1st July to 1st November 2009

The Design Museum presents the first UK retrospective of Spanish designer and artist Javier Mariscal. Regarded as one the world’s most innovative and original designers of our time, Mariscal’s rich and diverse body of work spans kooky cartoon characters to stunning interiors, from furniture to graphic design and corporate identities.The exhibition and graphics will be designed by Mariscal, promising an immersive experience for the visitor into the world and mind of Mariscal. Mariscal will also design and paint an elaborate mural for the exterior of the Design Museum showcasing his unique vision and signature design style.
Mariscal Drawing Life Blog

Curator: Daniel Charny
Design Museum Co-ordinator: Nina Due

Daniel Charny spoke at the 2009 Hidden Art Forum Growing Through Recession. The forum brings together specialist speakers to present and discuss opportunities within the design industry and ways of accessing them. Daniel spoke in the panel discussion on Prototypes, using the Aram Gallery’s exhibition series ‘Prototypes and Experiments’ as an example of their display.

03 June – 04 October 2009

Super Contemporary is the spirit of London design, past, present and future. The exhibition celebrates and examines the creative magnetism of London and its enduring reputation as a beacon of design. The Design Museum has joined forces with Beefeater 24 to showcase 15 new commissions from London’s most dynamic creatives to explore what it is that attracts the world’s leading designers to study, work and live in the city.

Curator Daniel Charny

Exhibition Design by Martino Gamper and Communication designers Bibliotheque

Photography by Luke Hayes

8th May to 27th June 2009

The Aram Gallery is delighted to exhibit the work of ten designers and artists that work in distinctly different fields, yet share the passion and sensitivity for using colour in their work. Significant Colour is an exhibition exploring the impact of colour and its richness as a subject matter for designers in different disciplines.  Pieces on show include furniture, photography, textiles, jewellery art, sculpture, communication, lighting and architecture.

Daniel Charny and Roberto Feo take Platform 10 students from RCA to Milan Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2009 this April to assemble Crisis Shop. A display of pieces designed as responses to the question ‘What qualifies as a Crisis?, each invests in the means to respond to crises at large.
Platform 10.

Crisis Shop. Sold Out!:
22nd-27th April 10am to 9pm daily

Seves glassblock showroom
Via Lodovico il Moro, 25/27 - 20143 Milano

In Milan 2009 Salone del Mobile Daniel is guest curator with the British Council launching an experimental new project The Incidental.

This daily hybrid media news sheet, guided by new creative projects consultancy FROM-NOW-ON, is collated through digital and physical participation channels…the first one out this morning. The project commissioned by Alison Moloney and Catherine Ince and project managed by Evonne Mackenzie from the British council Architecture Design and Fashion Arts Group, and involved internet product designer Matt Jones who introduced Matt and Jack from Schulze & Webb on the online and technical development. With graphic designers:  Åbäke and Co-Editor writer Damian Barr.

From February 12th 2009

Prototypes and experiments are critical elements in the development process of any new design.

The prototype is the manifestation of a design idea on its way to production; experiments are more like steps on the way. The prototype, being part of a process, makes more real an idea that will lead to a final piece, and is not made with the intention of being sold or shown outside the designer’s studio. Experiments are also unique artefacts but are even less refined and sometimes constitute a partial sketch on the way to the prototype.

The exhibition features prototypes from both established and emerging designers, and for the first time a 3D Scale Model of the Thames Gate by Nigel Coates. Visit The Aram Gallery for more.

Latest curating project: New work by Sebastian Bergne. A collection of new designs around wine generated in response to a commission to present new work under his own name. On show at The Aram Gallery till January 17 2009. Graphic design by Jeremy Hofmeister Mac Lynn.

Daniel Charny & Gabriel Klasmer developed a physical and slideshow version of a 2003 photographic project inspired by football sports photogrphy. The pieces are installed at NOWHERE/NOW/HERE an exhibition into alternative investigations in design curated by Rosario Hurtado and Roberto Feo for LABoral in Gijon Asturias.

Furniture is often thought of as given types that relate to a task or support an occasion. Sports Furniture is about choreographing the body into dramatic physical situations, such as those of footballers at the height of exerted effort. Their shape frozen by photography becomes a heroic depiction of human form. Good sports photography captures these moments that are so full of energy and human expression. The body in relation to the ball becomes a study of intent. These supports are the exact opposite of the transient sport moment; they offer the user an imaginative scenario in which they can place themselves in that heroic moment.

The Royal College of Physicians building by Denys Lasdun has a new reception desk, designed by Daniel Charny and Martino Gamper. The Corian slab design houses all the digital security, communication and electrical equipment that has accumulated since the original 1964 marble desk first sported a single receptionist with one telephone line.

A new type of exhibition curated for a long-lasting continuously changing commercial programme at The Aram Gallery. In response to the limitations of the limited edition trend, The Aram Gallery will be showing unique pieces selected while on visits to designers studios. For more about the concept and the first selection please visit the exhibition NOW on at the gallery website.

Platform 10 takes to the hotel stage once more, this third year of collaboration with Simon Warrington of ANDAZ.

Private View is an insight into the workings of the designers thinking process. A series of short films made as sketches for new designs that are concerned with personal space. Each one is an intimate creative experience that stirs, provokes and kicks off ideas. It is a raw part of the process of young designers thinking about the future of domestic spaces. The projects are presented in speacial locations around the hotel, including staircases and elevator entrances. The show is on and open to public till 14 May.

Why design more chairs? was one of the key questions raised while chairing a talk at the Barbican about the relationship designers have to chairs. This talk was part of the education programme around the Hans Schabus exhibition, in which he wall-mounted on to the impressive curve gallery hundreds of chairs into a seating layout of a commercial plane. The talk offered the chance to meet art historian Margit Emesz who wrote the text accompanying the exhibition; Tim Oldman designer that has made his way to management and is currently the Design Director of Vitra UK and Martino Gamper designer of the 100 Chairs in 100 days and winner of the Design Museums Brit Insurance Designs of the Year Furniture award last month.

Total Trattoria, was a unique site specific commissioned project from London-based designer Martino Gamper to design all the elements of an ad-hoc restaurant. It’s an extension of the Trattoria al Cappello concept he developed together with Maki Suzuki, Kajsa Stahl and Alex Rich.

Every element of the dining set up was designed or adapted - ranging from the massive 13 part dinner table itself to a kitchen unit, from the cutlery, place-mats, glasses to the chairs and lampshades. Each of the projects has an element of bringing things together, reflect the social nature of a dinner event. The 25 chairs around the table are all different yet are constructed from the same components in different configurations, its a kind of way of seeing putting materials together as cooking with ingredients.

The exhibition graphics and communication, also designed by Suzuki, Rich and Stahl, are intertwined with a specially commissioned catalogue (we even made it to the amazon).

Signs of Change in Singapore was a five day workshop with the LASALLE University product and interior design students in their amazing new building. The students explored ideas about the future of their city by story-boarding a day in their life when they will be over 50 years old. Each one chose a cultural, technical or social change to follow and imagined the type of institutes that will be part of Singapore in 30 years or more. They then designed a public sign naming the institute and giving it a heritage sign type icon. Some of them looked at the future of housing, other transport and food culture. One of the interesting aspects that came through was the fear of an overload of virtual life which was evident in proposals such as the Meet-for-Real place.

The signs were placed in the vicinity of the campus with prospects of being embedded into the actual city at a later stage. The workshop was commissioned by the British Council Curator Catherine Ince and Dan Prichard, Director, Creativity and Innovation in Singapore. The students were all very much engaged and the workshop enjoyed the great support of Xinwei, an energetic tutor, that helped us get the signs made to a very nice standard. This is the second Signs of Change workshop, the first was conceived and co-directed with Artist Gabriel Klasmer in 2005 with the design students at Lund LTH.

Working with Daniel Charny in 2007, Urban Salon reached the fourth round of the RIBA competition to design the Royal College of Art Battersea North site.

The brief was for a £19 million building that contained studio and retail space, start up atelier units, and a lecture theatre to be built over three phases.

The team researched into the history of the existing South Kensington building, and then incorporated successful characteristics from here into the new proposal.

To find out more, visit the Urban Salon website.

Slow Water was a responsible design brief set by Feo and Charny for the Royal College of Art student group platform 10 and resulted in 14 new design concepts. The research and the prototypes were presented in a unique exhibition, supported by Innovation RCA, that rippled to wide acclaim during the London Design Festival of September 2007.

The students were offered a brief to ’slow water down between the sky and the sea’, and to consider changes to the way people use and think about water in their day to day life. This included ideas about the future of showering with less water and efficient rain water management for private gardening alongside communication projects for raising awareness to the impacts of indulgent domestic water consumption.

Two of the students projects from Slow Water have since been picked up by progressive industry, and the project is still generating attention from press and publishers… for more details check out the report on treehugger or visit the platform 10.

On the occasion of the opening The Royal Institution of Great Britain hosted a talk with Karen Blincoe and Daniel Charny on Designing for Sustainability with a focus on questioning the roles of designers and design education.

New Moves was an exhibition at The Aram Gallery from 20 September to 3 November 2007 featuring 70 new task light prototypes designed by students from the Royal College of Art’s acclaimed Design Products department. The exhibition had as its starting point an exploration of the iconic task light - the Anglepoise and also offers the opportunity to compare new work with a selection of classics and best sellers from this uniquely independent form of lighting.

Research into solid freeform fabrication NEW PROTOTYPES of the Morning Glory tower lamp, and two products from the “A head of its time” project. The first to be produced was the double portrait sandclock, the sand pours from the top head to the lower and back when turned up side down. The second project is a salt and pepper portrait shakers. The embedded portraits are of the two designers involved in this project. The three pieces are part of the joint design collaboration with Professor Gad Charny of HIT, for ‘Dream Makers’ - an exhibition on the future of rapid prototyping, curated by Alex Ward, produced by Objet Geometries and shown at the Israel Museum Architecture and Design department, opened 5th January 2007.