100 Years
2 – 29 June 2013
Craft Victoria window
31 Flinders Lane Melbourne 3000

Visit www.craft.org.au for more information. Image courtesy Kim Jaeger and Craft Victoria.

The man in black. Jan Gehl snaps a Melbourne laneway view. Photo by Eugenia Lim – Assemble Papers.

Back in the 1970s, when Gehl was in Melbourne as a visiting professor, the value of street culture was not widely recognised. Robin Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness had been published over a decade earlier; in addition to being deemed ‘unpatriotic’, its critique on ‘featurism’ in Australian aesthetics and architecture was yet to make a broader impact. At this time, Gehl recalls walking down the deserted streets of inner Melbourne of a weekend: “It was neutron-bombed, not a soul – not even a cat. Now, internationally, Melbourne is ranking sky high, one of the best cities in the world. Everybody who has been down here has been raving about the quality of the streetscapes, and the care that’s been taken.”

Working with the City of Melbourne in 1993 (Gehl was invited by the council to conduct a Public Spaces and Public Life survey – and again for a 2004 update), a key recommendation was to create opportunities for outdoor dining, mimicking the success of the grand boulevards of Paris and the communal squares of Rome. The suggestion was ridiculed in a city famous for its icy southerlies and four-seasons-in-one-day climate. Yet, twenty years later, Melbourne boasts the highest ratio of street furniture per person in the world; outdoor cafes have increased from less than 50 in 1990 to over 600 today; the number of pedestrians in the city on weekday evenings has doubled; and Swanston Street has more pedestrians per day than Regent Street in London.

Swanston streetscape. Busier than Regent street London. Photo courtesy Avlxyz (CC-license via Flickr).

Jan Gehl has made it his life’s work to provide convincing evidence for this investment in public life. His published titles speak to his enduring commitment to and singular focus on the human subject, beginning with Life Between Buildings in 1987 and continuing on with variations on the theme: Public Spaces, Public Life (1996), New City Spaces (2000), New City Life (2006) and most recently, Cities for People (2010) (in which Melbourne features prominently). For his part, Gehl credits the “grandmother” of humanistic planning, Jane Jacobs for drawing attention to the importance of human scale. “Fifty years ago she said – go out there and see what works and what doesn’t work, and learn from reality. Look out of your windows, spend time in the streets and squares and see how people actually use spaces, learn from that, and use it.”

Before: Broadway and Times Square, New York City, pre-2007. Congestion, cabs and car culture dominate. Photo courtesy Department of Transport (DOT).

After: the same location, Broadway at Times Square in 2009, after Gehl Architects worked with the City of New York and the Department of Transport on a major urban realm and bibycle strategy in New York. Photo courtesy Department of Transport (DOT).

Gehl has taken this approach literally, spending countless hours walking the streets of cities around the world, studying life beneath, between and around buildings. “Man was made to walk”, Gehl reminds us. “All our senses are made for being a walking animal – for that speed, for that horizontal perception – and when we are in that natural environment that we are meant for, then we can watch and talk and kiss as we were meant to as human beings”. Forty years of this close observation of human behavior (rather than a more theoretical engagement with urban studies: ”I am not much into reading”, he confesses) lies behind Gehl’s core beliefs of treating pedestrians and cyclists “sweetly” and the need for the city to be an “invitation” to spend time, a welcoming and sustaining place for people to live. “A good city is like a good party”, he says. “You know it’s working when people stay for much longer than really necessary, because they are enjoying themselves.”

Before: Ashrafieyh Square, Amman, Jordan pre-2005. Cars dominate with a lack of pedestrian access. Photo courtesy Gehl Architects.

After: Gehl Architects worked with the Greater Amman Municipality on an urban realm strategy for a car-free, pedestrian-focused public space. Photo courtesy Gehl Architects.

Jan’s generous nature is tested on the subject of “starchitecture”. He has no time for what he terms “bird-shit” architecture, the legacy of modernists – “architects travelling all over the world to drop their towers”. Or, what he sees as the increasing obsession with form in contemporary city building and skyscrapers, which he compares to his wife’s perfume bottles that decorate the bathroom shelf. Each new building reaches higher, in more complex formations than the last. This is, he says, the “Brasilia syndrome” – the creation of cities and spaces which look magnificent from a plane, or in the architect’s render, but do nothing for the people that need to live in them.

Unsurprisingly, he is not entirely at home with the “New Wave” or “New Pragmatism” of Danish architecture currently sweeping the globe (think urban infill developments and think BIG). However, he confesses that starchitect Bjarke Ingels has now, in fact, become one of his “very special friends”. “I started by criticising his stuff as senseless and unfeeling and with no concern for people. But now, he comes to me with his design and he says to me, look at this group floor, look at this project, it is much better than the previous ones, isn’t it? And I was over at his place the other day, and he had a new book and I grabbed one. And he wrote in it: Bjarke loves Jan. And now I have that at home”.

Jan Gehl and the IFHP study tour group, walking and watching in Melbourne’s Block Arcade. Photo by Eugenia Lim – Assemble Papers.

While making cities for people is a battle that Gehl continues to fight, he feels the winds of change are behind him. “It is the third time that the architecture profession has given me their highest honour – and that is very nice. This is a sign that the kind of work that I do has been accepted, not only by the architecture profession worldwide but my own people in Denmark, the fatherland, which for many years has treated this area disdainfully, overlooked it, pretended it was not there”. Gehl Architects now works in thirty countries, with a core team of over forty staff, consulting on public life and guidelines for city development, increasingly in developing countries. With satisfaction, Gehl reflects that “it took a long time for Jane Jacobs to be heard, but now she has been heard, and I am her humble grandson”.

And, in city planning itself, from the United States to rapidly urbanising China and India, “one city after the other is converting, wanting to ‘do a Melbourne’”. Gehl sees a “new paradigm” of urban development emerging, driven by a fundamental concern for life, rather than the efficient flow of traffic. “In what I call the ‘reconquered cities’, we have won back the right to be in the city from the car, and we can now enjoy the age old joy of people meeting people, which is why people came to cities in the first place”. Melbourne, he says, has been transformed from a city where we once rushed to the office and back home again, (“like ants to their various places and when they are finished they go down like ants down in the hole again”), to “a city which really is very inviting for promenading, and for lingering and sitting and enjoying, and looking at the girls or whatever you do.”

Jan Gehl (centre, right) and Rob Moore (centre, left) and the IFHP study tour group take in Section8 “temporary pop-up” bar, which has now been running for over 6 years. Photo by Eugenia Lim – Assemble Papers.

As Gehl takes his leave, donning his parking inspector hat, he leaves me with a parting caution: “You go down and see the Docklands, and they are 30 years behind what the city can do. They think that if they just have enough architects it must be a good city – but it is just another assembly of these perfume bottles”. You will not, Gehl stresses, maintain a livable city by thinking of the beauty of the buildings first, or from privileging the happiness of the motorcar over the interests of people. Rather, it is how the buildings land, how they are connected, and how the public spaces around them are organised that will define the success of the cities of the future.

Many thanks to Anna Esbjørn, Senior Project Manager and Mette Løth Rasmussen, Researcher at The Danish Architecture Centre (DAC) who organised the study tour for The International Federation for Housing and Planning (IFHP) for inviting Assemble Papers to attend part of the tour and for assistance with this article. Big thanks to Jan Gehl for his patience and candour while we pursued him across the streets and rivers of Melbourne for this interview. For more information on the work of Gehl Architects, visit: www.gehlarchitects.com. Feature image (top) by Sheng Han (CC-license via Flickr) and Swanston streetscape by Alpha (CC-license via Flickr).

Curated by the gallery’s director Julia Peyton-Jones and co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, this annual commission fuses art and architecture, creating a space in which the public can linger, converse, work, sip coffee and soak in the experience of being within a site-specific piece of contemporary architecture. Past pavilions have included designs by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Frank Gehry (2008), the late Oscar Niemeyer (2003) and Zaha Hadid, who designed the inaugural structure in 2000.

Sou Fujimoto’s cloud-like structure occupies around 350 sqm of lawn in front of the Serpentine Gallery. Constructed from latticed 20mm steel poles, the pavilion appears lightweight and semi-translucent, allowing it to blend into the green summer-autumn landscape of Kensington Gardens. The pavilion is designed to be a flexible social space (with a café hidden inside), encouraging locals and visitors alike to enter and engage with the architecture over its four month installation (June-October 2013).

Sou Fujimoto’s architecture is inspired by organic structures and explore the space between nature and ‘artificiality’. Fujimoto’s projects have mainly focused on residential and institutional projects in Japan, including Final Wooden House, T House and House N, to the institutional, such as the Musashino Art Museum and Library at Musashino Art University.

For more information on the work of Sou Fujimoto, visit his website (in Japanese): www.sou-fujimoto.net. To find out more about the Serpentine Gallery summer pavilions past and present, visit: www.serpentinegallery.org. Feature image (top) is by Ray Tang/Rex Features courtesy the Guardian.

Watch Sou Fujimoto speak about his Serpentine Gallery pavilion in this video by Dezeen:

Originally commissioned as a new residence for a small family, the brief was for a new, sustainable dwelling at the rear of an existing small terrace house. Breathe take a common sense approach to sustainability and environmental sensitivity, evident in the design of all their projects large and small. Transformer House is a micro-scale case study of this philosophy. Environmentally-sustainable design features and materials were key for both architect and client. “Of all of the things we debated on this project – sustainability was not one of them”.

These features include the design of the first floor as both heat sink and radiator. A suspended concrete slab incorporates hydronic heating coils that are preheated by the sun and in turn, circulating heating and cooling throughout the dwelling. The built form maximizes northern exposure for all living spaces, making the most of winter sun while shielding itself from summer heat. Automated high level saw tooth windows encourage natural convection: hot air escapes up and out, thereby removing the need for air conditioning and reducing overall energy consumption.

Transformer House has a utilitarian outer shell, built to last in robust materials and natural finishes: existing brickwork, clip-lock steel cladding, un-oiled spotted gum cladding and battens. Yet, the interior of the home is simple, light and inviting, with white walls and a charcoal concrete floor in the living areas. This is a compact space that the current owner Teresa has made her own, living a full life surrounded by her collection of artworks, books and ephemera, close to public transport and family.

All exterior photographs by Andrew Wuttke: wuttke.com.au. Interior photographs by Eugenia Lim – Assemble Papers. For more on Breathe Architecture, visit: breathe.com.au.

Image courtesy Gehl Architects / The Human Scale. 

Over the course of a day, Room11‘s Aaron Roberts and Thomas Bailey (co-founders, along with Nathan Crump and James Wilson of the Hobart and Melbourne-based practice) guided us in, across and through a few of the practice’s key Tasmanian projects, including the multi-coloured public walkway commission GASP! (Glenorchy Art and Sculpture Park), the sleek black-clad Longley House and the modular timber design of Thomas’ own residence, Little Big House (we first waxed lyrical about Little Big House late last year). Established in 2005, Room11 continue to forge a reputation for sophisticated, minimal and environmentally-sensitive architecture designed for the Australian context. We’re pleased to debut our first moving image piece above, a collaboration with artist, cinematographer and filmmaker Jon Mark Oldmeadow, along with a further interview with Aaron and Thomas below – and stunning, hot-off-the-digital-press images (debuting for the first time ever, right here on AP, by photographer Ben Hosking) of GASP! stage two.

Light play. Shadows, sun and the simplicity of form at Room11′s GASP pavilion and ferry jetty (part of the project’s ‘stage two’, completed May 2013) in Glenorchy, Tasmania. Photo by Ben Hosking.

You maintain two bases in Melbourne and Hobart. Tell us more about how these two offices operate and collaborate?

Aaron: Room11 originated in Hobart and we practiced solely from there for a number of years. The decision to open another wing of the practice in Melbourne came from the desire to continue practicing together even while members of the group chose to live in different places. It wasn’t that Melbourne was chosen as a strategic move for the practice. The same has happened in a minor way when members have travelled abroad for extended periods. The “remote” office in Melbourne is now however a solid base, which throws up challenges in terms of collaboration, but given the current and future advancements in video conferencing and online design tools, the process of collaboration is realistically an issue of making time for the two studios to connect and critique projects. We still believe in the value of the face-to-face design sessions, so members from each base travel regularly between the two sites, recently tied in with either competitions or short-term teaching roles at universities.

Thomas: The internet. Plus, we travel back and forth quite a bit.

Red refractions. Room11′s new GASP pavilion, unveiled this May 2013. Photo by Ben Hosking.

A sense of sci-fi drama at GASP. Photo by Ben Hosking.

What are you currently working on in Melbourne and in Tasmania?

Thomas: Here in Hobart, we’re working on a number of fantastic residential projects, an artist studio and are busy finalising GASP stage two among a few others.

Aaron: In Melbourne, we’re working on some competition entries, some multi-residential projects, a cellar door, and an office/showroom which changes colour as you walk around it.

Colour theory: a red framed landscape and a green view of the sky at GASP. Photo by Ben Hosking.

Quiet contemplation and concrete poetry. Photo by Ben Hosking.

Aaron, you were heavily involved in the sound art scene in Hobart in the bad old days. What about now, is the sonic experience still a part of the design process and consideration of the lived experience for Room 11?

Aaron: I used to co-run an event called the “cluster” with various musicians and video art collaborators. The notion of place was always key to these events, one for instance was held in the rivulet tunnels under Hobart, the aural reverberations echoing for great distances through the concrete tunnel system. For me, these events provoked ongoing desires for collaboration and to create experientially rich environs. Sound in architecture and the other primary senses of smell and taste are generally under-utilised and seen as secondary to sight and touch. From a sensual point of view, smell is something we utilised as a marker of arrival and departure from the ARH house, its entry portal wrapped in oiled celery top pine.

The ARH house in Allens Rivulet, Tasmania. ‘Dark armour’ and the dramatic entry, wrapped in oiled celery top pine. Photo by Ben Hosking.

The lighter interior at ARH with an inviting kitchen – the heart of the home. Photo by Ben Hosking.

In terms of sound, the idea of the progression of chords within certain classical pieces influenced the gradation of the colour scheme at GASP, and Susan Philipz recently produced a site-specific sound installation along this walkway. Designing with sound in mind, as a part of the lived domestic experience has (unfortunately) been largely contained to the zoning of sound systems. We are always on the lookout for future collaborations, particularly of the sonic variety!

The timber walkway at GASP, a walkway and sensory public art space, winner of the Dulux Colour award 2012. Photo by Ben Hosking.

Simple sustainability. Low-cost, low-maintenance pine battens arranged in a colourful ‘moiré effect’ configuration at GASP. Photo by Ben Hosking.

You mentioned that “aesthetics are almost secondary to the architectural outcome” and that the connection between the interior and exterior, the body in space and the experience of daily life drives the design. Are there particular examples where you have experienced this in the spaces and designs of other architects and if so, where/when?

Thomas: I think Zumthor’s work, the Kunst Museum in Liechtenstein by architects Morger and Degelo and all the great architects Aalto, Sigurd Lewerentz, Van Der Rohe respond to the body and physicality in surprising ways. Certainly, I have very strong recollections of Corbusier’s concrete walls, they are far more gentle and sensitive than I expected, like frozen veils.

Aaron: Experiencing this is not as common as one would like, particularly as much design is currently obsessed with form or facade. A recent trip abroad allowed me to experience the amplified sensuality of the Therme Vals by Zumthor, passing through its thick leather curtains, rosewood change rooms and the slate bathing spaces gives one the feeling that the space is directed at senses beyond sight and hence aesthetics. This was again experienced visiting bath houses in Japan and is probably something felt in bathhouses in many cultures. It’s much more difficult to experience these heightened conditions in architecture of the everyday, within living or work environments, particularly where the aesthetics are seen as secondary. A wedding in the South Yarra Boyd House was the most recent space in which I felt the experience of the way the house operated was more important than the aesthetics.

View out to the water at GASP, like a vision from Antonioni’s 1964 film ‘Red Desert’. Photo by Ben Hosking.

Cantilevered form across the water at GASP. Photo by Ben Hosking.

Is there a signature Room11 style? How would you describe your work to a child?

Aaron: “Style” is a difficult idea for me to come to terms with. In some ways I feel it describes output that is lacking deeper meaning. I think the output of our practice is shifting all the time now, due to new building typologies. There may be similarities, which I’d hope are driven by something more than style. As for describing our work, it depends on the age of a child… big shoeboxes with little gardens…

Whose work do you most admire in Australia and internationally (in architecture and also art, design, literature, music….? 

Thomas: We are architecture nuts, we enjoy Sean Godsell and Murcutt in Australia. Internationally, the projects I mentioned before… all great architects worth pursuing. In music we are pretty varied, from Sabbath to Arvo Part. In cinema, I enjoy Aki Kaurismaki and Andrei Tarkovsky. Art is difficult to talk about… for me, it is more a matter of delighting in a collection.

Aaron: In architecture, the Spanish practice RCR; art: Bianca Hester and Berlinde De Bruyckere. Design: the guys at Archier, Chris, Josh and Haddad are pushing some great work. Music: recently…The Savages. Book: Triumph of the City. Fashion: Alexi Freeman. Cinema: sci-fi, Children of Men.

What’s your favourite building (or buildings) of all time?

Thomas: Too hard to answer… but the Pantheon is pretty good. Lewerentz’s St Mark’s Church Bjorkhagen.

Aaron: I have many that may be my favourite, but I haven’t visited them yet (so I don’t know if they’ll stack up!). So in terms of actually having been there, the Toro-do, or lantern hall in Koyasan Japan.

The red zone at GASP. Photo by Ben Hosking.

Mirrored landscapes. GASP at dusk. Photo by Ben Hosking.

Environmentally sustainable design seems fundamental, almost a given, in the Room 11 design process, from materials through to ethos. But you also note the limited “good” ESD can do while Australian cities continue to sprawl or “erode the periphery”. Can architecture make a difference? And what in your opinion can be done to go “beyond architecture” towards true sustainability in cities and in Australia? 

Aaron: Beyond architecture, public transport has a huge influence, designing our cities around high speed rail, reviewing potentials for distributed work environments or hubs linked to transport networks and stations, reducing pressures on city centres. We face very serious issues relating to energy production and food security. I’m interested in how hybrid, symbiotic infrastructures can be utilised to improve efficiencies and sustainability. At a crude level this is akin to utilising waste heat from industrial districts to heat homes, and at a geo-political level using the Mexican border fence as a giant solar collector as per Rael San Fratello Architects project for the WPA 2.0 competition. This idea of re-purposing infrastructure with dual or hybrid purpose and interlinking systems to reduce or eliminate ’waste’ as an element I think is pivotal.

Thomas: At the macro scale, we can be advocates for urban consolidation and we can discourage development that destroys the periphery. At the micro scale, we can make our buildings perform as efficiently as possible and encourage clients to buy land on established public transport routes or close to their place of work. In short, we can publicly and privately encourage sustainable practice.

To view more of Room11′s work, visit their website at: room11.com.au. Cinematography by artist and filmmaker Jon Mark Oldmeadow: jmo-mi.com. All photos by Ben Hosking: benhosking.com.au. 

When: Doors open 6.30pm, film starts 7pm sharp.

Where: The Robyn Boyd Foundation: ‘Walsh Street’ 290 Walsh Street, South Yarra, VIC 3141, Australia

How much: For DADo film subscribers, booking for individual sessions is free and will be opened two weeks prior to the scheduled screening date. Booking in advance is essential as capacity is strictly limited. This is a DADo film subscribers ONLY event. New DADo subscribers and guests are welcome subject to seating availability. $25 donation is always appreciated.

For more info on DADo’s programme and to become a film subscriber, visit robinboyd.org.au. Image (top) via DADo.

Incredible bamboo scaffolding in Sheung Wan. Photo by Eugenia Lim – Assemble Papers.

On a steamy day, I headed to the Sheung Wan & Central district, where some of the most historical parts of the city nest in the shadows of skyscrapers. I’d put the call out across the world-wide-web for leads to people embedded in the local creative scene: long-term residents who bridge that uniquely Hong Kong blend of commerce and creativity. I met with: designer Danielle Huthart, founder and director of design consultancy Whitespace and creative director of Creative City, a cultural guide and printed map; and earlier that day, Jason Schlabach (branding strategist) and Marc Brulhart, Chantal Réchaussat and (via Skype from the coincidentally-named Eugenia Hotel in Bangkok) Marc Cansier – founders and directors of Marc & Chantal, an Asia-wide creative agency who work across branding and experiential design.

Whitespace office pinboard. Photo by Inga Beckmann.

Whitespace: “small studio, big heart”. Photo by Inga Beckmann.

After a decade living in New York, Danielle Huthart felt she needed to “return and connect with Hong Kong”. She was drawn back to a city that was both foreign and familiar (Danielle was born in HK and is English-Chinese), curious to test her design chops in a culture that privileges business and entrepreneurship, but is still forging its global identity as a creative player. Danielle founded Whitespace in 2005, after arriving back and searching, without success, for a local design studio to work with. “I couldn’t find one that had an aesthetic or vision that I believed in. Between the large ad agencies and smaller independent design shops, there appeared to be a gap”. Rent was cheap in a post-SARS environment and Danielle was able to find a small space in the centre of town to turn into a design studio. Whitespace (which takes its name from the free space between elements) provides creative direction, branding and interactive services to local and international clients across the arts, cultural, retail, fashion and hospitality industries, including Miele, Rooftop Cinema, K11 Art Foundation, across online, print and exhibition design. With such diverse projects, Whitespace’s team of ten remains “hands-on”. “Everything we craft comes from our experiences, our perspectives and our love of good design. A small studio with a big heart is how we like to see ourselves!”

Feedback, meetings, design, yum cha. All in a week’s work at Whitespace. Photo by Inga Beckmann.

The World is Yours… aspirational neon signage at Whitespace. Photo by Inga Beckmann.

For the three European expats behind Marc & Chantal, shifting to Hong Kong and forming a cross-disciplinary collective was an organic process. Marc Brulhart (who hails from La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland – Le Corbusier’s hometown) was the first to make the move from Europe in the 90s. Trained in product and interior design, his dream was to head to Japan, but he was permanently sidetracked by Hong Kong. Graphic designers Marc Cansier and Chantal Réchaussat arrived 6 months later and the trio formed their namesake company, working out of a tiny living room. The company has now grown to a staff of 35 in Hong Kong and a smaller Beijing office working across branding and experiential design for high profile clients including the Hong Kong government, French Embassy Hong Kong, Mandarin Oriental, Hermes and Swire Properties.

Marc & Chantal’s topographic installation at last year’s Art HK (the predecessor to Art Basel HK) made from post-consumer paper.

Over 80% of the paper was reused or recycled after the fair. Photo courtesy Swire Properties.

The view from above. Visitors within Marc & Chantal’s installation, which celebrated Hong Kong’s densely-packed high-rises. Photo courtesy Swire Properties.

With a diverse skill set amongst staff (architecture, furniture and product design, graphic design), craftsmanship, collaboration and innovation is central to the Marc & Chantal ethos. To this end, the team also curate and present Le Salon, a series of free and public “informal conversations” featuring the city’s creative leaders, to further the cross-pollination of ideas and processes in the wider creative community. During this year’s Art Basel HK, Marc & Chantal will host Le Salon 006: Building and Living Art: the artist’s experience in Hong Kong within their commissioned installation in the fair’s lounge. Both the discussion and the built installation aim to explore how the city shapes artistic practice; and the impact of increasing density, population growth and property prices on the creative fabric of Hong Kong. For Chantal, the city is “a place that promotes fast exchange of ideas and fast moving projects. There is this sentiment for everyone, whether it was 20 years ago or today, everyone that comes here. Everything is possible. There’s a lot of open mindedness.”

The “Lazy Tire” project was a playful contribution to HK-based music festival Clockenflap in 2012. Discarded bus tires en route to becoming playful seating…Photo courtesy Marc & Chantal.

Marc & Chantal wrapped the discarded bus tires with bands of orange and purple to create a collection of “lazy tires” for festival goers. Photo courtesy Marc & Chantal.

The name “Lazy Tire” was inspired by “the slinky posture that one takes when resting in the chair”. Photo courtesy Marc & Chantal.

Danielle agrees that what she loves about Hong Kong is “the drive of our people, our mercurial Cantonese language, and the relentless energy of the city to grow, create and change”. Inspiration is also found in the city’s imperfections: “the oppressively tall buildings, the speed at which things go up or get torn down, rude people, long queues, disdain for noise after 10pm, lack of a good grilled cheese and bad street furniture. All the things that annoy us also inspire us — to do better, to live with integrity and act with compassion”. Fostering a sense of community is also crucial to Whitespace’s ethos. “When I came back to Hong Kong, I was new to the city again. I didn’t know where to go and who to talk to! It was only over time that I connected with like-minded people and discovered many of us went through the same thing such as not knowing where to go, who’s out there and what’s going on creatively and culturally”.

Delectable-looking printed matter on the shelves of the Whitespace office. Photo by Inga Beckmann.

Staff in the foyer at Whitespace. Photo by Inga Beckmann.

In 2010, Danielle founded Creative City, along with editor and creative consultant Louise Wong out of a desire to capture and share insights from the creative community and to communicate and share this knowledge with the public in a sharply-designed, relatively inexpensive HK$68 (around AUS$8.90) map. “As designers, I feel we have a responsibility to make things better, not just for a privileged few”.

The second edition of Creative City, a cultural guide and map to Hong Kong, for the keen traveler and curious local. Photo courtesy Whitespace and Creative City.

A colourful mood board made of a variety of limited edition #2 Creative City guides. Photo courtesy Whitespace and Creative City.

Creative City has published two guides dedicated to communicating the ground-level culture that is taking place in Hong Kong. Says editor and co-founder Louise (via email): “I have strong feelings about the way [Hong Kong] is perceived and my projects now are mostly dedicated to shifting these beliefs and establishing new dialogues about the creative communities here”. Also born in Hong Kong, Louise lived in Australia until 1997, when she relocated back to HK (at the time of reunification with China). “My feelings for the city are complicated and nuanced, just like the cityscape – layered and textured. I love the city and in some ways my sense of identity has evolved along with it. Some of the changes the city has experienced since 1997 have been deeply profound. And while I grew up in Australia, I became an adult here so I feel that my journey has always mirrored Hong Kong’s”.

Detail of the Creative City second edition. Photo courtesy Whitespace and Creative City.

The six districts mapped in Creative City. Photo courtesy Whitespace and Creative City.

Creative City is geared towards the curious visitor and the local who wants to delve deeper into the cultural fabric of HK. Six districts are featured in editions one and two. On Hong Kong island: Central & Sheung Wan, Wan Chai and Causeway Bay & Tai Hang; on Kowloon: Tsim Sha Tsui, Mong Kok & Yau Ma Tei as well as Shek Kip Mei & Sham Shui Po. The recent second edition was a collaboration with “district curators” who either work or live in one of the districts, including Graphic Airlines for Tsim Sha Tsui, Shanghai Street Studios for Yau Ma Tei and Daydream Nation for Wanchai.

Danielle Huthart (left) and Louise Wong (right), co-founders of Creative City. Photo courtesy Creative City.

It’s the vertical density and the proximity to many people willing to take creative risks that drives Louise. “The scene here is very hard-working and enterprising. I always meet people who have ideas on the go and want to brainstorm them to take them to the next level. It’s not always easy here for the creative industries but more and more, people are making things happen”. With major public projects in the works, such as the development of Foster + Partners-designed West Kowloon Cultural District (including M+, a new museum for visual culture opening in 2017) and the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Central Police Station redevelopment, Louise feels it’s an exciting time for Hong Kong as its profile is lifted towards becoming an international destination for art and culture. “And for better or for worse, the art market is suddenly all about Hong Kong, so we’re going through an amazing pull effect at the moment. It’s all feeling kind of abuzz with energy – even more so than usual, if you can imagine that!”

Bright lights, big city. The view of Hong Kong typology – the skyline of skyscrapers from Kowloon Bay. Photo by Eugenia Lim – Assemble Papers.

Feature image of the Whitespace pinboard (top) by Inga Beckmann. Big thanks to Jason Schlabach, Marc Brulhart, Chantal Réchaussat and Marc Cansier at Marc & Chantal for their time and candid conversation. Also big thanks to Danielle Huthart and Louise Wong of Whitespace and Creative City and the inimitable Katrina Tran for helping me to connect the dots in the first place.

‘Autoprogettazione’ furniture at Salone del Mobile, Milan 2010. Photo courtesy designrecherche (CC-license via Flickr).

Design is often valued for being functional rather than beautiful; modern design is known for its minimalism and simplicity, foregrounding use over pleasure. Ornament and Crime, written by Adolf Loos in the early part of the twentieth century, declared that the time for decoration and frivolity in design was over. The new world of modern society would be efficient, productive and useful. And this, naturally, served the growing influence of industrial production – which relied on speedy mass-production of goods with fast labour and minimal materials, in order to maximize profit. As simplicity in design became prevalent, producers were able to produce more goods at lower cost and with greater profit margins. The ornamental, decorative side of design was expensive, time-consuming, and did not lend itself to either mass-production or profit-making. Beauty was out, function was in!

Sturdy and stoic table from ‘autoprogettazione’. Photo by Eugenia Lim.

The functional design of autoprogettazione captures a dilemma in the history of modern design: functional design could speed up mass-production and discard the hand-made, human elements of design; but at the same time, functional design could enable a better quality of life, reducing the time and effort involved in making things, and creating objects that made life easier. And so, according to Mari, the best design objects are created by socialist thinkers working in a capitalist system. Mari puts this into practice by designing objects for mass production that circumvent the very principles of mass production.

Mari’s socialist inclinations are evident in the autoprogettazione project. To avoid the problem of miserable factory workers slaving away at producing objects for a mass market, Mari developed DIY designs that empowered producers to create their own furniture using readily-available (and affordable!) timber and nails. The works are also customizable, so the user becomes both maker and designer. It’s tempting to see this work and think, IKEA eat your heart out! However there is an important difference between Mari’s design and the production of IKEA. While both transform the consumer into a producer, there are strict limitations involved in the IKEA iteration. We don’t get to influence the design (although we can hack it), we choose from a limited series of options, and we must go to the IKEA store to obtain the materials. Mari’s “self-design”, by contrast, enables. When we follow Mari’s guidelines, we also pick up the skills to create an infinite array of products. In this way, we become more liberated from our reliance on commercial designers and producers.

Let’s say we produce the autoprogettazione chair. We can source any materials available to us, including recycled timber or wood from our backyard – and with a nail and hammer, we build this chair. In the process, we discover we can build a different kind of chair using the same materials and steps, or indeed a table, or a bed, or a house! Mari’s design practice is puzzling because in one sense, it celebrates function and simplicity; yet at the same time, it sabotages the impetus of industrial production by privileging quality and longevity over reproduction and efficiency. It’s not surprising, following this train of thought, that some of his most celebrated work includes actual puzzles, games and children’s books – the antithesis of work and productivity. 16 Animals is a set of carved wooden animals that fit together to form a perfect rectangle and was first produced by the manufacturer Danese in the 1960s. Another minimal-waste design, the animals can be played with as individual pieces, stacked on top of each other lego-style in new constructions, or pieced together as a puzzle. Mari’s work involves pleasure and play, along with form and function; and in this sense, emphasizes the human qualities of design.

Mari’s design is generous. He gifts to us the tools to create our own design environment and encourages us to experiment and play. His work is also designed to last. Not only is autoprogettazione furniture robust, practical, and sustainable – the work is also timeless in the sense that it can easily be repaired, re-built, or re-invented by the consumer. Mari has said, “I want to make objects that don’t die”. This is sustainability in its deepest sense, ideas rather than products. Mari’s design thinking has had a revival in recent years, perhaps partly due to this inherent sustainability, which has affinities with the resurgence in hand-craft and local design, especially post-GFC. Mari’s utopian aspirations, however, are deeply pragmatic; as evident in his continuing collaborations with major design brands including Danese, Driade, Zani & Zani, and Zanotta.

In his collaboration with design company Alessi in 1995, Mari created a new variation of autoprogettazione, an eco-design called Ecolo that transforms household cleaning bottles into decorative vases and furniture items. Like autoprogettazione, the work includes a simple set of instructions, along with the finished product, so that customers can create their own decorative masterpieces from household detritus. In this simple idea, where an empty laundry detergent bottle transforms into an elegant table decoration, the ornamental becomes useful, and rubbish becomes beautiful. Mari confuses the relationship between function, pleasure, form and design and in this way his work is puzzling, playful and human.

You can build your own piece of autoprogettazione with the book of designs, timber, a hammer and a nail (and patience). Book stockists: Motto, the Book Depository or try ordering through World Food Books or Perimeter. As Enzo says in the book, autoprogettazione is ”a project for making easy-to-assemble furniture using rough boards and nails. An elementary technique to teach anyone to look at present production with a critical eye… Anyone, apart from factories and traders, can use these designs to make them by themselves. The author hopes the idea will last into the future and asks those who build the furniture, and in particular, variations of it, to send photos to his studio at 10 piazzale Baracca, 10 – 20123 Milan”.

For more on Enzo Mari and Autoprogettazione, watch this wonderful film by Artek. Feature image (top) of Enzo Mari in his “self-design” chair is courtesy of twentytwentyone.com (CC-license via Flickr).

Empire state of mind… view from outside Arthur’s sublet apartment in Sunnyside, Queens, looking down 48th Avenue towards Manhattan. Photo by Arthur Holland Michel.

Every Saturday, as a way to unwind, I rode across the Ed Koch bridge (bumpier and narrower than the Williamsburg), through the Upper East Side, and into Central Park, which is closed to motor traffic on weekends. All three lanes of the 10km road that winds through the park are left for joggers, tourists, horse and carts, and cyclists. I’d race against men and women on fancier, newer, more expensive bicycles. These impromptu encounters were usually very competitive (no surprise: in New York City, everyone is out to prove themselves). Nonetheless, there was that same sense of partnership between the riders that I experienced on my weekday commutes. We felt as if we owned the lanes, and that there was no other traffic, just human, horse, and car-shaped obstacles. I started riding along 6th Avenue, which has no bike lanes. I got in the habit of shouting at people who got in the way – for their safety, but also to avoid the inconvenience of having to stop. As summer drew on, it seemed to me we were moving faster. In a sense, we were.

View from the saddle on John Jay Byrne Bridge, which crosses Newton Creek and connects Brooklyn and Queens. Photo by Arthur Holland Michel.

In early August, a series of articles appeared in New York City newspapers about how Central Park had become dangerous for pedestrians as a result of the “speeding bicyclists who treat roads like Olympic velodromes.” Around that time, the DOT released their statistics for traffic injuries for 2011, which showed a spike in bicycle related injuries and fatalities over the previous two years. I had a brief exchange with a woman handing out pamphlets about the statistics on a street corner. “Look,” she said, “so many people are crashing their bikes and dying.” I pointed out that the increase in accidents had much more to do with an increase in the number of bicycles on the city streets, but she didn’t seem to understand my point. A friend fell while riding a bicycle in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and fractured her ankle. People started telling me to “be careful” or “ride safe” whenever I headed out on my bike.

What lies ahead for cyclists in NYC? Photo by MGChan (CC-license via Flickr).

Then, a man cycling along Greenpoint Avenue, about five blocks from my apartment, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver. The tone had changed. I realised the meaning of the ghost bikes dotted along my commute. Cycling in New York City didn’t seem like such a perfect mode of transportation anymore. By the end of summer, I was only commuting about twice a week. The last time I rode in Central Park, there were policemen at every pedestrian crossing, fining cyclists who didn’t obey the traffic code. At one crossing, a woman was screaming at us: “stop! stop! stop!”

Copenhagen-inspired bicycle lanes in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Photo courtesy Really Boring (CC-license via Flickr).

Improving New York City’s bicycle infrastructure has been a major policy during Michael Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor. Since 2002, when Bloomberg took over from Giuliani, the city has added about 480 kilometers of bicycle lanes to the city streets. In 2008, the DOT embarked on a program to double bicycle commuting by 2012, a goal they actually reached a year ahead of schedule. Earlier this year, the New York Times described the city as having become a cycling heaven. But the events of late summer showed a different perspective on cycling in New York City. What seemed for so long like a benign, non-issue (who, we asked ourselves, would ever oppose more bike lanes?) began to boil. In February came the news that we had, until then, thought unthinkable: none of Bloomberg’s potential mayoral successors plan to continue the bicycle infrastructure program. Some candidates have even said they would probably remove some cycle lanes. To many, the bicycle program is just another example of Bloomberg’s unilateral project to form the city according to his own vision. How, I asked, could this be?

Cyclists riding across the Williamsburg bridge, New York. Photo courtesy Tim Ailius (CC-license via Flickr).

I think what us cyclists forget is that to other people, cycling is not necessarily the morally obvious cause that we think it is. The facts are apparently a little irrelevant. A second debate has raged in New York City about whether increased cycle traffic helps or hurts local, storefront business; the DOT statistics clearly show that they help, but that hasn’t changed the fact that people still think that bikes hurt business. When cycling, it is easy to feel like a more conscious urban citizen; to see the health and emotional benefits. But how is this visible from the comfort of a car, or even a sidewalk? An estimated 200,000 people ride each day in NYC, but several million don’t. This, I realised as I was riding through Prospect Heights a few months ago, is the issue. People talk about the arrogance of the cyclist, weaving in and out of traffic, ignoring traffic lights, and shouting at pedestrians who wander on to bike lanes; this is the peril of taking the morally superior route to work.

Ultimately, it has something to do with communication. The only time I communicated with people in cars over summer was when I was angry, or scared. The only time that pedestrians communicated with me was when they were angry (except for one man who stopped me to compliment me on my bike). Cyclists believe that if you’re not cycling, you’re in the wrong; the non-cyclists park their cars on bike lanes; and the Hasids feel affronted by female bike riders, or “hotties.” Cycling is about bringing yourself into more immediate contact with your city, and yet there is a danger that it can alienate you from the non-cyclist majority. On the bike, it’s possible to forget that you are part of a complex urban ecosystem, of which the cyclist is just one part. I get the sense that sometimes people think that we behave like an invasive species. And though, yes, in part, we do want to claim more and more of the city habitat from the car, the bicycle is ultimately a tool for coexistence.

Feature image (top) by James McDowell (courtesy CC-license via Flickr).