Interior Design August 2024

AUGUST 2024

bold, bright, big ideas

Photograph Photograph

by Kendall

by Kendall McCaugherty, McCaugherty, Hall + Merrick Hall + Merrick + McCaugherty + McCaugherty

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FABLE

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CONTENTS AUGUST 2024

VOLUME 95 NUMBER 7

ON THE COVER In the Heritage gallery at the Future City Exhibition Center, a nearly 6,000-square-foot space by Various Associates that celebrates the transformation of Shenzhen, China, over the last four decades, historic images stream across a low-platform screen, while the facade’s cast-acrylic filigree panels are visible through a street-front window, all of it contained in the landmark Golden Business Center, one of 15 projects in this issue’s special “Big Ideas” section. Photography: SFAP.

08.24

features 118 THE MOD SQUAD

by Michael Snyder

A house by Ohtake in Ibiúna, Brazil, channels the country’s long and sometimes checkered history with modularsystems construction.

126 OPEN ROAD

by Michael Lassell

In Gothenburg, Sweden, a national law granting public recreational access to private land inspires the World of Volvo, a mass-timber exhibition and event center by Henning Larsen.

134 FLOOR PLAN

by Rebecca Dalzell

A fantastical epoxy commission anchors the Tuscan seaside family retreat of VMCF Atelier’s coprincipals, who’ve filled the home with pieces by themselves and other notable creatives.

142 HIGH RESOLUTION

by Elizabeth Fazzare

With Lanwuu Imagine, a photography studio in southern China, Aurora Design upends a paradigm and brings an experiential, must-visit space into focus.

150 RIGHT ON TRACK

by Wanda Lau

For the Silicon Valley headquarters of Nuro, a maker of electric, autonomous vehicles that transport consumer goods, Elkus Manfredi Architects delivers two state-of-the-art facilities.

158 THINGS ARE LOOKING UP

by Jen Renzi

From a zero-carbon government campus in California to a rehabbed Australian train station aglow in pastels, blue-sky concepts fuel ambitious community revitalization projects across the globe.

JAMES SILVERMAN

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CONTENTS AUG 2024

VOLUME 95 NUMBER 7

special section 43 15 BIG IDEAS

departments 22 HEADLINERS 27 DESIGNWIRE

by Annie Block 34 PINUPS edited by Rebecca Thienes text by Jen Renzi 38 SHOPTALK edited by Georgina McWhirter

43

113 CENTERFOLD Wicker Park

by Athena Waligore

At Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru in India, Enter Projects Asia builds a rattan wonderland where travelers can shop, dine, and retreat into biophilic bliss.

170 BOOKS

by Wilson Barlow 171 CONTACTS 175 INTERVENTION

by Jesse Dorris

DAVID SARZOSO

08.24

83 MARKET edited by Rebecca Thienes text by Wilson Barlow, Lisa Di Venuta, Georgina McWhirter, Rebecca Thienes, and Stephen Treffinger

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SANDOW was founded by visionary entrepreneur Adam I. Sandow in 2003, with the goal of reinventing the traditional publishing model. Today, SANDOW powers the design, materials, and luxury industries through innovative content, tools, and integrated solutions. Its diverse portfolio of assets includes Luxe Interiors + Design, Interior Design, Metropolis, and DesignTV by SANDOW; ThinkLab, a research and strategy firm; and content services brands, including The Agency by SANDOW, a full-scale digital marketing agency; The Studio by SANDOW, a video production studio; and SURROUND, a podcast network and production studio.

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e d i t o r ’s welcome

bold, bright… big ideas!

Dreaming up exotic farscapes, founding impossibly complex imaginary cities, man­ ufacturing thin air into unpredictable objects and forms, hewing intricately distant futures…what was once the province of science fiction writers and prophets has now, it seems, become standard fare. And all in a day’s work for architects and designers nowadays. I should slowly walk back that “standard fare,” because I have no intention of trivializing unfettered creativity, after all!

It’s just that irrepressible imagination has become an essential requirement for the craft, because there is no room for any kind of “average” in our industry anymore.

And gag me with a spoon if it is not so. We need new, and as always, we need it now! And it just so happens, I have a whole lot of new for you right here in the following pages.

It’s how our super-hot summer days issue, built from the ground up with—what else? —big ideas, came to be!

Let me start you up in style with some highlights. Elkus Manfredi Architects designed not one, but two fab facilities for a growing robotics company—Nuro—developing auto­ nomous vehicles that transport consumer goods (talk about an idea-maker!). In Brazil, a mod modular house—in robust blue—by Rodrigo Ohtake offers open-plan living, diaphanous screens to soften the hard edges, and a wildly alive green roof. And our chockablock Big Ideas section proves innovation comes in every shape and form, like a northern California installation—Plaid!—blending technology, site, sustainability, and, yes, three varietal wines in colored vessels (I’ll drink to that!). Plus, for the first time ever, we literally traveled the globe to bring you a trade-show bonanza—from four favorite fairs—with the hottest product ever, not to be missed!

Soooooo my friends, wanna feel inspired for your next big idea? Well, all you have to do is turn the page! xoxo,

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AUG.24

INTERIOR DESIGN

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headliners

Aurora Design “High Resolution,” page 142 founder, chief designer: Xuewan Yang. firm site: Kunming, China. firm size: Three designers. current projects: Da Guan café in Kunming; Chun Sheng jewelry boutique and Ye Xiao Xiao teahouse, both in Yunnan, China. honors: IDA Gold Design Award; Loop Design Award. away: Earlier this summer, Yang toured Australia for several weeks, particularly enjoying Sydney Harbor at night. home: She collects painting and photography by contemporary artists. aurora22design.com

XIN NA

“A comprehensive design-consulting service, our philosophy is to create fantasy and beauty”

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VMCF Atelier “Floor Plan,” page 134 principal: Valerio Ferrari. principal: Cinzia Mazzone. firm site: Milan. firm size: Five architects and designers. current projects: A house in Puglia, Italy; Elvo Horse Stables in Piemonte, Italy; a music hall in the U.S. meeting: Ferrari and Mazzone met in 1994 as architecture students at Politecnico di Milano. meaning: In 2003, they founded VMCF, which stands for visual machine concept facilities but also their initials.

vmcfatelier.com

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: LORENZO TAIDELLI; TREVOR REID; RUY TEIXEIRA

Ohtake “The Mod Squad,” page 118 principal: Rodrigo Ohtake firm site: São Paulo. firm size: Five architects and designers. current projects: A public school in São Paulo, a municipal public park in Porto Feliz, and a residence in Gonçalves, all in Brazil. honors: Red Dot Award. showman: Ohtake was an assistant curator for André Corrêa do Lago’s Brazilian pavilion at the 14th Biennale di Venezia. sportsman: The architect is an avid tennis player. ohtake.com.br

Elkus Manfredi Architects “Right on Track,” page 150 firm site: Boston. firm size: 180 architects and designers. principal: Elizabeth Lowrey, FIIDA. See April 2024 for complete bio. elkus-manfredi.com AUG.24

INTERIOR DESIGN

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MADE FOR SWITCHING HI ON

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design wıre

edited by Annie Block

Rue Las Casas, in the seventh arrondissement of Paris, might as well be renamed India Mahdavi Boulevard.

The Interior Design Hall of Famer runs three businesses there: her studio, furniture showroom, and Petits Objets shop. In 2020, she expanded her ecosystem to the intersecting Rue de Bellechasse with Project Room, a tidy 430-square-foot gallery where she produces quarterly exhibitions with fellow creatives—past collaborators include Martine Bedin, Chris Wolston, and Les Crafties—that represent a unique nexus of all her interests. “Its scale is intimate enough yet big enough to express a concept,” Mahdavi explains of the modern-day parlor.

Since she synchronizes the programming with city happenings, the summer show linked to the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics: It was the first all-room installation, called Match Point. When dreaming it up, Mahdavi invited designer Harry Nuriev to flesh out her vision, which resulted in a sporty, silver spectacle of an interactive ping-pong room. “It was Harry’s idea to cover it all in reflective surfaces,” Mahdavi says, “generating a spatial mirroring from inside to out, and vice versa, which was the opposition I wanted to manifest.” She’s currently manifesting Criss Cross, her CC-Tapis carpet collection that is a modern take on tartan and will be shown at Project Room in September.

silver streak

BENOIT FLORENÇON

Match Point, by Crosby Studios founder Harry Nuriev, was an all-room installation at Project Room, India Mahdavi’s Paris gallery that she programs with collaborative temporary ex­hibitions, in aluminum paneling, linoleum flooring, lamé curtains, and a custom table and paddles that ran during the 2024 Summer Olympics.

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d e s i g n w ire Clockwise from top: Venancio Aragon’s Rainbow Wedge tapestry, Kim Mupangilai’s Bina daybed, Joyce Lin’s Wood Chair (Ash), Luam Melake’s polyurethane-foam Love Seat, and Misha Kahn’s For Those Who Float chan­ delier are some of the more than 100 works appearing in “Objects: USA 2024,” the debut triennial at R & Company, running September 6 to January 10, 2025, in New York.

Before cofounding New York gallery R & Company in 1997, Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman were practicing artists themselves and principals of the B Team, which toured the world doing glassblowing performances. That focus on making is not only the foundation of the artists they represent today but also their first triennial, “Objects: USA 2024,” opening this fall. Featuring more than 100 works by 55 American creatives—some represented or previously shown by R, some never involved with the gallery before, emerging and established voices among them. That’s the work of independent curators Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy and Kellie Riggs. “Part of our vision for having guest curators is to expand the conversation beyond our own relationships,” Meyers and Snyderman note.

Another part of the vision was the original “Objects: USA,” which appeared in 1969 at what’s now the Museum of Arts and Design; this 21st-century version builds on that show, diving into the varied landscape of today’s innovations, motivations, and diversity via Vizcarrondo-Laboy and Riggs’s seven conceptual categories called “archetypes of objecthood.” For instance, Venancio Aragon, a Diné textile artist, is part of Mediators, concentrated on identity and environment; Luam Melake, a Black furniture designer of Eritrean and Ethiopian descent, is in Codebreakers, who mask the meanings of their works, making the seemingly simple more complex; and fellow furniture designer Joyce Lin is a Betatester, engaging in material subversion and boundary pushing.

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LOGAN JACKSON/COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS AND R & COMPANY

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all together Although originally from Baltimore, architect Dennis Maher has called Upstate New York home for nearly half his life, first earning his degree from Cornell University, then settling in Buffalo. The latter called to him because he “saw unique creative opportunities in the Rust Belt—availability of land, buildings, used materials, industrial relics—that would allow projects combining art, architecture, and city development,” recalls Maher, who’s also a painter/sculptor—he’s exhibited at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, among other museums and galleries worldwide—and a University of Buffalo architecture department faculty member. After years working on demolition and renovation sites, his interest in dismantlement, salvage, and circularity increasing, in 2015, he founded Assembly House 150, a career-development incubator and nonprofit design studio headquartered in an 1850’s former church that itself is an “ever-changing dreamworld of restored and new fragments,” Maher says, plus a construction/craft apprentice space and a workshop for commissions.

Speaking of commissions, AH 150 just completed its largest to date: Interfield, an education studio at Maher’s old stomping grounds, the Burchfield Penney. He and his team of 10 turned two classrooms into an 1,800-square-foot wonderland of the found, the vintage, and the rehabilitated, where museum visitors can make and explore art and objects amid whimsical environments resembling a living room and a garden grotto, backdropped by a mural that nods to artwork by late Buffalo hero, Charles Burchfield.

BIFF HENRICH

From top: For the Garden Grotto at Interfield, a pair of former classrooms turned visitor maker space at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, Assembly House 150, a local nonprofit design studio, made a decorative trellis from old ladders and shelving and drove to a Wisconsin salvage dealer for the mid-century school chairs, since shipping during the pandemic, when the project began, was expensive. Antique furniture pieces and found architectural parts framed in newly built maple-plywood boxes form a curiosity cabinet in the Living Room part of Interfield. The handpainted mural on the wall and sliding door between the two rooms was inspired by an early 20th-century M.H. Birge & Sons Company wallpaper pattern by artist Charles Burchfield, while the custom table winding through the spaces is supported by specially created, nonmatching pedestals.

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Discover Infinito sofa, designed by Marcantonio.

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P I V O T ( P V C - F R E E R E S I L I E N T ) I N E C O LO GY

by Rebecca Thienes p i n ups edited text by Jen Renzi

of a piece Statement furnishings composed of color-blocked blobular modules are designed to be engaging— and engaged with

ALESSANDRO CREMONA

Inspired by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso drawings, French talent Sam Baron’s artfully crafted 71-by-110-inch Figures divider/ screen for Exto insets gloss-lacquered Canaletto walnut panels with brass, leather, steel, glass, mirror, and MDF. extoworld.it/en

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Versatile by design.

FLOORING | RUGS | WALL TEXTILES UPHOLSTERY | WINDOW COVERINGS

chilewichAD.com Upholstery, Wall Textile: BOTANIC, Madder

p i n ups shape-shifters

Minnesota-born artist/designer Misha Kahn riffed on radicalism (and bodily organs) to create Morphologica, an experimental sofa for Meritalia composed of sculptural polyurethane-foam units that can be upholstered in any color combination. meritalia.it

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INTERIOR DESIGN

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plus modular | six tables | abacus screens plus modular designed by GSDS darran.com

“IA is committed to building more inclusive environments for all through sensory-rich spaces engaging sociological, psychological, and physiological research.

The goal is to provide a more holistic experience for users, focusing on nine key principles of well-being. We’re currently testing this model with a global financialservices client, and it’s proving successful.”

Interior Design’s NeoCon health and wellness roundtable participants share how they’ve addressed mental and emotional well-being in recent projects

—Neil Schneider, IA Interior Architects

“We’re having great success inserting loggias into the corners of skyscrapers; they remind me of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. By removing windows, adding glass railings and planters, and pulling in the facade, we create open-air gathering spaces that bring nature to the concrete block. The postpandemic demand for healthier environments made this popular. We’re also studying the impact of scents and essential oils based on studies demonstrating they can enhance attention and relaxation. While in use for decades in hospitality and retail environments, this idea may see a new day in the workplace.”

—Bill Bouchey, Gensler

“We’re designing a daycare with a minimalist palette accentuated by flora-inspired colors, like a delicate pink known to have a soothing effect on emotions. The biophilic hues and textures work in concert with our childcentered design, tailoring the space to users’ physical, cognitive, and emotional needs.”

—Lily Weeks, WRNS Studio

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INTERIOR DESIGN AUG.24

“My furniture designs infuse spaces with whimsy while addressing the needs of those with anxiety or neurodiversity.

Take the shaggy Phil lounge chair, a partnership with Haworth, Patricia Urquiola, and Pophouse, which is designed to be petted, invoking the release of comforting hormones akin to those experienced when interacting with a beloved pet. And my chair for Darran Furniture draws inspiration from the nurturing embrace of a hug and is strategically engineered to alleviate stress by targeting tension points.”

—Chrissy Fehan, Maison Fee

“We approach civic and justice buildings by first understanding that we are all sensory beings responding to our environment. For our recent work on the Nashville Youth Campus for Empowerment for families and youth entering the system, we fine-tuned spaces to support healing, transformation, and equity. Acoustically absorbent surfaces, calming colorways, and light levels foster regulation, de-escalation, and a sense of safety.”

—José M. Jordan, DLR Group

TOP RIGHT: CHELLY CRUZ

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CONTRACT & HOSPITALITY at The New York Design Center

dentistry to objects hand- and the best concepts in design

IDEAS

From circular retail and galactic digitally made, here are 15 of

BIG

AUG.24

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b i g ideas

01

firm: studio alexander fehre site: zurich

ZOOEY BRAUN

“The office blends workspace professionalism with hospitalityinflected sophistication and comfort”

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hyatt at the circle Hotel style meets workplace smarts in Hyatt at the Circle, the hotelier’s corporate office at Zurich Airport by Studio Alexander Fehre. Housed in the largest LEED Platinum–certified complex in Europe, by Pritzker Architecture Prize–winner Riken Yamamoto, that includes two Hyatt hotels, the 16,150-square-foot, ninth-floor project offers its 80 employees a business environment infused with hospitality aesthetics and amenities, via single offices, open collaborative spaces, contemplative retreat areas, and a large open kitchen. Enclosed with curved glass walls, meeting rooms have thick curtains for privacy when needed, while circulation zones are minimized by adding seating nooks, enlivening otherwise dead spots with real functionality.

The materials and color palettes reinforce the five-star vibe. Augmented by swaths of carpet, blond oak parquet in a polygonal pattern covers the floor, creating a warm glow underfoot that’s echoed by paneling and cabinetry in the same wood. Velvety fabrics in inky blues and purples upholster seating alcoves, offsetting the pale timber, as do the sunset hues of DUM stools or the metallic gleam of Graypants pendant fixtures—a mix of playfulness and elegance that, as Alexander Fehre notes, “brings that special hotel flair to the office.” alexanderfehre.de —Peter Webster

ZOOEY BRAUN

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b i g ideas

02

“It restores urban balance, brings education and recreation, and is a place where the city meets its own history”

park of memories aš

firms: soa architekti site: aš, czech republic

ALEX SHOOTS BUILDINGS

In Aš, on the Czech-German border, Prague firm SOA Architekti has completed a project connecting past and present. Near the town center, the 111/2-acre Park of Memories Aš links an urban square with a nearby forest, creating a transition between the different areas, each with their own historical weight. After World War II and the Cold War, when much of the Czech population fled, Aš experienced another wave of devastation in the ’70’s, when swaths of it, including its largest cemetery, were demolished to make way for new housing.

The park reintroduces the cultural identity of Aš via physical and digital means. At the entry, a granite plaza dotted with benches and square cutouts, each planted with a Tilia cordata, the Czech national tree, provides a place for meeting or reflection. A smaller granite plinth near what remains of the cemetery has smaller recesses for candles. Curving through is a 110-foot-long elevated bridge in steel and locally sourced pine. “It connects the site of the original church to the tree line winding through the cemetery,” explains Štefan Šulek, copartner of SOA (which stands for sons of architecture). Park of Memories is also linked with Time Trip, an app that provides information on the city’s past and the park’s interactive points. “Rather than force history upon the visitor,” Šulek adds, “the design offers a chance to experience nature from a different perspective.” s-o-a.cz —Lauren Gallow

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Carousel Collection by Sebastian Herkner

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T h e m o d e r n i n t e r p r e t at i o n o f t r a d i t i o n a l w e a v e s t r a n s f o r m s t h i s c o l l e c t i o n o f f u r n i t u r e i n t o a v e rs at i l e c o m p l e m e n t f o r a n y e n v i ro n m e n t . A s t y l i s h f e at u r e o f t h e c h a i r i s t h e e m b rac ing a lu min u m a rmre st , s cu l pte d in t hre e dime ns i o ns to g i ve it di st inct c h a ra cte r.

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“The triple-win initiative provides unique tapestries, a cleaner environment, and economic independence for Nicaraguan women”

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art for impact

Founded in 2010, the global workplace-design firm Unispace has completed some 6,000 offices for such clients as Biogen, Microsoft, and PayPal, while simultaneously giving back to the community through pro-bono projects.

In 2022, Unispace’s DEIB team formalized its CSR efforts with Art for Impact, focusing on initiatives that address climate change, social inequality, and economic development.

One such homes in on Nicaragua, specifically Las Tejedoras, a women’s collective located in El Astillero that weaves tapestries from the plastic bags that litter the Playa Chacocente shoreline and harm sea turtles and other local marine life. Recently, Unispace interior designers across Europe have conceived some 30 patterns, which, through a partnership with Nicaraguan NGO Casa Congo, Las Tejedoras, Spanish for the weavers, has handmade into coverings for floors and walls from more than 50,000 found plastic bags, which are first washed, shredded, and sorted by color before being transformed into regenerative furnishings. The pieces then go on to get purchased by and installed in the workspaces of Unispace or like-minded clients—with half the profits going to Las Tejedoras. The floor-to-ceiling, black-and-white tapestry, for example, graces Unispace’s Zurich studio; the green-blue rug lays in a lounge at Zoom London. As Las Tejedoras proclaim: “¡Una bolsa menos, una tortuga más!” casacongo.org; unispace.com —Lisa Di Venuta

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CLOCKWISE FROM INSET: MARIA DEL ROCIO ITUARTE/COURTESY OF CASA CONGO; OLIVER POHLMANN/COURTESY OF UNISPACE (6)

firm: unispace site: worldwide

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“The sculptures are created by digitally and hand molding shapes in a way that looks organic, similar to cell growth”

spirits firms: orsi orban; duffy london site: london

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COURTESY OF DUFFY LONDON

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Inspired by bone formations, coral, and animal scales, Spirits is a limited-edition sculpture series that merges traditional craftsmanship with cutting-edge technology. The process involves a complex back and forth between two entities interested in computational design and innovation: Berlin-based Orsi Orban, a multidisciplinary artist and three-dimensional surface designer, and Duffy London’s Christopher London, who focuses on high-end custom furniture.

It begins with Orban presenting her surface-design creation methods and Duffy exploring forms with CAD and AI. “We collectively pushed our limits by investigating what could be achieved in the digital realm and how it could be faithfully reproduced in the physical world,” Orban explains. Once adjustments are made and she receives the CAD files, Orban dissects them into smaller components that she then constructs from hundreds of pieces of laser-cut cherry laminate paired with polyester foil, which makes the wood stronger and more flexible. The modules are connected without glue in what Orban describes as a “reimagining of weaving,” whereby a part of each piece is drawn through a slit made in the one above it, slowly building the final form, which is approximately 3 feet tall. Two similar sculptures debuted in May at Clerkenwell Design Week, but with polypropylene scales. Steadan, Pulse, and Harmon shown here are planned to participate in London Design Week in September. orsiorban.com; duffylondon.com —Stephen Treffinger

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future city exhibition center firm: various associates site: shenzhen, china

For two decades, the 50-story Golden Business Center has been a Shenzhen landmark distinguished by its eponymous hue. A glittering monument from the early days of the Chinese city’s transformation into a global tech hub, the building is an apt site for the Future City Exhibition Center, a 5,770-square-foot space offering a dazzling vision of things to come. Various Associates has given the street-front venue a showstopping facade featuring gold-tinted, cast-acrylic filigree panels mounted on a cantilevered steel frame that overhangs the sidewalk. Standing out like a marquee while integrating with the building’s aureate color, the 98-foot-long structure creates a dappled passageway to the entrance. Visitors first enter the Heritage gallery—dark and

minimalist, with gray marble–clad walls and ceiling—where images from the city’s past stream across a lowplatform screen at the room’s center. A spacious hallway leads to the Future gallery, an even larger room with another low platform holding a model of tomorrow’s Shenzhen. Enveloping digital-display walls provide a spectacular light show that cycles from dynamic sunset colors to a static gradient skyline, surrounding the miniature metropolis with an aura of endless space and time. The final stop, a lounge overlooking a planted courtyard, offers a tranquil retreat before returning to the real city outside. various-associates.com —Peter Webster

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SFAP

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“The facade’s carefully established scale and materiality harmoniously integrate the new exhibition center with the existing iconic building”

SFAP

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“The figures express my gratitude toward those who shaped my vision and inspired my creative process”

most illustrious cini firm: elena salmistraro In 2018, Milan-based artist and product designer Elena Salmistraro paid tribute to four distinguished Italian predecessors—Achille Castiglioni, Riccardo Dalisi, Michele De Lucchi, and Alessandro Mendini— by rendering each as an enameled figurine in a series dubbed Most Illustrious for Venetian ceramics workshop Bosa. Now, the first-name-only boys’ club gets an equally deserving female member: Cini Boeri, on the 100th anniversary of the pioneering architect’s birth. (Having lived to 96, she almost got to celebrate in person.) As with the men, Salmistraro has created a wittily abstracted version of Boeri that melds her physical traits with elements from some of her best-known designs. Her signature hairstyle—a blunt-cut bob with bangs—everpresent neck scarf, and dark-framed glasses are juxtaposed with a body that incorporates the ridged modularity of her 1971 Serpentone sofa and the cushioned fullness and chrome-leg angularity of her 1973 Botolo chair. Boeri’s textiles inform the jazzy pattern and vivid glazes splashed over the 12½-inch-tall statuette, while its fluid curves echo those found in her architecture. “The figurines go beyond being simple portraits,” notes Salmistraro. “They witness the profound connection between the master and his or her work, by embody­ ing the concept we are what we make.” bosatrade.com; elenasalmistraro.com —Peter Webster

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cycle & cycle firm: f.o.g. architecture site: china

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“The prefabricated, modular bakery made from natural materials can be transported to other cities, with details adjusted to site”

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: F.O.G. ARCHITECTURE; INSPACE; F.O.G. ARCHITECTURE; INSPACE

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Although Cycle & Cycle has nothing to do with two-wheeled modes of transportation, it is designed to be mobile. The prefabricated bakery, debuting last year at the Shanghai Coffee Festival and currently residing in a bustling mixed-use plaza in Hangzhou, is the work of F.O.G. Architecture, which, with its client, is using the project to explore the relationship between food and land, architecture and people. Inspired by barn vernacular, the 200-squarefoot, CLT-framed kiosk appears humble and rustic at initial glance but is actually densely detailed and creatively conceived with modular elements.

Take the facade, which is formed from grain sacks neatly stacked to resemble bricks but with small openings left between them to allow for the passage of sunlight and customers to peek inside to watch breadmaking. Along the front and back, a board and a rainproof canopy, respectively, provide shade for those ordering and seated on a built-in low bench, the grain sacks doubling as backrests, or in the supplemental freestanding chairs. When it’s time to relocate Cycle & Cycle elsewhere, the chairs stack inside, board drops down, canopy retracts, and the whole unit gets transported via truck. Next stop: Shenzhen. fogarchitecture.com —Edie Cohen

The Forage Collection / Evoke a sense of wonder and exploration. Gather in nature’s enduring design. Biophilic patterns create comforting and communal spaces. In four running line styles in multiple constructions and two custom color styles, Forage soft surface is circular by design the way nature intended. It’s constructed with EcoWorx® backing and EcoSolution® Q100 yarn, creating a low embodied carbon product that is In The Loop – meaning it can be reclaimed and recycled into more EcoWorx products at the end of its useful life. © 2024 Shaw, a Berkshire Hathaway Company

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“The pop-up immersed visitors in a labyrinth of exploration that culminated with coffee”

i really don’t know firm: kidz site: dubai, united arab emirates

aesthetic, such as the Hide and Seek zone with obstacles and a swinging bench that oscillated through a gap in the walls. The final stop was the coffee shop proper, where guests who had eventually ordered could sit on ottomans made from expanded clay blocks, topped with cushions attached using construction ties. The 1,300-square-foot project was built in a week over the New Year holiday and offered a playful and art-driven experience for all ages. kidz.studio —Dan Howarth

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RUBEN MOVSISIAN

Have you ever stood in line at a café, perplexed about what to order?

This common conundrum formed the concept for I Really Don’t Know, an interactive maze by Kidz, an experiential architecture studio based in Belgrade, Serbia, with the motto: “Let’s create something amazing together and unleash your inner child.”

That it did. The temporary installation, created for the brick-and-mortar I Really Don’t Know coffee shop in Abu Dhabi, UAE, popped-up in the Dubai Design District last January. To reach the order counter, visitors first had to navigate a puzzle of pink partitions labeled with prompts, which forced decisions that determined their journey. “Wanna eat?” directed to a cozy space with seating; “Wanna play?” led to an adventure that began via a slide down into a ball pool.

Along the route, cutouts in the partitions offered glimpses into other areas, as well as out to the waterfront. Each space had a different

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xinú firms: cadena concepts; esrawe studio site: mexico city

Xinú is a Mexican perfumery with shops in Mérida and San Miguel de Allende. For its latest boutique, in Mexico City, the company tapped local firms and frequent collaborators Cadena Concepts and Esrawe Studio for a radically new concept: a store that doubles as a sanctuary in the middle of the busy metropolis.

“The spark came from the vision of gifting a garden to Juarez,” Héctor Esrawe says of the hip neighborhood.

The production of the overall experience was a joint venture, with Esrawe in charge of construction and architectural details and Ignacio Cadena developing storytelling and displays.

Translating to nose from Otomi, a tonal Mexican language, Xinú is inspired by the aromatic botany of the Americas. The store, in turn, immerses customers in a multisensory journey literally wrapped in nature.

The 2,500-square-foot circular pavilion is made of laminated tornillo wood sourced from FSC–certified Peruvian forests, supporting the brand’s commitment to sustainability—even its bottles are composed of responsibly grown walnut and locally blown glass.

Vertical louvres, which open entirely to the elements, support shelving and vitrines, while the shop’s round configuration allows visitors to meander, connecting with both the garden and the products—perfumes, home scents, incense—blurring the line between public space and retail experience. “It showcases a synergy,” Cadena adds, “between handmade luxury, the natural world, and the olfactory arts.”

—Stephen Treffinger

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ALEJANDRO RAMÍREZ

cadena-asociados.com; esrawe.com

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“The pavilion surrounds shoppers in the brand, its scents, and nature, creating an authentic and open dialogue with the city”

ALEJANDRO RAMÍREZ

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“The luminous artworks are like medicine for the psyche”

nutty collection firm: guillaume bottazzi

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©GUILLAUME BOTTAZZI–ADAGP PARIS

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With one in five of us reportedly affected by mental-health issues, anything that helps to make us happier is a huge plus. If that thing is also aesthetically pleasing, all the better. With the World Health Organization confirming that art can improve human health, French painter Guillaume Bottazzi has devoted much of his work to this realm; in fact, research by University of Vienna neuroscientists has found that the curves in Bottazzi’s paintings activate the viewer’s pleasure zones and reduce stress. The neuro-aesthetics pioneer has created more than 100 large-scale murals in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. over the past three decades that aim to reduce anxiety. His Hope 2011, for example, a 10,000-square-foot, site-specific installation, was emblazoned in red, orange, and yellow on the exterior of the Miyanomori Art Museum after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan earlier that year.

Bottazzi’s latest endeavor continues his mission to improve our biology by employing his paintings in another way: Nutty, a lighting collection of circular fixtures ranging from 11 to 48 inches in diameter, slightly tilted from their mount surface. A lacquered-wood frame surrounds heat-tempered, laminated glass laid with enamel in soothing swirls of soft colors, made even more ethereal when illuminated from internal LEDs. “I have long dreamed of painting with light,” Bottazzi says, “and that the poetry of my work will make people feel good.” guillaume.bottazzi.org —Dan Howarth

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DAYLEN

www.ERGinternational.com/daylen.php

“History, outer space, nature, and healthcare coalesce at a practice dedicated to a new generation of dentistry”

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paris dental studios Paris Dental Studios launched in its namesake city in 2021, offering an elevated oral-examination experience through a design-forward, wellness-centered space conceived by local firm JCPCDR Architecture.

The très chic result has been so successful that PDS has since expanded to other French locales: opening in Aix-en-Provence earlier this year and now Lyon.

Occupying the ground floor of a 19th-century building, the concept for the 3,250-square-foot clinic is based on inserting modern “micro-architectures” within the historic shell, which had an atypical plan and a high ceiling. “The volume allowed for something bold and a play on scale,” explains JCPCDR founder and chief architect Jean-Christophe Petillault, who attended two years of medical school before switching to his current profession. Four 215-square-foot pods, each containing an exam room and finished with textured white lime plaster and fluted glass on the exterior, sleek aluminum and blush-pink Corian inside, recall astronomical observatories. That pink first appears by reception, another similarly domed form, in Faye Toogood’s Roly Poly chairs for waiting patients. “It’s a peaceful color and reminds me of healthy gums,” Petillault says of the hue. Sammode’s simple Elgar sconces are installed as straight as Invisalign-ed teeth behind them; poured in place concrete flooring runs underneath. Lush plantings spill over the pods adding a biophilic element. “The intimacy in the units is reassuring,” Petillault adds, “while outside feels like a retro-futuristic garden.” jcpcdr.com —Lauren Gallow 66

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DAVID FOESSEL

firm: jcpcdr architecture site: lyon, france

ASCARI™ CONFERENCE

firm: splendour living site: mumbai, india

maraal Splendour Living is a multifaceted design corporation in Mumbai, India, helmed by architect and trained chef Nyishi Parekh and her husband Sharan, a businessman and car enthusiast, with acclaimed French designer Thierry Betancourt serving as creative director. Under its brands Splendour Living, Ilo Rugs, Misho, and Betancourt himself, projects encompass architecture, interiors, furnishings, jewelry, and real-estate ventures. The latest addition is Maraal, a hybrid events, gallery, and workshop endeavor, occupying a dilapidated former warehouse, exquisitely rehabbed and restored by Nyishi Parekh and her team.

Located in Sewri, Mumbai’s historic waterfront, a military fort in the 18th century, the Parekhs acquired the 14,000-square-foot structure after visiting a friend’s warehouse in Shoreditch, London. This one offered ample room for passions and business—Maraal is a design studio first and foremost—to comingle in an industrial setting punctuated by exposed beams. A third of the space is given to prototyping, where, for example, Splendour Living’s Interference table and Marlene sofa, share center stage with a pair of rare yoke-back chairs and a 20th-century cocktail table sourced by Betancourt. An automotive center is for Sharan Parekh’s interest in

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“Creativity and business coexist in this former warehouse turned event and workspace, where curated design installations blend with preserved steel girders and worn concrete floors”

ASHISH SAHI

race-car development, engineering, and maintenance. Upstairs, a juxtaposing wood-clad cabin functions as a private meeting room for clients, served by the heart of the project, a kitchen run by his wife. Maraal, by the way, takes its name from the flamingos that flock to Sewri during winter. splendour.co.in —Edie Cohen

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ASHISH SAHI

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A modern take on a centuries-old tradition.

Photography courtesy of Christian M. Andersen and Søuld

Introducing the first acoustic panel composed of all-natural eelgrass collected from the shores of Denmark. Traditionally used for roof thatching dating back to the 1600s, this sustainable material is now available in a fully-circular panel designed for contract use. spinneybeck.com/sould

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“Inspired by comic and pop culture, the functional installation created a magical atmosphere and can be reused”

cloud

Hundreds of cities across the globe host their own comic con, an annual convention that draws crowds of comic-book and pop-culture enthusiasts. For this year’s Salón del Cómic de València in Spain last March, the city council engaged local firm Clap Studio to create a bespoke activity space that could be easily disassembled for reuse. Clap cofounders Jordi Iranzo and Àngela Montagud responded with Cloud, a knock-out installation that’s recalls something between a superhero comic strip and a Roy Lichtenstein painting.

“We used the flat, primary colors of comic culture,” Iranzo explains of the canary-yellow and cobalt-blue paint coating Cloud’s plywood elements, which encompass 15 stools serving 15 CNC-cut recesses around a nearly 12-foot-diameter table, used for talks and workshops. The table’s spiky form is modeled after the action bubbles that appear in cartoons—think “zap!” or “pow!”—“the kind used to communicate sounds and make emotions visible,” Montagud adds.

But the table could also be interpretated as a bright sun, especially with the LED-lit partition surrounding it, its rounded, cloudlike trim also cut by CNC. Though it’s meant as a separator from the rest of the hall, portions of it are only 5 feet high, allowing the curious a peek at what’s happening within. weareclap.com —Wilson Barlow 72

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DAVID ZARZOSO

firm: clap studio site: valencia, spain

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villa austevoll firm: saunders architecture site: austevoll, norway

Perched on a windswept hill, Villa Austevoll stands in contrast to its rugged, waterfront surroundings in southeastern Norway. Its white, boxy form might initially evoke the austere anonymity of an art gallery. Yet, the 3,000-squarefoot residence, by Saunders Architecture, is anything but placeless.

Situated on Selbjørn, accessible only by boat, the client, whose grand­ parents had lived on the island, commissioned Todd Saunders to deliver a contemporary retreat that would provide both shelter from the coastline’s challenging weather conditions and an observatory for the unspoiled terrain and North Sea. Saunders and team responded with a volume composed of intersecting rectangles arranged on north-south and east-west axes—the formation, when viewed aerially, echoing the Norwegian flag’s cross—with wide, 9-foot-tall windows capping each elevation. The structure is elevated on a triangular plinth and 10 steel pillars, not only enabling uninterrupted views and maximizing connection to site but also minimizing its impact on the landscape.

Inside, the ground floor is devoted solely to storage and utility rooms. But a swirl of a skylit oak spiral staircase beckons upstairs, where the main living areas and three bedrooms are clad in the same painted larch as the exterior.

“It simplifies the detailing and gives a more cabinlike feel,” Saunders says of the unified approach, “plus the materials will develop a patina, adding character.”

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“The handmade stairway sits in the direct center of the home’s two axes, their orientation affording sweeping vistas”

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IVAR KVAAL

saunders.no —Anna Gibertini

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plaid!

Think Silicon Valley, and tech is often the first association. Yet the stretch of northern California is historically engrained in agriculture and viniculture, its more than 80 vineyards attesting to the latter. No stranger to the area, or to these pages, Virginia San Fratello maintains her practice Rael San Fratello in nearby Oakland. An architect, educator, and author, she also calls herself a “creative technologist” and a “material scientist”; her 3D-printed clay vessels were included in our 2023 “Big Ideas.”

All these elements coalesced in Plaid!, San Fratello’s recent project with colleagues Cody Glen and Mattias Rael for the Art Kiosk, a Redwood City gallery that hosts temporary, thought-provoking installations by Bay Area creatives. Like a fine wine, Plaid! tastefully blended technology, site, and sustainability. The 150-square-foot installation was composed of 300 rods in recycled clear glass. Connected by 3D-printed nodes, the vessels were colored cabernet, zinfandel, and chardonnay, but those are not figurative names; the rods were actually filled with those liquids as well as with others representing the region’s prolific spinach, turmeric, and oyster-mushroom crops, made with water and food coloring. Woven together, they formed a 12-foottall, plaidlike structure highlighting how vernacular and repurposed industrial materials, when paired with compu­ tational design, can create luminous spatial assemblies.

firm: rael san fratello site: redwood city, california

“The installation combined Silicon Valley’s past and present, agriculture and technology” 76

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MATTHEW MILLMAN

rael-sanfratello.com —Edie Cohen

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edited by Rebecca Thienes text by Wilson Barlow, Lisa Di Venuta, Georgina McWhirter, Rebecca Thienes, and Stephen Treffinger

market An inspiring assembly of novelties introduced at recent global furniture trade shows—from Milan to New York, Chicago to Copenhagen

salone del mobile

noom

COURTESY OF NOOM

While Svoya Studio cofounder Denys Sokolov was designing furnishings for fellow Ukrainian company Noom, there was a moment when he sensed that a nearly finished lounge chair was, well…winking at him! In the spirit of greeting the seat back, he named it Hello, a moniker that also captures the inviting nature of the soft, ample, injection molded–foam forms. The design begat a mini-collection comprising the chair in low and high variants, a three-seater sofa, and two coffee tables, all equal parts art piece and functional furniture. Topping off the series (figuratively and, in the case of the seating, quite literally) is a spherical pillow that just begs to be tossed around. noom-home.com AUG.24

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Market Gallery Advertorial

Market Gallery Advertorial

Salone del Mobile PROSTORIA New seating introductions from the Croatian company capture the zeitgeist for commercial pieces with a residential vibe. The Buffa sofa has a playful look, with ergonomic armrests that function as headrests when the sitter is in recline.

A coordinating corner element and armchair lend design flexibility. And the soft padding of Rei, an updated club chair with swiveling mechanism, contrasts with its fluidly contoured molded-plywood shell, embodying the tension between rigidity and plasticity. prostoria.eu/en

m a r k e t s c a p e salone del mobile

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product Buddy Oasi. standout The Italian trio debuts a new outdoor-friendly iteration of its iconic daybed, now with a water­ proof cover and removable lining cladding its repositionable polyurethane foam–padded backrests. pedrali.com 86

Ferruccio Laviani for Kartell

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Roberto Lazzeroni for Lema

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product Teresa. standout Shaped like petals unfurling, the table lamp’s recycledPMMA structure has subtly ribbed edges reminiscent of a jellyfish and comes in fresh limited-edition shades of orange, sky blue, petroleum, and mauve. kartell.com

Cristina Celestino for Gervasoni

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product Orion. standout Both fun and functional, this versatile coffee table has a sturdy lacquered-MDF top with a slight circular recess holding a painted-metal tray ideal for corralling decorative objets d’art. lemamobili.com

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product Plumeau. standout With frilly-edged quilted upholstery draping its voluminous, cloudlike form, the architect and Attico Design founder's lounge chair draws inspiration from the world of textiles and the culture of Asian nomads. gervasoni1882.com

PORTRAIT 1: ANDREA BASILE

Manuela Busetti, Andrea Garuti, and Matteo Redaelli for Pedrali

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Hannes Peer for Minotti

5 PORTRAIT 7: SAMUEL COVARRUBIAS

product Janis. standout A composition of carefully engineered solids and voids charac­ terizes the Milan-based architect’s geometric screen, whose polished stainless-steel modules are available lacquered burnt brown, moka, or moss. minotti.com

Luca Nichetto for Ethimo

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Alberto Sánchez and Eduardo Villalón for Sancal

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product Folia. standout The Nichetto Studio founder and industrial designer modernizes wrought iron by way of a stool doubling as a side table, which features a delicate leaf pattern atop a base of eight “stalks.” ethimo.com

Vincent Van Duysen of Molteni&C

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product Canto. standout The modular seating system by the cofounders of Valencia, Spain, studio Mut Design was inspired by (and has the look of) carved stone blocks—but boasts all the soft, cosseting comfort of upholstered furniture. sancal.com

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product Picea. standout The brand creative director celebrates the company’s 90th anniversary with new innovations that include a glossy indoor/outdoor side table crafted entirely of ceramic and named for a resilient Arctic evergreen spruce. molteni.it AUG.24

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Brit design icon Faye Toogood was in a rude mood at Fuorisalone this year—and we loved it! The “Rude Arts Club” exhibition at Piazza Santo Stefano 10 showcased her rugs for CC-Tapis plus her Cosmic furniture for Tacchini, upholstered in Dedar fabrics. The hand-knotted, suggestively shaped, and uber-textured rugs, which were displayed on walls as well as the floor, had provocative titles like Tongueand-Cheek, Poking Fun, and Blue Tit. The colors, Toogood notes, were inspired by her visit to an exhibit of Francis Bacon paintings. “There’s nobody like him to jolt you back to corporeality,” she explains. “All that visceral fleshliness, vivid pink and bloody red jarring with orange and lilac. It’s not necessarily the shapes or subjects in the paintings that I wanted to reference, but the feeling the exhibition gave me that lingered in my guts.” Equally enticing was Cosmic, a collection featuring puffy padded mirrors and a louche silver armchair resembling a stack of squishy pillows. cc-tapis.com; tacchini.it

cc-tapis and tacchini

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CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM: JOHN WILLIAM; ANDREA FERRARI (2)

FAYE TOOGOOD

Market Gallery Advertorial

NeoCon KI

2024WINNER

The company introduces the elegant and elemental Tributaire collection, encompassing versatile table formats—from training to café—as well as complementary pieces including credenzas, lecterns, storage screens, and monitor stands. Items are offered in a palette of premium materials and an extensive range of sizes, shapes, and styles to suit any space or application. ki.com

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market milan design week

Past meets present was the theme at the opulently frescoed 18th-century Palazzo Visconti, where Flos staged a tantalizing intervention. Mirrored platforms and partitions multiplied the Baroque surrounds as well as reflecting two lighting debuts: Barber Osgerby’s Bellhop Glass table lamp, now with a blown-glass shade, and Formafantasma’s SuperWire, a modular series that features LED strips suspended in skinny borosilicate glass tubes the size of spaghetti strands. The new pieces were accompanied by greatest hits like Michael Anastassiades’s poised-globe IC series, now available in a 24-karat-gold 10th-anniversary edition, and Achille Castiglioni’s polished-aluminum Taraxacum 88 chandeliers, which debuted in the very same space 36 years ago. flos.com

NICOLÒ PANZERI

“The material of the products presented, namely glass, is reflected in the mirrored architecture-within-architecture”

BELLHOP GLASS SUPERWIRE

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IC 10

Market Gallery Advertorial

NeoCon MIZETTO Always at the ready, Captin keeps bustling environments clean and tidy.

Designed for large workplaces and public spaces like hotels, malls, and airports, the playful yet unassuming unit—which can be used individually or grouped—invites usage without overpowering its surroundings. The waste bin incorporates recycled or bioplastic content and is equipped with a hatch for easy emptying. mizetto.com

2024WINNER

arflex and loro piana interiors market milan design week

BOBORELAX CINI BOERI

BOTOLO

“Cini Boeri’s thinking is still extraordinarily contemporary”

STRIPS

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COURTESY OF LORO PIANA

Visionary Milanese architect and designer Cini Boeri would have been 100 this year— the same age as luxury Italian textile house Loro Piana. To celebrate those dual milestones, the latter brand’s decor arm, Loro Piana Interiors, collaborated with Boeri’s archives to curate a special tribute installation. On display was her seminal 1967 Boborelax chaise longue, one of the first seats made of a single block of polyurethane foam with no internal frame; the iconic 1973 Botolo chairs, on three chunky legs with hidden casters; and the perennially popular 1972 Strips modular seating system. Produced by Arflex, all are dressed in Loro Piana fabrics: Take the limited series of 100 Botolo chairs, upholstered in the company’s fluffy Cashfur cashmere-silk blend, or the Boborelax in vivid cherry-red Tiepolo wool. arflex.it; loropiana.com

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NeoCon FRÍANT With its unique design and artistic charm, Fala adds whimsy to any space. The meticulously crafted seat sports a leather loop on one end that serves as both a distinctive accent and a convenient handle for maneuvering the mobile unit on its smoothglide casters. Sturdy construction ensures comfort and support, regardless of the sitter’s posture. friant.com

2024WINNER

1

Diego Olivero of Meso

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product 40. standout A side table clad in stripes of dyed parchment paper is one of six introductions from the Thai-American talent’s new furniture and lighting brand, which aims to produce crosscultural “conversations” between the two countries. pernbaan.com 94

INTERIOR DESIGN

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product Aman. standout A shapely terra-cotta vessel with endearingly wiggly details made by artisans in Honduras is a highlight of the brand founder’s collection of affordable handcrafted objects, furniture, and wall art. mesogoods.com

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Justin Donnelly and Monling Lee for Heller

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product Fortune. standout The fortune cookie’s pinched-circle shape sparked the form of the Jumbo studio founders’ plastic chair, in six foodie hues: oat­ meal, cookie, olive, tomato, dark cherry, and licorice. Through DWR and Heller. dwr.com; hellerfurniture.com

Glenn Pushelberg and George Yabu for Warp & Weft

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product Gale. standout Wool and silk combine in this hand-knotted rug by the Interior Design Hall of Famers and Yabu Pushelberg cofounders, sporting an organically raked texture and muted palette inspired by ariel views of Earth. warpandweft.com

PRODUCT 1: ROBERT SUKRACHAND

Robert Sukrachand of Pern Baan

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Simon Johns of Simon Johns

Cristián Mohaded for Moooi

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PRODUCT 7: ANDREW BUI

product Magma. standout The Canadian designer’s ripple-textured floor lamp appears to materially morph from liquid to solid as it segues from moltenlook blown glass to cracked un­ glazed stoneware. simonjohns.com

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Steffany Trâ ̀n of Vy Voi

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product Big George. standout A gentle giant, this lowslung armchair by the Argentine industrial designer, artist, and Mohaded Studio founder has a curious, casually voluminous shape that suits it to any lounge setting. moooi.com

Katie Deedy of Grow House Grow

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product Sǎ ́n. standout Elegantly propped on a teeny weighted-porcelain base is a supersize lampshade covered in multilayered Dó paper—a barkflecked Vietnamese variety traditionally used for royal documents and folk art. vyvoi.com

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product Josephine. standout The wallpaper nods to the “elegance, playfulness, and perfect rarity” of Josephine Baker, a cultural figure who kept a pet cheetah and spied for the allies, transporting messages in invisible ink on musical scores. growhousegrow.com

m a r k e t nycxdesign

“The collection’s namesake pays tribute to the central dome shape found throughout the range, symbolizing the convergence of two geographic hemispheres”

bankston architectural During a packed party catered by Gohar World (whose surrealist fare included asparagus spears hung on lengths of string for guests to snip off), Australian hardware manufacturer Bankston Architectural launched Hemispheres, a zeitgeisty collab with architects Nicko Elliott and Ksenia Kagner of Brooklyn studio Civilian. The door levers, pulls, and knobs on circular roses or halfmoon or pill-shape backplates were sparked by the materials and contours of art deco, Soviet-era graphic design, and more. The interchangeable components are intended to be juxtaposed, with five key materials to mix and match: American walnut, brownish Portoro Gold marble, polished chrome, smooth nickel, and a cream powder-coat. Also available are door stops and cupboard knobs that can double as robe hooks. They’ve thought of it all. bankston.com

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Market Gallery Advertorial

NeoCon ALLSEATING Clean, classic lines and contemporary details distinguish Dart, an executive conference chair available in mid- and high-back versions for meeting spaces and C-suite offices alike. The fully upholstered back is graced with horizontal stitching for a sophisticated edge, while a special focus on support guarantees that Dart is as comfy as it is stylish. allseating.com

“Verso was born as an agile and itinerant gallery and store inhabit­ ing diverse real estate”

AMAURI AGUIAR

SLINKY, CRACKED EGGS

CHESS IN THE BATH

verso What happens when a bevy of multidisciplinary artists, designers, and brands overtakes a townhouse in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood for New York Design Week? Amauri Aguiar, cofounder of TriBeCa gallery Verso, found out when he invited dozens of contemporaries to fill three floor-through condo units, plus the backyard and carport, of 96 King, a chic residential new-build, with whimsical collectible furnishings. The activation, dubbed “Verso & Friends,” starred statement pieces like Hannah Bigeleisen’s cobalt gypsumcement Throne bench, the squiggly Cracked Eggs and Slinky merino wool rugs by Dokter and Misses, Lynn Lin's glass Chess in the Bath set, and Martina Guandalini’s Soulmate acrylic-and-resin vases. The site, a light-filled aerie with harbor view by developer/builder Ground Architecture, formed the ideal backdrop for Verso’s idiosyncratic assembly. verso-works.com

m a r k e t nycxdesign

JONATHAN HÖKKLO

SOULMATE

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Paris Déco Off ARTE The brand, renowned for 3D wallcoverings that combine monochromatic motifs with dimensional construction, unveils Kanso, a collection inspired by Japanese minimalism. Patterns such as the herringboneesque Iki and Shibumi, a dynamic composition of diagonals, feature soundsoftening foam cores, pronounced texture, and a suede-like surface fabric that add tactility and a luxurious hand to walls. arte-international.com

m a r k e t s c a p e neocon

Daniel Germani for Bernhardt Design

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product Ice. standout The kitchen maestro—and 2024 HiP Award winner!—expands into occasional tables with an allglass design pairing a handblown base with a cast top, available in three ethereal gradient-style colorways. bernhardtdesign.com 100

Patricia Urquiola for Andreu World

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Patrick Jouin for Pedrali

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product Nuez Lounge BIO. standout A ribbed wraparound shell in a thermopolymer generated by live microorganisms gives the Hall of Famer’s lounge chair bio­de­ gradable and compostable proper­ ties and a carbon footprint equi­ valent to timber. andreuworld.com

Yinka Ilori for Momentum Textiles & Wallcovering

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product Ester. standout The Hall of Famer’s 2013 armchair is now offered as a lounge variant with even softer and more generous shapes for increased comfort. We can just picture its elegant, enveloping frame perched in a hotel lobby. pedrali.com

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product Yinka Ilori x Momentum. standout In this debut, the BritishNigerian artist/designer’s ability to infuse spaces with culture and story­ telling dovetails with the maker’s commitment to fostering creativity in commercial environments. momentumtextilesandwalls.com

Cory Grosser for BuzziSpace

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product BuzziShroom. standout A nearly 2-yard-high, fabric-upholstered foam floor lamp by the Pasadena, California–based designer fuses acoustic control with illumination, its quirky Seussian charm belying its functional prowess. buzzi.space

Dorothy Cosonas for Wolf-Gordon

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Carole Baijings of Stylex

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product Sampler. standout A nostalgic polyester fabric embroidered with over­ lapping matte and metallic yarns draws on a practice sampler the designer’s mother stitched when she was a young woman. wolfgordon.com

Alyssa Coletti for Martin Brattrud

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product New color palette. standout The recently appointed brand creative director curated a color story replete with playfully complementary contrasts to apply across the manufacturer’s wares, including Yoom modular seating by Anthony Land. stylexdesign.com

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product Azusa. standout The Nonfiction Creative founder debuts minimalist tables that balance lightness and strength via bases of thin folded-aluminum panels cradling tops of quartz, stone, solid-surfacing, or wood. martinbrattrud.com AUG.24

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“Frank Lloyd Wright’s design principles predate concepts ubiquitous in wellness discussions today”

The upholstery collection Elemental Wright is rooted in its name­sake’s teachings: namely, Frank Lloyd Wright’s integration of nature into the built environment to conjure wellbeing. The three patterns are creative explorations of basic mathematical forms. Pentimento, a pentagonal motif that stems from a draw­ ing made by Vernon D. Swaback, one of Wright’s youngest apprentices, combines floral and geometric elements. Circulate dials in on the qualities of a circle, organized in a grid with varied textures and tones. Vertex riffs on the triangle, the fractals an example of organic architecture that predated today’s bio­ philic and human-centered design. All are made from blends of nylon, solution-dyed acrylic, and postconsumer-recycled polyester, so durability is assured. designtex.com

designtex

m a r k e t neocon

ANNE DEPPE

CIRCULATE

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Market Gallery Advertorial

NeoCon OYSTER WELLNESS Developed in collaboration with a renowned exercise physiologist, this innovative perch helps achieve the perfect seated posture. The Oyster Wellness Seat's backless, ergonomic design, offered in commercial-grade fabrics, suits meditating and working alike—encouraging extended active sitting by engaging the core, supporting the sitz bones, and maintaining the lumbar spine’s natural curve. oysterwellness.com

2024WINNER

m a r k e t neocon

allermuir Talk about the great divide—or make that Crate Divide, the ingenious new system from Allermuir’s in-house team.

The modular cubic-grid steel frame snakes through open plans to zone off areas and can even wrap around on itself to enclose a circular “room.” Horizontal connector bars join the modules together (in-line or at right angles), obviating the need to double up vertical frames. The effect is visually light and pleasingly perfected. Add curtains for softness and more robust sound dampening and/or supplement with shelves, boxes, planters, and acoustic panels in plywood or TFL. As for color, the standard powder-coat finishes available are black, white, sage, bronze, and a deep, plummy aubergine. allermuir.com

“This semiprivate partition system resembles graph paper writ large”

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NeoCon KEILHAUER Function and comfort artfully coexist in Dais, an awardwinning, carbon-neutral solution suited to a myriad of environments. The relaxed yet supportive seat, designed with minimal components and without fossil-based materials, features bio-based foam cushioning and an FSCcertified ash frame whose backrest cleverly wraps around to double as armrests and a surface for writing or a laptop. keilhauer.com

2024WINNER

m a r k e t s c a p e 3daysofdesign

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Thilde Maria Haukohl Kristensen for Layered

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Torbjørn Anderssen and Espen Voll for &Tradition

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product Sleeping Flower. standout The Danish floral artist known as Poppykalas reteams with the Swedish brand for a collab dubbed Magical Garden that includes a wool-Tencel rug inspired by dormant flowers waiting to bloom.

product Massif. standout A visually petite powdercoated-steel counter-height stool that swivels and provides an integrated footrest? This seating solution by Oslo-based Anderssen & Voll checks many boxes.

layeredinterior.co

andtradition.com

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Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby for Fredericia

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product Plan. standout In September, the Danish brand will extend a 2022 line by British design studio Barber Osgerby, welcoming a chair with a wraparound back/armrest that’s upholstered sans glue for easy disassembly or repair. fredericia.com

Rikke Frost for Carl Hansen & Søn

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product Sideways. standout A range the Dane designed for the third-generation family-run company expands to include a pleasingly curvy solid-wood low lounge chair with strands of paper cord detailing its rounded backrest. carlhansen.com

PORTRAIT 1: PETRA KLEIS

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Kristian Sofus Hansen and Tommy Hyldahl of Norr11

PORTRAIT 7: ERWAN BOUROULLEC AND RAAWII

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product Fave. standout So ’80’s! Destined to be a crowd-pleaser, the Fave (as in favorite) chair’s bubbly seat and bolster back are connected via a mirror-chromed tubular-steel frame (also available powder-coated black). norr11.com

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John Löfgren and Jonas Pettersson for String Furniture

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product Center Center. standout The Form Us With Love founders envisioned a hyperflexible and reconfigurable storage solution composed of perforated sheet-metal boxes that are precision-welded, -bent, and powder-coated. stringfurniture.com

Erwan Bouroullec for Raawii

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product Arba. standout A slightly flexible metal spine adjoins two molded-plywood elements in the French designer’s swivel chair, which also flat packs, assembles in few steps, and comes in three base-color options. raawii.dk

Fabien Cappello for Hem

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product Toto. standout The Londoner’s cartoonish lamp is unexpectedly covered entirely in fabric, a material extension of shade into base. Find it online from the Swedish brand starting August 15, in two sizes and various colors and patterns. hem.com AUG.24

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market 3daysofdesign

CECILIE MANZ

fritz hansen “The challenging part is to get the two points, comfort and aesthetics, to meet”

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“I wanted it to be really reduced, drawn like a quick sketch, without too many details,” Danish designer Cecilie Manz says of her fully upholstered plywood Monolit chair. Its bucket seat rests on a flared base akin to a ceramic pedestal vessel. The seat is cosseting…but not too much. “We have boxes of paper patterns where we worked out the front cutout so you can twist around a bit,” Manz continues. “That was very important to me because humans want to move around and change position; your body doesn’t want to be locked in. With this slight opening you can move but still feel embraced.” Monolit is offered in two seat heights: a 16-inch lounge version and an 18-inch dining model that’s slightly higher than typical, allowing people to get in and out with greater ease. On offer are 12 specific combinations of textiles and colors delineated by Manz, or designers can choose their own from Fritz Hansen’s entire range. fritzhansen.com

Market Gallery Advertorial

NeoCon AMERICAN BILTRITE Designed for healthcare environments, ABPURE Infinity carbon-neutral rubber sheet flooring is manufactured with renewable natural gas from 100% organic waste, reducing greenhouse gases at the source. The flooring features an elegant tone-on-tone chip visual in an earth-centric palette, influenced by color forecasting and designer feedback, to coordinate with popular wall paneling and paint tones. american-biltrite.com

Market Gallery Advertorial

CARL HANSEN & SØN

STRING

WENDELBO

FRITZ HANSEN

Market Gallery Advertorial

AUDO COPENHAGEN

NORMANN COPENHAGEN

ARTISAN

3DaysofDesign DESIGN PUBLIC GROUP The spec and procurement platform curates unique, design-driven collections that bridge the residentialcommercial gap and celebrate attributes of authenticity, functionality, sustainability, and craftsmanship. By leveraging optimized logistics and a sophisticated ordering system, the company helps designers simplify the process of specifying globally sourced brands including Norr11, String, Normann Copenhagen, Artisan, Fritz Hansen, Wendelbo, Audo, and Carl Hansen & Søn. designpublicgroup.com

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wicker park At Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru in India, Enter Projects Asia builds a rattan wonderland where travelers can shop, dine, and retreat into biophilic bliss

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“We took the plant-based materials—rattan, reeds, bamboo—found in Southeast Asian wellness retreats to the typically utilitarian, urban space of an airport”

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designers, weavers, welders, and installers led by architect Patrick Keane

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COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY OF ENTER PROJECTS ASIA (3); ADISORNR (2)

1. For the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill–designed Terminal 2 at India’s Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru, Enter Projects Asia principal Patrick Keane and team used Maya, Grasshopper, and Rhinoceros software to develop the forms and fabrication processes for a nearly 3-acre land­ scape of five sculptural rattan pavilions. 2. The layout of the pavilions takes inspiration from the 20th-century garden city movement, upon which Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) is planned, intro­ ducing a meandering informality that’s more like a stroll in a park than a direct point A to point B passenger traversal. 3. An elevation diagram relates the size of two pavilions to a Boeing 747 and a Concorde. 4. The eight-month design pro­ cess included fit tests for the 168 modules com­ prising the pavilions, their structural sup­ports made of aluminum tubing wrapped with rattan.

5. At EPA’s factory in Bangkok, the mod­ules were handwoven by Thai craftspeople before being shipped to Bengaluru, where more than two dozen workers would complete the complex installation.

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NICK HUFTON/HUFTON + CROW PHOTOGRAPHY

c e n t e r fold 1. EPA’s rattan pavilions are part of what SOM has dubbed a 4 million-square-foot “terminal in a garden,” with the firm’s cross-laid ceiling of engi­ neered bamboo, and tiered planters, 700-year-old olive trees, and other natural elements by landscape architect Grant Associates that are irrigated with rainwater harvested on-site, all of which has led to LEED Gold certification. 2. The pavilions house high-end retail, a Wolfgang Puck steakhouse, and lounges, the density of the weaving varying from tight, to conceal back-of-house functions, to open and airy. —Athena Waligore

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8257 Oxidized Silk Oak

Explore the InDepth Surfacing ™ Collection. www.formica.com/InDepth

august24

Come explore—and be amazed

JASON KEEN

AUG.24

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the mod squad A house by Ohtake in Ibiúna, Brazil, channels the country’s long and sometimes checkered history with modular-systems construction text: michael snyder photography: filippo bamberghi/living inside

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Previous spread: Comprising prefabricated steel modules manufactured by sysHaus, Ohtake principal Rodrigo Ohtake’s 1,940-square-foot residence in Ibiúna, Brazil, for him and his family is freestanding but appears embedded in the sloped site.

Top: At the back of the house, bridges connect the lushly planted green roof to the sur­ rounding grassy landscape. Bottom: Stairs lead down to the sheltered entry courtyard, which is enlivened by a pair of recycled-polyethylene Sugar Loaf chairs by Ohtake.

Opposite top: A Delgadina armchair, Ninho club chair, and Tri coffee tables, also all by Ohtake, join José Zanine Caldas’s Sela sling chair in the living area, where flooring is vinyl. Opposite bottom: The green roof consists of a 6-inch-deep, free-form planter that sits atop the rectangular modules.

For the first three years of his life, Brazilian architect Rodrigo Ohtake lived in a São Paulo apartment building designed by his father, Ruy, and named for his grandmother, Tomie, a renowned abstract artist who painted the tower’s white facade with oscillating bands of color. Completed in 1985, the building’s powerful concrete construction gestured to the Paulista brutalism that Ruy Ohtake had learned as a student at the University of São Paulo’s Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism—the same school where his son would study in the early 2000’s—while its curved balconies suggested the sumptuous forms and colors that defined his later work.

“I’ve been an architect since I was born,” says Rodrigo Ohtake, who merged his own small studio with his father’s firm in 2021, following Ruy’s death from cancer at age 83. “My family has been working in Brazilian culture for 60 years—we have a kind of a tradition,” he observes. “But we try to look to the future, not the past.”

That penchant for experimentation played a central role in the modular home that Ohtake built in 2023 for himself, his art-curator wife, and their three young children outside Ibiúna, a hill-country town southwest of São Paulo. Designed by Ohtake and manufactured by sysHaus, a producer of prefabricated homes, the 1,940-square-foot country residence comprises four 10-by-20-foot steel prisms, each with a different typology but all containing a bedroom. These are arranged like a pinwheel around a central void, which accommodates the open-plan living space. Sliding glass doors opening onto the surrounding forest and 33-foot-long steel beams (the maximum size sysHaus can use without support columns) define the edges of the communal volume at the building’s core. As in Brazil’s colonial terrace houses, Ohtake notes, “The void is where the house happens.”

To break with the orthogonal rigidity imposed by the prefabricated modules, Ohtake shielded the exposed corners of the bedroom units with freestanding, wavelike screens of blue perforated steel. This is almost an inversion of the house his father designed for his grandmother in 1968

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“The modular house extends a family inheritance of materializing a future that looks different from the past”

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Top, from left: Backdropped by native forest, a seating vignette of Ohtake’s color­ ful outdoor furniture. Behind the freestanding perforated-metal screen, a paved service zone. In the TV area, a Zig-Zag chair and stool, Ninho sofa, and Meandre rug, all by Ohtake. Bottom, from left: Backing Oscar Niemeyer’s Praiana chaise lounge in the living area, sail-like Caravela shelving by Ohtake’s late architect father Ruy. Sequestered in its own glass-wall module, the main bedroom. Integrated work­ stations in stainless steel and MDF forming the open kitchen.

and expanded through the decades as his aesthetic transformed. While the son uses curves to create privacy and blur his home’s strictly rational silhouette, the father leveraged the open floor plan enabled by the floating concrete-canopy roof—a typical feature of Paulista modernism—to insert rounded dividing walls painted in vivid primary colors.

The Ibiúna house is capped with an exuberant, amoebalike roof cut from orange steel. This shape, Ohtake acknowledges, was partly inspired by his favorite structure in São Paulo: Oscar Niemeyer’s Marquise do Ibirapuera, a covered pathway beneath a sinuous, white concrete-slab marquee that snakes between the trees in the city’s most important park, connecting buildings and offering shelter from the intense subtropical sun and rain. For insulation, Ohtake topped most of the roof with 6 inches of soil in a free-form planter bursting with grasses and hanging vines. A grassy ramp curls up one flank of the house to merge with the roof at the back. Embraced by the earth and practically erased from view, the home becomes a steel cave enlivened by the intrusions of the surrounding landscape. “When the wind blows, you almost feel the trees are inside the house—a lot of leaves come in, which I think is marvelous,” Ohtake enthuses. “I wanted to show that industrial materials can be in harmony with nature.”

The entire project served as a proof-of-concept for prefabrication in a country where, for the most part, Ohtake says, “We are still doing architecture as if we were building pyramids, brick by brick, when we should be building more like LEGO.” Despite pioneering architects like João Filgueiras Lima, better known as Lelé, who began developing ingenious modular construction systems in the 1960’s and continued innovating through the ’80’s, Ohtake believes most Brazilians still associate prefab­ rication with American-style cabinet construction introduced in the ’70’s.

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Top: The diaphanous screens not only provide color and privacy but also help soften the modular structure’s hard-edged geometries. Bottom: The bedroom’s floor and ceiling are vinyl. Opposite top: The pool is located behind the house on the lot’s highest point so as to interrupt the relationship between the interiors and the natural surroundings as little as possible. Opposite bottom: The architect, his art-curator wife, Ana Carolina Ralston, sons Ivan and Tom, and daughter Lia enjoy the seamless indoor-outdoor life­ style the sliding glass doors afford.

That flimsy, disposable approach held little appeal for families that regard their homes as patrimony for their children. “We can only prove that these houses are permanent by building them,” he asserts, something sysHaus will do when it starts shipping its first Ohtake-designed modular homes across the country later this year.

For Ohtake, modular-systems architecture is, above all, an extension of a generations-long inheritance of materializing a future that looks different from the past. That forward-looking attitude expresses itself in the Ibiúna house, of course, but even more powerfully in the way the family uses it. “I don’t have to worry about toys,” the architect reports. “The kids just go into nature to play with wood and leaves, stones and sand.” Educated to value rationality but raised to question its primacy, Ohtake worries over the future of a society that trains young people out of creativity in favor of more reliably profitable skills. “I’m trying to tell my children, ‘Use your sense of play, it will help you in your future,’ which is something I can say from experience,” he concludes. “The world is too serious. We should have more play.”

PROJECT TEAM ANDREI DA SILVA; LEONARDO ROCHA; ISABELLA MARTINI; CARLA STELLA: OHTAKE. SYSHAUS: GENERAL CONTRACTOR. PRODUCT SOURCES FROM FRONT AMÉRICA MÓVEIS: CLUB CHAIR (LIVING AREA), SOFA (TV AREA). ARTI MÓVEIS: ARM­ CHAIR, COFFEE TABLES (LIVING AREA), SIDE TABLE (LIVING AREA, TV AREA). 31 MOBILIÁRIO: SLING CHAIR (LIVING AREA), CHAIR, STOOL (TV AREA). PUNTO E FILO: RUGS (LIVING AREA, TV AREA) TETO VINÍLICO: VINYL CEILING (BEDROOM). MEKAL: WORKSTATIONS (KITCHEN). THROUGHOUT JAPI: OUT­ DOOR FURNITURE. TARKETT: VINYL FLOORING.

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open road

text: michael lassell photography: james silverman

In Gothenburg, Sweden, a national law granting public recreational access to private land inspires the World of Volvo, a mass-timber exhibition and event center by Henning Larsen

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Previous spread: Glulam columns and beams define the main exhibition hall at the World of Volvo, a 242,000-square-foot, mass-timber building in Gothenburg, Sweden, by Henning Larsen that incorporates an automotive museum, restaurants, event spaces, and conference facilities, all reflecting sustainable design and Swedish cultural values.

Top: The reception area features a full-height ceiling and unobstructed views of the surrounding landscape. Center: The roof extends beyond the glass curtain wall like the brim of a hat, exposing the glulam support struc­ ture. Bottom: Vintage Volvo cars and tractors are among the historical products on display in the museum.

Opposite: The largest of the project’s three “tree trunks,” all of which serve structural functions as well as containing elevators, stairs, and additional exhibition spaces.

On April 14, 1927, the first Volvo automobile rolled off the assembly line in Gothenburg, Sweden. On the same day 97 years later, the venerable company—now a multinational corporation renowned for producing cars, trucks, buses, and construction equipment, as well as marine and industrial engines—opened the World of Volvo, an enormous exhibition, education, and entertainment center in the same city’s expanding event district. A circular building sheathed in glass, the 242,000-square-foot, five-story venue is a mass-timber structure that leverages advanced computational parametric design to reinvigorate the use of wood for large-scale, architecturally adventurous construction.

The commanding new landmark was commissioned jointly by Volvo Cars, still based in the city, and Volvo Group, which manufactures the brand’s other products in factories around the globe. Danish architectural firm Henning Larsen won the assignment by recognizing that the client was like an extended family with multiple viewpoints in need of integration.

“It was clear from the beginning that Volvo was taking a human-centric rather than a technological approach to the project,” says Søren Øllgaard, Henning Larsen partner and design director for Europe. Although the facility would incorporate the company’s historical vehicle collection from the now-closed Volvo Museum on nearby Hisingen island, it needed to be much more than a museum. To determine what the World of Volvo would be, exactly, the architect and his team spent six months developing a program that addressed the varying interests of the constituent stakeholders through four key performance indicators.

“The first KPI was the iconic value of the space itself,” Øllgaard explains.

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resonated with the Volvo brand. And fourth was to make it as sustainable as possible, which is important to us as architects and echoes Volvo’s commitment to electric vehicles.”

“Iconic” is the right word for the building Henning Larsen delivered: a 360-foot-diameter cylinder topped by a slightly tilted roof—almost 100 feet tall at its highest point—that extends beyond the glass curtain wall like the brim of a jaunty hat. Despite its size and bold form, the structure doesn’t overwhelm its site, a steep slope wedged between a major highway and a small river.

The transparent skin not only helps dematerialize what could be a monolithic bunker but also enhances the surrounding urban landscape’s natural attributes, allowing the interior to connect visually with the grassy riverbank and stream while sheltering them from the highly trafficked road above. (An 800-car parking garage lies hidden beneath the terraced hillside.)

The building’s openness to the natural world reflects allemansrätten, Swedish for the right of public access, a constitutionally enshrined Swedish principle that allows citizens to freely roam, camp, and forage on privately owned land, as long as they respect the property and the environment. This ethos also pervades the interior program: While there’s a fee to enter the 50,000-squarefoot main exhibition space—a journey through Volvo’s past, present, and future, as represented by vintage vehicles, interactive displays, and immersive narratives—the remainder of the facility is free for the public to explore at will. Amenities include versatile spaces for events, lectures, and meetings; two dining venues; and a monumental concrete stair that connects the first two levels while providing visitors with bleacher seating. There are additional galleries on the third and fourth levels, while the partially planted roof hosts a penthouse conference center.

Opposite top: A monumental concrete stair curves around a trunk, linking reception to the museum (the only part of the center that charges an entry fee) and a restaurant on the second level while also providing bleacher seating. Opposite bottom, from left: Ceilings and some floors are clad in CLT panels made from spruce and pine. An aerial gangway leads to elevators. The interior of the main trunk is spacious.

Right: A vintage Volvo sits at the base of the principal elevators, glass tubes that suggest the action of pistons in a combustion engine as the passenger compartments move up and down.

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The building itself is an architectural metaphor for Sweden’s legendary mountain forests. Inside the glass shell, a trio of colossal timber columns contain elevators, stairs, and additional display space. All three are sheathed in hefty glulam ribs that, treelike, branch out to form a radiating framework of beams, supporting the roof and creating the enveloping sense of an arboreal canopy. The entire structure comprises 2,300 of these glulam components—some vertical pieces are up to 50 feet tall, while horizontal ones span as much as 115 feet—all produced by the Austrian timber-engineering company Wiehag, utilizing advanced CNCfabrication technology. Ceilings and some floors are clad with crosslaminated timber slabs sourced in Sweden. About 2,800 tons of lumber, either spruce or pine, was used in the building. Henning Larsen has designed large-scale wooden structures before, but the World of Volvo is the biggest and most complex. The architects initially used traditional drawings and models, but as the concept of the three interior “tree trunks” took shape, they turned to computers for their precision, flexibility, and speed. “Working out the parameters of the canopy without computers could have taken years,” Øllgaard acknowledges.

The architect also suggests that the use of mass-timber for the World of Volvo provides a provocative contrast between the vehicles and the building. “If you go to the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, those sleek automobiles are surrounded by the same sleek materials,” Øllgaard notes. “But a Volvo is different from a Mercedes, and Sweden is different from Germany. I think part of the reason wood seems so fresh right now is that people are tiring of globalization, which produces the same buildings for Hong Kong as Brazil. But differences in cultures are wonderful, and wood has deep roots in every culture. You could say that the future is vernacular.”

PROJECT TEAM SØREN ØLLGAARD; MARTIN STENBERG RINGNÉR; FILIP FRANCATI; ANDERS ASTRUP ANDERSEN; ANDERS ÅKESSON-BJÖRSMO; CARLOS RAMOS SEIDENFADEN; FABIA BAUMANN; LEONARDO CASTAMAN; MARINA GONZALEZ; NANNA NEERGAARD; PHILLIP GRASS; SAMUEL MORRIS; TILDE HAREMST; UNI ÞEYR JÓNSSON: HENNING LARSEN. WIEHAG: STRUCTURAL-TIMBER ENGINEER, FABRICATOR. BRA TEKNIK; OPTIMA ENGINEERING: STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS. BRION VENTILA­ TION: VENTILATION CONSULTANT. CEDÅS AKUSTIK: ACOUSTIC CONSULTANT. CONFIRE: FIRE, RISK CONSULTANT. FREDBLAD ARKITEKTER: PARKING GARAGE ARCHITECT. VINNERGI: DIGITAL TECH­ NOLOGY CONSULTANT. INHOUSE TECH: PROJECT MANAGER. LINDNER SCANDINAVIA: FACADE, INTERIOR CLADDING CONSULTANT. PREFABSYSTEM SYD: FRAME FABRICATOR. ANDERSSON & HULTMARK: PLUMBING, ENERGY CONSULTANT. BRA MARK: LANDSCAPE CONSULTANT. BRA BYGG: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.

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“The mass-timber building is an architectural metaphor for Sweden’s legendary mountain forests”

Opposite: Along with a planted zone, the rooftop includes a 1,100-person penthouse conference center with its own indoor-outdoor restaurant.

Top: An 800-car parking garage is concealed beneath the site’s grassy terracing overlooking the Mölndalsån, a small river flanked by hiking and bike trails. Bottom, from left: Volvo’s collection includes 350 diverse vehicles, such as school buses and commercial trucks, around 50 of which will be periodically rotated in and out of public view. The conference facility includes a large event hall, meeting rooms, a broadcasting studio, and lounge areas.

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floor plan A fantastical epoxy commission anchors the Tuscan seaside family retreat of VMCF Atelier’s coprincipals, who’ve filled the home with pieces by themselves and other notable creatives text: rebecca dalzell photography: eric laignel AUG.24

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Castiglione della Pescaia is a coastal Italian town in southwest Tuscany known for its Etruscan ruins, nature reserves, and relaxed beaches. Within it is Pineta di Roccamare, a private community in a 200-year-old pine forest. Architect Valerio Ferrari, principal of VMCF Atelier, first visited the enclave when he was young. “It’s a magical place because it’s untouched and wild,” he says. “It’s not crowded, even in August.” Decades later, he and his architect wife, VMCF coprincipal Cinzia Mazzone, bought a seven-bedroom summer compound there and turned it into an unconventional canvas for contemporary art.

Developed in the 1960’s, Pineta di Roccamare is especially notable for its modern architecture. Many of its 241 homes were conceived in the Prairie style by the Florentine architect Ugo Miglietta; Pier Niccolò Berardi and Ernesto Nathan Rogers also built villas there. (Early residents included writer Italo Calvino and actor Roger Moore.) Ferrari and Mazzone purchased a singlestory, 2,580-square-foot Miglietta house, with an adjoining, later-added 625-square-foot guest cottage a short walk from the beach. They set about renovating the run-down 1970’s

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buildings, landscaping the nearly 2-acre plot, which includes a pool, and integrating art into the interior architecture.

Founded in 2003 in Paris and now based in Milan, VMCF, which stands for visual machine concept facilities, often brings an element of theatricality into its projects. Ferrari and Mazzone have conceived sets for opera and dance and collaborated on art installations; Ferrari has also written several librettos.

Mazzone, a professor at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles in France, studies the synthesis of various forms of art. Many of their interests come together in the Roccamare house. A custom steel media unit rolls in and out of a wall like a piece of scenery onstage; interior doors are maple partition panels that rotate on an axis, resembling theater wings. Mazzone notes that the latter play a kind of “role” in the house, blurring the boundaries between rooms, creating ambiguous spaces. Even the windows are dramatic, crisscrossed by diagonal steel frames.

But the showstopper is a glossy pink, purple, and teal assemblage not normally where you’d find artwork: on the floor of

Previous spread: At their summer compound in Castiglione della Pescaia, Italy, VMCF Atelier married coprincipals Valerio Ferrari and Cinzia Mazzone commissioned an artistic floor by German painter Peter Zimmermann for the main house’s living area, which is furnished with Francesco Binfaré’s On the Rocks sofa.

Top, from left: Florentine architect Ugo Miglietta built the single-story, 3,205-square-foot main house in 1970 with a Castiglione sandstone facade and a painted-iron stair leading to the roof terrace. A custom steel media unit slides out of a living-area wall to reveal the TV. Bottom, from left: Jørgen Wolff’s Conus pendant fixtures populate the living and dining areas, where Zimmermann’s floor extends and custom diagonal steel frames support the floor-to-ceiling windows; a Swiss 19th-century chair sits at right. The floor is composed of seven layers of epoxy, the colors nodding to the Silene colorata that grow on nearby dunes.

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Top: A custom headboard upholstered in jute, Mollis Lux pendant by Maria Grazia Rosin, and Dark Forest, a Roberto Matta painting, furnish the main bedroom, its floor coated in two shades of micro-cement. Bottom: VMCF turned a Matta drawing into ceramic tiles for the kitchen, where the plywood cabinetry, concrete marble–composite counter, and OSB-topped table are custom.

Opposite top, from left: A raw linen curtain and Omar Carraglia’s Mira sconce in a bedroom. A Christian Henkel sculpture, Matta painting, and Berber rug in the guest house. Jordi Miralbell and Mariona Raventós’s Disco sconce in the living area. Opposite center, from left: The floor’s groovy vibe reflecting the house’s ’70’s origins. Paola Navone’s Rafael table on the terrace. Custom cabinets in bleached maple and steel lining original sandstone walls. Opposite bottom, from left: A small watercolor

by Maria Settler, Miglietta’s wife, and Giancarlo Piretti Plia chairs joining the custom OSB-topped dining table. Painted-pine bedroom closets.

Luserna stone and teak surrounding the pool.

the living and dining area. It’s by Peter Zimmermann, who’d painted another such floor for a solo show in his native Germany in 2016; after seeing it, Ferrari called him and proposed a commission.

“I just said, ‘I love your work. I can’t afford your paintings, but I see you’ve done a great floor,’” Ferrari laughs. Zimmermann spent two weeks on-site applying seven layers of swirling, somewhat cushioned epoxy. It’s so shiny that when the sun comes in, the floor reflects the furniture and the trees outside.

Like scenography, the floor tells a story. “We always try to establish a dialogue with the surrounding area,” Ferrari explains. The region, Maremma, was a hub of mid-century experimental architecture—Vittorio Giorgini’s whale-shape Casa Balena and hexagonal Casa Esagono are nearby—and the floor channels that energy. Its groovy vibe also suits the ’70’s house and feels as joyful as summer vacation, while the colors allude to the Silene colorata flowers that grow on the dunes. “It’s something you want to play with,” Ferrari adds. A Francesco Binfaré sofa sits in one corner of the large room, but many visitors choose to lie on the soft floor instead. The couple has even hosted a dance performance there.

Part of the fun of Zimmermann’s floor is how strongly it contrasts with the rest of the house.

Its epoxy meets original Castiglione sandstone interior walls, a dining table topped with OSB, wicker chairs, and bleached-maple cabinets.

“We mixed natural and pop colors, forms, and materials,” Ferrari states.

In comparison, the bedrooms are minimalist, furnished with custom jute headboards and painted pine wardrobes. Pendant fixtures by Italian artist Maria Grazia Rosin hang overhead; made of Technogel, a plasticizer-free material able to be molded, and Murano glass, they’re another study in contrasts. VMCF continues to keep things interesting underfoot: Micro-cement flooring is divided into two shades of gray for a graphic effect.

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Top, from left: In the main bathroom, wall tiles high above the toilet were removed but the glue retained, forming an abstract pattern; the ceramic tiles are by Le Corbusier. In the guest house, beneath the Compendium Plate ceiling fixture by Daniel Rybakken, Henkel also made the painted ply­ wood closet/bench/sculpture. Bottom, from left: Vico Magistretti’s Broom­ stick sofa, Enric Miralles square stools, and a Miguel Milá TMD lamp stand on the porcelain-stoneware roof terrace. Designed similarly to Miglietta’s main house, the 625-square-foot guest house was added in 1974, and now Palomba Serafini Associati’s HiRay table and chairs sit on its Luserna stone terrace; the steel storage unit against the main house is custom.

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There’s an occasional 19th-century chair standing in the corner or contemporary painting on a wall.

Art infuses the rest of the house as well, though more subtly.

In the kitchen, wall tiles have a pattern taken from drawings

by Chilean painter Roberto Matta, with whom Ferrari worked on a project in the ’90’s. German sculptor Christian Henkel built a piece of blue-and-pink painted plywood furniture in the guest house that has a closet on one side, a sculpture on the other, with a bench in between. “We tried to experiment with what happens to design when a work of art is not simply added but becomes an integral part of the architecture itself,” Mazzone explains.

Outside, however, Mazzone and Ferrari took a lighter touch.

They preserved 100-foot-tall maritime pines; planted native cork, strawberry, and mastic trees; and restored the sandstone facade. A cistern collects rainwater for the garden and plunge pool, its teak and stone decking and gray PVC lining blending into the landscape. Terraces off the main and guest houses are furnished with pieces by Vico Magistretti, Paola Navone, and Ludovica and Roberto Palomba. Up on the roof, accessed by

an iron stair, existing porcelain stoneware tiles form another terrace. From there, a glimpse of the Tyrrhenian Sea can be seen through a break in the lush canopy.

PROJECT TEAM MARCO FERRARA; ALESSIO DEL LESTO; CARLA GIULIANI; RICARDO ROBERTO: VMCF ATELIER. GIOVANNI MERIGGI; VDA STUDIO: ARCHITECTS OF RECORD. L’IDEA VERDE: LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT. TELMOTOR: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. DFR STUDIO: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. ELETTRO 2000: MEP. CASPANI CUGINI: CUSTOM FURNITURE WORKSHOP. IMPRESE PISCINE: POOL INSTALLATION. COSTRUZIONE GRECHI: GENERAL CONTRACTOR. PRODUCT SOURCES FROM FRONT EDRA: SOFA (LIVING AREA). SANTA & COLE: SCONCE (LIVING AREA), LAMPS (TERRACES). THROUGH GALLERIA NICOLA QUADRI: PENDANT FIXTURES (LIVING AREA, DINING AREA). NICOLA CORALLO: CUSTOM HEADBOARD (MAIN BEDROOM). SOMMA 1867: BEDSPREAD. TECHNOGEL ITALIA: PENDANT FIXTURE. CERAMICA GATTI 1928: CUSTOM WALL TILE (KITCHEN). DAVIDE GROPPI: SCONCE (BEDROOM). THROUGH LES LOSANGES: RUG (GUEST HOUSE). ETHIMO: TABLE (TERRACE).

ANONIMA CASTELLI: CHAIRS (DINING AREA). POOLGROUP PISCINE: POOL STRUCTURE (POOL AREA). OIAMO: STOOLS. GIGACER: WALL TILE (BATHROOM). ANTONIO LUPI DESIGN: TOILET. LUCEPLAN: CEILING FIXTURE (GUEST HOUSE). ALIAS: SOFAS (TERRACES). THROUGH FUNDACIÓ ENRIC MIRALLES: STOOLS. KARTELL: GREEN OUTDOOR FURNITURE (GUEST-HOUSE TERRACE). THROUGHOUT TERRANOVA OFFICINE: CUSTOM WINDOW FRAMES. FASSA BORTOLO: PLASTER. TASSANI: PAINT.

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high resolution With Lanwuu Imagine, a photography studio in southern China, Aurora Design upends a paradigm and brings an experiential, must-visit space into focus

text: elizabeth fazzare photography: xin na/inspace studio

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Typically, a photography studio is all about control—of light, sound, foot traffic, and any unwanted visual distractions.

However, for Lanwuu Imagine in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, China’s most southwestern province, Xuewan Yang, founder of and chief designer at local firm Aurora Design, created a studio that instead welcomes spontaneity. With a ground-floor café and art installations visible through playfully shaped windows, the facility is conceptualized as both a public living room and a professional-level space for photo shoots, allowing passersby to interact with an architectural typology usually known for its exclusivity.

Yang’s portfolio encompasses private residences along with retail and award-winning teahouse projects, the latter focused on creating a consumer experience defined by heightened aesthetics and engagement. As Lanwuu specializes in wedding and wedding-dress photography—Yang has also completed studios for Chinese wedding photography brands Mushi and W. Dresses—as well as portrait sessions, Yang was the ideal candidate to deliver a “complete transformation from the typical,” she says, an open-arms approach to the public.

The 4,300-square-foot location takes inspiration from its novelty as an industrial space situated in a residential neighborhood. Using construction as a conceit and an allusion to Lanwuu’s innovation, one facade features a branded stainless-steel screen supported by pink scaffolding; another has a large bifold window, referencing a garage door. Inside, Yang left the shell of the two-story building mostly raw, with concrete floors and walls and exposed ceilings. To delineate between the studio’s public and private zones, she employed a rough-luxe material palette of concrete, marble, metal, and velvet, contemporary furnishings, and site-specific architectural interventions—the latter two in more pink or other flattering pastels.

Based on their visit’s purpose, patrons can enter directly under the scaffolding and into the studio or via a circular portal, formulated to appear like a camera lens. The portal leads to the coffee bar featuring cabinetry in marine-grade birch and built-in magazine racks, which warm the adjoining catering kitchen in stainless steel and concrete. Beyond the loose, flexible arrangement here of round café tables and tubular-steel and blush shell chairs for sipping drinks and 144

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Previous spread: At Lanwuu Imagine, a studio in Kunming, China, by Aurora Design that specializes in wed­ding and portrait photography, clients can wait for their shoot to begin in the café or VIP consultation area, as seen through a portal on the building’s exterior.

Opposite top: Outside, the portal resembles a camera lens. Opposite bottom: The reception area is accessed through a narrow hall and open doorway to ensure shoots are not disturbed by the public-accessible café.

Below: Wedding dresses are hung and photographed in a rounded light box, propped with stacked TV and horse sculptures.

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chatting is the studio’s VIP consultation area. Another nod to photography, it’s contained inside a tall, framelike structure, tilted so it’s asymmetrical and clad in butter-yellow tile, furnished with upholstered lounge seating. A mirrored wall—one of those concealing the photo studio itself—behind this semienclosed vignette enhances this commercial area’s cinematic feel. Black-and-white striped area rugs add graphic punch.

“Trompe l’oeil techniques create a sense of depth,” Yang explains of her interventions. “By using reflective materials such as stainless steel and mirror glass, and strategically placing lighting, the boundaries between different areas are blurred, giving the illusion of a larger, more open space.”

These techniques might trick the eye, but they also draw it closer. The studio’s lobby connects to the café by a narrow hall paneled in polished stainless steel with retractable garage door–style shading. In the lobby, a cylindrical light box is the centerpiece. Floored in rose carpet, wrapped in burl-patterned wood veneer, and capped by an eyeball-esque fixture, the space is used to hang and photograph wedding dresses. But, since it’s visible to the public through a streetside window, Yang upped the visual draw with unusual installations of stacked TVs and an equine sculpture with hay. “The dazzling light, the black horse, the small TVs—they achieve a sense of temporal confusion, creating effects that are both virtual and realistic,” says Yang, who sourced the unexpected props from a local flea market.

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Top, from left: A steel stair­ way culminating at a Lang Ma painting connects the groundfloor spaces to the offices and film-development lab upstairs.

“We make you a cover character” is painted on the polished stainless-steel panels preceding the photo studio, accessed via retracting garage doors chosen for their ability to control light. Stainless also defines the studio’s dressing room, designed to resemble a photo booth, one that’s enveloped in carpet. Bottom, from left: Much of the studio’s 4,300-square-foot interior shell was left raw, including the concrete flooring and exposed ceiling, with industrial interventions in concrete, wood, stone, and metal. Many of those materials, along with café tables and chairs by DP Studio, coalesce to form a chic coffee bar with LED signage.

It may all feel a bit fantastical, but the designer’s concept argues that that is the point: Capturing emotional portraits first requires creating an environment of fantasy with clients on set. This also necessitates that the subjects look and feel their best. Thus, the studio’s makeup and dressing rooms, which feature plush carpeting and Japanese-style partitions, are reminiscent of residential interiors, intended to evoke the same sense of comfort as trying on clothes in one’s own bedroom.

The coffee bar’s similar living-room vibe contributes to that cozy atmosphere. And while the photo shoots ultimately take place inside the private, black-boxlike space at the center of the building, Lanwuu’s overall layout creates ideal conditions for informal snapshots, too.

“The studio is open and flowing to facilitate the movement of natural light,” Yang explains. “By avoiding excessive partitioning, we ensure that natural, balanced light can penetrate all corners.”

Playing with allusion by geometry, she designed circular windows that not only look like camera lenses but also simulate their aperture ability to diffuse and manipulate sunlight. All other openings are adjustable as well, offering flexibility throughout the day and as needs change. Back-ofhouse functions, including the administrative offices and image-processing facilities, are located on the second floor, to maintain the accessible feel.

Lanwuu is inherently a work in progress. “We want the project to convey this pursuit of momentary beauty and warmth,” Yang continues. As those definitions change through differing trends, preferences, and needs, so too must the sets where they are captured.

Being “unfinished” is an advantage—one Yang has built into the design.

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PROJECT TEAM DA WANG; SIJIE ZHANG: AURORA DESIGN. PRODUCT SOURCES FROM FRONT DP STUDIO: TUBULAR CHAIRS, TABLES (CAFÉ).

SWHY FURNITURE: SEATING (VIP). TAOBAO: LAMPS. THROUGHOUT QIANGLI JUCAI: LED SIGNAGE.

Opposite top: Many vignettes in the studio toe the line between art installation and functional set, such as the horse and hay bales, which can be seen by passersby through an exterior window. Opposite bottom: Pink scaffolding supports a stainless-steel screen on the entrance facade, an illusion that the studio is under constant creative renovation.

Top: With the portal in the distance, the VIP consul­ tation area is demarcated by a custom tiled off-kilter structure that nods to picture framing. Bottom: A large bifold window in the coffee bar contributes to the project’s industrial feel.

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For the Silicon Valley headquarters of Nuro, a maker of electric, autonomous vehicles that transport consumer goods, Elkus Manfredi Architects delivers two state-of-the-art facilities

right on track text: wanda lau photography: eric laignel AUG.24

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Achieving success as a tech startup is difficult. But not if an idea is landed upon that meets a need so clearly. Such is the case with Nuro, a growing robotics company developing zero-occupant, electric, self-driving vehicles that deliver goods using its pro­prie­ tary mapping technology. Moving full speed ahead, Nuro’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, has recently expanded to include two 1960’s former warehouses. Thanks to Elkus Manfredi Architects, their interiors don’t just avoid generic spec territory, they center on a vision that fulfills the client’s goals, makes optimal use of a space, engages staff, and respects the planet.

The project’s scale is formidable: the renovation of a 58,000square-foot erstwhile industrial laboratory that would expand Nuro’s existing office at 1290 Terra Bella Avenue, plus a 49,000square-foot fit-out approximately 500 feet away, at 1330 Terra Bella. A strategy that would tie Nuro’s brand, product, and request for versatile, human-centered spaces with the vast areas became immediately clear to Elkus Manfredi principal Elizabeth Lowrey.

Like “being in a plane, looking down on earth, and seeing roads and communities,” she envisioned the interiors laid out as cities, with a network of neighborhoods and a sweeping “ring road,” essentially a track that organizes work functions in its inner “urban” loop and distributed breakout spaces in its outer “suburban” loop.

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Lowrey knew the strategy had to avoid crossing into kitsch territory. “How do you interpret city-making in a sophisticated, elegant, and simple way?” she says. “It was about being quiet, not having a concept that was hitting you over the head.” Lowrey navigates this territory well, having the agility and know-how to formulate dynamic interiors for projects as wide-ranging as the upscale White Elephant Palm Beach hotel in Florida to the TMC³ Collaborative Building, an innovative life-sciences and laboratory facility in Houston.

Like a thriving city, Nuro’s program is complex and multifaceted: an R&D engineering hub complete with more than 800 work­ stations, laboratories, testing areas, and meeting spaces accommodating small groups to town halls. Lowrey and her team embraced the warehouses’ volume and soaring ceiling heights: 141/2 feet at 1290, nearly 22 at 1330. “The scale of these buildings can’t be beaten,” she continues. “So, we instead added daylight, air, scale-tempering elements like meeting rooms, and acoustically private spaces to humanize it—and then it’s like having the whole sky above you.”

The simplicity of the ring road, a two-lane, 8-foot-wide track painted on the existing concrete floor of both buildings, belies its impact. Its minimalism is the ultimate sustainable design flex.

Previous spread: At 1290 Terra Bella Avenue, one of two 1960’s former warehouses com­ posing the headquarters expansion of Nuro, a robotics company in Mountain View, California,

by Elkus Manfredi Architects, a painted concrete track organizes dense programming elements, like a café with Paséa seating and Allied Maker’s Dome pendant fixtures in its inner loop, and gable-roofed meeting rooms along the perimeter.

Left: In reception at 1290, under RBW’s Vitis pendants, guests check-in at the mapleveneered desk and can wait in Fiber chairs made of wood composite and recycled plastic.

Top, from left: An aluminum roll-up door opens to a testing lab for Nuro’s electric, self-driving vehicles. A mezzanine at the other building, 1330 Terra Bella, currently sublet, overlooks an open office area floored, like much of the project, with Turn carpet tile, which is made of recycled nylon and carbon neutral. Bottom: Hedge lounge chairs and a Circula table form a breakout area within the open office.

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Its capsule shape nods to Nuro’s logo. It serves as a testing ground for the company’s autonomous vehicles. And, like streets in a city, it provides Nuro employees wayfinding and a main artery that connects all interior spaces.

In 1290, the 540-foot-circumference track encircles meeting rooms, laboratories, a kitchenette, and workstation hubs rotated in different orientations “like a neighborhood plan,” Lowrey explains. The outer loop hosts lounge areas, a café, and workstations distributed along the building perimeter. Private conference rooms positioned prominently along the road are topped with illuminated gable rooflines, forming a human-scale skyline.

In 1330, the 350-foot-diameter ring wraps a multipurpose space that can host all-hands meetings and is overlooked by a mez­ zanine. The company is currently subleasing this building in anticipation of occupying it in the coming years, according to Timothy Bergen, Nuro’s head of real estate and workplace.

Notwithstanding the occasional Nuro car or cyclist on the track—yes, bikes are allowed—the expansion exudes mobility and adapta­ bility. Staffers, who work in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and product design, can relocate where they need or want to work with the aid of movable furniture, repositionable track lighting, and an array of seating choices, from acoustic 154

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Top: In 1330’s multipurpose area, which provides a 12-by-45-foot pro­ jection surface for presentations between the pair of stairways, Zero51 pendants recall the headlights of Nuro cars. Bottom, from left: In 1290, cus­ tom wallcovering depicts maps of cities served by Nuro cars. Miniature models are throughout the workspace. This vehicle serves the Mountain View area.

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Top, from left: Nuro employees can gather in 1290’s café, which, like the rest of the headquarters, features furnishings and finishes made from sustainable materials in compliance with California Title 24 Building Energy Efficiency Standards. Here the track separates outer lounge areas from the inner kitch­en­ ette, the latter centered on a custom maple-tambour island. Bottom: A lounge at 1330, outfitted with TAF Studio’s Rime pendants and modular seat­ing, is flexible enough for meetings, solo work, or relaxation. Right: Glass garagestyle doors allow for indoor-outdoor gatherings in the double-height space.

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wraparound chairs to counter stools and task chairs in enclosed rooms for recharging or focus work. “We’re trying to empower each employee to do their best work,” Lowrey notes, “letting people control the space versus the space controlling the people.”

Besides preserving the elements containing the highest embodied carbon—the building structures themselves—the project also retained 53 skylights across both buildings and the woodframed ceiling decking in building 1290. Though exterior walls were left exposed and unfinished, the renovation cuts in floor-toceiling windows to enable expansive viewing angles from the deep floor plates. “You can see the sky, not just what’s straight in front of you,” Lowrey says. Light fixture finishes, soft seating, and carbon-neutral carpet made from recycled materials help dampen sound in the open layouts. A natural color palette of sand, caramel, white, gray, and black conveys the company’s ethos of sustainability, humility, and handcraft.

In addition to the creation of neighborhoods within walls, other touches distinguish the space as distinctly Nuro. Miniature models of its vehicles are sprinkled throughout 1290. Murals of abstracted street maps delineate the travel paths of the company’s cars in the cities it serves, Mountain View and Houston among them. And, in 1330’s multipurpose area, O-shape pendant fixtures wink to the Nuro’s beguiling round headlamps.

PROJECT TEAM TARA REILLY; LINDA M AC LEOD FANNON; MICHAEL HATHAWAY; MARK VANLUVEN; JACQUELINE HIERSTEINER; MARC CIANNAVEI; MICHAEL STRAHM; ELIZABETH STEVENS; DREA PLUMMER; STEFAN VOLATILE-WOOD: ELKUS MANFREDI ARCHITECTS. LEMESSURIER: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. MONTBLEAU & ASSOCIATES: MILLWORK. DPR CONSTRUCTION: GENERAL CONTRACTOR. PRODUCT SOURCES FROM FRONT ALLIED MAKER: PENDANT FIXTURES (CAFÉ). ANDREU WORLD: ROUND TABLES. SITONIT: SOFAS (CAFÉ, RECEPTION, LOUNGE), OTTOMANS (CAFÉ, LOUNGE), TABLES, CHAIRS (MULTIPURPOSE). MUUTO: CHAIRS (CAFÉ, RECEPTION), PENDANT FIXTURES (BREAKOUT, CAFÉ, KITCHENETTE, LOUNGE), STOOLS (CAFÉ). BLU DOT: TABLES (RECEPTION, BREAKOUT, LOUNGES), HIGH-BACK CHAIRS (BREAKOUT, LOUNGES). RBW: PENDANT FIXTURE (RECEPTION). SURFACING SOLUTIONS: DESK VENEER. LAWRENCE DOORS: GARAGE DOOR. HUMANSCALE; TEKNION: WORKSTATIONS (OPEN OFFICE).

MAHARAM: HIGH-BACK CHAIR FABRIC (BREAKOUT, LOUNGES). LUCIFERO’S: PENDANT FIXTURES (MULTIPURPOSE). WEST COAST INDUSTRIES: TABLES (CAFÉ). ARCHITESSA: WALL TILE. FORMICA: CABINETRY. CAESARSTONE: TABLETOPS, COUNTERTOP (KITCHEN), COUNTERTOP (LOUNGE). GRAND RAPIDS CHAIR COMPANY: STOOLS (KITCHENETTE).

LUCEPLAN: PENDANT FIXTURES (LOUNGES). THROUGHOUT PROSOCO: CONCRETE FLOORING. SHAW CONTRACT: CARPET TILE. 3M: CUSTOM WALLCOVERING. FINELITE: TRACK PENDANT FIXTURES. THE COLLECTIVE: FURNITURE SUPPLIER. ARCHKEY SOLUTIONS: LIGHTING SUPPLIER. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT.

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things are looking up From a zero-carbon government campus in California to a rehabbed Australian train station aglow in pastels, blue-sky concepts fuel ambitious community revitalization projects across the globe text: jen renzi

See page 160 for a landmarked grain silo in the Czech Republic that Prokš Přikryl Architekti helped transform into a cultural venue. Photography: Petr Polák.

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“The idea of opening up the building went hand-in-hand with opening the site to the city after more than a century” 160

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Prokš Př ikryl Architekti project Automatic Mills, Pardubice, Czech Republic. standout Adaptive reuse turned a century-old flour mill, with facade by Czech modernist Josef Gočár, into a cultural and educational complex, including a 12,200-square-foot grain silo, its machine room converted into a multipurpose hall, grain bins into an exhibition space, and rooftop into an alfresco lounge with bar. The sensitive redesign showcases the patina of original surfaces—graphic exterior brickwork and poetically pockmarked concrete interior walls—while other gestures dissolve boundaries, such as floors inset with glass blocks to convey light between levels. photography Petr Polák.

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Sako Architects project Yang Zheng Kindergarten, Tianshui, China. standout A festive bonbon of a building houses a 29,800-square-foot school conceived as a new landmark for the city and designed to nurture creativity and joy. Classrooms surround a skylit central atrium (warmed by subfloor radiant heating) that doubles as an activity zone when weather prohibits access to the rooftop playground. Casting a dancing rainbow of light are 438 laminated-glass elements, in 10 colors, activating doors, balustrades, and window half-rounds, all in arcing shapes that nod to vernacular dwellings in the surrounding Loess Plateau. photography CreatAR Images.

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“The early education project is like a giant rotating kaleidoscope with constantly changing colors and patterns”

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“We worked both with and against the former bakery’s solidity to make its transformation feel simultaneously familiar and mysterious”

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OMA project Lantern, Detroit. standout This mixed-use arts hub—programmed with 21,400 square feet of gallery spaces, a letterpress printer, workshops, a recording studio, and more—is located in Little Village, an emergent cultural district.

Firm partner Jason Long spearheaded conversion of the erstwhile bakery and warehouse, leveraging a section of the building that was missing its roof as an excuse to carve out an interior courtyard and entry that fosters tenant and community togetherness. Some 1,300 round windows punctured into the concrete-masonry southern facade offer a pixelated view of the activity within. photography Jason Keen.

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ZGF Architects project Department of General Services, May S. Lee State Office Complex, Sacramento, California. standout Sustainability and speed-to-market were drivers for this 1.25 million-square-foot, 17½-acre all-electric campus—the country’s largest zero-carbon office complex, serving as a model for other such developments. The four thoughtfully massed mid-rise structures, interconnected by skywalks as well as publicly accessible plazas and lushly planted pathways, are cohesive yet have a distinct identity and materiality that threads inside airy lobbies and workspaces boasting modular programming, community-boosting interconnecting stairs, and locale-inspired environmental graphics depicting mountains, grizzly bears, and the like. photography Magda Biernat.

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“Decarbonization strategies inform the design holistically, from structural and MEP systems to the use of shading, water-conservation strategies, and materials selection”

Wood Marsh project Bell Station, Darebin, Australia. standout A rail line that connects central Melbourne to its northern suburbs was upgraded with new stations and elevated tracks, below which some 60,000 square feet of landscaping by collaborating firm Tract and recreation space bolster accessibility, community, and safety. Color was used as a placemaking device, in this case a piquant pink and lilac palette that crops up in lighting (including the tracks at night), painted piers, and windows in the facade, its faceted concrete form abstracting surrounding houses and rooflines, while such elements as patterned screens in elevators and along the viaducts honor Indigenous traditions. photography Peter Bennetts.

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“Our work exemplifies how transportation infrastructure can be reimagined to revitalize the broader community”

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b o o k s edited by Wilson Barlow

CLOCKWISE FROM CENTER RIGHT: ARTIE PHOTOGRAPHY; ZVI HECKER; STEFANO PEREGO

Following World War II, an explosion of creativity, manufacturing technology, and international ideasharing spurred a design revolution. Furnishings from that era—the Eames lounge chair, George Nelson’s wall clocks for Vitra—are still produced today. But numerous buildings and interiors from the mid-century modern movement have been demolished. Luckily, here is an encyclopedic archive of standout structures built between 1945 and 1975, some gone, some still with us.

It takes readers on a journey that crosses every continent—even Antarctica, where Buckminster Fuller built one of his geodesic domes—with projects cat­egor­ Atlas of Mid-Century ized by region. Stateside, there’s the Beinecke Rare Book Modern Masterpieces and Manuscript Library, the 1963 Inter­national Style

By Dominic Bradbury structure by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill partner New York and London: Phaidon, Gordon Bunshaft at Yale University that graces the $150 book’s cover and is still used by students and faculty 424 pages, today. Same goes for the 1966 mechanical engineer­ing 450 color and b&w illustrations labs at Technion–Israel Institute of Technology—its triangular concrete ceilingscape by alumnus Zvi Hecker and his tutor Alfred Neumann—in the Middle East, which is also where R. Khayrutdinov and F. Tursunov’s 1974 Exhibition Hall of the Uzbek Union of Artists, with its ornate facade, is now known as the Central Exhibition of the Academy of Arts. Like it, the 1962 Church of St Anthony of Polana in Maputo, Mozambique, by Nuno Craveiro Lopes appears in color, show­casing its expressive stained glass and crownlike concrete canopy.

Accompanying each of the 450 en­ tries is a nifty list of symbols indicating project type, status, and condition, plus a glossary defining such mid century– birthed terms as Googie.

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DESIGNERS IN SPECIAL FEATURE OMA (“Things Are Looking Up,” page 158), oma.com.

Prokš Přikryl Architekti (“Things Are Looking Up,” page 158), proksprikryl.cz.

Sako Architects (“Things Are Looking Up,” page 158), sako.co.jp.

Wood Marsh (“Things Are Looking Up,” page 158), woodmarsh.com.au.

ZGF Architects (“Things Are Looking Up,” page 158), zgf.com.

PHOTOGRAPHERS IN FEATURES Filippo Bamberghi (“The Mod Squad,” page 118), Living Inside, filippobamberghi.it.

c o n ta c t s

Eric Laignel Photography (“Floor Plan,” page 134; “Right on Track,” page 150), ericlaignel.com.

Xin Na (“High Resolution,” page 142), Inspace Studio, inspace.ltd.

Interior Design (ISSN 0020-5508), August 2024, Vol. 95, No. 7, is published monthly with seasonal issues for Spring and Fall by the SANDOW Design Group, LLC, 3651 FAU Boulevard, Boca Raton, FL 33431. Periodicals postage paid at Boca Raton, FL, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS; NONPOSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: send address corrections to Interior Design, PO Box 808, Lincolnshire, IL 60069-0808. Subscription department: (800) 900-0804 or email: interiordesign@omeda.com. Subscriptions: 1 year: $69.95 USA, $99.99 in Canada and Mexico, $199.99 in all other countries. Copyright © 2024

by SANDOW Design Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. Material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. Interior Design is not responsible for the return of any unsolicited manuscripts or photographs.

James Silverman Photography (“Open Road,” page 126), jamessilverman.co.uk.

DESIGNER IN CENTERFOLD Enter Projects Asia (“Wicker Park,” page 113), enterprojects.net.

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design

annex partners

Kieffer Feral: the tenderness of mohair wool for a soft, furry and sexy fabric. It belongs to Untitled, the latest Kieffer collection created by Rubelli under the creative direction of Formafantasma. Its extensive palette of colors ranges from the sober to the playful, from burgundy, camel and gray to joyous fashion tints. kieffertextiles.com - rubelli.com

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Rubelli A graceful miniature design for the all-over jacquard Millefleurs belonging to Gardens, the first collection created by Rubelli under the creative direction of Formafantasma. Millefleurs is woven with a very durable eco-sustainable yarn in the Rubelli mill in Como. rubelli.com

Pure + Freeform Inspired by our fascination with natural metals and their transformative design potential, Pure + FreeForm embarked on a quest to redefine the boundaries of Ultra High Performance Aluminum’s beauty and expression. The Alloy collection seeks to become synonymous with innovation and creativity, inspiring a new era of high performing architectural walls and ceilings that keep our shared future in mind. purefreeform.com

L I ST E N N OW

Artesano Iron Works Natural Elegance in Wrought Iron at Tuscany Hotel by LuxUrban, NY This wrought iron railing mimicking tree branches blends art and functionality to elevate the interior decor with a modern and organic touch.

Interior designer Jeff Lincoln Interiors, Inc day. artesanoironworks.com

Discover podcasts shaping the design industry S U R R O U N D P O D C A S T S .C O M

M AY 1,

Daniel House Club Daniel House Club takes the most painful logistics of running a design business out of your hands so you can spend time doing what you do best: designing beautiful spaces. Shop collections from 200+ of your favorite vendors, like Four Hands, Bernhard, and Uttermost, with the tools and concierge service you need to manage your clients, track orders, and handle shipping. With Daniel House Club, sourcing online has never been easier. danielhouse.club

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SAVE THE DATE WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11 THE GLASSHOUSE, NEW YORK CITY inductee announcement next month

across time Planted into the rich soil and verdant fields of Central China, Nanyang City is the fertile ground from which the millennia-old Chu-Han culture grew. While the bustling metropolis is home to more urban forms of life these days, farmlands still surround it. Nanyang Wanyue City Square & Landscape Sculpture by One Plus Partnership pays tribute to this local agriculture via a striking structure that’s part artwork and part city planning. “Our goal is to attract different ages to this place,” One Plus founder and design director Ajax Law says.

Erected upon a 31/2-acre plot of land, the sculpture portion is what first catches the eye. The One Plus team welded together approximately 1,600 steel-plate squared rods, coated in either taupe or emerald automative paint, into a pair of forms. The taupe rods rise some 60 feet toward the sky; the green appear to run through them, resulting in a sort of abstracted, human-scale skyscraper. At night, the horizontal and vertical bars are illuminated by wall washers hidden among them and in-ground LED spots.

The geometrical arrangements reappear below as steel flower ponds overflowing with Buxus sinica, a native plant. Around them, varying tones of granite tile illustrate One Plus’s idea of “thousands of miles of fertile field” as viewed from the air. “Farmland doesn’t have to be a symbol of obsolescence,” One Plus cofounder and codesign director Virginia Lung notes.

“Humans get the nourishment to continue their lives from them.” And, in the case of the Nanyang Wanyue City Square & Landscape Sculpture, to gaze, take selfies, and reflect. —Jesse Dorris

i n t er vention

JIANGNAN PHOTOGRAPHY

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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Prostoria lands in North America, opening two Chicago showrooms Croatian furniture brand Prostoria has opened its inaugural flagship in the U.S., in Chicago’s booming River North Gallery District.

Located on the ground floor at 303 West Illinois Street, the doubleheight space’s glazed storefront bathes the elegant furnishings on display in natural light, offering up a true experience of colors, fabrics, and finishes.

“Prostoria was already present on the North American market through various premium showrooms, but as demand for our furniture started to grow, we wanted to offer our clients better service and so decided to open our own store in the U.S.,” explains Prostoria CEO, Tom Knezovic.

The River North store is focused on the brand’s residential offerings, showcasing classic, luxurious pieces. But there’s also a second showroom: A contract space at The Mart that highlights more playful, daring designs. This broad diversity of design is a reflection of the company’s research-based processes, passion for comfort, and openness to exploring their designers’ creativity.

The River North flagship presents sofas, armchairs, side chairs, and tables alongside complementary accessories. Taken together, they evoke the atmosphere of a curated home or a polished hotel lobby. Natural materials and tones foster an inviting, cozy ambience, while the architecturally refined space makes it easy for customers to imagine their new interiors in situ. The to-the-trade showroom at The Mart, on the other hand, features sculptural pieces in bold colors arranged in vignettes that recall workplace break-out zones, lobby seating areas, and buzzy cafés.

“Comfort is what all of our products have in common,” concludes art director Iva Silovic of the throughline between the showrooms.

“For us, comfort means honesty and quality. We want people to love using our products, to enjoy sitting in them and living with them.

The reason we're able to achieve extraordinary levels of comfort is because we produce our furniture in-house and can control the whole process. Our factory in Croatia is not just a production line; it’s a research lab, a creativity hub, and an entire mini-industry with the precision, dedication, and quality of a small workshop.”

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