Designing the future

My daughter was invited to Number 10 last week.

She was attending a reception to celebrate a project she’s been working on for the best part of a year.

The London Design Biennale is at Somerset House until June 25 and on Saturday we went to see it for ourselves.

Described as an ‘interactive, musical and kinetic exhibition of design and design-led innovation from across the globe’, it features contributions from multiple countries including Poland, Ukraine, USA, Malta, Chile, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and many more.

Spain and Peru, countries that share a cultural heritage, collaborated on a joint installation, as did Denmark and Switzerland (for reasons that were slightly less clear).

I can't pretend I understood the purpose or message behind every exhibit, but the award-winning Polish pavilion – featuring discarded but reusable windows that are being collected and sent to Ukraine to help repair buildings damaged in the war – left nothing to the imagination, and was all the more poignant for it.

Correspondingly, part of the Ukraine pavilion (named 'The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn') features taped windows which in a war zone is intended, I think, to limit shards of glass injuring or maiming people following an explosion.

The meaning behind other exhibits was sometimes more opaque. Literally.

The Serbian pavilion was a darkened room infused with a strong scent and shafts of murky light. I’ve no idea what it was meant to represent but it certainly had a calming effect.

I also liked the Congo pavilion which 'reimagines the country's national museum as a vivid virtual world'.

It made maximum use of the space and featured, on one wall, a large screen featuring what appeared to be live pictures of passing traffic shot from a camera on the roof of what I assume is the national museum in Kinshasa.

Consequently it was one of the few exhibits that gave a direct glimpse of the country the pavilion was there to represent.

Arguably the most significant room was devoted to items made by Ai-Da Robot, 'the world's first ultra-realistic robot artist':

Ai-Da Robot makes history as the first humanoid robot to use artistic AI algorithms to design everyday items such as mugs, vases, plates and cutlery.

If I understood it correctly, however, many of the items are considered to be failures because of various 'mistakes'.

Nevertheless, the designs looked quite impressive to me, although how practical some of the items on display are I don't know.

It can only be a matter of time before the errors are eliminated, though, and what happens after that is anyone’s guess.

Pity the designers of the future, although it won't be the first time they've been threatened by new technology.

I remember, in the late Eighties and early Nineties, how the rapid advance of desktop publishing replaced skilled graphic designers with IT specialists who may have had an eye for design but were employed primarily for their IT skills.

To survive, graphic designers had to become computer literate extremely quickly, and that was quite a struggle for the older ones in particular.

Back at Somerset House there was also an exhibition within an exhibition. This was Eureka, a ‘showcase of design research from across UK universities’.

Strathclyde University (I think it was) had a design proposal for a High Line in Glasgow city centre.

Having been hugely impressed by the wonderful New York High Line when I was there in 2017, I would love to see something similar in other cities, and as a regular visitor to Glasgow I can imagine it being a huge attraction.

I was drawn too to the proposal for a new type of public toilet in Glasgow city centre:

Changes include increased floor space in cubicle … and posters of local events, history information, helplines and places of support to create sense of community.

I’m not sure how much of that is a priority when you’re bursting for a pee, but I do think Britain's public toilets are due a major overhaul, as long as they’re not unisex!

Somerset House, I quickly discovered, has a choice of male, female, and unisex toilets and on the two occasions I used the unisex toilets I had to queue!

No queuing was required for the male only toilet, but it was only late in the afternoon that I discovered there was one.

My daughter, I should add, isn't keen on unisex toilets either. According to her, men make too much mess.

But I digress.

Aside from the Biennale, I thoroughly recommend Somerset House as a venue, although navigating every room can be a little confusing.

Despite visiting the East and West Wings, and the basement and mezzanine in the main building, the Dubai pavilion, which was said to be one of the highlights of the Biennale, remained elusive.

It looked good in the brochure, though.

Somerset House has two excellent cafes and, outside, a lively terrace bar which appear to be open to the general public, not just visitors.

The Financial Times reviewed the London Design Biennale here and you can also read about it here and here.

Unlike my daughter (above), I have never been invited inside Number 10.

The closest I’ve been to the hallowed hall and staircase (with its portraits of every British prime minister) was standing outside the famous front door in 2014.

I was part of a small delegation tasked with delivering 53,196 letters to the then PM David Cameron opposing plain packaging of tobacco.

In fact, all but a handful were sent to another address because Downing Street, understandably, didn’t want them all delivered to the front door.

Instead we were allowed to deliver, by hand, 2,500 letters in a single cardboard box, but only after jumping through numerous hoops.

Full story here.