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12/12/12 8:52 AMIn the Shifting World of Product Design, the User Now Has a Voice - NYTimes.com
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DESIGN
In the Shifting World of Product Design, the User NowHas a Voice
Kristof Vrancken/Unfold, via Istanbul Design Biennial
The open-end process devised by Unfold, an Antwerp-based design group that will be exhibiting at the Istanbul DesignBiennial, in operation.
By ALICE RAWSTHORNPublished: September 9, 2012
LONDON — How do you design a toaster? By that, I don’t mean whatskills and materials will be needed, but rather what the designprocess consists of. Would you be surprised if I suggested that itmight begin with a manufacturer describing what type of toaster isrequired to a designer who envisages exactly what it will look like andhow it will be made, then sends detailed specifications to a factory?Of course not. Countless products have been designed in that waysince the Industrial Revolution.
But a very different process wasapplied to the design of the toasters aswell as of the vacuum cleaners, kettles,vases and toys that are to be exhibitedat the first Istanbul Design Biennial, which opens on Oct.13. All of those products were developed by the new genreof open-ended design processes, which deploy advancedproduction technologies, like 3-D printing, to enable thepeople who will use the finished objects to take criticaldesign decisions about them.
“The traditional model of the designer and manufacturerfoisting a finished product on to the market is no longerrelevant in many fields,” said Joseph Grima, editor of the
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12/12/12 8:52 AMIn the Shifting World of Product Design, the User Now Has a Voice - NYTimes.com
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Maker Faire Africa/disterics, via IstanbulDesign Biennial
Sunglasses made with various objects,giving each pair a unique look, byCyrus Kabiru.
Italian design and architecture magazine “Domus,” who isco-curating the Istanbul biennial with the Turkish architectEmre Arolat. “We want to explore what happens when thedesign process becomes open-ended and unfinished, ratherthan closed, and to look at the way it is transforming designculture.”
The new design and manufacturing systems, including 3-Dprinting, enable objects to be made at such speed and soprecisely that the specifications of each one can becustomized to adopt a shape or style chosen by its eventualuser. Mr. Grima has invited some of the designers who arepioneering the development of these technologies toparticipate in “Adhocracy,” a program of exhibitions,workshops and performances scheduled throughout thebiennial.
Among them are Thomas Lommée and Jesse Howard, whowork in Brussels and Amsterdam respectively, and Unfold,
a design group in Antwerp, Belgium, co-founded by Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen.Meanwhile, Cyrus Kabiru, Norbert Okec and other participants in the Maker Faire Africaevents in Lagos, Nairobi and Cairo are to take up residencies in Istanbul where they willforge collaborations with Turkish designers, manufacturers and artisans.
“Adhocracy” is not the first attempt to explore the impact of the new productiontechnologies on design. The same theme was analyzed by an exhibition presented by“Domus” in Milan in April during the city’s annual furniture fair, and is now beingscrutinized in “The Machine: Designing a New Industrial Revolution,” running throughOct. 7 at the C-mine Design Center in Genk, Belgium. But “Adhocracy” is an unusuallyambitious endeavor, which could make a constructive contribution to the ongoing debateabout the rapidly changing role of design.
If it succeeds, it will also establish the Istanbul Design Biennial, which is organized by theIstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, as a dynamic addition to the global designcalendar. The new biennial comes at a particularly busy time in the design year becausedozens of design festivals take place in different cities all over the world every Septemberand October. Despite cuts in public funding for such projects in many countries, thismonth’s schedule includes events in Beijing, Brussels, London, Paris and Shanghai as wellas the opening of Vienna Design Week and a flurry of activity in Helsinki as the city nearsthe end of its year as World Design Capital. The events in October range from DutchDesign Week in Eindhoven, Netherlands, and the annual design festivals in Prague andthe Polish city of Lodz, to the biennials in Istanbul and Kortrijk in Belgium.
Many of the early autumn design fests revolve around commercial projects. The LondonDesign Festival is dominated by the 100% Design furniture fair, as is Shanghai DesignWeek by the China International Furniture Expo. But the London festival also embracesscores of fringe events ranging from an exhibition of sticky tape from around the world inthe Shoreditch shop of the industrial designer Jasper Morrison, to a survey of the eatingand cooking products designed by Sebastian Bergne and Corin Mellor at the David Mellorstore in Chelsea.
The most influential design fests tend to be the ones that are driven by cultural, ratherthan commercial agendas. The most talked-about event of last autumn was the GwangjuDesign Biennial in South Korea where the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei co-curated
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12/12/12 8:52 AMIn the Shifting World of Product Design, the User Now Has a Voice - NYTimes.com
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A version of this article appeared in print on September 10, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.
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an exhibition “Unnamed,” which challenged conventional definitions of design. So far, thenew Istanbul biennial looks like the strongest contender to succeed Gwangju this year.
A promising development is that some cultural events, which have traditionally focused onart or architecture, are adopting a more thoughtful and provocative approach to design.Among them is Manifesta, the roving European contemporary art biennial runningthrough Sept. 30 in Flanders. It includes work by the Beehive Design Collective, anexperimental U.S. design group, and the Dutch book designer Irma Boom.
Another example is the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened late last month andruns through Nov. 25. Traditionally, it has focused (unsurprisingly) on architecture andignored other aspects of design, with occasional exceptions — mostly implausible,uncomfortable chairs designed by architects — but not this time.
Mr. Morrison is participating in “Common Ground,” the exhibition curated by thebiennale’s director, the British architect David Chipperfield, and other designers havecontributed to the national pavilions in the Giardini di Castello. The German industrialdesigner Konstantin Grcic was part of team responsible for his national pavilion, as wasthe Dutch graphic designer Joost Grootens for the Belgian Pavilion. Among the dozens ofsocially motivated projects exhibited in the U.S. Pavilion were pieces by community designgroups, design activists and information designers.
For the first time, design features in the Venice Architecture Biennale not as a prop, but bymaking an incisive contribution to the issues under discussion. In other words, it has beenincluded for the same reasons that art often is — just as it should be.
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