ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN | ART

veniCe
Biennale
2014

Jean nouvel | Quentin Blake | Serpentine pavilion | kenneth GranGe

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 FORWARD PLAY REVIEW CONTENTS

041 196 233

023 COver sTOry 214 – 218

Listen 1 056 – 084 Process 1
14th venice Architectural
025 Biennale 220 – 222
Listen 2 All the latest from Rem Koolhaas’ Process 2
celebration of the fundamentals of
026 architecture, the history of the past to 224 – 226
Listen 3 a portrait of its host country review: London Festival
of Architecture
029 086 – 096
On the list Do you want the truth or 229
something beautiful? review: Where you Are
031
Infographic 098 – 112 230 – 231
strong foundation review: radical Cities
033 Across Latin America
On the drawing board 114 – 126 in search of New
rock, Paper, scissors Architecture
035
Meet 128 – 136 233
regeneration game review: Comics: A
036 – 037 Global History 1968 to
The art of repetition 138 – 150 the present
Foyles war
039 234 – 235
Graphics project 152 – 166 review: Comics
Ice and fire Unmasked: Art and
041 Anarchy in the UK
Design project 168 – 180
The life and death of MATerIALs FOCUs
043 buildings 237 – 251
Art project Features: Mews by
182 – 194 Barber & Osgerby; Tile
045 Dutch courage Mile by Turkishceramics
A letter from… and russ + Henshaw
196 – 210
047 Motown to mountain 252 – 258
Architecture project Archive

048 – 049
Curated diary

050
Blueprint for the Future

B335-003-Contents-JM-csh.indd 3 03/07/2014 16:34

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 IssuE 335 EDITORIAL

Unfortunately, like many readers no doubt, I was unable to make it out

to Venice this time around for the Biennale. Fortunately for you and me, we
had a five-strong Blueprint team out there to document the whole event and
bring it home in style. As well as Paul Raftery’s stunning cover shot, there’s 30
pages of coverage of Rem Koolhaas’ architectural extravaganza, starting on
p56. We discuss the key areas, themes and issues thrown up by the show and
also look in detail at what we considered to be the best national pavilions.
And talking of pavilions, a quick flick through this issue will reveal a goodly
amount of coverage of the Serpentine’s latest structure, from perhaps one of
the least well-known architects to grace the lawn — Chilean Smiljan Radić. The
project features in each section of the magazine, starting with the infographic,
which takes a visual look at all of the pavilions so far in Forward (see p31). In
Play, we look at the 2014 pavilion in detail and talk with the Radic about his
ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN | ART

creation (see p114). And finally, in Review, we take a ‘How It’s Made’ look
veniCe
Biennale
behind the scenes at the pavilion, having photographically documented the
construction process during May and June. Also in Play this month Serpentine
2014

co-director Hans Ulricht Obrist talks to Jean Nouvel about his now 20-year-old
Cartier Foundation Building in Paris.
As I write this editorial, we have a large team out and about scouring the
universities and colleges for the very best degree work. We’ll bring you the
Jean nouvel | Quentin Blake | Serpentine pavilion | kenneth GranGe

results of that search in issue 336 out in September. One college bound to get a
mention is Central Saint Martins, which also features in this issue a couple of
times. First off we take a look at an ingenious scheme by architect
Featherstone Young (see P41) to make better use of the central street in the
new(ish) Stanton Williams-designed building behind King’s Cross. Then we
look at what’s happened to the old CSM building on Charing Cross Road. It’s
become a bright and airy new Foyles book shop for the 21st century, replacing
JULY/AUGUST 2014
ISSUE 335 / £30
www.designcurial.com

Front cover — Entrance to the dingy old one that barely ever made it into the twentieth to my mind.
Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands is behind that new scheme (see p138).
Elements of architecture at
the Venice biennale, by Rem
Koolhaas.

Back cover — british Pavilion,

And finally, it’s time to enter our awards (www.blueprintawards.com) and
by FAT and Crimson
Architectural Historians.
also nominate people you think should receive the three Blueprint Awards for
Both images by Paul Raftery.
Architecture, Design and Critical Thinking. The deadline is nearly upon us —
Blueprint masthead set in 25 July, so don’t miss out. Look forward to hearing from you.
Reduct by Dylan Kendle,
Tomato. Johnny tucker, editor

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Quentin Blake, Liz Farrelly, Adrian Friend www.designcurial.com 2 Maidstone Road, Sidcup, Kent DA14 5HZ, UK accepted for unsolicited manuscripts or
Christine Gravemaker-Scott, Joseph photographs. ©2014. All calls may be
Grima, Ruth Lang, Chris Lefteri, Oliver monitored for training purposes.
Lowenstein, Paul Raftery, Veronica
Simpson, Erik Spikermann, Ossian Ward,
Thomas Wensing

B335-005-Editorial JM.indd 5 03/07/2014 16:34

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 Blueprint
Awards
2014

Final date
for entries
31 July
blueprintawards.com
@Blueprintmag
#winaBlueprint

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B335-018-BP Awards-.indd 1 08/07/2014 11:13

B335-018-BP Awards-.indd 2 03/07/2014 16:33
 023
Listen 1
Joseph Grima, curating the cultural
side of this year’s Biennale Interieur
event in Belgium, argues that the
concept of the home as a place no
longer exists
025
Listen 2
Renowned artist Quentin Blake
welcomes the opening of the House
of Illustration in London’s King’s
Cross and hopes it will lead to a new
appreciation of this artform
026
Listen 3
It’s time for us to reclaim control
from computers as they are making
decisions that cost lives, says Erik
Spiekermann
20
B335-020-F-Contents-JM-csh.indd 20
029
On The List
With the new Garden Bridge planned
for London, we take a look at the
city’s 21 existing river crossings
031
Infographic
We look at the 14 pavilions created for
the Serpentine Galleries in Hyde Park
in London
033
On the drawing board
Stanton Williams’ transformation of
the Musee d’Art in Nantes is due to
open to the public in 2016, bringing
old and new together. Director
Patrick Richard talks through the
ambitious plans
035
Meet
FleaFollyArchitects has been carving
a unique niche for itself, since
creating Grimm City, a fictional
miniature cityscape
036 – 037
The art of repetition
Photographer Luke Stephenson,
taking the seaside as his springboard,
travelled the length and breadth of
the UK to document the ice cream in
a cone with a flake, aka the 99
039
Graphics project
The world’s most famous online
payment method PayPal has been
going through a rebranding exercise.
Liz Farrelly picks apart the changes
041
Design project
Featherstone Young has come up
with a useful way to fill the echoey
thoroughfare of Central Saint
Martins, says Johnny Tucker
043
Art project
Herbert Wright follows Richard
Healy’s documentary on the work
of forgotten American architect
Horace Gifford
045
A letter from…
The Vitra Campus in Germany has
become a showcase for work by
the world’s best architects and it is
continuing to add to its repertoire as
Johnny Tucker finds out
047
Architecture project
Johnny Tucker takes a closer look at
the Waste House, Brighton’s project
which intends to utilise a wide range
of discarded items
048 – 049
Curated diary
Richard Calvocoressi, director
of the Henry Moore Foundation,
selects his top events for the coming
months
050
Blueprint for the Future
Chris Lefteri looks at research that is
working towards creating materials
that blur the boundaries between
nature and synthetics
03/07/2014 16:59
 FF

21

B335-020-F-Contents-JM-csh.indd 21 03/07/2014 16:59

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 LISTEN

From being a universal right, to the nurturing place of social revolution, the
home as we imagine it no longer exists, posits editor and architectural
curator Joseph Grima. He is curating a cultural programme around the
subject of the home for the Interieur Biennale, in Kortrijk, Belgium this
October. Grima was the editor of Domus from 2010 to 2013 and heads up
Genoa-based studio Space Caviar

JOSEPH GRIMA
When Le Corbusier published his plans for the Maison
Dom-ino in 1914 (see page 62), he effectively declared
the home a universal right, one that would be
achieved by the mobilisation of society and industry
towards a single systematic ideal of construction.
No longer burdened by the tedious particularities
of vernacular architecture, industrialised societies
were free to build cheaply and rapidly throughout the
better part of the 20th century, laying the framework
for the middle classes to grow to unprecedented
levels out of the ruins of the Second World War.
As much as the dream of a home for every family
could be justified after the terror of starvation and
death across Europe, it held another kind of potential,
for both corporations and governments, both of which
had a vested interest in dampening revolutionary
aftershocks and domesticating a population that had
witnessed the horrors of war. Not only houses, but
also furniture, appliances, utilities, and behaviours
were eventually assimilated into the all-encompassing
model of the machine for living.
It was in this context that Biennale Interieur was
founded in Kortrijk in 1968, as a platform that would
accomplish the final step in the modernisation of the
European home. Beneath the headline of an aesthetic
avant-garde, however, the new context that Interieur
was attempting to both foster and furnish was also
economically radical. By showcasing a new species
of domestic objects, whose curious appearances were
a by-product of their serialised manufacture in new
materials, designers in 1968 were constructing a direct
challenge to any lingering conservative predilections.
The living room, it seemed, would be the birthplace of
a new social revolution — and it would be affordable.
In the intervening years, however, the relationship
between aesthetics, finance and social ethics has
changed considerably. Given a perpetual economic
crisis, a globalised market and an increasingly mobile
and transactional population, the values that once
guided the design process — a reasonable cost
numbering among them — are now checked by the
end goal of total financial and material liquidity.
In demanding that both our furniture and living
conditions fit our contemporary nomadism, and
by participating in massive financial betting on the
property market, we have exerted a dematerialising
effect on the infrastructural underpinnings of our
daily lives as we require more freedom from their
size, weight and sheer presence. (This is not to say
that the visions of collapsible, inflatable or modular
furniture of the Sixties and Seventies have been
realised; indeed, as the logistics of shipping have
been optimised to the millimetre, the virtuality
of our objects is a function of how easily they can
be replaced).
Nevertheless, even dematerialised forms of living
have a spatial presence. It is not so much that the
home has disappeared, rather that beyond the
gypsum, wood veneer and particle board, it’s most
essential identity is as a cloud of data, communicating
through electronic impulses in a vast network of
incoming and outgoing streams of media, information,
and activities.
Where we once decorated our homes to support
an exaggerated vision of ourselves for our dinner-
party guests, we now compose our identities through
a variety of digital media, transmitted on to millions
of screens around the world. Most significantly, the
privacy we once associated with the domestic
environment has now been put into direct conflict
with the formation of our public identities, with our
ability to participate in new economies, and not least
our existence before national governments as founts
of unlimited information.
As curators of the cultural programme of
Biennale Interieur 2014, we would like to propose a
simple premise: the home, as we know it, no longer
exists. The concepts of domesticity that we continue
to harbour must be interrogated and reframed using
a new set of possibilities — that property might no
longer be owned but rented, that currencies and
governmental services might be decentralised, that
the growing gap between our physical selves and
our digital identities may generate unexpected
social outcomes.
Perhaps we must begin to look at the current
crisis in the fields of architecture and design not as
a product of the recession, but as an embryonic stage
in the development of a new form of habitation, one
unlike any ‘home’ we have known before.

wHERE OncE wE
dEcORAtEd OuR HOMES tO
SuPPORt An ExAGGERAtEd
vISIOn Of OuRSElvES fOR
OuR dInnER-PARty GuEStS,
wE nOw cOMPOSE OuR
IdEntItIES tHROuGH A
vARIEty Of dIGItAl MEdIA

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Untitled-4 1 16/06/2014 11:44
 LISTEN

Renowned illustrator, cartoonist and author Quentin Blake welcomes the

establishment and opening of the House of Illustration, in King’s Cross, by
Witherford Watson Mann. Apart from staging an exhibition of his work as
its debut event, the House of Illustration will hopefully spread the word
about the work of the illustrator and bring them together to share their
experiences and for mutual support, says Blake

QUENTIN BLAKE
The doors of the House of Illustration are open at
2 Granary Square, King’s Cross, a Victorian office
building it shares with the Art Fund. My immediate
involvement is to put on an exhibition of my own
work. Called Inside Stories, it shows not only a
selection of the originals of nine of my books but
also roughs and preliminary drawings to
demonstrate some of the thinking and processes
that go into the creation of a suite of illustrations.
It’s the first item of what will be the House of
Illustration’s continuous programme of exhibitions.
What the visitors — students, families, classes,
enthusiasts, and specialists — will be looking at is
a celebration of illustration of every type, including
natural history, medical, fashion and reportage, as
well as its fictional and narrative uses.
Illustration has a long and varied history, from
medieval illuminated manuscripts on, and it happens
to be a form of art that the English have always been
good at. Think, for instance, of the diversity of
19th-century illustrators: Bewick, Tenniel, Rossetti,
Keene, Caldecott. What would be specially gratifying
to me would be for us to give attention to George
Cruikshank, whose prolific genius I suspect we don’t
know enough about beyond Oliver Twist and
Sketches by Boz.
Cruikshank had the approval of Ruskin, who
I seem to remember thought him the best etcher
after Rembrandt, and, perhaps even more tellingly,
the passionate admiration of Ronald Searle: evidence
of a live tradition at work.
However, national traditions aren’t, and
shouldn’t be, watertight. One area of illustration
of particular interest to me is the illustrated journals
of late 19th-century Paris, where fine artists and
illustrators were still very often one and the same
person, and in whose pages you can find Lautrec
and Bonnard rubbing shoulders with Steinlen and
Vallotton and other artists less well-known to
us now, such as Rouveyre and Hermann-Paul and
the young Paul Iribe. It is interesting to notice from
those pages that they were well aware of what had
happened on our side of the channel, in particular
Hogarth and Rowlandson.
This is just to indicate one area of interest,
and I look forward to the curator of the House of
Illustration focusing our attention on not only the
history of illustration in such countries as America,
Germany, and Japan, but also on what is happening
there now. I hope that we shall also present the
graphic work of fine artists such as Hockney
and Paula Rego.
I also look forward to the House of Illustration
becoming a centre for illustrators. Of particular
interest to me, as someone who spent 20 years
teaching illustration, are those students studying
illustration in art schools (there are a lot of them)
and young illustrators setting out on their own.
There’s a great deal of good work done by the
Association of Illustrators, which has an energetic
and aware journal in Varoom — but now we shall
have a premises that says Illustration over the door.
It would be good to think that students from Central
Saint Martins across Granary Square, will come
through it, as well as students from everywhere in
the British Isles, and from the Continent as they
arrive by train at St Pancras. Happily, there’s already
a young Illustrator in residence, Rachel Lillie, to show
them the way.
I hope that, when those illustrators are on the
premises, they will give the visiting public the benefit
of their talents and experience, but also, through
lectures, seminars and conferences, they will talk to
each other. My sense is that we don’t know enough
about the history of our own art; not enough about
what we are all doing; and perhaps even sometimes
not enough about where we are going.
I know from my own experience that the
freelance illustrator develops a deep-seated instinct
to say yes; to take on the next task offered. That calls
for a sort of determination and spirit that I admire,
but I am also conscious, simply from my own point
of view, that it took me a long time to find my own
prospects and possibilities. Perhaps being together
in the House of Illustration will allow us to share our
values and aspirations, and persuade others to give
the work that we do its proper value.

I LOOK FORWARD TO THE

CURATOR OF THE HOUSE OF
ILLUSTRATION FOCUSING
OUR ATTENTION ON NOT
ONLY THE HISTORY OF
ILLUSTRATION IN SUCH
COUNTRIES AS AMERICA,
GERMANY AND JAPAN,
BUT ALSO ON WHAT IS
HAPPENING THERE NOW

B335-025-F-ListenQB-ph copy.indd 1 03/07/2014 16:58


ERIK SPIEKERMANN
Computers are infallible. While this may not be
what we experience at our desks every day, it is
the premise behind collecting more and more data
which eventually is supposed to enable machines
themselves to make decisions, purely based on
facts — objectively, without moral considerations.
Take our little vacuum cleaner robot: it knows
nothing about vacuum cleaning or about hygiene
and hasn’t a clue about where it actually works.
But it does its job very well. Intelligence is not the
reason for its effectiveness, but the sheer amassing
of data: about the size and shape of the surface, the
dust already collected, the position of furniture and
other obstacles. It never learns and starts its routine
every day as dumb as it was the day before. Fuzzy
logic is not intelligence.
Machines like this little sucker are ubiquitous
and have not just been gathering dust, but all sort
of information about you and me: ‘We know where
you are. We know where you’ve been. We more
or less know what you’re thinking about.’ This was
not something NSA chief Keith Alexander said, but
Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. As Joseph Weizenbaum
(computer scientist at MIT who wrote the influential
book Computer Power and Human Reason)
B335-026-F-ListenES-ph2.indd 1
LISTEN
It’s time for us to take back control from computers, which are being relied
on to make decisions that, in the extreme, are costing innocent lives —
regardless of the nature of ‘collateral damage’, says Erik Spiekermann.
Erik Spiekermann set up MetaDesign and FontShop, and is a teacher, author,
designer and partner at Edenspiekermann
pointed out, there is a difference between deciding
and choosing. Deciding can eventually be
programmed, while choice is the product of
judgement, not calculation.
BAE Systems’ latest drone, Taranis, named after
the Celtic god of thunder, is well over budget and
behind schedule and may not be operative before
2030. It is supposed to be a ‘fully autonomous
intelligent system’, albeit controlled by a human
operator. At least that is what BAE says on its
website. The decision to bomb objects and thus
kill people is based on a new paradigm in data
collection: pattern-of-life analysis. This can
encompass anything in an individual’s life, from
internet browsing habits to a record of instances
of choices made in order to determine a statistical
‘favourite’. At some point in the process of such
analysis a certain limit (imposed by whom?) will be
crossed and a potential terrorist will be considered
a real terrorist. They may just have been using the
wrong SIM card in the wrong place, at the wrong
time, but now the computer has certainty. And
people more faith in a computer — more than in
a person, as Weizenbaum discovered.
‘We’ve killed 4,700 [people],’ Republican
senator Lindsay Graham said of the ‘war against
terror’. ‘Sometimes you hit innocent people, and
I hate that, but we’re at war and we’ve taken out
some very senior members of Al-Qaeda.’ Such
collateral damage included 12 members of a
wedding ceremony in Yemen killed by a drone
strike in 2013 that ‘failed to comply with rules
imposed by President Obama last year to protect
civilians’, as the official statement put it.
So far, Google et al only target our purses. But
we know that the NSA and its buddies abroad
(notably the UK) accumulate just as much data.
And there is good reason to suspect that the
gathering does not stop at their own servers but
suck information from all the ‘clouds’ out there.
As far as the data is concerned, a shopper and a
terrorist leave the same traces. A computer cannot
choose between them but still makes decisions.
We can’t undo data gathering to date nor live
without the internet, but we do need transparency,
rules and clearly defined rights. The recent
judgement by the European Court of Justice that
ordered Google to provide people with the right to
be forgotten is a first step to getting ourselves back
in charge of our own decisions and choices.
ThERE IS A dIffERENcE
bETwEEN dEcIdINg
ANd chooSINg. dEcIdINg
cAN EvENTuAlly bE
PRogRAMMEd, whIlE
choIcE IS ThE PRoducT
of judgEMENT, NoT
cAlculATIoN
PhotograPhy by StEvE Carty
03/07/2014 16:57
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Untitled-2 1 25/06/2014 12:58

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Untitled-3 1 10/06/2014 10:38
 ON THE list
London’s bridges
Thomas Heatherwick’s new Garden Bridge will feature prominently in a
new exhibition called Bridge, at the Museum of London Docklands until
early November. The museum has a large collection of artworks related
to London’s bridges, and along with these there will be rarely, if ever, seen
contemporary photographs and film. So we thought we’d take you on
a criss-crossing journey along the Thames and over its bridges, from
Hammersmith in the west to Tower Bridge in the east
1. Hammersmith Bridge
Year: 1887
Architect: Sir Joseph Bazalgette
Length: 210m
Essential info: Hammersmith Bridge has long suffered
structural problems because of the increase of inner-city
traffic it was not originally designed to support. It has
also been damaged by IRA bomb attacks.
2. Putney Bridge
Year: 1886
Architect: Sir Joseph Bazalgette
Length: 210m
Essential info: Putney Bridge was designed by the
architect of London’s sewerage system and the bridge
integrates two of Bazalgette’s five outfall sewers.
3. Fulham railway bridge and footbridge
Year: 1889
Architect: William Jacomb
Length: 418m
Essential info: At one point William Jacomb was
Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s assistant, before striking
out on his own. This bridge is made with a lattice girder
construction.
4. Wandsworth Bridge
Year: 1940
Architect: Sir Pierson Frank
Length: 200m
Essential info: The steel panels cladding the bridge were
painted in varying shades of blue to camouflage it from
Second World War German and Italian air raids, a colour
scheme it still retains to this day.
1
2
3 Year: 1921
4 Architect: Ernest George and Basil Mott
5. Battersea Bridge
Year: 1863
Architect: William Baker
Length: 204.2m
Essential info: The bridge was strengthened and
refurbished in 1969, and again in 1992. It was declared
a Grade II* listed structure in 2008.
6. Albert Bridge
Year: 1873
Architect: Rowland Mason Ordish and Joseph Bazalgette
Length: 220m
Essential info: The bridge is an unusual hybrid of three
design styles, after it was originally found to be
structurally unsound and the design elements of a
suspension bridge added.
7. Chelsea Bridge
Year: 1937
Architect: G Topham Forrest and EP Wheeler
Source: Wikipedia
Length: 213m
Essential info: It was the first self-anchored suspension
bridge in Britain, and was built entirely with materials
sourced from British Empire countries. During the early
Fifties it also became popular with motorcyclists, who
staged regular races across the bridge.
B335-029-F-List-JT ph3-csh.indd 1
8. Grosvenor Bridge 15. Blackfriars Bridge
Year: 1859 Year: 1869
Architect: Sir John Fowler Architect: Robert Mylne
Length: 283.5m Length: 281m
Essential info: Originally the four wrought-iron spans Essential info: The bridge became infamous in June 1982
carried four rail tracks across the river. In 1965, the when the body of Roberto Calvi, a former chairman of
bridge was reconstructed in steel and now provides Italy’s largest private bank, was found hanging from one
a crossing for 10 tracks. of its arches.
9. Vauxhall Bridge 16. Blackfriars Railway Bridge
Year: 1906 Year: 1886
Architect: James Paine and Kenton Couse Architect: John Wolfe-Barry and Henry Marc Brunel
Length: 247m Length: 284.4m
Essential info: In 1963 it was proposed to replace the Essential info: In 2012 the platforms at Blackfriars station
bridge with a modern development containing seven were extended across the Thames and a solar panelled
floors of shops, office space, hotel rooms and leisure roof added, making it the largest of only two solar
facilities, but the plans were later abandoned. bridges in the world, designed by Tony Gee & Partners.
10. Lambeth Bridge
Year: 1932
Architect: Engineer Sir George Humphreys and architects
Sir Reginald Blomfield and G Topham Forrest 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Length: 236.5m 14
Essential info: The bridge features pairs of obelisks,
which are surmounted by either stone pinecones, or 13
possibly pineapples, as a tribute to Lambeth resident 12
John Tradescant the Younger, who is said to have grown
the first pineapple in Britain. 11
Heatherwick Studio has proposed
11. Westminster Bridge a new pedestrian Garden Bridge that
Year: 1862 will be covered in indigenous trees
Architect: Thomas Page 10 and shrubs. Scheduled for completion
Length: 252m in 2017, the 367m bridge is being
Essential info: The wrought-iron bridge is decorated developed with engineer Arup and
with gothic detailing by Charles Barry, the architect of landscape designer Dan Pearson.
the nearby Palace of Westminster.
17. Millennium Bridge
6 7 8 Year: 2002
5 Architect: Arup, Foster and Partners and Sir Anthony Caro
Length: 370m
Essential info: When it opened Londoners nicknamed it
the Wobbly Bridge, because that’s what it did. It
subsequently closed for almost two years while
adjustments were made.
18. Southwark Bridge
Length: 243.8m
Essential info: Southwark Bridge replaced Queen Street
12. Hungerford Bridge Bridge, designed by John Rennie in 1819. It is the least
Year: 1864 busy road bridge in London.
Architect: Sir John Hawkshaw
Length: 365.7m 19. Cannon Street Railway Bridge
Essential info: The first Hungerford bridge was designed Year: 1866
by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but was replaced and its Architect: John Hawkshaw and John Wolfe-Barry
chains then reused for Clifton Suspension Bridge. Length: 260.6m
Essential info: It was the scene of the Marchioness boat
13. Golden Jubilee Bridge disaster in 1989, which saw 51 people killed.
Year: 2002
Architect: Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and 20. London Bridge
engineering firm WSP Group Year: 1973
Length: 325m Architect: Lord Holford and engineer firm Mott,
Essential info: The two footbridges frame the Hay and Anderson
Hungerford Bridge and help support it from impact Length: 269m
from riverboats. Essential info: The current London Bridge is the sixth on
the site, following various iterations and the sale of the
14. Waterloo Bridge last one to American entrepreneur Robert McCulloch.
Year: 1817, 1945
Architect: Sir Giles Gilbert Scott with engineering firm 21. Tower Bridge
Rendel Palmer & Tritton Year: 1894
Length: 375m Architect: Sir Horace Jones with engineer Sir John
Essential info: It was the only Thames bridge to be Wolfe Barry
damaged by German bombers during the Second World Length: 244m
War. It is sometimes called The Ladies’ Bridge because Essential info: The bridge’s original raising mechanism
the 1945 bridge was built largely with a female workforce. was powered by hydraulics, today it uses electricity.
03/07/2014 16:56
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08/10/2013 11:42
 InfographIc
Serpentine galleries pavilions
Every year since 2000, the Serpentine Galleries in London’s Hyde Park has
commissioned a temporary summer pavilion by a leading architect. As this
year’s work by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić is unveiled (see pages 114 and
220), we take a look at the 13 previous designs that have occupied the lawn
2000
2002
2005
ILLUSTRATION BY IAN DUTNALL. SOURCE: SERPENTINE GALLERIES
2000 Zaha hadid
The inaugural Pavilion took
the form of a triangulated
tent-like roof, which spanned
an internal area of 600 sq m
and was supported by a steel
sub-structure.
2001 daniel libeskind
wiTh aruP
libeskind’s eighteen Turns
was created from sheer
metallic planes that reflected
the greenery of the park and
provided a dark, sheltered
space inside.
2002 Toyo iTo and CeCil
balmond wiTh aruP
The white cube of the pavilion
was broken up with numerous
triangles and trapezoids clad
in glass, derived from an
B335-031-F-Infographic-ph.indd 1
2001
2003
algorithm of a cube that
expanded as it rotated.
2003 osCar niemeyer
built in steel, aluminium,
concrete and glass, this
pavilion’s ruby-red ramp
contrasted with the surprise
of a partly submerged
auditorium, offering views
across the park.
2004 mVrdV (unbuilt)
The plan was to cover the
entire gallery in a giant green
mountain, but the scheme
proved too ambitious and
costly, and so there was
no pavilion that year.
2005 ÁlVaro siZa and
eduardo souTo de
moura wiTh CeCil
2007
balmond and aruP
The structure was based on
a simple rectangular grid,
which was distorted to create
a dynamic curvaceous form
of interlocking timber beams.
2006 rem koolhaas wiTh
CeCil balmond and aruP
The centrepiece of the
design was an inflatable,
ovoid-shaped canopy that
was illuminated from inside
at night. The canopy was
raised into the air and
lowered to cover the
amphitheatre according
to the weather conditions.
2007 olafur eliasson
and kjeTil Thorsen of
snØheTTa
The timber-clad structure
2006
2008
2009
resembled a spinning top
and featured a wide
spiralling ramp ascending
from the galleries’ lawn
to a seating area and viewing
platform above.
2008 frank Gehry
his pavilion, composed of
large timber planks and a
network of overlapping glass
panes, took inspiration from
leonardo da Vinci’s large
wooden catapults.
2009 sanaa
a metal roof structure
wrapped itself around the
park’s trees, taking the form
of a reflective cloud or
floating pool of water,
sitting on top of a series
of delicate columns.
2011
2012
2013
2010 jean nouVel
The design contrasted
lightweight materials with
dramatic cantilevered
structures, all rendered in a
vivid red to reference iconic
british images of traditional
telephone boxes, postboxes
and london buses.
2011 PeTer ZumThor
This pavilion, as with much of
Zumthor’s work, emphasised
the sensory and spiritual
aspects of architectural
experience, with a garden
created in collaboration with
dutch designer Piet oudolf.
2012 ai weiwei and
herZoG & de meuron
The structure took visitors
beneath the Galleries’ lawn
2010
2014
to explore the hidden history
of its previous pavilions.
The pavilion’s interior
was clad in cork, while
the floating roof held a
shallow pool of water.
2013 sou fujimoTo
at 41, fujimoto was the
youngest architect to accept
the invitation to create a
pavilion. his design was
constructed from white steel
poles to form a semi-
transparent ‘cloud-like’ structure.
2014 smiljan radić
(open until 19 October)
This year’s pavilion comprises
a semi-translucent, cylindrical
structure, designed to
resemble a shell, which
rests on large quarry stones.
03/07/2014 16:55
Untitled-2 1 18/06/2014 15:41
 ON THE DRAWING BOARD
Stanton Williams

Stanton Williams’ transformation of the Musee d’Art in Nantes, the sixth

largest museum outside of Paris, has just started on site and is due to open
again to the public in 2016. It’s the practice’s first project in France, uniting
several historic buildings with a new monolithic extension clad in thin layers
of marble and glass developed in collaboration with glass manufacturer
Saint Gobain. Stanton Williams’ director Patrick Richard talks with Cate
St Hill about the challenges of mixing the old with the new

How did the project come about?
This is our first competition and project in France.
The cultural ambition in Nantes is very high so in
some ways designing a museum there is almost
better than designing one in Paris. I think more than
150 people applied — big-name practices such as
Libeskind. We made the shortlist of five teams and
were the only non-French one, so we thought
there’d be no way we’re going to get it. But in the
end we won the competition fair and square: the
jury was unanimous. The project played to two
strengths in the practice, one being working with
historical buildings and the other that we have 30
years’ experience in exhibition design. Museums are
very much a part of the DNA of our practice.
How have you connected the existing building of
the Musee d’Art de Nantes with the new additions?
The current site includes this 19th-century ‘palais’ or
‘temple of culture’ and a chapel, which has been
gutted and is now used like Tate Modern’s Turbine
Hall for art installations. Our project is very much
about how you tie together buildings of different
periods with a new extension. For us the extension
should be a continuity of the space not a look-at-
me, stand-out building. The obvious thing would
have been to connect them with a glass bridge. But
we wanted it to be a bit more intriguing so people
hardly notice that they are moving from one place to
another. The two buildings have a strong dialogue,
they have their own language, but it is the similar
materials and spatial qualities that tie them together.
There is not the shock of the old and the new.
What did you take as your reference point for the
new extension?
Like any of our projects, we don’t follow a style or
strict approach: for us it is very much about the
context and getting the ingredients from the site.
And one of the things that is specific to Nantes is
Tuffeau stone, which is a very fine, whiteish stone
that most of the chateaux are made of. At the
competition stage, one of the first things we did
was phone a stone association and find out
1 have used alabaster, so we thought marble could be
1 – Patrick Richard, Stanton
Williams’ director
2 – The front entrance of the
museum will be opened up to
form a new public space
3 – A sample of the marble
and glass facade developed
with Saint Gobain
4 –The project unites the
current museum with a new
extension and chapel
everything we could about this stone. The
whiteness struck us on site; it ties together all these
different buildings from different eras and there
was a feeling that they all worked together. But we
were clearly told that it shouldn’t be used for a new
building because it is too fragile and weathers too
quickly; Nantes cathedral is permanently under
scaffolding. We couldn’t actually use it but we
wanted to keep that monolithic aspect, so for the
extension we used a white marble from Portugal.
Tell us a bit more about the south facade of the
extension, developed with Saint Gobain?
The south facade is a different game. We wanted to
play with translucency. We already named the stone
at the competition stage so there was a strong idea
from day one.
In medieval times, before glass, builders would
interesting if it was cut thinly. The panels of marble
are about 4mm deep and are placed between two
pieces of glass. We are the first to have done it this
way, and I think Saint Gobain is very interested to
market it as a product. When you get light through
it, the white marble looks very white and all the
veins start to appear. With all the light from the
south, it could become quite monumental.

2 3

B335-033-F-Drawingboard-ph.indd 1 03/07/2014 16:51

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urban adventures.

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Untitled-2 1 25/06/2014 11:45

 MEET
FleaFollyArchitects
WhO Pascal Bronner and Thomas hillier
WhaT architects
Where Woolwich, London and Durbhein, Germany
When Founded 2013
It’s hard to define exactly what FleaFollyArchitects
is — an architecture practice, a design studio, a group
of artists, sculptors, even jewellery designers. The
founders, architects Pascal Bronner and Thomas
Hillier, call themselves ‘spatial storytellers’, which
goes some way to explaining the role of narrative
within their work. Set up only last year, the practice
uses storytelling and dexterous model-making skills
— honed at The Bartlett, where the pair met under
the tutelage of CJ Lim — to invent projects that
operate across the fields of architecture,
contemporary art and installation. They formed
FleaFollyArchitects a couple of years after working
for Hawkins\Brown and teaching together at
London Met and The Bartlett.
The name FleaFollyArchitects refers to the
scale of its projects. ‘It was literally an idea that we
could create a folly for a flea, an idea for a miniature
architecture,’ says Hillier. ‘We also like the idea of
a folly being for pure enjoyment. Our architecture
isn’t inhabitable by the body, but it’s quite playful
and engaging,’ agrees Bronner. Its most high-profile
project to date is Grimm City, a fictional miniature
cityscape designed for the characters of the Grimm
brothers fairy tales. Created during a self-initiated
five-week workshop in Bronner’s hometown on the
outskirts of the Black Forest in Germany, it was later
displayed in London’s Design Museum Tank event
2 3
1 ThIS IS STuDIO 2 & 3 FLeaFOLLYarChITeCTS
B335-035-F-Meet-JT ph3-csh.indd 23
1
in October last year and again last month in the
Craft Council’s Space Craft exhibition at Habitat’s
Platform gallery. The deliberately abstract model
is completely handmade and took nine people two
and a half weeks to make.
On a similarly minute scale, the practice has
also designed a range of interactive jewellery,
currently on the back burner while it works on
other projects. It calls itself a ‘one-project practice’,
preferring to concentrate its efforts on one project
at a time, such as the Table Manners series, which
includes a series of rings with small, mischievous
mechanisms to shoot peas across the dinner table.
This year FFA is one of six artists and designers
selected for the Jerwood Makers Open, set up by the
Jerwood Charitable Foundation to recognise and
support rising stars in applied arts. Now in its fourth
year, the award offers each artist a bursary of £7,500,
with the resulting work then exhibited at the Jerwood
Space in London before touring the UK. It has
allowed the practice to get a space in an art studio, in
Woolwich, for the first time.
For this year’s edition FleaFollyArchitects has
adopted a similar approach to Grimm City, this time
constructing a 3.5m-tall ‘technological Tower of
Babel’, inspired by the server farm Facebook is
building in the Arctic. Titled A Modern Prometheus,
it relies much more on digital fabrication and laser
cutting than previous work.
While they are not opposed to designing real
buildings, Bronner and Hillier like to be in control
of the craftsmanship and detail of a project. ‘We
actually see our projects as real architecture; we
don’t see them as models of architecture, we see
them as 1:1 miniature pieces like bonsai trees or
dolls’ houses,’ says Bronner. ‘We believe you can
engage with this architecture as you can with a real
building, maybe through the imagination more so
than the body.’ CSH
1 – (L-R) Pascal Bronner and Thomas Hillier
2 – Table Manners, for flicking peas at the dinner table
3 – A detail from Grimm City
03/07/2014 16:51
 The ArT of repeTiTion
A new publication documents the results of
photographer Luke Stephenson’s 3,500-mile
trip around the British coast snapping the
wide variety of the iconic ‘99’ that is on offer

B335-036-F-Repeat-ph2.indd 1 03/07/2014 16:48

 British photographers’ obsession with the seaside
and its customs and conventions isn’t new, but its
lure continues. Latest to succumb is Luke
Stephenson, who last summer made a 3,500-mile
trip around the UK’s coastline to document a very
specific element of seaside life — the ice cream in
a cone with the stick of flaky chocolate, aka the 99.
He visited 99 locations to make this dairy-
document and the result is a new publication, in
three formats, out next month called 99 x 99s,
designed in collaboration with consultancy YES.
For the project, Stephenson created a portable
ice-cream studio — not unlike a little ice cream
B335-036-F-Repeat-ph2.indd 2
fridge — that allowed him to get close up to the
vans and kiosks so he could photograph their 99s
before they started melting and running down his
hand or dolloping on to the ground.
Like the documentary Super Size Me, he had
one rule — if he was offered sauce or extras he
had to say ‘yes’. ‘Over 25 days and 3,500 miles
I travelled deeper and deeper into the story of this
British icon and the culture that made it,’ says
Stephenson. ‘As I travelled from place to place
I became fascinated by the human touches that
make each cone unique and the stories which
shroud the 99 in mystery.’ 99x99s.com
03/07/2014 16:48
 pc studio - photo tommaso sartori

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Untitled-2 1 03/09/2013 16:50

BLUEPRINT SMichel_sls.indd 1 03/09/13 16.47
 Project
PayPal identity
The world’s most recognisable online payment company has
decided to rebrand just as it is repositioning itself to be more than
just an online mover and shaker. It has brought in San Francisco’s
Yves Behar and fuseproject to help it get its message across.
Liz Farrelly looks at PayPal’s plans
1 2
PayPal has changed, but you may not have noticed.
A press release trumpets: ‘PayPal Unveils New
Brand Identity’. While introducing Yves Behar and
fuseproject as PayPal’s design partners, it bigs up
the sort of tiny changes to ‘wordmark’ and
‘monogram’ that are almost imperceptible to the
‘public eye’ (meaning the world’s population minus
‘industry insiders’). These brand tweaks come as
PayPal goes ‘mobile’, offering a range of new
services. But it’s significant that PayPal chooses to
flag up this design change in tandem with its first
multichannel global campaign, as it transitions from
online-only to assume a central role (it hopes) in
what it terms the ‘Power The People Economy’
(what would John Lennon say?).
Undoubtedly the PayPal logo works hard,
functioning as both corporate identity and
consumer brand. PayPal is a financial tool, a pioneer
of the digital payments industry, so it must avoid
looking fly-by-night, and anything more than
incremental change may have online users doubting
its authenticity (due to evermore elaborate phishing
frauds). Within the retail environment, PayPal’s ‘PP’
has to stand out among big-name brands and
Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs). Ironically,
corporate identities are more prone to drastic
overhauls; see for example BP’s shield mutate into
a sunny flower. Meanwhile, the brand marques of
household names develop tweak by tweak, the remit
of inscrutable packaging designers. From Coca-Cola
to KitKat, recognition must not be compromised.
fuseproject tells us that the PayPal logo was
too ‘Web 1.0’ and, ‘over time it started to resemble
the establishment it once challenged. Research has
1 – The new PayPal logo, part of the company’s rebranding
2 – A PayPal reader, designed for regular transactions
3 – For the first time ever, PayPal will be seen on the high street
4 – PayPal logos across 15 years of evolution
B335-039-F-PayPal-.JMi ph.ndd 1
revealed increased user perceptions of trust,
youthfulness, innovation and energy’. So, while
a financial institution might emphasise longevity,
PayPal aims to be forever young.
Eternal youth is to be achieved via ‘vibrant
colors’, dynamic angle graphic’, ‘softened edge’ and
double ‘Ps’ that emphasise ‘connection,
forwardness, PayPal’s position as a visionary
company… a human, approachable brand’. An
accompanying video features the team doing what
designers do — with pencils, paper and screens
— while Behar wonders how they might ‘capture
the soul of one the biggest companies of our time’.
And the new identity is a tidy improvement.
4
1999 2007 2014
When viewed on-screen the two-tone, nested ‘Ps’
suggest transparency and solidity (a neat trick).
And the wordmark has a satisfying materiality;
soft-edged letterforms nod to three-dimensional
chamfered, stamped or laser-cut marques.
What’s more exciting than any change to any
logo though, are the ‘transformational changes’
David Marcus (ex-PayPal president, recently
departed to Facebook) described in the PayPal
press announcement is ‘redefining the future of
money by putting people first’. No longer just the
go-to payment method for online indie retailing and
eBay (by the way, PayPal is owned by eBay Inc), it
aims to be a ‘real-world’ alternative to both cash
and credit cards. You’ll see PayPal in-store readers,
3
and a nifty device that plugs into mobile phones
used by retailers in markets and at events; and of
course there’s an app.
Behar deflected questions about fuseproject’s
involvement with such developments. Was his team
involved with issues of functionality? ‘We have been
working on hundreds of applications and
adaptations that are digital and physical…The
redesign of the logo was an idea I shared with
David Marcus,’ he states. When asked if he’s tackled
customer experience, Behar stresses these are
‘long-term projects’ and his team is working on
‘in-app brand elements and animations’.
Behar is most forthcoming when asked about
buttons. ‘User experience (UX) started in industrial
design with interaction design,’ he says, citing the
button arrangement on a Dieter Rams’ Braun stereo
as exemplar. ‘The average product experience today
is a lot more complex and requires a different
technical outlook…we are trying to increase the
desirability to click, and thinking about the physical
and virtual ergonomics is important to make
a button palpable and crave-able.’
So, if Behar had the ear of PayPal’s top boss
and ‘a full UX team on staff at fuseproject’, then
why limit his contribution to branding? Behar is
a product designer, and even as design disciplines
blur and expand it’s obvious where fuseproject’s
strengths lie — in designing a button that wills you
to press it and buy. Perhaps the full extent of his
team’s involvement has been downplayed because
an external consultant can only do what he’s asked
regardless of where the ideas come from. That
PayPal promotes a vision of design aligned with
marketing rather than ‘back office’ functionality
gives a clue to where design fits within online
commerce. It might be doing the job, but it can
be exploited for its good looks too.
03/07/2014 16:46
Leeds Met_quark:Layout 1 3/7/14 14:50 Page 1

Interior Educators at Free Range presents

UK’s largest and only collective exhibition of the

best work produced by the 2014 graduates from
the leading national undergraduate courses
within Interior Architecture & Design.

www.free-range.org.uk Exhibition Open: F Block T1, T2, T3, T4, & T5

www.interioreducators.co.uk/show Thursday 6pm — 9pm The Old Truman Brewery
@ie_interiorist Friday — Sunday 10am — 7pm 91-95 Brick Lane
#ieshow2014 Monday 10am — 9pm London
Free Admission E1 6QL

10th — 14th
July 2014

IE:PKE Powered by FREE ADMISSION + Bar Speakers

P haK ha
PechaKucha 20x20 – 20 slides, 20 seconds, Alex Haw — Director, atmos
Andrew Shoben — Founder of Greyworld and Professor of
Curated
C t d by
by EDGEcondition,
EDGE diti , 6 minutes and 40 seconds Public Art, at Goldsmiths, University of London
G
Gem B
Barton
t and d Cara
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 PROJECT
Central Saint Martins Tables
The presence of a huge yellow table in the heart of Central Saint
Martins in Kings Cross is a major enhancement by architect
Featherstone Young to the college’s main thoroughfare and working
life. Johnny Tucker takes a closer look
1 2
You could be forgiven for thinking the giant yellow
table with a pop-up lamp in the main thoroughfare
of Central Saint Martins in London is an installation
by one of the more extrovert students. It plays so
well with the giant space, looking quite normal in
many respects, while helping to punctuate it and
also give it a more human scale.
In actuality it’s a visually arresting, extremely
pragmatic design solution by architect
Featherstone Young to issues surrounding usage of
the thoroughfare. Now that the students have been
ensconced in the Stanton Williams building for a
couple of years, the college started to look at how
the building was actually being used on a daily
basis. A number of areas have come under the
spotlight, including this huge, full-height central
street. Although the space is perfect for degree
shows and performance, generally students don’t
1, 2 & 4 GlaSShopper 3 FeaTherSTone YounG
tend to congregate there, due to such factors as a
lack of seating (furniture tends to go walkies
around the building), the lighting and having
nowhere to plug in to recharge electrical items –
the only sockets are special ones designed for
cleaners, that won’t take a normal plug — not to
mention the sheer size and scale of the space.
Featherstone Young’s deceptively simple
answer is a nest of tables all built by Millimetre. This
giant yellow table is the mothership. Some 4m high,
it has a two-fold purpose, the first of which is to
house all the other tables when not in use. When
B335-041-F-Tables-JM.indd 1
4
everything is removed it becomes a moveable
room. Material sides can be pulled down and AV is
built in to allow it to be used as everything from a
work or seminar space to a theatre. Flexibility is the
key, as it is with the rest of the tables. Within the
yellow table sit two 2.5m-high M-size tables, which
again can act as rooms or just delineate a human-
sized space with its own lighting. Nestled inside of
these are S-size tables (12 in total), which are
actually tables and XS-size tables (24) as seats.
‘The key thing was to do something that wasn’t
too restrictive and that people could take
ownership of and change it and adapt it,’ says
practice co-founder Sarah Featherstone, who is also
a tutor on the Narrative Environments MA course at
CSM. The use and layout permutations are myriad
and Featherstone Young has even gone to the
trouble of suggesting, via diagrams, a few options
until the students truly make them their own.
It’s a clear family, the larger pieces steel-
framed, and all of them finished off in exterior-
grade phenolic board (for robustness) in a family of
green to yellow colours that those familiar with
Featherstone Young’s award-winning output may
have seen before.
The big idea and execution is extremely clever,
1 – The colours act as a counterpoint to the buildings around it
2 – The huge L table acts as a mothership for all of the others
3 – Illustration showing how all the sizes fit together
4 – Featherstone Young’s design with all the tables utilised
but what raises it a level further is the true attention
to detail and that’s what should make these tables
extremely flexible and useful. The power issue is
sorted: the L and M tables plug into the cleaners’
sockets and students can then plug into the tables’
legs. The L wall and projection screens are
integrated into the ceiling. On the M-table, a more
substantial wall in three parts hinges down from the
ceiling and can be used as screening or for display.
The L table has also been designed so standard
display panels — an art college staple — can slot
into the gaps between the legs.
On a smaller scale, there are such elements as
fully integrated lighting, a little board for chalking
up details of the day and holes in the legs to allow
for eyelets to be screwed in so students can easily
attach things to them. None of this detailing
compromises the minimal form and clean lines. The
bigger tables are on casters and L has even been
designed to be the right size to be wheeled through
the security turnstiles, so that it can be used in the
space outside.
When out the tables give a new human rhythm
to the huge space, the strong colour a real bonus in
the essentially neutral interior. When not needed,
everything can be packed into the L footprint and
wheeled into one of the side lobbies.
It’s a playfully elegant and practical design
solution and one that you could see working in
many other similarly large spaces.
03/07/2014 16:45
UK_BLUEPRINT_245
Untitled-1 1 x 328.indd 1 04/09/2013 16:51:41
05/09/2013 07:55
 EXHIBITION
Last Seen Entering the Biltmore

When British artist Richard Healy discovered forgotten American

architect Horace Gifford (1932–92), he made an animation about
one of his beach houses. That film is now presented in a bespoke
installation he designed for a major South London Gallery show.
Herbert Wright follows the trail from Long Island to Peckham

1 2

‘Form followed foreplay in the ‘make-out loft’ says
the smooth-voiced commentary as we glide
smoothly up towards a rendered floating level of
timber, over the edge of which sheepskin rugs spill.
The animation is from a film by Richard Healy,
called The Pines. The new twist on Walter Sullivan’s
mantra for the modernist architecture movement
is by Christopher Bascom Rawlins, taken from his
book Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the
Architecture of Seduction. It describes one of
Gifford’s surviving beach houses, designed in the
Sixties and Seventies. They were designed for the
1 FIRe ISLAnd ModeRnIST couRTeSy ARTBooK d.A.P. 2 & 3 couRTeSy RIcHARd HeALey
the architecture,’ she says. And the houses provided
a ‘backstage’ for much performance.
Healy recalls that he’d been ‘researching the
idea of creating architecture for gay cruising’ after
the White Cubicle Gallery had asked him ‘ to make
work for a toilet in a gay pub in London’, and he
stumbled across Rawlins’ work about Gifford. ‘That
was it!’ he says. ‘From that encounter, Rawlins’ book
became the template for me to explore Gifford and
his work’. But he adds that while the architecture
the martini pitchers men cruising Fire Island’s
boardwalk carried and acted as signals and starting
points for encounters. The table stands before a
metal screen with pine cladding, designed to ‘allow
you to peek through... and maybe even see other
work behind’, Gritz says. ‘Again, that’s the idea of a
backstage, seeing something through something
else.’ The monitor, on which the virtual reality of The
Pines film plays, is mounted on the screen’s other
side. Just as the film choreographs a tour of a
Gifford house, Healy’s installation is ‘choreographing
the movement of the visitor in this space’, notes

gay community that cruised and used a particular
beach locale at Long Island called Fire Island, in
the days before AIDS. The houses, each an elegant
ensemble of 3D geometries, were uniquely tailored
to host a heady, hedonistic lifestyle, but they also
sat lightly in the sand dune topography there,
anticipating sustainability in their timber structures.
In the South London Gallery (SLG)’s new exhibition
Last Seen Entering the Biltmore, Healy has
expanded the film into a multimedia installation.
SLG curator Anna Gritz took the title of the
show from a book of writings by Gary Indiana,
whose ‘really bonkers plays’, she notes, were a key
part of the New York underground scene in the
Seventies and Eighties. The Biltmore was a swank
Manhattan hotel which Gritz sees as ‘almost an
alternative stage to Hollywood’. She’d been asked
to bring together a show about performance, but she
was more interested in ‘deconstructing the pretence
of the stage’, and that zone on the edge of it, the
backstage. She talked to some in their studios about
the concept and, with Healy, she discussed the gay
culture on Fire Island, and Gifford’s work. ‘I just love
is ‘amazing and at times breathtaking’ it was the
context that captivated him: ‘The sexual revolution
and the birth of the gay rights movement are all
tied up within these buildings. These are very real
subjects, places and people.’
Healy’s installation first confronts the visitor
with a table of five weird clear-glass bottles on a
table, each blown and hand-crafted to his design,
which include fetishistic elements. They reference
1 – Travis Wall House, Fire Island Pines, 1972-1975
2 – Richard Healy’s martini pitchers are a nod to Fire Island
3 – Early designs of pitchers, table and screen from The Pines
Gritz, ‘mimicking the sentiment of the film’.
Blueprint asked Healy if he was addressing
a trend of convergence between the real and the
virtual in design and architecture. ‘It’s a short-cut
to making work,’ he replies. ‘I made my first
architectural animation in 2008 out of necessity.
I had a graduate show to produce and only a 6m
wall to present it on, so I made a computer model
of the gallery and filled it with models of my work.
What I do like about the technology is how it can
simultaneously appear new and nostalgic.’
Healy’s interest in architecture is ongoing.
‘At the moment I am really into Philip Guston’s
painting, especially those which describe a type of
soft inflated architecture’, he reveals. ‘I am looking
at composer Benjamin Britten and the home he
built for his wayward lover, the tenor Peter Pears.
So, I am making models of these sobbing and
deflated lighthouses. It feels fitting.’
Richard Healy is one of nine European and American
artists involved in Last Seen Entering the Biltmore
at the South London Gallery until 14 September

B335-043-F-Biltmore-JM ph.indd 1 03/07/2014 16:43

 Design
Martin Ryan /Simon Cahill

Designing and manufacturing furniture

at our factory in the UK since 1987

+44 (0)1427 677556

contact@martinryan.co.uk
www.martinryan.co.uk

Untitled-1 1 30/04/2014 11:47

 A LETTER FROM...
Vitra Campus
Two more big-name installations have been added to the Vitra
Campus, in Germany, one from Álvaro Siza the other from Casper
Höller. Johnny Tucker was there they were both unveiled
16
1 6
7
3
Approaching Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, the
first thing you see from a distance is the apparently
randomly stacked volumes of Herzog & de Meuron’s
VitraHaus — each one looking like it was extruded
through a mould of a child’s drawing of a house
minus the chimney pot and curl of smoke.
Built in 2010, it’s a marvellous structure (inside
and out) that towers over the site, which now
contains buildings (in architecture-tour order) by
Frank Gehry (1989), Tadao Ando (1993), Nicholas
Grimshaw (1981 and 1983), SANAA (2012), Zaha
Hadid (1993), Jean Prouvé (1953, moved here in
2003), Renzo Piano (2013) and Portuguese maestro
Álvaro Siza (1994), who will be here today to open
his second design intervention in the 25 ha of Vitra
ville. As you can tell by the roll call of starchitects,
there’s gold in them thar chairs.
Joining Siza is artist Casper Höller, who is
perhaps best known in the UK for the giant slides,
Test Site, he installed at Tate Modern in 2006, and
he’s been at it again here in Germany. He’s created
his largest ever free-standing slide, which is
accessed by the Álvaro-Siza-Promenade that also
creates a link between VitraHaus and Zaha’s Fire
Station. We learn this during the press conference
from Vitra’s powerhaus chairman emeritus, Rolf
Fehlbaum. Tanned and besuited, he’s doing a
not-bad impression of a bespectacled Jacques
Herzog, whose practice is based just down the road
and over the border in Basel, Switzerland. Fehlbaum
is flanked on one side by Casper Höller, looking a
little like Nigel Coates doing an impression of
Jacques Herzog, and on the other side a slightly
uneasy-looking Siza. The brief press conference is
followed with a tour of the two new attractions and
Siza immediately relaxes, as he gets outside and
1, 2 – Factory Buildings, Nicholas Grimshaw, 1981/1983; 3 – Balancing Tools, Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, 1984; 4 – Vitra Design Museum, Frank Gehry, 1989; 5 – Gate, Frank Gehry, 1989;
6 – Factory Building, Frank Gehry, 1989; 7 – Conference Pavilion, Tadao Ando, 1993; 8 – Fire Station, Zaha Hadid, 1993; 9 – Factory Building, Álvaro Siza, 1994; 10 – Dome, after Richard Buckminster Fuller,
1975/2000; 11 – Petrol Station, Jean Prouvé, 1953/2003; 12 – Vitra Design Museum Gallery, Frank Gehry, 2003; 13 – Bus Stop, Jasper Morrison, 2006; 14 – VitraHaus, Herzog & de Meuron, 2010;
15 – Airstream Kiosk, 1968/2011; 16 – Factory Building, SANAA, 2012; 17 – Diogene, Renzo Piano, 2013; 18 – Álvaro-Siza-Promenade, 2014; 19 – Vitra Slide Tower, Carsten Höller, 2014
B335-045-F-Vitra-JM ph.indd 1
2
9
10
11
12 5
4
13 15
14
lights up a clearly much-needed gasper.
Gathered at the entrance to his promenade —
a little like the outline of a bus stop done in
20cm-high Portuguese marble — the heavens
choose this inauspicious moment to add moisture
to the assembled archi-throng. The swift production
of snow-white umbrellas sees the crowd move on
down the promenade like a slowly migrating
mushroom field. At this point in the proceedings
you can’t help but feel, figuratively and literally,
as though you’re being led up the garden path.
Siza, who seems to have taken a plan of the
campus, whipped out a big black marker pen and
drew a meandering path up past the car parks,
around the giant slide, on around the side of his
warehouse to the Fire Station.
The featureless Death Star-black, asphalt path
is bordered for much of its length by what Siza’s
interpreter insists is ‘vegetable’, but which the more
arboreally minded among us know to be beach
hedging. Around a couple more sinuous curves and
the path broadens out to reveal Höller’s Vitra Slide
Tower. Truth be told, it’s so huge that you can see it
from just about anywhere on the campus.
Seeing this huge playful piece of art, motorists
passing by on the nearby busy road could be
forgiven for wondering if a new waterpark has
opened. The towering structure is topped off at
30m by a glass control tower-like rotunda, crowned
with a distinctly Fifties-looking clock — if you tilt
your head sideways by five minutes.
His difficult-to-classify interactive sculpture/
installation is a bold intervention into the site
and also very engaging, demanding as it does
participation to complete the art work (and in case
you are wondering… no, it was too damn high).
19
17
18
With so many structures from architecture’s
great and good, harmoniously here together in this
bucolic German setting, it can feel slightly like
you’re in a rather fun archi-theme park, so it’s
perhaps rather fitting that it now has a ride as well.
This is all part and parcel of a whole new, more
public-facing phase at Vitra Campus. During the
press conference, Fehlbaum had revealed that he
would be moving on. Vitra and Vitrashop are
merging and will be headed up by the respective
CEOs Nora Fehlbaum and Gilbert Achermann.
Sitting in the audience to hear this was Basel’s
mayor, who has been closely involved in extending
the tramline out from the city to the campus
(opening 2015). This will allow far more visitors in at
a different access point and the promenade and slide
are also part of a reorientating of the site. Added to
all this is the news that the big hole in the ground
near the Fire Station is going to be a new Herzog &
de Meuron-designed museum for Fehlbaum’s
currently vaulted collection of chairs and lights.
Back to the tour and the clouds scud away, as
we move on to a right-angle bend around Siza’s own
building, which he has articulated beautifully with
two deconstructed, roofless, three-sided interlocking
buildings, one at 45 degrees to the other. It’s
reminiscent of the 2012 Venice Biennale pavilions
with Souto de Moura. We are funnelled through
a corner doorway in the walls, which are made from
the same brick stock as his adjacent warehouse and
exit via a white granite structure, which feeds into
a more formalised version of the earlier path. Here
the black asphalt is crisply delineated by two parallel
lines of the granite, leading to a small low-level
amphitheatre that references the ‘bus stop’ at the
opposite end. Our journey is complete.
03/07/2014 16:43
 Rawstone range

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Untitled-3 1 11/02/2014 10:13

 Project
Waste House
On the city centre Faculty of Arts campus of Brighton University
now sits a house that highlights the huge amount of materials that
are thrown away. Waste House has been built by students from a
wild assortment of discarded and repurposed items, from
toothbrushes to floppy disks to carpet tiles. Johnny Tucker returns
to his alma mater to have a look
When you get the words wasted and students in
the same sentence, what follows is not usually an
exercise in positivity, but not when it comes to
Brighton University’s latest experiment. It throws
the spotlight on wasted materials, via a fully
functioning new building made entirely out of
things that would have been thrown away.
As you round the corner and the house comes
into view, in a corner plot of the Grand Parade
Faculty of Arts campus in the centre of Brighton,
from a distance it looks just like an interesting
modern house with a slate tile facade. On closer
inspection, that tiling turns out to be reversed
carpet tiles — and that’s one of the more prosaic of
the waste materials that have been used, but more
on these later.
Project instigator, architect and senior lecturer
Duncan Baker-Brown says: ‘This is building as
polemic. It is saying, “don’t throw stuff away.” I’m
coming at it from the point of view of the statistic
that, for every five houses we build, the equivalent
in waste of one building is thrown away.’
Baker-Brown designed it and it has been
almost entirely built by students from Grand Parade
and City College Brighton & Hove, and apprentices
from the construction part of the Mears Group,
which also oversaw the project. It is essentially a
timber frame building. The timber is reclaimed, but
this meant the engineers had to assume the lowest
tolerances, which in turn meant the building ‘got a
little chunky at one stage,’ according to Baker-Brown.
As for other materials that have gone into the
building, there’s a compacted chalk wall made from
soil removed during excavation, and then there’s
the plastic, mostly used as wall insulation, including
almost 20,000 unused toothbrushes from airline
courtesy packs sourced from nearby Gatwick
2 3
cOUrtesy University OF BrigHtOn
B335-047-F-Waste house-ph.indd 1
1
Airport. Small windows into the cavities allow you to
see that other walls are filed up with even stranger
plastic waste, including floppy disks (remember
those?), cassettes, both audio and VHS, and DVD
cases. There’s also two tonnes of denim insulating
one section — the arms and legs of jeans and denim
jackets from a supplier that imports the garments
whole, before creating cut-offs and sleeveless tops.
Compressed recycled paper forms the stair
treads, bicycle inner tubes seal in the windows (the
windows are one of the few new items in the build),
old vinyl advertising banners are used for vapour
control, and the roof membrane is made from
recycled Pirelli tyres. On a more aesthetic level, the
interior paint is all reclaimed (who hasn’t got 10
part-used cans languishing somewhere?) and
there’s even an Eames Vitra chair as you enter the
building, that was rescued from a skip. The kitchen
1 – The Waste House with its cladding of used carpet tiles
2, 3 – Windows in the walls allow views of the insulation infill
of toothbrushes and floppy disks in their cases
is recycled and came from the Brighton arm of
Freegle:UK which specialises in reuse and is run
by Cat Fletcher, who has been the materials
coordinator on this project.
The Waste House will test the performance of
all of the ‘undervalued’ waste resources it has used;
indeed, the whole house is being vaunted as an
ongoing research project run in conjunction with
the sustainable design MA course at Brighton
University. It will also be made available to other
colleges, schools and community groups for
sustainability–based events, not to mention plans
for artists, scientists and writer residencies.
‘It is an open, creative workshop,’ says
Baker-Brown. ‘The idea is that it can be fitted out
time and time again by different sets of students,
and we will continue to set projects within it for
the architecture, interior architecture and product
design courses.’
As well as the invaluable experience gathered
during construction, the overall ethos is perhaps
more educational, not surprising given its setting,
than pragmatic. It’s also not necessarily about
these particular materials— there has to be a finite
amount of floppy disks and video cassettes left
in the world you’d think — but more about the
reinforcing the ethos of reuse at every level.
A point of interest highlighted by this is
ReIY — a network of materials centres created
to collect and distribute ‘waste’ materials for
use and reuse. Although Baker-Brown says there
are lessons here for commercial construction
companies, this currently must be only on the
radar of the more sustainable-minded end of
the self-build market. But these kinds of ideas
always have to be explored by the fringes before
they become mainstream. 
08/07/2014 10:25

1 Serpentine pavilion 2014
by Smiljan radić
HYDE PARK, LONDON
Until 19 October
Responding to what she calls ‘an architectural
explosion in Chile’, co-director Serpentine Galleries
Julia Peyton-Jones invited Chilean architect Radić to
design the 14th Serpentine Pavilion. Resembling an
object from outer space that has landed in the park,
the pavilion houses a flexible, open area with a cafe.
Radić describes it as ‘a fragile shell… suspended on
large quarry stones. At night, the amber-tinted light
will attract the attention of passers-by, like lamps
attracting moths’. serpentinegalleries.org
1 2
B335-048-F-Diary-JM.indd 41
CURATED DIARY
Richard Calvocoressi
director of the Henry moore foundation in Hertfordshire
2 antony Gormley room 2014
THE BEAumONT,
BROwN HART GARDENS, mAYfAiR
for their first luxury hotel, restaurateurs Jeremy
King and Chris Corbin commissioned Gormley to
extend the exterior of the 1920s building in mayfair
with a massive, 10-metre high sculpture of a
crouching figure. made from stainless steel blocks,
Room is no ordinary public sculpture. inside its
outer skin is a bed. Gormley wants hotel guests
to find ‘a safe haven, a retreat, a place of peace’.
Light can be totally excluded: ‘it’s the first time
that i have attempted to sculpt darkness itself’.
thebeaumont.com
3 martyrS (earth, air, fire, water)
by bill viola
ST PAuL’S CATHEDRAL, LONDON
Permanent installation (from May 2014)
Conceived eleven years ago, Bill Viola’s soundless,
four-screen video on the subject of martyrdom has
1 JOHNNY TUCKER 2 ANTONY GORmlEY ROOm 2014, lONdON 3 PETER mAllET 4 GERmANY dividEd: BAsEliTz ANd His GENERATiON, BRiTisH mUsEUm, lONdON 5 BOdY ANd vOid: ECHOEs Of mOORE
proved to be well worth the wait. installed at the east
end of St Paul’s, this contemporary altarpiece invites
people to reflect on the meaning of self-sacrifice,
with each of the four humans portrayed moving
from intense physical suffering to a state of
spiritual transcendence or enlightenment. for
access check the cathedral’s website.
stpauls.co.uk
iN CONTEmPORARY ART, HENRY mOORE fOUNdATiON, HERTs 6 mAPPlETHORPE ROdiN, mUsEE ROdiN, PARis
03/07/2014 16:38
 Richard Calvocoressi
Richard Calvocoressi is director of The Henry Moore Foundation.
He recently co-curated the exhibition Bacon Moore: Flesh and Bone
at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. From 1987 to 2007 he was
director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh
where he built up a world-class collection of surrealist art; he was
also instrumental in attracting the Anthony d’Offay gift of
contemporary art to Edinburgh and London.

4 GeRmany divided: Baselitz
and his GeneRation
BRiTiSH MuSEuM, LONDON
Until 31 August
No-one interested in the history of postwar Germany
should miss this show. All 90 drawings and prints are
from the collection of Count Christian Duerckheim,
one of the foremost champions of German artists of
his own generation (Baselitz, Lüpertz, Palermo,
Penck, Titel (below) and Richter). Duerckheim has so
far given 34 of the works on show to the museum.
Given Britain’s ambivalent attitude to collecting
modern German art after two world wars, this is
extraordinary generosity. britishmuseum.org
5 Body and void: eChoes of mooRe
in ContempoRaRy aRt
HENRy MOORE FOuNDATiON, PERRy GREEN
Until 26 October
This is the first time that Henry Moore’s sculptures
have been contrasted with those of living artists at
Perry Green, his former home and studios. From
Bruce Nauman, Bruce McLean and Richard Long to a
younger generation including Anish Kapoor (right),
Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst (Mother and Child
Divided) and Simon Starling, the exhibition looks
at the ways in which Moore’s sculptural language of
the body has been reinterpreted by subsequent
sculptors. henry-moore.org/pg/exhibitions/body-void
6 mapplethoRpe Rodin
MuSEE RODiN, PARiS
Until 21 September
The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe once said:
‘i see things like they were sculptures’. His classical,
symmetrical approach to the human form could not
have been more different from Rodin’s abiding
concern with movement and vitality, even in the
inanimate. And yet, as this revealing exhibition of
50 sculptures by Rodin juxtaposed with over 100
of Mapplethorpe’s photographs demonstrates,
there were themes common to both: black and
white/light and shadow; eroticism and damnation
and, of course, sex. musee-rodin.fr

4 5

B335-048-F-Diary-JM.indd 42 03/07/2014 16:39


1 2
Imagine a world where your clothing can be woven
and shaped by the root system of a plant, where
your shoes morph and adapt to better support your
feet to suit the type of surface you’re walking on,
and where silk is harvested and used to produce
plastic films capable of storing data.
Blurring the line between biology and
synthetics, the design process has evolved beyond
the development of forms and structures, resulting
in the dissecting and manipulation of nature
through the cross breeding of grown materials
with artificial substances. These designers or ‘new
materiologists’ are forging a unique new path
for design innovation through solutions that will
transform and shape the future.  Babu takes a slightly different approach by exploring
Presenting as part of the Inspired by Nature
exhibition at the Roca Gallery London this spring,
Marcos Cruz explained his approach: ‘Architecture
is starting to absorb, integrate and host nature in
its own skin. Rather than biomimicry it should be
seen as a joint venture between architecture and
nature.’ This statement captures this evolution of
the approach: rather than merely being inspired by
nature, design is redefining the use of nature. In this
trend of designers and architects developing new
materials, there are concerns over the environment
as one of the drivers for innovation.
Although silk was first cultivated in the Far East
more than 5,000 years ago, Professor Fionrenzo
Omenetto (Tufts University, Massachusetts), in his
now-famous TED talk, is researching how it could
emerge as a renewable material with potential way
beyond the garment industry. One area is using the
optical properties of silk (the reason it shimmers) to
generate film capable of storing information. Worm
silk is not the only form currently under the
microscope of scientists. Spider silk — recently
B335-050-F-Materials-ph2.indd 1
blueprint for the future
Materials: Natural modification
Chris Lefteri takes a look into the future and at research that is working
towards creating materials that blur the boundaries between nature and
synthetics. Lefteri, a designer and author, has helped some of the world’s
largest consumer brands formulate new strategies for effective materials
integration during the design process
found to be a super heat conductor — and bee silk
are also emerging as new materials. Apart from the
obvious uses of woven silk and its origins in exotic
textiles, Omenetto proposes that silk can be used
for implanting into the body to replace veins and
arteries, implantable fibre optics, storage for data
through its optical properties, and for compostable
products and sustainable plastics.
With a background in materials science and
a subsequent MA from the Royal College of Art,
designer and materials architect Sarat Babu’s work
sits firmly between the bounds of today and
tomorrow. Where as many designers are looking
at the material composition itself to drive innovation
the relationship between geometry and production.
His research explores what happens if the form
of the product is varied by changing the way
a single material can be produced in multiple grades
and formed with internal structure that, when
stretched or pulled, changes the performance of
the external form and function. He also is exploring a
potential new architecture that encompasses a scalar
hierarchy of matter, enabling design to take place
concurrently at scales ranging from the micrometre
to the metre. This research has resulted in him
currently working closely with surgeons at University
College London to develop new polymers and
composites for knee replacements that mimic the
inherent properties and characteristics of existing
human cartilage.
Both optimistic and cautionary, the work of
1 – Living protocells can join together into a running shoe
2 – Silks — from worms, spiders and bees — are being looked
at to provide a variety of uses
3 – Protocells seemingly float about randomly before melding
into a larger mass
3
designer, researcher and curator Carole Collet
explores concepts that either embrace or reject the
new bio-tech revolution. Through her work in setting
up the textiles futures MA course and the Textile
Futures Research Centre at Central Saint Martins,
and her many research projects she has been
instrumental in redefining textiles. One of her research
projects focuses on reprogramming plants to create
a hybrid strawberry plant that produces fruit and
lace at the same time.
As science evolves rapidly past the realms of
idealism, what becomes of design and manufacture
when we can program the living? Collet ponders
that if today’s tools for designers are computer
programs such as Photoshop, then in the future
this toolbox will need to incorporate a completely
different set of skills that will allow them to
program on a new level of biological engineering.
Similarly, textiles designer Shamees Aden
focuses on emerging living technologies for the
future world with her study into the remarkable
new discovery of protocells. To understand the idea,
she demonstrates what protocells look like under
a microscope. At this scale these living cells appear
to be randomly floating but then join up to create
1 & 3 ShameeS aden 2 fionrenzo omenetto
larger masses. This provides a vision of a future
world where structures, shapes and even running
shoes are grown and formed into new products.
Collaborating with scientists, Aden conceived
the futuristic Amoeba (see Blueprint 318), a living
shoe that adapts to your feet and the surfaces you
walk on to provide greater cushioning and support
where needed most. This glimpse into a future
world does not just draw breath for the vision it
presents us with in terms of wow factor; it also
brings to mind a vision of the future where our
ability to control living cells is frightening.
03/07/2014 16:37
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London’s leading The Sorting Office
design destination New Oxford Street
London WC1A 1BA
In partnership with thedesignjunction.co.uk

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08/07/2014 18:22
 056 – 084
14th Venice
Architectural Biennale
This year the event is twice as long
and has 10 new countries exhibiting.
The five-strong Blueprint team takes
a look at what’s on show
086 – 096
Do you want the truth or
something beautiful?
Veronica Simpson speaks to London-
based designer Faye Toogood and
asks whether her work is art or
design — and does that matter?
098 – 112
Strong Foundation
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of
the Fondation Cartier’s building in
Paris, the Serpentine Galleries’
co-director of exhibitions Hans Ulrich
Obrist talks with its architect Jean
Nouvel
114 – 126
Rock, Paper, Scissors
For its latest Pavilion, this year
Serpentine Galleries have turned to
little-known Chilean architect Smiljan
Radić for the 14th structure on the site
128 – 136
Regeneration game
Veronica Simpson investigates what
Frank Gehry has planned for the
revamp of LUMA Arles Arts Campus in
the once-vibrant French city of Arles
138 – 150
Foyles war
The iconic London bookshop’s new
store, in the former Central Saint
Martins building, is a mix of cool
contemporary style and nods to its
past, discovers Cate St Hill
152 – 166
Ice and fire
Badly hit by the recession, Iceland’s
designers are now embracing their
cultural heritage to reinvent
themselves, says Oliver Lowenstein
182 – 194
Dutch courage
Alain de Botton has put theory
into practice and recreated his book
Art as Therapy at the Rijksmuseum
in Amsterdam
196 – 210
Motown to mountain
In a career spanning more than seven
decades, Latvian-American architect
Gunnar Birkerts has just seen what
may be his last project realised —
the National Library of Latvia, a
concrete and glass mountain
symbolising the country’s struggle for
freedom from the Soviet Union

168 – 180
The life and death of
buildings
Shumi Bose meets the key players
behind architecture and design firm
Rotor at this year’s Venice Biennale

54

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 PLAY

55

B335-054-P-Contents-JM-csh.indd 55 03/07/2014 17:18

 14th venice
architecture
biennale

Words Cate St Hill, Shumi Bose,

Adrian Friend, Ossian Ward
Photography Paul Raftery

56

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 A look at this year’s research-centred festival,
curated by Rem Koolhaas with the theme
Fundamentals, showcasing our top 10 pavilions
and the two contrasting exhibitions on display
in the Giardini and Arsenale

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B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 58 03/07/2014 17:20
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 PAVILIONS
p62 p65 p72
AA BELGIAN CHILEAN
p65 p66 p73
ANTARCTICA BRITISH DANISH
AN INTRODUCTION
This year’s Biennale takes a look at the nuts and
bolts of how the mundane has influenced the
contemporary world. Curator Rem Koolhaas
placed particular emphasis on challenging
popular myths and fallacies
Francis Fukuyama’s thesis on The End of History is widely
credited with sealing the fate of the ‘historical thinking’,
stripping the veneer off of any ideological alternative to liberal
capitalism and crashing the meta-narratives of the 20th century
into self-reflective panic. When Rem Koolhaas, the doyen of
S,M,L and XL, was appointed curator of the 14th International
Architecture Exhibition, in his 70th year, one sensed a similar
wave rising in ‘architectural thinking’. Presented as a choral
research on architecture, Fundamentals, the title of this year’s
Biennale by Koolhaas, head of OMA and professor of Harvard
University Graduate School of Design, looks at architectures
past, present and future. Firstly he asked the national pavilions
to explore the historic impact of the past 100 years of
2 gilbert mccArrAgher
modernism in Absorbing Modernity. The present day is
canonised in 15 booklets on Elements of Architecture that
dominate the Central Pavilion, charting the impact of 20th-
century industrialisation on the built environment, where lifts,
escalators and toilets dictate the way architecture is programmed.
Architectural futures is tackled in the Monditalia, where
Italy is the empathetic host for testing and consuming culture,
All imAges PAul rAftery unless otherwise credited
witnessed in 82 films and 41 architectural projects with space for
first-time participations from the worlds of dance, music, theatre
and cinema. For this Biennale, the image of the architect and
products of their sole endeavours — the ‘masterpiece’, is
secondary, in its place, shared collaborations dominate, either
technical, social or ideological such as neo-avant-garde group
Superstudio, founded in Florence in 1966 whose The Secret Life
1 (previous page) – The
entrance to the Central
Pavilion was marked by an
archetypal false ceiling
covering the 1909 dome
B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 61
p74 p83
FRENCH NORDIC
p78 p84
GERMAN RUSSIAN
of the Continuous Movement, shown at the 1978 Biennale,
advanced towards symbolic representations of architecture
where, ‘Architecture exists in time as salt exists in water’, where
the only possible architecture, then is our own life.
It seems that to popularise architecture, Koolhaas feels the
need for the architect to disappear, which has been a
reoccurring theme in his oeuvre. As Bart Verschaffel states in
The Survival Ethics of Rem Koolhaas on receiving the Rotterdam-
Maaskant Prize in 1986: ‘It is a remarkable feeling, but I am not
an I. Throughout my career I have only written the word ‘I’
once, and that was in the sentence “I am a ghost writer”. A ghost
writer is someone who does not appear on stage himself, but
remains in the background and speaks in the name of someone
else.’ This statement is unexpected and perhaps even sounds
suspect from someone who has become one of the most famous
and media-genic architecture stars. Yet in that same 1986
speech, he heralded this ‘stardom’ as ‘a strategy’: ‘The
mythology of the architect begs a reconstruction plan.’
In the opening Biennale week debating ‘5000 years of
architecture and technology, what next?’, with CEO and inventor
Tony Fadell of Nest Thermostats, Koolhaas reflected on digital
technologies’ desire to commodify architecture as well as
predict and better human behaviour. ‘I drive an old car and it
frequently breaks down. Then I am asked to rent a new car that
predicts my new speed and makes me behave better and be a
better driver, almost all the aspirational words we use now
include ‘better’ ‘more responsible’ — what about transgression?’
2 (opposite page) – Rem
Koolhaas, now 70, relaxes for
a brief moment in front of
the Luminaire at the Arsenale
61
03/07/2014 17:20
 By referring to In praise of shadows by Junichirō Tanizaki,
comparing Japanese homes to those in Europe, where in
‘household implements: we prefer colours compounded by
darkness, they prefer the colours of sunlight’, Koolhaas asks,
‘Why deny these challenging qualities that also hold beauty?’
and are now needed to break the current global homogeneity
perpetrated by digital technology.
Reflecting on the merits of the Nest Thermostat, Koolhaas
posits ‘Well I have mixed feelings — I admire the intelligence and
the use as a tool to be frugal and responsible, but also a
fundamental reluctance on my part to see architecture turned
into products, and the relentless commercialisation of
architectural elements.’ In response to Fadell’s assumption that,
‘what you do will last for centuries — what I do ages quicker
within the year’, Koolhaas reveals, ‘The exhibition on the one
hand shows the huge decrease in flexibility of materials, but in
terms of appearance we are in the same world of accelerated
ageing [where] confidence has crumbled, the permanence of
architecture is a pathetic fiction now. Even if buildings last 25 or
30 years it is a miracle.’
For Koolhaas, the Biennale is a mirror on his thinking and
desire to challenge the popular myths, perpetrated by the
modernist narrative of the architect maestro, the sole author of
a permanent architecture, fortified by manifestos and classical
references to ancien regime. Koolhaas shows us that what was
a gift for one generation is now a given for another — a set
change, no more than part of a performance. Famously credited
with stating ‘it’s not me, it’s made by OMA,’ Koolhaas’s design
approach, recently unpacked by Albena Yaneva in An
Ethnography of Design states: ‘Just as it is impossible to
understand Rembrandt’s work without understanding the
aspects of his studio practice along with his specific handling of
paint, the theoretical treatment of his models and his
relationship with the market, it is impossible to understand
Koolhaas’s work without considering his design practice.’
Yaneva continues: ‘The entire OMA design work revolves around
life as it is staged in the office; in model making, in the travels of
the model, in studio events and situations of reuse. There, the
architects are performers and spectators and architecture
becomes part of the performance that we view.’ AF

3 (opposite page) – the 4 (page 64) – Old door

fireplace room of the Central handles contrast with the
Pavillion looked at the security mechanisms
‘device-ification’ of the embedded in airports
central hearth

AA PAvilion
Maison Dom-ino
To celebrate the centenary of Le Corbusier’s Maison
Dom-ino– a housing prototype that he dreamed
could quickly and efficiently relieve the chronic
housing shortage after the destruction of the First
World War — London’s Architectural Association
and vbvb studio constructed a timber facsimile on
the lawn outside the Central Pavilion.
Le Corbusier was 27 when he designed Maison
Dom-ino. The name alludes to a game of dominoes
because the units could be multiplied to form a row
of houses. And although the system — made up of
horizontal slabs and pilotis — was never put into
production, it anticipated the concrete structural
frame that would make his name and transform
20th-century architecture beyond recognition.
Rather than concrete, this remake uses
engineered timber, so it could be easily and quickly
assembled on site. It was a long process — copyright
clearance had to be sought from a protective
Parisian foundation, information modelled on screen
3 & 4 FrancecO gallI,/ la BIennale DI VenezIa

and then mapped on to plywood sheets. A new

system of timber foundation was also developed.
Manufactured by automated machines in
VBVBSTUDIO

Switzerland, it travelled by truck and boat to Venice,

and there are plans for it to embark on a worldwide
tour. ‘Like the Somme in 1914, building anything in
Venice is like operating in a war zone, in the sense
that we were working with a tabula rasa,’ says
Valentin Bontjes van Beek, project architect. ‘The
Le Corbusier’s Maison
completed structure looks wonderful, and standing Dom-ino is realised in
within it really is strangely familiar.’ CSH timber in the Giardini

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 anTaRCTiCa Pavilion
Antarctopia
Walking into the first Antarctica Pavilion in the
Architecture Biennale waterproof flight cases display
models of visionary Antarctic projects, many
considering the challenge of designing for an
environment that is still so new and uninhabited.
Curator Nadim Samman writing about Antarctica
says, ‘no ring for it on the Olympic flag and no
pavilion in the Giardini. The only continent without
a biennale. Has its art history been written? It is
only a matter of time.’ Writer Gabrielle Walker
calls Antarctica, ‘the living metaphor’, adding
‘the continent lacks most of the normal ways
that we interact in human societies. There is no
need for money’.
So Samman’s question about the role of art
practice and by association the role of the architect
is relevant, as concepts of home are not obvious, yet
each of the exhibits are some type of dwelling.
According to Antarctic scholar, Shane McCorristine
‘homeliness was performed through winter rituals of
comfort-eating and snugness. It was by these means
that physical spaces of inhabitation were
transformed into homes — that is filled with
narratives, memories.’ Commenting on Cape Evans,
site of Robert F Scott’s last meal in 1911, before his
fateful last expedition: ‘by virtue of Scott’s uncanny
absence/presence, [it] has become the primal
Igor boury

The Antarctic, ‘the only Antarctic home... signs of absent inhabitants have
continent without a
been preserved and this has transformed the hut
biennale’ makes its first
appearance in Venice into a site of pilgrimage and commemoration.’ AF

Belgian Pavilion
Interiors. Notes and Figures
The Belgians, as always, kept it clean and simple.
It was a welcome relief from the monotony of
information on display elsewhere. The exhibition
comprised a series of minimalist architectural
interpretations based on a photographic study of
hundreds of domestic interiors throughout Belgium.
Each intervention was paired with a page from the
accompanying catalogue, which records and
analyses the diverse range of humble elements and
subtle modifications we make in our homes.
For example, a series of white bookshelves in
the corner of the gallery illustrated a home where a
disused chimney had been used to store objects,
while a solemn group of fridges suggested a home
where the cupboards had been clustered to match
the height of the appliances. Elsewhere a tiled floor
demarcated the space of the gallery and a group of
chairs, connected by the line of a dado rail, were
perched alongside a wall of a side room. The curators
came up with a ‘language of inhabiting’ to describe
common forms and configurations found repeatedly
in these little-documented homes.
‘Behind the permanence of buildings’ facades,
all sorts of transformations and modifications are
carried out by successive owners and occupants,’
say curators Sebastien Martinez Barat, Bernard
Dubois, Sarah Levy and Judith Wielander. ‘Counter
to our notion of modernity as an all-consuming
The exhibition phenomenon, a study of our everyday interiors
was based on a
photographic study of
reveals a vernacular architecture in which it seems
260 Belgian homes that modernity itself is being consumed.’ CSH

65

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BRITISH PavIlIon
A Clockwork Jerusalem
Viddy well, dear readers, how England’s green and
pleasant land has become a carbuncle of brutalist
buildings, squat tower blocks and emptied
‘pavements in the sky’. If the 2014 British Pavilion
by Crimson Architectural Historians and FAT
Architecture is a complex, muted celebration
and something of an apologia for the misfiring
modernism of our sceptered isle (mainly in the
Sixties and Seventies), then it is also an exhilarating
explanation of where this impetus for architectural
optimism and social betterment came from
and why we came to love these utopian
cock-ups anyway.
The central room features a sorry-looking
hillock made of earth, one of the show’s recurring
motifs, which references not only prehistoric burial
mounds, but the rubble left after the slum clearance
around Shoreditch’s Arnold Circus of 1903, as well
as a conical landscaping feature of a social housing
scheme designed by the Smithsons in 1963. This
tiny promontory could, in the context of the
Biennale, be a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for our
relative international standing in architecture and,
as part of a wider context, our status in most other
things for that matter. But it is also defiantly funny
66
B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 66
Above – Three large
models of the housing
scheme’s Hulme,
Thamesmead and
Cumbernauld
and self-deprecating, in a ‘Carry On’ kind of a way.
This light-hearted spirit continues in
delightfully irreverent leaps of influence from Sir
John Soane’s Bank of England, pre-imagined as a
ruin, to the Barbican’s hope-filled redevelopment,
as immortalised in a film for Unit Four Plus Two’s
song Concrete & Clay, in which the band cavorts on
the building site in their proto-music video of 1965.
Another great passage, deftly orchestrated by
curators Wouter Vanstiphout of Crimson and Sam
Jacob of FAT (whose practice is now, ironically,
defunct) shows how the monument of Stonehenge
begat the semi-circular Royal Crescent in Bath
(1767), which begat the short-lived tenements of
the four Hulme Crescents in Manchester (1964) that
were pulled down just three decades later.
While Kubrick’s use of Thamesmead in
A Clockwork Orange and an image from the
Tottenham riots of 2011 bring some ultra-violence
to proceedings, it’s still a noticeably British trait to
foreground our failures so spectacularly and
publicly. Whether it is modesty or the inherent
navel-gazing of a national pavilion that forces the
hands of subsequent Biennale commissioners to
face our inner demons in this manner, A Clockwork
Opposite top – The Opposite bottom –
hillock made of earth is Glass vitrines are filled
a reoccurring theme with books, leaflets and
throughout the British displays of pop music
Pavilion videos
Jerusalem is timely in so far as it resembles last
year’s art offering in the same spaces by Jeremy
Deller (entitled English Magic and now touring this
country), which shared the sensibility that can bring
William Morris, the welfare state and rave music to
the same party (as well as very similar visual display
design and graphics).
This impetus to delve into Britishness — which
no one has succeeded in distilling since Nikolaus
Pevsner’s slightly faltering but laudable effort to
discover The Englishness of English Art — is surely a
healthy exercise, or perhaps it’s an exorcism.
Because, on the basis of much of this show, what
British modernity seemed to lack in true visionaries,
our glorious past and its plethora of driven
architects can always be counted on to provide
more than enough compensation. It’s also a feature
of Biennales past to not know quite how to handle
some of the spaces in this little marble neoclassical
folly — especially the narrow gallery at the back,
used here for a simple model of one of Hulme’s
sci-fi crescents and by Deller as a pit-stop serving
mugs of Yorkshire tea. Maybe then it’s all the fault
of the pompous pavilion, itself sat ridiculously on a
hillock atop of the Biennale’s winding Giardini. OW
03/07/2014 17:21
 All imAges this spreAd cristiAno corte/british council

B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 67
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B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 68 03/07/2014 17:22
 ElEmEnts of ArchitEcturE
Eschewing the higher end of design and
architecture, this year’s show turned its focus
to the ordinary items that play such a
pivotal role in our lives
Who would have thought that my favourite part of the
Biennale this year would involve a room all about the science
of crapping? Tucked away in the back of the Giardini’s Central
Pavilion, a small room presents a Roman chariot latrine, a
precursor to the modern ‘throne’, next to a Japanese squat
toilet, Victorian valve closet and elaborate Austrian ceramic
urinal. The mundane is the order of the day at the Central
Pavilion, where curator Rem Koolhaas has broken down a
building into 13 fundamental elements, aside from the standard
bog: window, corridor, floor, balcony, facade, fireplace, wall,
escalator, elevator, stair, ramp, roof and door.
This year the Biennale as a whole sheds itself of architects’
egos and instead dwells in the domain of the masses, and all for
the better. As Phyllis Lambert said when she collected her
Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement, ‘It recognises the
essence of architecture as the concern of the public.’ In fact,
Koolhaas left much of the research and curating of the Central
Pavilion to the students of Harvard Graduate School of Design,
who have been working on the project for two years as part
of their degree. The exhibition isn’t about architects, it’s about
the very stuff of architecture, without which buildings simply
wouldn’t exist. It’s a complex encyclopedia of all the things an
architect uses and takes for granted — a more graphic version
of the architects’ trusted Metric Handbook for example, or a
pick ‘n’ mix of the ancient, the past, the present and the
future, all rolled into one big melting pot of ideas.
It describes the evolution of elements from the eccentric
and the admired to the standard and the technologically smart.
But it is also a catalogue of elements that we all know and love,
even if we aren’t architects. Everyone can relate to a window or
a door because we use them every day; we climb stairs each day,
open doors of our homes and offices, go to the loo numerous
5 & 6 Francesco galli / la biennale di venezia
times in a day or stand in a lift thinking about what we’re going
to have for lunch. The human scale of these elements is even
embedded in our language — we talk of eyes as windows, faces
as facades and doors to our hearts. So if we are to get the public
interested in architecture and the built environment around
5 (opposite page) – Charles
Brooking’s collection of
English windows
B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 69
them, we need them to engage with something they can grasp,
and what better than the humdrums of roofs and ramps.
‘The idea of looking at particular elements of architecture is
very fascinating because you can look at history, both architectural
history and cultural history, all by looking at one single element,’
says Federico Martelli, researcher at OMA/AMO and the exhibition’s
designer alongside Koolhaas. ‘We didn’t want it to be too
academic or boring so we tried to pick aspects of the elements
that were critical or where you can see that it has been changing.
My experience when you go to architectural exhibitions is that
you get a lot about urbanism and the building is just one more
object within the landscape, but in this case we decided to
intentionally completely ignore that and look at the material.’
The exhibition opens with a sci-fi suspended ceiling, a vast
network of pipes, ducts and cables that control the functioning
of buildings, dangling below a domed ceiling with restored
frescoes originally created in just 21 days by Galileo Chini for the
8th Art Biennale. The message is clear: while at one time we
revered handcrafted elements, which took time and thought,
our buildings are now becoming irreparably moulded by
technology and our insatiable need for security and comfort.
In the room dedicated to the window, the fascinating
collection of 17th to 19th-century English windows rescued by
preservationist Charles Brooking are placed next to a fully
functioning window factory and its testing device. To Koolhaas
and his team, it illustrates ‘the slow death of the window as a
singular articulated area, a hole punctured in a wall in order to
select a particular view’. Brooking’s collection features an
astonishing array of 500,000 windows salvaged from buildings
under demolition across the country since 1966, from humble
terraced houses to royal palaces (there was even a window in
the exhibition from the very street I grew up in Guildford).
‘English windows have been lost with double glazing’, he
tells me as a semi-spherical vat starts up in the factory next to
us, noisily polishing the window fittings inside. ‘It isn’t some
nerd’s collection of ironmongery sash pulley windows for the
sake of it — it is a useful resource,’ he says in the exhibition’s
6 (next page) – Toilets down
the ages, from ancient
Roman to modern Japanese
69
03/07/2014 17:22
B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 70 03/07/2014 17:22
B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 71 03/07/2014 17:22
 catalogue. His collection is invaluable for conserving the built
heritage in all its shapes and sizes and we should celebrate the
weird and wacky world that has somehow resulted in the
ordinary sheets of glass of today. The history of window seats,
sills and stained glass can tell us a lot about people’s social
status, from broad bay windows for Georgian gentlemen to
show off at private clubs in London’s wealthy St James’s area
to windows in brothels for prostitutes in Amsterdam’s red-light
district. ‘I want to preserve the social nuances and subtle
changes that went into building types,’ says Brooking.
Going back to the toilet, which according to Koolhaas might
well be the ‘primordial element of architecture’, we are greeted
with the unflinching drawings of architect Alexander Kira, who
studied the ins and outs of defecating for 10 years at Cornell
University. He used a method of intimate, empirical ergonomics,
meticulously calculating basic postures, squat positions and
stream dispersion, all of which was relatively ignored by the
design world. While in the room dedicated to the stair, there are
the studies of the one-legged German professor Friedrich
Mielke. He dedicated over 60 years to examining stairs,
72
B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 72
amassing a vast collection of model stairs, penning 30 books and
establishing an Institute for Stair Research in Bavaria. There is
also Claude Parent who worked for more than 60 years on a
study of the ramp and ‘the establishment of a new architecture
and urbanism dedicated to living at grade’. But like Kira, it had
little impact on architecture. These academics all believe that we
can find the extraordinary in the ordinary, that through studying
these everyday functions, we may create a better, more nuanced
architecture. They may seem like mad scientists, but it would be
incredibly boring if no one cared.
While technology may change the face of these elements
beyond repair, the exhibition at the Central Pavilion highlighted
that it is as much about the physical object as the experience.
These historical elements made an emotional connection
between our environment and us, and that is something that is
being increasingly lost. As buildings change according to
different cycles and trends, we should remember the curiosities
of the past. As Koolhaas said in a talk during the Biennale:
‘Preservation is not the opposite of modernity, but a key element
of diversity.’ CSH
CHILEan PavILIon
Monolith Controversies
The anterior room of the Chilean Pavilion is dressed
as a domestic hallway, with the typical personal
trappings of many a South American home. There’s
the shrine-like arrangement of family portraits
against florid wallpaper, with the youngest members
sharing pride of place with the deceased; then, the
sober furniture protected by gaily coloured fabric
runners; the proudly gleaming cabinet full of kitsch
and Catholic knick-knacks. It’s a piece of stage-set;
the accumulated material and emotional ties of a
particular life; in this case, the life of one Mrs Silvia
Gutierrez, in the KPD Housing Project at Viña del Mar.
The real story of the Chilean Pavilion revolves
around a reinforced concrete panel that stands alone
in the second room. This panel is one of several types
manufactured by the KPD concrete panel factory in
Quilpué — that factory was a gift from the Soviet
Union. The Chilean KPD (a corruption of the Russian
term for large concrete panel) factory produced the
prefabricated components for no less than 153
buildings, most of which were four-storey apartment
blocks for social housing. The factory was shut down
shortly after the US-backed coup yoked the country
to a military dictatorship for 27 years.
On the walls are dozens of diagrams, stoically
demonstrating the deployment of KPD-style
Above – A reinforced
concrete panels used in 28 housing projects across concrete panel is the
the world; the curators Pedro Alonso and Hugo star of the show
Palmarola estimate that after the end of Second Below – A typical
Chillean home is
World War, no fewer than 170 million apartments recreated in the
were built using similar concrete panel systems. SB pavillions anterior room
03/07/2014 17:30
 8

7 – The connecting bridge 8 – The stripped back

between the Giardini and entrance to Elements of
the Arsenale Architecture

DANISH PAvIlIoN
Empowerment of Aesthetics
The contribution of landscape culture to art and
science is writ large in the Danish Pavilion where
a blend of artificial natures — bark on walls, pine
needle floors aesthetics, contrasts with technocratic
papers covering Danish building law, housing law,
planning law and the Danish Environmental Act.
The Danish Pavilion, charged with both Koolhaas’
Absorbing Modernity theme and Denmark in the
year 2050, looks at modernist legacies for
overwhelming factual information, legislation and
scientific data and the need for a more
complementary future vision that curator Stig
Andersson beleives ‘can open up yet again the
missing dimension of aesthetics as an important
aspect when we make our decisions’. For
Andersson , director of landscape practice SLA
based in Copenhagen, ‘aesthetics and rationality
7 i rondin EllA 8 FrAnCEsCo gAlli / lA BiEnnAlE di vEnEziA

AndrEA AvEzzù CourtEsy lA BiEnnAlE di vEnEziA

are actually two radically different paths to

knowledge and recognition. One way, the aesthetic,
is empirical knowledge and experience through
sensory experiences. The other way is common
sense, the deductive practice in which conclusions
are logically obtained,’ citing the Golden Age (1800
-1850) where the two views were interwoven in one
Above – ‘Technocratic
papers’ cover the walls culture. In this way they mimic the UK when the
and ceiling in one area term ‘culture’ also referred to farmland, where
– including an
environmental act cultivation of the land enabled a person to become
cultured and the 18th-century estate was also
Below – Nature invades
the pavilion as the understood as a key moment when nature and
contribution of
landscape to science
culture were interdependent in meanings of the
and art is explored term ‘landscape’. AF

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 9

9 – The idea of the balcony

as a political platform is
explored in the Central
Pavilion

10 (opposite page top) –

A collection of facade
sections from Elements

11 (opposite page bottom) –

A fully functioning modern
window producing machine,
next to the historic collection

FRENCH PavilioN
La Modernité, promesse
ou menace?
France reflected back on a series of its own post-war
architectural contributions that came to define
modernism both nationally and later internationally.
But it wasn’t all rosy, and the exhibition highlighted
how modernism could easily tilter on the verge of
downfall. Curated by architectural historian Jean-
Louis Cohen, the exhibition honed in on several
ambitious French experiments ranging from Jacques
Tati’s Villa Arpel, the focus of his seminal film Mon
Oncle, to panels from Jean Prouvé’s prefabricated
curtain walls and the imposing former concentration
camp of Cité de la Muette in Drancy.
‘A significant number of structural and spatial
inventions that contributed to the language of
modernity were developed on its [France’s] soil,’
says Cohen. ‘Modernity started out as a promise: for
rational and affordable dwellings and healthy cities.
But after 1950, this same configuration led to the
mass production of monotonous complexes. As a
result, modern architecture was also able to
11 francesco gaLLi / La biennaLe do venezia

incarnate the menace of an existence dominated by

machines and their repetitive productions.’
A cinematic montage combining scenes from
films by Jean-Luc Godard and Tati was projected
simultaneously in each gallery on wall-wide screens,
while intense light was thrown on a number of
large-scale objects. The main attraction was a 1:10
scale model of the fictitious Villa Arpel, the
A model of Villa Arpel
protagonist of Mon Oncle, which smirked and from Jacques Tati’s film
winked its way throughout the famous film. CSH Mon Oncle

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 MONDITALIA
The show at the Arsenale meanwhile takes a look
at the real forces shaping Italy’s modern culture,
whether it’s Sikhs making Parmesan or the
glacial river that continues to remake and
reshape the country’s fluid border
According to the ongoing legend of Koolhaas, the genesis of
the Monditalia exhibition lay with a map, and a transcendental
experience in the Laurentian library of Florence. No ordinary
wayfinding tool, this particular map dates from the fifth century,
depicting trade routes during the height of the Roman empire.
As such, it shows no boundaries between nations — though these
were recognised — only connectivity and transportation routes,
demonstrating with continued relevance the idea of Italy as
a truly global node for economic and cultural transfer.
Enlarged and printed on to diaphanous floor-to-ceiling
fabric, the map wends its graceful way through the entire 300
plus metres of the Arsenale-Corderie, dividing space and
directing movement through the imposing linear building. The
trek through this vast exhibition space, a relic of the Serenissima
fleet used since the first proper Architecture Biennale in 1980,
is always a daunting prospect for curators and visitors to the
event. This time, the journey begins at the foot of the map with
installations pertaining to southern Italy; these moments of
correpondence continue as visitors move up through the ‘boot’,
culminating at the northern, Alpine border — where the interior
of the Arsenale-Corderie also changes character. The curtain-like
map dances alongside, acting now as room divider, now as a
bunched and billowing scenographic backdrop, but above all
as a continuous, tethering narrative.
But why devote the gigantic space of the Arsenale to one
country in the first place — is this not an obsequious, navel-
gazing bow to Koolhaas’ Italian hosts? As one of the exhibition’s
(Italian) curators explains, Italy in this case is itself a paradigm;
of course the internal issues of its contested cultural values, its
antagonistic and profitable exchanges with the rest of the world,
may well be paralleled for other nations.
Viewed in this way, Italy can be seen as a paradigm for any
modernised, hooked-up country — yet it cannot escape its own
specific history; the Roman empire was the first to dominate
such an expansive international territory, and Italy (itself a very
‘recent’ country in its unified state) has been dealing with its
residual influences for millennia, as opposed to those countries
B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 77
where globalisation has appeared as a recent phenomenon.
As such, Monditalia is densely populated with hundreds
of competing histories and contested views of, and from within,
the Italian condition. Researchers, whose teams may or may not
have include architects, were challenged with the call to discuss
the historical, urban and contextual issues surrounding Italy’s
built and physical fabric — the issues to which architecture itself
forms a scenographic backdrop — and given strict spatial
parameters within which to display their findings.
A few of these displays are frankly amateurish and poorly
produced, which exacting visitors may find off-putting at this
most hallowed of exhibitions — but each of them contains a
genuine amount of heart. And for each slightly shabby offering,
there are as many polished, profound and beautiful attempts;
a few that spring to mind include a wonderful drawing
documenting a day and night in the life of a worker in an Italian
Amazon fulfilment centre (read: automated, robot-legible
mega-warehouse), or the beautiful photographs of hereditary
workers in ‘The Business of People’, by Ramak Fazel. Personally,
once I allowed myself to be absorbed in the content of most of
the installations, the occasional peeling edge and missing vinyl
transfer mattered less.
And this voluntary absorption is somewhat the key to
enjoying Monditalia. You could of course try to engage with the
dozens of works of individual research, some expanding to take
over entire rooms (for example, in the case of the Princeton-led
initiative Radical Pedagogies, which looks at the influence of
Italian radical thinking on architectural education through time).
But it is, I imagine, perfectly possible to moderate your own
pace; for every space containing an earnest, intense piece of
research, there is a more sedate installation in which one is
invited to sit and rest a while, or an adjunct ‘void’ space in which
hanging screens show looping gems of Italian and Italy-located
cinema. Indeed the constant and cacophonous presence of
cinema is notable: The Italian Job, La Dolce Vita and Ladri di
Biciclette are a few that you might recognise, but many others
show the multifarious ways in which the spaces of Italy, through
12 (opposite page) – The
entrance to the Arsenale with
the luminaire created in
collaboration with Swarovski
77
03/07/2014 17:23
 film, have been fictionalised and dissipated all over the world.
Furthermore, if all the territorial and broadly contextual
studies get too much, there are suprisingly animated encounters
with other disciplines. The overwhelming space of the Arsenale,
punctuated by its massive brick columns, is further interrupted
by large, inescapable stage areas — sometimes raised off the
ground, roped off, or surrounded by scaffolded viewing galleries
and raked seats. Through the course of the next six months,
these stages will be successively given over as constant rehearsal
and performance spaces to the biennales of dance, music,
theatre and film. The extraordinary cooperation between the
artistic directors of the various biennales means that a
tremendous live element of cultural production is hosted within
and against the scrim of architectural context, which in turn
finds itself leavened and enriched.
Truth be told, I did step out with a noise-induced headache
once, and there were times when I would skip past one of
the performance areas rather than watch another capoeira
warm-up — but equally there were moments where, even as
I contemplated Italy’s hamstringed property market or the
ruins of Rationalism in Bologna, the impeccably choreographed
movement of bodies in space or a drifting chorus of song from
78
B335-056-P-Venice-JM.indd 78
a rehearsing choir actually moved me to tears.
That there are at least four pieces of research devoted to the
phenomenon of the nightclub is perhaps not so strange, when
considering the lasting impact on popular culture made by New
York’s Studio 54, Manchester’s Hacienda and the Blitz club and
Ministry of Sound in London. The foment of disco, punk and
house music — and spaces of unparalleled social, sexual,
chemical and cultural freedom — clubs and discos were hotbeds
of collaboration between artists, rebels and free thinkers,
associations that felt themselves to be repressed in the
suffocating atmosphere of postwar, post-fascist Italy and which
therefore burst out in extreme exuberance, at venues such as
the Space Electronic discotheque in Florence, founded in 1969
by the radical architect Gruppo 9999.
The confrontation between liberation and repression is
marked by the placement of Space Electronic’s immersive,
neon-bedecked installation, which sits nonchalantly next to a
display on the restoration of frescoes at the cathedral in Assisi,
home of the animal-loving St Francis. Here in the neighbouring
region of Perugia, after several earthquakes and seismic shocks
in 1997, public funds were prioritised for repairing the basilica
over the restoration of peoples’ homes.
13 (opposite page) – Over the
coming months dance, music
and theatre rehearsals and
performances will be a
feature of Monditalia
GERMAN PAvilioN
Bungalow Germania
In contrast to the encyclopedic, retrospective nature
of many national pavilions, Germany cut through
with a single, theatrical statement. Outside, a
standard-issue black Mercedes town car is parked at
a jaunty angle to the pavilion, as if it has just raked
up its gravel drive. Through the grand neoclassical
portico of the Germania pavilion, one enters an
understated, pseudo-Miesian interior — all plate-
glass planes, travertine floors, heavy wooden sliding
panels and self-assured geometric purity.
The Bungalow Germania installation, by Swiss
based German architects Alex Lehnerer and Savvas
Ciriacidis is an almost-exact replica of the
Kanzlerbungalow built in 1964 in Bonn, when that
city was the capital of the Federal Republic — and
which served as the residence of Chancellor Helmut
Kohl. The bungalow has been artfully recreated and
dropped (with minimal alteration) at 1:1 scale into the
space of the Germania pavilion, itself built in 1912 and
revised significantly in 1938 — when it was
inaugurated by the Nazi party — and again in 1964.
Kohl’s Wikipedia entry describes him as the
‘architect’ not only of Germany’s reunification in 1990
but also of the Maastricht Treaty, which launched the
social experiment that is the EU. The bungalow was
originally commissioned to embody the values of a
young democracy emerging from National Socialism.
Faced with a trouble-ridden political context,
The German
this clean gesture is a staged confrontation Chancellor’s bungalow
(1964) has been
between the political and architectonic realities of replicated in the
two very different moments. SB pavilion
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 17

14 (previous page) – Italian
films and ones shot in Italy
are projected onto screens
in the vast Arsenale
exhibition space
15 (opposite page top) – 16 (opposite page bottom) – 17 – The floor-to-ceiling map
DAAR’s Italian Ghosts Radical Pedagogies looks at that divides the main space
satirises Berlusconi’s apology the influence of Italian
for Italy’s historical crimes thinking on architectural
in Libya education

NORDIC PavIlION
Forms of Freedom, African
independence and Nordic Models
Curator Nina Berre, director of architecture at the
National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in
Oslo, explored the role of émigré architects sent from
Scandinavia to modernise independent sub-Saharan
Africa in research disseminated for the first time.
The liberation of Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia
in the Sixties coincided with the founding of state
development aid in the Nordic countries, where there
was widespread belief that the social democratic
model could be exported, translated and used for
nation building, modernisation and welfare in Africa.
The leaders of the new African states established
solid bonds with the Nordic countries. During a few
intense years in the Sixties and Seventies, Nordic
architects contributed to the rapid process of
contemporisation in this part of Africa.
These young architects found themselves in the
field between building freedom and finding freedom,
one a valuable nation-building, through city
ANdreA Avezzù / lA BieNNAle di veNeziA

planning, infrastructure and industry, the other

emerged between Nordic aid and African nation
building. Reminiscent of Jonathan Hill’s thesis on
Sverre Fehn, in which Hill argues, ‘Accommodating
trees and rain, transforming Venetian light into
Nordic light, the Nordic Pavilion expands the
dialogue between architecture and nature.’ There is
a sense the Modern Scandinavians exported a sense
Inside the Nordic
Pavilion, partitions of freedom in exporting Nordic light visible in many
explore Scandinavian
architects’ work
projects such as the Kenya Fisheries Department by
in Africa architect Karl Henrik Nøstvik. AF

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 On the other hand, a photographic grid showing the view
from the repossessed residences of over 100 mafia bosses shows,
in a manner either chilling or amusing depending on your
proximity or propensity, the real and deeply embedded presence
of organised crime within every part of Italy’s terrain. In a
wonderful obscene rightness, the Roman mafia chief looks from
his bedroom directly on to the Trevi fountain, in prime position.
And there are new revelations to contrast with cliches; who
knew that the main labour force involved in Protected Designation
of Origin (DOP) Parmesan production is largely made up of the
immigrant Sikh population? An oversize lenticular print shows a
sleepy rural town square in the Italian region which appears
deserted from one angle, but viewed from another point brims
over with the colourfully clad dairy farmers transplanted from
their native Punjab, celebrating a religious festival.
One of the most remarkable and popular pieces, rounding up
the very northern frontier of the Monditalia odyssey, is a project
entitled Italian Limes (recalling liminality, rather than the citrus
fruit). This begins from the rather remarkable fact of Italy’s
annually negotiated border with Austria. As the national border
follows the course of an ever shifting glacial river, the very limit
of these countries is under constant negotiation. This fact is
wondrous enough, but the Limes team has distilled it into a
performative and mesmerising installation; the curators took
a helicopter to place a server on a mountain top within a field of
the national border, and this transmits the exact location of the
borderline at any given second. Back in the Arsenale, a robotic
plotter receives this data and continually traces the evasive
boundary on a huge stack of paper maps, and if you have the
patience to watch the line being drawn, you can take one away.
For better or worse, an event of this magnitude demands
bold curatorial statements — something many architects shy away
from. It is a bold curatorial statement to host a messy,
multidisciplinary, research-based exhibition, and even more so to
focus ostensibly on a single nation. Yes, there is precious little
‘straight’ discussion of architecture in the show, but Monditalia’s
complement, the Elements exhibition in the Giardini’s Central
Pavilion (see page 69), is unapologetic in its architectural geekery.
Koolhaas’ dichotomy may be too harsh for some: if one half of
Fundamentals is about the very guts of buildings, the kit-parts
that architecture is made of, Monditalia is just as relentlessly
contextual, revelling in the complexity of social, economic,
political and cultural paradigms affected by architecture.
Where the catalogue-like Elements left me informed but
somewhat cold, I wandered out of MondItalia in a daze, stunned
by the vital intensity of the space. It is certainly a lot to take in,
but if architectural concerns must be thus divided, I’d take the
richness of meaning over the pragmatics of means. SB

RUSSIAN PAvIlIoN
Fair Enough
This iteration of the Russian Pavilion has its tongue
stuffed firmly in its cheek. Brash, irreverent and with
a straight (if brightly painted) face, the Fair Enough
expo of urban ideas takes on the commercial trade
fair as a ‘universal typology’ with a Brass Eye-like
bite of satire.
The only clue to its inspiration is a photomontage
in the entrance hall of a ‘typical’ expo, depicting a
typically frenetic yet banal edge-of-town ‘congress
centre’, overtaken by a hive of competing stalls and
kiosks. At the entrance hall of Fair Enough, visitors
are greeted and lanyarded by a crew of luridly
uniformed (and uniformly bouncy), air-steward-like
assistants, in whose sunny disposition there is no
small trace of irony. On offer: a surfeit of really rather
good ideas for the city, through a number of
provocative propositions.
There’s the Prefab Corporation, whose
conglomerate title nevertheless takes into account
contemporary issues on material lifespans and
AndrEA AvEzzù / lA BiEnnAlE di vEnEziA

upcycling. Or the neoliberal, equity-based ‘Financial

Solutions’, using private investment to preserve
heritage monuments.
The curators of Fair Enough at Moscow’s Strelka
Institute suggest that the international trade fair is
‘the ultimate manifestation of modernity’. Here for
sale are urban ideas gleaned from the past century,
revised through contemporary concerns. Down to
This Russian Pavilion is
the commercial graphic details on its wall panels, Fair transformed into a
trade show – ‘the
Enough comes together as a pitch-perfect and ultimate manifestation
hysterical production. SB of modernity’

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 DO YOU WANT THE TRUTH
OR SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL?

Words Veronica Simpson

Portraits Ivan Jones

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 Faye Toogood’s highly personal, crafted, experimental
aesthetic is a welcome antidote to the slickly commercial
mainstream. Her sensibility has transformed retail
and domestic interiors, furniture and even coats.
Is it art or design — or does that even matter?

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 When was the last time you walked into a branded retail
outlet — or any retail outlet even — and felt genuinely startled by its
look and feel? Was it perhaps when Apple launched its first glassy,
minimalist shrines to digital consumerism, with product-strewn
‘altars’ instead of showcases, and T-shirted ‘clergy’ circling among
the flock, administering the sacraments from their shiny tablets?
It certainly doesn’t happen too often. Most contemporary
retail interiors are designed to bludgeon you into slavish
submission with their seductive or edgy feel and finish, or
dazzle you with their disco-dark decor, scantily clad attendants
or blinking flatscreen TVs depicting achingly desirable lifestyles
— all yours for the price of a pair of pants or a sports shoe. Design
as foreplay.
Faye Toogood’s interiors are utterly disengaged from this kind
of titivation, and yet she is wooed as a collaborator by some of the
world’s most prestigious fashion houses, from Alexander McQueen
to Vivienne Westwood. Her work interrogates and explores the
outer reaches of emotional response, informed by unusual
textures and juxtapositions. For Mahani’s first Middle East outlet,
in Dubai — a Mecca for opulent and excessive retail interiors — she
created a raw concrete cell adorned only with racks of clothes,
plus a few pastel-pretty leather stools. For Hermes’ London launch
of its ‘Petit h’ range (couture upcycling, transforming discarded
Hermes materials or items into new and unique pieces), the brand
gave over the ground floor of its Bond Street store to Toogood,
who turned it into a white, utilitarian space filled with sculptural
displays in raw leather, neon and resin, inspired by the shapes and
templates of Hermes bags, while a selection of well-used makers’
tools were displayed alongside as wall art.
Admirers often ruminate on whether her work is art or
design. There is clearly a lot of the artist in her approach — she’s as
interested in provocation, in breaking perceived rules, as she is in
problem solving. But Toogood always places herself firmly in the
design camp, because her work is ‘useful’. What gives her work
particular traction now, she suspects, is the storytelling that
underpins each project. ‘People have perhaps become more
interested in storytelling recently because everything has become
so fast,’ she says. Anyone can order anything they want from
anywhere, so why should you connect or want to live with
anything? The tangible aspects of design and architecture and
spaces have become more and more important.’
This is where Toogood’s obsession with craft comes in: she
has long been fascinated with hand skills and celebrating industry
and making, as she does in using British makers for her furniture,
and as she did with her 2012 London Design Festival installation in
Covent Garden, called 7x7. Seven ‘washing lines’, each strung with
seven oversized workers coats splashed with industrial paint, were
displayed along Monmouth Street, labelled to represent the many
trades that once flourished there — brewers, potters, puppeteers,
furriers, bookbinders. It was this installation, for which she
enlisted the help of her clothes-designer sister Erica, that started
the pair dreaming up a fashion range, the latest new territory in a
career that has seen her design furniture, retail and domestic
interiors, glassware and makeup.
Unsurprisingly, her launch into fashion is unorthodox. She’s
worked in the sector and knows what a fickle and all-consuming
monster it can be, so, to keep it bespoke and manageable,
she’s only designing coats and aprons. The concept is — again
unsurprisingly — not just any old coats but workers’ coats, and
that theme follows through from shape to materials. For example,

3
All project ImAges studIo toogood

1 (previous spread) – Faye 2 (opposite page) – 3 – For Mahini’s debut Middle

Toogood, multidiscipline
designer of interiors for
fashion houses, and now her
own fashion garments
Toogood’s interior for
luxury bag and scarf retailer
Hermes features a display
of well-used makers’ tools
with upcycled Hermes goods
East store in Dubai, Toogood
went against the oppulent
norm there and used only
raw concrete, racks of
garments, and leather stools

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 4

4 & 5 marius w hansen

4 – The Beekeeper coat, one

of four unisex work coats
from Toogood’s debut
fashion collection, created
with her sister Erica

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 there’s the industrial worker (vulcanised rubber); the beekeeper
(industrial felt); the oil rigger (waxed cotton), and the mariner
(canvas). ‘I said if we’re going to do clothes we should pick one
thing and do it well,’ says Toogood. ‘We wanted clothes that we
could work in, where I don’t feel I’m part of a tribe of fashion. It’s
practical. It’s glamorous, but at the same time I can get on a bike.’
The cutting and crafting is all down to sister Erica, she says.
‘I don’t have a skill. I’m a creative director. I wouldn’t know how
to begin to make a 3D object out of a flat piece of cloth and some
scissors. Erica inherited that from my grandmother, who’s a tailor.
It’s instinctive to her. I’m concentrating on the fabrics, the
concept, questioning why we’re doing it, contributing to the form.’
For this, she applies her skills from working in furniture: ‘It’s about
volume, silhouettes, geometry, finish, how you communicate it.
I’d approached it like I would any project. We almost came up with
the title and concept and how it would look as you walk in the
room before we even cut the first garment.’
The range will vary slightly from season to season — a new
tone, a new detail, a new material, but the shapes will be eternal
— and unisex. They go up in sizes 1 to 5, and can be chosen
according to whether customers want to hide or enhance their
shape. Says Toogood: ‘The point is if you find yourself loving the
beekeeper, the beekeeper will always be in the range. I like
consistency. I like opening my wardrobe and knowing I can put
this thing on and I can get the same thing next year. Consistency
is a very nice thing in a world that’s constantly changing.’
See the provocation? To opt for consistency in the most fickle
and inconsistent of all design fields has a delicious contrarian ring
to it. Freedom of thought matters more to Toogood than building
a reputation and sales in any particular design genre. This, she
5 (opposite page top) – Roly
Poly is Toogood’s fourth
Assemblage collection,
encompassing furniture items
with soft lines and childlike
rounded edges
6 (opposite page below) –
Installation The Conductor,
has 160 fluorescent bulbs
fed by a skein of wires and
cables, that can be
‘conducted’ by the viewer
from a centrepiece
switchboard
7 – Toogood’s Indigo Storm
ceramic set of plates, bowls
and cups in Delft blue and
cream, for British ceramics
firm 1882 Ltd, made its
debut at this year’s Salone
del Mobile
B335-086-P-Toogood-ph2.indd 95
says, is something that her first mentor, design editor Min Hogg,
taught her through her eight years working as stylist and then
creative director on World of Interiors magazine (Toogood’s first
proper job after a history of art and fine art degree, landed after
she arrived in Hogg’s office with a suitcase full of inspirational
items and pieces). The freedom to take risks and experiment also
drove her choice of setting up a multidisciplinary studio, long
before multidisciplinary became the norm.
Established five years ago, the Studio Toogood team has
grown from three to around 12 and includes product and interior
designers, artists, architects and at least two graduates from
Central Saint Martins’ vanguard textile futures (now renamed
material futures) MA course. Experimentation and cross-
fertilisation are positively encouraged. She says: ‘Unlike other
design practices. I’ve never been interested in having one style that
we all have to follow or one group of people all trained in one way.
From the outset I wanted a company where people like myself,
who consider themselves designers, would get the opportunity to
work on different projects — furniture designers working on
interior projects or interior designers working on coats.
‘Our style is unexpected every time we do a project. It’s the
approach that marries everything together and the emotional
content to what we do. Somehow we have managed to produce
projects that are relevant to people.’
Not just relevant but increasingly admired. Leading UK
furniture designer Tom Lloyd of Pearson Lloyd is a fan. He says:
‘She manages to go across boundaries between product, interior
and installation in a very seamless way, where you don’t really
know where the roots of her practice are. It feels like a stream of
consciousness almost. It feels very effortless. It also feels surprising
7
95
03/07/2014 17:37
 but very familiar. Some of the furniture pieces look like they could
have come out of any period of the past 100 years. There’s a
conscious timelessness. You could argue that it’s very much of the
zeitgeist but it doesn’t feel like she’s following anything other than
her own path.’
A fine art background is a blessing if you don’t want to be
bound by any rules, says Toogood: ‘I can reference the past
without being worried about that. Designers are told not to create
a pastiche of the past — always to move forward and not look back.
I notice that in young designers. They don’t pick up a pre-1950
book now. Their knowledge is quite limited.’
Her maverick tastes and sensibility means she has learned
over the years to pick her clients carefully. ‘We turn down a lot
of projects. After initial meetings, If I feel we’re not connecting,
they’re not going to get the best out of us. If you work with
someone who is going to block what you do, it’s so destructive.
Those are the projects that kill us financially, because the mix isn’t
right. It does seem frightening to turn down work because I’m
paying wages at the end of the month. But I’ve learned that costs
me dearly, because we care. In a way the best designers potentially
let their ego get in the way of making money because they can’t
bear to leave something that’s not perfect. The most successful
commercial people are happy to leave it and walk away.’
And yet branded fashion houses of a certain calibre seem to
like that independence of spirit. Says Toogood: ‘A lot of brands
come because in-house they’ve not been able to be brave enough
to get out of the box they have put themselves in. They come to
us and often sit down and say that they want something totally
different. We want people to see us in a totally different light.
That’s great. And that’s happening more and more.’
96
B335-086-P-Toogood-ph2.indd 96
Again, bucking against the prevailing trends, Toogood says
she has no interest in multimedia, 24/7 connectivity. ‘I don’t
read magazines any more. I feel overloaded by information in
magazines and online. So I spend a lot of time and money
on books. There are a lot of books in the studio, available to
everyone — history, art, decorative art, ceramics, sculpture.
A big part of me wishes to be a sculptor. There’s nothing like
nothingness to give you inspiration. I’m so bombarded by visual
stimuli that to get an idea or thought or inspiration I need
nothing but to be quiet, to be in a landscape or away.’ Her
preferred locations are in Suffolk, ideally, or taking walks along
the canal behind her house in north London.
‘I do want to be relevant but the moment I start to scratch
the surface and find out what people think of the projects we’ve
done I can’t handle the comments. I need to be in this bubble in
order to create, or I get too concerned. It’s not that I don’t care.
I actually care a bit too much. It’s best if I just shut down and
carry on doing what I’m doing. And if people are still going
to the events and buying the coats then that’s fine.’
For this multifaceted designer and her studio there are still
ambitions to be realised: ‘I’d love to have someone here only
concentrating on materials and experimentation. That would
be incredible because it would filter through to the interiors and
clothes.’ And there are genres yet to crack, she says: ‘I think to
revisit hotel design would be a fantastic opportunity. I think
we’ve come to the end of boutique hotel interiors, all of which
are looking pretty generic. If someone asked me to do a hotel
I would relish that opportunity. How could we come up with
a new way of how we spend time in a hotel? It’s time, nowadays,
that is the great luxury.’
03/07/2014 17:37
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Blueprint_Omega_328x245.indd
Untitled-3 1 1 22/05/2014
20/05/2014 15:56
15:42
 Strong foundation

In conversation:
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Jean Nouvel

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 A special exhibition is being held to mark the occasion
of 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Cartier
Fondation, housed for the past 20 years in an iconic
building on the site of Chateaubriand’s house in the
Boulevard Raspail. The Serpentine Galleries’ co-director
of exhibitions and programmes and director
of international projects Hans-Ulrich Obrist talks
with Jean Nouvel, the building’s architect

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 3

4
Thirty years ago uber-brand Cartier set up the Cartier
Fondation for arts patronage that has since seen it put together
an impressive and eclectic collection spanning painting,
sculpture, design, film, photography, fashion and graphics.
It has the feel of fine art meets wunderkammer and is
‘characterised by a spirit of curiosity and inquiry’. To mark
this anniversary the foundation put together a show, Vivid
Memories, looking back at some of its key acquisitions and
commissions, with works from the likes of Ron Mueck, Marc
Newson, Allessando Mendini, Issey Miyake, Moebius and Bodys
Isek Kingelez. And over the next few pages you can see a
selection of work drawn from that exhibition and past shows.
A decade after the Fondation Cartier was founded it moved
into a purpose-built building designed by Jean Nouvel. The
ground floor houses the highly flexible exhibition space, with
Cartier offices above. The exterior plays with transparency, the
facade extending out beyond the environs masking its true form.
On the 20th anniversary of that building’s opening Hans-Ulrich
Obrist talks to architect Jean Nouvel about the creation of his
self-proclaimed ‘Parisian monument’:

Hans Ulrich Obrist: In the early Nineties, after my grant at

Jouy-en-Josas, I spent a year living at the Hôtel Carlton on
Boulevard Raspail and did a lot of walking round Montparnasse
with Raymond Hains, a great local personality, who knew the
neighbourhood inside out.
Jean Nouvel: He was a friend of mine, too.
HUO He was always talking to me about Chateaubriand, who
lived on the current Fondation Cartier site, a figure who haunts
that space. It’s a place associated with romanticism, you could say.
JN It was Chateaubriand, in 1823, who planted the famous cedar
of Lebanon at 261 Boulevard Raspail that for me is the real
monument here. The site was chosen when the American Center
moved from there to the building designed by Frank Gehry over
on the Right Bank of the Seine. At the time the developers and
the Gan insurance company had a project for this piece of land
— mainly office buildings — which were going to occupy most of
the site. Local groups were protesting, trying to preserve the
cultural function and green space and, in what was quite a
turnabout for Paris, the then mayor, Jacques Chirac, cancelled
the building permit. Gan knew that Alain Dominique Perrin
[founder of the Fondation Cartier] was looking for a new site
and got in touch with him. Alain accepted it, but only if he could
choose the architect. That’s where I came in.
1 & 2 Jean nouvel / adagp, paris. photo: luc Boegly
JN Yes of course, the constraints were very particular. […]
Moreover, after the permit was cancelled we could only build
on the footprint of the demolished American Center. That meant
having a relatively tall building, but then there was a risk that
it wouldn’t work in relation to the rest of the boulevard. I asked
myself how we could play on the closeness of the building and
the cedar while respecting the context, so that we wouldn’t
end up with an orphan building that would look completely
incongruous in the middle of the boulevard. That’s when I had
the idea of playing on depth and creating maximum ambiguity
by having three successive layers of glass: a play on
dematerialisation, presence-absence and the absence of limits.
[…] To cancel out the side limits, I thought about making the
facades of the building bigger than the building itself, so they
reach beyond it. And after lengthy observation, I realised that
this superposition of the thing observed, and its reflection,
created an uncertainty. In other words, if you reflect a cloud
in a cloud, if you create the reflection of a tree on a tree, by
“trans-appearance”, something happens that has to do with
emotion, something “unsettling” in every sense of the term.
I decided to play on these parameters so that these two walls
would reflect the trees standing in front, on the sidewalk, and

HUO When Julia Peyton-Jones and I invited you to London to
design the Serpentine Galleries Pavilion in 2010, I had a chance
to observe your process. When you work, you start with a
concept, a very clear idea. Can you tell us about the process
of creating the building for the Fondation Cartier as a response
to a site and a context?
that this reflection would be imprinted on the trees behind it.
For the building’s base, the biggest temporary exhibition
space, I opted for total absence, thanks to complete
transparency over a height of more than 8m. Thus, through
the facade of the entrance, you can also see the trees behind.
And if I add two layers of glass on the sides of the building,

1 & 2 (previous and opposite 3 – Hans Ulrich Obrist

pages) – Jean Nouvel’s
building for the Fondation 4 – Jean Nouvel
Cartier, built 20 years ago.
The trees were central to the
design and the building’s
outline is deliberately
obfuscated by the facade

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 5

104

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 6
5 Takeshi kiTano/FondaTion CarTier 6 MaTThew Barney/FondaTion CarTier

5 – From the exhibition Beat 6 – Still from Matthew Barney

Takeshi Kitano, Gosse de Cremaster 4, the first in the
peintre in 2010 Cremaster Cycle that was
funded by the Fondation
Cartier and Artangel

105

B335-098-P-Cartier-ph2.indd 105 04/07/2014 10:09

 8

7 TIssey mIyake/FondaTIon CarTIer 8 TakeshI kITano/FondaTIon CarTIer 9 moebIus ProduCTIons 10 bodys Isek kIngelez. CourTesy galerIe magnIn-a, ParIs. PhoTo: andré morIn
7
9

I put trees back in. This means my trees can be read in

continuity with the neighbouring trees; in depth, they multiply
or are perturbed by reflections. As a result, the initial impression
is of something becoming dematerialised in a space whose limits
we cannot gauge, characterised by the perpetual presence of
plant life and the sky, which is “supra-present”: in the middle, it
is there reflected on the offices, on active life; around, we see the
sky reflected on itself.

HUO Every exhibition at the Fondation Cartier reinvents its

spaces. It’s interesting because when you build a contemporary
art foundation, you don’t know what the art of the future will be,
the relation it will have to the space. And there, you have created
two very different spaces: the ground floor is transformable and
open; the basement can become a cinema or conventional gallery.

JN Yes. That thought process was linked to the strong constraints

of the site, but also to my experience of temporary exhibitions —
from 1971, I was architect for the Biennale de Paris, presenting
artists who were shown at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville
de Paris, the Centre Pompidou, the Villette, the Parc Floral… For
the Fondation Cartier, it all began with two notions: emptiness
and the unity of interior and exterior. In reality, the building
plan was extremely simple.
The first decision, which initially came in for a lot of
criticism, was the absence of walls in the interior spaces. People
were amazed that someone could build a museum without walls.
I knew that the main problem you have with a temporary
exhibition is working with the existing space. It is actually much
easier to put in a new wall than to remove one. Consequently,
I chose a hyper-flexible exhibition space, with each very long
floor being amenable to any kind of occupation: you can put
in as many walls as you want or leave it totally empty. In other
words, you’re inventing every time, usually quite simply, using
freestanding picture walls for example. […] The ground floor
is thus a completely theoretical space, totally empty, 8m high.
The exterior is an extension of it, because as well as being
transparent, the ground can also be totally open. The enormous
sliding glass panels of the ground floor, 8m x 3m, can indeed
slide outwards and overlap in the wings, where the facades
continue beyond the building. The exhibition space is thus
totally open, and the Fondation is built on stilts!
The basement, conversely, is completely opaque. This space
is delimited by walls made of concrete and is totally empty,
allowing you to exhibit what you want as you want. At first, I
made small openings in the ground floor, kinds of windows so
that bigger works could be installed in the basement, and to
shed light down. These horizontal windows were not used in the
end, and the decision was taken to block them and block the
light out completely. I wasn’t necessarily convinced by that
option, but that was the choice that was made. What is
interesting is the contrast between this closed space surrounded

7 – Issey Miyake, Making 10 (opposite page) – Projet

Things, 1998 pour le Kinshasa du troisième
millénaire (1997) by
8 – Takeshi Kitano, Gosse de Congelese sculptor Bodys
peintre in 2010 Isek Kingelez

9 – A piece by Moeubius,
Jean Giraud, who had his
own show in 1999

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 12

110

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 HUO That brings us to the question of the garden. I remember a
magical moment: the last performance by James Lee Byars, who
came to Paris for his final farewell before going to Egypt to die.
He was like a kind of apparition: dressed in a gold suit; he left
his hotel, crossed the Boulevard Raspail, entered the building,
entered the garden and, without a word, went back to the hotel.

JN The presence of the golden sphere was magic, too. That void,
that sphere placed in the middle of the scene, the emptiness.
It was really surprising.

HUO That was a great moment in the Fondation Cartier garden,

that was created by Lothar Baumgarten.

JN I asked Marie-Claude Beaud for the garden to be as natural as

13
by walls and the first floor, where there is an osmotic
relationship between interior and exterior. From one exhibition
to the next, the artists have tried out a great variety of attitudes,
going from a building that was completely open to the outside
for La Volière by Jean-Pierre Raynaud, to the exhibition By
Night, where everything was closed, so as to give a feeling
of occultation in the space.
Artists played on the presence of the works in nature,
or again on the visibility of the display devices from outside,
11 Ron Mueck, Photo: PatRick GRies 12 Moebius PRoductions 13 Photo stefano Pandini foR the fondation caRtieR PouR l’aRt conteMPoRain
possible: basically, not designed. In that sense I really loved the
approach taken by Lothar Baumgarten. It was exactly what I was
looking for and a complete success: a garden including as many
natural species as possible, all living together in the space. I was
less in phase with the architectural aspect, that kind of artificial
hole and the amphitheatre with the side of the stone showing.
The idea was a kind of pre-existing archeology, which
doesn’t really suit the site, in my opinion. I gradually got used to
those big steps where visitors come and sit, but I never really got
used to the hole. I think that in Lothar’s mind it is a meditation
room. But I do like everything that is natural in the garden: the
fact that it is dry in the winter, that you can sense the coming
of spring. You get huge differences over the four seasons.

without a “window display” effect in the traditional sense of the
word: you have more a sense of works fitting into a landscape
setting. Flexibility was therefore the first parameter of this
option, a rather radical one for a temporary exhibition space,
but also a matter of the identity of the place.
The Fondation Cartier is not a neutral space. When you are
there, you are inside and outside at the same time, and you
wonder how the works got there, in the middle of these trees
brushing against them.
HUO That brings us to another opening: apart from the opening
on to the garden and the oscillation between interior and exterior,
there is also the vertical aspect — think of Patrick Blanc’s vertical
garden, above the main entrance to the building — and the idea
of ascension linked to transparency. I always remember the first
time I visited the Fondation Cartier: there was a reception on the
roof. I took the transparent elevator and had this incredible
experience of Paris when I arrived on the terrace. I’d like to know
how this play on transparency takes us up to the top, vertically.

14
11 (previous page) – In Bed,
created by Australian
sculptor Ron Mueck for the
2005 exhibtion Mueck. It is
one of three works by the
artist in the foundation’s
collection.

12 – A piece from the

exhibition Un monde réel,
1999, by the French graphic
artist Jean Giraud, better
known as Moeubius.

13 – An element from Jean

Paul Gaultier’s Pain Couture
exhibition from 2004.

14 – Ron Arad’s installation

for his eponymous show in
1994.

B335-098-P-Cartier-ph2.indd 111 03/07/2014 17:42

 15
In an earlier interview you told me that the big question for you
today is the essence of the material, and knowing how to
connect it with transparency. Can you tell me about that?
JN You have to bear in mind that, quantitatively speaking, the
programme was mainly about office space. True, I bestowed
strong symbolic significance on the exhibition space by giving it
a height of 8m, by the fact that there is not a single post inside,
and by the extremely light structure, which I worked on with
Ove Arup and Paul Nuttall. On the upper floors, where the
offices are, there is a great emptiness. The different offices are
delimited by partitions in sanded glass, creating an effect of mist
and hiding the people working there. The impression you get is
that they are in a dematerialised space. The interiors play on
reflections that act at the base of the partitions and also create
an effect of levitation above the ground. And when you look at
the cedar from the offices, it seems to be standing out against
tracing paper.
All the interior architecture is based on these effects of
dematerialisation. […] I often speak of the way a discipline
constantly questions itself in relation to the times, both
symbolically and sensitively. And the question of matter — its
presence and its ambiguity — but also of light, and the relation
between the two are indeed some of the big questions of the
day, in my view. We try to deal with them using our own modest
112
B335-098-P-Cartier-ph2.indd 112
and inadequate means. Hence the notions of “presence-
absence”, “inside-outside”, and all these ambiguities which
create uncertainty.
HUO According to the art historian Erwin Panofsky, our
inventions are often based on fragments from the past. You told
me that you were greatly inspired by the architecture of light in
cathedrals, but also in certain 11th-century churches. Were you
inspired by past constructions for this very specific building for
the Fondation Cartier?
JN I have always been responsive to the architecture of light.
Indeed, my prime ambition is often to make buildings that stand
in a spatial continuum, that belong to the air. I believe that we
build in the solid, that construction is just a variation of this solid.
Of course, like other projects of mine, the Fondation Cartier is a
permanent play on layers of light, both material and immaterial.
They proliferate, interfere with each other, pick up reflections
or drops of water for refraction, disappear because something
intervenes, are printed on to the background (especially the
trees), mesh together when overlaid or when you step back…
The materials — glass and aluminium — were chosen for their
ability to pick up colour and light. Paradoxically, this play on
15 Marc NewsoN,. Photo: DaNiel aDric
dematerialisation probably makes the Fondation Cartier the
building most permeated by its site that I have managed to create.
15 – Kelvin 50, by Marc
Newson (2003) was created
for the exhibition Kelvin 40
03/07/2014 17:42
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 Rock, papeR, scissoRs

Words Cate St Hill

Photography Johnny Tucker

114

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 This year’s Serpentine Pavilion from Chilean
architect Smiljan Radić looks somewhat like a
papier mâché spaceship. We investigate the
rationale behind his design

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 If you didn’t know that the Serpentine Gallery had been
creating a temporary pavilion on its front lawn for the past 14
years, you could be forgiven for thinking that an alien flying saucer
had just landed in Kensington Gardens. Perched on a Druid-like
formation of large boulders, this year’s iteration looks like a
hollowed- out snail shell patched together with masking tape,
halfway between a home for the Flintstones and a galactic vessel
ready to take off. It is the work of the largely unknown Chilean
architect Smiljan Radić, who follows in the wake of household
names such as Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry.
At 48 years old Radić is one of the youngest architects to
have been chosen to design a Serpentine pavilion. His work has
mainly been confined to his native Chile, having founded his
practice in Santiago in 1995. It could be argued that it was a
brave decision for the Serpentine Gallery to pick him — a young
architect barely heard of outside of South America — but it is a
welcome direction for the institution, leading on from Sou
Fujimoto’s (who was 41 at the time) thoughtful and hugely
successful cloud-like structure last year. In a similar way to
Fujimoto, Radić is more interested in creating an atmospheric
118
B335-114-P-Serpentine-JM.indd 118
space or a climatic situation rather than a purely beautiful
object. ‘We have been intrigued by his work ever since our first
encounter with him at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010,’
say the Serpentine Gallery’s co-directors Julia Peyton-Jones and
Hans-Ulrich Obrist. ‘Radić is a key protagonist of an amazing
architectural explosion in Chile. While enigmatically archaic, in
the tradition of romantic follies, Radić’s designs for the Pavilion
also look excitingly futuristic, appearing like an alien space pod
that has come to rest on a Neolithic site.’ At the opening of the
pavilion in June, Radić told journalists, ‘This commission is so
special for me because in the end this piece of grass is a symbolic
place for London, it’s a big challenge. I had never been in a
[Serpentine] pavilion before, I had only seen them in pictures. It
gave me more freedom but in the end the pavilion has to be yours,
and that is the problem. The problem is not the other ones.’
From the outside, visitors see a creamy shell made of
fibreglass, mounted on large quarry stones that appear as if they
have been plonked down by Stonehenge’s descendants. The
result is vaguely reminiscent of Fischli/Weiss’s Rock on Top of
Another Rock, comprising two large granite boulders seemingly
03/07/2014 17:48
 3
4 5
1 (previous spread) – The
shell of fibreglass sits atop
an array of boulders
B335-114-P-Serpentine-JM.indd 119
2 – Radić’s sketches show 3 – Smiljan Radić was an
how he was inspired by unusual choice as he was
natural forms little known outside of his
native Chile
4 – With the press 5 – Press begin to gather for
conference in full swing (l-r) the launch conference
Hans Ulrich Obrsist, Julia
Peyton-Jones and Smiljan
Radić sit outside and face
the media within
119
03/07/2014 17:49
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 8

6 (previous spread) – The
pavilion is lifted above the
ground giving it the
appearance of a floating
spaceship
7 (opposite page) – While the
facade appears solid from
the outside, inside it
becomes more transclucent
8 – The floor is wooden
decking, ‘as if the interior
was a terrace rather than a
protected interior space,’
says Radić

balanced one on top of the other, also in the Serpentine’s grounds
just around the corner. The shell’s smooth, swollen surface is
broken by a strange black box that sticks out and provides a
window out from the interior. The entrance of the pavilion is
accessed from a ramp around the back, which brings you up to
an elliptical space that swerves around a hole in the centre.
Inside, the sculptural fibreglass structure is translucent and
womb-like. It has the quality of papier mâché, with the scars of
its reinforcements on show and raw edges like those of plaster
casts. In parts it looks as if Radić himself has hacked away at the
shell with scissors, like he would with a small model or maquette,
to reveal openings to the landscape around. ‘I feel like a giant
made this model for the city of London with his big hands,’ he says.
Radić prefers to call it a folly rather than a pavilion,
referring to the history of small romantic constructions popular
in parks and gardens across England and France during the 18th
century. ‘A folly gives the project its own personality,’ he says. ‘A
folly historically and romantically presents a disturbance, an
atmosphere, they have to occupy and create a symbolic place.
The idea of ruins, for example, give you the sensation that the
volume is broken up. You feel like you are inside but at the same
time outside. It gives you the sensation of Brutalism, something
really strong and crude.’ Radić cites as influences Cedric Price’s
aviary (1961), one of his few built projects, and Berthold
Lubetkin’s penguin pool (1933-34) at London Zoo. ‘It was really
important for me to go to the zoo and see this pavilion of birds.
It pushed me to think freely,’ he says.
He refers to natural forms, found objects, leftover materials,
weathering and what he terms ‘fragile constructions’. The pavilion
has its roots in some of his earlier projects, in particular The Castle
of the Selfish Giant (2010), a model made of papier mâché that is
based on the 1888 short story by Oscar Wilde. Fragile and
ephemeral, it looks like a forgotten artefact found and rescued
by archaeologists. ‘I would like to express the sensation of masking
tape or the papier mâché models I made four years ago,’ he says
of the Serpentine pavilion. ‘In the end it was like making a small
model, but a big one. It looks like it is handmade but it is really not.’
For the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010, Radić, along
with his wife Marcela Correa, transported a large granite rock to
the Arsenale and carved a perfumed cedar wood refuge inside

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 9

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 10

9 – A black opening in the 10 – Radić describes the

shell allows views inside and rocks as ‘appearing as if they
out had always been part of the
landscape’

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11
13
with just enough space for a person. It was inspired by the sense
of protection felt in David Hockney’s haunting etching, The Boy
Hidden in a Fish, which drew on the fairy tales of the Brothers
Grimm. Like the Serpentine pavilion, the tactile cocoon of the
Biennale acted as a sanctuary, in this case as a response to the
disaster of the Chilean earthquake of the same year. ‘I wanted to
get the atmosphere of this illustration into a model or something
physical that I could make, because being physical makes it real,’
Radić said in a conversation with Peyton-Jones and Obrist in June.
Rocks, it seems, are something of a common theme in
Radić’s work, perhaps inspired by his wife’s work as a sculptor.
‘The stones look expensive, but for us they are cheap, it’s more
or less just the cost of the transport,’ he says. In his Mestizo
restaurant in Santiago (2007), for example, Radić used bulky
lumps of granite to support black concrete beams. His House A
(2008), also in Chile, similarly placed rocks on the building’s
blackened terrace, forming a counterpoint to the sharp point of
the house’s roof. Other houses by Radić are equally poetic and
powerful, in remote rural settings, mountainous terrains or on
the rocky coastline of Chile. For Extension of the Charcoal
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B335-114-P-Serpentine-JM.indd 126
12
14
11 – The Castle of the Selfish
Giant, 2010
12 – Extension of the
Charcoal Burner’s Hut, 1999
13 – House A, 2008
14 – Mestizo restaurant,
Santiago, 2007
Burner’s Hut (1999) Radić constructed a mud-plastered sphere
that looked like a giant prehistoric boulder, to demonstrate the
process of charcoal making in the Chilean region surrounding
Culipran. Like the traditional furnaces called hornos de barro
that convert thorn wood into fuel, the installation was meant to
gradually crumble and fade away back into the landscape.
Radić refers to the Serpentine pavilion as a ‘new ruin’. He
says, ‘Ruins compress the time: you see the past and you see the
future. You see an idea in continuity. This could be a new ruin
because the fibreglass on top is crude, whereas normally fibreglass
10 & 11 Smiljan Radić 12 Gonzalo PuGa 13 Gonzalo PuGa
is really shiny, but this is unfinished, a ruin of the material, and
the rocks are the same. In every culture, rocks give you the
sensation of the primitive, that the stone will be here forever, as
part of the landscape.’ But he doesn’t seem disappointed that
the pavilion will be on show for just three months until October.
‘Follies are very ephemeral. The beauty of this commission
is that they sell it to other places and it will be somewhere else,
that will be great.’ To him, it’s a folly that transcends the range or
limits of time. It could be from the Stone Age but it could also be
from the future.
03/07/2014 17:50
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Untitled-2 1 29/04/2014 09:13

 REGENERATION GAME

Words Veronica Simpson

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 With the assistance of some of the best people in their
fields Frank Gehry is creating a series of spaces in the
southern French city of Arles, intended to breathe
new life into this once-vibrant city

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B335-128-P-Luma-JM ph.indd 132 03/07/2014 17:56
 1 (previous spread) – Scale
model illustrating Gehry’s
ambitious plans for LUMA
Arles Arts Campus
2 (opposite page) – Gehry’s
trademark building designs
will be in evidence here
in Arles
3 – The public launch for
the Arles campus attracted
a lot of interest 3
A city knows it has fallen off the grid when the dominant
soundtrack to its daily life is the woosh of high-speed trains
rattling past at 200 miles per hour. Arles does have a station but
the TGVs don’t stop here — they thunder straight past to
Marseille. It’s a subliminal snub that must have stung for
decades, since Arles used to be the site of French railway
operator SNCF’s main workshops — it still has a 27-acre industrial
‘parc’ along the railroad tracks where more than 1,000 ‘artisans’
repaired and restored trains, until it was shut down in the
Eighties. Now the derelict buildings and rubble strewn delivery
yards are on the brink of a Lazarus-like reincarnation that could
see Arles becoming a major landmark on France’s cultural map.
As with so many ambitious regeneration schemes, there’s
a big-name architect involved. And they don’t come much bigger
than Frank Gehry, whose Flamenco-flourish of a Guggenheim
art gallery in Bilbao spawned the defining term for culture-led
regeneration: the ‘Bilbao effect’. Gehry will be designing the
landmark building in this project, a rippling tower of stainless
steel and stone, with a glass rotunda at its base. It will loom over
the main road into town — the Boulevard Victor Hugo — as both
glittering signpost and gatehouse to the LUMA Arles Arts
Campus, welcoming the public into its spacious halls and cafes,
and ushering them into the sprawling public park that is planned
for the centre of this complex, designed by Belgian landscape
architect Bas Smets. Several of the site’s crumbling industrial
workshops are being transformed by New York architect
Annabelle Selldorf into studios and collaborative work spaces,
while the cavernous train-length shed, the ‘Atelier de la
Mécanique’, declared itself ready for business with the April
launch of a multidisciplinary exhibition of Gehry’s own work,
under the name Solaris Chronicles.
Unlike so many culturally led regeneration initiatives, this is
no smug developer’s vanity project and neither is it a box-ticking
exercise by calculating civil servants for whom a ‘starchitect’-
designed building is the ultimate cultural commodity. Funded by
Swiss-born philanthropist and pharmaceuticals heiress Maja
Hoffman, who grew up in Arles, she is determined that a new
kind of collaborative creativity will be fostered in this sunny
spot, boosting the fortunes not only of her beloved city but also
the arts communities she has nurtured for decades. A massively
influential supporter of both artists and arts institutions, in
France and around the world, she has been evolving the look
3 HERVE HOTE
B335-128-P-Luma-JM ph.indd 133
and feel and facilities for a cutting-edge contemporary campus
over the past four years, collaborating closely not just with Gehry
(who she signed up in 2008) and Selldorf, but also with a steering
committee — her ‘core group’ — comprising some of the most
influential and innovative players in the contemporary arts world:
conceptual artist Liam Gillick, uber-curator and Serpentine
Galleries co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, video artist Philippe
Parreno and Kunsthalle Zurich director Beatrix Ruf.
At the launch Hoffman stated: ‘The past four years have been
an intense period of research and development aimed at creating
a new model for fostering, producing, staging and experiencing
new work. The core team’s goal has been to create an
environment that allows artists and thinkers to work in ways that
are unencumbered by the practices, dynamics and structures of
arts institutions.’ Unlike in the cloistered atmosphere of an art
college or university, the free-flowing spaces, the mixture of park,
studios and exhibition halls, plus the mingling of public with
practitioners will, she hopes, create ‘an environment that
simultaneously welcomes both the focused and casual interaction
among artists, thinkers and audiences to the benefit of all.’
Obrist explains how the project evolved: ‘The curators and
artists wanted a new institute that doesn’t exist anywhere else.
It’s unique. But it’s also significant that this happens not in Paris
but in Arles. Arles is a very interesting context. It is accessible
from Paris, but lies somewhere between connected and remote.
It allows artists a new kind of temporality. They can think here.’
The clusters of workshops, library, archive, gallery spaces
and studios clearly facilitates the kind of collaborative, multimedia
and cross-disciplinary art that is demonstrated in the Solaris
Chronicles exhibition — choreography from Tino Sehgal; music by
Pierre Boulez; lighting, motion and shadow-play created by
Philippe Parreno and Liam Gillick; architecture by Frank Gehry;
curated by Obrist, Gillick and Parreno. Obrist says however that
there is no prescription for the kind of art that will be created at
LUMA Arles — but there is certainly far greater freedom and scope
for those wanting to experiment with large-scale, immersive
productions. Obrist calls this a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk
approach — a synthesis of several art forms, to bring a heightened
sensory experience. He says: ‘This is the age of the internet, yet
live concerts have become more important than ever. Musicians
are experimenting with combinations of moving image, sound,
performance, and this is also happening with art.’ In a time
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03/07/2014 17:56
 4
when anyone can tap into endlessly replicable, instantly
transmitted and shared experiences online, audiences are
showing new appreciation for intense, immersive, live,
performance-based events. ‘This experience is about being in
the moment. In this place,’ says Obrist. Liam Gillick summed up
the Campus ethos: ‘it’s more about production than
consumption.’
Due for completion in 2018, some €110m are being invested
in the built fabric alone. Other partners have joined Hoffman to
leverage the cultural and economic capital of this potential arts
hotspot. The Ecole National de la Photography — the first
postgraduate college for photography in France, founded in the
1980s — will move its base here. Actes Sud, a major French
publishing house known for its arts, humanities and children’s
publishing, is also relocating to the site. The regional council of
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B335-128-P-Luma-JM ph.indd 134
Provence-Alpes-Cotes d’Azur has already renovated the Grande
Halle at the far end of the site, and used it as exhibition space for
the annual festival of photography, the prestigious Rencentre
d’Arles. This year, the festival will also take advantage of the first
of Selldorf ’s renovated spaces, the 1,300 sq m Atelier des Forges,
opening this month.
For some, this investment might be seen as the city claiming
its rightful place in the cultural firmament. Once the Roman
capital in the region, with its remaining ruins earning it UNESCO
World Heritage Site protection, the city of Arles and surrounding
countryside have served as muse for many significant
individuals, including Vincent Van Gogh and his friend Paul
Gauguin, inspiring Van Gogh’s most prolific period and arguably
his most important work, with some 300 paintings completed
during the two years that he lived here. Simultaneously with the
4 – Solaris Chronicles is
designed to ‘examine the
creative vision of Frank Gehry’
03/07/2014 17:56
 launch of the LUMA Arles campus, this April saw the
inauguration of the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh’s first dedicated
exhibition space (designed by FLUOR Architects), hosting not
just a permanent collection of Van Gogh’s work, but also
exhibiting leading contemporary artists whose work resonates
with his innovative approach.
What is Gehry bringing to the table — a genuinely
inspirational building or just an architectural logo? As architect,
theoretician and long-standing Pritzker Prize jurist Juhani
Pallasmaa has said, our ocularcentric culture – giving the power
of the eye supremacy over all other senses — has resulted in
‘architecture... too often (being) viewed as a short-lived
speculative commodity rather than as a cultural and
metaphysical manifestation that frames collective understanding
and values.’ Never is this more true than when buildings are
B335-128-P-Luma-JM ph.indd 135
intended as regeneration totems. But Gehry argued convincingly
in the April press conference that his perspective in designing
this building — five years in gestation — came from a deep
connection with the region and with Hoffman’s ambitions for
the campus to have a ‘painterly’ building — one inspired by the
landscape and also by Van Gogh’s renderings of it, in particular
The Starry Night. Says Gehry: ‘We studied many different
configurations and materials. We moved the building one side
then the other side, made it smaller, larger, incorporated the
forge, incorporated the Mécanique. It led us to understand the
assets of this site and what it meant to the community.’
‘We started making these kinds of models with rocks and
blocks. Slowly we worked out a language for the building using
metal blocks. I think, I hope, that when this is built, with both
the sun and the moonlight it will have a painterly quality. We
135
03/07/2014 17:56

have never done anything like this before. It’s completely
“Majan-ised”. It’s something she’s been completely involved
with. She has been an inspiration for us. The client architect
team has worked closely together to achieve something very
special.’ This building’s DNA is entirely of this place, he asserted:
‘I wouldn’t do this anywhere else.’
The 7,600 sq m building will house research and reference
archive facilities, workshop and seminar rooms, artist studios and
galleries. The ground floor atrium space will also host a visitor
cafe, while a top-floor restaurant will offer views over the campus
as well as the town beyond. The form seems to have been dictated
by surrounding rock formations, with shades of Van Gogh’s
sinewy cypress trees; its contours are clearly designed to capture
tessellations of light and shade across the stainless steel external
tiles, whose pace and rhythms echo Van Gogh’s dynamic — almost
manic — brushstrokes. From the Boulevard Victor Hugo, the
dazzling stainless steel facade dominates. But from the campus,
a large stone tower that forms the backbone of the building links
this elevation with the stone of the town’s historic and
Romanesque structures.
Judging by the size of the crowd — more than 1,200 people
— gathered along the Boulevard Victor Hugo to witness Gehry
laying the first stone, and the cheers that resulted from the
Mayor of Arles’ cries of ‘Vive la Republic! Vive Maja Hoffman!
Vive Gehry!’ it’s safe to assume that the presence of this iconic
architect is key to the citizens’ faith in this Parc’s rejuvenating
power. Gehry himself concluded: ‘I am 85 years old. For me, this
building can’t happen soon enough.’
Solaris Chronicles
Intending to ‘examine the creative vision of Frank Gehry’, Solaris
Chronicles is truly an immersive experience of an exhibition. The
key exhibits are several large-scale models of Gehry buildings,
some built, some unbuilt, placed on huge trestle tables. The
setting is starkly chiaroscuro with the buildings placed like
islands, dramatically lit from above by graphic neon sculptures
and Philippe Parreno’s pulsating ‘Marquees’. These are clusters of
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B335-128-P-Luma-JM ph.indd 136
5
coloured incandescent bulbs that pulsate slowly and sometimes
frantically, their rhythms synchronised with a gothic and
disjointed organ composition which resembles the sonic
noodlings of a psychotic five-year-old. A large and powerful stage
light crawls across the ceiling, casting sharp and shifting shadows
of these buildings as well as the steel pillars which support this
huge former engineering shed. At strategic points we are plunged
into darkness, and then exposed to the crashings and scratchings
of Pierre Boulez’ Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna, while
dancers, choreographed by Tino Sehgal, start pushing the trestle
tables around the space in a procession both stately and surreal.
Programmed in three phases, the choreography starts off
slowly: there goes the Guggenheim Bilbao, gently trundling past in
a solo excursion. Then several buildings start to waltz around the
shed at once, almost colliding in the centre. The pace then picks
up with the audience at one point seeming in danger of being
mown down by the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a colossal structure
of toppled blocks and cones, barrelling along the concrete floor.
It’s wise to get out of the way. For anyone who saw the Hayward
Gallery’s brilliant exhibition Psycho Buildings, this feels like the
action-packed sequel — in 3D.
While the experience is undoubtedly provocative and
engaging, I’m not sure how much it enhances or illustrates the
Gehry buildings. Gehry himself confessed to shedding ‘tears of joy’
at seeing his buildings dance around the room. Philippe Parreno
says he thinks that adding movement ‘makes the buildings seem
more human’. They don’t seem human. But they are at times
eerily beautiful: the Walt Disney Concert Hall comes off the best
in the whole grouping, as the most coherent and uplifting of
Gehry’s sculptural set pieces. The more restrained future projects
— Facebook’s campus and the Loyola Law School project — are
surprisingly subdued, not a whisper of whimsy to be found
anywhere in their determinedly rectangular structures. Ultimately,
as an insight into Gehry’s architecture, it lacks depth. As a
multimedia and interactive experience, it has its own unnerving
thrills, but no underpinning narrative to haunt you beyond the
point when you step back out into the dazzling Arles sunshine.
5 – This image puts what
Gehry et al will be creating
in Arles in geographical
context in the city, illustrating
the space the new
development will occupy
03/07/2014 17:56
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Untitled-5 1 25/02/2014 16:47

 Foyles war

Words Cate St Hill

138

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 At the beginning of the recession, London landmark
bookshop Foyles took the brave step of deciding to
moving lock, stock and barrel, into the site of the former
Central Saint Martins building next door. As the tills
start ringing in the newly opened building we take a
wander around the stacks

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 2

142

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 Foyles bookshop on London’s Charing Cross Road was once
a Mecca for book lovers. Opened in 1929 by brothers William
and Gilbert Foyle it was at one time listed in the Guinness Book
of Records as the world’s largest bookshop, with one of the
longest lines of shelving (48km). Its rabbit warren of small,
eccentric and sometimes infuriating spaces turned it into
a tourist destination, while its double payment system was
incomprehensible to anyone who walked through the door.
But in the past 10 years, as high-street bookshops have been
forced to close and e-book sales have risen, Foyles has had to
reevaluate its famous store. Now a new flagship shop designed
by architect Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands hopes to take the
historic bookshop into the 21st century.
It was important for the brand to stay on the same street.
The building at 107 Charing Cross Road, just two doors down
from the old shop, was the former home of Central Saint Martins
art school, before it moved to its new purpose-built complex in
King’s Cross. It too was a hodge-podge of ad hoc accretions built
up over the past century, with grimy windows, paint splattered
studios and drafty corridors. Built in 1939 and designed by EP
Wheeler and HFT Cooper, of the London County Council
Architects’ Department, it became the place where Britain’s
creative bright young things came to hone their talents, from
Terence Conran to Gilbert & George and Alexander McQueen,
among others. It was also where in 1975 the Sex Pistols played its
first ever show, and where Jarvis Cocker came up with the lyrics
for Pulp’s Common People.
Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, which has been working on
the project some six years, has stripped back the art school’s
labyrinthine partitions to reveal a structure of open floors
separated by a central atrium. A series of stairs was added
between the front and rear blocks of the existing building to
create a clearly legible and easily navigable floor plan. ‘It’s a very
flexible building. If there is any art in the project, it is in taking
away in the ad-hoc additions,’ says director Alex Lifschutz. ‘The
front floors are half a level above the back floors and we’ve taken
advantage of that to create what I think is a very human-scale
building. As you cross from side to side you are hardly aware
that you are also moving up or down the building — it’s a magic
formula which takes people around and up to the main
attraction on the upper floor — the cafe and events space.’
The result is around 3710 sq m of flexible retail space spread
over eight alternating half levels, with 13 new residential
apartments above (see page 150), housed within a new zinc
extension and accessed through a separate entrance to the north
of the bookshop. The impressive 16m-tall atrium, just off the

1 (previous spread) – The new
Foyles, located on the
previous site of Central Saint
Martins art school, has totally
revamped the space that it
now occupies
2 – Foyles has been a fixture
of London’s West End for
more than a century, as
shown from this photo of the
shop dating back in 1906
3 – Despite almost being
destroyed by a bomb in the
Second World War, Foyles
has remained a constant in
an ever-changing city. This
photo comes from 1940
4 – It is telling to see how
much more space Foyles has
gained each time it has
moved, with the latest store
the biggest yet

4
1 hufton + crow 2 & 3 foyles Archive 4 siMon heAfielD

143

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 entrance on Charing Cross Road, fills the space with natural light
— a far cry from the stuffy and oppressive store next door. It is lit
from the top by a skylight, while the balustrades are formed of
frameless glass to further blur the boundaries between staircase
and shop floor. As you move up the shop you encounter slots cut
into the atrium walls displaying books as well as lecturns sitting
on the landing of each floor, both a clever marketing device to
constantly introduce the customer to books they thought they
hadn’t come across before.
With more than 6400m of shelving, the shop has the
capacity to hold 200,000 titles, the same amount as the old
shop, but tellingly far less than the 16.5 million books for sale
on the Foyles website. Some bookshelves have been used as
partitions to create more intimate spaces, partly in homage to
the old shop, while other spaces have been left open. Low
ceiling heights meant that services such as heating, cooling and
lighting needed to be tightly packed. Rather than concealing
them behind a suspended ceiling, which would have made the
space seem even smaller, they are on view in their foil wrappings
and industrial brackets.
While the top two floors are dedicated to a large cafe,
purpose-built gallery and events space, a former assembly hall
that used to host meetings, fashion shows and dances has
Foyles section
1 Atrium
2 Apartment (see page 150)
3 Cafe & gallery
4 Events & offices
5 Retail
6 Assembly hall
2 2
2 2
5 5
6
5
5
5
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B335-138-P-Foyles-JM PH2.indd 144
become an informal double-height auditorium at the back of
the shop. A glass mezzanine and balconies look on to the space
so an audience can gather at various levels and look down on
an event or at a speaker. The space still has bookshelves and
appears much like any other bookshop, but it is the relaxed
and adaptable nature of the space that Lifschutz says makes
it different. ‘The more ad hoc and the more unexpected the
space is the better, and the more spaces for events and
happenings to take place the better. It shouldn’t feel like
it’s staged, but a seamless part of the building,’ he says.
One of the main ways Foyles is trying to respond to
changing reading patterns is with an ambitious programme
of in-store events as well as cult jazz performances. As Lifschutz
says, ‘Bookshops need to connect with the audience through
bookclubs and talks, just like music has countered the internet
with performances and gigs.’ This is nothing new to Foyles.
Christina Foyle, daughter of co-founder William and owner
of the bookshop until her death in 1999, initiated monthly
luncheons in 1930 so that outsiders could meet the literati
such as Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis and DH Lawrence.
(There is a letter to Christina in the archive from artist
Lucian Freud, which reads: ‘While your bookshop remains
a temple to panic, ignorance and suspicion, I would prefer
5 – Architect Lifschutz
Davidson Sandilands has
made clever use of the
space thanks to a series
of staircases
2
1
4
5
0 2m 5m 10m
04/07/2014 10:15
 5
5 hufton + crow

145

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 to not have lunch with you, please do not ask me again’!
Foyles has appointed Futurecity, a ‘placemaking agency’,
previously responsible for a number of multidisciplinary art
projects, including Mark Wallinger’s White Horse and Richard
Wilson’s Slipstream at Heathrow’s new Terminal 2, to curate a
series of exhibitions over the next few years. It has been advising
Foyles on the strategy for the bookstore’s new cultural hub for
the past two years. Mark Davy, director of Futurecity, calls it the
‘gallery of the word’, promising ‘exciting conversations and
collaborations between artists, writers and other creative
disciplines’. The first offering will be from Turner Prize nominee
and alumnus of Central Saint Martins, Mark Titchner, whose
painting studio once existed on the same floor as the gallery.
To mark the opening of the new store, Foyles launched
a three-week festival of workshops, performances, signings
and readings in which different writers, from Michael Palin
to Grayson Perry, opened different sections of the shop — the
Hay Festival of London if you like. The hope is that it has
encouraged people to break their usual book-buying routines
and help them use the bookshop in a different way than they’re
used to. Sam Husain, chief executive of Foyles says: ‘It’s about
discoverability, a chance to interact with authors and artists,
to listen to great music in one of our many performance spaces
and forge partnerships right across the cultural sector.’
For them, a bookshop is no longer a place to merely pop in
to and buy books; rather it has taken on the role of a library or
cultural centre, to educate people, encourage debate and get
people together in one public space. Bookshops now also have
the job of editing down the mounds and mounds of material
found on the internet into a few essential reads. ‘What we’re
aiming for is that people come here for an experience, rather
like dare I say it Harrods, Hamleys or Fortnum’s,’ said
Christopher Foyle at the new store’s opening.
Some would say it was an entirely mad decision to up sticks
and undertake a major architectural project right on the cusp of
the economic downturn in 2008, and just as Foyles was
returning to profit. Even more so, considering that Transport for
London’s development for a new Crossrail station (due to finish
in 2018) just 200m to the north was deterring shoppers from
entering Charing Cross Road, costing the company an estimated
£1.5m loss of sales a year. But inspired by one of the UK’s most
creative art schools, it saw a window of opportunity to combine
books and culture in a new modern space and continue its
illustrious history. Essentially, it had to either go big or go home.
Now it’s hoping to pave the way for other bookshops: whether
mad, brave or genius foresight, only time will tell.

6 (previous page) – 7 (opposite page) – The use 8 – 3D cutaway model of the

Bookshelves have been used
as partitions partly to create
intimate spaces as a tribute
to the old shop
of half floors at the new
Foyles has given the
architect extra space to play
with to give the store a more
open, contemporary feel
new Foyles building gives
you a better sense of how
it all fits together

8
6 & 7 hufton + crow

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 9
The SainT MarTinS LofTS
High above the bookworms nosing their way through the
new Foyles bookshop, there are 13 new apartments, housed
within the existing fabric of the building and two new zinc
‘pavilions’ on the roof. The Saint Martins Lofts, named after
the Central St Martins art school and designed by interior
architecture practice Darling Associates, feature penthouses,
two and three-bedroom properties with views over London’s
West End, duplexes with double-height spaces and original-style
Crittall windows, and some with large terraces. It is a joint
venture between Aquila Housing Holdings and Noved Property
Group, the property arm of the Foyle family.
Director of Soho-based design hub 19 Greek Street and
alumnus of Central Saint Martins, Marc Péridis has styled the
interior of one of the apartments. Much of the studio’s
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B335-138-P-Foyles-JM PH2.indd 150
philosophy is based on injecting new life in design products
and promoting sustainability, social design and up-cycling. With
this in mind, Péridis has selected pieces with an emphasis on
resourcefulness, including those by Nina Tolstrup of Studio
Mama, Beirut-based Karen Chekerdjan, 3D pioneer Dirk Vander
Kooij and Australian outfit Super-cyclers. There is also work by
young and up-and-coming designers, including Chilean studio
gt2P and London-based Israeli Yoav Reches.
Says Péridis: ‘I remember with such intensity the time spent
at Central Saint Martins as a design student. We want to bring
that energy and emotion in the apartment at The Saint Martins
Lofts, celebrating not only the heritage of this very special
building but also London’s ability to continuously reinvent itself,
breathing new life into objects, buildings and entire urban areas.’
9 – One of The Saint Martins
Lofts interiors, being styled
by former Central St Martins’
student Marc Péridis, of
19 Greek Street, will feature
hand-picked pieces from
an international selection
of designers
04/07/2014 10:17
 DISCOVER
DECOREX
A WORLD
OF LUXURY
DESIGN

Visit www.decorex.com to register

Please quote invitation code BLP1

Organised by:

Decor14_328x248_BLP1.indd
Untitled-2 1 1 07/07/2014 16:28
07/07/2014 15:19
 Ice and fIre

Words Oliver Lowenstein

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 The drive to dam Iceland’s wilderness rivers to provide
hydropower to smelt aluminium caused massive
populist protest in the island republic of Iceland.
At its most vocal it coincided with the country’s
financial meltdown, the finishing touch to bringing
down the government. What was triggered is
a newfound engagement with design and the creative
spirit of the country in a search for a more
meaningful and fulfilling existence

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B335-152-P-Iceland-ph2.indd 156 04/07/2014 10:23

Who would have thought a river could bring on a revolution
and bring down a government? If though, you look to the roots
of its ‘pots-and-pans revolution’ — a reference to the
cacophonous noise that protesters kept up outside the Althing,
Iceland’s parliament, during the freezing winter weeks of late
2008 and early 2009, until the politicians couldn’t stand it
any longer — this is one way of understanding what happened
in Iceland.
It’s poetic compared to the more orthodox, socio-cultural
and economic interpretations, which laid the overwhelming
blame of the country’s financial meltdown at the door of its
turbo-charged experiment in hyper-capitalism, turning this
Nordic roaring tiger into an economic pariah overnight. The
crash bankrupted the country and saddled much of the
population with mountainous debts, a confluence of identifiable
out-of-control economic factors. Yet, follow the money and,
at least partially, one major trail also quickly leads to the plans
of the Icelandic Government of the late Nineties to develop
hydropower in the country’s vast interior, known as the
Highlands, to produce energy for aluminium smelting plants.
The first of these was for Europe’s largest dam, Kárahnjúkar,
to power an Alcoa (the Aluminum Company of America)
Iceland
1 Christopher Lund 2 from pétur thomsen’s imported LandsCape photographiC series
hofsjökull
glacier
langjökull
glacier
reYkjaVik
– existing reservoir
– existing geothermal energy project
– existing heavy industrial project
B335-152-P-Iceland-ph2.indd 157
1 (previous page) –
Wilderness river
2 (opposite page) –
Diggers at work on the
Kárahnjúkar dam
smelting plant in Reyðarfjörður, a small town on the eastern
edge of the island. It was approved in 2001, overturning the
Icelandic Environment Agency’s decision against the project.
Upstream of the planned dam the local valley systems, including
not one but two rivers, the Jökulsá and Fljótsdal, would
disappear under a deep, deep reservoir. The decision caused
controversy, and in the years leading up to the crash the country
became increasingly polarised between those for the massive
project, and those against. One man who has more reason than
most to know about this is Andri Snær Magnason: poet, story-
teller and author of Dreamland, his definitive chronicle of a
crash foretold.
Dreamland, which as Björk notes in the preface, ‘had an
enormous impact in Iceland’, traces the economic path of the
young country from its early history through the 20th century
to the mid-2000s. Dreamland was published in 2007, the same
year as the Fjardaál Alcoa plant became operational, after a
series of five vast dams had, after much opposition, been
constructed, followed by the flooding of the upstream river and
the inevitable remaking of the Kárahnjúkar river valley ecology
through the dams. If Kárahnjúkar was the first, many other parts
of the Highlands, were part of much larger hydropower
Vatnajökull
glacier
– expected environmental impact
– planned reservoir
– planned geothermal project
– planned heavy industrial projects
– high voltage power lines
157
04/07/2014 10:24
 3
aluminium plans, including the Thjórsárver wetlands, within the
largest sub-Arctic wilderness in Europe. Threatened by
industrial development for several decades, the wetlands are,
in Magnason’s poetic phrase, ‘a jewel of life’ containing an
irreplaceable ecological habitat, and have become the iconic
focus of long campaigns by environmental groups the Icelandic
Nature Conservation Association (INCA) and Saving Iceland.
At first relatively uncontroversial, the realisation among
the population that they were paying through the nose for the
publically funded dam building, alongside a growing sense that
the government was selling off large chunks of the country
to international corporations, played uneasily in a nation which
saw itself in the title of the famous epic novel, Independent
People, by its Nobel laureate, Halldór Laxness. Magnason wrote:
‘It is not overstating the case to say that Iceland’s greatest
natural treasures have been on clearance sale for the past 30
years, without the nation ever having had it explained what was
on sale.’ A mounting wave of demonstrations, protests, and
impassioned involvement by both of Iceland’s big music icons,
Björk and Sigur Rós — including Hætta, the country’s largest
concert ever, in 2004, which attracted a 30,000-strong
audience, 10 per cent of the population — brought the splits
to the surface. In the words of a National Geographic writer,
Icelanders were ‘one big unhappy family’. By 2008 the divide
was already intense. And then came the meltdown.
So what has all this to do with design? And what has it to do
In starting over again
Icelanders embraced
design, the creative
industries, and attempted
to reduce the country’s
reliance on its traditional
economic mainstays
of fishing and farming
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B335-152-P-Iceland-ph2.indd 158
with the current moment? Well, among the confluence of
influences, with the rivers helping to — at least to some extent —
precipitate the revolution, so the revolution triggered newfound
engagement in design, part of a wider embrace of the creative
spirit. For many the meltdown brought forth other, existential,
symptoms and soul searching. After the get-rich-quick years, the
pendulum swung towards a desire for less material rewards,
inner migrations to more meaningful and fulfilling work and
lives after a mammon-defined decade. And aluminium isn’t
exactly unknown as a material in both design and architecture.
Go to Iceland today, and you will get the answer to this latter
point; there is apprehension that a second replay is once
again building.
So, at least partially, it isn’t too much to say that when it
happened, the ‘pots and pans’ revolution was a continuation,
by other means, of the hydropower and aluminium protests
and polarisation. In the aftermath, Iceland’s citizenry voted in
the first ever left-of-centre coalition of Social Democrats and
Left-Greens, led by their first openly gay female premier. And
in 2010, a minor political earthquake, further fallout from the
crash, hit Reykjavik. A new party, The Best Party, formed by
many of those around the post-punk band The Sugarcubes (it
also included Björk), won control of the city council. John Gnarr,
a kind of Zen comedian, became mayor, and one-time
Sugarcubes front man and sparring partner to Björk, Einar Orn
Benediktsson, took on the city’s culture portfolio. Katrin
3 Christopher Lund 4 pétur thomsen 5 darren Webb
3 & 4 – The Kárahnjúkar dam
under construction
5 – Sigur Ros’s violinists
warm up during the band’s
homecoming Heima tour
04/07/2014 10:24
 5

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 6

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 7

Jakobsdóttir, ex-culture minister and chair of the current

opposition Left-Greens, talking over the phone summarises the
changes pithily: ‘People began waking up to how there was
more to life than fish and aluminium.’ In starting over again
Icelanders embraced design, the creative industries, and
attempted to reduce the country’s reliance on its traditional
economic mainstays, fishing and farming.
For the hydropower advocates, the opening of the Alcoa
plant symbolised the first realisation of a vision of Iceland’s
future made concrete, exploiting the land for heavy industries,
the path long promoted by the older and politically conservative
establishment. Magnason’s book, while hardly the only voice
to outline a different path, articulated what a whole spectrum
of Icelanders were thinking while also underlining how the
world is changing and the country’s need for a much more
diverse economic base than farms, fisheries and aluminium.
Dreamland highlighted the success of the Nordic countries,
particularly the Danes’ effective development of design, making
culture a major cultural export. These very different visions of
the future were at the heart of a rift that continues smouldering,
a volatile back story which has yet to be excised from Iceland’s
population, not entirely tectonically different to the Great Rift
Valley where, a 90-minute drive from the capital, the European
and North American continents meet.
‘It took just seven years from deregularisation to the
meltdown,’ says Magnason, tall and, when I met him in 2013, Stoisk, and CCP, a DVD gaming success, through to larger
with a slightly dishevelled look of a punk professor, under the start-ups, including Green Marine Technology and prosthetics
crystal palace glass ceilinged wonder of the Reykjavík’s only exporter, Ossur.
contemporary iconic beacon, the harbourside Harpa concert hall. Although two years prior to the crash, in 2006 post-rock
As part of the inevitable self-questioning, the meltdown’s after- band Sigur Rós had undertaken an unannounced free tour
shocks led many to an instinctual embrace of the path Magnason, through the far-flung and sparsely populated northern and
artists, designers and others had been trying to highight. Frida eastern coast towns (including an acoustic set at the Alcoa
Ingvarsdóttir, the new rector of the Icelandic Academy of Arts, protest camp), Ingvarsdóttir feels certain that it had an
reflects many people’s thoughts when she points to how important influence through the next years: ‘What Sigur Rós did
Icelanders, the one-time ‘Independent People’, in reference to the had a very good effect on the cultural scene; they were really
Laxness novel, after only a brief 10-year induction into nouveau positive role models.’ A group of creative practitioners from the
riche values ‘found it easier to return very quickly to their earlier same eastern fjordland reaches came together to form Make,
values’ roots. It was still very new here.’ which included furniture, graphic, fashion, textile and product
For some the convergence of the heavy industry protests design, fashion, metalwork and carpentry, and in 2012 hosted
with the search for different values led easily to work that didn’t Make it Happen, a major regional conference. A
have the same impact on the environment. The company Vík multidisciplinary group, including architects, graphic and
Prjónsdóttir, for instance — three young ex-product and fashion industrial designers, and eco-tourist specialists, created the
design students — began designing clothes from Iceland’s tough Vatnavinir (‘Friends of Water’) project, which envisaged
sheep wool. Small one or two-person designer enterprises Highland hiking to a network of outdoor bathing pools with
started springing up. Some were outfits that had been working accompanying eco-accommodation, which won a major
for some time, such as furniture design practices Dogg Design European sustainability award.
and Studiobility, others completely new. Many one or two- Turning words into actions, Magnason became one of the
person bands tried their hand at establishing small businesses, key figures in reconstituting Toppstodin, an old electricity plant
while already existing businesses received a boost in the new on the outskirts of Reykjavik. A kind of grassroots mini-Tate
atmosphere. The spectrum is broad, encompassing fashion, Turbine Hall, the building is used by a small army of designers,
textiles and clothing, such as Geysir, Sruli Recht, Elivogar and computer start-ups and artists. The night I was there a Sigur Rós
Rendur, 3D, product and graphic designers such as Berlinord, inflected post-psychedelia band were going through their

6 – Vik Prjonsdottir’s
SeaBlanket clothing au natur Dreamland highlighted
7 – Vatnavinir’s (‘Friends of
the success of the Nordic
Water’) project countries, particularly
the Danes’ effective
development of design,
making culture a major
cultural export
6 Marino Thorlacius

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sound-check, the music wafting through the still present old
turbines. I wondered if they could persuade Kraftwerk to add
in an extra special gig on their next tour.
Magnason has also been involved in Hugmyndahúsið, the
House of Ideas, two harbourside warehouses providing spaces
for start-ups of any kind. Not dissimilarly, in the south an early
FabLab was launched, expanding into an island-wide network.
Vík Prjónsdóttir working with the Arts Academy, started up a
collaborative project with farmers across the country, titled
Designers and Farmers. By the time it ended in 2012, the project
had woven the two hitherto disconnected communities together
in a network of initiatives. ‘What connects these projects is the
concept of using what we have here,’ wrote Vík Prjónsdóttir’s
Brynhildur Pálsdóttir in an email, ‘...the resources, the materials
and the production that is available.’
Iceland’s international stars were also busy: Björk helped
found Náttúra, an organisation whose explicit sustainability
agenda fused the singer’s well-known biophiliac love of nature
with technology. Harpa, the collaboration between Iceland-
Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, Danish architecture practice
Henning Larsen and Reykjavik practice Batteriíð, opened in 2011
to provide a major venue for Reykjavik’s thriving music scene, as
well as conferences and events.
After the crash, the completion of the Harpa project and
building hung in the balance before funding was eventually
guaranteed, its completion generally understood for its
10
162
B335-152-P-Iceland-ph2.indd 162
9
psychological message as much an architectural statement over
adversity. Ingvarsdóttir says: ‘Imagine how negative a reminder
it would have been if there’d been a half-completed building and
a big hole in the ground.’ (Batteriíð incidentally, is the same
practice that designed Alcoa’s eastern Fjardaál aluminium
plant.) Although very few architecture projects were around in
the post-crash aftermath, a series of nature centres were begun
in the country’s newly protected Snaefellsjokull National Park in
the far west, with the first completed by Reykjavik practice
Arkis under the mountain glaciers of Hellisandur.
The Best Party, currently in the process of dissolving and
merging with another new party, Bright Future, has pushed
city policy in what today are thoroughly mainstream ways:
cycle paths, local urban regeneration across the city, including
first tentative steps at Copenhagenisation with the Breytingar á
Hofsvallagötu, a painted-road bike path. It has also tried to
act as a brake on energy use, moving the energy policy of
Reykjavík Energy, Reykjavík’s energy company, towards a more
sustainable direction.
Nationally, the new administration sought to support the
fledgling creative industries, commissioning reports, helping set
up the Icelandic Design Centre, and the annual DesignMarch
festival, and strategically supporting projects around the
country. A 2011 report, Towards Creative Iceland: building local,
going global, provided the first objective analysis of the value
of the creative industries. At the beginning of the century,
8 – Icelandic Academy of
Arts 2014 final design project
9 – Reykjavik Trading Co
10 – Dogg Design
11 – Studiobility’s Eldleiftur
11 Marino Thorlacius
04/07/2014 10:25
 11

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 12

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In some parts of Europe’s
reset architectural
landscape, a new politics
of materials has been
emerging... Norwegian
practice TYIN Tegnestue
contends that wood is
a democratic material
— anyone can potentially
use it and afford to use
it. The inverse is the case
with aluminium
13
design, whether at the level of fashion, gaming, marine
technology or prosthetics, was something new in Iceland, still
essentially a young country. Where before the cultural industries
seemed both incomprehensible and anathema to the ruling
political elite, Halla Helgadóttir, the Design Centre’s director,
points to how things are different. ‘The discussion has changed,
which has been a huge improvement,’ she says. ‘It was difficult
before with the old politicians; there was no media, and no
discussion of the questions.’
Yet, the change has only been gone so far. In spring 2013 a
coalition of the two centre-right parties, The Independents and
the Progressives, were returned to office. There is pragmatism
in both the voices of Helgadóttir and Jakobsdóttir about the
current situation. This year’s National Design Policy, conducted
by the previous administration but accepted by the new
government demonstrates the change. ‘It didn’t become
political,’ says Helgodóttir with relief in her voice. Also a new
constituency — the younger, more internationalised businesses
— recognises the need for the wider economic base. ‘Fifteen
years ago sustainability was very peripheral, you were seen as
odd. Now it is part of the main discussion. That is an
improvement,’ states Jakobsdóttir. Helgadóttir echoes the
sentiment: ‘Sustainability is a real interest and a social issue
among the young. It’s growing more and more.’ At the Art
Academy there is a flourishing interest in sustainability as
process, ideology and social structure rather than as designing
14
B335-152-P-Iceland-ph2.indd 165
14
objects. ‘After the crisis the focus on product design shifted
somewhat from commercial objects to alternative working
methods and sustainability,’ states Ingvarsdóttir.
Much more mobile than older generations, often studying
in Nordic and European cities, the current student cohorts’
cosmopolitan interests chime with peers and friends across
Europe. In the age of social media, Wikileaks — partially
coordinated from Reykjavik — transparency is as much a
generational vision as one specific to any distinct Icelandic
group, though also highlighting the growing distance with
traditional, older generational thinking. At the same time, there
are signs that the volatile pre-crash atmosphere is beginning to
ratchet up again, with tourism, the country’s new economic
growth sector, expanding rapidly. ‘Tourism’, remarks the
Academy of the Art’s Ingvarsdóttir ‘is the new aluminium.’
‘Everyone’s building hotels, says Steve Christer, the British half
of the husband-and-wife team of Studio Granda, with Icelander
Margrét Hardarsdóttir, before calculating upwards of 40 hotels
currently on the way up across the capital. ‘It’ll be the death of
this country,’ he concludes winsomely. For others
it was the tourist industry that pulled Iceland through the crash’s
aftermath and, it ought to be noted, was part of Magnason’s
Dreamland alternative menu to heavy industry.
From 340,000 visitors in 2004 to 780,000 in 2013, there
are worries that the tourist rush is out of control, and Iceland’s
most precious asset, its stupendous, dramatic, overpowering
12 – Studio Granda’s
Hof-Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson
home
13 – Colours are inspired by
the volcanic hues of the
Krafla area
14 – Lighting design at the
Make it Happen exhibition
165
04/07/2014 10:27
 15
natural interior, increasingly vulnerable to decimation. The most
popular tourist sites are already suffering, with rare mosses and
lichens losing out underfoot.
Heavy industry is also on the march again. Political changes
about the future of the wild Thjórsárver wetlands in the midst
of the Highlands, long under threat and more recently under
the protection of Nature Reservation, are again at risk of
hydro-power and aluminium development. This spring, Björk, in
a reprise of the Hætta concert a decade earlier, was the main
draw for another protest charity concert, this time in Harpa’s
cavernous concert hall. Organised by INCA and collectively titled
STOPP! the concert also featured Patti Smith as special guest and
a line-up of younger Icelandic bands intent on highlighting what
they clearly feel could be a new dangerous chapter in the
country’s environmental history.
‘The only thing that will stop them is demand — the market
demand,’ states a rueful Magnason as we sit in the Harpa
restaurant. In the east of the country Magnason and all the other
environmentalists have been proved right. Despite reassurances
before the project began, the lake around the dams has died,
the ecological systems ruined. In Dreamland, Magnason makes
a case, citing the aircraft industry, that all the aluminium already
manufactured is enough for the industry’s needs if reuse and
recycling systems were in place. All things being equal, many
166
B335-152-P-Iceland-ph2.indd 166
aluminium plants are not actually needed. To which, of course,
needs to be added that this isn’t the way the world works. But
Iceland makes visible and highlights the general invisibility of the
politics of materials, so often sited in the out-of-mind, faraway,
developing world. In Britain the construction industry’s latest
focus is currently embodied energy, which prospectively adds
another layer to the only too well-known fact that aluminium
is one of the most energy-intensive materials being produced.
In some parts of Europe’s reset architectural landscape,
a new politics of materials has been emerging in the past six years.
The young Norwegian practice, TYIN Tegnestue, contends that
wood is a democratic material — anyone can potentially use and
afford to use it. The inverse is the case with aluminium. Not only
is it inaccessible, but the processes by which it is produced comes,
if one stops to reflect for a minute, at a profoundly destructive
cost. If the hi-tech booster mavens of Rogers, Piano and Fosters
celebrate and sell the hi tech aluminium path as ecological in
nature, Magnason and his environmental confreres may propose
a visit to Kárahnjúkar or the Highland Thjorsarver wetlands. For
those who argue rhetorical simplicities, for instance from inside
the architectural bubble, about absolute design freedom (freedom
from what? freedom for whom?) these attempts to find another
way away from Big Aluminium in Iceland is today’s rejoinder,
from tomorrow’s all too interdependent planet.
15 – Sun at midnight -
Henning Larsen’s Harpa
performance centre in
Reykjavik harbour
04/07/2014 10:27
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25/06/2014 11:03 AM
 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BUILDINGS

Words Shumi Bose

Portraits Paul Raftery

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 Although Rotor is well known for its curatorial forays,
its own practice has thus far remained obscure. What
exactly is its practice? Is it and architect? Crucially,
does it do buildings? We meet half of Rotor’s
non-hierarchical office, to discuss architecture, and
life and death in material terms

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 2
1 (previous spread) – Four
cardinal members of the
Rotor collective from left:
Lionel Devlieger, Tristan
Boniver, Maarten gielen and
Renaud Haerlingen
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B335-168-P-Rotor-SB PH2.indd 172
2 & 3 – Usures, Rotor’s
curation of the Belgian
Pavilion at the 2010 Venice
Biennale of architecture,
captured the simple poetry
of patina
2 & 3 and following spread LEFT PagE eriC Mairiaux
4 – Boniver, Devlieger,
Haerlingen and gielen spoke
with Blueprint’s Shumi Bose
during the ongoing 2014
Venice Biennale
04/07/2014 10:32
 ‘There are parts of the practice that are practically invisible
— and which benefit from that privacy. Not all of our activities
need to be “dezeened”,’ observes Maarten Gielen, one of Rotor’s
co-founders. In the run-up to my meeting with the Brussels-
based collective, I encounter puzzlement from even my well-
informed peers: What exactly is its practice? Are they architects?
Crucially, does it do buildings?
Yet Rotor is no stranger to the pages of this or almost all
other design magazines. Its curation of Behind the Green Door,
as directors of the 2013 Oslo Architecture Triennale, brought
more people than ever before to that event, investigating
the ‘universal’ (and highly debatable) goal of sustainability.
Another prominent curation project brought Rotor to London,
as the team behind the montage of Progress, the 2011 OMA
retrospective held at the Barbican art centre. Rotor’s semi-
formal display strategies — with drawings tacked on with
masking tape and rough arrangements suggesting an exhaustive
work in progress — perfectly captured the Dutch megafirm’s
exposure of its own methodology.
The most prominent platform came just a few years into
Rotor’s history, when it was selected to art-direct the Belgian
Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale of Architecture, itself
directed by Kazuyo Sejima. For its pavilion, called Usures —
which translates most accurately as wear, as in wear and tear
from usage — it installed elements of buildings removed or
salvaged from their context, showing the patina acquired from
years of use. The effect was as poetic as it was simple: each
isolated fragment — a worn stair tread, a flaking handrail —
holding untold narratives within a fourth dimension of time.
Anecdotal beginnings in the mid-noughties mark Tristan
B335-168-P-Rotor-SB PH2.indd 173
Boniver and Gielen as the original protagonists of Rotor’s motley
crew. As an intense young student, Boniver was seeking some
cheap solutions for a community infrastructure project —
a play-area on a public beach — without compromising on
quality. Gielen enters the story as a sort of Robin Hood-turned-
Del Boy figure; self-taught, he was at the time sourcing arcane
and low-cost materials for a sociocultural group. Both had an
epiphany when they realised that used and discarded building
scrap could given a useful afterlife. Instead of answering
requests for materials, Gielen began to offer diverse materials
— ‘Maarten would come with a container full of stickers, or little
red plugs,’ remembers Boniver — and these materials became
the source for ideas.
The territory where Rotor operates is certainly
architectural, but at first glance the firm seems to situate itself
somewhere between site-specific installation and demolition
junkie (happily, neither ‘site specific’ nor ‘upcycling’ are terms
ever used during our long and numerous conversations).
In 2008, Rotor received a commission to explore how this
social economy could work with salvaged building components.
‘We did a kind of survey of what was possible in Belgium and
also abroad, in the UK, Holland and the USA. Very quickly
we became experts in the field of construction waste,’ says
Gielen. The name Rotor was originally given to a database —
hence the ‘db’ part of the group’s website address — intended
as a comprehensive directory of construction waste. Thus the
idea of a ‘rotor’, or lifecycle in material terms, defines a practice
whose output ranges from curation to demolition, through
research publications, interior design and artistic residency,
and yes, even building.
173
04/07/2014 10:33
 In fact, Rotor announced itself through its first building,
which arose from a necessity for work space. When an
irresistible plot coincided with an obliging landlord and access
to a cache of scaffolding and other salvage, the group created
an undeniably eye-catching structure, a translucent box
seemingly taped together and hovering over a void (I’m later
told that this space was allowed for the land owner to park his
car). ‘We needed a temporary structure to house ourselves, but
it was absolutely not intended to be seen,’ explains the intensely
thoughtful Boniver, ‘In a way, it’s like architecture came towards
us, rather than us taking a place within it.’
Ambiguity around Rotor’s identity is not new. Indeed,
it is cultivated by a practice that self-consciously tries to define
alternative approaches to architecture. ‘It’s something we’ve
been thinking about in the office as well,’ confesses Boniver.
Currently, the ‘office’ includes eight fixed members — some
of whom call themselves architects — and around the same
number of ‘floating’ collaborators. In terms of office hierarchy,
‘it’s a bit like a rock band’, reflects Lionel Devlieger, at 42 the
oldest core member. ‘There is definitely one but it is unnamed.
It depends on the question at hand; we all have complementary
competences.’ In a softly spoken baritone, Devlieger recounts
how he joined the group in 2008: ‘I had just finished my PhD
— on 16th-century Florentine architecture theory, which is pretty
remote. After that I decided to get back to practice, which
I combined with teaching. These guys were students running
a workshop, but they had a kind of earnestness and professional
attitude that I didn’t find elsewhere, an eagerness which
compelled me to join them.’
The same earnest attitude must have compelled the directors
5 6
174
B335-168-P-Rotor-SB PH2.indd 174
of the Parisian retail conglomerate Galeries Lafayette, who were
impressed by the group’s 2010 Belgian Pavilion. In 2012, Rotor
was invited to mark a new venture for the Lafayette empire:
the Fondation D’Enterprise Galeries Lafayette, a creative hub
for innovation and artistic production in the centre of Paris.
Incredibly, Rotor managed to turn the brief, along with the
Foundation’s approach towards its newly acquired 19th-century
building, upside down and all around. In advance of shutting
down for most of the heavy renovation (the architect appointed
is none other than OMA), the Fondation Lafayette planned
a two-day event in late 2013, to inaugurate the new initiative
in the company of an invited network of artists.
Rotor was appointed for the ‘scenography’. Its radical
counter-proposal suggested rethinking the whole event,
proposing a building ‘clean-up’, which would enable it to be
used as a creative workplace for months. ‘Our contribution
to help them came from our own experience in Brussels,
where having the space allowed us the possibility of forming
our intentions,’ relates Renaud Haerlingen, who studied
alongside Boniver but joined the group in 2010. ‘This is a 2,500
sq m building in the centre of Paris, 500m from the Centre
Pompidou: a great location, but where no one has the space
to think, let alone work. If the purpose of the Fondation is to
enable creative production, we thought the best way we could
help them to think would not be to make space for a specific
two-day event before closing it down, but essentially to allow
it to remain open and productive.’ From the opening of
‘Lafayette Anticipation’ in September 2013 the productively
‘hacked’ space has hosted a programme of artist residencies
and happenings, which came to a crescendo this July.
5, 6 & 7 Lyndon dougLas
04/07/2014 10:33
 7

5 & 6 – Rotor’s montage of 7 – Painted lines in the

the OMA retrospective at the Barbican courtyard trace the
Barbican in 2011 framed the angular, open tectonics of
Dutch megafirm’s prolific, the OMA-designed Maggie’s
research-driven energy Centre in Gartnavel, Glasgow

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 8

At the Grindbakken in
Ghent, a 160m-long
piece of dock-yard
infrastructure, Rotor
was invited to ‘interfere’
in the process of urban
renovation, preserving
moments of interest and
traces of occupancy

8 – Rotor selected points

to protect within the
structure to denote previous
uses and occupancies,
from material corrosion
8 single image bottom left eric mairiaux

to humanising graffitti

9 – The Grindbakken is
a 160m-long structure
originally used to transfer
sand and gravel between
trucks and boats. The
space is accessible 24/7

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 9

177

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 LAFAYETTE
ANTICIPATION:
A PRECURSOR

Dotted ‘cut’ lines and tape

were used to communicate
between Rotor’s creative
team and four local site
workers. Sliced walls quickly
became shelves or seats

Working with a building set

for demolition gave Rotor
the freedom to chop and
slice through walls, removing
previous demarcations of
space and function

Tilting the suspended ceiling

in this room allowed for more
light while upsetting the
connotation of a
stereotypical office space

Very few new materials were

used to transform the space;
instead, elements were
imaginatively repurposed

Rotor’s work on the

Fondation Lafayette
premises was both surgical
and therapeutic; taking
pieces away to allow for
more freedom

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 The Fondation quickly capitulated to Rotor’s brilliant logic,
which challenged the clients to put their money where their
mouth was. The plan involved a intensive live-in programme,
best described as building therapy. ‘We had to arrange the
exhibition for the Oslo Triennale, so we had limited time,’
Haerlingen continues. ‘We told them we could only give 20 days.
And we would not make planning or decisions in advance, but
would be on site with a team of highly skilled people — thinking,
solving problems and making decisions “on the spot”.
The block, on the aptly named Rue de Platre in Marais, had
previously sheltered a nomadic community of office workers;
at one time it housed a service-block of carpentry workshops.
Rotor’s primary goal was to liberate the space from any pretexts
and constraints, revealing its possibilities. The first spatial
intervention involved the smallest possible element: the key.
Rotor advised the Fondation Lafayette to drop its defensive
‘anti-squat’ strategies in favour of open access — again,
it responded with wholehearted agreement.
Where most architects might have been tempted to strip
back to a tabula rasa, Rotor leaned towards making the biggest
effect with the smallest of means. Boniver and Haerlingen
describe precise, diagnostic interventions to remove the
‘problem’ — that being ‘the thing that carries the previous
connotation, which makes it uninviting for others to enjoy it’.
‘If you have a suspended ceilings, vinyl wallpaper and carpet
tiles,’ Gielen chimes in, ‘You’re in an office space. It’s not an
exhibition space, it’s not a space that invites people to dine —
what you do in an office space is very specific.’ In one room at
the Fondation, Rotor’s surgery raised a polystyrene-tiled ceiling
on one side, setting it at a disruptive diagonal. This change was
10
10 – Rather than simply
sourcing salvage, Rotor uses
its design expertise to
understand human attitudes
towards materials and space
B335-168-P-Rotor-SB PH2.indd 179
immediately effective in upsetting the office ‘connotation’ — but
it is practical rather than aesthetic. Originally the suspended
ceiling — cheaply and retroactively installed in a bid towards
efficient lighting and services — blocked the upper half of the
window opening. Raising the ceiling allowed better access to views
and to daylight, transforming the space. It was one of many small
moves — not gutting and whitewashing, but a series of alterations
to render the space readable, open to use — less didactic. At the
same time, bold slices through walls denote a gleeful abandon
in carving up a building whose days are numbered. The sketchy,
suggestive new spaces have hosted dinners, workshops,
presentations and installations over the past months.
If the cavalier energy of Rotor’s approach to building is
inherent in its youth — indeed Boniver completed his studies days
before work began on the Belgian Pavilion in 2010 — then it must
be the group’s collected years that compound its sensitivity, not
only towards the fabric of buildings but the entire food-chain
of protagonists involved in its production and lifespan. ‘Since the
beginning of our practice, we’ve noticed that a lot of intelligence
and attention is applied up until the opening of a building, and
then it drops off completely,’ Gielen explains.
Rotor’s curatorial projects maybe internationally visible,
but in and around its native Belgium, the group’s network and
relationships within the construction trade are its greatest
assets. Building trust with developers and property dealers
has taken time, as had learning to deal with the semi-formal,
second-hand economy. In translating the concerns of both
parties, Rotor has been able to engage with highly specialised
companies doing interesting things with materials, but that are
completely out of scale with stock-market-indexed developers.
‘If you have a suspended
ceiling, vinyl wallpaper
and carpet tiles, you’re
in an office space. It’s not
an exhibition space, it’s
not a space that invites
people to dine. What you
do in an office space is
very specific’
179
04/07/2014 10:34
 11 12

These are issues that Rotor has dealt with first-hand.
For example, the unusually large windows in its own office,
composed of some lovely glass ‘partition walls’ recovered from
the offices of a well-known denim brand, were not of a standard
size, and so had to be included within a wood wall. ‘You learn
a lot about the very elements of architecture, about how things
are put together, through demolition and salvage — much more
than at school,’ says Renaud. It’s a question of developing the
market, and helping people to be aware of how one might use
salvaged materials rather than new components from a
catalogue. ‘We’re trying to add some value into that process,
to see how the skills of an architecture office can inform that
process,’ adds Maarten, combining sagacity with an innate
understanding of wheeler-dealing. ‘In two years from now,
if we’re running our own sort of demolition mediation service,
that would be a dream project in a way.’ That’s a far cry from
the intentions of most young practices, it is safe to say.
However, the group has no intention to become a scrap
dealer. For Rotor it’s about the strategic deployment — maximum
efficiency of materials, with minimum disruption to the
processes of construction. ‘The margins are so tight that if we
try to overextend, it will collapse — others have tried before,
of course,’ says Renaud. ‘You can’t be romantic about trying
to use everything. Taking something down and storing it is an
investment of time and money.’ Gielen adds to this pragmatism:
‘It’s about being the right interface. While large companies want
to make their own things from scratch, smaller companies can
take a lot of salvaged materials, and we are able to help them
understand how they might use them. One phone call might
alert the group to news of a few hundred hardwood storage
units, to be stripped from a bank. The next phone call might
be from the V&A to discuss its rapid-response collection strategy.
‘The range of questions in our mailbox is very nice.’
We discuss more projects in progress, and a few recently
completed odysseys: a community centre, strategic consultation
with the Lafayette’s property department and an interior fit-out
of the MAD museum in Brussels, as well as the recently printed
catalogue for Behind the Green Door, reflecting on the group’s
curatorial action-research on the topic of sustainability. None
of this really crystallises Rotor’s identity, although there’s
a definite flavour to its projects. ‘If you have to make new
buildings in order to legitimise a relationship to the discipline of
architecture, then maybe that’s not what we are,’ quips Boniver.
As consumers of so much virtual culture, we value Rotor’s
recognition of materially embedded narratives and qualities:
witness the ineluctable trends for distressed finishes and
retrogressive interfaces with modern technology. But Rotor
has none of this romance towards the tools of its trade. ‘Most
of what we do is about revealing potentials, but that can be
at the scale of the boards in a hardwood floor, or it can be
at the scale of the real-estate strategy for Lafayette,’ Devlieger
intones. ‘You could say that the pleasure for us is relative
to the scale of the reveal, in terms the space and its potentials.’
The ambiguity surrounding Rotor’s practice is as concrete
as it needs to be; it is more telling of architecture’s own self-
perception, and the shifting posts of legitimacy within an
ever-expanding field. If Rotor’s continued success is anything
to go by, these changes are exciting: merging beauty and
pragmatism with the visceral truth about buildings, their life
and death.
11 & 12 ERIC MaIRIaux

11 – Rotor’s rudimentary 12 – Despite an ongoing

self-built office used
borrowed scaffolding and
a free plot; the only caveat
was leaving a parking space
for the owner
tension with the discipline,
the office staked Rotor’s
claim as an architecture
practice. It’s been thinking
about it ever since

180

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 Dutch courage

Words Christine Gravemaker-Scott

Photography Olivier Middendorp

182

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 Alain de Botton is putting theory into practice.
The writer and commentator on philosphy, art and
architecture has recreated his book Art as Therapy at
the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Selecting works of art
and prints from the museum he has grouped them
under populist headings and used ubiquitous yellow
sticky notes alongside them to help viewers form a
more personal way of responding

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B335-182-P-Botton-ph2.indd 184 04/07/2014 10:39
B335-182-P-Botton-ph2.indd 185 04/07/2014 10:39
 2
1 (previous pages) – The
sticky note aims to subvert
traditional painting labelling,
offering a different, if not
particularly deep, take on
this Bart van der Lek
186
B335-182-P-Botton-ph2.indd 186
2 – Living Architecture:
model for Peter Zumthor’s
Secular Retreat, between the
resorts of Salcombe and
Hallsands in Devon, due to
be completed in 2015
2 & 3 Living Architecture 4 FAt / Living Architecture
3 – Living Architecture:
constructed from Danish
hand-made bricks, the John
Pawson Designed Life
House/Tŷ Bywyd in Wales
is due to open next year
04/07/2014 10:39
 Alain de Botton was everywhere during Amsterdam’s
‘month of psychology’. He was in every newspaper you opened,
every news-channel you watched showed him as he launched
Art is Therapy, at the Rijksmuseum, followed by the
inauguration of the city’s branch of his ‘School of Life’. The
city was completely ‘em-bottonised’.
He has a high, sometimes challenging, profile that tends to
polarise opinion. On meeting him you are struck by his energy
and high level of enthusiasm, but there is also a certain naivety
and shyness, compounded by his conservative, school-boyish
look with a penchant for uniform-style blue shirts. The friendly
chap next door; a likeable, witty, ‘geeky’ type of guy.
After observing him over three days in Amsterdam, one has
to be impressed — blue shirts aside — at his genuine drive. His
enthusiasm is infectious and his knowledge impressive, his talks
are delivered at high speed without a pause, but always with a
smile. It is difficult to take offence to someone who seems
genuinely optimistic.
For those not fully aware of who Alain de Botton is, here’s
a potted profile: the Swiss-born philosopher is a resident
of London, author of at least 12 books, public speaker and
presenter of radio and TV programmes. He is also the co-
B335-182-P-Botton-ph2.indd 187
founder of social cultural enterprises such as Living Architecture
and the School of Life. The ‘School’, which runs a variety
of programmes and services on how to live wisely, started
in London in 2008 and has now expanded — and continues
to — into a number of countries. Always interested and
motivated by visual stimuli and its effects, particularly so when
it comes to architecture, de Botton was made an Honorary
Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2009,
in recognition of his services to architecture.
‘Architecture matters because of what is in front of our eyes;
the places we inhabit hugely determine who we are,’ de Botton
says. ‘Our identities are not stable. We need the help of an
optimistic, kind, dignified external environment to help our
inner states.’ His book Architecture of Happiness explores
and addresses the effects of philosophy and psychology of
architecture, the power and emotions it inspires, how it affects
our lives, happiness and well-being, and how to become more
aware of them and learn from that (as with art).
In 2009, he co-founded the not-for-profit organisation
Living Architecture, allowing the UK’s middle classes to holiday
in some truly outstanding houses — designed by the likes of
MVRDV, NORD, and soon John Pawson and Peter Zumthor. The
4 – Living Architecture:
Grayson Perry and FAT
combined to create A House
for Essex which will open its
doors later this year
187
04/07/2014 10:39
 aim is to get the public up close and personal with exciting
buildings, to experience living, eating and sleeping in them,
thus enhancing the appreciation of modern architecture.
Another book by de Botton, Religion for Atheists, made him
come up with the idea of building an atheist temple in London,
a project that inevitably met with much opposition from middle
England and a number of non-believers, including high-profile
atheist Richard Dawkins. For now, the project is ‘on hold’. But
de Botton — who likes a bit of controversy and is not easily
daunted — immediately enthuses to me about another temple,
the ‘Temple to kindness and delight’. This is a Living
Architecture collaboration between British artist Grayson Perry
and now disbanded FAT architecture. The Hansel-and-
Gretelesque house in Essex is the next Living Architecture project
to open, scheduled to start taking paying guests this autumn.
De Botton has a raft of accessible — some say too accessible
— philosophy books to his credit on a wide variety of subjects
including travel, architecture, religion, work, love, sex and
status. His aim and hope is to simplify psychological wisdom.
It was the book Art as Therapy, published in 2013 and written
by de Botton and philosopher/art historian John Armstrong,
that sparked off the idea for the Rijksmuseum ‘intervention’.
188
B335-182-P-Botton-ph2.indd 188
In the book, they look at how works of art can be
approached in a more personal way and used as a therapeutic
tool to help people lead more fulfilled lives, even help with some
of our dilemmas, big and small, that we encounter in our daily
lives. De Botton has long thought of culture as being something
that should shed an explanatory and consoling light on our daily
lives: ‘It’s an approach that I’ve had since I was a teenager, and
it’s how I myself use and respond to art.’ It’s the kind of language
that is always going to appeal to some and annoy others.
The opportunity — of taking it all a major step forward, off
the page and into the museum — came with a chance meeting of
Wim Pijbes, director of the Rijksmuseum, and Alain de Botton.
The discussion that followed went something like this: de Botton
to Pijbes ‘You’re doing it all wrong!’ Pijbes to de Botton ‘OK,
show us how to do it properly!’
To be given this chance at this magnificent and much-
revered 19th-century cathedral-like museum was a dream, albeit
frightening and daunting. De Botton, who has had a fair share
of criticism for his thoughts, writings, approach and especially
so for Art as Therapy, now had to put theory into practice.
Books, according to the philosopher, ‘how marvellous they may
be, cannot on their own change very much. The widespread
5 vincent mentzel
5 – Alain de Botton at the 6 (opposite page) – The
Rijksmuseum in his de rigeur subtle neon sign outside the
blue shirt museum announces the show
04/07/2014 10:39
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B335-182-P-Botton-ph2.indd 191 04/07/2014 10:39
 8

7 (previous pages) & 8 (this

spread) – the aim of the
project was to involve people
on a ‘what can it do for me’
level with the artworks

192

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 193

B335-182-P-Botton-ph2.indd 193 04/07/2014 10:40

 belief that they can strongly hold back progressive causes and
the effectiveness of enlightened minds’. De Botton adds that he
feels hugely indebted as this radical project was a daring move
for both the museum and its director.
A total of 150 works of art throughout the museum and
40 prints from the archives were selected for Art is Therapy.
The prints were divided into five themes and placed into
‘cabinets’ under the populist titles fortune, money, politics,
sex and memory. Guided by the geography of the building,
the decision was made to put labels with the selected works.
Work with the well-known Dutch designer Irma Boom — who
is responsible for all the graphics for the museum — started.
Her concept, based on yellow sticky notes, was further
developed and these ‘extended captions’ can be found
alongside the selected works of art, but also elsewhere in
the museum, the entrance, cafe and shop.
Despite the large green flashing neon sign Art is Therapy
on the grand building’s facade, the intervention itself is slightly
disappointing. The sticky notes’ approach should have been
even stronger, bolder and more legible. One has to be quite
194
B335-182-P-Botton-ph2.indd 194
determined to find all the philosophical comments within the
walls of the museum. But in case you missed some of the yellow
stickers, Boom has also created a Post-it style catalogue/pad,
containing all the words of wisdom and the images to take home
and reflect on.
De Botton and the Rijksmuseum hope that people will take
inspiration and follow this more personal way of responding
to art, with less emphasis on where it comes from and who
made it and more on ‘what can it do for me’. De Botton
reckons their mission is accomplished ‘when something that
was considered odd becomes normal — to look at a picture and
think about yourself, your life situation — then I know we have
succeeded’. And he reiterates that they are ‘not telling people
what to think, it’s just a suggestion; if they don’t like it, then
move on; the show will be gone in September!’
That said, it’s not likely to be going away completely.
De Botton would like to permanently open up this new,
therapeutic way of reading art, other venues are lined up
and the natural next step is to go digital — conversations with
Google have already started.
9 – ‘The museum is only a
prelude to the well-lived life.’
reads the note – make of it
what you will...
04/07/2014 10:40
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Untitled-8 1 13/02/2014 14:16

 motown to mountain

Words Herbert Wright

Photography Janis Dripe

196

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 Gunnar Birkerts, one of America’s greatest post-war
architects, transformed modernism with metaphor
and materiality. Now aged 89, he has realised an
extraordinary glass mountain in the land of his
birth — the new National Library of Latvia, a
symbol of the country’s independence struggle
from the Soviet Union

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B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 198 04/07/2014 10:46
B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 199 04/07/2014 10:46

Before it reaches the Baltic Sea, the river Daugava flows
north past strange land-based shapes. They stake out a great
capital city, Riga. First, on a long mid-river island sliver, is the
EU’s tallest structure, the 368m-high Riga TV tower, a graceful
Eighties’ tripod structure on parabolically-curved orange legs,
inherited from the USSR. Then, on the east side, a magnificent,
massy Stalinist-style skyscraper, the Latvian Academy of
Sciences, faces the historic spires of the Hanseatic old town
a little way downstream. The tallest is St Peter’s Church, its spire
elements separated vertically like fuel tanks under a rocket nose,
all topped with a golden rooster 123m above the street level.
Opposite, shortly before a few emerging capitalist skyscrapers,
stands the latest skyline addition, separate and distinct: an
extraordinary icy asymmetric triangular slab topped with a
jagged crown. This is the new National Library of Latvia, and the
final realised work of one of the USA’s great late-modernist
architects, Latvian emigré Gunnar Birkerts, now 89. ‘It’s a very
emotional building for me’, he told me.
Birkerts was born in Riga to parents who studied Latvia’s
culture and folklore. He made his first architectural drawing in
1942 when he was 17. As the Soviet Union reoccupied the country
in 1944 he fled westwards. At Stuttgart’s Technische Hochschule
he mastered furniture design and architecture and graduated in
1949. Immediately he set off for Detroit, hoping to work with
legendary Finnish-born Eero Saarinen, but instead he found
work with Perkins and Will in Chicago. Saarinen eventually had
a job for Birkerts, thrusting him into a north Detroit nexus of
some of post-war modernism’s most important figures, including
two future Pritzker winners with whom he worked on the
seminal General Motors Technical Center at Warren, Michigan —
Cross Section
1 Auditorium 9
2 Lobby
3 Meeting rooms
4 Atrium
5 Bookcases behind vitrine screen
6 Book storage floors
7 Reading room floors
8 Skylights
9 Apex for special events
6 7
5
200
B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 200
1 (previous page) – the new
National Library of Latvia
standing proudly over the
river Daugava
Robert Venturi (at the very next drawing board, he recalls), and
Kevin Roche. Birkerts also worked on Saarinen’s extraordinary
raised brutalist volumes of the War Memorial Building in
Milwaukee. He won the first of numerous awards in 1954. He
maintained a continuous output of furniture design, a field
in which a jury including Alvar Aalto awarded him a 1956 prize
in Italy. He was later with Minoru Yamasaki, working on Saudi
Arabia’s Dhahran Airport. In 1959, Birkerts set up his own
practice in the Detroit conurbation, and became a professor
at the University of Michigan.
His first commission was 1300 Lafayette East, Detroit (1963),
a co-op tower adjunct to the residential Lafayette estate by Mies
van der Rohe, of whose regimented facades Birkerts disapproved.
Strong, surprising forms were to come, but no hallmark style
emerged. Rather, as he tells Blueprint, ‘every building is
different. I don’t have that many buildings that are urban, they
end up being lone-standing buildings’. The common thread is a
continual originality in composition, engineering and materials.
At the iconic Federal Reserve Bank, Minneapolis (now Marquette
Plaza), completed in 1973, he hung office floors from catenary
cables, their curve iconically marked across the glass facade.
Birkerts says that, of his American portfolio, it was ‘the most
interesting, the most forward building’.
An interest in metal technologies dates back to 1958 and an
unrealised design for an aluminium house. It continues in key
works including the red metal skinned triangular Corning Fire
Station in upstate New York (1974), the stainless-steel surfaced
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (1972) and the almost
Gehry-esque Corning Glass Museum extension (1980), of which
Birkerts says he is most proud of and ‘the first one where I depart
2
8
4
1
2
04/07/2014 10:46
 3

2 – Conceptual sketch by 3 – The main entrance at 4 – By day, windows on the

Gunnar Birkerts from 1990, the library’s south end steps riverside facade evoke the
as the Castle of Light out from the main riverside verticality
metaphor emerged facade, the apex space is
illuminated

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B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 201 04/07/2014 10:55

 5

5 – The lobby with its floor of 6 – The wood-lined

polished granite gives access Auditorium, in which the first
to the library through four rows of seating can be
barriers (right) and opens slid under the stage
into the atrium above

202

B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 202 04/07/2014 10:47

 from orthogonality’. Although its exterior floating, flowing strips
are visually different, this is the project which Birkerts says is the
most similar to the new National Library: ‘Both have metaphors
as concept, so they are expressive, have organic forms
supporting my material choices — stainless steel and special
glass.’ Later Birkerts incorporated dashes of PoMo, such as the
shiny Capitol-like dome on the University of Iowa College of
Law (1986), or the playful columns holding up the entrance
canopy into the freeform spaces of the Kemper Museum of
Contemporary Art, Kansas City (1994).
Birkerts invitation to design Latvia’s National Library arrived
on Christmas morning 1988. ‘There was a call from a committee
of Latvian architects,’ Birkerts recalls. This was when Gorbachev
had already allowed the forces of national identity to stir, but still
two years before independence from the USSR in 1991. There had
been intense interest when an exhibition of Birkerts’ works was
held in Riga earlier in 1988. ‘I knew a symbol would be exactly
what they needed after freeing themselves from the Soviets’, he
says. ‘The question was identity.’
Writing in 1994, Birkerts referred to the ‘organic synthesis’
of his creative process, in which each parameter is considered
‘before conceptual combustion can take place’. Further, he wrote
that ‘allegiance to history and culture, and not simply the mode
of the day, is essential to the lasting quality I strive for in my
architecture’. That would be particularly so in Latvia, where the
magic cultural ingredient was found in the fable about a sleeping
princess atop a mountain of glass, whose smooth surface defeats
would-be suitors attempting to scale it to reach her. It’s
something he recalls that Latvian schoolchildren were taught,
and the metaphor here is that the sleeping princess is freedom.
Ground Floor Plan
5 4
4 4
1 Entrance
2 Lobby
3 Auditorium
4 Exhibition space
5 Restaurant
6 Access to library
7 Service area
B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 203
The Glass Mountain defined the National Library’s form in
sketches from 1989, and Birkerts says ‘people embraced the idea’.
Then, an alternative metaphor came forward: independence as
a sunken castle of light that rises from the dark depths. The poet
Mikus Krogzemis (aka Auseklis) described this in 1873 and it was
put to music by Jāzeps Vītols in 1889. The resulting choral song,
Gaismas Pils (Castle of Light), is almost a national anthem,
and its performance in 1985 is credited as stirring Latvia’s
reawakening as a nation.
But a castle is not a mountain, so Birkerts adapted his design
with ‘physical projections’, notably the glass skylights on the
great slope of the south-facing roof, but it was not the only
major change to happen in the 20 years between concept and
construction. The original design was longer, spanning the small
street at the south of the riverside site, but budget limitations
cut back the building’s footprint, and ceiling heights were
lowered to fit in more floors to compensate for lost area. In the
final design, it still offers a huge 40,455 sq m, more than recent
landmark libraries in larger European cities, such as Mecanoo’s
Library of Birmingham (35,000 sq m, 2013 — see Blueprint 330)
and Yi Architects’ Stadtbibliotek Stuttgart (20,225 sq m, 2011).
Of course the new library is national, not local. Ginta
Zalcmane, head of the library’s information service department,
says that its two million books, ranging from a 1586 church
handbook to telephone directories, are less than half the
collection. Periodicals, posters, manuscripts, maps, music in
a century of formats and more are in the national collection,
currently spread across six locations. The State Library was
established in 1919 in a 1909-built bank building in the centre
of Riga. There, light falls through exquisite etched-glass windows
2 3
203
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B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 204 04/07/2014 10:47
B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 205 04/07/2014 10:47
 on to ancient banks of card-index drawers, exposed wiring trails
across peeling plaster in rambling back-corridors, tiny old lifts
shudder, and in the labyrinthine damp basement, dense storage
shelving heaves with books under low ceilings. It’s romantic and
beautiful, but in 2010 a floor collapsed. Things had to get real.
The new library is 170m long and 44m wide, orientated
almost north-south along the river, from which it is separated
by a garden with paths jagged like tree roots. A supplementary
plant building by Birkert’s local architecture collaborator
Gelzis-Smits-Arhetips (the practice of the late Modris Gelzis),
rectilinear in solid grey with blue glass and discrete despite its
four storeys, is to the south. The library entrance is at the
northern end, stepping forward towards the Stone Bridge that
crosses directly to the Old Town. No section of the 15,300 sq m
stainless-steel roof is flat.
The library is a concrete structure clad with glass, its higher
floors in a steel frame, which was topped out at a height of 68m in
May 2011. Up there, a steeply pitched glass structure erupts where
the long steepening slopes of roof would meet. This two-storey
apex glass house, on levels 11 and 12, is where the metaphorical
princess would have slept, but it will now host special events.
The view is extraordinary, with St Peter’s Church exactly aligned
across the river.
Throughout the building there is wood: Canadian maple
flooring and Latvian birch panelling for the walls, which here
merely enclose lift and stairs. An enclosed staircase (one of two)
descends from level 11, its metal walls coldly bouncing light.
All stairs and bannisters are wood, at Birkerts’ insistence. From
level 10 down, the building is effectively three separate slices
laminated together. Offices are situated in the slice behind the
west facade, facing inland, their windows forming horizontal slits
with steel bris-soleil strips along them.
A great internal drama lies in the building’s central slice.
Below the glasshouse apex, three more stacked glass structures
rise vertically, then angle back into the northern roof slope.
These skylights sit above the library’s astonishing central feature:
a huge eight-storey atrium. Inside each skylight in the atrium’s
upper reaches, parallel sets of triangular vertical fins hang, as
sharp as shark’s teeth, channelling light deep into the interior
space expanding below, wider with each floor down. From levels
two to eight, the south side of the atrium is bounded by a great
continuous vitrine, angled as if a glass skyscraper facade was
frozen as it toppled forward. It exposes bookcases on six levels,
the ends of book storage areas that continue behind. Reflecting
how traditional Latvian farm storage buildings called klets placed
more valuable goods higher up, Birkerts has specified the same
for more precious volumes.
In front of this glass wall, a scissor stack of staircases
descend across the atrium, which is spanned on each floor
by metal bridges carrying walkways, defining a clear square
void from skylights to lobby. Columns around the atrium are
marked with vibrant shades of the colours of Latvia’s banknotes
before it switched from lats to euros, changing on each floor
for different denomination. This descent through red, then blue,

7 (previous page) – The 8 – Looking down through 9 (opposite page) – A great

National Library of Latvia lies the atrium, which is traversed sloping glass wall on the
beside the river Daugava, a by scissor stairs and north side of the atrium
little south of Riga’s railway connecting bridges showcases books and fronts
bridge the book storage areas

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B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 207 04/07/2014 10:47
 10

11

10 – The bookcase vitrine 11 – Light from skylight is

reaches to level 8, the lowest channeled by triangular fins
of three floors cut by the as sharps as shark’s teeth
array of atrium skylights

208

B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 208 04/07/2014 10:56

 then yellow, and so on, animates the great atrium’s otherwise
pristine continuum of metal and wood.
There is more colour, but it is subtle — hues woven into the
grey carpets spanning the reading rooms off of the atrium and
spreading along the eastern slice of the building. Much of the
1,200 reading places will be here, looking out on the river. The
windows are arranged as vertical strips in the eastern facade, like
a histogram, referencing the verticality of birch — as Birkerts says:
‘The birch forest is as Latvian as they come.’ The reading rooms
get larger going down, and on level 3 they split to create free
open space between them. The biggest continuous upstairs space
of 1,500 sq m is on level 2, and will be for social sciences.
Escalators descend from here, through a mezzanine level
with a big information zone to the ground floor, where the wide
lobby has polished granite laid in a traditional Latvia linen-weave
pattern. The lobby is bounded by exhibition spaces, a restaurant,
cloakrooms and lifts. To the north, the building angles out at the
ground from the riverside facade, reaching towards the Stone
Bridge with an extension defined by glass triangles to provide the
main entrance. At night, it takes on an aspect like IM Pei’s Louvre
pyramid. This end also hosts a 400-seat auditorium, with its own
triangular skylight erupting from the roof slope. The basement
contains service entrances and meeting rooms.
From glass apex crown to basement, Birkerts has discretely
qualified the expanses of wooden wall panelling with ribbed
sections. The wooden furniture he has conceived for use
throughout has a simplicity and finish reminiscent of Alvar
12
12 – The National Library’s
apex is aligned opposite the
123m-high spire of St Peter’s
Church. The Stone Bridge is
to the left
B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 209
Aalto’s. The material interplay between wood and hard glass and
metal that Birkerts creates is ubiquitous, and the effect is crisp,
yet understated compared to the spatial drama of the atrium and
the sharp angles popping up everywhere.
The new library opens in August. Construction (excluding
fit-out) came in at €163m — extraordinarily, the budget set in
2008 when work began. This January, 14,000 Latvians formed a
2 km human chain to pass books from the old to new libraries. In
2015, it will host the EU presidency and fill with politicians and
bureaucrats, but it belongs to the people. Hopefully, that includes
the Russian-speaking Latvian minority as well — at least the fire
evacuation notices are in Latvian, English and Russian. Many
historical works are in German or Russian, and now English
acquisitions proliferate — 1.8 million items are in languages other
than Latvian, according to Zalcmane. They help make the project
national, rather than nationalistic.
Modern engineering and digital design make spectacular
buildings increasingly commonplace, but they’re still
recognisable as belonging to our time. The National Library,
however, is something apart; its peaks and slopes are almost as
much landscape as architecture. The reflective surfaces of glass
and steel might suggest science fiction, but they also echo the
keen air, crystal waters and silvery birch of northern climes. So
too its wood and light, the materials that inform its interiors. The
atrium’s angled heights, like a cathedral’s, has a sense of the
mystical. Embodying myth, physically anticipating the future,
and creating wonder, this extraordinary building is timeless.
209
04/07/2014 10:52

13
14
GUNNAR
BIRKERTS
From Massachusetts, where
the legendary Latvian emigré
Gunnar Birkerts has relocated
after a career based in Michigan,
he talks with Herbert Wright,
about influences, Latvia and
the new National Library
Blueprint: You admire Aalto, Asplund and
Saarinen. Is there something in the Baltic background
you all share that informs the architecture?
GB: We are all North Europeans, we have these
climactic conditions, we have the same vegetation
and all that. I was working with Saarinen. There
was something with us in common, otherwise he
would not have hired me, probably.
Blueprint: Yet you say architects and styles don’t
influence you. What is your creative process?
GB: I do synthesise everything in my mind. I don’t
have any attachment or particular interest with
any direction or philosophy or dogma —I have
design principles. I don’t believe in any architect’s
form-giving whatsoever. If I design a building,
I might look at a published building — not to be
influenced, not to do what’s been done before,
[but] just to stay away from influence. The mind
is not that clear that it would not reproduce
something it saw from years back.
Blueprint: Metal surfacing characterises your
portfolio and is central to the new National Library.
Does it spring from Fifties’ American optimism,
a futuristic Atomic Age dawning?
GB: I was influenced by that. And I went to Japan,
the [1970] World Exposition Osaka; there was
technology and urban movement and stuff. I was
influenced by that.
Blueprint: What was your experience of Latvia
during Soviet times?
GB: I had one or two trips, to give lectures and
210
B335-196-P-Latvia-ph3.indd 210
15
16
show what I was doing [in exhibitions]. There were
overwhelming crowds of people coming
to us and they liked it. You couldn’t talk about
intuition and the sub-conscious, and I use that
an awful lot in my architecture.
Blueprint: What Latvian architecture from the
Soviet period impresses you?
GB: The [Riga] TV Tower [1986, by Gunars Asaris
1934-88)]; that definitely was one. There was a
strong modernist in Latvia, Modris Gelzis [1929-
2009, designer of Jurmala Sanitorium, and
collaborator on the new library].
Blueprint: How did the form of the National Library
of Latvia develop?
GB: I’ll tell the story. My proposal was the Glass
Mountain, it was the right image. People embraced
the idea. Then a new idea came about the rising
up of independence, symbolised by a Castle of
Light that was sunk in the dark [and] should rise,
and it did rise. What did that do visually? It
changes stuff — how the light was defused into
the interior, it meant more terraces, physical
projections on the roof.
Blueprint: Is the building both metaphors at the
same time?
GB: Yes. There are many metaphors, it’s so hard
to take them and put them on the table. They are
amalgamated in this form.
Blueprint: How do you feel about the original design
being reduced in size?
13 CORNING MUSEUM Of GlaSS ExtENSION - phOtO by balthazaR KORab 14 DUlUth lIbRaRy- phOtO by tIMOthy hURSlEy 15 GUNNaR bIRKERtS pORtRaIt by JaNICE DRIpE 16 fEDERal RESERVE baNK - phOtO by balthazaR KORab 17 KEMpER MUSEUM- phOtO by tIMOthy hURSlEy
17
GB: The ceilings were lower than I wanted them to
be. The building was originally twice as big. It was
the same height but it went over the street at the
back. It was more flowing; it became less elegant.
Blueprint: What about the building’s colour?
GB: In the early models, the building was shown
as almost white. The building is basically concrete,
the glass is just skin, cladding. I stayed with the
glass. The problem is, it’s sort of grey-green. My
countrymen cannot quite adjust to that. They may
expect it to be like window glass. When you take
a big piece of glass, it’s green. I’m happy with it,
I just want everyone to be happy with it.
Blueprint: How was it to work in the metric system
after a career using imperial units?
GB: I was coming back to something that I knew
well.
Blueprint: Is the National Library of Latvia your
final great work?
GB: I’m not doing any more architectural work,
I’m just cleaning things up for the library.
13 – Corning Glass Museum 15 – Gunnar Birkerts. His
extension (1980): Birkerts career began in 1949 when
says it’s the building he’s he moved to the USA
most proud of
16 – The Federal Reserve
14 – The futuristic Duluth Bank, Minneapolis (1973)
Public Library (1980) refers
to barges and ‘speaks of the 17 – Among Birkerts’ museum
transportation of coal and projects is the Kemper
the Great Lakes’, says Contemporary Arts museum
Birkerts (1992) in Kansas City
04/07/2014 10:51
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Design Curial 17/12/2013
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12:03
 214 – 218
Process
Kenneth Grange has collaborated
with relative newcomer Jack Smith
to design a new seating range for
Modus
220 – 222
Process
Taking a look at how this year’s
Serpentine Pavilion, designed by
Chile’s Smiljan Radić, was
constructed
224 – 226
Event – London Festival of
Architecture
Cate St Hill and Shumi Bose review
three events from this year’s
month-long festival, which had
the theme of capital
229
Book – Where You Are
A collection of maps assembled
by a variety of writers, artists and
philosophers uses its format to good
effect says Ruth Lang
230 – 231
Book – Radical Cities
Across Latin America
in Search of a New
Architecture
Thomas Wensing discovers a book
on the future of cities in south
America that offers a thrilling and
compulsive narrative
MATERIALS Focus
237 – 251
Features: Mews by Barber &
Osgerby; Tile Mile by Russ
+ Henshaw
In two reports by Cate St Hill, Barber
& Osgerby gets some unique
inspiration from its adopted home
city of London for a new range of
porcelain tiles, while a modern
interpretation of a Turkish ceramics
tradition is recreated in an temporary
installation by Russ + Henshaw
252 – 258
Archive
We revisit Blueprint 112 (November
1994), in which our erstwhile editor
Rowan Moore interviewed future
superstar Rem Koolhaas, who was
just about to publish his seminal
book S, M, L, XL

233
Book – Comics: A Global
History 1968 to the present
Joel Meadows finds, that while its
intentions are good, this book,
which attempts to tell the story of
comics around the world, falls flat

234 – 235
Exhibition – Comics
Unmasked: Art and Anarchy
in the UK
The British Library’s latest
exhibition, focusing on the cultural
history of comics, fails to really
engage with Johnny Tucker

212

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 REVIEW

213

B335-212-R-Contents-JM-csh.indd 213 04/07/2014 11:13

 1

214

B335-214-R-Process1-ph2.indd 214 04/07/2014 11:23

 2 3

Process
Kenneth Grange has
collaborated with
relative newcomer
Jack Smith to design a
new seating range for
Modus. The overriding
requirement, insisted
Grange from the start,
was for comfort
by Johnny Tucker
4
These latest chairs and sofas from UK
manufacturer Modus lack the ooph
factor. That’s not a criticism, it has
modicum of oomph, but no ooph.
Ooph is that barely audible noise you
make when you reach a certain age
— and it’s really not that old — and
you sit down on a lowish sofa or
chair. But April has specifically had
the ooph designed out.
Created by Kenneth Grange and
Jack Smith — a working relationship
that Grange is keen to promote as a
true partnership – April is primarily
aimed at the contract market, but
Grange is hopeful that it will have
crossover appeal in the domestic
arena, and conversations are
underway with some large retailers.
Launched in Milan as prototypes,
April is a small family of pieces
ranging from an ottoman and
generous chair, through two and
three-seater sofas, to curved and
corner-sofa versions. Since then it’s
gone into production and Apriletta
has been added — a slimmed-down
version of the chair aimed at the hotel
and domestic sector. It’s also being
turned into a more extensive system.
As ever with furniture of this kind
the main visible constituents, those
of wood and fabric, are ultimately
customisable to whatever the client/
customer fancies, though Grange
adds: ‘I think for catalogue purposes,
we will gradually tease out a series of
fabric and appropriate wood finishes.’
There are three wooden leg
versions aimed at different price
points, and the one where the leg
also forms a partial exterior frame world with him and I’m very ‘I did a chair specifically for the Grange’s enthusiasm for
is particularly strong visually. commercially minded, working with elderly a little while ago and I was industrial design is completely
Kenneth Grange needs little if decent clients creating decent products. able to bring some of that profiling unabated and disarmingly infectious.
no introduction: Pentagram founder, ‘The brief from Modus was very to these pieces. We did a fair bit of A straight talker, you get the feeling
Parker 25, Metro Cab, Intercity 125, open,’ says Grange, ‘but from the modelling as well. So we felt very he would tell you if he wasn’t fully
et al. His collaborator on this is Jack outset I said that I wanted the comfortable about the ground we happy with the result. You know he
Smith, a graduate from the design comfort aspect to be a very big point. were on. I think we got the profile wouldn’t let something he was
products course at the Royal College The under-50 [year-old] is a very right; it’s touched the nerve of the unhappy with come to market, but
of Art in 2011. Smith had been a tolerant specimen, but over 50 you moment in a sculptural sense and it’s this fits the bill for him: ‘I must say,
student of Grange’s and had helped are very alert to discomfort. I’ve seen comfortable. It’s warm enough in its I’m tickled pink with the result.’
out on a number of previous projects. people over 50 sat in a chair where character to have a sense of comfort
Grange says: ‘This is the first time they’ve had a hell of a job to get out as well, especially the curved sofa.’
we have publicly declared our because it’s so low and so deep. And he is telling the truth —
1 – Kenneth Grange checks one of the material
association. It’s been very agreeable ‘That seems unreasonable to me. sitting in it proves a distinctly samples at the Modus factory
and I think we bring different In it’s simplest term it has to be high comfortable experience in an
2, 3 – Wooden frame and foam elements of the
experiences to the table. If I’m enough to get in and out easily and unassuming way, somewhat like the April prototype during construction
absolutely truthful, Jack brings much short enough that you don’t get back aesthetic, which has a quiet, but 4 – About to start cutting out material for the
more experience of the furniture ache. Primitive points, but important. insistent charm about it. two-seater prototype

215

B335-214-R-Process1-ph2.indd 215 04/07/2014 11:25

 5

6 7
‘From the outset I said
that I wanted the
comfort aspect to
be a very big point’
– Kenneth Grange

8 9

216

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 10

11

12

5, 6, 7 – Original sketches by Jack Smith for

different elements of the April collection

8, 9 – Variations on size and material of the

April chairs and sofas

10 – A rear view of the April sofa with the

frame leg variation, which is one of three
options with different price points

11 – One of Kenneth Grange’s leg construction

detail drawings

12 – The corner sofa seen from above. Grange

feels this is slightly more intimate, beginning
to bring sitters face to face. More modular
elements have now been added to this version

217

B335-214-R-Process1-ph2.indd 217 04/07/2014 11:23

 13

14 15
You know Kenneth Grange
wouldn’t let something he
was unhappy with come to
market, but this fits the
bill for him: ‘I must say, I’m
tickled pink with the result’

13 – A close-up detail of the frame leg

14, 15 – Comparing the two main leg variations.

A simpler/cheaper screw in the leg for the
underside is also available

218

B335-214-R-Process1-ph2.indd 218 04/07/2014 11:24

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 1

Process
This year’s Serpentine
Pavilion has been
created by Chilean
architect Smiljan
Radić. From a papier
mâché inception, the
final structure was
constructed using
GRP panels
Words and images by Johnny Tucker

Looking a little like an enormous,

particularly well-iced Krispy Kreme
doughnut, balancing on a some
pretty large sandstone rocks, the
latest Serpentine Pavilion has landed
in Hyde Park. 2
Except of course it hasn’t just
landed. As ever, it’s a pretty
substantial structure, part
architecture, part installation, all
pavilion. And those enormous rocks
help hide a not-inconsiderable
amount of steel work. It’s the result of
six weeks of extremely intense
on-site build and a whole design and
engineering process that’s been
going on since last Christmas.
‘The design process is always
exciting on a Serpentine Pavilion
because at Christmas you’ve got
nothing and then by 24 June, you’ve
got everything!’ says AECOM’s global
chief executive for building
engineering, David Glover. Aecom
was responsible for the engineering,
technical design services and project
management. ‘In the first four weeks
of the design, which is basically
January, you go through an amazing
3
constriction of ideas during which
you struggle constantly to make sure
you’re not strangling the vision. It’s
got to be pragmatic, you’ve got to
make it happen, you’ve got to make it
so that it gets the licenses, like health
and safety, fire. All of those things
have to be done, but you could also
kill that vision with all this right at the
beginning in January. Julia [Peyton-
Jones, co-director of the Serpentine
Galleries] is fantastic at this in the
curatorial mode. She knows just how
to bring out the important things
from the designer and then once
you’re there, you then have to start
on the materiality.’
Chilean architect Smiljan Radić is
the architect behind this latest
pavilion. His starting point for this

1 – Pavilion construction began on site in early

May not helped by plenty of rain

2 – By early June the structure was clearly

taking shape

3 – A view of the builders assembling the pavilion

4 – A crane was used to hold panels in place

while they were integrated into the structure

5 – A plan of the pavilion

220

B335-220-R-Process2-JM.indd 220 04/07/2014 11:09

 4

221

B335-220-R-Process2-JM.indd 221 04/07/2014 11:09

 6

was a papier mâché model he made in

reaction to Oscar Wilde’s story, The
Selfish Giant. This structure tries to
retain these origins, mimicking that
materiality by using GRP to build up
the structure in layers.
Essentially what you have here
this year is a bridge supported by
stones and ironwork. The structure is
then bolted on to this in a robust way
‘due to updraft’ issues. The GRP
structure was created off-site. Initially
a negative was made as a solid
polystyrene form using CNC cutters.
‘That was put into a big aircraft
hanger and then we let loose their
GRP guys who took the strips that
you’re looking at and started laying
until they got 12 layers, all over the
whole of form and made it in its
entirety. Then they took the saw to it,
cut it into 56 bits, cut the openings
and we shipped them down here.
‘The beauty of GRP is you just
re-stitch it back together. You can see
how the thing was made. What you
end up with is a fundamentally
7
hand-crafted piece. You could have
made joints so they bolted together,
but then you would have been able to
read the ribs, which would ruin it.’
Getting the thickness of the GRP
right to retain a level of translucency
was also key and a boatbuilding
expert was brought in to help with
that. GRP is also quite expensive so
there was a great deal of calculating
to be done to get the right thickness
that satisfied the building aesthetics
and integrity: ‘We were talking about
taking off millimetres of the shell
because every millimetre you put on,
the less translucency you have.’
For the launch the sun was
obligingly beating down on the park
bringing out the translucency
beautifully. Conversely at night the
internal strip of LED light makes the
structure glow ethereally. Glover is
brimming with enthusiasm about the
project that was pretty much finished
the night before. ‘I haven’t seen it
myself in full evening glory, but the
pictures from last night look beautiful
— they look fantastic.’

8 9
Time line
December - Architect chosen January
- design chosen (as above)
January/February - Aecom
undertakes technical design
March - Final design revealed to public
March/April - Fabrication begins
May - start on-site in London
23 June - completion
24 June - Press launch
26 June - Public launch

6 – Radić’s Pavilion looks like something from

outer space, or a Krispy Kreme

7 – A boatbuilder was brought in to make sure

that the structure worked practically
6 Iwan Baan

8 – The internal strip of LED light which gives

it its haunting exterior lighting

9 – The pavilion sits on top of a steel base

222

B335-220-R-Process2-JM.indd 222 04/07/2014 11:11

 Image: Black Lake by Dechem Studio

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Sav

tentlondon.co.uk

Media partner

Untitled-1 1 26/06/2014 11:37

 The most striking thing about
LFA event watching The Dilapidated Dwelling is
Two LFA events the prescience of all of its discussions.
highlight how gritty Made in 2000, it was conceived in the
glory days of the late Nineties, when
and realistic talk a progressive and savvy New Labour
about architecture Government suggested a technocratic
optimism for Britain.
and the built Contrary to the Britpop fanfare,
environment is not Patrick Keiller’s film (originally
limited to the sector intended to be screened on Channel
4, in four parts — it never was)
found a melancholia surrounding
9 June
the very places where we live.
Will Self: Architecture & Power,
In the years since the film was made,
and discussion between Will Self
technological advances — including
and Andy Beckett
remote workplaces, cheaper travel,
Kings Place, London
and the rise and rise of social
and
networks — have allowed one to feel
25 June
‘at home’ more or less anywhere, but
Film: The Dilapidated Dwelling,
the materiality of a home, and of
and discussion with Patrick Keiller,
owning one, has remained as a
Sam Jacob and Anna Minton
persistent crisis.
Kings Place, London
The premise that sets up the
Both events as part of London
film’s narrative is simple, effectively
Festival of Architecture
allowing an inside-outside perspective
Review by Shumi Bose
on the contemporary situation of
1
224
B335-224-R-Lfa-ph2.indd 224
housing in the UK. A disembodied
and ambiguous protagonist, voiced
by Tilda Swinton, has been away from
London for 25 years (so, according
to the film’s chronology, having left
in the mid-Seventies). During this
time, she encountered an indigenous
polar folk whose concept of
housebuilding diametrically opposed
our own: she invested ‘considerable
energy’ on the collective building
of large yet ephemeral shelters in
snow and ice. Although this barely
registers in the opening seconds of
the film, it is significant in throwing
our own values into relief. If not
content with communal igloos, what
are the things we want from a house?
Permanence, security and material
value; above almost all other things,
private investment.  building in the literal sense. If the
Terms like ‘barcode
facades’ give satisfying
texture and form to our
own and widely
experienced frustrations
Architecture as the
materialisation of private investment
is the topic at the heart of Will Self’s
diatribe tackling the LFA’s theme
of Capital — that is, both the capital
city London and its financial
machinations. Inevitably, though
not exclusively, housing comes into
it; those who live or even visit London
may be aware of the profound
shortage of housing, particularly for
those without the requisite of readily
available millions.
At the beginning of his lecture
(properly entitled When Liquid turns
to Solid: the Spatialisation of Capital
Flows in 21st Century London), Self
describes a conversation with Irving
Sellar, the developer behind The
Shard — London’s most prominent
view from the top fudges into a
benign expanse, down in the middle
floors (where the LFA launch took
place) one is better able to witness
the city — a prominent number of
cranes and construction sites suggest
04/07/2014 11:07

that London is indeed moving up.
Recent broadsheet coverage has
discussed the impact of foreign
investment in the city; last year TIME
magazine ran a story on London not
as the vibrant, cosmopolitan and
creative city that it undoubtedly is
(for now), but rather as a sort of
global safety-deposit box.
Sellar recommends that this will
continue as long as the city remains
attractive to ‘flight capital’, a rough
definition that describes the transfer
— legal or clandestine — of large
sums of money from one country to
another, in search of greater stability
and returns. (Its counter is capital
flight, where currency escapes the
problems of its native economy,
almost never to return.)
This is the reason impoverished
countries that are nevertheless rich
in natural resources never see their
fruits. More immediately, it is also the
reason why London’s property prices
stay inflated beyond reason, pricing
out swathes of would-be homeowners
B335-224-R-Lfa-ph2.indd 225
whose reasonable earnings pale
in comparison to the limitless
international sums seeking brick-
and-mortar (or steel and concrete,
or plasterboard and uPVC soffit)
repositories.
Rising above all of this,
filmmaker Keiller’s secondary
fascination is not with flight capital
but rather flight itself. Planes —
usually during take off — interject
throughout the otherwise grounded
sequences of his film; hardly a few
minutes of The Dilapidated Dwelling
pass without a loving shot of
mechanical ascent. ‘The airplane is
the symbol of the new age,’ wrote
Le Corbusier, and in this sense Keiller
follows a grand tradition of
modernism — although architects
from Daedalus to Da Vinci have also
dreamed of flying machines.
Keiller’s parallel between the
house and the plane is at least
twofold. Firstly, in terms of their
manufacture; the advances in the their
design construction are constantly
referred to as a foil for those made
in the art of housebuilding, which still
emulates historic methods as well
as styles. Secondly, and more subtly,
flight provides an opposition to the
earth-boundedness of dwelling. If
owning a house, or indeed building
one, is to root oneself to the ground,
then restlessness, postulates Keiller’s
narrator, is indicative of creativity.
Sociologists Doreen Massey
and Saskia Sassen corroborate the
dwindling importance of the
domestic realm, in social and
economic terms respectively; if
‘buildings for living in’ were at the
centre of architecture in the Fifties
and Sixties, architectural concerns
have gradually given way first to
corporate concerns, and later to the
culture industry. Set against the idea
of modern mobility, Massey ventures,
perhaps the nuclear family and the
nation state are concepts also in need
of refurbishment.
The Dilapidated Dwelling moves
through a series of Keiller’s trademark
dreamy montages, taken from plan
and car windows through the
suburban high streets, urban
potlatches of modernist towers and
Victorian back-to-backs, and through
decayed landscapes across England.
Much time is spent in the North — in
Leeds, York and Sheffield — linking
the idea of industrial heritage with
housebuilding. Why can’t
housebuilding be more innovative,
asks the narrator, in an echo of
postmodern right-thinking: why can
we not apply the same technocratic
optimism on a mass scale to the
problem of sheltering people?
The question justifies the
presence of figures like Buckminster
Fuller, Walter Segal, Cedric Price and
Martin Pawley, all of whom offer
commentary on the relationship
between architectural technology and
2
its potential for human benefit. Were
it not for the presence of interviews
with the late Price and Pawley, the
film could have been made today;
perhaps they would be replaced by
the proponents of the Wiki House
rather than the Wichita House.
Indeed the film’s protagonist is
continuously baffled by the lack of
ingenuity and innovation in building
homes; we pass by a plant which
simultaneously manufactures
branches of McDonald’s and flats for
the Peabody Trust, a philanthropic
organisation dedicated to social and
key-worker housing, but for the most
part neither critically noted architects
nor advancements in technology find
their way into the mass-housing
market. Prefabrication and
mechanisation threatened to
revolutionise the way people housed
themselves, but recent surveys
demonstrate our firm preference for
19th-century Georgian architecture.
If Keiller’s film asks questions
that remain relevant today, Will Self’s
discussion on speculative finance as
a driver of architectural production
acted as further affirmation. For the
audience, much of the appeal of
Self’s reading seemed to come from
his admittedly ingenious and unique
mastery of language, as well as his
characteristically tortured deadpan.
Wilfully restrained within the
confines of text-speak and hashtags,
we are enthralled by anyone with a
creative command. Although Self’s
‘argument’ (not that he claims
radicality) on the skewed
relationships between capital and
buildings is not so different to
the conversations we might have
in the pub, it is reassuring — even
comedically relieving — to hear
it phrased in such exaggerated,
visceral terms. Terms like ‘cockney
agglutinations’ of mismatched
skyscrapers in the City of London
and ‘barcode facades’ give satisfying
texture and form to our own and
widely experienced frustrations.
As a writer I concede to taking
a greater-than-average enjoyment
from words; I confess to throwing,
on occasion, an obscure descriptor
into an article for the sake of my own
pleasure. The slight danger in being
seduced by vocabulary — or indeed
moving imagery — occurs when the
point one is communicating loses out
to style; when what one remembers
is grotesque juxtapositions and
mellifluous syllables, rather than
the ideas constituted by their
composition.
Quite understandably, neither
event pointed to a specific way
forward for architecture — though
some interesting reflection on both
the production and consumption
of buildings entered the following
Q&A sessions. But the recognition
by Self, Keiller and the London
Festival of Architecture was warmly
appreciated by two sold-out
audiences. If nothing else, they
prove that a realistic, gritty and
contextualised conversation about
architecture and the built environment
is hardly limited to the profession,
but is rather of vital and urgent
importance to anyone who regards
London, and the United Kingdom
even, as a dilapidated home.
1 – Author Will Self with Andy Beckett (l-r)
2 – From Patrick Keiller’s film The Dilapidated
Dwelling
225
04/07/2014 11:08

LFA event
On Ettore Sottsass
Design Museum, London
3 June
Review by Cate St Hill
A conversation between Deyan Sudjic
and Ettore Sottsass’ widow Barbara
Radice provided a rare insight into
the life and work of the late Italian
architect and designer. Sottsass
always saw himself as an outsider,
‘he never felt like he belonged to the
establishment of architecture’, Radice
told the talk’s audience.
Nevertheless he became known
and respected as the founder of the
early Eighties’ Memphis collective
and for his designs for Italian
manufacturer Olivetti. ‘This is the only
fucking thing I’m known for,’ he once
said of his design of the red Valentine
typewriter for Olivetti. This talk
proved that he was so much more.
Born in 1917 to an Austrian
1 2
226
B335-226-R-Sottsass-ph2.indd 226
mother and Italian-speaking father,
Sottsass grew up in Innsbruck and
studied architecture in Turin. He
was interested in painting, but ‘not
fond of any institutional hierarchy,’
said Radice. ‘Colour was really what
drove him,’ added Design Museum
director Sudjic.
He spent most of the Second
World War in a concentration camp
in Yugoslavia, where he continued to
paint colourful watercolours, and
after the war worked on housing
projects with his father. For the next
10 years he lived in Milan, pursuing
his passion for painting. He exhibited
art, wrote for Domus and designed
posters, but ‘he seriously wanted
His widow said Sottsass
believed architecture
should be a container.
‘He had an awareness
of life and our being
here; he believed houses
should protect those
living in them’
to be an architect’ said Radice. He
travelled for a while in the Fifties to
New York and worked in the studio
of American designer George Nelson.
It was also where he met Ernest
Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, and
produced a number of photographs.
Back in Italy Olivetti rang him, a
call that led to a series of design
commissions for calculators,
computers and typewriters. It wasn’t
just the appearance of the objects
that appealed to Sottsass; he carried
out endless research into the
ergonomics of keyboards. Said
Radice: ‘He was really thinking that
design should make people aware
of their existence in the world.
He once said that the good thing
about Charles Eames is not that
he designed a good chair but that
he designed a way of sitting.’
In the late Seventies Sottsass
worked with a group of furniture
designers called Studio Alchymia
and shortly afterwards formed a new
collective, Memphis, named after
3
the Bob Dylan song. In the late
Eighties and early Nineties he
completed a series of private houses,
including one in Palo Alto for David
Kelley, designer of Apple’s first
computer mouse. According to
Radice, Sottsass believed that
architecture should be a container:
‘He had an awareness of life and our
being here; he believed houses
should protect those living in them.’
In his later years Sottsass’
passion was for travelling. ‘He was
very curious about life in general,’
related Radice. ‘He was very
interested in reading, in anthropology,
archaeology, geography and history.
He travelled to find things out and
learn things.’
The event was to mark the
publication of a new book, Sottsass,
by Philippe Thomé, published by
Phaidon, £100.
1 – A Sottsass’ watercolour, Appartamento
2 – Ettore Sottsass, in the Seventies
3 – The red Valentine typewriter for Olivetti
All imAgES EttorE SottSaSS and BarBara radicE / archivio EttorE SottSaSS 3 alBErto Floravanti
04/07/2014 11:06
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 T r e k
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Untitled-3 1 10/06/2014 10:41


Book
Where You Are
16 Writers/Artists/Thinkers
Visual Editions £35
Review by Ruth Lang
Blessed are the mapmakers, for they
shall inherit the earth — the scribes
of those power-driven definitions of
territory, those are the true history
makers. Yet cast adrift in the
placelessness of digital communities,
our increasingly web-driven lifestyles
subvert geographic and, in many
cases, political borders, to create what
was identified by Bruce Sterling at last
year’s Lisbon Experimenta conference
as a ‘post-nationality culture’.
In doing so, the nature of our
personal territories become
increasingly portable, our boundaries
intangible — we are Citizens of No
Place, in the words of Jimenez Lai.
So just how do we now define
ourselves within these non-linear,
mongrel identities, where eddies
of personal experience break down
boarders to create new unities
and forms of alignment outside
traditional definitions?
Such concerns are subtly
confronted in Visual Editions’ Where
1
B335-229-R-Maps ph2.indd 229
You Are, a compendium of varied and
beautifully formatted maps designed
by writers, artists and philosophers,
themselves breaking out of their
predefined categories to become
almost trans-cartographical, reading
and defining their own personal
territory through narratives, timelines,
diaries, photo essays, collage and
imaginary sketches. These touch on
themes of psychogeography,
semiotics and delineation as they lead
us through their personal domains.
Given the delightfully analogue
nature of the compendium, we are
given no shortcuts to the narrative.
This is particularly evident in the case
of Geoff Dyer’s The Boy Out of
Chippenham, for which the direct
engagement with the act of opening
and refolding (or trying to refold) the
map is destined to choreograph our
movements as we piece together his
childhood while cross-referencing
between lists, stories, diagrams, and
a bird’s-eye view of the territory he
never saw from such a perspective.
Dyer charts the key points of
orientation, but it is left to the reader
to determine the journey — physical,
temporal and psychological — made
in between.
Much like Massimo Vignelli’s
iconic NYC subway map, the beauty
of these pieces is in the reduction
to that which is important in order
to orientate oneself in the world.
Stripped of all superfluity, key
relationships are highlighted, and
otherwise intangible relationships
are revealed as a result.
This abstraction is not limited
to such new forms of mapping —
as Alain de Botton points out, even
a standard OS map is so removed
from our direct experience it can
leave us unable to see where we are
even when we’re looking right at it.
Anyone who’s tried to navigate their
way around (especially Venice) will
understand the frustration of trying
to orientate themselves without the
necessary perspective to step back
and identify key landmarks — a
scenario which is as much a
philosophical issue as an urban one.
Yet it is as much the places not
seen, the roads not taken, the life
stories of vanished citizens that are
tangible throughout this collection,
the subjective nature of the mapping
The act of unfolding
a map taps into a very
human anticipation at the
sense of adventure, of
setting out and of charting
our own territory
2
process facilitating a conveyance of
meaning and interpretation that can
otherwise be stamped out through
direct observation, such as
photography.
Denis Wood’s Paper Route
Empire explicitly captures and
questions the fragility of truth and
the manifestation of memory in
mapmaking, which has a tendency
to be morphed by our own personal
histories to fit with our view of where
we are now. Somehow the map we
hold in our hands is more believable,
yet in the process of becoming
directly quantifiable it also becomes
questionable. They become readings
as much as mappings, and it’s the
anomalies and gaps in between
which are as beguiling as the map
itself — as he so succinctly puts it:
‘In case you need reminding, the
map ain’t the territory.’
In publishing this collection,
Visual Editions took the novel
approach of releasing these pieces
in two parallel formats – one freely
available online, through which the
reader is able to scroll, adapt and
zoom at will; the other stubbornly yet
charmingly static. It’s to the publisher’s
credit that both maintain their
character, yet as with its other
publications it seems very aware that
its audience is bewitched not just
by the content but by the container,
and our desire to question what we
have directly before us through a
multiplicity of senses and activities, all
rooted in our own direct environment.
The act of unfolding a map taps
into a very human anticipation at the
sense of adventure, of setting out,
and of charting our own territory. It
embraces the lost art of getting lost,
the impreciseness of narrative and
interpretation in comparison to a
more binary digital culture, reminding
us to question our relationship to our
physical and cultural identities, and
how this relates to the positions we
adopt. As John Simpson states in
his contribution: ‘There is more to
geography than just going from one
place to another.’
It reiterates the importance of
knowing not only where you are, but
also how you are, and ultimately who.
1 & 2 – Each of the 16 essays in Where You Are
is presented individually as duly folded maps,
as a boxed set
229
04/07/2014 11:05

Book
Radical Cities —
Across Latin America
in Search of a New
Architecture
Justin McGuirk
Verso, £18.99
Review by Thomas Wensing
This is a riveting travelogue that
narrates the stories and lives of activist
architects, politicians and radical
communities in pursuit of a more
dignified existence for the inhabitants
of barrios, barriadas, villas miserias
and favelas across South America.
The title alludes to both David
Harvey’s Rebel Cities and to Le
Corbusier’s famous manifesto;
author Justin McGuirk is clearly
inspired by both the utopianism of
modernism in Henri Lefebvre’s Right
to the City, and by the anarchism
of John Turner, a British architect
who worked in disadvantaged
communities in Peru in the Sixties.
The book starts with a visit
to one of the Mexican superblock
housing estates. Tlatelolco was
a bafflingly technocratic and
gargantuan modernist estate
designed in the Sixties by Mario Pani
around the Plaza de las Tres Culturas.
‘South and Central America were
home to some of the greatest
experiments in urban living in the
20th century,’ McGuirk contends.
But however large, the projects were
2 class divisions expressed by the
´tokenistic´ in comparison to the
scale of the problems of poverty,
explosive population growth and
mass urban migration.
It is telling that in Tlatelolco the
modernist layer was superimposed
on an archaeological site, and centred
around a square adorned by Aztec
pyramids and a Spanish Colonial
church. It was supposed to be the
symbol of a bright future but was
not immune to the violence of an
oppressive regime and the effects
of natural disaster: before the Mexican
Olympics of 1968 protesting students
were murdered by the military and
during the earthquake of 1985 some of
the towers, which had been poorly
built by corrupt contractors, came
crashing down.
1
The estate continues to
deteriorate, since the state has largely
withdrawn from public housing
expenditure. Such, in a nutshell, are
the problems one continues to deal
with in South America and which
McGuirk emphatically explores.
‘Latin America is where modernist
Utopia went to die,’ he dramatically
asserts, and this sets the tone for the
argument for the more democratic,
egalitarian and inclusive urbanism
as practised by the communities,
politicians and activist architects in the
book. As such the book effectively
reiterates several points made by the
self-help pioneer John Turner decades
before: among others that favelas are
the primary urban condition of
growing cities, and that no state can
afford to finance the total demand for
housing, but more importantly that
the people themselves are best
equipped to build for themselves and
decide how to live, given the chance.
The comparison of the relative
merits of top-down, large-scale
housing programmes and the
bottom-up empowerment of self-help
programmes and participatory design
is one among many narrative strands
in the book, but the argument runs
much deeper than this. McGuirk is
spot on in his observation that the
argument for the support of self-help
programmes has been turned against
itself: governments withdrew from
public housing programmes, trying
instead to ‘manage’ the growth of
informal settlements, but in essence
accepted and reinforced the deep
favelas and the formal city. The
problem of housing was left to the
free market, architecture became
spectacle, form without Utopia, and
architects lost their social purpose.
The turn to neo-liberalism in
political-economic practices from the
Eighties onwards is, of course, not
unique to Latin America. But through
the IMF’s restructuring programmes McGuirk is spot on in his
in Latin America, the disastrous effects observation that the
of these economic policies are more argument for self-help

acutely felt. This in turn has led to
original and hopeful responses of
3 citizens, who despite the pressures of
laissez-faire, extreme poverty, conflict
and violence, continue to resist these
oppressive structures and collectively
build a better future.
McGuirk visits radical communities,
for instance Túpac Amaru in Argentina,
a collective movement which builds its
own houses, swimming pools, and
community facilities at a fraction of
the cost of regular house builders. He
meets with the squatters occupying the
Torre David, an empty and unfinished
office building in the centre of Caracas.
He explores the projects and picks the
brains of several activist architects,
including Alejandro Aravena of
Elemental and Alfredo Brillembourg
and Hubert Klumpner of Urban Think
Tank. And last but not least he meets
1 Iwan Baan 2 Thelma VIlas Boas 3 CrIsToBal Palma 4 Tomás GarCía PuenTe
programmes has been
turned against itself...
with ‘activist’ politicians such as
Antanas Mockus, a philosopher and
mathematician who became the
mayor of Bogotá and whose
unorthodox approach helped to turn
the city around. His political career
was launched on the platform of
‘No P’ — no publicity, no politics,
no party and no plata (money),
and he famously and successfully
employed 400 mime artists to
regulate the city’s unruly traffic.
We currently live in a neo-liberal
society, which is to say that our laws
and governments continue to be
dedicated to the promotion of the
ideology of neo-liberalism, and that
the opposition between corporate
power and the state has all but

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B335-230-R-McGuirk-ph2.indd 230 04/07/2014 11:04

 4
vanished. This collusion between state
and private interests has eroded the
rights of citizens and is a continuous
threat to democracy, especially in
the fragile economies of South
America. This generation of activists,
pragmatists and social idealists are
finding successful ways to address
poverty and inequality, and to my
mind their power lies in the paradigm
shift they bring about.
Inequality is one of the biggest
problems which needs to be
addressed at the start of the 21st
century and I think it is to McGuirk’s
credit for delivering a book that
strikes a hopeful tone, is multifaceted,
personal, and yet is realistic about the
challenges that need to be faced.

1 – A panoramic view from the Caracas metro

cable car, an infrastructural masterstroke
2 – ‘Ruins’ of favelas at Manguinhos, Rio
3 – The celebrated Quinta Monroy incremental
housing, by Alejandro Aravena & ELEMENTAL
4 – Alto Comedero, a ‘new town’ in the
Argentinian city of San Salvador de Jujuy

231

B335-230-R-McGuirk-ph2.indd 231 04/07/2014 11:05

 FX MayBlueprint
Burlington s310 taper.qxp_Layout
219x154 Ad.indd 1 1 17/04/2014 14:40 Page 1 04/07/2014 07:26

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with its subtle use of interlocking shapes
s310 taper has a distinctive undercut
detail set on a square tubular frame

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Book
Comics: A Global
History: 1968 to
the Present
Dan Mazur and Alexander Danner
Thames & Hudson, £19.95
Review by Joel Meadows
Comics creator Dan Mazur and
academic Alexander Danner have
bitten off a little more than they can
chew with this 300-page global
history of comics.
Interest in comics, both for
general readers and the more
analytically, academically inclined,
has probably never been higher, but
this book presents problems from the
opening page. Firstly, the existence
of comics as an artform predates the
arbitrary date chosen here to kick off
proceedings by a good six or seven
decades, with the turn-of-the-century
newspaper strips such as McCay’s
Little Nemo in Slumberland and
Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie
creating comics’ future environment.
Presumably 1968 was chosen
because it was the period that saw
American underground comics by
the likes of Robert Crumb and S Clay
Wilson come to the fore, but the
problem is that the ‘Undergrounds’
were created as a direct reaction
against what the creators saw as
1 2
B335-233-R-Comics1-ph2.indd 233
a conservative and atrophied
mainstream industry.
To my mind the other serious
flaw with the book is the basic
premise. The history of comics
around the world is a huge and
complex subject, and to try and boil
this down to a mere 300 pages is a
nigh on impossible task for anyone.
If you consider historical books on
cinema, a reasonable analogy, no
author would try to cover the entire
gamut but would break it down into
its constituent parts.
The forced brevity of the book
explains some of the rather odd
omissions: Japanese powerhouse
creator Katsushiro Otomo (Akira,
Domu) is covered quite extensively,
deservedly so, but none of his art is
reproduced. The same issue arises for
manga Lone Wolf & Cub, a series that
was the first to be translated for the
American market and was a trailblazer
for what came after, but none of artist
Kojima’s work is shown either.
There are other notable
absences: Italian artist Sergio Toppi,
whose five decades in comics was
massively influential, doesn’t get
The book has its heart in
the right place but the
sometimes arbitrary
choices indicate to me
that the subject is too
large and too nuanced for
one book to do it justice
a mention. The influence of British
creators and publishers gets only
a passing mention (the early days
of 2000AD), despite the fact that
Britain has punched above its weight
and now has a flourishing original
graphic novel scene of its own (see
review of the Comics Unmasked
exhibition, p234). Key UK publishers
including SelfMade Hero and
Jonathan Cape, don’t even warrant
a mention here.
American mainstream comics
have been fairly reflexive, with the
sizeable influence of American
independent and underground
comics reflecting back on the more
mainstream titles and creators. DC
Comics’ adult imprint Vertigo is
mentioned but only briefly, and only
its first few years are really discussed.
Visually, the book is all over the
place: there are a number of vivid
reproductions of key titles from the
creators and publishers discussed but
then there are pages with either no
images or a few rather uninteresting
selections. For something that is
addressing a highly accessible, visual
medium, for much of its page count,
it comes across as a dry and lifeless
treatise on comics’ cultural impact.
Some of the book is impressive
however, as it does cover Japanese
and French and more general
European comic history with
admirable erudition, contextualising
many of the key players who shaped
4 5
the industry’s destiny such as
Moebius, Billal, Peeters and Tezuka.
But the absence of any real
acknowledgment of the significance
of the UK and the American comics
industry in the past 20 years displays
a lack of knowledge on the part of
the authors, whose experience seems
to be limited to a very academic
approach to the entire subject.
Comics: A Global History: 1968 to
the Present has its heart in the right
place, but the sometimes arbitrary
choices indicate to me that the
subject is just too large and too
nuanced for one book to do it justice.
Sadly it feels to me like a rather token
effort from a publisher that has
spotted the interest in comics and
decided to capitalise on it without
any real thought. Roger Sabin’s
Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels,
published by Phaidon in 2001, is a
much more accomplished attempt
to achieve the same goal that Mazur
and Danner have attempted here.
The world of comics is a culturally
important and significant one with
a rich and diverse history, and it
deserves better than this.
1 – Cover to 2000AD#1, February 1977
2 – P Craig Russell art from Imagine#2, June
1978
3 – Igort Tuveri art from 5 is the Perfect
Number, 2003
4 – Javier Mariscal art taken from Una Noche
Particular, El Vibora #65, 1985
5 – Howard Chaykin art taken from American
Flagg #6, March 1984
3
233
04/07/2014 11:03
 1

Exhibition
Comics Unmasked:
Art and Anarchy
in the UK
British Library, London
Until 19 August
Review by Johnny Tucker

This is an exhibition trying so hard to

get across the message that comics
have played, and do play, an
important socio-political role — they
have serious credentials — that it
sometimes tends to forget just how
immediate, visceral and entertaining
comics are, and that a lot of the
medium’s impact is derived from this.
By trying to bring them so far
above ground in this way (in actuality
that probably happened in the
Eighties, with the rise of the graphic
novel), we’re maybe losing the point
that because they so often operate
beneath the radar they are able to
push the boundaries of tastes, while
prodding (often stabbing) away
at society’s mores, moving the
boundaries ever outward, for better
or worse. Where comics go, others
follow, particularly cinema.
This is not to say that comics
haven’t been visible for a long time,
stirring up the ire of the moral
majority. In the USA the comic was
perhaps more ubiquitous and quickly
came under the scrutiny of the
mothers of prevention, having to self
impose a sanitising code of conduct in
1954, before it was handed one.
In the UK the very first comics’
exhibition was in 1954, organised by
the NUT. It wasn’t so much an a
exhibition of them, but rather a
demonstration against them. It was
part of a popular tide, complete with
sensationalist tabloid headlines, that
ironically brought the very comics it
was trying to suppress to a wider
audience helping to create a stronger
comic culture in the UK.
There’s plenty of historical
context in this show, although it’s
1 & 4 TONY ANTONIOU 2 COPYRIGHT BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD 3 JAMIE HEWLETT
split up by theme rather than a
timeline. The exhibition itself has
been designed by one of UK comics’
undeniable greats, artist Dave
McKean. McKean has an immense
track record as a comic artist
including such gems as, Arkham earth to rest on a wooden easel at One of the exhibition’s fantastic manuscripts from
Asylum with writer Grant Morrison, the very end. strongest devices is Elizabethan occultist John Dee and
Black Orchid and Hellblazer covers, The show has six main areas, the Guy Fawkes’ mask... more recent black arts exponent
not to forget CDs and whole books which McKean treats differently, some now ubiquitous at anti- Aleister Crowley, although their link
including John Cale’s autobiography subtly, like Mischief and Mayhem, establishment gatherings to the world of comics seemed
What’s Welsh for Zen, and Heston for which the display cases are all tenuous even if the latter is
Blumenthal’s most recent couple at separate angles, to the pinstripe Sex is slightly hidden behind occasionally illustrated.
of books. walls of Politics: Power and People, pinky-red panels that open with One of the exhibition’s strongest
McKean has created a two-fold to larger interventions like creating Aubrey Beardsley illustrations. That devices, perhaps the hook it all hangs
physical design aided by a number a studio set (I thought it was a said, you have to work quite hard on, is the Guy Fawkes’ mask taken
of large-scale graphics that help bedroom — but then that is perhaps to find any prurient content. from the Alan Moore (writer) and
delineate certain spaces. A white equally valid in this context!) for Hero The other two zones are To David Lloyd (illustrator) comic V
ribbon — a virgin comic strip, with a Thousand Faces. See Ourselves and, at the end, for Vendetta. The protagonist is a
sometimes projected on — pulls you Lest some might venture in with Breakdowns: The Outer Limits of never-unmasked anarchist, bringing
around the show before coming to younger children, Let’s Talk about Comics, which includes some government to its knees and actually

234

B335-234-R-Comics2-ph2.indd 234 04/07/2014 11:01

 2 3

managing to explosively carry out in the studio set up, and a few video been nice to focus a strong spotlight USA and the very strong French (and
what Fawkes never did. The mask screens at the end showing Gorillaz, on and so help give the show a other European) comic industries
has now become ubiquitous at the musical creation of Damon Albarn change of pace. The likes of the would also have been interesting and
anti-establishment gatherings the and graphic creation of another UK aforementioned McKean, Hewlett and perhaps enlightening.
world over, from Occupy to G8 great, Jamie Hewlett. Moore and maybe a few other touch From the latter part of the 20th
Summit clashes. Life-size figures Now I’m certainly not one for points, such as the influential century, the UK has had a strong
wearing the mask unnervingly appear the cult of personality, but there are 2000AD. There is a democratic influence abroad and that would
in parts of the show, in particular the a number of seminal people in the UK flatness to this show that could have have been worth exploring too. It’s an
Politics: Power and People area. comics industry in the latter part of been avoided. And while the content interesting show, but it does lack
This is the masked anarchy of the 20th century who it would have is the UK’s, some context from the the vibrancy of its subject matter.
comics. As for the unmasked, well,
4
that comes from the rest of the
content, 80 per cent of which is taken
from the British Library’s archive,
which requires a copy of every UK
publication, so has a wealth of comic
material at its disposal. This brings us
to the crux of the matter, however,
and it’s something that is an issue
— and I guess always will be — with
every exhibition at the British Library:
essentially it’s always going to be a
series of books, open at a pertinent
page, sitting inside a glass display
case, however you dress it up. That
said, the other 20 per cent of material
really helps in this instance,
particularly the original artworks,
which help bring the process to life

1 – A V for Vendetta welcome at the entrance

to the exhibition designed by Dave McKean
2 – A disturbing Victorian strip comic
3 – Original Tank Girl artwork by Jamie Hewlett
4 – McKean has worked hard to move the show
away from the usual static display cases

235

B335-234-R-Comics2-ph2.indd 235 04/07/2014 11:02

 238 – 239 240 – 251 MATERIALS FOCUS
Features Blueprint promotions
In two reports by Cate St Hill, 240 Tile of Spain
Barber & Osgerby gets some 242 Stone Haus UK
unique inspiration from its adopted 244 Turkishceramics
home city of London for a new 246 GranitiFiandre
range of porcelain tiles, while 248 Iris
a modern interpretation of 250 Refin
a Turkish ceramics tradition
is recreated in an temporary
installation by Russ + Henshaw
PHIllIP VIle

237

B335-237-R-Focus-ph2.indd 237 04/07/2014 11:00


Study: Mews by
Barber & Osgerby
Inspiration for a new
range of porcelain
tiles from the
London-based
practice is drawn
from the city itself,
reports Cate St Hill
Design duo Edward Barber and Jay
Osgerby have called London home
since they met at the Royal College of
Art and set up their studio in west
London’s Trellick Tower in 1996.
Eighteen years later, a new collection
of porcelain tiles for Italian ceramic
manufacturer Mutina showcases their
love for the city.
Inspired by the capital’s great
variety of textures, from handmade
238
B335-237-R-Focus-ph2.indd 238
London stock brick to uneven
parquet flooring, as well as its
Victorian history of soot and heavy
smogs, and even its love-hate
relationship with the common pigeon,
the Mews collection of materials
comes in six earthy colours and three
traditional patterns.
Barber & Osgerby was first
introduced to Mutina by Spanish
architect Patricia Urquiola, who also
designed a range of tiles for the
company in 2009. There wasn’t
a brief for the project so the duo
started thinking about their
surroundings. ‘London was a really
great starting point for us to draw
inspiration from. We quite liked the
idea that conceptually London is built
on clay and that ceramics are
engrained in the fabric of our city’,
says Osgerby.
The challenge for Barber &
Osgerby was to create a variety of
tones and textures that referenced
the imperfection and irregularity that
we’re used to seeing across the city.
‘One thing we discovered when we
went to the production offices in Italy
was that the company is incredibly
advanced, it’s very, very good at
making things look very consistent
and very much the same,’ reveals
Osgerby. ‘But we wanted to challenge
that and create something which
had movement and depth. When you
look at London nothing is consistent,
everything is different. That was quite
an inspiration for us.’
The Barber & Osgerby practice
worked with Mutina for more than
two and a half years, working through
thousands of swatches to create
‘We quite liked the idea
that conceptually London
is built on clay and that
ceramics are engrained
in the fabric of our city’
a range of colours complementary to
each other. ‘It was a great idea, but a
complete nightmare to do,’ reflects
Osgerby. The names of the tiles also
reference London, with Chalk and
Fog leading the colour range from
cream to the greys of Pigeon, Lead
and the darkest colour, Soot.
And while the collection has
been designed for a number of uses,
both interior and exterior, it was
created with small homes in mind and
so manufactured in smaller modules,
including a chevron tile, an oblong
strip and a small square tile. But
Barber & Osgerby’s ambition might
extend a little further than the
domestic interior: ‘There’s no reason
why they literally couldn’t pave
London. That’s the hope anyway, we
just need to talk to Boris about it…’
1 – Colour and style options from Barber &
Osgerby’s Mews collection for Mutina
04/07/2014 11:00
 1

Study: Tile Mile by

Russ + Henshaw
A Turkish tile tradition
lives on in a modern
interpretation of the
Iznik design principles,
reports Cate St Hill
Ceramics in Turkey has a long and rich
history, starting in Anatolia more than
6,000 years ago when cobalt-blue
glazes were first combined with
Ottoman arabesque patterns and
elements of Chinese porcelain, called
Iznik. This style was the inspiration for
a temporary installation by London-
based architecture practice Russ +
Henshaw and Turkishceramics in one of
the oldest parts of Clerkenwell in May.
The Tile Mile, under the arches
of the 16th-century St John’s Gate,
featured two parallel mirrors that
infinitely reflected the vaulted ceiling
and colourful tiled floor. The designers
say the space was multiplied in the
reflection at the speed of light, so that
within seconds enough reflections were
created to take 70 years to count. The
effect was reminiscent of Istanbul’s
subterranean Basilica Cistern, with its
forest of columns and vaulted ceiling.
‘We wanted to create a modern
reinterpretation of traditional Iznik
design principles,’ Russ + Henshaw
says. ‘In particular we were fascinated
with decoration that featured infinitely
repeating mathematical patterns.
These mesmerising designs contain
both reflective and rotational
symmetry; a form of patternation that
inspired us to pursue the themes of
infinity and reflection through the
optical effect of mirrors.’
To further reference the theme
of reflection, the tiled floor was
designed to represent a mirror image
of the vaulted ceiling above. Divided
into 16 triangular segments by the
ribbed structure of the ceiling, it was
formed of some 7,200 tiles, which took
more than 100 hours to install by local
craftsman Colin Barber. The tiles were
laid in four quadrants, each containing
four patterns inspired by the colour
combinations and decoration of Iznik
ceramics, over a rigid metal deck
commonly used for stage sets.
For Russ + Henshaw it was
as much about inviting the public
to engage and interact with the
installation as the pattern of the tiled
floor. ‘It is all too easy for people to go
about their daily commute and take for
granted the built environment around
them,’ it says. ‘Our vision was to create
an intervention that would place
a focus on this spectacular example
of medieval design and engineering,
and to remind people of the beauty
within the city fabric.’
1 PHILLIP VILE

1 – Turkish ceramic tiles and mirrors create a

spectacular effect in the temporary installation

239

B335-237-R-Focus-ph2.indd 239 04/07/2014 11:00

 Tile of Spain

1
A new wAve of solutions
with spAnish tiles
The vibrant Spanish tile industry continues to
push forward the aesthetic and functional
capabilities of ceramic and porcelain, offering
inspiring advances for a wide variety of
environments. Solutions range from striking stone
and fossil effects to patterns that play with
perception – and from hi-tech digital solutions to
intriguing bas relief effects.

welcome relief (1,2,3)

As technology advances, the ‘3D’ effect of tiles
also moves on in terms of aesthetic options.
A wave of fresh textures is now available in
Spanish tiles, drawing from the fine traditions of
bas-relief, but re-invented for contemporary needs
and enabling a new vista of fascination when
applying easy-care wall tiles. Undulating reed
effects are a keynote motif, but also extruded
textures and embossed patterns.

precious pAlAeolithic (4,5,6)

Honouring the rare and noble stones featured in
the world’s grand palaces and museums, this
theme takes its cue from the past while proposing 2 3
a modern solution in a high-tech format. From
remarkable replications of glossy agate and marble
to the fine art of fossil hunting, a diversity of new
designs makes it easier and more cost-effective
than ever to install a luxurious mineral aesthetic.

plAying with perception (7,8,9)

An exciting array of designs are evolving the
‘geometric’ theme, often taking this into the
realms of optical illusion and surrealism. Whether
creating 3D effects by playing with repeating
patterns, referencing the work of abstract artists
or bio-mimicking the beauty of nature: an
engaging range of new aesthetics from Spain are
extending the horizons for designing with tile.

tile of spAin 4 5
Tile of Spain is the voice of the Spanish tile
industry, encompassing more than 100 tile
manufacturers. Renowned worldwide for an
inspiring blend of aesthetic and technical
innovation, Spanish tiles draw on a rich heritage of
skill and creativity, while remaining at cutting edge
of design. Manufactured in Spain and widely
available in the UK, these products embody the
spirit of an industry that prides itself on proposing
beautiful, meaningful and high-performance
solutions to flooring, wall coverings, furnishing
and external paving and cladding.

240 Blueprint promotion

Tile of Spain.indd 240 03/07/2014 17:14

 Tile of Spain
www.tileofspain.com

1 – Azulev ‘Sea’ White body

rectified wall tiles with relief
effect, in three colours,
30x90cm www.azulev.es

2 – Aparici ‘Cool’ Double-

fired rectified wall tiles with
embossed pattern. Multiple
colours, five different reliefs.
20x20cm www.aparici.com

3 – Peronda ‘Harmony
Brilliant Perle’ Glass mosaic
tiles with raised surface, in
black and white. 30x30cm
www.peronda.com

4 – Ceramica Mayor ‘Sea

Rock’ Stoneware collection
inspired by nature, in six
colours and three formats
www.ceramicamayor.com

5 – Inalco ‘Touche’
8 9 Ultra-white glossy marble
effect slimline porcelain tile,
100x100cm www.inalco.es

6 – Grespania ‘Jura Gris’

Fossil and quartz effect tiles
in three colours and two
formats www.grespania.com

7 – El Molino ‘Dynamic3d’
Optical illusion effect
ceramic wall tiles in three
colours. 33.3x66.6cm
www.elmolino.es

8 – Realonda ‘Kefren’
Porcelain 3D textured tiles
in three different finishes.
31x56cm www.realonda.com

9 – Natucer ‘Concrete Roma’

Range of versatile wall and
floor tiles in various colours
and patterns. 22.5x26cm
www.natucer.es

Blueprint promotion 241

Tile of Spain.indd 241 03/07/2014 17:14

 Stone Haus UK Ltd

242 Blueprint promotion

Stone Haus.indd 242 03/07/2014 17:15

 Stone Haus UK Ltd
www.stonehausuk.co.uk
01633 221 863
info@stonehausuk.co.uk
Stone Haus UK Ltd is a dedicated tile specification
company, primarily working with the designer and
architect to meet all necessary tiling requirements.
Our exclusively hand picked ranges, combined
alongside any ancillary items necessary to create
an extensive portfolio of tiles suitable for your
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Stone Haus UK Ltd offers an outstanding
professional contact, enabling you to design your
unique creations and fulfil your requirements.
ServiceS
Stone Haus UK offers a personal one to one
specialist contract tile supply service for Architects,
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from design to technical specification including
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Blueprint promotion
Stone Haus.indd 243
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Stone Haus UK offer a free next day sample
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Stone Haus UK offers the complete pool design
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243
03/07/2014 17:17
 Turkishceramics

Turkishceramics represents over thirty companies

that design and manufacture tiles and sanitary
ware. Ceramic production in Turkey has a rich
history and tradition, with the first ceramics being
created in Anatolia over 8,000 years ago.
Contemporary Turkish ceramic producers are
proud to continue this tradition, applying an
innovative and creative approach to a broad range
of products for both specifiers and consumers.
The history of ceramic production in Turkey
dates back to the primitive sculpture of prehistoric
Anatolia, the ornaments and crockery of the
Hittites and the ornate hand-painted tiles of Iznik.
These traditions have been coloured by the many
different civilizations that have evolved in the
Anatolian region.
In addition to this cultural history, geography
has played an important role. The abundance of
natural resources in Anatolia ensures high quality
ceramic products and these raw materials are also
exported for ceramic production outside Turkey.
During the middle of the 20th Century, the
era of mass-production began as ceramic
producers built factories to manufacture ceramics
on an industrial scale. Turkey has since rapidly
increased its share in the world ceramics market
and is now a global competitor in the production
of ceramic tiles and sanitary ware.
As well as being a world leader in ceramic
production, Turkey has some of the most
sophisticated technology and innovative products
on the market. Turkish ceramic producers work
closely with talented designers such as Defne Koz,
Yigit Ozer, Can Yalman, Ross Lovegrove and Dima
Loginoff to create exciting new products that are
beautiful and innovative. A number of brands
within the Turkishceramics group have been
awarded the Red Dot Design Award across categories
such as the Best Of The Best Award, which is
reserved for the best products in a category.
Recent projects in the United Kingdom, such
as the Tile Mile by russ + henshaw at Clerkenwell
Design Week 2014, have seen Turkishceramics
products being used in innovative new ways while
remaining true to the historic roots of ceramic
design in Turkey.

Turkishceramics represents the following brands:

Altin Çini Seramik Kütahya Seramik

Anka Seramik Pera Seramik
Bien Seramik Sanovit
Bocchi Seramiksan
Çanakkale Seramik Seranit
Creavit Serapool
Dogvit Serel
Duratiles Söğütsen Seramik
Duravit Tamsa
ECE Termal Seramik
Ege Seramik Toprak Seramik
Egevitrifiye Turavit
Esvit Turkuaz Seramik
Graniser Seramik Umpaş Seramik
Güral Vitrifiye Uşak Seramik
Hitit Seramik VitrA
İdevit Yüksel Seramik
Kale Yurtbay Seramik

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 Turkishceramics
Twitter: @landofceramics
Website: www.turkishceramics.com

Blueprint promotion 245

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 GranitiFiandre

246 Blueprint promotion

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 GranitiFiandre
GranitiFiandre S.p.A.
Via Radici Nord, 112
42014 Castellarano (RE), Italy
www.granitifiandre.it

2
MEGALITH Maximum is GranitiFiandre’s newest
asset. With its considerable size, offset by its
extreme manageability, the 1x1 m format combines
the qualities of big slabs with those of more
traditional formats: the aesthetics of these products
are maximised and they make any setting appear
visibly larger, while the lower 6 mm thickness and
the 1x1 m format reduce the weight per square
meter, thus ensuring the greatest ease of use.

MEGALITH Maximum 1m x 1m
Colours: MEGAWHITE, MEGAGrEy,
MEGAGrEIGE, MEGAbroWn, MEGAbLAck
Sizes: 1m x 1m
3
Thickness: 6 mm
Surface finishes: honed

4
1 – MEGALITH MAXIMUM /
MEGABROWN

2 – MEGALITH MAXIMUM /
MEGAWHITE

3 – MEGALITH MAXIMUM /
MEGABROWN

4 – MEGALITH MAXIMUM /
MEGABLACK

5 – MEGALITH MAXIMUM /
MEGABLACK

Blueprint promotion 247

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 Iris Ceramica

Iris Ceramica is the world leader in the production

of glazed ceramic and glazed porcelain tiles for
wall and floor coverings for residential, retail and
industrial projects. With a range of more than 50
collections totalling over 2500 items, Iris Ceramica
has been adding to the prestige of Italian-made
coverings world-wide since 1961.

FMG Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti constructs products

conceived to free the creativity of architects,
designers and planners by offering a large range of
man-made natural granites, stones, travertines and
stones suitable for the most widely varying
applications, from major projects to small
residential contexts. A genuine innovation, which
today enables FMG to offer the international
market a unique product.

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 Iris Ceramica
www.irisfmg.com
+39 0536 862111

Blueprint promotion 249

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 Ceramiche Refin

1
With over 50 years of manufacturing under their
belt Ceramiche Refin is one of the world leaders
in ceramic tile production. Based near Bologna,
the tile capital of the world, Refin produces over
6 million m2 of tiles per year. With their new
state-of-the-art factory and a Milan showroom,
they boast a prodigious output in terms of design
and manufacturing.

ReseaRch & Development

Innovation and creativity are the mainstays of
the Refin ethos. The research team works closely
alongside their in-house technical laboratory to
constantly develop new products. Advancing tile
technology is a vital component in enhancing
Refin’s reputation as a leader in this field.
In addition, DesignTaleStudio is a long-term
project giving creatives an opportunity to push the
boundaries of tile design. DesignTaleStudio
collaborators have included Alessandro Mendini,
Michele de Lucchi, Mario Bellini, Karim Rashid,
Luca Nicchetto, and Studio FM Milano.

poRcelain tiles
Ceramic tiles have grown in popularity thanks to
their ultra-high quality. Grés porcelain, as it is
often referred to, means the ceramic tile is vitrified
and compact making it exceptionally impact
resistant. Refin’s ceramic tiles are durable, stain
and scratch resistant, are suitable for indoor/
outdoor use, and are available in thousands of
colours and finishes. Refin tiles can be used in
residential, hospitality or commercial projects and
are frequently seen in public spaces.

laRgeR sizes foR BiggeR impact

Refin has introduced new sizes to their portfolio,
including two new maxi-sizes: 75x75 cm (this is
the largest size that can be installed by a single
technician) and 75x150 cm. The 75x150 cm, one of
the largest on the market, reduces the number of
grout lines, enhances the continuous effect of the
surface and allows for different sub-cuts. Maxi-size 2
tiles can also be used in ventilated facades.

oUt2.0 – poRcelain stonewaRe tiles

foR oUtDooR Use
OUT2.0 from Ceramiche Refin are 20mm thick
porcelain stoneware tiles suitable for outdoor
floors with traditional and raised installation.
OUT2.0 tiles can be dry-installed directly onto the
footing, gravel or grass, or they can be laid as a
raised floor using either fixed or adjustable
supports. OUT2.0 is easy and quick to install and
the floor can be immediately walked on. OUT2.0
tiles are available in a selection of finishes, from
natural stone to wood effect.

enviRonmental impact
All Refin ceramic collections meet the standards
of the prestigious Ecolabel European certification,
and the LEED-certified ranges incorporate pre-
and post-consumer recycled materials in their
production. Refin’s hi-tech manufacturing facility
ensures that it currently recovers 100% of its used
water, and 40% of its thermal energy.

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 Ceramiche Refin
T: 020 3603 1884 / 07503 778938
Email: ukstudio@refin.it
www.refin-ceramic-tiles.com

1 – OUT2.0 Bluetech tiles in

Vintage Charbon

2 – OUT2.0 Pangea tiles in

Barge Grigio

3 – Design Industry tiles in

Raw Grey and Oxyde Rust

4 – Design Industry tiles in

Raw Light and Raw Mix

5 – OUT2.0 Artwork tiles in

Grigio Strutturato

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 FROM THE ARCHIVES
November 1994
With all eyes on Rem Koolhaas as the curator of
this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale we rewind
two decades and take a look at Blueprint 112, in
which Koolhaas, on the cusp of architectural
superstardom, spoke to erstwhile editor Rowan
Moore. At the time of the interview Koolhaas was
celebrating the opening of an exhibition at MOMA
in New York, the completion of most of his
mini-city on the edge of Lille and his new book —
S, M, L, XL.
Moore described the book as ‘the Ulysses
of architectural publishing’, achieving the rare
status enjoyed by Le Corbusier’s Towards a New
Architecture. He found an overriding theme to
the book, which is that most of what architecture
once held dear — hierarchy, wholeness, unity,
consistency, tradition and symbolism — had
been blown away by things Koolhaas called
‘globalisation’ and ‘bigness’. This is more or less
the same theme Koolhaas had in mind when,
20 years later, he gave to the national pavilions at
this year’s biennale the theme of Absorbing
Modernity 1914-2014. They were asked to show,
each in their own way, ‘the process of erasure
of national characteristics in favour of the almost
universal adoption of a single modern language
and a single repertoire of typologies’. For the
results of this theme see our 30 pages of Venice
coverage, starting on page 56. CSH

252

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Mantis_quark:Layout 1 3/7/14 16:08 Page 1

Treat your iPad

Manufactured from solid aluminium,
with a unique high precision quick
release mechanism, 360 degrees
continuous rotation and 90 degrees
tilt for multiple viewing angles.

How will you view yours?

Stand for iPad®

MADE IN THE UK

©2012 Flatscreen Arms. Mantis, the Mantis logo, and other

Mantis marks are trade marks owned by Flatscreen Arms. “iPad”
and “Apple” are registered trade marks of Apple Inc. All other
trade marks are the property of their respective owners.
www.flatscreenarms.co.uk/ipad
 JULY/AUGUST 2014
ISSUE 335 / £30
www.designcurial.com

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