The Great Tate Mod Blog

Ideas from ‘The Ideas Store’

Jane — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:47:09 +0000

Stepping out of the tube at Whitechapel in East London, you find yourself in a bustling market, selling everything from fruit and veg to saris and CDs of the latest Bangra beats. Above the stalls and Victorian shop-fronts the colourful glass façade of the ‘Ideas Store’ hoves into view, like an inter-stellar spaceship on a mission. Technically, the Ideas Store is a library, but the word ‘library’ doesn’t appear anywhere in its self-consciously styled branding – instead, the ‘Store’ entices you in with offers of DVD rentals, dance classes and even massage therapy alongside the books. Oh, and there’s a cool café with great views (and cheap sandwiches) on the top floor. The library staff walk the floors rather than hiding behind desks, which are deliberately banished. Instead, you can wander in without anyone putting you on the spot by asking what you want, you can use self-service book checkouts, or simply hang out using the free internet -surfing zone. And instead of typically limited library opening hours they’ve matched theirs to the supermarket just behind the building. So now you can drop in while out doing your shopping.

The architect behind the Ideas Store is David Adjaye, who first became known for his work designing studios for a number of prominent young British artists. The sleek, modern appearance of the Ideas Store is a key factor in changing perceptions about what a library can be.

One of the smart things is the way the Ideas Store integrates its offer. Books remain at its heart, but there is a plethora of other learning opportunities available, all imaginatively constructed to make them as appealing as nipping out for a spot of retail therapy. One example is ‘Premiership’ after school clubs, where the children get to shoot footballs through inflatable goalposts if they score well in their quizzes. There are also sleepovers, ‘Wii’ gaming competitions, and Bollywood dancing classes. And one of the best innovations, that would have sent shivers down the spines of librarians in the past, is that you can take food and drink anywhere in the building.

There are a few problems of course. The building is so busy being super cool that it’s not all that practical to run and is expensive to maintain. The clever underfloor ventilation system doesn’t work properly; the lighting is beautiful, but changing a bulb is a nightmare; and the ground floor working spaces open straight onto the street, a democratic touch, but one that means it’s freezing in winter (they’re retrofitting an entrance lobby). Still, the Ideas Store’s users are voting with their library cards: a fourfold increase in visitors, and an 86 per cent uptake in book loans. You can’t argue with those numbers.

Modblog wins a BIMA award!

Doug — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:26:25 +0000

Mod Blog contributors, commentators, film-makers, scrawlers and fans, please take a bow as we have been awarded a splendid shiny pink sci-fi-esque cube for our efforts…

Snatching the annual BIMA award for Best Blog in the ‘Social Media’ category, The Great Tate Mod Blog won out against some strong competition. As you can see we produced ours for the ‘Public’ which makes it doubly rewarding. The award ceremony was great fun and we were very pleased to have come away with something for all the hard work that everyone has put into the Mod Blog.

The Mod Blog would be nothing if it wasn’t for everyone’s help and input, not least of all Dunk Digital who designed and built the site for us and joined us in celebrating our win. Thanks should duly be heaped upon those who contributed articles and ideas, and to all of you for commenting and giving us such great feedback on the plans and designs for phase two of Tate Modern.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Mod Blog Team

What makes a good office?

Fiona — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:37:39 +0000

Fiona Sibley snoops around offices that pave the way for better working practices

Office life gave us one of the best comedy TV series in recent memory. Inside Ricky Gervais’ tragicomic world of heavy-duty carpets, cluttered desks and claustrophobic meeting rooms, trapped on a miserable trading estate in Slough, were elements we probably all recognised: the office as a dead, grey, thoroughly uninspiring environment.

But there’s a whole other story, and offices also exist as shining exemplars of good design. People lucky to work in a well designed office can definitely say they reap the rewards. Calmer environments, better lighting and ventilation, ergonomically designed chairs and space planning that facilitates communication – all elements of good design – can help to make employees to feel happier and achieve more. And with the longest working hours in Europe, don’t we deserve that?

The work of interior designers specialising in offices, like Linda Morey Smith and BDG Workfutures, certainly suggests this is the case. Projects in their care are benefiting from innovative, sustainable design thinking which makes the most of the actual building’s merits, whether it is a vast former high street bank, or a purpose-built eco office in the rolling countryside.

Instead of a monotony of standard issue office furniture, offices now incorporate areas of softer elements, with design elements and furnishings you’d expect to find in restaurants and hotels. The National Trust’s HQ in Wiltshire is a paragon of elegant, calm design, with vast walls designed in textiles, which has scooped awards for its architects, Fielden Clegg Bradley.

Now that designers are so focused on employee wellbeing, feeding natural light into offices is a popular design strategy. Offices often accommodate many people, and like it or not, not everyone can sit by the window. Instead, in offices like the Blue Fin building, designed by Allies and Morrison and home to IPC Media, transparent glass is used for all the internal walls, so that daylight can filter through to even the most internally located departments. And if that’s not clever enough, the exterior is clad in 2,000 blue aluminium ‘fins’ that not only help the building to stay cool, but give it a unique appearance on London’s riverbank.

Then there is the matter of encouraging teamwork and collaboration. In the digital age, helping staff to flit easily between concentrated computer work and communicating with colleagues can be a challenge.

To help this, Linda Morey Smith creates many different types of space within her sophisticated schemes, employing different textures and atmospheres. Her offices for the Nokia design team’s move to new premises in London’s Soho give a clue to why these designers remain creatively ahead in their industry. Project rooms with flexible furniture and controlled lighting provide space for Nokia’s designers to collaborate away from their desks. Vast reclaimed timber doors separate these areas off, but as a useful flourish, they can be rolled right back to present the results to the main office. Glazed off quiet rooms have rugs, soft seating and feature lighting, and there is also a big space for presenting to visiting colleagues, screened off by two giant pivoting panels. Ultimately, this is not an office where employees sit at their own desks from morning until night, but create their work through teamwork.

At Bloomberg’s London HQ, designed by Powell Tuck Associates, the effort spent making the office feel alive as a way of inspiring its staff is palpable. From the exterior lighting that transforms the office into a beacon in the streetscape to its dramatic atrium entranceway that you enter on an escalator, to the areas set aside for displays of art, the whole office resonates with the buzz of conversation and culture.

It’s doubtful whether Ricky Gervais would recognise these forms of office life, but they are definitely on the up. Good design helps companies to attract the best staff and project a good image, so more employers are creating spaces that make their employees feel lucky to step through the front door each day.

Some of Tate’s employees will be moving into new office spaces in the new building, and the office can be designed from scratch. What would you recommend? I would suggest a series of different, inspiring meeting spaces, set within a flexible layout that allows plenty of collaboration between different departments. Just add music, fresh air and fresh coffee being piped gently to each employee and that would be just about perfect.

The best of Berlin

Alexey — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:31:52 +0000

I recently visited Berlin and was keen to experience the city’s art galleries. I found them to be some of the most exciting gallery spaces I have ever seen.

Hamburger Bahnhof , Berlin (© Alexey Moskvin)

One of them is Hamburger Bahnhof, which was designed by Josef Paul Kleihues, and originally built as the terminal of the Hamburger-Berlin railroad line. At the moment it holds works of more than 150 artists and presents a wide range contemporary art, including painting, photography, installations, sound, performances and readings.

Richard Long Berlin Circle 1996 © the Artist (Photo © Alexey Moskvin)

Richard Long’s Berlin Circle in the main open area was just staggering. Well, it was for me, as I couldn’t have imagined a better space for it. Apart from somewhere out in the wild, of course.

Courtyard KW and Cafe Bravo, Berlin (© Alexey Moskvin)

In the East part of Berlin, since 1997 KW Institute for Contemporary Art has been a venue and partner for the Berlin Biennale. The listed front building dating from the second half of the 18th century has one of the most striking courtyards in central Berlin with two new glass cubes: the Cafe Bravo

The Sony Centre, Berlin (© Alexey Moskvin)

The Sony Centre, at the heart of new Berlin, was designed by Helmut Jahn – a master of glass and steel architecture. His designs are of outstanding quality and excellently implemented and constructed. Imposing offices, apartments, bars and cafes, shops, entertainment and culture spaces encircle a lively open public space, the sky-lit Forum.

Filmhaus at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin (© Alexey Moskvin)

Part of the Sony Centre is the sleek and uber techy looking Filmhaus and Deutsche Kinemathek. It holds around 13,000 German and foreign silent and sound films in its archive with an emphasis on avant-garde, experimental and documentary films.

Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (© Alexey Moskvin)

Neue Nationalgalerie, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe is called “temple of light and glass”. It houses the collection of 20th century European painting and sculpture, ranging from early modern art to art of the 1960s. The collection includes works by Munch, Kirchner, Picasso, Klee, Feininger, Dix, Kokoschka, and many others.

Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (© Alexey Moskvin)

The transparent, spacious, all around glass hall at ground level and the basement gallery space are frequently used for special exhibitions, one of which is the Berlin Biennale.

Space seemed to be not an issue in Berlin at all. There is simply lots of it. And artworks are allocated according their needs, allowed to have their space and can breathe easily. Therefore there is a different feel and approach to work from both artists and audience.

THE STYLE FILES IN SHEFFIELD: PENTHOUSE AND PAVEMENT

Tom — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:09:59 +0000

Sheffield, for me, is a city that would be impossible to sum up in one blog. Then again, I’m slightly biased in my love for the place, having spent the last seven years there. It’s definitely a city where all is not what it seems. A mystery, a cult classic.

When I think of Sheffield I think of hills, amazing people, and a rose-tinted view of the concrete, brutalism, and music; the history of a city that has stuck it’s neck out. But what comes to mind when you think of Sheffield? Hillsborough? Cutlery? Pulp? It’s tricky. This is a city without a single image visible to the outside world, in other cities it’s easier. Liverpool has it’s Pierhead and cathedrals; Newcastle has bridges and vistas galore. Sheffield remains a famous name without a face.

Sheffield city centre

Like many cities, Sheffield is currently going through a massive period of change. Some call it regeneration. Vast swathes of the city are being tarted up and reinvented for the post industrial economy. Cafe bars and call centres are popping up next to new shops and the obligatory city living flats.

This has happened before. Post-war, it was a city that was rebuilt for the future, but it was a future which never quite materialised. Before the paint was dry, many of Sheffield’s groundbreaking new landmarks were relics of a failed era.

The biggest example of this has to be Park Hill flats. Snaking across a hillside like wallpaper for the city, Park Hill was the product of huge post-war slum clearances. Inspired by Le Corbusier’s efforts at the Unite d’habitation in Marseille, council architects Ivor Smith and Jack Lynn took a similar tack in South Yorkshire. They thought that advances in technology and engineering really could create a utopia for all.

With ’streets in the sky’ and all the facilities in one building, Park Hill was built with new ideas and hope at its core. Yet now it’s vilified as a failure. I can’t help but ask whether the architecture really was at fault, or whether it was simply neglected and poorly managed. After all, the Barbican is a similarly brutal structure but remains one of the most desirable addresses of London.

Park Hill

Fortunately for Park Hill, Manchester developers Urban Splash are coming to its rescue. Hopefully with a little TLC and a fresh batch of ideas and enthusiasm Park Hill will smile again. But I wonder, must it be the grand plans of the civic authorities that will define the city? Can the city be reborn because a few people decide it so? What really holds the key to somewhere’s identity?

Maybe with Sheffield it’s the industry. This city was transformed in the Industrial Revolution from small ‘Little Mester’ industries (the name comes from the cutlery fabricators who would rent floorspace in factories to ply their trade), to a centre for steel production on a massive scale. Often in this country this industrial heritage isn’t celebrated and there’s an element of shame attached to the dirty factories that propelled us into the modern age. Sheffield’s Lower Don Valley is the perfect example of this, a vast chunk of the city that still creaks with the weight of the mills, yet is neglected and overlooked in favour of showpiece squares and fountains.

The best examples I’ve found (bar the Tate Modern of course) of reusing redundant industrial structures are in Emscher Park in the Ruhrgebiet in Germany. The area around Essen, Dortmund and Duisburg has been transformed from a scarred hinterland of coal mines and power stations into a new landscape that re-uses its industrial past intelligently. Coking plants have been turned into artists studios, design museums, galleries and restaurants. Slag heaps and gasometers are now platforms for new art. The turnaround culminated in the region’s status as European City of Culture 2010.

Rem Koolhaus' museum in the Zollverein, near Essen

You need to build on what’s there already – Emscher works because it has a relevance and resonance with the surrounding area. It needs to be appropriate development rather than development for the sake of it.

For me, successes in architecture and design come when the ingrained identity of the place feeds and informs every aspect of the new building or redevelopment. Maybe this is the biggest challenge facing the TM2 extension? Making sure the building is firmly rooted in the community and in its relationship to the local area.

What’s your idea of a Psycho Building?

Jared — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:30:02 +0000

For some truly off-the-wall ideas take a trip to Psycho Buildings, the Hayward Gallery London’s mash up of art and architecture.

The exhibition brings together what they describe as ‘habitat-like sculptures and architecturally inflected installations’. This translates into some pretty weird and spectacular spaces, and maybe a few that would be fun to think about in the context of the new Tate Modern building.

Atelier Bow Wow’s Life Tunnel Photo: © Stephen White

There’s Life Tunnel 2008 by Atelier Bow-Wow, for example. It’s a passageway made from steel that connects two floors of the Hayward gallery. To negotiate it you have to crawl at first, then walk as you find your balance. Another shaft sprouts vertically filling the space with light, and allowing visitors a view down below.

It reminded me of Carsten Höller’s installation at Tate Modern last year. His slides provided an exhilarating ride down from the galleries to the Turbine Hall.

Slidey fun at Tate Modern. Photo: © Tate Photography

Both sculptures are aesthetic, immersive experiences – fun and functional. Holler is adamant that sliding is a viable means of transport. I’m not sure about that, but if TM2 can have slides, tunnels and lifts that work I’ll be very happy indeed.

Thanks to Psycho Buildings thousands of people can now say that they have paddled in a boating lake on top of a building in the middle of London. That’s because the Austrian collective Gelitin have filled one of the Hayward’s outdoor sculpture terraces up to the brim with water and plonked in some home-made rowing boats.

This is me trying out one of Gelitin’s boats. The installation is titled ‘Normally, Proceeding and Unrestricted With Without Title’ 2008

What a surreal and disconcerting experience this is, not to mention spectacularly beautiful.

OK so slides, tunnels, lifts that work, a boating lake on the roof… what else would you add to a list of far-fetched ideas for TM2?

Hot off the press: latest images of the new Tate Modern

Jane — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:57:16 +0000

Today, Tate Director, Nicholas Serota and architects Herzog & de Meuron revealed the latest plans for the new development at Tate Modern.

Instead of the glass façade originally envisaged, the building will be enveloped in a textured brick lattice. The design links the extension much more closely to the brick structure of the existing power station building. In the same spirit it makes a feature of the underground oil tank spaces, keeping them as dramatic raw spaces for art (previously they were going to house an auditorium). This dialogue between the found and the new is at the heart of the architectural vision for the building.

TM2: The design of the new building has evolved to look like this

Creating a green building is also high on the agenda, and these revised plans deliver on that front. It will use energy efficiently through passive design principles such as natural ventilation, seasonal day lighting, solar shading etc. But the team is also looking at installing geothermal heat pump systems and thinking about how to use the waste heat generated by the electrical substation that’s still on the Tate site (you can hear the hum of the transformers when you stand in the Turbine hall). The recovered heat could be used for warming the building in winter, or heating hot water in kitchens and washrooms in summer.

Visitors will get a stunning view of London from the upper floors

The building will include more varied spaces for Tate’s growing Collection and better facilities for the gallery’s education programmes. It will rise 70 metres above ground in 11 storeys, and will add an additional 21,500 sq metres to Tate Modern’s existing 35,000 sq metres. Outside there’ll be two new public spaces – a piazza to the south and new gardens to the west designed for families and children.

This model shows the lattice effect of the brick work

We’re aiming to get it all built by 2012, and it should cost about £215 million at 2012 prices (we’ve raised £67 million so far). In the meantime, now that the exterior finish has been decided the project team will be turning their attention to the interior spaces, which is where the ModBlog comes into its own. Please keep sending us your comments and pictures to help the process along.

The Raw Canvas plan

duncanb — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:16:12 +0000

When it was time to design a forward-looking extension to the already contemporary Tate Modern, the voice of the next generation needed to be heard. So it made sense to invite Raw Canvas – Tate Modern’s youth initiative – on a tour around the oil tanks.

The oil tanks remain from back when Tate Modern was a power station. What could fill them?

RC already meet regularly at Tate Modern. They commandeer the world-famous galleries to host activities like workshops, gigs, performances and debates exclusively for an audience of 15-23 year olds. Tate Modern want to encourage the potential such a group has for opening eyes and minds to contemporary art. But what RC want to do next is of a different order: create an area dedicated to interaction and conversation between members as well as a venue for performance, music, and film. What they proposed is a space that could act as a kind of art headquarters. As one member put it, ‘a place where your guard is down and your mind is open’.

As the meeting got underway, RC representatives called for a break with the main exhibition space, and many suggested looking for an alternative to the medical atmosphere of the contemporary white gallery. As Fiona wrote on Monday, a space for young people needs a distinctive style, and Raw Canvas members will choose everything for themselves. They wanted to recreate an old-fashioned interior, featuring hand-made designs produced entirely by the group and its extended community. Ideas of hand-stitched cushion covers and communally painted murals sparked excitement from all quarters. One member mentioned woven curtains or silk screen blinds that would divide up the space, making it more versatile for its changing role as a performance, exhibition or screening area. Others mentioned the appeal of existing buildings such as the FACT Gallery in Liverpool, or the changing Pavilions of Hyde Park’s Serpentine Gallery. The Forest Café in Edinburgh was for many the touchstone of an adaptable and relaxed space designed by its regulars. And, like the Forest Café, Raw Canvas would like to create a venue that could stay open late, where drinking would be allowed but the focus would be on the community.

The Forest Café’s ’shabby chic’ inspired the Raw Canvas group

This would be a place where young artists could curate any kind of event or exhibition they liked with the support of Tate Modern. They talked about a map of London mounted on a board where members could pin events, turning the RC space into a headquarters for contemporary art all over London. A whole wall could be given over to posters for gigs and performances they were involved with or thought the community might be interested in.

As the tour continued through the underground world of the oil tanks, ideas for designing the space also took root. A James Turrell–like design, where light could be let in from above through a cutout shape in the ceiling, could link the RC space with the Turbine Hall above. That way neither members nor the general public need feel too cut off from one another, whilst the setting provided a thought-provoking juxtaposition of artist and gallery.

From the Mood Board: An artist at work in a glass case at the Pompidou Centre, Paris

But perhaps the most revolutionary ideas that RC want to bring to the new Tate Modern are about closing the gap between art production and interpretation. The group are particularly keen to have more workshop spaces; the majority of Raw Canvas members are artists, designers, sculptors or art historians themselves. They want to see that the study of art is not isolated from the processes of making it, and that more artist-led courses could be offered as a hands-on approach to understanding the art in the gallery. Taking this to a whole new level, they also hope to work as an integrated part of the exhibitions themselves. They suggested gallery spaces designed as ’squares within squares’ that would enable groups such as theirs to run ‘interpretation areas’ that would not disturb the exhibition space itself but could allow the public to interact with them in the immediate context of the art.

Some of the Raw Canvas crew

And as if all that weren’t enough, Raw Canvas also want to lead the way in demonstrating creative and inspiring energy saving design. A lot of the members of Raw Canvas have been involved with product or graphic design have been made acutely aware of the importance of sustainability in their designs and would therefore like to play an active role in helping Tate and its audience to go green. Tastefully.

Hanging With Teens

Fiona — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:06:18 +0000

Calling all teenagers: if you could design your perfect space to hang out in at Tate Modern, what would you put in it? What would it look like?

In Channel 4’s Skins, the teenagers hang out mostly in a park in Bristol. Outside of tellyland, teens do similar things – in Manchester they congregate around Urbis, the trendy modern gallery dedicated to cities and their teeming street life. In London, it’s Camden’s canalside market, or the skate park in the concrete bunker below Royal Festival Hall, or Topshop Oxford Circus’s ground floor café, which benefits from having a fashion demonstration space and giant screens showing catwalk footage and blaring pop.

Wolverhampton’s Pop Art Gallery

There aren’t that many dedicated leisure spaces for teens, although they flock to places that get the mix of style and activities right. Teens just like to gather wherever their friends are, and where there are cool things to do, away from adults and certainly away from younger kids. Mobiles and the internet have changed teenage life immeasurably, promoting a passion for communication that’s a world away from the archetypal teenager of the 1990s. All these habits and activities should influence the design of a teen space at Tate Modern.

Such a space should offer its users a distinctive environment, and be flexible enough to host a range of activities – painting projects, informal gigs, performances and discussions with artists could all take place there.

Generally, you’d expect to find such a place stocked with books, headphones to listen to music and podcasts, screens showing film content created specially for this area, and computers to browse online art archives. This might make for a space that’s like a cross between a café lounge, a library and a music store. If you look at the popularity of outlets like the Apple Store, teens love good design.

One British gallery has already taken a very teen-centric approach to one of its areas. At Wolverhampton Art Gallery, the idea behind the Pop Art gallery, designed by Airside and mae architects, is to create somewhere that teens like to hang out, surrounded by fashionable artwork. There, vibrant pop art prints hang in a plain white gallery with a huge white circular sofa in the centre, encouraging groups of teens to gather. Films are projected onto the walls, featuring an actor dressed as Andy Warhol who explains who all the people in the paintings are. White iMacs provide further chances to explore and enjoy this zingy art movement and its connections to music, celebrities and American culture.

Compared to the rest of the new Tate, Tate’s teen space could be a bit more eccentric in its décor. A few choice items of furniture could be bold and unconventional, enticing teens to enjoy design that they don’t get to see in everyday life, like Arne Jacobsen’s 1958 classic Egg chair, or any contemporary design by the Campana Brothers, whose ideas are based on the favelas in their native Brazil. This multipurpose swivel seat by Swedish designer Fredrik Mattson has definite teen appeal.

A glance at Flickr shows that American libraries seem to have got the design of teen spaces carefully perfected. These areas for teen books seem to host all sorts of other activities: Jacksonville Public Library in Florida is a definite social hub. Its Myspace is pretty active, but so is the space itself, with large sculptural seating areas in bold colours and lots of changing collages and display areas.

In Rem Koolhaas’s breathtaking Seattle Public Library building the teens aren’t overlooked, getting a dedicated floor with a vibrant red interior in which to lounge about (bold primary reds, yellows and lime green interiors seem to be a regular theme in teen-land).

Minneapolis Central Library – photograph by Flickr user webchicken. Licensed under Creative Commons

Believe it or not, the best teen hang-out looks to be in Minneapolis. Designed by teens for teens, the Central Library’s teen area is furnished with bean bags, vending machines and very cool portable book trolleys with curving metal frames. But the main focal point is a large silver wipe-clean wall where people can write stuff in marker pen. (All that freedom can get a bit out of hand, though.)

Tate has had similar displays for visitor comments at the Turner Prize, and these would be a great permanent feature for a teen space to record ideas and messages. But we want to hear from you – what would you put there?

Interview: Renzo Piano

duncanb — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:44:45 +0000

We caught up with Renzo Piano to talk about ecological architecture, how to design a “cultural building”, and what it means to build the first skyscraper in New York since September 11th.

The man who built the Pompidou Centre had a few things to say about his iconoclastic past and his ambition to create “buildings that breathe”.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

You can also see the talk he gave for April 2008’s Real Architecture series on the Tate online archive here along with the rest of the talks.

Check out Renzo’s website at http://rpbw.r.ui-pro.com/.

Photo: New York Times Building façade, New York, by Michel Denancé.