About Jasper Morrison
Biography
Jasper Morrison was born in London in 1959, and graduated in Design at Kingston Polytechnic Design School, London (1979-82 BA (Des.)) and The Royal College of Art for Postgraduate studies (1982-85 MA (Des.) RCA). In 1984 he studied at Berlins HdK on a Scholarship.
In 1986 he set up an Office for Design in London. His work was included in the Documenta 8 exhibition in Kassel in 1987, for which he designed the Reuters News Centre. The following year he was invited to take part in “Design Werkstadt”, a part of the “Berlin, Cultural City of Europe” program, where he exhibited “Some new items for the house, part I” at the DAAD Gallery.
He then began designing products for SCP in London, the German door handle producer FSB, the Office furniture company Vitra, and the Italian furniture producer Cappellini. In 1992 together with James Irvine, he organised Progetto Oggetto for Cappellini, a collection of household objects designed together with a group of young European designers. He also worked with Andreas Brandolini and Axel Kufus on a variety of installations, exhibition designs and town planning projects under the umbrella of Utilism International.
In 1992, his slide show lecture "A world without words" was published in book format by the graphic designer Tony Arefin.
In 1994 Jasper Morrison was guest of honour and held an exhibition at the Interieur 94 exhibition in Belgium. In 1995 he held a solo exhibition at Bordeauxs Arc en Rêve Centre darchitecture. He began a consultancy with Üstra the Hannover Transportation Authority by designing a Bus Stop for the City.
In 1995 Jasper Morrisons office was awarded the contract to design the new Hannover Tram, the largest European light rail production contract of its time, at 500 Million Deutschemarks. The first vehicle was presented to the public in June 1997 at the Hannover Industrial Fair, and awarded the IF Transportation Design Prize and the Ecology award.
More recently exhibitions and installations have included: "The State of Things" to complement the editing of the 1999 Design Year Book. Solo exhibitions at the Axis Gallery, Tokyo, for Flos at the Yamagiwa Centre in Tokyo, as Designer of the Year 2000 at the Paris Design Fair.
Recent projects include the design of furniture for Tate Modern in London, "Luxmaster" for Flos, Folding Air-Chair and Low Air-Table for Magis; a monograph "Everything but the Walls" published by Lars Müller Publishers; a bench for the Roppongi Hills development in Tokyo; ATM desk system for Vitra ,a line of kitchen appliances for Rowenta, Pots&Pans for Alessi and a sanitary- and brassware range for Ideal Standard.In 2005, founding of Super Normal with Naoto Fukasawa. In June 2006, first Super Normal exhibition in Tokyo.
Jasper Morrison Ltd. currently based in London and Paris, have worked and in most cases still do for the following companies:
Alessi Spa, Italy; Alias Srl, Italy; Canon Camera Division, Japan; Cappellini Spa., Italy; Flos Spa, Italy; FSB GmbH, Germany; Magis Srl, Italy; Rosenthal AG, Germany; Rowenta, France; Sony Design Centre Europe; Vitra International AG, Switzerland. In 2004, began consultancies with Samsung Electronics, Korea, Muji (Japan), Ideal Standard (UK) and Olivetti (Italy).
Essay
by Jasper Morrison, 2006
Super Normal
Published by Lars Müller Publishers
I was having a cup of tea with Takashi Okutani in Milan, during the 2005 Salone del Mobile, talking about projects underway with Muji and describing to him the Alessi cutlery project and how I was feeling this approach to design, of leaving out the design, seemed more and more the way to go.
I mentioned having seen Naoto Fukasawas aluminium stools for Magis and how they seemed to have a special kind of normality about them, and he added: “super normal“. That was it, a name for what I have been trying to achieve all these years, a perfect summary of what design should be, now more than ever.
I have been feeling more and more uncomfortable with the increasing presence of design in everyday situations and in products lined up on the shelves of everyday shops. For years people have faulted design for being inaccessible, over priced and out of tune with the mass market. Now that it has become mainstream its beginning to look like a sell out, as if design simply stepped into the shoes of all the cheap ugly products which were previously available and made them cheap and ugly and highly visible.
Design, which is supposed to be responsible for the man-made environment we all inhabit, seems to be polluting it instead. Its historic and idealistic goal to serve industry and the happy consuming masses at the same time, of conceiving things easier to make and better to live with, has been side-tracked.
A while ago I found some heavy old hand-blown wine glasses in a junk shop. At first it was just their shape which attracted my attention, but slowly, using them every day, they have become something more than just nice shapes, and I notice their presence in other ways. If I use a different type of glass, for example, I feel something missing in the in the atmosphere of the table. When I use them the atmosphere returns, and each sip of wines a pleasure even if the wine is not. If I even catch a look at them on the shelf they radiate something good. This quota of atmospheric spirit is the most mysterious and elusive quality in objects. How can it be that so many designs fail to have any real beneficial effect on the atmosphere, and yet these glasses, made without much design thought or any attempt to achieve anything other than a good ordinary wine glass, happen to be successful? Its been puzzling me for years and influencing my attitude to what constitutes a good design. Ive started to measure my own designs against objects like these glasses, and not to care if the designs become less noticeable. In fact a certain lack of noticeability has become a requirement.
Meanwhile design, which used to be almost unknown as a profession, has become a major source of pollution.
Encouraged by glossy lifestyle magazine, and marketing departments, its become a competition to make things as noticeable as possible by means of colour, shape and surprise. Its historic and idealistic purpose, to serve industry and the happy consuming masses at the same time, of conceiving things easier to make and better to live with, seems to have been side-tracked. The virus has already infected the everyday environment. The need for businesses to attract attention provides the perfect carrier for the disease. Design makes things seem special, and who wants normal if they can have special?
And thats the problem. Once normal has been wiped out theres no going back. Its a bit like building new housing on virgin countryside, or developing huge areas of cities at one time. What has grown naturally and unselfconsciously over the years cannot easily be replaced. The normality of a street of shops, which has developed over time, offering various products and trades, is a delicate organism. Not, that old things shouldnt be replaced or that new things are bad, just that things which are designed to attract attention are, from the outset, going to be unsatisfactory. There are better ways to design than putting a lot of effort into making something look special. Special is generally less useful than normal, and less rewarding in the long term. Special things demand attention for the wrong reasons, interrupting potentially good atmosphere with their awkward presence.~
The wine glasses are a signpost to somewhere beyond normal, because they transcend normality. Theres nothing wrong with normal of course, but normal was the product of an earlier, less self conscious age, and designers working at replacing old with new and hopefully better, are doing it without the benefit of innocence which normal demands. The wine glasses and other objects form the past reveal the existence of super normal, like spraying paint on a ghost. You may have a feeling its there but its difficult to see. The super normal object is the result of a long tradition of evolutionary advancement in the shape of everyday things, not attempting to break with the history of form but rather trying to summarise it, knowing is the artificial replacement for normal, which with time and understanding may become grafted to everyday life.
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