Wallpaper* Magazine May 2021 Issue

*Architecture � Design � Art � Travel � Entertaining � Beauty & Grooming � Transport � Technology � Fashion � Watches & Jewellery

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DESIGN

ISSUE KEEPING YOU IN THE LOOP WITH BRIGHT IDEAS, PERFECTLY FORMED FURNITURE AND A CIRCLE OF LIGHT

PLUS… Alber Elbaz makes a joyful return Hella Jongerius looms large Sumayya Vally’s Johannesburg

may 2021

MAY HELLA JONGERIUS’ FROZEN RAIN PANORAMA, FROM THE WOVEN WINDOWS SERIES, WOVEN ON THE DIGITAL JACQUARD LOOM IN JONGERIUSLAB’S STUDIO, SEE PAGE 076

DESIGN

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Eye candy Alessi classics revisited are just as sweet Good yarn Hella Jongerius weaves a new kind of magic for Berlin’s Gropius Bau

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Family values Objects of affection by Nifemi Ogunro Light source Salon 94’s Rafael Viñoly-designed space New flames Comely candleholders from 1882 Ltd

Soft focus Antonio Citterio on redefining the sofa

ARCHITECTURE

Moving stories MAXXI and Molteni & C celebrate the world of Aldo Rossi

Wool power Sander Lak and Maharam’s colour hits Vein glory Roberto Lazzeroni’s new marble marvel

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Natural flow Francis Kéré’s breezy Kenyan campus Life lessons Learning from Sigurd Lewerentz’s architecture for body and soul Urban explorer Counterspace principal Sumayya Vally’s Johannesburg – a photographic tour

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MAY 180

Pin sharp Men’s tailoring is chic and crisp

FOOD

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Artist’s palate Park Seo-Bo’s janchi guksu

FRONT OF BOOK

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Newspaper Post-pandemic dressing, and perfect pens The Vinson View Picky Nicky on hotels that keep it local

INTERIORS JACKET, £1,746; TROUSERS, £610, BOTH BY RAF SIMONS. SHIRT, £330; TIE, £155, BOTH BY CHARVET. SHOES, £750,

BY Y/PROJECT, SEE PAGE 180

ART

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End notes Anri Sala on music lost in space and taking his art underground in Houston Page turner Kader Attia addresses post-colonial trauma in a show at the Mathaf in Doha

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Hyper links Men’s chains shape up at Le Gramme Hero of the hour Montblanc’s new watch is an adventure A man for all seasons Alber Elbaz on his new label AZ Factory

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Out of the darkness Task and table lamps that outshine the rest Night and day Awesome outdoor furniture

MEDIA

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WallpaperSTORE* Refined design delivered to your door Subscribe and save Plus, receive artist-designed covers Wallpaper* Smart Space Awards Nominate your design now

RESOURCES

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Stockists What you want and where to get it

Wallpaper.com @wallpapermag

EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Sarah Douglas Digital Editor Elly Parsons

Editor TF Chan Fashion Director Jason Hughes

Photography Director Holly Hay

Design Editor Rosa Bertoli

Architecture Editor Ellie Stathaki

Transport & Technology Editor Jonathan Bell Group Art Director David Graham

Fashion Features Editor Laura Hawkins

Head of Interiors Olly Mason

Watches & Jewellery Editor Hannah Silver

Designer Ben Rimmer

Executive Editor Bridget Downing

Arts Editor Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Assistant Photography Editor Sophie Gladstone

Producer Tracy Gilbert

Beauty & Grooming Editor Mary Cleary

Entertaining Director Melina Keays Production Editor Anne Soward

Sub Editor Léa Teuscher

Contributing Editors Nick Compton, Deyan Sudjic, Ekow Eshun, Marco Sammicheli, Tilly Macalister-Smith, Nick Vinson, Emma O’Kelly, Hugo Macdonald, Bodil Blain, Alice Morby, Henrietta Thompson, Suzanne Trocmé US Editor Michael Reynolds • New York Editor Pei-Ru Keh • Milan Editor Maria Cristina Didero • Paris Editor Amy Serafin • Germany Editor Sophie Lovell Madrid Editor Maria Sobrino • Japan Editor Jens H Jensen • China Editor Yoko Choy • Singapore Editor Daven Wu • Australia Editor Elias Redstone Latin America Editor Pablo León de la Barra • Buenos Aires Editor Mariana Rapoport

PUBLISHING & MARKETING Managing Director Malcolm Young Associate Publisher Lloyd Lindo

Business Director Kelly Gray

Advertising Digital Advertising Director Chris Goh Watches & Jewellery Advertising Director Silvia Blahutova

Bespoke Senior Account Manager Tom Hemsley

Advertising Business Manager Amanda Asigno

Digital Project Manager Arti Sisodiya

Bespoke Director Sarah-Jane Molony

Bespoke Editor Simon Mills

Bespoke Art Director Daniel McGhee

Bespoke Producer Minna Vauhkonen

International Advertising Offices usa Advertising Manager Matt Carroll Tel: 1.312 420 0663 italy Advertising Manager Paolo Cesana Fashion Executive Eleonora Armirotti Design Executive Marcella Biggi Commercial Executive Paolo Mongeri Tel: 39.02 844 0441

Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR) www.futureplc.com

germany, austria and switzerland Advertising Manager Peter Wolfram Tel: 49.89 9611 6800 france Advertising Manager Magali Riboud Tel: 33.6 12 59 28 36 china Advertising Manager Maggie Li Tel: 86.10 6952 1122

Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne Non-executive chairman Richard Huntingford Chief financial officer Rachel Addison Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244

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Group Managing Director, Tech Lifestyle Paul Newman

Business Development Manager – Circulation Tim Mathers

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Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw licensing@futurenet.com Endorsement Sales Director Efi Mandrides

 Advertising Manager Mamta Pillai Tel: 971.5035 62723

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ISSN 1364-4475. All contents © 2021 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All prices and credits are accurate at time of going to press but are subject to change. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information, or for unsolicited submissions. For full terms and conditions, see www.futureplc.com/terms-conditions. Printed by Walstead Roche.

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CONTRIBUTORS BRUCE GILDEN Photographer Street photographer Gilden is known for his close-up portraits of New Yorkers, made using a flash, but for this issue, we asked him to consider something a little different. ‘It was my first Zoom portrait, and I had fun working on the story,’ he says. His subject was fashion designer Alber Elbaz, who talks to us about his new womenswear label, AZ Factory, on page 112. ‘It went well and Alber and I were on the same page,’ says Gilden of the shoot, declaring himself keen to explore Zoom portraiture further.

DANNIELLE BOWMAN Photographer

MARIA CRISTINA DIDERO Milan editor

Known for her multilayered black-and-white images, Bowman, who hails from LA but is based in New York, took to a rooftop to capture designer and fellow Brooklynite Nifemi Ogunro (page 114). ‘Thankfully, one of Nifemi’s lovely roommates helped us carry her pieces up to the roof – in 4in platform loafers! I remain impressed by them both.’ In June, Bowman, a Yale School of Art alumna, will be artist in residence at Syracuse photography centre Light Work.

‘It’s so exciting to be the eyes and ears of Wallpaper* in my beloved city,’ says Italian curator Didero of her new role as our Milan editor. She kicks off her tenure with a piece on designer and architect Aldo Rossi (page 097). ‘I’ve always appreciated his personality,’ she says, ‘and I have his “Cabina dell’Elba” in my kitchen. I also enjoyed interviewing Carlo Molteni on such an important piece as Rossi’s “Piroscafo” bookshelf – which, unfortunately, does not fit in my kitchen!’

NATASHA LEVY Writer London-based Levy delves into the world of late Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz on page 137. ‘He was a shy and reserved figure,’ she says, but she was delighted when her research revealed ‘how truly prolific, versatile and brilliant his work was. I still feel there’s much left to uncover about him.’ Levy is looking forward to a postpandemic world where international travel is possible, so she ‘can hop over to Sweden to see some of his projects in real life’.

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PARK SEO-BO Artist

MIKHAEL SUBOTZKY Artist and photographer

A pioneer of the Dansaekhwa movement in Korea, Park made his name with meditative paintings that bring together Asian philosophical traditions and Western abstractionism. Now in his ninth decade, he is a cultural icon both at home and abroad.

Invited to contribute to our artists’ recipe series (page 194) to coincide with a show at White Cube Bermondsey, Park chose a noodle dish, janchi guksu, which he enjoys for ‘the clean taste of the anchovy broth and the crunchy texture of kimchi garnish’.

Subotzky is based in Johannesburg, a city he explored for us with Sumayya Vally of local architectural studio Counterspace (page 144). He has only good things to say about it: ‘We shot the extremely stylish Sumayya at the Bree Street taxi rank, where my studio manager lost her driver’s licence and credit cards. A trader found and returned them the next day. This reflected our experience of what is normally considered a “notorious” inner-city area.’ Subotzky is now working on shows at the High Museum and SFMOMA.

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WRITER: LÉA TEUSCHER

EDITOR’S LETTER

Leading lights

Newsstand cover Photography: Leandro Farina Interiors: Olly Mason Clockwise from cover image, ‘O’ lamp, from £1,044, by Elemental, for Artemide. ‘John’ lamp, €545, by Tobias Grau ‘Last Order’ lamp, £375, by Michael Anastassiades, for Flos, from Aram ‘John’ lamp, €545,

by Tobias Grau ‘Perry’ lamp, £340; ‘Perry’ tall lamp, £420, both by James Stickley From left, ‘Phare’ lamp, €150, by Stanislaw Czarnocki, for Menu.

‘MO310’ lamp, £368, by Mads Odgård, for Carl Hansen & Søn. ‘W154 Pal’ lamp, €237, by Dirk Winkel, for Wästberg ‘Yuh’ lamp, £505, by GamFratesi, for Louis Poulsen, from Aram.

See more on page 158

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Welcome to our Design Issue. While in-person gatherings of the international design community, in Milan and beyond, may still be months away, there’s a host of launches that leave us eager with excitement. Showcasing the unflagging creativity of designers around the world, this issue is a celebration of the inspiring ideas, exhibitions and products to come.

The legendary Hella Jongerius gives us an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of her upcoming solo show at Berlin’s Gropius Bau, which explores experimental weaving techniques, and graces our limited-edition subscriber cover. The show includes live elements: among them a participatory installation inviting visitors to spin a yarn from recycled textile waste, and four looms working in tandem to create large-scale, 3D-woven objects. This is a masterclass in pushing traditional craft techniques to new heights, memorably captured for Wallpaper* by local photographer Dan Ipp. In New York, we visit the new premises of art and design gallery Salon 94 on the famous Museum Mile. The six-storey neoRenaissance building on the Upper East Side, built a century ago as an extension to an aristocratic couple’s residence, has now opened its doors to the public following a thoughtful makeover by Rafael Viñoly.

As our New York editor Pei-Ru Keh observes, this ambitious flagship location is also a symbol of hope, bringing with it the conviction of a full cultural recovery.

In LA, we call on designer Sander Lak, who has turned his attention to interior textiles following the much-lamented closure of his Sies Marjan clothing label.

He has created three wool fabrics in a joyfully eclectic palette of 150 colours, with inspirations as wide-ranging as plant life and the visual identities of quintessentially American brands such as McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.

We salute the return of one of fashion’s greatest talents, Alber Elbaz, whose new AZ Factory label offers ‘meticulously designed, hard-working clothing that will

transcend trends’, delivering practicality and style in equal measure. We tasked the great Bruce Gilden with shooting Elbaz over Zoom, an experience the Magnum photographer enjoyed so much that he is now exploring a new remote portrait series involving more designers.

For our blockbuster profile of the fastestrising star in architecture, Counterspace’s Sumayya Vally, we asked her to take artist and photographer Mikhael Subotzky around Johannesburg, their adopted hometown. Journeying from the landmark Ponte City skyscraper, to a trade hub for the Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora, to a mine dump in the city’s periphery, and a dinner club for new African cuisine, they show how the evolving urban landscape has shaped Vally’s practice. It’s a full-circle moment for Vally, who earlier in her career had researched Subotzky’s archive to understand the lives of migrants, and whose upcoming Serpentine Pavilion celebrates the gatherings of peripheral communities.

A spirit of urban exploration is likewise evident in our main fashion story, which sees a cast of models step into the streets and green spaces of Paris, reflecting our shared desire to once again go beyond the confines of our homes. That sense of anticipation and measured optimism has been perfectly conveyed by photographer Alexandre Guirkinger, a long-time contributor whose first major commission for Wallpaper* was a 2007 Architecture Icon story on Claude Parent (W*161).

Finally, it wouldn’t be a Design Issue without a double helping of interiors stories: the ever brilliant London-based photographer Leandro Farina brings his flair for brutalist architecture to our edit of the season’s standout lighting pieces, which also features on our newsstand cover; while Barcelona design studio Six N Five presents visions of outdoor furniture in alluring desert landscapes that has us yearning for an exotic escape. Enjoy the issue!

Sarah Douglas, Editor-in-Chief

Limited-edition cover

by Hella Jongerius Photography: Daniel Ipp Jongerius’ specially created cover features her 2020 Undertone View. Woven on a digital loom using mixed materials, including cotton and paper, it is part of the Woven Windows series. See more details and our interview with Jongerius on page 076 Limited-edition covers are available to subscribers, see Wallpaper.com/sub21

Newspaper* Wallpaper’s hot pick of the latest global goings-on Jacket, £2,420, by Loro Piana ‘Black, White & Sun Yellow Kinetic Sculpture’, £9,000,

by Daniel Reynolds, from The New Craftsmen For stockists throughout, see page 193

For a little post-pandemic panache, spring into sprezzatura mode

Model: Louis S at Tomorrow Is Another Day. Interiors: Olly Mason. Digi tech: Emre Cakir. Photography assistant: Kerimcan Goren

Hang loose

PHOTOGRAPHY: UMIT SAVACI FASHION: JASON HUGHES

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Newspaper Right, jacket, £2,000; trousers, £990, both by Lanvin ‘Black, White & Sun Yellow Kinetic Sculpture’, as before Below, jacket, part of a suit, £3,720, by Brunello Cucinelli Bottom, jacket, £1,490; trousers, £590, both

by Jil Sander by Lucie and Luke Meier

T PHOTOGRAPHY: UMIT SAVACI FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

here are some people who would describe their current style as slovenly. If you are one of those adherents, then we suggest you now step away from those slouch-inducing sweatpants and oversized sweaters. Your aspiration for spring should be sprezzatura, an Italianate nonchalance most effectively achieved through investment in appearanceuplifting, lightweight suiting.

Think of the springtime suit as a post-pandemic transition piece, sitting serendipitously between the sportswear silhouettes of your lockdown wardrobe, »

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Newspaper and the stiff, starch-filled tailoring of your former office-bound existence. Look to subtly oversized proportions that have a laidback lilt, easy unlined silhouettes and fabrics that welcome the warmer weather.

As we ease gently back into the outdoors, it’s only natural to feel the pull of organic tones, such as chestnut, honey and walnut.

At Ermenegildo Zegna, artistic director Alessandro Sartori has looked to the hues of the label’s Oasi Zegna nature reserve, in the Biella Alps in northern Italy, for

inspiration, while at Jil Sander, softer silhouettes have been imagined in slate, caramel and sky blue.

For those keen to emerge from lockdown with a more exuberant energy, we recommend offsetting that spirit with an insouciant stance, like hands shrugged into loose trouser pockets. Turn your attention to Bottega Veneta’s bouclé suiting, which is striking in its textural fabrication.

There’s another winning adjective for your new season style glossary.

Above, jacket, £2,750; trousers, £1,280, both by Bottega Veneta.

Boots, £945, by Saint Laurent

by Anthony Vaccarello ‘Blue Glass Five Piece Mobile II’, £5,400, by Daniel Reynolds, from The New Craftsmen Right, jacket, £2,300; waistcoat, £890; trousers, £950, all by Ermenegildo Zegna

PHOTOGRAPHY: UMIT SAVACI FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

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Newspaper

A two-decades-old Achille Castiglioni prototype is finally brought to life

Write on time

Photography: Neil Godwin at Future Studios for Wallpaper*

Designed by Achille Castiglioni and his close collaborator, architect Gianfranco Cavaglià, two decades ago, writing set ‘Cento3’ has now been put into production for the first time.

Castiglioni’s daughter Giovanna found the original prototypes hidden behind a mirror in her father’s Milan studio: a series of wooden pencils that he and Cavaglià had created in collaboration with Bottega Ghianda in 2001. During the project’s conception, the two designers debated the pens’ exact shapes, and the final design is moulded to accommodate a three-finger grip, to reinforce the connection between hand and mind. The design has the added benefit of not rolling off a table easily.

The prototypes had been left untouched for nearly two decades, as it was difficult at the time to find a manufacturer to produce the unusual shape at an affordable price. Castiglioni’s heirs joined forces with a team of Bolognabased entrepreneurs to launch Ego.M, a collaborative brand that would bring these designs to life. The new versions are 3D-printed in black graphene and are available in three formats: a thick art pencil, a classic pocket fountain pen with stainless steel tip, and a mechanical pencil. egoundesign.com

Above, from left, ‘Cento3’ fountain pen, art pencil and mechanical pencil, from 50, all by Ego.M Right, the original wooden prototypes found hidden behind a mirror

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WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI

Newspaper

Photography: Neil Godwin at Future Studios for Wallpaper*

‘Cobra’ bowl, £120; basket, £85; salt and pepper shakers, £59; egg cups, £45 for set of two, all by Constantin Wortmann, for Georg Jensen. ‘Sky’ glasses, £49 for six; dinner plate, £26; lunch plate, £22, all by Aurélien Barbry, for Georg Jensen. ‘Copenhagen’ cutlery,

£52 for set of four, by Grethe Meyer, for Georg Jensen. ‘Vinum XL’ champagne flutes, £55 for two, by Riedel. Blanc De Blancs Second Skin, £70, by Ruinart, from Selfridges.

‘Linara’ linen in Swedish Grey, £40 per m, by Romo

We welcome some new additions to Georg Jensen’s portfolio

Extended family Synonymous with sleek Scandinavian design, Georg Jensen is our go-to brand when we want spectacular scene settings. Thrilled at the prospect of a return to entertaining, we were delighted to learn that the Danish brand would be extending its ‘Sky’ and ‘Cobra’ tableware collections. ‘Sky’, designed by the Frenchborn, Copenhagen-based designer Aurélien Barbry, originally debuted in 2018 as a series of bar accessories, but has now been expanded to include dinnerware and glassware. A series of porcelain plates, bowls and serving dishes boast soft lines and slightly asymmetrical

INTERIORS: OLLY MASON ENTERTAINING DIRECTOR: MELINA KEAYS WRITER: ANNE SOWARD

bases, inspired by the organic shape of clouds, while new crystal wine glasses and tumblers feature delicate, rounded forms that feel understated yet sophisticated.

Meanwhile, the iconic fluid lines of German-born designer Constantin Wortmann’s ‘Cobra’ collection now appear on salt and pepper sets, serving bowls, platters, trays and egg cups, in mirror-polished stainless steel. We’ve chosen to use it for serving up our dream brunch, featuring a couple of glasses of Ruinart’s Blanc De Blancs and a Danish open sandwich of salmon, dill and caviar on rye bread. Velbekomme!

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Newspaper ‘H08’ watch with titanium case and titanium strap, £4,890, by Hermès

The new Hermès ‘H08’ runs rings around the competition

Sports star

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Founded in 1978 in the Swiss town of Bienne, the watchmaking division of Hermès has since grown to encompass a workshop solely focused on creating leather straps and another that produces in-house movements. An Hermès watch is characterised by a clean design that belies the robustness of the whole. It is a point simply drawn in the lines of the new Hermès ‘H08’, which takes its name from the rounded forms of the font.

The negative space of the 0 and endless loops of the 8 underpin the geometrical whorls of the case, which juxtaposes

a circular dial with its softened edges.

In its emphasis on a comfortable cut and tactile materials, it is consistent with the codes set out by artistic director of menswear Véronique Nichanian, who this season rethought leisurewear with hooded parkas, fleece jackets and relaxed cuts. The casual theme continues in the muted hues of the ‘H08’, which takes on a sporty bent when paired with straps in satin-brushed titanium, webbing or vivid colour pops of rubber. hermes.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: LEON CHEW WRITER: HANNAH SILVER

Newspaper

the vinson view

Quality maniac Nick Vinson on the who, what, when, where and why

THE IMPORTANCE OF THAT UNIQUE SENSE OF PLACE Construction materials, techniques and colours change from region to region, which makes travelling interesting.

Guest room décor should use local colours, materials, techniques and finishes that you won’t experience elsewhere.

Local trees, plants, soil and climate create great olfactory experiences and memories that are often overlooked and are preferable to the smell of chemically perfumed amenities and overbearing cleaning products.

Clockwise from left, Hugo Sauzay and Charlotte de Tonnac; the Splendido Mare hotel on Portofino’s main piazza overlooking the harbour; lighting and tile details in the renovated hotel

Offering local dishes and produce, no matter how simple, is better than any generic ‘international’ option, so promote these to the top of the menu.

One should never overestimate the value of a good view.

Local staff can be the best draw.

Staying power Picky Nicky hopes to finally get some satisfaction in the bedroom After a complete renovation that was entrusted to Charlotte de Tonnac and Hugo Sauzay, of Paris-based Festen Architecture, the Splendido Mare in Portofino reopened its doors on 16 April.

The hotel’s 14 guest rooms now allude to a feeling that you are staying at the Ligurian home of a very chic, wellheeled friend, one that features handvarnished wood, rope detailing, textiles

by Loro Piana, and a layering of furniture and furnishings that takes in existing pieces, newly commissioned and locally crafted designs, and 20th century pieces by the likes of Gio Ponti, Paolo Buffa and Guglielmo Ulrich.

The Splendido Mare is the first property to be refurbished since LVMH acquired hospitality brand Belmond in April 2019. Belmond was originally founded in 1976 by James Sherwood, who bought the Hotel Cipriani in Venice and then went on to acquire a collection of unique and highly individual properties. Now the Splendido Mare refurbishment will form part of an ambitious ten-year plan by LVMH to

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fully refurbish the Belmond’s portfolio of 34 hotels, six trains, two boats, three safari adventures and one standalone restaurant across 21 countries.

To be honest I used to think of the ‘Mare’ as a spill over from the ‘main’ property, the Splendido, on the hill above, named for its spectacular view over Portofino and the Ligurian coast.

My first visit, booked last minute, meant the only remaining room was down in the port at the Mare, but we spent our days, by the pool and having meals, at the Splendido. Now the Mare is being marketed as a standalone property with its own general manager, dedicated team and new restaurant, in partnership with the Da Vittorio Group, right on the main piazzetta of the port.

Celia Geyer, Belmond’s senior vice president of design and project development, and Joe Ferry, Belmond’s art and design director, are overseeing the renovations of the hotels and are responsible for hiring and guiding the creative talents to ensure a property’s personality is not overwhelmed by

designers imposing too much of their own look or by the brand itself.

Regular readers of this page will know that I have not always been satisfied with my experiences at some of Belmond’s properties, including the Villa San Michele in Florence, the Splendido, and the Grand Hotel Timeo in Sicily. Belmond has some of the best properties in the world, but my guest experience has not always matched the calibre of the property, so I am glad to hear work is going on behind the scenes in the art of hosting. Getting the food right can be particularly complicated – some guests, like me, just want great simple food, while others expect more bang for their buck and want ‘fancy’.

I have heard, which is music to my ears, that the group’s ten Italian properties will be serving genuine Italian food rather than Americanised versions, and that’s significant.

Covid-19 travel restrictions aside, I plan to return, to see what’s changed.

Right now, a smaller hotel feels right. belmond.com

Model: Eva Varlamova at Kult London. Photography assistant: Martin Eito. Post-production: Ink

Newspaper

We’re shunning slouchwear in favour of a bit of flounce

Best swishes

After months of shuffling around in our slouchiest separates, lazing in loungewear and tootling about in tracksuit bottoms, we’re eyeing up ensembles with a little more oomph.

Flounce was a focus on the S/S21 catwalks, as labels shirked the dresseddown sartorial slump of 2020 in favour of optimistic, more attention-seeking style, revelling in hardware, sequins »

PHOTOGRAPHY: DOUGAL MACARTHUR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

Above, top, £1,510; skirt, £2,030, both by Salvatore Ferragamo

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Newspaper and shimmer. Brands, such as Saint Laurent, Roksanda, Numeroventuno and Salvatore Ferragamo, also adorned evening looks with delicate plumes, whether they swathed skirts and slip dresses or frothed from a skinny sleeve.

These fine-feathered pieces recalled the froufrou of a 1920s flapper girl or the sweep of a 1960s starlet.

Numeroventuno’s Alessandro Dell’Acqua created Jazz Age-style embellishments by pairing plumed skirts with pared-back chunky knitwear and men’s shirts, while Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello found particular inspiration in the Swinging Sixties, drawing on archival pieces that felt both easy and extravagant.

Spring’s plumed looks bring a lighter-than-air uplift to dressing, but they also provide required comfort, too. Pristine white pieces evoke the solace of freshly laundered layers, while feathers swathe the body and recall the soft, enfolding fabrics we relied on during lockdown, providing a protective dressing option for when we can finally flock together.

Top left, jumpsuit, £2,555; belt, £565, both by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello Above, dress, £3,200,

by Numeroventuno by Alessandro Dell’Acqua.

Tights, £35, by Wolford Left, top, price on request,

by Roksanda. Tights, £35, by Wolford

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PHOTOGRAPHY: DOUGAL MACARTHUR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

Newspaper The three-storey studio spans 10,000 sq ft and includes a large space, with pivoting walls, designed to house massive marble blocks

A Brooklyn sculptor’s studio brings the creative process in-house

Art work Created for Brooklyn artist Barry X Ball, this studio in Greenpoint is the work of New York architect Andrew Berman.

The project provides workspace for a team of 20 and is created to ‘facilitate an artist’s complex creative process and workflow’. The space spans three floors within a restructured and renovated 10,000 sq ft warehouse; a utilitarian exterior hints at the complex’s original use. Brick, flat and corrugated steel panels, perforated steel panels, glass, and polycarbonate sheets make for a robust structure that feels at home within its urban locale. Everything from delivery handling to storage and creative work is tackled on the generous ground floor, where a selection of studios provide appropriate space for digital imaging, photography, woodworking, hand carving, metalworking, sandblasting and exhibiting. Meanwhile, upstairs, office, meeting and residential areas allow the artist to remain close to his work day and night, while a planted roof adds a touch of greenery to the composition and the wider neighbourhood. barryxball.com; andrewbermanarchitect.com

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PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL MORAN WRITER: ELLIE STATHAKI

Newspaper

creative smalltalk Bodil Blain catches up over a coffee with artist Mathias Kiss

There’s alchemy at work in the new fragrance collection from Loewe

Rainbow magic For its latest fragrance collection, Botanical Rainbow, Loewe has reimagined its classic rectangular fragrance bottles in a new technicolour scheme.

A different hue has been applied to each of the 28 scents, which feature botanical ingredients such as dragon fruit, almond blossom and tangerine, and when placed next to each other, the bottles create a rainbow that ranges from strawberry red and emerald green to sunshine yellow and off-white.

Nature is a reoccurring influence for Loewe (take, for example, the pansy-covered pieces in its A/W21 collection inspired by artist Joe Brainard), and particularly so when it comes to its fragrances.

Last year, the brand debuted its first home fragrance range with scents inspired by creative director Jonathan Anderson’s own vegetable garden.

To celebrate the launch of the new collection, Loewe has once again collaborated with celebrated American photographer Tyler Mitchell, whose still-life images are suffused with a painterly light that lends an almost dream-like quality to the depiction of perfume bottles alongside backdrops inspired by Ikebana techniques, the Japanese art of flower arranging.

‘I have always found the idea of senses being used as a stimulus to healing very interesting,’ Anderson told Wallpaper* last year, ahead of the home fragrance launch. ‘There’s always been this thing with nature, that we draw on what we have around us. We associate smells with different things – it’s very personal.’

At a time when we could all perhaps use a bit of healing, Loewe’s sweet-smelling fragrances offer some welcome olfactory escapism and visual relief. perfumesloewe.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: TYLER MITCHELL WRITER: MARY CLEARY

Above, Loewe 7 EDT, part of the Botanical Rainbow collection, 72.50 for 50ml,

by Loewe. This fragrance is composed of seven ingredients, including incense, red pepper berries and red apple, and comes in a semi-opaque glass flask in a metallic shade of midnight blue

BB: Do you drink coffee?

MK: I take my coffee short, tight, strong.

Were you a creative child?

I have always avoided everyday life, groups and institutions. I felt trapped on a school bench and I felt trapped making things I had to make. At 14, I was thrown out of school. It then became my path to work against being categorised. I find it a strange idea to study and pass an artist diploma – it is the opposite of freedom.

What has been your creative journey and how did your processes develop?

I joined the Compagnons du Devoir, a French organisation of craftsmen and artisans dating from the Middle Ages.

Their traditional, technical education included taking apprenticeships with masters who imposed on me an aesthetic and technical route. My process is fuelled by my reaction to this experience, and the need to change the immobility and the rigour of classicism, to liberate forms and materials. My job is to remove the frame, it is my fight.

What do the mirrors represent in your work?

Mirrors represent luxury and narcissism.

They are inflexible and so is the picture you have of yourself and the life around you. I want my work to ‘deconstruct’ self image and the image of society. Mirrors are fragile yet threatening because we can see ourselves. They are alive and organic, my work is to liberate them.

Can you explain the installation in the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille?

I used to paint skies when I was an apprentice painter restoring historical monuments with Compagnons du Devoir. To create the sky at the Palais was a childhood dream, to give back to this sad and impersonal canopy the romanticism and movements by natural light through the transparency of my sky was a wonderful gift. The changing light with the hours and seasons made it move and evolve, it was magic.

Below it, I created a pool of overflowing mirrors to see it in the reflection, and the dialogue between ceiling and pool was a nice tribute to the compositions of the great times of oil painting.

All alive and accessible to uninitiated people, which is always important to me.

Where can we currently see your work and things coming soon?

In my new workshop, open by appointment, in Paris in the 19th arrondissement.

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Newspaper The brands closing the gender gap in skincare and wellness

Innovative approaches to male skincare and wellness are still few and far between. For Brandon Palas, founder of male beauty brand Beau D, it no longer holds ‘that beauty, either in word or concept, is somehow the exclusive province of women’, an ethos he’s promoting with a new product line that begins with a lip salve. New York brand Tracaris also appeals to ‘a new wave of masculinity’ with a Hydrating Radiance Serum formulated to protect all skin types from air pollution and travel-induced irritation. A plant-derived deodorant is the first product in what will soon become a full skincare line from Saint New York, which is setting its sights on being the grooming equivalent of streetwear brands like Off-White or Supreme. Californian label Asystem, meanwhile, offers a skincare and supplements line designed to coincide with men’s natural hormone cycles. Alongside the product line, it also hopes to promote male wellness with The Betterment Project, a forum that offers everything from online boxing classes to tips for combatting anxiety.

Clockwise from top left, deodorant, $24, by Saint New York, saintnewyork.com. Hydrating Radiance Serum, $40, by Tracaris, tracaris.com.

Overnight Rebuilding Cream, $28; Superhuman Supplements, $85, all by Asystem, asystem.com.

Lip Salve, $38, by Beau D, beau-d.com

Complementary cutlery for a collaborative culinary event

Raw talent Despite a widely acclaimed star turn on Netflix’s Chef ’s Table, the food of Korean buddhist nun Jeong Kwan is difficult to come by – she does not have a restaurant or a cookbook, and those in search of her exquisite cuisine need to journey four hours from Seoul to the seventh-century Baegyangsa temple. But come September, she will be in Amsterdam for a muchanticipated culinary event organised

by Dutch collective Steinbeisser. To complement Kwan’s dishes, which will combine ingredients sourced from organic and biodynamic producers in South Korea and the Netherlands, Steinbeisser has commissioned cutlery and craftware, including interlocked chopsticks by Joo Hyung Park, intended to gently challenge the user and impart a lesson in acceptance, and glassware, by Fabienne Schneider, that has been blown in raw soil and takes on organic forms. Also on the roster is Patrizia Keller, who works with found

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wood from Switzerland’s mountains and forests. Her ‘Raw’ spoons, which comprise meticulously carved wooden bowls connected via brass rods to branch segments, encourage the user to ponder the natural origins of their cutlery and the beauty hidden within humble organic materials. steinbeisser.org

‘Raw’ spoons, from 245,

by Patrizia Keller, for Steinbeisser, from Jouw Store, jouwstore.com

WRITERS: MARY CLEARY, TF CHAN

Photography: Sophie Gladstone

Groom mates

Eye candy Alessi marks its centenary with a sweet selection of design classics WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI

The Twergi collection, with, from left, Sottsass’ pepper, salt and spice mills, now in a new colourway; a magnetic photo holder by Bortolani Becchelli Associati; the ‘Ercolino’ bottle opener by Andrea Branzi; Sottsass’ original jar; a photo frame by Kuno Prey; Sottsass’ relaunched corkscrew and original fruit bowl

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Design

rom Philippe Starck’s squid-inspired juicer to Alessandro Mendini’s anthropomorphic corkscrew and Michael Graves’ kettle with bird-shaped whistle, the Italian brand Alessi has become synonymous with humorous designs that combine colourful resin details with playful shapes (many of which are made of stainless steel, the firm’s material of choice since its founding in 1921).

But when third-generation owner Alberto Alessi first entered his family business in 1970, there was nothing colourful about the company. While his grandfather and father had established a successful business producing well-made objects, there wasn’t a strong creative element to its products. ‘In 1970, Alessi felt a bit grey,’ he recalls. ‘Everything was made of metal, and the factory smelled like car oil. I was young and hopeful, and my plan was to introduce a bit of fun.’

He did so by inviting what he calls ‘an exaggerated number of designers’ to boost the aesthetic quality of the company, setting a new course for what over the next 50 years would establish itself as one of Italy’s most recognisable and relevant design brands.

This year, Alberto Alessi is celebrating his family firm’s centenary with a year-long project that pays tribute not only to the design masters he worked with over the years, but also the values that have shaped the company during this time. Every month for the next year, a new product will be unveiled, either a previously unreleased design or a novel version of an Alessi classic.

The celebrations kick off in April with a project dedicated to Industrial Craftsmanship, a fitting theme for a company that has described itself as ‘a cross between a mass production industry and craftsman’s workshop’. The initiative’s first offering is Twergi, a collection initially conceived by Ettore Sottsass in the 1980s, and now released in new colourways. Inspired by local wood-turning traditions, the designer’s iconic colourful totems are scaled down into mundane objects such as jars, corkscrews and pepper mills. Also included are wooden photo holders and a corkscrew by Bortolani Becchelli Associati, Kuno Prey and Andrea Branzi.

Further chapters in the Alessi 100 Values Collection will explore ideas of Art (with dotted vases by Mendini), Research and Poetry, with more obscure themes (such as Paradox) devised to delve deeper into previously unrealised projects. The products will also paint a picture of Alberto Alessi’s own experience, one that has been inextricably linked to the 300 or so designers – including Achille Castiglioni, Aldo Rossi and Enzo Mari – he met along the way. It started in the early 1970s with Sottsass, who left a deep impression on Alberto Alessi. ‘He said to me, “as an entrepreneur, you have a great cultural responsibility, because you’re going to fill the world with millions of objects”.’ Over the years, Alessi saw designers work in radically diverse ways, from Richard Sapper’s ultra-precise drawings to Rossi’s often childlike sketches (‘his concepts were so strong that they’d survive any changes our technical department tried to impart on them’). ‘Meeting each of these design masters slowly transformed us into one of Italy’s great design factories,’ he says.

The key to this success? Patience: ‘My job is to plant seeds, and wait for them to give signs of life,’ he says. ‘The results are sometimes small, sometimes interesting. Patience is important because I work with an unpredictable material, which is creativity applied to an industrial and artisanal context.’ ∂ alessi.com

Jewellery Clockwise from left, ‘77g’ necklace in slick polished 925 sterling silver, €1,900; ‘27g’ bracelet in slick brushed 925 sterling silver and 750 yellow gold, €3,700; ‘33g’ bracelet in slick polished 750 yellow gold, €9,800, all from the Segment collection, by Le Gramme

HYPER LINKS

Photography: Neil Godwin at Future Studios for Wallpaper*

French brand Le Gramme is reshaping men’s jewellery

Erwan Le Louër is fascinated by geometry, his clean lines and understated interplays of precious metals forming the cornerstone of French men’s jewellery brand Le Gramme.

Trained in industrial design, Le Louër graduated in 2008 with a master’s degree from what was then ESDI, in Paris, and translates his analytical aesthetic into the brand’s cool minimalism.

Le Gramme, created in 2013 by Le Louër and Adrien Messié, encapsulates simplicity.

Materials take centre stage, with 18ct gold or sterling silver precisely proportioned for clean and uncluttered forms. The smooth surfaces of the precious metals become ripe for interpretation, with a choice of polished, matte or brushed finishes available to discerning wearers. Patterns, when used, are subtle – the ridges of a guilloche wedding ring are gentle, the grooves in a lightweight silver cable bracelet unobtrusive. Made in France, each piece is succinctly named after its weight in grammes.

Now, a new collection, Segment, builds on these foundations with bracelets, rings and necklaces that nod to last year’s chain collection, Entrelacs. While those pieces upped the proportions of the classic chain, thickly knitting together circular gold and silver links for a chunky urbanity, this year Le Louër has rethought the concept entirely.

The familiar circles appear to have been pinched, their forms tweaked so they become cylinders. Previously hollow, the links are now filled with precious metal, adding a reassuring weight. They move freely with the wearer, an articulated design making for a gleaming flexible spine.

WRITER: HANNAH SILVER

‘We think through the shape in every detail, nothing is left to chance,’ Le Louër says.

‘At Le Gramme, we are not into free artistic gesture,’ he adds, however effortless the designs may appear.

The duo’s close scrutiny is reflected in the choice of materials; some pieces feature seemingly random links of gold or silver in a contemporary play on mixed metals. The rings take this further, mixing yellow, red and white gold in a move that is a first for Le Gramme. In this modern reinterpretation of the classic trois ors jewellery design, the century-old motif is brought bang up-to-date in a gracefully Gallic way.

‘We don’t see Segment as a new direction, but more like a continuation of what we have already done,’ says Le Louër. ‘Like all of our other pieces, it looks very easy but is, in fact, very complex. We believe that details make all the difference – Segment is an elementary shape that we thought of and made our own.’

By shifting the focus from clean design to high-quality precious metals and unusual shapes, the heavy jewelllery becomes sensual, crying out to be worn and touched.

Adds Le Louër: ‘As the name of our brand is Le Gramme, you need to feel the weight of the jewellery you are wearing.’ ∂ legramme.com

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GOOD YARN

Hella Jongerius’ new exhibition adds contemporary twists to the age-old story of weaving PHOTOGRAPHY: DAN IPP WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI

Sustainable innovation, craft, responsible production, and how we relate to objects and nature are recurring themes in the work of Dutch designer Hella Jongerius. A new series of textile experiments and an exhibition at Berlin’s Gropius Bau, ‘Woven Cosmos’, presents a panoramic take on her thinking.

‘I have always worked on the relationship between objects and human beings; objects are silent partners, there is a lot of healing in them,’ says Jongerius, whose work over the past three decades has touched upon industrial design, furniture, craft, material explorations and chromatic research.

Her ongoing work with colour has led her to collaborate with textile manufacturers Maharam and Kvadrat; to leave her mark on classic Vitra furniture by Jean Prouvé, and Charles and Ray Eames; and to design the North Delegates’ Lounge for the United Nations’ New York headquarters. These experiences, alongside more in-depth research, culminated in exhibitions such Above, Season Panorama, made on a digital Jacquard loom in Jongerius’ studio Left, Jongerius at the Gropius Bau with Forest, from the Woven Systems series

as ‘Colour Machine’ at Milan Design Week in 2016 and ‘Breathing Colour’ at London’s Design Museum in 2017.

The newest chapter of her work focuses on weaving, a medium that allows Jongerius to explore some of those recurring themes, particularly sustainability, social responsibility, spirituality and ‘the healing function of objects’. The idea for the Gropius Bau exhibition developed after Jongerius spent time working on a digital loom, leaving her keen to investigate more experimental and performative weaving techniques. ‘Weaving is such a huge topic,’ she notes. ‘And I wanted »

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Above, this issue’s limitededition cover created by Jongerius features her 2020 Undertone View. Woven on a digital loom using mixed materials including cotton and paper, it is part of the Woven Windows series.

‘During Covid, I had time to weave and I thought we were all inside our houses looking through our windows to the outside world, so I wanted to weave windows,’ she says.

‘I like the idea that a window is the eye of the house. The window is also a threshold: you can only pass with your eyes, your body can’t go out and that’s also been the case in the past year.’

Limited-edition covers are available to subscribers, see Wallpaper.com Left, a model of the Gropius Bau exhibition space and one of the exhibition installations Opposite, a silk-screen print sketch, part of Jongerius’ Woven Systems series

to do it in a bigger realm, so I called the show “Woven Cosmos”: I wanted to work with metaphors, diving deeper into the future of weaving.’

Presented as a work in progress, ‘Woven Cosmos’ will include two new installations and more than 50 new objects created by Jongerius and her team between her Berlin studio and the neo-Renaissance halls of the museum, with some pieces developed live on site during the exhibition. Jongerius brought a multilayered and personal approach to the project, including a spiritual séance led by a local shaman in the Gropius Bau’s atrium before production started, which highlighted the vitality of the building.

The end result will include threedimensional textile sculptures created with

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yarns spun from recycled materials – old stock from the textile industry, virgin cotton, wool and paper yarns used for weaving – alongside objects in wood, glass and ceramics. Jongerius looked through the museum’s archives for materials to repurpose, and found four shades of sand from a recent exhibition by artist Lee Mingwei, three of which have now been used to create glass pieces for ‘Woven Cosmos’ (a process carried out in Sweden and overseen

by Jongerius over Zoom).

There will be three live elements, performed by the designer and her team, Jongeriuslab, with the public invited to join in. The Cosmic Loom installation will feature bundles of recycled textile waste, available to the team and visitors to use to spin a yarn to add to the loom. Another project, titled

Dancing a Yarn, will invite the public to be part of a choreographed workflow. Twisting and twining dancers will perform alongside a machine, replicating its movements, to create two ropes. The resulting ropes will then be knotted together to form a ladder that will ‘grow’ out of the building’s window and into the public space surrounding the museum.

Finally, Space Loom #2 (a large-scale, threedimensional loom Jongerius previewed in a 2019 installation for Lafayette Anticipations in Paris), built by the designer and her collaborators out of four looms, will be activated during the show to produce new 3D-woven objects named Matrix Modules.

Outcomes will be unpredictable, but, as the designer points out, ‘it’s not about the result, it’s about the process’. She continues: »

Design

Design Left, the piece Cosmos, from the Woven Systems series, at Jongeriuslab‘s temporary workspace at Gropius Bau Below, a 3D-woven brick on Space Loom #2, part of the Pliable Architecture series

‘We are all yarns in the bigger cloth, all interwoven’ ‘For me, it’s important that we research, and that what we do is restricted between boundaries, that we have questions. But we are doing the creative work; we are not just producing something that’s ready in our minds. That’s also how it works in design and with other creative processes.’

Building a new body of work on site at Gropius Bau has been a helpful exercise for the team. ‘In the studio, everything looks big, and then we come into the museum and it shrinks,’ says Jongerius. ‘So it is really great that we can see the work at the right scale, under the right lights. I am not there every day, so my team has time to concentrate on a piece of work without being watched the whole time.’ She characterises the more

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intimate studio work as the ‘embryo’ stage of her projects, and finds the duality between the two spaces and dimensions refreshing.

Jongerius’ move from industrial design to a more experimental craft-based dimension has felt like a natural progression of her practice. From where she is now, she is able to communicate to a more open, critical audience that wants to explore beyond what’s currently possible. ‘Craft is now more relevant than ever; these ancient techniques not only have cultural and historical value but also offer real solutions,’ she says. ‘A material never travels alone, it has a huge social and geopolitical agenda. To work towards a carbon-neutral footprint, we have to redesign all of our materials, and that has

a lot to do with craft. There is a huge revolution in my profession.’

It’s impossible to create work in 2021 without feeling the impact of the ongoing global pandemic, and for Jongerius, this has meant observing the world both digitally and physically. Its restrictions and new rules, she says, ‘will have an echo in our objects and materials’. This is also where weaving comes into play: ‘It’s almost a cliché, but we are all yarns in the bigger cloth. We are all interwoven, it’s about connection. And that’s why weaving is a very strong metaphor for where we are right now.’ ∂ ‘Hella Jongerius: Woven Cosmos’, 29 April15 August, Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstrasse 7, Berlin, gropiusbau.de; jongeriuslab.com

HERO OF THE HOUR Inspired by feats of endurance and daring, Montblanc’s new limited-edition watch is an horological adventure

PHOTOGRAPHY: LEON CHEW WRITER: ROBERT JOHNSTON

One victim of multiple lockdowns has been adventure – even lazy days in the Dodecanese remain but a dream.

But with its latest watch, Montblanc is determined to keep the spirit of adventure alive. The newly launched 1858 Geosphere Desert Limited Edition is inspired

by Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner, one of the world’s greatest living adventurers.

Now 76, Messner was the first man to conquer Everest without supplemental oxygen and is perhaps most famous for scaling the Seven Summits, his list of the highest peaks of the seven continents – in descending order, Everest, Aconcagua, Denali, Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Vinson and Puncak Jaya.

In 1986, Messner became the second person to climb all seven summits, having been beaten to it by Canadian Pat Morrow several months earlier.

Montblanc has worked with Messner since 2019, and with its new watch is celebrating not his climbs but his 2004 solo expedition, 2,000km across the Gobi Desert on foot. Even in this inhospitable wasteland, there is beauty to be found, and the new managing director of Montblanc’s watch division, Laurent Lecamp, is particularly pleased with the watch’s tribute to the desert’s Bayanzag, also known as Flaming Cliffs.

This starkly striking feature was on Messner’s route and is one of the world’s palaeontological hotspots.

Its English name was coined by the American Roy Chapman Andrews, who discovered the world’s first fossilised dinosaur eggs there in the 1920s as well as bones of velociraptors – appropriately, Andrews is said to be one of the inspirations for Indiana Jones.

The 1858 Geosphere Desert Limited Edition features a 3D rendering of the cliffs on its titanium caseback. ‘The process is incredibly complicated and time-consuming,’ says Lecamp. ‘The image is first engraved by laser, then coloured by oxidisation, [then engraved] again by laser. It is one of the most advanced examples of this process in the world and has to be carried out on the individual caseback itself, which means each design is effectively unique.’ The company that creates the renderings is the only one in Switzerland that uses this technique and Montblanc is the only company that uses it on such a scale. It is a perfect celebration of the past, the future and Messner himself. As Lecamp says, ‘When you speak to him, it’s as if he is from a different era. He is not a great believer

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in modern communication – you wouldn’t catch him taking selfies on the slopes of Everest. He is very traditional and this is a perfect marriage with our belief in traditional watchmaking.’

The 42mm case itself is based on a design from the 1930s, scaled-up for modern tastes. It is made from satin-finished bronze and has a brass bi-directional bezel with a brown ceramic finish. The colour on the dial graduates from smoked brown to beige.

‘Everything is inspired by the astonishing colours of the desert, as described by Messner,’ explains Lecamp. The indexes and the cathedral-shaped hands are finished in rose gold. As every explorer of the great unknown will tell you, readability in a timepiece is key, so the hands, Arabic numerals, compass indications and hemisphere globes are all coated with an unusual, beige-coloured, hand-applied Super-Luminova.

The distinctive rotating Geosphere globes are part of the piece’s world-timer function. The northern hemisphere turns anti-clockwise while the southern goes clockwise; each is encircled by a 24-hour marker to show time around the globe. The second time zone display is found at nine o’clock. At three o’clock, rather than the familiar white star logo representing the snow-covered peak of Mont Blanc (created in 1913), the one featured here is in a retro italic font bisected by a silhouette of the mountain, based on a historic design once found on Montblanc pens.

All great adventures require the right kit and the watch is powered by the Calibre MB 29.25 automatic movement, an in-house manufacture with a 42-hour power reserve. The 1858 moniker refers to the year that the renowned watchmaker Minerva was founded in the Swiss village of Villeret. It became part of Montblanc in 2007 and today the Villeret collections boast the brand’s finest – and most complicated – movements.

Lecamp himself was born in the Pyrenees, but he finds his thrills on the flat. ‘My passion is running marathons,’ he says. ‘The most extreme was in Siberia, where temperatures were below minus 45°C. Now I am in training for a race at the North Pole.’

Montblanc’s 1858 Geosphere Desert Limited Edition, not to mention Lecamp’s plans to pound the pack ice, suggest it will take more than a virus to quell the quest for adventure. ∂ montblanc.com

The 1858 Geosphere Desert Limited Edition, £5,400, by Montblanc. Inspired by the 2004 Gobi Desert trek of adventurer Reinhold Messner, the watch’s tones nod to the natural environment, while its titanium caseback features a laser-engraved, coloured 3D rendering of the desert’s landmark Flaming Cliffs

Watches

Designer Antonio Citterio at Flexform’s Meda HQ with his bestselling 2001 ‘Groundpiece’ modular sofa. Low and deep, the sofa was designed as a more relaxed and casual approach to seating

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Design Icon

SOFT FOCUS Antonio Citterio reflects on his work with Flexform, and conceiving a sofa as the heart of the home PHOTOGRAPHY: FEDERICO CIAMEI WRITER: DEYAN SUDJIC

Meda is a small town at the heart of Brianza, the industrial zone that unfolds across the green Lombardy plain like a long grey dust plume stretching from Milan towards the Swiss border. Its medieval centre, marked by the frescoed 16th-century church of San Vittore, is hemmed in by a ring of more recent development that peters out into the generic anonymity of industrial Italy.

It’s hard to think of a more appropriate birthplace for Antonio Citterio. What we think of as Italian design depends on this town, and half a dozen like it.

Meda is the engine room of the contemporary furniture world, where a web of workshops and factories forms a creative cluster that is to sofas what Silicon Valley once was to laptops. This is where Citterio grew up, and it’s where Flexform, the firm established in 1959 by the Galimberti family, which gave him one of his first jobs, is based.

He makes the start of a relationship with the company that has lasted almost 50 years sound remarkably casual. ‘I was 23, I had just finished in the army. I was still studying architecture at the Politecnico in Milan.

One of the Galimberti children had been my friend at school, so I went to Flexform and said, let’s do something together.’

Flexform had already made the transition from the traditional designs it had started out with, and had applied the artisanal skills of its craftsmen to a more contemporary design language. It had commissioned a piece as radical as Joe Colombo’s 1969 ‘Tube’ chair.

Now it needed reliable bestsellers. ‘This was a time when a lot of furniture looked like sculpture, but I said, let’s do something really calm, and really normal.’ One of the results was the ‘Aria’ sofa, produced with his studio partner at the time, Paolo Nava.

It belonged to a period in which the sofa was designed to be part of a conventional three-piece suite, and had yet to dominate the contemporary interior. In the average living room in the 1960s, the armchair was the seat of power, occupied by family patriarchs. The matriarch, if she was lucky, got a slightly smaller version to herself. »

Design Icon 01. Citterio’s mood board for the ‘Groundpiece’ sofa design includes this picture of Donald Judd’s 100 Untitled Works in mill aluminum, 1982-86, at the Chinati Foundation in Texas. Judd inspired Citterio to place the sofa directly on the floor. 02. and 03. The designer’s sketches show the sofa’s arms, which can incorporate storage elements. 04. The completed design, shot in 2001 by Gabriele Basilico in Gio Ponti’s Pirelli Tower

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The sofa was for supplicant sons-in-law.

Launched around 1980, ‘Aria’ had a wooden frame, foam cushions, and brushed steel legs, accommodating two people in comfort.

Citterio produced two other early projects for the company and began to play a part in shaping its identity. ‘I was never really Flexform’s art director, but I would talk to them about things,’ he remembers.

‘So I asked Achille Castiglioni to design the stand at the furniture fair a few times. And I suggested that Natalia Corbetta should do the graphics, and that they should work with Gabriele Basilico.’ Basilico was one of Italy’s most distinguished architectural photographers, scrutinising the relentless urbanisation of the country in the 1960s with an unforgiving eye. His work with Flexform was always in monochrome, always contextualising the furniture in slightly melancholy architectural settings, such as the interior of Gio Ponti’s Pirelli Tower.

‘People didn’t understand at first. It took a while for the approach to work,’ says Citterio. ‘The market has changed a lot since then. The market for contemporary design

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in the 1970s was just six per cent, now it’s the overwhelming majority.’ The way that we live has changed, too. ‘The sofa was not a normal element in the home. If you had one, it was a sofa bed, something to sleep on.

My idea was that a sofa could be somewhere to eat and to work, as well as to relax.’

It’s 20 years since Citterio designed ‘Groundpiece’, as the embodiment of that insight. The name is a reference to Donald Judd’s work, not because Citterio believes that his work is art, but because of what he learned from the way that Judd took sculpture off the plinth, to create a more direct relationship with space. Citterio took the sofa off its legs, and, apparently at least, placed it directly on the floor, like the Arab ‘suffah’, which was a raised section of floor softened by carpet or cushion.

As the middle-class living room increased in size, Citterio was able to consider ‘Groundpiece’ as furniture in the round, not backed awkwardly against a wall. ‘We moved the sofa into the middle of the room.’

This liberation allowed him to incorporate a menu of additional elements to the seating.

‘Groundpiece’ has no single fixed form: one or more of the sofa’s arms can incorporate storage shelves; the arm itself has a top wide enough to serve as a coffee table; and the back of the sofa can be used to form a low wall of shelving.

It was a conceptual rather than a technical turning point, blurring the distinction between furniture and architecture, between foreground object and background service.

It was made using existing technology, and designed as much on the workshop floor in Meda as it was in Citterio’s studio. There were no technical drawings; he relied instead on the skills of Flexform’s craftsmen to realise his ideas. ‘I worked only with sketches,’ says Citterio. ‘I worked with the man who cuts the fabric to get the line and the proportions.’

‘Groundpiece’ helped transform the sofa from playing a relatively minor role in the repertoire of contemporary furniture to a dominant one. And its success has reinforced the continuing relevance of the Italian design system and its ability to use its old skills in new ways. ∂ citterio-viel.com; flexform.it

Photography: Douglas Tuck. Donald Judd Art © 2020 Judd Foundation / Artists Rights.

Society (ARS), New York. Gabriele Basilico, courtesy Flexform

‘My idea was that a sofa could be somewhere to eat and to work, as well as to relax’

Natural flow

Francis Kéré’s perfectly ventilated, termite-inspired Kenyan campus is a breath of fresh air WRITER: ELLIE STATHAKI

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Architecture Berlin-based architect Francis Kéré’s hillside educational campus on the banks of Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya, features three termite mound-inspired ventilation towers. It was built using local quarry rocks and finished with concrete plaster to aid with insulation, keeping the interiors cool

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urkana County in Kenya is a large expanse of beautiful yet arid land of low bushes and occasional trees, home to Lake Turkana, the country’s largest landlocked body of water and the biggest desert lake in the world.

Termite mounds, buzzing with activity and up to several metres high, are dotted around the region’s gently undulating landscape.

It was these tall structures that first caught the eye of Berlin-based architect Francis Kéré when he started researching the area for one of his latest commissions – an education campus on the lake’s banks.

In 2019, Kéré was in Munich for the Global Africa Forum organised by the city’s Technical University. There, he met Ludwig Bayern, founder and CEO of Learning Lions, a non-profit organisation that works to empower young adults in impoverished rural areas of Eastern Africa. Together, the pair decided to build a school by Lake Turkana – a higher education facility that would offer valuable IT knowledge to the county’s youth.

This part of Kenya offers immense natural beauty, but it is also the country’s poorest region, with high unemployment rates.

‘The NGO wanted to support development in the area, to create opportunities,’ says Kéré.

‘It wanted to give the area a boost and the people a better future.’ The project was named Startup Lions Assets Kenya (SLAK).

The architect, who first gained widespread acclaim a decade ago for a series of school projects in his native Burkina Faso, is known for a site-specific and inventive approach that is particularly sensitive to the needs of local communities. Today, he runs an 18-strong and extremely busy studio in Berlin. Projects span London, Montana and Kenya, while a new National Assembly for Benin is in the works. ‘Every project is different,’ says Kéré.

‘Material availability is important to me, and local traditions and handcraft, too; you also have the climate as a factor. But I’d say a common thread in my work is finding a »

Architecture

way to create the most comfort for the people living there. And if possible, I always try to use renewable, local materials rather than very expensive materials.’

For this design, he looked at the local nature and building vernacular, aiming to create an architecture that not only looks and feels stylistically at home in its environment, but is also respectful and operates in harmony with it, too. Turkana’s climate can be hot and harsh, so ventilation and temperature management were key concerns. Traditional local housing is very simple, made of straw.

Inspiration came from the area’s termites.

‘Nature is the best architect,’ says Kéré.

‘I wanted to learn from termite mounds and design something that provides passive ventilation. So we studied the mounds and came to a shape that does that and is really visible, and becomes part of the architecture.

The complex has these sort of wind towers.’

Indeed, the first indication of a man-made structure on the site as you approach is the three towers. Celebrating the local context, these elements support natural ventilation

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‘Nature is the best architect. We studied termite mounds’ ‘by extracting warm air upwards, while fresh air is introduced through specially designed low-level openings’, says Kéré. Electricity is produced on site, using solar panels.

The hillside campus, which focuses on information and communication technologies, is a composition of five main buildings spanning two levels and made of local quarry rocks finished with concrete plaster to aid with insulation and keep the interiors cool. The cluster is arranged in a circular shape, around a clearing that allows students to gather. Various shaded terraces, covered by planted pergolas, offer options for teaching outdoors. Wide steps connect the various parts, also providing impromptu seating for large and small groups.

Inside, the buildings house classrooms and flexible workshops, but also storage and technical facilities. The metal and wooden window frames feature woven straw shades, in the traditional mkeka style, which can be adjusted depending on the sun’s position.

Mosquito nets keep insects at bay while air flow remains continuous. All labour was local and all elements were made on site.

A second phase is currently in the works and includes housing (by a different practice) for the staff, volunteers and students who board. Creating a restaurant on site is also part of the plan. This is just the first step in what both Kéré and his client are hoping becomes a network of similar hubs in remote areas. ‘The political power behind the project is subtle but strong,’ says Kéré, who also recently completed the RTL Kinderhaus for the Sauti Kuu Foundation, and has finalised designs for the Mama Sarah Obama Legacy Campus, both in Kogelo, western Kenya.

‘Give the people a laptop and instruct them, and see what they can do.’ ∂ kerearchitecture.com

Photography: Kéré Architecture

An acacia tree on site was saved and now sits embraced by the five two-storey, ochre-coloured buildings, which are connected by a series of wide steps and sheltered terraces, providing impromptu seating and outdoor classrooms

Art

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A subterranean installation in Houston memorialises music lost in space Albanian artist Anri Sala’s work explores the moment between the tangible and intangible. It exists somewhere between time and space, perhaps even ricocheting between the two. His latest major work combines film, sound and installation at the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a vast underground reservoir in Houston, Texas.

Titled Time No Longer, the work is inspired by the African-American astronaut and jazz saxophonist Ronald McNair, who was a crew member on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 and had the intention of recording the first original piece of music in space.

McNair intended that recording to be played as part of Rendez-vous Houston, a live concert by French composer Jean-Michel Jarre to mark the 150th anniversary of the city of Houston and the 25th anniversary

of Nasa. Had the Space Shuttle Challenger not exploded seconds after take-off, McNair would have set that record.

Sala’s immersive installation features a floating, weightless turntable, projected intermittently onto translucent Hologauze.

The stylus grasps for purchase on the record’s grooves, sometimes managing to communicate music, other times skipping and revolving back into space, resonant of the moment McNair never played. As the motion repeats, we hear snippets of music.

‘It’s like a train of thought, or of music being continuously interrupted and us somehow wanting to make sense of this interruption,’ explains Sala.

The screen is only visible when the film is projecting, leaving the viewer to contemplate the space in darkness. When the film is »

PHOTOGRAPHY: LAWRENCE KNOX WRITER: AMAH-ROSE ABRAMS

Above, Sala’s immersive installation Time No Longer, held in the vast, subterranean, otherworldly landscape of the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, incorporates a film projected onto a translucent screen, with a soundtrack emanating throughout the space, its reverberations creating ripples on the surface of the water

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Above, the installation’s film depicts a weathered turntable, floating in a space station, the stylus’ touch and rise resuming and ceasing its music Left, Anri Sala on the edge of the 87,500 sq ft space, which visitors walk around to experience the installation in 360 degrees

running, it is reflected in the reservoir, creating the illusion of infinite turntables tumbling through infinite space.

The work’s soundtrack is a mixed clarinet and saxophone rendition of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, perhaps the most famous piece of music composed in captivity. Written by Messiaen while in a German prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War, the music communicates a deep sense of loneliness for Sala.

In the recording, it’s hard to distinguish one instrument from the other, a deliberate effect. ‘Sometimes it sounds like one and sometimes like the other. It also plays with this idea that the clarinet might sound like a saxophone before it exists, in a sense asking what would a song sound like before it plays?’

It’s not the first time that Sala has been inspired by the saxophone in his work, and

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‘It plays with the idea that the clarinet might sound like a saxophone before it exists’

he says he is drawn to jazz music for its lack of narrative. The work Long Sorrow (2005) saw him suspend the saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc from the window of a building in a public housing estate in Berlin.

‘He was anchored in space and he used music as a way to make his mind drift away from the situation he was in, while Time No Longer is the other way around, because it’s about drifting in space, like the turntable, but being anchored in time.’

Time No Longer, like Long Sorrow and Answer Me (2008) – which was shot in a geodesic dome at Teufelsberg in Berlin – relates to its architecture, ‘I like to find a narrative that conveys the attributes of the space,’ says Sala. ‘One that treats the space as if it was an organ, not merely a receptacle.

‘In other words, I tend to try to approach space as an instrument, rather than a backdrop to a narrative that’s being played solo within it. When the space becomes tangible, allowing it to play a collaborative part in a form of retelling, it elicits curiosities about context and history, quite unlike and beyond those that storytelling conveys.’

A performance without a performer, a lonely turntable floating through space, this reflective work speaks to the experience of many of us in recent times. ∂ Anri Sala’s Time No Longer is showing until 12 December at Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, Houston, Texas, buffalobayou.org

Design

Moving stories MAXXI and Molteni & C celebrate the work of worldly architect Aldo Rossi ‘Imagination and fantasy can only blossom from the knowledge of the real,’ said the architect Aldo Rossi.

The epigram appears in the Blue Notebooks, a personal and professional journal Rossi started in the late 1960s.

It was a discipline he maintained over three decades, filling 47 volumes, which continue to offer an insight into his unique take on the poetry and practicalities of architecture and a wider creative life.

Born in 1931, he died just before the turn of the century. In that time, he established a reputation as one of the 20th century’s leading architectural voices, and was the first Italian to win the Pritzker Prize, in 1990.

Rossi cut a distinctive figure with his expansive creativity, passion for any kind of talent and virtuosity,

WRITER: MARIA CRISTINA DIDERO

Above, the ‘Piroscafo’ bookcase, from £3,315, by Aldo Rossi and Luca Meda, reissued in a warm spice colour by Molteni & C

and solid belief in the vital role of the architect within society. He had an appreciation for film, theatre and books, which informed his take on architecture and the city as an organic environment. ‘One cannot make architecture without studying the condition of life in the city,’ he stated.

He is now the subject of an extensive retrospective exhibition at the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome, while his iconic ‘Piroscafo’ bookcase is being reissued in a new edition by Molteni & C, one of his longstanding collaborators.

In 2001, the museum acquired 2,000 graphics and drawings, 1,895 photographs, 11 models and 30 files of documents from his archive for its permanent »

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Clockwise from top left, a drawing by Rossi, entitled L’Orario Estivo; Hotel Il Palazzo in Fukuoka; a study drawn for a competition to expand the San Cataldo cemetery in Modena; office complex for the Disney Corporation in Celebration, Florida; project model for the UBS office building in Lugano

collection, which now form the backbone of the retrospective. ‘We are proud that such an extensive and comprehensive exhibition is presented in Rome’, says the museum’s president Giovanna Melandri.

‘Aldo Rossi, The Architect and the Cities’, curated

by Alberto Ferlenga, is born of a collective effort involving the museum, heirs Vera and Fausto Rossi, and Aldo Rossi Foundation curator, Chiara Spangaro, as well as various international institutions. Spangaro says: ‘Rossi had always been an intellectual and a designer with an articulated vision without borders, and he continued to investigate the connection between past and future, to bring his historical and theoretical reflections and his architecture from Milan to Italy and the world.’

The exhibition explores Rossi’s extraordinary influence, both practical and theoretical, and particularly of his ideas around urban vitality and renewal. His 1966 masterpiece, The Architecture of the City, is still a canonical text for architects and urban

planners. Rossi had a special sense for cities: having experienced the horrifying destruction of the Second World War, he felt a real commitment to rebuilding his country – but applied the same passion and ideas all over the world and in diverse cultural contexts.

Ferlenga adds that Rossi had ‘the sensitivity of a poet and the depth of a scholar’.

The exhibition has been divided into two main sections, one covering Rossi’s work in his own country (including the San Cataldo cemetery in Modena, designed with Gianni Braghieri in 1971 and still unfinished, and the Theatre of the World in Venice, designed in 1979), while the second explores his work abroad (including the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, Disney’s Celebration Place in Florida, the Hotel Il Palazzo in Fukuoka, and the Quartier Schützenstrasse in Berlin). Rossi was a committed traveller and passionate about the value of travel, as witnessed in his theoretical approach and his activity as a designer; the Theatre of the World, conceived for »

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The ‘Piroscafo’ bookcase could be regarded as a floating palace in which imagination and fantasy can sail free

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were walking through the Centro Fontivegge, the headquarters of Umbria’s regional council, which Rossi had designed. Construction had begun on the building in 1982 but had then been partly terminated in 1989, leaving numerous parts unfinished. Carlo Molteni, owner of Molteni & C and UniFor recalls, ‘The two were deep in conversation, but suddenly they stood still, their gaze fixed on the building’s large green glass façade, next to a chimney from the former Perugina chocolate factory. And here comes the stroke of genius: turn the façade of the building into a glassfronted display cabinet! In just a few months, their intuition took concrete form and, at the 1991 Salone del Mobile in Milan, four large compositions were presented, two featuring white façades and two with Prussian green, in a place of pride at our stand.’

Rossi became close to the Molteni family, even advising Molteni’s daughter Francesca on her choice of university subject (she is now a leading director of design films, see W*182). Recalls Carlo Molteni: ‘Aldo Rossi has been crucial for us, he was a guide. His legacy is very important to Molteni & C and UniFor, and he defined the company’s history for almost 20 years.

Today, our intention is to re-edit some of his most significant pieces to be part of the Heritage Collection, which includes other masterpieces, among them Gio Ponti and Afra and Tobia Scarpa.’ ∂ ‘Aldo Rossi, The Architect and the Cities’ is showing until 17 October at MAXXI, maxxi.art; molteni.it

Above, conceived in 1991

by Aldo Rossi and Luca Meda, the ‘Piroscafo’ bookcase was inspired by a building Rossi had designed in Perugia.

Its name means ‘steamship’ in Italian, and when the units are lined up together, they give the appearance of a steamship Above left, a ballpoint pen drawing by Luca Meda

‘Piroscafo’ image: courtesy Archivio Luca Meda IUAV

Paolo Portoghesi’s 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale (see W*264), was a floating theatre, positioned in front of Punta della Dogana for the duration of the event, and then sailed to and from Dubrovnik before being dismounted.

Rossi’s ability to think in big and small scales is clear in the ‘Piroscafo’ bookcase (the name meaning ‘steamship’ in Italian), conceived in 1991 for Molteni & C, with his friend Luca Meda, who then served as art director of the Italian company.

Molteni & C and its sister company, UniFor, are sponsoring the exhibition, and contributed original pieces from its archives as well as creating the museum’s display cases.

The ‘Piroscafo’ could be regarded as a floating palace in which imagination and fantasy can sail free.

Its design, featuring long, unbroken, windowed walls of wood and glass, references the houses on the rocky, windy Atlantic coasts of Portugal and Galicia, which Rossi discovered during one of his trips. The idea of a boat interested the architect, who, in his creations, was keen on abstract associations: a charming object in the middle of the ocean, able to move people and things.

Conceived like a building, it becomes host to objects, clothes, displaced memories, dreams and hopes. After 30 years, Molteni & C is now re-editing it in a warm spice colour with eucalyptus interiors.

The idea for the bookcase came during a winter walk in Perugia. One cold afternoon, Rossi and Meda

This page, Gemma fabric, available in 52 colours, and Gemma Multi fabric, available in 57 colours Opposite, Sander Lak, wearing a custom shirt made from Terra fabric in Tandem, photographed in February at his home in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles

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ew York designer Sander Lak set up Sies Marjan six years ago.

Last June, the label was shuttered, another casualty of the pandemic, but before its untimely demise, it had established a reputation for impeccable tailoring, a colour-focused approach and a feel-good point of view. And it went out on a creative high.

For his final A/W20 collection, Lak, a former design director at Dries Van Noten, took an esoteric deep dive into experimental sustainable practices, sponsoring and creating a capsule collection for the AMO/Rem Koolhaas’ exhibition, ‘Countryside, The

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Future’, which opened in February last year at the Guggenheim. The collection explored ideas of sustainability and eco-responsibility as Lak experimented with innovative material techniques and fabrications. These included a collaboration with Cornell University on an eco-printing technique where plants and flowers were hammered into silk to create prints, and transforming sustainable wool upholstery, developed from sheep sheddings

by Dutch textile artist Claudy Jongstra, into two sleeveless overcoats and a duffle bag.

The Jongstra collaboration introduced Lak to textile house Maharam. Jongstra’s Drenthe Heath fabric, named for the

indigenous Drenthe Heath sheep that she rears in northern Netherlands, and exclusive to Maharam, was custom-dyed using walnut husks, onion skins, indigo and madder to create a deep, rich kelp colour for the Sies Marjan collection. The textile was also incorporated into a limited run of Maharam pillows as part of a Sies Marjan x AMO capsule line, sold at the Guggenheim store.

This month, Lak and Maharam reveal a new joint effort – the development of three wool fabrics that join Maharam’s wool initiative, launched at the end of February.

Responding to growing interest in renewable natural fabrics, while taking a fresh look »

Design

WOOL POWER Sander Lak brings his killer colour instincts to a team-up with Maharam PHOTOGRAPHY: PIA RIVEROLA WRITER: PEI-RU KEH

Design Right and below, Sander Lak’s colour and mood boards used for developing the textile palettes

at classic textiles, the offerings include material made using post-consumer recycled wool, and wool that has been spun, woven and pressed at a single location to reduce the environmental impact of textile transport.

Lak has created a pair of woven felts – Gemma (with a solid and saturated finish) and its mélange sibling Gemma Multi (an intricate duotone that’s also reversible) – along with Terra, a chunky basket-weave wool that nods to his fashion background with its cable knit-like blooms. They reflect extensive colour experimentation, alongside the material depth and nuances in wool.

Offering a combined palette of 150 colours, the textiles bring a fresh perspective to what upholstery can be.

‘What was great about this project was that I had this incredible freedom,’ says Lak, who was born in Brunei, and grew up between Malaysia, Gabon, Scotland and the Netherlands. ‘When I’m working on a collection, we normally work with maybe 12 colours, which is already a lot. From a fashion point of view, there are so many things you have to think about for fabrics.’

Designing interiors textiles was a new experience. ‘Instead of me considering where on the body this would go and how I would line it, I really just had to look at the fabric and decide what colour this fabric, this texture and these fibres would take best, without having to worry about skin tones, hair colour, shape or washability. Of course, we have to look at which colours will sell well and which are more editorial, but we needed so many colours that it was the first time I really felt I could let it all come out of me.’

His approach to assembling this extensive array is simple. ‘I pick colours based on imagery that I collect. I don’t go through a Pantone book. I have a huge database of the most random images and I go through them and select by colour what is speaking to me,’ says Lak, who is currently working between LA and New York. ‘Without sounding like a Laurel Canyon hippie, it’s purely instinctual.

The way that I worked on this project is similar to how I work in fashion. I make boards of all these different colour samples, and then I just put them next to each other to see what works; I go outside in the afternoon to see what it looks like then, and in the morning, and under artificial light. I’m probably the only nerd in the world who is »

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Above, rolls of Terra fabric and folded stacks of Gemma fabric Right, Alvar Aalto’s ‘Stool 60’, upholstered in Terra fabric in Brunnera, with Terra fabric in Callais and Brunnera behind

excited by that, but for me, that is the most exciting thing, to find the shade that clicks.’

The palette that accompanies the woolly trio has been drawn from the ephemeral and the mundane, be it the buttery shade of cheese and crackers, the muted tones of milkshakes and smoothies, or the bold colour combinations of digital icons. Lak also looked to nature; ‘the subdued shades of plants that are almost dying or completely overwatered or over-thriving, and colours of the sky,’ he recounts. ‘All of these natural components completely overlapped with the reality of the pandemic home life.’

Lak also looked to the corporate colours of American brands like McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins. ‘I was drawn to using these aggressive, almost unnatural colours and making them feel more natural and subtle on very natural fibres. There was a lot of clashing, which is also reflective of what we are living through – a time of opposing emotions, where we are happy to have some quiet, but we’re also bored of quiet.

We’re scared, but we’re also kind of satisfied.’

‘Sander has a strong gut instinct about colour,’ says Mary Murphy, Maharam’s senior vice president of design. ‘In addition to arriving at colours that are unusual, Sander also likes mysterious colours, colours we don’t quite know, that change in different light.

He likes combining things that are a little bit

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‘Sander likes mysterious colours, and he likes combining things that are a little bit weird’ weird. The two felt wools offered a blank canvas for him to do whatever he wanted.

He could go crazy with the solid felt and the dyed fibres in the mélange version. His colour combinations created a lot of surprises. The mélange is my favourite because if you look closely, you can see different things.

‘For Terra, we wanted something that would complement the flat woven felts,’ she adds. ‘It’s the most textured of all the wools that we were working on. It is piece-dyed, so Sander wasn’t limited in any way by yarn colours. We wanted him to have free rein to express his point of view, which is definitely different. That’s why we collaborate and bring that different flavour to our line.’

None of the colourways’ references are explicitly named in the collection, but each

of Lak’s textiles possesses a memorable energy that emerges from their idiosyncratic depth and complexity. Enhanced by Maharam’s impeccable dyeing and manufacturing prowess, which adds resiliency to ensure the textiles stand up to both upholstery and vertical applications, the three new fabrics are just the start of more to come.

‘We’ve always said that we don’t want to collaborate with someone we wouldn’t want to have dinner with,’ says Murphy. ‘We want a long-term relationship. Even though it wasn’t quite as much fun because we couldn’t work face-to-face, we were still able to achieve something that we all feel good about. There’s also going to be another and another, so we still have time.’ ∂ maharam.com

Design

VEIN GLORY A rare marble adds that elusive exclusive touch to an elegant table design by Roberto Lazzeroni for Poltrona Frau WRITER: ALICE MORBY

Left, the larger ‘Infinito’ table, designed by Roberto Lazzeroni for Poltrona Frau, has been produced in a run of eight pieces. The tops are all cut from the same slab of green Rosso Lepanto marble

T

he ways in which nature can take us by surprise are limitless. Take, for example, a cave in Turkey that has long been mined for its reddishpurple Rosso Lepanto marble, but in 2018 unexpectedly produced a deep sage-toned slab with shades of darker green.

This ‘quirk of nature’ forms the basis of an upcoming limited-edition collection of tables, designed by Roberto Lazzeroni for Italian brand Poltrona Frau. ‘As always happens, we found a treasure that we weren’t looking for,’ says Nicola Coropulis, CEO of Poltrona Frau. ‘When we found the green Rosso Lepanto marble, we had no clue about what we were going to do with it.’

Coropulis was entranced by the marble and its origin story, and decided to buy the entire slab. He then reached out to Roberto Lazzeroni, a long-term collaborator, to tell him about the discovery. The pair played out ideas over dinner until Lazzeroni presented a plan to create a table. The design would draw on his cross-disciplinary experience in its engineering, while maintaining a focus on the materiality of the marble itself.

Lazzeroni was constrained creatively by the amount of marble available, but otherwise, he had carte blanche. ‘The only limit lay in the marble slab’s measurement,’ he says, noting that the marble block itself measured 240cm, but his design spanned 340cm. ‘My solution was to bring together two ellipses, and then cut and splice them on the diagonal in order to create a single geometrical figure.’ Comparing this final form to yin and yang, or the infinity symbol, the designer chose the name ‘Infinito’.

The design has been produced in a run of 72 pieces. The tables are available in two sizes, weighing in at a whopping 491kg and 286kg respectively. The larger pieces, eight in total, feature a double oval shape and two white »

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‘It is something exceptional, unique and unrepeatable,’ says Lazzeroni of the one-off green-tinged marble

marble supports, while the 64 smaller designs have a simple oval tabletop and a single base.

The nature of the material and its individual patterning makes every table unique.

Each has been crafted in Tuscany by expert marble workers, who painstakingly carve away at the green Rosso Lepanto to create its top, and sculpt its striking white base from Carrara using a high-tech milling process that makes use of a robotic arm with five rotary axes. ‘With this process, the knowledge of the material must be supported by advanced technological knowledge,’ says Lazzeroni, praising the skilled craftspeople who worked on the project.

Lazzeroni was born in Pisa, and studied art and architecture in Florence. Since the 1980s, his career has spanned art, architecture and design projects, including a number of collaborations with Poltrona Frau – ‘He is our partner-in-crime for many out-of-the-box ideas,’ says Coropulis. Notes Lazzeroni, ‘Art, architecture and design are three different worlds, but it’s undeniable that connections between them exist, and sometimes it

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happens that they influence each other.’

The collision between the disciplines is perhaps most evident in the world of collectible design, a market that has boomed in recent years and shows no signs of slowing. Brands are now wising up to the fact that limited-edition collections can offer a new kind of luxury. ‘The idea of luxury has evolved over time and has moved from being a symbol of opulence and ostentation to a more intimate concept, where exclusivity is the key word,’ says Coropulis. ‘Limited editions are important in enhancing the value of an object. Thanks to their exclusivity, they perfectly represent what a luxury item should be.’

With that in mind, ‘Infinito’ is about as luxurious as you can get, its exclusivity rooted in a one-off material that was a result of a natural mutation. ‘It is something exceptional, unique and unrepeatable,’ concludes Lazzeroni. ∂ Limited-edition ‘Infinito’ table, available in two sizes, prices on request, by Roberto Lazzeroni, for Poltrona Frau, poltronafrau.com

Clockwise from top left, the green-tinged Rosso Lepanto marble; cutting out the tabletop; the table’s base is made of contrasting white Carrara marble, sculpted in the shape of a tree with its branches opening outwards

Fashion The Paris-based Israeli fashion designer Alber Elbaz, shot via Zoom by iconic New York street photographer Bruce Gilden

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

Alber Elbaz’s new label eschews trends for a harder-working wardrobe PHOTOGRAPHY: BRUCE GILDEN WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

‘I thought, if I name my new label after my initials, people will think of Albert Einstein,’ chuckles Alber Elbaz over Zoom from Paris. With his bleached crop of peroxide blond hair, chunky glasses and monochromatic black tailoring, it’s also hard not to picture Andy Warhol. January saw the return of the renowned designer, who, to much industry jubilation, launched his new Richemont-backed womenswear label AZ Factory after a five-year creative hiatus.

A reference to the first and last letters of the designer’s name, the label sits somewhere between science and art, balancing the theorising of Einstein with the innovative creative production of Warhol.

‘What I’m doing here is solving problems all day long,’ says Elbaz of his ‘solutions-based’ label, which eschews seasonal collections in favour of direct-toconsumer drops of thematic, category-specific clothing.

Gone are the narrative-focused, dreamy creations that the Israeli designer was famous for during his 14-year creative tenure at Lanvin. In their place are clothes rooted in practicality, ones that respond to a woman’s wardrobe requirements. ‘Fashion week was always about the biggest cape, the shoes of the moment,’ Elbaz says. ‘My time away from it allowed me to observe life not just as a designer, but as a human being.’

AZ Factory’s first release was MyBody, a series of engineered knitwear designs, available in sizes XXS to 4XL, which features form-flattering asymmetric, puff-sleeve and bow-detail dresses in black, beige and high-energy hues like magenta and cherry. The brand’s AnatoKnit technology, which took eight months of testing, combines a series of knitting techniques that vary in density, supporting and celebrating the body with panels, compression points and perforations.

Designs also feature long gold zippers, acting as can-do costume jewellery and ensuring women are

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able to fasten their dresses without assistance.

Pieces are paired with pointed-toe sneakers, a hybrid footwear design that treads between sporty comfort and sophistication, elongating the leg with ease.

‘I thought, “a black dress?”. Is that all I can come up with?’ Elbaz laughs, reflecting on the focal silhouette of MyBody. ‘Then I realised, at this time that’s what we need.’ The designer spent half a decade conceiving AZ Factory, but its season-subverting, solutionscelebrating clothing has even more resonance in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, women require meticulously designed, hard-working clothing that will transcend trends. ‘We change less than we think,’ Elbaz says. ‘I see women running next to the Seine in the same outfits, day in, day out.’

Utilitarian, yes, but well-considered clothing can still be exuberant. The joy of Elbaz’s brand is that he can design with freedom, unconfined by industry restrictions. Other AZ Factory releases include Switchwear, a series of modular pieces that span leisure and eveningwear, including layerable, voluminous bubble-hem skirts and base-layer activewear pieces; and this spring’s SuperTech-SuperChic, a series of sculptural evening dresses, formed from comfortable nylon microfibre fabrics often reserved for sport.

‘Our company is like a fisherman’s boat, not a cruise liner,’ Elbaz says. ‘We can change direction in ten minutes. It doesn’t take us a week to make a new turn.’

Elbaz finds multiple meanings in the title of his brand. Beyond his own name, it also suggests a new beginning, and working on a whole alphabet of possibilities. ‘There’s something exciting about fashion that’s of the moment,’ he says. It could be a bag, a piece of jewellery or some pyjamas. ‘I’m creating pieces for a reason, not a revolution.’ ∂ azfactory.com

Design

Family values Brooklyn-based artist and designer Nifemi Ogunro is keeping her inspiration close and personal PHOTOGRAPHY: DANNIELLE BOWMAN WRITER: CAMILLE OKHIO

Family and function are interwoven in the world of design. A family of stools, for instance, gathered together to explore a certain theme or shape. A coterie of tableware, each piece related to each other so that every course can be enjoyed to its fullest. But Nifemi Ogunro, a Nigerian-American artist and designer, marries design to the concept of family in a more literal way. In her first, very personal, collection, she reaches for inspiration within her own immediate family.

Born in Lyon, France, 25 years ago, Ogunro moved to Colorado, and then lived in North Carolina – graduating with a degree in industrial and product design from Appalachian State University in 2017 – and Georgia before settling in Brooklyn, New York.

Throughout these moves, she’s had to bring her family with her in spirit, if not in the flesh. And so Ogunro’s closest relations came to inspire a series of functional objects. The collection comprises stools, for her parents, and a coffee table, for her brother. Partsculpture, part-furniture, the prototypes were all designed during the first few months of the pandemic.

‘The “Mrs Sola” stool is an inside joke,’ says Ogunro.

‘When I was growing up, my mother was always like, “I’m not your friend. Put a Mrs in front of my name”.’

It’s a sentiment any child of a Nigerian mother can understand – a healthy dose of respect and reverence is expected by parents from the most populous and loudest of African countries. ‘The “Tob(i)” stool was based on my father,’ she continues. ‘He’s an engineer, and people would always misspell his name as Toby.

And the “Tope” table bears my brother’s middle name.

It is the most abstract piece from the group, and I felt like only he would understand its beauty.’

With these objects, all humbly constructed from bent and glued wood, Ogunro explores affection and personal identity, giving a tangible, visible form to some of the experiences of many first- or secondgeneration immigrants to a Western country – that troubling moment when a quite simple name is mispronounced, or the terrifying time when your American friends call your mother by her first name.

Preceding Ogunro’s 2020 collection were more disparate experiments in design and representation.

There is her ‘Discombobulated’ side table (2019), constructed of solid wood with a finely finished circular top, a halved spherical base and a centrally placed structure connecting top and bottom in the shape of a ‘U’ – a form that recurs in much of Ogunro’s work.

It is also incorporated in her ‘Comb Concepts’, Afro picks inspired by memories of her mother detangling her hair. Each comb is hand-carved from wood, the oils and butters that are often applied in Black haircare routines only adding lustre and a desirable patina to the pieces with each use. »

Above, Nifemi Ogunro’s ‘Oddment’ side table in wood and concrete Opposite, the artist and designer in her Brooklyn home and studio, with her ‘Tob(i)’ stool, inspired by her engineer father

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Design Clockwise from top left, Ogunro’s ‘Tob(i)’ stool in plywood and maple; a shelving unit/plant stand in wood and concrete; the ‘Tope’ coffee table, inspired by her brother and ‘the most abstract piece’ in the new collection; the ‘Mrs Sola’ stool, named after Ogunro’s mother

Ogunro’s first independent work, the ‘Decompulsion’ coffee table, carries an encouraging story of self-trust.

‘I made the table for an assignment in 2015,’ she says.

‘An amazing professor of industrial design taught me how to weld. Three days before the project was due, I flipped the metal frame upside down and still got an OK grade.’ Ogunro was surprised by her luck: ‘Industrial design is really technical, so my professor giving me the freedom to explore was really nice.’

It was then that Ogunro learned to pay attention to her intuition. ‘Not everyone is going to have a rigid or super-structured way of working, and that’s OK.’ Recently the artist was included in a show at the swiftly expanding Bushwick design haven Lichen.

‘Open Studio’, organised in collaboration with digital design platform Pink Essay, brought together the work of a mass of young designers, many of them self-taught.

The show was a huge success, with many pieces (including Ogunro’s ‘Tob(i)’ stool) finding their way into both established and exciting new collections.

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Ogunro also sold work through ‘Super Group’, a show organised by Instagram platform Superhouse.

The untraditional format of both of these shows perfectly suits the nature of Ogunro’s practice. Though digital platforms have opened up new opportunities for young designers, Ogunro isn’t interested in commerce, digital or otherwise. ‘My driving force was never capital,’ she says. ‘I am devoted not only to design, but also to the sociological aspect of it. Design has the ability to inspire people, but it has also been the source of a lot of exclusion in society.’ For Ogunro, what is more important than the creation of the objects themselves is the creation of a safe space within a field that has been a locus of privilege and anti-Blackness.

‘Since I was in college, I’ve been interested in voids,’ she says. In her most recent work, it seems she has filled at least one, and in so doing has widened the space available for young people of colour within the world of art and design. ∂ nifemiogunro.com

Art

Opposite, architect Rafael Viñoly and gallerist Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn photographed at Salon 94’s new Manhattan location on East 89th Street This page, Chute Chandelier (prototype) (2021), custom designed by Philippe Malouin for the space, drops two floors down the gallery’s stairwell alongside an ornate, cast iron and marble oval staircase

LIGHT SOURCE Cultural hope springs eternal as Salon 94 opens the doors on its new Manhattan space

PORTRAIT: IKE EDEANI PHOTOGRAPHY: JASON SCHMIDT WRITER: PEI-RU KEH

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t a time where most art galleries and institutions are still oscillating between the real world and a virtual one, the contemporary art and design gallery Salon 94 has doubled down on in-person viewing with the unveiling of a new home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Located in a palatial, six-storey building built between 1913 and 1915 at 3 East 89th Street, the neo-Renaissance structure originally served as an exhibition hall, library and entertaining space for the philanthropist and scholar Archer Milton Huntington, and as an artist’s studio for his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. Designed by architect Ogden Codman Jr, who counted both the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers as clients, the building was created as an extension to the Huntingtons’ residence on Fifth Avenue next door.

In 1941, both properties were donated to the National Academy of Design, who used it as a museum and exhibition space until 2016. (They also built a third additional building next door.) These were put on the market as a whole, but ultimately sold separately, with Salon 94’s founder Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn buying 3 East 89th Street for a cool $22.3m in June 2019.

‘My husband had seen the buildings on the market.

This last one available was the middle building of the

Above, the gallery’s rare porte-cochère entrance with Bronze Bench #3 (2003) and Chandelier (2004), by the late American artist Betty Woodman, and Bench (2021), by young Brooklyn artist Thomas Barger

National Academy. We walked in and I immediately thought it would make an amazing gallery,’ recalls Greenberg Rohatyn, an Upper East Side local. ‘We walked out and I actually didn’t bring it back up for a month or so, because when we’re looking at spaces together, it’s always with an eye to move, especially when our children leave home. Thinking of a space as a gallery involves an entirely different muscle. That’s what started in my head and I couldn’t let it go.’

With its rusticated limestone base, tan brick façade and elegant piano nobile, the building is hard for any art dealer to resist. ‘In the room on the second floor, which we call the Stone Room, you could really see the potential,’ she says. ‘To have a column-free space with so much ceiling height, and on the Upper East Side, is rare, as is the porte-cochère entrance.’

To bring the 17,500 sq ft mansion up to date, Greenberg Rohatyn turned to her friend, architect Rafael Viñoly, who has collaborated with her on three other projects over the years – her home on 94th Street, and the gallery’s two other locations downtown.

(In anticipation of the move uptown, Salon 94 Bowery quietly closed its doors last November, but its Freemans outpost continues to stage exhibitions.)

Working over a period of almost 18 months, Rafael Viñoly Architects oversaw the renovation of the »

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Above, Receiver (2019) and I Can Hear Everything You Think (2020), by PakistaniAmerican sculptor Huma Bhabha, in the Stone Room, which features a marble chequerboard floor and a trio of fan-shaped windows Right, Ballet Table (2020), by Gaetano Pesce, surrounded by Poly Rainbow 60 chairs (2020),

by Max Lamb, with Untitled (evening) vase (2020), by Californian artist Ruby Neri, in the ground floor gallery space

building, bringing a seamless quality to the project that underscores the building’s history. ‘One of the best things we’ve done is not to try to unify the rooms, but rather keep them more or less as they were,’ says Viñoly.

‘The proportional and volumetric condition of the building is like a museum in itself. The rooms are large, which is what moved Jeanne to buy it in the first place, and how you circulate through is pretty unique.’

The firm revitalised the marble and granite portecochère, which serves as the gallery’s point of entry, restored the herringbone brick paver floor and coronet light fixtures, and installed a new ceiling. The entryway leads to a 14ft-high gallery space, accented by penny-tile flooring and a wood-formed concrete ceiling. A lift provides access to the galleries and offices on the upper floors, but an ornate oval staircase, with its cast iron banisters and nostalgic grandeur, offers a more scenic route. On the second floor, the Stone Room boasts Doric pilasters with fluted shafts, Caen stone walls, round-arch bays and a chequerboard floor, made from Hauteville and Belgian Black marble, and encircled by richly patterned Rosso Merlino marble. A trio of fanshaped windows with gilded espagnolettes open onto views of the Guggenheim Museum opposite.

‘When you see the space, you understand the guts and the vision, because obviously it is a major investment. It’s not your Chelsea gallery type thing. »

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New works by Japanese sculptor Takuro Kuwata (top), from his show ’Zungurimukkuri (Roly Poly)’, and Brooklyn artist Derrick Adams, from his show ’Style Variations’, both currently showing at Salon 94’s new gallery

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This has an added layer where some family transformed it into a party place; God knows what they did there,’ jokes Viñoly. ‘I, for one, don’t believe that it’s a major piece of architectural style, but it has its value because it carries a certain image of a way of living on Fifth Avenue and the Upper East Side. Now the signals are maintained but dimmed down so you don’t really focus on them – because it’s all about the walls and how the walls frame the art. The important things were structural modifications. It’s what you would call minor surgery, certainly not plastic surgery.’

The gallery’s programme of rotating exhibitions began in March with a triple header of solo shows

by Brooklyn artist Derrick Adams, Japanese sculptor Takuro Kuwata and the late French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Greenberg Rohatyn also enlisted some of the designers she represents, under the Salon 94 Design banner, to create permanent, site-specific elements. Each was born simply ‘out of practicality,’ she says. ‘We wanted a beautiful chandelier in the stairwell and I felt that Philippe Malouin was the right designer to make something spectacular. It was just a straightforward call from there.’

Malouin’s statuesque sandblasted chandelier drops down two floors through the building’s stairwell.

Other custom pieces include limestone sconces by Max Lamb in the Stone Room, nylon benches by Kwangho Lee in new colourways on the first floor, and furniture by Tom Sachs in some of the gallery’s meeting spaces. The staff offices feature black nylon desks by Malouin, a new addition to his ‘Nylon Industrial Office’ collection, and in May the gallery will reveal a bathroom designed by Lamb using curved, cobalt blue tiles from Japanese brand Tajimi Custom Tiles.

The building’s third floor houses the Wood Room, a mahogany-panelled office for Greenberg Rohatyn, custom-designed by Viñoly. ‘I challenged him to reimagine what a wood-panelled room would be like today, given that the wood panelling here had been destroyed,’ she recounts. The harlequin-patterned wall panels are inlaid with concealed brass hardware in each corner for hanging art. ‘You can change the hanging positions of the art without disturbing the geometry of the surface,’ explains Viñoly.

With a café, shop and artist residency in the works, Salon 94’s new flagship location brings with it the conviction of a full cultural recovery. ‘Covid allowed us to slow down and take a step back,’ says Greenberg Rohatyn. ‘It’s been a reset for both myself and my team, a chance to rethink what the gallery represents and what we are going to be in the future. Space can change your point of view, and I like that movement forward.’

‘Even in this crazy moment of the pandemic, it’s the kind of place that will come back very strongly,’ sums up Viñoly. ‘It’s really a unique revitalisation and a private contribution to the famous Museum Mile.’ ∂ salon94.com; rvapc.com

Photography (Takuro Kuwata): Dan Bradica, (Derrick Adams): John Berens. All artworks courtesy of the artists and Salon 94, New York

‘When you see the space, you understand the guts and vision, because it’s a major investment.

It’s not your Chelsea gallery type thing’

Art Right, Kader Attia in his Berlin studio. At the time of our interview, the artist’s reading material included Sigmund Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents, the work of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and a book on the economy of attention

PAGE TURNER

Kader Attia’s artworks, addressing culturalism, colonialism and capitalism, speak volumes

Kader Attia’s breakthrough work, Ghost (2007), began as a cast of his mother. Childhood memories of seeing her in prayer prompted the artist to wrap her in layers of aluminium foil as she knelt. He then repeated the process until he had a crowd of 40 figures, arranged neatly in a grid. Viewers approach the figures from behind, mimicking the perspective from which Attia would have encountered the long, narrow spaces that often served as mosques in the Paris of his childhood.

PORTRAIT: MAX CREASY WRITER: TF CHAN

Only when they reach the other end of the installation do they realise that the figures’ burka-like hoods each conceal not a face, but rather a haunting void.

Despite its beginnings as a personal gesture of filial love, Ghost is mostly about wider, weightier ideas, among them the perception of religion, the search for a sense of belonging, and the promises and pitfalls of multiculturalism. These complex themes have long fascinated Attia: his first sculpture, titled The Dream »

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Photography: Axel Schneider. Courtesy of the artist, Simon Studer Art and Galleria Continua

Art

Machine (2003), showed a figure staring at a vending machine stocked with purportedly halal versions of items – pork products, alcohol, a visa card – that are either forbidden in the Islamic faith or intertwined with ideas of modernity. Conceived in the aftermath of 9/11, ‘it was an ironic way of showing how racialised communities also mirror what the dominant society is producing or consuming,’ recalls Attia. ‘There’s this idea that non-white people have to become white inside, all the while staying the basis of society, the slaves of capitalism.’ He considers the work to be an early form of a critique he can make about today’s gig economy: ‘Uber says its drivers are not employees, but rather their own CEOs. And I think this sort of neoliberal rhetoric is very dangerous, because it shows that colonisation continues. The extraction of values from the racialised body continues.’

Born in 1970, Attia grew up between a Paris banlieue and Algeria, a former French colony and the country of his ancestors, and struggled to figure out where he belonged.

‘My father used to tell me that, as a migrant, the most important thing is neither the kind of place where you live, nor the one you’re going to find. The most important thing is the journey,’ he says. His upbringing inspired a yearning for travel: in his twenties, he

worked for three years at an NGO in Congo.

During this time he put on his first show, a series of images documenting a journey along the Congo River on what he calls a floating city: ‘It was one boat carrying 1,000 people and then attached to it, about five other boats without motors, each with 1,000 people living on them.’ He was the only foreigner apart from two missionaries, who were translating the Bible into Pygmy; among the passengers was a man travelling with three crocodiles, their mouths tied with raffia. The journey impressed on Attia the shock brought by capitalism to these remote regions.

‘What drives me to travel is not only the need to find the traces of what I’ve read in books,’ Attia says, ‘but also the reaction of these locations to the contemporary global order. I’m not into the idea of the journey as a sort of ethnologist or anthropologist, but rather as a philosopher or artist. Cultures always counteract a hegemony, particularly when the hegemony comes from another culture that is occupying it, a Western one.’

Attia’s next project explored the fringes of modernity in a different way: back in Paris, he stumbled upon a café frequented by transgender Algerians, many of them illegal immigrants who had recently fled civil war in Algeria and were now doing sex work to »

Top, The Object’s Interlacing (2020) at the Kunsthaus Zürich; the Doha iteration will feature the same video projection but a different set of copied African artefacts Above, Attia’s Chaos + Repair = Universe (2014) suggests hope for healing

‘My father used to tell me that, as a migrant, the most important thing is the journey’ ∑

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Above, Ghost (2007), as installed at Le Tri Postal in Lille, 2011-12

make ends meet. He befriended them, awed by their courage to live authentically in a world where their gender and migrant identities made them doubly alien: ‘For me, they were really the incarnation of total bravery.’ These friendships resulted in the series The Landing Strip (2000-02), showing moments of happiness amid hardship.

With its defiant joy, The Landing Strip gives a voice to dispossessed groups that have often been forced to hide in silence. Attia continued this work in the 2011 video piece Collages, travelling to Mumbai with the journalist and transgender activist Hélène Hazera to visit communities of hijras, who identify as third gender and often struggle to fit into Indian society (their exclusion is in part a legacy of British colonial law, which categorised them as criminals and deviants).

He is equally interested in how nonWestern cultures have resisted colonialism.

He mentions his grandmother, who melted down jewellery made from old colonial coins and sold it to support resistance efforts during the Algerian War of Independence.

Similarly, while travelling in Asia, Attia came across hair jewellery forged from the coinage of French Indochina. ‘Silent resistance that works through craft productions are, for me, the first signs of reappropriation, which will one day become a revolution,’ he contends.

This month, the rich and varied strands of Attia’s work come together in a major solo exhibition at the Mathaf Arab Museum of

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Modern Art in Doha, curated by its director Abdellah Karroum. Titled ‘On Silence’, the show highlights the effects of postcolonial trauma and the need for ‘repair’. It is at once global in scope, including works such as Ghost, and conceived specifically for what Attia considers ‘one of the most hindered regions in the world today’, the Middle East.

‘I’m thinking about the last 20 years, how Americans have destroyed Iraq, how Israel is with Palestine, how Saudi Arabia is driving a colonial war in Yemen. There’s an unbelievable continuity of colonialism today.’

In his view, silence, or an unwillingness to confront tumultuous histories, has normalised colonial domination, and ‘On Silence’ is a valiant effort to criticise today’s perpetrators as well as awaken the silent enablers.

Crucial to the show are two new installations. The eponymous On Silence comprises a roomful of prosthetic limbs suspended from the ceiling. Attia deliberately sought out items bearing traces of their former owners: ‘I wanted something that really speaks by its own texture and patina of a used object, that whispers of political violence,’ he explains. Many were sourced from Syrian refugees, but the intent of the piece is broader: ‘Prosthetics refer mostly to landmines in war-torn places like Angola, Vietnam and Palestine, places where colonial domination happened. And you can be amputees physically but also traumatically.

Most of the time, they’re both.’

The other new installation, The Object’s Interlacing, takes on the issue of cultural looting by former colonial empires. Attia, who has long been interested in the question of restitution, has created an hour-long video piece that stitches together interviews with key players in the debate, including Serge Guezo, an activist for the preservation of cultural heritage in Benin and descendant of King Gezo of Dahomey, and the greatgrandnephew of the French general who sacked Gezo’s palace. Attia’s objective is not to advance a particular agenda, but rather to highlight the artefacts’ significance, and the complexity of untangling their histories.

Opposite the projection will be 27 replicas of African artefacts (some of them crafted in Senegal, others 3D-printed in Germany) appearing to watch the film alongside the visitors, reinforcing the idea that history has its eyes on today’s decision-makers.

Given Attia’s choice of subjects and the weight of his ambitions, it is easy to imagine him as a tortured soul, frustrated by our inability to heal the wounds of our troubled past. But he calls himself an optimist, crediting a love of art and philosophy for his faith in human virtue. ‘I’m not optimistically naive,’ he qualifies. ‘If we need to struggle against very complex, powerful forms of repression or dominance, we need relevant artworks, and relevant discourse.’ ∂ ‘On Silence’ is on until 19 December at Mathaf, Doha, Qatar, mathaf.org.qa; kaderattia.de

Photography: Jean-Pierre Duplan. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nagel Draxler

Right, still from Reflecting Memory (2016), a video work exploring phantom limbs as an allegory for collective trauma

NEW FLAMES

Ceramics brand 1882 Ltd joins with four creative talents to rethink the candleholder PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM BARCLAY WRITER: ROSA BERTOLI

British ceramics brand 1882 Ltd has launched a new collection of candles, with a bespoke scent, in ceramic holders designed by some of its most celebrated collaborators.

The candleholders – though that description doesn’t really fit their ambition – were created by designers Max Lamb, Bethan Gray, Snarkitecture, and conceptual artist Bruce McLean. Longstanding collaborators with 1882 Ltd, the four were chosen to celebrate the diverse range of techniques and aesthetics that the brand has been

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championing since it was set up in 2011 by daughter-and-father founders Emily and Christopher Johnson.

After a career in advertising in LA, Emily returned to London to study design, where she spotted a gap in the market for designled, British-made ceramics (see W*242). Her family’s ties with Stoke-on-Trent’s artisanal heritage date back to the year 1882, when the Johnson Brothers started producing ceramics there. The brothers’ company grew rapidly and eventually became part of the Wedgwood

Group in 1968. Christopher, a fourthgeneration Johnson, had been running the family business, and was invited to join Wedgwood, where he stayed as head of production until his retirement in 2002.

1882 Ltd strives to promote creative talent, while drawing on its founders’ multi-generational knowledge to support the ceramics industry of Stoke-on-Trent.

Working with a network of local suppliers, Emily and her father have grown the brand and are now moving some of their »

Design

This page, ‘Dissolve’ candle, in collaboration with Snarkitecture, and opposite, ‘Crockery’ candle, with Max Lamb, both in fine bone china, £185 each, from WallpaperSTORE*. The ceramic designs, among a series of four, each contain a candle featuring a signature scent – a mix of sandalwood, amber and earthy florals. Once the candles are burnt, the object remains to be enjoyed

Design

‘Bruce McLean said, “Let’s make a ceramic garden with a bird”, and so we did’

Clockwise from top, work in progress for an upcoming collection that 1882 Ltd is working on with Shona Heath for Jo Malone; ‘Lustre’ candle in collaboration with Bethan Gray, in fine bone china, £225; and ‘Ceramic Garden’ candle, with Bruce McLean, in fine earthenware, £185, both from WallpaperSTORE*

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production to Wedgwood’s factory, built in the late 1930s, in the nearby village of Barlaston – a process she describes as ‘going back as close to the mothership as humanly possible’. The bright, state-of-the-art facility will allow 1882 Ltd to amplify some of its more experimental and research-based work, including designer collaborations.

The new candleholders are additions to the four collaborators’ existing collections for 1882 Ltd. Lamb’s offering joins his Crockery collection of bone china tableware, cast from moulds he carved in plaster and rendered with his signature beautiful imperfection.

Snarkitecture adds to its series of vessels designed to reveal the artisanal process behind their creation, their otherwise sleek surfaces interrupted by unexpected texture.

Gray’s design expands her Lustre collection, featuring 22ct gold decals that create captivating motifs. And McLean builds on his Garden Ware series of vessels decorated using a silk screen decal.

The candleholders represent a distillation of each designer’s collection into a single piece, enhancing their aesthetic richness.

McLean, for example, considered his creation to be more than a candleholder. ‘He said to me, “Let’s make a ceramic garden with a bird”, and that’s what we did,’ recalls Emily.

‘People who haven’t always worked with ceramics come and design a collection unbiased,’ she says. ‘They’re not aware of the limitations of the materials, which means that they push the boundaries.’

Simultaneously, 1882 Ltd is developing a series of home accessories for British brand Jo Malone, created by set designer Shona Heath. ‘This is one of the most fantastical collections that we’ve worked on,’ says Emily.

‘Shona’s imagination is just incredible, the way that she is able to transfer her vision through to us is fantastic.’

The common thread of these creative collaborations is the brand’s craftspeople.

‘The people who make our products are a fundamental pillar of our company,’ says Emily, who is expanding its apprentice scheme. ‘We need to ensure that the industry continues, and we can do that by having a younger generation working. But in order to do that, you need to be making some pretty interesting stuff. If you make interesting things, you’ll attract interesting people.’ ∂ 1882ltd.com; store.wallpaper.com

Architecture Icon The enigmatic exterior and (below) pared-back interior of St Peter’s church, Klippan, completed in 1966

LIFE LESSONS

Stockholm’s ArkDes museum celebrates Sigurd Lewerentz’s architecture for body and soul Those unfamiliar with Sigurd Lewerentz may be intrigued by how he is characterised in books and articles. Despite being one of Sweden’s most admired architects, he is regularly described as ‘enigmatic’, ‘mythical’ or even ‘obscure’. Born in Bjärtrå, northern Sweden, in 1885, Lewerentz was indeed a quiet figure; he published almost nothing about his built projects, and would reject invitation after invitation to speak at international events – a stark contrast to his publicity-savvier contemporaries, such as architect Erik Gunnar Asplund.

Stockholm’s ArkDes museum is cutting through some of the misconceptions surrounding Lewerentz with its October 2021 exhibition ‘Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life’, designed by London’s Caruso St John Architects. The exhibition (as well as its accompanying 700-page monograph,

PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHAN DEHLIN WRITER: NATASHA LEVY

out in May) features objects, models and drawings created by Lewerentz over the course of his career, and is the first extensive display of his work to take place since the 1980s. ArkDes’ director Kieran Long says the exhibition’s title hints at the idea that, while Lewerentz might have been intensely private, his architecture sought to connect with human life at almost every level. ‘There’s his famous buildings, which are existential, they’re about life and death and profound themes of what it means to be a human being.’ But, adds Long, other works tapped into Lewerentz’s clear understanding of our more everyday desires. ‘He had a long career and, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, was engaged with shopping, drinking, listening to jazz, living in a modern metropolis, and having fashionable clothes, interiors and expensive, luxurious furniture.’ »

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Architecture Icon Right, Lewerentz’s 1925 Chapel of Resurrection in Stockholm’s Woodland Cemetery features white mosaic floors and lofty ceilings.

The elegant triple window signifies the chapel’s link with heaven Below, the architect’s mausoleum for his friend Ernst Malmström stands next to Erik Gunnar Asplund’s family grave for Hjalmar Rettig, in Stockholm’s Northern Cemetery

The more obviously ‘life and death’ focused projects bookend Lewerentz’s almost seven-decade career. In 1915, aged 30, he and Asplund won a competition to design a new cemetery for Stockholm’s southern Gamla Enskede district. Their winning proposal became what is now known as the Woodland Cemetery, a Unesco World Heritage site since 1994. While Asplund focused on devising plans for the cemetery’s built structures, Lewerentz took charge of the landscaping, creating a deep-rooted connection between the site (a former gravel pit overgrown with pine trees) and its surrounding natural terrain. Gravestones are embedded among the soaring trunks of mature trees, while visitor footpaths wind past reflective ponds and grass-lined hills. The one building designed by Lewerentz, the Chapel of Resurrection, is regarded as a prime example of Nordic Classicism for its ornate entrance portico and lofty interiors.

By 1963, Lewerentz was 77 but showing no sign of slowing down. He started work on St Peter’s, a church in the small Swedish town of Klippan. Widely considered his finest work, the building looks discreet from the outside, revealing little – it comprises two slightly ominous dark-brick volumes that are punctuated by just a handful of narrow rectangular and square windows. A similarly inscrutable façade can be seen on Lewerentz’s 1960 St Mark’s church in Stockholm’s Björkhagen district. ‘His work doesn’t come with an instruction manual, it doesn’t come with a set of things from him that says, “here’s what it all means”,’ says Long. ‘It can be hard; you turn up at his very mysterious, strange, unique buildings and you have to think for yourself.’

Inside St Peter’s, more bricks cover the floor, walls and barrel-vaulted ceiling of a sombre nave, sparingly decorated with metal pendant lamps and simple wooden chairs that stand in place of traditional pews. Towards the entrance of the nave is Lewerentz’s unusual take on a baptism font: a huge conch shell that is suspended above a deep chasm in the floor. The room then slopes down towards a heavy, weathered-steel structural beam that’s arranged to resemble a cross, before culminating with an immense altar that’s also crafted from bricks. »

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Architecture Icon Left, the circular courtyard of Stockholm’s National Insurance Institute, designed

by Lewerentz in 1932

‘Lewerentz’s mysterious, unique buildings don’t come with an instruction manual. You have to think for yourself ’ The long period between these existential works is when Lewerentz took on projects that spoke to the more light-hearted elements of everyday life. In 1930, he and Asplund were designated as head architects for the Stockholm Exhibition, a four-month fair that encouraged Swedish citizens to engage with modern ways of living. As well as championing notions such as standardisation and mass production, the landmark exhibition drew attention to progressive architecture movements such as functionalism, with which Lewerentz would eventually become associated.

The architect tapped into his graphic design skills to fashion the fair’s distinctive wing-shaped logo (a symbolic nod to the idea that Swedish society was moving forward), but also found himself designing exhibition stands, temporary cafés and display homes of the future, as well as the wallpaper, furnishings and musical

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instruments that he imagined would appear inside. ‘He was involved in the life of the city; not as his functionalist colleagues were.

He was always interested in our shallow selves,’ explains Long. ‘I also think it’s to do with imagining the reality of human life – there are a few architects who do that.

Architects of the modern period tend to see humanity as a problem to be solved, whereas Lewerentz saw us in our appetites.’

A few years later, in 1932, Lewerentz completed a workspace for the National Insurance Board in Stockholm’s Norrmalm district. Rectilinear in form, it features a pale stucco exterior and rows of uniform square windows – essentially, a conventional office block. But behind the building’s façade, the architect turned playful, creating a cavernous internal oval courtyard that channels light throughout the office’s plan. Inside, the space was dressed with his custom-designed pieces produced by Blokk (later known as Idesta) –

a company he co-founded, dedicated to making furniture and interiors fittings.

Then, in 1933, Lewerentz collaborated with peers Erik Lallerstedt and David Helldén to design the Malmö Opera, an unadorned yet striking steel-framed structure with expansive glass windows and a sweeping marble-clad lobby, still seen by many today as a functionalist masterpiece.

Although some of his projects are well known, Lewerentz, who died in 1975, stayed largely under the radar. Perhaps because of this, those who do come across his work forge an intimate connection with it, ‘almost as if they’ve discovered him all for themselves’, suggests Long. Now, with the upcoming exhibition, it seems Lewerentz will receive the wide acclaim he has always deserved. ∂ ‘Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life’, 1 October 2021 – 28 August 2022, ArkDes museum.

A book of the same title is published by ArkDes and Park Books in May 2021, arkdes.se; park-books.com

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URBAN EXPLORER

Counterspace is the fast-emerging South African architectural practice commissioned to create the latest Serpentine Pavilion in London. Here, its founder Sumayya Vally takes artist and photographer Mikhael Subotzky on a whistle-stop tour of their adopted hometown, Johannesburg PORTRAITS: MIKHAEL SUBOTZKY WRITER: ELLIE STATHAKI

Looking at each individual project by Sumayya Vally, it’s hard to pinpoint a ‘signature’ look or subject. There are installations, film and sound pieces, projects around food, community-focused schemes, fine art research, and traditional building works. Yet zoom out and examine her portfolio as a whole and her fascination with the ‘city’ becomes clear. Listening to her talk reveals even more: Vally is ‘obsessed with Joburg’.

Vally grew up in an apartheid-era township in Pretoria called Laudium. She credits the tight-knit community, ‘strong urban atmosphere’, and her experiences of going to a Muslim school from a young age and living in a relatively small space with informing her sense of community and city. Witnessing many people transcending that small-town context, through their work or studies, also played its role.

But it was Johannesburg that shaped Vally’s architectural approach and her passion for urban

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space. She often spent holidays with her grandfather, who owned a store in the city. Eventually she studied for the second part of her architecture degree there (architecture studies in South Africa include two parts in university, usually split by a break in practice).

During this time, she admits to being completely taken by the varied, rich, urban environment of South Africa’s largest city. ‘I was obsessed with the city; reading it, understanding it, drawing it, filming it, absorbing it,’ she recalls. ‘I became really concerned that, after graduating, I would lose what that felt like, and that is how Counterspace was born, as a response, refusing to become jaded.’ Vally set up her practice in Johannesburg in 2015.

Working in the city before completing her studies– practising architecture at an NGO, and conducting research and installation projects for several national museums – proved transformative. ‘I had a lot more »

Architecture

PONTE CITY, BEREA Vally in an apartment on the 51st floor of Ponte City, a landmark 1976 development with an eclectic history. The residential skyscraper, Africa’s tallest, was the subject of an acclaimed 2008 project by artists Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse

Architecture

YEOVILLE DINNER CLUB (ABOVE) AND MINE DUMP, EAST RAND (OPPOSITE) Above, Vally at Yeoville Dinner Club on Rockey Street with chef Sanza Sandile (right) and friends Opposite, the architect recycled mine dust and pigments for her 2018 Folded Skies installation

exposure to what was actually going on in the city,’ says Vally. ‘Seeing how people find ways to function economically, understanding ritual practices of the city – seeing how belief systems, for example, filter down into how people live. This can birth different or new kinds of architecture that we may not be focusing on in school. This is really rich ground to create architecture.’ And why shouldn’t buildings be created by taking into account different uses and ways of life?

This is exactly the point between formal and informal architectural space- and place-making that Vally likes to unpick. ‘My work is focused on how architecture can be social and public and inclusive and diverse, but it’s from the perspective of a deep social project. There is this layer about history, future and archive that is left out [of mainstream architecture] at the moment.’

Over the years, Vally explored multiple areas of Johannesburg, choosing different communities to focus on. All of these places influenced her practice, she admits. There is Bree Street, an economic hub for

the Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora, which helped her understand forms of trade in the city; and Ntemi Piliso Street, home to her grandfather’s store, where she spent much of her childhood and first encountered Basotho textiles, and their ‘language’ and meanings.

Using this kind of ‘urban reading’, zooming in and out of cultural hotspots of activity, Vally followed her instinct and picked work that allowed her to develop her interests – a lot of it in the realm of research.

In 2018, she worked with Yale University’s Denise Lim on the archive of artist Mikhael Subotzky (who shot the portraits on these pages) – in particular, his collection of trash from Ponte City. Created in 1976, the 54-storey cylindrical building (W*80) became iconic in Johannesburg, starting off as a desirable place for European expats, but later designated a ‘grey zone’ (an apartheid-era term for areas where people of colour could live). It changed character completely during the last decades of the 20th century, due to population shifts and the political situation in the country, »

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BREE STREET TAXI RANK, CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT Vally studied the area, an economic hub for the Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora, as part of her research on trade in Johannesburg

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Categories • Most tactile tech design • Best use of colour and tech • Smartest furniture design • Smartest lighting design​​​​​​ • Best collaboration (tech + design brand) • Best life-improving / wellbeing design • Application of nature and tech / best sustainable design • Best-looking television design • Best use of re-used materials in tech • Smartest luggage / carry-on bag • Sleekest portable speaker • Zippiest personal mobility • Domestic genius tech • Ingenious home application • Most influential social media tech tool • Wine & Design award for best home bar accessory • Most intelligent multitasking object • Most stylish personal / wearable tech • Go-ahead transportation service • Fittest-looking home gym equipment • Work from home award for best desktop tech

Nomination deadline: 24 June 2021 Winners announced: 30 July 2021 For more information about the awards and how to enter, visit: www.futureevents.uk/ smartspaceawards

Architecture

YEOVILLE RIDGE (LEFT) AND SUBOTZKY STUDIO, MABONENG (RIGHT) Left, Vally on Yeoville Ridge, with the Ponte City tower in the background Right, in Subotzky’s Maboneng studio, with some of the artist’s works in progress

becoming home to people from all over the world.

Subotzky and artist Patrick Waterhouse collected the rubbish left behind when developers bought the building in 2008 and started to clean it out; the pair’s project is now part of the collection at SFMOMA. Johannesburg’s infamous mine dumps (great mounds of waste on the sites of disused mines) in Booysens, Soweto, East Rand and West Rand also attracted Vally’s attention. Her research on the dumps and surrounding issues – socio-economic systems, belief systems, toxicity, racism, climate change – and how they affect the formation of cities, became a display at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015. ‘It is a reminder of how segregated our city is,’ she says. Later, a pigment research part of the project became the Folded Skies mirror installation for the Spier Light Art festival in Stellenbosch in 2018.

‘I worked on researching how to recycle the mine dust and pigments from run-off to tint mirrors to reflect the colours of Johannesburg skies at different times in the day,’ says Vally. ‘There is

a myth in Joburg that our skies and our sunsets are iridescent because of all the toxic dust.’

The city’s Yeoville Market, Fordsburg and Little Mogadishu in Mayfair, home to South Asian and Muslim immigrants, have a particular significance in Vally’s Pan African Plates, an ongoing project looking at how different communities gather around food.

North-east of Pretoria in Mapoch, a village that maintains the traditions of the Ndebele people, she learned about the culture’s shapes and their meanings, for Ndebele Geometries. The project, a mobile installation to help children learn about mathematics through the distinct shapes found in the painted façades of Ndebele homes, is currently in development.

Digging a little deeper into Vally’s projects, it becomes clear that there are strong, common threads running through all of them – the notion of archive; ideas of coexistence and mixing of cultures, segregation and common ground; and how our background, be it cultural or political, can affect the way we live and structure our urban environment. These are themes »

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that tie strongly into Johannesburg life as Vally experiences it, but also life in South Africa as a whole.

‘The nature of growing up in South Africa certainly informed my practice,’ she says. ‘On the home scale, the community scale, the urban scale, in the way I think about segregation.’ They are also themes that feel universal and can apply to anywhere migration has taken place – which is, on some level, most places.

This layering of design, history, culture and archival research in the creation of architectural output that speaks to its place and users has become a speciality for Counterspace. In 2019, Vally was invited to apply her perspective to the annual Serpentine Pavilion in London. Counterspace is the youngest studio to be awarded the commission; the pavilion will be the first built work of its kind by the fast-emerging practice.

Delayed by the pandemic, it will be unveiled this year.

While Vally’s proposal includes the traditional physical structure (in this case to be made of cork and bricks from recycled construction waste), the project has grown branches that reach far beyond the pavilion’s usual remit at Kensington Gardens. ‘I didn’t want it to be an aesthetic manifestation, but I felt that it needed

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As part of her research for Counterspace’s Serpentine Pavilion commission, Vally explored various migrant communities in London, including Whitechapel, known for its British-Bangladeshi market and shops (top left and bottom left); Church Street Market in Paddington, a hub for Edgware Road’s Middle Eastern population (top right); and Brixton Market, where Afro-Caribbean stallholders are fighting against rising gentrification (bottom right)

to be a representation of my ethos as a practice,’ she says. ‘I wanted to bring other voices into the pavilion.’

Rather than working on the physical structure first, Vally approached the concept from the opposite direction. ‘The intent to read, and draw in other places and neighbourhoods came first, and then I went into the form-making of the pavilion,’ she explains.

She researched migrant communities in London and photographed a series of spaces, especially gathering places, that represent, or used to represent, various migration waves and groups. ‘Some of the places existed but have now been erased,’ she says, flagging up as examples areas in Brixton, Hackney, Edgware Road and North Kensington. Her research includes anything from event posters to music records.

Spaces of cultural production that, she feels, were not widely recognised at the level they deserved, play a prominent role. Case studies include one of the first venues to play Black music in the UK, the Four Aces Club in Dalston; the Centerprise publishing house that was a centre for the West Indian community; the Theatre of Black Women (Britain’s first Black women’s theatre company, operating during the 1980s); the »

Architecture

‘I felt that the pavilion needed to be a representation of my ethos as a practice; I wanted to bring other voices into the project’

Top and above, designed to be built using Portuguese cork and bricks made of construction waste, Counterspace’s Serpentine Pavilion will feature textures, shapes and gradients to reference places in London of importance to migrant populations

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iconic Mangrove Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill; the first mosque in London; and informal venues, such as the sites of festivals and sidewalk events.

Vally treated the pavilion as a place to bring these forms of gathering and cultural manifestation together and into Hyde Park in an abstracted form. It is a design planned to encourage both one-on-one and larger encounters, both organised (through a programme of events) and casual – all this, of course, planned before the pandemic hit. ‘Now there are different kinds of opportunities to engage with, and we are developing projects that will have a life of their own, beyond the pavilion,’ she says. Counterspace’s Serpentine Pavilion is currently planned to go ahead for a June opening, unless the pandemic throws another unexpected curveball; either way, its intention and spirit are emblematic of Vally’s approach to architecture.

Meanwhile, more built work is underway – a mixeduse building in the Crown Mines area of Johannesburg is due to complete this year. Larger-scale architecture, cultural projects in particular, is something Vally is keen to focus on in the future. ‘The slowness of research, the faster pace of installations, and then building too – all these speeds catalyse and inform each other,’ she says. Eventually, it all feeds back to the city, how we read it and how we push it, and the discipline of architecture, forward – in Joburg, and beyond. ∂ counterspace-studio.com; serpentinegalleries.org

MAY IS ALL ABOUT...

INNER GLOW AND OUTER STRENGTH p158 BEAM TEAM Task and table lamps that shine brightly p170 INTO THE WILD Furniture for the great outdoors p180 FRESH START Crisp new tailoring p194 BROTH TAKING Artist Park Seo-Bo’s janchi guksu ∑

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In The Market For...

From left, ‘Blade’ lamp, price on request, by Baxter.

‘Daphinette’ lamps, £309 each, by Tommaso Cimini, for Lumina Italia, from Aram. ‘Oblique’ lamp, £305,

by Vincent Van Duysen, for Flos. ‘Beacon’ lamp, price on request, by Léonard Kadid.

‘Daphine Tavolo’ lamp, £445,

by Tommaso Cimini, for Lumina Italia, from Aram

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OUT OF THE DARKNESS

Task and table lamps with star qualities get their moment in the spotlight Photography Lea ndro fa r ina Interiors Olly m ason

In The Market For...

This page, ‘Yuh’ lamp, £505, by GamFratesi, for Louis Poulsen, from Aram Opposite, ‘O’ lamp, from £1,044, by Elemental, for Artemide. ‘John’ lamp, €545, by Tobias Grau

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In The Market For...

This page, ‘Fontanella’ lamp, 450, by Federico Peri, for FontanaArte Opposite, top, ‘Anthracite Coal’ lamp, £750, by Jesper Eriksson. ‘Fossilised’ lamp, 2,000, by Jesper Eriksson, for Spazio Nobile Bottom, ‘Urano’ lamp, £1,200, by Elisa Ossino, for Salvatori

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This page, from left, ‘Phare’ lamp, €150, by Stanislaw Czarnocki, for Menu. ‘MO310’ lamp, £368, by Mads Odgård, for Carl Hansen & Søn.

‘W154 Pal’ lamp, €237, by Dirk Winkel, for Wästberg Opposite, ‘Buds 3’ lamp, £766, by Rodolfo Dordoni, for Foscarini, from Aram

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In The Market For...

This page, ‘28t’ lamp, €676,

by Omer Arbel, for Bocci Opposite, top, ‘Flamingo’ lamp, €1,600, by Nika Zupanc, for Ghidini 1961 Bottom, ‘Meridian’ lamps, from €159, by Ferm Living in collaboration with Regular Company

In The Market For...

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This page, from left, ‘Night Owl’ lamp, €201, by Nicholai Wiig Hansen, for Fritz Hansen. ‘Cestita Alubat’ lamp, £504, by Miguel Milá, for Santa & Cole. ‘Chispa’ lamp, €130, by Joan Gaspar, for Marset Opposite, ‘Last Order’ lamp, £375, by Michael Anastassiades, for Flos, from Aram For stockists, see page 193 Interiors assistant: Markos Ioannides

Space From left, ‘Ora’ lantern, €175, by AYTM. ‘Onde’ sofa, price on request, by Luca Nichetto, for Gandia Blasco.

‘Borea’ table, from £1,214,

by Piero Lissoni; ‘Ginepro’ table, £3,264, by Antonio Citterio, both for B&B Italia.

‘Clubhouse’ armchair, £360,

by Big-Game, for Tectona

NIGHT AND DAY Round-the-clock pieces for the great outdoors Artwork six n fiv e Interiors olly m ason

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Space From left, ‘Biscuit’ coffee table, from €8,710, by Massimo Castagna, for Exteta. ‘In Vitro’ lights, from £1,150, by Philippe Starck, for Flos. ‘Sunray’ chaise-longue, price on request, by Rodolfo Dordoni, for Minotti

Space

From left, ‘Venexia’ armchair, £2,520, by Luca Nichetto, for Ethimo. ‘Plein Air’ table, from €2,990, by Michael Anastassiades, for Roda.

‘Nodi’ sofa, price on request,

by Yabu Pushelberg, for Tribù. ‘Ola’ chair, from €477, by Radice Orlandini, for Potocco

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This page, from left, ‘Tres’ outdoor rug, from £1,160, by Nani Marquina and Elisa Padrón, for Nanimarquina.

‘Ginger’ bollard lamps, from €397, by Joan Gaspar, for Marset. ‘Net Club’ armchair, from €1,331, by Kettal Opposite, from left, ‘Trampoline’ sofa, from £4,580, by Patricia Urquiola, for Cassina. ‘Kida’ hanging lounge chair, €2,395, by Stephen Burks, for Dedon.

‘Bush On’ planter, from €2,050, by Gordon Guillaumier, for Roda

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Space From left, ‘Atlante’ sofa, from £9,400, by Antonio Citterio, for Flexform.

‘Globe’ outdoor lamp, £259,

by Ligne Roset. ‘Chopstix’ dining table, €7,860, by Paola Navone, for Janus et Cie. ‘Cannolè’ coffee table, €436, by Anton Cristell and Emanuel Gargano, for Emu. ‘Petale’ chair, price on request, by MUT Design, for Expormim For stockists, see page 193

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PIN SHARP Crisp tailoring and bold lines keep our flâneurs focused Photography A lex a ndr e guir k inger Fashion Benoit M artinengo

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Fashion This page, jumper, £840; shirt, £440, both by Missoni. Tie, £155, by Charvet. Trousers, £198, by Acne Studios Opposite, jacket, £1,950; shirt, £395; trousers, £650, all by Celine Homme

by Hedi Slimane. Tie, £155, by Charvet. Shoes, £1,150, by John Lobb.

Socks, £20, by Falke

This page, top, £145, by Margaret Howell Opposite, jumper, £645; trousers, £515, both by Loro Piana. Belt, £135,

by Margaret Howell

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Left, shirt and tie set, £695; trousers, £695; jacket, price on request, all by Louis Vuitton Below left, shirt, £2,990; trousers, £4,030, both

by Bottega Veneta Below right, jacket, £1,480; shirt, £545; tie, £165; trousers, £735, all by Prada Bottom, jacket, £1,950; shirt, £1,450; trousers, £950, all by Fendi

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Left, jacket, £379; shirt, £290; trousers, £299, all by Boss. Sunglasses, £360, by Lindberg Below, jumper, £1,250; belt, £830; trousers, £830, all by Hermès

Fashion

This page, top, price on request, by Boramy Viguier.

Shirt, £395; trousers, £395, both by Margaret Howell.

Belt, £150, by Uniforme Opposite, jacket, £450,

by Lemaire. Shirt, £330,

by Charvet. Shorts, £315,

by Ernest W Baker.

Shoes, £495, by Church’s

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This page, Zacharie (left) wears shirt, £350; tie, £150; trousers, £2,250 as part of a suit, all by Giorgio Armani. Shoes, £495,

by Church’s. Tony wears shirt, £350; trousers, £2,250 as part of a suit, both by Giorgio Armani. Tie, £155, by Charvet.

Shoes, £1,015, by John Lobb Opposite, jacket, £1,155; shirt, £350; trousers, £500, all by Salvatore Ferragamo.

Shoes, price on request,

by Boramy Viguier

Fashion This page, jacket, £2,200; roll-neck, £700; trousers, £690, all by Dior. Shoes, £750, by Y/Project Opposite, jacket, £3,910 as part of a suit; jumper, £620, both by Brunello Cucinelli.

Shirt, £390, by Uniforme

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Jacket, £419, by APC For stockists, see opposite Photography assistant: Chloé May Truong Fashion assistant: Pauline Mosconi Local production: Cinq Étoiles Productions Grooming: Michal Bielecki at Bryant Artists Casting: Svea Casting Models: Zacharie Villot and Melvil Termini at Success Models, Marius at Tomorrow Is Another Day, Lamine Faty at The Claw, Tony Collet at New Madison

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Aram aram.co.uk

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Exteta exteta.it

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Fendi fendi.com

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Boramy Viguier boramyviguier.com

Flexform flexform.it

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Bottega Veneta bottegaveneta.com

FontanaArte fontanaarte.com

Brunello Cucinelli brunellocucinelli.com

Fritz Hansen fritzhansen.com

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Cassina cassina.com

Georg Jensen georgjensen.com

Celine Homme

by Hedi Slimane celine.com

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Acne Studios acnestudios.com

B&B Italia bebitalia.com

Carl Hansen & Søn carlhansen.com

Charvet at Mr Porter mrporter.com Church’s church-footwear.com

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Dedon dedon.de Dior dior.com

Emu emu.it

Gandia Blasco gandiablasco.com

Giorgio Armani armani.com

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Artist’s Palate

PARK SEO-BO’S Janchi guksu ‘Teema’ bowl, £16, by Kaj Franck, for Iittala; ‘Goa’ chopsticks, £24,

by Cutipol, both from Amara.

‘Stellar’ wallcovering in Pierogi, $23 per yard, by Maharam For stockists, see page 193

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#120

Noodles are associated with longevity in Korean culture, so it’s fitting that a noodle soup, janchi guksu, is a favourite of painter Park Seo-Bo, who turns 90 this year. A founder of Dansaekhwa, a monochrome style that emphasises repetition and tactility, Park played a pivotal role in shaping postwar Korean art and remains active to this day. His new London show reinterprets his pencil and oil works as vehicles for collective healing: ‘my slower movement of pencil tracings overlap on top of one another to reveal the passage of time,’ he reflects. His wife Yoon Myeong-Sook has written up his recipe featuring step-by-step photographs for preparing the anchovy broth, which Park favours for its ‘clean taste’.

Park is at White Cube Bermondsey until 1 May, whitecube.com. For his recipe with step-by-step photographs, see Wallpaper.com ∏

FOOD: LEI SAITO INTERIORS: OLLY MASON WRITER: TF CHAN

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