This is a review of "From the Spoon to the City" which comprises a collection of objects designed by architects from LACMA's collection. The exhibit gets its title from a quote by Italian architect Ernesto Rogers who declared that he wanted to design everything "from the spoon to the city", meaning that he did not only want to design buildings but also everything within them and the context within which the building is situated. The exhibition only focuses on "the spoon", that is objects that go inside a building rather than on urban planning or landscape design (which would have been interesting to see).
"From the Spoon to the City" investigates the motives of the architect when designing that which is not a building. Often the architect is motivated by a desire for a more holistic design, one that completely integrates the building with its furnishings. In this model, each facet of design exists in dialogue with every other object so that each object simultaneously represents a complete design solution as well as an aspect that informs and dictates the total design. The other motivation explored in the exhibition is the architect's necessity to realize novel often complex design schemes within a more viable format. Architects frequently have grand design schemes that they need to test, but cannot afford to do so on the scale of an actual building; therefore, the smaller scale of furnishing provides the architect with a less costly medium in which to experiment. The third motivation, which is not intentionally addressed by the exhibition is the architect's desire to control everything, to be the ultimate designer of society.
This obsessive compulsion is born out of the fetish to act as god that is within each of us. This motivation will scant be acknowledged and is destined to failure. Take for example Le Corbusier's machine-like homes in which he designed every facet of the home and its furnishings with the notion that design could mold humans and provide a more efficient and productive life. Society never changed as a result of his design, his dream was never realized because he forgot that humans are not calculated machines, but rather are distinct compassionate beings that respond primarily to emotion. Unfortunately those grand illusions that architects can design a better society have not completely disappeared and as evidenced by this exhibition probably won't.
Although I criticized the idealism of architects, I actually really liked Frank Gehry's Bubbles Lounge Chair. I should preface this by saying I don't tend to like Gehry's buildings, in fact I find them baroque and ostentatious and think that his work has become repetitive. But much to my chagrin I even started to like some of his architecture.
I thought the Bubbles Lounge Chair was an ingenious design; the beautiful folds of cardboard represented a union of high design and low-cost material to create a piece that was both art and furniture for the masses. The chair is constructed entirely of corrugated cardboard, a material that is often viewed as waste and disposed of. However, Gehry has managed to transform the throwaway material into furniture that is cheap enough that anyone can afford it yet it employs an ingenious design of sensuous curves that visually articulates the sensation of lounging in the chair.
The use of cardboard makes the Bubbles Lounge Chair essentially a readymade and thus proves that objects can have many purposes if a designer conceives of it. This realization encourages all people to reevaluate the uses of objects and materials that exist in everyday life. Gehry's readymade is different than Duchamp's Fountain because Duchamp made a usable object unusable, while Gehry has recycled what would normally be considered unusable and made it useful. In this sense Gehry's readymade is much more similar to Duchamp's Bottle Rack. Both works transform industrial materials that would have likely been scrapped into utilitarian art objects.
Duchamp, Bottle Rack, 1914
Gehry's interest with unfinished or "throwaway" industrial materials as seen in the Bubbles Lounge Chair actually has its origins in his architecture. Just look at Gehry's own residence in Santa Monica where he built a shell of corrugated metal, plywood, and chain link fence around a preexisting bungalow house. Gehry created a visual deconstruction of the home by making the usually invisible materials of construction visible and expanding the role of those materials from structural support to aesthetic design. The Bubbles Lounge Chair is an example of the architect experimenting with the same principles of recycling readymade materials, deconstructing the understanding of a material's purpose, and reconfiguring structural components to create aesthetic design. Both Gehry's Santa Monica Home and Bubbles Lounge Chair marries high design principles with low-brow materials to deconstruct the barriers that separate high and low design. Furthermore, the Bubbles Lounge Chair breaks down the barriers between art and utilitarian objects because it is affordable for anybody but also found in museums and homes of high-art collectors. This result is a much needed democratization that destroys the distinctions of high and and low design. Ultimately, it encourages the untrained designer to reevaluate common materials and even garbage in order produce a recycled, aesthetically pleasing, and functional design.
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