29/08/2013

Build My Ranch, Tadao Ando

If thinking about architectural projects that have left their sign to our minds, designer/director Tom Ford‘s personal ranch designed by the rigorous and self-taught Japanese architect Tadao Ando surely positions high on that list.

The complex is located in the arid lands of Santa Fe, New Mexico, setting place for several western movies, and continuing the tradition of architecture connected to the fashion world and its characters. Polyhedric Tom Ford is Texan by adoption and to him New Mexico has always been a very spiritual place, a mind-set that has formed part of his aesthetic, and always meant freedom to him. For his project, Ando took inspiration from the context of enveloping portions of barren land and turning them into monumental riding facilities, integrating them with the surrounding nature.


The ranch Las Cuadras plays different roles with the architecture, landscape, Mexican customs (the figure of the Gaucho), local climatic conditions and light, a very violent light, playing with the thick, strong walls that Ando designed. Also the use of rustic color palette fills the space with tones of the earth and the blues of the sky and water.


Other additional solution is Ando’s skillful control of circulation, the contrast between curved volumes and square-shaped parts, and between camouflaged materials and solid concrete, which are a part of a method that the award-winning Japanese master has been experimenting for some time. In addition, his poetical project – certainly influenced by the works of the Mexican architect Luis Barragán – has been generated creating sweeping landscapes, juxtaposing light and shadows as strong contrasts, but could be reassumed on the themes of the wall as a monumental scenography and magnificent calibration of sunlight. The clean aesthetic, volumes of pure geometry, the modern lines and the unobtrusive relation to the surrounding views make this building absolutely stunning. Las Cuadras expresses the personality and the meticulousness of Tadao Ando’s handprint, that as Ford’s, is always directed to the pursuit of perfection and pure beauty.


Giulio Ghirardi 
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27/08/2013

Design to See in September: London Design Festival

If you have enjoyed your summer holidays as much as we have, you must be really cranky for heading back to your office. For this very reason, we have come up with the perfect strategy to face those difficult first days at work: planning your next trip. If you’re a design junkie, there is no better place to be this September than London. In fact, for the eleventh year in a row, London will be hosting its Design Festival, and even though it may be a bit too soon to know all the great shows, shops, new products and brands to visit, here is a brief guide to this year’s edition.

The main venue of the Festival, which this year bears the slogan “Design is Everywhere”, is hosted by the Victoria and Albert Museum. V&A’s rich collection is the perfect setting for creating connections and reflecting on design practice. At the intersection between centuries-old crafts and up-to-date design, the V&A will be hosting different initiatives, from a real-life installation with objects from its collection designed by Scholten and Baijings, to Swarovski “God is in the details project” which will offer a closer look (literally) at the museum’s collection.

As with any other fair or international event, London Design Week has given birth to a set of collateral events, mainly organized in design districts around town. Even though Brompton Design District is the oldest cluster, nevertheless Eastern London has lately been true hub of creative activity. Hence, Clerkenwell Design Quarter with its retail spaces and Shoreditch Design Triangle with design studios and young creatives are the ones that need your attention.

Last but not least, we feel the need to mention in a concise to-see some events that have already been put on our design calendar for this year’s Festival: Max Lamb and his terrazzo project developed for dzek, Wrong for Hay collection directed by Sebastian Wrong for the super-exciting Danish brand Hay, Graphic Africa at Habitat‘s Platform gallery, and, of course, two days of talks at Global Design Forum at the V&A.

p.s. Even though we are still sleepy from our holiday break, we cannot but end this post on a critical note and think, once again, that events like London Design Festival or Salone del Mobile, should carefully think what is actually their role in contemporary design world and if 19th century world’s fair exhibition model should still be applied today.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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22/08/2013

Summer 2013: Architecture of the World

If your plans do not include burning yourself at the beach, you may consider visiting some cities that are not the usual first choices for a cultural summer trip, but unexpectedly beautiful and interesting venues in Europe, the Middle East and in the United States. If you specifically want to keep the beach factor included, in some of them you can surely find also a swimming spot.

Chicago, not NYC

Forget once the heat of New York as a destination for summer and choose the windy Chicago and its architecture. The Illinois State capital is known for its architecture and has long been connected with some of architecture’s most important names: it’s where Frank Lloyd Wright apprenticed, worked and flexed his brilliance and arrogance thanks to his master, Louis Sullivan, where Mies van der Rohe, in exile from Germany, created his later masterpieces. 
Moreover, the skyscraper was born in Chicago but the city, however, is not only a memory of a past splendor, but also continuing to experiment together with the MIT. Thanks to new enthusiasm and internationally renowned architects and artists a new wave of interest has flown to the city of Illinois — Frank Gehry’s sinuous Millennium Park and Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing for the Art Institute of Chicago are good examples. Happily, Chicago’s buildings aren’t just good for gawking — you can explore them, eat, sleep and play in them.

Unexpected Ljubljana

Ljubljana, the small capital of Slovenia is a gem in the heart of Europe. It was almost entirely conceived and designed by the architect Jože Plečnik and is considered one of the most radical works of art of the twentieth century.
 Plečnik tried to draw Ljubljana according to the model of ancient Athens and after studying in Vienna with Otto Wagner, in 1921 he returned to his city, where he was offered the role of professor in a newly founded university. He devoted all his creative power to modeling Ljubljana as the new capital of the Slovenes. His style, considered innovative even today, is characterized by classic design elements such as architraves, balustrades, columns and the like, which transformed and combined in their own way. 
He created a new image for the city, taking into account the aquatic and the terrestrial axis. See the National and University Library, the Triple Bridge, the Shoemaker’s Bridge, the central market, the outdoor theater Križanke, stage of Bezigard, the complex of mortuary chapels of the cemetery Žale and the church of Sv. Mihael on the Ljubljana Marshes. The city and Slovenia in general are experiencing a new creative period and have been also appreciated lately for a new wave of designers and architects in addition to a lively artistic activity also exported abroad.

Beirut’s Second Golden Age

Despite the 15 years of violent civil war that destroyed much of the city, Beirut has regained its original charm and a regionalist identity. Voted the best destination to visit by the New York Times in 2009, and, more recently, by Frommer’s, the city is in the second phase of one of the biggest urban reconstructions and despite the scarred history, there is a clear vision to rehabilitate the city in all its parts. New urban politics have brought international architects like Steven Holl to design the new marina, Herzog & DeMeuron with their project of a residential tower in the heart of the city, Zaha Hadid, and Rafael Moneo to the scene.
 This new ongoing construction boom is making Beirut’s skyline rising even further from the after war state. In the less internationalized parts of the city sit the landmarks of the 1960s and 1970s, Beirut’s pre-war glory days, including buildings by names such as Alvar Aalto, Victor Gruen, and the Swiss Addor & Julliard. Beirut has been completely transformed after the war and now it’s reviving its golden age, rediscovering the ancient heritage, projecting into the future.

Giulio Ghirardi 
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20/08/2013

Summer 2013: Beach Readings

“Hello World: Where Design Meets Life” by Alice Rawsthorn

Alice Rawsthorn is International Herald Tribune’s design critic and an exceptional writer, and this should be about enough to qualify her new book as an amazing summer read. “Hello World: Where Design Meets Life”, published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books and designed by Irma Boom, is the perfect text for any design rookie. Through simple language and loads of examples the author eloquently explains quite difficult concepts, such as what is good design (here ‘integrity’ is the key word), why is there so much bad design and what is design actually supposed to be and why is it relevant in everyone’s lives.

“Booktrek” by Clive Phillpot

Clive Phillpot has teamed up with one of the best contemporary art publishers, JRP Ringier, in developing a book that collects a series of essays he has written on artists’ books. Phillpot, the former librarian of MoMA library, has written the essays collected in this book since 1972, with the goal of shedding some light on the concept of artists’ books and their role in contemporary art practice. In his words, “Artists’ books are understood to be books or booklets produced by the artist using mass-production methods, and in (theoretically) unlimited numbers, in which the artist documents or realizes art ideas or artworks.”

“How to Shoplift Books” by David Horvitz

If you are to be bored by the other two suggestions, this one might come in handy if you want to treat yourself with a more juicy kind of book. “How to Shoplift Books” is a cleverly playful book conceived by the Brooklyn-based artist David Horvitz and published by the Venice-based Automatic Books. The book guides you through eighty different ways in which you might steal books from your favourite or the least favourite bookstore and (hopefully) not get caught.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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19/08/2013

Summer 2013: Designer Studios to Visit

#1: Kiki van Eijk & Joost van Bleiswijk (Eindhoven, The Netherlands)

When you enter through the flaming red doors of the studio of Kiki van Eijk and Joost van Bleiswijk, you’ll find yourself gazing at a bright and organized workspace with an exhibition chamber, where the shimmery dust of the industrial epoch still swirls around. This designer duo and real-life couple are seen as the epitome of “the new generation of leading Dutch designers” together with designers as Marcel Wanders, Maarten Baas, Studio Job and Piet Hein Eek. Twelve years ago, they both graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven, and they have worked side by side ever since. In 2011, they moved into this new grand studio of 1.100 m2, located in Strijp-T in Eindhoven. On these Strijp grounds, behind the chequered windows of the factories halls, Philips once manufactured its famous light bulbs, televisions and radios. 
Even though sharing the same workspace, Van Bleiswijk and Van Eijk rarely merge their names with the “&” symbol; under the same roof they are running their own studio and producing their own characteristic range of furniture, ceramics and textiles. However, this summer you’ll have the unique opportunity to see the duo’s works together in an overview exhibition. The exhibition ‘Co-evolution’ represents an overview of eighty pieces from the first twelve years of both designers’ careers and is a recommended must-see this summer.

‘Co-evolution’ runs until August 18th 2013
Noordbrabantsmuseum
Verwersstraat 41

5211 HT, ’s-Hertogenbosch
The Netherlands

Studio Address:
Zwaanstraat 1
TAB Building, Strijp-T
5651 CA Eindhoven
the Netherlands
*To visit you can make an appointment by sending a mail to press@kikiworld.nl or making a phone call to the studio +31(0)40-2222560
www.kikiworld.nl, www.projectjoost.com




#2: Rich, Brilliant, Willing (Brooklyn, New York)

Living in or visiting New York this summer? The studio of the lighting and furniture design trio Rich Brilliant Willing is located in a beautiful red brick building in Brooklyn. The studio’s name is a creative “jeu de mots” derived from the names of the founding trio: Charles Brill, Theo Richardson, and Alex Williams. These three fellow Rhode Island School of Design graduates teamed up to form their design studio in 2007. 
Rich Brilliant Willing is quite unique in that all of the production work is done in-studio. Design is, in their vision, not just the beginning part, and does not stop after the idea part to be pushed off to a manufacturer elsewhere. This is why the studio has a fully equipped workshop attached where the creative team oversees every aspect of the process, from A to Z, from design to assembly to distribution to sale. Thereby most of the materials are locally sourced; deliveries from the vendors are frequent. There is a lot of movement and energy all day long and the studio visitor can see every aspect of a design company in the one space.

Studio and Workshop Address:
98 4th Street
Suite 107
Brooklyn, NY 11231‬
US
*Studio is typically open 9am-6pm Monday-Friday. Visits are best booked in advance. www.richbrilliantwilling.com

#3: João Abreu Valente (Lisbon, Portugal)

When you stroll through the lively neighbourhood Bairro Alto in the city centre of Lisbon, search for the Rua da Rosa, number 237. Here you’ll find the studio space of 
contextual designer João Abreu Valente, who recently returned to his homeland after finishing his master studies in Contextual Design at the Design Academy of Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. The young Valente deliberately came back to the Portuguese context, because he is concerned how both designers and consumers estrange from the origins of the materials and the products they use due to the digital age we live in. Luckily, on Portuguese soil there are still small-scale industries left that are using artisanal methods. This allows the designer to connect and interact with the production process. 
Valente shares his open studio with other designers and architects, which makes it a vibrant meeting point, event space and showroom. He also uses the space for his most recent project: the store/gallery that he named Arquivo 237, a place to display more experimental approaches and initiate fruitful discussions (Valente claims there is a lack of such places in the Portuguese capital). You can freely visit Arquivo 237, where the passionate designer invites participants with relevant work to showcase projects that refer to the ideas of process and also hosts informal weekly gatherings where young people can present their work.

Studio Address/Arquivo 237:
Rua da Rosa 237
1200-385 Lisbon
Portugal
www.jav.pt and www.arquivo237.com

#4: 
Graphic design & bookstore Bruno (Venice, Italy)

Do you love to discover authentic places, cozy little book shops, the smell of paper pages with ink, and nose about there for hours, losing track of place and time? Then Bruno in Venice should be your next stop this summer.
 Bruno is a graphic design studio and bookstore dedicated to magazines, artists’ publications and independent editions in collaboration with Motto. Special presentations, publication launches and performances exploring the evolution and typology of the editorial international scene, take place in the store and around Venice.

Studio and Bookstore Address:

Dorsoduor 1621/A
30123
Venice, 

Ital
y
www.b-r-u-n-o.it

Lisanne Fransen 
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13/08/2013

Summer 2013: Summer Design Shows

Even though you might long for those lazy summer days at the beach, you shouldn’t nevertheless forget to soak in some culture, too, during this year’s vacations. Here are a few interesting, but not too nerdy shows for you to see during the summer in Rome, London, New York and Hyères.

Memory Place at V&A Museum in London

“Memory Palace”, a show curated by Laurie Britton-Newell and Ligaya Salazar, tries to understand the role of memory in contemporary (and possibly future) cultural climate by putting on display a three-dimensional illustration of a novel. Especially commissioned for the show, the 10000-word novel was written by London-based author Hari Kunzru and was visualized by some of the world’s most important designers, authors and illustrators, such as Åbäke, Le Gun, Erik Kessels and Luke Pearson, with the idea of expanding the notion of the book as one of the most significant beholders of our collective memory.


“Memory Palace” remains on show at Victoria and Albert Museum in London until the 20th of October 2013.

Design Parade 8 at Villa Noailles

Design Parade turns eight this year. Founded with the goal of promoting young designers, every year it chooses ten product designers who put their work on display in the beautiful setting of Villa Noailles. An international jury guided by Dutch designer Bertjan Pot has awarded French designer Mathieu Peyroulet Ghilini with his trestle project as the winner of this year’s edition.

The exhibition remains on display at Villa Noailles in Hyères until 29th of September 2013.

Young Architects Program 2013 in New York and Rome

Established in 2000, Young Architects Program is a competition that enables young architects to put in practice their skills, by designing a project to be displayed at MoMA PS1 courtyard in New York. This year, the project has expanded internationally and includes other three competitions held respectively at MAXXI in Rome, Santiago in Chile and Istanbul, Turkey. You can see the winning projects by CODA (Ithaca, NY) in Long Island City, bam! bottega di architettura metropolitana (Turin, Italy) in Rome, and SO? Architecture and Ideas (Istanbul, Turkey) in Istanbul throughout the summer in the courtyards of the respective museums, and in Santiago, Chile, from December 2013 through February 2014.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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01/08/2013

A Curious World of Things in Achille Castiglioni Studio

Entering the apartment of an inspiring personality is always a bit of excitement, with all the expectations. 
What could happen when you enter the studio of someone like Achille Castiglioni – a genius of the Italian design?

The apartment space and studio in the center of Milan, where Castiglioni worked, hosts nowadays a studio-museum of his name. Back in the days the location was smartly chosen because of the ability to quickly join the highway. In the times without Internet and emails this was the way to reach the clients – the main furniture companies on the periphery of Milan.

It’s a magical world of objects, models and prototypes, books, magazines, sketches and boxes, filled with all kinds of materials, research and work – the space is filled with thousands of curious things. To remember what exactly is in which box, is almost impossible. But not for Antonella Gornati, working there for more than twenty years. “In her head she has the real database of the content of each box,” jokes the daughter of the designer, Giovanna Castiglioni. As we move through the space, a story behind each object is told by either the daughter or the wife – Irma Castiglioni.

The word for furniture in Italian is mobile. Somehow it feels like there might be something even etymological in the idea that furniture has to be moved once in a while. In fact, in order to give it a new life from time to time, almost each piece by Castiglioni is thought to be easily transportable either with tiny wheels or other comfortable ways. The aim of the studio-museum is also to give as much of the attention for the contemporary designers. That’s why once in a while different boxes are being opened by a young designer who helps to originally curate the exposition of the objects, so the space is constantly changing and keeping the conversation alive between the past and the present. “In this way we share the way of thinking, working and teaching of Achille Castiglioni,” his daughter explains. “My father would, like Mary Poppins, arrive to teach in the university with two luggage bags full of curious everyday objects. He was always telling to his design students: If you are not curious, forget about it!”


At the moment in the studio-museum of A.Castiglioni the attention is given to the famous lamp Gibigiana. All the models, sketches and prototypes are shown until the 10th of August. This exhibition is curated by a young designer Marco Marzini.










Agota Lukytė 
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30/07/2013

In Between Naivety and Amazement

Apocalyptic or integrated? The conflicting attitudes that characterized the appearance of mass culture and, later on, of the Internet, are still popular in evaluating the reach of what design experts are keen to consider as the next industrial revolution: personal fabrication. In other words, the chance into producing our personal belongings ourselves thanks to a 3D printer, a laser cut and a 3D scanner.


According to the enthusiasts, these tools will soon transform us into contemporary demiurges – or simply “makers”, as Chris Anderson suggests – offering us the chance to fully control both design and manufacturing in a process that goes backwards from bits to atoms, that is to say from a 3D file to a three-dimensional object. The sceptics, on the contrary, are reluctant to diminish professional designers’ talent to imagine and create new objects according to their visions and knowledge.

In any case, the opportunities opened by personal fabrication are indeed real, but easy to be misunderstood at these early stages of technology development. Let’s think about the launch of the first 3D printed furniture: when Patrick Jouin presented his Solid collection in 2006, his futuristic interpretation of organic aesthetics impressed the design community, but very few professionals were stunned by the use of 3D-layering for objects on the scale of a chair. The same happened to Endless chair by Dutch designer Dirk Vander Kooij, which was first displayed in 2011 at the Eindhoven Design Academy showcase during the Salone del Mobile days. People got excited by the real-time processing of this seat, which was realized though a print head mounted on a robot arm. Nevertheless, they lost the perception of what its innovation represented: not only a DIY application of a numerical control machine, but a first step into the world of mass customization.

Thus, if we don’t get surprised by the widespread inability to give a proper weight to innovation – design history is full of naïve misunderstandings -, at the same time we should not be astonished that we ignore whether personal fabrication will allow us to fully customize the way our homes look like or, on the contrary, it will be an opportunity to print too many worthless gadgets. What we know for sure, however, is that the biggest revolution is not going to involve the way we imagine, draw or use our furniture, but the way we market them along the whole supply chain. We already got familiar to purchasing our furniture online, and we shall soon get used to buy a 3D file (or download it from an open-content platform) and then print it in a next door Fab Lab. Does it sound apocalyptic? It could, if not only showrooms risk to get obsolete, but also wholesalers risk to become unemployed.

Giulia Zappa 
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23/07/2013

The Spirit of Utopia at Whitechapel Gallery

Is it legitimate to ask the art world to contribute to social, cultural, political and economic change? If so, how can it publicly contribute to such change? Throughout the last century artists have often asked themselves probably the exact same question, thus developing forms of artistic practice that actively challenged the preconceptions of our society. Even though the concept of public art might have often been misunderstood, in its most eloquent outputs it has definitely proven that the art world can actively contribute to social change. It is necessary to notice that, when art does engage with the problems of the society, it often does so using the tools of design, as can be seen in the latest exhibition currently on display at Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Titled “The Spirit of Utopia”, the show departs from Ernst Broch’s seminal book “The Principle of Hope”, elaborating ten proposals for possible future development of our society. As can be seen from the installations exhibited, the artists and collectives involved have channeled their artistic practice through design tools, which often proves to be remarkably adequate in addressing such socially relevant issues as the ones this show tries to investigate. Hence, the exhibition includes projects like “Soul Manufacturing Corporation” by Theaster Gates, which stages an on-site pottery making laboratory, training apprentices and investigating skills, teaching and crafts as contemporary re-enactments of Morris’ ideals embodied in labor.

Our relationship with the nature, on the other hand, is addressed by the Londoner collective Wayward Plants, who “fuses new possibilities in food production with scientific narratives, from futuristic seed gardens to sending plants to space”. The show investigates nearly all aspects of contemporary life, such as alternative economies – with Time/Bank platform and Superflex collective, psychological health with “Sanatorium” project by Pedro Reyes, or the role of cultural institutions through the work of Peter Liversidge.


Even though the show lacks concrete proposals for solving problems our society will surely run into in the near future, “The Spirit of Utopia” nevertheless offers a clever insights on the potential of art and creative practices in dealing with issues that go beyond the boundaries of the art world itself. “The Spirit of Utopia” runs until the 5th of September 2013 at Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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18/07/2013

Old Wood Design, Reclaimed Material Is Going Raw

In the early 2000, Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek gained international recognition with his Scrapwood furniture collection, a set of cupboards, tables and armchairs crafted through a creative re-use of reclaimed wood. A genuine reaction to the pervading minimalism that had affected design during the 90s, his homemade style celebrated the beauty of old materials and the aesthetic dignity of no-waste culture.


Nevertheless, his glamourification of imperfection went one step ahead the mainstream bricoleur attitude seen before. Instead of assembling miscellaneous junk otherwise destined for the dump, Hein Eek succeeded to ennoble his furniture through a distinguishing feature, an artificial fossilization process under a thick layer of synthetic resin.

Ten years later, designers demonstrate to be more and more passionate about old wood and its potential applications. Riva1920, an Italian manufacturer devoted to massive wood processing, launched two years ago the “Briccole” program, a design competition inviting to refunctionalize the wooden posts that drive boats through the Venetian lagoon.



Among the 18 designers who joined the contest, Matteo Thun’s table is probably the most accomplished revamping attempt. Its tabletop, made from Briccole slices, is meant to appraise every flaw that comes from the corrosion of salty water, while brand new legs exalt the contrast between old and new wood. One more time, the result is not inconsistent and, above all, it avoids its most insidious risk: being rustic.

Finally, an innovative old wood design example comes from the 2013 edition of Design Basel, where the French gallery Ymer&Malta presented “fallenTree”, a limited edition table celebrating the raw aesthetics of a tree as a piece of art. Half table and half branch, this piece is not only a sophisticated example of contemporary cabinetmaking, with no rift between geometric and organic forms. Rather, the branch integration represents the very best achievement of the raw aesthetics: the most sophisticated form of design is to all appearances the most natural one.

Giulia Zappa – fallenTree photo credit ©Bernard Maltaverne & YMER&MALTA 
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