Design Anthology UK Issue 02

FROM THE EDITOR

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iven the stormy political climate, it seems apt that so many designers, architects, restaurateurs and hoteliers are serving up a healthy dollop of escapism and fantasy in their recent projects. Intentional or not, they form a welcome antidote to the grim reality we face on many fronts. People need transcendental places where they feel safe and connected, and yet can have a bit of fun and avert the drudgery of the every day. We outline a few such spots in issue 02: the cinematic suites at Palma’s new boutique hotel Can Bordoy (p56); a hidden house with a sunken courtyard and dramatic spotlights of overhead glazing (p64); or the three cantilevered sky terraces at Manhattan Loft Gardens, a behemoth hotel and residential development opening in Stratford, east London (p32).

Likewise there is a hunger for places that tie in with passion pursuits. The owners of Spiritland, a recently launched 180-cover restaurant behind London’s Royal Festival Hall, have created an eatery where serious audiophiles can eat their kohlrabi and tarragon chimichurri while listening to music “as the artist intended, on one of the best sound systems in the world”. The interior is designed to enhance the experience of sound and gives punters yet another reason to escape their woes, for a couple of hours, at least (p24).

Having said all this, there are designers who are prepared to take on some of the serious issues facing humankind, a few of which can be seen in curator Paola Antonelli’s long-anticipated Milan Triennale exhibition, Broken Nature (p30). We also feature sustainable fashion labels swimming against the current of the industry’s relentless seasonal calendar – an outmoded system that, without a doubt, discourages quality and longevity in lieu of “the new,” with its attendant effects on water use, pollution and waste (p156).

Antonelli sums up the challenge: “We must get rid of all these labels – sustainable design, green design… we need to make it part of people’s reality.

To do that, we cannot punish. You attract people by showing that behaving better is also pleasant, satisfying, gratifying. So it’s up to us.”

Elizabeth Choppin Editor-in-Chief

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MASTHEAD

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April 2019

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Choppin elizabeth@designanthologyuk.com Art Director Shazia Chaudhry production@designanthologyuk.com Sub Editor Emily Brooks Commercial Director Rebecca Harkness rebecca@designanthologyuk.com

hello@astridmedia.co.uk astridmedia.co.uk

Media Sales, UK and Europe Rebecca Harkness +44 7500 949434 rebecca@designanthologyuk.com Media Sales, Italy Carlo Fiorucci +39 0362 144 6000 info@fiorucci-international.com

Editorial Concept Design Frankie Yuen, Blackhill Studio

Media Sales, other regions Astrid Media sales@designanthologyuk.com

Words Charlotte Abrahams, Morag Bruce, Alice Bucknell, Francesco Dama, Grant Gibson, John Jervis, Dominic Lutyens, James McLachlan, Karine Monié, Emma O’Kelly, Laura Snoad, Ruth Sullivan, Becky Sunshine, Ginny Weeks, Kate Worthington

Printer Park Communications Alpine Way London E6 6LA United Kingdom

Images José Manuel Alorda, Filipa Alves, Iwan Baan, Emli Bendixen, Beppe Brancato, Nicole Franzen, Midi Photography, Nuno Henriques, Andrew Meredith, Vinay Panjwani, Mitch Payne, Art Sanchez, Ester Segarra, Rich Stapleton, Daniel Stjerne, Luke White

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CONTENTS

Front cover A Brussels mansion remodelled by Pierre Yovanovitch. Image

by José Manuel Alorda. See p90

Radar

Journey

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Products Collections and collaborations of note

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Read A selection of new titles on design, architecture and interiors

Hotel openings The best boutique and design hotels opening in Europe and beyond

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Travelogue, Detroit Food, architecture, art and music: Motor City has risen from the ashes

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Hotel, Palma Mallorcan architects Ohlab create a grand addition to the city’s hotel scene

22 Q&A In conversation with German design talent Sebastian Herkner 24

Restaurant, London An eatery at the Royal Festival Hall created by (and for) audiophiles

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Openings New showrooms and retail hotspots in Stockholm and London

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Exhibition Paola Antonelli’s Milan Triennale show, which focuses on mankind’s fractured relationship with earth

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Profile Space Copenhagen brings some Scandinavian spirit to Stratford

Home 64

Inner sanctum A house inspired by both a Turner painting and Japanese architecture

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Warm front The Disco Flat: metal and marble, fused with a burnished palette

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Rigour and poetry Pierre Yovanovitch creates an art haven behind a 1910 Brussels facade

108 Let in the light Transatlantic design studio Nune’s refurbishment of a Manhattan triplex

Hit the Heights Shot in their studio, Space Copenhagen’s Signe Bindslev Henriksen and Peter Bundgaard Rützou. See p32

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CONTENTS

Art + Collecting

Style

118 Diary The most compelling art events and exhibitions for the coming months

156 Most wanted Clothes and accessories that are beautiful, thoughtful and good

128 Exhibition Hauser & Wirth salutes local makers at its Somerset craft gallery

162 Jewellery Geometric adornments that have been sculpted for the body

134 Studio glass Beachcombing and glassmaking make good companions, according to Sophie Thomas and Louis Thompson

168 Profile How Nuno Henriques revived a dying weaving industry in his home village

Architecture 138 Survey Rationalist Rome: the most visible legacy of Mussolini’s rule

Pioneer 176 Aino Aalto The face of friendly functionalism who helped disseminate Finnish design

144 Yorkshire Feilden Fowles’ lateral new gallery, inspired by its parkland setting 150 India Modern maestro Balkrishna Doshi’s retrospective at Vitra Design Museum

Solid state Design Anthology UK shot a grouping of sculptural jewellery, against a background of geometric forms. See p162

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Selling Britain’s most beautiful and thoughtful homes

themodernhouse.com info@themodernhouse.com 020 3795 5920

Fürstenberg’s Plisago side table. Read the full story on p12

R ADAR Global design news

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Houtique With its cheeky, colourful crescent-shaped fringing, the Wink light by Houtique possesses a flirtatious femininity not often found within lighting design.

The Spanish brand has recently expanded the Wink collection, adding a floor and wall version to the existing pendant light. Their designer, Valencian consultancy Masquespacio, has also launched three more products with Houtique, helping to cement their creative partnership. Pictured alongside Wink is Masquespacio’s Mambo chair. houtique.es

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Orchid Edition In founding Orchid Edition, Tina Ledi hopes to breathe new life in to her family’s fourth-generation rattan company, teaming up with contemporary designers to bring a new sense of refinery to this versatile material. Paris-based Studio AC/AL has come up with four pieces for the first collection, including this Contour carver, which is full of inviting curves, from its bent-cane frame to the woven oval-shaped backrest. The optional seat-pad comes in five standard colours or a custom fabric. orchid-edition.com

Ferm Living The work of Denmark’s Ferm Living is often playful, even when it’s also sounding a more minimalist note.

The stand-out from its new collection is the Bow candleholder, made from subtly mottled Indian marble; its U-shaped twin is Arch, a candleholder made from blackened brass. There are more chunky curves in marble to be found among its new lighting pieces, including the Rest lamp, a matt glass sphere sitting on a ring of black stone. fermliving.com

SCP Philippe Malouin has created the Barrel collection for SCP, inspired by the shape of a wine or whisky barrel. The dining table, bench, coffee table and stool-cum-side-table are described as “simple yet sturdy, brutalist home objects”, and all feature a distinctive slatted curved base and plain top, both in lacquered American white oak. SCP launched the collection at the Maison & Objet fair in Paris, alongside new work by Matthew Hilton, Piet Hein Eek and Donna Wilson. www.scp.co.uk

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Fürstenberg It may appear to be a delicately fabric-wrapped side table, but Plisago is more intriguing than that: the work of German company Fürstenberg, its pleats are actually made from solid porcelain. Founded in 1747, Fürstenberg is better known for its tableware, but for this project it worked with Marcel Besau and Eva Marguerre to create something a little more groundbreaking, as part of an ongoing series of collaborations with outside designers. Plisago comes in two sizes, and in either white or rose-pink. fuerstenberg-porzellan.com

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Apparatus New York studio Apparatus is at the heart of the recent revival in US manufacturing, with a coolly modernist aesthetic and a materials palette that includes brass, wood, leather and marble. A new addition to its catalogue is an ash-topped version of its Segment range (pictured is the console table), which stands on softly opaque resin with horizontal fluted brass rails. The ash tabletop is sandblasted to bring out its contrasting grain, with a softly rounded underbelly. apparatusstudio.com

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Nada Debs This table light is part of Nada Debs’ Marquetry Mania collection, which seeks to bring a playful vitality to a traditional craft. Linear marquetry strips criss-cross its hemispherical shade, with delicately detailed, contrasting patterns showing off the skill of the maker. The collection, which is all handmade by artisans in Debs’ home country, Lebanon, incorporates a cabinet, centre table, dining table and side table, plus accessories such as bowls and mirrors. nadadebs.com

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Mater The vogue for reusing waste products happily shows no sign of slowing down, with innovative new materials popping up everywhere. Mater’s latest, designed by Denmark’ s OeO Studio, is the Column table, which is made from old packaging waste (for its black trestle base) and recycled yoghurt pots (for its white top, although an all-black version is also available). In line with Mater’s sustainable, ethical ethos, the trestles are made in northern India as part of a programme to revitalise local craftsmanship. materdesign.com

&tradition Space Copenhagen’s recent remodel of the Royal Hotel in Denmark’s capital – originally the work of Arne Jacobsen – included its design for a lounge chair, Loafer, which melded Jacobsen’s mid-century aesthetic with a more contemporary look. Loafer’s manufacturer &tradition has now released a sofa version, so now more than one person at a time can enjoy its enveloping high sides and back, fluted upholstery and solid curvy legs. andtradition.com

Lalique French crystal house Lalique has partnered with Arik Levy to make RockStone 40, a limited-edition series of sculptures in luminous colours. RockStone’s monolithic, faceted form has become one of Levy’s best-known motifs; the collaboration came about after he installed a stainless-steel version in the gardens of Villa René Lalique in Alsace. He realised that in Lalique he had found a kindred spirit, saying “our work is bent on preserving as much of the sheer force of nature as possible.” lalique.com

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Paola Paronetto The extraordinarily tactile forms of Paola Paronetto’s paperclay vessels are handmade using a complex procedure involving a mix of paper, card and clay.

Having experimented with bottle, vase and column shapes in her Cartocci series – named after a tubeshaped Sicilian doughnut – the Italian ceramicist has now added a family of tripods (pictured far left) to the collection. The individuality of each piece makes them eminently collectible. paola-paronetto.com

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Muuto Danish brand Muuto has ventured in to the fresh air with the launch of its first furniture for outdoors.

Linear is made from matt powder-coated steel and comes as a table or bench, in four colours (pictured is the burnt orange version). As the name suggests, the design is all straight lines, apart from its semicircular legs; a channel along the top is for water run-off. Linear was designed by Thomas Bentzen, a serial Muuto collaborator who has created several similarly refined pieces for the brand. muuto.com

Flos Nendo’s Oki Sato has taken a typically unexpected approach to the design of a dimmable floor lamp in his latest creation for Flos. Sawaru takes the form of two cylinders, with one acting as the light source, balanced perpendicularly atop the other. A moveable pin means that the top tube can be set to three different angles, so the light can act either as a low spotlight, wash all the way up a wall, or perform a function somewhere in between. flos.com

Favius A cross-shaped Italian-marble base gives a pleasing sense of stability to Favius’ Gravity tables; these weighty footings are balanced by a frame of slender steel bars and a black oak-ply tabletop. It’s available in two versions, a side table and coffee table, and a choice of two marbles, nero marquina or breccia pernice, the latter known for its swirling orange, pink and white surface pattern. Gravity comes from the Berlin design studio of Hanne Willmann, and like all of Favius’ products is made in Germany. favius.de

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Hana Karim The Ljubljana-based ceramicist Hana Karim started out as a jeweller, and there is certainly something jewel-like in the palette she employs; her beautiful stoneware plates possess pool-like depths thanks to their intensely hued glazes. Her newest collection introduces a few more colours, including a dark jade, which belongs perfectly with existing pieces in tones of turquoise, lapis, honey gold, shell pink and white. The indistinct speckled glaze employed on some of them she describes poetically as “galaxies”. hana-karim.com

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RADAR / Read

Futurekind: Design by and for the People

Coppi Barbieri: Early Works 1992-1997

Futurekind is billed as a “manual, manifesto and a call to arms,” dissecting 60 socially and environmentally conscious design projects that have made a positive impact around the world. Written by Rob Phillips – a designer, researcher and senior tutor at the Royal College of Art – with a foreword by Fuseproject’s Yves Béhar, it looks at open-source platforms and citizen science in eight areas of application including healthcare and education. From a DIY cellphone to a playground-powered water pump, the story of each inspiring project is told through photography, diagrams, drawings and interviews with the designers and communities who were motivated to create them.

This volume introduces the world of Lucilla Barbieri and Fabrizio Coppi, a pair of indemand still life photographers who have crafted images for the likes of Apple, Chanel, Cartier, Fendi, Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Now based in Whitechapel, they first met in Milan in the early 1990s while studying at Italy’s Istituto Europeo di Design. The book shows a set of intriguing experimental images from the start of their prolific career; inspired by earlier photographers such as André Kertész and Josef Sudek as well as later fashion photographers including Paolo Roversi and Sarah Moon, they reveal the origins of the couple’s passion for colour, light, form and material.

by Rob Phillips (Thames & Hudson)

foreword by Paolo Roversi (Daniani Editore)

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RADAR / Read

Houses: Extraordinary Living

Ando: Complete Works 1975-Today

Houses: Extraordinary Living deftly scans the diversity and innovation of more than 400 domestic spaces designed since the beginning of the 20th century. Modernism, postmodernism, brutalism, regionalism and deconstructivism all feature in this compendium of homes by internationally acclaimed architects and emerging talent. With a single sumptuous photograph illustrating each project, the book examines how modernist icons such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, alongside contemporary greats like Steven Holl and Grafton Architects, have experimented with materials, technology and space to create some awe-inspiring homes.

With a body of work spanning more than four decades, Japanese architect Tadao Ando is the recipient of some of his industry’s most prestigious awards, including the Pritzker, Kyoto and Praemium Imperiale prizes. His distinct modernist approach is illustrated in this super-sized monograph, which has been updated for 2019 to include new projects such as the Shanghai Poly Grand Theater (pictured on the cover) and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Ando’s unique use of concrete, wood, water, light and organic forms is explored via his studio’s portfolio of projects, from churches to cultural spaces, in Japan, Korea, France, Italy, Spain and the US.

by Phaidon authors (Phaidon)

by Philip Jodidio (Taschen)

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RADAR / Q&A

Sebastian Herkner

The award-winning German designer defines some of his criteria for working with top brands and explains how “swimming against the river” has become his ethos

You’ve been named as 2019’s Designer of the Year by the French design show Maison & Objet. How does that feel?

It’s a great honour for me and my team, but also the other companies and craftsmen I’ve worked with over the last 20 years.

You’re still based in Offenbach in Germany, where you graduated – weren’t you ever drawn to live in one of the big European design cities?

No. And I always say as a designer you don’t have to move to London, Paris, Milan, New York. You have to feel comfortable. Now you have the internet, Skype… of course you have to travel but don’t put pressure on yourself as a young designer to invest in a London studio.

What else would you tell young designers?

Focus on the local craftsmen in a place, not just the big brands. Ask them if they would be interested in a collaboration – use their material and knowledge and apply it to a completely other typology.

Other cultures and their makers are a huge part of your work, such as your recent Colombianmade woven furniture for Ames. Where does that impulse stem from?

I think it’s a privilege to be able to travel. If I go to Colombia for a project I’m really immersed in it and I understand the culture completely

differently than I would from afar. Then I really get inspired by the whole thing, the atmosphere and the colours around me.

Colour is integral to your work, isn’t it? Is it always right at the beginning of your process?

Colour is very important for our life and it gives a certain personality and character to a product. For me it’s always at the beginning, with the sketches.

Can you give an example?

With the Bell Table [for Classicon] all those years ago, when I did the first sketch it was in brass and green glass. Then I started to look for companies that would create it – and that was where the challenge started.

I suppose utilitarianism and function reigned supreme a decade ago. There wasn’t quite the same affection for flamboyant colour and rich materiality as there is now.

This was how German design was then. But I did a two-year internship at Stella McCartney in 2003 and that was all about tactility, material, colours and combining those things.

So you got your sense of colour from fashion?

I think I learned to work with colours there.

Fashion is about the research at the beginning, about which textiles will be used. In the same

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As told to Elizabeth Choppin

RADAR / Q&A

way, I think about materials and colours from the beginning now.

You’ve worked with a stellar cast of European brands, from Pulpo to Zanotta and Moroso.

How do you decide which commissions you’re going to take on?

I visit the company to see if I like them or not because it’s often a long-term relationship. Do we like the materials, their way of production?

Do they have a vision or is it just a press stunt?

Is it easier or more challenging to work with a brand that has a strong vision or identity?

It’s very important to me that I design a product that fits the company but carries my design language. It doesn’t make sense to go from one company to another and do the same thing over and over. That’s why my collection of products is very diverse.

Would you say that your work is more rational or emotional?

Emotional. In German design they want to be more rational, functional.

So is that true, rather than a stereotype?

I think it’s both, but a product has also to be beautiful. If it’s just functional, for me, it’s not really right because it needs an atmosphere and a personality and a certain beauty.

What’s your general take on European design?

There is definitely a trend for well-crafted products and high quality. We don’t have the time or money or space anymore for trendy throwaway things. You really have to be responsible about materials, where they come from and how we use them.

Yes, and promoting craft traditions, which is what makes some of your pieces so potent.

With Ames, I brought the craftspeople we worked with a magazine [that had featured the products] so that they can see that the world is respecting what they do, that it has value and is something people understand universally. We need to tell those stories.

Is there a product that you think particularly encapsulates what you’re about?

Well, the Bell Table, which I designed ten years ago. Back then no one was interested in brass and glass. They all said it’s old fashioned and now it’s one of the most successful side tables.

It’s been imitated a lot.

Yeah, [on sites like] Alibaba… you get it. And I really was interested in those materials, but at the time it was like swimming against the river.

Is that your thing? Swimming against the river?

Yes. A lot.

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Above Left to right: the much-imitated Bell Table for Classicon; three new products – the Albert table for Schönbuch, the Colombianmade Macara chair for Ames and the Bent floor lamp for Pulpo Images by Ingmar Kurth

RADAR / Restaurant, London

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RADAR / Restaurant, London

Sound bites

London eatery Spiritland, designed by – and for – audiophiles Words / Laura Snoad Images / Andrew Meredith

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ucked beneath the white-grey hulk of one of London’s most impressive postwar icons, Spiritland Royal Festival Hall is a new 180-cover restaurant where sound is an essential ingredient. While diners tuck into flavour-packed plates including carrot m’hanncha or kimchi rosti with pulled pork and pickled chillies, courtesy of New Zealand head chef Moondog, musical “selectors” – such as Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, Detroit techno pioneer Jeff Mills or all-female NYC collective Discwoman – spin records behind the decks. It hosts album playbacks, genre deep-dives and a talks programme that riffs on the enormous talent passing through the venue above.

Left Walnut panelling and leather booths create a cosy spot to eat – but it’s the behind-the scenes acoustic architecture that creates Spiritland’s added ambiance

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First opening at a site in King’s Cross in 2016, Spiritland is the brainchild of restaurateurs Patrick Clayton-Malone and Dominic Lake, who founded modern British eatery Canteen (the new restaurant takes over Canteen’s South Bank spot) and Paul Noble, the veteran sound engineer and producer behind Monocle’s radio station Monocle24. The trio lamented that, despite the maturity of the London restaurant scene, there was nowhere to share their passion for music that wasn’t sticky-floored, loud and preoccupied with heavy drinking.

“What inspired us was creating a space for music lovers built around excellence, where people could listen to music as the artist intended, on one of the best sound systems in the world, with food and design to rival that,”

RADAR / Restaurant, London

says Noble, who acts as the artistic director.

“Usually in the music world the music is at the centre and then everything else is just what you can get away with, especially when it comes to food. We wanted it to be unfathomably good.”

Designed by and for audiophiles, Spiritland’s interiors mix precision sonics with a luxe take on mid-century style. Panels of spiky acoustic foam are hung like contemporary sculpture on the walls, theatrical velvet curtains are thick with sound-absorbent lining and the ceiling is a grid of bespoke reflection and absorption panels, not to mention the chest-high custom speakers (and behind-the-scenes dark arts) by custom audio specialists Living Voice. “It’s not a retro space but there’s a fifties and sixties influence via Milan coffee houses – there was a warmth that we were looking for,” says creative director Clayton-Malone. “We couldn’t not be aware of the Festival Hall here, but Spiritland

sits perhaps ten to 15 years after it first opened.

There’s luxury in the materials, whereas when the Festival Hall was built, everything was repurposed. The country was broke.”

Walnut panelling and curvaceous booths in conker-coloured leather add to the opulence, but any nostalgia is quickly punctured by playful touches, such as stripy spherical lamps

by London-based designer Jordi Canudas and a bar fashioned from Max Lamb’s nougat-like terrazzo for Dzek. Designed to be a good place to socialise whether for breakfast at 8am or after-show drinking at 2am, Spiritland slips into party mode via gradual changes in light and sound levels. “You can enjoy the evening at a different pace to a normal night out,” says Clayton-Malone. “It doesn’t have to be…” – he gestures a steep rise and a sudden drop. “We’ve all done it and it’s great fun but most of the time you want to glide down gently.”

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Above The restaurant’s bespoke sound system was designed and built

by Living Voice

THINKING DIFFERENTLY ABOUT TRADITION

GALVINBROTHERS.CO.UK

RADAR / Openings

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RADAR / Openings

Sahco, London German textile company Sahco was recently acquired by Kvadrat, an event that has led to the 200-year-old brand opening the doors to a new Chelsea Harbour showroom. The space, conceived by a recently assembled creative team headed up by Vincent Van Duysen and Anna Vilhelmine Ebbeson, shows Kvadrat’s textiles as well as Sahco’s latest collections, which have been taken in a fresh, contemporary direction. sahco.com

Resident x Massproductions, Stockholm In a contemporary design double-bill, New Zealand’s Resident has ventured to the northern hemisphere for its first international showroom, open in partnership with Swedish furniture firm Massproductions. Based in Hammarby quay, central Stockholm’s former industrial area, the light-filled 14,000 sqm space occupies a concrete-clad, neomodernist building designed by Johannes Norlander, an ideal backdrop for both brands’ collections of furniture and lighting. The collaboration “brings together the best of two like-minded and ambitious design companies,” says Resident’s co-founder, Scott Bridgens, who adds that “the Scandinavian market is one of the most informed in the world.”

Timorous Beasties, London Lovers of exuberant pattern will be pleased to hear that Glaswegian brand Timorous Beasties has opened its first London retail outpost in Islington, showcasing a vast collection of fabrics, wallpapers, cushions, accessories and stationery. It’s right next to the existing trade showroom for industry clientele – which has also undergone an extensive revamp. timorousbeasties.com

resident.co.nz / massproductions.se

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IKON, courtesy of Nicoletta Fiorucci, London and Giustini/Stagetti, Rome

RADAR / Exhibition

A climate of possibility

Curator Paola Antonelli’s show for Milan’s Triennale explores how mankind can repair the fractured relationship it has created with the environment

Words James McLachlan

Above Clockwise from top: monitoring devices being flown into the Italian Alps as part of a project that measures shifting international borders; a cabinet made from computer waste

by Formafantasma; a greenhouse full of solandra vines, whose pheromones are said to induce feelings of love, will be shown as part of the Nation of Plants show

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here’s a triceratops in Milan in the Natural History Museum that I remember from childhood. I grew up with it. I love it. But I hope that we as a species will be remembered as more than that,” says curator, writer and broadcaster Paola Antonelli. Surely, homo sapiens have a better shot at leaving a decent legacy than the dinosaurs? Well, no. Unless we make some drastic changes, then our ingenuity in shaping the natural world is probably leading us down the path of extinction, too.

Antonelli has curated this year’s Triennale in Milan – the 22nd edition of the city’s major art and design exhibition – with this theme in mind. Called Broken Nature, the long-awaited show explores this fractious relationship with the natural world and how we might repair it through restorative design. The underlying notion is that humanity has disrupted the natural order, and only through a system of reparations can we be saved from the abyss.

“Do these reparations have to carry pain and your sweat and the idea of punishment?” asks Antonelli. “Or can we instead move beyond that and work together to make nature whole?”

The curator has trained her lens on the latter, pulling together a broad spectrum of exhibits that (she hopes) will cajole rather than hector her audience into reassessing their behaviour. It encompasses everything from the

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rethinking of everyday practicalities, such as biodegradable pregnancy tests, to the probing of complex scientific systems. Neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso’s The Nation of Plants show, for example, will examine how botany could solve ecological problems. It is a deliberately broad church where the avant garde will rub shoulders with the more prosaic. Occasionally, as with Formafantasma’s Ore Streams project, which proposes that waste is in fact a new material, those two ideas merge. “There are objects that are pretty mundane, like tanks that recover rainwater in Mexico,” says Antonelli.

“They are not pretty at all, but they are gorgeous to me because of what they signify.”

Broken Nature feels like an event that has been rehearsed numerous times, but never quite made it to the opening night. Where this show may succeed owes much to Antonelli’s acute awareness of the need to sever the association of sustainable design with a kind of pious hair-shirted puritanism. Even the terms are problematic. “We must get rid of all these labels – sustainable design, green design… we need to make it part of people’s reality. To do that we cannot punish. You attract people by showing that behaving better is also pleasant, satisfying, gratifying. So it’s up to us.”

Triennale Milano, on until 1 September 2019; triennale.org

RADAR / Hotel, London

Hit the heights

Space Copenhagen brings its distinctive brand of Scandinavian design to a long-awaited hotel in a Stratford skyscraper

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very large chimney is taking shape in Stratford. Not the sort of stark, industrial chimney you might imagine in this gritty part of east London, but rather a sculptural smokestack, nine metres tall. Located in the lobby of the new Stratford Hotel, which opens this spring, it will burn brighter than any blaze for miles around. This neighbourhood is not known for its homely feel, its tourists or its connection to nature – and both hotel and fire are original additions to the area, occupying the first six floors of the 42-storey Manhattan Loft Gardens skyscraper.

“Stratford is an industrial modern cityscape needing to be humanised,”says Peter Bundgaard Rützou, co-founder of the Danish architecture practice Space Copenhagen and the creator of the hotel’s interiors. “Nature is absent and the hotel lobby is enormous, with huge-scale windows. It needed to be anchored.” So, the real, crackling fire in a cold glass lobby is a grounding act. “When we stare at an open fire, we connect to something fundamental to our wellbeing,” adds Signe Bindslev Henriksen, Space Copenhagen’s second co-founder.

The pair, who have worked together since 2005, have created hotels with hygge before. Last year signalled their renovation of Copenhagen’s iconic Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, a 1960s timepiece by the late Arne Jacobsen, and their 11 Howard hotel in New York – all soft tones, tactile textures and materials, propped up by a crowd-pulling bar – has the pulse that other famous Manhattan haunts such as The Carlyle or The Chelsea once had. It’s one of the reasons

why Harry Handelsman, the visionary property developer and founder of the Manhattan Loft Corporation, chose them for The Stratford.

Manhattan Loft Gardens, a serrated, doublecantilevered skyscraper, is Stratford’s highest landmark by far. The views from the very top stretch as far as Richmond Hill, Crystal Palace and Alexandra Palace, with Essex and Surrey beyond. The views from the hotel, however, are less impressive; its neighbours are the Westfield shopping centre and the rather dreary remnants of the 2012 Olympic village. “The interiors scheme incorporates natural materials, a subtle palette and softer elements to counteract its surrounds,” explains Henriksen.

Words Emma O’Kelly Images Daniel Stjerne, portraits

Sited above the hotel there are 248 apartments, ranging from £15m penthouses to £495,000 studio flats, as well as furnished lofts that can be rented nightly, weekly or monthly. “Because people are also living in the building, The Stratford has to accommodate residents as well as guests,” says Bundgaard Rützou. “The interdependency between the two throws up exciting possibilities.”

A destination restaurant, Allegra (run by the team behind Chiltern Firehouse), and the ground-floor Stratford Brasserie are required to provide spaces for all-day, all-mood socialising, while 24-hour room service, private catering and concierge services, meeting rooms and the hotel gym need to reach residents too. Likewise, hotel guests get to meet the locals, either in the bars and restaurants or sitting around the fire pits in the three sky gardens. Another talking

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Facing page Signe Bindslev Henriksen and Peter Bundgaard Rützou of Danish architects Space Copenhagen

RADAR / Hotel, London

Facing page Space Copenhagen’s oak, bronze and leather bench, and a mirror whose frame has been colourmatched to the walls to blend in Image by Rich Stapleton Right One of the 42storey building’s three sky gardens Below Architects SOM designed the doublecantilevered tower

point is a unique artwork by British designer Paul Cocksedge, consisting of 218 pieces of “paper” – which are actually made from solidsurface material – floating down from on high.

Handelsman bought the site in 2009, before Westfield and while the Olympic Park was still a pile of bricks. “The stereotype of a high-rise tenant is someone who lives in isolation, who doesn’t really populate the building,” he says.

“Tenants at The Stratford Lofts are encouraged to get to know their neighbours; the entire building has been specifically designed to fuel social interaction, to make guests and residents feel part of a community.”

Bundgaard Rützou says that “Harry’s ambition of creating a community in the building is extremely interesting” – but it’s a challenge, too. “Copenhagen also has its share of soulless developments; Ørestaden is an area of the city not dissimilar to Stratford, which 15 years on, is not seen as a success,” he says. “It was badly planned and lacks personalised space – those small bike shops and coffee shops

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RADAR / Hotel, London

Left Bindslev Henriksen and Bundgaard Rützou, who have worked together since 2005 Right A suite at The Stratford, which features a bed custom-designed by Space Copenhagen Image by Rich Stapleton

that create a sense of belonging and connect people. A lot of forward thinking has gone into Stratford, though, so I’m sure it will succeed.”

Connections to the rest of London are excellent and culture has also arrived in the area. When the Victoria & Albert Museum’s V&A East opens in 2021, followed by a second Sadler’s Wells, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and campuses for University College London and the London College of Fashion, an expected 1.5m more visitors will come to the area. The Stratford will be there to accommodate them.

“The fluidity between hotel and residential projects is a trend going both ways,” observes Henriksen, citing Space Copenhagen’s design

work on a residential project in Washington DC that will include some of the amenities of a hotel. Ongoing collaborations with furniture manufacturers such as Gubi, Stellar Works and Mater ensure that there’s no shortage of elegant pieces, all with their trademark Scandinavian twist, for the interiors.

“We first saw the site of The Stratford three years ago. It was a cold, overcast day and the whole area looked uninhabited, except for one gigantic mall,” says Bundgaard Rützou. “Now when we are there, we feel an overwhelming sense of the future. It’s good. The collective debate needs to be about what’s next, not what we have lost.”

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RADAR / Hotel, London

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The Hideout Room at the Siren Hotel, Detroit. Read the full story on p46

JOURNEY Distinctive destinations

JOURNEY / Openings

New hotels

Unique places to stay, in destinations of note

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JOURNEY / Openings

Casa Cook Chania, Crete Thomas Cook continues to invest in its boutiquehotel spin-off Casa Cook, having had some success with the brand in attracting new audiences to its package holidays. Casa Cook Chania, a familyfocused hotel in Crete’s historic harbour city, will be led by the same design team who worked on previous projects – K-Studio architects, with interior design

by Lambs and Lions alongside Annabell Kutucu.

The resort spreads across several low-rise buildings in signature Casa Cook style: simple yet sophisticated, with a breezy coastal vibe. Local stone, wood and polished concrete have been incorporated into the design, and the village-style layout is populated with Mediterranean and tropical planting, with paths that wind down to a white-sand beach. casacook.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

The Hoxton, Chicago East-London-born Hoxton Hotel group is set to bring its English charm and characterful interiors to the Fulton Market District of Chicago with the opening of its third hotel in the US. Set on a site once occupied by car mechanics and meatpackers, the new building, designed by Ennismore Design Studio, features industrial elements such as concrete ceilings and warehouse-style windows. Mid-century

furniture will add a cosy feel, alongside customdesigned rugs and local artwork. Co-working space and welcoming communal areas should encourage guests and locals alike to work, relax and enjoy the amenities, which include a rooftop pool and an eatery run by Chicago’s Boka Restaurant Group. thehoxton.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

Hotel Amapa, Puerto Vallarta Boutique stays had been scarce in the Mexican coastal resort of Puerto Vallarta – until now, with the opening of Hotel Amapa, a “minimal, modern and Mexican” hotel set against a dramatic backdrop of the Sierra Madre Mountains, the Pacific Ocean and the old town. With a neutral colour palette and crisp, clean lines, the emphasis is put on the hotel’s sea and mountain views. Designer Antoine

Ratigan of Circle Minds was inspired by the work of legendary architect Luis Barragán in his use of traditional materials, and native craftsmanship is found throughout, including Oaxacan clay by David Pompa, textile art by Mariella Motilla and woven hammocks from the Yucatán peninsula. hotelamapa.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

Blique by Nobis, Stockholm Hot on the heels of opening in Copenhagen, Nobis Group has turned to the up-and-coming Stockholm neighborhood of Hagastaden for the site of its newest hotel. Blique by Nobis, comprising 249 guestrooms including 58 studios, occupies a 1930s warehouse originally designed by architect Sigurd Lewerentz and newly revamped by the celebrated Swedish practice Wingårdhs. Its concrete surfaces

and steel accents pay homage to the industrial heritage of the building, which spans nearly a whole city block. Blique by Nobis envisages the hotel as a “community in its own right” with a courtyard, two restaurants, three bars, events spaces and a rooftop terrace to draw in creative clientele. designhotels.com

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JOURNEY / Openings

Inhabit, London New hotel brand Inhabit will debut its first property in London this summer, focusing on a “restorative townhouse experience”. The property, on a quaint mews street in Paddington, brings together six Georgian townhouses, designed by Holland Harvey Architects and Caitlin Henderson Design. It draws on multiple influences, from its soft Scandinavian palette to its focus on British heritage. As well as featuring peaceful communal areas, the hotel’s 90 rooms are designed around decluttering the mind, with minimalist furniture, a library and a holistic art programme by Culture A. The two-storey atrium, complete with living plant walls, will offer yoga and meditation to further soothe weary travellers, while a cafe will serve locals and guests alike. inhabithotels.com

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Start your engines

Motor city is more than cars – the city’s flourishing creative and cultural scenes are driving Detroit forward as never before

Doug Zuba/Unsplash

Words / Kate Worthington

JOURNEY / Travelogue, Detroit

“T

he next Berlin.” “The new Brooklyn.”

These are some of the terms that have been bandied around to describe Detroit and its comeback over the last few years. But the truth is, this city has always been cool. Ask any local and they’ll tell you Detroit has never followed the crowd – it’s just that now, the rest of the world has caught on, and the momentum has suddenly picked up considerably, with several new hotels and a vibrant food scene.

Detroit has had its troubles – hit by economic downturn, it filed for bankruptcy in 2014 – but it’s still arguably one of the world’s most influential cities. As the seat of the US motor industry, the birthplace of Motown and techno (and a breeding ground for musical talent in general) and the home to a unique stock of art and architecture, it has always been a hotbed of innovation. In 2015 it was the first US city to be named a UNESCO City of Design and there’s been a surge of regeneration sweeping through ever since. The last 18 months have seen the opening of a trio of hotly anticipated

hotels housed in iconic Downtown buildings – the type of hotels whose design credentials will invite those Brooklyn comparisons, whose eateries and bars become hangouts for the city’s creative types as well as design-savvy visitors.

Occupying the magnificent neo-Renaissance Wurlitzer Building, The Siren Hotel opened last spring. It made waves in the city, not least because of its outrageously Instagrammable public spaces, its Candy Bar being a highlight (see Address Book, p54). Then came the Detroit Foundation Hotel, in the former Fire Department headquarters; and finally the Shinola Hotel, opened this past January by the Detroit-based lifestyle brand of the same name, which since its founding eight years ago has been at the vanguard of the city’s manufacturing resurgence as a maker of watches, bicycles and leather goods.

The Shinola Hotel is housed across two restored buildings, including the old TB Rayl & Co sporting goods and hardware

“The Siren Hotel made waves in the city, not least because of its outrageously Instagrammable public spaces”

Right The boudoir-like lobby of the recently opened Siren Hotel Facing page Vacant since the early 1980s, the neo-Renaissance Wurlitzer Building was turned into The Siren Hotel by developers ASH NYC

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JOURNEY / Travelogue, Detroit

“Rooms feature Shinola bedside clocks, turntables and custom leather accessories, but it’s a subtle nod to the brand rather than a hard sell” store, which was built in 1915 by architects Baxter, O’Dell & Halpin. Fairly unremarkable at a distance, look closer and you’ll see an incredibly decorative brick-tiled facade, which the architects hoped would cause passers-by to associate with the decorative goods within (it’s these kinds of details that make the city’s architectural specimens so unique). The other building is a former Singer sewing-machine store – all-in-all a fitting location for Shinola, then, with the brand’s emphasis on American craftsmanship and attention to detail.

So far, so industrial – but once inside, Detroit’s commercial and manufacturing history fades away to a sense of effortless sophistication.

The Living Room, to the right of reception, is intended to be a space for Detroit locals and guests alike to enjoy. Awash with a soft palette of blush nudes, caramel and coffee coloured velvets, marble and fine timber, the space is punctuated by art and the occasional jewelhued couch. These understated interiors are the work of New York-based Gachot Studios,

which had previously worked on Shinola’s retail spaces. Naturally, rooms feature Shinola bedside clocks, turntables and custom leather accessories, but it’s a subtle nod to the brand rather than a hard sell.

All three hotels make use of homegrown talents, in the decor, art and in the kitchen.

Another common feature is the inclusion of retail spaces – again, all championing resident brands. It’s a no-brainer for the Shinola Hotel, of course. Rather than just a store off the lobby though, it has an entire stretch of shops on the premises, named Parker’s Alley. Here, international names Le Labo and Madewell sit with local brands such as fashion label Good Neighbor and cold-pressed juice bar Drought.

All this independent spirit and we’ve not even left Downtown yet. When you venture to other, less commercial areas, it’s even more palpable. Take Corktown, the city’s oldest surviving neighbourhood. It’s been dubbed a hipster haven for some years now, but it’s still

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Above Muted tones in a guest room at the Shinola hotel, opened in January 2019 Image by Nicole Franzen Facing page Work by local artists features prominently at the Shinola Image by Nicole Franzen

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JOURNEY / Travelogue, Detroit

a breeding ground for creativity, new openings and community happenings. Distilleries-cumspeakeasies, coffee roasters, artists’ studios and record stores inhabit its colourful painted buildings – the sense of community is evident at every turn, from urban farms to non-profit co-working spaces. It’s about to get a further influx of investment too, as it was announced last year that Ford is planning to locate a campus in the area.

Across town, another neighbourhood where entrepreneurialism is flourishing is leafy West Village. The area is fast getting a reputation as a food and drink hotspot with several new establishments set to open this year. Newcomer Marrow is a typical example – not just a cool local restaurant, but a butcher’s shop that hosts workshops and events, too. Owner and chef Sarah Welch says of the area: “It’s a beautiful mix of old and new Detroit. Many people left the city in the sixties, but those that didn’t decided to remain in areas like West Village.

So while there is an injection of new people and growth to the neighbourhood, there are also those who have weathered the storm and are relieved to see it flourishing again.”

Welch says Detroit’s food scene is a melting pot of cuisines and cultures – and was so long before this recent boom – from Bangladeshi, Mexican and Vietnamese to Mediterranean and Caribbean. With 30-plus restaurants due to open this year, Motor City looks set to become a culinary destination as much as it is already a mecca for music or architecture.

Facing page Top to bottom: West Village’s Marrow, part of a flourishing food scene; Diego Rivera’s masterpiece murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts – its panels depict humming industry at Ford’s motor plants

Speaking of music, there’s no escaping Detroit’s notorious heritage. There’s Motown, of course (the museum is a must-visit for firsttime visitors), but jazz, hip-hop, punk and rock all have connections to Detroit, while techno was born and bred here. On any one night, the city’s music scene is thrumming across its brilliant mix of old dive bars ( Jumbo’s, Old Miami), jazz clubs (Cliff Bell’s) and newer venues (Deluxx Fluxx), and its nightlife is a huge draw to visitors and creatives who’ve upped sticks from the likes of NYC and LA. This is where the Berlin comparison starts to make sense, especially when you consider that,

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like the German capital, the cost of living is so affordable – nearly half of that of New York.

Perhaps another reason why the city draws parallels with Berlin is its confident art scene.

“There is great art everywhere. Detroit has always been an international art city that seeks out conceptual, political art – it has a fear-no-art mindset,” says Elysia BorowyReeder, executive director at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).

Taking up residence in a former car dealership designed by acclaimed architect Albert Kahn in the vibrant Midtown area, MOCAD has been the city’s hub for contemporary arts since it opened in 2006 and is a premier example of repurposed architecture.

MOCAD’s story is one that’s being replicated across the city. After the exodus of the 1960s, many of Detroit’s buildings fell into dilapidation, and are now being restored and reinvented as hotels, galleries and the like. After all, Detroit has one of the largest surviving collections of late-19th- and early20th-century architecture. From the soaring art deco Fisher Building, to the showy, neon-festooned Fox Theatre and the grand Renaissance-styled Detroit Institute of Arts – a must-visit for its Diego Rivera murals, which depict Detroit’s industrial heyday – just by standing on the street, you get a real sense of the city’s swagger and the financial power it beheld at its peak. The wider metropolitan area is home to several works by Frank Lloyd Wright, including Affleck House and Dorothy H Turkel House, and there are exciting new plans afoot for the city including a riverfront park project by David Adjaye and the state’s highest building by SHoP Architects. All more proof that Detroit is – and has always been – a place that’s eagerly raced into the future, unafraid to champion new ideas and design.

To feel the city’s buzz and witness its creative energy today, it seems almost implausible that just six years ago, it was declaring bankruptcy.

Motor City may not quite be back in its golden age just yet, but it’s clearly on track. And this time, when it gets there, Detroit’s communities will make sure it stays there for good.

JOURNEY / Travelogue, Detroit

Address book

Highlights from Detroit’s kicking cultural scene

DÉTROIT IS THE NEW BLACK

“A uniform for Detroit” is how founder Roslyn Karamoko describes her capsule of classic monochrome staples such as cotton sweatshirts and varsity jackets. The store is also a platform for emerging local brands. detroitisthenewblack.com

LIBRARY STREET COLLECTIVE

This Downtown contemporary art gallery has helped to shape Detroit’s arts scene since it opened in 2012. As well as running a conventional exhibition space, it has transformed an alley in the former garment district into streetart gallery and events venue The Belt (pictured is a work by Ellen Rutt) and repurposed a 10-storey parking lot in the business district into a public gallery with space for the work of 27 mural artists from around the globe. lscgallery.com CANDY BAR

CITY BIRD

LADY OF THE HOUSE

Part of The Siren Hotel, Candy Bar has swiftly become one of the city’s hippest hangouts, in part thanks to its decor: swathed top-to-toe in pink velvet, it’s where Jazz Age decadence meets millennial cool. Pull up at the bar and order from pink-tuxedoed bartenders, admiring the enormous, blown-glass chandelier overhead.

This well-loved independent retailer in Midtown showcases the work of designers from Detroit, Michigan and other Rust Belt cities. As well as a 500-strong range of greetings cards by local talents, you’ll find gifts, jewellery and apparel for kids. Its next-door sister store, Nest, stocks homeware and garden accessories.

Kate Williams’ Corktown restaurant (above) has scooped up many awards with its focus on local producers and a menu of elevated comfort food such as mushroom fettuccine with caramelised onion, fennel and miso butter. From this spring, she will also be at the helm of new restaurant Karl’s at The Siren Hotel.

candybardetroit.com

citybirddetroit.com

ladyofthehousedetroit.com

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Swathed in pink, Candy Bar is The Siren Hotel’s Instagram-friendy cocktail spot.

Try the bubblegum-flavoured Bubble Rum, served by a pink-clad bartender

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JOURNEY / Mallorca

A Balearic balancing act

Palma’s hotel scene is enriched by the addition of the romantic and refined Can Bordoy

S

wedish investor Mikael Hall is well versed in buying and selling property. Extensively renovating a property and then turning it into a business has been a lesser-trodden path. So too is creating a high-end hotel on the Balearic island of Mallorca, but that’s just what he’s done in the heart of the island’s capital Palma.

Arguably more often associated with its noisy bars and pizza joints, the city is five or six years into a process of regeneration. Not far from the newly developed neighbourhoods full of hipster coffee shops and independent design stores is Hall’s recently opened 24-suite luxury hotel, Can Bordoy Grand House & Garden, discretely tucked away on a quiet, narrow street in the charming Old Quarter.

Hall understands good design, which is why he recruited the husband-and-wife architects Jaime Oliver and Paloma Hernaiz of Palmabased Ohlab to renovate, restore and then decorate the building. The hotel had previously been a private family home, as well as more recently during the 1970s and 1980s, a school run by nuns. For Hernaiz and Oliver, who had previously worked for Rem Koolhaas’ OMA practice in New York and China before setting up their own studio in 2009, this was their first complete hotel project.

Hall’s purist vision is what first enticed Ohlab to get involved. It was clear that Hall as looking for something luxurious, but mostly he wanted a place that was authentic and respectful of the building’s layered history. With the help of historians and archaeologists, Oliver and Hernaiz got to work and uncovered remnants of a 12th-century facade, plus a storey that

was probably built during the 16th or 17th centuries followed by 19th- and 20th-century additions. Their aim was to restore what they could of the typically Mallorcan house – four wings that make up a square, based around an entrance courtyard – without eradicating the centuries of life. The finished result, a threestorey building with a basement spa and 750 sqm garden, is delightful.

Words Becky Sunshine Images Art Sanchez

“There had been a lot of intervention and additions and some of it was really unfortunate, invaded by lots of construction,” describes Hernaiz. “Our goal was not to restore the house to a previous state that never was; we purposely didn’t want to make it a fake old house. It was important for the decay and romanticism of the building that it was still crumbling a little.”

However, the building needed a lot of work.

Floors and windows were replaced where they couldn’t be restored, while modern additions such as the rooftop deck with a glass-bottomed plunge pool and the basement spa with an oculus flooding light down from the stairwell, were clever interventions. An air-conditioning system built into the mouldings with no visible grills also works cleverly.

“As we were planning to add our own layers too, such as a new staircase at the top of the building, instead of trying to replicate what was there, we created something totally different in oak and mirror to make sure you knew it was contemporary,” says Hernaiz. The same goes for the ground floor common areas. Rather than a traditional reception, there’s a homestyle lobby entrance that connects a long stone bar under a mirrored ceiling to the informal

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Facing page Clockwise from top left: the facade of the old Mallorcan mansion, hidden down a side street in Palma’s Old Quarter; the theatrically curtained bar; the secluded entrance courtyard, featuring Husk seating by Moroso

JOURNEY / Mallcorca

restaurant at the back. The architects have also wisely added glazing from the front courtyard straight through an elegant drawing room, into another dining room, next to a compact library and straight to the garden and pool area. All of it feels connected by trailing faux vines through the rooms – a lovely touch.

In fact, lovely touches are evident absolutely everywhere. “The mix of old and new is what interests us,” says Oliver of the rich paint colours, timber floors and lighting from Tom Dixon, Bocci, Flos and Artemide. “We wanted the rooms to feel cinematic, with velvet curtains, the bathrooms like a stage to your partner in the bed. The elliptical mirror in the hotel’s entrance, which also hides the new stair structure, is like marking your entry point

before the drama begins.” Furniture has been thoughtfully placed, from the drama of Gebrüder Thonet Vienna armchairs in the lobby, to pieces from Moroso, Baxter, Fredericia and Ligne Roset found around the building.

Highlights designed by Ohlab for the project include oversized beds with walnut and velvet headboards and freestanding cocktail bars with integrated stereos, which all go towards making this place feel special.

Hernaiz sums up. “When we started to buy furniture two years ago we thought, what do you do in your own house? You pick up things from different places. So we wanted to have a mix of things that you might find in a Mallorcan house but also things from Europe, China, Scandinavia.” And it works perfectly.

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Above Moroso’s Banjooli chairs add a jolt of colour to the otherwise peacefully neutral pool area Facing page Left to right: the top-lit staircase leading to the spa; Bodystuhl chairs

by Gebrüder Thonet Vienna in the lobby

“It was important for the decay and romanticism of the building that it was still crumbling a little”

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Facing page Velvet curtains divide the bedrooms from the bathing area. “We wanted the rooms to feel cinematic,” says Ohlab’s Jaime Oliver

Above Custom-designed walnut and velvet headboards mix with contemporary furniture, including Norr11’s deeply quilted Mammoth armchairs

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A Brussels mansion designed by Pierre Yovanovitch. Read the full story on p90 Image by José Manuel Alorda

HOME Timeless spaces

Inner sanctum

The enigmatic Tiverton House, an inwardlooking London home almost hidden from sight Words / Dominic Lutyens Images / Courtesy of The Modern House

HOME / London

A

painting of a church interior by JMW Turner was the unusual inspiration for Tiverton House, built on the site of a small garage near Kensal Rise in north London and completed in 2018. But then there’s nothing usual about this home, which is clad in vertical strips of chestnut that promise to turn silvery grey over time, has arched windows and doors and a subterranean courtyard open to the skies.

An enigmatic facade made from the same wood, which discreetly incorporates the main entrance, fronts the building; from the street, it is barely noticeable.

The house, which was designed by Londonbased practice Takero Shimazaki Architects, is reached via a bridge that overlooks the courtyard, a minimal rectangle strewn with evenly sized pebbles, punctuated by a solitary deciduous Japanese maple tree. The upper floor, which contains a bedroom, bathroom and study, has three arched skylights. The house is adjacent to a railway line and mainly looks inwards, its focus being the courtyard that connects to the living room, dining room, kitchen and a utility room. The walls of the interior are lined with concrete panels or clay plaster, giving a raw, textured finish.

Takero Shimazaki describes the house’s serene and sparsely furnished interior as “monastic and echoey”. The ecclesiastical description neatly links to the aforementioned painting

by Turner, Interior of an Italian Church (1819), which depicts light dramatically permeating

a space. The work reflects the artist’s love of architecture: early in his career, he worked as an architectural draughtsman and for 30 years taught perspective at the Royal Academy of Arts. Yet this typically atmospheric, nearabstract image seems rather to dissolve perspective and all hard edges.

In a similar way, the architects, working with the homeowners, aimed to create a house in which light appears to alter and enlarge the perception of space. Playing with evanescent light and an illusion of boundless volume was more important than creating a solid, heavy mass. Bright colours have been avoided in favour of a neutral backdrop, against which the play of light and shadow is more visible.

There is barely any pattern either, save for the bathroom’s green geometric tiles.

Another reference point for the project was a statement made by 20th-century Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara: “What has been lost is the echo of spaces in houses.” Shimazaki says: “Our clients, Anabel, a freelance writer and her partner, Steve, a creative director for a menswear label, were interested in a minimal Japanese aesthetic, although we don’t actively promote this sensibility.”

In fact, several influences shaped Tiverton House’s aesthetic, in particular another major project by the architects, the refurbishment of the Curzon Bloomsbury cinema (formerly The Renoir), part of the late-1960s Brunswick

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Facing page The house’s chestnut cladding will fade to silver over time Previous page A potted Japanese maple provides greenery in the otherwise monastically sparse courtyard

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HOME / London

“Our clients just told us that they wanted a very different house, one that wasn’t commonplace. It was very liberating”

Centre in central London, which was completed in 2015. “At the cinema, we cut holes in the ground floor to create skylights that draw light into the basement,” says Shimazaki. “We also installed a new concrete staircase and the walls were covered with hand-applied natural clay plaster. The clients liked its atmosphere, its tactility.” Other inspirations were mid-century Swedish architect Sigurd Legerentz who, says Shimazaki, counterbalanced “mass with lightness” and Swiss architect Peter Märkli, known for his use of tactile materials.

The owners of Tiverton House, who later sold their home through estate agent The Modern House, originally lived in a nearby terraced home before deciding to convert its separate garage, which was eccentrically buried under a mound of ivy at the end of their garden.

“Anabel and Steve had left full-time jobs and wanted to take on a project. They lived in the main house for two months and were on site every day. They were incredible clients. They didn’t push us on how much kitchen or living space they wanted. They just told us that they wanted a very different house, one that wasn’t commonplace. It was very liberating.”

The architects submitted a design to the local council’s planning department for a house on three floors, but this would have entailed raising the roofline, so the idea was vetoed. Yet the planners agreed to the conversion, provided it was “unusual”, especially when it came to materials used. The addition of a lower ground

floor greatly expanded the size of the property.

One planning rule forbade any windows at the rear of the house as these would overlook the neighbours’ garden. This explains why the window-shaped skylights are placed so high.

As with the courtyard, they make the house feel inward-looking and hermetic. “It’s a private space cut off from the city,” says Shimazaki.

“You don’t get any sense of being by a railway line. It has heavy walls, it’s cocooned.”

I ask Shimazaki if this seclusion echoes a tradition in Japan in the 1970s for fortress-like urban homes designed in response to growing fears about pollution and overpopulation, a subject highlighted by the 2017 exhibition at the Barbican art gallery about post-war domestic architecture in Japan. “I prefer not to be specific,” he says hesitantly. He does agree, however, that the house’s hand-applied finishes, designed to look richer than painted walls, are typically Japanese.

Overall, though, it is Italian architecture – as well as Turner’s highly personal vision of it – that has most directly influenced the house’s aesthetic. Shimazaki teaches at The Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University and as part of that role he regularly takes his students to Italy. “My travels to Rome, Florence and Vicenza partly inspired the arches, which I think soften the space. We thought doorways and windows with rectangles would have looked too conventional.”

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Facing page Walls and floors have a raw, textured finish Previous page The lower-groundfloor kitchendining space.

Circular openings between the floors create cinematic shafts of light

Left A circular rooflight ensures that the basement living space is full of light – yet it also feels pleasingly detached from the wider world Next page The house is entered via a bridge that overlooks the courtyard below

Anton Gorlenko

Above A brass-railed curving staircase descends to the living areas below

tree-dappled sunlight; the cool and calm ground floor; indoor greenery echoes the single tree in the courtyard

Facing page Clockwise from top left: threedimensional shapes in the hallway;

Next page The building’s many arched openings were inspired by Italian architecture

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Anton Gorlenko; Courtesy of The Modern House

Warm front

A cocooning London apartment with a burnished palette fused with metal and marble Words / Charlotte Abrahams Images / Luke White

HOME / London

“T

here is absolutely no sense that this flat is all things to all men,” says British architect William Smalley. He is talking about his recent collaboration with the property developer and interior designer Danny Pine, and he is not exaggerating. Their Disco Flat, as they’ve dubbed it, breaks every high-end speculative development rule going, from the unfashionable postcode (it’s located in a Victorian mansion block on London’s Edgware Road) to the singular design aesthetic. “Danny’s strategy as a developer is to make unique spaces that someone – or preferably two people – will absolutely fall in love with,” Smalley explains.

“That’s what justifies his attention to detail.”

investigation reveals that this back-lit channel actually functions as a series of door pulls.

The effect is both cocooning and mysterious, but it also serves a practical purpose. “When you design a [lateral] apartment, you need to create the equivalent of going upstairs to bed,” Smalley says, “and this corridor does that. As you walk down the seven-metre-long passage from the living spaces to the master suite, you really do feel as though you’ve made a journey and left the front of the flat well behind.”

This feeling of separation is enhanced by the double doors that shut off the suite from the rest of the apartment. As well as the main bedroom, there is also a small study furnished with a 1950s sofa and a Flexform armchair, both upholstered in Hermès fabrics, a cedarlined dressing room and a bathroom wrapped almost entirely in Van Gogh calacatta marble, the painterly veining of this multi-toned stone giving the room a welcome sense of warmth.

The story of this unique and particular finely detailed space began, in an unlikely fashion, with the corridor. Pine’s vision was for a nightclub-glamorous passageway that featured wood and mirror, illuminated by a diagonal slash of light – and Smalley has given him what he wanted. The walls are panelled in dark cherrywood, the ceiling and end wall are made from smoked mirror and there is indeed a bolt of light running down the length of the ceiling.

A strip of light also cuts through the centre of the wooden walls. At first glance there do not appear to be any doors in this space – but closer

Smalley is generally described as more of a “monastic” architect, a maker of pared-down private homes for the minimally minded. The Disco Flat, while less glitzy than its working title suggests, is not a monastic space. Furnished

Previous page Architect William Smalley has made the ordinary extraordinary in this apartment thanks to high-quality materials and attention to detail

Facing page A snug sitting room that forms part of the master bedroom suite; its fireplace features a brass hearth that gives off an inviting glow when lit

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“There is absolutely no sense that this flat is all things to all men”

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Right The corridor – usually a neglected space – has been made into the main event, with dark wood walls and a smoked-glass ceiling

HOME / London

“It is certainly more suited to a recalcitrant monk who has gone back to the pleasures of life” with deeply tactile and unashamedly luxurious materials, chiefly leather, brass and wood, it is sensual, indulgent, cosseting. A place designed for physical comfort.

Most of the chairs are upholstered in velvet.

Almost everything is bespoke.

“We wanted to make this a memorable place to be with a hotel level of comfort,” says Smalley, “and we have used the texture and colour of the furniture and furnishings to help us achieve that. We’ve warmed up the north-facing living space with velvet upholstery, leather and dark wood furniture. I put leather-clad shelves in the dressing room, grasscloth wallpaper on the walls of the master suite and we designed all the fireplaces with brass hearths, which give this incredible glow when they’re lit.”

“It is certainly more suited to a recalcitrant monk who has gone back to the pleasures of life, but at its heart is an almost classic church-like plan,” says Smalley of the project.

“By opening up the interior, we have created crossed axes and all the doors in the corridor are opposite each other, so there is a real rigour tying it all together.”

There is serious quality too. The kitchen, which Smalley has repositioned in the heart of the apartment, is furnished with an exquisite brass sink that will patinate beautifully with time and use, and an island made from Amber Brown stone from Brazil, its rich chocolate orange tones reflected in the leather-clad larder cabinet in the adjoining dining area. The coffee table in the living space is formed from two hexagonal slabs of Verde Oriental marble.

The result is a masterclass in the transformative power of materials. Even with the reconfigured layout (kitchen/living/eating space at the front, long corridor down the centre and master suite at the rear), the Disco Flat remains structurally quite ordinary. What makes it extraordinary is the stuff its interior is made from. It may be a speculative project with the look of a superluxe hotel, but feels very much like a home.

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Above A leather-clad cabinet in the openplan dining area picks up on the warm palette of burnt orange and chocolate brown used elsewhere

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Facing page Left to right: a Flexform chair in the en-suite sitting area; the bathroom, clad in Van Gogh calacatta marble with minimal brass fittings

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Above Dark cherrywood joinery frames the view into the master bedroom, which features grasscloth walls and a leather bed

Rigour and poetry French interior designer Pierre Yovanovitch turns a Brussels mansion into a contemporary art refuge Words / Karine Monié Images / José Manuel Alorda

Previous page Two sculptures by German artist Stephan Balkenhol populate the foot of the staircase. The owners of the Brussels mansion are avid art collectors

Above Elegant period windows dominate the first-floor living room. The facade dates to 1910 and is the only element of the building to survive the renovation

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HOME / Brussels

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n the Belgian capital, the suburb of Ixelles stands out for its enchanting and romantic atmosphere, thanks to its buildings’ rich mix of architectural styles – from neoclassical to neorenaissance, but especially art nouveau – ringed around two beautiful ponds.

The glass roof sits at the top of a monumental staircase – a sinuous sculptural element that has become the backbone of the house. Down in the basement, which also houses the utility areas, Yovanovitch designed a 15-metre-long swimming pool for the family.

It is here that French interior designer Pierre Yovanovitch has worked on the remodelling of an exceptional 1,200 sqm mansion spread over five floors. Behind a facade made of brick and stone dating back to 1910, it strikes the perfect balance between grandeur and warmth, with pure lines, noble materials and custom features.

“I tried to keep the soul and architectural spirit of the house,” explains Yovanovitch, who describes the home with the same adjectives as its dwellers: sophisticated, generous and simple. “The eclecticism of the house is what makes it interesting.”

In the generous hallway with its period front door, a piece of art by Jonathan Horowitz has been placed on the wall above a Yovanovitchdesigned two-piece bench and a Paavo Tynell floor lamp. The contemporary kitchen is also on the ground floor, sitting adjacent to an outdoor terrace; it features a ceiling light by Ru Editions, a Dornbracht island and stools by Mark Albrecht Studio.

The property is the primary residence of a Flemish couple with four children, who are avid collectors of modern art and passionate about architecture and design. Having similar aesthetic tastes to Yovanovitch, they felt an immediate connection with his work, trusting him to lead the remodelling of this historically classified monument.

“The brief from the family was to have a warm and bright house,” says Yovanovitch, “so my work consisted of bringing natural light inside the building.” The facade is the only element left from the original structure. All the interior spaces were removed, leaving Yovanovitch with an “empty box” to completely rethink, both in terms of flow and style.

Living spaces take up the first floor – reception areas, living and family rooms – with the master suite and bathrooms on the second storey. The couple’s children have been given free rein on the top floor, with three bedrooms, a bathroom, a sitting room and a terrace.

“Every area of the house has its own spirit and, altogether, they contribute to create the cosy ambience,” says Yovanovitch. “For example, the powdery pink master bedroom adorned with a woman’s portrait by Magritte above the fireplace corresponds to the sophisticated, soft personality of the wife, while the bar (and cigar cellar) with walls covered in caramel-coloured leather and blackened larch reflects the festive, welcoming character of the husband.”

Several key features shape the airy space, most notably the geometric stained-glass roof, which is situated at the centre of the rebuilt home.

“I felt that we needed to add some poetry and colour to the white architecture, so we had the idea of creating a skylight,” says Yovanovitch.

This playful element helps to balance the rigour of the rest of the house’s design.

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HOME / Brussels

“I like it when the furniture is in dialogue with the art” The doors of each room, in chiselled oak and featuring custom-made hexagonal handles, are invitingly tactile and three-dimensional; there are also niches everywhere, for displaying art or as seating nooks, which further create a play of light and shade, changing as the day progresses.

and international galleries, the furniture is a mix of European (mostly Scandinavian) and American design from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Philip Arctander and Viggo Boesen armchairs, a Hans Wegner table, a Poul Henningsen piano and wall lights by Franco Albini are just a few of these mid-century classics. Contemporary pieces such as a Jorge Zalszupin desk, Nendo chairs and a custom-made chandelier by Jeff Zimmerman complement the look.

Wide-plank Danish oak floors from Dinesen add a further sense of warmth. Throughout the house, silk, linen, hemp, cotton and wool are introduced through textiles and hand-woven carpets. Shades of blue, Chinese red and gold evoke a sense of richness: the kitchen is an almost womb-like red room, dominated by a custom-made stone-topped island at its centre.

Giving priority to authentic materials (such as wood, stone, marble and metal), Yovanovitch designed several pieces himself: an eightmetre-long asymmetric sofa in solid oak, a table with legs in patinated metal and occasional tables in ceramic, among other furnishings.

They were fabricated by skilled craftsmen, like the German designer Matthias Kohn who made the pink concrete dining table. “I love the materials for which you feel the hand of an artisan,” says Yovanovitch. “For me, it is what humanises a place and gives it personality.”

With work by Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Frida Kahlo and René Magritte – to name just a few – the owners’ impressive collection of art plays an important a role in the refined spaces. “I like it when the furniture is in dialogue with the art,” says Yovanovitch. Purchased in auctions

Previous page A enormous zig-zagging sofa acts as both room divider and plentiful seating for a large family. The artwork above the fireplace is by David Altmejd

Facing page Tucked into a curve, a dining area features Yovanovitch’s Essim Table in pink concrete for Matthias Kohn and Danish mid-century oak chairs by Ejvind A Johansen

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Facing page Danish flooring – with some planks more than 7m long – runs througout. The sofa and desk were designed by Pierre Yovanovitch

Above A work by New York-based artist Jonathan Horowitz hangs in the hallway. The vintage floor lamp is

by Finnish designer Paavo Tynell

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Above At the heart the house’s sinuous staircase, a sculpture by Jean Dubuffet occupies an ocean-blue niche

Facing page Snaking three floors up, the curved staircase is topped by a colourful geometric stained-glass rooflight

Previous page A Frida Kahlo painting hangs above a red travertine fireplace. The Clam sheepskin chairs are by Philip Arctander

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Above A Magritte painting sits against a powdery-pink plaster wall. The 1920s red and gold chair is by Swedish designer Carl Malmsten

Facing page Niches – for seating, and for art – are a recurring motif in the house, creating a sense of cosy domesticity as well as a play of light and shade

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“I love the materials for which you feel the hand of an artisan.

For me, it is what humanises a place and gives it personality”

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Above Walnut bookshelves hug the walls of the oval-shaped sitting room; the vintage rocking chair and side table are

by Swedish designer Axel Einar Hjorth

Facing page A large picture window at the rear of the property looks into the bright red kitchen. The little figure in the kitchen is a sculpture by Stephan Balkenhol

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Let in the light

Transatlantic design studio Nune’s refurbishment of a Manhattan triplex is mostly monochrome – but never monotonous Words / Karine Monié Images / Nicole Franzen

HOME / New York City

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ocated in New York City’s Gramercy Park neighbourhood, this apartment, originally built in 1945, had a lot of potential when its owners first saw it. The couple, who work in finance and fashion, and had two cats in tow, were immediately convinced it was their next home despite the need for a renovation.

Entrusted to transform the space was the team from interior design firm Nune, which partnered with AF Architecture on some of the structural elements. Nune was founded in Brooklyn in 2014 by British-born interior designer Sheena Murphy, who had a muchtravelled life – in Lyon, India and Seattle – before settling down in New York City, where she did a postgraduate degree in interior design at the Parsons School of Design.

The studio continues to flourish in New York – but after seven years living in the city with her husband and their daughter, Murphy decided to go back to her roots, returning to the UK with her family in late 2018 to launch a new London office.

Murphy says of Nune’s design ethos: “We focus on supporting small and independent businesses and designer-makers as much as possible, and we care about the environmental and human impact of our sourcing and design decisions.” She put this vision and her refined aesthetic at the service of this apartment for a transformative refurbishment that took 12 months to complete.

Previous page Sheena Murphy has packed the apartment with work from independent New York designers, including Egg Collective’s Howard sofa Facing page Apparatus’ Cloud pendant hangs hazily over the marble-topped dining table

Facing a private and quiet interior courtyard with windows on only one side, the apartment, which occupies a portion of three levels of the building, was initially too dark. Opening up the layout required the demolition of a large pantry, which stood in the centre of the living area; the removal of old dark-stained wood shutters in the main living space; refinishing of the floor in a lighter tone; the addition of Crittall windows to a mezzanine level; and the whitewashing of the exposed brickwork.

“Our client was very drawn to monochromatic palettes and metals, so we used a lot of light materials, but we contrasted those with darker

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moments and mixed metals for some drama and glamour, without losing the airiness of the space,” says Murphy of the completed project.

The materials were chosen with the couple’s lifestyle in mind. Leather, felted fabrics and tightly woven upholstery (to prevent cat-claws from catching on the surface) add a refined and warm touch throughout the apartment. “The trick was to mix up the types of hides and the tones here so it didn’t feel too repetitive or onedimensional,” says Murphy.

Lighting by Apparatus, Materia Designs and Allied Maker, and furniture by Egg Collective, BDDW and Poritz & Studio reflect both the owners’ taste and Murphy’s preference for local names. “We love to have people’s homes be a mix of humble, honest materials and great design, with an underlying focus on sustainability,” she notes. “We strive to create interiors that are not only easy on the eye but also good for the soul, good for humanity and good for the earth.”

The staircase was designed in collaboration with the local craftspeople who also handled the plaster finish on the wall, and it’s turned out to be one of Murphy’s favourite architectural features. “They were originally very dark and closed in with an outdated railing detail,” she says. “By reconstructing the stair to have floating steps, a Venetian plaster wall and a blackened-steel railing, we were really able to visually open up the entire area. We also put low-level lights on the stair landings, and the shadows cast by the light through the open treads are really beautiful.”

Currently working on a number of renovation projects in New York as well as a commercial space in London, Nune is starting a new chapter, with many opportunities presented by its flourishing European base. “Working with an ocean between my business partner Tor Sauder and I, along with bimonthly trips, certainly comes with its challenges, but at the same time it is a really exciting time for us,” says Murphy. “Europe has opened up to us in terms of vendors and clients and we are eager to see what might come from that.”

Facing page A previously enclosed staircase now features open treads, with pale grey walls in a Venetian plaster finish and a blackened-steel handrail

Above Just beyond the front door is a ruched-leather Souffle bench by Kelly Wearstler, with a backdrop of whitewashed exposed brickwork

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Above The moody black paint in the cloakroom serves a practical purpose, helping to disguise the room’s awkwardly angled ceiling

Facing page New York design brand BDDW’s bronze-wrapped drawers, topped with a Michael Anastassiades Tip of the Tongue light in polished brass

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EXHIBITIONS EVENTS EDUCATION GARDEN COMMUNITY RESIDENCIES ROTH BAR & GRILL ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPE

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A DESTINATION FOR CONTEMPORARY MAKING AND THE CRAFTED OBJECT

Olafur Eliasson’s Stardust Particle. Read the full story on p118 Image by Jens Ziehe

ART & COLLECTING A cultural review

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Agenda

Sights to behold: a calendar of shows and fairs for the coming months

© 2010 Olafur Eliasson, Image: Thilo Frank/Studio Olafur Eliasson

Words / Alice Bucknell

Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life, Tate Modern, London 11 July 2019–5 January 2020

Aside from his melting ice blocks stationed in front of the museum last autumn, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson hasn’t shown at Tate Modern since 2003, when his knockout The Weather Project earned global attention.

That will all change come summer with a retrospective focusing on the artist’s extensive social and environmental

engagement as well as the sublime experience of work such as Your Blind Passenger (pictured above) and Big Bang Fountain (pictured opposite). Eliasson’s touch will extend into the landscape around the museum and its Terrace Bar, where a Berlin-inspired vegetarian canteen designed by the artist will temporarily replace the standard fare.

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© 2014 Olafur Eliasson, Image: Anders Sune Berg

Courtesy of Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Kunst Kunst Kunst, Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp 20 April–18 May 2019

Tim Van Laere has always been something of a prodigy.

He opened his Antwerp “artist’s gallery” in 1997, when he was only 27, and it’s now one of Belgium’s most respected spaces for contemporary art.Twenty years on, a new gallery designed by Belgian architects Office has just opened

in the city’s experimental Nieuw Zuid neighbourhood.

Its inaugural show is a three-way exhibition of Adrian Ghenie, Rinus Van de Velde (pictured) and Jonathan Meese, who are known collectively for their expressive and dynamic large scale paintings and illustrations.

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ART & COLLECTING / Diary

How Chicago!, CCA, London

Liste, Basel

The Chicago Imagists were a wily bunch, both hugely influential during and after their active period of the 1960s and 1970s but equally impossible to pin down.

This spring, the newly minted Goldsmiths CCA gallery in south London will host the first significant exhibition about the Imagists in the UK for more than 40 years.

With works by 14 of the 20 or so members making up the unofficial collective (including Sarah Canright, pictured), CCA is truly bringing the band back together, giving these expressionistic midwestern makers due credit for their global influence and often irreverent outlook.

With its never-ending champagne breakfasts and rows of white booths representing the same bigshot artists, Art Basel can induce feelings of burnout before it’s even begun. This year, why not shake things up at Liste, the city’s younger and cooler art fair? People don’t just pitch up for the dirt-cheap beer (at least by Swiss standards) and the perilous staircases of the old red-brick Warteck brewery, the building that Liste calls home; they come for the younger, more entrepreneurial participants (such as Galerie Maria Bernheim, pictured) that have been selected in a drive for game-changing galleries over glut.

Until 26 May 2019

10–16 June 2019

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ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, The British Museum, London

Anish Kapoor, Pitzhanger Gallery, London

The secret life of the Norwegian painter and printmaker will be unpicked at the British Museum this spring, in an exhibition co-curated with Oslo’s Munch Museum.

It will offer insights into the context of Munch’s work, from the pre-war politics setting the collective mood of his time to the social circles and intimate relationships that defined the artist’s world view.

This Georgian mansion in Ealing was designed and built by architect Sir John Soane in 1804 as his own home, and recently reopened after a £12m renovation. A new gallery in the house’s former library will host three exhibitions a year in which artists, architects and designers respond to Soane’s legacy: up first is Anish Kapoor’s immersive, glitzy and super-saturated work.

AI: More than Human, Barbican Art Gallery, London

Jupiter Artland, West Lothian

16 March–18 August 2019

Anna Kunst/Jupiter Artland

11 April–21 July 2019

16 May–26 Aug 2019

18 May–30 September 2019

Get to know your future robot overlords this summer at a “festival-style” takeover of the Barbican’s Curve gallery. This interactive exhibition fuses art and science in an exploration of the boundaries between human and machine. Computer scientists and artists will work in partnership to examine the mechanics of this technology and its ability to revolutionise life as we know it.

This sculpture park outside Edinburgh has an impressive permanent collection that includes the likes of Phyllida Barlow (pictured), Andy Goldsworthy and postmodern architect Charles Jencks, who designed the otherworldly landscaping. This year, the estate will kick off its summer programming with a splash, with the unveiling of a ninemetre-long pool by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos.

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ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Ifeoma U. Anyaeji, Baltic, Gateshead 24 May–22 September 2019

The woven works of Nigerian artist Ifeoma U. Anyaeji may look beautiful, but there is meaning lurking behind each brightly coloured composition. Utilising a traditional hair plaiting technique known as threading, Anyaeji’s “plasto art” is made from discarded plastic bottles and

bags. Baltic in Gateshead will get a dose of the artist’s entrancing creations as part of her first solo exhibition in the UK. “My creative practice is about the transitions of African culture within a globalised society, particularly Nigerian traditional aesthetics,” she says.

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© 2015 Jenny Holzer, Image: David Heald

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Jenny Holzer: Thing Indescribable, Guggenheim, Bilbao

Positions Berlin Art Fair, Berlin

Jenny Holzer’s powerful, provocative text-based works are as relevant in today’s political climate as when they first appeared in New York’s Times Square in the 1980s.

Guggenheim Bilbao’s blowout exhibition, the largest Holzer retrospective to date, will hone in on themes of resistance and collaboration evident in the artist’s practice.

In addition to Holzer’s famed Truisms and Inflammatory Essays, it will feature lesser-known pieces such as 1994’s Lustmord Table (pictured), as well as responses to the buildings of Guggenheim architect Frank Gehry.

During the typically riotous Berlin Art Week, institutions, galleries, project spaces and collectives join forces to put on a supersensory art safari across the German capital filled with talks, performances, and subversive takes on the traditional art fair. One such show, Positions, is this year returning to Tempelhof, the former airport turned summertime hangout and events space. If you prefer keeping it real in 2D, don’t miss Paper Positions, a subset of the fair dedicated exclusively to works on paper, which also runs in Basel in June and Munich in October.

22 March–9 September 2019

12–15 September 2019

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Iwan Baan

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes 13 June–22 September 2019

6a Architects and artists Gareth Jones and Nils Norman, the gallery’s inaugural exhibition features the punchy work of Portuguese painter Paula Rego whose rich, narrative-led scenes fuse feminism with folk influences.

The show will span her entire career since the 1960s.

Not long ago, Milton Keynes was considered a failed utopia; now, its wide boulevards and LA-like street grid are generating a buzz, and the opening of a dramatically expanded MK Gallery in March has cemented its status in the UK’s art scene. Designed collaboratively between

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Marten Nauw

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Unseen Amsterdam 20–22 September 2019

Amsterdam’s three-day creative celebration is a perfectly provocative place to get a close-up look at cutting-edge contemporary photography. Multi-sensory installations are par for the course, as are experimental production techniques. Aside from the main fair, which takes place

inside a former gasholder at at the Westergasfabriek, there are plenty of other draws. Catch the annual Book Market, where you can pick up rare art publications, and the Coop, which specifically promotes the work of collaborative artists and features workshops and discussions.

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Bill Orcutt

ART & COLLECTING / Diary

Whitney Biennial, New York City

Biennale Arte, Venice

There is no biennial more provocative than the Whitney’s, and with the last edition’s controversy over Dana Schutz’s Open Casket painting – perceived by some as racially insensitive – still lingering, all eyes will be fixed on New York come May. As the longest-standing continuous exhibition in the US, the Whitney Biennial sets the pace for what’s hot in contemporary American art; this year’s curator power team Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley have scoured the country for the past year, and their resulting presentation will not disappoint; the early indicators are that artists under 40 will dominate.

Since 1895, the Venice art biennale has defined the who’s who of the art world. For its 58th edition, curated

by Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff with the ambiguous title May You Live in Interesting Times, themes of uncertainty, post-truth politics and crisis run high – as does art’s ability to introduce critical thinking and new perspectives to present calamity. Galleria Giorgio Franchetti, based at the exquisite Ca’ Doro (pictured), is hosting Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s Dysfunctional show, an exhibition of functional sculptures from names such as Virgil Abloh, Martin Baas and Studio Job.

17 May–22 September 2019

11 May–24 Nov 2019

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ART & COLLECTING / Somerset

West is best

Hauser & Wirth’s newest gallery in the market town of Bruton is giving local makers an influential stage

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ver the past few years, something strange has happened to the craft world. Whisper it quietly but it has become ever-so-slightly fashionable. In many regards this is a huge surprise. After all, it wasn’t that along ago that the New York-based curator and commentator Glenn Adamson compared craft to a nerdy teenager at a school disco, forced to watch on the sidelines while the cool kids (in this instance contemporary art and design) strutted their stuff on the dancefloor.

Yet here I am at a new gallery devoted to the work of makers by Hauser & Wirth, recently opened on Bruton High Street in Somerset.

Called Make, it’s pretty convincing, managing to pull off the neat trick of feeling domestic in scale – it was originally the front two rooms of a Georgian townhouse that Hauser & Wirth has been using as offices – while maintaining the clean minimal appearance of a gallery.

The exhibition on during my visit, Retracing Nature, featured a pair of artists who are both inspired by the landscape around their coastal studios, but with hugely contrasting results. Ceramist Adam Buick, based in south west Wales, makes Moon Jars (a traditional Korean form) from stone and locally dug clay. Meanwhile metalsmith Stuart Cairns creates pieces that combine found objects and materials (collected during walks around the shoreline across the Irish Sea) with steel and patinated silver. At first glance they can seem slightly scrappy, home-spun affairs. Look

a little harder and there is wry commentary on man’s relationship with nature, as well as huge skill and an intuitive beauty. To my slight surprise, the pair work very nicely in tandem.

According to the gallery’s director Jacqueline Moore, the whole venture is very much the brainchild of Manuela Wirth. “She’s personally very interested in textiles and ceramics,” she explains. The idea, she adds, is to look “very broadly at materials from wood to ceramics, via textiles and metalwork to glass. Everything where there’s a strong sense of materiality, process and technique.”

Meanwhile outside in the garden, four artists who will be taking part in the gallery’s next group show, West Lands, are busy having their portraits shot and getting to know one another.

One of Moore’s aims is to periodically present work from makers based in the south west, and the first such exhibition will include ceramics

by Joanna Still and baskets from Hilary Burns, as well as textiles courtesy of Bristol Weaving Mill and some startling black and white photography by Jonty Sale, among others.

On the face of it they’re an eclectic bunch who hail from quite different backgrounds – Still, for instance, was born and bred in Wiltshire, while Burns harks originally from South Africa – and covering a variety of techniques and materials. However, seeing their work gathered together for the first time, it’s clear that there is a thread running through all the pieces.

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Words Grant Gibson Images Emli Bendixen

Facing page Work from (clockwise from foreground) Bristol Weaving Mill, basket-maker Hilary Burns, photographer Jonty Sale and ceramicist Joanna Still, all taking part in West Lands at Hauser & Wirth’s Make gallery

Left The Make gallery sits on the High Street in the market town of Bruton, Somerset. Here, Hauser & Wirth seeks to highlight work “where there’s a strong sense of materiality, process and technique,” according to director Jacqueline Moore

ART & COLLECTING / Somerset

“There’s definitely a sensibility and aesthetic that we share,” says Bristol Weaving Mill’s codirector Juliet Bailey, pausing for a moment.

“I’m trying to put my finger on it. I think it’s sort of a rough, rustic-ness. That might be a response to the region.” Moore adds: “I think with all of them it’s the sense of material. It’s very strong with the work that they produce and they are all informed by the area.”

It seems to me that they’re both right. Many of the pieces exude an unrefined (in a good way) quality. Still’s vessels are unglazed and smoke fired, for example, giving them a pleasing rawness that’s designed to reflect the Wiltshire landscape, while Burns grows her own willow on the Dartington Hall estate in Devon and uses it unstripped. Sale’s textural images are created through multiple exposures, using a large-format camera.

“We wanted to recognise the makers who are here and on our doorstep,” concludes Moore.

“I think that will become a recurring motif in our programme. So I’ve begun with the makers that we have on this occasion. And they’re good representatives of all the very talented artists in the south west, but there are many more…

We want to create beautiful exhibitions and we want to make the work look its best and give the makers the opportunity to see their pieces in a gallery context.”

Returning to Adamson’s allusion, it looks as though craft is the nerdy teenager no more. It has its feet firmly planted on that dancefloor.

Right Architectural details from the Georgian building, which was formerly used as office space for Hauser & Wirth Facing page Makers based in the south west taking part in the current show: left to right are basket-maker Hilary Burns, photographer Jonty Sale, ceramicist Joanna Still and Juliet Bailey of Bristol Weaving Mill

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ART & COLLECTING / Studio glass

Message in a bottle

Sophie Thomas and Louis Thompson’s work combines beachcombing for waste plastic with glassblowing – with peculiarly beautiful results Words / Grant Gibson Images / Ester Segarra

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ophie Thomas and Louis Thompson are very keen to talk about the bag brimming with plastic rubbish that they collected that morning off the Essex coastline. The pair, a graphic designer and glass artist respectively, have been hard at work on their latest collaboration, destined for the Saatchi Gallery’s Collect fair in March. Their work, which combines glass with found plastic, provides a wry commentary on the value we place on materials and issues surrounding marine waste.

The Collect show represents the third time that Thomas and Thompson have worked together,

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and it isn’t difficult to see the common thread running through their projects. Their first works, entitled The Seven Stages of Degradation, were developed for an exhibition at London Glassblowing and combined hand-blown glass and found beach plastic to make objects that, at first glance, looked like plastic water bottles.

Following this, their contribution to last year’s London Design Festival – a chandelier made from glass, abandoned fishing nets and LEDs – was installed at a cafe as part of the Brompton Design District. Called Ghostnet, it was a rehearsal for Collect – a way of seeing

ART & COLLECTING / Studio glass

Left and facing page Components from Broken Ocean, an installation by Sophie Thomas and Louis Thompson for Collect at the Saatchi Gallery

whether they could progress their ideas. Unlike Ghostnet, the new work, Broken Ocean, was designed specifically for the spot it inhabited at the Saatchi Gallery, cascading out from the wall and measuring three by five metres.

“The piece is about these objects that are made by humans but become almost natural again in their shape and form,” says Thomas. For Thompson, the most difficult element of the project was how to fuse his glasswork seamlessly with the found plastic. “It’s a question of trying to persuade the plastic to morph into the glass,” he explains. “It’s about making the point

of contact as quiet as possible. Picking up some detailing in the material – the moulding or the seam line, possibly text or the colour, and echoing that with the glassmaking.”

The idea was to create a sense of detritus being pulled out of the ocean by an ocean trawler, but in a white-cube gallery environment. That said (and despite 20 years of eco-activism), Thomas isn’t necessarily keen to hit the audience about the head with a message: “People can read in it what they want to read in it,” she insists. It isn’t hard to detect where she stands though: “I think it’s beautiful and kind of tragic.”

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Feilden Fowles’ Weston Building. Read the full story on p144 Image by Midi Photography

ARCHITECTURE Surveying the built environment

ARCHITECTURE / Survey

Monumental ambition

Grandiose yet reductive, Rome’s rationalist buildings are Mussolini’s most visible legacy

Words Francesco Dama

Below and facing page The Palazzo della Civiltà Italianas, built for the (later cancelled) 1942 World’s Fair, and now Fendi’s HQ Images by Beppe Brancato

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omans are very fond of their past. In the Eternal City, history is cherished and celebrated at every corner: a stroll through the narrow alleyways of the centre offers examples of buildings from nearly every era in history.

But one architectural style, inserted among the ancient ruins, renaissance palaces and baroque churches, brings back memories that Italians would rather forget. Rationalism – appropriated and developed to suit the needs of the regime that ruled Italy from the 1920s to the 1940s – would become the official architectural language of Fascism.

The aesthetic was one of severe and symmetric volumes; stone shimmering under the dazzling Mediterranean light. A monumentality that refused every ornamentation but the essential – pillars, arches and columns – became the homogenising image of a whole country. In this combination of classicism and modernity, Fascism found the ideal way of showing its political strength. For Mussolini, to rule a country meant to act on its imagination.

Thanks to unprecedented levels of funding, hundreds of schools, train stations, office blocks, post offices and stadiums were designed and built in the style, often at a fast pace. Rome was at the epicentre of such construction fervour, in its dual role of capital of a nation and of a colonial empire. Indeed, even nearly a century after completion, it’s difficult to elude the power of suggestion of such architecture.

In advance of other totalitarian regimes, Fascism found an ideal catalyst for national identification in the form of sporting prowess.

Towards the end of the 1920s, architect Enrico del Debbio was commissioned to design an ambitious sports complex, known as Foro Mussolini, to be built on a vast area on the north west side of Rome. The forum quickly became the elected place for the frequent mass mobilisations organised by the government; a perfect ground for auto-celebration.

Among the countless facilities, also comprising tennis courts and a swimming pool whose impressive interiors are covered in mosaics, the project includes the iconic Stadio dei Marmi (Stadium of Marbles), which is completely made of Carrara marble and surrounded by statues of male athletes, each depicting a different sporting discipline. In 1936, architect Luigi Moretti added the Academy of Fencing to this sprawling complex, a masterpiece of abstract elegance. A contemporary newsreel

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describes it thus: “Entirely covered in marble, on the inside and outside. The airy rooms, adorned with allegorical decorative panels with high ceilings and carved stuccoes, constitute a clear example of modern architecture and sober, rational furnishings.”

In the mean time, the new campus of Rome’s Sapienza University had been inaugurated with grandiose ceremonies. By Mussolini’s will, the project had to be assigned to several architects, overseen by Marcello Piacentini, a favourite of the dictator. The buildings were designed by some of the best talents of the time, from the minimalism of the Institute of Physics by Giuseppe Pagano to the rarefied elegance of the Institute of Mathematics by Gio Ponti. Although each edifice preserves its own individuality, there is an overall coherence; Piacentini himself designed the main rectorate building, at the heart of the campus.

But the most relevant episode in the relationship between architecture and Fascism was yet to be written. In 1938 Piacentini presented an unprecedented project for the construction of the E42, a new neighbourhood in the south west of the city, to host the 1942 World’s Fair in Rome. Away from the subtlety of Moretti and the dignified restraint of the university’s campus, the E42 – whose name later changed into EUR – was meant to give essence to the ultimate Fascist mythology. Mussolini himself was directly involved in the design, imposing a style that would emphasise monumentality while referencing Roman classicism.

The symbol of the new district, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, is a rectangular behemoth clad in creamy travertine stone. Rising from a podium guarded by equestrian sculptures, each of the four facades features six rows of nine arches each. A series of allegorical statues

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Above Classical figures embody Roman athletic prowess at the 1920s Foro Italico sports complex, designed by architect Enrico Del Debbio Image by Raimund Kutter/Alamy Facing page Two views of Luigi Moretti’s 1936 fencing academy at the Foro Italico Images by Tim Benton and Architectural Press Archive/RIBA

“Paradoxically, the new democratic state was in charge of completing the projects meant to immortalise Mussolini’s dictatorship”

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inhabit the loggia at the base. The palazzo, also known colloquially as the Colosseo Quadrato (Square Colosseum), is the epitome of the detached grandiosity that Fascism wished to pass on. Atop each side of the building runs an inscription describing the Italian people as “a nation of poets, of artists, of heroes, of saints, of thinkers, of scientists, of navigators, of colonisers.” Today, too few people remember that what sounds like pretentious selfcongratulation is in fact a quote from a speech that Mussolini gave in 1935 to announce the invasion of Ethiopia, one of the most shameful chapters in Italy’s modern history.

And yet, the alluring power of the Colosseo Quadrato continues to fascinate the popular imagination. The film director Federico Fellini famously loved the metaphysical atmosphere of EUR, using it as a location for his 1962 film The Temptations of Dr Antonio. “It’s like living in a painting,” he said, seizing on the dreamlike immobility of its architecture.

With the outbreak of the second world war, Italy had to set aside its architectural dreams; the World’s Fair was abandoned in 1941. By the time the Fascist regime had fallen, though, there were rationalist buildings disseminated throughout the country. Far too many and far too spread out, they were reassigned to different uses rather than being demolished.

Paradoxically, the new democratic state was left in charge of completing some of the projects meant to immortalise Mussolini’s dictatorship.

The EUR was only finally completed in the early 1960s and became Rome’s major business district. In 2015, after a careful restoration, luxury fashion house Fendi inaugurated its new headquarters inside the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. The Foro Mussolini, now renamed Foro Italico, recovered its original recreational functions. It’s still the biggest sporting venue in town, hosting both Lazio’s and Roma’s football clubs at its Olympic stadium.

Above Mosaics in the Palazzo delle Piscine at the Foro Italico sports complex Image by Adam Eastland/Alamy Facing page Marcello Piacentini’s rectorate building, part of the University of Rome campus.

Piacentini was the overall masterplanner, employing some of the best talent of the time to design the faculty buildings Image by Roberto Conte

As time passed by, the buildings became part of the cultural legacy of the country. As fascinating as an interrupted dream, they stand like ruins from the future, a living contradiction between Italy’s rich heritage and its darkest past.

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Words James McLachlan Images Midi Photography

Y

orkshire is God’s own country, as any of its more fervent inhabitants will tell you – and the beauty of this verdant, rugged county in the north of England is hard to refute. Yet, the reverence with which the early Victorians regarded the landscape, inherited from the Romantic movement and the work of Wordsworth, Blake and Shelley, belied their desire to shape and control it. At the Yorkshire 144

Sculpture Park – 500 acres peppered with art by internationally renowned sculptors such as Henry Moore, Anthony Gormley and Ai Wei Wei – architects Feilden Fowles have used this idea of the orchestration of nature to design a new gallery and visitors’ centre, The Weston.

The vistas, lakes and mounds that lend the park its character are largely the 19th-century work

Lay of the land

Feilden Fowles’ reposed gallery and visitor space for the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Above In designing The Weston, Feilden Fowles looked at how the parkland landscape had historically served the 18th-century Bretton Hall, which still sits on the site

of landscape designer Robert Marnock, created when the site was still the parkland that served Bretton Hall. “What really interested us was the history of shaping the land for the benefit of the country house,” says Feilden Fowles’ cofounder Edmund Fowles. Looking beyond the boundaries of their discipline, the practice explored the work of landscape artists Robert Morris and Michael Heizer to seed an idea. The 145

site, on the south-eastern side of the park, makes the final point in a triangle of buildings, which also comprises Feilden Clegg Bradley’s restaurant and gallery to the north and Tony Fretton’s rustic Longside Gallery to the south.

The Weston is deceptively long, housing a gallery, restaurant and shop within an oblong of concrete, timber and glass. The building’s presence is

Above A translucent lantern of glassreinforced plastic tops the gallery Facing page The building is set in to the hillside on a site that was once a quarry; its pigmented concrete walls echo the look of the local sandstone

ARCHITECTURE / Yorkshire

betrayed by a lantern of glass-reinforced plastic, which, depending on the time of day, shifts from opaque to translucent, revealing or obscuring a sawtooth roof that coaxes light into the gallery within. Beneath the lantern rests a concrete slab pigmented with locally sourced granite, lime and sandstone sandblasted to recall the strata of the natural bedrock – a precise exercise in imperfection.

The building continues with a sequence of timber-framed windows that embrace a sunken terrace overlooking the Lower Lake and the distant Bretton Hall. At the main entrance (on the motorway side), harmonious geological landscaping by Jonathan Cook offers a protective frame to the architecture.

The building’s interior is a bright and inviting space capturing all the brilliance the reluctant Yorkshire sunshine has to offer. Recessed timber frames cast blade-like shadows across a

terrazzo floor, with a woodburning stove at the heart of the floorplan. The building is naturally ventilated, relying on an air-source heat pump and a humidity buffer (in essence, a pile of bricks) to maintain a pleasant temperature.

The real gem is the gallery. Empty of exhibits, and top lit courtesy of the sawtooth roof, it feels meditative, almost monastic. This is set to change, of course, as the different exhibitions bring the space to life (an inaugural show by Indian duo Thukral and Tagra will surely add some visual drama to the white walls).

The Weston’s willingness to meld with or melt into the landscape demonstrates the power of things left unsaid. Anchored to centuries-old earth, Feilden Fowles’ building is totally at ease with itself, neither timid nor overbearing. It will no doubt prove an excellent foil for the growing number of galleries it joins – a worthy addition, well executed.

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Above The soon-to-be restaurant, a 140 sqm space with a Scandinavianinfluenced interior Facing page A sawtooth roof, concealed by the lantern from the outside, supplies top lighting to the gallery space

ARCHITECTURE / India

Places of belonging

Celebrated Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi gets his first European retrospective

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ast year, after decades of critical acclaim, the 91-year-old Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, following in the footsteps of such starry names as Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Shigeru Ban. And this year, the first ever retrospective outside Asia covering his extraordinary career will be staged at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Its curator, architect Khushnu Hoof, who is also Doshi’s granddaughter, was given a simple brief by her grandfather: “He wanted anyone who visited to leave with something – a question, a thought, a conversation. He didn’t want to exclude anyone – the diversity of people’s lives has been so important to his work. That gave us our starting point.”

Doshi’s career-long devotion to his home country has made his work inaccessible in person to many. Without travelling widely across India, it’s impossible to understand the sheer breadth and quality of his architecture, from low-cost housing to major national institutions. At the Vitra Design Museum, his far-reaching stylistic journey will be presented, from his early studies at Le Corbusier’s studio in Paris, to a distinctive modernism, inspired

by India’s many traditions, lifestyles, climates and architectures.

Born in 1927, Doshi began his studies 20 years later in Mumbai, just as India gained its independence. Frustrated by outdated courses, he travelled to Europe in 1951, seeking a modernist style that could help transform his country. London proved equally disappointing, but he soon learned of the new city in northeast India, Chandigarh, being designed by Le Corbusier. He gained an invite to the maestro’s Paris atelier, just as masterpieces

such as Ronchamp’s Notre Dame du Haut and the Maisons Jaoul were being designed.

The relationship between the two flourished, and Doshi was set to work on the monumental concrete High Court for Chandigarh. He helped design its massive sculptural roof, which offered ventilation and shade while absorbing the heat of the day. According to Hoof, “Le Corbusier used a very cryptic language when talking to him about architecture, but Doshi learnt from him how to design the spaces themselves, employing sensitivity to light, to people, to movement, to scale. He learnt to create a dialogue between these qualities, and that has remained with him ever since.”

Words John Jervis Images Vastushilpa Foundation, Ahmedabad/ Vinay Panjwani, Iwan Baan

Doshi was subsequently sent to Ahmedabad to supervise Le Corbusier’s many commissions there, and adopted the rapidly expanding textile city as his home, setting up his own practice in 1957. His relationship with Le Corbusier – and later with the American architect Louis Kahn, whom he invited to Ahmedabad – has long been used as a prism through which his career has been understood, but Doshi soon established his own architectural identity, adapting his Western peers’ ideas to Indian customs and craftsmanship.

His early Institute of Indology married the expressive forms of Chandigarh with traditional plans and techniques, drawing on Ahmedabad’s rich architectural heritage of mosque and temple complexes. Similarly, his School of Architecture, of which he was a founding director in 1962, was a stepped structure sitting lightly in its landscape, clad in a local brick more suited than concrete to the climate. Doshi was inspired by traditional Indian towns to incorporate fluid spaces and streets, giving “free scope to teach and

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Facing page Doshi’s Institute of Management in Bangalore.

Its shaded outdoor corridors were designed as green spaces where academic discourse could take place beyond the classroom

Above Balkrishna Doshi, who won The Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2018 and is being celebrated with a retrospective at the Vitra Design Museum

Facing page Clockwise from top left: Housing (1973), the subterranean art space Amdavad ni Gufa (1994) and Premabhai Concert Hall (1976) – all located in Ahmedabad

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learn anywhere” as he put it. He focused on architecture’s in-between areas, an idea to which he has constantly returned.

At the end of the 1970s, Doshi established his own studio, Sangath, just west of Ahmedabad.

At the time, the lessons of Indian culture and spirituality were being rediscovered both within the country and far beyond. Doshi was a pioneer, incorporating these messages into his architecture, challenging the priorities of modernism and of contemporary life. Instead, he focused on the structures of Indian society, on the rituals of its everyday life, seeking a sense of wellbeing and security. Sangath’s low-lying, cylindrical workshops, clad in white china shards, enclose a multipurpose amphitheatre, set within a sensuous green landscape. This lush oasis is specifically created for the exchange of ideas, says Hoof: “There are no boundaries; the change between interiors and exterior is blurred. This relates to Indian lifestyles, where the activity takes place in transitional spaces.”

Doshi’s campus for Bangalore’s Institute of Management, developed over a period of 20 years from the late 1970s, fuses rural and urban but on a larger scale. Its networks of walkways, verandahs and courtyards, complete with trellises and plants, hark back to Fatehpur Sikri, the 16th-century fortified city in Uttar Pradesh. Doshi revitalised these traditional forms, adapting them to modern life to create what he called a “bazaar for education”.

All Doshi’s projects, from his experimental rural housing to his sustainable city planning, reflect his personality, his approachability, his openness and his sensitivity towards people of all backgrounds. They have been hugely influential on younger generations of Indian architects, and hopefully this retrospective will bring his message to an even wider audience.

Hoof says she hoped the show “will give a sense of wonder, a new way of looking, of understanding that architecture is not just an object, but can be something much more.

“For Doshi, ambiguity is the essence of life.

You can never say that you know his buildings, there is always something to discover. He will never tell you what you need to do, he will instead raise questions, make you think, and allow you to get in touch with your inner self.”

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Scion earrings by Ruby Jack. Read the full story on p162 Image by Mitch Payne

STYLE Fashionable pursuits

Most wanted

Clothing and accessories that are thoughtful, expressive, beautiful and good Words / Elizabeth Choppin

STYLE / Products

Rachel Comey Oh Rachel Comey, how we love you. With each season it becomes increasingly difficult to decide which item in your collection is most covetable. Is it the casual, exquisite tailoring of your jumpsuits?

The wearable trouser silhouettes that would suit almost every shape and size? Or might it be the playful colour palettes and surprising materials

in your statement jewellery, which give an air of offbeat glamour to otherwise sensible ensembles?

We just don’t know. What we do know is that we’d rather not have to choose.

Pitch jumpsuit, £340 and Costello suit, £450, both rachelcomey.com

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The Workers Club Founded in 2015 by fashion veterans Adam and Charlotte Cameron, The Workers Club takes its name from a 1920s architectural concept set up by Russian Constructivist Aleksandr Rochenko – said to be one of the earliest iterations of a co-working space for people to connect and collaborate. TWC has positioned itself as an antidote to fast fashion,

with timeless detail and careful construction given priority over fleeting seasonal trends. Working out of the Oxfordshire countryside, the team’s output includes denim, T-shirts and jackets, all of which are intended to be layered and long-lasting.

Outerwear from £195, theworkersclub.co.uk

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Votch Vegan-leather watch brand Votch was born when founder Laura Way battled a serious skin condition and spent the recovery period educating herself on animal welfare issues in the leather industry.

“Finding accessories that are stylish but crueltyfree isn’t always that easy,” she says. Votch’s latest timepieces offer a twist on a classic watch shape,

with a strap made from a TPE, polyester and cotton blend – although the brand is always experimenting with new materials. The benefits are not to be scoffed at, with nasties such as phthalates, bromine and harmful flame retardants kept well away.

New collection from £135, votch.co.uk

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Octobre Éditions Under the same group umbrella as cult favourite Sézane, menswear brand Octobre Éditions delivers a similar calibre of unfussy French chic that its sister company has perfected. Case in point: these sleek Archie high-tops made from fine Italian leather with Margom soles, with attention to detail in the band of navy suede at the ankle. They can be

dressed up or down – it doesn’t really matter – because Archie is an all-rounder that can hold its own whether paired with a summer suit or something from Octobre Éditions’ celebrated collection of selvedge denim, made from Japanese and Italian fabrics. £130, octobre-editions.com

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Bite Studios Any womenswear brand that takes art collector and socialite Peggy Guggenheim as the starting point for its latest designs – “a strong woman with true agency and intelligence” – is definitely in our good books. Sustainable luxury fashion label Bite Studios has put its money where its mouth is by ensuring that everyone working for the brand and

its production partners receives a living wage, that material sourcing doesn’t damage the ecosystem and that its collections are timeless, to help redefine the way clothes are consumed. Each piece is designed and made in London.

Shirts from £250, bitetudios.com

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Solid state

Geometric, architectural adornments, sculpted for the body Images / Mitch Payne Styling / Shazia Chaudhry

Previous page Left to right: Scion earrings, £110, Ruby Jack (rubyjacklondon.com); Dance double ring, £150, Reichwald (reichwaldjewellery.com); Strata D.5 bracelet, £280, Jake McCombe (gillwingjewellery.co.uk); Tube necklace, £230, Rhiannon Palmer (tomfoolerylondon.co.uk);

Infinite rings, from £160, Marion LeBouteiller (marion-lebouteiller.com); Micro Box pendant, £1,495, Alice Robson (alicerobson.co.uk); Positive Negative rings, from £1,800, Daphne Krinos (daphnekrinos.com); Geometric Linea ring, £240, Mariko Sumioka (gillwingjewellery.co.uk); Atlas L bracelet, €640, Fold Unfold (theboyscouts.com)

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Facing page Clockwise from front: Geometric earrings in gold-plated sterling silver, £250, Mariko Sumioka (as before); Micro Box pendant in gold with tiny diamond, Alice Robson (as before); Scion earrings in brass and freshwater pearls, Ruby Jack (as before); Dance double ring in sterling silver, gold and brass, Reichwald (as before)

Above Clockwise from front: Tube necklace in concrete and silver, Rhiannon Palmer (as before); large A.1 earrings in gold, £250, Jake McCombe (as before); Infinite rings in oxidised sterling silver, Marion LeBouteiller (as before); Atlas L bracelet in gold, €460, Fold Unfold (as before); Positive Negative ring in gold, Daphne Krinos (as before)

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FAST E R A N D S M A RT E R F O R LO N G E R Advanced Mobile AI | Ultra Wide Angle Triple Camera | 40W Super Charge*

Product colour, shape, interface and functions are for reference only. The actual product may vary. *40W Super Charge refers to a High-Voltage variant of HUAWEI SuperCharge Technology which only applies to HUAWEI Mate 20 Pro and is only supported by a 40W HUAWEI Charger.

STYLE / Profile

Carry it forward

Toino Abel’s bags tell a story of how rural Portugal’s dying reed-weaving industry was revived

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ife can sometimes pivot on the smallest of gestures. When you’re not trying to work things out, the best direction usually appears, clear as day. Meet Nuno Henriques.

After studying art in Lisbon he was living in Berlin, calling Kreuzberg’s cafes and bars his second home, light years from Castanheira, his family’s rural village in Portugal. One day, he received a call from his father.

“He said my grandfather had died,” he says. “I was on the first flight and arrived in the village that night.” The family gathered together at his great-grand-aunt’s house, where they “talked and talked”. Conversation turned to welcoming the newest addition to the family, Henriques’ brother’s girlfriend, who had never been to the house before. His brother went to the garage and came back with the gift of a handwoven reed basket. Here’s that small gesture.

His great-grand-aunt managed a reed basket weaving workshop in the village, a practice started some 150 years ago (depending who you ask) by Henriques’ great-great grandfather.

Castanheira’s claim to be the epicentre of Portugal’s reed basket weaving industry may be down to its geography, says Henriques.

“There were three lakes in this region 500 years ago. Being wetlands, reeds grew abundantly so locals would use the materials at hand.”

Unfortunately, by this century, Portugal had fallen out of love with its idiosyncratic baskets.

This hyper-local, slow-paced craft was out of kilter in a fast-fashion world.

As a gift to a new family member, the basket represented history and identity. “It had all the story within it, and my brother’s girlfriend could take it with her wherever she went. I loved the idea of people around the world doing the same,” says Henriques. He returned to Berlin and founded Toino Abel in 2010. It’s named after his late grandfather, Antonio, whose nickname was Toino. “He was

the person I loved most on earth so this is a tribute to him,” says Henriques. Keeping it in the family, “Abel” was his great grandfather.

“Rather than a desire to start a business, this was always about the love,” he says. “I couldn’t allow this craft to only exist as a dusty museum exhibit. It had been carried by so many people, so many generations, I felt it was my turn.”

Words Morag Bruce Images Nuno Henriques, Filipa Alves

In 2013, reality bit. “There were just a few skilled people left in the village. They didn’t use email, or even the phone, so communication was difficult from Germany,” he says. Lifechanging action was required. Henriques upped sticks and moved to Castanheira, but it wasn’t easy; still isn’t sometimes. “At the start, it was a novelty,” he says. “The old ladies talked about death, aches and pains. I loved it – they were pretty grounded!” When tradition is involved, people can be protective of their ways. “Many were adverse to doing things differently,” he says. “With time, I realised a lot of what they did was down to habit rather than design, even if it was outdated or uncomfortable. Even today, I’m considered new in town. And new things are suspicious,” he smiles.

A revival wasn’t enough, Henriques wanted longevity. “We’ve worked on every part of the process to make it last,” he says. “We started with our workforce. We pay above the average of any other sector, provide social security and other benefits and we created modern, comfortable conditions for everyone.” The days of a few elderly women as final custodians seem to be over. “We’re now a multi-generational team ranging from 18 to 80, with interns alongside seasoned craftspeople. Weaving brings us together and – because it’s a social activity – we talk and learn a lot from each other.”

Like many historic crafts, reed basket weaving is based on sustainable production. The reeds grow wild, without pesticides or fertilisers.

Electricity use is minimal and they only use

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Facing page A checked Gabriela bag by Toino Abel; like all the brand’s bags, it is handwoven from organic reed in rural Portugal

STYLE / Profile

Left Processing the dried reeds ready for weaving Below A Donato bag, with leather strap and willow handle Bottom Raw materials stacked up Facing page The reeds are harvested annually, after they have flowered

vegetable-tanned leather. “Our looms have to be completely manual, that’s the heart of our work,” he says. “I was once asked why we’re so successful in the 21st century; I said it was because we produce like it’s the 15th century,” Henriques laughs. The dying process he uses is something that’s a work in progress: “Right now, we use a synthetic pigment that’s not ecofriendly and we need to change that. We’ve invested in research to find a better method.”

Toino Abel’s beautiful finished products are the sort of timeless accessory carried by those who nail style without seeming to try; ideal for buying veggies at the market and summer weddings alike. Blending this historic craft with modern sensibilities is the job of creative director Sara Miller. Having worked as a designer for huge global fashion brands, this is somewhat of a contrast. “I used to work in a field where, honestly, almost everything had been done or seen before,” she says. “Now, there’s everything to explore. We spend as much time as we can working by hand; putting more love and respect into the product.”

The starting point for a bag is the “tapestry” that’s woven on the loom, which can produce components for up to eight bags per day. The pieces are stitched together to build the bag, and then willow branch handles and leather components are added. A ceramic Toino Abel label, made in the neighbouring village, is the finishing touch. The production of one bag takes several days. “It’s essential for me to know and be close to the process,” says Miller. “At first, we used our archive and just made small changes while we built good relationships with the artisans, but the collection we have now is completely new in terms of patterns, colours and shapes. I’m very proud of it.”

With such legacy, it must be hard not to imagine ancestors as invisible foremen, watching over this new generation. What would they say now, seeing the modern success of their handiwork?

Toino Abel bags are stocked in boutiques all over Europe and are shipped to all corners of the globe. “I think they’d say to join my father and work at his health clinic instead, to be honest,” Henriques laughs.

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Facing page Cidália (top) and Mini (bottom) bags

Above The Olinda bag – the culmination of a family legacy that goes back 150 years

Previous page After the annual harvest, the reeds are spread in the sun to dry for a few weeks

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PIONEER

Clear vision

How Aino Aalto shaped one of Finnish design’s most fertile eras Words / Ruth Sullivan Image / aalto.com

F

innish design will be forever linked to the architect and designer Alvar Aalto, but it was his wife – and partner in design – Aino (1894-1949) who did much to bring modernism to the masses in the 1930s.

were stackable (therefore space-saving), with a motif of concentric circles that helped disguise irregularities in the cheap pressed glass. The circles were inspired by the ripples from a stone thrown into water – typical of the influence of the natural world on Finnish design.

An innovative spirit and versatile designer in her own right, Aino was a co-founder of the influential furniture company Artek, and the director who led the interior design department and shaped its aesthetic direction.

Her frequent visits abroad as Artek’s design director also played a large part in bringing Finnish modernism to international attention.

Bringing modernism into people’s everyday lives also had a social and cultural side. Aino worked on improving schools and child health centres such as the Noormarkku children’s house and health centre in 1945, and on kitchens and small apartments, bringing new thinking to domestic living. Her creativity took on a more luxurious direction in the interiors of the outstanding Villa Mairea, which was designed by Alvar, and inside the couple’s own house at Munkkiniemi. She worked on many projects with her husband, including the esteemed interior design of Helsinki’s Savoy restaurant – an assured hand that helped guide Finnish design to its still-revered status.

Aino’s vision was to democratise good design, instilling it in the humblest of objects. Her Bölgeblick range of utility glassware – still made in an updated form by Iittala – marked out her own brand of functionalism with clear, simple lines. The pieces were practical, too: the tumblers

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ISSUE 17