Easy Rider

‘Pal’ electric scooter, by Layer and Nio

- Nick Compton

As we started to plot our suitably heart-warming and celebratory tenth edition of Wallpaper* Handmade, we also knew we had to look forward to the exhibition’s second decade. Handmade had been groundbreaking in its honouring of craft and collaboration but it was time to propel ourselves onwards and upwards. Over the lifetime of Handmade, ideas about what design can and should do have been dramatically enlarged. So many pressing to outright urgent concerns – the use and misuse of resources, sustainability, environmental trauma, or even housing provision, food production, meaningful communication, lower-impact travel – can be seen as design problems. ‘Design thinking’ is being applied in all sorts of bold new ways. Technology and its latest paradigm-shifters – AI and machine learning, big data, virtual reality, the blockchain, the new bio-techs, constant connectivity – present incredible opportunity (if also some amount of dread).

Could we re-imagine Handmade as an experimental showcase for smart, beautiful design that addressed, head on or tangentially, these problems and incorporated new technology? We asked around, and there was excitement but also an understanding that it wasn’t going to be easy. We had to focus.

What we needed was a flagship project to include in Handmade X, something that pointed the way ahead and alerted the design world to our plans. We talked to Benjamin Hubert, whose Layer studio has been working at the advancing edge of product design since launching in 2015. Its output includes 3D-knitted upholstery, concept aircraft seating and ceramic charge trays, with a client list that spans from Moroso through Airbus to Nike. Hubert was ready to roll.