Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i AZURE

Earlier this year I had occasion to swing through Kansas City, the Midwestern U.S. hub whose metro area straddles the border between Missouri and Kansas. Beyond its jazz history and top-notch barbecue, I didn’t have much of a picture of the place before alighting there. As it turns out, KC is a stealth architectural hotbed, serving as the main or regional base of a bevy of A-list firms (including HOK, BNIM, Helix and DRAW) and dominating the field of stadium design (category leader Populous is also headquartered there). In addition, the relatively small city of just under half a million people has become both a fabrication powerhouse (local institution Zahner, a metal company founded in 1897, today helps everyone from Frank Gehry to Bjarke Ingels realize their fantastic visions) and…

While carbon taxes and single-use plastics have become topics of modern-day water-cooler conversation, Italian furniture manufacturer Rimadesio has been on a mission to reduce its environmental footprint for nearly 14 years. “We recognized the need to act on sustainability,” says CEO Davide Malberti. “Good intentions and communications were no longer enough.” The company started small, switching to water-based paints for glass materials in 2006. Bolder moves soon followed: A photovoltaic system, now the largest in the Italian furniture sector, was installed to help meet the company’s energy demands. Standard packaging was replaced with a variety composed of 90 per cent recycled materials and polystyrene was completely eliminated. Now, Rimadesio has set out to solve one of its – and the entire furniture industry’s – thornier challenges: how to reduce waste,…

_Smart Suspension Systems _A Cool Cave Dwelling _Emotional Illumination In an architecturally diverse setting like Mexico City, where buildings spanning a vast range of eras and styles rub shoulders with one another, establishing a new landmark that holds its own isn’t easy. But architect Francisco Gonzalez Pulido has done just that with Alfredo Harp Helú Stadium, the new home of the Diablos Rojos del México, the nearly 80-year-old local Triple-A Minor Mexican League baseball team. Located in Magdalena Mixhuca Sports City, originally developed to host the 1962 Mexican Grand Prix and the 1968 Summer Olympics, the stadium features a massive trident-shaped cantilevered roof and a carefully orchestrated lighting plan. In a direct allusion to the team’s name, Mexican-born, Chicago-based Gonzalez Pulido (along with local architect Alonso de Garay of Taller…

MILANA BY MARSET Barcelona-based designer Jaume Ramírez devised a pulley and counterweight system to bring literal movement to his modular suspension lamps for Marset: The lights can be moved up, down and sideways as needed. Furthermore, the cylindrical LED base with built-in lens can be left unadorned to direct illumination straight downward or paired with one of the various conical shades available to diffuse the glow in a more ambient manner. Bases and shades are offered in black and oyster white. marset.com BELT BY FLOS An intriguing prototype presented by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec at Salone del Mobile earlier this year, Belt is a combination of elements with the potential to redefine suspension systems. Strips of super-thin leather – some pliable, some inflexible – distribute either light, weight or electricity.…

For a project that’s had to navigate choppy political seas since it surfaced two years ago, it’s perhaps appropriate that Sidewalk Labs devotes so much of its MIDP’s attention to stormwater management. The cluster of tall timber buildings the Alphabet subsidiary has proposed for the five-hectare Quayside district will include so-called “blue roofs” that rely on sensors to mitigate the effects of unexpected flooding. In typical projects, developers must build subsurface holding tanks to contain excess runoff. Sidewalk’s plan, by contrast, is to create rooftop reservoirs and use a combination of weather forecasting technology and sensors to continuously regulate the amount of water they’ll contain. Up top, that water may be used to irrigate green roofs, or it can be released into swales and other planted areas at street level…

October The Innovators Issue What new building has most impressed you recently? STEFAN NOVAKOVIC Azure’s Web Editor England’s Nevill Holt Opera, designed by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, is a Leicestershire barn repurposed as a theatre (pictured). It’s an extraordinarily inventive example of adaptive reuse. The building has no foyer, so a simple lawn is now a sort of grand lobby for operagoers. What a transformation. Who do you consider the most innovative designers working today? NAARO Photographers, “Making Light Fall” (page 78) Zaha Hadid Architects. They’re still among the big leaders when it comes to architectural innovation, in large part because of their capacity to test and implement their design and technological research in actual buildings and objects. What recent technological innovation do you feel holds the most promise? BIANCA WYLIE…

_Battery Park _Cape Town, South Africa _dhk Architects Hot on the heels of 2017’s Zeitz MOCAA/Silo Hotel complex – Heatherwick Studio’s globally lauded repurposing of decommissioned grain silos in Cape Town, South Africa – comes another ambitious waterfront project in the city: Battery Park, a 1.2-hectare canalside oasis by local firm dhk Architects, whose mandate could be regarded as even more daunting than that of Heatherwick. In addition to serving as a key entry point to the V&A Waterfront, one of Cape Town’s most visited tourist destinations, Battery Park also had to camouflage a 1,206-spot parking garage, reinvigorate its underused Canal District location with new attractions and amenities, serve as a link to surrounding neighbourhoods and do justice to its historic precursor: the Amsterdam Battery, a one-time fort and then…

_Pier 35 _New York, New York _SHoP Architects and Ken Smith Workshop These days, more than a few of New York City’s piers – relics of another, more industrial age – are being reinvented as parks and other public spaces, creating challenges both visual and spatial for the designers charged with transforming them. In the case of the Pier 35 redevelopment, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, SHoP Architects and Ken Smith Workshop had an especially imposing neighbour to deal with: a massive Department of Sanitation shed. What to do? As Cathy Jones of SHoP explains, “you refocus attention to the real attraction,” which at Pier 35 is a delirious view of both the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, the Financial District and Brooklyn. A slanting lattice wall positioned just in front…

How do you transform the dim confines of a 200-year-old Georgian winery into a luminous five-star hotel? You turn to legendary German lighting designer Ingo Maurer, as the Radisson Hotel Group did after taking over a crumbling 4,000-square-metre site in the village of Tsinandali, about two hours from Tbilisi. “When they offered this to me, I was unsure if I could take it,” says Maurer, “because we had never done a project of this size.” Well-known for his inventive takes on contemporary lighting, the 87 year old was tasked with developing an artistic plan for the hotel’s public spaces, including the lobby, restaurants, lounges, a shop, meeting rooms and a ballroom. “Fortunately for us, the building had very strong walls,” he says, “so we didn’t have to recreate much.” Maurer’s…

When I arrive at A/D/O by Mini in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I am struck by how the squat, full-block building communicates itself as something old yet new. The graffitimarked brickwork is of a piece with the (rapidly gentrifying) industrial neighbourhood, but the patio is shaped as if someone has sliced off a triangular wedge from the one-storey volume, providing a jolt of the novel and exciting. It’s a sun-showery May afternoon during NYCxDesign and I’m here to learn about A/D/O and specifically its Urban-X accelerator. But I also want to experience the eminently Instagrammable installation in the courtyard. Called Urban Imprint, it’s composed of two terracotta-coloured layers – a floor and a ceiling – connected by a hidden system of steel springs and pulleys. When you step onto the floor, your…

Upholstery Collections 1 Taconic The five patterns in Taconic were inspired by the natural phenomena of Appalachia, where designer Joseph White grew up, such as sun dappling the forest floor and shadows on the foothills. Patterns Five, in up to 12 colourways Applications Upholstery Manufacturer Geiger, geigerfurniture.com 2 Future Tense Suzanne Tick’s newest series consists of expressive graphics and striking solids that can be mixed and matched to play with scale and tonality. Shown is Schema (on backrest), a shifting graphic, and Actuate, a textured basket weave. Patterns Five, in up to 16 colourways Applications Upholstery, multi-purpose Manufacturer Luum, luumtextiles.com 3 Etch Emulating the variations in orientation and rhythm found in hand-drawn lines, Hella Jongerius’s Etch has a vibrant sense of movement. Patterns One, in six colourways Applications Upholstery Manufacturer…

Explorer Table While Jaime Hayon’s Explorer side tables for BD Barcelona Design are sure to add a playful touch of colour to any interior, be warned: The collection might also invoke a serious hankering for sweets. The Spanish designer picked up a little inspiration from the candy store for this series, balancing rounded tabletops on capsule-shaped legs that mimic jelly beans. He also suggests the idea of a space vessel about to launch as another influence, which explains the moniker. Exhibiting Hayon’s trademark blend of elegance and whimsy, Explorer – one of three new collaborations with the Barcelona furniture brand – combines matte and glossy finishes and a triptych of components: painted glass top, cylindrical lacquered-fibreglass base and four solid turned-wood legs. Various multicolour iterations are available, in warm neutrals…

_Bar Ramona _Amsterdam, Netherlands _Studio Modijefsky In Amsterdam, brown cafés are as iconic as tulips and canals. Named for their swaths of dark wood covering nearly every surface, these cozy, smoke-stained watering holes are also the inspiration for the warm, rust-hued interior of a new eating and drinking spot, Bar Ramona, in Amsterdam West. Studio Modijefsky, the interior architecture firm behind the establishment’s concept and design, envisioned the space as one run by a fictional woman – the daughter of a bar owner – who spent her childhood in a brown café. “We imagined Ramona as a girl with a style of her own, who has a taste for funky music and is a bit edgy,” says Esther Stam, Studio Modijefsky’s founder. “If she were to open her own bar,…

_Stationsplein Bicycle Parking _Utrecht, Netherlands _Ector Hoogstad Architecten In the Netherlands, the bicycle reigns supreme, thanks to the country’s extensive networks of paths and parking garages designated for bikes. But when cyclists get to those lots, they often have to walk their rides up and down a series of ramps before finding an available spot. In Utrecht, the Rotterdam-based practice Ector Hoogstad Architecten has created an alternative to this slow and taxing process. The cycling crown jewel in the proudly bike-friendly city, which boasts 335 kilometres of dedicated routes, is a three-tier parking structure beneath the elevated pedestrian square, or Stationsplein, at Utrecht Central Station. Punctuated by a monumental skylight-studded canopy that soars above the square, the garage is a triumph of urban infrastructure that revolves around safety, speed and…

“Light is my medium,” says François Roupinian. “I like to bring a very sensory experience to it.” The principal and creative director of Montreal-based Lightemotion, Roupinian began building and tinkering with lamps as a teenager. “My background is eclectic: In the 1990s, I worked major underground techno events for the likes of Daft Punk and The Chemical Brothers; lighting was a crucial if subtle part of the experience. Then I went to the National Theatre School of Canada in 1997. In theatre, I learned how to be mindful and sensitive to the needs of all the creators…the actors, dancers, makeup artists, costume and set designers.” That resulting philosophy is evident throughout the more than 200 projects that Roupinian has completed since he founded his design consultancy in 2002. His body…

Two years ago, Brooklyn studio Trueing seemed to materialize out of thin air when it snagged the Emerging Designer award at New York’s ICFF with an eccentric yet chic table lamp called Janus. It was astonishing considering the lamp was Trueing’s first realized product and the young founders – Josh Metersky and Aiden Bowman – hadn’t formally studied design. They did, however, share a deep appreciation for the subject matter. “I’ve been a subscriber to Architectural Digest since I was five,” laughs Bowman. The two crossed paths, rather amusingly, by swiping right on Tinder; during their courtship, they decided to pursue design projects together without quitting their day jobs (Metersky developing fixtures for lighting designers and Bowman working in marketing communications for companies such as BIG). “We really didn’t expect…

Let’s start with some praise: Sidewalk Toronto’s proposal is a welcome compendium of enlightened design thinking today, presenting a wealth of core design ideas that read like genius solutions and no-brainers all at once. Reading through Volume 2 of the MIDP, I often found myself asking, Why aren’t we already doing this? At 307 Lake Shore Boulevard East, Sidewalk’s Quayside hub, those ideas find form in a physical model: a mock-up of the Quayside site abounding with wood mid-rises. The model’s buildings are skeletal and meant only to convey that mass timber is the main building block of this potential development. But in the MIDP, Michael Green Architecture, Snøhetta and Heatherwick Studio have visualized voluptuous renderings of a Parliament Plaza (the central gathering node) where tall wood performs feats –…

Composites 1 Industrial Look With three light to dark grey tones and three surface textures, Cement Project by Cotto d’Este is based on the industrial beauty of exposed concrete. Texture Work evokes the board-formed variety, complete with subtle wood-grain and textural imperfections. The panels are available in six sizes (up to 300 by 100 centimetres) and three thicknesses, and can be installed in horizontal or vertical configurations. cottodeste.us 2 Light Monochrome A new addition to Rieder’s exterior cladding is Pietra, a series of stone-inspired hues. The five complementary colours range from Cotton, a light beige, to medium sand-like Almond. The line is available for the Concrete Skin, Öko Skin and Formparts portfolios. rieder.cc 3 Brushed Surface A sanding process using coarse grit results in the subtly textured surface of the…