The Tournament
 

Amongst the pomp and pageantry of Trafalgar Square, the largest chess set in the world was installed for a brief three-day period. Spanish designer Jaime Hayon created ‘The Tournament’ and his designs for the two-metre-tall chess pieces reference many of the towers and spires from iconic buildings in London. Ben Evans, director of the London Design Festival, said ‘Trafalgar Square is the heart of London with tens of thousands of people passing by every day. Jaime Hayon created a spectacle that will draw people towards it and show them how dynamic and fun design can be’.

Each of the pieces were hand-crafted by Jamie Hayon in Veneto, Italy where he worked alongside Bosa, the Italian ceramics experts. The Tournament Team moved the ceramic chess pieces, seated on elevated platforms, across a specially built glass mosaic chessboard.

However impressive the ceramic structures were, though, chess is not a great spectator ’sport’. If the London Design Festival is intended to be inclusive, then why introduce such an elitist game into one of the prime exhibition locations? Very few people have the time (or patience) to sit and watch a chess match, especially when it is hard to see the exact layout of what is occurring on the board. The public had to view the installation from a distance and cannot get a close look at the level of craft that the piece involves. Design can be expensive, but it should not be precious. Installations such as ‘the Tournament’ prevent the public from experiencing design. Many of the other exhibits would have made a far bigger impact on the general public and invited interaction, whereas ‘The Tournament’ excluded nearly everyone and does very little to make design more universal.

Shigeru Ban and Sonoco

Tucked around the back of the Royal Festival Hall is a collaboration between Japanese architect and designer Shigeru Ban and cardboard manufacturer Sonoco. The 22m-high conical tower is constructed from compressed cardboard tubing. The tower sits upon considerable concrete foundations and is a fascinating experiment in a material that is sparsely used for construction. The installation encourages a tactile experience; the steady stream of people on their way across the river or to waterloo station regularly stops to touch the structure. The cardboard tubes have to be validated or tested through physical contact before people seem to genuinely accept what the tower is made of.

The Tokyo- and Paris-based architect and designer Shigeru Ban produced this triangulated structure in response to the London Design Festival’s brief to “challenge the perception of the everyday materials used by creating dramatic temporary installations outside the Royal Festival Hall” . 

There were many technical limitations on the construction of the installation, meaning that it couldn’t be placed directly by the Thames. As LDF director Ben Evans explains: “The engineering is much more complicated on the river front because there is a floor below and so that means there are loading restrictions. Add in the wind factor and it means that the base has to be extremely heavy and bulky [and so ugly] to ensure that the structure doesn’t fall over.’ Yet, the result of these problems was that the visual impact of the structure was significantly lessened.  If it had been placed on the riverbank, rather than around the back of RFH, the tower would have provided a more critical argument about the way we use materials. The structure could have mirrored the height of the structure of the adjacent Hungerford Foot-bridge and the triangulated structural system would have had a visual connection to 30 St Mary’s Axe by Foster and Partners. Instead, the installation is slightly dwarfed by the vast horizontal expanse of the RFH and the impact its height may have had is reduced. 

Making Fun Serious
 

For the Making Fun Serious exhibition at Chappell in central London, the Royal College of Arts collaborated with Yamaha. The show, which ran until 26 September, featured the work of product design students and focused on the relationship between music and performance in everyday life. The playful exhibits allowed visitors to experience the efforts of the students and invited interaction. Set amongst the instruments in the shop, the exhibits could be played without any musical expertise or knowledge. The efforts of the designers removed any need for musical proficiency in a series of instruments that could be played in any facet of life.
 

Of particular note was ‘Typing the Sound’ by Fabien Capello. Capello has connected a typewriter to a circuit board, which plays a note with each character that is struck. The technology is very basic and there is an endearing simplicity to the realization of the piece. When typing, the writer creates a sonic performance in the machines particular language. The most beautiful prose could emerge as a calamitous racket, where the most inane keystrokes could produce a beautiful sound scape. The sonic language of the piece is unique and the associated imagery is removed from the rules of language or music. The language is not reductive and the soundtrack to each piece can very much effect how prose is interpreted.