Indice dei contenuti per October 2018 in AZURE

When the fashion label Kenzo opened its first store in Seoul, in the city’s trendy Gangnam district, it wanted to make a big impression. To that end, the youthful, LVMH-owned brand turned to Rafael de Cárdenas – the New York designer known for his eye-popping, colour-gradient interiors, installations and furnishings – to craft a unique facade. De Cárdenas’s studio, Architecture at Large, developed numerous concepts; Kenzo, he recalls, chose the most challenging one. “The projected-cones concept was evocative and appealing, but at the time, we had no idea how to make it,” says the designer. In order to preserve the building’s stone cladding and irregular windows, de Cárdenas overlaid a modular metal grid on the exterior. The plastic cones – 862 of them positioned at a 20-degree angle to resemble…

A Star is Born A palette heavy on raw materials – warm copper, terrazzo tiles, exposed brickwork – creates a light and harmonious first impression at Paramount House Hotel (opposite) in Surry Hills, Australia. Occupying a renovated 80-year-old warehouse that once served as headquarters for Paramount Picture Studios, the hotel, by Breathe Architecture, nods to its roots through considered touches, such as the copper-chevron-fronted doors that echo the neighbourhood’s art deco influences (the feature also reflects the building’s stunning facade). Chunky concrete benches with upholstered cushions offer guests a comfortable place to land, while integrated garden beds and massive skylights bring natural elements inside. Deliberately free of superfluous ornamentation, the reception lobby maintains a subtle film-set-like atmosphere and reflects, as the firm puts it, “the spirit and excitement of the…

Airports are chaotic places. So when passengers seek refuge in a lounge, the top thing they crave is a sense of order and quiet. This desire is perfectly in tune with the principles of Spanish designer Francesc Rifé, who has made order, symmetry and proportion the trademarks of his practice. When called in to design the Colombian national airline’s new flagship VIP Lounge at El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, Rifé exercised precision and applied a relaxing palette to create an oasis that mixes comfort and entertainment. Encompassing 3,500 square metres, Avianca’s lounge could have felt cavernous. To counter this effect, Rifé organized areas to meet the various needs of both business- and first-class travellers, the purpose of each space identified with a name such as “Stay Connected,” “Resting Area”…

On a visit recently to the new Musée de la Romanité in Nîmes, France, I was surprised to find a roof garden with expansive views of the city and the ancient Roman arena next door. I had read about the museum – conceived by architect Elizabeth de Portzamparc and landscape architect Régis Guignard – but I somehow hadn’t registered that the building incorporated a green roof. Just a decade or so ago, the headlines about such a building would have crowed about its green credentials. These days, however, a green roof seems to be an expectation, no longer worthy of mention, at least not much of one. No news is good news. If green roofs and living walls are business as usual, it means that fruitful collaborations between architects and…

Tonal Range Carpet Tiles 1 MotionScape The three patterns included in this series – Movement, Rapid and Rush – allow for varying degrees of intensity. Twenty-four colourways are offered, from muted neutrals to shades of yellow, red and blue. Materials Nylon with PVC-free cushion backing Dimensions 25 cm x 1 m plank Manufacturer Milliken, millikenfloors.com 2 Discord The pronounced angles and irregular scrawls of these modular carpet tiles can be frenetic or calming, depending on the arrangement and on the combination of the 14 warm and cool colour options. Materials Nylon with hardback or cushion backing Dimensions 23 x 91, 46 x 91 and 61 x 61 cm tile Manufacturer Bentley, bentleymills.com 3 Garden Walk Intended for health-care, senior-living and hospitality spaces, these tiles use subdued patterns and neutral tones…

Rubbery pendants resembling milky balloons, table lamps that look like cinched chewing-gum bubbles, pliable vases with intersecting chambers: If these forms sound unconventional, it’s because they’re shaped by an unconventional process. Liquid to Air is a collaboration between Swiss designer Christophe Guberan and MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, which explores transformable objects and programmable materials. The team’s starting point for this line of lamps and vessels was the untapped potential of their new Rapid Liquid Printing (RLP) technology. “The dream that everyone talks about with 3D printing – it hasn’t been realized,” says Skylar Tibbits, the lab’s co-director. “Printing is generally too slow, the material properties aren’t very good and the objects you can fabricate are really small.” Unlike most 3D printing techniques – which build objects from the bottom up, one…

With rare exceptions, construction projects are almost always impositions on their physical surroundings. File Ring House, a striking island residence by decaArchitecture on the southern coast of Crete, squarely among the anomalies. The low-slung, horseshoe-shaped building not only hugs its hillside setting, virtually disappearing into the arid, sandy slope, but the material excavated during construction was used to restore some of the site’s original topography, which had been marred by roadwork and other human incursions. Prior to the home’s construction, seeds had also been collected from native flora and then cultivated in a greenhouse to grow a fresh supply, which was sown over the repaired landscape to create new swaths of plants. The house itself is made of rough stone and untreated wood, the envelope capped with concrete beams that…

Perhaps it’s a reaction to all the sharp words and pointed arguments polluting global politics these days. Maybe it’s a desire to surround ourselves with more elemental shapes and forms in a world increasingly disconnected from nature. Whatever the reason, the preponderance of softer lines and rounded edges in everything from furniture to architecture is a hard fact right now. It’s also a welcome one after years of ultra-sleek lighting, industrial-style interiors and macho super-buildings. For the antithesis of aggressively self-referential architecture, one needn’t look further than the first building designed entirely by artist Olafur Eliasson, whose 28-metre-high Fjordenhus – the harbourside headquarters of a Danish investment firm – opened in the city of Vejle to much acclaim in June and promises to be influential for years to come. Although…

Bertjan Pot isn’t like most designers. As widely acclaimed for his high-end commercial products (his Random Light for Moooi is now a classic) as his colourful woven-rope masks, he clearly isn’t afraid to toy with expectations and to push the limits of methods and materials. Whatever he’s working on, though, he prefers to keep things simple, eschewing technologies such as 3D printing in favour of techniques like knitting, knotting and weaving. In most cases, Pot starts off by taking something small – a piece of yarn or a bead, for instance – and then follows a sequence of repeated gestures to turn the everyday material into something radically different. You could say he adds the “extra” to the ordinary. Like many of his contemporaries, Pot embraces a handmade aesthetic, but…

Composites 1 Weather Ready Resistant to graffiti and extreme weather, Elemex’s Ceramitex facade panels are made from fibreglass-mesh-reinforced ceramic. Available in a variety of standard colours, they were recently installed on the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, in Arctic White (shown). elemex.com 2 Industrial Evolution Three cement-inspired designs by architect Daniel Germani will be added to Dekton’s Industrial Collection this fall. The new looks will join Nilium, Orix, Trilium and Radium (the oxidized metal effect shown). Suitable for ventilated facades – as well as flooring, walls and countertops – the panels are available in sizes as large as 144 by 320 centimetres and up to three centimetres thick. dekton.com 3 Fine Grain Kerlite has introduced Cement Project, a collection of slim and lightweight ceramic slabs that mimic the…

In the experience economy, people want less stuff and more Instagram moments – or so the conventional wisdom goes. Whatever the case, Sid Lee Architecture’s complete repositioning of Montreal’s Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel is a masterstroke of experiential architecture. Best known as the hippie landmark where John and Yoko spent a week in bed, the newly revamped luxury and business destination now includes a lively, amenity-filled lobby, a trio of stylish food and drink destinations and, as of this year, Espace C2, a 220-person, rooftop event space that is the property’s literal crown jewel. In a complete rethink of the hotel’s uppermost reaches – previously dedicated to exclusive Fairmont Gold suites – the hotel’s owners, operators and architects sought to make the space more egalitarian by opening it for…

In today’s multi-option hotel landscape, centrally located private rentals are battling it out with both high-end boutiques and corporate chains. So stepping into the fray requires a certain edge in order to entice travellers with more than just a clean room and complimentary coffee. Though a relatively new kid on the block, Okko Hotels (the brand, helmed by president and founder Olivier Devys, opened its first location in 2014 in the French city of Nantes) seems to be on to something, cornering the four-star urban hotel market with super-stylish rooms and coveted locations in city centres across France. While part of Okko Hotels’ appeal is its streamlined app-based check-in/check-out service and conveniently positioned locations – its eighth outpost opened last year in Strasbourg – the chain’s philosophy goes beyond offering…

It’s a primordial material, but also ultra-contemporary and increasingly cutting-edge. Part of the unmistakable revalorization of wood among architects and designers – a phenomenon that reached a fever pitch this year and is only going to get hotter – has to do with a desire to work with alternatives to less sustainable substances such as plastic. Another part is the result of higher-tech moulding and assembly techniques that are allowing designers to take wood in directions unavailable to them in the past. Both of these motivations were on display during last spring’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, where some of the most talked about releases included Mario Bellini’s aptly named Torsion table for Natuzzi (a glass-topped piece supported by half a dozen solid-olive-wood “petals” twisted to form a base) and…

A hotel that nearly disappears within a reflection of its surroundings may seem like the ultimate in low-impact tourism. But the ethereal, mirror-clad facade of Uruguay’s Sacromonte Crafted Wines and Landscape Hotel, a getaway designed by Montevideo-based firm MAPA, reveals only part of the project. Indeed, walk around to the other side of the building – one of four 60-square-metre units spread out over the 100-hectare site – and you’ll see a riot of wood: a facade inspired by firewood cords, composed of variously sized logs cut to 25-centimetre lengths. Stacked together and attached to the building’s steel frame, they make for a nearly 40-centimetre-thick wall – and create a stark contrast to that filmy one-way mirror. As it turns out, MAPA doesn’t want to blend in to the landscape;…