J O H N PAW S O N
ISSUE 118 MAY 2015 THE DESIGN ISSUE
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wear what you want
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D E S I G N PO R T R A I T.
Charles, seat system designed by Antonio Citterio - www.bebitalia.com B&B Italia Stores New York: 150 E. 58th Street 10155 - Soho: 138 Greene Street 10012. Other B&B Italia Stores: San Francisco - Seattle Los Angeles - Dallas - Miami - Mexico City - Belo Horizonte Please call 1 800 872 1697 - info@bbitaliausa.com - www.bebitalia.com Time_Less Program: select B&B Italia pieces now in stock: www.bbitaliaquickship.com Milan Design Week: April 14Th/19Th 2015 - B&B Italia Store Milano: Via Durini, 14
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ALFI BY JASPER MORRISON Made in America of 100% reclaimed industrial waste and responsibly sourced local wood. Read more at emeco.net
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extra-ordinary
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Lumina
MORE THAN FOUR DECADES, CREATING ENVIRONMENTS THAT AFFECT PEOPLE'S LIVES.
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Pictured on left: Luminaire’s Flagship Showroom in Coral Gables, FL Pictured above: Luminaire’s Chicago Showroom
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“Forty-two years ago, we dared to dream…to democratize good design, to create spaces that enhance people’s lives.” Luminaire was born out of a vision to bring good design to the American public by being a resource focused on creating environments that affect people's lives. The component parts of this unifying philosophy – the necessity of design education, the desire for limitless inspiration and the requirement for impeccably detailed execution – affect every item in Luminaire’s collection, and reflect the company’s dedication to make good design accessible to all.
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Lumina
A SHAPER AND SHARER OF IDEAS.
Since its inception in 1974, Luminaire has continued to expand and respond to the needs of an increasingly receptive audience. With two showrooms, a state-of-the-art corporate headquarters and distribution center in Miami, and a showroom in Chicago, Luminaire demonstrates a continual evolution as a
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pioneering force in the design world, reshaping the idea of what a design store can be. Boasting a collection of the best contemporary design in indoor and outdoor furnishings, lighting, kitchen, bath and accessories, Luminaire continues to set the standard as a full-service design resource.
Pictured above & top right: Luminaire’s Flagship Showroom in Coral Gables Pictured below right: Luminaire Lab in Miami’s Design District
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Lumina
MANY OF THE THINGS OUR CLIENTS LIKE BEST ABOUT LUMINAIRE ARE NOT FOUND ON THE SHOWROOM FLOOR.
WING SOFA designed by Antonio Citterio
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Luminaire has built long-standing relationships with an international roster of designers and Europe's most important manufacturers of contemporary furniture, lighting and accessories such as: Agape, B&B Italia, Edra, Flos, Glas Italia, Flexform, Ingo Maurer, Living Divani, Paola Lenti, Porro, Walter Knoll, Davide Groppi, Danskina, Kymo, Michael Anastassiades, Bocci, Tecno, Moroso and Zanotta, to name but a few. These invaluable associations enable the company to offer their customers an incomparable selection of the most exquisite furnishings available, while Luminaire's in-house team manages the entire spectrum of their clients' experience, from selection to installation, providing an unrivaled level of attention at each step.
Pictured above: Luminaire Headquarters in Miami
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Luminaire's clients benefit most from the company’s business intelligence. Their sophisticated centralized computer system ensures fast and accurate order processing facilitated through direct
shipments from Europe to Luminaire’s main warehouse, delivered by their fleet of trucks and installed by the company’s professionally-trained team. In the realm of design education, the company has annually sponsored and produced spectacular curated exhibitions and a series of lectures since 1979. Featured speakers have included design luminaries such as Marcel Wanders, Antonio Citterio, Piero Lissoni, Giulio Capellini, Philippe Starck, Ron Arad, Ingo Maurer, Konstantin Grcic, Massimo and Lela Vignelli, Patricia Urquiola, Naoto Fukasawa, and Michael Anastassiades among others. Internationally, since 1998, Luminaire has been the sole US company to sponsor the prestigious DesignReport award, at SaloneSatellite during the Salone del Mobile in Milan, discovering young design talent, connecting them with top industry tastemakers and influencers, and exhibiting their works in its showrooms.
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Lumina
In the realm of philanthropic community outreach, the company has launched the innovative, fund-raising "Love" series by reaching out to Luminaries in the design community to raise both money and awareness for cancer treatment. These efforts have raised over a million dollars for the University of Miami Sylvester's Comprehensive Cancer Center. Luminaire’s generosity also extends to local cultural institutions, including support of Miami's Wolfsonian-FIU in Florida and in Chicago, the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital initiative where Luminaire furnished the St. Jude Dream Home. Luminaire makes a dedicated commitment to encouraging not only the extraordinary interactions with good design that occur in the showrooms, but also to a superior level of customer service and support that sets the company apart.
OBJECTS IN OAK designed by Ernst Gamperl
RIPPLE designed by Poetic Lab
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PAVILLION designed by Renato Morganti SMILE designed by Francesco Rota
CORAL GABLES SHOWROOM 2331 Ponce de Leon Blvd. Coral Gables, Florida 800.645.7250
CHICAGO SHOWROOM 301 West Superior Chicago, Illinois 800.494.4358
LUMINAIRE LAB 3901 NE 2nd Avenue Miami, Florida 866.579.1941
www.luminaire.com
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I C F F 2015
M AY 1 6 - 1 9
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Estiluz Booth - 1208 Inalco Booth - 912 Arturo Alvarez Booth - 1004
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B O OT H - 1 2 0 7
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Todagres Booth - 1212
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Now Carpets Booth - 1213 Teixidors Booth - 1111
Castalla Booth - 1112
Capdell Booth - 1104
Fama Living Booth - 906
Lladr贸 Booth - 904 Santa & Cole Booth - 1222
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Nomon Booth -1204
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CONTENTS
NO. 118
departments
26 Masthead Editor’s Letter 28 30 Contributors 44 Select 54 Travel 56 Bar 58 Restaurant 60 Hotel 64 Retail
66 Transport 68 Gear 70 Auction 72 Art 74 Books 76 Material 78 Survey 102 Endorsement 216 Object
46
product
Styling: Justin Min Photos: Sarah Silver and Victor Prado
PHOTOS: COVER, MARK COCKSEDGE. IDEAS IN DESIGN, OGATA. PRODUCT, SARAH SILVER. FASHION, COREY OLSEN. GALLERY, NACASA & PARTNERS. CULTURE CLUB, DELFINO SISTO LEGNANI.
104 fashion Men’s, Women’s, and Collection Commentary: Valerie Steele Photos: Corey Olsen
who’s on the cover?
John Pawson is a 66-year-old British architectural designer who has created everything from a steak knife, to real-estate developer and hotelier Ian Schrager’s Manhattan apartment, to a Trappist monk monastery in the Czech Republic. He is currently at work on the interiors of the London Design Museum’s new building, scheduled to open in late 2016.
188 gallery
S wiss firm Herzog & de Meuron designs a new Miu Miu boutique in Tokyo’s Aoyama district.
32
ideas in design Jasper Morrison discusses his second home and studio in Tokyo. Stefano Tonchi celebrates Italian design in a special exhibition at Collective Design. Former Fab.com co-founder Bradford Shellhammer launches Bezar, a new online platform for contemporary design.
201 culture club A photo portfolio of recent events in the Surface universe, including Valextra’s Martino Gamper–designed installation at Salone del Mobile. cover: John Pawson at his studio in London photographer: Mark Cocksedge SURFACE
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CONTENTS
ur annual look into the world’s leadO ing design minds, from a nonagenarian style icon to a British museum director.
166 f it for film esign doyenne Iris Apfel lands a D
starring role in a new documentary by the late Albert Maysles.
140 c lear and present With several major projects in the
170 drawn together Noemi Blager organizes a Chicago
works, John Pawson reaches new heights in things plain and simple.
exhibition celebrating the life and pioneering work of Lina Bo Bardi.
154 b orn identity Architect James Biber invokes food
174 creative control Directing events in Milan, New York,
160 r ule of three The crisp, well-made products of
178 building up With bold, clear vision, Deyan Sudjic
history and culture for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo.
Egg Collective have earned the trio renown in American design circles.
and Chicago, Joseph Grima proves his command of various mediums.
readies the London Design Museum for its move into a first-rate new home.
SURFACE
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PHOTOS (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT): IRIS APFEL, COURTESY MAGNOLIA PICTURES. NOEMI BLAGER, HANA KNIZOVA. JOSEPH GRIMA, DELFINO SISTO LEGNANI. DEYAN SUDJIC, HANA KNIZOVA. EGG COLLECTIVE, JEN DESSINGER. JAMES BIBER, VALENTINA ANGELONI. JOHN PAWSON, MARK COCKSEDGE. THE DESIGN ISSUE, GILBERT MCCARRAGHER.
138 the design issue
NO. 118
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855 768 5932 Quickship: select products delivered in 10 days
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New York Los Angeles Miami San Francisco
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MASTHEAD
S U R FAC E brand development
editorial and design
director Marc Lotenberg Instagram: @marclotenberg
editor-in-chief Spencer Bailey Instagram: @spencercbailey
advertising director (design & interiors) Adriana Gelves agelves@surfacemag.com
creative direction NoĂŤ & Associates info@noeassociates.com
advertising director (luxury & fashion) Laurel Nuzzo lnuzzo@surfacemag.com west coast account manager Jim Horan jim@accessmediala.com italian account manager Ferruccio Silvera info@silvera.it circulation manager David Renard david@muinc.com surface media llc chairman Eric Crown chief executive officer Marc Lotenberg controller Miles Bingham mbingham@surfacemag.com finance & operations manager Braden Bradford bbradford@surfacemag.com executive coordinator Laurie Sadove lsadove@surfacemag.com events coordinator Simon Swig sswig@surfacemag.com interns ZoĂŤ Bodzas, Julia Lu, Christopher Malone, Emily Manchester, Max Rovo
senior editor Aileen Kwun akwun@surfacemag.com Instagram: @aileenkwun fashion director Justin Min jmin@surfacemag.com Instagram: @_justinmin_ associate creative director Michael Ryterband mryterband@surfacemag.com Instagram: @michaelryterband assistant editors Roxy Kirshenbaum rkirshenbaum@surfacemag.com Instagram: @roxylittlewing Hally Wolhandler hwolhandler@surfacemag.com Instagram: @hallyjet designer Aaron Tripp digital imaging Caitlin Oppermann special projects editor Bettina Korek
Surface magazine is published 10 times annually by Surface Media LLC. subscriptions To subscribe, visit us online at: surfacemag.com/subscribe One Year Print and Digital United States: $60 International: $110 Single issue (within the U.S.): $15 Single issue (international): $30 Digital Only iPad subscription: $14.99 Single issue: $6.99 newsubscriptions@surfacemag.com advertising and editorial offices Surface Magazine 601 West 26th Street, Suite 1507 New York, New York 10001 advertising@surfacemag.com editorial@surfacemag.com licensing Contact us for opportunities at: licensing@surfacemag.com online
watch editor Keith W. Strandberg
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editor-at-large Dave Kim
international edition
contributing editors David Basulto (ArchDaily), Marina Cashdan, Julia Cooke, Tomas Delos Reyes, Natasha Edwards, Ted Gushue (Supercompressor), Tiffany Jow, Seamus Mullen, Nonie Niesewand, Evan Orensten (Cool Hunting), Ben Pundole (A Hotel Life), David Rockwell, Josh Rubin (Cool Hunting), Jonathan Schultz, Valerie Steele, Ian Volner, Ethan Wolff-Mann (Supercompressor) contributing photographers Grant Cornett, Adrian Gaut, Dean Kaufman, Mark Mahaney, Ogata, David Schulze, Yoshiaki Sekine
surfaceasiamag.com (Southeast Asia) All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is strictly prohibited. Please keep Surface for your library. When finished, recycle this issue or give it to a friend. Printed in the U.S. with responsibly sourced paper, soy-based inks, and renewable energy.
SURFACE
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NEVERTOOCHIC
While conceiving this year’s Design Issue, I never intended to give it a decidedly British bent. But as it developed, I began to notice (as if I weren’t already aware) that the U.K. has in fact spawned or is home to a disproportionate amount of the world’s leading voices in contemporary architecture and design, many of whom remain at the fore of today’s conversation. (To name just a few of the hard-hitters: David Chipperfield, Ilse Crawford, Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Alice Rawsthorn, Richard Rogers, and Paul Smith.) Three such figures—the architect John Pawson, London Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic, and designer Jasper Morrison—are profiled on these pages. In Studio Visit (page 32), contributing editor Nonie Niesewand—a veteran journalist from Scotland who has interviewed or covered practically everyone in the region’s architecture and design circles—stops by the Tokyo studio of the notoriously press-shy Morrison, who just unveiled a new design for Pennsylvania-based chair-maker Emeco and is a winner of this year’s Noguchi Award, to be presented at New York’s Noguchi Museum this month. Further in (pages 140 and 178, respectively), Pawson and Sudjic talk about their various projects, including a massive one they’re currently collaborating on: the London Design Museum’s new building (shown here under construction) slated for completion in late 2016. The project could very well redefine the nature of a design museum and its possibilities for presenting design (and, in turn, educating the public). The space is primed to only further cement London’s alreadyinfluential cultural position internationally. Combine this with last year’s major renovation of New York’s Cooper Hewitt, and these few years will likely prove to be a defining period in the history of design museums. Sudjic himself is an exemplar of this British might—and widespread presence. A week before interviewing him in New York this spring, I met him for the first time at a dinner in Tokyo, where we had traveled to attend the opening of Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron’s new Miu Miu boutique in the city’s Aoyama district (see Gallery on page 188). A week after the interview, during the Salone del Mobile design and furniture fair in Milan, we found ourselves once again seated at a dinner together. Upon departing, I asked him, jokingly, “Where will I see you next?” One possibility could be this fall’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, which is being co-directed by Joseph Grima (page 174)—who, though based in Italy, is yet another British maestro on the global design stage. — Spencer Bailey SURFACE
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PHOTO: GETTY/COURTESY LONDON DESIGN MUSEUM.
Editor’s Letter
EDITOR’S LETTER
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Contributors
LAURA RASKIN Writer and editor Laura Raskin talked to James Biber, whose firm designed the U.S. Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo, for a feature story in this issue (page 154). Though the two only spoke on the phone, Raskin says she got a vivid, on-the-ground picture of Italy: “He described his view of the Expo city rising before his eyes, as I heard the construction noise in the background—I could see the whole scene.” She adds that her favorite part of the interview was learning about the history of World’s Fairs and Expos from Biber, who is well-versed in the subject matter. Raskin, who lives in Brooklyn, is currently editing an architecture monograph for Phaidon and working as Rockwell Group’s web editor. Previously, she was an editor at Architectural Record. Her writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Brooklyn Rail. NONIE NIESEWAND Surface contributing editor Nonie Niesewand interviewed Jasper Morrison for this issue’s Studio Visit (page 32). Interestingly, Niesewand covered the somewhat elusive designer 20 years ago for Vogue. “I loved the haiku Jasper penned when I asked him to pare down his feelings for Japan in a few words,” she says. Niesewand, a U.K.-based freelance writer, has been busy traveling all over the world: She recently returned from Hong Kong, where she was covering Art Basel for Condé Nast Traveller, and visited Dubai for Design Week, as well as Milan for Salone del Mobile. Niesewand has worked for Vogue and The Independent and is also a contributing editor at Architectural Digest India and House & Garden. CRISTOBAL OLIVARES Santiago-based photographer Cristobal Olivares took the portrait of Chilean designer Ignacia Murtagh at her studio for this issue’s Travel column (page 54). Olivares says his favorite part about contributing to Surface was getting to know Murtagh’s approach to design. “I wasn’t aware of her talent and super-clean work,” he says. The Chilean documentary photographer is currently working on an exhibition, book, and dedicated website for a long-term project about violence against women in Chile. His photographs have been published in publications including Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times, and Bloomberg News. GREGORY PIERCE “We started off both a little stressed from our experiences earlier in the day, but gradually slowed down and ended up talking about how important it is to stay in the moment, and also a little bit about Buddhism,” photographer Gregory Pierce says of his portrait shoot with Portland artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins, featured in this issue’s Art column (page 72). “Jessica was great, and we had a lot of fun on set.” Pierce, also based in Portland, recently wrapped up an aerial shoot in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for Hilton (“I’m actually afraid of heights!” he says). Pierce’s clients include a variety of major hospitality groups, like Auberge Resorts, Best Western Hotels, Marriott Hotels, and Zagat, as well a number of architecture firms. JORDAN KUSHINS For this issue, Jordan Kushins interviewed Brooklyn-based design trio Egg Collective (page 160), which is receiving the inaugural American Design Honor award at New York’s Wanted Design fair this month. “I am totally inspired by the Egg Collective story—three friends who met in college and kept their creative connection going after graduation until the time was right to ‘officially’ collaborate,” Kushins says. “It’s a nice affirmation that even though modern design seems swept up in a crazy fast pace, it’s okay to let good ideas and partnerships incubate and develop organically.” She adds, “This was my first story for Surface in a couple years, and it feels great to be back!” Kushins lives in San Francisco and has previously worked as a writer and editor at Gizmodo, Dwell, and Fast Company. When she’s not writing, she creates stamps and baskets, among other crafty projects.
SURFACE
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Ideas in Design
IDEAS IN DESIGN
Jasper Morrison
STUDIO VISIT
A recipient of the second annual Isamu Noguchi Award, the English product and furniture designer discusses his second home in Tokyo and his latest releases from this year’s Salone del Mobile. INTERVIEW BY NONIE NIESEWAND PORTRAIT BY OGATA You were born in London, studied at the Royal College of Art, and founded your studio in the city almost 30 years ago. When did you move to Japan? About eight years ago, I think. I had started to work for Muji and I met my now-wife there soon after. What does living in Japan offer you that London doesn’t? I think pretty much any locale offers something another place cannot, but the cultural differences are quite extreme and I enjoy switching between the two. When I’m in Tokyo, I lead a very local life; when I’m in Europe, I never stay still. What does a typical day—if there is such a thing—in your Tokyo studio look like? I don’t usually get to work until after lunch, but the studio, which used to be our apartment, is a small box on top of a bigger building with a large terrace
around it. There’s a view of a river lined with cherry trees, which are spectacular in March and April. I have one assistant here, and we work very quietly for about five hours, drinking a lot of green tea. There’s no telephone or fax and no room for a workshop, but we use the terrace to make things occasionally. Of the three studios I have, it’s the most productive for me because the rest of the world is asleep for most of the day. Do you think your design process or approach has changed since moving to Japan? If it has, it’s just a result of having time to concentrate on things a bit more and not being disturbed. You’re being honored with the second annual Isamu Noguchi Award— along with architect Yoshio Taniguchi—to be given in a ceremony at New York’s Noguchi Museum this spring. When did you first discover Noguchi’s work? When I was about 16 years old, I spent about three months chiseling away at a block of granite with some blunt sculpting tools, and during that time— while learning sculpture was more work than it seemed—I discovered the work of Noguchi, Brancusi, Gaudier-Brzeska, Matisse, and others who inspired me. What impression did Noguchi’s work initially make on you? I liked the scale of it, and the abstraction, and also his work in other fields: the paper lights he did in Japan, the furniture, and the landscapes. >
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Your work is very clear-minded. The recent Noguchi Museum citation describes it as having “a quiet respect for materials.” How do you typically present or pitch your ideas to manufacturers? Usually with a scrappy sketch and a verbal explanation, but occasionally, we develop something further before showing it. What did you launch at this year’s Salone del Mobile? A collection of Emeco chairs, called Alfi; the Superloon light for Flos; a new book on my design work with Lars Müller Publishers; a small table with the Danish company Fredericia; some follow up projects with Cappellini and Maruni; and an exhibition design for Molteni’s 80th anniversary. You lead a whirlwind life of international deadlines and deliveries. Where do you go to seek inspiration or to just relax? The best escape I know is to go and stay in a ryokan with a hot spring bath outside your room. Tell us about your new Superloon light for Flos. What sets it apart from the rest of your lighting projects? It’s a large flat white disc, which sits in a kind of gyroscope mounted on a tripod base, so you can spin it on two axes. It’s my first LED light, and quite a dramatic entry into that field, as most LED lights have been quite small so far. It’s dimmable, but gives out quite a lot of light at full setting. It’s both a powerful light source and an interesting presence—probably not made for small rooms, though! Which of your many lighting designs gives you the greatest pleasure to live with or work near? I’m sitting in a room with all three of the existing ones, and each of them
is pleasing for a different reason and provides a very different kind of light. Hanging over the staircase there’s a Glo-Ball, which sends out a highly diffused light in every direction. Over the table, there’s a Smithfield, which sends an equally diffused light down on the table, and in the corner there’s a Luxmaster, which is bouncing light off the ceiling. I think you need these different types of light to make a good atmosphere in a room. I’m thinking you have read Japanese writer Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 essay “In Praise of Shadows.” I have read it, and I loved it. It’s a book that the light-source people need to read now that the incandescent options are disappearing. We’ve lost a lot of subtlety for the sake of a few percent’s efficiency. You’ve designed a lot of everyday, useful things for brands like Muji and Alessi. Do you find smaller-scale items are more or less challenging to design than larger ones? No, I wouldn’t say so. They all have their special reasons for being complex in some ways, and easy in others. For example, cutlery—which I have designed for Muji and Alessi—tends to be a question of a basic idea, which gives identity, good detailing, and balance. A chair is more of a puzzle, having to do with structure, materials, and a certain expression of character. You’ve also designed many pieces for both Vitra and Cappellini. What is it about these two companies that attracts you and keeps you coming back to work with them? I started with Cappellini in 1987 after Giulio Cappellini came to see me in London and with Vitra a year later after Rolf Fehlbaum sent me a letter expressing interest. They have both been patient enough to put up with my early mistakes, and happily, the relationships in both cases are SURFACE
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PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY LARS MULLER PUBLISHERS. BOTTOM, COURTESY EMECO. OPPOSITE, OGATA.
IDEAS IN DESIGN
IDEAS IN DESIGN
very special. It’s much easier to work with people you get on well with and respect. “Super Normal,” your joint 2006 exhibition with Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa, seems to have had a large impact on your career. Now that nearly 10 years have passed, what’s your perspective on it? It was one of those happy realizations that you no longer have to think of a reason for what you’re doing. Everything fell into place for me, and I think I’ve done most of my best work since then. Do you still have dialogues with Fukasawa? Absolutely. We meet quite often in Tokyo.
Morrison’s new monograph, published by Lars Müller. Alfi, his new collection of chairs and stools for Emeco. (OPPOSITE) A Muji bookshelf in Morrison’s Tokyo studio, with an assortment of stationery and his designs including his phone and clock for Punkt.
Your work has become associated with the “New Simplicity” movement, of which you’re seen as a leading practitioner. How do you feel about this label? It makes me laugh—the idea that simplicity might be anything new! Is there any “-ism” or label attached to what you do that you dislike? I only have one way of doing what I do and I’ve never paid any attention to labels, but the one that annoys me the most is being called a “Minimalist.” If you were to throw a dinner party full of Japan-based designers and architects, living or dead, whom would you invite? Sori Yanagi, Kenzo Tange, Yoshio Taniguchi, Junzo Yoshimura, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, and Naoto Fukasawa. If you could pare down your feelings on Japan into a few words, what would they be?
PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY LARS MULLER PUBLISHERS. BOTTOM, COURTESY EMECO. OPPOSITE, OGATA.
I like things local / And the feeling of being / A stranger at home.
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IDEAS IN DESIGN
A ustralian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
ARCHITECTURE
EXHIBIT
“Collective Focus: Italy”
New Yorkers like to carp—mostly about New York, a place that’s been slowly mulcted of its character over the past few decades. Still, its denizens try to make the best of it. One way of doing that is by looking to those few countries that have managed to preserve their cultural heritage, and Italy immediately comes to mind. “Italy has always been one of the great centers of innovation,” says Steven Learner, founder of Collective Design, an annual design fair in New York, returning for its third edition this month (May 13–17) at Skylight Clarkson Sq. Each year, Collective Design’s Focus presentation features influential design from a particular country or region. This year the exhibition, titled “Collective Focus: Italy,” encompasses the enduring impact of Italian design on artists and designers from across the globe. It’s being curated by the editor-in-chief of W magazine, Stefano Tonchi. “He has a deep knowledge of art and design,” Learner says. “He applies that educated eye with a personal sense of history and passion.” Tonchi, Florentine by birth, knows all about his native country’s contributions to modern design. He extols the greats like Ettore Sottsass, Nanda Vigo, Andrea Branzi, and Giò Ponti, not simply for their functional work, but for their decorative art and experimentations in other media. Furniture and lighting from the early midcentury era through to contemporary will be on display, handpicked by Tonchi from galleries showing at the fair, including Nicholas Kilner (New York) and Memphis-Post Design Gallery (Milan), among others. Tonchi explains that Italy’s heritage is very important to the world of design. The country has reason to complain about its political leaders or the Eurozone’s tanking currency, for example, but the Sistine Chapel will never be in danger of housing a future Duane Reade. “The memory of the past,” Tonchi says, “is always present in the mind of any Italian designer.” —Charles Curkin
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PHOTOS: ARCHITECTURE, JOHN GOLLINGS, COURTESY OF THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS. EXHIBIT, COURTESY COLLECTIVE DESIGN.
Since 1895, the Giardini has been the main venue for the Venice Biennale. On its grounds sit a collection of architectural gems representing 29 countries. Designed by celebrated architects like Gerrit Rietveld, Sverre Fehn, and Alvar Aalto, these pavilions range from neoclassical to modern, turning the Giardini into a sort of timeline of architectural styles. Just in time for the opening of this year’s Art Biennale, Australia inaugurates its new pavilion—the first one built at the Giardini in this century. Designed by Melbourne-based architects Denton Corker Marshall, the enigmatic black box hovers over the canal, replacing a temporary pavilion built in 1988. “We embraced the responsibility of designing a new structure in such a distinct setting and proposed something different and special, to make the Australian Pavilion a ‘must-see’ for visitors to the Biennale,” says one of the firm’s directors, John Denton. The black box is composed of panels that can be opened according to the requirements of each exhibit, adding a dynamic and sculptural accent to its stealthy look. Says Denton: “We saw the ‘black box’ a little like the black object in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, just landing in the Giardini from the antipodes.” In the interior, this bold image subtly shifts. A white box inside provides neutral space that can be modified to fit a variety of exhibition types. On May 6, the pavilion will be inaugurated for this year’s Biennale (through Nov. 22). —David Basulto, founder and editor-in-chief of the website ArchDaily
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IDEAS IN DESIGN
“How Posters Work”
GRAPHICS
“Sacai: A to Z”
BOOK
When Japanese fashion label Sacai launched to wide acclaim in 1999, it culminated a moment that had been a long time coming for founder Chitose Abe. Brought up in a postwar Japan by a seamstress mother, Abe worked for two years as a pattern maker at Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons, then for Kawakubo’s protégé, Junya Watanabe, once he launched his own collection in 1992. “I was continually figuring out how to make things. You are told not to look at magazines, but to come up with something original,” says Abe of her training with the two avantgarde legends in Sacai: A to Z (Rizzoli), a new monograph of her work. “I learned so much from [Kawakubo]. The main thing was her sense of individuality—that your work should be innovative, and not like other people’s. And that you have to understand that the clothes must sell.” Sacai upholds the experimental rigor of both predecessors, yet strikes a gentle, softer balance, applying deconstruction to create a playful mixand-match aesthetic. Abe’s vision is one that’s decidedly more feminine, and more wearable—a practicality informed by her home life as a mother and wife—yet fiercely independent (the brand’s moniker derives from her maiden name, Sakai). Presenting the elemental vocabulary of her designs, the tome collects images defining the Sacai ethos: The letters A, B, and C stand for Astonish, Brand, and Creation, and continue along the alphabet to E (Extra, a collection of press clips), P (Pattern, interleaved with a foldout blueprint to her architectural pieces), and Z (Zero, with a small graphic comic zine illustrating “how it all began”). Though she has made a name for herself through jigsaw patterns, flouncing silhouettes, bright colors, and material juxtapositions of leather, mesh, satin, and knitwear, “everything I do is rooted in something classic,” Abe says. —A.K.
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PHOTOS: GRAPHICS, COURTESY COOPER HEWITT, SMITHSONIAN DESIGN MUSEUM. BOOK, COURTESY RIZZOLI USA.
A new show at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, “How Posters Work,” explores the age-old print medium as an enduring—and widely diverse—graphic tool for communication. Opening on May 8 and on view through Nov. 15, the exhibition will present more than 125 international works culled from over 4,000 in the museum’s permanent prints and drawings collection. “We didn’t want to do a show that was just a history of style, or a greatest-hits show,” says senior curator Ellen Lupton. “We wanted to see how we could really use the poster collection to demonstrate bigger ideas about graphic design.” To that end, Lupton and her team spent long hours in the archives to find the most salient examples, then sorted the selected works into what she describes as “buckets representing different ideas, concepts, or motivations in poster design, so that the visitor immediately sees the point of the exhibition is these big ideas.” The resulting typologies are expansive, and aptly, illustrative: “Focus the Eye,” “Overwhelm the Eye,” “Double the Meaning,” and “Tell a Story” are among the show’s 14 groupings, containing works by pioneers such as Herbert Matter, Paul Rand, Experimental Jetset, and M/M Paris, alongside emerging talents such as young Swiss designer Felix Pfäffli (whose 2013 poster for a festival is shown, right). The exhibition has a “didactic and, I think, really friendly, direct, very inviting way,” says Lupton, who heads the graphic design MFA program at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and has long contributed critical texts to the field. “I think the public will walk in and go, ‘Oh! Okay! So that’s an idea, here’s how it works.’” —Aileen Kwun
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Das Licht.
Starbrick design by Olafur Eliasson www.starbrick.info
www.zumtobel.com
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IDEAS IN DESIGN
Lacoste LT12 Tennis Racket
LIMITED EDITION
With a design that merges wood and graphite, Lacoste’s LT12 tennis racket is now available in an edition of 650. The LT12 represents a contemporary model that borrows from a traditional wood racket and applies innovative graphite technology to the frame. The LT12’s wood element features an inner periphery of low-density lime, an outer periphery of walnut (to support its core), and balsa oriented toward the racket’s center (to dampen vibration and strength its structure). This wood blend, comprising 70 percent of the frame, has been chosen specifically to stabilize the racket, to allow for easy gripping, and to reduce polar inertia. “Wood means comfort, and also a flashback in time,” says French tennis legend and Lacoste ambassador Guy Forget. The final 30 percent of the frame is made of high modulus graphite, contributing to increased ball speed and control. Inspiration for the hybrid piece derives from a meeting between two experts: Alain Gallais, René Lacoste’s historical collaborator, and French ski artisan Alain Zanco. “First, a prototype was produced, and we tested it on the courts,” Forget says of racket-making process, which took three years total. “Then we fine-tuned the racket and went to test it in labs to know the true specifications.” —Zoë Bodzas
C asey Lurie
Chicago-based furniture designer Casey Lurie finds himself both deeply attracted to West Coast modernism and traditional Japanese interiors, woodworking, and joinery techniques. As such, the 38-year-old is drawn to wood, glass, metal, and steel. Lurie, who grew up in Southern California and has spent three years working in Tokyo, is a well-seasoned traveler constantly inspired by his surroundings. Currently, he finds illumination in the Windy City’s industrial past: “Chicago has a strong history of manufacturing, and steel and glass are two big elements of the buildings here. Those materials certainly influence my current aesthetic.” Lurie’s best-selling piece is his easy-to-assemble, flat-pack Primo shelving system, which does away with hardware and fasteners. While the designer is accustomed to creating clean, uncomplicated pieces made of wood and steel, he is now trying his hand at leather in his new experimental pieces debuting in Miami this month at the first-ever Maison & Objet Americas fair (May 12–15). Of the stools (shown here), Lurie says, “They’re taking me in a new direction. They’re quite upright, and feature a frame that the loose slung leather gets stretched around, sort of in the way that a canvas is stretched.” —Hannah Gottlieb-Graham
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PHOTOS: LIMITED EDITION, COURTESY LACOSTE. UP AND COMING, COURTESY CASEY LURIE STUDIO.
UP AND COMING
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Vision. Touch. Passion. To learn more about our kitchen designs, please visit www.bulthaup.com Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Hamptons, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Scottsdale, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington DC
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IDEAS IN DESIGN
S amsung Galaxy S6
TECH
After years of making plastic phones, Samsung has finally joined the ranks of Apple and HTC with its new unibody aluminum Galaxy S6 phones. While this sleek new look translates to a departure from the previous Galaxy designs that allowed for expandable storage and an easily replaceable battery, the S6 addresses the change handily by offering storage up to 128 gigabytes and an enormous battery. A big tack windward for the brand, the prioritization of aesthetics meant an enormous redesign and going back to square one. “Every aspect, from material and shape to the user experience, was considered from an entirely new perspective that focuses on premium device aesthetics and functionality,” says Samsung senior designer Hong Yeo. “We needed everything—including the software and hardware—to support the aesthetics of the design.” In addition to the standard Galaxy S6, Samsung took an extra step forward by launching the S6 Edge, a variation with a screen that continues onto the edges of the phone. Pushing the boundaries of current smartphone technology, the Edge clearly shows Samsung’s renewed commitment to form, aesthetics, and user-friendly design. Someday soon, these phones may be all screen. —Ethan Wolff-Mann, editor at the website Supercompressor
B ezar
When Bradford Shellhammer launched the new online retailer Bezar last month, he had two things in mind: to sell things that people have never seen before, and to champion design for a younger audience. Bezar, a play on the words “bizarre” and “bazaar,” is a fitting combination of both referents, offering a diverse marketplace of offbeat, colorful products that aim to “bridge the gap between people who aren’t buying luxury goods but want really interesting things in their home, and people who are making cool things that are authentic and don’t cost a million dollars,” says Shellhammer, who previously cofounded Fab.com in 2011. “There’s nothing that’s showing how real people live, which is a mix of special things that you save up a little bit more money for, the high end things, and then the more affordable things that you pick up at the flea market.” While seemingly similar to his former venture, Bezar promises to distinguish itself with a pop-up sales model that introduces four new designers every day in one of four categories: Art, House, Jewelry, and Accessories. The collections are specially curated by an in-house team with an eye for emerging designers, new collections from established figures, and products imbued with a colorful, happy energy—what Shellhammer refers to as an “unapologetic optimism.” The site’s backcatalog of products, called Additional Offerings, include select items with color options exclusive to Bezar, including the Flos Kelvin lamp in a bright pink twist (shown here) that’s set to launch this month. By “colorbombing” some of the most iconic products in design, Shellhammer says he hopes to breathe new life into classics. —Julia Lu
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PHOTOS: TECH, COURTESY SAMSUNG. RETAIL, COURTESY FLOS AND BEZAR.
RETAIL
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CHESS TABLE CONSTRUCTION LAMP CONTAINER TABLE NEW ANTIQUES CONTAINER STOOL NEW ANTIQUES HEAVEN’S GATE CARPET HERACLEUM THE BIG O MONSTER CHAIR PROP LIGHT FLOOR PROP LIGHT WALL ROUND RANDOM LIGHT THE KILLING OF THE PIGGY BANK TUDOR CUPBOARD ZIO COFFEE TABLE ZLIQ SOFA
New Brand Store now open! moooi new york (showroom & brand store) 36 east 31st street � new york, NY 10016 T +1 646 396 0455 � ny@moooi.com � www.moooi.com
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Coco Chanel’s taste for her home was as limited quantities, each watch is painstakexquisite as the liberating silhouettes of her ingly hand-painted by master artisans using a revolutionary dresses and trousers. Taken Genevan technique called “Grand Feu.” The from the lavish orient and occident–inspired watch comprises 18-karat white-gold hands, interior of her famed apartment on 31 Rue an enamel dial, glossy leather straps, and a Cambon, Chanel has introduced a new line watch case accented with 4 carats of snow set of watches, “Mademoiselle Privé,” that fea- diamonds. Mademoiselle Privé Coromandel tures the Coromandel, shown here. Inspired Dial Grand Feu Enamel, $226,000, available by the lacquered chinoiserie screens that in all Chanel Fine Jewelry Boutiques, 800adorned her apartment, and produced in 550-0005 —Justin Min SURFACE
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PHOTO: VICTOR PRADO.
Dialed In
SELECT
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FLAT design Mario Ruiz www.gandiablasco.com info-usa@gandiablasco.com
GANDIABLASCO NEW YORK 52 Greene Street New York, NY 10013 T. 212-421-6701 info-usa@gandiablasco.com GANDIABLASCO MIAMI 3650 North Miami Ave Miami, FL 33127 T. 305-576-8181 miami@gandiablasco.com GANDIABLASCO LOS ANGELES 301. N Robertson Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90048 T. 310-278-3191 losangeles@gandiablasco.com GANDIABLASCO ATLANTA 670 14th Street Atlanta, GA 30318 T. 404-605-0196 atlanta@gandiablasco.com
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INTERIORS FROM SPAIN Ca Amalia. Ibiza.
26/03/2015 8:25:29 28/04/2015 19:33
PRODUCT
COLOR SPLASH
Makeup artist Walter Obal interprets wall coverings by Trove using this season’s top beauty products.
SKIN: Optimal Brightening Concentrate (to hydrate the skin and give it a glow). EYES: Velvet Shadow Stick in Nunavut (to line the entire lashline, creating a graphic line toward the temple). Duo Eyeshadow in Parallel Universe. Iridescent Pink Lilac shadow (to highlight the inner corners of the eye and the brow bone). Soft Iridescent Violet (to color up the inside crease). LIPS: Guyane Lip Gloss (to add a soft hydrated sheen to the lips). All makeup and lipstick NARS. NAILS: Le Vernis in Lavanda, Chanel. Dress, Alexander Wang. Heze wallpaper, Trove.
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BY JUSTIN MIN PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARAH SILVER
PRODUCT
SKIN: HD High Definition Elixir. EYES: Aqua Cream No. 4 (white shimmer on entire lid and inner and upper corners of the eye). Aqua Matic Pencil Shadow in D-21/Light Turquoise (to highlight the brow bone). Aqua Matic Pencil Shadow in 1-20/Dark Turqoise (to contour the upper crease). Aqua Matic Pencil Shadow in 1-22/Cobalt Blue (to light the entire eye, smudging the color toward the temple for a smoky look). LIPS: Plexi Gloss No. 200 lip gloss. All makeup and lipstick Make Up For Ever. NAILS: Eu De Rose, Yves Saint Laurent. Top and skirt, Dion Lee. Auva wallpaper, Trove.
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PRODUCT
SKIN: Intensive Infusion Ultra Rich Moisturizer (to add a glow to the skin). EYES: Cream and Powder eye color in Golden Peach (for a hint of color, keeping the focus on the lips). LIPS: Lip color shine in Ravenous. All makeup and lipstick Tom Ford. NAILS: Vernis in Milly, Dior. Top, Ellery.
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PRODUCT
SKIN: Hydra Beauty collection (to hydrate the skin). LIPS: 56 Orange Intense Pencil (to line and fill in the lips with intense color). Lip gloss in 166 Amour. All skincare and lipstick Chanel. NAILS: Night Out, NARS. Top, Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh Model: Annie K at New York Models. Hair: Danielle Priano at Tim Howard Management. Manicurist: Kelly Baber at Defacto. Photo Assistant: Eric Martin.
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PRODUCT
SHADY BUSINESS Spring’s most covetable shapes play with tortoiseshell frames for a look both dynamic and classic.
ROUND ABOUT This spring, round frames are the focus of optical trends. Quirky shapes lend a sartorial boost. LEFT TO RIGHT: Riviera, Retrosuperfuture. Milan, Illesteva. Dewey, Garrett Leight California Optical. Wilson, Garrett Leight California Optical. Typewriter Edition, Persol. Round Tortoise, Ray Ban.
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BY JUSTIN MIN PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTOR PRADO
PRODUCT
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TOTAL COVERAGE This season, whether it is square, cat-eye, or round, tortoiseshell iterations have been reinterpreted in bright colors. LEFT TO RIGHT: The Grettas, Bobbi Brown. 0107, Fendi. Square Acetate, Stella McCartney. PR08RS57, Prada. DVN84 Frame, Dries Van Noten. Square Sunglasses, Max Mara.
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Natural Beauty
TRAVEL
Designer Ignacia Murtagh finds revelations in the poetic landscape of Chile.
Something about the country of Chile—perThe Bernhardt Design commission came haps its rich natural environment, its con- about after the company’s president and crenection to the mountains and the sea—lends ative director, Jerry Helling, met Murtagh it a profound serenity. The country’s unfor- at the Design Junction fair during London gettable geography and topography form its Design Festival in 2013. There, Helling saw soul. That the land has spawned poets includ- prototype versions of the Los Andes pieces, ing Pablo Neruda, Vicente Huidobro, and which were initially made with a ceramic top. Pablo de Rokha is no surprise. In the city of “We needed to create pieces more suitable for Santiago, with the Pacific Ocean to the west industry and mass-production,” Murtagh says. and the Andes Mountains to the east, this Following a series of sketches, prototypes, and sense of spirit is especially pronounced. For mockups, Murtagh and Helling decided on the 26-year-old designer Ignacia Murtagh, who all-wood result. “The table is angled, but at was born and raised in the capital city, Chile’s the same time soft,” she says. “Woodworking various native cultures “add extra value to the allows this. It’s versatile and limitless.” pieces I create.” Throughout the work of Murtagh, who “We live in a world where we’re surrounded launched her studio in Santiago two years by so many objects,” Murtagh says. “I like to ago and this month is relocating (at least temdesign more meaningful objects. I like to think porarily) to New York City, her surroundthat my pieces are like poetry—materialized ings in Chile shine through. But cues come poetry.” She continues, “I’m always paying from elsewhere, too. During her childhood, attention to tiny details of nature that can be she often traveled internationally, and these relevant in an object.” experiences opened up her eyes to opportuAt this month’s ICFF in New York, nities—and ideas—beyond Chile’s borders. Murtagh will unveil her latest creations: the “It was my motivation to do something difLos Andes collection for American furniture ferent than what was already here in Chile,” manufacturer Bernhardt Design. Pulling inspi- she says. ration from the Andes mountain range, the Following a five-year design program at solid walnut line consists of a coffee table and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, two side tables. “The concept, or the essence, Murtagh briefly studied furniture design at of the project,” she says, “was how landscape the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in can be turned into furniture, and how very Copenhagen and ceramics at London’s Royal abrupt, sharp forms can be balanced with College of Art, also interning at the U.K. bone weightlessness, elegance, and slimness.” china manufacture Royal Crown Derby. Her
studio’s focused, cleanly designed output is, like Chile’s landscape, refreshingly diverse: Her pieces range from the marble-and-steel El Plomo table collection, to the Kal line of wool textiles, to the stone-shaped ceramic Kura bowls and plates. “I’m not the kind of designer who has an idea, and that’s it,” she says. “I study my source of inspiration, then move onto materiality and the design process and all the technical aspects. I really take my time to design something.” Santiago has proven an ideal location for Murtagh’s creativity. For one thing, nature is never far away. “It’s a big city,” she says, “but it’s surrounded by mountains. You’re one hour from the sea, and in 45 minutes, you can be in a national park to visit a glacier. I don’t lose that relationship with nature. I’m really connected with it.” For another, the city is “eclectic,” as Murtagh puts it. “Santiago is difficult to know because it’s really spread out. When I think of Santiago, Berlin also comes to mind. They’re cities in which every corner provides something different. Here, there’s such a mix of Western civilizations. Chile was a Spanish colony, but we also have strong French, Italian, and English influences. We also have native and countryside cultures. Everything blends.” Of Santiago’s small-but-burgeoning design community, she adds, “We’re all using Chile as a source in different ways. Some of us use the native cultures, others the geography, others the materials. Chile is the spine of it all.” SURFACE
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PHOTOS: 01, COURTESY BASICO. 02, COURTESY GALERIA MADHAUS. 03, COURTESY GALERIA PATRICIA READY. 04, COURTESY SISA.
BY SPENCER BAILEY PORTRAIT BY CRISTOBAL OLIVARES
TRAVEL
IGNACIA MURTAGH’S INSIDE GUIDE TO SANTIAGO
01 Part of the Andes House design collective, manufacturer Básico produces wood furniture and recently furnished the café at Santiago’s Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. Among its wares in a small shop are limited-edition tapestries (shown here) by local designer Sebastián Rodríguez Besa featuring silkscreens produced by Sebastián Palma of Coco Prints. “It’s a very good selection of Chilean design,” Murtagh says. Nueva Costanera 3919, Local 102 B, Vitacura; 56-02-2503-6631; basico.to 02 Murtagh enjoys Galería Madhaus for its youth factor. “Madhaus has more unknown and upcoming young talents [than established ones],” she says, adding, “It also has a bar and is more related with nightlife.” Located in the city’s Barrio Italia neighborhood near Murtagh’s studio, she says it’s a place of consistent discovery. Among the artists on the gallery’s roster are the photographers Magdalena Chahin and Bernardita Bennett, the painter Matias Santa Maria, and the sculptor Andrea Rodríguez Vial. Tegualda 1509, Ñuñoa; galeriamadhaus.com
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PHOTOS: 01, COURTESY BASICO. 02, COURTESY GALERIA MADHAUS. 03, COURTESY GALERIA PATRICIA READY. 04, COURTESY SISA.
03 Designed by local architecture firms Izquierdo Lehmann Arquitectos and Elton + Léniz, Galería Patricia Ready is one of Murtagh’s favorite places to visit in the city. “It’s a very open space and has a lot of light,” she says. “It’s the perfect spot to stop for lunch and then to walk the gallery.” Recent exhibitions displayed the work of local artists Patrick Steeger and Eugenia Vargas Pereira. Calle Espoz 3125, Vitacura; 56-02-2953-6210; galeriapready.cl 04 Founded in 2012 and run by Alejandra Cruz with her two partners, Trinidad Rodríguez (a trained industrial designer) and Elisa Rodríguez (a trained architect), the fashion label Sisa is “one of Chile’s best standouts,” Murtagh says. The brand, like Murtagh’s studio, is global-minded: It manufactures all of its collections in Chile, but it sources materials locally, as well as from places like the United States and India. Nueva Costanera 3919, Local 102, Vitacura; sisacollection.com
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BAR
Cocktail by Tomas Delos Reyes INSPIRED BY HAPPIEST HOUR The overall kitschy-cool vibe of the space inspired me to go for a take on a classic Tiki cocktail. With the bar’s Hunter Thompson–meets–Diane Von Furstenberg feel, I knew it had to have complexity in character balanced with some elegance. On that note, a base of Hennessy VSOP Privilege was necessary for its blend of 60 Eau de Vie to represent the nostalgic ’70s-era props throughout. The orange Curacao combined with the Orgeat and lime reference the lighting and texture of the wooden banquettes. A handful of garnish evokes the flair of palm trees. Placing it all in a Cocktail Kingtom rock glass makes for the perfectly elegant presentation. 1.5 oz. 1 ⁄2 oz. 1 oz. 1 oz. 1 dash
Hennessy VSOP Privilege orange Curacao orgeat syrup fresh lime juice Angostura bitters
Add all ingredients into a shaker. Add ice and shake hard. Strain over fresh ice into rocks glass. Slap a few mint sprigs across your hand lightly and garnish. Add orange wedge. Enjoy.
A coastal feel brings a refined dash of kitsch to a new bar in Greenwich Village.
Palm Tale
BY EMILY MANCHESTER The Happiest Hour, a new restaurant and bar from Acme’s Jon Neidich and bartender Jim Kearns (the latter formerly of the Pegu Club and the NoMad), looks back to the midcentury resorts of California and Florida. Designed by Neidich and Australian restaurateur Nick Mathers, the space lends a distinctive flair to New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. “I became enchanted by the resorts of the 1950s, old woody boats, and definitely some Dirty Dancing,” Neidich says. The space, previously occupied by the restaurant Kingswood, was redesigned to break up the rectangular-shaped room. A strategically placed half wall separates the horseshoe-shaped bar from the dining room; wood-framed windows complete the wall the rest of the way up. “This element, which was Nick’s idea, is really the key to the space,” Neidich says. “It allows the bar to be full and boisterous, yet the dining area still feels separated and very much protected.” The bar features a Carrara marble top, a wood bull nose, and a bendable ply front. The space fits 15 seats and has ample standing room for other bar-goers. The dining area, which seats an additional 55 guests, features velour banquets characteristic of
decades-old country clubs and sunbrella seating that lends an indoor/outdoor vibe. Anchoring the dining room is a large midcentury armoire. The lower perimeter of the space is reminiscent to bamboo, brought out by wooden dowels that have been cut and stained. “For the rest of the wood, we used pine, which is great because the grain shows through the paint and feels like it’s been there forever,” Neidich says. Tying the room together is palm tree wallpaper lining the periphery above the bamboo-like panels. The retro feel especially comes through on the back wall, which is adorned with knick-knacks and souvenirs that include seashells, cigar boxes, bottles, a model boat, and an alligator head. Perimeter lighting alludes to late sunny afternoons spent lying on the beach; amber bulbs create a warm glow and comfortable feel. Additional lighting comes from hanging spherical lamps that emit a rosy glow, making the space feel as balmy—in a good way—as the resorts of yore it seeks to emulate.
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PHOTOS: COCKTAIL, LESLEY UNRUH. BAR, ZANDY MANGOLD.
Tomas Delos Reyes is a mixologist and partner of the gastropub Jeepney in New York’s East Village.
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LIGHTING
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A new Rockwell Group restaurant treats the kitchen as a performance space. BY HALLY WOLHANDLER
New York City can be viewed as one big rat race, setting available by reservation, a “Chef’s Studio” and this is especially so when it comes to its res- in the back of the house seats 15 and features its taurants. A new place called Chefs Club, though, own kitchen. has involved so many talented, enterprising For most of its projects, Rockwell creates people and organizations that it’s unlikely to have custom furnishings and lighting, but in this trouble attracting attention—and maintaining it. instance, the team went further, also working on Those involved include Food & Wine magazine, staff uniforms, graphics for brand materials and Rockwell Group, Murray Moss (the eponymous the menu, and even collaborating with a potter owner of the legendary, now-shuttered design to create the plates. Inspired by the existing space, emporium), and the chef Didier Elena. which boasts tall cast-iron columns and exposed The concept: a restaurant whose chef changes brick, Keffer chose a simple palette of raw steel, every month, all picked from Food & Wine’s wood, concrete, and stone. “We chose really list of best new chefs and overseen by Elena. honest materials, but an interesting combination Rockwell Group designed the space, which is of them—sort of like all the ingredients that make located in the Puck Building on Lafayette street up a great meal.” Breaking up the rich-but-neutral in Manhattan. Moss is in charge of its regularly palette is a bright kitchen backsplash of handupdated art and design installations. glazed green tiles, which “makes the kitchen the In creating the interior, the Rockwell team— central focus point,” Keffer says. Also drawing led by principal Greg Keffer—focused on the eyes to the chef’s stage is a stove hood that Keffer idea of a chef and kitchen being accessible to and his team created using a computer-controlled diners. “The overall framework of the project cutting machine. With a compelling, undulating was really about deconstructing the kitchen and form, the hood acts as a kind of sculpture. immersing the guests into it,” Keffer says. This Adding to this thorough focus on the personalmeant putting an open kitchen front and center, ity in the kitchen is a large wall of portrait sketches and then incorporating diners into it by placing of the chefs who have worked the venue so far. tables right up against various stations, allowing “We found the artist in Central Park,” Keffer says. guests to engage with the cooks working there. “The wall will evolve and constantly change and The best table in the house is the “Chef’s Table,” grow as the restaurant continues to grow.” which is adjacent to the main chef’s station and sits directly beneath a 1,300-pound salt shard in a glass box that Moss chose and had chipped from a salt mine in Pakistan. “The head chef is constantly engaging that table and talking about what he’s plating,” Keffer says. For an even more intimate SURFACE
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PHOTO: EMILY ANDREWS.
Center Stage
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Dish by Seamus Mullen INSPIRED BY CHEFS CLUB PHOTO BY LESLEY UNRUH
PHOTO: EMILY ANDREWS.
Lamb Tartare It’s no secret the restaurant industry is tough. Every day, month, and year, someone is trying to create or be the next big thing. Guests are pretty savvy these days, and they’ve seen it all—it takes a lot to wow them. But I would hazard to guess that Chefs Club by Food & Wine is doing just that. The idea behind Chefs Club is a brave one. We’ve all heard the saying “too many cooks in the kitchen,” but that’s exactly what Chefs Club embraces. Chefs who might never otherwise open a restaurant in New York get to flex their culinary chops here, and guests who may never otherwise taste their food get a chance to do just that. On the design front, it’s no easy feat to impress guests these days, either. Good luck to the designer who dares to put another Edison bulb in the dining room. But the Rockwell-designed space at Chefs Club is stunning. What’s old is new again, again. We’ve seen the elements before—concrete, marble, brick, steel, wood—but here they feel fresh, and they come together to create a dining room that is handsome, sophisticated, and very New York. I particularly love the open kitchen, and the way Rockwell has incorporated seating almost within the kitchen itself. What most inspired me for this month’s dish was not any one visual component (there were simply too many to choose from), but the way in which Rockwell takes classic elements and makes them feel new. Steak tartare, for example, is most certainly in the pantheon of
classic French dishes. I love a good steak tartare, but I wanted to change things up a bit, so here, I use lamb. Lamb is one of my favorite proteins to work with, and it’s important to get the absolute freshest lamb you can find, preferably grass-fed. The brown butter vinaigrette lends a hint of toastiness. Then I add a small dollop of sheep’s milk yogurt, seasoned with garlic, lemon, and mint to give the tartare a delicate brightness. Individually, the flavors might be familiar enough, but together I hope they inspire something new. Serves six as a starter 12 ounces grass fed lamb loin or top round, chilled and finely diced 1 shallot, finely minced 1 clove garlic, grated on a micro plane 1 ⁄4 brown butter vinaigrette (recipe follows) 1 ⁄4 cup sheep’s milk yogurt (recipe below) 6 quail egg yolks 2 tablespoons rosemary leaves, minced ≈ zest of 1 lemon ≈ fresh horseradish ≈ sea salt and fresh ground pepper Sheep’s milk yogurt 1 ⁄4 cup full fat, plain sheep’s milk yogurt 1 clove garlic, grated on a micro plane 1 ⁄4 cup minced mint leaves 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil zest and juice of 1 lemon ≈ ≈ Sea salt and fresh pepper to taste Combine all ingredients.
For the Brown Butter vinaigrette ⁄2 1 1 2 1 ⁄4 ≈ ≈ 1
cup butter teaspoon pine nuts clove garlic, grated on a micro plane tablespoons honey cup Moscatel vinegar juice of 1 lemon or yuzu salt and pepper to taste
To make the brown butter vinaigrette, clarify and then brown the butter, discarding the milk solids. Add the pine nuts and gently toast, infusing the butter with their flavor. Once nuts are light golden, strain and reserve. Whisk in the grated garlic to the brown butter and set aside. In a small bowl, combine honey, vinegar and citrus juice. Whisk together. Slowly drizzle in the brown butter/garlic mixture and whisk together. Season with salt and pepper and set aside. For the tartare In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the minced lamb, shallot, garlic, lemon zest and brown butter vinaigrette and mix together thoroughly, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. On six small, chilled plates, smear 1 tablespoon of sheep’s milk yogurt on the base of the plate and add 2 ounces of lamb tartare, making a small well in the meat. Add 1 quail egg yolk, season with sea salt. Finish with a generous micro plane of fresh horseradish and a sprinkling of rosemary leaves and the pine nuts. Seamus Mullen is an award-winning New York–based chef; owner of Tertulia, El Colmado, and El Colmado Butchery; and culinary director of Sea Containers restaurant at Mondrian London. He is the author of the cookbook Hero Food.
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The new Principal Madrid combines sprawling views of its surrounding city with rich interiors on the inside. In this column, we ask Ben Pundole, founder of the website A Hotel Life, to pick a new hotel that offers the best of hospitality design today. BY HALLY WOLHANDLER
View from the Principal Madrid’s sixth floor, where its rattan roof and hinged glass walls can be opened.
Madrid’s Boulevard Gran Vía has been called hotel, by smoothing the boundaries between Spanish Broadway, but despite being a major traditionally singular spaces—lobby, restaurant, shopping mecca and nightlife destination—and bar—to make a more holistic and cohesive expeboasting some of the city’s best Art Deco and rience. “The functionality of the furniture in the Art Nouveau architecture—it hasn’t housed public spaces should be governed by versatility,” top-notch accommodations for visitors. That is, Garcia-Nieto says. This means that the ático’s until earlier this year, when the five-star Principal lounge areas (the kind typically found in a hotel’s Madrid opened. lobby) meld seamlessly into a bar, restaurant, and Created by Pau Guardans, the Spanish hote- terrace (called La Pergola) on the same floor. “So lier behind the Único Hotels group, the hotel is while one guest is working and enjoying good situated in a stately 1917 Spanish Renaissance music,” the designer says, “another next to him corner building on the boulevard. The interior is enjoying a good cocktail or dinner.” Keeping in line with the history of the buildhad been redone by Pilar Garcia-Nieto, the head of the design department at Único, and by the ing, Garcia-Nieto used materials like solid wood, interior design firm Studio Luzi. The location leather, velvet, and Turkish carpets coupled with was the primary source of design inspiration, midcentury furniture—“all with a color palette according to Garcia-Nieto. Of specific focus that adds warmth and modernity,” he says. were the Gran Vía’s “history and splendor,” as Michelin-starred chef Ramón Freixa runs the well as the building itself. “We tried to make the restaurant (called Ático) and the bar (La Terraza). best of the building,” he says, “so that architec- “La Terraza was our biggest challenge, because we ture and the interior were perfectly integrated— wanted the outdoor space to be spectacular and not to evoke a 1917 decoration today, but to maintain a luxury philosophy,” Garcia-Nieto prevent the interior from being a stranger to says. “And because Spain is a Mediterranean the building.” and passionate country, we included olive trees and the color red.” RECEPTION, BAR, AND RESTAURANT An abundance of olive trees, plus plenty of cypresses, fills the space with greenery, and the By locating the reception area in the ático— sound of water enhances the atmosphere for the sixth floor of the building—rather than lounging. “Since the building could not accomon street level, Garcia-Nieto and the team at modate a pool,” Garcia-Nieto says, “we decided Luzi sought to use an exciting and unexpected to bring in Madrid’s weather and the refreshentrance, to create the feeling of a secret club. ing sound of an overflow pool and outdoor They also wanted to play with the notion of a showers.” > SURFACE
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PHOTO: COURTESY DESIGN HOTELS.
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Interiors from Spain
Taking care of light
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GUEST ROOMS The team wanted the guest rooms to be traditional, in the vein of designers like Ralph Lauren. Thick gray carpeting, tweed upholstery, and touches of chrome, leather, and velvet all contribute to a decidedly neutral moodiness, but wide views of the city’s architecture bring light and a sense of grandiosity into the spaces. The design may be paramount to the project, but the city views of surrounding buildings are what really define the Principal. As Garcia-Nieto says, “There is no better decoration than good architecture.” BEN PUNDOLE’S TAKE ON ROOMS HOTEL:
(TOP TO BOTTOM) One of the hotel’s premium guest rooms. The lounge and bar area of the sixth floor Ático. SURFACE
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PHOTOS: COURTESY DESIGN HOTELS.
Madrid is a city that oozes elegance, so it’s natural that it would be home to a new hotel that is, well, as elegant as ever. The Principal, thankfully, isn’t just a hermetically sealed 76-room box of lush, rich interiors; its design is centered on scrumptious views of Spain’s capital city. Though the hotel is spanking new and its aesthetic clean, it feels like it has been lived in. Ernest Hemingway would be at home here in its warm, sun-drenched spaces—most likely at the bar, sipping a mojito. I’d happily join him there.
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Fine Grain
RETAIL
BY ROXY KIRSHENBAUM
A street view of Okomeya.
Located on a shopping street that is within walking distance of the Togoshi-Koen station in Tokyo is a narrow rice shop called Okomeya. In an area facing economic decline with the risk of turning into a “shutter-street”—in which all storefronts are closed for business—local company Owan Ltd. is seeking to reinvent the neighborhood. Commissioned by Owan, local firm Schemata Architects, run by Jo Nagasaka, repurposed a wooden building that was previously a vegetable shop (before closing last year) as the new space for the rice shop. “The shop concept is to connect various generations, families, and different regions—Niigata and Tokyo—through rice,” Nagasaka says. Rather than fully transforming the building’s prior design, Nagasaka and his team renewed its elements by sanding its columns and wood surfaces to match the color of the lauan plywood used for its newer fixtures. Okomeya’s structural components, such as the column, ceiling, floor, and part of the wall come from the building’s original design, while all the storage displays and boxes in the kitchen are newly built. The 177.5-square-foot floor area leaves little room for a staff size greater than one. Its small space also limits the amount of product that can be sold. “We don’t need a big shop,” Nagasaka says. “We would rather have a modest-sized shop to maintain a one-staff operation.” The shop sells rice and rice balls from premium Koshihikari rice of the Minami-Uonuma region in Niigata, farmed by one of its owner’s cousins. Nagasaka wanted to create an attractive
retail experience that would blend in with the store’s neighbors, which include a coffee shop, a hair salon, a supermarket, and a dry cleaner. Integrating the building itself and making the shop’s design additions indistinguishable from its older parts was crucial to its design. When it comes to small shops, a positive relationship with adjacent businesses helps, especially in the case of Okomeya. Nagasaka explains that when the staff leaves the shop unattended, its neighboring establishments can keep a watchful eye over it. It’s likely that this courtesy is reciprocated. This mutually supporting relationship is central to the shop’s design. The building’s layout is rather typical: The space faces the street, and the owner’s residence is located in the back. The art found in the shop is considered similar to charms or keepsakes. The simple, low-cost design plan gives it a rejuvenated appearance without setting it apart too much from adjacent stores. Also on the street, Owan Ltd. owns and operates the café Pedera Branka and a Mr. Coffee. Plans are in the works for further revitilizing the area.
PHOTO: KENTA HASEGAWA.
A modest rice shop brings new life to a struggling neighborhood in Tokyo.
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K채bu outdoor collection designed by Javier Pastor
Nautica swing chair designed by MUT Design reddot award 2014 winner
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Upward Mobility
TRANSPORT
A sleek rail line in Toronto elevates airport commuting with a bold—and extensive— aesthetic. BY JONATHAN SCHULTZ
makes for an uncommonly varied canvas. Four stations—two of which are outdoors at frequent metropolitan-transit transfer points—are fashioned around ribcage-like blonde wood frames (“solid and hardwearing,” Brûlé says). A palette of autumnal greens and oranges (“enduring rather than trendy”) adorn the station furnishings, and the color scheme carries over to the train liveries themselves. Creative director Maurus Fraser helped select the typeface, a sans serif called Gibson that was created by Canadian designer Rod McDonald. “It has a strong, clean, highly legible aesthetic,” Fraser says of the font, the licensing proceeds of which will benefit Graphic Designers of Canada. The Winkcreative team enlisted local talents including Matt Robinson, owner of the menswear label Klaxon Howl, which is producing the uniforms, and Drake General Store, a curio and clothing boutique that will help to anchor the downtown end of the line. In aggregate, the rail project exudes an aspirational character that few transit masterminds might have ever considered essential, let alone valuable. “There are many rail links we looked to,” Brûlé says of Winkcreative’s field research, citing Stockholm’s Arlanda Express, Oslo’s Flytoget, and Tokyo-Narita’s N’EX, “but we didn’t feel that any of them nailed it 100 percent.” The system, which is forecast to obviate 1.2 million car trips in its opening year, receives its first major stress test in July, when Toronto hosts the Pan Am and Parapan Games. Travelers boarding the UP Express will experience, promises Brûlé, a sensation rarely associated with commercial air travel these days: “Dignity.” SURFACE
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PHOTOS: EAMON MACMAHON.
The Union Pearson Express, shown traveling between Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and Union Station. (OPPOSITE) The interior (top) and exterior (bottom) of the UP station at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
To appraise a city—its values, its temperaments, its coffee—it helps to leave baggage claim first. And yet travelers cannot help but draw conclusions about a place well before their soles ever scrape a sidewalk. Toronto, a metropolis experiencing unprecedented growth, with upwards of 6 million residents, is determined to mold favorable, even remarkable, impressions right where they take root: at the airport. June 6 will mark the opening of the Union Pearson Express, a link between Pearson International Airport and Union Station, the region’s Beaux-Arts rail hub located 15 miles away in downtown Toronto. The UP Express will depart every 15 minutes and whisk visitors across the exurbs in just 25—a virtual eyeblink for this traffic-plagued megalopolis. When that first train pulls out of Pearson, however, smiles will be worn not just by blueprint-toting bureaucrats and engineers, but also by its chief stylist. “We feel this is the most complete concept of its kind in the world,” says Tyler Brûlé, the peripatetic chairman and chief executive of Winkreative, the global agency that conceived the branding for the rail-link project. In addition to his agency work, Brûlé is a publishing veteran: Founder of Wallpaper and Monocle magazines, he is also a longtime columnist for the weekend supplement of the Financial Times. Befitting Brûlé’s ringmaster persona, Winkreative oversaw the stations, the signage, the seat fabrics, and even the attire of UP Express personnel. “It stretched from strategy, to naming, to livery design, to uniforms and pretty much everything in between,” Brûlé says of the commission. “We liked this project because of its scale.” Indeed, a rail link
TRANSPORT
PHOTOS: EAMON MACMAHON.
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Brooklyn-based BioLite makes lighting uberaccessible and portable with its new NanoGrid. In this column, Josh Rubin, founder and editor-in-chief of the website Cool Hunting, highlights top-quality outdoor clothing, products, and equipment. BY HANS ASCHIM
The NanoGrid, BioLite’s new lighting and energy hub.
As economies and populations in the world’s opportunity that you can’t necessarily find developing countries grow, so too do their if you’re dealing with a basic mechanical tool demands for energy. And as governments kit,” says Cedar, a fifth-generation Brooklynite. struggle to establish infrastructures for this The BioLite team comprises Ph.D. combustion swelling need, innovative solutions are essential. scientists, electrical engineers, designers, and a Brooklyn-based company BioLite is shirking manufacturing division that works to innovate the idea of the “grid” altogether, instead creating both on technology and the production proproducts that allow users, from families in rural cess itself. This allows BioLite to explore true Uganda to hikers deep in the backcountry, to technological breakthroughs and get creative experience all the benefits of modern electricity with how it solves problems. It has also allowed without ever plugging in. them to scientifically measure and control every BioLite’s flagship stove, produced in por- variable associated with its stoves, from user table models suitable to recreational users and data to each particle of emissions—an elemental permanent home versions, reduces emissions part of their function. “Precise quantified measurements of output and improves fuel efficiency while converting excess energy to electricity to charge devices. are especially important for developing counFounders Jonathan Cedar and Alec Drummond tries, because the alternative is cooking on began BioLite as a passion project, spending an open campfire in a small enclosed room. what Cedar describes as far too many nights The smoke from those fires kills four million and weekends drumming up prototypes. Now people every year, which is more than HIV, TB, the duo develops, tests, builds, and distributes and malaria combined,” Cedar says, adding, their life-changing stoves across the world “Cooking is the single-largest use of watts in from their headquarters in Brooklyn’s Dumbo most of our days. In India, 80 percent of resineighborhood. dential energy is burned wood—as measured “One of the things that’s really unique about by watts.” The BioLite Homestove boasts both our staff is that we have the ability to engineer fuel efficiency—requiring half the fuel of a trafrom first principles—to really go deeper inside ditional open cooking fire—and produces 94 of technology problems, to try and find the percent less smoke. Solving the stove problem, SURFACE
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PHOTOS: TORY WILLIAMS, BIOLITE.
Jack of Lanterns
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PHOTOS: TORY WILLIAMS, BIOLITE.
however, is just the beginning for BioLite. Cedar and his team aim to improve access and efficiency to off-the-grid multipoint lighting with their latest product, the NanoGrid. The initial design inspiration came during a chance encounter on a research trip to India. Solar lighting systems were in the market, but there was a major gap. On the low end, single light systems failed to accommodate multiroom dwellings while multiple point systems were considerably higher in price and out of reach for most consumers. “One of our designers had this breakthrough observation when he went into a house and they had one batteryoperated fluorescent bulb and two rooms in the house,” Cedar says. “They had cut a hole in the wall and slid the tube through, so half of the light was in one room and half was in the other.” And thus, the seeds of the NanoGrid were sown. Composed of the central PowerLight and two additional points of light with the SiteLite (with users able to daisy chain additional sets to the same hub for even more points of light), the NanoGrid offers a customizable, compact solution to the problem of affordable multipoint lighting. It also marks the first time the brand has introduced the same products to recreational and emerging markets. This cross-comparability is thanks largely to how compact the system is. The central PowerLight unit houses both a 200 lumen lantern and USB powerbank with the capacity to charge up to three GoPros or shine on its energy-conserving setting for 72 hours. While most lanterns need a large amount of empty space to diffuse light, BioLite’s powerlight features “edge-lighting,” a technology that works similarly to how screens are backlit. “We shine the LEDs longitudinally through the lens,
and it works much like fiber optics with total internal inflection—these shallow little reflections make it efficiently travel up the lens, and when it hits, the texture points it.” Meanwhile, the compact magnetized SiteLights produce a rich wide-spectrum 150 lumens with 20 feet of connectivity. A patent-pending S-hook mechanism ensures the lights affix easily, whether for lighting a tent at night or setting up a study zone in a cramped apartment. Designing a product that appeals to both outdoor enthusiasts and families in developing countries might seem improbable, if not impossible. For Cedar, however, the aims are surprisingly similar. Qualities like durability aren’t features, they’re prerequisites. “I think good design focuses not on necessarily solving all problems with one product, but understanding what is the most important opportunity and making sure that happens first and foremost,” Cedar says. “Good design understands what is primary and what is everything else.” With the NanoGrid, that priority is as clear as a 200 lumen LED. JOSH RUBIN’S TAKE ON ASKOV FINLAYSON: Design is an exercise in problem solving. When it comes to backpacking or camping, we need light to see, and heat to cook with, but keeping our gear packable is paramount. Add in the desire to charge a few gadgets and our backpacks quickly become heavy and burdensome. What’s beautiful about BioLite’s products is not only how they’ve addressed these constraints faced by outdoor enthusiasts, but also for anyone living a minimalist life.
The BioLite Bundle, which includes the CampStove, KettlePot, and Portable Grill. 69
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An upcoming sale places 20th-century carpets within an international context of contemporary art and design. BY GRANT JOHNSON
A rare Strålarna flatweave carpet (1949) by Marianne Richter for Märta Måås-Fjetterström’s workshop.
“It is certain that the beginning of building vice president, Michael Jefferson. “For the coincides with the beginning of textiles,” wrote longest time, carpets were relegated to interiors architect and theorist Gottfried Semper in 1862. sales where they just became background,” he In the shadow of the Great Exhibition at the says. “People would just glaze over and see all Crystal Palace in Paris—which included some of these dark rectangles, presumably Asian and of the first artifacts of industrial design—Semper Turkish traditional carpets in the back of these concluded that the ancient technology of sales. Nobody paid any mind except for the weaving should remain foundational to even the dealers that dealt carpets.” most modern achievements of advanced design. Wright’s sale counters this thinking, putting Semper’s attempt at a unified theory of carpets at the forefront of the modernist design anticipated the exchange between art and project. Indeed, as abstraction became Europe’s design that animated much of the 20th century, new normal, the formal experiments of modern from the cross-disciplinary workshops of the painting appeared just as dynamically on floors Bauhaus to the collegiality of Black Mountain and walls as they did in geometric carpets and College. Highlighting compelling examples weavings. Whereas it took a visit to the Musée of the modern approach to an ancient craft, d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro for Picasso to Wright’s 20th-century carpets sale on June 12 “invent” abstraction and discover the limits will make this cross-pollination palpable in of European design, transnational formal landmark works by the likes of Art Deco leader exchange and abstract freedoms had already and painter Ivan da Silva Bruhns, architect and long been at the heart of modern weaving. Arts and Crafts pioneer C. F. A. Voysey, and Work like that of Ivan da Silva Bruhns furniture designer Paule Leleu. makes especially clear that primitivist motifs The sale expands the geography of and post-cubist abstractions captivated modernism to include not only works of carpet designers and painters alike. “Bruhns French Art Deco but also significant examples is really carrying the torch of the modernist of Scandinavian and Moroccan design. The principles of geometry, simplicity, and the kind sale especially foregrounds the workshop of of graphic nature that we see throughout the Märta Måås-Fjetterström, including a blue arts,” Jefferson says. He notes similarities of Strâlarna carpet by Marianne Richter (valued at Bruhn’s work to that of painters like Fernand an estimated $70,000–90,000), a hand-knotted Léger, as well as the influence of African Rabttan work in red by Barbro Nilsson (at carvings and fabric designs. One can imagine $50,000–70,000), and the work of Måås- a Bruhns carpet easily at home alongside a Fjetterström herself. Léger painting. Or, say, a mural by Amédée Wright’s second sale in an ongoing series Ozenfant at Le Corbusier’s Pavillon de l’Esprit dedicated to modern weaving from around the Nouveau at the Exposition internationale des world, the auction underscores its significant arts décoratifs in 1925—the core of another achievements, says the Chicago house’s senior World’s Fair, and a new revolution in design. SURFACE
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PHOTO: COURTESY WRIGHT.
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Rare Forms
ART
Oregon-based sculptor Jessica Jackson Hutchins creates punk-infused collage with ceramics and found objects. BY MARINA CASHDAN PORTRAIT BY GREGORY PIERCE
Hutchins at her studio in the East Bank neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.
“I remember distinctly the magic of having these themes of love, intimacy, motherhood, language, traders come to our house with burlap bags and and literary texts. “I’m interested in the universalstrange smells. [I would] hide behind chairs, ity of experience—we’ve all been children, we’ve watching them take these sculptures out of burlap all been part of a family. I almost think that now, bags,” says artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins, of more than ever, the muck of the personal and the an upbringing filled with curious objects. Her sexual is an important redeeming quality,” she says. mother was an art historian with a penchant for “Tenderness, intimacy: That’s our saving grace.” collecting rare African artifacts. When Hutchins This month, Hutchins opens her first solo show recalls this memory, vividly, over coffee in a café with New York doyenne Marianne Boesky; it in Manhattan’s Union Square, it’s akin to an “aha” also marks her first solo show in the city in five moment. The connection between Hutchins’s years. Titled “I Do Choose,” the show comprises work—collage-like sculptures combining textural new two- and three-dimensional works, all of materials including ceramics and papier-mâché, which take language and code as their underpintextiles, newspaper, and found household items ning. They incorporate objects that Hutchins like old sofas, tables, chairs, even pianos, all meld- has found in her home city of Portland, Oregon ing together as if born from the same material (where she recently returned following a threefamily—feels right. Both are visceral and imperfect, year stint, with her husband and two daughters, raw, and lacking pretension. in Berlin). Among the works featured will be her “That also came out of punk rock,” she says signature sofa-ceramic installation, a new series of her aesthetic direction. “But those are also my of stacked tables, and “wall works” featuring the values; that’s the chord that I want to strike.” And essence of a picnic table that Hutchins’s friend (and she does so, beautifully. Showing extensively in fellow Boesky artist) Jay Heikes sent her as the New York and internationally since she first came parameter for a show he’s curating in Rome. onto the scene with a critically acclaimed show at Hutchins’s installations, though not literally Laurel Gitlen gallery in 2010, Hutchins has devel- figurative, are nevertheless anthropomorphic, oped a style that is part punk rock (her husband, emotional, and fragile. Stephen Malkmus, is the former frontman of The artist has also been exploring a creative cult band Pavement), part classical music, and practice outside of her studio—and outside of the part steeped in art-history education; Hutchins art world. She recently joined a dance troupe— went to graduate school at the Art Institute of “I have never been [a dancer], but I am now,” she Chicago. “I have special memories of going to laughs—and hopes to take some of her rarely seen look at art with [my mother] at the Art Institute,” wearable ceramics to the stage in the near future. she says. “And then I went to school there, so I Inspired by her daughters’ interest in string instruwould march in and out of those collections all day ments, she has also taken up the violin. “I’m hoping long.” Hutchins also references the late painter my neural pathways will shift,” she says. “I mean, Philip Guston several times, providing another it’s all for my art. But I won’t put a violin on my striking connection in her work, which explores painting; I’m not that impractical.” SURFACE
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«I often need a change of perspective – that’s why I value a system adaptable enough to open up new horizons.» Laura Tusevo, Design Student ECAL, Lausanne
The design icon USM Modular Furniture Haller is turning 50 – time to look ahead and explore new perspectives. Watch a new generation of designers, artists, and architects from seven renowned schools all over the world as they rethink modularity and become a part of a visionary project. Follow their journey at usm.com/project50 USM Modular Furniture 28–30 Greene St. New York NY 10013 Phone 212 371 1230
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Books BY AILEEN KWUN PHOTO BY LESLEY UNRUH
Film Scripts, Interviews, Letters, Notes, and cities in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley to Speeches (Yale University Press) catalogues the present day. Showcasing the world’s most texts, both written and spoken, from the vision- stunning uses of the ubiquitous building block Design, When Everybody Designs: An ary midcentury designers Charles and Ray throughout the years, the book is organized Introduction to Design for Social Innovation Eames. Presented in five chronological parts, it by a series of typologies, including Form, Text, (MIT Press) questions the role of design in begins with the couple’s arrival to Los Angeles Light, and Scale. As author William Hall writes, an age where the very discipline and its pro- and subsequent opening of the Eames Office “There’s a comforting honesty to a clay brick.” cesses have increasingly engaged multiple in 1941, through to Ray’s death in 1988. The parties and new models for collaboration. 40-some years intervening would prove to be A follow-up counterpart to a 2013 antholDrawing upon global case studies, author widely innovative and rigorously cross-disci- ogy of Swiss graphics, 100 Years of Swiss Ezio Manzini—a sustainable-design expert— plinary, as the Eameses worked across art, film, Design (Lars Müller Publishers) focuses on argues for a humanist, collective approach. industrial and graphic design, as well as archi- Switzerland’s historical contributions to fur“In a changing world, everyone designs,” he tecture. Presented alongside archival imagery of niture and product design from 1900 to today. writes. “Each individual person and each col- their varied and prolific projects, these texts illu- Reflecting the holdings of Zurich’s Museum lective subject, from enterprises to institutions, minate the thinking and discourse behind each. of Design, the book serves to bring an accesfrom communities to cities and regions, must sible visibility to its permanent collection. Brick (Phaidon) explores the visual and endur- Among the highlights featured are costumes define and enhance a life project.” ing possibilities of the age-old building mate- by Sophie Taeuber, the Schröder House by Edited by film producer and Eames scholar rial that dates back to more than 6,000 years. Gerrit Rietveld, and aluminum armchairs by Daniel Ostroff, An Eames Anthology: Articles, It spans the emergence of the world’s earliest Marcel Breuer. SURFACE
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Material
MATERIAL
In this column, we ask Material Connexion vice president Andrew Dent, Ph.D., to select one innovation that’s set to influence what designers will be using tomorrow. BY CAROLYN STANLEY PHOTO BY LESLEY UNRUH
The distinctive crisscross of lattice can be seen in many places: as a decorative accent on fences and screens, a structural element in bridges and towers, or a topping for pies and pastries. Ventura, California–based innovator Architected Materials takes that intersecting framework to a smaller and more intricate scale with Architected Lattice. A spinoff of HRL Laboratories (an advanced research center co-funded by Boeing and General Motors), Architected Materials came into existence following HRL’s development of a technical micro-lattice that boasts the Guinness record for the world’s lightest material. “The goal was to create an ultra-light composite for aerospace and automotive applications,” says Bamidele Ali, vice president of business development at Architected Materials. Now, the company seeks to expand the potential for its ultra-lightweight materials to all manner of applications. The secret to producing a lattice that lives up to exacting technical standards: the material is “3-D grown” using a complex photopolymer process. UV light is passed through a “mask”—an arrangement of holes whose size and spacing determine the structure of the finished product—into a reservoir of liquid monomer. As the light shines through the liquid at precise angles, the monomer cures into a solid, creating trusses where the lines of light enter the reservoir, and nodes where the light intersects. In less than a minute, the cured structure has hardened. The remaining liquid is then drained away to reveal a completed threedimensional structure that falls somewhere between mesh and honeycomb in appearance.
Following that process, lattices can be customized for desired characteristics. By adjusting the mask, says Ali, “We can tailor [it] to be either soft like a pillow or hard like metal,” and hence, the pathways of UV light as it passes through the liquid. The density of the finished product depends on both the diameter of the studs (measuring as small as 0.1mm and as large as 8mm) and the complexity of the resulting geometry. The lattice absorbs energy, like foam, but has a much quicker recovery time, springing back to its original shape almost instantly. That, combined with its high strength-toweight ratio and breathability (which allows air to flow freely through the open structure), makes it an advantageous addition to everything from construction panels to air filtration systems to protective gear: Architected Materials was recently selected a winner in the NFL-sponsored Head Health Challenge, an effort to improve football helmets and prevent brain injury. For a material that can be engineered down to the micrometer, Architected Lattice is poised to make an impact of massive proportions.
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| design l + r palomba PIANO ALTO
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Woven, stamped, and wrapped, textured details lend these outdoor pieces sophistication and charm. BY AILEEN KWUN
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The scooped seat and back angle of Janus et Cie’s die-cast aluminum Niwa chair matches comfort with visually alluring details. It comes in 16 colors, including Acid Green, Coral Red (shown), Light Blue, and Sage Green. janusetcie.com SURFACE
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The Les Copains lounge chair by BrĂźhl is made from a hot-dip galvanized frame and robinia top rail wrapped with wickerwork strings. Part of a collection of chairs, stools, and tables, it comes with optional cushions.
Kettal’s Stampa armchair, designed by the Bouroullec brothers, is made entirely of durable, lightweight aluminum. It combines an injection-molded ring frame with a metal shell punched with a perforated pattern.
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Crate & Barrel’s Morocco lounge chair pairs a powder-coated aluminum, UV-resistant frame with cushions upholstered in a special mildew-resistant acrylic fabric. Handwoven resin rope detailing gives it a subtly rustic feel.
Designed by Enzo Mari, Driade’s Elisa collection is made of a steel frame and generous polyurethane foam cushions with a removable fabric covering. Alternate covers also make it suitable for indoor use.
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Join us for the 10th Anniversary of Design Miami/ Basel The Global Forum for Design/ June 16–21, 2015
‘Chromatropic’ textile, 2015 – Design Miami/ x Pierre Frey
Design Galleries/ Armel Soyer/ ArtFactum Gallery/ ammann//gallery/ Antonella Villanova/ Caroline Van Hoek/ Carpenters Workshop Gallery/ Carwan Gallery/ Cristina Grajales Gallery/ Dansk Mobelkunst Gallery/ Demisch Danant/ Elisabetta Cipriani/ Erastudio & Apartment Gallery/ Franck Laigneau/ Friedman Benda/ Galerie Eric Philippe/ Galerie Jacques Lacoste/ Galerie kreo/ Galerie Maria Wettergren/ Galerie Matthieu Richard/ Galerie Pascal Cuisinier/ Galerie Patrick Seguin/ Galerie VIVID/ Galleri Feldt/ Galleria O./ Galleria Rossella Colombari/ Gallery ALL/ Gallery FUMI/ Gallery SEOMI/ Hostler Burrows/ Jousse Entreprise/ LAFFANOUR – Galerie Downtown/ Louisa Guinness Gallery/ Magen H Gallery/ Marc Heiremans/ Moderne Gallery/ Nilufar Gallery/ Ornamentum/ Patrick Parrish Gallery/ Pierre Marie Giraud/ Priveekollektie/ R & Company/ Sarah Myerscough/ Gallery Southern Guild/ Thomas Fritsch – ARTRIUM/ Victor Hunt Designart Dealer/
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The Global Forum for Design June 16–21, 2015/ Preview Day/ June 15
Galleries/ Curio/ Design at Large/ Collaborations/ Awards/ Talks/ Satellites/
Hall 1 Süd Messe Basel, Switzerland
designmiami.com
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Available in a range of fabrics and colors, Patricia Urquiola’s modular Butterfly sofa system for B&B Italia’s outdoor collection comprises four different components that can be freely assembled and mixed and matched. bebitalia.com SURFACE
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Designed by Richard Frinier for Brown Jordan, the Connexion armchair is made of extruded powder-coated aluminum. It comes in 28 different smooth or textured finishes, and 40 mesh fabrics for its siding and back. brownjordan.com SURFACE
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IC LIGHTS BY M I C H a e L a n a STa S S I a d e S
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Relaunched this year, Expormim’s new edition of the Lapala chair, designed in 1998 by Barcelona-based studio Lievore Altherr Molina, is handwoven from high-resistance polyester rope that lends it a Mediterranean flair. expormim.es SURFACE
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Designer Glen Baghurst’s Outdoor Events chair is made of powder-coated tubular steel and natural leather. Inspired by British campaign furniture, its small, space-efficient frame is designed low to the floor. glenbaghurst.com 87
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The steel frame and rope seat of the clean-lined Tituna chair, designed by Mariana Lerma for Gandia Blasco, come in neutral tone palettes of white, sand, gray, bronze, and brown. gandiablascousa.com SURFACE
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LOVERBOY MIRROR
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Distributed exclusively by Janus et Cie in North America, Italian designer Monica Armani’s Tribu lounge chair carries a tactile braided seat and full-bodied cushions upholstered in a linen finish. janusetcie.com SURFACE
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Shown here in plum, Richard Schultz’s classic 1966 collection for Knoll—originally designed for Florence Knoll’s own beachfront home—is now available in six new colors, including yellow, lime green, and blue. knoll.com 91
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Gloster’s Wedge lounge chair comes with all the comfort of an indoor armchair, matched with outdoor durability. Its plush lounge cushions are upholstered in eight different waterproof fabric colors.
The Gazelle table, designed by Swedish studio Claesson Koivisto Rune for Capdell, comes with the option of three different tabletop shapes—round, oval, or rectangular—in varying materials and colors.
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New York Randall’s Island Park May 14–17, 2015 Preview Day Wednesday, May 13 friezenewyork.com
Buy Tickets Now ‘A dumbfounding display of human creative industry’ The New York Times ‘Ground-breaking’ Financial Times
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Main sponsor Deutsche Bank
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The George’s rope chair by Living Divani incorporates waxed rope, wood, and metal with a triangular steel frame for a pleasing graphic element. Additional options include leather or wicker-woven models. livingdivani.it SURFACE
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S A L E S | R E N TA L S | R E L O C AT I O N | N E W D E V E L O P M E N T S | C O M M E R C I A L | M O R T G A G E | P R O P E R T Y M A N A G E M E N T | T I T L E I N S U R A N C E
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Konstantin Grcic’s new Medici bench for Mattiazzi builds upon the success of the Medici chair. Like its counterpart, the sculptural two-seater takes its inspiration from the classic Adirondack chair. mattiazzi.eu SURFACE
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PROMOTION
Design Dialogues No. 17
PHOTOS: TOP AND BELOW RIGHT, COURTESY PRATT INSTITUTE. BELOW LEFT, MICHAEL RYTERBAND.
Design Dialogues No. 17 On March 31 at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, Surface presented Design Dialogues No. 17 with art dealer and curator Jeffrey Deitch and designer Stefan Sagmeister. The conversation, moderated by editor-in-chief Spencer Bailey (following opening remarks by Pratt president Thomas F. Schutte), covered everything from Deitch and Sagmeister’s respective early interests in punk rock; to the time they first met, in Sagmeister’s hometown of Bregenz, Austria; to Sagmeister’s 2008 “Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far” exhibition at Deitch’s former New York gallery, Deitch Projects; and Deitch’s new Sagmeister-designed book, Live the Art (Rizzoli). 97
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The Husk chair, designed by Marc Thorpe for Moroso’s M’Afrique collection, is made of yarn from fishing nets crafted by local Senegalese artisans. Its elongated back and sides take inspiration from corn stalks. moroso.it SURFACE
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CALL FOR ENTRIES: SURFACE’S 15TH ANNUAL AVANT GUARDIAN PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST
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The 15th edition of Surface’s famed Avant Guardian contest for up-and-coming photographers is now open for entry. The contest has helped launch the career of many celebrated talents. Past Avant Guardian winners frequently appear in the pages of Surface, and have gone on to shoot campaigns and promotions for brands including Giorgio Armani, Hermès, Banana Republic, Nike, IBM, and Levi’s. Winners have included Nicholas Duers, KT Auleta, Sarah Silver, Josh Jordan, Mark Veltman, and Vanina Sorrenti.
Surface editors and a star jury—including Hélène Binet, Stephen Hilger, Youssef Nabil, and Roy Schwalbach—will select the 10 submissions that show the most promise from this year’s pool. The winners’ work will be showcased in our Oct. 2015 issue and exhibited at a special issue launch event. Surface invites photographers to enter new and unpublished work into the contest, which welcomes entries spanning art, architecture, fashion, portraiture, still life, and more.
For more details on how to enter now through June 1, 2015, visit: surfacemag.com/avantguardian.
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New York–based studio Visibility’s prototype for the waterproof Poolside chair takes its formal cues from the archetypal slatted deck chair, elevated by complex formal geometries and a sensitivity to ergonomics. vsby.co SURFACE
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SUBSCRIBE COMING IN JUNE: THE POWER 100 ISSUE FEATURING ANDRE BALAZS, ROBERT IRWIN, HELLA JONGERIUS, AND MORE.
Get a one-year subscription (10 issues) for only $60 via surfacemag.com or purchase the digital edition of Surface, available on the Apple App Store.
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Dutch architect Anne Holtrop builds a second base in—and a 2015 Milan Expo pavilion for—Bahrain. BY TIFFANY LAMBERT PORTRAIT BY DELFINO SISTO LEGNANI
An aerial detail view of the National Pavilion of the Kingdom of Bahrain, designed by Studio Anne Holtrop, at the 2015 Milan Expo. (OPPOSITE) Holtrop at the pavilion.
Anne Holtrop may be the Netherlands’s best- new. I really had to look up where this country kept secret, but that’s a label he won’t wear for was on the map,” Holtrop says. Dissecting and reassembling Bahrain’s rich long. The emerging 37-year-old, who founded his eponymous studio in 2009 after spending agrarian culture through an architectural lens, time as an assistant to visual artist Krijn De Holtrop, working with the Swiss landscape Koning, is quickly carving out an inimitable architect Anouk Vogel, conceived of an arcing place within the international architecture prefabricated concrete structure that serves scene. With a penchant for materials and free as 10 distinct fruit gardens, as well as exhibiforms, Holtrop’s work has an enigmatic, muted tion spaces that showcase a collection of artiquality that belies the rigorous formal and con- facts—pottery, glassware, seals—culled from ceptual experimentation it’s founded on. “I find the Bahrain National Museum. Here, every a work good when it is not mono-referential detail has been considered, from interiors for or over-functional,” Holtrop says. “I like a VIP space, designed by Milan gallery owner something more complex and multilayered.” Rossana Orlandi, to a film about the project Accident and chance are the guiding principles by Armin Linke, to the building itself. Each of to the architect’s way of working. “I start with a the fruits in the garden will ripen at different form or material that often comes from outside times throughout the duration of the event, of architecture,” he says, adding, “You make and are the main staple for the local Bahraini an action and it leads you somewhere, but you cuisine available at the Expo. “We designed don’t really know where it will lead to.” gutters that collect water to feed the gardens,” For his first foray into furniture, in 2014, Holtrop says. “It’s an old farming technique Holtrop found inspiration in the stone col- in Bahrain.” lection of the French critic and philosopher The building itself fits together something Roger Caillois after reading The Writing of like a puzzle with 350 stackable pieces in total. Stones, a 1970 publication in which Caillois All of the elements were fabricated in Italy with contemplates the patterns of interior sections marble sand, marble aggregates, and white of marble, jasper, onyx, and agate. “He writes cement as its building blocks. “You can just in a really interesting way about his stone col- take them off again and put them back together,” lection. In a way, it’s how I describe my work,” he says. The project is as nomadic as it sounds: Holtrop says. “There are hidden messages in At the end of the Expo, the entire pavilion will the stones that trigger the imagination.” be dismantled and travel to Bahrain, where it Holtrop’s resulting pieces—a mirrored room will become a permanent botanical garden and divider, wall shelves, a desk—formed one half exhibition space. “I thought, why not reuse the of the inaugural collection for Brussels-based building in Bahrain?” That the structure will Maniera, a newly minted gallery that invites be sent back to Bahrain is a testament to how architects and artists to step outside their usual this desert nation is investing in its cultural work to make furniture. (The Belgian archi- and design legacy. tectural studio Office Kersten Geers David With at least five large-scale projects curVan Severen contributed the other half of the rently underway (including a souk and another debut collection.) Holtrop then enlisted the building in Bahrain, where Holtrop has opened realist artist Sylvie Van der Kelen of Belgium’s a second studio), an exhibition in Paris for L’Institut Supérieur de Peinture to hand paint a new gallery that opens in the fall, a comexact depictions of a selection of stones onto missioned public artwork in Belgium, and a the furniture. “There were errors in the pho- forthcoming monograph, Holtrop continues tography because it’s a book from the 1970s, so to elaborate on his ideas about architecture. she also painted the errors,” Holtrop says. Each “In the conviction that things can always be one-of-a-kind edition became its own labor- reexamined and reinterpreted,” he says, “they intensive trompe l’oeil. “From a distance, it can also be seen as architecture.” looks exactly like stone, but then you get closer and you can see the brushstrokes,” Holtrop says. “For me, the whole attraction is that it’s not real stone.” That poetic approach manifests in Holtrop’s architecture, too. This year he will open his first two major buildings, including the Waterline Museum at Fort Vechten, a new national museum dedicated to telling the Dutch history of using water as a line of defense. Located in Utrecht and slated for a September opening, the 21,500-square-foot space is largely constructed underground, deriving its organic, serpentine shape from the existing topography—Holtrop used the land as a direct mold for the final architectural form. Though Holtrop cut his teeth in his native Holland, now he has his sights set on the desert; he was commissioned to design the national pavilion of the Kingdom of Bahrain at this year’s Expo in Milan, which runs from May 1 through Oct. 31. “For me, it was completely SURFACE
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At Ease Soft fabrics and relaxed menswear silhouettes play with Cassina’s classic furnishings. Womenswear reinterprets cultural references and artisanal textiles, providing a new global view. Tactility and generous proportions ooze modernity in Ermenegildo Zegna’s spring collection.
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TRENCH COAT, SWEATER, PANTS, AND SHOES, GIORGIO ARMANI. MY WORLD SOFA SYSTEM WITH ACCESSORY BOX IN WALNUT BY PHILIPPE STARCK (2013). ALL FURNITURE, CASSINA.
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T-SHIRT AND SHORTS, NO. 21. THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE: APPLIQUE À VOLET PIVOTANT WALL LIGHTS BY CHARLOTTE PERRIAND (1962), NEMO CASSINA.
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OPPOSITE: SWEATER AND SHORTS, ACNE STUDIOS. SNEAKERS, MARC JACOBS. LC1 CHAIRS IN PONYSKIN BY LE CORBUSIER (1928). OPPOSITE: 713/714 TABLE BY THEODORE WADDELL (1973), LEFT, AND ZIG ZAG CHAIR IN CHERRYWOOD BY GERRIT THOMAS RIETVELD.
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OPPOSITE: SHIRT AND PANTS, LOEWE. SHOES, NICHOLAS KIRKWOOD. THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE: MEXIQUE TABLE BY CHARLOTTE PERRIAND, DESIGNED IN 1952–56 FOR THE STUDENTS’ ROOMS OF THE MAISON DU MEXIQUE AT THE CITÉ INTERNATIONALE UNIVERSITAIRE DE PARIS, AND PUT INTO PRODUCTION IN 2014.
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Grooming: Sierra Min using Oribe and Nars. Model: Dan Murphy, Soul Artist Management. 113
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OPPOSITE: SUIT AND SHOES, MARC JACOBS. T-SHIRT, ALEXANDER WANG. P22 CHAIR WITH WALNUT BASE BY PATRICK NORGUET (2013). OPPOSITE: RED AND BLUE CHAIR (1918) AND SCHROEDER 1 TABLE (1922-23), BOTH BY GERRIT THOMAS RIETVELD.
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Grooming: Sierra Min using Oribe. Fashion assistants: Sean Kim and Olaide Ojekunle. Model: Philip Witts at Ford Models. Location: Cassina’s New York showroom in SoHo. 115
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COAT, HERMES.
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GOWN, ERDEM. OPPOSITE: ROBE, VEST, TOP, AND PANTS, DRIES VAN NOTEN. SHOES, LOEWE.
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SWEATER AND DRESS, MARNI. OPPOSITE: SKIRT, MARNI.
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COAT AND SHIRT DRESS, VALENTINO. OPPOSITE: DRESS, SALVATORE FERRAGAMO.
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THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE: DRESS, BOOTS, AND EARRINGS, ALL LOUIS VUITTON.
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Makeup: Colleen Runne using NARS Cosmetics. Hair: Stefano Greco using Oribe. Model: Cristina Piccone at Fusion Models. Fashion Assistant: Olaide Ojekunle.
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ON
THE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY COREY OLSEN STYLING BY JUSTIN MIN
LOOSE
COLLECTION
For our Collection fashion story on the pages that follow, Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of the Museum at FIT, shares her thoughts on new pieces from Ermenegildo Zegna Couture. SURFACE
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DOUBLE-FACED CASHMERE AND COTTON BLAZER. ALL LOOKS ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA COUTURE.
Steele: “This jacket is highly desirable. I mean, its tactile values are amazing. The piece has a very bold look. It looks not just Italian, but Northern Italian. It’s fabulous, isn’t it? Zegna is putting a lot of research and development into making everything really light, comfortable, and modern. It’s both transnational and trans-seasonal. If you were stuck on a desert island, it would be the perfect thing.”
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COLLECTION
SINGLE-BREASTED WOOL JACKET, COTTON TANK TOP, AND PLEATED WOOL TROUSERS.
Steele: “It’s a little bit odd, the camel color. But, you know, Italians really like those sort of indeterminate colors. I think that’s part of their aesthetic. This color would look beautiful if its wearer had a dark tan. Whoever gets it should just take a page out of Valentino Garavani’s book and have a dark tan.”
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SINGLE-BREASTED DOUBLE-FACED CASHMERE BLAZER, WOOL SWEATER, AND PLEATED WOOL TROUSERS.
Steele: “Nobody wants clothes that are beautiful but difficult to maintain. There’s an ease to this, kind of like when in the 1970s Armani did all these deconstructed jackets—it revolutionized everything. Another great thing is that you can’t do a cheap copy of this. You just can’t! To get this kind of quality, you have to have a certain level of materials and craftsmanship, as well as the thought that goes into it.” SURFACE
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DOUBLE-FACED CASHMERE COAT. OPPOSITE PAGE: SUEDE BOMBER JACKET, STRIPED CASHMERE SWEATER, AND PLEATED WOOL TROUSERS.
Steele: “This is totally like a bathrobe coat. If only they would make it in a women’s size! It reminds me of how radical Yohji Yamamoto once was—it sort of has an ’80s Japanese sensibility. Look how desirable it is. Who wouldn’t want to live in this? You could feel like a million bucks in it. The stripes are just so subtle. It’s really much better than if it were all-black.” SURFACE
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Grooming: Sierra Min using Sheseido. Model: Jonathan Glass at Ford Models. Fashion Assistant: Sean Kim. Location: Cassina’s New York showroom in Soho. 133
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The Design Issue Our annual look into the world’s leading design minds, from a nonagenarian style icon to a British museum director.
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THE DESIGN ISSUE
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Clear and Present
(OPPOSITE) John Pawson in the library of his London studio.
With several major projects in the works, John Pawson reaches new heights in things plain and simple. INTERVIEW BY SPENCER BAILEY PORTRAIT BY MARK COCKSEDGE
In the two decades since the British architect John Pawson designed his nowfamous New York store for Calvin Klein Collection, he has created homes in places like Montauk, Mallorca, St. Tropez, and Treviso; a Cathay Pacific airport lounge in Hong Kong; a gallery and café in Okinawa, Japan; ballet sets for Paris’s L’Opéra Bastille and London’s Royal Opera House; a kitchen system, lines of cookware and tableware, and a steak knife; a Swarovski crystal lens; the interiors of two yachts; seven Phaidon books; and an ongoing master plan for Cistercian monks in the Czech Republic. A recent commission saw Pawson designing the just-finished London flagship of fashion designer Christopher Kane. Along the way, he has also forged an unusually strong
relationship with real-estate developer and hotelier Ian Schrager, whose immaculate Manhattan apartment the architect designed. Last year, Schrager unveiled the Pawson– designed Miami Beach Edition residences, and the pair are currently collaborating on the interiors of two New York City residential projects— 215 Chrystie and 160 Leroy— and the West Hollywood Edition hotel, scheduled to open in 2018. On top of all of this is the commission of a lifetime: the interior of the London Design Museum’s new building, opening in late 2016 and located in a structure formerly housing the Commonwealth Institute. (To read about the museum’s director, Deyan Sudjic, see page 178.) Throughout all of these projects Pawson, 66, has remained
steadfast in his detail-oriented, clean-lined approach. One could call his designs Raymond Carveresque: As economical as the writer was with his words, Pawson is with his architecture and interiors. Like Carver, he manages to say with a lot with a little. His projects pack a punch—even if they’re neutral, clean, and well lighted, with little flash or pomp. They’re warm, often rich places with deep thought and complexity behind their seemingly simple surfaces. Earlier this spring, over coffee at the boardroom table in his London office near King’s Cross station, Surface spoke at length with Pawson about everything from what it was like meeting Calvin Klein in the early ’90s to why he recently joined Instagram. >
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Your father was a textile manufacturer. Did growing up in that environment, surrounded by fabrics, get you thinking more about the material world?
Now that you’ve asked me the question, looking back, definitely. Dad was amazing, because he could feel this [touches sleeve of interviewer’s jacket] and tell you its weight, and that it was silk and cotton. I spent a lot of time rifling through textile collections there to choose fabrics, and I was sometimes commissioning designs. The majority of what we did was make clothes for manufacturers. But it was too frenetic for me. It was to “on to the next thing!” all the time. I never had a chance to think. There was a short time there during which you designed clothes, right?
A model for a private residence in Pawson’s studio. (OPPOSITE) Material samples near Pawson’s workstation.
I did. My mother was very proud of me—but she never wore any of it! [Laughs] Of course, in those days, the idea was that you worked your way through the factory. You learned to cut a pattern and sew. I was good at that. Then I got to working with people. We had a design department—a bit like here at the studio. It would have been better, I think, if I had started to work for someone else or had done my own thing. Because it was a very established business, it was difficult to make an impression. I mean, I did make an impression, but not a very good financial one.
In some sense, you could have gone the direction of fashion designer.
I could have, yes. I had an eye, but I certainly wasn’t exhibiting creative genius in the fashion department. And my father brought it to a close because he was quite pragmatic and running a big company. He was able to dispense of my services. After this, you ended up traveling to Japan.
I went because it was the ’60s when I left school, and it just didn’t seem right to go to university. Not that I tried. I ended up traveling, and then working for my father, and when that didn’t work, I ended up in Japan. After Japan, I went to architecture school [at the Architectural Association in London], and that didn’t last very long, either. [Laughs] You ended up staying in Japan for six years.
That was interesting, because I was only supposed to be staying there a week! [Laughs] The Japanese have a tradition of: If you’re there, they entertain you and pay for everything. This was the case in those days anyway. My one contact, Akira Arakawa, said, “So you’re staying more than a week?!” Because obviously it would’ve cost him a fortune. Luckily, he didn’t have to pay for me beyond a week. What drew you into Japan and made you want to stay?
I think it was the people, just their sensitivity and politeness and the way they do things. It’s very seductive and pleasant. After you’re there, it’s a great shock going anywhere else. After moving back to Europe, it took me several months—or I would say years—to get back. The Japanese have exquisite presentation and taste. I’m not talking about the nation Japan— obviously, there are a lot of downsides about it; it can be quite stressful there—but the place just seemed suitable. I never learned Japanese, and that was a huge embarrassment. It was never the plan to begin with, but then when I got to Tokyo, people like Shiro Kuramata said, “Well, why can’t you speak Japanese? You’ve been here for four years. What’s wrong with you?” That was the message. When you finally get through to the Japanese, they give it to you straight.
No. It was a typical young arrogance. I just rang him up. I said, “I’m John Pawson, and I’m here.” I think it was just easier for him to say, “Yes, we’ll have coffee,” rather than ask lots of questions. We met and he brought along Masayuki Kurokawa, who translated, because Kuramata’s English wasn’t that good. It was fine, but he was more comfortable when it was translated. I used to hang out with Kurokawa. It wasn’t excessive, but quite a lot brushed off. SURFACE
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Tell me more about your relationship with Kuramata. Did you work with him?
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Do you feel spending time with him was an alternative education?
Yeah. It was huge. The stuff he used to say— you’d ask him how’s it going, and he’d always go, “No sparks.” He was incredibly remorse. He could be very dismissive. You could say, “This is great!” And he’d say, “It’s good enough.” He couldn’t help helping. Sometimes, when we were together, he would just take over a project. I remember once at 3 a.m. in the morning I had nodded off because he was doing all the work. When you’re watching somebody do something, it’s actually more tiring than doing it yourself. Suddenly, he tapped me on the back like this [Pawson bangs his fist hard on the table] and goes in a very loud voice, “Design is serious business!” I’ve never forgotten that. I’ve always felt slightly conscious that one’s never serious.
PHOTOS: MARK COCKSEDGE.
So what’s your take on that now? Do you see design as “serious business?”
Hugely. One’s always trying to be as serious as Kurokawa was. The only point is the work. It’s what I really enjoy doing. The most pleasant thing for me is actually doing it. What was it about the Architectural Association that made you decide you wanted to drop out?
I was 30, and most of the students were new to London and new to relationships. For them,
all the fun was meeting people and exploring London. I never got the timing right, because you’d arrive on time, and the students and the teacher would be late. Then when I’d arrive late I’d miss the class. My antenna wasn’t as sharp as it was when I was 5 or 10 years older. I didn’t know you could be taught design. I just thought you could create. I think everyone has it in them. I’ve noticed bit by bit things get more intense; you work harder, you strive harder. Just by working something comes, hopefully. John Andrews was my teacher, and I learned a lot from him. But after three years there, I just said, “I can’t.” I think it had to do with the fact that I was never good with the whole business of exams. Was there a moment early in your career as a designer that changed everything for you? Was it the Calvin Klein commission?
I never started out to have a career. I never intended to have an architectural office or be an architect. I just wanted to make stuff. At the beginning, you have lots and lots of ideas, and you haven’t harnessed them. You haven’t got a vehicle, really, because you don’t have clients or an office. You have to put those things together. You have lots of ideas and time to develop things. Then you start getting the clients. Calvin didn’t change the designs so much. Obviously, when you get jobs, you try to choose good partners so that the collaboration is fantastic. The big thing about Calvin was the endorsement. He trusted a young unknown to
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get him what he wanted. With all of his backing, energy, and input—and everyone else’s at the company—and a great location for a store, that encourages other people. In that sense, he changed my whole working life. Ian [Schrager] introduced Calvin to me. You learn so much from the clients, and they learn from you. So how did Ian introduce you to Calvin?
where we just talked about the window frame from 8 o’clock in the morning to 8 o’clock at night. He wanted the big picture and the details. And he had charm. These are not things you can learn. Everything was done to the top level. If it was flowers, it wasn’t just lilies; it was Arab lilies. And it wasn’t just one; it was 100. Everything was done beautifully, the graphics and the presentation.
Apparently, from what I gather, Calvin said So much is happening for your studio at the to Ian he was looking for somebody to help moment. It seems to be the culmination of him do his first shop, and he was on his way what you’ve done over the past decade or to Europe to see people and get a feel. Ian gave two. One of your new projects is Schrager’s Calvin my first book on my work. new residences at the Miami Beach Edition. Meeting Calvin was an incredible moment. I What has it been like working with Ian, and had this tiny basement office. There were very how have your projects with him evolved? few of us, just a line of people. I was slightly hungover. I had had this painful morning with a The first thing I did was Gramercy Park resinew potential client who was trying to explain dences—not the hotel. I can’t remember how it to me this concept about how he was going to came about. There was the tea in ’94, ’95, then bring “loft living” to London. I was like, “Well, this long gap. I think people kept telling him, we’ve got lofts already.” I couldn’t cope with “You should give John a go.” He wanted to, but it at all. Afterward, I went out and had half a I just don’t think he could see it, the minimalist thing. After Gramercy, we did his Bond Street bottle of Chianti at a spaghetti house. When I returned to the office, my team apartment, and he was really happy with it. said, “Calvin Klein has been on the phone.” In That’s informed a lot of the stuff he’s done those days, as someone with not a lot of work, without me, and it has encouraged him to come Calvin Klein was way up there [Pawson raises back. Finally, after 20 years, he feels really comhis hand toward the ceiling]; it’s sort of difficult fortable working with me. We’ve also helped to explain now. He was one of the best-known him with 215 Chrystie Street. We’re doing names in the world. My office always played the same with 160 Leroy Street. Ian’s so nice practical jokes on me—and they still do. They to work with. There’s always something he’s used to ring up and pretend to be an Arab engineering, and then suddenly there’s a whole sheikh, for instance. I told them, “Fuck off,” building. [The Edition Hotel and Residences and lied down on this concrete bench because coming in 2018 to] West Hollywood will be I’d had slightly too much to drink. And they amazing. said, “No, no, no, Calvin Klein’s office rang and said he wanted to see you.” I said, “Fine, tell The London Design Museum’s new building, him he can come in,” thinking, “…when he’s for which you’re designing the interiors, is next in London.” Then they got his assistant another special project coming to fruition. on the phone. She said, “Mr. Klein is outside in It’s special not only because London is your the car. Can he come in?” He bounced down home base, but because it’s such a national— the steps and said, “Hi, I’m Calvin Klein.” He and international—platform for design. How was so good-looking and fit. I was completely did that project come about, and what does it in shock. That was in ’93. mean to you as a designer to do such a highly
PHOTOS: MARK COCKSEDGE.
How did you initially meet Ian Schrager?
After I’d been working for Calvin for a bit, Ian suggested—I can’t really remember—“Let’s meet up for tea at the Paramount.” I thought, “Oh, great, here comes the next job!” It was just to meet, and that was very nice. I don’t think I’d known then that he’d given the book to Calvin. Of course, I know now, but I don’t think I was quick enough to realize then that the job wasn’t there, that it was gonna be 10 years [until we would work together]. Calvin had always been a minimalist, and is. When he traveled, he traveled simply. He didn’t mind queuing. But he’d be quickly rescued from the queue as soon as they saw who he was. He was very straightforward. What, if anything, did Calvin Klein teach you about design?
He has incredible energy and focus. He went into the detail on the store. We had one day
prized commission?
To design a design museum? [Laughs] I’ve never thought of it that way. Deyan [Sudjic, the director of the museum; see page 178 for our interview with him] has been a lifelong friend. He’s been around since the beginning of my architectural working life, and he’s seen all the highs and lows, from when Calvin turned up to when I lost big jobs. I was around when he got the job at the museum, and I thought, “How lucky for them.” He’s got a spread of talents. At one point, Deyan said, “We’re going to have a competition. Want to enter?” I said, “I don’t really do competitions.” He said, “You have to.” I sort of resisted, then it was pointed out to me by various people—not Deyan—that it would be a good idea to try. So I decided, if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it properly. We pooled all of our resources. I had no idea if we’d win. Deyan holds his cards to his chest, and I thought, “Can’t he at least say something?” It’s a very English thing: You get less help because he’s a best friend. It
(OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM) Workstations on the upstairs level of Pawson’s studio, with a 2006 work by South African photographer David Goldblatt on the wall. Models of a home Pawson is designing in the U.K. countryside.
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What’s been your approach to the London Design Museum?
I was resistant to an exhibition. There has been inference drawn that because we were doing the Design Museum building we’d be given a show—the exhibition came first. But again, I didn’t want to do it, because it’s really difficult to show architecture in an exhibition. If you have Matisse, Warhol, or Alexander McQueen, it’s much easier. Architecture exhibitions are, by nature, quite dry. So we tried. I mean, it’s a very good exercise because you’re forced to evaluate the past—which you don’t normally do—and take stock. I wanted it to be accessible. I wanted it to be nice for people to go to. What was nice is that a lot of people took their children. I don’t know if this was a last resort, but they did. I’m not competitive, except for with myself, but I was very keen to see if I could come close to the Zaha Hadid exhibition’s figures in attendance. You can’t possibly compete with fashion [exhibitions], but I wanted to see if I could compete with Zaha, and I think I got quite near. Not that I bought all the tickets! [Laughs]
It’s going to be a spectacular space and really fun to hang out in. It’s mostly trying to not bugger about with too much. It was originally designed as an exhibition space without daylight. Which is crazy, because you’ve got this beautiful park next door. So opening it up was one major thing.
Speaking of fashion, you have this past with Calvin Klein, and you just designed the new Christopher Kane London flagship on Mount Street. Your only other retail project in between the two was a London shop for the brand Jigsaw in 1996. Why work with Kane? >
In these projects, in which you’re doing interiors for, say, a Herzog & de Meuron structure, what’s your relationship to the building architects?
In Ian’s case, it’s very, very distant. In fact, I’m not always sure everyone knows exactly what’s going on. I’m not pushy at all for jobs. For me, the competition is with myself. It’s very nice for me to work within a Herzog & de Meuron building. They’re great architects, and I’ve learned a lot through the process. And it’s very flattering that Ian asks for my help.
(THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE) Christopher Kane’s recently opened London flagship, designed by Pawson.
You have a previous relationship with the museum: You had an exhibition there in 2010 called “Plain Space.”
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PHOTOS: GILBERT MCCARRAGHER.
finally got down to the wire. I remember there were 10 judges on the committee around this huge table, and you try to answer each one. It was quite stressful. As I left, I saw a van arrive and its doors open with this huge architectural model lifted out by these guys. I saw it going into the committee room. The model was David Chipperfield’s. This was the third and final interview. I thought, “That’s it.” My model was much smaller.
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You should ask him. How flattering for a I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures. I see stuff 66-year-old to have a 32-year-old ask him to everywhere. Hopefully it’s not an affliction. do his store. They came in and were quite I do that thing where I count the number of nervous. They’d done a lot of homework. I doors or drawers. I keep seeing patterns. think he just wanted presence, and part of what he said was that he wanted it to be about Many of the photographs you take are of the clothes. It’s his world. I wanted to create things that catch your eye, whether it’s a a space where the clothes look good and the Peter Zumthor building or a Wegner chair people look good—something very much the or a Carl Andre sculpture. What do you find Christopher Kane atmosphere. I think he felt if yourself drawn to? he’d chosen a rising star, like he is—the equivalent of him in a design or architectural capac- Gosh, that’s a big thing. When I did the book ity—there might have been more conflict. It’s Minimal—funny enough, that was a Deyan always been the game: You want to do the best [Sudjic] thing. Phaidon had said to Deyan, for them, and hopefully when you do that, the “Can you do a book that speaks to simplicity result is good. I think it has worked out really in art and architecture?” Deyan said, “You’re well. The space is big for Mount Street, but it’s speaking to the wrong guy. You want John small for a flagship. Pawson.” This was in the ’90s. They were like, “Who’s he?” I thought, “This is great! I’ll write Were you familiar with Kane’s work before 100,000 words.” They were like, “You don’t he came in? understand. We do 5,000 words at the most.” About A Visual Inventory, people often say My wife was. She was like, “Ahhh!” It’s so nice to me, “I love your inspiration book.” I say, when you do things that thrill your wife. This “It’s not an inspiration book. It’s a very seriis what I mean by how lucky I’ve been with ous treatise on the notion of simplicity.” I used pairings: Calvin, Ian, Christopher Kane, the these photographs to illustrate my points. Judd, Design Museum. Fontana, and shaker and Egyptian architecture—these are things that appeal. It’s interestInterestingly, in addition to those, you’ve ing now, because it’s one click on Pinterest, and worked with monks for clients. What is the you get all kinds of stuff like this. People set up posts called “What John Pawson Might Like.” line between all of your clients that really ties The best one of all was a page on Facebook—I together their appreciation for the spaces you create for them? have to say this was a few years ago—called “Get Your Paws on John Pawson.” Two That’s a difficult one to be articulate about. It’s women had set it up, and they were just talking certainly true that to be a client you have to about my architecture—it was very, very funny. come already onboard. There’s no converting Sadly, it wasn’t kept up. It’s so odd, isn’t it, that people, sadly. And any time that I’ve been in a now you can find everything online. position where people have said, “Tell me why I should hire you,” it doesn’t work. My clients It’s this paradox we live with: We’re conare all “believers,” so to speak. Ian always was. stantly in search of simplicity, but then He just found it commercially difficult to make there’s the often boisterous, unrelenting at first. noise of the Internet. I think the monks understand I get what’s appropriate for them and provide them these My wife is very keen I do Instagram. She can’t spaces that are very difficult to make. They’re understand why I don’t. The studio very kindly clear, light-filled, and make people feel good. just put up three photographs of the—I was They’re lasting, and they don’t cost a lot of going to say Citizen Kane shop. [Laughs] I money. It’s not like I understand the liturgy. wanted the posts to promote our website, but It’s probably handy being Christian, but they as my son says, “Nobody’s going to go from were interested in it just being good. I could your Instagram to your website.” I’ll do it, but have been Jewish or Muslim, probably. Funny I just think it’s important that whatever you enough, I was introduced to them by an do is done well. Also, I’m always conscious Armenian urologist. They have a tie-in with of the responsibility that if you’re having this guy. They had tried to contact me, and the someone over for dinner, you’re giving them letter had been sent back. There was a mistake a night, so everything has to be special—the in the post, but they thought I didn’t want to food, the best—so that they come away with do it. They tried again through this intermedi- something. It’s just like that with Instagram. ary. I got a letter from someone at the Sheffield I want to give them something they couldn’t University hospital in the urology department have gotten somewhere else. Maybe it’s a saying these monks in France want to build photo of me in my underpants. [Editor’s note: a cistern in the Czech Republic, and can you Following this interview, Pawson began posthelp? I thought, “This must be a joke!” ing on Instagram; as this issue went to print, the latest pictures were from his travels in Chile’s Let’s switch over to your photography, which Atacama desert.] ties in closely to your design work. In 2012, you published a book, A Visual Inventory (Phaidon), looking at this connection. What role do these images play in your work?
Photography is a lot about framing and editing. Do you see that translated into your designs? >
(OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM) The Martyrs Pavilion at St. Edward’s School in Oxford, England, completed in 2009. A Pawson-designed house in Drevviken, Sweden, completed in 2013.
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Definitely. You’re making choices. It isn’t the same in the sense that you say, “Okay, you’ll pull these things together, and then that’ll be your space.” You’re often starting from scratch when you’re building something. You just have an intuition about some things and putting them together. You’re trying to make these material choices, like my father would. You’re always trying to reduce and ask, “Is it necessary?” In the end, you don’t need to show how clever you are. You just want to make it as refined as possible. It’s about forgetting what’s in front of you. It’s like when you read a good book, you forget you’re reading, or when you see a good photograph, you lose yourself in what you’re looking at.
Yes. The best compliment is when people walk into a space you designed and say, “What have you done?” Do you think of yourself in an editor-asdesigner capacity or do you separate editing and designing?
Yeah. In the old days, there used to be hundreds of boxes of prints in the shop. In your book Plain Space, the first essay begins with a Raymond Carver quote: “It’s difficult to be simple.” I love that for several reasons, one being that, if you look into Carver’s history, he worked closely with the editor Gordon Lish, who has been largely credited with shaping and trimming down Carver’s stories into the ones we know today. That relationship between them, the tensions that were brought out, resulted in these incredible—and simple—sentences that build into rich stories. Do you see some of your clients in that way, as editors, as people working closely with you to refine their needs?
Oh God yes. They’re more rigorous, driven, fastidious, and demanding than I am, if that’s possible. It’s a truism that you have to have a client. The interaction with a client is what gives you the opportunity. Every project is different because of the client. I’ve been blessed with these remarkable clients. That would be a good book: The Clients. It’s interesting that clients rarely show up in architectural monographs. >
PHOTOS: GILBERT MCCARRAGHER.
(THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE) The Pawsondesigned church of St. Moritz in Augsburg, Germany, completed in 2013.
I think they’re separate. Designing is an intuitive thing. I’m not saying it’s magic, because it’s hard work and a process. When you take a photograph, you reflect. I won’t say it’s cathartic, but I think taking photographs—I use them as shorthand. My sketching is a joke. My sketches are highly prized in the office because of their rarity.
So in a way you’re sketching when you’re photographing?
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Yeah. I’d love to do it. The clients don’t always see why they would appear—or need to be on the cover. But I’d love to do that. I think it would be incredible, just telling their stories. It’s usually because most clients don’t need or want press. But for the most part my only tricky periods were when I was young and didn’t really listen and see the client’s point of view. Now I really enjoy listening to them, trying to put myself in their place. If there were things that would make for uncomfortable reading in this fantasy book on the clients, it would be the early-career stuff. In hindsight, it was usually my fault. Maybe you could include some of the clients or projects that never happened. I read that you once sent a couple of sketches to Karl Lagerfeld for a tennis court.
They’re visceral. And that’s sometimes difficult, because it isn’t until you walk into them that you get it. What you’re creating isn’t so tangible. We use the same things: material, scale, proportion, light. Something like a church is especially difficult. There’s no guarantee that it will be spiritual or sacred. But that’s the plan. You just have to do your best. And so far, the monks have been incredibly happy with it. These are very much emotional, human places. It’s tricky because early on people thought I was saying my domestic work has some sort of religious or sacred connotations. It really doesn’t at all.
A workshop building by Pawson at the Novy Dvur monastery in the Czech Republic, completed last year. (OPPOSITE) A Pawson-designed house in Mallorca, Spain, completed in 2013.
PHOTOS: GILBERT MCCARRAGHER.
[Laughs] That I got very badly wrong. He used to show them to Anna Wintour, and I realized rather naïvely—I did this tennis court, and there were these ugly things I wanted to hide. I hid them with this oval hedge. I got a note back saying, “I don’t do curves.” That didn’t go quite so well. Karl and I did quite a few things, actually. We started with a studio, then a house and swimming pool. It was fantastic hanging out with Karl. He’s the most entertaining fellow. Spending time with him was like being paid to watch theater.
When you think about what he has achieved, it’s really been about establishing presence—and a persona. In many ways, I think there’s a connection to what you do: You’re creating spaces that have a strong presence. They’ve even been described as “sacred.” You’re creating more than just design; you’re creating places that make people feel something.
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Born Identity
(OPPOSITE) James Biber in Milan.
Architect James Biber invokes America’s food history and culture with his cutting-edge design for the U.S. Pavilion at the Milan Expo. BY LAURA RASKIN PORTRAIT BY VALENTINA ANGELONI
When architect James Biber went to London open rectangular volume inspired by agriculfor the first time, in 1977, he bought a book: tural buildings. The firm collaborated with a reproduction of working drawings for the Pentagram on graphic design, Thinc on the Crystal Palace, the third-of-a-mile-long glass exhibitions, dlandstudio on landscaping, and and cast iron pavilion designed by Sir Joseph Tillotson Design Associates on lighting. An Paxton for the Great Exhibition of 1851, the airplane hangar–like door and a ramp and pathway made of recycled lumber from the first-ever World’s Fair. “I learned more about how you put things Coney Island boardwalk beckon visitors to together from that book than years of explore presentations on America’s food hisother things,” says Biber, who founded his tory and culture. “I patterned this building on Manhattan-based practice, Biber Architects, in really beautiful images of barn raises, which are 2010 after 19 years as a partner at the graphic- community events and such seminal images,” design firm Pentagram. “[Paxton] had it Biber says. “The pavilion feels very American: prefabricated, assembled it on site, and filled honest and direct.” it with exhibits in nine months, with a techExhibits are located throughout the pavilnology that had only existed on a small scale. ion. A roof terrace has spectacular views Then they demounted the entire building and of the 3.6-million-square-foot Expo site. moved it.” Biber calls it “the first truly modern The pavilion’s roof is made of 312 panels of “smart” glass that can change from transparbuilding.” Though the architect—in the years after ent to opaque blue in an instant, but perhaps that inspiring trip to London—has gone on the structure’s biggest spectacle is its football to design the Harley Davidson Museum in field–length “vertical farm,” inspired by the Milwaukee, a wide range of private residences, gridded panorama created by the 1785 U.S. New York City restaurants such as Bobby Land Ordinance. Flay’s Mesa Grill and the Gotham Bar and In some ways it’s ironic that Biber wanted Grill, the visitors center at Philip Johnson’s to design an expo pavilion at all, given his angst Glass House in Connecticut, and an exhi- about the evolution of these global, large public bition at the Museum of Sex, among other exhibitions—the history of which he can rattle projects, those early influences find ways of off by memory. What started out as expressions returning. The U.S. Pavilion at the 2015 Milan of incredible innovation and glimpses into the Expo, designed by Biber Architects, opens this future had morphed, by the late 1990s, into month and will be up through Oct. 31. “I’m far less architecturally ambitious projects. As really interested in identity and architecture Biber puts it, “Fairs became more corporation as identity,” Biber says. “This is the ultimate as nation state.” It was exactly this disappointidentity challenge: Try to represent the entire ment and frustration in that transformation U.S. in a single building.” that inspired the architect to attempt to reverse In response to the Expo’s theme of “Feeding the trend and “finally build a pavilion that says the Planet, Energy for Life” examining hunger, something about the aspirations of America, waste, and sustainability, Biber’s pavilion, rather than the day-to-day reality,” he says. dubbed “American Food 2.0: United to One could say that transparency is a leitmoFeed the Planet,” is a 36,000-square-foot tif of Biber’s work and ethos. His projects are
significant and varied, but he maintains a sense of accessibility rare in the profession—including a regularly updated blog. In one post, he casually implores readers to stop using their Kindles (when he wrote it, Amazon was in a dispute with e-book publisher Hachette); in another, he weighs in on the very public debate over MoMA’s demolition of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s American Folk Art Museum. Elsewhere on his website, Biber posts humorous quotes from figures ranging from Lena Dunham to random New Yorkers overheard in the city. Biber, whose mother worked in advertising design and whose wife is a graphic designer, calls his years at Pentagram “the best postgraduate education” and credits the firm with his deep interest in design-as-biography. He began his tenure there as the second-youngest at the firm, and left as the second-oldest; though practicing more directly in architecture these days, he still gravitates toward graphic designers. “I really think that architects have lost control of building in general. They are not the masters—clients, developers, and governments are,” Biber says. “In compensation, some have fallen back on a kind of jargon and obfuscation as a way of separating themselves from everyone else. It’s an unfortunate tendency.” Biber believes his role, and that of his eight-person firm, is to make things clearer and simpler. His current projects include a New York City charter school, an expansion of the Clinton Street Baking Company in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a senior center in East Harlem, and a system of prefabricated houses in the Hamptons. “It’s also a taste thing,” says Biber, of his tendency toward simple, elegant solutions. He adds, “Some people really love complex forms and spatial experiences.” He just isn’t one of them.
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A rendering and drawing of Biber’s U.S. Pavilion for the 2015 Milan Expo. (OPPOSITE) The pavilion under construction. (NEXT SPREAD) Another rendering. SURFACE
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PHOTO: SAVERIO LOMBARDI VALLAURI.
IMAGES: COURTESY BIBER ARCHITECTS.
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PHOTO: SAVERIO LOMBARDI VALLAURI.
IMAGES: COURTESY BIBER ARCHITECTS.
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Rule of Three
The crisp, well-made products of Egg Collective have earned the young New York trio renown in American design circles. BY JORDAN KUSHINS PORTRAIT BY JEN DESSINGER
life experience yet,” Petrie says. They moved to different cities and pursued a range of paths— including sculpture, urban planning, and fabrication—but kept in touch. Five and a half years later, all at once, they fortuitously found themselves “in flux,” Ellis says. “We still hadn’t given up on that dream.” And so, in the fall of 2011, they secured a studio space in Brooklyn and prepared to get serious about their business. Before officially launching, however, they dedicated nine months solely to intensive research and development. “We had those six years of pent up energy and ideas that had been floating back and forth, and so much momentum,” Ellis says. “It was a wonderful, productive time to focus on being creative.”
It also allowed them to develop a symbiotic style of working—in person, finally—that includes a combination of analog and digital techniques. “The three of us usually sit down together around a sketch pad or sheet of loose leaf, then start to dialogue and draw out our ideas by hand, starting with shapes that someone wants to explore, something that people have been asking for, or what we feel might be missing so far,” Beamer says. “Crystal will take those into the computer and turn the 2-D drawings into 3-D renderings.” Then comes the prototyping: They construct full-scale models using less precious materials—say, chipboard or paper instead of bronze or maple—in order to understand the physicality of everything from SURFACE
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PHOTO: COURTESY DESIGN WITHIN REACH.
Stephanie Beamer, Crystal Ellis, and Hillary Petrie met while studying architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, but a design-heavy curriculum gave them each the opportunity to explore courses that went way beyond the built environment. This multidisciplinary mentality helped inform Egg Collective, their on-the-rise design company based in New York. The three began casually, collaborating under the Egg Collective name directly after graduation in 2006, but the timing wasn’t yet right to fully commit to anything official. “We were in our early 20s. We loved working together, but it was one of those things. We were aware we weren’t ready with the right tools or skills or
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joints to surfaces. “We learn the most from those we wanted to make pieces that would stand the mock-ups about how the pieces exist in space in test of time. Our clients want to invest in products that they will have forever.” the real world,” Beamer says. At the end of their initial incubation period This admirable patience doesn’t mean they’re after reuniting, they had a collection to debut not keeping busy. The year has kicked off with at New York’s International Contemporary a flurry of professional activity, which includes Furniture Fair in 2012, and went into the having a dresser, a credenza, and a console picked Midtown Manhattan convention center with up by Design Within Reach (DWR) for distribua kind of make-or-break attitude. “We were tion and designing a mirror for DWR; moving taking a chance,” Ellis says. “We decided: If their studio from near Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill what we present resonates, we’ll keep going. neighborhood across to Industry City; and If nobody seems to care for it, at least we got opening of a showroom in Manhattan’s Hudson it out of our systems,” Petrie says. The collec- Square area in March. tion—with clean lines and crisp geometry that This month, they’ll receive the inaugural references sculptural modern art as much as American Design Honors award at New York’s functional furniture—garnered both attention Wanted Design fair. Given in partnership with and accolades, and they were selected by the fair Bernhardt Design—like Wanted, an avid supas the year’s Best New Designer. porter of young American talent and stateside The women of Egg Collective have since manufacturing—the award comes as Wanted firmly established themselves in what remains celebrates its fifth anniversary. Since its incepa largely male-dominated field, and while their tion, Wanted’s co-founders Claire Pijoulat and gender is an inherent—and important—part of Odile Hainaut have positioned the event as a their shared identity, they point out it’s not the kind of alternative to more traditional, stodgier only part. “It’s hard for us to deny that we have a trade shows, and in Egg Collective they have feminine sensibility,” Petrie says. Adds Beamer: an ideal ambassador for the fledgling program. “We’re feminists, but we also want to stand in our “They have a high-end, contemporary approach on right, regardless of—and beyond—gender.” to design, with a very strong personality,” The dizzying demands of a fickle indus- Hainault says of the firm, an observation that try with a short attention span and unyielding would just as aptly apply to Wanted itself. “They desire for new products hasn’t deterred them are still very fresh.” from confidently setting their own pace. “We’re not a high-volume shop,” Ellis says of nurturing the delicate balance between passion and selfpossession. “From the outset of the company,
Egg Collective’s walnut Morrison credenza for Design Within Reach. (OPPOSITE) Hillary Petrie (left), Stephanie Beamer (middle), and Crystal Ellis of Egg Collective in New York.
PHOTO: COURTESY DESIGN WITHIN REACH.
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Egg Collective’s Hawley side table, made of brass and Pietra del Cardosa marble. (OPPOSITE) The studio’s Nutty magazine rack in a custom bronze patina. SURFACE
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Egg’s Ritter chest of drawers, made of lacquered wood, bronze, and stone. (OPPOSITE) The studio’s Wu side table and stool. SURFACE
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Fit for Film
(OPPOSITE) Iris Apfel with a parrot.
Long a front-row fixture at fashion shows, design doyenne Iris Apfel lands a starring role in a new documentary by the late Albert Maysles. INTERVIEW BY AILEEN KWUN PORTRAIT BY BRUCE WEBER
Iris Apfel is a woman of many hats—literally and figuratively—though she’s seemingly keener on oversized eyewear, necklaces, and bangles, stacked in jangling multiples. Marked by bright palettes, an improvised mix of any and all style periods and juxtapositions of high and low, Apfel’s distinctive style was the subject of “Rara Avis,” a celebrated 2005 exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Costume Institute. The landmark show attracted more than 150,000 visitors, and went on to travel to several other museums nationally. Known simply by her first name, the prolific, selfdescribed “geriatric starlet” has since emerged as a poster child for advanced style. As a longtime interiors and textile designer, however, Apfel’s forays into design are hardly new, and colorful variations carry on to bothher social and professional lives: She counts Kanye West, Jenna Lyons, Dries Van Noten,
and Architectural Digest editor-in-chief Margaret Russell among her devotees, and U.S. presidents Truman, Nixon, Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton among her former client base. The charm of Apfel’s enthusiastic and candid personality has kept her and her work in the limelight for more than six decades—and her popularity only seems to be growing. In the past two years alone, the erstwhile cover girl has been featured in campaigns for beauty and fashion brands such as MAC Cosmetics, & Other Stories, Kate Spade, and Alexis Bittar, the latter two for which she appeared alongside supermodel Karlie Kloss and wunderkind Tavi Gevinson, respectively. She has also appeared in editorials in Dazed & Confused, Vogue, Paper, and Harper’s Bazaar. The enterprising nonagenarian also designs a line of accessories sold exclusively via the Home Shopping Network, and keeps an epic collection of objets, furniture,
and keepsakes culled from years of international travel with her husband and business partner, Carl, with whom she founded and ran the textile firm Old World Weavers from 1950 to 1992. At age 93, the style maven, entrepreneur, and largerthan-life pop culture icon shows no signs of stopping: Currently, Apfel is writing a book and styling window displays for New York ’s Bergdorf Goodman department store—the vitrines will be “Iris-themed” for two weeks this month—and she’s the subject of Iris, the final documentary to be filmed by the late director Albert Maysles, who passed away this March. Surface took a few minutes from Apfel’s whirlwind schedule to discuss her approach to design and fashion, how she collects, and what it’s like to be the star of a feature-length film, currently in theaters throughout the U.S. >
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How does it feel to be the subject of a documentary by Albert Maysles, and what was your reaction when you first viewed it?
It feels very good. It has been very well received, and I’m very grateful—Al was a joy to work with. I’m very, very excited and amazed at the great response we’re getting. There are a few fourth wall–breaking cameos by Maysles in the film, which are poignant in retrospect. Had you already been well-acquainted with each other when the project began?
No, no, I had never met him. I met him as we started, and we just hit it off. Then we went straight into it. We had great rapport. It was very nice. We had a few social events together, but by and large, it was a working relationship. He’s captured some really great moments on your approach to fashion and design. Listening to you appraise style over beauty was particularly interesting.
Well, I didn’t say I prefer style over beauty. I prefer … Well, I like style. I think style is very important. I like style because if it’s real style, it’s original, creative, and something that comes from within. It’s nothing that God gave you—though I guess God gave you the ability to do it. But I don’t think getting by on being beautiful is such a wise thing to do because beauty fades and style continues. Many people admire you for the fearlessness and originality of your style—you’re the original “geriatric starlet,” though it seems there are more surfacing these days, with recent campaigns: Joan Didion for Céline and Joni Mitchell for Saint Laurent.
It’s about time. There’s a huge, untapped market of women of a certain age that nobody in the fashion business pays any attention to, and they’re the ones who have all the money, so it’s kind of dopey. Putting them there is a no-brainer; I think it’s a wise thing to do.
In the film, you mention your mother played an early influence in your love for jewelry and accessories. Were there other early influences that helped cultivate or inform your personal taste?
I didn’t copy my mother’s style. I was completely different! She just planted a seed. And these are things that you have to do on your own. I did it mostly myself—there weren’t that many people informing me. As I grew up a little bit, I admired Pauline de Rothschild, and I admired Polly Mellen. I thought they were pretty amazing. Most people, I found, were perhaps very welldressed, but I didn’t find them original. And some of the people who were very original were a little bit crazy. I think people have to be appropriate and wear the proper things to the proper places. Your career has been consistently diverse: You’ve worked across multiple fields of design—interiors, fashion, jewelry, and collecting—and have become an increasingly public figure along the way. How has one field bridged or led to another?
It’s all part of the same thing. Good design is good design; it’s just translating it to another form. I don’t find any problem with it. One of your first jobs was a stint at Women’s Wear Daily. What was it like to work there?
It was pretty awful. It was back in the—I guess it was the late ’30s or early ’40s, when there were no electronics. I had the lowliest job possible: I was a copy girl, and that meant I had to run around the building passing papers from one desk to another. There were no electronic means of transporting information. I got the magnificent sum of $15 a week, and I didn’t have to go to the gym, so I saved on that, because I was always running up and down. I decided after a little while to leave because, being very bright, I could figure out that most of the editors were women, and they were all noticeably middle-aged: too old to take leaves of pregnancy and too young to die. I figured I’d never get a crack at their jobs, so I went on to greener pastures.
Where do you look for fresh ideas, whether it’s decorating a room or putting together an ensemble to wear?
Were you still interested in fashion at that point, or did it cause you to become a bit jaded?
It depends on what has to be done and how I feel. The same principles apply with me for both areas. I like them both. I don’t really have favorite places, because the things that I find, I just find, and in the most unlikely places. I don’t do much shopping anymore—some of my favorite little hoards are kaput. They’re finished; the people are either out of business or have gone on to their last reward. So I don’t do too much shopping. You just keep your eyes open, you never know what you’re going to find, ever.
Back then I wasn’t jaded—I was just beginning! So fashion has been a lifelong interest?
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PHOTO: BRUCE WEBER.
I’ve always been interested in fashion. It’s not a life’s journey. I’m not a fashionista, but I like it, I think it’s a creative project, and I wish people would take more advantage of it because they can play around with dressing up. It can involve a sense of play—a sense of joy—if you want it to. Some people make it an agony.
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It’s interesting that you don’t consider yourself a fashionista. You’re often seated at the front row at fashion shows, and you’re in numerous campaigns, for brands including Kate Spade (alongside supermodel Karlie Kloss) and Alexis Bittar (alongside Tavi Gevinson).
hard to recount them. Almost everything I buy, I love.
But that doesn’t make me a fashionista. I mean, they chose me, but I’m interested in a lot more things than fashion. I don’t live to get dressed.
Oh, I love Mickey and Minnie Mouse! When I turned 90, I bought myself a giant Mickey Mouse for my birthday present.
You and your husband Carl traveled extensively, especially for Old World Weavers, the textile business you ran together for a number of years. How do you think globalization has changed the industry in recent years?
You also seem to have a fondness for cartoon characters—I noticed a denim shirt you wore in the film, embroidered with Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
Through it all, which style period would you say you identify with most?
Oh no, I just like all kinds of things! Whatever fits me in my mood: one day it’s one thing, one day it’s something else.
Oh, I think travel now is an agony. Years ago, we went back and forth on a great ship and you traveled like an animal. We loved every place: the Middle East and North Africa, and Italy. I loved the markets and the souks and all that. When I first started, each and every place was so different. Now the world has become homogenized, so it’s not as exciting. You seem to have great skill at bargaining and getting a great deal.
Yeah, I’m not bad at it. Over the years, you’ve worked for many high-end clients, including the offices of several U.S. presidents. In your consulting and design work, what are some of the ways you help people discover the potential of their own style?
You have to talk to them and explain things to them and show them things, and bring them out. Some people have it, and some people don’t. It’s like being a good teacher. You’ve taught classes as well. What kinds of things do you try to teach your students?
I don’t give lessons. I try to take them all around and show them all the possibilities, and explain to them that fashion is a big umbrella—that one can get a job in fashion without being a designer. And it’s been very rewarding. It opens their eyes and they tell me it changed their life and their whole approach.
PHOTO: BRUCE WEBER.
You’re also a great collector of all sorts of items, from furniture and objets, to art and clothing, and recently sold a good deal of your collection through One Kings Lane. How do you decide what you sell and what to keep?
Some things you insist on keeping, but I had so much I had to get rid of most of it. I mean, it comes to a point where you just can’t keep it all. So you just have to bite the bullet. I have so many favorites it would be 169
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Drawn Together
Noemi Blager organizes a Chicago exhibition celebrating the pioneering life and work of 20th-century Brazilbased architect Lina Bo Bardi.
(OPPOSITE) Noemi Blager at her London apartment. (NEXT SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Lina Bo Bardi’s “Caipiras, Capiaus: Pau a Pique” exhibition in 1984. The exterior of Bo Bardi’s Glass House. The Glass House’s interior. View of “Lina Bo Bardi: Together” at the Graham Foundation.
BY TIFFANY JOW PORTRAIT BY HANA KNIZOVA
In 2006, architect Noemi Blager went on a business trip to Brazil, where she saw the São Paulo Museum of Art for the first time. She was struck by the structure’s monumental aesthetic and humanistic methodology: Two thick, red, pre-stressed concrete beams suspend a rectangular volume above the lower half of the building, providing unobstructed views of the site’s panoramic vistas. Elevated from the ground, the cantilevered mass creates a public gathering place beneath it—a stage for contemporary life. Blager inquired about its architect. “They told me it was a woman named Lina Bo Bardi who’d completed the building in the middle of the 20th century,” she says. “I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of her before.” At the time, very little had been published on Bo Bardi, who has since become better known. The only English-language document Blager could find was a lone catalogue from an exhibition that was mounted shortly after Bo Bardi’s death in 1994. Blager, who is from Argentina but is based in London, went to see all of Bo Bardi’s buildings, tried to meet people who’d known her, and struggled to read documents in Portuguese. Slowly, the details came together: Bo Bardi was born in 1914 in Rome, where she studied architecture and opened her own firm at age 28. In 1940, she moved to Milan and started an office with architect Carlo Pagani. There, she also forged projects with Giò Ponti, whose userfocused, all-encompassing approach to design would have a lasting impact on her. After marrying curator Pietro Maria Bardi in 1946, the couple traveled to Brazil in search of a fresh start. Bo Bardi fell in love with the region’s traditional culture and forms of craft, and dedicated herself to celebrating the wisdom, creativity, and talent of its local makers. “She was an enormous mirror for the Brazilian people, and gave them the confidence to appreciate their culture,” Blager says. “That is what’s so exemplary about her: Lina totally embraced the social responsibility of
architecture. Buildings were not the end—they were a means to an end to improve people’s lives. She was an activist, and architecture was her weapon.” Determined to bring Bo Bardi’s work to the mainstream, Blager organized the exhibition “Lina Bo Bardi: Together,” which just made its U.S. debut at Chicago’s Graham Foundation and will be on view through July 25. Bo Bardi didn’t just design buildings, Blager explains. She put people at the center of them, and was chiefly concerned with the life they generated. Like actors on a stage, people completed them. Following Ponti, Bo Bardi’s work spanned architecture, industrial design, curating, and writing (she co-founded the pioneering art magazine Habitat in 1950). She skillfully used simple shapes and noble materials like glass and concrete, but mixed them with her interest in craft and deep-rooted passion for people. She wasn’t afraid to use mud or straw, or to borrow oxcart-making techniques in order to build a staircase. Perhaps her most telling project is the first portion of São Paulo’s SESC Pompéia, a social and cultural center completed in 1982 (a second phase was finished in 1986). Bo Bardi prevailed over the original plan to demolish the former steel drum factory on the site—some of its existing users like the puppet theater and food stands, she reasoned, had already settled there, and the new building was meant to serve them. Bo Bardi transformed the structure—a trio of big, bizarrely shaped concrete forms joined by open-air walkways—into a non-hierarchical hub for creativity under one roof. “For Lina, playing chess is as important as going to a play or taking a swim—culture is everyday culture,” Blager says. “SESC allows for a kind of freedom, a public domesticity.” First exhibited in 2012 at London’s British Council, “Together” traveled around Europe before arriving in Chicago. True to Bo Bardi’s approach, the presentation is a collaborative effort; instead of showing models and drawings,
it demonstrates what it feels like to be inside a Bo Bardi structure. The London design collective Assemble designed the exhibition, which features art, film, and photography. Artist Madelon Vriesendorp, who co-founded OMA (with Rem Koolhaas and Zoe and Elia Zenghelis), presents artifacts she collected in craft markets in the Brazilian city of Salvador and others that were created at workshops she ran at Bo Bardi’s Museum of Modern Art there. Finnish architect and filmmaker Tapio Snellman draws parallels between Bo Bardi’s buildings and daily life through videos of her work. Photographs of The Glass House, the home Bo Bardi designed for herself and her husband in São Paulo, show collections of toys, shells, paintings, and recycled objects displayed in her most intimate space. “Lina’s world was in the Glass House,” Blager says. “She’d put an Eames chair next to a stool made by a peasant—the same nonhierarchical way she organized spaces in the public buildings she created.” Italian furniture manufacturer Arper, which sponsored the exhibition, presents a limited-edition series of Bo Bardi’s Bowl chair, designed in 1951 and now industrially produced for the first time. Comprising a wide, round seat with two disklike cushions, the chair’s key element is human interaction: A user moves around the pillows as she sees fit, ultimately having the final say in the object’s appearance. In a time when “craftsmanship” and “community” are buzzwords and the number of female architects continues to be scarce, it’s curious that Bo Bardi’s rediscovery hadn’t happened earlier. There were so many things working against her, Blager says—political turmoil, her lack of interest in self-promotion, being female—that even today, many Brazilians have never heard of her (or assume her buildings were designed by Oscar Niemeyer). “Suddenly, it seems like everyone is discovering her,” Blager says. “And it’s the right time to love her.”
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PHOTOS: IOANA MARINESCU/COURTESY INSTITUTO LINA BO AND P.M. BARDI.
PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY INSTITUTO LINA BO AND P.M. BARDI. BOTTOM, RCH-EKH.
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PHOTOS: IOANA MARINESCU/COURTESY INSTITUTO LINA BO AND P.M. BARDI.
PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY INSTITUTO LINA BO AND P.M. BARDI.. BOTTOM, RCH-EKH.
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Creative Control Directing cultural events in Milan, New York, Chicago, and beyond, polymath Joseph Grima proves his command of various mediums.
(OPPOSITE) Joseph Grima in the RAM House, an installation designed by Space Caviar (Grima and Tamar Shafrir) and produced by Prokoss Mobilrot, at this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan.
BY DAVE KIM PORTRAIT BY DELFINO SISTO LEGNANI
If Joseph Grima could have his way, he would forego declaring a nationality. The 38-yearold architect, curator, and writer holds British citizenship, but he was born in France, has a Maltese grandfather, and spent most of his life in Italy. This makes for a rather elaborate answer to the question “Where are you from?” but then again, Grima—who has directed a nonprofit (the Storefront for Art and Architecture), edited a magazine (Domus), and organized several exhibitions (including the 2012 Istanbul Design Biennial)—doesn’t seem keen on singular identities. “If you can’t claim no nationality,” he says, “then maybe you should try to have as many as possible, and they’ll cancel one another out.” Grima is based, at the moment, in Genoa, Italy, where he operates his design and research practice, Space Caviar. But he spends only half of each working month in the ancient port city: The other half puts him in Chicago and New York, where he’s currently organizing the Chicago Architecture Biennial (with co-artistic director Sarah Herda, who’s also executive director of the Graham Foundation) and the New Museum’s Ideas City festival, respectively. Those planning to visit the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial this October (through Jan. 3, 2016) will have the added distinction of attending the first-ever architecture biennial in North America. Its theme, “The State of the Art of Architecture,” pays tribute to a conference of the same name organized by Stanley Tigerman in 1977. One could read the title either as “architecture’s state-of-the-art” or “the state of architecture as an art form,” and this ambiguity is deliberate. “[The practice] is evolving very quickly,” Grima says. “The state of the art of architecture is something that’s indeterminate. We left the title
as open-ended as we could, in the hopes that titular theme, “Invisible City.” Every municifuture editions will be less referential to the pality is really many cities in one—the fespast and more open-minded to the present.” tival’s title pays homage to an Italo Calvino Chicago is in many ways the ideal place for novel that explores this concept—and Grima what is to be the largest architecture exhibi- hopes to highlight the conflicting and sometion on the continent; after all, the Windy City, times imperceptible social dynamics within it. birthplace of the skyscraper, is where many “It’s those processes that to many people are leading architects, from Daniel Burnham to completely invisible and imponderable,” he Mies van der Rohe, revolutionized the world says, “that are critical in giving shape to the of design. The biennial’s main hubs will be near city.” their seminal projects in the commercial heart For someone with the job of analyzing of town, at the Chicago Cultural Center as city-making, the architect also thinks quite well as commissioned pavilions in Millennium a bit about something more intimate in scale: Park. But organizers will also bring a show- the home. Space Caviar’s recent projects for case to the Stony Island Arts Bank, a formerly Interieur Biennale, in Kortrijk, Belgium, and condemned building restored by the artist Salone del Mobile, in Milan, explored the Theaster Gates, on the city’s South Side. “The shifting nature of domestic space in the digibiennial will create a dialogue between two tal age. (Last year, the firm released a book, profoundly different parts of the city,” Grima SQM: The Quantified Home, on this very says, “one of which is the historic center of subject.) Your dream house, Grima says, now modernity and the other one of the more comprises packets of data that you follow on deprived parts of the city, where architecture Pinterest and Instagram; home can be the is most desperately needed.” social force field you create when you look This dialogue, Grima adds, is an opportu- at your smart phone in a public square. But nity to show visitors two faces of the metropo- with increasingly invasive and sophisticated lis, a duality emblematic of many other cities. data collection systems, he adds, the surveilThe ever-widening gap between wealth and lance of vicarious experience has reversed, and poverty, the breakneck pace of development “it’s actually your home that’s watching you.” versus the disgrace of civic neglect—these So what does the ever-itinerant Grima— familiar issues have become major concerns who is also the artistic director of Matera for architects, and they will be key themes for 2019 (the Italian city will be the European exhibitors at the show. Capital of Culture that year)—consider home? Similar topics will be examined this month “Right now, it’s Genoa,” he says, “but it’s also at another biennial event helmed by Grima, pretty much every airport lounge. And that’s Ideas City: New York, whose third install- definitely not unique to me. Among other ment will take place from May 28 to 30, in things, I think the biennial is very much a partnership with Manhattan’s New Museum. product of the culture of mobility, where we As director, Grima will bring together panel don’t want to just read about things or look at pictures, but actually travel to and experience discussions, workshops, commissions, and a them ourselves.” daylong street fair, all organized around its
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A path at a Space Caviar–organized workshop in the abandoned Broelschool in Kortrijk, Belgium, as part of the city’s Biennale Interieur. (OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM) Another view of the Broelschool workshop. An aerial photograph of Chicago by Iwan Baan, commissioned for the forthcoming Chicago Architecture Biennial. SURFACE
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PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESTY SPACE CAVIAR. BOTTOM, IWAN BAAN.
PHOTO: COURTESY SPACE CAVIAR.
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PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESTY SPACE CAVIAR. BOTTOM, IWAN BAAN.
PHOTO: COURTESY SPACE CAVIAR.
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Building Up
With bold, clear vision, London Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic readies the institition for its move into a first-rate new home.
(OPPOSITE) Deyan Sudjic at the current London Design Museum located on the south bank of the River Thames.
INTERVIEW BY SPENCER BAILEY PORTRAIT BY HANA KNIZOVA
Deyan Sudjic speaks methodically—but quickly. He comes across as very generous with his time, yet it’s clear he has a sense of urgency about how he spends it. There’s an eagerness and earnestness to him. It seems as if he could never run out of things to say about architecture and design, and the truth his, he couldn’t. The 62-year-old London Design Museum director has an encyclopedic mind on the subjects, having spent the past 40 or so years writing about them. Now, in his current role at the museum, he’s giving them necessary international attention. Since working as the architecture critic of the U.K.’s Sunday Times in his early 20s and co-founding the architecture and design magazine Blueprint in 1983 (where he was on staff until 1996), Sudjic has become one of the strongest design voices and advocates in England, if not the world. His career is unparalleled: Over the
years, he has published many books, served as the architecture critic at The Observer, and taught at the Royal College of Art and Kingston University. In 1999, he was the director of programming for Glasgow’s U.K. City of Architecture and Design; from 2000 to 2004, he was the editor of the design magazine Domus; and in 2002, he was director of the Venice Architecture Biennial. Sudjic’s latest book, B is for Bauhaus, Y is for YouTube (Rizzoli), is a sort of culmination of all of this experience. Sudjic has run the Design Museum for the past nine years, and during this time, the institution has presented a slew of exhibitions of note, including “Zaha Hadid: Architecture and Design,” “Christian Louboutin: 20 Years,” and “Hello, My Name is Paul Smith.” He has also shepherded the museum’s upcoming relocation to the former Commonwealth Institute building in the city’s
Kensington neighborhood. The new 107,000-square-foot structure, scheduled to open in late 2016, will provide three exhibition spaces—one for the permanent collection, two for temporary shows—and accommodate an expected 500,000 visitors annually. John Pawson is creating the interiors, and other London-based designers, including Morag Myerscough, Cartlidge Levene, and Gravity Road, are involved in the project. For Sudjic, the endeavor is proving to be a sort of masterwork, bringing together his curatorial and journalistic skills in a physical manifestation while also celebrating—and enhancing—Britain’s place in the international design landscape. Over breakfast at New York’s NoMad restaurant earlier this spring, Surface spoke with Sudjic about his diverse array of engagements in design, from fashion to furniture. >
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How did you break into writing and journalism?
I trained to be an architect. When I was discovering my incompetence as an architect—and my extreme lack of patience—I was having more fun editing the school newspaper. I came out into a recession in the U.K. and started at a weekly architecture trade journal. I learned more about architecture there in three months than I had in school. And it solved my impatience problem, seeing instant results. I’ve been lucky throughout my career to be editing and working in journalism and curating. I guess journalism is a license to be curious. You get to go around the world asking people questions, which is fantastic fun. I always thought that architecture was just too interesting to leave to the “priesthood.” I was very lucky early on in my career to work for the Sunday Times. I had a subeditor in those days who taught me to never use the word “fenestration” when “window” would do. That was very good advice. Architecture is a narrow field in itself, but as time went on, I began to look at design. I also started to meet some artists. I found the subject of design getting wider and wider. Fashion has been of interest to you, too. You were recently involved in the Rizzoli book Hello, My Name is Paul Smith, and in 1990 you published Rei Kawakubo and Comme Des Garçons.
Yes, actually, in my extreme youth, Paul Smith called up one day and said, “You must come see Tokyo.” We got on a plane and went. He took me around the city and showed me the shrines and shops. Then one evening we had dinner with Rei Kawakubo. Paul managed to ambush her with a rubber chicken. She actually laughed. I spent six months following her around as she made a collection. We went to Gifu, where they make textiles. I later ended up with her at one of her Paris collection shows, where she had John Malkovich and Julian Sands among the models. It was quite an impressive evening. How did you meet Paul?
I bought a suit in a store that had this label called Paul Smith. I had no idea there was such a person. Then I went to his first store in London when it opened. There was this tall guy hanging around the shop, and it happened to be Paul.
Dominic Wilcox’s driverless glass car prototype in the “tank” outside of the current London Design Museum. (OPPOSITE) A model of the Design Museum’s new building.
I once got accused of being a “book-writing machine,” which is a bit wounding. A book is a marathon: The first one you do, there’s a pain barrier. Spending time on a book allows you to actually explore things over time. I did
Technology continues to ease access to architecture and design content. What roles do monographs still play in the Internet age?
We all think our attention spans are shrinking, and that we don’t have the patience to read long form—that books are deceased. But people publish books more and more, in the same way that people still produce print magazines. We seem to be wired to loving the smell of ink on paper. We’re living in an immaterial world where there’s a hunger for material things. Books are those things. So many careers are still launched by books. Rem Koolhaas’s first real project was Delirious Manhattan, and then SMLXL, which was an attempt to reinvent what the architectural monograph could be. The idea of a massive, 2,000-page, bricklike book has also become somewhat of a conventional way of approaching a subject. Books are a chance to do research—but research in a way that’s accessible. Still, it’s rare to find a book that truly shakes you. I remain fascinated by a book that came out eight years ago called The Wrong House. It’s by Steven Jacobs, a Dutch film and design historian who obsessively explores every Hitchcock movie, looking at the sets he built and the implied floor plan they represented. He’s someone who sees the world in a different way. How does this conversation about books tie into museums? What’s the role of a design museum today?
Museums are a shared social experience, which is why they have a future in ways that maybe some forms of print don’t. It’s blended so that it’s partly a digital experience now, but you still get to see things. There are some strange hybrids: The Victoria and Albert Museum did a David Bowie show that traveled to Chicago, and that somewhat overwhelmed the physical experience because people wore headphones throughout it. The rather-maligned Björk show at MoMA [on display through June 7] has a similar headphone component. How do you see technology upending publishing and museums—or at least transitioning or changing the way things are?
I think it’s a cliché that the world is going faster and faster and faster—which it is. Wired is a great magazine, but it’s always telling us about the next, the next, the next, not necessarily reflecting the world. I read a shocking statistic that when Instagram was acquired for a billion dollars it had 25 employees, whereas Kodak at its high had 80,000 good engineering jobs. Maybe it’s the job of books and museums to be slightly more reflective on these things. > SURFACE
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PHOTOS: HANA KNIZOVA.
You’ve written or contributed to books on Ron Arad, Norman Foster, and John Pawson, among others. How do you choose your book projects, and how do you actually complete them all?
a book on cities, Hundred Mile City, in 1993, which allowed me to look at what Tokyo was becoming, what Los Angeles was. I suppose books have been a way to research.
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PHOTOS: HANA KNIZOVA.
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funding by knocking on the doors of half a dozen of London’s most successful architects and designers. We had the capital to keep going, to get an office, to hire a sales force. For a while, it was a very fresh approach. We had what now seems like a very trivial idea of putting peoples’ faces on the cover. It was meant to be about accessibility, but in the end, it turned out to be its own contribution to the celebrity cult. But it was fun. People were kind of shocked by the gossip-headline format of it. It was a different way of approaching the subject. I’m imagining an architecture-world version of Kurt Andersen and Graydon Carter’s Spy magazine.
Yeah. [Laughs] You later went on to run the Italian design magazine Domus from 2000 to 2004. What was that like? So books and museum exhibitions are chances to dig deeper.
Yes, and I suppose I initially found the transition of doing things at the speed of a magazine or a newspaper to the two to three years of an exhibitions program quite difficult. But it should be something that gives a body of research. An exhibition is certainly a more layered experience than a book. There’s a certain theatricality. There’s a sensational aspect, but beneath that you hope there are also layers of things that last. There should always be a catalogue and a body of research. Museums always have this tension between people who want to acquire stuff and guard it from the audience and those who want to be showmen and use it to tell stories. Early in your career, you co-founded Blueprint. What made you want to start a magazine?
How would you describe your years at Domus?
Anglo-Saxon sobriety. No, that was around 2002—the same time I was the director of the Architecture Biennale in Venice. During that time, speculation seemed futile. There was so much being built. Any architect who wanted to, no matter how wacky his or her work, could actually get the opportunity to build something. I thought, “Let’s document this.”
There was a group of us in London working at various mainstream publications, and there was a change in the air. It just seemed A few years later, you wrote a book about right to find another platform, perhaps a more this phenomenon of— irreverent view of the subject. We all had day jobs. It was an idealistic idea to start a maga- Big architects building big things everywhere. zine as a collective, which meant nobody got Yes, The Edifice Complex. It was an attempt to paid. There were photographers, layout artists, find a thread about architecture. There were designers, and writers involved. The inspira- a couple quite disturbing episodes. I got to tion was Skyline, a tabloid-newspaper format meet Albert Speer’s son, who was at that stage magazine designed by Massimo Vignelli that engaged in trying to persuade Beijing to build was going in the ’80s. It seemed very appealing a north-south axis eight miles long. Which sort to address a slightly satiric subject in a very of reminded me of a previous episode. So I mainstream format. Of course, the inspiration went to see him in Frankfurt. He was the perwas slightly worrying because Skyline disap- fect German liberal. He and Peter Eisenman peared shortly after we launched. It was not a knew each other. I remember asking Peter very encouraging business model. what he was doing collaborating with Speer. We started the magazine with enough He would say, “We’re attracted by opposites. money to do 10 issues, and the idea was that Speer always wanted to be a Jewish intellectual, once those 10 were done, then we would stop. and I always wanted to be a fascist monster.” I The magazine was designed to be thrown away. told Speer, “It’s quite tough working in China. But once you’ve done 10 issues, you can’t kill Ideas get watered down all the time.” He said, your babies. It took on a life of its own, and “Yes, I find the secret is to find a most powwe were dragged along with it. We got some erful person in the room and persuade them SURFACE
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PHOTOS: FRENCH + TYE.
(THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE) The Design Museum’s new building currently under construction.
Like being handed the keys to a Rolls Royce. In some ways, Domus was an inspiration to Blueprint, in that it did actually cover design and architecture and art and fashion in a way that most publications in those days didn’t. Domus had an 80-year history and budget to allow me to send photographers to Shanghai and São Paulo. It was amazing that the company would let a foreigner run such a thing. There, I worked with the same art director as Blueprint, Simon Esterson, who now has a design studio and publishes Eye magazine.
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that it’s their idea.” What could this suggest about his father? It got me thinking about how this subject—which I’ve found fascinating my entire life—has had some horrifying aspects to it. There’s a very interesting book that the British academic Frederic Spotts wrote called Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. His line is “Hitler wasn’t using culture as a means to acquire power; he acquired power as a means to influence culture.” I tried to put that all together and explore that at various moments. I noticed that your latest book, B is for Bauhaus, Y is for YouTube, is a sort of modern-day ABCs of design. One of the Ks is for Krier—a reference to the architect Léon Krier, who’s known for his book on Albert Speer’s architecture. What are your thoughts on Krier’s pro-Speer sentiments?
I suppose maybe initially he was doing it to shock. Now I’m somewhat concerned he thinks there’s beauty in it. Which is puzzling, because Krier is a fascinating, interesting thinker and a wonderful draftsman. He was at the Architectural Association at a strange time: Both he and Rem Koolhaas were teaching Zaha Hadid. Can you imagine that? It’s like that Tom Stoppard play in which it’s 1917 in Zurich and the Dadaists meet James Joyce. You were mentioning the idea of accessibility earlier. How does B is for Bauhaus connect to this bigger conversation? How do
you make design relatable to the YouTube generation?
It is! That’s why design is fascinating: It keeps reconfiguring what it’s about. For writers, design is a way of making sense of things. In the contemporary world, design is a way to make technology useful, engaging, or entertaining. It is no question shifting from this material/physical world to this other world, but it’s still design. Human beings still hanker for the material. It’s a bipolar thing. We still want physical experiences: magazines, vinyl records, live music. If you look at the success of Apple, it’s because of this. The iWatch is about having something physical. Headphones spent all their time in our ears, and now they’ve emerged into these kinds of motorcycle helmet–scale objects. We’re lusting for things to buy. How did you choose what to focus on in B is for Bauhaus?
I was being pushed to do something that’s on one level autobiographical, so I ended up putting myself in there a lot more than I like doing. I’ve always been uncomfortable about using the word “I.” The book is a dictionary/ encyclopedia format, but it’s really something else. There were problems with this: Xerox was a bit of a stretch. But most of the letters weren’t a stretch, >
PHOTOS: FRENCH + TYE.
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like M is for Manifesto, S is for Sottsass, or T is for Taste.
They needed to be things that reflected personal experience in most cases. I knew Ettore Sottsass, and I just finished a book on him that will come out in the fall. Taste is a great subject—it’s like sex and death. The book starts with A is for Authentic, which is reflecting on why we’re motivated to do things. Was your intention for this book to reach a wide readership and be accessible?
Yes. I was with [MoMA senior curator] Paola Antonelli yesterday, and it’s interesting how she’s been very successful, and yet she still feels in the cultural hierarchy that design is seen as taking second place to contemporary art. It’s a thought many of us have: Design is burdened by utility. Which of course should be seen as a privilege. Art is endlessly fascinating, but it’s in a pretty strange moment right now. Art seems to be engaging more and more with popular culture—the Björk show at MoMA is an example of this. What do you think about this connection between pop culture and the previously more rarified worlds of art and design?
Some of the most interesting writers have tried to look at both of these things at the same time. Adolf Loos seemed like the most serious writer, but actually, he wrote extraordinarily amusing, insightful, sharp commentary for Viennese newspapers in the early 1900s. We know about his allergies to tattoos, but there’s also great stuff about why the Germans wear their trousers too wide and how people set out to change hat fashions. I think this connection has always been there. The Internet and social media have helped facilitate the connection, I think. We’re now able to reach a wider group of followers than ever before.
Things happen faster and faster. I suppose those are some of the most astonishing shifts: the idea that Grand Theft Auto V could ship 20 million units in a month! In human history, there has never been such a rapid intake of ideas.
(OPPOSITE) The roof of the Design Museum’s new building.
I think it’s fascinating how these things go in cycles. Forty years ago, Sony was seen as the ultimate example of this shiny new future of what’s possible, but now just compare its output to Apple! When he was a student, Jonathan Ive was obsessed by Sony. And the model for Sony was that they were producing 50 or 60 new products a year, as opposed
You also wrote the forward for a James Irvine book that’s coming out.
Yes, as an act of friendship. It’s a sad loss. James was a great guy who was among a legion of non-Italians who ended up in Milan. He helped start conversations. He worked with Sottsass for a long time, so he was a great source for my Sottsass biography. How often are you asked to write forwards? An Amazon search shows you’ve done—
One or two. [Laughs] What I only say yes to now is if you don’t pay me. Let’s switch over to the new Design Museum building. What’s OMA’s connection to the project, and how did you come to work with John Pawson?
Well, it’s a complicated mix. I was hired with a brief to move the Design Museum to a larger space. The current space is a great site, but it’s limited in its scale and not great for transport. When I arrived, the conversation was with Tate Modern to buy a site behind it. We looked at that for a year and a half, and we decided that the Design Museum would be like a lifeboat hanging off the back of an aircraft carrier. We then looked back to the past of the Victoria and Albert Museum: The museum started as a sort of guerilla popup. That would have meant loss of identity. Finally, a developer who had acquired a building from 1962—the former Commonwealth Institute—approached us. In some ways, there’s a parallel between the site and Columbus Circle. It was a landmark, love it or not, that needed a new use. It was acquired by a property company building residential; they had selected OMA to design the residential, but to get their planning approvals, they needed to find a bona fide cultural user for the landmarked structure. We looked and it, and initially it seemed quite a difficult building to adapt to SURFACE
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PHOTO: GETTY/COURTESY LONDON DESIGN MUSEUM.
You’ve been involved with a new book on Sony Design. What do you think about companies like Sony in terms of making design relatable, usable, understandable, and even getting people thinking about design itself?
to Apple’s one every two or three years. They were firing over all landscapes of technology. And then they declined. What is it that makes some companies survive and others not? Sony is an example of a company all design enthusiasts love, and it’s practically dead. Or compare the Renaissance palazzo in Milan that used to be Olivetti’s headquarters to the flying saucer that Norman Foster is making for Apple. Or consider that Olivetti allowed its designers to work for others; Ive can’t do that. IBM is an interesting example that does still exist in a powerful way and has managed to reinvent itself over three generations. Olivetti had two, Sony one and a half. They learn off of each other. There’s no question that Apple using color suddenly reflected what Olivetti did with the Valentine typewriter, which came out in three color-ways. Olivetti made fantastic stores designed by BBPR, Gae Aulenti, and Carlo Scarpa. Apple has put a focus on the design of its stores, too.
THE DESIGN ISSUE
our uses. But once we talked to the heritage authorities—and they would allow us to sufficiently adapt it in order to make it work for us—we decided to go with it. That brought advantages, because the planning consent for the landlords was that they would need to give us a 175-year rent-free lease and also make a substantial contribution—10 million pounds—for the cost of fixing it. With that underway, we made an architect selection process, and we ended up with 15 firms, which were then whittled down to five. We went to see all of the projects, and then ended up with David Chipperfield and John Pawson as the last two. David is a great architect with a big firm who had a lot on his plate, and John had not done a public building previously. Our trustees thought John would be the right choice. In an office of 25 a job of that scale is important in a way that it’s not in an office of 200 or 300. Also, when you’re dealing with an existing building that itself has a strong personality—it’s sort of a collision between Saarinen’s TWA terminal and the Guggenheim—you don’t want another strong architectural voice. You want someone like John to work on it. You want someone who’s going to listen and spend time worrying about how you’re going to use the building. What’s it been like to work with John?
Transitioning from being a newspaper writer to a museum director is a huge leap. Going from being a critic to a client is also astonishing. The more you do it, the more you realize
how much respect you need for an architect. Any building is tough and requires immense patience and dealing with the minutiae of fireescape systems and occupancy. To watch a small office handle all that and still have possibilities—your respect for them rises. Of course, it’s not only John. He has had two people working on it, more or less full-time, for two and a half years, and they’ve been really careful and respectful. What is it about John’s architecture that separates it from the rest?
He’s very good at making spaces that are comfortable to be in. For some, the view is that he’s a kind of austere Zen Buddhist monk. Nothing could be further from the truth. He likes to make everyday things special. How do you hope the new space will alter and morph the museum?
We’re planning an audience of half a million visitors a year, which would make it the mostvisited standalone thing of its kind in contemporary architecture and design. What are your main ambitions as director?
Avoid failure. No, we’ve come a long way. We’ve got a great building. We’ve raised 45 million pounds so far.We’re planning an auction to raise the last million. A lot people have worked really, really hard, and we’ve grown the museum. Now it’s a platform for doing something really special.
PHOTO: GETTY/COURTESY LONDON DESIGN MUSEUM.
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Gallery & Culture Club Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron designs a new Miu Miu boutique in Tokyo’s Aoyama district. The Endorsements Surface’s A photo portfolio of recent second annual events in the Surface universe, Endorsements Awards including Valextra’s Martino highlight the new guard Gamper–designed installation in the worlds of design, at Saloneart, de Mobile. fashion, and more.
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Photos by Nacasa & Partners
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Architect Jacques Herzog, senior partner of Switzerlandbased firm Herzog & de Meuron, discusses the juxtaposition between the studio’s just-finished Miu Miu flagship in Tokyo’s Aoyama neighborhood (shown here) and another of H&dM’s designs, a 12-year-old—but still new-looking— shop for Prada located diagonally across the street: When I first visited this street 15 years ago, I found it rather ugly. It had no characteristics that would say to you: “This is something we have to take into account.” There was no style or identity. We found this very refreshing, and we were thrilled to do something in Japan—and in Tokyo. To me, Tokyo is very special. In recent years, we’ve been traveling more in China than in Japan, and the Chinese cities are different: They’re not so carefully curated. Here, the city is very dense, but in a particular way. There’s a lot of activity and carefulness within very limited space. It’s something that impresses me, because you have such a huge city, and then all of a sudden the scale is broken down and so detailed. With the Prada store, we knew we had to do something that wants to be a contribution in the area, so we came up with the idea of creating a public space. The property allowed for a small plaza to be created outside the building. We concentrated all the FAR [floor area ratio] possible to make the building more vertical so that the outdoor public
space could be done. The Miu Miu site was much more reduced by comparison. Here, we had to exploit every square inch. Nothing would be left to the street or public space, so we made sure everything happens inside the store. We reinforced this scarcity in that we made the store very hermetic. We exaggerated all of the potentials of the Prada and Miu Miu sites. For the Miu Miu building, whatever we did would be compared to the Prada one, so what do you do? Do you do the same thing again? You can’t. Because the zoning called for less height, and you don’t want to do something that immediately speaks to this as being from the same family. To juxtapose, to go with different designs, and to give the building a strong identity was the obvious solution, and the only one that could be promising. You would not even want to compare them. You can compare them on an urban level, but you can’t really compare them as buildings because they’re such different characters. I think it was very important that they have different identities. If we did Miu Miu in glass or with height, you would immediately start to see the buildings as rivals. As a brand, Miu Miu is more feminine, more playful, and more colorful than Prada. The decision to use copper influenced a lot in the shop. The copper was also going into the hangers, the tubing, the vitrines. It inspired another color, SURFACE
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together with the green fabric that is so definitive of Miu Miu. Green was the only color taken and kept from existing Miu Miu stores. As far as I know, this is the only Miu Miu building that’s different; the other stores are fit-outs and more standardized. Here, everything is made just for this place—besides the fabric, but even the fabric, if you look at it, there are these fuzzy edges sewn like puzzle pieces put together. That kind of detail is aesthetic and iconographic but also practical: These different elements can be recomposed in new ways over time. We used steel for the new building because the building’s very hermetic, but it’s not a bunker, like if we did it in stone or concrete. And wood would have been flirting too much with Japanese traditions. The more we worked with the steel—and started to make this iron-and-copper pairing—the more we started to open up new doors. As you can see, the interior is very rich, refined, and carefully crafted. It has surprising corners and angles. The one theme that goes all the way through is that it’s like an open box, with the front flap and the back flap. It’s a very thorough building. Every single element is structural, as well as space making, as well as part of the ornament— ornament as the image of the whole. Every angle is made just for the building. The roof’s angle is a gesture of opening, of discovering, of curiosity.
It also gives some intimacy and protects the interior. Or maybe it’s a sort of temple, like a religious space. But it’s not only this. It carries all these different associations with it. That’s what makes the richness of the architecture. It’s a structure that’s familiar to everyone, in every culture, whether it’s an Asian, European, or American: the box that has an open slit. The box design opens up new angles and corridors, but it’s also a gesture that attracts you. The idea of reflection goes well with everything that is fashion and needs to be presented. But this building is not just about reflection, per se. It’s more nuanced and has more depth than that. Its only ordinary material—steel—is on the exterior. But even there, with this polished steel brushstroke on the side of the building, we uncovered a different material quality. Outside, it’s clearly mimicking a shop window. So reflection has so many different functions. It’s for the goods inside, but also for the passersby. The windows are almost presenting themselves as being part of the shop, more than a window where you see into the building. We developed each element of the building individually. To fully explain it, I would need to talk about every single decision. The building is very much based on mockups. Nearly the entire store was built one-to-one in Italy. You cannot just design and build something like this without
doing that. You have to test everything. With both projects, there were a lot of these hidden details we had to be careful about. These details are so important for both Prada and Miu Miu, and also for us. If you know Prada’s Galleria store in Milano, the company’s oldest, it’s both classical and almost an archeological beauty. At the same time, it’s the ideal platform for this ever-evolving company. I think—I’m interpreting; I’m not Prada—that balance is interesting to them. That’s how we work, too: On the one side, we have this constant transformation, and on the other side, we have infrastructures that are very robust and solid. If you change everything all the time, you lose your identity. I think it’s important to look back at what you’ve done and say, “This is still very interesting stuff!” Even though Prada and Miu Miu are very innovative and constantly moving forward, if you look back at the previous collections, they’re also not dated. They’re reflecting a very interesting moment in their time, and they become a nice part of your wardrobe. On a different scale, it’s the same thing as a building in a city. Sustainability, for me, is this. It’s more this than good insulation or solar panels on the roof. Sustainability means you create something that lasts over time and continues to contribute to the beauty, attraction, and functionality of a city. —As told to Spencer Bailey
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Leveraging design as a strategic platform, Culture + Commerce identifies and cultivates opportunities for global brands and international designers.
GOOD DESIGN IS GOOD BUSINESS CULTURECOMMERCE.COM
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Culture Club Edited by Roxy Kirshenbaum
Art Production Fund Benefit Gala On March 31, the sixth annual Art Production Fund (APF) benefit gala attracted more than 400 guests at New York’s historic Down Town Association. The gala honored artist Haim Steinbach (pictured) and Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. Themed “Gangs of New York,” the event offered ample glasses of Dom Pérignon champagne, temporary tattoos by Sean Landers, and portraits by Will Cotton. There was also an exhibition of artworks by Adam Pendleton, Jackie Saccoccio, and Leo Villareal, all auctioned to benefit APF. Notable guests included APF cofounders Doreen Remen and Yvonne Force Villareal, Liv Tyler, Stefano Tonchi, Sofia Sanchez De Betak, Cathy Horyn, and Marilyn Minter. (Photo: bfanyc.com) 201
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CULTURE CLUB Bulgari Hotel Garden Serpenti Installation On April 14, during Milan Design Week, Bulgari and architect Zaha Hadid unveiled an installation inspired by the brand’s signature Serpenti icon. The installation was on view for visitors at the Bulgari Hotel’s gardens for the durationof the week. In celebration of its debut, there was an exhibition of Bulgari Serpenti pieces from the ’60s to present. Guests enjoyed the serene garden atmosphere and music by Milly De Mori. Notable attendees included Hadid, Bulgari’s CEO Jean-Christophe Babin (pictured at center, with designer Philippe Starck and his wife, Jasmine), Nastassja Kinski, Francesco Vezzoli, and Antonio Citterio. (Photo: Getty Images)
Cooper Hewitt and Artsy Algorithm Auction On March 27, Cooper Hewitt and Artsy, in partnership with Ruse Laboratories, hosted the Algorithm Auction and after-party. The first auction to celebrate the art of pure code, the event featured the seven auction lots of historic and living algorithms. Technologist and musician Anthony Ferraro performed “Hypothetical Beats,” one of the algorithms on auction (it converts algorithms into music). Notable attendees included co-host and Cooper Hewitt director Caroline Baumann, OkCupid co-founder Chris Coyne, Swiss Institute’s Simon Castets, Artsy founder and CEO Carter Cleveland, Guggenheim Museum digital marketing associate director Jai Jai Fei (pictured, with Antwaun Sargent), Armory Show executive director Noah Horowitz, Richard Phillips, and eBay chief curator and editorial director Michael Phillips Moskowitz. (Photo: David X Prutting/bfanyc.com) 203
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CULTURE CLUB Marni Roof Market in Hong Kong On March 14, Marni continued its 20th-anniversary celebration by hosting a “Roof Market” during Art Basel Hong Kong. Held on the harbor at Pier 4, the city’s skyline served as a fitting backdrop to enhance the brand’s cultural cachet. At the center of the market was a custom installation by Italian artist Massimo Bartolini composed of a series of lights that pulsated and gained intensity in response to the music and surrounding sounds. As a part of Marni’s commitment to charity, a portion of the proceeds was donated to the Vimala Association. Shown here are Consuelo and Carolina Castiglioni of Marni. (Photo: Courtesy Marni)
Dom Pérignon Rosé Vintage 2004 Cabaret Party On March 27, Dom Pérignon hosted a grand cabaret party to celebrate the newly released Dom Pérignon Rosé Vintage 2004. In the presence of the brand’s chef de cave, Richard Geoffroy, the launch took place at the Walter de Maria space in Manhattan’s East Village. Inside, a “Grand Salon” filled with avant-garde cabaret performances and light installations entertained guests as they tasted the new rosé and enjoyed snacks from chef Pascal Tinguad. Notable attendees included American Internet celebrity Cory Kennedy (pictured), Dennis Basso, Karen Duffy, Jasmine Tookes, Arden Wohl, Stella Schnabel, and Sean and Rachelle MacPherson. (Neil Rasmus/bfanyc.com) SURFACE
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CULTURE CLUB Guggenheim Young Collectors Party On March 19, New York’s Guggenheim Museum hosted its annual Young Collectors Party. Sponsored by DeLeón Tequila, the event featured cocktails, as well as kale and purple cauliflower salad and filet mignon. A musical performance by D.J. Afrika Bambaataa kept the pulse of the event lively. Fashion designers Prabal Gurung and Peter Dundas made appearances. Other notable guests included Nell Diamond, Evan and Ku-Ling Yurman, Dree Hemingway, Bee Shaffer, Ines Toledano, and Selby Drummond. (Photo: Jerritt Clark/Splash)
Moschino Late Night with Jeremy Scott at Coachella On April 11, designer and Moschino creative director Jeremy Scott hosted a party, sponsored by DeLeón Tequila, at the Coachella music festival in Bermuda Dunes. Skrillex and Diplo deejayed throughout the night while guests danced and sipped Deleón cocktails. Adorning the event were oversized Moschino pool toys and giant teddy bears. Katy Perry, Fergie (pictured, with Scott), Robert Pattinson, FKA Twigs, Jourdan Dunn, Zoe Kravitz, and Alexander Wang were among the guests. (Photo: Michael Simon/ Startraks Photo)
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CULTURE CLUB Dallas Contemporary Nate Lowman Exhibition Opening Dallas Contemporary recently opened a new exhibition featuring three new bodies of work by New York–based artist Nate Lowman. In his first solo museum exhibition, Lowman presents pieces he has developed over the past several years, including a multipart installation of shaped canvases modeled on a map of the U.S., a series of two dozen lamps built from found objects, and new canvases based on materials recycled from the past several years of production. The exhibition highlights Lowman’s approach to iconography and materials. Pictured are American artists Aaron Young (left) and David Salle, who attended the opening night event during the Dallas Art Fair. (Photo: Kelly Taub/ bfanyc.com) NEW MUSEUM GALA
New Museum Spring Gala On April 8, the New Museum held its Spring Gala, this year honoring the husband-and-wife team and seminal arts writers Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian (pictured). Beginning in 1962, Tomkins set about profiling generations of artists for The New Yorker—from Marcel Duchamp and Willem de Kooning, to Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, to Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman. Kazanjian’s distinctive style and vision are demonstrated in both her vibrant features for Vogue and in her curated exhibitions for Gallery Met at Lincoln Center. Together, these two have established a formidable force on the American arts landscape. Others in attendance included Jeff Koons, Paul Chan, Cindy Sherman, Aby Rosen, and Rashid Johnson. (Photo: Madison McGaw/bfanyc.com) SURFACE
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CULTURE CLUB Jasper Morrison Book Launch at Flos On April 16, during Milan Design Week, lighting brand Flos hosted a launch party for designer Jasper Morrison’s new monograph, A Book of Things (for more on Morrison, see Studio Visit on page 32.) Its showroom featured a special exhibition for the occasion. Published by Lars Müller, the new book collects the designer’s projects and products with detail. The party attracted more 1,000 guests, many of them movers and shakers from the global design community. Notable attendees included Flos CEO Piero Gandini (pictured), Piero Lissoni, Marcel Wanders, the Bouroullec Brothers, Michael Anastassiades, Ron Gilad, and Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi (of Gam Fratesi). (Photo: Stefano Guindani)
Taschen Milan Store Opening Book publisher Taschen celebrated the opening of its first location in Italy on April 16 during the city’s Design Week. Spread across two floors, the space features a reading alcove and a multicolored Venetian terrazzo staircase that’s accompanied by a sinuous wall drawing. Taschen founder and CEO Benedikt Taschen (pictured, left, with designer Marc Newson) led the creative team for the store’s design and lent several furniture pieces from his personal collection, including a chandelier Giò Ponti designed for the Hotel Parco dei Principi in the 1950s. The opening highlights the publisher’s continuing partnership with Newson, who designed modular libraries and large glass top cabinets for displaying extra-large collector’s volumes. (Photo: Spencer Bailey) SURFACE
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CULTURE CLUB The New York Academy of Art’s Tribeca Ball On April 13, the New York Academy of Art transformed into a fairy tale for the 2015 Tribeca Ball. Themed “Once Upon a Time,” the event honored industrialist and art collector Peter Brant. Van Cleef & Arpels presented the event, and the décor and theme were inspired by the brand’s current collection of jewelry. The evening began with live music and costumed performers dressed as mythical creatures on stilts that led to roaming musicians and special performances, and a tableau allowed guests to act as pop star Katy Perry in her “California Gurls” music video. The event raised more than $900,000 for student scholarships and public programming. Shown here are Calvin Klein, left, with Peter Marino. (Photo: Joe Schildhorn/ bfanyc.com)
Spotlight Series Dinner In Celebration of Rachel Zoe The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), Neiman Marcus, and Refinery29 co-hosted a celebratory dinner in honor of American fashion designer and stylist Rachel Zoe on April 15 in Los Angeles. Among those in attendance were CFDA CEO Steven Kolb, Refinery29 editor-in-chief Christene Barberich, and Neiman Marcus fashion director Ken Downing. Guests enjoyed a four-course meal, as well as a surprise performance from Caroline Vreeland. The event was the first in a planned ongoing series honoring the accomplishments of influential designers. (Photo: Billy Farrell/bfanyc.com) SURFACE
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CULTURE CLUB Martino Gamper’s “Magnetico” Installation for Valextra On April 16, Valextra and designer Martino Gamper (pictured) unveiled new products and a store installation during Salone del Mobile. For the first time, the Milanese leather goods manufacturer worked with an outside designer. Gamper brought new life to the company’s timeless designs by seeking to combine, as he puts it, “fun and function.” Design-savvy guests found themselves in café-inspired interiors with hidden magnets in the walls, allowing for easy access to the leather goods and a distinctive display. Notable attendees included Marina Piano, Neil Barrett, Karla Otto, and David Adjaye. (Photo: Delfino Sisto Legnani)
Whitney Museum’s Inaugural Dinner On April 21, The Whitney Museum of American Art hosted its Inaugural Dinner and offered a first look at the museum’s new Meatpacking District home, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. Guests at the blacktie event included 400 of the museum’s top donors and artists with works in the museum’s permanent collection. Upon arrival, they were treated to a preview of the museum’s inaugural exhibition, titled “America is Hard to See.” Whitney director Adam Weinberg and Michael Bloomberg (both pictured, from left to right), as well as Whitney chief curator Donna De Salvo, made remarks during dinner; Rufus Wainwright performed after the main course. Dessert was shared in the museum’s restaurant and galleries following a Weinberg-led toast to Piano. (Photo: Neil Rasmus/bfanyc.com) 215
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To a Tee
THE CASA CANOVA BY THE NUMBERS:
6 Number of T-shirt and jeans pieces used 700 Hours it takes to hand-carve each tabletop from Carrara marble 350 Weight of the table in kilograms 3 Colors available for the base of the table (natural, white, and gray) 511 Years since Michelangelo sculpted “David” in Carrara marble 1.36 Billion Italian lire, the equivalent price for the table before the currency was obsolete Diameter of the table in inches 72 4 Thickness of the Carrara marble used, in inches 13 T-shirts carved into the solid marble top 2 Craftsmen employed on the production of each table (one master carver and one master finisher) 6,145 Distance in miles between Knibb’s Los Angeles– based studio and the facility in Italy where the table is produced 44 Knibb’s age 10 Number of tables planned for production each year PHOTO: SEAN KNIBB STUDIO.
Launching this month in New York, each of the six tables in Sean Knibb’s new Casa Canova collection is hand-carved from Carrara marble.
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