The Design Line: 26 March - 1 April
It’s always risky publishing on April Fools but here at the Design Line we promise you only truths – and piping hot takes – on this week of news, which features scandal at SCI-Arc, a new director for the Bartlett, and a Dyson invention that nobody asked for.
To infinity, and beyond (image: Nicholas Calcott).
Meet the Eameses
Charles and Ray Eames were famous for their belief that “eventually everything connects”, which is perhaps handy given how many interlocking bodies and organisations now look after their considerable design legacy. There’s the Eames Office, which works to “communicate, preserve, and extend the the Eamses’ work”; the Eames Foundation, which “preserves and protects Ray and Charles’ historic home in Los Angeles, California”; and this week saw the launch of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, “a new nonprofit organization that aims to bring the lessons of Ray and Charles Eames to those looking to solve today’s most challenging issues.” Trying to tease apart the bodies’ different areas of responsibility is knotty, but assessed on its own merits the Eames Institute seems a fine initiative. Led by writer John Cary and curator Llisa Demetrios, the institute will be based out of the Eames Ranch in Petaluma, California, where it will host exhibitions, events and programming that engage with the Eames’s methodology and design process. At the heart of this initiative is the Eames Collection – a repository of tens of thousands of prototypes, components, objects and art drawn from across the Eameses’ career. That’s got to be worth a visit, surely?
The air may be fresh but at what cost? (Image: Dyson).
Welcome to the snot zone
Unfortunately, this new product launch is not an April Fools, but it will have you looking like a fool if you’re foolish enough to drop what will surely be serious money on The Dyson Zone Air Purifying Headphones. From the company that brought you a £500 cult hairdryer and bailing on Britain after Brexit, here’s a personal air filter and noise cancelling headphone combo that will have you both looking and acting like a selfish prick. The concept responds to a serious problem, air pollution, which the World Health Organisation estimates kills 4.2m people a year. But instead of addressing an issue that disproportionately affects low income communities on a systematic or community level, the Dyson Zone just gives you a personal bubble of filtered air and silence. Even worse, as Chinese tech expert Naomi Wu points out, the headpiece effectively turns you into a covid bioweapon. Wearing one in an enclosed space will spray aerosols from your mouth on hapless bystanders, spreading any contagious respiratory diseases far and wide. While innovation in health technology isn’t unwelcome, this is a concept that should have been mothballed when the pandemic began.
“No, it is the children who are wrong” (image: YouTube).
Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone
The Oscars wasn’t the only live-streamed event to cause a furore this week. In a panel that aired 26 March, SCI-Arc faculty members practically fell over themselves to show how out of touch they are. The event was such a raging bin fire a whole hashtag sprang up to critique it and subsequent student protests have seen two faculty members suspended, pending investigation. SCI-Arc, or the Southern California Institute of Architecture, was founded in 1972 as a radical alternative to more traditional design institutions. An ethos that appears completely devoid in its current teaching staff. In a conversation titled ‘How to Be in an Office’, Dwayne Oyler, Marrikka Trotter, and Margaret Griffin, advised young architects to keep working 60-hour weeks on unliveable wages for the “passion” and suggested the best way to deal with climate anxiety was to fantasise about getting on the first rocket out of here. Students were outraged and on Wednesday panellist Trotter was placed on administrative leave, along with SCI-Arc graduate chair Tom Wiscombe. Wiscombe and Trotter allegedly had students work 18-hour days on a competition entry for Tom Wiscombe Architecture, and made threats against their industry reputations when they quit en masse after being made to deep clean his studio. It’s a grim incident, but heartening to see a new generation of architects refuse to be complicit in continuing a culture of exploitation.
You wouldn’t download a plant
When you think of piracy your mind jumps to the rum-swilling kind depicted in hilarious new comedy series Our Flag Means Death, or maybe some more modish digital pirates out to illegally download a film. But, as touched upon on a recent Words on Wood podcast, biopiracy is a big issue facing countries who wish to protect their unique species of flora. Biopiracy, aka scientific colonialism, is where the genetics of an indegenous species are stolen by corporations developing new drugs and other products and placed behind a patent. It’s a topic that was hotly debated in Geneva this week during negotiations for the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD), a global agreement seeking to protect nature – like a Paris Agreement for plants. Developing nations are, quite rightly, demanding a system for financial compensation should digitised genetic data, called digital sequence information (DSI), from their native species be used by pharmaceuticals to turn a profit. Countries from across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean want loopholes in the DSI closed before they agree to the terms. Sharing and protecting resources is key to saving the planet, and continued exploitation from corporations can’t be allowed to sneak in the back door.
Alejandro Aravena is one of the Pritzker pinups for Doha’s trio of museums (image: Qatar Museums).
It’s a hat trick
Why have one Pritzker Prize-winning architect when you could have three? Well, four, although technically Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron share theirs. Anyway. Qatar Museums has announced it has plans to build not one, not two, but three brand new cultural institutions in Doha, each one designed by a top architectural practice. Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena (Pritzker laureate 2016) and his studio ELEMENTAL will build The Art Mill, an exhibition and performance campus built on the site of a historic flour mill. Herzog & de Meuron (Pritzker class of 2001) is heading up design for an Islamic art museum with galleries and a library. One day soon it will be hard to find a major city that hasn’t got a museum by Herzog & de Meuron. Meanwhile the Qatar Auto Museum will be designed by OMA, the practice founded by Rem Koolhaas (Mr Pritzker 1999). The trio of museums are set to “complete the cultural ecosystem of Qatar and advance the nation’s creative economy”. The cult of the starchitect is alive and well, it seems.
Amy Culper takes on the beleaguered Bartlett (image: courtesy of The Bartlett).
A sea change?
Congratulations to Amy Kulper, the US academic who was announced this week as the new director of The Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London. Kulper is set to take over from Bob Shiel, whose eight-year tenure is coming to its end, joining off the back of a stint as head of architecture att the Rhode Island School of Design and previous teaching posts at the University of Cambridge, UCLA, Sci Arc and the University of Michigan. “We are currently witnessing a sea change in architectural education,” Kulper said upon her appointment, “as the architect’s role is strategically expanded to include fluency and expertise in racial, social, and environmental justice and decoloniality.” The Bartlett will be hoping she can deliver just that, with the school’s reputation having been heavily scarred by recent scandal. The school is currently undergoing an independent investigation into its “culture and behaviours”after a number of former students made allegations of bullying, several of which focused on sex or race-based discrimination. A sea change would probably be welcome, but is a new director enough to turn the tide?