The year was 1989. Material ConneXion's founder & CEO, George Beylerian, then vice president of Steelcase, and Jeffrey Osborn, a design consultant, embarked on a remarkable journey that swept up all who heard about it: Mondo Materialis.
Sponsored by the Steelcase Design Partnership, Mondo Materialis was a look at the next generation of design through the prism of materials. More than 125 of the world's top designers and architects were invited to create a three-foot square panel representing the materials and processes that would be instrumental to their work in the coming years. "Think of materials you find vital and fresh, whether they are traditional or new," the organizers asked each participant. The instructions may have been simple, but the assembled panels were anything but. Included among the eclectic pastiches were shrines to concrete, paeans to metal, even an epitaph to asbestos. That the resulting works encompassed so many different themes ─ technology, nature, culture, humanity ─ was a testament to the power of materials placed in the hands of creative thinkers.
The exhibition was shown across the country, from New York's Cooper-Hewitt to the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. to Los Angeles' Pacific Arts Center. Works by Ross Lovegrove and Michael Sorkin hung alongside contributions from Richard Meier Partners, Vignelli Associates, Sottsass Associati and other world-famous firms and practitioners. The panels told us which materials were readily available in the marketplace and which were currently in vogue. They raised issues of social responsibility and environmental conservation, and signaled the influence of style, art and fashion on architecture and interior design. In short, they were a celebration of materials, a salute to the very elements we use to shape and define our world.
This gathering of the industry’s most creative minds represented a watershed moment for design: the convergence of talent and vision at a pivotal point in history. As the 20th century rounded its last corner, Mondo Materialis asked not only how the built environment would look in the coming years but what it would be made from, and the answers to these questions varied from the practical to the abstract.
“The materials of the future come from the imagination,” wrote the architect Franklin D. Israel in a statement that accompanied his work. “Seeing the immediate world in different ways…will force us to understand better how precious are those things that give us beauty, scale and harmony.”
Designer Tom McHugh was firmly grounded in the realities of the day when he commented that “in the nineties, economic conditions in the real estate market will result in much smaller spaces, forcing designers to stretch the visual limits of these spaces. With the advent of electrical components in advanced technology,” he continued, “it will be necessary to counterbalance these spaces with more personal and visual anchors.” How prescient these words seem from our present vantage point, where technology has infiltrated our lives ways in which we never would have imagined.
When revisited today, the collages in Mondo Materialis represent more than just a collection of samples and swatches. They are as much a sign of the times as they are a personal calling card for the unique styles and tastes of their individual creators. They give us an indication of how designers once thought about materials and their application to the built environment. They are a time capsule that reflects the cultural and creative concerns of design professionals in the final decade of the 20th century. They are ideas made real.
To say that times have changed in the past twenty years would be a great understatement, and even more so in the world of materials. Products that would have been fanciful concepts in 1989 now seem commonplace. Sustainable design practices have progressed beyond the use of natural materials in their most basic forms to the development of biodegradable polymers and a reliance on "technological nutrients" for new solutions. A barrel of oil today costs more than US$140, and soon the notion of "cheap plastic" will become a thing of the past. Materials are making an impact like never before, and today's designers are taking full advantage.
How will the materials landscape change in the years ahead and what does this mean for the future of design? The moment is ripe to revisit the questions raised by
Mondo Materialis, and on the heels of its 20th anniversary, a reprise of this landmark exhibition is already in the making.
This time around, the show will feature 150 new participants, in addition to 50 of the original exhibitors, who will be invited back to reexamine their earlier works and provide their fresh, updated perspective on the future. As for the new crop of designers, they will be selected from a much larger pool: designers of fashion, transportation, graphics and products, as well as fine artists, will be added to the original mix of architects and interior designers. Opening up the playing field in this way represents an important development over the past two decades in how designers find and specify new materials. As practitioners look outside of their disciplines for new and unlikely solutions, materials and technologies are being more readily transferred from one industry to the next, helping to build a shared and inclusive palette and fostering innovation, growth and ingenuity in the process.
Mondo Materialis II will challenge designers in much the same way as before, but will press them to take an even greater leap beyond the here and now to imagine the possibilities of the next generation. More than just a wish list for the future, the works in Mondo Materialis II will offer a roadmap for progress, a vital and essential link between today and tomorrow.