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FRAME is published six times a year by Frame Publishers Luchtvaartstraat 4 NL-1059 CA Amsterdam frameweb.com EDITORIAL For editorial inquiries, please e-mail frame@frameweb.com or call +31 20 4233 717 (ext 921). Editor in chief Robert Thiemann – RT Managing editor Floor Kuitert – FK Head of content Peter Maxwell – PM Editor Anouk Haegens – AH Editor at large Tracey Ingram – TI Junior editor Lauren Grace Morris – LGM Editorial intern Antonio Graniero – AG Copy editor InOtherWords (D’Laine Camp) Design director Barbara Iwanicka Graphic designers Zoe Bar-Pereg Shadi Ekman Translation InOtherWords (Maria van Tol) Contributors to this issue Shonquis Moreno – SM Kourosh Newman-Zand – KNZ Jonathan Openshaw – JO Riya Patel – RP Rosamund Picton – RP Debika Ray – DR Daan Roggeveen – DRo Anna Sansom – AS Peter Smisek – PS Cover Copenhagen store of Swedish footwear brand Axel Arigato (see page 56) Photo Erik Undehn Lithography Edward de Nijs Printing Grafisch Bedrijf Tuijtel Hardinxveld-Giessendam PUBLISHING Director Robert Thiemann Brand and marketing manager Leah Heaton-Jones leah@frameweb.com T +31 20 4233 717 (ext 951) Marketing intern Renata Sutton Distribution and logistics Nick…

co-living for life?

Is co-living having its WeWork moment – will the phenomenon go mainstream? Today, co-working spaces are part and parcel of working life in the average city. Having started out as cheap and flexible alternatives for tech start-ups, they now also accommodate established corporations that face growing pains and, on the other end of the spectrum, the ever-proliferating ranks of the self-employed. WeWork, rebranded The We Company, is the household name on the lips of everybody considering co-working. That the very same company launched WeLive some time ago may signify the boom co-living is experiencing. Of course the phenomenon is hardly new. Thirty years ago I myself shared a spacious apartment with nine others. Each of us had our own bedroom/study/living space and we shared two bathrooms and a kitchen. There were…

london

Two topics dominated the conversation at London Design Festival (LDF) 2019, the same two as have done for the past three years. In the official programme, across talks and installations, the climate crisis and design's role within it remained central. In informal discussions: the ongoing Brexit saga, its impact upon business and its implications for the UK’s social harmony were foremost. What wasn’t so frequently noted was their relation to each another. This changed when design leaders from around Europe gathered at the House of Commons for the LDF awards dinner. The building, shrouded in scaffolding and – thanks to its much publicized and politicized closure – largely devoid of life, made an ironic backdrop against which to celebrate another year of creative collaboration. At the finale of the evening, Dame…

shanghai

It’s a hot and humid Tuesday evening in August when I make my usual evening run along the Huangpu river. While cargo ships slowly move their loads of sand and coal downstream, I pass a violinist playing a Paganini solo on the double-deck bridge. Welcome to the Westbund, Shanghai’s cultural hotspot. This waterfront area was originally set up as a manufacturing and logistical hub during the industrialization of China. Only a few years ago the area was full of factories, hangars, warehouses and oil tanks. During the World Expo of 2010, the zone was transformed at lightning speed and the industry moved to the outskirts of the city. The district was appointed as an arts cluster, and many museums and galleries were set up there in the past decade. The Long Museum…

1 why fashion rental is not an e-comm-only play

It’s a market that was worth 1 billion dollars in the US last year and was forecast to grow to 4.4 billion over the next decade according to GlobalData Retail. The boom in fashion rental has developed largely online, which makes a lot of sense, and not only because this is already where consumers prefer to buy clothes. A model that increases the turnover of items in an individual’s wardrobe benefits even more greatly from e-commerce’s economies of scale in relation to customer data and product discovery. If wearing 50 per cent more outfits per annum requires 50 per cent more time looking for those outfits, the paradigm won’t shift. So why is fashion rental investing in brick-and-mortar venues? This spring Rent the Runway (RTR) opened its latest – and largest…

2 how visual excess is (still) powering a retail revolution

Two recent events prove that the Instagram economy has some mileage in it yet, at least stateside. The creation of overt, maximalist interiors that score big on camera-friendly backdrops – if not on the traditional precepts of spatial design – remain both a crowd puller and, crucially, a lucrative business model. First was the news that The Museum of Ice Cream (MIC), arguably the first venture to prove that you could do away with the pretence of any function beyond being a visual-first venue, plans to open a permenant location this autumn. The NYC space will cover 25,000 square feet (2,322 m2) over three floors. This follows the announcement that MIC’s parent company, Figure8, raised $40 million in series A funding in August, while MIC itself is valued at $200 million.…