Design Line: 20 - 26 January
This week on Design Line the 23rd Serpentine pavilion winner is announced; disaster aid becomes easier for claimants in the US; Ronan Bouroullec translates his artworks for fashion with the help of Issey Miyake; Hella Jongerius’s archive is collected by the Vitra Design Museum; and Disegno rounds up some notable moments at FOG Design+Art fair.
Jongerius finds a natural home for her archive of over 30 years (image by Roel van Tour, courtesy of Vitra Design Museum).
A home for Hella’s history
For fans of designer Hella Jongerius, this week brought good news: the designer’s archive has been acquired by the Vitra Design Museum and will now form the basis of a retrospective of her work scheduled to open in 2026. It’s not only positive news because of the critical attention it will drive towards Jongerius (since launching her studio in 1993, she has developed investigations of material, colour, and the intersection of craft and industry which have made her one of the most fascinating practitioners of the past 30 years), but also a move that seems to mirror the trajectory of the designer’s own career. Jongerius has always pursued independent research projects, but the earlier phases of her career included greater direct engagement with brands and industry – a strand of work reflected in her appointment as art director for the Vitra Colour and Material Library in 2007. In recent years, however, Jongerius has reduced her work within product and furniture design, instead focusing on displays in museological contexts, frequently focusing on experimental weaving techniques: “I think I have a better voice in a museum,” Jongerius told the Financial Times in 2022. “In a museum you can really make contact with people via a material or craft, even more so than with a product.” Now, following her long and successful collaboration with Vitra, there is much to look forward to as Jongerius’s archive mirrors the trajectory of its creator and shifts into the world of Vitra’s own Design Museum.
USA’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will now provide aid as immediate cash grants to better help victims of national disaster (image courtesy of .waldec, via Flickr)
A reform to ditch the forms
Even at the best of times, everyone hates filling in forms, especially government forms. But at the worst of times, say after a flood, fire or hurricane, form-filling and the slow bureaucracy of government processes is not only frustrating and stressful but puts peoples’ safety and lives at risk. It was a welcome announcement, then, that the USA’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) plans to remove much of the red tape that natural disaster survivors have had to wade through before receiving its support. FEMA has been widely criticised for its lack of agility in the face of intensifying natural disasters, leading critics to say its four letters stand for “Fix Everything, My Ass”. Its current process requires those affected to complete lengthy applications and swathes of paperwork that can take weeks to process, often leaving renters and those with low incomes in precarious housing scenarios. The overhaul of the process, which is set to launch in March, will instead be based on a system of immediate cash grants of $750 to all victims of federally declared disasters, with the aim to give support in the chaotic first few days after a disaster. It also offers more flexible upfront funding to cover about two weeks of housing in order to provide space to submit long-term loans that focus on repair and rebuilding. With this change, hopefully architects, urban planners and those in the building sector can also move more quickly to support repair and rebuilding efforts.
Scaly ceramic vases by Taller Los Tepalcates for AGO Projects are a delightful moment of pause at FOG Design+Art fair (image courtesy of AGO Projects).
Less brain fog is more
Chock-a-block with furniture pieces and household objects, design fairs often leave visitors with a feeling of brain fog. FOG Design+Art fair, which took place in San Francisco last week, was a welcome exception to this experience, leaving the minds of its visitors, ironically unfoggy. Perhaps it was the small scale of the venue that created the notably calm mood, or perhaps the fine-art galleries’ modes of display rubbed off on the design pieces, which were given plenty of space to breath and be appreciated. Five resplendent reptiles with their heads tilted back and mouths open as if waiting to catch falling rain, for example, were given a generously spacious display on a plinth at AGO Project’s exhibition. The reptiles in question were a series of large-scale ceramic vases by sisters Asunción and Laura Enriquez Chávez. The craftswomen have been running their Mexican-based workshop Los Tepalcates since the early 1990s and, at over 80 years of age, were likely some of the older exhibitors at the fair. In contrast, AGO Projects is relatively young on the design scene, having been established in 2019. Other highlights of FOG had a similar crafted feel, including Max Lamb’s tufted armchairs made from hand-dyed wool shown by Gallery Fumi; tiled furniture pieces by Claudia Wieser shown by Jessica Silverman; and a reclaimed timber cabinet by Gareth Neal shown by Sarah Myerscough Gallery. Although largely aimed at commercial clients, the fair was, nonetheless, a breath of unfoggy air.
Watch out for the spaces in between (image by Mass Studies, courtesy of the Serpentine).
Defining the void
If you gaze up at the night sky (and are feeling poetic), you might be struck by the sense of an endless void set off by numerous stars. For Minsuk Cho, the recently announced winner of the 23rd iteration of the Serpentine Pavilion, this interest in an object floating within a void has led him to create a star-shaped construction for this year’s pavilion (scheduled to be installed from 7 June to 27 October). The Seoul-based architect and his firm Mass Studies have proposed the “Archipelagic Void”, named in honour of one of the pavilion’s key design features: a central courtyard around which are arranged five rooms or “islands”. The rooms, arranged as points of a star, each have their own entrances and the centre is inspired by madangs, small courtyards found at the heart of historic Korean houses. Each room will serve a different purpose: a library, gallery, auditorium, tea house and play tower. Meanwhile the spaces between the five rooms have also been given consideration, such that 10 spaces have been created overall. You might not be able to see it, but the empty space in this design is every bit as important to shaping it as the solid materials that construct it.
Ronan Bouroullec’s increasing body of work within art has now led him back to design, with his drawings folded into the fashion design of Issey Miyake (image courtesy of Issey Miyake).
A decision reversed
“I didn't want my drawings to be used as patterns.” So spoke designer Ronan Bouroullec in 2023, in conversation with Dezeen, explaining his decision to reject approaches from fashion designers seeking to transform his artworks into garments. A surprise, then, to see Bouroullec’s work take centre stage at this week’s Homme Plissé Issey Miyake autumn/winter 2024 menswear show. Variously created using ballpoint pens and Japanese felt tips, Bouroullec’s meticulous artworks have become a prominent strand of his practice, manifesting as original drawings, prints, and even a Kvadrat textile collection. In the case of the new Miyake collection, the works have been translated onto the studio’s pleated fabric (whose texture is sympathetic to the visible strokes within Bouroullec’s art), as well as transformed into flexible scarf-like wrappings, and coats that pack down into oversized pockets to form cushions. The drawings have, undeniably, been used as patterns, but it is easy to see why Bouroullec reversed his earlier resistance towards a fashion collaboration: there has been obvious care and consideration in how the studio has designed with the artworks, not least in leaving the bulk of the garments white so as to retain the white space of the originals. “It was an extraordinary experience to work with the design team, where I discovered many things over the course of the creative session about what my work has in common and in contrast with their clothing design,” Bouroullec remarked of the collection. Sometimes, it would seem, changing your mind is no bad thing.