Vertical Urban Factory Exhibit, Photo by Christopher Hall

After a six-month run in New York City, Vertical Urban Factory, curated by Nina Rappaport, opened on May 11th and runs through July 29th at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). A longtime fan of the process of making things and the buildings that contain the manufacturing occupations, as well as of Nina’s exacting and thoughtful research, I took the opportunity to the talk to the curator about the past. But as important, we discussed the present and future of manufacturing in urban neighborhoods. We also got into the new ways of making things that require none of the toxic smokestacks that loomed over the 20th century. After Detroit, Vertical Urban Factory will travel to the Toronto Design Exchange (September 12, 2012 to January 3, 2013).

Vertical Urban Factory Exhibit, Photo by Christopher Hall

Susan S. Szenasy: What made you choose the urban factory as the subject of your research, and what did you hope to find when you started out (when)?

Nina Rappaport: I have been fascinated with the role of the factory as workplace, part of the urban landscape, and a significant place of innovation in design since I was young. I remember visiting the Volvic water bottling plant in France and being intrigued with the process, the volume, the people who make things, the repetitive motions, and the creations that result. Then the architectural historian and urbanist, Reyner Banham’s Concrete Atlantis sparked an interest in the role of the engineer in the design of factories and the way in which Modern architects gravitated to the rawness of the innovative spaces of production. This actually led to my book, Support and Resist, on the role of contemporary engineers in design. I begin the book by discussing a Modern factory in Germany. All the while I wanted to return to the research I had begun on factories, some actually for a Metropolis article in 1995 on the fate of Albert Kahn’s factories on the 100th anniversary of the firm!

The factory as urban landscape and as part of a “spatial product” in the terms of Henri Lefebvre, contributes to the city in a different way than the office as a workplace did--shuffling paper all day but not making anything. And that led me to investigate how the processing and company organization as well as labor issues impact the design of the space.

Continental Motor Car Co Interior
12801 E. Jefferson Ave. Albert Kahn and Ernest Wilby, 1911. Photograph courtesy of Albert Kahn Associates

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John Edelman, the CEO of Design Within Reach, has no patience for self-indulgent design. Or, as he disparagingly puts it, design-for-design’s-sake. Unless a product merges beauty and marketability, the ultimate sweet spot, he’s just not interested. For our “So You Want to Be a Product Designer” story, we talked to creative directors at six American manufacturers about how young designers might break through. Edelman asked that Kari Woldum, DWR’s vice president of merchandising, join him in the interview. An edited version of their joint conversation with Derrick Mead follows:

What are best ways for young designers to get noticed by manufacturers?

John Edelman: They can do shows, they can do competitions, and they can reach out to us. But the biggest problem we encounter is most designers are so out of touch with anything that’s marketable, they become valueless. They design for themselves, versus designing for the market. They purpose things that can’t be produced, or they don’t have a full industrial background. A lot of their ideas seem exciting on the exterior, but once you get past the first layer, they don’t become applicable.

Kari Woldum: With DWR, there’s such a perception of us being this giant retailer. There’s not a single email that comes to us that we don’t look through and assess. John said it years ago: “We want there to be a dialogue, and a open platform, no matter who they are, whether we’ve heard of them or not.”

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With a past life in corporate interior and architectural design in San Francisco, I have been aware of 3Form’s many uses as an interior manufacturing company for several years now. I had seen their products used again and again in our sustainable projects, but the image of a conference room divider using their organic Varia Ecoresin Interlayers, in which bear grass had been entombed within a sheet of 40 percent preconsumer recycled material still resonates in my mind. So when I was asked to preview their new showroom, I was confronted with a question I had never thought of before: how does 3Form use 3Form in their interiors?

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