The Design Line: 12 - 18 March
All hail the good ship Design Line, which this week is pulling into port to hail the selection of Diébédo Francis Kéré as the 2022 Pritzker Prize laureate; to eye up Maximilian Davis’s appointment at Salvatore Ferragamo; to sound the horn in celebration of Frida Escobedo’s election to revamp a wing of the Met; and much more!
This man has completed architecture. He need architect no more (image: Lars Borges).
Pro Pritzker
It’s nice when the Pritzker Prize gets it right. Last year the “architecture Nobel” celebrated Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal for their work in renovating and reclaiming existing spaces, and for 2022 the award continued down its path of recognising socially conscious forms of practice with the selection of Diébédo Francis Kéré as its latest laureate. Kéré is a splendid choice, having made his name with a series of schools and medical facilities in Africa that use materials local to their sites to allow for community engagement during building, and which are designed to be climate-conscious in virtue of using as few resources as possible. This is the kind of practice that awards can play a meaningful role in championing to a wider public, and it was further good news to see the Pritzker begin to remedy a historic blindspot: Kéré is the first African winner of the prize (as well as the first Black architect to be selected).
So long to Stockholm
Like most design events, Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair has had a bad time of it during the pandemic. The fair cancelled its annual event in February 2021, while its 2022 iteration was forced to move from February to September. This week, however, the fair’s organisers announced that the 2022 edition would now also be cancelled, with a new plan to focus on returning in February 2023. “We want to unite the design industry and focus on a strong comeback after two years of absence”, said Hanna Nova Beatrice, project area manager for the fair and Stockholm Design Week. In explanation of the move, the fair said that the proximity of the planned 2022 and 2023 events had placed visitors and exhibitors in an awkward position of having to choose between the two – a five-month gap, after all, is very little time indeed. “After two years of cancelled fairs, it’s more important than ever that the industry stays together, and the trade fair gets a strong restart,” said Cecilia Ask Engstrцm, director of industrial development at the Swedish Federation of Wood and Furniture Industry. “This is what the industry wants.” After the fair’s two years in the wilderness, let’s hope 2023 can provide the comeback it craves.
New Trafford
Old Trafford has had a good run: initially built in 1910 by the architect Archibald Leitch, Manchester United’s stadium recently celebrated its 112th birthday (it has, admittedly, been updated a few times in the interim, but its rude to speculate on what work the elderly may or may not have had done). It was a shock, then, to learn this week that the club are considering euthanising their venerable stadium: demolishing Old Trafford to make way for a new stadium on the same site. Now, this is not to say that Old Trafford couldn’t do with an upgrade – the ground is famously tired and has fallen behind its rivals to the degree that even its roof isn’t watertight [insert joke about the leakiness of Man Utd’s defence here] – but demolition seems extreme. In a time of climate change, and a growing consensus across architecture of the importance of not defaulting to new builds and instead working with existing infrastructure, surely something could be done to rejuvenate the space without resorting to wiping the slate clean. If nothing else, demolishing one enormous stadium to make room for another enormous stadium isn't the most creative approach [insert joke about the bluntness of Man Utd’s attack here: whey!].
Who sees what?
This week saw Russia ban Instagram, ostensibly in reaction to its owner Meta’s decision to temporarily allow posts that would usually violate Facebook community standards: for now, Facebook moderators will not remove posts (in some countries) that call for violence against Russian soldiers and Vladimir Putin in response to the war in Ukraine. Access to apps has been contested on both sides during the war. Earlier this month, Ukrainian officials called for Facebook and Twitter to ban their sites in Russia as a form of sanction. The flipside is that Instagram has now been banned by Russian officials (along with Facebook and restrictions on Twitter) to exert tighter control over the spread of information within the country. Interestingly restrictions have not yet been applied to YouTube or apps such as Telegram. Indeed, even the Meta-owned WhatsApp has been deemed permissible. Thus far, restrictions seem focused on platforms that make it easier to broadcast to massive audiences and the rest of the world. Anything, it seems, to keep peddling Putin's appalling notion that the invasion of Ukraine is merely a “special military operation”.
Davis for Ferragamo
“I want to show that Black elegance is a thing,” the fashion designer Maximilian Davis told Dazed towards the end of 2020. “I feel like we’ve always been seen in a one-dimensional way, and I really wanted to make something that showed people of colour and Black people in a different light.” Less than two years later, the Fashion East alumnus has a chance to do just that, having been announced as the new creative director of Italian luxury house Salvatore Ferragamo. The appointment marks a meteoric rise for Davis, who only left the Fashion East incubator under a month ago, and also explains his decision to withdraw from this year’s LVMH Prize for Young Designers earlier in March. “I am deeply honoured to be joining Ferragamo, and grateful for the opportunity to build on the rich and profound heritage of the house,” Davis wrote on Instagram. The move represents a step up for Davis, but a fresh perspective and new blood seems to be what the brand is after. In 2021, it announced the appointment of Marco Gobbetti as its new CEO, with the aim of leading a “new phase of brand enhancement”. Over to Davis then.
Never Met a challenge she didn’t like
This week saw the Met appoint architect Frida Escobedo to oversee the planned $500m revamp of its Modern and contemporary art wing. It’s been a plan 10 years in the making, with Escobedo ultimately triumphing over a heavyweight pool of potential architects including David Chipperfield (who had previously been selected for the commission in 2015 by the Met’s then-director Thomas Campbell before the plan was later shelved), Ensamble Studio, Lacaton and Vassal and SO-IL. It’s an exciting commission, with the Met keen to overhaul its treatment of 20th- and 21st-century art through the provision of 80,000 sqft of galleries and public space, and also a major opportunity for Escobedo – an architect better known for her work with smaller scale buildings and temporary projects. Yet Escobedo seems gloriously unperturbed. When asked by the New York Times about the scale of the commission, which will involve overhauling the museum’s Wallace Wing designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Kevin Roche, she simply answered: “I like challenges.”