Sep 12
Dezeen Wire: architecture critic Rowan Moore reviews Europe’s largest urban shopping centre ahead of its opening tomorrow – The Observer
Sep 09
Dezeen wire: media company News International has cancelled the remodelling of its London headquarters by Amanda Levete Architects.
In 2009 the architect was awarded planning permission for a new campus that would bring together the offices of News International, Harper Collins, MySpace, Dow Jones and Fox. The proposal included new public spaces, accessible walkways and a restaurant, with a series of atria providing natural light and ventilation to the former print works.
News International has decided to sell the site in Wapping, its home for 25 years, and will relocate to nearby Thomas More Square. The company has recently been embroiled in the phone-hacking scandal.
See our previous story on Amanda Levete Architects’ winning V&A Exhibition Road proposal here and their design for the Huntingdon Estate in London here.
Sep 08
Dezeen Wire: French designer Inga Sempé will be Guest of Honour at Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair 2012, which takes place 7-11 February.
Above: portrait is by Anders Hviid
Sempé will create a lounge at the entrance to the fair, where she has regularly exhibited products for brands including Gärsnäs and Wästberg. See all our stories about her work here.
Last year’s guest of honour was Arik Levy, also based in Paris, and the 2009 guest of honour was fashion designer Paul Smith.
See all our stories from last year’s fair here.
Here are some more details from Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair:
For the ninth year running, an international designer will be responsible for creating a lounge in the Stockholmsmässan entrance hall. This time the task falls to French industrial and product designer Inga Sempé, who has won much attention and appreciation for her designs.
Inga Sempé was born in Paris, France in 1968, graduating in 1993 from the design college Les Ateliers-ENSCI, L´Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, Paris. Since then Inga has focused on the design of furniture and lighting, as well as a variety of objects and textiles. She worked at a couple of design studios before setting up her own studio in Paris in the year 2000. During 2000 and 2001 she was also artist-in-residence for the French Academy at the Villa Medici in Rome. During this period she started working with Italian companies such as Cappellini and Edra, who became her first manufacturers.
“In recent years, our choice of each year’s Guest of Honour has helped explore the boundaries between design and fashion and between design and art. For next year we want to take this a step further, and for the first time turn towards the world of lighting. We have followed Inga Sempé’s work over many years and greatly admired her expressive and varied collection of products. We were particularly impressed by her lighting items”, says Cecilia Nyberg, Event Manager, Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair.
Inga Sempé started to work with Swedish companies in 2006. The first of these was David Design and the second Swedish company she worked with was textile firm Almedahls. Since then she has also had work commissioned by Swedish manufacturers Wästberg, Gärsnäs and Svenskt Tenn.
“I am proud to be Guest of Honour, at The Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair, because Sweden is a country that gave me many opportunities to work – for instance I work for more Swedish companies than French companies and also I really appreciate this fair, which is not huge, but shows a high qualitative concentrate of good design in a country that shows a lot of culture for it”, says Inga Sempé.
In 2003 Inga was awarded the distinction of the “Grand Prix de la Création en design de la ville de Paris” and she had an exhibition the same year at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris.
Today Inga Sempé works with, among others, Ligne Roset, Moustache, Domestic, David Design, Hjelle, Almedahls and Artecnica. She lives and works in Paris.
Previous Guests of honour include Patricia Urquiola, Spain, brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, France, Naoto Fukasawa, Japan, Konstantin Grcic, Germany, Giulio Cappellini, Italy, Ineke Hans, the Netherlands, Paul Smith, UK, and Arik Levy, Israel/France.
The Stockholm Furniture Fair & Northern Light Fair will take place at Stockholmsmässan on February 7-11, 2012.
Sep 08
Dezeen Wire: architect David Adjaye has been announced as this year’s Design Miami Designer of the Year.
He will create an installation called Genesis in an outdoor area at the entrance of Design Miami’s Temporary Structure at the fair, which takes place 29 November to 4 December 2011.
Last year’s Design Miami Designer of the Year 2011 was Konstantin Grcic – see his installation here.
Listen to our podcast interview with David Adjaye here and see all our stories about his work here.
Here are some more details from Design Miami:
Design Miami/, the global forum for design, is pleased to announce that David Adjaye, OBE, Principal Architect of Adjaye Associates, has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Designer of the Year Award. A site-specific installation by Adjaye, commissioned for the fair, will be presented at the 2011 edition of Design Miami/, November 29-December 4, 2011.
Each December, the Design Miami/ Designer of the Year Award recognizes an internationally renowned architect, designer, or studio whose body of work demonstrates unmatched quality, innovation and influence, while expanding the boundaries of design. The Designer of the Year must demonstrate a consistent history of outstanding work, along with a significant new project, career milestone, or other noteworthy achievement within the previous twelve months. Past Designer of the Year winners include Zaha Hadid, Marc Newson, Tokujin Yoshioka, the Campana Brothers, Maarten Baas, and Konstantin Grcic.
Renowned for a focus on museum-quality exhibitions of collectible design from the world’s top galleries, Design Miami/ has utilized the fair as a platform for architectural innovation since its inception, with its award-winning temporary structures, innovative exhibition designs and installations. Adjaye’s use of architecture as a catalyst for generating community, his novel application of materials, and his diverse catalogue of projects that intersect architecture, design and art, complement Design Miami’s objective of creating a forum that advances the discourse surrounding experimental design while encouraging visitors to connect and exchange ideas within its venue.
“Winning Designer of the Year is huge for me,” says Adjaye. “To win an award like this from the design community is really significant because so much of my work is about crossing platforms. Being recognized this year–which culminates in all of the work and research I’ve been doing in Africa–is extremely meaningful.”
The Award presented Adjaye with the opportunity to design a site-specific installation for Design Miami/ 2011. His pavilion, entitled Genesis will welcome visitors to the fair’s temporary structure on Miami Beach. Given an open brief for the commission by Design Miami/, Adjaye has created a pavilion that introduces the essence of his architectural ideas to a wider public in a temporary context.
Composed of hundreds of vertical wooden planks morphing into organic interior seating and opening up to the sky and surrounding environment, the triangular pavilion will serve as entryway to the fair, a community gathering area and a space for respite during the lively week. Choreographing these diverse functions in one structure exhibits Adjaye’s ability to organize space in a way that effortlessly guides the user and creates an engaging spatial experience through a transcendent use of materials.
Adjaye was chosen by a diverse selection committee comprising individuals who significantly impact international design discourse: Maarten Baas, Baas & Den Herder Studio; Daniel Charny, Design Curator and Critic; Pierre Doze, Design Critic; Marianne Goebl, Director for Design Miami/; Brooke Hodge, Hammer Museum; Ellen Lupton, Maryland Institute of College of Art & Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; Ravi Naidoo, Design Indaba & Interactive Africa; Deyan Sudjic, Design Museum London; Noriko Takiguchi, Design Critic; Alexander von Vegesack, Vitra Design Museum & Boisbuchet.
“One thing that clearly sets David Adjaye apart from many of his contemporaries is the strong social agenda to his work,” says Goebl. “The democratic approach to design is clearly a benchmark of what he does, but as you look more deeply, there are so many layers to David’s work. His projects show a real sensitivity to materiality, not just aesthetically, but in a performative and emotive sense.”
Based in London, with offices in Berlin and New York City, Adjaye is one of the world’s leading architects. His ingenious use of materials and unique ability to showcase light coupled with his democratized approach to the architectural process have helped establish his reputation as an architect with an artist’s sensibility and vision. His many worldwide projects include the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO (winner of the 2011 First Prize Public Buildings IX ARCHIP International Architecture Award); The Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, CO;
the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway; flood-resistant houses in New Orleans for Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation; and the Stirling Prize-nominated Idea Stores in London, England. Adjaye’s current projects include the design of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American Culture and History (NMAACH) on the National Mall in Washington, DC, set to open in 2015.
Tanzanian-born and of Ghanaian descent, Adjaye has also spent ten years traveling to 53 cities throughout Africa to document the continent within an urban context and address much of the world’s lack of knowledge of the built environment throughout the disparate countries of Africa. The resulting project, “Urban Africa: David Adjaye’s Photographic Survey,” includes over 36,000 pictures, 3,000 of which were displayed at London’s Design Museum before traveling to other locations around the world.
David Adjaye’s belief in working together with artists and other cultural thinkers has led to a number of notable collaborations on both building projects as well as exhibitions. The practice established its early reputation with a series of private houses where the artist was client, and this dialogue continues with recent public buildings, exhibitions and research projects. Adjaye Associates was responsible for: the exhibition design of the all-video SITE Santa Fe Eighth International Biennial Exhibition “the dissolve” (2010); Olafur Eliasson’s “Your black horizon” light installation at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005); and Chris Ofili’s “The Upper Room” exhibited (1999-2002 and 2010), which is now in the permanent collection of Tate Britain.
Sep 07
Dezeen Wire: a panel of experts and an enthusiastic audience discussed the relationship between journalism and architecture at an event hosted last night by RIBA think tank Building Futures.
The debate put forward the motion: “This house believe the architectural profession has been let down by its press. Has the architectural media lost its backbone?”
Arguing for the motion, architect Will Alsop aserted that editors focus too much on style and there needs to be a dialogue between architects and journalists to ensure interesting projects makes it to press. Hugh Pearman, editor of the RIBA Journal and architecture critic at The Sunday Times, outlined his three disgraces of architectural journalism: elitist coverage, allowing architects to control the market and being influenced by advertisers. Deputy editor of the Architectural Review Will Hunter claimed that online media lacks depth of analysis and said that architecture has moved on while its press has stagnated.
Against the motion was Amanda Baillieu, executive editor of Building Design magazine, who stressed that journalists are not in the business of supporting the architecture profession and that online media has challenged the authority of the traditional press. Piers Gough of CZWG Architects explained the enjoyment architects take in the praise they receive from the press and accused periodicals of being “newsy,” while deputy chair of the Design Council Paul Finch stated that architecture has become a luxury, is too introverted and has given away too much responsibility to other professions.
We’re happy to report that the motion was comprehensively defeated.
Have your say in our comments section below or see how the debate unfolded on the Building Futures Twitter stream.
Sep 07
Dezeen Wire: a 510-metre office building that will become the tallest skyscraper in the Chinese capital will break ground on 19 September – China Daily
Sep 06
Disegno magazine launches
Posted in: Dezeen Wire
Dezeen Wire: new fashion, design and architecture magazine Disegno launched today – www.disegnomagazine.com
Sep 06
Dezeen Wire: design critic Justin McGuirk reports from Korea on the Gwangju Design Biennale – The Guardian
Curated by Ai Weiwei and Seung H-Sang, the biennale runs until 23 October. Exhibits include designs for bombs, plastic surgery for fighters and blueprints for public executions, plus a series of temporary follies built around the city by renowned architects including Atelier Bow-Wow, Peter Eisenman and Dominique Perrault.
Sep 06
Dezeen Wire: The Telegraph’s deputy art critic Alastair Sooke reviews the Victoria & Albert Museum’s new contemporary crafts exhibition, Power of Making, which opens today – The Telegraph
Sep 05
Dezeen Wire: the completed National September 11 Memorial designed by Israeli-American architect Michael Arad opens on Sunday in New York, exactly ten years after almost 3000 people were killed in terrorist attacks across America.
In anticipation of the event, Ted Loos of the New York Times describes Arad’s turbulent design process, Karen Matthews writes about Arad’s rapid rise in profile for Associated Press and Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times reports on the architect’s battle against controversy.
For CNN, Todd Leopold details the rebuilding process that has taken place at the World Trade Center site while The Telegraph’s Jon Swaine focuses on the painstaking process of adding the victims’ names to the memorial.
A dedication and memorial service will take place on Sunday and it will open to the public on 12 September, with the Memorial Museum due to open in September 2012.
Dezeen Wire previously featured architecture critic Rowan Moore’s appraisal of the memorial design and his criticism of the politics surrounding the project for the Observer.
See an animation of the fountains at the heart of the memorial on Dezeen Screen.
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