Tabla de contenidos para November - December 2016 en AZURE

NOVEMBER 30 AND DECEMBER 1 IIDEXCANADA TORONTO The country’s premier architecture and design expo returns to Toronto. Keynote speakers Christophe Pillet and Karim Rashid talk about their interiors, as well as products for such heavy-hitting brands as Kartell and Cappellini. LightCanada has a major presence on the floor, and the Woodshop feature, exemplified last year by Willow & Stump’s Fluyt Bench (left), returns to make creative use of locally felled ash. iidexcanada.com NOVEMBER 19 TO SPRING 2017 DESIGN CURRENTS PHILADELPHIA This Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition brings together works by three top contemporary talents: Oki Sato, Faye Toogood (pictured alongside her Spade chair) and Zanini de Zanine. Toogood and de Zanine will represent the trio – which shares the museum’s Collab award – with a talk on November 18th. philamuseum.org…

MELBOURNE STUDIO ESTETA THE INSPIRATION BEHIND Lune Croissanterie was pastry, of course, but also outer space. The pairing may seem unlikely, but Kate Reid, founder of the wildly popular Melbourne bakery, was formerly an aerospace engineer, so it seemed only natural to name her shop after the moon, and to play up a galactic theme with clever graphics. Reid and her brother, Cameron, who is also a pastry chef, had an idea to create a unique retail experience by letting customers get a clear view of making, laminating, and shaping the dough as it happens, and to a build a kitchen devoted to one purpose: creating the perfect croissant. “We put the highest quality into our workmanship, and we want anyone who might be skeptical to be able to see…

MAKE A SCENE Statement-making tables and chairs that serve up style…

Changing perspective A London exhibition reconsiders dyslexia as an advantage in design A river is a barricade for those who can’t swim, until someone makes a bridge. Stairs are an impedment for those who can’t walk, until someone designs a ramp. Reading is an obstacle for those who can’t see, until someone invents Braille. When the world presents itself as an obstruction, the vision to see it otherwise kicks into gear. Dyslexic Design, a recent exhibition in support of the British Dyslexia Association, takes this attitude, making the case that a disability can in fact be a gift that is a catalyst for innovative thinking. Dyslexia is a common learning disorder that usually manifests itself when children begin to read. The problem is not a matter of intelligence, but of…

In Shanghai, Schmidt Hammer Lassen reimagines a popular temporary pavilion as a permanent structure IN OCTOBER 2013, Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen unveiled the Cloud Pavilion near the Huangpu River in Shanghai. With its white ropes suspended between a rectangular floor and ceiling, the pavilion was conceived as “a marker, a meeting point and a place to rest while walking along the riverfront,” according to partner Chris Hardie. It was built to last two months (the duration of the West Bund Biennial), but as its industrial surroundings continued to develop, the pavilion became such a popular hangout that it stayed in place for two years. In 2015, SHL was asked to turn it into a permanent space, extending the West Bund’s cultural programs into the park. They had already caught…

New Work Order For Microsoft’s Vancouver office space, L.A. architect Clive Wilkinson works all the angles Text by Hadani Ditmars Photography by Ema Peter IN THE HOMETOWN of Microserfs author Douglas Coupland, one might expect a company like Microsoft to tap, at least ironically, a bit of the “geek house” Coupland’s dystopian novella described so well. Nothing could be further from the truth, though. For its western Canadian headquarters, the Silicon Valley giant invited L.A. architect Clive Wilkinson to spin a narrative that is part nature-inspired utopia and part brave new office space. Located in central Vancouver, the 13,200-square-metre hub occupies two floors of a late-1970s building that was recently transformed and reskinned in glass. Open to civic panoramas of Arthur Erickson’s iconic Robson Square, the interiors play on the…

AMSTERDAM STUDIO MODIJEFSKY BAR BOTANIQUE GIVES Amsterdammers a taste of the tropics in their own back garden. Straddling kitsch and cool, the interior is an explosion of greenery, textures and an array of mid-century modern furniture. Designed by local firm Studio Modijefsky, the all-hours café perfectly fits the eastern district, affectionately known as Oost. The café’s predecessor, De Ponteneur, was the go-to haunt in the area for more than 25 years, and for much of that time, the only place to go. The prominent corner site provided an ideal spot for watching the neighbourhood pass by, and it brought together diverse residents who treated the beloved fixture like a community living space. Its transformation into Bar Botanique is part of a wave of retailers that are now opening in the…

For an undergrad class at the ArtCenter College of Design, students came up with a fully realized collection of millennialfriendly office furniture, including a leg-free sofa and acoustic panels that look more like art. The concepts were then manufactured into marketready prototypes by Bernhardt Design and exhibited at ICFF in New York. The project, named Studio: twentysomething, also took home an award at NeoCon in Chicago as the best furniture collection for collaboration. “FOCUS ON DOING SOMETHING WELL, RATHER THAN TRYING TO BE INTERESTING. BE HELPFUL RATHER THAN RIGHT.” ANDREW JONES furniture designer and architect “WORK HARD. LISTEN. ENGAGE YOUR COMMUNITY AND YOUR CITY.” DEBORAH WANG designer and curator NORTH AMERICA ARTCENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN, Pasadena, California PROGRAMS: Bachelor of Science, Master of Sc ience TUITION : BSc : US$40,000;…

FLOODS AND FACADE ILLUMINATION LIGHTING PATHS SPOTS AND DOWNLIGHTS TRACK SYSTEMS…

WHEN ZAHA HADID died unexpectedly in March of this year, there were 36 projects still in development at her office. And while Patrik Schumacher, who now leads Zaha Hadid Architects, has ambitious plans for the studio’s future, it is hard not to look at these remaining works as a conclusion of sorts. One such project – Port House, which opened in September in Antwerp – embodies both the highs and lows of Hadid’s distinctive approach. Located on a dry dock with views south to the city and north to the expansive port, the building is at the centre of a wider investment plan to improve the port’s global profile and its integration with the city. Prompted by the need to accommodate staff with more office space, the city and port…

WHEN IT WAS UNVEILED three years ago, Thomas Heatherwick’s proposal for Garden Bridge was applauded for its vision of a landscaped viaduct spanning London’s River Thames. But like many massive public works, it also drew skepticism for its multi-million-dollar price tag. In the years since, the pro-bridge team has spared no effort to sway public opinion, the most effective measure being a 360-degree virtual reality video by Arup that places viewers on the proposed bridge with the help of immersive headsets. While the bridge’s future remains uncertain, Arup’s detailed visualization, presented to the public at events around London, played a vital role in the organizers’ plans to rally support for what might otherwise have remained a pipe dream. The same tools can also help architects promote concepts after they have…

ST. PETERSBURG CHEUNGVOGL STUDIO COSMETICS SHOPPERS AT the Au Pont Rouge department store in St. Petersburg are in for a surprise. Rather than strolling the aisles, here they will use a product-fetching robotic system. A single sample of each available beauty product is presented for perusal, set on a slender-legged table within a stark white space. When it’s time to buy, customers simply scan the product to activate the automated system, comprising a large robotic arm that moves around on tracks to access a network of conveyor belts. The arm collects the chosen item from a glass-enclosed storage area and ferries it to the checkout counter. Conceived by Cheungvogl of Hong Kong, the system is an attempt to reinvent the department store experience in the age of online shopping. Rather…

EAST LONDON SELGAS CANO THE INSIDE of this bookstore in the heart of hip East London is much larger than its quaint exterior seems to suggest – or at least this is my impression until I try to avoid someone coming toward me, and then realize it’s my own reflection in a mirror. Librería (the Spanish word for bookstore) was designed by José Selgas and Lucía Cano of SelgasCano, the Madrid studio that has built its reputation on bringing novel approaches to architecture, and on exploiting off-the-shelf building materials in remarkably playful ways. The firm’s tent-like Serpentine Pavilion of 2015 was built almost entirely out of panels of ETFE, the fluorine-based polymer. Librería is small indeed – a mere 83 square metres distributed over two floors, with the bookstore at…

IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE the Watergate Hotel was close to demolition not long ago. For a luxury hotel, it has everything going for it: panoramic views, a downtown location in a destination city, and a history that counts movie stars, heads of state and royalty among its regular guests. Of course, there is also the unforgettable role it played in bringing down the 37th president of the United States, after it was discovered that Richard Nixon’s administration had burglarized and tapped the phones of the Democratic National Committee office in that very complex. Yet beginning in the 1990s, the hotel lost its mojo, and by the start of the 2008 financial crisis, it had slid into receivership, standing vacant and seemingly destined for the wrecking ball in spite of its…

Paragon Films (75 minutes) Filmed, produced, directed and edited by Tomas Koolhaas over the course of four years, Rem is a film about an architect more than it is a film about architecture. The feature-length documentary provides glimpses into the daily life of Rem Koolhaas, arguably the most important architect of our time, as the filmmaker followed his father during his continuous travels. The spectacular cinematography, much of it in slow motion, cuts effortlessly and seemingly at random from one site to another while its subject intones his personal reflections, all to the accompaniment of a dramatic musical score composed by Murray Hidary. The film portrays Rem as being seemingly everywhere at once. He visits a construction site in Doha, attends an office meeting in New York, swims in the…