Show 13: James Mair on Bare Minimum

Film Transcript:

James Mair: This year for the London Design Festival we have decided to do a show called The Bare Minimum. I had got fed up with all the clutter that tends to permeate the London Design Festival so I kind of wanted this space to be a haven of peace. And people could come here, calm down and see some very special pieces. The main essence behind it is there is lots of talk about minimalism and here I have tried to pick pieces that have their own individual quality. And this could be material, proportion, texture, or sense of humour but getting to the bare essence of what the designer is trying to achieve.

The first pieces that I wanted to introduce to this show are the new wires pieces from Muller van Severen. They are favourite designers of ours and the two pieces we have selected I think are the essence of the collection of about 15 or 16 in total. One is a rocker in red oxide and the other looks like a mattress where the end has been turned up and propped against it and is freestanding. And I love the sense of humour in their pieces as well. So, humour is really an important part of some of the collection.

The second piece is my all time favourite dining table which is the Oak Table by Maarten van Severen. And it really shows the complexity of detailing that is needed to create a minimal piece. All the joints are mitred, the legs are wrapped around aluminium tubes and the whole proportion of the table is just beautiful.

I had to include Michael Anastassiades because his chandelier collection is so elegant, and this is my favourite piece out of this current collection. It just sits like a mobile but again it has perfect proportions and sits beautifully above the brass MDF Tense table.

The Tube chair by Joe Columbo was selected because I wanted to include some classic pieces and once again humour comes in. And this is a collection of tubes that all slot in to each other. We had the first part of the show then I was really keen to do something in the space upstairs, in the showroom. I heard Nina Tolstrup talking about a little project that she had going in Islington which was a 13 square metre house. And then I looked at the space upstairs and thought, “Mmm this could fit up here.” So I thought why don’t we reconstruct it. So I talked to her and she seemed keen on the idea and it started posing the questions of micro living, how people can afford to live in London in the future and this is one method of doing it. It gives you privacy in the smallest space. And I thought that it is a very worthwhile experiment just to show that the principles behind caravan design and boat building could be applied to housing. It is one of the many solutions that are being talked about at the moment.

On top of that came the third element that she suggested because having reduced all the elements in the house to virtually nothing then it came down to what couldn’t you live without? So, we are asking the question of anyone who comes to visit the show to write down what they couldn’t live without. And this will provide a fascinating compendium of practical and emotional pieces.