Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2024 i AZURE

Where does culture get made? How is culture experienced today? These questions and many more came up early and often during the ideas meetings that led to the issue you now hold in your hands. Rather than focus on the iconic formats — like galleries and opera houses that contain art — we wanted to discuss the types of culture that are emerging and how places are being designed to accommodate them. We also wanted to get super-meta and interrogate how architecture culture itself thrives and falters in connecting with the masses. “Language Barrier,” Sydney Shilling’s excellent essay on the subject (page 80), is a conversation about and meditation on what the profession can do to make design discourse accessible to those outside the industry. In the projects we feature…

1. The Brief Manhattan apartments rarely live up to the ones that you see fictional New Yorkers inhabiting on television. Quarters, the second-floor Tribeca space opened by Brooklyn lighting studio In Common With this past May, is a notable exception. Mind you, even if the setting feels like a residence, it’s actually a showroom. Or is it a bar? “First and foremost, it’s a store,” explains Nick Ozemba, who co-founded In Common With six years ago alongside Felicia Hung. “Everything is for sale. But the way that we wanted to sculpt the retail experience was through this idea of hosting people.” Staged to evoke someone’s cozy living quarters, the hybrid setup invites clients to admire products in situ by day, then encourages them to come back for a drink by…

A trip to the concrete jungle for May’s big industry events might bring expectations of boxy minimalism. But rather than reflecting their surroundings, exhibitors at ICFF and NYCxDesign seemed eager to deliver quaint escapism. Many embraced an earthy palette of mossy greens and muddy browns that made a natural complement to sophisticated woodwork. Adding to the countryside spirit, bulbous proportions evoked the cozy hobbit homes that open The Lord of the Rings. Other designs engaged more directly with fantasy, either by depicting supersaturated realms or by referencing characters and themes from ancient lore. Forged bronze lighting and hardware offered yet another connection to Tolkien’s powerful ring. Is New York the one design week to rule them all? Not quite — but it had plenty of magic in store.…

Designers Alexis Tourron (left) and Stefano Panterotto are out to subvert outmoded furniture archetypes — hence their self-initiated 2019 concept for a five-piece flat-pack furniture collection that weighs less than 20 kilograms. Or their speculative couch that fits in an envelope, developed for Ikea’s now-defunct SPACE10 research and design lab. “We’re always thinking about the future of living — and working — and how the way we live is evolving,” the duo says. “We explore themes of global mobility, of relocating often, and how current furniture is not ready for that.” Panterotto (from Italy) and Tourron (from France) founded their studio, Panter&Tourron, in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2016 after meeting at and graduating from ECAL. Positioning themselves at the juncture of design, technology and society, the creatives consider future impact and…

For most design students, a graduation project is an exercise in aspiration. It’s the culmination of several years of study and research, the goal of which is to coax a company or more established designer to hire you for an internship or entry-level job. But for Esther Jongsma and Sam van Gurp, the founders of Dutch lighting brand Vantot, their thesis at the Design Academy Eindhoven became the foundation of a now-flourishing company. The project — Exploded View, a series of pendants that examines dimmability through the positioning of a moveable LED in relation to a gridded lampshade with a mirroring foil reflector — caught the eye of Microsoft, which commissioned the pair to create a custom version for its headquarters in Seattle. “It was one of the things that…

Designing for resilience in the face of a changing climate is more important than ever. With an ambitious lineup of CEU-accredited talks — keynotes, panels and workshops — AZURE’s inaugural Human/Nature conference boasts a multidisciplinary roster of inspiration, information and opportunities for collaboration between A&D professionals. Among our renowned keynote speakers is Kongjian Yu, founder of Beijing landscape firm Turenscape and the recipient of the 2023 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander Prize, whose marvels include the award-winning Fish Tail Park in Nanchang City and Tongnan Dafosi Wetland Park. His talk is part of the event’s extensive programming on regenerative landscapes, including panel discussions like “The Green Public Realm” and “Forecast for Hotter Cities.” In the latter, Dorsa Jalalian of Toronto firm DIALOG and Rasmus Astrup of Danish landscape firm SLA, among others,…

A HOME IS SO MUCH MORE THAN A HOUSE. The humble property of Nick and Chris in Toronto’s Little Portugal has long served as a cultural hub with a tacit mi casa es su casa open-door policy. It’s the favourite hangout for a group of friends that gather regularly to watch movies projected onto the home’s back wall on summer nights, to share meals and just to “crash.” The 130-square-metre abode is itself something of a social creature: It’s situated in the middle of a set of row houses dating back to the late 1800s on a lot that was cheaply built up, possibly to accommodate rail workers. When they bought it over eight years ago, the couple split the residence into two apartments — one for themselves on the…

Design industry merchandise has long carried its own form of niche cultural cachet — a faded Alessi T-shirt or souvenir Molteni&C tote is sure to earn you a knowing nod from a fellow subway rider. But at this spring’s trade fairs, novel brand extensions were more prominent than ever, and an increasing number of products now position furniture-maker logos akin to fashion labels. During Copenhagen’s 3daysofdesign festival, branded brews were the toast of the town. Hay collaborated with the Danes at Carlsberg to reimagine their beer can in blue and green stripes, while Muuto teamed up with craft brewery To Øl for custom booze stamped with the furniture-maker’s slogan, “New Perspectives.” More than just a place to launch products, design fairs are a chance for manufacturers to express their overall…

AI-GENERATED DESIGN The 18 patterns in Shaw Contract’s rug and broadloom Awaken series began as paintings. Designers then turned to A.I. to blend elements of the different artworks together before making final adjustments by hand using digital drawing tools. VIDEO CONFERENCING MEETS IRL Steelcase created its Ocular Sightline range with hybrid workspaces specifically in mind. In addition to facilitating easy eye contact for natural in-person conversation, each table features a tapered form that ensures everyone can comfortably see off-site colleagues being broadcast onscreen at the end of the room. But that’s not all: The tables are also designed to work alongside conference webcams like Logitech’s Sight, helping its dynamic lenses frame each participant and highlight speakers. FROM HEALTHCARE TO DESK CHAIR With a background in medical equipment, Steven Dufresne, CEO…

Designing a light fixture is an intrinsically material and hands-on process. Yet the A.I. images saturating the Internet — dreamlike lamps, interiors, houses and more — might have us believe otherwise. All are irrefutably magnificent but ignore a core element of what constitutes design: the ability to build it in real life. More often than not, these otherworldly creations will simply never exist in the physical realm. Polishborn, Amsterdam-based product designer Jaro Kose, however, is exploring a return to materiality in the form of table lamps, a chandelier and a large floor lamp handwoven from recycled PLA filaments. Constructed from fibres that are normally fed into a 3D printer, the up-and-comer’s new series, “I Am Not A Robot,” harnesses a process of discovery that centres the human spirit of play…

IN SIDE PLATO CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY in Ostrava, Czechia, several visitors stand around a wall gaping in fascination. They are gazing not at art but rather at a portion of the wall that is slowly rotating open. Thick and putty-grey, the massive moveable architectural feature is adorned with the traces of the window and door once integrated into this part of the building’s facade. As it slowly opens into a position fully perpendicular to the structure, the wall reveals the view outside to the Ostrava Stodolní train station across the way and the gallery’s surrounding green space. The rotating wall is one of six facade features in this transformation of a 19th-century slaughter-house into a new contemporary gallery for the city. Through these openings, art crosses the threshold of the…

The Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900 may be best remembered for giving rise to the Eiffel Tower, but the monumental event also left behind another enduring City of Lights landmark: the Grand Palais, which returned to the spotlight this summer as a venue for the 2024 Olympic Games. Granted, before the Art Nouveau building was ready to host tae kwon do and fencing matches, it had to get back into shape. Thankfully, it had a good trainer. Since 2021, Chatillon Architectes has been working on a loving refresh of the historic 72,000-squaremetre monument based on careful study of archival plans by the original designers: Henri Deglane, Albert Louvet, Albert Thomas and Charles Girault. Olympians experienced the first stage of this ongoing transformation, which stripped away walls in the glass-roofed nave…

With her Bamboo Mood living room collection for Roche Bobois and a takeover of the Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts in Paris, Jiang Qiong Er has had a momentous year. The artist–designer, who also co-founded the luxury craft brand Shang Xia with Hermès in 2009, has developed a philosophy of how to integrate culture — specifically her Chinese culture — into design. “When it’s physically present as a real visual element, it’s limited by time. What I try to bring is the spiritual dialogue,” she says. “It could be a style, a philosophy, a proportion, a kind of emotion. It could be the sensibility when the wind blows on you. It’s abstract and therefore timeless.” We spoke with Qiong Er about three of the sources of inspiration reflected in…

To say that Yinka Ilori had a major moment at NeoCon would be an understatement. Across Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, the British Nigerian designer’s debut commercial textiles and wallcoverings line with Momentum served as the trade show’s unofficial branding this year; visitors flocked in droves to snag a coveted tote bag adorned with the collection’s graphic motifs (which were out of stock by Monday afternoon). People might have come for the merch, but they stayed for the infectious energy that radiated from floor to ceiling in Momentum’s showroom — a modern Wonka factory rendered in sweet, candy-like hues that offered a refreshing change of pace from the contract market’s often subdued palette. But beyond the joy they inspire, the patterns boast a narrative quality that has become a through-line in Ilori’s…

CLAY NATION Yurii Zhukov and Oleksandr Puzyrnyi formed Clayp in 2021 as a platform to reconceptualize Ukrainian modern design through an eco-conscious lens. Along with lead designer Alisa Tiramisova and a team of skilled artisans, the brand crafts its weird and wonderful lighting and interior objects from mineral-rich clay that is sourced from deposits throughout the country. Blended with other natural materials like herbs, plants, marble dust and recycled paper fibres, Clayp’s one-of-a-kind illuminators are dried at 34 degrees Celsius to minimize energy consumption and reduce their carbon footprint before being packaged in cardboard for shipping (the brand is currently researching new packaging materials that are even more environmentally friendly). And when the light has reached its end of life, it will biodegrade without leaving a trace. Sustainable and stunning…