Nosing Around/ Sissel Tolaas Makes Sense of Smell
I once saw a homeless person outside a fine restaurant in Tokyo, eating a bowl of white rice while smelling the meal inside. The smile on his face inspired me to try the same thing.
Perfectly Odd Connections/ Thomas Lommée
Physically, Thomas Lommée often occupies a space in Brussels, but where is his head at, really? With group, collaborative, and solo projects for corporate and cultural clients that range from Droog Lab, the Liege and Istanbul design Biennials, Z33, Samsung, and the ongoing work of the Intrastructures studio, this proponent of open design sees the role of designers as one “shifting from being inventors towards being observers, connectors and entrepreneurs…”
Right-on Tom Dixon/ Thwarting the Copycats
Tom Dixon is a designer who has well and truly played the field. With hands in pies of all flavours he has shown an exceptional capacity for designing to the nth degree. The scale of the project doesn’t seem to have any effect on his desire to exercise his metier, and exercise it he does.
Creation in Times of Turbulence/ Disarming Design from Palestine
An ambitious, heart-and-soul-felt project is underway in Ramallah. Dubbed Disarming Design, a team of designers from the International Academy of Arts Palestine, ICCO, and Studio Devet, is collaborating in the development of a collection that incorporates the ancient traditions of their homeland, including carpentry, smithery, building and tailoring, to arrive at an authentic interpretation of contemporary ideas. Travelling cross-country to explore the workshops and learn about everything from traditional techniques to materials, these intrepid designers are proud to be producing what is deemed to be the very first collection of Palestinian products of the current time.
Present Absence/ Ben And Sebastian
This artist duo has a penchant for the concept of phantom limbs – literally, metaphorically and metaphysically. Their oeuvre embodies as much intellectual reasoning as it does emotive sensation, with complex sculptures that contain both aspects at once. In a recent exhibition their work is interwoven with objects derived from the inventory of a medical museum…
Clearing Grounds/ Massoud Hassani’s Homemade Stories
This young designer is pulling out all the stops. On the one hand, he has launched an initiative to rid the world of landmines, a passion that harks back to his Afghan childhood. And on quite the other, he is busy concocting culinary books and devices inspired by the positive riches of his homeland.
Journal of a Peeping Tom/ Bruno Mathsson Revisited
It takes a fair amount of passion to devote six years of one’s life to discovering the ins and outs of an absent man’s world, however inadvertently this may have occurred. Mikael Olsson simply visited this Swedish architect’s summer refuge and began photographing the fascinating, long-abandoned premises, when he became utterly enraptured and felt an unrelenting urge to dig deeper. This exploratory adventure effectively materialised into a palimpsest, in the guise of a comprehensive view of a life captured through the eyes of an intervener-cum-voyeur with much sensitivity and awe.