yesterday my brother james returned fro a visit to the USA. he stopped off here in london on his way back to hamburg, germany. he was jet lagged for most of the day so just crashed on the couch. i rode my bike to the design museum a few miles east of the tate modern on the south bank near tower bridge. there were 3 shows going on. the first was 25/25 celebrating 25 years of design at the boilerhouse. 25 top designers got together and chose 25 of their fave designs over the past 25 years. selections included donald judds 1982 chair, richard sapper’s kettle for alessi. jon ives ipod, rod arad’s big easy chair, dyson’s vacum, jergen bey’s tree trunk bench, hussein chalayan’s airlplane dress, and one of my favs chair one by K grcic.
the next exibit was all about ettore sottsass. his work for olivetti was really well done. it truly was the apple computer of it’s time. i think apple owes much to the work of ES. the work he did for memphis was pretty cool to see in person. looking at some work on paper it is easy to dismiss it. while many discount memphis as a mistake i give those designers credit for starting something really bold and fresh.
on the second level was a show on luigi colani. lots of sci-fi sea creature shaped 70’s shite. i give the guy credit for some of the work but onthe whole i think his head was too far out in the clouds. making a drawing and a model of a sting-ray shaped 3000 passenger jet might look cool on paper but let’s get real… from a distance the cars looked cool but upon closer inspection it was all just cracked yellowing plexi-glass and ill fitted leather seats.
i filmed parts of the tour. just go to tysonandrew.com and click on the movies section.
