The Design Line: 9 - 15 July
As we await the arrival of the european Heat Dome it’s another scorcher for this week on the Design Line. Jony Ive swaps the patronage of Apple for that of the British monarchy, Nothing launches its literally and metaphorically transparent smartphone, and the Institute of Digital Archaeology copies the Parthenon Marbles behind the British Museum’s back.
Ive got news for you
It was a big week for Jony Ive, whose contract with former employee Apple is rumoured to be coming to a surprise early end. The New York Times reported that Ive’s company LoveFrom and the technology giant are parting ways, after senior Apple execs grew annoyed with the money being spent on Ive – a rumoured £100m – while their designers kept jumping ship to work for Ive. It’s the end of an era, as the British-American designer who took the world from brightly coloured iMacs to Apple’s upcoming AR headset. It’s onwards and upwards for Ive, though, who was the cover star of the August edition of Wallpaper* – alongside Prince Charles. HRH and Ive have teamed up for Terra Carta Design Lab (assiduous readers of Design Line may remember we covered their competition-winning cow gas masks recently), which aims to invest in solutions to climate change. In a soul-baring interview with Deyan Sudjic, Ive’s revealed how he is driven by both anxiety and fury. “So many products do not deserve to exist,” he raged. “The minimum that they should do to justify themselves and consume all that material is that their designers should care about them.” Strong words from a designer who has the ear of a future king.
This is one smartphone with nothing to hide (image: Nothing).
Nothing ventured, nothing gained
In a market so dominated by Apple and Samsung, a new phone launch that can garner the tech media’s attention is notable. This Tuesday saw the launch of Phone (1) by UK-based Nothing. Nothing, led by CEO Carl Pei, has garnered much interest in the run up to the launch due to a combination of trendy marketing and industry big hitters working on the Phone (1) team. Nothing’s design director Adam Bates is a former Dyson design lead, whilst designer Tom Howard of Teenage Engineering also worked closely with Pei and Bates on the project. Phone (1)’s eye-catching design offer to consumers is its translucent plastic back (a brand signature of Nothing’s) encasing a series of LED lights. These activate in various glowing hieroglyphs along with retro synth-y sounds corresponding to app notifications. Whilst the phone itself is widely reported as a fairly standard Android phone (albeit with some neat LED bells and whistles), Nothing’s less obvious appeal may be found in its material sourcing. Nothing claims that 100 per cent of the aluminium in its phone is recycled and that over half of all the plastic components used are from recycled or bio-based sources. Refreshing from an industry often known for a murky materials sourcing supply chain. Nothing’s Phone (1) may find more devotees in consumers who want a sensible, consciously made phone as much as for people looking for a cool alternative to the dominant smartphone models.
The nebula of a dying star seen through an unfortunately named telescope (image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI).
To infinity and 13bn years beyond
Space is, after all, the final frontier, so there was great excitement when the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope were beamed back to Earth and released by NASA this week. Launched in December 2021, the telescope gazes out into the stars from orbit 1,500,000km above our home planet. Those six months adjusting to space have been well spent, as the Webb unfurled its blingtanstic honeycomb of 18 gold-plated mirrors and a tennis court-sized five-layer sunshield. Designed for near-infrared astronomy, the Webb can peer back through space and time to show us how galaxies looked 13bn years ago. These inaugural images of distant galaxies far outstrip the humble offerings of its predecessor the Hubble telescope. Social media was sent into paroxysms by the pictures, some rejoicing in the wonder of science and the sheer insignificance of individuality in the face of the cosmos. Others expressed horror and existential dread. But NASA’s choice to name its new flagship telescope after the late James Webb, the former administrator of the Apollo mission, who cut his teeth developing tools of psychological warfare for the US Department of State, was notorious for his attempts to purge the space agency of LGBTQ+ employees. It’s a homophobic legacy NASA has failed to grapple with. Perhaps there are frontiers closer to home that could bear closer attention.
A (warm) cheeky subscription
Have we not reached peak subscription yet? Once the preserve of newspapers, every startup under the sun has muscled in on the ruse of regularly subtracting a smallish sum from customers in return for a reliable service. From razors to meal kits, wardrobes to furniture, there is little that cannot be subscribed to, for a price. But there are some things that one might expect to come as standard with a significant purchase, like a car, for example. BMW has found itself at the centre of fervid debate over its heated seats, which it is trying to shill to customers in South Korea as an added extra to the tune of $18 a month. It seems pretty egregious to charge people to use something that is already integral to the thing that they bought off you in the first place, but times are apparently tough in the automaker industry. But unless you cough up, BMW will block the software that makes your bum all nice and toasty on a chilly morning. It used to be fairly standard to pay extra upfront for heated seats and the ilk, but the car company is clearly hungry for regular infusions in the form of microtransactions from those suffering from a cold derriere. What’s next? A regular fee to unlock one’s front door? A toll for turning on the fridge light? We would like to unsubscribe from this design trend, please.
A piece of marble cake
It’s been over 200 years and Britain has still not returned the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. Diplomatic government-level requests have fallen on deaf ears, but now some renegade archaeologists have proposed a solution. It’s not a reverse-Indiana Jones plot (a shame) but robots. The Institute of Digital Archaeology in Oxford has developed a 3D-machining device it says could reproduce exact copies of the disputed artefacts. The robot is currently beavering away at a workshop in Carrera, of marble fame, milling a prototype copy of the head of a horse from one of the marbles held in the museum. Once the trial run has proved satisfactory, the robot will tackle a block of authentic Acropolis marble quarried from Mount Pentelicus. “Our sole purpose is to encourage repatriation of the Elgin marbles,” said the institute’s executive director Roger Michel. “When two people both want the same cake, baking a second, identical cake is one obvious solution.” Whether the museum would settle for this Ship of Theseus-style cake is another question. The institution already proved obstreperous when the Institute of Digital Archaeology wanted to scan the marbles, so staff snuck in posing as guests and scanned them anyway using LIDAR technology downloaded on an iPad. So perhaps the metaphor here is sneaking into someone else’s bakery to bake them a cake with their own ingredients. Once the real fake marbles are finished, its makers plan to display them in an as-yet-undisclosed London location. Hopefully on the British Museum’s doorstep.
This bridge won’t be budging for Bezos’ big boat (image: Wikimedia Commons).
Bezos’ bridge too far
There was rejoicing in Rotterdam at the news that the historic Koningshavenbrug Bridge has been spared a temporary dismantling to serve a megayacht belonging to Jeff Bezos. Colloquially known as The Lift, the bridge was built by architect Pieter Joosting in 1927 and was a part of the Breda–Rotterdam railway. The innovative piece of infrastructure allowed the railway tracks to simply lift up to allow ships to move in and out of the port. It was decommissioned in 1993 and has been designated a historic monument. The central lift has been removed once, for refurbishment, and in February 2022 news broke that the 55m span would be taken out once more – to allow Y721, the $500m three-masted luxury sailing yacht being custom built for the billionaire Amazon owner, by Dutch shipbuilder Oceano, to pass through to the sea. When complete, it will be the largest privately owned sailing ship in the world, yet the Y721 also requires its own support yacht with a helicopter pad, as the masts would get in the way of any aircraft. Anyway, there was outrage over the 100-year-old bridge having to be taken apart to serve the whims of one of the world’s richest men who is building a boat the size of the pyramids. This is one monument that won’t be moving, perhaps because locals threatened to egg the ship as it passed – proof that direct action gets results. No word, yet, on how the hulking craft will finally make it to the sea.