London Design Biennale 2018 Opens at Somerset House: A Kaleidoscope of Countries and Cultures
Building on the success of the inaugural 2016 London Design Biennale, 40 countries, cities and territories from six continents are taking part in the second edition of London Design Biennale, at Somerset House, which opens to the public on Tuesday 4th and runs to the 23rd September.
A highlight on the global cultural calendar, the Biennale sees some of the world’s most exciting and ambitious designers, innovators and cultural bodies gather in the capital to celebrate the universal power of design, across the theme Emotional States. It did not fail to follow the hype from the previous, and first, edition.
HIGHLIGHTS
Egypt — Winner of the London Design Biennale as the most outstanding contribution.
Modernist Indignation
Modernist indignation is an elegy for a rapidly disappearing culture, seen through the prism of the first arabic design magazine.
The Egyptian installation mourns the loss of the country’s modernist architecture, a rich heritage that has been left to ruin or violently erased, and asks the question: how can a design language that was once embraced by a society be so easily forgotten and denied a place in history?
Visitors will see a contemporary reinterpretation of a functional 1939 exhibition put on by the editors of Al Emara, the first Arabic-language design magazine, which was published between 1939 and 1959. The original exhibition would have explored the magazine’s mission, but now it stands as a testament to a lost culture.
The display also includes a video shot in the house of Sayed Karim, the architect who founded Al Emara, who ran into political trouble with the state in 1965 after an illustrious career. The slow, contemplative journey through the house is accompanied by a voiceover of Karim’s 1939 manifesto, “What is architecture?”
Argentina
The Impenetrable Forest
A winding path leads into the impenetrable forest, where visitors can discover the traditions of the wichis and ponder on the Timelessness of their crafts.
For a long time, El Impenetrable, located in the north of Argentina has been the home of the Wichis, one of the oldest ethnic groups of the region — experts in weaving geometric shapes as part of a very ancient sacred tradition of this native community.
The installation evokes the textures, sounds and scents of the forest in this rich region of Argentina and presents a celebration of an ongoing story of self-sustainability.
Brazil
Desmatamento
David elia’s desmatamento captures the vulnerability of Brazil’s rainforest and the emotional toll of its continuing destruction.
Despite reductions in deforestation over the last 10 years, at the current rate the Amazon rainforest will be reduced by 40 per cent by 2030. David Elia’s goal in creating the installation Desmatamento (or Deforestation) is not only to give voice to ecological anger but to share the beauty and emotional significance of the rainforest to Brazil.
Visitors enter a room furnished with stools crafted from the branches of found
Eucalyptus trees — a fast-growing species that is widely used in Brazil for reforestation. Because it is cultivated on a short rotation, the wood is produced sustainably, helping to preserve the native forests from logging. On the walls, a printed wallpaper evokes the breathtaking Mata Atlântica rainforest, immersing visitors in a fragile world.
Colombia
Triada
In Triada, David del Valle explores the complex identity of a country where happiness and optimism co-exist with the pain and shame of the war years.
Colombia is a country whose recent past has been framed by armed conflict and violence related to the drug trade. David Del Valle, curator of the entry, explains that this has created a largely negative impression of its culture and society.
In response to this, Del Valle has created an installation that juxtaposes the emotional states that exist in a country that does not deny its troubled past, but refuses to be defined by it.
Triada (or Triad in English), in reference to the emotions of pain, pride and happiness. A circuit created from images and textures inspired by traditional manufacturing techniques unique to the county, has been designed allowing people to journey from negative to positive states, exploring sounds and images that will make them feel a range of sentiments.
Greece
ANYΠAKOH (Disobedience)
STUDIO INI’S INSTALLATION, ANY AKOH (DISOBEDIENCE), IS A 17M LONG KINETIC WALL THAT CHALLENGES OUR PERCEPTION OF DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE AS SOMETHING STATIC, OR EMOTIONALLY INERT.
Disobedience has been used throughout history to describe the Greek temperament, from the cautionary tale of Icarus, to Antigone, to Prometheus, Greek mythology shows a hero who disobeys the gods yet obeys his moral obligation to humanity and creates opportunity for its progress. It remains a potent theme for Greece at a time when the country is in the process of reinventing itself.
Scientists discover by disobeying the assumptions of predecessors, children learn by disobeying the boundaries of parents, designers create by disobeying the norm.
ANYΠAKOH explores this duality in the nature of disobedience. In the courtyard of
Somerset House, visitors will be presented with an innocuous wall. As they step inside, this dynamic skin exes and morphs in response to their movements: they have transgressed a boundary, transitioning from obedient spectator to disobedient actor.
The undulation and transformation of the structure — a steel spring skeleton built up with recycled plastic — is experienced by both the “actor” and the audience in the courtyard. In addition, a dance performance produced by Farooq Chaudhry, founder and producer of Akram Khan Company, and choreographed and performed by Dickson Mbi, will be broadcast to the public, bringing the piece to life.
Sweden
Coal: Post-Fuel
Coal: post-fuel considers an alternative future for the material that powered the industrial age, and shows that even coal has an emotional value.
Coal is traditionally seen as a completely functional raw material; its value is derived solely from its own destruction. Jesper Eriksson’s installation considers whether this cheap and dirty fossil fuel has a more complex emotional significance – particularly in Britain — and whether it has an alternative future as a desirable material. Eriksson presents a speculative future for coal as an organic material for architecture and interior design. In this way, its image is transformed from a fuel that releases carbon dioxide to a material that encloses it. The installation contains flooring, furniture and other objects in solid coal — “Britain’s most iconic material”, as the designer puts it.
A unique experience in the beautiful setting of Somerset House that I highly recommend. For more information, please visit their website on www.londondesignbiennale.com
