PREVIEW Frame #131 NOV/DEC

THE NEXT SPACE

HOW CO-LIVING CAN EXPAND ITS APPEAL

Axel Arigato reinvents streetwear stores Designing a home for dementia Suchi Reddy on the politics of place DDAA deconstructs the agile office Chinese hospitality’s surreal turn ISSUE 131 NOV — DEC 2019

BP BX €19.95 DE €19.95 IT €24.90 CHF 30 UK £14.95 JP ¥3,570 KR WON 40,000

5 .1 HIGH END SWITCHES & SOCKETS

fontbarcelona.com

CONTENTS 08 REPORTING FROM London and Shanghai

28 Courtesy of Döppel Studio

BUSINESS OF DESIGN Bespoke garages, point-of-rental

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strategies and diversity in design

24 MOOOI A lamp reborn Andrew Boyle

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IN PRACTICE

28 INTRODUCING Paris-based Döppel Studio 38 ROCA Online inspiration 40 A DAY WITH MoMA’s Ramona Bronkar Bannayan

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HAT I’VE LEARNED 48 W Suchi Reddy of Reddymade Courtesy of 0932 Design Consultants

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45 HOW TO Become an employee-owned business

55 THE CLIENT Axel Arigato cofounder Max Svärdh 60 DOMOTEX Giving the floor to wellness Frame 131

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65 SPACES From the agile office to a work-in-progress museum 66 LOOK BOOK Sino-Surrealism

Courtesy of Thomas Petherick

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106 INFLUENCER Thomas Petherick on sculpting sets 124 NEW TYPOLOGY Designing for dementia Courtesy of Wojciech Morsztyn

152 Yixiang Wang

161 MARKET Smart solutions for the home and highlights from London Design Festival 176 IN NUMBERS Underground Vol. II in facts and figures 2

Contents

174 Courtesy of Layer x Ræburn

133 CO-LIVING LAB 134 The pros and cons of communal housing 140 Cutwork on what’s missing in today’s shared spaces 148 The Conscious Co-Living watchlist 152 What do we want from co-living 3.0?

BUSINESS OF DESIGN

Courtesy of Aston Martin

P.14

Fashion rental enters the department store P.16 Insta-spaces prove their profitability P.20 Design’s diversity problem gets a new voice P.22 Car brands open architecture departments

Why fashion rental is not an e-comm-only play Courtesy of Lotta Nieminen and Marko Macpherson

RETAIL

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Consumer data showing customers wanted to try on clothes before renting has encouraged Rent the Runway to open several stores across the US.

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It’s a market that was worth 1 billion dollars in the US last year and was forecast to grow to 4.4 billion over the next decade according to GlobalData Retail. The boom in fashion rental has developed largely online, which makes a lot of sense, and not only because this is already where consumers prefer to buy clothes. A model that increases the turnover of items in an individual’s wardrobe benefits even more greatly from e-commerce’s economies of scale in relation to customer data and product discovery. If wearing 50 per cent more outfits per annum requires 50 per cent more time looking for those outfits, the paradigm won’t shift.

So why is fashion rental investing in brick-and-mortar venues? This spring Rent the Runway (RTR) opened its latest – and largest – location, taking 8,300 square feet (770 m2) of space in San Francisco. Then in August came the news that competitor rental service Le Tote had made the shock purchase of America’s oldest department store chain, Lord & Taylor. These moves offer a range of advantages: RTR’s property features a salon and a co-working space, both useful opportunities for brand stretch and reinforcement that couldn’t occur online; while for Le Tote, access to new product lines and a pre-baked customer base is invaluable.

Most important for the future of the rental industry, however, is that both moves seek to address a key pain point: convenience. These companies are working out that the path to purchase for buying and renting clothes isn’t the same. Fashion e-commerce has a massive returns problem, and that’s largely down to fit. Research

by Navar shows 41 per cent of people buy variations of a product with the intent of returning.

Business of Design

It’s a costly exercise for brands and was partially responsible for ASOS’s profit warning at the end of last year. This is only exacerbated by the turnover of garments in the rental business.

RTR already offers to send one free extra size for most garments, but that means a huge amount of stock is effectively unused. Add to that behavioural challenges – will general consumers be happy to potentially return an item several times to get the right size if they’re only planning on wearing it for a few months, or even just one party?

Indeed, it was customer data showing that subscribers also wanted to try things on that drove RTR to open stores in the first place. Le Tote cofounder Rakesh Tondon signalled a similar impetus behind offering optionality: ‘A lot of [customers] will buy, a lot of them will rent, they’ll come into stores and return online. We want to be able to offer customers the ability to do all of the above.’

Rachel Arthur, chief innovation officer of The Current Global, believes Le Tote had little choice but to follow RTR’s lead.

‘The only route for growth is to compete on the same customer convenience level,’ she explains.

‘Having physical spaces that can facilitate rental in a logistical sense is set to only increase.’

With many high street brands such as Urban Outfitters and Banana Republic developing their own subscription programmes, it won’t be long before developing point-of-rental (and return) strategies will be as important as point of purchase for store designers. PM renttherunway.com letote.com

FORM FOLLOWS PERFECTION

Setting oneself apart from the masses. Gratifying the need for uniqueness.

Striking out in a new direction. This is the mission statement of AXOR MyEdition.

Clear, linear design sets the stage for personal fulfilment. For one’s own creativity.

A personal statement. In perfection. axor-design.com

How visual excess is (still) powering a retail revolution

MERCHANDISING

Courtesy of Showfields

The House of Showfields installation integrates product displays within the context of theatrical performances and specially commissioned works of art.

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Two recent events prove that the Instagram economy has some mileage in it yet, at least stateside.

The creation of overt, maximalist interiors that score big on camerafriendly backdrops – if not on the traditional precepts of spatial design – remain both a crowd puller and, crucially, a lucrative business model.

First was the news that The Museum of Ice Cream (MIC), arguably the first venture to prove that you could do away with the pretence of any function beyond being a visual-first venue, plans to open a permenant location this autumn. The NYC space will cover 25,000 square feet (2,322 m2) over three floors. This follows the announcement that MIC’s parent company, Figure8, raised $40 million in series A funding in August, while MIC itself is valued at $200 million. That’s what happens when you create a pop-up with a 200,000-person waiting list. But the size of those figures is also the result of founders Manish Vora and Maryellis Bunn having worked out how to flip an eventsbased business (in which the space is the event) with massive social clout into a series of spinoff products and partnerships with the likes of Sephora and Target.

This product-second strategy is also proving its worth for another New York newcomer in retailer Showfields. Opened at the end of 2018, its store aims to introduce customers to unexpected brands while helping small and early-stage businesses generate engagement. It does this by curating an experience-led platform on behalf of its suppli-

Business of Design

2 ers, integrating their products into a wonderland-like environment far beyond what each would be capable of achieving alone.

This reached its ultimate expression in House of Showfields, a temporary multiroom installation that opened this summer and sits somewhere between art museum (there are bespoke commissions), immersive theatre and product showcase.

Slides, neon, projection mapping, mismatched furniture and attendant actors, it’s all here. The effect is stagey, entirely unsubtle, more-than-a-little-bit-fun and it works. The Lab, a more traditional retail space situated at the end of the experience – and where you can actually buy the products you will have stumbled across in the preceding rooms – achieved a fourfold increase in sales in House of Showfields’ opening weekend compared with the average, while the rest of the store has seen a 33 per cent increase in footfall. Going for broke, at least in terms of spatial design, still seems to be a pretty direct route to revenue. PM museumoficecream.com showfields.com

www.ton.eu

ginger armchair designed by Yonoh ES

www.andreuworld.com

Nuez by Patricia Urquiola

IN PRACTICE

Erik Undehn

P.28 Döppel

Studio on the difficulty of defining its identity P.40 Ramona Bronkar Bannayan on pushing MoMA to its limits P.48 Suchi Reddy on identifying the science of aesthetics P.55 Axel Arigato’s Max Svärdh on building a cult sneaker brand

Dร PPEL

Natives of Nevers, a city in France, Jonathan Omar and Lionel Dinis Salazar of Parisbased Dรถppel Studio discuss why they search for absurdity through friction, the power of portfolio censorship and how to know when a finishing touch is too much.

Words Anna Sansom Portraits Antoine Doyen 28

In Practice

STUDIO

Introducing

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The Gravity windows for Nike – which assess the juxtaposition of weight and balance, light and shadow, and matter and light – are based on work

by Döppel Lab, the studio’s research arm that feeds future spatial projects.

Lionel Dinis Salazar (31) and Jonathan Omar (30) founded multidisciplinary outfit Döppel Studio two years ago in Paris. Both hail from the town of Nevers in central France, where they studied product design together. Further education ensued: Dinis Salazar’s achievements include graduating from the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, while Omar earned a degree from HEAR, an art and design school in Strasbourg. Omar then returned to Paris, where the two friends began collaborating, united by their similar interests and multifaceted approaches. In the last few years, they’ve designed everything from furniture and eyewear to exhibition scenography. So what drives this duo? For starters, they extrapolate techniques from other sectors to create narratives that twist ideas and toy with the absurd.

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In Practice

Introducing

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Courtesy of Dรถppel Studio

Courtesy of Désormeaux/Carrette and Döppel Studio

The name Döppel Studio embodies the notion of double: two people collaborating. What else does it signify for you?

LIONEL DINIS SALAZAR: Aside from symbolizing people working together, the name relates to the way we approach our projects: taking things that seemingly have nothing in common and mixing them to tell a story. Our aim is to juxtapose elements from different worlds – things that have friction – to play with the absurd. We won a young designers’ prize from Cinna [part of French furniture company Roset, along with Ligne Roset] by combining the form of a Roman armchair with a seat comprising an inflatable duck. Our idea was: What is an emperor’s power of intimidation if he’s seated on an inflatable duck? We’ve also created a very lightweight furniture object whose trompe-l’oeil marble pattern

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makes it appear heavy. We wanted to surpass the notion of the object by using a technique from car-wrapping [when an adhesive film camouflages a car] and 3D imagery.

What are the biggest challenges facing young designers in Paris wanting to set up their own practices?

JONATHAN OMAR: After studying abroad – often in Belgium, or at ÉCAL in Switzerland or DAE in the Netherlands – French design graduates typically settle in Paris. There’s so much competition here that you have to work incredibly hard to get commissions.

Networking is important: contacting people via social media, emails and phone calls.

What complicates things further is the need to communicate a storyline about your work.

Because we aspire to have quite a broad, eclectic scope, sometimes we have to conceal

In Practice

some of our projects so that our storyline seems clearer. It’s difficult to define our identity, but that’s the case with any studio seeking to be multidisciplinary. Even if we’re forming a vocabulary, our goal with each commission is to invent something. We don’t want to be pigeonholed or restricted to one technique.

The hardest thing for a young studio, though, is convincing someone that you’re capable of doing something if you lack experience in that particular domain. We need to win people’s trust.

How do you think your processes differ from those of your predecessors?

JO: Today, big design houses focus on re-editing past objects by big names. They play it safe because of the risk and expense involved in defending unknown designers.

We see two main ways of working: either

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Together with DĂŠsormeaux/Carrette, DĂśppel Studio developed the scenography for an exhibition on young French designers held at the Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art.

Introducing

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RA Mo NA 40

In Practice

Ramona Bronkar Bannayan is the senior deputy director of exhibitions and collections at MoMA in New York.

A Day With

MoMA’s senior deputy director of exhibitions and collections has spent much of the last three years overseeing the museum’s major overhaul by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. We caught up with the Ohio native as she prepared to return to business as usual – only to find out there’s no such thing.

As told to Tracey Ingram Portraits Andrew Boyle

09:00

RAMONA BRONKAR BANNAYAN: There’s really no typical day at MoMA – that’s one thing I like so much about my job. There are a lot of recurring meetings, though, from one-on-one brainstorming sessions to large-scale seasonal programme reviews with over 100 people. Over the last three years my primary focus has been MoMA’s major overhaul [due to open 21 October at the time of printing]. Liz Diller has been a terrific partner. The process has given us literal breadth with additional space and expanded the way we think about display. We’ll now mix works of different mediums together, connected via a chronological spine. This change raised new challenges surrounding scale, reflection, lighting, film presentations and so on. By opening day, we’ll have relocated around 6,000 objects and reframed some 2,000 works of art.

Every element of display has been rethought, from the presentation pedestals to the cadence of paint colours.

14:30

15:30

10:30

There is one thing I do every day: on my way to get my second cup of coffee for the day, I do a walk-through of the museum to see the spaces in action. There’s always something being installed somewhere. I take the temperature of the installations, so to speak. I talk to everyone involved. It’s important to be a present part of the team.

I try to reserve time in the afternoons for another walk-through, this time to see how the installation design affects the visitor experience. If, say, people are crowded around a specific work, we’ll try to create more space for photo opportunities.

There are many subtle ways to advance a visitor through a space without their knowledge. A change in lighting, for example, or the location of text. Museum visitors experience personal moments with works of art in a public forum. Our spaces should respect both the visitor and the art.

17:30

The office officially closes at 5:30 p.m., but that’s not when I leave. I use the quiet time to email, think, plan, read. I’m a big believer in starting a draft, sleeping on it, and reviewing it in the morning. My job involves many intricacies: in addition to the creation and programming of exhibitions, my team and I are involved with everything around them: loan agreements, insurance, storage, registration of works, imaging and databases.

12:30

Every two weeks there’s a lunch meeting with the chief curators. We go through the topics at hand, from programming to larger issues surrounding the museum’s operation. My main role, though, is to remove obstacles. Any ideas an artist may bring are always worth exploring – you learn so much during the process. Artists should challenge us, and we should push the building and institution to the limits. We drilled through the entire floor plate of the second storey for a Robert Gober installation a few years ago – he was delighted. I know how to work with various authorities to get a whale skeleton transported across the border, how to install a 640,000-lb [290,299-kg] sculpture, and what it might take to work with such farm animals as a goat, chicken and cow. It’s great fun. We should also create circumstances that make everyone feel valued.

Whether a person is painting a wall, framing a work or imaging part of a display, the environment, process and timeline should support them in bringing the highest level of professionalism to their craft.

Some of our programming is already scheduled for as far ahead as 2023, so we’re constantly balancing immediate and future needs. I run the monthly exhibition committee gathering with our 30 senior curators. A call for proposals goes through the ranks, and the curatorial team responds with ideas. We want to be conveners of pressing conversations. We always ask: Why MoMA, why now? During the 2017 travel ban, we presented works by artists from the targeted nations. Some exhibitions can be that immediate and responsive, whereas others might require up to four years of scholarship and research.

21:00

There’s a rule in my house: whoever gets home first makes dinner. My husband is an excellent cook, so it works out well. We like taking long walks in Riverside Park – a leisurely moment to unwind from the day. I also relax by reading fiction. In the weekends I often pick up art journals, once I’ve had some distance from work. I also like visiting other museums, galleries and art fairs to stay current.

22:00

A Day With

My work is always with me. Checking emails is the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night. But I never read them in bed; I have a strict rule about that. I’m ‘on’ in the weekends, too – something is always percolating.

The creative process isn’t a 9-to-5 job. moma.org

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PORCELAIN SURFACES FOR CREATIVE DESIGN Milan

Moscow

New York

florim.com

MAX SVÄRDH Having launched in 2014 with a direct-to-consumer business model, Swedish footwear brand Axel Arigato has built a cult following around the globe for its stripped-back, streetwear-inflected approach to luxury. Cofounder and creative director Max Svärdh explains how working with a digital-first business model has freed him and his team to take an innovative approach to brick-and-mortar venues, opening two new stores this year alone, in Copenhagen and Stockholm.

As told to Jonathan Openshaw The Client

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Going offline MAX SVÄRDH: ‘We embrace everything

online has to offer, but we also love physical experiences – you can’t touch a photo or a website; they’re just images. So for us it’s really important that our customers can walk into a store and experience the true DNA of Axel Arigato. Launching a physical store is also a great moment to really think about the brand and how you translate it into a real-life, cultural space. We always knew we wanted to do something totally different to what was already out there. The normal model for a sneaker brand is to cover every inch of the walls in products – literally stacked from floor to ceiling. We turn this on its head and avoid the walls completely, displaying our product on podiums in the centre of the room instead, giving it more of a gallery feel.

The concept needed to be very clean and clear – an escape from the busyness of our digital lives.’

Making a soft sell ‘One thing I was very clear about is that our stores should be way more than just transaction points. I wanted to create a space where people could come in to catch up with mates or see some live music or look at a cool new sculpture. We’ve always been interested in culture more broadly at Axel Arigato, so the stores have to represent that – they need to embody all the things that we love. For me, the era in which physical retail is about shoving products down someone's throat is over. We’ve

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In Practice

focused on events ever since we opened the London store [in 2016], working with both emerging artists and bigger names like Stefflon Don or Deadmau5. We held an amazing festival called Posthuman earlier this year in Copenhagen, which took our cultural programming to the next level.

We remove all products from cultural events, because they’re not the time nor the place for selling sneakers. It’s about selling the brand and showing what we’re all about.’

The perfect space ‘When looking for a new location

we always start with the footfall – that’s really the most obvious and important thing. Then we’re looking for the mix of people in the neighbourhood, whether there are like-minded brands and an interesting mix of leisure and retail types. Community is so important for us: although all of our locations are super central and in busy areas, we’re able to put our own stamp on them and invite people from all over the city together. Then, once we know we’re in the right community, the final thing we’re looking

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The brand’s most ambitious interior to date, the Copenhagen store features a staircase that doubles as a seating area to encourage a sense of community.

‘OUR STORES SHOULD BE WAY MORE THAN JUST TRANSACTION POINTS’

Erik Undehn

MAX SVÄRDH

Axel Arigato favours large rectangular retail spaces, as they offer more flexibility for different events and displays, such as the globular acid-green shelving in Copenhagen.

The Client

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Courtesy of Coordination Asia Ltd.

SPACES

P.66

Why Chinese interiors are swimming in surrealism P.82 The agile workspace gets a radical new form P.98 Exhibition designers break the museum’s fourth wall P.124 Housing helps to treat the symptoms of dementia

SINO SURREAL 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 why Chinese interiors are adopting increasingly surreal aesthetic and spatial dynamics.

Words Rosamund Picton and Kourosh Newman-Zand 66

Spaces

Chao Zhang

Look Book

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Ruijing Photo

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China’s emergence as the world’s first truly digital society is written into its built environment. The skylines of top-tier cities like Shenzhen or Chongqing flicker like jungles of electrified circuit boards.

Meanwhile, down at ‘user level’, each glowing smartphone screen is an invitation to augment our experience of the physical world with an adjacent digital one. In thematizing the vectors of this ‘mixed reality’, Sino-Surrealism reveals the shifting expectations of leisure and freedom in China.

Throughout Sino-Surrealist spaces, particular objects or structures function as gateways, describing the user’s transition from routine physics into the disorienting territories of the digital. Unlocking a new sense of optimism, Escher-style staircases defy the conventions of geometry while infinity mirrors warp and multiply the user’s depth of field. Outsize vault doors, gratuitously positioned slides or narrow corridors perform as figurative ‘wormholes’, upending users from old paradigms into new ones. The crude motion of the carousel is transformed by the fantastical experience of the rider into a signifier of altered perception.

A sense of transcendence imbues Sino-Surrealism.

Parades of ethereal balloons hang in suspension and cloud-like façades billow from ceilings or walls.

Environmental mimicry in the form of sparkling ceilings of stars, undulating dunes and forests of evanescent tubing demarcate ‘clearings’ in which users can find respite. Occasional, absurd glitches in the matrix – co-working desks submerged in a ball pit

or empty picture frames – remind users that they’re moving through the topsy-turvy dreamscape of an intelligent creator.

Outsize candlesticks, lanterns and looking glasses invite users to participate in the allegorical journey of a fairytale. Reflective surfaces multiply and abstract the self-image of the user, highlighting the freedoms of personal brands in China’s hyper-mediated age. The topographical outlines of the spaces and the glow of lighting (much like selfie rings) emanating from behind furnishings build the impression of a highend photography studio. To help users create their own stories, Sino-Surrealism scatters wayfinding breadcrumbs. Corridors are often complex and rows of mysterious arched doorways invite users to participate in classic philosophical games, wherein choosing and opening a particular door alters an individual’s destiny.

Only four short decades ago, China had a predominantly agrarian economy. Sino-Surrealism can be seen as an attempt to resolve the incomprehensible transformation of the nation into a highly advanced digital economy. It aims to capture and suspend (before the pieces of the kaleidoscope have fully settled) this moment of transition. As disoriented users recover from the breakdown of old geometries and the introduction of new ones, unprecedented territories of myth-making emerge.• axis-mundi.com

PAGE 66 The Other Place hotel by Studio 10 OPPOSITE Fine-jewellery boutique Yin by Okamoto Deguchi Design

Look Book

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THE SCENE

London-based set designer Thomas Petherick explains how the obscurest Instagram image can trigger the next big idea, why a show is as much about the set design as the space it sits in, and why his chairs aren’t made to sit on.

Words Riya Patel Portrait Andrew Meredith 106

Spaces

SCULPTOR

Influencer

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Courtesy of Thomas Petherick

Thomas Petherick loves rolling up his sleeves to work with props, space and clothes in a hands-on way. He graduated from London’s Goldsmiths University in 2011 and did a brief spell as a conceptual milliner before realizing an industry that essentially makes ‘hats for ladies at Ascot’ wasn’t his scene. After finding his way into set design through physically making small props and installations for others, he’s come to forge a view of space that is closer to a sculptor’s than a designer’s. Across fashion shows for the likes of Xander Zhou, Kiko Kostadinov and Tommy Hilfiger, and advertising campaigns for Nike, Balmain and Burberry, Petherick crafts original narratives in set design by making the surrounding space as important as the fashion itself.

What was your first job in set design?

THOMAS PETHERICK: One of the first set-design things I did was to make a spaceship for a London Fashion Week show. I knew some fashion stylists and I started making props for them. I had done a multidisciplinary course: woodwork, metalwork, photography, film, sculpture. And I came away from that with all these making skills.

What do you think of the conventional ways fashion is presented?

I think there’s a lot regurgitation in fashion.

I try not to follow too many people in the setdesign industry on Instagram – I don’t want to be influenced by that. Otherwise my mood boards would all be filled with fashion images only, sets that have been done before. I look at art and design a lot – and at interiors. There are also really obscure Instagram accounts full of weird images that might spark an idea.

What’s an example?

I saw a picture of someone’s foot coming through a ceiling and thought: I want to make that into an amazing shoot where someone is

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actually falling through a wall, but with beautiful shoes on. I’ve been wanting to do that shoot for ages. I like the idea of merging two worlds.

What underpins all your design concepts?

Every time I approach a piece of work it’s from the perspective of sculpture – and how that sculpture fits within a space. Take my furniture. I always say: ‘It’s not a sitting chair; it’s a looking chair.’ I’ve had this outlook since I started doing props, and I still do now that I’m working on larger installations.

There’s also always an attachment to concept. I don’t like to design for the sake of something being just visually interesting. And I actually find it quite difficult when someone says: ‘Oh, just make it look great.’

A good concept makes the design process so much easier. I feed off that. There’s always a reason for me to use that colour, or that shape.

Why do you make furniture?

I do so much commercial work that it’s easy to get swamped. I used to be much more hands-on in the studio, making loads of stuff, building all my own sets. I loved that. And I’m getting much busier, which means managing

Spaces

people and projects, talking with people. I’m basically just at my computer. The furniture is about trying to take back that hands-on feeling. It’s not that there isn’t a lot of creativity in my work – just that I can get a bit lost with my sense of style. I need personal projects that can feed into the rest of my work.

The Xander Zhou SS18 show was set in a very ordinary looking office. What was the concept there?

I met Xander very early on in the process, before he had an idea for the show. I came up with the idea of an office and that influenced his collection and the set design at the same time. I did the full production for that show, so I was really able to go out and find the right venue and the right lighting. It was an all-encompassing project.

We’re in an age when spaces for work and life are in flux. Did the throwback office set design have something to say about that?

I don’t know. I’m not designing for real so I don’t have to think about that. If I’m

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PAGE 107 Petherick approaches every piece of work from the perspective of sculpture. His chairs – such as 3PT-01 – are made for looking at, not for sitting on.

ABOVE A set design by Petherick featured in the Daniel Sannwalddirected moving-image campaign for Nike’s Tech Pack collection.

Influencer

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‘THERE’S A LOT OF REGURGITATION IN FASHION’

THOMAS PETHERICK

Petherick has worked on advertising campaigns for the likes of Nike (pictured), Burberry, Alexander Wang and Balmain.

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Spaces

Influencer

DESIGNING FOR

DE MEN TIA With the world’s population rapidly ageing, housing will need to be redesigned to take account of our mental as well as physical frailties.

Words Peter Smisek 124

Spaces

UHA and Nord Architects’ ‘co-existence village’ will situate residents with dementia at the centre of the wider community. A yellow road acts as a wayfinding device, ensuring sufferers can easily navigate the development.

On average, life expectancy for both men and women is predicted to rise by 4.4 years over the next two decades, according to research recently published in The Lancet. The same study predicts that, in leading nations such as Japan, Singapore, Spain and Switzerland, by 2040 citizens will most likely live to see their 85th birthday. This shouldn’t come as a surprise – at the beginning of the 21st century we were already living 30 years longer than we were at the beginning of the 20th. This aggregation of years isn’t wholly positive, however; the accepted wisdom is that while we’re certainly living longer, we’re often not living better. This is thanks to a host of degenerative diseases, with dementia one of the most insidious. Dementia is an umbrella term for a family of illnesses whose effects include memory loss, confusion and worsening perception, as well as loss of communicative and motor skills, and it is estimated that one in six people over the age of 80 will suffer from the condition. The good news is that spatial designers can play a large role in reducing the impact of these symptoms.

Design for dementia patients has historically emphasized memory stimulation via what’s

termed ‘reminiscence therapy’. Institutions such as Town Square, an ‘adult day centre’ outside of San Diego, re-create an idealized 1950s main street inside a large warehouse.

Families can bring ailing relatives here for a day at a time, giving themselves much needed respite, while the elderly are able to socialize in the many facilities, which include stores, a cinema, a library and a diner, complete with nostalgic touches like a vintage Cadillac and 1950s film posters. ‘We’re all about trying to create an environment that’s meaningful to people,’ Scott Tarde, the CEO of Town Square says. ‘It’s really designed to mimic the experience of someone who’s in town for the day. A lot of participants come in and say “I’ve been here before”.’

While powerful, such memorial theme parks are limited in the way they use spatial design to address the problems posed by dementia. Beyond being occasional, they’re also highly specific. Every culture and generation will have different triggers, and the success of places such as Town Square, which is about to open its second location in Baltimore, depends on how close they respond to »

New Typology

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local context. Instead, today architects are starting to explore how they can transform standard living units into environments that empower dementia sufferers to remain independent within the broader community.

Such domestic design can help a rapidly ageing population spend more time in the present, rather than reminiscing about the past.

Ikea’s SilviaBo concept, introduced through its BoKlok modular housing venture, tries to achieve just that in six units currently being built just outside Stockholm. Developed with the Silviahemmet Foundation, a dementia care non-profit headed by the Queen of Sweden, SilviaBo doesn’t deviate from the timber frame BoKlok, but the interior design and furnishings have been tweaked ‘to allow the elderly to live in their own home for as long as possible’, says Jerrie Kristensson, product manager at the company. Improved accessibility is the first obvious difference, but there are other, more subtle adjustments, such as oversize signage, electrical switches that light up in the dark and colour contrasting door frames and toilet seats.

This last point is also a key element in a model home recently developed as a joint partnership between Loughborough University (LU) and building research

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institute BRE. The property makes extensive use of colour contrast between walls, skirting and floors in order to make the space more legible. Flooring requires particular attention, as those with dementia can often misinterpret its appearance: spots or sparkly elements in a pattern can be confused with items that can be picked up, while dark areas can be mistaken for holes and shiny surfaces sometimes read as treacherous patches of ice or water.

The LU space also makes use of an open plan to prevent residents from becoming disoriented. ‘By creating these lines of sight leading you to the bathroom it’s easy to navigate without having to get around features in the house,’ Professor Eef Hogervorst tells the BBC. Hogervorst also emphasizes the importance of natural light, as dementia patients often have weaker circadian rhythms, meaning they suffer from ‘sundowning’, making them agitated as night encroaches.

Similar rules can be expanded to the creation of larger residential clusters or ‘dementia villages’. While the model has primarily been pioneered in Scandinavian countries, a number of practices are now exporting it further afield. Copenhagen-based Nord has built up substantial experience in designing elderly care

Spaces

‘DOMESTIC DESIGN CAN HELP A RAPIDLY AGEING POPULATION SPEND MORE TIME IN THE PRESENT’

facilities and is currently working on a 120-unit village in southwest France. ‘The most consistent feedback is concerned with design features that provide natural light, sounds, colours, materials and access to the outdoors,’ says Morten Gregersen, partner at Nord, adding that all of these aspects can be incorporated into wayfinding schemes. The Village Landais will feature white-render and timber clad residential and communal pavilions with eaves, arcades and low pitched roofs, recalling the regional vernacular.

They are clustered around small squares and set within landscaped grounds. Each cluster will be styled differently, and residents will have the option of choosing the one that is most suited to their needs.

Communal activities, including painting classes, gardening and exercise, will be catered to. ‘Patients don’t want to be hidden, but want to be a part of the natural life in the city,’ says Gregersen.

But Village Landais, for all its virtues, is still only an imitation of communal life. A more radical project is currently in the works in Odense, Denmark. This ‘co-existence village’, called City for Life and nestled in the middle of a residential district, has been designed by Nord and London-based UHA in order to provide a home for some 300 dementia patients. Here the focus is as much on the urban context as it is on individual units: the scheme places residents with dementia in the central part of the neighbourhood, away from car traffic. A circular path called the ‘Yellow Brick Road’ doubles as a wayfinding device – those who

are on it will eventually arrive home, while it also connects to social spaces, such as cafés and workshops. The buildings, some made of brick, some rendered in different colours with different pitched roofs, will provide a visual variety that residents can more easily identify. More importantly, families, students, singles and young couples will live in the other parts of the neighbourhood, and be able to interact with and, if necessary, help residents with dementia. Technological solutions, in which patients will wear discreet tracking devices and, if necessary, trigger a wayfinding sequence – such as a favourite piece of music being played from loudspeakers positioned around the neighbourhood – is also being explored.

‘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 community support,’ he concludes.

The growing body of research shows the importance of social interaction and integration into communal life wherever possible. This should provide fresh impetus not just for new developments, but also for retrofitting existing buildings and urban environments to be more dementia-friendly. With potential cures still some way off, architects and designers can do much to help dementia patients spend their daily lives in a more dignified and meaningful way.•

Families, students, singles and young couples will reside in the properties that make up the outskirts of UHA and Nord Architects’ ‘co-existence village’, ensuring that those with dementia are integrated into community life.

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Jonathan Vos, courtesy of The Student Hotel

FRAME LAB

CO-LIVING Yet another typology arising from the

burgeoning sharing economy, co-living is seemingly cropping up on every corner of every city. The number of units offered by major co-living companies in the US alone is reportedly set to triple in the next few years. With the category still in its relative infancy, we assess the current challenges – and offer directions for the future.

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urban utopia or latter-day apartment building?

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Co-living has taken off as an industry in recent years, attracting legions of converts, but also its fair share of critics. As several key players go global and numerous innovators open up in every conceivable niche – from family collectives to senior communities – it’s time to take another look at a form of urban organization that trades personal space for shared amenities.

It’s hard to recall now, but when Airbnb launched back in 2008, the concept of handing over your house keys to a total stranger was met with abject horror.

Individualist Western society tends to put a premium on personal space, and applying a sharing-economy logic to the home was considered a step too far. Cut to a decade later and everyone from Italian nonne to urbane New Yorkers are merrily commercializing their homes through platforms such as Airbnb, HomeAway and Vrbo.

When Frame last reported in-depth on co-living back in 2016 (issue 111), it was similarly eyed with some scepticism. ‘Glorified student living’ was the general consensus, and while innovators such as The Collective were expanding at the time, other major co-living providers such as Campus had recently filed for bankruptcy. It was assumed that co-living was a temporary solution to urban woes such as lack of quality housing, unsustainable economic migration and unattainable mortgages. Surely it wouldn’t be a way of life that people would actually choose unless they had no other option?

Just three years on and the market is a very different place. Venture capital has flooded in and new niches are opening up, catering to every conceivable demographic. No longer student halls for adults, co-living has proven that it can provide vibrant and sustainable communities. Could the sector be about to have its Airbnb moment and go mainstream?

PROMISES OF UTOPIA

As with so many new-fangled millennial concepts, co-living isn’t new at all. From the early 20th-century Israeli kibbutz to the Danish Sættedammen of the 1970s,

utopian ideals of collective living never really left us – they were just relegated to the margins of society as people aspired to individual ownership.

The economic, political and social climate of the 21st century has undermined the great American Dream of a white picket fence to call one’s own, however, and with the UN projecting that 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050, the aspiration to buy a house is no longer sustainable. If we’re to avoid the urban nightmare of endless suburban sprawl, we need to come up with innovative solutions to high-density living.

By minimizing private space and maximizing communal areas, co-living providers are positioning themselves as one such solution. What’s more, they could address the urban anomie that seems to plague late-capitalist societies: recent research from The Economist and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that almost a quarter of UK and US adults sometimes or always feel lonely. Rapid urbanization clearly comes with severe growing pains, and anything that fosters a greater sense of community needs to be explored.

VOICES OF DISSENT

It’s not all singing kumbaya around the campfire, however. Like many sharing-economy solutions, commentators are worried that there’s a conflation between people choosing communal living versus society not offering a better alternative. Do millennials choose to use Ubers rather than drive, or has car ownership become untenable? Do millennials choose Airbnbs when travelling, or is traditional hospitality no longer affordable? Do millennials choose to work freelance, or are zero-hour contracts being imposed »

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in a market that offers little career progression? There are two sides to every coin and co-living has certainly attracted its critics.

Much of the concern centres on the fact that it seems to privatize the state’s responsibility to provide affordable housing for citizens. With house prices far outstripping wages in real terms, there’s an entire generation for whom home ownership is a pipe dream, and the Resolution Foundation think-tank recently found that up to a third of UK millennials are on track to rent for the rest of their lives. Another survey from OnePoll shows that many feel they have nowhere to turn, with only 17 per cent considering social housing a viable option.

In Ireland, political debate is currently raging in 2019 about whether co-living is hardwiring this crisis into the system by providing what Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has called ‘glorified tenement living’. Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar has responded by calling McDonald ‘dishonest’ and ‘disingenuous’, defending forthcoming Irish co-living developments and giving a taster of the passions stirred up by this controversial form of urban organization.

CCTV and 24-hour guards. Meanwhile, Robynhood in Berlin positions itself in opposition to corporate housing: ‘Our mission is to fix the housing crisis,’ explains CEO and founder Dennis Prinz. ‘RobynHood is introducing a radically new kind of home – one made for people, not landlords – and it will cost less than a flat-share.’

Amsterdam-founded The Student Hotel has answered the co-living criticism of providing glorified student housing by honing in on that sector and demonstrating that innovation is possible. ‘We are building boundary-blurring physical, cultural and digital spaces where guests stay, work, learn and play,’ explains chief brand officer Jason Steere. ‘Our hybrid hospitality model means guests can stay for a night, a month or a year, benefiting from co-working, gyms, restaurants and cultural event programming all under one roof. It’s what we call the Complete Connected Community.’ The company plans to open six hotels a year: Berlin and Vienna are launching in the next six months, and sites from Madrid to Delft and Porto to Paris are in the pipeline.

Innovative spatial organization is the foundation of co-living, shifting the emphasis from underutilized private spaces to larger communal areas that come with an economy of scale, meaning tenants have access to far better quality amenities than they would if renting privately. This rethinking of urban space was often more radical in theory than in practice. Many early co-living providers operated out of pre-existing buildings, giving them the feel of a rebranded hotel rather than a radical new form of urban organization.

With investment and interest in the industry, this is changing. Recent research by French architecture firm and co-living specialists Bond Society found that before 2016, only 12 per cent of co-living spaces were purpose built, whereas now it’s closer to 30 per cent. This means that providers are better able to translate their philosophy into practice, creating truly flexible spaces that encourage new forms of social interaction in cities.

One such co-living operator is Noiascape, founded by architect brothers Tom and James Teatum.

Rather than seeing each co-living space as a standalone building, the Teatums are designing a networked offer: tenants will sleep in one location, but actually live and operate from multiple spots across the city.

‘We resist the idea of internal communities,’ explains James Teatum. ‘Noiascape buildings are organized to engage and interact with the local community, allowing tenants and local people to exchange. For us this is the purpose of cities – to organize space to allow exchange.

Suddenly, home is not just a spatial concept defined »

INDUSTRY INNOVATION

The industry certainly has its detractors, but that doesn’t seem to be hampering growth. In January 2019, global behemoth WeWork rebranded as The We Company in order to dial up its focus on co-living branch WeLive, which is expanding across US cities as well as into international markets such as India. On the other side of the Atlantic, London-founded The Collective has raised almost $1 billion to back a global expansion, from Berlin to New York. Interest in the market also seems to be booming: industry commentator Conscious Co-Living (see page 148) reports that from May 2017 to January 2019, Google searches for ‘co-living’ increased by more than 400 per cent.

It’s not just big players such as WeLive and The Collective that are making moves on the market, but a plethora of smaller operators with distinct niches are also opening up. Take Kin, for example, an offer from property developer Tishman Speyer and co-living provider Common that focuses on young families and launched in Queens, New York, this year.

Kin families have their own private living space while benefiting from a larger communal area and shared amenities such as childcare, toys, fitness facilities, swimming pools and a dog park. The founders are also emphasizing the role of the Kin app, which allows tenants to network, set up playdates and open-source questions to the community.

Other innovative offers include Flock in India, which offers a female-only co-living space enforced by a three-tier security check of biometric scanning,

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Frame Lab

RETHINKING SPACE

Combining living with leisure and work facilities, The Student Hotel – where guests can stay for a night, a month or a year – is quickly expanding its ‘global community’. The Vienna branch (pictured) will open in February 2020.

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Lyndon Douglas

IN ORDER FOR CO-LIVING TO GO TRULY MAINSTREAM, A PROFOUND CULTURAL SHIFT IN MINDSET IS NEEDED

Rather than seeing co-living spaces as autonomous, Noiascape offers a network: tenants sleep in one location, but actually live and operate from multiple spots across a city.

Hidden House in London is pictured.

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by privacy – it’s redefined to include a network of people, community and experiences. The concept of “home” extends beyond your front door.’

Returning to Robynhood in Berlin, the team has designed ‘pod’-style living spaces that can be quickly deployed when new buildings become available. These soundproof sleeping spaces allow modular builds and reorganization in a matter of hours rather than months, meaning that they can live up to their promise of reclaiming industrial space and disused buildings from the ‘rich’ to give to the (relatively) poor. At the time of publication, members were lining up to vote on three prototypes of the pod designs, further reinforcing the company’s egalitarian principles.

NEW FACES

Established co-living companies tend to have a member sweet spot in millennial city workers. Young enough to still be au fait with student hall-style living, they also live relatively untethered lifestyles that may involve regularly moving jobs – and even cities. These so-called digital nomads are quick to understand the benefits of living in a serviced community with few ties and good amenities.

Other audiences have been harder to reach, but that’s also starting to change. Family-focused Kin has already been discussed here, but another demographic receiving the attention of co-living operators is retirees. In London, Pollard Thomas Edwards designed the UK’s first co-living project for seniors in the Older Women’s Co-Housing (OWCH) initiative back in 2016, which has since built a long waiting list and has several more locations in development. In Oakland, California, the Phoenix Commons is a co-living solution for the over-55s where residents on a rota cook communal meals every evening.

Even with targeted solutions for different demographics, the fact remains that in order for co-living to go truly mainstream, a profound cultural shift in mindset is needed. Co-living is far more established in East Asian markets such as China, Japan and Korea, where compact personal space and collective responsibilities are not such a tough sell. If co-living is truly to take hold in Western markets such as the UK and the USA, people will need to let go of the deep-rooted mantra that an Englishman’s home is his castle.

Automotive brand MINI recognizes the importance of East Asia in the history of co-living and is opening its first major shared-home concept in Shanghai later this year. Developed as part of the ongoing MINI Living programme – the brand’s exploration of the future of urban design through

various commissions and collaborations – the Shanghai offer will transform an 8,000-m2 disused paint factory in the Jing’An district into a collection of apartments and public spaces.

JOINING THE CITY

A COMMON FUTURE?

One lingering criticism of co-living is that these spaces tend to create hermetically sealed communities that feel disconnected from the neighbourhoods in which they exist. For co-living to take hold, a wide array of urban stakeholders – from local government to city planners and legislators – need to buy into the concept.

Government cooperation is clearly essential for future success, but this has been lacking in many major cities. Change is underway – New York recently launched ShareNYC, an initiative to encourage developers to come up with more affordable co-living projects – but there’s still a sense that operators need to prove they’re able to invest in local cities and communities, rather than creating ghettos of millennial professionals.

To help address the issue, The Collective has rolled out an ambitious non-profit initiative through The Collective Foundation, investing in the communities around them. Mentoring and workshops are available for local entrepreneurs, a four-week accelerator programme is on offer to those aiming to tackle the challenges of city living, while grants are also available for local charities and community groups. Meanwhile, Noiascape is carrying through on its promise of networked living by offering events programming that engages with diverse organizations around London, from evening classes at the London College of Fashion to boxing school at a local club. By organizing cultural programming in the surrounding communities, it continues to create interactions between members and the city at large.

The last couple of years certainly suggest co-living is maturing as a sector, answering critics and innovating into new niches. The future success of the industry, though, will depend on how well it tackles both soft and hard issues. On the softer side, a social, cultural and psychological shift needs to happen before Western urbanites can truly commit to co-living as a solution and not a stopgap. On the harder end of things, there’s a whole array of legislative, political and planning issues to navigate before city-makers can fully embrace the co-living dream. But since there are plenty of very smart and well-funded people trying to solve such problems, it would be wise to watch this sector with interest.•

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furnishes Antwerp’s hottest new design hotel P.172 Rocking, rental and re-editioned chairs at LDF P.176 Transport for London celebrates a century of seat covers

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL MOLTENI&C D.153.1 The 2012 re-edition of Gio Ponti’s classic midcentury D.153.1 chair by Molteni&C was included at I-Made, London’s first exhibition solely dedicated to Italian design. The show, which brought together iconic pieces representative of the community, was housed in the Saatchi Gallery. molteni.it

TON BARSTOOL 813 Josef Hoffmann’s iconic 1930 bentbeech chair design – the 811 – has met a modern match in Czech furniture maker TON’s barstool 813. Like Hoffmann’s original design, the 813 can be finished with cane weave, plush upholstery or a combination of the two.

Courtesy of Kate Anglestein for Gallery Fumi

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MAX LAMB URUSHI WAJIMA Japan’s ancient urushi lacquer craft greatly inspired designer Max Lamb, who created a bold set of contemporary furniture using the technique. It’s a craft that often sacrifices the raw character of the wood for a high shine: Lamb’s lacquered pieces, however, retain it. An exhibition of the work – titled Urushi Wajima – was held at Mayfair’s Gallery Fumi. maxlamb.org

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POLTRONA FRAU ARCHIBALD Furniture maker Poltrona Frau celebrated the tenth anniversary of its leather Archibald armchair in London with its inclusion in the I-Made Italian design exhibition. The design of the enveloping, elegant seat – curated for show by Giulio Cappellini – is by Paris-based creator Jean-Marie Massaud.

Ed Reeve

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SONY AFFINITY IN AUTONOMY In the Prince Consort Gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sony exhibited its mesmerizing interactive robotic installation, Affinity in Autonomy. Human presence is detectable by the smart pendulums, which display dynamic, autonomous behaviour and were built to portray emotion and sensitivity, according to the designers. sony.net

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