Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2020 i Frame

Stress in the workplace is on the rise. Now that most of us can work anytime, anywhere thanks to smartphones and laptops, we’re also expected to be up and running constantly, regardless of where we are – and to work faster and more efficiently to boot. Alarming news about stress dominated the media in the Netherlands while we were making this issue. No less than 17.3 per cent of the Dutch workforce – 1.3 million people – suffers from severe symptoms of burnout, a modern phenomenon that affects those between the ages of 25 and 34 in particular. In 2018 the economic damage to employers amounted to €2.8 billion in the Netherlands alone. On a global scale, the impact is dramatic and the damage incalculable. Enough reason, we felt, to…

01 GET THE RIGHT MIX Internal transfers from existing offices will help maintain the company ethos, especially at an executive level, but local hires are key to ensuring an understanding of contexts and codes. 02 BUILD A CLEAR PROFILE Understanding what purpose an office serves is central to making it a success. Will it be focused on one particular group of projects or area of expertise? Is its aim to maintain existing client relationships or to generate new business? 03 MAINTAIN STANDARDS While different countries have different working cultures, it’s important – especially in an industry with such intensive office hours as architecture and design – that performance expectations are consistent across the company. 04 FOSTER INDEPENDENCE Satellite offices tend to be most successful when allowed to develop their autonomy,…

Andreu World believes that design has the power to build community and provide inspiration within the workplace, specifically through the creation of communal spaces that draw people together. Furniture plays a big role in shaping such spaces, which is where the Spanish manufacturer comes in. Just like a group of colleagues assembling to share ideas, Andreu World’s seating and tables work together in harmony. Each of its core products complements the others, giving designers countless options to meet the demands of today’s new workspaces. One of those options is colour, which is why Andreu World decided to publish a new book on the topic. As Andreu World CEO Jesús Llinares explains, Stories 4: Mediterraneanism in Color is ‘from the master hand of Giulio Ridolfo, one of the world’s most renowned…

CHENGDU Two key examples come to mind when considering the relationship between British architecture and China’s copy culture. The first is Thames Town, a facsimile British town on the outskirts of Shanghai where newlyweds take photographs in front of red telephone boxes and mock-Tudor houses. The second is Meiquan 22nd Century in Chongqing, an unauthorized reproduction of Zaha Hadid’s Wangjing Soho that the architect discovered was likely to be completed even faster than her Beijing original. What these demonstrate is not only an appetite for consuming Britain’s spatial heritage (both old and new) wholesale, but also a more open attitude to how ideas are sourced and reproduced across borders. (It’s important to note that, rather than simply being disregarded, Western notions of intellectual property are still fairly new to China,…

HEALTHY MIND, HEALTHY (WORK)BODY The term ‘burnout’ may have been coined in 1974 by German-American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger, but it’s only recently been included by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the International Classification of Diseases (11th Revision, published mid-2019). The announcement – which labelled burnout as an ‘occupational phenomenon’, not a medical condition – coincided with another by the WHO: it is about to embark on the development of evidence-based guidelines on mental wellbeing in the workplace. The WHO’s actions signal that the mental health of workers deserves much more attention. A recent Gallup study of nearly 7,500 full-time employees found that 23 per cent reported feeling burned out at work very often or always, while an additional 44 per cent reported feeling burned out sometimes. CNBC notes that…

DURAVIT STARCK 1 BARREL German bathroom manufacturer Duravit and Philippe Starck have reimagined the 1994 design Starck 1 barrel, a washbasin plus vanity unit. The original garnered attention due to its archaic, basic form reminiscent of a bucket and bowl – the new version updates the barrel with attractive storage space and glare-free LED illumination. Finished with contemporary satin-matte lacquers, the range offers multiple possibilities for all bathrooms. duravit.com starck.com CC-TAPIS DOODLES Six individual rug designs make up Doodles, a collection designed by Faye Toogood for CC-Tapis, whose Milan showroom was temporarily rethought to create an exhibition setting for the pieces. The collection – which originates from Toogood’s textile work – took over 12 months to develop. ‘Our intention was not to create photocopies of the original works of art,…

At a prestigious award ceremony in Sydney earlier this year, one well-known designer turned up in a dress-shirt emblazoned with the words: ‘Counterfeit Protection Statement.’ Nothing too unusual about that, you might think – most creatives are driven to ensure the integrity of their output. Except that said awards ceremony was held in a showroom sporting knockoffs of his signature lighting. In design terms it was akin to Katharine Hamnett wearing a ‘58% Don’t Want Pershing’ T-shirt to meet Margaret Thatcher during the missile testing controversy in the mid-1980s. The Australian design industry is under attack from counterfeiters. While intellectual property (IP) laws automatically protect original work in the fields of literature, music and film, copyists can happily fake furniture, lighting and household accessories with impunity. Unlike the arts, industrial…

Peter J. Lassen, who passed away just last year, founded Montana in 1982. He had previously worked at his father-in-law’s company, Fritz Hansen, where he eventually became CEO. During his time there, Lassen saw a growing need for standardized modular storage solutions that met the emerging architectural style of the 1950s: less flair, more practicality. In response, he developed System 60/60 for Fritz Hansen in 1974, a shelving series whose name reflected the size of its units. When Fritz Hansen was sold to Skandinavisk Holding in 1979, Lassen left the company and bought the rights to the product, which, after a few tweaks, including changing the size to 69.6 x 69.6 cm, became the modular Montana System we know today. Montana – which in 2019 became one of the first…

HANNAH CARTER OWERS: I used to think I became an interior designer almost by accident, but it actually seems logical when I plot things back. I grew up in London, with two parents in the film and theatre business. A lot of my time was spent behind the scenes of fantasy worlds – backstage at the theatre or on film sets, or hanging out with the ladies in the costume department. I saw the nuts and bolts of my parents’ craft, and early on I knew I’d end up making stuff. People in the film industry are obsessed – it’s all they talk about. There was no way I wanted that life. But since theatre, film and television were the only worlds I knew, I did consider becoming a set…

BEIJING The release of Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo’s Netflix series was met with both (sparked!) joy and censure. While hoarders across the globe shared their #konmari makeovers on Instagram, critical articles surfaced online from the likes of The Guardian: ‘Marie Kondo, you know what would spark joy? Buying less crap.’ But setting aside the controversy for just a moment, let’s look at one reason cleaning up is taking off. As Kondo herself says: ‘Tidying orders and relaxes the mind.’ Mindfulness and mental health are very much on the agenda – topics we detail in this issue’s Lab (see p. 132) – particularly as the majority of the world’s population flocks to bustling urban centres. One such area is Chaoyang, Beijing’s largest and most populous district. ‘People are facing immense…

Nearly a decade on, Chanel’s AW10 set is regarded as one of, if not the most, spectacular of those overseen by the late Karl Lagerfeld. Over six days, 35 people worked to install a 265-tonne iceberg imported from Sweden into Paris’s Grand Palais – all for a 15-minute show. Lagerfeld’s intended takeaway message, as reported by Vogue? ‘Global warming is the issue of our times,’ he stated. ‘Fashion has to address it.’ Lagerfeld’s words were – and are – painfully true, though they highlight the hypocrisy of the show itself. ‘It was incredibly tone deaf, the perfect example of what is wrong with fashion today – excessive expense, excessive consumption and excessive folly at the peril of the planet,’ explains journalist-author Dana Thomas, who recently published the fast-fashion exposé Fashionopolis.…

HYBRID FOOD RETAIL Rethinking Design for the Experiential Turn Discover emerging trends in the food retail industry – one of the most creative fields for designers, architects and other professionals. This handbook prescribes hybridization – a fusion of gastronomy, co-working, hospitality and performative formats – as a powerful remedy against digital disruption. €29 MOMENT Redefining the Brand Experience Tokyo-based design firm MOMENT’s book of the same name highlights a versatile and skillful visual approach, focusing on detail-oriented spatial branding and lighting design for interior solutions that are both functionally and emotionally driven. €39 THE THEATRE OF WORK Clive Wilkinson This book proposes six humanistic principles that will inform a holistic and collaborative workplace design – each demonstrated by the award-winning work of Clive Wilkinson Architects. €39 WE BUILD DRAWINGS Mikkel…

In October, the theme of this year’s Abierto Mexicano de Diseño was ‘Lo popular’ (‘the popular’). Online, the event’s curator, Mario Ballesteros (also the director of the city’s Archivo Design and Architecture Gallery), explored the idea of ‘popular design’. Does it mean accessible design? Or design that rejects the ‘designer’ and instead comes from the street? Or, echoing the sentiment of popular art, is it a ‘complete universe of indigenous production and material culture emanating from the people’? Right now, the Mexican design community seems concerned with shaking off design’s elitist connotations and proving that it is for everyone. Over the last few years, there have been a slew of businesses, sometimes positioned as social enterprises, working with artisans to reconcile traditional crafts, techniques and forms with a contemporary design…

Isabel Gibson and Helen Chesner studied graphic design communication, not spatial or product design, but it’s their quirky and playful installations that have made a splash and shaped the current direction of their London-based practice. After each graduating from Chelsea College of Art with a degree that promises to ‘engage you in the creation and understanding of the rich visual culture that now surrounds us’, they promptly nabbed a project for an institution that – coincidentally? – surrounds us in rich visual culture: London’s V&A. There, the duo developed an interactive installation inspired by the Russian Constructivist design movement: ‘We didn’t want to do a flat piece of work on a wall,’ says Chesner. ‘Even though we hadn’t done much 3D work by that point, it felt like the natural…

Just one day after returning to New York City from a year-long shoot, Inbal Weinberg is taking time out to talk about the nuts and bolts of production design. Growing up in Tel Aviv, Weinberg decided to pursue the profession at an early age, believing it would combine her love of art and of film. Her enthusiasm was in high demand at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts: ‘Most people wanted to be a writer or director,’ she says. ‘Nobody came to film school to be some craft person.’ Since she graduated in 2003, her career has flourished, ranging across the likes of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Beasts of No Nation and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. ‘Production director’ – what’s the job description? I’m coming from a…

Once the pursuit of rarefied society and high-flying executives, the democratization of travel initiated in the latter half of the 20th century codified the spirit of American adventure and exported it to the world. Unprecedented access to land, sea and sky bestowed the masses with a heady medium for escapism and self-cultivation. Fast-forward to today, however, and the elegant designs of nascent mass-transit have collapsed into glorified commuter services, sprinkled with luxe-lite signifiers that offer little more than a nod to their glamorous predecessors. In the midst of flattened travel experiences and the current convention for more nomadic lifestyles, celebrating the intrinsic value of journeying well is enjoying a renaissance. A vanguard of hospitality spaces is emerging to meet the needs of travellers seeking permission to relax, something afforded by…

In the midst of the urgent need for action on global climate crises, architects and designers find themselves in an interesting position. As reported by the World Green Building Council in September 2019, building and construction are responsible for 39 per cent of global carbon emissions, meaning that the parties designing those buildings are coming under increased pressure to acknowledge their professional responsibility in the fight for the future – and to act upon it. How they might do this is, of course, complex. The Architect’s Declare campaign in the UK is advocating the use of low-embodied-carbon materials, whole-life carbon modelling, and designing for retrofit and renovation rather than demolition. Yet with signatories such as Foster + Partners continuing to take on large-scale airport projects, it’s difficult to know how…

Tick. Tick. Tick. That’s the sound of Tik-Tap, the design that won jumpthegap®’s special We Are Water Foundation Prize, an entry by South Koreans Soyeon Lee and Hyemin Min. To raise awareness of the acute water shortage in developing countries, the designers chose a simple, powerful solution in which storytelling plays a key role. A timer on a shower head brings the daily reality of having to walk for miles to find water to the affluent world of our Western bathroom. The story is communicated by Golombo, a little boy in a developing African country whose pencil-drawn shape literally walks around the shower head as the timer counts down. Lee agrees that Golombo makes turning off the hot shower a lot more rewarding and says she takes shorter showers since…

01 UTILIZE PLANT POWER Plant-filled workspaces can help to counter the lack of nature resulting from today’s indoor-oriented lifestyles. Work with a green specialist who can prescribe the right plants for the right purpose. 02 DIVERSIFY SPACES AND SERVICES Acknowledging the need for on and off time – and that those things mean different things to different people – employ a variety of spaces and services for non-work-related activities. 03 GO NEUTRAL TO NEUTRALIZE Companies should not only encourage rest – it can actually increase productivity – but also realize relaxation comes in many forms. Rooms for taking time out should remain neutral and flexible to best accommodate every user. 04 GATHER THE MASSES Corporate campuses can feel sprawling and disconnected, issues that can be remedied with a central hospitality-oriented…

3 years post-research went into developing the chair at the MIT Media Lab and at Limbic Life 24 vertebrae are activated while sitting 9 groups of spinal muscles are stimulated 15 hours are needed to produce the most complicated seat shells 999 different movements can be made on the sensor-optimized chair 14 layers of carbon and Kevlar are in the seat shells 64 variations of shell shapes were tested and produced  93 parts make up each chair limbic-life.com…