Table of contents for November 2019 in Wallpaper

CLAUDE LÉVÊQUE Artist Lévêque’s tomates farcies feature in this month’s Artist’s Palate (page 250). While continuing to create his distinctive neon installations, the artist took a different approach to his recent takeover of the Paris Opera, Saturnales, commissioned for the institution’s 350th anniversary. His giant LED diadem, crowning the Opéra Bastille, and his pair of golden tractor tyres, on the grand staircase of the Palais Garnier, can be viewed until the end of this year. SHUMI BOSE Writer Bose, who is based in London but has ‘bits of my heart in Kolkata, New York and Rio’, found it ‘deeply satisfying’ to write about the S House in Brussels by Belgian architect Julien de Smedt (page 088). ‘I remember running my fingers over the toothpaste-like mortar and brutal-luxe concrete,’ she says.…

We’re well versed in the merits of engaging in a digital detox, and we occasionally like to head out of the city, swapping smoke fumes and screen time for the great outdoors and sleeping underneath the stars. And whether we’re pitching up in a treehouse or a teepee, glamping or gorge crossing, we like to make sure we pack a few striking hiking essentials to take to our favoured secluded spot. Italian accessories specialist Piquadro has recently bolstered its backpack offering with a sturdy pine green leather version, complete with carabiner clip fastening, multiple pockets and easy-access zips. We’re fond, too, of Smythson’s collaboration with New York reusable water bottle brand S’well, a sleek water bottle and calf leather holder based on a 1920s beaker set from the Smythson archives.…

Isokon Plus is a company so rich in history that it’s a struggle to sum it up in a few short paragraphs. It was founded in London in 1931 as the Isokon Furniture Company by entrepreneur Jack Pritchard, who, seduced by the workings of the Bauhaus, wanted to bring a taste of European modernism back to Britain. His ambitious plans to build homes, as well as the furniture within them, began with the Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead, north London (now known as the Isokon Building). At the time of its completion in 1934, it was the first modernist block to be built in the UK. Pritchard’s ideology attracted Bauhaus pioneers Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, Swiss architect Egon Riss and midcentury heavyweight Ernest Race, who each worked with the…

BB: Do you drink coffee? AI: No. Sometimes I get a smoothie at Earthbar, which is just down the hill from my house. Who influenced your creativity while you were growing up? My maternal grandmother loved art, and both she and my mum would take me to museums as a child and teenager. I also gleaned a lot of knowledge and inspiration from my high school art teacher, who was a big influence on my life. Who else inspires you? There are so many, it’s hard to list them all, but they include Oprah, Cady Noland, Frank Ocean, Marc Newson, Miuccia Prada, Bret Easton Ellis and the late John Hughes. Tell me about your recent work. I was invited to create an exhibition at MAMO arts centre on the rooftop…

Saint Laurent has always been a revolutionary brand. The original Saint Laurent Rive Gauche boutique, opened on the Left Bank in 1966, was the first ready-towear store in a couturier’s own name. Last spring, the brand’s current creative director, Anthony Vaccarello, unveiled another groundbreaking boutique on the Right Bank (with a sister store on Los Angeles’ Rodeo Drive opening the same day). Naturally, this one is named Saint Laurent Rive Droite. The new boutique sprang to life after iconic concept store Colette announced its closure after 20 years, giving Saint Laurent first dibs on its three-storey space on Rue Saint-Honoré. The relationship was close: Colette’s final collaboration was with Saint Laurent, and it was the first store to carry Vaccarello’s own line, back in 2009. ‘I didn’t want to lose…

There’s something in the water on Orior Road, in Newry, Northern Ireland. The street, lined with pebbledashed terraced houses, might look pretty ordinary, but speak to any of the locals and they will proudly reel off stories on the doctors, teachers, scientists – and in this case, designers – who have all been residents of the BT35 postcode. ‘Everyone on that road went on to do some amazing stuff,’ confirms Ciaran McGuigan, the creative director of furniture brand Orior, which is named after the street. McGuigan’s vested interest in the area runs deep. Both his parents, Brian and Rosie McGuigan, come from the area; they met as teenagers at the local rugby club. Aged 17, they decided to leave behind a war-torn Northern Ireland and head for Copenhagen, where they…

For more than 25 years, South Korean artist Kimsooja has focused her practice on a specific element in her country’s visual culture: the bottari, a colourful bundle of cloth used to wrap and transport items by hand. It is a traditional and timeless component of life in Korea, where bottari fabrics are often recycled from old silk bedcovers, a repurposing that inverts domestic and public spheres, conventional gender roles and power structures. It is in this context that Kimsooja began using this material in her work: ‘I’ve always started from my own reality and my own culture,’ she says. ‘It’s not that I like them, necessarily. I use them because it’s my reality.’ Kimsooja (who goes by a single-word name, in defiance of cultural conventions) has spent the better part…

Czech contemporary glass manufacturer Lasvit has been wowing us since it launched in 2007, so we were intrigued to hear it was building a new home in the small town of Nový Bor, the centre of the Bohemian glassmaking region since the 18th century. The company’s success lies in its team of experts, which includes not only specialist glassblowers but also lighting and design engineers and programmers. Most bespoke glass art installations at Lasvit are designed by an in-house team led by Czech designers Maxim Velčovský and Mária Čulenová-Hostinová, while lighting collections and tableware have been created in collaboration with renowned architects and designers such as Kengo Kuma, Nendo and Zaha Hadid. The best headquarters do more than simply announce a corporate presence. They also connect and contribute to their…

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The devil is in the detail, and interesting joinery, be it butterfly or dovetail, can elevate the plainest of pieces with an element of surprise. When creating his eponymous table for Hem, Max Lamb devised leg joints that set the legs flush into the tabletop, sturdily supporting its 200kg weight and visible as four simple squares on its surface. Israeli designer Hagit Pincovici went for a more embellished approach, developing an aluminium foam which connects the wooden seat of her ‘Sands’ stool to its sandstone supports, while London-based Italian designer Martino Gamper opted for something more classic when designing his ‘Round & Square’ collection, which uses contrasting woods to make a feature of the good, old-fashioned V joint. Bringing a bit of French fancy into the mix, Christophe Delcourt’s ‘Geo’…

It was a glinting light that compelled Brazilian jeweller Silvia Furmanovich to peruse a dark box of fabrics in a New York antiques store. Closer inspection revealed a pile of intricate material samples, a collection of Nishijin woven silks that had belonged to a Kyoto family clothing business serving aristocratic women in the Kansai region during the Meiji era (1868-1912). The box also contained a swatch book with 141 fragments of obi belt fabrics. ‘Each piece of fabric was a little universe unto itself, complete with its own symbolism,’ says Furmanovich. The found fabrics were embroidered with rich patterns and ancient Japanese cultural motifs, such as cranes, waves, bamboo, maple leaves, chrysanthemums, peonies and dianthus flowers. It was a serendipitous find because it so perfectly reflects the São Paulo-based jeweller’s…

‘I’m not a designer, but I had to learn to be one,’ says Brian Gitta of his first product design, a malariascreening device that does not require a blood sample. Nor is he a doctor. Yet Gitta’s Ugandan studio ThinkIt has developed what could be a breakthrough in the fight against this still-too-prevalent killer disease. ‘Freeing the world of malaria would be one of the greatest achievements in public health,’ said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization in August. This year, the 26-year-old entrepreneur’s efforts to combat malaria made him one of five laureates in the Rolex Awards for Enterprise programme. Part of the Swiss brand’s Perpetual Planet campaign, the prize was launched more than 40 years ago to ‘support pioneering men and women advancing knowledge…

At the end of the 19th century, a Scottish immigrant landed on the Falkland Islands and joined a surge of people, and 5,000 sheep, travelling north from Punta Arenas to the Santa Cruz region of Argentina. Against all odds, he found a home in the seemingly uninhabitable Patagonian Desert, where the wind shapes everything – from the chronically bent trees to the century-smoothed mountains. Anything permanent must be as hardy as the rocky boulders, morros, that periodically interrupt the flatness. Yet permanently settle he did, casting down roots and establishing a livestock ranch that grew into an estancia, the local term for a settlement of family members and staff on the land. The fifth generation descendants of this early Scottish settler are still there today, managing Estancia Morro Chico’s production…

Secret garden AMAN KYOTO The star attraction of Aman’s new 24-room boutique property in Kyoto is its spectacular natural setting within a once-forgotten garden, and beyond that a 72-acre backdrop of lush forest. For his final project with the hotel group, the late architect Kerry Hill inserted a series of low-key pavilions over the garden’s terraced platforms, which are laced with a tableau of moss-covered paths and fringed by a small stream and a wooded hill. Sticking to the Aman playbook, the interiors of the rooms and public spaces are understated, taking their cues from traditional Japanese architecture and highlighting the work of local artisans, such as the handcrafted raku tile panels in the Living Pavilion, home to the hotel restaurant. Order a bamboo picnic hamper to enjoy in the…

There comes a point for every serious art collector when all that canvas and twisted steel starts to get in the way. The collection needs its own space, a place to breathe and be seen to its best advantage. When a Corsican businessman, having amassed that kind of stockpile, contracted South African architecture studio Saota to design a new home on Lake Geneva, it suggested creating a standalone private gallery. The house’s main living quarters – by design, too light-filled and lake-and-Alp framing to be a proper place for art appreciation – could then stay largely art-free, except for the odd judiciously placed Fontana and Hiquily. Plans drawn up – including a zinc-clad three-storey gallery – and foundations laid, our committed collector turned to Paris-based Thierry Lemaire, an architect-turned-interior designer…

‘JUNIT’ LAMP by Julia Jessen Schneid Studio continues to take lighting in a decorative direction with its ‘Junit’ pendant lamp, comprised of modular sculptural forms. Designed by Schneid co-founder Julia Jessen, the system debuted in 2017 with a total of eight interchangeable decorative elements sold in various configurations, including ‘Column’, ‘Tame’, ‘Record’ and ‘Mentis’, all paired with a simple round bulb. Jessen drew inspiration from the abstract geometric precision and strong colours of Bauhaus-era design, such as Josef Hartwig’s 1924 chess set and Marianne Brandt’s coffee and tea set of the same year. New colours have been added to the ‘Tame’ set for 2019. €249 each, by Julia Jessen, for Schneid Studio, schneid.org ‘NOPPER’ MODULAR SYSTEM by Bram Kerkhofs Key to the contemporary office is modularity, and Bram Kerkhofs’ new…

The Pompidou’s Christian Boltanski retrospective, meditating on time and memory Sharp suiting for election season – p218 The inaugural Sharjah Architecture Triennial Geometric interiors on the rocks – p232 Unveiling Glenn Murcutt’s MPavilion in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens Knockout knobs – p242 The Hoxton Downtown LA opening in a 1920s Beaux Arts building Claude Lévêque’s tomates farcies – p250 A new AI exhibition at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum pondering how humanity will live tomorrow…

A Alessi Tel: 39.02 9475 3451 (Italy) alessi.com Alexander McQueen Tel: 44.20 7355 0088 (UK) alexandermcqueen.com Ami Tel: 44.20 7499 0290 (UK) amiparis.com Amura Tel: 39.02 659 5295 (Italy) amuralab.com Antoniolupi Tel: 39.05 7158 6881 (Italy) antoniolupi.it Aram Tel: 44.20 7557 7557 (UK) aram.co.uk Arflex Tel: 39.0362 853 043 (Italy) arflex.com Arper Tel: 44.20 7253 0009 (UK) arper.com Artemide Tel: 44.20 7291 3853 (UK) artemide.com Aspesi Tel: 39.02 7602 2478 (Italy) aspesi.com Atrium Tel: 44.20 7681 9933 (UK) atrium.ltd.uk B Bäccman & Berglund Tel: 46.8669 9100 (Sweden) bb-sweden.se Balenciaga Tel: 33.1 56 52 17 17 (France) balenciaga.com Baux Tel: 46.8 21 07 07 (Sweden) baux.se Baxter Tel: 39.031 35999 (Italy) baxter.it Bloc Studios Tel: 39.05 8584 5871 (Italy) bloc-studios.com Bonnemazou Cambus Tel: 33.9 81 44 96 99 (France) bonnemazou-cambus.fr Boss…

District 2 of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City is one of the Southeast Asian urban hub’s fastest developing areas, currently making its way from being one of the poorest to one of the most modern. Bridging old and new in this context is key to maintaining the city’s character and history, and this is the approach that Italian architecture firm Locatelli Partners took when designing its latest project there, French-style ‘epicerie’ grocery store complex Le Square. The scheme, which combines an existing colonial-style villa and an L-shaped new build, contains food shops and a restaurant on the ground level, with co-working spaces and offices upstairs. A delicate mesh cladding connects the old and new parts in a semi-transparent ‘cloud’. Different colour tones on the cladding help distinguish various parts of…

Reflecting on modern relationships and their many, many forms for her Design Academy Eindhoven graduation project, interdisciplinary designer Orlando Lovell coined the term ‘polycreative’, which, in layman’s terms, is essentially polyamory, but with less kissing and more designing. To represent the concept, she enlisted five designers – Philippe Malouin, Matylda Krzykowski, Bertille Laguet, Koos Buster and Anne Dessing – to create cake stands. The shape and form of each then influenced the five cakes she baked. For the icing on the cake, she asked Sarah Illenberger, Alice Wong, Marisa Miller, Arvid & Marie and Giulia Soldati to create rituals for consuming each of the baked goods, resulting in a truly collaborative project with an outcome good enough to eat. orlandolovell.com/polycreative. All five examples will be on show at this year’s…

Chunky, patterned alpine knits have a tendency to conjure up images of 1980s ski trips, sipping eggnog, or kitsch art teacher attire. But that Italian master of fabrication Brunello Cucinelli has tapped into A/W19’s penchant for artisanal details, and instead given a luxe, handcrafted lift to this winter fireside essential. We can’t wait to snuggle up in jumpers and cardigans from the Umbria-based fashion house’s Opera collection, which are woven by hand using fine natural yarns, such as cashmere, combined with silk, alpaca, mohair or sparkling Lurex, in a minimal colour palette. Featuring patterns inspired by ancient Nordic intarsia knitting styles, we’re now longing for the days to get chillier. brunellocucinelli.com…

It is astounding how much time, talent and effort goes into creating a 15-minute fashion show. And yet, one cannot overestimate the importance of those 15 minutes to a brand and its fortunes. A catwalk show must create an emotional experience for the audience while reflecting the unique aesthetic of a house, and do it all within a specified budget. Eyesight, owned by renowned lighting designer Thierry Dreyfus, is one of a handful of companies that specialise in the unique challenge of producing these events. Dreyfus has run Eyesight since 2002, with a full-time staff of 21 (plus freelancers) and offices in Paris, New York and Milan. It has produced around 100 shows per year for about 35-40 houses, including the likes of Helmut Lang, Raf Simons, Comme des Garçons,…

Tucked into the edge of a former orchard in Kent is this striking interpretation of the county’s characteristic oast house. Designed by London studio Acme, the new house straddles the uncanny valley of vernacular, pastiche and modernity. This blended approach is not new to Acme, a practice founded in 2007 by Friedrich Ludewig. He was soon joined by his former colleague at Foreign Office Architects, Stefano dal Piva, and the pair found themselves working on a variety of scales in a variety of ways, blending 3D modelling with traditional methods to develop a language that is still firmly rooted in place. This project’s clients, one a planner who had collaborated with the pair in the past, wanted a new-build house. A first set of plans drawn by a different architect…

Washington Boulevard in Culver City is one of the few neighbourhoods left in Los Angeles that has not yet been transformed for the worse by shiny new condos. Blocks of low-rise stucco buildings bear timeworn painted signs: ‘Jesus Saves’, ‘Guns and Ammo’, ‘Ray Blom Plumbing’. If the area hadn’t existed, Doug Aitken could have invented it. The artist has long looked to the mundane and forgotten, an archaeology of a vanishing American culture. His mirrored words or light-box wall pieces often draw from the long horizons and isolation of the West; his appreciation for it surely fated the discovery of his new studio. Driving along Washington Boulevard four years ago, he saw a hand-lettered ‘For Sale’ sign in front of a transmission repair shop. When Aitken stopped to enquire, he…

Models: Steve F at Tomorrow Is Another Day, Ben Grafton at SUPA, Matïss Rucko at Sage, Theo Neilson at Select and Chase at xdirectn Casting director: David Steven Wilton at East Grooming: Takuya Uchiyama using Bumble and Bumble Set designer: Samuel Pidgen at Bryant Artists Interiors: Jacqui Scalamera Digital operator: Daniel Gurton Photography assistant: Olivier Barjolle Fashion assistants: Aylin Bayhan, Anastasia Xirouchakis Grooming assistant: Anri Omori Set design assistant: Shaye Gregan Production assistant: Becca Jones Shot on location at Hornsey Town Hall, north London. Designed by architect Reginald Harold Uren and completed in 1935, the Grade II*-listed building is currently being restored and redeveloped by Make Architects for Far East Consortium. The mixed-use development will include apartments, a hotel, co-working space, and an arts centre operated by Time + Space…

Whether scrawled across a wall, winding along a bridge on the Seine, or piercing the Louvre’s glass pyramid, Claude Lévêque’s neon works have an unmistakable verve and mythological charge. Small wonder that our erstwhile guest editor Karl Lagerfeld called the French conceptual artist ‘a divine man’ (see W*127). The works stand in sharp contrast to Lévêque’s famously down-to-earth demeanour, as reflected in his favourite dish, stuffed tomatoes. ‘I usually make it with sun-ripened tomatoes from my garden in Pételoup, in Nièvre, during the summer,’ he explains. ‘It’s a good recipe to share with friends on the terrace with a light local wine.’ For Lévêque’s recipe, see Wallpaper.com…