Between the Lines: Lines Lab

Designing objects and products and organising events are the key aims and objectives of Clara Brito and Manuel Correia da Silva’s Lines Lab project. Based in Macau, a city famous for being the first and last European colony in China, Lines Lab has become in just three years a creative hub for a range of different services. Asia represents a market in constant growth and Brito and Manuel CS saw Macau as the ideal place to develop their audaciously creative projects.

Manuel CS grew up between Lisbon and Macau, and, after graduating in Equipment Design at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa (ESBAL), in 2002 he established in Macau the “City Furniture Designers”. Following the principles of modular logic, he created pieces of urban design such as the CTM (Macau Telecom) telephone booths and the “DNA” outdoor benches in wood and stainless steel. In 2005 Manuel launched the Lines Lab brand and project together with Brito, born in Lisbon and also a graduate of the ESBAL. It developed rather successfully and the designer duo now boasts clients in China, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Taiwan and Japan.     
   
The Lines Lab Fashion (LL Fashion) store in Macau is a sort of multi-disciplinary workshop that sells the creative duo’s products, but also offers a range of different services. Bags are undoubtedly one of LL’s most fashionable products. Created following basic lines, LL’s bags are characterised by a geometrical simplicity, bi-dimensional forms and striking colours. While the most recent “Cut Sar” bags are characterised by cut out details that remind of cross-stitched motifs, the “Derma” bag features materials recycled from outdoor banners that covered the streets and buildings of Macau. In a way this bag is not only a fashion object, but also an instant piece of art as it gives the wearer the chance of turning the socio-cultural history of Macau into a very personal accessory.

Dazed Digital: How would you define Lines Lab?
Clara Brito: Lines Lab is a Macau-based venture with a contemporary orientation, a laboratory focused on the synthesis between creation and risk, committed to the equation “objects, people and events” that defines urban creation today. When we decided to launch the project and brand Lines Lab we were mainly thinking in creating a platform for ideas to blossom, a place that could work both as a showcase for our products as well as a laboratory for experiences and creativity.

DD: Did you find it difficult to establish your project in Macau?
CB: Lines Lab was launched in 2005 and at that time it was quite easy - especially in a city with the dimensions of Macau - to register the brand, open our first shop and present our products and work to its citizens. However, our main markets are outside Macau, in Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Korea, Shanghai, Lisbon, Barcelona, Madrid and Milan, and this makes our ambition of being internationally acknowledged harder achieve. Time has also passed and Lines Lab has grown from a small venture comprising just Manuel and I, to a larger team, so what we are trying to do at the moment is keeping faithful to the brand’s original identity and keep on injecting in it fresh and modern ideas while growing and developing new products and projects.

DD: What inspired you the name of the label?
CB: The forms and lines of different objects. Objects are the result of lines and our senses acknowledge their existence by taking in their lines as a whole. Objects are as familiar and as vital as space because, like space, they are a product of the mind. At the same time, objects also represent a revelation of human desires. In a way, human beings are also lamps, glasses, chairs, buildings, dresses, shoes or a steel nail planted in the darkness of the matter in a universe of structures and possibilities.

DD: What’s the design/fashion scene like in Macau?
CB: Macau is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (P. R. C.) and in the last years the city went through a strong economic development that had a huge impact on its creative industry and on the local community of designers, architects, musicians and artists. “This Is My City” (www.thisismycity853.blogspot.com) is just one example of what the local creative industry’s efforts have recently generated. Different creative minds have come together in this event to present their work to the city in one alternative and amazing environment in which participants and citizens actively interact.

DD: Do you prefer designing clothes and accessories or working on urban design/furniture and which are the favourite projects you worked on so far?
CB: As designers, all projects and objects - from fashion to urban projects or pieces of furniture - are a welcomed challenge for us. One of our favourite project is our line of accessories named “Lineless” which integrates in the fashion field the principles of industrial design, but we also love the projects related to public space, such as “This Is My City”, and to urban equipment, like the DNA bench and the BLABLA telephone booth.

DD: What’s your latest collection of bags about?
CB: After the “Derma” bag we launched the “DERMA +853” collection which is based on the colours, shapes and motifs that recur in Macau’s architecture. Inspired by the “Derma” bag we designed a smaller bag, the “Cut” bag, and we recently launched the “Cut SAR” which is an evolution of the first “Cut” series and was inspired by the “Special Administration Regions” (SAR) concept applied to Macau and Hong Kong. We like this designation and we decided to explore its meaning from a different perspective, inviting designers and artists to create their own cut-out images on our bags.
 
DD: Are you involved in any new exhibition?
CB: We are preparing the 2009 “This is My City” exhibition that promotes exchanges among the creative minds from the South East Asia cities, that is Macau, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shengzhen and Shanghai, and also encourages the interdisciplinary interaction between different artists and their audiences.

DD: Would you like to collaborate with another fashion designer/architect one day?
CB: As Lines Lab we often collaborated in the past with different artists and creative people and the result of these exchanges has generated several interesting products. We would love to work in future with Lisbon-based Pedrita, United Nude and Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons.

Lines Lab is taking part in Hong Kong Fashion Week, kicking off on Monday 12th January. To keep up to date with the brand’s products and with Lines Lab designs at HKFW, you can check out Manuel and Clara’s blog.