This was my first London Design Festival and I was unsure exactly what I was going to get. Was it going to be quirky, cutting-edge design or the bunch of faceless distributors that was the Birmingham Interiors show in January… well it was both really. The two boutique shows I went to, Tent and Designers Block, had some real creative flare, but we got round each exhibition in around 30 minutes. Whereas, at 100% Design in Earls Court, we really had to wade through a lot of fountain showers to find the gems of the exhibition.
Trends
Vintage
The Circa Vintage collection at Tent is a safe way to go when looking for design trends. We know most of it is good, otherwise it would have been thrown away years ago, but it is for a different reason that I think the vintage trend is a good one. The term “reuse” doesn’t get enough credit in environmental marketing; it is by far the most energy/waste friendly way of buying furniture, because the only reprocessing needed is a little elbow grease and a van ride or two. The key point here is to go authentic vintage — don’t cheat and go replica, because it is the patina that make these designs rich and desirable. You would only be selling yourself short otherwise. A popular piece in the circa vintage collection was the Eames DSW (below). I prefer the wooden leg version rather than the Eames DSR chrome legged version.
Thanks to the BMD Love Blog for this link to 100%’s new vox-designer video all about sustainable design.
I know about the designers and journalists Max Fraser and Aaron Stone have interviewed for this film but I don’t really know them for their work in overtly sustainable design projects yet - something to look into. Send in your examples of mainstream sustainable design and we’ll feature them in the comments feed here.
Alex and myself (Ed) did a whistle-stop tour of some of the main attractions on offer to see what 2008 had to offer. Here’s what caught my eye and captured my imagination at the London Design Festival.
Tent London exhibited a diverse range of furniture and lighting. The Wired Lamp by Something From Nothing caught my eye, a simple design that would work well in a contemporary interior. I also liked the painted wooden furniture by Meg Shirayama at Rocket, the wood / gloss paint combo gets mine and Alex’s nod for what’s hot in 2008.
Pli launched the Reee chair on Wednesday this week. Thanks to everyone who came to help us celebrate. We had a good party and I hear some of our friends carried on into the weee small hours.
But the main thing was for us to share the achievement of bringing an innovative product to market, with all the stakeholders, partners and well-wishers who have been instrumental in the project.
Pli began developing the Reee chair in 2006 with Sprout Design as the designer. Now we have a finished product, already in shops and installed in some homes, meeting rooms and (next week) lecture halls.
Here are some photos of the launch… (click to enlarge)
If you can’t make Christopher’s “100% Sustainable?” round table discussion to be held at London’s 100% Design exhibition in Earl’s Court 21 September, or you can’t get enough of Pli, you have another opportunity to catch us in the flesh. I will be attending a similar discussion for “100% Sustainable?” on 18 September. The topic to be explored is “What opportunities could a shift towards sustainable design offer individuals and companies within the design profession?” It starts at 3 pm on the 100% Sustainable? stand.
100% Design 2008
See Christopher’s post for registration details and more information about the event
I will be taking part in the “100% Sustainable?” round table discussion to be held at London’s 100% Design exhibition in Earl’s Court on 21 September.
The discussion will open up to take questions from the floor and it’ll be great to hear some testing questions and illuminating ideas, so come along if you’re available. It starts at 2 pm on the 100% Sustainable? stand.
100% Design 2008
There will be a seminar on each day of the exhibition. Sunday will be the best one. The seminars are free to exhibition visitors (that’s free to trade visitors too, if you register online before 12 September).
Here’s 100% Design’s description of the event… Read more »
After learning the theory of Lean manufacture on day 7 it was time to put it into practice, this meant playing with Lego. The reason for the Lego was to demonstrate the difference between a ‘push’ style of manufacture, a traditional style of manufacture, and ‘pull’ style developed through Lean manufacture. A simple metaphor to explain what was to come is try and pulling a piece of string versus pushing it.
If you want results in manufacturing the current English trend is to go ‘Lean’. However this concept of ‘Lean’ manufacturing has been around since the 1960’s if not earlier. During this time post-WW2 Japan was rebuilding its manufacturing infrastructure and trying get rid of its reputation for low-quality products. American experts were sent to Japan to help the automotive manufacturers improve quality. Companies like Toyota and Yamaha embraced this quality driven Lean manufacturing style. From there, the Japanese made Lean manufacturing their own with unsurpassed levels of quality and manufacturing efficiency. Soon Europe began to implement its own style of lean manufacture. Nissan, Toyota, and Honda brought Lean manufacturing principles to the UK during the 90’s. Now these UK plants are leading the way in manufacturing innovation and efficiency.
Day 7 and 8 of the NPD course were delivered by Colin Allaway from London Manufacturing Advisory Service. He has worked in manufacturing for the past 37 years, for a wide range of companies from plastic caps to aerospace, so he soon had us up to speed on the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principles that lean manufacture is based around. Read more »
After the dramatic events of day 3 which I fortunately missed out on, Furniture Works had managed to regroup and relocate for day 4 which was on intellectual property. This module was headed by Marice Cumber from the intellectual property advice company Own-it. She had scheduled a range of speakers from various sectors of the IP industry.
The first speaker was David Morgan from the UKIPO. He gave an overview of how IP works and some case-studies showing the value of IP to a company. I had seen him speak before at a previous London Remade seminar and it was a good refresher on the basics of IP. Read more »
On Wednesday 25 June I followed my colleague Alex onto the New Product Development course organized by Furniture Works at London Metropolitan University. Alex had already briefed me on the format and content of the course so far - I’m the one who spends most time working with design consultants and we agreed I can use the training on that topic most.
NPD Day 3
Jodie Eastwood of Metropolitan Works spoke about how furniture developers and manufacturers can work more productively with designers by breaking down the different issues and expectations into manageable ideas.
We started by differentiating between conceptual design, commercial design and technical design (e.g. conceptual like the Campana Brothers, commercial like Simon Pengelly and technical like the anonymous designer who makes injection-moulded dustbins). What kind of product are you planning — therefore who do you want to brief for the design?
Then we moved on to the design project structure. This was very useful advice — the sort of training you think you already know, but it underlines how easy it is to stray from these intelligent project structures and allow things to get ad-hoc. The whole course group spent a while discussing the balance between creative freedom and hitting the brief on target. How much leeway should a designer get, and how much restraint should the client require? It’s a fuzzy issue and it’s great to discuss it with people who really understand both sides of the dilemna. We also discussed what motivates designers and how to bring out the best in them by learning how to be a ‘good’ client.
Finally, before the morning session finished, we focused on brief writing and we looked at the specific pieces of information a designer should need, in order to fulfil it and come back with usable concept drawings on schedule. We talked about production costs and margins and went down an interesting sidetrack to debate the merits of loss-leaders in the product range.
Over the last two days I attended the first two parts of a pilot programme on New Product Development at the London Metropolitan University. It is a module style course that helps start-ups, furniture designer/makers, and manufacturers pin points weaknesses and develop strengths in their product development. Pli being a company that focuses on effective product development both Christopher and I jumped at the chance to attend the free pilot of this programme.
Day One: Product strategy
We started with an introduction, then quickly moved on to the first module focusing on product strategy. Delivered by Matthew Lewis, from Furniture Works, we went through different elements of product strategy including, market placement and adding value to products. Some of these elements I knew well while others were gems of knowledge that cleared up various confusions I had been “living with” up until now. Read more »
On Wednesday this week, our colleague Eray Cayli presented his research into Utility Furniture at the Green and Trifty seminar organised by London Remade. If you’re a product designer, a design student or simply somebody with an interest in sustainable design, you’re sure to find his insights persuasive and inspiring.
Eray’s central point — as I understand it — is that the Utility Furniture scheme applied austerity measures not only to material supply and manufacturing processes, but also to the creative freedom and experimental curiosity of designers in that period (1942 - 1952). Imagine being constrained for 10 years of your working life by design committees staffed by bureauctratic appointees.
Are we risking our liberty to explore and develop new designs, materials and processes as British designers of the 1930s had done, unwittingly? If design professionals won’t moderate their own environmental impact, who will do it for them? Would it be possible for restraints to be applied centrally by governments or trade authorities to limit our work for the benefit of a low-carbon economy in the future?
Importantly, Eray has also spotted opportunities that arose from the Utility scheme, particularly for small local manufacturers who benefitted from a shortened supply and distribution network. They picked up the business that was previously aggregated by the big producers in High Wycombe and London’s East End. Will we increasingly make a virtue of local supply and short journeys?
You can download Eray’s presentation directly here. We’ll be podcasting the audio and slides in the next few days, once Eray has settled back in Istanbul.
If you want to follow up on the research into Utility Furniture and its application to new resource-efficient manufacturing business models, contact Pli or comment here and we’ll pick up the conversation with you.
Les Mandelbaum, co-founder and president of Umbra, is to our way of thinking. Here are his comments on his company’s sustainable product strategy from the floor of this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Show in New York. The interesting point he makes is that, once you have started down the road to sustainable design and product development, it eventually pervades the whole company and becomes an essential aspect of business and customer relations. The video chops off just when he gets into his stride.
This link came to us via Environmental Leader, a wide-ranging blog site about sustainable strategy for corporations. Worth a look. Read more »
In this TED talk he talks about designing value into a product. The style of design was a reaction to his first job designing “skins” for computers. He has now set out to really capture the users needs when designing a product. He takes you through an interesting array of case studies showing how design shouldn’t just be an addition to the project, more a set of values that runs in parallel to the product development.
Searching online for information on eco-friendly patents, I got sidetracked by blog posts from a design team at Nokia which is publishing research into sustainable mobile communications technology. This is interesting for us at Pli although we make chairs not phones. The links started with a press release about the Homegrown project.
Following up, I started by reading the comments and presentation materials posted by the Near Future Laboratory which led me to Raphael Grignani’s work on Homegrown and also on Remade, another Nokia project.
If a corporation has developed and patented a technology that has a general, environmentally-friendly benefit, then how can that patent protection be compatible with the pressing need to share and implement that kind of technology? What’s the point of inventing something environmentally useful if nobody else can use it, or can afford a license to use it?
The Eco-Patent Commons initiative sets out to address the issue in such a way as to reassure large, tech-driven corporations whose intellectual property is an important part of their market value. The scheme is being led by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and IBM in partnership with Nokia, Sony and Pitney Bowes.
As an example of how the scheme can work, have a look at
Nokia’s initiative which they annouced in January 2008.
For the full low-down on Eco-Patent Commons, click on the image…
Pli’s latest products are now available through the UK’s leading online sustainable furniture retailers. A group of new and established retailers are offering eco-friendly furniture and homeware for competitive prices and we are really pleased to have been chosen as a supplier to so many already this year.
You can find selected designs from our Grass, Reee, Hoop and Twist ranges at Nigel’s Eco Store, One Eco Home, The Greenhaus and Hidden Art. More retailers will be stocking our products soon and we will be announcing them over the next few weeks.
The rise of green awareness puts designers and manufacturers in a position where they have to back up what they say. A helping hand comes from FIRA (furniture industry research association), who launched an online software tool named Furniture FootPrinter, with an RSA event on April 17th. Pli was there to get a grasp of this brand new green tool for the industry.
The ease of business travel and internet communications can give product developers a false sense of security when it comes to selecting parts suppliers and development partners around the world. The thrill is immediate: a bright future beckons, made of cheaper parts and magical supply-chain savings. The disappointments are slower to arrive but months or years down the line, plenty of designers and specifiers will end up questioning the decision to go ‘offshore’.
If I were to tell you “I have invented a mechanical animal made out of plastic tubes and that roams the beaches only using the power of the wind” you may look at me a little strange. So when Dutch artist/engineer Theo Jansen describes his kinetic sculptures he would get some odd looks indeed. They have to be seen to be believed. They are a triumph of light-weight design, alternative energy sources and of thinking right outside the square (things that we rate highly here at Pli). He has even created a simple brain that controls these graceful beasts. This is only an 8 minute talk; even if you just skip through it it is worth the watch.
The Jean Prouvé exhibition ends on April 13. There’s just one week left to go and see this excellent collection of the French designer and manufacturer’s work at the Design Museum, by Tower Bridge in London. The Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition is also running, upstairs, and you can catch it until 27 April.
The Prouvé exhibition is laid out as a sequence of explorations into different aspects of his work. From the first exhibit, Prouvé is depicted here as a mature designer with a ready-established aesthetic and expertise.
Prouvé’s work is significant for succeeding generations of furniture designers and architects. Like Alvar Aalto (well presented by Shigeru Ban in last year’s Barbican exhibition) he offered his clients a combination of true craftsmanship, innovation and a vision that went beyond the bounds of the briefs he was set. Read more »
Pli has just brought out a longer version of the Grass media table, appropriately called the Long table. It’s 2.4 metres long (or wide, depending how you look at it) - that’s 2400 millimetres of media equipment, files, books, bottles, wedding presents, bowls and flatmates you can store on its unbroken bamboo surface. You can learn more about the design here (click on the image)…
Pli was invited to talk at the sustainable design seminar held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London on 4 March ‘08. I made a short presentation about the Reee chair to an audience of very well-informed and engaging product designers, design students, interior designers and manufacturers.
You can download all the presentations, including my slides, from the London Remade site (click on the logo).
April 2002 saw the arrival of one of those rare books that stays interesting and relevant long after its publication. It seemed to have an instant impact on the small world of sustainable design. But looking back it’s better described as a slow-burner: its impact is still apparent as the issues it discussed are shouldered by a growing community of designers.
I bought my copy of Cradle to Cradle a year later, in April 2003. It’s been a touchstone ever since: at Pli, terms like ‘downcycling’ and ‘nutrients’ still permeate our discussions.
Here’s a question for you: if you have read Cradle to Cradle, what have you done that you can say is a direct result of the ideas you came across in its rather heavy plastic pages?
The breaking news were delivered by German weekly newspaper Die Zeit: Philippe Starck is “fed up with his job and plans to retire in two years”. The renowned designer went on further to claim that “design is dead and his work ‘unnecessary’”.
Well, there are people who hate the French designer and others who adore him, as is the case with star names in any business. Some of those tree huggers out there might even be celebrating. Blogs are filled with outraged people arguing that they will not accept Starck’s confession, for he has done so much damage and made so much money out of it. I will approach this piece of breaking news from another angle. Read more »
This video is a really good conversation about collaborative design. Cameron Sinclair talks about projects he has worked on in Africa where creative thinking has made a big difference in people lives. His idea of ‘Open Source’ design uses the internet to create a free flowing creative environment where ideas can flourish without the restriction of geography.
There is a lot of buzz around ‘green’ and ’sustainable’ products. The big issue with this kind of marketing is that there is a big difference between saying green and being green. Read a previous post on greenwashing. The onus now lies on the consumer to check up on the manufacturer to make sure all their claims are accurate and no naughty indiscretions have been conveniently left out. The American Society of Interior Designers have developed a green products checklist which gives you things to look for when purchasing a green or sustainable product.
Here is a cool use of old paper-backs by UK Designer Lucy Norman…
Lucy Norman’s usage of recycled materials is key to her art. She has focused on designing a range of products under the slogan “Rethink, Reuse, Rebook”, combining a concern for the environment and the reuse of waste in a way that is both stylish and commercial. Another variation on green and re-cycled chandeliers, this one is made of recycled books which cannot be sold as no-one will buy them. Ordinarily they would have to be land filled which is costly and detrimental to the environment. Instead she created “Light Reading”, a quirky (and flame retardant) chandelier made by folding pages of books and hanging them around a ceiling light. The Paperback Partition is also made from unwanted books, and is an aesthetically pleasing room divider, providing good heat and acoustic insulation.
Inspiration posts