PREVIEW Frame #145 MAR/APR

THE NEXT SPACE ISSUE 145 MAR — APR 2022

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DARK RETAIL

LIGHT THERAPY VARIOUS ASSOCIATES REFILL REVOLUTION

Create, innovate.

Design.

www.kettal.com

inventor of adjustable lighting since 1919

midgard.com

CONTENTS 10

REPORTING FROM Valencia and Reykjavík

14 BUSINESS OF DESIGN

From Gen-Z hospitality to the refill retail revolution

Zhang Chao, courtesy of Various Associates

Sam Harris, courtesy of Nina+Co

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32 30 32

IN PRACTICE INTRODUCING

Shenzhen-based studio Various Associates

54 THE CLIENT Spotify’s Sonya Simmonds

Michèle Margot

44 INFLUENCER

Solar designer Marjan van Aubel

Frame 145

44 3

64

66

SPACES

Retail interiors turn out the lights, wooden buildings show the way forward (and upward), pet-friendly design is on the rise, and more

Urvirsion Co. / Zheng Fang and Tang Cao, courtesy of Various Associates

116 WELLBEING LAB 118 The healing power of humanized lighting 140 What’s next for health-first illumination?

Michael Rygaard, courtesy of Tableau

Patrick Degerman, courtesy of White Arkitekter

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Bjørnar Øvrebø, courtesy of Snøhetta and Studio Plastique

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82 150

MARKET

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IN NUMBERS

Contents

New releases from Herman Miller, Andreu World, Kettal and more Chromarama by Kukka in facts and figures

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

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Colophon

LIGHTS OUT?

Every Monday, a message pops up on my smartphone and laptop: last week your screen time averaged x hours per day (on average y% more/less than last week). I’m often surprised by how much time I apparently spend in front of a screen. That can’t be right, 6 hours per day!? And do I really pick up my phone 144 times a day!?

Too much screen time isn’t healthy. The culprit is the blue light emitted by screens, which suppresses the production of the ‘sleep hormone’ melatonin and causes the quality of our sleep to deteriorate.

It’s not just time spent using phones, laptops and other screens that messes with our sleep, though.

Exposure to a lot of artificial light in general is harmful to our health. It disrupts our circadian rhythms, or more simply: our biological clock. While there’s light, we normally stay awake. When it gets dark, it’s time to sleep. But spending all day in artificially lit rooms, at home and at work, and using screens late into the night, disrupts our natural rhythm, causing us to sleep poorly and feel bad.

The pandemic has held us in an iron grip for the past two years, but one of its benefits is that it has made us much more attentive to our health and wellbeing.

So it was only a matter of time before the use of light in spaces also came under scrutiny. In this issue’s Lab, we show how human-centric lighting can improve our circadian rhythms. We take a look at the three sectors that are most probable to undergo a lighting revolution: the health space, the workplace and the home.

But it doesn’t stop there. The Look Book focuses on the role of light in retail. Better said: the lack of light, which is causing shops to take on an austere and mysterious appearance. ‘Released from the prevailing moral imperative of participation and self-becoming, the consumer is free to unspool and unwind in moody, oppressive reverberations,’ Rosamund Picton and Kourosh Newman-Zand write about this monochromatic dark wave.

Finally, we’ve given the word to Marjan van Aubel, the designer who became an activist and instigated the solar movement. She wants to bring scientists, designers, policymakers and industry together to convert sunlight into energy that is accessible to everyone. ‘We could be generating solar power from every available surface,’ says Van Aubel, ‘including our clothing and streets.’

If we have to look at screens, then preferably powered by solar.

Robert Thiemann Editor in chief 8

Editorial

Courtesy of Virgin Voyages

BUSINESS OF DESIGN

Sam Harris, courtesy of Nina+Co

How youth culture is reshaping hospitality. What packaging-free retail means for store design. Phygital venues for esports entertainment. How workspaces can tackle the loneliness epidemic. Sustainable restaurants enter a new chapter.

Courtesy of Mini

What if we could design spaces that could ‘give’ more than they ‘take’?

Courtesy of Aromatica

Business of Design

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Beauty brand Aromatica’s Zero Station is a zero-waste store in Seoul offering refillable products.

2

Who’s driving the refill retail revolution?

Shoppers making bigger commitments to reducing their carbon footprints are expecting the retailers they shop with to do the same.

Globally, sustainability is rated as an important purchase criterion for 63 per cent of consumers, according to a recent study by Simon-Kucher and Partners.

While the factors that make up eco-conscious shopping are broad – from seeking localized supply chains to buying seasonal ingredients – packaging is an area that has received a great deal of attention, due to its long-standing reliance on virgin plastic. A study by environmental organization Friends of the Earth found that the manufacturing of plastic is responsible for 5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Refillable alternatives to plastic packaging have risen in popularity recently, and as a result moved from being a quirky, hard-to-come-by retail service for die-hard sustainability enthusiasts to a mass-market option for everyday shoppers. Customers no longer need to supplement their weekly shops with a trip to an independent refill station, but can now opt for packaging-free alternatives in their favourite consumer packaged goods (CPG) stores, from a selection of their favourite brands.

Supermarket chain ASDA has just opened a third refill store in York – the UK’s biggest yet. The 18 bays stock over 100 branded and own-brand products sold in loose and unpackaged formats, ranging from Yorkshire Tea to Whiskas pet food. Through a partnership with Unilever, it’s also testing a new refill format that’s a global first: shoppers pick up pre-filled bottles from the shelf and return them in-store once used. This convenient option brings refilling

even closer to the regular aislebrowsing experience, and takes yet another barrier away from mass adoption: time.

But convenience isn’t the only way to convert more customers into post-packaging pioneers.

In fact, there’s a growing appreciation for the experiential nature of refilling your own lotions or cereals, with TikTokers taking to the video app to showcase the sensory pleasure that can accompany more sustainable shopping. Thus, there is an opportunity for retailers to capitalize on the viral obsession of Restock TikTok, which merges ASMR with the aesthetically satisfying nature of refilling containers with food, drink or beauty products. And with these videos amassing over 3.6 billion collective views, it’s not so much a niche youth subculture as a natural human appreciation for order. ‘I think people get boosts of motivation and satisfaction from watching the organizational patterns, colors, and shapes that come from structuring certain items in the same way,’ TikToker Stephanie Quinones tells Modern Retail, in turn offering a new way for brands to consider how to build visual campaigns for their refill retail ventures.

For grocery stores, the ability to self-select feels relatively natural – after all, we’re used to testing the ripeness of our own fruit and vegetables. But for other CPG industries, such as the beauty sector, more work is needed to make customers rely less on the shelf appeal of beauty packaging and help drive the cosmetic sector’s bulk packaging market, which, according to Market Research Future, is expected to be worth €13.5 billion by 2028.

French FMCG retailer L’Occitane recently opened its first Green Store in Sydney,

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Courtesy of Spotify

SFAP, courtesy of Various Associates

IN PRACTICE

A design is a failure if people find it hard to interact with it meaningfully Shao Feng

Pim Top, courtesy of Marjan van Aubel

Various Associates on combining the best of Western and Chinese design.

Marjan van Aubel on making solar energy accessible. Spotify on developing offices for hypergrowth.

VARIOUS

INTRODUCING

ASSOCIATES 32

SFAP

Shenzhen-based studio Various Associates – headed by Qianyi Lin and Dongzi Yang – has been boldly striving to subvert and rework the use of Chinese building materials in their most traditionalist, conservative form, and to introduce them in fresh, unexpected contexts. Lin and Yang discuss why it’s important to streamline narrative with design, their search for visual references that appeal to people the world over, and why they shy away from hackneyed ideas of good craftsmanship.

Words Amandas Ong Portrait Shao Feng

How was Various Associates established in 2017, and how has the studio evolved since?

QIANYI LIN: We left London in 2015 after completing our studies, and spent the following year looking for meaningful projects to pursue in China. One of our British ex-classmates from the Royal College of Art happened to be working in Hong Kong at the time, and after speaking to them, it became clear that there was space in the Chinese design market, particularly in Shenzhen, to do something creative.

We feel that for many years, the predominant approach to significant projects has been to go for a stereotypical vision of grandeur – marble, expensive materials, a ‘Cinderella’ feel. Initially, we weren’t sure if our experimental attitudes towards spatial design would gather currency in China, but after talking to several people in Shenzhen, we were encouraged to forge ahead. We don’t see Various Associates as a company; it’s more like a platform for like-minded individuals who value freedom in design to get together. That’s why our Chinese name is Wan She, with the latter character referring to the varied groups you find in society.

DONGZI YANG: Just as every person and every brand has its own unique DNA, our aim since starting Various Associates has been to explore and use unusual materials and visual effects. We strongly believe in the use of visual language through design to tell a story about the space.

PREVIOUS SPREAD Dongzi Yang (left) and Qianyi Lin cofounded Various Associates after studying at London’s Royal College of Art. OPPOSITE Beauty store Haydon in Shanghai’s The Bund references the area’s blend of retro and modern aesthetics.

You both studied at the Royal College of Art in London. In what ways has your education shaped your practice?

QL: I think there’s a large emphasis in Western ideals of design on fun and a sense of humour, both of which are really important. In China, because urban development has happened

Introducing

so quickly, it’s often the case that commercial priorities overtake the actual design – things have to be completed at a rapid pace. But that’s not to say that there’s no potential to combine the best aspects of Western design with Chinese ones. Studying abroad taught us the power of narrative in any given space. There’s so much we can do with poetic suggestion to evoke a certain response to design. For example, as soon as I start reciting the lines of the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai’s famous verse Quiet Night Thought, you instantly know that I’m trying to elicit a sense of nostalgia. We like playing around with these familiar references, seeing how we can incorporate them into our designs and, vitally, make them universal.

DY: I also really appreciated the open-mindedness of academic culture in the UK. That’s very important: disciplinary crossovers and a lack of boundaries can really benefit design. It’s the ability to ask ‘why not?’ when presented with unlikely combinations.

Have you faced any pushback within China, when presenting atypical design ideas?

QL: We’ve been lucky to have clients who like the energy we bring to the table. Ultimately, we’re also practical about what we can deliver within realistic timeframes, once agreed.

When we’ve offered our clients a variety of unorthodox design solutions to work towards, while remaining true to, and embodying, the spirit of their brand, I think the result is a success. I think that’s what keeps them coming back to us, because we’ve demonstrated a lot of thoughtfulness with each commission.

One of the studio’s core values is that ‘the method of driving everything is based on human experience, rather than any fixed design dogma’. Can you elaborate more on what this means to you?

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INFLUENCER

MARJAN VAN AUBEL SOLAR DEMOCRATIZER 44

In Practice

The first in a range of products that aim to integrate solar power seamlessly into daily life, Sunne stores energy during the day to produce ambient night at light.

Pim Top

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In Practice

There’s much more to solar energy than outdated photovoltaic panels. Dutch designer Marjan van Aubel has dedicated the past five years of her career to uncovering the potential of this technology: malleable layers of solar cells that can be applied to almost any surface in our built environment.

Developing tangible products and engaging installations – notably a contribution to The Netherlands Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020 – the self-proclaimed solar designer has set out to redefine what sustainability entails. Her ground-breaking designs reveal how this renewable and readily available energy source can be easily extracted and implemented. But Van Aubel’s ambition to get the word out doesn’t stop there. She’s one of the names behind The Solar Biënnale taking place this autumn, which will survey a wide range of innovations and highlight the pioneers pushing the industry forward.

Words Adrian Madlener Portraits Michèle Margot

Tell us about your background. How did a passion for solar cell technology emerge from your initial interest in material experimentation?

MARJAN VAN AUBEL: I developed a fascination for materials during my studies, which centred heavily on coming up with bespoke processes. At the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, I engineered a foaming porcelain process and used it to create large cabinets. I brought this experience with me when pursuing a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in London, where I began applying this technique to wood shavings and bio-resin. Based on this exploration, I developed the Well Proven Chair with James Shaw. What I realized during school was that design isn’t just about exploring how various materials behave or working towards set end results, but also about understanding what it means to design outright, to consider how objects are produced and the responsibility they carry.

I was first drawn to solar cells as a surface material that could capture and

transform light in an exciting way, which aligned well with my master’s thesis on the future of colour. I was inspired by the idea that this technology employs the properties of colour to generate electricity and do more than meets the eye. This complexity eventually became the basis of my work, but it wasn’t until 2017 that I decided to take a leap, hone my focus, and fully dedicate my practice to working with solar cells. Moving back to Amsterdam was also an impetus for this shift.

I became much more interested in collaborating with others, with like-minded experts based here, than just focusing on the material. I wanted to look at data and design things that could have a positive impact on the future.

The idea behind most of your projects is that solar cell technology is inherently accessible and can be applied to almost any surface. How did you make this discovery?

I first found out that you could make rudimentary dye-sensitized solar cells from scratch using readily available natural

Influencer

components like blueberry juice. Working with inventors like Michael Gressel and eventually manufacturers in Switzerland and South Korea, I learned how to refine the process and use more sophisticated elements like dioxide and nanostructures. Through this process, I realized how flexible the material is and its potential in different applications.

Produced using heavy and harmful synthetics like silicone, standard photovoltaic panels are limited and bulky. They’re developed without much consideration for design or aesthetics. I decided to conceive products that could better integrate into our surroundings and make good use of underperforming walls, façades, windows, tabletops and so on, solutions that are tangible, emotional and even fun. The lightweight organic transparent solar cell (OPV) skylights I developed for The Netherlands Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020 incorporated a playful combination of colour and pattern. They demonstrated that there are many ways to implement this technology.

Design is an integral tool that can help us make solar energy more accessible.

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Acrylicize

In Berlin, Spotify worked with architects MNA Merten Nibbes and TP Bennett to maintain the integrity of the historical building while softening its raw aesthetic.

THE CLIENT

SPOTIFY Sonya Simmonds ‘A new office reality is up for discussion and design’ In Practice

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How do you design offices for a company that’s in hypergrowth?

That’s what Sonya Simmonds set out to do for Spotify. Having previously worked for architecture firms in London and Stockholm on projects for clients such as Bloomberg, Schroders and the Discovery Channel, she’s now the global head of design and build at the world’s most popular audio-streaming subscription service. She explains how the team reassessed its strategy to create dynamic, flexible and experiential workplaces.

As told to Tracey Ingram

SONYA SIMMONDS: Spotify is in a period of hypergrowth, and has been for some years. Back in 2019, we started to assess how our real estate aligned with our growth and realized that something didn’t feel right. We were constantly running out of space, a story common to many growing companies. But if we looked out across our open office spaces with dedicated desking, we saw empty workstations. How could we need more real estate when our office floors felt and appeared empty?

The first step towards a solution was gathering utilization data on our biggest offices in Stockholm, New York and London. The apparent emptiness of our spaces was due to a variety of reasons. Like many companies, we had openplan offices with meeting rooms; since people weren’t comfortable talking in the former, they’d use the latter. We were also meeting-heavy.

Meeting rooms therefore became overbooked, but when people missed meetings, those spaces weren’t made available to others, resulting in underutilized space. In addition, when one of us travelled to another office with dedicated desks, we often had to sit at someone’s highly personalized workspace, which can feel uncomfortably imposing.

If we wanted to do a global rollout, we needed a solid plan.

So, we started listening to what people did and didn’t like, what they needed and wanted from our spaces. To me, a layered approach seemed logical, and the result was what we today call our Dynamic Workplace strategy. We were all set to start implementing this new strategy – and then the pandemic hit. But instead of pressing pause, we took the opportunity to push ahead while our offices were unpopulated.

Each Dynamic Workplace project starts with a raw base. We take the building and expose or retain as many of the existing features as possible to remain humble and true to the space. This approach also informed our future real estate strategy – we would be looking for interesting buildings and, as we became more established, we didn’t necessarily need central business district locations but could position ourselves in a city’s more creative sectors.

The next layer is the interior fit out. Up until 2019 every Spotify office looked different – it was difficult to define

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the Spotify office. We started to set global design standards and decided to hire local architects to make our base design locally relevant and culturally reflective. We usually approach three or four local architects after doing a lot of dedicated research to find the right fit for the job, including poring through magazines and staying on top of who’s winning awards. We’re looking for creatives who base their design on spatial experience rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. And we want their style, their personality, for them to bring something to the table. We don’t stipulate any design competition or pitch requirements – what we want to see is their true essence, what they stand for, and whether they align with our values: innovative, collaborative, sincere, passionate and playful.

For each project, we do a deep due diligence on the building as well as interview our local teams to understand who they are and what they need.

This helps us to set up a very clear baseline for the local architects, so that they don’t get too bogged down in guesswork. We also provide guidelines for furniture, sustainability and accessibility.

These guidelines indicate our main priorities – for example, it’s not important for us to have a piece of paper that proves we’re sustainable, but it is important that we follow sustainability practices.

As for the furniture, we suggest pieces that are sustainable and support the various ways our ‘band members’ work – that’s what we call the Spotify team, as all our employees are treated like one big band. We’ve moved away from a uniform, desk-ownership approach towards what our platform does best – it’s a system that allows for user choice. We want to offer spaces to use based on people’s mode or mood. Collaborative spaces are as equally important as focus areas, and we noticed that specific groups want different environments – after all, those in HR, finance and artist relationships are different types of people who work in different ways, so why shouldn’t each team have personalized environments? The furniture choices also needed to answer some of our aims for improving diversity and inclusion in our spaces, such as making enclosed retreat areas and enhancing acoustics.

The final stage in our new layered approach is about the experience, which was completely lacking in previous Spotify offices. When I joined, we were about to embark on an experiential project for 4 World Trade Center – 14 floors of

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In Practice

Located in LA, Spotify’s US production hub includes workspaces, studio production and viewing and listening rooms spread across three buildings.

The entrance is designed to reflect the feeling of arriving in a nightclub, with dynamic lighting for different moods.

Urvirsion Co. / Zheng Fang and Tang Cao, courtesy of Various Associates

LLAP, courtesy of DUTS Design

SPACES

Building smaller can promote innovation José Hevia, courtesy of Eeestudio and Lys Villalba

Zaohui Huang, Dison Mao, Peng Zhong, courtesy of Inspiration Group

Why retail is showing its shadow side. Plyscrapers reach new heights. Animals up the design ante for interiors. China’s parent-child retail revolution. The growth of the small-living movement.

SUSTAINABILITY

Plyscrapers

New ways of working with wood have seen the material emerge as a sustainable, circular solution for buildings tall and wide.

With the Sara Cultural Centre and The Wood Hotel, White Arkitekter aims to showcase how wood can be engineered as a sustainable structural material for complex and high-rise buildings.

Patrick Degerman

With awareness rising of the construction industry’s impact on climate change, the pressure is on to find sustainable, circular material alternatives to concrete and steel – two major contributors to carbon emissions. Concrete and steel are responsible for metropolitan skylines as we know them, where towering high-rises convert limited square metres into densely populatable habitats for living, work, education, leisure and more. Such towers can help to accommodate the 55 per cent of the world’s population currently living in urban areas, a figure that the UN expects to rise to 68 per cent by 2050. The question is, how can we resolve these two seemingly opposing issues, creating enough space for a growing urban population without exacerbating climate change?

Apparently, one answer has been under our noses the entire time: wood. ‘Two solutions to climate change are obviously to reduce our emissions and find [carbon] storage,’ said architect Michael Green during ‘Why we should build wooden skyscrapers’, a Ted Talk he gave in 2013. ‘Wood is the only major material I can build with that actually does both of those two things.’ Just 1 m3 of wood – a renewable material that can often be sourced locally, further reducing its carbon footprint – can store 1 tonne of CO2.

Wood has been around for as long as we’ve known, so have we simply been slow to catch on to its suitability for bigger buildings?

In reality, new technologies like mass timber

construction have made it possible to push such a low-tech material to its limits. That said, these technologies are relatively simple.

Glued laminated timber (GLT), for instance, is made by bonding together layers of lumber with their woodgrains aligned. Able to be used for longer spans, heavier loads and more complex shapes than reinforced concrete and steel – and with much lower embodied energy than either – GLT is perfect for columns and beams. Cross-laminated timber (CLT), on the other hand, is like giant pieces of plywood. Its layers are glued together perpendicularly to create uniform strength, making CLT ideal for walls and floors.

Due to the size and scale of these techniques, wood can finally move well beyond the bounds of 2 x 4 construction. Where wooden buildings once barely grazed the four-storey mark, we’re now seeing countries compete for the title of ‘world’s tallest plyscraper’. Just completed in Amsterdam, Team V Architectuur’s Haut claims to be the ‘first wooden residential tower in the world’ at 21 storeys. Skellefteå in Sweden recently welcomed a 20-storey, 75-m-tall project comprising the Sara Cultural Centre and The Wood Hotel, courtesy of White Arkitekter. Tokyo has plans to go much, much bigger: the city is proposing a 70-storey wooden building to commemorate its 350th anniversary, in 2041. In the meantime, many others will likely appear rapidly around the globe. And rapidly is apt: According to The

Guardian: ‘A whole year was saved by using wood [for the Sara Cultural Centre and The Wood Hotel], compared with steel and concrete, with a storey completed every two days.’

One major remaining obstacle is cost – or at least the perception of it. Stefan Prins, partner architect at Powerhouse Company, says that in his home base of the Netherlands, ‘the price of building in timber is still much higher than traditional methods of construction. I foresee this changing once our industry’s focus shifts to a building’s entire lifecycle. For the government, the environmental benefits of using wood will outweigh the price of the effects of concrete’s carbon emissions.’ What’s more, he adds, ‘designing in wood gives incredible possibilities in architecture. The speed at which technological developments are being implemented makes this material increasingly the best choice for the building industry.’ TI

30,000-m2 cultural centre and hotel

Jonas Westling

A small Swedish city is now home to one of the world’s tallest timber buildings to date: a 75-m-tall carbon-negative complex that comprises the Sara Cultural Centre and The Wood Hotel. The high-rise hotel in Skellefteå is comprised of prefab 3D CLT modules, while the low-rise cultural centre combines CLT cores and walls with GLT columns and beams. The trees used – which were both harvested and processed within 60 km of the site – have all since been replenished. whitearkitekter.com

Sustainability

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A rainbow tunnel welcomes visitors to KidsWinshare 2.0, a non-traditional retail space in a Chendgu shopping mall.

RETAIL

Sino Children’s Retail Falling fertility rates and a rapidly ageing population could spell disaster for China’s economy. But with the government’s new threechild policy in place, it’s a unique time for retailers operating in the fast-growing parenting sector.

Popo Vision

The business of families is a contentious one in China. Since the one-child rule was abolished in 2013, the government has been on a mission to encourage Chinese citizens to have more children – it even established a three-child rule in 2021 – in a bid to reverse its position as one of the world’s oldest nations.

According to China’s latest census, 18.7 per cent of its population is now over 60 years old. And with birth rates falling for a fourth consecutive year, experts speculate that the country could experience the lowest fertility rate in the world in the coming decade. However, with the economic burden of raising multiple children at the top of their

Spaces

minds, young adults are not necessarily looking to take advantage of the three-child rule anytime soon. ‘The mums who are having kids are now mainly post-90s and 99 percent of them grew up in single child families due to the one-child policy; they are very comfortable with a small-sized family,’ Chen Shu, senior business strategy planning manager at Balabala, a leading brand in China’s childrenswear market that boasts over 4,800 stores, told Business of Fashion.

With these milestone family-planning policies in the public eye comes renewed interest in the children’s retail market, where competition is heating up among

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All-day experience

Conceived by Panorama Design Group as an ‘imaginative parentchild world’, KidsWinshare 2.0 is a family bookstore in Chengdu with four key functions: retail, learning, dining and amusement.

The designers abstracted the colour and shape of a rainbow throughout the scheme to define the various zones. panoramahk.com

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Spaces

Retail

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FEATURED

LEARNING FROM CHINA A New Era of Retail Design As e-commerce uproots the norms and conventions of physical retail, Chinese retailers are showing the way forward. What can designers, architects and industry leaders learn from this melting pot of innovation?

A curated selection of 50 case studies, this book provides a window into the future of the industry. €49

store.frameweb.com

LEGACY Generations of Creatives in Dialogue A recipient of this year’s AIGA’s 50 Books | 50 Covers competition, ARCHITECTURE IS A SOCIAL ACT: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA] addresses how the discipline can be used as a tool to engage in politics, economics, aesthetics and smart growth by promoting social equity, human interaction and cultural evolution. €39

MOMENT Redefining the Brand Experience 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

Legacy is a star-studded, cross-generational compendium of key conversations with and between some of the most revered creative minds in recent history. It prompts a radical reappraisal of how we examine the concept of influence as an empowering call to action, one ultimately aimed at furthering innovation and intrepid experimentation. €39

WHERE WE WORK Design Lessons from the Modern Office The office isn’t dead. But just in what form will it live? As we think about the future of the office in a post-pandemic world, this book explores 51 ground-breaking workspaces, providing an indispensable reference tool for interior designers, architects and companies alike. €49

Thomas Meyer / Ostkreuz, courtesy of Gonzalez Haase AAS

LAB

Nick Wiesner, courtesy of Cinco Sòlidos

One of the critical components of health is light Michael Rygaard, courtesy of Tableau

Yohan Fontaine, courtesy of Ubalt

Artificial light. We’ve designed our modern world around it, but now it’s wreaking havoc on human health. With excessive screen time and light pollution contributing to the disruption of circadian rhythms, is it time we turned out the lights? Not necessarily.

As we explore on the following pages, designers are taking a more humanized approach to illumination by borrowing from nature.

In an immersive installation developed by the EPFL+ECAL Lab in partnership with the Ming Shan Centre, the intensity, rhythms and colours of light change during meditation in response to the user’s physiological parameters, such as breathing or heart rate.

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Frame Lab

Daniela Tonatiuh

LIGHT THERAPY

Why is light – something so integral to how we live – damaging us? Because light regulates circadian rhythms – the physical, mental and behavioural processes that determine our 24-hour cycle – telling us when to sleep and when to be alert, it’s only natural that being exposed to the wrong type of light at the wrong time will profoundly affect our biology.

Contributing to our reliance on light is screen time, which increased 60 per cent among Americans during the pandemic.

According to a UCLA study, this had ‘profoundly negative impacts’, such as disrupted sleep, which, in turn, disrupts the body clock.

Our always-on culture extends to our light-polluted cities, some of which are responding by shrouding themselves in darkness.

Pittsburgh, for instance, is dimming streetlights and using LED bulbs to lessen the impact of light pollution. Meanwhile, findings from a study conducted in Paris – a city that has founded an entire identity on illumination – suggest 95 per cent of residents would prefer it had fewer lights.

Spatial designers, on the other hand, aren’t removing light from their design toolboxes. Instead, they’re turning to solutions like human-centric lighting (HCL), which matches the motion, intensity and colour of sunlight, thus improving our circadian rhythms.

But how, exactly, can HCL replace conventional lighting, and where can we expect to find it? ‘Any space that has a prolonged absence of solar lighting: where a person spends the majority of time,’ believe Catalina Maldonado and Demian Ezequiel Epsztein of LED lighting brand Actilum. Drawing from this, we investigate three sectors awaiting a lighting revolution: the health space, the workplace and the home.

Words Eva Gardiner

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Neuroaesthetic design No longer defined by blinding white strip lights, health and wellness hubs are primed for a great recasting of light.

OPPOSITE Lighting plays a key role at Post Service in Copenhagen, an alternative therapy environment to support those dealing with grief and death. The design by Tableau includes a care room and two private infrared saunas, whose light temperatures can adapt to personal preferences.

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All signs are pointing to the fact that light can pose a very real risk to our health – and to the healthcare system. With exposure to excessive artificial light during night-time hours linked to numerous health issues – from increased risk of obesity to sleep issues and mental health disorders – healthcare spaces such as hospitals, general practices, mental health facilities and even therapists’ offices are good places to start implementing humancentric lighting (HCL) concepts.

‘I would strongly advise you that one of the critical components of health is light,’ explained Kurt Ward, senior design director at Philips Healthcare, at Frame’s October 2021 think-tank The Next Space. He went on to explain that Philips has been able to reduce the recovery time for patients in intensive care units (ICUs) by as much as 15 to 30 per cent by mimicking natural daylight and removing unnecessary night-time light.

‘It was simply about helping the body do what it needs to do.’ » Frame Lab

Michael Rygaard

Yohan Fontaine

In transforming a former data centre with limited natural light into a flexible Parisian home, Ubalt worked predominantly with white to bounce luminance around the space.

The well-tech home While circadian lighting gains pace in public spaces, designers should not forget that the home will remain an important sanctuary where light can nourish our bodies and minds.

The home has undergone a sea change in recent years, shifting from a place for temporary moments of downtime to a place for resting, socializing and working. While this revaluing of the home has affected every part of our life, its relationship to our health and wellbeing has been particularly catalytic. Part of this stems from the fact that we’re now expected to separate the various activities we use our residences for, such as learning to switch into rest or childcare mode after a day of working without the natural partition of commuting.

Studies show that a sense of kinship towards our home is central to maintaining good health. According to Ikea Retail, 40 per cent of people who felt more positive towards their home in the last 12 months also saw » Wellbeing

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their mental health improve. But progress needs to be made if we are to make the home an alimentative space – starting, naturally, with the quality of light.

Recognition of the neuroscience of light is finding mainstream appeal among consumers, according to Rowena Gonzales, founder and creative director of Liquid Interiors. ‘People are really understanding lighting scenes and the way they affect mood – like how a dim light to wind down makes you feel sleepy,’ she explains, highlighting ‘wakeup lamps’ that mimic sunsets and sunrises as a simple but effective way that people are investing in their circadian health.

Product innovations such as the wakeup lamp or apps such as Sunn are good places to start for circadian-curious consumers looking to offset the artificial glares of their screens. But soon residents will be demanding these systems be embedded in their buildings before they even move in. Samuele Sordi, chief architect at design studio Pininfarina, is seeing ‘greater implementation of circadian lighting systems with tunable, white lamps to further improve wellbeing’ in its architecture developments.

As awareness rises, and work-fromhome arrangements continue to be a mainstay of many working weeks, human-centric lighting (HCL), as a relatively affordable technology, offers an entry point into the wider smart home market. ‘What is most exciting about

this category is that the cost for the general consumer has finally come down, so that having lighting systems with circadian rhythm is more affordable, and there are many more options than there were even two years ago,’ notes Ian Bryant, director of strategic partnerships at home technology association CEDIA. Affordability is undeniably a major step towards mass adoption for the home HCL market. But for those looking to develop holistic, long-term solutions that truly impact people’s lives, the real opportunity lies in niche developments that are targeted at specific demographics. Take elderly consumers, for example. This market is primed for major growth in the coming years, as powerful nations such as China, Japan and the US experience a rapidly ageing population. Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world’s population aged over 60 is expected to nearly double from 12 to 22 per cent, according to the WHO. A report by Graphical Research on Asia’s HCL market is evidence that this type of lighting infrastructure can have a positive impact on the recovery of elderly patients. It’s also important to note that many older consumers suffer from visual issues, spending most of their time indoors with limited access to sunlight, which can adversely affect their eye health.

This issue was high on the agenda for Sunrise Senior Living, a state-of-theart living complex for elderly residents that recently opened in New York’s Upper East »

The future of regulating our circadian rhythms lies in personalized lighting that is adaptable on a hyper-individual scale 136

Frame Lab

Yohan Fontaine

Franz & Fritz was responsible for the supplementary artificial illumination at an Ubaltdesigned flat located on the outskirts of Le Marais (also pictured on p. 134).

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Conventions surrounding office norms have vastly changed

Lower-impact design with recycled materials, self-built furniture, modular seating solutions, versatile collections for in- and outdoors, and freedom-focused setups for agile working.

TARKETT DESSO AIRMASTER Able to reduce the concentration of harmful dust particles in the air, the Desso AirMaster carpeting series by Tarkett has already helped offices achieve better air quality. Now available in plank form, the Savera and Savera Shades not only offer a functional design, but also an interesting aesthetic in the workplace – with 24 shades in the Savera and Savera Shade lines, an array of floor designs are possible. tarkett-group.com

TABLEAU X DINESEN CONNIE-CONNIE The concept of the Connie-Connie café in Copenhagen was thought up by Tableau and Ari Prasteya, coming to fruition at the hands of 25 artists, designers and architects. This group of creatives were tasked with designing unique chairs and benches with off-cut pieces of wood provided by Danish wood company Dinesen, which wanted to extend the lifecycle of the scrap pieces. tableau-cph.com dinesen.com

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MUUTO FIBER CHAIR IN RECYCLED PLASTIC ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ is an adage that Muuto has taken quite literally. With its own name meaning ‘new perspective’ in Finnish, the brand does exactly that with the relaunch of the now iconic Fiber Armchair and Side Chair. Having initially released the plastic shell chairs in 2014, Iskos-Berlin has reinterpreted the pieces, namely their materials, to achieve a refreshingly lower-impact design.

The shells of the chairs utilize a new composite material developed by Muuto. It consists of at least 80 per cent recycled plastic – recovered postindustrial waste from eyewear manufacturing – mixed with up to 25 per cent FSC-certified wood fibres.

Muuto’s drive to establish and live out ‘new perspectives’ – something that involves a continuous questioning of its approach and methods – is reflected by sustainable initiatives that include the increased use of recycled materials. The company believes that taking the leap from virgin to recycled plastic for production is an ambitious starting point in becoming more circular in its consumption of raw

materials. By making the switch to recycled plastics, the brand expects to save over 50 tonnes of virgin plastic in 2022 alone.

While material sourcing is an important aspect of sustainability, the long-lasting quality and aesthetic of products is also something Iskos-Berlin considered – after all, an enduring design is much more sustainable than a passing trend. For that reason, the Copenhagen-based designers stripped the chair of all unnecessary layers to arrive at what they describe as an ‘iconic form’ that marries the tactile wood-fibre composite with ‘soft, embracing curves’.

According to Muuto, reimagining the way the brand works with recycled plastic has resulted in a product that’s strong and durable enough to endure daily wear and tear while matching its distinctive palette. With versatile applications for a variety of spaces and available in Muuto’s signature colours – black, dusty green, grey ochre and white – the Fiber Armchair and Side Chair prove their longevity in both aesthetic and use. muuto.com

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