Thomas Heatherwick explores the world for design ideas; Ray Kappe rediscovered in Los Angeles; lyons lit up; looking at the future on the worldwide web; view from bam, the earthquake-destroyed Iranian city which was one of the unsung wonders of traditional middle-eastern mud construction

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2004 by Ray Kappe

OBJETS TROUVES

Thomas Heatherwick has spent the last 18 months scouring 15 countries (visiting six personally for shopping trips) to collect 960 items to be placed simultaneously into the 'things you'd like to live with' exhibition held at the London Design Museum (until 21 March). He was given a budget of [pounds sterling]30 000 from the Conran Foundation and an open brief when spending the money. The result is quite extraordinary, producing a collection that's intriguing, diverse and grand in scale. It is reminiscent of a great nineteenth-century eclectic collection, like those of Henry Welcome and John Soane. Where it differs is in the modernity of the acquisitions and its ability to celebrate objects of little financial value.

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Heatherwick's choices were based on the objects' ability to demonstrate inventiveness and human ingenuity and not just form. Heatherwick says that, 'This is not an exhibition about iconic design or good taste. It is about ideas: how many can you buy for [pounds sterling]30 000? My choice of objects was led by whether I found the objects interesting and inventive.' His choices range from a handmade papier-mache coffin sympathetically made to fit the human form, to a specially cultivated square-shaped bamboo, to an electrically operated colour-changing slab of concrete.

The exhibition is organized in chronological order based on the date of purchase for each item, in three aisles. All the objects have purpose-built rectangular cabinets projecting from the walls, each with an internal strip light. The different shapes of the cabinets, bunched closely together, give the feel of a richly textured three-dimensional tapestry.

Thomas Heatherwick Studio was set up in 1994, to explore cross-disciplinary approaches to architecture, engineering, design and sculpture. Known for a vibrant experimental approach to use of materials, Heatherwick draws on his sculptural background, creating work that is playful, inventive and thought provoking (see for instance ARs January 1998, July 1999, November 1999 and January 2004). He is currently involved with the B of the Bang, a star-burst of cones to be the UK's tallest sculpture, a pedestrian bridge that hydraulically rolls up into a spherical shape for the Paddington basin, an amorphic Buddhist temple in Japan and the artistic masterplan for Milton Keynes.

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Heatherwick's show will be the last in an annual ten-year tradition of curating the 'things you'd like to live with' at the Design Museum. Its contents will be added to the Conran Foundation Collection, and will join the objects from previous exhibitions. Past curators have included designers Jasper Morrison, Ross Lovegrove, Marc Newson and the Droog group.

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The growing Conran Foundation Collection reflects a blend of 'good design' with more idiosyncratic design choices, illustrating changing taste and advances in design technology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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PELHAM DAVEY

SENSE OF ENQUIRY

Marking 50 years of professional practice, Ray Kappe--A Retrospective is also a timely reminder of this architect's critical role as an educator in Los Angeles. Known primarily for homes that take advantage of hillside sites and views, an architecture that distils construction--as in Kappe's own canonical residence of 1965-67--to vertical shafts and horizontal decks, Kappe is also a pivotal figure as founder of SCI-Arc (the Southern California Institute of Architecture) and as Director of that radical school from its inception in 1973 until 1987.

Installed in a spacious, light-filled suite accessed from the Sunset Strip, the show includes giant black and white photographs as hanging screens, a dozen or so models of key houses along one wall, and larger models of larger projects as occasional, free-standing elements. One side chamber houses a video interview with the architect (in need of editing and a better sound system), while a second exhibits period photographs of Kappe buildings by Marvin Rand and Julius Shulman.

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These elements are linked by scroll-like horizontal panels that recount, through text and image, Kappe's development from initial exploration of post-and-beam techniques (projects contemporary with later Case Study and early Frank Gehry houses) through the maturity of his own home (its decks raised above grade to avoid underground springs), to more recent structures such as the Cookston Residence and the Santa Monica Bus Administration building (where curves in plan and section respond to climatic and modular concerns).

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One entire facade of his Culbert beach house slides back, as do some in Japan by former SCI-Arc student Shigeru Ban. Indeed, like Schindler before him, Kappe manipulates light and the merits of each chosen material--whether concrete or timber or steel--as settings for healthy, unpretentious lifestyles.

His larger and mostly unrealized planning proposals for Downtown LA and for responsible hillside development reflect the positive sense of enquiry and experiment associated with SCI-Arc. Including shots of Ron Herron and Peter Cook holding forth, and of Michael Rotondi--Kappe's eventual successor as Director--in SCI-Arc's first graduating class, this is an exhibition positing architecture as a pragmatic adventure. RAYMUNDRYAN