Design Cities

William Morris, Marcel Breuer and Zaha Hadid were all featured in the Design Museum's exhibition: Design Cities. Pictured above is a selection of hanging lamps that featured in the exhibition by Tom Dixon, a series called 'Beat.' I'm a sucker for sleek, smooth, minimal design and so these hand beaten lamps enticed me.

This selection of Alessia Bettini cutlery also caught my interest, i was especially impressed with the slight bend in the spoons that would enable right handed users of the product easier access to the head of the utensil. I have to say i was much more intrigued by the contemporary design over the older that was on show, however i still appreciated some of the older English design concepts. The exhibition covered 150 years of design from several design capitals of the world in their hay day. One quote i did pick out from the older section was from Owen Jones' The Grammar of Ornament (1856) where he writes- "The more closely nature is copied, the further we are removed from a work of art." This, for me, is a pretty interesting quote, that would bode well with Matisse who once wrote in magazine La Revue Blanche (1908)- "I cannot copy nature in a servile manner."

Finally i was most captured by Zahid Hadad's design for the 2012 London Olympic Aquatic stadium, whose fluidity and simplicity of form reflect perfectly the role and function of the building. Like a Medieval church suggests divinity with its walls and an exterior packed biblical sculpture, this piece of architecture suggests the ripple of a wave as an Olympic swimmer carves through water.