, Riya Patel is the new curator at the Aram Gallery.
She talks to Ariana Mouyiaris about her first show and gives us a preview of her next, 2°C, that will be part of the London Design Festival starting in a few days.

Your first show, Extra Ordinary, at the Aram Gallery showcased an interesting cross section of designers working across different craft-based approaches: utilising industrial materials and processes as well as creating new raw materials for design products. Can you tell us a bit about your personal interests and inspirations in design?

It was a good show for me to start with as I’m actually very inspired by details of the everyday. I think there is as much value and richness in the design of things for mass production as there is for craft/bespoke… for something to be so well-designed, or serve its purpose so completely, that we actually don’t think of it as design any more. Like a coin that has to be made in a material durable enough to last a lifetime and communicate a lot of information about identity on a small surface area. I’m actually not so interested in craft, although naturally this is the area where experimentation often happens. Design in our time has become closer to art but really it’s a service: something that should serve everyone and do it well.
The popular misconception is that design is exclusive and for the rich; I want to show that it isn’t and that it affects everyone every day.

I think we’ve also become so detached from how things are produced and made.
We talk a lot about how craft is in decline but parts of industry are too, especially in the UK. Extra Ordinary had the effect of turning products and materials on their head to make us look again at them. And question why we think some things are more valuable than others.
I want the many young designers who come to the gallery to be excited about process, material and manufacture not just a fashionable end product.

Views of the Extra Ordinary show

How has your background in architecture and journalism influenced your approach to curation? Is working within an exhibition format the perfect bridge between storytelling and creating space?

It’s more about finding the perfect timescale for me. I studied architecture but never had the patience for how long it takes to see a complex building through to completion.

Working for magazines was great as every month you’d have this great feeling of satisfaction, and then be on to researching the next exciting thing. Although I still write, modern journalism can feel a bit too speedy sometimes. With the internet always demanding more words and faster, I felt like I wasn’t really seeing things or talking to designers in-depth, just skimming the surface. Curating The Aram Gallery is already proving a good pace for me: lengthy research, the time to talk with lots of designers in their studios, and of course the chance to see it all come to fruition five times a year. For me, all three things are essentially about a cycle of research, collaboration, and creative expression.

Can you tell us about your next show at Aram and what you’d like to bring
to your new role?

The next show at The Aram Gallery is called 2°C and it’s a collaboration with Disegno magazine and Universal Design Studio. For its latest issue, Disegno invited leading designers to think about how the issue of climate change could be more effectively communicated to the public. The title is a reference to the forthcoming UN conference on the subject which will aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so that the earth’s temperature doesn’t rise above 2°C, the threshold at which effects will be catastrophic.

Universal Design Studio have created a fantastic exhibition design and I’ve been working with the designers to develop the ideas into an exhibition format. Like the previous exhibition,
I love the questioning attitude all the participating designers have taken to the subject.
The exhibits are weird and wonderful, and perhaps not the usual thing you might see at the gallery as they are quite conceptual.

But as I mentioned the main thing I want to express in my new role is that design doesn’t exist in a vacuum… we have to think carefully about the time we are designing in, about context and wider issues too.

2°C at the Aram Gallery: 21 September – 31 October 2015

Interview by Ariana Mouyiaris, an independent Creative Director and Founder
of design and curating practice Haptic Thought.

Photography by Amandine Alessandra / The Interior Photographer

1 Portrait / 1 Object : Silo Studio

For this first issue of the 1 Portrait / 1 Object series, I interview Attua Aparicio & Oscar Wanless of Silo Studio.

Silo Studio is a London-based design studio that was formed by Attua Aparicio and Oscar Wanless while studying on Design Products at the Royal College of Art a few years ago. A mix of hands-on and industrial processes, they describe their practice as “Handmade Hi-tech”. I paid a visit to their East London studio as they were getting set for a 12 week residency in Sweden.

Attua Aparicio and Oscar Wanless of Silo studio

I discovered your work at the launch of Contour of Spring at Mint, during London Craft Week, where you were presenting your Newton’s Bucket series, a project that has also been selected for Jerwood Makers Open. Could you tell us a bit about it?

We started by looking into a physical principle (inertia) that Isaac Newton called the Bucket Argument, describing the dish shape created by liquid rotating in a receptacle. In Newton’s times the electric motor hadn’t been invented yet, but he noted that with a stable rotation a perfect form would appear. We thought we would try to freeze this moment, first experimenting with plaster.

Starting in a very rudimentary way, we attached a bowl to a drill to make it spin; the principle worked, but required some refinement. So we adapted a potter’s wheel to spin a bowl, and now we’ve just made our newest machine, which gives us much more control and stability.
We have been trying other materials to solidify or “freeze” that movement, such as bronze and aluminium.

Often in our work we find inspiration in craft and industry, embracing a naive approach to developing new techniques or new ways of making things. Another major element in our practice is randomness and chance: we like to let the material behave in its own way,
having its own voice.

Newton’s Bucket dishes and the adapted potter’s wheel.

You also have a series a textile moulded glasses, which I love, some editions of them distributed by Wrong for Hay. Is the idea of catching, or shall I say freezing a fluctuant shape, a strong lead in your research?

Yes, we are trying to capture a physical marker of what is happening in a process; the form is showing the making in a very explicit and simple way. This is the result of trying to create unique pieces by using moulds, in this case textile moulds, so they are flexible and producing slightly different results each time.

Is there anything in particular that you are looking forward to researching or experimenting with during your residency over the Summer?

We are looking at the residency as a moment to reflect on our practice and set our next steps. We will be using the available facilities to experiment and hopefully find starting points for new projects. In our day to day practice, we tend to concentrate our efforts on materials and ways of making. In order to truly develop new things, we have to allow ourselves to get a little bit lost in what we are doing: not knowing or being able to predict the result of experimentation
is essential.

Silo Studio
Interview & photography by Amandine Alessandra

Snapping through Clerkenwell Design Week 2015

A few images I brought back from a marathon visit through Clerkenwell Design Week 2015,
as you probably noticed if you follow me on Twitter.

You may recognise, amongst others and in no specific order, Philippe Malouin’s Gridlock pendant for Roll & Hill/SCP, Gubi’s very Art Deco showroom in the amazing old walls of the Icon House of Culture, Sebastian Herkner’s Oda lamp, pieces of The Republic of Fritz Hansen, the dazzling installation by Cousins&Cousins on St John’s Square, and Ikuko Iwamoto’s bizarre and exquisite ceramic, which I’ve loved since seeing it at her graduation show years ago.

If you’re visiting CDW today (last chance!) don’t miss Discover & Deliver‘s collection displayed in an eery indoor garden in the House of Culture, next to another striking installation by Uncommon Land for Moroso, inspired by senegalese tiny urban vegetable gardens and featuring outdoor furniture manufactured using the traditional skills of Senegalese basket weavers.

ps: Picture grid organised using Curator

Today Bread

Soaked Linseeds & Wheat Grains Rye

In the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying fresh sourdough bread delivered to door step, baked
and biked by Alexandre Bettler, who recently set up Today Bread in East London.

Every week is a surprise: we’ve had Hibiscus Sourdough Rye, Almonds, Cardamom & Raisins Sourdough Rye, Rye and Chamomile… so I made a habit of taking every loaf’s portrait every week.

Flaked Almonds Sourdough Rye

You can read Alex’s interview in Grafik here, and ask for your own weekly loaf here