PREVIEW Frame #141 JUL/AUG

THE NEXT SPACE

Can design solve the housing crisis?

Why flexible retail is the new pop-up shop Decoding the true value of ‘third space’ The renewed relevance of the members’ club Why hotels should refocus on sleep Neha Singh on experiential e-commerce ISSUE 141 JUL — AUG 2021 BX €22.95 DE €22.95 IT €24.90 CHF 33.00 UK £19.95 JP ¥3,570 KR WON 40,000

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illustration Giacomo Bagnara

Domus Agenturen desalto@domus-agenturen.nl

Element — table design Tokujin Yoshioka 2013

Softer than Steel — chair design Nendo 2014

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CONTENTS

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10 REPORTING FROM

Los Angeles and Johannesburg

Andrew Meredith

Courtesy of Obsess

14 BUSINESS OF DESIGN

From the renewed relevance of the members’ club to the centralization of aged communities

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32 INTRODUCING

Tel Aviv architecture practice Baranowitz & Goldberg

Shai Gil, courtesy of Baranowitz & Goldberg

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IN PRACTICE

42 THE CLIENT R8 Property’s Elin Tufte Johansen 48 WHAT I’VE LEARNED

MoreySmith founder Linda Morey-Burrows 54 INFLUENCER Neha Singh of virtual store platform Obsess

32 Frame 141

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Joe Fletcher, courtesy of OPA

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UNIFOR

A workplace for wellbeing and collaboration

SPACES

A building that bends for its users, a school to empower young women

116 LIVING LAB 118 How design can help to combat the housing crisis 138 How could affordable housing expand its horizons?

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160

IN NUMBERS

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Courtesy of Tom Dixon Studio

MARKET

Kenji Seo, courtesy of Pan- Projects and Haruki Oku Design

Iago Corazza, courtesy of MCA and WASP

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New releases from Flos, Cassina, Tarkett and more Pearson Lloyd’s Flow X in facts and figures

157 Frame 141

AXOR ONE — THE ESSENCE OF SIMPLICIT Y DESIGNED BY BARBER OSGERBY

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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 Zoe Bar-Pereg Translation InOtherWords (D’Laine Camp, Maria van Tol) Contributors to this issue Andrew Boyle – AB Angus Donald Campbell – ADC Simon Flöter – SF Dor Kedmi – DK Adrian Madlener – AM Andrew Meredith – AM Shonquis Moreno – SM Kourosh Newman-Zand – KNZ Riya Patel – RP Rosamund Picton – RP Mimi Zeiger – MZ Cover Softie house by OPA in Mill Valley, US (see page 68) Photo Naaro

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Build back better You might have forgotten it in the midst of the corona mess, but in addition to the climate challenge we also have a housing crisis to solve. According to the UN, 3 billion people will need access to a home by 2030, which means that 96,000 affordable – and what, exactly, is affordable? – homes will have to be built every day. Is that even possible? And to what extent will this get in the way of solving the climate crisis?

Since 2018, I have experienced the extremely complex, polluting and slow way of building that is commonplace even in a developed country like the Netherlands. My family and I moved into a newly built flat on one of the eastern harbour islands in Amsterdam. Contractors have been building in this formerly industrial area since 2011, with 1,700 homes and 18,000 m2 of workspace to be completed by 2030.

If we assume that construction started in 2015 and will be finished in 2025, in ten years on average about half a house will have been built every day. So achieving 96,000 homes a day worldwide will require quite a few building sites. Or a different way of building.

For two years, I have looked out on the construction of a six-storey apartment building on top of a two-storey parking garage. It looks all right aesthetically, but the building process is downright archaic. A lot of concrete is poured on site, the shell has to be insulated and finished, and now that the building is finally standing, the interior has to be built. And cranes, concrete mixers, reinforcement material and trucks have been coming and going the entire time.

Is there no other way to build? Cleaner, cheaper and above all faster? In this issue’s Lab, we investigate what designers and architects can do to solve these issues. We look at new materials, methods

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and master plans. Biobased materials such as mass timber, for example, deserve a broader application.

Wood has a significantly lower carbon emission than concrete as well as numerous other advantages: it guarantees a natural look and provides fine acoustics. The use of recycled plastic also reduces the carbon footprint of buildings – as well as the vast accumulation of waste.

The way contractors build is about to be revolutionized thanks to the availability of industrial 3D printers. The first printed houses are already being lived in. Besides concrete, 3D printers can use locally excavated earth as raw material, which makes the technology a lot more environmentally friendly than traditional building.

Ultimately, these innovations can only gain ground if all stakeholders in the building process work together – as soon as possible and as effectively as possible. Governments, developers, investors, contractors, architects and users: the earlier and more intensively they consult with one another, the greater the chance that homes will meet their needs without placing an unnecessary burden on the planet. The key to solving the housing crisis lies in co-creation.

Robert Thiemann Editor in chief

Editorial

What shapes your life?

More at roca.com /everything

Joe Fletcher, courtesy of Amangiri

Business of design

17 The rise of the ‘third space’ between home and office 23 Why hotels should refocus on sleep 26 The secret to the success of Chinese department stores

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Could retirees help revive urban centres?

Work will commence this summer on a Retirement Villages Group project to replace a 1960s office block and shopping precinct with 195 apartments for retirement living in the village of West Byfleet in Surrey, UK. Centred around a village square, it will feature a range of shared facilities for multigenerational use, as well as retail units, a wellness centre and community space.

Corrie Raine, courtesy of RVG

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Courtesy of Nord Architects and UHA London

Nord and UHA’s Co-existence Village proposal – intended to provide a home for some 300 dementia patients in the heart of a new residential district in Odense, Denmark – encourages interaction between inhabitants of all ages.

In Frame 131, the last issue of 2019, we did a deep dive into the design of living facilities for senior citizens. The context then was that life expectancy was booming, with predictions of a 4.4 year rise over the coming two decades according to research published in The Lancet. The same study predicted that, in leading nations such as Japan, Singapore, Spain and Switzerland, most citizens living in 2040 will likely live to see their 85th birthday. The caveat was that, while we were forecast to live longer, we weren’t necessarily living well during those final years. Could the design of care homes and retirement communities – a typology long lacking in innovation – help overcome that?

2020 quickly reasserted how poor much of the extendedcare home stock across the EU and the US really is. Not only did retirees find themselves in even greater isolation, already a problem present in many facilities, but it also left them vulnerable to disease and without easy access to the most basic medical and social infrastructures. For the high percentage of residents suffering from some degree of dementia, the psychological

trauma caused by a lack of care, continuity and community was as big a threat as the virus itself. The results don’t bear repeating.

What does bear consideration was how some of the nascent projects we profiled a year and a half ago might have improved the quality of life for potential residents during last year’s cyclical lockdowns. The most compelling focused on integrating senior citizen communities more closely into urban life, rather than segregating them on the periphery, allowing them greater independence and support. As Morten Gregersen, partner at Nord Architects, commented at the time: ‘Patients don’t want to be hidden, but to be a part of the natural life in the city.’

Nord, in collaboration with London-based architecture firm UHA, had just unveiled its Co-existence Village proposal, intended to provide a home for some 300 dementia patients in the heart of a new residential district in Odense, Denmark.

Here the focus was as much on the urban context as on individual units: the scheme places residents with dementia in the central part of the neighbour-

hood, away from car traffic.

‘The principle was to design a community where you can grow up – there is a kindergarten – and where you can stay until the very end,’ says Jonas Upton-Hansen, a founder and managing director at UHA. ‘It’s about social sustainability and about designing to encourage interaction and where people can help each other.’

While Co-existence Village set a high-water mark for such facilities, one silver lining of the pandemic could be that it makes its core principle – reintegrating such communities into the wider population – more attractive.

Retirement Villages Group (RVG) has just announced a £2 billion investment boost to develop properties at over 40 UK sites, responding to the demand for more later-life accommodations set close to town and city centres. ‘The current options for people looking to downsize are not good enough,’ says CEO Will Bax. ‘We want to change that by putting older people back at the heart of our communities and building homes that enable them to live rich, connected lives safe in the knowledge that support is

Business of Design

available when, but not before, they need it.’

Such developments could offer much-needed stimulus postpandemic. Back in 2019, insurance and pensions group Legal & General launched a similar plan with the assertion that businesses would see great benefit from the grey pound. ‘Do we have a role in reviving high streets? Absolutely,’ Phil Bayliss, chief executive of L&G’s Later Living division, told The Guardian. ‘We will be bringing footfall back to cities, we will be bringing the elderly back.’

The rise in distressed real estate caused by Covid-19 is creating new opportunities for exactly these kind of projects. There are reports of hotel operators exploring the potential to convert some of their portfolios into senior residences, while mall and shopping centre operators are exploring similar solutions. ‘The idea of investing patient capital or pension fund money to build higher-quality housing for older people, while at the same time contributing to the post-Covid renewal of towns and cities, is exciting,’ says Bax. PM

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Shai Gil, courtesy of Baranowitz & Goldberg

In practice

32 Baranowitz & Goldberg on bringing a foreign flavour to Israel 42 R8 Property on a people-centric approach to sustainability 48 Linda Morey-Burrows on why the open office is unbeatable 54 Neha Singh on upping the engagement of e-commerce

Tel Aviv-based architects Sigal Baranowitz and Irene Goldberg explain what Israel’s relatively short history means for the country’s design dialect, how to create strong brand spaces that express the inhabitant’s identity, and why they would like to be respected as architects without the addition of the adjective ‘female’.

Words Floor Kuitert Portrait Dor Kedmi 32

In Practice

Introducing

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Baranowitz & Goldberg developed custom-designed elements for the showroom of stone and marble manufacturer Fervital to show the possibilities embedded in the brand’s materials.

Amit Geron

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In Practice

The paths of Irene Goldberg and Sigal Baranowitz first crossed when they collaborated with Pitsou Kedem on the design of an Asian restaurant in Tel Aviv. The way that Goldberg’s specialization in luxury private and residential design complemented Baranowitz’s background in interior architecture and commercial spaces gave them both a taste for more. Hence why in 2017 they founded their namesake practice.

‘We are like a stunt pilot and navigator duo constantly swapping roles,’ says Goldberg.

‘We dare but we do so with a clear understanding of a project’s possibilities and restrictions. Nonetheless we never get tired of trying to stretch the limits.’

How has your studio grown since its foundation?

IRENE GOLDBERG: We were lucky enough to ‘hit the ground running’ both creatively and business-wise when we first set up our own practice. We collaborated before and already had joint ongoing projects at the time.

SIGAL BARANOWITZ: Over the past years we became more fluent in the language of management. We started off with a team of five including the two of us and we are now at seven, which we believe is our lucky number. We took a metaphorical blood oath not to grow beyond our means and by means we mean our ability to take a leading, active and present part in every detail of the projects that we do. We also managed to gain more trust from the local Israeli audience, which was one of the big challenges and an important milestone on our journey. Now that our projects are receiving more exposure it’s getting easier to gain commissions. The choice to work with us is not a blind leap of faith anymore. We enjoy a greater freedom of speech, architecturally speaking.

You both had very international educations and brought that back to Israel. Were you seen as – or did you feel like – ‘outsiders’ upon return?

SB: We never felt like outsiders but instead like the bearers of good news, so to speak. Israel is very different from many other countries. We are a young culture that is very often referred to as a melting pot of heritage and influences.

Our history is the product of many different countries and cultures and so the Israeli dialect of design does not have its own true roots. One could argue that that’s a liberating situation when it comes to design. When we returned from abroad with a bag full of foreign cultural references, history, methodologies, thoughts

and work, we felt we had the chance to help shape a brave new world.

IG: Awareness of good design and architecture, and the impact both can have on our society, were not high on the list of priorities of this country. Growing up in the Middle East, we were raised in a complex reality. This complexity formed a belief that our future is always at risk. This shaped us as a country of the here and now.

Spiritually that’s a wonderful concept, but as designers it can be frustrating, as we face a lack of respect for the quality of craftsmanship and the time needed to develop good designs and architecture. There are very talented people here in Israel, and the venues for their expression are expanding, but it’s a bit of a jungle in terms of the dialogue between entrepreneurs and service providers. It is, beyond anything else, a cultural issue.

How would you describe your design philosophy?

IG: Our design process is deeply rooted in intuition and emotion and we like to think of it as a playful balance between art and design. But however artful our interpretation might be, it must be grounded in good solid functionalism. So in other words, we strive to design grounded yet ground-breaking experiences.

SB: When presented with a new commission, we listen attentively to the client’s brief. We look for the subtext and for anchors in the stories to develop a strong concept, which is then interpreted into architectural gestures. Our gestures are broad and based on a palette of natural materials and calculated compositions. The play of void and mass is a recurring theme in our designs – we use it to create what we refer to as elegant drama. We enjoy exploring materials and using them in an unexpected form and

Introducing

context. We challenge both ourselves and our clients to step outside of the comfort zone in order to create spaces and objects that defy the norm and open doors for new ideas, new human interactions and new experiences.

Can you give an example?

IG: Take the Jaffa Penthouse. Its design draws inspiration from the stage it is set in – the historical glory of the Old Jaffa neighbourhood, the beautiful views of the sea and Tel Aviv’s skyline and its White City heritage. The juxtaposition of old and new, history and modernity prompted us to explore the space in between. The residents’ modern lifestyle, as well as the 360-degree panoramic views, called for a spacious and open layout. However, walking through Jaffa’s narrow alleyways, the romantic notion of exploration comes to mind. Not all is ever revealed at a glance. Each turn exposes a new story. It was this idea of layered spatial experiences that unfold as one moves through the space that we interlaced into the design and layout of the Jaffa Penthouse, promoting a true sense of home with intimate spaces to enjoy with family and friends.

SB: We designed a series of sculptural partition walls in stone and wood that create a harmonious sequence of separations between the different spaces. They act as ‘split masses’ – on the one hand they divide and on the other they connect. They offer a framed glance of what lies beyond.

What’s Tel Aviv’s architectural legacy like and in what way does it inspire your work?

SB: Its most beautiful legacy, and the one that inspires us most, is the International Style and its Bauhaus influences. The White City, which is a collection of 4,000 functional International Style buildings, was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site

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Ivar Kvaal

42

In Practice

Elin Tufte Johansen, chief human officer and head of sustainability at Norwegian commercial real estate company R8 Property, discusses her company’s ambition to become climate neutral, how proptech can cater to the era of decentralized work, and why she is an advocate of activitybased interiors.

Torunn Stavran Johansen

As told to Floor Kuitert The Client

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R8 Property, the real estate company behind the Snøhetta-designed, energypositive Powerhouse Telemark building in Norway, is on a mission to set a new standard for sustainable property development that benefits both people and planet. Through a portfolio that focuses on high-end office buildings and with subsidiaries that span co-working and proptech, the Scandinavian company shows that reducing its industry’s ecological footprint is about more than green construction and involves sector-wide knowledge sharing, systems thinking and flexibility. But most of all: a people-centric approach – which is why chief human officer Elin Tufte Johansen is an integral part of the teams behind new projects’ design processes.

Putting people at the centre of property development

ELIN TUFTE JOHANSEN: From our in-house team to our tenants: people are the driving force behind everything we do. Since the start of R8 about ten years ago, our human-centric organizational culture has been one of our main characteristics. We genuinely believe that our employees are our true gold. In my role, I’m responsible for the company’s human resources. I make sure that, at all times, we have the competence we need to achieve our strategic goals. In doing so, our corporate culture is key.

It attracts talent and helps that talent to develop further.

American author Zig Ziglar once said: ‘You don’t build a business. You build people, and then people build the business.’ It’s a mindset that influences both the way that we do business and informs the way we develop projects.

Buildings aren’t built for their own sake. They are there to serve the people that inhabit them. Neither are buildings isolated entities, but rather part of a community. This is just as true for commercial real estate as it is for housing.

That’s why we focus on the cultural aspect of a building.

How can we facilitate the best possible environment for its users? There should always be a link between culture and human behaviour and interior and design.

Pioneering in the real estate industry

We have set a clear ambition: to be a climate-neutral real estate developer towards 2025. Our ambition is to be a driving force when it comes to sustainable development and, by doing so, an inspirational force in the construction industry, which is responsible for almost 40 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions. We are accountable for what the planet of our future generations will look like.

There is no Planet B and our actions leave footprints for decades to come. As property developers we shape the environments people live their lives in, and we need to think beyond brick-and-mortar. It’s extremely important for our industry to be aware – and ahead – of the changes and challenges that are to come. We believe that technology and flexibility will be prerequisites for success in dealing with those challenges, so we’re dedicated to the development of modern and future-oriented commercial property, as well as systems that can help manage those properties more sustainably. Our mission is to leverage technology to enlighten collaborators, politicians, other

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property developers, tenants and society in general about the ways in which we can change how we build and manage property for the better. In doing so, sharing knowledge and competence with collaborators is important.

People prefer to learn instead of to be taught. Trust and courage are other important values. Powerhouse Telemark would never have been anything other than a crazy idea without it.

Overall, we notice that there’s a bigger focus on sustainability now than there was before. Tenants want premises that have sustainable and innovative technological solutions, and their feedback is that this is important regarding recruitment as well – especially when recruiting younger people.

Responding to rental market shifts

We have won the Norwegian Tenant Index six years in a row now, indicating that we have the most satisfied tenants in our country. But we have to stay alert and constantly respond to customers’ needs and keep up a close dialogue with clients. The rental market is subject to major changes. Although we are happy to have many long-term leases – often transcending ten years – we are noticing an increased demand for flexibility. There is a growing need for shorter-term leases, but also for more distributed workspace portfolios that allow companies to use different satellite offices that help limit the commute – and improve the work-life balance – for their workforce.

Hence we’re focused on acquiring properties at central hubs, easily accessible by public transport, and increasingly committed to providing co-working space in those hubs. One of our subsidiaries, Evolve Business Space, consists of 25 different co-working locations in southeastern Norway. Creating better opportunities to work from satellite offices is a new kind of sustainability thinking, as it saves time, money and the environment.

Optimizing occupancy

As I mentioned earlier, our aim is to use technology to create better experiences for people and reduce our ecological footprint while at it. With this in mind, we founded Orbit Technology last year. It’s a proptech (property technology) platform for office sharing at scale, with the purpose to better utilize buildings and reduce space waste. By 2030, 500 million m2 of new office

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In Practice

Ivar Kvaal

ABOVE Referred to as the ‘green diamond’ because of its shape and sustainability, Powerhouse Telemark utilizes photovoltaic cells on its south-east-facing façade and roof to generate energy: 256,000 kilowatt hours each year, approximately 20 times the annual energy usage of the average Norwegian household.

PREVIOUS SPREAD The material standardization of Powerhouse Telemark’s interiors results in flexibility of use, as it means tenants can scale their office spaces as needed.

The Client

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Linda Morey-Burrows – principal director of Londonbased MoreySmith – predicts the pandemic’s impact on residential redesign, explains why the open office is still the way forward, and anticipates a return to analogue.

As told to Tracey Ingram Photos Andrew Meredith

What I’ve Learned

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Linda Morey-Burrows set up MoreySmith in 1993 as an inclusive and collaborative studio. Above, a model of MoreySmith’s entry into the BCO NextGen Design Competition (foreground) and a sample of a screen designed by the Verhoeven Twins (background) reveal what the team is working on.

LINDA MOREY-BURROWS: I started working as a designer in London when I was 20, in 1984. I was pretty much the only woman in any meeting I ever went to – all my clients were men, as were my bosses. Women typically had supporting roles. It was quite intimidating. One of the last practices I worked for was a really large architecture firm, about 250 people. I was probably the most senior female at the time, but all the partners were men.

We worked at rows of desks and everything was grey. If you smiled too much, they’d say something like: ‘Don’t smile, it makes you look silly.’ There was no encouragement at all. That’s why, when I set up MoreySmith in 1993, I wanted to create a studio environment where everyone felt happy. And I wanted it to feel creative and natural – I didn’t want rows of desks. We always use lots of natural materials, like timber. Visitors tell us the studio has a lovely feel about it – the combination of the design, colours and materials and the fact that it’s not densely occupied. That’s how we design for others, too. These kinds of interiors feel more inclusive. Many men have grown up in macho environments, but I think they also prefer something more natural and homelike.

People like to put designers in boxes, don’t they? They design hotels, they design residences, they design workplaces. But we love working across disciplines, and I find that

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In Practice

one feeds the other. If you just do corporate work, you can get lost in that world. Same for residential. But a good designer can design anything. Nonetheless, we are seeing more enquiries for residential projects at the moment. People have spent so much time at home lately. They’ve looked around and realized they want more from where they live.

I think there’ll be an increased demand for areas at home that are solely for work, separated in some way from the living space. That’s one thing people have struggled with during lockdown – the lack of definition between private and professional life. People can’t switch off. Personally, I don’t like working from home. I’m a people person and I feed off the energy of others. That said, I’m lucky to have a house that at least offers a variety of working areas.

I don’t like working in one spot. If I’m doing something creative, I want to be near light and music. If I’m doing something quiet, I’ll go somewhere else. It’s the same in an office. We need freedom and choice and flexibility.

Two of our biggest current projects are offices for Sony Music and CBRE. Even though we came up with the designs almost four years ago – they have long gestation periods – we haven’t had to change much at all in light of the pandemic. I think that’s because what

The office’s sample library and pieces of art – including When I met Francis Bacon

by Bob and Roberta Smith, on loan from Art Source – contribute to a creative atmosphere.

we’ve designed over the past ten years was already leading the way. It helps that we have a research arm. People have been worried over the course of the year and coming to us for advice: ‘What should we do with our office?’ ‘We’re on site, is everything going to be okay, or should we alter the design?’ Those sorts of things. If we’re not going out there and doing research and providing data, how will we be able to answer their questions?

With corporate offices there’s sometimes a density issue – clients tell us they need to squeeze more of their team into a space, usually by grouping people together on long tables. We always push back: nobody wants to work in what feels like a call centre. You’ll never get people to come back, especially now that they don’t necessarily have to work from a physical office.

I’m all for egalitarian, non-hierarchical environments. But I’m aware that some people have spent a long time climbing corporate ladders and have finally manged to land their own office. It’s a status thing, and many are reluctant to give it up. To coax them out of it, you have to spend a lot of time explaining the benefits to them. Their gain will be others’ gain, too. People shouldn’t underestimate the

What I’ve Learned

importance of mentoring and sharing knowledge. If the person you’re aspiring to be is locked in an ivory tower and you don’t get any time together, you can’t learn from them. And likewise, as my generation gets older, we need to have contact with younger people – there are things, like technology, that they know much more about than we do. We can create environments of mutual exchange.

I’ve always worked in an open studio environment, and personally I love working in open plan. With the future of the workplace in mind, we’ve developed a concept called Open Work. But ‘open work’ doesn’t mean forcing everybody to sit at rows of desks – like in a call centre, as I keep describing it. It’s about providing lots of different spaces so you can always find somewhere you feel comfortable.

There’s a tactic I use for people who are apprehensive about open-plan spaces, especially those who are used to working in quiet, private rooms. I ask: ‘When you were at university, were you not happy working in the open library there? Was it not quiet enough?’

Inevitably they agree that yes, as long as the area is quiet, then it’s great. Where you locate these areas is therefore very important. They can’t be along major thoroughfares or near a

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Neha Singh, founder of virtual store platform Obsess, explains how her company makes e-commerce more engaging, why she recommends brands to keep their virtual spaces lifelike, and what she believes is the next frontier for digitized retail.

Words Adrian Madlener Portrait Andrew Boyle

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In Practice

Influencer

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With most physical stores shuttered during the long months of quarantine, consumers turned to online shopping in droves for everything from essential goods to fashion and furniture. A recent United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report reveals that the global e-commerce sector rose from 16 to 19 per cent in 2020 and took in a whopping €22 trillion in revenue. Almost every company, large or small, had to reimagine their online presence and periodically introduce new features. VR and AR technologies like those offered by New York startup Obsess provide a wide range of retailers with the ability to re-create existing physical stores on their websites.

Established in 2018, the virtual store platform has become the go-to for brands as varied as Tommy Hilfiger, Samsung and Ulta Beauty. We spoke to founder Neha Singh about her flourishing business and the role design continues to play in this everchanging industry.

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In Practice

Tell us about your background and the motivation behind Obsess.

NEHA SINGH: I studied computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before working as a software lead at Google, where I helped program integrated advertising platform AdWords. During that time, I also fulfilled my desire to study fashion by taking classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). Though I never pursued the discipline, I decided to find a way to combine my two passions.

Joining luxury e-commerce marketplace startup AHAlife, I was tasked with creating a more intuitive shopping interface. However, I quickly realized that

it would be challenging to create a truly immersive experience using the standard thumbnail grid typical on sites like Shopify and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This search and filter template is something Amazon introduced 25 years ago to sell books and that most retailers have had to adopt for every other kind of product. If you wanted to do something different, you needed to invest in custom solutions and work with a large engineering team. Most e-commerce platforms still look and operate this way.

As the head of digital product at Vogue, I launched all of the publication’s US digital properties including Vogue.com, Vogue Runway, and several mobile apps. I worked directly with advertisers to create

Through an aggregated store concept called Shopobsess.co, Singh and team bring different products together in thematic stagings such as the interior of a private jet.

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Influencer

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Feng Shao, courtesy of Various Associates

Spaces

66 Why interiors are returning to the paleolithic period 80 The spaces helping retail put its flexible foot forward 104 How family members’ clubs are coming of age

Modern stone age CreatAR Images

Satori Harbor library by Wutopia Lab in Guangzhou, China.

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 Stone Age references are refreshed and used to provide respite from our age of ceaseless change.

Words Rosamund Picton and Kourosh Newman-Zand 66

Spaces

ArchExist

The Cloudscape of Haikou bookstore by MAD Architects in Haikou, China.

LEFT Soniah lamp by Faina.

BELOW Chair I by Simone Bodmer-Turner.

OPPOSITE The Cloudscape of Haikou bookstore by MAD Architects in Haikou, China.

Vova Klever

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Spaces

ArchExist

Flexible retail Kenji Seo

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Spaces

Pop-ups gained traction during the post-recessionary period of the 2010s, a time deemed too risky to invest in permanent locations. Today, facing new uncertainty in the world, we’re welcoming a fresh generation of stores that don’t just pop up and pop down again, but flex, morph and shapeshift.

We’ve written at length about retail’s key strategies for physical space in an increasingly online-oriented market. In short: create a destination, foster communities, engage your audience. But more recently there’s been another shift that’s less about what retail spaces offer and more about how they offer it. It stems from a growing consensus that fixed equals risky, whether that ‘fixed’ refers to a fit-out or a tenancy agreement. As retail expansion director Doortje van der Lee of eyewear brand Ace & Tate explained in Frame 140: ‘Traditionally retail has been about signing a lease for five to ten years and staying in one place . . . Landlords are starting to open up to different ways of working together, and creating modular stores gives us the flexibility to pick up our concept and go somewhere that we’re more needed.’

Tenancy may not be a designrelated concern, but spatial flexibility and modularity most certainly are. After also noticing landlords beginning to offer more adaptability instead of relying solely on fixed, long-term tenants, UK-based Brinkworth designed a solution for such a scenario at Belowground. Located in the basement of Hong Kong shopping mall and luxury fashion destination Landmark, the retail concept sees brands come on board to offer limited-edition drops and exclusive capsules for anywhere between a day and a year. ‘The space is equipped with a flexible infrastructure that fosters experimentation, allowing brands to test the waters,’ says Brinkworth director Emma Wynn, whose team designed a modular kit of parts that can be reconfigured for various setups. It’s a way of designing that focuses on facilitating the end result, not providing it.

‘The space is there to be commandeered by

the brand and its individual art direction,’ says Wynn, highlighting bespoke glass screens that act as canvases for the application of branded graphics. ‘We have seen many of the units both densely populated and completely pared back to allow for brand expression. When done successfully, this model of flexibility allows for a melting pot of different brands and personalities to exist in one space.’

Not just different brands, either, but young, local and independent brands that might not be able to shell out steep upfront costs. At places like Belowground, says Wynn, they’re ‘encouraged to thrive with minimal investment’. She believes ‘this flexibility is an integral approach for both brands and landlords as they navigate the times’. Erik MuellerAli – principal at global architecture, planning and design firm CallisonRTKL – agrees: ‘We should focus on providing smarter retail spaces that don’t need extortionate fit-out costs and can offer rotating, incubator-style pop-ups for emerging online and local brands to test the waters – think 100 m2 of unique/ customized products, not the 1,000-m2 Zara or H&M, whose merchandise is available everywhere, including online.’

Andrew Martin – founder of UK-based AMD Architecture – has seen a ‘huge demand from retailers who want to get back to the high street without the long lease commitment’. In response, he came up with a concept called Residency that caters for short- to mid-term retailing. Martin describes it as ‘a sustainable solution for temporary retail that works for landlords and retailers alike.

We manage everything, from the design of the space through to curating the brands, so it’s an easy and profitable option for all parties involved.’

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When lowered, The Playhouse’s dramatic silver curtain turns the retail space into a pop-up theatre.

To date, it’s been the backdrop for a dance show, a Sunday market and a talk session.

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Vinay Panjwani

By a woman, for women Architecture as an ally for social change. It’s a tall order, and one that may often be more aspirational than actual. Time will tell whether the Gyaan Center in India can live up to its goal of empowering young women in a low-literacy area, but its impactful design and planned future programme suggest it’s off to a good start.

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THAR DESERT ‘Instead of challenging the typical tropes of masculinity and femininity, Indian curricula and textbooks chronically under-represent women, show mostly men at workplaces, and introduce gendered standards of intelligence, beauty, strength and skill to impressionable students.’ Anna Rego and Shagun Sabarwal penned these words for The Times of India, arguing that gender equality should be tackled early. ‘Schools must do more to promote positive gender roles through their classrooms,’ they wrote, ‘and become an alternative platform that reinforces values of inclusion, equality and egalitarianism.’

That’s the situation in general – now consider those outside of standard schooling. In the region surrounding the desert kingdom of Jaisalmer, for example, female literacy barely reaches 36 per cent.

(According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the 2019 global literacy rate for females aged 15 and above was just over 83 per cent.) CITTA – a non-profit organization that supports development in some of the world’s most economically challenged, geographically remote or marginalized communities – is responding with the creation of the Gyaan Center. The design of the complex

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– which aims to equip young women with the tools to further their education and independence, as well as to bring global awareness to the issues faced by women in India – was commissioned to New York City-based architect Diana Kellogg after a chance meeting between Kellogg and CITTA’s founder, Michael Daube. ‘Michael doesn’t superimpose a one-size-fits-all Western idea of positive change, and I was inspired by that,’ says Kellogg, who worked pro bono on the project.

‘I saw how his existing projects had acted as catalysts for development beyond the specific region – a ripple effect extending far beyond the location of the project itself.’

The first of the Gyaan Center’s three buildings to be completed is The Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls’ School, which will serve more than 400 girls in the region who live below the poverty line. In time, the school will be joined by two more structures: The Medha, a performance and art exhibition space with a library and museum, and The Women’s Cooperative, where local artisans will teach mothers and other women region-specific weaving and embroidery techniques.

As an outsider, Kellogg felt the strong need to build according to local

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Spaces

ABOVE Helping to instil a sense of home pride and community in The Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls’ School students, the uniforms were created by celebrated Indian fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee using ajrak, a traditional block-printed textile common to the region.

OPPOSITE Local craftsmen – many of whom are the schoolgirls’ fathers – built the school from sandstone with their own hands.

Effekt Architects, courtesy of Space10

Frame lab

LIVING The shortage of adequate and affordable housing has become a global issue that needs to be tackled on many levels. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but what about solutions that adapt their size to fit all? Which new technologies could help us build faster than we ever have before? And what types of materials could help us pave the way?

How design can help to combat the housing crisis

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Frame Lab

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, also known as UN-Habitat, estimates that 3 billion people will need access to adequate housing by 2030.

Satisfying that demand would mean building 96,000 new homes every day.

Even if such a daunting task is possible, how should we be building these new homes? Not the way we typically have been, appears to be the consensus.

‘Looking from the outside in, it seems the common approach to creating more affordable housing today is a “let’s race to the bottom” approach,’ says Simon Caspersen of research and design lab Space10, ‘whereby we seek to offer lower pricing by building with cheap, pollutive materials, and cram as many people as possible into small, low-quality homes in big buildings on unattractive land, far away from where the promise of the city lies.’

The term ‘social housing’, in particular, carries a stigma. ‘What generally comes to mind are the failed housing projects constructed in the post-Second World War era, planned low-income communities that had become more blighted than the ones they were meant to replace and improve,’ says LOHA founder and design principle Lorcan O’Herlihy. ‘From an aesthetic point of view, much of the supportive/ affordable housing in the US still immediately conjures up the expectation of cheapness – both in design and construction – and blight that social housing did, a throwaway for people whose lives are considered less virtuous because they have fewer means.’

The problem is just as complex as the network of players involved in its remedy, and we’re not saying the design industry has all the answers.

As UNStudio’s Ben van Berkel says, the issue ‘encompasses many scales and requires dedicated action from

multiple stakeholders. We really do believe that these stakeholders need to work together to find integrated solutions.’ But, he adds: ‘As one of the actors in this network, we also believe it’s the responsiblity of architects and designers to devise specific and progressive design solutions to tackle the issue.’

Because we’re not just dealing with a housing crisis, but also a climate crisis. At the same time, there’s a shift towards pooling resources and creating communities. We want – and need – our homes to be more flexible than they’ve ever been. So, what can design do? We examine the materials, methods and master plans looking to answer that question.

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Methods Technology is rapidly opening the door for how we build, allowing us to construct homes at unprecedented rates. On the flipside, we’re returning to hands-on processes that empower end users.

Until recently, 3D printing’s viability as a large-scale production process seemed more fanciful than factual. But things are starting to change. In April, for example, a Dutch couple in Eindhoven became Europe’s first tenants of a 3D-printed house. ‘In addition to affordable homes, the market increasingly demands innovative housing concepts,’ said Yasin Torunoglu, alderman for housing and spatial development for the municipality of Eindhoven in a statement. ‘With the 3D-printed home, we’re now setting the tone for the future: the rapid realization of affordable homes with control over the shape of your own house.’

But what exactly is ‘rapid’? To use the Eindhoven house as an example: It has 94 m2 of living space and, according to one of the parties involved in the construction, the actual time needed to print the house – if they would have printed all the elements in one go – was 120 hours. That’s five days, the same duration it took for a 56-m2 printed home to emerge in Chennai, India. The Vulcan series of industrial-scale 3D printers – a collaboration between construction technology company Icon and housing non-profit New Story – can construct the wall system of 124

an entire house in just 24 hours of printing time. (These are the machines responsible for creating what’s being dubbed the world’s first 3D-printed neighbourhood, in Southern Mexico.) Compare these periods with results from the 2019 Survey of Construction from the US Census Bureau, which put the average completion time of a single-family home at around seven months. Not only that, but according to an article published on the World Economic Forum’s website, the Chennai home – the first of its kind in India – is estimated to be 30 per cent cheaper to make than traditional houses and to have generated less waste during the building process.

Most current examples are printed using concrete, a material that’s come under fire for causing up to 8 per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions. That figure is often put into perspective by comparing concrete to a country – it would be the world’s highest emitter after the US and China. A project in Massa Lombarda, an Italian municipality around 40 km east of Bologna, is out to prove that 3D printing can be fast and sustainable.

Known as TECLA – a portmanteau of ‘technology’ and ‘clay’ – the collaboration between Mario Cucinella Architects (MCA) and the »

Frame Lab

Iago Corazza

Whereas most 3D-printed buildings are made with concrete, TECLA is the first housing model 3D-printed entirely from local raw earth. The project is not just about overcoming the housing shortage, but about doing so sustainably.

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Submissions are closed but the journey continues.

Stay tuned throughout July and August as our jury panels vote and comment on projects.

Learn more on frameweb.com

Pete Navey, courtesy of Tom Dixon Studio

Market

150 Portable, crafted, tech-driven: a selection of the latest furnishings 156 Highlights from Milano Design City 160 Pearson Lloyd elevates the stairlift

MILANO DESIGN CITY Highlights from Milan’s phygital event

Federico Cedrone

ALPI WAVY FIR The wood-manufacturing experts at Alpi have paired up with London-based design duo Raw Edges to introduce Wavy Fir, a surfacing collection in two colour variants. Raw Edges drew inspiration from the ‘typical striped grain of fir and pine’ for the FSC-certified series, which is crafted from poplar wood sustainably sourced from Italian arboriculture sites. The designers, wanting to emphasize the intriguing graphic patterns of natural wood, opted to present the surfaces by shaping them into curvaceous forms. alpi.it

MEMPHIS MEDUSA TABLE Originally designed in 1982, Masanori Umeda’s Medusa Table for Memphis has been renewed for modern times. The piece was presented as part of Umeda’s Post Design collection Night Tales at Milano Design City. It’s a sculptural design that changes colour depending on the lighting and viewing angle thanks to a dichroic glass top, which projects hued shadows around a space. Its angular legs – a nod to Ettore Sottsass’s Murmansk fruit dish – are forged from steel. memphis-milano.com

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Frame 141

TOM DIXON STUDIO HYDRO What does one of the biggest energy and aluminium companies in the world have in common with British designer Tom Dixon? Together, he and Hydro, the organization in question, came up with an innovative, fully recyclable chair. Aptly named Hydro, the aluminium seats are blow-formed at high temperatures through a process called superplastic forming, then laser-cut by robots – previously technologies used only in the automotive industries. The limited-edition collection, manufactured in Canada by subsuppliers to Tesla, reveals new ways to utilize these methods for product design.

Pete Navey

tomdixon.net

ZANOTTA TWEED MINI Three coffee tables devised to complement large sofa islands, Tweed Mini is the work of Italian studio García Cumini. Part of Zanotta’s larger Tweed family, the tables can be used individually or in unison, providing users with practical surfaces in various heights. Thin sheets of solid oak and Canaletto walnut wood are used for their tops, and, when the triad is used together, their wood grain lines match up to pleasing visual effect. Tweed Mini’s tubular metal legs are welded to the matte black underside. zanotta.it

CAPPELLINI CORD German designer Werner Aisslinger’s Cord hanging lamps were among the Cappellini products featured at Amor Fati, a Milano Design City exhibition designed by Elena Salmistraro for the brand. Offered in two dimensions, the orb-like luminaires comprise two spherical caps made of ribbed mouth-blown glass and a black metal link.

The bottom cap is transparent while the top can be selected in a range of jewel tones including amethyst purple, emerald green and avio blue. cappellini.com

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