Sound enhances the way we perceive and understand space. In the city it does this by connecting the realm of public space to the private and intimate space of our minds. Sound gives any space, interior or exterior, its identity and is an important navigation and orientation tool.

Yet actually identifying a space aurally is difficult, especially in busy cityscapes where incessant noise erases and blurs the traces of other sounds. This, however, was the first task the participants of contemporary music and art promoter Sound and Music’s Ways of Hearing project were asked to carry out. This was the inaugural  workshop that kick-started a national programme of sound exploration and research.

In all, 36 sound artists, acousticians, designers, policy-makers and researchers took part, grouped in three distinct research city hubs: Bristol, London and Leeds.  As well as bringing together these professionals to explore the relationship between sound and built environment, Ways of Hearing aims to help individual practices with a specific interest to develop new design approaches, processes and innovations in sound.

The Ways of Hearing project can be defined as an experimental platform aiming to provoke new research and creative ideas combined with sound technologies. It also focuses on the cross-disciplinary intersection between sound, architecture and the arts. It was co-produced by MAAP (Media and Arts Partnership) a Leeds based public art consultancy directed by Sue Ball that played a crucial role on structuring the methodology of the programme and the selection of participant artist. This was coordinated with John Kieffer and Richard Whitelow from Sound and Music. The name Ways of Hearing came from a workshop that MAAP initiated in 2005 with American sound artist Bill Fontana.

As part of broadening the spectrum of sound exploration and creative investigation on a national scale, Sound and Music invited Arup and Blueprint to be project partners for Ways of Hearing. It also established a substantial network of local partners including Opera North and Lumen in Leeds, Musarc in London, and Arnolfini and the Architecture Centre in Bristol.

After the initial two-day workshops, which were run by a core group of practitioners brought in by Sound and Music to support each city group, participants had a week to finalise and submit their research proposals. They then had a further eight weeks to work on their projects.

Although the workshops were designed for experimentation and work-in-progress research, some projects reached completion during the process, while others continue to develop.

In the November issue we take a look at five specific research projects from the Ways of Hearing, which illustrate the wide spectrum of theoretical enquiry and practical creative research engendered.

‘As soon as we popped open the box, the Nintendo 3DS moved from desk to desk, here at our studio, and was the major distraction for a week. It is a definite concept progression from the original Nintendo DS, with ever-increasing possibilities for the games and application designer. Its unique range of available control methods, a touch screen, stylus, and 3D camera offers more possibilities for games and applications to interface with the user.

‘In our opinion, the real technological leap for the unit is not solely the inclusion of a 3D screen or camera – although it is impressive to have these features on a consumer unit, they are certainly do not create an instant holodeck – the real potential we see is using the 3D camera as an augmented reality device to create the long-promised breed of alternate reality games and applications that have been so far a science fiction to the consumer.

‘What the 3DS delivers, as so many technological artefacts have promised in the last decade, is a portable console that can successfully mix virtual and physical elements with startling accuracy. Using the image depth from its stereoscopic camera, 3D objects can be dropped into view, panned around and interacted with. In an urban context, the 3DS has the potential to offer unprecedented possibilities.

‘Sadly, the drawbacks are evident as soon as you begin to tinker. Nintendo’s software development kits are notoriously difficult to obtain, and require a significant financial commitment to the company. Whereas Microsoft offered the open source community the opportunity to get to grips with its revolutionary motion detection Xbox 360 peripheral Kinect, Nintendo retain an incredibly proprietary stance.’

The perforated urethane back of SAYL is supported by a Ytower instead of a frame allows for maximum upper body movement

Creating something new for Herman Miller could well rank as one of industrial design’s more formidable challenges. Just look at the heritage. The Eames Aluminum Series, first produced in the late 1950s is still  a desirable (if pricey) office option. The Aeron, created by Bill Stumpf and launched in 1994, shows no sign of losing its appeal; at about $1,000 (£640) a pop, the company has now sold more than six million of the mesh giants, accruing a few billion dollars of profit for the company. Jeff Weber’s Embody, meanwhile, was brought to the market in 2008 and – in spite of its six years of development and the heft of Herman Miller behind its launch – hasn’t made much of a ripple on the collective design conscience. May it serve as a cautionary tale.

On top of this sheer weight of success is the contradictory fact that the office chair offers up two problems, one physical and one cultural. First, it has to combine structure and comfort and, equally, it has to reflect the interests of its times, and the changing landscape of contemporary office life. The Aluminum series did this brilliantly, the progressive edge of its extruded aluminium frame and the clean lines of its structure representing a post-war environment where machinery was making a better world. The Aeron was the ultimate yuppy accessory – a status symbol that created the impression of being filled with more engineering per square centimeter than your black Beamer and taking up not much less space, as aggressive as the times that launched it.

Yves Béhar is well placed to create a new offering, which responds to very different times: non-hierachical workplaces in a digital world. Where the Aeron makes its presence more than felt, the SAYL should slip, politely and prettily, into any given space.

With the white structural Y-tower that supports its back and the large round plastic key that allows the seat to be heightened and lowered (the arms just rachet up and down), its language is playful and graphic, almost cartoon-like. The perforated urethane back deliberately lets light and air pass through (a clear version is still in development). Add to that the elimination of a frame (Béhar, a devotee of yoga, is vehement that a frame is an obstruction rather than a support and was determined to open up the whole shoulder area for maximum upper body movement) and it’s a chair that barely wants to be there. It takes the basic design proposition of the Embody and refines it to the point of abstraction.

This is not a chair for the complacent executive – it’s only going to cost about $399 (£255), for goodness sake. It’s more a tool for a sprightly worker, who’ll be playing with an iPad before setting off to a meeting on a bike. It’s also a poster chair for sustainability, and in that respect it fulfils Béhar’s wish that it should be ‘symbolic of its time’.

Béhar’s design for SAYL has refined the Embody to cartoonish abstraction. Its simplified form can be assembled without tools

Sustainability is still the biggest buzz word, and the SAYL is a classic Cradle to Cradle product, using the minimum amount of material, having the maximum amount of recyclable parts and being as economic to ship as possible. It will be sent out ready to assemble using no tools, in half-size boxes, cutting down on waste and transport cost. Perhaps the least wasteful part of the chair, however, was in its development. While it took 70 prototypes and 1,000 sketches, the process was condensed into two years – a very short time in industrial design.

Béhar is already known for the ethical and human-centred ideals of his company Fuseproject. It has produced the XO-1 laptop for the nonprofit organisation One Laptop Per Child and the EV charging stations for electric cars, for example. Less of a tree-hugger, though, he is one of a few eco-sensitive designers to be aware that sustainability needs to be sexy.

Béhar’s stylings provide an important dimension to Herman Miller – an air of sensuality that the Embody, failed to, well, embody. When in New York, he shares an office with the equally glamorous David Adjaye (who is designing a new house for Béhar in San Francisco). His socially-minded underwear company PACT makes nice pants – but the whole production process is restricted to within a 100 miles radius. ‘If a project isn’t ethical it can’t be beautiful, and if it can’t be beautiful it shouldn’t be at all,’ he says. It sounds a little preachy  but at least he’s practising it.

Vitra and Blueprint present the Audile Interpretation Workshop:  An Exploration into Sound and Environment.

During the London Design Festival, the spirit of the Boisbuchet workshops will be recreated at Vitra’s base in Clerkenwell. Architect ODA, in association with sound artist Craig Vear and designer Andrew Lock, will explore sonic experience with groups of students and professionals. How much of the world do we experience through sound? When you close your eyes do you become more aware of the world behind you? Does the aural environment change more rapidly than the visual one?

Two one-day workshops will focus on the experience of space through sound; what kind of shapes enhance or restrict, what kind of textures absorb or reflect? Participants will create listening devices that capture, re-interpret and re-imagine the environment, and perhaps generate their own sound in response.

The workshops will take place 10am-5pm, 24 and 25 September at Vitra, EC1. To book call 020 7608 6200 or write to andrew.lock@vitra.com

Next week, Alessi – the Italian kitchen product design company – are launching a new series of abstract metal bowls, baskets and centrepieces. Black and white squares and rectangles that look like business cards, are stuck together seemingly at random,  forming a bowl or basket shape. Created by artist, architect and graphic designer Mario Trimarchi, this inventive product, ‘La Stanza dello Scirocco’, is his first innovative project for Alessi. Trimarchi says:                            

‘Their peculiarity lies in the fact that they have been designed with their shadows as starting points by halting unforeseen moments of fragments agitated by the wind, shadows that multiply and are as restless as unfocused photographs.’ 

Trimrachi lives and works in Milan and has worked alongside with many well-known architects and designers, such as Andrea Branzi and Ezio Manzini. Currently he is working for the faculty of architecture at Genoa University (Italy), as a professor of the industrial design degree course.

Although Trimarchi is working with Alessi, his main focus is his work with the FRAGILE studio. In a nutshell, they help develop corporate identities for companies by gathering a group of graphic designers and architects who, for different expressions of the brand, work on brand, interior and product design, multimedia and graphics. Founded in 1999 with co-founder Michele De Lucchi, they emphasis the idea of investing time and ideas on people to develop them.

Porcelain; the ‘white gold’, a precious material originating in China, brought to Europe by Marco Polo, and whose recipe was a royal secret for many years. It is distinguished by being the only one of the fired-earth family to have a translucent quality, and when tapped it rings like crystal. Its composition was discovered in Europe by an alchemist trying to make gold, and after a final firing at 1400˚C for 24 hours it becomes incredibly hard, durable, pure white, and of course beautiful.

These are some of the facts I learned in Limoges today. As part of their workshop, led by Sam Baron of Fabrica, the porcelain group spent a day listening and learning instead of making. As we were guided round the factories of Bernardaud and Royal Limoges, with the exception of witnessing the raw materials dug out of the ground, we saw the entire process from a messy lump of clay (or powder) to immaculate shop floor.

One of the most striking aspects of this industry is that even though as many elements as possible are mechanised, a great deal of the process can still only be done by a well-trained hand and eye, and as such haven’t changed for over 100 years. The porcelain shrinks during firing, but not necessarily in a uniform way, which makes designing pieces by computer often irrelevant – producing the original requires the intuition and experience of the head designer. In the factory where the pieces are cast, at the end of the production line are the ‘choisisseuses’ – ladies who test and categorise each blank into perfect, imperfect but saleable, and reject piles, continuously feeding the information back to a central office. And in the decorating factory, although many patterns are applied using a kind of transfer (‘chromo’), details are added and mistakes corrected by hand – a very steady hand that takes at least two years to train.

Bernardaud and Royal Limoges are two of a dwindling number of porcelain manufacturers in Limoges, the French town which became the home of porcelain because of nearby deposits of kaolin, the principal component. Both companies claim to be the oldest of course, and at the Royal Limoges site you can see an original brick kiln from 1904, the only one of its kind left out of nine that they had, and hundreds altogether throughout Limoges. The cost of manufacture, changing tastes, and the nearby deposits running low have all contributed to a reduction in production. Bernardaud have responded by expanding the range of products they make to include parts for household appliances and works of art.

The students at Boisbuchet don’t have two years to learn the process – just a few days to experiment – and they are returning to Limoges over the next few days to work in the porcelain school, casting and firing their designs. And I’ll be back at Boisbuchet, continuing with my impossible project.

In cooperation with the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Centre International de Recherche et d´Education Culturelle et Agricole (CIRECA), Vitra Design Museum has been putting on an international summer academy at Domaine de Boisbuchet since 1996.  For more information click here 

Zona Tortona 2009

Next week sees the 48th year of biggest event in the global design calendar: the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. Around 88,000 visitors are expected to pour into the area around Via Tortona in the southwest of Milan during this week of the Salone del Mobile. Originally an ad-hoc happening, Zona Tortona Design – for which Blueprint is media partner – has blossomed into major event organised by Design Partners, a collaboration between marketing experts Maurizio Ribotti and Luca Fois.

We present our Zona Tortona highlights…

Tamawa watch by Hubert Verstraeten

ABC- AUTHENTIC BELGIAN CREATIVITY
Spazio Herno – via Savona, 19 A
As part of an initiative of Design Flanders and Flanders Investment & Trade (FIT), a group of Belgian designers and brands will showcase a selection of their new collections in a single curated space in ZonaTortona Design. For this edition, they will unveil an original product range that denotes the high level of the exhibition. The designers and brands involved in this show are active on the international market in different innovative sectors such as furniture, textile design, glass design, jewelry and tableware.

Ross Lovegrove's Bamboo bike for Biomega

BIOMEGA
DesignLibrary – Via Savona, 11
In ZonaTortona Biomega presents the world premiere of the spectacular and ground breaking Bamboo Bike by Ross Lovegrove – an exceptional and uniquely designed piece of art. We invite all bike enthusiasts to visit the Design Library and experience the Furniture of Locomotion at it’s finest.

Glass Music by Alfredo Haberli

CZECH SELECTION
TRAS – Via Savona, 19
Czech Selection presents design products of eight Czech furniture and interior accessories producers including Krehky by Designblok Prague, Qubus design, Moravske sklarny Kvetna and Process amongst works by designers such as Olgoj Chorchoj, Alfredo Haberli, Jiri Pelcl and Maxim Velcovsky.

DESIGN LIBRARY CAFE
Via Savona, 11
In April, during ZonaTortona Design 2009, the DesignLibraryCafe will extend its opening hours from 6 am to 3 am. Especially for the fair, “Taste away”, a take away menu of high quality food instead of the usual take away dishes, will be available for those on the go.

Vase by Fish Design

FISH DESIGN
DesignLibrary – Via Savona, 11
A presentation of different vases from the collections by Alessandro Mendini (Mendinismi collection) and Gaetano Pesce. These vases will be showcased in parallelepiped display at the entrance of the DesignLibrary.

Forest Collection from Ilio

ILIO
Forcella 11 – Via Forcella, 11
Ilio is inspired by forms of nature, adopting a playful yet functional approach to present new forms. Functionally and intellectually, Ilio presents multi-layered products to people who take pleasure from fine living. Ilio focuses on both high design quality and the best available production standards.

LAGO APPARTAMENTO – TEMPORARY SHOP
Via Tortona, 21
For the first time ever, an exhibiting company doesn’t stay in a hotel but “lives” in a large flat entirely furnished with unusual versions of its own products. The setting is rounded off by out-of-the-ordinary objects designed by students of the Royal College of Art.

LZF Lamps

LZF LAMPS
Magna Pars – Via Tortona, 15
For ZonaTortona 2009, LZF Lamps have been chosen to illuminate the Design Lounge. The models showcased were born thanks to the collaboration of thirty artistans – from painters and sculptors to fashion and graphic designers. The lighting is a result of the combination of two elements: light and sheets of wood veneer. The veneer provides a spectacular effect that highlights its nobility, creating warm sensual atmospheres both in the domestic and contract market. All products are handmade.

Maos Contemporary Art

MAOS CONTEMPORARY ART
Superstudio Piu – Via Tortona, 27
A new concept of contemporary art, dealing with bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional shapes. Mãos’ work focuses on interactivity and happiness – the main idea of the plastic artists.

Avenue Screen, Portugal Brands

PORTUGAL BRANDS
Via Tortona, 32
Portugal Brands is an exhibition of companies selected for their iconic status within the sphere of design, creativity and product quality. A prestigious collection of fabrics and wallcoverings, furniture, lighting and carpets, as well as bespoke services.

Installation by Toshiba

TOSHIBA
Designlibrary – Via Savona, 11
An LED interactive installation that represents light in harmony with human beings and with the environment. The lamp beams a strong light and pulsates like a human being as the visitor approaches.

LINE 94
The design circular – a strengthened transport system for the week of the fair connecting design destinations around Milan, with each stop displaying it’s cultural and design highlights.

Tarantula Tea Light, photo © Hilary Walker

The first product from Krawczuk’s DesignedMade label is the ‘Tarantula Tea Light’ holder. Embracing in full Krawczuk’s philosophy of ‘Made in Britain’ the Tarantula is laser-cut in Rotherham, hand pressed into final form by Krawczuk in Huddersfield, and powder coated in Brighouse. The machinery used to press the candleholder comes from a small specialist company in Huddersfield with just three employees. This is a sad rarity according to Krawczuk: “It’s such a shame that so many workshops have already gone, and continue to shut down. There’s still a plethora of highly skilled and talented engineers and workers in the UK – but unfortunately they don’t have enough work.’

Tarantula Tea Light, photo © Hilary Walker

In developing the brand identity for DesignedMade, Krawczuk worked with his sister, graphic designer Laura Coley, founder of We Are Family. About DesignedMade she says, ‘As the logo suggests DesignedMade is about the interdependent relationship between design and production.’

Krawczuk, who is also a consultant to the British Council’s Creative Economy Unit, is looking to expand and develop his network of manufacturers, engineers and craftsmen. ‘By combining and exchanging the visions, ideas and expertise of fellow designers with engineers and manufacturers, we can work out how to translate these shared thoughts into finished products.”

Tarantula Tea Light, photo © Hilary Walker