BRIT INSURANCE DESIGNS OF THE YEAR DESIGN MUSEUM

BRIT
INSURANCE
DESIGNS OF
THE YEAR
DESIGN
MUSEUM

Credits
Curator
Alex Newson
Project Management
Melanie Spencer
Graphic and Exhibition Design
Cartlidge Levene
External Project Management
Richard Greenwood
Editor
Anna Faherty
Book Production Editor
Simon Armstrong for Design Museum Enterprises
The Design Museum would like to thank all the
nominators and nominees who have helped
deliver Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2010.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright
holders and to obtain permission for the use
of copyright material in this publication.
We are grateful to the individuals and institutions
who have assisted in this task. Any errors or
omissions are unintentional. Corrections should
be addressed to the Design Museum.
Design Museum
Shad Thames
London
SE1 2YD
United Kingdom
designmuseum.org
© Design Museum 2010
Foreword
We are delighted to continue our association with the Design Museum
for the third year of our partnership. The Brit Insurance Design Award
winner in 2008, Yves Béhar’s One Laptop Per Child, was followed last
year by Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama poster, one of the defining
images of 2009. Both winners clearly demonstrate the power of design
and its influence throughout our everyday lives. This year’s Brit
Insurance Designs of the Year again include a comprehensive and
thought-provoking shortlist of the best of international design, which
reflects the mood and reality of the times. A focus on sustainability
and efficiency underlines the link between design excellence and
reduced risk, a connection that is particularly relevant for Brit Insurance.
The members of the Awards jury, chaired by Antony Gormley, must
select category winners and the overall winner from a very strong and
diverse field. We wish them all well in what will be a demanding task.
Dane Douetil CBE
Chief Executive, Brit Insurance

Contents
Introduction 9
Architecture 10
Fashion 38
Furniture 60
Graphics 86
Interactive 122
Product 148
Transport 190
Nominators 207
Past winners 219

8
Introduction
Now in its third year, the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year award
has continued to go from strength to strength. This year’s nominations
are perhaps the most varied yet. It’s a broad field and an exciting
celebration of design from every corner of the world. It has been
fascinating to see how the featured designs differ from year to year.
As might be expected, certain themes connecting the designs have
become apparent. Projects with sustainable and global themes are
strongly represented, while objects for everyday use and projects
with a strong social message also feature heavily. For 2009 it is also
interesting to observe the impact of the financial downturn. Intriguingly
this is not represented by an overload of obvious austerity or asceticism
but by a celebration of innovation and the desire to seek solutions
for both everyday situations and global problems.
We are grateful for the support of a wide and distinguished group
of nominators representing all areas of design, including journalists,
curators, practitioners and enthusiasts. With their guidance and
critical rationales we have selected a shortlist of almost 100 designs
spanning the fields of architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics,
interactive, product and transport. A select panel of experts, chaired
by the sculptor Antony Gormley, will choose a winner from each
of these seven design disciplines, along with an overall winner.
It is always hard to define design by constraining it within a framework
of disciplines, and it is encouraging to see that so many of the
nominated projects defy classification. To reflect this, the physical
exhibition has been laid out thematically, using narratives to link the
designs. The loose themes of communications, cultural heritage,
everyday design, conceptual design, global and sustainable solutions,
and social enablement have been used as a framework to present
this year’s designs within the Design Museum. This book, however,
presents the nominations within the established award categories.
The ideas on show provide an insight into contemporary design, but in
a wider context they also say something important about the economic
and social climate of the past 12 months and the role that design can
play in our lives.
9

Brandhorst Museum, Munich, Germany
Matthias Sauerbruch, Louisa Hutton, Juan Lucas Young,
Sauerbruch Hutton
Client: Staatliches Hochbauamt
Nominated by Max Risselada, Ruth Ur
The Brandhorst Museum in Munich houses a substantial collection
of modern and contemporary art, the majority of which are paintings.
The architects have tried to optimise light conditions in an interior
exhibition environment that, reflecting the nature of the collection,
will have an almost domestic quality. The innovative daylight and
energy concepts both conserve resources and create excellent
conditions for the art on display. The unique polychromatic facade
consists of 36,000 ceramic rods glazed in 23 different colours before
a folded, bi-coloured metal layer. The effect is a kaleidoscope of
pixilated colour, which alters with the movement of the observer.
These multiple impressions of oscillation make the Museum appear
to dissolve into the city.
Architects traditionally shy away from introducing strong colour to
the outside of buildings. Not so Sauerbruch Hutton, the British–
German architecture practice that lit up the grey Berlin skyline with
their ingeniously polychromatic GSW Headquarters a decade ago.
Now they have brought some of this boldness to the Southern German
city of Munich. Their elegant scheme for the Brandhorst Museum
consists of a simple elongated building of three interconnecting
volumes, each distinguished by colourful cladding. Composed of
vertical ceramic louvres, the joyous multicoloured facade hints at the
visual treasures inside.
Ruth Ur
sauerbruchhutton.de
museum-brandhorst.de
12 13
© Haydar Koyupinar/Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen

British Embassy, Warsaw, Poland
Tony Fretton Architects
Client: Foreign & Commonwealth Office, UK
Nominated by Ellis Woodman
Set in its own grounds in an area of the city devoted to embassies,
and with a park on one side, the new British Embassy in Warsaw has
a serene and formal quality. With simple gestures towards integration
into the site, the building maintains its role in the culture and fabric of
the city. The long form houses a central, elementally neo-classical attic,
and is underlined by the walls and railings stretching around the site.
With security as a priority, the architects and engineers devised a
system to withstand the impact of explosive devices while maintaining
an accessible and light appearance, something that is so obviously
missing from many recent buildings dealing with security risks. With the
conservation of energy in mind, the glass exterior functions as the
outer skin of a double facade. In conjunction with mechanical louvres,
this thermal cavity provides warming insulation in winter and cooling
relief in summer.
In the wake of the events of September 11th 2001, the security
pressures placed on public buildings have increased enormously.
As a consequence we are in danger of constructing a generation of
government facilities with grim fortress-like characters. The new British
Embassy in Warsaw vividly articulates an alternative. The architect
has exploited the set-back from the road required to counter the threat
of bombing, to provide its building with an idyllic landscape setting.
Equally crucial, the building’s external walls have been conceived
as a double-layered assembly: a massive inner layer to withstand
any possible explosion, with an exceptionally delicate outer glazed
layer projecting an image of openness and poised understatement.
Ellis Woodman
tonyfretton.com
14 15
© Peter Cook

High Line Park, New York, USA
James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Nominated by Paola Antonelli, Lucy Bullivant, Patrick Burgoyne,
Francesca Ferguson
Inspired by the melancholic beauty of nature reclaiming a previously
vital piece of New York infrastructure, the former conveyance has
become a post-industrial instrument of leisure, life, and growth. Built in
the 1930s, to carry freight trains above Manhattan’s streets, the High
Line is an unusual 1.45 mile abandoned elevated railway spanning
22 city blocks, between and through buildings along the west side of
Manhattan. By carefully managing the relationship between plant life,
architecture and pedestrians, the experience becomes a blend of
changing proportions, which accommodates the wild, the cultivated,
the intimate, and the hyper-social. Paving and planting systems allow
for varying ratios of hard to soft surfaces which move from high use
areas (entirely hard) to richly vegetated spaces (all soft), with a variety of
experimental gradients in between. In opposition to the speed of life in
the rest of the city, the linear experience of the High Line is consciously
unhurried, contemplative and other-worldly.
The High Line’s mantra is ‘keep it simple, wild, quiet and slow’. An
obsolete railway structure dating from 1934, with a melancholy air and
unruly vegetation, it ran 30 feet above the ground, along Manhattan’s
Meatpacking District from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street. Disused
since 1980, this grassy industrial corridor was in danger of being
demolished until a scheme to convert it into a linear park began in
2005, inspired by Paris’s Promenade Plantée. The team’s ‘agritecture’
strategy, a layered design of organic and building materials, has
wrought an idiosyncratic yet relatively open-ended green ‘park in the
sky’, which is flexible and responsive to people’s lives. Instead of being
erased, or imposed on the district as a sanitised theme park, the High
Line revitalises historic space as a free-to-all milieu of otherworldliness.
Lucy Bullivant
dillerscofidio.com
fieldoperations.net
thehighline.org
16 17
© High Line

Hutong Bubble 32, Beijing, China
Ma Yansong and Dang Qun, MAD Architects
Design Team: Dai Pu, Yu Kui, Stefanie Helga Paul, He Wei,
Shen Jianghai
Nominated by Francesca Ferguson
Beijing’s rapid development has altered the city’s landscape on a
massive scale, continually eroding the delicate urban tissue of the old
city. Such dramatic changes have forced aging architecture, such as
traditional Hutong houses, to rely on chaotic, spontaneous renovations
to survive in an ever-changing neighbourhood. The first of a proposed
series of bubble-shaped additions to Beijing’s domestic architecture,
Hutong Bubble 32 provides a toilet and staircase within a traditional
Hutong. Existing in symbiosis with surviving housing, the Bubbles
are designed to function like magnets inserted into the urban fabric,
attracting new people, activities and resources to reactivate entire
neighbourhoods. Fuelled by the energy they help to renew, the Bubbles
will multiply and morph to provide for the community’s various
needs, thereby allowing local residents to continue living in their old
neighbourhoods. In time, these interventions will themselves become
part of Beijing’s long history, newly formed membranes within the city’s
urban tissue.
This is a bold small-scale intervention that dares to introduce a highly
contemporary solution into the most traditional of settings. MAD
Architects envisage their shiny alien forms attached to the basic
housing typology of the Hutong, offering new points of access and
sanitation. Enabling renewal on a small scale, in neighbourhoods that
are suffering gradual degradation, MAD’s response to the relentless
pace of urban development is an elegant design solution avoiding
sentimentality. The cheekily incongruous quality of the reflecting blobs
– each morphing to fit into compromised spaces – implants a wholly
new architectural language into these neighbourhoods. The Bubbles
intervene while reflecting their surroundings, to playful and surreal
effect. Eye-catching and mirage-like, visitors to the Hutongs might
imagine these sci-fi parasites to melt and disappear at any moment.
Francesca Ferguson
18 19
© Shu Hue

MAXXI, National Museum of the XXI
Century Arts, Rome, Italy
Zaha Hadid Architects
Design: Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher
Project Architect: Gianluca Racana
Nominated by Jonathan Glancey
The MAXXI museum in Rome houses two institutions, MAXXI Arte
and MAXXI Architecture. Zaha Hadid’s main concept for the complex
is directly linked to the building’s purpose as a centre for the exhibition
of visual arts, with flows and pathways overlapping to create a
dynamic interactive space. The walls that cross the space, and their
intersections, define both the building’s interior and exterior areas,
acting on all three levels with a wealth of connections and bridges
linking the galleries. The visitor is therefore invited to enter a series
of continuous spaces, rather than the compact volume of an isolated
building. The interiors are covered by a glass roof that floods the
galleries with natural light filtered through the louvered lines of the
roofing beams. These linear beams aid in articulating the various
orientations of the galleries and facilitate circulation.
On paper, Zaha Hadid’s plans looked like a surreal motorway
intersection imagined by JG Ballard, with walls not only curving but
changing in depth as they do. In practice there are moments where
walls become floors and even threaten to become ceilings. This is
a brave project, and little short of incredible in a city that has recently
proved so deeply conservative. In one sense, however, MAXXI is
happily old-fashioned, built on-site by local contractors using materials
close to hand. The energy and imagination of the building, and its
sense of intrigue and possibilities, will no doubt bring out the best in
its curators. No-one knows what twists and turns architecture will
take in the future. For now, Hadid’s gallery offers an exhilarating set
of Roman walls to build upon.
Jonathan Glancey
maxxi.parc.beniculturali.it
zaha-hadid.com
20 21
© Roland Halbe

Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC Theatre
Project, Melbourne, Australia
Ashton Raggatt McDougall
Clients: Melbourne Recital Centre/Arts Victoria and Melbourne Theatre
Company/University of Melbourne
Nominated by Wayne Hemingway
When Ashton Raggatt McDougall (ARM) were given the challenging
dual brief of creating a new home for both the Melbourne Recital
Centre and the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), they decided
to create two distinct buildings. The Melbourne Recital Centre
comprises the 1000-seat Elisabeth Murdoch Hall and the 130-seat
Salon for pre-concert talks and experimental music. Both spaces
achieve extraordinary standards in acoustic excellence – to eliminate
external noise, the building is surrounded by 250mm of concrete,
mounted on 38 steel springs. The MTC theatre features a distinctive
facade composed of white steel tubing, whose playful geometric
arrangements appear to be both two and three-dimensional depending
on the position of the viewer. Since a visit to the theatre is predominantly
an evening pastime, ARM designed the project with a shape and
dynamism that is made for the night, rather than developing a building
with a daytime presence that is simply lit up after dark.
It really is hard to find fault with this building – from its conception as a
joint facility for both the arts community of Melbourne and the University,
to the broad uses that its four distinct performance spaces offer, to the
relatively frugal budget that delivered a world class piece of architecture
three months ahead of schedule. The Melbourne Recital Centre and
MTC Theatre’s use of light and challenging angles brings one of the
few remaining dull parts of Melbourne to life and adds yet another
wonderful architectural focal point to a city that is always a joy to walk
and cycle around. Melbourne should be applauded for consistent
quality and serendipity.
Wayne Hemingway
a-r-m.com.au
melbournerecital.com.au
mtc.com.au
22 23
© John Gollings

Monterrey Housing, Mexico
ELEMENTAL S.A., Chile
Client: Instituto de la Vivienda de Nuevo León, Mexico
Nominated by Catherine Ince
An international ‘do-tank’ based in Chile, Elemental focuses on finding
solutions to the challenge of housing the world’s ever-increasing
population. In the Chilean city of Iquique, Elemental were asked to
settle a city-centre community of long-term squatters on a very limited
budget. Their response, Quinta Monroy, was a development of halffinished
prefabricated structures, designed to facilitate self-build
expansion by a further 50 per cent at minimal cost. Their later project in
Monterrey, Mexico further refined the ‘half-house’ concept, providing a
continuous roof over the entire structure and bringing communal green
areas around the development as close as possible to the houses, thus
creating favourable conditions for maintenance and care. Unlike most
private property, the value of social housing often decreases over time;
Elemental’s half-house solutions have been shown to rise in value as
the self-build expansions are created. The organisation hopes their
housing solution provides longevity as well as encouraging authorities
to see social housing as an investment, not an expense.
Elemental’s ‘half a house’ concept is an intelligent and elegant solution
to social housing needs, first developed for communities in Chile.
The blank canvas of the development in Mexico will take on a new
and – crucially – self-defined character as residents take ownership,
adapting, extending and decorating their homes according to their
needs and personal tastes. Elemental are – in their own words – a
‘do-tank’ whose pragmatic approach is underpinned by efficient
economic models and an aspiration to deliver quality designs with
positive social impact. A growing international reputation, the
increasing demand for their informal housing typology, and the
enduring communities they help to create is testament to the
success of Elemental’s innovative and comprehensive approach.
Catherine Ince
elementalchile.cl
24 25
© Ramiro Ramirez

Neues Museum, Berlin, Germany
David Chipperfield Architects and Julian Harrap Architects
Client: Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz
Nominated by Catherine Ince, Ellis Woodman
Originally completed in 1849, the Neues Museum sustained heavy
bomb damage during the Second World War and was left a dilapidated
and deteriorating shell for over half a century. Rather than erase this
memory, the architects’ reworking intelligently acknowledges the
historical events that have taken place in and around the Museum.
Drawing on William Morris’s nineteenth-century strategy, laid out when
he established the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings,
simple and classical modern interventions sit comfortably alongside
exposed brickwork and leftover scraps of gilding and frescos. The
result is a powerful, eloquent building where the layers of history can
be read throughout.
Representing 12 years work on the part of its architects, this radical
refurbishment has brought back into use Friedrich Stüler’s gallery in
the centre of Berlin, a building that had lain derelict since it was bombed
during the Second World War. Chipperfield and Harrap eschewed a
straight restoration, restricting themselves to a strategy based on the
meticulous repair of what existing fabric could be retained and the
introduction of new building work of an explicitly contemporary
character where it could not. The layers of new and old, while distinct,
combine to form a cohesive and deeply characterful whole.
Ellis Woodman
davidchipperfield.co.uk
julianharraparchitects.co.uk
neues-museum.de
26 27
© David Chipperfield Architects

Ningbo Historic Museum, Ningbo, China
Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, Amateur Architecture Studio
Design Team: Song Shuhua, Jiang Weihua and Chen Lichao
Nominated by Flavio Albanese
The Ningbo Historic Museum combines local Chinese construction
methods with a contemporary architectural language, using the
surrounding landscape as inspiration. The Museum sits at the edge
of the city on a site which was formerly home to dozens of beautiful
villages, the last being fully dismantled only when the project
completed. The building is conceived as an archaeological mountain
located upon ruins. The bottom part of the structure is a simple
rectangle. The upper part echoes the shape of mountains from
1000 year old Song Dynasty paintings. From interior to exterior, the
structure is covered by bamboo-cast concrete and over 20 types of
miscellaneous recycled bricks and roof tiles. Broken tiles and bricks
from the former settlements have been reused, making the Museum
the memory of the substance and techniques that once existed there.
The public space is multi-accessible and forms a labyrinth structure
which can be adapted to respond to different exhibits.
Chinese architect Wang Shu is one of the few in China to practice
‘resistance architecture’. In his projects and way of thinking he opposes
the economic policies and urban planning that has mercilessly, and
without distinction, razed the historical centres of major Chinese cities.
Ningbo Historic Museum is a big mountainous building whose outer
stonework pattern contains thousands of salvaged tiles as shreds of
China’s history. Not only has Wang Shu erected on a flat, unremarkable
lot in Ningbo City a piece of contemporary architecture that honours
the past, he has also taught the masons involved in its construction the
ancient technique of wa pan, the process of recycling used building
materials which is all but forgotten in China today.
Flavio Albanese
28 29
© Iwan Baan

Porchdog House Prototype, Biloxi,
Mississippi, USA
Marlon Blackwell Architect
Sponsored by Architecture for Humanity
Nominated by Cameron Sinclair
Biloxi Model Homes are affordable prototype houses designed for
the Architecture for Humanity Model Home Program and targeted at
East Biloxi families who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina. The
proposition of raising a home up to 12 feet off the ground to provide
the requisite protection from a potential Category Four storm surge
event disrupts the traditional notion of the Gulf Coast streetscape and
affiliated porch culture. The Porchdog House is compact with an
efficient stacked living program, elevated above the ground but still
incorporating a street-side porch. Other ground-level elements are an
entry stair, enclosed storage space and parking area. Louvred metal
shutters provide light control and storm security for aluminium framed
window walls at the east and west elevations. The Porchdog House
is a refuge that opens itself to the social structure of the city while
minimising its impact on the ground.
At first glance, the Porchdog seems like an anomaly in historic Biloxi,
where porches are at the heart of the neighbourhood. On closer
inspection, the house responds to both the environment and its corner
site. Elevated on a steel foundation system that offers a safer stronger
alternative to the traditional foundations that failed under the lateral
force of Hurricane Katrina, the building is designed with the safety and
comfort of its occupants first in mind. Operable shutters protect the
home in the event of storms, while providing shade and energy savings.
The interior layout offers flexibility for alternative family functions,
including a second storey loft that can serve as an office or a quiet
homework space for school-age children. Elevated exterior decks
maintain the connection with the streetscape, capture the spirit of
the porch and extend family life beyond the walls of the home.
Cameron Sinclair
architectureforhumanity.org
marlonblackwell.com
30 31
© Architecture for Humanity

Raven Row, London, UK
6a Architects
Client: Raven Row
Nominated by Caroline Roux
Raven Row, a new contemporary art exhibition centre in East London,
opened to the public in February 2009. Embedded in two of the finest
eighteenth-century silk mercers’ houses in Spitalfields and a 1972
concrete-framed office building, the project provides contemporary
art galleries within a new semi-basement and a series of rococo rooms
over three storeys, with additional studio space, offices and apartments
for artists in residence above. Originally built around 1690 and
substantially rebuilt in the eighteenth century, the Grade One listed
buildings have been added to, converted, neglected, ravaged by fires
and repaired over two and a half centuries. The latest intervention by
6a Architects weaves itself through the buildings to create a new
architectural narrative of spaces, surfaces and textures that bind the
past with the new in a contemporary whole.
This is a sensitive reworking of two buildings dating back to the
seventeenth century, into one not-for-profit art space. 6a’s treatment
is like a narrative that retells the chaotic story of the buildings’
eventful lives.
Caroline Roux
6a.co.uk
ravenrow.org
32 33
© 6a Architects

TEA, Tenerife Espacio de Las Artes,
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands,
Spain
Herzog & de Meuron
Client: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife
Partner Architect: Virgilio Gutiérrez Herreros
Nominated by Flavio Albanese
The Tenerife Espacio de Las Artes (TEA) cultural space is a multifunctional
exhibition centre in the heart of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
To deliver a lively space accommodating people of all generations and
various interests, Herzog & de Meuron’s main architectural concept
has interflowing spaces allowing for different activities. A public path
cuts diagonally through the building complex, connecting these spaces
to the outside world and inviting passing pedestrians inside. The path
transforms into a triangular, semi-covered space at the heart of the
building, creating an unusual public plaza which is open and accessible
for all. The plaza slices through the large library reading room, where
giant glass screens allow views inside. The light-filled library animates
the nocturnal skyline, creating a new landmark for the city of Santa Cruz.
The city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has an area characterised by ancient
buildings with courtyards. This is where Jacques Herzog and Pierre de
Meuron erected a large cultural centre perforated by a triangular piazza.
The building is shaped with reinforced concrete, making outer skin
and structure one. At the same time, the concrete’s mass is lightened
by a pattern of irregular holes punched through the walls. The TEA is
impressive for its uniqueness, but also for giving the city of Santa Cruz
a new vocation.
Flavio Albanese
teatenerife.es
34 35
© Iwan Baan

Youl Hwa Dang Book Hall, Paju Book City,
South Korea
Florian Beigel + Architecture Research Unit, London
with Choi JongHoon + Network in Architecture, Seoul
Nominated by Ellis Woodman
The Youl Hwa Dang Book Hall is the latest in a cluster of three buildings
designed by the Architecture Research Unit (ARU) on a site that
consolidates operations for the South Korean publishing industry.
Within the front elevation, slightly different variations and proportions
of a classical architectural facade are apparent. To some extent these
reflect the different uses of the inside space, which includes a book hall,
lounge, reading room and café, with double storey apartments above.
The building also includes an ‘art yard’, a small public square set back
from the main street and linked by a portico building. With this latest
edition to the Paju masterplan ARU have produced a series of buildings
distinctly separate, but linked by an evolving architectural language.
Over the past decade the South Korean publishing industry has been
consolidated on a single site, the Paju Book City development outside
Seoul. ARU led the team that drew up the Paju masterplan and has
subsequently realised three buildings on adjacent sites. In the course
of these projects, the practice has reassessed its architectural language
dramatically – a shift it characterises as a move from abstraction to
figuration. Housing a bookshop, café and apartments, Youl Hwa Dang
Book Hall’s principal contribution to Paju takes the form of a public
square. The facade it presents to this space is one of the most
extraordinary of recent years, a highly sophisticated free composition
in which person-height windows offer an insistent measure of the
human form.
Ellis Woodman
aru.londonmet.ac.uk/works/youlhwadang02
youlhwadang.co.kr
36 37
© Jonathan Lovekin

Accessoires et objets, témoignages de vies
de femmes à Paris 1940–1944, France
Produced for Ville de Paris by Paris-Musées, realised with Musée
Galliera, shown at Mémorial du Maréchal Leclerc de Hauteclocque
et de la Libération de Paris- Musée Jean Moulin, Paris, in 2009.
Curated by Christine Levisse-Touzé, Fabienne Falluel, Marie-Laure
Gutton. Design: Jean-Jacques Raynaud. Graphics: CL Design
Nominated by Sonnet Stanfill
The exhibition Accessories and Artefacts: Women’s Lives in Paris
1940–1944 showcased fashion accessories worn during the Nazi
occupation of Paris in the Second World War. While many of the
exhibits were based on utilitarian function, such as the need to protect
wearers from the elements while queuing for hours outside shops, the
variety of accessories on show and the unexpected glamour of some
were a delight. The women of Paris were forced to adapt to the harsh
living conditions imposed by the occupying force and the Vichy
government. Even so, life went on and cinemas and theatres, the only
heated spots in Paris, had never been more popular. Faced with
wartime restrictions, women became experts in the art and craft of
recycling and substitution. So did fashion designers, tradesmen and
manufacturers, who used unconventional materials, like newspaper,
wood, used car tyres and off-cuts of fabric and leather. With the 2009
recession and economic downturn strongly prevalent, the exhibition
proved timely, cleverly demonstrating the ability of fashion and design
to thrive and innovate even in the face of adversity.
At the beginning of 2010, crises abound. In this uncertain climate, an
exhibition devoted to 1940s wartime fashion offers a clear reminder of
the ingenuity produced by fashion’s great motivator: hope. In ordinary
times, fashion holds out the promise of reinvention. As this project
suggests, precarious times can also encourage extraordinary creativity,
with hope as a companion. In association with the Palais Galliera, the
Musée Jean Moulin presented this display of several hundred fashion
accessories created during the Occupation. These objects show the
Parisian determination, despite wartime privations, to continue
dressing well as a point of both personal pride and patriotism. Objects,
by established makers such as Hermès as well as at-home creators,
included wooden-soled shoes, hats accented with wood shavings
and bags with secret document-concealing compartments.
Sonnet Stanfill
40 41
© S. Piera/Galliera/Roger-Viollet

Alexander McQueen Spring /Summer ’10
and Spring /Summer ’10 Catwalk
Presentation, Plato’s Atlantis, UK
Designed by Alexander McQueen
Catwalk presentation: Alexander McQueen, Nick Knight,
Raquel Zimmerman and Ruth Hogben
Nominated by Sonnet Stanfill
Fashion designer Alexander McQueen has described his interpretation
of Atlantis as a fantasy place that never existed, a metaphor for
anywhere people find sanctuary in hard times. The designs themselves
bring to mind a futuristic underwater world dominated by reptile
patterns and alien features, with shoes that encase feet like armoured
hooves. The presentation of McQueen’s collection proved as much
a talking point as the clothes themselves. Broadcast live over the
internet by Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio, the event was thrown open
to everyone – not just the usual select group of industry insiders,
celebrities and journalists. The broadcast proved so popular that the
demand crashed the website. The popularity of the event has perhaps
suggested the future direction of catwalk collection presentations.
Alexander McQueen is known for embracing radical silhouettes,
collaborating with groundbreaking artists and producing remarkable
catwalk presentations. His Spring /Summer ’10 collection combined
all of these elements. Titled ‘Plato’s Atlantis’, the collection hinted
at a futuristic underwater world. The silhouettes of the 45 striking
ensembles gently blossomed around the shoulders and hips,
suggesting hollowed out carapaces; the startling, monstrously
sculptural shoes provided dramatic punctuation. The show’s
innovative presentation celebrated technology as a means to
achieving an interactive dialogue between the designer and the
public. Two giant robots rolled along the catwalk, filming and
projecting images onto screens. Partnering with photographer
Nick Knight, the show was streamed live to an estimated audience
of 40 million via SHOWstudio.com. McQueen stated afterwards
that he sees this democratic format as ‘a brighter future for fashion’.
Sonnet Stanfill
alexandermcqueen.com
alexandermcqueenlive.showstudio.com
42 43
© Alexander McQueen

Balmain Jacket, France
Designed by Christophe Decarnin
Nominated by Dylan Jones
Under the direction of head designer Christophe Decarnin, French
fashion house Balmain has defied the recession. Patronised by
celebrities and adored by industry, the company induces a mood
fashion insiders describe as ‘Balmania’. While there were many striking
garments in the Spring /Summer ’10 collection, it is the jacket that
remains synonymous with the name Balmain. Endorsements by
celebrity clients have undeniably boosted popularity, but the elegant
styling of the pointed and highly padded shoulders, military overtones
and a Michael Jackson-esque 1980s nostalgia have all contributed
to the design being emulated on the high street.
You know this jacket, the Vulcan shoulder peaks it popularised have
been inescapable this year. Designed by Christophe Decarnin and
first seen at Balmain’s Spring /Summer show, it was indisputably the
most influential item of womenswear in 2009. Sharp enough to take
someone’s eye out, the sculpted Balmain shoulder has been seen
on Rihanna, Kate Moss and Beyoncé, but also up and down the high
street. Thanks to Decarnin, shoulder pads are no longer a 1980s folk
memory: they can now be found sewn into blouses, dresses and
jackets, carving clean lines and defining contours for those who can’t
afford the Balmain price tag. Not since Joan Collins was in her prime
has the bold shoulder meant so much.
Dylan Jones
balmain.com
44 45
© Balmain

Beth Ditto at Evans, UK
Designed by Beth Ditto and Lisa Marie Peacock
Nominated by Bronwyn Cosgrave
When plus-size retailer Evans announced it was teaming up with rock
singer Beth Ditto it seemed a perfect match. Ditto spent considerable
time collaborating with Lisa Marie Peacock, Evans’ Head of Design,
contributing detailed sketch books, examples of vintage clothing and
fabric samples. Along with inspiration from popular culture, such as
Grace Jones and Mama Cass, the collection also references Bauhaus,
art deco and 1980s fashion and design. The clothes feature a range
of different cuts, from loud and confident domino-print leggings and
sequinned all-in-one outfits to more muted high-waist pencil skirts,
hoodies and jackets. The pieces are bright, fun, and like the designers,
refuse to disappear into the background.
Plus-size fashion has traditionally disguised generous proportions
through dark sombre colours and long, loose, silhouettes. But in 2009
Evans, the high street producer of affordable fashion for full-figured
women, introduced the Beth Ditto at Evans clothes collection. This new
range, collaboratively conceived by Ditto, the audacious lead singer
of the Gossip post-punk band, and Lisa Marie Peacock of Evans,
challenged the preconceived ideas long dominating the ‘outsize’ mode
of dress, demonstrating the need to refine its design. Imbued with
the fearless approach Ditto has to styling her own size 22 frame, her
eponymous range included items with a sharp curve-enhancing cut
and bold patterns. The biker jacket was cropped close to the body;
the dresses all featured thigh-grazing hemlines. On the night of its
June 2009 launch, Ditto flaunted the boldest ensemble – leggings
and a long sleeved, scoop-neck T-shirt dress featuring a graphic,
domino print. As the Guardian noted, ‘it worked’.
Bronwyn Cosgrave
bethdittoatevans.co.uk
46 47
© Evans

Boudicca Spring /Summer ’10 Real Girl
Lookbook, UK
Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby for Boudicca
Nominated by Sarah Mower
With the Real Girl digital lookbook Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby have
come up with an inventive new way to view the Boudicca collection.
The online lookbook avoids high-end production techniques, instead
displaying the collection as a series of rotating stills reminiscent of a
flickbook. The jerky and almost robotic rotation shows the clothes
from a variety of angles, giving a more accurate portrayal of a collection
than even the most lavish high resolution photography lookbooks.
The website is easy to navigate, with an index page of thumbnail
images linked to full-screen versions of each video. Paving the way
for fashion to tap into the fast-paced world of Facebook and Twitter,
Boudicca’s approach is sure to set the standards for future lookbooks.
The beauty, clarity, economy of style – and delightful accessibility – of
Boudicca’s lookbook is a breakthrough at a time when the entire fashion
world is anxiously looking for new ways to bring clothes alive on the
net. Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby have mashed-up the boring trade
standard of a photographic top-to-toe ‘line-up’ with accelerated timelapse
photography; their useful and brilliant solution conveys threedimensional
views of each outfit. Unpretentious and easy to consume,
it cracks the problem of instant delivery of information through a
medium that tolerates zero hanging around and virtually replaces the
need for a catwalk show. The CCTV camera device in the corner of the
screen suggests the ‘surveillance’ genesis of the time-lapse conceit
here, yet no sinister overtones get in the way of the efficient viewing
of Boudicca’s clothes in the round. This is one of those solutions so
obviously good it begs the question of why no-one’s thought of it
before. Boudicca has scored a first that deserves to be logged as
such, before it sets off the avalanche of copying certain to follow.
Sarah Mower
platform13.com
realgirl.platform13.com
48 49
© Platform 13 Ltd T/A Boudicca

Christopher Kane Spring /Summer ’09, UK
Designed by Christopher Kane
Nominated by Zöe Ryan
Christopher Kane is a young designer quickly making a name for
himself. In what was just his fifth show, Kane’s Spring /Summer ’09
collection referenced both Planet of the Apes and the Flintstones.
Using such popular themes as inspiration can often lead to simplistic
or tacky results. Kane’s designs are anything but. There is a Jurassic
feel throughout, with large scalloped edges around shoulders and
arms, or thickly layered over whole garments – a recurring theme with
echoes of a stegosaurus. Animal prints feature heavily, with gorilla
faces emblazoned on the front of jersey dresses and leopard print
cardigans. Kane expertly combines bright and neutral colours with
chiffon to create a range that is both sophisticated and accessible.
The exquisite constructions of Christopher Kane’s Spring /Summer ’09
collection are technically and intellectually rigorous, aesthetically
beautiful and, what’s more, wearable. Known for a distinctive visual
language, which references everything from suspension bridge cables
to science fiction, Kane’s new collection brought his talents for detail,
colour, and intricate construction methods to the fore in designs that
are whimsical, yet bold. Taking Planet of the Apes and the scales of
prehistoric animals as starting points, Kane’s entire line of clothing
used half circle three-dimensional geometric forms in monochromatic
shades of bright colours and more muted tones, paired with elements
adorned with striking animal prints. The scalloped edges worked best
when framing a garment at the shoulders, down the arms or when
fanning out from a skirt.
Zöe Ryan
50 51
© Christopher Moore

Comme des Garçons Autumn/Winter ’09,
Japan
Designed by Rei Kawakubo
Nominated by Sarah Mower
It’s not unusual for designer Rei Kawakubo to lean toward the avantgarde
and conceptual. For three decades she has challenged
perceptions about the function and form of clothes. With Comme des
Garçons Fall ’09 collection Kawakubo once again designed a range
that, though not immediately accessible to the mass public, is likely
to prove prescient. Observers at Paris Fashion Week described it as
a genuinely emotional experience, with many people drawing parallels
to homelessness – albeit seen through a haute couture lens. The mood
of the collection shifted throughout, with Kawakubo’s technical
brilliance demonstrated through complex cuts, tailoring and draping.
Many of the designs featured military elements combined with blanket
layering, in combinations of flesh, beige and olive colours that are
already appearing on the high street.
Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons Fall ’09 collection of military
and ‘nude’ synthetic elements wielded a profound influence throughout
fashion – a reverberation certain to continue for the next couple of
years. What seemed odd, avant-garde and yet strangely moving in this
collection – pyramidal pile-ups of army-like jackets constructed from
blankets and tent-canvas juxtaposed with flesh-coloured multi-layered
tulle – would, one might think, confound any idea that these strands
could be teased out and adapted in the mainstream. Yet it has come
about. In the subsequent season, army styles and delicate flesh-tobeige
tones have recurred in many other designers’ work, and are
being replicated up and down every high street. This collection is far
from the first to have triggered a trend-wave in the almost 30 years
Rei Kawakubo has been working. But this time, it’s the most obvious.
Sarah Mower
52 53
© Comme des Garçons

Goggle Jacket ’989 – ’009, UK
Aitor Throup for C.P. Company
Nominated by Sara Mower
The Goggle Jacket is a studied example of functional innovation
inspired by the practical requirements of long-distance car racing.
The jacket was originally designed by Massimoto Osti, as part of
C.P. Company’s sponsorship of the 1988 Mille Miglia – the Italian open
road endurance race initiated in 1927. To celebrate 20 years of the
design Aitor Throup was asked to rework the jacket in a contemporary
style. In an exhibition at the Royal College of Art Throup presented
a detailed analysis of the orginal, culminating in his redesigned 1000m
Goggle Jacket. The entire structure of the garment has been
constructed around a human form in a driving position – the arms are
forward and slightly bent, with excess volume built into the back – in
order to maximise driving comfort. By concentrating on functionality
and postural anatomy the 1000m Goggle Jacket is even more focused
on driving than the original.
Aitor Throup, a 2006 graduate of the Royal College of Art, came to
design as a working class kid growing up in Burnley, where the
C.P. Company jacket had the status of a cult object. Three years after
graduating, this precociously gifted draughtsman, a designer who
brings extraordinary rigour to his thinking about the fabric and
construction of menswear, was commissioned by the owners of
C.P. Company to adapt the coat – originally designed by Massimo Osti
for endurance car-racing – for the company’s twentieth anniversary.
Throup’s ergonomically correct ‘conceptual functionalism’ resulted
in an exhibition at the Royal College, which revealed the depth of his
intellect, as a product designer who thinks way beyond the ephemeral
concerns of fashion.
Sarah Mower
aitorthroup.com
cpcompany.com
54 55
© Aitor Throup

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones,
V&A Museum, London, UK
Curated by Stephen Jones and Oriole Cullen
Exhibition design: Michael Howells
Exhibition graphics: Lawrence Mynott
Nominated by Bronwyn Cosgrave
This collaboration between the V&A and one of the world’s foremost
hat designers featured more than 300 hats chosen with the expert eye
of a milliner. Displayed in a magical, box-hedged, baroque garden
setting, Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones showcased headwear
ranging from a 600 b c Egyptian Anubis mask to a 1950s Balenciaga
hat alongside couture creations by Jones and his contemporaries.
Looking at common themes explored by milliners, such as exoticism,
modernism and the natural world, the exhibition highlighted an area
of design and fashion that is rarely as well celebrated as others.
This blockbuster exhibition – which was two years in the making –
proved both fascinating and timely. It unfolded through a series of
rooms, revealing design inspiration, the creation process and the
fashion secrets of famous clients renowned for sporting outlandish
headgear – including Isabella Blow and Italian Vogue’s Anna Piaggi.
While an ancient Egyptian Anubis mask, Margo Fonteyn’s favourite
Dior cloche and Marlene Dietrich’s signature beret were among the
300 hundred hats exhibited, the show also coincided with a millinery
revival spearheaded by Jones. Affordable variations of the flattened
straw hats he created for Marc Jacobs’ Spring /Summer ’09 ready-towear
collection, as well as panama hats, which appeared on Gucci’s
Spring /Summer ’09 men’s and women’s ready-to-wear runways,
became a ubiquitous summer street fashion trend.
Bronwyn Cosgrave
stephenjonesmillinery.com
vam.ac.uk/hats
56 57
© V&A Images

Madeleine Vionnet, Puriste de la Mode
Exhibition, Musée Mode et du Textile, Paris,
France
Curated by Pamela Golbin, designed by Andrée Putman
Nominated by Colin McDowell
In 1952, Madeleine Vionnet donated 200 dresses, 750 dress patterns
and 75 photo albums to Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris. After full restoration
a selection of works created between 1912 and 1939 went on display
in 2009. The dresses were presented on simple mannequins in mirrored
vitrines without sets or unnecessary interventions. Vionnet’s meticulous
records and archives were displayed on monitors near each design,
with archive photography and computer-generated footage
demonstrating the cut of certain garments and how they were
produced from single pieces of fabric. The exhibition showed just how
influential and forward thinking Vionnet was, with elements of her
bias-cut dresses and gowns showing through in the work of today’s
designers. This retrospective was the first time the dresses of Vionnet,
known as the ‘designer of designers’, had been assembled and shown
to the public.
To make a fashion exhibition informative as well as attractive for the
general public is not easy, especially when it is devoted to a figure
who, although major, is not generally known. Too didactic and people
become bored, too frivolous and they are irritated. Fine judgement is
required in oder to get it right. In my opinion, nobody currently curates
fashion exhibitions with the skill and erudition of Pamela Golbin, who
this year followed on from her Balenciaga exhibition of 2006 with an
equally impressive survey of the work of Madeleine Vionnet (both for
the Museé de Mode et du Textile, in Paris). In each, the supporting
catalogue by Golbin is a masterclass in accessible erudition. Learning
lightly worn, if ever it was.
Colin McDowell
lesartsdecoratifs.fr
58 59
© Les Arts Décoratifs/Patrick Gries

360° Work Chair, Germany
Designed by Konstantin Grcic
Manufactured by Magis
Nominated by Paola Antonelli, Caroline Roux
On first inspection the design of the 360° Work Chair is confusing. Do
you sit on it sideways or straight? Do you use the upright as an armrest
or backrest? Yet this flexibility is central to the design. The chair invites
users to consider how they will interact with it, requiring them to change
stance until they find the position that best fits the task in hand. The
360° chair and stool provide dynamic furniture for people who like to
constantly change positions while they work. Designed for a young
public who love informal seating, they can be used in the office
(together with the table, stool and container that complete the 360°
family) or any other setting that requires dynamic seating.
Grcic’s 360° family brings a playful but rational edge to the potentially
dull subject of office furniture. Each piece has a 360° usage and is
softly finished in epoxy resin. The task chair looks challenging, with
an unconventional stick seat. In fact, it can be sat on in several ways,
making this a lot more versatile than a standard chair.
Caroline Roux
konstantin-grcic.com
magisdesign.com
62 63
© Magis

Breathe Furniture, Australia
Designed by Helen Kontouris
Manufactured by Sunweave International
Nominated by Brian Parkes
Helen Kontouris’s Breathe furniture range is enduring in two senses.
Physically, it is strong, lightweight and resistant to indoor and outdoor
elements. Stylistically, it is timeless, designed for visual longevity in the
hope of discouraging disposal. The range has also been created using
completely recyclable materials, and is usually shipped in containers
that maximise volume, with recyclable packaging made from
polyethylene bubble wrap, cardboard and recycled blankets.
Helen Kontouris is an impressive young Australian designer working
with manufacturers in Europe, Asia and Australia. The new Breathe
furniture family is designed for a manufacturer who specialises in
fabricating outdoor furniture from polyethylene strips hand-woven over
welded aluminium frames. To realise the elegant simplicity of the seat
section hovering languidly above the base, Kontouris has pushed the
boundaries of the process, creating a complex structural frame through
a labyrinth of smart engineering. Breathe furniture is suitable for indoor
or outdoor use, lightweight and resistant to the elements and spills.
Kontouris hopes that its timeless aesthetic combined with its long-life
durability will prevent it from becoming a part of what she calls the
culture of ‘throwawayism’.
Brian Parkes
helenkontouris.com
sunweave.com
64 65
© Ashley Poon

Carbon Fibre Chair, Japan
Designed by Shigeru Ban Architects
Material: TENAX ® , provided by Teijin Ltd
Nominated by Francesca Picchi
In Shigeru Ban’s words, the architect set out ‘to make a chair that was
even lighter than Gio Ponti’s Superleggera, a chair so light that a child
could pick it up with just his or her little finger’. The end product is
constructed from TENAX, a lightweight carbon fibre material. While
carbon fibre has extremely high tensile strength, it performs less well
under compression. To exploit the material’s advantages but avoid its
disadvantages, Ban sandwiched aluminium between thin layers of
carbon fibre to create a new composite. The result is a wafer thin super
light material able to withstand the pressures needed for a chair.
Within one of the crazes of design (creating ever more lightweight
products), this chair couples an aluminium structure with a sheet
of carbon fibre. Shigeru Ban has transferred a futuristic composite
material – which integrates metal, resin and ceramic – from the field
of lightweight aircraft and car manufacture to a domestic setting.
Francesca Picchi
shigerubanarchitects.com
tokyofiber.com
66 67
© voile

Extrusions, UK
Designed by Thomas Heatherwick Studio
Nominated by Caroline Roux
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1994, Thomas
Heatherwick has been searching for a machine capable of producing a
chair with legs, seat and back from a single component. The solution is
an extrusion process that squeezes aluminium through an individually
commissioned chair-shaped die. With this specialist technology –
traditionally used in the aerospace industry – Thomas Heatherwick
Studio created the world’s largest extruded piece of metal and the first
single-component metal furniture extruded by machine. The ends of
each bench are contorted into gnarled, arbitrary swirling forms through
the initiation and termination stages of the process, and each piece is
polished for 300 hours to achieve a mirrored finish. The 2009 exhibition
of Extrusions showcased prototypes for a 100 metre long piece, due to
be constructed and exhibited in 2010.
Thomas Heatherwick’s relentless innovation has always made his work
stand out, and the Extrusions benches are no exception. The pieces
shown at Haunch of Venison are undoubtedly beautiful, but it is the
potential of the project which is most interesting. While the benches
might please a few lucky collectors, for the rest of us – Heatherwick
included – it is how this aluminium extrusion technique might be used
to create architectural cladding or mass seating that really matters.
Caroline Roux
thomasheatherwick.com
68 69
© Peter Mallet

Grassworks, Netherlands
Designed by Jair Straschnow
Nominated by Daniel Charny, Philippe Garner, Gareth Williams
Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants on earth, a grass which
can be harvested again and again from the same stalk. Grassworks
is a furniture collection of flat-pack, self-assembly structures loyal to
one single ‘green’ material: bamboo sheet laminates. Avoiding screws
and glue led Straschnow to traditional woodworking techniques,
most notably the reworking of the dovetail joint, executed with modern
CNC routing. The dovetail has been used not only as detail, but also
as a structural principle, allowing only one possible way of assembly.
Straschnow also considered physical space as a resource, resulting in
multi-purpose objects: a dining chair that converts into an easy chair,
a bookshelf that functions as a space divider, tables that extend,
fold and collapse. The Grassworks collection is an attempt to make
maximum use of the structural and flexible qualities of a single material,
as well as the physical space it occupies. The product is also designed
to leave a minimal footprint on the world around us.
Jair Straschnow’s approach to designing furniture is so reductive that
on first inspection it is tempting to see it as only plain, maybe even
rather uninteresting. But every piece in his exhibition at the Aram Gallery
was an exploration of the potential for pressed bamboo board pieces –
generally recognised as a more sustainable material for furniture than
most – to be combined using variations on dovetail joints. A particularly
subtle design is the long dining table that is ever so slightly racked and
twisted, holding the construction in tension. This subtlety is rare in an
age where furniture design must yell from the pages of magazines
first and foremost. Straschnow’s ecological, inventive and resolved
designs – seemingly ready to roll out in batch production – are to
be commended.
Gareth Williams
straschnow.com
thearamgallery.org/2009/07/16/jair-straschnow-grassworks
70 71
© Jair Straschnow/Tim Stet

Houdini Armrest Chair, Germany
Designed by Stefan Diez
Manufactured by e15
Nominated by Francesca Picchi, Emilia Terragni
The pared-down proportions of the Houdini chair offer a modern and
timeless silhouette. Using an unusual production methodology taken
from aeroplane model-making, two flat plywood slabs are stretched
by hand around a complexly milled solid wood ring to form the back
and part of the seat. The slabs are then glued to the base, producing
the shape of the chair. Combining traditional techniques with the latest
timber engineering methods, the chairs present a beautiful interface
between innovative craftsmanship and Stefan Diez’s design spirit,
reflecting his modern confidence in utilising traditional methods along
with a sense of wit in the choice of the memorable name Houdini.
With experience working in various fields of design – ranging from
furniture and tableware to industrial, fashion and exhibition design –
Stefan Diez has created the Houdini, a chair that blends different
design methodologies. The inspiration for the production technique
comes from model-aeroplane making, where no nails or screws are
required. This approach dictates an interesting form, which is then
further manipulated to ensure elegant shapes and proportions.
The individually-formed back and seat produce an interesting
combination of curved and angular shapes when glued to the base.
This process, and the use of evergreen materials, demonstrates
a balanced unification of high technology and sustainable design.
Emilia Terragni
e15.com
stefan-diez.com
72 73
© e15

Palindrome Series, UK
Designed by Peter Marigold
Nominated by Alexandra Cunningham
The Palindrome series of furniture focuses on the use of symmetry,
with each piece comprising half mould and half cast. A reinforced
composite casting material is layered into simple wooden moulds
which are then opened up, turned inside out and used to create the
opposing side to the cast. The forms, textures and details on one
side are mirrored on the other, as imperfections and damage become
complimentary features, circular saw marks become symmetrical
decorative swirls, knots in the wood become motifs and holes
become handles. The wooden halves are engraved with a palindromic
word or name, resulting in the word being reproduced on the cast
side in raised writing. This technique of using simple timber moulds
is commonly seen in modernist architecture, where ‘fair facing’
creates concrete structures, often with a brutalist heavy wood grain.
The Palindrome series was created in response to the 2009 Designers
of the Future Award brief, which asked entrants to create objects
using easily available and affordable materials, specifically plaster and
mirror glass. Rather than respond literally, Peter chose to explore the
systematic appearance of symmetry in nature. Through a moulding
process, Peter constructed mirror images in two distinct materials,
wood and plaster, then fitted them together to create one whole object.
The significance of symmetry remains the subtext of most discussions
of beauty in Western society, and Palindrome presents an accessible
manifestation of this concept, which is void of mystery or pretence.
The reflection is never precise, varying in size and texture just as your
own self-perception is compromised when looking at a mirror image.
Alexandra Cunningham
petermarigold.com/palindrome.htm
74 75
© Peter Marigold

Pallet Furniture, UK
Designed by Nina Tolstrup, Studiomama
Nominated by Henrietta Thompson
Nina Tolstrup is engaged with issues of sustainability and the idea that
excellent design can act in a socially positive way. The Pallet project
uncompromisingly uses reclaimed pallets to produce furniture. These
ubiquitous, rough pieces of discarded packaging are transformed into
clean-lined products designed to be manufactured in a unique manner.
The assembly guidelines can be ordered online for £10, bypassing
costly and unsound supply chains and enabling furniture to be created
from reclaimed pallets anywhere in the world. A believer in the ‘think
globally, act locally’ tenet, Tolstrup has given photographer and gallery
owner Cecilia Glik permission to teach unemployed workers from Villa
Lugano – one of the most deprived slums of Buenos Aires – to make
the furniture in their cooperative.
Designer Nina Tolstrup of Studiomama has developed a timely range
of ‘open source’ furniture and accessories reusing discarded wooden
pallets. The Pallet project consists of chairs, lighting, and even toys
made from the reclaimed material. Products can be ordered online or,
for a much cheaper price, the potential pallet purchaser may download
DIY instructions and make their own. As well as championing a
resourceful approach to interiors, Tolstrup has extended the project
to achieve wider goals. In one initiative, unemployed workers in a
Buenos Aires slum create the furniture from locally-sourced pallets
and sell it, feeding money back into the community.
Henrietta Thompson
studiomama.com
76 77
© Nina Tolstrup

PARCS, UK
Designed by PearsonLloyd
Manufactured by Bene
Nominated by Thomas Geisler
PARCS is an innovative new furniture programme intended to challenge
the design of workplace furniture. A hybrid between architecture and
furniture, PARCS offers a range of spaces for staff to work away from
their desks in informal and collaborative settings. The management
of acoustics and privacy, and the appropriate provision of technology,
help to deliver a new type of workplace, which challenges traditional
archetypes. The PARCS combinations are not prescribed but intended
for clients to create bespoke configurations. The wide-ranging sources
of inspiration include observations of behaviour and interaction at the
Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland and the Spanish Steps in Rome,
while the Toguna piece references the low-ceilinged meeting places
of the Dogon Tribe in Mali.
What looks like a homey interior is the cubical of the future. Creativity
and productivity within team work need new environments in offices
where people spend most of their day. This varied working and
communication landscape, with references to Malinese togunas
and American diners, offers many opportunities to brainstorm or
socialise. Wouldn’t we all love to work in PARCS?
Thomas Geisler
parcs.bene.com
pearsonlloyd.com
78 79
© PearsonLloyd

Polytopia, Australia
Designed by Lucas Chirnside
Nominated by Brian Parkes
Cutting edge contemporary furniture is difficult to pull off, frequently
delivering an imbalance between aesthetics, comfort and concept.
Lucas Chirnside’s Polytopia seating system strikes the right balance
between these three issues. Conceived as communal seating,
Polytopia examines how people interact and communicate when
sharing a space. The cascading geometry can be arranged in multiple
configurations, with the look of a deconstructed Rubik’s cube.
Polytopia is made from recycled plastic using standard rotational
moulding techniques.
Sharing a space is a dynamic ritual that is open to improvisation. The
seating design of Polytopia allows it to participate in the physical and
social play of its environment. Polytopia acts as a spatial organ, flexible
and programmed to sustain key functions, which create interconnected
chairs, armrests, tables, voids, eddies and flows. Polytopia begins as
a familiar but ambiguous geometry that offers seams and folds awaiting
interaction. In any given state Polytopia is incomplete and demands
further adjustment by rotating, sliding, closing and opening. As an
exercise in modular design principles, Polytopia has been reduced
to three basic forms to facilitate the ease of production.
Brian Parkes
smlwrld.com
80 81
© Lucas Chirnside

Repair Project, Lisbon, Portugal
Concept and design by Linda Brothwell
Commissioned by the British Council for Experimenta Design, Lisbon
Nominated by Emily Campbell
Linda Brothwell uses traditional craft techniques to repair everyday
objects within the public realm as a form of privately experienced but
publicly sited intervention. The Repair Project was created as part of the
British Council’s contribution to Experimenta Design in Lisbon, where
Brothwell intervened upon damaged park and street benches around
the city. She lived in Lisbon for a month, learning traditional wood inlay
techniques in the workshops of the decorative art museum before
using her new skills to create the work, ornamenting new oak slats with
interpreted Donna Maria furniture designs, personally experienced
maps of the area and 1950s Portuguese domestic patterns.
In her Repair Project for Experimenta 09 in the city of Lisbon Linda
Brothwell repaired broken benches with new wooden thwarts,
painstakingly inlaid. Her work is a small and anonymous gift to the
city residents, a magic blend of high craft and arte povera hinting
at redemption in a throwaway society.
Emily Campbell
lindabrothwell.com
82 83
© Bridget Smith

Setu Office Chair, Germany
Designed by Studio 7.5
Manufactured by Herman Miller
Nominated by Sam Hecht
Setu is the epitome of a task chair – designed and built to support and
offer comfort to the user for hours at a time on a daily basis. The flexible
bone-like ribs at the rear have a mimetic quality, seemingly reflecting
the bend of the user’s spine as it curves along the back of the chair.
This form was inspired by the contours and spirals of the nautilus shell.
As part of the development process, designers Studio 7.5 produced 35
different, fully functioning prototypes until they arrived at a design they
were happy with. During the testing, every line, bend and corner of the
chair was painstakingly tested to achieve the required result.
I think it’s been very hard recently for the Herman Miller company to
bring revolution to chair design and be acknowledged for it. It seems
every month there’s a new revolutionary chair that’s launched and
then forgotten. Let’s at least marvel at this office chair. Within its
frame, Studio 7.5 managed to create structure, support and comfort.
That’s within the frame, not an additional mechanism. I think that’s
quite remarkable.
Sam Hecht
hermanmiller.com/products/setu-chairs
seven5.com
84 85
© Herman Miller Inc

032c Magazine, Germany
Art Direction by Mike Meiré
Nominated by Jeremy Leslie
Under the art direction of Mike Meiré, 032c has become a contemporary
culture magazine that stands out from the crowd in a busy market.
The use of clashing colours, demanding page layouts, challenging
fonts changing on almost every page, and mixed weights and types of
paper generates a feeling of disorientation and spontaneity. On closer
inspection, however, these combinations are far from rash. Rather, they
are the result of considered and rigorous experiments that challenge
the perceived principles of graphic and editorial publishing. In the
words of the New York Times, 032c ‘fuses art, architecture, literature,
urban studies and fashion in ways that can make one forget how
depressing a visit to a news-stand has become’.
032c magazine has been published from Berlin for a decade. Launched
as a fanzine-like two-colour newsprint publication taking an outsider
view of its home city, it now plays a central role in reflecting the area
of contemporary culture where art, fashion and design meet. Its last
few issues have featured a new and continually evolving design by
Mike Meiré. Dubbed the ‘New Ugly’ by the creative press it is in reality
born more of a desire for spontaneity in an area of editorial design
that has become tired and repetitive in its self-conscious ‘stylishness’.
Instead of the careful application of modernist typography and formal
composition, the magazine features system fonts and clashing colours,
still very ‘designed’ but deliberately alternative. It is an ongoing
experiment in editorial design that is not always easy on the eye,
but sticks a healthy finger up at the clichés of modern independent
magazine publishing.
Jeremy Leslie
032c.com
meireundmeire.de
88 89
© 032c

Altermodern: Tate Triennial Catalogue
and Poster Design, UK
Designed by M/M (Paris)
Nominated by Rick Poyner
The Altermodern exhibition at Tate Britain addressed ‘the death of
postmodernism and the rise of a new modernity, reconfigured to an
age of globalisation’. When curator Nicolas Bourriaud commissioned
M/M (Paris) to design the exhibition identity and catalogue, they
developed a strong visual language, the centrepiece of which was a
typically challenging logo. Using numerous typefaces separated over
multiple lines the logo has an almost baroque feel, forcing the viewer
to concentrate hard in order to decipher the text. M/M (Paris) combined
single letters lifted from collections of typefaces they had designed
over the past 15 years, to spell out the exhibition titles as well as the
wording for a series of events leading into the exhibition. The logo
was also used as the main image for the accompanying poster and
catalogue.
In an era of heavy institutional branding, designers aren’t left with much
space to interpret art in an inventive way. M/M (Paris)’s exuberantly
playful typographic constructions for French curator Nicolas Bourriaud’s
Altermodern exhibition for the Tate Triennial are a rare example of
exhibition graphics that make an insistent visual statement, while
also embodying the spirit of the exhibition. The title piece used on
the poster and catalogue cover is built from a motley collection of
letterforms, some expressive and ornamental, others plain and
functional. Variations on the idea in black and white and colour are
used throughout. The designers commit the sacrilege of borrowing
fragments of the artists’ works to compose their own pieces of
graphic art, obliging the gallery, artists and viewers to encounter art
and design on equal terms.
Rick Poyner
mmparis.com
tate.org.uk/Britain/exhibitions/altermodern
90 91
© M/M (Paris)

Cafe of Equivalent$, UK
Designed by kennardphillipps
Nominated by Angharad Lewis
Playing around with the notion of value in the global capitalist financial
system, kennardphillipps’ Cafe of Equivalent$ engaged City workers
with some simple ‘truth derivatives’ during their lunch break. Set up
in Leadenhall Market in the heart of London’s financial district, the
Cafe sold soup and bread at a cost equivalent with food affordability
in producing countries such as Mozambique, Brazil, Indonesia and
Bangladesh. Calculating the ratio of the cost of soup and bread to
a Mozambican worker earning two dollars a day – their 20 cent lunch
accounts for 10 per cent of their daily wage – the Cafe applied the
same percentage to the average bonus-earning-banker. Soup and
bread in the Cafe of Equivalent$ was therefore priced from £111.20.
The intervention is an attempt to create transparency in an opaque
world of money, making material the physical possibilities of using
financial resources for need rather than profit.
Kennardphillipps set up a temporary café in the heart of the city of
London, with the aim of highlighting the inequalities between the dayto-day
lives of people living in developed and impoverished nations.
They attempted to sell lunch to city workers, with food priced at the
equivalent percentage of income that a person in a developing country
would have to spend on a meal. A series of digitally printed visual
and typographic works printed over sheets from the Financial Times
provided a visual backdrop to support the message. Cafe of Equivalent$
is an outstanding example of how design can operate as much more
than a mouthpiece for a client’s message. Graphic design often comes
into its own as a medium for galvanising action or to distil an issue into
a powerful visual medium, including performance. There is a chasm
between the perceived function of graphic design in its narrowest
sense, and projects like this where the designer is author, activist
and image-maker.
Angharad Lewis
kennardphillipps.com/cafe-of-equivalent
92 93
© Jenny Matthews

Corporate Diversity, Swiss Graphic Design
and Advertising by Geigy 1940–1970,
Switzerland
Designed by NORM, edited by Andres Janser and Barbara Junod
Published by Lars Müller Publishers and Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
Nominated by Tony Brook
During the 1950s and 1960s the chemical and pharmaceutical
company JR Geigy AG became the focus of a far-reaching and
influential period in Swiss graphic design. Empowered by a modern,
open-minded corporation, Geigy’s design studio produced a large
body of work across identity, advertising and package design. Under
the leadership of Max Schmid the studio combined a formal language
with a refreshing approach to corporate design that chimed perfectly
with the second wave of European modernism. This is the first
comprehensive look at Geigy design, and the book’s considered but
complimentary layout combined with well-researched information
shine a light on an unglamorous yet important period of graphic design.
Corporate Diversity: Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy
1940–1970 celebrates one of the most impressive and imaginative
bodies of corporate design ever made. The Swiss pharmaceutical
company Geigy’s rise to prominence coincided with the golden era
of Swiss modernism and the organisation took full advantage. Rarely
seen work by designers of the calibre of Armin Hofmann, Karl Gerstner,
Nelly Rudin, Gérard Ifert, Steff Geissbuhler and Fridolin Müller more
than justify the book’s existence. But it is the well written and
researched essays, revealing the innovative strategies behind the
work, that make it exceptional. The design by NORM is restrained
but never dull and supports the imagery perfectly.
Tony Brook
lars-mueller-publishers.com
museum-gestaltung.ch
94 95
© Lars Müller Publishers

Daily Visual Column for de Volkskrant,
Netherlands
Concept and design by Gorilla (De Designpolitie, Herman van
Bostelen and Lesley Moore)
Nominated by Angharad Lewis
Six times a week a revolving duo drawn from the Gorilla collective was
given three hours to create a visual response to the day’s news, to be
published in de Volkskrant. They acted not only as designers but also
as authors and even opinion formers. During the period in which the
column appeared, Gorilla developed its own unique visual identity and
a fixed place in the paper’s layout. The simple and colourful designs
look innocent enough but have a razor-sharp message. Gorilla gave
iconic images a twist, creating a visual double take to challenge
readers’ expectations of how to interpret images or, in this case, the
daily news. The telling images, constructed from the minimum number
of elements, produce something instantly recognisable, yet requiring
a second glance. In the world according to Gorilla, ‘graphic design
is about communication, about the tension between informing and
concealing, about what you show immediately and what you allow to
filter through. And, certainly no less important, what you do not show.’
The Gorilla collective spent two years making a daily intervention in the
Dutch national newspaper de Volkskrant. Every night they responded
to the breaking news to create a graphic image that summed up
their take on events. Gorilla made a sharp, one-hit graphic response
to daily events across different news sectors, from global political
developments to sports news and media gossip, appearing each
morning on the newspaper’s front page. The Gorilla project is a fantastic
example of graphic design’s potential to interact with the wider world
of news, politics and current affairs. Talented designers like these can
crystallise complicated issues and ideas into a succinct single image
(not to mention pulling off an amazing feat of design stamina).
Angharad Lewis
designpolitie.nl
hermanvanbostelen.nl
lesley-moore.nl
thedailygorilla.nl
96 97
© Gorilla

It’s Nice That, UK
Edited by Will Hudson and Alex Bec, designed by It’s Nice That
in collaboration with Joseph Burrin
Nominated by Simon Esterson
It’s Nice That is the printed publication from the design blog of the same
name. Founded in April 2007, the online platform covers a wide range
of work from across the creative industry, predominantly graphic
design, illustration, film and photography. Directors Will Hudson and
Alex Bec launched their printed incarnation two years later, allowing
the blog’s audience to engage with their content away from a computer
screen. Working with graphic designer Joseph Burrin ensured the work
was presented in a manner that did it justice, resulting in a beautiful
physical object. The printed manifestation of It’s Nice That is made up
of advertising-free content, documenting the most interesting work
featured on itsnicethat.com, alongside more in-depth interviews and
features written by current practitioners.
Will Hudson and Alex Bec’s blog has expanded into a printed magazine,
events and talks. To me it’s a perfect example of how to deliver a witty,
appropriate presence across different media. And of course it’s very
well done. They’ve achieved something many older, apparently more
experienced teams have struggled to do as effectively.
Simon Esterson
itsnicethat.com
98 99
© It’s Nice That

PIG 05049, Netherlands
Written and designed by Christien Meindertsma and Julie Joliat
Nominated by Paola Antonelli
After its death, pig number 05049 was shipped in parts across the
world. Some products remain close to their original form and function
while others diverge dramatically. In an almost surgical way, a pig
is dissected on the pages of PIG 05049, resulting in a product
catalogue that shows all the final products: from car paint to heart
valve, from bullet to rib chop and from chewing gum to print paper.
PIG 05049 is the result of a three year study during which Christien
Meindertsma tracked all the products made from 05049, a pig she
selected at random from a commercial farm in the Netherlands.
The animal was used in 185 different products, which are all pictured
in the book. Aside from the expected foodstuffs, parts of 05049 were
used for a variety of non-food products, including photographic film,
toothpaste and even the glue used to bind the pages of Meindertsma’s
book. PIG 05049 is a visual catalogue of the afterlife of one animal
which reveals the complexity of the meat processing industry and
the impersonality of our relationship to livestock. It is an outstanding
example of design, exploring the relationship between man and
animal, and between consumer and product.
Paola Antonelli
christienmeindertsma.com
100 101
© Christien Meindertsma

Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia
Volume III, UK
Designed and published by FUEL Design and Publishing
Nominated by Quentin Newark
Now in its third volume, the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia
brings to a close the fascinating ethnographic study of over 3000
unpublished drawings and photographs of tattoos, compiled by
Danzig Baldaev during a lifetime working as a prison guard. FUEL
have illuminated this previously closed world of criminal iconography
and, through the publication of this rarefied collection, the reader
is encouraged to create narratives to fit imagery that is darkly comic,
surreal, disturbing and sometimes vulgar. The series has received
international acclaim, inspiring the History Channel’s documentary
Marked and David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises film along the way.
It isn’t a prerequisite that every designer must be drawn to the new.
Old technologies are still valid. The publication of the third volume of the
Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia marks a high point for the quiet,
but brilliant, design group and publishing enterprise known as FUEL.
The Encyclopedia could so easily have been a website or a blog.
All of us visit blogs with interesting visual material on them. We graze,
scrolling through for a few seconds or minutes, get a quick visual ‘wow’,
and are off to the next one. By presenting this material in book form,
FUEL have given the iconography of the Russian underworld the status
of art. It is given space, contextualising texts and photographs,
enabling cross referencing between volumes. The book allows a form
to be imposed, a shape, meaning and pace for the content. And the
content is truly amazing. The tattoos are an extraordinary creative
outpouring in otherwise bleak lives, the articulation of psychological
damage eked out with paper clips and ink made from soot and ash
mixed with urine. Put with their startling study of Communist-era makedo,
Home-made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts, we see that
FUEL are using books to shine a spotlight into the most arcane and
forlorn corners of recent Russian culture.
Quentin Newark
fuel-design.com
102 103
© FUEL Design and Publishing

The Happy Hypocrite, UK
Designed by A Practice for Everyday Life
Edited by Maria Fusco, published by Book Works
Nominated by Rick Poyner
The Happy Hypocrite is a bi-annual journal of new writing and
research-based projects from artists, writers and theorists. Informed
by a lineage of modern experimental and avant-garde magazines,
such as Bananas, Documents, The Fox, Merlin and Tracks, The Happy
Hypocrite unpacks the methodology of these key journals, while
providing a brand new approach to art writing. It provides a testing
ground for experimental ideas, which might not otherwise be realised
or published. A Practice for Everyday Life (APFEL)’s design for the
journal reflects the written nature of the contributions. Each section
has a different typographic language, illustrating the diversity of the
included work.
One pleasing trend in the last decade has been a spate of engagingly
designed arts journals that give new life, and added visual intelligence,
to a genre of non-academic publications one might have imagined to
be on its last legs. A twice-yearly journal about experimental art writing
called for an eccentrically restrained if not self-consciously clever
visual treatment and APFEL’s design struck exactly the right balance.
The enigmatic covers, which subdue the publication’s peculiar name
to a whisper, are consistently intriguing: in what way are a group of
people sitting around a table engaged in an act of ‘volatile dispersal’?
Inside, The Happy Hypocrite alternates readably presented text, mostly
set in the traditional book typeface Baskerville, with visually-led items.
Everything feels appropriately off-kilter.
Rick Poyner
apracticeforeverydaylife.com
bookworks.org.uk
104 105
© APFEL

The Indian Type Foundry, India
Designed by Peter Bilak and Satya Rajpurohit
Nominated by Patrick Burgoyne
Perhaps due to the small size of the sector, perhaps because of the
time it takes to develop a new typeface, or perhaps to try and maximise
potential usage and profit, most type design is concentrated on
creating Latin typefaces. The Indian Type Foundry attempts to give
as much attention to non-Latin fonts with a focus on Indic scripts.
Their first typeface, Fedra Hindi, is a Devanagari script but scripts
such as Gujarati, Bengali and more will follow. The Devanagari script
is a Brahmi-derived writing system developed originally to write
Sanskrit and now used widely in India and Nepal.
Professionally-designed typefaces are part of the design ecology
of any nation. Until now, Indian designers had to make do with a paltry
selection of often poorly realised fonts. The Indian Typeface Foundry
hopes to change that, making well-designed type in a variety of local
languages available nationwide for the first time.
Patrick Burgoyne
indiantypefoundry.com
typotheque.com
106 107
© The Indian Type Foundry

The Newspaper Club, UK
Created by Ben Terrett, Russell Davies and Tom Taylor
and supported by 4iP
Nominated by Simon Esterson, Jeremy Leslie
The seemingly unstoppable rise of digital communication has seen
many people predict the impending death of print. The Newspaper
Club flies in the face of this, by enabling anyone to produce, not just
their own newspaper, but anything that can be made with ink on
newsprint. To keep costs as low as possible on print runs from five to
5000, The Newspaper Club utilises downtime at printing presses.
Files can be uploaded to the website, enabling prompt printing and
delivery, and there are even tools to help the enthusiastic amateur
arrange text and images in attractive page layouts.
The Newspaper Club is an idea that solves several problems to do
with printing small runs of printed publications. Taking advantage of
downtime at newspaper printers, the company takes care of the print
and production side of things, providing online templated designs for
amateur publishers or accepting bespoke designs from professionals.
The result is an easy-to-use process providing relatively cheap but
high-quality colour newsprint printing. Ideal for newsletters, one-off
events, special reports or for regularly published projects, it makes
good use of existing resources to create sensible quantities of
publications, from simple, local publications to highly designed,
widely distributed pieces. This is a design innovation in the best sense:
a project that is well conceived and designed in itself, but that opens
the world of design and communication beyond the usual group
of specialists to the benefit of the wider public.
Jeremy Leslie
benterrett.com
newspaperclub.co.uk
108 109
© Ben Terrett

The New Yorker, 2 Nov 2009 Edition, USA
Designed by Chris Ware
Nominated by Patrick Burgoyne
Over the years Chris Ware has produced a number of celebrated
covers for the New Yorker. The latest, a Halloween edition for the
2 November 2009 issue, features a group of distracted parents whose
faces, illuminated by the glow from their iPhones, match the ghostly
masks worn by their children. The cover, while its own single image,
is actually the first panel of a four-page fiction selection in the same
magazine, concerning a woman who visits her widowed mother after
an angry dispute with her husband, only to learn that her father once
committed adultery.
We’ve come to expect great illustration from New Yorker covers but
Chris Ware’s evocation of Halloween 2009-style was just beautiful.
As the kids go trick or treating, their parents stare distractedly at the
little white screens of their phones, unable to tear themselves away
from devices that have come to dominate our lives, even for just one
evening. Perfect and strangely moving.
Patrick Burgoyne
newyorker.com
110 111
© Chris Ware/The New Yorker/Condé Nast Publications

Trillion Dollar Campaign, Zimbabwe
Designed by TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, South Africa
for The Zimbabwean Newspaper
Art Directors: Shelley Smoler, Nadja Lossgott
Copywriters: Raphael Basckin, Nicholas Hulley
Nominated by Patrick Burgoyne
The Zimbabwean newspaper has been driven into exile for claiming
that the Mugabe regime rigged elections, crushed the opposition
and caused poverty, disease and the total collapse of the economy.
With the levy of a 70 per cent ‘luxury’ import duty, the paper has become
unaffordable for the average Zimbabwean. To raise awareness and
drive sales outside Zimbabwe, the South African based advertising
agency TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris conceived a unique solution. One of the
most eloquent symbols of Zimbabwe’s collapse is the trillion dollar
note, a symptom of the country’s world record inflation. This banknote,
and the dizzying escalation of notes that preceded it, cannot buy
anything, not even a loaf of bread – and certainly not any advertising.
The campaign turned the money into its own medium by creating
posters, billboards and flyers from the banknotes themselves.
News of the materials spread globally, with the campaign appearing
on international television and radio programmes, covered in the
Guardian and New York Times and featuring on hundreds of blogs.
As the campaign continues, sales of The Zimbabwean continue to soar.
The humble billboard can seem horribly old-fashioned in these days
of digital media but this simple idea proves its enduring communicative
power. Poster sites are plastered with genuine (and practically
worthless) Zimbabwean currency, vividly illustrating the economic
disaster visited on the country by the Mugabe regime.
Patrick Burgoyne
tbwa.co.za
thezimbabwean.co.uk
112 113
© TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris & Des Ellis

Typographic Trees, Crawley Library, UK
Designed by Gordon Young and Why Not Associates
Nominated by David Kester
When artist Gordon Young was asked by architects Penoyre and
Prasard to design a site-specific work of art for their new library in
Crawley, West Sussex, he suggested a ‘forest’ of typographic oak
columns installed floor to ceiling like supporting pillars. Fellow artist
Anna Sandberg held workshops with library users, to gather
information on people’s favourite books, places and memories.
Young then worked with typographers Why Not Associates to design
columns from this user-generated content. Each of the 14 solid oak
‘trees’ reflects a different subject – from the opening line of the first
Harry Potter novel to the gothic text of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The final
designs were sandblasted into green unseasoned oak by long time
collaborator Russell Coleman. This material – with all its cracks and
shakes – was deliberately chosen to contrast with the perfection of the
new building’s interior. Finally, the finished columns were installed in
relevant specific locations throughout the library.
Literacy changes lives, and libraries are crucial in helping to make
sure everyone in the UK can read and write. Crawley’s newest library
features a set of oak tree trunks engraved with passages from some
of the library’s well known and best loved books, as chosen by library
users. Graphic designers Why Not Associates worked with artist
Gordon Young on this piece of graphic-design-as-public-art. Different
typefaces, chosen to suit each passage of text, were sandblasted
out of the tree trunks in a technically complex process that saw the
designers experimenting with blasting techniques and sourcing a
specific sort of grit. The Typographic Trees are an elegant reminder
of the importance of words, ideas and literacy in Penoyre & Prasad’s
building, described as ‘the most sustainable in West Sussex’.
David Kester
gordonyoung.net
whynotassociates.com
114 115
© Gordon Young

Voltaic: Songs from the Volta Tour, France
Designed by M/M (Paris) for Björk
Released by One Little Indian
Nominated by Zöe Ryan
Conceived as a definitive multi-format audio and video archive, the
Voltaic collection includes multiple live recordings of songs from
Björk’s last two records, along with assorted remixes and videos.
The packaging uses an elaborate die-cut gatefold sleeve containing
a series of sleeves-within-sleeves. These contain more inner sleeves,
holding the three LPs, two CDs and two DVDs. Everything is held
together by the bright tear-shaped sticker glued to the front, which
needs to be removed delicately to gain access. The template was
originally developed for the Volta studio album and its many subsequent
single releases. Here it is re-used with new photographic material
taken by M/M (Paris) throughout the tour, and on location in Iceland.
A specially-developed multi-coloured font echoes Björk’s vibrant
costumes and make-up, and is used extensively across the project.
Known for their work with fashion companies, musicians, and cultural
institutions, M/M (Paris) consistently create inventive and eye-catching
graphic solutions at a range of scales from posters and publications
to installations. Working with Björk on a limited edition version of her
live album, M/M (Paris) determined that a bold approach was needed
to stand out in our increasingly digital world, where music is more
often downloaded than purchased over the counter. Collaborating
with photographers Nick Knight, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh
Matadin, M/M (Paris) created a visual language incorporating both
photography and graphic elements – such as original typography –
that reflects the emotive quality of Björk’s music and her diverse
approach. To accommodate a set of records and CDs, M/M (Paris)
generated a series of brightly coloured sleeves that fit together, one
inside another, like a Russian doll. On the one hand complex, their
design is nonetheless a functional solution that provides an element
of discovery.
Zöe Ryan
mmparis.com
116 117
© M/M (Paris)/Wellhart Ltd/One Little Indian Ltd

War Memorial, UK
Designed by Harry Pearce at Pentagram, for the Science Museum,
London
Nominated by Patrick Burgoyne
Pentagram partner Harry Pearce’s wall-mounted memorial for the
Science Museum, London is a reverential and sober tribute to the
institution’s employees who fell in the First and Second World Wars.
The plaque is made from a single piece of cast iron layered with
typographic interventions powerful in their simplicity and eye-catching
in their invention. ‘19’ sits proud of the plaque, with ‘14 –18’ slightly less
raised to one side. ‘39 – 45’ shares the ‘19’ on a second layer, while a
cross is de-embossed through both sections. The raised and polished
Raleigh lettering stands out clearly and, together with the obvious
solidity of the plaque, speaks of permanence and unfailing respect.
An elegant, dignified and beautiful response to a tricky commission.
A memorial that is both contemporary and appropriate for its context
and for the setting of the Science Museum.
Patrick Burgoyne
pentagram.com
118 119
© Pentagram

Yes, UK
Designed by Farrow (Mark Farrow, Gary Stillwell and
Sabine Fasching)
Clients: Pet Shop Boys, The Vinyl Factory
Nominated by Patrick Burgoyne
The cover design for the 2009 release of Yes consists of a simple tick
made from 11 coloured squares, one for each track on the album.
Reducing the title to a symbol deliberately creates more of an identity
than an album cover. It is simple, memorable and ‘pop’. The nominated
work is the limited edition vinyl version of Yes. The album is split over
11 vinyl records, each in a coloured sleeve. When correctly arranged,
these form the tick symbol on a much larger scale. The inner sleeves
feature deconstructed graphic elements and photographs from the
original album. A twelfth, white sleeve contains a signed print, track
listing and recording credits. The smoked perspex case features a
gold-plated tick, reminiscent of high-end hi-fi equipment.
With its Gerhard Richter references and cool confidence this was a
vivid reminder that the record sleeve can still be a great creative canvas.
The lavish vinyl special edition is beyond covetable.
Patrick Burgoyne
farrowdesign.com
120 121
© Farrow

Amazon Kindle DX, USA
Designed by Amazon
Nominated by Matt Jones
Amazon believes the Kindle DX e-reader will change the way that
people read. Central to the design is the striking e-ink screen that
reproduces the appearance of real paper more closely than LCD
screens or past e-reader technologies. Content can be acquired in
various ways, including the Amazon Whispernet service. Whispernet
uses a technology similar to wireless broadband to provide users with
remote access to books, journals, magazines and other publications
without having to access a computer or mobile phone.
Amazon’s Kindle DX isn’t the first e-book reader, but it’s the first time
service, form, interface and content have come together at a point of
mainstream marketability. The integration of the service and the device,
especially with the ‘Whispernet’ wireless connection, is almost magical.
Switching on the device for the first time it ‘knows’ you and quickly
loads the books you have bought. After years of seeing e-ink screens
in labs, or as devices from the future in movies, here it is, catching my
eye in the corner of my living room. The words live in our world, seen on
the surface of the device rather than through the glowing proscenium
of an LCD. It’s too early to say whether Kindle DX is the iPod of books,
but it is the starting gun for a few years of design innovation in digital
reading and an icon of transformation in one of our oldest media. After
all, it’s been 2000 years or so, but we’ve finally invented the book you
can read with one hand.
Matt Jones
amazon.com
124 125
© Amazon.com

BBC iPlayer, UK
Designed by the BBC
Nominated by Simon Esterson
Since its launch on Christmas Day 2007, BBC iPlayer has grown to
a service receiving over 100 million requests per month for BBC
Television and Radio programmes. The on-demand service allows
UK audiences to catch up with their favourite BBC programmes from
the past seven days, at a time that suits them. Audiences have a choice
of streaming or downloading their chosen programme and with series
catch-up, selected programmes are also made available for the entire
season. First launched on the computer, BBC iPlayer is now available
on over 20 devices, including TV services, games consoles and mobile
phones, providing UK audiences with greater access to the wealth of
content available from the BBC.
It’s not new, but in October 2009 – when the site experienced 70 million
download requests in one month – the social consequences of BBC
iPlayer software have become obvious. I can now sit at my desk and
watch television or listen to the radio on my Mac. It’s better than my
conventional television at home. The interface is clear and so simple
to use. The vast range of the BBC’s content is presented with a
remarkable equality. It’s led me to rediscover BBC 4 and I think it has
done wonders for the radio channels: they’ve somehow been turned
into a visual medium.
Simon Esterson
bbc.co.uk/iplayer
126 127
© BBC

Bloom, UK
Designed by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers
Nominated by Quentin Newark
Bloom explores uncharted territory in the realm of applications for
the iPhone and iPod touch. Part instrument, part composition and
part artwork, Bloom’s innovative controls allow anyone to create
elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen.
A generative music player takes over when Bloom is left idle, creating
an infinite selection of compositions and accompanying visualisations.
As Brian Eno says, ‘Bloom is an endless music machine, a music
box for the twenty-first century. You can play it, and you can watch
it play itself.’
In the 1970s Brian Eno created ambient music. More than 30 years later,
Eno’s musical theories – and, through his filter, the theories of the most
avant-garde composers of the last century – can appear in everyone’s
pocket. The Bloom iPhone app plays generative music in a tone chosen
by the listener. By tapping on the screen and controlling the volume and
length of repeat, Eno and Chilvers even allow us to compose our own
music. Bloom is popular art at its absolute best, making profound ideas
appealing and easy to engage with. It is also breath-takingly graphically
beautiful, like a cross between a Moholy-Nagy film and a colour-field
painting. Its depiction of sound as radiating circles of colour positioned
according to pitch might just be the first new invention of musical
notation since the neumes and staves of the thirteenth century. This is
design that is brilliantly democratic, technologically elegant, musically
revolutionary and graphically amazing.
Quentin Newark
generativemusic.com
128 129
© Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers

Graffiti Taxonomy: Paris, France
Concept and design by Evan Roth
Nominated by Shane Walter
In Graffiti Taxonomy: Paris, Evan Roth spent four days photographing
over 2,400 graffiti tags from each of Paris’s 20 districts. Each photograph
was archived, tagged and sorted by letter. To investigate the stylistic
diversity found in Parisian graffiti tags the 10 most commonly used
letters (A, E, I, K, N, O, R, S, T and U) were identified for further study.
From each letter grouping, 18 tags were isolated to represent the
diversity and range of that specific character. These sets are not
intended to display the ‘best’ graffiti tags in Paris. Rather, the aim
is to highlight the diversity of forms ranging from upper case to lower
case, simple to complex and legible to cryptic.
This is a rare project, which immediately struck me for being at once
smart, stylish, obsessive, unusual and enlightening. Roth takes in
and comments on a multitude of areas, from street art and typography,
new media and psychogeography, to photography and spray paint.
It has wonderfully brought to the surface the creative underground,
delivering the illicit world of tags and bombing in an intelligent range
of formats and scale. From interactive works to motion graphics and
print to signage, it is a remarkable study of our times, which depicts
the stylistic diversity found in Parisian graffiti tags. Graffiti Taxonomy is
an illuminating and important document of a recent cultural language
system that is so often overlooked or misunderstood. Roth is its master
cultural excavator and archaeologist.
Shane Walter
evan-roth.com/graffiti-taxonomy-paris.php
130 131
© Evan Roth

L-E-D-LED-L-ED, Japan
Designed by Dilight
Nominated by Hannah Redler
L-E-D-LED-L-ED consists of hundreds of bead-shaped light emitting
diodes (LEDs) that can slide back and forth along a series of parallel
horizontal wires. The ability to move the beads is central to the concept
as the viewer is encouraged to touch and feel the installation, using their
imagination to create a personal interpretation of the configuration
of beads. In a new process developed by Dilight, an electric current
is passed through the horizontal wires, which generates the lights
when it is reconverted into energy by coils inside each bead.
This breathtaking achievement of art, exhibited at Ars Electronica, was
created using hundreds of bead-shaped LED lights lined up on parallel
horizontal wires that can be moved around. The piece transcends
the typical gallery format. With space allowed to inspire the audience
to come up with something new, it genuinely becomes a co-creative
experience where viewers are encouraged to touch and feel it.
Hannah Redler
dilight.jp
132 133
© Daici Ano

Onedotzero Adventures in Motion
Festival Identity, UK
Designed by wieden + kennedy and Karsten Schmidt,
PostSpectacular
Creative Directors: Tony Davidson, w + k london and Shane RJ Walter,
onedotzero. Creative Team: David Bruno, Tom Seymour, Karen Jane,
Eze Blaine and Sermad Buni, w+k London
Nominated by Daniel Brown
The concept for the adventures in motion festival identity was to harness
online conversations stimulated by onedotzero’s global community,
uniting these to create the identity itself. Specially produced generative
software creates a ‘living’ identity from which all visual communication
is born. It can be paused to create print assets or recorded to create
film assets. It also ran live as a 50m interactive digital installation for
the launch at the BFI Southbank. The open source software is freely
available to download and adapt. As a result, the identity continues
to evolve for the full duration of the festival’s international touring.
Taking advantage of onedotzero’s active global community, aggregated
content from online postings on Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, Facebook and
various blogs was used to ‘self-generate’ the identity. The extracted
words and opinions are combined using specially produced software,
to create colourful and dynamic threads of text, which merge in and out
of one another to form onedotzero’s logo. Users were encouraged to
submit their own messages and content for the identity, manipulating
them through Nokia handsets. The community ethos of the project was
further enhanced by providing the code for the project online, in order
to encourage debate, innovation and new incarnations.
Daniel Brown
onedotzero.com
postspectacular.com
wklondon.com
134 135
© onedotzero

OpenFrameworks, USA
Developed by Zach Lieberman, Theodore Watson, Arturo Castro
and the OF community
Nominated by Moritz Waldemeyer
OpenFrameworks is an open-source, cross-platform program library
designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and
intuitive framework for experimentation. OpenFrameworks allows
beginners and experts alike to develop real-time software interfaces
that move far beyond traditional screen-based interaction, into
physical space. Zach Lieberman from the development team explains,
‘the project was inspired by the question of whether artists can make
tools at the same time as they make art. As artists, we took things we
learned and tried to find a way to distil them down into building blocks
for others’. Lieberman has been continually surprised by the ingenuity
and spirit of the community using openFrameworks. From their energy
and response, and from the works they have made, it looks as if
openFrameworks is spawning a new generation of artists making
expressive, organic, provoking and unique interactive artworks.
OpenFrameworks is a tool that makes it much easier to create things
via code. It allows creative people to access the power of modern
computers that was previously the sole domain of highly trained
software engineers. It removes the major roadblocks that prevented
curious designers from accessing the incredible performance of
modern graphics engines and processors and allows us to design
extraordinary interactive experiences that were pure science fiction
a few years back. The openFrameworks initiative is also a community
of talented interaction designers and a meeting point that pushes
the envelope of technology-based design.
Moritz Waldemeyer
openframeworks.cc
136 137
© Ryan Habbyshaw

Pachube, UK
Developed by Usman Haque, Sam Mulube and Christopher
Burman
Nominated by Matt Jones
The Pachube service enables people to monitor, store, discover and
share real time environmental data from sensors connected to the
internet. Just like a physical ‘patch bay’ (or telephone switchboard),
Pachube enables any participating entity to plug-in to any other
participating entity in real time. For example, buildings, interactive
environments, networked energy meters, virtual worlds and mobile
sensor devices can all talk and respond to one another. Pachube
makes it simple to build applications, products and services bridging
physical and virtual worlds. People have used Pachube to build sensorlogging
systems and remote monitoring apps, integrate building
management systems, develop geo-tracking systems, create mashups
and networked objects and a host of other web-enabled systems.
Pachube (pronounced ‘patch-bay’) is a service where the data streams
emerging from ever-more-ubiquitous sensors embedded in the world
can be accessed. Analysts predict that 20 per cent of non-video data
on the internet will come from real-time sensors in 2012, and Pachube
is set to become the YouTube of these things. You can get real-time
temperature, sea-level, noise, light and almost any other data you can
think of from a growing number of sites around the world. Pachube
is the broker of this information – to a community of designers and
developers creating exciting applications from its free exchange.
Possible applications range from the practical (reducing energy costs
by linking sensors to building management systems) to the more poetic
(connecting my lamp to a webcam trained on the sunset in my wife’s
native Australia). The physical and the digital are enmeshing and, rather
than living in virtual reality or Second Life, developments like Pachube
forge an ‘augmented reality’ (or 1.5 life) where invisible streams of data
around us become visible and usable.
Matt Jones
haque.co.uk
pachube.com
138 139
© www.pachube.com

Panda Eyes, UK
Designed by Jason Bruges Studio for WWF
Nominated by Ross Phillips
Designed for Pandamonium – the WWF campaign that asked leading
artists and designers to create new works based on the famous panda
collection boxes – Panda Eyes was originally displayed in a window
of Selfridges before being auctioned by Christie’s for the WWF.
Jason Bruges Studio created an artwork consisting of 100 rotating
captive pandas that detect a viewer’s presence and unanimously track
human movement. Rotating towards the viewer, their confrontational
stare is slightly unnerving, urging viewers to consider their impact
upon the environment. The pandas are controlled by servo motors,
which rotate at precise increments. Linked to an ARM microprocessor,
their position changes according to a live image feed from a thermal
camera mounted overhead.
Panda Eyes is a physical installation that consists of 100 pandas
(the old WWF collection boxes), which dynamically track a user’s
movements around the space and turn to face them. While the slightly
unnerving stare of 100 pandas clearly encourages the viewer to
consider their impact on the environment, what I enjoyed most about
this piece was the simple pleasure of the interaction itself – the whirr
of the motors as they turn to face you, the odd one who doesn’t quite
look your way and a sense of vying for affection from these inanimate
objects if someone else enters the space. No interface, no explanation,
just intuitive and playful interaction design.
Ross Phillips
jasonbruges.com
140 141
© Jason Bruges Studio

The EyeWriter, USA
Developed by members of Free Art and Technology,
openFrameworks, Graffiti Research Lab,The Ebeling Group
and Tony Quan
Nominated by Shane Walter
The EyeWriter project is an open source, collaborative research effort
to empower people suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
through creative technologies. The EyeWriter itself combines a pair of
low-cost eye-tracking glasses with custom software that allows artists
and graffiti writers to draw using only their eyes. The EyeWriter was
developed when members of FAT, GRL, openFrameworks and The
Ebeling Group teamed-up with LA graffiti writer, publisher and activist,
Tony Quan. Quan was diagnosed with ALS in 2003, leaving him almost
completely physically paralysed – except for the movement of his eyes.
Long-term, the project hopes to create a professional/social network
of international software developers, hardware hackers, urban
projection artists and ALS patients who are using local materials and
open source research to creatively connect and make eye art.
This has been a stand out project for me not just in the last year but
arguably the last decade. It is a masterful corralling of technology
married with a pioneering spirit, an international collaborative effort
and a great cause. Who would have thought that geek-tech + graffiti =
innovative medical advancement? Described as ‘a collaborative
research effort to empower people, who are suffering from ALS,
with creative technologies’ it more than delivers – add in total awe
and inspiration to that mix. This is a highly responsible, social and
fantastically moving project, which arguably could not happen
without the tools and tech of today’s digitally skewed creators and
their desire to make things better, in the only way they know how.
Open source creative brilliance.
Shane Walter
eyewriter.org
142 143
© EyeWriter Project

The Incidental, Milan Furniture Fair and
London Design Festival, Italy and UK
Concept and creative direction by Daniel Charny, From Now On
Commissioned and produced by: British Council, Arts & Architecture
Project development and design: BERG, Åbäke
LDF version design team included: Jérôme Rigaud, Bannocks&Hill
Nominated by Dee Halligan
Commissioned by the Architecture, Design, Fashion team at the British
Council, The Incidental is a community-generated website and news
pamphlet created by and for the design community. It was developed
as a new service replacing the traditional gallery exhibition model, the
fruit of a rich collaboration between curators, writers, digital and graphic
designers. First launched for the Milan Furniture Fair in April 2009, it
reached an estimated 20,000 people from over 50 countries, offering
opinion, reviews, news and recommendations by tapping into people’s
reactions to their experiences of the fair. During the 2009 London
Design Festival The Incidental included an open-house publishing
base, encouraging people to drop by, record comments, tweet,
email, text, or use any other forms of communication to add to the
user-generated content. This was then distributed through the four
editions, daily redesigned, self printed, folded and packaged.
A busy mix of printed paper, digital feeds, cycle couriers, sweat and
energy, The Incidental saw the British Council abandon their traditional
showcase for Milan Furniture Fair in favour of an inspired piece of
commissioning. As with many projects which mash-up the real and the
digital it’s difficult to encapsulate with any kind of precision. Referencing
it as newsletter/website underplays its most interesting aspects: social
and community connections both online and in real life, and the novel
production and dissemination processes which are integral to the
design. The British Council call it ‘a new media experiment’ and it
certainly bursts with enthusiasm for the possibilities of the new media
landscape. To throw themselves into (and potentially at the mercy of)
the design community was a bold and entirely appropriate move for
the British Council and I hope a sign of things to come.
Dee Halligan
danielcharny.com
theincidental.org
Wednesday 22 April 09:
EXPECTATIONS
God with a
Capital C
Alice Rawsthorn
Whatever else you go to see at
this – or any other – Milan Furniture
Fair, there’s one thing you really
shouldn’t miss: Studio Museo Achille
Castiglioni.
This is the place where Castiglioni
(alias God with a capital G to me
and most other design buffs) worked
from 1944 until his death in 2002.
Everything has been left just as it was
on his last working day. Drawings and
plans are laid out on desks. Doodles
by friends, like Ettore Sottsass and
Max Huber, are pinned on the walls.
Each room is stuffed with books,
models, prototypes, magazines and
Number of Tweets: 132 ISSUE 1 of 4
Damian Barr
01 BLUE: YOU MUST KNOW HIM…
EVERYBODY DOES
Ladies who lunch from London to Milan lean across
tables where food has barely been touched to devour
word of him. They speak in the hushed tones normally
reserved for affairs and cancer. A man bent double
by years and cares at the Grand Souk in Istanbul
remembers the feel of the silk rug he sold him.
In the Raffles Hotel in Singapore a bartender
raises an empty martini glass to the dark tropical sky.
There is his lip-print—pouting but not insolent, like
the angels on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel which
couldn’t possibly be modelled on him (could they?).
That glass will never be washed.
A tiger paces its cage in Brooklyn Zoo as it
always has done. It stopped only once before and that
was to direct its amber-alert gaze on him. Now, at
night, its paws twitch dreamingly as if it was a kitten.
He lives in London or Paris or Sydney or
somewhere. Everyone knows his face but he’s not on
Facebook. You long to look into his green eyes. If you
do you will find they are blue. And there is no one
behind them.
tools. Oddly shaped specs, ancient
wellies and (other side of the) Iron
Curtain souvenirs are crammed into
cabinets with surprisingly sculptural
chimney brushes. Every flat surface
sports one of Castiglioni’s steel
Spirale ashtrays, where the chainsmoking
maestro once rested his
cigarettes. Even the mirror in his
office is still at the angle that enabled
him to watch visitors come and go,
and his assistants at work, without
leaving his desk.
If you haven’t already guessed, it’s
great. If you haven’t been before, go;
and if you have, go back again.
Alice Rawsthorn is the design critic of
the International Herald Tribune.
Studio Museo Achille Castiglioni,
Piazza Castello 27, Milan
www.triennale.it/triennale/
sito%5Fhtml/castiglioni/
Today
Everyone’s
Talking
About:
Debates and Performances
utilitarianism
spartan and minimal
Social networking
Craft punk
“marketing fest”
and giveaways
Moustache
Skitsch exposed
Corrals, Clouds and Molecules
Plastic Diamonds
Crisis
Austerity chic
Wood’s good with plastic
Where are you Ron?
Silly bears
Are You
Sitting
Comfortably?
Stefano Santilli, Senior lecturer,
University of Brighton
20 students from the 3 D Design
Course at the School of Architecture
& Design at the University of
Brighton are presenting their project
in Milan — this time not exhibiting
physical objects, but a poster that
will be distributed during the Salone.
From Tuesday to Sunday keep a look
out for this limited edition product!
For the project brief, students
were asked to question the notion of
easiness as a strategy for the design
and creation of objects — raising
questions about manufacturing
technologies at different scales and
the logistics of production, but also
about the underlying motives for
producing more things. ‘What is an
easy chair?’ ultimately evolved to
mean ‘what kind of a designer do
you want to be?’ and ‘what kind of a
society do you want to live in?’
We take 3D students to the Fiera
every year as part of their education
programme. In the past we have
exhibited products in the Zona
Tortona and individuals have been
selected to show work at the British
Council in via Manzoni. Presenting
projects through graphic work is
also a good way to network and it
encourages students to consider
how they want their work to be
understood by the design community
Left to right (photography Antonia Halse):
Bicycles for hire at Zona Tortona (2 euros per hour + ID)
Moustache and Matali Crasset at their press preview
(via Tortona 19)
Bums on seats at the Triennale (Il Fiore Di Novembre)
Martino Gamper cutting Gio Ponti (Galleria Nilufar)
Hands photographs inspired by Bruno Munari’s Supplemento al dizionario italiano 1963
Incidentally
Daniel Charny
Chance encounters, fortuitous
coincidences, contingent occurrences
and naturally casual liaisons — many
such unpredictable moments make
for a successful fair.
This year the British Council is
tapping into the joyfully chaotic
forces of human interaction and
documenting them in a digital and
physical artefact: The Incidental.
Guest commentators will comment
and roving reporters will rove. You
too can be part of it by scribbling a
note, tweeting on twitter, uploading
images or sending a snapshot. It’s a
democratic self-help platform that
will mirror moments, events and
trends: sense the pulse and all the
fun of the fair.
The Incidental is a service designed
and developed by and for the design
community. It’s a live communication
document of the pre-eminent design
event of the year. A pioneering way
of reaching out.
It’s also a risk.
At the time of writing we still
don’t know quite what to expect.
We have a few certainties — this
issue is printed with blue ink,
Thursday is Red, Friday is Green
and Saturday is full colour. We’ve
commissioned a short story and a
sketch for each issue. But what other
stories and images will we receive?
Will we hit the hottest show, find
the coolest bar or sample the
aperitivo of the moment? Who
knows? We don’t. Incidentally,
that’s part of the thrill.
Reduce.
Reuse.
Recycle.
Debate.
Joanna van der Zanden,
Artistic director Platform21
Last year’s Salone featured many
bombastic, purely decorative and
unnecessary luxurious objects. I
am really looking forward to see
what will happen this year. To me,
in the best way, design opens up
possibilities for the future. So with a
crisis going on, it’s the perfect time
to reset the design agenda. To be
critical, really share ideas and take
on a new mentality. Hopefully this
is exactly what this years Salone
will do. Starting tonight. Premsela,
the Dutch Platform for Design
and Fashion, is hosting a forum
about repairing which responds to
Platform21’s Repair Manifesto (stop
recycling. start repairing). As one of
the panellists I am looking forward
to discussing this subject with the
other guests, Corinne Poux-Bernard
from Hermès and designers Piet
Hein Eek and Satyendra Pakhalé. I
also want to hear from the audience.
Happily there is an extensive talks
programme this year so hopefully we
will take these seriously and make
this a memorable Salone.
Today’s bun fight (Artemide shop)
Monkey business (Senseware, Triennale)
T-shirt ceiling at the RCA Crisis Shop, Sold Out!
(Seves Showroom, Via Lodovico Il Moro)
Recession,
not
Depression
Åbäke
Michael Marriott
Work in an office until 2am when
this broadsheet will go to print daily.
Our world is in a recession, not a It is very likely that the route from
Depression. People are holding back the hotel to the computer room will
from spending, but it’s not a re-run constitute our routine. What we’d
of the 1930’s Depression (as is often also like to do while we’re here: visit
suggested in the media). The world is the dining hall at Santa Maria delle
an extremely different place to what Grazie where the Last Supper by
it was then. When the stock market Leonardo da Vinci hangs and hope
crashed in 1929 people had real they kept it as a dining place. Go
reason to be depressed — they really to Piazzale Loreto to wonder how
had nothing to fall back on.
it must have felt to see the body
A positive side to the current of Benito Mussolini hanging upside
economic shakedown could be the down. Try to go as high as possible
end of the lumbering US motor in the Pirelli tower. Eat again at the
industry, which would leave the excellent Trattoria which we cannot
world in a much better place, and will not publish the location of.
environmentally and aesthetically. Go early in the morning to the fish
So I believe there are reasons to market and get some of the freshest
be optimistic, and therefore carried cuttlefish. See ‘Au Revoir Simone’ in
on working as usual. I’m launching concert tonight at La Casa 139. Visit
a new side table this year with SCP, all the places where Antonioni’s La
who are also in an upbeat mode, with Notte was shot. See whether the
the first collection of their new sub Natural History museum, like any
brand: ‘SCP Boxed’. Much the same respectable museum, includes an
as regular SCP products but more actual size reproduction of a dodo
affordable.
in its collection. Wonder at what the
significance of the Agip Trademark
is — a six-legged dog breathing fire —
at any of their petrol stations. Lastly,
and most importantly, drive to Rome
and visit the Dario Argento Horror
Museum.
Should I
stay or
should I go?
Thorsten van Elten
It’s a strange feeling! For the first
time in oh, 15 years, I haven’t got a
plane ticket to Milan for the annual
circus that is the ‘Salone del Mobile’.
I’m on Expedia, Opodo, easyJet and
Ryanair websites constantly and know
the prices and times of flights in and
out of Milan almost by heart…yet, I
simply can’t commit. I can’t press that
‘CONFIRM’ button. Not just yet. The
invites are flooding in by mail, email,
Facebook and every other possible
way but I’m still resisting (for now).
Maybe it’s because I don’t actually
like the city (I lived there for a couple
of years many moons ago). Maybe
it’s because I feel they should just do
the whole thing every other year, like
Euroluce (I am getting all eco warrior
on you). We must all try to be more
considerate about the amount of stuff
we produce and consume. And we
all know that Milan, while full of good
design, is also full of crap!
So, should I stay or should I go?
Write all
about it
Alison Moloney & Catherine
Ince, Co-Directors
Architecture, Design, Fashion
department, British Council
This is The Incidental: a daily paper
from the British Council generated
by the content you provide. This
unique platform gives a snapshot
of what’s out there, provides space
for reflection and brings together
the established and the emerging. It
follows the success of our student
shows and the Great Brits series of
exhibitions. The Incidental is for the
Milan visitor but also for those around
the world who aren’t here but who
can follow what’s happening and
contribute online.
As the UK’s cultural relations
organisation we champion British
Architecture, Design, Fashion
around the world giving international
audiences the opportunity to engage
with the UK. We encourage the
exchange of ideas between people
in Britain and the rest of the world.
The Incidental is our new global
conversation starter. We look
forward to hearing from you.
To Do List:
Milan, 2009
Want to
appear
here?
We want your updates, news,
comments, stories, sketches and
snaps. Contact us as often as you like,
however you like:
Follow The Incidental twitterfeed,
send us your @replies and tag your
public tweets with #milan09 so we
can include them.
Upload your photos to flickr, tag
them with milan09, include a caption/
description of what and where they
are. Be sure to give them a creative
commons-attribution license so we
can reproduce them and credit you.
Text us directly at +44 7789 928 338
or +39 366 430 4970
Email your stories, sketches,
photos and news to theincidental@
britishcouncil.org
If you spot one of our team of roving
reporters tell them what you think!
Everything we receive will appear in
The Incidental online — with the best
(and worst) published here each day.
Commissioned by: Alison Moloney
& Catherine Ince, British Council
Guest Curator: Daniel Charny
Co-Editor: Damian Barr
Graphic Design: Åbäke
Online & Technical: Schulze & Webb
Project Management: Evonne
Mackenzie, British Council
Roving Reporters: Shai Akram,
Marion Friedmann, Antonia Halse
144 145
© British Council/The Incidental

YCN Library, UK
Designed by Young Creative Network
Interior: Klassnik Corporation. Identity: Eat Sleep Work/Play.
Window: Jiggery Pokery
Nominated by Jeremy Leslie
The Young Creative Network installed a lending library into their new
headquarters at 72 Rivington Street to spark interaction with the
local community. Members sign up in person before receiving their
membership card in the post. They are then free to borrow any title
from the collection, which is also delivered online. Details of which
publications are on loan to other members can also be viewed. Regular
guest reading lists are presented in person in the space and also online,
keeping the collection fresh – and the members inspired. Guest reading
lists have so far been contributed by Sir Paul Smith, Sir John Hegarty
and Simon Waterfall.
The YCN library is the latest in a line of innovations from the Young
Creative Network. When the success of their annual creative awards
programme and the growth of their creative agency enabled a move
to new premises in Rivington Street this year, the ground floor area of
the new office was opened up as a public space, a rare access point
into a design organisation. As well as a series of talks and events, the
space is home to the YCN Library, where books and magazines ranging
from the obvious design tomes to obscure one-offs are available for
borrowing. Although still in its infancy, the project deserves support
as it gives a lead to what other more established design organisations
could be doing, by opening up its resources and encouraging personal
access and exchange.
Jeremy Leslie
72rivingtonstreet.com/library
146 147
© Young Creative Network

Beehaus, UK
Designed by Omlet (Johannes Paul, James Tuthill,
William Windham, Simon Nicholls and Rob Harper Gow)
Nominated by David Kester
Concerned nature-lovers stuck in cities are increasingly keen to help
boost the UK’s declining bee population through urban beekeeping.
The plastic Beehaus hive has been created in response to this desire
to keep bees in safe, flora-rich habitats in urban and suburban areas.
Beehives haven’t been re-engineered since the 1920s and are no longer
suited to the needs of contemporary hobby beekeepers, who want to
house their hives on rooftops and need to manage swarming behaviour.
The Beehaus addresses these technical issues while also having a
restrained, functional design.
The UK has just one third of the bees it had four years ago, and British
agriculture could lose £200m of crop production if bees continue their
current rate of decline. The Beehaus is a radical new design for a
beehive, which aims to encourage urbanites to support – and add to –
their local bee communities. Beehaus ‘looks a bit like a moon lander’
according to its designers: it sits further off the ground than normal
hives, which reduces the effort of handling different parts and keeps the
bees out of cold pockets of winter air. Made from easy to clean plastic
and available in five different colours, it has a sheltered landing area for
easy access, a wasp guard to keep out any unwanted visitors and triple
pocket insulation to keep the bees warm in winter and cool in summer.
David Kester
omlet.co.uk
150 151
© Omlet

Blown-fabric Lanterns, Japan
Designed by Nendo
Produced by Asahi Kasei Fibers Corporation
Nominated by Francesca Picchi
Smash is a specialised long-fibre non-woven polyester that can be
manipulated into different forms through hot press forming technology.
Nendo has used this light and rip-proof material to create lighting
fixtures in the style of vernacular Japanese chochin paper lanterns.
Traditionally, a chochin consists of thin strips of bamboo wrapped
around a wood frame and strengthened with vertical stitching.
Japanese mulberry paper pasted over the frame completes the lamps,
and gives them their characteristic glow. Nendo realised that Smash’s
particular properties would allow it to be shaped into a seamless onepiece
structure like blown glass. Since the manufacturing process is
impossible to completely control, each lantern takes a unique form
resulting in a collection of objects whose infinitely varied imperfections
are reminiscent of the mutations of viruses and bacteria.
Nendo reinterprets the traditional Japanese chochin lantern made
of bamboo and paper, adopting blow moulding technology with a
special kind of long-fibre non-woven fabric. The result is a seamless
one-piece lantern.
Francesca Picchi
nendo.jp
152 153
© Masayuki Hayashi

CASE Abyss, Norway
Designed by Abyssus Marine Services for SeaBird Technologies
Nominated by Anna Thorud Hammer
CASE Abyss is an advanced, autonomous data logger for deep (3000
metres) to shallow-water oil and gas exploration. A system of several
hundred seabed-dwelling sensors is placed in a huge, regular grid to
collectively listen for faint seismic sounds and vibrations. The highfidelity
data provides the global oil industry with crisp three-dimensional
images of oil and gas fields. Faced with severe competition, the CASE
system was re-evaluated. Using industrial design as an analytical tool
from concept through to the engineering phase, the redesigned
product offered improved performance, reduced size and an enhanced
appearance. Through this use of analytical design, CASE Abyss
transformed SeaBird’s seabed seismic business from an insignificant
niche to a main focus area delivering competitive advantage.
SeaBird Technologies use CASE Abyss to gather seismic data for
customers that include national and international oil companies.
The device is stored aboard a ship before being lowered 3000 metres
under water to collect data. Using industrial design throughout the
whole product development process has given SeaBird a clear
competitive edge in its industry. The CASE Abyss seismic sensor
is small and light and can be produced at a reasonable price. It can
also be stacked and is better than previous products in terms of its
ergonomic features. Ships can take onboard more than twice as many
devices, resulting in faster and better data collection than their rivals.
CASE Abyss has a tough, maritime identity which is appropriate to
the segment.
Anna Thorud Hammer
abyssus.no
sbexp.no
154 155
© Nancy Bundt

Clouds, Denmark
Designed by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec for Kvadrat
Nominated by Zöe Ryan
A modular system of small triangular textiles, Clouds tiles fit somewhere
in between furniture, curtains and installation. Each tile is joined
together using customised elastic bands, allowing the user to sculpt
their own three-dimensional forms by adding or removing elements
over time. The tiles were designed as a decorative screen or divider in
response to the cold, hard interiors often favoured in modern houses.
‘Once in a while I flip through a design or architecture magazine,
and I am often scared by all of the cold rooms,’ says designer Ronan
Bouroullec. ‘When we got the Kvadrat assignment we wanted to create
a design solution that was both soft and welcoming. At the same time,
we aimed for a solution that was so simple and well thought out it didn’t
require expensive workmen, but could be set up by everyday people.’
The Clouds tiles produced for Kvadrat, a Danish textile company
known for its inventive approach to home furnishings, provide users
with a kit of parts from which they can create a unique arrangement
to suit a particular space. What makes the tiles stand out is their threedimensional
quality, made possible by irregular forms which, when
joined together, protrude from the wall. Made from wool, the flexible
components are held together with an elemental yet easy-to-use
system of rubber bands that not only act as a functional device but
are also an aesthetic element. The black bands visible from the front
delineate the individual tiles, enhancing their three-dimensional quality.
Like much of the Bouroullecs’ work, Clouds is designed to be at the
service of the user. The distinctive design commands space without
interrupting the innate quality of an architectural environment.
Zöe Ryan
bouroullec.com
kvadratclouds.com
156 157
© Tahon & Bouroullec

Design and Democracy: Blanke Ark,
Norway
Designed by Blueroom, Innovativoli and KADABRA
Nominated by Nina Berre
Blanke Ark is an entire product system for democratic elections,
including voting booth, ballot box, signage, ballot and graphic profile.
Many voting systems make it difficult for people to carry out their
right to vote. Blanke Ark was designed to make the act of voting
accessible and welcoming to everyone, including groups such as
wheelchair users, visually impaired individuals and those who cannot
read. By focusing on these users, the voting system has been made
easier and more accessible to everyone. Blanke Ark was developed
and tested in the Norwegian governmental elections 2009, and will
be launched full scale for the country’s regional elections in 2011.
To cast a vote is a fundamental democratic right. It is in the polling
stations that governments become tangible to the public. In this
context, Norsk Form and the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government
and Regional Development implemented the competition Design and
Democracy, putting design at the very heart of the democratic process.
The aim was the development of a comprehensive, well functioning
and attractive setting for voting. The proposal from the trio of design
groups – Blueroom, Innovativoli and KADABRA – offered a solid
and well-presented solution. All proposed products and graphic
materials have a thorough and high quality and the overall aesthetic
emphasises an election as a solemn and important act. Furthermore
they demonstrate how a consideration of all users can give added
value to a product rather than being tagged on as an afterthought.
Nina Berre
blueroom.no
kadabra.com
innovativoli.no
158 159
© Innovativoli Industrial Design

Design Bugs Out Commode, UK
Designed by PearsonLloyd
Manufactured by Kirton Healthcare
Nominated by David Kester
The Design Bugs Out Commode was designed in response to the
Design Bugs Out initiative, launched by the NHS Purchasing and
Supply Agency and the Design Council to address issues that help
reduce healthcare associated infections. PearsonLloyd’s design
represents a complete re-definition of the functional delivery of mobile
toileting and the systems that support it in the modern healthcare
environment. The new commode has two key parts: the shell, which
forms the patient interface, and the frame, which delivers the
mechanical performance of the product. The separation of the
structure and comfort parts means that damaged components can
be easily replaced without having to condemn or recondition the
whole product. The strategy also minimises the number of parts,
making cleaning quicker and easier. In practice, this meant designing
out all unnecessary touch points, joints between metal and plastic,
sharp corners, grooves and hidden nooks and crannies.
Redesigning a commode for hospital patients who can’t get to
bathroom facilities isn’t the sexiest end of furniture and product design,
but PearsonLloyd, who have worked on high end furniture for Knoll and
Steelcase and created an award-winning seat for Virgin Atlantic, have
brought usability and improved aesthetics to this essential piece of
hospital equipment. The commode was a result of the Design Bugs Out
challenge, which asked designers and manufacturers to unite in the
fight against healthcare associated infections: superbugs like MRSA
and C. difficile. A detachable plastic shell and robust stainless steel
frame make this commode easy to clean and easy to store, while fewer
touch points between patient and commode reduce the chance of
cross-infection through contact with contaminated surfaces.
David Kester
kirton-healthcare.co.uk
pearsonlloyd.com
160 161
© PearsonLloyd

Folding Plug, UK
Designed by Min-Kyu Choi
Nominated by Tony Chambers, Daniel Charny, Marcus Fairs,
Sam Hecht, Shane Walter
Min-Kyu Choi’s folding plug revisits the design of the standard UK
electrical plug, which has remained largely unchanged since its
introduction in 1947. Infuriated by having to carry around bulky
UK plugs thicker than his laptop, Choi developed a system that folds
down to a width of just 10mm. The product is such an elegant and
useful design it will surely find a much larger market than the travelling
population it was created for. Choi has also expanded the concept
to include a three appliance multi-plug and USB charger, allowing the
use of multiple devices while still only taking up the space of a single
traditional plug.
Designers don’t spend enough time trying to improve the little niggly
everyday things that really affect our quality of life. British electrical
plugs are ridiculously large and awkward to use compared to
continental and other international standards and are in many cases
larger than the devices they power. This clever folding version is easier
to travel with but also allows several devices to be plugged in without
messy cables and bulky multiple sockets.
Marcus Fairs
minkyu.co.uk
162 163
© Min-Kyu Choi

Hope Chandelier, Italy
Designed by Francisco Gomez Paz and Paolo Rizzatto for
Luceplan
Nominated by Francesca Picchi
Hope is a modern and innovative interpretation of the classic chandelier.
Traditional chandeliers use the optical and physical qualities of crystal
and hand blown glass to multiply the light source into hundreds of
smaller light points. Utilising the principles of a Fresnel lens, Francisco
Gomez Paz and Paolo Rizzatto have created a high quality plastic,
which they refer to as ‘meta-crystal’ due to its capacity to capture
and refract light. The Hope chandelier uses these delicate moulded
polycarbonate leaves to reproduce the effect of traditional heavy
chandelier crystals. The lenses are carefully arranged around
the light source to avoid glare and ensure a perfect diffusion of light.
Light and easy to assemble, this project reinterprets the typology
of the chandelier with sophisticated technologies and contemporary
materials. A series of thin polycarbonate Fresnel lenses, created
using imprinted microprisms on polycarbonate film to achieve a
dioptric effect similar to glass (without any limitations in terms of
space, thickness and weight), multiply the light from the light source,
recreating a glittery and party-like atmosphere, sprinkled with
thousands of shards of light like a diamond. Hope has been designed
for use with any type of light source, including the latest generation
of halogens and energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs.
Francesca Picchi
gomezpaz.com
luceplan.com
164 165
© Tom Vack

Kyoto Box, Kenya
Designed by Jon Bøhmer
Nominated by Tony Chambers
The Kyoto Box is an oven powered solely by solar energy. The simple
design is created from just two boxes with an acrylic cover. In order to
concentrate the heat, the outer box is lined with silver foil, which reflects
the sun’s rays towards an inner box painted black to absorb as much
heat as possible. The cooker costs just £3.50 to manufacture and
quickly reaches a temperature of 80°C, hot enough to boil water, cook
dinner or bake bread. The inventor, Jon Bøhmer, claims that it can boil
10 litres of water in two or three hours. The Kyoto box was developed
for use in rural areas and locations without reliable access to electricity,
especially when it is essential to boil water before drinking. At the same
time, it tackles problems such as indoor smoke inhalation, fire hazard
and the risk of spinal injuries caused when gathering firewood. It could
also reduce deforestation, lower energy costs and minimise household
CO 2 emissions. It packs flat and thousands can be distributed on a
single lorry.
Kenyan-based Norwegian designer Jon Bøhmer has come up with a
shoebox-shaped solution to provide boiling water to millions of people
who have no access to electricity or gas. Named after the international
environmental agreement, the Kyoto Box costs €15 and consists of
one cardboard box nestled within another, with newspaper acting as
insulation between the two. The heat of the sun is harnessed and
trapped inside, thanks to an interior black paint coating and an upper
tinfoil covering. The Kyoto Box provides free energy to heat water for
cooking and cleaning and to dry food. To top it all, the lightweight solar
cooker can be packed flat and – since thousands can fit on a lorry – it is
easily distributed. This clever little box may not be a cure to all the
world’s afflictions, but it’s certainly a good start.
Tony Chambers
kyoto-energy.com/kyoto-box.html
166 167
© Jon Bøhmer

L’Eau d’Issey ETTORE SOTTSASS Edition,
France
Designed by Issey Miyake
Nominated by Sam Hecht
In 1997 the Italian architect Ettore Sottsass produced three drawings
for Issey Miyake as concepts for a new perfume bottle. The sketches
were not immediately used, and lay on Miyake’s desk for a decade.
After Sottsass died in 2007, Miyake decided to develop the bottle as
a tribute to his late friend. In developing the production version of the
designs a few alterations had to take place. The three intertwining tubes
were originally envisaged as delicate glass tendrils to match the main
bottle, but due to concerns about the strength of this during transport
they were converted to polypropylene. While the bottle is a Miyake
product, the complex combination of multiple forms and colours so
loved by Sottsass and apparent in his original sketches is never lost.
When I started working with Issey Miyake a few years ago they pulled
out a new perfume bottle design – probably the last piece of work by
the late Ettore Sottsass. I had an overwhelming sense of jealousy
when I saw it – in a good way. It’s very light and analogue in its thinking.
I always thought Sottsass should design toys because he had such
a child-like sensibility. Perhaps he left us with one in this piece.
Sam Hecht
isseymiyakeparfums.com/#/43/news
168 169
© Issey Miyake Parfums

PACT Underwear, USA
Designed by Yves Béhar
Produced by Jason Kibbey and Jeff Denby/PACT
Nominated by Lynda Relph-Knight
PACT is an underwear brand that blends design and sustainability
with support for powerful social and environmental causes. PACT
has formed partnerships with various non-profit and charitable
organisations, giving away 10 per cent of its sales revenue. Each
charity is assigned its own underwear collection, with the print
pattern on the garments reflecting the organisation that will receive
the money. Yves Béhar designed the expressive playful prints for
the first collections, with visualisations from other designers following
for further charities. The underwear is manufactured in Turkey, with
the entire production process occurring inside a 100 mile radius.
Every part of the supply chain is certified to, or exceeds, the highest
possible environmental and social standards.
PACT takes product design into new realms of sustainability and
‘service’ design. Made of 100 per cent sustainable organic cotton
grown within a 100 mile radius of production, the items feature
patterns promoting different environmental charities and are shipped
in compostable bags. Yves Béhar has a stake in the business – a West
Coast start-up company – which completes the circle of care. It’s a
simple product, beautifully delivered which combines design with
an important message in an unusual way.
Lynda Relph-Knight
wearpact.com
170 171
© Fuseproject

PlantLock, UK
Designed by the Front Yard Company (Duncan Kramer and
Dan Monck)
Nominated by Sam Hecht
The PlantLock planter was originally conceived to move bicycles out
of domestic hallways and stairwells, by providing a secure means
of locking bikes in front yards or gardens. Kept in place by its sheer
weight, the frame and wheels of a bike can be attached to the locking
bars using cyclists’ existing padlocks. PlantLock’s appeal has now
spread to shops, restaurants, cafés, community gardens, parks,
workplaces, schools and local authority street use. Agreements have
even been made between councils – who provide the PlantLocks –
and shops – who take responsibility for planting. PlantLock is available
in a simple unadorned version, or printed with an image of a locked
bike to explain its purpose and encourage good locking practice.
The containers have been used to grow a wide variety of plants,
flowers, hardy shrubs, vegetables and fruit. All while still providing
excellent security for bicycles.
I’ve started to cycle past a few of these in London. It’s a nice idea –
nothing dramatic, but a useful interjection into city life. I’d like to see
more things like this in the city, untouched by the planning system.
Sam Hecht
frontyardcompany.com
172 173
© Front Yard Company Ltd

Real Time, Netherlands
Designed by Maarten Bass
Nominated by Ed Annink, Marcus Fairs, Francesca Picchi,
Henrietta Thompson
Inspired by the Bob Dylan song, Subterranean Homesick Blues,
Maarten Baas became a film director for the occasion of Milan Design
Week 2009. Using new video techniques to create movies of 12 or 24
hours length, Real Time was the result, a combination of theatre, art,
film and design in a series of new clock designs. First shown at the
Milan Salone 2009 the Real Time clocks included the Grandfather Clock,
the Sweepers Clock, the Analog Digital Clock, and the World Clock.
Dutch designer Maarten Baas really knows how to make people tick.
His Real Time project debuted this year with four films shown at Salone,
each exploring the traditional ticking clock by replacing the cogs with
real human performances. Armed with a black marker and a rubber,
one figure appears to live inside a grandfather clock, where he draws
the time on the face minute by minute. In another – Sweeper Clock –
two men sweep lines of rubbish around a public square, mimicking
the hour and minute hand. A third consists of a man in an office going
about daily life, shifting pens around his desk. Perhaps the most
innovative, however, was Analog Digital, for which Baas constructed
a giant ‘digital’ timepiece, inside which two assistants changed the
digits manually, armed only with a couple of brushes and a bucket
of black latex.
Henrietta Thompson
maartenbass.com
174 175
© Ricardo sà da Costa

Samsung N310 Mini Notebook, Japan
Designed by Naoto Fukasawa
Manufactured by Samsung
Nominated by Sam Hecht
Naoto Fukasawa’s N310 laptop has many of the obvious qualities
that you expect from a portable, well proportioned notebook with long
battery life. Less obvious however, is the consideration that he gives
to people’s subconscious physical appreciation of the product. As the
designer explains, ‘people choose things that are the most handy
shapes or the shapes that are the most tactually inviting. The same
applies to computers and mobile phones. No matter how stylish these
objects are if there are sharp corners or surfaces that distract our mind,
we become unwilling to interact. In other words while people may enjoy
the shape or design of such objects, the body will naturally reject them.’
Fukasawa’s design exploits this philosophy, as smooth corners
combine with a tactile rubberised casing to produce a product just
begging to be picked up and used.
It always surprises me that the distance between a well-designed
computer and one that’s poorly detailed is still so big. It’s a testament
to how difficult it is to create an atmosphere for being great, as opposed
to an atmosphere that allows compromise. Somehow, Naoto Fukasawa
managed to create something very good – which means there is a good
atmosphere in the company. I like this little computer. It’s affordable,
well proportioned and the big brand logo also shows that the company
is proud of it.
Sam Hecht
naotofukasawa.com
samsung.com
176 177
© Samsung

Ski Helmet for Girls, Norway
Designed by Per Finne Industrial Design for Kari Traa
Nominated by Anna Thorud Hammer
Most ski helmets are made for boys, with a masculine look which means
girls aren’t encouraged to wear them while skiing or snowboarding.
Until now. The Kari Traa helmet isn’t just a boy’s helmet sprayed pink,
it’s been designed to match both the functional and aesthetic demands
of female skiers. The helmet has a narrow fit, with a ponytail port that
not only allows the wearer to keep the ponytail, it also gives the helmet
a distinctive, feminine look. The shape of the port and the butterfly
offset in the shell make an integrated rib structure that gives a stronger
construction. This allows a smaller and lighter helmet without
compromising safety. By taking girls’ needs seriously, the Kari Traa
helmet should increase the chance of more girls dressing safely
on the slopes.
Kari Traa AS wanted to address the disparity between the number
of girls and boys wearing helmets on the ski slopes, so they created
a product just for girls. The result is narrower, lighter and smaller than
other helmets, but not at the cost of safety. A curved shape around
the neck leaves room for a ponytail and removable ear flaps make the
helmet suitable for summer skiing too. It is both feminine and robust,
and its fine details are very well designed, such as the logo imprinted
on the shell, which forms a ribbed structure to increase the resistance
to any bangs.
Anna Thorud Hammer
karitraa.com
perfinne.no
178 179
© Per Finne

Soma, Tel Aviv, Israel
Designed by Ayala Serfaty
Nominated by Caroline Roux
Soma (meaning body in Greek) is an atmospheric and brittle light
installation, created from intertwining forms of 2mm wide tinted
glass filaments. The filaments are woven together to produce spatial
structures, which are then sprayed with polymer to generate a skin-
like crust, a membrane of sorts. Ayala Serfaty’s work in materials
research with Aqua Creations Lighting and Furniture Atelier formed
the basis of the installation. Her hand-crafted work process is akin
to transforming a calligraphic drawing into a three-dimensional
composition of architectural scale. As Serfaty says, ‘in the course
of time, the natural landscape formations have crystallised to spawn
topography of light’.
Ayala Serfaty is based in Tel Aviv and in the last year has created
incredible lighting installations in Tel Aviv and Den Haag, from her
lights made of glass filament and polymer skin. Serfaty trained as
a sculptor, which informs her extraordinary form-making. The lights
look like illuminated coral and turn a museum gallery into an
underwater landscape.
Caroline Roux
ayalaserfaty.com
180 181
© Albi Serfaty

Sugru, UK
Designed by Jane ni Dhulchaointigh
Researched and developed by James Carrigan, Dr Steve Westall,
Dr Ian Moss and Tom Dowden
Nominated by Henrietta Thompson
‘A hack is a clever solution to an everyday problem,’ says designer
Jane ni Dhulchaointigh. ‘People are natural hackers, we’ve just
forgotten how to do it.’ Her new product, Sugru, is a silicone-based
material designed to inspire a revolution of hacking and repairing.
Fresh from its pack it looks like modelling clay and can be simply
formed by hand. Leave it overnight and it forms a durable and flexible
material, which is dishwasher-proof and heatproof. Sugru’s ‘hack
things better’ motto reinforces ni Dhulchaointigh’s aim of providing
a tool for a community of people no longer content with ‘designer’
products and consumer culture. These people want to repair, improve
and personalise instead of buying new things. Ni Dhulchaointigh sees
this as a design revolution by non-designers who take control over their
possessions to make them function better for themselves. The results
are not only practical, but intriguing and surprising.
Jane ni Dhulchaointigh invented Sugru (then called Formerol) while at
the Royal College of Art. Since then her story has been one of hard work
and determination, finally seeing it hit the market this year. Her belief
in the product is well justified: Sugru is a great enabling invention that
could well be on a par with Sellotape, Blu-tack, and Post-its. Sugru is
a special type of silicone putty which hardens over a couple of hours
to leave a waterproof, durable, soft to the touch solid a little like rubber.
It can be used to mend things, stick things together, patch up holes,
and create any number of custom-made add-ons to existing products.
From bettering sporting equipment to making crutches more
comfortable or fixing an old teapot, the uses are endless. The slogan
‘hack things better’ sums up a new product very much of our time.
Henrietta Thompson
sugru.com
182 183
© FormFormForm Ltd

The Idea of a Tree, Austria
Designed by mischer’traxler (Katharina Mischer and Thomas
Traxler)
Nominated by Thomas Geisler
The Idea of a Tree is an autonomous production process that combines
a freely-available natural input with a mechanical process. Driven by
solar energy, it translates the intensity of the sun through a mechanical
apparatus to create one object each day. The finished products reflect
the various sunshine conditions throughout the day of manufacture.
The machine starts producing when the sun rises, slowly growing the
object, by pulling threads through a colouring device, a glue basin and
finally winding them around a mould. It stops when the sun sets, and
the product is ready to be ‘harvested’. The length and height depend
on the number of hours of sunlight in the day, while the thickness of the
layer and the depth of colour relate to the intensity of the sun. Just like
the rings and marks of a tree, the produced object becomes a threedimensional
record of the process and time of its own creation, with
each object representing a specific day in the specific spot where it
was produced.
With this astonishing machine mischer’traxler respond to many of
the crucial issues in design today. It draws new light to manufacturing
processes, uniquely recording time and space in an object, and
opposes the acceleration of a hyper economy. The designer becomes
a system developer while ‘designed by nature’ becomes a refreshing
notion. The Idea of a Tree project actually produces stools, benches
and lamp-shades.
Thomas Geisler
mischertraxler.com/projects_tioat1.html
184 185
© mischer’traxler

The Story of Stuff, USA
Written and narrated by Annie Leonard
Produced by Free Range Studios
Nominated by Ed Annink
The Story of Stuff is a 20 minute film presenting a critical vision of
American consumer society, which explains many of the stages
and issues involved, such as extraction, production, distribution,
consumption and disposal. Presented in an engaging and simple
format the film tackles some complex issues, including post-Second
World War economic policies and the notion of built-in obsolescence.
The film also offers impassioned suggestions about possible solutions
and points of intervention. The Story of Stuff has been criticised for its
simplistic view and celebrated in equal measure. The film has now
been seen by an estimated eight million viewers.
Every time I have the chance I show design students this very
accessible story. It is not just a story about ‘stuff’. The story explains
how we are exhausting our available resources – raw materials from
which we create products and objects. It makes design students
aware of their responsibility as designers and advisors. It encourages
designers to refuse to design the next throw away product. And in
general the story evokes a discussion about the needs and wants for
consumer products in our global society. Annie Leonard is spreading
awareness by sharing her very accessible and persistent view.
Ed Annink
freerangestudios.com
storyofstuff.org
186 187
© Story of Stuff

Worldmade Sport Wheelchair, UK
Designed by David Constantine, Stefan Constantinescu,
Ray Mines and Jen Howitt Browning
Manufactured by Motivation
Nominated by Daniel Charny
The Worldmade Sport is a low-cost sports wheelchair designed to
help develop grassroots wheelchair sports programmes in low-income
countries. Motivation’s £150 solution is a tenth of the price of many
other sports wheelchairs, yet doesn’t compromise on quality or
adjustability. The lightweight steel frame meets international regulations
for wheelchair basketball and tennis. And a whole set of different-sized
wheelchairs can be purchased and adjusted to the needs of individual
athletes. However, the chair is not intended to rival expensive high
performance equipment. Instead, the Worldmade Sport is designed to
make starting up new teams and programmes as simple and affordable
as possible.
Most sports wheelchair models can cost upward of £1000, but, in a bid
to make sport accessible for disabled people in low-income countries,
Motivation’s new design will cost around £150. At the suggestion of the
International Paralympic Committee, David Constantine, co-founder of
Motivation, developed two models of the Worldmade Sport – basketball
and tennis – which are designed to develop mobility, build confidence
and encourage healthy lifestyles, thus promoting inclusion and
independence. The designs are truly innovative and inclusive, not only
in the adaptability of the chair to be fitted to specific users and the price
bracket but also in the efficiency of sustainable production. From the
outset in 1991 Motivation has seen products not merely as objects.
They encompass an approach of products combined with services,
delivering a core value of economic empowerment that can truly
improve people’s lives. This extraordinary company has now rethought
its core offer. After 18 years focusing on creating local production
legacies, Motivation has reacted to the emerging possibilities of
sustainable global production by reinventing the wheelchair.
Daniel Charny
motivation.org.uk/worldmade
188 189
© ITF

E430 Electric Aircraft, China
Designed and manufactured by Yuneec International
Nominated by Sebastian Conran
While electric cars are becoming a common sight on the streets of
our cities, electric aircraft are not yet publicly available. With the
development of the E430, Yuneec hope to change that. The E430 is
a twin seat, single engine, light sport aircraft designed to be simple
to use, easy to fly and produce zero emissions. For a cost as low as £5,
a three hour charge can power the E430 for up to three hours. As with
other types of electric propulsion, the E430’s engine has only two
moving parts making maintenance simple and cost effective whilst
improving reliability. The engine produces almost no noise and minimal
vibration helping to improve the enjoyment of piloting the aircraft and
making it more accessible to the novice.
Until recently there were three basic methods of aircraft propulsion –
piston, jet and rocket engines – all producing high levels of air and noise
pollution. The Yuneec E430 is the first commercially available electric
aircraft, a twin seat, low-noise, zero-emission vehicle designed to be
simple to use and easy to fly. It has virtually no vibration, extremely low
maintenance and is significantly more environmentally friendly than
hydrocarbon-fuelled equivalents. Charging-times are claimed to be
three hours for as little as €5 making this electric plane a low-cost way
to fly short distances, and with just two main moving parts in the motor
the reliability, mechanical safety and maintenance are dramatically
reduced. Airplanes are by nature the ultimate manifestation of formfollows-function
but, with its broad wingspan-to-body ratio, the
Yuneec has a particularly elegant dragonfly-like form, which allows
quiet take-off and powered flight or silent gliding with improved safety.
It will undoubtedly be followed by even more practical, beautiful and
efficient imitators.
Sebastian Conran
yuneec.com
192 193
© Yuneec

GINA Light Visionary Model, Germany
Designed by BMW
Nominated by Ed Annink
This innovative and eye-catching new concept vehicle was conceived
when the BMW design team questioned the purpose of a car’s body.
Replacing the traditional rigid structure with a hi-tech fabric skin
stretched over a moveable wire frame enables the car to change shape
and form. Headlights are hidden – revealed by blinking apertures in the
fabric – and the engine is accessed by unzipping a slit in the ‘bonnet’.
The shape of the rear wing can be altered to influence the aerodynamic
performance in different situations. The car’s interior can also be
shaped to meet the requirements of individual drivers, with dials,
switches and other interior elements hidden from view when not
required. Despite being a one-off concept vehicle, the GINA Light
Visionary Model suggests the intriguing possibility of a production
car with more flexibility than has ever been seen before.
Instead of steel, aluminium or carbon fibre, BMW’s GINA Light Visionary
Model has a body of seamless fabric stretched over a metal frame
which allows the driver to change its shape at will. The car – which
actually runs and drives – is a styling design headed straight for the
BMW Museum in Munich. It will never see production, but building
a practical car wasn’t the point. GINA allowed the design team of
BMW to ‘challenge existing principles and conventional processes’.
Ed Annink
bmw.com
194 195
© BMW AG

Gocycle, UK
Designed and manufactured by Karbon Kinetics Ltd
Nominated by Sebastian Conran
Gocycle is a lightweight electric two-wheeler that combines on-demand
power, portability and city-specific design innovations for an easy
and no-emission commute. Gocycle’s entire frame and wheels are
injection-moulded in a high-tech and lightweight magnesium alloy.
This delivers the same performance, look and feel as carbon fibre, but
at significantly lower cost. Gocycle is the world’s lightest production
electric bicycle, weighing just 16.2kg. It is also the first bicycle in history
to use a magnesium injection-moulded frame and wheels.
The conventional bicycle user experience is terrific for the enthusiast
on flat roads in fine weather, but hills and chains often mean sweat,
grease and maintenance. The Gocycle, with its lightweight magnesiumalloy
construction, push-button access to electric propulsion, and an
innovative enclosed multi-speed chain-drive, combines the familiarity
of a conventional bike with a boost to help you scale hills and dash
away from traffic lights. In short it takes the sweat out of cycling. Unlike
most bicycles, which look as if they are assembled from a parts bin with
no visual harmony between components, this feels as if every single
nut was designed with one clear purpose in mind. An example of this
refined and thoughtful design-engineering is its approach to simple
disassembly for storage – with pop-off wheels reminiscent of a racing
car, mending punctures is now a pleasure. Whereas most other electric
assist bikes are heavy and clumsy looking, the Gocycle stands out as
an homogeneous design with an elegantly engineered appearance
and exquisite attention to detail.
Sebastian Conran
gocycle.com
196 197
© Karbon Kinetics Ltd

Honda EV-N Concept, Japan
Designed by Kanna Sumiyoshi for Honda
Nominated by Yorgo Tloupas
In the male-dominated world of car design, the EV-N Concept is a
huge achievement for Kanna Sumiyoshi, the 29-year-old who led the
development team at Honda. Inspired by the N360, Honda’s 360cc
micro car launched in the 1960s, the EV-N is a small, four-seater electric
battery vehicle. It has solar cells on the roof, which can be used to
charge the on-board battery, and measures less than 3m by 1.5m.
The EV-N has a combination of lights in the front grille, illuminated door
mirrors and lights at the rear of the car, all allowing communication
between car and driver, and car and other road users or pedestrians
via an innovative key ‘fob’. The concept debuted at the Tokyo Motor
Show in October 2009, though it is purely a design study with no plans
for production.
Retro car design has been a tricky exercise for manufacturers over
the last decade. While the new MINI has been a commercial success,
its design will always remain sub-par to the original. Fiat’s new 500
is a much better update of a classic design. But none come near the
absolute cuteness of the Honda EV-N concept, which draws some
cues from the 1967 Honda N360. Fully electric, small and clever, the
EV-N has interchangeable seat covers, and holds in its door the Honda
U3-X electric unicycle, making it the perfect city car for years to come.
Yorgo Tloupas
honda.com
198 199
© Honda Motor Co. Ltd

Land Glider, Japan
Designed by Nissan Motor Co. Ltd
Nominated by Sebastian Conran
Nissan’s Land Glider concept questions the layout, shape and steering
mechanism of traditional cars. The driver sits centrally in a narrow
cockpit, just large enough for a passenger seat directly behind.
Designed for city use, the 3m by 1m vehicle is easy to park, providing
urban drivers with the convenience of a motorcycle, but with added
comfort and safety. The zero emissions car includes an entirely electric
drive train and leans into corners as it turns, providing added stability
for the narrow shape.
One of the most significant changes in public attitude in recent years is
the idea that ‘small is aspirational’. The fact that Nissan have positioned
their latest micro car at the premium end of the market recognises this
change in the zeitgeist, in that it is no longer considered eccentric to be
environmentally concerned. Because it is able to tilt into a corner whilst
manoeuvring like a motorcycle, the electric powered Land Glider
prototype delivers the handling performance of a normal car with half
the width, thereby taking up less road-space and having less energysapping
drag. The main benefits are more manoeuvrability and less
traffic congestion. Comfort to passengers is improved too, as there
are less lateral forces when going around bends in the road. The novel
appearance and styling signals the experimental nature of what will
no doubt become a sleek and refined mode of transport once its likes
appear in the showrooms of Park Lane.
Sebastian Conran
nissan-global.com
200 201
© Nissan Motor Co. Ltd

Mission One Superbike, USA
Designed by Yves Béhar for Mission Motors
Nominated by Yorgo Tloupas
When Yves Béhar was asked to create an electric superbike for
Mission Motors, his greatest challenge was to develop a design that
would be accepted by motorcycle enthusiasts while also appearing
instantly recognisable as an alternative energy vehicle. A central goal
was not to appear as an ‘eco-toy’, but as a performance bike
augmented by electric power. With no traditional engine system,
the look, feel and sound of the product would be markedly different
to conventional motorcycles, yet the bike had to strike a delicate
balance between innovation and tradition. It needed to express the
excitement and promise of new technology, without dislocating the
experience from motorcycle heritage. Bikers won’t be disappointed.
The riding experience has been redefined in a way that feels new and
exciting and the sound of the bike is now more akin to a supersonic
pitch. Béhar’s Mission One solution feels like the next evolution in
motorcycling – looking forward to the future, yet firmly rooted in
authentic sportbike culture.
San Francisco-based Swiss-born designer Yves Béhar didn’t have
much experience in vehicle design before working on the Mission One
motorcycle. So when briefed by Mission Motors to create the world’s
fastest electric motorbike, Yves didn’t fall into the usual design traps
plaguing fast bikes. No go-faster stripes, no excessive use of masculine
design cues. Instead, a bold mix of colours and geometric shapes,
grouped together in a compact form that looks like no other.
Yorgo Tloupas
fuseproject.com
ridemission.com
202 203
© Mission Motors

Urbikes, Fourth Generation Urban Bicycle,
Spain
Designed by Eduard Sentís
Manufactured by Modular BPS
Nominated by Daniel Charny
Urbikes is a new bicycle sharing system that works in conjunction
with existing public transport networks. Based on the philosophy of
the ‘last mile’, Urbikes are intended to offer the type of door-to-door
service that mass-transport alone can’t deliver. The design of Urbikes
specifically addresses the practicalities of bicycles destined for public
use. Individual components are designed to be hardy but easy to
replace, while the non-standard design reduces the likelihood of parts
being removed and stolen for use in other bicycles. The unisex frame
can accommodate a variety of different body types and sizes, while the
inclusion of a built-in lamp is a rarity in shared bicycle systems. Urbikes
is already fully working in one Catalan city, is installed in a second and
is due to begin testing in Holland during 2010.
The Urbikes project is an ambitious initiative for European inter-regional
cooperation, designed to maximise ‘the use of bicycles as an alternative
and more flexible means of transport within cities’. The Urbikes V8,
with a drive-shaft transmission and wheels that cannot be punctured is
the latest realisation of the project. In one clear swooping line, the wide
gauge tubular frame doesn’t just connect all the different sections of
the bike – it also contains some of the internal parts. Fewer parts means
less maintenance, and the non-standard components and antitheft
wheels also make it less attractive for cannibalisation. More security
is offered by the dedicated electronic parking solution integrated
within the wheel. The Urbikes V8 offers a convincing, robust new
urban typology that stands out among the growing number of public
city bike schemes. Designed by Eduard Sentis, this well thought
out solution also benefits from Sentis’s involvement as production
manager, enabling the quality and detail of the design to reach the
target audience.
Daniel Charny
urbikes.com
204 205
© Isabel Cahuè Escuder/Modular BPS

Nominators

Flavio Albanese
Flavio Albanese is a co-founder of the Italian architectural practice
ASA Studioalbanese, established in 1987. He is currently editor of the
international architectural magazine, Domus.
Ed Annink
Ed Annink is a Netherlands-based designer and curator. He is cofounder
and owner of Ontwerpwerk multidisciplinary design in Den
Haag and is developing the programme for the first edition of Den Haag
Design and Government in 2010.
Paola Antonelli
Paola Antonelli is senior curator in the Department of Architecture
and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She has curated
several exhibitions, ranging from Humble Masterpieces: Everyday
Marvels of Design (2004) to Design and the Elastic Mind (2008).
Nina Berre
Nina Berre is the director of Norsk Form, the foundation for design and
architecture in Norway, an information and project-based institution.
She is responsible for the administration of the Norwegian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs’ grant scheme for design and architecture, is project
director for the Detour travelling exhibition and has written widely.
Tony Brook
Tony Brook co-founded the London-based graphic design studio, Spin
in 1992. Spin is responsible for the creation of identities such as Five TV,
More4, the ICA and Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Daniel Brown
Daniel Brown is a London-based designer, programmer and artist,
specialising in the fields of creative digital technology and interactive
design and applied arts. He is new media director for fashion
photographer Nick Knight, and works on independent projects
through his own company, Play-Create.
Lucy Bullivant
Lucy Bullivant is an architectural curator, critic and author whose
books include Masterplanning Futures, Anglo Files, Responsive
Environments, 4dspace and 4d social. She is a correspondent for
Domus, The Plan, Volume and Indesign and is currently curating
Give Me More Green In-Between for the 2010 London Festival of
Architecture.
208 209

Patrick Burgoyne
Patrick Burgoyne has been the editor of Creative Review magazine
since 1999. He is the author of several books on design and visual
culture and has written for publications including the Independent,
Graphis and La Repubblica.
Emily Campbell
Emily Campbell is director of design at the Royal Society for the
encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.
She previously pioneered a diverse programme of touring exhibitions
and collaborative design projects as part of the British Council’s
international cultural relations programme, and also commissioned
the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.
Tony Chambers
Tony Chambers is editor-in-chief of Wallpaper* Magazine where he was
previously creative director. He has also been art director of British GQ
Magazine and art editor of the Sunday Times Magazine. While at GQ
he was twice voted PPA Art Director of the year and was last year voted
BSME New Editor of the Year.
Daniel Charny
Daniel Charny is a curator, designer and tutor with an industrial design
background. Co-founder of creative projects consultancy From Now
On, he is a strategic consultant and guest curator for the Design
Museum, London and Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art. In
2002 he started The Aram Gallery for experimental and new work.
Sebastian Conran
Sebastian Conran is director of Sebastian Conran Associates, focusing
on product, branding and user experience design and visiting professor
of design against crime at Central Saint Martins. He has written
numerous books and papers on design, taught at the Royal College
of Art, where he is an Honorary Fellow, and judges many international
awards such as D&AD, Red Dot, and Design Week.
Bronwyn Cosgrave
Bronwyn Cosgrave is a London-based writer, curator and creative
consultant to luxury brands. She is the author of Made For Each Other,
Fashion and the Academy Awards, the first fashion history of the Oscars
and contributes to the international editions of Harper’s Bazaar and
Vogue as well as the Daily Telegraph.
Alexandra Cunningham
Alexandra Cunningham manages exhibitors and special projects for
Design Miami/, the global forum uniting dealers, collectors, designers,
curators and critics in celebration of design culture and commerce.
She develops the international gallery programme for both Design
Miami/ and Design Miami/ Basel, and liaises between the fairs
and cultural and academic institutions, establishing collaborative
programming opportunities, conferences and events.
Simon Esterson
Simon Esterson is a London-based editorial designer. He is art director
of Eye, the international review of graphic design.
Marcus Fairs
Marcus Fairs is a London-based journalist, lecturer and entrepreneur.
He is founder and editor-in-chief of online design magazine Dezeen
and the former founding editor of architecture and design magazine
icon. He has contributed to many other publications and broadcast
media and has authored two books.
Francesca Ferguson
Francesca Ferguson is initiator and curator of urban drift, based in
Basel and Berlin. She previously spent three years as Director of
S AM – the Swiss Museum of Architecture in Basel.
Philippe Garner
Philippe Garner is international head of photographs and twentieth
century decorative art & design at Christie’s, London. He is the author
of numerous books and essays and has curated exhibitions for
museums in London, Paris and Tokyo.
Thomas Geisler
Thomas Geisler is a designer, curator and researcher based in Vienna,
where he lectures in the department of design history and theory at the
University of Applied Arts. He is a partner of the design collective maupi
and co-founder of Neigungsgruppe Design. He co-directs Vienna
Design Week and has published widely.
Jonathan Glancey
Jonathan Glancey is architecture and design correspondent for the
Guardian and an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British
Architects. He was a founding editor of Blueprint magazine and has
worked with the Independent, Architectural Review and The Architect.
He has written several books and is a regular television and radio
broadcaster.
210 211

Dee Halligan
Dee Halligan is a project and programme manager from a design
background. Her work has included advising on, devising and
delivering projects for Tate, the Design Council and the Science
Museum.
Anna Hammer
Anna Thorud Hammer is managing director of DogA, The Norwegian
Centre for Design and Architecture.
Sam Hecht
Sam Hecht is co-founder of the London-based design office, Industrial
Facility. He was appointed Royal Designer for Industry in 2008 and
was recently the subject of an exhibition at the Design Museum.
Wayne Hemingway
Wayne Hemingway MBE co-founded the successful fashion brand
Red or Dead and is now a partner in HemingwayDesign specialising
in affordable housing and social design. His new project, Vintage at
Goodwood, an annual celebration of British creativity, is currently
attracting international attention.
Catherine Ince
Catherine Ince is a curator at the Barbican Art Gallery in London and
specialises in design and architecture. Previously, she worked for the
British Council where she organised the British Pavilion at the 2006
and 2008 Venice Architecture Biennales as well an international
exhibitions and events programme.
Dylan Jones
Dylan Jones has been editor of British GQ since 1999. He is also a
successful author, and has written books on Steve Jobs, Paul Smith
and an international best-selling biography of Jim Morrison. He recently
collaborated with David Cameron to produce a book about the
Conservative leader entitled, Cameron on Cameron: Conversations
with Dylan Jones.
Matt Jones
Matt Jones is a director at BERG Ltd, a London-based design and
invention company. He has been design director for Nokia, Sapient
and BBC News and co-founded Dopplr.com, which was recently
acquired by Nokia. He is a visiting tutor on the Design Interactions
course at the Royal College of Art, and writes on design and other
things at magicalnihilism.com.
David Kester
David Kester is chief executive of the Design Council, which promotes
and demonstrates the value of design. He is a council member of the
Royal College of Art and the RSA and a board member of the Design
Business Association. He is a regular commentator and advisor to
government on the creative economy, enterprise and innovation.
Jeremy Leslie
Jeremy Leslie is director of magCulture, a company specialising in
content design for print and digital media. As well as hands-on design,
magCulture provides consultancy and advice to publishers and other
clients. He is a passionate advocate for editorial design, regularly
contributing to the creative press and international design conferences,
and blogging at magCulture.com/blog
Angharad Lewis
Angharad Lewis is a London-based writer and editor. She is editor
of Grafik magazine, has edited and written several books, lectured
at Middlesex University and curated the Public Address System
exhibition, which toured internationally.
Colin McDowell
Colin McDowell is the founder and creative director of Fashion Fringe,
creative editor of NET-A-PORTER, senior fashion writer at the Sunday
Times Style magazine and visiting professor in fashion at London
College of Fashion.
Sarah Mower
Sarah Mower is a London-based fashion journalist, recently assigned
as the first ambassador for emerging talent at the British Fashion
Council. She is contributing editor to American Vogue and a columnist
for the Telegraph. She is visiting professor in fashion at Central Saint
Martins College of Art and The Royal College of Art.
Quentin Newark
Quentin Newark is a leading graphic designer. He is currently writing
a novel set in Phnom Penh and making a film about a far-right training
camp in Norfolk. He has also just become a father.
Brian Parkes
Brian Parkes is an international author and curator. He has been
associate director at Sydney’s Object Gallery for 10 years and has
curated many important exhibitions with an emphasis on contemporary
design, craft and Aboriginal art.
212 213

Ross Phillips
Ross Phillips is an award-winning interaction designer and creative
director of SHOWstudio.com. Recent solo projects include featured
work in Super Contemporary at the Design Museum, Funky Pixels in
the re-opened Ars Electronica Center, the Incheon International Digital
Art Festival, Korea and Decode at the V&A Museum.
Francesca Picchi
Francesca Picchi is a design writer, curator and editor for Domus
magazine, Italy.
Rick Poynor
Rick Poynor is a design critic and writer based in London. He is a
columnist for Eye, which he founded, a columnist for Print, and a
regular contributor to icon and Creative Review. He lectures
internationally on design and visual culture. His latest book is
Jan van Toorn: Critical Practice.
Hannah Redler
Hannah Redler is a curator specialising in projects which bring together
art, architecture, and new media technologies. She is currently head
of arts projects at the Science Museum, London and has worked as
a consultant with a number of UK arts organisations, including NESTA,
Tate Modern and the South Bank Centre.
Lynda Relph-Knight
Lynda Relph-Knight has been editor of Design Week, the world’s only
weekly design magazine, for over two decades. She is a fellow of the
RSA and an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Art.
Max Risselada
Max Risselada is an architect and professor emeritus of architecture at
the Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft. His exhibitions and publications
include Alison & Peter Smithson: From the house of the future to a house
of today (2003) and Team 10: In search of a Utopia of the present (2005).
Caroline Roux
Caroline Roux is a London-based design writer and consultant.
She contributes to a range of titles including the Independent,
the FT, Harper’s Bazaar and Blueprint.
Zöe Ryan
Zoë Ryan is a British curator and writer. She is currently Neville Bryan
curator of design at the Art Institute of Chicago and an adjunct assistant
professor at the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at
Chicago. She is regularly called upon as a lecturer, critic and juror and
her writing on architecture and design has been published
internationally.
Cameron Sinclair
Cameron Sinclair is the award-winning co-founder of San Franciscobased
Architecture for Humanity, a charitable organisation that seeks
architectural solutions to humanitarian crisis. In 2006 he co-launched
the Open Architecture Network, an open source community dedicated
to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable
design.
Sonnet Stanfill
Sonnet Stanfill is an author, lecturer and curator of twentieth century
and contemporary fashion at the V&A. She curated New York Fashion
Now (2007), Ossie Clark (2003) and is currently researching a display
devoted to London fashion in the 1980s.
Emilia Terragni
Emilia Terragni is editorial director at Phaidon Press, where she runs
the architecture and design department.
Henrietta Thompson
Henrietta Thompson is a journalist, author and curator. Specialising
in design, architecture and innovation, she is currently based in
London where she is design and arts editor at Wallpaper*, and has just
published her fourth book, Remake It: Home, about resourceful living.
Yorgo Tloupas
Yorgo Tloupas is a French art director and designer based in London.
He is the co-founder and creative director of the award-winning
alternative motoring magazine Intersection and design director of
the Kamel Mennour Gallery in Paris. He works with major brands
including Nike, Cartier, Hennessy and Lacoste.
Ruth Ur
Ruth Ur is director of the British Council’s Arts and Creativity
programme in Turkey, based in Istanbul. She is currently directing
My City, a major EU and British Council funded public art and artist
exchange programme for 10 cities across Europe and Turkey.
214 215

Moritz Waldemeyer
Moritz Waldemeyer is a London-based designer. He trained as an
engineer and his work is a fusion of technology, art, fashion and design.
He has collaborated with many of the world’s leading architects and
designers including Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid and Hussein Chalayan.
Shane Walter
Shane RJ Walter is a London-based producer, curator, writer and
speaker. He co-founded onedotzero, the global-reaching digital art
and design organisation, and onedotzero industries, where he
produces and consults for the world’s best-known brands and bands.
He has authored three books and recently co-curated Decode: Digital
Design Sensations for the V&A Museum.
Gareth Williams
Gareth Williams is senior tutor of design products at the Royal College
of Art, London. He was previously curator of twentieth century and
contemporary furniture at the V&A Museum, where he curated
Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design and wrote
the accompanying book.
Ellis Woodman
Ellis Woodman is deputy editor of Building Design and architecture
critic for the Daily Telegraph. He has twice been named as International
Building Press Architecture Critic of the Year and is the author of James
Gowan: Modernity and Reinvention. He curated the British Pavilion at
the 2008 Venice Biennale.
216 217

Past
Winners

Brit Insurance Award winners 2009
Category winner, Architecture
New Oslo Opera House, Norway by Snøhetta
Category winner, Fashion
A Black Issue, July 2008, Italy by Vogue Italia
Category winner, Furniture
MYTO Chair, Italy by Konstantin Grcic
Category winner, Graphics and overall winner of Brit Insurance
Design Award 2009
Barack Obama Poster, USA by Shepard Fairey
Category winner, Interactive
Make Magazine, USA published by O’Reilly
Category winner, Product
Magno Wooden Radio, Indonesia by Singgih S Kartono
Category winner, Transport
Line-J Medellin Metro Cable, Colombia by Poma, France
220 221
© Shepard Fairey

Brit Insurance Award winners 2008
Category winner, Architecture
The Main Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing,
China by Herzog & de Meuron Architects
Category winner, Fashion
Airborne, Autumn/Winter ’07, UK by Hussein Chalayan
Category winner, Furniture
100 Chairs in 100 Days, UK by Martino Gamper
Category winner, Graphics
Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, USA by various artists for
the Penguin Group
Category winner, Interactive
Burble London, UK by Haque Design + Research Limited,
with Seth Garlock and Rolf Pixey
Category winner, Product and overall winner of Brit Insurance
Design Award 2008
One Laptop Per Child, USA by Yves Béhar of Fuseprojec
Category winner, Transport
Mex-x Wheelchair for Children, Germany by Meyra-Ortopedia
222 223
© Fuseproject