What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true: we walk, we open doors, we go down staircases, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed in order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why?
Georges Perec, ‘Approaches to what?’ Espèces d’espaces (Paris: Galilée 1974). Species of Spaces and Other Pieces , ed. and trans. by John Sturrock (London: Penguin, 1997)
Flyspace | an interdisciplinary collaborative
Lois Weinthal
g eorges Perec draws together a number of physical and phenomenal elements in his quote that allows us to visualise how we occupy architecture. The elements he names are ordinary and found in the everyday, but he asks us to return to the point where we accept these elements without question, and to question them. Mass-production of these objects is so commonplace that they take on unquestioned acceptance, as a result, the designer as unique author has given way to large company ( viz . IKEA) mass-production. In Flyspace, interdisciplinary designers are brought together to design a number of familiar objects in a way that makes one aware of the origins of the type. Adolf Loos believed in Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art); Le Corbusier, the objet-type (typical object). Both recognised that parts contribute to a complete architecture. This history informs design at every scale, whether it be clothing, furniture, architecture or details and colours. If we were to take inventory of things we use everyday, we would find that multiple design disciplines have played a role in their design and production. In terms of models, the work of Charles and Ray Eames bridged many design disciplines from architecture, industrial design and graphic design, to furniture and film. Their work was manufactured by a range of offices from IBM and Herman Miller to the United States Navy. Droog Design in the Netherlands look at everyday objects in the domestic realm and redesign them with a familiar but alternative agenda. Their members come from interior and industrial design, graphics, furniture, art, art direction, textiles, jewellery and media installations. The contemporary artist Andrea Zittel’s work also questions the conventional in familiar objects. Related design disciplines — painting, sculpture, furniture, fashion and film, are also found to construct architectural space.
The interdisciplinary nature of the members of Flyspace 1 (interior design, graphic design, industrial design and architecture) brings a broad range of tools, materials and history to our projects. Each project begins with the core group, in two teams, developing initial concepts and designs. As a project develops from design to fabrication, individual members are deployed to other projects in ways that take advantage of their particular skills . All the while, a dialogue continues between the teams on overall design concepts, material choices and construction giving coherence to Flyspace projects. While there is often agreement on fabrication processes, to keep the projects cohesive agreement on design processes requires parameters: here, to address the layers that immediately surround the body, clothing and furniture. where the body and its interaction to surfaces, actions and the shapes that receive it, creates resemblances of us. Clothing is a layer made to fit the body with alterations allowing for a better fit. Furniture is ergonomically designed to fit the body. Upholstery can be seen as the clothing of furniture, similar to clothing for our body. These observations are our starting point, with the freedom to reinterpret them through an interdisciplinary lens.
1 A flyspace is the space above a theatre stage hidden from the audience where multiple stage sets are ‘flown’ in and out. It is an area associated with interchangeability, containment, iden- tity and anonymity. It is the closet to the stage, always prepar- ing the stage to wear what is needed for that specific show.
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