September 17/18, 2009
Thomas Heatherwick
The exhibition, Extrusions, will include six extruded, mirror polished, aluminium benches made without fixtures or fittings, which have been produced by the world’s largest extrusion machine. Heatherwick Studio commissioned a specially designed die through which aluminium was ‘squeezed’ into a chair profile, complete with legs, seat and back. The resulting exhibited extrusions are the early prototypes for a final outdoor installation – a 100 metre-long piece that tangles into an extraordinary form, which will be constructed and exhibited in 2010.
The
project, 18 years in the making, takes technology used in the aerospace
industry to produce the world’s largest ever extruded piece of metal.
The project is also the first limited-edition work exhibited by Thomas
Heatherwick.
The graceful aluminium pieces each have a unique, dramatic form that combines
the back, seat and legs into one element. The sweeping parallel lines
created through the extrusion process are contorted into random, gnarled
endings: arbitrary swirling forms created through the inherent initiation
and termination of the extrusion process.
Until now, extrusion technology has been limited to smaller dimension
profiles, and since graduating from the RCA in 1994, Heatherwick has been
searching for a machine capable of producing a chair with legs, seat and
back from a single component.
Shigeru Ban
Two of the world’s most highly regarded designers and architects – Marc Newson and Shigeru Ban – have been commissioned by the organisers of The London Design Festival to create installations for its annual Size + Matter initiative. The aims of this project are to challenge the perception of the everyday materials used, by creating dramatic temporary installations outside the Festival Hall which will be on display from 19 September, the opening date of the Festival, until mid October.
Shigeru Ban is an architect based in Tokyo and Paris. He is best known for his disaster relief projects– in particular the cheap immediate housing made from paper and card which can be used in earthquake situations. For the London Design Festival he has designed a tower made from cardboard which will soar over the embankment walkway and be visible as a new addition to the South Bank skyline.
Made from cardboard tubes, the tower is articulated by metal joints, a system similar in design to the system used by Ban in his construction of a bridge, boathouse and various pavilions around the world. Sponsored by Sonoco, a global supplier of industrial and consumer packaging, the structure will be 22m high and once built, will become the tallest paper tower in the world.
Marc Newson
For the London Design Festival Marc Newson has created a steel structure, entitled Supercell, that is both organic and mathematical. Made of brightly coloured enamelled hexagonal steel panels, it takes the form of an exaggerated funnel, reminiscent of both marine and botanical forms. The dynamic structure will be seen not only at ground level but also from above, given that visitors can view the structure from the windows of the Royal Festival Hall, which overlook the space, looking down into its interior. Talking of what inspired him to create it, Newson comments: “The starting point for this project was the underlying structure of biological growth. I used a conic section and a hexagonal grid to express biological forms in this installation.”
Telling Tales
Telling Tales, Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design will bring together around 50 objects that share common themes such as fantasy, parody and a concern with mortality. The exhibition will feature furniture, ceramics, lighting and large scale
installations by designers including Tord Boontje,
Maarten Baas, Jurgen Bey and Studio Job.
Gareth Williams, the curator, has arranged the exhibition in three sections. The first, ‘The Forest Glade’, will display objects inspired by fantasy and nature that evoke the spirit of fairytales such as Tord Boontje’s Fig Leaf wardrobe, constructed from 616 individual, hand-painted copper leaves. His Petit Jardin armchair, cut from sheet steel
and assembled by hand, is designed to create the sensation of sitting in an overgrown garden.
Work by designers Fredrikson Stallard, Julia Lohman, Maarten Baas and Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny will be in this section. Libertiny produces his intricate Made by Bees vase by placing a wire frame in a beehive and allowing bees to create its honeycomb walls.
The second section, ‘The Enchanted Castle’, will look at work that exaggerates and parodies historical design styles often associated with displays of status. Studio Job’s Robber Baron series of gilded and cast bronze furniture subverts the extravagance of late-Victorian design, and the perceived taste of today’s super-rich. A large cabinet,
based on an original from the workshop of André-Charles Boulle of about 1700, has a huge hole blasted through its centre. Other works in the group include a clock, table, lamp and jewel safe covered in motifs of weapons, polluted clouds and factories representing war, power and industry.
On show will be two recent V&A acquisitions. Maarten Baas’s Smoke Mirror is part of his Smoke Furniture series created by burning reproductions of antique furniture with a blowtorch to produce a charred effect. Lathe Chair VIII by Sebastian Brajkovic is an exaggerated love seat seemingly made from a single 19th-century chair stretched into
two.
Alongside will be Jeroen Verhoeven’s Cinderella table, Julian Mayors’s Clone chair, ceramics by Hella Jongerius and Joris Laarman’s Heatwave radiator based on rococo scrollwork.
The final section, ‘Heaven and Hell’ will display work by designers concerned with themes of mortality and the afterlife. The Lovers rug by Fredrikson Stallard comprises a pair of conjoined pools of poured red urethane representing the average quantity of blood in two people.
Some of the designers in this section reference historical depictions of ‘The Last Judgement’ or Dante’s ‘Inferno’. An example is Luc Merx’s The Fall of the Damned chandelier made up of a cloud of around 170 weightless and tumbling human figures suspended in mid air. Others reflect an interest in psychoanalysis, such as Joep van Lieshout’s Sensory Deprivation Skull, a large skull-shaped, fur-lined chamber to
accommodate two people. These objects will appear together with work by Dunne & Raby, Niels van Eijk and Miriam van der Lubbe and Boym Partners.
Gareth Williams said: “This exhibition aims to capture a way of designing that has been emerging in recent years. These objects have stories to tell and we wanted to present some of the most creative and innovative examples and explore common themes.”
The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009 has been designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of leading Japanese architecture practice SANAA.
‘The Pavilion is floating aluminium, drifting freely between the trees like smoke. The reflective canopy undulates across the site, expanding the park and sky. Its appearance changes according to the weather, allowing it to melt into the surroundings. It works as a field of activity with no walls, allowing uninterrupted view across the park and encouraging access from all sides. It is a sheltered extension of the park where people can read, relax and enjoy lovely summer days.’
Sejima
and Nishizawa have created a stunning Pavilion that resembles a reflective
cloud or a floating pool of water, sitting atop a series of delicate columns.
The metal roof structure varies in height, wrapping itself around the
trees in the park, reaching up towards the sky and sweeping down almost
to the ground in various places. Open and ephemeral in structure, its
reflective materials make it sit seamlessly within the natural environment,
reflecting both the park and sky around it.
The Pavilion
will be the architects’ first built structure in the UK and the
ninth commission in the Gallery’s annual series of Pavilions, the
world’s first and most ambitious architectural programme of its
kind that annually gives preeminent architects their debut in this country
and brings the best of contemporary architecture to London for everyone
to enjoy.