Hasta La Ideas

Swedish brand Wästberg has stepped back in time during the Stockholm Furniture Fair, launching a collection of fire-based lighting by Ilse Crawford, David Chipperfield and Jasper Morrison.

Two oil lamps and a candlestick make up the Holocene collection, which eschews electricity to focus on light created through fire.

“It’s a reminder that you should cherish fire as a light source,” CEO and founder Magnus Wästberg told Dezeen. “Lighting today is all about technology – it’s LEDs, it’s electronics – but very seldom does it actually take the place a fire once held, because a fire was so much more.”

“It scared animals away, it brought us together. Light had many more dimensions when it was just a fire.”

Made from brass, the Holocene collection was created in collaboration with some of the most influential players in contemporary design. It features two oil lamps – a round-bottomed one by the designer Ilse Crawford and a cylindrical design by architect David Chipperfield that partially obscures its flame.

The third product is a candlestick holder by designer Jasper Morrison – a simple nub made to hold a single tall candle.

Wästberg intends to continue developing the collection, which will sit alongside the brand’s electrical lighting lines. He hopes it encourages people to more consciously consider their lighting choices in various situations.

“It’s a way of making people think about lighting, and which kind of lighting makes us feel good,” he said.

The collection is named after the Holocene period, the geological epoch just before the current Anthropocene saw humans begin to impact the earth’s ecosystems.

It recalls Wästberg’s manifesto Lamps for Neanderthal Man, written at the time of the brand‘s launch nine years ago. In it, he explored humans’ relationship with light throughout time, and argued that softer lighting would be good for human wellbeing.

The brand’s recent products include the die-cast aluminium w162 Dalston lamp, modelled on lights in London warehouses, and the desk light w152, which powers mobile phones and other devices.

The Holocene range launched at the Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair, which began today and continues until 11 February 2017. Other products launched at the fair include Timo Niskanen’s giant loop-shaped lamp and Claesson Koivisto Rune’s latest Small Objects.

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I had no idea that it was possible to transplant trees. Then again I don’t have any experience working with nursery distribution centers, and a company called Dutchman Industries does, having been spun off from one in the early 1970s.

Dutchman specializes in the mechanization of the field operations required by tree nurseries, and apparently every once in a while there’s a need to relocate living trees. Thus they invented the Dutchman Tree Spade. Here’s what their dinosaur-sized 100″ model can do. (We’ve cued the video up to the appropriate moment, but warning—turn down your speakers!)

First off, that is freaking amazing. Secondly, to whomever edited this video: European club music? Is that what resonates with the arborist demographic? Also, are you the same guy who sets the volume level of NYC ambulances?

Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt London tower would have been more than a modernist icon, it would have created the only useable space for protest in the City of London, says Jack Self in this Opinion column.

For the first time in more than 30 years, Mies van der Rohe‘s only UK project is being presented to the public – in both a forthcoming exhibition at the RIBA and, if it is successful, a book funded through Kickstarter by the REAL foundation.

Alternatively referred to by Prince Charles as “a giant glass stump” and Richard Rogers as “the culmination of a master architect’s life work”, Mies’ unbuilt Mansion House Square remains highly controversial, even 50 years after its conception. The project’s failure to be realised is often blamed on a massive mood swing in the UK concerning how the public viewed modernist architecture.

It is true that when the scheme was finally cancelled in the mid 1980s, it was right at the moment when historical pastiche and an obsession with preservation overthrew the postwar, predominantly brutalist paradigm – one that was increasingly associated with social dystopias, not social democracy.

But is that myth actually true? Did the British really come to hate modernism generally and corporate modernist towers specifically? If so, how can we explain the explosion of precisely this type of building in the subsequent decades all around the City, from Lloyd’s of London to the Gherkin or Cheesegrater? Was there perhaps another quality about Mies’ project, aside from its modernist aesthetic, that made it politically impossible to build?

Mies took a scrambled, dangerous street pattern and rationalised it with a perfect grid

A key element to the scheme was the creation of a large public square to the east of the site, adjacent to the City Mayor’s residence Mansion House. In some respects, this space was the greatest genius of the scheme. Mies took a scrambled, dangerous street pattern surrounding the Bank of England and (apparently effortlessly) rationalised it with a perfect grid.

This move carved out a serene ceremonial area directly in front of one of London’s most important seats of power, which remains rather claustrophobically oppressed by its neighbours to this day. Such a generous civic gesture was not flagged as problematic when planning was granted in the mid 1960s, precisely because it was such an unquestionably positive addition to London. However, by the mid 1980s this public space had become a real source of panic for both the City and the British government.

The 1980s were a famously tumultuous decade for the UK, as Thatcherite reforms radically transformed the structure of employment and basic fabric of society. Strikes and civil unrest in London were common, from dockworker and printers’ union disputes in the east to violent race riots in Brixton and deadly anti-government protests in Trafalgar Square. Thrown into this mix were IRA bomb attacks, which at their worst point occurred almost every month (one of my earliest memories is being caught up in a blast at John Lewis on Oxford Street).

Large crowds – whether gathered out of civic pride or civil disobedience – were no longer universally desirable in the city. Public space had become dangerous.

This public space became a real source of panic for both the City and the British government

It is important to keep in mind that, by the mid 1980s, powerful components of neoliberal ideology had embedded themselves within the internal logic of governance. Some of these principles were that there was no such thing as society; that there was no alternative to deregulated free markets; that the state was an inherently wasteful, inefficient and unprofitable entity; and, therefore, its scope should be reduced by privatisation and corporatisation wherever possible.

Although Margaret Thatcher was extremely popular, she was also extremely divisive, and the large minority of people that opposed her were restive and vocal. There was a widespread belief amongst those in power that the basic functions of the nation faced existential threats from the protest, dissidence and unrest.

The responses by urban policy-makers to these problems of civic security were twofold. They prevented the formation of new public spaces wherever they could, often through blocking new development on ground of “historical merit”, and they installed various devices in existing spaces to limit their capacity and control their crowds. Mies’ project, Mansion House Square, may have been simply too generous, and more than the City could accept.

In 1848, during a comparable period of social upheaval in Britain, London’s authorities had installed two massive fountains into Trafalgar Square, to halve the number of people that could congregate there. Some time later, crude chains were added. Then the adjacent roads were redirected in such a way as to make the square into a kind of traffic island. These innovations became the basis for most anti-protest, anti-terror strategies that – until today – remain central to the governance of London’s public spaces.

The mechanisms are as diverse as they are ingenious. There are simple barriers, railings and gates. There are tools that rely on social norms (taking advantage of the British tendency toward polite obedience), such as excessive signage, road and pavement markings, or brass plugs in the pavement delineating private ownership. And then there are the urban tactics that coerce and influence in an unseen way: sophisticated anti-bomb bollards disguised as benches, water features like moats and fountains, lanes of traffic that encircle crowds like sheepdogs herding a flock.

We are told that these measures are necessary for our own protection. However, in broader historical terms it is not the public that really has to worry about terrorism. It is the authorities that must manage the risk of civil disobedience.

If Mies’ square had been completed it would have been an ideal locus for Occupy

The current state of public space, particularly in the City of London, bears testament to this fear. In October 2011 I joined a Facebook group calling itself Occupy London, and a few days later – when it announced a march – I fashioned the wittiest anti-capitalist sign I could think of and went down to the Stock Exchange.

As the crowd twisted along its route I found myself progressively shuffled towards the front, and as we arrived at our destination I was nearly cheek-to-cheek with a phalanx of anti-riot police. The London Stock Exchange (LSX), which at that time was majority controlled by Toshiba, is located opposite St Paul’s Cathedral, in a privately owned complex called Pater Noster Square. Because of this there was no way to “occupy” LSX and we were halted short of the target.

In fact, there was no way to occupy anything else in the City either – within a few days the City issued a memo advising companies to regularly check any nearby vacant properties for squatters, and instructed them to block access to all corporately controlled, publicly accessible spaces until further notice. The only exception was St Paul’s Churchyard, over which they did not hold such direct control. So Occupy claimed sanctuary there. We established a tent city, a library, a “university.” I even spent a night camping on the steps before the cathedral authorities were eventually pressured by the City to evict the protesters and dismantle the camp.

In a post-Trump, post-Brexit reality, public space and its occupation have never seemed so relevant

If Mies’ square had been completed it would have been an ideal locus for Occupy, which as a civic function is without doubt a positive contribution to the health of British democracy. But more importantly, for the overwhelming majority of the time when people are not setting up soup kitchens or hand-stitching banners, it would have been a wonderful public amenity.

Mies’ Mansion House Square scheme is the greatest public space never to have been built in London.

This is precisely why I have been so motivated to make the project available to the public. Me and the REAL foundation have spent almost two years working closely with the building’s commissioner, Lord Palumbo, as well as the RIBA (who are planning an exhibition on Mansion House Square and James Stirling’s One Poultry to open in March) with the aim of publishing a wide variety of project documents.

In a post-Trump, post-Brexit reality, public space and its occupation have never seemed so relevant. It is my strong hope that, by shining more light onto Mies’ attempted intervention in London, we can contribute to a renewed debate about what type of cities we want to live in today.

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US studio Handel Architects has completed a pair of residential towers with concrete facade elements designed to reference a neighbouring stone cathedral.

Called Enclave at the Cathedral, the project is located on the property of the historic Cathedral of St John the Divine in Upper Manhattan – one of the largest Christian churches in the world. The cathedral’s interior measures 121,000 square feet (11,200 metres) and its height reaches 232 feet (71 metres).

The new apartment building consists of two distinct volumes separated by a grand staircase, which leads to the cathedral’s nave.

The church — designed in Byzantine-Romanesque and Gothic styles – was initially conceived in 1888 by architects George Lewis Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge. Construction began in 1892 and was never fully completed.

The 15-storey housing block sits adjacent to the church, on the corner of West 113th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in the Morningside Heights district. The site formerly housed sheds where granite stones were cut and used in the church’s construction.

While conceiving the residential building, the design team was mindful of its prominent neighbour.

“Given the proximity of the new building to the cathedral, the siting, massing and design were critical,” said Handel Architects, a New York-based studio that also has offices in San Francisco and Hong Kong. The firm recently completed an apartment tower in New Jersey, designed with New York firm Hollwich Kushner.

Setbacks on all sides provide space for landscaping and a continuous connection to the cathedral’s campus.

Stepped facades and a new plaza help ensure clear views to the church and a nearby park.

“The carving of the building’s corners and setbacks allows multiple interior views of the cathedral, as well as to Morningside Park to the northeast,” the team explained.

The exterior walls are made of concrete elements of varying sizes that evoke the cathedral’s buttresses.

“The Enclave’s facade is composed of a series of cast-in-place, structural concrete ribs, derived from the transformation of the cathedral’s buttresses,” the architects said.

“The depth of the ribs varies along West 113th Street, creating an articulated facade that changes as one moves around the building.”

At the top of the building, the ribs taper and pull away from bands of glazing. As the ribs approach the ground, they taper inward, allowing for more landscaping around the base of the building.

Inside, the towers contain 430 rental apartments. Floor-to-ceiling windows provide sweeping views of the cityscape.

The towers are connected by an entrance lobby and gallery that were placed below the exterior staircase. Skylights bring natural light into the entry zones.

Finishes inside the building reference the facades. “The building’s interiors follow the material expression of the exterior,” the team said.

The Enclave at the Cathedral of St John the Divine by Brodsky joins a number of new, major residential projects in Manhattan, including a tower by David Chipperfield that is now under construction and a condo building by the late Zaha Hadid.

Photography is by Bruce Damonte, David Paler and Pavel Bendov.

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Prompted by a Twitter thread from Claude Hector, Quartz has delved into the history of many forgotten black designers—and the iconic looks they’re responsible for. Like so much black history around the world, significant stories are simply not known……

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