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Top 10 architecture and design exhibitions: summer 2019

Exhibitions guide

We’ve chosen our top 10 summer architecture and design exhibitions from around the world. To find out about industry events taking place in July, August and September, look at our comprehensive month-by-month guide.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019

Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition
Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, Kensington, London W8 6AG
Until 15 September 2019

Curated by the London museum’s director Deyan Sudjic, this exhibition about one of the best-known and most influential film directors of the 20th century focuses on his meticulous approach to set design for his movies.

Bringing together more than 700 objects, letters, interviews and rare photographs, the exhibition is the first of its kind and explores Kubrick’s relationship with London where he set and filmed a number of films including Clockwork Orange.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019
Photo is by Johnny Dufort

Camp: Notes on Fashion
Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028
Until 8 September 2019

This year the Costume Institute’s annual exhibition takes its theme from a 1964 essay by Susan Sontag, but in popular culture the word camp can be used to describe any designs that are ostentatious or overtly feminine, and has close associations with the LGBT+ community.

Sculptures, paintings and drawings sit alongside the fashion on display with a pink colour theme throughout and exhibits displayed in brightly coloured glass vitrines.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019
Photo is by Rasmus Hjortshøj

Formgiving
Danish Architecture Centre, Bryghusgade 10, 1473 Copenhaven, Denmark
Until 5 January 2020

Copenhagen’s Danish Architecture Centre is showing an exhibition that looks at the work of architecture practice Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) alongside the historical perspective of the Danish word for design: formgiving.

Looking at what the word means, from the Big Bang to a possible future of human beings living on Mars, the exhibition includes a Lego gallery complete with a Lego pool to allow visitors to explore what a better and more fun future of making might look like.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019

The Craft of Swedish Game Design
ArkDes, Exercisplan 4, 111 49 Stockholm, Sweden
5 July – 25 August 2019

Never-before-seen material from five Swedish studios that produce video games forms the core of ArkDes‘ exhibition about this rapidly developing creative form.

Sketchbooks and illustrations appear alongside prototypes and models from the games’ designers. The studios represented include Landfall Games, Might and Delight, and Avalanche Studios.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019

Daan Roosegaarde – Presence
Groninger Museum, Museumeiland 1, 9711 ME Groningen, Netherlands
Until 20 January 2020

Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde‘s first major solo exhibition is currently showing at the Groninger Museum. An 800 square-metre interactive phosphorescent landscape at the heart of the exhibition transforms in response to visitor interaction.

Elsewhere futuristic spheres create patterns on the floor of one of the gallery spaces, and another appears to be filled with luminous star dust.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019

Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat
Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), Av Paulista, 1578, 01310-200 São Paulo, Brazil
Until 28 July 2019

The title of this exhibition borrows its name from the magazine of the same name, founded by architect, designer and critic Lina Bo Bardi and her husband Pietro..

Seeking to reposition Bo Bardi, who died in 1992, as one of the foremost thinkers of her generation who successfully combined European modernism with south American popular culture, the exhibition will be divided into three key areas: Lina Bo Bardi’s Habitat, From Glass House to Hut and Rethinking the Museum.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019

Values of Design
Design Society, Nanshan, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
Until 4 August 2019

Values of Design is the inaugural exhibition at Design Society in Shenzhen, and closes this summer after an 18-month run. It’s the last chance to see 250 objects from 31 different countries on loan from the V&A museum in London in the UK institution’s eponymous gallery at Design Society.

The exhibition is an exploration of the way our values are reflected in the objects we choose to surround ourselves with, through the medium of objects. It will be followed later this year by an exhibition titled Values of Design in China, a open-call show of Chinese design objects.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019

Food: Bigger than the Plate
V&A, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL
Until 20 October 2019

The Victoria & Albert Museum’s show about the future of food is structured around four themes that cover the full spectrum of the food cycle: compost, farming, trading and eating.

The exhibition includes more than 70 projects including a ceramic toilet made from surplus cow manure and the biodegradable edible water holder Ooho made from a seaweed-based material.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019

Fiction and Manufacture: Architecture Photography after the Digital Revolution
Maat, Ave. Brasília, 1300-598 Lisbon
Until 19 August 2019

Lisbon’s Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology celebrates 3o years since the invention of Photoshop with an exhibition that looks at imaginary architecture in contemporary photography and how it can be manipulated for media consumption.

Work by more than 5o artists features, including German photographer Andreas Gurski known for his colourful large-format images and Vancouver-based Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, is on show.


Summer architecture and design exhibitions 2019

Creatures Made to Measure
Design Museum Gent, Jan Breydelstraat 5, 9000 Gent, Belgium
Until 29 September 2019

Humans have used animals for a number of purposes over the centuries, as food, scientific test objects, hunting trophies or playmates, but how might we live together sustainably in the future?

The complex and fraught relationship between the human and animal worlds gets a close examination in this exhibition. Technological progress could mean that we give up real-life pets in favour of robotic versions, and an animal-free food future could become more prevalent across the world, the show suggests.

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World's tallest shipping-container building to be built in London

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Patalab Architecture has won approval to build a nine-storey office block from shipping containers, which will be the world’s tallest building made from the modular structures.

When built, the office block in Whitechapel, east London, will be 26-metres-high plus a lift overrun. This will make it taller than the Freitag Store in Zurich – the current tallest building made from shipping containers.

London studio Patalab Architecture choose to design the building from reused shipping containers for both practical and aesthetic reasons.

“On the one hand this construction is a very economic way, with offsite modular manufacturing and a considerably shorter time on site,” said Uwe Schmidt-Hess, founder of Patalab Architecture.

“On the other it is the aesthetic quality of the shipping containers that we feel responds well to the brief,” he told Dezeen.

World's tallest shipping-container building: Vallance Road in Whitechapel, east London by Patalab Architecture

The containers will be stacked nine high, with a steel frame providing additional structural support. On the exterior the containers will be fully clad and glass balconies will be placed on the street facade.

Inside the block, the containers will be cut to create open-plan office spaces. Each floor will have corridors lined with corrugated metal that will be coloured based on the design schemes used by freight companies to paint shipping containers.

Patalab Architecture believes that the office block will advance container architecture, moving it from being associated with temporary and “meanwhile” use to more permanent structures.

“First of all it is taller than any container building before. This means structural arrangements had to be considered carefully,” said Schmidt-Hess. “I am convinced we will see more shipping container buildings as the economic case is very strong.”

As a condition of the planning consent the building is required to meet a sustainability standard of BREEAM excellent. To achieve this, along with the largely recycled structure, the building will have solar panels on the roof.

“We pushed the sustainability aspect by providing a highly insulated envelope and integration of renewables, achieving BREEAM excellent rating,” added Schmidt-Hess.

Shipping containers have been used as the structure to create numerous cafes and offices. Last year Kengo Kuma created a drive-through for Starbucks in Taiwan from the stackable containers, while Julius Taminiau created a space for startups in Amsterdam.

Other inventive uses for shipping containers include Neubau, which created a porters’ lodge at a Cambridge University college and JBAD that turned a container into a parking attendant booth in Ohio.


Project credits:

Client: The Estate Office Shoreditch
Planning consultant: Barton Willmore
Sustainability consultant: Eight Associates
Services engineer: Ingine
Contractor: Urban space management / container city projects

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SOM completes double-cantilevered Manhattan Loft Gardens tower

SOM completes Manhattan Loft Gardens tower

Manhattan Loft Gardens is a 143-metre-high tower with two cantilevers designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill that overlooks London‘s 2012 Olympic Games park.

Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) engineered the concrete and steel frame so that it could accommodate three sky-gardens notched into the 42-storey building.

SOM completes Manhattan Loft Gardens tower
The 42-storey tower has three sky-gardens

Most of the floors of Manhattan Loft Gardens are supported by a cantilevered perimeter truss system at levels 10 and 28.

This means that half of the columns could be removed to create open spaces within the tower, which stands on top of a rectangular podium.

SOM completes Manhattan Loft Gardens tower
Highly engineered truss systems allow for the outdoor terraces

“The way in which we settled on the overall form of the building was really a balancing act,” said Kent Jackson, design partner at SOM.

“Literally between the structure having to balance out the different parts of the cantilevered building so that they weighed each other out.”

SOM completes Manhattan Loft Gardens tower
There are 248 apartments available in the development. Photo by Oliver Douglas

The post-tensioning methods required to achieved this, said the architects, required engineering on a scale usually reserved for infrastructure projects.

Manhattan Loft Gardens is located in Stratford, east London, at the edge of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park were the 2012 games were held.

SOM completes Manhattan Loft Gardens tower
The sky gardens will include bars and barbecue areas. Photo by Oliver Douglas

The development of 248 apartments has a mix of 13 typologies, plus a hotel, and “destination restaurants”.

It has been reported that the former head chef of Marylebone’s Chiltern Firehouse will be opening a restaurant on the seventh floor.

SOM completes Manhattan Loft Gardens tower
Manhatten Loft Gardens offers loft-style apartments. Photo is by Rory Gardiner

Manhattan Loft Gardens promises a more luxurious high-rise experience for residents, with double-height ceilings, a hotel-style concierge service, members’ club and a layout designed to foster a “vertical community”.

Lofts can be booked for short stays between seven days and three months, or longer term tenancies of six to 12 months.

Sky gardens on the seventh, 25th and 36th stories will have wildflower gardens, barbecue zones and party areas complete with bars.  Timber panelling clads the underside of the overhanging levels.

SOM completes Manhattan Loft Gardens tower
Residences include the options for a concierge service. Photo is by Rory Gardiner

White-painted steel girders and raw concrete walls continue the industrial theme throughout the apartments.

SOM, which was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings, has another tower planned for London – a 56-storey tower topped with a viewing gallery planned for the City called The Diamond.

Main image is by Alex Upton, others by Ed Reeve unless otherwise stated.


Project credits:

Architect: Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM)
Structural engineer: Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM)
M&E consultant: Hoare Lea
QS: DBK Partners
Infrastructure consultant: Arup
Access consultant: David Bonnett Associates
Sustainability: Greengage
Transport: WSP
Lighting: Paul Nulty Lighting Design
Facade consultant: WSP
Landscape consultant: Randle Siddeley & Martha Schwarts
Acoustic consultant: Sandy Brown
Project manager: Core5
CDM co-ordinator: Bureau Veritas
Approved building inspector: Bureau Veritas
Main contractor: Bouygues UK, ISG

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Refined and Welcoming Restaurant in Montreal

Pour son nouveau restaurant Dandy situé dans le quartier historique de Montréal, le chef Michael Tozzi a confié le design intérieur à la firme locale BlazysGérard. Il s’agissait de concevoir un espace à la fois élégant, chaleureux et intemporel. Défi relevé avec brio!

En plus d’avoir des miroirs et luminaires splendides, le restaurant bénéficie d’une clarté impressionnante puisque la lumière a été travaillée avec grande attention. «Pour nous, la lumière est une matière, nous jouons avec elle et la sculptons comme nous le faisons avec n’importe quel autre matériau», indique la firme. Une atmosphère qui inspire la fraicheur et l’énergie, tout comme les brunchs et les déjeuners du menu.

Crédit photo: Adrien Williams


















"Design can't solve all our problems, so stop pretending it can"

Design can’t solve all our problems

Designers may not be able to save the world by themselves, but they must help avert societal problems and the looming climate crisis, says Christine Murray.


Designers, you know what your problem is? You just don’t know when to stop. You just have to design bloody everything. You get a piece of city to masterplan and rethink every inch. But that’s not what I call a city, that’s a petri dish.

History is razed, weeds are sprayed, the graffiti washed, homeless spiked, teenagers dispersed by mosquito alarms, benches studded and chairs bolted to the ground, with selected humans inseminated into place.

Your belief in the supremacy of design and its “solutions” puts you in league with Doctor Frankenstein: the more you simulate life, the more monstrous your creation becomes. Your predisposition to impose design “solutions” on anything you touch alienates when it should include. You are not Midas; this is not gold.

Your belief in the supremacy of design and its solutions puts you in league with Doctor Frankenstein

For a moment, we were with you. We held our iPhones and Muji toilet brushes and felt they made us better people – before the screen-eyed loneliness set in, the plastic panic, the lagom and hygge backlash.

But now, through the likes of Greta Thunberg and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, we see your complicity in making ever more chairs, tearing out kitchens, building glass houses, concrete and consumption for consumption’s sake.

This week a sick world swelters – a 17-year-old in France died of heat exhaustion after jumping into a pool; mussels off the coast of California roasted in their shells; Spain burns, again.

I know what you’re thinking – it’s not just our fault, we don’t act alone, we need to earn a living… And you’re right: the system is complicit, the consumer is complicit, alongside developers, engineers, landscape consultants and planners. Each with your own agenda; perhaps good intentions – but even Doctor Frankenstein thought he was creating something beautiful.

The other day I was drinking coffee with my friend Danny Michael Ball, a neuroscientist studying how the mind maps urban space. He was a working-class boy from London, and he said, look at what they’ve done to my neighbourhood (Bermondsey). They took our local pub, painted it black and charged two pounds more per pint of beer.

The loveable idiosyncrasies of a place are almost never saved by its designers or developers – they’re preserved by community-led protest

“Fine, if you need to go around regenerating places, but do you have to change every last thing? Can’t you leave something for the local people?” asked Ball. “You may think it’s just a shit pub, but it was our shit pub.”

And then – because this problem is global – my friend from New York, riled up by Hudson Yards, said, “We’re all still just in shock that you could spend that much money, make something that big, and deliver something that pointless and irrelevant to the local people.”

The loveable idiosyncrasies of a place are almost never saved by its designers or developers – they’re preserved by community-led protest, or maybe budgetary constraints. But where there is money, there is little restraint with the whitewash. The beautiful dream of Modernist efficiency has led to a nightmarish no-place creeping from one hot investment zone to the next. The blight of samey-ness; the march of Notopia.

Modernism failed to build Utopia, and yet designers march on, ignoring the loudening cry of communities that don’t want to live in a machine

In Emma Warren’s new book, Make Some Space: Tuning Into Total Refreshment Centre, she writes about how some kids placehacked a music venue and sparked a whole new London jazz scene. Warren says culture needs “infrastructure of its own making” where citizens find a crack in the city and build into it. But what if there are no cracks left?

We don’t leave empty warehouses lying around with the door open hoping someone will squat in. We sell it to WeWork and transform it into co-working space: a hotel lobby where the affluent unemployed pay good money to read their emails, hold meetings and wait for the call.

Modernism failed to build Utopia, and yet designers march on, ignoring the loudening cry of communities that don’t want to live in a machine. They want to participate in the city, which might get messy. They want you to respect their lives and experience, their ingenuity and talent. They want to contribute to its making. And they want some stuff left behind to occupy, figure out, make-do and mend.

Stop finishing things that you should only be kickstarting. Reach out but wait for reciprocation. Your work is unrequited: design inflicted on people is an air kiss.

But don’t get me wrong – designers, we still need you. We need your ingenuity. Fuck do we need it. The challenges facing our cities: extreme weather, affordable housing shortages, mental health crises, air pollution – are thorny, mangled spaghetti soups.

Your work is unrequited: design inflicted on people is an air kiss

I’ve started The Festival of Place in the hopes that by getting a jumble of smart people and professionals together, we can start to unpick these problems and find a way forward together. Design can’t solve all our problems, so stop pretending it can.

Design can’t do it alone, but we also need a total redesign. You are often the most educated and experienced person at the table. We need your creative thinking and expertise – we just want you to listen to the people; to serve; to collaborate and to question your own aesthetic self-indulgence.

Stop deciding where we should sit and how. Instead, please figure out how we can avert a climate disaster, a homeless epidemic, a mental health crisis, heat death, poisoned air, and food and water shortages.

Or at the very least, design out the human and environmental cost of the shit you make.

Main image is of 50 Hudson Yards, courtesy of Foster + Partners.

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This ‘Blue Pill’ will get you shiny teeth on the go

If there was a guessing game for ‘what’s in your travel bag’, then I know mine would be an easy win for most. I carry my shampoo, face wash, toothbrush, moisturizer… you get the drift. You name it, and it’s packed into travel-sized minion bottles, and are ready to go for their ride. However, most people are not like me – and one of the most common things that people tend to forget to pack is the toothpaste. I concur this is mainly because we typically buy the big tube and travel-sizes don’t retain much. Hence, packing a big tube can be unnecessary.

I like what designer Fernando Maldonado has done though – he’s designed a travel toothbrush that has a squeezable compartment. You see the blue pill shape one? That’s the space you fill up with toothpaste and carry the kit as a whole. When you need to use it – simply squeeze out the required amount, and brush. Clever!

Designer: Fernando Maldonado

Kazerne is a design-focused boutique hotel in Eindhoven

Kazerne hotel, Eindhoven by Moon/en/co and Van Helmond Architecten

Moon/en/co and Van Helmond Architecten have teamed up to form Kazerne, an Eindhoven hotel that boasts just eight rooms and an exhibition space that will showcase pieces from notable Dutch designers.

Kazerne hotel, Eindhoven by Moon/en/co and Van Helmond Architecten
Kazerne occupies former army barracks and an adjacent disused warehouse

Composed of eight guest suites, a private members club and a 2,500 square-metre exhibition area, Kazerne has been designed to be a hybrid hospitality space where guests can have an “authentic immersion” into Eindhoven’s creative scene.

Home to one of the world’s most prestigious design schools – Design Academy Eindhoven – the city is often considered to be one of the Netherlands’ creative hubs.

Work from revered alumni like Maarten Baas and Formafantasma will be displayed in Kazerne’s exhibition area, along with pieces by other prominent figures from the Dutch creative sphere.

Kazerne hotel, Eindhoven by Moon/en/co and Van Helmond Architecten
Pieces from renowned Dutch designers will be displayed in a large exhibition space inside the hotel

“Unlike any other hotel, Kazerne offers guests an environment where they can experience, 24/7, how design adds value to the world in which we live,” explained Annemoon Geurts of locally based studio Moon/en/co, who created the hotel in collaboration with Van Helmond Architecten.

Kazerne hotel, Eindhoven by Moon/en/co and Van Helmond Architecten
The Hay Loft suite is set within an attic

The hotel takes over former barracks of the Dutch armed forces and an adjacent industrial warehouse, with some of the buildings dating back to the early 19th century.

When it came to stitching them together to form Kazerne, the two studios worked to create a setting that “embodied two unique visions: one of the past, the other of the future”.

Kazerne hotel, Eindhoven by Moon/en/co and Van Helmond Architecten
Historic features like original wooden ceiling beams appear in the suite

Several of the suites therefore boast historic decor details. The Hay Loft, which is set within an attic, boasts the original wooden roof trusses, while the Corner Duplex includes a pantry that previously served as a holding cell for soldiers.

In the Penthouse Loft, which measures 140 square-metres, timber beams are marked with inscriptions from 1855.

Rooms have otherwise been completed in a monochromatic colour palette, with slate-grey walls and pale grey soft furnishings.

Kazerne hotel, Eindhoven by Moon/en/co and Van Helmond Architecten
A monochromatic colour palette has been applied throughout the rooms

As well as a private members club, the hotel also plays host to two eateries – Restaurant Benz, which provides Nordic-inspired fine dining, and the eponymous Restaurant Kazerne, which offers a menu of vegetable-based dishes that nod to Italian cuisine.

The two are connected by a central courtyard that has a charred-wood rear wall and black seating.

Kazerne hotel, Eindhoven by Moon/en/co and Van Helmond Architecten
The central courtyard connecting Kazerne’s two restaurants features a charred wood wall

Every year the city of Eindhoven is host to Dutch Design Week. Highlights from the 2018 edition included The Grotto, an installation by Bart Hess that was made to resemble drooping piles of flesh, and an exhibition of ten objects that explored how humans can tread more lightly by Dutch Invertuals.

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Fleur Pavilia clubhouse offers Hong Kong residents respite from city life

Dezeen promotion: New World Development has added a greenery-filled clubhouse alongside its Fleur Pavilia residences in Hong Kong, to help inhabitants escape the bustle of urban life.

Fleur Pavilia clubhouse by New World Development

The three-tower residential development is situated in the city’s busy North Point district, which is populated by a number of other housing projects.

For the design of its communal “clubhouse”, New World Development’s executive vice-chairman and general manager Adrian Cheng teamed up with the eponymous studio of late Japanese designer Shigeru Uchida and landscape design firm Ohtori Consultants.

Fleur Pavilia clubhouse by New World Development

Uchida has previously collaborated with Cheng to create the Khora furniture collection, which was partly inspired by Japan’s scenery and made using traditional joinery methods.

The Fleur Pavilia clubhouse features several rooms that are fronted by glass or centred around glazed courtyards, offering views onto Fleur Island – a verdant garden dotted with plum blossom trees, loosely influenced by Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement.

Fleur Pavilia clubhouse by New World Development

Uchida Design wanted the space to have the same calming atmosphere of Japan’s renowned tea rooms and to “offer a respite for those looking to escape the hustle and bustle”.

Interiors are decked out with bespoke furnishings crafted from light-hued pinewood or bamboo.

Fleur Pavilia clubhouse by New World Development

“Nature’s simplified beauty and sense of tranquility is at the core of the design idea,” said the company.

“The omnipresent wooden hue and bamboo materials in the space, complemented by the smart use of walls and zoning, blurs the line between the exterior and interior to form a majestic outdoors-indoors interplay.”

Fleur Pavilia clubhouse by New World Development

Several water features are also included throughout the gardens, which are meant to “gently nudge onlookers to take a moment of reflection.”

Fleur Pavilia clubhouse by New World Development

New World Development has created another residential project in the city called Bohemian House, which features an artisan kitchen and heritage-inspired interiors intended to appeal to sophisticated urbanites.

The company has also completed a bridge-linked clubhouse and gallery for a housing site at Hong Kong’s Clearwater Bay.

For more information about the Fleur Pavilia, visit the development’s website.

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