Design Anthology UK Issue 13

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Flagship Store, London 48A Pimlico Rd, London SW1W 8LP

VLA26

Vega Chair by Vilhelm Lauritzen

THE SOUND OF DESIGN

Slender yet durable, the VLA26 Vega Chair was originally created for Copenhagen’s historic concert hall, Vega. Many decades after its debut, Carl Hansen & Søn proudly launches Vilhelm Lauritzen’s functionalist masterpiece with meticulous attention to craftsmanship and detail.

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FROM THE EDITOR

Lucky 13. This issue we’re celebrating four years of publishing Design Anthology UK. It’s a milestone we’re very proud of, considering the challenges of the last few years. Thanks to our dedicated readership, D/A UK is thriving and growing.

Print is an integral part of what we do, but it’s not the whole picture. Along with our sister titles in Asia and Australia, Design Anthology is a global media brand that delivers a thoughtful, considered take on design, architecture, art and travel. We have big plans for next year including more digital content, podcasts, events and reader giveaways. Sign up to our newsletter, Design Digest, at designanthologyuk.com to stay updated on all we have coming up.

In the meantime, welcome to issue 13. We feature some soulful homes in the US, France, Italy and the UK, plus beautifully designed restaurants (with food to match) in Antwerp and Manchester. But the stand-out section in this issue is Architecture, where the newly restored Battersea Power Station lends the opportunity for journalist John Jervis to walk us through the history of one of London’s most beloved landmarks (p108). We also tour BIG’s new refugee museum in Denmark (p114) – a poetic building that respects its fascinating past while serving a new and vital purpose.

Until next time.

Elizabeth Choppin Editor-in-Chief

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MAXI SLIDING PANELS, SELF BOLD CABINET. DESIGN GIUSEPPE BAVUSO

London Flagship Store 83-85 Wigmore Street W1U1DL London london@rimadesio.co.uk +44 020 74862193

MASTHEAD

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December 2022

Co-publisher & Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Choppin elizabeth@designanthologyuk.com

hello@astridmedia.co.uk astridmedia.co.uk

Co-publisher & Creative Partnerships Director Kerstin Zumstein kerstin@astridmedia.co.uk Art Director Shazia Chaudhry shazia@designanthologyuk.com Sub Editor Emily Brooks Commercial Director Rebecca Harkness rebecca@designanthologyuk.com Editorial Concept Design Frankie Yuen, Blackhill Studio Words Charlotte Abrahams, Emily Brooks, Philomena Epps, Amy Frearson, Kate Jacobs, John Jervis, Nicola Leigh Stewart, Joe Lloyd, Dominic Lutyens, Karine Monié Images Billy Bolton, Leonardo Cendamo, Rasmus Hjortshøj, Peter Landers, Vincent Leroux, Ian Lidell, Ed Reeve, Carola Ripamonti, Nick Rochowski, Eline Willaert, Matthew Williams, Danyu Zeng

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Media Sales, worldwide Rebecca Harkness rebecca@designanthologyuk.com Media Sales, UK and Europe Elisabetta Gardini elisabetta@designanthologyuk.com Printer Park Communications Alpine Way London E6 6LA United Kingdom Reprographics Rhapsody Media 109-123 Clifton Street London EC2A 4LD United Kingdom Distributors UK newsstand MMS Ltd. Europe newsstand Seymour UK / EU complimentary Global Media Hub

Rug Design: Evolution B II | Photography: Beth Davis

Introducing Studio by Tai Ping

An exclusive prêt-à-porter range of crafted rugs 85 Pelham Street, London SW7 2NJ | london@taipingcarpets.com | taipingshop-uk.com

CONTENTS

Front cover A home for collectors in London, a collaboration between architects Pringle Richards Sharratt and interior designers State of Craft. Image by Alex Kristal. See p48

Radar

Journey

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Products Collections and collaborations of note

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

Hotel openings New design-centric destinations to explore across the globe

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Restaurant, Antwerp Space Copenhagen’s partnerships with designers and artists has given a moody, dream-like quality to Blueness

Hotel, Margate From the co-founders of Frieze, a new art-filled bolthole by the seaside

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Restaurant, Manchester A sensory approach informs the design of a new Japanese bar and restaurant by local studio Jolie

The cat’s whiskers Kitten, a new venue in Manchester’s Deansgate Square development, serves up Japanese food and drink, izakaya style. See p26

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Home 48

London A Georgian home where the art, architecture and interiors have been conceived as a single, sensual whole

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Bandol Valérie Chomarat’s grounded getaway in Provence is a family refuge

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Trieste An apartment inspired by the work of female artists and designers of the past

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New York City Restoring the balance to a Brooklyn townhouse, full of daylight and rooted in the work of local artisans

CONTENTS

Art + Collecting

Style

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

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Profile Giovanna Ticciati and the virtual marketplace she has founded to give talented artisans a shop window

Architecture 108

Regeneration, London The electrifying tale of Battersea Power Station and its new guise

114

Museum, Oksbøl Denmark’s refugee museum, Flught, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)

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

Pioneer 128

Gae Aulenti From the Musée d’Orsay to the Pipistrello lamp, the Italian designer who followed her own diverse path

Human scale In Denmark, BIG turns a second world war refugee camp into a museum honouring the displaced, past and present. See p114

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Trippy vase by Massproductions. Read the full story on p15

R ADAR Global design news

Gareth Hacker

R ADAR / Products

Béton Brut East London gallery Béton Brut’s latest furniture collection is a collaboration with designer David Horan, which mimics the luminosity of traditional vellum but is in fact made from paper. The starting point was a mid-20th-century goatskin parchment cabinet in the gallery’s collection: from there, Horan developed his “vegan vellum” by layering handmade Japanese paper using a découpage technique. The collection features seating, a coffee table and lighting, including these lounge chairs. betonbrut.co.uk

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SCP

Chris Mottalini

US lighting brand Blue Green Works is now available in the UK, thanks to retailer SCP. The Manhattan studio was founded in 2020, launching with two collections including Palm, which was influenced by the “beach modernism” of Fire Island, New Yorkers’ summer getaway. The series includes this pendant, its kiln-slumped glass sections curving at the top like a stylised palm tree; it comes in six colours including green, bronze-brown and plum, perfect for channelling a 1970s beach-house vibe. scp.co.uk

Kalon Studios x Reith Design Kalon Studios and Reath Design have teamed up to give a new face to the former’s Rugosa furniture.

Los Angeles interior design studio Reath has devised custom upholstery for the collection’s sofa, daybed and chair, with the pattern and colour of the fabrics contrasting with the stricter angles of the

pine frames. Florals, stripes and checks are used together to exuberant effect, with the fabrics drawn from the collections of Alexander Girard, Rose Cumming and the UK’s Warner Textile Archive. kalonstudios.com

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Tai Ping Known for its bespoke rugs – with accompanying long lead times – Tai Ping has launched a capsule collection that offers the same craftsmanship and creativity without the wait. Studio by Tai Ping features ten rugs in two set sizes (2m x 3m and 1.7m x 2.4m), including graphic, linear designs such as this Zebra D III in a bright teal, which has the look of combed sand, and is made from responsibly sourced wool and silk. All the rugs are meticulously made in Tai Ping’s workshop in Xiamen, China. houseoftaiping.com

The New Craftsmen The semi-buried treasure of the Thames foreshore inspired The New Craftsmen’s Claylarks collection.

The gallery’s creative director Catherine Lock invited 15 makers on a mudlarking trip, after which they were encouraged to create work inspired by their finds. Alongside the tabletop ceramics you

might expect, there are some beautiful furniture pieces, such as Matthew Raw’s oak dining table, which features cylindrical legs clad in Raw’s tiles, their green glaze inspired by discarded pottery. thenewcraftsmen.com

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Massproductions Founded with the aim of “creating objects with the ability to gild everyday life,” Massproductions has launched some smaller items to complement the larger furniture in its portfolio, including a wine rack, door wedge, mirror and candle holder. Most of these objects have a distinctly utilitarian aesthetic, but this Trippy vase is more decorative: it uses two glassmaking techniques, with the base produced in a mould and the wavy top section free-blown, the two fusing together to create a harmonious whole. massproductions.se

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The Invisible Collection With a twisted edge like a decorative pie-crust, this feminine Georgia seating is the creation of Aline Asmar d’Amman. It forms part of The Invisible Collection’s latest fruitful designer collaboration: Beirut-born Asmar d’Amman is the founder of the architectural practice Culture in Architecture, whose work includes the renovation of Paris’ Hôtel de Crillon. Her collection also includes Smoking, a family of lighting in brushed satin brass with white silk shades; Stone Cloud, a side table that pairs rough slabs of stone for the base with polished tops in contrasting shades; and an intricate embellished wallcovering produced by de Gournay. theinvisiblecollection.com

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Atelier de Troupe With its deep seat and bolster encased in a ribbonlike stainless-steel frame, Atelier de Troupe’s Dada chair relies on the contrast between the delicate and the robust; the matt and the polished. Made in Los Angeles, where the brand is based, it is available with velvet or leather upholstery, or your own material. It’s part of a wider collection of furniture and lighting inspired by the Dada art movement, all featuring the same fluid stainless steel lines, channelling both modernist and art deco influences. atelierdetroupe.com

Fern This Tulia dining table by Fern takes its name from a small town in Texas close to Palo Duro Canyon: the canyon’s rocky spires inspired company cofounder Jason Roskey to create the table’s distinctive sculptural legs. It has a solid wood top and laminated hardwood legs, and is available in walnut, white oak,

cherry or maple. Fern was founded in 2009 in the Hudson Valley by Roskey and Maggie Goudsmit, and is one of many furniture companies reviving the area’s tradition for high-quality furniture making. fernnyc.com

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Henry Holland Studio Fashion designer turned ceramicist Henry Holland has launched a range of lighting that uses his signature nerikomi technique, in which coloured clays are stacked in alternating colours – the resulting marble-like waves and wiggles make each piece unique. A table and floor lamp are both topped with a handmade linen shade, while the shade-free uplighters are more totemic in their appearance. All are available via Holland’s online store and at Sister by Studio Ashby. henryhollandstudio.com // studioashby.com

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Pinch Olivine is the latest bed to be added to Pinch’s portfolio. Straddling traditional and contemporary, it has a solid wood frame – including beautifully turned legs – and an upholstered headboard and rails. Choose from the European oak pictured or American walnut, and supply your own fabric (or have Pinch suggest something) to tailor the design to your own tastes. A further new bed has also been added to the collection, Laure, which is fully upholstered and features a gently arching headboard. pinchdesign.com

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Christian Watson The Abinger chair sees young British designer Christian Watson move away from the slender, linear creations he has released so far: “I wanted to play around with a chunkier profile, something that had a sense of fun and informality about it,” he says.

It’s made from aluminium, with the seat and back available in a variety of materials – cosy bouclé, wool or cork (pictured), the latter having been crowned one of the materials of the moment thanks to its natural warmth and sustainability credentials. christian-watson.com

Deirdre Dyson “I set myself the challenge of avoiding any curves and circles to see what could be achieved solely with angles,” says Deirdre Dyson of her latest collection of rugs. Quite a lot, as it turns out: the ten new designs – created with a set square and a ruler before being translated digitally – all feature a dynamic

interplay of lines, with shading and ombré effects on some creating an even greater sense of dynamism.

Pictured is Akimbo, which Dyson describes as “a happy dance of movement with right angles.” deirdredyson.com

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RADAR / Read

Soft Minimal

Messana O’Rorke: Building Blocks

by Norm Architects (Gestalten)

By Mayer Rus (Rizzoli)

The work of Copenhagen’s Norm Architects embodies what many of us are looking for in our interiors: they are stripped back enough to give breathing space in a busy world, yet full of warmth and tactility. This book distils everything that the practice has learned into a guide that’s part manifesto, part portfolio. “It is refinement as a means of expression, but with a distinct thoughtfulness to it,” reads the text, which covers everything from natural light through to the importance of voids to balance the solid matter. Immerse yourself in Norm’s calming, sensory world via projects including a Sri Lankan house that merges outside and in, to a Danish retail space that celebrates tactility.

Building Blocks, the subtitle of this monograph of US design and architecture practice Messana O’Rorke, is apt, because blocks, boxes and containers – and the areas within and around them – are the studio’s leading language. Brian Messana and Toby O’Rorke may create spaces that are thrillingly restrained, but the joy is in how light plays around them, how they elevate materials and how they achieve a pinpoint clarity. The book includes both commercial and residential projects, from radical retail design for Malin+Goetz to a tiny New York City apartment with a sleeping area in a freestanding brass cube. There’s not a superfluous element to be found in any one of them.

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RADAR / Read

Japanese Interiors

Homes for Our Time Vol. 2

Japanese interior design has had an influence far beyond its shores, and this book will feed the obsessions of those who dream of shoji screens, monochromatic palettes and a place for everything. Mihoko Iida is our guide to 28 homes that span city, country, mountain and coast, tracing the story in three sections: Aspirational (the work of starchitects such as Kengo Kuma), Functional (houses that also serve other purposes, as workplaces and shops, for example) and Historic and Iconic (buildings with a heritage value). There are some particularly lovely mid-20th-century homes that blend modernism and tradition, and some radical contemporary designs too.

The global scale of this survey of the best contemporary domestic architecture is what makes it particularly pleasing. Stylistic diversity is a given, with many of the projects fusing vernacular materials with a modern sensibility, such as Vo Trong Nghia Architects’ house in the Vietnamese pottery village of Bat Trang, encased in a perforated wall of terracotta blocks. However, it’s pulled together by addressing the global common threads that are influencing the design of our homes today, from multigenerational living to making the most of material and resources. Photographs, plans and descriptions of each project make the book the next best thing to living there.

by Mihoko Iida (Phaidon)

by Philip Jodidio (Taschen)

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RADAR / Antwerp

In the atmosphere

Collaboration with artists and designers has given a moody, dream-like quality to Antwerp restaurant Blueness, designed by Space Copenhagen

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espite its familiar classical bones, there’s something uncanny about Blueness, the newly opened Antwerp restaurant designed by Space Copenhagen for chef and restaurateur Sergio Herman. The Danish interior and product design studio has created a space that manages to combine restrained Nordic design with classical architecture and what Space Copenhagen’s Signe Bindslev Henriksen calls ”unexpected esoteric futuristic elements”.

She continues: “We took inspiration from the building’s renaissance style, rich in grandeur, and its locale, in the heart of Antwerp’s fashion design district. The challenge was to honour the fragmented history of the 17th-century building while giving it a contemporary spin with our modern Scandinavian aesthetic.”

The bar features a long counter made from rich red walnut and aluminium, the work of local studio Destroyers/Builders, which also created a cast-aluminium waiter station in the main dining area, as well as the restuarant’s knobbly ice buckets in the same material. The dining space itself, with its original carved columns and elaborate metalwork across the windows, is made more informal thanks to its suspended candle holders by Valentin Loellmann, which

look like dripping stalactites cast in metal. “He has a very particular expression in his way of approaching materials and craft,” says Space Copenhagen co-founder Peter Bundgaard Rützou of Loellmann’s work. “We really love the candle chandeliers; they not only contribute to the cosiness of the candles but are a strong sculptural element in themselves.” Lining the staircase, copper-toned cladding, whose cloudy tones move from dark to light, has been created

by Latvian designer Germans Ermičs.

Words Emily Brooks Image Eline Willaert

The historic building presented its challenges.

The layout had to work around a strangely located staircase, for example, while dampening the noise couldn’t be tackled in a conventional way – by covering the ceilings in acoustic panels – because the historic vaulted plaster ceilings had to be kept in tact (the solution was to amp up the use of soft furnishings, resulting in a cosy yet refined dining area).

“We have worked with some amazing artists on this project to create bespoke pieces that have a real sense of place,” says Bundgaard Rützou of the project. He describes Blueness as “a space that takes guests on a playful journey, where past and present collide to create an atmosphere of otherworldliness.”

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Facing page The bar, designed

by Destroyers/ Builders, is made from red walnut, with tactile rounded edges

The cat’s whiskers

Manchester bar and restaurant Kitten takes a sensory-led design approach Words / Emily Brooks Images / Billy Bolton

RADAR / Manchester

Facing page Arched niches – illuminated at night – emphasise the restaurant’s cathedral-like proportions Previous page Kitten manages to create a sense of both drama and comfort amid the glass and steel of Deansgate Square

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t takes some flair to pull off a sensual, cosy space in a cavernous glass-fronted new highrise, but Franky Rousell, founder of interior design firm Jolie, has achieved this with a new Manchester bar and restaurant, Kitten. The venue, part of the new city centre Deansgate Square development, serves up Japanese food and drink, izakaya style – think small plates and cocktails that keep on flowing. Venetian plaster walls, soft terracotta floor tiles and subtly veined sandy-coloured marble create an earthy, grounding feel, while a sophisticated lighting scheme gives the venue a warm glow at night that invites you to step off the street and sip a lychee and sake martini at the bar.

There are three main areas: the entrance, where Rousell says that she wants people “to feel an immediate sense of impressiveness, without feeling intimidated,” partly thanks to the sightlines that allow diners to see all the way into the rest of the room; a restaurant and bar dominated by a long marble-fronted bar, where “the wizardry, the drama and the innovation” of the cooking and cocktail-making is on show; and a cosier dining space that can be partitioned off for private events. Each area sets the mood with elements such as lighting, materials and music levels – the bar is louder, somewhere you want to be on show, raise your voice and feel part of the buzz, while 1970s-inspired low banquettes encourage intimacy, for example.

Jolie’s focus is on sensory-led design. Six years ago, when Rousell founded the studio, she says the interiors she was seeing “were incredibly aesthetically driven, without anyone thinking

about how it feels to step into those spaces. I wanted to set up a research-based practice that really understood what makes a human decide how they feel in a space. With Kitten, we really had the opportunity to curate and design in a subliminal way things like how long we wanted people to stay in certain zones.”

Rousell says she didn’t want to give too many nods to Japanese design (although there is a soaring wall of chunky bamboo as well as a giant cloud-pruned faux-tree), partly out of longevity considerations – hospitality spaces may need to flex every few years if the food concept changes. This desire for sustainability is reflected in the individual products specified, too, from the wallcoverings that use waterbased inks to the solid-surface bar top that incorporates waste materials: “We’re not going to promote a culture of ripping it out and redoing it in five years’ time,” says Rousell.

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Above A lantern-hung tree and bambooclad wall make reference the Japanese menu

Fort Road Hotel, Margate. Read the full story on p42 Image by Ed Reeve

JOURNEY Distinctive destinations

JOURNEY / Openings

New hotels

Design Hotels

Unique places to stay, in destinations of note

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JOURNEY / Openings

Mamula Island, Montenegro Just a short boat ride away from the coastal town of Herceg Novi sits Mamula Island, a private retreat surrounded by the waters of Montenegro’s Bay of Kotor. Named after the uninhabited islet on which it stands, the new Design Hotels member is housed in an 1853 fortress built to protect the bay. The abandoned building has been brought back to life by architecture firm MCM London, which has respected the building’s history by preserving the existing structure. weStudio’s Piotr Wisniewski has overseen the interior design of the 32 rooms and suites, marrying a contemporary muted colour palette with ancient stone walls, accessorised with sculptural light fittings and bespoke furniture. mamulaisland.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

Château Royal, Germany parquet flooring, coloured marble and handmade craquelé tiles. Nickel and chrome bathroom fittings reference the Bauhaus and modernist movements, while bespoke oak furnishings and modern luxuries including heated floors and rain showers put a contemporary riff on Berlin style. chateauroyalberlin.com

Felix Brueggemann

Two listed buildings dating back to 1850 and 1910 have been combined to create Château Royal, a hotel marked by a fun neon sign in the heart of Berlin’s Mitte district. Inspired by the history of the property and the city’s Wilhelminian period, local designer Irina Kromayer has dressed each of the 93 rooms with materials synonymous with the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries – think herringbone

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JOURNEY / Openings

Kleinjan Groenewald

Caravan Agafay, Morocco Eco-hospitality group Habitas has launched its first site in Morrocco with Caravan Agafay, a chic glamping experience less than an hour’s drive from the bustle of Marrakech. Inspired by Bedouin culture, the retreat spans five hectares and comprises 20 Moroccan canvas tents that blend seamlessly into the sandy backdrop of the Atlas Mountains.

Traditional ceramics, rugs and textiles add colour to

communal spaces while inside each tent, warm and welcoming shades of orange and natural wood have been accentuated with golden highlights. Following a day’s swimming, camel trekking or horse riding, Habitas’ signature communal agora offers a space to gather together around the fire as the sun sets. ourhabitas.com

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Promote your products on Dezeen Showroom dezeen.com/showroom

JOURNEY / Openings

Francisco Nogueira

Sommerro, Norway In Norway’s capital, the former HQ of electrical company Oslo Lysverker has been given a new lease of life as luxury hotel Sommerro. Local studio LPO Architects and the New York and London-based GrecoDeco were enlisted to reimagine the landmark 1930s building, which has received a newly designed extension to house the 231 rooms and suites. Inside each, plush velvet sofas, Murano glass chandeliers,

marble tubs and bespoke furnishings feel suitably decadent next to the opulent art deco details.

Peppered throughout the hotel is a carefully curated selection of artworks from emerging local creatives, which sit alongside originals from famed early20th-century Norwegian artist Per Krohg. sommerrohouse.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

Aman New York, USA Aman and designer Jean-Michel Gathy have joined forces once again to transform New York’s Crown Building into the brand’s first stateside city hotel.

Gathy has brought Aman’s understated style to the 100-year-old beaux-arts building, combining original architectural details with muted shades, natural fabrics and flower arrangements inspired by Japan’s ikebana tradition, referencing the brand’s Asian beginnings. Inside each suite, timber has been used to create warmth and tranquillity in the heart of buzzy Manhattan while custom furnishings in bronze, brass, and stainless and blackened steel add an urban edge. The final touch is a working fireplace – a first for a modern New York City hotel. aman.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

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JOURNEY / Openings

La Zambra, Spain Andalusia’s iconic Byblos Hotel, which welcomed the likes of The Rolling Stones and Princess Diana during its hedonistic heyday, has been reborn as a new luxury retreat, La Zambra. The Palma-based architectural studio Esteva i Esteva has retained the building’s striking white facade and blue tiled roofs and marked the hotel’s new chapter by revamping the 197 rooms and suites. The traditional alabaster

walls blend seamlessly with creamy hues and minimalist wood furniture to create contemporary living spaces that overlook the surrounding Mijas hills. A thoughtful selection of ceramics, rugs and artwork – notably the large wall hangings behind each bed – all celebrate Andalusian craftsmanship. lazambrahotel.com

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Heralding Australia’s finest interior brands

Design Centre East Chelsea Harbour, London

www.thespecifed.com

JOURNEY / Margate

Seaside splendour

The founders of Frieze have turned their hand to hospitality, reinventing a crumbling Margate icon as an art-filled beach bolthole

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ver since the Turner Contemporary gallery opened its doors in Margate in 2011, the Kent seaside town has been emphatically establishing itself as a hotspot for artists who are looking to escape the rising rents of London. The latest product of this is the Fort Road Hotel, a new 14-room guesthouse that combines understated interior design with contemporary artworks by the likes of Tracey Emin, Hannah Lees and Tim Noble.

The hotel’s owners are, perhaps unsurprisingly, no strangers to the art world. Matthew Slotover and Tom Gidley (alongside Amanda Sharp) founded the magazine that gave birth to the Frieze art fairs, while property developer Gabriel Chipperfield is the son of Turner Contemporary’s architect, David Chipperfield.

All three had been following Margate’s revival with some interest, so when they discovered they had a mutual affection for a particular building that was due to go up for auction – a former boarding house dating back to 1820 – they hatched a plan to bring it back to life.

In its reincarnated form, the Fort Road Hotel doesn’t look dissimilar to how it would have

appeared in the 19th century, when JMW Turner himself is believed to have been among its patrons. The main difference is height; the addition of an extra floor has given the building more visually pleasing proportions. Inside is a different story. Having been abandoned for more than three decades, the internal structure had completely collapsed. An entirely new interior, planned by Fleet Architects, now stands behind the original facade. “Everyone was telling us to just demolish the entire thing and build a replica,” says Gidley, “but we felt there was value in retaining as much of the old building as we could.”

Visitors enter the building through a restaurant that doubles as a reception space for hotel guests – a move that sets the tone for how the hotel operates. “We thought it should be somewhere between a hotel and a large house,” explains Gidley. This space feels both stylish and timeless, with its herringbone-patterned terracotta floors, vintage wooden furniture and a bar clad in emerald-green tiles. The bedrooms are more simplistic, but not without a sense of character. Each one has its own custom-made wood and marble vanity unit, providing storage

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Words Amy Frearson Images Ed Reeve

Facing page Brought back from decay, the hotel is a symbol of Margate’s continuing rise as a hub for art

JOURNEY / Margate

space for wool blankets, a Hay Sowden kettle and a curated selection of books.

Gidley (an artist himself ) sourced the nostalgic vintage artworks, photographs and postcards hung in the corridors outside the bedrooms: “I had to look at 10,000 bits of kitsch to find one picture that felt right,” he says. Downstairs is dedicated to contemporary art: paintings and drawings feature in the restaurant, while the impressive two-storey basement bar hosts a neon by Emin and a textural piece by Lees.

There’s also a mural by Sophie von Hellermann embellishing one of the corridors.

The owners are uncomfortable with Fort Road Hotel being described as an art hotel – or worse, the Frieze hotel. Gidley believes it has as much to offer locals as it does to those travelling down from the city. “People ask me when the next hang will be, but it’s not going to be as formal as that,” he says. What he, Slotover and Chipperfield have created here is as much a celebration of Margate’s history as it is a symbol of the town’s artistic future.

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“We thought it should be somewhere between a hotel and a large house”

Facing page Top to bottom: the inviting basement bar; many of the 14 rooms have direct sea views

Above Thonet chairs and vintage tables sit on a terracotta tiled floor in the informal all-day-dining restaurant

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A house in Bandol, France. Read the full story on p60 Image by Vincent Leroux

HOME Timeless spaces

Peace & unity

A Georgian home for collectors where the art, architecture and interiors have been conceived as a single, sensual whole Words / Charlotte Abrahams Images / Nick Rochowski Styling /Alex Kristal

HOME / London

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tanding in the hallway of this Grade I-listed townhouse, the first thing that strikes you is the sense of peace. This is central London, where traffic and people hustle and bustle in the streets outside, but behind the elegant Georgian walls, all is quiet. Light filters down from a skylight six storeys above, illuminating the chalky, bone-coloured walls, and a staircase stretches invitingly up ahead.

“The owners’ brief was to create a timeless, calm, comfortable pied-a-terre, quite different from the hotels they used to stay in when they came to London,” says Daniel Goldberg, founder of State of Craft, the multidisciplinary design studio commissioned to create the interior spaces (architect Pringle Richards Sharratt undertook the restoration of the house itself, as well as designing a new mews building at the rear of the property).

Facing page A Quasar Cosmos light fills the highceilinged kitchen, which is in a new mews building that extends the house’s footprint Previous page The interiors work in harmony with the art throughout; Lawrence Calver’s Three Stripes hangs above the fireplace

Simple, rational and graceful, the capital’s Georgian townhouses are made for such treatment, and while this one might have been, as Goldberg remembers, “a sea of beige carpets and tired, unsympathetic finishes,” its elegant bones were still in place. It also boasted a frontrow spot on one of London’s finest garden squares. “The tranquil square, with its lawns, plants and trees, has quite a presence in the building,” says Goldberg. “That connectedness with nature was the starting point for us.”

There are no house plants here, no leaf-print textiles and botanical wallpaper to bring the outside in. Instead, there is a – very restricted

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– palette of natural materials, each chosen for its unique properties. Grigio Alpi stone with its fossil fragment veining, European oak that is light enough in colour to showcase the grain, traditional Venetian polished plaster walls (the work of Perucchetti Studio) and touches of leather, marble and silk. The sense of the natural world is more felt that seen.

“These days, many people judge interiors for their visual impact on a screen,” Goldberg says, “but spaces are three dimensional and should be experienced with all the senses. Especially touch. There are materials in this house with texture and grain and grit, juxtaposed with something a bit more refined. That contrast in textures is delightful in interiors.”

In the kitchen, a luminous, double-height space in the mews building, walls wrapped in warm, bespoke oak cabinetry meet a cool stone floor. In the ground-floor dining room, the slubby, woven backs of Cassina’s Capitol Complex chairs contrast with the gleaming surface of Agapecasa’s Incas table, while in the living room, smooth silk rugs sit on wide oak planks, and a pair of cow hide stools rub up against Menu’s shining Plinth marble side tables and Stephane Parmentier’s gleaming brass Houdini console.

Such repetition makes for harmony – and harmony is vital in the creation of a tranquil home – but Goldberg was keen to introduce some surprises too. “The house is not a onetrick pony,” he says. “We wanted there to be

HOME / London

something new to discover in every room: a balancing act between consistency and variety.”

Sometimes that new discovery is the colour – in the small ground floor study, the walls are so dark they are almost black, while up at the top of the house in the guest suite, they are gold and dusky blue – and sometimes, as in the woven fronted wardrobe in the master bedroom, it’s an unusual piece of furniture. But it is almost always connected to the art, because this is a house that belongs to collectors.

Rather than bringing in works from their existing collection, the homeowners decided to treat their London home as a blank canvas, sourcing new pieces in collaboration with the contemporary art consultancy and gallery Richeldis Fine Art. “The art curation was in complete parallel with our interior design process,” says Goldberg. “It was a real crossfertilisation. Sometimes our ideas for material, colour and space informed the art curator’s thinking, and other times we were inspired by the art, bringing colours and materiality from it to the interior. For example, the client chose Sarah Kaye Rodden’s black leather wall piece Crossing for the kitchen and we thought that it made such a striking statement against the light timber wall that we decided to introduce other black accents, such as the breakfast bar.”

In the music room on the floor above, the choice of two large-scale graphic paintings facing each other, by German artist Alexi Tsioris, was driven by the symmetry of the

architecture, which in turn influenced the selection of a trio of Baxter’s chunky, rounded Lazybones chairs and a bespoke circular table made by Peter Hall. “We wanted something sculptural and blocky in the centre to contrast with the straight lines,” Goldberg explains.

Next door in the living room, Richard Serra’s vertical etching Right Angle II, hanging above the fireplace, appeared to alter the axis of this rectangular room. Goldberg’s response was to create a sense of subtle asymmetry by placing a pair of Cassina’s Utrecht armchairs opposite a Flexform sofa, then slightly off-setting the twin square bespoke glass coffee tables that sit between them.

It is all very clever, and a testament to the determination of all those involved to create a gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art that unites the architecture and the objects within it. But perhaps the cleverest thing they have done (along with ever-so-gradually lightening the colour scheme as you move up through the building) is to make this meticulously curated house feel like a comfortable home. “It is incredibly important that art and objects are not imposed on the spaces and that there’s a sense of things having evolved over time,” says Goldberg, “so there’s an eclecticism to the curation and we have mainly used loose rather than built-in furniture. We also resisted the temptation to make every wall in every room a feature, because we were interested in creating something calming and soothing to the mind.

A quiet sanctuary in the heart of London.”

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Facing page A trio of curvy Baxter leather chairs contrast with the Georgian architecture’s straight lines Previous page Venetian plaster walls create a subtly textured backdrop for art and sculpture

Facing page The walls get darker the further down the house you descend – with a nearblack shade reserved for the study

Above A large painting by German artist Alexi Tsioris overlooks a sculptural bespoke table made by Peter Hall & Son

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Above State of Craft’s desire to create soothing interiors comes across especially strongly in the master bedroom, with its play of neutral tones and sensuous materials

Facing page Left to right: the steam room, clad in Alpine granite with soft lighting washing the floor; a woven-fronted bespoke wardrobe attests to the craftsmanship behind every detail

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Floristry: Frida Kim

“There are materials in this house with texture and grain and grit, juxtaposed with something a bit more refined. That contrast in textures is delightful”

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Le refuge

Architect and designer Valérie Chomarat creates a grounded getaway in Provence Words / Karine Monié Images / Vincent Leroux

HOME / Bandol

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alérie Chomarat’s decision to create her French family refuge in the coastal town of Bandol was no accident. Originally from Ardèche in the Rhône-Alpes region, the architect and designer had spent her childhood summer holidays in Provence, close to the sublime Calanques of Cassis, a National Park that straddles land and sea. “I am very attached to it,” she says of the area.

Naturally, Chomarat felt that this would be the perfect place to conceive a home for herself, her husband and their two young sons, where they could recharge and spend quality time together. Having found a house surrounded by shady pines and with views of the sea, she fully played her role of architect for this personal project, enlarging and rebuilding the exterior, as well as taking care of all the interior spaces down to the smallest details. “It is a home connected to nature and the horizon,” says Chomarat, who always reflects the importance of perspective in her wider work. “There is a continuity between the architecture, the spaces, the furniture, the door handles…”

Having grown up in an indoor-outdoor house inspired by Japanese architecture, and being an admirer of Tadao Ando, Chomarat drew on this to design something that would echo these

influences. “Traditional Japanese architecture is calm and invites [you] to contemplate,” she says. And this is exactly what happens here, where elongated openings and longitudinal lines make the sea into both the main protagonist and the backdrop.

“There are different spaces that seem to be inside and outside at the same time,” says Chomarat. The ground floor opens up to a pool and patio, where the exceptional panorama takes centre stage. The pines, coastline, blue of the sea and the sky, as well as the muted tones of the local stone used for the floors, basins and worktops – all typical of the Mediterranean landscape – informed the natural, earthy colour and material palette. Whitewashed walls and ceilings contrast with the wood as a way to further highlight the architecture. “I wanted to use the least materials possible,” says Chomarat.

A sense of subtlety and precision prevails in every nook of this poetic house.

Inside, Chomarat wanted to create the feeling of being under the trees and protected from the intensity of the sun. Acting as a transitional space shaped by the sculptural and diffused natural light, the staircase is one of the designer’s favourite features, with every step infused with the possibility that it can be used

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Facing page The kitchen is made from warmtoned walnut; two photographs by John Pawson are propped on a shelf Previous page Chomarat’s architecture was inspired by the restraint of Japanese design

Above An informal built-in sofa lines the living room; the Slab Arm lounge chair is by George Nakashima

Facing page A painting by Korean artist Yun Hyong-Keun sits on a long, low cabinet in the living room

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HOME / Bandol

“My objective was that every member of our family could find his or her place”

as an occasional seat. “I used the architectural vocabulary to respond to the sensations I wanted to give,” she explains. “It has been very interesting to have the opportunity to think about every area in its relationship with the exterior.” Spreading across a total of about 220 sqm, some of these areas are very intimate, while others are ideal for entertaining.

Throughout the project, Chomarat strove to tell a visual story where harmony would reign.

“My objective was that every member of our family could find his or her place,” she says.

The house’s multiple levels called for some streamlining between the furniture and the architecture, with custom-made built-in pieces such as sofas that merge with the envelope.

Constantly on the hunt for unique pieces that speak to her aesthetic, Chomarat has adorned this home with some design icons such as a Pierre Jeanneret bench, an Akari light by Isamu Noguchi, chairs by Poul Kjaerholm and George Nakashima, and a Magistretti lamp, complementing them with art troves. Among them are African shields, Bénédicte Vallet ceramics, a Julia Atlas oversized necklace, a Robert Courtright mask, as well as paintings

by Japanese artist Sadaharu Horio and Korean

artist Yun Hyong-Keun, to name only a few.

Very dear to Chomarat, two photographs by John Pawson – her mentor and former employer – are displayed in the kitchen.

Designed as a layered composition where every detail is part of a whole, this home appears as a synthesis of Chomarat’s creative vision. There is no hierarchy between the building itself and what it holds; between the surroundings and the house; or between one object and another.

On the contrary, the continuous flow proves that coherence and balance have been achieved through thoughtful simplicity.

“One of the challenges was that I made myself less available for my project than when I work for a client,” says Chomarat, who despite this constraint knew she needed to consider all aspects of the house to truly bring it to life.

Taking her time to accomplish what she had in mind at a slightly slower pace than usual, Chomarat enjoyed the process along the way.

Truly hers, the result exemplifies what has guided Chomarat since she started her career: “To create a beautiful way of living.” It may sound simple, but only a select few are capable of honouring all that this approach entails.

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Facing page Covered outdoor spaces feel cosy and cocooning, with their earthy plaster walls

Facing page An Isamu Noguchi Akari light hangs in the stairwell; the landing doubles as a useful workspace

Above Earthy Mediterranean tones and textures are echoed across the interiors, uniting inside and out

Next page The architecture is designed to draw the eye to the vista, such as this sea view across the pool

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Urban fabric

A Trieste apartment inspired by the work of some often-overlooked female artists and designers of the past Words / Kate Jacobs Images / Carola Ripamonti

HOME / Trieste

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etween them, architect Andrea Marcante and interior designer Adelaide Testa have decades of experience in creating stunning spaces all over Europe. Nevertheless, their Turin-based practice, Marcante-Testa, remains committed to learning and firmly grounded in research which, perhaps, is the secret of their success. Theirs is a diverse body of work because they are passionate about tapping into the genius loci of each project – the individual spirit of a place. “In Roman times the genius loci was seen as a god, and we have to collaborate with this god,” is how Marcante puts it.

Which brings us to this apartment in the historical port city of Trieste, once the end of the maritime Silk Road. Despite being in Italy, Trieste is closer to Vienna and Munich than Rome. “It’s a border city that has been heavily influenced by the cultures of central Europe,” says Testa. These wider links are particularly strong for Marcante-Testa’s clients, a couple whose first home is in Munich. He is an artist and a Munich native, while she has a textiles showroom there, but was born in Trieste, so the couple decided to create a second, live-work home here, to enjoy more time with her family.

Marcante-Testa drew on the pale neutrals and soft pastels of the buildings in the historical centre of Trieste – in particular the pinkishterracotta tones that pepper these graceful streets. The building dates to the early 20th century, but in this third-floor apartment, few original details remained except the internal doors. These play a significant role here, since all the rooms fan off a central corridor, but the four rooms at the front of the apartment are also connected by aligned double doors, in the grand enfilade style, allowing the couple and their guests to enjoy a sense of elegance and space in the apartment. The rooms run from a large living and dining room – perfect for entertaining – to a studio that doubles as a guest room, through to a dressing room and finally, the master bedroom suite.

Across all their projects, Marcante and Testa are ever mindful of their environmental impact and like to minimise the structural changes that they make, choosing a low intervention

approach wherever possible. Here, the clients wanted to bring the apartment up to 21stcentury expectations, adding a bathroom and creating more space for the kitchen.

The homeowners share a passion for German design with Marcante-Testa, which led to a Bauhaus influence in this apartment. The walls have been papered in a subtly geometric original design from the Bauhaus period, while the door handles are by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and the lighting is by Adolf Loos. Ceilings are a particular passion of Marcante-Testa’s: “We love a quote by the psychoanalyst James Hillman, who said ‘the gods no longer live in the ceiling.’ Today, ceilings are neglected spaces; gone are the frescoes, replaced by air con and lighting,” says Marcante. The design duo took their inspiration

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Above Eileen Gray’s Day Bed Grand, first designed in 1925, is concurrent with the building’s age Facing page ClassiCon’s Venus chairs sit around an Azucena Cavalletto table; the fringed cabinet hides a radiator Previous page The living room screen was inspired by textile designer Anita Pittoni

“We like to create visual continuity in our work.

And then throw in a deliberate element of discontinuity”

Facing page Art by Diet Sayler hangs above origami-like furniture – a Pallas desk and Mars chairs by ClassiCon

Above Rooms run off a generous central corridor; the only original features to survive were the internal doors

Above Metal kitchen cabinets and a black and white scheme contrast with the colour and femininity elsewhere

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HOME / Trieste

from the work of Josef Hoffmann, a founder of the Vienna Secession movement and the Wiener Werkstätte, creating an interpretation of the square and linear motifs he favoured to border the ceilings here, providing subtle visual interest. “We carefully research the historical elements in all our projects, then translate them in a contemporary way,” explains Testa.

Since textiles are a way of life for one half of this client couple, fabrics were always going to play a key role in this apartment. “We asked ourselves, how can we connect textile design to the genius loci of Trieste? And the answer was Anita Pittoni,” says Marcante. This artist, textile designer and Trieste native worked with Gio Ponti on his influential architecture and design magazine, Domus, in the 1930s and 1940s. “She used fabrics in an architectural way – she is not as well known as she deserves to be,” says Testa. To create the dividing screens in the living room, the design duo took inspiration from a similar structure that they has seen used in a 1942 exhibition of Pittoni’s work.

The textiles that feature on these panels and throughout the apartment are the result of a collaboration with boundary-pushing textile designer Aleksandra Gaca – a pioneer in the field of 3D textiles – and were produced at the TextielMuseum of Tilburg, in the Netherlands.

“It was an interesting collaborative process during Covid, with a lot of strong ideas and fabric samples being exchanged,” says Testa.

“The end result is a spatial artwork; it makes you want to get close to it, to appreciate the texture and the detail,” adds Marcante.

in the overall scheme, for Marcante-Testa they are an integral part of the room. “Because the bed occupies a large space, we think of the bedcover as an important element of the interior architecture,” explains Marcante.

Above In the study (doubling as a guest room), a sky-blue cabinet is bordered by a ribbon of green

The twin themes of high-concept textiles and female creatives run throughout this apartment.

A hand-woven cotton piece by the late Sardinian artist Maria Lai hangs in the dining area, while a bedspread was commissioned from the studio of mid-20th-century textile innovator, Gegia Bronzini. “We were able to view samples of Bronzini’s work and choose the colours of the textiles and embroidery, before it was hand-woven using Bronzini’s original looms to create a unique and precious piece,” recalls Testa. While some might view bedcoverings as something of an afterthought

It is gratifying that, amid all this celebration of female creativity, the kitchen is perhaps the least feminine space, with its monochromatic scheme and perforated sheet metal cabinet doors. Against the softness of the textiles, the furniture, too, is sculptural, with an emphasis on rigorous design and clean lines. This last is evidenced by the curtain rail that runs through the apartment, now black, now blue. “It’s like an arrow to move your gaze from room to room. We like to create visual continuity in our work. And then throw in a deliberate element of discontinuity,” says Testa with a smile.

Facing page The decorative ceilings were inspired by the work of Vienna Secessionist Josef Hoffmann

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Facing page The bedroom’s long headboard is papered in textured wallpaper

by Rasch, made to an original Bauhaus design; behind it are walls upholstered in a bespoke textile developed with Aleksandra Gaca

Above Left to right: An Orcus desk by ClassiCon and a Postsparkasse Hocker stool by Gebrüder Thonet Vienna; two basins sit on a band of granite with integrated shelves, all designed by Marcante-Testa

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Reset the balance

A Brooklyn townhouse’s quiet makeover, achieved using the work of local artisans Words / Dominic Lutyens Images / Matthew Williams

HOME / New York City

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riginally built in 1892, this six-storey townhouse in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn was carved up into eight dingy apartments in the 1940s. Now, it has been transformed into a light-filled, five-bedroom home, a labour-intensive project initiated in 2015 and finally completed in 2020.

The handsome building is an A house – the term in the US for a home that stands at the end of a row. “Daylight comes in on three sides,” says Lyndsay Caleo Karol, who, together with her husband, Fitzhugh Karol, redesigned the house’s interior and renovated its exterior.

She says that she “wanted natural light to flood the rooms,” something that has been achieved with the opening up of previously covered windows, discovered during the course of the renovation, a change that Caleo Karol says was one of the joys of the project, enabling her to coax much more daylight inside. The addition of several outdoor terraces, including one on a garage roof, another with a fireplace and tree canopy and a roof terrace, has helped to draw even more light into the interior.

For the couple, being near green spaces was almost as vital a consideration as maximising the daylight that would enter the house: the property sits near the 19th-century Prospect Park, which was laid out by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also co-designed Central Park with Calvert Vaux. “The second most important element to us was closeness to nature,” says Caleo Karol.

Caleo Karol is the creative director of The Brooklyn Home Company (TBHCo), a family-run property developer, which oversaw the renovation. TBHCo likes to incorporate lots of hand-crafted elements into its projects, and, for this house, it tapped into Brooklyn’s extensive community of artisans to create an individual interior furnished with one-off pieces made from ceramic and wood, as well as art and vintage furniture. The pièce-derésistance is a new staircase ascending a wide, spacious stairwell, its oak banister forming graceful loops. Described by Caleo Karol as a “ribbon staircase linking all levels,” it has unified a formerly bitty, compartmentalised interior in a pared-down, elegant way – and allows more daylight to permeate the house thanks to tall windows flanking the stairwell.

This monumental and sculptural intervention replaces an old staircase that hugged the wall.

“The new staircase was made by a Polish man who had created staircases all his life,” says Caleo Karol. “He knew how to make it curve.

It was beautifully engineered.” Thanks to the generous width of the stairwell, a hook at the top of the staircase can be lowered to hoik up deliveries or suitcases from the ground floor, much needed when there are six storeys.

The facade couldn’t be altered because the building is in a landmarked zone (the US term for a conservation area). “There were a lot of restrictions on what we could do with it. But I appreciated that strictness,” says Caleo Karol.

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Facing page Art by Tyler Hays hangs beside the fireplace in the living room on the first floor Previous page Soft neutrals in the ground-floor living room invite lazy lounging; the two bouclé chairs are

by Jenni Kayne

“Something we kept coming back to was wanting to create an interior that felt like it could have been around for some years”

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Facing page In the study, original beams have been revealed and plastered, complementing chalky white walls

Above The oak staircase, with its sinuous ribbon-like handrail, is the project’s architectural pièce-de-résistance

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HOME / New York City

“Every detail, from stained-glass elements to curved windows, needed to be kept intact.”

Internally, says Caleo Karol, there were no stunning original features – or “jewels”, as she puts it. “But something we kept coming back to was not wanting to create an interior that felt very 2020 but one that could have been around for some years,” she says. The interior of the building looked unloved when the couple first bought the house: “There was peeling swimming-pool-blue paint everywhere and uprooted tiles.” Now, the interior is uniformly white, which encourages the light to bounce around. Pale wood floors made from sustainable timber, installed throughout, have a similar reflective effect, yet add a degree of warmth.

Initially, the couple took on this project with a view to moving into it. But realising later that they were too attached to their existing home – a brownstone nearby – they decided against it. Despite appearing stripped-down and ultramodern in some places, the house also features some elements that hint at tradition. “There are pretty ceiling mouldings in the bedroom – new, custom-made ones that replaced damaged ones,” says Caleo Karol. “We were able to reference mouldings in our own home to ensure they looked authentic.” In the bedroom there is a surprisingly theatrical four-poster bed with totemic columns, inspired by the work of sculptor Constantin Brancusi and carved by Fitzhugh Karol (a sculptor himself, and TBHCo’s artist in residence).

In the ground-floor living room, which has access to a garden, a suspended ceiling was removed to expose wooden beams, which were then covered with plaster to add texture.

Adjoining this room is a book-filled study as well as the house’s guest rooms, while the staircase on this level descends to a laundry room, gym and wine cellar.

Complementing the house’s chalky white walls is a wealth of hand-crafted objects fashioned from natural materials. As well as carving the bed, Karol made the wooden sideboard in the living room, while the kitchen includes some ceramics by Brooklyn-based Nicholas Newcomb. The dining area, which is open plan to the kitchen, boasts a chandelier with stoneware shades by Philadelphia-based designer Natalie Page, wooden dining chairs with a raw, rustic quality from a local antique shop and a painting by artist Tyler Hays.

Perhaps warm minimalism best sums up the style of this economically furnished yet comfortable house. Its hand-made pieces, including an ecru rug from Brooklyn-based Breuckelen Berber, local purveyor of antique Moroccan rugs, inevitably soften the white spaces. While connecting to the neighbourhood through the views from its terraces, the house simultaneously provides an inward-looking retreat from city life. “It doesn’t compete with the noise outside,” says Caleo Karol. “It’s a space to come home to and reset, with the aid of soothing daylight and hand-crafted objects.”

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Facing page In the playroom, the sofas double as twin beds for sleepovers

Facing page Clockwise from top left: The boot room has a classic black-and-white tiled floor; a view out to the properties of Park Slope; an arched stable door echoes the cupboards in the boot room; wall-towall storage in the master bedroom suite

Above Tall windows flanking the staircase help the light to flood between the floors Next page The bed, with its totem-like posts, was carved by Fitzhugh Karol

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GRAPHIC OBJECTS.

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Zadie Xa: House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness at the Whitechapel Gallery. Read the full story on p102 Image by Andy Keate

ART & COLLECTING A cultural review

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Agenda

Sights to behold: a calendar of shows and fairs for the coming months Words / Philomena Epps

Anne Imhof: Youth, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Until 29 January 2023

Anne Imhof ’s Youth marks the German artist’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. Imhof has previously garnered attention for her performance practice and her unique convergence of visual art, fashion, architecture and choreography. This show sees the Stedelijk Museum’s lower galleries transformed into a disorientating and

dystopian labyrinthine environment, drawing on diverse inspirations including Greek mythology, romanticism, nihilist philosophy and underground culture. Artworks and found objects (school lockers, water tanks and car tyres) interrupt a series of scattered film and video works, all arranged within complex light and sound installations.

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Photos: Peter Tijhuis

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Sung Tieu: Civic Floor, Mudam, Luxembourg

Plastic: Remaking Our World, V&A Dundee

Vietnamese artist Sung Tieu’s conceptual installations explore subjects such as bureaucratic power structures, state control, geopolitics and global capitalism, working across a range of media including text, drawing, sculpture, sound and performance. For Civic Floor at Luxembourg’s contemporary art museum Mudam, Tieu presents a series of sculptures and wall-based works, accompanied by a sound piece, that consider the relationship between space and volume in both abstract artistic practice and the design of carceral spaces and prison architecture.

This exhibition, which has travelled from Germany’s Vitra Design Museum, considers the rise of plastics in 20thcentury art and architecture, their current impact on the environment and the future of sustainable materials. The show traces plastic’s 150-year old history, from its utopian beginnings to its current controversial status, being now largely associated with waste and environmental disaster. Works on show range from pop inflected “plastic age” items from the 1960s to cutting-edge contemporary technologies such as bioplastics made from algae.

Until 5 February 2023

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© Sung Tieu

Until 5 February 2023

Courtesy of White Cube

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Cerith Wyn Evans, Mostyn, Llandudno Until 5 February 2023

Cerith Wyn Evans’ practice has incorporated a range of media, including installation, sculpture, photography, film and text. For this exhibition of glass sculptures, lights and sound pieces at Mostyn (the centre for contemporary visual arts in Llandudno, Wales), he focuses on ideas surrounding circuits of energy and translating movement

into notational form. Works include neon sculptures, light columns that descend from the ceiling, suspended and smashed windscreens and glass panes that reverberate with sound. Viewed as one immersive assemblage, they engage with the specific site of the gallery, questioning notions of reality, perception and subjectivity.

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Leicester Museums & Galleries © DACS 2022

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Making Modernism, Royal Academy of Arts, London Until 12 February 2023

Making Modernism is devoted to four women working in Germany in the early 20th century – Paula ModersohnBecker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin – exploring how they were central to the radical development and dissemination of modern art. Many of the 67 paintings and drawings (including Münter’s

1917 Portrait of Anna Roslund, pictured) have not been exhibited in the United Kingdom before. The exhibition unfolds thematically, reframing familiar subjects such as still life, the self portrait, the female body, childhood and depictions of landscapes and urban spaces, through the individual perspective of the artist’s experiences.

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Courtesy of the collection of Edwin Oostmeijer. Photo: Jack Hems

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Rose Wylie, Picky People Notice…, SMAK, Ghent Until 30 April 2023

For British painter Rose Wylie, inspiration can be found in any aspect of daily life, from eating a chocolate biscuit, watching a film or feeding the ducks in the park. Her figurative canvases have paid attention to a range of sources, both high and low, from mythology and folklore, celebrity gossip and the canon of art. In addition to this

being her first solo museum presentation in Belgium, Wylie has also made a new series of paintings (including 2022’s A Handsome Couple, pictured). The show will also pay attention to the multiple studies that precede a finished work, which all feed into the visual intensity and delight of the final composition.

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Korakrit Arunanondchai, Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Maria Bartuszová, Tate Modern, London

The core of Korakrit Arunanondchai’s art is rooted in storytelling, where the boundaries between the personal, the political and the spiritual become dissolved. For this solo exhibition, titled Songs for Dying and Songs for Living (a name drawn from two 2021 video works), he has created an environment in which artistic mediums become hybridised, with video projections reflecting on to water, or paintings expanding into large-scale murals.

Bringing together many works rarely seen before in the United Kingdom, this exhibition highlights the plaster sculptures made by the Prague-born Slovak artist Maria Bartuszová between the 1960s and 1990s. Bartuszová’s vocabulary was focused on the continuous transformation of forms: she often tried to emulate shapes found in nature, while other works were inspired by processes such as the ripening of fruit or the germination of a seed.

Zadie Xa,Whitechapel Gallery, London

Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings: Tulips, Tate Britain, London

Zadie Xa’s installation for her largest solo exhibition in London combines sculpture, textile and painting, arranged within a large-scale fabric structure inspired by a traditional Korean home known as a hanok. Drawing on her own cultural background, the show reflects Xa’s engagement with diasporic identities, global history and the theatrical language of masquerade and ritual.

Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings’ Tulips is part of Tate Britain’s Art Now series, which spotlights emerging talent.The duo’s work encompasses painting, drawing, video, performance and installation, and for Tate, they have made a series of fresco paintings and drawings inspired by both the fresco cycle in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence and archival street photography.

Until 9 April 2023

Until 16 April 2023

Until 30 April 2023

Until 7 May 2023

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Courtesy Bangkok CityCity Gallery, Carlos/Ishikawa, London, C L E A R I N G, New York/Brussels, Kukje Gallery, Seoul/Busan; photo: Soopakorn Sirsakul. © The Archive of Maria Bartuszová, Košice, Tate, courtesy of the estate of Maria Bartuszová, Košice, and Alison Jacques, London. Photo: Andy Keate. Courtesy the artists and Arcadia Missa, London; photo: Josef Konczak

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Archiv Würth © 2022 Niki Charitable ArtFoundation, All rights reserved/ProLitteris,Zurich

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Niki de Saint Phalle, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 3 February–31 May 2023

From the 1950s until the millennium, French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle created multidisciplinary artworks that engaged with feminism, performance, sociopolitics and counterculture. Particularly known for the colourful series of monumental female sculptures she named Nanas, her artistic language was distinctive and

radical, with Saint Phalle unafraid to stand up for human rights, racism, women’s liberation, climate change and awareness surrounding HIV/AIDS. Alongside traditional artistic media, her output included a sculpture garden in Tuscany, theatre sets, jewellery, her own fragrance, books, memorial headstones and clothing.

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ART & COLLECTING / Online

Champion of creativity Giovanna Ticciati’s virtual marketplace gives artisans a shop window, directly benefiting skilled makers

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background in gilding and plastering has given furniture and interior designer Giovanna Ticciati a solid understanding of crafts, as well as a first-hand appreciation of how craftspeople’s specialist skills are honed over years. At one point, she assisted on an interior design project and found herself commissioning pieces for it – and these combined skills later informed the ethos of her eponymous shop in Petworth, West Sussex, opened in 2007, which sells art, antiques and contemporary design, including her furniture.

Words Dominic Lutyens

However, she has recently launched a venture that opens up a whole new audience. The Artisan Collab is an online marketplace touting work by designers, makers and artists, which she describes as “an extension of the shop with the walls down.” The business model is designed to benefit the makers (in contrast to some sites that fleece them by charging hefty commissions). “The artisans pay a membership fee calculated on the average price of the pieces they list on the site. We promote them and introduce them to new clients. We don’t charge a commission fee,” she says. “Some sites try to hide makers’ names to stop them cultivating independent relationships with clients. But clients can commission pieces directly from our makers.”

Ticciati curates the site herself and showcases her own furniture on it, but how does she find other makers? “Some artisans recommend others. I also trawl, go to fairs, look for people whose work resonates with me. I like things that are well made and subtle, pulling you in the more you examine them. I admire how craftspeople study a discipline, getting deeper

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ART & COLLECTING / Online

into it.” The site currently features work by ten makers, including Roxane Lahidji, who makes tables from salt culled from salt flats in France, mixed with tree resin and natural pigments; furniture and lighting by established brand Ochre; the organic furniture of Imperfettolab; Jeremy Pitts’ wooden tree houses; Sia Taylor’s delicate jewellery; and artist Kate Boxer’s human and animal portraits. Ticciati believes that each maker’s personality and passions determine the character of their pieces, and fittingly, the website features lyrical descriptions of each artist’s work rather than soulless CVs trumpeting past achievements.

The Artisan Collab also recently inaugurated a Young Creator Fellowship, an annual award

launching next year that will support emerging product designers, makers and artists under 35.

To enter, they must submit 500 words outlining their inspiration, process and manufacturing footprint and images of their work; there will be three finalists and one winner.

“Each year, a member of The Artisan Collab will design an award given to the winner,” says Ticciati. The fellowship offers one year’s free membership of the site, plus PR and mentoring by other members. While the fellowship promises to see The Artisan Collab expand, Ticciati says she doesn’t want it to grow for the sake of it: “It will be led by how many amazingly gifted people we find. I’d rather it was beautiful than sprawling and not so beautiful.”

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Above Giovanna Ticciati alongside some of her furniture designs, including a cast brass and Jesmonite table Facing page Top to bottom: Italian studio Imperfettolab’s Nido chair, in copper-coloured fibreglass; Blue Wolf, a print by Kate Boxer

NEW DESIGN

PLIVELLO Design: Christian Troels

Made in Odense, Denmark

Flught, Oksbøl, by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). Read the full story on p114 Image by Rasmus Hjortshøj

ARCHITECTURE Surveying the built environment

ARCHITECTURE / London

Industrial melodrama

The electrifying tale of Battersea Power Station and its long-awaited regeneration

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hat would top a list of London icons?

There’s no Eiffel Tower, Colosseum or Sydney Opera House – but perhaps Battersea Power Station fits the bill. Its glowering brick hulk – isolated on the site of an old waterworks, cut off for a long time by river, railway and road – has for decades been an inescapable presence for commuters pulling into Victoria Station on the other side of the Thames.

Brooding, remote yet ever-present, it is suggestive of another, older, industrial London – one of massive barges carrying coal up the Thames, rows of cranes bent over wharves, vast turbines, blackened bricks, billowing steam.

Built in two matching halves – one a glamorous vision in 1930s art deco, the other the paredback product of post-war austerity – Europe’s largest brick building was edging towards obsolescence even upon its completion in 1955. A nuclear future beckoned; North Sea oil was discovered a decade later; and the expansion of the national grid – in which Battersea played an early role, replacing London’s patchwork of private power stations – negated the benefits of its central location.

Initially, its architecture – or at least its exterior,

by Giles Gilbert Scott – was lauded. In 1939, the Architects’ Journal anointed Battersea the nation’s second most popular modern building (trailing only Sloane Square’s Peter Jones store). Brought in to provide a cladding that would be acceptable to the wealthy denizens of Chelsea on the opposite bank, Scott – famous for the domed K2 phone box, Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral and the later Bankside Power Station (now Tate Modern) down the river – created a truly extraordinary cathedral in brick. Variously labelled as medieval or classical, its heroic form is given delight by eyecatching art deco elements, from the strips of

recessed brickwork to the four stepped corners with their fluted chimneys – late replacements for Scott’s overweight rectangular originals.

By the late 1950s, though, Battersea had fallen from favour. A new architectural generation dismissed its monumental design as proof of Britain’s failure to embrace modernism, its “ponderous brick exterior” and “timid detailing” failing to match the glazed facades and crisp geometries of the Bauhaus. Factories should be clean, cheap and flexible, expressing form and function without stylistic dissemblance. Yet even critics recognised Battersea’s magnetism, Ian Nairn saluting it as “stage scenery for a riverside opera, splendid in mist or with winter sun behind it”. And, as such, it imprinted itself on the consciousness of Londoners as a backdrop for thrillers like Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage, “a well-known power station” in the Beatles’ Help! and, most famously, with Pink Floyd’s inflatable sow, Algie, escaping her tethers and soaring free in 1976.

By then, decommissioning was underway, to be completed in 1983, and Battersea began its sad fall towards dereliction. Its heritage listing in 1980 – a direct result of the destruction of another inter-war temple to industry, the Egyptian-styled Firestone factory in west London – caused much anguish to the Central Electricity Generating Board, which was now burdened with a financial albatross. Plans to accommodate sports arenas followed, then an industrial museum, a waste-incineration plant, the Cirque du Soleil and more, all falling by the wayside as the challenges of the decaying structure became clear.

Most famous was property developer John Broome’s alluring proposal for a theme park, boasting rollercoasters, skating rinks and retail,

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Words John Jervis Images Peter Landers, Ian Lidell

Facing page Following decades of decline, the power station now sits at the heart of an entirely new London neighbourhood

ARCHITECTURE / London

with just a touch of improving education.

Heralded as “the future” by Margaret Thatcher at a grandiose renaming ceremony in 1988, it was to leave Broome bankrupt and the station rotting, roofless and bereft of its west wall.

By 2004, the power station had made it on to the World Monuments Fund’s endangered list, with further schemes (including a 60,000-seat stadium for Chelsea Football Club) requiring ever-increasing densities to make the sums add up. Along the way, various among Britain’s more outré architects indulged in an unlikely series of fantasies, from Terry Farrell’s ruincum-park to Cedric Price’s floating chimneys.

Throughout, Battersea retained its grimy allure, appearing as a substitute Gotham in The Dark Knight and a dystopian “ark of the arts”, complete with floating pig, in Children of Men. Now, at last, Battersea has come back to life, courtesy of a Malaysian consortium and some experienced architectural hands in the form of WilkinsonEyre. Disembowelled, its turbine halls have been elegantly reconceived as shopping malls, the pre-war hall filled with light, revealing the quality of its deco detailing, its post-war sibling a more generic exercise in industrial gloom, with a few mechanical remnants and crumbling concrete. The former’s dazzling control room has now become an events space, while the latter’s austerity-era equivalent houses a bar. Squeezed around and about are 254 apartments (18 of them rooftop “sky villas”), a cinema, food hall and six floors of offices, including Apple’s London campus.

Outside, Battersea is surrounded by a tight carapace of hefty apartment blocks by Foster + Partners, Frank Gehry and others, leaving just one vista intact, across the river from Chelsea.

Scrubbed and patched to perfection, topped by glass boxes, punctured with tasteful black windows and the obligatory dashes of Corten steel, its chimneys rebuilt (one with a viewing platform), it is now more K-Pop than prog rock. But Battersea survives this transformation.

To revert to Nairn, it remains an irresistible, evocative moment of “industrial melodrama”, compelling in its physicality, its romance, and in the final return of its vitality.

Above Top to bottom: Control Room A was elegantly attired, with a parquet floor and coffered ceiling; Turbine Hall A, the heart of the coal-fired power station, is now home to shops and dining spaces Facing page Giles Gilbert Scott’s eye-catching art deco details were designed to be an acceptable face of heavy industry for Chelsea’s residents over the river

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“Its turbine halls have been elegantly reconceived as shopping malls, the pre-war hall filled with light, revealing the quality of its deco detailing”

Facing page Northcot, the original manufacturer of Battersea’s bricks, supplied a further 1.75 million hand-made bricks to restore the building

Above The building now has glass-fronted “sky villas” on its upper levels; a viewing area sits at the top of one of the chimneys, reached by a lift

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Human scale

BIG turns a second world war refugee camp into a museum honouring the displaced, past and present Words / Amy Frearson Images / Rasmus Hjortshøj, Danyu Zeng

ARCHITECTURE / Oksbøl

A

sweeping curve of Corten steel marks the entrance to Flught, the Refugee Museum of Denmark. It is just the type of grand gesture that its architect, Copenhagen-based Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), has become known for, thanks to bombastic builds like the triangular Via 57 West ‘courtscraper’ in New York or the twisted Kistefos museum in Norway. But as visitors move beyond this eye-catching arrival space, they will discover something far less common in a BIG project: the museum is more refurbishment than it is new-build.

Previous page BIG’s curvy steel building links two wings of the site’s former hospital Below A pivoting door in the curve marks the main entrance

The majority of Flught’s structure is provided by a pair of modest brick buildings that once served as a hospital to the Oksbøl refugee camp in western Denmark. This settlement was at one point the country’s fifth-largest city, home to approximately 35,000 refugees who had fled Germany at the end of the second world war. Few traces of it remain today, so when local institution Vardemuseerne started developing plans for a museum on the site, there was never any question that these blocks would be the ones to house it. “The buildings are not listed and they don’t hold an enormous architectural value,” says Frederik Lyng, architect and associate at BIG, “but because

they were once part of the camp, the historical value of them is very high.”

The practice was not originally in the frame for the project and, under different circumstances, might never have taken it on. However, it was already involved with Vardemuseerne on a more typically BIG project in nearby Blåvand, an “invisible museum” submerged in the sanddune landscape beside Tirpitz, one of the world’s largest Nazi bunkers. A conversion of the former Oksbøl hospital would have seemed a world away in terms of architectural ambition, but conversations with Vardemuseerne director Claus Kjeld Jensen led BIG founder Bjarke Ingels to become captivated by the story of Oksbøl and how it had been largely forgotten in Danish history. At a time when the number of refugees worldwide has surpassed 27 million, Ingels saw an opportunity for a museum with more of a social ambition. “We went into this project with all our heart to address one of the world’s greatest challenges – how we welcome and care for our fellow world citizens when they are forced to flee,” he says (the museum’s name “Flught” translates as “flight” in English).

The serious nature of the subject matter could have resulted in a very sober design, but BIG was adamant from the start that this would not be the case. “We felt that the building should be uplifting, to counterbalance the depressing stories that it has to tell,” explains Lyng. The curving new entrance block plays an important part in creating this mood. This contemporary structure links the gable ends of the two former hospital blocks – positioned roughly at right angles to one another – in the most exaggerated way possible. The outcome is an enormous bulge, creating a foyer that stretches around a serene teardrop-shaped courtyard.

Narrow strips of glazing emphasise what is already a distinct contrast between the new and old parts of the building, yet there is a sense of cohesion as you move from the foyer into the two exhibition wings. Exactly as the Corten-steel cladding resonates with the terracotta tones of the restored brickwork and roof tiles, preserved timber ceiling joists find reference in the neatly ordered timber columns

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ARCHITECTURE / Oksbøl

and beams that frame the undulating roof form. Flooring has been upgraded throughout, so a continuous brick surface directs visitors naturally through the galleries and into a cafe that connects with the outdoor exhibits.

Flught’s ambition is not just to chart the history of Oksbøl: exhibition spaces, designed

by Dutch studio Tinker Imagineers, give a face to refugees around the world today and bring their stories to life through film, animations

and soundscapes. Lyng compares the link between the building and its contents to that of a church, where the aim of the architecture is to heighten the experience rather than be the centre of attention. “Working with existing structures, where we have to pay our respects to what’s already there, is a really interesting way for us to work,” he says. “I think we’ve created something that is expressive but also quite quiet.” It’s an approach that could lead to new possibilities for this already pioneering studio.

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Above The building's exposed-timber interior looks inward on to a teardrop-shaped courtyard garden

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Rings by Sandralexandra. Read the full story on p126

STYLE Fashionable pursuits

Most wanted

Clothing and accessories that are thoughtful, expressive, beautiful and good

STYLE / Products

Edeline Lee Colour, structure and femininity are the hallmarks of British-Canadian fashion designer Edeline Lee’s portfolio, and this Chromatic dress could be a masterclass in her work. An ankle-length skirt and stand-collared shirt are cinched at the waist with a belt and statement fabric-covered buckle in a third contrasting colour, with elbow-length sleeves. There

are three colour options, including black, amber and slate (above) and red, burgundy and rust (opposite).

Head to Lee’s website to see this and the rest of the collection come to life in a brain-bending surreal film by motion artist FrankNitty3000. £1,065; edelinelee.com

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STYLE / Products

Ormaie French fragrance house Ormaie’s inaugural seven products were more than two years in development, launching in 2018; now, mother and son team Marie-Lise Jonak and Baptiste Bouygues have released Tableau Parisien – an evocation of Parisian elegance “with just a touch of nonchalance” – with hits of tuberose combined with spice and tobacco.

Ormaie’s USP is its use of all-natural ingredients, so there are no synthetics here; as with all the brand’s unisex fragrances, it comes in a 12-sided bottle, making reference to a clock face, and the idea that good things come to those who wait. €260 for 100ml; ormaie.com

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STYLE / Products

Lacalifornienne Lacalifornienne’s products are inspired by the hues of the “magic hour” sunrise and sunset skies of its native Los Angeles. Following a successful line of straps to fit the Apple Watch, it has now released a complete timepiece, the Daybreak. The Swiss-made watch comes in stainless steel, yellow-gold-plated and rose-gold-plated finishes, with a leather strap

that comes in a myriad of different colours, from pink ombré with an aqua dial to bright primaries with a pastel pink face. And if that isn’t high enough on the cuteness scale for you, keep an eye out for a forthcoming version featuring emojis on the dial.

From $1,480; lacalifornienne.com

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STYLE / Products

Blazé Milano Taking you into winter with an effortless sense of refinement, Blazé Milano’s latest collection is where beautiful materials meet high-quality detailing. Its bubblegum-pink double-breasted overcoat (above) is made from a wool and cashmere herringbone with lightly padded shoulders, while the brand has also reworked its bolero and five-pocket high-rise

pants in a cotton velvet with an autumnal pattern inspired by archive fabrics from textile company Mantero (opposite). All of them feature a Blazé Milano signature – semicircular “smiley” pockets.

Lotus overcoat, €2,103, Topaz pants, €504, and Topaz bolero, €1,257; blaze-milano.com

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STYLE / Products

Sandralexandra A pop-art reductionist take on a diamond solitaire, these Bolita rings by Sandralexandra are handmade near Barcelona in lampwork glass, a technique that means that no two are quite the same. Founded by Alexandra Barrio von Hurter and based between London and Spain, Sandralexandra’s jewellery is irresistibly sweet, with glass heart and fruit motifs

that recall jelly sweets, swirly sea-urchin-inspired pendants and seed pearls suspended from snake chains. Almost all of it works better when layered up, so stack the Bolita with the brand’s plain glass band, Linea, or the seductively stripy Liquorice. £60 each; sandralexandra.com

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STYLE / Products

The Workers Club Waxed cotton is a smart choice for country as well as city – there’s inclement weather everywhere, after all – so don’t be fooled by this garment’s description as a field jacket. In classic olive green, the windresistant and shower-proof cotton canvas is treated with a dry wax in Scotland, and there are two sets of pockets for practicality. The best bit? Just like a

favourite pair of jeans, it’ll soften with age until it feels like a second skin. Pair it with a checked lambswool scarf and one of the brand’s Shetland wool sweaters, made by a family-run knitwear company based in the Scottish Borders. £495; theworkersclub.co.uk

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PIONEER

Free expression

Italian architect and designer Gae Aulenti was never one to follow a prescribed path Words / Joe Lloyd Image / Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images

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hen the Musée d’Orsay in Paris opened in 1986, the reaction was decidedly mixed. One critic called it “a kind of Dantesque nightmare.” But Gae Aulenti, the Italian architect responsible, was unbothered.

“When you’re criticised for something,” she said, “it’s best to wait two or three years and see.”

curvy Locus Solus pool furniture and Fontana Arte’s Tavolo con Ruote, a glass table on industrial castors.

Aulenti was aligned with the Neo-Liberty movement, an offshoot of postmodernism that embraced some elements of the traditional. But her output had a remarkable diversity. “It’s not possible,” she said, “to define a style in my work.” The Musée d’Orsay epitomises this, exposing the defunct train station’s barrel-vaulted ceiling while sub-dividing the space with a geometric maze of stone walls and wire mesh, the old spotlighted against the new.

Aulenti was born in 1927 at a time when very few women worked professionally. Her parents tried to raise a society girl; she rebelled, enrolling in architecture at Milan Polytechnic before becoming a highly successful freelance designer. Over the next three decades she taught widely, collaborated on research and worked as an art director at Casabella magazine; she also designed showrooms and exhibitions for a who’s who of Italian brands, crafted sets for La Scala and built refined private villas. Not forgetting her legacy of design classics, including Martinelli Luce’s art nouveau-inspired Pipistrello table lamp, Poltronova’s

Time proved Aulenti correct: the d’Orsay remains one of the most popular museums in the world. It capitulated Aulenti into the architectural big league. She completed large-scale projects in Venice, Rome, Barcelona, San Francisco and Tokyo. She died in 2012, aged 84, her place in the pantheon of Italian design assured.

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