(SUM)one
05 March 2010
(originally published 10.2009)
A designer's work consists of bringing the future to the present.
Joe Colombo
First as an artist and then as a designer Joe Colombo evinces and interprets through his work the profound technological and social changes that have taken place in post-war Europe. The shapes, objects and spaces created by the Italian designer mirror his belief in the progress of art, technology and humanity. It was on the basis of this belief that Colombo cultivated the concept of habitat, a dynamic area that rejected the static conventions and typologies of the past – like house, rooms and furniture, as well as family, work and leisure – to suit them to the needs of modern men and women. The sleeping, living and eating areas of this habitat are no longer the rooms of a house, nor should they be stuffed with furniture. As with life, each area should be what a person makes of it, each zone an expectant wrapper that is activated by modular, multi-functional equipment.
The Minikitchen set out to be one such piece of equipment. Designed for the Italian kitchen manufacturer Paolo Boffi, it was launched at the 1963 Milan Triennale. It was less than half a cubic metre of wood and metal that contained a cooker, a fridge, a tin –opener, drawers for cutlery, work surfaces and even a place for cookery books – everything powered by a single electric plug. This entire item and dynamic was greater than the sum of its parts, mechanisms and functions: the Minikitchen was not kitchen furniture. It was the kitchen.
Equally, it was the desire to activate an area by means of a piece of equipment that led Miguel Rios Design to create the (SUM)One item. Taking the formal and conceptual appropriation of the piece /BNU, /2009 by Ângela Ferreira as the starting point for a joint presentation initially devised for the building occupied by MUDE – Museu do Design e da Moda, (SUM)One is, like the Minikitchen, an outline of the future.
But the form of /BNU, /2009, has its origins in the past – in the actual MUDE building, to be precise, the former headquarters of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino. Established in 1864 as an issuing bank for the Portuguese colonies, the BNU was one of the main arms of Portugal's imperial power – and this building was the epicentre of that power. The part of the museum where the two works are on display, the Dom Luís Pereira Coutinho room, is so named in honour of the director of the bank who had the Rua Augusta building refurbished. This matchless “no-budget” work, designed by Cristino da Silva and opened in 1964, the centenary year of the institution; in that same year Pereira Coutinho also inaugurated another symbolic headquarters of the so-called “bank of the colonies” in Lourenço Marques. Designed by José Gomes Bastos, this outstanding example of modern Portuguese architecture is the same building today, but all the rest has changed. The city where it stands is no longer Lourenço Marques. The Portuguese colony is now an independent African republic. And this imposing block of concrete and glass is no longer the seat of financial power of the metropolis. It is the National Bank of Mozambique.
Ângela Ferreira was in the two seats of financial power – and in the tension between the space of the first and the shape of the second – fertile ground for a reflection on power and Portugal’s colonial past. This is an object built through the memory and life of its author, and one which seeks with its very presence before us to activate our collective memory.
By appropriating /BNU, /2009 and subjecting this object to the rationale typical of the design process, Miguel Rios Design has constructed a new work inspired by Colombo’s MiniKitchen, basing it on the shape of the BNU headquarters in Lourenço Marques, evoked by Ângela Ferreira. By incorporating mechanical devices (wheels, drawers, hinges) and suggesting new functions (workbench, table for meals) the (SUM)One intends to question the nature of an artistic object and ascribe to it a use that is missing by nature.
As with any object or item conceived via the design process, this use only exists when there is the possibility of true interaction between object and subject. That is to say, when a person creates, and urges, the use of an artifact.
And it is precisely on the limits of that (im)possibility that (SUM)One operates: although it is in an area of a gallery and is displayed in an artistic setting, this object is not devoid of the functions that give it meaning. While the exhibition is on it can be opened, closed, fiddled with, touched, used. But while the chance of being brought into action is not denied it, here it is nothing more than the sum of its working parts. Its functionality is exhibited here with a certain potential, like a future scenario.
Because this gallery is not actually a house, nor even a habitat: no matter how much Joe Colombo wished to change the way we activate the areas we live in, there are still spaces which, by reason of their function, themselves activate meanings, metaphors, stories from the fixtures and fittings placed before us – and not the other way round. Here and now we know how to be the capim grass that grows in the bed of African soil. But when the exhibition is over and all this is taken out of the gallery, the capim will become ordinary grass, the African soil will be ordinary ground and (SUMOne) can finally be a piece of kitchen furniture.
(SUMOne) will only really be put into practice once it is mass-produced, distributed and marketed – essential aspects of the design process. Only then will the item we see before us, like Colombo’s Minikitchen, find its true function: to meet the everyday needs of its users and activate whatever places it is taken to. Only then, released from the meanings, metaphors and stories of the past, will we be able to bring a new future to our present.
Frederico Duarte
Having studied communication design in Lisbon, Frederico Duarte (1979) worked as a designer in Kuala Lumpur and Treviso. Since 2004, he quits design practice to focus on what is around this activity, having worked in research, promotion, production, curator and critical design. Currently living and studying in New York, where he is part of the inaugural class of the Masters in “Design Criticism” the School of Visual Arts.
WHITE GEOMETRY
12 November 2009
(originally published 10.2007)
It was a night when design joined forces with the plastic arts and the performance arts in an Art Gallery. Filled with many people - over five hundred - and an object based on a modular system which is, in fact, a variety of objects. And White. An immensity of white. Where nothing is written, but where virtually anything can be contained. A well-lit, precise, methodical and cold atmosphere which immediately brings to mind some futuristic dimension, but which is, after all, our reality. Today and now. It was white, symbolic and immense, that Miguel Rios chose for the presentation of the 1st edition of the project, developed by the Miguel Rios Design Office, which is based on the System 2K07 bag / container assembly system and the Drizzle protection system, both of which are integral parts of the System line. Objects which have a pure and precise geometry and an open design system, where only the initial concept remains unchangeable, revealed in the graphics of a video by Hélio Oliveira. Seven components, which can be combined using straps, zips and Velcro, which allow five types of bags / containers to be assembled - Box, Mini-Box, Laptop, Pocket and Portfolio – where the assembly process by the user him/herself, bearing in mind his/her needs and desires, reflects the ludic character and the open design system at its core. With white, too, everything is left open. Therefore it reigned. From its aseptic perspective, so that no strange noise could disturb the clear reading of the concept behind the object of design.
In the middle of one of the rooms at the Vera Appleton Gallery, an installation by Ricardo Jacinto. A structure, also geometrical, recalling a space station or the immaculate environment of a laboratory, conceived to reflect, to the infinite, the bodies, the movements and the objects. Two bodies, twins, by their condition also reflecting into each other. Mechanical, repetitive, cadenced, synchronized and exact movements, with no margin for error, choreographed by André Murraças. A drink, also white – Dame Blanche: created by Hugo Brito, who idealized a combination of drinkable liquids placed in four drinking fountains which would normally contain water. In another room, the audience present was invited to handle the modular components and to try out the various possible combinations. Miguel Rios directed this presentation with the mastery of an orchestra leader, demonstrating his purified work process. All this with the minimum noise possible, to ensure no one was distracted from the essential – the pure object of design. In a near future, white will let itself be contaminated by other colours. But for this night, it was simply white.
Anabela Becho
Anabela Becho started at the newspaper Blitz. She wrote for the magazines ELLE, Número, Obscena, among others. She collaborated with ON, ÍCON, VOGUE and Agenda Cultural. Currently, she is Editorial Director of the urban culture magazine RELANCE.
Miguel Rios Design Online
12 November 2009
(originally published 01.2007)
The Miguel Rios Design office emerged from the growing interest in the practical feasibility of design in industry, in the conception of clothing as items of protection and communication, their utilitarian and functional nature, and in issues related to intelligent garments. Thus, when it was set up in 2002, this office had the precedents of the designer Miguel Rios, who has been involved in the research and observation of the dynamics of dressing and the relation between the body and clothing, as an object. One of the aims of this site will therefore be to pass on information about these interests and references.
Currently, the team which comprises the MRD office is working on different projects, all of which are related to the adaptation of new technologies to the textile world. Its core business is design, by the team and by the strategic dynamics which constitute it. They aim to create and introduce onto the market products which in one way or another lie outside of the normal scope of items of clothing, of the ephemeral aspects which are usually associated to them, and to imbue those items with something which gives them a certain continuity through time and allows them, likewise, to communicate for themselves.
With all of the subjectivity which these themes may involve, with all of the complexity of references, Man has always imagined the future, has always projected images. A high technology world is developing, much faster than we may think, and the reality which the average citizen observes, with a greater or lesser degree of awareness, is seen in a different way by minds which equate more futuristic possible scenes. The truth is that 40 years ago no one imagined a world such as the one we have today. And that is obvious from many films and other art forms from different eras (hence the difference in the imagery of a 2001 Space Odyssey and a Blade Runner, for example). There are dangers we experience today and project into the future. Fiction meanders through viruses, contamination and terrorism. At the same time that we face this more dangerous world, the future also holds for us the pleasure of using new technologies associated with greater comfort and protection, more emotional aspects, and therefore more human. This office has been thinking about these issues for a long time. It has questioned itself about what life will be like, in practice, in a complex city, filled with unknowns. About how we may protect ourselves and live together as a society. Futuristic imagery is not a part only of cartoons. It can’t be.
Perpetually connected with cities, with urban and social issues, with architecture and urban culture, the interests of Miguel Rios have always lain between art and design, the evolution of the body and its possible adaptations to its surrounding environment, the changes this implies for the behaviour of individuals, the textile world and its constant transformations. Therefore, it is not surprising that some of his references are Sterlac and Lucy Orta. And that he should think of all of these issues solely in the light of the town and city.
Reading the various points on this website will help the visitor to understand the projects themselves, with the whole hermetic implicit in issues of intelligent wear, as well as to get to know those involved, the team itself. This communication platform will also serve as a means of expression for the various issues and events related to contemporary culture, written by different authors, depending on the themes. This page will, therefore, be a space for opinion.
Isabel Lindim
Graduated in Communication Sciences from the Universidade Autónoma of Lisbon in 1996. Between then and 2005, she has contributed to the magazines Grande Reportagem, Visão and DIF, as well as working as a journalist for Elle and as an editor of the on-line magazine Le Cool. She has also worked as a journalist for the television programme Pop Up, on RTP2, a programme about urban culture. She is currently collaborating with the magazines Elle and Le Cool, as well as writing press notes for various events, such as ModaLisboa.