Table of contents for Nov-2018 in Wallpaper

ALI MORRIS Writer When she first turned up at Wallpaper* as an intern in 2006, Morris never dreamt she’d still be traversing the globe for us 12 years on. This month, she tracked down one of our four architecturally awesome winter holiday homes, Bahrain’s Reef house (page 139), a structure boasting impossible forms and astonishing views. ‘At one point, the house’s two volumes meet in mid air, millimetres apart,’ says Morris. ‘It’s one of those buildings that you can’t quite believe exists.’ RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA Artist Turning the bounty of the kitchen into meditations on culture and belonging, Thai conceptual artist Tiravanija has prepared and served meals in gallery spaces ranging from MoMA to the National Gallery of Singapore (his Japanese tea house, surrounded by a bamboo maze, is perched on…

Pleats are top of our skirt cheat-sheet for autumn. A host of flaring folded styles swung down the A/W18 runways, some short with concertina pleats, some knee length in more scholastic silhouettes. With kilts clearly an inspiration, Max Mara creative director Ian Griffiths and Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri nodded to rebellious punk icons and the protesting students of the 1968 Paris riots, the leather details of their folded styles adding a flicker of defiance. Whether you’re riffing on rebellion, favour retro checks, or have a mind for something more monochrome, pleats are sure to keep you firmly in fashion’s fold.…

A tenacious resident of your grandma’s bathroom cabinet, magnesium has long been known to combat tired and achy muscles and, more recently, it is being mined for its ability to wipe out cellulite, blemishes and sleepless nights. Pestle and Mortar’s Balance Facial Spritz (01) brings magnesium sourced from the Irish Sea into your handbag to offer instant pollution protection on-the-go. Buly 1803’s Transcutaneous Magnesium lotion (02), which contains magnesium that comes from the untouched prehistoric Zechstein Seabed, in one of the highest concentrations available in the market, is a wonderful skin softener, while Aesop has blended it with high potency vitamin B and C in its B Triple C Facial Balancing Gel (03) to balance combination skin and soothe inflammation, red patches and acne. If you prefer to trust grandma’s instincts, you…

Sportswear isn’t always that sexy, but a collaboration between Norwegian technical sportswear brand Odlo and Zaha Hadid Architects has left us breathless. The Zaha design team has created a set of engineered base layer tops and leggings that feature Odlo’s signature innovations, including body mapping, seamless knitting and Zeroweight insulation. The two sets (one for men, one for women) feature an elastic, seamless knitted texture that controls the flow of air and adapts to breathing and movement. Thanks to body mapping, the pieces act like a second skin, with no seams limiting flow and flexibility. The collection took shape in much the same way that most of the architectural practice’s projects come to life, with a combination of visual ideas and rigorous research. Sporting underwear has never been so fit.…

In September 1969, the American magazine ArtNews published a cryptic feature about a young, overlooked artist named Oscar Neuestern. It described the rare amnesic condition he suffered, which prevented him from remembering his work from any previous day, and so opening his practice to perpetual reinvention. ‘Why was I telling you this story?’ asks Mario Garcia Torres, frowning, as if his own memory was suddenly failing him. The Mexican artist is gearing up for his first US survey at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center. It features some 35 works – old and new – spanning video, photography, installation and performance. ‘I’m happy not remembering things,’ he concludes. ‘Without memory, you can experience things in a different way,’ he says, a nod to Marcel Duchamp’s claim that he desired to live without…

‘Take a walk on Fendi’s dark side, and back. Playfully,’ began the show notes for the Italian powerhouse’s S/S19 menswear collection. It was a fitting opener to the parade along a glossy black runway, emerging from a lava-red archway emblazoned with neon caricatures of snakes, demons and a clawed frog. At the centre of the archway, illuminated text reading ‘Fendi’ morphed periodically into its anagram, ‘Fiend’. The collection itself was a play on contrasts, with sturdy elements made light by perforations; paper masquerading as leather, and vice versa; all of it generously sprinkled with anagrams and the distinctive ‘double F’ logo. As usual, the clothes were the work of the brand’s matriarch, Silvia Venturini Fendi, but the infernal set, and the prints and logos appearing throughout the collection bore the…

A representative of Mexico’s dynamic contemporary architecture scene, Frida Escobedo set up her practice in Mexico City in 2006 and has been going from strength to strength ever since. CASA NEGRA, 2004 Standing on four columns, this live/work space in the outskirts of Mexico City was Escobedo’s first ground-up, new-build project (designed with her then-partner Alejandro Alarcon). HOTEL BOCA CHICA, 2010 The renovation of a 1950s hotel in Acapulco, Hotel Boca Chica (W*137) offered the opportunity for Escobedo to experiment with interventions to an existing structure. LA TALLERA, 2012 This high-profile project, which comprises a museum, atelier and artist’s residence, placed Escobedo firmly on the global architecture map. CIVIC STAGE, 2013 Stage design for Lisbon’s 2013 Architecture Triennale marked her first European project. AESOP INSTALLATION, 2014 An installation at a…

Building a library from scratch to tell the history of creation might be a daunting task. But that’s exactly what Garance Primat – with bookseller Nicky Dunne and multidisciplinary designer Raphael Navot – set out to do at her estate in south-west France. The estate, the Domaine des Etangs, is located in Massignac, a commune near the city of Angouleme, less than two hours from Paris by train. Visiting it, though, feels like travelling back in time. An 11th-century chateau sits at the heart of 1,000 hectares, with seven ponds, pastures, gardens and a forest. The estate has been in the Primat family since the 1980s, when Garance’s father, the French oil baron Didier Primat, bought it as a holiday home and renovation project. In 2015, Garance decided to turn…

Perched on a funnel-shaped slice of land on the coast of Bahrain’s manmade Reef Island, the sculptural Reef guest house is something of an ‘alien in its surroundings’, admits its architect Jalal AlNajjar. From the street, its vast angular entrance – four tilting planes of pristine plaster angled towards a towering 3m door – makes for an intriguing spectacle alongside its more conventional neighbours. The Bahrain-based architect, whose portfolio includes luxury residences and showstopping public buildings, designed the five-bedroom property for a local client who wanted a spectacular but private space for entertaining high-profile guests. ‘Almost everything in the house was custom made,’ says AlNajjar of the four-year project. ‘It was the most complex and ambitious project of my career to date. ‘With the entrance, the idea was to have…

A modest Georgian property, in a terrace of similar structures in London’s Mayfair, conceals much behind its elegant brick facade. For this is the private office of the Dyson family, Britain’s most successful modern industrial dynasty. Intended as the nerve centre for all family business, it combines domestic scale interiors with sleek modernist finishes, contemporary craft skills and the latest in industrial design. Sir James Dyson oversees a multi-billion pound business empire, with a vast R&D centre (designed by Wilkinson Eyre) in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, and around 4,500 UK employees, mostly engineers. Manufacturing is taken care of by 5,000 more in factories in Asia. Dyson designs and manufactures vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, fans and lighting, and a much-vaunted foray into personal mobility is currently taking shape. The business has always involved…

Art break JOALI, MALDIVES Newly opened on the sugary white beaches of Muravandhoo Island on the Raa Atoll in the northern Maldives is the art-focused retreat Joali. Istanbul design firm Autoban, together with the Tokyo-based Studio Glitt, laid out the resort to include 73 beach and overwater villas, each with private infinity pool and butler service, as well as four restaurants, a liquid nitrogen ice cream corner, a flower garden offering botanical workshops, and a store packed with both local and international artworks and specially-curated artisanal knick-knacks. Meanwhile, an art studio and gallery hosts an international roster of guest artists, from Studio Glithero and Porky Hefer (see page 132) to Misha Kahn. Other diversions include snorkelling with manta rays, wakeboarding, waterskiing, and chartered yacht and dhoni excursions. However, you’re most…

For stockists, see page 256 Hair: Maarit Niemela at Bryant Artists using Bumble and Bumble Make-up: Kentaro Kondo at Eighteen Management using MAC Cosmetics Interiors: Olly Mason Interiors assistant: Harvey Waller Photography assistant: Christopher Greenaway Fashion assistant: Aylin Bayhan Models: Andrew Denny at Models 1, Jack McQueen, Jibrill Ollow, George Jones and Vincent Giovannoni at Wilhelmina Casting: Tallulah Bernard at The Magnet Agency…

In Chicago or any of the other dynamic destinations in the collection, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, London, LA, Madrid, Miami, Milan, New York, Paris, Rome and Tokyo, Wallpaper* City Guides uncover the most interesting architecture, enticing sights and hippest haunts. Whether you are on a business trip or a weekend break, here’s an insider’s checklist for the design-savvy visitor. Print £8.95, $11.95, ¤10.95. Available at phaidon.com App £4.99, $5.99, ¤5.99. Available at iTunes.com/phaidon…

For stockists, see page 256 Twenty-five years since Rirkrit Tiravanija doled out free green curry to a voracious crowd at Manhattan’s 303 Gallery, food remains key to the Thai conceptual artist’s practice. He has partnered with gallerist Gavin Brown on a restaurant in upstate New York, chef Dalad Khambu on Berlin eatery Kin Dee (see W*224), and fellow artist Tobias Rehberger on a food stall at Frankfurt’s Kleinmarkthalle. His twist on a Negroni substitutes Carpano Antica Formula vermouth for Campari. Topped with gin, ‘in sufficient quantity to ensure its dominance over the other ingredients’, Tiravanija’s creation ‘has excellent effects on the imagination. I’ve no idea how or why; I only know that it works.’ For Tiravanija’s recipe, visit Wallpaper.com…

We have lift-off On a sultry Shoreditch evening during London Design Week, I had the honour of introducing a conversation between Richard Rogers and his son Roo. I opened by telling the crowd at Second Home about an architecture documentary series that BBC2 ran in the mid-1980s, scheduled just before the sizzling banter of Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting. The series, of course, talked to and about Rogers – then un-Lorded but post-Pompidou and the Lloyd’s building, eloquent in his hard-to-place accent, and strikingly handsome in a collarless shirt that may have been fuchsia or Yves Klein blue. I was watching on my black-and-white bedroom telly, so I’m making assumptions in post. Rogers immediately joined Jack Kerouac and Barney from New Order in my mixed bag of male…

The cookie, that mainstay of comfort food confectionery, has recently been the subject of a few makeovers. Evolving the ultimate comfort-food pairing, cookies and milk, Dominique Ansel, the inventor of the cronut, offers Tahitian vanilla milk cookie shots. Thinly lined with chocolate, the lightly baked cookie-dough shot glasses are served with cold milk at his various outposts. New York’s modestly named World’s Best Cookie Dough serves up cookies and cookie dough in most forms, from sandwiched with ice cream to combined with brownie mix (brookie dough). Across the pond in London, Naked Dough offers a variety of cookie dough flavours served in a tub, in a cone or as a freakshake, all with impossibly kitsch branding. Blondies Kitchen’s mission was to bring the authentic American cookie, all crunch on the…

Back in 1968, Italian tile company Cedit tasked Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni with creating a series of ceramic objects, with the only brief being to keep it small. The pair proposed a small collection of vases, whose original shapes referenced abstracted geometric forms. The body of the vase is held by a curved support, an arrangement that offers multiple silhouettes depending on the viewer’s perspective: a cone with a flying buttress from one angle, a gaping pocket from another. Half a century after the original design, ‘Lapis’, was released, Cedit has reissued the pieces in grey, dark blue and red. And thanks to the urgent sense of modernity that guided the Castiglionis throughout their careers, the pieces look just as relevant today as they did back in 1968. florim.com/en/cedit…

It’s unusual to be offered chocolate first thing in the morning, especially on an uncharacteristically hot summer day in London. Yet today, visitors to Thomas Heatherwick’s HQ are greeted by an array of delicious-looking cocoa models of Coal Drops Yard – his studio’s latest project – vacuum-formed from 3D prints. ‘When I first saw the site’s existing buildings I thought they were like those KitKat fingers, with a bite taken out of one, so it is shorter,’ Heatherwick offers in explanation. He is referring to the pair of long, 19th-century buildings in which coal was sorted as it arrived by train at London’s King’s Cross station from the north of England. Now Heatherwick Studio has transformed this piece of Victorian industrial engineering into a new retail hub. Heatherwick, whose studio…

Back in 1998, David Chipperfield Architects (DCA) beat 145 other contenders to win a global competition for an extension to the Venetian island cemetery of San Michele. Thanks to the vagaries of Italian funding and bureaucracy, work didn’t begin until 2004. Another 14 years on, and the second (and potentially, last) phase of a revised scheme – including a new dock to supplement the existing pontoon on the island’s west side, and an administrative building–is now complete. San Michele has been the city’s sole burial ground since 1837, and within its wave-lapped walls lie the tombs of generations of Venetians, as well as some illustrious foreigners, including ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev, composer Igor Stravinsky and poet Ezra Pound. After nearly 200 years of internments, the cemetery was running out of…

It’s taken a long time for the fine-watch industry to get to grips with what women want in a timepiece. There have been sporty, flowery, minimal and jewelled pieces to cater to a spectrum of tastes. But aesthetics tend to err on the classic side. Cecile Guenat, director of ladies’ collections at Richard Mille, is out to change that. Her latest creation – the ‘RM 71-01 Automatic Tourbillon Talisman’ – is a super-technical, multi-textured object that looks as if it sprang from a Ridley Scott storyboard rather than the tiny Les Breuleux village in Switzerland’s Franches-Montagnes region. ‘When I started designing this collection, it was the summer of Pokemon Go. The “morphing” that underlies the creatures’ evolution in the game informed parts of the collection,’ she says. Architecture is also…

MAYA S SOMAIYA LIBRARY, INDIA by SP+A An array of global influences came together to create sculptural magic in this new library for the Shri Sharda school in Kopargaon, a small town in Maharashtra state, nearly 200km north-east of Mumbai. SP+A drew on traditional Catalan tile vaulting, the structural gymnastics of legendary Uruguayan engineer Eladio Dieste and software developed by ETH university in Switzerland to conjure up the snaking brick roof. ‘We tried to push the local or regional paradigm to evolve beyond the cliched image,’ says founding principal Sameep Padora. ‘Our process drew on a combination of techniques across both time and geography.’ The architects also designed the wooden furniture, shelving and low Kota limestone stools. The result is a new landscape that expands the children’s horizons, both physically…

A world of oenophile wonders and spirit-raising accoutrements For his newest winery, located in the historic Alexander Valley region in northern California, wine entrepreneur David Duncan enlisted Daniel Piechota, a local architect with strong connections to the area. Duncan’s father established the Silver Oak wine label in the 1970s and the business has been growing ever since. It now works over 400 acres of land but Duncan is determined that the company’s best wines are still to come. The new winery is set in 70 acres of vineyards along the foothills of the Mayacamas Mountains, and the brief Duncan gave Piechota was to create a striking facility that would ‘frame the vineyards’ around it. The project is split into two main structures – a tasting room, which is positioned on…

Africa Hallmark House Hotel, Johannesburg, South Africa Asia & Oceania Macq 01, Hobart, Australia Paramount House Hotel, Sydney, Australia Tribe Hotel, Perth, Australia The Middle House, Shanghai, China The Murray, Hong Kong The Sukhothai, Shanghai, China Hotel Koe, Tokyo, Japan Moxy Osaka Honmachi, Osaka, Japan Andaz, Singapore Six Senses Duxton, Singapore Europe Hotel Sanders, Copenhagen, Denmark Nobis, Copenhagen, Denmark Hotel National des Arts et Metiers, Paris, France The Hoxton, Paris, France Roomers, Munich, Germany The Fontenay, Hamburg, Germany Asmundo di Gisira, Catania, Italy Hotel Indigo, Warsaw, Poland Puro, Gdańsk, Poland Verride Palacio Santa Catarina, Lisbon, Portugal Almanac, Barcelona, Spain Eden Locke, Edinburgh, UK The Mandrake, London, UK The Principal, London, UK Latin America Fera Palace Hotel, Salvador, Brazil W Panama, Panama City, Panama Middle East The Vera, Tel Aviv, Israel…

There are so many places to visit in Japan that Nara, a charming old capital city located roughly at the centre of Honshu, is often overlooked. Two years ago, while working on a book project on the Nara prefecture, I finally made it there, travelling around to visit the ceramicist Shiro Tsujimura, who lives deep in a forest in a house he built with his own hands; witnessing a Japanese tea whisk being made from a simple piece of bamboo by 20th-generation craftsman Tango Tanimura; and exploring the compact city centre. I’ve been coming back regularly since. While Kyoto is most often thought of as the traditional old capital of Japan, Nara was in fact capital longer ago, in what is known as the Nara period, from 710-794. Much of…

&Tradition Tel: 44.7747 319997 (UK) andtradition.com A Aesop Tel: 44.20 3637 4577 (UK) aesop.com Agustina Bottoni Tel: 39.339 258 0822 (Italy) agustinabottoni.com Alan Cristea Gallery Tel: 44.20 7439 1866 (UK) alancristea.com Alessi Tel: 39.02 9475 3451 (Italy) alessi.com Alexander Kanygin Tel: 7.921 390 8949 (Russia) alexanderkanygin.com Alpi Tel: 39.02 3650 3757 (Italy) alpiwood.com Aram Tel: 44.20 7557 7557 (UK) aram.co.uk Armani Prive armanibeauty.co.uk Atelier Biagetti Tel: 39.02 8324 1694 (Italy) atelierbiagetti.com Azucena azucena.it B Berluti Tel: 44.20 7437 1740 (UK) berluti.com Botanic Lab botanic-lab.co.uk Bottega Veneta Tel: 44.20 7629 5598 (UK) bottegaveneta.com Bristol Paint bristolpaint.com Brunello Cucinelli Tel: 44.20 7287 4347 (UK) brunellocucinelli.com Buly 1803 buly1803.com C Carpenters Workshop Gallery carpentersworkshopgallery.com Cassina Tel: 44.20 7584 0000 (UK) cassina.com Ceadesign ceadesign.it Chaplins Tel: 44.20 8421 1779 (UK) chaplins.co.uk Church’s Tel: 44.1604…

Wallpaper’s hot pick of the latest global goings-on KYOTO’ PARTITIONS, €2,367, BY NOTE DESIGN STUDIO, FOR ZILENZIO. ‘ABCD’ SOFA, FROM £5,200; ‘LAMPADA POLTRONA’ LAMP, FROM £940, BOTH BY LUIGI CACCIA DOMINIONI, FOR AZUCENA. ‘REN’ BOOKCASE, £7,548, BY NERI & HU, FOR POLTRONA FRAU. ‘TRIUMPH’ BOOKENDS, FROM €125, BY JOSEP VILA CAPDEVILA, FOR APARENTMENT, FROM WALLPAPERSTORE*. GLASSES, €160, BY CHRISTIANA VANNINI, FOR FASSAMANO. ‘EQUILIBRE D’HERMES’ MAGNIFYING GLASS, £1,360, BY HERMES. VASE, FROM $80, BY DANA BECHERT. ‘EDGE’ POT, FROM €33, BY STILLEBEN, FOR SKAGERAK. ‘DAIS’ STEP STOOL, €262, BY GRIDY, FOR NORTHERN. ‘BOTANICAL ANATOMY’ RUG, FROM £1,729, BY CHRISTOPHER KANE, FOR THE RUG COMPANY. BOOKS COURTESY OF PENGUIN, PHAIDON, BULY 1803, STEIDL, PAN MACMILLAN AND MITCHELL BEAZLEY FOR STOCKISTS THROUGHOUT, SEE PAGE 256 Digital may dominate these days, but at desirable…

How do you take your coffee? Black with ice. On a doily. Anyone who spends a bit of time with me leaves knowing how to crochet. When did you first realise that you were creative? I was never going to do anything academic, but it was probably when I went to art college in Dublin and one of the tutors persuaded me to take the fashion module. I did my project on nurses. I printed all these images of how they used to make the old nurses’ hats and wondered whether I could make skirts out of that type of construction. My brain just started working. I realised then that that was how I could make emotion, through clothes. Who’s been your biggest influence? I’ve always been obsessed with Louise…

There’s a hands-free usefulness behind the most ergonomic accessories of A/W18. So put your handbags on hold in favour of this season’s practical pocketed styles, which can be strapped across the body or buckled around the waist. For a luxurious take on the tool belt, Parisian maison Hermes and outdoors expert Holland & Holland have both created leather styles with multi-pockets, which are perfect for housing sunglasses, keys, mobile phones and more. Haute holders for those everyday essentials, and versatile accessories for an impromptu site visit. hermes.com; hollandandholland.com INCOMING | JOHN WEICH HASHTAG TEAMS With hashtags driving so much social conversation, it’s little wonder that brands are scrambling to claim their own 24 hours of fame – a day dedicated to whatever it is they offer. A typical month on…

Taking in video, performance and sound, often all at once, time-based media can be thrillingly engaging or beyond testing. The young New York-based artist Rachel Rose – who layers animation, sound, original footage and found material in her video compositions – thrills and engages. At 32, her achievements already include solo exhibitions at the Whitney in New York and the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, as well as memorable appearances at Frieze Art Fair (she won the Frieze Artist Award in 2015) and the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. It’s a stratospheric ascent for Rose, who abandoned painting, her original medium of choice, while studying for an MFA at Columbia University. She found new inspiration in documentary filmmaking and moved at pace from there. ‘I felt that painting didn’t really…

The British artist Alexander Groves and Japanese architect Azusa Murakami, collectively Studio Swine, provided the visual for this feature and for this issue’s limited-edition cover (pictured below). They are also part of the freshly minted Wallpaper* Moonshots Division. The pair established Super Wide Interdisciplinary New Explorers (Swine for short) in 2011. Since then they have produced objects, furniture, sculpture, installations and films, exhibited at the Pompidou and the V&A, and earned gongs at Cannes and other film festivals. The talented duo first grabbed our attention with a remarkable range of objects made of compacted human hair, and later with their furniture collection inspired by Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s failed urban experiment in the Amazon rainforest. Last year, they created New Spring for COS, a tree of arcing columns that birthed mist-filled bubbles or…

From the gates of Namib Tsaris Conservancy, a private reserve located in a remote valley of the Namib Desert, it’s a 30km drive to The Nest. The journey is best undertaken during the day, for at night, stars alone illuminate the dirt roads, and leopards and hyenas prowl the land. On approach, a swimming pool and a grid of solar panels are the most visible signs of human life, for the isolated hideaway itself, with its thatched roof and soft lighting, is a barely-there silhouette in the landscape. The nearest town is 125km away and wildlife, which congregates around a floodlit watering hole, provides the only company. Seclusion is just one of The Nest’s selling points. On hand are a local chef, butler and guide, as well as a helipad.…

It’s not often that a hotel opens as ambitiously as the Edition has in Shanghai, where it has flung open its doors and unveiled 145 rooms alongside ten levels of public space. With a simultaneous launch in Barcelona, plus four more in the works internationally (including the Piero Lissoni-led restoration of a grand but defunct Milanese palazzo, see W*235), Ian Schrager’s brand is moving at an impressive clip. Its pace is matched by the designers of its Shanghai outpost, Neri & Hu, who have just finished the city’s sleek Sukhothai hotel and several of its hottest new restaurant spaces. With a collective energy that feels almost nuclear, it’s fitting that the Shanghai Edition occupies a pair of adjacent buildings that once housed electric companies. Located just off The Bund, the…