Frameの January - February 2019 の目次

SOUND – What does home sound like? Is it the same for everyone? And can we take it with us and make anywhere feel like our place? Answering those questions at this year’s Dutch Design Week was an interactive installation – Space Here Becomes Sound – developed jointly by Sonos and Studio Lonk and curated by Frame. What visitors saw as they wandered through a set of concentric frames bore little resemblance at first glance to a warm homelike interior. Each frame featured one of the five colours of the Hay Sonos One Limited Edition Collection. For those who ventured on to play with the moving parts, however, each component revealed part of an overall soundscape: Soft Pink emitted the sound of heels on the pavement outside the living-room window;…

ALBERTO ALBERTO CAIOLA grew up in Pordenone, an Italian province about an hour’s drive from Venice. In 2002 he began studying product design at Politecnico Milano, which he calls ‘a conservative, classical school’. While learning about design theory and the great masters, Caiola immersed himself in the ‘city that breathes design’. He and his comrades were frequent visitors to events and exhibitions. ‘We took everything the city had to offer, which was more than it offers today. Coming from a small town, I felt for the first time that I was part of the creative world.’ In 2006 Caiola ventured to Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), where he chose Design in Context for his master’s degree. After returning to Italy and working for the likes of Aldo Cibic, the designer made…

NEW YORK CITY – The future of healthcare is prevention – that’s the idea behind Lab100, a prototype clinic designed by Brooklyn-based Cactus for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Best known for its digital and experiential projects for the likes of Samsung, Beyoncé and Nike, Cactus set out to rethink the way healthcare is delivered. At Lab100, (healthy) patients are tested and given feedback on their physical conditions, alerting them to potential problems and providing a personalized wellness plan. While artificial intelligence makes it all possible, Lucas Werthein and Noah Waxman of Cactus are quick to point out that the goal of the design was to ‘humanize’ the 150-m2 space. ‘Otherwise,’ says Waxman, ‘our experiences of both technology and healthcare can be horrible.’ The solution was to ‘kill data…

ALTHOUGH GRIEF SEEMS an unlikely companion for architecture, in embracing this complex emotion architects are building spaces for mourning and memorialization that carry an awareness of death and bereavement. Ceremonies for the loss of a loved one are highly sensitive and personal, yet the settings in which they occur are borrowed environments that often fail to offer comfort to mourners. A church, for example, can isolate those who don’t participate in organized religion, and a crematorium can feel more industrial than inviting. Can architecture reshape the way we bid farewell to the departed? Amsterdam architecture studio HofmanDujardin approached the subject with a concept design. The Funeral Ceremony Centre has no client and no plans for construction. It’s a response to architect Michiel Hofman’s personal experience. After organizing a gathering to…

COLOGNE – What role does the trade fair play in our increasingly digitized world? And will its format have to change if it’s to remain relevant? What better place to find answers to our questions than Orgatec, Germany’s biennial office-furniture fair? The 2018 edition revealed the increasingly fading boundaries between products for the contract, home, workspace and hospitality markets. To highlight brands that are moving with the times, we honoured the most innovative uses of colour, light and material among exhibitors’ stands in a special edition of the Frame Awards. Our jury emphasized the infeasibility of maintaining the trade fair’s traditional perimeters. Both organizers and exhibitors need to understand their audience: a new generation with different needs and expectations. More and more visitors are well-informed, digital-savvy millennials. ‘You might think…

IT SEEMS IRONIC that one of the first companies to entirely replace bricks and mortar with virtual offices, deals in bricks and mortar for its bread and butter. If, however, you consider the evolution of office design, from the cubicle to the open-plan office to the ever more common hot-desk, as the pursuit of maximum productivity – and therefore profitability – per square metre, then eXp Realty’s decision to forego physical offices begins to make more sense. CEO Glenn Sanford founded the real estate brokerage in the wake of 2007’s US housing collapse. Unable to afford the expense of real-life offices scattered across the country – or risk another property price plunge – he sought an alternative to renting or buying buildings for his employees to work in. You only…

Offices aren’t what they used to be. The old world of fixed seating and corner offices has been swept away by a wave of flexible open-plan environments. Meanwhile, developments in technology are allowing more and more of us to work at home, at least for part of the time. The rise in home working is rapidly transforming the function of the workplace. Today’s office isn’t necessarily where we go to spend eight hours staring at a screen; it’s more a space for interaction and the sharing of ideas and information. In fact, with innovation the name of the game in the contemporary business world, exchanges between employees – often people who may not have met in a traditional office – are increasingly seen as the key to the most radical…

For maximum workplace productivity, organization is essential. Especially when you consider a statistic published in the Harvard Business Review: 80 per cent of an office worker’s day is spent in meetings and in fulfilling colleagues’ requests. CBRE predicts that by 2020, 45 per cent of multinationals will shift from a constraining work setup to a hot-desking strategy – up from the 30 per cent who employ it today. A collaborative approach allows an office to open up but also requires time-saving versatility and mobility in terms of furniture and tools. From lamps that can charge smartphones to whiteboards on wheels, many of today’s office products are based on the idea that a temporary workplace can be ‘built’ anywhere. One advantage is the ease at which employees can designate impermanent functions…

A recent research poll, held by HR advisory firm The Future Workplace, painted a thought-provoking picture: among a group of 1,614 North American employees, the number-one determiner of workplace environment quality was access to outdoor views and natural light. Yet another survey, conducted by biophilic design expert Ambius, found that 35 per cent of the workforce spends no more than 15 minutes outdoors on an average workday. Access to greenery and fresh air trumped the importance of every other premium benefit, including on-site childcare and the presence of a cafeteria. Mid-day lethargy and sore joints are common side-effects of spending an entire day inside, sitting at a computer. This undoubtedly has an enormous impact on mental clarity and workplace productivity – the surveys convey the idea that perhaps we should…

Writer and editor DEBIKA RAY is interested in global culture and its sociopolitical dimension. She has written for publications such as The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Sight & Sound, Wallpaper*, Icon, Disegno, Kinfolk, Metropolis and Blueprint, covering subjects that ranged from the shifting skyline of New Delhi to the nurturing of creative districts in China. Last year Ray founded Clove, a magazine about the culture of South Asia and the region’s global diaspora. For this issue of Frame, she interviewed workplace strategist Despina Katsikakis on the future of the physical office (see p. 132). Architecture and interior photographer KATIE BRICKER TESSARO is based in Atlanta, but her skills take her nationwide, shooting for architects, furniture manufacturers and interior designers. Utilizing her sales and marketing experience in the field of built environments,…

‘IT’S CRUCIAL FOR YOUNG DESIGNERS to think outside the box. They are less inclined than most of our more established designers to allow technological barriers to influence their work,’ says Kinga Grzybowska. ‘Their concepts may turn out to be quite futuristic, but that’s exactly what big companies can benefit from. Such ideas challenge engineers and push the industry forward.’ Together with Michal Hondo, the Polish architect received the Special Sustainability Award at the 2016/2017 edition of jumpthegap®, a biennial design competition organized by Spanish sanitaryware brand Roca in collaboration with the Barcelona Centre de Disseny. Promoting the unrestrained approach that Grzybowska refers to, the competition gives international architecture and design students and professionals under the age of 40 a platform for the presentation of bathrooms for the future. The eighth…

What’s your take on the current state of work? TOMAS DIRRIX: The classic distinction between work and home no longer exists. An increasing number of people freelance, and the physical office is fluid. Thanks to technology and mobility, we can perform certain tasks remotely. It’s no longer necessary to live where we work; we can now work where we are. Armed with a laptop, we’re able to set up shop in environments more pleasurable than the traditional office. Not only do work and leisure often run parallel. There’s also a potential for the two to merge. How do you see things developing in the future? Rather than requiring specifically designed moments for relaxation, we will desire focused, uncluttered workplaces. Conducting work in a concentrated fashion – something we used to…

LONDON – In 2010, up-market leather-goods company Mulberry launched a concept store in London. Responsible for the interior of the New Bond Street establishment, which featured a dry-stone wall to emphasize the luxury brand’s British provenance, was Universal Design Studio. Eight years on, Mulberry’s creative director, Johnny Coca, commissioned Faye Toogood to come up with a new retail concept. The result – her design for the Regent Street flagship – suggests that the nation’s identity is impossible to pigeonhole. Whereas Universal elected to focus on traditional craft, Shoreditch-based Toogood drew inspiration from brutalism, a controversial style of architecture pioneered in the UK by the Smithsons and Denys Lasdun. Toogood and her team juxtaposed concrete walls with a rich array of materials: gloss and textured green ceramic tiles, cast resin, polished…

THE DESIGN OF A SCHOOL expresses an attitude towards education. The traditional classroom, with its regimented rows of desks all facing forward, reflects a unidirectional style of schooling, with the teacher dispensing facts, not fun. What to make then of WeGrow, a school for kids from three to nine located in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood. Designed by BIG, the 930-m2 ‘learning landscape’ features islands of stacked cushions, upholstered ‘rocks’ and curvy wooden pods. Another contemporary example is Rockwell Group’s new Blue School in Lower Manhattan, where LED-lit planters grow food for lunch and every classroom has a brightly coloured multipurpose platform dubbed an ‘urban porch’. Unlike their traditional counterparts, both schools, which opened their doors in September 2018, resemble ‘creative workspaces’, thanks to a variety of places to sit or…

NEW YORK CITY – Amid ongoing retail turbulence that this year alone has seen legacy brands like Sears and Toys R Us close the majority of their locations, opening a splashy flagship store at a sought-after address can feel like an almost counter-cultural gesture. But Nike has just done it for the second time in two months. The brand’s new House of Innovation 000 on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is a five-storey paean to frictionless commerce. It’s also, by virtue of its numbering, a prequel of sorts to the equally ambitious House of Innovation 001 in Shanghai’s Nanjing East Road district, which launched in October. What can a store still offer today’s omni-spoiled, multi-screening consumer? ‘The pleasure of physically being somewhere’, to quote a certain newspaper of record, a place…

AFTER ALMOST 60 YEARS, Flexform has remodelled its iconic corporate showroom in Meda, near Milan. Flexform Design Center coordinator Saul Galimberti – representing the third generation of the founding family – talks about rethinking the showroom as a hub and meeting place. What new needs does Flexform’s remodelled showroom meet? SAUL GALIMBERTI: The core of the project was our determination to make it more of a hub, a place for people to meet. As a company, we felt that we needed a permanent exhibition – along the lines of our temporary stands at Salone del Mobile. The showroom serves not only as a place for displaying the broad Flexform collection; it’s also a venue where we can organize workshops for our customers, architects, interior designers and students. We designed the…

THESE ARE RED-LETTER DAYS for the R&D teams at major car brands. As the technological horizon of autonomous driving draws tantalizingly close, automakers are quickly repositioning themselves as mobility providers. CIOs are rounding up anyone whose job title includes the term ‘innovation’ in an effort to nail down a concept that can help their marque lay claim to the future of the industry. The current period might best be described as the ‘golden hour’ – that moment just after dawn when the sun peaks over the horizon, the light takes on an otherworldly brilliance and the improbable seems somehow possible. To all intents and purposes, autonomous driving is feasible today. Lending a layer of credibility to any proposed mobility scheme are Google’s AV spinoff, Waymo, which has already clocked five…

‘MICROSOFT USED TO epitomize a hard, corporate entity,’ says Francesco Messori, creative director and partner of D/DOCK. ‘The company is no longer about showing its muscles. The new CEO’s philosophy goes beyond solely selling products. Microsoft wants to help the world move towards digital. To do so, it needs to open its arms to society.’ Messori and his team were responsible for capturing that goal in their renovation of Microsoft’s Amsterdam offices. Strolling to Micro Polis from nearby Schiphol Airport leads visitors through Base, a strip of real estate that includes workspaces, cafés and a gym. ‘The proximity to Base meant we didn’t need so many extra facilities in our building,’ says Microsoft’s René van der Vlugt. The idea is that the borders between buildings in the area are more…

Wellbeing has permeated every facet of daily life. Eliminate all the emphasis on the subject, and it’s very possible we’d be living in a world without SoulCycle, green juices and meditation apps. Stress is a major deterrent to the wellbeing we so crave and need. According to Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, approximately 13.7 million working days are lost each year in the UK owing to work-related illness. In acknowledging this statistic, designers should consider where office work takes place and, consequently, the essence of the problem – the desk. In a 2015 report published by the American College of Physicians in Annals of Internal Medicine, doctors concluded that ‘prolonged sedentary time was independently associated with deleterious health outcomes, regardless of physical activity’. When chairs become uncomfortable…

PRODUCTION – In the early 2000s, retailers like H&M and Zara globalized, reinforcing the direction in which the industry was already heading – towards fast fashion, where polyester reigns supreme. Today, nearly two decades later, we’ve become far more aware that grabbing a €5 shirt from the rack probably isn’t planet-friendly and that we’re on the precipice of another shift: one that aims for sustainable solutions while acknowledging the inevitability of technology’s impact on the entire sector. Fortunately, sustainability and technology can work hand in hand. Every digital project has the potential to alleviate the fast-fashion crisis – by reducing hours of labour, shortening production time, promoting transparency and maximizing the possibility of customization. Among the couturiers of tomorrow are 3D scanners that can map bodily dimensions and calculate a…

PROCESS – What is the true cost of manufacturing? Diego Faivre lifts the veil on mass production with his DAE graduation project: Minute Manufacturing. By offering complete transparency in the production process, Faivre challenges the current fabrication and evaluation of objects. He whips up items in a jiffy by coating waste – found furniture, cardboard tubes, plastic boxes – in brightly coloured air-drying clay. Costs are measured in Diego Coins: each token represents one euro and is worth 60 seconds of production time. Time really is money; the number of minutes spent affects the quality and design of the outcome. Minute Manufacturing responds to the dehumanizing aspects of mass production. Drawing from his experience as a blue-collar worker, Faivre points out that every action in a factory or similar environment…

Do we still need physical offices? VICTOR MOYNIER: In today’s context – think remote working and portable digital tools – I believe it’s crucial to have a physical, personal desk. It creates a base camp to which you can gravitate. On the other hand, visual and acoustic forces remain major drawbacks in bricks-and-mortar offices. Large open spaces counteract the comfort and intimacy required for concentration. Moreover, a one-size-fits-all plan lacks flexibility. Hence your idea for an adaptive system … The rhythm of work is shifting towards fast-paced microtasking, and current furnishing systems lack the versatility to keep up. At any given moment, an office might demand a completely different atmosphere: quiet and private for meetings, open and collaborative for brainstorming sessions, concentration-enabling for computer tasks. My idea is to offer…

You’ve proposed a customizable desktop computer system for the future workplace. What was your motivation? ELI BLOCK: Computers can’t be white, grey or black boxes forever – especially as their usage continues to increase. Since many people now spend the majority of their working days on a PC or laptop, these devices should be just as vibrant and lively as other aspects of our environment. My concept, Landscape, makes colour and customization vehicles for communicating the importance of diversity. We all live and work differently, after all. Do you believe monotony is the greatest issue in today’s open-plan workplaces? Probably not. But designer Ilse Crawford has said that since we spend 87 per cent of our time indoors, the design of our built environment – specifically our interiors – greatly…

Apart from his notable work in stage and fashion design in the early 20th century, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo can be credited with having aimed a spotlight at the enchanting world of textiles for Kari Pei, lead product designer at global modular-flooring company Interface. ‘I was fascinated by his incredible breadth of work,’ says Pei, ‘which included everything from the Delphos Tea Gown in pleated silk to his printed velvets and his work with lighting and stage design.’ Fortuny drew you into the textile industry, but what’s kept you there? KARI PEI: Fortuny struck me as being an early 20th-century Renaissance man. It was his work that compelled me to go into this industry, which continues to fascinate me. You can do so many different things. Textiles combine engineering, invention…

DONG-PING PART OF A TEAM responsible for a 60-something-storey tower at the tender age of 24, an assignment that led to a career built from a pie in the sky (or, more accurately, a waffle in the water) – not to mention his close encounters with Kanye West – Dong-Ping Wong can look back on a colourful practice. In 2007 Wong met Oana Stănescu at Rex Architecture in Brooklyn, New York. He was a fresh-faced junior associate; she was an intern. After their boss discovered how well they worked together, a partnership was born. Eventually their paths diverged when Stănescu left to tour the world, gaining experience in architecture offices along the way. In 2010 the pair reunited professionally as Family, a studio that would ultimately add the likes of…

INCHEON – To make a building reflect its site and surroundings, many architects rely on harmony, choosing a similar style and material palette to what’s already there. For an entertainment centre close to Seoul, MVRDV took the notion a tad more literally. True to its name, The Imprint features façades ‘imprinted’ with elements from adjacent buildings. The project comprises two venues: a 6,200-m2 nightclub and Wonderbox, a 3,600-m2 theme park and entertainment complex. Together they form part of a new tourist hub near Incheon International Airport. Because the internal programmes require no natural light, MVRDV ruled out windows – a move that transformed the façades into uninterrupted canvases. By mapping the exteriors with windows, doors and other details from the client’s nearby hotel and resort, Paradise City, the architects »…

PARIS – Most retailers with numerous stores adopt a spread-and-conquer approach, aiming for outlets citywide. Shinzo Paris, on the other hand, has cultivated a cluster of six (soon to be seven) shops on one street. The multi-brand sports-and-streetwear label is dotted along Rue Étienne Marcel, a tourist destination in the French capital frequented by exponents of Shinzo’s young international target market. Joining outposts specialized in the likes of basketball, running and skateboarding is a flagship designed by Bonsoir Paris, the first external party to conceptualize a Shinzo store. The 250-m2 project represents the studio’s biggest spatial overhaul to date, as well as its predilection for blending architecture and technology. Bonsoir Paris was involved in every aspect of the design, from the interiors to the furniture and detailing to each technology-infused…

INCHEON – Cutting through the sugary cuteness normally associated with teddy bears, a new store for artisan Joanne Oh by Seoul-based office WGNB frames her handmade cuddly toys within a dramatic, 3D linear architecture. Located on the first floor of the the Paradise City Plaza, in Incheon, Korea, the 115.5-m2 space is both shop and showroom, and it celebrates the craft origins of the bears, which have won a cult following in Korea and beyond. The concept is based on the fact that Joanne Oh hand-weaves the mohair fabric that she uses to make the bears herself, colouring the resulting materials with natural dyes. ‘We think it’s interesting to see the moment when the “skin” of the bears is produced by hand,’ says WGNB’s Nayoon Yang. ‘So we opted to…

EMPLOYEES AT THE SHANGHAI office of Japanese life-style and homeware brand Muji often have to endure a six-hour round trip from their home to work. House prices and availability in the city’s centre mandate that most live in the suburbs and travel in by subway. For this year’s China House Vision exhibition – a spinoff of the housing expo inaugurated by the company’s art director Kenya Hara – Muji tasked Japanese architect Gō Hasegawa with coming up with a solution. His answer? A brand-owned co-living model that raises questions not only of how we programme such spaces, but also whether we may see a return of the sort of paternalistic company housing projects that had their heyday in the 19th century. Hasegawa’s design is directly influenced by Shanghai’s existing residential…

From a sensory perspective, our ability to hear is undoubtedly the source of most workplace disturbance. Loud talking or music can derail our train of thought in a matter of seconds and seriously disrupt important meetings. Although noise-cancelling headphones have come to our aid, employees rightfully deserve a more sustainable solution. According to research published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, private offices outperformed open-plan layouts in terms of indoor environmental quality, especially in the areas of acoustics, privacy and proxemics. As the war between open-plan and partitioned offices wages on, designers imagine scenarios that allow us to benefit from the positives of both schemes – options that endorse the ease of interaction found in open-plan layouts, while reserving more contained areas for quiet, concentration and focus. An average of…