THE NEXT SPACE
WILL COVID CRUSH THE CLASSROOM?
Snap, app, score: Burberry’s ‘social retail’ store The designers making sense of sustainability How to build for the bicycling boom The home’s new all-inclusive role Future offices: more flexible, less affordable? ISSUE 137 NOV — DEC 2020
BP BX €19.95 DE €19.95 IT €24.90 CHF 30 UK £14.95 JP ¥3,570 KR WON 40,000
CONTENTS 8 REPORTING Beirut and São Paulo
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FROM
13 BUSINESS OF DESIGN From the home’s new all-inclusive role to retail’s wrestle with fulfilment
Shannon McGrath
Michèle van Vliet
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IN PRACTICE
28 INTRODUCING Spanish artist and designer Lucas Muñoz 38 INFLUENCER Ikea designer Akanksha Deo Sharma
28 Courtesy of Ikea
46 WHAT I’VE LEARNED MPdL Studio’s Mónica Ponce de León 52 THE CLIENT Uniqlo’s Takahiro Kinoshita 60 TOBIAS GRAU A team of lighting, for teams
38 Frame 137
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65 SPACES The under-construction aesthetic, cycle-in spaces and precedent-setting phygital retail 117 EDUCATION LAB 118 Learning in a tech-driven era 134 Post-pandemic schooling
Arch-Exist
130 Kris Tamburello, courtesy of Off-White
Ewout Huibers
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145 MARKET Armani/Roca brings fashion to the bathroom, plus the best of Copenhagen’s 3daysofdesign
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Courtesy of Tableau
160 IN NUMBERS Rashmi Bidasaria’s Dross: fact and figures Contents
AD Beatrice Rossetti - Photo Federico Cedrone
Frame is published six times a year by Frame Publishers Domselaerstraat 27H NL-1093 JM Amsterdam frameweb.com EDITORIAL – FE For editorial inquiries, please e-mail frame@frameweb.com or call +31 20 4233 717 (ext 921). Editor in chief Robert Thiemann – RT Head of content Floor Kuitert – FK Editor at large Tracey Ingram – TI Editors Anouk Haegens – AH Lauren Grace Morris – LGM Business editor Peter Maxwell – PM Copy editor InOtherWords (D’Laine Camp) Design director Barbara Iwanicka Graphic designer Shadi Ekman Translation InOtherWords (D’Laine Camp, Maria van Tol) Contributors to this issue Silvia Albertini Suryan//Dang Simon Flöter Christele Harrouk June Kim Kourosh Newman-Zand Jonathan Openshaw Rosamund Picton Michèle van Vliet Cover YueCheng Courtyard Kindergarten by MAD Architects in Beijing, China (see page 128) Photo Hufton + Crow Lithography Edward de Nijs
PUBLISHING Director Robert Thiemann
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LEARNING, THE HARD WAY I have children of different ages, two at home and two who live independently. Their world has changed dramatically over the past six months, and not exactly for the better. I’m not talking about the fact that their nightlife and social life has largely come to a standstill, let’s leave that aside for the moment. I’m talking purely about education here. Let’s start with the oldest two, one of whom finished her university studies in July. That was after six months of house arrest: she was no longer welcome at the company where she was following an internship to complete her graduation project. So she spent week after week in her student house, on Zoom or staring at the walls, in search of connection and inspiration. If the pandemic has made one thing clear, it’s that people are not made to create in isolation – with the exception of that one genius artist working in self-chosen solitude on jaw-dropping installations. And maybe even that’s too romantic a thought. My son is still studying and decided to move into student housing immediately after the lockdown. He hasn’t seen a fellow student or a classroom since March. Luckily, he finds independent living pleasantly challenging and has a nice roommate, otherwise he, too, would be wasting away on Zoom. My stepdaughter, on the other hand, has been back in class since September. She’s as happy as a clam, because she no longer has to follow classes on Teams from half past eight in the morning – this is well worth getting up and dressed for, even biking to school in the rain is not a problem! Adolescents like her are trying to establish their identity. They want to be independent, but they also want to belong to a group – even if that includes fighting. And that, with only Snapchat and Teams at your disposal, is very complicated.
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And the youngest? This five-year-old has been going to school again since June, and the summer vacation caused an unpleasant interruption. She prefers to spend all day long with her friends, especially since her school only offered half an hour of Zoom per day during the lockdown. In short, the virus has hit education and thus our youth hard, and the sector is far from finding an answer. Which is a good reason to dedicate this issue’s Frame Lab to the future of education. Not just for children, but for all of us: we’re expected to continue to learn throughout our lives, to be able to cope with the ever-changing challenges thrown at us. And guess what: it turns out that, like other sectors, education was already digitizing before the virus struck. Now the challenge is to accelerate and offer game-inspired tools that are fun and engaging. Goodbye Zoom and Teams. In addition, schools and universities will also have to embrace nature: not only because the chance of infection then decreases, but also because children in contact with nature prove to learn better. Finally, designers will have to make physical spaces suitable for multifunctional use: for a variety of group sizes, activities and resources. Until then, I fervently hope that our children will not be subjected to a second lockdown.
Robert Thiemann Editor in chief
Editorial
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business of design Sui Sicong, courtesy of Cohost West Bund
14 Co-living’s surprising Covid-19-induced boost 22 Telemedicine’s impact on both the home and the hospital 24 Future office furniture: more flexible, less affordable?
Why office furniture may soon cost a lot more
5 Shoot Buildings
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Business of Design
RIGHT Furniture such as Steelcase’s Roam line, which is not only mobile, but also self-sufficient in terms of data and power, will be crucial in creating offices that focus on collaboration, creativity and Covidsecurity. OPPOSITE LXSY Architekten’s redevelopment of an old post office building in Berlin into an innovationfocused co-working space is an example of the sort of collaborative architecture that will be prioritized post-pandemic.
For Steelcase, the US’s largest office furniture maker, this has been a sobering year: the company is having its worst sales period by value since it IPOed in 1998. The shares of both Steelcase and its closest competitor Herman Miller remain over 50 per cent lower than at the start of 2020. ‘We think there will always be the need for a physical workplace – places where you go for collaboration and bring to life the corporate culture,’ Lori Gee, vice president of workplace performance services at Herman Miller told Reuters. That may be true, but recovery is going to be predicated on these businesses’ ability to adapt to new, and likely reduced, terrain. Herman Miller says it’s already working on concepts that fit with the predicted shift away from large company HQs and towards networks of smaller satellite offices. When and if staff do start to return in numbers, they’ll already be entering unfamiliar territory. According to a poll by the American Staffing Association Workforce Monitor, the most important single factor
that makes staff feel safe at work is social distancing, with 53 per cent citing tactics such as increased signage, plans for communal areas and limiting the number of staff in the workplaces at any one time as the most critical measures to be taken. But while office interiors depopulated of desks and invaded by partitions will work as a stopgap, more permanent, practical and purposeful solutions will have to be sought. What sort of fit-out justifies the cost of running a physical office in an age of increased remote working? When CBRE’s Furniture Advisory division ran a study with 31 internal and external partners to query what relevance dedicated workspaces still had, their answer echoed Gee’s: collaboration. An environment that supports the sort of creative communal tasks that can’t be achieved via screens is one that workers will still value. As an interviewee from manufacturer The Senator Group outlined: ‘The importance of collaborative spaces to a company’s culture and its ability
to innovate, support meaningful connections, and communication are the main drivers to return to the office.’ According to respondents, what that means in practice is the creation of far more flexible furniture systems, ones that can adapt to differing tasks and group sizes across a freeform office space. Considerations include: lighter-scale materials for ease of reconfiguring, better acoustic capabilities and technology integration that ensures connectivity to off-site workers. The latter also raises the need for furniture products that embed wireless or mobile power and data solutions. This is a vision of the office floor as populated by a series of nomadic islands, light enough to evolve at speed and infrastructurally self-sufficient. Further confirmation of this shift came in an AdAge interview with McCann Worldwide chairman-CEO Harris Diamond and chief operating officer Bill Kolb, who confirmed that their reoccupation strategy would focus on spaces where ‘people can meet to participate
in new business pitches, work on creative reviews or discuss other important issues’. These will be upgraded with technologies that allow remote workers to contribute to on-site discussions, they added. All this will come at a price of course. ‘We will likely experience an overall increase in furniture costs with the next generation of furniture,’ write authors Julie Deignan, director of CBRE Furniture Advisory Service and Tina Lamkey, studio lead for CBRE Design. ‘The quantities of workstations may be reduced, but the potential increased workstation componentry and/or more adaptable/ hackable collaborative furniture may offset any decreased costs.’ PM
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Suryan//Dang
in practice
28 Lucas Muñoz on more conscious materials and methods 38 Akanksha Deo Sharma on making an impact at Ikea 46 Mónica Ponce de León on the power of robotics 52 Uniqlo on the playful side of shopping
Spanish designer and artist LUCAS MUÑOZ explains what it means to design by demolition, how to apply ex-situ wisdom to in-situ resources, and why sustainability should not be measured, but thoroughly understood. Words Floor Kuitert Portraits Michèle van Vliet
Introducing
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From a stool made of discarded materials sourced at a Thai Buddhist temple that produces rockets for the flying cylinders festival, to a 59.55-kg table representative of the amount of asphalt produced each second in Spain: the raw works of Spanish designer and self-proclaimed ‘crafts traveller’ Lucas Muñoz are firmly rooted in their local context. And that context is diverse. After his education took him from Madrid to London to Eindhoven, his creative practice led him through China, India, Thailand and beyond. But wherever Muñoz lands, he embeds himself in the sociocultural environment and works with what – and who – is at hand, addressing consumption and production issues while at it.
You divide your time between Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and Madrid, Spain. What’s the difference between both locations when it comes to the design community and opportunities? LUCAS MUÑOZ: The design ecosystem in the Netherlands is more mature than the one in Spain. In the Netherlands design is considered a respected creative industry, whereas in Spain it’s still fighting for its place and is often seen as a decorative art. But this struggle for recognition also provides opportunities. There’s room for development and this trajectory offers space for the redefinition of existing models. A territory like Spain – within the context of Europe, with its specific roots in crafts and its particular history (there’s a strong Arab heritage for instance) – can still develop a language of its own and possibly even become a pioneer. The country doesn’t have to deal with the pressure of paying tribute to a rich design heritage, like Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden do. However, if we keep importing design visions instead of drawing up our own, Spanish design culture runs the risk of becoming the bastard son. But, building a country’s design identity requires energy and vision, together with an investment in cultural politics that aim at long-term development. Without investments and the presence of creative funds like the Dutch Creative Industrial Fund NL, Spanish designers are forced to instantly make a living out of their practice, leaving little room for experimentation and the development of more radical standpoints that could refresh the industry and market. Has the current pandemic changed the way you think about your profession and design approach? The pandemic hit right after the completion of my to this date biggest project: the restaurant Mo de Movimiento in Madrid. So I had already scheduled the three months of compulsory confinement that followed for rest and reflec-
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tion. In a way, for me the pandemic confirmed the validity of my views and ways of working. Such things as the reliance on local networks or the understanding of site-specific materials, which are at the core of my work, are now more current that ever. I believe they are also foundational values to the design profession in general. Nonetheless, they seemed largely forgotten for a while. Now, I think we will see a return to those values.
brought upon us, it’s not the growth of the global market space but rather the osmosis of knowledge and perspectives. According to sociologist Manuel Castells, 95 per cent of the information in the world is already digitized. What should be taken from this is the fact that we are richer in knowledge than ever. That, in turn, should result in the development of local aesthetics that are born from in-situ resources and ex-situ wisdom.
How do you expect the Covid19 crisis to impact the design industry in the long run? First, and most importantly, I hope it will change how industry, designer and market interact. The current models for production and market placement rely largely on what I call a pipeline structure. I think it’s time to develop a more platform-like structure in which knowledge and innovations are seen as a common good instead of a protected market good. The internet can host knowledge ecosystems and eliminate the need for the travel (and trouble) we were immersed in before. This would, however, require a huge effort in terms of transparency and trust from all of the actors involved in the process that leads to a product and its market placement. Secondly, when it comes to materials I believe we should find ways to reduce the distance between sources, manufacturing, design and market. To achieve this, local sources and crafts will need to be rediscovered and ideally made exclusive to a territory. We should become aware of the passport every material entails, and get thoroughly conscious about the trace each one leaves from the moment it’s mined. Finally, I hope the cancellation of massive industry events like Milan Design Week will be compensated with smaller community events specific to a place. And thanks to the connectedness we have experienced over the last decade, these local scenes will benefit from – quite literally – a whole world of knowledge. If there is something good that came from the decades of total permeability between cultures that globalization
From BREEAM to LEED certified: sustainability seems to come in various degrees, and a truly independent, all-encompassing standard appears to be missing. In your opinion, should sustainability (in design) be measurable? At the moment, to gain any kind of sustainability certificate you have to meet a certain minimum. But there is a thin line between compliance and non-compliance, leaving a large grey area that’s up for interpretation. In my opinion each construction project should define its own standard based on the precise information it embodies. That information should not only entail its location and materiality, but also the society and culture it’s embedded in, as well as the territory it belongs to. Any construction process should be a horizontal agreement between all parties involved, and aim not only for economic benefits, but social significance, too. If trust, transparency and ‘doing good’ goals become an inherent part of construction processes, there shouldn’t be a need for standards and certifications. In short: sustainability in design should not be measured, it should be thoroughly understood.
In Practice
How did you apply these ideas around sustainability to your recent restaurant project Mo de Movimiento? We basically mined most of the materials we used for the interior design from the demolition of the existing building. All undertaken deconstruction was legally
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For Madrid-based restaurant Mo de Movimiento, Lucas MuĂąoz collaborated with InĂŠs Sistiaga to reupholster reclaimed office chairs with a patchwork of textile leftovers and cutouts.
Introducing
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From her home base in Princeton, Venezuelan-born American architect and educator MÓNICA PONCE DE LEÓN explains how balancing theory and practice can yield richer results, why she’s fighting the stereotype that community projects should have a certain look, and how digital technologies can help to democratize design. As told to Tracey Ingram Photos June Kim
What I’ve Learned
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MÓNICA PONCE DE LEÓN: I grew up in Venezuela, surrounded by cutting-edge public buildings that were tied to community identity. We Venezuelans knew the names of the architects who designed them, that they were important, that they were creating a language of expression that was uniquely ours. A language that responded to our climate, our customs, our history. We all knew the name Carlos Raúl Villanueva, and that his design for the public Central University in Caracas was unequivocally Venezuelan. Discussing materials and construction techniques – new and old – was part of our culture. During career day in high school, I saw a recent graduate’s presentation about architecture as a profession. He showed us images of Banco Metropolitano by José Miguel Galia, a tiny building in Sabana Grande, one of the main avenues in Caracas that had been recently transformed into a pedestrian-only boulevard. The graduate spoke of how the bank’s ground floor was shaped to create a small public space in front of it, facing the boulevard. I loved the Brutalist, reinforced concrete structure and its geometric, abstract form, but I honestly thought he was fibbing – or at the very least, exaggerating – when describing the ‘public’ space. I was only 16 at the time, but the question nagged me: Can a tiny, private building – something so geometric – really produce public space? So I hopped on a bus and went to see for myself. When I got there, I was surprised to see a children’s flute ensemble playing for passers-by. A small crowd had gathered, and people were dropping money into a collection box to help the flutists attend an international festival abroad. The image still startles me, and it was then that I knew what I wanted to do with my life. The reinforced concrete made the Banco Metropolitano’s shape possible in the small space. This experience taught me that the intersection of material and space is what makes architecture so important. The model of that building was part of the Latin American exhibition at MoMA in 2015. I’d never seen it before, and it was shocking to recognize so much of my own work within that maquette. I was the first of my family to go to college. When I came to study in the US, I was surprised to discover that design and architecture didn’t seem to be on everyone’s minds. My first port of call was Miami. In retrospect I realized the city was more architecture-anddesign-minded than other US communities. But in contrast with Venezuela, no one seemed to know who designed what or cared whether it was appropriate for its surrounding community. Then came Arquitectonica, a Miami firm whose buildings held the promise of an alternative to the status quo. They projected a new image for a city that, until then, had looked like any other. But these buildings were done for developers, and no one appeared to be broaching the subject of design in the public realm. It was clear to me that this way of thinking needed to change. Architects in the US have preconceived ideas about what is ‘appropriate’ for one community versus another. ‘Community design’ has a particular look. This is no more than a stereotype – one that I’m trying to fight. The public wants and deserves good design. Architects here need to stop patronizing the communities we work within. Just because
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In Practice
a community lacks resources, that doesn’t mean they want a boring box. When I returned to Florida a few years ago to design the Pompano Beach Library and Cultural Center, I was very excited because the community wanted design. Their charge to me: we do not want a box. This is a community where the annual average income is under $45,000 and the poverty rate is 20 per cent. During all of our community meetings, they wanted to ensure that the building looked to the future. I have worked a lot with digital fabrication technology, including robotics: for me it’s a way of exploring how to use tools to expand design’s reach. How we build says everything about who we are. When I got my first commission right after I graduated in the early 1990s, I realized that the building industry had radically changed, but no one was talking about it or thought digital fabrication was relevant. I realized that architects were still designing as if buildings and their components were fabricated with power tools when in fact the use of CNC tools was already widespread in the building industry. I thought it would be important to experiment with such tools in an academic context and see if that changed the way we considered building. That said, I’ve always been interested in digital technology as part of a large suite of techniques, not as a replacement for other forms of making. After the Industrial Revolution, architectural production was divided into prefabricated and custom-made components – the latter being accessible to only those who could afford them. But with digital technology, we have the opportunity to make ‘custom made’ commonplace. The digitally guided machine has no qualms about what shapes it cuts – it can effortlessly provide a great degree of variation. But it’s also important to understand that architecture happens live on the field – on-site assembly and installation are done by hand and that will continue for many years. All the components for our Rhode Island School of Design Main Library were cut off site. While the design is consistent, it’s also an example of mass customization. The study carrels – their seating and table heights – are different sizes. Instead of designing for the average body, we designed for a wide range of bodies. CNC technology made that possible. With a clear, simple assembly system, the carpenters were able to construct the elements with ease despite the dimensional and shape variations. Yes, architecture and robotics are two male-dominated fields. What advice can the younger generation learn from my experience? Never take no for an answer. When you hear ‘no’, always ask ‘why not?’. I’ve balanced my architecture practice with academia for 30 years, and am currently a professor and the dean at the Princeton University School of Architecture. I don’t believe in the big divide between theory and practice: the experimentation I do in the classroom directly influences my studio work, and the issues I confront in practice inform what I think we should be experimenting with in academia. Architecture is always a speculative practice: we’re continually imagining – and trying to build – what is not there. There seem to be more limitations in practice than in school, but if you’ve experimented with the same ideas in academia then you know how to work around those limitations – or to
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‘I think that experimentation and misuse of tools is essential for architecture and technology to evolve’
ABOVE A snippet from an underconstruction residential project in Princeton shows a small ‘cabana’ with a carbonized wood skin. RIGHT MPdL Studio has designed the residence so that its inhabitants can ‘age in place’: it can be easily reconfigured from a single-family home into multiple apartments or other configurations.
What I’ve Learned
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Located right in front of Harajuku Train Station, the epicentre of subculture visited by tourists from around the world, the Uniqlo Harajuku outlet is a T-shirt specialty store, as reflected by its interior design.
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In Practice
TAKAHIRO KINOSHITA is the group executive vice president and creative director of Fast Retailing, the parent company of Japanese casual wear brand Uniqlo. He explains why stores don’t need to be just for shopping, how to build social media into a physical retail space, and why sometimes you should hold on to history.
As told to Kanae Hasegawa The Client
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TOPS ON TOP Cindy Crawford on New Silestone Eternal Noir
A product designed by Cosentino® Find inspiration at cosentino.com | Follow Us F T ô
Markus Windt
spaces
66 Why retail interiors are looking unfinished 98 Spaces that make insects more palatable 104 Cycles take over the city
(IN)COMPLETE
Off-White flagship store by Virgil Abloh and AMO in Miami, US.
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Spaces
In each issue we identify a key aesthetic trend evident in our archive of recent projects and challenge semiotics agency Axis Mundi to unpack its design codes. Here, we look at how exposed infrastructure in retail spaces is a resourceful response in unstable times. Words Rosamund Picton and Kourosh Newman-Zand Kris Tamburello, courtesy of Off-White
Look Book
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In a moment of social, economic and ecological crisis, the hidden foundations that keep everyday life going have entered the foreground of our collective consciousness. Increased visibility of essential workers and critical infrastructure is reorienting societal perspectives towards the importance of maintenance, repair and prudent management of resources over the spectacle of innovation. Stripped of theatrical staging, digital distractions and overt lifestyle references, retail environments increasingly resemble transient building sites or fulfilment centres. This protean approach exposes a sober acceptance of the capricious nature of the current market. Investment in extravagant interiors is eschewed in favour of industrial austerity. Drywall panels, storage trolleys and translucent polycarbonate dividers ensure easy spatial reconfiguration in response to fluctuating levels of supply and demand. In a violent riposte to the sleek aesthetics of the information age, the aloof and intimidating presence of heavy machinery such as hand lifts and engine cranes echoes the instrumental function of the eyewear, footwear and clothing on sale. The dialect of bluecollar authenticity can be read in this fetishization of utility, signalling the desire for a return to substance, structure and protection in the midst of instability. However, these spaces do not invite guests to linger. Limited inventory, clean lines and hard edges encourage expedient evaluation of goods rather than relaxed browsing. Stencilled signage and overhead strip lighting demarcate expansive open spaces and direct patrons towards discrete collection zones, efficiently uninterrupted by any distinction between the shop floor and backroom. Previously perceived to be mundane, the nobility of construction is further acknowledged in manifestations of labour left unconcealed. From the crude affordance
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of stacked wooden pallets and arbitrary arrangements of rubble, to the understated display of copper-plated wiring ensconced behind transparent acrylic, subtle markers of manual intervention offer reassuring evidence of human enterprise that counteract the creeping inertia of segregated, screencentric living. Elsewhere, stratified bundles of discarded corrugated cardboard, foam and recycled paper held together with cable ties are transformed into ingenious in-store seating, marrying a scrappy scavenger mindset with engineering nous and offering a glimpse into a more improvisational future. Occasional ornamentation can be found in the form of furniture-inspired objects or ambient visual stimulation provided by sporadic paint swatches and the undulations of brushed corrugated steel. More emphatic interventions like interior scaffolding act as arresting signifiers of resourceful agility. Indicative of a pressing shift towards effective sustainability, the hollow lightness of bamboo belies a greater tensile strength than steel, while the intersecting beams create abstract geometries that refract a chaos of light and shadow. A quiet humility reverberates throughout spaces caught in a state of perpetual beta, reflecting the uncertainty of our times. Making infrastructural elements more visible forces us to reckon more squarely and honestly with systems of consumption, whose migration into the online sphere has only been accelerated by the pandemic crisis. Adaptability is the essential value that unites environments under construction. Going beyond resilience or robustness, materialist spaces are designed to thrive in the face of fragility and scarcity, becoming sites of industrial resistance to be made and unmade in perpetuity.• axis-mundi.co
Spaces
Sunghoon Han
Andersson Bell store by Studio Unravel in Seoul, South Korea.
Look Book
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FOR KIDS, BY KIDS Olson Kundig based its design on the structure of an ark, using the flood narrative to engage children in a conversation about climate change.
Teaching a young audience about climate change and inclusivity and creativity – and all without making it feel like homework – is no small feat. But what if children played a truly active role in creating a space for such fundamental life lessons? Together with the Jewish Museum Berlin, Olson Kundig turned kids into co-curators and consultants for the design of Anoha Children’s World. 92
Spaces
Institution
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Dominating Anoha Children’s World is a 7-m-tall circular ‘ark’ constructed from CO2-neutral wood, a home to animals made using recycled materials.
Petra Appelhof
Spaces
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CYCLE SPACE For numerous reasons – climate change and Covid-19 among them – the world is witnessing a rise in cycling. How might our newfound pedal power affect spatial design, from the buildings we frequent to the wider city beyond? Words Tracey Ingram
BICYCLE PARKING, UTRECHT With a gross floor plan of 21,373 m2, the three-storey bicycle parking at Utrecht Central Station in the Netherlands is currently the biggest of its kind. In order to achieve the project’s goals of convenience, speed and safety in a facility of this scale, Ector Hoogstad Architecten enabled cyclists to pedal all the way up to their parking space. Additional facilities include a cycle repair shop and rental kiosk. Stairwells and tunnels connect directly to the square, main terminal building and platforms above. ectorhoogstad.com
New Typology
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I’ve lived in both Auckland and Amsterdam, two places that couldn’t differ more when it comes to transportation. The car reigns supreme in New Zealand’s most populous city, its urban sprawl connected by busy roads and motorways with barely a bike lane in sight. The Dutch capital, on the other hand, ranks second only to Copenhagen in the world’s most bicycle-friendly cities. But even in automobile-oriented environments, current events – namely the Covid-19 crisis and climate change – are inspiring a two-wheeler wave. During lockdown, 17 km of temporary cycle lanes were installed across the Auckland region, for instance – much of the space siphoned from car parks. Closures and/or reductions of public transport services – as well as the appeal of travelling out in the fresh air instead of in cramped compartments – make bike sharing an attractive alternative: NYC Citi Bike, for example, saw a demand surge of 67 per cent in March, while some governments offered essential workers personal access to bikes from shared fleets. Amsterdam-based bike-subscription service Swapfiets – whose users pay a monthly fee for a rental that’s promptly replaced if the bike is stolen or damaged – gained a large rise in users, too, with 42 per cent of new customers citing the pandemic as their reason for signing up. The company has plans to expand into London, Milan and Paris. Bikes aren’t just seizing space once dedicated to cars, either. London’s Selfridges is selling cycling as an aspirational lifestyle trend by offering up premium retail space to the cause. For a month during the summer, its Corner Shop – which housed pop-ups from luxury brands Burberry and Gucci earlier in the year – became the ‘bike shop of the future’. It presented a range of more traditional models alongside e-bikes and e-motorbikes that were later moved to a permanent location within the department store. Selfridges even freed up part of its car park for customers to take test drives. Speaking to the sustainable aspects of cycling, The Bike Shop also hosted a world-first workshop for making a personalized 100 per cent bamboo bike. ‘There couldn’t be a better time to open The Bike Shop at Selfridges,’ Rob Smith of project partner Smartech said in a statement. ‘As we emerge from lockdown, we’ve seen an increased focus on health and wellness, looking after the environment, and, most importantly, safety.’ Freitag’s first Amsterdam flagship, on the other hand,
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opened in September and combines retail and rental, selling its wares alongside rentable bikes and bike bags. Aside from commanding more visible retail territory, how might the rise of personal mobility affect spatial design, from the buildings we inhabit to our neighbourhoods and the wider city beyond? First of all, if city streets are to become more liveable – a topic we scrutinized in Frame 136 – we can’t leave our cycles strewn across the sidewalks. Lessons for how storage spaces can help to incentivize cycling are numerous in the Netherlands, where bikes outnumber people. Providing more bicycle parking is part of the government’s long-term bicycle plan towards 2022, and the results thus far go beyond the archetypal underground garage to become destinations in their own right. Take Silo and Studio Marsman’s lightfilled project in The Hague. ‘We set out to radically change the expectations of what a basement parking space can be like,’ says Rene Toneman, Silo’s creative director. He believes the project’s interior design and spatial identity ‘have such an impact that the windowless space does not seem to be underground’. The museum-like environment references famed Dutch artist M.C. Escher, with a metamorphosing light wall that weaves together The Hague-specific architectural motifs. Toneman says that ‘adding a narrative defines the parking garage as a destination. It has become a place you want to visit, even if you’re not parking your bike there. The effect will only be stronger once the ground-level developments – residential towers, retail and public square – are completed.’ Facilities like that in The Hague, which is located in front of the city’s central train station, are designed to serve those commuting to other cities. But what about the other end of the journey? How could the bicycling boom affect our residences, for example? Paolo Trevisan, head of design at Pininfarina of America, which has designed transportation solutions both in the US and abroad, believes the answer lies in flexibility. For its Cyrela residential project in São Paulo, the firm designed an easily adaptable parking garage. The idea is that some spaces can transition into bike lanes and storage areas or charging stations for electric scooters or Segways as the need arises. ‘Like many cities, São Paulo wasn’t initially designed to support personal or micro mobility,’ says Trevisan, ‘but it has since invested considerably in developing bike lanes and enforcing safety measures »
Spaces
Andrew Meredith
THE BIKE SHOP, LONDON From Burberry to Gucci to . . . bicycles? By bringing ‘the bike shop of the future’ to its Corner Shop – a space that hosted pop-ups from the aforementioned luxury fashion houses earlier this year – Selfridges in London is promoting cycling as an aspirational lifestyle trend. A partnership with Smartech, the pop-up presented a range of more traditional models alongside e-bikes and e-motorbikes that were later moved to a permanent location within the department store. selfridges.com
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Out Now
ARCHITECTURE IS A SOCIAL ACT Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects Good architecture needs to meet head-on the forces that are shaping today’s world. Featuring 28 projects drawn from across LOHA’s nearly 30-year history, this book underscores this urgent idea and points the way ahead for both people and architecture. €39
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MOMENT Redefining the Brand Experience
HYBRID FOOD RETAIL Rethinking Design for the Experiential Turn
Tokyo-based design firm MOMENT’s book of the same name highlights a versatile and skillful visual approach, focusing on detail-oriented spatial branding and lighting design for interior solutions that are both functionally and emotionally driven. €39
This handbook prescribes hybridization – a fusion of gastronomy, co-working, hospitality and performative formats – as a powerful remedy against digital disruption. €29
THE THEATRE OF WORK Clive Wilkinson
FUTURE FOOD TODAY A Cookbook by SPACE10
This book proposes six humanistic principles that will inform a holistic and collaborative workplace design – each demonstrated by the award-winning work of Clive Wilkinson Architects. €39
Straight from the test kitchen of IKEA’s research and design lab SPACE10 comes a collection of future-proof and delicious recipes. €39
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Courtesy of Nudes
frame lab
EDUCATION As we highlight over the following pages, some consider the classroom to be the ‘third educator’ alongside teachers and parents. It would therefore be fair to call the current Covid-19-induced absence of the classroom a crisis. However, it has also provided the opportunity to reassess the vital role the classroom plays in preparing children (and increasingly adults) for an ever more complex world. Now is the time to redefine how we think of educational space as a physical, digital – and even immaterial – entity.
head space: how 2020 will help us redesign education for the better
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Life used to be so much simpler, didn’t it? A mere generation ago, most people still had a clear blueprint to follow that would take them from cradle to grave – a neat tripartite structure where you would learn for the first third of your life, work for the second and (hopefully) retire for the final third. This has been heavily disrupted in the last couple of decades, as careers-for-life become hazy memories, entire industries have crumbled and shiny new technological sectors have arisen almost overnight. This has been met with a rise in ‘lifelong learning’ as people scramble to retrain, meaning education spaces need to cater to ever expanding demographics – as far back as 2016, 73 per cent of Americans considered themselves to be lifelong learners (according to Pew Research Center) while 74 per cent had upskilled in the last year. What’s more, there’s been increasing scrutiny of whether the skills being taught in schools are still fit for purpose. As the Fourth Industrial Revolution in artificial intelligence and robotics takes hold, there’s a growing need for attendant industries in science, technology, engineering and mathematics – STEM jobs have increased by 79 per cent since the 1990s and are set to grow a further 13 per cent by 2027. Perhaps more counterintuitively, the opposite is also true, with so-called ‘soft skills’ in growing demand. Machines still struggle to make the messy, intuitive, creative leaps that come naturally to people, so a focus on skills such as emotional intelligence, creativity and aesthetic judgement is also growing. Dogmatic education systems have tended to focus on the grey middle ground, however, neither teaching specialist skills nor nurturing deep creative thinking, but attempting to blend a bit of both.
This may leave students woefully illequipped for the modern world. Covid-19 didn’t create these tensions, but it may just be the crisis that breaks the educational model as we know it. The classical economics term ‘creative destruction’ has come back in vogue in 2020, attempting to find small slivers of silver linings in the giant storm cloud that is the global pandemic. Derived from the 1940s theories of Joseph Schumpeter, creative destruction essentially posits that out of tumultuous crisis comes great innovation. It’s a hopeful outlook that recognizes the fact our house may be burning down, but asks what kind of phoenix could rise from the ashes. From this perspective, 2020 may not be an unmitigated disaster for our educational institutions, but rather a short-term shock that could produce long-term gains. The unprecedented disruptions schools around the globe have faced during this time may actually catalyse underlying trends that were bubbling away in the background, meaning that we’ll reach a more equitable, innovative and productive future model sooner than we would have without it.
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VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Letting students look beyond the whiteboard
It’s wrong to characterize all classrooms as luddite Victorian institutions, and although this may have some accuracy on average globally, there has still been a huge amount of digital innovation in physical education spaces in recent years. These pockets of innovation were peripheral before the pandemic, but have now had a spotlight shone on them, meaning that the niche could soon become mainstream. In recognition of the need for greater digital skills and competencies (92 per cent of future jobs will need digital skills and 45 per cent of jobs will require workers who can reconfigure and work confidently with digital systems, according to research from CBS’s ZDNet), ‘blended classrooms’ have been introduced at innovative institutions such as the Chicago-based Intrinsic School. This hybrid approach mixes online learning and testing with physical workshops and technologically enhanced classrooms, making for high-quality contact time as well as broad digital exposure. In 2018, Education Next found that the blended approach yielded a 91 per cent increase in maths and reading core competencies. In many ways, this is a replication of the Nordic model of education – 90 per cent of primary schools and 100 per cent of upper secondary schools in Sweden are classified as ‘highly digitally equipped and connected’ (mirrored in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, where over 88 per cent of schools meet the highly digital criteria). Just as we’ve seen with retail, digitally enhancing physical education spaces should not be interpreted as slapping a few iPads around the room – it requires a far more nuanced understanding of how to engage through technology. Google Creative Lab’s Project Bloks is a much celebrated example of how to make technology fun and accessible from an early age, as is the Montessori-approved Cubetto. The potential of VR and AR in education is also only just being recognized, with New Zealand-based companies Vector and Soul Machines recently launching an AI-teacher by the name of Will who was designed to have interactive conversations with children on subjects such as renewable energy. Digital innovation was clearly underway in niches before the lockdown, but its sudden imposition highlighted how far we still have to go – the education of an estimated 1.5 billion children (that’s 90 per cent of the children on Earth) was disrupted » 120
Frame Lab
To learn more about the history of Ancient Greece, users of Ubisoft’s Discovery Tour can embark on online excursions guided by historical characters. Knowledge is rewarded by unlocking unique avatars and personalization options.
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The undulating roof of MAD Architects’ Courtyard Kindergarten in Beijing, which is located on the site of a traditional siheyuan courtyard that dates back to 1725, transforms the limited space between the various on-site buildings into a colourful playground that functions as the main place for children to engage in outdoor sports and activities.
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Tian Fangfang
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Peter Ryle, courtesy of Ambience
market
146 Products releases: recycled, relaxed, reworked 156 Highlights from Copenhagen’s 3daysofdesign 160 Furniture that saves steel remnants from India’s landfill
3DAYSOF DESIGN TOP PICKS FROM COPENHAGEN’S DESIGN FAIR
MONTANA X FRAME EVERYBODY IN Calling on emerging creatives to conceptualize a welcoming workspace that breaks down office boundaries, the Frame x Montana challenge was won by Kathrine Barbro Bendixen of Studio KBB and Tanita Klein. Through their project Everybody In, which personifies furniture, the duo advocates for office interiors that represent – and help bring together – the various personality types that make up today’s workforce. The collage of cheerful office fittings creates a multifunctional space that turns the focus to sociability. montanafurniture.com
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Frame 137
TABLEAU AURORA Launched by flower studio-cum-gallery Tableau, which is housed in a 19th-century Copenhagen building featuring an interior design by Studio David Thulstrup, the sculptural Aurora vases sport a coating that resembles mother of pearl and are topped with a grid structure to arrange flowers. tableau-cph.com Michael Rygaard
MUUTO TIP FLOOR LAMP To extend their Tip Lamp series, Muuto is introducing a minimal floor and wall lamp featuring an adjustable head, opal diffuser and dimmer function. ‘I spent a lot of time polishing every single detail and combining them with the lamps’ inherent functionality,’ says designer Jens Fager, who aimed to strip the designs back to their very essence. muuto.com
FRITZ HANSEN LET™ LOUNGE CHAIR Suitable for both commercial projects and residential use, Sebastian Herkner’s Let™ Lounge Chair for Fritz Hansen centres on lightness and comfort. ‘The armrest is spreading its wings in an inviting gesture,’ says Herkner. ‘Thus the chair becomes an oasis to relax in. Light and precise, comfy and communicative.’ fritzhansen.com
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IRON PLAN India’s steel sector is a major contributor to
the country’s manufacturing output, but unfortunately to its waste pile, too. Large quantities of slag – a by-product of the molten iron processing industry – end up in landfills every year, heavily impacting the environment. But in the hands of Mumbai-born designer Rashmi Bidasaria, this trash is turned into treasure. To complete her Master’s at London’s Royal College of Art, she returned to her roots and joined forces with factory workers of recycling steel scrap foundry Southern Ferro Ltd to develop Dross, a series of tables and benches made out of rammed remnants. ‘The artefacts created through this process are meant to start a dialogue about the consumption of materials and manufacturing processes by allowing room for thought to develop a more responsible sense towards use of resources,’ she says. Words Floor Kuitert
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illion tonnes of steel slag m is produced worldwide each year, of which 12 million tonnes originate in India
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f this slag is utilized by o other industries, such as cement manufacturing. The remainder, however, ends up in landfills or on dumping sites
600+ mini steel plants in India – one of which is Southern Ferro Ltd – together produce at least 4 million tonnes of slag that’s unsuitable for cement production on a yearly basis
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are the costs a mini steel foundry has to bear for each tonne of waste material it dumps in a landfill. Bidasaria calculated that even by repurposing only 10%, companies could save about €5,000 a month
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people make up the families of the workers at Southern Ferro Ltd. All will benefit hugely from the additional income that can be generated by the sales of Dross’s collection items
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In Numbers
months is the time Bidasaria dedicated to co-create Dross. Many will follow. rashmibidasaria.com
