Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2019 i AZURE

I was telling a colleague recently about how grateful I always am when, after settling onto an unfamiliar barstool in an unfamiliar bar, there’s a tiny hook under the lip of the bar on which to hang my tote or coat. “Oh, that’s considered,” my colleague said. “Did you say considerate?” I said. “Well, it’s that, too,” she replied. “But I said considered.” What she meant was that someone – a designer or manufacturer – had gone to the trouble of putting those hooks under that bar lip, had considered the likely needs of the patrons sidling up to it and outfitted the bar accordingly. As a frequent traveller (and, er, barfly), I am always appreciative of the design gestures – big and small – that make the experiences of…

TAMassociati exists on a completely different plane from starchitecture. The Venice firm first caught the world’s attention in 2016, when it curated the Italian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Under the theme of Taking Care, it launched a crowdfunding campaign to design and build a series of mobile facilities, including a not-for-profit medical clinic and a library. Now the studio – whose portfolio also includes Indian director Mira Nair’s Maisha film school in Kampala, Uganda (pictured top right) and a car-free co-housing development in Treviso, Italy – is garnering praise for its pro bono projects with Italian NGO Emergency. It has created permanent hospitals and surgery centres in places such as Sudan and Afghanistan and is completing a hospital in Uganda with Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Earlier this year,…

_Privacy Booths _Resimercial Goes High-Tech _Sit/Stand Desks When it began looking for a new showroom just over two years ago, Canadian contract furniture manufacturer Inscape had a good sense of what it wanted: an agile and adaptable space that could serve not only as a showroom for its furniture and systems and as an office for its employees, but also as an education space and events venue. In short, Inscape wanted a place that reflected the current working culture and its own ability to change with the times. In business since 1888, the brand – which still manufactures out of a factory just an hour north of Toronto – has seen first-hand how technology and changing social attitudes have transformed the office landscape. Plus, Inscape was aiming to better showcase…

_Workspace BELUGA Part of the debut line from California-based office furniture brand Pair, the Beluga table has an unimposing profile. Its base is made from powder-coated steel, while the surface can be etched glass (shown), veneer or laminate. It can also be fitted with power and technology storage. madebypair.com MORETHANFIVE Michael Young devised this work table as a weighty counterpart to his LessThanFive carbon fibre chair. The slender cast iron base is topped by translucent glass, which shows off its materiality. Tabletop formats include rectangular, round and square, and the base can be clear coated or painted. coalesse.com COLUMN Handmade in Vancouver, Column can be specified with a round or oval top – the curved edges make it comfortable no matter where one is seated. The base pillars are offered…

_Workspace Every company has its own unique story to tell, ethos to espouse and goals to reach. Interior designer Primo Orpilla, co-founding principal at Studio O+A in San Francisco, has been communicating those narratives through his workplace designs for a wide range of clients over more than 30 years. “We like to understand the why of what the company is doing,” says Orpilla, who can wax poetic on offices in terms that are both practical and poignant. From the earliest workplaces of Silicon Valley to the offices of today’s most prominent design and business leaders, O+A’s portfolio has made it a frontrunner in its field. “Agile work has been adopted in a big way, but we are already seeing chinks in that armour – too much noise, not enough concentration,…

Valencia is a booming city with a strong design tradition: Many of the best Spanish studios are located here, while the excellence of local craftsmanship is recognized internationally. At the same time, the city has a long and rich history and a beautiful historic centre: the Barrio del Carmen, where buildings that date back to the 13th and 14th centuries still stand. Today the district is a charming and lively neighbourhood situated along the footprint of Valencia’s medieval Arabic wall, traces of which can be found all over the area. Restaurante Sucede, a contemporary Michelin-starred eatery designed by Barcelona-based Francesc Rifé Studio, is among the latest projects to be woven into this tapestry, a densely layered milieu that it settles into both sensitively and with great aplomb. The 412-square-metre restaurant…

If temporary architecture was a sidebar conversation two decades ago, it now appears to be the only architecture worth talking about. In just the past few months, fly-by-night buildings have subverted public space in Kyoto, peddled booze in Copenhagen and prompted detoxes at Burning Man. Elsewhere, the trend has consumed whole communities, such as Columbus, Indiana, which is staking its identity on a many-splendoured biennial installation program. All this in addition to the yearly entries of the Serpentine Pavilion, MoMA PS1 courtyard and other forerunners of the phenomenon. Of course this is the fault of Instagram. Try as hashtags might to establish some intelligence behind an image, IG deep-fries thought experiments, professional dialogue and design whimsy into visual carnival food. And we keep on scarfing it down. Then along comes…

_Hotel Birks _Montreal, Quebec _Neuf Architects Forgive the obvious metaphor, but to describe the building now housing Montreal’s Hotel Birks as a one-time diamond in the rough couldn’t be more apt. For decades the edifice hid in plain sight, its magnificent 19th-century facade attracting a few admiring if fleeting glances from the passersby who noticed it as they hurried along bustling Saint Catherine Street. Yes, it did and continues to contain the namesake jewellery chain’s beautiful local flagship store, but the majority of the building was relegated to office, manufacturing and shipping functions, hidden from public view. And it did very little to animate elegant yet forlorn Phillips Square right next to it. What a difference two years and a $20-million renovation make. After hotelier Jean Salette acquired the building…

_Bauhaus Museum Dessau _Dessau, Germany _Addenda Architects The German city of Dessau may have been home to Europe’s most famous design school between 1925 and 1932, but it had never, until this year, had a world-class museum in which to display the local Bauhaus foundation’s objects. Many of the items in the 49,000-strong collection were too delicate to be shown in the pioneering academy’s one-time base: a listed complex designed by founder Walter Gropius just outside Dessau’s centre. “This meant that the collection was seen more often abroad than in this country,” says Wolfgang Thöner, one of the three curators of the museum’s opening exhibition, Bauhaus as Testing Ground: The Collection, which features more than 1,000 of those aforementioned objects. Designed by Barcelona-based practice Addenda Architects, the new museum is…

_Workspace C9 DESK BY WATSON Decidedly Scandinavian in design, the C9 desk conceals a four-motor spindle lifting mechanism within its minimalist steel frame. Six styles of undermount storage cubes are on offer, along with privacy screens that can frame some or all of the work surface. Part of the larger C9 collection, the individual desks can be linked together via a powered rail system to create non-linear work stations equipped with lighting, planter boxes and team tables. watsonfurniture.com SIT-STAND WORKBENCH BY BENCHMARK Part of the Sage collection by David Rockwell, the Sit-Stand Workbench takes inspiration from drafting tables. Divided by cork and felt privacy panels that double as pinboards, its dual work surfaces are lifted and lowered via a button. Made from sustainably sourced sycamore, oak or walnut, the workstation…

_Workspace 1 AVION This system of walls, tables and seating can be configured to build a variety of scenarios for solo or group work. Sofa options include one-, two- and three-seaters, while upholstered walls in differing heights suit a range of privacy needs. Power sources and USB charging can be integrated. stylecraft.com.au 2 OUTLINE HIGHBACK PANEL A new complement to Anderssen & Voll’s Outline sofas, the Highback Panel transforms the seating into an acoustic and spatial shelter for a focused spot to work. The upholstered divider is easily affixed to the sofa’s walls with powder-coated metal brackets and screws. muuto.com 3 BANQS Responding to the needs of multi-purpose settings such as co-working environments, PearsonLloyd developed this series that includes sofas, privacy screens, tables and power/USB charging accessories. Its modules can…

Building with Bamboo A course on the island of Bali offers intensive in-situ primers on a promising material Sometimes, the best technology isn’t a technology at all. At one training centre hidden in the forests of Bali in Indonesia, students are learning how to work with one of humanity’s oldest building materials: bamboo. Established in 2015, Bamboo U aims to inspire people about the fast-growing grass’ potential for green construction. “We’re at the cutting edge of a Stone Age technology,” says Orin Hardy, who co-founded the school with his wife, Maria Farrugia. Participants in the 11-day “build and design” course use hand tools to make and design products from handicrafts and furniture to housing. For Hardy, the main purpose of the course is to inspire. “I wanted to create a…

Wood 1 Patterned Effect Named after godron, a French term for patterned ornamentation in vase design, this dynamic parquet by Giancarlo Bosio plays with natural and grey hues of Canaletto walnut wood. Godron’s multiple laying patterns are made possible by triangular and diamond-shaped segments in three gloss levels and saturations. giorgettimeda.com, listonegiordano.com 2 Finishing Touch Alpi’s tangram-esque Gamperana Triplex by Martino Gamper results from combining woods of different colours and grain directions into a consolidated log, then slicing veneer sheets to reveal unexpected patterns. alpiwood.com 3 Ceiling Style Straight, crossed or coffered – the appeal of an exposed ceiling structure can be acquired in nearly any room with these lightweight rustic wood beams by Ornamental Mouldings & Millwork. The 2.44-metre-long U-shaped sections come in 7.62- or 12.7-centimetre depths in Ambrosia…

_Arcade _Kruibeke Bazel Rupelmonde Controlled Flood Area, Belgium _Gijs Van Vaerenbergh A few years ago, a new embankment was built along a controlled flood zone in the Belgian region of East Flanders, both reinforcing the system of dikes and seawalls designed to protect nearby towns from inundation and providing panoramic views of the surrounding landscape. But the feature, which is located in the Scheldt Estuary, just southwest of Antwerp, also bisected a historic route between one of those towns, Bazel, and the reclaimed land on the other side of the barrier. To restore and highlight that connection, the Flemish government’s Agency for Nature and Forest commissioned two Leuven-based artists known for their unusual overpasses, sculptural pavilions and other outdoor structures, Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh. Like many of Gijs…

_Workspace Sophisticated, intimate and more than a little homey isn’t typically how tech-industry offices are described, but that’s exactly what JHL Design, of Portland, Oregon, achieved when it converted the penthouse of a 1927 building into a functioning workspace. Having served myriad uses in its lifetime, the 371-square-metre space is defined by its pitched concrete walls (it’s situated under a mansard roofline) and exposed columns. When those walls – which had been painted multiple times and covered by drywall over the years – were stripped down to their rawest state, the residual staining and pockmarking offered a dramatic finish that Liz Morgan, JHL’s creative director, opted to work with rather than eliminate. Having lived in Japan for many years, the client had an affinity for that country’s architecture, which JHL…

Today’s office is more dynamic than ever – yet sitting is still the default for most people most of the time. And while a corresponding push for more residential-style furnishings is elevating the modern office’s appearance, it often comes at the cost of ergonomics. Musculoskeletal ailments are still the number one cause of absenteeism, according to a 2018 report by German healthcare insurer DAK, and “75 per cent of all employees have a backache at least once a year.” As we learn more about the effects of long-term sitting, it has become clear that “correct” posture is a fallacy. No position is healthy when held for several hours a day. Movement while sitting, including easy-to-use sit–stand options, is one way to break up long periods of sitting. And as Wilkhahn…

In 2017, Damien Perrot, the senior vice-president of design at French hospitality company Accor, was brainstorming solutions to a perennial problem: It often seems that hotels aren’t where the people are. In ever-greater numbers, travellers are eschewing traditional vacation spots in favour of temporary, site-specific attractions. They want to vibe out at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, dance to the brink of exhaustion at Tomorrowland or take peyote and roam the desert at Burning Man. “They want a lived experience,” concludes Perrot. “Coachella started with 30,000 people, and now it attracts 300,000.” To address this changing market, Perrot sought to develop lightweight, luxurious accommodations that could be trucked to almost any location, assembled hastily on site and removed with equal efficiency. “We need to do something innovative and…

Graphic Rugs 1 Capas German designer Mathias Hahn collaborated with Nanimarquina to develop a unique loose kilim structure that allows the colours of the warp and weft to be mixed – and gives Capas its gradated effect. Material 100 per cent Afghan wool Colourways Five Dimensions 170 × 240 and 200 × 300 Manufacturer Nanimarquina, nanimarquina.com 2 Endurance Collection The indoor–outdoor rugs in this series, inspired by desert modernism, are handwoven using a highly durable yarn that is stain-, fade- and water-resistant. Material Solution-dyed acrylic Dimensions From 183 x 274, plus custom Colourways 12 patterns (Culver Mint shown) Manufacturer The Rug Company, therugcompany.com, avenue-road.com 3 Stacked Collection Combining different materials, colours, shapes and textures, this series of handwoven flatweave dhurries is stitched together by hand. Materials Wool, linen, cotton Dimensions…