Design Considered #10
10th anniversary edition, a new schedule, smart design and tasteful photography.
#01 - Opening Thought
Despite, content-wise, a definite leaning towards the bright and optimistic movement of design that was modernism, this newsletter is about covering creative endeavours from all periods of time. Therefore, Flemish sculptor Giambologna (Jean de Boulogne) is deservedly recognised this week for the magnificent, magical 1580s-built stone Colusses, naked and replete with stalactites for a beard (that continues to grow over time), which lives harmoniously with nature in Vaglia, Tuscany.
Yet it's what exists underneath - a cavernous network of chambers - that has tied Appenine Colusses to the contemporary design world and our Opening Thought this week. For Objects for a Heavenly Cave, which opens in Marta gallery in Los Angeles on September 7th - designers and artists were prompted with various historical references (including an image of the Colossus) to create works focusing on its fusion of the natural and the grotesque. Paying homage to the Renaissance grotto movement, the show, curated by Krista Mileva-Frank, will explore how these past inspirations can inform modern design, presenting works that evoke the mystical interplay between human creation and nature.
#02 - Edition 10 Update
Hello, and welcome back to Design Considered. As (hopefully) some of you have noticed, we didn't send out a newsletter last Friday and have popped up a day early. Thursday is the new Friday, so we can reserve the latter as a day to share our stories across other channels, namely Instagram and LinkedIn. Please follow along. Also, fortnightly has become the new weekly, so you all have more time (and, ideally, a greater feeling of anticipation) before each wave of design-related content rolls into your inbox.
With Edition #10 being a milestone moment for this newsletter, I decided to recap the project's purpose and reflect on some of the better-received stories. For me, 'Design' is an umbrella term relating to many creative pursuits. However, what architectural design, graphic design, urban design, and product design (the list goes on...) share in common is the fact that best practice in these efforts is all about problem-solving. Good design is essential to our lives - it makes them better. Whether it's a team of creative practitioners re-imagining the purpose of an Alvar Aalto building to preserve its legacy of improving people’s health or learning how retreating to a simple Swedish summer home once a year can enhance one’s quality of life, the stories on this channel are essentially about clever creative people's solutions to myriad problems - big and small.
The 'Considered' aspect of the title is more about the curation and selection of these stories. We're casting our net into a vast ocean of content from the design industry and sharing with you only the most interesting and tasty (tasteful?) catches. This might be a finely crafted lost wax cast bronze bottle opener made in Sydney from Henry Wilson or the story of the smart redevelopment of sunny French Mediterranean modernist development. The point is there is so much noise when it comes to design media these days, and none of us have the time to make sense of it all. This pacy newsletter briefing aims to select the best ideas and stories that make sense to people who care about the creative industries and deliver them in a clear and concise form.
Story suggestions are, of course, always welcome; feel free to email me. Thank you for all the support so far - and see you in a couple of weeks!
#03 - Design Selection
Vessels of all kinds mark our design finds this week, kicking off with a tasteful (1) Oak bowl, which comes from a collaboration between Monocle and Danish design brand Form & Refine. Staying in Scandinavia, Denmark’s Karakter is known mainly for classy classic furniture from modernists and contemporary designers. Still, in keeping with this week’s round-up, we wanted to showcase the sculptural 1968 Joe Columbo-designed (2) Sferico glassware set - a worthy addition to any well-designed home’s dinner table. Going Down Under, visitors to the Sydney gallery Studio Gardner can grab a perfect pair in the form of (3) Henry Wilson’s Billet bowl and a wood fire vessel by Jodie Fried, handsomely set on a vintage oak dining table by Carlo Scarpa. For something sleeker, Milan’s NM3, a design firm well on the rise, has collaborated with Ill Studio to create this conceptual stainless steel (4) Time Capsule, just launched at Dover Street Market Ginza and coming to European shores this autumn. Finally, British porcelain master Wedgwood has been around since 1759, but high-end dog bowls mark a relatively new addition to the now-Finnish-owned brand’s product line-up. Advertised with the great tagline ‘Florentine Unleashed’, the (6) Florentine Verde Pet Bowls are true luxury items for your four-legged friend.
#04 - For Your Consideration
On Instagram this week, the algorithm gods have been giving me content gold, including The Art of Roofing, which does what it says on the tin - just excellent roofing design, with a few construction mishaps thrown in for good measure.
Moving off the phone and into the real world of design, there are still a couple of weeks left to make it to the Fiskars Art & Design Biennale, a wonderful craft & design showcase in a picturesque Finnish village, showcasing works from design talents including 91-year-old furniture making legend Yrjö Kukkapuro.
Back online, I recently stumbled on the comprehensive digital deep-dive into contemporary lighting that is Atmosfera, available to enjoy in English and Italian. It is a clever branded content device for the lighting design specialist A.A.G. Stucchi.
A pair of typographic treats I've been admiring over the past couple of weeks come in the form of Zürich-based Studio Marcus Kraft’s advertising work for the Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2024 and excellent London-based A Practice For Everyday Life's design for the website of US non-profit art space Tinworks.
Finally, these days (I guess because a lot of us live in little homes), not enough attention is paid to installing a statement bar area in one's residence. The very throwback bar area in the lounge ‘den’ of this mid-century gem ‘Domus’ advertised on The Modern House almost had me wanting to ship out of London and set up shop in the wilds of Lancashire. Almost…
#05 - Through The Lens
Danish photographer Jan Søndergaard has long been fascinated by what is on show in the streets of Tokyo. In 2015, he published a series of small books on this subject alongside Boije af Gennäs called Tokyo 123. This photo came a couple of years later, in 2017, when the perfect afternoon light hit Shinjuku’s Sompo Japan Building, designed by Yoshikazu Uchida, just right. “The building comes from a golden period of Japanese design in the 1970s, when many architects there were making a name for themselves globally,” says Søndergaard. “Tokyo is an amazing city, where you see buildings that might be 100 years old next to brand new towers.” Among Søndergaard’s other fascinations in the city is how people sometimes buy cars the same colour as their houses to beautifully match the exteriors of their buildings.