ÔÅÂÐÀËÜ 2010  
EDITORIAL

Life after design

Each thing has its own lifecycle and at the end of this cycle something less or more unusual has to happen with it. Except for a sad word «rubbish bin» and aloof one «recycling» in the arsenal of designer's transit from this life to the next one there are other more fascinating possibilities. 
Recycling, that turned from a dull utility waste into an elegant concept of sustainability, of course underlies the belief of design-reincarnation. Evolution of our consciousness gives objects new chances for an eternal life in the way of functional transformations and regeneration into art objects.
To tell the truth, people have always been able to make furniture from cartons and build homes from glass containers and only natural aspiration of prosperity together with luxury prevented from realizing such projects in volumes significant for the society. Today we can estimate such examples of eccentricity and headpiece not only on magazine's pages but at designers' exhibitions as well. This means these new and for now odd forms of life will soon appear in our houses.

Natalia Karpenko,
Chief editor





PROJECT AVANT-GUARD

Monica Forster:
The trans-polar star

Monica Forster continues traditions of one of the most respected and interesting schools of modern design: Scandinavian.
Specific style of Forster could not appear in other part of the Planet. This cocktail needed sanity and fantasy of ancient fairy-tales as well as dry humour and a good drop of feminism. We can always think design has no nationality, but we cannot dispute importance of the surrounding that professionally forms designer. Monica Forster expertly combined good traditions of her country with irrepressible wish to experiment and go beyond the borders of common and is by right recognized as one of the brightest Swedish designers.  

Jasper Morrison:
A decent classic

Jasper Morrison doesn't like praising himself. He has turned into classic long ago so recognition and fashion hardly ever trouble him.
Not everyone is able to represent an object's function with an elegant simplicity that only Morrison has. The designer can crystallize the main point of a thing, open its historical meaning, and as a result create a kind of super version that has the best experience of predecessors in it. Lightness of Morison's style is illusive: each his project – is the result of long researches and meticulous work that is why serious work expects the ones who dare to copy him.

Arik Levy:
Technical intuition

Artistic energy of Aric Levi originates in intuition and hankering for technological experiments.
Aric Levi – an inexhaustive experimentator, sensible artist and enthusiastic pioneer. He has an ability to find miraculous poetry in everyday life and expound the obvious in his solid works, characterized by designer Pippo Lionnides as «fair design, straight, hard and open». Levi constantly invents new technologies and goes forward, lugging away young generation of designers.

Materials was prepared by Olga Zhuravleva





REPORTAGE LONDON

London Design Festival 100% Design
A dinosaur in design

If there are still young dinosaurs in England, you should look for them not in the Loch Ness, but in London at the end of September at '100% Design' exhibition, which is the oldest event (which is more than 10 years old) of London design festival.

In fact, young British design is as young as it is savoring with the old times, innovative and at the same time genetically tied to tradition. A passing glance at the shapes and colours of design objects of the newest generation is sufficient to catch the inimitable taste of good old Britain with its heather tenderness, classical bends and unforgettable irony. When charting Elizabeth's profile on the polystyrene object, the revolutionary designer not only wants to please his grandmother, but also identify the place of the new object in his system of coordinates.

Text by Nataliya Karpenko
photo (1–9) Igor Karpenko





REPORTAGE LONDON

The Dock
The whims of the bohemia

To found the new centre of design in the old English docks is a romantic and practical idea. It crossed the mind of one of the glorious frontmen of British design Tom Dixon.

The various buildings of London Portobello Dock, which frame the Grand Union Canal, last September gathered a various and sophisticated bohemian society. The souvenir shops and street artists, the picturesquely dirty water of the canal, in which the design objects floated – all this entourage, new for London design festival, acted in a calming way on the heated imagination of journalists and designers, who for the first time on a serious design exhibition could feel like tourists, lost in the London docks and surrounded almost by Dickensian characters. Here one could one more time marvel at British harmony of paradoxes: the organic combination of Victorian infrastructure, half-wild nature, bohemian whimsicality and innovative design.

Text by Nataliya Karpenko
photo (1–17) Igor Karpenko





NAME PORTRAIT

Edward van Vliet:
Enamoured of ornaments

Nowadays there are not that many designers who pay much attention to the ornaments and patterns. Dutch designer Edward van Vliet is one of the rare masters of modern ornamentology. Nevertheless, he is not a functional specialist. His portfolio includes not only the designs of upholstery fabrics, rugs and wallpapers, but also the designs of furniture, lamps, and interiors; furthermore, it includes an art-directorship of furniture companies and the design of corporate identity. 

In 1989, Edward graduated from the Department of Textile Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven, and one year later he established his own Studio Edward van Vliet in Amsterdam (www.sevv.com). That is not to say that for the last twenty years his name hasn't left the pages of specialized design magazines, but he has been actively and productively working, gradually widening the horizons of his work experience. At first, there was work that corresponded to his Diploma in Textile Design, then the development in the field of furniture and lighting took place and eventually the solution of complex tasks emerged as a result of this progressive movement, such as the interior collections for big Italian brands and independent interior projects (e.g. hotels, bars). Among Edward van Vliet's customers are the following Moroso, Casamilano, Quasar, Moooi, Ligne Roset, ICE Carpets, Coco-Mat. In 2008, the designer caught press' eye by designing a peculiar collection, called Sushi, for Moroso. The collection includes an armchair, a module sofa, a pouf, a rug and a lamp. All elements of this collection can be distinguished by multilayered ornamental solution in patchwork style with Japanese flavor.

Material was prepared by Ekaterina Oshemkova,
the photo were provided by press service
Studio Edward van Vliet
 

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