We don’t embroider cushions here
Glenn Walls. We don’t embroider cushions here. Bauhaus Carpet. Dimensions variable. 2020.
Glenn Walls. All power to you. (Based on Eileen Gray, Rivoli Table, 1928). Steel and wood. Dimensions variable. 2020. Contains Le Corbusier mural that he painted on Gray’s E1027 house between 1938 – 39.
Eileen Gray Vs Le Corbusier
E1027 was the first architectural work of the designer Eileen Gray, completed in 1929 when she was 51 years old. Gray talked of creating “a dwelling as a living organism” serving “the atmosphere required by inner life”. “The poverty of modern architecture,” she said, “stems from the atrophy of sensuality.” She criticised it for its obsession with hygiene: “Hygiene to bore you to death!”
E1027, which was built for Gray and her lover, Jean Badovici, grows from furniture into a building. She created a number of pieces of loose and built-in furniture for the house and installed others that she had previously designed, always with close attention to their interaction with the senses and the human body. She created a tea trolley with a cork surface, to reduce the rattling of cups, another trolley for taking a gramophone outside, and the E1027 table, whose height can be adjusted to suit different situations
Long after Eileen Gray left the villa in 1932, Le Corbusier spent a few days there in 1937, 1938 and 1939. In April 1938, encouraged by Jean Badovici, he painted two murals in the villa and returned the following year to paint another five. He said, “I am dying to dirty the walls: ten compositions are ready, enough to daub the whole lot”. According to her biographers, Eileen Gray didn’t think much of these paintings. In 1949 Badovici threatened to remove them. Several paintings that had been damaged during the war were restored by Le Corbusier himself in 1949 and again in 1963. Three of them, however, have disappeared. Those that have been preserved have since been restored or are under restoration.
Reference: https://capmoderne.com/en/lieu/la-villa-e-1027/ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/02/eileen-gray-e1027-villa-cote-dazur-reopens-lost-legend-le-corbusier
Left: Eileen Gray. Rivoli table, 1928.
Glenn Walls. Perfect lovers. (Based on Eileen Gray, Rivoli Table, 1928). Steel and wood. Dimensions variable. 2020.
Domestic Scale
German designer Dieter Rams (1932 – ) epitomised the modernist aesthetic within his designs that adhered to principle of ‘form follows function’.
As head of design at Braun, the German consumer electronics manufacturer, Rams emerged as one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century by defining an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language for its products (Design Museum, 2014).
Rams’ objective was to design useful products, which would be easy to operate (Design Museum, 2014). Rams embraced the modernist aesthetic of ‘less is more’ Rams’ designs always looked effortless with an exquisite simplicity borne from rigorous tests and experiments with new materials and an obsessive attention to detail to ensure that each piece appeared flawlessly coherent. Dieter Rams remains an enduring inspiration for younger designers, notably Jonathan Ive and Jasper Morrison, who have acknowledged his influence in their work at Apple and Rowenta respectively (Design Museum, 2014).
My work focuses on the use of Rams radio design series for Braun, including RT20 table radio, 1961, as a framework to construct narratives that modify the designer original intentions by creating variant surfaces on the object. I am interested in how I can construct narratives by adding new layers to these objects in order to imbue them with personal significance. Through the placement of text and pattern that interrupts the modernist aesthetic, I envisage how we are able to occupy and personalise these objects to our own agenda.
Everything popular is wrong (Oscar Wilde) Wood, Perspex, working clock, 2013
Aim Higher / Aim Lower. Wood, Perspex, 2013, 130 x 250 x 95 mm
There is a possibility something will fuck up today. Wood, Perspex, working clock, 2013
Glenn Walls’ series of sculptures could be mistaken at first glance, for everyday domestic appliances. Based on the RT20 radio designed by Dieter Rams in 1961, Walls interrogates the tenets of Modernism by transforming the radio into a functioning clock and applying disruptive text that subverts the minimalist simplicity of the design. In works such as There is a Possibility Something Will Fuck Up Today, 2013, this modification serves to unpick Modernism’s master narratives – such as the notion of creating a definitive design prototype appropriate for every person and context as seen in the International Style of Le Corbusier. Fittingly, this series is juxtaposed next to iconic furniture such as Grand Confort, 1928-30, by Le Corbusier, Jeanneret and Perriand, plus Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair, 1925-26, that forms part of the exhibition design schema. Through visual and conceptual interference, Walls is able to personalise the aesthetic principles of Modernism, harnessing their attributes to serve his own agenda.
Glenn Walls - SUPER CREATIVE GRID 
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