Indice dei contenuti per October 2020 in Wallpaper

WIDLINE CADET Photographer New York-based Haitian artist Cadet is best known for her work examining issues such as migration and Black Caribbean cultural identity. We tasked her with photographing Bahamas-born artist Tavares Strachan in his Manhattan studio (page 120). ‘It was really nice to see him in his element, and get a small glimpse of his space,’ she says. Cadet is currently working on exhibitions for the USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa and Portland’s Blue Sky Gallery. EVENS JP MORNAY Stylist Having set aside his law studies and reined in his video game habit (though he is still known to play for ten hours straight), Mornay found his true calling in the world of fashion, learning the ropes with the likes of Ludivine Poiblanc and Hannes Hetta. ‘This was…

Lukas Gschwandtner was inspired to create his ‘Pendal’ chair by a ferry ride across Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. ‘It was a very industrial, utilitarian-looking boat,’ recalls the young Austrian designer. ‘As we boarded, the staff walked through the rows of passenger seats, flipping the backrests from one side to the other.’ Instead of turning the entire ferry around, they could quickly adjust the seats to face the opposite direction. Gschwandtner’s design is likewise reversible, comprising a pair of I-shaped steel frames with rectangular brackets at the top that allow the movement of two pivoting beams, connected with upholstery to form the backrest. Unlike the mass-produced ferry seats, however, ‘Pendal’ is painstakingly handmade, and clad in either waxed canvas or goat or eel skin, materials that patinate with time. ‘The surfaces…

‘Still to this day, I cannot figure out how to describe what I do in one sentence. It is jewellery, it is art, it is wearable. If I could make a new word, like jewelart, or jart, I would!’ laughs Liz Swig, the ebullient art collector, patron and founder of LizWorks. Swig has the trust and ear of many celebrated contemporary artists, and her collaborators include Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger and Laurie Simmons. Through LizWorks, she blends traditional and contemporary inspirations, creating limited-edition pieces, including porcelain plates, terracotta bowls (W*225), cameos (W*243) and eyewear. In recent years, she has become increasingly focused on ‘wearables’, namely jewellery. This September, she unveils her latest collaboration, with Rashid Johnson, which sees artworks from Johnson’s Anxious Men series translated into gold and titanium cuffs,…

Gabrielle Chanel breathed new life into women’s fashion thanks to her fascination with traditionally male accoutrements such as military uniforms and tweed. She was just as enthralled by buttons, rescuing them from their mundane functionality and transforming them into adornments in their own right. ‘She shined a spotlight on a commonplace household object and raised it to the status of jewellery. She saw it as an artistic medium in itself, yet one that absolutely still had to serve its intended function,’ says Arnaud Chastaingt, director of watchmaking at Chanel. Here, the ubiquitous black tweed, interwoven with gold thread, forms the cuff of the ‘Mademoiselle Privé Bouton’ watch. In a clever design tweak, the button is not only a chic cover for the dial, but also secures the cuff to the…

In 2013, Letizia Caramia and Morten Thuesen launched Older, a brand that would turn the concept of hospitality uniforms upside down. The pair, Italian and Danish respectively, who had met while working at Alexander McQueen in London, joined forces on the project to explore a new approach to fashion. ‘Older was born as a result of us having grown tired of a fashion system we believed lacked ideology, sustainability and the ability to make us dream,’ say the designers. ‘As we are both very interested in architecture, gastronomy and wine, we were thinking how we could merge these fields. The answer became uniforms.’ Their first commission came from Restaurant 108 in Copenhagen (part of the Noma group). More soon followed, and Older is now known across the industry for its…

One blustery morning in early February, Genesis Belanger is showing us around her studio, in a 1930s industrial building in Brooklyn. The American sculptor is at a pivotal moment in her career – having mounted an installation for the New Museum’s Storefront Window last year, she is now working on solo exhibitions for the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT and the Consortium in Dijon, France. Works in progress dotted throughout the space suggest recent, frenetic activity, yet the atmosphere is also oddly subdued: four moodboard images pinned against a wall show historic interiors with furnishings cloaked in dust sheets; in the space nearby, what appears to be a dining table, chair, ottoman, upright piano and fireplace – custom-made plinths for Belanger’s ceramic works – are similarly shrouded in…

A Acne Studios Tel: 44.20 7589 5995 (UK) acnestudios.com Alexander McQueen Tel: 44.20 7355 0088 (UK) alexandermcqueen.com Amura Tel: 39.02 659 5295 (Italy) amuralab.com B Balenciaga Tel: 44.20 3318 6027 (UK) balenciaga.com Berluti Tel: 44.20 7437 1740 (UK) berluti.com Boucheron Tel: 44.20 3936 9090 (UK) boucheron.com Brunello Cucinelli Tel: 44.20 7287 4347 (UK) brunellocucinelli.com Buccellati Tel: 44.20 7629 5616 (UK) buccellati.com Bulgari Tel: 44.20 3808 5090 (UK) bulgari.com C Cartier Tel: 44.20 3937 7595 (UK) cartier.com Cassina Tel: 44.20 7584 0000 (UK) cassina.com Celine by Hedi Slimane Tel: 44.20 7491 8200 (UK) celine.com Chanel Tel: 44.20 7493 5040 (UK) chanel.com Chopard Tel: 44.20 7046 7808 (UK) chopard.com Completedworks Tel: 44.20 3393 3460 (UK) completedworks.com COR Tel: 49.52 42 41 02 400 (Germany) cor.de D De Beers Tel: 44.20 7758 9700…

Of all the challenges and unexpected benefits of lockdown, one ray of light and optimism was the announcement this spring of Design Emergency, a project by two design visionaries, Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli. Individually they have shaped contemporary design, Alice being a highly influential critic and author of Design as an Attitude and Hello World: Where Design Meets Life, and Paola a senior curator of MoMA, creator of ‘Broken Nature’ at the XXII Triennale di Milano – one of the most important exhibitions of recent times – and winner of the London Design Medal at this year’s LDF. Now they have joined forces to explore design’s role during and after Covid-19 – through an Instagram Live series with thematic discussions, interviews, and introductions to design innovations. Design Emergency is…

Mario Bellini first designed the ‘Duc’ sofa in 1976, a piece that reflected the free design spirit that was emerging at the time. That same year, Bellini drafted a modular furniture range called ‘The Book of Furniture’ for Cassina, an investigation into the language of living and its archetypes. Bellini had worked closely with the Italian design brand’s R&D department on experiments that resulted in the sofa’s first iteration, leveraging sophisticated technologies and materials to achieve its simple form. The new ‘Duc-Duc’ remains faithful to Bellini’s original design, with updated measurements and details redeveloped for added comfort. The project was led by Cassina LAB, a new research arm of the company, in collaboration with Poli. Design at Milan’s Politecnico. The result features a rigid panelled frame encased in polyurethane foam…

Precious minerals in their rough state have always beguiled and, sometimes, repulsed. Yet, when cut, polished and turned into gemstones, their power to seduce is universal. ‘Pierres Précieuses’, a collaborative exhibition from Van Cleef & Arpels and Paris’ Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle connects the dots, exploring the link between mineralogy, gemmology and jewellery. The exhibition, three years in the making, has been designed with an educational bent. The collaborator-inchief is François Farges, professor of mineralogy at the Muséum. ‘Mixing gemstones and objects is a French tradition, pairing beautiful things and placing them close to the natural minerals. People are intrigued by the wonder of nature, its different shapes and beauty. The duality of our approach helps people learn in a different way.’ The dialogue between the philosopher Roger Caillois and…

Chaumet marks its 240th anniversary this year with a new collection that draws on a host of defining cultural references from the high jewellery house’s history. The ‘Perspectives de Chaumet Skyline’ necklace takes modern cityscapes as its inspiration, rewriting their clash of geometry in warm yellow gold that has been polished, openworked, engraved and hammered. ‘The work of gold on this piece is a tribute to the 1960s and 1970s, from the time of Pierre Sterlé and René Morin,’ says Chaumet CEO Jean-Marc Mansvelt. A serrated silhouette gives an illusion of chaos, a nod to deconstructivism; Mansvelt points to Irving Penn’s Collapse and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater as direct inspirations. ‘The construction of a piece of jewellery is also a question of architecture: creating balance, harmony, tension, the relationship between…

Byredo is a brand that has always defied easy categorisation. Founded by former basketball player Ben Gorham in 2006 as a fragrance house, Byredo quickly gained a cult following for its sleek, minimal packaging and narrative-driven scents, with inspirations as far-ranging as First World War field nurses and an Inez & Vinoodh photograph. Since then, Gorham has expanded the Byredo universe to include clothing, eyewear, leather goods, jewellery (see W*246) and, from October 2020, make-up. To bring his cosmetics project to fruition, Gorham enlisted the help of British make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench, who, in addition to working with the likes of Burberry, Yves Saint Laurent and Tom Ford, is known for subverting classic interpretations of beauty, instead exploring the mutable nature of the human face using prosthetics and digital technology.…

Dubbed ‘neo baroque’ by its architect and owner Billy Kavellaris, this colourful contemporary house is at odds with its many genteel Victorian neighbours in affluent Melbourne suburb Toorak. ‘The idea of designing your own house is something most architects dream of. It was certainly in my head even as a teenager,’ says Kavellaris, who lives here with his wife Rosalba and their two daughters Jorja and Alexia (hence the name of the house, JAR+B). Although the shape and form of the new house wasn’t established from the outset, the idea of bringing art and architecture together has always been an important facet of Kavellaris’ Melbourne-based practice, Kavellaris Urban Design (KUD), which he set up in 2002. While many architects reference the Renaissance period in their designs, going for grand yet…

PA What is GEO-Design? SF Joseph Grima, the director of Design Academy Eindhoven, introduced the concept of GEO-Design first as an exhibition curated by Martina Muzi, where alumni of Design Academy have a chance to explore the concept on a thematic basis. The 2018 ‘GEO-Design: Alibaba’ exhibition was the first, and last year Martina curated ‘GEO-Design: Junk’. Now it is also a department, and Joseph asked us to be the heads. We have a similar perspective on what needs to be done in design education. In the future, maybe GEO-Design will also become a publication, and more. There are different ways of interpreting the term. We feel that design has been focusing on the needs of users for a long time, and sometimes there is a disregard for the infrastructure…

Dates (a prized Iraqi export often smuggled out and relabelled to circumvent international trade restrictions) have long been integral to the work of Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz. Date syrup cans were the building blocks of his Fourth Plinth installation in London in 2018, a replica of a winged bull sculpture destroyed by Isis. A year later, for a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, he developed this sandwich for the gallery restaurant, featuring a mixture of date syrup and tahini. Witty, wistful and easy on the palate, it’s the perfect embodiment of Rakowitz’s practice as artist and cultural provocateur. For Rakowitz’s recipe, visit Wallpaper.com…

Swiss stationer Caran d’Ache continues its remarkable track record of design collaborations with a set of writing instruments by Kengo Kuma, including a fountain pen, roller pen and ballpoint pen, each in a limited edition of 1,000. Their hexagonal barrels are clad in hinoki cypress, a recurring material in Kuma’s architectural output, and gently grooved in a nod to traditional Japanese chidori toys, contrasting beautifully with their rhodium-plated brass caps, clips and nibs. The designs, almost two years in the making, involved craftspeople with 12 different know-hows including engraving, varnishing, lacquering and electroplating. Kuma found the project enlightening: ‘This experience makes evident the possibility of a new combination between wood and metal. I’ll try to use it in bigger architecture projects.’ Varius Kengo Kuma collection available from 12 September, carandache.com;…

For creative consultant Daniel Baer, every mealtime is an event. ‘Whether it’s a picnic with friends, a solo supper in front of the TV, or a family breakfast, they all bring nourishment, nurture creativity or sustain relationships,’ he says. How then to bring a proper sense of occasion to every repast? Uniting his background in graphic design (a stint as Wallpaper’s senior designer was followed by the founding of his own creative consultancy, Studio Baer, with clients ranging from Dior and Comme des Garçons to Rizzoli) and an interest in studio pottery, his answer was to create his own tableware brand, which launches this month. Called Monoware, the launch collection features dining staples such as plates, bowls and mugs, as well as serving platters and pitchers, with reduced silhouettes and…

Michelangelo famously said that every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to set it free. For its latest launch, Cire Trudon enlisted a team of Spanish master craftsmen to set free some sculptural vessels to house a new line of candles using a single block of alabaster. These new, delicately carved receptacles are unique, with a different configuration of brown and black mineral veins running through the alabaster’s milky white surface, while their simple, rotund shape evokes ancient Greek vessels, blurring the boundaries between classical antiquity and modernist minimalism. Called The Alabasters, this limited-edition candle range comes in three fabulous fragrances – Ernesto, meant to evoke the scents of revolutionary Havana, Abd El Kader, a blend of mint, ginger, tobacco…

BB: Do you start your day with coffee? KTT: The first thing I do normally is have a shower, to get into this mood of ‘waking up’. Then I go for the coffee – I have my own little espresso machine. What led you to become an architect? When I was 15, I was more interested in art, but I had an art teacher who told me that I should become an architect. Architecture is more collective – there’s a different way of doing things and you have to listen more. I think becoming an artist would have been too lonely for me. How does your desire to make energy-positive buildings affect your work? It does restrict us in some ways because you get confronted by contradictions between aesthetics and…

Behind the Berkshire workshop of British furniture brand Benchmark flows the River Kennet. On any given day, its slow-moving water is alive with water voles, brown trout and demoiselles, but recently it has been home to something else – pieces of red oak and cherry that would eventually form parts of a chair, designed by Alexander Groves and Azusa Murakami of Studio Swine. The chair in question is part of Connected, Benchmark’s latest collaborative project with the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC). Initiated and carried out against the backdrop of a global pandemic, Connected has seen nine designers come up with something that would enhance their working-from-home experience. The obvious twist is that they have been unable to visit the workshop or see their pieces in the flesh, and have…

When designer Philippe Malouin got the call to collaborate with Swiss furniture brand de Sede, his first reaction was surprise, followed by excitement. And then, he freely admits, he began to feel the pressure. De Sede began life in 1962 as a small family-run saddler’s workshop, but rapidly grew into a world-class producer of handcrafted leather furniture with a track record for producing coveted design classics, such as the iconic, accordion-like ‘DS-600’ sofa system, Ubald Klug’s terraced ‘DS-1025’ sectional, and the imposing ‘S231’ swivel chair, used as a prop in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Malouin’s eponymous studio has racked up an impressive client roster since its founding 12 years ago. Named Wallpaper’s designer of the year in 2018 (see W*227), he has created products…

Architects Simon Astridge and Nicholas Szczepaniak joined forces late last year. After a lockdown-induced wobble in the spring, the new practice is now hard at work on everything from installations through to private houses, galleries, retail units and even a masterplan for a tropical resort in Cambodia. The renovation of a south London house for a young art director in the fashion industry was completed before the pandemic struck, and offered the studio a chance to flex its collaborative radicalism. While the terraced site was conventional, the ambitions for it were anything but. And the architect-client relationship was intense and fruitful. ‘We went to shows and out for meals together,’ Astridge recalls. ‘At one point, she showed me imagery by the artist Gordon Matta-Clark, one of my heroes.’ Other sources…

Kazimierz Dolny, a small town some 120km south-east of Warsaw and with a mere 2,500 permanent residents, is not an instantly recognisable name beyond Polish borders, but it’s considered one of the country’s most beautiful rural destinations. Thanks to its strategic location on the Vistula River, the town was once a prosperous grain trade centre and cultural melting pot. Today, its combination of well-preserved Renaissance architecture, numerous galleries and relaxed pace of life means it attracts thousands of tourists, particularly art lovers. MiŚka Miller-Lovegrove, a London-based designer, was one of those who fell for its charms. Polish-born Miller-Lovegrove moved to London in 1979, after graduating from the architecture school at Warsaw University of Technology. The UK was meant to be just a starting point, a pit stop in her career,…

PA In 2007, while you were still working at OMA, you published an essay in the journal Log, entitled Urban Crawl. It was an occasion for the western/northern hemisphere to consider cities in developing countries as paragons and paradigms for the future, and also argued for a radical rethinking of the position of architecture. KA The article was written shortly after my post-professional degree at Princeton, and I published it with a view in mind. My thesis at the time was on the role of market economies in rapidly emerging cities. I had a lot of reflection around the impact of cities of the Global South and how they would become more important in the future. It was a prompt to rethink our perceptions of cities, understanding that there’s a…