Whereof One Cannot Speak
Kvadrat’s new showroom in New York, designed by Jonathan Olivares (image: courtesy of Jonathan Olivares).
I was speaking with the Los Angeles-based designer Jonathan Olivares over Zoom, when the conversation took an interesting turn. For the preceding 30 minutes we had been speaking about his work designing the new Kvadrat showroom on New York’s 475 Park Avenue and 58th Street. The discussion had followed the usual pattern for this kind of interview: a bit of information on the final space, as well as some reflection on the project’s various inspirations and references. “But I’m at the point where I don't need to talk about any of the work that went into it,” Olivares said suddenly. “I think it's enough to walk into that space, and just feel it. You will take plenty from that.”
This, of course, is a fair point. The story behind any design’s development may be illuminating, but it’s likely subservient to the final result – at least in the case of a commercial product or space. If a showroom space is to be successful, it needs to prove itself independently of any backstory or questions over its development. Regardless of however nice that backstory may be, and how many beautiful models or pieces of concept art may exist to document it, there is a sense in which it is, ultimately, extraneous. A ladder to climb up before being thrown away once you reach the top. “Everything I do to get to that final result is part of a process that I hope the end result effaces,” Olivares explained. “I don't romanticise models or process at all. In fact, I'm totally uninterested in the model making process and everything that leads to a final design because, of course it's going to be there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s interesting. I would say the same goes for everything we're talking about. I would really encourage someone to just walk into the space instead.”
And so a problem is presented. Because while an element of design writing is intended to be straightforwardly evocative of the project at hand, the images accompanying an article often do much of the heavy lifting in that respect – even for those unable to visit a space, the images frequently create more of an impression than their accompanying words. And, when it comes to a textile showroom’s operation, there’s not masses to go into in terms of explaining the way in which that space actually functions (although Olivares has created a neat system with an aluminium catwalk that encompasses the space’s sprinkler system and air conditioning unit, as well as providing a helpful element from which textiles can be draped). As such, the typical resort of the design writer is to pad out an article with details about the project’s development, as well as providing a little bit of information about its surrounding context. Through the provision of these hidden details, the idea runs, you come to appreciate the project more fully. “But I wanted to say as little as possible with the press release for this project,” Olivares reflected, “because I've found in the past that when I reveal what went into something, people will want to talk about that. And that's not entirely necessary.”
A quandary then, because there is much to discuss in regards to the Kvadrat project. Olivares has designed the entire space, for instance, overseeing the process that converted an 8,000sqft space that had previously housed an antique Chinese ceramics dealer into a contemporary design showroom. “The last tenant had basically taken what is a two-storey-high, very generous space and dropped in a low ceiling, before dividing it up into vignette rooms where they could stage different interiors,” Olivares notes. Alongside the resultant architectural work in clearing out the building’s various partitions, Olivares designed tables and chairs for the space (“Which are actually an opportunity to showcase Kvadrat textiles, so in a sense the furniture becomes part of the display function of the space”). Meanwhile, the aforementioned aluminium catwalk is an element that Olivares considers a “dynamic mechanical object”, both in terms of rationalising the space’s systems and clearing ceiling space, but also employing aluminium’s conductive properties to function as a means of regulating temperature in the space. “I think of it as being a big piece of furniture,” he says. “And it starts solving more problems because you can just hang textiles from it, so now the staff can create window displays easily, which is really the most interesting or challenging problem for a [showroom space]: how can you make things simple and straightforward for the staff?”
But, then, I’ve already fallen back into that same old pattern – explaining what could just be experienced instead. I could point out, for instance, the preponderance of square forms within the space, both in terms of its basic layout and the furniture it houses (and how “kvadrat” in Danish translates to “square”), or how the decision to employ aluminium in a space that sits across the street from Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois’s aluminium Pepsi-Cola Building (1960) is likely no coincidence. I could even mention how The Tao of Wu (2009), a book written by Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, proved influential on the project. Its observation that “all of [RZA’s] favourite things could be combined [within his work and philosophy] […] his love of kung fu films, his love of hip hop battles, his love of comic book characters, and his respect for the Five-Percent Nation”, persuaded Olivares that you can take seemingly disparate design interests (such as strictly rectilinear compositions and ergonomics) and merge them in a way in which they “start to actually become compatible in a way that you didn't necessarily think they would be”. But as to whether this will affect your appreciation of the space, I don’t know. And yes, I’m not unaware that this whole paragraph has been an exercise in smuggling in details of the project’s development, thinly disguised under a veil of what I could do (and, ultimately, have done).
The problem, you see, is that Olivares is a designer whose process is interesting, regardless of whether he feels so or not. Alongside his explicit design work, for instance, a major element of Olivares’s practice has been writing – a field in which he has achieved no small distinction as both a journalist and editor, and which appears to have left a trace on the way in which he approaches design. More than many in the field, Olivares is encyclopaedic in the research, building up references, historical allusions, production methods and argumentation as part of his process. Reflections around materiality, verbal wordplay, functional rationalisation and ease of use all intermingle, wrapping around one another until they start to coalesce into some form of unity. “You pile up these things that you like to look at and think about, and then something new emerges from them,” he summarises. “For every text that you write you basically build a thesis, but that can also work as a design method – it’s a writerly method, but it’s also my way of doing design. And I think that’s because I spent so many years building up texts where you have to go through all these different things that then need to come together to say something bigger than they did individually.”
Journalists, of course, rarely show their full working. Typically, we draw upon multiple sources and then synthesis them into something new – a cohesive final work that becomes the object of scrutiny over and above the multiple strands that make it up. Because even a piece like this – an article where I’ve spent 1,000-plus words angsting over not being able to tell you anything about Olivares’s showroom – is basically a con: hopefully you’ve come out the other side having learned something about the space. But Olivares’s point remains. For all design’s discussion of process and the tantalising details that emerge from a project’s development, the most relevant test of a space is how it shapes the experience of those who engage with it – how does it support those who work within it and those who visit it? “I like to take care of people,” Olivares summarised when this was put to him, “and while some designers choose to do their work in a different way, I think that as a designer you’re ultimately there to take care of people – that’s what design is.” So for those in the New York area, why not step beyond description? Visit the Kvadrat showroom and experience it for yourself.
Interview Oli Stratford
Photography Daniele Ansidei