Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2018 i Frame

COLOUR – In chemistry and healthcare tests, colour helps to determine (deviating) values. In the traffic sector, it has a warning function. The design scene is adopting the principle of colour change by developing new shade-shifting surfaces that react to their direct surroundings, yielding results that draw attention to everything from air pollution to rising temperatures. The application of sensitive coatings, dyes and textiles causes products to change appearance when they come into contact with environmental stimuli, revealing the otherwise unseen. Large industries such as construction and architecture have already connected energy consumption with the Internet of Things in responsive buildings that address today’s pressing issues. It’s now time for people and products to follow suit, perhaps in a less digital way. The work of Japanese design studio WE+, Blur…

2003 SFERA BUILDING ‘They’re uncompromising when it comes to quality,’ says Marten Claesson. ‘Only the Japanese have this unwavering attitude towards everything they do.’ Claesson, the man behind the C in Claesson Koivisto Rune (CKR), is reflecting on the Swedish studio’s first major architecture project: the Sfera Building in Kyoto. A combined art gallery, design store, restaurant and café – or ‘cultural centre, as Claesson and cofounder Ole Rune call it – the building was completed in 2003. Located in Kyoto’s Gion district, the project gave Claesson, Rune and partner Eero Koivisto the feeling that they’d made a modern contribution – one sensitive to its context – to the very heart of the ancient Japanese city. ‘Our mission was to add something contemporary to the site,’ says Claesson, ‘which quickly…

TOKYO – Japanese department store Loft is one of the country’s primary promoters of consumer 3D printing. To further endorse Loft’s fab-lab services, Dus – the Dutch architecture firm responsible for the widely publicized 3D Print Canal House – was invited to develop six novel 3D-printed furniture pieces for Loft’s Tokyo flagship. The 3,300-m2 store in Ginza is spread over four floors. It was conceived by Jo Nagasaka of Schemata Architects and features signage by Hiromura Design Office. ‘Loft evokes the idea of craft and facilitates personal expression,’ says Hans Vermeulen of Dus. He talks about tailoring designs and products to a customer’s needs in four steps: ‘customize, order, print and make it your own’. Inspired by artisanal techniques, the architects developed various articles of furniture, from a writing desk…

MILAN – Luxury menswear brand Salle Privée focuses on classic essentials – no seasonal collections but ‘timeless fashion’ – and House No. 8 in Milan is the relative newcomer’s second European showroom. Responding to the question of what permanence looks like, the Dutch fashion house asked Sabine Marcelis to realize the interior of its latest retail venture. No stranger to the label, Marcelis previously translated her signature en vogue resin panels into display units for the Salle Privée Amsterdam flagship. The Milan showroom – at the historical heart of the city – occupies a space within Palazzo Recalcati, a 16th-century building whose existing interior immediately caught the designer’s attention. ‘It was clear from the beginning that we should enhance the original aesthetics, not detract from them,’ says Marcelis. ‘The core…

SEOUL – While many South Korean studios specializing in interiors now consider selfie spaces a must-have, Snarkitecture’s latest collaboration with fashion brand Cos in Seoul didn’t surrender to the trend. ‘Loop was quieter than our two previous projects with Cos,’ says Snarkitecture’s Alex Mustonen. ‘When you look at images of the installation, it almost dissolves. It’s also difficult to understand unless you’ve seen it in person. It’s different from something that provides the Instagram moment or an iconic photographic visual.’ For each of the parties involved, the project marked its first installation to appear in the South Korean city, where Cos has secured six stores since 2014. The label eschewed another trend – the pursuit of local talent – by asking the NYC-based designers to jump on board. ‘We would…

ABU DHABI – A gigantic silver dome composed of perforated layers glistens above an array of white gallery buildings at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, whose design draws on the twin notions of light and geometry. French architect Jean Nouvel, known for his contextual approach, took inspiration from Arab architecture and the twisting alleys of the medina for the immense labyrinthine museum, which has 6,400 m2 of exhibition space. Thanks to the incorporation of pools and basins, Nouvel was able to develop a relationship among the volumes of the building and to evoke the image of an oasis. The museum is the first ambitious project to be completed in the cultural district of Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The Arab world has long fascinated…

Providing museum visitors with virtual-reality headsets or having holograms strut down the runway might guarantee clicks or likes, but such things certainly don’t ensure the success of an institution or event. In recent years, the art of catching the public’s attention, and keeping it, has become undeniably challenging. The key to a deeper level of engagement, whether at a theatre or in the gallery, is a combination of technology and interactivity. Technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) offer audiences a more enriched experience. Too often technology and interactivity are used as tools to dazzle or merely to provide information. Simply using them to fashion an Instagram-worthy installation makes them redundant almost immediately. On the other hand, confronting people with a mountain of data to sift through…

‘PIONEERS OF digital-spatial storytelling’ is how Atelier Brückner describes itself. Regardless of whether a project is of a commercial or cultural nature, the Stuttgart experience designers begin by determining the narrative qualities that they want to translate into a – often tech-infused – scenography. The studio’s approach becomes apparent at Car Culture Experience Park, an exhibition for car brand Hyundai realized under the direction of two eminent professors: Uwe R. Brückner and Eberhard Schlag. Occupying the 4,000-m2 Hyundai Motorstudio Goyang, a building in Seoul by Vienna-based architecture firm Delugian Meissel, the interactive exhibition tells the story of Hyundai as a car on the move. The immersive-responsive character of Atelier Brückner’s design for the exhibition is part of what cofounder and creative director Uwe R. Brückner calls ‘an interplay of logic…

What developments are influencing today’s kitchen surfaces? SVEN BAACKE: Kitchens are associated more and more with living areas, and their surfaces follow suit – hence the focus on authentic materials like wood, stone and glass. As Gaggenau continues to supply the home with professional kitchen appliances, our biggest challenge is to assure that these appliances – made from rigid materials like stainless steel – blend into domestic living spaces. Gaggenau pairs functionality with a clear design language. How is this combination apparent in your finishes? You can often decipher the decade in which a kitchen was made by looking at the surfaces used, but Gaggenau’s surfaces and materials are more timeless. We see Gaggenau products as part of the architecture of a house. Every detail of our appliances speaks precision,…

SEETAL SOLANKI is the director and founder of Ma-tt-er, a materials-research design studio in London whose clients include Space 10, The Future Laboratory, Dazed, Selfridges, Viewpoint and the Design Museum. Solanki, who also teaches interior design and information experience design at the Royal College of Art, tackles the topic of colour-changing surfaces on page 27. After eight years in China, British freelance journalist and editor FRANCES ARNOLD recently relocated to Zagreb, Croatia. While living and working in Shanghai, she reviewed the city’s contemporary art scene for such publications as ArtAsiaPacific, Art Republik and Artsy. For this issue, Arnold spoke to Kokaistudios about the wave of bookstores in Asia. ‘When planning the Claesson Koivisto Rune shoot, I was attracted to the simplicity and natural graphic lines that existed throughout the studio’…

Their ability to design practical solutions for contemporary problems and situations earned GIULIA PESCE and RUGGERO BASTITA a place in ‘The Challenge’. What inspired your concept? GIULIA PESCE: The research we did at Designskolen Kolding for Patchwork, our masters project. It’s a partition and storage system for cohabitation contexts. During that project we conducted ethnographic field studies at two Italian reception centres for migrants. What did you see there? RUGGERO BASTITA: The facilities were decrepit, cold and anonymous – the complete opposite of the welcoming feeling you’d expect a reception centre to provide. Other than a bed and a metal closet, nothing was ‘private’, although some people did try to personalize their spaces with decorations and personal belongings. The focus of our proposal is the sleeping area as a private space that…

MERLE FLÜGGE’s speculative projects featuring artificial intelligence were our motivation for inviting her to join ‘The Challenge’. There seems to be a contradiction at the centre of your concept. MERLE FLÜGGE: Yes, a deliberate contradiction. A sense of belonging has become ephemeral and placeless in our digital, nomadic lives. Home is where the smartphone is. Today’s Homo digitalis organizes its social and professional life around the internet, causing a sense of home or belonging to shift from the physical to the virtual realm. Like-minded tribes connect through their smartphones, but we still hanker after a physical sense of belonging. You could argue that social media and smartphones contribute to an erosion of the home, but I also see them as part of the solution. There’s definitely a paradox here. What…

YINKA YINKA ILORI was one of the faces at this year’s London Design Festival. In four installations and events dotted around the city, he used his trademark bright colours and gloriously graphic Dutch-wax prints in a subtle examination of race, inclusion/exclusion, class, hierarchy – and of what it means to be bicultural. The projects were a reimagined council-estate playground in front of East London’s hip CitizenM hotel, an exhibition and auction of chairs transformed during a series of workshops with people in recovery from addiction, an experiential installation at the Africa Centre, and a design salon featuring multiculturalism. Ilori doesn’t didn’t shy away from big social issues and an exploration of our ‘common humanity’, and his work never loses its cheeky, cheerful edge. We meet up with the London-based creative…

LONDON – ‘Our current food-production system has reached its limits and needs to be reinvented.’ The warning comes from Guillaume Charny-Brunet, director of innovation strategy at Space10, Ikea’s external research arm. In the basement of Space10’s Copenhagen lab, a busy team tends to stacks of hydroponic planters. Filled with microgreens – which can grow up to three times faster and use 90 per cent less water when grown hydroponically – the system could lead to ‘a scenario in which we’re able to feed nine billion people with food that’s good for us – and for the planet’, says Charny-Brunet. ‘We could grow vast quantities of delicious food within our cities at an affordable price.’ For London Design Week, Space10 turned the concept into a working salad bar in Shoreditch: a…

NINGBO – ‘We started by studying circulation: how people would move through and access the space,’ says Pietro Peyron, chief architect and associate partner at Shanghai’s Kokaistudios, as well as project manager for the interior design of Alt-Life, a bookstore in Ningbo, China. The 2,400-m2 venue presented Peyron and his team with very specific challenges, including an underground location, ambitious programming and a fixed-yetflexible template for future tenants. Realized in just five months, the store goes beyond books to deliver a comprehensive lifestyle destination in the eastern Chinese city. Effectively sponsored by Chinese publisher San Lian, Alt-Life is the latest in a string of book-themed, lifestyle-concept stores in Asia. In a nod to the likes of Taiwan’s Eslite and Tokyo’s Daikanyama T-Site, complementary functions support Alt-Life’s impressive stock of books…

LONDON – As you step into the world’s most sustainable office building, it’s hard not to look up at the mesmerizing surface of Olafur Eliasson’s latest creation: an undulating sheet of polished aluminium that shimmers like a gravity-defying pool. Entitled No future is possible without a past, the piece reflects a core belief of Eliasson’s client, Michael Bloomberg, who inaugurated the European headquarters of his media conglomerate this past October in the City of London. No future was strategically installed at the oculus of the building’s lobby – a space defined by three interlocking timber shells – where it captures the reflections of visitors and fragments of the bustling area below. Eliasson joins artists Michael Craig-Martin, Arturo Herrera, Langlands and Bell, David Tremlett and Pae White, all of whom contributed…

DRONES OCCUPY a peculiar position in our society. Not only are they an annoyance, buzzing overhead as you take a quiet walk or flashing neon light in the night sky above city squares; they also pose a threat to targets in countries like Yemen and Pakistan, where remote-controlled military drones reap ‘silent’ death. It’s this strange dissonance – the lurch from annoying to annihilating – that choreographer Wayne McGregor exploits in +/- Human (2017). Appearing in London earlier this year, the performance saw the vaulted space of the Roundhouse filled with giant levitating orbs. Luminous white and fleshy, the spheres – each more than a metre in diameter – were reminiscent of manatees or the bloated characters in Pixar’s Wall-E (2008), simultaneously comic and unsettling. Controlled by an algorithm, the…

The automation of production processes minimizes diversity in output. A nearly flawless reproduction of goods shows the benefits of today’s technological advancements while simultaneously limiting the chances of unexpected – and sometimes surprisingly successful – results. More often than not, consistency and uniformity are the pursuit of factories responsible for making ceramic tiles and other cladding materials for large surfaces. In a move to revive authenticity and character, designers and manufacturers are giving their mass-produced objects an impression of individuality. The unrefined beauty of materials exposed to the elements is celebrated in what appear to be mercurial surfaces, and visible traces of ageing are fixed in time to give a raw feel to flooring. From burning to fading and fragmenting, various distressing techniques enrich surfaces with a lived-in look.…

MATERIALS – The turbulent Middle East is faced with immense social, economic, educational and environmental challenges. Owing to its geographical position, resources are limited. But an abundance of those that are available – think sand and stone – define the looks of local architecture and, as became apparent at design weeks held in Amman (October) and Dubai (November), motivate a young generation of designers to employ the copious materials in contemporary and alternative ways. Using locality to their advantage, they conceive works that reflect regional topography, industry and crafts. Architect RULA YAGHMOUR carved a hyperbolic chair from a compacted mass of stone, granite and marble waste materials discarded by factories that make tiles and other products for construction projects. Yaghmour collaborated with Jordanian firm A.W. Yasin & Sons Co. on…

FURNITURE – Heatherwick Studio abides by a ‘mechanical philosophy’ in open experiments that combine resilience with a play of hybridity and flexibility. The latest fruit of its work is the Friction table, a convertible piece of furniture. ‘We were intrigued by the act of transformation, which is a critical component of architectural and design-orientated thought nowadays,’ says Stuart Wood, group leader at Heatherwick Studio. A tug at one side of the tabletop sees the latticed structure shift a series of 61 slats into different positions, allowing the table to adapt to diverse spaces and uses. Starting from a round form that can seat eight, it expands to become an ellipse with a length of over 4 m and space for a large group of people. Made from a composite material…

DAE graduate MIRJAM DE BRUIJN received a spot in ‘The Challenge’ because of the way she uses simple, smart designs as a tool for critical analysis. What inspired your concept? MIRJAM DE BRUIJN: I had a roommate who used a charcoal soap with a hint of lavender. I didn’t really like the smell, but it brought back memories of my grandparents’ house in Norway. After a bit of thought, I realized that my roommate’s soap had the same aroma as their sauna. Smelling it has always given me a deep feeling of belonging. How have you translated this olfactory memory into a concept for displaced people? In the future we will move around more and more, thanks to technological developments that will make the world even smaller than it is…

THE HAGUE – ‘No one talked about sustainability in the 1990s,’ says Ellen van Loon, OMA’s partner in charge of Rijnstraat 8. The project’s name may be uninspired – it’s simply the street address – but the result, which unites two Dutch ministries and three governmental organizations in The Hague, challenges stereotypes of traditional bureaucracy buildings. Van Loon says that despite a lack of discussion on the topic, the existing situation at Rijnstraat 8 was already ‘quite sustainable for its time’. Designed by Jan Hoogstad in the 1980s and completed in 1992, the building was formerly home to the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM). It included a grid of atriums – or ‘lungs’ – that served as a natural ventilation system. Times have obviously changed since…

EINDHOVEN – ‘Only an architect or designer can shape a sustainable future,’ says Peter van Assche, director of Bureau Sla and a firm believer in the circular economy. To substantiate his claim, the architects at Bureau Sla joined forces with the spatial designers at Overtreders W to create a completely closedloop pavilion for Dutch Design Week, an annual event that takes place in Eindhoven. ‘It seemed weird to build a pavilion that would be dismantled and demolished after only nine days,’ says Van Assche. ‘We came up with a plan that involved borrowing all necessary materials and giving them back unharmed.’ They implemented the plan in detail, contacting suppliers and manufacturers who lent them materials for what was to be the People’s Pavilion. From concrete components and timber beams to…

TO CREATE A BUZZ about its coming light-rail transit (LRT) link – the Confederation Line – Ottawa set out to give local residents a memorable immersive experience, with the help of interactive specialists Moment Factory. In advance of the LRT launch in 2018, and simultaneously celebrating the Canadian capital’s 150th anniversary, the city’s ‘Ottawa 2017’ organization collaborated with Moment Factory to transform Lyon Station – still being completed at the time of writing – into a pop-up extravaganza. For nine weeks over the summer and autumn of 2017, Kontinuum offered visitors to Lyon Station a metaphorical voyage into the unknown. The concept revolved around the exploration of a magical realm discovered during excavations for the 2.5-km-long tunnel, ‘an anomaly in the fabric of reality where invisible frequencies take on physical…

Burn Up Sh? sugi ban or yakisugi, the ancient Japanese technique of charring timber to preserve it, is revisited by more than one brand. Kengo Kuma’s Yakisugi light for Lasvit (1) captures the texture of dry wood in handblown glass, and Ceramiche Refin’s Kasai (‘fire’ in Japanese) line of ceramic tiles (2) bears a similarity to burnt slats. In a similar vein, hand-charred wood is The dimensions of architectural surfaces are subject to change. A multitude of materials, including metals and ceramics, team up with new manufacturing techniques in the production of increasingly larger tiles of decreasing thickness. The game of proportions continues on walls, floors, ceilings and furnishings. Playing with spatial perception, manufacturers of flooring and wall coverings apply 3D effects to flat surfaces, highlighting the graphic capabilities of…