Inhoudsopgave van September - October 2016 - Frame

I’m writing these words on the day before our summer holiday begins. I’ve answered most of my e-mails, taken advantage of online check-in, and will soon finish packing. As I examine the prints depicting this issue’s main theme – hospitality – my mind wanders to the first time we featured hotels in Frame. It must have been the late ’90s, and I remember introducing the phenomenon ‘design hotel’ to our readers. Later we spoke with Ian Schrager, reviewed hotels designed by Philippe Starck, and marvelled at the beauty and elegance of this new genre of accommodation. In those days, most travellers stayed in grubby backpacker hostels, family-run hotels in the countryside, tidy but tacky Ibis-type chains intended for businesspeople, and pretentious resort hotels for the upper classes. Every demographic had…

Raphaël Pluvinage and Marion Pinaffo turn electronic gizmos into educational games WINNERS OF THE AUDI TALENTS AWARD 2016 Papier Machine materializes and demystifies electronics. Can you elaborate? MARION PINAFFO: We wanted to demonstrate that behind the magic of today’s electronic devices is a hidden world of materials, forms and even smells. The project arose from our attempt to re-create the components of such gadgets on paper. Using basic paper compositions, we developed the concept for Papier Machine, a booklet containing a dozen electronic toys made of paper – to be cut, coloured, assembled or torn. Papier Machine is a response to the growing complexity and apparent mysticism of technology; we felt it was essential to highlight the tangible properties of intricate electronic systems. Should technology be hidden from view or…

‘FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION, but at Bulthaup that’s only half the sentence. Here we say “Form follows function that serves the people”,’ says Marc O. Eckert, CEO of Bulthaup and grandson of the company’s founder. A convincing statement, exemplified by the brand’s Milan Design Week presentation, where Bulthaup showcased innovative products that challenge the kitchen setup as we know it. ‘We use a sociocultural context to reinterpret the kitchen,’ says Eckert. ‘People come first, followed by functionality, which has to respond to our customers and their lives. A product should adapt to different living circumstances.’ That’s exactly what Bulthaup’s new offering aims to achieve. Adaptability characterizes a collection that features ergonomic counters that can be fitted with an array of modules, including a selection of hobs and taps. ‘The various functional…

SCHIAVELLO managing director Peter Schiavello has memories from early childhood of working in the company’s Melbourne factory on weekends and school holidays. The Schiavello business – which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary – was founded in 1966 by his father, Tony Schiavello, the company’s executive chair, and his uncle, Joe Schiavello, the current director of Schiavello Group. Furniture makers by trade, the brothers immigrated to Australia from Italy in the 1950s. ‘My father and his brother studied under an artisan in Italy,’ Peter Schiavello explains. ‘They really understand how to work with timber, from finding a tree in the forest and felling it, to designing and making pieces of furniture by hand.’ The brothers opened the first Schiavello showroom in the 1970s and in 1982 produced a ground-breaking prototype…

AMID THE ROLLING HILLS of Niedersachsen in Northern Germany, the production facilities of Wilkhahn rise dramatically from yellow fields of rape. Home to the office-furniture company’s factory and headquarters, these buildings aren’t quite what you’d expect of a manufacturing plant. Instead, the structures hint at Wilkhahn’s history and rich association with iconic modernist design. Realized in 1959, the administration building is the work of Herbert Hirche. One of Braun’s original designers and a student of Wassily Kandinsky and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Bauhaus, Hirche also designed a number of Wilkhahn furniture pieces. German architect Thomas Herzog is responsible for the building that houses Wilkhahn’s production facilities, while the dramatic tentlike structures that accommodate the sewing and upholstery workshops were designed by 2015 Pritzker laureate Frei Otto. The…

As the rhythm of daily life evolves at an increasingly rapid pace, hotels, restaurants, bars and business lounges will have to change, too. Architects, decorators and designers planning to attend EquipHotel, an annual hospitality fair held at Paris Porte de Versailles, will discover the latest developments in the industry while visiting Studio16, a 3,000-m2 pop-up concept spread across three floors of the venue. Depicting new ways of thinking about what a hotel should be, Studio16 is a sort of creative research lab led by French designer Thierry Virvaire. He’s been working with a group of architects, designers and hoteliers, exchanging ideas and envisioning possible applications. The goal is to stimulate debate and to find attractive solutions for contemporary design challenges. Among the participants are trendsetter Elizabeth Leriche, architect Jean-Philippe Nuel,…

Glam Jam A London bistro gleams with decadent designs by Tom Dixon. LONDON – Sitting pretty along the Strand, London’s new Bronte restaurant adds a taste of modern glamour to the capitol’s lush culinary scene. Designed by Tom Dixon and his team at the Design Research Studio, Bronte emanates a mix of lavish surfaces and materials. Highlights include a pewter cocktail bar, malachite leather banquettes, and a pink concrete breakfast bar with upholstered chairs to match. To accessorize the combination of forms, textures and colours, Dixon applied his signature penchant for industrial minimalism, hanging a bouquet of his brand’s Fade pendants from the venue’s double-height ceiling. The metallized gradation of shades that range from transparent to a warm, rich copper alludes to the heat of the kitchen, and the teardrop…

AS THE HEAD OF CORRADI, the Italian brand devoted to ‘outdoor living space’, Belgian-born CEO Raf Segers is well placed to explain the company’s international success. ‘When I was growing up in Belgium, my parents never had a sofa outdoors,’ he says. ‘These days, I know people who do. In Southern Europe, living outdoors has been around forever, but in Northern Europe it’s a much more recent thing. Now, though, the market in the north is really catching up. And this is true of both the hospitality industry and private residences.’ With its bespoke, reliably weatherproof solutions for outdoor living, Bologna-based Corradi has played a role in this development. ‘Our vision at Corradi is to transform any outdoor area into a space for living and enjoyment,’ says Segers. ‘Today, that…

AMONG THE NOVELTIES presented at this year’s Salone del Mobile, Nemo Lighting’s reissue of Le Corbusier’s Borne Béton lamp made a bold statement: brutalism is back. Designed in 1952 for the walkways of the iconic Unité d’Habitation de Marseille, the new Borne Béton is a testament to the longevity of solid principles. ‘The lamp was a trailblazer for future outdoor lighting. Its strong design is of unparalleled harmony,’ says Federico Palazzari, CEO of Nemo Lighting. ‘Le Corbusier represents the essence of modernist architectural design, to which he is what Mozart is to music, or what Shakespeare is to literature. We still keep him in mind when we design today.’ Traces of Le Corbusier’s influence on modern design can be found worldwide. Nonetheless, to Palazzari it was paramount that the reissue…

6 months was the length of time it took Rama to go from folded paper to finished product 8 is the number of steps involved in the manufacturing process, which includes welding, powder-coating, stitching and upholstering 3 is the number of prototypes Levy needed to achieve the ‘perfect’ design 12 folds and facets give Rama its origami-like form 2 eco-friendly materials – including FSC-certified wood and Palau Eco Foam – are used to give the inviting seat its shape…

Hailing from Venice, Italy, and currently based in Paris, Oscar Duboÿ is a freelance journalist specializing in the fields of architecture and design. A graduate of the prestigious Sorbonne University, Duboÿ holds a master’s degree in film studies and writes for French publications such as AD (France), Mixt(e) and L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. Duboÿ investigated EquipHotel for this issue’s Frame Lab. Patricia Casten, a portrait and fashion photographer from Melbourne, Australia, graduated from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in photography. Casten has collaborated with numerous international print and digital publications, among which Pitch Zine, Vice, i-D, Acclaim, Sicky, Teeth Magazine, Spook and Fashion Journal. Her portrait of Peter Schiavello, managing director of Australian furniture brand Schiavello, appears on page 104. Why not think about…

MECHANICAL. It’s a strange word. In this day and age, our automatic reaction is to assume that it describes an act performed with minimal human input. The official definition, however, hovers in a grey area between science and nature, as it can mean operated ‘by a machine’ as well as ‘by physical forces’. Daniel de Bruin knows this better than most, as he’s the brains behind the world’s first mechanical 3D printer, This New Technology. Not just the brains either, as the printer was built with his own hands, and the energy it uses to produce vases comes from him, too: the power is generated by manually lifting a 15-kg weight. De Bruin also developed this symbiosis between man and machine with the Neurotransmitter 3000, a 7-m-tall device of which…

Snøhetta’s location-driven Aēsop store embraces wear and tear SINGAPORE — For its fourth Aēsop store, Snøhetta was inspired by the former life of Singapore’s busy Orchard Road as a nutmeg plantation. The site’s horticultural history, coupled with an underground location, ‘spurred the concept of an upside-down forest’, says Thomas Fagernes, lead architect for the project. There was also a practical consideration, he adds: ‘We faced the challenge of overcoming the acoustic and visual impact from the mall and the surrounding stores. This saw us working with the ceiling and floor as acoustic absorbers and diffusers, and arranging the circulation to direct customers’ eyes away from the mall.’ The dark ceiling suggests the earth of the former plantation, while slender timber battens hang from the ceiling, curving through the space like tree…

NOW FIRMLY IN THE MAINSTREAM, LEDs offer many advantages, including lower energy consumption and a longer lifetime. It’s the tiny dimensions of LEDs, however, that have given impetus to some of the most interesting developments in lighting design. The latest products reveal how manufacturers are exploiting the enormous versatility of miniaturized LED light sources in modular systems that are inherently flexible and customizable. The small size of LEDs is ideal for minimalist and architectural solutions in which the light source becomes nearly invisible. The little lamp’s heat efficiency allows for high-impact effects, such as characteristically ‘floaty’ chandeliers, whose floating appearance comes from the greatly reduced need for wiring and armature thanks to LEDs’ lightness. Directional and ambient lighting can be easily united in one seamless system. Recent innovations in modular…

Witness the Matter of Motion stool in the making with the digital magazine An explorative design process uses centrifugal motion to shape one-of-a-kind stools FURNITURE – Israel-based industrial designer Maor Aharon takes production into his own hands with Matter of Motion. Aharon’s experimental making process involves casting colourful polymer resins with the use of centrifugal force and combining them with materials such as wood and metal. Guided by two main ideas – ‘freezing the moment’ and being a ‘one-man production line’ – Aharon produced a collection of stools, no two alike. The seats feature an array of shades and surfaces in novel variations, each with a distinctive character. According to the designer, the series ‘highlights the capabilities of a technique’ in which factors such as velocity and acceleration clearly influence…

STORAGE SPACE – almost nobody has enough of it. I’m the last one you’ll hear claiming that everything was better in the old days, but I clearly remember the brown-stained oak wardrobe in my grandparents’ bedroom, a large piece of furniture with three doors. On the left side were my grandma’s clothes: dresses, skirts, blouses and suits hanging from a rail and, beneath it, several shelves for her folded woollens. Two drawers held what I assume were her unmentionables, and the bottom shelf was reserved for shoes. My grandpa’s section of the wardrobe, which was behind the door to the right, was arranged in more or less the same way, but his side had a selection of neckties on the door and a drawer full of neatly pressed handkerchiefs. The…

It’s easier for people to lose their timidity and respect for art in public spaces WITH TITLES LIKE Please Touch the Art and a deceptively minimalist approach combined with sly humour, the installations of Jeppe Hein challenge the traditionally passive role of the observer. Reflective surfaces – including mirrored glass and foil, two-way mirrors and highly polished stainless steel – often play a central part in drawing the audience into his worlds and melting the boundaries between viewer, work and context. Born in Copenhagen, Hein studied art at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts and in Frankfurt. He currently lives in Berlin. When did you start using mirrors in your work, and why? JEPPE HEIN: I created my first pieces with mirror surfaces, Small Mirror Ball and Big Mirror Ball, in…

We’ll continue to work with certain furniture brands, but we will be much more selective 2009 A Year in the Making It’s safe to say that in career terms, London-based designer Benjamin Hubert hit the ground running. His self-initiated project, A Year in the Making, was a collection of ten simple yet elegant products for a slew of British and European manufacturers. Projects included the Labware series of cylindrical, mouth-blown pendant lamps for Authentics; the concrete-and-timber Heavy Desk Light for Decode; Gradient, a timber chair and table for Ercol; and terracotta Chimney lights for retailer Viaduct. Launched at 100% Design, the collection made something of a splash, giving the designer – who graduated from Loughborough University only three years earlier – an immediate profile, and allowing him to leave his…

BACKPACKING THROUGH EUROPE in need of affordable lodgings that radiate locality and design? Enjoying a stopover in Toronto with other jet-setting members of the city’s exclusive Soho House? Drooling at the thought of chicken wings or relishing the idea of haute cuisine? You can have it all amid interiors created by Toronto-based DesignAgency. Founded in 1998 by partners Allen Chan, Matt Davis and Anwar Mekhayech, the company has seen the hospitality industry undergo a series of transformations. DesignAgency’s portfolio goes beyond hospitality venues, however, to cover residential and commercial projects that represent all aspects of the interior-design spectrum. Catching Anwar Mekhayech during one of the rare moments he’s at the Toronto office – travelling in search of hidden gems is an important part of his life, which is apparent in…

COMBINING THEATRE, technology and design, Arjen Klerkx’s visually stunning sets – designed for everything from productions of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen to stand-up comedy shows – achieve dynamically layered effects through the use of projectors. It seemed only natural, therefore, for Klerkx to design Ricoh’s installation at Frame’s What’s the Matter? exhibition in Milan. We sat down with Klerkx to discuss the artistic potential of the projector. Have theatre and projectors always gone hand in hand for you? ARJEN KLERKX: Theatre came first. I studied theatrical make-up, changing later to set design and technology. Although projectors were still largely analogue back then, they always appealed to me. When I went to work at the RO Theater in Rotterdam, director Guy Cassiers encouraged me to experiment with them – and…