Satyendra Pakhalé Culture of Creation

CULTURE OF CREATION

Jane Szita

Satyendra Pakhalé, born in 1967, India, trained both in his native country and in Switzerland. For the past two decades, he has been working globally from his studio in Amsterdam. His design work is an act of unity going beyond any binary such as high- and low-tech, industrial production and traditional crafts, functionality and poetic significance. You might say that he stands at the crossroads of the diverse currents shaping contemporary design.

Satyendra Pakhalé: Culture of Creation, the first compre­hensive monograph devoted to his work, explores the way that the designer navigates these currents on multiple levels. The notion of a ‘culture of creation’ refers simply to the ancient and innate impulse behind human making. It engages with the very roots of the human need to create, to design, to make, to build and bring something into reality.

Over the last twenty years or so, Pakhalé has cultivated a design practice that focuses on the culture of creation, from mass- produced industrial products to experimental one-offs, always with the aim of returning to objects and their environment the sensorial qualities that have so often been lost due to the excesses of indus­trialization and consumerism. A sensorial object resonates with humanity’s broadest needs. It is charged with those qualities that connect people to the object itself. Therefore, we are unlikely to discard it.

Any design monograph is necessarily visual, and this one is no exception. Yet it is also much more than that. Over the years, intellectual curiosity has been a constant feature of Pakhalé’s de­sign practice. Besides his own research, he has been in dialogue with professionals from various fields including architects, writers, curators, academics, and prominent figures in the design industry, several of whom have contributed to this book.

Themes such as the culture of making, poetic analogy, per­ception, sensorial design, atmosphere, social modernity, secular humanism, craftsmanship, technology and more, in which his thinking and his work are rooted are addressed in twelve critical essays by authors like architect and architectural-design thinker Juhani Pallasmaa, Helsinki; Paola Antonelli, Sr., curator MoMA, New York; René Spitz, scholar on HfG Ulm, Cologne; Aric Chen,

curator at large of M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Jacques Barsac, director of the Fondation Charlotte Perriand, Paris; Tiziana Proietti, architect and professor, University of Oklahoma, Norman and Stefano Marzano, former CEO Philips Design, Eindhoven.

Through these essays, the monograph illustrates the de­signer’s world view and intellectual position, and the theoretical heritage underpinning the cultivation of a ‘culture of creation’. The essays put his design projects into a wider, deeper context, offering the kind of food for thought on which he himself thrives.

The monograph structure consists of three overlapping lay­ers, namely a project layer, documentary (studio practice) layer and research (critical essays) layer. The essays are interwoven with the project layer and documentary layer that give an insight into Pakhalé’s studio practice, and with accounts from his industrial partners such as Alberto Alessi, Giulio Cappellini, Cristiano Crosetta, and Vittorio Livi. The project layer meanwhile zooms in on specific processes and approaches called ‘project clusters’ that are presented in the monograph with a dense graphical layout. Over the years there have been several topical design explorations carried out at Pakhalé’s studio. Some of the results went into indus­trial production; some became limited edition gallery pieces and others remained ideas. Theory, practice and production – concepts, words, photos, sketches, watercolours, models, prototypes and more – are linked throughout these pages. Concluding the book is Satyendra Pakhalé’s Chronology of Works, introduced by Ingeborg de Roode, curator of Industrial Design, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, which provides an overview of his body of work.

Satyendra Pakhalé: Culture of Creation illustrates the de­signer’s journey by placing his work in the cultural, artistic and intellectual context to which it belongs, and to which it always returns. At the same time, it anticipates what is yet to come.

“Pakhalé’s work exemplifies how crafts and industrial design can come together in the dimension of human nature.” – Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA

“His designs suggest a haptic skin-relationship through their sensorial forms, poetic associations and tactile surfaces: they stimulate sensations of intimacy and nearness.” – Juhani Pallasmaa, Professor, Architect, design thinker, Finland

“To look within Satyendra Pakhalé’s body of work is to see an argument for design as a more pluralistic enterprise.” – Aric Chen, Curator at Large,    M+ Museum, HongKong

“He is a designer who has power to make you develop things that were unthinkable at the beginning.” – Cristiano Crosetta, CEO & partner TUBES Radiatori, Italy

“Satyendra Pakhalé is a poet of form and materials. Experiencing his work is a joy.” – Giulio Cappellini, Art Director, Cappellini, Italy

Satyendra Pakhalé Culture of Creation | ISBN 978-94-6208-514-5 | € 49,95

Please contact Satyendra Pakhalé Associates to order a copy of the book.

Contributing Authors: Alberto Alessi, Paola Antonelli, Juhani Pallasmaa, Jacques Barsac, Giulio Cappellini, Gabrielle Ammann, Aric Chen, Cristiano Crosetta, Marva Griffin Wilshire, Ingeborg de Roode, Rene Spitz, Tiziana Proietti, Wera Selenowa, Vittorio Livi and Stefano Marzano

Editor: Jane Szita | Design: Mainstudio Amsterdam, NL | English | hardcover | 22 x 28 cm | 448 pages | illustrated (390 color and b/w) | nai010 Publishers Rotterdam, NL |