The ArRiyadh Development Authority recently announced that Zaha Hadid Architects will build the new King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) Metro Station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The 20,434 sq. m. King Abdullah Financial Disctrict Metro Station - to be completed in four years - will contribute to serve the fast-growing population of the city, that now boasts 5 million residents, while serving as interchange on the network for Line 1, as well as the terminus of Line 4 (for passengers to the airport) and Line 6 of the new Riyadh Metro.
The new building will be characterised by a lattice-like patterning on the façade (that will reduce solar gain) defined by a sequence of opposing and dynamic sine-waves that act as the spine for the building’s circulation. The sine-waves embedded in the building were inspired by the sand dunes sculpted by desert winds.
Sine-waves or sinusoids, that is mathematical curves that are usually employed to describe a smooth repetitive oscillation, occur in pure and applied mathematics, as well as physics, engineering, signal processing and many other fields.
The architectural studio, whose Riverside Museum in Glasgow has just won the European Museum of the Year Award, moved from sand dunes since they represent complex natural formations generated by frequencies and repetition, and based its research for this futuristic shape also on symmetry and scaling and on concepts borrowed from harmonics, including amplitude and initial phase.
The most interesting point in this sort of contemporary architectural structures is that they seem to offer us a physical representation of mathematical ideas without sacrificing design ambitions: in 1807 Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier established a fundamental theorem which is used in linear systems analysis. Its core idea stated that any waveform can be synthesized by combining a specific set of pure sine-waves in appropriate phase relationships.
A pure sine-wave in the temporal domain extends forever, with no beginning and no end; a pure sine-wave in the spatial domain extends indefinitely in space. In a way this structure will look like a complex Fourier series smoothly simplified (to eliminate sharp corners), characterised and optimised by a parametric variable.
The interest surrounding textile art has grown in the last ten years or so also thanks to dedicated exhibitions that allowed many of us to discover the intrinsic pleasures of creating refined art combining traditional skills and materials with a modern point of view.
If you like this form of art you shouldn't miss "Strings" at Brussel's Design Flanders Gallery. A project by Design Flanders in collaboration with the non-profit organisation Lace as an Art, the event is directly linked to the International Betonac Competition.
The latter was launched by Betty Cuykx, founder of Lace as an Art, as an opportunity to assess and promote the state of Flemish textile art, but, little by little, the event became well-known far beyond the borders of Belgium.
Numerous artists from across the planet participated indeed in the event and every edition involved workshops and a travelling exhibition which visited many countries.
"Strings" will feature recent works by the Betonac competition "laureates" together with a group of designers from Flanders (Tim Baute, Patricia Boulez, Betty Cuykx, Trui Demarcke, Hoet Design, An Lanckman, Ria Lins, Marleen Mertens, Hilde Metz, Nathalie Perneel, Rozemarijn Spilliaert, Lieve Vandycke & Inge Van Gheel).
The laureates' creations are particularly exciting and include Marie-Rose Lortet's solid lace architectural structures; Michaël Brannand Wood's eye-catching sculptural pieces; Marian Bijlenga's impalpable embroideries; Kaori Umeda's works calling to mind natural and organic forms; Luciana Costa Gianello's thought-provoking installations; Blanka Sperkova's wire structures suspended between the traditional wire craft of Slovak tinkers and Bruno Munari's experimental objects such as "Concavo-Convesso" (1946-47) and Erna Van Sambeek's unusual pieces made with ordinary objects such as ceramic dishes transfigured through embroidery, lace, pearls and pins and elevated to art.
All the artists featured use the most disparate materials and techniques, focusing on exploring the expressive possibilities offered by threads, through small or larger works.
The artists' approach is varied as some works are based on structural and geometrical concepts or mathematical variables; others look at density, expansion, dimensionality and monumentality.
Some pieces represent abstract forms and shapes or impressive figurative images; others are more decorative but still prompt visitors to ponder about the tactile power of different materials, the importance of manual labour and the powers of objects that actively interact with what surrounds them.
All the creations can be analysed on multiple levels, from different points of view or disciplines (including art, architecture, interior design or fashion, but also technology) and all of them represent the extraordinary and optimistic energy of the artists' gestures.
The most important point remains the fact that each piece represents the journey without an end that threads embark in, accompanying visitors through a sensorial experience involving all one's senses. "Strings" will be the last event organised by the non-profit organisation Lace as an Art.
Strings, Design Vlaanderen (Design Flanders Gallery), Koloniënstraat 56 - 7e verdieping, 1000 Brussel, Belgium, 7th June 2013 - 18th August 2013.
Critics often underline how Joseph Beuys' works have a documentary aspect about them hidden in the materials and colours the artist used, in those thick grey felts or in his muted browns. The old objects assembled and employed in his artworks ended up having a memory-enhancing value, prompting viewers to try and make sense of what they saw, decoding it through their lives and experiences. Franca Pisani's work is gifted with the same "documentary" value.
Part of a generation of artists unafraid of breaking the boundaries and following their own paths, Florence-based Pisani has worked throughout the years using different media, such as painting, sculpture, installations, visual poetry and mail art.
A new exhibition entitled "The Courage of Inspiration" will open at the end of the month at Hamburger Bahnhof's Halle am Wasser 3 in Berlin. The event - based around a series of themes such as plurality, multiculturalism, nature and feminine identity - features new works by Pisani, conceived a bit like Beuys's thinking and spoken forms, set to provoke thoghts and make us ponder about how we mould and shape the world we live in.
"The Courage of Inspiration" includes indeed a series of large canvases covered in primitive symbols and graffiti, images trapped in Plexiglass, and a series of grey busts with visually striking details in vivid red. The former invite visitors to go back to their origins, rediscovering them and contemplating the genetic code of humanity, while the latter hint at a more optimistic future, characterised by new energies and by the revitalised power of imagination.
What's the background to this exhibition? Franca Pisani: I had the honour of being invited by one of the seminal state galleries dedicated to modern art in Germany, the Halle am Wasser at Hamburger Banhohf. They own a very important Modern Art collection that also includes key installations and works by Joseph Beuys and the idea for "The Courage of Inspiration" came from this fascinating figure. When I was an art student I read a lot about him and contemplated the highly imaginative universe created by this well-rounded artist and shaman. This man who could have been my father served as a pilot in the Second World War, was shot down over the Crimea and saved by a group of indigenous people who covered him in animal fat and felt that preserved his body, making him discover that nature saves. This strong link with nature in his life has showed me the way I'm currently following in my work. I sort of entered the simple yet complex magic of nature since exhibiting at the 54th Venice Art Biennale, as part of the Italian Pavillion with my installation "La leggerezza di essere in due" (The Lightness of Being in Two) composed of two figures, one standing, one sitting in a wheelchair, with their heads wrapped in reeds from the natural reserve of the splendid Orbetello lagoon, managed by the Italian branch of the WWF. The reserve is a safe haven but it also represents a sort of new way of thinking and culture in which humans are aware of their limits and limitations.
Can you take us through a virtual tour of the exhibition? Franca Pisani: The exhibition in Berlin will reunite 110 destructured canvases created throughout a year. They represent a series of mind thoughts and mental notes, one overlapping the other like branches of a baobab tree, and also mix past and present while they hang in a large wall installation. The genetic code of this installation is represented by a series of bi-faceted characters locked in plexiglass boxes that hint at dichotomies such as public and private, while affirming their existence together with nine sculptures, all of them busts in terracotta, representing female identity, memory, fragility, and intellectual and spiritual power. The research behind this exhibition revolves around a series of themes including ecological conscience, multiculturalism and new and old languages. Paintings, sculptures and installations represent the courage of inspiration because the freedom of thought and of using one's imagination help us conquering once again a reality that is not pre-arranged by others.
In which way do the plexiglass and the terracotta pieces interact with the larger installation? Franca Pisani: The paintings, sculptures and installations analyse a political system that has evolved into an art system. The nine terracotta busts featured in the exhibition are elevated to imaginary characters. Some of them have half-closed eyes not because they are afraid of looking around them, but because they have an eye looking inward to see and grasp the best parts of themselves, but also the mystery hiding inside them. Terracotta is a sort of forgotten material and represents a difficult balance between man and nature. While moulding this material an artist must indeed take care of various issues including gravity, or the shrinking process that takes place during firing. Life is injected into the thirteen plexiglass pieces via the double faceted shroud on which I traced primitive marks and symbols. All the artifacts meet and clash with the main installation.
In this exhibition you return to art intended as artifact, can you tell us more about this concept? Franca Pisani: My return to art intended as artifact is a way to reject any ideology and the constrictive art market as well, while rediscovering the pleasure of physical acts such as touching materials and colours. Art galleries have lost their aura, they aren't shrines anymore, but outside art galleries society has changed, and there is a world full of colours and energy.
So far you mainly employed natural materials in your work, but in this exhibition you also used plexiglass which is a synthetic material, how do you reconcile it with your passion for nature? Franca Pisani: Plexiglass represents the technological shock entering into my works and hitting my characters. At the beginning I wasn't sure about what I was doing, but then I realised that the role of the artist is also that of confusing and creating a certain level of shock even when entering in a well-organised environment like a factory producing such materials. In this case the artist represents an element that breaks into the precise and well co-ordinated routines of the workers there, realising that his or her job is trying to annihilate the dullness that too often suffocates human beings.
One of the themes you tackle in your works is feminine identity, what does it represent to you? Franca Pisani: This is a key theme for me. It was thanks to what I call "female synergy" that my art came out of the clandestine dimension. One day while I was in France for an exhibition, I met one of the most amazing persons I ever encountered in my life, Marzia Spatafora. She wanted to collaborate with a woman artist and we teamed up and grew up together, strong and stubborn though surrounded by male ostracism. I remember that once in Pietrasanta, a famous sculptor complained because he didn't want women to be part of an exhibition. When I think about it, I still feel like screaming. If I am the artist I am today it is also because of Marzia who has been a dear friend in many fights. Women have embedded in their DNA this sense of becoming, growing and understanding, and this is why men are scared and tend to annihilate women's potential by taking advantage of our sense of fagility as well, that should be a resource and not a weakness. Looking for our primitive origins in my works allows me to eliminate certain differences, reach the true essence of humanity and discover that, after all, our ancestors are very near to us when we scratch the surface of the fake reality in which we live and finally realise that women genuinely represent the evolution, the change and the newness in this big and vast world and in the art universe.
Is the title of the exhibition a message to visitors? Franca Pisani: The title hints at the fact that only by being brave, by keeping your head high and your chin up, you can go through a wild art system that badly needs to renovate itself. We need an injection of courage at different levels: artists must go back to work in their studios; galleries must create culture, welcoming and educating both professionals and amateurs to look at real art and not at ways to make quick money; critics must follow art with a firm and stubborn mind. Magazines must also help rising more interest in art and museum curators must go and visit artists and discover them, while government must turn into the first buyers and supporters of art and artists.
Are there any contemporary artists that you particularly like? Franca Pisani: I don't think there is one particular artist that I like the most. All contemporary artists excite and move me in different ways. Other people like listening to music or reading a good book, but I feel an almost obsessive need to fill my eyes with art. I love embracing the new and the visually exciting; I never put any constraints on my mind, but I try to open both my mind and my heart to every kind of art. I wish I was also able to visit different artists' studios, but I think that the loneliness of our society has managed to enter even creative environments, making in some cases almost impossible to meet in real life, outside the virtual dimension of Facebook.
The Courage of Inspiration by Franca Pisani, Halle am Wasser 3 - Hamburger Bahnhof, Invalidenstr. 50/51, 10557 Berlin, Germany, 30th May - 28th June 2013
We live in a digital landscape and we have therefore grown accustomed to "glitches", or annoying malfunctions and technical errors, appearing in our lives while we browse an Internet page, look at the screens to check when the next train is due or use an automatic teller machine. Quite often, rather than correctly visualising the information we are looking for, we just end up seeing jumbled letters or coloured blocks. Children even have their own "glitch heroine", cute pixellating Disney character Vanellope von Schweetz who appeared in last year's Wreck-It Ralph.
All these examples may prove glitches are destined to remain confined in a digital and therefore impalpable world, but Japanese artist (you can check out the gallery events he organises with some friends here), musician (he's part of an electro-ambient band) and fashion designer Nukeme doesn't think so.
Prompted by his passions that include not just art and fashion, but also data re-writing, and technology, Nukeme developed in the last few months experimental knitwear and embroidery patterns disrupted by glitches purposely induced by him.
In the first case he connected an Arduino platform to a Brother knitwear machine linked to a computer; in the latter he rewrote the binary-code that moves the needle of the embroidery machine. In both cases the programme sent from the computer to the machine goes through a loss of control, creating small but visible disruptions in the final pattern or logo.
Though the final effect is imperfect, the knitted swatches, or clothing items with glitch embrodiery still look aesthetically pleasing, and, above all, quite amusing.
Can you tell us more about your background? Nukeme: I was born in 1986 in Okayama, Japan, and, after graduating from the fashion school in Osaka, I started living in Tokyo. I studied fashion for three years, focusing on womenswear in the first two years and menswear in the last year. Now I’m working part-time sewing toiles at a fashion brand in Tokyo, while also developing my own creations.
You're an artist, fashion designer and musician, do you have an inspiring person - like a favourite artist or somebody who influences you in your work? Nukeme: I think Yoshinori Henguchi, ucnv, and Dorita - the member of my band and also the partner of TANUKI - have a large and direct effect on me. In the first place, the collaboration with Henguchi led me to start working on my brand activities: it was him who suggested the name "Nukeme". It was ucnv who taught me the "glitch" techniques and concepts and I often discuss the ideas of creation with Dorita. As for the influence in my fashion designs, I think I received a great influence from BLESS.
What inspired the "glitch project"? Nukeme: The participation in the glitch workshop that was held at Tokyo University of the Arts, lectured by ucnv, Yosuke Hayashi, and Shusaku Hariya. During this two-day workshop, I learnt the history of glitch and basic techniques to glitch images and movies. After participating in the workshop, a friend of mine told me that he was going to sell a computerized sewing and embroidery machine at an affordable price and I bought it jointly with Dorita. I applied the techniques that I learnt at the workshop to the machines and it happened to work out. Though the idea to glitch the embroidery had been just a mere thought, I think it turned out to be a very good way to turn the glitch into an artwork.
Which was the most difficult aspect of this project, hacking the Brother KH-970 knitting machine with the Arduino platform? Nukeme:Tomofumi Yoshida and So Kanno took charge of the hacking’s technical part, and I was just looking at their trial-and-error process until the hacking made a certain success. Of course there was a long series of failures and I had a really hard time, but it was them who took all the pains tech-wise. My part was thinking what I should knit with this hacked knitting machine and how I should express the glitches in knitwear. So I guess the most difficult aspect of this project is to decide what I should create from now on with this hacked Brother KH-970.
Which offers the best solutions in knitwear, traditional machines, computers or a combination of both? Nukeme: What I find interesting is the misapplication of things, and things that were created from unexpected use of machines, I have no intention of creating a great knitwear piece. For instance, I think it would be more amusing to turn something that was made to be a basketball net into a great knitwear design. On your site there are also other installations and a series of caps made in collaboration with poet Yoshinori Hengichi: did you ever think about making textile installations for art museums? Nukeme: If I have a chance, I'd love to. But since I can't create them all alone, I guess I will have to form a team to work on it.
One of your previous installations showcased at the 16th Japan Media Arts Festival Entertainment was a very long T-shirt with a series of "Glitch Embroidery" logos of various brands. Are you fascinated by commercial logos or do you use them in ironic ways to highlight how much they influence our lives? Nukeme: It was Dorita who suggested me the idea of using commercial logos. I thought the idea was perfect since I’d been working on Nukeme with the brand concept of "hat as a media" and "fashion as a media". I guess I’m fascinated in something that has an element of advertising rather than in commercial logos. By embroidering a commercial logo on a clothing, the clothing turns out to have a function of an advertisement. The clothing itself is rather trivial, but I feel there is a little bit of fun in the fact that the clothing starts advertising something regardless of the wearer’s will. And since those commercial logos are what everyone sees in their daily life, I’m using them as a common language. To express and tell the action of "glitch", there is a need of understanding "what it used to be before it was glitched".
There is a lot of talk at the moment about smart textiles - do you feel that new technologies will help us developing innovative garments in the future? Nukeme: I think new technologies will multiply design ideas. Now we can casually and easily digital-print on textile, and that's much easier than it was when I was a student. There are even fibres that change their colours according to temperature now, but there aren't garments made with them at the moment. But I expect that even today's latest technologies will turn into something universal in a while. And if there’s a new technology that spreads widely - so widely that people forget that it was a new technology - I think that's an innovation.
Is there a technique you'd like to experiment with in future? Nukeme: I’ve been using knitting and embroidery machines usually employed for household purposes, but now I want to try using data and machines for industrial use. I would also like to try knitting full-coloured Jacquard. And for a long time, I’ve been interested in printing and dying not on the cloth but directly on products (clothing) too.
If you could launch a collaboration with a scientist or an artist who would you choose? Nukeme: There are 2 on-going projects right now, a collaboration with Jeff Donaldson (noteNdo) and another collaboration with ucnv. Both of the collaborations are fun. I’m planning to upload them on my website as soon as they are completed, so I would like to urge your readers to check them out. If there’s a chance, I’d like to collaborate with anyone regardless of their occupation. Even a music session with my band would be great fun to me!
What plans do you have for the future? Nukeme: I usually create clothing items like art pieces, and I want to keep this style on the one hand, but I also want to try mass-producing my works on the other hand. I would also like to take part in competitions and receive work from private clients too. Right because I accept as many requests as possible, many projects expanded in a very short period of time. I can’t even imagine how things will develop in future, but I hope I will have fun!
The recently opened exhibition "Punk: Chaos to Couture" at the Met received quite a lot of criticism for having somehow sanitised punk, making it acceptable to the elites and turning its rebellious power into a pile of carefully arranged clothes. So to rediscover a bit of punk spirit, I'm posting today some images shot by photographer Stéphane Duroy.
Born in 1948, Duroy started his career as a press photographer, working for different agencies. As the years passed he moved onto personal projects focused around Europe that often turned into disenchanted documents of the 20th century, recording also the changes Berlin went through from 1989 on.
Fascinated by decadence in England, Duroy chronicled it with a project that lasted for a few years between the late '70s and the early '80s.
The results of this project were a series of images picturing miners and their kids, young punks squatting in derelict houses, unemployed people, social outcasts drinking in the streets and the backstage of a random catwalk show.
Some of the most interesting images were shot around the East End, at the time one of the poorest areas in London (the first picture featured in this post was taken there during a binmen strike), but now painfully hip and trendy.
It would be interesting to maybe rediscover some of these images in a dedicated exhibition that looked at the meaning of the “no future” slogan then and now and that wondered which are the main differences between that generation of young people without any future and young people now. It would also be interesting to see how the fashion industry turned punk slang into empty slogans to maybe print on a shirt, ending up rehabilitating the legacy of some politicians and even elevating some of them (read Margaret Thatcher) to icons of style.
Richard Buckminster Fuller defined himself as a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist” whose life was based on search and research projects. Analysing his contributions to the world of art, architecture and science is not that easy even in our times, especially considering how, while some critics consider him a prophet, others quite often dismiss him as a visionary eccentric.
Among some of the most interesting projects Buckminster Fuller worked on, there was also the "Fly's Eye Dome" (1965), a structure designed as a cheap dwelling, that was still under development two years before his death. This double-skin truncated sphere 15 meters in diameter that looks as if it had been lifted from a sci-fi film set was restored two years ago and will soon be arriving in Europe to be exhibited at the Toulouse International Art Festival, opening at the end of the month.
The dome was based on Buckminster Fuller’s mathematical research and on a very simple principle: enclosing the largest volume of interior space using the smallest surface area, a sphere, creating in this way a structure that could offer immediate shelter to people in urgent need.
The Fly's Eye Dome was extremely light since the structure was pierced by several holes: these “eyes” or openings embedded in the dome could be used as windows, doors, vents or solar energy cells. The structure with its pore-looking holes anticipated our current obsession with biomimicry since, while guaranteeing efficiency and flexibility, the openings also hinted at the metabolic regeneration of living organisms.
As Fuller wrote in his book Critical Path (1981) "the Fly’s Eye domes are designed as part of a ‘livingry’ service. The basic hardware components will produce a beautiful, fully equipped air-deliverable house that weighs and costs about as much as a good automobile. Not only will it be highly efficient in its use of energy and materials, it also will be capable of harvesting incoming light and wind energies."
Fuller made three prototypes - a 12, 24 and 50 foot dome - and the one that will be shown in Toulouse is the larger one, exhibited during the 1981 Los Angeles Bicentennial, then disassembled and dumped in a field. All the damaged parts have been restored by collector, curator and architecture historian Robert Rubin. The Fly's Eye Dome will occupy the Port Viguerie area and every night special lighting designed by Philips will illuminate it (sadly the dome won't be accompanied by Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car, an 'omni-directional transport system' intended to fly).
In the Toulouse International Art Festival catalogue, Robert Rubin calls Buckminster Fuller “the American cousin” of French metal worker, self-taught architect and designer Jean Prouvé, drawing comparisons between the two. Fuller's desire to put at the disposal of humanity a high performance shelter reminds indeed of Prouvé's prefabricated structures, from his Maison Tropicale to the Maison des Jours Meilleurs (A house for better days) that could be build in just a few hours.
Yet, while for us it's easy to look at certain projects and structures by Buckminster Fuller and immediately relate to them (considering also new technologies, including 3D printing, applied to design and architecture), the futurist polymath's radical ideas weren't always taken too seriously. After all, as Rubin states in the Art Festival catalogue, "Bucky just came a little early."
The first experiments with 4D printing may have started in more recent months, but in the last few years many of us have been busy familiarising themselves with 3D printing, a technology that has been pervading different fields and professions.
Dedicated projects in art, architecture, interior design or fashion have proved 3D printing can definitely help developing new and experimental shapes, high-performing parts or optimized products. Yet for most of us this technology and the possibilities offered may still be difficult to grasp. Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman come to our rescue in the recently published volume Fabricated (John Wiley).
The book subtitle - The New World of 3D Printing - though generic, perfectly hints at the wider scope and applications that this new technology may have. The volume - divided in 14 chapters - opens with a brief history of 3D printing that dates the first experiments around the mid-'80s. The authors then focus on explaining the different methods, families of printers and materials, while also analysing design software and design optimisation, and the advantages this technology may offer in fields like medicine, medication, food, design and fashion (readers of this site will rediscover in the book Kerrie Luft, Hoon Chung and the Continuum Fashion duo).
The most interesting chapters look at the impact this technology may have on our lives if we ever managed to print human organs or foods with specific dietary requirements, but the financial aspects are also tackled in several parts of the books analysing customisation and personalisation processes and the consequences of 3D printing on the labour market.
Yet Lipson and Kurman do not make the mistake of seeing everything through rose-tinted glasses: while in one chapter their tone may be more optimistic, in another they remind us about legal problems linked to 3D printing, from health and safety standards to issues regarding property law and copyright infringement or even criminal law (think about recent issues about downloadable designs for weapons, or the consequences of managing to use a 3D printer to create a new breed of chemical drugs).
The authors also tackle the green issue: discarded prototypes littering university laboratories or design studios will turn into a new threat to the environment if we don't start developing more eco-friendly materials like the desert sand employed by Markus Kayser for his "Solar Sintering" design project. So, while 3D printing may be the future, keeping on experimenting is definitely the path forward.
Some issues the authors look at in the volume - illustrated by a lot of black and white pictures and a few ones in colour, but written in an extremely accessible language and therefore ideal for everyone, from students to teachers (a lengthy chapter analyses the benefits of letting a 3D printer into the classroom) and researchers, but also amateur 3D printing fans - may find a solution soon, others are instead set to generate wider debates on a technological, but also on a moral and ethical level in the next decade. In the meantime, if you want to know more about the magic and the perils of 3D printing, you should definitely pick a copy of Fabricated.
Self-assembly - that is the spontaneous association or formation of molecules into organized structures under a defined condition - is a key scientific principle of disciplines such as nanotechnology. The fascinating idea of applying the self-assembly concept to other fields, structures and materials is currently being investigated by a dedicated experimental unit, the Self-Assembly Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Part of MIT’s Center for International Design, the Lab, founded and led by architect, designer, computer scientist and artist Skylar Tibbits, reunites a variety of professionals from multi-disciplinary environments, all focusing on analizying the possibilities offered by self-assembling structures on different scales. This is actually the most revolutionary aspect of Tibbits' research, creating self-constructing and manufacturing systems for large-scale applications or transformable and reconfigurable structures that could improve our lives.
Tibbits developed projects revolving around three principles - programmable components, simple design sequences and energy. Working with molecular biologist Arthur Olson and in collaboration with Autodesk Inc. and experimenting with 3D printing and embedded magnets, Tibbits created molecular structures trapped into glass flasks that would self-assemble when energy was added by shaking the flask (Chiral Self-Assembly project at Autodesk University 2012, Las Vegas, NV).
The same principle was applied to "The Self-Assembly Line", a large-scale and interactive installation activated by stochastic rotation presented at the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA.
Further exciting projects focused on transformable 3D shapes and self-foldable 4D printed surfaces. 4D printing, developed in a collaboration between Stratasys’ Education and R&D departments and MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, explores the pure programmability of materials and the possibility of embedding transformation from one shape to another, using only water as its activation energy.
While certain aspects of forming unique structures with programmable self-assembly systems still need to be investigated, it is exciting to think about how they may revolutionize certain industries. It is even more intriguing to think that self-assembling furniture or buildings may be a future - but not so distant - reality and that a new and self-assembling world is not only possible, but may be soon at hand.
How did you come up with the concept of self-assembling structures in the first place? Skylar Tibbits: Self-assembly is a fundamental principle in many different disciplines, from physics to biology, chemistry, material science, computer science and robotics and many other people came to this topic from the biology side, I came instead from an architecture background. Then I came to MIT and did Design Computation and Computer Science, so I came to the world of self-assembly and programmable materials through the computer science and robotics side.
Can you introduce us to the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT? Skylar Tibbits: I set up this research laboratory that falls within the architecture department. The goal of the laboratory is to study the principles of self-assembly and programmable materials in a cross-disciplinary environment, understanding the fundamental knowledge, pushing that forward and discovering new scales of application, while working on applied research and collaborating with industry leading companies in various sectors, and scales. The people within the lab are very much cross-disciplinary people with various backgrounds - from mechanical engineering, computer science, architecture, design and media.
What's the most exciting aspect of working on these projects with professionals from different fields? Skylar Tibbits: Each one brings a different experience to the table and they have different skill sets, but one of the things that we share and that crosses all the disciplines is the interest in these principles - utilizing self-assembly and programmable materials. They have become common interests in very different disciplines, trajectories and skill sets, but I think the collaboration works well for these reasons. The main collaborator on the biology side and molecular self-assembly work is molecular biologist, Arthur Olson, at the Scripps Research Institute, another one is Carlos Olguin, with his research group at Autodesk, that's more on the software side, and then we've been working with Marcus Quigley, a civil engineer at Geosyntec Consultants, on programmable water infrastructure systems.
What's the biggest challenge in these sort of projects? Skylar Tibbits: Scaling up these technologies and getting them applied and distributed into real world applications. Part of the research consists of trying to understand how do these systems can become efficient and functional, how we can scale and apply them in industries to make really impactful changes on people's lives. Another problem, or rather ambition, is to make these systems as universal as possible with the 4D printing technologies so that we can really extend the palette of these adaptive programmable materials.
At the moment there is a lot of interest in the possibilities that 3D printing can give us, what is instead 4D printing? Skylar Tibbits: The idea of 4D printing is to give the opportunity to materials to adapt and respond to how we are using them or how the environment changes around them. 4D printing is printing multiple materials that transform over time, and they can transform in shape or in properties. They could be conceived as customisable smart materials, that can be printed in any shape or configuration we want, so that they can go from one state to another state completely on their own. So while with 3D printing we are printing static objects, with 4D printing we are printing active materials.
Is it possible to create self-reconfiguring systems? Skylar Tibbits: One possible application is self-repairing systems or systems that are much more adaptable. So for example one person who's much heavier than someone who is lighter sits on a chair or you lie down rather than sitting on a chair, and that material may respond and be more resilient and break less. I think there are many applications, one of them is that, responding to the user and have it interacting with the system. Another one is self-reconfiguring applications, so if you flat pack something and have it shipped then you have active energy that transforms it in other structures or you could have one product transforming into something else when you need it or when you want it to be something else. So there are a lot of scenarios from re-configurability to construction, assembly, deployment or self-repairing.
In which kind of fields would you like to see the applications you're researching being employed? Skylar Tibbits: I'm really interested in some of the product applications, like sportswear, or responsive materials, products that could be in the consumer marketplace and that could be highly adaptive. Most of our products today have a very fixed capacity, they have one function and one lifespan and that's it. But we can imagine highly performing systems that transform as we evolve or as we have different demands.
So far what kind of materials have you employed? Skylar Tibbits: Before we did the 4D printing work, we were using every kind of material, from metal to foam and plastic or wood. We actually tried to use as many materials as possible. We can try to use a lot of different materials, it's not like we must use a high tech material, it's more about how the material responds to energy. In terms of 4D, we've been collaborating with Stratasys, the leader in 3D printing, they have a multi-material printer called the Connex and they have been developing new materials such as a synthetic polymer that extends 150% in water.
Could this be considered as a new industrial revolution? Skylar Tibbits: There is a lot of talk and research focused on these topics and many people have published articles claiming that this is a new industrial revolution. I'm not sure if I'll go all the way to say that, but there are definitely a lot of things happening at the same time in different fields and there is a lot of talk about additive manufacturing, new possibilities for customisation, and smart materials. All these things together may lead to this new industrial revolution, but, from my point of view, the focus is on how we collaborate with materials, how we can program them, how they can be smarter and assemble, reconfigure, and even replicate themselves.
Would you like to introduce your projects at international events such as the Venice Art or Architecture Biennale? Skylar Tibbits: Yes, definitely. We haven't been invited so far to the Biennale, but we come to Europe all the time to do workshops, give lectures and do collaborations. We try to look at all the different spectrums, from design to engineering, computer science, molecular biology and the art side as well, so we embrace all these disciplines.
Do you feel that the profession of the future will somehow be a combination of different disciplines together? Skylar Tibbits: I certainly think that there is a disciplinary convergence happening between some topics, specifically self-assembling and programmable materials, in some cases some disciplines seem to be merging - computer science is looking more like synthetic biology, which is looking a lot more like design or engineering. So there is a sort of fluctuation between them, the difference only stands at the scalar limits, but the principles and the topics are very similar across the disciplines. I think the interesting thing is crossing between all these disciplines that is allowing new opportunities to collaborate, and that's really exciting.
Image credits:
4D Printing: Multi-Material Shape Change A collaboration between: Skylar Tibbits, The Self-Assembly Lab, MIT Shelly Linor & Daniel Dikovsky, Education & Research & Development, Stratasys Carlos Olguin, Bio/Nano Programmable Matter Research Group, Autodesk
In between one thing and the other I've been playing a bit with Processing and wondering if one day we will be able to apply specific patterns created with such programmes in the textile industries. While my doubts remain, I'm posting here the fruits of my session of Processing brainstorming. Enjoy!
“The Missoni myth is one of normality. They are the gods of knitwear, of pullovers, of simple dressing for everyday life, however costly. They are husband and wife. He's tall and she's small; he's very good-looking and she volitive: they're like a couple out of a fifties musical. They've been together for ages; in fact they're getting on, they've got grown up children, they're grandparents (…) Normal, thoroughly normal, a real treat: just like you and me. The Missonis have taken years and years to create their myth,” The Italian Look Refected by Silvia Giacomoni
In the early '60s, Luis Hidalgo, buyer at La Rinascente, suggested Italian fashion journalist Maria Pezzi to go and meet Ottavio and Rosita Missoni, definying them as "the three G's: gentle, genial and generous". Pezzi agreed and was fascinated by the husband and wife team and by their colourful knits with zigzag patterns. Rather than using words, the late Pezzi claimed, it would have been better to draw the knitwear they produced to give a better idea of the graphic and geometric effects the duo created with their looms. Yet fashion was just one side of the family: the history of the Missonis was indeed told throughout the years also in different contexts: Italian sport journalists like Gianni Brera often wrote about the atheletic career of Ottavio, who died on Thursday in his home in the town of Sumirago.
Born in 1921, in Dubrovnik and growing up in Zadar, at the time part of the Italian territory, Ottavio "Tai" Missoni studied in Trieste and Milan, even though, as he recounted in his biography published in Italy in 2011, he preferred sport to studying. In the late '30s he was already a student champion and recordman. The war and four years of imprisonment in Egypt interrupted his career that he soon resumed at the end of the conflict.
In 1948, he took part in the Olympic Games in London as a member of the Italian 400m hurdles team. In London he met Rosita Jelmini who was studying there and in 1953 they got married, starting their adventure in knitwear. Ottavio already had some experience in garment manufacturing as he had been producing since 1948 in Trieste the trademark knitted "Venjulia" tracksuits also adopted by the Italian Olympic team.
The duo set up their first factory in the basement of their home in Gallarate, producing garments for Biki and, in 1958, colourful stripy shirt dresses for La Rinascente. Little by little, they developed new methods, working with different materials and multiple colours, coming up with a new concept of elegance based on individualism.
In the '60s the Missonis collaborated with Christiane Bailly; in 1964 the duo visited Paris and asked Emmanuelle Khanh to do a collection together. The French designer saw this opportunity as a chance to inject her fresh and young ideas into Missoni’s advanced knitwear and very gladly accepted. The results of this collaboration were presented in 1966 at the Gerolamo Theatre in Milan with a fun catwalk show.
A year later the Missoni team presented at the Pitti tradeshow their new collection. At the very last minute, Rosita realised the models’ underwear didn’t match with their futuristic and thin lame knits, so she sent the girls out without anything underneath, causing a little scandal while anticipating the "nude look". Scandalised, the organisers decided not to invite the couple at the next Pitti, but by then the fashion critics and buyers were hooked and success arrived also thanks to innovative catwalk shows such as the one at the Solari swimming pool in Milan with models floating on the water sitting on inflatable armchairs and sofas (by Quasar Khanh) pushed around by swimming champions.
American buyers dubbed Missoni's creations as "put together" designs, to highlight how the garments allowed customers to freely create their own style: the wearers could indeed pick and mix jumpers and trousers, skirts and tops, and create perfectly coordinated or uncoordinated outfits following their personal taste. The confirmation of their success, supported by prominent fashion editors such as Anna Piaggi (Ottavio stated about her: "Anna is a great character; she has very sensitive antennae, is professional to a degree, is always open-minded") and Diana Vreeland, arrived in 1973 when Tai and Rosita received the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award.
“We weren't born as designers, but as people who did things. They called us 'stilisti', designers, because they recognised a style in our products. We were only aware of creating fashion when people started to talk about it, after Anna Piaggi came to see us because she'd noticed some of our things at La Rinascente. Only later did we realise what was happening in the fashion world, what problems there were to do with image. We tried to learn, and we coped as a result, but always on our own. I used to do up the parcels and keep the accounts, but when I realised that the main thing was creativity, that the company worked because of the type of product it was manufacturing, I threw myself into that side of things, and so did Rosita,” Ottavio Missoni, 1984
When Missoni appeared on TV he never played the part of the designer; both Tai and Rosita also refused to do television adverts and publicity in certain newspapers and magazines. In the '80s, as the brand expanded also in other sectors through licensing deals, critics stated that the Missonis had done for knitwear what Le Corbusier did for concrete and Pucci did for prints - they gave it personality and autonomy.
Wool, mohair, silk, cotton, elasticised and Lurex yarns were employed to create herringbone-like motifs, abstract designs, asymmetrical decorations or zigzagging stripes, at times applied on pieces layered one on top of the other.
Ottavio and Rosita's vibrantly pictorial graphic effects called to mind dynamic and bright paintings such as those created by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carrà, artists belonging to the Futurist movement. A first exhibition featuring Missoni's work analysed from an artistic point of view was organised in the '70s in Venice; their creations were then presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1981 Ottavio's patchworks were also exhibited as innovative tapestries first in Milan and then at the Berkeley Art Museum, University of California.
In the meantime, while the company expanded into interior design founding the MissoniHome brand, directors and costume designers started turning up in Sumirago to pick up pieces for their films: Burt Lancaster donned Missoni cardigans in Luchino Visconti's Gruppo di famiglia in un interno; Mariangela Melato appeared in patchwork jumpers in Mario Monicelli's Caro Michele; Henry Fonda was pictured in a Missoni sweater when he got an Oscar for his final film role in On Golden Pond and Missoni's designs reappeared on Maria Schell in Hugh Brody's Nineteen Ninteen.
Nino Manfredi became a puzzling case also for Tai: the Italian actor wore in the film Nudo di donna a Missoni cardigan that soon became a Manfredi trademark. The actor regularly appeared in a Missoni jumper at festivals and on TV adverts (Tai joked in interviews saying that Manfredi had got a Missoni tattooed on his skin...) and was even buried in a Missoni design.
Charlotte Rampling got married in a design by Missoni, while Rudolf Nureyev's long and colourful knitted coat was often showcased in quite a few exhibitions about the dancer's costumes (and Nureyev in turn also became an inspiration for some of the house collections).
"We buy raw yarn and we dye it. We have hand-looms for making models and normal knitwear looms - I say normal, but actually our fabrics are so complicated that it takes an hour to make one metre. You have to realise that in one collection I may use up to fifteen or twenty different yarns, each one the result of perhaps thirty dyes; and in one garment there may be three different types of yarns, each one in different shades," Ottavio Missoni, 1984
Tai often claimed he was amazed by the fact that people working in very different fields, from actors and actresses to athletes, liked their designs as some deemed them elegant, others found them extremely comfortable. Yet the Missonis' favourite link outside the fashion industry remained the one with the stage.
In 1983 the company created the costumes for Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" at Milan's La Scala. The opera took pace in Scotland, a place the Missonis naturally considered as the perfect location for their wool designs. For the occasion they dressed the entire choir, producing all the costumes in Sumirago and following all the rehearsals in Milan.
Further collaborations followed: the Missonis dressed two youth orchestras, Claudio Abbado's and Gino Negri's, and created the golden fleece for the "Medea" ballet (1990) with costumes by Franca Squarciapino. One of the most important events that reunited fashion and sport and to which the family collaborated was the opening ceremony for the 1990 World Soccer Championships. The house made for this occasion colourful costumes representing Africa (documented through Maria Pezzi's drawings).
In the '90s the brand also created costumes included in "Step Into My Dream" for The Parsons Dance Company and, a few years later, the knit space-dyed stretch suits for the acrobatic performances by the Aeros company.
Rather than surviving the crisis, the main goal of the most recent years for the Missonis was how to preserve the image of products originally made on Coperdoni looms in Sumirago, while innovating the brand, that in the meantime kept on being honoured through awards (Rosita won Elle Decoration UK's "Best Fabric Award" in 2003 and Elle Decor International Design Award in 2005 and she was also elected Createur 2007 for Maison et Objet) and exhibitions such as "Workshop Missoni: Daring to be Different" (the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London, 2009).
While the company extended the brand to Missoni Hotels in Edinburgh and Kuwait, it also launched collaborations with Havaianas, Converse, and Target, while turning to experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger to shoot the advert for the A/W 2010 collection.
Missoni was born as a family business and family remained central in all their ventures and activities: Ottavio and Rosita's three children all work for the brand while granddaughter Margherita, Missoni's accessories designer, is also the label's ambassador. To strengthen the idea of the brand being a family business, all the members often appeared in advertising campaigns such as the one shot by photographer Juergen Teller at James Brett’s Museum of Everything.
In more recent years, Ottavio dedicated himself to painting and tapestry, publishing his autobiography, Una Vita sul Filo di Lana (A Life on the Woollen Thread) in 2011. Last year during the London Olympic Games, his sport achievements were remembered through dedicated window shops and unofficial music tracks.
In January 2013 eldest child and company chief executive, Vittorio disappeared with his wife and four others while flying in a small plane over the coast of Venuzuela. The missing group remains presumed dead. Ottavio, who often remarked in interviews that he himself was amazed at the fact that, from a sportsman and athlete, he had turned into a successful fashion designer, is survived by his wife Rosita, his two other children, Luca and Angela (who has designed the ready-to-wear collections since 1996), and grandchildren, who seem to have inherited his passion for life.
In a 2009 interview Margherita stated: "My grandparents and my mother Angela taught me everything I know for what regards this industry, but they also taught me to distance myself from the fashion universe. A great passion for our job runs into the family, but we do also know that this is not the most important thing in the world, so we live our lives with lots of irony and detachment, since, after all, it’s just clothes."