Design Anthology UK Issue 01

FROM THE EDITOR

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hen we were shaping our ideas for the inaugural issue of Design Anthology UK, we asked two questions: What is our point of view?

And, when there are countless other magazines covering design in Europe: Why now? The answer is fairly straightforward. As with Design Anthology, our sister publication in Asia, we believe that there is room for a new kind of considered, premium title that champions quality, beauty and innovative thinking in design, architecture, travel, art and style. We are a title to keep and refer back to, made by people who are passionate about print.

For our first issue, we compiled a shoot of objects from a wave of ethical designers who aren’t just interested in creating luxury products but in taking steps, however small, to use design as an agent for change (p32). Some of the most thought-provoking ideas centre on new materials and biodesign – from the conceptual to market-ready pieces – which use inventive composites and compounds that, if scaled up, could make a genuine difference to the environment. There is also an encouraging move to use waste plastic in product design because, in reality, a plastic-free world is out of reach. Logic says that we should instead think more creatively about reuse, and designers such as Jamie Shaw and Weez & Merl are doing so in a striking way.

Further into the issue, our first travelogue explores the Lithuanian capital Vilnius as it transforms into a mecca for art and design aficionados (p48). Its rich cultural heritage and thriving locavore food scene are just two reasons to explore its cobbled streets and baroque buildings.

We also cover some the best of residential design in the UK and Europe, such as the enchanting Parisian garret of Christophe Poyet (p68) – one half of design duo Humbert & Poyet – and the serene interiors of a beach house north of Copenhagen by Danish firm, Norm Architects (cover; p80).

Beyond that, we take a culturally engaging journey to the Engadine Valley in Switzerland (p140), home to Europe’s newest contemporary art museum, Susch, tucked into the remnants of a medieval monastery founded in 1157.

Welcome to Design Anthology UK. Elizabeth Choppin Editor-in-Chief

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MASTHEAD

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December 2018

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Choppin elizabeth@designanthologyuk.com Art Director Shazia Chaudhry production@designanthologyuk.com Sub Editor Emily Brooks Commercial Director Rebecca Harkness rebecca@designanthologyuk.com Editorial Concept Design Frankie Yuen, Blackhill Studio Text Charlotte Abrahams, Claudia Baillie, Anna Beesley, Anna Brady, Morag Bruce, Ruth Corbett, Giovanna Dunmall, Grant Gibson, Dominic Lutyens, James McLachlan, David Michon, Henriette Noermark Andersen, Emma O’Kelly, Becky Sunshine and Kate Worthington Images Francis Amiand, Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen, Mark Bolton, Alick Cotterill, Philip Durrant, Annabel Elston, Amit Geron, Stefano Graziani, Tina Hillier, Hufton + Crow, Ricardo Labougle, Joe McGorty, Kristy Noble, Giulia Piermatiri, Juan Pratginestos and Nicholas Worley Styling Clare Piper. With thanks to The New Craftsmen

Subscribe Invest in an annual subscription to receive three issues, anywhere in the world.

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Design Anthology UK is published triannually by Astrid Media Ltd hello@astridmedia.co.uk astridmedia.co.uk

Media Sales, UK and Europe Rebecca Harkness +44 7500 949434 rebecca@designanthologyuk.com Media Sales, Italy Carlo Fiorucci +39 0362 144 6000 info@fiorucci-international.com Media Sales, other regions Astrid Media sales@designanthologyuk.com Printer Park Communications Alpine Way London E6 6LA United Kingdom Reprographics Born London 90/92 Pentonville Rd London N1 9HS United Kingdom Distributors UK newsstand MMS Ltd. Europe newsstand Export Press UK / EU complimentary Global Media Hub

Hem is a Stockholm— based independent design brand creating the new generation of furniture, accessories and lighting.

Together with vanguard designers and renowned European manufacturers, Hem crafts iconic products for homes and work— places around the world.

HEM LONDON POP—UP SHOP Open until Dec 31 Coal Drops Yard Stable Street, London N1C 4AB Mon-Sat 10am— 8pm Sun 10am— 5pm

Find out more on

hem.com

CONTENTS

Front cover A seaside abode north of Copenhagen by Norm Architects. Image

by Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen.

See p80

Radar

Journey

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Products Collections and collaborations of note

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Openings New showrooms and retail hotspots in Paris and London

Hotel openings New design-centric destinations to explore, in Europe and beyond

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Travelogue, Vilnius Lithuania’s capital city is small but mighty when it comes to design nous

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Boutique aparthotels Locke, the hospitality group leading the aparthotel movement

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Hotel, Tel Aviv John Pawson makes his mark on a historic landmark with The Jaffa

24 Read Delve into a selection of books on design, architecture and interiors 26

Design profile Radnor, the Brooklyn-based brand working with European talent

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Restaurant, London Highly regarded design duo Sella Concept’s south London eatery, Piraña

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Design innovation Meet the new materialists: designers making work from waste materials, composites – and even bacteria

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Q&A Design Anthology UK speaks to Natsai Audrey Chieza about biodesign

Home 68

Elevated stature Christophe Poyet’s eclectic apartment, with rooftop-skimming Parisian views

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Ode to nature Norm Architects’ “soft minimalism” played out in a seaside Danish house

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Quietly confident Sculptural shapes and tactile surfaces in a Georgian apartment in Mayfair

102 Fully formed Fran Hickman creates a Notting Hill home for a couple with divergent tastes

The new materialists Shot at Mayfair’s The New Craftsmen, an assemblage of products made from conventiondefying materials. See p32 to read the full story

112 Urban retreat Art provides the creative starting point for an apartment by Sophie Ashby 120 Calm & composed A restored and extended London home with a cocooning sense of warmth

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CONTENTS

Art + Collecting

Style

130 Diary The most compelling art and design events for the coming months

176 Most wanted A compilation of clothes and accessories that are beautiful, thoughtful and good

140 Switzerland How the picturesque Engadine valley is disrupting contemporary art 148 Studio glass Laura McKinley balances playfulness and skill in her latest collection 152 Profile The career of “design art” champion David Gill is traced in a new biography

Architecture

184 Profile Fashion designer Edeline Lee’s structured yet feminine style

Pioneer 192 Athos Bulcão The modernist artist whose tilework brought a refreshing irregularity to Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasilia

156 Photo essay Eerily quiet, the disused St Maarten’s hospital in Belgium before its temporary reuse as a design venue 166 V&A Dundee Kengo Kuma looks to local geology for his cliff-like Scottish museum 170 Royal Opera House The architectural evolution of a venerable London institution

Fit for real life Design Anthology UK shot fashion designer Edeline Lee in her light-filled Hackney studio. See p184 to read the full story

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A space where curious minds meet for meaningful conversations.

N O RN . C O |

@NORN.CO

Lundhs Real Stone’s tabletop collection. Read the full story on p20

R ADAR Global design news

R ADAR / Products

SP01 Furniture company SP01 may be based in Australia, but it works with an international roster of designers – and every piece is made in Italy. Milanese studio Metrica designed SP01’s first-ever collection in 2016, and has now expanded on those concepts with new armchairs, desks, stools and a sofa. Pictured is Yee, a modular storage system: its starting point is a steel-framed flat bench with a slatted timber top, on to which additional elements can be attached, including upright sections for concealing cables. sp01design.com

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Foscarini Five classic lighting designs from Foscarini have been given a colour-conscious makeover. The Be/ Colour collection was launched at an immersive installation at Shoreditch gallery OneRoom during the London Design Festival; the venue featured the products over three floors, with each floor given a very different look. Bright new colour combinations include Ionna Vautrin’s Binic table lamp in marine green and ocean blue (pictured), and Marc Sadler’s Twiggy floor light in rose and orange. foscarini.com

Tiipoi The brutalist concrete infrastructure of India is the unlikely inspiration for these Siment planters and vases, made in Mumbai by London-based Tiipoi.

Charming, but possessing a certain urban grit, they are based on designs for water towers and the piers for flyovers, which have been downsized without losing crisp details such as pipework, ladders and other architectural features. They look as good on their own as they do embellished with some flora. tiipoi.com

Joyce Wang Studio Terrazzo is definitely the material of the moment, and designers are exploring its creative possibilities beyond its traditional use as a covering for floors and walls. Interior design firm Joyce Wang Studio has launched Flint, a collection of furniture and objects that brings a sense of refinement to the material, with flowing sculptural shapes and furniture joints that have been highlighted with strips of inlaid brass. Playful and tactile, they’re made in Italy by a third-generation terrazzo specialist. flint.joycewang.com

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The Urban Electric Company The Hedges wall light was designed with a specific use in mind – the slim spaces sitting either side of a powder-room vanity mirror, which are often too narrow for a statement fitting. It was designed by Michael Amato, creative director of Charlestonbased Urban Electric Company, a firm that’s been at the forefront of the recent revival of American manufacturing and craftsmanship. A newly opened London studio means that its products will be more widely available in the UK for the first time. urbanelectricco.com

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House of Grey Spread across two north London houses, House of Grey’s shoppable pop-up for the London Design Festival, In the Neighbourhood, demonstrated how retail doesn’t have to be sterile. The interior design firm curated a space full of covetable furniture, art and accessories, with an emphasis on handcrafted, natural materials. House of Grey is the exclusive UK representative for some of the brands shown, including Sydney designer Henry Wilson, whose travertine light is pictured on Frama’s Sintra table. houseofgrey.co.uk

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Stitch by Stitch Harnessing the dexterity of artisan textile-makers in India and Nepal, Stitch by Stitch blends ancient skills with a modern eye for design. Most of its ethically sourced products have a natural look, such as this Makalu Radhi rug, which is made from undyed Himalayan sheep’s wool. Its gently diffused appearance is achieved by washing the rug in hot water to felt the wool, so it’s cosy underfoot as well as durable. It’s shown here alongside a Chindi cotton quilt, handmade in Gujarat. stitchbystitch.eu

Ha’ Founded in Hasami, one of Japan’s most highly regarded regions for making porcelain, Ha’ offers a contemporary take on a 400-year-old industry.

British designer Sebastian Bergne is at the helm, and has created Tuba, a family of U-shaped twinvessel vases that can be used for cut flowers, pots or a mixture of both. Equally characterful are his Fruit vases, which resemble a ripe peach or apple, and are designed to hold a single leafy stem. haporcelain.com

Benchmark “We believe that some furniture pieces need to be of a more calm and silent nature,” say Signe Bindslev Henriksen and Peter Bundgaard Rützou of Space Copenhagen, designers of Benchmark’s Muse sofa.

While it’s comfortable for lounging, the sofa’s minimal look and barely visible upholstery seams are intended to draw more attention to the grain of the timber. The design has several configurations: it’s available with integrated side tables on one or both sides, and with or without arms. benchmarkfurniture.com

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Bohinc Studio Lara Bohinc’s Solar chair explores a cosmic theme, something of a recurring subject matter for the Slovenian-born, London-based designer. With an asymmetric but perfectly balanced linear frame, it echoes the sweeping circles of planetary orbits, while the hemispheric upholstery in powder-pink wool recalls a vivid setting sun while amplifying the piece’s feminine appearance. Solar is part of a collection of three chairs made in collaboration with creative consultancy Matter of Stuff. bohincstudio.com / matterofstuff.com

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Swedish Ninja A riposte to the homogenous reputation of some Scandinavian design, Swedish Ninja was founded to bring something more unexpected to the table.

Its Brick candle-holders were designed by Malmรถbased Jenny Nordberg, and are made from cast glass components with the same dimensions as traditional masonry blocks. It gives them a familiarity and an architectural quality, while retaining some of the DNA of classic Swedish art glass. swedishninja.com

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Another Country This ash daybed is a collaboration between furniture company Another Country and architecture studio Ekkist, whose remit is to design buildings that enhance health and wellbeing – a subject with a growing band of supporters. It’s part of a collection called Ori, named after Ekkist’s conceptual Ori House, whose design and materials are natural, sustainable and aimed at maximising wellbeing.

The daybed’s slim mattress is made from organic coir with recycled wool upholstery. anothercountry.com

Lundhs Real Stone Better known for its robustly beautiful worktops, Lundhs Real Stone has launched Essence, a limitededition collection of complementary tabletop items.

Chunky, curvy boards, vases, trays and a pestle and mortar have been created in collaboration with design duo Jenkins & Uhnger, introducing brass and timber to the mix, alongside the distinctive Norwegian stone that Lundhs has been quarrying for more than 50 years. lundhsrealstone.com

CC-Tapis Launched at Belgium’s Biennale Interieur show, CC-Tapis’ five new rugs showcase the brand’s talent for creative collaboration and bold experimentation.

Ultimate Bliss (pictured), by Dutch designer Mae Engelgeer, was inspired by the graphic chutzpah of the Memphis movement and features cotton, wool and silk in a variety of pile heights, creating a multi-dimensional effect. A further highlight is Fay Toogood’s Dabble design, which features an abstract pattern overlaid with stitched lines. cc-tapis.com

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1882 Ltd Design insiders keep an eye on the Stoke-on-Trent ceramics brand 1882 Ltd, to see which top-flight name it will work with next. This time around it’s Bethan Gray, known for her use of intricate pattern and luxurious materials, both of which are evident in her Lustre tableware, made from fine bone china decorated with decals of 24-carat gold, finished with hand-gilded details. A smart black and white stripe can be mixed with a more fluid pattern inspired by the billowing sails of a Middle Eastern dhow.

1882ltd.com

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RADAR / Openings

La Chance, Paris When French furniture brand La Chance stormed on to the design scene in 2012, it presented a collection that made waves for its daring material combinations and decorative heart. Pieces like the Magnum table by Pierre Favresse or Note Design Studio’s Bolt stool became instant classics. Over the following years the La Chance ethos hasn’t changed, says co-founder Jean-Baptiste Souletie: “There is no concept behind our pieces – you instantly understand what it is and you either like it or you don’t. We don’t require subtitles.”

Working with international design talent like Jonah Takagi, Nathalie du Pasquier and Luca Nichetto, La Chance has, over its short life, accumulated a cohesive family of furniture, accessories and lighting. It was high time for a bigger and better showroom, says Souletie, which is why the brand has recently opened a new space in Paris’ 11th arrondissement. True to form, La Chance opted to go its own way and has set up shop in an unexpected part of the city: its new home is the former Loebnitz earthenware factory, designed in 1884 by architect Paul Sédille. You can’t miss it: the building’s exterior features decorative ceramic panels that had once adorned the Fine Arts Pavilion of the World Exhibition of 1878. lachance.paris

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RADAR / Openings

Meridiani, London Who doesn’t enjoy a little art alongside their furniture? At its South Kensington showroom, Italian design brand Meridiani has collaborated with contemporary art gallery Marco Rossi to display works for sale by a rotating roster of artists, including Roberta Savelli and Franco Guerzoni, complementing its furniture, textiles and accessories. The idea is that these tableaux will explore how art and design can coexist. meridiani.it

Coal Drops Yard, London The long-anticipated Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross – a 19th-century coal depot reimagined as a retail hub by Heatherwick Studio – has opened its doors with an eye-watering index of brands including Aesop, Caravane, Margaret Howell and COS. The latter’s multi-use space features its own collections as well as a rota of artist collaborations, the first of which is a sitespecific work by Paul Cocksedge (pictured). coaldropsyard.com

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RADAR / Read

Drawing Architecture

New Design

“Throughout history, architects have relied on drawings both to develop ideas and communicate their vision to the world.” This is the essence of Drawing Architecture, an elegant collection of more than 250 architectural drawings spanning centuries to the present day.

Each architect’s process and personality are explored, with sketches and renderings ranging from the intricately detailed to the simplistic; built projects to concepts and ideas; and the acclaimed names to the lesser known. Thomas draws connections between architecture from vastly different historical periods and schools of thought – from Michelangelo to Gehry, Louise Bourgeois to Tadao Ando, Grafton Architects to Luis Barragán. The result is a love note to the art of architecture and an exploration of a particular facet of its history.

Although Dutch painter Piet Mondrian was not an active member of the Bauhaus, his name is often associated with the legendary art school, which in 2019 commemorates 100 years since its founding. In this re-edition, printed for the first time in English as a standalone book, Mondrian ponders the “figurative expression of human existence” and the concept of New Design in its various forms. A prolific art theorist until his death in 1944, Mondrian also dissects the hierarchy between painting and architecture, and tackles neoplasticism (the reduction of art down to simple components, such as his own canvases of coloured squares and rectangles). The text was originally edited

by Bauhaus School founder Walter Gropius with graphics by László Moholy-Nagy – a design and art enthusiast’s dream.

by Helen Thomas (Phaidon)

by Piet Mondrian (Lars Müller Publishers)

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RADAR / Read

Rabih Hage: Quiet Architecture

The Alchemy of Things: Interiors Shaped by Curious Minds

by Dominic Bradbury (Lund Humphries)

by Karen McCartney (Murdoch Books)

This monograph celebrates the highly revered Rabih Hage, the Beirut-born, London-based interior designer and architect. Illustrated with photographs, drawings and sketches, the title gives a comprehensive survey of Hage’s quiet kind of glamour and the subtle ways in which he has pushed boundaries in his work, from London townhouses to sprawling farmhouse escapes; he is particularly passionate about thoughtfully adapting older buildings to suit modern lives. Hage speaks to author Dominic Bradbury about how he develops each project and the considered details that have become his signature: from bespoke glass and steel screens at a home in The Boltons in South Kensington to the bold use of Ian McKeever artwork in a Manhattan townhouse or a sculptural staircase within a bright Parisian flat.

Karen McCartney explores the homes of 18 global creatives who take a less conventional approach to interiors. The Alchemy of Things is concerned with the place where eccentricity and whimsy meet curation; rich layers of personal history and oddity come together for a visual essay on the joie de vivre of this group of artists, architects, interior designers, stylists, collectors, gallerists, furniture designers and vintage retailers. These diverse contributors hail from Australia, the UK, the US and Europe, and many have agreed to open their homes for the first time for this book. Each one is afforded a dedicated chapter accented by exquisite photography and McCartney’s poignant observation, which helps bring into focus the fount of creativity that inspired these fascinating design schemes.

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RADAR / Design profile

Open dialogue

The Brooklyn design brand fusing homegrown manufacturing with European talent

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y most standards, the contemporary design scene in the US has gone from strength to strength over the last half decade. In furniture, accessories and lighting in particular, a spate of Brooklyn-based studios is arguably leading the global pack in terms of experimentation and expressive design. But however often we see boutique European brands commissioning talent from around the world, rarely do their American equivalents look beyond their own borders to find designers to collaborate with.

However, Susan Clark, founder of US retailer and manufacturer Radnor, is an exception.

Radnor’s work can currently be explored at Material Interiors, a show that takes over an apartment at The Bryant, a residential tower in midtown Manhattan designed by David Chipperfield. It showcases a muted, soulful collection of meticulously handmade furniture, lighting and homewares from a menagerie of both European and American designer-makers, all of which have been carefully assembled by Clark. Known US names, including furniture

by Egg Collective and lighting by Workstead, are complemented by pieces from textile designers Oyyo and artisan woodworker Marie

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Words Elizabeth Choppin Images Matthew Williams

RADAR / Design profile

Right Top to bottom: Mae bed by Adam Rogers, Tower Pendant I

by Workstead and a Halyard rug

by Bunn Studio; Pillar chair in bleached maple, by Bunn Studio Facing page Mae shelving unit, with Mae desk and Pillar chair. The wall-hung weaving is by Oyyo

Eklund, both from Sweden. They are all part of Radnor Represented, an initiative where designers fabricate work themselves and are helped to market through the brand.

The show also marks the inaugural collection of Radnor Made, which is the manufacturing arm of Clark’s business and creates exclusive, limited-edition product lines. Among the new pieces are the Pillar chair and a series of textiles called Halyard by Denmark’s Bunn Studio, a husband-and-wife team that had worked for European brands like Søren Rose Studio and Kvadrat before joining forces. Pillar is a perfect marriage of Scandinavian design sensibility and American craftsmanship: each bleachedmaple chair is handcrafted by Pennsylvanian Mennonites, and then finished with mohair upholstery. “We were quite specific in our selection of production partners, and they’re the best woodworkers out there,” says Clark.

Choosing designers to collaborate on Radnor Made lines is also done very carefully, says Clark: “If they don’t know how to fabricate or they don’t have a respect for material and ergonomics, then our conversations typically don’t get very far. Whereas with Bunn, our conversations from the start were joinerydriven. Within a year I could produce the product because they already understood how things are made and how the material works.

So they’re designing the aesthetic but they’re also designing with the fabrication in mind.”

Material Interiors is open until May 2019. radnor.co

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RADAR / Restaurant, London

Extra-experiential

Sella Concept’s interiors for London eatery Piraña overspill with colour and character

Words Emma O’Kelly Images Nicholas Worley

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eaving together influences from Lisbon shop fronts, Parisian zinc bars, 1970s San Francisco and Irish snugs could, in most people’s hands, result in the visual equivalent of school-dinner slop. But Gayle Noonan and Tatjana von Stein, who together make up London design studio Sella Concept, are not most people. And on their watch, these seemingly random references blend elegantly together to create south London’s buzzy new South American restaurant, Piraña.

With its facade of blue and white tiles, red metal windows and retro signage, Piraña stands out on an otherwise drab and traffic-heavy street near Balham tube. It’s the latest arrival in this emerging foodie hotspot, offering a mashup of dishes from across the continent, from Argentinian rib eye and Brazilian feijoada to the ubiquitous chicharrónes and empanadas.

Facing page Sella Concept’s Gayle Noonan (left) and Tatjana von Stein (right)

“While the food concept touches on South American cuisine, our brief was to create somewhere with no particular cultural references,” says von Stein. To this end, the pair delved into their vast visual scrapbook, dug out the aforementioned inspirations and custom-made everything from the jade terrazzo basins to the red suede banquettes.

They also sourced furniture with a mid-century feel on vintage websites and in markets. “Places fall down on furniture,” says von Stein. “Why add 50 of the same chairs? You build character through variety, and if someone has spent time considering the space, you need to think carefully about what goes into it.”

Piraña’s budget was under £300,000, and looking at the chef ’s table, the curtained snug (reminiscent of the Irish pubs that Noonan

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grew up with) the curvaceous cocktail bar and the speakeasy-style back room, it’s hard to disagree with von Stein when she says “I think we are good at making things look expensive.”

Alastair Heathcote, who co-owns Piraña with his brother Nicholas, adds: “We had a good idea of where we were going with the concept but needed a good design eye to differentiate us from the boring styles of many established tapas restaurants.” The brothers have something of a Midas touch when it comes to creating fashionable eateries with highly Instagrammable decor. Their Indianinspired cocktail den, The Imperial Durbar, and Himalayan haunt, The Hill Station (both in Tooting) as well as Dalston tapas joint La Cabina, are go-to nightspots.

They met von Stein and Noonan through a designer friend and were familiar with their interiors for Omar’s Place, a Mediterraneaninspired restaurant in Pimlico, and Night Tales, a Bacchanalian hangout that brings together kushiyaki-style Japanese grill, a pizza parlour, a prosecco shack and Mexican mezcal under a railway arch in Hackney.

Von Stein and Noonan apply their same magpie’s eye to their own personal style, mixing vintage finds, niche pieces and bigname labels. In 2015, the pair met at the (now defunct) concept store Clerkenwell London, which offered a fresh mix of fashion, furniture, jewellery, fragrances and a restaurant. Von Stein was curator and Noonan, who trained as a graphic designer, took care of the space.

“God, she would spend three hours styling up the stationery table,” laughs von Stein, who admits that Noonan’s forensic eye for detail

RADAR / Restaurant, London

is both a blessing and a curse. They became partners in life and work and went on to create a colourful cafe and co-working space within the De Beauvoir Block – a converted Edwardian building that houses 26 creative businesses in Hackney (Alexa Chung’s fashion label is among the residents).

This autumn, the pair married “under a tree and on top of a mountain” in Andalusia.

Von Stein grew up in Thiersee, a Tyrolean mountain village in Austria, and remembers going to school on a sleigh, and Noonan is

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from County Tipperary. A love of nature is a shared passion, and their backgrounds supply a cultural mix that brings its own inspirations.

“We are 50/50 on everything,” says Noonan, who created Piraña’s signage, menus and stationery and oversaw all aspects of the fit out, while von Stein bursts with entrepreneurial energy, rattling off zeitgeisty observations on everything from retail to crafts. On street markets, she says: “Show me one good clothing market in London these days”; on concept stores: “A shop with a coffee machine in it is

RADAR / Restaurant, London

not a concept store”; on artisans: “Why are all their workshops outside London? They need platforms beyond the occasional pop-up.”

These insights have drawn big brands eager to seduce millennial audiences. In the pipeline is a boutique hotel and members club in Lisbon and boutiques for Kate Spade in New York and Tokyo. “Cafes, retail, music – they are all merging under one roof,” says Noonan. “Shops have to have a lifestyle element rather than just being a place you walk through and buy, buy, buy. There has to be a sense of discovery,

an extension of the brand.” The Kate Spade stores, Sella’s first non-UK projects, will need to satisfy the whims of American and Japanese shoppers and will, they admit, be a challenge.

They currently do everything themselves, from construction drawings to finished products, but that may change as projects stream in.

Increasingly, brainstorming sessions take place on long-haul flights. “For now, we are happy to stay small and boutique and our clients like that,” says Noonan, “but two-and-a-half years in, we’re still sorting out our work/life balance.”

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Above Piraña ditches the usual design tropes associated with South American restaurants and opts for a colourful and convivial retro style instead

The new materialists

Experimental and innovative objects, where style meets substance Images / Kristy Noble Styling / Clare Piper

RADAR / Design innovation

Previous page On floor, left to right: table made from Marwoolus by Marco Guazzini, from Mint (mintshop. co.uk); Totomoxtle vase by Fernando Laposse (fernandolaposse.com); Perception cup by Valeria Sergieko for Nome Design, from Mint (as before); Quinta vase by Marco Guazzini, from Galleria Luisa delle Piane (gallerialuisadellepiane.it); Perception cup by Valeria Sergieko for Nome Design, from Mint (as before); vessel by Charlotte Kidger (charlottekidger.com); table

by Charlotte Kidger (as before), topped with coasters by Weez & Merl (weezandmerl.com); Plastic Baroque candlestick by Jamie Shaw (jamesmichaelshaw.co.uk); Hot Wire Extensions stool by Studio Ilio (studio-ilio.com). Back row, left to

right: Pilotis console by Malgorzata Bany, from The New Craftsmen (thenewcraftsmen.com); vessel by Charlotte Kidger (as before); fabric dyed with bacterial pigment by Faber Futures (faberfutures.com); newspaper tableware by Hyun-Jin Son, from Mint (as before) Facing page Left to right: Perception cups by Valeria Sergieko for Nome Design, made from a variety of waste materials including denim, leather, paper, plastic, rubber, styrofoam and glass; Quinta vase by Marco Guazzini, made from Marwoolus (a mix of marble dust and textile offcuts); Totomoxtle vase by Fernando la Posse, veneered with maize husks; coasters by Weez & Merl, made from recycled plastic

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ew materials are high on the agenda in the design world, with a steady groundswell of new ideas – from young talent in particular – dissecting what products are made from and, in many cases, experimenting with the reuse of industrial waste. At this year’s London Design Festival, some of the most impactful pieces at the shows were made from reused plastic or innovative composites. And they didn’t just tell a compelling story – they were beautiful, too, often in unearthly ways.

In this spirit of innovation, Design Anthology UK has gathered some of the most striking examples of furniture, accessories and textiles that are challenging convention. Many take waste products as their starting point: Charlotte Kidger’s vessels and tables, made from the dust created by CNC machines; Studio Ilio’s stools, which use nylon powder left over from 3D printing; Jamie Shaw’s Plastic Baroque collection, created by firing waste plastic from

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an extruding gun; marbled plastic coasters from Weez & Merl; and Hyun-Jin Son’s tabletop pieces comprised of old newspapers.

Marco Guazzini’s Marwoolus is made from marble dust and wool offcuts, while Valeria Sergieko has experimented with everything from styrofoam to glass for her Perception cups for Nome Design. For serious sensuality, look to Malgorzata Bany’s furniture cast in Jesmonite (a non-toxic gypsum-based resin) or Fernando Laposse’s vases, which are veneered with maize husks. Finally, biodesigner Natsai Audrey Chieza has created textile dye that uses far less water and petrochemicals than is the norm: see p38 to read more about her work.

These are exceptional pieces in their own right, but just as important is that they are a force for good – whether because they minimise or recycle waste, use sustainable harvest methods or incorporate inventive material compounds that will benefit all of us in the long run.

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Facing page Clockwise from top: fabric dyed with bacterial pigment by Faber Futures, and vessels by Charlotte Kidger, made from waste polyurethane foam dust from CNC fabrication; table made from Marwoolus by Marco Guazzini and coasters by Weez & Merl; Hot Wire Extensions stool, made from waste from 3D printing, by Studio Ilio, and tableware by Hyun-Jin Son, made from recycled newspaper

Above Pilotis side tables made from Jesmonite (a gypsum-based resin)

by Malgorzata Bany, from The New Craftsmen (as before); Plastic Baroque candlesticks, made from recycled, extruded polyethylene,

by Jamie Shaw

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RADAR / Q&A

Natsai Audrey Chieza

Can biotechnology create better, more sustainable materials for the masses?

Design Anthology UK asks the founder of Faber Futures about “the next industrial revolution”

Can you tell us about Faber Futures’ mission?

Faber Futures is a London-based biodesign lab and consultancy, working at the intersection of design and biology. We are interested in synthetic biology and how it is enabling the next industrial revolution. What that means is, with emerging tools and technologies, we can engineer organisms that have new capabilities – capabilities they would otherwise not have in nature. This is an interesting opportunity to look at how we might bridge what biology does best in nature with the needs that we, as human beings, have on this planet. Biology potentially enables us to start to manufacture in more sustainable ways – from textiles to the built environment.

You have been developing environmentally friendly, bacteria-based dyes – can this science be applied commercially, in a real way, in the design and fashion industries?

I think there are really good examples of how this is starting to emerge. We’ve been using petrochemicals for the last hundred years or so to make pretty much everything. And when we are faced with climate change and our need to divest from fossil fuels, people focus on energy

alternatives. They don’t immediately think about where new materials will come from.

So what are some of the real benefits to the environment if biotechnology is introduced to making pigment for textiles, for example?

When Faber Futures integrated Streptomyces coelicolor [a soil-dwelling, pigment-producing bacteria] into our design process to dye textiles, we need 500 times less water than is ordinarily used to manufacture textiles and without any of the harmful chemicals that we normally use to fix pigment to fibres. You can start off with a microbe that naturally produces a pigment compound as we have, but there’s still an important question around how this naturally occurring phenomena might be scaled into a production system and what kind of environmental benefits there are from that.

So how do you industrialise it?

That is where synthetic biology comes in – because to industrialise something you need to standardise it, you need to understand it better so that you can maintain a certain level of yield, and so that it can start to compete with the prices of petrochemicals, which is an important

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As told to Elizabeth Choppin

RADAR / Q&A

factor that can determine the mass adoption of alternatives. What synthetic biologists will do is engineer this organism and optimise it to reliably create a high-performance product.

How? What’s involved in that process?

Synthetic biology takes engineering principles and applies them to biology, enabling us to assemble artificial biological systems that can be programmed to exhibit specific behaviours, like the production of molecules and compounds.

You could scale up an engineered yeast for example, to produce a pigment. We already know how to scale up fermentation because we brew beer, it’s just a matter of changing what that organism is producing. In this case, it’s pigment for the textile dye industry.

Can it be as specific as directing the organism to produce a certain colour of pigment?

Using advanced tools to read and write DNA, synthetic biology is opening up the possibility for us not only to programme new pigments to expand a colour palette but potentially other useful features in the context of textile design that could also be programmed in to the cell.

Is the bigger benefit of this process how much water it saves, or is it the fact that it cuts back on harmful chemicals?

It’s both. It’s so rare that we have any processes that do one of those things, let alone both at the same time. Our next wars are going to be fought over water, so it’s not a throwaway phenomenon that we have something here that is freeing up huge amounts of water and reducing the need for toxic chemicals as well.

These are the kinds of solutions that we need to start building up.

Have you had interest from any organisations that can really get behind this financially and do something bigger with it?

We’re working with apparel brands that need these technologies to scale and so it’s understanding how our methods fit within their context, and finding out how they need

to reconfigure their production models so that biology can fit within theirs.

There is also work to be done to bridge the science with societal needs and expectation, as well as creating an understanding of where it makes sense to deploy this technology.

What about the design industry, has there been any interest there? Do you think that biodesign can affect the design industry?

Yes, there has been some interest in our work from the design industry but it’s mainly been fashion and apparel. I think that synthetic biology is going to transform the entire design industry – it’s the next technological frontier.

In the same way that digital created a paradigm shift for design, biology is about to do the same.

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Textiles dyed with bacteria. The petrochemicalfree method uses 500 times less water than standard dying

The Jaffa, a new hotel for Tel Aviv. Read the full story on p60 Image by Amit Geron

JOURNEY Distinctive destinations

JOURNEY / Openings

New hotels

Unique places to stay, in destinations of note

Istoria, Santorini With a classic and contemporary blend of aesthetics, this luxury 12-suite retreat on Perivolos Beach is as rooted in the past as it is in the present. Its design is an eclectic impression of Mediterranean influences with rustic textures and decorative accents. The

hotel’s main restaurant, a 40-cover eatery led by Noma alumnus Alexandros Tsiotinis, serves up modern Greek and Mediterranean cuisine. designhotels.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

Stamba Hotel, Tbilisi It quietly opened earlier this year with 41 guest rooms, but Georgia’s newest design hotel, Stamba, has now officially launched with over 150 rooms for intrepid explorers of the Caucasus. Capturing the dynamism of contemporary Tbilisi, Stamba is housed in one of the city’s 20th-century landmarks – a former publishing house where original features, including old printing paraphernalia, have been imaginatively restored for a unique, sensorial experience. Gilded, freestanding brass bathtubs and a “living lobby” with foliage crawling up five floors of the central atrium add to the off-beat grandeur.

On the ground floor, Stamba’s Chocolaterie & Roastery, focused on a bean-to-bar (or bean-tocup) concept, completes the hotel’s epicurean edit.

Design Hotels

designhotels.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

Sir Victor, Barcelona The Sir Hotels group is bringing its particular brand of edgy glamour to Barcelona with Sir Victor, set to open in early 2019 in the heart of the city’s modernist district on Passeig de Gràcia. The sixth boutique property within the Sir portfolio, it will take up residence in an iconic building originally designed by local practice Capella Garcia, with a rooftop terrace overlooking landmarks Sagrada Familia and Casa Milà. The hotel, named after revered Catalan author Victor Català, will feature local artists including Muntadas and Alfons Borrell, and will launch the Sir Explore programme – an initiative connecting guests with in-the-know locals for bespoke adventures. sirhotels.com

Rockwell East, London The latest player in the aparthotel movement – where home comforts meet room service – is the slick and sexy Rockwell East, an outpost in London’s financial district and sister to The Rockwell in Kensington. With interiors by renowned practice Waldo Works, Rockwell East is an oasis in a part of the capital not exactly revered for its contemporary design scene. Apartments and studios range from £150 per night and there’s an elegant ground-floor cafe and bar open from 9am to midnight.

Rafael Vargas

rockwelleast.com

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Akshay Sharma

JOURNEY / Openings

The Kumaon, Almora, India This mountain retreat is perched on a ridge in the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary above Almora – an ancient Indian city that has attracted the likes of Bob Dylan, Timothy Leary and DH Lawrence in its time. Designed in a tropical modernist style by architects Pradeep Kodikara and Jineshi

Samaraweera of Sri Lankan practice Zowa, this is monastic glamour personified. Its calming vistas, luxury suites, library and sun terrace are set up to provide lasting sanctuary for busy urbanites. thekumaon.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

Heckfield Place, Hampshire A grand Georgian beauty nestled on a Hampshire estate, Heckfield Place is a restored country pile that design aficionados will gladly retreat to. The line-up is hugely impressive: Skye Gyngell (of Spring and Petersham Nurseries fame) is overseeing the hotel’s three restaurants, and the interiors are by Studioilse’s former director, Ben Thompson. Referencing the house’s 250-year history, he has reimagined the 47-room hotel through the use of natural materials, antiques and considered, handmade pieces. heckfieldplace.com

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Old town, new tricks

A small city with a rich design scene, the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius has creativity at its core Words / Kate Worthington

Saulius Ziura

JOURNEY / Travelogue, Lithuania

L

ithuania has had a big year in 2018. It marked 100 years since the country was re-established as a democratic state after over a century of Russian imperial rule. Which means it also marked a century of Lithuanian design, as with independence comes a new visual identity (new flag, new currency, new postage stamps – the list goes on). It would fall under occupation twice more before finally becoming fully independent in 1991. So perhaps it’s this tumultuous past under the rule of others that gives the country’s capital, Vilnius, its proudly independent spirit and youthful, vibrant arts scene today. One hundred years on from its watershed moment, Vilnius is celebrating with a flurry of creativity and establishing itself as a design destination in the process.

Design Hotels

Walk around the city’s historic centre – made a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1994 – and you’ll quickly notice the refreshing absence of the global coffee chains and fast-food outlets that are so abundant in most European cities and towns. But Vilnius is no quaint old town preserved in aspic – this is a place of contrasts. Renaissance, baroque, gothic and modern buildings rub shoulders, while Burberry and Max Mara share a street with stall holders selling hand-knitted mittens and carved wooden toys. Chintzy traditional restaurants sit next to craft beer dens (there’s now a sizeable brewing scene here) and oldfashioned stationers neighbour sleek concept stores. There’s a sense that behind all the grandeur and wedding-cake-like baroque facades, there’s something more going on – and it makes wandering the city’s cobbled streets all the more intriguing.

In the heart of the pastel-hued Old Town, with its charming avenues and ornate churches, Hotel Pacai is fast becoming a hub of Vilnius’ cultural new wave. Opened in May, the 104room hotel is the Baltics’ first Design Hotel and is a celebration of Lithuanian art, design and culinary talents. Housed in a palace built in 1677 for the city’s influential Pacai family, the building has been sensitively restored by a team of local architects and designers with the aim of celebrating its illustrious history – which includes a visit by Napoleon, no less.

Above Hotel Pacai, the first Design Hotel in the Baltics, occupies a baroque former palace in the Old Town Facing page In one of Hotel Pacai’s bedrooms, artfully faded original frescoes contrast with contemporary furniture

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Design Hotels

“Vilnius is no quaint old town preserved in aspic – this is a place of contrasts”

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“Every bar, cafe, boutique and gallery seems to be doing its own thing, gloriously free-spirited and flying in the face of convention”

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JOURNEY / Travelogue, Lithuania

The palace was originally decorated by the Italian architects, painters, and sculptors that worked on the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Antakalnis in Vilnius, a masterpiece of Lithuanian baroque. Throughout the airy rooms and high-ceilinged corridors, original frescoes and murals have been restored fragment by fragment and left exposed, while sculpture and artefacts uncovered in the renovations (some of them by surprise) have been artfully woven into the interior scheme.

Each room is different, with a restful, neutral palette of dark and light shades accented by luxe materials – marble-swathed bathrooms, polished parquet, brass – alongside paintings by local artists (the hotel also runs a programme of exhibitions in its events spaces). Downstairs, the public areas have a moodier, cosier feel, with inky walls, brass statement lighting and low-slung velvet couches.

It’s here that two “new Baltic” food concepts have been creating a buzz, with locals and guests flocking to experience the culinary exploits of the hotel’s brasserie, 14 Horses (located in what was once the palace’s stables) and Nineteen18, a fine-dining tasting menu concept that showcases Baltic cuisine – the name another reminder of the year the country found independence. Claus Meyer, co-founder of Copenhagen’s Noma, has invested in both venues, and the influence of the Nordic food movement can be found in the focus on local and seasonal ingredients and the surprising reinvention of culinary traditions.

Another groundbreaker at the vanguard of Vilnius’s food scene is Sweet Root, in the bohemian Užupis district. Opened four years ago, it also champions local and seasonal ingredients, many of which are foraged or grown in its own gardens. The seven-course tasting menu is aptly described as a fairytale – there’s certainly magic happening in the kitchen. Unexpected combinations such as patty pan squash, kohlrabi, apple and wild stonecrop challenge received definitions of sweet and savoury and keep diners on their toes. Each guest is presented with a list of ingredients that will feature in the meal in

some form, plus a pencil, encouraging diners to tick off the components they think they’re eating in each course. The menu is not only an ode to ingredients, but a celebration of the farmers, foragers and growers too – they’re all name-checked on the menu, reminding guests about the provenance of their food.

Separated from the old town by the river, Užupis is a self-proclaimed “mini republic” and it’s here that Vilnius’ undercurrent of creativity bubbles to the surface. There’s a tangible makeit-yourself attitude here – every bar, cafe, boutique and gallery seems to be doing its own thing, gloriously free-spirited and flying in the face of convention. On the same street as Sweet Root you’ll find boutiques stocking designs by local names, second-hand book stores, out-there street art and the odd artist’s studio. Look out for Šušop, which offers an edit of footwear, accessories and scent by carefully selected European brands. Across the road, Užupio Keturiolika is a concept store with a capsule collection of minimalist womenswear and homewares, with an emphasis on quality materials and craftsmanship – think handmade cotton shirts and cashmere knits.

Vilnius is proud of its homegrown talent, and rightly so. With a population of only half a million, the city is small, but its rich arts scene and high proportion of creative minds at work give it the energy of a much bigger city. Yet up to now, it’s been somewhat of a well-kept secret. Not for much longer. With neighbouring Latvia having seen a big boost in tourism in recent years thanks to Riga being awarded the European City of Culture in 2014, the spotlight is starting to settle on other Baltic states – Lithuania in particular. For Vilnius, 2019 is shaping up to be yet another big year.

Facing page Left to right: refined “new Baltic” cuisine can be found at Sweet Root in Užupis, which celebrates local, seasonal ingredients; the restaurant’s pared-back interior Images by Lina Jushke

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JOURNEY / Travelogue, Lithuania

Address book

Vilnius’ creative hotspots

FRIENDS AND FRAMES

It’s not only the glasses that offer a vision of the future at this purveyor of design-forward eyewear – the store itself also resembles a work of art. The intergalactic-looking space features polished chromed surfaces as well as a lunar rock-like installation. friendsandframes.lt

CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE

Built in 1968, the CAC in Vilnius is the largest contemporary art venue in the Baltic states and continues to be a leading light in the region, hosting a wide range of public programmes including seminars, performances, film screenings and live music events, as well as a roster of temporary exhibitions. Housed in a brutalist concrete building, the gallery features a sculpture garden and there’s a popular cafe serving the likes of chilled beetroot soup and local beer. cac.lt N AT I O N A L G A L L E R Y OF ART

V2 CONCEP T STORE

HOUSE OF NAÏVE

A 20-minute stroll from the Old Town, Lithuania’s National Gallery of Art has a richly varied collection from the 20th and 21st centuries; highlights include artworks from the 1990s by names such as Mindaugas Navakas, made during the country’s post-independence creative flourish.

The city’s best-known concept store stocks clothing, accessories and homewares from small, directional brands from around the globe – fashion from Sweden’s Hope, design from Denmark’s Wood Wood and jewellery by June Nineteen, an LAbased brand founded by Lithuanian jeweller Jurga Juozapavičiūtė.

Made-to-order shoes and clothes, artisanal chocolate (some of the more unusual flavours include beer, sesame and porcini) and leather bags and mittens are just some of the treasures to be found at this petite boutique in the Old Town. Browse the rails to the store’s idiosyncratic soundtrack: seasonal birdsong.

ndg.lt

v2onlinestore.com

houseofnaive.com

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Top to bottom: the National Gallery of Art traces Lithuania’s 100-year history through its comprehensive collections; footwear shop Šušop in Užupis

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JOURNEY / Boutique aparthotels

Short-stay shake-up

Locke’s aparthotels sit somewhere between a boutique escape and a chic home

W

ith its bespoke furniture, sophisticated joinery and quirky accessories, one of Locke’s properties could be easily mistaken for a boutique hotel, but this is something new: an Instagram-friendly aparthotel, custom designed for the latest generation of global explorers. Locke is challenging the prevailing apartment-stay model in locations throughout the UK and offers its guests an aspirational, highly designed space to live, co-work and socialise, whether for two days or two weeks.

In November the company opened its third property, Whitworth Locke in Manchester, following on from sites in London (2016) and Edinburgh (2017); eight more are in the pipeline, including Paris, Berlin and Dublin, so global domination is clearly on the agenda.

The Manchester outpost has been designed

by New York-based Grzywinski+Pons, which also worked on both previous Locke projects, and there’s a common thread of celebrating the character and social fabric of the hotel’s locality.

Housed in a Victorian cotton mill, Whitworth Locke honours Manchester’s industrial past while embracing its creative present and future.

“It’s a dream to become intimate with a city that isn’t yours,” explains Matthew Grzywinski, who spends months at a time researching the personality and nuances of each location before settling into the design process. “In Manchester, I had the gift of doing an adaptive reuse project on a historical building that’s so emblematic of the city. For me, there’s no better way to be inspired by a city than working with buildings that are typical of the destination.”

The designers have celebrated and amplified existing heritage details from the inside out, using as a starting point the city’s past as a

centre of the textile industry. “I went with a feel of ‘eastern exoticism’ inspired by the trade routes, but in a modern, urban way, playing off both Manchester’s roots and the history of the building,” says Gryzwinski. It was also deemed important to counteract the lack of colour in a city that is notorious for spending a lot of time under grey cloud: “Manchester’s climate can be a little grey and rainy and the buildings can seem quite austere, so we really wanted to make it friendly and aspirational – a happy, warm space. Creating garden areas and playing on the light to make it a feature helped us to create a sunny, inviting environment.”

Words Anna Beesley

Locke has succeeded in creating sophisticated properties that are engaging communities as well as travellers, offering vibrantly designed, highly functional spaces in which to live, work and socialise. They give guests all the mod cons of being at home but in a design-led hotel environment. “We’ve identified what matters most to our target customer: third-wave coffee, hand-crafted cocktails, co-working space and a wellness programme that incorporates yoga, CrossFit and mindfulness,” says co-founder and creative director Eric Jafari.

The approach is challenging existing models of both Airbnb and that of the luxurious boutique hotel. “The rise of Airbnb has undeniably influenced the accommodation industry and contributed to a definitive shift in the way we travel,” says Jafari. “Many travellers have sampled Airbnb and they like the autonomy and space that an apartment provides. Those same travellers have sampled boutique hotels and love the service, design, food and bar offering and the social experience.

Consequently, modern travellers are now seeking experiences with the best of both.”

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Facing page Top to bottom: the bar area at Eden Locke in Edinburgh; the distinctive sofacum-chaise in sorbet colours has become a Locke signature

“There’s no better way to be inspired by a city than working with buildings that are typical of the destination”

With “living local” becoming an increasingly important part of a hotel’s offering, Eden Locke’s communal spaces offer everything from yoga to cocktail-making classes. Informal, flexible design supports this approach

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JOURNEY / Boutique aparthotels

From Grzywinski’s stance, it was relatively easy to design each location, as he himself was the customer that they had in mind: a working, creative professional who craves a design-led experience, one who might stay in a city for one night or four weeks. He has created a home-like and therefore intrinsically liveable environment: a functional kitchen, versatile living room and comfortable bedroom. There are bentwood chairs, signature plump sofas in soft sorbet colours and industrial elements such as fluted glass used for the wardrobes. It’s a fully equipped and achingly cool take on the modern second home, with the convenience of a city-centre location. “I wanted to celebrate what people like to do when they’re at home, to create an apartment-like domestic experience, not just a bed in a hotel room,” says Grzywinski.

“We’ve created a space where people can truly feel at home, even if it’s temporary,” says Jafari.

“From our perspective, a second home is more than the four walls that you sleep within; it’s defined by a combination of your community and daily habits.” It’s this that gives Locke an edge, highlighting the needs of the nomadic professional and at the same time, bridging the gap between an aspirational home environment and a liveable hotel concept.

This page Clockwise from top left: the newest Locke outpost in Manchester, housed in a former Victorian cotton mill; much of the furniture has been custom-designed

by Grzywinski+Pons; generously sized kitchens provide convenience, but in a design-led hotel environment

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JOURNEY / Hotel, Tel Aviv

Hallowed ground

Booming Tel Aviv’s newest hotel blends ancient history and modern design

Words Becky Sunshine Images Amit Geron

N

ew York property developer Aby Rosen (the Seagram Building, Gramercy Park Hotel, etc) has a keen eye when it comes to spotting the next hot move. Wise, then, that back in 2005 he realised the potential for a luxury hotel in the old city of Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv. What has long been a neighbourhood known for its busy daily market, a warren of cobbled streets of artists’ studios and factories, is now rife with regeneration. In the midst of it, perched on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean from one side, is The Jaffa.

Rosen co-owns the 120-room hotel and 32 residences with Marriott’s Luxury Collection.

Rosen also knows good design, which is why he appointed the British minimalist architect John Pawson to undertake both the renovation of what was once a 19th-century French hospital and the addition of a new building.

The pair have a proven track record: Pawson redesigned the apartments at The Gramercy for Rosen, ensuring the collaboration was always going to be a success.

Facing page Now a lofty bar resplendent with historic detail, The Chapel once provided spiritual nourishment for a 19th-century French hospital

“Aby is so brilliant, he has an idea and keeps going,” says Pawson. “What do they say about the patience of Job? Aby, is in it for the long haul and is consistent.” Just as well, as the project turned into a 13-year marathon when a dig down to reveal the building’s loggia foundations (now the central courtyard and the kitchens and restaurants) was halted for several years as archaeologists moved in to establish that the discovered bones were animal remains, and ensure that artefacts would be preserved.

“I hadn’t worked in Tel Aviv before – it’s a bit different,” says Pawson. “But we collaborated with a local architect, Ramy Gill, who had been working on the property long before we showed

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up. It was brilliant to have his knowledge and expertise.” That expertise involved negotiation with local building authorities. Eventually the build was allowed to continue, and the hotel opened in late summer 2018.

The results, in a beautifully landscaped setting of almost five acres, are pretty spectacular. The U-shaped, five-storey former hospital is where you’ll find most of the hotel bedrooms plus a new penthouse storey. What Pawson does with his trademark light touch, though, is steer clear of erasing the past entirely. Instead he’s wisely left subtle signs of the building’s history in the form of lightly faded paintwork, original door signage and imperfect plaster. Where replacements have been required, such as the floor tiles in the communal walkways or the stained glass windows of the deconsecrated church (now a showstopping space occupied by a hip bar and nightclub) has been done with great sensitivity by local craftsmen.

The new building, clad in Jerusalem stone, houses further hotel bedrooms and residences as well as the lobby at ground level and the spa, gym and car park below. It sits respectfully adjacent to the historic building, without ever making physical contact.

“We talked about the fact that we are one layer on top of previous layers, which means responsibility – we may be a layer to be built over in the future,” explains Ramy Gill. “That creates humbleness. John and I decided we would articulate modernity with our own vocabulary. We didn’t want to have any connecting bridge or any niceties between the two buildings. So we created new stairs connecting to the old stairs, but we’ve done it in a hyper-modern way. Where we had to

Facing page The Chapel bar: the bar itself has been provocatively placed where the altar once would have stood Below Rooms in the old hospital building overlook a courtyard pool area.

The landscaping is by New York’s Rees Roberts + Partners

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JOURNEY / Hotel, Tel Aviv

introduce air conditioning in the restaurant, we exposed it.” The mix of age and modernity therefore feels comfortably smooth.

The interior design is also the handiwork of Pawson’s London studio. “There’s so much that’s new that it’s a treat wandering around,” he says. “For a lot of people who aren’t interested in architecture and design, some will recognise certain pieces and be intrigued by others.” Pawson designed many of the in-room additions too, such as a well-stocked chrome mini-bar, bathroom toiletries and most of the furniture and soft furnishings. One favourite feature was a “wet capsule”: a large, smokedmirror box set within the vaulted bedrooms of the old building, which houses the marble bathroom. Facing the bed, also within the capsule, is an integrated television.

“I think you’ll find it’s unlike any other hotel in terms of its design and fittings. A huge amount has gone into creating custom things so it has a different feel,” says Pawson, who has also designed rugs, throws and wallpaper for the project. With Middle Eastern sunlight as powerful as it is, the addition of perforated aluminium screens, inspired by the woodcarving techniques used for traditional Arabic mashrabiya screens, shade the windows of the presidential suite as well as the penthouse balconies. The patterned shadows are glorious as light moves throughout the day.

As an experience, this is a slick one. Service at the hotel is Israeli-style informal and friendly, but with a quiet New York efficiency. Food too is a highlight. Don Camillo, the main restaurant, offers seriously good New Yorkstyle Italian food, while Golda’s Delicatessen next door goes for lighter options and other classic deli favourites. The central courtyard, on to which both restaurants open out, is pleasantly filled with tables and low seating.

People-watching here at night, cocktail in hand, is first class.

Relaxation and comfort is clearly high on Rosen’s agenda, so subsequently, the elegant 15-metre pool and upholstered seating area under a shaded pergola, which sits between

one side of the old building and a perimeter wall, is the ideal place to lose a few hours. The travertine-clad basement spa, which includes six treatment rooms and four saunas, offers products and treatments by renowned Swiss beauty brand L Raphael.

The lobby is arguably more colourful than one might expect from Pawson, and includes orange Shiro Kuramata chairs, a Pawsondesigned rug, George Nelson lighting and a Togo sofa by Michel Ducaroy for Ligne Roset, encouraging guests to stay a while. So too does the bar area and bespoke backgammon tables.

Pawson has the last word: “It’s nice to see people finally coming and going. The whole area is amazing, it’s so vibrant.”

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Above The colonnaded 19th-century hospital building, painstakingly restored by architects John Pawson and Tel Aviv-based Ramy Gill Facing page Using a light touch, the architects have left traces of the building’s past, and used local craftsman to renew features where necessary

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Christophe Poyet’s Paris apartment. Read the full story on p68 Image by Francis Amiand

HOME Timeless spaces

Elevated stature

Designer Christophe Poyet’s eclectic home in a Parisian garret Words / Dominic Lutyens Images / Francis Amiand

HOME / Paris

B

ut for his unflagging persistence, Monacoborn architect and interior designer Christophe Poyet might never have acquired his Parisian apartment in the little-known but up-and-coming Saint-Georges area, just south of Pigalle. “Saint-Georges is traditionally known for its theatres,” he explains. “Now it has many new hotels, restaurants and shops – it’s very bohème chic.”

The painfully protracted purchase of Poyet’s property began in 2011 when he bought three compact, interconnected rooms in a classic Haussmannian building. It was Baron Haussmann who, from the 1850s, at Napoleon III’s behest, modernised the city, supplanting cramped medieval neighbourhoods with wide boulevards and residential buildings clad in uniformly elegant cream limestone. Poyet’s apartment is not far from tree-lined Boulevard Haussmann, named after him.

Haussmann’s buildings typically boasted six storeys and a mansard roof with garret rooms occupied by servants; Poyet’s top-floor apartment is no exception. “The first rooms I bought were maids’ rooms,” he recalls.

These had very antiquated interiors with old wallpaper that he describes as “vintage” (although not in a complimentary way).

Soon after, he set his heart on enlarging the apartment by annexing two other rooms. But their owner at the time, an elderly woman who hadn’t changed the interiors for 50 years, had no intention of selling them. “I visited her regularly to try to persuade her but she wouldn’t budge,” recalls Poyet. But his tenacity finally paid off – in 2016, she agreed to sell him the space. He vividly remembers the moment that

he first saw them: “She opened the door with a 20cm-long key,” he remembers, theatrically mimicking the sound of ancient metal turning creakily in a lock.

Once in possession of his mini-empire, Poyet worked alongside his Paris-born business partner Emil Humbert – who set up their interior design practice Humbert & Poyet 10 years ago – to refurbish and redecorate the property. Converting the rooms into a single apartment consisted mainly of removing the parts of the walls near the windows in order to create a single corridor connecting most of the spaces. “I wanted the circulation to be along the windows from the kitchen at one end to the bathroom at the other,” Poyet explains.

“Only the bathroom has a door.”

He also now owns a small room opposite the apartment’s entrance (in the living room), which is used as a guest room. The other major intervention was laying smoky grey-brown chevron parquet flooring in most rooms to unifying effect. By contrast, the bathroom, with its walls with utilitarian white tiles similar to those in the Paris Métro and strip of eaude-nil paint, has a marble mosaic floor by Devon & Devon. Poyet adorned the ceilings with subtly decorative cornices to add more “Haussmannian chic” to the apartment.

Humbert & Poyet’s projects to date include the The Hoxton Paris hotel, Luxembourg eatery Beeftro and Michelin-starred Alan Yau restaurant, Song Qi, in Monaco. The latter is inspired by 1930s Shanghai, a time when the city was still exposed to Western influences, notably the French Concession, a territory occupied by the French until the second world

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Previous page The apartment combines two adjoining suites of rooms; it’s now a door-free series of interconnected, light-filled spaces Facing page Left to right: Christophe Poyet (left) and Emil Humbert (right); a 1950s Saarinen Tulip table in the dining area

“I instantly fell in love with the views. They’re like a carte postale”

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Facing page Eric Schmitt’s idiosyncratic Arbre light presides over the living space, which also features a Pierre Jeanneret chair

Above Bronze-clad units give the kitchen a richness, but the design is practical, too, hiding the joins between the doors

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war and famous for its grand shikumen houses with stone doors and courtyards. Song Qi epitomises Humbert & Poyet’s opulent, eclectic aesthetic: its focal point is a semicircular, velvet-upholstered banquette enclosed by a cage-like structure of gold spindles. Radiating from this is a black and white marble floor with a pattern of exploding concentric stars. “We like dramatic contrasts, theatrical elements.

We use natural materials, mixing bronze for example with marble,” says Poyet.

Another important aspect of the duo’s work is sourcing antiques and art for clients. “We started out loving 1950s design. Now we’re moving towards the 1970s and 1980s – a slightly more pop style,” says Poyet. One of the duo’s favourite hunting grounds is Paris’s StOuen flea market. “We go there once a month, minimum,” he continues. “There’s a section called Paul Bert, divided by different galleries.

Recently, a new generation of dealers with a fresh vision has been taking over its spaces.”

They also frequent galleries such as Patrick Seguin in Paris and Nilufar in Milan, either searching for pieces for specific projects or taking a more organic approach, as Poyet has done when decorating his own place: “In my bedroom, there are two 1950s Italian pendant lights designed by Luigi Caccia Dominioni that I bought five years ago. I kept them in our office until I found the right spot for them.”

While Poyet’s aim was to link the majority of rooms, he has differentiated them using distinctive colours to give each one “a different atmosphere”. The dining-room-cum-kitchen is particularly flamboyant with its busy palm-tree motif wallpaper by Pierre Frey, plush custommade banquette and marble-topped 1950s

Eero Saarinen Tulip table. The kitchen units are faced with a sumptuous layer of bronze.

“Thin vertical lines drawn on the bronze disguise the joins between the units,” says Poyet. “I wanted the bronze to give the kitchen a richness, a wow factor.”

In the adjoining living room, contemporary designer Eric Schmitt’s stylised tree-shaped Arbre floor light and rug that features a bold geometric design are playfully teamed with Pierre Jeanneret’s more sober, 1950s teak Easy armchairs, originally designed for Chandigarh, the Indian city co-created by Le Corbusier.

Breaking up the room’s off-white walls are two abstract canvases, one by Spanish painter José María Sicilia, the other by younger US artist Graham Collins.

Colour-wise, Poyet’s bedroom is more dramatic, its walls painted Farrow & Ball’s moody hue, Hague Blue – a dark greeny-blue – in sharp contrast to the crisp white ceiling and headboard. A lithograph by op artist Victor Vasarely hangs on one wall. “Cosy” is how Poyet describes the den-like guest bedroom, with its walls painted the same deep hue paired with similar Farrow & Ball colour Pigeon.

“Everyone who sleeps there loves it,” he says.

Clearly Poyet has no regrets about devoting so much time and energy to securing his apartment. What was his first impression of the additional rooms? “Great. I instantly fell in love with the views.” It’s not hard to imagine why. The sweeping vistas of rooftops, topped by the iconic Paris landmark the Sacré-Coeur basilica, are undeniably romantic. “They’re like a carte postale,” he rhapsodises – clearly intending to conjure up an image more charming than clichéd.

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Facing page Dark colours amplify the feeling of cosiness in the guest bedroom; the wallpaper is Fornasetti’s Nuvolette design

by Cole & Son Next page The picturepostcard view of Parisian rooftops, with the SacréCoeur basilica as a centrepiece

Above The classic black and white Edwardianstyle bathroom features marble flooring from Devon & Devon’s Elite collection

Facing page A white headboard is crisply outlined against dark blue walls; the vintage light is by Luigi Caccia Dominioni

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Ode to nature

A sensual seaside abode north of Copenhagen Words / Henriette Noermark Andersen Images / Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen

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ature and contemporary architecture merge in this newly renovated home designed by acclaimed multi-disciplinary practice, Norm Architects. With an emphasis on moody tones and the intrinsic qualities of the surrounding landscape, Norm has applied both Scandinavian and Japanese sensibilities to a serene getaway along the Danish coast.

The T-shaped, single-storey house is situated in a remote part of the countryside north of Copenhagen. The team from Norm, headed up

by Linda Korndal and Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen, completely renewed its interior by adhering to one basic principle: blurring the line between inside and outside. The result is an atmospheric home with minimal ornamentation and a clever interplay between hard and soft.

Located on an elevated beach plot along a headland, the 200 sqm cottage was in the ideal location for Norm’s clients, a young family of four. However, there was no correlation between the beauty of the location and the house itself, so the first point on the agenda was to connect the house to its surroundings.

The homeowners wanted a place to escape their busy lives in Copenhagen and asked for the feeling of a luxury boutique hotel with enough space for friends to visit – so while it needed to be simple and exquisitely finished, it also needed a strong, homely personality.

Divided into zones, the house consists of a master suite, two guest bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms, children’s quarters at the opposite end and a large communal space divided into an entrance hall, kitchen and living room with a feature fireplace. Everything is designed to create long views along the facades, letting the eye take in the full volume of the spaces.

Throughout the house, sliding doors accentuate the vastness of the rooms and are a nod to

Japanese culture, where courtesy is paramount and sliding openings prevent the risk of a collision with people or furniture.

Norm has a dictum, “soft minimalism,” a term the practice coined as a riposte to minimalism’s reputation for cold, clinical spaces. “Rooms must be nice to stay in even without furniture,” says Bjerre-Poulsen, which is to say that interior surfaces are key. A tactile character runs throughout all finishes in the house, from the sanded and pickled wooden floors, tinted plaster walls or the rustically stained cabinetry.

The tactility of materials is as important as their appearance: a subtle symphony of wood, wicker, wool, sand, clay, marble and stone, all calling out to be touched.

Bjerre-Poulsen says that the interior is part of the architecture, not an afterthought: everything is curated, from bespoke furniture and fittings to cutlery and ceramics. The house features full-height windows opening towards the view, bringing the rugged beauty surrounding the property centre stage.

“There is no art on the walls, nothing figurative stealing attention,” says Bjerre-Poulsen.

“Instead, we have focused on interesting surfaces, details and materials, which create balance and character. If a room is cluttered with objects you do not see any of those things.”

From the oak and sandstone flooring to the veneered cabinets and fitted wardrobes, there is a perfect balance of restraint and sensuality – a signature of Norm. Bjerre-Poulsen sums it up: “In the classic book-turned-movie, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, you learn that the Inuits have different words for snow; in Japan, they have hundreds of types of grey. For this project we used an extensive range of colours in grey, brown, red, blue and yellow tones – but they slide together like in a landscape painting.”

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Previous page A subtle play on shades of grey, the living area features Living Divani’s lightly structured Extrasoft sofa Facing page The principle aim for the redesign was to blur the boundaries between inside and out, achieved via large windows and a sympathetic use of materials

Above Japanese design ideas provided some of the inspiration for the house, from the sliding doors to the Zen-like sense of balance Facing page The kitchen features monolithic cabinetry sitting on bronze plinths

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Previous page The calm palette of coastal North Zealand, from the sand to the greyblue sea and sky, has informed the colours used for the interiors Left Steps extend from the decking and lead invitingly to the sea Above In a traditional gabled style, the house is discreet in its setting

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Facing page Clockwise from top left: Workstead’s bronze Signal light against a tinted plaster wall; thick stone kitchen worktops; a bespoke bronze light in the entrance; darkstained cabinetry in the kitchen

Above Simple textile hangings take the place of artwork on the walls, to create a harmonious look with no attention-stealing focal points Next page Norm’s “soft minimalism” aesthetic summed up in the kitchen, with a moody neutral palette, handmade objects and tactile surfaces 91

Quietly confident

A Mayfair home that takes pleasure in pared-back design Words / Claudia Baillie Images / Tina Hillier

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nterior architect Katie Earl describes her latest project as “a serene space in the heart of the city.” She and Emma Rayner, co-founders of No12 Studio, worked together on the twobedroom Mayfair apartment, which features “a lot of muted and desaturated colours. Calmness was a key directive in terms of the palette we chose. The mood is very peaceful.”

as with all of their projects, was to create a luxurious but low-key atmosphere.

This kind of simplicity has always been key for the pair, who met at Westminster-based design studio 1508 back in 2010. “When we started, there were 25 people,” says Rayner, “then that grew to about 70 and it became a bit of a powerhouse. We never actually worked on any projects together at the time, but we definitely had a mutual respect for each other’s design style.” In 2014, Earl left to take up a role as the creative director of Hudson & Mercer, a small design studio in west London, and a couple of months later, Rayner followed suit.

“We ended up moving to a team of just eight, including ourselves, but during our time there we created a really nice synergy,” she says. That synergy eventually led to them setting up on their own in 2015.

The apartment is located within a Grade IIlisted Georgian building, and the property was formerly an office space before being sectioned in to 17 unique apartments by architects Darling Associates. It was then that No12 Studio was brought in to oversee the interiors.

“We christened the job Project Verde as the building was once owned by a legal company called DS Green Limited, and the plaque is still on the front of the building today,” says Earl. “The facade had been modified around 1900, but thankfully many of the original interior features were retained, including amazing fireplaces and mouldings, which have since been beautifully restored.”

“By then we understood what was required from high-end interiors in terms of quality, craftsmanship and sophistication,” explains Rayner. “We’d worked on prime projects with all the trims, silks and pattern, but we wanted to take a more pared-back approach. There can sometimes be an assumption that if something is heavily designed it becomes luxurious, but

Working with these elements, they dressed the space with a carefully curated mix of antique pieces, design classics and bespoke furniture, as well as rich fabrics and original art. The aim,

Previous page Strong sculptural shapes, such as Desalto’s finely balanced Clay table, are set against the decorative period features of the Georgian building

Facing page A play of surface textures – rather than colour or pattern – creates the rhythm and interest, including a bespoke rug by Colbourns

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for us, contemporary and minimalist can be equally luxurious because of its simplicity.”

layer with a bespoke rug, which was made for us by luxury carpet manufacturer Colbourns.

This adds some real comfort to the living room and creates a soft and homely feel.”

It’s a way of thinking that is evident throughout this project, where many of the pieces have been made to order by London-based upholstery company Northbrook Furniture, including the dark blue velvet sofa, a low-level bench and a set of dining chairs that sit around a Clay table by Desalto. “We wanted everything to work perfectly within the space, and this was an opportunity for us to design key pieces to exact dimensions, and to match our vision for the project,” says Earl. “The curved back of the sofa is a subtle detail that continues through the bench base, for example, and reflects the curves of the vintage armchairs, which were sourced from a local antique dealer. It’s details like these that have always made us tick.”

Lighting comes courtesy of Scandinavian brands including a collaboration between 101 Copenhagen and Norr11, as well as Danish design house Gubi, while art was sourced from an array of galleries and antique markets, and chosen to include a range of mediums from photograph to sculpture and illustration. They particularly champion new, emerging artists.

Since completing the project, the studio has also worked on Gasholders, a luxury development housed within a trio of gasholder frames in London’s redeveloped Kings Cross, which joins offices on Old Park Lane and one of London’s first all-women’s members’ clubs, AllBright, in their burgeoning portfolio.

Next up there is talk of a boutique hotel, a five-bedroom property outside Dublin and a penthouse apartment near High Street Kensington. “For that project we’ve created an entirely bespoke collection of furniture,” says Earl. “It’s been really exciting, and a great opportunity to showcase what we can do in that area of design, too.”

The armchairs, by Czech designer Jindřich Halabala, were reupholstered in a pale grey corduroy sourced from Howe at 36 Bourne Street, meticulously chosen to contrast with the hide on the custom-made bench, as well as the plush velvet. “Combining textures helps to create interest and depth without using lots of pattern. It lets the fabrics speak for themselves,” says Rayner. “We added another

Previous page Contrasting geometric forms are rhythmically repeated, such as the bench with its U-shaped and cuboid abutting sections, and the blue velvet sofa, with its curved cushions sat against a squared-off back. Both are custom-made pieces designed for the space by No12 Studio and made by Northbrook Furniture

Facing page Clockwise from top left: creatively displayed curiosities; historic contrasts with modern over the fireplace; a vintage Halabala chair, reupholstered in pale grey corduroy Next page In the bedroom, a pared-back design approach creates a restful mood

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Fully formed A Notting Hill townhouse inspired by a Barbara Hepworth sculpture Words / Elizabeth Choppin Images / Annabel Elston

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here are certain endeavours that benefit from a collective effort, as is the case with an elegant townhouse in west London designed for a film director and her husband, an entrepreneur. Built by William Chadwick in the late 1850s, it is part of a picturesque, half-moon terrace of stucco-fronted homes in Notting Hill. After drafting in design practice 23 Architecture to refurbish and start again, the owners then turned to one of London’s most exalted young designers, Fran Hickman, to create interiors that would live up to the storied building and appeal to the couple’s divergent tastes: his, resplendent drama; hers, Scandinavian calm with a focus on materiality.

“In the interest of keeping them both happy, they wanted to do something quite bold and had the idea of designing a feature stair,” says Hickman from her west London studio.

Previous plans had involved an enclosed staircase made of concrete, moving like a monolith up through the centre of the narrow building, but when Hickman came aboard she began to rethink things and open up the space.

“It’s lovely living in a townhouse. I grew up in one, and when you have a lot of people under one roof, you can all be on your own floor and have a real sense of privacy, but you’re still aware of those above or below,” says Hickman.

With that in mind she conceived of a new, gestural staircase that would connect the lower ground floor gym, wine cellar and office to the ground floor kitchen and dining area; and from the first floor (a space for entertaining guests) to the bedrooms above. Taking inspiration from sculptor Barbara Hepworth’s 1946 work, Pelagos, its spiral is the focus of the home and creates a restrained, quiet sense of drama.

“We were keen to move away from cement because it’s so cold and it looks a bit like a Bond villain’s lair,” chuckles Hickman. “We

wanted to soften it – and one of the softest materials to play with and live with is wood.”

The team worked with Dinesen on all of the flooring to make a seamless transition between the timber stair treads and the white plaster finish. Elsewhere the palette extends to copper, marble, lime-washed oak, concrete and steel – used in the custom-made Crittall doors in the kitchen and lower ground floor, which allow extra light to come flooding in.

Most of the flourishes are in the textures, materials and bespoke fittings, although there are a few moments throughout the house – such as the decorative painting on the cupboards and wet bar, and feature wall in the dining room, by French artist Pierre Bonnefille – that show the compromises made between the couple. “While working together we developed a point system, so each of them would give a point to the other if they gave in on something. Which is why, in the interest of finding as much common ground as possible, we tried to approach the house as simply as possible,” explains the designer.

Having cut her teeth at Soho House Group and Waldo Works, Hickman was bound to be in demand after launching her practice five years ago. She has designed spaces for rock stars and premium fashion brands, and has just completed a penthouse at Television Centre (the former BBC headquarters) as well as Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop pop-up in London.

“I try to get to the essence of a space. It’s a little bit like writing – you try to get your idea across in as few words as possible,” she says.

The Hickman ethos is perhaps summed up on the quote the designer cites from Hepworth herself: “The sense of feeling…is the first one we have when we’re born…with a sculpture you must walk around it, bend toward it, touch it…walk away from it.”

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Previous page Interior designer Fran Hickman was inspired by a Barbara Hepworth piece, Pelagos, when designing the staircase Facing page Quiet restraint characterises the kitchen-diner, with its Crittall glazing and poured concrete floors Next page The first-floor bar/entertaining space features a trio of Artek’s Beehive lights

“Fran Hickman created interiors that would appeal to the couple’s divergent tastes: his, resplendent drama; hers, Scandinavian calm with a focus on materiality”

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Namibia white marble has been used in the master bathroom, which leads off a bedroom with a bespoke bed and chest of drawers

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“I try to get to the essence of a space. It’s a little bit like writing – you try to get your idea across in as few words as possible”

The staircase spirals up the house, lending a quiet sense of drama to the interiors; its white finish echoes the external stucco facade

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Urban retreat

An informal apartment by Studio Ashby, elevated and refined by its original artwork Words / Charlotte Abrahams Images / Philip Durrant

HOME / London

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hen Sophie Ashby, founder and creative director of London-based interior design practice Studio Ashby, was commissioned to transform a newly built apartment in London’s Mayfair, she began with a painting. And not some easy-on-theeye, furniture-matching type of painting either; the work she chose as a starting point was a large, bold, figurative work by emerging British artist Jack Penny.

This is something of an Ashby signature. “Lots of designers commission art as a second phase, to fit with their scheme, but I like to do it the other way around,” she says. “I choose artists whose work is strong and I try not to interfere too much. This is Jack’s interpretation of the life the owner would be living in this space.”

It is an unusual approach for an interior designer, and more unusual still in a project created for an unknown inhabitant, as this was. The two-bedroom, sixth-floor apartment is part of Burlington Gate, a new mixeduse building by developers Native Land and architectural practice Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and, although it is owned by a private individual, it was bought as a super-prime rental investment. Ashby’s brief, therefore, was to design a residence to rival a luxury hotel.

The result is an exquisitely detailed, highly sophisticated interior. Penny’s painting is mounted on a sliding panel that neatly conceals the television; the bookcase it hangs from was hand-made in French walnut by one the Studio’s network of British craftspeople; the study walls are wrapped in silk wallpaper.

But Ashby has done something else too; she has made the place feel like a home.

“That was really important,” she says. “The price of renting a place like this, in the heart of Mayfair, is pretty much the same as staying in a hotel, so if someone decides to rent, it’s because they’re looking for something more personal – a home from home.”

Ashby’s focus on statement artwork plays a huge role in this personalisation. As well as several paintings – including a very large, very black abstract piece she bought from the Royal College of Art’s 2017 graduation show – she also commissioned a range of unique objects, which she has scattered throughout the apartment like precious treasures.

There is a carved white sculpture by Vanessa da Silva, also acquired from the RCA, on the dining room sideboard, its smooth, undulating form inviting anyone who sees it to run their hands across it, and a cluster of one-off pendant lights by ceramicist Ranti Bam hanging over the dining table. The organic forms and painterly glazes of these delicate pendants bring both pattern and colour to the room, while the perforations Bam has made into the clay slabs send shadow patterns dancing across

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Previous page Pendant lights by ceramicist Ranti Bam hang over the dining table at Studio Ashby’s Burlington Gate apartment Above A commissioned painting by Jack Penny provided a starting point for the whole scheme Facing page Mismatching bedside lights epitomise the interiors’ playful informality

“I choose artists whose work is strong and I try not to interfere too much�

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the space. All these pieces speak of a real owner who has bought pieces to live with and to love.

The furniture is imbued with the same spirit.

Vintage finds, such as a pair of art deco bedside tables in the guest bedroom and a brass sputnik chandelier in the kitchen, are combined with recognisable pieces of contemporary design like Piero Lissoni’s Mex table for Cassina and Konstantin Grcic’s Traffic chaise longue for Magis, plus bespoke furniture designed and made by Studio Ashby and its craftspeople.

The studio-designed furniture is certainly luxurious, made from beautiful materials such as walnut, burr oak, velvet and mohair, but it also carries a strong sense of place and history.

The top of the kitchen table, for example, is simply a slice of tree, albeit subtly ornamented with a ring of copper inlay, while the steellegged dining table is made from the same marble that covers the floor of the building’s neighbour, the Burlington Arcade.

Ashby has arranged it all with an appealing informality. The chairs in the living room are gathered close together, inviting cosy conversation, and almost nothing is perfectly paired or symmetrical; even the bedside lights are mismatched, in different shapes and styles.

“Architecturally, the inside space is very simple, a blank canvas essentially, so the interior has to work much harder if it is to have some soul,” she says. “We’ve avoided forcing an unnatural symmetry and have played with the juxtaposition of opposing elements – antique with contemporary, raw with refined, natural with man-made. The careful layering of all these different elements brings character, atmosphere and feeling to an interior.”

She has used the same approach for the colour scheme. The walls and floors are pale and neutral, a quiet backdrop for the artwork, furniture and fabrics, which introduce shots of bold, saturated colour and the occasional jolt of pattern. An electric blue armchair and

a sunshine yellow cushion here, a deep green headboard and a sugar pink throw there. It’s seemingly random, but a closer look reveals that the colours have all grown from that Jack Penny painting. They don’t obviously coordinate, but they do have a satisfying harmony.

The dining room encapsulates everything Ashby was trying to achieve with this apartment. With its pale oak floor, bespoke artworks by recent graduates, long table and simple – if luxuriously upholstered – bench, it feels like a room that has evolved organically, with a relaxed intimacy suggestive of congenial meals with friends and family. “I wanted to create something that felt casual,” Ashby explains. “If you’re interested in fancy, then there are lots of options right outside the door, so this is a space that is an antidote to all that.

A place that feels like a sanctuary.”

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Previous page Custom-designed furniture is mixed with classics such as Magis’s Traffic chaise longue Above Glas Italia’s iridescent Shimmer side table adds colour and intrigue Facing page Atmospheric photography

by Joslyn Beta Lawrence and Brian Kuhlmann bring character to the bedroom

“Architecturally, the inside space is very simple, so the interior has to work much harder if it is to have some soul�

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Calm & composed

A listed Georgian townhouse reborn as a family home Words / Ruth Corbett Images / Mark Bolton

HOME / London

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he glowing testimonials that can be read on Irene Gunter’s website are to be expected, given her wealth of expertise. Her clients unanimously attest to her impeccable taste, innovative ideas and professionalism, but the ringing endorsement that will chime loudest with those looking to renovate an awkward home is this, from a satisfied London couple: “Irene creates solutions for what we had thought were hopeless situations.”

The owner of one of Gunter’s recent projects doubtless agrees, as this is the second time he has commissioned her to transform a home for his family. The first was their country place in the Cotswolds; this is their London home, a Georgian terraced townhouse in Chelsea. “My client doesn’t like to do the same thing twice, so while the Cotswolds house is very intimate and personal, this space reflects a slicker, more urban dynamic,” says Gunter.

The Grade-II listed property had a raft of restrictions to work around, and conscious of maintaining the architectural integrity of the house, Gunter designed the new spaces to seamlessly blend with those already existing.

“Some architects like to make a big difference between old and new, which works if you have the space; in a bigger property you can enjoy the characteristics of both. But for a more bijou space, like this, it’s better if the proportions of the rooms, and their architectural details, are consistent throughout.” To enable this she took

profiles of the original listed features, such as the skirting boards and doors, and had them copied for the new rooms. A visitor wouldn’t be able to tell what’s old and what’s new.

The main house hadn’t been touched for 25 years, and Gunter’s three-storey rear extension has turned a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home into one with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. On the lower ground floor, a successful transformation of the formerly tiny kitchen was vital, as the client loves to cook. Now, two sets of French doors and a conservatory ensure it’s bathed in natural light and is spacious enough for family gatherings.

“In fact, the new layout delivered so much light, we were able to use an almost-black paint for the kitchen cabinetry and woodwork,” explains Gunter. “I pushed the client a little bit to paint the conservatory in the same colour. It’s cosy, and with white tiles all the way to the ceiling, it’s got a timeless, classic look that won’t date.”

Elsewhere, Gunter says she tried to create rooms that provide a sense of joy or fun when you walk into them. “My client wants to feel uplifted when he enters a room. He wants to see colour, and a mix of contemporary art and antique furnishings that will complement and enhance the cultural heritage of the house.”

Gunter has the advantage of knowing her client extremely well. Having impressed him some years previously, when she applied for

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Previous page Walls wrapped in wool create an invitingly cosy atmosphere in one of the bedrooms Facing page Near-back paint for the light-filled new conservatory contrasts with herringbone white wall tiles; the bulbous kitchen table is Aqua, by Roche Bobois

In the family bathroom, a classic Lefroy Brooks shower in an aged gold finish sits against a backdrop of dark grey porcelain tiles

The cloud-like walls and ceiling of the cloakroom are created with a scumble-effect polished plaster; the wall lights are vintage

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“As well as the unexpected, detail is important.

Get that right and your eye will never tire of the space”

The master bedroom’s bed, with its half-moon headboard, was designed by Irene Gunter. An Hermès fabric covers the cushion

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“My client wanted a mix of contemporary art and antique furnishings that will complement and enhance the cultural heritage of the house”

a work-experience stint with his property development company, he hired her the week she graduated from design college. “I worked for him for four years before eventually setting up my own design studio, so yes, I am very familiar with what he likes and what drives him,” says Gunter. “I’ll save intriguing things or interesting materials that I have come across in the run-up to working on a house for him, because I know he will appreciate them.”

The relationship has allowed her to enjoy a huge amount of creative freedom. While other clients might push back and want a certain amount of compromise, in this case, she has driven through some potentially challenging design ideas, with little questioning. “Take the herringbone floor in the living room and kitchen, for example. It’s a smoked, blackened design that is dark in character. The sample was intimidating, but in large amounts it’s stunning and it’s now my client’s favourite flooring type.”

Likewise, a dip-dyed polished plaster technique used in the guest bathroom might have proved too much for some, but Gunter got her way once more; the result is a luxurious surface texture that accentuates the vaulted space, making its organic curves even more tactile.

In other rooms, outsize chevron patterns characterise floors and walls, and a bedroom ceiling is papered with a dreamy cloud design.

“As well as the unexpected, detail is important,” Gunter says. “As you unconsciously interrogate

a room, you’ll take in the delicate finial on a curtain pole, the craftsmanship of a piece of skirting, the soft light enhancing a piece of art. Get these elements right and your eye will never tire of the space.”

Luxury merged with practicality is evident throughout this project. In the master bedroom the walls are lined with panels of padded Belgian linen, to add warmth. “The feeling, when you walk in, is like being hugged, like having a soft blanket wrapped around you,” says Gunter. “It’s a technique the Victorians used in grander houses, to help keep out draughts.

Because the building is listed, we could only use single glazing for the windows, so the padded walls add an extra layer of insulation.”

A particularly irksome element of the design was the lighting. There were two key factors to contend with: the listed status and the low height of the ceilings. “A listed building can’t have recessed down lights. And the chandeliers my client would have loved had too great a drop,” says Gunter. “I solved the problem by collaborating with Atrium, a lighting company that always has cool new products, in this case, beautiful surface mounted lights in a ‘can of beans’ shape. White on the outside and gold on the inside, they’re perfect.”

Gunter’s client loves what she’s done with his home. “Which is good,” she smiles. “He’s got deep pockets, and he keeps coming back.”

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Facing page Light filters in through the blinds, in a sheer fabric by de Le Cuona; the original shutters have been restored to their former glory

28 FEB—3 MAR 2019 SAATCHI GALLERY LONDON TICKETS AT COLLECT2019.ORG.UK/DESIGNANTHOLOGY #COLLECT2019

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Moon Jar by Akiko Hirai. Represented at Collect by Flow Gallery. Photo: Tony Hay

INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR FOR MODERN CRAFT AND DESIGN

Dorothea Tanning, Pincushion to Serve as Fetish (1965). Read the full story on p139 Image courtesy of Tate

ART & COLLECTING A cultural review

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Agenda

Sights to behold: a calendar of shows and fairs for the coming months

Laziz Hamani/Christian Dior

Words / Anna Brady, art market editor, The Art Newspaper

Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2 February-14 July 2019

Lavish exhibitions of fashion designers have become the V&A’s strong suit – its Alexander McQueen show in 2015 was the most popular in its history. Now to Dior, and a show that traces the house’s development and influence from 1947 to the present day through material drawn from its archives. The original incarnation

of this exhibition was at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, but the V&A has given it a British spin, with a new section devoted to Christian Dior’s Anglophile tendencies – he loved Britain’s stately homes, staging a fashion show at Blenheim Palace in 1954, and his clients included Nancy Mitford and Princess Margaret.

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James Harris

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Art Basel Miami Beach 6-9 December

Design Miami 5-9 December

A meeting of Swiss precision and unabashed Florida glitz, Art Basel Miami Beach is the party animal of Art Basel’s three modern and contemporary art fairs, where the cognoscenti down margaritas at sunset then run them off along the boardwalk at sunrise. There is a strong focus on

Latin American art, catering to the many collectors who fly in from the region. Next door, Design Miami offers a chic mix of modern classics and innovative contemporary design; exhibitors include Belgium’s Maniera, whose collaboration with Studio Mumbai is pictured.

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ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Picasso. Blue and Rose, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Tintoretto 1519-1594, Palazzo Ducale; The Young Tintoretto, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

Until 6 January 2019

Until 6 January 2019

Spanning the short but formative period between 19001906, this blockbuster show brings together the sensitive works of Pablo Picasso’s Blue and Rose periods as the artist moved restlessly towards abstraction. The 80 works on show include a pensive self portrait from 1906 (pictured) and the somewhat creepy Fillette à la Corbeille Fleurie (Young Girl with a Flower Basket) from 1905, which sold for $115m in the Rockefeller collection sale at Christie’s in May 2018.

Should you need yet another reason to visit Venice, 2019 marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of one of the city’s greatest painters, Jacopo Tintoretto. This two-venue show suggests that Tintoretto was an arguably more exciting and innovative painter than the older Titian.

Religious subjects, grand history paintings, portraits – all are here on a grand scale, with loans from museums around the world and, in situ, the cycles that Tintoretto painted for the Doge’s Palace between 1564 and 1592.

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Egon Schiele – Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

Ribera: Art of Violence, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

The art world cannot get enough of Jean-Michel Basquiat and, following the sell-out exhibition at London’s Barbican in 2018, the Fondation Louis Vuitton hosts a major show of the American artist alongside one of the Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele. Born 70 years apart, both died at only 28, and the pair’s work shares a rawness – one born of 1980s New York, the other of angst-ridden Vienna at the turn of the 20th century.

Not for the squeamish, the first UK show dedicated to the work of Spanish Baroque artist Jusepe de Ribera will include a real piece of 19th-century human skin. Ribera was a master at painting (often tortured) flesh, creating scenes full of the violence of 17th-century Rome, the drama enhanced by Caravaggesque chiaroscuro. Eight large-scale, high-drama paintings are the focus of this show, complemented by prints and drawings (and skin).

Until 27 January 2019

Until 14 January 2019

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ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde, Barbican Art Gallery, London Until 27 Jan 2019

Two artistic temperaments rarely make for a dull romance. This exhibition brings together 40 couples from the early 20th century, illustrating their relationship through their work and archival material. Painters, sculptors, photographers, architects, designers, writers,

musicians and performers all feature, from celebrated couples such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning (pictured), to the lesserknown relationships, such as that between Salvador DalĂ­ and the poet and playwright, Federico GarcĂ­a Lorca.

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ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Brafa Art Fair, Brussels

Artgenève & PAD Genève, Geneva

Stylish yet welcoming, Brafa has been going since 1956 and its loyal visitors keep coming back for its truly eclectic mix, which is particularly strong on antiquities, haute époque sculpture, modern design and African and Oceanic art. Contemporary art is a weaker spot, although you will find a large amount of Belgian Modern art and, of course, Surrealist works. Fifteen UK galleries are taking part amid the mainly French and Belgian dealers.

Art Basel in June may dominate the Swiss art calendar, but there is more going on here. Last year, Thomas Hug and Laura Meillet (directors of Artgenève and Artmonte-carlo) invited Patrick Perrin (founder of the PAD fairs) to bring 25 galleries specialising in decorative arts, modern and contemporary design, and tribal art, to take part in the art fair. With a similar pool of buyers, it proved a natural fit, and so the initiative returns in 2019.

Frieze Los Angeles

Cubism, Centre Pompidou, Paris

The Londoners are off to La-La Land for the most hotly anticipated new art fair in 2019, as Frieze launches an LA edition at Paramount Pictures Studios. The city’s art scene has been gathering momentum for a few years, with top-tier galleries such as Hauser & Wirth setting up West Coast outposts. At around 60 exhibitors, this will be a smaller affair than the London and New York events; participants include Mexico City’s Galería OMR.

The first French exhibition dedicated to Cubism since 1953 reveals that the movement was more than a twoman show of Picasso and Braque; it also influenced artists such as Mondrian (pictured) before spreading to the likes of Fernand Léger, Jean Metzinger and Marcel Duchamp.

As with other radical movements born in the restless years before the first world war, Cubism ground to a halt as the brutality of conflict led to a return to tradition.

26 January-3 February 2019

31 January–3 February 2019

14-17 February 2019

Until 25 February 2019

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Natascha Libbert

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Tefaf Maastricht 16-24 March 2019

modern art and design. The modern and contemporary art has been a weaker spot at this largely traditional fair, but efforts to attract more galleries in this sector are paying off – big names such as Sprüth Magers and Pace Gallery will participate for the first time in 2019.

This is the grand old Dutch lady of the fairs world – its strength in Old Master paintings and antique works of art make it an annual pilgrimage for serious collectors and museum curators. Its 276 galleries specialise in everything from antiquities and tribal art to jewellery to

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Bill Viola/Michelangelo, Royal Academy of Arts, London

Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing, UK nationwide

The video art of Bill Viola and the drawings of Michelangelo may seem unlikely bedfellows, but the RA makes the claim that the two share a preoccupation with “human experience and existence”. Fifteen works by Michelangelo will sit alongside 12 video installations by Viola; the latter’s emotionally charged work owes a debt to Italian Renaissance art, and how it will stand up next to one of the greatest draughtsmen of all time remains to be seen – but this will certainly be a box-office hit.

To mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death, the Royal Collection is loaning 144 of his drawings to regional museums around the UK, from Belfast to Bristol and Sheffield to Southampton. Each will show 12 drawings each – painstaking depictions ranging from human anatomy to architecture – and then, in May 2019, they will all come together for an exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace, making it the largest Leonardo show in the UK for more than 65 years.

26 January–31 March 2019

1 February–6 May 2019

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Dorothea Tanning, Tate Modern, London 27 February-9 June 2019

For too long known foremost as the wife of fellow artist Max Ernst (see p137), Dorothea Tanning is now getting an overdue UK survey show following her death in 2012.

This exhibition transfers to Tate Modern from Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia and charts the American artist’s

seven-decade career. Tanning’s peculiar creations conjure, in her words, “unknown but knowable states,” from her Surrealist paintings made in 1930s New York and then the Arizona desert, to the soft sculptures of uncanny twisted bodies that she began making in 1960s Paris.

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The Engadine effect

No more white cubes: how a picturesque Swiss valley is disrupting contemporary art Words / David Michon Images / Giulia Piermatiri

ART & COLLECTING / Switzerland

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igh in the Swiss Alps, the narrow Engadine valley runs along the river Inn from the borders of Austria to those of Italy.

An archetypal European experience, it floats somewhere between utter remoteness and smack-dab in the middle of quite a lot, sitting at the nexus of Zurich, Milan and Munich.

The Engadine is what we imagine when we think of Switzerland: sun-drenched and green in summers and covered in glistening white snow in winter: its mountains rugged, its towns seemingly frozen in time. It has twice hosted the Winter Olympics (in 1928 and 1948), and is today aflutter with a steady flow of often well-to-do tourists and seasonal residents, many of whom flock each year to St Moritz, one of the world’s premier ski destinations.

Here, nestled within this well-preserved Alpine milieu, bastions of contemporary design, art

and architecture are finding a new home. A number of galleries have opened – such as Vito Schnabel in St Moritz, and the von Bartha gallery in S-chanf – and some have relocated entirely from big cities, such as Galerie Andrea Caratsch, which closed its space in Zurich in 2016 and is now another staple of the St Moritz scene. The exclusive travelling art and design fair Nomad held its first winter event in the village of Samedan, and a companion contemporary art salon, Sommet, will arrive at the Maloja Palace hotel in February. Finally, a new museum of contemporary art is about to swing open its doors, also in Samedan.

For Nomad, whose first exhibition was in 2017 at Villa La Vigie, Karl Lagerfeld’s former residence in Monaco, the drive was to escape the scale and intensity of fairs like Frieze or Art Basel. For its co-founders Nicolas BellavanceLecompte, a Montreal-born architect and

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Previous page Artwork from Massimo De Carlo gallery at Nomad Above Nomad founders Giorgio Pace (left) and Nicolas BellavanceLecompte (right) Facing page DeWain Valentine, shown by Almine Rech Gallery

ART & COLLECTING / Switzerland

Above Left to right: art by Monika Sosnowska at the Muzeum Susch; architects Chasper Schmidlin and Lukas Voellmy have remodelled the old brewery Facing page Dramatic, grottolike spaces at the Muzeum Susch Images by Stefano Graziani

curator, and brand consultant Giorgio Pace, the venue is treated almost as reverentially as that which is eventually displayed within it. The scouting process is rigorous, and what they find must have an intrigue all of its own: “Not in a convention centre, not in a tent, but more or less in a private residence, one not usually open to the public,” explains Bellavance-Lecompte.

Their choice in Engadine was the Chesa Planta, a stately patrician home-turned-museum first built in 1595. For the fair, nearly 80 percent of the museum’s existing furniture was stripped out, and replaced with displays by 20 galleries, including London’s Gallery FUMI, Beirut’s Carwan Gallery and New York mid-century design specialists Demisch Danant.

“At the end of the day, once you buy a piece of furniture or art or an object, it is contextualised into the house – this is why the galleries

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like it, this is why the collectors like it,” says Bellavance-Lecompte of the domestic setting.

The venue also forces an intimacy of scale: the invite-only guest list is in the hundreds, rather than the thousands, and Bellavance-Lecompte along with Pace (who for nearly a decade has been a part-time resident of St Moritz himself ) personally make the introductions between gallerists and guests.

The valley itself is also part of the draw. It is an interesting place for collectors to visit, and puts them in a frame of mind difficult to achieve in London, New York or Paris – relaxed, refreshed, appealing to “a certain imagination,” says Bellavance-Lecompte. With an event like this, he adds, “we have little competition”. As such, it attracts new audiences, including those turned off by traditional fairs. Guests tended to truly engage, returning to the Chesa Planta two, three or four times during their stay.

ART & COLLECTING / Switzerland

When Nomad’s collectors return in 2019 for the second edition, they’ll have a bit more distraction. Visitors will be sure to travel down the road to the Muzeum Susch, a contemporary art institution funded by Polish businesswoman, philanthropist, art collector (and Engadine resident) Grażyna Kulczyk, which opens in the new year.

For its part, Muzeum Susch is also slipping into a historical skin, renovating the site of an abandoned 12th-century vicarage. The vicarage building is typical of the region: its exteriors are coloured white with chalk, its windows deeply inset. A brewery was added in the 19th century, and is in part carved into the mountainside, with caverns hewn in stone used for production and storage.

Former breweries have proven to be good luck for Kulczyk – Stary Browar, her arts and business centre in Poznan, Poland, took over the former Brewery Huggerów, and has been a huge success.

“In a way, it feels like we’re waking this town up,” says the museum’s director Mareike Dittmer. “Well, I wouldn’t call it a town, it’s a village.” Samedan’s brewery closed in the 1920s, and its train station is a request stop.

Charming as it may be, there isn’t much else here – a small hospital, the local carpenter.

The institution will open following some skilled intervention by Zurich architects Chasper Schmidlin and Lukas Voellmy, which has involved renovating existing buildings and excavating new spaces. Kulczyk and Dittmer want the Muzeum Susch to be a space of experimentation and education, “more like a kunsthalle – beyond simply the presentation of collection,” says Dittmer. International curators will draw from Kulczyk’s collection, but not rely on it, for temporary exhibitions, and a residency programme will invite artists and thinkers to spend time at the site.

Although the first exhibition will hone in on female artists (working title: Women Looking at Men Looking at Women), the common thread going forward will be artists who have

been “overlooked”. For the opening, they have also commissioned a site-specific artwork from Monika Sosnowska, a Polish artist known for large-scale architectural sculpture that often looks much like the twisted metal of a wrecked building. Her piece for the institution, titled Stairs, is a 14m-high structure situated in the brewery’s former ice tower.

“There are a lot of questions about the periphery and the centre,” explains Dittmer of the Muzeum Susch’s location, “and a lot, of course, about the magic of nature that you experience here.” As with Nomad and Sommet, the impetus to locate in the Engadine was, both consciously and unconsciously, the clarity of thought one can achieve here. Digesting art and design in this context offers people a perspective that they just can’t get in cities.

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Above Chesa Planta, home of Nomad’s winter event Facing page Clockwise from top: Gallery FUMI’s space at Nomad; Tony Matelli’s Warrior (from the Marlborough Gallery) outside Chesa Planta; Beirut’s Carwan Gallery at Nomad

ART & COLLECTING / Studio glass

Radiance & flow

Laura McKinley brings a sense of childlike intrigue to glassmaking

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rtist Laura McKinley is explaining why she first fell in love with glass: “There’s nothing else like it. It was this moving, breathing, living material. I was just mesmerised by it. It was incredible.” We’re chatting in a cafe on fashionable Bermondsey Street, next to the workshop-cum-gallery, London Glassblowing, where an exhibition of McKinley’s latest work, Childlike Abandon, is about to close.

McKinley has been a resident at London Glassblowing – arguably the nation’s leading glass workshop – for the past eight years.

Founded by Peter Layton in 1976, it is (quite literally) a hothouse for up-and-coming glass talent, with ten makers working on their own pieces as well as making Layton’s designs.

Childlike Abandon marks the culmination of her recent MA at the Royal College of Art. McKinley’s organically shaped pieces – some in clear glass but most opaque and sandblasted smooth with cut and polished elements – were inspired by children’s toys. They’re beautiful and overwhelmingly tactile. “I want to make pieces that people are surprised by and want to explore,” she says. “I’m keen to bring out that intrigue that children have with everyday objects because everything is fresh and new.”

Whereas many studio glass artists are guilty of splurging on colour, maxing out on the material’s potential, McKinley instead keeps hers muted, using a handful of pastel tones. “I don’t use a lot of colour generally, or if I do then it’s very simple but I wanted it to be very calming and subdued,” she explains. “I decided to concentrate on the forms and I didn’t want the colour to distract from that.”

But why glass in the first instance? After all, it isn’t an easy artistic route to take, requiring large amounts of equipment and, therefore, space and cash. It’s also physically taxing. “I love three-dimensional forms. I always see

things in 3D; nothing is ever flat,” she explains.

She went to university to study ceramics but had a go at glassblowing in her first week and never looked back. “I was doing anything and everything I could,” she says, “exploring, blowing into wire to make crazy shapes. I was always into sculpture, so that’s what I made.”

Words Grant Gibson Images Alick Cotterill

It was here that she started experimenting with her Symbiosis series – joining glass bubbles together to create different forms. You sense there’s a determined streak running through McKinley, a resilience that’s required in any up-and-coming maker. She first applied to the RCA directly after leaving university, for instance, only to be rejected. “I was distraught,” she says. “I was so sad, but it pushed me to do more and not give up.”

Instead she did a year as an artist in residence at her old university before taking a short course at legendary US glass school Pilchuck, subsequently getting a job at Loco Glass studio in Cirencester, and then moving to the capital, “just because I wanted to be in London,” she laughs. “I tend to do that a lot. Do things and see what happens.” She quickly picked up a job at London Glassblowing, so it all worked out.

Finally getting in to the RCA for her MA was another shift. “I didn’t want any preconceptions that would push me in certain direction,” she says. “I wanted my experience there to lead me into areas I wouldn’t normally be taken.”

The test for any young maker is how they fare when they’re finally away from the protective embrace of higher education. McKinley is setting up a studio in north London with fellow RCA graduates, while continuing her work at London Glassblowing and garnering attention from the fine-art market. Hers is a name worth remembering. londonglassblowing.co.uk

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Facing page Avolio I, from Laura McKinley’s Childlike Abandon series, inspired by children’s toys

“I’m keen to bring out that intrigue children have with everyday objects because everything is fresh and new”

Above Imagine is series of sculptures whose childlike quality comes from its simple forms and mix of opaque and polished elements

Facing page McKinley’s technique combines both blowing and hot-sculpting the glass. This piece is Assemble I, from her Childlike Abandon series

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ART & COLLECTING / Profile

Rare display A new biography about David Gill traces the gallerist’s life and work Words / Dominic Lutyens Images / Ricardo Labougle

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any will be familiar with the roster of creatives that David Gill nurtured long after setting up his first small shop on the Fulham Road in 1987 – among them Zaha Hadid, the Campana Brothers, Fredrikson Stallard and Barnaby Barford. Less familiar will be the gallerist’s earlier collaborations with artists Donald Judd and Grayson Perry.

So, in the new book David Gill: Designing Art (Vendome Press), it may well be the lesserknown story of his formative years that are found to be more interesting.

Solina Guedroitz

The book credits the Spanish-born, Londonbased Gill with pioneering the concept of “design art” in Britain since its infancy in the 1980s. Arguably, this phenomenon – a rather nebulous category of limited-edition design that prioritises form over function and so approximates fine art – is a relatively recent development in the UK. Yet the book’s introduction by veteran art journalist Meredith Etherington-Smith acknowledges that the

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ART & COLLECTING / Profile

movement has well-known British precursors, notably Edward James, patron of the surrealists, who commissioned Salvador Dalí to create his lobster telephone and Mae West Lips sofa, modelled on the one depicted in the artist’s 1936 painting of the Hollywood actress.

It could be said that another precedent for the movement was the Bloomsbury Group’s Omega Workshops, which saw the likes of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant try to dissolve the division between the fine and decorative arts by producing art, textiles and painted furniture all in a similar post-impressionist idiom. However, it is France that is generally seen as the natural home of design art – its art deco designs, often handmade from exotic, expensive materials, were more opulent than those found anywhere else. Indeed, if Gill has pioneered anything it is the importation of the spirit of French design art to the UK: his first gallery showcased ceramics by Jean Cocteau and work by the French modernist interior designer Jean-Michel Frank. Soon after, he promoted the neo-baroque and later playfully primitivist work of duo Mattia Bonetti and Elizabeth Garouste.

This book is part biography, tracing Gill’s life since his upbringing in Zaragoza in Spain – though rather mysteriously his name doesn’t sound Spanish – where he accompanied his mother to her dressmaker, pored over her magazines and first became enamoured of design. It is also a eulogy of design art. As Francis Sultana, the gallery’s artistic director and Gill’s life partner claims, Gill’s career path “took the decorative arts of the 1980s and reinvented them into the contemporary ‘design-art’ global market that exists today”.

Before going to university, Gill spent an enlightening year in the French capital. “Paris opened me up,” he remarks in the book. “This was when I discovered all the amazing designs of the 1920s and 1930s.” One of his first buys, picked up the Marché aux Puces, the city’s legendary antique market, was a chair created by 20th-century French architect and designer Emilio Terry, who favoured a neo-baroque style. This aesthetic has shaped Gill’s taste ever

since. The designers he represents also reflect his penchant for stylised representations of nature, maximalism, a pop sensibility and whimsy. At its most challenging, the work he showcases is ironic – take Grayson Perry’s urns, which tackle uncomfortable subjects such as social injustice and so are arguably at odds with the elitist ethos of Gill’s spacious gallery, now on King Street in Piccadilly opposite Christie’s (where, incidentally, as a young man Gill worked as a modern print specialist). At his gallery, he has also shown work by US artist Paul McCarthy, known for his mordant critiques of American consumerism.

In a gallery space, design art can sometimes look overblown and oddly monumental; it is often more appealing in a domestic interior, mixed with other similarly eccentric creations.

One of the book’s main strengths is its lavish images of homes (including Gill’s own pads in London and Malta), which feature designs from his gallery in a more nuanced context.

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Above Fredrikson Stallard’s King Bonk armchair and ottoman, in Gill’s home at the Albany Facing page Top to bottom: a Cut Out sofa and Polyhedral side tables by Mattia Bonetti, in David Gill’s south London home; a portrait of the gallerist

Workplace design works best when driven by a purpose Method Recycling has arrived in the UK

methodrecycling.com

Kengo Kuma’s V&A Dundee. Read the full story on p166 Image by Hufton + Crow

ARCHITECTURE Surveying the built environment

ARCHITECTURE / Photo essay

Observation rooms

The disused St Maarten Hospital in Kortrijk was one of the venues for Belgium’s biannual design fair, Interieur, where it made an immersive backdrop for installations, lectures and workshops – but here’s what it looked like before, in all its eerie beauty Images / Dennis De Smet Thanks to / Interieur.be

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ARCHITECTURE / Dundee

A different slant

Kengo Kuma’s cliff-like building for V&A Dundee is reviving the city’s neglected waterfront

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ome ten years after the idea was first mooted, a new Victoria & Albert Museum has opened its doors in the post-industrial Scottish coastal town of Dundee. It’s the first V&A outside London, and also Scotland’s first design museum, containing the largest museum-standard exhibition spaces in the country. Sited on the river Tay, its inverted pyramidal form and angular concrete-panelled walls are the work of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, who says that the brief “was to integrate the building with the river and create a relationship with it. We tried to find a special shape that would fit the waterfront.”

Aside from its slanted, twisting and folding form, what also makes the new museum stand out is the void at its heart, created where the building’s two volumes come away from one another at ground level. “Our intention was to activate the flow of people around and through the building,” says Kuma, who also refers to this slightly dark space, where water pools create dancing shadows on the walls, as “the cave”. The space also creates beautiful framed views of the river from a distance.

Kuma is an architect known for his imaginative wooden buildings, but in Scotland, he opted for concrete. “The conditions here are very tough, with the climate and sea water,” he explains. “The V&A had to be protected by a heavy concrete shell.” Taking the nearby cliffs of Arbroath as his inspiration, he gave the concrete a rough stone-like texture on the 2,429 light-grey panels of different depths and lengths covering its walls; for the angled walls behind it, it was tinged with a black pigment in order to provide maximum contrast with the horizontal fins and to create shadows, another important theme in Kuma’s work. “Shadows can add quietness and calmness to a building,” he says. “That is the reason our design allowed for gaps between the panels of concrete.”

A contrast to its monumental outer appearance, the building is warm and light inside with a lofty atrium space (replete with shop and cafe), timber walls and beautiful dark limestone floors with mesmerising fossil patterns. On the river-facing wall, a long staircase with regular rest areas and benches leads up to the first floor and has low risers and deep steps: “The slope is very gentle so that it’s easy to walk up and encourages you to look around as you go up,” explains project architect Maurizio Mucciola.

Words Giovanna Dunmall Images Hufton + Crow

Upstairs there are two galleries on either side of a central exhibition space, learning rooms, an auditorium and an open-plan restaurant with a terrace that may not be usable much of the year due strong winds. One gallery space houses the Scottish Design Galleries, a permanent collection of objects or ideas made in Scotland – or designed by Scots – that run the gamut from textiles and shipbuilding to architecture and comic books. There is even a reassembled section of an original Charles Rennie Mackintosh tearoom that had been in storage in Glasgow for half a century, which showcases intricate woodwork and beautiful hand-crafted glass elements.

“I think people will be surprised by some of these pieces, which are familiar but people don’t know where they originated,” says Joanna Norman, lead curator for the Scottish Design Galleries. “One of the first things you see is a kaleidoscope – I think most people are totally unaware that it is a Scottish creation and very much a product of the Edinburgh Enlightenment and experiments with optics.”

Another thing that Scotland – and Dundee specifically – majors on is videogame design.

The industry kicked off in the 1980s, when a local watchmaking factory started making ZX Spectrum computers instead. One of the stars of that early scene was game designer

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Facing page The building’s slanting form and horizontal stacks of pre-cast concrete were inspired by the cliffs of Arbroath

ARCHITECTURE / Dundee

Dave Jones, a computer science student at Abertay University in Dundee, who developed worldwide bestseller Lemmings before going on to create Grand Theft Auto, one of the most successful and influential game franchises ever.

The other gallery space will house major temporary exhibitions. The first show is Ocean Liners: Speed and Style (recently arrived from London’s V&A) but future exhibitions will come from other design institutions around the world or be devised by V&A Dundee itself.

“Curators wouldn’t be happy just receiving a programme,” says Philip Long, director of V&A Dundee. “We need to be a place that is generating ideas and discussion and debate, and that works well when it’s a programme that we ourselves take responsibility for.”

City Council leader John Alexander said at the museum’s opening that the place has “put a fire in the belly of Dundonians” after decades of unemployment and social problems had removed it. But some commentators have been troubled by the fact that the building, which is part of a wider £1bn waterfront regeneration programme, is surrounded by a recently renovated and architecturally generic station and is soon to be joined by other new buildings of average design ambition.

As Graeme Hutton, professor of architecture at the University of Dundee and part of the competition committee that selected Kuma’s design explains, the development was always due to happen and replaces a road network, overhead walkways and some uninspiring buildings that blocked off access to the water.

He believes the problem of context has been overstated. “When you’re in London you get glimpses of St Paul’s but you don’t see all of it, all of the time. During construction, people got used to seeing the building on display.

Now it’s being slightly closed off and the vistas are more directed, but you can still see the prow and entrance from Union Street in town and it is becoming part of a layered city.”

What’s more, he adds, not every building can be a monument. The aim here is more about bringing life and activity to the water, and in this, the V&A Dundee has done its job.

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Facing page Top to bottom: architect Kengo Kuma; an airy, timber-lined atrium orientates visitors; Dundee’s waterfront, which is undergoing a wider £1bn regeneration

Above A void is created where the building’s two volumes connect at first-floor level, framing views across the Tay. Architect Kengo Kuma calls this “the cave”

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A fitting encore The Royal Opera House’s surefooted overhaul aims to attract new audiences Words / James McLachlan Images / Hufton+Crow

ARCHITECTURE / London

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n 1996, the BBC aired The House – a flyon-the-wall documentary series that lifted the curtain on what went on backstage at one of the country’s most venerable institutions, London’s Royal Opera House. It was a seminal moment in television, setting the scene for a new genre of what we now know as reality TV. Although it made compelling viewing, it proved somewhat of a public relations disaster for the institution, offering up a cast of warring characters that would have any right-minded TV producer rubbing their hands with glee.

Elitist and incompetent seemed to be the general takeaways. The same year architect Jeremy Dixon embarked on a lottery-funded overhaul of the building in partnership with BDP to the tune of £140m, which compounded PR woes. Costs overran, performances were cancelled, and the time-frame was impossibly protracted. It completed in 1999; Dixon had originally won the gig in 1983.

But when the dust settled, even the most sceptical was forced to admit that Dixon had all but succeeded in democratising a famously hierarchical space. No longer were people in the upper cheap seats expected to scuttle in via tradesman’s entrance on a side street while

the upper echelons swept in to the Floral Hall (now the Paul Hamlyn Hall) on Bow Street.

And yet more could be done. At least, that is what the Royal Opera House believed when it engaged London practice Stanton Williams to tie-up the loose ends in a follow-up scheme it christened Open Up. As the name suggests, its aim was to create a welcoming place to visit and attract new, younger, audiences.

What was required was a dismantling of various architectural roadblocks to improve people flow and facilities, all without interrupting the 960-odd performances that continued even as jackhammers hit concrete. “It was like one of those puzzles. Once you removed a piece, you could see how the others could be shuffled around,” says Stanton Williams’ Alan Stanton.

Chief offender was a gargantuan loadbearing stair that ran parallel to the Covent Garden entrance. By removing it, the architects established a visual connection to the street via a new glazed pavilion entrance, which doubles as a drinks terrace for Paul Hamlyn Hall above.

The great missed trick of Dixon’s scheme was that it allowed the venue to lay dormant during the day, at least as far as the public

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Above The refurbished Linbury Theatre: its seating is now flexible and can be reconfigured to suit a variety of performance types Previous page A new glazed pavilion enhances the instantly recognisable Bow Street facade; its roof provides an outdoor terrace

ARCHITECTURE / London

was concerned. Given the footfall in Covent Garden, it seemed obvious to expand the foyer to include a cafe to attract a younger, daytime audience. Finished in solid, quiet materials – stone, timber – but with digital projections displayed on the walls, the new spaces are a curious mix. Reassuring to the old guard, but with just enough modernity in the rapid-fire loops of whirling performers to (perhaps) convince a new audience to return come nightfall. Penetrating further into the space leads to the other entrance from the Covent Garden piazza – remodelled with curved glass frontage and featuring a retail unit. In a sign of the times, the old box office stalls are gone, to be replaced by tablet-carrying greeters.

Below Top to bottom: the top-floor restaurant, with its glazed terrace overlooking Covent Garden; a detail of the walnutclad balconies in the Linbury Theatre

Below ground rests the Linbury Theatre – now afforded an improved foyer, which will double as a performance space. Formerly a classic “black box” the theatre is now a horseshoe of sturdy American walnut with purpleclad retractable seats and a state-of-the-art acoustics system. Flexibility is the watchword, so the seats can be adjusted to suit a variety of stage settings. Some might feel the Linbury has sacrificed some of its edgy charm amid the polished execution, but it is no longer playing a faint second fiddle to its bigger brother.

The one element where the architects loosened the reins is the illuminated central staircase, which, while not quite attaining Busby Berkeley levels of flair, does offer a dash of drama. It leads to the amphitheatre and a terrace on the top floor, which are served by a new restaurant, and overlook Covent Garden.

As always with great reconfiguring projects like this, the changes are subtle but their effect on the visitor experience is felt exponentially.

Indeed, it is tempting to characterise Stanton Williams’ work as the mother of all snagging jobs given the sweeping changes Dixon had pushed through, but that would sell far too short the intelligence of the enhancement. Not to mention the diligence and commitment of the practice. “We’ve lived it for three years. It has been a labour of love,” says Alan Williams quietly, before adding: “Working with theatre people is always fun.”

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BOLD FURNITURE FOR MODERN PLACES

FORM-MOBILE www.jennifernewman.com Showroom: 8 Clerkenwell Green, EC1R 0DE

Fashion designer Edeline Lee’s studio. Read the full story on p184.

Image by Joe McGorty

STYLE Fashionable pursuits

Most wanted

Clothing and accessories that are thoughtful, expressive, beautiful and good Words / Morag Bruce

STYLE / Products

Fern Fans If you draw your fan across your cheek, be careful who’s watching: you may well have proclaimed your love for them, or possibly told them you’re sorry. The 19th-century language of fans may be a lost art, but the products themselves remain an elegant, suggestive and eyecatching way to keep cool. Take Fern Fans: designed by Daisy Hoppen

and her co-creative director, Danish textile designer Amanda Borberg, its products are made by a familyrun factory in Valencia from cotton and birch, in three sizes. Hoppen and Borberg hope to bring the fans’ playful and practical uses into modern life.

From £50, fernfans.com

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STYLE / Products

Matea Benedetti The Pineapple skirt, by Italian sustainable luxury fashion brand Matea Benedetti, is more than just a cute name; it’s actually made from pineappleleaf fibre. Benedetti had been looking for a while for sustainable alternatives to leather, and found it in Piñatex, which makes commercial use of a byproduct of the fruit industry that’s usually discarded

or burned. “It does have some limitations; it’s quite rigid, for instance,” she says. “You have to combine it with other materials or work on forms that fit well with this kind of effect.” Happily, it turns out Piñatex suits glamorous pencil skirts very well. €810, mateabenedetti.com

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STYLE / Products

Blackhorse Lane Ateliers With a ready-to-wear line of selvedge and organic raw denim, Blackhorse Lane Ateliers claims to craft the only jeans made in London for at least 50 years. “Jeans are the most engineered garment on the planet, and most London makers come from a tailoring background,” says David Giusti, a member of its Walthamstow-based team. “When

we looked inside, we felt they were unfinished and untidy. So we explored tailoring techniques to see how we could incorporate them into our jeans.”

The company also runs denim masterclasses to help raise the status of this under-appreciated industry.

From £135, blackhorselane.com

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STYLE / Products

Intoart x John Smedley There’s no way you could have a bad day in this sweater. Designed by Andre Williams (pictured), its positive message goes deeper than its slogan: it’s part of a collaboration between knitwear brand John Smedley and Intoart, which works with people with learning disabilities to achieve equal recognition in the world of contemporary art and design. Williams

is one of three Intoart artists who have produced designs for the capsule collection, which includes unisex sweaters, dresses, a scarf and a shawl in fine merino wool – all featuring hand-drawn designs, translated into knitwear by the John Smedley team.

From £220, johnsmedley.co.uk

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STYLE / Products

Daniela Barone “I love all metals. They hold a life of their own,” says Los Angeles-based jewellery designer Daniela Barone. “You can’t force metal to do something it doesn’t want to do. There has to be a lot of respect and care in the creation of a piece. I see the design in the materials, then I carve, bend and cut until the piece exists.” Inspired by art and architecture

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– from abstract paintings by Hans Hofmann to a 15th-century Florentine altarpiece – Barone creates bold pieces made from a type of brass called NuGold.

She sees her jewellery as “a type of armour, symbolic of the strength and beauty of women.”

From £80, danielabarone.com

STYLE / Products

Flattered The satin Zoe mule, from Swedish brand Flattered, balances clean-cut Scandinavian design and discreet glamour. This modern take on the classic mule will serve you well, being just as good for t-shirt and jeans as dressing up. “The straight heel and decorative fabric plaque on the upper is a nod to our love of simplicity,” says Anna Johansson, Flattered’s

creative director. The company is pleasingly upfront and open about its sustainability policies, believing consumers should never have to compromise on these values. Its shoes are designed in Stockholm, then made in Spain and Portugal. £169, flattered.se

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STYLE / Products

Workhouse Bury St Edmunds menswear company Workhouse’s SS19 collection is inspired by the work of Vincent Van Gogh – a bit of a new direction for the brand, which until now had been known for delving into English history to create contemporary updates on classic workwear. “Vincent has always been an inspiration to me,” says designer Peter Leveritt. “We

greatly admired his work and the way he poured his soul into his paintings.” In soft linens, English and Scottish cottons and simple, relaxed shapes, the pieces are named after places, people or subjects in Vincent’s life, and they are all made in England.

Jackets from £350, workhouse-england.co.uk

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STYLE / Profile

Fit for real life

Design Anthology UK captures in-demand fashion designer Edeline Lee in her studio

“I

feel like an archaeologist,” says womenswear designer Edeline Lee, across the table in her east London studio. She isn’t suggesting that she gets down in the mud, trowel in hand, when seeking her treasure, but she does dig deep for it. Just like an archaeologist, to find her meaning she needs to build a better picture of people and how they live, through curiosity, endeavour and empathy. “It’s not me imposing what I think women should wear, it’s me trying to figure out – as a woman now, what do I want to wear?” she says. “I want to create something that works for women, so what works for me?

It’s personal and intimate. I feel I’m doing something in service of women. That sounds cheesy!” – her face erupts into a wide smile.

Since the British-Canadian designer launched her label in 2013, awards and accolades have followed; her line is now stocked worldwide, from Vivaldi in New York to Costume in Dublin. Lee is one of those lucky people who knew her path in life from a young age. “I made my first garment from a pattern at 12.

My parents were rigidly against me going into the arts, though, which only made me more determined. I used every avenue I could to be close to fashion. I worked in theatre doing costume design, building my portfolio on the side. I learnt that, in this industry, you need to stick it out.” She studied at Central Saint Martins before landing apprenticeships at both John Galliano and Alexander McQueen.

“Back when I was growing up, you’d see their work and it was the dream,” she says. “They were very different, but both brilliant. Genuine storytellers. I loved that then and still do.”

This morning, fresh from eight days in Paris showing her SS19 collection to buyers, and London Fashion Week immediately before that, Lee went straight to the Frieze art fair.

Lee loves art, of course, but she was at Frieze to meet clients: women in the art world were the first to flock to her elegant, distinctive designs.

“They’re aesthetically aware, but they don’t necessarily want to be fashion plates,” she says of these clients. “The way I think about colour and structure seems to resonate with them.”

They are still loyal, of course, but the word is now well and truly out. Alicia Vikander, Karen Elson, Livia Firth, Cynthia Nixon and Solange Knowles have all worn Lee’s designs.

These women don’t mess about, and Lee knows this: “We’ve worked hard to find fabrics that fit our woman’s life and allow us to experiment.

We have a fabric you can just pull out of your suitcase and it always looks polished” – music to collective ears. All Lee’s garments are made in England using fabrics woven in Italy and France. Cut is important, of course, as is detail.

“I love where you look up close and there’s a tiny touch that’s handmade and special, but from a distance it looks minimal,” she says.

Words Morag Bruce Images Joe McGorty

That’s clear to see in Lee’s SS19 collection.

The seemingly simple shapes have intricate constructions, playful yet sophisticated details, a delicious, rich palette and bold, hand-painted zigzags. Plus, you can’t not love a designer who knows how to work a ruffle. For the SS19 presentation of the collection, she leaned in on her love of storytelling and immersive performance: “It was about showing that a woman has many self-expressions. Her public face as well as her vulnerable side.” It ran eight times on a continuous loop, and professional dancers were cast alongside the models. The audience could enter and leave as they wished, so each person had a different experience. Lee herself was dancing by the end.

Did this collection answer any more of Lee’s questions? “It’s like a giant puzzle. Each season, you get some pieces in the right place, but you screw up a little bit over there. That’s why I feel lucky I chose fashion. The craft is so rich, you never stop exploring. The day after the season finishes, you get a fresh start. You might be able to get it better. We’ll see.”

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Facing page “I made my first garment from a pattern at 12”: fashion designer Edeline Lee in her east London home and studio

“I love where you look up close and there’s a tiny touch that’s handmade and special, but from a distance it looks minimal”

Above Left to right: Powolny dress; Dancer vest and Telluride skirt. Both are from Edeline Lee’s SS19 collection Images Benjamin Tietge Facing page Raw materials: coloured threads lined up in the workshop

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Above Ivory and bottle green Valence top and JetÊ midi skirt Image Benjamin Tietge Facing page Scenes from Lee’s workshop, clockwise from top left: a ruffled neckline; paper patterns; spools of thread; bagged-up patterns

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PIONEER

Pattern hero

How Athos Bulcão’s randomly laid tilework gave Brasilia some soul Words / James McLachlan Image / Juan Pratginestos

A

rchitect Oscar Niemeyer may have designed the city of Brasilia, but it was modernist artist Athos Bulcão (1918-2008) who brought it to life. Intended to replace Rio as Brazil’s capital, the city – a utopian vision of axes, plazas and monumental civic architecture – was almost suffocating in its rigidity. Simone de Beauvoir described it as having an “air of elegant monotony”.

dove and a Star of Bethlehem set against a deep blue background. In years to come, the motif would find its way on to postcards, towels and teacups, becoming a kind of shorthand for the artist’s wider work.

His subsequent designs were more abstract, challenging the viewer to decode or discover symmetries. One of his preferred techniques was to design a series of tiles and then allow the construction team to install them in a pattern they saw fit (a method that is currently undergoing a major revival). This is most keenly felt in Niemeyer’s sombre National Congress building, where the artist’s work is almost provocative in its disorderliness. Bulcão worked on many other projects, including publishing house Mondadori’s Milan headquarters, but Brasilia remains his most extensive canvas, and is as much a part of the city’s identity as any of Niemeyer’s buildings. His colourful subversion of the city’s tight aesthetic endures.

As Niemeyer built, though, Bulcão embellished, proving the perfect foil for the architect’s modernist structures.

The artist’s tilework, with its fractured geometries and abstract forms, disrupted the meticulous rows of rectilinear housing blocks – a modern interpretation of the decorative azulejo tiles that arrived in the country with the Portuguese in the 17th century. At the church of Our Lady of Fatima, Bulcão complemented the architect’s swooping simulacrum of a nun’s wimple with his own figurative interpretation – a stylised white

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