Three Layer Cake

Who:  Emily Campbell, Head of Design & Architecture, British Council
Where:  London
When:  During London Design Festival (15-30 September each year!)
Why:  Emily has her finger on the pulse of design across the globe
How:  We were introduced by Nipa Doshi

About:  Since her appointment in 1996, as the first Head of Design and Architecture at the British Council Arts Group, her critical expertise in design has shaped an extensive programme with three objectives: to enhance Britain’s international reputation for creativity; to increase understanding of design in the world at large; and to enlarge the international perspective of design in the UK. Emily commissioned the British Pavilion at the last three Venice Biennales of Architecture; and the first major international design exhibitions to tour India and China. A series of critical debates on design, initiated by Emily and each drawing full-capacity audiences, includes How Global is Design? at the V&A in 2005, My Kind of Town at the Venice Biennale 2006 and Has the Silk Road Gone for Good? which she chaired at Asia House in London in March 2007. Emily has a BA in English Literature from Cambridge, a diploma in clothing technology from the London College of Fashion and an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale School of Art. Before joining the British Council she had been a pattern-cutter for the fashion designer Jean Muir, a project manager at Pentagram in London and a graphic designer with Michael Bierut at Pentagram in New York.

Interview with Emily Campbell

 
ICON Magazine published a special issue in 2005 on London and how designers view the city.  How do you view London as a design capital and how has this changed since you’ve been in your current role as British Council Arts Group’s first Head of Design & Architecture? 

I chaired a debate at 100% on “London as a Design Destination”  with Deyan Sudjic, (Design Museum, Director), Paul Thompson (Cooper Hewitt Design Museum) and Tom Dixon (Designer).  Everyone discussed the fact that London has good schools, a buoyant design discourse, a good relationship between media and design, that there has been a fairly good integration of design into the urban fabric and commercial life...all of that.  Then  I opened it up for questioning and aside from one question, I had to shut it down after 35 minutes.  It was unanimous:  London is the design capital of the world. 

I would attribute this to all of the design schools—all of them, not just the Royal College of Art, but all of them.  Camberwell, London College of Fashion, Goldsmiths, Middlesex, Ravensbourne…  There is also a relatively enlightened public sector which commissions architecture, and a multi layered architectural fabric going back centuries.  In London, there’s just plenty of it all.  You have 100% Design, enterprise initiatives, awards, design supplements in newspapers, an active design scene, many stemming from educational opportunities which have become more international in the last 15 years. The integrated cultures here have led to a rich and inspiring atmosphere.  It also helps that there is a definite relationship with the media, not just in the design sense but between design and the literary public - in the broadest sense in which I include compulsive tabloid readers. That’s very different than say in the Far East where design is often set apart from any social discourse narrative.  In London there’s a satirical undertone, away from that formalism, which connects design to comedy and other fields of creative endeavour like literature and film. 

Since I’ve been at the British Council, there has been one big change in London and indeed Britain as a whole.  The Millennium impulse to commemorate led to a lot of capital projects.  This raised design awareness among the public; who had been slow on the uptake of modernism, but all the new environments that opened around and because of the year 2000 eventually increased the desire for a modernity.  (Image: Lighting by Heath Nash, New World Exhibition)

You’ve also spent significant time in New York.  How would you compare the two cities in this respect?  When I worked in New York, I was a Graphic Designer, and comparing the two, there’s more of an intellectual discourse around graphic design in New York.  In Britain there is skepticism, combined with respect for the origins in the printing trade.  In product design, I can think of two product designers.  Tucker Viemeister and Karim Rashid.  That’s it.  I have no sense of product design in the United States.  It’s really strange.  You’ve got this huge commercial savvy in the U.S., you have Target, the Gap, but then no product design sense.  When you do get down to it, like the Brooklyn design scene, it really is quite “indie”. Finally, New York also doesn’t have a prominent public sector commissioning design or new buildings – the initiatives tend to be private or community led, like BIDs.  

One of your objectives at the BC is to enhance Britain’s international reputation for creativity.  What has been Britain’s greatest contribution to the design field?   Our greatest contribution?  Railways and steam trains, the Industrial Revolution and all the engineering based innovations that came out of that era.  That’s what put Britain on the map.  The heir to that tradition is, I think, Jonathan Ive.  I know that Apple is an American brand, that made it all possible; that sleek design packaging, the design “icon”, though, was designed by a Brit!  I know that’s a cheeky answer… But there is a parallel history to this design-engineering story: Really, Britain’s great image comes from people like Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Paul Smith, and other image makers in the ephemera industries like graphics and art direction and fashion. 

Where can it continue to lead and where must it catch up?  The challenge for us is that the design industry is not connected to an indigenous manufacturing industry.  That’s a big problem for fashion.  It’s not as big for product design, but it is a real problem for fashion.  It’s the reason we’re falling behind in the technical manufacturing skills, like pattern making, sewing, those types of areas. 

We continue to lead in image-making work—word and image work, fashion, magazines, all the parts connected to the immediate publishing of culture.  Here we have a resistance to the abstract, unlike the French and Portuguese, and that makes our design more accessible.  The more abstract, I believe, the harder people have to work to understand and the easier they fall off it. (Image:  Fashion by Ana Vaz, part of New World exhibition )

How do you identify designers for your exhibitions?  How does their work compare with their European counterparts?  In other words, is there a British design identity?  It’s our job to know.  We know the field, we go to school shows, we read magazines, we’re out scouting all the time.  How the work compares I talked a little bit about before.  We’re more direct, less abstract.  There’s a real boldness, readiness to work with crude and banal materials, humble materials.  Our designers are resourceful and very hungry, conceptually hungry.  They try bold concepts and aren’t afraid to shock.  Our education breeds rebelliousness.  I’d say this is also true for the Dutch in particular, and for developed Western design cultures in general.  

Like I already said, we have a great industrial design and engineering heritage, from which Norman Foster, Jasper Morrison, James Dyson, these guys came about.  Conversely perhaps, we also have a resistance to modernist and technical propriety, a rollicking expressiveness with a compulsively ironic underbelly.  You see that most in fashion – British designers are great parodists, very referential in their language. 

Which exhibition has been your favorite and why?  I’d have to say My World. We inherited the theme from Experimenta – the relationship between design and craft.  My main objective in writing the catalogue foreword was to not use the word “craft” more than once – and eventually came up with the subtitle “the new subjectivity in design” as an alternative.  I am pleased with the outcome.  There were seven pieces of really good, provocative design which led to further exhibitions being commissioned.  I really felt that we nailed something in design, the “me-ness” i.e. subjectivity that is demanded of designers now from all quarters.  (Below:  Sketch by Nipa Doshi of Doshi Levien for Experimenta exhibition)

The other two objectives of your programme at the BC are to increase understanding of design in the world at large; and to enlarge the international perspective of design in the UK.  How are you measuring your success--  Why should people care about design?  People should care about the social value of design.  That’s something I talk about in the most recent edition of our newsletter.  In many parts of the world, design is just seen as premium consumer goods or as the private property development.  Not, for example, as a better ride to work or accessible communications from the Health department.  People should see design in every day life, for example, forms that are easy to fill out, a newspaper makes the news accessible for everyone.  This is where there’s a lot to do in design.  In many parts of the world you say “design” and they think “Louis Vuitton. BMW, Prada”. They just think you mean luxury brands.  (Bowl by Paula Dib, Winner 2006 International Young Design Entrepreneur)

 We measure our success by tracking requests for repeat visits, by interest expressed in our work, by the critical response from the media, and by institutions and organizations coming back to us, wanting to work with us again.

How have you seen ‘design’ change (globally) since you’ve been in the field?  There is a lot more emphasis in countries on “inclusivity” as a driving force.  For example, designing for people who don’t read magazines, designing for people with disabilities, women with kids, access and mobility issue.  Then there’s Cameron Sinclair’s Architecture for Humanity and initiatives like Index in Copenhagen promoting “Design that Improves Life”

Time Capsule:  Which three designs would you put in a time capsule today that say the most about you and the times we live in?  An iPod; an animation by Danny Brown; a Cow Bench by Julia Lohmann. and Doshi Levien’s Charpoi, which was commissioned by us for the My World exhibition.  (Image:  Charpoi, produced by Moroso.)

What motivates you?  To see more, better design in the world. 

Which food/dessert best describes your personal design style?  A stew of lamb and beans.  I have learned to work well with dried beans.  It’s a dish of more or less my own contrivance which makes reference to both Gigot and Navarin of Lamb.  Everything is cooked in one pot, using a cheap cut of lamb, which cooks for a long time and becomes delicious. 

What was it ten years ago?  Some kind of French patisserie.

Eating what food brings back the best memories?  Drinking Chianti – it brings back bittersweet memories.  My son was born in Siena in difficult circumstances and for three and a half months, my husband and I lived in a converted Tuscan pigsty visiting him in the hospital every day and drinking Chianti every night.

First thing you notice in a restaurant? Social atmosphere

Favorite flea market find?  Where is it now?  I was delighted to find a copy of Hallam Tennyson’s two-volume Memoir of his father, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in Lincolnshire. 

Best color for a front door?  Really, really dark navy blue with brass hardware. 

Interior design piece at the top of your wish list?  17^th century Dutch still life featuring pewter and peeling lemon.  I have a craving for a still life, landscape, portraiture - figurative painting. 

Latest celebrity crush?  May I invoke the more usual question: who are the living people you most admire?  The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, a very erudite and humanistic person.  Ian Hislop, a hilarious writer and journalist, and I forget the third.  There were three… 

You’ll always pick up the magazine if ____________________ is on the cover?
If “design” is on the cover and it’s not a design magazine as such. 

You never leave home without it.  My Oyster Card and my keys.  Sometimes, I just leave with those two things.  I think it’s the ultimate freedom. Men are lucky to have pockets. (Below:  detail of bowl by Paula Dib, part of New World Exhibition)