In the run up to the general election, the term change will be much used and abused at Westminster. As Brendan O’Neill, editor of the independent political site, Spiked, points out, Gordon Brown used the word nearly 50 times in his speech to the Labour Party Conference; Peter Mandelson used it 38 times, and David Cameron has claimed to be launching a ‘movement for change’. ‘”Change” has become the buzzword of our age because the parties are no longer rooted in a clear set of values,’ says O’Neill.
With that in mind, we decided to launch a search for the people who we felt are really making change: being proactive, maverick and challenging, rather than simply waiting for a change of government. We enlisted the help of many contributors and friends to compile a list that includes well-known names and complete newcomers. In addition to these choices, we also asked three experts in the fields of technology, architecture, urbanism and product/furniture design to make their own suggestions about who will bring change in 2010. You can see their lists here
All illustrations by Marta Baztan
The Cloud Design Team
Architect Carlo Ratti (pictured) of Massachussetts Institute of Technology and his team may not have won the Mayor’s competition to design an observatory for the London Olympics, but they plan to build The Cloud independently on a different site. The team will start fundraising (or ‘Cloudraising’) for the project in 2010, working with members of Barack Obama’s campaign team, and with support from Google, which will provide free advertising and the structure for a micro-donations site where the public will buy into the project.
The vision for this incredibly ambitious idea was conceived in Milan with advice from the writer Umberto Eco. Others on the team – which is spread across five continents – include artist Tomas Saraceno; architect Alex Haw, and engineer Jörg Schlaich. The Cloud consists of a 120m-high, cable-net tower, with observation deck and inflatable spheres, each containing a lattice of LEDs. Ratti describes the design as ‘light as air itself – a tribute to a digital age of bits and atoms beyond the antiquity of steel and glass – a structure which reveals the connected networks of a common humanity fuelling the Olympics, its 2012 host city, and the world itself’.
Finn Williams, Urban designer, Croydon Council
Williams pursues imaginative, but realistic, solutions to urban design problems. Since being appointed urban designer to Croydon Council in January 2009, Williams has already launched an ambitious 30-year regeneration programme, along with architects Studio Egret West for the East Croydon region. 2010 will see the first steps of this scheme being realized: ‘I’m looking forward to turning radically practical plans by young offices like Studio Egret West, East and OKRA into road works and building sites,’ says Williams.
Despite his background of thinking about urban design on a large scale, working with the likes of Rem Koolhaas and General Public Agency, his plans for 2010 also involve change at a more pragmatic level: improving the quality of local authority planners through basic means such as altering the job description and removing bureaucracy to make it a more desirable role. He is working with the Architecture Foundation and the Greater London Authority on introducing work placements at local councils for architecture graduates.
Regina Peldszus, Researcher, Kingston University
While most designers these days seem content to limit their field of study to the immediate environment, it’s good to hear of someone looking at design that will potentially help us to reach new environments. In 2010 Regina Peldszus will finish a three-year AHRC-funded research project at the Design Research Centre and the Astronautics and Space Systems Group at Kingston University. This involves developing design approaches to make the interior of spacecrafts on long, isolated transfer missions, such as to Mars or a Near- Earth Asteroid, more habitable.
So far her work has taken her to subarctic Lapland, the European Space Agency (ESA), and to NASA in California. Peldszus hopes to set up an infrastructure for research into design for (human) space flight in London, similar to other hubs in Europe.
The timing, she says, is perfect and the UK is well positioned for this, with a Briton in the new class of European astronauts; front-row involvement in space tourism; new extreme-environment architecture; a young but ambitious field of space medicine and, of course, a long tradition of excellence in space engineering. ‘If we pair all of this with world-class design schools in London, and it could be a lot of fun,’ says Peldszus.
Alan Pert, Architect, NORD Architecture
Regardless of the scale or nature of the project, NORD Architecture, led by Pert, has a habit of rethinking the norm. Its master plan for Stoke-on-Trent demonstrated a new approach to regeneration, combining infrastructure improvements with a subtle awareness of the city’s history as a centre of the ceramics industry. The first completed project of the master plan, the Bridgewater Bridge, has exemplified this approach. 2010 is an important year for NORD: it will see the completion of two significant projects on very different scales. The Wexford County Council offices in the south-east of Ireland, will be the Glasgow-based practice’s largest project to date. NORD will also be completing a house in Dungeness, part of the Living Architecture portfolio that also includes houses designed by Hopkins, MVRDV and Peter Zumthor.
NORD’s project includes design down to the smallest detail, and they have prototyped a range of fixtures and fittings including bespoke furniture items. Pert is also looking to extend his academic involvement, taking on research projects into prototype housing that will ultimately feed back into his practice.
Manick Govinda, Arts Project Manager, Arts Admin.
Having gathered nearly 10,000 signatures for a petition, in 2010, Manick Govinda plans to up the ante on the campaign he’s leading (with the Manifesto Club) against draconian new regulations restricting non-EU artists visiting the UK. The Home Office restrictions affect international artists and academics visiting the UK for talks, temporary exhibitions, concerts, or artists’ residencies. They now have to submit to a series of arduous and expensive procedures to get their visa, and then more bureaucratic controls when they are in the UK. Already a series of concerts and residencies have been cancelled.
As a direct result of the campaign, Govinda and Arts Admin were invited by a developer to commission a range of permanent artworks for the Town Hall Hotel and apartments in Bethnal Green, which will open in April. Designed by RARE Architecture, the project will feature the work of emerging East-End talent, and, says Govinda, ‘is a good opportunity to raise the issue of freedom of movement’.
Jules Wright, Curator, The Wapping Project
Wright has developed a reputation for ground-breaking exhibitions at The Wapping Project gallery in east London. While that space is owned by charitable organisation, the Women’s Playhouse Trust, Wright is now expanding her operations with a new, personally owned space in the shadow of Tate Modern: The Wapping Project Bankside.
With this space, Wright aims to further encourage interest in collecting photography, film and video. The gallery will be representing the work of both emerging photographers, and those with great experience. 2010 will see original work displayed by, among others, 38-year-old photographer Annabel Elgar, who uses places and architecture to create disturbing scenes in her photography, and new work by the 93-year-old fashion photographer Lillian Bassman.
This year will also see Wright directing a photo story, North of the Arctic Circle, and a drama at The Wapping Project; staging a retrospective of one of the UK’s most treasured painters, and, she hopes, opening a hotel in Wapping.
Yuli Toh and Takero Shimazaki
Plenty of architects are unhappy with the official architectural education that is on offer around the world. But very few go as far as setting up an architecture school in their own studio. In 2010 Takero Shimazaki and Yuli Toh will launch a two-week workshop in Japan and a series of evening workshops, in addition to the four-week summer forum they’ve been running for the past few years in their London office, which has now produced more than 70 graduates.
Their aim is to explore ‘authorship’ in architecture, which they believe is hard for architects to hold on to in the professional world. ‘Creators need to take ownership and pride in what they make and design and not rely on a ready-made formula, or a global language,’ says Shimazaki.
Toh Shimazaki Architects (TSA) believes that a personal, intuitive approach is often squashed out of contemporary architecture. They hope the workshops and summer forum will build confidence so that architects can give a personal response to the site and brief, instead of being dominated by the pragmatics of the situation.
The TSA Forum is also unique in bringing architects together, breaking down the professional jealousies that often affect the profession. On top of this, TSA has started Forum Mini, an architecture school for 6-12 year olds.
Richard Wilson, Sculptor
It is a remarkable testament to Wilson’s ongoing creativity that he is still able to confound preconceptions and generate unease with his work more than 30 years after his first solo show. In 2009 the artist created the illusion of a crushed and wrecked corner on the facade of the London School of Economics’ New Academic Building. The installation challenged architectural expectations in much the same way as his famous Turning the Place Over work in Liverpool, 2007.
After a year of planning and implementing large-scale works, Wilson begins 2010 able to start a new set of projects. One of these will, assuming permissions can be obtained, be an artwork that subverts the perceived stability of cranes: working with The Wapping Project’s Jules Wright, he will install orange neon lighting on the etal struts of a large construction crane and at a slight angle to the structure. Oscillating between these two positions, the light will create an impression that the crane is shaking and unstable.
Elena Corchero, Textile Designer, Lost Values
A winner of the Blueprint Award for Best Use of Materials at 100% Design 2009, Elena Corchero has big plans to roll out her products and form new collaborations, including a project with Kate Stone from Novalia Printed Electronics for interactive paper goods.
In 2010 she will expand her business, Lost Values, from a new base at central London’s Cockpit Arts, selling her LFLECT products that combine a reflective thread with traditional knitware. Until now, Corchero has been based at Distance Lab in the Highlands of Scotland, a creative research organization bringing together digital media technology, design and the arts.
She hopes soon to incorporate the LFLECT technology into interiors, and also has a range of jewellery and products that explore portable solar technology, including a parasol that after being exposed to sunlight during the day, becomes a light at night.
Corchero plans to run a series of workshops on smart textiles and electronics from her Holborn base. She is particularly eager to encourage girls to get involved: ‘there’s still a huge gap between girls and boys. If you go to Hamley’s toyshop, the technology section is full of boys’.
Agents of change, Graffiti Artists
This collective of artists gave graffiti a new depth and poignancy with its Ghost Village project in October 2009, in which it created paintings on the walls throughout the abandoned village of Polphail in south-west Scotland. The project was carried out by core members Timid, Remi Rough System and LXOne, along with collaborators Derm and Stormie Mills.
This same group, who are based across Europe, will be working together on projects in the year ahead: Agents of Change are going into 2010 with plans to take their imaginative approach to abandoned structures up to a new scale. Current ideas include working an a coal-fuelled power plant in Scotland, which was only decommissioned in the summer of 2009, and on a military tank staging post in east Berlin.
Responding to the specific historical and personal resonance of sites, these projects hope to bring greater challenges, both on a practical level and in dealing with larger historical and political ideas.
The Manifesto Club, Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life
In 2010 the Manifesto Club will launch a campaign against alcohol control zones, which are increasingly restricting peoples’ freedom to drink in local parks and on beaches. The campaign follows Josie Appleton and Dolan Cummings’ (pictured right) report on the booze bans affecting the UK, charting the creeping growth of drinking regulation, and showing how public space is being reorganised around the whims of police and bureaucrats.
They are also planning an international launch for the their book Attention Please, which documents patronising and pointless safety signs that are polluting public space. The book began as a photoessay by RCA design graduate Tom Mower, who photographed needless warning signs in the built environment: tape over a crack in the pavement, or a puddle marked off with police cones. The project questions what such useless bureaucratic signage means for the look and feel of urban life, and called for a more rational approach to public space. Later, members of the public made their own contributions via the Manifesto Club’s website.
Anthony Hoete, Architect, What Architecture
Hoete’s past projects, from a rooftop nursery in Hackney, to the architectural ‘hijacking’ of a suburban detached house, take problematic briefs and stringent red-tape requirements as an opportunity for innovation. His next project is a west London school with a Lego facade. The idea was a response to the Government’s Every Child Matters programme, and managed to include the pupils, as well as parents and local officials, in the design process.
Hoete has also designed a community centre in Senegal, where the plans have been woven into the clothing of the locals who will be building the structure. Also on the cards in 2010 is the renovation of a Maori glass hut, which was transported to the UK from New Zealand in the 19th century, and now sits in the grounds of a Surrey country house. Hoete’s approach rejects ‘cryogenically sealing’ listed buildings, and intends to turn it into a working public amenity.
Abraham Thomas, Curator of Designs, Victoria and Albert Museum
In an ambitious project that will open during the London Festival of Architecture, Abraham Thomas is bringing several of the world’s most interesting architects to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Seven designs have been commissioned from architects including Terunobu Fujimori of Japan, Rural Studio of the USA, Studio Mumbai of India and Helen and Hard of Norway.
Full-scale, small buildings will be located around the museum so that the visitor can explore the power of small spaces on themes such as work, play, contemplation and performance. Thomas’s aim is that people should be able to experience the architecture directly, rather than just through looking at drawings and models.
Alun Moreton, Architect, Scott Brownrigg
Dr Ivana Wingham, Academic, University of Brighton
This unlikely pairing demonstrates that commercial architectural practice need not work at a distance from more theoretical, academic research. Moreton is an associate at Scott Brownrigg, a well-established architecture practice with a roster of corporate and public clients. Wingham is an architectural academic at University of Brighton, whose research has focused on the links between architectural theory and practice. They have initiated a series of exhibitions and debates titled No Place Like Home, held at Scott Brownrigg’s London office.
The project, which continues into February 2010 and is likely to spur similar events, is partly a response to the simplistic and negative tone of the Prince Charles vs Richard Rogers debate over Chelsea Barracks, but also a dissatisfaction with the level of communication between architects, educational institutions and the general public.
Each of the four installations in the series explores the public space of a different European city: Athens, London, Milan and Tallinn. They range from a Temporary Urban Garden by Wingham, to a focollaboration between fashion and theatre designer Reet Aus and Finnish composer, sound designer and producer Ville Hyvönen.
Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook
Led by writer and graphic designer Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brooks, of graphic design agency Spin, Unit Editions is no ordinary publishing company. Specialising in books that are about, by and for designers, it is specifically interested in hybrid books, which Shaughnessy describes as ‘books that exist as physical high-quality entities, but also have additional content online’.
With Unit Editions, Shaughnessy and Brooks are proposing a way forward for book publishing and, in the process, demonstrating that designers can lead the way: ‘publishers who follow the record industry’s example and ignore the internet are doomed.’Following 2009’s Studio Culture, which featured designers’ studios and interviews that explored the different ways to run a creative practice, Unit Editions’ next project will be titled Super graphics. It will be an investigation into the use of graphics and imagery in the built environment today and in the 1960s and 1970s when such work first blossomed.
David Adjaye, Architect, Adjaye Associates
While the urban centres of China, India and Brazil have been muchanalysed in recent years, African cities have received relatively little attention. This could begin to change, led by the efforts of David Adjaye. Over the last 10 years Adjaye has been taking photographs of cities across all of Africa’s 53 countries. ‘Africa has always suffered from being thought about in vague terms as being dangerous, or the victim of extreme of poverty. I’m not sure that people can even imagine what an African city looks like,’ says Adjaye.
A selection of the architect’s photography will be exhibited at the Design Museum at the end of March, and will also be published in a book. Though the photographs in Adjaye’s collections are intentionally taken without too much deliberation, almost as snapshots, they signify the start of a growing interest in Africa’s major cities.
