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#66 | February | March | 2014

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i n t e r i o r s A r c h i t e c t u r e d e s i g n

K2Ld Architects’ eccentric Kit-of-parts

FARM | NAMLY HOUSE BY CHANG ARCHITECTS | House at vICTORIA PARK BY IP:LI ARCHITECTS NATIONAL DESIGN CENTRE BY SCDA ARCHITECTS | RIVER SAFARI BY DP ARCHITECTS

CUBES | CONTENTS

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cubes #66 February march

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CHECKLIST

COMMUNITY

Products

In Conversation

Business Q+A

021 We pick out the design pieces to add to your inventory

News

055 Beyond Boundaries Patrick Chia and Pann Lim discuss identity, design education and eploration

034 Getting you up to speed on all that’s going on in the local design scene

Profile

068 Roll Call K.S. Sim and Kenneth Sim at Sunscreen talk about the company’s steady ascent as a world-class supplier of roller screen solutions

038 Play and Play Lanzavecchia + Wai’s new conceptual and childlike designs for Secondome Gallery

060 Thinking Design Honesty of materials, functionality and understanding human psychology guides Chris Hardy’s designs

040 Harbouring Design The inaugural Hong Kong Indesign®: The Event showcases the city’s distinctly dynamic pulse

062 The New Old Henge straddles the traditional and the new, the natural and the manmade

Review

064 Light Tale Lars Østergaard Olsen on Lightyears’ story and the secret to the brand’s success

042 Cover Stories Foscarini takes stock of the world of art and design in Inventario

Brand Story 048 Grand Vision In more ways than one, Vitra’s design passions are as broad as they are deep

Portfolio 070 Cultivating Possibilities An unconventional approach and energetic spirit underpin FARM’s eclectic, cross-disciplinary output

Physix Developed by Vitra in Switzerland, Design: Alberto Meda Contact Betty.khoo@vitra.com Tel: +65 9476 0336

www.vitra.com/physix

Checklist | products

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Historic Appeal

Warm Switch

Colour Chameleon

Shapely Baths

Designed in 1987, Oscar Tusquets Blanca’s award-winning Gaulino chair for BD Barcelona Design has become an icon of 20th century Spanish product design.

Influences from Antonio Gaudí and Carlo Mollino are apparent, hence the name.

The chair appears to have been designed by a master of his craft, but interestingly, it was actually the designer’s first industrial product in wood. BD Barcelona Design is available at P5.

Gira’s Espirit range of switches offers more flexibility in interior design with the use of wood veneer – Wenge or Walnut – aside from the more conventional glass, aluminium, glossy gold and chrome-gloss polished metal. More than 280 functions, including music, light and electrical control as well as complete, complex automation systems, are available. Available from Eureka Technologies.

One of the winners of the prestigious Red Dot Product Design Award in 2013, the Geo vacuum flask from Normann Copenhagen marries minimalism and pop in its design. Clear geometries are fused with lively colour combinations reminiscent of the 70s. Normann Copenhagen is available at DREAM, Lifestorey and Volume Five Home.

British sanitaryware manufacturer Victoria + Albert Baths is now available in Singapore. Known for their artisanal designs, the baths are made from a unique Quarrycast® volcanic limestone and high quality resin material that, unlike enamel, will not be damaged by bleach. The composite’s insulating characteristics also allow the bath water’s temperature to remain warm for longer. Available at Bathroom Gallery (Wan Tai & Co) and Equip Design.

bdbarcelona.com

gira.com

l i f e s t o r e y. c o m

p 5.c o m .s g

eurekasingapore.com.sg

volumefivehome.com

normann-copenhagen.com dream-int.com

vandabaths.com b a t h r o o m g a l l e r y. c o m . s g equip-design.com

Checklist | Products

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Old and New

Vintage Touch

Up Fold

Eggersmann’s newest kitchen design Concrete Vintage Oak combines the industrial quality of concrete and stainless steel for its island and worktops with the warm tactility of rough-sawn vintage oak veneer fronts. The brand, founded in 1908 by Wilhelm Eggersmann, presents quintessential German design and manufacturing with top-notch functionality. Eggersmann is available at Kitchen Culture.

A door handle is the first tactile experience a person has with a space.

Colombo Design keeps this squarely in mind with its new Vintage and Vintage Matt finishes that provide hints of Old World charm. The finish is available for the Fedra, Electra and Roboquattro S handles. Colombo Design is available at Builders Hardware Marketing and Thrive Design & Trading.

“Only minor changes or unexpected details are needed to give a product a lively character, which sparks associations and emotions of the user,� says German designer Oliver Schick of his Ronde pendant lamps for Gubi. In this case, it is a subtly raised collar at the top of the hand-turned aluminum piece so that light is not only directed downwards from the shade but also upward towards the ceiling. Available at Foundry.

builders hardware marketing eggersmann.com

(65) 6294 1492/3

gubi.dk

khlmktg.com

thrive design & trading

foundry-store.com

(65) 6735 7333

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checklist | news

Play & Play Lanzavecchia + Wai’s new designs commissioned by Secondome Gallery reflect a fascination with both the conceptual and the childlike.

Te x t

» Luo Jingmei

Images

» c o u r t e s y o f L a n z av e c c h i a + Wa i

S

ingaporean-Italian design duo Hunn Wai and Francesca Lanzavecchia were invited last November to stage an exhibition at Secondome’s new gallery in Rome.

Entitled ‘Rock It!’, the exhibition is an addition to the young studio’s list of impressive accomplishments, which include collaborations with brands like Mercedes Benz and Alcantara.

Orchestrated by noted design curator, journalist and director of the Fondazione Bisazza, Maria Cristina Didero, ‘Rock It!’ featured a new de-

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sign commissioned by Claudia Pignatale (Secondome’s founder and artistic director), alongside familiar works from Lanzavecchia + Wai such as the cryptic Mutazioni rug for Nodus and Leone series 01 Lamps made by Singapore’s last remaining lion mask artisan, the latter an early project that put them on the design radar.

Lanzavecchia + Wai’s latest designs – objects that bring to mind a rocking horse and seesaw – don’t immediately let on their function. But that’s intentional, rather than accidental.

“Didero identified the playful

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and somewhat romantic streak we have in our practice and expression through our works – qualities that attract viewers and users…where the embedded message reveals itself layer by layer,” says Wai. In this case, are these objects playthings, sculptures or chairs?

According to the designers, they could be any of these. Playful objects for the domestic space, they are common seats when static, and more engaging objects in motion.

Their simplicity beckons interaction, yet their abstraction and materiality speak of complex artistry.

Named Rockers, n°1 & n°2, they continue the designers’ sophisticated yet accessible design language, where the aim is to “capture the attention of the viewers’ gaze, enthrall them and set their minds in motion [so as to] form an emotional bond with our work,” says Wai. Though layered in meaning, they are not complicated in form.

Here, the making of the Rockers is almost childlike: circular discs curved downwards, with leather saddles and handles providing an equestrian hint.

“Combining our knowledge of industrial processes and love for the

hand-crafted, we sought to express the pieces at their intersection point.

Bending a single laser-cut shape from an industrial metal sheet stock implies simplicity and efficiency. But at the same time, it is testament to the inherent strength derived from this geometry,” Hunn expounds.

Similarly whimsical, but more literal in expression, is another new series of objects designed for Secondome’s catalog. Circus is a set of glass cloches mouth-blown by Venetian glass artist Massimo Lunardon.

Perched atop these glass cloches are circus trope protagonists that “inject lightness and movement into what is a simple vitrine,” shares Wai. No doubt, design should be functional. But it is when it brings delight that design is elevated. Here, Lanzavecchia + Wai have shown a maturity in creating objects that prompt contemplation and uplift the soul at one and the same time.

Bottom left: The two-seater rocker reminds one of traditional see-saws

Top right: Circus is as delicate as it is whimsical

Secondome is available at P5.

l a nz av ecchi a-wa i.com secondome.eu p5.com.sg

Grand Vision

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From furniture design to architecture and cultural initiatives, Vitra’s design passions are as broad as they are deep.

Te x t

» Janice Seow

Images

» Courtes y of Vitr a a nd Space Fur nit ur e

t’s a chilly November morning in Weil am Rhein, Germany, but the sky is clear and the sun is out, which makes this an excellent day to explore the Vitra Campus. The first campus sighting can be seen while on the road a fair distance away – it’s the VitraHaus designed by renowned Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. It is also, interestingly, one of the newest projects to be erected on the sprawling grounds. Completed in 2010, the striking building, which houses the Vitra flagship store, appears as twelve archetypal gabled houses one stacked atop another.

Some 350,000 architects, designers, students, design enthusiasts, members of the media and the public make the pilgrimage here every year from all

Top: The VitraHaus designed by architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron resembles a child’s random assembly of blocks

across the globe. The figure is hardly surprising if one considers the number and diversity of notable structures standing toe to toe on a single site – there are at present fifteen in total. Arguably the most well known is the Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry. The building is not only significant for being the Californian architect’s first building project in Europe, and one of his most emblematic works, but it also heralded a new beginning for the Vitra Campus as an internationally recognised architectural and cultural landmark.

But to understand the significance of the Vitra Campus, and indeed the wide-ranging initiatives undertaken by Vitra over the years, one first has to return to the start.

Checklist | Brand Story

Vitra Furniture: A Design Vision Perpetuated Founded by husband and wife Willi and Erika Fehlbaum in 1934, the company began as a familyowned shop-fitting business in Basel, Switzerland, where the Vitra headquarters remains to this day.

Then in 1953, Willi made his first trip to America and by pure serendipity, chanced upon early Plywood chairs designed by Charles and Ray Eames in a store in New York. With a sharp eye for good design, Willi was quick to strike up an agreement with Herman Miller for the rights to produce Eames furniture for the European and, later, the Middle Eastern market. Thus marked the genesis of Vitra’s partnership and friendship with the Eameses, and the birth of its future as a leading furniture manufacturer across the realms of offices, public spaces and homes.

Since the Eameses, the Swiss company has gone on to establish long-term collaborations with some of the world’s most respected designers such as George Nelson, Jean Prouvé, and Verner Panton, and in more recent years, younger talents like Jasper Morrison, the Bouroullec brothers and Hella Jongerius, to name just a few.

In conversation with Patrick Guntzburger, Managing Director of Vitra International over a drink at the VitraHaus café, it becomes clear that the company deeply values its relationships with the designers and architects it works with. Guntzburger likens it to a “marriage”.

“You need to have time for each other. You need to take good care of each other. Because the process of designing a product is a long process, [both sides] need to work with the same understanding.

The designer has to understand what Vitra wants to achieve, what Vitra is thinking, what is right for Vitra, and Vitra has to understand how the designer works. The chemistry has to be right,” he says.

Vitra’s furniture designs are recognised today for their timeless aesthetic, quality and precision engineering. Be it a design classic or the latest product to market, the approach is unflaggingly consistent.

“We don’t want to do fashion,” Guntzburger states. “We want to do long-lasting products, not only [in terms of ] quality, which is almost [a given], but products that are timeless. We want to do a product that you’d still like in 10 years. It [also] should not be complicated [to use] but selfexplanatory.”

Guntzburger goes on to explain the company’s passion for design. “There are so many products around. So how can you make [a product] attractive for people [so they will] buy your product versus someone else’s? As a human being, first

Top: The Fehlbaums (middle) and the Eameses

Bottom: The Bouroullec brothers’ updated version of the iconic Eames bird in wood, L’Oiseau (middle) and Hella Jongerius’ Polder sofa

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An unconventional approach and an energetic spirit underpin the eclectic cross-disciplinary output of FARM.

Cultivating Left: FARM’s office entrance cuts a striking image in the ubiquitous Waterloo Street HDB locale Photo credit: Rebecca Toh

Right: (From left) Selwyn Low, Tiah Nan Chyuan, Peter Sim and Torrance Goh in their office foyer

community | Portfolio

Te x t

» Narelle Yabuk a

Im age s a nd dr aw ings

» C ou rt e s y of FA R M u n l e ss o t h erw ise s tat e d

Portr ait photo

» R e b e c c a To h

I t ’ s i m p o s s i b l e t o m i s s the FARM office in Singapore’s Waterloo Centre.

On level four of the HDB podium, the letters F, A, R, and M are each emblazoned full-height in white paint on black roller doors. Beside them is an enormous pivoting glass door upon which text can be read against the backdrop of city buildings seen through the strip window beyond. “We are often asked who we are and what we do,” it begins.

I had the very same questions for Tiah Nan Chyuan, Torrance Goh, Selwyn Low, and Peter Sim – FARM’s four directors. It was convenient that their glass door began to explain, echoing the firm’s website by continuing: “FARM is many things at once. We are a cross-disciplinary design practice.

We are a curatorial team. We are a communitycentred arts organisation. We call ourselves FARM because we would like to cultivate a culture of imagination in our community.”

This really raised more questions than it answered in my mind. First and foremost, what is the thinking behind a studio that introduces itself with something of a conundrum on its front door (and its online profile)? And then, what is prompting four architecture graduates to dabble in various design disciplines, let alone the arts? Is it personal interest? Creative engagement? Market forces?

Client expectations? Community considerations?

What goes on behind those roller doors? There was much to discuss.

As it turns out, the team itself finds it difficult to define FARM. This is not due, however, to poor business management or confused states of mind.

It is rather to do with an approach and a way of thinking that rejects the need for categorisation and classification, and favours the potentials of openendedness and multiple points of influence. Says Goh, “When people ask, ‘What is FARM?’, we wonder, ‘Do we need to define ourselves?’”

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Play Of Parts MetaHouse by K2LD Architects juxtaposes material and form in an interesting way.

Case Study | House

Te x t

Photogr aphy

» Luo Jingmei » Pat r ic k B i ng h a m-H a l l

‘Tropical Expression’ is the title of local architecture firm K2LD Architects’ first book.

Within it are mostly residential projects spanning the firm’s beginnings, when Ko Shiou Hee first set up the company, to recently completed projects.

In the book, Metahouse is placed near the tailend, having been completed about two year ago. In it, we see a clear evolution in Ko’s works – unlike K2LD Architects’ earlier projects, which feature more rigid constructs, the formal expression in Metahouse points to a desire to stretch beyond the box form.

While visually stimulating, the control of the Modernist hand that has and still guides the firm’s works is ever-present. In other words, it is not as as explosive as the Winged House that graces the cover – a house that Ko says epitomises his current preoccupation with the potential tectonics of the roof beyond the conventional vernacular made popular by architect Geoffrey Bawa in the region.

But the restraint is understandable – Metahouse is suited to the context, scale, and client’s requirements.

The house is situated in a suburban neighbourhood in the north of Singapore, sitting along a string of two- and three-storey semidetached houses that feature the classical accents and tangerine terracotta roofs popular with homes built in the 80s and 90s. Departing from the symmetry and homogeneity found in these houses,

Left: From the front facade, the different forms and materials of Metahouse cuts a striking image

Right: The right elevation of the house is characterised by its iridescent materiality

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Creative SCDA Architects have transformed an entire urban block of conservation buildings into a national centre for design promotion.

exchange Top: A dramatically lit entrance leads the way into the National Design Centre at the road junction

Right: In the main atrium, swivel doors cater for the flexibility of exhibitions and events

Case Study | institution

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Case Study | Institution

Cinematic Appeal

Thailand-based A49’s design for the Center for Cinematic and Digital Arts Faculty for Bangkok University takes the Stage.

The bold red main staircase sets a tone of drama and event at the entrance

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URBAN PROGRESS? Two architectural works at the Singapore Biennale 2013 address – or, perhaps, redress – the city-state’s fetish for redevelopment and our estrangement from history.

Te x t

» Iliyas Ong

Th i n g s o f m y t h are sprouting up around the city. A mountain range has risen on the lawn before the National Museum of Singapore, three peaks whose unassuming majesty clashes with the hectic streets and mega-blocks surrounding them.

And on the opposite end of Fort Canning Park, a spectre resembling the National Theatre wards over the original site of the forgotten cultural centre.

Despite their hallucinatory nature, these structures are real. They’re the work of two artists/architecture professors, as part of the Singapore Biennale 2013: the mountain range is Eko Prawoto’s Wormhole and the ghostly statue of the National Theatre is Lai Chee Kien’s National Theatre@50. And until 16 February, the pair of site-specific artworks will stand watch over the city, as stark contrasts to Singapore’s hyper-modernisation and its alienating effect on the people who live here.

A NATURAL TENSION Wormhole is a meditation on the furious and unforgiving speed of modern living. Constructed from bamboo, the three interconnected mounds stand up to 8.6m tall and have hollowed-out interiors that visitors can enter via two hobbit-sized doorways on both ends of the ‘mountain range’.

The installation’s conical shape provides shade and shelter while drawing the eye upwards, where a skylight funnels illumination in. Which also means once inside, the only other thing you’ll see are the heavens.

“Nature gives us that luxury every day but most of the time we seem to take no notice of these special moments,” says Prawoto. “Wormhole is a reminder of how we have lost our intimate relationship with nature because of the urban lives we have adopted today. We are all trapped in our routine lives.”

According to the 55-year-old Indonesian, the design for Wormhole began with the space and not the form. And where better to deploy a paean to the natural environment than at the mouth of the island’s premier shopping belt? Prawoto divulges that he wanted the installation to “create a tension with the existing surroundings”, and in doing so reveal what he calls the “unseen energy” of the site.

That bamboo is the sole material used only fuels Wormhole’s back-to-basics spirit against the glassand-concrete buildings in the district.

“Wormhole has this kind of archaic universal

Above: Lai Chee Kien’s National Theatre@50 standing as a ghostly reminder on the Fort Canning lawn

CURATE | ART

quality because it is from nature,” the lecturer at Yogyakarta’s Duta Wacana University explains. “It does not ask for admiration, nor is it supposed to be fancied. It is there without intent; it doesn’t overwhelm you or compete with your ego. It is just there to create a dialogue with your inner self.”

LOST HISTORY Lai Chee Kien’s installation is similar to that regard.

Built from aluminium, timber and concrete, National Theatre@50 mimics the iconic ‘diamond’ facade of the original building designed by Alfred Wong Partnership. The National Theatre was part of a group of public structures erected in the 1960s that intended on unshackling Singapore from its colonial masters and establish an identity for the nation. Many of those other public buildings, the National Library included, have gone the way of the bulldozer. 2013 would have been the theatre’s 50th anniversary.

“The theatre stood as a very important symbol for Singapore,” says the 48-year-old, who grew up enjoying children’s plays at the venue. “People at the time really needed it. It hosted all kinds of shows, from Louis Armstrong to The Yardbirds.

You even had Pyongyang national troops and Shaolin monks perform there. It was a good chance [for multi-ethnic Singapore] to bond, as the Chinese, Malay and Indian groups could understand one another’s culture on a large scale. It was very egalitarian; it went beyond political ideologies.”

The National Theatre, which cost a total of $2.2 million to build, was partly funded by the public.

So when it was demolished in 1986 for underground tunnels in the vicinity to be laid out, Singapore lost another essential slice of its heritage – one that its people literally helped to construct. Only in this country, argues Lai, would an edifice of such significance be forced to succumb to infrastructure.

Although Lai insists his eight-metre tall sculpture is designed as a trigger for reminiscing and a celebration of the theatre’s legacy, it’s not too difficult to read the installation otherwise. The building’s narrative makes National Theatre@50 at once a metonym of the erstwhile monument and a metaphor for Singapore’s urban redevelopment frenzy, the former evoking warm memories and the latter eliciting chilling predictions.

“In any space you inhabit, there must be structures, landscapes or buildings that are from the

Top; Eko Prawoto’s Wormhole juxtaposed against the cityscape

Bottom: The delights of nature as experienced within the Wormhole

different time periods of your country’s history,” the National University of Singapore assistant professor says. “If you don’t have them, it’s harder to explain how you’re connected to that heritage. They play a big role in the national psyche. And not only do we need different historical periods represented in space, we also need to know that every part of Singapore has a history – we just might not connect with it. A city is a living museum.”

Which then makes it strange that the theme of the Singapore Biennale 2013 is If the world changed. Wormhole and National Theatre@50 aren’t imaginations of the future so much as they are reimaginations of the past. Perhaps the word “hadn’t” is missing from that tagline. Or maybe, our heritage and our relationship with nature are just that: things of myth. « singapor ebiennale.org

“it doesn’t overwhelm you or compete with your ego. It is just there to create a dialogue with your inner self.” » Eko Pr awoto

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