Design Line: 4 – 10 March
Queue the applause track on Design Line this week, as David Chipperfield takes architecture’s biggest gong, Bethan Laura Wood prepares to enter the NGV permeant collection, Max Fraser takes on the top job at Dezeen, and the design world celebrates the life of architect Rafael Viñoly.
It’s Pritzker Prize-winner David Chipperfield now (image: David Chipperfield Architects).
Awards season
If your first thought this week upon hearing that David Chipperfield has been awarded the Priztker Prize was “Wait, he hadn’t already?” you’re not alone. With four decades in the business and over 100 projects under his belt, Chipperfield has already racked up a RIBA Stirling Prize, a Mies van der Rohe Award, Japan’s Praemium Imperiale, Germany’s Order of Merit, and a knighthood from the British crown for services to architecture. His mantelpiece may already be heaving with accolades, but the Pritzker – nicknamed the Nobel Prize of architecture – must feel like the cherry on top of a stellar career. The jury gave special mention to Chipperfield’s design for the James-Simon-Galerie on Berlin’s Museum Island, which completed in 2019, as an example of the “understated but transformative civic presence” of his work. Props to Chipperfield, who used the opportunity of receiving the award of a lifetime as a platform to talk about issues close to his heart. “I take this award as an encouragement to continue to direct my attention not only to the substance of architecture and its meaning but also to the contribution that we can make as architects to address the existential challenges of climate change and societal inequality,” he said in a statement. “As architects, we can have a more prominent and engaged role in creating not only a more beautiful world but a fairer and more sustainable one too.” The Oscars may be just around the corner, but in its selection of Chipperfield, architecture has already appointed its equivalent of the EGOT for this year.
Tick-tick-boom
“Inventories is the number one challenge we need to resolve,” admitted Harm Ohlmeyer, Adidas’s chief financial officer, with the German sportswear giant revealing this week that it expects to make an annual loss of up to €700mn in 2023 – its first annual loss in 31 years. While slowing sales in China are part of this financial picture, another element is the company’s (correct) decision to sever links with Kanye West in October 2022 following the musician’s blatant antisemitism, with the resultant cessation of West’s Yeezy line for Adidas wiping out €1.2bn in annual revenue and potentially up to €500m in losses. Speaking with investors, the company’s chief executive Bjorn Gulden flagged up the “complicated issue” that Adidas has been left with: an inability to destroy Yeezy stock because of environmental issues, and an inability to sell it because of reputational damage and the various ethical implications. Gulden’s assessment of the difficulty of the situation feels bang on, but sympathy for Adidas is hard to muster. It has been widely known for a number of years that West holds or has held a number of repugnant views – remember his assertion that slavery was a choice? – and the man has repeatedly lashed out when things do not go his way, causing damage to those around him. Yet Adidas was happy to work with him when it was financially advantageous to do so. Now that this choice is blowing up in its face, Adidas can hardly claim it wasn’t forewarned.
If you build it, they will scroll (image: Spotify).
They see me scrollin’
Change is hard, and that extends to app redesigns. You use them every day, and suddenly the font is different? The buttons have changed locations?! Well, brace yourselves music fans. This week, Spotify announced a major overhaul of its app to be more like TikTok for spring. Groundbreaking. A “discovery feed” will allow users to swipe vertically through songs, although whether Spotify’s personalisation AI will be able to pinpoint listener’s exact tastes and preferences with the laser focus of TikTok algorithms remains to be seen. Because it’s not the format through which TikTok delivers its short-form video content in that makes it so addictive, it’s the ability to keep feeding you back little hits of exactly what you’d enjoy. It may pose all kinds of interesting questions about the intersection of psychology, design and social media, but including a vertical scroll feed and hoping that will bring you TikTok-levels of interaction feels like the app version of a cargo cult. If Spotify manages to nail it, however, it could be a game changer for the music industry. Musicians have spoken out about how exhausting it is to have their record label insist they keep posting on TikTok, with artists also having to try and orient their songs towards a coveted 30-second clip going viral, before rushing back to Spotify and change the song title to whatever lyric has blown up on TikTok. If Spotify steals a slice of the TikTok scroll pie, it will cut at least one step out of the soul-crushing process of trying to make money from streaming.
Max Fraser is the new editorial director of Dezeen (image: Dezeen).
The continuity candidate?
Four months on, the search for Dezeen’s new editorial director is at an end, with the website having announced the appointment of Max Fraser to the role. Fraser steps into the newly created position following the death of the platform’s founder Marcus Fairs in June 2022, with the announcement stressing a sense of connection between the two men. Fraser acknowledged the “privilege, gratitude and humility” with which he would succeed his “friend and long-term collaborator”, and the two do seem to share certain virtues – like Fairs, Fraser is a consummate networker and an enthusiastic advocate for and facilitator of design, widely known and liked by both practitioners and brands. He seems well placed to maintain and build upon Dezeen’s existing strengths, particularly given that Fraser’s previous work within design publishing has shown a desire and talent for welcoming general audiences into the field, which sits comfortably with the platform’s commercial interests and ambitions for as large an audience as possible. In Fraser, Dezeen seems to have doubled down on what it already does well – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Bethan Laura Wood has won the 2023 MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission (image: Mark Cocksedge).
Who run the world
It was International Women’s Day this week, a celebration that marks the day women in Soviet Russia gained suffrage in 1917. While its socialist feminist origins sometimes get obscured in the wave of cupcakes and brand posts offering shopping discount codes, it's traditionally a day to press for demands. So it was heartening to see the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) continue to honour its commitment to acquire more work by women in its collections, namely for its department of contemporary design and architecture. Bethan Laura Wood is the 2023 recipient of the 2023 MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission. An installation from the British designer using textiles, furniture and scenography to explore the gendered history of education will open at the NGV in December 2023, and her new works will subsequently join the museum’s permanent collection. “This commission, supported by MECCA, will allow deeper exploration into my practice of material investigations,” said Wood. “[It] offers a unique opportunity to present my contemporary design pieces in conversation with historical works from the NGV Collection.” This kind of change is testament to the power of protest: back in 2016, the NGV came under fire from critics for the gender imbalance in its collection and exhibition programme. Hopefully more design institutions will take note of the positive benefits of affirmative action.
Rafael Viñoly has died aged 78 (image: Roman Viñoly)
Rafael Viñoly (1944-2023)
“A black-clad wraith with a madcap nimbus of silvery hair” who “could run a charm school in his spare time, if he had any.” So ran Robin Finn’s 2003 New York Times profile of architect Rafael Viñoly, whose death aged 78 was announced this week. Viñoly, was was born in Montevideo but became a proud New Yorker, was the subject of numerous tributes, with critic Edwin Heathcote – and many others – drawing attention to his many admirable human qualities. His architecture was rather more controversial. Despite his protestations to Metropolis in 2010 that he was “interested in unglamorousness”, Viñoly primarily dealt in landmark buildings, with all the triumphs and tribulations that this may suggest. His Tokyo International Forum (2007) met with widespread acclaim; the 425.5m-tall 432 Park Avenue skyscraper (2015) has been plagued by structural and social issues, but is far more elegant than a building of its size has any right to be; and the Walkie-Talkie (2014) was pretty much an unmitigated disaster (although Viñoly did highlight that issues around development in the UK – as well, refreshingly, as problems with his own design – had conspired to lead to the numerous problems with the structure). It ultimately shows the absurdity of trying to neatly sum up a designer’s career – Viñoly, as with all architects, experienced highs and lows. Yet to borrow the words of his former collaborator, David Rockwell, Viñoly remained "voraciously curious” throughout – he is a sad loss to the profession.