Design Line: 6 – 12 January
This week on Design Line we get lost in a maze of transparent TVs; luxury paint spattered shoes; ugly lawns; charges of plagiarism and a proposal for charging infrastructure created from existing street furniture.
New TV, old idea (image courtesy of LG).
Credit where credit is due
“World’s First,” declared electronics manufacturer LG’s press release, heralding the public debut of its LG Signature OLED TV. The device’s “first” is the fact that it is transparent when not in use, allowing the television to function as a room divider when off (an effect supported by mounting it within a shelving system). It’s a technologically impressive response to the issue of televisions existing within domestic spaces as mute black screens (something explored in ‘The Only Thing Left to Design is the Foot’, an essay featured in Disegno #28), but not, it must be said, particularly original. For a world’s first, it’s late to the party. In 2019, designer Daniel Rybakken and Panasonic, working in conjunction with Vitra, debuted their Vitrine concept, a transparent OLED TV that when not in use could function as a room divi— well, you get the idea. “You can place it more freely as opposed to against a wall, because a big problem with the TV is that it dictates how people decorate the living room,” Rybakken said. “The arrangement of the TV facing the sofa is not as social as other arrangements, and then when they’re turned off it’s just a black hole, sucking energy out of the room.” There is nothing wrong with two designs exploring the same idea differently (Signature is slicker; Vitrine more thoughtful and unusual), but LG might do well to learn its history. For an “Exciting New Chapter in LG’s Ongoing Legacy of TV Innovation”, it treads familiar ground.
Campaigners go nuclear
Marie Curie’s Paris laboratory has narrowly escaped demolition, with France’s culture minister having stepped in to save the structure at the eleventh hour. Bulldozers were scheduled to raze Pavillon des Sources to the ground on Monday as part of a development project, but the appeals of campaigners seem to have finally triumphed. The building, where Curie would prepare radioactive materials for her research, was designed by Henri-Paul Nénot in 1914 and is one of three structures that made up Curie’s lab in Paris. Supporters of the pavilion argue that the fight to protect it must now continue, however, as it is still not classified as a historical monument so remains vulnerable to demolition. The lab’s near-death experience fits into recurrent discussions about the preservation of architectural heritage: should we maintain historically significant structures or can the legacy of eminent cultural figures be preserved through sensitive redesign? Curie’s great-grandson, Marc Joliot, has come out in support of the demolition, telling Radio France Info that “the pavilion has to be demolished […] it is only a 100 square metre house which is, in any case, inaccessible because of its radioactive emissions.” The argument, then, is that it is better to replace the pavilion with a proposed state of the art cancer research centre and continue Curie’s legacy in this way. The future of the lab still hangs in the balance, but for now at least, its half-life has increased.
A beautiful lawn is a matter of perspective (image courtesy of gotland.com).
Grass won’t cut it
Have you ever worried that your lawn is an eyesore, in need of trimming, re-seeding or just redoing? Worry no longer. A Tasmanian garden has won the prize for the world’s ugliest lawn in an international competition launched by the municipality of Gotland, Sweden, after the island nearly ran out of water. The award aims to encourage people to question the necessity of those tiny green shoots when water scarcity is a pressing global issue. Kathleen Murray is the proud owner of the winning lawn, which is reminiscent of the body of a mangy cat, pockmarked with craters and tufts of hay. Murray used to dismiss criticism of her backyard, claiming it was a “paddock”, but is now proud to boast the advantages of her laissez-faire approach. She loves that the lawn encourages wildlife, saying they “feel safe to come out during the day […] they’ve got camouflage.” This kind of considered approach to landscape architecture welcomes in the natural world and it is heartening to see this championed by the competition. The award fits within a wider, gradual redefinition of success in the design world which puts greater emphasis on environmental impact. ArchitectureAU for instance, launched its social impact award at the end of 2022 to reward projects that prioritise empathy over aesthetics, whilst the iF social impact prize supports projects prioritising UN sustainable development goals. As Murray reaps the rewards of her languishing lawn, maybe it’s time for us all to retire the mower and consider muddier plains.
Neri Oxman has been confronted with plagiarism accusations (image courtesy of Joi, via Wikimedia Commons).
Copying campaign comes home
Neri Oxman, designer and former professor at MIT, apologised this week for plagiarism after Business Insider identified 15 passages lifted from Wikipedia without sufficient attribution in her 2010 dissertation. Oxman's situation is reminiscent of the recent accusations made against Claudine Gay, who resigned as Harvard University’s president after plagiarism allegations. Copying is clearly unsatisfactory behaviour for professors, but originality and plagiarism sit on a spectrum and omitting quotation marks seems to fall somewhere in the grey zone. Both Osman and Gay have apologised, with Gay having paid with her position, but the situation raises troubling questions about who is being accused and why. Bill Ackman, Oxman’s billionaire husband, helped lead the charge against Gay, writing on X that her actions were a “scandal and stain” on Harvard’s reputation, but many have perceived his attacks as having been politically motivated. Now that violations have been uncovered closer to home, Ackman seems to have softened, stating that “it is a near certainty that authors will miss some quotation marks and fail to properly cite[…] it does not seem like a crime.” He has now been inspired to “save all news organisations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews”, nobly committing to use his skills as a, erm, hedge fund manager to investigate the work of other professors, as well as all Business Insider reporters. Whatever Ackman discovers on his crusade, his key finding may be that who is accused and how has more to do with the person than the plagiarism.
Green cabinets set to go greener (image courtesy of Jaggery, via Wikimedia Commons).
Amped up cabinets
New year, new you? This can certainly be said for the 60,000 green street cabinets in the UK that are set to receive a makeover in 2024, becoming electric vehicle charging points to improve Britain’s charging infrastructure. Telecoms company BT has announced plans to repurpose these old phone and broadband cabinets to tackle a shortfall in electric car chargers. Ubiquitous on most UK streets, the boxes house connection points for the copper wires that provide internet and landline services to many homes and businesses. As fibre optic cabling is rolled out across the UK, however, these cabinets will become obsolete. BT is now planning to re-use them, retrofitting the boxes with a charging device for vehicles. The first box to receive a new lease of life under the pilot programme is in East Lothian, Scotland, and BT hopes that more will be converted over the year. Since the British government’s U-turn on its net zero policies last year, the scheme seems a practical way to boost electric vehicle take up. Repurposing existing infrastructure may prove an efficient method to address some of the barriers to access customers are currently facing. Like it or not, electric vehicles are the current trend and these updated green cabinets are charging into 2024.
The latest drop of the TN98 – shoes you can paint in (image courtesy of A-Cold-Wall*).
Good wear
“This shoe is personal to me because it’s the shoe I always aspired to have growing up, [that] I could never afford. It’s almost like buying your first piece of art.” So said Samuel Ross, reflecting on the Nike Air Max Plus shoes, released in 1998 and now considered a streetwear classic. This week saw the launch of a new colour-way of Ross’s redesign of said shoe, dubbed the TN98 for his fashion brand A-Cold-Wall*. The TN98 launched last September in black, white and cobalt, but a teaser released on instagram this week revealed that the latest version features a black shoe in a white paint-splattered colour way. The battered look of the new shoe is a further example of the interest that Ross has brought to his work with Nike in looking at ideas of wear and deterioration. The first versions of the TN98 featured a Nike Air unit with a purposefully worn finish, while the shoe’s textured Nappa leather was designed to wear away over time to display a second shade underneath. The version teased this week is a more direct exploration of these same themes of use, wear and natural ageing: one man’s paint-splattered shoe is another man's piece of art.