Tabla de contenidos para November - December 2021 en Frame

Exactly a year ago, I introduced my children here. I described the extent to which the pandemic had turned their lives upside down. They had to trade school desks for beds and sofas, attend classes online via Zoom and Teams, and ration their contact with classmates and teachers. Now, in large parts of the world, the pandemic seems to be under control. Children’s lives are on track to get back to the ‘old normal’. But in (higher) education, things seem to have changed forever. Virtual learning has been added to the menu for good – along with in-person meetings that focus on interaction and collaboration. This allows universities to greatly expand their reach, and students to not have to look for an expensive room in the city where their educational…

One of the most enduring images of the first months of the pandemic was that of empty supermarket shelves, a moment that highlighted the vulnerability of the supply chains that keep our cities nourished. ‘The pandemic is exposing our food system’s fragility,’ argued an editorial in The Guardian in March 2020, ‘a crucial warning in a world where other shocks – notably from climate change – will be heading our way.’ Urban agriculture is being widely touted as one response, and the basic premise is clearly appealing: cities can become self-sustaining entities, where their residents can eat healthy food grown within metropolitan borders. This will, in theory, reduce the carbon footprint of food transportation and storage while lowering the amount of rural land used for agriculture. How we might arrive…

‘Workspace has become a desirable thing to design’ NASIM KÖERTING: The pandemic has slowed things down a lot for businesses, and for us as well. Pre-pandemic we were looking at expanding quite quickly and now we’re being adventurously cautious. My personal view of what to look for in a new location is whether the market is vibrant. Are there a lot of small businesses, opportunities and larger corporations? Is there vibrancy, movement of business and growth? We’ve been looking at Ireland for example, which is an upcoming market. And at Paris and cities in the US. A lot of decision making is about how the city is performing. Then we strategically look at areas within a city. We’ll look at location, transport and other details to make sure that it’s…

Nothing was quite what it seemed when Italian design brand Qeeboo launched its new collection at Milan Design Week in September. Known for embracing the ‘quirky’ and the curious, nothing was off limits for the team of international designers behind the latest additions to the Extraordinary Objects collection displayed in four locations across the city. Qeeboo’s approach reimagines familiar objects in surprising ways, creating pop icons that tickle the imagination. A giraffe, for example, can become a lamp, or a rabbit a chair. This playfulness runs through the veins of each designed product to bring an unexpected flair to household objects. The brand has a talent for identifying designers that ‘share a similar language’, says founder Stefano Giovannoni. ‘We are interested in those who work with a figurative narrative and…

In recent years, we’ve reported on several workspaces becoming – or attempting to become – more porous, opening up to the wider community of non-staffers through events, communal areas, F&B offerings and more. Some are trying to dismantle their self-constructed ivory towers, others are sharing resources to split costs, and still others are adding another level of dynamism and energy to their establishments in a bid to answer the modern-day quandary: If you can work from anywhere, why come to a physical workspace? Why are we talking about workspaces in an education special? Because the typologies are experiencing many of the same predicaments. Why go to a classroom when you can study online? What’s the role of the physical campus in an increasingly digital world? We’re therefore not surprised to…

With consumers in the developed world becoming more conscious about the environment and sustainability – more than 70 per cent of European and American consumers now consider the environment when shopping, for example – it’s imperative to reimagine a more sustainable future for the €102.8-billion interior design market. The industry should be driven by ‘frugal innovation’, described by Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu, the authors of a book on the topic, as ‘how to do better with less’. It’s a concept with which Zimbabweans are well-practised. The design of Shona kitchens – famously known as ‘round huts’ – is centred on people and the environment, driven by the philosophy of hunhu, or ‘I am because we are’. The idea is that the round hut’s circular design encourages dialogue and brings…

Our homes were never designed to be offices. While some have found temporary adaptations acceptable for the longer term, many haven’t been able to find a healthy solution for living and working under one roof. Our experience in the pandemic has revealed that people want to work from home, but for this to become truly possible, we need to think about designing ‘work-ready’ homes from the outset. Fundamentally, the experience of remote working differs greatly depending on whether we can afford enough space to do it in. Research by Stanford University found 49 per cent of American workers log in from a dedicated room, while 51 per cent work from a bedroom or communal area. The BBC recently highlighted the negative effect of unwanted sound at home on productivity, noting…

BIBI SECK: I often say: what’s the difference between artists and designers? Artists solve problems for themselves. But designers solve problems for others. I’ve been a designer for over 20 years now, and I started in the automotive industry at Renault. You cannot imagine how beneficial this has been for me. I gained good experience in manufacturing products – ranging from a simple symbol in the dashboard to seats intended to be covered with various materials. And I learned to work in a team – which is essential for successful creations in the life of a designer. We all come together for a single star: the user. Throughout my career, I’ve also learned that when you fail, it’s because you didn’t understand the needs of the client in the first…

After months of remote working – and in the wake of the subsequent Great Resignation – workspaces face an intensifying need for knowledge workers to actively choose to inhabit them. Already evolved past Office Space’s conforming cubicles and fluorescent, blinding clarity, these spaces are also shedding the maximalist, Google-style ‘fun’ aesthetic framing workers as excitable children or artists. Now, the dominant metaphor equating knowledge workers with labourers or artisans has been hollowed out by flexible, distributed, digital remote work. Third-space signifiers such as communal benches, exposed infrastructure and faux-industrial cues feel increasingly quaint. Instead, new workspaces resemble the pandemic’s true sites of knowledge work: the ‘domestic cosy’ of a comfortable home, and intuitive, welcoming online interfaces. Workers are tempted by human welcome, not identity affirmation. With muted but rich elemental…

Spa experiences are multisensory by their very nature. They include at least touch – of water on skin, for example – and sight, although visibility is often intentionally impaired by dimmed, mood-setting lighting. Hearing and smell are typically catered for with calming ambient music and essential oils. Since this is what we’ve become accustomed to, some players are responding to the growing thirst for unique experiences by taking multisensory experiences to new extremes. Spas that hypnotize bathers with immersive digital art, ‘beer baths’ that intoxicate visitors with the heady aromas (and taste) of hops and barley, virtual experiences that somehow manage to tingle every sense. Even artists James Turrell and Marina Abramović are reportedly collaborating on a spa (for Motown, a hotel complex in Hobart, Tasmania, slated to open in…

Some surfaces look flawless after installation, only to be marred by wear and tear – nicks and scratches that reveal the base material beneath the uppermost layer. Florim overcomes such occurrences with its new Earthtech/collection, ceramic surfaces whose aesthetic expression is consistent from the visible plane to the bottom. Coloured through and through, Earthtech/maintains its look even in the event of a deep surface abrasion, giving one of the oldest building elements a new level of resistance. Florim, an Italian manufacturer of large-format tiles and porcelain slabs, has been producing products for floors, walls, worktops and furniture for 60 years. The brand always draws from this past with an eye towards the future, an ethos expressed in the consideration of its environmental impact. Earthtech/is named in part for its relationship…

Those who follow architectural happenings will already be familiar with the controversy that started in around 2014 surrounding the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo. A group of leading Japanese architects, including Fumihiko Maki, Toyo Ito, Sou Fujimoto and Kengo Kuma, criticized the proposed design by Zaha Hadid. In response, she called them ‘hypocrites’. On the more local side, the residents of the Toei Kasumigaoka apartment building, which used to be located adjacent to the Olympic Stadium and was demolished during the redevelopment accompanying the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, were forced to fight and eventually to move out without consensus over the period from 2012 to 2017. Even though the event was postponed until 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Olympics symbolically started years ago, leaving marks in cities and changing the…

How did Paf Atelier come about? What inspired you to start your own practice? CHRISTOPHER DESSUS: I founded the studio in 2017 following an experience working as an exhibition producer at Villa Noailles during the 33rd Festival de la Mode et du Design and the Design Parade Toulon. It was after I studied architecture at the École Nationale Supérieure d’architecture de Versailles (ENSA) and in Montreal. The experience taught me about the small economics of scenography design, the beauty of production support and, above all, the satisfaction of producing quality scenographies in the company of other talents. As a scenographer you have to be very attentive to needs and find a humble place next to someone’s work. Combining my experience as an architect and the idea of production, Paf Atelier…

Talk about your background. How were you able to combine biology and architecture in establishing your studio? DORIS SUNG: I initially decided to study biology to go into a pre-med programme, but over time realized I was more interested in the visual arts. I took architecture classes as a way to differentiate myself and mastered drafting, which gave me entry into the field. After graduating, I chose not to go to medical school and instead started working for a range of large and small firms. I learned the trade while on the job. Eventually, I decided to open my own practice, but with the turn of the 21st century, became obsessed with climate issues and began to shift gears. The more I tried to figure out how architecture could be…

Born between 1996 and 2008, the ‘Zoomer’ generation has lived through countless beauty trends (Sharpie eyebrows and mega-contoured faces to name a few), with unlimited access to tutorials and selfie inspiration from social-media influencers. Both, undoubtedly, are factors that contribute to their willingness to experiment. And that readiness to try new ways of self-representation is what Marina Mansour, head of beauty partnerships at Gen-Z media company Kyra, calls a main driver of beauty purchases for the group. Where does that leave spatial design in this retail sector, when e-commerce is so threatening the physical shop? Bright-lit aisles of lipsticks in every colour, perfumes in every scent and foundations in every shade simply won’t do anymore. Getting consumer loyalty from the young beauty shopper today – at least in the brick-and-mortar…

Over the past few years, the gaming industry has flourished. Expected to grow by 9.64 per cent annually over the next five years, it will be worth a whopping $314.4 billion by 2026. How did we get here? On the one hand, gaming has smoothly merged with consumer technology. We increasingly expect apps and experiences to be gamified, whether we’re seeing the latest VR film or amassing badges on language learning apps. On the other hand, brands from prestige industries have recognized that if you get a foot in the gaming door, a juicy reward awaits in terms of a target market. JWT Intelligence calls them the ‘unreachables’: digitally savvy Gen Zers and millennials with a decent income and an aversion to traditional advertising and media channels. In a move…