The Design Line: 14 - 20 May
A new director for the AA, a village-like campus for Google, accessible computer accessories from Microsoft, and a pavilion for Melbourne all feature on this week’s Design Line. Dive in!
Ingrid Schroder, the new head of the AA, engaging in nimble debate (image: Sue Barr).
A successor arrives
The Architectural Association has had a bit of a time of it. In 2018 it appointed its first ever female director, Eva Franch I Gilabert, who assumed the role having received 67 per cent of the vote among shortlisted candidates from the AA’s School Community (its full-time registered students, staff, and serving members of the school’s Council). Gilabert, it was felt, was a contemporary, dynamic figure who could pull an occasionally crusty institution into the 21st-century. Two years later, however, she was removed from her position after narrowly losing a vote of no confidence from that same School Community, with onlookers divided between those who felt that Gilabert had underperformed in her position (in addition to allegations of bullying and exploitation) and those who believed her dismissal to have been motivated by sexism and traditionalism. Now, two years later, the school finally has a replacement and can begin to move on. On Thursday it was announced that Ingrid Schroder, director of the MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Cambridge, will become the AA’s new director in August. Schroder is eminently qualified for the role, having extensive experience within academia and education (Disegno particularly recommends the excellent African Modernism (2014) of which she is a co-author) and she has already struck a positive note in her acknowledgment of the AA as a “nimble place of debate”. Moreover, given the allegations around sexism that surrounded Gilabert’s departure, it feels important that her successor is a woman. Here’s hoping that Schroder proves every bit the success the AA is hoping for.
The All(Zone) team, ready and willing to build a pavilion (image: MPavilion)
Pavilion pleasures
What a week to be alive and interested in temporary pavilions. For a start, invitations went out for the 7 June opening of Theaster Gates’s Black Chapel for London’s Serpentine Galleries. Gates’s project looks excellent, playing with the typologies of sacred spaces crossed over with the kilns of Stoke-on-Trent as part of the artist’s ongoing wok with ceramics. With any luck, it should be a worthy successor to last year’s enjoyable effort by Sumayya Valley of Counterspace. But the Serpentine isn’t the only pavilion programme going. Since 2014, Melbourne’s Naomi Milgrom Foundation has organised the MPavilion initiative for the city’s Queen Victoria Gardens, attracting heavyweight architects such as Rem Koolhaas, Amanda Levete and Glenn Murcutt to the commission. This week, the foundation revealed its 2022 pavilion architects, appointing Thai studio All(Zone) to create the structure that will be installed in November. Led by Rachaporn Choochuey, All(Zone) prides itself on reusing and recycling local materials in its projects, and exploring methods of light construction. “Small commissions, temporary architecture or even exhibitions are our exercise in experimenting with an idea we have in the moment, and it means we can do a lot of trial and error,” Choochuey told ArchitectureAU. “We are very interested to see how we can build lighter and lighter. I’m questioning the rigidity of architecture and the typology that would allow us to change or modify what we could do with the structure that we have.” In short, they seem a smart match for a temporary pavilion – roll on November.
The kind of accessible, collaborative project we’d like to see a lot more of (image: Microsoft).
Open to all
It’s not often we can praise big corporations, but credit to Microsoft this week – they seem to have done something genuinely good. Building on previous initiatives focused around accessibility and inclusivity in tech (such as its Xbox Adaptive Controller for gamers with limited mobility or its Surface Adaptive Kit that supports customisation of Surface tablets to support different levels of mobility and vision), the tech giant has now launched its Microsoft Inclusive Tech Lab, “an inclusive design incubator where Microsoft and disability communities can ideate and evaluate product design and direction”. It’s a good initiative, with its first results looking promising: a suite of customisable new designs for computer accessories that “empower you to configure, 3D print, and customize your own mouse, keyboard inputs, and shortcuts in ways that work best for your specific needs.” There are a number of smart designs within the collection (such as an “Adaptive Button”, which can be finished with a d-pad, joystick, or dual button to perform different tasks), but particularly pleasing is its focus on adaptation and customisation to suit specific needs, as well as the lab’s emphasis on the central importance of collaboration with the disabled community. So kudos to Microsoft – more of this sort of thing, please.
Gilane Tawadros, soon to be of the Whitechapel Gallery (image: Brian Benson).
Whitechapel renewal
It’s a hard act to follow: Iwona Blazwick has served as director of London’s celebrated Whitechapel Gallery for more than 20 years. But this week we learned the identity of Blazwick’s successor in the role and there is good reason to be excited for what comes next. The writer and curator Gilane Tawadros will take the reigns in October, the next step in a career that has seen her serve as a founding trustee and chair of the Stuart Hall foundation, establish the Art360 Foundation, launch the Institute of International Visual Arts, and work as chief executive of DACS, a not-for-profit visual artists rights management organisation. A considerable pedigree, then, with Tawadros having also said a lot of encouraging things in the statement announcing her appointment to the Whitechapel Gallery. “Cultural diversity, access and inclusivity are abiding concerns for me that underpin a desire to make contemporary art and the art gallery central to all our lives,” she noted, adding in conversation with The Guardian that contemporary social, political and environmental crises should prompt institutions “to think deeply about what the role of the contemporary art gallery is.” We can’t wait to see that deep thinking begin to take effect.
A humble village, home to the world’s online search functionality (image: Iwan Baan).
Village life
“The idea of the ‘office' has been stuck for a long time,” notes Thomas Heatherwick. “Yes, people have done different aesthetic treatments. But there hasn’t been a fundamental questioning of the workplace at this scale.” The scale in question is the new Google Bay View Campus, a 1.1m sqft space in Silicon Valley that has been developed by Heatherwick in collaboration with BIG. Opened this week, the campus is a first for Google, housing the company’s employees in a series of buildings with lightweight, tent-like roofs coated in photovoltaic tiles (which will generate 40 per cent of the scheme’s energy needs). Underneath these tents, the designers have installed a flexible, adaptive “village” of workspaces, meeting areas and leisure spaces, which Heatherwick Studio says will allow “everyone [to] work together, under the same sky, instead of in cramped floors stacked above a spacious office lobby for guests”. The proof will be in the pudding, and if the building works for its residents then Heatherwick and BIG deserve credit (although calling an office a “village” immediately sets alarm bells ringing: can’t it just be an office?), but on first glance it’s difficult to see the Google Bay View Campus as a radical shift in the office typology. Flexible, adaptive spaces have been discussed for years and, although their application seems appropriate for an organisation such as Google where teams and projects can shift rapidly, Heatherwick’s promise of a “fundamental questioning of the workplace” seems a touch hyperbolic. No matter how many verbal niceties you dress it up in, work is still work, an office is still an office. Is the Google Bay View Campus really so different from what's already out there? And, whisper it softly, but is there a slight whiff of cubicle culture about the aesthetics of that flexible village?
Behold! An upgrade in action (image: Framework).
New computer, same as the old
In July 2021, the hardware manufacturer Framework launched a different type of laptop: a device that was designed to be easy to disassemble, with modular components that you could upgrade or replace as required. It was a smart idea, playing into the right to repair movement and seeking to minimise the alarming proliferation of e-waste, and it struck a chord for many working in design. This week, the company revealed its second generation of laptop, introducing a more robust lid assembly and improved processors, alongside a host of other small design tweaks. Launching a new version of a products whose raison d’être is to be upgraded and repaired could have been difficult, but Framework appears to have handled it perfectly – all of the improved elements are also available individually as modules, as well as being combined as Upgrade Kits in the Framework Marketplace. It means that you can buy a new laptop if you need one, but if you just want a slight buff in performance, you can tweak your existing device without the whole thing going to waste. “This is perhaps the first time ever that generational upgrades are available in a high-performance thin and light laptop,” said Framework’s founder Nirav Patel, “letting you pick the improvements you want without needing to buy a full new machine.” Let’s hope they keep up the good work.