Design Line: 8 – 14 July
Summer is famously silly season in the news, but as we reach mid-July, design is showing few signs of giving into holiday giddiness. This week has brought positive news – such as Ronan Bouroullec’s restoration of a 17th-century chapel, and Dorte Mandrup’s appointment to create Canada’s new Inuit Heritage Centre – as well as tragedy, with Forensis having announced its investigation into the circumstances of the Adriana shipwreck. Read on to find out more.
Dorte Mandrup’s new arctic adventure in Nunavut (image: Dorte Mandrup Architects).
Arctic architecture
Danish architect Dorte Mandrup is rapidly making a name for herself in the realms of Arctic architecture. In 2021 she completed the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre in Greenland – a climate research cum community centre that was sensitively interwoven with the country’s Sermeq Kujalleq glacier – and she has now won a competition to design a new Inuit Heritage Centre in the territory of Nunavut, Canada. Mandrup’s work on the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre could hardly have hurt her case – it saw her evince an acute understanding of the ways in which the Arctic’s climate, seasonality and landscape intersect with the built environment – but the Inuit Heritage Centre is a different kettle of fish altogether: as the architect Lola Sheppard noted in a conversation with Mandrup published in Disegno #30, a “modern architecture vernacular for the Arctic[…] would be different in Canada from Greenland and from Russia”. The new centre is intended to provide “greater awareness of Inuit culture and support cultural healing and reconciliation between Inuit and non-Inuit”, and Mandrup certainly seems up to the challenge of embracing this and manifesting these ideas spatially. “We are looking very much forward to listen, learn, and be the link between thought and form,” she noted upon winning the commission. Disegno, for one, can’t wait to see what she comes up with.
Guess who’s back, back again
There was celebration at the UN this week as the USA re-joined UNESCO after five years in the heritage wilderness. Having left the agency in 2019 under the auspices of Trump, the country was voted back in at the end of June. Despite being a founding member, the USA has been bumped down to 194th place in the membership league tables, and president Biden has pledged to plough up the membership arrears of $619m. The USA’s motives for returning are not a pure love of education and science, shockingly, but somewhat more geopolitical. Per The Art Newspaper, the superpower is reportedly concerned about China’s influence after the country increased its contributions to $65m. Unesco director-general Audrey Azoulay called it a “historic moment”, adding that “the return of the United States, and the additional resources that go with that, will help us to provide even better support for everyone around the world.” While the financial sabre-rattling is all somewhat eye roll-inducing, the money will at least be going to decent causes.
Ronan Bouroullec’s parsimonious chapel (image: Claire Lavabre/Studio Bouroullec).
Born again
The Chapel of Saint-Michel de Brasparts is a 17th-century structure built in the Monts d'Arré in Brittany, an area heavily affected by wildfires in the summer of 2022. The chapel was not damaged in the fires, but has nevertheless been closed for a year while undergoing a restoration funded by François Pinault. As with Pinault’s earlier Bourse de Commerce project, the interiors of the space have been given over to French designer Ronan Bouroullec, who has designed a series of new ecclesiastical furniture pieces. The results, unsurprisingly, are beautiful. Working with local artisans Mathieu Cabioch and Christophe Chini, Bouroullec has created a Nuit Celtique de Huelgoat granite altar; a console table for votive objects; a ripple-surface glass mirror; and candle holders and a cross made from hammered steel. Martin Béthenod, former managing director of the Bourse de Commerce, has penned an introductory text for the chapel in which he references “the notion of parsimony”, praising the idea that “a little explains a lot”, and this seems an elegant expression of the work that Bouroullec has done on Saint-Michel de Brasparts. The new pieces are restrained and simple, but nevertheless deeply expressive. They speak not only of the site’s spiritual significance, but also of the materials and craft capabilities of Brittany. It is, in short, a consummate restoration.
The Pylos Shipwreck, Forensis’s investigation of the Ariana tragedy (image: Forensic Architecture).
An avoidable tragedy
The sinking of the Adriana, a trawler carrying migrants across the Mediterranean, was a tragedy – a humanitarian disaster off the coast of Greece that has left close to 100 people dead, an estimated 500 further people missing, and which could have been prevented had the Greek coastguard not treated the “the situation like a law enforcement operation, [rather than] a rescue”. A new investigation from Forensis, a research agency founded by Forensic Architecture, has now cast further light on the wreck, criticising inconsistencies in the Hellenic Coast Guard’s (HCG) account of events, and suggesting that “600 people drowned as a result of actions taken by the HCG”. Whereas the HCG has alleged that those onboard the Adriana resisted assistance, and that the boat capsized following a sudden shift of weight, the Forensis investigation – which has been supported by survivors – alleges that HCG made multiple failed attempts to tow the boat out of Greek waters, ultimately destabilising and capsizing it. Building their investigation using testimony from the vessel’s passengers, videos and photographs of the Adriana, satellite imagery, and vessel tracking data, Forensis’s account makes for distressing reading: a story of mass, preventable death that “demonstrates once again the inhumane and lethal nature of the European border regime.” As one survivor noted: “I feel that they have tried to push us out of Greek water so that their responsibility ends.”
She suits, she scores
With all eyes on the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which kicks off in Australia later in July, Prada scored a massive goal this week with the announcement that it will be dressing the China Women’s National Football Team. Rather than design a more casual strip, the Italian fashion house will be making sure the 铿锵玫瑰, or Steel Roses, will be suited and booted when not on the pitch. Prada has promised the team “a fresh and contemporary off-the-field image” when travelling and attending formal events. The photoshoot accompanying the announcement featured the team, which currently ranks 14th in the world, looking exceptionally suave in matching black suits and white button-down shirts. The news went down a storm on Chinese social media site Weibo, which must have been a relief for the Prada PR team, who have weathered a rocky few years in the country. In 2021, the brand cut ties with its spokesperson Zheng Shuang after negative coverage of her personal life, and similarly ditched face-of-the-brand Li Yifeng when he was arrested in 2022. Backing a beloved national team is a safer bet for the luxury fashion house’s image, and underscores how women’s football is being taken more seriously in terms of big name investment – finally (see ‘Pitch Dreams’ in Design Reviewed #2).
Handsome hardware (image: Linn).
For the love of it
This week saw the return of Jony Ive to hardware design, with the announcement of a collaboration between his LoveFrom agency and British audio brand Linn: a redesign of Linn’s Sondek LP12 turntable. The new unit, the LP12-50, is being released on the 50th anniversary of the original LP12, with Ive and his team invited to reconsider the device’s industrial design. The result is largely identical in outline and form to the original LP12, but finessed for 2023 with rounded off elements, metal hinges replacing plastic ones, and a circular aluminium power button instead of the original’s rocker switch (reminiscent, perhaps, of the iPod’s famous circular control button). Ive is best known for his work for Apple, and his reputation lends a commercial allure to anything he subsequently touches. It’s no surprise, then, that the LP12-50 turntables are being released in a limited batch of 250 and are expected to reach £50,000 a piece. What’s more surprising, however, is that this project is apparently pro bono for LoveFrom. According to a blog post by Linn’s CEO Gilad Tiefenbrun, Ive reached out to the company because he was in the market for his own vinyl player. As such, the LP12-50 project seems to be part hobby, part desire to return to consumer electronics, and part marketing stunt. LoveFrom has longterm commercial projects in the pipeline with Ferrari and Airbnb, but little has been seen as to what forms these collaborations will eventually take. Seen in this light, the LP12-50 project could be read as a flash of leg – a hardware tease that drives interest until we see what Ive’s solo studio will be bringing to the table long term.