Table of contents for October 2015 in AZURE

1 LOOKS GOOD ON PAPER Given carte blanche by German manufacturer Rolf Benz to envision an armchair, Claudia Kleine and Jörg Kürschner of Munich studio Formstelle looked to origami to inspire the open frame that defines their 580 chair. “The famous image of the crane served as the formal motif,” say Kleine and Kürschner of the reclining seat, which mixes retro styling with more contemporary moves. For the intricate seams, they drew from another unique Japanese tradition: the art of folding fabric. 2 CHARTING THE COURSE Sketches soon gave way to lifesized models made of foam and cardboard, then a wooden prototype to determine the geometry needed to give the chair its deep, comfortable recline. “It was quite challenging to develop the folded wooden frame,” says the duo of the…

OCTOBER 3 TO JANUARY 3 CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL IT’S A NATURAL FIT for the birthplace of modern architecture to host this ambitious event, which aims to be the North American rival of the Venice Biennale. The list of more than 100 participants looks promising, with top local talents (SOM, Studio Gang) and international virtuosi (Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, Vo Trong Nghia of Vietnam, and Spain’s SelgasCano, the firm behind this summer’s Serpentine Pavilion in London). Joining them are such emerging practices as the British collective Assemble (profiled on page 66), and MOS Architects (right), the New York firm that won the 2015 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture. Exhibitions, films and talks will be spread across six venues, including four galleries, Millennium Park, and the Chicago Cultural Center, where…

1 WOOF AND WARP BY MOROSO Influenced by the Jacob’s ladder folk toy, Maarten de Ceulaer’s divider is assembled with fabric strips that work like hinges, giving it flexibility in how it folds and unfolds. A foam core dampens sound. moroso.it 2 BUZZIFALLS BY BUZZISPACE With graphic cut-outs (including forest silhouettes), these hanging screens double as room dividers. They’re made of felt constructed from 100 per cent upcycled plastic bottle waste. buzzi. space 3 SCREEN SYSTEM BY CAPPELLINI Copenhagen studio GamFratesi’s screens are suspended from the ceiling. Any number of textile petals can be added to the Alexander Calder–inspired design. cappellini. it 4 PATCH BY STOKKEAUSTAD AND GU Combining colourful wool with such hard materials as mirror, polished brass and Norwegian stone, these standing or wall-mounted panels, designed by StokkeAustad,…

IN 2014, entrepreneur Curtis James, an avid documentary photo blogger, founded a novel consultancy in London called Fieldwork, which uses ethnological studies to help com pan ies fine-tune their operations by finding new ways to inspire employees. But James doesn’t rely on management meetings or remote data research. Rather, he and his agents (one with a Ph.D. in anthropology) immerse themselves in their client’s workspace, tracking the daily habits and goings-on, and recording their observations via photographs and notes. The fieldworkers arrive with their own custom-made lab, a plywood trunk on wheels that opens into a mini-office with a pull-down writing surface and cubbyholes for storing research materials. Designed by Steve Baines and Eliza Fricker, of Baines&Fricker, the lab is constructed for quick set-up and portability, in the tradition of…

MEDIBANK IS AUSTRALIA’S largest private health insurer, and last August it opened its new head office in Melbourne, in a building that neighbours such landmarks as Etihad Stadium, home to the Australian Football League, and Southern Cross railway station. Located in the Docklands, the country’s largest urban renewal development, the black and white–clad building has quickly become a beacon for what could be the healthiest work environment on the planet. Hassell, the international design practice behind the new office, calls the interior landscape a health-based working environment, or HBW, and it is a clear departure from the more familiar activity-based working phenomenon that has permeated so many workplaces, where foosball tables and tube slides are the norm. Health-based working puts the emphasis on the well-being of the building’s occupants, and…

INTERNATIONAL OUTRAGE over the death of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe this past summer has shown how our attitudes toward animals have changed. Even airports are endeavouring to treat them better. Gensler, the international design and architecture firm, is working on the first air terminal for animals, at New York’s JFK airport. Zoos have changed, too, becoming less like prisons where wild beasts live behind bars, and more like research facilities where species can be observed and protected from poachers and habitat degradation. In Paris, architect Bernard Tschumi and landscape architect Jacqueline Osty rebuilt the zoological park, with fewer animals in more spacious environments. Rather than a mere attraction, such institutions are a means of instilling appreciation for science and natural history. One of the most revolutionary controlled habitats to…

Projects, ideas and innovations for a better work environment AT NEOCON THIS YEAR, such brands as Coalesse, Herman Miller and Teknion launched desks, seating and storage units in nude wood, tipping the balance toward a more residential aesthetic. The trend has begun to travel around the globe; for example, in Melbourne, Cox Archi tecture, one of Australia’s largest inter national firms, chose wood as the main materi al for its new 1,000-square-metre headquarters. Blackbutt eucalyptus and Douglas fir cover the walls, floors and staircases, and in the communal kitchen an expansive countertop was fashioned out of planks left over from the construction. Patrick Ness, design director of the Melbourne office, says that the elementary material “allowed us to craft spaces that are better suited to creative design thinking.” A staff…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, Deloitte published a report called Mind the Gaps, an expansive study into the minds of millennials and their priorities at work. One of the most compelling takeaways is that the generation born after 1982 has a stronger commitment to improved social good and well-being than to profits. Other think tanks and R&D departments are reaching similar results. A key finding from a report by research firm Human Spaces, commissioned by Interface, indicated that physical space is central to happiness. For instance, two-thirds of survey respondents said that they feel most fulfilled in brightly coloured, naturally lit environments, with green, yellow and blue accents favoured the most. We wondered how the ultimate millennial office – the Frank Gehry–designed campus for Facebook, which opened in March – stacks up.…

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THIS CATALOGUE COMMISSIONED for an ongoing exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao provides an extraordinary in-depth view of the dynamo that is contemporary African design. It rips away post-colonial notions of indigenous art to expose a continent’s creativity – alive with the energy that powers some of the world’s youngest and fastest-growing economies (in 2014 alone, Africa’s total GDP grew by 5.0 per cent, compared with the global average of 3.3 per cent). Editors Amelie Klein and Mateo Kries have combined spreads of photography, graphics, art, design and fashion with learned essays that attempt to define what it means to be a creator in Africa today, while describing the context in which these artists and designers operate – a continent full of contradictions. Curator Azu Nwagbogu of Lagos argues that…

EVEN ALONG GRAND AVENUE, a street that is becoming Los Angeles’s major hub for architectural show-stoppers, the all-white honeycomb veil is hard to miss. The Broad, which opened in September, sits next door to the silvery waves of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and kitty-corner to Arata Isozaki’s heavyset Museum of Contemporary Art. Housing the collection of Eli and Edythe Broad, the private art museum’s rectilinear form is cloaked on all sides (including the roof) by a perforated shell, with a blocky profile antithetical to Frank Gehry’s roller-coaster curves. “The concert hall is a formidable neighbour,” says Liz Diller, founding partner of New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. “We wanted to make something that was more absorptive, perhaps more brittle feeling, that would not compete but would be an…

1 LIVESCRIBE NOTEBOOK BY MOLESKINE The beloved notepad company has joined the digital age without losing the power of the pen. Simply writing on the page makes your notes appear instantly on a computer screen, where they can be converted into type. moleskine.com 2 RIGGAD BY IKEA Ikea has been rolling out numerous prod ucts that double as charging stations. Riggad offers two ways to revive devices: a built-in USB port, and a wireless charging surface on a blond wood base. ikea.com 3 CORIAN CHARGING SURFACE BY DUPONT Dupont is now building transmitters into Corian. A phone sits on a disc-shaped spot and starts to refuel its battery immedi ately via a Powermat ring attachment. dupont.com 4 ASOLA BY CLIQUE Part lamp, part power station and part sculpture, this stylish…

AND THE WINNERS ARE… Over the summer, the Royal Institute of British Architects announced a number of awards, including the prestigious Jenks Award, given to Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron for its contributions to the theory and practice of architecture. Jacques Herzog is scheduled to deliver a lecture at RIBA on October 29, after the official presentation. For more information, see architecture.com. In July, non-profit Shelter Global revealed the winners of the first annual Dencity competition, which seeks ways to improve living conditions in slums around the world. A low-tech concept for a sustainable community in Rwanda earned first place for the OC Workshop team. Second place went to Jack Isles’s scheme for mapping the favelas of Rio de Janeiro; and third went to an idea from Iowa State…

The 1901 discovery of coal in Genk, Belgium, catapulted a sleepy burg into the economic stratosphere. Eight decades later, after the city was stripped of its black gold, prosperity vanished with the same whiplash intensity, forcing thousands out of work and depositing unsightly slag heaps across the landscape. Industrial ruins were also left behind, including the Winterslag production facility. Now called C-mine, it reopened as a cultural centre in 2010. As it pumps new life into the region, it lends insight into Genk’s past with a giant maze that has been installed in the courtyard. Labyrint – the work of architects Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh of Leuven, Belgium – allows visitors a visceral understanding of the coal mining experience. Rising five metres, the towering steel grid consists of…