Maison goes for cohabitation
With the global economic crisis, last season the design world opted to heal itself through “Regeneration.” Almost as fast as we can regenerate, however, things seem to spin out of control as our societies undergo rapid mutations on a global scale.
“New ecological issues, new demographics, the virtualization of human relationships — the arrival of a world culture have shattered our values,” observes Etienne Crochet, managing director of Maison & Objet, the trendsetting Paris show for home decoration and interiors. Crochet cites the need for “solidarity, sharing, opening, awareness . . . rethinking our relationships with others, with ourselves and the environment.”
The show’s trend laboratory picks up this imperative with “Cohabitation,” a trends itinerary for the dawn of a new decade. To live through the shocks of rapid changes, the home — a true “model cell” for the gigantic global organism — has to develop novel models of coexistence, reconciling various generations, families of variable geometry, different cultures, the city and nature. The days of “every man for himself” are over. Energies have to be channeled into a sharing and restored bond with the home achieving a new urbanity that reconciles differences. Styles anticipate a change for better living with a human face, ultimately making life easier for city dwellers.
Hybrid — Nature –Techno - Urban By François Bernard
As we become more dehumanized, there seems to be a greater need for nature to be at the heart of everyday life, to erase the borders between indoors and outdoors. “A cross-pollination is combining the urban, the natural, and technological,” according to trend forecaster François Bernard. “In a time of extensive urbanization of the planet, the city and nature are being reconciled in order to soften urban manners.” This form of cohabitation is producing new categories of unusual, well-meaning objects that work for a better life.
There is a new way of interacting with our urban and domestic environments, a transformation which is part of the process of our history of relating to nature. Bernard recalls that during the Renaissance, “a renewed interest in mythology enchanted culture’s relationship to nature, while its scientific relationship was organized around botanical gardens.” (The first botanical garden was in Pisa in the 16th century) In the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a fascination for exotic species that were imported, thus facilitating an understanding of the interrelationships between different species. As great strides in the natural sciences were made, there was also a philosophical reconsideration of the culture/nature relationship that reestablished human purity within a new kind of Eden as portrayed in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novels with rhapsodic descriptions of natural beauty and the belief in the spiritual origin of man’s soul and the universe. The 18th century objectified nature by affirming it as “a space of truth to which we feel an immediate attachment.”
In the 19th century, however, it became more of a “spectacle” with the Romantic idea of the “picturesque” as epitomized by the “Grand Tour” and the favored botanical exoticism ushered in by colonization. Imported plants were housed in the new glass cathedrals of metallic architecture and the heated greenhouses built alongside the mansions of the second half of the 1800s. Nature came into the home and got acclimatized. The invention of the Wardian case for transporting plants further developed imports of the rare and exotic for decorating gardens and greenhouses. It also brought about a new concept: interior decoration using plants (earlier, bouquets of flowers were the norm).
Since then, the need for nature has been ever-growing, with the city and the countryside being reunited in the late 19th century urbanist concept of the garden city created by Ebenezer Howard in the UK. The 20th century, however, gave rise to unbridled urbanization, leading to the disappearance of the concept of garden cities in favor of vertical planting. To add to this, the postwar rural exodus resulted in congested, polluted cities. By the second half of the century, there was a renewal of ecological thought, giving the concept of nature in the city a renewed urgency and relevance.
“There is now a desire for immediate contact with the ‘spectacle of nature,’” observes Bernard. He cites the vertical vegetal wall as the archetype, bringing a peacefulness that would soon take the form of “purification.” He even ventures to use the term “catharsis” as Aristotle used it, recalling our “natural” human character and purging us of our emotions.
“The spectacle of nature” takes root with the emergence of astonishingly creative new objects and furniture by the designers of today: Hybrids of vegetation and various domestic functions. Purifiers, tables, chairs, lighting and walls are parts of a “nourishing” house. But, unlike in the past, Bernard believes these hybrids go beyond the simple consolidation of man/nature inside or outside the home: “Having vegetation participate in the definition of an object becomes an indissoluble part of its DNA.”
Outside the home, there is also the desire to live in tune with nature as shown by the success of gentler forms of transportation like the Vélib bicycle program in Paris and the arrival of carrier-tricycles in France after their growth in Scandinavia. Nature is definitely becoming a big part of the picture in renewing social ties through gastronomy hikes, foraging, tending and shared gardens.
Hybrid key concepts: Urban, nature, techno, interior nature, accessibility to new concepts, new domestic objects, organic fabrics and materials, merger of technology and biology, source of energy imitating photosynthesis, usage, everyday, surprising wood technology, protecting others.
La Coopérative By Vincent Grégoire For Nellyrodi
For Vincent Grégoire, everyday life already has a new configuration, making it inevitable to play it collective: “Social micro-practices are giving up on the idea of being self-sustaining and are instead privileging attitudes of solidarity and mutual aid, reestablishing social ties and paying attention to others. Cooperative, associative, or participative modes of behavior are putting humanity back at the center of the system. We are stacking, nesting, constructing a fresh, optimistic style through variable geometries.”
Gregoire points out that the post-Madoff generation has put consumer gluttony on a strict diet. We are learning to do better with less. In what he calls a “new society of consideration,” the quality of our ties is more important than voracious appropriation. Sharing a living space with a roommate, which was de rigueur only among students, is expanding to include the elderly as an alternative to nursing or retirement homes. In countries like Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, the US and France, there are micro-communities that are activating ways of living differently through values founded on the collective life: Groupings of individuals exchange knowledge, know-how and living skills. Different generations and cultures come together in communal gardens to share the pleasures of growing vegetables and flowers.
Are we back to the era of communes and kibbutzes? Not really, since there is a sharing of collective spaces but a respect of private places. “We are together but each of us in his own home,” says Gregoire.
This new way of living, in fact, isn’t a relic of the utopias of the last century. With the end of the era of what British economist Noreena Hertz calls “Gucci capitalism,” the present conditions now call for a new collective capitalism based on cooperation, collaboration and collective intelligence. Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Muhhamad Yunus suggest “a social, solidarity-based economy rooted in respect for individuals, nature and cultures in order to generate collective well-being.”
Aesthetics of formal coexistence, in fact, are already inspired by the new social arrangements. Gregoire observes that “creators are playing with reconstruction, assembling, stacking, and plugging in heterogeneous modules in order to build a new whole. Elements are being superimposed, imbricated, combined.” Just take a look at architect Edouard Francois’ “Urban Collage” project in Champigny-sur-Marne, or British Will Aslop’s eco-building “Chips” in Manchester, which mounts up composite strata like stacked fries and has open-plan flats to encourage partying with neighbors. Philip Nigro’s “Confluences” sofa for Ligne Roset and Matali Crasset’s “Compo’sit” sofa for Dunlopillo are transforming seating into spaces of social interaction and conviviality. “Places, furniture and objects are adopting modular structures with variable geometry. With a return to altruism, the home is becoming the composite space of a reinvention of our relationship with others.”
La cooperative key concepts: Community, collective, combinatory, exchanging, repairing, combining, modulating, compartmentalizing, stacking, plugging, binding, customizing.
Transcultures By Elizabeth Leriche
Elizabeth Leriche talks about “imaginary geographies” erasing the borders between near and far, with one culture enriching those of others to produce a transcultural aesthetic of world objects that have a unique story to tell.
“Creation today points to a new path by seeking to transcribe the many uniqueness of the world into a market reality in search of perpetually updated forms. These newly multiplied identities create ties between people and cultures, materials and gestures, the artistic and the artisanal, the global and the local. Sharing differences enriches creation.”
The Philippine Papasan Chair, that rattan chair with a bowl seat popular in the ‘60s and even introduced to the US by American servicemen who bought them outside Clark Air Base, was immortalized by iconic Italian designer Paola Navone in her new, modernized design for Gervasoni.
Nipa Doshi, born into a Gujarati family in Mumbai and a graduate of London’s Royal College of Art, teamed up with Jonathan Levien, a Scot, to create innovative design concepts that merge the visual cultures of India with the Industrial Design of the United Kingdom. Their hybrid creations combining technology, narration and industrial and craft design are true embodiments of today’s transcultural world. Belgian designer Myriam de Loor created a chandelier together with Pan Bohua, a great master of traditional Chinese kite-making. Produced by Chinese artisans, the piece reflects each of the duo’s specific set of skills: one excels in producing forms, while the other excels in minute precisions. Through its conceptually innovative rubber and rattan container bowls, the Campana Brothers of Brazil are able to sustain a livelihood for Vietnamese rattan weavers and disadvantaged youth while helping them recycle the disposed rubber tires from all those ubiquitous scooters.
Today, we see artisanal and design gestures, local and folkloric rites, ethnic forms and patterns, craftsmanship from the past and techniques of today all open to various forms of updating in the realm of contemporary creation. They are sources of exploration and places of transformation and reformation.
With all the exchanges and blends going on and the formation of a new global identity, one wonders: Isn’t there a risk of global standardization in creativity? But Leriche assures us that “the frontiers of creativity are in perpetual motion and the Internet has accelerated the process, making it possible to explore any country in just a few clicks. We are witnessing the emergence of a sort of global culture, but accompanied by greater awareness of everyone’s identity, their particularities with the desire to preserve and protect the diversity of our world.”
Transcultures key concepts: Craft, crossover, global, singular, diversity, meeting, folk, know-how, local, chance.
