Hasta La Ideas

Maureen Sherrard, a Chilean-Irish creative producer at Shanghai-based agency Goodstein, has experienced over two months of quarantine due to Covid-19, but is now seeing the city slowly opening up again, and work returning. We talk to her about her experiences and what we might expect in the coming months.

Creative Review: How did brands and agencies handle the coronavirus outbreak in China and the quarantine?
Maureen Sherrard: Everything happened during the Chinese New Year holidays when most people were off work with their families. Campaigns for that period would have launched by then and people where just getting ready to come back to work in early February. Sadly, that was not the case and everything paused for the best part of the month. There was a mandatory shutdown of offices that kept on being extended. There was a lot of uncertainty. No one went to their offices and this meant briefs, campaigns, and shoots were all delayed or cancelled.

CR: Did work continue to take place remotely? If so, how did this work?
MS: Yes, particularly with digital agencies. For the rest of us, this time was best used to plan the next few months and if nothing was happening, work on our own projects. We (Goodstein) usually work from home and are advocates of remote working. We don’t believe it is necessary to fly everywhere for meetings when you can easily do it with a video conference. We are very used to this. During this time, it was a matter of making clients comfortable with this ‘new’ working method. I’m sure companies like Zoom and Google Hangouts have seen some increase in traffic.

CR: Were brands putting out marketing messages during the peak of the crisis there? If so, what were these like? Did they talk much about what was happening or was this avoided?
MS: Almost none. Most brands had to close for at least two weeks during the peak, just like everyone else. There were however a few public welfare videos being posted. Some clients and their agencies managed to quickly re-think strategy and produced TVCs (or online videos) that talked about the virus. International Women’s Day also got some mention in the online world. All was done very low-key and produced in different places/remotely because of the production restrictions. Ads that were already in post production kept their timeline. In the past week you can see more brands re-starting their usual campaigns and TVCs are coming back.

CR: How did things evolve over the weeks of quarantine?
MS: It took a while for the government to allow offices to reopen. During most of February the government and local authorities were implementing safety regulations, from disinfecting offices to creating registration forms where people receive a QR code stating they have not travelled and have done self-isolation etc. And are fit to enter offices.

CR: How is it now? Are agencies beginning to go back to work or are they still quarantined?
MS: Yes. I’d say 99.9% of clients and agencies are back to work. Even if some still work from home. Some have kids and schools are still shut so everyone is being more flexible. But the good news is that things are moving. There are briefs coming and we are getting busy again. It feels great.

CR: How are brands responding now?
MS: Our clients and I’m sure most out there are eager and ready to get back and catch up with the time lost. There are still some restrictions with travel so shoots will be affected but its good to see briefs are coming in and people are getting used to the new working methods. Everyone knows social distancing is still important as no one knows if or when or how a second wave of the virus will come.

CR: What advice would you give to agencies and brands elsewhere in the world for how to handle this situation?
MS: The most important thing is for you and your colleagues to be safe and healthy. So please stay home. This is the only way for your brand or agency to literally save the world. Don’t expect everyone to work in the same capacity. This is a good time to force yourself to stop and think. For clients, trust your agencies. Give them time to think. No one knows how long this will take and we all have to be open-minded to new ways of working and communicating.

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Towards the end of last year, director Yousef sat down with the team at production company Prettybird to discuss who to cast in the music video for Piero Pirupa’s new track. It would have to be an actor worthy of delivering the message central to Braindead (Heroin Kills), and someone threw soap opera actor Shaun Williamson’s name into the ring. Fast forward to three months later, and we have Barry from Eastenders gracing our screens once more.

Since his role on the soap opera came to end in 2004, Williamson has made comedy mileage out of Barry – most prominently in Extras, where he embraced the legacy of his pitiful Eastenders character. And it’s a pleasure to see him return here: in a video which makes a nod to Brass Eye’s classic ‘Cake’ report about the perils of drug use, we see Williamson presenting a public service announcement, before everything descends into chaos.

Williamson causes trouble on set as he’s overcome with hallucinations – including a handful of red-eyed animated birds and a troupe of miniature fist-pumping versions of himself (one of which he proceeds to snort). And things only get weirder as Yousef makes the most of animation and VFX to create facial mutations, a brain with a particularly bad attitude that escapes out of Williamson’s head, and a Russian Doll series of figures that come to be through vomiting.

The music video draws to a close with Williamson’s body deflating, before he returns to the frame, apparently traumatised, to relay the lyrics. Together, it’s an assault on all the senses, a presumably intentional outcome given the track’s ‘anti-drugs’ message.

Credits:
Director: Yousef
Production company: Prettybird

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Architecture practice Deltastudio has turned a former agricultural warehouse in Italy into a house with a balcony framed with white curtains.

Called Elena after one of its owners, the home sits in a chestnut grove overlooking the town of Caprarola in central Italy.

The original warehouse had two storeys connected by an external staircase.

“The starting point is a structure designed for agriculture,” said Deltastudio. “A rough volume articulated on two levels, warehouse in the basement and laboratory on the upper floor,”

Deltastudio used this existing division to create spaces for the family who live there, with more private areas for the parents.

A deep concrete portal frames the entrance, leading into a bright internal stair.

This staircase is illuminated by double-height windows cut out of the corner of the structure.

Internal areas are oriented depending on the surrounding views, with the living space looking out towards the town.

The bedrooms look towards the quieter countryside, and are divided by a central wood-panelled volume.

Elena’s upper level opens onto a balcony that surrounds the majority of the building, sheltered by the overhanging flat roof.

A slim, black-steel balustrade connects to a larger steel grid that wraps around this balcony.

This sense of enclosure can be enhanced by drawing small sections of white curtain.

“Horizontal and vertical elements frame the views, define spaces, perform the functions of shading during the day and those of lighting in the evening,” said Deltastudio.

Interiors have been kept minimal, with white walls, grey plaster, concrete and pale wood.

“The horizontal surfaces, devoid of geometry, infuse in the rooms a natural continuity interrupted only by the large wooden block that hides and separates the functions,” said the studio.

“On the interior scenic backdrops, the light enhances the sculptural materiality of the furniture, simple and bright, a synthesis of a rediscovered harmony between architecture and context.”

Deltastudio, which was founded by Dario Pompei, has also turned an old agricultural building in Caprarola into a monochrome home.

Photography is by Simone Bossi.

The post Deltastudio converts concrete warehouse into minimalist family home appeared first on Dezeen.

Translucent glass doors fold open to reveal the studio that architecture firm Estudio Nu has created inside a dental mechanics workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Estudio Nu had shared the Lerma workshop in the city’s Villa Crespo neighbourhood with an artist for years but wanted to update the facilities to accommodate more tenants.

“Lerma started as our shed to design and try different shapes and techniques for our furniture collection,” studio co-founder Santiago Passalacqua told Dezeen.

“Now we still work there but we have extended the space so more projects can take place there.”

Passalacqua had inherited the space from his family. The architect’s great-grandfather, a mechanical engineer and inventor, built the studio and then his son had used it to make dental mechanics.

Estudio Nu’s renovation aimed to keep as much of the existing structure as possible like the thick structural beams and a long skylight that runs through the workshop.

To achieve this, it introduced a new metallic volume to run down one side of the 150-square-metre, to create a private workspace on the ground level and an open-air space above.

The studio chose translucent glass doors and partitions between the areas above to match the rooflight above.

A large workshop, kitchen and bathroom are located on the ground level. A staircase is slotted between the kitchen and the workshop to lead up to the mezzanine, which contains three separate workspaces.

The main space is left open for overflow and group activities like ping pong.

Estudio Nu chose materials to complement the simple aesthetic of white-painted walls and exposed concrete flooring inside. Many interventions such as the staircase, flooring and walls are made of pale wood.

Colour is introduced by the speckled pink kitchen tiles and bathroom tiles. They are intended to be reminiscent of the flooring in the courtyard at the front, which is decorated with greenery.

Lerma joins a number of workspaces that make use of old structures. Examples include the architecture office of AMAA, which is located in an abandoned plumbing factory and online design retailer Radnor’s studio inside The Old American Can Factory in Brooklyn.

Photography is by Javier Agustín Rojas.

Project credits:

Lead architects: Delfina Riverti and Santiago Passalacqua
Landscaping: Estación Salvaje and Julieta Riverti

The post Estudio Nu retrofits creatives studios in former Buenos Aires workshop appeared first on Dezeen.

Powerful raw recipes with health benefits and impressive heat

After continuously selling out of the hot sauces they were procuring from a friend, POST owner Bobby Stackleather decided he needed to make his own. The restaurant’s new line of house-made hot sauces—called Bon Merde, French for “good shit”—reflect the creativity and attention you’ll find elsewhere on the Alphabet City restaurant’s menu. Stackleather explains, “Our recipe is totally different and raw. This was something I had experimented with in the past, and decided to pick it up again. With months of testing different ingredients, trials and errors, we ended up with the product we sell at the restaurant now.”

POST’s hot sauces always stood out when paired with any number of their delectable brunch and dinner dishes: a separate menu page dedicated exclusively to biscuits offers plenty of ground for experimentation; roasted goat cheese with baby heirloom tomatoes and honey atop a baguette also works with each iteration’s heat. Available in mild or hot and habanero, the Bon Merde concoctions offer plenty more than tantalizing heat and added flavor.

“Because it’s a raw food and produces its own acids while fermenting, it keeps its probiotic properties,” Stackleather explains. “Most hot sauces are cooked and or fortified with some sort of acid (like vinegar) which kills the beneficial probiotics. Lacto-fermented foods boost heart and brain health and offer anti-inflammatory, cancer-fighting, and boosting-your-immune-system benefits.”

The powerful, probiotic sauces are available now, alongside a select shortlist of POST’s larger menu, on food delivery services for NYC residents. Eventually, Stackleather’s newly trademarked Bon Merde line will be more broadly distributed, beyond the bounds of the restaurant.

Images courtesy of Bobby Stackleather