DESIGNWIRE

edited by Annie Block designwire

From top: In Belgrade, Serbia, Accept & Proceed designed sneaker collection bins and signage for Nike, for the company’s Grind program, which recycles manufacturing scrap and post-consumer materials for use in other applications. Utilizing 20,000 upcycled sneakers, Blok 70, a park with a basketball court, gym, and playground, has been recently refurbished by A&P, the color and pattern derived from those historically used in warning signs but reappropriated and recontextualized.

just reuse it

Everyone knows that sneakers are for playing sports.But lesser known is that the materials composing them can be recycled into sport surfacing. Nike Grind, the company’s decades-old program contributing to its zero-waste goal, takes the rubber, foam, leather, textile, and plastic originating from manufacturing scrap, unsellable products, and used athletic shoes and repurposes them—totaling 120 million pounds to date—into running tracks, turf fields, and basketball courts. That’s what happened at Blok 70, a formerly underused, decade-old park in Belgrade, Serbia, that’s been eye-catchingly and sustainably revamped by creative agency Accept & Proceed using sneakers upcycled by Nike, one of many projects the London-based Certified B Corporation has completed for the brand worldwide. A&P’s scope encompassed the graphic design, colorways, and refurbishment of Blok 70’s basketball court and its 13-foot-high chain-link fence, the fitness area, playground, and bleachers, and also extends to sneaker collection bins in the city’s squares and inside Nike stores. “We’re immensely proud,” A&P creative director Matthew Jones says, “to have a role in sowing the seeds for an active future and better tomorrow.”

painterly style

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The name often associated with OMAis Rem Koolhaas. But the influential Dutch architecture firm was actually cofounded in 1975 with three other people: illustrator Madelon Vriesendorp (also Koolhaas’s wife from 1971–2012), architect Elia Zenghelis, and artist Zoe Zenghelis, the latter having her first solo exhibition in the U.S. this spring at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. “Fields, Fragments, Fictions” encompasses 70 Zenghelis paintings and drawings categorized into four areas of practice, including her work in OMA’s early urban projects, such as a ’70’s hotel proposal for Times Square, and as cocreator and teacher of the Color Workshop at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture, which is where her former husband Elia also taught and had Koolhaas as a student (the four first collaborated together on a 1972 architectural competition submission). Zenghelis employed what she called a “sundrenched palette” on her OMA colleagues’ aerial perspectives; similar colors inform the independent art practice she launched in 1985 and continues today, at 84 years old. “My paintings became influenced by my architectural experiences,” she says, “but they work differently as conceptual views of my own world of images.” Her approach to artmaking—abstract geometries, assemblies of forms, eruptive hues—and her cultivation of play, discovery, and spatial imagination has had an integral role in the shaping of architectural representation.

Clockwise from top left: Zoe Zenghelis, pictured in 1988 at London’s Architectural Association, presenting her students’ work, is an artist, educator, OMA cofounder, and the subject of “Fields, Fragments, Fictions,” at Carnegie Museum of Art’s Heinz Architectural Center in Pittsburgh, March 26 to July 24. Happiness, 2000, is an oil on canvas she made in her independent art practice. City of Our Choice [I], is a 1994 acrylic on card. Hotel Sphinx, an acrylic on paper from 1975, was part of OMA’s proposal for a Times Square project that’s included in Delirious New York, the book by her OMA colleague, Rem Koolhaas.

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From top: At Pressed Roots in Dallas by Coevál Studio, flooring is acrylic-treated diamond-polished concrete and walls are wash-finished plaster. Custom mirrors hang above the salon’s 23-foot-long hair-blowout island. Dried palms and custom benches furnish the Instagram area.

pretty in pink

Like many innovative concepts,Pressed Roots arose to fill a void: offering affordable yet luxurious haircare for women of color. The silk-blowout brand, founded four years ago by Piersten Gaines initially as pop-up salons, caters to those with highly textured tresses. Recently, Gaines opened her first brickand-mortar flagship in Dallas, working with local firm Coevál Studio to craft a visual identity that reflects the Pressed Roots ethos of inclusivity and empowerment—and beauty.

Coevál cofounder John Paul Valverde approached the project holistically, starting by studying the neighborhood demographic to create the optimal experience for all those working at and visiting the shop. “We strove for a relaxed, playful environment,” Valverde says, “where stylists and clients would thrive.” That entails incorporating such organic elements as botanicals and soft curves as well as a flattering allover blush palette—from the concrete floor and plaster walls to the mirrors at each of the 10 blowout stations. Those stations line a shared island that bisects the 1,400-square-foot open plan, encouraging interaction among everyone at the salon. “It’s a nontraditional, noninstitutional setting,” Valverde adds, “with no barriers.”—Lisa Di Venuta