Milan 2014: explore the space created by Marcel Wanders and Casper Vissers in Milan to showcase the new range from their brand Moooi, with this interactive showroom.
Moooi has taken over an old warehouse in Milan’s Tortona district to create an atmospheric showroom.
Products have been set up in clusters, as if in rooms of a house, against giant architectural and interior photographs by Massimo Listri that help create smaller spaces in the large building.
“We implemented something which is interesting for interior designers to see,” Marcel Wanders told Dezeen.
“If you look at all these objects they are a bit displaced. They should be in houses and projects and they should live in surroundings which have their own kind of depth and logic,” said Wanders.
The exhibition is accompanied by eerie sounds created by Dutch musician Fontane, to emphasise the surreal nature of exhibiting home furnishings in an industrial space.
The ability to create a bespoke atmosphere for the showroom is one of the reasons why Moooi presents away from the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, the trade fair taking place on the other side of the city.
“Every year we decide not to [go there] because the fair makes it really difficult to make a really wonderful show,” Wanders explained.
“The limitations of the fair are tremendous, simply to get a nice space. Besides that even if you get a nice space then it’s a square with nothing. You get a floor. It’s just not the right thing for us at the moment.”
Known for its wide-ranging palette of colours, Kvadrat‘s felt-like fabric was originally created by Danish painter and graphic artist Finn Sködt in 1984.
“We didn’t choose the name for nothing, we used it because it gave some inspiration as to which colours we could put into the scheme,” said Sködt. “Every colour is divine if you ask me, every colour is nice. It’s only a question of using them right or wrong.”
Lasagne by Philippe Nigro
The designers were invited to create their own one-off piece using the fabric, which comes in 56 colours. “Divina is so intense that it is almost like paint, or something that has been sprayed onto a surface,” said Anders Byriel, CEO of Kvadrat. “You could not have a colour that is more vivid or clearer than this.”
Nesting Hexagons by Werner Aisslinger
German designer Werner Aisslinger‘s Nesting Hexagons reference Joe Colombo’s 1969 Tube chair, a piece comprising hollow cylinder modules fixed together in different formations, which can be dismantled and used separately like cushions.
Here, Aisslinger uses the hexagon shape as a basis to create a piece designed for lounging, which can then be stored by slotting each hexagon inside of each other. “Our concept came from the idea of a picnic, with a blanket in the grass and pillows around,” said Aisslinger. “The hexagons are ideal for lolling around or relaxing on the ground, both indoors and outdoors.”
Afternoon Nap by Martino Gamper
Working between art and design, London-based Martino Gamper has created Afternoon Nap, his second project with Divina, which features upholstered solid geometric volumes in various coloured triangulations of the fabric.
“For me, this simple shape, mixed with the complex and colourful fabric, creates a landscape where I could imagine having an afternoon nap,” said Gamper.
Pli Bleu, Pli Violet by Robert Stadler
Austrian designer Robert Stadler‘s interpretation entitled Pli Bleu and Pli Violet uses two very similar shades of blue, emphasised by the folds in the piece. “My intention was to show the quality of the textile in the most pure and direct way possible,” said Stadler. “The two pleated monochromes catch the ambient light in a subtle way.”
Divina Chandelier by Lindsey Adelman
New York designer Lindsey Adelman has created a chandelier comprised of thin brightly coloured strips of the Divina fabric layered on top of one another while London designer Max Lamb has designed a series of oversized smocks.
A special exhibition showcasing 22 contemporary interpretations of Divina by international designers
‘We didn’t choose the name for nothing – we used it because it gave some inspiration as to which colours we could put into the scheme. Every colour is divine, if you ask me – every colour is nice. It’s only a question of using them right or wrong.’ Finn Sködt.
Thread Wrapping Architecture by Anton Alvarez
In celebration of Divina, one of its most iconic textiles, Kvadrat has invited 22 international designers to reinterpret the fabric in the context of contemporary design and to create a one-of-a-kind piece. The exhibition will be presented in Milan during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, 8 – 13 April 2014.
East-West Fan by Jonas Merian
Divina is known for its extraordinary range of colours, first created in 1984 by the Danish painter and graphic artist Finn Sködt and regularly updated by him ever since. It is a full-cloth textile with a smooth, directionless and uniform surface, very similar to the properties of felt.
Bagpacker by Silvia Knüppel
Divina translates as ‘heavenly,’ or ‘divine,’ and the name has been chosen because of the way colours can be expressed in the material. It is one of the finest products in Kvadrat’s range for showing-off colours in all their glory. The textile comes in three different variations: Divina (56 colours), Divina Melange (25 colours) and Divina MD (27 colours).
Guadalupe Daybed by Bethan Laura Wood
Finn Sködt, now 70, still continues his practice from his studio in Denmark; he is most noted for his instinctive understanding of colour. Sködt first worked with Kvadrat in the 1970s on their visual identity, soon after the company was founded, and later designed patterns and colour ranges for textiles such as Divina.
Daybed by Muller van Severen
Designers and Curators
Designers selected for the Divina exhibition include Lindsey Adelman, Werner Aisslinger, Anton Alvarez, Big-Game, Duangrit Bunnag, Gonçalo Campos, Jonas’ Design, François Dumas, Martino Gamper, Graphic Thought Facility, Richard Hutten, Silvia Knüppel, Max Lamb, Peter Marigold, Studio Minale-Maeda, Philippe Nigro, Klemens Schillinger, Muller Van Severen, Jerszy Seymour, Robert Stadler, Katharina Wahl and Bethan Laura Wood.
Divina Calendar by Graphic Thought Facility
Curators include Njusja de Gier, Richard Hsu, Hans Maier-Aichen, Yves Marbrier and Constance Rubini. Kvadrat celebrates Divina during Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan 2014.
Stripe Daybed by Big-Game
‘We are delighted to be celebrating our iconic Divina textile coloured by Finn Sködt, a great friend and collaborator who has lent his painterly eye to Kvadrat since our early days in the 1970s. Over 30 years Divina has continued to be one of our most successful textiles, with a texture that lends itself to an intense and vibrant representation of colour. It is exciting to see the interpretations of this diverse group of contemporary designers and to pay tribute to Divina’s incredible range.’ Anders Byriel, CEO of Kvadrat.
Garlands by Studio Minale-Maeda
The Divina exhibition follows on from the success of the Hallingdal 65 exhibition in Milan in 2012, inspired by one of the company’s first and most popular textiles, designed in 1965 by Nanna Ditzel. A special book with an essay by Hettie Judah and edited by Henrietta Thompson will accompany the exhibition.
Obese Door, Voluptuous Door by Katharina Wahl
In addition to celebrating Divina a new collection of knitted fabrics by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec will be launched in Kvadrat’s Milan showroom. The company’s sister brand, Danskina will showcase a new collection of rugs created under its newly appointed Design Director Hella Jongerius; Kinnasand will open a new Milan showroom designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Toyo Ito; and the launch of Kvadrat’s new textile collection with Raf Simons (Creative Director, Dior) will be celebrated with the Italian retailer Spotti.
News: “An architecture challenge doesn’t come much better than this,” says David Chipperfield, who has been named winner in the competition to design a new home for the Nobel Prize in Stockholm (+ slideshow).
David Chipperfield Architects saw off competition from Swedish studios Wingårdh and Johan Celsing Arkitektkontor to land the prestigious commission to create the Nobel Center – an exhibition centre and events venue for the award that recognises advances in science and culture.
“I think all projects are important but this project has enormous meaning, not just for the city of Stockholm but internationally. An architecture challenge doesn’t come much better than this,” said Chipperfield.
The architect’s vision is for a shimmering brass-clad building on the waterfront. It will be fully glazed on the ground floor, opening out to a new city park on the sunny south-eastern side of the site.
“The jury finds the lightness and openness of the building very appealing and consistent with the Nobel Foundation’s explicit ambition to create an open and welcoming centre for the general public,” said Nobel Foundation executive director Lars Heikensten, who was a member of the judging panel.
“We view the winning proposal as a concrete interpretation of the Nobel Prize as Sweden’s most important symbol in the world. Stockholm will gain a building – magnificent but without pomp, powerful yet graceful – with qualities like those the City Hall gave the capital a century ago.”
Fellow jury member Per Wästberg added: “We view the winning proposal as a concrete interpretation of the Nobel Prize as Sweden’s most important symbol in the world. Stockholm will gain a building – magnificent but without pomp, powerful yet graceful – with qualities like those the City Hall gave the capital a century ago.”
As well as hosting the annual award ceremony each December, the building will provide a public centre for exhibitions, educational activities, events and meetings.
Proposed site plan
“It can be spectacular on its greatest night, but also it can be very useful and functional and working the rest of the year,” said Chipperfield.
The chair, called Mollo, has been designed for British brand Established & Sons and is Malouin‘s first project for a commercial furniture brand.
The chair is made without any hard internal structure. The design aesthetic came about as Malouin was experimenting with the expanded polystyrene foam – an everyday foam that you might find in a mattress.
“We always knew we wanted to make something super soft and comfortable and [Mollo] kind of happened by accident,” said Malouin.
The seat and arms are created using stitches to make shapes in the material. “Imagine you are putting your finger on the foam, where that pressure is you place a stitch and that creates the seat which is lower than the armrests,” he explained. “This curves the foam is such a way that gives it its plumpness and shape.”
The prototype was made from a single piece of foam, but it will be produced using two pieces. The foam is upholstered in velvet.
Speaking about why he decided to work with Established & Sons, Malouin said, “they just came to the studio to meet me at the beginning of this experiment and they were interested in developing it. I rarely contact people because I’m too shy but I’ve always admired the brand and wanted to work with them.”
The chair is being shown until 13 April at Istituto dei Ciechi, 7 Via Vivaio, Milan.
Children can clamber onto the curved roof of this community library in China, which architects John Lin and Olivier Ottevaere designed for an earthquake-damaged village in Yunnan Province (+ slideshow)
Ottevaere and Lin led a team from the University of Hong Kong to design The Pinch, a library and community centre built as part of a government reconstruction following the 2012 Yunnan earthquakes.
Situated in the mountain village of Shuanghe in south-west China, the library and surrounding plaza offers a meeting place for local residents, as well as a space where children can play and read.
“Villages in China often prioritise building houses over community spaces and community programs, even though it is an important aspect of village life,” Lin told Dezeen.
“Although the government provided an open plaza for the reconstruction, we wanted to help introduce a program which would activate the site. By adding the library, we have created an important public and communal facility in the village,” he explained.
The library features a twisted shape that bends out to meet an elevated stretch of pavement, allowing visitors to walk over the roof and look out towards a new basketball court.
Inside, rows of books sit on shelves made from interlocking timber frames, which are suspended from the ceiling and hover just above the floor.
Simple school benches offer flexible seating, while polycarbonate plastic doors and windows front the building.
The project was part-funded by the University of Hong Kong. Forming part of a knowledge exchange project, the design team worked with a local timber company to learn about native wood and regional construction techniques.
Here’s a project description from the design team:
The Pinch: library and community centre
The Pinch is a library and community centre in Shuanghe Village, Yunnan Province, China. The project is part of a government-led reconstruction effort after an earthquake in Sept 2012. The majority of village houses were destroyed, leaving the residents living in tents for up to one year. After the earthquake the government has sponsored new concrete and brick houses and a large central plaza. During the first site visit, the houses remained incomplete and the plaza was a large empty site.
The University of Hong Kong decided to sponsor the design and implementation of a new library building. Located in the new but empty public plaza, it would serve to activate the community and provide a physical memorial for the event. The site of the library is against a 4 meter high retaining wall. The design spans across this level difference and acts as a bridge between the rebuilt village and the new memorial plaza. Emphasising its location in a remote mountain valley, the design responds visually to the space of the valley, offering stunning views across a dramatic double curved roof. The structure itself rises to a peak, a monument to the earthquake and rebuilding effort.
As a Knowledge Exchange Project, the construction involves collaboration with a local timber manufacturing factory. The process resulted in the development of a surprisingly diverse form through simple means. A series of trusses is anchored between the upper road level and lower plaza level.
The form of each truss changes to create both a gradual incline (to bring people down) and then a sharp upward pitch (to elevate the roof). The trusses were covered in an aluminium waterproofing layer and timber decking. On the interior, the trusses extend downward to support a floating bookshelf. Simple traditional school benches are used as chairs. The polycarbonate doors can open to create a completely open space extending out to the plaza.
Rather than submitting to the abandonment of wood construction (as with the houses after the earthquake), the project reasserts the ability to build contemporary timber structures in remote areas of China.
Construction diagram
Location: Shuanghe Village, Yunnan Province, China Design: Olivier Ottevaere and John Lin / The University of Hong Kong Construction: Kunming Dianmuju Shangmao Company Funding: Supported by the Knowledge Exchange Impact Award, HKU Project Team: Crystal Kwan (Project Manager), Ashley Hinchcliffe, Connie Cheng, Johnny Cullinan, Jacky Huang Size: 80 sqm Cost: 130,000 rmb Unit Cost: 1600 rmb/sqm
Milan 2014: Danish design brand Menu has launched its first chair, as part of a collection by Stockholm studio Afteroom that also includes a stackable table and a stone caddy.
Afteroom Chair with the Menu collection
Taiwanese designers Hung-Ming Chen and Chen-Yen Wei of Afteroom first presented the Afteroom Chair in 2012, but are launching it with Menu at the Salone Satellite in Milan this week, alongside the Afteroom Side Table and the Afteroom Caddy.
The three-legged chair’s rounded details, such as the oak seat and back support, contrast with the solid-steel linear frame. The result is a minimal design that pays tribute to an early twentieth-century aesthetic.
Afteroom Chair with the Menu collection
“The Afteroom Chair is an homage to Bauhaus and functionalism. The simplicity of its design combined with the quality of materials is what’s important,” said Afteroom’s Hung-Ming Chen.
Afteroom Chair
“We embraced the challenge of designing something minimalistic with clean lines, without in any way compromising its comfort. In that sense we’ve looked towards classic Scandinavian features as inspiration,” he said.
Afteroom Chair
“Afteroom Chair is based on the concept of reducing the amount of materials to the minimum and by doing so pushing the aesthetic appearance to the maximum,” added Chen-Yen Wei. “It’s a designer’s job to develop functional objects without compromising the aesthetics.”
Afteroom Side Table
The chair is available in black, white, moss green and light grey.
Afteroom Side Table
To complete the collection, Afteroom have also created a stackable side table designed to be “as practical and durable as it is beautiful” and a stoneware caddy designed for tabletop storage in the kitchen, bathroom or office.
Afteroom Caddy
Afteroom will be on Stand d17 at SaloneSatellite Tuesday 8 – Sunday 13 April 2014, 9.30am – 6.30pm.
An austere concrete wall screens the transparent lower floor of this house in southern Brazil, while the overhanging upper storey is masked behind a layer of timber slats (photos by Leonardo Finotti + slideshow).
Designed by MAPA, an architecture collective based in Brazil and Uruguay, XAN House is a summer residence located near the beach in Xangrilá, a small town south of Porto Alegre.
The ground floor is dedicated to the family’s communal activities while the upstairs level contains bedrooms, and the architects chose to highlight this difference through the use of different external materials.
A single-storey concrete wall stretches across the site, from the north-west to the south-east, screening the ground floor from the street. Behind it, the rest of the walls feature floor-to-ceiling glazing that allows residents to open their living spaces out to the landscape.
“A summer house is a space full of freedom, a place to enjoy an outdoor life,” said the architect. “This fact conditioned the way the project was faced.”
The positioning of furniture divides the space up into different zones for cooking, dining, reading and relaxing. The ceiling overhead is exposed concrete, while the floor is covered with tiles that continue outside the walls.
Upstairs, large balconies extend the length of the floor, creating overhangs that shelter both the front entrance and a rear patio. One balcony belongs to the master bedroom and en suite, while the other sits alongside two smaller bedrooms.
Both balconies and rooms are surrounded by the timber screen, but sections of it fold open to reveal windows.
Laser-cut stainless steel creates an intricately patterned surface on the walls of this upgraded metro station in Amsterdam by architecture firm Maccreanor Lavington (+ slideshow).
Maccreanor Lavington‘s Rotterdam studio overhauled the 1970s Kraaiennest station in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, increasing its capacity and modernising its facilities.
The decorative steel screens surround the new ground-level entrance, allowing natural light to filter inside during the day. After dark, lights glowing from within transform the structure into a glowing beacon that makes it easy for locals to find.
“At night time the design allows the station to be a lantern for the local neighbourhood,” said the architect in a statement.
As well as the laser-cut panels surrounding the base of the station, the opaque upper walls are also made from stainless steel. The architect says this material will age well and need little maintenance.
Unlike the old station, which only offered stairs, the new facility incorporates a series of escalators to transport passengers up to the platform. This will help it offer regular transport to around 100,000 local residents.
The upgraded Kraaiennest station is the latest in a series of infrastructure improvements underway in the 1960s neighbourhood. It follows the 2008 completion of Grimshaw’s Bijlmer Station, which was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize.
Here’s a project description from Maccreanor Lavington:
New €14 million Metro Station completed in Amsterdam
London and Rotterdam based architecture firm, Maccreanor Lavington has completed a major new metro station in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The new 550m² station and 1,880m² platform in the neighbourhood of Bijlmermeer started on site in 2010 and sits on the site of the original station, built in 1970.
The metro station features a ground level entrance with new escalators to take passengers up to the platforms, a major improvement for citizens as the old station only had stairs. The ground level entrance provides the main focal point of the station with an elegant stainless steel facade with a floral design. The laser cut design allows plenty of natural light to flow through the entrance, helping the passenger journey to seamlessly flow from the external surroundings into the station.
At night time the design allows the station to be a lantern for the local neighbourhood, creating a sense of warmth on street level and creating an instantly recognisable feature for the station. The architects’ chose stainless steel for the external facade due to its durability and low maintenance enabling the station not to need constant upkeep.
Since the beginning of the late 1990s the area has seen massive investment transforming it from its previous negative public opinion and now making it a thriving suburb of Amsterdam.
Now completed, the station will be in use by over 100,000 residents in Bijlmermeer, a vast increase on the number of users from when the station first opened and completes one of the biggest urban regeneration projects in Europe in recent history.
Milan 2014: brushed steel frames surround monochrome shirts at this installation that Japanese studio Nendo has created for fashion brand COS, unveiled in Milan today (+ movie).
The COS x Nendo installation comprises a series of white shirts, which are displayed on stands and hung from the ceiling at different heights throughout the space.
Geometric brushed-steel frames in a variety of heights and widths surround the clothes, and the parts of the shirts that sit inside them are dyed with different shades of grey.
“I feel that Nendo and Cos have a lot in common with how we see things, simplicity, purity and focusing on the small details,” said Nendo founder Oki Sato. “When you look at a white shirt from COS it explains so much, so I decided to let the shirt do the talking.”
At the front of the space are five metal frames that incrementally increase in size. These surround a series of shirts, which gradually change colour from white to dark grey according to the scale of the surrounding stand.
“The white shirt is the cornerstone of our design philosophy; we love to reinvent them every season and so we were really excited that Nendo picked the shirt as a centrepiece for the installation, as it is such an important part of our collection,” said Martin Andersson, head of menswear design at COS.
Milan 2014: British artist Sarah Lucas presents her debut furniture collection, made from concrete blocks and MDF, in Milan tonight (+ slideshow).
The 14 limited-edition pieces have been created for the Sadie Coles gallery in London in collaboration with the London Art Workshop.
The range includes tables, chairs, benches, a desk, and a free-standing partition wall made from materials previously used as plinths and platforms to display Lucas’ artwork. Each piece is numbered, stamped and signed by the artist.
The concrete breeze blocks used in the pieces are identically sized and have been embedded horizontally or vertically into the pale wooden frames, creating a grid-like appearance.
Lucas said she used the materials because they are “meaningful in terms of their uses in the outside world. They say a lot and are also low key, they don’t overwhelm the sculptures.”
The rough concrete and the smooth but sharp-edged MDF are in stark contrast to one another. Lucas said the result was “surprisingly stylish” and the texture and colour “both seem very real'”.
The largest piece in the collection is the freestanding partition wall, a structure made from 10 by 10 concrete blocks that have been set in a uniform grid.
The smallest is a table made of just one block that can slide in and out of its frame.
Other pieces include a bench and chair, both of which Lucas intended as stand-alone pieces for a gallery.
The bench is made of 16 blocks set vertically in the MDF frame. It uses blocks for both the back and the seat and can seat four people. The chair consists of eight blocks set horizontally into the MDF.
The collection will be shown in a private view from 17.00 – 20.00 today at Via San Gregorio 43 / Via Casati 32 20124 Milano.
Here’s some more information about the collection:
Sadie Coles HQ presents Sarah Lucas Furniture
From 8th to 12th April 2014, Sadie Coles HQ presents 14 limited edition, numbered, stamped and signed new furniture designs by the British artist Sarah Lucas, on display at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano. These limited editions – each numbered, stamped and signed – mark a dramatic new development in Lucas’s practice. Materials that previously acted as plinths and platforms for her artworks have been reconfigured into stand-alone pieces including tables, chairs, benches, a desk, and a freestanding partition wall.
Produced in collaboration with specialist fabricators the London Art Workshop, Sarah Lucas Furniture (2013) comprises mass-produced, basic construction materials – concrete breeze blocks and MDF – that have pervaded Lucas’ art for several years. For each of the pieces, identically sized and exactingly arranged breeze blocks have been embedded into hard edged, minimalist MDF frameworks, creating a brutalist kind of inlay or ‘intarsia’, the antique practice of setting wood or stone within a surface.
Lucas describes the concrete and MDF materials as “surprisingly stylish”, pinpointing their appeal through their “texture, colour – both of which seem very ‘real'”. To Lucas, using these versatile materials is “meaningful in terms of their uses in the outside world. They say a lot and are also low key, they don’t overwhelm the sculptures.”
In Lucas’ furniture, concrete fulfils both a functional and aesthetic role, serving as durable readymade building blocks while investing the furniture with a uniform utilitarian appearance. Indeed the grid-like appearance of the breeze blocks in the objects call to mind the modular compositions of Minimalist artists such as Donald Judd and Carl Andre.
This can be witnessed especially in the monumentalism of the free standing wall from the series. Certain of the works have been specifically designed by Lucas as gallery furniture – as seats to be placed within a larger exhibition of the artist’s work.
Sarah Lucas Furniture also echoes the artist’s long-term use of furniture as anthropomorphic sculptural apparatus. Chairs especially have often featured in sculptures as stand-ins for the human body. In the series, Bunny (1997 – onwards), the chair was a key component of the work – stuffed tights clamped to chair legs implied splayed legs in an ambiguous expression of either sexual availability or vulnerability. One implication of this new body of work is that real human bodies have assumed the place, or status, of sculptures.
Overt and often comic literalism has long been a hallmark of Lucas’ work, above all in her use of found real-life objects such as toilets, cigarettes and furniture. That literalist quality is extended in these functioning pieces: their radical blurring of art and life recalls earlier conflations of sculpture and useable furniture by artists such as Franz West, with whom Lucas collaborated on several occasions, and the American artist Scott Burton.
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