Video: Bastian Hartig.
1014 invited Jochen Eisenbrand, Chief Curator at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, to present the museum’s current exhibition, “Plastic. Remaking Our World”, during NYCxDESIGN in New York City.
After an introduction of the exhibition topics, the curator discussed the rise and fall of a material that has been elemental to the design world and become a symbol of modernity as well as its shortcomings. Featuring Lola Ben-Alon, Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP, and Charlotte McCurdy, an award-winning designer and researcher.
Photos: Gili Benita
Photo by Peter Stackpole, staged to illustrate an article on Throwaway Living, LIFE magazine, August 1, 1955 Getty / Photo: Peter Stackpole
Plastics have shaped our daily lives like no other material: from packaging to footwear, from household goods to furniture, from automobiles to architecture. A symbol of carefree consumerism and revolutionary innovation, plastics have spurred the imagination of designers and architects for decades. Today, the dramatic consequences of the plastic boom have become obvious and plastics have lost their utopian appeal. The exhibition, “Plastic. Remaking Our World”, at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein examines the history and future of this controversial material: from its meteoric rise in the twentieth century to its environmental impact and to cutting-edge solutions for a more sustainable use of plastic.
Bär+Knell, Müll Direkt, 1994 Vitra Design Museum, photo: Jürgen Hans
Topics include rarities from the dawn of the plastic age and objects of the pop era as well as numerous contemporary designs and projects ranging from efforts to clean up rivers and oceans to smart concepts for waste reduction and recycling through to bioplastics made from algae and mycelium.
The exhibition was created by the Vitra Design Museum, V&A Dundee, and maat, Lisbon. The program in New York City was a collaboration between 1014, the Vitra Design Museum, and NYCxDESIGN.
Jochen Eisenbrand is Chief Curator at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein. Having completed a master’s degree in Cultural Studies in 1998, he received his doctorate in Design History in 2013 with a thesis on George Nelson’s work for the United States Information Agency during the Cold War. At the Vitra Design Museum, Jochen has been in charge of a number of exhibition projects, such as Airworld – Design and Architecture for Air Travel (2004), Hidden Heroes – The Genius of Everyday Things (2010), Night Fever. Designing Club Culture 1960 – Today (2018) and most recently, Home Stories: 100 Years, 20 Visionary Interiors (2020). He also curated retrospectives on George Nelson (2008), Louis Kahn (with Stanislaus von Moos, 2012), Alvar Aalto (2014), and Alexander Girard (2016). Jochen has co-edited several exhibition catalogues and the Atlas of Furniture Design (2019).
Lola Ben-Alon, PhD, Associate AIA, LEED AP BC+D, is an Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP, where she directs the Natural Materials Lab and the Building Science and Technology curriculum. She specializes in natural earth- and bio-based building materials, their life cycle, supply chains, and policy. Ben-Alon received her Ph.D. from the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, where she developed perception surveys, life cycle assessment, and building policy analysis for earth-fiber assemblies such as cob, light clay, and rammed earth. She holds a B.S. in Structural Engineering and M.S. in Construction Management from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. At the Technion, Ben-Alon co-founded the experimental art and architecture lab titled art.espionage. She also served as a curator and content developer at the Madatech, Israel National Museum of Science, Technology, and Space. Her work has been published in Building and Environment, Journal of Green Building, Woodhead Publishing Series in Civil and Structural Engineering, and Automation in Construction. She serves on the board of ACSA’s Technology | Architecture + Design, and Elsevier’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
Charlotte McCurdy is an award-winning designer and researcher who works at the intersection of emerging technology, futures, and existential threats. Her work on carbon-negative materials, “After Ancient Sunlight,” debuted as part of “Nature — The Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial” in 2019, won the Experimental category in the 2019 FastCompany Innovation by Design Awards and was most recently on view at The Design Museum, London. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, Dezeen, Wallpaper, and Vogue, and has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Swarovski, The UN Office for Partnerships, and Science Sandbox. She holds a degree in Global Affairs from Yale University and in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence at RISD where she teaches courses on climate change, design research and experimental design.
Photo: Key visual for the exhibition “Plastic: Remaking Our World”, Vitra Design Museum, illustration: Daniel Streat, Visual Fields