Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2022 i AZURE

The flax plant has a Swiss Army knife’s worth of uses. A well-known health food, its seeds are recognized for their nutritional value. It’s also the origin of linen, one of the oldest textiles in the world, and its natural fibres have recently made their way into flax board wall panels, car doors and composite surfaces. But is the delicate flowering plant strong enough to make up a load-bearing structure? Recently, advanced digital technologies have made the answer a resounding yes. Developed by an inter-disciplinary team of architectural tech students and researchers at the Universities of Freiburg and Stuttgart, the livMatS Pavilion in Freiburg, Germany, is the first building with a load-bearing structure built entirely from robotically wound flax fibre. The material’s strength and rigidity are similar to those of…

You can still be forgiven, for now, for not understanding what the metaverse is — even as the burgeoning network of interactive virtual worlds wins over firms like Zaha Hadid Architects, which recently unveiled its own online version of the micronation Liberland. The metaverse is banking on technological advances and increased adoption of immersive VR headsets to reach its full promise. But anyone with a phone or a laptop can already stroll through a virtual city, meet with others or attend digital events like concerts and fashion shows. And while some remain skeptical, others are investing. Earlier this year, Pallavi Dean’s Dubai-based architecture and interior design firm Roar paid about US$68,000 for four land plots in the Decentraland metaverse. Dean has plans for an NFT art gallery, furniture showroom, event…

Marenco sofa design Mario Marenco arflex USA office 1 Selleck Street, Norwalk, CT 06855 arflex Vancouver 1672 1st Ave, Vancouver, BC V6J 1G1 arflex Toronto 24 Mercer Street, Suite 100, Toronto, ON M5V 0C4 arflex Montreal 4396 St Laurent Blvd, Montreal, Quebec H2W 1Z5 Agent DzineElements Tel: +1 (917) 594 5550 info@arflex.com www.arflex.com instagram: arflex_official facebook: arflex via Pizzo Scalino, 1 Giussano (MB) - IT +39 0362 85 30 43 Salone Internazionale del Mobile June 7th-12th Hall 05 Stand C05…

“If an elderly person has a fall, there is a 30 per cent chance they won’t live past a year, and a 60 per cent chance they’ll never regain the function they previously had.” Donald Strum, principal of product design at Michael Graves Design, cites this alarming statistic as a main catalyst behind a new collaboration between the renowned design firm (creator of the iconic “whistling bird” teakettle for Alessi) and American medical retailer CVS. The collection is divided into two categories: Mobility (which includes a travel walker and two canes — one foldable, one C-grip) and Bathroom Safety, with a commode, raised toilet seat and shower chair. If these don’t sound like the most exciting of house-hold products, well, they’re not meant to be. Instead, the devices are intended to…

The Shenzhen headquarters of Yeahka, a Chinese company specializing in point-of-sale technology, epitomizes the workspace of the future, where layouts promote high levels of transparency and connectivity. Its most daring architectural gestures: five glass-walled meeting rooms suspended in midair that evoke scenes from a sci-fi movie and a dramatic black staircase that both links the office’s tiers and serves as its visual anchor. Conceived by JSPA Design — a Beijing-based architecture, interior, landscape and product design studio founded by French architects Johan Sarvan and Florent Buis — the 6,000-square-metre office occupies the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of Kexing Science Park, a commercial building erected in 2012 in Shenzhen’s centre. Although the building is relatively young, the project required the firm to do some serious demo work. Its approach —…

Windows 1 ALX 2066 Series For a recent project in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, Naturehumaine incorporated a fixed glass corner window built with Alumilex’s double-insulated glazing. Instead of mullions, the special configuration features structural silicone joints at the corner and seams to facilitate an expansive view. alumilex.com 2 SkyMax Offering single spans of up to 10 feet, Velux’s extra-large skylights double the square footage of standard rooftop glass by structurally reinforcing the window’s vinyl frame with aluminum. As another innovation, a condensation channel prevents leakage without the need for weep holes. veluxusa.com 3 Curtain Wall TiltCo’s structural glass products integrate with the manufacturer’s Hi-Finity sliding doors to allow for end-to-end, floor-to-ceiling views. Featuring thermally broken aluminum technology, the minimalist glazing even allows for corner solutions to support full volumes of glass.…

Contract furniture designed for the post-pandemic office has largely focused on the need for flexible and collaborative yet physically distanced spaces. There’s one challenge that’s proven harder to solve, though, and it’s convincing workers that, much like home, the workplace can have its creature comforts. One solution: contract furnishings that maximize everyday ease and mirror the softness of a residential setting. Enter Brig Lounge. New from contract furnishings leader Nienkämper, Brig (pronounced “Breeg”) is a configurable soft-seating system. With generous proportions and luxurious cushions, it captures the warmth of residential seating while delivering the durability required by high-traffic contract spaces. Allowing users to create unique configurations — from a classic lounge chair or a simple modern bench to a high-back sofa that offers a sense of privacy in an open…

Taking inspiration from postwar minimalist art, particularly the clean lines and simple yet evocative forms of Donald Judd’s sculptures, Antonio Citterio designed the Groundpiece sofa for Flexform just over 20 years ago as an experiment in “marrying art and cushion.” The result is a timeless piece that challenges the very idea of a couch while maximizing both its artistry and its utility. Much like the work of Judd and his contemporaries, which was not immediately appreciated or understood in the mainstream, Citterio and his team prioritized the introduction of a new way to think about what a couch could be over ensuring the product’s broad appeal. Though they were at first concerned whether the sofa would be marketable because it was both “so simple and so untraditional,” according to the…

Healthcare design often focuses on how to make care settings feel less institutional, more tranquil and better suited to healing. But what role can design play when the issue at hand isn’t atmosphere but lack of access? That’s what New Delhi–based Architecture Discipline set out to explore when the pandemic took hold in India, where an already fragmented, underfunded and inaccessible healthcare system was buckling under the weight of skyrocketing COVID-19 case numbers. Led by principal Akshat Bhatt, the firm developed the low-cost, easily installed prefab Life Community Medical Facility (LifeCMF) concept. The proposed building material was upcycled shipping containers: “They’re robust and available at a fairly economical price,” Bhatt explains. “[And], because they’re metal, they could be picked up by a forklift or crane, deployed and redeployed.” What started…

When hospitality furniture-maker Mogogo tapped Israeli designers Gilli Kuchik and Ran Amitai for a first-time collaboration on a furniture system, it was looking to solve a very specific problem: the lack of modular and easily adaptable storage systems that can confidently meet a variety of F&B and hospitality demands. What the multidisciplinary duo presented was Canvas, a deceptively straightforward-looking collection of open shelving units with upwards of 15 interchangeable accessories. “The project, although seemingly simple, was actually quite complex due to its many parts and add-ons,” says Kuchik. Adding to the challenge was the fact that the shelving units “need to move around a property, sometimes stacked with goods, without rattling or shaking.” To overcome this last obstacle, Kuchik and Amitai developed, over the course of four years and dozens of…

Workspaces, 3rd and 4th Floors 1. Stair 2. Creative lab 3. Glass meeting hubs 4. Forest circle 5. Flexible workstations 6. Office supply storage 7. Breakout area 8. Dining table How can architecture offer an appealing alternative to digital modes of remote working? That is the question that Swiss firm Christ & Gantenbein asked itself when designing Roche’s new office building, or “multi-functional workspace,” as the firm calls it, in Grenzach-Wyhlen, a German town near Basel. An excellent example of a new generation of offices that respond to employees’ desire for flexible, open-plan workspaces, the design was set in motion before COVID-19 but was adapted and adjusted over the past two years in response to it. The project’s primary aim, says architect Emanuel Christ, was “to provide a space for…

One of the pleasures of visiting a Canadian cottage, no matter how large or small the building, is having the physical and mental space to appreciate nature in all its details: the sight of a heron swooping across the lake, the feel of cool water on toes dangling from the edge of a dock. That effect can be intensified when the cottage itself has been crafted specifically to reflect the nuances of its site. A recently built 269-square-metre home away from home in Ontario’s Kawartha Highlands accomplishes exactly that. It sits on Precambrian granite, which slopes down toward the water. One side faces a thick forest. Clad in a charred black skin of shou sugi ban cedar, it appears as weighty and solid as a stone on a hiking trail.…

Flourish How can humanity achieve a more harmonious balance with nature? Urban strategist Sarah Ichioka and Exploration Architecture founder Michael Pawlyn believe the answer lies in regenerative design — a practice that moves beyond just avoiding further harm to instead emphasize actions that actively restore the living systems around us. The pair define this approach with five major paradigm shifts. (Number three calls for adopting a more expansive view of “now.”) Their principles are accompanied by showcases of projects like Eco-Village, an L.A. community co-op started in the ’90s to retrofit old buildings and promote on-site food growth. triarchypress.net Green Obsession With projects like Bosco Verticale, Stefano Boeri has long led the way when it comes to bridging the gap between rural forests and the concrete jungle. Here, he outlines…

Although it’s within biking distance of the city centre, Amsterdam’s Zuidas neighbourhood and its rows of soulless steel and glass office towers feel worlds away from the city’s iconic canal houses and neo-Renaissance train stations. But a new mixed-use arrival, MVRDV’s Valley, aims to challenge what a modern business district can — and should — be. “It’s a literal expression of this area becoming alive,” says Gijs Rikken, associate design director at MVRDV. “We made it into a bit of a joke. The flat glass is similar to the fancy pinstriped suits of buildings that are already there, but then we scratch out the inside of those blocks to show that it’s something very different within — there is a human factor being introduced to this site.” Encompassing a total…

Warm, comforting and serene is not how cancer treatment centres are typically described. But then, the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC is far from typical. Doctor David Agus, the clinic’s founding director, “wants to change ‘the soil of the body’ so cancer can’t find a home anymore,” says Melanie Freeland, studio director at RIOS, the multidisciplinary Los Angeles firm responsible for the interiors of the method-busting centre that focuses on patient-forward cancer prevention, care and research. Agus’s “audacious” goal — combined with RIOS’s adept understanding of how “good design can support a desired narrative” — has resulted in a prime example of what modern-day healthcare could be. Occupying the top three levels of a five-storey building (recently completed by New York–based HLW), the 7,803-square-metre institute is defined…

Not all outdoorsy travellers relish the rugged accommodations of a tent or log cabin. Recognizing this, Sépaq (the governmental arm that oversees Quebec’s parks) and Lac Saint-Joseph resort Station Touristique Duchesnay decided to replace all of the latter’s detached half-century-old cabins — 14 rustic cottages painted bright yellow, clashing with one another and their surroundings — with sleek chalets that offer all the accoutrements of a modern home. A collaboration between Bourgeois/Lechasseur Architectes and Coarchitecture, the 14 new Oxygène cabins bring the site up to date while blending it in with nature. “We endeavoured to integrate the new constructions into the landscape for a more coherent look,” says Olivier Bourgeois, founding partner of Bourgeois/​ Lechasseur Architectes. To preserve the site’s topography and avoid tree removal, the architects positioned the cabins…

The Market Building in Clerkenwell, London, is an unusual beast, even for the typology-fluid times we live in. Neither conventional showroom nor pure office or co-working space, it’s a savvy blend of all three, with extra room for events and dining and a major focus on partnerships and collaborations thrown in for good measure. “The client liked our ideas about flexibility and what we’ve learned from our work in hospitality,” explains Alex Holloway, co-founder (with Na Li) of the interior architecture firm Holloway Li, which designed the new space. “It’s about how you can create engagement around a property that might not be revenue-generating in a traditional sense but that has a harder-to-measure but hopefully longer-lasting impact to do with culture and community.” The project, which occupies two storeys of what…

It’s a bold and elegant building: Its glazed facade, interrupted by a diagonal slash of balconies, reveals a stack of knife’s-edge floor plates made more dramatic through repetition. The kinetic geometry of its mass timber columns, also aslant, is emphasized by triangular windows that can be popped open. Yet NEXT — by Gensler, Buro Happold and KPFF — is just a design experiment for now, a proposal for the future of commercial laboratories, those sophisticated facilities that host research in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and the life sciences. It’s the kind of commercial space that is largely non-existent in Canada. But with the pandemic changing the face of commercial real estate, NEXT is a sure-fire sign: The small-scale urban lab is coming. While start-up incubators like JLABS in Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District…

Bathtubs 1 Nostalgia Part of a decidedly retro-inspired collection (that currently includes wall-mounted and freestanding vanities, basins and mirrors) by Italian studio Marcante Testa, this bathtub can be panelled in one of five old-world colours; Dark Green is shown. Materials Marine plywood Dimensions 58 H × 183 L × 90 W Manufacturer Ex.t, ex-t.com 2 Solium II The wafer-thin walls of the freestanding Solium II provide both a striking profile and a spacious interior. Made from a composite that successfully mimics marble, the tub has a silky smooth finish. Materials Aluite composite Dimensions 53.5 H × 160 L × 70 W Manufacturer Clou, clou.nl 3 Sequence With crisp lines, an integrated tiling flange for against-the-wall installation and a built-in deck faucet mount that can be positioned on the right or…

These days, it’s not unusual for a celebrity to keep working after they die. Carrie Fisher is posthumously woven into new Star Wars movies, Tupac’s hologram performs at Coachella and, now, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe has designed the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture+ Design in Bloomington, Indiana. Back in 1952, Indiana University’s Pi Lambda Phi hired Mies to envision a white steel and glass fraternity house that never materialized. Six decades later, former fraternity brother Sidney Eskenazi alerted IU to the project’s long-forgotten plans, which were then pieced together from MoMA’s archives and materials at the Art Institute of Chicago. Along with his wife, Lois, Eskenazi went on to pledge funding for a contemporary revival — albeit one on a fresh site, and with an entirely different program. After…