New York architecture studio Bureau V showed its debut menswear collection based on theories by German architect Gottfried Semper during New York Fashion Week.
Bureau V centred its first foray into fashion design around Semper’s nineteenth-century Stoffwechseltheorie, which describes the replication of old construction techniques when implementing new materials.
With this in mind, the studio used the performance-driven shapes of cycling shorts and fisherman’s waders and created garments in lighter, textured fabrics and a minimal palette.
“We’ve shifted the materials and tweaked the shapes to migrate some of the forms of this clothing outside of sport and into a more formal setting,” Bureau V’s Peter Zuspan told Dezeen.
Oxford shirts with mesh vents under the arms and bibbed long johns feature in the 12-piece collection, along with felt T-shirts and tweed shorts.
White and light grey tones help to emphasise the textures such as waffle cotton knit and quilted cellulose fabric, plus diverge from the overuse of black in architect’s clothes according to Zuspan.
“The original reason we chose the colours was a minor protest to architects’ (and New Yorkers’) longterm obsession with black,” he told Dezeen. “That said, we also appreciate the light colour’s ability to show off the more sculptural details in the clothing with minimal lighting.”
The studio enjoyed the speed of working on a fashion collection compared to drawn-out architecture projects.
“We’re a younger studio and one of our biggest frustrations we find with architecture is that it’s just too slow,” said Zuspan. “A fashion design project that we designed and worked on for 2-3 months was very refreshing.”
Bureau V collaborated with design platform BYCO to produce the garments, which are now for sale. The collection was first shown last Thursday at the Dillon Gallery as part of New York Fashion Week.
Other architects that have tried their hand at fashion design include Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid and Oscar Niemeyer, who have all previously created shoe collections.
Bureau V’s capsule collection takes as its point of departure 19th century German architect Gottfried Semper’s Stoffwechseltheorie, a historical theory that describes how forms derived from material-specific practices often shift into other materials, creating valuable lingering forms that bear no material justification.
The collection presented at New York’s Dillon Gallery
The collection expands upon this theory from material practices to utility at large. Taking extreme performance-driven forms (such as bicycle bib shorts and fisherman’s waders), the collection shifts both the clothing’s material and its context, removing much of the utility from the work, and thereby re-contextualising material formal artefact as sculptural gesture.
The collection presented at New York’s Dillon Gallery
The collection is presented by BYCO, a tech-platform for design, which has an ongoing project to collaborate with designers to create work outside of their respective discipline.
There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you use your brand new gadget for the first time: The smell when you open the box, removing the screen cover and touching it for the first time. But there and then you know that…
News:Jean Nouvel’s One Central Park residential tower in Sydney will feature the world’s tallest vertical garden by inventor of living walls, Patrick Blanc.
Blanc, who has been designing living walls for over 30 years, has been working with Nouvel to install plants and vines up the 166-metre facade of Sydney’s One Central Park tower – which when completed later this year will become the tallest living wall in the world.
“The building, together with my vertical garden, will be an architectural work floating in the air, with plants growing on the walls – it will create a very special result that will be very new to Sydney,” said Blanc.
The vertical garden consists of 190 native Australian and 160 exotic plant species. The shrubbery covers 50 percent of the building’s facade and according to the designers intends to extend the greenery from the adjacent park onto the building.
The Central Park project by Ateliers Jean Nouvel consists of two adjoining residential towers that house 624 apartments. Nouvel’s towers are 116 metres and 64.5 metres in height and are part of a larger mixed-use development that includes apartments, shops, cafes, restaurants and office units.
The tallest tower features a large cantilever that contains 38 luxury penthouse apartments. On the underneath, there is a heliostat of motorised mirrors that direct sunlight down onto the surrounding gardens. After nightfall the cantilever is used as a canvas for a LED light installation by artist Yann Kersalé.
Public tours of Central Park project were held in June and the development is due for completion by January 2014.
Interview: forty years after he first met her, London design retailer Zeev Aram has launched a website dedicated to the work of his late friend, the modernist designer Eileen Gray. In this interview, Aram describes his working relationship with the elderly designer who, despite being frail and almost forgotten, could ” see with one eye what many architects couldn’t see with two eyes” (+ slideshow).
De Stijl side table, 1922
Zeev Aram is the owner of the Aram Store, which he launched in 1964 on London’s fashionable Kings Road. He introduced the work of many legendary designers to the UK, including Marcel Breuer, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray, who he first met in 1973.
Aram says that Gray, who was revered in the 1920s and 30s for her modernist furniture and architectural projects, was almost forgotten by the time he first encountered her and was “a bit bemused that somebody was interested in her work.”
Bibendum armchair, 1926
Working with Gray, who was in her early-90s at the time, Aram began to reproduce some of her most famous pieces, including the Bibendum armchair, the E1027 table, and the Tube Light.
The two became close friends and Gray would regularly visit Aram at his showroom to talk about design. “Working with her was very, very appealing because she knew exactly her mind,” recalls Aram. “With one eye she saw what many architects I know and admire couldn’t see with two eyes.”
Tube Light, 1927
A contemporary of Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer and J.J.P. Oud, Gray was a pioneer of tubular steel and glass furniture and her architecture projects, including two houses in the Alpes Maritimes in southeast France, are now considered among the most outstanding examples of modernism from the interwar period.
Aram feels that Gray deserves to be considered alongside “all the other big shots, like Le Corbusier, Mies, Breuer,” but because she chose a “quiet, modest life she was not included.”
Before she died in 1976, Gray offered Aram the exclusive license to reproduce her products, but he now struggles to find the energy to battle the copyists who continually produce imitations. “I’m not prepared to spend my life with lawyers and solicitors and in courtrooms to prove that we have the license and these people are charlatans,” he says.
E1027 table, 1927
The new website, www.eileengray.co.uk, features images and information about Gray’s products and a timeline of her extraordinary life, which is currently being made into a feature film called The Price of Desire starring Orla Brady and musician Alanis Morissette.
Here’s a full transcript of our interview with Zeev Aram:
Alyn Griffiths: When did you first meet Eileen Gray?
Zeev Aram: I met her in 1973. I think she was 92 or 93 and she was retired many years and living in her flat in Paris, but I actually met her here in London.
Alyn Griffiths: Did you meet with her to discuss licensing her products?
Zeev Aram: No, not at all. Actually, my knowledge of her was quite thin. I remembered reading about her many years earlier when I was in college and she was just part of the milieu of art deco artists and designers. I must admit I didn’t really remember anything about her.
But then, in the late sixties there was a very interesting article written by Joseph Rykwert in Domus magazine about her and that triggered my curiosity about this particular artist that nobody wrote about, nobody talked about, nobody had seen her work. Neither had I, and then in the beginning of 1973 there was a small exhibition that my friend, the architect Alan Irvine, mounted at the Heinz Gallery that used to be the RIBA gallery in Portman Square and he said come along, it’s a little exhibition but it’s very interesting. So I went to see it but there were only pictures, and about three or four pieces of furniture and one of her rugs, so not very impressive and I looked at the pieces and the photographs and then I asked him how can I get in touch with her because I think her work is very interesting and very important but seems to somehow slip the consciousness of everybody, including me.
Alyn Griffiths: What did you think was so important about it?
Zeev Aram: Well, when you see something that triggers your curiosity and interest, that’s a good enough reason to pursue it further. I didn’t know what would come out of it, I didn’t know if she would be at all interested in talking to me, but I did know that what I saw was good. I’d been around the design world for a while and introduced a few things to the country when we opened the store on the Kings Road in Chelsea, so I just wanted to see what’s going to happen.
E1027 house interior
Alyn Griffiths: What was she like as a person?
Zeev Aram: Descriptive wise, she was a frail little lady. She was wearing glasses and one glass was black because she got injured in her eye and couldn’t see in one eye. Very frail and very elegant, but not in an ostentatious kind of way. She was very shy but at the same time she knew exactly what’s what.
She used to come over to visit her niece, the painter Prunella Clough, who would drive Eileen to us and we would sit and have tea and talk about little things, always more generally about what do I think about design and the way it is going and the way architecture is becoming very anonymous and nothing to do with the person who designed it.
It becomes a statement of structure, not a statement of the person who designed it. When she retired, she lived in the Roquebrune flat for many years and she was always doing little models and mock ups and plans, so she never retired from the work, as such, she retired from the world of the work. When she visited we would wander around the showroom and she would ask about the new materials and the new techniques like injection moulding and ABS plastics. She wanted to understand what was going on.
Roattino, 1931
Alyn Griffiths: Did she ever talk about the past and her relationships with some of the great architects she has worked with?
Zeev Aram: Not really because actually, don’t forget we’re talking about a lady of 93. Her interest was never waning, but her energy was and her stamina was. So we constantly dealt with the work in hand, what we were doing. Whenever I raised something like that, she would say “that was a long time ago” and what that meant was, actually that’s not interesting to talk about now.
She was very much involved and she knew her value, but you see – Joseph Rykwert said in his article that she was completely left in the sidelines, and everybody rushed ahead and the last person actually to pay homage to her was Le Corbusier because in the late thirties he included her work in an exhibition he did. And since then, until this article as Rykwert said, it’s surprising that nobody has said, “Here’s somebody that’s really important”. Meanwhile of course, we have all the other big shots, like Corbusier, Mies, Breuer etc, and she’s not included.
E1027 table, Bibendum chair and Tube light
Alyn Griffiths: Obviously you think she should be?
Zeev Aram: Not only that she should be. Not mega importance like Corbusier, who did the Unité d’Habitation, which is a very important statement architecturally. He knew how to major in publicity. But because of her modesty, maybe because of her style of life, she chose the quiet, the modest. If you are modest and you don’t shout, nobody asks you to do anything. So that was what she was.
Working with her was very, very appealing because she knew exactly her mind. With one eye she saw what many architects I know and admire couldn’t see with two eyes.
She was so precise, so accurate and so confident. For her to sit on a chair such as Bibendum and say to me it should be 3cm wider. I mean, I’ve worked with many architects – nobody would even – yes they’d measure, maybe it needs to be a bit wider, let me see. Anyway, she was quite an interesting person.
Bibendum chair, 1926
Alyn Griffiths: What was your working relationship like?
Zeev Aram: We were just working on the furniture because she was actually a bit incredulous. She wasn’t taking it as a joke, but she was a bit bemused that somebody was interested in her work.
She wouldn’t say it, although after several times meeting I managed to pull out a little bit because when we got to know each other she relaxed more and there was a bit of small talk and so on. I did sense that she was somewhat disappointed, but not in a sort of a big way – ‘I’m a great person and nobody thinks of my name’, but disappointed that she was forgotten. And yet, she knew – I mean J.J.P. Oud invited her to Holland and then they made a whole issue of her work and Rietveld said that she was one of the greatest and still the world just passed by. She was disappointed with a small ‘d’. Without the content, that’s the way life is, she had her wonderful years, she had wonderful fame, she had a wonderful working life – with ups and downs, and that’s that.
By the time you become ninety and almost a recluse, you adopt to a certain view of the world and she wasn’t expecting anything. So when Alan told her that this guy was interested to meet her and do something with her designs, she apparently shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Me? My work? Who’d be interested in my work?’
Brick screen
Alyn Griffiths: Which of her pieces is your favourite?
Zeev Aram: I love them all because they’re like your children. Each one has got its own character, you like each one because of what it is and each one has got its own inherent function and beauty. So no, I have no favourites but I do like when I see three of the E1027 tables side by side. I think this is the most wonderful composition, just to see how one differs from the other and how she resolved the solution in the problem of the different tables, it’s wonderful.
Alyn Griffiths: You worked with Eileen until her death in 1976 and in that time she decided that you were going to have the world license to produce her designs exclusively. Was that important to you?
Zeev Aram: Yes, very. It’s very important, not because it makes me recognised and makes me important, it’s important because I think we still haven’t quite finished but we are getting there. When I decided that I would like to introduce the designs her name was not at all on the front line of anything design, worldwide I’m talking about, not the person. And I asked friends of mine, good friends, architects and designers to tell me about Eileen Gray. What do you know about Eileen Gray? Nine-and-a-half out of ten were sucking their teeth, saying the name reminds me of something but I can’t put my finger on it. I’m paraphrasing, of course.
Now, 30 years have passed: it took Zeev Aram to make it happen – I’m sure that there would have been someone else but there wasn’t, the fact is that we did it and now you are interviewing me not because she’s an anonymous person, but because she’s an important design person.
Occasional Tables, 1927
Alyn Griffiths: I wanted to ask you about having the exclusive license and how difficult it is to look after that and to make sure people aren’t imitating these designs.
Zeev Aram: Yes, the table I mentioned before, the E1027, at last count there was something like 120 companies producing them. All over the place. You see, companies like Herman Miller and Vitra and Cassina are making big investments in these things and even so they cannot prevent people copying some of the designs. I think it is very frustrating, I have a whole pile of them, of people, and I just think we have won a few cases in the States and Germany and so forth. But life is too short. I’m not prepared to spend my life with lawyers and solicitors and in courtrooms to prove that we have the license and these people are charlatans. Because I tell you, there are police forces all over the world trying to prevent crime, and it still happens.
People who want the proper thing, they’ll come to us. People recognise it, people are prepared to pay for it. Because people who understand quality that’s the way it is. People who want the cheaper stuff, they buy the cheaper stuff and if it doesn’t perform and it breaks down it’s part of life. You buy cheap, you get cheap. And it’s not because I’m bitter about it, I’m not. It’s a fact of life. After my last court case, which was some years ago in the States, I said never again will I go through anything against any company. Although we won the case in the federal court, all expenses paid etcetera, I am not prepared. It’s too much. Too much of me going into that.
Alyn Griffiths: You’ve just launched a website dedicated to Eileen Gray’s work. Why did you decide that now was the time to do that?
Zeev Aram: This is not a late show, not a late, late show. It’s a damn late response. It was just one thing after another. We kept on saying it’s nearly ready, its nearly there. Years of saying this! So you know what, Halleluiah that it’s done. Now it’s there and we’ll make the best of it. It’s still not quite right, it needs some adjustments done. But at least it’s there for anyone who is interested in Eileen Gray and wants to know about her.
Alyn Griffiths: And what about the movie? Do you think that’s going to help bring her to the attention of a wider audience?
Zeev Aram: I’m sure, because you know people do like to see a nice cinema movie and so forth. And don’t forget the big retrospective exhibition at the Pompidou that will be opening very soon in Ireland, at the IMMA. Very nice. The same exhibition comes over to Ireland. And from then I think it’s being negotiated to go over to the States and from there it probably goes to Tel Aviv.
So by putting her work in a more comprehensive way, not just little samples, on the world stage in these important venues, it’s bound to enhance her reputation. And I mean there are quite a number of books written about her as you probably know and so it is all helping her reputation. She’s not God, but if we talk about all these big names in the design world I think Eileen Gray should be one of them. You know, because she is that important as far as I’m concerned.
Alyn Griffiths: What is it about her work that is so unique and so special?
Zeev Aram: It’s not that bend, its not that weld, its not that proportion, it’s not that function – it’s none of that. You must ask why do I think that the sunlight is wonderful, that the sunset is so wonderful. And you can’t start enumerating them, listing them.
I really feel, and I’m not joking, I feel I have a blessed life that I’m able to walk between not only other designs which we have in the showroom, but to walk between Eileen Gray’s work and to see all the time something fantastic and something interesting and something which gives me great delight. And it’s not because it makes money you know, it’s not the money value here.
It’s the satisfaction to see the person who has been able to create such wonderful stuff and to anticipate what is going through our mind today, to anticipate this 50 or 60 years ago. And that’s what makes it great.
L’artiste argentin Tomas Saraceno multiplie les installations magnifiques, et a récemment présenté « Solar Bell » une sculpture capable de s’élever dans le ciel. Construite avec des matériaux légers comme la fibre de carbone, il imagine ainsi un futur possible pour des structures habitables.
Cacti, gravel, concrete floors and a wooden bridge feature in this Brussels fashion boutique by JDS Architects (+ slideshow).
Danish architect Julien De Smedt of JDS Architects created the raw industrial interior for the two-storey Siblingsfactory shop, which opened last week in Belgium’s capital city. The store sells clothing and accessories for men and women, vintage furniture and a selection of homeware, plus the design team has also created a small magazine library where customers can sit down and have a cup of tea.
Fibreboard bridge
Raw concrete and white painted walls surround the retail space. A fibreboard footbridge spans diagonally across the double-height store entrance, while rows of thin cacti are planted in gravel along the edge of the mezzanine.
Ground floor
The ground floor features rows of clothing rails and a long wooden reception desk. Box-like shelves are hidden under a staircase and display products such as lamps and footstools.
Ground floor reception
Two white shelves are fixed to the concrete wall behind the reception desk and used to display accessories such as bags.
On the second floor there additional clothing rails and a selection of furniture pieces, including a bookshelf made from five stacked wooden boxes.
The architects positioned vintage furniture pieces around the store, alongside new products designed by Julien De Smedt and lamps by French lighting designer Marine Breynaert.
First floor
Siblingsfactory opened last week to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of clothing label Le Mont St Michel. Other brands on sale include A Peace Treaty and Studio Nicholson, and the store plans to donate a portion of its annual profits to children’s charity Afghanistan Demain.
Last week De Smedt launched Makers With Agendas – a new design brand with products ranging from solutions to natural disasters to coat hooks and tea sets. Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs spoke to De Smedt ahead of the launch. Read the full interview »
Marie de Moussac and Aymeric Watine, Siblingsfactory co-founders
Photographs are by Nico Neefs, courtesy JDS Architects.
Here’s a project description:
SiblingsFactory concept store
A concept store of 230m2 invented by the Belgian architect Julien De Smedt, pleasant and welcoming, ideal for beauty, quality and excellence in the heart of the Dansaert district in Brussels.
Marie de Moussac and Aymeric Watine, SiblingsFactory co-founders
In Siblingsfactory one finds a coherent and intelligent mix of fashion, design and contemporary art. One can enjoy a sophisticated selection of fashion and accessories for men and women, exhibitions, vintage furniture and design, a cup of tea and a library with art magazines.
To realise the project, co-founders Aymeric Watine and Marie de Moussac worked closely with the JDSA architects and its founder Julien De Smedt. The agency consists of young architects and designers who are known for projects such as the ski jump in Oslo and their collaboration with Muuto.
She studied communications at the EFAP (Ecole Française des Attachés de Presse et des Professionnels de la Communication). Marie then spent eight years working at a communication agency in Paris as a project manager. Marie is passionate about contemporary art and design and has a thorough knowledge of the art market.
In 2007, she works for an advertising agency in Kabul in Afghanistan and met Mehrangais Ehsan, founder of the association Afghanistan Demain, which aims to get children off the street and into school. A portion of the proceeds from the new Siblingsfactory concept store will be donated to the charity.
News: ICSID president Brandon Gien has told Dezeen that lack of entries to be World Design Capital 2016 was “because it is expensive,” after Taipei submitted the only bid.
Speaking to Dezeen at the Gwangju Design Biennale, International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) president Brandon Gien cited the current financial climate and high cost of hosting the event as a possible reason for the lack of interest in the project.
“It’s disappointing that only one city made it through, maybe it’s a sign of the economic times,” he said. “It’s perhaps an indicator that we need to look at World Design Capital so it’s not prohibitive for cities around the world to enter, because it is expensive.”
He hopes that a city from a developing country submits a bid next time around as he believes they would benefit the most from carrying the title.
“I would love to see developing countries around the world have the ability put themselves forward for World Design Capital,” said Gien. “It’s the people of those cities that probably need design the most.”
Last month the ICSID, which oversees the World Design Capital programme, revealed that the city of Taipei submitted the only bid with any potential to successfully quality for the accolade, which is awarded to one city every two years.
The Taiwanese capital passed the first evaluation phase last month, though Gien was unable to say what will happen if Taipei fails to qualify for the designation and simply proposed to “cross that bridge if we get there”.
He is confident about more interest for 2018 and said many cities have already expressed interest. “I know a whole bunch of cities in the pipeline wanting to put forward a bid for 2018, so maybe it’s just a cyclical thing,” Gien said.
La fascination pour les jouets sous forme de kit de l’artiste suédois Michael Johansson ont influencés nombreux de ses projets. Il détourne des objets du quotidien qu’il démonte et donne à voir sous forme de kit à assembler. Une manière non conventionnelle et ludique de revisiter le quotidien à découvrir en images.
Mugi Yamamoto è giovane designer nato in Giappone e cresciuto in Svizzera; quest’anno si è laureato a Losanna e con il progetto di tesi, la stampante Stack, ha già fatto bingo. La stampante è stata recensita dai migliori blog di design, ma nel sito di Yamamoto sono pubblicati altri progetti che dimostrano sia grande inventiva che una rassicurante concretezza (guarda qui e qui).
Ad ogni modo il suo pezzo pregiato è questa stampante: dopo aver studiato le tipologie di stampanti in commercio è riuscito a produrne una versione originale, molto innovativa e plausibile. Stack è una piccola stampante di formato A4 di dimensioni ridotte grazie all’idea di portare all’esterno la carta da stampa. La stampante, infatti, va posta in cima a una pila di fogli, così che può pescare la carta non da un cassetto esterno ma dal mucchio sottostante. E’ evidente come questo prodotto abbia dei limiti ma le sue dimensioni compatte la rendono preferibile, per certi utilizzi, a una stampante tradizionale.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
