Interview with Barbara Holzer from Holzer Kobler Architekturen

The renowned Swiss architectural firm Holzer Kobler is one of five foreign firms chosen to exhibit at the National Museum as part of the Beijing International Design Triennial 2011 (BIDT). H!TANG&CCC talked with co-founder Barbara Holzer right before her journey to Beijing. The first BIDT, which is hosted by the Ministry of Culture and organized by Tsinghua University and the Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Group, will be held in the China National Museum from September 28th to October 17th.

H!TANG & CCC: How did this project in China first come about? Were you approached by the BIDT, and how did they select you?

Barbara Holzer: The contact came through a person who has spent several years organizing the Swiss Design Price, which is a quite famous award in Switzerland. She collaborated with Tsinghua University and recommended us for the BIDT. Tsinghua University was originally looking for curators from Switzerland, and the first contact was established because we are not only architects and designers but also curators. 10-12 designers were recommended, and after a pre-selection we and eight other designers were finally invited to an interview with the BIDT in Beijing.

What is your interest in China within the context of your area of specialty, what do you think you can bring to China, and is there anything you can learn from China?

First of all I think it is very valuable to have cultural exchange. It is a very strong element of inspiration, and that is what I feel working together with Chinese colleagues, Chinese curators, Chinese professors, and Chinese designers. I think it is interesting to see that there is a common sense of understanding of what design is within a different cultural background that makes it so interesting to have this exchange. I think we are coming from such a small country - Switzerland, with approx. 8 million people - compared to China, which is so enormously large.

Our country has specialized in quality and perfection and the challenges are so totally different from a country like China. On the other hand, the largeness of this country is producing so much creativity and so many good young designers who are starting to create a new culture. That is of mutual benefit for countries in Europe and Switzerland in particular, where things are very refined and worked over and over for hundreds of years. In China there is a young powerful generation who is starting, in my eyes, a new design culture that can compete worldwide.

What we probably can bring to China is experience as we know a lot about techniques, innovative materials, handicrafts and local production. That is also something we want to contribute to China, to say: it is not only mass production and famous labels, and its not only the things that you can buy everywhere in the world that have a value, but its really about the designing of objects that are more in touch with regional and local aspects. There is a high potential for creativity in China, which I think is extremely inspiring, and there is a lot of energy and a strong will to generate good design. I think this is fascinating.

Have you seen any examples of architecture and or design from China that caught your eye in a positive/inspiring way?

There are some really good architects, good products and fashion designers, some of which we are actually showing in our exhibition. It is interesting to see that Chinese architecture firms now try to get an international perspective. It is not only about importing ideas, but offices like MAD are now starting to export Chinese culture into the world. I think their office building in Canada is almost finished. This is a very interesting effect.

Many Chinese architects for example work abroad for a couple of years for offices like Zaha Hadid, come back to China and bring their experiences with them. But now, those people are starting to re-export ideas back to the world. I am fascinated by the fact that Chinese design, architecture and urban design these days start to compete with the western world. When I first entered the MAD office in Beijing I felt as if I was in New York, it was very similar to many western cities I have been to. It is like there is an inter-marriage of culture taking place, which I think is very fascinating.

How did you decide on your theme for this exhibition?

The idea is to focus on the responsibility of designers. We are looking at products, we are showing products at an exhibition, but the people who created these products have to have an idea, they have to have an understanding of the world in order to contribute to our culture. That's why we call them “good guys”, starting from the people who are doing good design. What connects them all over the world is a certain attitude towards good forms but also towards other themes like recycling material, local production, sustainability and smaller series, even handcrafted ones. This idea is saying: I am not only producing good design that is fashionable and “cool,” but which is more than that: it respects nature, social problems and doesn’t poison our world. With our exhibition we want to tell that designers are a very important for our societies as they assume responsibility for how our future world will look. In our understanding design goes clearly from urban design to jewelry; we do not only focus on product design. Design is an open field in terms of disciplines.

What are your favorite objects that you are displaying within your exhibit?

In our exhibition “Good Guys,” we show design objects from designers from all over the world, but about one third of the exhibition is Chinese. We didn’t sort the design according to nations or categories; the exhibited design objects are completely mixed up and follow more of a spatial sequence.

There is always an individual history connected to the design objects that affected us in particular. We have, for example, a young designer who collects used wooden chairs and always replaces one leg, or one part of the leg, with a glass element. This design object symbolizes a lot of things to me: the functionality of a chair - to sit on - but also other aspects. Through the glass element, the chair becomes very fragile so that you almost don't dare to sit on it. Furthermore, because every chair is treated individually and has its unique glass element, it becomes almost an art piece. You ask yourself: is this chair for sitting on, or is it art? What is the functionality of design? Is design art? I particularly like this object as it is bringing so many aspect of design together.

Can you give us a practical recipe for being a "good design guy" i.e. producing good design? For example, what is a good chair?

What is clear to all good designers is that they have a very sharp eye looking at things and discovering things in the world of objects that are fascinating. They have to have a high sense for innovation and a good understanding of production and materials. They have to be able to design good forms, which means the shape has to be right. No matter whether it is elegant, funny or ugly: with every form you have to find the right answer. The ability to see things that the majority of people don't notice or think are relevant, knowledge about materials, innovation, and the ability to structure it into a good form is essential.

There is one designer, for example, who uses common white plastic garden chairs and drills thousands of little holes into them to make them look almost like a mesh. She takes these chairs that have been thrown away, redesigns them by taking material out of it, and in the end makes very individual and particular chairs out of it. When it comes to sustainability, I regard the concept of “found footage” as an important issue. “Found footage”, an expression from the film industry originally meaning compiling a film out of pieces created by others and putting them into a new context, can also be transferred to design: finding things that already exist, transforming them and reusing them in different ways. The “Freitag” bags, made out of truck cover material, are a good example of that.

You mention that "sustainability" (a concept that seems to be in the heart of your philosophy), should be interpreted within the respective social context. What does that mean for China, and does that mean sustainability means something slightly different everywhere?

What we are basically saying is that not everything has to go into mass production. Even in a huge country like China, you can still design things for a smaller group of people. If you do mass production, you can try to break it into smaller productions, more individualized productions, local productions.

By “sustainability should be interpreted within the respective social context” we mean that design doesn’t have to be the same everywhere and doesn’t have to follow a standard design fashion catalogue. What we want to say is that there is something beside the standard design, which is so much more interesting; it is about bringing out individualized design. We say to China: use what you have and make something new out of it or by transforming it into something avant-garde. To really work on that, use your potential of creativity and to focus not only on economies of scale but also on innovation.

Where did you source the 200.000 chopsticks for the Dragon? How many people and how much time does it take to built it?

We are actually using about 600,000 chopsticks. We developed a chopstick-module, which has a pyramid form, and assemble these pre-fabricated elements into a dragon-like form in the exhibition hall. So the dragon itself is not built out of singular chopsticks but out of ready-made modules of chopsticks. It is a very abstract dragon. Tsinghua University has contracted the people who built it up. In addition, we have five people from our office flying in to help install the objects. Some of the objects are shown in very special ways such as colored children trousers displayed like flags.

We don't want our exhibition to be a classical product fair, but we want it to be a cultural event taking place in a museum. With our work we always want to create an emotional experience. We want the visitor to become curious, and to really look at the objects. To achieve this, we always try to show the objects in a different way, a way that opens your eyes and makes you curious to discover things.

The chopstick installation is like a metaphor for walking through a city, where you have many things to discover. When walking through our exhibition “Good Guys”, you will discover all kinds of objects that are displayed in, on and behind the dragon. We always put a lot of emphasis on the process of exploration and discovering the objects in an exhibition from a visitor’s perspective. That is what is meant by the concept “Spatial Narratives.” This is also the title of our new book, which we are going to launch in China next week.

H!TANG&CCC is organizing the book launch event for Holzer Kobler Architekturen in Beijing in cooperation with the Swiss Embassy as well as planning and implementing PR activities for Holzer Kobler and their exhibition in China.