We Asked Wallpaper*'s Editor-in-Chief Where the Magazine's Aesthetic Actually Lives

Fifteen objects for eating, drinking, playing, living, traveling, and wearing add up to a survey of the magazine's aesthetic.

At Singapore Design Week 2017, a small exhibition called MultipliCITY opened on a hot afternoon on March 8, showing 15 household objects made by designers from around the world together with craft brands. The range was wide — from shoe cabinets to suitcases, from lunch baskets to headphones, plus rice cookers, barbecue grills, prop sets, perfume, fashion, and drinkware...

The show was put together by Wallpaper*, a magazine with readers in more than 100 countries and worldwide circulation above 100,000 copies in 2016. It was founded in London in 1996 by the Canadian journalist Tyler Brûlé, who is also the current editor-in-chief of Monocle.

Brûlé, a newsman who had spent years drifting between Europe and North America, used this design magazine to announce to the world a globalized urban-elite way of life. "The design aesthetic on the magazine's pages, influenced by Scandinavian modernism, arrived at exactly the right moment in the 1990s, an era when the internet and cheap air travel were making it easier to travel," the British designer and curator Jeremy Leslie wrote in a piece for Creative Review.

Less than a year after founding Wallpaper*, Brûlé sold it to Time Inc., part of Time Warner, and stayed on as editor-in-chief until 2002. After he left, Jeremy Langmead, lifestyle editor at the London Evening Standard, took the job.

Langmead's first move was to hire Tony Chambers, who had been art director at GQ, as creative director. From 2003 to 2007 the two built on the style Brûlé had set, fixing Wallpaper*'s image as a high-end lifestyle publication, and in 2005 they created a design prize named after the magazine: the Wallpaper Design Awards.

In 2007 Langmead left, and Tony Chambers, who had trained as a graphic designer, became one of the rare cases in magazine publishing of an art editor rising to editor-in-chief.

Chambers liked to call himself a "visual editor." His background as a seasoned designer gave him a shrewd eye; he then went on to prove he had potential on the commercial side too.

A website and a digital edition, design competitions and a wider set of awards, curated exhibitions, an online store stocked by buyers — under Chambers, Wallpaper* turned into a design brand in the broader sense.

Now, when people think of Wallpaper*, the magazine about architecture, interiors, travel, and food, what comes to mind is no longer a single article or a beautifully shot spread. It is the Graduate Directory, the graduate design competition Wallpaper* runs each year with design schools around the world; the travel guides it publishes for more than 100 cities; or a high-end set of drinkware released with a famous designer.

One of the magazine's main vehicles for carrying its aesthetic, Wallpaper* Handmade, was conceived by Tony Chambers in 2010. The magazine itself does the commissioning, going to the designers and studios its editors consider the most active of the moment, who then work with artisans, craft brands, and factories to make all sorts of objects for everyday life. The pieces are gathered into a small exhibition shown each year at the Milan Furniture Fair.

Meirion Pritchard, then the magazine's art director, said in a 2011 interview that this was "one of the most ambitious and brand-building projects Wallpaper* has ever done." He recalled that when Jonathan Bell, the architecture and cars editor, raised the idea in a meeting, Tony Chambers "immediately saw the huge potential behind it."

The first Handmade ran for three days on the fourth floor of Brioni House in Milan. Architects, fashion brands, bicycle makers, artisanal coffee shops, graphic designers, and illustrators were all invited in, and together they produced a spatial installation, a bicycle and bicycle-bag collection, a book chest, a sofa, a tapestry, and a Wallpaper* vending machine made with a multimedia artist.

Ever since, Wallpaper* has brought more than a dozen Handmade pieces to the Milan Furniture Fair every April, and the editorial team puts out a Handmade Issue at the same time, telling the stories behind the collaborations.

Tony Chambers's instinct back then turned out to be right. At least as things look now, seven editions in, Handmade has kept Wallpaper* closely tied to the designers, workshops, and lifestyle brands of Britain and of Europe as a whole. Other magazines, department stores, luxury houses, craft studios, and designers can all take part in the project in one role or another.

The 15 pieces shown at Singapore Design Week "can be called a comprehensive preview of Wallpaper*'s aesthetic. Through these beautiful objects we explain to people what Wallpaper* does, and what the Wallpaper* Handmade project does," Tony Chambers told QDaily.

Some of the pieces are one-off concept works made for exhibitions; others are objects for everyday life that can be sold in department stores or design shops. Since 2015, when Wallpaper* opened its own online design store, the various collaborations have had a new place to sell.

The MultipliCITY exhibition set out to present "a playful interpretation of the city of Singapore's diversity, adaptability and innovation." But the stronger impression it leaves is of a picture laid out to show designers in Singapore, and in Asia at large, what Wallpaper* finds beautiful.

What follows is our short conversation with Tony Chambers — about Handmade, about design, and a little about the state of the world.

Q = QDaily

T = Tony Chambers

Q: Could you explain the thinking behind the show? Why bring these 15 products to Singapore?

T: We have worked on more than 400 pieces over the past seven years, which is quite a large number. Some of them are no longer in our inventory; we don't even know where they are. They might be with the designer, or a manufacturer might have borrowed them. Even so, we still have a fairly rich selection to draw on. When you are putting together an exhibition, of course you want plenty of stock on hand. So we wanted to pick a set that could say clearly what Wallpaper* does, and what the Wallpaper* Handmade project does.

Obviously, Wallpaper* is a magazine about design and lifestyle. So design, architecture, travel, food, and drink are indispensable elements. You can see several pieces to do with food and drink — a barbecue grill, a set of whiskey glasses, props, and so on. We tried to use designs with this wide a range to sum up Wallpaper*'s taste.

That bottle of perfume is a good example, a piece that catches people off guard. It came from a German art printer who loves books and is also very good at printing. So we thought about how to put books and perfume together. There are a lot of elements in it — books, printing, perfume, fashion. We mixed them all up. The idea looked a little crazy, but the result is a perfume that lives inside a book, and it is very elegant. That is Wallpaper*.

Wallpaper* Handmade goes to the Milan Furniture Fair every year, and we run a dedicated issue introducing that year's project. But Singapore this time is more of a spin-off show, because it is our first time working with Singapore Design Week. It will be a long-term partnership, though. Next year Wallpaper* will invite Singaporean designers to take part in the work, and the pieces will show in Singapore first, around this time next year, and then go on to Milan.

Q: Over these seven years, how have the themes for Handmade been decided?

T: Handmade had no theme at first, but it does now. Even so, the themes are all quite loose — we don't ask designers to follow them literally. In 2015, for instance, our theme was about food. It was called "Eat Me! Drink Me! Tell Me You Love Me!," which was very sweet. In 2016 the theme became "Hotel Vibes," but designers didn't actually have to design a hotel; anything that might turn up in one would do. This year, because our new venue is a deconsecrated church in Milan's Brera district, we set a theme called "Spiritual Reality" — religion with a lower-case r.

I think the theme could not fit this moment better: alert, considered, lifting our thinking to a higher level. The world is in a very unstable state right now, society is going through violent change, so we can afford to pay more attention to things that are more theoretical, more spiritual. Further out, we talk the idea through with the designers and craft brands we commission and ask them not to make their Handmade pieces the way they usually would. We always want the result to be unexpected, and we also want the people we commission to feel a bit of pressure.

Q: You mentioned "violent social change." Under those conditions, does the identity of "designer" change in some way?

T: Another reason we — along with Time and Fortune — worked with Singapore on a design forum is that I think there has never been a more interesting or more fitting time to be a designer. The world is going through enormous change, society as a whole is being remade fast by technology, and behind all that turbulence problems keep appearing.

We don't know what will happen tomorrow, and communication often breaks down. Designers are the ones who solve problems. They are always handed challenges. Five or ten years from now, as artificial intelligence and robotics keep advancing, people will worry that these programs will take their jobs, but being a designer, a creative thinker, is work that will not be replaced.

Q: But people's attitude toward material things is changing, isn't it? A lot of things are being overproduced.

T: I see what you mean. It is a fair point. But design is not entirely about material things; sometimes it is about something more conscious. Of course physical objects matter, we need them in our lives. And I agree with you, much of the time there are simply too many of them. So what we need is less design, but design that has been thought through. As Dieter Rams said many years ago — 'Less, but better.' I think that is our role too: as a magazine, an editor, a curator, to pick out the designs that truly deserve attention. Finding the right people at the right time, to do the right thing.

Of course we make mistakes sometimes; everyone does. But our aim and our motivation come from making something of value — whether it solves some "problem" in the world, or simply brings some enjoyment of beauty.

The cover image and the photos without a credit were provided by Wallpaper* or shot on site.