Getting emotional at London Design Biennale
From Forensic Architecture’s investigation into Daesh’s destruction of architecture in the Sinjar area of Iraq to a pavilion of objects made by refugees to tell their stories, there are so many gripping responses to this year’s London Design Biennale theme of ‘Emotional States’. Opening at Somerset House today, the second edition of the global design event looks likely to exceed the very high expectations set by the first.
We’re so excited about you lovely folk stepping into this year’s Norway pavilion, which shows two ground-breaking projects striving to make the classroom more inclusive and fun. The first is AV1 by No Isolation, a telepresence robot that connects children and young adults with long-term illnesses to the classroom and their mates. Through the cute little robot, which is fitted with a nifty microphone, speaker and camera, lengthy hospital stays needn’t mean loneliness.
The second project you’ll find in the Norway pavilion is Kahoot!, an inclusive virtual gaming platform, that allows teachers, students, in fact, anyone, to design and play learning games. It’s won fans all over the world from academics to accountants.
But with 40 countries involved this year, there are so many opportunities to have your mind blown. Here are some of our highlights…
Visiting his parents in Australia back in December 2017, London-based designer Flynn Talbot watched from the edge of his seat as the country’s decision on whether to legalise same-sex marriage was read out on TV. ‘I had goosebumps all over me,’ he says, as the yes vote was announced. ‘I was hit with an overwhelming feeling of pride and love for humanity.’ Its this moment that Flynn has captured for the Australia pavilion, making a rainbow from +150 strands of fibre optic light, each one a different colour. Hearing about the installation we got goosebumps too, so much so that Zettler's in-house film team has made a film documenting the concept and process behind it. Be sure to watch it here.
Back in 1939 Egypt launched the first Arabic-language design magazine, Al Emara, during a purple patch in the country’s rich history of modernist architecture. But today the memory of this frenzied period of creativity is being forgotten – or in some places – violently erased. Modernist Indignation is a contemporary staging of a fictional 1939 exhibition dreamed up by Al Emara’s editors, documenting the period’s huge enthusiasm for quality contemporary architecture and the subsequent loss. The show has been curated by ever-excellent architect and writer Mohamed Elshahed, who is also the curator of the British Museum’s Modern Egypt Project. Check out his AA School of Architecture talk from February if you’re curious to learn more about Egyptian architecture.
Also on the theme of loss, Somalia’s Biennale exhibition traces the country’s architectural history before and after its civil war. The county hosts a rich medley of British and Italian colonial architecture and post-independence socialist modernism – some of which fell casualty during the war, alongside its huge human cost. The show aims to tell the story of these buildings, and how they weave in and out of the human experience – both as symbols of loss but also of resilience and survival.
What makes a house a home? Its the question that Tabanlıoğlu Architects has posed for its pavilion for Turkey. Based on the research of psychoanalyst DW Winnicott and his groundbreaking work on childhood development Home is Where We Start From, the semi-translucent structure lulls visitors into a sense of security, sometimes falsely so.
Puerto Rico: Soft Identity Makers
We love how Muuaaa Design Studio has used the Puerto Rico pavilion to challenge the idea of nationhood completely. The installation will act as an ‘identity making space’, where visitors will be provided with individual visual identities regardless of where they’re from. The aim is to encourage people to question how important (or not) nationality is to their identity. This idea is deeply personal to Puerto Rico given its an island that has been a colony since 1492, first ruled by the Spanish and now by the US.
Discover how Norway is using technology to eradicate the isolation felt by children with long-term illnesses – read about the Norway pavilion here.
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