Hy-Society

“You will get this collage structure, where components of different types can become one object”

- Thomas Lommée

- Thomas Lommée

WELCOME TO THE

Hy-Society

Hybridity affects all areas, whether it’s Uniqlo’s ‘heat tech’ that combines function with style or the controversial nature of gene splicing, we believe it will be something seen on a regular day to day basis. As technology advances, so do we, hybridity allows us to live our lifes with ease, and to the best of our genetic, technologic and habitual ability.

WELCOME TO THE

Hy-Society

contents

DESIGN

Stellar craftAlex Bennett

LIVINGMichael SaraisCOFFEE’S POWER

ARCHITECTURESarah BuchananURBAN PLANNING

FASHIONCLAUSTROPHILIA

Stellar CraftALEX BENNETT

In a digital, global landscape, collaborative design systems are lighting a future horizon. With social networks and rigged interconnection, synthesized collaboration is burgeoning a plethora of potential. We meet those who will make this approaching horizon light the sky.

The digital ecosystem has hybridized our lives, the virtual in continual consort with the concrete. Undoubtedly, such technological feats become embedded in the private and public, our work life and social life. Notably, our objects and possessions are beginning to host such complexities. But how is this moving the design system - the process of future creations for future objects? A recent MINTEL report (Jan 2013) projected that: “By 2017, the number of one- and two- person households is projected to increase by 850,000.” Initiating a logical future demand for space-efficient furniture and modular objects, the design system in turn will have to advocate such efficiencies in a culture lacquered by instant demand. Thomas Lommée, designer and creator of IntraStructures and sibling network OpenStructures is shaping this future. A strong focus on observation, analysis and re-networking established forms, IntraStructures works on a pragmatic, logistical format – fit to work in everyday life. Based in Brussels, both models of design focus on a collaborative, open standard approach, mirroring a communal way of life. OpenStructures operates as a social network of sorts, where designed components are made from the same grid. Designs can be uploaded and shared, providing insightful solutions to current

design strains, all enlivened by collaborative communication. Lommée elaborated upon this approach in his studio: “if something is modular then it has time integrated into the design, so that means it can evolve because you as a person also evolve.” Modularity enhances adaptability: “your needs change all the time, if your objects that surround you could evolve with you then they can last longer.” OpenStructures proposes an evolution from original production, which is “developed from mostly a top-down point of view” - states Lommée. This hierarchical structure is carefully rebalanced in Lommée’s hands, manifested lyrically in the utilitarian vigour of OpenStructures. Lommée explains: “You have this modular construction system but it works according to the Wikipedia model, so it works according to this idea that everybody adds a small part to a bigger whole.” In turn, the results consecrated an ecosystem of modular, collaborative design. Such collaboration Lommée notes, “will take a while before it goes fully open, and before people are really willing to go far with these collaborative processes. It’s a risk but on the other hand, people will always take small steps and that’s how you proceed.” This communal thinking has become present among “The Principals”, a design trio based in Brooklyn, New York. Specializing in sensory technology and adaptable spaces within a

contemporary framework, the founders, Christopher Williams, Charles Constantine and Drew Seskunas all originate from differing design backgrounds. The variety includes metalwork, industrial design, sculpture and architecture – and their project titled Botox Trilogy embodies such diversity. A reactive modular lighting system, Botox Cloud mirrors natural structure in the heavily artificial. Emblematic of architectural pluralism, the fi-nal stage, Botox Utopia, demonstrates future dialogue between person and object, also the complexity of collaboration. 24 international students at the Politecnico di Milano partici-pated in a workshop to construct an interactive, architectural installation. Converting mundane cardboard sheets and emergency blankets into intricate geometric patterns, the team networked LEDs to sensors, creating an immersive experi-ence from the hands of many. Seskunas explains

that: “the more commonplace things like hybrid-ity and complexity become in our society, the more society will not only be able to comprehend high level collaboration as a concept, but they will accept it as the norm.” Beyond the collabora-tive approach, the design DNA at The Principals crystalize the importance of personal relation-ships. “We three are extremely close friends, and when we’re not working, we’re drinking together or skating together or watching football or doing whatever. That has a huge impact on the success of our work” says Constantine. The simplicity and seamless integration of social and work life in turn provide a multitude of op-portunities. Lawrence Lek, a London based instal-lation architect, sculptor and designer provides a backdrop for these collaborative encounters to thrive. Lek explains: “Pod and Twins and my pa-vilions are opportunities for these encounters to happen in real life. I hope to be able to expand

modular projects I’ve started into really immer-sive, inhabitable installations that can form a new kind of public architecture”. Referencing the natural and technological in examination of our environment, Lek observes: “the plurality of me-dia, cultures and histories that we witness mean that there is no central unifying idea behind the world today” a consequence alluding to a design system based on pluralism. Nascent symptomatic integration has outlined prospects for self-regulated, autonomous design schemes. IntraStructure’s Biosk is one particular prospect. Lommée explains: “waste becoming energy is something very apparent and is quite implementable…by working with this process of waste becoming energy and extracting it, it be-comes an educational object”. The cyclical eco-system of design acts as both social space and coffee bar, liberated by re-instating the organic waste to feed soil, helping local crops. Though this self-regulation will become desirable and manifest collaborative involvement, Lommée in-dicates potential variables: “we will be able to re-vitalise these cycles of organic waste that could happen in a more autonomous way, within local community. But on the other hand, I still think we need the global community for other things”. Underscoring the idea that ‘objects become puz-zles’, Lommée describes the intricacies: “the whole power of infrastructure is like a dynamic

puzzle, it’s constantly growing and shrinking people plugging in things and plugging out ap-pliances”. Lommée continues: “so you get this collage structure where components of different types can become one object.” Lek imagines such puzzles becoming part of our own body: “tech-nology will probably be integrated in the body in a subtle, miniaturized way. In the future, the devices will be so small that you won’t see them”. Extrapolating this collage culture as a global mapping, The Principals examine cultural dif-ferences. “This trend will certainly continue in Tokyo, but it may not elsewhere. Paris for in-stance, can grow in inhabitants, but cannot really become much denser due to historic preserva-tion and cultural restrictions…Berlin has huge swathes of unoccupied land, so hybridity there is more about adaptive reuse.” Conversely, Thomas Lommée expresses: “If you want to discover this hybridized society, I think you have to go to crisis areas, I think my system (OpenStructures) would work much better in Africa than it does in Eu-rope”. Wherever the process will prosper, a mixture of cultural collage, collaborating and sharing, re-purposing and networking will be the multi-lev-elled product of a hybridized future. One thing is certain: expect to find our global metropolis becoming home to local symbiosis.

“The plurality of media, cultures and histories that we witness mean that there is no central unifying idea be-

hind the world today” – Lawrence Lek

Coffee's PowerMICHAEL SARAIS

Named one of the most influential people in the world in 2007, Philip Rosedale made a name for himself after creating a virtual world where everything is possible (like earning real money, to name one), he now illustrates his latest project and the future of work relations.

They say California is the land of the perpetual sun, a place where people are happy and ideas flourish so quickly that most entrepreneurs are in a constant (very pacific) battle against each other to find investors to help them develop the future.

Born and raised in San Diego, California, Philip Rosedale gained notoriety when a new wave of virtual reality called “Second Life” hit the internet. Merging the cybernetic space with an ideal world made of perfectly looking avatars and futuristic environments, made his idea a winning one, gathering millions of users to be stuck on their screens for infinite hours.

His ideas always revolve around hybridity and how we can combine two or more perfectly functioning concepts and make them work together in harmony. This is where his new project “Coffee & Power” takes place. “When we started building Coffee and Power we started to notice all these psychological effects of technology on people. We were fascinated at how people work together in the real world and we wondered ‘How is technology going to change the way people work together?’ Coffee and Power is an attempt of using technology to work together in a way that is better than real world relations,” explains creator Philip Rosedale. “We wondered why most of the most cultured individuals come to San Francisco and become successful. There is something about

the way people interact with each other in San Francisco that we wanted to replicate through a technology that would help people to do so.”

Coffee and Power is a mobile app that allows people to interact with other people and collaborate to work together. “First of all, it lets you find by their skills, people that are physically working in locations in the city where you might want to work,” states Rosedale. “Secondly, we try to get people to help each other. The idea of Coffee and Power is a social signal that tells people you are willing to do a piece of work, probably for free.” Coffee and Power isn’t about dating or just chatting. Coffee and Power is the ultimate tool for people to interact and develop work relations, and have a job done.

Easily compared to a much more refined Craigslist, Coffee & Power’s jobs include Arabic lessons, engineering new vehicles, gardening or even setting up new businesses. “The very next big thing could be right around the corner. One day we could have a young entrepreneur looking for investor, and they may have their very first informal meeting through Coffee & Power.” The marketplace includes live communication, a public chat, star-based reviews and its own currency. Above all, Coffee & Power also provides a shared space that combines the perks of going to Starbucks with intelligent conversations ran by

“It’s the future of work relations, and if I help any other individual, or any other city to develop new

ideas and new projects, well, that’d be just earth-shattering.”

- Philip Rosedale

personally have two hours to spare and be able to share some of my experience just over coffee, and people that only came into the café to grab a muffin, can easily join the conversation and make the most out of their coffee experience.”

The only Coffee & Power café is based in San Francisco, but CEO Philip Rosedale is positive that more and more big cities can embrace his new technology. “For the longest time I believed a project like this could only happen in San Fran-cisco, because a huge part of entrepreneurial energy is located here, in the Silicon Valley,” he explains. “But when I really looked into it, I be-lieve any big city could benefit from Coffee & Power. It’s a peer to peer experience, you teach and learn, you get a job done, you help another person, could be cheap, or you could earn a lot of money from it, it’s up to you, but if there is something we can easily foresee is the lack of time. We appear to rush everywhere, and may-be we could use that coffee break to do some-thing good for others. It’s the future of work relations, and if I help any other individual, or any other city to develop new ideas and new projects, well, that’d be just earth-shattering.”

young professionals, including Philip Rosedale himself. “I have decided to open this space to offer people a neutral place to share their ideas. I had the whole Coffee & Power concept ready, but what I hadn’t included in the equation was the aftermath; what happens after two people actually decide to meet up to discuss a job?” says Rosedale. “It is tremendously awkward to meet up at a random noisy coffee place where everything and everyone is loud, and as much as I like to think people in California are nice and pacific, no one really wants to invite a stranger into their home.”

Coffee & Power is only a startup company, but it has a major following among other entre-preneurs such as Kevin Rose (Senior Product Manager at Google Ventures) and Daniel Burka (Digg’s Creative Director) to mention a few. “It almost feels like some sort of charity work,” con-fesses Rose. “There are probably a lot of people out there struggling to obtain advice from a CEO of a company to start their company, but no one really sends e-mail saying ‘Hey, I have no idea what I am doing, please let’s meet over lunch and explain everything to me’, it just doesn’t happen psychologically. Here at Coffee & Power I could

CLAUSTROPHILIAPhotography

RORY CRITCHLOW-SIMPSONFashion Editor

MICHAEL SARAISArt Director

GEORGE RAYMOND STEAD

Urban planningSARAH BUCHANAN

The two art forms that are integral to human life are architecture and fashion. Fashion and architecture are cognates; both concern three-dimensional form and shape, whilst providing shelter for and protection of the body, and reflect individuality. Due to the predicted social shifts in the future, a trend that we will see in one, we will see in the other simultaneously. In both fashion and architecture, it is predicted that the utilisation of advancements in technol-ogy will open the door to a more urbanised future in a hybrid society. As the two disciplines are symbiotically linked, it would be beneficial to analyse the movements of each together.

The future of architecture is set to be more concentrated on urbanisation around the world, to account for migration to city centres. In London alone, the population is predicted to reach 9 million by 2018, due to rising births, migration and longer life spans. It is the more modest projects that will require revolutionary thinking, as architects will be pressured to develop more housing, schools and transport in the already dense city centre. This will require innovative architectural plans to maximise capacity and minimise space, creating hybrid dwellings. A perfect contemporary example of this is the YO! Home, designed by Simon Woodroffe. The YO! Home enables a limited space to be transformed in to multiple rooms, with the use of existing technology in a reconsidered way. “Since the invention of the city centre apartment, we’ve never really re-invented it,” comments Woodroffe. “YO! Home is that new invention. Twelve moving parts draw on a wealth of engineering technology taken from fields as diverse as yacht and automotive design and the mechanics of stage production, allowing the transformation of an eighty square metre space (the size of a one bedroom apartment)

into a much bigger home.” The YO! Home could provide a popular template on which houses of the future are modeled, where one room has the ability to adapt to provide multi-functional purposes and a dynamic way of living.

Another way that technology can be manipulated to account for increasing urbanisation is the hypothesis that a home could be built to any shape, on demand, demonstrated by a fusion of technology and architectural design. Due to the development of 3D printing technology, dubbed the second industrial revolution, there is currently a race to construct the first 3D printed house. If the prototypes and structures prove successful, the possibilities are almost endless, and any kind of dwelling could be constructed. In spatially challenged areas such as global cities, fantastic shapes could be invented that fit in to the cracks and fissures of existing infrastructures. New buildings could even be mounted on to existing ones, creating heterogeneous tessellations of space and structure. Foster + Partners architecture company are even considering plans to 3D print dwellings on the moon, by harnessing the world’s largest

well-established brands are aspiring to turn their images on their heads. “More brands are going to try and work with young designers and young bloggers. They are going to try and become more ‘urban’ – they want to get rid of the heritage feel about them and squish it up a bit. It is all about keeping up with the Jones’ in the competitive sport of fashion.” La Touché divulges that Ben Sherman plan on utilising social media to change their image in the future. “Social media adapts to our lifestyle, because we want things quick, we want things here and now. It is that whole ‘take-away’ environment that we live in now, we are always on our toes, so why would we want something slow? Social media enables us to be kept up to speed with our interests.” Moreover, Hackett wants to change the perception of its age, as the brand is only turning 30-years-old this year. “Hackett plans to work with new, top bloggers in London and host co-lab parties. They even recently bought a new space in Spitalfields, in Shoreditch. They are purposefully trying to put themselves in

3D printer and experimenting with lunar soil.

The possibilities of 3D printing will share an impact with the fashion world, and potentially eliminate the manufacturing process, and need for manually skilled labour. During Paris Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2013, Iris van Herpen debuted two garments, which had been manufactured using the 3D printing method, proving that this could be the tipping point for fashion designers to adopt the revolutionary technology. Consequently, the use of 3D printing can be seen to hybridise technology with different design disciplines and manufacturing. Due to the fundamental similarities between architecture and fashion, as material technology pushes the boundaries of architecture towards more urbanised frontiers, fashion will mimic the change.

It might seem peculiar to make the claim that fashion will become more urbanised in the near-future, but with the insight from a brand consultant, La Touché, it seems that

more urban environments in order to change.”

The fact that these fashion brands plan to rely so heavily on social media and blogging to change their image stresses the increasing importance of the Internet and the hybrid web of connections it allows. The cultural shift behind this trend is not only due to advancements in technology, but the rise of the power of the youth. This inside perspective into brands’ self-promotion portrays a realisation that is occurring now, that it is more acceptable for established brands to work with bloggers and social media, whereas in the past it was frowned upon. Hence, in the next five years, established brands will begin to engage increasingly younger generations to bring youth to their brand in order to achieve a desired image in the future. This is also an example of how hybridity will function in the future of fashion, because brand identity will comprise a well-established, trusted, household name with a fresh perspective that is flexible to emerging trends, technological advancements and social change. Moreover, the mention of co-

lab parties - literally meaning collaboration - hints towards how fashion brands are deeming it necessary in the future to combine with other companies for a symbiotic relationship of mutual publicity and financial gain.

The symbiotic relationship between architecture and fashion will continue to prove how each discipline can, and will, learn from one another. Architecture of the future will adopt the fluid and ephemeral quality of fashion with a constant flux of reviewing and reinventing. In turn, fashion will look to architecture for social and cultural trends, as well as advancements in technology, and it is likely that fashion will become more urban and architectonic, as the current pace of fast fashion is not sustainable. There is an unlimited potential for the dialogue between architecture and fashion to become more fruitful, and create hybrid possibilities that may even redefine the parametres of architecture and fashion, and reform the way they are perceived in the future.