MIX - Barber Osgerby

STORIES
interview
British design team BarberOsgerby’s work has been described as a real marriage of craft and design.
They talk to Tamsin Kingswell.
Clockwise from above: Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby; RIBA desk 2008; Portsmouth
Bench Isokon Plus 2003; Universal Design Studio / Stella McCartney 2002; Levis hangers
2000; De La Warr Pavilion chair 2006; Universal Design Studio / Natural History Museum
The Deep 2010; Loop Table Isokon Plus & Cappellini 1997
Clarity,
BarberOsgerby isn’t your typical British
brand. “We have always had our own
agenda,” says Edward Barber. The
other half of the design team, Jay Osgerby,
agrees; “I don’t think you could define us
as typically British,” he adds. Certainly they
haven’t followed the tortuous and unfunded
route of many British designers. Success
came swiftly with the Loop table (1997),
initially designed for a London restaurant
project. “People kept on telling us to do
something with it until we felt compelled to
make it and then Cappellini picked it up; we
were lucky,” says Barber.
Cappellini’s patronage effectively
catapulted them into the big time, but was
still something of a trial by fire; “We arrived
in Italy and there was a dedicated product
development team assembled. They had
been put together for us and they were
taking us seriously. You should have seen
the shock on their faces when they saw
how young we were, we both looked about
12. They were used to working with people
in their 40s,” says Barber. “It does put you
in panic mode, you think, are we a one hit
wonder” adds Osgerby.
Despite these fears, being taken so
seriously by, at the time, one of the most
directional furniture producers in the world,
gave BarberOsgerby a real confidence in
the potential of their design ideas. “We had
spent years pushing ideas to tutors who
often had their own personal agendas and
we had become very deflated by education.
Then we were thrown into our first Salone
and we were on the Cappellini stand next to
Jasper Morrison’s pieces, it was a bit of
a shocker,” says Barber.
The pair still seem a little mystified
by their success. “Each time a big name
manufacturer gets in touch with us we
are pleasantly surprised,” says Osgerby.
Certainly the sheer diversity of the projects
they have worked on makes it tricky to
identify and categorise. They have worked
on a choir stall for St Thomas’s Cathedral
in Portsmouth (2003), made from oak.
They have also worked for Coca Cola,
creating a new bottle for Ipsei (2004).
“We do take each project as it comes,
we never apply a particular style,”
adds Osgerby.
When pressed to define the qualities
that they look for in a design, function and
longevity both come up. Both designers
point out that, while there is a lot of talk
about these qualities there are precious
few designers really committing to creating
products that will last and actually work
and work well. “Longevity is a big deal,
we don’t want to produce transient pieces,”
says Barber. Creating good work also
means that BarberOsgerby is not a prolific
studio. “Some projects take two, three
years to mature; we need to run multiple
projects and all of the work then feeds off
each other,” says Osgerby.
Coherence
& Beauty
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STORIES
The classic, understated nature of
their designs could well be what attracts
clients that need objects that will last.
BarberOsgerby were commissioned to
design furniture (2006) for The De La Warr
Pavillion, one of the UK’s most famous
examples of International style architecture.
“We had the pressure of working with such
a historically significant building plus we
wanted to create furniture that fitted the
purpose; the original brief was for different
chairs for inside and out, but we felt that one
chair, that could be used both inside and out,
would fit the building better,” says Osgerby.
Likewise a project to design the reception
desk (2008) for RIBA headquarters became
an exercise in function, all stainless steel
and black glass surfaces. “We like to design
site specifically; our architectural background
means that we can see objects in a space
and make things that resonate with their
environment,’ says Barber.
Certainly attention to detail is a big deal;
what seemed like a simple project to design
a hanger for Levi’s (2000) turned into an epic
expression of the three-dimensional nature
of the then new engineered jeans. “We
had to persuade Levis to sew an extra loop
onto their jeans to get the hanger to work,
which after some persuasion, they did,” says
Barber. The level of control they like to keep
over their work means that they are very
picky about who they work with; “We look
for owner-led companies or companies with
a strong figure head. So much design is now
decided by committee and we don’t want
our message diluted by a series of Chinese
whispers,” says Barber.
The design process itself is rigorous.
“We make physical prototypes; we are
very low tech,” says Barber. An entire floor
of BarberOsgerby’s East London office is
covered by card models in various stages
of completion, stacked one on top of the
other. Barber adds; “We never use
computers in the early stages; they come
later in the processs. Sketches first, then
model making. You can’t fudge anything in
model making, like you can on a screen.
A few years ago we toyed with working
entirely on computers and we had some
real disasters so now everything is designed
with physical models.”
BarberOsgerby is also entirely the
work of the two designers; early on they
decided that they didn’t want their work
to be diluted by a large design team, that
the ethos and message of the brand had
to come directly from them. This posed
something of a problem though for the other
side of their business, architectural projects,
which by their very nature, need to be more
collaborative. “Stella McCartney doesn’t
want to project the BarberOsgerby brand,
she wants to project her own, so we knew
that splitting the company into two divisions
made sense,” says Barber. So in 2001 they
launched Universal Design Studio, which
now employs around 25 people.
Universal Design Studio projects include
Stella McCartney’s stores in London, NYC
and LA, Selfridges (2005) in London and
Battersea Power Station (2006-). Increasingly
too, this division has focused on exhibition
design, with work for the Victoria & Albert
(2008) and The Deep Exhibition at the Natural
History Museum (2010) and Magnificent
Maps at the British Library (2010).
The two divisions rarely work directly
together which made this year’s Milan
installation for Sony all the more special.
“It was a chance for the two companies to
combine skills. Sony is an amazing company,
really at the forefront of new technology and
the challenge was for both divisions to get
that message across,” says Osgerby. “It
was also a big deal for Sony; it’s a secretive
company and asking them to expose new
innovations was scary for them as copying
is a genuine threat. I think it was a brave
decision and one that paid off,” adds Barber.
Commercial success has also been
matched with critical acclaim; the pair
won the Jerwood Prize for Applied Arts
in 2004 and were amongst the youngest
people ever to be made Royal Designers for
Industry by the Royal Society of Arts in 2007.
BarberOsgerby furniture can also be found
in permanent collections at The Victoria &
Albert and the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York as well as the Chicago Institute of
Art & Design and others. “Its really strange
seeing our work in museums, it’s quite hard
to connect ourselves with the furniture as
exhibits. I was super-excited when I found
out but when you actually go there it is odd,”
says Barber.
Despite their early success, if anything,
each project completed makes the pair
realise how much more there is to do.
“There are still gaps in the market; we’re
launching a significant new range in the
autumn,” says Osgerby. And there are
more ambitious plans too; “I want to do a
boat,” says Barber. “I want to do a bridge,
an epic one that crosses the sea, maybe
the channel,” says Osgerby. He adds; “We
haven’t even started yet, really. We haven’t
scratched the surface.” •
Contacts
www.barberosgerby.com
www.universaldesignstudio.com
Clockwise from Left:
Tab Lamp Flos 2008;
Bute Fabrics Skye 2006;
Zero-In Established & Sons 2005;
Saturn ClassiCon 2008;
Four Leaves Magis 2010;
Poppins Magis 2010
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