LDF 2013: Benjamin Hubert

Starting from the latest innovations – Ripple and Amass – presented at the London Design Festival, Benjamin Hubert recounts to Domus his much-lauded “materials driven, process-led” approach.

Amass: “to gather together or accumulate material; to bring together in a crowd or group”. AMASS is the title of 28-year-old London-based industrial designer Benjamin Hubert’s contribution to the London Design Festival this year: a modular, reusable auditorium for the talks at the trade fair 100% Design.
Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013
Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013
The 200 sqm structure is composed of multiples of three distinct pieces which when fitted together en masse create a hanging screen to mark out or divide a space while allowing light and vision through.
Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013
Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013
Elsewhere at the festival Hubert presented an exhibition at Aram Store, “Antecedents”, which revealed some of the process and prototypes behind the studio’s designs. We saw sketches and early incarnations of the djembe-shaped Pots, and the 3D textile cloaked Talma, hammock-inspired Cradle and woven mesh Membrane chairs. The exhibition also showcased a new Ripple table, made of a corrugated timber weighing only nine kilograms, claimed to be the lightest in the world. The Pelt collection for De La Espada was launched, featuring a chair, three stools and a shelving unit in ash veneer with a seamless plywood skin.
Benjamin Hubert, “Antecedents”, Aram Gallery, London Design Festival 2013
Benjamin Hubert, “Antecedents”, Aram Gallery, London Design Festival 2013. Photo Rei Moon

Domus talked to Benjamin Hubert about these latest innovations and his much-lauded “materials driven, process-led” approach, whose timely ethos – to create more from less – has propelled the studio’s rapid success since its launch in 2009.

 

 

Domus: How did you come up with the concept for AMASS?

Benjamin Hubert: In the studio we always ask: why do we need more things? With the temporary nature of the exhibition world, thousands of tonnes of waste are produced each year. We were interested in doing something that had more longevity, that could be reused, recycled, potentially also upcycled. So our idea was to create a large piece of modular architecture that would create corners, curves and arches, and that could be fitted together and deconstructed for use in future exhibitions.

On the last day of 100% Design we dismantled a quarter of the structure [over 50,000 pieces were used in total] and gave the pieces away to exhibitors, visitors and designers, as a memento of the show or a sample for future projects.

AMASS can essentially create single, three-dimensional or multi-layered screens. The next step will be talking to some of the brands I work with to see if they are interested in taking it forward as a product.

Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013
Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013

Domus: The auditorium’s modular nature recalls organic forms or biological structures. Is this something that came out of your research?

Benjamin Hubert: The brief we set ourselves was to make something that we could control, that had order to it, but that also had a degree of randomness or flexibility. There’s an underlying structure of vertical 45 degree joints - if you stripped out some of the decorative parts, you would see a highly engineered structure.

By creating something with multi-connections, it started to echo natural forms – whether ice or crystal formations, coral or bone structure. Its similarity to a molecular structure came later, as a logical result of our research and engineering.

Benjamin Hubert: Ripple, London Design Festival 2013
Benjamin Hubert: Ripple, London Design Festival 2013

Domus: The idea of recyclability is also relevant to the lightweight Ripple table

Benjamin Hubert: We are interested in delivering products with a high performance using less material. Plywood is a very sustainable material, but how could we make the table further sustainable by minimising the amount of material we use? We borrowed from the corrugated construction that you find in aluminium or cardboard, and then applied this to timber, a material that people inherently value.

The table ended up being extremely light, and also light on the environment, which is interesting to the design community. We managed to cut down the waste to between 70 and 80 percent less than other timber constructions. The table allows us to showcase the construction and material, but our next step is to develop it into a family. Its potential is in minimising surface area, so this would be ideal for larger panel structures, like benches and shelving systems.

 

 

Domus: The exhibition “Antecedents” gave some insight into your process-led approach and the steps of design that come before the final product.

Benjamin Hubert: This was an opportunity to show the things that people never see as part of our output – models, sketches, research, material studies – the work in progress. The studio is still quite young, and we have achieved relative notoriety early on, so it was also about showing that our design process is not quick and easy, but robust and intense. Despite the fashionable nature of furniture and interior design, our products take a long time to develop – we go through many iterations before the final version.

Benjamin Hubert, “Antecedents”, Aram Gallery, London Design Festival 2013
Benjamin Hubert, “Antecedents”, Aram Gallery, London Design Festival 2013. Photo Rei Moon

Domus: The idea of producing much more material than a single final outcome – a vast amount of research, renders and sketches – is familiar to architectural practice too.

Benjamin Hubert: This obviously happens exponentially in architecture. I think that some people think that our chairs are designed in a week, but in fact, most of our chairs take years. It’s not equivalent to a large piece of architecture, but nevertheless there is an unseen process behind our designs.

Domus: How long were your Pots in development, for example?

Benjamin Hubert: From initial conversations with Menu through to the launching of the prototypes, about two years, then an additional three to four months to get to production. Around one or two years is about right for most of our projects, but it depends on the complexity of the product. If you’re doing surface design alongside the hardware, it could be a much longer process.

Domus: The objects for “A Year in the Making” at your first London Design Festival in 2009 took just that long, however?

Benjamin Hubert: From the first design to the first prototypes, more or less. That was right at the beginning of our career and many of those products were incredibly simple – a kiln-fired terracotta light, a Splay coat stand, a machined timber table and chairs. The cast concrete lamp and rota-moulded chair had more complexity, but those technologies are much simpler than the technologies that we work with now, the challenges that we set ourselves and the level of intelligence that we hope to put into our projects.

Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013
Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013

Domus: The materials used in this early collection were already diverse. You had mouthblown glass, cork, oak, recycled plastic… How do you go about researching and sourcing the materials you use?

Benjamin Hubert: We do this on a daily basis. We are always collecting suppliers and samples, and when we can visiting factories. We have a sort of library that we can refer to when we come to develop a new product. How things are made, where they are made and who made them is what fascinates us.

Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013
Benjamin Hubert: AMASS, London Design Festival 2013

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