Table of contents for URBIS_91_201604 in Urbis

AS FAR AS DESIGN REGIONS GO, it is fair to say that Scandinavia casts a strong spell on the New Zealand psyche. There is something highly alluring in its simplicity. Its ‘practicality over adornment’ and egalitarian ethos resonate with our own design history. From time to time, however, we hope to explore the design and architecture offerings from regions that are increasingly relevant or whose aesthetic offers an interesting counterbalance to ours. This, the first of such dispatches, focuses on a region dear to my heart: the Latin world. Why now? Like a bad horoscope would say: there are many planets aligning. The Olympics are scheduled to take place in Brazil later this year and it is worth following the phenomenal design servings that accompany the event. A few continents…

SMART LOCKS Keys? What do you mean you still use keys? The old analogue lock-and-key system has existed for almost 6000 years – and those embarrassingly outdated pieces of metal can get lost, stolen or broken off in your lock! No, no, no. The true technophile needs a smart lock. Fit one, pair it with your smartphone via Bluetooth, and you’ll instantly update the way you deal with your doors. Give a code to your cleaner, real estate agent, or the mate that’s always coming over to borrow your stuff – and they can get in too. Usage logs keep track of who is coming and going from your house. The August Smart Lock is one of the simplest models on the market, as it uses your existing dead-bolt cylinder.…

THERE IS A SENSE THAT THIS VILLA IS AN ISLAND OF REFUGE FOR THE FAMILY, ENSCONCED IN COMFORT, LEISURE AND SELF-EXPRESSION IT IS A FEAT IN ITSELF to pin down two of New Zealand’s top names in architecture for a mid-week, midday chat, but at Charles Walker and Jessica Barter’s villa in Grey Lynn, Auckland there is a sense of two comfortably busy people at the peak of their careers and loving life. On the street verge is a tree decorated with Pacific leis, an ode to Christmas created by a neighbour, and on the front steps the couple’s four-year-old son Jimmy, home from daycare for the morning, is awaiting my visit. To be home on a weekday is clearly something of a treat for the whole family, who keep…

How did you come to design? My father works with carpentry, and my mother is an artisan and seamstress. This proximity to making, to forms, to objects, and their relationships has brought me to the world of the artefact and the world of forms and aesthetics. Much of your furniture is created out of simple shapes. Yes, my idea is to always make things exhaustively simple. I am used to starting with complex things and then editing them down. I always work with forms of découpage – formal, conceptual, material. Currently, what interests me the most is to leave this clean and observe what is the limit existent between simplicity and expression. Some of your work looks as if it might be quite precarious to use. Is this edginess intentional?…

PARIS OF SOUTH AMERICA As the sun begins to set over Buenos Aires the light turns from warm white to iodine orange. This view from the small light house at the top of the Barolo Palace shows a city influenced by grand, European ideas of elegance and eclecticism. To find out more, turn the page. MUCH LIKE THE TANGO, BUENOS AIRES IS EQUAL PARTS SEDUCTION, REJECTION, POETRY AND POVERTY. THE INFAMOUS DANCE was, reportedly, invented in brothels and seedy bars by immigrants fusing their music (African candomblé and Italian performance techniques) with local rhythms. Its current persona, however, is more synonymous with worldly sophistication. Buenos Aires is still very much a delightfully disorganised mixture of global influences. Immigrants’ contribution to local culture is evident almost everywhere; from the singsong Spanish…

Writer "IT’S A CITY FOR WRITERS AND ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS. THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT IT THAT BASHES UP AGAINST YOU AND THEN HUGS YOU." THE IMPRESSIVE CURLS in Jessica’s hair bounce freely like some sort of forewarning to her personality: she is fast moving and full of zest. In the late 90s, Auckland-born Jessica embarked on a South American adventure that took her to Peru where she volunteered with homeless children, lived in Cusco (an archeologically rich town not far from Machu Picchu) and met an Argentine surfer who sparked a passion for all things Buenos Aires. She returned to the Antipodes but, on a romantic whim, fled Melbourne and her cushy job as a clinical psychologist. “It’s like South America and I have unfinished business,” is how she describes…

TOAKI OKANO Regular contributor Toaki Okano shot the Objectify feature. His work also appears on the cover. See page 34. What comes to mind when you think about the design of the Latin world? Dynamic lines of beautiful furniture, confidence with mix of colours. Do you own or covet any objects from the region? I would like to own a piece of furniture from there, but I have no space for it. Tell us about your contribution for this issue and what you enjoyed about it? I was excited to see all the beautiful pieces in my studio, and I enjoyed working with new art director Thomas Cannings. RICHARD POWERS Globe-trotting photographer Richard Powers shot a beautifully decorated villa in Miami. See page 62. What comes to mind when you…

TEQUILA’S EARTHY COUSIN There is a bit of romance going on between sommelier Mundo Ferrera and Seafarers Club. The Mexican native is passionate about his work there and talks us through what he is currently serving from his homeland. URBIS: What is the latest in the world of Latin American tipples? MUNDO FERRERA: Mezcal is starting to be internationally recognised. I was in Mexico for three and a half weeks recently and I barely touched tequila. Mezcal is very exciting and it’s just coming out. U: For the uninitiated… what is it? MF: It’s the rustic cousin of tequila. I was introduced to it as a little boy, when my mum would give me a little taste. It’s made from indigenous plants, so the flavour of the mezcal is different…

“… THE CHALLENGE WAS THAT IT HAD TO BE COMFORTABLE AND FEEL LIKE HOME, BUT STILL BE PRACTICAL AND EASY TO MAINTAIN.” THERE’S LITTLE WONDER interior designer Cristina Jorge de Carvalho’s clients chose Estoril as the location for their new holiday apartment. The 60-something Brazilian couple fell in love with the Portuguese seaside town, renowned for its wide, open beaches, breathtaking ocean views and a casino purportedly the inspiration behind James Bond novel and subsequent film, Casino Royale. For a place to retreat for a few months each year, the region offers just the right mix of giddy excitement and quiet respite. Their 170m2 two-bedroom apartment is housed on the fifth floor of a recently renovated 1930s building, which includes a boutique hotel as well as private residences. Lisbon-based de…

Restaurateur WITH CASA CAVIA... THE YOUNG 'LUPE'... BEGAN ORCHESTRATING A MODERN, MAGIC REALIST VERSION OF AN EPICUREAN GARDEN. Guadalupe recommends: Yeite restaurant and JT new retail store. They manage to work together combining fashion and food and reside in a unique neighbourhood, where you get to see the Atlanta soccer stadium. A very rare program! The place is designed by a great architect and furniture maker. ROHO hairdressing because it is a hub for creative people, where musicians and artists get their hair done and you always meet someone from the local scene. THERE IS A STUNNING ROOM at the back of Casa Cavia, Guadalupe’s second restaurant, which serves as a laboratory for scents. This artisanal perfumery, Fuegia 1883, crafts aromas based on poetic images of Latin America. There are…

Artist HE LIKES SITUATIONS WHERE HE IS NOT ENTIRELY IN CONTROL OF HIS ARTWORK, BUT THOSE WHERE THERE IS A “FOURTH DIMENSION... WHERE THE AUDIENCE IS THE ARTWORK SOMEHOW.” Eduardo recommends: The Xul Solar Museum in the former home of the artist Xul Solar. Everything from the artwork through to the architecture is worth looking into. The book The Invention of Morel by local writer Adolfo Bioy Casares. A great book about people who live in a Polynesian island and don't realise they are dead. I am really fond of the barbeque restaurant Los Platitos. The food and its surrounding area are excellent. “THE FIRST ARTWORK I did was in collaboration with Mormons,” says the softly spoken Eduardo about his somewhat unorthodox yet increasingly successful career which has also seen…

COLOURFUL FOLLY Daughter of the Swamp, the winning architectural installation at the Brick Bay Folly 2016 competition, was unveiled at the Brick Bay Vineyard in March 2016. The idea for this winning entry was an enormous eel-pot form marooned on the edge of a pond: an elongated form of coloured-steel ribs that move in the breeze. “The folly site is on the bank of a gorgeous swamp so we wanted a dynamic construction that rolled over the land,” says co-designer Alexander Sacha Milojevic. brickbaysculpture.co.nz WHAT WE ARE READING Brazil Modern: The Rediscovery of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Furniture, by Aric Chen, Monacelli Press, $130. From the design of the first mass manufactured bed (a 1915 wooden contraption) through to Jose Zanine Caldas, this tome is proving to be an excellent inquiry into…

THE GUNA HOUSE sits as “a stony mass in apparent repose” in a sloping lagoon bay surrounded by a forest of native trees. The poise of its cantilevered mass balanced on a compact pedestal below belies the everyday functions inside: those of a family home. Some abodes scream ‘I am house!’, but the Guna house is calm and meditative as it sits in the landscape as if it has been there since the dawn of time. “The house can be understood as a monumental object… it embodies a sense of memory, of resemblance to another time. This might be read as a veiled function of the house, of a monumental domesticity,” says Mauricio Pezo, onehalf of the art and architectural partnership Pezo von Ellrichshausen and Sofia von Ellrichschausen. Located in…

THIS IS NOT A HOUSE By Dan Rubinstein Rizzoli $140 A compilation of innovative houses by the editors of Mark magazine and Dan Rubinstein, the book showcases a series of detached houses aligned to the archetypal ‘Mark House’ exhibiting an “unconventional approach to the design brief, an innovative formal language, and a distaste for showiness.” The propositions are unusual, and each project is intriguingly conceptual. Almost half the houses are located in Japan, with others from Western and Northern Europe. Editor David Keuning explains that the fascination with Japanese houses is contextually driven by the temporal approach to housing in a country where houses only usually last about thirty years. Houses aren’t passed down generationally, resulting in highly personalised commissions and bespoke solutions – where experimentation is encouraged and functional…

WHEN DESIGNER Eugeni Quitllet talks you get the sense he could have been a philosopher or motivational coach. In our 30 minutes together, he peppered the conversation with affirmations like: “Everything started to happen the moment I let things happen,” or “you can’t stand still, you must jump into the void” and “the future is expanding so you can go in any direction.” Eugeni’s infectious and expansive positivity translates into much of his work. EUGENI HEARD A RUMOUR THAT PHILIPPE STARCK WAS LIVING [NEARBY]… HE TOOK HIS DRAWINGS, RODE HIS BIKE AROUND THE ISLAND, FOUND PHILIPPE’S HOUSE AND KNOCKED ON THE DOOR... As a child growing up in Ibiza, Spain, Eugeni would sketch from morning to night and make his own toys. In his 20s, he studied design and interior…

Architect "WE ARE LIVING IN A VERY OPEN AND VERY DYNAMIC MOMENT IN ARCHITECTURE... WE ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO DIALOGUE WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD." LAST YEAR ADAMO FAIDEN, the architecture firm that Sebastián Adamo runs with his business partner Marcelo Faiden, unveiled the refurbishment of a 1970s chalet in the neighbourhood of Belgrano. “Here in BA you have many different typologies living next to each other,” says Sebastián of the eclecticism of residential neighbourhoods. The Fernández House intervention included the creation of a double façade, the exterior one uses a stark white metal, scaffold-like construction topped with perforated sheet metal. From these, fronds and stalks of various plants rupture to the outside in random and alluring patterns. Much like this house, there is an almost meditative quality to their exteriors,…

Trend Hunter “BUENOS AIRES LENDS ITSELF TO PEOPLE WHO ARE INTREPID BECAUSE THERE IS A LOT GOING ON THAT IS UNTOUCHED OR BEING CREATED BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.” THIS BRITISH-BORN, dedicated follower of fashion has lived in Buenos Aires for the past seven years and is on a relentless quest to uncover and document the city and all it’s many quirks. “My mum is Argentine and she had been bringing me here all my life. When I was 17 I realised… ‘hey, this place is really cool!’” she says, “I would work in London, save money and come back and spend time here.” Back in the UK friends and strangers would often ask where she bought her clothes and accessories. “A highlight was when I was working in [clothing store] Browns…