With a great statement this book opens: “The best things happen during the journey. “
“Most designers in this book will agree. As well as the ultimate destination, whether it is a tangible product or simply the beginning of a more comprehensive project, their practices are usually all about the route they take to get there. The research, the process that precedes the products – it provides the most spectacular views and the best ideas. The intuitive use of a particular colour, for instance, produces unexpected information about the past, the choice for a particular material can send you down a completely different path and change the direction of the entire project. If you are open to it, you are already a step ahead of all the other road users, who only use the asphalt to get to the finishing line as quickly as possible”, says Merel Bem in the essay Inga Powilleit Tatjana Quax.
The designers portraited in the book are: Scholten & Baijings, Chris Kabel, Mae, Engelgeer, Joris Laarman, Formafantasma , Pieke Bergmans, Valentin Loellmann Christien Meindertsma, Dirk van der Kooij, Atelier NL, Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters, rENs, Lex Pott, Pepe Heykoop and Daan Roosegaarde.
René Pingen, director Stedelijk Museum ’s-Hertogenbosch writes in his foreword that in the early days of conceptual art, Douglas Huebler came to the conclusion that the object could be replaced by text or that it could take on a more or less immaterial shape in the form of graphics, photos or geographical maps. In actual fact it was a quest for an adequate form of communicating information, in order to identify the perception that lies at the foundation of the production and experience of art.
“Fifteen studios reflect just as many ways of working. They are filled with the latest 3D-printers, with clay, seaweed and dried flax, with colour experiments, sand research, wooden planks, old plastic, textiles, leather remnants, a thousand and one ideas or the future, and atmosphere. Inga Powilleit and Tatjana Quax wanted to capture all of this in this book, so that they can show people who know nothing about all the authentic processes and optimistic toiling behind the products: see how special and beautiful this is. And how necessary in our time in which cultural institutes for children are being forced to close their doors, libraries are disappearing and schools are steadily focusing more and more on reaching the finishing line as quickly as possible and less and less on reaching the result in a roundabout way.”
And indeed “This book is bursting with roundabout ways.” With wonderful photos on the designers, their studios and works we get full insight in the different processes, materials, samples, sketches and possibilities.
For instance one can read and see all on the process of Formafantasma, whose pages are filled with fish skins, sponge, clay, volcanic rock, shellac…
“Sicilian province that is home to the volcano Etna, and there you collect chunks of solidified lava. You then heat these chunks in an oven until the material melts. Molten basalt looks like molten glass, with the difference that the chemical composition of basalt allows you to draw it into strands upon heating. Now you sew these strands together, creating a kind of sheet that looks similar to skin or textile, but is actually very different. You then place the different layers on top of each other like sheets of lasagne, put the whole thing in a ceramic oven and heat it again to just below its melting point. This makes it more consistent in structure, like earthenware. You can use the resulting material to make things. Luckily we have Andrea Trimarchi (1983) and Simone Farresin (1980) for this. Designers, chemists, historians, alchemists, artists [….] But Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin are also archaeologists. Layer by layer they peel off their ideas, searching for the underlying meanings, for as long as it takes them to reach the red-hot core. And then it can all start to flow.”
Or the process of the works by Pieke Bergmans starting with the text: “It must be wonderful to experience: Pieke Bergmans (1978) walks into a factory building, the workshop of a glass factory for example, or a plastic manufacturer, and starts explaining to the people working there about the idea that has nestled inside her head. An idea for glass that does not end up in a mould but that is given all the space it needs when it is blown. Clay that looks like toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube. And she asks whether it is possible to make these things. Picture it - like a kind of dance: the factory workers shake their heads, because they’ve never heard such an impossible idea, while the designer chatters on, continues to scan and search for a way in, for as long as it takes until it suddenly appears. And then everything changes.”
Atelier NL -the Eindhoven based designer duo consisting of Nadine Sterk (1977) and Lonny van Ryswyck (1978)- “collected hundreds of different kinds of sand and clay over the past years. Their research was extensive, so extensive that colleagues sometimes commented: ‘I would have made something long ago. Why do you two carry on with this? What’s it worth?’. But their collecting stemmed from a love for raw materials and the desire to gain insight into where things come from. To identify everything that’s out there and what it can all be used for.”
Filling a cabinet with boxes containing “various kinds of sand from West Europe, combined with all kinds of information: photos of the area, stones, twigs and samples of the chemical composition of the materials found. The grains of sand were heated and melted together to form pieces of glass, all differing in colour and with various craquelure patterns. This cabinet represents a research project in which there is space for the experiment and the context of the material, as well as the end product.”
Also Daan Rosegaarde is presented in this book: “Artist. Inventor. Entrepreneur. Scientist. Roosegaarde, educated at the art academy in Enschede and the architectural Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, is all of these things. But he prefers to call himself a ‘social designer’, or better still: ‘a hippie with a business plan’. His often interactive designs, whether they fall into the category fashion, art in public spaces or architecture, must primarily build bridges.” The photos show projects like the Smog Free Project, ending with a ring of glass filled with a black cubic of pressed smog, collected in Beijing by cleaning the air with a large smog absorber; Lotus, stones fitted with Led lights, sample for a project with road construction company Heijmans for the Van Gogh cycle path in Nuenen and Dunes, giving a view in his studio.
A book with 15 stories, with good lay out and full-page photos, all should study to understand that the process is as important as the outcome, a must-have for all schools, teachers, collectors and all who are interested in design.
Angela van der Burght
Exposition How We Work at Stedelijk Museum ‘s-Hertogenbosch>
