Architecture & Design | Nigel Coates
chunky lumps of concrete and for the culture within it. It has a sense of celebration of the city. London has a mix which is pretty unique in European cities - that degree of difference that has the new with the old. We are not afraid of knocking down a dreadful building and putting another in its place.
What do you believe design to be? Design is a very overused term,
just like the word community. Architects say they design, but so do fashion designers. Somewhere in between if you restrict design to furniture you are thought to being narrow in definition.What I mean by design is the culture that comes from industrial design that is now applied to all sorts of objects. It is a way of thinking and applying ideas to objects that don’t fit into art - useful objects whether you wear them or live in them or buy them for the house. On the other hand design
is a verb, so designing means grasping a set of questions or a context in which something new is required, then understanding that context very well, researching and expanding it and then exploring possible materialisations of those questions. In the end good design should ask as many questions as it answers. It should result in something stimulating, that really engages people, that isn’t just useful and ergonomically worked out to the nth degree. The new idea of design is that it is a cultural field
in its own right. It should seduce, tease, engage with the user and be a pleasure to use, and that should apply to buildings as well as chairs and clothing.
Which buildings do you consider to be
examples of great architecture? The Pompidou Centre in Paris is fantastic and opened the doors for all those incredible buildings in the 60s. Peter Cook’s Kunsthaus in Graz and Will Alsop’s Sharp Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto Canada are amazingPractices such as the erstwhile group FAT have brought artistry and unconventional thinking to architecture; they fought hard and proved that it can work. Then there are the high tech folk who are traditionally thought to be the masters that carry the torch for British architecture, the Brits who build the modern world, but to someone like me they are the granddads - super conventional and not interesting because they’re work is well understood, very noble.
What role do you believe architecture
plays in a wider context? Architecture is a sparring partner to all sorts of other aspects of business. What I have believed in all along is that we should challenge what architecture is, and find other fields in our everyday culture that can inform it and that architecture can learn from. British creativity is extraordinary
because we are a free enough society to be willing to put all sorts of phenomena together. Put the unfettered free thinking entrepreneur together with an architect who has been taught to think outside the box and truly amazing things can happen. That is where a lot of interest in the future lies, in being able to stream unconventional thinking and make propositions that are worthwhile for the world. There will always be difference of interpretation as to whether a building is beautiful or not but that is part of the risk. Society no longer has a set of streamlined precise codes that are able to say that this fits and this doesn’t. That process started with the Victorians when they couldn’t decide which French or Italian style to copy most, so they tried out everything and in a way we are back to that. Take the Gherkin, the Shard and the Walkie Talkie in the City of London - who is to say which one is better? But in a sense, as they become part of the landscape of the city, we make our own minds up. Personally I’m not in favour of the Walkie Talkie which is inverted and inelegant. The Gherkin, whichever way you come at it, is always iconic.
You have designed famous buildings and created Cool Britannia - how do
you view your work? I am an unconventional architect in that I don’t feel the compulsion to build towers in order to exist. I am quite happy to design a chair. I am waving the flag for a British approach to design which results in objects that companies want to make and to sell. I collaborate extensively with Italian companies. I have just done a whole family of sofas and armchairs for Fornasetti which is about as Italian as it gets, but they didn’t choose an Italian designer they chose me. I’ve just done a new Bentwood chair as well. These companies have to sell on a global stage, just like architects do. They are very pleased to work with me because London for them is an access to cool.
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FURTHER INFORMATION Tel: +44 20 7838 1068
info@nigelcoates.com www.nigelcoates.com
global-opportunity.co.uk ISSUE 01 | GLOBAL OPPORTUNITY 2014 119
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