Índex per March - April 2018 a Frame

FINISHES – From smart devices to smart homes, technology is embedding itself into every aspect of our lives, adding layers of interaction and visual play to the surfaces that surround us. In theory, the shift towards digitized environments ought to render inanimate objects stale and monotonous, were it not for designers experimenting with colour and low-tech techniques in an attempt to hoodwink human perception. It’s all about adding analogue layers to everyday objects to produce a sense of interaction.…

How did you prepare for ‘The Challenge’? ANDREAS TJELDFLAAT: I studied reports by the World Health Organization and Eurostat that identified households as the single largest contributor to emissions of ozone precursors. As the most significant sources of domestic pollution are closely connected to the city's infrastructure, utility services and air space, it was clear to me that the effectiveness of a solution would depend on the extent to which it interfaces with a building’s envelope – and with the city as a whole. What’s your solution? A communal space suspended above the street in an urban neighbourhood. By consolidating household amenities among residents; utilizing sustain 36 able, high-efficiency fixtures and equipment; and tying into social programmes and civic services, we could minimize the total impact of household pollution, while strengthening…

Why did you focus on outer space rather than on the Earth? PATRICK STEVENSON-KEATING: A definite link connects the ecologies of outer space and the Earth. Some people even attribute the modern environmental movement to space travel – the ‘pale blue dot’ image of the Earth as seen from space was revolutionary in terms of how we view our planet as a whole. We feel our obligation to the planet extends beyond the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to anything humankind has produced. What problem do you want to address? There are currently around 500,000 known pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth. The real number probably greatly exceeds that figure, but we can only track the location of a piece that is larger than 5 cm. How did this situation…

KIEV – According to Katya Zuieva, Kiev is experiencing an ever-expanding showroom scene. AKZ Architectura’s cofounder and chief architect sees retailers in the Ukrainian city wrestling for visibility and, more importantly, for memorability. These two factors headed the brief that clothing brand Blushhh! – having outgrown the space it occupied for several years – presented to AKZ. The only other stipulation was the use of the company colours, which distinguish its corporate identity, as a base for the scheme. AKZ Architectura’s interpretation of memorability makes use of surprising materials. The team covered the walls with white corrugated polycarbonate panels and metallic foil, a material more associated with roast turkey and survival blankets than with chic retail environments. By deliberately wrinkling Alufom – a soundproof, heat- and vapour-insulating material whose mirroring…

TIANJIN – The most prominent feature of MVRDV’s Tianjin Binhai Public Library – its atrium, shaped like a giant eye – alerts us to one of the building’s main functions: a place to see and be seen. According to MVRDV’s Winy Maas, the library is phenomenally successful in this role, attracting 500,000 visitors in the first three weeks after its opening, as well as a mountain of press coverage. As a project underlining China’s devotion to the city as spectacle, Tianjin Library certainly fits the bill. Maas argues that it is also in the mainstream of library development. ‘Historically, libraries have been important spaces of knowledge and social exchange,’ he says. ‘They bring together different disciplines and people of all ages and experiences. In larger libraries, the atrium is traditionally…

SHANGHAI – In China, urbanization has long been a synonym for destroying existing architecture and replacing it with new builds. The tendency has begun to shift over the last ten years or so, however, with cities such as Shanghai leading the charge. A few hundred older buildings – factories, warehouses and the like – have been repurposed as studios and workshops, sports centres, offices and retail stores. Many conversions carried out for the so-called creative industries are temporary in nature. Several complexes have been demolished – or reused yet again – after being in service for less than a half-dozen years. Unfinished Space, a project by Shanghai-based X&Collective Design (XCOD), is an office that occupies a former aerospace research laboratory. Because the client has only a five-year lease and the…

NEWCASTLE – Australia has the largest immigration population by percentage of any Western country. Just 50.7 per cent of its inhabitants have two Australian-born parents – a figure that’s dropping – and the majority of immigrants are originally from Asia. ‘Australia is an extension of Asia, with European grandparents,’ says Ben Berwick, director of Newcastle architecture studio Prevalent. ‘It’s also a colony. As such, it’s largely littered with colonial architecture. If you chance upon an Australian suburb, you’re hit with houses in architecture styles from all over the world in one street. I’m not quite sure that the notion of “local” architecture or design has ever really existed in Australia. And I’m delighted by the thought that I’m not sure it ever will.’ Berwick’s home base does have what he…

TOO SICK TO MOVE A MUSCLE? What a load of nonsense. The latest data, however, show that most of you reading these words will not escape illness. And I’m not just talking about a touch of flu. ‘Unfortunately, cancer and cardiovascular disease are still the most likely causes of premature death and most probably will remain so in the future,’ says Jos Stuyfzand, senior creative director at Philips Design Healthcare. ‘Technologically, from a medical point of view, a lot is possible, but real progress is made by looking at the environment in which healthcare is provided.’ The challenges facing Stuyfzand and his multidisciplinary design team are complex. They have to determine the needs of the hospital staff – how can a space facilitate optimal performance, accurate diagnostics and quality treatment?…

With Tom Dixon launching his own hand wash last year, you know that the age of the designer bathroom is here to stay. Aware of the success of feature facilities in hotels, museums and other public spaces – Philippe Starck’s toilets in Jean Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi being a recent example – consumers want star pieces at home, too. The result is a growing number of collaborations between bathroom brands and big-name designers that’s offering consumers countless options for giving the smallest room in the house a lifestyle signature that expresses their own personality. A recent UK survey found that ‘design’ or ‘a new look’ has surpassed ‘replacement’ as the chief reason for buying new bathroom furniture, especially among the younger generation. With that information in mind, manufacturers are turning…

Born in Nancy, France, ANTOINE DOYEN dropped out of university, where he was studying sociology, and flew to West Africa to check out filmmaking in that part of the world. The trip produced the series of images that sparked him to pursue a career in photography. After Metro commissioned him to shoot the Cannes Film Festival, he found himself engaged in portrait photography and enrolled in a photojournalism class at the EMI-CFD in Paris. Among his clients are Le Monde, L'Express, Le Parisien Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. Doyen is currently documenting tractor-pulling competitions and the lives of Catholic priests. His portrait of the duo behind Studio Briand Berthereau is on page 56. Specializing in health, wellbeing and beauty, JESSICA SMITH is a writer and a creative researcher at…

‘PERFECTION IS ACHIEVED, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.’ After looking at the work of Studio Briand Berthereau, I’m not surprised that the duo behind the Paris design practice puts stock in this quotation from a book by French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Reminded of Apple’s minimalist design style, I note that founder Joran Briand and former-intern-turned-partner Arnaud Berthereau live and work by the leitmotif ‘doing the maximum with the minimum’ and, in describing their resource-saving designs, often use the word ‘frugal’. Their approach is not just a matter of aesthetics. ‘Projects last much longer when they do not feed on fashionable trends but are instead an ad hoc reflection,’ says Briand. When expressing my observation about the contrast…

I MEET JAPANESE INTERIOR DESIGNERS Hisaaki Hirawata and Tomohiro Watabe at their office in Tokyo’s Minami-Azabu district, where we’re surrounded by the creatives’ contemporary art collection. The duo leads Moment, the practice behind a number of Issey Miyake retail interiors, multi-brand department stores and dining establishments. Besides spatial design, the firm covers graphics and visual communication for exhibitions. Whatever the field of work, Moment pares down a client’s brand to its essential elements. Sometimes, in fact, a design is reduced to the point where there’s seemingly nothing left. 2010 BAO BAO ISSEY MIYAKE Bao Bao is Issey Miyake’s bag brand, and the Ginza store marked the fashion label’s first garment-free retail environment. The main objective was to communicate the accessories line: just what is Bao Bao? Moment highlighted the sculptural…

DESIGNERS AROUND THE WORLD are driven by similar impulses and draw on a common vocabulary of forms, materials and spatial strategies. So it’s no surprise to find that a film-production company in Southern California, a dance studio in London and a media headquarters in Tallinn share a common feature: tiny rooms within a soaring void. The concept can be traced back to antiquity and the aedicula that enclosed the altar in a temple. A richly modelled baldachin focuses attention on the high altar of St Peter’s in Rome, and architect Charles Moore used a minimal variant to make his tiny house in Orinda, California, seem larger. Grand or modest, singular or multiple, these inner rooms establish a hierarchy of scale, layering space and adding complexity. In Tallinn, Arhitekt 11 was…

NAGOYA – As the world’s largest automotive manufacturer, Toyota distinguishes itself by means of specific models and high-calibre technologies. The Japanese car brand is equally committed, however, to the development of services that fall within the larger scope of mobility. One such initiative is Drive to Go, a new retail concept based on car sharing. The service targets people under the age of 25 who live in metropolitan areas and can afford neither the steep costs of ownership nor the accompanying maintenance expenses and parking fees. ‘Instead of providing a place in which young people get to see and touch cars, we’ve come up with a service package that allows them to actually use one,’ says Atsushi Muroi of Archicept City, whose studio developed the project with Inamoto & Co.…

NEOBIO SHANGHAI Designed by X+Living, the Neobio restaurant in Shanghai caters for the entire family. In plain sight of parents enjoying their meals, kids explore a paradise where animal-shaped objects hang over play pits filled with balls, sand and toys. ‘IT’S NO LONGER ABOUT escaping reality; it’s about getting as real as you can get,’ we wrote in Frame 118, describing a tendency in the hospitality industry that favours an uber-local approach. It’s a development that’s prompted one-off hotels to create environments with a strong sense of place and spurred chains to give each outlet a unique, site-specific appearance – in the manner of rapidly expanding homestay services such as Airbnb. All units operated by Generator Hostels, for example, reflect the cities they inhabit, while Noma’s pop-up restaurants in Australia…

‘WE SUFFER NEW but generic hospital buildings, contractor-led delivery of depressing concrete monoliths, with only occasional one-off attempts to do better,’ says architect Alex de Rijke, founding director of London-based firm DRMM. And he is not the only designer that feels the necessity to improve and transform healthcare environments. Japanese architect Kengo Kuma agrees. ‘Take a look at the hotel industry,’ he says. ‘Hotel design is ever-improving in order to accommodate various user needs, whereas hospitals – I’d say 90 per cent of them – show no sign of changing, in my view.’ Mecanoo architect Francine Houben also thinks movement is slow: ‘Ten years ago, it was thought that an institutional hospital would no longer exist by 2020 and that only satellite functions would be spread around a city. This…

125 kg of CO2 emissions and 100 litres of oil are saved by using recycled rather than new plastic 2 Amsterdammers produce as much plastic waste each year – 23 kg per person in 2015 – as the quantity used for the XXX bench 3,000 single-use plastic bags were recycled to make the bench 50 kg is the weight of the final product 740 layers of plastic comprise the product 0 kg of waste was produced during the printing process…

REUSE – Formafantasma addresses the shortcomings of e-waste recycling with a presentation of recent work that places design thinking at the crux of the global problem. Commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Ore Streams is a furniture show-cum-video installation: together they form an ecological metaphor for the complex circulation of electronic waste that spans the world, without regard for political boundaries. Ore Streams features collage-like office furniture made from an array of repurposed items, including old microwaves and keyboards. Displayed in a workplace context, the pieces highlight the themes of efficiency and organization. Images of the surface of Mars add to the show’s alien atmosphere. Visitors are encouraged to contemplate production in all its guises. An 18-channel video installation depicts the afterlife of electronic devices – an estimated 70…

TECHNOLOGY – Thanks to the ever-expanding capabilities of smartphones, digital devices seem to have become extensions of the body, a phenomenon that’s led to an unprecedented and somewhat contentious dependency. Applications that can accomplish a multitude of tasks within the purview of a hand-held screen are pushing the analogue world away as people devote more and more time to virtual realities. One result is that designers are having to rethink how we engage with ordinary objects. Dependency on technology is evidence of the influence of objects on human behaviour. Product design that addresses this ‘problem’ often expresses the interaction between people and things. Drawing attention to technology’s grip on everyday life, designers explore and manipulate the connection through clever designs that either enable or inhibit our attachment to smartphones.…

ELLEN VAN LOON: ‘I grew up on the water. I lived in a barge for the first seven years of my life. My parents transported freight between Rotterdam and other European ports – like Basel, for instance. As a child, I spent a lot of time in and around harbour areas. I know the port of Rotterdam like the back of my hand. Its harsh atmosphere made an enormous impression on me as a child. That port is so huge. If you set off seawards from Rotterdam, through Europoort, you pass ocean-going vessels whose steel sides rise straight into the air, some 20 or 30 m from the water line. The port was our playground. We sailed to uninhabited islands with our toy boats. That was our life.’ ‘In the…

AT DOMOTEX IN JANUARY, Hannover’s Deutsche Messe was packed floor to ceiling with design that continues to integrate the floor into the rest of the interior. Domotex 2018 shone a spotlight not just on personalized flooring products and services in a time of deepening uniformity, but also on the industry’s potential to generate uniqueness, artistry and even wellbeing. With more than 1,400 exhibitors from 61 countries, the trade fair debuted an exhibition layout in which product segments were presented in clusters to give a clarified overview of the market. ‘Brands are expanding their offerings, and we’ve followed suit by adapting and restructuring the fair’s scheme,’ says Andreas Gruchow, project director of Domotex. To attract the attention of architects and interior designers, Framing Trends – a special area at the heart…

BEIJING – The science of display dictated the blueprint for Beijing’s 751 Fashion Buyer Boutique. Incorporating the rusted steel chimneys and crumbling red brick of the Chinese capital’s once-defunct-now-gentrified industrial district, the futuristic commercial space exemplifies lessons learned from strategic product positioning. The 430-m² unit in 751 D-Park was reimagined as an immersive shopping experience by Chinese designer Cui Shu of Cun Design. A rhythmic display system that combines analytical consumer data and practical reasoning aims to encourage exploration of the entire store without the need for obtrusive signage. ‘The design is very rational,’ says Shu. ‘We set up the booths and used hanging items to boost visibility and to make use of wasted areas. In this way, our design helps facilitate selling.’ One key feature sees shelving units that…

SHANGHAI – Editor sells all things storage-related, from travel bags and cardholders to water vessels. Its Shanghai outlet – designed by Beijing-based B.L.U.E. – marks the first of its kind in China. ‘The words “editor” and “storage” therefore became our main concepts,’ says the studio’s cofounder and director, Shuhei Aoyama. Upon their approach, shoppers witness the architects’ translation of the first aforementioned term in action. The frontal view is inspired by graph paper, a link to the process of conceiving, editing and drawing up a design scheme. The entire layout – composed of 13 movable units in different sizes – fits back into a central wall, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, leaving a blank canvas behind. ‘Everything in the shop can be stored in the wall,’ says Aoyama. The…

LONDON – Clothing brand Carhartt is proud of its rich history while still being completely contemporary. The label was established in 1889 when founder Hamilton Carhartt began manufacturing overalls in duck and denim with the help of two sewing machines and five employees. His firm went on to thrive, producing uniforms, coveralls and other sturdy apparel for the military during both world wars. The brand’s Work in Progress (WIP) evolution, which targeted European consumers, materialized in London in 1997 with the opening of the first store to sell Carhartt WIP products exclusively. By then, the label had successfully tapped into the skater and streetwear aesthetic. A little over 20 years later, the company opened its fourth store in the UK capital – this time in the distinctly up-and-coming area of…

The most important interior trend is that there’s no such thing as right or wrong any moreIMM 2018 TREND REPORT…