InLiquid Articles - Box Set by Joan K. Smith

Box Set by Joan K. Smith
A local design firm creates edgy identities, box furniture and more

this article originally appeared in the February 15, 2001 issue of the Philadelphia City Paper

What does skate culture have in common with a box? Quite a bit, according to Phil Otto of ODG/Otto Design Group. But more about that later.

ODG itself is difficult to neatly put in a box, encompassing as it does everything from graphic and interior design to prototyping, finishings and installation. This possibly comes from its unconventional genesis more than ten years ago. Philip Otto, fresh out of Stanford with a degree in anthropology but the soul of an artist, became involved in the development of San Francisco’s Marin Headlands Arts Center, a multidisciplinary community of studios and performance spaces set on an abandoned military base. Otto’s creative rehabbing of these buildings, which was based more on actualizing the qualities of the existing spaces rather than completely altering them, led people to approach him for outside jobs. Before long, he had a full-time design business.

His breakthrough commercial job was designing the furniture and fixtures for the West Coast Urban Outfitters, which later became a permanent client. ODG, working in collaboration with Pompeii architects, has now created the interior components for Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie stores nationwide.

It was mainly due to the Urban Outfitters account that Otto relocated to Philadelphia in 1995 — although he adds that another incentive came out of hearing himself described as a "preeminent grunge architect."

"I knew then it was time to leave the West Coast," he says with a slight cringe.

That said, ODG’s first home in Philadelphia was certainly befitting its alternative culture reputation: an immense industrial loft — complete with an indoor skate ramp — in the shadow of the Berks el stop. Initially the studio was comprised of only two full-time employees — Otto and Chris Boccella, a young architect — plus a fluctuating array of freelancers to pitch in as needed on the firm’s projects, which primarily involved custom interiors and furnishings or slightly edgy, youth-oriented retail spaces, such as Todd Oldham and Betsy Johnson.

Although the Kensington warehouse was a wonderfully affordable workspace, the rough-around-the-edges neighborhood was not so great for clients, nor for employee recruitment. So their studios have since "moved on up" so to speak, to a tidier, if far smaller, Old City space at 222 Vine St. that is more accessible to clients and prospective employees. They’ve already made a mark in their new neighborhood by designing Rescue 138, a vintage/ new clothing boutique on Third Street, and garnering an in-progress residential loft rehab for Fringe Festival Producing Director Nick Stuccio.

Otto says that a free-flowing, cooperative spirit has characterized ODG’s work environment from the beginning — a sort of Eamesian model of "renaissance people working as a team and willing to play different roles, to fill the space between drawing and building." Even now, with 15 full-time employees, the laid-back structure and communal spirit seems active.

ODG also emphasizes hands-on design, meaning they actually construct the objects they design. In the beginning this was out of necessity — in order to produce the work they wanted while staying within budget they learned craftsmanship first hand, doing their own carpentry and metalwork, thus eliminating several layers of middlemen. But more importantly, according to Otto, this practice has allowed for a more idiosyncratic, freeform design process.

Chris Boccella and Nathan Lentz (who now run one-man satellite offices in New York and Venice, CA, respectively) recount how they have actually traveled around the country to their clients, sometimes camping out on the floor of the project site, to personally construct and install their work. Much of the process is based on open discussion, leading to spontaneous improvisation. "With Chris and I on-site, someone would say ‘wouldn’t it be great to do this,’ and we’d just go ahead and build it," says Lentz; a process that would have been impossible had they simply handed drawings to a contractor.

Otto says that this style of working is well suited to their clients, who "tend to have in common a desire to keep a foot in subculture, to seem peripheral or edgy." He says that individuality and customized design are critical to these clients, especially due to the "ruthlessness of the alternative client base if they feel a favorite store has ‘sold out’ to mainstreaming."

Chris cites Urban Outfitters as an example of success in this area, because in almost every city where they have a store, people are surprised to learn it’s not a local company.

While remaining open to improvisation, ODG steers clear of dictating an aesthetic, and is averse to leaving a distinctive designer’s mark.

Instead, their credo is to be "pragmatists who reflect and exemplify" the client’s existing identity. (They were thrilled when, upon the opening of the Todd Oldham store in L.A., one of Oldham’s associates described it as "amplified Toddness.") Tying in to Phil Otto’s original philosophy of design through reuse and appropriation of existing elements, ODG designers take as their departure point existing materials, space, and image — and then idealize it.

Which brings us to skate culture and the box. In discussing their new furniture line, called Box Product, Otto describes what he terms "the zeitgeist of the box": in an increasingly nomadic, rootless culture — perhaps epitomized by youth subcultures — people are going to live out of boxes no matter what. Why not, then, he reasons, recognize and elevate this by simply making better boxes?

Box Product, then, is a highly simplified and unembellished series of exchangeable box-like modules made of birch plywood and color laminates. But there is art to the deliberate simplicity of this series, in Otto’s words "more Donald Judd than IKEA in its elevation of common materials, exposing and revealing something of their intrinsic qualities."

The series made its debut this year at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, and will be featured alongside the works of the Droog design group later this month at the Orange design store in Los Angeles.

So far Box Product isn’t shown anywhere in Philadelphia. But that will change soon, when the metal loading dock doors of their studio are converted into a display window, creating a mini-showroom at street level to present an exemplification of ODG philosophy, which Boccella sums up as "a collision of sculpture, fine art, and pragmatism."

Reproduced courtesy of the Philadelphia City Paper

Joan K. Smith is an artist, freelance writer, and Associate Director of InLiquid.com

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