Tabla de contenidos para July - August 2018 en AZURE

Carved from Carrara marble, the 2018 AZ Awards trophy is a minimalist yet multi-faceted sculpture that – appropriately for a prize – fits satisfyingly in one’s hand. Working with Italian stone innovator Salvatori, designer Michael Anastassiades – the London-based talent best known for his elemental lighting fixtures – has crafted the piece with a timeless quality reflective of his work. “I’m curious to see the different functions the object takes on,” Anastassiades says. “It has been designed to facilitate multiple uses: as a decorative object perhaps, as something that might have a more practical function, like a paperweight.” On June 22, the trophy was handed out to the 20 category winners of the eighth annual AZ Awards, for which Anastassiades was also a juror (meet the full jury on page…

_Illuminated Walls _Portable Lamps _What’s Next As a type, underground parking has a bad name. In most of these concrete volumes, says Marco Serra, chief architect of Novartis, “the walls are dead.” But lifeless building is not the calling card of the global pharmaceutical company, which has populated its various campuses with works by Frank Gehry and Alejandro Aravena, among others. In 2014, Novartis assigned Serra to reconceive parking for 800 bicycles – which it has inserted beneath a new park at its Basel, Switzerland, headquarters – as a work of architecture better suited to the company’s reputation. Almost immediately, Serra thought of Lina Bo Bardi’s legendary Coaty Restaurant in Salvador, Brazil. Completed in 1987, the largely windowless, concrete interior featured sinuous corrugated walls that evoked gently flowing curtains –…

Architecture Residential Single Family Project: Mylla Hytte Location: Near Oslo, Norway Firm: Mork Ulnes Architects, Norway Team: Casper Mork-Ulnes with Auste Cijunelyte, Tom Erdman, Konrad Jasinski, Michal Manzak and Lexie Mork-Ulnes By massing four volumes with shed roofs in a cross, this 84-square-metre, three-bedroom/three-bathroom ski cabin in Norway, an hour north of Oslo, achieves the footprint and angles of a pinwheel. The unique design was Casper Mork-Ulnes’s response to the municipality’s unwavering insistence on a gabled roof. Inside, the pine-plywood-clad interior is as practical as it is lovely; it features custom furniture, ample storage and dramatic cathedral ceilings that show off the different facets of the structure’s intersecting rooflines. The cabin’s unconventional shape and position – atop a concrete slab on a grade – also creates sheltered morning and evening…

Konstantin Grcic and Vitra The winning relationship between Vitra and German designer Konstantin Grcic continues apace. Their Waver chair – whose seat is suspended, like a paraglider’s harness, from a metal frame – won an AZ Award in 2012 for Best Furniture Design. It was also just one of the pair’s many successful collaborations. The latest is the exhibition Night Fever, on view at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany. Night Fever explores how clubs and lounges have been de facto laboratories for disciplinecrossing innovation, pushing architecture, interior design, lighting, graphics and even fashion to their limits. The highlight is a multisensory installation created by Grcic and lighting designer Matthias Singer. The exhibition runs until September 9. design-museum.de Mason White and Charles Waldheim Together with his Lateral Office partner Lola…

Residential Multi-unit The firm did so by sheathing the 17-storey structure in a galvanized-steel wrapper that incorporates expressively angled balconies. This dramatically sculpted cladding serves as a climate shield to protect the interiors from direct sunlight and wind, and its perforated patterns create an effect akin to sun-dappled water. Generous openings were carved into the concrete facade to create space for floor-to-ceiling windows and large balconies. The offcut slabs were then repurposed into pavement and urban furniture for a public space, meaningfully linking the building to its context. Inside, the original spaces for storing and handling grain have been transformed into 38 unique apartments, measuring up to 401 square metres, with ceilings that soar to seven metres. The building also houses a public event space, and the top floor is…

Environmental Leadership “What I love about this project is that Duke University took a stand and said, ‘Landscape is part of our future, not a box to check off’”CLAIRE WEISZ When Duke University faced an infrastructural problem, instead of opting for a short-cut solution, it took on a holistic vision. The school decided to reduce its reliance on potable water by commissioning Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects to create a resplendent, multi-purpose landscape featuring a stormwater reuse pond. Today, Duke Pond delivers up to 380 million litres annually – representing a fifth of the university’s water consumption needs – to the campus chiller plant. But the pond accomplishes so much more. What could have been a hole in the ground edged by rip-rap was instead imagined as an idyllic five-hectare…

Full Systems 1 Diesel Open Workshop A collaboration with Diesel, this Scavolini system features exposed metal shelving, portions of which can be concealed behind glass or left open. The various horizontal and vertical volumes can be fully customized to suit any space. Materials Multiple options including aluminum, smoked or ribbed glass and bronzed metal Manufacturer Scavolini, scavolini.design 2 Maxima 2.2 Dropping to table level, this dramatic cantilevered counter provides both a dining area and an extended work surface. Door and drawer fronts are a mere 2.2 cm thick, giving the customizable system its name. Materials Steel, melamine, Dekton, stainless steel, a choice of oak, walnut or teak, and other materials Manufacturer Cesar, cesar.it 3 Artematica At 14 cm thick, the Artematica worktop lends a substantial look to the home kitchen.…

Peter Mabeo Through his eponymous design brand, manufacturer and distributor Peter Mabeo has made it his mission to bring “a uniquely African sensibility” to the global design scene, emplying countless craftspeople in the process. Hit releases have included Garth Roberts’ Seri series of solid-wood tables, stools and containers, distinguished by intricate edging hand-carved by artisans in Botswana, Mabeo’s home country. More recently, French designer Inès Bressand’s sleek Lebone lamps, showcased in Milan this spring, feature sheet-metal bodies and shades, their surfaces hand-beaten in the manner of traditional forgers. mabeofurniture.com Dundun Coffee Table “The revival of African design sometimes risks being interpreted with preconceptions,” says Studio Lani founder Lani Adeoye, whose sculptural furniture, inspired by her Nigerian roots, is anything but cliché. Take her bent-metal Dundun coffee table, which evokes West…

Striding through the palazzi and passageways of Milan, it’s difficult to fathom that marble’s appeal might ever go through phases. But in North America anyway, the original gangster of luxury building materials has given ground in recent years to upstart alternatives such as quartz, granite, slate and concrete. One reason for its eclipse is the comparative affordability of stone such as quartz. Another could be its residual rep as an old-school material. On that latter score at least, this year’s Salone del Mobile proved how contemporary all manner of marble can look and feel. For Arketipo, Gino Carollo adopted a veiny dark variety to reinforce the “universality” of his Moon Invaders tables. At Salvatori, none other than master minimalist John Pawson created exquisitely austere furniture out of classic Bianco Carrara.…

Smiljan Radić has run away with the circus – at least he has with Teatro Regional del Biobío, a six-storey venue that he describes as rising like a modern-day big top on the banks of the Biobío River in Concepción, some 500 kilometres south of Santiago. “Concepción was close to the epicentre of the 2010 earthquake,” says the Chilean architect best known for his 2014 Serpentine Pavilion, a doughnut-shaped structure built out of boulders and paper-thin fibreglass. The 8.8-magnitude catastrophe destroyed many of the city’s buildings, so “the submission call,” he says, “was for a very solid structure, also for an institution. We did the exact opposite, visually.” Rather than a building supported by a handful of massive columns, Radić and colleagues Eduardo Castillo and Gabriela Medrano (who beat out…

Residential “This is a great piece of architecture and a beautiful statement about a willing client coming together with true craftsmanship”MICHEL ROJKIND Here’s what is truly remarkable about Loft Panzerhalle, beyond its obvious achievement as a visionary architectonic masterpiece: The new insertion hasn’t overwhelmed the original red brick building that houses it. Located on the top level of a refurbished armory, where military tanks used to be repaired, the apartment takes advantage of its eight-metre height thanks to the addition of a ribbon-like mezzanine, where the private rooms are now located, along the perimeter. From this vantage point, the bedroom – shrouded by a white curtain rather than stationary walls – provides views of the Salzburg mountains, visible through a bank of paned windows original to the structure. Getting to…

Ideas/Prototypes “Cities are intensifying so quickly that you have to utilize every square inch in a meaningful way, so making use of volumes that already exist is a really compelling and necessary idea”MEGAN TORZA When the first elevated portion of the Gardiner opened in 1962, Torontonians saw the raised expressway as either a symbol of innovation or a monstrosity that chopped the city off from its lakeshore. Today, for Adam Nicklin and Marc Ryan, co-founders of Public Work, it is an opportunity for a new kind of urbanism. Their multi-phase plan, developed with urban designer Ken Greenberg, will transform 1.75 kilometres of dead space beneath the highway into a lively park called the Bentway. The park’s name refers to the “bents,” the T-shaped concrete columns on which the roadway sits…