Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby became the first British designers to show a retrospective exhibition at the Triennale Milano. In an exclusive interview, the pair reflect on their 30-year journey from “outcasts” to trailblazer artists.
Opened as part of Milan design week, the Alphabet exhibition includes more than 230 objects and prototypes that trace the evolution of the Barber Osgerby studio over four decades, including icons such as the Tip Ton chair, the Bellhop lamp and the London 2012 Olympic Torch.
The two designers have been working together since the early 1990s, when they met while studying architecture at the Royal College of Art in London and received their first commissions before graduation.
Today, the two are based in different cities – Osgerby in London, Barber in Milan – but still collaborate on every project.
“We’ve never worked individually,” Barber told Dezeen. “There is nothing in the show that only one of us had a hand in.”
Osgerby said they shared an “Anglo-Saxon pragmatism”, while Barber thought they moderated each other’s crazy tendencies.
“We don’t agree on everything,” he said. “It’s good because we end up with rational, logical designs. But maybe it captures the craziness that could have happened if one or the other had done it.”
Dezeen sat down with Osgerby in London a week before the opening, before catching up with Barber the next day. Both talked about their constant desire to “find new archetypes”, where they say things that make people think or behave in new ways.
“I don’t want people to think that we just make beautiful shapes and beautiful colors,” said Barber. “There’s a lot of thought behind each of our projects.”
“When we do a project, we tend to work on the basis that, if you can’t stand up and talk about it for 20 minutes, that doesn’t mean you’re there,” Osgerby said.
The letters are arranged in chronological order, charting a clear progression of material technology. Most of the first works were done with bent plywood, in collaboration with Isokon Plus, while the knowledge of metal molding and plastic molding came later.
As the curator Marco Sammicheli emphasized in the exhibition, Italy played an important role in this development. Many of the studio’s best-known designs have resulted from collaborations with Italian manufacturers, including Cappellini, Flos and B&B Italia.
Like many people who have succeeded in Italy, we have Giulio Cappellini to thank,” said Osgerby. “He was responsible for finding our generation of outcasts, along with Bouroullecs and Marc Newson.”
Both look back fondly on this period, when they felt the design industry was more open to taking risks. As an example, Barber points to Screen Stencil, a 2002 collaboration with Cappellini that he reimagined for the show.
“When we showed it to Giulio, he loved it,” Barber recalls. “I asked him if he thought we would sell. He said no! but he said it didn’t matter.”
“He was right,” he continued. “The wonderful thing about design is that it doesn’t have to be commercial. It can just be thinking, in the same way that art is about thinking.”
Osgerby cites the Tip Ton chair as another success story that resulted from taking a risk. Produced by Vitra, it allows the occupant to move forward into a more functional living space.
“As a monobloc chair, it was very difficult to make, not us or Rolf [Fehlbaum, then-CEO of Vitra] I didn’t know if it would sell,” he said.
“So to find a new way to stay in a company that is the chairman of the company… that was a win.”
The exhibition includes a recreation of Barber Osgerby’s London studio, full of humor and models of both tangible and intangible designs.
As a profession, the studio has undergone unique changes over the past 30 years. It grew to include the in-house-led Universal Design Studio in 2001, and an art consultancy Map in 2012, before both were acquired by AKQA in 2018.
“By the end of 2014, we had something like 5,000 square feet of studio space with architects, interior designers, industrial designers, filmmakers, and all the management and sales teams,” Osgerby recalls. “It was a lot of fun, because all the design barriers just completely evaporated.”
“For a long time we were the youngest people in our studio,” Barber said. “We hired people who have already done things that are more complicated than us, so they can help us understand.”
The studio still collaborates the same today, say the designers. Technologies like 3D printing have changed the way they work, but it hasn’t dampened their enthusiasm for exploring new ideas.
The companies that work with us say that the best thing about us is our freedom,” said Osgerby.
“We are not prima donnas; we want to find the best solution for everyone.”
In addition to Alphabet, Barber Osgerby unveiled seven different brands during Milan design week. This includes new partnerships with Kettal and Kartell.
Osgerby said they won’t spend a week testing what else is new. He prefers to find inspiration from elsewhere, rather than looking too closely at what other designers are doing.
“When I visit the city, I go to shops that sell fairs rather than shops that sell designs,” he said. “Our job as designers is to capture history and the future, not the present.”
Photo of Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby by Mark Cocksedge.
Alphabet is on display at the Triennale Milano from Apr 18 to Sept 6. Check out Dezeen’s Events Guide for a dedicated guide to Milan Design Week.