Editor's Letter – September 2023

I can hear voices.

No, this isn't a cry for help, but, rather, a statement of fact. The autumn design agenda has kicked off with a raft of inspiring live talks and I've been lucky enough to attend a number of them – as both audience member and host. 

'Without community, there's no sustainability.' So argued Italian architect-designer Michele de Lucchi earlier this month during the inauguration of his new pavilion for furniture and lighting manufacturer Pedrali, which is celebrating 60 years in business. The all-wood-and-zero-glue structure, currently located at the company’s production site in Bergamo, displays a levity that belies its monumental scale. ‘Set on legs, it’s a building for the community that is open at the base,’ explained the esteemed 71-year-old to the assembled guests. 

The purpose of the pavilion, which will soon move to a different site, is on the one hand, of course, to signal Pedrali’s continued commitment to closing the circle. (De Lucchi reminded us that embracing wood as a renewable material is a no-brainer – my term, not his – given that old trees capture much less CO2 than younger ones.) But the building has also been created to house a programme of talks and events on our common future, with an emphasis on getting schools involved. It’s a big-top for big ideas. 

Circularity and community also took centre stage at a couple of panel discussions in Zurich recently, as part of Zurich Design Weeks. Hosted by the Circular Design Circle – a free-to-join organisation that brings together professionals who are passionate about circular design – creative and company chiefs from such cult Swiss brands as Freitag and Qwstion revealed not only what they understand a circular economy to mean, but also what real-life decisions they are making and practices they are deploying as they strive to achieve a total circular economy in their businesses. 

What struck me most is how we’re all in this together. Design manufacturing can learn a lot from these fashion and accessories brands, in terms of both the biological and the technical cycles. It comes back to the basics: reduce, reuse, repair, remanufacture, rot and – only if absolutely necessary – recycle. 

I’m just back from London where I was invited to host a day of Architonic Live Talks at the aptly, and somewhat literally, named London Design Fair. The location, a repurposed former brewery on the city’s iconic Brick Lane, acted as an effective metaphor for my conversations with Pearson Lloyd, Form Us With Love, Universal Design Studio and 2LG Studio, where sustainability proved to be a common thread. 

For Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd, who founded their eponymous design office 25 years ago, there have been a lot of learnings, but chief among them is their move away from linear thinking in their practice to a circular one. ‘We're trying, as producers of stuff, to figure out how we can avoid just an extractive process of material usage. But, circularity is not just about how you produce; it’s also about how you consume and how you gather back again. How do ownership models change? Or how do you pre-plan recovering materials, or how do you pre-plan the second or third life of a product?’

For London-based design duo 2LG, meanwhile, whose highly expressive interiors have made them one of the most sought-after studios over the past couple of years (as well as bringing them regular television appearances and book contracts), infusing their projects with storytelling is more than just whimsy. A collaborative process that involves a deep analysis of the identities of their clients makes for spaces that not only reflect their users’ personalities – thus creating a sense of comfort and well-being – they also become long-life, sustainable places. If the environment around you mirrors you so effortlessly, you’re unlikely to want to change it. 

To find out how collaboration is fundamental to Universal Design Studio’s work, too, plus an opportunity to download some brilliant insights from my candid conversation with Form Us With Love on the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurship, look out for my follow-up London feature. It’s coming soon on Architonic. 

Stay well and think in circles!

Simon Keane-Cowell
Editor-in-Chief

@ Architonic

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