A sculptural garden seat for
Young Vic artistic director
Kwame Kwei-Armah, ‘Au’ is
made from delicate steam-
bent wood slats that recall the
slave ships and vessels that
brought Kwei-Armah’s
ancestors from Africa via the
Caribbean to the UK – as well
as the book that changed his
life, the autobiography of
Malcolm X. It is named after
the symbol for gold, a nod to
the gold mines of Africa, also
referenced in the seat’s shape,
which echoes the precious
metal’s crystal structure.Enabling visitors to send
postcards from the Serpentine
Galleries, this postbox draws
from its artistic director
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s passion
for collecting postcards.
Obrist is starting what he calls
‘a small movement’ to save
the art of handwriting from
dying out, something that
fired designer Nina Tolstrup’s
imagination: ‘We found it
really inspiring to think of
a postbox as not just a place
where you post bills, but
that is also about poetry and
writing longhand.’Project:
‘SERPENTINE
POSTBOX’Designer:
STUDIOMAMAInstitution:
SERPENTINE
GALLERIESheads around a lectern here, a treehouse there, a
beehive, a sofa, chairs; all from diverse ways of working.’
While Cox and his team busy themselves with their
project – a writer’s desk with an ‘embedded’ pencil case
for Amanda Nevill, CEO of the British Film Institute,
Sutcliffe leads a tour of the workshop, intermittently
stopped by staff asking him about power outages
and glue failures. In various states of readiness, we see
Martino Gamper’s shelving unit for Tamara Rojo,
artistic director of the English National Ballet, and
Tomoko Azumi’s boat-inspired seat for Kwame Kwei-
Armah, artistic director of the Young Vic (‘We’re calling
it the dinghy’), while Marlène Huissoud grinds away
at the aforementioned beehive – a ‘freeform, intuitive’
sculptural piece for Ian Blatchford, director of the
Science Museum Group. ‘Last night we had to start the
whole thing again because the glue wasn’t working,’ says
Sutcliffe. ‘Just when everyone’s ready to go home you
have to say, “Sorry guys, we have to load in a new load
of timber and re-glue it up.” Marlène was lumping huge
boards of oak that weigh over 200kg by herself, trying
to get them cut. I was so impressed. It’s a good energy.’
The task of using American red oak – spearheaded
by AHEC’s European director, David Venables –
created its own challenges. ‘We didn’t know a lot about
red oak previously,’ says Sutcliffe. ‘It’s not what you’d
call fashionable in Europe, but forestry and fashioncan’t be happy bedfellows: forestry has to have a (^) »
Project:
‘AU ’
Designer:
TOMOKO AZUMI
Institution:
YOUNG VIC
136 ∑
Design