Blueprint Magazine April 2012

B
L
U
E
P
R
I
N
T

I
S
S
U
E

3
1
3

A
P
R
I
L

2
0
1
2

5
.
5
0

F
E
A
T
H
E
R
S
T
O
N
E

Y
O
U
N
G

T
H
E

C
H
E
M
I
C
A
L

B
R
O
T
H
E
R
S

N
O
R
D

J
O
S
E
P

L
L
U
I
S

M
A
T
E
O

T
H
E

B
O
A
T

P
R
O
J
E
C
T

I
M
M
/
M
A
I
S
O
N

E
T

O
B
J
E
T

B
I
S
A
Z
Z
A

P
R
A
D
A

L
A
N

V
A
N

D
E
R

W
I
E
L
BLUEPRINT
APRIL 2012 5.50
THE LEADING MAGAZINE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
LIGHTS!
CAMERA!
CONCRETE!
LLUIS MATEOS
FILMOTECA DE
CATALUNYA
B04 001 Cover ph:1 21/2/12 10:47 Page 1
+44 (0)20 7940 4269
o@cbsproducts.co.uk
colebrookbossonsaunders.com
UK France Germany Benelux Russia USA
Canada Australia Japan UAE
HAVE YOU NOTICED
MORE PEOPLE WORKING
WITH A TRADITIONAL
COMPUTER AND A TABLET?
SO HAVE WE.
+44 (0)20 7940 4266
info@cbsproducts.co.uk
colebrookbossonsaunders.com
UK France Germany Benelux Russia USA
Canada Australia Japan UAE
Dual Flo with tablet mount
*All trade names are registered trademarks of respective manufacturers limited.
Cradle to Cradle Certifed
CM
is a certifcation mark of MBDC.
All information subject to change without prior notice.
Project1:Layout 1 28/2/12 14:50 Page 1
TORINO
Design Wolfgang C R Mezger

take fexible table systems for instance
Our TORINO ip-top table can be ipped and closed in seconds thanks to its simple but ingenious mechanism.
Many tables can be wheeled away and stowed in small spaces in no time at all.

The crush-proof rubber edge prole prevents damage when regularly butting tables together, otherwise there are
other less expensive edge proles to choose from. Over 50 HPL surface colours and 4 wood veneers are standard.
A number of intelligent options are available in terms of accommodating power, data & technology including well
thought out horizontal and vertical cable management.
TORINO is a total family of exible tables, static tables and ancillary items - thus presenting a solution for just
about every conceivable application.
brunner
for further i email i@brunner-uk.com call 020 7309 6400 or visit www.brunner-group.com
exceptional seating & table solutions
for the contract market
Extensive new range of
innovative and inspiring
washrooms.
Vibrant new colours
and prints.
Complete washroom
solutions to ht your
budget.
We know that perlormance, practicality and cost-ellectiveness are your key considerations.
Contact us to order our new brochure. Call 01474 353333. www.venesta.co.uk
10-year guarantee.
We know education.
Boss bp.indd 2 26/01/2012 09:23
Boss bp.indd 3 26/01/2012 09:23
Start preparing to win!
www.fxdesignawards.co.uk
Categories:
Projects:
Leisure or Entertainment Venue
Museum or Exhibition Space
Workspace Environment
Public Space Schemes
Bar or Restaurant
Lighting Design
Public Sector
Retail Space
Hotel
Products:
Public, Leisure or Offce Furniture
2012 Product of the Year
Workplace Seating
Lighting Product
Surfaces
Special Awards:
Interior Design Practice of the Year
Breakthrough Talent of the Year
Lifetime Contribution to Design
Product Designer of the Year
Awards night:
22 November 2012
To enter:

For queries contact:
Maarja Pehk on +44 (0)7825 544 193
or email entries@fxdesignawards.co.uk
Deadline for entries:
20 July 2012
To reserve your table or seats go to:
or email fxawards@btinternet.com or
contact Tony Thompson on
+44 (0)7803 148 194
FXA/BP1/dps.indd 1 20/02/2012 11:53
FXA/BP1/dps.indd 2 20/02/2012 11:54
NEOREST/LE INTEGRATED WASHLET
The core function of the WASHLET is a
wand-jet system that uses warm water to
cleanse the intimate parts of the body.
The temperature, position and force of
the warm water jet can be individually
adjusted and for additional comfort, the
seat is pleasantly warm before you start.
TOTO has been refining this high-
tech innovation for over 30 years, with
some models incorporating the added
luxuries of automatic soft opening and
closing, drying and air purifying. Sixty
per cent of all Japanese households have
at least one and TOTO have sold more
than 30,000,000 worldwide. Now, five
different WASHLET products are
available in the European market, from
entry-level to total luxury models.
The WASHLET incorporates a
number of TOTOs Clean Technology
innovations, including the Tornado Flush,
rimless bowl and CeFiONtect glaze.
These reduce the build up of bacteria
and make them quicker and easier to
clean without aggressive chemicals. This
combined with TOTOs energy and water
saving technologies makes them an ideal
choice for hotels, workplaces, leisure
facilities and hospitals as well as
luxury bathrooms.
For a WASHLET demonstration, please
visit our London concept store:
140142 St. John Street
London EC1V 4UA
t: +44 (0)207 831 7544
e: London@totoeu.com
w: gb.toto.com
Toto.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 22/2/12 15:35 Page 2
GIOVANNONI WASHLET GL WASHLET
NEOREST/SE INTEGRATED WASHLET WASHLET REMOTE CONTROL
Toto.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 22/2/12 15:35 Page 3
Frankfurt am Main
15 20. 4. 2012
> Lighting
> Electrical engineering
> Home and building
automation
> Software for the
construction industry
www.light-building.com
info@uk.messefrankfurt.com
Tel. +44 (0) 17 84 41 59 50
Top themes:
Digitalisation of light
and buildings.
Buildings as power
stations.
The worlds leading trade fair
for Architecture and Technology
EDITORIAL
T. ++44 (0) 20 7336 5304
EDITOR
Johnny Tucker
johnny.tucker@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
SENIOR WRITER
Owen Pritchard
opritchard@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
PRODUCT EDITOR
Gian Luca Amadei
gamadei@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
ART DIRECTOR
Wes Mitchell
wmitchell@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
CHIEF SUB-EDITOR
Pamela Horne
INTERNS
Hitoha Tsuda
Kate Wood
CONTRIBUTORS
Jenny Brewer
Adrian Friend
Beatrice Galilee
Oliver Lowenstein
Patrick Myles
Sofie Pelsmakers
Christopher Rainbow
Rebekka Ranjan
Erik Spiekermann
Thomas Wensing
Herbert Wright
EDITORIAL STEERING COMMITTEE
Tim Evans, Sheppard Robson; Kieran
Long, journalist; Jeremy Myerson,
Helen Hamlyn Centre, RCA; Keith
Papa, BDP; Lee Penson, Penson
Group; Paul Simovic, Kohn Pedersen
Fox Associates; Cherill Scheer,
Cherill Sheer & Associates; Jason
Turner, Swanke Hayden Connell;
Chris Wilkinson, Wilkinson Eyre
PRODUCT RESEARCH
PRODUCT RESEARCHER
Sophia Sahin
T. ++44 (0) 20 7406 6546
F. ++44 (0) 20 7406 6519
Sophia.Sahin@progressivemediagroup.com
PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Clare Ovenell
covenell@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
TECHNICAL
PRINTING
S&G Print Group
NEWSTRADE DISTRIBUTION
COMAG Specialist Division
T. ++44 (0)1895 433800
BOOKSHOP/GALLERY DISTRIBUTION
Central Books
T. ++44 (0)20 8986 4854
PUBLISHING
CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Russell Milburn
HEAD OF EVENTS
Mike Callison
mcallison@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Theresa Dowling
ADVERTISING
SALES DIRECTOR
Joe Maughan
T. ++44 (0) 20 7406 6543
jmaughan@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
SALES MANAGERS
Alistair Fitzpatrick
T. ++44 (0) 20 7406 6629
afitzpatrick@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
Ryan Sloan
T. ++44 (0) 20 7406 6623
rsloan@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
ACCOUNT MANAGER
Craig Jones
T. ++44 (0) 20 7406 6577
cjones@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
Dean Cassar
T. ++44 (0) 20 7406 6626
dcassar@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
CLASSIFIED SALES MANAGER
Craig Glinski
T. ++44 (0) 20 7406 6626
cglinski@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
CLASSIFIED SALES EXECUTIVE
Liam ODonnell
T. ++44 (0) 20 7936 3859
liam.odonnell@blueprintmagazine.co.uk
ITALIAN REPRESENTATIVE
Paolo Capitini
T. ++39 0399 715 671
paolo.capitini@nicheland.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS
MARKETING EXECUTIVE
Jeanette Pletten
T. ++44 (0) 20 7936 6694
jeanette.pletten@progressivedigital
media.com
BLUEPRINT
Boundary House
91-93 Charterhouse Street
London, EC1M 6HR
www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk
COVER IMAGE: THE FILMOTECA DE CATALUNYA BY MATEO
ARQUITECTURA, PHOTOGRAPHED BY ADRIA GOULA
WORLD MARKET INTELLIGENCE LTD
John Carpenter House
7 Carmelite Street
London, EC4Y 0BS
T. +44 (0) 20 7936 6400
F. +44 (0) 20 7936 6813
(ISSN 0268-4926)
Blueprint is published monthly for 52/year by World
Market Intelligence Ltd, a Progressive Media Group
company, John Carpenter House, 7 Carmelite Street,
London, EC4Y 0BS, England.
No responsibility can be accepted for unsolicited
manuscripts or photographs. 2012.
All calls may be monitored for training purposes.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
SINGLE ISSUE PRICE: UK 5.50; EU C =11.50; US $20.00; ROW $25.50
ONE YEAR: UK 52; EU C =124.50; US $184.50; ROW $224.50
TWO YEAR: UK 88; EU C =218; US $325; ROW $393
BLUEPRINT DIGITAL ONE YEAR: UK 47.84; EU C =66.40; ROW $79.44
Blueprint Customer Services: cs@progressivemediagroup.com
Subscriptions Hotline: ++44 (0)845 155 1845 (local rate)
Fax: ++44 (0)20 8269 7877 E: subscriptions@progressivemediagroup.com
Blueprint Subscriptions, WMI Trade Media, Progressive House, P.O Box 99, Sidcup,
DA15 0EN, UK. Subscribe online at www.getthatmag.com
B04 014 Editorial PH.qxp:B09 17 editorial/pm 22/2/12 15:10 Page 20
It seems that atheism is now well on its way to becoming a
religion. Not only do we have one voice calling for edifices to
non-believers, but now dissenting non-followers are calling that
wrongheaded its a schism!
It probably hasnt escaped your notice that Alain de Botton
has rustled up a plan to build a temple for atheists in London
(see page 25 and, sorry Alain, page 38). The current scheme
looks a lot like something from an Underworld film minus the
crouching vampire or lycanthrope sitting atop it. High-profile
co-atheist Richard Dawkins has openly criticised it saying that,
should it happen, it would be a waste of money.
As a hardened non-believer, Ive browsed de Bottons Religion
for Atheists book I tried actually reading it and then found
myself too often stopping and talking out loud to it: Yes, but
For me, its heart and soul are in the right place. In fact thats
possibly the issue; it comes across as though de Botton has a
yearning, a soul that needs succour.
He argues in the book that we do and should appreciate the
beauty of a large religious edifice, such as Westminster Abbey
(whose western towers by Nicholas Hawksmoor are pictured
above). So why not appropriate this for atheism (this is a
simplified version of what hes saying)? Yes, there are beautiful
examples of religious architecture and art from centuries past,
read them in their historical context of politics, power, wealth,
patronage, control... It doesnt stop them being lovely, but it
does add a distinct layer of meaning that cannot be ignored.
Leni Riefenstahls documentaries are undeniably brilliant, but
there is that little issue of the subject matter and, for me, the
two have to be read together.
The idea of building such an edifice seems really odd. Who is
it actually for? Is it publicity for rationalism, or de Botton?
That said, it would definitely rile the religious establishment
and hopefully provoke wider debate. So, go for it! And if it gets
to planning, it should certainly set the cat among the angels
Perhaps a more acceptable secular celebration of humanity
is The Boat Project (see page 46). Rarely has a community-
based art project come up with such a brilliantly emotive idea.
Essentially, a new boat is being created from ordinary peoples
lives, in the shape of donations of wood with personal stories
attached. Now try translating this to architecture: what a sense
of community and ownership there would be.
Johnny Tucker, editor
EDITORIAL
BLUEPRINT APRIL 2012
15
BLUEPRINT
B04 014 Editorial PH.qxp:B09 17 editorial/pm 22/2/12 15:11 Page 21
Citterio S.p.A
23844 Sirone (Lecco) Italia
Via Don G. Brambilla 16/18
T. +39-031-853545
BASIC
Design:
Franco Mirenzi, Vittorio Parigi
C.R.S. Citterio
for Architecture
sales@citteriouk.com
UK Ofce. 0845-496-1010
www.citteriospa.com
Citterio.indd 1 27/09/2011 12:07
40 FILMOTECA DE CATALUNYA
Architect Josep Lluis Mateo,
principal of mateoarquitectura,
has completed the new 12m
Filmoteca de Catalunya at the
heart of the El Raval district
in Barcelona. Owen Pritchard
visits the building and speaks
to Lluis Mateo about the
characterless regeneration that
has blighted the area and his
passionate and unforgiving
response to it, which has
resulted in this
uncompromising building
60
62
SOLID FOUNDATION
Mosaic manufacturer Bisazza
will soon open a foundation
near Vicenza in Italy. Johnny
Tucker reports on the collection
housed in a remodelled
production facility
IMM COLOGNE/
MAISON ET OBJET
Jenny Brewer and Johnny
Tucker select the highlights
from two of the largest trade
shows that kick off the annual
cycle of design events
52 SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE
Founded by architects Alan Pert
and Robin Lee in 2002, NORD
enjoyed steady growth until the
partners announced that they
were going to split in late 2011.
Oliver Lowenstein meets Pert to
discuss how the practice will
continue to develop the
sensitive approach to
architecture that is apparent
across its built portfolio,
drawing on examples from the
early days to a new housing
scheme in Glen Dye, Scotland
17
46 LIFE BOAT
As part of the 2012 Cultural
Olympiad, The Boat Project
brings together the story of
1,200 wooden objects donated
by members of the public to
form a sea-worthy vessel that
will launch in May. Johnny
Tucker meets the designers and
curators of the project to
discover the process of
assembling the objects and the
stories behind them that have
created a work of art and
a unique piece of social history
FEATURES
40
A
D
R
I
A

G
O
U
L
A
46
52
C
H
A
R
L
E
S

H
O
S
E
A
B04 017 Contents ph.qxp:B08_17 contents/pm/sd/pk/ta 21/2/12 10:58 Page 17
20
25
65 OPENING SHOT
Artist Matthew Pictons piece,
Venice, depicts the literary and
architectural history of the city
VIEW
Featherstone Youngs Dellow
Centre; Alain de Bottons latest
plan; BMW and Serie at the
Olympic Park; Stanton Williams
museum of concrete and design
addition; letter from Munich; In
Numbers at the ICA; the
Chemical Brothers Dont Think
film; Diary; Achtung!
PRODUCE
In exploring two of the Earths
strongest, invisible, natural
forces gravity and magentism
designer Jlan van der Wiel
has developed a novel process
of creating furniture using
magnets, iron filings and liquid
plastic. At IMM Cologne Johnny
Tucker met the Gerrit Rietveld
Academie graduate to talk about
the inspiration behind this
project and how van der Wiel
hopes to push the concept to
create larger pieces
69
77
90
103
REVIEW
Event: Prada and AMOs 24 hour
Museum Exhibitions: David
Shrigley at the Hayward Books:
Jonathan Hills Weather
Architecture; Zaha Hadid and
Alberto Kalachs Moleskines;
Philipp Meusers Pyongyang
Architecture; Sang Lees The
Aesthetics of Sustainable
Architecture
SUSTAINABILITY SUPPLEMENT
A Japanese bridge replicated;
Comment by Sofi Pelsmakers
PRODUCTS
FROM THE ARCHIVES
From March 1989 we bring you
an article by Andy Robinson and
Niclas Dunnebacke that
reported on the large-scale
building works undertaken by
the city of Barcelona in the run
up to the 1992 Olympic games.
Also, we reproduce a sketch by
Javier Mariscal that unveiled his
vision for a flooded Barcelona,
complete with an aerial
transport system
18
REGULARS
34
69
65
70
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

P
R
A
D
A
L
I
N
D
A

N
Y
L
I
N
D
B04 017 Contents ph.qxp:B08_17 contents/pm/sd/pk/ta 21/2/12 09:42 Page 20
MODEL: AFFAIR by Uwe Fischer
For further information please contact Alex Knowles Agencies t +44 (0)7967.399759 a.knowles@cor.de www.cor.de
Business means movement, which is why the furniture on which you do business should be just as flexible as the business itself. It goes without
saying that the furniture also has to be exceptionally aesthetic and functional at the same time. In contract, the business collection from COR,
you will find all of these qualities in consummate form. A fine example of this is Affair a relaxed all-rounder that can be reconfigured endlessly
to create seating islands or never-ending sofas, room dividers or seating corners, just as the occasion and purpose require. Thereby providing the
most relaxed basis possible for any kind of business.
20
I
M
A
G
E

C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

M
A
T
T
H
E
W

P
I
C
T
O
N
/

S
U
M
A
R
R
I
A

L
U
N
N

G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
B04 020 Opening Shot ph.qxp:B09 20 Opening shot/pm/hw/ta 21/2/12 09:43 Page 22
OPENING SHOT
MATTHEW PICTON
Seen here for the first time in print is Venice, a new work by artist Matthew Picton.
it is made from pages of the 1911 novel Death in Venice by Thomas Mann and the
musical score for its operatic interpretation by composer Benjamin Brittan.
The edges of the paper have also been dipped in the water and mud of the
Venice lagoon, to evoke the memory of the citys devastating cholera epidemic
in the early 20th century and to highlight the fact that the city is slowly being
reclaimed by the sea, says the artist.
Picton was born in England and now lives and works in Oregon. A graduate of
history and economics from LSE, he explores the historic and fictional narratives
associated with specific cities through his work, building up cartographic
representations from distinct periods in history using texts and materials evocative
of the events that defined that age.
Venice and two new responses to Dublin and London, along with other work,
are now on show at the Sumarria Lunn Gallery, London W1, until 6 April.
matthewpicton.com
21
B04 020 Opening Shot ph.qxp:B09 20 Opening shot/pm/hw/ta 21/2/12 09:51 Page 23
A top chef uses the finest ingredients to create an excellent meal. An architect turns them into a kitchen.
Blueprint_496x328_GG_Festessen_GB.indd 1 28.08.2008 14:31:07 Uhr
For over 30 years now, the Vario 400 series cooktops have
provided the perfect combination of cutting-edge tech-
nology and superior design. They have been fne-tuned and
improved at every turn. Each of the 13 appliances from
the gas and induction cooktops to the electric grill, Teppan
Yaki and steamer are state of the art and yet incredibly
simple to use. Whats more, they are all modular, so they
can be mixed and matched as desired. Its everything you
could need to create something truly individual before
the cooking even starts.
For more information and a list of partners, please tele phone
0844 892 9026 or visit: www.gaggenau.com.
Alternatively, visit our showroom at: 40 Wigmore Street,
London, W1U 2RX.
The difference is Gaggenau.
A top chef uses the finest ingredients to create an excellent meal. An architect turns them into a kitchen.
Blueprint_496x328_GG_Festessen_GB.indd 2 28.08.2008 14:31:39 Uhr
Call 0121 753 0777
Email sales@solusceramics.com
Visit www.solusceramics.com
Do you need a breath of fresh air?
As one of the UKs largest commercial tile suppliers, Solus Ceramics can supply
almost any tile from around the world, including the more unusual ones. The
Italian Pandura range featured above is just one example. If you are struggling
for inspiration, try calling Solus Ceramics for a bit of welcome relief.
Writer, entrepreneur and architecture
enthusiast, Alain de Botton has
followed up writing about religion
from an atheist standpoint to
promoting atheist edifices.
Following on from the launch
of his book, Religion for Atheists,
de Botton has now unveiled plans
for a series of temples for atheists
to be built around the UK. The first,
designed by Tom Greenall Architects
and Jordan Hodgson Designs (above),
is for a 46m-high black tower to sit
among the offices and banks of the
City of London. A representation of
the age of the Earth, with each
centimetre of the towers height
equating to one million years, at its
base would be a band of gold a mere
1mm wide, that would relate to the
human presence on the planet.
Why should religious people have
the most beautiful buildings in the
land? asks de Botton. Its time
atheists had their own versions of
the great churches and cathedrals.
De Botton is no stranger to
commissioning buildings his Living
Architecture programme has seen the
construction of bespoke houses in the
UK by architects such as NORD (see
page 52), Simon Conder and David
Kohn, for the public for rent.
Stanton Williams heads to Germany
to transform a former foundry into
a museum of concrete art and design
A competition calling for the
transformation of a 19th-century
foundry in Ingolstadt, Germany, into
the new site of the Museum of
Concrete Art and Design, has been
won by architecture practice Stanton
Williams (jointly with DFZ
Architekten) with its sensitive
addition to the existing building.
Noted for its recent UAL campus
at Kings Cross for Central St Martins,
which integrates a Grade II listed
granary and transit sheds into the
masterplan, Stanton Williams has
proposed to maintain the generous
space and light of the foundry hall. It
forms a flexible exhibition space at
the centre of the scheme, wrapped by
the new additions housing the foyer,
cafe and smaller exhibition spaces.
The proposal also responds to the
form of the foundrys trussed roofs,
reinforcing its robust, industrial
elegance, and uses cast materials
in-situ concrete, naturally, and
corrugated cast iron panels to unify
the building with its historical
context and for future use.
T
H
O
M
A
S

G
R
E
E
N
A
L
L

&

J
O
R
D
A
N

H
O
D
G
S
O
N
After promoting architect-
designed holiday hideaways,
Alain de Botton turns
his attention to far loftier
preoccupations...
VIEW
25
S
T
A
N
T
O
N

W
I
L
L
I
A
M
S
B04 025 View1/Smalls ph:B09 25 v1/ki 21/2/12 09:52 Page 1
Just off Brick Lane, on Wentworth
Street in Londons East End, is the
Dellow Centre, new premises of the
charity Providence Row that supports
the homeless in Tower Hamlets and
the City of London. London-based
architect Featherstone Young has
just completed a new arts and
activity building on a site opposite
the charitys exisiting facilities,
built in the Eighties.
They appointed us because we
were local, says Sarah Featherstone,
director of Featherstone Young. Im
not sure how familiar they were with
our other work, but they wanted an
architect who really understood the
local area. Featherstone Young has
undertaken jobs with a sensitive brief
and hugely specific requirements from
the client with great success in the
past, exercising great rigour in
understanding the clients needs and
finding a suitable design response.
The original brief from Providence
Row had been for a two-storey
building, but it was reworked to
workshop behind to the courtyard
the centre offers bike maintenance
courses over a six-week period to
groups and hopes to expand its remit.
In summer, activities will spill out
into the courtyard. The project was
about addressing the courtyard.
Allowing the clients to see what is
going on through the workshop
windows and doors will pique
curiosity, says Featherstone.
Above this is a cantilevered level
clad in Bluclad external rainscreen
board that from a distance has the
appearance of concrete. The facade
zigzags across the building, with its
four windows set in to be angled
away from the hostel rooms opposite
while maximising the amount of
light entering the building from
the crowded space outside. This
tiered facade challenges the
rectilinear geometry of the courtyard
and provides the building with
a visual stimulus.
It is a bold move for the architect
and Providence Row to make,
but it speaks volumes about the
conviction that the architect has
in the building and that the charity
has in its presence.
On the second floor the green
steel reappears, the building line
receding to create a tight but pleasant
enough balconied floor for the
charitys administrative staff. Large
sliding glazed doors allow the light to
pour into the open-plan office that is
home to eight full-time staff and an
army of support staff and therapists
who help the Dellow Centre operate.
The interior plan is simple: the
building has three principal spaces
that sit behind the facade a
workshop on the ground floor,
a classroom-cum-performance room
with large timber-framed windows
on the first floor and offices on the
top floor. Arranged behind this are
much-needed storage spaces for
the centre and a wide stairway that
creeps up the northern wall.
The finishes are raw. Painted
breeze-block walls, unpolished
concrete floors and plastic-cased
fluorescent lights ensure there is
no glamour. Yet the building does
not feel banal or tawdry. The architect
has provided well-lit, warm spaces
that will be easy to maintain on
a shoestring budget testament
to the care that has been put into
the project.
Featherstone Young has
demonstrated its expertise in crafting
buildings whatever the budget and
purpose, be it a private residence such
as Ty-Hedfan or the Dellow Centre. The
latter is an excellent example of an
architect exerting control over a site
and project that could so easily have
been mired in mediocrity.
This is a very good building that
has been delivered on a tight budget,
managing to find a balance between
making a visual statement and
providing practical space with
character and purpose, for a charity
and its clients that are in need
of both.
26
T
I
M
B
R
O
T
H
E
R
T
O
N
incorporate a third. Featherstone
Young has delivered a cheerful yet
robust 367 sq m building in just 11
months that makes the most of a
cramped site and a tight budget of
just 475,000.
Sat on the eastern side of the
Dellow Centre courtyard, hemmed in
behind some forbidding access gates,
the new building is shoehorned
between an office building that faces
out on to the street and a massive
hole in the ground, that will soon be
an EDL substation. As a result, it only
has one facade, facing south-east.
The ground floor is clad in
corrugated steel in shades of green,
partly perforated, to add texture and
porosity to the surface. It is a
welcome splash of colour among the
monotonous palette of bland brick
that dominates the area. I think its
OK to have some fun with a project
like this, particularly when using
industrial materials like steel, says
Featherstone. The central panels of
the wall are pivoted to open up the
Above: The new
Dellow Centre, for
the Providence
Row charity for
the homeless,
delivers character
and function on
an awkward site
between a brick-
built office block
and excavations
for an electricity
substation
Architect Featherstone Young has
served up a new building with
character and purpose, on a limited
budget and a difficult site, for a charity
for the homeless. Owen Pritchard pays
a visit to the Dellow Centre
B04 026 View2/Dellow ph.qxp:B09 26 v2 ki 21/2/12 09:53 Page 2
Calm
Unique
Loud
Pure
Your rug, your style, your way
Call 01562 743 747 Visit www.crucial-trading.com
Expression is Crucial
HIGH DESIGN LUXURY VINYL TILES
FOR HOME INTERIORS
Visit FACEBOOK.COM/CAMAROFLOORING for a
large collection of inspirational installations or see
POLYFLOR.COM for general product details.
Weaving a contemporary urban
masterplan into a medieval city is not
a quick task, as Bolles+Wilson has
found out during its most recent
project an 18,500 sq m city hall
and cinema complex, the Raakspoort.
BMW has unveiled its design for a pavilion at the Olympic Park,
created by London-based architect Serie. The two-storey, 800 sq
m building is expected to host around 8000 visitors daily during
both the Olympic and Paralympic Games and will sit somewhere
between the Olympic Stadium and the Aquatic Centre on the
bank of the Waterworks River. It will use water from the river for
its cooling system then return it, filtered, via a water curtain
wrapped around the ground floor.
29
SONY WORLD
PHOTOGRAPHY
AWARDS
Somerset House in London plays host
the Sony World Photography Awards
exhibition from 27 April until 20 May.
The exhibition will showcase the work
of both professional and amateur
photographers covering a wide range
of subjects, from architecture
through photojournalism to fashion,
nature, and sport. Shown above is
Scallop by Rui Nunes, from the
architecture category. The winners of
the World Photography Awards will be
announced in London on 26 April.
R
U
I

N
U
N
E
S
Situated on the edge of Donald
Lamberts Raaks Kwartier plan in
Haarlem, Holland. Raakspoort, which
has been 10 years in development
and cost 18.3m, mediates between
the old, smaller-scale urban fabric
BOLLES+WILSONS HAARLEM SHUFFLE
and the new. Its articulated brick skin
and the incorporation of fragments
of demolished buildings are meant
to break up the visual weight of the
blocky massing and animate the
passage into the area.
C
H
R
I
S
T
I
A
N

R
I
C
H
T
E
R
S

B04 029 View3/Smalls ph:B09 25 v1/ki 21/2/12 09:54 Page 1
Self-publishing has never been more
accessible than it is today thanks to
the internet and the availability of
digital printing. So, in many ways, In
Numbers is a timely exhibition and
book as it charts the growth of
publications produced by artists since
the Fifties to the present day.
From the rise of the small press in
the Sixties to the DIY zine culture of
the Eighties and Nineties, professional
artists have taken on the format of
magazines and postcards as a new
platform for artistic expression, as
well as a means of correspondence
and sharing of ideas. But unlike
mainstream magazines, these serial
publications belong to a genre of their
own. They do not conform to the
conventional formats of news items
and features, but become artworks
in their own right.
In Numbers comes from a
collection of some 60 publications
produced by artists from around
the world. Curator Matt Williams
had the difficult task of selecting
key documents to exhibit but succeeds
in displaying a concise cross-section
through carefully selected printed
examples. From these you get a good
sense of the physical objects, and
the variety on display goes from
bold visuals printed on pulpy paper
to much quieter and delicate artworks.
While you dont get quite the sense
of the physical objects in the
accompanying book as you do in
the exhibition, there is room to show
many more examples.
What is very apparent is the
influence these artists have had
on contemporary graphic design.
Elements of overprinting, use of
typography and other graphic
The timeline in the exhibition and
book presents an immediate graphic
illustration of the often-short lifespan
of some of the publications. However,
there are exceptions, notably Control
Magazine by Stephen Willats (1965
present day). Willats established the
publication as a forum for artists to
challenge mainstream notions of art
and redefine it in light of the lack of
other publishing opportunities. From
the first issue, Willats produced the
magazine as an artwork that included
philosophical statements from
contributing artists about the future
of art practice, and he has continued
to edit Control, often without staff,
from his London flat.
Provokes life (19681969) was
far briefer, in retrospect offering
a cultural glimpse in time. Takuma
Nakahiri, Koji Taki, Yukata Takanashi,
and Takahiko Okada produced this
photography-based magazine that
challenged the straight tradition of
Japanese photojournalism of the time
in just three issues. The photographs
of William Klein, whose book New York
had appeared in Japan a few years
earlier, heavily influenced the grainy
and blurry photographic style
embodied in Provoke. Not only the
style but also the content of the
imagery was controversial for its time.
The second issue revolved around a
theme of Eros and was the magazines
strongest statement. Its sequence of
22 photographs of a woman naked
in a hotel room, watching television,
smoking, and having sex is a powerful
example of Provoke's radical aesthetic.
Overall, many serial publications
by artists in the collection are
immediate responses to the cultural
landscape of a specific period.
Although traditional methods of
printing and the hand-made quality
are evident in many of the exhibited
pieces, I have no doubt that
technology advances will have
a major effect on the genre.
There is every indication that
the desire to use traditional methods
such as letterpress and screen printing
will continue alongside the low
production values of the photocopier,
but online communication and the
development of digital printing should
introduce new aesthetics and offer
artists more opportunities to produce
new, challenging and experimental
serial publications.
The show runs until 25 March
30
elements dating back to the Seventies
and Eighties can particularly be seen
mirrored in todays fashion and style
magazines. But the driving content
here is mostly political and cultural.
The artist publication represented
an often hard-hitting reflection of
the world, from the violence of war
to explicit sexual imagery.
The design approach is incredibly
varied too. Cartoon-illustrated zine-
style magazines appear very different
than those that imitate consumer
magazines, such as File (19721989).
It was produced by an artistic
collective called General Idea, formed
by three artists who shared a house in
Toronto. General Idea became an
influential group in the international
correspondence-art movement a key
reason for producing File.
The logo originally mimicked LIFE
magazines trademark white lettering
against a red rectangle as a parasitic
art project, the idea being that copies
could be placed in a newsstand and,
because of its familiar appearance,
could be picked up by people who
would not normally be exposed to this
kind of work. The page layouts also
used headline fonts and text in the
same way as you would expect to see
in mass-produced publications.
Andy Warhol was one of Files
first subscribers, and influential
contributors included Kathy Acker,
Kim Gordon, Yoko Ono and David
Byrne. Later, the covers dropped the
original logo and adopted a more punk
approach to their design. The 1977
Punk til You Puke issue put Debbie
Harry of Blondie on her first magazine
cover and showcased punk/new era
musicians such as Talking Heads, Patti
Smith and the Sex Pistols.
Above: The Punk til
You Puke issue
(autumn 1977)
of File, produced
by General Idea
Below left: Provoke,
a shortlived but
controversial
photography-based
magazine much
influenced by
the work of
William Klein
Below right: The
summer 1991 cover
of ArtPolice Comics,
produced by
Frank Gaard in
Minneapolis from
1974 to 1994
Patrick Myles visits In Numbers, an
exhibition of artists self-published
serial magazines from the Fifities
onwards, at the ICA in London. There
he finds the artists work as varied in
content as in execution
A
L
L
I
M
A
G
E
S
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
O
F
T
H
E
I
C
A
B04 030 View4/Typo ph.qxp:B09 26 v2 ki 21/2/12 09:55 Page 2
hm77
design Kazuko Okamoto
one of a broad and versatile
range of contemporary seating
designs for corporate, public and
residential projects. To view the
complete Hitch Mylius collection,
visit our website or contact us on
T +44(0)20 8443 2616
E info@hitchmylius.co.uk
www.hitchmylius.co.uk
template 28/07/2010 12:06
77
33
Munich has held its very first Creative
Business Week to bring industry and
design closer together, while
showcasing the creative quality of
an area most often associated with
lederhosen, says Rebekka Ranjan
were displayed and discussed.
German lighting designer
superstar, Ingo Maurer, hosted two
events at his exclusive Munich
showroom. Surrounded by an
impressive selection of Maurers lights,
including the celebrated LED
wallpaper, the director of the Design
Museum, London, Dejan Sudjic,
delivered a series of design talks,
related to his book, The Language
of Things. According to Sudjic,
without design things have
no function or worth. He used the
example of a euro note, saying it is
worth something because a designer
has touched it, so exemplifying the
economic importance of design.
Described by Maurer as technical
poetic freak, Moritz Waldemayer,
presented his version of the vast
possibilities of design in the future
with examples such as chandeliers
that can receive text messages, and
robotic dresses for fashion designer
Hussein Chalayan.
The citys Museum of Egyptian Art
provided an excellent environment to
present MCBW moments thinking
spaces for design, created by German
architect Peter Bohm. The tall,
extravagant spaces, resembling an
ancient burial chamber, became an
impressive backdrop for international
designers to showcase their
innovative sustainable ideas for the
future. Exhibitions such as Too GOOD
to waste, Universal Train, the latter
by design practice Neomind Design
Studio demonstrating its flexible
concept of public transport that
accommodates differing spaces
depending on the current train
scenario and Dennis Van Melicks
clever alternatives to traffic lights,
demonstrated design of the future
with the end-user firmly in mind.
Of course there were high
expectations, but at times the Munich
Creative Business Week was mediocre,
if pleasant. With an ambitious events
programme the organiser were aware
that all beginnings are difficult,
and in this first year it was apparent
that the intention to create a platform
to connect design and business
was heartfelt.
MCBW presented a clear German-
style, no-frills, ethos of design. The
Bavarian products on display shared
a number of common attributes:
primarily pragmatic, driven by
technology, streamlined and user-
orientated. This strong focus on
functional, sellable design may be the
key to Germanys economic strength
and ahead-of-the-curve recovery.
Design was showcased as something
more than a chic addition to the
home, something that provides a
purpose in our everyday lives.
enthralls. Design cuts paths. Design
represents quality.
The week brought together one of
Bavarias most successful examples of
economically successful design, BMW,
alongside numerous examples of
outstanding local talent such as Anna
Fuhrmann, a communication designer
showcasing her campaign to rent, as
well as emerging students from the
Faculty of Design at Munichs
Hochschule. On the downside, the 20-
below temperatures made travelling
around pretty challenging, a labour
of design love.
Seen in some of Munichs
most modern additions another
theme, future, also became
apparent through the event. Creative
responses to an emerging need for
sustainable environments, civilisation
and technology that not only deliver
on a high quality of design but
also benefit a growing economy
Germany has emerged as something
of an economic leader during the
European Debt Crisis and so I thought
it would be interesting to visit
financially healthy Munich on the
occasion of its first Creative Business
Week. In the public consciousness
Munich is probably most associated
with dirndls and lederhosen, so this
was an opportunity to present a more
stylish face and showcase Bavarian
design talent.
The event organiser bayerndesign
deliberately set out to dispel any
stereotype of design being solely
about styling. Over six days, with
more than 90 talks, conferences,
exhibitions and workshops at various
locations across Munich, it aimed to
address designs role in the economic
world. Through the predominantly
German-based designers present it
looked to bang home the message:
Design offers variety. Design
A LETTER FROM
Below: Too GOOD
to waste, on show
at the Museum of
Egyptian Art
Above right: BMW,
one of Bavarias
big design success
stories
THE EVENT... SET OUT
TO DISPEL ANY
STEREOTYPE OF DESIGN
BEING SOLELY ABOUT
STYLING... IT AIMED
TO ADDRESS DESIGNS
ECONOMIC ROLE
B04 033 View5/Letter ph:B09 29 v3 ki 21/2/12 09:58 Page 1
The show was the best it had ever
been, says Adam Smith, director of
The Chemical Brothers film Dont
Think. It was a case of if we didnt do
the film now, we would never do it.
Last month saw more than 500
cinemas in 20 countries screen it a
concert video like no other, the
culmination of a 20-year collaboration
between dance music duo The Chemical
Brothers, Smith and Marcus Lyall.
We were asked to design a set
that continues the tradition of our
work with the act, says Lyall, who
produced Dont Think with Lee
Groombridge and designed the stage
show with Smith. In the early days,
when The Chemical Brothers were The
Dust Brothers, we used to project
visuals over them Kodak carousels
worked with them to create the
Solaris, the centrepiece of the set
design that hangs above the artists as
they perform, pulsating in time to the
music and creating an explosion of
colour and movement during the
opener, Another World.
Drawing everything together was
a struggle, says Lyall. Things look
good on paper, but in the rehearsal
spaces you begin to see the huge
reality of it and have to think again.
The visuals that Lyall and Smith
developed or reworked help create the
narrative that underpins the live show
and the film. The aesthetic behind the
show is that everything is set against
a backdrop of black, says Lyall. Its as
important when nothing is happening
as when something is happening
similar to the music. Surprisingly,
many of the visuals were shot live
rather than using digital animation.
During Escape Velocity, the stage
becomes an abstracted world in soft
focus, where the objects and people
are denoted with a series of dots that
track their movement. It was about
giving the smallest amount of
information to define movement,
says Lyall. Another song sees sofas
bouncing in time to the beat. During
the song Swoon, the concert is
consumed with rushing images of
what Smith calls Banister Fletcher-
inspired architectural graphics.
Smith and Lyall then had to
create a film of the show that not only
conveyed the sophistication and
energy of the live performance, in
Japan, but also worked as a film in its
own right. I kept repeating to myself,
how do we get people to connect with
this? says Smith. It had to be
different from a standard TV gig film,
with nine cameras and rushed editing.
The audience reaction was key.
The film documents the event
using 22 cameras that capture not
only the performance but the euphoria
and excitement in the crowd. Not
forgetting that this is a music video,
The Chemical Brothers remixed
the audio for Dolby 7.1 sound,
reproducing the sonic impact of the
performance within the cinemas.
The film has two distinct strands:
the performance and a sub-narrative
that follows a concertgoer throughout
the show. The film drifts away from
the stage show at certain points to
follow Mario, the Japanese girlfriend
of one of the animation team. It is a
device that places the onstage action
in the wider context of the Mount Fuji
Festival and builds on the themes of
The Chemical Brothers album Further,
says Smith, conveying the feelings
of when you are lost in the moment
at a show and just dont give a shit.
Dont Think is a remarkable
document of an event that celebrates
the visceral experience of live music
that until now has never really
translated to film. Previously, the
most celebrated gig movies were the
Rolling Stones Gimme Shelter (maybe
more remembered for the events at
the show than for its cinematic value),
and Stop Making Sense by Talking
Heads, a tightly choreographed
performance filmed over five nights
and edited together.
The Chemical Brothers, Smith,
Lyall and Groombridge have created
a film that sets a new benchmark,
bringing to life not only the technical
splendour of a big-budget live show,
but also the emotion and energy it
creates within the audience.
and 16mm loops, says Smith. For so
long we wanted unity of concept and
vision, and with this show [Dont
Think] we believe we achieved it.
Before making a film was even
considered, Smith and Lyall had to
produce the live show. The Chemical
Brothers on stage is not a Mick Jagger
or Bono-esque projection of ego and
personality, the act is behind banks of
keyboards, modulators and samplers
that belt out tunes that have defined
a generation of dance music. The
visual experience had to complement
the music as well as creating stimulus
and emotion for the audience. It was
great to have a show and a set list so
we could really plan it. I think it is the
greatest set they have ever done, says
Smith. Its a journey through
emotions. Joy, terror, delight. Its all
there.
Smith and Lyall worked with
lighting designer Paul Normandale to
bring the images beyond the confines
of the stage using a stealth screen.
This allows us to project light through
the visual, achieving effects that make
the videos reach out to the crowd,
says Lyall. The set interacts with itself
and the lights arent fighting the
visuals, adds Smith. Normandale also
Above and below:
Film director Adam
Smith worked with
producer Marcus
Lyall on the live
show. Along with
lighting designer
Paul Normandale,
they brought the
images beyond the
confines of the
stage by using
a stealth screen
Thanks to the director, set design and
lighting designer Dont Think, The
Chemical Brothers film, is a stunning
live show that also encapsulates the
emotion and energy it creates in the
audience, says Owen Pritchard
34
B04 034 View6/Chemical ph.qxp:B09 26 v2 ki 21/2/12 09:59 Page 2
Ceramics Natural Stone Wood Parquet Terracotta Mosaics Kitchens
Bedroom Furniture Bathroom Furniture Hydromasage Brassware
Sanitaryware Technical Solutions
a
b
s
o
l
u
t
e
use
t. a
b
s
o
l
u
t
e
See the Absolute Gallery at Material Lab
10 Great Titcheld Street, London, W1W 8BB.
Tel: 020 7436 8629
www.material-lab.co.uk
Harewood Street, Tunstall
Stoke on Trent, ST6 5JZ
Tel: 01782 575575
sales@johnson-tiles.com
www.johnson-tiles.com
If you ask a local for directions, they
will usually answer with a list of
landmarks. Not the historical type,
more like, take a left at the Slug &
Lettuce, past Tescos and ask again by
the big tree on the next corner This
is how we remember our way about.
As a mental exercise, I used to try
and list all the names of the side
streets I had to cross on my way
to work. And although, as a cyclist,
I would have been close if not slow
enough to look at the signs, I could
never complete the list. I knew exactly
where the Turkish vegetable shop was,
the falafel place, the wine dealer, the
petrol station, the church you get
my drift. The side streets were of no
value to me, while the shops were
my landmarks.
We dont learn the lay of the land
in a series of yes-no responses, and
that is one of the reasons why we are
useless at giving absolute distances.
The mental map we have suits our
own needs, so we measure with our
inner clock, like a short walk or a
couple of minutes. Once were familiar
with some of the landmarks in an area,
we start connecting them. We
remember their positions relative
to each other. Our mental map then
becomes a cognitive one, we find
shortcuts and detours.
Picking up an actual map helps
place these details within a larger
context. Even for people who claim
that they cannot read maps, the
physical image of a place with ones
mental memory of it, will provide
a strong frame of reference.
So maps are useful. Am I being
nostalgic by saying that electronic
devices showing GPS data are bad for
our brains? One school of thought says
that we dont need to remember
things we can just look up whenever
we need them. Why fill our brain with
useless information that any run-of-
the-mill smartphone brings up at the
touch of fingertip? I agree when it
comes to trivia like the conversion
37
Erik Spiekermann
set up MetaDesign
and FontShop, and
worked in London
from 1973 to 1981.
A teacher, author
and designer, he
is a partner at
EdenSpiekermann,
which has offices
in Berlin and
Amsterdam
The ubiquity of the GPS is causing us to be led by
the nose, not knowing what is to the left or the
right, or where we are in relation to anywhere
else. Long live landmark maps of local knowledge
ACHTUNG!
of fahrenheit to celsius, or Roy
Orbisons number-one hits.
Our inherent and to a degree
healthy laziness (it prevents stress)
suggests the easy way out also when
it comes to wayfinding. Why memorise
an area we may never come back to?
How are we to find an obscure street
from behind the wheel of our car
without stopping to look at the A to Z
every few yards (or metres, in my
case)? Fair enough, while I do not
own a dedicated Global Positioning
System device and will probably never
have one, there have been times when
I have wished for one. Luckily, theres
always Google Maps on my iPhone, but
I use that as a last resort, and never
when driving.
GPS doesnt show us landmarks
that may be relevant to us, let alone
the connections or shortcuts between
them. We always know where we are,
but we have no idea how we got there.
If you live in London, you are spoilt
by having cabbies who know their way
around. In other European cities, more
and more taxi drivers just ask for the
address and then switch on their GPS
device. They then follow that dotted
line without a clue of where they
actually are in relation to other
places. The stupid monitor doesnt
know which pub has decent beer,
which detour to take if a big game is
on, which one is the scenic route and
which one the quickest. It is oblivious
to the fact that places have character,
stories, hidden joys as well as dangers.
It is all a series of algorithms, all
memory lost when the batteries go
flat. What will those people do if their
GPS breaks down? They wont even
be able to radio each other for
information, because they are all
victims of the same disease.
It is a fact that our brain needs as
much exercise as other muscles. Bad
enough that hardly anybody younger
than myself can still do simple sums
without a calculator; within a few
generations we will probably have lost
our ability to make mental maps. It is
like learning a language or a musical
M
E
L
V
I
N

G
A
L
A
P
O
N
instrument: without practice youll
soon forget how its done.
The reliance on an electronic
guide will totally obliterate what little
map-reading skills most of us have.
Well have no idea whats to the right
and left of us because that little dot
or arrow always sends us forward. Nor
will we know whats North or South
that arrow always points upwards.
I see cyclists running into obstacles
(such as buses) while staring at a
little display on the handlebar, telling
them that they are just another dot
on the screen.
Asking your GPS for directions
rather than a friendly native, youll
be able to tell exactly how many
yards, metres, feet or fathoms your
destination is away from you. Itll
even give you an eta, rather than just
a just a few minutes away. But with
every use of that machine, your brain
is shrinking a little.
OUR BRAINS NEED
EXERCISING...
WITHIN A FEW
GENERATIONS WE
WILL PROBABLY HAVE
LOST OUR ABILITY TO
MAKE MENTAL MAPS
B04 037 View7/Achtung ph.qxp:B09 29 v3 ki 21/2/12 09:59 Page 25
BOZAR CENTRE FOR FINE ARTS
(BRUSSELS)
CY TWOMBLY:
PHOTOGRAPHS 1951-2010
Until 29 April
This exhibition, curated by the artist
himself prior to his death, presents
somw 100 dry prints, generated from
Polaroid photographs, that were only
made public in the Nineties. It also
includes a number of paintings by Cy
Twombly and an intimate cinematic
portrait by artist Tacita Dean as
a tribute to Twombly, who died last
July at the age of 83.
bozar.be
PARASOL UNIT (LONDON)
LINES OF THOUGHT
Until 13 May
Parasol Unit in north London presents
the work of 15 contemporary artists,
whose work has focused in particular
on using lines in creatively
challenging ways. The use of line
varies greatly from one artist to
another, and so the exhibition
includes a dramatic, sculptural
installation of wax stalactites by
Indian artist Hemali Bhuta, as well as
more gestural and minimalistic works
such as those of Raoul De Keyser and
Sol LeWitt.
parasol-unit.org
ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS (LONDON)
NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR: ARCHITECT
OF THE IMAGINATION
Until 17 June
The buildings of the great English
baroque architect Nicholas
Hawksmoor, including Christ Church,
Spitalfields and St George,
Bloomsbury, have sparked the
imaginations of generations of
architects, artists and writers. This
exhibition explores this influence
using images, quotations and film
interviews to bring to light the
imaginative legacy of this strikingly
original architect.
royalacademy.org.uk
ARTS DECORATIFS MUSEUM (PARIS)
TROMPE LOEIL, IMITATIONS,
PASTICHES AND OTHER ILLUSIONS
Until 15 November
A showcase of the museums
collections via selections of trompe-
loeil, a concept that originated in
painting but has been utilised by
many architects and designers, in
which the illusion created by a
painted object relies heavily on
perspective and chiaroscuro. Like a
treasure hunt traversing centuries and
materials, the exhibition invites
viewers into the great game of illusion.
lesartsdecoratifs.fr
NLA SPACE (LONDON)
DONT MOVE, IMPROVE!
Until 28 Marc
This years Dont Move, Improve!
competition, which invited architects
and homeowners in Greater London
to submit their most innovative and
well-designed home extension,
interior design and small office
conversion projects, can be seen at
the NLA space in The Building Centre.
Projects on display range from roof,
basement and side extensions to
complete home refurbishments and
garden workspaces.
newlondonarchitecture.org
DESIGNHUIS (EINDHOVEN)
CONNECTING CONCEPTS
Until 20 May
Hosted by Premsela, the Netherlands
Institute for Design and Fashion, this
exhibition celebrates the Dutch design
industry and shares the processes and
principles behind some of the
Netherlands most innovative designs.
It explores the collaborative designer-
client approach and the willingness
to innovate in design that has
produced such icons as Marcel
Wanderss Knotted Chair and Strand
Cycle by Tjeerd Veenhoven.
premsela.org
38
D
I
A
R
Y

B04 038 View8 Diary ph.qxp:B08 36 v8 pm/sd/ta 21/2/12 10:01 Page 40
VOLA Round Series.
Discreetly efcient. Visibly VOLA.
VOLA Studio
32-36 Great Portland Street
London W1
Tel: 020 7580 7722
VOLA UK Ltd.
Unit 12, Ampthill Business Park
Station Road, Ampthill
Bedfordshire MK45 2QW
Tel: 01525 84 11 55
sales@vola.co.uk
www.vola.com
A
L
L

P
H
O
T
O
G
R
A
P
H
S
:

A
D
R
I
A

G
O
U
L
A
40
B04 040 Barcelona ph.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 21/2/12 10:17 Page 2
41
The massive concrete
walls of the Filmoteca de
Catalunya barge up to
neighbouring residential
buildings and glower over
a public square
AFTER TALKING TO SPANISH
ARCHITECT JOSEP LLUIS MATEO,
CREATOR OF THE NEW FILMOTECA
DE CATALUNYA BUILDING IN THE
NEGLECTED EL RAVAL DISTRICT OF
BARCELONA, OWEN PRITCHARD
CONCLUDES THAT THIS BRUTE OF
A BUILDING HAS A HEART
interventions in the Thirties and made
holes in the urban area, but the site for the
Filmoteca building was made by a bomb
during the civil war.
The Filmoteca de Catalunya is, at first
glance, a brute of a building the younger,
angrier Spanish cousin of the Hayward
Gallery in London, maybe. The massive
concrete walls barge up to the neighbouring
residential buildings and glower over
a sizeable public square. It is an unsubtle
statement of permanence that exerts control
over an area that lacks urban coherence. I
was not happy with the existing plan to
improve the area I ignored it. Its not very
exciting, its peripheral and boring normal
housing, Lluis Mateo laughs. Its not easy
to add a piece in a generic way to the area.
So there was a square and I had to build into
it. We had to convince the building to make
the square.
Lluis Mateo has made a defiant gesture
to the other architects who have built
in El Raval of late. Having won an open
competition in 2004, beating more than
50 other entries in the initial stage and six
others in the second, Lluis Mateo set about
designing a building that not only served
the functions of the film institute it was
to house, but began to provide a sense of
42
I knew very well it was, and still is,
an interesting place, a very interesting
place to put a new building, says
Lluis Mateo. The area has always lacked
monumentality. It is a working-class
district with factories. It was dense and
lacked centrality. It has always been
a problem.
In an attempt to improve the area, the
Rambla del Raval, completed in 2000, was
ploughed through slum housing to create
a wide urban boulevard that would provide
a new focus within the maze of streets.
Work is also underway to overhaul
the Mercat (market) de Sant Antoni,
a perplexing cruciform building that
would have a far more dominating
presence in another context, and on the
insular MACBA by American architect
Richard Meier, to the north. The area
still remains a labyrinth of streets that
skirt the now redundant coal-powered
factories and fed the slum housing that
filled the neighbourhood.
There was a struggle with the modern
logic of building in El Raval. It was an
insane, unhealthy place with no light and
no fresh air, so the solution was a reductive
process to the urban scale, says Lluis
Mateo. The modernists started to make
Above and right:
The ground and second
floors are free from
support columns, the
stucture hanging from
the walls-cum-beams
Left: The Filmotecas two
cinemas, one with 360
seats and one with 184
seats, have been
positioned under the
public square
It was clear to me that the contemporary
architecture in the area was unsuccessful.
It ruined it. The buildings have a certain
mass and density that makes them seem
fragile and uninteresting in the wider
context. All these appear totally lost and
boring. Architect Josep Lluis Mateo, sat in
his office in a northern suburb of Barcelona,
is speaking of the developments in the El
Raval district of the city, immediately to
the north of his most recent building the
12m Filmoteca de Catalunya (Catalonia
Film Institute).
While under construction the
buildings are nice, once they are
completed, they are ugly, continues the
head of practice Mateoarquitectura.
Pouring the concrete, placing the steel,
digging holes, it is exciting. When the
building is completed the architecture is
ugly and unpleasant.
El Raval was, and in some areas still
is, an area notorious for its vice trade.
Streetwalkers, drug dealers and junkies
populated the dark winding lanes of the
area that evolved outside the historic city
walls. Geographically, El Raval sits to the
north of Barcelonas port, its limits defined
by the main streets La Rambla to the east
and Avinguda del Parallel to the west.
43
order to this contentious piece of the city.
The buildings rough-and-ready appearance
belies its purpose this brute has a heart.
The longitudinal facades are an
expression of pure construction; its crass
materiality appears assured and fresh
compared to the crumbling plaster on the
tired facades that surround it. The concrete
surfaces are like the po-faced glare of
a nightclub bouncer, surveying the activity
before it with an authoritarian stare. The
building picks up the line of the street to the
south and east, but is a storey lower than the
surrounding buildings. At each end, Lluis
Mateo has reduced the mass of the building
by adding two cantilevers that open up the
streetscape and provide a place to shelter
from the sun or rain. Its a rectangular
building, but on the short sides there are two
special moments, says Lluis Mateo. The
building is around you protecting you, but
you are connected and open, the building is
opening up the area.
The parallel facades act as massive
beams that are tied together through a
series of steel beams that support the floor
plates. This allowed Lluis Mateo to keep
the ground and second floor free of
columns, hanging the structure from the
walls-cum-beams, which in turn allows
THE LONGITUDINAL FACADES

ARE AN EXPRESSION OF PURE
CONSTRUCTION; ITS CRASS
MATERIALITY APPEARS ASSURED
AND FRESH COMPARED TO THE
CRUMBLING PLASTER ON THE
TIRED FACADES THAT SURROUND
IT. THE CONCRETE SURFACES
ARE LIKE THE PO-FACED STARE
OF A NIGHTCLUB BOUNCER,
SURVEYING THE ACTIVITY
BEFORE IT WITH AN
AUTHORITARIAN STARE

Right: The building is
top-lit by a vast skylight
Far right: Utilitarian
escalators enforce a strict
pattern of circulation
Far right, below: The
mass of the building is
reduced by the cantilevers
44
45
spaces within the building that are airy and
open quite an unexpected ambiance
considering the density of the exterior.
Gouged into the massive concrete surface
are a series of parallel grooves that
undulate across the length of the building.
These help break up the monotony of the
monolithic scale of the building and are
actually a visual expression of the
movement of the forces that are being
transferred through the structure. The
end of the beams tying the parallel walls
together are left exposed on the exterior
too, their black caps framed by a recess
in the concrete surface. It is my dream
to make a building that is pure
construction, says Lluis Mateo. The
savage energy of construction is something
we should embrace.
On all but the north-facing elevation
the windows are screened to reduce glare
and solar gain. It is here, and in the
coloured glazing that appears on the ground
floor and internally, that Lluis Mateo has
succumbed to the use of cinematographic
trickery. The coloured glazing and the
perforated screens work as filters and
lenses, he says. From inside the building
we are framing and distorting the reality of
what is outside. On the south facade the
building is clad with perforated Cor-ten
360 seats and a smaller 184-seater, have
been placed underneath the public square,
freeing up the external space. Here, the
metaphorical foundations of the Filmoteca
become the physical foundations of the
building. They are nothing spaces, says
Lluis Mateo of the auditoria. They are
acoustically treated with some seats.
Its not relegation it needs to be dark.
The Filmoteca de Catalunya is a
culmination of influences that Lluis Mateo
has toyed with throughout his earlier
buildings and a manifestation of his
teachings as a professor at ETH in Zurich.
His previously feted works such as the
Borneo housing development in
Amsterdam and the remodelling of the
Banc Sabadell headquarters in Barcelona
have had a rich tectonic presence and
strong social purpose. With the Filmoteca,
Lluis Mateo has stripped the building back
to its essence and laid bare the structure,
largely avoiding the superficial trickery of
the medium it celebrates.
My role has to be to do something
real, not a stage set. In this sense, the
films are pure stage and unreal, says Lluis
Mateo. But this building was a conscious
way of reacting to the existing strong
reality of El Raval, with an extra dose
of tectonic reality.
steel that inverts the pattern of the
windows on facing buildings. This is for
privacy, but also turns the busy street into
an intriguing blur of soft focus activity.
Facing the square, a white steel screen
hangs from the facade like a ragged cinema
screen the perforations pull tight over the
windows and spread out, where it only
reveals the ever-present concrete behind.
Inside, the basalt stonework of the
public square bleeds into the entrance
lobby, an attempt to make the building
more welcoming and embedding the
interior into the immediate environment.
From here, visitors can proceed to a modest
cafe that sits under the enormous northern
cantilever, or travel up and down the
utlitarian escalators that enforce a strict
circulation pattern.
Lluis Mateo has carved out a fractured
atrium that chicanes through the floor
plates, allowing visitors to ascend from
the bowels of the building to the office
space on the top floor. Top-lit by a vast
skylight, mirrors and light materials are
used to reflect light through the building
into the basement.
Contained within the 7,500 sq m
building are two cinemas, the cafe, library,
seminar rooms, office space and an
exhibition space. The cinemas, one with .
A
L
L

I
M
A
G
E
S

C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

T
H
E

B
O
A
T

P
R
O
J
E
C
T
46
A HANDCRAFTED BOAT, CARRYING
IN ITS WOOD THE STORIES AND
MEMORIES OF HUNDREDS OF
PEOPLE, IS LAUNCHING FOR THE
2012 CULTURAL OLYMPIAD, A
FESTIVAL OF ARTS LINKED TO THE
2012 GAMES. JOHNNY TUCKER
DISCOVERS HOW THE BOAT
PROJECT HAS COME ABOUT
LIFE
BOAT
B04 046 Boat ph.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 21/2/12 10:27 Page 2
47
When you design a boat you normally
know what materials you are going to
be building out of we obviously didnt,
says boat designer Simon Rogers,
surprisingly exuberantly as he starts
to describe The Boat Project. Part of the
2012 Cultural Olympiad a festival of arts
linked to and culminating at the same
time as the London Olympics The Boat
Project is a fully seaworthy work of art
made from pieces of wood donated by the
general public.
The only proviso for donations was
that each piece of wood should have a story
Below: Hundreds of
donations of wood pieces
from exceptional to
everyday items, each
with their own story,
were assimilated into
The Boat Project
In the end, the response to Lone
Twins call for wood with a tale behind it
was massive and The Boat Project has
ended up with more than 1,200 donated
pieces and, of course, just as many stories.
Like life itself, the range of donations is
amorphous, stretching from parts of old
ships, including Henry VIIIs Mary Rose, to
a piece of wood from the cemetery where
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was
filmed. Theres history that resonates with
many part of a boat that was walked on
by 7000 troops evacuated from Dunkirk
and there are more personal moments such
attached to it, according to the project
instigators Greg Whelan and Gary Winters
of performance art company Lone Twin.
They won the South East Region
commission from the Arts Council in its
response to the Cultural Olympiad, called
Artists Taking the Lead. Other schemes,
which have received 5.4m funding in
total, include a giant Lady Godiva puppet
which will descend on London from
Coventry, the Quay Brothers taking over
Leeds for a month, and a massive column
of cloud and light which will disappear into
the sky above Liverpool.
Graham Johnston: branches from a juniper
bush taken from the cemetery that was
used for the filming of The Good, The Bad
and The Ugly, near where his daughter lives
Shirley Craig (L) and Bunty Clatworthy:
crates used to secretly transport British
Government Securities to Canada during the
Second World War
Robin Wilson: a cricket bat signed by
various members of Sussex County
Cricket Club
Dave Philpot, Chloe Barker, Peggy Philpot:
fertility symbol used for eight years until
baby Peggy arrived three months before this
pic was taken
Sue Adamson: played table tennis for Surrey
and Scotland for 40 years and this bat is 20
years old
John Kepton (L) and Brian Burton: deck
plank from the paddle steamer Medway
Queen, which saved 7000 British troops
from Dunkirk
Professor Mike Whittle: not actually wood,
this metal medal was minted from
recovered parts of Skylab
Cassandra Parry: a stick on which
Cassandras American grandfather carved
her name and a rabbit
Freddie Fredericks: a mirror with wooden
surround that Freddie had with her during
her 12 years as a protestor at Greenham
Common Peace Camp
Louise Flynn: a stick used by her father to
fend off lions while on safari in Africa
Ann Sutton: now retired, Ann was a weaver
for 40 years and these are the last
remaining pieces of her looms
Lt Co Whild: a plank from HMS Victory
which was removed during restoration
48
Arthur Mack: while trawling for fish off
Southsea, Arthur found the wreck of HMS
Invincible of which this is a part
Maureen Barrett: part of the wooden
escalators from Earls Court Exhibition
Centre where Maureens husband worked as
a joiner
Sam Dew: mirror frame given to Sam by her
grandmother when she moved into her
first flat
Charlotte Walker: hairbrush given to
Charlotte by her grandfather, a make-up
artist who worked on Carry on Films, among
others, at Pinewood Studios
Jason Eades: a witches broom which has
been used in the garden in two different
houses for 25 years
Donna Hall and daughter Ruby-Jude: Ruby-
Judes no-longer-needed wooden walker
Christine Clark: part of a photobooth that
was used for a street party
Annabel Murphy: a wooden tunnel for
Annabels hamster, Jessica, which died
Simon Brooks: piece of mahogany from a
Thames river launch. Simon used to be a
boatbuilder
Prue Furby (and Mishka): a block of wood
with a pattern like a swallow which has
been in the family for more than 40 years
Tim Gillin: a bust from Singapore sent
through the post to Tim by his father who
had been sent there during World War Two
Oliver Evans: a piece of the track from the
2012 Olympics velodrome (which wasnt
needed!)
49
as a hamster tunnel donated by a child after
the pet died. Theres even a sliver of one
of Jimi Hendrixs guitars.
Its these stories, small and large,
that resonate about this project, making
it stand out from the crowd of so much
community art. This is not just someone
turning up for a couple of hours and getting
their hands dirty, this project has a massive
amount of emotional investment from all
concerned. Its about the encapsulation,
figuratively and literally, of individual lives
and memories and the creation of
something new and unique in the process.
As well as the differing tales, each piece
was also very different in size and the type
of wood and so, physically incorporating
them all into this new story, The Boat
Project presented a major challenge to boat
designer Simon Rogers, and boat-builder
Mark Covell. You can also add to this mix
that Rogers is a leading designer of racing
yachts and Covell an Olympic-medal-
winning sailor (silver in Sydney) these
guys wanted to build a vessel that really
sails, not some wallowing hulk.
We wanted to develop something that
was exciting and sporty and a boat of our
time state-of-the-art design, says Rogers.
I think anybody with any sailing heritage
will look at it and say, Thats actually
quite an exciting boat!
The entire design is bespoke, not using
any previous elements. They started from
the basis that they would use cedar strips
encapsulated in resin to provide structural
integrity. They also knew that they would
get a wide variety of donations so they
built that into the parameters of the design,
particularly in terms of weight: If we were
designing it to be a full-on sports boat it
would be about 500600kg lighter. But, by
virtue of the fact that our centre-line
structure alone is made out of HMS
Warrior, HMS Victory and the SS Great
Britain [its decking rather than the cast
iron] it ended up weighing 100kg more
than we had been expecting.
While some of the wood has been
incorporated into the structure, much of
it has also been reduced to a veneer and
used to create a visual story around the
upper part of the hull: We have had so
many donations and at the end of the day
we had to keep in mind that it is an artistic
project. Weve put the lighter donations
at the ends so the boat doesnt pitch too
much and the heavier donations nearer the
middle. The design has naturally evolved,
both aesthetically and structurally. This
is the opportunity of a lifetime and she
[the boat] has certainly stretched my grey
matter in all directions, adds Rogers.
And it was still evolving when
50 50
Emsworth
Thornham Marina,
Brighton
Portsmouth
Hastings
1
4
2
5
6
Milton Keynes
Margate

8
7

3

THE ROUTE
7 May Launch
19 27 May at Brighton
16 22 May (to Weymouth for a
race then back to Brighton)
22 June 1 July at Portsmouth
7 10 July at Hastings
14 16 July at Margate
19 29 July at Milton Keynes how it
reaches there is currently a secret
1 11 August back to Weymouth
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

Weymouth
BY THE DOZEN
At the end of 2009, following a lengthy
selection process for the Arts Councils
initiative Artists Taking the Lead, 2000
entries were whittled down to a dozen as part
of the London Cultural Olympiad. These 12
projects received 5.4m to bring their ideas
directly inspired by their location and
celebrating the London 2012 Olympic Games
and Paralympic Games across the UK alive.
In addition to The Boat Project the winning
commissions were:
East On Landguard Point, Pacitti Theatre
Company A feature film, starring the local
community alongside leading live artists which
is being created from a series of outdoor
events across East Anglia.
East Midlands Lionheart, Shauna
Richardson Three 10m-high lions taking
their inspiration from Richard the Lionheart
and the regions textile industry are being
hand-crocheted and will then be displayed
in a huge taxidermy-style case, in Nottingham.
London Bus-Tops, Alfie Dennen and Paula
Le Dieu LED panels on tops of bus stops will
give locals a unique canvas on which to talk to
each other and display their creativity. A
number are up and running now.
North East Flow, the Owl Project and Ed
Carter A sustainable watermill, which will
float on the River Tyne, is being built and will
be an interactive arts space full of fantastical
mechanical devices.
North West Projected Column, Anthony
McCall and FACT A spinning column of cloud
and light is set to rise into the sky from
Birkenheads disused Morpeth dock, directly
opposite the city of Liverpool.
Northern Ireland The Nest, Brian Irvine and
John McIlduff A warehouse installation
made from donated personal possessions will
form the inspiration for a musical composition
to be performed by the largest chorus ever
assembled in Northern Ireland.
Scotland Forest Pitch, Craig Coulthard
A full-size football pitch will be created in
woodland near Edinburgh, used for two
amateur matches and then allowed to return
to nature.
South East The Boat Project, Lone Twin
South West nowhereisland, Alex Hartley
Artist Alex Hartley creates a moving, floating
island sculpture that hes calling a
micronation. You can join the nation online
and last time we looked its population was
bigger than The Falklands and was closing
in on Montserrat.
Wales Adain Avion, Marc Rees A travelling
wingless silver bird a repurposed DC9
aeroplane will be taken over by the local
communities in the various locations around
Wales where it nests.
West Midlands Godiva Awakes, Imagineer
Productions Coventrys nudist icon, Lady
Godiva, will be recreated as a gigantic human
puppet and lead a huge procession before
travelling to London.
Yorkshire Leeds Canvas, Leeds Canvas The
Quay Brothers will use the buildings, streets
and people of Leeds as their canvas
for a month-long series of interventions.
It could be any object, of any size a lolly
stick as long as it had a story, says
van Spijk. Some of those stories are
nationally significant and others are very,
very poignant and personal stories the
full gamut.
Each has been documented, the story
written down and the person and their
object photographed, and that will all find
its way into a book to accompany the boat.
A quick wander around the 10m length of
the hull obviously a lot easier when its
up on a trailer at a boat show than when
its in the water reveals many stories,
shapes of toy trains, elephants, guitars,
hockey sticks, tennis rackets, as well as the
far more strange and curious. If only this
boats walls could talk
The construction, and coming launch
on 7 May, from Thornham Marina, near
Chichester, where its been built, is just the
start of the story. It will then travel around
the south-east coast stopping off to create
the focus of a series of arts festivals
celebrating local, national and international
artists. The boats designer Simon Rogers
sums it up: We are absolutely thrilled.
The sailing performance is secondary,
it is about the journey, and the artistic
vision. Then with an added glint in his
eye adds: The reality is, though, that she
will sail well, very well.
51
Blueprint caught up with the project, with
the maiden voyage still three months away.
The boat has, however, already been on its
travels. At the start of the year it attracted
a lot of attention at the Boat Show in
London even among vessels whose sheer
bulk would block out a row of terrace
houses from view.
At the show, Lone Twins Gwen van
Spijk explained that it had been a long time
in gestation. The germ of the idea was
actually born more than a decade ago:
When Lone Twin started up it tended to
be more live-art and performance-art based,
and a lot of it was within a community,
gathering stories from that community
through different kinds of processes.
Many of the communities were by
water, either by rivers or by the sea. The
initial idea was to build one-man coracles
and then it just gathered momentum from
there the interest being about gathering
stories from a community and how you do
that, and how you build something like a
boat at the same time. The reaction from
the boat-building community in general to
this last part was, you cant. But Covell
disagreed and set about putting together
a team that could do it.
After getting the funding, the call went
out last year for donations. We said it
could be exotic wood or bog-standard pine.
Left: Following the boats
launch on 7 May, it will
call in at festival sites
along the south and
south-east coast, before
arriving in landlocked
Milton Keynes in a
manner yet to be
reavealed
Below: For racing yacht
designer Simon Rogers
and boat-builder Mark
Covell, physically
incorporating the
wood donations into
The Boat Project was
a major challenge .
C
H
A
R
L
E
S

H
O
S
E
A
52
B04 052 Nord ph.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 21/2/12 10:37 Page 2
53
FROM A BRICK-BUILT OLYMPIC
SUBSTATION AND EXPO SHOW
HOUSE IN STONE, TO A HOUSE ON
THE BEACH AT DUNGENESS AND A
HIGHLANDS FARM CARPENTRY
WORKSHOP ALL IN WOOD,
SCOTTISH PRACTICE NORD IS
CREATING ITS OWN STRIKING
STATEMENTS WITH THESE
TRADITIONAL MATERIALS,
REPORTS OLIVER LOWENSTEIN
SCOTTISH
INDEPENDENCE
uncovered 80 structures, which were all
painted black. The more we visited
Dungeness, we realised how many black
and charred things were already there. The
tar coating which fishermen applied to
their buildings and huts was an economic
way of protecting them. The research
continued, metaphorically dismantling
the structure so as to rebuild it again,
and the practice eventually decided to
replace the old building while keeping
to the footprint.
There was the need to build off the
shingle on a special concrete plinth, a
meeting space between technology and
shingle. Talking with the retired fisherman
who was selling the plot, Pert asked about
the absence of porches. Exposed to the
weather and close to the sea, porches are
a basic protection against the elements,
and the seller became apologetic. From this
NORD composed brief connecting
corridors inverted porches between
the buildings different compartments,
as the structures sheltered spaces.
54
Dungeness is such a loaded landscape,
which makes it much easier to talk about
the vernacular, says Alan Pert, NORDs
remaining director, before explaining how
the buildings footprint determined and
traced the original vernacular, which again
involved NORDs trademark penchant for
architectural archaeology: stripping back,
digging down, uncovering whats hidden,
which can teach us something.
The single-level cottage is actually
four separate units linked by porch-
corridors, all tar-black except for a boiler
outhouse. The clients guiding spirit,
Alain de Botton, notes in a brief email
that the approach suited the site: Living
Architecture had early in its life identified
Dungeness as a dream location for the
house We expected an abstracted
vernacular and we got one.
Initially, Pert wasnt sure whether it
would be new or rebuilt, and whether it
should be black. Jarman and Condor had
already done that. The working method,
that Pert calls the archaeology of ideas,
Right, below left, bottom
and previous pages:
Scottish architect NORD
designed a new
residential building,
Shingle House, for the
Dungeness beachscape
Below: Stone House was
built with Caithness
stonework for the first
Scottish Housing Expo,
held in 2010
Eerie, desolate, dreamlike, surreal: the
words effortlessly trip off the tongue as one
turns through 360 degrees to take in the
singular landscape of Dungeness. Sitting
out on a far edge of the Sussex coastline,
it is a geological spit of lost land, hewn by
waves into one of the planets largest
shingle beaches, while inland stretch the
flat expanses of Romney marshes.
And then there are the man-made
incursions. Dominating the horizon,
at least westwards, is the nuclear power
station; huge, inaccessible, a hint of
an aura of menace mixed with the
technological sublime. Two lighthouses,
one disused, stand guard, while at ground
level a miniature railway loops around the
shingle. The approach is lined with rickety
old huts, some once-upon-a-time railway
carriages, originally dragged on to the beach
by the local fishing community. In recent
decades these have partially been taken
over by incomers and weekenders drawn
to the strangeness of the setting.
Derek Jarmans celebrated garden,
all gorse and sea cabbage, introduced the
modern art, landscape and, to an extent,
architectural audiences, to Dungenesss
surreal atmospherics back in the Eighties.
Jarmans house and garden anticipated the
invasion of the contemporary in the form
of two small residential homes as refined
modernist dwellings by Simon Condor
Architects, which neither add to nor
detract from the beachs random
concoction of filmic oddity.
Last year, a new building was added to
this desolate dreamscape. Scottish practice
NORD (the Northern Office of Research &
Design) completed Shingle House, the first
in Living Architectures initial round of
buildings. The modestly scaled holiday
home continues an unfolding story, which
has been a part of NORD since the practice
was founded by Alan Pert and Robin Lee in
2002. It is a story of enduring immersion in
the physicality, tactility and atmospheres
of buildings and of place, and overlapping
absorption in the vernacular and everyday,
as well as the history of whats gone before.
Such an approach, along with an
emphasis on materiality, isnt particular
to the practice, and its path shadows that
of a new generation of architects who have
been making an impact over the past
decade, though it is also a departure
from the established practitioners of the
British chapter of the central European
architecture of the everyday: Tony Fretton,
Caruso St John and Sergison Bates.
Of the new generation, Mole
Architecture, Mitchell Taylor Workshop,
for instance, and ex-Caruso St John man
Adam Khan, have all turned the everyday
a greener shade. NORD, with its roots in
industrial Glasgow, has taken its language
of place in another direction. The practices
buildings speak not so much of a post-
industrial even if forcefully expressed in
the all-brick Olympics Substation heavy
object but of a working-mans
vernacular; it is equally responsive to rural
working as to urban contexts. This
common theme has found expression
in a group of recent projects including,
most visibly, Shingle House.
55
NORDS PATH SHADOWS THAT
OF A NEW GENERATION OF
ARCHITECTS WHO HAVE BEEN
MAKING AN IMPACT OVER THE
PAST DECADE, THOUGH IT IS
ALSO A DEPARTURE FROM THE
ESTABLISHED PRACTITIONERS
OF THE BRITISH CHAPTER
OF THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN
ARCHITECTURE OF THE EVERYDAY
C
H
A
R
L
E
S

H
O
S
E
A
CENTRAL
SAI NT
MARTI NS
COLLEGE
OF ARTS
& DESIGN
SHORT COURSE WEB LISTINGS AND SECURE ONLINE BOOKINGS:
WWW. CSM. ARTS. AC. UK/SHORTCOURSE
TELEPHONE ENQUIRIES: +44 (0)20 7514 7015
PLUS - DUAL CITY COURSES STARTING 25 JUNE: ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY IN LONDON AND BARCELONA / PHOTOGRAPHY
AND THE CITY, ART AND ARCHITECTURE / DESIGN LEGACY OF GLOBAL SPORTING EVENTS - LONDON AND BARCELONA
ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING
ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF LONDON
ARCHITECTURAL MODEL MAKING
CONCEPTUAL DRAWING FOR ARCHITECTS AND DESIGNERS
EVENT DESIGN
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
INTERIOR DESIGN - LEVEL 1 AND LEVEL 2
INTERIOR DESIGN - COMMERCIAL
INTERIOR DESIGN FOR RETAIL
INTERIOR STYLING
MODEL MAKING FOR ARCHITECTURE
MOSAICS FOR INTERIORS
PHOTOGRAPHY, ART AND ARCHITECTURE
SCALE MODEL MAKING
STYLING FOR HOME DECORATION
VISUAL MERCHANDISING - INTERIORS
REFRESH YOUR
CREATIVE POTENTIAL
NO MATTER WHAT
YOUR AGE, PROFESSION
OR SKILL LEVEL
3D- ARCHI TECTURE
SHORT COURSES
EVENING, DAYTIME AND SATURDAY COURSES. EASTER AND SUMMER SCHOOL COURSES.
Top: One of three
residential projects NORD
has been working on
during the past two years
is Glen Dye, involving
the refurbishment
of six farm buildings
Above: The larger plan for
Glen Dye involves a new
set of timber buildings,
including a new carpentry
workshop, shown here
Pert would be the first to acknowledge
that NORD has been lucky. The run of
luck began in 2004, just two years after
Pert and Lee founded the practice, when it
was picked to represent Scotland at the
Venice Biennale (the first time the country
had been invited to participate). Two years
later, NORD was chosen as Young
Architect of the Year by Building Design.
This was followed by a steady growth in
projects and profile before an official split
between the founding partners in 2011,
with Lee leaving to set up in Ireland, and
Pert continuing under the NORD name
in Glasgow.
During the latter period in the
relationship, NORD completed the
Olympics substation, a commission
awarded, Pert thinks, on the back of the
early awards. Both of those also likely
contributed to Living Architecture deciding
to give one of its first projects, the Shingle
House, to the Glasgow practice: That was
a massive help, opines Pert.
The Glasgow background is,
inevitably, significant. Once called the
workshop of the British Empire and
most visibly symbolised by the Clyde-
side docks and shipbuilding, the city
has been scrambling to uncover a new
identity for the post-industrial future.
Pert recalls growing up in a place where
that NORD has been working on over the
past two years. Close to the Cairngorms in
the Highlands, an inside-out refurbishment
of six farm buildings is just about to be
completed at Glen Dye, on the Gladstone
estate between Montrose and Aberdeen.
And, in 2010, the first Scottish Housing
Expo showcased Stone House, complete
with striking Caithness stonework, a vivid
contrast to the dominant timber material
mood of the Highlands vernacular.
While hardly a signature work, the
long period the Glen Dye farm steadings
have been on NORDs books has fed into
and informed the practices rural
vernacular dwellings. Pert and project
architect Alistair Forbes listened at early
meetings to a local stonemason and
carpenters, relishing hearing about and
sensing the materials subtleties through
the craftsmen. We all sat round the table,
and they clearly talked with respect and
love about the materials, says Pert. A
wealth of regional detailing information
about stonemasonry and wood was one
result. During the rebuild, each and
every stone has gone back exactly to
where it was in each individual building,
maintaining the particular textures in
the same parts of the buildings.
The work on Glen Dye is ongoing, and
with the estate diversifying its 9,000 acres
things were made, working products,
in his case looking out on the Singer
sewing machine factory.
Along with archaeology, NORDs
working process invariably includes a vein
of social history. The patient sifting and
uncovering of the everyday past is tied
to both memory and loss of these social
histories, rather than the denial and erasure
implicit in much of celebrity architecture
when put to use, attempting to combat
industrial decline. Its about creating
identity after one identity has gone,
remarks Pert. Its driven by the city fathers
thinking the way to economic salvation
will be through attracting tourism, through
the cultural branding route, which is
understandable up to a point.
The reinvention is most prolific along
the Clyde, in the aftermath of ship-building
going East, most recently with Zaha
Hadids snaking, zinc-covered, big shed
that references warehouses on the opposite
waterfront. Another charm to add to
Glasgows charm bracelet, says Pert of
the building. Its purely image-based, with
T-shirts and other memorabilia using the
primary image of the zinc-dressed front
gable as a core marketing device.
Shingle House may have been grabbing
headlines and winning awards, but its
actually one of a trio of dwelling buildings
57

58
of forested land, the larger plan also calls
for a set of new timber buildings, including
a sawmill and timber workshops. For this,
NORD has developed what looks to be
an exciting timber-build design, which
will come on line very soon, if not in the
immediate future.
The research on stone and granite
dovetailed into the Highland Housing
Expos Stone House. NORD noted the
popularity of timber in other designs and,
in a counter-move not dissimilar to the
choice of brick for the Olympics substation
(which in its brief had stipulated a mesh
facade), began looking into stone.
A striking design emerged along with
the help of a stone supplier. Initially the
cost was prohibitive and Pert was told to
use render. It became a battle, says Pert,
with NORD scouring the quarries and
finding one in Caithness that could bring
the stone to site at price which, amazingly,
came in at cost-equivalent to render. It was
a hit at the expo says Pert, and at least two
other architects are now building with
stone, and NORD is considering it for its
latest competition win a hospice to be
built in a Glasgow park.
Such promotion of a new building in
Scottish stone distinguishes NORD from
various groupings in the close-knit Scottish
architectural community. Along with the
reach of NORDs projects, and the catholic
spread of materials, its approach is also
at odds with the distinctive timber-led
Highland and Island regionalism which
has emerged over the past decade, led by
the likes of Dualchas, Neil Sutherland,
Bernard Planterose and Gokay Deveci.
While agreeing that there are sound
reasons for reintroducing timber, a material
which grows in abundance in Scotland, and
attempting to make the forested landscape
usable, Pert is not without reservations.
There are contradictions in timber as
a Scottish vernacular, he suggests,
claiming that timber use in the new
Highland regionalism is actually a reaction,
expressing something new and modern.
NORDs work straddles both these
and the English tactile, materiality-led
practitioners. Pert calls the overlap a
similarity of attitude.
For me, NORDs approach works best
when substance isnt distracted by style,
when theres no grating with vernaculars
anonymity, simplicity and modesty.
Walking round Shingle House, it felt
at times, for all the archeological
investigation, like a box of party-time
surfaces all wrapped up in vernacular
dressing. Pert must be fully aware of these
paradoxes, and of the architectural cottage
industry producing small-scale, everyday,
iconic even, wonderments.
But how will this uncover the new
identities required to replace earlier, lost
ones? Its a dilemma for all those staking
out the landscape of an early 21st-century,
regionalist-inflected and vernacular-hewn
architecture. NORD is better placed to do
this than many.
Left: The Olympic
substation, with detail
shown right. An all-brick
structure, its commission
followed quickly on from
NORD winning two awards
.
Chorus Furniture Limited
3 Nelson Trade Park
South Wimbledon
London SW19 3BL
t +44 (0)20 8543 6063
f +44 (0)20 8545 0362
info@chorusfurniture.com
www.chorusfurniture.com
Theo
Design: Simon Pengelly
A
L
B
E
R
T
O

F
E
R
R
E
R
O
60
Above: The main entrance
to the foundation,
created by architect
Carlo dal Bianco
Right: The work of
long-time collaborator
Allesandro Mendini, who
is also on the foundations
advisory board
Left: Jaime Hayon
created these pieces,
Pixel Ballet, for Bisazza
in 2007. They are shown
in a dedicated room,
one of 15 given over
to the work of individual
designers
Below: The minimal
inner courtyard of the
new Bisazza Foundation
building in Vicenza, Italy
SOLID
FOUNDATION
LUXURY MOSAIC MANUFACTURER
BISAZZA IS ABOUT TO OPEN THE
BISAZZA FOUNDATION, A
SHOWCASE FOR ART AND DESIGN
PIECES CREATED FOR IT OVER THE
YEARS BY BIG NAME DESIGNERS.
JOHNNY TUCKER PREVIEWS IT
AHEAD OF THE 8 JUNE OPENING
O
T
T
A
V
I
O

T
O
M
A
S
I
N
I
A
L
B
E
R
T
O

F
E
R
R
E
R
O
O
T
T
A
V
I
O

T
O
M
A
S
I
N
I
B04 060 Bisazza ph2.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 21/2/12 10:53 Page 2
61
There are some companies, like ours,
that feel the need, regardless of the problems
at the moment, to link their name their
brand to artistic activities, says Rossella
Bisazza, head of communications at luxury
mosaic brand Bisazza, explaining why the
company is about to open a 6,000 sq m
Foundation near Vicenza, Italy.
Culture and design have always been
interconnected, especially for Italian
brands, says Bisazza, whos father, Renato,
founded the company 60 years ago. She
adds: It was time to open this foundation,
as we already had all of the pieces.
For foundation, read brand museum.
Its very much about showcasing previous
collaborations with illustrious designers
and artists, including Allesandro Mendini,
Marcel Wanders and Patricia Urquiola.
Ettore Sottsass has even had a hand in
designing his own room, which is one
of 15 dedicated to individual collaborators.
As well as the permanent rooms
there are also two spaces for temporary
exhibitions, which will kick off with the
Design Museums Plain Space, John Pawson
show, but will also include a site-specific
piece by Pawson that will become part of
the permamnent collection. Arch-
minimalist Pawson and opulent-
maximalists Bisazza are odd bedfellows. Its
a twist. Of course, our style is completely
different, but in a way we admire John
Pawson very much, says Bisazza.
The foundation building itself was
a former Bisazza production facility and
had been remodelled by architect Carlo
Dal Bianco for the collection and visiting
exhibitions. The Bisazza Foundation, will
be open to the public, so if you happen to be
wandering around Montecchio Maggiore
from 8 June onwards, do drop in.
Right: Marcel Wanders
collaboration with
Bisazza included this
working car
Below: A massive screen
design by Patricia
Urquiola the other side
is made up of mirrors
Below right: The Ettore
Sottsass room, which he
designed himself
A
L
B
E
R
T
O

F
E
R
R
E
R
O
A
L
B
E
R
T
O

F
E
R
R
E
R
O
O
T
T
A
V
I
O

T
O
M
A
S
I
N
I
B04 060 Bisazza ph2.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 21/2/12 10:54 Page 3
62
COLOGNE
& PARIS
BEFORE EVERYONE GETS REVVED
UP FOR SALONI IN MILAN IN
APRIL, THE FIRST NEW OFFERINGS
OF THE YEAR GO ON SHOW IN
GERMANY AND FRANCE. JOHNNY
TUCKER VISITED IMM IN COLOGNE,
WHILE JENNY BREWER WAS IN
PARIS FOR MAISON ET OBJET.
HERES THE PICK OF WHAT WAS
ON DISPLAY AT THE TWO SHOWS
BROKIS
MEMORY LIGHT BY BORIS KLIMEK
Shown as part of the Czech Selection
stand, these floating ceramic balloons
are lights, with the string acting as a
pull chord. They come in a range of sizes
and vibrant colours
SCHENKWORKS
TICK BY JACOB SCHENK
Showing in the D3 selection section in
Cologne, Tick is a series of trestle table
legs in three heights, which securely clip
on to any piece of wood, or similar,
to create a bespoke table or bench.
For a second offering from the D3
selection see Produce on page 65
LIGNE ROSET
PEYE LAMP BY NUMRO 111
On show in both France and Germany,
this floor lamp features a series of LEDs
around its inner rim, emitting a diffused
light that reflects around the cavernous
white interior of its oversized shade
B04 060 Cologne ph.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 21/2/12 10:55 Page 10
63
IMM
DAS HAUS BY DOSHI LEVIEN
IMM drafted in London-based Doshi
Levien to create the shows centrepiece
design feature: Das Haus. Rather than
rooms, Doshi and Levien reimagined the
home as a transparent series of spaces
where things happen and populated it
with their own pieces including this
table for Stilwerk and favourite pieces
by other designers
FLOETOTO
PRO BY KONSTANTIN GRCIC
Best known for its school furniture,
Floetoto brought in Konstantin Grcic to
create Pro, a family of hard-wearing
chairs for the education environment.
The polypropelene S-shaped shell is
designed to promote good posture that
will relieve stress on the lower back
HIVE
DRAGON TAIL LAMP BY LUISA
DE LOS SANTOS-ROBINSON
Part of a family of lamps, the material
and wire construction shades are meant
to evoke the skin of the mythical beast
ENO STUDIO
QUAKE SHELVES
BY ANTOINE PHELOUZAT
This modular shelving consists of five
wood planks and four pairs of steel
cube frames of differing size. When
assembled, the cubes sit at disconcerting
angles to the perfectly flat shelves
B04 060 Cologne ph.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 21/2/12 15:09 Page 11

65
The Earths natural forces of gravity
and magnetism have been harnessed
by a Dutch designer to create stools,
bowls and even chandeliers.
Johnny Tucker reports on an exciting
project shown at IMM in Cologne
PRODUCE
Above: The
number of legs of
the Gravity Stool
simply depends on
how the magnets
are placed
exploration of the concept, Nothing
is something while studying at
the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in
Amsterdam (he graduated in 2011).
I wanted to demonstrate that
we are able to utilise and exploit the
things which already exist everywhere
around us, and by doing so capture
the invisible natural power in
a material form. These are the
kinds of techniques I can imagine
exploiting further in other methods
of production and in the quest for
shapes within these processes.
With his products called the
Gravity Stool (theres also a Gravity
Bowl and a chandelier) van der Wiels
intention was to try to set two of the
Earths powerful unseen forces
against each other gravity and
magnetism to create a functional
A
L
L

I
M
A
G
E
S

C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

J
O
L
A
N

V
A
N

D
E
R

W
I
E
L
Amsterdam-based designer Jlan van
der Wiel delights in calling his
products freakish and organic and
hes not wrong. They also beg the
question, How on earth did you do
that? The answer, magnetism.
Essentially, for his stools, van der
Wiel mixes a large amount of iron
filings around 6kg with some
liquid plastic, then uses magnets to
draw up the legs. Whats left in the
bowl forms the seat. The whole
mixture sets within about five
minutues and then you have a stool,
which can cope with up to 200kg of
weight and is surprisingly tactile too,
with a vinyl-meets-rubber feel allied
with its own unexpected weight.
The extraordinary shape of the
stools and the method by which they
are made all stem from van der Wiels
B04 065 Produce ph.qxp:B10/127 132/Produce1/pm/ep/ph/vr1 21/2/12 11:04 Page 1
66
piece of furniture. There was no
machine available that would let
him do this, so he set about building
his own Heath-Robinsonesque
contraption, that looks essentially
like a printing press with some
enormous magnets attached to it.
My aim was to explore and
visualise what was already there, but
invisibly, says van der Wiel. Gravitys
a force with a strong shaping effect
and I intended to manipulate this
using magnetism. As an invisible but
omnipresent power, gravity offers the
possibility of manifesting itself
visually in the material. From the
projects beginning, I intended to
take a step back and let the natural
phenomenon itself determine the
final shape of the object. My role
as a designer should be nothing but
a supporting one, determining only
the conditions under which the
object could take shape.
Two of the key factors that van
der Wiel controls are the material and
the magnets (the number and power)
he uses. Essentially, three sets of
separate magnets means three legs.
He mixes the iron and plastic
together in a bowl then lowers the
magnets towards the mixture before
raising them up again pulling the
legs up with it. The consistency of
the mixture and especially the power
of the magnets affect how long the
legs can be.
The first step and the most
important part is mixing the
materials. If I dont mix them well
enough, the stool will become too
hard or conversely wont harden
at all, explains van der Wiel. After
that, in the case of the stool, I
determine the shape of the seat and
the places where the legs should be.
Then I put the material in the mould
and after that the natural forces take
over. Its always a surprise the
shapes are totally down to the
magnetic fields.
Now van der Wiel has his eye
on expanding the method using
electromagnets, believing he could
use those to create tables. To that
end, hes scouting around for
sponsors to enable the process.
Below: The process
begins with the
mixing of the
plastic and iron
filings and ends
with the magnets
pulling up the legs
67
Left and below:
Three of the
finished articles.
Each is unique
due to the process
br|t|sh des|gners and manufaoturers of oontemporary furn|ture
hb head office
un|ts 1, 2 and 8
broadwyn trad|ng estate
waterfa|| |ane
orad|ey heath
west m|d|ands
b64 6ps
t: +44 (0}121 559 9111
f: +44 (0}121 559 9122
e: sa|es@hbgroup.oo.uk
www.hbgroup.co.uk
b
pr|vate res|denoe south west franoe

24-HOUR MUSEUM
Francesco Vezzoli, AMO and Prada
24 January 2012, Paris
Review by Beatrice Galilee
>>EVENT
Carsten Hller with architects
Carmody Groarke. In Seoul the Prada
Transformer was a five-month-long,
shape-shifting structure built by OMA
that was designed to change form to
be the perfect venue for cinema,
fashion shows and art exhibitions.
In Paris, AMO assisted Vezzoli
in turning Perrets palais into an
elaborate collage of rites and rituals.
The building, originally designed as a
museum of public works in a classical
style, is now home to the Economic
and Social Council of France. Inside
there is grandiosity, spectacular
staircases and a hint of modernism.
AMOs installation was in three
sections, each inspired by a particular
type of museum space: contemporary,
historic and forgotten. The space in
between was, naturally, for the bar.
The first clearly defined area was
a glowing pink metal cage of grilles
decorated with fluorescent lights a
campy crossover between Bruce
Nauman and Dan Flavin. This
is the experimental, contemporary
museum, dripping with artifice.
Inside were sculptures designed by
Vezzoli. The statues sat on marble
plinths and were flashing light boxes
rather than static sculptures, slowly
shifting from white to pink to red
a brilliantly unsubtle homage to all
things disco.
The method could be argued as
one of classical disco resurrection.
We see ancient sculptures without
their original multicoloured
appearance, Vezzoli tells Hans Ulrich
Obrist in the accompanying
catalogue. Our idea of classic
artworks is inevitably linked to the
whiteness of the marble. Its as if
Francesco Vezzoli does not do B list.
The Italian artists work is a perpetual
homage to the diva with all the
accompanying fame, bling, disco,
glamour, decadence and fantasy. For
his shows he pulls in public figures
and popular icons from Veruschka
at the Venice Biennale, to Cate
Blanchett and Natalie Portman at the
Guggenheim and Lady Gaga at the
MOCA. His latest project, the 24-Hour
Museum, was orchestrated as part
of a triumvirate of cultural icons:
Vezzoli himself, fashion brand Prada
and Rem Koolhaas think tank, AMO.
For one rainy day and night in
Paris, a spectacular, but fleeting
installation with a lifespan of less
than a mayfly occupied the Palais
dIna, a monumental concrete
rotunda designed by August Perret
in the centre of the city. The 24-Hour
Museum was an exclusive, elusive,
fanfare of neon-pink extravagance.
Its difficult to shake the idea
that this was simply a lavish 24-hour
party, a Parisian Studio 54, rather
than a museum. But while party
would have been a more honest
descriptor, one shouldnt dismiss the
ambition, thought and strategy
behind this.
This is the third such event that
Fondazione Prada has presented in
recent years. The Double Club in
London was a temporary club and
restaurant conceived by German artist
Calvin Klein had washed out all of the
colour from the history of Roman and
Greek sculpture.
The second AMO typology was the
propagandistic use of the museum.
The architects refer specifically to
Hitlers Haus der Kunst in Munich,
where the neo-classical architecture
exudes severity, discipline and order.
The art was austere portraits or
familial, country scenes of German
life. At the 24-Hour Museum, this was
represented by a single majestic
sculpture standing in front of a deep-
red curtain at the top of the gorgeous
curving baroque staircase. The
glowing goddess was at the heart
of the room, drawing all attention.
Dangling from her feet was an ironic
Facebook Like thumbs up.
The third space was the disco,
and the only thing to really say
about that was that Kate Moss was
there DJing.
As a whole project, the Prada,
Vezzoli and AMO museum averted
the traditional gaze and turned its
tailored and manicured guests into
the subject of the spectacle. Says
Vezzoli: The museum is social ritual,
which at the end of the 24-hour
period will be deprived of the object
for which the social ritual is being
organised. The museum is the stage.
The performers are the audience.
The morning after was a little
subdued. The throngs were gone and
the Prada-dressed staff were offering
juices and intense-flavoured canaps
to only a handful of curious visitors.
There was not much of the intensity
of a museum which would fold in on
itself in just a few hours. Even online,
with much social-media input on
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, was
not delivering the thrill of decay or
anticipation that the experience was
once in a lifetime.
One failing of the project was its
ubiquity all of it could arguably
have been replicated at any other
time in almost any other space. It
could have lasted for two months as
easily as 12 hours. And we only have
Vezzolis promise that it wont.
It all seemed to point to the twin
truths about the museum. Firstly that
despite it being the antithesis of the
careful collections and the painful
research and investigation, many
directors disproportionately cherish
the vernissage and its attendees over
all else. Ditto the guest list and the
attendees for the dinner.
Secondly, that for all the 24-
Hours Museums efforts to be fleeting
and effervescent there is eternal life
for objects and ideas in the space of
print and in the world of online.
Above: Gone in a
flash the 24-Hour
Museum was
conjured up in Paris
as a collaboration
between Francesco
Vezzzoli, Rem
Koolhaas AMO
and Prada
Below right: A
sculpture in a
neon-lit pink cage
more Studio 54
than museum from
artist and satirist
Francesco Vezzoli
69
REVIEW
I
M
A
G
E
S

C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

P
R
A
D
A
B04 069 Review1/Prada ph:B09 077/rev1/ki 21/2/12 11:06 Page 95
bronze sculpture Look at This (2012).
Shrigleys show is very much in
keeping with the irreverent tone of the
Hayward Gallerys recent programme
which tugs at the edges of the
question what is art? Psycho
Buildings was particularly successful
at engaging with the gallerys physical
and cultural identity, and drawing
in new visitors. Similarly, Brain Activity
does not take itself too seriously not
unexpectedly for an artist so humorous
and yet shows a consistency of
approach that makes for a coherent
and peculiarly compelling exhibition.
hence he chose to make 12 large Eggs
(2011) rather than one, and line them
up, like a troop of Humpty Dumpties,
along a high wall. He has translated
the games he plays with scale in his
work into his architectural
manipulation. Most unsettling is a
small opening in a wall, too low to be
a doorway, that hints at yet dashes
the opportunity of retreat from the
hoard of copulating metal insects that
is Untitled (2009). He has also adeptly
used the views out to the sculpture
terraces, pulling a picture-postcard
view of London into the gallery with
drawing as an activity in itself.
Shrigley says this style evolved
as a reaction to the seriousness of the
art he was expected to produce at art
school. This desire to provoke, along
with his environmental art course at
Glasgow, helped to form his witty
response to context, evident in early
works such as Leisure Centre (1992)
and Lost (1996).
For this show, his first major
retrospective, Shrigley wanted to give
the work a reason to be in the space.
Much of it is new, having been created
in response to the context to fill it
I wanted to call it Fancy rooms filled
with crap, muses David Shrigley at
the opening of his latest exhibition at
the Hayward Gallery, but they said no.
However, the shows eventual title,
Brain Activity, is rather apt, as it
opens a window on to the artists
methods of working.
Principally known for his
drawings, Shrigley has produced at
least 25,000 of them since graduating
from Glasgow School of Art in 1991,
pouring out his stream of
consciousness on to paper. Of this
enormous number, only about a
quarter escaped his judicious editing;
he explains: I just keep the good ones
and throw the bad ones away.
Little more than 100 drawings
have made it to the Hayward Gallery,
arranged in storyboard-like rows
across adjacent walls. Only on closer
inspection does it become apparent
that there is little narrative to unite
the series. Each drawing is a tiny
snapshot of a larger scene that the
viewer can only imagine: economy of
narrative, Shrigley calls it.
His drawings in particular are
pared-back, simple diagrammatic
representations that, he says, have
nothing to do with craft. He talks
about making drawings rather than
DAVID SHRIGLEY:
BRAIN ACTIVITY
1 February 13 May
Hayward Gallery, London SE1
Review by Kate Wood
>>EXHIBITION
Right: David
Shrigleys drawings
are a snapshot of
a larger scene
that the viewer
has to imagine. Its
what the artist
calls economy
of narrative
ZAHA HADID AND
ALBERTO KALACH,
INSPIRATION AND
PROCESS
Published by Moleskine
24.99
Review by Hitoha Tsuda
>>BOOKS
Designed in Moleskines iconic style
that has long been appreciated for its
pure material beauty, a new
architecture series, Inspiration and
Process, features sketches by four
renowned architects and practices:
Bolles+Wilson, Giancarlo De Carlo,
Zaha Hadid and Alberto Kalach.
Covered in light grey cardboard
tied with Moleskins signature elastic
strap, the books feature each
architects drawings and sketches
along with interviews and essays.
As a pioneer of digital
architecture in the Eighties, the
Hadid book reveals her attitude
towards the current movement of
parametric architecture in which she
now leads the world. As a means of
architectural production, hand-drawn
sketches on paper are the nostalgic
process for her. Hadid argues
computation increasingly simplifies
the production process, spatial
discoveries decrease and it is rather
barren compared to those in the pre-
digital age. Now there is sameness
and far fewer surprises you dont get
so many layers of discovery, she
expounds in her interview.
In an accompanying essay in the
book, Marco Sammicheli, a PhD and
researcher at the Politecnico di
Milano, focuses on multicultural
influences on her work. Arabic and
Chinese calligraphy and Russian
suprematism, in which she had great
interest, can clearly be seen to affect
her pictorial representations for her
2010 Stirling Prize-winning MAXXI,
Romes Museum of XXI Century Arts.
The way Alberto Kalach considers
sketches, as a means of spatial
exploration, is markedly different from
Hadid. In the wide range of his
projects, from minimal houses such as
the palapa an open-sided ocean-
front dwelling with a thatched roof in
Acapulco to urban planning such as
housing blocks spanning mangroves
in Cancun, most of his sketches are
hand drawn with dynamic, fine and
even sensual pencil lines. In an age
where digital tools are an inevitable
part of the architectural design
process, Kalach clearly appreciates the
immediacy of hand-drawings as a way
in which he can most appropriately
convey the spaces.
Architects never have the blank
sheet of paper as the initial condition
of a site. The zestful strokes and
colouring in Kalachs sketches are
redolent of the explosive natural
context in the city, to which he
attempts to integrate his imaginary
architecture with utmost respect and
empathy towards nature. Under the
magnificent geography and the
landscape the question is how to touch
it; where it will hurt less, he says.
Each of these books reveals the
unique perspective of the architect.
Hadid reminisces about the deep and
creative spatial explorations in the
process of paper drawings within
the current hegemony of parametric
architecture; Kalach still believes
in the imaginary integration of an
existing context and an architects
vision gained through strokes and
marks on paper. Amid the confusion of
what is real, continuously altered by
emerging 3D modelling software and
algorithmic systems to generate
architecture without any tangible
medium, perhaps these books are a
timely reminder of the power of the
tangibleand the immediate, as we
advance into the post-digital age.
70
L
I
N
D
A

N
Y
L
I
N
D
B04 070 Review2 Mole Shrig ph.qxp:B08 70/rev3/ki/sd/ta 21/2/12 11:07 Page 2
Jack. Lounge chair. Design: Burkhard Vogtherr.
www.girsberger.com/jack
Girsberger London, Invicta House, 108-114 Golden Lane, London EC1Y OTG, Tel. +44 (0)20 7490 3223
glass model helped me on my way and
I soon recognised that, by employing
glass, it is not an effect of light and
shadow one wants to achieve but a
rich interplay of light reflections.
Nature is seen in the pavilions
polished surfaces, not in the
transparency of the pavilions many
reflective surfaces: water, chrome, red
onyx, green marble, yellow travertine
when wet, and glass, which is either
clear, white, grey or green.
Hill credits the weather and a
sense of north in allowing modernism
to connect with national romanticism
and flourish in Scandinavia and
Germany. The Nordic climate does not
encourage submission to the seasons
and gentle weathering. The dialogue
with nature remains, but rather than
the benign encounter of the
picturesque it is confrontational as
well as celebratory and closer to the
romanticism expressed in 19th-
century landscape paintings.
For Hill, architect Sverre Fehn
is an author of weather, successfully
exporting the northern romantic mist
to a milder Italian climate in 1962
Fehn blurred architecture and nature
to the extent that Nordic light is the
Nordic Pavilions principal material.
Hills treatise, both charts the
cultural history of environmental
discourse and paves the way for future
areas of special architectural interest.
There exists a tipping point in
teaching sustainable design, and
Weather Architecture encourages
critical re-evaluations of contemporary
responses to climate change.
investigations earlier established
by van der Rohes interest in Karl
Friedrich Schinkel. Van der Rohe
stated: If you view nature through the
glass walls of the Farnsworth House, it
gains a more profound significance
than if viewed from the outside. Hill
argues: Within its vulnerable interior
the full effects of weather and
weathering are amplified and
experienced, from
the pleasant beauty of sunlight to
the painful beauty of cold and
condensation, from the majesty of
thunder and lightning to the fearful
flood when immediate danger
overcomes the sublime. Either way,
within the Farnsworth House
ambiguity is a hesitant margin
between its architect and the weather.
For Hill, Farnsworth House is a hinge
between the early modernist control
of nature and the later modernist
accommodation of nature.
Twentieth-century weathering is a
quality imbued in material. Van der
Rohe while designing the Barcelona
Pavilion, found my experiments with a
Soanes concern over climate,
tested by instruments to measure time
and atmosphere, drove him to make
and inhabit a complex interior as
a garden and expand picturesque
narratives through his phased
alterations to 12-14 Lincoln Inn
Fields. For Hill, todays architects deal
with climate rather than weather
weather is what you experience at a
specific time. In Greek, the world for
the moment is same as for weather.
Weather challenges the common
perception of architectural authorship,
how, as Hill says, others understand
architects but also how architects
understood their own work. The best
architecture has always embraced
context and must inherently be
harmonious with the weather.
Though few celebrate the stained
concrete of the Haywood Gallery, it
was surely intended that way in which
the seasons are made visible, recorded
and remembered. If one accepts the
intentional nature of architecture to
weather then, as Hill suggests, one
also recognises the contribution
weather makes as a co-author.
Hill examines the art of
weathering in the 18th-century trend
for ruination due to empiricisms
attention to subjective experience,
the heightened historical awareness
in the Enlightenments concerns for
origins and archaeology, and the
value given to imagination, time
and metaphor. Whether found or
fabricated, the ruin related the
present to the past, imagined or real.
It could evoke a lost idyll that
would never be repeated, transfer
gravitas and authority from one era to
another, or suggest that the successes
of the present will surpass those of the
past. As Hill says: Whether classical or
gothic, ruins developed the 18th-
century discourse on nationhood and
nature... the visionary ruins of Piranesi
and Soane were appropriate to an era
that valued self-expression, temporal
awareness and multiple meanings and
the potential for language reinvention.
The recurring attitudes to the
environment are picked up in the mid-
20th century where, as before creative
architects looked to the past to
imagine the future, using the weather
as their principal means to recognise
and represent time. Using Mies van
der Rohes Farnsworth House, Hill
questions whether the architect
intended the house to flood and when
one should recognise the weathers
role in affirming the Northern
romantic tradition.
Farnsworth continues romantic
Weather Architecture acknowledges
the creative stimulus of inclement
weather in the emblematic Rousham
Garden by architect William Kent
(1685-1748), whereby Jonathan Hill
portrays the sense of the picturesque
and rural idyll that pervades it.
Here the English empirical garden
transcended the ancien rgime by
mixing allegory from ancient Rome
with gothic and Arcadian symbols
referring to Englands pastoral past.
It repeats a pattern of cultural
independence, established in the
15th century by Henry VIIIs Act of
Supremacy and separation from Papal
Rome and in the 16th century when
Sir Edward Coke argued that the
unwritten law of England went back
to the Druids.
Rousham Garden (1741) was
planned as a place to heighten the
viewers awareness of nature, never
as a sequence of separated spaces
but always as a series of oblique,
picturesque views with multiple
perspectives and allegorical readings
in all directions. The opportunities for
surveillance offered by the garden and
which encouraged participation was
made possible by use of two
distinctive military features, the ridge
and the ha-ha, both familiar and most
likely encouraged by the client,
General James Dormer.
Following Sir John Soanes interest
in the work of William Kent, later
picturesque theories and the
fascination in climates influence,
Hill examines the national interest
in the subtle variations and poetic
effects of weather.
WEATHER ARCHITECTURE
by Jonathan Hill
Published by Routledge, 34.99
Review by Adrian Friend
>>BOOK
Right: In Weather
Architecture,
Jonathan Hill
examines the
nature of the
dialogue between
architecture and
weather
Below: Mies van der
Rohe talked of
nature gaining a
more profound
significance when
viewed through the
glass of Farnsworth
House. Here a
similar effect is
seen through a
window of the
Brunswick Centre!
73
HILL CREDITS THE
WEATHER AND
A SENSE OF NORTH
IN ALLOWING
MODERNISM
TO CONNECT
WITH NATIONAL
ROMANTICISM...
A
D
R
I
A
N

F
R
I
E
N
D
B04 073 Review3_Weather V2 ph.qxp:B08 70/rev3/ki/sd/ta 21/2/12 11:08 Page 1
No mention is made of
Pyongyangs loony attempt to co-host
the 1988 Olympics with Seoul, despite
30,000 crack soldiers from the Korean
Peoples Army being assigned to whip
up a blizzard of buildings in
Kwangbok. Desperate Olympic hopes
are why vast athletic and housing
facilities and the May Day Stadium,
the worlds largest, were started. Its
a rare oversight in Meusers own essay
surveying the Cabinet of Curiosities
that is Pyongyang. Overall, he has
produced a fascinating insight, with
great photography, into this freak city
and the urbanism of megalomaniacs,
both stranded by history.
like Roland Barthes and Michel
Foucault, although his comparison of
citizenship in Augustan Rome and
contemporary Pyongyang is more
interesting.
The drivel of Kim Jong-ils
interminable treatise On Architecture
makes Posthafen read like a thriller in
comparison. Mercifully, here we get an
edited version the original was five
times longer. The Dear Leader was no
Palladio. His banal generalisations,
repetitions and inconsistencies are
occasionally lightened by references
to door handles or exhortations about
making grand monuments to the
leader (ie, him).
Korean elements and typologies were
encouraged, coinciding with founding
dictator Kim Il-Sungs unique political
philosophy, Juche. From the Eighties
international influences are absorbed.
This contextualises works like the
170m-high granite Juche Tower
monument to the Ryugyong Hotel,
long an unfinished shell whose very
existence locals denied, despite its
330m height. Only now is this
concrete rocket-cum-pyramid being
completed, with new glass cladding.
Christian Posthafens essay on the
Legibility of Spatial Production is
somewhat less illuminating, stuck in
the arcane vagaries of philosophers
German architect and publisher
Philipp Meuser describes Pyongyang,
the North Korean psycho regimes
capital, as arguably the worlds best-
preserved open-air museum of
socialist architecture. This publication
offers a solid armchair trip through it.
Volume 1 has photographs and
descriptions furnished by the official
Pyongyang Foreign Publishing House,
without critical comment, but Volume
2 includes critical and analytical
essays. Best to leave the latter at
home if youre planning a trip.
South Korean architectural
historian Ahn Chang-mo
comprehensively charts the
development of Pyongyang from
before its destruction in the 1950-
1953 Korean War. He says that the
architecture of Pyongyang is
completely different from that of
other socialist states, but anyone who
has wandered along, say, Berlins Karl-
Marx-Allee, would instantly recognise
the stolid heroic architecture set in
wide, windswept spaces. The spaces
are wider in Pyongyang, Ahn explains,
to reduce damage in war, and he
highlights how North Korean
architecture diverged from Soviet
styles. From the Sixties, traditional
ARCHITECTURAL AND
CULTURAL GUIDE
PYONGYANG
Edited by Philipp Meuser
DOM Publishers, 31.90
Review by Herbert Wright
>>BOOK
The Juche Tower
monument, in the
foreground, stands
170m above the
river Taedong
in Pyongyang
AESTHETICS OF
SUSTAINABILITY
Edited by Sang Lee
010 Uitgaverij, 32
Review by Thomas Wensing
>>BOOK
The Aesthetics of Sustainable
Architecture is a worthwhile
collection of essays that explores
sustainability as it relates to
architecture and aesthetics. The many
writers, including Sang Lee, Kenneth
Frampton, Kengo Kuma, Matthias
Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton, and
the more leftfield like Ralph L Knowles,
raise pertinent questions about the
state and status of sustainability and
its concomitant aesthetic development.
Lees opening essay takes stock of
the situation and asks whether
sustainability has fundamentally
changed architectural discourse and if
sustainability has become an intrinsic
part of the architectural profession.
Despite many inspiring individual
examples
of sustainable and energy neutral
architecture, the profession has not
yet been able to design for a world
in which sustainability is a lived
principle, just a catch-phrase.
Lee and many of the contributors
expose the intrinsic hypocrisy in what
is currently understood as sustainable
development. To Lee the real barrier
to addressing environmental issues
is elementary: The fundamental
position underlying sustainable
development appears to be that the
current model of unbridled production
and consumption may be sustained
as long as we do not destroy our
environment in the process.
Ironically, sustainability has in
this way become a term to serve the
status quo rather than an idea strong
enough to effect real change in our
bankrupt economic and political
systems. The premise of the book
is, correctly, that a structural revision
of the industrial capitalist model is
long overdue, and that it is therefore
worth pondering what a sustainable
architecture could look like.
It is worth remembering that
the term aesthetics once held a
more moral dimension than how it
is more commonly used now, but it is
precisely in this more idealistic sense
that the book develops its argument.
In other words, it is assumed
that sustainable architecture could
take many shapes and forms, and by
extension an important function is
that the buildings communicate their
sustainability to us.
The different authors see
prospects for transformation in
different arenas: for Sauerbruch
and Hutton the potential lies in
encouraging a change in lifestyles,
whereas Frampton points towards
impotence and reactionary
obtuseness in politics combined with
a profession that has increasingly
isolated itself. He argues that
the tendency of design as an
individualistic and fashionable will
to form needs to be confronted head-
on in academia first. And there are
those who address sustainability as
a design challenge, such as Ralph
R Knowles, who has been pursuing
his solar aesthetic for 50 years.
Despite Knowles good judgment
the long-awaited tipping point
towards sustainably has yet to occur.
An oversight in the book may be
that the platform on which a new
sustainable architecture and aesthetic
will flourish has to be provided from
bottom up, rather than from top
down. Lets hope that the recent
expressions of people power are the
first signs of a global awakening.
74
M
E
U
S
E
R
/
D
O
M

P
U
B
L
I
S
H
E
R
S
B04 074 Review4/Pyong/Sus ph:B08 70/rev3/ki/sd/ta 21/2/12 11:10 Page 2
The essential design tool for architects, interior, furniture and product designers.
No registration, no advertising, no charge. Simply search, select and compare veneers on screen
...inspire yourself at veneerselector.com
with over 200 wood veneers
for your next project.
inspiration comes in all
shapes and sizes...
77
D
A
N
I
E
L
A

M
A
R
I
N
SPECIAL
FOCUS
SUSTAINABILITY
2012
B04 077 Focus cover ph:B09 25 v1/ki 21/2/12 11:13 Page 77
Courses at Kingston offer projects designed to engage with with, and critique,
real-world issues. This year we were invited by the Hannah Barry Gallery
to design and construct a project space, as a year round home for the
acclaimed Bold Tendencies art festival, which is sited in a multi-storey
car park in central Peckham.
The project space provides an infrastructure of clean, secure, functional
spaces, which supports the range of activities that the event requires.
It sits within the Gallerys existing Copeland Road base, an old
factory situated in an industrial estate to the rear of Rye Lane.
It is articulated as a building within a building, a room within a room - a
simply detailed timber construction clad in unfinished cement board and
topped by a lantern that both responds to the existing building form
and provides a specific interior character.
Students: Savani Akashbhai, Christopher Chan, Peter von Essen, Lisa Gould, Vaida Morkunaite,
Hayder Hatem, Hawar Salgado, Taulant Toci. Collaborators: Price & Myers, Gavin Mellor.
Thanks to Hannah Barry Gallery: Hannah Barry, Sven Munder, Ross Chalmers
School of Architecture and Landscape
BA(Hons) Architecture
BA(Hons) Interior Design
BA(Hons) Landscape Architecture
Graduate Diploma Architecture
(part 2 ARB/RIBA)
MA Architecture: Thinking Building
MA Landscape and Urbanism
MA Professional Practice in Architecture
MArch (Design)
PG Diploma Landscape Architecture
(Part 3 LI exemption)
PG Diploma Professional Practice in Architecture
(part 3 ARB/RIBA)
Image courtesy of David Grandorge
81
83
84
86
EDITORIAL FEATURE: SPANNING THE YEARS
EDITORIAL FEATURE: COMMENT
PARKLEX
SOLARLUX
BLUEPRINT
79
CONTENTS
Above: A span of the
17th-century Japanese
bridge Kintaikyo has been
replicated by Kingston
University students
during their exploration
of issues surrounding
sustainable architecture
D
A
N
I
E
L
A

M
A
R
I
N
B04 079 Focus contents ph 22/2/12 16:50 Page 1
Providing natural protection
The natural durability of Finnforest ThermoWood
makes it an ideal building material for external timber cladding and rain screen applications.
ThermoWood is PEFC certified and comes in a range of profiles and sizes. Heat treated and chemical free, ThermoWood
provides a low maintenance

service life of 30 years without the need for preservative.
ThermoWood
For timber cladding and rain screens

> www.finnforest.co.uk
For more information and references
or call 0800 00 44 44
Bl%eP#i$_claddig_ad_&2:AW 19/12/2011 18:01 Page 1
More than 50,000 visitors pass though
the doors of Ecobuild every year keen to gen
up on new technologies and schools
of thought surrounding sustainable
architecture.
The synthesis of humanity and nature
has become a prevalent and provocative
theme of our age. Architectural education is
obsessed with opposite kinds of desire at the
same time one school of thought leans
towards parametric architecture, digitalised
to create a fully artificial and controllable
human habitat, while the other orientates
towards organic materials and sustainable
construction methodologies.
As a part of Timber Focus at Ecobuild
2012, a team from Kingston Universitys
School of Architecture and Landscape will
showcase a replica section of Kintaikyo, the
traditional Japanese bridge that is applying
for World Heritage status. Takeshi Hayatsu,
a Japanese tutor who led the team of
students, along with other tutors, explains
why the bridge is relevant to the discourse
surrounding sustainable architecture: The
bridge is made out of numerous details
without hierarchy or a top-down scheme
to determine every detail. He is particularly
interested in the relationship between
details and the whole, which is unique to
this structure. The bridge, he says, is
ultimately a lot of details.
As the team researched the plans,
drawings and templates which were actually
used to construct the original bridge in five
arches in the 17th century and its periodical
rebuilding work after that, it became clear
that the bridges details have been
continuously altered, added to, modified
and reconstructed.
The details are not deduced from the
initial plan of the whole, but communicate
with the whole in a bottom-up way that
organically reconciles the internal network
of the structure. Another discovery was
that each element cannot be clearly divided
according to the respective role it plays
in the structure of Kintaikyo. Each element
of girder members, V-shaped saddle bars
and other auxiliary bars is intertwined
into the intricate beauty as seen in the
underside of the 12m-long reconstruction;
function is often ambivalent and
relationships to other elements are
idiosyncratic.
This project was also a challenge in
terms of architectural education. The
particular skills of the bridges meticulous
craftsmanship were passed down from
generation to generation locally. So this had
to be translated to a global educational
system for a variety of non-craftsmen, from
multiple cultural and national backgrounds.
In a way we simplified, admits
Above: The finished
bridge on site at the
university campus
Below: Packing tape was
used instead of the metal
strips of the original
Hayatsu, and what we built is not exactly
the same as the original. That said, the
simplification was seen as a positive part
of the task.
Translating the traditional Japanese
carpentry methods, to make them suitable to
global sustainable architecture was a healthy
struggle. With a DIY spirit, students and
tutors improvised skills to make use of the
standardised sizes of timber. Some students
brought an amazing idea using packing
tape instead of the traditional metal straps
originally used in Kintaikyo, says Hayatsu.
The 5mm-wide tape was perfect for bundling
the prefabricated pieces of wood.
The prototyping was carried out
with a tight schedule, just 10 days, and
it was constructed in larch and spruce,
which would have been different from
the wood originally used. Within these
limitations the workshop attempted to
recreate the architectural language in the
original structure in an entirely different
cultural milieu.
The result of all this effort to translate
the design principles represented by the
structure of Kintaikyo to our modern age
resulted in an elegant and virile timber
structure, which now spans the river at the
Knights Park campus of the university.
The bridge will be on show at Ecobuild
2012, at Excel in London from 2022 March. .
81
STUDENTS AT KINGSTON
UNIVERSITY HAVE REPLICATED
A 17TH-CENTURY JAPANESE
BRIDGE IN AN EXPLORATION OF
SUSTAINABILITY AND
CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE,
SAYS HITOHA TSUDA
SPANNING
THE
YEARS
B
O
T
H

I
M
A
G
E
S
:

D
A
N
I
E
L
A

M
A
R
I
N
B04 081 Focus feature 1 ph.qxp:B08 54 57/Campana/pm/sd2/ta 22/2/12 12:55 Page 1
Here comes
the sun
970 Trillion kWh of energy
shines onto the earth daily
We can help you achieve your sustainability targets
with our range of renewable technologies
Capture it with
renewable
technology
www.beechdale-energy.co.uk
01223 264520
83
COMMENT
practice work, while not necessarily to everyones taste, has
been using environmental ethics as a generator of its aesthetic
for some time. Feilden Clegg Bradley keeps refining its work
and thinking in the field, and there are some exciting recent
projects by others to look out for too, which managed to exploit
environmental constraints to their advantage.
Of particular note is Swiss practice Bearth and Deplazess
Gantenbein Vineyard, which is a masterpiece of natural light
and ventilation by simply playing with bricks. Closer to home,
strict ventilation requirements were also what inspired Allies &
Morrisons Charles Street car park in Sheffield and Levitt
Bernsteins HIP Liverpool project. While the boundary of
material choices used could be pushed further into the realm
of sustainability, clearly these projects have successfully used
environmental parameters and constraints as the generator
of their architectural aesthetic.
Additionally, much can be learned from dRMMs Kingsdale
Sports and Music School, a building which pushes the material
choice further into the sustainability realm. Its form is derived
from material constraints of structural engineered timber and
daylighting design, while furniture is made from wall window
cut-outs, and external aluminium cladding is first used as
concrete formwork shuttering.
Another practice to watch closely is RHMA, particularly
its housing projects Whatcotts Yard and Clay Field, where form
is derived from solar access without jeopardising urban plan
or architectural ambition. Additionally, they are built from
unfashionable eco-materials such as wood and hempcrete, and
yet the resulting designs are sophisticated and inspirational.
There is also a new generation of humanitarian designers,
such as TYIN Tegnestue and Voluntary Design and Build that
are leading the way in this field. Often constrained by resources,
their work is pushing the boundaries of what is possible
to achieve, using sustainable materials innovatively to create
architecturally poetic designs.
Similar constraints of money and material availability
apply to architectural education, where it is increasingly
exploring environmental architecture as a subject in its own
right. The fact that both CATs Graduate School of the
Environment and Sheffield Universitys architecture students
sensitive eco-projects have been shortlisted for an award
is testament to a changing culture, and one which we should
all be part of.
The building industry is overloaded with regulations, design

guides and sustainable frameworks such as EcoHomes, Code
for Sustainable Homes and BREEAM. Ironically, the plethora of
guidance and legislative frameworks that are supposed to help
the designer to build more sustainably often hinder results.
This is not surprising considering many designers today spend
more time ensuring various regulations are met to prove they
are thinking about sustainability than they do actually
contemplating sustainable design.
Given that carbon dioxide is one of the main greenhouse
gases and that we live in a world of finite resources, the focus on
energy efficiency and carbon reductions is indeed justified, and
fabric efficiency should always be the first renewable to
consider. However, I wonder whether the narrow focus of
carbon counting may be stifling architectural creativity,
leaving little room and time for professionals to manoeuvre. I
would also argue that it is the way in which professionals
approach carbon reduction legislation, which often lacks
imagination.
While the ticking of boxes may have improved building
efficiency, I cannot help but notice that much of its architecture
lacks inspiration or ingenuity. At its worst, eco-gimmicks
have been bolted on to architecture, which fails to do justice
to the architectural profession and makes a mockery of
environmental architecture.
Fortunately, unlike other project constraints, such as cost
for example, site and environmental constraints can be used
as a virtue if considered creatively. Rather than reluctantly
accepting environmental requirements as another overriding
and imposed constraint, we should use these environmental
constraints as a generator of a new architectural language.
Think where architects have done this before, such as the
Pompidou Centre in Paris, or the Lloyds building in London,
where the architecture was generated by visibly designing the
environmental services on the outside skin of the building.
While not classed as particularly sustainable, these buildings
highlight how playing with and celebrating an often-dull and
unimaginative constraint can be used to its advantage.
Other examples include Le Corbusiers later work, in
particular Unite dhabitation and La Tourette. Large ventilation
shafts act as sculptures and division on the Unites roof scape,
while in La Tourette, the daylight openings and roof canon
lights not only make for amazing play of light inside the
building, but give it a distinct architectural language externally.
In environmental practice, Alan Shorts rather post-modern
Sofie Pelsmakers
Architect Sofie
Pelsmakers is author of
The Environmental Design
Pocketbook (RIBA,
published this month)
.
CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING THE
ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE
OF A BUILDING ARE OFTEN
PERCEIVED BY THE DESIGN
INDUSTRY AS AN ADDITIONAL
CONSTRAINT OR OBSTACLE IN A
WORLD BESET BY BUREAUCRACY,
SAYS SOFIE PELSMAKERS
B04 081 Focus feature 2 ph:B08 54 57/Campana/pm/sd2/ta 21/2/12 11:19 Page 1
84
PARKLEX
Parklex UK Limited
Demita House, North Orbital Road
Denham, Buckinghamshire, UB9 5EY
t: +44 333 123 1121
e: ukalison@parklex.com
w: www.parklex.com
Parklexthe durable, contemporary
timber solution.
At Parklex we manufacture an extensive
range of natural timber products, all of
which beneft from long term performance
characteristics and ease of maintenance.
Whilst timber is highly regarded for
its natural beauty, in many cases the
requirement for signifcant, ongoing
maintenance can prove problematic.
Parklex has developed a series of
manufacturing processes which completely
eliminate the requirement for sanding,
lacquering, staining or oiling, requirements
traditionally associated with natural
timber panels. Under the general heading
BP Sustainability April 2012.indd 84 22/02/2012 16:30
85
of the Gureprex System, we completely
encapsulate natural timber veneers with
a variety of resins and overlays. Working
with many species of natural timber veneer,
our high technology manufacturing plant
creates large format sheets specifcally
designed for both internal and external
applications.
Externally, Parklex Faade is installed

as a rainscreen to numerous landmark
buildings throughout the world. From
single dwellings to large multi occupancy
apartments, commercial and public buildings,
in diverse climates such as Alaska and
Dubai. Parklex is highly resistant to UV
degradation, is resilient against atmospheric
pollutants and graffiti and requires only
washing with mild detergents for general
maintenance. Starting as a 2440 x 1220
panel, the design options for external
facades are almost endless. The panels may
be factory or site cut to ensure accuracy
of installation. In addition, reveals, soffits
and fascias can be matched to the general
facade layout. A 10 year warranty, PEFC
environmental certifcation in addition
to CWCT and BBA accreditation provides
assurance of performance. All guaranteed by
an ISO 14001 accredited manufacturer.
For natural timber without specifc

maintenance Parklex truly is the
durable, contemporary timber solution.
86
SOLARLUX SYSTEMS LTD
5 Quadrant Park, Mundells,
Welwyn Garden City, Herts AL7 1FS
t: 01707 339970
e: info@solarlux.co.uk
w: www.solarlux.co.uk
A new and successful approach to building
thermal management
Contemporary architecture is increasingly being
called upon to provide answers to a buildings
thermal management by producing intelligent
designs which address the challenges of the
future. With a new-build office for its Dutch
subsidiary at Nijverdal, Holland, Solarlux is
already meeting these requirements with an
innovative downsizing concept.
Architect Wolfgang Herichs main design
aims were energy efficiency, maximise
independent energy supply and the use of as
little technical climate control and artifcial
lighting as possible. The result is a
development that expresses the companys
corporate identity and philosophy in stunning
architecture style.

Back to basics
The Co2mfort faade is an idea taken from
87
the past the double glazed window. In the
Solarlux project, the idea has been
extrapolated to create a double-skin faade by
using the companys own products to produce
a future-proof result.
The Co2mfort faade
A thermally insulated faade of SL65
folding wood and glass doors, 3m high,
envelopes the office space. In turn this
faade is encompassed by SL25 XXL
frameless foor to ceiling slide-and-turn-
system which forms an uninsulated glazed
shell. The primary function of the outer
glass faade is to provide protection from
the elements, while the inner faade is
designed as a thermal barrier between
indoors and outdoors. Both faades can be
opened manually to varying degrees.
The building has no need for a
mechanical ventilation system.
Saving energy as a building concept
The Co2mfort faade concept ensures that
the solar warmth generated between the two
faades is used to heat the rooms in winter. In
summer, excess heat is expelled by opening
the outer faade.
Structural features enhance the natural
fow of air; two mono pitch roofs created
above the two central atria, with an overhang,
which creates a vacuum drawing air out of
the atria, while fresh air fows in through
open windows in the faade. This principle is
especially advantageous in winter, since it
allows the solar gain from the faade to be
used as heating. The low-tech manually
controlled faade incurs far fewer
maintenance and operating costs than a
conventional, high-tech, ventilation system.
The buildings thermal management
concept is based almost entirely on renewable
sources of energy. A geothermal plant produces
water at a constant 15C all year round.
With no ventilation or air-conditioning
system installation costs or space
requirements, the result is a considerable
reduction in energy consumption and CO2
emissions. A photovoltaic system provides a
share of the electricity requirements.
After one year of occupation and we
havent really achieved our target point for
consumption of natural resources, the results
are pretty impressive.
Viewed against an average consumption
in the Netherlands the results are:-
Gas: 93% saving, Water:64%saving,
Electricity: 79% saving, Lighting: 50% saving,
Solar cells produce 5,000kW of electricity.
When it comes to thermal building
management, this leading producer of folding
glass doors has set the standard for
sustainability and CO2 reduction with the
development of its Solarlux Co2mfort faade.
Barrisol
Lumire

Acoustics
by Zaha Hadid
photoHufton+Crow
Barrisol
Acoustics
Queen Mary University London _ arch. : Alessandra Foderaro

Barrisol
Lumire Color
O2 Arena Lounge London _ arch. : Populous Architects

Barrisol
Print
Cool Britanica London _ arch. : Wren Architecture
WORLD LEADER OF STRETCHED CEI LI NG
A
C
O
U
S
T
I
C
S
P
R
I
N
T
L
U
M
I
E
R
E
3
D
These exceptional projects
have one thing in common
www.barrisol.com
DISCOVER BARRISOL
NEWS AND INNOVATIONS
AT THE ECOBUILD 2012
from 20.03 to 22.03 stand S661
Mosa Tiles
0800 0770 8981
info@mosa.nl
www.mosa.nl
Stand S930
MOSA TILES
Contact: Sophia Sahin T +44 (0)20 7406 6546 E sophia.sahin@blueprintmagazine.co.uk W blueprintmagazine.co.uk
PRODUCTS ECOBUILD PREVIEW
90
Terra Tones is an innovative
ceramic tile surface concept
within the award-winning Mosa
collection Terra Maestricht. Now
you can have the highly sought-
after natural living feel of
walls, floors and faades in this
superior Mosa ceramic quality.
With this tile innovation, Mosa
has succeeded in creating a
well-chosen and select mix of
colour tones within one familiar
Terra colour.
The tiles in this collection are
Cradle to Cradle Silver certified
and meet sustainable building
requirements.
Deltalight
0870 757 7087
design@deltalight.co.uk
www.deltalight.co.uk
Stand S910
DELTALIGHT
This new generation of dimmable recessed spots
use carefully selected high performance leds that
are the equivalent of 35-50 Watt halogen lamps,
consuming less than 10 Watt, and delivering a
powerful, warm light. The Reo Led collection
guarantees a perfect balance between lighting
quality and energy efficiency. Countersunk conical
shapes create an almost unnoticeable transition
from the intense LED light with the ceiling.
NCS COLOUR
01491 411717
www.ncscolour.co.uk
Stand S163
NCS COLOUR
NCS sheets are available from
stock in all 1,950 colours in a
low sheen finish for design and
colour specification. Order A4
or A6 sheets online for same
day despatch. NCS colours can
be used for specifying many
interior and exterior products
and materials including paint
and powder from all major
companies. See us on stand
S163 at Ecobuild.
Armourcoat
01732 467994
marketing@armourcoat.co.uk
www.armourcoat.com
Stand S571
ARMOURCOAT
As an industry leader,
Armourcoat recognizes its
obligation to manufacture green
products. Core product lines
are made from natural minerals
predominately pre-consumer
recycled marble which can
account for up to 40% of the
product recipe. Reduction of
the companys carbon footprint
has been achieved with the
introduction of region-specific
pre-cast manufacturing in the
USA, Middle East and Far East.
CAESARSTONE
Caesarstone
0800 0421 6144
caesarstone@crlaurence.co.uk
www.caesarstone.uk.com
Stand S710
Caesarstone has created a new and unique range
of colours to complement their existing Classico
Collection. The new colours include Crme Brule
4255, Shitake 4230 and Cocoa Fudge 4260, and
will be on show on Caesarstones stand at
Ecobuild 2012, Stand S710. Also on display is
Caesarstones Supremo Collection. The Supremo
range is a new premium collection that blends
exceptional design and innovative technology.
MILLIKEN
Milliken
01942 612888
www.millikencarpet.com
Stand S810
Charting a commitment to the environment that
goes back over 100 years, Milliken will use ecobuild
as an opportunity to tell visitors of its rich history
of innovation that saw the company introduce its
first recycling policy in 1900, and that has led to
the introduction of innovative technologies
including the development of glue-free installation,
the adoption of recycled content cushion backings,
and the use of 100% recycled fibres.
BLUEPRINT PRODUCTS APRIL 2012.indd 90 22/02/2012 13:05
The Spaceoasis client list is a whos who of leading
companies, colleges and schools.
Our online project casebook showcases many of our
stunning and dynamic furniture installations for high
impact space where we have worked closely with
designers and clients to add that WOW! factor.
Featured products: Fraternity curved team desk, Okinawa meeting pod with convex touchdown, Zaharako vending point
View our project casebook www.spaceoasis.co.uk
Contact us for a brochure 01952 210197
Join us on Facebook
European Patent No.1470773 Community Registered Deign No. 00013268 SPACEOASIS is a registered trademark of Spaceoasis Ltd
Making An Impact
Roca
01530 830080
www.roca.com
Stand S830
ROCA
Contact: Sophia Sahin T +44 (0)20 7406 6546 E sophia.sahin@blueprintmagazine.co.uk W blueprintmagazine.co.uk
PRODUCTS ECOBUILD PREVIEW
92
EcoBuild is particularly relevant
for Roca, the leading global
bathroom brand. The company
is completely committed to
the environment in terms of
both its water-saving products
and processes, and its now
firmly established We Are Water
Foundation, which was set up to
raise awareness of and mitigate
the negative effects associated
with the lack of adequate water
resources. The Foundation is
working with NGOs including
Oxfam and Unicef to ensure the
distribution of donations to
worldwide cooperation projects.
nora
01788 513 160
info-uk@nora.com
www.nora.com/uk
Stand S320
NORA
Inspirational encounters in the third dimension,
norament 926 crossline is more than just a
flooring, it is a vibrant interplay of colour, light and
shade. The unique effect of norament 926 crossline
shows itself with a the three dimensional craftwork
like structure. norament 926 crossline fulfils
as a rubber floor covering meeting the highest
expectations and most exacting demands for safety,
robustness and environmental compatibility.
Twyford
www.twyfordbathrooms.com
Stand S223
TWYFORD
The Rimfree revolution is
here, with the arrival of the
ultra-hygienic, ultra-efficient
Rimfree WC from Twyford
Bathrooms. The UKs first truly
rimless WC developed for the
home, Rimfree is one of the
most notable landmarks in the
evolution of WC design and will
be on display at Ecobuild 2012
where the brand will showcase
three Rimfree Designs Moda,
3D and Galerie alongside their
antecedent, Sola Rimless.
Also on show at Ecobuild will be
the new T4 shower enclosures,
the Odourwise Waterless
urinals and the new Galerie Plan
electronic urinal.
Shackerley
0800 783 0391
info@shackerley.com
www.shackerley.com/cladding
Stand S835
SHACKERLEY
Shackerley, the UKs market
leading supplier of ceramic
granite cladding will show
how its attractive, sustainable
Sureclad ventilated faade
systems are helping architects
to achieve impressive BREEAM
ratings across the UK.
Specifiers will be able to see all
the latest colourways, textures
and surface finishes in the
extensive Sureclad Ceramic
Granite Collection and explore
the environmental credentials
of the system. The new Sureclad
Ventilated Faades brochure will
also be available at the show.
DESSO
Desso
www.desso.com
Stand S850
Innovation is the theme for leading European carpet
manufacturer Dessos stand at this years EcoBuild.
Based around the companys three innovation pillars
Cradle to Cradle, Functionality and Creativity the
stand will showcase Dessos transition to the circular
economy and its latest products and developments.
Vote on which of five of the centurys greatest
innovations they believe to be the best at Dessos
stand for a chance to win an iPad 2.
BELTRAMI
Beltrami
01384 564315
info@beltrami.co.uk
www.beltrami.co.uk
Stand S870
Beltramis stand will feature a host of new
products at Ecobuild. Beltrami supplies tiles and
slabs from around the globe, and has introduced
the new Cathedral and Sabbiatino finishes into its
range, giving a burnished and worn look to four
new limestones: Tandur Grey, Tandur Beige, Sinai
Pearl and Bronzatto. The tiles are available in
large formats are suitable for all interior settings,
giving a warm, lived-in look to any room.
The Spaceoasis client list is a whos who of leading
companies, colleges and schools.
Our online project casebook showcases many of our
stunning and dynamic furniture installations for high
impact space where we have worked closely with
designers and clients to add that WOW! factor.
Featured products: Sorbonne double sided touchdown wall, Okinawa meeting pod with convex touchdown
View our project casebook www.spaceoasis.co.uk
Contact us for a brochure 01952 210197
Join us on Facebook
European Patent No.1470773 Community Registered Deign No. 00013268 SPACEOASIS is a registered trademark of Spaceoasis Ltd
Making An Impact
Maine
01908 271688
www.maine.co.uk
MAINE
To place products contact: Sophia Sahin T +44 (0)20 7406 6546 E sophia.sahin@blueprintmagazine.co.uk W blueprintmagazine.co.uk
PRODUCTS
94
MAINE storage & filing were
recently specified for Imperial
Colleges, new research building,
at their Hammersmith Campus.
Spacecraft Furniture selected
Maines Mainepure range for
its flexibility, elegance and
streamlined aesthetic. Maines
flexible range of lateral filing,
receding doors and cupboards,
could meet with the specific
heights required and create
an efficient storage solution.
Areas of privacy were defined
using Mainepure units creating
a wall with their stylish,
seamless backs.
Corian
0113 201 2240
info@cdukltd.co.uk
www.cdukltd.co.uk
CORIAN
Corian was recently supplied for Twiningss new
Tea Tasting experience at Westfield White City
and Stratford. The East Yorkshire-based specialist
joinery company and Corian fabricators, Urban
Construction Interiors, were appointed by project
management company AB Associates of London to
undertake the design, build and installation. 12mm
Glacier White Corian with integrated sink was
specified as the perfect material for this project.
Black Millwork
www.blackmillwork.co.uk
BLACK MILLWORK
When a 1970s bungalow in
Derby was bought in order to
transform it into a magnificent
eight bedroom home, careful
attention to detail and finishes
was essential. Black Millwork
was the only window and door
supplier that could provide over
50 windows and doors, as well
as exceptional bespoke feature
windows for the front and
back of the property, on time
and of a high enough quality
finish. Random House overlooks
the picturesque Derbyshire
countryside, and Black Millwork
was specified to ensure the
property seamlessly blended in
with neighbouring, traditional
fronted buildings.
RAK Ceramics
07891 475364
kevin.j@rakceramics.co.uk
www.rakceramics.co.uk
RAK CERAMICS
RAK Ceramics porcelain slabs
have been specified for the UKs
largest large-format ceramic
cladding installation. The
7,654-square metre installation
forms the exterior of
Streamlight Tower in Londons
docklands. Acclaimed by the
Mayors office for its significant
contribution to the provision of
affordable housing, Streamlight
comprises 137 homes and
features a three-block design.
It reaches 82 metres in height,
offering stunning views over the
Olympic Stadium, the Thames
and Canary Wharf.
ANTRON
Antron
0845 450 6434
enquires@antronfibres.co.uk
The Antron carpet fibres Carpet and Space
concept has been exploring the human
relationship with carpet and its impact on
interior environments.
Through the use of innovative design, new
fibre technologies and modern manufacturing
processes, Invistas Antron carpet fibre has
presented experimental carpet samples that
catalogue the design potential of carpet.
PHILIP WATTS
Philip Watts
0115 926 9756
sales@philipwattsdesign.com
www.philipwattsdesign.com
Solid numbers by philip watts design.
These beautiful art deco numbers are hand cast
in aluminium and finished with a satin polish
for longevity.
Striking a balance of both bold and delicate, they
measure 120mm high, 67mm wide and 35mm deep.
For more inspirational products visit the new look
web site www.philipwattsdesign.com
. . .
Tel. 01923 818282 Fax. 01923 818280 Email. sales@shopkit.com www.shopkit.com
MAST SCREENING SHELVING
PAT.227494
+
MADE IN THE UK
Standard & custom made items, design & build services, quick lead times
Polyrey
01923 202700
polyrey.uk@polyrey.com
www.polyrey.com
POLYREY
PRODUCTS
96
Polyreys P066 pearlescent
laminate in the designers
favourite colour of white has
been selected for high-end
retail display units aimed at
boosting motorcycle sales within
the prestigious Stephen James
BMW showroom in Enfield.
Nottingham-based design and
shopfitting company the SGI
Group specified the Polyrey
PO66 white pearlescent laminate
in surf texture to provide a
durable and simple backdrop.
With its subtle pearlescent
design, PO66 offers greater
visual depth and interest than
a standard white.
KI
020 7404 7441
www.kieurope.com
KI
Faveo, designed by Paul Brooks, is a new task and
occasional seating range which has received a Red
Dot design award. The Faveo task chair, from KI, is
both inviting and attractive. A mesh back provides
optimum and ergonomic comfort, due to the point
synchromatic integrated mechanism which provides
a wide range of reclining options with free flow
and four-position locking.
Khrs
023 9245 3045
sales@kahrs.com
www.kahrs.co.uk
KHRS
Khrs has introduced a stunning
new collection of authentically
aged wood floors to its Supreme
Range. Crafted from sustainable
rustic oak, the new Da Capo
Collection includes six rugged
one-strip oak floors. Each
design is brushed, handscraped,
bevelled and smoked to achieve
a distinct vintage look, whilst
different tones of nature oil
prefinish give a spectrum of
shades. The Da Capo range
combines a robust, antique look
with the performance and easy
care benefits of its modern,
eco-friendly, multi-layered
construction.
Vorwerk
020 7096 5090
www.vorwerk-carpets.com
VORWERK
After showcasing of one of the
most innovative flooring concepts
in the last twenty years, Vorwerk
Carpets declared this years
Heimtextil exhibition a runaway
success. Revealing the Scale
Living concept to an international
audience, along with its updated
premium Selected Rugs collection,
Vorwerk interrupted the variety
of decorative fabrics on display
with a stand designed by the
renowned architect and creator
of the Scale Living collection,
Hadi Teherani. The stand took on
an almost sculptural-like quality,
with a mirrored surface modelled
on the free-form lines and shapes
of the Scale Living collection.
FORBO
Forbo
www.forbo-flooring.co.uk
Irelands newest major sporting venue, the
Aviva Stadium in the heart of Dublin, required
a fittingly impressive entrance and exit-zone
aesthetic. Accommodating up to 50,000 seated
spectators meant issues of safety were key to the
specification process, and the entrance flooring
system chosen had to perform to the highest
level, both functionally as well as aesthetically.
POLYFLOR
Polyflor
0161 767 1111
info@polyflor.com
www.polyflor.com
Polyflors Polysafe Standard safety vinyl
flooring collection is now available with
the manufacturers groundbreaking Polysafe
polyurethane reinforcement (PUR).
Cross-linked and UV cured, Polysafe PUR is a
super-strength reinforcement designed to make
Polysafe Standard PUR even easier to clean,
provide optimum appearance, colour retention and
improved soil release.
BluePrint_248x328.indd 1 15/12/11 15:17
Fondazione.indd 1 21/12/2011 09:39
Viasit
020 8643 1095
www.viasit.co.uk
VIASIT
PRODUCTS
98
Scope, the result of a
collaboration between
designer Martin Ballandat and
the companys own product
development team, is a
complete family of seating and
embodies the Viasit philosophy
in its purest form.
Since its launch in March
2011 Scope has been awarded
many deign prizes including a
prestigious Red Dot and most
recently the Good design
award from the Chicago museum
of Art and Design and in
practical use was the overall
winner in the Das Buro
professional test.
Domain
01403 784846
mail@domainfurniture.info
www.domainfurniture.info
DOMAIN
Riva 1920 creates pieces using solid wood
and natural finishes from sustainable forests,
conceived by renowned designers and made
entirely in Italy. The table Mantis, designed by
Marc Sadler, is shown here in solid walnut (also
available in cherry, maple, & oak).Riva 1920 is
one of the many European furniture manufacturers
represented by Domain. Others include: Zeitraum,
Ceccotti, B&B Italia, Maxalto, Baxter, Rimadesio.
The Interiors Group
0207 495 1885
www.interiorsgroup.co.uk
THE INTERIORS
GROUP
The Interiors Group recently
fitted out its first retail shop
unit for Intimissimi, a brand
of the Calzedonia Group in
Islington. Calzedonia is one of
the largest Italian international
franchises, selling lingerie,
fashionable hosiery and
beachwear. The brief required an
entire store refit, while retaining
Intimissimis overall brand and
corporate image. The Interiors
Group supplied designs, and
drawings for the electrical and
mechanical installations.
Artemide
020 7291 3853
showroom@artemide.co.uk
www.artemide.com
ARTEMIDE
Artemide presents Melete, a wall
fitting born from the desire to
design a simple lamp and easily
understood.
The external surface of Melete is
a pure and linear monolith that
interacts with the architecture,
the internal is carved and
guarantee an excellent direct
and indirect lighting.
Melete is made with die-cast of
painted aluminium.
Sizes 22.8cm x 13.8cm x 5.5cm.
Light source 1x160W halogen
dimmable.
Designers: Pio & Tito Toso, 2011.
BLUEBELL
Bluebell
08452 300 0990
info@bluebellfinishes.co.uk
Synua, the revolutionary armoured door that
opens environments, instead of closing them
up making contemporary living gracious and
comfortable, thanks to its size, the greater light
guaranteed by the vertical pivot operation and
a rich and refined choice of custom finishes,
which make it a veritable integrated furnishing
complement for the interior fittings.
HITCH MYLIUS
Hitch Mylius
020 8443 2616
info@hitchmylius.co.uk
www.hitchmylius.co.uk
Designed specifically for healthcare use,
addressing the particular requirements of care
homes and the needs of the elderly, the hm82
by Kenneth Grange for Hitch Mylius comprises
ergonomically designed high-backed and low-
backed chairs with or without arms.
Also known as the Edith chair, it is available in
a wide range of fabrics, including selected vinyls
and coverings with antimicrobial finishes.
sa| es@mr f des| gn. oo. uk
t 0121 602 6942
mr f des| gn. oo. uk
mr f
o360 jaok
outside-inside aluminium furniture specialists ...
All products customisable in colour and dimensions.
Quotations provided for bespoke alternatives.
www.jennifernewman.com
jennifernewman
99:Layout 1 22/2/12 15:48 Page 1
T: 01638 500338 F: 05603 419105 W: WWW.ARCHITECTURALTEXTILES.CO.UK
ARCHITECTURAL TEXTILES LTD
Architectural Textiles Ltd, Shardelows Farm House, New England Lane, Cowlinge, Suffolk CB8 9HP
Imagine your walls dripping with high gloss lacquer with a vertical texture! New from
PHILLIP JEFFRIES this LACQUERED STRI wallcovering is embossed with a vertical stri
pattern that is virtually seamless. Too luxurious not to fall in love with, the LACQUERED
STRI is conveniently matched with coordinating solids.
F L I G H T D E S I G N
T. 0 2 0 8 9 8 0 1 0 0 0 E . I NF O@F L I GHT DE S I GN. CO. UK W. F L I GHT DE S I GN. CO. UK
S TA I RCA S E S | B A L US T RA DE | A RCHI T E CT URA L F E AT URE S
13 Stratford Road, Kensington, London W8 6RF
Tel: 07771 861939
www.paeredansk.com
pre dansk
BESPOKE SOLID ROSEWOOD TABLES
bp0412 22/2/12 10:20 Page 100
Digital and screen print.
Driven by technology.
Powered by hands-on experience.
outside-inside aluminium furniture specialists ...
nora ooring systems are the worlds largest manufacturer of rubber
oor coverings and with over 60 years of research & development, are specialists
in commercial sector. Product characteristics include durability, easy cleaning, high
slip resistance, excellent walking comfort and excellent sound absorption properties.
The Environmental Accolades of nora rubber oorcoverings are unsurpassed,
the products are PVC-free and, in addition to high quality natural materials,
contribute positively to the environment with low toxicity and low VOC content. With
certicates such as BRE A ratings and Blue Angel, be eco conscience with nora.
nora ooring systems UK Ltd, 4-5 Allerton Road, Rugby CV23 0PA
T: 01788 513 160 F: 01788 552812 W: www.nora.com
bronze & pewter door hardware
www.louisfraser.co.uk
free brochure 0845 003 7522
LOUIS FRASER
bp0412 22/2/12 10:20 Page 101
Call now on
+44 (0) 845 155 1845
or visit
www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk
Subscribe to Blueprint by 31 March 2012 to receive your
20% discount. (Normal price 52)
Make sure you are kept up-to-date on the latest
ideas and projects in architecture and design
SUBSCRIBE
TODAY
FORONLY
41.60
A YEAR
When subscribing please quote: B20P12
BP subs ad lhp April 2012:Blueprint Subs Ad f/p v1 23/2/12 10:33 Page 1
103
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Striking a rather sultry pose on the cover of Blueprint
number 55 from March 1989 is Parisian designer Marie-
Christine Dorner, whose redesign of La Villa hotel featured
in the magazine alongside a report on Barcelonas
preparation for the 1992 Olympic Games, written by Andy
Robinson and Niclas Dnnebacke. Also, we brought you
Javier Mariscals expressively sketched ideas for Barcelonas
redesign, which involved flooding the city centre and a new
system of cable cars. The 1992 Olympics were widely
acclaimed for their regeneration of large areas of the city
a success that hopefully can be emulated by London 2012.
B04 103 Archive ph.qxp:B09 20 Opening shot/pm/hw/ta 21/2/12 11:20 Page 93
104
105
Issue
number
32
106
107

Blueprint Magazine April 2012

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Blueprint Magazine April 2012

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

B

THE LONGITUDINAL FACADES

B04 060 Cologne ph.qxp:B10 ?? ??/Interview 21/2/12 15:09 Page 11

pr|vate res|denoe south west franoe

provides a low maintenance

For timber cladding and rain screens

The building industry is overloaded with regulations, design

Externally, Parklex Faade is installed

For natural timber without specifc

Queen Mary University London _ arch. : Alessandra Foderaro

O2 Arena Lounge London _ arch. : Populous Architects

You might also like