de/ design exchange Volume 01 2012 Issue 25 ÂŁ8.00 www.demagazine.co.uk
Volume 01 Places & Stories
Atelier Nekuto / Featherstone Young / Pedro Clarke & Camille Bonneau / Studio Job / Ball Nogues / Tom Foulsham Alex Schweder La / T3arc / Nicola Read + House of Jonn Archizines / Carsten Holler / Maria Fusco Hendzel and Hunt / Pedro Gadanho
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Editorial - Places & Stories M x P = Ph (Matter times Process equals Physicality) This equation, presented by Pascal Schoning in his Manifesto for a cinematic architecture seven years ago, illustrates quite well the focus of this issue. Here, we want to reveal the process through which the matter is turned into physicality. Our understanding of architecture is one that extends beyond the building, to embrace performance through occupation and events. For this reason, we’re interested in the stories that inhabit spaces. Throughout this issue we will tell stories of building sites and of unexpected occupations. We will explore architecture as a storytelling device. And we will discuss writing and publishing as forms of art and architectural production.
— Stories of Building Sites The relationship between places and stories is a fascinating subject, one that has been taken from diverse perspectives. Today, in a contrived economical context, we revisit the discussion around this relationship, this time with a focus on the actual physical and intellectual processes that inform the making of spaces. More and more are architects and designers bodily engaged in the building of their designs, we’re interested in the stories that emerge from those processes, and the stories that those processes project. Camille Bonneau and Pedro Clarke’s Maliphofu School in Lesotho, South Africa, illustrates the improvisation skills necessary to make a building happen in that context, and the emotional attachment of all those involved in the process. In ‘Charter for Change’ Robert Pike discusses the importance and the implications of education for architects, and suggests practical hands-on alternatives to the school of architecture. Nicola Read and House of Jonn’s Poetry Takeaway exemplifies the above mentioned bodily engagement, where the architects designed, built and programmed the ‘building’.
— Unexpected occupations The façade as an instrument to communicate is used in the Yucca Crater, by Ball Nogues studio, to reveal an unexpected interior. In an arid
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landscape, the blunt anonymous façade hides a surprising oasis of life and people. This project raises questions that have to do with programme and its role in architectural design. Alex Schweder’s ‘La: Stability’ critically reflects upon the (often) shared occupation of space and its good and bad implications. His installation physically reflects the balance required to share spaces and how sharing spaces necessarily leads to shared stories.
— A storytelling device It is when we touch the depths of personal and collective memory that architecture and cinema reveal their constructive force: ‘It is when architecture and cinema deploy their physical means, their interactions and their assemblage that they show their mythopoeic inspiration’ (1). In fact, spaces work as containers for memories, as they evoke moments and experiences from the past and give us clues as to imagine the lives of its inhabitants in the present and future. Sarah Featherstone’s Ty-Hedfan corresponds to the classic model of the house built by two architects as a couple, for themselves, as a sum or investigation into their architectural system and methodology. Studio Job’s house is a collection of iconographic decorative elements, that slow down our movement through what Umberto Eco describes as lingering techniques (2). Flashing back and flashing forward, the house catches our eye in the small details and indulges us, so we linger, we make inferential walks outside the subject of the house and its iconography, we make imaginary walks. If the story is the linear set of events (a-b-c) then the plot is the order in which those events are told (e.g. b-a-c). In this issue we focus on both content and form, story and plot, with a focus on the expression and tone of the telling of the story. Architecture as discourse is the subject of this issue. Mariana Pestana
(1) Pascal Schoning, Manifesto for a Cinematic Architecture (London: Architectural Association Publications, 2005) (2) Umberto Eco, Six Walks into the Fictional Woods (Harvard University Press, 1994).
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/CONTENTS/
Features
50
68
62
72
Carsten Holler: Experience
36
Studio Gil: Reflecting on the narratives that drive the design
46
Tom Foulsham: Totem
66
40....................................Interview with Maria Fusco 50............................................................Archizines 54.....................................Architectural Story Telling 58................................................Charter for Change 62...................................Alex Schweder La: Stability 64....................................Nicola Read + House of Jonn 68...........................S i r Eduard o Paol o zzi Mos ai c s 72............. In the Workshop with Hendzel and Hunt 79.................S BID : Inte rnational Desig n Awards 114......................................Stor ytelli ng i n D esi g n 132.................................................D esi g ne rsbl ock
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/CONTENTS/
PrOJECTs 18
Maliphofu School, Lesotho
Pedro Clarke/Camille Bonneau, Lesotho, Southern Africa
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26
30
Yucca Crater Ball Nogues California
Ty-Hedfan
Featherstone Young Wales
Crystal Brick Atelier Nekuto Tokyo
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96
100
104
92....................................................Studio Job House 96..........................................................GMG House 100..............................................................Tubohotel 104...................................................Derwent London 108...............................................................Hotel Icon
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Editor-in-Chief Diana Biggs diana@demagazine.co.uk Editor Mariana Pestana editor@demagazine.co.uk Feature Editors
Gem Barton Ilsa Parry Karina Joseph Lucas Gray
Stefania Vourazeri Stuart Blakley Robert Pike
Art Direction - Design / layout Yvette Chiu art@demagazine.co.uk Web Developer Kingsley Man web@demagazine.co.uk Accounts Department Jenny Shore accounts@demagazine.co.uk
de/design exchange Volume 01 2012 £8.00 no, 25 Cover Image | Yucca Crater, project by Ball Nogues Joshua tree National Park, California.| PHOTO Scott Mayoral © 2012 All rights reserved
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For subscriptions: UK: £20.00 per year (4 issues) visit www.demagazine.co.uk © 2012 Copyright design exchange magazine claims no responsibility for the opinions of its writers and contributors contained within this design magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without prior permission is strictly forbidden. Every care has been taken when compiling design exchange to ensure that all the content is correct at the time of printing. design exchange assumes no responsibility for any effects from errors or omissions. design exchange Magazine are media Partners of:
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University of Leicester
№ 1/
Maliphof u S ch o o l , L es o t h o Pedro Clarke /Camille bonneau kingdom of Lesotho, africa
Deep in the highlands of Lesotho, the country known as the “Mountain Kingdom” lays the new classroom prototype for Maliphofu School. Being influenced by the surrounding environment, this new space sought at providing a good learning environment whilst coping with the harsh mountainous climate.
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Architectural Project â„– 1
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Located in Thaba-Tseka Distric the new school classroom is hoped to be the first of a series of improvements to the existing school. Both the extreme weather conditions and the isolated surrounding environment strongly influenced the project according to architects in charge Camille Bonneau and Pedro Clarke. When designing and supervising the new classroom for Sentebale, a charity set by Prince Harry of the UK and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, the architects always included the local community. “A lot of emphasis was put on involving the village chief, the local community, the teachers as well as the children...and the choice of color scheme, to replicate the schools uniform came from these
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Words: Stefania Vourazeri
Architectural Project № 1
interactions,” Clarke says. Their ambition was to develop a new space that was “a direct response to the old classroom, in which the kids were taught. The materials and techniques were an
interpretation of what we could see and do,” says Pedro Clarke. The old classroom was dark and freezing in the winter. It normally hosted up to 130 children and had only two small windows. “It was important for us to organize this small space to allow for maximum flexibility and variety of arrangements,” he says. In the winter they managed to prevent heat loss by placing a polycarbonate solar wall, which stores as much heat as possible in the dark natural stone façade. With no electricity in the village, most of the windows are located in the Northern part so that the classroom enjoys maximum sunlight throughout the day. When temperatures rise to over 25 degrees Celsius in the summer, the polycarbonate screens can be fully opened and used for cross ventilation and cooling. Every aspect of the space is carefully designed to provide a suitable classroom. For example, the double skin skylight on the south pith of the roof balances light internally in the classroom. To them, “the biggest reference in terms of design was the village itself,” says Pedro Clarke. And he 21 | www.demagazine.co.uk
continues: “We were trying to interpret the volumes, materials and techniques present and make a statement, that using the exact same ‘semi-vernacular’ materials we could achieve a modern yet integrated building.” “The community was very proud with the new classroom,” says Clarke. The children as well as the teachers were curious and eager about the space. “So eager were they that on the day we handed over the site to the contractor we discovered that the teachers had got a roads contractor, working on a large road improvement project nearby, to come and flatten the site,” he says. And he adds: “This was a huge show of dedication and enthusiasm but caused us many problems as what we had planned and designed was for a site that no longer had the conditions we expected.” To Pedro and Camille, it was important that the project was designed for children. “For us to provide a good learning environment which they could be proud of, and make them dream, was our ultimate goal and we believe we have achieved it,” they say. www.a-architecture.org
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y u c c a C r at e r ball Nogues Joshu a tree N ational Park, California
Abandoned urban swimming pools and land art are some of the themes that influenced Yucca Crater, a project by Ball-Nogues Studio, which is an upside down pile impressed into the ground of the barren desert near Joshua Tree National Park in California.
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“For Gaston and me the American Southwest is loaded with association of land art. There were several seminal land art projects created here.”
“The American Southwest has a lot of craters, both real and mythical,” says Benjamin Ball one half of the duo that forms Ball-Nogues Studio. Having that in mind, they designed Yucca Crater, a synthetic earthwork that doubled as a recreational amenity during the annual art event, High Desert Test Sites (HDTS) in October 2011. HDTS are experimental project sites where artists, designers and architects are invited to create installations around Joshua Tree, Pioneertown, Wonder Valley, Yucca Valley, and 29 Palms. Yucca Crater was then abandoned in the desert.
It is a project closely associated with Talus Dome, a sculpture in the shape of an abstracted pile or mound. Yucca Crater “arose by reconciling the shape of Talus Dome formwork with the desert landscape,” Ball says. “The formwork used to make Talus Dome was repurposed to become Yucca Crater-they have the same shape except inverted,” he adds. Both projects were designed at the same time and their forms are influenced by a principle of geology called “angle of repose”. Explaining the principle Ball says that when aggregated material is poured from a single point it forms a pile of predictable shape. 24 | Design Exchange
“A similar principle applies to both the convex shape of piles and the concave shape of craters. So Yucca Crater has aspects of both a pile and a crater,” he says. Apart from drawing artistic influences from the abandoned and decaying swimming pools and homesteader cabins that are scattered around the Mojave Desert, Ball-Nogues Studio when designing Yucca Crater attempted to expand on concepts borrowed from land art. “For Gaston and I the American Southwest is loaded with association of land art. There were several seminal land art projects created here,” Ball
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using the rock climbing holds. “Climbing was part of the original proposal and was an important aspect of the finished work. We designed Yucca Crater to have rock climbing holds attached to its inner surface and we intended for people to use them,” he says. According to Benjamin Ball people are more willing to climb a wall that was designed for climbing rather than a natural rock. “We wanted to make something that would comment on our collective need to feel like we are in control of the natural environment,” he says.
Words: Stefania Vourazeri
says. And continues: “Making an intervention in that landscape of this particular scale, that is intended to be in a dialog with ‘art’ and is intended to decay in the landscape, is bound to be understood in relation to land art.” However, as Ball explains they wanted to make something that is ersatz land art. “It is a kind of ‘slacker’ land art constructed of man made materials that borrow from the original ideas of the movement but offers a different critique,” he says. Visitors have the opportunity to descend into the pool by
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ty h ed f an Featherstone Young wales
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Ty Hedfan or the “hovering house” in Welsh, winner of the 2011 RIBA Manser Medal, is designed as the private residence of architects Jeremy Young and Sarah Featherstone. Influenced by the traditional Welsh long house, Ty Hedfan is both dramatic and peaceful.
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“It is a beautiful site and we wanted to create a building that was sensitive to it,” says Sarah Featherstone, co-director of Featherstone Young. Having that in mind the architects built Ty Hedfan above the River Ysgir in Wales. It is the first house they designed together and it had a very strict specification, that of a statutory 6m no-build zone along the riverbank. “It is a difficult site. The main feature is a steeply slopping riverbank with a stream running below. We decided that we could turn this into an opportunity. Because we were unable to build along the riverbank we came up with the idea of the cantilever.” she says. Therefore, “one half of the house is sunk into the slope of the site-hugging the landscape and in a sense adding to it with a green roof and the other, more dramatic wing of the house features a cantilever over the stream that thrusts the living space into a group of mature trees,” says Featherstone. Contextual architecture is something that interests the practice. “Context is enormously important to us and it’s always the starting point for any design,” she says. Ty Hedfan was influenced by the traditional Welsh long house as Sarah Featherstone explains. “We wanted Ty Hedfan to be totally unique and utterly modern, while retaining that strong connection with local architectural heritage,” she says 28 | Design Exchange
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Words: Stefania Vourazeri
Architectural Project № 3
and she continues: “At the front door you are met with what appears to be a modern yet unassuming interpretation of a Welsh house, and it’s only as you pass into the cantilevered section that you realise that you have left the ground and the traditional form behind you.” The architects selected very specific materials such as locally sourced slate and stone following their decision to take a design cue from the traditional Welsh
long house. “We wanted to use local materials that referenced local vernacular architecture -hence the extensive use of slate, stone and timber- while introducing contemporary forms that lend a modern twist to the traditional design,” Featherstone says. Ty Hedfan was special to the architects as they wanted a beautiful home in the country to spend time with their families and because they used 29 | www.demagazine.co.uk
it to found out how they could work together professionally. “It has worked out well,” says Featherstone. “Throughout the house we have sought to use forms and materials that respond to their immediate surroundings. We are also interested in creating strongly contrasting forms and scale which heightens one’s sense of space and provides a range of rooms both intimate and lofty,” she says.
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C ry s tal b r i ck atelier Nekuto tokyo
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Architectural Project â„– 4
In a quiet residential area in Bunkyo District, Tokyo, lies the Crystal Brick, a house whose glass block walls reminiscent of a Lego structure provide a luminous space accommodating the clients’ request for a residence as bright as the crystal they collect as a hobby.
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This double household designed by Tokyo based practice Atelier Tekuto is influenced by the architectural concept of Mansory that uses identical objects on top of each other achieving totality. “Constituting the whole structure from cells, it means that the weight of the structure can be distributed,” says Yasuhiro Yamashita, head architect of Atelier Tekuto. The project, which is an extension to the old wooden building, had to accommodate the main requirements of the clients that of a two family space full of light. Architect Yasuhiro Yamashita admits that he was highly influenced by the hobby the family had, that of collecting crystals. “That was where my inspiration for this building comes from,” he says. The practice decided to design the house using glass block walls. This way they achieved the “sunlight to penetrate the house,” he adds. Using glass blocks to construct the walls was a challenging idea and they thus needed to closely collaborate with structural engineers, manufacturers, constructors and with the University laboratories to examine the use of glass block. “ I talked to the company of the brick and they said no twice as they couldn’t take the responsibility without experimenting. We then asked them to share the responsibility together and they said yes,” says Yasuhiro Yamashita. As Yasuhiro Yamashita explains, the practice sought at providing the space with density and depth.
“We thought of avoiding neutrality and commonness by layering three different layers on the surface of the glass block and by bringing the manifold diversity to the space.”
“ We divided the function of the surface into three layers,” he says. One layer is semi-transparent for the perception of the light, the other one is non transparent for the perception of distance and to create a boundary with the outside world and the third layer is transparent. “We thought of avoiding neutrality and commonness by layering three different layers on the surface of 32 | Design Exchange
the glass block and by bringing the manifold diversity to the space,” he says. A steel frame lies at the core and is the one that supports the glass block structure. “Installing the steel frame with a flat bar into the joint of glass block where the set of glass blocks are incorporated, makes the existence of frame invisible and create the complete glass block façade,” Yasuhiro Yamashita says.
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Words: Stefania Vourazeri
Architectural Project â„– 4
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No.1
Feature
carsten holler Experience
Words Gem Barton
New Museum has a long tradition of introducing the most adventurous international artists to an American audience. It is here that ‘Experience’ gathers together a number of signature works by German artist Carsten Höller in an arrangement that transforms the viewer’s experience of time and space. ‘Experience’ provides a first opportunity for the public in America to examine the full scope of Höller’s artistic experiments. Höller studied agricultural entomology at the University of Kiel where he received his doctorate in 1988 but by the 1990s, he began to make artworks and eventually abandoned science as profession to pursue a career as an artist. Since this change of direction Höller has created a world that is equal parts laboratory and test site, exploring such themes as
childhood, safety, love, the future, and doubt. Höller gained significant European exposure with his ‘Test Site’ slide installation in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in 2006-7, which introduced the audience to the inspiration for some of his work. His work often draws on social spaces such as the amusement parks, zoos, or playgrounds, but the experiences they provide are always far from our usual expectations of these activities. This inverse relationship between inspiration and product could be said to be because of, or in spite of his previous training as a scientist. Höller is frequently inspired by research and experiments from scientific history and deploys these studies in works that alter the audience’s physical and psychological sensations, inspiring doubt
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Images: NM Benoit Pailley Carsten Holler
and uncertainty about the world around them. Höller’s newest piece, designed specifically for the New Museum is called Double Light Corner (2011). Here he uses a sequence of lights, which flicker back and forth on a central axis giving the viewer an immersive and hallucinatory sensation. Over the years, the artist has employed psychotropic drugs as well as flashing lights, and other stimuli to potentially alter the viewer’s mental state. Höller actively engages with the Museum’s architecture, with each of the three main gallery floors and lobby of the building presenting a focused 37 | www.demagazine.co.uk
selection of pieces that demonstrate different experiential dimensions of his work. One of Holler’s signature slide installations functions as an alternative transport system running from the fourth floor to the second, perforating ceilings and floors, to shuttle viewers through the exhibition as a giant 102-footlong pneumatic mailing system. Each floor of the exhibition explores a different general theme within Höller’s work to provide a carefully choreographed journey through the building and the artist’s oeuvre. The fourth floor focuses on the theme of movement—featuring the artist’s spectacular Mirror Carousel (2005), which provides riders with a notably different physical experience than 38 | Design Exchange
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Images: NM Benoit Pailley Carsten Holler
the traditional fairground merry-go-round, while at the same time reflecting and illuminating the space surrounding it. The third floor gathers together works that seek to provide an altered or utopian experience of architectural space. For example, his Giant Psycho Tank (2000) invites viewers to float weightlessly in the water of a sensory deprivation pool, providing a tenebrous, out-of-body experience. Höller’s art has often taken the form of proposals for radical new ways of living. He has created sculptures and diagrams for visionary architecture and transportation alternatives, like his renowned slide installations and flying cities. These concepts may seem impossible in the present day, but suggest new models for the future. Carsten Höller’s work is first and foremost concerned with altering our basic assumptions about what we see, feel, and understand about ourselves. He invites us to reconsider the meanings of play and participation and to explore the limits of our sensorial perception and logic. The show includes, amongst others, the following works; Giant Triple Mushrooms (2010), What is Love, Art, Money?, 2011, Singing Canaries Mobile, 2009, Skyscraper Slide Connections, 1998, One Minute of Doubt, 2007, Pill Clock, 2011, Swinging Curve, 2009, Infrared Room, 2004, Atomium Slide House, 2003, High Rise Sculpture, 2006, Double Light Corner, 2011, Animal Group, 2011. 39 | www.demagazine.co.uk
No.2
Feature
interview with maria Fusco Writing as Practice
Image: The Mechanical Copula Maria Fusco Published by Sternberg Press 2010
Words Barnaby Lambert
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Writing as Practice
In the e-mail I sent to Maria Fusco requesting an interview, I framed my topic as “the practice of written fiction as a means of ‘doing’ contemporary art”. That she consented to converse professionally on the grounds of so cumbersomely worded a subject is no small testament to her intellectual generosity. Yet looking over the transcript of what was said, perhaps we can find some justification for the bumbling ineptitude of my terms. In that they reveal something of the difficulties inherent in communicating any moment when disciplines converge. And in relation to Maria’s work as an academic, author and editor operating at the juncture between writing and art; something of the more specific challenges thrown up when we attempt to think visual art as an activity which could be performed verbally - could be ‘done’ with words. It was with precisely these challenges in mind that I came to Goldsmiths University. As director of the college’s new Art Writing programme, Maria was an ideal person with whom to discuss a certain flourishing of interest around written fiction taking place within contemporary art. And on a more gradual, general scale; to discuss a certain revision of the art world’s relationship to writing itself. A revision in which
Maria’s Art Writing course plays an interesting role as both participant and paradigm. “The idea of establishing a course within an art department rather than an experimental literature or visual theory department”... she explains... “was to focus on cementing a moment in which we can really see a proliferation of writing as practice”. In relation to art-making, the possibilities of “writing as practice” bubble up consistently throughout our conversation. And what is exciting about Maria’s approach to the idea is that it is not so much concerned with a sleight-of-hand switching of context; with taking writing as-is and calling it art. But looks instead to “how artists can write as a central spine or methodology of working”. Allowing for a more pervasive understanding of the role that writing can play in artistic outcomes “which in the end are not necessarily written”. Yet if we turn that understanding on its head, we might also see how this subtler, more inclusive attitude suggests a different way of thinking through written outcomes that are not necessarily art; but may nonetheless participate in many of the critical (and even aesthetic) functions we expect an artwork to perform. In Maria’s description of the Art Writing course I begin to recognise the extent to which it exemplifies this difference. Challenging as it does the perception of writing as a ‘secondary’ supplement to the active, ‘primary’ production of art itself. And encouraging its students to play against kind of oppositional logic which keeps objects and discourse safely apart. Supporting this kind of activity is also a defining feature of The Happy Hypocrite, the semiannual journal “for and about experimental art writing” which Maria founded and edits. Since by offering an equal space both ‘for and about’ its content, the journal can be seen as part of the attempt to undo something of the aforementioned distinctions which separate the productive from the receptive. In that it approaches critique, analysis and theory as active, material forms
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and practices the agency of which extends well beyond their accepted status as disembodied organs of reflection. “Its a completely embodied experience, and I think that is what I mean by being active, that it participates in an embodied way.”
Fiction and The Object
Having marked out a little conceptual ground, it was at this point that our conversation broached more specifically the subject of fiction. And in relation to her own work, I wanted to know how the theme of our discussion fitted into some of the more general possibilities of art writing which Maria had discussed. “My own writing practice predominantly now is as a fiction writer. I do write criticism and I write things which are more theoretical in nature and have different types of functions. But at the moment a lot of my intellectual work is with fiction.” I then raised the topic of the ‘artist’s novel’; since in the novel we find perhaps the most self-standing form which fiction can take. “With artist’s novels, they are interesting because arguably they very self consciously refer to how they might be read. But more ‘traditional’ novel writing also refers to how it may be read. So that the way in which things are written directly describe to you how to read them. Not what to think about them, or how to experience them, or how to intellectually process them lets say - but how to read them.” At the moment, Maria is working on a short novel of her own - Sailor. Set in Belfast during the Second World War (“the war before the more obvious war in Northern Ireland”) it tells the story of a Vervet monkey
- the pet of a merchant trader - as an internal monolog from its own perspective. “And although it sounds silly now because its a monkey, for me its a very serious, political and sociopolitical project. Aspects of it have to do with the reclamation of the subjective voice and the paradigm of the subjective voice. And in relation to what I was saying earlier about ‘how things may be read’; because the monkey narrates the book, in a very obvious sense you have to read it through the monkey’s voice.” This use of fictional writing to ‘give voice’ to an object seems especially relevant within the context of contemporary art; a context in which we have come to expect objects to somehow ‘speak’. As another example of how Maria’s work demonstrates the voice-giving properties of fiction, I suggested The Mechanical Copula, a collection of her short-stories published last year. In the narrative after which the book is named; we find reconstituted an imaginary encounter between a clock-work woman and Casanova as portrayed in Federico Fellini’s eponymous film. What is wonderful about the story is that it not only reproduces in text the object of this animatronic doll, but also animates it which thought. “That story was
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inspired by the movie’s representation of Casanova by the actor Donald Sutherland, who I was thinking about as a kind of ‘cultural vector’. There was an idea from my point of view of wanting to address Donald Sutherland as Casanova on a basic level. But on a grander or more ambitious level lets say, to try and look at how cultural objects and vectors come to be produced.” Although we are by no means lead to approach The Mechanical Copula as an art-object, there is something about subtle unconventionality of its design and the minimal punch of its often ultra-short narratives which cleverly emphasise the materiality of the words from which it is made. Yet even with less self-reflexive examples, an interesting aspect of ‘works of fiction’ in general is the ease with which we are already able to accept them as autonomous aesthetic outcomes. Cultural artifacts in their own right which (as opposed critique or theory) we rarely think of as existing only to explain something else. Brining up her training as an artist, Maria reminds me that although working now primarily as a writer, she still has “a fairly substantial knowledge of what it is to make objects”.
Working Between
As our interview came to an end, I began to realise the extend to which I had come to it with a desire to latch onto ‘artist’s fiction’ as some newfangled tendency or trope. In Maria’s responses to my questions however laced as they were with specific precedents, examples and contingencies - there was a marked reluctance to accept that kind of blustering generalisation. And as she rightly reminded me at the time, it does seems more than a little arbitrary “to say for instance, that it is a more interesting time for artist’s fiction than it is for artist’s anything else”. Instead, what we can say is that the use of written fiction within art offers an engaging expression of the numerous, though disparate attempts being made to agitate the kind of a priori divisions which separate creative disciplines. “A friend suggested to me that we might be entering an era of the ‘post-discipline’. And if we take the idea of fiction as a verb - as fictioning rather than a noun, we can be far more specific about what that might mean within a contemporary art environment and how active it can be. I find it difficult to draw huge distinctions between discipline in that sense. Because it is very much based on particular moments - active intellectual moments - where things can either naturally coalesce or be brought to coalesce by the practitioner. I’m far more interested in how people go about doing things than what they are doing.” So be it labelled art, fiction, artistic fiction or fictional art; “all excellent work will create its own criteria - time after time after time”. www.gold.ac.uk/pg/mfa-art-writing
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No.3
Feature
Studio Gil
Reflecting on the narratives that drive the design Words Robert Pike
“18 months ago we sat down and decided what was the point of the practice and what was the point of what we do”, says Pedro Gil, founder of Studio Gil Architects as we sit discussing the history of the practice in the ground floor gallery space of the three storey studio in Newman Passage, a short walk from Oxford Street, that is shared with KHBT. Such reflection was prompted by Robert Mull, the Dean of the London Metropolitan University Department of Architecture and Spatial Design (ASD), and Diana Cochrane course coordinator, when Gil joined the school as undergraduate tutor. ASD has a policy of encouraging young practitioners to lead design studios in the school. Those practitioners are expected to deliver a presentation of their own portfolio to the students they teach and wider community of the school. The opportunity to reflect on one’s practice in its infancy when surrounded by a multitude of outside
pressures was timely, and confirmed to Gil that he is moving in the right direction, employing the correct methods. So what is it that drives Studio Gil?
Childs Play
We’re joined in the gallery space by collaborator Christo Meyer to discuss the images and models on display. What is immediate is Gil’s choice of words as he specifically uses the word ‘play’ to describe the design process. What does he mean by the word ‘play’ in this context? During Christmas Gil visited family in Colombia, and when saying goodbye asked his young niece what she will do that week. “Play” was her wide eyed response. He reflects on that response, and is interested in the way a child has the freedom to do as they please without outside pressure. He recounts his younger years when he had the freedom to just imagine, draw, paint and make,
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completely uninhibited from the outside world. Gil is fortunate that when studying architecture he was “taught by tutors - Stewart Dodd and Mette Thomsen at Undergrad, and Christine Hawley and CJ Lim at Diploma level – who “ inspired him to experiment with ideas through different mediums and actively encouraged a trust in your base primal instincts as a designer”. The learning doesn’t stop there as Gil suggests as he continues to learn through the individuals that work in the studio, and alongside tutors such as Diana Cochrane and Michael Chadwick.
Play in Practice
How does this belief translate into the practice of architecture? Gil encourages those he teaches and those he works with to understand design as an uninhibited process - free to think and explore. He believes richness of design and a depth of ideas’ emerge that way. Being a young studio it is easier and without commercial constraint, and Gil goes further to suggest that he tries hard to protect his young protégés from the outside influences that can all too easily derail the design process. He wants them to be in a bubble, free to go about their project work without the type of money and time pressures that exist in the commercial realm. For those architects working in the commercial realm – as Gil has done himself – this notion of play would probably have you laughed out of the building. Exploring design may be a distant memory for most, play being something they left behind long ago. In response to the commercial realm Gil is keen to ask why playing with design has to stop when you finish your Diploma. Must leaving university be the end of the creative process? Current collaborator Meyer is a good person to answer this question, given that he was introduced to Gil and his methods when he chose to be part of his design unit. Meyer studied for his Diploma on a part-time basis at London South Bank University, and has been working in commercial practice for a number of years. He was “thus aware of architectures limitations and how easily one can forget why you initially wanted to be an architect”. But Gil offered a change of perspective and what caught his attention about Gils studio presentation – which included large scale models and beautiful drawings of the practices work - was this belief that “what you draw beautifully, you build beautifully”. Meyer had initially studied for
his degree in his home nation of South Africa, where he says, ”themes of phenomenology was crucial to the pedagogy so this relationship between conditioning the architecture or object is very much engrained in the way I approach design”. He continues, “But what made Studio Gil’s approach to teaching so interesting was how the study of social narratives is translated into and critically tested as the hand crafted drawings and models. In many ways, what I experienced in final year was only a taster. Since then, I have started to collaborate with Studio Gil on a series of projects and research, putting into practice what was learned in academia. It is a very exciting time for the studio.”
Drawing and Making
At Studio Gil drawings and models are not simply products for supply to relevant parties such as clients, consultants and planners, but important devices by which to stimulate a thought process and direction. Take as an example two exquisite framed drawings hung in the gallery space. Both depict a scheme for Distriandina - a South American bar project underneath the railway arches in Elephant and Castle. One is an abstraction of the surfaces laid flat on a
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Photo:Zander Olsen
page with ideas for their adornment. The second is an exploded isometric of the configuration of the space. The former - a drawing that in another place might be considered a work of art – has been created to test ideas. It is unlikely to be shown to the client, whereas the latter will be. Each is produced with the same level of care and attention to detail. This is not a linear process, which Gil illustrates by way of a scale model of the ground floor for a house in Maida Vale. This model illustrates a spatial intention. Yet the next piece made was an architrave corner detail at 1:1 scale that illustrated a material and stylistic intention. The next move in the puzzle might be to then model the house in 3 dimensions before once again returning to physical models and pencil sketches. Critically at the end of each of these processes Gil is keen to assess and review what has been done. It is an intensive, rigorous and methodical approach that can lead to different routes of inquiry and in the end a beautifully executed product.
Intuition
But where does the review process begin and end? When can the architect step away from the project and leave it to the craftsmen, builders and clients? This is where intuition plays such a key role. Flex House in Palmira, Colombia, the studio’s most accomplished completed building to date, is perhaps the best way to explain such an idea. Once more Gil guides me through a series of drawings and models that explain the development of the project. These range in scales and in forms, the biggest of which sits in the corner of the small cramped design space on the top floor. Gil is keen to point out that a projecting fenestration in the top corner doesn’t appear on any of the models.
In fact it was only when presented with the 1:1 version on site that did Gil feel it necessary to add the extra fenestration. It was designed intuitively in collaboration with the skilled craftsmen building the project in Palmira. Then can the Architect step back? Perhaps, but there is always an opportunity to reflect on the project and sometimes that can provide the inspiration for the strand of a project. For example the off-cuts
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from a model for the Tree House project have been reappropriated for an idea for what could be the screening of a building. Or it could be something else, as the possibilities are endless once you put your mind to it. But then there are lots of these little ideas dotted around, particularly in the upstairs studio. Here old ideas sit on high shelves perhaps ready to return at a later date, and new ideas sit developing next to laptops. Those up for discussion are pinned to the wall. Right now the wall is a collage of current ideas including images of the craft of tailoring. In one a tailor cuts fabric to the shape of the required pattern. The depiction of the action is the start point for some interesting ideas behind the development of a design for the shop, studio and rooftop apartment for the tailor Charlie Allen. Long after I have left the studio the daily narrative of Studio Gil continues.
Continuing the Narrative?
It is a surprise to hear Gil sound uncertain for the first time during our discussion when he talks about knowing when the practice has made it. This is obviously the big question for any young practitioner. When will they achieve a level of recognition and trust
that is then translated into bigger commissions or clients who come and knock on their door? Looking to the future what will be the continuing narrative of Studio Gil? Can Gil continue to ‘play’? From my point of view Studio Gil are at a point in their short history where they have not completed many projects yet but have lots of ideas on the table, not least the number of commissions which has stimulated much of the drawings pinned to the wall. I feel they will go on in this way and will probably need more space in which to do it. That craftsmanship would need to find a bigger outlet and you can envision Studio Gil remaining small in terms of employees whilst maintaining that play element, but thinking big in terms of how much they can play. Will they become a workshop testing out ideas at 1:1 scale like Studio Mumbai? Beyond this there is a desire to forge links between South America and London- specifically northern nations of South America and especially his home nation of Colombia. The motivation behind this is to reveal the quality and intuitive responses inherent in the craftsmen of the area, which is reflected, not only in buildings and public spaces, but in other disciplines. This is why Gil wants to bring it to the attention of a wider audience. There has been much critical acclaim for projects in Colombia such as the Biblioteca Espańa in Medellín, which seek to regenerate impoverished areas with landmark public projects. It is also hoped that the research will lead to a travelling exhibition that will continue the conversation. It is a fascinating experience to visit Studio Gil and go behind the final images to learn a bit more about how they work – or rather how they play.
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No.4
Feature
archizines The New Generation of Architectural Publications Words Kelly Pollard
The relationship between architecture and publishing is not a recent phenomenon; however, the 2000’s have marked a new generation of independent architecture publications that are redefining the way in which architecture is consumed and perceived. The term ‘archizine’ – a blend of the words architecture and magazine intended to classify a contemporary periodical that provides an alternative to established architectural publications – coined by independent curator and writer Elias Redstone to describe his personal collection of magazines, journals, and publications dedicated to architecture. It is also the name of the exhibition curated by Redstone and hosted by the Architectural Association at their headquarters in London. Comprising 60 fanzines, magazines, and journals, the exhibition
offers a snapshot of the global activity affecting the contemporary architecture-publishing scene. About five years ago Redstone began discovering and reading fanzines about or of architecture both from the UK and his travels abroad. After realising that a plethora of these independently published titles existed around the globe, Redstone wanted to celebrate and promote the newfound creative materials, manifesting architectural ideas through a renewed interest of the printed page. With the Barcelona based creative agency Folch Studio, Redstone branded and initiated his ARCHIZINES project as an online catalogue, which launched at the beginning of 2011. The website allowed Redstone to showcase the various publications, meanwhile virtually reaching out to titles he had yet to discover. Word quickly spread about
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the ARCHIZINES project and Redstone was flooded with interesting publications. Soon it was obvious that the project needed to be redefined; it was no longer just a personal collection or website, but a potential exhibition. Translating ARCHIZINES from a website into an exhibition, required Redstone to envision and create a spatial experience for visitors. The exhibition exists as a tri-fold exploration – video interviews, the publications, and a catalogue – merged into a single space. The Architectural Association, a renowned institution for architecture education, is a suitable venue to promote and educate visitors on current publications that offer a more critical view of architecture. Utilising a reading room setting, ARCHIZINES is designed to encourage visitors to take a seat and read. The sixty fanzine editors were invited to choose one issue to show in the exhibition, allowing visitors to become acquainted with their publication. A clever, yet effective table design offers introductory text next to each publication and
encourages you to have a leisurely look at any or all of titles. Recessed within plexiglas vitrines, each publication is displayed so that you must physically it pick up in order to understand what they feel like and experience why they are interesting. It is this tactility that enables visitors to discover the distinct voice each publication has within the architectural realm. To further explore the impact of the international publications selected for the exhibition, Redstone posed four questions to each of the editors about the relationship between architecture and publishing; particularly examining the role of printed matter in the continuously changing field of architecture within a digital age. These responses have been filmed, compiled, and displayed on the periphery of the exhibition. Not only do these responses give insight to the current state of architectural publications, but also offer a bit of personal context to the names behind them. The interviews justify why publications have secured a vital role in contemporary society, and the exhibition design enables visitors to understand
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that printed material is attractive and relevant today because it offers a tactile experience, much like architecture. Each archizine offers a unique voice on the topic of architecture, and the publications in the exhibition are as varied as their creators. Visually led publications, such as Mark and Apartamento, strive to maintain a balance between beautiful images and professional, critical language; while the publications Log and another pamphlet favour the critical essay format, which revives writing as a means to communicate and represent architectural ideals. One: Twelve and Pidgin, student run publications from American universities, are the result of collaborative student efforts, capturing the school’s voice and sharing it with the architectural community at large. Comparatively, the archizines mono.kulture and Touching on Architecture often prefer to explore how architectural discourse is informed through its relationship to other disciplines by publishing extensive interviews or critical work of non-architects, respectively. Even production methods can structure and define the content of publications like the annual series Bracket contrasted with the one-week production, Archinect News Digest. Regardless of methodology, every archizine explores the possibilities of architecture and supports
the rising trend of architectural print media by offering something for every architectural enthusiast. ARCHIZINES poignantly captures the resurgence of architecture publications amidst a recession. The exhibition – and the catalogue – stimulates discussion and raises questions about the flourishing relationship between architecture and publishing. Expanding upon the films’ insight into the relationship between architecture and publishing, the ARCHIZINES catalogue is a printed space to record the current thinking of this trend. The bold and colourful format visually organises the publication, containing essays that expand upon the exhibition’s themes. While the catalogue itself strives to explain the resurgence and importance of archizines, it is meant to be a catalyst for further discussion and research about architecture publications. The immediacy of publishing offers architects the opportunity to explore their ideas in ways that are not often possible through architecture itself. Writing about architecture becomes an outlet for imagination and creativity, and becomes an extension of the discipline itself – continuously moving the field forward through critical publications. The sheer number of the publications in the exhibition proves that architects and broader audiences, alike, feel an affinity for architecture and
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Photos: Sue Barr, The AA School.
its role in culture, and appreciate a carefully published zine. Audiences are realising that archizines serve as a new platform for disseminating architecture in a variety of ways that currently do not exist in traditional publications. Today, there is a need for independent magazines and publications because they offer audiences more than just an idealised perception of architecture. This new generation of publications is not afraid to depart from the systematic format of mainstream professional press, and instead welcome alternative ways of thinking and engaging with architecture. Ultimately, ARCHIZINES’ success lies not in the variety or creative approach of each publication, but rather in its ability to highlight the dynamic and vital relationship between architecture and writing. Whether it is due to the current economic state and its effects on the architecture industry, or the growing need for printed material even amidst the digital era, archizines have proved they are more
than publications, but an extension the field itself. The ARCHIZINES project does not end at the Architectural Association, because it will be travelling to international venues, and will continuously add new publications. The research will be transferred to the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum, making these publications a permanent public resource. Redstone has curated a powerful collection of fanzines and celebrates the ways in which they express architecture through print – a rare sense of materiality in our increasingly digital world. By comprehensively surveying of the role of architecture and publishing in society, ARCHIZINES, and the archizines, will continue to evolve and solidify their place in contemporary culture for generations to come. For more information on ARCHIZINES and the publications included in the exhibition, visit the website - www.archizines.com.
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No.5
Feature
architectural Story telling Engaging people through design Words Lucas Gray
Architects love discussing their work and showcasing our latest designs - it may be a bit ego driven but it is the true reward for all the long hours and hard work. We all know it isn’t the money that drives us. However, more often than not we address our communications to other architects, write for other designers, publish in industry publications that are rarely read by the general public. This creates an isolating effect, where the profession of Architecture is having trouble engaging the general public. Our creative ideas and visions are going unheard by the vast majority of people. Architecture is about story telling, both in the way we go about getting new work as well as the way people interacts with our buildings. We need to captivate an audience in order to get new contracts, and our
buildings must tell the story of its place, local culture, and something about the designers who conceived it. The successful firms are those that have mastered to ability to engage people in the design process. Bjarke Ingles is a fantastic public speaker, who captivates audiences of architects and the general public alike. His firm BIG creates powerful and dramatic images of proposed buildings that captivates people’s imaginations. The tools: simple easily read diagrams, a sense of humor, references to pop culture, evocative imagery. Each design is explained in a series of simple, elegant diagrams that tell the story of the building’s concept, one design move at a time, in a way that everyone can understand. This allows BIG to engage the public and the design community in an effective
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LEFT Ford Alumni Center at the University of Oregon | RIGHT
BIG’s effective graphics
way. People get excited when they see a design proposal because they can understand how the architects arrived at the final solution. People feel like the design is the most logical outcome from the specified project parameters. The story of the architect’s design process is transparent for all to see. This clarity is what has led to BIG’s ascent to the top of the international architecture stage. The combination of Bjarke’s showmanship in presentations, the effective graphics used tell the story of a design, and dramatic renderings successfully persuades judges, excites the public, garners extensive media exposure. These talents are what separate BIG from so many other talented firms which fail to breach into the public eye. Now the question arises, how we can change this trend? How can architects better engage the public and get them to participate in design? More importantly, how can architects teach the public what makes a good building and the value architects bring to a project. Unfortunately I don’t think the public knows what value designers offer. This is reflected in the salaries of architects in comparison to other professionals, or the amount of buildings in the world that are actually designed by architects - as little as 2% by some accounts. I believe story telling holds the key to expanding the influence of the profession and
ultimately improving the environment in which people live. The stories we tell must speak a wider audience and educate people on the value of good design. However, this is just the first step in how architects should utilize their talents to interact with people. Buildings themselves tell stories. Built architecture should bridge the gap between our conceptual ideas and people’s lives. Opsis Architecture, an innovative firm located in Portland, Oregon with complete projects across the Pacific Northwest of the United States, has manifested the idea of storytelling into one of their recent projects. In their design for the Ford Alumni Center at the University of Oregon (UO), Opsis was challenged with the task of designing a space that captures the essence of the university experience and connect the architecture of the building with the narrative of UO alumni. This confluence led to the creation of an interactive story telling atrium that acts as the front door to campus. The new building offers a place where alumni can stay engaged with the university community while also welcoming prospective students to begin their UO experience. A dynamic touch screen table anchors the storytelling aspect of the space, offering a glimpse into the lives of over 200,000 alumni. It is a place where alumni share their stories, their UO
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ABOVE & BELOW Alumni Center at the University of Oregon
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experiences, their memories. It brings people together over time and distance. It is also an important part of the recruitment process for new students. When people visit the campus they begin their experience here, confronted by the history of the place. The culture of the generations of students before them leads prospective students to become more engaged with their surroundings. They can build a story in their minds based on bits of those who walked the campus days, months or years before. The details of the design reinforces these goals. From the initial concept to the final manifestation, the design of the Ford Alumni Center atrium tells the story of the University of Oregon. The materials, the form, and the integrated technology all visualize the narrative of UO - creating a physical manifestation of the flow of ideas, stories and time. THe table is warmly enclosed within a locally sources wood box with the touch screen glass elegantly sitting flush with the wood casing. The details are simple, clean and beautiful, yet they don’t distract from the incredible interactive surface
“Nine towering panels filled with interactive media and artifacts reveal the past, present, and possibilities of the University of Oregon experience.” The design begins with a series of nine back-lit panels rising from floor to ceiling. Their warm glow of yellow and green, shines through the transparent facade and draws people into the building. These panels are on tracks and slide around the space creating a dynamic experience that speaks to the evolving university campus surrounding the building. These towers also evoke a forest, relating the space to the surrounding Oregon landscape. This theme is further explored as wooden screens grace one wall of the three story atrium, adding texture and warmth to the multipurpose space. “Like the sections of a bookstore, each Cascade (panel) is devoted to a different subject matter: LEARN (Academics), COMPETE (Athletics), LIVE (Student Life), EXPLORE (Campus and Community), and HONOR (Notable Ducks). The media was designed to flow through the Cascades like a waterfall of content, introducing the diversity of opportunities—academic, athletic, social, recreational—that define the University of Oregon experience.” The physical manifestation of storytelling has become a successful part of the UO community as it bridges the gaps between generations of University of Oregon students. Opsis Architecture used the university story as a basis for its design, informing the materials choices and detailing. Through these decisions the building is able to engage people, captivate their imaginations and create a closer sense of community. The architecture is a built manifestation of the university story and furthers the narrative through integrated technology.
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No.6
Feature
Charter for Change
Giving voice to the concerns of architecture students Words Robert Pike
Considering studying architecture? Enrolled at a British university on an architecture course? Worried about rising fees? Unsure about if you will get paid during your year out? Is architecture as a profession developing an agenda of exclusion that will be detrimental to the profession as a whole? If you’ve answered yes to those questions now is the time act. In November, the Pavilion of Protest, a project by ZAP Architecture – the practice of young graduates Zohra Chiheb and Pol Gallagher – together with 12 students from the University of Sheffield Live Projects initiative, occupied the RIBA’s Florence Hall. Their aim was to demonstrate the skill and craft of the student, and to give voice to their issues and concerns. To mark the closing, ZAP joined forces with ‘What Now? Collaborative’ - who we featured in the Autumn issue - consolidating that voice and instigating a lasting ‘Charter for Change’ – painted on the night
by Dan Slavinsky – and signed by the audience of 120. Slavinsky took inspiration from the debate and discussion instigated first by the ‘ranters’ – Niall McLaughlin (Niall McLaughlin Architects), Prof. Robert Mull (Dean, London Metropolitan ASD), Max Gane (Project coordinator for Project Context), and Alastair Parvin (Architecture 00:/, Makeshift) – and then the ‘suggesters’ – Merlin Fulcher (AJ), Paul McGrath (Association of Part 2 Architects), Helen Misselbrook (Studio - the online graduate employment pool), Pol Gallagher (on behalf of the 12 Sheffield students), and myself (Robert Pike – Boidus.co.uk). Misselbrook, Prof. Jeremy Till (Dean, University of Westminster SABE) and Nic Clear (Greenwich University) debated those points which shaped a charter of realistic suggestions of measurable propositions. These are:
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Photo: Zander Olsen
Feature no.6
LEFT The Charter for Change by Dan Slavinsky | THIS PAGE The panel,
Photo: Rick Roxburgh
speakers & the Audience Votes
More flexible ways of studying the architectural profession
Dismantle the RIBA/ARB edifice that sentences students to years of study by addressing the point of entry. Is 7 years of study really necessary? The likes of Till and Mull believe not. Mull pragmatically suggests changing the focus from time-based study to a qualification achieved by collecting credits. For example Mull questions why the skills acquired from running and managing a restaurant could not be a way to gain credits that contribute to a final qualification. Till continues that it should be an amalgam of the parts. Should we merge the professional qualification into part 2 with a greater emphasis on live project work, to expose the student to the necessary experience that only on the job training can provide? In both cases it suggests a move towards more diverse modes of study, with an expansion of the part-time options
currently offered. Apprenticeships could also be an option, but does this imply that the onus is on the employers to educate rather than academia and is this necessarily a big deal? At present you can only call yourself an architect once you have gained the requisite professional experience. So might we go further to suggest practices partner with universities or sponsor whole schools and would that give more prominence to these suggestions?
Incorporating knowledge from other professions
Max Gane and Nic Clear both emphasised that architectural education is a multiple entity with many directions, one result being that an architect emerges at the end, yet the multitude of skills that one acquires need not be used to pursue a career in
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architecture. Likewise outside influences enrich and diversify study with sharing of teaching from the fields like engineering, digital media or new methods of manufacture, add to the links already apparent in the profession and a reimagining of what architecture could be. For example Metropolitan Works – a creative knowledge exchange that is part of London Metropolitan University – has proved a fruitful exchange, with architecture students keen to learn how technology for rapid prototyping and CNC digital fabrication can act as tools in the design process.
Encouraging thesis project to be followed through in reality after graduation
Alastair Parvin’s conviction is that there may not have ever been a better time to be a designer, because given the current climate there has never been a greater time for design need to tackle resource scarcity, global warming, social inequality, manufacturing...etc. A new industrial revolution that will form a new social economy – as he puts it – that Architects could be a part of. It is not unrealistic to think this and could easily be implemented now with the architecture graduate is easily placed to take advantage. Parvin continued that if business students are encouraged to develop a final thesis project in the public realm, then why can’t architecture students with their final proposal? Judged by the public, and tested against real problems, rather than an external examiner – surely this is the ultimate test of one’s credentials. One could speculate that, if developed towards a built proposition, might this project generate the necessary professional study required to meet qualification? Does this imply we need a level of flexibility in ways of study? More on Parvin’s proposals can be read in the publication Education for Architecture’s Next Economy which he co-authored with Tatjana Schneider and Sam Brown and can be found on the Makeshift website. Alternatively, university-based live projects and consultancies have proven successful in replicating the practice environment. For example the University of Sheffield Live Projects initiative helped deliver the Pavilion of Protest. Elsewhere, the University of Nottingham collaborated with NGO Education Africa to deliver projects, challenging undergraduates to design, manage and build, and complete projects in the townships of South Africa. ASD Projects is an extension of the design studios of London
Metropolitan School of Architecture, allowing studiobased work to develop in the public realm and offering commercial solutions for it. Often this is an incubator from which practices like Studio Weave or Assemble with a desire for self initiated projects can emerge. One could cite Assemble, who saw the redundant canal side space beneath the A12 undercroft as a destination for Folly for a Flyover – a 6 week cinema programme that took place in the summer – as a good example to follow.
Cancel membership of any people or practices not paying minimum wage
A member of the audience suggested that if McDonald’s can guarantee to pay the minimum wage, then why can’t the practices? The implication is that a job that requires limited training could represent a better financial move than architecture, bringing under the spotlight how little some practices value those skills that graduates possess. How can the RIBA allow this to continue? The threat of being struck from the membership of the RIBA would offer a serious incentive to practices to maintain a living wage to their employees. Is this something that could be implemented or would it be too difficult to police? Or could the architectural media lead a campaign that
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would embarrass offending practices into reforming? Helen Misselbrook, of Studio – a free online talent pool for graduates – will only match potential employees to practices that can guarantee the minimum wage. Could the recruitment industry follow suit or is she a lone voice in promoting this? Max Gane is also critical of the system for not replicating the career support that exists to assist medical and legal graduates in the transition to work. The onus is on the architecture student to find employment and negotiate pay, before even considering how they will gain adequate professional experience. For balance, Fulcher emphasised how practices like 3D Reid (student prize), Fosters (Travelling scholarship), Adam Architecture (Travel scholarship, and student placement scheme)…etc, work hard to support students through financial incentives. He suggests such practices that do support graduates through sponsored part-time study; graduate programs, part III study groups and mentoring should be acknowledged and rewarded. Perhaps it is this positive incentivised approach that could eradicate the rise of the unpaid internship.
Stronger student voice
What Now? and ZAP have proven that you can make a statement on these key issues. Coutinho says, “The What Now? Collaborative has three aims: appreciation, awareness and action. We don’t want to simply rant and blame, we want to be a part of change and we want people to appreciate that they have an onus to influence change.” The collaboration led the audience including, significantly, members from the RIBA Education Committee, RIBA Validation Panel and RIBA Council, and the President and the Past President of the Association of Consultant Architects in signing the charter and starting a journey towards implementation. It is not simply a matter of universities, the RIBA and the profession that have a
responsibility to instigate change but the students and young graduates themselves, which is why a stronger student voice is necessary. Gane, and his group Project Context, has generated much discussion on education reform and recently at Sheffield University Architecture Society debated the motion that Schools of Architecture should be dissolved. A provocative point indeed but do such actions reflect a growing trend towards engagement? The presence of such groups suggests that there is.
Shout Very Loudly!
Being involved with everyone at this event it is clear to me of the need to shout loudly and to be heard! We need to become activists for our profession and go out and demand answers. The 12 Sheffield students led the way: To those with influence in schools of architecture, what are you doing within your schools to promote and gain the collective input of your students in the debate? To those reading this, what do you feel is your responsibility in making sure effective changes to the archaic architectural curriculum actually happen? To those actively working towards publicising and engaging with people in the debate, how will you go about gaining participation and the views of people outside the debate? How will you get everyone on board? Shout, listen, and hear to what Charter for Change has to say? Start to take action now! All views were expressed at the Charter for Change event held at the RIBA on the 15 November 2011
No.7
Installation
alex schweder la Stability
Words Gem Barton
This collaborative story begins in 2006 in Rome, with the exploration of how architecture might intersect with performance and performativity. It was at the American Academy in Rome that Alex Schweder met Ward Shelley, a Visual Arts fellow who shared his interests. “In 2007 we decided to collaborate on a project called ‘Flatland’ that was shown at New York’s Sculpture Center. In this 2 foot wide building, we lived with four other people for three weeks. Only one rule applied to those participating, you can leave at any point during the 3 weeks, but you then cannot come back in. “ says Schweder. The installation ‘Stability’ performed at the Lawrimore Project in Seattle stems from the realisation
that we as humans are spatially conditioned. Schweder explains how he wanted “to make a building that physically changed in relation to occupation while at the same time visualize the occupants’ negotiation of one another. Ward and I thought of the armrest between airplane seats, only one person can be using that space but both people want it. It is a kind of contested zone and we wanted our next work to have some sense of that kind of conflict produced by the physicality of the architecture. We decided on a house on a fulcrum that, like a seesaw would tilt in relation to the location of our bodies. For a week we needed to negotiate one another to keep the house level. Or not. There were moments in this work when we decided
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IMAGES Alex Schweder’s installation ‘Stability’ performed at the Lawrimore Project in Seattle
to just live out of plumb. By the end of our week in this structure, we had become synchronized in our daily rhythms.” Counterweight Roommate, the third in trilogy exercises the topic of symbiosis. “A building that would not allow us to occupy it without the other person.“ Schweder is currently working on a new project with his wife for the Marrakech Biennale, which opens
in February. “While we have not decided on the form of this building it will make explicit negotiations of power.” His explicit ability to work so intently and responsively with both object and collaborator makes his work a true act of precision and interaction.
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No.8
Installation
nicola read + house of jonn Poetry Takeaway Words Gem Barton
Show and Tell duo Tom Searle and Tim Clare shared the literary dream of vending poems to the public free of charge but full of charm. Nicola Read [815 Agency] and Niall Gallacher [House of Jonn] made this dream a reality when they converted an old ironmongery van into The Poetry Take-away. The Poetry Takeaway specialises in the production of free, made-to-order poems, delivered and performed to the hungry yet discerning literary consumer within ten minutes or less. It is modeled on your typical burger van and is manned by a rotating cast of the UK’s best poetry chefs who write, perform and deliver
a hand-written, carefully boxed, souvenir copy of every customer’s poem (open or wrapped). “We were really taken by the humour behind the idea for a poetry takeaway and felt that whatever we made needed to reinforce the strength of the idea, playing heavily on the ‘we vend poems not burgers’ approach. The proposal for a burger van-like towable structure stemmed from this.” Says Nicola Read. There is a theatrical narrative behind both the idea and the fabrication of the Poetry Take-away. The only option was to purchase an existing road-worthy van and customise and adapt it on a shoestring. The
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IMAGES The Poetry Take-away
team spent days trawling through online auction sites seeking the perfect vehicle with a small budget but a truck load of romanticism. The small budget was raised by the team, funded partly by Ideastap’s Ideasfund and the rest crowd-source funded through Wefund. Read and Gallacher gave a new literary lease of life to old van; from the essentials such as fitting it with new lighting, signage and demountable shelving units to the sweet details of accompanying stationery for the poems themselves. Bringing the often subdued, personal experience of creation out of the rooms of poets and into the streets of the UK is a social experiment in itself. Inviting the public to watch as well as take part in the content and formation process makes this adventure a truly captivating one. 65 | www.demagazine.co.uk
No.9
Installation
tom foulsham Totem
Words Gem Barton
Tom Foulsham brings his architectural training full circle in his latest body of work ‘totem’ exhibited in March 2011 at the Marsden Woo Project Space. “This is a series of works exploring the use of balance, which is something I’ve worked with for some time. There are several permutations here of balancing components in different arrangements. In these ‘Totem’ pieces, using toy animals, the objects themselves are the points of balance and I’ve made these extra parts to counterbalance them.” Says Foulsham. Foulsham has a strong creative background; he studied Architecture at the Bartlett, before working in the practices of Thomas Heatherwick and Ron Arad. He went on to study for an MA in Design Products at
the Royal College of Art. Fousham uses this inventive knowledge and experience to manipulate gravity. The theme of ‘balance’ has been represented in his work for some time; ‘Balancing Shelves’ showed at Pecha Kucha 2007 and ‘Candle Balance’ which showed as part of a group exhibition at the V&A in 2009 The seemingly playful encounter of ‘Totem’ in particular requires both harmony and poise. Toy animals are delicately balanced on their fulcrum points. Nothing is fixed. Strategically placed counter weights create a point of rest just at the edge of slipping apart. They could be said to represent the fragility of society but they are most definitely feats of concentration and dedication regardless of their impish
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leading characters. Foulsham sees some of his pieces as prototypes or maquettes. “The great thing about them is that once I know they work at this size they can be scaled up proportionally. That’s how I know they would work... I just need to persuade someone to let me have a go!” He makes reference to the ‘golden position’ the glorious point at which gravity seems to recede into
the distance. “It’s a similar principle to a boat, which is balanced when it is floating in water, but as soon as it’s on dry land it loses its stability.” Experiencing this precision and calm can be more actively enhanced upon witnessing the power of the collapse. You can see Tom Foulsham exhibit new works as part of the group show ‘Mixed Display’ at the Marsden Woo Project Space from 10 Jan – 11 Feb 2012.
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No.10
Design/Art
Sir EdUardO PaOLOZZi mOSaiCS The importance of public art Words Karina Joseph
The Eduardo Paolozzi mosaics in Tottenham Court Road tube station, visible from the entrance hall through to the Northern and Central line platforms, brighten the dreaded rush hour commute. Completed in 1984, their aesthetic has aged well, and they remain accessible to Londoner and tourist alike. Impossible to see at once in its entirety, this is part of the appeal: there is always more to discover. Passing them, you want to slow down, double back, and seek out the full story. Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, CBE, FRA (1924 - 2005) was
a Scottish sculptor and artist born in Leith, the eldest son of Italian immigrants. He studied at the Slade, and moved to Paris for two years in 1947 with fellow students Nigel Henderson and William Turnbull. There he became associated with the Surrealist movement and met Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque and Fernand LĂŠger, encounters which had a great influence on his career. Paolozzi founded the Independent Group, a collection of writers, thinkers and practitioners who regularly met at the ICA. Artist Richard
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IMAGES The Paolozzi mosaics in Tottenham Court Road Station | Photo Karina Joseph
Hamilton, architects James Stirling and Alison and Peter Smithson, [and] critics Reyner Banham and Lawrence Alloway all contributed to multidisciplinary events, and discussed contemporary culture. They used a variety of sources including pages of science fiction magazines, Hollywood film and modernist architecture, creating a radical and inclusive way of looking and working with visual culture. The group is considered responsible for the foundation of Pop Art, though Paolozzi firmly aligned himself with Surrealism. Paolozzi was an avid collector and his studio was filled with hundreds of books, toys, found objects, tools, models and sculptures which often appear in his work. London Transport commissioned the nine hundred and ninety-five square meters of mosaics in 1979 after a worker spotted a Paolozzi mural in Berlin. Their aim was to ‘improve the environment for the traveling public, pointing out that it was ‘unusual to see art as a unitary whole in the modernization of an underground station’. Not to everyone’s taste, critic Brian Sewell dismissed them as ‘crude in colour, random in their application, monotonous in their conception, [and] old fashioned in their mechanical references’, though this certainly isn’t true. The mosaics are a good example of Paolozzi’s signature style that show his affinity with collage and draw from a wide range of sources, presenting a dazzling assemblage of motifs, vibrant colour, rhythmic lines and abstracted forms. According to the artist, the work reflects his ‘interpretation of the past, present and future of the area’ where ‘metaphors exist on many layers simultaneously’. His visual vocabulary references the local vicinity; a saxophone, 69 | www.demagazine.co.uk
chicken, and cassettes allude to Soho jazz cafes, fast food outlets and technology shops. An ethnographic mask evokes the British Museum and diversity of local inhabitants, as does the multitude of colour in the design. An engine refers to the automotive traffic above ground, and architectural plans were intended for Architectural Association students passing them daily on their way to school. A solitary butterfly evokes the artist’s memories of an all-night Turkish bath that used to exist in the Russell Hotel, and there are also many allusions to modernist works Paolozzi admired
including a large stylised face reminiscent of Paul Klee’s ‘Senecio’. The mosaics were originally planned for the opposite wall across from the platform, a better vantage point to view the designs, however London Transport couldn’t afford to lose money from advertising. Paolozzi considered how commuters would navigate the station and view the work, so he used a mixture of colours and textures so they could be appreciated at close range, and included a variety of textures and patterns, ranging from regular grids to crazy paving. Visually the grid
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formations of mosaic make an interesting commentary on the pixilated image of the digital age, and there is an interesting tension between aesthetics of the past and the present, between modern LCD screens, computer games and digital photography and this ancient technique. The earliest known mosaics were found at a temple building in Abra, Mesopotamia, dating to the second half of the third millennium BCE. Mosaics have adorned the walls of Byzantine churches and the floors of Hellenic villas. An eminent modern example is the
Gaudí mosaics at Park Guell in Barcelona. It is a timeconsuming process, inserting hand-placed cut glass into the ground piece by piece. It is this combination of permanence, unification with the building, and the human irregularity of shape, which makes mosaic so appealing. Although the glass mosaics within the station require a clean to restore their former brilliance, and small parts have been eroded, they still maintain a charm. Public art must aim to enrich the lives of those who encounter it, which the Paolozzi mosaics achieve. In response to the threat from improvement works due to the current Crossrail development, London Underground recognised the value of the work. In collaboration with the Paolozzi Foundation, they have promised to ‘preserve these wonderful mosaics during the station upgrade’ and undertaken to ‘maintain as much of the mosaics as possible in their original location, remove other sections for future display and record and replicate the design of the mosaics where the original material would be lost.’ Conceptual artist Daniel Buren has been invited by Art on the Underground to produce a new work for the entrance hall. A series of large-scale diamond and circle shapes will be fixed to the station’s internal glass walls, designed in his trademark-striped vinyl. This new presence will surely modify the viewing experience of the Paolozzi in the station. Two hundred thousand people are expected to pass through the new station every day. It will be interesting to see the reincarnation of Paolozzi’s great public artwork, and how it sits alongside its new neighbour.
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No.11
Design/Art
Opening the doors of the advent Calendar Cabinet In the workshop with Hendzel and Hunt Words Robert Pike
Beyond its purely utilitarian purpose of storage, whether of domestic, mundane objects, or of prized personal possessions, the cabinet was also endowed with special meanings. The ritualistic, magical aspect of the cabinet was also linked with the idea of secrecy.
Monique Riccardi-Cubitt, The Art of the Cabinet
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On the First Day of Christmas my true love said to me… fetch my timber key
Photo’s: Ed Kulakowski
It was the 1st of December and for Selfridge and Co. – the famous Oxford Street department store – it was time to take their timber key, unlock the first door of the exquisite bespoke Advent Calendar Cabinet designed and built for them by Hendzel and Hunt -the Peckham -based design studio - and reveal the secret within. Beyond each one of the 24 doors, drawers, and compartments, discovered amongst the mosaic of stained pallet boards, an exclusive miniature object has been created by designers from around the world, plus a clue to help open the next compartment, with a final twist for the final compartment. The opening marked 1st anniversary of the opening of the Selfridge’s Shoe Galleries, and for Hendzel and Hunt the culmination of a labour of love that combined their passion for locally reclaimed materials, historic typologies and contemporary new tech twists.
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It’ll Soon Be Christmas. It’s nearly 7pm on Saturday 21st October and for many residents of Gowlett Street thoughts of Christmas are feint in the memory as they settle down for an evening of X Factor, but in a design studio hidden away behind the terraces all is a hive of activity. Jan Hendzel and Oskar Hunt, and their hard working and passionate project assistants – Daniel Wallis, Nic Parnell, Stanzin Losal, Oscar Medley-Whitfied, Liam Motyer and Marta Bakowski – stand around admiring the two considerable black fabricated steel hinges that have just been delivered. Spirits are raised – the only elements that had to be trusted to be made by somebody beyond the studio – and each member of team returns to continue applying their individual skills to crafting the cabinet, and completing the commission. The skeleton of the cabinet quietly sits incomplete at the heart of this maelstrom of activity, components, drawings, scribbles of ideas, materials… and two black fabricated steel hinges surrounding it. I had earlier arrived at the studio after accepting an invite from Hendzel at Auction Room and event during the London Design Festival. Then he was both excited and nervous about the magnitude and scope of the commission. Seeing the quality of work first-hand I was intrigued to visit this creative and entrepreneurial environment, and witness how ideas come to life. Strewn around the studio, and the several business units they have spread into, are reminders of why I
have grown to admire their work. Propped up near the metal door with the company logo emblazoned upon is one of the pieces made during the 24 Hour Design Challenge – the French Orchestra – made by students invited to respond to the brief of designing and producing a machine capable of playing a record within a set 24 hour period. The students were encouraged to respond to the history and aesthetics o f Peckhams Edison Bells gramophone factory and record label. Stepping inside the studio door, into the noise of the lathes and the dust, and that distinctive smell of freshly cut wood, is the Great Victorian Porky Pie. This piece interpreted the idea of Victorian conversation seat. The original typology itself inhibited conversation, so Hendzel and Hunt gave it a modern
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twist. The seats could be folded out to form a table around which a proper conversation could take place. At its centre a real conversation piece and a porky pie in the form of a carved pig’s head made from a patchwork quilt of timbers. This was showcased at Auction Room. Away from the noise in the mezzanine office a model of a French double curved cabinet sits beside the well used drawing board and leather wallet of pens and pencils. It is an idea that has emerged from the history of furniture making – a subject that is reflected from the numerous books on the shelf. The story of how Hendzel and Hunt bring beautifully crafted pieces to life are all around is writ large around this busy studio. The Advent Calendar Cabinet is no different, taking its influences from the historic period of the cabinet at its height, between the 15th and 18th centuries. Hendzel and Hunt reference The Art of the Cabinet by Monique Riccardi-Cubitt who states “during this period the term ‘cabinet’ referred to a small private retreating room, generally containing a collection of curiosities and works of art. These rooms later evolved to become items of furniture, often custom-made and built with exquisite materials. Cabinets are designed to protect their owner’s secrets and precious belongings; they contain small personal objects and collections imbued with deep emotional meaning. This mystical quality of protection and secrecy is only enhanced when the objects concerned are concealed deep within the cabinet’s innermost secret compartments.” The historic layer is only one part of the story, as walking around the studio also reveals the material aspects. The casual observer would never know from looking at the final pieces, nor the skeleton of the cabinet, that everything Hendzel and Hunt
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build – from the bespoke oneoff items, to the furniture ranges sold in shops such as the Made in Peckham range – that all the materials are reclaimed from within the SE15 area. Their work is of Peckham, even if the actual material is not originally from Peckham. That material became an essential part of something made in Peckham for a long time until it became redundant. For example the Cabinet and another commission for Selfridges – The Troy Town table – are made from locallysourced pallet boards, as well as roof trusses originally from an old church, and were sourced in a reclamation yard. Each of the doors draws and compartments that forms such a unique feature of the cabinet, has an exquisitely crafted individual lock made from a mixture of oak, walnut, and ash. These timbers are all remnants from previous jobs. The studio is full of little curios off-cuts and new reclaimed materials that could form the story of the next piece. They are keen to emphasise that nothing in the studio goes to waste. They believe strongly that there can be a richness and diversity to materials right on your doorstep. You can sense this when you witness the way pieces are put together, worked and adorned in a manner that invites a haptic response from the observer. This adds up to a final piece that is more than the sum of its parts. It is a haptic experience of all the senses revealing the truth of the material.
The combination of history and narrative, as well as craft, are being invested in this cabinet as it is put together. The story of the past life of those timbers of the church is being told in the fabrication of each individual component. Beyond is the wider understanding of the cabinets’ typology and the interpretation Hendzel and Hunt take from that. It is not a copy of those historic examples, but a playful representation of several ideas.
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Thursday 24th November saw Hendzel + Hunt winners of the Creative Enterprise Award for New Business. Congratulations from Design Exchange.
Photo’s: Ed Kulakowski
On the 24th Day of Christmas my true love said to me…fetch me my smart phone
“The 24th compartment reveals a booklet holding the instructions to access the ultimate code that will open the central combination lock, revealing that the façade is actually a puzzle. The key elements to the final code are in fact right there, in front of the user’s eyes. After turning around the top drawers, the pixilated surface of the cabinet, until now appearing to be simple ornament, reveals a digital code” (Hendzel and Hunt, 2011). This is known as a ‘Quick Response (QR) code’ and is a form of matrix-like barcode that has come to prominence recently due to new media, attitudes towards the quick supply of information, and the new generation of smartphones’ ability to supply that information. It is a minimal looking piece of technology that can then open a magnitude of secrets.“…the user is redirected to a short film disclosing a series of numbers that must be dialed to unlock the central combination…the puzzle is solved…the cabinet opens to uncover a cabinet within a cabinet, another space to store even more precious items or a greater secret; it is the supreme heart of the piece that celebrates a playful journey into the world of the covert” (Hendzel and Hunt, 2011) Only recently has the QR code become prominent in our daily lives, appearing in the corners of newspaper adverts, for
example, or on the corner of an exhibit of a gallery show. With Hendzel and Hunt we are presented with QR code fabricated from a mosaic of individual squares in blues, whites, and grays. This introduces the final idea - layering of the new and the interactive or experiential that melds with classical ideas and haptic suggestions, to elevate the simple everyday piece to a contemporary modern design.
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TEL + 44 ( 0 ) 20 8348 9003 FAX + 44 ( 0 ) 20 8348 6478 E MAIL david@radiantlights.co.uk WEB www.radiantlights.co.uk 78 | www.demagazine.co.uk
No.12
Art & Design
Sbid international design aw ards Crème de la crème Words Emmanuelle Chazarin
Applications are pouring in for the SBID International Design Awards 2012. Interior designers, architects and manufacturers from around the world are submitting their best Commercial and Residential projects and products in a bid to win worldwide recognition. The shortlisted entries will be judged in August by international industry leaders, including Professor Jimmy Choo OBE and Nerio Alessandri, head of Technogym, the exclusive Olympic Games supplier. For more information, or to enter the awards, head to internationaldesignexcellenceawards.com. In anticipation of new interior marvels to discover this year, we look back at what we loved about 2011’s winning entries.
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HBA London: Overall Winner 2011 The ‘Overall Winner’ accolade was reaped by HBA London for its design of the restaurant and cocktail bar Améthyste at the InterContinental Phoenicia in Beirut, Lebanon. This project was essentially implemented to uplift the once hot spot of Beirut into today’s market. Over time, the space had lost its punch, but the fantastic views to the sea offered the perfect backdrop to transform the area once again. The client wanted to create various experiences for hotel guests and locals alike. From this brief, Inge Moore’s team at HBA London planned various zones including an entry point, pool terrace, dining, chillout/lounge area, a cocktail bar, a shisha smoking lounge, and even a small kids area for family guests. “Our inspiration revolved around the 1001 Arabian Nights folk tales and the amethyst stone,” said Inge, Principal of the practice. “We were instantly captivated with the jewel-toned purple colour that seemed prevalent throughout various illustrations and interpretations of the tales. Purple became our signature colour and everything started to work around this element.” Robin Gibb CBE, SBID’s Intellectual Property Ambassador and President of CISAC (International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies), 80 | Design Exchange
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headed the committee of judges for this category. He said: ‘The ethos of SBID is to engage and encourage design that improves the quality of life whether this is social or functional. The standard of the competition entries was so high it merely proves that there is a mammoth wealth of talent across the globe. Despite sitting on voting panels from the Brits to the Academy Awards, I can say choosing an overall winner to Maison & Objet was one of my biggest challenges do date.’ Upon receiving the Award at Maison & Objet in September 2011, Inge Moore said her team felt honoured. “SBID is a very important ambassador for British interior design here and overseas,” she
said, “and it reflects the excellence and new-found confidence of the profession in the UK. For the team in the London studio, the Awards were a chance to present the diversity and individual creativity of our most recent work.” Leading the hospitality interior design industry since 1964, HBA/Hirsch Bedner Associates remains keenly attuned to the pulse of changing industry trends governed by today’s sophisticated traveler. Their international presence, depth of experience, and detailed industry knowledge enables them to identify interior design trends at their source, make definitive predictions about new directions and innovations, and influence design standards at a global level.
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Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands: Best Interior Design 2011 The Interior Design trophy was awarded to Londonbased practice Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands for their Tsvetnoy Central Market project in Moscow, Russia. RGI International approached Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and food consultants Ford McDonald on the basis of their experience bringing life to the notoriously underperforming upper floors of department stores: they have in the past designed food halls and restaurant schemes at Harvey Nichols in London, Edinburgh and Manchester and the acclaimed La Rinascente in Milan, and the architects were behind London’s 90s icon - the OXO Tower Restaurant Bar and Brasserie. Adjacent to the Old Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands’ 3,930m² (42,300sq.ft) scheme for this the new department store features striking, reflective stainless steel interiors which capture the colour, buzz and activity in the stores food market space and create a sense of drama which shimmers right down to the lower retail levels. The new Tsvetnoy Central Market, designed by Moscow-based architectural studio Project Meganom, seeks to establish a food experience new to Moscow - a retail space with high-quality local and international produce at reasonable prices in a market atmosphere. To be located on the top floors of the new store, it was crucial that the space entice shoppers upwards and become a destination in itself, while at the same time the brief stipulated that the produce was to be the focal point, that the design let the produce take centre-stage. Carolina Calzada-Oliveira headed the judging panel here, as a representative of the Mix publications which bring design professionals the most up-to-date colour 82 | Design Exchange
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and trend information on the market today. She said: ‘With a futuristic use of the aluminium, the market perfectly reflects a new approach into food by the Moscow society.’ At Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, architects focus on bringing buildings and spaces together to become civilised and successful environments. Since their formation in London in 1986, they have worked from the ground up with clients, communities and users on projects that generate and improve the urban landscape, or, out of town, enhance the rural environment. Recently, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands have been appointed to redevelop Bonhams’ international headquarters on New Bond Street and Foyles’ new flagship store on Charing Cross Road. 83 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Candy & Candy: Best Luxury Small Space 2011 Candy & Candy won Best Luxury Small Space Award for their stunning design of luxury yacht M/Y Candyscape II. Heading the project, Monaco-based designers Nick and Christian Candy said the challenge was to create fully bespoke interiors that delivered a balance between a comfortable relaxed home and a business and entertaining environment. Combining glamour and sophistication with efficiency, innovation and high quality design and construction was an essential element of the project brief, as well as minimising the yacht’s impact on the environment. The use of space, as with any boat design, was an important and complex issue; every detail was carefully considered by the Candy & Candy team in terms of both design and square footage. The result, with a style spanning 1930s glamour to 21st century state-ofthe-art, with wind and water motifs, and contrasting textures of leather and steel against silk and cashmere, is a showpiece of naval architecture. The overall design concept is based on the interpretation of the relationships between man, machine and nature; elements of this are referenced throughout providing a seamless but subtle cohesive design aesthetic. The design team created a high degree of flexibility to the living spaces on Candyscape II which cater well to the multi-use requirement of home vs. business.
The design allows for flexibility with the arrangement of the areas on-board – many of which can be opened up or closed down to create more intimate spaces and respond to daytime or evening requirements. Heading the Judging Panel for this category was David Lewis, the managing director of Sunseeker London, a world leading and Platinum Award winning yacht broker who sell new and pre-owned Sunseeker Motor Yachts Worldwide. He said: ‘Candy & Candy should be commended for their use of exquisite materials and their ability to bind them together to create a space of the utmost luxury, continuity and
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ingenious design.’ Candy & Candy is recognised internationally as a pioneer of bespoke and innovative design, creating sumptuous homes in some of the world’s most coveted locations, as well as designing yachts, jets, luxury cars and a wide range of commercial environments. Candy & Candy also apply its remarkable design and project management skills to delivering boutique residential developments in central London, including One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge and 21 Chesham Place in Belgravia.
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Burrell Architects: Best Sustainability Interior Design 2011 The best sustainability interiors award went to Burrell Architects for their outstanding design of the Mintel HQ in London. For this project, Burrell Architects’ brief was to create a new London headquarters that reflected the Mintel brand, philosophy and culture through design. The use of colour, shape, cultural and artistic reference and material were combined to create a 3D brand representation with key brand signifiers which were simultaneously practical, fun, provocative, thought provoking and engaging. Mintel, like many other companies, had serious space issues and the standard solution providing open plan work stations was required. However, the design team at Burrell Architects knew that it was as important to give Mintel staff a variety of different areas where they could work; including areas that they could personally relate to, feel comfortable in, engage with, be quiet in or simply socialise in. An airstream Tardis caravan and classical library were designed into small meeting rooms with this brief in mind, along with larger break out areas which are some of the spaces that have become so successful in Mintel. The brand architecture of Mintel has successfully created an environment which both reflects the brand
and celebrates the individuality and creativity of the people within the company. The staff is now fully engaged and is able to work more productively within their new environment. Sustainability through good design was a major factor in the design process, however not in its most conventional sense. Through gaining an in-depth understanding of the needs of the company and their staff, Burrell Architects ensured the longevity of the project’s design and ability to adapt to changing demands. This project is a perfect example of effective ‘re-use architecture’, as the designers transformed an existing building shell through creative and innovative interior design. Their notion of effective re-use was incorporated through a selection of furniture and fixtures, uniting selected second hand items alongside new and bespoke items. Heading the judging panel for this category, Ken Baker, the Managing Principal of Gensler Architects, explains the rationale for choosing this project: ‘This office space reflects futuristic thinking employers who understand that employees are part of a team, and to get the best ideas and increased productivity from a team you need a planned functional space with breakout areas to increase innovation and work output levels.’
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De Matos Ryan: Best Commercial Design 2011 The rebranding and refit of the nationwide Italian restaurant chain Strada is one of De Matos Ryan‘s most ambitious projects of recent years in terms of the programme and exceptionally quick turnaround. The practice was commissioned by Tragus in 2009 to develop a new refresh concept for the restaurant street presence and interiors incorporating new brand signage and graphics developed by The Intro Partnership. Initially appointed to trial design schemes on seven sites, the contract evolved into a major commission with a nationwide refit programme. The project demonstrates a rethink of roll out. Uniquely De Matos Ryan were invited to produce tailored schemes for all 70 units nationwide and were given the freedom to respond creatively to each of these individual scenarios. In refreshing an existing popular high street brand it was vital to retain loyal customers as well as attracting new trade so the design approach was informed by market research and customer feedback. Familiar motifs such as convivial lighting and banquette seating remain within a sharper more distinguished accessible interior. Emphasis has been placed on the street frontage. New green/grey striped motif awnings and al-fresco red/white dining furniture in the Strada palette were introduced as new brand signifiers. The design puts Strada’s key selling point - fresh ingredients and quality produce – at centre stage. Wherever possible
the theatre of food production takes place in a central open kitchen characterised by a grey marble monolithic counter which foregrounds Strada’s ‘Forno a Legna’ pizza ovens. The project was awarded the SBID Commercial Design Award for restaurants completed 2010-11 and the jury commended De Matos Ryan for skillfully combining the prerequisites of a restaurant in a design that is ‘authentic, entertaining, inviting and practical’. The project proves that good design can mean good business. Tragus have seen the financial benefit of their investment in good design with a significant increase in trading across the refresh sites. Head of Judging Panel for this category was Peter Bierwirth, the President of The European Hotel Management Association (EHMA). He said: ‘My choice for De Matos-Ryan came spontaneously, from a guest’s point of view as well as from an operator’s perspective. A restaurant’s design must be authentic, entertaining and inviting, putting the guest in the centre of interest. On the other hand it must be ‘practical’, allowing staff to work efficiently with hardware that survives the rough commercial wear and tear. ‘Strada’s restaurant concept combines those prerequisites in a most remarkable way, using rustic elements of the existing building in combination with modern materials, contrasting colors, perfect lighting and with an excellent lay out.’
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Archi-Do: Best Architect 2011 Awarded the Best Architect award, Vadim Kondrashev heads Archi-Do, the St. Petersburg architect’s bureau which is responsible for the layout and design of Yota HQ, a Moscow-based internet company. The Yota office is situated on the 2nd floor of the new business centre, and one of Archi-Do’s main tasks in this project was to secure the easy communication between departments despite the building’s odd assortment of shapes. The design of this HQ was also required to highlight the innovation, sociability and friendliness of the team. The result was a remarkable use of architectural logic and area logistic. The strategic placement of classical objects of contemporary design and the gradual use
of colour, texture and fabric, from one dimension to another, aimed to leave the décor behind. The combination of rectangle, trapezium and semicircle form the geometric pattern of the building’s whole floor, offered plenty of room for creative and innovative designing. Archi-Do’s main challenge was to find the only infallible architectural combination of areas. The basic concept consisted in placing the central conference room of VIP-area on the bow’s diameter axis, directing the axis of the conference room orthogonally to all the facilities of the working area. The conference room itself was stretched along the forming axis of the composition and was shaped as a rotunda gallery. This shape was inspired by the Great gallery of Catherine Hall in the Taurida Palace set by architect Starov. The pride of this HQ is a great collection of 20th century name design: Gaetano Pesce, Ettore Sottsass, Eileen Gray and many others. The project incorporates a design by Pesce, the “living classic”, in person – his branded rubber chandelier "54ARMS” was placed in the President’s office. Vitra’s “Aluminum group”, created by the famous couple Eames, emphasizes the brightness of details; on the whole, there are quite a number of limited edition pieces. Contemporary art and antiques add an element of high design to the overall office. Some objects were made to sketches of Archi-Do’s executive and chief architect Vadim Kondrashev by a well-known Italian factory Porro. The famous Belgian antiquary Axel Vervoordt appeared as an expert for antiques, consulting the project architects. Heading the Judging Panel was Ken Baker, Managing Principal of Gensler Architects, a leading global architecture, design, planning, and strategic consulting firm that partners with companies to achieve measurable business and organisational goals through the use of design. He said: 'The well detailed plan creates a series of good spaces, routes and procession within a small space. It creates an identity for the Chairman. There is a consistent handling of materials and palette. The utilisation of different lighting is relevant for each space and identity.'
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2012 Event diary april
M ay
june
Mosbuild Moscow, Russia ( 2-5 & 10-13 April) www.mosbuild.com
HOLA - Hotel Opportunities Latin America Miami,USA (8-10 May) www.holaconference.com
DMY Berlin, Germany (06-10 June) www.dmy-berlin.com
Milan Design Week / Saloni 2012 Salone International Milan, Italy (17-22 April) www.cosmit.it
The Hotel Show Dubai (15-17 May ) www.thehotelshow.com
The Oporto Show Porto, Portugal (15-17 June) www.oportoshow.com
ICFF (International Contempary Furniture Fair New York, USA (19-22 May) www.icff.com
LFA - London Festival Of Architecture London, UK (23 June-8 July) www.lfa2012.org
Clerkenwell Design Week London, UK (22-24 May) www.clerkenwelldesignweek.com
New Designers (Part1/2) London, UK (27-30 June) www.newdesigners.com
JULY
September
September cont.
New Designers (Part2/2) London, UK (04-07 July) www.newdesigners.com
Macef Milan, Italy (06-09 September) www.macef.it
100% Design London, UK (19-22 September) www.100percentdesign.co.uk
Design Tokyo Tokyo, Japan (04-06 July) www.designtokyo.jp
Maison & Objet Paris, France (7-11 September) www.maison-objet.com
Designjunction London, UK (19-23 September) www.thedesignjunction.co.uk
aUGUSt
LDF London Design Festival London, UK (13-23 September) www.londondesignfestival.com
October
Designersblock Milano 2012 at MOST Milan, Italy (17-22 April) www.verydesignersblock.com The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) Rotterdam, (20 April- 31 Oct) www.iabr.nl
13th Venice Architecture Biennale Venice, Italy (29 August-25 November) www.labiennale.org
Hot.E London, UK (19-20 September) www.europeanhotelconference. com 90 | Design Exchange
(WAF) World Architecture Festival Singapore (3-5 October) www.worldarchitecturefestival.com
â„–I
Studio Job house Studio 58
Words Stuart Blakley
The story of a mid 20th century functionalist house has a happy ending as it is saved by a design collective who fill it with the best of modernist Dutch and Belgian design.
92 | Design Exchange
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Photos: R. Kot
Interior Project â„– I
93 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Half a century ago Bergeyk near Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands was a sleepy village. That all changed when furniture designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld was asked to design a factory for the Weverij de Ploeg weaving mill. He soon got commissions for public buildings and private villas in the area. Alongside textile producer de Ploeg, the furniture company t’ Spectrum opened in Bergeyk. An enclave of modernism was born. Artists like Sol LeWitt and Anselm Kiefer flocked to the area. Gerrit’s pupil D L Sterenberg designed a villa in Bergeyk for the wealthy Kruip family in 1958. They lived there until three years ago. The villa is a modern functionalist white house with a flat roof. It displays the horizontal lines, corner windows and streamlined interiors typical of the period. The Weverij de Ploeg weaving mill closed at the end of the 1990s. It signalled the death of an era. Bergeyk’s halcyon days were over. Not for long. A rebirth is taking place thanks to Studio Job, a design collective. Studio Job has been amassing artefacts from the mid 20th century functionalist and industrialist period. D L Sterenberg’s Villa has been rescued and brought back to life as Studio Job House. It is the collective’s third semi public initiative, joining Studio Job Gallery in Antwerp and Studio Job Lounge in Groningen. The house required complete restoration but its character has been fully retained.
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Interior Project № I
Photos: R. Kot
Not just retained but enhanced. Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel designed a new work of art for the exterior. It acts as a balustrade for the projecting first floor balcony. His whimsical work spells ‘GRID’ using the 1967 typeface New Alphabet against a sky blue background. Studio Job designed a raised grass green platform called Dinner for Two for the garden. Classic companies have been used to authentically furnish Studio Job House. Royal Auping supplied 1972 Auronde beds by Frans de la Haye. Van Besouw reproduced a 1950s carpet. Tits Lamps were provided by Vennini. A range of Hansgrohe taps by contemporary designers Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec were selected as appropriate additions to the interior. Studio Job’s collection includes pieces from designers Gerrit and Wim Rietveld, Cees Braakman, Friso Kramer and Martin Visser. Brands like Gispen, Pastoe and t’ Spectrum are also represented. The villa offers the perfect synthesis of modernist architecture and sculpture under one roof and in one garden. Other contemporary designers like Piet Hein Eek, Richard Hutten and Viktor & Rolf complement the 20th century collection. A Gesamtkunstwerk is born.
95 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Supplier list
Concept & Creative Direction: Nynke Tynagel & Job Smeets Original Architect: D L Sterenberg Furnishings: Frans de la Haye, Royal Auping, Royal Mosa, Van Besouw, Vennini etc Taps: Hansgrohe Banister: Maarten Baas
â„–2
Colour me beauti ful GmG house
Words: Stuart Blakley
Portuguese architect Pedro Gadanho reads architecture as being sensual or intellectual pleasure rather than imposed constraint. His recently completed home is testimony to that view.
96 | Design Exchange
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Photos: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Interior Project â„– 2
97 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Credits
Architect: Fernando Guerra Photography: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG www.ultimasreportagens.com
My first thought when entering this refurbished 19th century townhouse in Torres Vedras generates a flashback to Keith Coventry’s artwork England 1938 on show at Tate St Ives. This piece uses geometric blocks of colour to celebrate the range of paints in use that year which coincides with the British modernist era. The recent International Abstraction exhibition at the Tate included an Andy Warhol Egg painting composed of voluptuous blocks of colour. “I’m very partial to pop. I think that comes out in my work,” commences architect Pedro Gadanho. The transformed interior of his home is populated with large enigmatic objects. The study is recessed off the sitting room and is treated as a colourful capsule painted “petrol green” to employ Pedro’s terminology. A lavender lavatory protrudes into the hallway in a box reminiscent of Claes Oldenburg’s enlarged objects. A second lavatory in a giant red-and-white pill recalls Damian Hirst’s Pharmacy. I’m guessing Pedro is also partial to the Young British Artists. The Portuguese sunlight intensifies the visual impact of the colour blocks. But Pedro urges me to look beyond the superficial. “I’m very interested in the question of reception,” he tells me. “The house has been displayed just by people looking and saying, ‘Ah, how striking, the colours, how striking.’ It’s really frustrating because there is another level of conceptual depth to it.” “I was exploring the notion that instead of using colour to enhance a surface plan as Le Corbusier used to do, it would be objects that would be coloured,” continues Pedro. “If you look at the house, there is no wall that is painted in colour. It’s always specific moments, objects – almost sculptural objects – that get the colour.” A pea green hexagon given three dimensional form is a case in point. It contains a wardrobe. A petrol green staircase to the new second floor, a canary yellow luggage
98 | Design Exchange
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Photos: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Interior Project № 2
lift, pillar box red kitchen cupboards… the polychromatic highlighting of interventions in a monochromatic space portrays a journey from minimalism to abstraction. It’s a knowing nod to the work of Donald Judd. The black-and-white clad architect tells me, “We have moved in now… the colours and large objects possess a life of their own, independent from ours, and function autonomously. We realise this, day by day. We are having fun trying out the different rooms and discovering the best way to live in them, only to change our minds the next day.” “I think it’s important to have cultural references in the home that come from outside the world of architecture,” concludes Pedro. I have counted the influence of at least four art movements. He hints there are literary references too. But that’s a whole new story.
â„–3
t3arC tubo hotel Light at the End of the tunnel
Words: Stuart Blakley
The genesis of TuboHotel could have been a tamale – the Latin American corn husk that can be filled with various foods.
100 | Design Exchange
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Interior Project â„– 3
101 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Combining last century’s fad for pods with this century’s fashion for eco tourism, architects T3arc have created a 20 bedroom hotel made from redundant concrete pipes. Its rural location in Tepoztlán counteracts the exodus of the rural population to nearby Mexico City, enticing high numbers of travellers to this idyll. Judging by first appearances, the arrangement finds roots in American artist Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels. This 1976 artwork consists of four large concrete tubes laid out in the Utah desert in a cruciform configuration. Like empty tamales. The top of each of her tunnels is pierced with small holes corresponding to the pattern of selected celestial constellations. TuboHotel is more down to earth, akin to Fun Tunnels. Holt says Sun Tunnels are “more accessible than art in museums”. T3arc’s creation allows the art to be not only visited but inhabited. The architects have extended the concept by stacking some of the tubes to form pyramids. Ladders access the upper level. One end of each tunnel is sealed; the other is glazed and acts as the entrance. The interior of the pipes is a revelation in intimate living. A queen size bed spans the diameter with storage provided underneath. A desk light and fan are also fitted into the 2.44m by 3.5m space. Like packed tamales. These bedrooms in pipes are scattered around open spaces containing a pool, picnic tables
102 | Design Exchange
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Interior Project № 3
and barbeque areas. Two bathrooms and Café Five, an eco eatery, complete the experience. “Tubilicious!” is T3arc’s new adjective for their new project. They have exploited the possibilities of using unwanted construction materials in natural surroundings to create a hotel which was quick to build, is cheap for guests and beneficial to the environment. TuboHotel is a testament to the power of creating something new from something old. Recycled materials and recycled ideas. As for tamales, the best place to eat them in London is Mestizo on Hampstead Road.
103 | www.demagazine.co.uk
â„–4
angel in the architecture
Words Stuart Blakley
The story of developer Derwent London is one of entwining art and architecture from the beginning. The latest chapter is the Angel Building which is the reworking of a dated composition in Islington.
104 | Design Exchange
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Interior Project â„–4
105 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Simon Silver is Head of Regeneration at Derwent London. An honorary Fellow of RIBA, Simon’s role is at the heart of the company overseeing acquisitions, projects and design. “We’re very project oriented,” he says, “and always have a pipeline of schemes. Artists form part of our team for each project.” Derwent London regards art as intrinsic to the environments it delivers for its tenants. Simon believes, “The space which people work in makes a subtle yet significant contribution to the way they think, interact and function.” The developer has cultivated relationships with some of London’s most visionary galleries. He explains, “Rather than simply buying finished pieces we commission artists to make pieces specifically for each of our buildings. This blurs the boundaries between art and architecture. It creates unique surroundings that allow unique minds to flourish.” Derwent London’s efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. The Angel Building – “Our most iconic project yet!” proclaims Simon – has won just about every accolade going. It’s received a RIBA Award for Architecture, a New London Award for Working and was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize to name a few. “It reads as a new building despite having a 1980s frame,” remarks Simon. The skill with which the exterior is manipulated demonstrates architects AHMM’s love of a necessary complexity and an innate contradiction where one form belies another. It’s an architecture of distinction, as Adolf Loos had it, realised by references to Mies van der Rohe. Expanding the lettable area by about 30% – an additional 90,000 square feet – was achieved by extending inwards, upwards and outwards on two sides. A sweeping curtain wall placed in front of the existing concrete structure realigns the façade with the gentle curve of St John Street. The bays of the curtain wall are framed by prominent mullions
106 | Design Exchange
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Interior Project №4
resembling Miesian exposed steel l-beams. Think the Seagram Building. They are in fact extruded aluminium alloy in two L-shaped half sections. Black framed glazing is distinguished by the shallowest of black spandrel panels. Opening windows, mechanically operated since they are top hung and 1.5 metres wide, are one of many environmentally aware attributes of the Angel Building. The fourth floor slopes outwards by seven degrees to reflect the mature trees. Light grey fritting and white panels on the fifth floor complete the disciplined palette. This new floor is recessed behind expansive roof terraces. Far below, the capital snakes out in a labyrinth of Lilliputian living. “The atrium with its lounge and café is more like a city hotel than the entrance to an office block,” Simon observes. “It’s monochromatic yet welcoming.” The use of polished concrete in this former service courtyard is a nod to Tadao Ando, a favourite of Simon’s. Is it art or a chair? Ian McChesney’s sculpture Out of the Strong Came Forth Sweetness in the atrium is both. Temperature is controlled via a low velocity under-floor displacement system which liberates the offices from internal ductwork. Exposed low energy DALI lighting is in place of suspended ceilings. Clean open spaces are the result. Mies would approve. The architectural demands of this prominent site for an inspirational urban composition demonstrate the role of architecture as the guardian of the public realm, something too readily dissolved by the alternative demands of consumerism and bourgeois values. The Angel Building succeeds by at once interacting and reacting with its context. Diners spill out from Jamie’s Italian in a ground floor unit, bathed in their reflection in the curtain wall. The story of Derwent London’s placemaking in Islington continues afoot. Next chapter? A 55,000 square foot office building at 10-4 Pentonville Road opposite the Angel Building, due to open later this year.
107 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Supplier list
Developer: Derwent London Architect: Allford Hall Monaghan Morris Landscape Architects: J&L Gibbons Structural Engineers: Adams Kara Taylor Transport Consultant: Colin Buchanan Lighting Consultant: GIA Acoustic Consultant: Sandy Brown Associates Rights of Light: GIA Party Wall Surveyor: GIA Project Managers: Buro Four Cost Consultants: Davis Langdon Service Engineers: Norman Disney & Young Fire Consultant: Norman Disney & Young Fire Main Contractor: BAM Construction Cladding Contractor: Scheldebouw CDM Coordinator: Jackson Coles Property Agents: Pilcher Hershman & CBRE Graphic Designers: David Hillman
â„–5
The muses are h eard hotel icon hong kong
Words: Stuart Blakley
Like a Greek legend with a novel twist, Hotel Icon in downtown Tsim Sha Tsui East has given birth to an explosion of talent – some young, some old.
108 | Design Exchange
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Interior Project â„– 5
109 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Daughters of Zeus and denizens of Mount Parnassus, the nine Muses of Mythology are heard every time a poet writes or an artist paints, as the title of Truman Capote’s nonfiction novella records. Homer invoked this ethereal sorority at the opening of The Odyssey. Dante summoned them before plunging into his Inferno, “O Muses… aid me now!” Somewhere down the ages the immortal Muses morphed into flesh and blood, capable of holding all manner of men in their thrall. For a time Whistler could barely brush a stroke without the guiding presence of his titian tressed muse Joanna Hiffernan. The Viennese seductress Alma Mahler famously impelled Walter Gropius to draw, Gustav Mahler to compose and Franz Werfel to write. Around the same time that art became abstract, muses migrated from artists to musicians. Marianne Faithfull crooned “I am a muse, not a mistress, not a whore” in Sliding Through Life on Charm. Taking it to a whole new level is the recently opened Hotel Icon in Hong Kong. Multiple muses – male and female – not only inspired the design but became part of it. Hong Kong’s designerati took the lead. Rocco Yim oversaw the sharp architecture. William Lim of CL3 Architects designed the sweeping staircase, ballroom and bedrooms. He says, “Comfort is always my priority. We wanted to create a sense of richness and elegance – then let the spectacular views complete the story.” The eponymous VT suite is the brainchild of fashion designer Vivienne Tam. Her contemporary Barney Cheng designed the staff uniforms. He labels his style “extravagant simplicity”. Designer Freeman Lau curated the hotel’s eclectic art collection. They were joined by French landscape architect Patrick Blanc who installed a ‘vertical garden’, an 18m high verdant wall, in the Green café. A meaningful moniker theme emerges. Sir Terence Conran directed the design of all the hotel’s eateries which also include members’ club Above & Beyond on the top floor of this 262 bedroom hotel and an open plan
110 | Design Exchange
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Interior Project № 5
Supplier list
restaurant called The Market. Rocco’s ninth floor harbour facing outdoor swimming pool and fitness centre allow guests to work up an appetite while enjoying the panorama. Isabella Blow once remarked, “In the 18th century the muse would be in her salon. You would visit her, you would have tea with her, she’d talk… you were inspired by her. But life is very corporate now, you can’t do that.” In the 21st century the muse is more likely to have designed the salon. The passive qualities of muses have transmogrified into the activity of icons. Hotel Icon’s logo represents its coterie of icons. Designer Tommy Li explains, “The logo is an assortment of individual units gathering up to form a unique star shaped icon. It’s based on the concept of ‘bringing brilliance together’.” The totality of the titans’ talent is on display, housed in a 28 storey glass tower, revealing a new approach to traditional Asian hospitality. It’s a world away from Truman’s unfortunate hotel experiences. At Hotel Icon, the muses are heard and seen. -
111 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Architects: Rocco Design Architects Ltd Interior Designer: CL3 Architects Ltd Restaurants Designer: Conran & Partners VT Suite Designer: Vivienne Tam Vertical Garden Designer: Patrick Blanc Uniform Designer: Barney Cheng Logo Designer: Tommy Li Spa Operator: Angsana Spa
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No.13
Design/Art
are you sitting comfortably? then Let me begin... Words Ilsa Parry
When you initially think of ‘storytelling’ you don’t necessarily think of design. You may consider movies, books, memories of being read to as a child or even songs, but there is however a story to be told within every product’s make up, from the values it holds through to where it derives from and how we give it meaning. People who design also convey messages during the development process, merely substituting sound for physical forms. A designer, whether conscious or not will naturally embody narratives in what he produces as he both strives to improve upon the existing and to communicate with the user, participant or “reader”. A designer much like an author, designs with purpose, often around a theme, in the hope that their argument for how things can be different will be heard. This makes for exciting and unique subliminal messages that are held, captured, told or created within everything that is designed.
114 | Design Exchange
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Photo: Ellen Forsyth
Design/Art no.13
STORIES HELD WITHIN... More and more we are seeing designers keen to educate users about the various issues surrounding sustainability. There are countless examples today where a designer has taken old, used objects and reinvented them to extend their life. Some of the most successful examples are where the designer has used a culturally significant form within the telling of the story in much the same way that we can bring ideas to life in a movie through use of a well known character. Here, the iconic form central to the designer’s argument has been used as a construction material and in doing so, focused the users attention on the issue in hand:
115 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Title | Library Desk Designers Purpose | Education on sustainability through reuse of books Theme | An object can have more than one function Target reader | Library users Argument | Don’t judge a book by its cover
STORIES CAPTURED EVERYWHERE... Title | Sydney Opera House Designers Purpose | Cultural preservation through a physical simile to represent the areas history and purpose Theme | Look again and think Target reader | Visitors to and inhabitants of the area Argument | Cities change but their evolution leaves a legacy
Photos: VFedele
Some designs have come together to capture a specific moment, place or theme, often in order to preserve the richness of its significance or history. There are examples of this in architecture and products around the world which often inspire, entertain and educate through visual metaphors that are thought provoking and encourage individual interpretation.
Title | Tripp Trapp Chair Designers Purpose | Sustainability and moral value Theme | Product and consumer growing together, life companions Target reader | Consumers Argument | Furniture should adapt and grow with the user as a lifelong companion
STORIES CREATED BY US... Some designs are purposely left unfinished or have a degree of interaction or personalisation designed into them allowing the user to create their own story and form their own relationship with the designed item. As such products are used, they change and take on new identities, leaving the pages open for participants to write, read and remember the actions recorded upon it. 116 | Design Exchange
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Design/Art no.13
STORIES TOLD AROUND US...
Photo: Lg Santa Toys 1953
When a consumer looks at an object they will instantly have some sort of emotional response to it, this could be as basic as an instant like or dislike towards the aesthetic or it could run much deeper where its functionality, weight or even smell can be an influence. It is therefore important to consider how we build a relationship with a new item in the split seconds that occur during our first encounter. Graphic and brand experience designers are experts at this and have to work hard to ensure that the stories told by a product or other designed object are instantly engaging and positive. This must happen from the moment we first learn of the object, design or brands existence and continue throughout its lifespan. The colour, texture, sound and smell all form part of the experience we as participants will undertake and all help to naturally form mental imagery, recall memories and associate the design with a story, whether it be personal and nostalgic or widespread and indicative of contemporary affairs. How our feelings are influenced will determine the story the product tells us and therefore, ultimately dictate how we perceive it and whether or not we buy the product or buy into the brand or message.
Title | Coca Cola Designers Purpose | Enjoyment (Entertainment) Theme | The Happiness Factory / Holidays are coming Target reader | Consumers Argument | The classic party drink
117 | www.demagazine.co.uk
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Design/Art no.13
A direct link between storytelling and design can be seen through all of the examples here. Such designers consciously embed narratives in their work almost as part of their unique creative identity. Some provide us with ways to interpret a more meaning from the physical world through the subtle embodiment of nostalgia or culture in design, from this we can draw our own personal conclusions and see more value in the world we live in. Others offer us a blank canvas so that we may create our own impressions and stories on the physical world for others to behold and learn from, such products are designed as an expressive medium for consumers to communicate their own experiences and create their own narratives. Every design has a story, whether consciously embodied or not. Designers like authors can inform, persuade, generate discussion and create memories, the more this occurs when a user is exposed to a designed object, the better the story that is told and the deeper the connection to the design. Some may argue that stories are born from imagination, highly subjective and very personal, open to questioning and reinterpretation, that a designed item in contrast should be controlled and objective, useful and straightforward, however if everything we owned and interacted with offered us only this, there would be little to stimulate our imagination and fire our soul. Stories can keep us alive, provide us with a sense of purpose and intrigue, what better way to be creatively vitalised then through the myriad of designed objects we encounter everyday?
118 | Design Exchange
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Technology collaborating with Interior Design World renowned technology company JVC has recently become a member of The British Institute of Interior Design (BIID). Established in 1966, the BIID is the pre-eminent professional organisation for interior designers in the UK. The BIID’s growing national and international membership
represents both the commercial and residential sectors, from heritage to cutting edge. This membership recognizes the fact that technology products from companies like JVC are now part of the design consideration for many interior designers.
New JVC Home Theatre Projectors Display Images With 4K Precision JVC introduced the world’s first HD up-converting home theatre projectors that display 2D HD content with full 4K precision. They feature JVC’s new e-shift technology capable of projecting images with 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution, four times that of full HD. The new JVC projectors are the DLA-X90R, DLAX70R and DLA-X30. JVC’s 4K e-shift technology is featured in the top two models, while all three
new projectors offer other advancements that boost picture quality, improve 3D performance and enhance functionality. For further information please contact hdworld@jvc.co.uk / www.jvc.co.uk
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Chelsom lighting for Cruise ships Building on 65 years’ experience of lighting the world’s premium hotels, Chelsom is now a leading supplier to the international cruise marketplace, with an enviable list of clients including P&O Cruises, NCL, Royal Caribbean, Cunard, Fred Olsen Cruise Lines, Carnival UK, SAGA, AIDA Cruises, Windstar and Disney Cruise Lines. The company has been designing and manufacturing high quality contract lighting for the hospitality industry since 1947, so the move into cruise and passenger shipping was plain sailing. Blending its expertise in hotel lighting with a thorough understanding of the specific requirements of the marine industry, Chelsom is the first port of call for many interior designers and ship specifiers. Chelsom now works with leading interior designers worldwide, taking ideas from concept to completion and has in-house manufacturing facilities to produce one-off centrepiece fittings or large production
runs. The company understands the demands of the maritime industry and is skilled at adapting standard products to suit the seafaring environment. The large quantities often required on marine projects is not an issue, as Chelsom is renowned for reliability in project managing phased deliveries on large schemes and can utilise the vast storage areas at the companies head office in Lancashire. Will Chelsom who heads up the cruise lighting division comments, “2011 was a great year for Chelsom in the cruise ship lighting marketplace. We had a tremendous response to our products at the Cruise Shipping Miami show, and have now got an agent based in Florida to specialise in this sector. We’re looking forward to exhibiting at the exhibition again this spring, with a preview of products from our forthcoming Edition 23 lighting collection which will be launched in May. ”
122 | Design Exchange
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Uncompromising quality, design, style and superior finish The Series 2 wiring accessories range offers a truly flush finish and whilst meeting the highest British standards, they are a real feature of a room design, in the same way as light fittings, door furniture, wall coverings and fabrics.
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REALISE
Edinburgh-based REALISE are committed to creating innovative, low environmental impact designs that are distinctive, elegant and built to last. The MMX Skewed Tripod stool is seen here. Twitter: @REALISE_innOV8
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Mike To
The Moon Chair is inspired by the earths natural Satellite. Made from Fibreglass and is available in many different colours red, orange, bronze, black and white. www.fashionforhome.co.uk 126
| Design Exchange
03 Simone Brewster 07
The Negress (chaise lounge) & Maid (low table) are the examples in Simone Brewster’s growing Collection of Domestic Servants, a body of research and work which explores the relationship between the female role in the household. www.simonebrewster.com
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HI-MACS SleepBox
A contemporary and organic piece of furniture in HI-MACS® SleepBox represents a contemporary and organic piece of furniture, designed for the demands of an increasingly urbanized environment. www.himacs.eu
05 Emma Elizabeth Designs
06 Hwa jin,Jeong
The ‘Round Diamond’ is a hand tufted rug from 100% New Zealand wool and is made to order directly from Emma Elizabeth Designs. www.emmaelizabethdesigns.com
127 | www.demagazine.co.uk
Leaf cover brings new life to normally a empty space, simply place the cover over the top of a nail in the wall and use as you wish. www.junghwajin.com
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Daniel Schofield
Shifty is an interpretation of the modern day writing desk. Designed to accommodate for small space living, the wall mounted solid Ash desk has a secret hiding compartment to keep all your personal documents and electronic equipment safe. www.danielschofieldesign.com
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Extremis
The ever innovative Belgian company Extremis takes a new approach to the market and is offering consumers a choice between buying an actual Extremis product and buying the rights to make one themselves. If people can build Extremis furniture themselves, no finished goods need to be shipped. www.extremis.be
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Aquaduct
Aquaduct brings innovative ideas to your wet rooms and spas! We transform function into art with uniquely designed shower grills and floors. The complete bespoke design, supply and install service.
T: 020 8450 2244 www.aquaduct.co
P roducts
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Mattias Stenberg
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CARRY-ON was born out of an increasing need for flexible seating arrangements, both in the home and in the public space. Also from Studio Vision is ‘Within’ a Limited edition seating / side table www.studiovision.se
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Jail make
The Plantable reintroduces nature back into the experience of gathering, cooking and eating a meal. The legs act as trestles and the feet as planters. The top is a solid oak surface for preparation and eating. Tomatoes, herbs, sweet peas and climbers have all been tried and tested. www.jail-make.co.uk
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Traditional and contemporary Handtufted, Passmachine and Woven custom designed carpets and rugs from design to installation
www.customcarpetcompany.co.uk
Custom Carpet Company PO Box 167, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 6WH Tel.: + 44 (0)1737 830301 Fax.: + 44 (0)1737 833785 Email: info@customcarpetcompany.co.uk
Web: www.customcarpetcompany.co.uk
No.14
Art & Design
valentina Gonzales wohlers The narrative of a narrative designer Words Designersblock - Bud Moore
Sometimes furniture comes from a conversation. A couple of years ago Designersblock founder Piers Roberts myself and a few others were having Christmas dinner with designer Valentina Gonzales Wohlers. Val who had recently finished her Masters in furniture design at St Martins was pondering out loud in the way that designers do, what she should do next. Feeling that if she went back to Mexico she wouldn’t be taken seriously in the design industry, but also if she stayed in the UK she would just be part of the morass of of BA and MA graduates hunting for the same placements, internships and jobs as all the others. At that meal, one of us, in the way of conversation, I’ve no idea who, suggested something along the lines of ‘why not make a piece of furniture that talks about a Mexican designers experience of living and working in europe’. At some level this comment obviously got Vals gears going. A few months later Val got in touch
saying she had a piece of furniture she wanted to show with us in Milan. In my head the gap between these two events can be expresses as a 4 panel comic strip, which if I could draw I would, but sadly I’ll have to type. Panel 1: A typical garden shed, above the door hangs as sign saying ‘Vals Studio – Top Secret. Panel 2: Close up on the window of Vals studio, inside we side Val frantically sketching and emoting in Spanglish. Panel 3: exterior of Vals studio, we see it rocking from side to side and the sound affects of hammering and sawing. Panel 4: We see the the interior of a travel agents, Val with a chair under her arm purchases a ticket for Milan. The Prickly Pair Chairs, whos genesis I’ve just described in a slightly daft way, are a combination of a Louis XV chair and a Nopal or prickly pear cactus. The chair, a typical piece of european furniture which
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Art & Design no.14
Images: Valentina Gonzales Wohlers
has been produced in multiple variations for centuries, and the cactus as much a cliché of Mexico as tequila and sombreros, expresses in some way the experience of a Mexican designer in Europe. As a signature piece there is no doubt that the ‘Prickly Pair Chairs’ did exactly what she needed them to do. Although designed as a conceptual exhibition piece to describe her journey from Mexico to London. They are now batch manufactured in the UK and Mexico and are on sale in London, Paris, New York and Abu Dhabi. The variations for the American market are upholstered in traditional Mexican fabrics and painted in yellow rather than pink. Subsequent projects from val include ‘the ghost of
a chair’ part of a project instigated by retailer Lifestyle Bazaar to create a variation of the Philippe Starck ghost chair, ‘Erotica Cutouts’ a quartet of tables in collaboration with illustrator miss led featuring images of genitals and sperm, ‘Abstract Tenoch’ tables based on the map of Mexico city before the conquest, Eden, the Tenango Chair a collaboration with furniture brand Natuzzi. All of these diverse projects share several things in common, Vals love of putting narrative into furniture and objects, her ability to bring alchemy into collaborative projects, and her restless imagination. All of these I think are informed by and emerge from her first signature piece, The Prickly Pair Chairs.
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de pi ck
J iLL t at E Architectural photographer submitted this image of interior designer Nicola Gartland in front of the Angel of The North. The pair were inspired to collaborate on this image after reading our Autumn
edition on collaboration.
The photo here has been chosen from the great selection we had submitted for our online photography entry for the Autumn edition (Places & People: reading de magazine) More images are online www.demagazine.co.uk To submit a image for Vol 2, 2012 edition please email photo@demagazine.co.uk
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www.jilltate.com www.room33.co.uk
‘Mayfair Apartments’
Designing and developing five multi-million pound apartments in Mayfair London W1, with a state of the art system which controlled, among other technologies, audio and video distribution proved to be a tough challenge. Minimalist design and decor were foremost in the clients mind providing occupants with a dream home that looked stunning but was full of hidden technology. Amina’s invisible speaker technology was utilized to generate highly clarity, room filling sound in a truly exceptional integrated, visually stunning solution. Each apartment has five Amina Loudspeakers installed providing a hidden 5.1 surround sound system for the main living area. The result is that these luxury homes feature aesthetically pleasing living spaces to relax or entertain in, whilst also providing a full surround sound home theatre experience for family and friends to enjoy. t: +44 1480 354390 e: inspired@amina.co.uk w: www.amina.co.uk