Frame

The International Magazine of Interior Architecture and Design

Quarterly | No. 57 | January/February 2010

The

White

Issue

The Great Indoors

CONTENTS

116

84

122

94 100

84

94 98 100 108 112

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A truly grand buffet is served in Amsterdam by Hans Op de Beeck.

Mind Over Motor A George Yu retreat houses Honda’s dream team in Pasadena.

Great Expectations Shigeru Ban’s wood-plastic pavilion is an antidote for Artek’s Milan hangovers.

Making Waves

126

80

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Party’s Over

White Power Two trend-forecasters take time to look at, listen to and experience white.

134

Clive Wilkinson brings ’60s beach culture to an LA property developer.

Dinner for 500 J. Mayer H. bases his Karlsruhe refectory on a Nutella sandwich.

108

Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better Scandinavian artists Elmgreen & Dragset ponder the success of failure in Berlin.

126

Shampoo and Shadows Isolation Unit creates a lot by doing little at this Tokyo hair salon.

Shadowlands Martin Margiela presents a dance of light and shadow in Milan.

Lap of Luxury Burdifilek goes black and white in Holt Renfrew’s Toronto store.

134 142

Do the Bambi A cute ’n’ clumsy Disney character inspires Jun Aoki in Osaka.

146

The Inner Circle Nike and Torafu celebrate Air Force 1 at a circular shrine in Tokyo.

152

Going Underground In Milan, Fabio Novembre puts jeans label Meltin’ Pot where it belongs.

Point Blank Gijs Bakker aims, shoots and leaves a café interior in Middlesbrough.

Party With the President

Stuttgart’s Theodor Heuss Straße 12 is Ippolito Fleitz’s ode to party central.

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The White Indoors Finishes

Details 30 33 36 36

39 41 42 45 47 48 51 53 54 56 59 60 63 65 66 69 71 72 76 77 78

161

Franklin Azzi, Shop, Paris Geneto Studio, Showroom, Osaka Cassandra Complex, Bar, Melbourne HMC Interactive and Newangle, Installation, Birmingham Studio Pha, Shop, Prague Matter, Exhibition, New York Gordon Kipping, Shop, New York Keiichiro Sako, Shop, Hangzhou Stephan Jaklitsch, Shop Window, London Andreas Angelidakis, Shop, Milan Designrichtung, Showroom, Bern Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Dance Studio, New York Mario del Mare, Clinic, Kanagawa Maurice Mentjens, Parking Garage, Roermond Visionworks, Trade-Fair Stand, Las Vegas 3Gatti.com, Office, Shanghai Antonio Bertone, Shop, Tokyo Bellprat Associates, Trade-Fair Stand, Geneva Philippe Starck, Ceiling, Beijing Bleed, Showroom, New York Fox Lin, Installation, Los Angeles Carbondale, Shop, Nagoya Diezinger & Kramer, School, Eching Jehs + Laub, Hotel Room, Jukkasjärvi Nendo, Fitness Club, Tokyo

184

News

218

170 181 182

Exhibitions 188 190

[Portrait] Bertjan Pot. [Market] Salone del Mobile Milan.

[Introducing] Vujj.

[Process] Translucent stool by Kazuyasu Kochi.

196

201

Outdoor furniture by Extremis.

Danish firms Randi, Magnus Olesen, Penlau, Erik Jørgensen.

Kitchens and tiles by Eiffelgres, Miele, Ariostea, Canakkale Seramik Kalebodur, Iris Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti, Steuler Fliesen, MK Kitchen.

Materials 209 210

[1 Artist, 1 Material] Peter Callesen.

White and transparent materials.

Displays 216

Adidas shop in Paris.

Lighting Adaptable lighting.

Fixtures and Fittings 220

[Talk] White Collection by Gavin Harris.

Books 222

Four Dutch monographs and more.

Next 224

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Lisa Jones in Sydney.

Antoni Arola in Barcelona.

Frame Promotion 194

Frame launches The Great Indoors Award.

Furniture 162

186

Fabrics.

Phase 01 fabric by Elvira Softic & Gabi Schillig.

CONTENTS

Why creatives clear out the clutter and cover everything with a coat of white.

Opposites collide in Frame 58 when gin meets tonic and shopping meets surrealism Frame | No. 57 |

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Making Waves Ocean metaphors abound in the office fit-out that Clive Wilkinson designed for property developers Maguire Partners in Los Angeles.

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g Michael Webb Photos Benny Chan

Entrance to the blue conference room. Clive Wilkinson enclosed the room with shard-like white planes and glazing to conjure up an image of breaking surf – appropriate, given the location of the office, just one block from Santa Monica Beach.

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Interior of the green executive conference room located at one end of the oblong office. Shard-like slanting walls and panels of green glazing enclose the space.

‘E

veryone grew up at the beach,’ says property developer Robert Maguire, recalling the surfing culture that flourished in LA in the 1960s and the songs of the Beach Boys that once conveyed Southern California to the world. The exuberant spirit of that vanished era is revived in the executive offices that Clive Wilkinson Architects designed for Maguire Partners in Santa Moznica.

The ocean beckons from beyond an iconic row of palm trees, and the beach is re-created as an interior landscape of pebbles and waves. Shards of blue and green glass provide an abstraction of light glinting off water, and the whole expanse of the open office seems to roll with the surf. Things are in a state of becoming. It’s an appropriate image for a company that takes billion-dollar gambles on prestigious developments and new communities, such as Playa Vista, all over America.

Maguire Partners has a handsome base in downtown LA, where the firm is a leading force in urban renewal, but the powerful lure of the ocean recently led to the opening of a second office, which

‘We took the ocean metaphor and played with it. Colours, textures, materials and shapes all connect to the beach’ Clive Wilkinson

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The Plane Game: low between workstations, angled around conference rooms, large overhead.

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Enlivening one end of the office are an open pantry (right) and adjoining dining tables (left).

symbolizes the oufit’s involvement with beachfront projects in Orange County and San Diego. The pleasure principle was also a factor, as it was for the artists who settled in the vneighbouring district of Venice when it was still a slum by the sea with nothing to offer besides low rents, the beach and fresh breezes.

Now, Venice is being gentrified, and Santa Monica has already become one of Southern California’s more desirable and expensive places in which to live and work. Maguire shares its glass tower with the prestigious Rand Corporation, which recently commissioned a new headquarters on the adjoining site. Yet the laid-back vibe of the old beach community is still there, and Wilkinson cleverly exploited this mellow atmosphere.

It’s a big leap from the vibrant colours, jazzy patterns and pop artefacts of Chiat Day and FIDM (see Frame 31, page 114).

‘We were breaking out in a new direction, because these clients are very different from the advertising guerrillas and fashion students we’ve worked with before,’ says Clive Wilkinson, adding that the new direction was ‘also because the programme was so simple, and I yearned to turn it into something special without getting overly decorative. We didn’t want to have a conventional grid of high partitions, so we took the ocean metaphor and played with it.

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to the beach.’

The downstairs lobby is generic, offering no hint of what is to come and thus enhancing the surprise of emerging from the elevator into a gleaming white penthouse that is suffused with light. The floor is covered with tiny pebbles set in epoxy resin that is xtruded up to support counters topped with fibreglass or Corian. The exposed ceiling and its beams and ducts are wrapped in reinforced paper like a work of art by Christo - an agreeable change from the customary matte-black surface – and are partly concealed by a soffit that is cut away in long curved sweeps and pierced by deep-set lighting slots.

‘The soft tones and repetitive shape respond to the panorama of buildings and beach that can be viewed from every point’ Nothing blocks the view across the floor and out through the exterior glazing. Glass-walled perimeter offices (‘something we learned to do when Google insisted on enclosing its executive suites’) are separated by the same curved dividers that separate the open workstations: partitions made from white-lacquered drywall wrapped around metal armatures. Some of these waveform screens have rounded edges in an ironic nod to the local fetish for ‘Mediterranean style’ interiors, others are sharp-edged, and all provide a modicum of privacy without compromising the sense of openness. Everyone can be seen, but there’s no feeling of being in a goldfish bowl.

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Floating ceiling planes connect the conference rooms and the workstations in between. The ceiling integrates lighting, conceals mechanical systems and allows the overall building envelope to be exposed beyond.

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Details

Matter, Exhibition, New York

Soft Cell Photos Harry Zernike

David Sokol

The Gwathmey Siegel-designed galleries at New York’s International Center of Photography are punctuated with narrow passageways, decon angles and idiosyncratic slits. In conjuring up an exhibition design for the show Ecotopia, the Brooklyn design practice Matter took advantage of these quirks by inserting appropriately organic forms in, through and around the architecture. Dubbed ‘pods’, Matter’s creations would house video monitors and cordon off projection rooms throughout the 697-m2 museum. That much was certain.

‘But we had no idea what it would be made of,’ admits Sandra Wheeler, a principal in the firm. Wheeler and partner Alfred Zollinger had been presenting preliminary models made of polypropylene-foam acoustic insulation, a graphitecoloured material in which hollow cells are packed into irregular rows.

Ultimately, they replicated the material with Tubolit, polyethylene foam tubing used to wrap plumbing and heating pipes.

The architects ordered over 8000 linear metres of black insulation tubing and sawed it into thousands of cuffs. The museum’s crew laced

Black Blobs: With polyethylene foam tubing commonly used to insulate piping, design office Matter makes a subtle reference to issues raised by the Ecotopia exhibition.

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the cuffs into flexible, standardissue pieces of chicken wire and animal netting, which Matter then assembled onto standing wood and metal armatures. To fabricate screens, the miniaturized tubes were connected using commercial tagging guns. Wheeler waxes rhapsodic about Tubolit, saying that it met the requirements for affordability, sound absorption and ease of construction.

Better yet, its environmental paradoxes – non-biodegradable but recyclable, petroleum-based but energy-conserving – resonated with the exhibition’s images of the natural world and climate change, which were equal parts damning, hopeful and pessimistic.

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vtv

Compilation Matério www.materio.com

Matério’s latest selection of products features white and transparent materials for covering all

Pixel

Textile designer Emma Jeffs introduces Pixel, a series of decorative, self-adhesive, plastic films for covering windows. Pixel offers privacy without reducing the amount of light that enters the interior. Available in six designs, the product has no top, bottom, left or right: it can be applied as desired.

White patterns are printed on frosted film.

ARPRO EPP

Surface Material Design UK

Composed of expanded polypropylene beads, this recyclable, lightweight, sound- and energyabsorbent foam can be moulded into virtually any shape imaginable.

A product made from ARPRO always returns to its original shape.

Exposure to water – as well as to most oils and chemicals – does nothing to alter the functionality of the material. Densities vary. The foam can be adapted to ensure UV protection, to withstand physical abuse, and to tolerate extreme temperatures and other environmental conditions.

info@surfacematerialdesign.co.uk www.surfacematerialdesign.co.uk

JSP Germany

Dimensions (one roll): 100 x 120 cm.

Materials

Wrapped inWhite

Artema

Extra-durable Artema is a new type of weather-resistant concrete suitable for outdoor use. Especially applicable for projects with convex surfaces, such as curved façades. Available in six finishes, including textured patterns, and 16 colours.

Maximum dimensions (h x w x d): 240 x 100 x 1.6 cm.

Weight per m2: 38 kg.

Carea France contact.facade@carea.fr www.carea.fr

info@jsp.com www.jsp.com

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