ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN | ART

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU’S
EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK
IN FRANKFURT

RICHARD ROGERS | JAN KAPLICKÝ | ALEXANDER MCQUEEN | ILSE CRAWFORD

 FORWARD PLAY REVIEW CONTENTS

041 088 208

025 COVER STORY 208 – 216

Listen 1 056 – 072 Blueprint 20/20
Functional Sculpture
027 Herbert Wright travels to Frankfurt 218 – 223
Listen 2 and takes a tour of the new Review: Spring fairs
European Central Bank by
028 Coop Himmelb(l)au with practice 224
Listen 3 co-founder Wolf Prix Review: History is Now

031 074 – 086 226

On the drawing board Being Human Review: Audi A3
Sportback e-tron
033 088 – 100
Meet Memories of Jan Kaplický 228 – 229
Review: Human —
034 – 035 102 – 116 Space — Machine: Stage
The art of repetition From Bauhaus to Experiments at the
this house Bauhaus
037
Infographic 118 – 130 231
Drawing a line Review: sqm: The
039 Quantified Home
On the list 132 – 144
The Bilbao Effect: 233
041 – 042 hit and myth Review: The Frick
Design project Collection: Art Treasures
146 – 158 from New York
045 The Bilbao Effect: Britain
Letter from... plays to the gallery 234 – 235
Review: Ladybird by
046 160 – 172 Design
Design project Screening our future
237
048 – 049 174 – 186 Review: Skyward —
Curated diary Miami nice High-Rise Frankfurt

050 188 – 202 LIGHTING FOCUS

Blueprint for the Future Outside in 239 – 241
Feature: Digital Double,
Jason Bruges Studio

252 – 258
Archive

3
HORIZONTAL MEETS
VERTICAL

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bcdQW^b]McW^]fWQR
BZRMbRS^ZZ^fwww.poggenpohl.com/en/find-a-studio/c^Ŭ]Qh^da]RMaRbcbcdQW^͙
 ISSUE 339 EDITORIAL

The Bilbao effect looms large in this issue. Some 18 years on from the
Guggenheim opening there and in the wake of the much-publicised ‘blind’
competition for the new Guggenheim in Helsinki, we reassess the Gehry building
(page 132). With the benefit of hindsight we look at whether the regeneration of the
area can be laid at the feet of this undoubtedly iconic building. We also turn the
spotlight on the UK and its raft of cultural buildings, many deliberately instigated for
their regenerative effects, even if they didn’t always get built (page 146).
On a related note, ‘regenerating the cultural heart of Birmingham’ was a phrase
oft heard with the opening of the Mecanoo-designed Birmingham Central Public
Library (Blueprint 330). On a personal visit one Sunday this year, I found the place
bustling, every table filled by a predominantly young, multicultural throng —
regeneration of the city, and of the library as an institution. But now, due to the
Government cutting public spending to the bone, the Library has announced that
it will only open for 40 hours a week from 1 April. ‘This is because the City Council
must make significant budget savings,’ is the explanation. This is not cutting to the
bone, this is cutting out the recently restarted, cultural heart of the building and
ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN | ART
the city it serves. Pure insanity. In an open plea to the next government, take stock
of the reality of what spending cuts like this are doing.
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU’S
EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK
IN FRANKFURT
And talking of the next government, as this is the last Blueprint before the general
election we thought we’d ask some graphic designers to have a bit of fun at all the
political parties’ expense and devise icons to represent them for the Thanet South
seat (page 41). There were a few great ones we had to withhold for legal reasons, but
the ones that are left are rather excellent; just don’t let them sway your final decision!
RICHARD ROGERS | JAN JAPLICKÝ | ALEXANDER MCQUEEN | ILSE CRAWFORD

The Bauhaus is another theme that runs through every section of the issue, from
a plaster sculpture of the building itself (page 34), through its influence on the
creation of the White City in Tel Aviv by Bauhaus emigres (page 102), to a review
of just how important theatre was to its way of teaching (page 228).
And finally, Blueprint’s 20/20 seminar on the Eden Project played to a full house
at Grimshaw’s office in London, where the founder Tim Smit, the project architect
at the time Andrew Whalley, and Nicholas Grimshaw rediscovered the excitement
MARCH / APRIL 2015
ISSUE 339 / £30
www.designcurial.com that the buildings generated among those involved and those looking on at the time
of the Millennium (page 208). An excellent evening was had by all, as they say.
Cover (and back cover) —
European Central Bank, Johnny Tucker, editor
Frankfurt, by Coop
Himmelb(lau).

Photography by Paul Raftery.

Blueprint masthead set

in Reduct by Dylan Kendle.

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ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN | ART

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU’S
EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK
IN FRANKFURT

RICHARD ROGERS | JAN KAPLICKÝ | ALEXANDER MCQUEEN | ILSE CRAWFORD

 025
Listen 1
Our property industry is failing
to keep pace with the number of
small businesses and start-ups, says
former technology adviser
at Number 10, Rohan Silva
027
Listen 2
Having creative minds with a can-do
attitude can transform whole
districts for the better, says Red or
Dead founder Wayne Hemingway
028
Listen 3
Erik Spiekermann examines why
vinyl records are making a comeback
22
031
On the drawing board
The Luzhniki stadium in Moscow is
having a $500m rebuild in time for
the 2018 World Cup. Galina
Gordyushina of Mosinzhproyekt
talks through its challenges
033
Meet
Catalan practice Camps Felip
Arquitecturia is going from strength
to strength after shaking off the
shackles of the recession
034 – 035
The art of repetition
British duo Chisel & Mouse has
added nine new buildings to its
portfolio of plaster models
037
Infographic
We look back at a collection of
architect-designed central and
reserve-bank buildings across
the world
039
On the list
As the winner of this year’s Pritzker
Architecture Prize is announced in
March, we track the previous winners
041 – 042
General election
Seven leading design consultancies
give us their take on graphics for
political party hopefuls doing battle
in the upcoming general election’s
Thanet South seat (Nigel Farage,
Al Murray et al)
045
Letter from... Helsinki
Shumi Bose comes back refreshed
from a visit to NOW Office’s
Kultuurisauna in Helsinki
047
designjunction
Blueprint is the Media Partner for
designjunction in Milan where it’s
launching a new design district and
has plans for global expansion
048 – 049
Curated Diary
Founding creative director of
Infrastructure Ross Urwin picks his
top events for the coming months
050
Blueprint for the Future
Co-founder of Blueprint James
Woudhuysen kicks off a new,
forward-looking Blueprint for
the Future column
FF

23
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THE URGE TO EXPLORE SPACE

LISTEN

Despite the number of small businesses and startups in the UK getting

bigger and bigger, the property industry has failed to keep up. Rohan Silva,
former technology adviser at Number 10, is on a mission to tackle the
problem of inflexible, unimaginative office buildings, starting with his latest
venture, Second Home, an office space designed by SelgasCano for
creative businesses in Shoreditch

ROHAN SILVA
A spectre is haunting the city — the spectre of
technology. Developed economies around the world
are being reshaped by the information revolution,
but the lack of innovation in the property industry
means our cities and buildings simply aren’t
evolving to keep pace.
The internet has dramatically slashed the cost
of starting a company, helping the number of small
businesses in the UK to explode from 700,000 just
a few decades ago to 5.2 million today. What’s
more, in the Information Age, clustering and
physical proximity are more important for
innovation than ever, while the innovation cycle
is so fast that large corporations are being
disrupted by startups at lightning speed.
Despite these seminal changes, the property
industry has barely changed at all in the past 20
years. In the main, developers are still churning out
inflexible buildings for monolithic large companies
on rigid, long leases, with tenants working in
isolation from one another, and next to no emphasis
on the cultural life that helps spark serendipitous
collisions and innovation.
This isn’t just an academic problem — it means
life is harder than it should be for millions of
creative entrepreneurs and small businesses, with
huge negative consequences for job creation and
economic growth. It doesn’t have to be this way. I
believe that it is possible to re-imagine the built
environment so that it better reflects the way that
companies work today. Here’s how my company
Second Home is going about it.
First, through radical design. In early 2014,
we appointed the Madrid-based practice,
SelgasCano, to create a building in east London
where creative companies can have their own
private, soundproofed studios, within an overall
environment that is beautifully transparent and
communal. We have 30 private studios in total,
enabling teams of between four and 25 people to
work around the clock, cheek by jowl with startups
operating from the communal space in the centre
of the building. Companies occupy our studios
on three-month, rolling memberships, and can add
or subtract staff on a weekly basis, ensuring that
they can respond in real-time to the ever-changing
innovation cycle.
Second, we’re curating a community. We
understand that good things happen when different
types of industry and people collide, which is why
we carefully picked companies for Second Home
that we felt could have a synergistic relationship
with one another. (We turned down more than 60
businesses that we didn’t think were quite right.)
The result? Our studios were 100 per cent full on
day one of opening, occupied by a tight-knit and
diverse community: global businesses such as
SurveyMonkey, Foursquare and TaskRabbit,
alongside homegrown innovators such as Cushman
& Wakefield’s new property-tech incubator and
Santander’s £100m FinTech fund.
Third, we’re supporting wellbeing and
creativity. SelgasCano drew on evolutionary
psychology to design an environment that mimics
the seasonality and fractal complexity of the natural
world: there are more than 1,000 plants and trees in
our building, every chair and desk lamp is different
(all mid-century and Bauhaus originals), and there
are almost no straight lines anywhere. In addition,
we host a regular programme of cultural events
to bring people together, including lectures, film
screenings and live gigs, which all take place
in our stunning auditorium.
In the words of the Harvard economist
Ed Glaeser: ‘Cities are our greatest invention’ —
they are crucibles of creativity where we come
together to achieve new things. It’s time to reinvent
our urban spaces, and help a new generation of
entrepreneurs to flourish in our cities. This is our
generation’s struggle. I’ve no doubt we’ll rise to
the challenge.

THE PROPERTY INDUSTRY

HAS BARELY CHANGED AT
ALL IN THE PAST 20 YEARS.
IN THE MAIN, DEVELOPERS
ARE STILL CHURNING OUT
INFLEXIBLE BUILDINGS FOR
MONOLITHIC LARGE
COMPANIES ON RIGID, LONG
LEASES WITH TENANTS
WORKING IN ISOLATION
FROM ONE ANOTHER...
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LISTEN
Red or Dead founder Wayne Hemingway, currently working on
re-establishing Margate’s amusement park Dreamland in a vintage
regeneration, urges architects, designers and their clients to be brave in
projects, to be creative and adopt the all-important ‘can-do’ philosophy
WAYNE HEMINGWAY
I was recently tasked with giving a talk on ‘Bravery
and a can-do attitude’ at Somerset County
Council’s Staff Awards. It is a subject matter close
to my heart and something that is sadly lacking not
just in the public sector, but in a fair number of
those in the private sector that serve the public
sector. We all bemoan the paucity of decent design
in the vast majority of new housing, and how many
times do we have to sit in a miserable hospital
waiting room or feel deflated at how uninspiring
that sheltered housing scheme is where a beloved
relative is living out their final years? How many
times do we look at some new public landscape
and think, what a bleedin’ waste of money?
Just about all of those crappy buildings, public
spaces and interiors will have had significant input
from architects and designers, all of whom have
lacked bravery in debating and standing up to a
client that doesn’t understand the value of good
design, and will have lacked a can-do attitude in
being creative with tight budgets. What is the point
of being a designer if all you are doing is earning a
wage and you don’t care about the outcome? I have
a firm philosophy that ‘design is about improving
things that matter in life’ and this mantra continues
to ensure that we are brave and we ‘can-do’ and
that drives a very healthy bottom line.
Gerardine (wife of 32 years and design partner
for 34) and I were brave in moving from our native
Lancashire as teenagers with no plans other than to
see what ‘that there London’ could offer. Without
staff or a factory to make her clothes, Gerardine
was extremely brave to take a very large order from
Macy’s New York for her first collection that, up to
then, she’d been making herself with her portable
sewing machine. To grow Red or Dead into a
fashion brand with shops all around the world
without backing, with a team of young, unqualified,
enthusiastic can-doers was brave and a hoot to boot.
From the client side, Bournemouth Council’s
bravery comes to mind, in commissioning for the
run-down district of Boscombe, the world’s
second-only surf reef and employing designers to
bring the mid-century overstrand and pier back to
life. Cries of ‘waste of money’ went up from the
media and the usual suspects. The surf reef was
untested technology which failed to generate
decent waves, then broke, and the New Zealand
construction company went bust. But, in the
meantime, the investment has paid off: Boscombe
seafront is nothing less than transformed and one
of the coolest and liveliest bits of beach in the area.
The early years in the development of the
Staiths South Bank in Gateshead, which we were
also involved with, were full of debate and
arguments over ‘secured by design’, ‘homezones’,
communal barbeques, the table tennis tables in the
streets, ‘shared pocket parks’, cycle routes and
restrictions on car ownership. We were questioning
accepted practice and were also being questioned
by many architects and planners as to our suitability
for the project. ‘Q: What could a couple of fashion
designers know about housing? A: We have
bloomin’ well lived in them for four decades each
and we care about the quality of life!’
We didn’t let any of the flak get to us and we
proved the police wrong in their belief that we were
designing crime ‘in’ rather than designing crime
‘out’ by placing all the parking down gable ends
rather than in view of residents’ houses. We proved
the council wrong by getting rid of all wheelie bins
and forcing residents to communally dispose of
waste. The development has not become covered
in litter and the local yoof haven’t cooked the
neighbourhood cats on the communal barbeques.
Our current, most challenging and most
exciting project is Dreamland Margate, and if there
is a braver regeneration project in the UK with
so many can-do folk involved, then please point
me in its direction. From Heritage Lottery, to
Thanet Council, to the Dreamland Trust and the
Margate community that support it to Sands
Heritage that will run the [vintage amusement]
park, everyone is taking risks for the public good.
Having creative minds with a can-do attitude
has seen transformations of the Mitte District in
Berlin, Williamsburg and now wider Brooklyn in
New York, Hackney Wick in London, the Baltic
Quarter in Liverpool, and now Margate’s old town.
To the councils that have allowed pianos and
table tennis tables to populate our public spaces,
I salute you for your bravery and for supporting
those who say ‘try this’.
JUST ABOUT ALL THOSE
CRAPPY BUILDINGS, PUBLIC
SPACES AND INTERIORS
WILL HAVE HAD
SIGNIFICANT INPUT FROM
ARCHITECTS AND
DESIGNERS, ALL OF WHOM
HAVE LACKED BRAVERY IN
DEBATING AND STANDING
UP TO A CLIENT THAT
DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THE
VALUE OF GOOD DESIGN...
 LISTEN

Vinyl records are making a comeback. It has to be a nostalgia thing surely,

as there doesn’t seem to be anything as regards sound quality or usability
to recommend them, says Erik Spiekermann. He examines if there are
indeed other, less tangible, reasons to go back to vinyl. Founder of
MetaDesign and FontShop, Erik Spiekermann is a teacher, author, designer
and partner at Edenspiekermann

ERIK SPIEKERMANN
A ‘noteworthy music-industry trend’ was reported
by Rolling Stone magazine. Quoting the 2014
Nielsen Music report, it noted that sales of vinyl
albums continue to rise. In 2014, the 12-inch had its
best year in decades, selling 9.2 million units. That
is more than a 50 per cent increase on the previous
year, with vinyl sales now accounting for six per
cent of all physical music sales.
While this sounds great, comparing it against
78.6 billion audio streams makes it appear less so.
And if you must know, Nielsen Music counts 1,500
streams to be the equivalent of one LP bought and
10 tracks purchased to be one album.
With most of those streams coming free or
almost free (a Spotify subscription is $9.99 a
month), why do people still go to all the trouble of
buying LPs — pieces of vinyl that attract static
dust, get scratched and have to be kept inside
paper sleeves? For those of you too young to
remember: playing an LP involves connecting a
record player, taking the LP from its sleeve,
removing the dust from the needle, wiping the
record clean, lowering the needle, sitting back to
listen and getting up 20 minutes or so later to turn
the LP over and start the whole process again.
Apparently, it is exactly this cumbersome
process that people find attractive. If it were really
about superior sound quality, as some people claim
(they being the ones with hi-fi equipment the size
of kitchens and with similar power consumption),
music lovers would simply use services offering
lossless streams. Most newly released LPs these
days are probably cut from digital data anyway.
Music can be played on a traditional CD without
any discernible loss of quality, even on equipment
affordable by the rest of us. A CD is 12cm in
diameter instead of the bulky 12in (that is, more than
twice as wide) and has been around long enough
(the first album released on CD was Billy Joel’s
52nd Street from 1982) to have reached technical
maturity. In other words: LPs are totally unpractical.
One explanation for this unreasonable
behaviour by music fans is nostalgia. A lot of
top-selling vinyl albums are indeed re-issues of
classic records. And perhaps our deep emotional
connection to music also needs some physical
involvement with the object of our desire. Music
was one of the first things disrupted by the internet
and thus quickly became disembodied. If we look
around at other industries, there are similar things
happening. For example a return to letterpress
printing (albeit on a similarly insignificant
economical scale as LP sales compared to
streaming) and analogue photography. The maker
scene has become a veritable movement beyond
making FM radios from cereal boxes. Even home
cooking is no longer considered something only
Neil from the Young Ones would do.
If the vinyl revival is about the desire to own
something tangible, it may at first glance seem like
a contradiction against another popular trend:
people wanting to spend more on experiences rather
than objects. But isn’t a vinyl record much more than
a thing? Not only is it an experience to go through
the process of setting it up and listening to it without
the help (or interference) of an app on a smartphone
or a similar cold surface, an LP also offers generous
room for words and images about the music and
the artist. Instead of multitasking (which usually
means working) while listening to music, reading
the liner notes connects us to the experience rather
than pushing it into the background.
A lot of contemporary indie artists successfully
sell old-fashioned LPs. They seem to be ahead of
the mainstream music industry, as always.

PERHAPS OUR DEEP

EMOTIONAL CONNECTION
TO MUSIC ALSO NEEDS
SOME PHYSICAL
INVOLVEMENT WITH THE
OBJECT OF OUR DESIRE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE CARTY
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ON THE DRAWING BOARD
Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow

Back in the USSR, the Central Lenin Stadium, situated on a bend of the
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played there, and it hosted the 1980 Olympics. Later, as Russia’s national
stadium, it was renamed Luzhniki and gained a roof in 1997. To host the
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by Mosinzhproyekt. Galina Gordyushina, director of project planning for
civil construction, discussed the project with Herbert Wright

FIFA agreed to the stadium’s 1956 facade wall being
retained — is that the only preserved element?
Luzhniki is the symbol of Soviet sport. If the
stadium was demolished, it would be a big shock
for many people. We had to keep the facade of the
building and thus insert the new stadium within the
existing wall and the existing roof. Fans will still have
an opportunity to touch the history of the events they
have experienced here. In my opinion, it is optimal.
Altogether we have left the roof, the support
ring that holds the roof, and the completely
preserved facade. To preserve the wall and roof
integrity, we designed reinforcing structures. At
FIFA’s request we will add another 11m to the roof
canopy. The facade is a brick wall, reinforced by
a metal core and lined with silicate tile. It is in a
good condition [although] the lining needs
restoration. The facade will be indistinguishable
from the original. We won’t change it.
What is the biggest construction challenge?
The main challenge is to build a sort of box in a
box... high accuracy is needed. We have to work
in a very tight interspace between the new frame
and the old wall and gradually demolish the
remaining building bay. After that we have to
connect under the new frame to fix the wall on
to it. Only then can we remove the reinforcing
constructions. Now we are building the new frame.
The erection of the sixth floor has begun.
Moscow’s climate is extreme — how has this
affected the design?
Large snow loads in Russia were the only thing that
influenced the design of steel structures. The
standard load is 280kg per square metre. We
certainly took this into account, in particular when
we were designing the visor of the stadium.
How can the project’s budget and delivery be
protected against the economic situation in Russia?
First, we have no dependence in terms of building
materials, as we supply everything from Russia. It’s
planned to use a lot of foreign equipment in Luzhniki
(engineering equipment, light fixtures), and exchange
rates may affect its cost, but we have time to find
a solution. Anyway, the government will not scrimp
on the stadium and it will become one of the
world’s best-value football arena reconstructions.
The construction schedule has already been
trimmed by two to three months and the city
1
1 – Galina Gordyushina,
director of project planning
2 – The colour of the
stadium’s seating was
selected by online voting
3 – The original Fifties’
facade is to be retained
4 – It will host the 2018 World
Cup, with its capacity
increased to 81,000
government is working on reducing it up to six
months — this gives straight saving both for
constructor and supplier. We don’t expect
significant budget overrun.
Will new media technology be incorporated?
Luzhniki will be equipped with a media roof. We’ll
put LED strings inside the roof, enabling us to display
images, texts, flags et cetera. We’ll set up the digital
system so people can see the repeats of important
game moments on their iPads. We’ll also have
special devices on sale at the entrance, showing the
match with commentary in any language.
And the public had a voice in the design?
Moscovites voted for the chairs’ colour via the [city’s
online] ‘Active Citizen’ platform and we already
know that it’s going to be burgundy-coloured with
gold, which is very symbolic for the Russian capital.
What are the legacy plans?
Before reconstruction Luzhniki was a favourite
place for concerts. We removed the track lanes,
moved the whole stadium closer to the field and
increased the capacity — it will be even better for
concerts. Most of the time Luzhniki will be used as a
sports arena. The comprehensive plan for the
stadium will be developed by the operating
company — we’ll just deliver a modern international
stadium, with the world’s ninth-biggest capacity.

2 3

4
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 MEET
Camps Felip Arquitecturia
WHO Josep Camps, Olga Felip; plus seven staff
WHAT Architecture practice
WHERE Girona, Spain
WHEN Founded in 2006
Young, Spanish practices, emerging from the
shadows of the recession, seem to be on the ascent.
One is Madrid-based SelgasCano, which is
designing this summer’s Serpentine pavilion and
has just completed its first building, co-office space
Second Home in London (see page 25), another is
Girona-based Camps Felip Arquitecturia, founded
by Catalans Josep Camps and Olga Felip. In nine
years it has built up a consistent portfolio of elegant
and dignified buildings, all defined by a sensitive
stitching together of the old and the new, the site
and the community, the urban environment and the
landscape. As yet, it hasn’t built anything outside of
Spain, but that is all set to change with a house in
London and a major competition in the works.
Camps and Felip first met at the Barcelona
School of Architecture (ETSAB) and started
working on small competitions together as
students, until the practice was officially formed in
2006, just as the economic crisis in Spain was
coming to a head. Undaunted by the shaky state of
construction in Spain, it began to pick up self-built
installations and small cultural buildings in
Catalonia. ‘This situation has been our reality from
the very beginning; we don’t know yet other
situations, so it is our natural habitat,’ says Felip.
One of its first projects (2009–10) was a
cultural centre on the site of the old market of
Ferreries, in Tortosa, that restored and extended
the disused market building and created a dignified,
dark, grooved facade and a new public square.
2 3
2+3 PEDRO PEGENAUTE
1
A concern for the historic layers and context of
a site combined with a limited palette of materials
and the framing of new views has typified Camps
Felip Arquitecturia’s approach since then. Its
Museum of Energy (2011), located next to the river
Ebro, in Ascó, frames views of the surrounding
landscape with two sweeping, concave
polycarbonate-clad facades, screening visitors from
the industrial eyesore of the nearby town centre.
Similarly, its swimming pool (2011) in Jesús,
Tortosa, is structured around a new public space
and plays with the boundaries between interior and
exterior: a linear sequence of shaded areas,
concrete porches and patios connect a bar,
changing rooms and lobby. Another example of
using a powerful, impassive elevation to define the
orientation of a site can be seen at L’Aldea’s
Primary Care Centre (2013), along the river from
Tortosa. At a new junction, between the traditional
rice farms and new buildings taking shape, the
centre is defined by a tall, homogenous, off-white
aluminium facade that references the watchtowers
dotted along the riverbanks. ‘Every project can be
understood as a variation of the other ones. They
are overlapped in space and time. Then the same
issues move from one project to the next or the one
on the table beside. In the end, there is just one
open project that never ends,’ reflects Felip.
A string of accolades has followed, from two
Young Architect of the Year awards and inclusion in
the European Centre of Architecture’s 40 under 40
in 2010, to representing Catalonia at the Venice
Architecture Biennale in 2012. Last year, its 80 sq m
artist’s studio in Girona, built in just three weeks
using prefabricated wood, was commended in the
Best Small Project category at Blueprint’s
inaugural awards. Judge Asif Khan called it ‘a great
achievement on such a small budget’. The practice
is currently working on a primary school and health
centre in towns near Barcelona, and on one of the
first commissions it won, in 2006, for the Law
Courts of Balaguer, put on hold in the recession.
What would be Camps Felip Arquitecturia’s
dream project? ‘We believe that almost every
project has the potential to be a dream project;
then, it depends on you to make it happen.’ CSH
1 – Josep Camps and Olga Felip
2 – Ferreries Cultural Centre, Tortosa (2009–10)
3 – Primary Care Centre, L’Aldea (2013)
 THE ART OF REPETITION
With nine new buildings recently added to
their portfolio, including a model of the
Bauhaus, Chisel & Mouse continue to do
what they love
Sounding a little like a rap duo, Chisel & Mouse are
two brothers, Robert and Gavin Paisley, who
‘parked’ their jointly owned software company to
start doing what they really loved. A ‘mind map’
showed them that they loved technology,
architecture and modelling and thus their business
modelling famous buildings was born.
Battersea Power Station and the Hoover
Building were two early projects, as was Arsenal’s
Highbury stadium — and that’s despite them being
lifelong Liverpool fans (they are the great nephews
of the club’s most famous manager, Bob Paisley).
The latest additions to their selections are the
original Bauhaus building (1) by Walter Gropius and
his Fagus Factory (2). Robert Paisley admits the

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9
 pair share a love of modernism and art deco, and
adds that the rectilinear nature of these, works well
for their modelling process. Their starting point is
plans or photographs, from which they create CAD
drawings, used to print 3D models. They found the
nature of these models a little ‘plasticky’ though, so
they now take silicon moulds of the print and then
cast them in plaster. A lot of sanding later, a master
model is created and a master mould taken from it.
The final models are also created in plaster, giving
them a pleasing heft.
Since they started, they’ve been approached by
the likes of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and,
recently, the London Eye, and are now picking up
commissions for everything from offices to homes. JT
10
13
16
COURTESY CHISEL & MOUSE
1 – The Bauhaus (Walter Gropius); 2 – Fagus Factory
(Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer); 3 – Whitechapel Gallery
(Charles Harrison Townsend); 4 – Highbury Stadium
(Archibald Leitch); 5 – Baltic Flour Mills (Gelder & Kitchen);
6 – Battersea Power Station (Giles Gilbert Scott); 7 –
Centre Point (R Seifert & Partners); 8 – Cincinnati Union
Terminal (Alfred Fellheimer and Steward Wagner); 9 –
Fisher Apartments (Andrew N. Rebori); 10 – Glasgow
School of Architecture (Charles Rennie Macintosh); 11
– Bilbao Guggenheim (Frank Gehry); 12 – New York
Guggenheim (Frank Lloyd Wright); 13 – Helsinki Central
(Eliel Saarinen); 14 – Hepworth Gallery (David Chipperfield);
15 – VC Morris Gift Shop (Frank Lloyd Wright); 16 – Hoover
Building (Wallis, Gilbert & Partners); 17 – Turbinenfabrik
(Peter Behrens); 18 – Trellick Tower (Ernö Goldfinger)
11 12
14 15
17 18
%XPOLQJ 0HJDOR
By Anders Pehrson 1968 and Olle Lundberg 2009

Meet us in Milano
during Salone Del Mobile
at Corso Garibaldi 117

www.atelje-lyktan.com
 INFOGRAPHIC
Bank Buildings

This issue, as we visit the new headquarters of the European Central Bank
(ECB) in Frankfurt by Coop Himmelb(l)au — a dramatic double-tower
reaching 185 metres — we look back at some of the other remarkable,
architect-designed, central and reserve bank buildings that grace our world,
from Sir John Soane’s Bank of England to the tall, glass towers of China

BANK FOR
INTERNATIONAL
SETTLEMENTS (BIS)
Basel, Switzerland,
Mario Botta, 1994
The round building
is typical of the
architect’s work

BANK OF ENGLAND
London, UK,
Sir John Soane,
1790–1827
Soane dedicated 45
years of his career
to extending and
rebuilding the bank

AUSTRIAN POSTAL SVERIGES RIKSBANK

SAVINGS BANK Stockholm, Sweden,
Vienna, Austria, Peter Celsing, 1983
Otto Wagner, This thick hulk of a
1904–06 An early building was
modernist bank designed to seem
constructed using impregnable and is
reinforced concrete clad in large blocks

NATIONAL BANK OF WORLD BANK BANK OF CHINA

BELGIUM Brussels, HEADQUARTERS TOWER Shanghai,
Belgium, Marcel Van Washington DC, China, Nikken
Goethem, 1948–58 USA, KPF, 1996 Sekkei, 2000
Work continued The 13-storey block This 226m-tall tower
non-stop to get this is nearly one-third has a hotel and
building up in ten the size of the offices as well as
years Pentagon commercial space

DANMARKS BANK OF SPAIN DEUTSCHE

NATIONALBANK Jaen, Spain, Rafael BUNDESBANK
Copenhagen, Moneo Architecture, Chemnitz, Germany,
Denmark, Arne 1988 Josep Lluís Mateo,
Jacobsen, 1965–78 The building closed 2001–04 The bank
The impressive in 2004, 119 years sits in the former
lobby rises to after the bank first Park of the Victims
almost 20m high opened in the city of Fascism

EUROPEAN
INVESTMENT BANK EUROPEAN
Luxembourg City, INVESTMENT BANK
Denys Lasdun, Luxembourg City,
1974–80 This is one Ingenhoven
of Denys Lasdun’s Architekten, 2008
few buildings An extension to
outside the UK Denys Lasdun’s
building (left)

CENTRAL BANK OF
KUWAIT Kuwait City,
Kuwait, HOK, 2013
The 40-storey
triangular tower has
two stone walls that
absorb the harsh
Kuwaiti sun
ILLUSTRATION BY IAN DUTNALL

ROYAL BANK PLAZA BANCO CENTRAL DO BANK OF CHINA NATIONAL BANK OF

Toronto, Canada, BRASIL Brasília, TOWER Hong Kong, DUBAI Dubai, UAE,
WZMH Architects, Brazil, Hélio Ferreira China, IM Pei and Carlos Ott and
1976–79 The Pinto, 1976–81 Partners, 1990 NORR, 1997
building is covered Its cable-stayed The tower, at one This was one of the
with around 14,000 curtain wall was time the tallest city’s first iconic
windows and 2,500 revolutionary at the building in Asia, modern buildings to
ounces of gold time in Brazil stands 70 stories define its skyline
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ON THE LIST
Pritzker Architecture Prize past laureates

The winner of this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize — one of the highest
honours in architecture — will be announced in March (Blueprint was asked
for its input into the award). We look back at some of the past laureates
(and Blueprint cover stars) since the award first crowned Philip Johnson
back in 1979

Year / Architect / Country where architect was/is based

1979 Philip Johnson USA 1991 Robert Venturi USA 2003 Jørn Utzon Denmark
1980 Luis Barragán Mexico 1992 Álvaro Siza Portugal 2004 Zaha Hadid UK
1981 James Stirling UK 1993 Fumihiko Maki Japan 2005 Thom Mayne USA
1982 Kevin Roche USA 1994 Christian de Portzamparc France 2006 Paulo Mendes da Rocha Brazil
1983 IM Pei USA 1995 Tadao Ando Japan 2007 Richard Rogers UK
1984 Richard Meier USA 1996 Rafael Moneo Spain 2008 Jean Nouvel France
1985 Hans Hollein Austria 1997 Sverre Fehn Norway 2009 Peter Zumthor Switzerland
1986 Gottfried Bohm Germany 1998 Renzo Piano Italy/France 2010 Kazuyo Sejima &
1987 Kenzo Tange Japan 1999 Norman Foster UK Ryue Nishizawa Japan
1988 Oscar Niemeyer Brazil 2000 Rem Koolhaas Netherlands 2011 Eduardo Souto de Moura Portugal
1988 Gordon Bunshaft USA 2001 Jacques Herzog and 2012 Wang Shu China
1989 Frank Gehry USA Pierre de Meuron Switzerland 2013 Toyo Ito Japan
1990 Aldo Rossi Italy 2002 Glenn Murcutt Australia 2014 Shigeru Ban Japan

1 2 3

BLUEPRINT CHARLES CORREA

IN LISBON
THE LEADING MAGAZINE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
NEW YORK’S PARK
IN THE SKY THE
BILLY BRAGG
315 SHARD
JULY 2011 £5.50 JUNE 2012 £5.50 JULY 2013 £5.99

ON BRITAIN
THOM RENZO
PIANO’S
MAYNE TOWERING
ACHIEVEMENT
16-PAGE SPECIAL SOUTO
MAN IN DE MOURA
MORPHOSIS POSTMODERN
MODERNIST

JOIN US FOR HIS

ROYAL ACADEMY LECTURE
THOM MAYNE: ROYAL ACADEMY LECTURE WITH BLUEPRINT 27 JUNE WITH BLUEPRINT 8 JULY

4 5 6
Blueprint covers showing
work by past laureates
1 – Thom Mayne (2005)
2 – Renzo Piano (1998) ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN | ART ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN | ART ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN | ART

3 – Eduardo Souto de Moura (2011)

4 – Rem Koolhaas (2000) OMA’S ZAHA HADID
DE ARCHITECTS
5 – Zaha Hadid (2004) ROTTERDAM IN AZERBAIJAN
6 – Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2006)

PAULO
MENDES
DA ROCHA in Lisbon with
RICARDO
BAK GORDON

PETER SAVILLE | PAUL SMITH | STANLEY KUBRICK | JAMES CAUTY | PIERO FORNASETTI LACATON & VASSAL | JONATHAN MEADES | BARBER & OSGERBY | CARUSO ST JOHN LINA BO BARDI | RICHARD HAMILTON | CARMODY GROARKE | STEVEN HOLL ARCHITECTS
PROJECT
General Election

As we’re sure you are well aware, the UK goes to the polls this coming May, and
that’s something we just couldn’t ignore. In countries with a low level of literacy,
the ballot paper often involves the use of symbols, sometimes quite mundane,
that represent a political party in an apposite way. So we decided to create a
ballot paper with six of the real candidates standing for the Thanet South seat
and then asked some of the UK’s leading design consultancies to come up with
a graphic representation for each party

Applied
Wayfinding D&B Studio Handsome Household

Conservative
1 Party
Craig Mackinlay

2 Labour Party
Will Scobie

3 Liberal Democrat
Russ Timpson

4 Green Party
Ian Driver

UK

5 Independence
Party
Nigel Farage

Free United

6 Kingdom Party
Al Murray
 PROJECT
General Election

ico Design Pentagram The Chase The Chase

Conservative
1 Party
Craig Mackinlay

2 Labour Party
Will Scobie

3 Liberal Democrat
Russ Timpson

4 Green Party
Ian Driver

UK

5 Independence
Party
Nigel Farage

Free United

6 Kingdom Party
Al Murray
 Kirklees College Atrium, West Yorkshire

Space
that
works

We don’t just make furniture,

we create products and settings
that make space work.

The world of work is changing

and so are we. To see how, visit
www.connection.uk.com
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 A LETTER FROM...
Helsinki

Shumi Bose visits Helsinki, where not only the much-

hyped Guggenheim Helsinki competition continues,
but also where practices including Anttinen Oiva
Architects, NOW Office and Dogma are putting their
own spin on the city’s architectural attractions —
beyond the legacy of Alvar Aalto

Finland for an architecture historian is bound up in

the legacy of Alvar Aalto, whose approachable
blend of pragmatic technology and vernacular craft
earned him a fond place in the pantheon of modern
masters. Aalto lives on as the gentle modernist who
permeated design culture like no other, from 1
designing the seats at your local Apple store to the
hand-crafted bricks of MIT’s Baker House.
But I’m not on a historic pilgrimage — there’s
plenty to talk about in Helsinki right now. The
competition for the Guggenheim Helsinki attracted
more than 1,700 architectural entries from across
the world. With the project budget set at a
mouthwatering €130m for a museum of more than
12,000 sq m, the competition has come under
criticism for aping the Bilbao effect (page 134),
courting international starchitects to create another
icon. The jury has rebuffed such jibes by insisting 1 – The Kultuurisauna is more
than a building: this
that all entries were selected blind, with no ‘punk-monastic’ illustration
indication of authorship to sway judges. In a comes from San Rocco 10
blog-post titled Open Architecture! Guggenheim
curator Troy Therrien calls the Helsinki project ‘the
largest gathering of architectural intelligence ever… utility and work choreographed in space. The the practice of NOW Office effects urban-scale
assembled precisely at the moment when we are Kulttuurisauna’s beatified proprietors performed change in a direct, contextualised but modest manner.
most actively experimenting with massive amounts daily chores, tending to the building as if it were The Kultuurisauna’s blend of social ambition
of data’. Let’s not forget that the Finnish economic a living beast, moving among a steady procession and austere, punk-monastic attitude has met its
landscape has been transformed by the knowledge of locals alternating between aromatic sweltering match in the practice of Dogma, led by Martino
industries, through the success of Nokia and the and bracing ice-dips. Tattara and Pier Vittorio Aureli. NOW Office and
high-tech sector. (Speaking of building knowledge, Perhaps the steamy soul-cleanse made me Dogma have proposed a development near the
the most beautiful work I have seen so far this year particularly susceptible, but the Kultuurisauna’s sauna’s immediate site in Merihaka, a respectably
is the new Helsinki University Library, by recent productive unity of labour, creative practice, cultural proletarian seafront neighbourhood in Helsinki
graduates at Anttinen Oiva Architects.) contribution and ethical stance has rarely been so composed largely of concrete high-rise blocks.
Yet what does all this activity say about Finnish fully demonstrated to me by any architectural The recent publication Living/Working: How
society? Back in 1925, a young Aalto declared: project, anywhere. to Live Together in Merihaka (L’Esprit d’Escalier,
‘Europe is full of museums sat atop stairs but the There is plenty to say in practical terms about £18) concretises Dogma’s proposal for a large
stairs have no people on them… So let us build a the Kultuurisauna too. For instance, in order to have number of affordable live-work units, housed in still
sauna! Not a caricature but a cultural sauna – which a wood-burning stove in the middle of a residential more podium-and-tower blocks — resolutely banal
could bear a renaissance in the whole Finnish mode area, a new smokeless fuel had to be developed, but programmatically radical. If the proposal goes
of everyday life.’ using compressed sawdust and waste-wood pellets. forward, the Merihaka housing blocks may be the
Architecture practice NOW Office, led by Amazingly, the wood-fired Kultuurisauna is the only first built project from Dogma, better known for
native Finn Tuomas Toivonen and Japanese graphic place in Helsinki where you can actually bathe (and the polemic and pedagogical output of its partners.
designer Nene Tsuboi, has been operating just such specifically take ice dips, during winter, if you’re The result uses the metabolism of domestic space
1 MICHELE MARCHETTI, COURTESY OF SAN ROCCO MAGAZINE

a kultuurisauna for just over a year. Tired of the
cut-throat life of a young design practice, Toivonen
and Tsuboi had a hard think about how to proceed,
as people and practitioners. Not that they didn’t
have work: Toivonen has long been active in
building projects from community centres to
nightclubs, as well as various TV, radio and music
ventures (including the 2010 vinyl LP ‘Urbanism
In The House’, itself a frustrated reaction to a
scuppered competition, and much better than you
think). The pair opted for autonomy through deep
engagement with place and people, combining
design practice with the running of public baths.
The first day I stayed there I didn’t partake in
a sauna, mesmerised by the clockwork routine of
mad) in the sea, so making it both the newest and
the most traditional sauna in the city.
The spartan aesthetic has its own seductive
chic: the hand-blown oil-lamps, whitewashed brick,
rough timber-trunk ‘columns’ and bare concrete
floors; the frost-stiffened coir mats, the smoky
crackle of burning wood and the archaic LPs of
Finnish choral music, drifting across the bay...
But this is not mere ‘content’. I do not
recommend the Kultuurisauna as an essential
tourist destination (though perhaps for selfish
preservation; a TripAdvisor page glows with happy
reviews), but more as a manifesto. Sincerely
providing a public, unassuming but transformative
element in the neighbourhood, the reorientation of
as the key element for transforming the city. No
frills; vibrancy is provided not by tokenistic public
artworks but by a varied, busy demographic. In the
spirit of Finnish social democracy, it would produce
a potentially autonomous, co-operative
neighbourhood with economic resilience and
community infrastructure built in, fully accessible
and affordable for working people without a
financial leg-up.
Looking back to Helsinki from my own precarious
living conditions in London, stretched between
unaffordable rent and partial skeins of employment,
I can only quip from Aalto’s sauna-reverie, ‘It is a
dream extending far beyond us and far behind.’ If
not there, then where?
The UK Stone Industry Event 28 - 30 April 2015

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 EVENT
designjunction

Global expansion is on the cards for designjunction, which is piloting a new

design district during Milan Design Week in April, with Blueprint as its media
partner. It also sees a new show in New York in May. Where else might we see this
burgeoning design show make landfall next, asks Johnny Tucker?

Blueprint will be in Milan this year as the media
partner for designjunction, which will be launching
a newly created design district, the San Babila
Design Quarter, near the Duomo during the world’s
biggest design week.
designjunction will be taking over all three floors
of the Casa dell’Opera Nazionale Balilla, a Thirties
building designed by rationalist architect Mario
Cereghini. designjunction edit > Milan will also be
the venue for Tom Dixon this year, having moved on
from the MOST show that he started up in Milan in
2012, before handing over its running of it to Will
Sorrell. This year Dixon is planning a series of
installations at the Casa dell’Opera, which will also
feature new pieces from Shin Azumi for Case
Furniture, while Jaguar will show its new XE car.
designjunction and Blueprint will also be found
together in New York in May, when more than 25
brands will be on show at a new ‘edit >’ show, as
part of the NYCxDesign. Like the main London
event in September, at the Old Sorting Office in
Holborn, designjunction edit > New York will be in
housed in an industrial building, ArtBeam, in the
heart of Chelsea’s gallery district, a stone’s throw
from the High Line park.
1
Started by Deborah Spencer in 2011 in London,
designjunction has linked up with Informa Global
Exhibitions ‘to assist with global expansion of the
show’. Informa is a multinational publishing and
events company, and designjunction fits with its
growing portfolio of design shows that includes
Interior Design Show Toronto, Interior Design Show
West in Vancouver, the São Paulo Design Week and
a host of art shows such as Art Toronto, The Artist
Project and One of a Kind, also both in Toronto.
Given this regionality is it not beyond the realms
1 – The Casa dell’Opera Nazionale Balilla building
2 – Lens, a newlight from Tom Dixon that will be launched at the
designjunction edit > Milan show in April
of possibility that we’ll be seeing a designjunction
edit > Toronto sometime soon?
Informa Global Exhibitions CEO, Will Morris,
says of the move: ‘We are delighted to partner the
UK’s leading design show with a proven track
record for excellence in the design sector and with
enormous potential for growth. designjunction is
at the cutting-edge of design, and we are proud
to support its growth plans.’
Deborah Spencer will continue in her position
as event director and part-owner of designjunction
‘with the full backing and support of Informa Global
Exhibitions’. Meanwhile, Will Sorrell has been
brought in to ‘head up the international portfolio
of designjunction shows’. Michael Sodeau will
continue to be the show’s creative director.
Blueprint will again be at designjunction in
London this September with another look back at
the year in architecture, design and art, along with
an architects’ breakfast event.
designjunction edit > Milan 15–19 April
designjunction edit > New York 15–18 May
designjunction > London 24–27 September

2
1 COURTESY DESIGNJUNCTION 2 COURTESY TOM DIXON

1 SALONE INTERNAZIONALE DEL MOBILE
MILAN, ITALY
14 – 19 April
My annual injection of creativity comes from this
furniture event. The entire city embraces and
celebrates every aspect of design and innovation,
and if you go to only one annual design show this
would be my choice by far. It exhibits the latest in
innovation, from established design brands and
emerging design names of the future from across
the world. For me, after a quick trip to the major
exhibition centre, it’s all happening at the various
satellite events scattered across town, including
Tortona and Lambrate. salonemilano.it
1 3
2
CURATED DIARY
Ross Urwin
2 DESIGN SHANGHAI
EXHIBITION CENTRE, SHANGHAI
27 – 30 March
As one of the creative directors behind this event,
as far as I’m concerned, Design Shanghai is the only
true design show to visit in China. China is such a
new market and the vibrant, design-hungry city of
Shanghai as a backdrop makes this a unique event.
The first Design Shanghai last February welcomed
47,000 visitors! It mixes design, art, food and
innovation, introduces international brands to the
region, works with local partners to support Chinese
designers, builds design features and partners the
city’s creative community. designshowshanghai.com
3 ART BASEL — HONG KONG
CONVENTION AND EXHIBITION CENTRE, HK
March 15 – 17
Hong Kong is Art Basel’s latest addition. Only in
its second year, this is THE event in Hong Kong’s
social calendar and draws an array of interesting
characters out of the woodwork. Art has been the
focal point for creativity within Hong Kong for
some years now. The city that never sleeps appears
to be on steroids during the event, with a full
schedule packed with parties, lectures and events.
It is the best week to visit Hong Kong, even if you’re
not interested in art.
artbasel.com/en/Hong-Kong
1 SLV 2 DR JOHN C TAYLOR 3 ART BASEL 4 MOEBE 5 CATWALKING, COURTESY ALEXANDER MCQUEEN: SAVAGE BEAUTY, V&A 6 ARTEXPO NEW YORK
 Ross Urwin
Urwin is founding creative director of Infrastructure, a leading creative
agency based in Hong Kong that specialises in branding, repositioning and
experience in the retail and hospitality sector. At the moment, he is consulting
for retailers, hoteliers, restaurateurs, artists and independent labels, including
a design-led social enterprise called ‘Kanjian Creations’ that is dedicated to
supporting and conserving traditional Chinese craftsmanship. This year he is
creative director of Design Shanghai 2015 along with Infrastructure co-
founder Darrel Best.

4 BLICKFANG 5 ALEXANDER MCQUEEN: SAVAGE BEAUTY 6 ARTEXPO NEW YORK

STUTTGART
20 – 22 March
One of the biggest design shows of its kind in
Switzerland, Germany and Austria, blickfang gives
great significance to the story behind the product and
the maker. I have always emphasised the importance
of learning the history and technique behind any
merchandise, as today’s consumer is looking to be
inspired by these stories. Showcasing more than 200
innovative designers from across Europe, the great
thing about blickfang is its diversity — product
design, jewellery and fashion under one roof — and
all can be bought on the spot. blickfang.com
V&A, LONDON
14 March – 2 August
Originally exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York and one of the museum’s most
popular events in its 141 years, this amazing
exhibition of the troubled fashion icon’s work is a
must if you’re in London. The designer’s innovation
and genius will be on display at the V&A until 19
July and is the largest retrospective of his work
to be presented in Europe. Alexander McQueen
pushed the boundaries of fashion, and designers
from all disciplines can learn a lot from his short
but brilliant career. vam.ac.uk
PIER 94, NEW YORK CITY
23 – 26 April
An important event in the international art calendar,
ArtExpo New York is one of the best places to
discover new artists and a great opportunity to
meet influential designers and architects. On the
trendy Pier 94 at the heart of a thriving cultural art
and design district ArtExpo hosts a great selection
of artists creating prints, paintings, drawings,
sculpture, photography, ceramics and glass work.
I think it’s important to support up-and-coming
artists, and this show is packed with exciting
discoveries to be made. artexponewyork.com

4 5

6
 BLUEPRINT FOR THE FUTURE

Yes, British retailers have too much space — they’re overfooted.

But the rise of mobile shopping may see a revival of street-market
haggling, and payment technologies will have to fit all comers. Expect
more LEDs, the appearance of shop-floor robots, and more engrossing
attractions, says James Woudhuysen in the first of a new, forward-looking
Blueprint for the Future column. A co-founder of Blueprint, James
Woudhuysen now speaks to and writes for an international audience on
the future of innovation

JAMES WOUDHUYSEN
I confess. Like most men, I find shopping boring.
Yet what retailers do next is more interesting than
the travails of Tesco today, or the more general
problem of too much retail floorspace in the UK.
We’re not just talking about the rise of the
discounters, with Aldi and Lidl being the wildcard
Nigel Farage of the market. No. Nearly 100 years
after the Piggly Wiggly self-service supermarket
opened in Memphis, Tennessee, retailing —
traditionally, a weak R&D spender — just might be
poised, once again, to adopt some serious innovations.
First, mobile IT will change life for retail staff.
Brits now spend nearly an eighth of their shopping
money online. More significantly, a third make a
monthly purchase on their smartphones (Swedes,
Germans and French: 19, 15 and 8 per cent
respectively). Peter Fitzgerald, sales director and
head of retail at Google UK, believes that for most
retailers, ‘the majority of the time that consumers will
spend looking at products will be on a mobile device’.
M-tailing means that the shop worker of
tomorrow will perform a lot of price comparisons
on customers’ handsets. If deflation persists, aided
and abetted by such comparisons, shop staff may
even have to be prepared to haggle. After all, a
quarter of British mothers use mobiles to buy at a
store different from the one they are standing in.
Second, the Centre for Economics and Business
Research predicts that, by 2020, more than 20
million adults will use mobiles to pay for things at
the checkout. They’ll part with more than £14bn
that way — triple today’s figures. Result: retailers
will have to accept that, in methods of payment, the
customer is always right.
Lighting will form a third area for innovation.
Already Sainsbury’s store in Leek, Scotland, uses
General Electric LED lights inside and out. LEDs can
last 30,000 hours. Unlike fluorescents, they come
on at once in sub-zero outdoor temperatures —
and, in-store, they render colour better.
Bigger than these changes could be retailers’
efforts to raise productivity and so lower prices.
Any revival in UK wages may prompt interest in
using design to streamline shop workers’ activity.
Before the crash of 2008, academics at Eindhoven,
the Netherlands, began unearthing fat costs and
tricky processes around the stacking of shelves. A
little earlier, Accenture found that much could be
done for efficiency through the adroit use of
‘shelf-ready’ packaging. These studies will one day
be dusted off, updated and used to bring real
automation to the aisles. Already Lowe’s, the
American DIY retailer, has Fellowrobot’s OSHbot, a
fairly simple sense-and-display robot, strolling its
stores, scanning your type of screw and telling you
where more of that type are to be found.
The final innovation retailers should adopt?
Fight the next war, not the last. Discounts, coupons,
endorsement by celebrity chefs, inner-city ‘metro’
stores, Christmas commercials — these are about as
futuristic as cannibalising existing sales by
practicing, and promoting, ‘freshly clicked’.
Instead, shops should beat back pressures from
the Internet by shifting toward the physical,
inter-personal and intellectual: toward street
markets, catwalks, vaudeville, circuses, 3D printing,
exhibitions, museums, debating chambers and
lecture halls.
Two years ago Belgium’s Holocube showed off
holographic movies for Nike; Microsoft’s Hololens,
just launched, could also make shopping more
informative. However, the next generation of shops
will not just be about how wearables and
‘nearables’ replace smartphones. They will also be
architectural dramas in load-bearing graphene and
structural electronics.
Just for once, the shopping trip of the future
might be something to delight in, not just endure.

SHOPS SHOULD BEAT BACK

PRESSURES FROM THE
INTERNET BY SHIFTING
TOWARD THE PHYSICAL,
INTER-PERSONAL AND
INTELLECTUAL: TOWARD
STREET MARKETS,
CATWALKS, VAUDEVILLE,
CIRCUSES, 3D PRINTING,
EXHIBITIONS, MUSEUMS,
DEBATING CHAMBERS AND
LECTURE HALLS
CHRIS RENTON
 DISCOVER
CYCLING CULTURE,
THE SORTING
OFFICE, WC1
8TH 10TH
MAY, 2015.
BIKES » FASHION » PRO RIDERS » TEST TRACK
FILMS » COFFEE AND COCKTAILS
PLEASE USE THE CODE SPECIAL FOR 20% OFF TICKETS
FIND US AT → SPINLDN.COM » #SPINLDN » @SPINLDN
designjunction edit
Milan
14–19 April 2015
Via Pietro Mascagni 6
Milan 20122
In partnership with

The leading design destination

Register now to visit Part of

thedesignjunction.co.uk
 056 – 072
Functional Sculpture
Frankfurt has a new 185m-high tower
defining its skyline — The European
Central Bank by Coop Himmelb(l)au
074 – 086
Being Human
Cate St Hill meets British designer
Ilse Crawford, who has been putting
the human values back into our
workspaces, airport lounges and
hotel lobbies with her design firm
Studioilse
088 – 100
Memories of Jan Kaplický
Richard Rogers remembers a
visionary and lifelong friend, the
Czech architect and Future Systems
co-founder Jan Kaplický
54
102 – 116
From Bauhaus to this house
The once under-appreciated cluster
of Bauhaus-esque buildings in Tel
Aviv’s White City are being brought
back to life, reports Anthea Gerrie
118 – 130
Drawing a line
With a major exhibition on the
iconic work of British fashion
designer Alexander McQueen
opening at the V&A in March,
Abraham Thomas examines his
remarkable sketches
132 – 144
The Bilbao Effect: hit
and myth
With all eyes on Helsinki for the
latest Guggenheim outpost, Veronica
Simpson reflects back on the legacy
of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao
146 – 158
The Bilbao Effect: Britain
plays to the gallery
James Pallister examines whether
the large-scale art galleries that
are emerging in regional centres
have brought the hope of local
regeneration to fruition
160 – 172
Screening our future
Yolanda Zappaterra meets creative
studio Territory, the team behind the
visualisations for films such as Ex
Machina and Prometheus
174 – 186
Miami nice
Caroline Roux travels to Miami to see
Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto’s
latest project: a waterfall in glass
188 – 202
Outside in
At the newly extended Whitworth
Gallery in Manchester, MUMA has
taken this internationally significant
institution into the welcoming arms
of the surrounding parkland,
without a tree being lost, says
Herbert Wright
PLAY

55
 FUNCTIONAL SCULPTURE

Words Herbert Wright

Photography Paul Raftery

56
Greece’s travails may threaten to deconstruct the euro,
but its guardians now have a new headquarters
designed by an original master of deconstructivism.
In Frankfurt, Coop Himmelb(l)au has housed The
European Central Bank in twisting towers, and
intervened in a vast historic market hall

57
Out on the eastern edge of Frankfurt, where residential
streets surrendered to rail, wharves and industry, the world’s
largest reinforced concrete structure of its time was completed
in 1928. Designed by municipal architect Martin Elsaesser, the
Grossmarkthalle was a market hall 220m long and 50m wide,
bookended by eight-storey, solid, modernist, brick towers. Now,
jagged not-quite-twin towers of not-quite-flat glass, linked
through atria and stabilised by connecting steel, rise into the sky
with glacial serenity beside the restored Weimar Republic
behemoth. Through the market hall’s northern facade, another
angular form thrusts out horizontally. Cantilevering above the
entrance, it presents a great warped window that simultaneously
seems to observe your arrival, and swivel sideways, as if keeping
an eye on other things. This is the new 184,000 sq m
headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB), the
institution charged with maintaining the stability of the world’s
number two currency, the euro. The design competition was
launched in 2002, construction began then stopped in 2008,
restarted in 2010, and the costs and the ECB’s staff numbers
outgrew the original plan. Nevertheless, they started moving in
in November, and 2,900 people now work here in this showcase
project, the latest by Vienna-based practice Coop Himmelb(l)au.
‘It’s a functional sculpture,’ says its 72-year-old principal and
co-founder Wolf Prix, of the €1.3bn building. ‘It enlarges the
meaning of function — it’s not just value engineering, the
function is also to make an emotional statement.’ Wearing a grey
suit and his trademark white scarf, Prix is sitting in the ECB’s
expansive cafeteria, eager to talk. His sunglasses come in handy
as daylight streams directly through the vast concrete grid of the
southern facade of the restored Grossmarkthalle, into a space
bounded by the vaulted ceiling 23m above, and a great sidewall
formed by brick and windows in the old western tower. Prix’s
‘emotional statement’ is about Europe. ‘The European project is
the most important of our century. Our democratic society is in
danger,’ he declares, continuing: ‘We have a parliament building
in Brussels, it’s boring. This building has a special Gestalt.’ He
has chosen the word that means form, but also gives an instant
idea of the form’s entirety. ‘It’s an imprint on the retina.’
In sound terms, Prix suggests Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, or
the last movement of the previous Symphony No. 40, as the

1 (previous page) – The ECB 2 (opposite page) – 3 – Wolf Prix’s sketches

has two elements — the 1928 Hyperbolic parabaloids curve illustrate the concept of
Grossmarkthalle cut by a new the facade of the 165m-high towers with special geometry
entrance building volume south tower. Atria connect above the box of the old
(left), and the towers (right) the 185m-high north tower market hall

61
 music that matches the whole building. Before we explore this
gestalt or symphony of volumes, angles and some curves, we
should ask: How did Prix come from being a playful iconoclast
who once attracted attention walking barefoot through Basel
inside a 4m-diameter balloon to demonstrate pneumatic
structures (the Restless Sphere project, 1971), to being a global
‘starchitect’ (a word he uses) with offices from Los Angeles to
Beijing, delivering billion-euro projects?
Prix studied at Vienna’s Technical University, the
Architectural Association, London, and LA’s Southern California
Institute of Architecture, and in 1968, he co-founded Coop
Himmelb(l)au in Vienna. Himmel, bau and blau mean heaven,
build and blue. Prix reveals that the name ‘comes from
Shakespeare, a dialogue in Hamlet’ (the one that starts ‘Do you
see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?’). ‘It’s the
idea of architecture changing like clouds.’
In a 1995 bulletin of his philosophy, Prix said, ‘Clouds are
symbols for rapidly changing states... Viewed in slow motion,
the architecture of urban development could be compared with
patches of clouds’. A 1968 project was even called The Cloud —
an Archigram-ish concept for an elevated platform that could be
moved into urban gaps and raised. Another early project, with
practice co-founder Helmut Swiczinsky, underlines the drive to
defy gravity: House with a Flying Roof (1973) was an art
installation that suspended a domestic roof in the air. It has
been his only London work.
The Cloud philosophy statement went on to say that ‘the
notions of centre, axis and spatial sequence will have to be
replaced by tangents, vectors and sequences of images’. The
language is strikingly similar to Zaha Hadid’s, and it’s no
coincidence that they were both cast onto the international stage
by an exhibition called Deconstructivist Architecture in 1988 at
MoMA. It was curated by Philip Johnson, who 56 years earlier
had co-curated the seminal Modern Architecture show there,
and coined the term International Style. Again, Johnson nailed a
movement, presenting deconstructivism as an emerging style,
with roots in constructivism but ‘subverting’ perfection for ‘the
pleasures of unease’. And again, Johnson brought forth the key
players — the others being Eisenman, Gehry, Koolhaas,
Libeskind and Tschumi.

4 (opposite page) – The

concave curvature of the
southern facade, viewed from
the east, behind a railway
bridge over the river Main

Frankfurt skyline

WESTENDSTRASSE 1
KPF
208m
1993
EUROTOWER
Richard Heil
148m
1977
(Previous headquarters
of ECB)

MAIN TOWER
Schweger + Partner
200m
1999

ECB
MESSETURM COMMERZBANK Coop Himmelb(l)au
Murphy/Jahn Foster + Partners 185m (200.5m with
257m 259m (300m with antenna) antenna)
1990 1997 2014

Frankfurt’s skyscrapers are the subject of the Skyward exhibition at Deutsches Architekturmuseum, reveiwed page 237

62
6 7

8 9

5 (opposite page) – Stacked
atria between the towers
bring light in and reveal
diagonal beams that provide
structural stability
6 – The platform on level 38
is more than a sky lobby for
changing lifts, it’s a hang-out
with its own summer chairs
and viewing platform
7 – The Grossmarkthalle’s
ceiling vault, concrete grid
facade and the old west
tower’s brick define the café.
The Restaurant is above,
inside the new volume (left)
8 – Money talks in the
Council Chamber atop the
South Tower. The ceiling
reveals Europe from a certain
angle, a window reveals a
glimps of central skyscrapers
9 – Looking north in the
Entrance Building lobby, to
the welcome desk. The Press
Centre cantilevers over the
entrance

65
 This elite group became the riposte against postmodernism,
and Coop Himmelb(l)au’s contributions were as striking as any.
They include the vivid, red cubist part of the Groninger Museum
(1994), the UFA Cinema Center, Dresden (1998), with its madly
leaning glass element, and the apartment tower and intervention
into old brick at Gasometer B, Vienna (2001). The swirling, curvy
BMW Welt, Munich, and the angled, cantilevering planes of the
Akron Art Museum, Ohio, were both completed in 2007. The
surprise and pace of output seems to be accelerating. In 2014,
Lyons’ Musée des Confluences, a spectacular 190m-long
structure that links two elemental forms, Cloud and Crystal,
opened just weeks before the ECB.
As in Lyon, the ECB has two connected principle parts, the
office high-rise (itself two connected structures, 185m and 165m
high) and the 80m-long Entrance Building (not to be confused
with a small, outlying gateway building with a wide, flat wing
roof ) that cuts across the Grossmarkthalle. Three of Elsaesser’s
15 concrete-shell, barrel-vault roof sections, all postwar rebuilds,
and a section of north and south facade, have been demolished
to make way for it.
10
66
The section of new glass frontage facing north is where you
enter the almost airport-terminal-sized lobby, into which an
angled, translucent block, three storeys high, touches down
behind the reception desk, like the hull of a spaceship. Above is
the Press Centre, its main room occupying the cantilever. The
panelled ceiling there looks like silvery water just gently
disturbed by wind, and a wide slice of northern light falls
through a full-wall-width curved window. From the outside, it
echoes the great forward-looking window of Coop Himmelb(l)
au’s House of Music in Aalborg (also finished in 2014), but here,
the surface is three-dimensional, bending with double
hyperbolic paraboloid curvature. The cantilever is supported by
two concrete piloti which seem to nod to Le Corbusier, one
recessed behind the entrance facade. (Prix confides that ‘I like
Corbusier more’ than the ‘cold’ Mies.)
The Entrance Building’s other, southern end opens into a
four-storey atrium that is the hub connecting all the main
building volumes. A semi-circular ‘Loop’ houses a bend of
connecting passageways overhead. The towers are to the south.
A diagonal support beam penetrates the glass in the screen
10 – in the eastern side of
the Grossmarkthalle, the
Conference Centre occupies
a volume-within-a-volume,
the top floors of which are
seen within the truss
11

11 – The Entrance Building cuts conferences are held. The 1928

through the Grossmarkthalle’s brick west tower (foreground)
north facade, thrusting into a now includes the ECB library
cantilever in which press and fitness facilities

67

through which we enter the main length of the Grossmarkthalle
to the east. It supports a great raised and inclined steel truss,
which articulates to run parallel to the concrete grid screen of
the old southern facade. Behind the truss is the conference
centre, a building within a building, reached by climbing grand
stairs flanked by channels of water flowing down over another
gently fluid, metallic surface. Further along, up more stairs, a
wide, airy terrace beside the conference entrance looks out into
a space ending at the brickwork of the eastern bookend tower,
now offices. Overhead, ten of the original 15 concrete-shell roof
vaults repeat westwards to vanish back above the truss.
Elsaesser’s old building — its restored brick (bound with darker,
vertical mortar to accentuate horizontality) and great stretches
of grid facade and roof shell — and Prix’s interventions — the
thick, metal structure-work, leaning walls, terraces and steps
— both play with materiality and a satisfying sense of sequence.
The old diagonal columns supporting the roof are even echoed
in Prix’s new angularity. The effect is serene and harmonious.
The Grossmarkthalle has known darker days. The Nazis
brought 10,000 Jews there, to be deported on trains to death
1 Press Centre (in Entrance Building)
2 Brick tower at west end of Grossmarkhalle
3 The Loop, connecting towers to Entrance Building
4 North Tower
5 Antenna
6 South Tower
7 Skylobby
8 Hanging gardens- not implemented
9 Executive Board offices
1
2
3
12 (opposite page) – 90 per
cent of double-glazed glass
panels in the tower facades
are the same, each with
blinds in the gap. Natural
ventilation is enabled by
integrated slats. Atrium
facades absorb just a tenth
of incoming solar gain
camps. This will not be forgotten. A memorial will open in the
basement, designed by KatzKaiser, with a minimal, solidly
walled ramp descending to it from the grounds in the east.
The towers beckon. More than anything else, they define the
ECB headquarters. Essentially, they are two irregular, rhomboid
slabs with concrete frames, between which 14 angled, steel
cross-beams and four steel platforms span. The platforms are at
levels 3, 15, 27 and 38, and they define a stack of three atria, the
largest 60m high. Dropped for cost reasons, the original plan
was for hanging gardens in the atria, enclosed in gently twisting
tubes. Passing some pot plants dotted around on the ground
level, Prix suggests dryly that ‘exploded pieces of it are there’.
Prismatic towers such as the Shard or One World Trade
Center are becoming commonplace, but as Prix says, ‘this is a
building with special geometry’, characterised by ‘HP
(hyperbolic paraboloid) deformed surfaces’. Unike the Press
Centre’s, window panels are flat, but the towers’ north and
south facades have overall curvature. They are gently concave
and twisting, over an epic scale, with an overhang reaching 12m.
Prix explains that they are ‘rational’, because as the surface
7
8
69
 ‘bends, it supports the shaping. This is very Himmelb(l)au’. The
effect is crucial to the gestalt — ‘it’s going to (the) subconscious.’
Prix says the atria create a ‘vertical city’, because ‘the
platforms are forums for little civic meetings’, adding that ‘it’s
very functional’. Stepping out at level 38, this is indeed more
than just a sky lobby for changing between the express lifts in
the atria and local ones in the towers. Garden chairs are grouped,
a coffee point is to hand, and shallow steps with languid turns
rise to the glazing, so people can linger and behold the view.
Although the south tower’s 43 storeys are two less than the
north tower’s, the pinnacle of the ECB’s power is situated here.
From level 39 are three floors where the Executive Board has
private offices, and above that is the Council Chamber. The
seating is arranged circularly, and the view looks across to the
skyscraper cluster of the Financial Quarter to the west, a
kilometre separating the high command of the euro currency
from the citadels of commercial banking, dominated by Foster’s
Commerzbank tower. Board or council rooms atop skyscrapers
reinforce the god-like power of their occupants, and
simultaneously place their heads in the clouds. Here, the ceiling
13
70
seems to do the latter — across it, a field of parallel strips, each
cut with a differently curved, lower edge, suggests another
Himmelb(l)au cloud reference. But it holds a hidden image —
from a certain angle, you can see the shape of Europe in it.
Prix still wants to draw your attention like he did on city
streets when he was younger, but now he does so with shinier,
stranger shapes demanding a bigger stage. The latest Coop
Himmelb(l)au buildings, especially those in China, are like
structures on a sci-fi dreamscape, often silvery, organic forms
like vast, alien beasts. The ECB headquarters is sober by
comparison, even with its asymmetric, subversively curving
towers. The project does play a more deconstructivist hand
internally, but the biggest surprise is its interplay with Elsaesser’s
functionalist expressionism (old labels that are also apt for Coop
Himmelb(l)au). Prix warns young architects that, ‘when you
want to make free forms, you are forced to make constrained
forms’, but here are free forms within and around the constraint
of the old market hall. Prix’s visions are still outside of the box
— and inside this one. The whole, the gestalt, works as a brilliantly
precise and logical unified structure. Rather like Mozart’s music.
13 – Looking up from ground
floor into the lowest atrium,
we see the base of the lowest
platform between the towers
14

14 – View from the south

across the river Main,
revealing the interconnecting
structure between
Grossmarkthalle and towers

71

At the ECB, Frankfurt, Coop Himmelb(l)au
WOLF principal ,Wolf Prix, sat down with Herbert
PRIX Wright to talk about deconstructivism, China and
fish, and also offered advice for young architects
Blueprint: The architects in MoMA’s 1988
Deconstructivist show (Gehry, Hadid, Koolhaas etc.)
are now big international names. Do you all share
anything else in common?
Prix: Yes. We all depend in a similar way on our
cultural background. Austrian architects are more
dependent on baroque space sequences, lots of
structure. They try to dissolve the structural
constraints. If the architect is good, he tries to
overcome gravity. Look at that LC4 (chair) by Le
Corbusier — if you lie there, you have the same
position as astronauts taking off. This is not by
chance. The Dutch guys like Rietveld are related to
Calvinism, Jewish friends to Kabbalism.
Blueprint: In the UK, we had high-tech rather than
deconstructivism — are they related?
Prix: This is related to fish and chips, to farmers
and sailors.
Blueprint: Your architecture was once described as
‘punk’.
Prix: It is not punk, it’s rock-and-roll.
Blueprint: Were you ever a rebel?
Prix: No, never.
Blueprint: But do you accept the label
‘deconstructivist’?
Prix: Deconstructivism has a misunderstanding.
People say it’s connected with destroying. But
(the word) deconstructivism comes from (French
philosopher) Jacques Derrida. He proved that
in a text, one word can unconsciously rule the
15
72
whole understanding... Maybe Libeskind
understood it. The architects who are neurotic,
depressed, sexually infantile, they do buildings that
are that way.
Blueprint: That sounds Freudian.
Prix: Freud could only come up with his ideas in
Vienna. Look at the (pompous neo-classical)
buildings on Ringstrasse in Vienna. You can tell
this society was preparing for World War One. What
I can read from buildings is not just the elements, I
read the society that puts these buildings. The
problem of architectural theory is we only discuss
the visible part. That’s the tip of the iceberg. The
invisible is the dangerous part. The design process
is more like a whale than an iceberg.
Blueprint: What shapes Coop Himmelb(l)au design?
Prix: (The German word) ‘entwerfen’ is at the root
of our design. Each part throws up possibilities.
‘Ent’ comes from the unconscious, ‘werfen’ means
‘throw’. The moment when you change from
unconscious to conscious is when 30 tonnes can
fly! I like breaking ground because that’s when
your idea becomes reality.
Blueprint: What new Coop Himmelb(l)au project
excites you most?
Prix: We just finished (the Musée des Confluences
at) Lyon, the most complex building until now. It
has an elaborated sculpture of water turbulence
(the Gravity Well), 15m high. We are working on
(something) similar in China 60m high (in the
Dawang Mountain Resort, Changsha).
16
15 – Wolf Prix, co-founder 16 – Who’s driving? The
and principal of Coop Restless Sphere, demonstrated
Himmelb(l)au in Basel, 1971, was a
‘transparent habitat’ and
also a ‘means of transport’
Blueprint: President Xi Jinping called for ‘no more
weird architecture’ in China. Is that bad news for
your Beijing office?
Prix: The architectural profession is going down.
There are too many architects. We are sardines in
an ocean of sharks. The difference is, we don’t
have a swarm intelligence.
Blueprint: Are the sharks the clients?
Prix: Clients always envy the starchitects because
they have less pressure. They’re wrong.
Blueprint: Perhaps Xi feels Western architects have
used China as an experimental lab, for ever more
digitised design.
Prix: They have learnt a lot from these experiments.
Xi is not trained in architecture. Digitisation itself
is not a problem. Now, we are doing a project in
China that is being built by robots (the Dolphin
sculptured hub between MOCAPE’s two museums,
under construction in Shenzhen).
Blueprint: If you met your young self and said you
were designing a headquarters for Europe’s reserve
bank, what do you think he would say?
Prix: He’d say ‘let’s do it!’ The difference is time,
the attitude is the same.
Blueprint: And what advice would you give young
architects?
Prix: Don’t fragment your power on stupid
competitions or stupid buildings. You won’t get
results, (but) the client gets stronger. Go back to
school and start a new wave of architectural thinking.
Be independent from money and shark-like
investors. Create a wave, learn to be patient.
Blueprint: But they need to pay the rent
Prix: When we were young and refused a
commission, we sold bananas, we drove trucks.
Blueprint: They may become just paper architects?
Prix: It’s not said that everyone should build.
Sometimes a small sketch is more influential. If
you only think in architectural terms, only
architecture will come up. Architects now suffer
from obedience before it’s necessary.
15 PAUL RAFTERY 16 COURTESY COOP HIMMELB(L)AU 17 VIA COOP HIMMELB(L)AU 18 DUCCIO MALAGAMBA
17
18
17 – A rendered robot fine 18 – The 220m-long,
grinds a welding seam on the 60m-high Dalian Conference
Dolphin, within the MOCAPE, Center, with a fluid envelope
currently under construction of steel, contains a
in Shenzhen conference and opera theatre
Kin Desk
Designed by Paul Crofts, the Kin Collection in solid
surface seamlessly combines elegant form and
practical function. Comprising of four distinct desk
shapes to meet various spatial requirements.

+44 (0)20 7388 8599 info@isomi.com

www.isomi.com
 BEING HUMAN

Words Cate St Hill

Portraits Ivan Jones

74
 Former journalist turned designer, Ilse Crawford
exercises a humanist approach to her work, to create
comfortable, ‘lived-in’ environments. Her outlook was
on display at the Stockholm Furniture Fair, for which
she imported her studio’s ‘not cool, but warm’ ethos
for the event’s feature lounge

75
 ‘We’re not cool, we’re warm,’ affirms Ilse Crawford of her
design firm Studioilse. For the past 14 years, and many more as
a design journalist, Crawford has been making her mark on the
design world with an array of projects that put the soul back into
airport lounges, workplaces, hotel lobbies and shop interiors,
in an almost altruistic bid to improve the way we live and work.
Crawford’s is a humanistic approach to design, an on-the-
surface simple mission to put human needs and desires at the
heart of her work. This means creating environments where
people can feel comfortable, whether it’s an office with a domestic
atmosphere or a hotel lobby that feels like someone’s living room.
Her interiors are warm, authentic, soothing and lived-in, anything
but superficial. They are never too finished, too polished. They
make their impact sotto voce. Some blend old and new, all use
a mix of textures and natural (‘real’, she calls them) materials:
brick, oak, cork, marble, lime plaster and wool.
‘We try to put warm values into a cold system, specifically
building, which is obviously an information-driven system; it’s
Excel, it’s planned, it’s scheduled,’ says the poised 52-year-old
Domestic in atmosphere, Studioilse is open-plan...staff refer to
the meeting room where they have client presentations and
studio lunches as ‘the dining room’
1 (previous page) – Ilse
Crawford swapped
magazines for design and set
up Studioilse in 2001
78
designer. ‘It needs to be, but what we do in our work, at the
very beginning, is put those human values in there, all those
unmeasurable things. Otherwise all the things you really
remember about a space, the way they feel, the way you can live
in them, spaces you can love, smell, taste, spaces that make you
feel grounded and good, that just kind of gets lost on the Excel
sheet; there’s no category for that.’
Her studio, in Neckinger Mills — moved into in 2013 and now
with around 25 staff — sits on the first floor of a Grade II-listed
warehouse and former paper factory in Bermondsey. Domestic in
atmosphere, the space is open-plan with three long, sturdy,
custom-made wooden workbenches and piles of design books
everywhere; staff refer to the meeting room where they have client
presentations and studio lunches as the ‘dining room’ and the
kitchen has a large cooker they use daily. Crawford herself doesn’t
have an office space or even a desk, instead she moves around
wherever the rest of the team is. The way that the studio works
she says is to ‘delay gratification’. For her, interior design isn’t
just about scatter cushions and add-ons; Crawford often feels it’s
1 IVAN JONES 2–4 MAGNUS MARDING
2, 3 & 4 (opposite page) –
Ett Hem, a 12-bedroom hotel
in Stockholm with a domestic
atmosphere (2012)
 a misunderstood and trivialised profession, too often dismissed
as a postscript at the end of a project, the cherry on the cake.
‘We make sure the big, important questions get answered way
before we get to the visual, before the how,’ she says. ‘It’s kind of
tough, because pretty much every potential client who walks
through the door says, “Yeh, great, can we have a concept by the
end of the next week?” Our main focus is on “Woah, shall we
just sit down and work out what it is, why it is, what’s going on
in the world?”, a whole host of questions.’
In February Crawford transported this inquisitive nature
of the studio to Stockholm Furniture Fair (see review, page 221)
where she was guest of honour, following in the footsteps of
Patricia Urquiola, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec,
Arik Levy, Konstantin Grcic and Paul Smith — each year the fair
invites a well-known designer or studio to create a lounge in the
event’s airy Stockholmsmässan entrance hall. Crawford’s lounge,
called Question Time, replicated the studio’s environment with
long wooden benches and cork walls pinned with questions
such as ‘Do we need another chair?’ alongside notepads and
printers so people could respond and pin up their answers.
‘In the past I have noticed at fairs in general there is often
nowhere for people to sit down without paying,’ she says.
‘We thought it would be interesting to take a slice of the feeling
of how we work — slightly messy but in some way with purpose
— and create a relaxed, informal, habitable space in what is a tad
chilly one, and also to simply make a place to take your time
in and reflect. What was great was that from day one people
claimed the space as their own.’ It is this ability to create spaces
that relate to people that attracted the fair’s organisers to Crawford
in the first place, says event manager Cecilia Nyberg, ‘She makes
hotels feel like a welcoming home and successfully embodies each
project’s own history.’ Reflecting on the impact of the lounge on
visitors, Crawford adds: ‘We believe that the design of space can
change the way you feel and behave in a profound way, and it’s
something that as a studio we pay a lot of time and attention to.
We had a number of people come up to us and say they were really
surprised to see this interaction in a public space in Stockholm
because for them, culturally, it was unusual to share a space with

‘We thought it would be interesting to take a slice of the

feeling of how we work — slightly messy but in some way with
purpose — and create a relaxed, informal, habitable space...’

7
5+6 JULIA GRASSI 7 MIKAEL STRANDH

5 & 6 (opposite page) – 7 – Crawford’s Guest of

Cecconi’s restaurant in the Honour lounge asked all the
heart of Mayfair (2006) right questions at this year’s
Stockholm Furniture Fair

81
 strangers. For example, they rarely see someone taking an empty
seat next to a stranger on a bus.’
Born in London to a Canadian father and Danish artist
mother, Crawford grew up in Shepherd’s Bush, one of five children.
She suggests her interest in architecture and design stemmed from
an upbringing immersed in the intangible Danish concept of
‘hygge’: with no equivalent in English, it roughly translates as
cosiness or making everyday moments special. Often at night she
would go out with her mother to rescue ‘19th-century tiles’ from
building sites; later while living in Kent it was the gathering around
a big kitchen table with a ‘big messy family’ that she remembers.
‘As a teenager I also spent a lot of time in different hospitals with
my mother,’ she recalls. ‘It gave me lots of opportunities to hone
my understanding of the value of humanistic spaces, and what
kind of spaces bring out the best in people, both in private and
public space. I have always leaned towards a livable modernity.’
Crawford studied history of architecture at university before
starting a career, not as a designer, but as a journalist. ‘For sure
there wasn’t a plan!’ she laughs. At 27, she was commissioned
to launch the British ELLE Decoration in 1989 and then the
short-lived Bare magazine. She stayed with ELLE for nine years
before moving on and creating a new home division for Donna
Karan in New York. Disillusioned with magazines and the vast gap
between the glossy images and what people’s homes were really
like (‘too many of the places I saw smelled of disinfectant and
divorce’), she set up the department of Man and Wellbeing at
the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2000 (where she’s still teaching,
or as she says ‘learning’) and Studioilse in 2001 from the
bedroom of her flat in Borough.
‘During my time on magazines I calculated the number of
interiors I saw was probably close to well over 5,000. It developed
my obsession with prioritising the experiential and our real human
needs, with putting emphasis on the physical connection to our
environment over the abstract idea,’ she adds. She talks of her
design process as a ‘frame for life’ — an approach that starts with
the individual human experience, encompassing social, sensorial
and emotional perspectives. She cites the work of architects Lina
Bo Bardi, Wang Shu, Peter Zumthor and David Chipperfield and

She became disillusioned with magazines and the vast gap

between the glossy images and the reality of people’s homes:
‘Too many that I saw smelled of disinfectant and divorce.’

8 – Duddell’s, a restaurant, 9, 10, 11 & 12 – Studioilse’s

bar and event space for Hong Sinnerlig collection for IKEA,
Kong’s art crowd (2013) in stores this August

82
 8 ROBERT HOLDEN 9–12 FELIX ODELL
9

11
12
10

83
 writers Jane Jacobs and Juhani Pallasmaa as her design heroes —
‘All are designers who prioritise/d the essential humanity
of the inhabitants.’
Her projects have spanned hospitality, retail, domestic
interiors, workspaces and products, from celebrity hot-spot
Babington House in Somerset and Soho House New York (2003),
through the first shop in London for Australian skincare brand
Aesop and offices for creative ad agency Rapier (2010), to a
collection of metal vessels for Georg Jensen (2012). Then there was
Ett Hem (meaning ‘a home’ in English), a 12-bedroom hotel in a
converted Arts and Crafts house in the Larkstaden district of
Stockholm (2012) that was designed with a domestic feel, with no
division between front and back of house. A key thread weaving all
the projects together is an element of the domestic — a blend of
comfort, a dash of familiarity, a soupçon of intimacy. These aren’t
statement pieces or surface decoration shouting to get heard:
they’re buildings, interiors and objects to be used — designs that
can be seen simply as a backdrop for life to take place. ‘I love to
watch people and see how they inhabit space, and design to
Studioilse has a remarkable, somewhat rare, ability
to transform a brand into the everyday, intelligible language
of the public, without jargon or PR speak
15
13+14 FELIX ODELL 15 CASPER SEJERSEN
13 & 14 (opposite page) –
Studioilse transformed the
loft of the VitraHaus into the
home of a fictional couple
(2014)
enhance that. I walk a lot in order to see a lot,’ she says. Indeed,
one suspects a lot of the magic happens when Studioilse packs
its bags and leaves it to the users.
Studioilse has a remarkable, somewhat rare, ability to translate
a brand into the everyday, intelligible language of the public,
without jargon or PR speak. Last year, to mark the merger of the
Finnish furniture company Artek and Vitra, Studioilse transformed
the loft of Herzog & de Meuron’s VitraHaus in Weil am Rhein into
the home of a fictional Finnish-German couple, Harri and Astrid.
He was a musician, she was a set designer, and their home was
filled with objects that told the story of their lives. It went deep to
the core of Studioilse’s values, telling an enchanting tale of human
life and behaviour, in the process transforming these ubiquitous
design objects from cold stage sets of catalogues to real-life
scenarios, where the kids draw on the walls and the cat scratches
the designer sofa. The pieces on display were design classics but
the ‘couple’ were not afraid to use them and make them part of
their everyday life. For example an Alvar Aalto tea-cart was used for
messy paint brushes, while a mood board spread out organically
15 – The Apartment in
Copenhagen also simulated
a domestic environment
for a three-month-long
installation (2014)
85
 on a cork wall (like at Stockholm), complete with torn-out pages
of magazines and tatty ends of fabric samples. ‘We wanted to think
beyond the furniture and lighting and beyond the bland
commercialisation of design, to convey real life in all its layers
and eccentricities,’ says Crawford. ‘It was vital to bring out the
intellectual spirit of the minds and hands that made these things.
These pieces are stories of real life and courageous intentions
to raise the quality of everyday living. To see them as museum
exhibits of sales units is a profound injustice to their creators.’
In February Studioilse unveiled a collection of some 30
household products for IKEA (available in stores in August).
Made from cork, ceramic, glass and bamboo, the tactile collection
includes trestle tables, stools, lighting and vessels. ‘The more
virtual our lives become, the more we crave the physical,’ says
Crawford. Each piece has been designed not for just one function
or setting; a trestle table could be a desk by day and a dining table
by night. In all of Studioilse’s work, there is no prescribed way
of doing things — nothing is forced or set in stone; there is room
for flexibility. At the moment a ‘typical’ day in the studio seems
a rarity: as well as UK projects there are projects in Sweden, Hong
Kong, China and the USA — ‘you get such an insight into how
people behave in different environments’ — not to forget the one
day a week teaching in Eindhoven. One project soon to complete is
a new lounge strategy for airline Cathay Pacific (one opened in
Tokyo at the end of last year, and several are opening this year).
‘We spent a lot of time in the lounges observing people — we looked
at how people sit, where they sit, the variations culturally, gender-
wise and age-wise, among many other factors. In the end it seems
to us that lounges are less about obvious luxury and more about
wellbeing; it’s the details that make the difference, and empathy.’
Increasingly we’re playing out our lives in the public
domain — we work on the train, in a hotel lobby and sleep in
other people’s homes now, thanks to airbnb. We need spaces
that perform multiple functions for working, socialising,
relaxing. The idea of what a space is and does is changing, and
it’s a team like Studioilse that is directing that change. As
Crawford says, ‘In this information age we want to feel at home,
wherever we are.’

Each piece has been designed not for just one function. In the
studio’s work there is no prescribed way of doing things —
nothing is forced or set in stone; there is room for flexibility

16

16 – Crawford divides her

16 IVAN JONES

time between London,

teaching in Eindhoven and
projects across the world

86
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 MEMORIES OF JAN KAPLICKÝ

Words Richard Rogers

88
 As a new book of drawings by the late Future
Systems architect Jan Kaplický comes out, along
with an exhibition at London’s Architectural
Association, Richard Rogers remembers a
visionary and lifelong friend

89
 2
London in the 1960s was a very different city, far from
being the cosmopolitan hub that it is now. It was insular and
parochial — the rest of England more so. The only contemporary
art exhibitions were at the ICA or the Whitechapel — the Tate
was emerging from a deep slumber. There were almost no
restaurants worth venturing to and the one place you could get a
decent cup of coffee was Bar Italia in Soho. Although there was a
development boom, many streets still had ‘missing teeth’ —
evidence of wartime raids. Despite claims to the contrary,
London was grey and unsophisticated. If it was ‘swinging’ it had
no rhythm. In March 1968, an anti-Vietnam War demonstration
erupted into a riot in Grosvenor Square. For months after that
people were on edge, afraid that the convulsions then afflicting
Paris might be repeated at home. This was the London that met
Jan Kaplický when he arrived at Victoria station one September
evening. It was cold and dark and he was suddenly an émigré.
Jan had been in London almost two years when Eva Jiřičná
introduced us. He was working for Denys Lasdun, on the
National Theatre, but was clearly unhappy. He showed me his
portfolio, in which a house he had remodelled for a friend in
Prague stood out. He had built a delicate ramp from the garden

1 (previous spread) – A 2 – Jan Kaplický, who died in 3 – House for Josef K (1997) 4 – 3D view of House for a 5 – Blob (1985) designed for
photomontage for a house 2009 Helicopter Pilot (1979) a plot on the edge of
for a helicopter pilot(1979) Trafalgar Square

92
4

93
 up to the first floor. I thought he had a sculptor’s sensibility and
an amazing eye for detail — qualities that became increasingly
evident in his later work — and so I offered him a job.
At that time, Su Rogers and I had a project for the Design
8
Research Unit (DRU) — a roof extension in Marylebone. Our
office was in the same building and there were just six of us
when Jan joined the team. The DRU extension was an
experiment in prefabrication, based on the Zip Up Enclosures
we had developed. Jan produced one of his amazing collages,
which encapsulated the idea perfectly. He pasted the shell of a
VW Beetle on to the roof, with a flexible connector to plug in the
services. The fact that this dumb masonry structure and
sophisticated machine dated from the same period just
reinforced the contrast.
After Jan moved on, to work with Norman Foster among
others, we remained lifelong friends. And once he formed
Future Systems we collaborated on a number of projects.
Jan was passionate about design, but he was also restless. It was
natural for him to flourish best in his own practice. Perhaps
what is evident now, which none of us could have seen in 1968,
is that he was a pioneer in many respects. He began to

6 (previous spread) – 7 – A collage produced by 8 & 9 – The Media Centre at

Coexistence (1984) — a Kaplický for the Harrods Way Lord’s Cricket Ground,
650m-tall, green skyscraper In shop (1984) desiugned London (1999)
photomontaged onto an with Eva Jiřičná
image of Manhattan

96
9

97
11

12

10 (opposite page) – Future
Systems’ entry for the
Bibliothèque nationale de
France competition in Paris
(1989)
11 – The design was described 12 – The project marked a new
by the jury as ‘a door phase in Kaplický’s career
opening upon the future’ and attracted new clients

99

investigate green technologies and strategies before most people
were familiar with these concepts. He was among the first to
experiment with organic and biomorphic forms — long before
the age of the computer, when plotting complex curvatures
meant tracing with a pen around a set of French curves.
I remember visiting the Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket
Ground — a smooth, pebble-like form — and marvelling at the
fact that the first drawings were done entirely by hand. Jan was
not just a visionary architect, he was a draughtsman of genius.
His spirited drawings were at the same time intricate and
incredibly economical, able to communicate his Space-Age
visions with just a few strokes of the pen. As a juror, I saw
another memorable project almost make the leap from drawing
to reality, but not quite. Future Systems’ competition entry for
the Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France, in 1989, was a
masterpiece of expressive form. Sadly, the jury was too big and
unwieldy and could not make up its collective mind. President
François Mitterrand was asked to decide between schemes by
Future Systems and Dominique Perrault — between the
Romantic and the Rational. And of course Gallic rationalism
13
100
13 – A collage Kaplický did
while working for Rogers on
a roof extension in
Marylebone
won. Jan was devastated. He thought it was the end, but in
hindsight it marked the beginning of a new phase in his life.
Future Systems gained new clients. They began to build — and
build beautifully. Finally, we saw Jan Kaplický emerge as the
truly great architect we always knew he could be.
This essay and the images (except the portrait) are taken from
Jan Kaplický Drawings, published by Circa, £95, by Ivan Margolius
and Richard Rogers. Images courtesy of the Kaplický Center.
Richard Rogers, Amanda Levete (who was married to Kaplický and
a co-partner of Future Systems) and David Nixon (Future Systems
co-founder) will be in conversation at the Jan Kaplický Drawings
Symposium at Waterstones Piccadilly at 7pm on 24 March.
There is an exhibition of Jan Kaplický drawings, designed by AL_A,
at the Architectural Association, London, until 27 March. The
exhibition is curated by editor and critic David Jenkins, the founder
of the new independent publisher Circa.
 ,

FROM BAUHAUS
TO THIS HOUSE

Words Anthea Gerrie

102
,

A unique collection of modernist buildings in Tel Aviv

that, with a fascinating history behind them but
once left largely to decay and desolation, is being
restored by one curious means or another...

103
 It may be the finest concentration of modernist buildings
in the world, but that didn’t stop Israel’s White City falling into
dereliction. Until, that is, UNESCO recognition brought not only
World Heritage Site status but a new appreciation from locals
that Tel Aviv, one of the world’s first garden cities, was also an
architectural treasure-trove.
Now ambitious renovations are under way to restore an exotic
mix of eclectic and International Style buildings to their former
glory. Yet compromises unimaginable in the UK are part and parcel
of the project. Conservation officers may be strict about preserving
the integrity of lines and footprints, but they are under huge
pressure to allow extra storeys, excavation for underground
parking, and even the sale of building rights from the site to
which they were granted to another lacking any such planning
permission, in order to make restoration economically viable.
‘These rights were granted years ago, before the buildings
were listed, and cannot be revoked under Israeli law,’ explains
Tel Aviv conservation officer Jeremie Hoffman. ‘And at the end
of 2009 we approved a plan which allowed additional incentives
to developers. They could not only sell those building rights
to others, but in some cases add apartments in the basement,
on the roof or within rear extensions of their own buildings.’
The selling-on of their unused rights has been the only way
forward for the owners of the 200 Grade A buildings which
cannot be altered; they often yield enough to finance a complete
renovation. ‘The €2m needed to restore this building, which had
the rights for two more storeys, was entirely met by selling them
to a building in a much higher-value neighbourhood,’ explains
Nitza Szmuk of the 1937 Jacobson building, considered one of
the city’s most successful renovations. ‘It’s often the case, and
it’s the only way the work would get done.’
Szmuk is almost single-handedly responsible for transforming
the White City, despite leaving her home town for more than
a decade to work on church restorations in Florence: ‘In 1989
I decided to return, and the municipality approached me about
doing something about these Bauhaus buildings. For more than
10 years visitors had been telling them about the value of the
heritage, but the locals were indifferent — I grew up here and
didn’t appreciate it myself. However, a younger generation got
it, and the city realised the buildings were drawing in tourists.’
Szmuk launched the city’s conservation department in 1990 —
‘the municipality assumes all the responsibility here; we don’t have
the equivalent of the National Trust or a government-led heritage
policy’ — and headed it till 2002, during which time she wrote the
bid for UNESCO recognition. She also founded an MA in
conservation studies before returning to her architecture practice.

2 3

2,3 & 4 COURTESY BAR ORIAN ARCHITECTS

1 (previous page) – The 2, 3 & 4 (opposite page)

Schick House (see page 131)
– Bialik Street in Tel Aviv has
a high concentration of
buildings from this period.
This refurbishment project
was carried out by Bar Orian
Architects

106
 Meanwhile, Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus Center sprung up in 2000 as
another labour of love. ‘No one cared about these buildings and
there was simply nowhere to learn more about them,’ says
co-founder Micha Gross, who has since been cataloguing
photographs of Tel Aviv past and present. The Center, housed
in a modest example of the genre, offers free self-guided tours
of some of the most illustrative buildings. These include many
around Dizengoff Square, the 1934 crown jewel of Bauhaus Tel
Aviv, which was brutally bisected to ease traffic congestion in
1978. ‘They put an underpass beneath it, pedestrian walkways
above it and destroyed all signs of it having been a square,’ says
Gross mournfully.
It is, says Hoffman, a wonder that the 4,000 historic buildings,
of which half are listed, proved sufficiently sound that renovation
could even be considered after new laws prevented wanton acts
of destruction, such as enclosing balconies to increase indoor
living space and building new apartments over the gardens planted
around supporting ground-floor columns. ‘These apartment houses
were only built to last 50 years, put up fast to accommodate the
large number of immigrants arriving in the Thirties and Forties,’
he explains. ‘Those immigrants didn’t come with a lot of money,
and the modernist idea was that you build a functional machine,
not a chateau, in a fast-changing world.
‘However, the basic construction proved very strong, as
6 7
5,6 & 7 COURTESY BAR ORIAN ARCHITECTS
there were good engineers, and although we have had to
reinforce some of the buildings — we don’t have a maintenance
culture here, where homes are not the priority for investment —
we have lost only one per cent.’
The fact that these thrown-up buildings turned out beautiful
in an era when functionality was the sole ideal, comes down
to ornamental quirks sneaked in by architects who freed
themselves from the strict edicts of their Bauhaus masters when
they fled Europe. Some made their drainpipes decorative, several
made much of the play between vertical glazing to light stairwells
and the horizontal cubes or curves of characteristic wrap-around
balconies, while others rendered buildings with plaster laced with
sparkling minerals to reflect the sun. There’s also the fact that
many immigrants, restricted from bringing cash out of Europe,
imported wealth in the form of tiles, wood and other high-
quality materials, which found its way into their new homes.
Woodworkers from the old country are still sought out for
today’s renovations — with neither fine timber nor joinery
expertise a strength in Israel.
The buildings turned out to be beautiful, though you would
never know from those which have been ruined by enclosing their
balconies to create living space or building between the ground-
floor pillars on land once reserved for tropical gardens. And if
the children and grandchildren of the original occupants declined
5 (opposite page), 6 & 7
– These residences at
3 Strauss Street were
refurbished by Bar Orian
Architects which is one of
the leading urban renewal
practices in Tel Aviv
109
 to care for them, you only have to look at 2000 years of history
to know why, says Hoffman: ‘Jews have always had to be
adaptable, used to moving fast. You don’t put big value on your
home, because you are always wandering. Heritage is not a
priority, and that’s a profound issue; it’s often impossible for
local people to understand the value outsiders put on the place
where they live, especially when the buildings are in such
ahorrible condition, as many still are.’
However, he adds that there has been a sea-change in
attitude in the past 10 years. New money has also flooded in
from the wealthy in England, France, Russia and the US, who find
Tel Aviv such an agreeable place to live. The White City was put
up according to the principles of Scottish urban planner Patrick
Geddes, with north-south traffic axes punctuated by quiet, leafy
east-west streets with apartment buildings, each surrounded by
a garden, to take advantage of sea breezes from the
Mediterranean lining the city’s entire western flank.
Other particularities include balconies designed for the
outdoor living new to refugees from a cold climate. Their outdoor
living spaces were close enough to let them socialise with each
other across the narrow streets — a particular delight for those
resuming social life after years spent in hiding — while the roof
space was, and still is, a communal space for the whole building.
Then there are the bomb shelters, considered vital for a
8
110
country at war even before its founding, although Tel Aviv has
only occasionally been strafed. ‘Each new build or renovation
with additions has to have a strong room for each apartment in
reinforced steel with protection against aftershock and gases,’
says Hoffman. ‘We’ve made them big enough to serve as extra
living space, and they are sited at the back, so they don’t
compromise the facade.’
Another consideration is parking, hardly an issue in
the Thirties, but now an essential in any renovation. Tel Aviv
architects routinely suspend buildings in mid-air with temporary
supports, while excavating the space beneath for a rotating
parking system that requires much less ground area than
a conventional underground carpark.
Hoffman believes his own contribution to Tel Aviv
architecture has been to discourage pastiche, what he calls
‘cut-and-paste architecture’. ‘If you choose to make your
extension copy the original, you have to make it clear that it is
a copy,’ he says. ‘And you can make it something quite different,
so long as you define your plans very well and respect the ethos
of the original. Tel Aviv is not like Paris, where I come from,
which is so much more conservative. Here, in this city that was
a laboratory for architecture during a time when almost no
construction was taking place in Europe, I feel I’ve been able
to make a difference.’
8, 9, 10 & 11 – Views of the
Norman Hotel, from a
drawing and photograph
from the Thirties to the
present day
8,9,10 & 11 COURTESY SAGRADA
 9

The
Norman
Hotel
(1924)

Reopening last autumn, the Norman

Hotel is a history of White City
architecture in microcosm. The main
building by Leon Adler is one of the
first built in the International Style,
sitting side by side with an example
of the Eclectic Style, which was the
vernacular until immigrants with
Bauhaus leanings imported modernism.
Although built only one year
earlier in 1924, the earlier building
is awash with arches and other
Oriental accents, plus remnants of
the hand-painted designs on interior
walls which also characterised the
style. Extending the building with
respect, but an avoidance of pastiche,
was achieved with wooden shutters
which enclose and showcase its
original lines.
The two buildings, and a
late-Twenties’ villa that sits between
them, are being unified with interior
design by UK design practice
Sagrada. The whole project is the
brainchild of Tel Aviv architect Yoav
Messer, whose aim was to bring life
back to the city’s once-vibrant King
Albert Square. On the edge of the
financial centre, it was deserted
decades ago by the mix of residents
and office workers who originally
occupied the buildings.

10 11

111
 14

The
Schick
House
(1934)

The Schick House by architect

Avraham Kabiri, is one of the most
characteristic White City facades,
visible from both land and sea.
It enriched Tel Aviv’s skyline for
decades before being ruined by
its very proximity to the water.
The original ground-floor coffee
shop was restored to its original
condition by architecture practice
Amnon Bar Or, which specialises in
historic renovations. Above that, what
had been a single-family home, built
by architect Avraham Kabin, was
converted into apartments.
This ‘costly’ renovation was funded
by the addition of two further floors.

15 16
1, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 COURTESY AMNON BAR OR

12 (previous page),
13 (opposite page), 14, 15 & 16
– The Schick House, one of
the most characteristic
buildings of the White City.
Adding two extra floors paid
for the restoration

115
17

18

The
Jacobson
Building
(1937)

The Jacobson Building was and

remains a mixed-use building. The
commercial ground-floor area was
expanded at the request of the
developer, who also specified newly
configured apartments on the
upper floors.
Architect Nitza Szmuk was
obliged to reinforce the badly
degraded building and enlarge the
rear to create a strongroom/bomb
shelter for each apartment as
required by law. As most architectural
details were destroyed by decades
of neglect, the beautiful details were
restored by referencing contemporary 19
photographs.
17 & 18 ITZHAK KALTER 19 MICHAELA BORSTOW

Selling on rights granted before

the building was Grade A listed for
upper floors — a designation that
now would prohibit adding storeys
— financed the €2m cost of the
renovation, completed in 2011.

17, 18 & 19 – The restoration of

the Jacobson building is
considered to be one of the
most successful in Tel Aviv

116
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 DRAWING A LINE

Words Abraham Thomas

118
 As the major exhibition on the iconic work of British
fashion designer and couturier Alexander McQueen,
Savage Beauty, opens at the V&A, we publish some
of McQueen’s conceptual sketches and republish
an essay by the director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum,
Abraham Thomas. It appears with 27 other essays
in the show’s catalogue book

119
 ‘I was literally three years old when I started
drawing. I did it all my life... I always, always wanted
to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the
age of 12... I knew Giorgio Armani was a window-
dresser, Emanuel Ungaro was a tailor’
Alexander McQueen, 2003
Alexander McQueen’s drawings provoke a particularly
intriguing set of questions, given that the designer was so well
known for his skill at working directly with materials. How does one
interpret the distilled qualities of a flat drawing when considered
alongside the textural and sculptural possibilities of fabrics?
Very few of these drawings, whether from his student days
or from his professional career, have been published or
researched before. Therefore, they offer a rare glimpse into
McQueen’s design process. Acting both as private musings and
as tools of communication within the studio, the drawings
performed a number of functions. They indicated McQueen’s
initial thoughts; facilitated conversations between members
of the design team; and, at the outset, established the tone,
atmosphere and creative direction of a particular collection.
Sarah Burton, who joined McQueen in 1996, recalled how
incredibly fast McQueen was able to sketch, and described how
she would run after him desperately trying to make notes on the
drawings as he went along. Indeed, many of the annotations on
the drawings are in Burton’s hand rather than McQueen’s,
reflecting their close collaborative relationship during these
early design stages. Selected sketches were also copied and
transmitted to the studio’s textile partners in Italy in order to
convey vital instructions for fabrication, as confirmed by the
scattering of annotated faxes that exist amongst original drawings.
McQueen’s drawings provide an important opportunity
to understand how ideas were expressed at a stage prior to any
cutting or tailoring using fabric on a mannequin. Highly
accomplished and supremely confident, the boldness of these
sketches creates a sense of equivalence to the bravery that was
1 (previous spread) –
Alexander McQueen, 1997
122
evident in his method of working with textiles and three-
dimensional forms.
The drawings that relate to his Central Saint Martins MA
graduation portfolio are especially interesting in that they seem
to provide a direct line of evolution from his early career as an
apprenticed tailor on Savile Row. Many exude a refined, almost
clinical, quality. Others demonstrate how his drawing skills were
able to adapt to a variety of contexts and scales with a deftness
and clarity of approach.
A fellow student, print designer Simon Ungless, recalls
seeing McQueen’s drawings in those early days:‘I remember the
drawings. I just thought, they are so chicken-feet scratchy.
Chicken-claws turning into ink. Really scratchy, feathery, girls
with really pointy noses, bald heads, turtlenecks that covered
their faces. A really different vibe to all the other students ... A
ALL DRAWINGS COURTESY OF ALEXANDER MCQUEEN 1 MARC HORN/TRUNK ARCHIVE
not very cool kind of thing. He really stood out tome. Here is
someone with a point of view.’
In many design disciplines, sketch drawings often acquire
a quasi-sacred status due to their representations of the initial
moments of conception. Although it is true that early drawings
can play a crucial role in articulating future design thoughts,
such a simplistic analysis runs the risk of belying the true
situation. For example, within architecture, designers often
choose to explore initial design ideas through more physical
material processes such as model-making, describing spatial
concepts that later will be expressed more explicitly through
formal drawings. One of McQueen’s drawings for his Scanners
collection (Autumn/Winter 2003) exhibits a particularly
architectural aesthetic, with the fabric articulated as a series of
2 – Sketch, Irere, Spring/
Summer 2003. Pencil on
paper, London 2002
2

123
3

124
interconnected flat planes, and the inclusion of notes indicating
a ‘fully embroidered fabric ... all engineered, no flat parts’. This
interest in the volumetric qualities of a drawing might be
compared to McQueen’s deep engagement with textile fabrics,
and his preference for directly manipulating tactile materials so
as to express ideas in a way that might have been frustratingly
difficult if relying exclusively on the mediated process of drawing
on a flat page. Indeed, from some accounts it appears that
McQueen drew less and less towards the end of his career, deciding
instead to focus on working directly with fabrics, which offered
him an outlet for creative expression that drawing never did.
However, in an interview with the photographer, Nick Knight,
McQueen revealed that his earliest memory of wanting to design
clothes expressed itself through the process of drawing. At the age
of three, at a time when his family was living in a council house, he
recalled outlining a sketch for a dress on an area of bare wall that
had become exposed through the gradual peeling of wallpaper.
This sense of immediacy and gestural flourish permeates a
number of McQueen’s design drawings. Some are compelling for
their minimalism and reduction, as exemplified in one example
that provides the subtlest indication of an outlined silhouette.
Others are memorable for suggesting an approach towards
abstraction, where the drawing seems to exist simply as a
statement of pure materiality. Throughout all the sketches,
though, there is a deft use of the medium to describe the various
qualities of different fabrics. Subtle shifts in texture and weight
are articulated through the delicate and precise application
of smudging techniques. Laborious contour lines and cross-
hatching are employed to indicate the quality of workmanship
3 – Sketch, Scanners,
Autumn/Winter 2003. Pencil
on paper, London 2003
required for detailed embellishments and other surface details,
for example, becoming intently focused on the details of a frock
coat. Perhaps most impressive is the way in which McQueen
manages to suggest a sense of movement within the fabric,
giving the gentlest hint as to how these textiles would behave
once they were on a human body — breathing life into what might
have been a rather more static image in anyone else’s hands.
Much of this was possible due to McQueen’s profound sense
of instinct when it came to working with fabric, and his ability
to faithfully communicate his designs through his drawing
techniques. He clearly strived to ensure that the emotional
content of his designs would never be lost through the explicit
articulation of the drawn line. These unique drawings are
invaluable as records of a creative vision, capturing as they do
a series of conceptual thoughts at a particular moment in time.
They are also crucial to an understanding of McQueen’s creative
process because of their ability to maintain a sense of poignant
inference and poetic ambiguity.
Drawing a Line is taken from Alexander McQueen, edited by Claire
Wilcox, V&A Publishing, £45. vandashop.com
Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, in partnership with Swarovski,
supported by American Express and made possible with the
cooperation of Alexander McQueen, 14 March — 2 August at the
Victoria and Albert Museum. vam.ac.uk
125
4

4 – Sketch, Pantheon ad 5 – Sketch, Pantheon ad

Lucem, Autumn/Winter Lucem, Autumn/Winter
2004. Pencil on paper, 2004. Pencil on paper,
London 2004 London 2004

126
5

127
6

128
7

6 – Sketch, The Girl Who 7 – Sketch, The Girl Who

Lived in the Tree, Autumn/ Lived in the Tree, Autumn/
Winter 2008. Pencil on Winter 2008. Pencil on
paper, London 2008 paper, London 2008

129
8

8 – Sketch, Irere, Spring/

Summer 2003. Pencil on
paper, London 2002

130
 THE BILBAO EFFECT:
HIT AND MYTH

Words Veronica Simpson

132
 Statement buildings are so last century. As the
architectural world awaits the winning scheme for the
Guggenheim Helsinki, we reflect on the legacy — both
intended and unintended — of the Guggenheim Bilbao.
What underpins its extraordinary success as a cultural
icon? And can Helsinki hope to replicate that formula?

133
 There are many things the Guggenheim Bilbao has become
a byword for — for architects it represents a career-defining,
genre-spawning, architectural moment that catapulted its
creator, the city and the client that commissioned him into
mythic global status. However, for national and regional
governments the world over, the hype that has surrounded it has
too often led to the erroneous belief that ambitious and
expensive cultural buildings are a fast-track to economic
prosperity and cultural significance. The cities of Spain, in
particular, are littered with the skeletons of starchitect-designed
structures (airports, opera houses, exhibition halls), many of
which are barely or will never be operational, as a direct result
of those who commissioned (and built) them trying to grab some
of that ‘Bilbao effect’ prosperity and cachet for themselves,
seemingly without bothering to do the sums, or consider how
the building will be supported by infrastructure, audience
appeal or contextual relevance.
Such is the allure of a Guggenheim commission that the
latest incarnation — the proposed Guggenheim Helsinki —
attracted more entries than any architectural competition ever
before: 1,715 of them, from 77 countries. With a shortlist of six
architects now frantically working away to develop and refine
their schemes in the hope of emerging triumphant when the
winner is announced in June, it’s worth re-examining what
made the Bilbao incarnation such a success.
Richard Armstrong, now the
Guggenheim Foundation director, was not
a fan when he first visited the construction The cities of Spain, in
site (it was finished in 1997). At the time, he particular, are littered
was director of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie with the skeletons of
Museum of Art, a curious art-world insider starchitect-designed
keen to see what Guggenheim director
Thomas Krens and Frank Gehry were up to.
structures
He remembers it as, ‘a hole in the ground. I
went back to Pittsburgh and I said it would never work’. Since
being appointed Guggenheim Foundation director in 2008, he
has had ample time to see how well the building supports the
programme envisioned for it. He says: ‘People think it’s all about
Frank’s building and his psychic investment. It isn’t.
‘I see now that what Frank and Tom were looking into was a
new spatial world and seeing what was coming.’ They believed
that art and artists increasingly needed far greater diversity of
exhibition space, in order to accommodate large-scale
sculptures, video art, light installations and site-specific work.
They wanted a mixture of both intimate and cavernous galleries
to house the Guggenheim Bilbao’s own emerging contemporary
collection as well as the 20th-century masterpieces the
Foundation had amassed; and a building that could welcome
and support cultural pilgrims, one that would feel accessible and
uplifting instead of elitist and intimidating. So the Guggenheim
was designed from the inside out, with Gehry and Krens
agreeing the kinds of shapes and scales of galleries that were
needed, and moving these around until they formed a plan that
worked, with the galleries organised around a central atrium.
This atrium serves to orientate the visitor as well as provide
views into and across the building from multiple interstitial
spaces such as balconies, staircases and bridges, where daylight
and views could be maximised, clear of the conservation
restrictions necessary to protect the art. The unorthodox
exterior flowed from this unusual interior plan, with the
136
titanium tiles added for an industrial finish that would evoke the
site’s shipbuilding past.
It’s hard to remember now how bold that would have
seemed. Of course, Gehry was following in the visionary
footsteps of his Guggenheim New York predecessor Frank Lloyd
Wright. Nobody thought that his circular spiral of a building
would work for art — and yet it does. Even so, in the mid-1990s,
‘people thought that a museum should be boring in terms of
architecture because, if not, the spaces would compete with the
art,’ recalls Juan Ignacio Vidarte — now director of the Bilbao
Guggenheim. ‘And that wasn’t right. We tried to find an architect
who could understand the ambition in terms of the museum and
in terms of the city. We asked different architects to provide the
ideas. And at that time it was Frank’s proposal that everyone
thought was the right answer. It was certainly a building that was
not neutral or boring. It was a statement. But we thought it was
the right statement... He had to make sure everything was there:
the types of galleries, circulation, flow. I think it was very
rational, combined with Gehry’s own artistic genius.’
There were other elements of its design that are often
overlooked in the rush to emulate its visual flamboyance. Gehry
wanted to situate the building right down on the waterfront —
long before riverfront cultural buildings became the norm (a la
Tate Modern and many imitiations thereof ), way below the city’s
main pedestrian and traffic route. This was allegedly inspired by
the idea of inverting the usual gallery
hierarchy, where you enter at ground level,
through a grand entrance and have to walk
up to the art as if subservient to it. But it
also meant that this glittering, sculptural
symbol was right by the river’s edge, at the
heart of the former shipbuilding site, on the
‘wrong’ side of the river — all the genteel
buildings and economic activity in Bilbao
were on the opposite side of the Nervión river at that time.
When you look at the Guggenheim Bilbao now, you would never
know it. The surrounding areas have been, mostly, thoughtfully
cultivated, with a generous sweep of open public space around
the building, from the adjacent park and plaza to the extensive
riverwalk that now opens up both sides of the river for
promenading, running and cycling. Just beyond the Guggenheim
are more recent buildings that complement the crazy curves of
the museum with sober and considered shapes and materials.
There’s the gently elliptical glass facade of César Pelli’s Iberdrola
Tower (2012) and Rafael Moneo’s innovative University of Duesto
Library (2008) which sits beside Alvaro Siza’s white marble and
ceramic tile-clad university auditorium (2010).
Much of this surrounding infrastructure and investment was
on the table even as the Guggenheim plans were being drawn
up. The museum was just one — albeit pivotal — element in the
Basque government’s 1990s ambition to transform its biggest
city’s economy from defunct industry and shipping to one
focused on culture, tourism, technology and education. Long
before the Guggenheim deal was sealed, the government had
lined up the likes of Norman Foster to design their underground
system, Santiago Calatrava for the airport, and Raphael Soriano
for the Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall. The use
of ‘top, world-class architects’ was a key part of the Basque plan,
according to Jon Azua, who was deputy president of the Basque
government at the time, and was instrumental in bringing the
1 (previous spread) –
Designed from the inside
out, the shapes of the
galleries created the
unorthodox exterior of the
Guggenheim Bilbao
 Guggenheim to the city. The idea of architecturally led
regeneration was as much about giving opportunities to the
city’s own far less-experienced architectural practices to work
alongside and learn from the global greats as it was about creating
a distinctive and high-quality, urban landscape. When Gehry
came on board, the city had just signed an agreement with the
French company Dassault Systèmes, to set up a base in Bilbao
for its pioneering CATIA (Computer Aided Three-dimensional
Interactive Application) expertise and software. The Guggenheim
Bilbao became their first live architectural experiment.
Azua, who now plays a key role as Guggenheim Foundation
board member and advisor, says: ‘Many people think, outside and
inside the country, that this Guggenheim deal and this building
was the first mover that explains the success and the change (for)
the city. It’s the opposite way around. It was the tip of the iceberg.’
So how has the building fared, over 17 years after
completion? What strikes one most, visiting the Guggenheim
Bilbao now is how well it looks — the titanium tiles ripple with
reflected light from the river, the interior paintwork is a crisp
white, the glazed panels gleam — and how well the experience of
the building works. The galleries, in groups of no more than two
or three at a time, set up a gentle and humane rhythm with the
many interstitial spaces. You emerge from galleries having
wrestled with the density and physical power of Richard Serra’s
sculptures for example, or gazed at mid-19th-century canvases
positively pulsing with colour and intensity, and invariably you
find yourself in an area flooded with daylight. There is sunshine
(on a good day) and shadow all around you. The surrounding
2
ALL IMAGES COURTESY GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION
2 – Frank Gehry (second
right) surveying the riverside
construction site in Bilbao
structure curves and tilts, making impossible shapes, offering
your fevered eyes respite and vistas both through and beyond
the building. The contours and light and materiality seem to
viscerally rebalance you, grounding you in the here and now,
giving your fizzing brain a rest. Like palate fresheners during a
12-course, Michelin-starred, gourmet meal, they give you the
will and the appetite to go for another course, and then another.
The building may seem over-engineered in places; the fans
of glazed panels that are concertinaed between the gallery
blocks seem cluncky, but that’s only in comparison with the
streamlined, soulless elegance of contemporary, glass curtain-
wall technology.
Armstrong agrees the spaces are ‘very hospitable and
stimulating. The museum is a space where you have to tease out
and nurture imagination. This building (Bilbao) is so
phenomenally generous about imagination. Frank has an
unusual capacity to direct your senses. It’s dramatic but not
oppressive. The only building I can think of that had this quality
before is Stirling’s Stuttgart building’. ( James Stirling’s Neue
Staatsgalerie, completed in 1984, also features a connecting
daylit atrium and frilly ‘skirts’ of glazed panels.)
Krens and Gehry were ‘about a decade ahead of their time,’
states Armstrong, in predicting how art would develop. But now,
he feels, it’s time for another step-change in what a museum
needs to be and to offer as a place for experiencing art. This is
what the Guggenheim judges are looking for in Helsinki.
To Armstrong, the frenzy that has accompanied the Helsinki
Guggenheim design competition is a sideshow, almost an
137
 irrelevance. He says that what was meaningful about the Bilbao
project — aside from the opening up of new opportunities for art
— was what it revealed about the spirit and political will of the
Basque region. And this is what intrigues him about Finland.
Says Armstrong: ‘The Basque leadership offers a model to
the world. I think the Finns do too. I hope that one of our
lessons is beyond the aesthetic and more to the social. Without
wanting to sound pretentious, we thought why not make the
(Finnish qualities and sensibility) available to a bigger audience
— celebrate the achievement of the city, which is real,
egalitarian, democratic, open.’ Other compelling elements in
justifying the Helsinki location included Finland’s design
heritage, its technological innovation and, for Armstrong, the
access to and importance of ‘real and pure nature’ that is so
central to Finnish culture. Says Armstrong: ‘One of the first
people I spoke to from Helsinki’s planning department told me
that every body of water should be potable. Initially I thought
that was ridiculous, and then I thought “how noble”. From then
my enthusiasm doubled.’ The final design, he hopes, will ‘offer a
good balance of outdoor/indoor, natural light, the proximity to
nature. I hope we can show people: here is a rational society that
values education and offers people a very high quality of life,
almost without riches... You see all kinds of people participating
in things. That’s a healthy society. It’s the
triumph of the middle classes, if you like.’
He pauses, before reflecting: ‘It’s gone out ‘What does it mean to
of our world in the US.’ have Guggenheim in
Armstrong acknowledges there have
been ‘agreements and disagreements’
Helsinki? I’m much
during the process — the Helsinki-ites more interested in what
rejected the initial proposal for how the impact does Helsinki
Guggenheim would be funded and operated have on Guggenheim’
as they felt the cost of building and running
the museum lay too heavily on the city’s
shoulders (a €104m bill for construction, plus a $30m licensing
fee to the Guggenheim). Says Armstrong: ‘We have learned a lot
in the agreement and disagreement. One of the questions
emerging from this was: What should the museum be in the 21st
century? A museum has to be a pure form. That’s hard for
museum people to comprehend.’
By ‘pure form’, he means: ‘Not only physical but
metaphysical. What I really hope for is someone who could
incorporate all the attributes of that particular site which is
inspirational and egalitarian.’ But then Armstrong says, by way
of a disclaimer: ‘I’m not on the committee.’
The committee, through a much-trumpeted process of
transparent and democratic selection (none of the identities of
the entrants were disclosed) has chosen, to the surprise and
delight of many of the onlookers, a shortlist of relative
unknowns. Some are very young practices with little more to
their names than the odd pavilion. There is little flamboyant
shape-making, but all proposals offer a more fluid relationship
between public space and gallery space, adaptable to a wide
range of different programmes. What the judges were looking
for, according to their chair, professor of architecture at
Columbia University, Mark Wigley, was mysterious even to them.
‘We are looking for something that shows us what we are looking
for. It’s kind of a dance…’ But he declared: ‘I believe that
something beautiful happens here in Helsinki in relation to
design. We are in a historic moment in the evolution of museums.
138
Our reflection on what a museum could be deepens in this
moment. As a jury we were looking for entrants who understood
this. That we are on the threshold of something new.’
At the shortlist announcement, Wigley stressed that the
selected designs ‘represent the thinking of architects at the
beginning of a very long and deep dialogue that will last for
many years. The very first task of the jury was to respectfully
look at all these entries and see which of them had the potential
to be developed further.’
The proposed schemes, Wigley declared, respond with
equal respect to ‘that beautiful site and also the needs and hopes
of Helsinki. It’s a project that has to participate in the evolution
of the city. What does it mean to have a Guggenheim in Helsinki?
I’m much more interested in what impact does Helsinki have on
Guggenheim.’
Wigley has a point — it has been far too easy for the
Guggenheim Foundation to be the king-maker, courted by
countless countries, corporate sponsors or ambitious architects,
desperate for a piece of their cultural kudos or the Bilbao
regenerative fairy dust. What Armstrong insists is that the
Foundation is interested in making an evolutionary step. It has
been experimenting with smaller, simpler and lighter-footed
interventions, such as the ‘BMW Guggenheim Lab’ initiative: a
six-week travelling roadshow, part think
tank, part community centre, part
gathering space, designed by Atelier Bow
Wow, which travelled around New York,
Berlin and Mumbai between 2011 and 2013.
There has also been a recent exploration of
the wild landscapes north of Bilbao for a
kind of art and wild-living retreat, ‘like a
spa for your spirit,’ says Armstrong, which
both he and Azua are interested in
developing further. Though what this
means for the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim, another Gehry project,
six times the size of Bilbao and a long way from completion, is
harder to say.
Given Armstrong’s declared interest in reinventing and
opening up museum experiences and in exploring the way a
museum can enhance a city’s social as well as cultural capital,
what can the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim offer that is of any value to
the world’s (or its own) citizens, beyond an oil-rich nation
seizing yet another opportunity to display its unimaginable
wealth, showcase yet more unsustainable architecture and
outdo its neighbours in civic ambition? (In its defence,
Armstrong points out that Dubai and Abu Dhabi are becoming
massive interchanges for a huge range of nationalities and the
cultural buildings proposed for Saadiyat Island, including the
Guggenheim, will offer a vital and accessible ‘meeting place’ for
visitors.) Either way, it makes one warm all the more to the idea
that the Helsinki Guggenheim can be that hoped for
evolutionary leap in museum design — one that celebrates the
unique spirit of a city which believes in collective endeavor and
universal access to good design, turning the creative process and
its outcomes into a truly participative and enriching experience.
If the new scheme’s design and programming can achieve this
feat, there is every chance for it to become another legendary
Guggenheim. What the world really doesn’t need is yet another
glamorous but meaningless cultural bauble, for visiting pilgrims
to gawp and marvel at.
http://www.archdaily.com/573862/6-finalists-revealed-in-guggenheim-helsinki-competition/

1
THE SIX FINALISTS...
The competition to design the new Helsinki Guggenheim pulled in some
1715 entries, all of which were judged blind, with the committee arriving
at a shortlist of six without knowing who had designed what. The names
of the six have been revealed, but despite rampant speculation we still
don’t know who designed what. Try matching these names to the projects
over the next six pages: AGPS Architecture, Asif Khan, Fake Industries
Architectural Agonism, Haas Cook Zemmrich STUDIO2050, Moreau
Kusunoki Architect and SMAR Architecture Studio

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 THE BILBAO EFFECT:
BRITAIN PLAYS TO THE GALLERY

Words James Pallister

146
The last thirty years have seen a boom in the building of
large-scale art galleries in English regional centres,
unprecedented since Victorian days. For former
industrial towns, stripped of a purpose and revenue
stream by the collapse of heavy industry, art was touted
as the new salvation. Have our prestigious new galleries
realised the dream of local regeneration?

147
 1 (previous page) – The David
Chipperfield-designed Turner
Contemporary Gallery in
Margate: the word regeneration
was avoided during it’s
gestation and realisation

Sometime in the 1990s, the notion took hold that the
arrival of a high-profile, new arts centre would be just the thing
to turn round the fortunes of a struggling city or a run-down
neighbourhood. Whether it came in the form of an opera house,
an art gallery or a centre for interpretative dance, the prospect
of a whizzy new arts venue was sufficient to bring a flush to the
cheeks of councillors, curators and property developers up and
down the country.
In the last 25 years many have been built; the dreams of the
burghers of many of England’s post-industrial cities have
become reality — they have gained their own new shiny centres,
though the attendant economic miracle, the Bilbao effect, has
not always been forthcoming.
Three factors helped fuel the resurgence: the need to
emolliate what had been a brutal shift in the 1980s from an
industrial to a services economy; the increased credence given
to ‘the creative’ industries as drivers of economic growth; and
the public sector and private sector investment in cities that
accelerated in the late Nineties.
There were some high-profile failures along the way. Will
Alsop’s The Public, in West Bromwich, was dogged by cost
overruns, and arguments over programme; the Millennium Dome
(Richard Rogers Partnership) was the great building which no one
knew how to fill; and the National Centre for Popular Music in
Sheffield (Branson Coates), which cost £15m was only open for
two years. It is now occupied by Sheffield Hallam Students’ Union.
For architecture, by and large, the period was a huge boon.
There have been some genuinely fantastic galleries produced,
which will be valued for years to come. The long-term effect on
their host cities is more difficult to measure. Some critics of the
strategy, such as the artist Nils Norman take issue with how
‘Cities are compelled to compete with each other, Liverpool with
London, Manchester with Liverpool, Rotterdam with
Amsterdam, Bexhill with Hastings, and so on. These cities are all
incredibly diverse and yet the competition forces them to be the
same.’ And geographer Jamie Peck of the University of British
Columbia has made criticism of the notion espoused by Richard
Florida in his 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, that
young, arty entrepreneurs can have a significant impact on the
economic fortunes of a neighbourhood.
Psychologically, one could say that the proliferation of
regional galleries has been an important corrective to the
all-consuming maw of England’s capital. Even if artists may still
have to go and work in London, at least there are globally
important art centres that now exist outside Zone 2 and the
precedent is there for England to shift away from its insistent
centrism. Their power may be small, their presence perhaps a
token gesture, but it’s an important shift nonetheless.

Gallery Gallery

TATE LIVERPOOL

The current generation of galleries

owe a debt to their forerunners in
redeveloping former industrial space.
Tate Liverpool (1988), designed by
James Stirling took over former dock
buildings to create a new outpost for
the London-based Tate, a precursor
of the further regionalism that would
come with Tate St Ives. By the late
1980s and early 1990s the idea that
PREVIOUS PAGE BENJAMIN BEKER THIS PAGE TATE LIVERPOOL

revitalising city centres in decline,

was important had begun to gain
traction, helped by such disparate
camps as Richard Rogers, the
Archbishop of Canterbury’s
Commission on Urban Priority Areas,
and regeneration enthusiast Michael
Heseltine, who drove forward the
1980s Garden Festival schemes that
brought thousands of visitors to
formerly derelict land in Liverpool,
Glasgow, Stoke-on-Trent, Gateshead
and Ebbw Vale. The building boom in
other former industrial cities owes a
lot to what was done in Liverpool in
the Eighties.

150
 In recent years, however, Arts Council cuts have left many
of these institutions struggling to fund themselves, making the
prospect of a raft of new galleries unlikely, and few wanting to
commit to venues with high running costs. That said, one of the
earlier of the new galleries, the Milton Keynes Theatre and
Gallery, built by Blonski Heard Architects, which opened in 1999,
is celebrating its success by last year appointing 6a Architects to
work on a refurbishment programme.
And what about the regeneration — did the regional gallery
strategy, articulated by individual cities and national bodies,
such as the National Museums Directors Conference help bring
money to the regions? In many instances, it’s too early to tell,
and the appropriate metrics to measure this are contested, but
there are signs that it has had a positive effect. The Newcastle
and Gateshead developments, with the BALTIC and the Fosters-
designed Sage, make a strong case study of the economic value
of building new cultural venues and developing existing ones.
In five years (2009–2014), the Newcastle Gateshead Cultural
Venues (NGCV) made a total economic contribution to the North
East of £85.8m, supporting 2068 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs,
1251 of which are people directly employed by the organisations.
For every 10 direct full-time jobs created by NGCV, five
additional ones were created in the region. For every £1 of public
money invested in NGCV, there was a return on investment of
£4.43. The BALTIC itself attracts about 400,000 visits per year,
including a dedicated audience of 80,000 who come to every
exhibition.
Recent DCMS figures show just how popular the UK’s and
galleries are: the 2013–14 figures saw an all-time record number
of visits. However, domestic visitors to London-based galleries
dropped, with half of all visitors to the Tate Gallery Group
coming from overseas. A worrying trend, perhaps, for those
galleries outside of central London, who pull in primarily
UK-based visitors with, for example, just 16 per cent of visitors to
the National Museums Liverpool being from overseas.
The V&A’s new gallery in Dundee (Kengo Kuma and
Associates), currently on site, illustrates a profitable London-
based gallery adapting a federal approach, despite significant
cost rises — from £40m to £80m. A recent poll (source:
YOURVIEWK) showed that the majority of Dundonians were in
favour of the gallery, with 67% saying it’s important for Dundee’s
development. It seems that for many the prospect of a bright
new gallery continues to have both economic — and emotional
— appeal. That said, in the current economic landscape, it looks
like smaller regional galleries without the clout of a major
institution like the Tate or V&A will find it difficult to embark on
the kind of ambitious capital spend projects that we have seen
over the past 25 years.
151
MIDDLESBROUGH
INSTITUTE FOR
MODERN ART
Once a titan of England’s industrial
revolution, the fast-growing Victorian
town was dubbed an ‘infant Hercules’,
by William Gladstone and great
wealth flowed through its iron and
steel mills and its port.
Middlesbrough, like many northern
towns, declined in the 1970s and
1980s as trade went elsewhere and
the heavy industries were wound
down. mima was built in 2007, to
bring together the three collections in
the town’s existing Victorian galleries.
As well as its permanent collection,
mima has a focus on post-1900 work,
and the relationship between art and
craft. The gallery, designed by Erick
van Egeraat Associated Architects
along with landscape architects West
8, sits within its own large public
152
square. Despite attracting over one
million visitors since its opening and
attracting around £800,000
additional spend to Middlesbrough
annually, mima’s existence and
funding remains contentious in one of
the most deprived parts of the
country. As the recently appointed
director Alasdair Hudson
acknowledges, mima sits ‘in a context
where the currency of modern or
contemporary art is in doubt’ and that
the world is very different to when
the gallery first opened in 2007. The
way forward, for Hudson, is to make a
EVE PHOTOGRAPHY
concerted effort to be relevant to its
local population and to evolve a new
kind of institution that ‘leads the field
in testing new approaches to making
art work in society’.
THIERRY BAL
 BALTIC CENTRE FOR
CONTEMPORARY ART
GATESHEAD

Alongside the Tate Modern

conversion of Bankside power station,
the BALTIC was one of the more
emblematic conversions in the crop
of new galleries, taking a former flour
mill and turning it into a space for
exhibiting contemporary art. Ellis
Williams Architects won the
competition to convert the 1930s
building, which had been vacated in
1981. The building is on the south side
of the Tyne — so technically in
Gateshead — but is synonymous with
the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in
the North East of England, an area
which was particularly badly struck
by the effects of deindustrialisation in
the 1980s. The gallery opened in
2002, with the bulk (£33m) of the
£50m capital spend coming from the
Arts Council Lottery fund. Together
with the Norman Foster-designed
Sage Gateshead and the Wilkinson
Eyre Millennium Bridge, the BALTIC
has helped transform the riverside
that had long been a slightly scruffy,
underused space, bringing Newcastle
and Gateshead together. The trio of
new buildings, together with
ALEX TELFER

enhanced public realm on the north

side of the river are a good example
of new cultural and physical
infrastructure working in tandem to
make a more pleasant, pedestrian-
friendly city that appeals to both
locals and tourists.
COLIN DAVISON 2014 BALTIC

JAMES TOLLEY

153
NEW ART GALLERY
WALSALL

This project, opened in 2000, helped

consolidate the reputation of Caruso
St John, then a fairly young practice,
building a large gallery in the
canal-side centre of Walsall, in the
West Midlands. The work went on in
parallel with a master plan by
Hopkins Architects on how to
rejuvenate the former industrial area.
The gallery hosts a large permanent
collection of art as well as touring
shows. In 2005, the gallery’s assets
were boosted by the addition of a
public-access art library — since its
opening, 50,000 visitors have used
the facilities, to look through archives,
books and journals. The last two
years have seen the gallery attract a
healthy crop of visitors (202,7875 in
2013–14), helped by strong
attendance at 2012–13’s Damien Hirst,
part of the nationwide Artists’ Rooms
tour. The gallery has fared relatively
well in the 2015 local council budget
cuts, meaning no full-time jobs will
be lost. The gallery received an extra
fillip in 2014 with the allocation of a
£2.64m funding boost from Arts
Council England’s (ACE) National
Portfolio 2015–18. The money will
help pay for the completion of
refurbishment and upgrading work to
the gallery. In the same round of
funding, ACE commended the gallery
for its ‘track record of excellent
programming’.

ALL IMAGES THIS PAGE: CRAIG HOLMES

154
 TURNER
CONTEMPORARY
MARGATE

Margate’s story — seaside resort

fallen on hard times, beset with
crime, drugs and sluggish economic
activity — is unfortunately an
altogether familiar one. David
Chipperfield’s sober new gallery,
opened in 2011, has helped shift
perception from the town being
associated less with brawling mods
and rockers and more with the
painter JMW Turner, who declared its
skies ‘the loveliest in Europe’. Its
location on a high-speed rail link to
London has helped pull in a few Zone
2 émigrés, keen to leave the expense
of London’s overheated rental market
behind, but still needing a quick
connection to the capital. With a
large number of vacant shops, it’s
hoped by many that the town can
benefit as a whole from the halo
effect of the new gallery. In Margate,
MANU PALOMEUQE

as elsewhere, the perennial tensions

between new ‘middle-class ghettos’
emerging and economic development
that benefits existing inhabitants,
rumbles on.
BENJAMIN BEKER

155
THE JERWOOD GALLERY
HASTINGS

Another seaside special, this one

conceived and led by the private
charitable organisation, the Jerwood
Foundation was completed by a
relatively young practice, HAT
Projects, in 2012. The duo twinned
mundane materials — cladding
normally found on out-of-town
drive-thrus — with some imaginative
glazing and detailing, to create a
sumptuous, but cheap black box that
riffs on the traditional structures of
the nearby fishermen’s net houses. Its
large picture windows are a reference
— intended or otherwise — to the
New Art Gallery at Walsall. The
gallery’s focus is on early-twentieth-
century art, including pieces by Sir
Stanley Spencer, LS Lowry and Walter
Sickert. HAT Projects’ gallery works in
tandem with the new public realm
cafe and restaurant by Tim Ronalds
Architects, making sure the gallery is
not marooned by itself. The Jerwood
complements the existing string of
galleries on the south-east coast
comprising Eastbourne’s Towner,
Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion and
Chichester’s Pallant House.

ALL IMAGES THIS PAGE: IOANA MARINESCU

156
157
 FIRSTSITE
COLCHESTER

Rafael Viñoly’s crescent-shaped

building opened in 2011, costing
£28m on a budget of £18m, and
completing several years late. Tucked
behind a row of respectable
Georgian, and some Tudor shops,
firstsite, with its croissant shape and
sloping walls, brings an unexpected
shock of bling to the journey through
one of England’s oldest towns.
Drawing some adverse publicity for
its impractical sloped and curved
walls, the gallery attracted 178,000
visitors in its first year, surpassing its
150,000 visitor target. Visitor
numbers dropped by 30,000 to
148,000 in its second year. However,
a survey conducted in early 2014, by
local critics of the building, showed
that 54 per cent of visitors over a
20-hour period, were leaving within
two minutes of arriving, prompting
the charge that many of its punters
were attracted by the availability of a
free public toilet rather than the
prospect of the art on show, and that
all visits should not be counted
equally. Since then, the proposed
funding from Arts Council England
has been pulled, with the gallery
being put into special measures.
Director Matthew Rowe said the
gallery, which has 15 full-time
equivalent employees, was
‘chronically understaffed’ and needed
around 25 staff members and that he
regretted not engaging a forensic
financial controller when he joined in
January 2013.

ALL IMAGES THIS PAGE: RICHARD BRYANT WWW.ARCAIDIMAGES.COM

158
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 SCREENING OUR FUTURE

Words Yolanda Zappaterra

160
 London-based creative studio Territory has been
grabbing our attention with future fictional worlds in
films such as Ex Machina and Prometheus as well as
graphic projects for Virgin Atlantic and the Guardian.
From within their glass-box studio, the team explains
how they’re blurring the lines between fiction,
the virtual, the artificial and the real

161
2

4 5

164
 Visiting a creative’s studio — whether it’s that of a fine
artist, architect, typographer or motion graphics designer — I’m
always filled with excited anticipation at the prospect of what I’ll
find. Sometimes it’s huge white walls splashed with colour in a
run-down factory in Port of Spain (Peter Doig), sometimes
endless shelves and cupboards filled with different materials and
arresting forms (Thomas Heatherwick), and sometimes boho
spaces sporting fixed-gear bikes and pop culture figurines (most
design studios I’ve ever been in). There is usually some
relationship between space and inhabitant, so walking into
Territory’s east London space, I’m half expecting something that
looks like a Neal Stephenson novel: Snowcrash maybe, or The
Diamond Age. For, more than anyone, Territory is currently
shaping our view of fictional near- and distant-future worlds in
films including Ex Machina, Jupiter Rising, Prometheus,
Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and The
Martian, Ridley Scott’s blockbuster due out in November. But the
space is like a blank canvas, a bright, uncluttered office with
some 30 desks and a glass-box meeting room.
Sitting in that glass box, I reflect (sorry) that the space is
perhaps perfect for the company whose work exists more than
1 - 5 © 2012 – TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION 6 © TERRITORY STUDIO LTD
1 (previous page), 2, 3, 4 & 5 6 – Territory designed a
– Ridley Scott’s Prometheus system of icons for the
features hundreds of motion Guardian’s app and online
screens and overlays created services
by Territory
anywhere in the imaginations and abilities of the 15 core
designers working within it. And that work, I soon learn, extends
far beyond the already impressive motion graphics work on the
films mentioned, and the other six they’re currently working on.
In design, there are branding and graphics projects for Virgin
Atlantic, Space NK and the Guardian; in digital, there are
interactives for Lord’s, UI design for Microsoft Xbox Sport, iPad
apps for Vogue, and website design for JJ Sweeney. And in the
spaces between, lies a broad range of projects which touch on
future technologies — including materials and how they might
behave and be used from wearables to domestic appliances, new
domestic product categories, and transport environments for
clients such as Panasonic, Joseph Joseph and AeroMexico.
What all the projects share is a fanatical attention to detail
plus the knowledge that’s rooted in the experiences of the three
founders who met at ad agency Fold7 in the mid-2000s and set up
Territory in 2010: David Sheldon-Hicks (director — motion), Lee
Fasciani (director — digital) and Nick Glover (MD). The director of
brand experience, Luke Miles, has recently joined them from
Virgin Atlantic. A former industrial designer, Miles’s aviation
projects,’ says Glover, are ‘a great example of how the business
165
7

7, 10 & 11 © TERRITORY STUDIO LTD 8 & 9 © 2015 – UNIVERSAL PICTURES INTERNATIONAL (TOP TWO IMAGES)/ © TERRITORY STUDIO LTD (BOTTOM TWO IMAGES)

7 – A detailed series of
technical drawings created
by Territory for the robot’s
humanoid skeleton in Ex
Machina

8 & 9 – A series of credible

‘near-future’ interface
designs and schematics were
drawn up, too

10 & 11 – Elsewhere in the

film, Territory created an
operating system for the
multi-billionaire genius
programmer who designed
the robot, Ava

166
8

10 11

167
12

168
 comes together, as you start to see the meshing of the conceptual
work being done in the physical realm with the fantastical stuff
we’re doing in the film area.’ In an ideal world, he adds, ‘we
might start to get into more physical creative in the film world
— by conceiving a spaceship for a production, for example.’ It’s
this intertwining and fluidity that makes Territory and its work
so exciting. He enthuses: ‘The motion side of our work has
grown very aggressively; screen graphics with fantastical user
interface work, HUD graphics, non-interactive cinematic stuff
and the like, account for 70 per cent plus of our revenue, but the
digital side of our business — user interfaces, user experience,
online, apps, offline installation projects (the media through
which you would connect with an audience) — has been
organically growing too.’
This mix of projects and disciplines and the concomitant
sharing of skills and knowledge is increasingly valuable beyond
the doors of the studio, where lines between fiction, virtual,
artificial and real are blurring more and more, and where
entertainment and real life are increasingly mirroring each
other: ‘The film world loves to plumb ideas, and then those feed
into current culture. Big organisations are keen to get involved in
13
12 © 2014 – MARVEL STUDIO (TOP TWO IMAGES)/© TERRITORY STUDIO LTD (OTHER IMAGES) 13 © TERRITORY STUDIO LTD
12 – Screen graphics for the 13 – Motion graphics
2014 film Guardians of the showcasing Land Rover’s
Galaxy Vision Concept technologies
such as Terrain Response
a film’s potential selling power, too,’ says Sheldon-Hicks. Being
able to draw on such organisations and their research is very
helpful with near-future projects, like the recently released Ex
Machina. ‘On these projects we do a huge amount of research,’
says Sheldon-Hicks. ‘We go and look at what NASA’s doing, or
MIT’s doing, and extrapolate along a curve to figure out how
they might be applying some of these theories in ten years’ time.
And, because industry is also looking at these things, we’re only
slightly ahead of the curve when we’re presenting our ideas in
films, where you have to play to an extraordinary level of detail.’
This was particularly true for Ex Machina, where the film’s
surface level of beauty was propped up by an underlying
interface of quickly accessible real code. The studio strived for
the same authenticity in the film’s delicate schematics; not just
because ‘the client was the art department, which draws out
schematics day in, day out, meaning there had to be a real rigour
and care around making it feel authentic’, but also because, says
Sheldon-Hicks, ‘film doesn’t like that pause moment, where the
geeks go “nuh uh, it wouldn’t be like that”. And that was
heightened on this film, where the interface was being used as a
narrative functional device’.
169
 It’s in areas like this that the team’s different skillsets come
to the fore. ‘You can have a quick conversation with someone
across a desk and know you’ve got something right, or are on
the right track,’ says Sheldon-Hicks. ‘We get a variety and
amount of learning from dealing with different people’s skills
— so, if I’m working with Luke, say on a total branding project, I
can bring something different to it.’ ‘Or on a film like Jupiter
Rising, we can create a bespoke font that brings a unique
element to the graphics,’ adds Fasciani. And it cuts across all
their work and design strategy, he believes: ‘We can do things
like go into a boardroom and take the chairman of an airline into
a physical environment that they’re completely immersed in
through digital media. It’s a moment — to see someone at that
level, with a headset on, getting such a childlike reaction, and
engaging and understanding, but it’s also a very quick way for us
to test design thinking, provoke a response, and gain some
insight into what that experience is going to feel like. It’s a
powerful proposition within Territory because we can create a
3D environment based on concepts and research that we’ve
done, and we can put someone in that environment virtually,
from the digital aspect of the business, and we can overlay
14
14 – Zero Dark Thirty
required computer screens
depicting aerial surveillance
created from scratch
170
graphics that the motion guys have done, and when you put all
those aspects together, that’s powerful.’
This kind of crossover and experience feeding back into
Territory’s film work neatly dovetails with a growing desire for
on-set graphics, something performers can play to. ‘What we
strive to do is figure out how to bring performance to someone
working with data, which ultimately is visually pretty boring, to
make a more interesting movie,’ says Glover. It’s seen to great
effect in Zero Dark Thirty, where ‘Kathryn [Bigelow] wanted a
very real-world perspective, because she believed the drone
camera views of Osama Bin Laden in front of the actors would
make it authentic and real, and create a performance that relates
to the content of screen, and a dialogue between actor and
screen graphics,’ adds Sheldon-Hicks. Anyone who’s seen the
scene will remember the gut-churning tension emanating from
the screen and the actors, illustrating nicely a point that Glover
makes: ‘Sometimes technology can forget the necessity we have
as humans to be sensorially touched in all kinds of different
ways. It’s not about streamlining things so that it’s all just
happening and you can’t actually feel anything. It’s the
experiential stuff, the physical interactivity.’
14 © 2012 – ZERODARK THIRTY, LLC 15 © 2015 - WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC (TOP IMAGE)/ © TERRITORY STUDIO LTD (OTHER IMAGES)
15 – The isometric lines used
to show spaceships in Jupiter
Ascending were inspired by
weather maps
15

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 16

The experiential stuff is clearly where Territory’s heart lies.

Its film work and the emotional connectivity it offers translates
to other areas because, as Sheldon-Hicks puts it, ‘the ability to
grab someone’s attention and hold it quickly is a constant,
whether applying it to a physical product or a virtual world’. So,
while current studio work is still firmly focused on films,
including an opening title sequence for a Twentieth Century Fox

16 © TERRITORY STUDIO LTD 17 COURTESY OLIVER DALY

thriller and work on Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, it’s
safe to say we can expect Territory to be involved in some pretty
out-there work in the coming years. And the beauty of it is, that
neither they nor we can possibly imagine what it will look or feel
like, or how we’ll engage with it. ‘Technology will push things
out there for humans to organically engage with or not.
Something might sound amazing, relevant and applicable, but it
takes real, everyday interaction to know if it’s going to stick. It’s
about tone of voice too, not what you’re told, but how you’re
told. And it’s also about process, materials, making things
lighter, thinner, more economical… Now that things can be
connected, it might be the right time,’ says Glover. Even if it isn’t,
I can’t help but feel that when it is, Territory will be more than
ready for it.

17

16 – Animations for Virgin 17 – Screen graphics for the

Atlantic show customers how military control room in the
to use its on-board film Miles
entertainment system

172
DESIGNED
FOR
BUSINESS

The May Design Series is the UK’s definitive

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London ExCeL
Furniture | KBB | Lighting | Decor | DX
17–19 May 2015
The May Design Series welcomes previously
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 MIAMI NICE

Words Caroline Roux

174
 Sou Fujimoto is the Japanese architect who
brought a cloud composed of thousands of white,
steel rods to Kensington Gardens in London.
Now he’s created a waterfall in glass in Miami

175
 3

Until recently, Miami wasn’t exactly a crucible of great

architecture. Its famous art deco buildings are mostly blind
boxes with fancy facades. A series of seaview, residential towers
from the last decade were dictated more by developers’ bottom
lines than any design ideals. But recently that has begun to
change. In 2010, there was the Herzog and de Meuron car park
at 1111 Lincoln Road — a reminder, if any were needed, of how
closely Miami is wedded to the automobile. Frank Gehry’s The
New World Symphony building was completed a year later, and
in 2013, the Perez Art Museum, another Herzog and de Meuron
project that looks out to the water, and invites visitors to enjoy
the shade offered by its generous overhangs dripping with vegetation.
Now, as the new buildings in the Design District begin to
take shape, there are bigger surprises afoot, not least the arrival
of a 30m-high arcade in blue glass that would provide pause for
thought in any city. It will house a number of high-end jewellery
1 (previous spread) –
stores, each with a unit plugged into the watery-blue, set-back Structural Waterfalls, a 30m
facade. The work of Tokyo-based architect Sou Fujimoto, it is his high arcade in Miami’s Design
District
first building in the United States and his most commercial
2 – This is Sou Fujimoto’s first
project so far. ‘It’s also the first time I’ve ever used colour,’ he
project in the United States
says as we stood in its azure shade on a hot day in December. ‘It
3 – Fins of glass in five
was a major challenge on many levels.’ different shades of blue line
The arcade, which Fujimoto calls Structural Waterfalls, is in the arcade

When Sou Fujimoto

made his first visit to
Miami a few years ago,
he was most struck by
the weather... by the
beautiful sunlight, and
then by the heavy
rainfall
1 - 4 ROBIN HILL

178
 4
the Design District’s newly constructed Palm Court piazza. Its
neighbours are equally attention grabbing: a new, two-floor
event space by New York firm Aranda\Lasch, with decorative
relief concrete walls, adjoins it; opposite, a newly opened
Bulgari store has a facade fashioned in gold and silver plate. Out
front, an enlarged facsimile of one of Buckminster Fuller’s
domes, the Fly’s Eye, doubles as the entrance to the
underground car park. But the Fujimoto building more than
holds its own. ‘I heard that Sou was very moved when he
actually saw it,’ says Craig Robins, the owner of DACRA, the
co-developer of the Design District (the other partner is L Real
Estate, the real estate arm of LVMH). ‘That’s a reality we don’t
focus on. The architect who’s so far away, who comes and finds a
finished product. It has to be emotional.’
When Sou Fujimoto made his first visit to Miami a few years
ago, he was most struck by the weather: ‘I was impressed by the
beautiful sunlight, and then by the heavy rainfall that followed.
That had a strong impact on me. I had the very basic idea, not
just to provide a building, but also a corridor-like space with a
180
roof, one that offered shade from sunlight and protection from
rain, and that itself was about water, coolness and the sensations
they bring.’ So he went back to Tokyo and thought about it.
Fujimoto is a patient man and for him, ideally, architecture
is a slow process. He grew up on the northern Japanese island of
Hokkaido, a region still dominated by nature; then he moved to
Tokyo, and found himself fascinated by its man-made
complexity. ‘I always thought nature was more complex than
architecture, but sometimes in Tokyo you find the man-made
getting near that same level of complexity,’ he says.
After he completed his architecture studies in Tokyo in
2001, Fujimoto spent five years negotiating architectural
possibilities in his head, contemplating exactly what might be. ‘It
was a very conceptual time,’ he says. His ruminations resulted in
a desire to create what he considers to be a ‘weak architecture’,
one that allows a synthesis with its surroundings, whether that’s
nature or the city, through transparency and porosity.
Finally, when asked to design the annexes of a children’s
psychiatric rehabilitation hospital in Hokkaido by a friend of his
The light bleeds out into
the courtyard creating a
real and atmospheric
connection between the
building and the open
space it looks on to
4 – The arcade neighbours an
enlarged facsimile of one of
Buckminster Fuller’s domes,
the Fly’s Eye
father’s (his father is an adult psychiatric doctor), he moved
from concept to reality. ‘I consulted a lot with the doctors for
that project, and I concluded that the buildings should allow the
children to do as they like,’ he says. The result was a set of cubic
buildings clustered in and responding to the landscape. ‘It has
the intimacy of the house and the variety of the city,’ says
Fujimoto of the programme.
In 2013, aged 41, Fujimoto became the youngest architect to
be asked to design the Serpentine Pavilion, an edition of which
appears annually in London’s Kensington Gardens. The gridded
construction of thousands of white, powder-coated, steel rods
was like a mechanical cloud floating in the subtly engineered
landscape of the royal park. ‘Architecture, but performing like
nature,’ he says. ‘You could enter and leave at any point,
wherever you wanted. Go up and down, or across.’ In other
words, the user, rather than the building, had the agency. ‘It’s all
about place-making. Somewhere for people to use, to explore.’
The producers of the Serpentine Pavilion are a highly skilled
crew, who’ve delivered a number of complex propositions over
181
 6

184
 8

9
5 IWAN BAAN 6 + 7 DAICI ANO 8 + 9 SOU FUJIMOTO ARCHITECTS

5 (previous spread) –
Fujimoto’s cloud-like
Serpentine Pavilion from 2013

6 & 7 – The Children’s Center

for Psychiatric Rehabilitation
in Hokkaido (2006)

8 & 9 – Sacai (2011), a Tokyo

store and Fujimoto’s only
other retail project

185
 the years. One of them told me after the event that Fujimoto had
been one of the most demanding architects they’d worked with.
I mentioned this to Craig Robins. ‘Look, I respect architects who
are extremely focused on the quality of their design and
building,’ he says. ‘And Sou definitely has that characteristic. I’m
not saying there was never a moment of tension, but it went
smoothly overall. And look what we’ve got.’
In person Fujimoto is positively jolly: tall, smiling and
always dressed in the latest Japanese fashions. Sacai is a
favourite label — he designed the Tokyo store for its owner, the
dynamic female fashion designer, Chitose Abe. ‘That’s my only
other retail-related project,’ he says of the shop which he
inserted into a rundown old building in Aoyama as a series of
boxes within boxes, so that framed views are continually
revealed as customers move through the space. The proposition
in Miami couldn’t be more different: one monumental facade
that can accommodate many different retailers, each of whom
will create their own framing device for their store. The
Alchemist, for example, an upmarket Miami multi-brand, will
have a rose-gold-coloured, mirrored exterior designed by local
architect, Rene Gonzalez. ‘We had to work out how to integrate
so many different faces into one volume, because each brand
will have its own character,’ says Fujimoto.
10
186
His response has been to step back the principal facade
behind the canopy, so everything is bathed in the unifying blue
light filtered through the glass. The light also bleeds out into the
courtyard, creating a real and atmospheric connection between
the building and the open space it looks on to. ‘It’s very
continuous,’ says Fujimoto. ‘It’s about creating an ambiguity
between what is inside and what is outside.’
The construction is explicit: I-beams, tension cables, but
most conspicuously, the dramatic full-height fins of sandwiched
glass, layered out of many shades from completely clear through
four or five different depths of blue. ‘We could have used
aluminium,’ says Fujimoto, ‘but it’s the layering that finally
creates a different quality.’ He also feels that glass better sums up
the fancy nature of the product on sale.
The rest of the building is a big box — in keeping with
Miami’s architectural tradition. Fujimoto hadn’t walked all
around the outside, so we took a tour round the back, where it
runs along the street. Fujimoto had originally proposed a similar
cladding of blue glass fins. Instead the blank back wall has been
exuberantly decorated in a black and white, Op art design. It’s
impressive, even if it does look like the world’s biggest nightclub.
‘It’s different from my design,’ says Fujimoto. ‘But it’s good, it’s
nice!’ And he blinked in the strong Miami sunshine.
10 – In 2013, at the age of 41,
Fujimoto was the youngest
architect to design a
Serpentine Pavilion
10 JOHNNY TUCKER
 PARIS SINGAPORE MIAMI BEACH
JAN. 23-27, 2015 MARCH 10-13, 2015 MAY 12-15, 2015
SEPT. 4-8, 2015

LET’S
CALL THE
WORLD
MAISON

WWW.MAISON-OBJET.COM

INFO@SAFISALONS.FR
SAFI ORGANISATION, A SUBSIDIARY OF ATELIERS D’ART DE FRANCE AND REED EXPOSITIONS FRANCE / TRADE ONLY / DESIGN © BE-POLES
 OUTSIDE IN

Words Herbert Wright

Photography Paul Raftery

188
The rise of Manchester as a confident, contemporary
metropolis steps up with the transformation of one
of its cultural jewels, the Whitworth Gallery. MUMA’s
bold yet sensitive extension of the internationally
significant institution is not just a major upgrade,
but draws it right into its surrounding parkland

189
 3

What more tranquil setting to contemplate art than
surrounded by trees and parkland? The Whitworth Art Gallery
mature ash and London plane trees on two sides in one of
Manchester’s most beautiful green spaces, yet most of its
galleries have been blind to it since it opened in 1908. That all
changed in February with a new extension, the highlight of the
Whitworth’s wider £15m-transformation by London-based
McInnes Usher McKnight Architects (MUMA). The extension
delivers not just the revelation of outside, but a two-way
transparency — founding partner Stuart McKnight says it was
‘absolutely vital to look into the galleries from the park’.
Furthermore, it gives the Whitworth 30 per cent more space
— crucial not only for the art, but also to handle escalating visitor
numbers. Maria Balshaw, the Whitworth’s energetic director, is
clearly pleased as she adds: ‘We were bursting at the seams’.
While the Whitworth has seen the number of visitors more
than double since 2005, Whitworth Park conversely remains
an oasis of tranquility sandwiched by the Manchester’s University
quarter and the stressed Moss Side neighbourhood. It was as if
they were two different worlds. The Whitworth’s eclectic collection
ranges from work by Turner through Bacon, Freud, Peter Blake
and Bridget Riley to the contemporary, and it has one of the world’s
great textile collections, its oldest examples dating back to the
third century. It’s all housed in a grand building designed by
Manchester’s own JW Beaumont. To the north-south Oxford Road,
the Whitworth presents his original red terracotta and brick
neo-Jacobean facade and columned semi-circular raised entrance.
Here we first see MUMA’s intervention. Gone are the old
metal access ramp and Tarmac drive-in, replaced by a sculpture
terrace and big steps that curve to splay out symmetrically
before the building. They invite not just visitors to enter but
anyone to stop and sit, maybe munch lunch (the hospital
opposite brings a million people every yeart to this patch).
McKnight recalls that in the entrance lobby, ‘you couldn’t
move’, but the space has been cleared, not least of the cafe,
now spectacularly rehoused, as we shall see.
The Whitworth has created new space twice before. In the
Sixties, John Bickerdike inserted Scandinavian-inspired galleries
deep inside the Beaumont building, quiet and crisp with low
ceilings of timber beams, and he brought daylight with windows
to the North and South Galleries. Then, above Bickerdike’s central
galleries, a first-floor Sculpture Court by Ahrends, Burton and
Korelek opened in 1995. Neither project touched the Whitworth’s
old ‘backpack’, a solid, triple brick shed extending west into the

1 (previous page) – The new 2 (opposite page) – The cafe’s 3 – Beneath a new Promenade 4 – Elevation of JW 5 – Elevation from the west,
cafe cantilevers coolly out glazing and the new brickwork Gallery, a lower promenade Beaumont’s Oxford Road showing new extension and
from the Whitworth into its both reflect and respect the runs between courtyard and facade from 1908 the Beaumont building behind
parkland surroundings original 1908 building Collection Centre

4 5

193
 park that contained two long galleries, a store and lecture hall.
It is here that MUMA’s proposals played a winning hand,
addressing the questions McKnight summarised as: ‘How to
extend a formal symmetric building of red brick? How to connect
to the park?’
MUMA won the redevelopment competition in late 2009, just
days before its RIBA Award-winning Medieval and Renaissance
Galleries opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum. That building,
just a year younger than the Whitworth, gave the practice the wide
Brompton Road end to open 10 new galleries, nine within the
existing footprint. In Manchester, the plan starts in existing space
but pushes beyond it, and launches two volumes asymmetrically
towards the parkland. And all without the loss of a single mature
tree — just one bush went.
First, suspended ceilings in those blind-ended, rear western
spaces were removed, and barrel-vaulted ceilings — each with two
rows of skylights — now look down from under the long pitched
roofs. The northern space becomes the third of three parallel
galleries, and in the central one full-height oak doors slide open to
frame a view into the park — a work of art in itself, like a recent
massive Hockney tree painting, but in light filtered by the trees
themselves. From the park, until the end May, people will glimpse a
work based on Rodin’s Kiss, by Cornelia Parker, who has the
headline opening show in these galleries.
Step through the opening and we are in the new-build. What
had been empty space beyond the unlamented western brick wall
is now a promenade around its three sides, paved with Dorset’s
Purbeck stone. The bricks are now inside the building, speaking a
new language. The promenade section facing west is wide enough
to be a gallery, but wide open to the park through a full-height,
full-width screen of glazing. Stainless-steel mullions that reflect
trees and sky vertically divide the glass, beyond which bead-blasted
5mm-thick fins form a continuous fringe of bris-soleil. A whole
storey below, a new courtyard space, destined to be an Art Garden,
is enclosed by new extensions either side into the park. Turn left,
past the turn of the promenade’s passage that leads to the old South
Gallery, and we enter the most dramatic of them — the cafe.
This is an extraordinary long box whose stripped-back
simplicity and transparency is worthy of Mies or Johnson.
Stretching 40m in total, the cafe extends from its servery end
into a completely glazed 28.5m length for seating, the last 4.5m
of which floats out on a cantilever that hangs from cross-bracing
in the roof. In the cafe, you are among the trees. The Purbeck
floor and steel mullions continue, and the glass is fritted high

6 (opposite page) – The

Whitworth extension talks
to the trees, it told it to the
breeze, it’s no secret
anymore

19
12
11 13 14
7

9
3

10 9 6 5 4 2 1

3
9

8
15 16
17

18

Ground Floor Plan 1 Sculpture Terrace 6 Pilkington Gallery 11 Landscape Gallery 16 Cafe Terrace
2 Entrance Hall 7 North Gallery 12 Plant 17 Director’s office
3 Shop 8 South Gallery 13 Meeting room 18 General office
4 Darbishire Hall — textile gallery 9 Exhibition Galleries 14 Conservation room 19 Events room
5 Gulbenkian Gallery 10 Promenade Gallery 15 Cafe

194
8

7 (previous page) – Mounted 8 – A long window in the Study 9 – Below the cafe the 10 – Going to your cafe table 11 – The Gallery Promenade
above the Gallery Promenade Centre looks south across the north-facing brick wall of can be like a walk in the woods is a composition of Purbeck
is Nathan Coley’s artwork courtyard to the cafe and the the Learning Studio has a stone flooring, old brick, oak,
Gathering of Strangers Learning Studio below it convex curve glass, steel and light

198
10

11

199
up with vertical lines that become double density at the top.
Look across the courtyard and the new north wing faces you.
It is shorter in extension and more massive, a solid volume of red
brick punctuated only by a single, long, horizontal window in the
new lower-ground floor, which we will descend to shortly. This
north wing houses the new Landscape Gallery, a place for land art
and sculpture, where the floor can take a 7.5 tonne point load,
or 10 tonnes distributed load, and the ceiling height is 5.5m.
A single west window next to a timber ventilation screen peeks out
on to the park, but natural illumination is also diffused through
a long northern skylight. ‘The extension reacts to the urban edge
with red brick and terracotta,’ says McKnight, but out Denmark
Road on the Whitworth’s northern side this skylight pitches out
of the brick-building’s roof edge, an unexpected frosted-white
volume that houses a great light scoop. It’s so big it looks as if it
should be a gallery in itself!
Opposite the Landscape Gallery entrance, the promenade’s
passage to the old North Gallery accesses more new-build on
the north. The small but tall Conservation Room, which has a
tapestry hoist, has an even higher ceiling than the Landscape
Gallery — 7.5m. Next to it, a window looks down on where
deliveries come in from Denmark Road. There’s a lift that’s roomy
13
12 (opposite page) – The park 13 – The central exhibition
is now seen from the central gallery is now revealed to the
exhibition gallery, here with courtyard and park beyond
works by Cornelia Parker
enough for a classload of schoolchildren. And back by the
Landscape Gallery, at the promenade’s turn, stairs descend —
past a slit window that will give a glimpse of a new street-side
orchard — to the new lower ground floor.
‘We’ve excavated the basement to create headroom,’ explains
McKnight. The blind western-end had half-buried, blocked-off
arches disappearing into the grass, but now they are glazed and
front the Collection Centre. Outside is another promenade, an echo
of the one above and also paved with Purbeck (but here it’s treated,
off-cut stone). This is an environmental buffer zone with benches,
glazing and bricked columns interfacing the courtyard. Not least
it has an entrance from the courtyard — parkside access was
a must-have in the brief. Below the Landscape Gallery is a Study
Centre for scholarly work, cut into by that long window. Below
the cafe is the Learning Centre. The students may notice that its
long, solid south wall subtly curves, so that its bench is almost like
a cinema row for watching the courtyard. Out there, Purbeck stone
is used in benching, some of which disguises air intake.
This extension is a tour-de-force of transparency and
materiality that brilliantly exploits the site. Dissolving the barrier
between park and gallery is clear, but internal sight-lines in the
galleries and promenades also open up — as Balshaw comments,
201
 ‘You’re always catching glimpses of the next bit of art.’ Metal, glass,
stone and wood make a serene palette — warmer than gallery-
white, but not competing visually with either exhibits or parkland.
The biggest player on the material field is the brick, which offered
MUMA opportunities to play with patterns here and there, inspired
by Whitworth textiles, says McKnight. Outside, the whole redness
and texture of the bricks — developed for the Whitworth by
Northcot — give continuity with the Beaumont building. Even the
rough brick lining the promenade does something special — more
muted than either the contemporary industrial chic of brick decor,
or the tromp d’oeil that Ahrends, Burton and Koralek generated
when an original Beaumont rear brick wall with windows was
made internal for the Sculpture Court.
McKnight, along with the other founding partners of the
practice Gillian McInnes and Simon Usher, studied at Glasgow’s
Mackintosh School of Architecture, so it’s not surprising that he
cites the Burrell Collection in Glasgow by Barry Gasson and Brit
Andresen that opened in 1983, as a reference point for Whitworth.
You can see it in the flood of light in its internal arcade (tempered
by stained-glass screens rather than fritting), enclosure of open
green space (there, by an L-shape plan) and the materiality of the
solid walls (sandstone rather than brick).
14
16
202
There’s more — in the Beaumont building, a staircase with
a fine wrought-iron balustrade is open to public use. It leads
to the restored Grand Hall, with a magnificent timber truss
ceiling. It will be used for lectures, private events, workshops,
and... yoga classes. And across the whole building, despite
the increased space, the carbon footprint has been cut by
a tenth, thanks to heat pumps, west-facing bris-soleil and
thermal massing.
Has the current extension future-proofed itself for further
extensions? MUMA and Balshaw discussed it and ruled it out.
As Balshaw says: ‘Continued expansion can lead to a building
becoming very deep in plan — an ever-expanding pancake —
with the circulation for visitors becoming long and circuitous.
In the case of the Whitworth, the interior of the gallery could
once again become detached from the park... Should the
Whitworth’s aspirations change then a satellite would be more
appropriate. [It] could bring the opportunity to inject some
stimulus into another part of the city.’ She adds: ‘We operate
in a culturally ambitious city.’
Manchester may well want more when it sees how smart,
sensitive design with a touch of the bold has transformed the
Whitworth Gallery.
15
14 – A skylight emerges on
the north side, scooping and
diffusing light into the
Sculpture Gallery
15 – A fringe of steel bris-soleil
is mounted beyond the
Promenade Gallery’s glazing
16 – The new Sculpture
Gallery with its opening
installation, Unmanned
Nature, by Cai Guo-Qiang
hb
british /
designers /
manufacturers /
2015

Entry deadline
24 . 07 . 15
Awards Night Projects Products Special awards
25 November 2015 Bar or Restaurant 2015 Product of The Year Breakthrough Talent of the Year
Drawing Lighting Product Product Designer of the Year
To Enter Hotel Public, Leisure or Office Furniture Interior Design Practice of the Year
www.fxdesignawards.co.uk Leisure or Entertainment Venue Surfaces Outstanding Contribution to Design
Public Sector
Entry deadline Public Space Schemes
24 July 2015. Submission enquiries UK Project
to Anna King 07780 956291 Lighting Design
entries@fxdesignawards.co.uk Mixed Use Development – NEW
Museum or Exhibition Space
Seat Reservations Retail Space
fxawards@btinternet.com Workspace Environment
+44 (0)7803 148 194 Global Project
 208 – 216
Blueprint 20/20
We report from the second Blueprint
20/20 event, where we gathered the
key players of the Eden Project at
Grimshaw’s London office
218 – 223
Event — Spring Fairs
A round-up of the key furniture fairs
this spring, including imm cologne,
Maison&Objet Paris and Stockholm
Furniture Fair
224 – 225
Exhibition — History is Now
Shumi Bose caught up with artist
Richard Wentworth ahead of the
opening of his latest group show
at the Hayward Gallery
206
226
Product — Audi A3
Sportback e-tron
Johnny Tucker takes a test drive
in Audi’s latest plug-in hybrid, the
A3 e-tron
228 – 229
Book — Human — Space
— Machine: Stage
Experiments at the Bauhaus
Cate St Hill catches a tantalising
glimpse of the theatrical world of the
Bauhaus in this comprehensive book
of seven critical essays
231
Book — sqm: The
Quantified Home
Produced for the Biennale Interieur
in Kortrijk last year, Shumi Bose
enjoys this investigation of the
contemporary realities of home
233
Exhibition — The Frick
Collection: Art Treasures
from New York
Rebecca Swirsky reviews an
exhibition that represents the
growing relationship between
Mauritshuis in The Hague and one of
the USA’s most celebrated collections
of Old Masters
234 – 235
Exhibition — Ladybird by
Design
Johnny Tucker takes a nostalgia trip
to an exhibition at the De La Warr
Pavilion on the classic Ladybird
Books of the Sixties and Seventies
237
Exhibition — Skyward –
High-Rise Frankfurt
As we review Frankfurt’s latest
high-rise, the European Central
Bank, Herbert Wright looks back at
Germany’s great skyscraper city
LIGHTING FOCUS
239 – 241
Feature: Digital Double,
Jason Bruges Studio
Jason Bruges collaborated with
Benchmark to create a digital
light installation at Number 10
Downing Street
252 – 258
Archive
We revisit Blueprint No 56 of 1989
and look back at the state then of
Manchester, on the cusp of
gentrification following its bid
to stage the 1996 Olympics
REVIEW

207
 1

Event
Blueprint 20/20:
The Eden Project

For the second Blueprint 20/20, we

gathered together many of the
original protagonists of The Eden
Project for an entertaining debate.
Grimshaw deputy chairman, Andrew
Whalley, presented the project with
all its trials and tribulations, before
Blueprint editor, Johnny Tucker,
conducted a panel discussion with
Andrew Whalley, practice founder
Nicholas Grimshaw and Eden Project
founder Tim Smit. The lively evening
ended with the news that further
Eden Projects are being planned for
China and Canada, and Grimshaw will
be the architect involved again. Here
we bring you some of the
presentation and discussion from a
memorable evening.

Andrew Whalley: The genesis of the

project came out of the Lost Gardens
of Heligan, not only are they beautiful
gardens, but Tim Smit has a real
fascination about learning how you
can cultivate and grow all the needs 2
and produce for a Victorian house From an architect’s point
from glasshouses and the surrounding of view, this was a life-
land. The idea was to take that to a changing project for our
much bigger scale and somehow office; so many things
explore and describe man’s relationship were never the same.
with the planet and plants. It was We’d done some quite big
through the idea of creating very projects before, but this
large enclosures, creating completely gripped us...
new life environments in Cornwall.
When we were approached, we had
just finished Waterloo terminal where
the inspiration for us was the great
Victorian railway sheds, and they in
turn were influenced by work of
Joseph Paxton. 1 – (from left) Johnny Tucker, Nicholas
Grimshaw, Tim Smit and Andrew Whalley
2 – The evening was a sell out
3 – The construction site near St Austell, Cornwall
Nicholas Grimshaw: From an 4 – The ETFE biomes are nestled in a disused
architect’s point of view, this was a china clay pit
life-changing project for our office; so 3
many things were never the same.
We’d done some quite big projects
before, but this gripped us in a way, I
suppose, like some vast film. It was
the way it swept everyone along —
we were perhaps only 10 per cent of
the picture — it was quite
extraordinary; the economics of it,
the politics of it, the whole effect on
the region, you just felt everybody
down there was involved in it.

AW: Collectively, as a design team, all

of us really bought into it, despite
several set-backs. I think as we all
went down on that beautiful train
journey, we all fell in love with
Cornwall and could see there was
something magical. Particularly, I
think it was the discovery of that site.
All of us claim to have been the first
person to discover the site and look
down; you almost expected dinosaurs
to be roaming around in the bottom.
It really had to be part of the

208
4

209
 5

210
8 9
architecture. Tim’s one of the few
people who has looked at a derelict
site that people are trying to get rid
of and said, ‘I have to have that site
— I’ll pay you anything for it’!

Tim Smit: Imagine if you will, a

situation where some jerk from the
sticks comes up to the big smoke,
talks to these people who are big,
big, big and says guys we’ve got no
money, we’ve just got this dream,
because one of things that is really
wrong with this country is that
dreaming has become the territory of
10 11
those who do not know how to
dream, the big pension funds, the
hedge funds, the crap artists, and I
mean this seriously, because in this
country we do not have a state way
of funding the feasibility of projects.
The Eden Project couldn’t have been
done without the guys in this room
spending at least £5m of their own
collective labour to prove that it was
possible. It was a huge act of faith,
and for us it was terrific.

AW: The biggest part of Eden was

to be the humid tropics, the Amazon
rainforest, where of course we have
...we needed to create the most diverse part of the planet,
something really large- but to do that we needed to create
scale, a completely something really large-scale, a
immersive experience completely immersive experience
where you wouldn’t be where you wouldn’t be aware you
aware you were in a were in a glasshouse or in an
glasshouse or in an enclosure;
enclosure we wanted it to feel like you were in
the Amazon.
I’m a great science-fiction fan
0m 25m 50m 100m and in the Seventies there was a
great cult film called Silent Running:
it’s the story of planet Earth being
made barren, and all of its plants and
different environments are protected
and sent to space in these large
geodesic biomes. Also, as a student
in Glasgow, I was very impressed with
the small glasshouse, Kibble Palace. It
always amazed me how it stood up
because it’s literally just a shell of
glass and wrought iron. What it
proved is that you can do very
lightweight, delicate structures,
inspired by nature. So we thought,
how can we do things more
efficiently, and we redefined it —
rather than this undulating shape, we
started exploring this idea of
interlocking spheres. We’ve also
always been very inspired by the
Institute of Lightweight Structures in
Stuttgart and they’d done a lot of
experimentation using soap bubbles.
If you put soap bubbles in a dish,
they find the optimum shape and
5 – Grimshaw was influenced by the great
tradition of Victorian glasshouses form, so that really became the
6 – The south-facing site informed the architecture reimagining and rethinking through:
7 – The enclosures seperately emulate tropical
and mediterranean enviroments trying to create a much more
8 – It was one of the first times Grimshaw used efficient, optimised structure.
three-dimensional CAD software
9 – The biomes intersect like a series of soap
bubbles TS: One of the problems we have is
10 – A lot of work, and budget, went into
anchoring the pit that we live in a world of big things,
11 – Another unexpected influence came from
Seventies cult film Silent Running, where Earth’s
but with no substance — they’re
plants are sent to space in geodesic biomes hollow — it’s something that

211
 13
spiritually erodes us. The people here
understood if we were trying to build 12

a bloody theme park, it would have

been a lot easier to do. What we were
trying to do was create something
that had the language of the popular,
of entertainment culture, because we
knew that the over-serious wasn’t
drawing people in. It was a really fine
balancing act.

AW: We really had the same team as

we had worked on Waterloo with,
Tony Hunt’s team [Anthony Hunt
Associates] on structures, Davis
Langdon on costs and Arup joined us
on the environmental design side.
With Tony’s team we looked at the
whole geodesic structure and started
off with a single, poured structure
and then brought in MERO the
German manufacturer and honed the
structure until we got it down to
basically what’s called a hex-tri-hex, 14

that’s two layers of structure. We

actually halved the weight of the roof
structure; it was great news for us
because it meant it was a much more
efficient solution.
We then embarked on the
construction work of the project. At
12 – The biomes are made of a hex-tri-hex –
the time, McAlpine looked at the two layers of structure
amount of work they had to do in a 13 – Parts arrive numbered on site
14 – It was all assembled together like a giant
short space of time, and said, ‘men Meccano set
have been digging this hole for a 15 – The panels vary in size up to 11m across
16 – The biomes were built using a very large
hundred years and you’re giving us birdcage scaffold
six months to try and put it back 17 – Nearly half a million people paid £5 each
to view the building site
together again’?
We did also choose the wettest
winter in, I think, twenty years — so
we had a few challenges. The site we
had pulled out for the first build, the
visitors’ centre, gave way and
disappeared one evening. We found
that we had to spend more and more
15
money stabilising what we thought
was a granite pit, but which wasn’t. It
was a very soft pit and a lot of work
disappeared into anchoring it.
What we ended up with was
probably one of the world’s largest
Meccano sets ever created. All these
crates arrived, all beautifully labelled,
with all the connectors in it, all the
pipework, all the nuts, bolts etc and
then we had the fun of actually
assembling it. Of course, the question
is — how do you build a geodesic
structure? — because they’re very
stiff once they’re built, but they’re
very difficult to support until they’re
in place. After looking at a number of
options, it was felt the only real way
of doing it was to build a very large
birdcage scaffold; this was our first
entry into the Guinness Book of
World Records. As soon as the
structure was up, we took the
scaffold out and anything else was
done with abseilers.
The number one goal was to get
the maximum amount of light on the
floor for the plants to grow, so really
we were searching for something that
could do that, but also we had this
great history of creating these

212
16

17

213
18

214
enormous enclosures and we had the
reality, as you always do, with the
budget. We had to come up with a
bit of ingenuity to think about how
we could create these big enclosures
for much less than traditional glass
and steel. It allowed us to really push
boundaries and create something
that was new.
Then, an entrepreneurial stroke
of genius — this is the only time I’ve
known members of the public to be
charged £5 a head to come and look
at a building site! Nearly half a million
people came to watch the
construction; that was great, some
money straight in the bank before we
opened, but more importantly it
created a lot of interest in the project.
Everyone who came along, I think,
felt almost part of the creation of the
project. It also brought a lot of
publicity in the newspapers, so
already it was drumming up interest.
We opened against a rather dire
situation which was the outbreak of
foot and mouth, and we were
surprised at the sheer number of
people who came to see the project.
The police became concerned about
the numbers coming and blocking
the roads, so asked people to delay
their visit to another time. If you ever
want to boost your numbers, ask the
police to tell you not to come to
something, as that just drove the
numbers up further!

NG: The main thing was it was a key

source of industry and employment,
and a source of life really for
Cornwall. They have a very short
holiday season, just a couple of
months, and what this gave them was
something like a vast industry in the
middle of Cornwall, which employed
people: cafes, restaurants, taxis,
hotels, the train service — everything
was sort of powered by this thing.

TS: Although it’s very easy to make

me the hero, I’m not. I actually
brought people together and made
them believe in the thing, but that
whole bunch of people took an
enormous professional risk. This
wasn’t half an hour here, half an hour
there — this was weeks and weeks of
time they could have charged other
people for. They all believed in the
dream. I believed in the project from
day one — I knew we were going to
build it. It was going to happen,
because no one was going to stand in
our way.
We’re using the same team for
an Eden Project in China. It’s going to
be the first environmental centre of
its kind to be completely powered,
we hope, by water, in the city of
Tsingtao, which is the former German
colony in China. The site is poisonous
— we only want to work on poisonous
sites! This was a mixture of salt
mining and prawn fishing, so it’s got
a lot of salt and a lot of nitrate. We

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19

20 21

don’t want to build the old Eden
Project, we want to build a new one,
so it’s like a sister around the world.
NG: The Eden Project in Cornwall can
18 – The project took two and a half years to
construct and opened on 17 March 2001
19 – The humid environment of the Tropical Biome
20 – ETFE is lightweight and allowed the
maximum amount of light to reach the plants
21 – The CORE information centre opened in
September 2005

definitely be seen as a building of its

time, and I think when we build the one
in China it will be completely different.
One particular compliment I
would like to pay to Tim is the quiet
way he gets across statistics. I think
one of the biggest problems with the
modern world is that nobody believes
anything anybody says. With Eden
particularly, Tim set up very quietly to
tell the story. He didn’t want to shout ®
at people, but just quietly said, ‘If all
the plants in the world disappear,
we’ll be dead in a few years.’

216

Review: imm cologne,
Maison&Objet Paris,
Stockholm Furniture Fair
Bringing you a
complete round up
of the key spring
furniture fair launches,
Johnny Tucker here
visits imm cologne and
Maison&Objet Paris,
while Cate St Hill
reports back from a
very cold Stockholm…
While the offerings at imm furniture
fair offered up under leaden Cologne
skies, were almost universally austere
in colour, ranging from neutral to
grey, Maison&Objet, offered a much
lighter touch in Paris, perhaps in
some respects reflecting a show with
lighter intentions.
At both, finding the new launches
is a bit of task. These shows, and in
particular, imm, are where we find the
pieces launched at Milan have evolved,
with a little refining of finishes and
sometimes form, into manufactured
pieces ready for the market.
All that said, there were a
number of new and exciting pieces
2
218
1
and even imm had the odd burst of
colour. imm is a serious show looking
to be taken even more seriously,
witness the installation of Memory
Lane, by Shanghai architect Neri&Hu,
which we previewed in Blueprint 338.
Though I met up with Lyndon Neri
just before Christmas for his
explanation, it seems the design had
developed even further by mid-
January. That’s definitely not to say it
was rushed; the level of detailing on
what was an enticing and intriguing
piece of work attested to that.
A raised, light-wood walkway
took you past a series of rooms into
which you could peer voyeuristically.
The walkway was contrasted with the
walls of the rooms that referenced
Peter Zumthor’s jet-black, material-
covered walls of the Serpentine
Pavilion from 2012. Creative director,
Dick Spierenburg, showed me around
breathlessly, with an almost childlike
enthusiasm running from one room
to the next — artfully cluttered rooms
which effortlessly melded East and
West much like Neri&Hu’s
architecture itself.
1 – The Das Haus feature, Neri&Hu
2 – Grid system desk, Ying Chan
3 – Angry Lamp, Weng Xinyu
4 – Iris, Neo/craft
5 – Boynton Hall Sideboard, Cassina, Frank
Lloyd Wright
6 – Table chairs and pieces, Meccano Furniture
1 COURTESY NERI&HU 2 IAN BARTLETT PHOTOGRAPHY 3,4,5 & 6 COURTESY MANUFACTURER/DESIGNER
3 4
The rooms featured classic
pieces as well as Neri&Hu’s own work
including a chair for Classicon
launched at imm and some prototype
pieces for De La Espada (with who
they also had launches of a table,
chair, sofa and bed at M&O).
Elsewhere in Cologne, debutant
Neo/craft’s soap-bubble-like light,
Iris, was very strong, and Cassina
continued its heritage of having
pieces by the very biggest name
architects, with a sideboard by Frank
Lloyd Wright originally designed for
Boynton Hall in New York in 1908, as
well as some tweaks to Jaime Hayon’s
Vico sofa that was launched in Milan.
At the other end of the career
trajectory, in the Pure Talent
emerging designer zone, two names
which shone out were those of Weng
Xinyu from the Bauhaus, with his
Angry Lamp among other pieces, and
from London’s RCA, Ying Chan’s grid
system desk.
5
In Paris, the desk came in for
some attention from two design
heavyweights, Tom Dixon and Michael
Young. For Hong Kong-based EOQ,
Young had designed an elegant,
precision-extruded, anodized-
aluminium, leather-topped desk with
walnut or oak legs. And if you wanted
you could populate that desktop with
minimal pen-to-stapler Cube pieces
from Dixon in one of his now

219
 7
trademark materials, copper (actually
zinc alloy and copper plate).
Elsewhere, Benjamin Hubert created
a beautiful Beacon lamp and De La
Espada put in an impressive showing
launching pieces from Neri&Hu,
Matthew Hilton, Luca Nichetto and
Autoban. The latter’s work included a
very heavy-looking, Seventies-meets-
art-deco sofa.
Meccano quietly entered the
furniture market at the very end of
last year with a series of literally
bolt-together pieces, and added to
the range at M&O. Originally the
invention of Frank Hornby in Liverpool
in the 1800s, the company is now
based in Calais. Meccano Furniture is
the brainchild of furniture retailer,
Vincent Boutillier and engineer
Christophe Piquemal. Their idea was
shared with two designers, Cécile
Makowski and Thomas Hourdain, who
came up with scaled-up parts and
new forms to allow the creation of a
series of DIY furniture pieces.
Other highlights included Chisel
& Mouse’s launch of two Walter
Gropius building sculptures (see
repeat page 34) and Ercol, which
showed a sofa designed by Paola
Navona that is like Ercol on steroids
— but in a good way! It’s clearly Ercol
in its use of the classic wooden
spindle frame, yet somehow more
muscular and more inviting.

10

11
ALL IMAGES COURTESY DESIGNER/MANUFACTURER

7 – Cubical table, Coco & Co

8 – Cube, Tom Dixon
9 – Nest, Ercol, Paola Navona
10 – Orsted Desk, EOQ, Michael Young
11 – Beacon Lamp, Benjamin Hubert

220
 12
Question Time, offered a place to sit
Stockholm Furniture Fair and contemplate the often tricky but
Braving the snowy fundamental questions of design,
such as ‘do we need another chair?’,
climes of midwinter pinned onto a giant cork wall.
Northern Europe, The launch everyone was talking
Cate St Hill found about, however, was Ronan & Erwan
Bouroullec’s Kaari Collection for
Stockholm to be a Artek — certainly one of its most
furniture fair full of high-profile collaborations to date.
The collection fits so seamlessly with
emerging young Alvar Aalto’s original work, you could
talent, pared-back be forgiven for thinking that it was
colours, clean lines created by the architect himself. Kaari
(meaning arch in Finnish) comprises
and effortless cool rectangular and round tables as well
as a desk, a wall unit and shelving, all
While the snow fell relentlessly united by a simple, black, triangular-
outside, visitors to Stockholm shaped bent steel support combined
Furniture Fair were greeted with with a band of solid wood.
three halls full to bursting with 700 Reminiscent of Aalto’s bent L-leg, the
exhibitors from over 30 countries. pieces stood out for their effortless
Being Scandinavian in nature, with elegance in a flurry of kitsch, pastel
their pared-back colours and clean colours and bold, neon accessories
lines, this is evidently one of the across the fair. ‘The interplay between
effortlessly cool fairs. The emphasis the solid vertical board and the metal
was on young, emerging designers, band gives the base a surprisingly
developing new materials and light appearance and creates a
innovative new ideas. It was also distinctive linear silhouette,’ say the
about stepping into the mind of the Bouroullecs. ‘When several tables are
designer, focusing on their design present in the same room, their
process and production techniques. silhouettes have a rhythmic effect,
The highlights of the fair were making the otherwise static world of
two smaller exhibitions, Inside tables seem to vibrate.’
Scandinavian Design and Twelve, that Elsewhere, Offecct displayed a
both looked at the methods behind number of new products by design
Nordic design today. The former, 13
curated and designed by Stockholm-
based Färg & Blanche, focused on ten
pieces of furniture and the work and
values that went into producing
them, from handcraftsmanship to
robotised production lines. Prototypes,
maquettes and videos were arranged
underneath a lattice-like structure
inspired by the patterns of traditional
upholstered furniture. ‘We wanted to
show something that is normally not
shown in a fair and to tell all the
stories behind the work,’ Fredrik Färg
told Blueprint. ‘We had this idea that
we wanted to create a light space, so
it’s almost like stepping into a piece
of furniture.’
Twelve, in comparison, curated
by Johanna Agerman Ross, was
broader and more conceptual in
nature, but all the more successful for
it. Twelve methods, ranging from 3D
printing and archetypes to crowd-
funding and performance, even
dialogue and narrative, were
represented by twelve different
designers. The space itself, designed
with Folkform, was a calm retreat
from the hubbub of the rest of the
fair — pale, beautiful, white concrete
arches and podiums separated the
work, while white-coat-clad staff
were on hand to answer questions.
And speaking of questions, Guest of
Honour Ilse Crawford’s lounge, titled

12 – Inga Sempé’s lamp for Wästberg that won

the FORM +1 Award for best new product
13 – Richard Hutten’s Satellite chair for Offecct

221
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 14
heavyweights; two chairs by Richard
Hutten and Jasper Morrison standing
out in particular. Hutten’s Satellite is a
neat, round, spinning chair with a
small side-table attached, which can
orbit around the seat to suit both
left- and right-handed people.
‘Architects always draw circles very
fast to indicate where to position
chairs on their floor plans. I thought
that was a nice gesture so I drew a
circle and said that it should be the
top view of the chair,’ says Hutten of
the design process. Morrison’s Kali
chair, meanwhile, is a functional,
wooden piece, whose proceeds will
help fund an orphanage in northern
Tanzania. For all its altruistic qualities
though, its similarity to his Vitra Hal
chair made it eerily familiar.
Other chairs that stood out — both
completely opposite in their comfort
credentials — were Rotterdam-based
Studio WM’s light and airy wire chairs
for MENU and Doshi Levien’s inviting
Uchiwa chair for HAY, it’s soft and
cocoon-like shape inspired by Japanese
hand fans. Also at HAY, Stefan Diez’s
shelving and storage system New
Order had a new look for workspaces
rather than domestic spaces. While
there is nothing groundbreaking
about the system itself — it’s one of
those things you walk away from and
think ‘ah that’s clever’ — now acoustic
panels, sliding doors and handy cork
trays for desk paraphernalia can be
fitted to the modular units for
never-ending configurations. In terms
of lighting, Note Design Studio’s
Elements for Zero, inspired by dawn,
dusk and midnight light in the Nordic
mountains, caught the eye, as did
French designer Inga Sempé’s fun
spinning-top-esque lamp for Wästberg.
Younger, less established
designers from over 30 countries and
many more schools were represented
in Greenhouse and the Young Swedish
Design exhibition — the result of a
biannual award honouring young
Swedish designers — designed by
Note Design Studio. The extremely
professional and well-finished furniture
prototypes by 13 design students from
Bergen Academy of Art and Design
15 16
wouldn’t have been out of place in the
main halls of the fair. Heidi Karlsen
Aarstad’s Companion powder-coated,
steel chair and Vilde Øritsland
Houge’s playful, rocking, half-sitting,
half-standing POW, for example,
seriously gave the more established
designers a run for their money. Lund
University’s School of Industrial
Design also had some innovative
tools and systems to enable us to live
a sustainable life in the future, from a
chemical-free cleaning kit to a natural
15 AUGUST ERIKSSON LITEN

perfume-maker. Watch this space —

here are tomorrow’s design stars.

14 – Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s Kaari

collection for Artek
15 – Inside Scandinavian Design exhibition
16 – POW by Vilde Øritsland Houge

223
 1

Exhibition
History is Now
Hayward Gallery,
Southbank Centre, London
Until 26 April
Richard Wentworth in conversation
with Shumi Bose

HISTORY IS NOW is a group show in

which seven artists were asked to
consider Britain’s post-war history,
from 1945 to the present day. Each
artist – John Akomfrah, Simon
Fujiwara, Roger Hiorns, Hannah
Starkey, Jane and Louise Wilson, and
Richard Wentworth – curated one
room each. Blueprint caught up with
Wentworth a couple of days before
the show opened to the public

Blueprint: You have shown in the

Hayward before. How do you like
working here?
Richard Wentworth: Oh yes. I’ve
worked here more times than I can
remember. I think the space is really
interesting. I watched it being built;
I came to the first show. The funny
thing is, of course, the whole point
about history is the erasing of things.
I can’t remember what was here
before, and today when I come here
I think, ‘Oh, they’ve changed that’. It’s
a place which is thoughtful — you put
your hand out and there is a handrail;
it’s very gracious.
The Hayward opened during the
summer of 1968. What was it like
at that time?
Oh, it was optimistic, it was brilliant
— we’re here, it is now, this is great!
And we hadn’t been in the war, so we
didn’t notice that a building like this
might have been in conversation with
the Atlantic Wall. I mean, I’m not even
sure I knew what the Atlantic Wall
was at that time [the extensive
system of coastal defences built by
Nazi Germany along the west coast
of Europe]. Tate Modern really just
wrecked this — not on purpose, but it
was like Harvey Nicks arriving when
this was a really nice corner store.
2 a V-2... and stitched into that is this
This is a sprawling show: were the
artists choreographed, arranged in
order of age or chronology?
Well, beginnings are important... But
I’ll take you through to my bit. There’s
Simon Fujiwara, very frontal collisions,
this corporate, Ocado-aesthetic. I
think there is something to do with
consumption that it is going on,
something to do with disengagement.
Then we have the Wilson sisters,
about 15 years older. Then Roger
Hiorns is here... with the history of
bodily fluids and CJD. I’m being a bit
cheeky... but you’re coming in through
the cow’s muzzle, being driven,
mooing, down into the museum space.
Then there’s a photography selection
from Hannah Starkey, and these films
from John Akomfrah. Everyone was
given a patch, and no one really
talked to each other, as far as I know.
Tell me about the Bristol Bloodhound
surface-to-air missile, which is mounted
just outside the gallery window.
You can’t see it, but there is a
steering wheel on that, and a little
button that says ignition. This is really
an achievement to have here, from
the Norfolk Air Defence Museum.
It came out of a conversation where
thought I wanted a V-2, designed by
Werner von Braun. This is a serious
weapon of death, but it’s lost its
meaning and we’re sort of stroking it.
The erotic pull that it has. for men
and for women, is quite extraordinary.
It is interesting to have the Bristol
Bloodhound in one of London’s war
bomb sites.
Well, that’s where it all came from.
A V-1 landed on the Southbank, only
I got muddled and thought I wanted
Cold War Werner Von Braun story.
The Americans got the personnel and
the Russians got the data... I mean,
that is GPS basically; all our
telecommunication comes from there.
It is a funny feeling to have it here, on
this damaged piece of London, still
pointing east.
There’s a collection of objects
in this specially constructed airlock,
between the gallery and the missile.
Is that all yours?
people who plan all their acquisitions
— maybe that’s very modern. But we
acquire friendships, relationships,
incidentals, accidentals, and that’s
what makes us who we are, of course.
Tell me about the immersive wall of
photographs. Where are they from?
What is interesting about this is that
about seventy per cent is from the
Archive of Modern Conflict, a very
unusual archive of things from,
I would say, spaces of friction. So
really, some horrible stuff — you can
predict what stuff will end up in there
from today’s warfare, people being
beheaded... But this is all archival
stuff, pre-internet.
To give you an example: I was
given two sandwich bags full of
photographs, all annotated with
these dry quips. You gradually realise
it’s one person... probably a young
boy and you realise he was in the
Normandy landings… I’m hoping that
people will behave in a similarly
discriminating way. They’ll see his
note here, and somewhere else, and
then start mapping in their own way.
Mixed up in here is some press stuff...
and things like this — my own iPhone
photographs looking at something in
the British Museum. Very ordinary.
I notice the captions around the
Henry Moore sculptures are in
1, 2, 3 & 4 LINDA NYLIND

This room is all the Bloodhound and slightly odd places.

things to do with it. Well, they are my
acquisitions; we happened to find
things and then they fitted. That’s no
different to acquiring stuff throughout
your life. I mean, there probably are
Getting people to look is really
interesting. Yesterday, someone who
is very bright was asking me why we
wanted to put the caption around the
corner. The answer was that I wanted

224
 3
people to have that very short
moment of just looking first, just
looking and having an experience
before the label. Everyone has a
smartphone; if people want the full
data on something it can be found.
I like things that you inhabit,
rather than things that you carry out;
that slow unfurling where you never
quite get to know something... It has
been difficult maintaining that
attitude within an institution, but I
like the journey, the process.

Can we relate this idea of journey-

making to history itself? Because
history is not a succession of facts
like points on a route, but a narrative
construct.
The only thing that makes things
‘fact’... is a product of other facts and
fictions. And pretty quickly you’re off
into why decisions were made, how
feelings are formed. This is why
history should be such a gorgeous
thing to teach. It’s something to do
with a ‘point of view’ – that great
expression. You can’t see things from
someone else’s point of view, and
that has been a great pleasure, a
great friction in working on this show.

Was the task of the exhibition more

to map your historic acquisitions,
then, or is it more to map your point
of view?
I think it was more that I was shown
some collections and quite quickly
went ‘shopping’. That sets up
conversations about what you want
to see together, and then you start
noticing that there are some quite
powerful things being said. The two
Paul Nash paintings are unbelievably
good. This one of the Battle of
Britain, which I wasn’t in, but which
I heard about... People would watch
the theatre of it, just like people
watched 9/11.
What was really important to me
was a particular 1944 Ben Nicholson
painting — I think we may even say,
June 1944, with an aerial view out of
St Ives... there’s this object that looks
like a Conran mug: it’s actually a
Union flag. And suddenly you realise
that, oh no, that’s a flag on a boat, 4
and you realise while he’s painting photo-Goyas of jolly bad things
that there are people drowning on — mostly people drowning in their
the beach in Normandy. kit. It might look like it was hung very
low, but we forget the person was
So, let’s talk about the beach for lying in the surf shooting that photo.
a moment; it seems to be a theme, Then with Richard Hamilton — in one
if there can be one, in the pieces image, one is slightly tempted to
you have selected. guess that we’re looking at blood in
I don’t really like the beach. I am the water, but then you look at it
happy to go for a walk, but I don’t closer and it’s actually leisure, so you
like sand in the bum! … But then get this line being blurred between
I suddenly realised what an activated war and pleasure on the beach...
space it is, because it’s an edge.
So I’ve always thought these Robert
Capa photographs were so
extraordinary... somebody put the 1 – Richard Wentworth’s curated installation,
showing Tony Cragg’s Britain seen from the
negatives in the drying cabinet and North (1981) & other works
2 – The Bristol Bloodhound bomber
cranked up the heat. So there are 3 – Simon Fujiwara’s curated installation
these very painterly, sensual kind of 4 – Richard Wentworth, installation view (detail)

225

Product
Audi A3
Sportback e-tron
£35–40,000
Review by Johnny Tucker
There it is, that pang in the middle of
the night. Londoners and regular
visitors to the capital will recognise it,
it’s the ‘did I pay the congestion
charge?’ pang.
But almost as soon as it hit, the
feeling went away as I remembered
the journey into Blueprint’s office had
been made in the new production
model Audi A3 e-tron. From the
name, you could be forgiven for
thinking the German prestige car
manufacturer was branching out into
the vaping market, but this is actually,
it’s latest production plug-in hybrid
vehicle (that’s an electric car with the
of traffic, a sustained 30 or 40 (where
still legal) is a bit of a luxury. But that
said, it’s always nice to have a little
bit of power at your toe tips when
you need it. From the lights,
0–30mph is done in the blink of an
eye, you look in the rear view to find
the car behind you still preparing to
enter the junction.
I never did get it out on the wide
open roads, but instead made a
pilgrimage to the brutalist
Thamesmead estate, location for
parts of Clockwork Orange and the
newer Misfits TV series. Using my
nose and signposts might have been
better than relying on the rather
adenoidal sat nav (think a female Ed
Miliband telling you to turn to the
left…) which tried on a couple of
occassions to send me through some
Crossrail hoardings across roads that
no longer exist.
Driving around town, the electric
charge gets used up surprisingly
It’s a mix of performance
and efficiency and that’s
exactly where the Audi A3
Sportback e-tron comes
in right on brand.
quickly, but then kicking in with the
petrol motor also tops it back up
quickly. As for plug-in charging, that
was more of a hassle. Plugging into
the house mains was not an option
as, in common with many city
dwellers, we park on the street (often
a few streets away, in fact). So,
hunting down charging points was
the answer — or so I thought. The
first one I buzzed up to in a multi-
storey was out of order. The second
one in a supermarket car park took
different charging cards from the two
I’d been supplied with. My third and
final effort was also a failure, but we
can mark that down to human error
as I’d left the charging cards in my
other coat. Still, you get the idea, it’s
currently a bit of a pain.
But you can’t put this at the feet
of Audi and you certainly can’t fault
them for bringing in a true
production, true thoroughbred
vehicle, that ticks all the right boxes,
while not wearing it’s heart on it’s
sleeve (ie it’s not an ugly old Prius).
So, who will buy it as there’s so
little to tell it from the regular A3?
Regular A3s weigh in at £20–35,000,
the e-tron is £35–£40,000 though
there a £5,000 cash-back to be had
from the government for buying a
plug-in car.
Essentially, this is aimed at those
with a penchant for the new (and
very well appointed), who either have
a strong, green agenda, or do enough
miles to make that low consumption
(and no road tax or congestion
charge) work in their favour.
1 – The e-tron, may be a plug-in hybrid, but it’s
also an A3 through and through

back up of an engine to help charge

1
batteries and extend range and
sometimes performance). There’s no
congestion charge to be paid because
its average CO2 emissions are just
35g per kilometre (a bit less than a
tenth of an equivalent petrol engine).
This car is essentially everything
you’d expect from the A3 — tried and
tested sporty-feel, premium, family
hatchback with two doors, or four
doors in the saloon. It’s a mix of
performance and efficiency and that’s
exactly where the e-tron comes in
right on brand.
It’s nippy for sure (0–60 mph in
just over 7 seconds), with a top
speed of 138 mph, although it’s
front wheel drive only. On the other
side of the coin, on just one tank of
petrol you can drive for 584.1 (very
precise) miles. Ignoring the 1.4l petrol
engine and using the electric motor
alone, will give you a range of just
over 30 miles.
Driving this car involves a leap of
faith for anyone not used to driving
electric. At a standstill, running purely
on the electric motor, the dashboard
is alive, but the car appears
completely dead. There’s no engine
noise, there’s no vibration. It is eerily
quiet and you’re not really sure it’s
going to do anything when you press
the accelerator. It does though, and
it’s still eerily quiet, little to hear
except the wheels rolling on the
tarmac. Perhaps that’s why,
annoyingly, the radio comes on as a
default every time you start up — to
give the interior a little life!
Driving, it feels very responsive if
not super sporty and the controls are
extremely intuitive: an hour or so’s
fiddling with every button on the
onboard computer and you’ve pretty
1 JOHNNY TUCKER

much got it sussed.

As a town family car it’s possibly
slightly overpowered for London
where so many boroughs are moving
to 20mph limits, and given the levels

226
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Book
Human — Space —
Machine: Stage
Experiments at
the Bauhaus
Edited by Torsten Blume, Christian
Hiller, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Spector Books, €36
Review by Cate St Hill
Towards the back of Human — Space
— Machine: Stage Experiments at the
Bauhaus, a striking black-and-white
photograph taken in 1928 depicts
members of the Bauhaus Stage
workshop cavorting on the balconies
and roof of the iconic Bauhaus
building in Dessau. Figures statically
pose in rotund, padded costumes
with shiny metal masks painted with
expressions that stare blankly at the
camera. Devoid of personality, are
these shop-window mannequins,
robots or real people?
As the title suggests, this book
is all about the Bauhaus’ quest for a
new relationship between man, space
and technology in the ‘machine age’.
The use of the building as a stage,
too, symbolises the ways in which the
Bauhaus tried to break down the
boundaries of traditional performance
and unite, under one roof, architecture,
painting, sculpture and industrial
design into one Gesamtkunstwerk,
or ‘total work of art’.
228
1
While numerous exhibitions and
books have previously focused on the
school’s output of furniture design
and urban-planning projects, this
book highlights the dynamic world
of the Bauhaus’ stage ‘laboratory’.
It is a comprehensive, elegantly
presented book of seven critical
essays alongside more than 100
sketches, drawings and photographs
of Bauhausler’s various abstract
studies of the body, theatrical
mechanisms and dreamt-up machines.
The book originally accompanied an
exhibition carrying the same title at
the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau last
year, before going to Norway and the
National Museum of Contemporary
Art in Seoul, South Korea.
Walter Gropius set up the audience, so it was designed to be Bauhaus Stage’s major protagonists
Bauhaus theatre workshop in the flexible, with rows of moveable, Walter Gropius, Oskar Schlemmer and
summer of 1921, two years after he tubular-steel chairs, gently sloping László Moholy-Nagy, inspired by
founded the art school in Weimar. Its down to a stage marked out by two quotes, diary entries and letters.
aim was to conduct new research and pillars and a set of accordion walls Despite the fact that they rarely worked
experiments to do with space, body, that could be opened up to connect together on projects — often costumes
movement, form, light, colour and with the next-door canteen. Here, or sets were designed for themselves
sound. When the Bauhaus Dessau as the book shows, academic and and not for other performers — they
building was constructed shortly professional activities merged with shared a vision for a fundamental
afterwards, in 1925, a dedicated stage social life, from gatherings and lectures rethinking of space and performer,
space was located in the heart of the to exercise classes, film screenings in which the new technologies of
building, connecting the workshop and legendary costume parties. modern life could be reconciled with
wing with the six-storey student block. This it seems is as much a story human form and nature.
Gropius sought to redefine the about performance as everyday ‘The huge strides forward in
relationship between stage and Bauhaus life, and that’s what makes it technology and in the big cities have
a compelling read, to get behind-the- added an acoustic and visual
Theatre played such a scenes, as it were, and find out what dimension to our senses,’ asserted
pivotal role in the school it was really like to be at the school Moholy-Nagy. From 1923, they
1 NACHLASS T. LUX FEININGER 2 STIFTUNG BAUHAUS DESSAU 3 XANTI SCHAWINSKY ESTATE 4 XANTI SCHAWINSKY ESTATE 5 VG BILDKUNST, BONN 2014
that it is almost during that intense period of creativity. investigated mechanisation, machine
impossible to separate it The book opens with an indulgent, industrialisation and rationalisation.
from other disciplines fictional conversation between the Gropius’ Total Theatre, for example,
3 5

designed in 1927 but never realised,

used a combination of film projection
and performance to create a
multi-perspective building — a
machine if you like — in which the
spectators became part of the event.
One of the better essays, by
Juliet Koss, looks at how Bauhaus
performances recreated the human
body in the shape of a doll, toying
with ideas of androgyny, abstraction
and the emerging machine aesthetic.
In Schlemmer’s Space Dance (1927)
rigid figures become simplified,
sexless forms on bare stages, while in
his Triadic Ballet (1923) the sculptural
costumes reduced the dancers to a
series of limited gestures and
movements, like puppets. The famous
image of a women nonchalantly
reclining on a Marcel Breuer chair
(1926) with a Schlemmer mask
on her head is also an example of a
Bauhaus doll — anonymous, but
maybe Ise Gropius or Lis Beyer, who
4
created the dress. A reprint of the
third issue of the Bauhaus theatre
journal from 1927, tucked into the
sleeve of the book — for Bauhaus
fans, probably worth the price of the
publication alone — also shows
impassive groups of performers,
conjuring up images of robots, each
just a cog in the machine.
It is perhaps surprising that this
is, as they claim, the first exhibition
and book to focus solely on the
Bauhaus stage experiments. Theatre
played such a pivotal role in the
school that it is almost impossible to
separate it from other disciplines. It is
also a problematic subject to commit
to paper; how do you translate the
dynamic movement of whole
performances to one single, mute
image? We may never be able to
go back and experience those
performances, but this book offers a
tantalising glimpse into that world.

1 – Space Dance, Oskar Schlemmer, 1927

2 – Form Dance, Oskar Schlemmer, 1927
3 – Design for a Constructivist stage set, Xanti
Schawinsky, 1926
4 – Robber’s Ballet, Xanti Schawinsky, 1925
5 – Kinetic Constructive System, László
Moholy-Nagy, 1922

229
 2015
Drawing
Competition

Isometric
2 point perspective
3 point perspective
Product drawings
Fine art drawings

Any scale.

All freehand drawings welcome

in monochrome or colour.

Culminating in an exhibition with

an FX summer networking party.
More details to follow.
_

Send your digital drawings to

drawing2015@fxmagazine.co.uk
with DRAWING in the subject

Free to enter!

In association with
 Laden. The Western media’s architects act as community-led changes to home life. Dan Hill and
Book speculation around a space that developers on a micro-urban scale, Alexandra Lange’s essays respectively
sqm: The could shelter such a monster is yielding a relatively rare and probably reflect on the impacts of airbnb,
contrasted with the somewhat fragile moment of optimism. sharing economies and Pinterest on
Quantified Home piteous suggestion of a self-imposed Closer to home, Sam Jacob’s current ideas of ownership, comfort
prison, the design of which was lyrical piece on the ‘liquidity’ of bricks and desire. Through an undeniably
Edited by Space Caviar ( Joseph Grima, purportedly of personal interest to and mortar descends to the very darkened mirror, Bruce Sterling,
Andrea Bagnato, Tamar Shafrir) Bin Laden. In an opposite measure of bowels of the London property (albeit neither younger nor lesser
Lars Müller Publishers, £30/€35 voluntary imprisonment, Ignacio market — literally, as he excavates the known) is drawn into conversation on
Review by Shumi Bose González Galan dissects the emergent typology of the Kensington today’s technological climate. The
panoptical arrangement of the Big and Chelsea basement-luxe. Joseph Internet of Things, he warns, is less to
Here’s an accepted fact: the most Brother house (or rather its Italian Grima and Jonathan Nicholls’ do with the convenience of
basic product of architecture is the cousin, the house for Grande conversation with Justin McGuirk controlling your fridge temperature
domicile of man, the shelter for life, Fratello), paralleling this idealised revisits Robin Hood Gardens: yes, from the office, and more about
the home. So runs the narrative of pseudo-home with the spectacle- again, I know, but unlike so many producing a commercially legible
any number of architectural polemics, producing environments of the critics before him, his contribution home of big-data flows: the one-click
from Abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier’s erstwhile Cinecittà film complex deftly deconstructs the Smithsons’ data-centric home of the future. ‘The
treatise on the primitive hut (first outside Rome: both temporal, attempt to materially embody ‘the wolf,’ he warns, ‘is already in the
published in 1753, then again with a physically stable structures which socialist/democratic dream’, rather living room.’ I haven’t mentioned
frontispiece depicting the famous hut circulate in an endlessly mobile than simply bemoaning its everything here; notable omissions
itself in 1755) through to Le Corbusier, broadcast reality. The (oil)pipe demolition. Ultimately, this is a would include Keller Easterling, Jacob
who wrote in Towards a New dreams of the Emirati property boom critique of the neoliberal mechanisms Reidel and many others, as well as
Architecture (1923) ‘the house has are portrayed by Rahel Aima as a sort which will see Robin Hood Gardens’ the fascinating infographics which
always been the indispensable and of non-place mirage offering no humane intentions replaced with punctuate the various critical
first tool he has forged for himself.’ possibility of belonging. This stands profit-driven pension replacements reflections with hard-edged and
Martin Heidegger’s existential, in contrast with Andreas Ruby’s frank taking the guise of apartments. well-visualised, statistical data. As
tripartite meditation Building, explanation of the Berlin baugruppe Cat Rossi provides an historical sqm’s subtitle suggests, the idea of
Dwelling, Thinking (1951) states: ‘We phenomenon (see Blueprint 332, appraisal of the ‘new domestic home is neither a place to lay your
attain to dwelling, so it seems, only January/February 2014), wherein landscapes’ proposed by the hat, where your heart is nor a state of
by means of building,’ and later still, now-fetishised Italian designers mind, but a thoroughly quantified
Reyner Banham’s techno-utopian ...incisive essays, Superstudio and Joe Colombo in the entity.
illustrated essay, A Home is not a exposing various takes early Seventies, whose works were
House, wittily reversed the title of the on the possibility of conceived and exhibited as critiques
Dionne Warwick/Burt Bacharach hit making oneself at home of consumerism and acknowledgments 1 – sqm was produced for Belgium’s Biennale
from 1964. Indeed, the sacrosanct in the modern world of radical technology-inflected Interieur in Kortrijk 2014
right to housing has been written into
1
Article 25 of the United Nations’
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights for almost 70 years, within the
section dealing with social, economic
and cultural rights.
Without escaping social contexts
or financial analyses, the publication
sqm is an excellent investigation of
the contemporary realities of home,
focusing on the domestic interior as
‘the convergence of the human, the
urban and the infrastructural’.
Produced for the relatively under-
exposed Biennale Interieur, which
took place in the Belgian city of
Kortrijk last year and which was
curated by former Domus editor and
ex-director of Storefront for Art and
Architecture, Joseph Grima, sqm is a
no-filler package of incisive essays,
exposing various takes on the
possibility of making oneself at home
in the modern world. The first
Biennale Interieur took place in 1968,
making it a far older event than the
Venice Architecture Biennale and,
unlike the organisers of Venice, who
seem wedded to the suffocating
prestige of established and venerable
commentators, the editors of sqm
have selected refreshingly luminous
and often younger, lesser-known
voices to elucidate concerns
surrounding the idea of domesticity.
Marina Otero Verzier discusses
the perceived sanctity and security of
home through a disturbing
examination of the domiciles
occupied by recent history’s most
inflated figure of fear: Osama Bin

231
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London W2 5QH London SW10 0SZ

Exhibition
The Frick Collection:
Art Treasures from
New York
Mauritshuis, The Hague
Until 10 May 2015 
Review by Rebecca Swirsky
‘Our DNA tells us to tell stories,’
declared author Tracy Chevalier in her
2012 TED talk. ‘And why not apply
that to our looking at paintings?’
The Girl with the Pearl Earring
(1665) by Johannes Vermeer, focus of
Chevalier’s famous novel, and The
Goldfinch (1654) by Carel Fabritius,
which plays a key role in Donna
Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of
the same title, are star draws at The
Hague’s Mauritshuis, a 17th-century
townhouse that is the mecca of Dutch
Golden Age painting. Now an
exhibition The Frick Collection: Art
Treasures from New York adds its
YORK; PHOTO MICHAEL BODYCOMB 4 HANS MEMLING (CA. 1430-1494) PORTRAIT VAN EEN MAN, CA. 1470 PANEEL, 33,5 X 23 CM THE FRICK COLLECTION, NEW YORK; PHOTO MICHAEL BODYCOMB
own layer of stories to Mauritshuis,
MICHAEL BODYCOMB 3 FRANCESCO LAURANA (CA. 1430-CA. 1502) PORTRAIT BUST VAN BEATRICE VAN ARAGON, CA. 1471-1474 MARMER, 40,6 X 40,3 X 20,3 CM THE FRICK COLLECTION, NEW
and represents the growing
1 IVO HOEKSTRA 2 JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE INGRES (1780-1867) PORTRAIT VAN DE COMTESSE D’HAUSSONVILLE, 1845 DOEK, 131,8 X 92,1 CM THE FRICK COLLECTION, NEW YORK; PHOTO
relationship between the Hague
institution and one of America’s most
celebrated collections of Old Masters.
Directors Ian Wardropper and
Emily Gordenker, from the Frick and
Mauritshuis respectively, were keen to
emphasise such overlaps, as well as
highlight the gaps. Despite the
relatively small size of both institutions,
each operates at world-class level,
prioritising quality over quantity. Both
collections excel in small, focused
exhibitions, and each shares the
challenge of solving spatial issues in
buildings once originally homes, rather
than purpose-built museums. The Frick
Collection’s presence at the Mauritshuis
allows the Dutch to enjoy works by
artists such as Cimabue and Ingres rarely
seen in Holland’s public collections.
The relationship between these
two institutions began in 2012 when
the Mauritshuis started an extensive
two-year, £25m renovation,
completed last summer. During this
two-year period, 15 key artworks —
including The Girl with the Pearl
Earring, The Goldfinch and
Rembrandt’s Simeon’s Song of Praise
(1631) — were lent to the Frick. The
exhibition coincided, not deliberately,
3 was once described by a bank
1
... the Mauritshuis has now
elegantly expanded by
renting art deco quarters
from a gentlemen’s
literary club next door
with Donna Tartt’s publication of The
Goldfinch. It served The Frick
Collection well; Vermeer, Rembrandt
and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch
Painting at the Mauritshuis drew in
more visitors in three months than
were normally recorded in one year.
Previously bursting at the seams,
the Mauritshuis has now elegantly
expanded by renting art deco
quarters from a gentleman’s literary
club next door, linking the buildings
with a large, light-filled visitors’ hall,
plus a giftshop and restaurant area,
airily connected to the city outside
through large plate windows. A sleek
glass lift has been incorporated into
the spine of the original house. And,
in a spirit of reciprocity now that the
Mauritshuis has reopened, The Frick
Collection returns a favour, with an
unprecedented loan of over 30 works.
The story of Henry Clay Frick,
after who the collection is named, is
one of the American Dream. Dubbed
the ‘Coke King’ and grandson to a
whiskey distiller, Frick became a
self-made billionaire on a par with JP
Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. He
manager as being a ‘little too
enthusiastic about pictures’, and his
public legacy today was possibly
inspired by visiting a similar London
institution, the Wallace Collection.
Frick, however, left this condition,
a cast-iron stipulation that any pieces
acquired within his own lifetime must
never be removed. Luckily, Helen
Frick, his daughter, had a keen eye for
acquisitions, particularly early Italian
Renaissance paintings (and a buyer’s
will that matched her father’s). Helen
ensured that not only were
subsequent additions carefully
selected, but with 30 per cent of the
collection added after Frick’s death in
1919, that ample treasures might be
available for loan.
Visitors to the exhibition enjoy
the luminosity of Ingres’ Portrait of
the Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845)
alongside Flemish Memling’s startling
Portrait of a Man (1470). Painted over
seven centuries ago, despite surface
oil cracking, Memling’s portrait
appears uncannily fresh and vital,
while Ruisdael’s and Constable’s
cirrus and cumulus clouds billow
rhythmically along one wall. Riches
are also to be found in quieter pieces.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Young
Man Holding a Book (1758) is a
startlingly fluid, brown-ink study that
represents Tiepolo’s skill, much like
Rembrandt, in conveying strong
character in simple lines.
The coming together of the two
collections offers new opportunities
for seeing, even for those who
already know the works. Gordenker
explained how, when the Mauritshuis
went to New York, the experience of
seeing familiar pieces in a new light
was like seeing ‘old friends in a new
role’. Now the situation has been
reversed, with Wardropper taking
pleasure in the clear sightline through
4 off with the spoils.’
2
the Mauritshuis afforded to the Frick’s
portrait bust of Beatrice of Aragon
(1471–73) by Francesco Laurana.
The Frick’s treasures returning to
Europe offers a certain circularity,
given the way American art collectors
competed to acquire the cream of
European art during the country’s
‘gilded age’. ‘If a fight breaks out at
an auction or an art dealer’s about a
valuable work of art,’ wrote eminent
art historian Wilhelm von Bode in
Kunst und Künstler in 1902, ‘you can
be sure that an American will make
In 2014, the Frick announced an
architectural masterplan for its
museum and library, including new
galleries and an education centre.
Once these plans are underway, more
opportunities will be presented for
the re-curation of these two
collections either side of the Atlantic,
offering fresh perspectives and
consolidating the bond between this
‘power couple’ of Old Master art.
1 – The Mauritshuis’ renovated galleries
2 – Portrait of the Comtesse d’Haussonville,
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1845
3 – Portrait bust of Beatrice of Aragon,
Francesco Laurana, 1471–1474
4 – Portrait of a Man, Hans Memling, 1470
233

Exhibition
Ladybird by Design
De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea
Until 10 May
Review by Johnny Tucker
In an age when mass communication
meant posting out a lot of letters,
Ladybird Books had a profound
effect on several generations,
particularly during its golden period
of the Sixties and Seventies.
This was a time when video was
virtually unheard of and the internet
undreamt of. Books, radio and
television ruled and the latter spewed
forth a diet of vaguely racist and
sexist sitcoms and light entertainers,
many of whom we’ve been hearing
a lot about again recently.
Once ubiquitous from bookshop
to corner shop, from schoolroom to
jumble sale, the small-format, highly
illustrated Ladybird books were a
fount of easily accessible information.
The format was simple and direct
during this period — single-page
illustrations and facing-page text.
The subject matter was wide-ranging,
the tone often morally high-handed
and they were educational.
It was the strength and impact
of the graphics that were the
absolute key to their success, and
it’s the images, not the often banal
The exhibition is a highly
visual, socio-political
journey through the UK’s
recent history. But I
guarantee that..the talk
among onlookers will be
continually punctuated
by ‘I had that one!’
2 3
234
1
words that form the basis of this
exhibition. Deliberately concentrating
on the illustrations from this golden
period, the exhibition uses them in
enlightening groupings and
juxtapositions to trace not only the
editorial changes during the period,
but the history of the period itself.
The illustrations reveal so much,
so quickly, about times long gone,
both in terms of the subject matter
chosen and the style of illustration
used to portray it. The illustrations
reflect the changing times and
attitudes, from the sterile Norman
Rockwell-esque idealisation of the
nuclear family and middle-class
values in titles such as Shopping with
Mother, through the dramatically
different, working-class orientated,
photo-realistic illustrations of the
People at Work series, to the flatter,
more hardcore How-It-Works
illustrations of the mechanical and
scientific titles, including Exploring
Space, which was actually published
before man had set foot on the moon
(if Kubrick could do it, why not
Ladybird?)
Although this was the heyday,
Ladybird has a long history, in fact
100 years — books featuring the
Ladybird logo first appeared in 1915
published by Wills & Hepworth.
And, while it was a very British
phenomenon, the books were being
published in more than 30 languages
during the Sixties and Seventies’
golden age. titles, the Ladybird book were overtly Keen took innovative, contemporary,
The subject matter was diverse, informative. They also went that one child literacy reading and learning
to say the very least: fairy tales, stage further into the strictly research and packaged them up in
religion (well one religion anyway), educational with the Key Words the by then standardised Ladybird
history and hobbies all featured. Reading Scheme series — Peter pocket-size format.
Nature was a mainstay and so, in fact, and Jane — sales of which have ran In a nutshell, the Ladybird by
was nurture. Apart from the more into the scores of millions. Editorial Design exhibition at the De La Warr
moral values imparted by certain director in the Seventies Douglas Pavilion in Bexhill is a highly visual,
socio-political journey through the
UK’s fairly recent history. Then again…
I guarantee that if you visit, the
discussion among onlookers will not
be dominated by any particularly deep,
historical discussion, instead the quiet
of the gallery will be continually
punctuated by the verbal ejaculation:
‘I had that one!’ A social journey
maybe, but this is also one big
nostalgia trip for certain generations.
These books really were so
dominant in the lives of the people
growing up in the golden age that
1, 2, 3, 5 & 6 COPYRIGHT © LADYBIRD BOOKS LTD 4 NIGEL GREEN
I wonder if everybody actually did
have one. I can’t remember what
I had, but so many of the illustrations
on show were frighteningly familiar.
And this show plays to that as
a strength. What I do remember of
the books is the slightly schizophrenic
nature they seemed to have. On one
hand, there were the modern How
Tos and the How Does it Works that
I favoured, but then there were those
ones full of archaic spinning tops and
extremely neatly turned-out boys in
blazers with slicked-back hair, who
didn’t resemble any of the little
blighters I hung around with then.
4
As mentioned, this really is about
the illustrations and to an extent the
illustrators themselves, such as John
Berry (People at Work), Robert Ayton
(Achievements and Hobbies), JH
Wingfield (Key Words and Learning
with Mother) and Martin Aitchison
(Key words and Composers), many of
5 6
whom worked for Ladybird for long
periods in their careers, 30 years in
the case of Aitchison. The show’s
explanatory text is about as much
as would have been contained in an
average Ladybird book. Shown like
this, the illustrations really do speak
for themselves and, of course, they
are a lot bigger than the final
reproductions, so revealing even
more strange, historical detail.
The sheer number of original
artwork on show here is great. They
have been picked from the archives
held at the University of Reading
which, according to exhibition
co-curator Jane Won, are very good
but not complete, as a number of
illustrators held on to the copyright
of their work, later selling them off
to collectors.
Won says that while the starting
point for this exhibition is Ladybird
by Design: 100 years of words and
pictures, by Lawrence Zeegan, who is
professor of illustration and dean of
the school of design at London College
of Communication, they wanted to let
the images almost work as fine art
here and allow them to offer a
alternative perspective on the books.
Yes, this exhibition plays to
the crowd, it is unashamedly and
unapologetically nostalgic, but it
also works on the more subtle levels
outlined, from the art of illustration
and graphic design (there is a large
wall of original book covers) through
to the history of the brand’s
development and the tale it all tells
of the times.
If you’re of that era, visit the
show and go home with a few
resurgent, long-buried (hopefully
good) memories and a postcard of
the one you had. If you are not, go
anyway, it was a phenomenon and
fascinating for it.
1 – Children of the Sixties were easily entertained
2 & 3 – The markedly different photo-realistic
style of the People at Work series, with
illustration by John Berry
4 – The wall of books at the De La Warr Pavilion
5 – One of the Key Words reading scheme titles
6 – Original artwork from Shop with Mother
235
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Exhibition
Skyward — High-Rise
Frankfurt
DAM Deutsche Architekturmuseum,
Frankfurt  
Until 19 April
Review by Herbert Wright
A great skyscraper city has more than
great skyscrapers, it has a great story
to tell about them. Frankfurt’s is
shaped by (among other things)
military occupation, beer, street
revolutionaries, and starchitects both
victorious and defeated.
Frankfurt has a long banking
history, but it was the Americans who
primed it to ultimately become
continental Europe’s financial
powerhouse. After the Second World
War, the city lay in the American
Sector, and Frankfurt’s airport geared
up for the ‘Luftbrücke’ to supply West
Berlin, isolated in the Soviet Sector.
Frankfurt had aspirations to be West
Germany’s capital, but Bonn won that
in 1949, so the city decided to
become the commercial capital
instead. American skyscrapers
symbolised capitalism, and Frankfurt,
unlike other cities, had given the
green light to inner-city high-rise as
early as 1947. The Bank deutscher
Länder — later the Bundesbank — set
up shop in 1957, anchoring a Banking
Quarter. By the time SOM’s (low-rise)
America House opened the same
year, standard International style
boxes were already proliferating.
A fun exception was the
Henninger Turm, converted from a
brewery silo, mounted by a beer
barrel-shaped rotunda with a
revolving restaurant. It opened in
1964, a year before London’s at the
(now) BT Tower. Now demolished,
new high-rise flats will follow the form.
In the 1960s, the centre’s
neighbouring Westend was slated for
2 from 1997 until The Shard. It defines
1 UWE DETTMAR 2 ?KAI-UWE WÄRNER, 1988 3 KLAUS MEIER-UDE, 1985
1
triple-deck road schemes and
skyscrapers, and property speculators
moved in. Villas and neighbourhoods
were obliterated. A squatter movement
rose up, and in the Seventies,
skyscrapers became the left’s symbols
of ‘Bankfurt’’s capitalism. Violent
revolutionary street protests flared
(Joschka Fischer, later Foreign Minister,
squatted and attacked police). Some
wondered if the city was ungovernable.
Government did improve, and so
did design. It almost included Mies
van der Rohe, who invented the glass,
curtain-walled skyscraper in 1921
(unbuilt at Friedrichstrasse, Berlin).
Building a tower in the land of his
birth beckoned again when
Commerzbank held a competition for
a new Frankfurt HQ. He designed a
Seagram-esque tower and adjacent
pavilion, lighter but square like his
Nationalgalerie, Berlin. The exquisite
model was found by DAM and is a
star of the show. But Mies was
..this show should have
translated its dramatic
German title:
‘Himmelstürmend’ — it
means ‘storming heaven’
defeated by a Miesianly, black,
conjoined, double slab by Richard
Heil, finished in 1973. Commerzbank
soon outgrew that building, and a
new competition was launched in
1991. Enter Norman Foster...
Ex-revolutionary Daniel Cohn-
Bendit was a leading voice in the
city’s Red-Green coalition, insisting
on green credentials for
Commerzbank’s new tower in
return for doubling the height. The
corporate eco-tower was born. Both
Düsseldorf-based Ingenhoven’s and
Foster’s designs introduced natural
ventilation, but Foster won with his
great, stacked atria between
peripheral cores, one rising to 259m,
making it the EU’s tallest building
the central cluster of ‘Mainhattan’,
and (though Wolf Prix dismisses the
coincidence) the atria concept is
echoed in Frankfurt’s newest
skyscraper, Coop Himmelb(l)au’s
ECB headquarters (page 56).
As in London, great post-war
high-rise has been lost in the lust to
maximise plot ratios. For example,
developers Tishman-Speyer replaced
the once-listed Zürich-Haus (1962),
an elegantly light, 20-storey stack by
Stücheli and von Schauroth with
generous glazing and a clock
overlooking the old Opera Square, by
a 170m-high tower which was
completed in 2010.
That may be nothing compared
to the current frenzied climb of say
Shanghai, Tianjin or Manhattan, but
in European terms, Frankfurt’s 14
buildings over 150m is up there with
London’s 18 and Paris’ 17. And the
locals have learnt to love the
skyscraper, especially after the
256m-high, postmodernist, red
granite MesseTurm — by another
German émigré, showy Chicago-
based Helmut Jahn — wowed
Frankfurt in 1991. Since 1996,
Frankfurt has even had a Skyscraper
Festival. In 2013, 1.2 million visits were
registered for bungee-jumping, aerial
shows, fireworks, music — and entry
into skyscrapers.
This exhibition celebrates them
with meticulous research into
architecture, city planning and
socio-political history. It’s stuffed with
models, photos and plans. And
there’s an extra exhibit outside —
DAM faces Frankfurt’s spectacular
Banking Quarter skyscraper cluster
across the river Main. Despite its
calm, contemplative mood, this show
should have translated its dramatic
German title: ‘Himmelstürmend’ — it
means ‘storming heaven’.
3
1 – Models, pictures and facts show the future
and past of Frankfurt’s skyscrapers
2 – In 1988, a model of the MesseTurm by
Murphy/Jahn gave great joy to (L to R) Mayor
Brück, Stauber of Messe Frankfurt, and
developer Jerry Speyer of Tishman-Speyer
3 – The blue-gazed Zürich-Haus overlooking the
Old Opera was listed, but has been demolished
237
240 – 241 242 – 251 ARCHITECTURAL LIGHTING FOCUS
Feature Blueprint promotions
As part of the GREAT Britain 242 Durable
campaign, Jason Bruges Studio 244 Concord
worked with Benchmark to create a 246 Traxon
digital version of the iconic Number 248 Griven
10 door for one morning in February 250 Slamp

239

Digital Double
Jason Bruges Studio
Words by Cate St Hill
There is one door that is more famous
than all the others in the UK — the
black, highly glossy, six-panelled
entrance to Number 10 Downing
Street. In fact, there are actually two
Number 10 doors — a spare is kept in
storage and regularly swapped with
the bomb-proof, steel original during
periods of housekeeping. And, for one
brief morning in February, there was
also a third door, this time an ingenious,
blink-and-you’ll-miss-it art installation
designed by Jason Bruges Studio.
This playful, facsimile door,
created with West Berkshire-based
furniture manufacturer Benchmark,
captured movements inside Number
10 and translated them as silhouettes
and low-resolution animations on the
outer surface of the door. One
example included Number 10 resident
Larry the cat stalking past, while
another showed a policeman coming
to answer the door.
The project is part of the GREAT
Britain campaign that aims to promote
and showcase the best of the UK
internationally. ‘We were really trying
to find sites or opportunities that
2 3
240
1
would be globally iconic and
someone mentioned the door,’ says
Jason Bruges. ‘At the time, I thought,
wow, how likely is that going to be?
But, it was really interesting to see
how the hybrid of technology and
craft worked together. That’s
something which makes it quite
British — that twist on the traditional.’
A bespoke, digital veneer,
comprised of photodiodes and LEDs,
on each side of the painstakingly
crafted, replica door senses the
amount of light and shadow inside
Number 10. A Raspberry Pi — a credit
card-sized, single-board computer
nominated for the Design Museum’s
Design of the Year 2013 — then
processes that information and plays
back a low-resolution image on the
outside of the door. ‘You can’t actually
see the material behind the surface, it
just looks like the same glossy paint will include a one-off Aston Martin there for a little longer. Adds Bruges,
as the rest of the door,’ says Bruges. and a set of portraits of the Queen by ‘Some of the staff at Number 10 were
‘When it’s off, it sits right back and David Bailey to promote British really excited by it and took it as a
looks like the real thing — a very nice business, tourism and education compliment. They even jokingly
replica — but the next moment, it’s abroad. This, along with being on the asked if we could leave it there!’
like this breathing, living thing.’ UK Trade and Investment’s Creative
Following its whistle-stop debut, Taskforce, is already proving to have
the installation will next appear at the an effect on Jason Bruges’ own work, 1 – A bespoke digital veneer made of
photodiodes and LEDs lines each side of the
Great Festival of Creativity at with projects coming up in North door at Number 10
Shanghai’s Long Museum in March, America, China and the Middle East. 2 – Jason Bruges tests out the door for himself
3 – The door stood in place for just one morning
before forming part of a year-long Back, closer to home, however, the in February and took 10 minutes to install
4 – Number 10’s cat Larry tries to see what all
touring exhibition of specially residents of Number 10 may be the commotion is about
commissioned GREAT creations that regretting that the installation wasn’t 5 – The door in action — Larry the cat stalks past
 ALL PHOTOGRAPHY AMY PARTON
5

241
DURABLE
DURABLE have revolutionised the task lighting
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has been manufactured using the highest grade of
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wellbeing and productivity within the workplace.
Using the latest findings from extensive
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DURABLE have developed a sophisticated range of
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table lamp models in two modern, minimalistic
designs and three stylish colour finishes.
The range, endorsed by Dr Dieter Kunz, an
expert in the importance of light for health in light
design features superior quality cold white and warm
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today between 2,700 and 6,500 Kelvin, which provides
an intensity and colour that closely replicates daylight.
In the human brain, the intensity and colour
of daylight stimulates the production of hormones
melatonin and serotonin that controls the circadian
rhythm, more commonly known as the ‘day and
night’ rhythm. Lack of exposure to daylight and
consequently these hormones can result in fatigue
and at worst depression, therefore the effective
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LUCTRA® is a unique lighting system that can
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are equipped with a patented VITACORE®
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the brightness and colour of the light by simply
242
placing a finger on the glass touch panel. A short
term concentration of light is also possible via the
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For those who would rather have an
automated system, DURABLE have developed a
VITACORE® APP, available on Apple and Android
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BLUEPRINT PROMOTION
adjusted at any time. In addition, Bluetooth
technology allows the lamps to be controlled from
a 10 metre distance and two integrated USB
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tablets without affecting the life of the LED’s.
To achieve the maximum output of the LED
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fans, which act as both attractive housings for the
illuminant, but are also integral parts of the LED
concept. By dissipating the heat effectively, the
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The lamps long service life is also enhanced by the
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which operate without the normal locking screws
or complex mechanisms. Nevertheless, the table
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smooth, fluid movement.
DURABLE are proud to have designed a stylish
and sophisticated lamp range that features the most
up-to-date in LED technology and human centric
lighting that can be used in numerous settings such
as desks in the workplace and home, in libraries
and museums or even health care settings.
The company who began manufacturing in
Germany in 1920 has presence in 80 countries,
including its UK headquarters that has experienced
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DURABLE prides itself on offering a next day
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week lead time that is usual for this highly specialist
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and highly personalised lighting experience.
To receive further information about
LUCTRA®, request a brochure or to speak to a
DURABLE lighting specialist, please call 01202
893799 or email enquiries@luctra-uk.com
 DURABLE UK LTD
T: +44 (0)1202 897 071
E: customeroperations@durable-uk.com
www.durable-uk.com
www.luctra.eu

BLUEPRINT PROMOTION 243

Concord
Lighting the way to better offices
By David Neale, Marketing Manager – UK Fixtures
Since the implementation across Europe of EN15193
energy performance legislation, there have been
advances in the development of new LED lighting
technologies and energy efficiency has become
ever more critical when specifying lighting for an
office or commercial building installation.
Rapid improvements in the quality,
performance and life expectancy of lighting
solutions in general, combined with cutting edge
lighting control systems, provides the user with
optimum energy savings. As a result, we are able
to create stimulating, well lit workplaces whilst
also being conscious of the maintenance and
running costs of an installation and the longer
term effects it has on the environment.
There are a range of lighting techniques
available to provide a suitable visual environment
for the office. These techniques include: lighting
directly onto the working plane from ceiling
mounted luminaires, indirect lighting via the ceiling
and upper walls from recessed, floor standing,
furniture mounted, wall mounted, or suspended
luminaires. Combining task and localised lighting
with a mixture of the above types of general
lighting will help create a good visual environment.
The selection of the lighting style will depend
on the physical constraints of the space, as well as
the decor. Artificial lighting needs to provide the
appropriate light levels for all tasks carried out
without causing glare nor creating a wide variance
in luminance between the different surfaces.
Natural light should fill the space wherever
possible to ensure comfort.
Choices: The Office Space
There are many ways of lighting an office space,
each with inherent advantages and disadvantages.
Each style affects the lit appearance of the space
and the balance of the surface luminance.
The Concord Officelyte range of luminaires is
the ideal choice for today’s work environments.
With its ease of installation and versatility, the
Officelyte LED allows Concord to offer a
comprehensive range of luminaires for all office
lighting requirements.
When looking to light around the workspace
the Concord Mini Continuum LED luminaire is a
perfect solution. Offering continuous, highly
uniform and yet discrete lines of light across walls
and ceilings, the Mini Continuum LED can be
vertically and horizontally recessed, semi-recessed,
surface-mounted and suspended dependent on
individual lighting requirements. Flexible in
positioning, yet classic in design, Mini Continuum
has an overall lit surface width of only 51mm.
Stairwells & Corridors
Lighting in corridors and stairwells is equally as
important to create the right ambience and safely
guide occupants through the building. The
Concord Glace is a super slim architectural
luminaire designed to redefine the current genre
of traditional ambient-style bulkhead fittings.
Utilising the latest LED technology, the superior
Glace is an ultra-modern, minimalistic luminaire
which eliminates black spots and provides an even
244
spread of light. Available in wall, ceiling mounted
and pendant versions, the Concord Glace is ideal
for circulation spaces including corridors,
stairwells, high-end reception areas and foyers.
Accent / Spotlighting
When it comes to illuminating artwork or logos
within an office building, installing spotlights will
highlight and enhance the space. For example, the
Concord Beacon Muse LED uses cutting-edge
technology and ancient lens principles to create a
fully adjustable spotlight. The new Muse’s
adjustable optic system provides a wide flood 65˚
beam angle which can be adjusted to a 10˚ spot
without the need for additional lenses or reflectors.
This fully adjustable spotlight provides all the
benefits of LED technology, no UV / IR radiation,
50,000 hours life at 70% luminous flux,
maintenance free applications and a considerable
reduction in energy consumption over traditional
light sources such as halogen.
Alternatively, the Concord Beacon Projector
has an innovative connecting snoot designed for
precise manual focus and optimum directional
lens control. Furthermore, at just 190mm in
length, Beacon Projector is one of the smallest
architectural LED projectors on the market.
Concord is also a Gold Sponsor of the British
Council of Office Awards 2015: Corporate
Workplace Category. For more information visit
www.concord-lighting.co.uk.
About Concord from Havells Sylvania
The Concord brand is part of the Havells Sylvania
Group and is one of Europe’s most respected
Architectural lighting brands.  With a strong
manufacturing base in the UK, Concord is
renowned for its strong design ethos, high
technical performance and aesthetic form.
Concord focuses on bringing lighting solutions to
meet the needs of architects and lighting designers.
BLUEPRINT PROMOTION
  Concord’s innovative portfolio is one of the
most comprehensive on the market, encompassing
track and spot, downlights, ambient lighting,
recessed and linear solutions for a variety of
application segments. Concord provides segment
specific lighting application advice; and the entire
product range is underpinned by in-house
technical expertise, from optical system design
through to photometric measurement and testing.
Concord’s best in class range of LED
luminaires have won many prestigious design
awards and industry accolades in recent years.
During 2013, Concord Glace has won the Best
Interior Luminaire at the Lighting Design Awards
and been a finalist at the Lux Awards and the FX
Awards. Concord Lytelab received a five-star
review in Lux magazine’s tests, Concord Beacon
Minor was a finalist at the FX Awards and Concord
Officelyte incorporating Organic Response has
won the 2014 Lighting Design Awards.
Formed in April 2007, Havells Sylvania is
owned by Havells India Ltd, a US$ Billion plus
company. With 94 branches and representative
offices worldwide, and over 8000 employees
working in more than 50 countries; Havells has
grown rapidly since its humble beginnings in Delhi
in 1958. Havells has eighteen manufacturing plants
in India, Europe, Latin America and Africa;
producing globally acclaimed products, including:
switchgear, cables, wires, luminaires and lamps.
Havells Sylvania is a leading, full-spectrum
provider of professional and architectural lighting
solutions. Built on over a century of expertise in
lamps and luminaires, Havells Sylvania supplies
state-of-the art products and systems to the public,
commercial and private sectors, worldwide. Havells
Sylvania strives to deliver the finest products,
service and consulting possible. All over the world,
people rely on group companies: Concord, Lumiance
and Sylvania, for top quality, energy-efficient
solutions to suit their individual lighting needs.
 Concord
www.concord-lighting.co.uk
www.havells-sylvania.com

BLUEPRINT PROMOTION 245

Traxon Technologies

San Mamés Stadium, Bilbao, Spain

In September 2014 the new San Mamés Barria
stadium was opened. Designed with the concept of
energy and unity, the new San Mamés Stadium is
the home for the Athletic Club of Bilbao, one of the
biggest European football clubs. It replaced the
previous 100-year-old San Mamés stadium, which
was popularly referred to as the cathedral of
football. While maintaining the atmosphere of the
old cathedral, the new Stadium is designed with
modern elements to connect with the city and its
surroundings. A total of 2,500 vertical sails are
mounted on the façade as five horizontal rings
around the new stadium. Each sail, five meters
high and twisted at 90 degrees, is illuminated by 17
individually controllable Dot XL-6 RGB. Special
profiles were created to house the Dot XL-6
perpendicular to the sails. To obtain perfect beam
spread, every dot is positioned on a different angle
to prevent direct view to the Dots. A total of
42,500 RGB LED dots illuminate the façade of the
stadium, creating stunning lighting effects and
amazing media content. Various dynamic lighting
sequences are played via e:cue Video Micro
Converter (VMC) paired with the Lighting Control
Engine fx (LCE-fx). The 360-degree multimedia
façade gives a unique character to San Mamés
stadium, creating an urban landmark over the
estuary of Bibao.

246 BLUEPRINT PROMOTION

 Traxon Technologies
T: +44 17 53 48 4(100)
E: info.europe@traxontechnologies.com
www.traxontechnologies.com

BLUEPRINT PROMOTION 247

Griven
GRIVEN S.r.l., a private limited Italian
company founded in 1990, has established itself
as one of the world leading manufacturers in the
architectural lighting market, featuring a
comprehensive catalogue of proven quality, high
reliability and fully weatherproofed lighting
fixtures capable of offering the industry professionals
the most innovative and alternative solutions at all
times. In its quest to keep ahead of a constantly
expanding market, GRIVEN has taken on board
the LED technology in 2001 for an increasing
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and offer high profile equipment for the widest
range of applications. A state of the art collection
of surface mount, modular, linear, recessed,
underwater and visual display projectors can
enhance, with spectacular effects and the boundless
versatility of its dynamic and green lighting source,
the most demanding lighting projects.
Based on the highest design, efficiency and
flexibility standards, GRIVEN luminaires deliver a
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by each and every lighting installation. GRIVEN
continued cooperation with the most renowned
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with eco-friendly and energy saving solutions.
Keeping up with the most challenging
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lighting solutions are increasingly being specified
in distinct urban contexts the world over. Among
248
the most recent and remarkable installations
based on GRIVEN products, following selection
shows the utmost flexibility of GRIVEN LED
lighting fixtures in different applications.
The Adelaide Oval, witness of the greatest
moments in sport and entertainment in Australia
for more than 140 years, now boosts a re-vamped
architectural lighting that wraps up the stadium in
team colours on game nights owing to the usage of
GRIVEN LED light fittings that create an infinitely
controllable panorama of light, adding an extra
burst of atmosphere to the arena.
The hospitality sector stands out with the
illumination of Sochi Olympic Park (Russia), the
residential complex of the 2014 Winter Olympics
shaped like a fairy tale castle, which has required
an impressive number of LED lighting fixtures to
achieve the breathtaking final layout. Overlooking
the West Bay of Qatar’s capital city and the clear
blue waters of the Arabian Gulf, the 5-star
Sheraton Doha Hotel & Resort has recently been
restored to its former glory with the help of an
imposing lighting scheme that enhances its
pyramidal shape at night.
The dynamically colourful illumination of
dazzling bridges, such as Krymksy Bridge in Moscow
(Russia), the Brda Bridge in Bydgoszcz (Poland)
and the Bolte Bridge in Melbourne (Australia) is a
symbol of an increasingly spreading trend to
emphasize the city landmarks or the suburban
areas with a combination of artistic lighting design
and innovative eco-friendly lighting equipment.
Adjoining STAPLES Center and the Los
Angeles Convention Center, the amazing L.A. LIVE
district (Los Angeles, CA) is home to some of the
best U.S. and international attractions. After the
recent installation of GRIVEN renowned
searchlights, the L.A. LIVE district now looks as if 
wrapped up in a geometric pattern of glittering,
powerful beams of light producing a spectacular
dancing light choreography.
BLUEPRINT PROMOTION
 Griven S.r.l.
Via Bulgaria 16 - 46042 Castel
Goffredo - Mantova - Italy
+39 0376 779 483
griven@griven.com
www.griven.com

BLUEPRINT PROMOTION 249

Slamp

LIZA by Elisa Giovannoni

250 BLUEPRINT PROMOTION

 Slamp
SLAMP S.p.A.
00040 Pomezia (Rm) Italy
T: +39 06 91623948
www.slamp.com

Above Avia and Aria by

Zaha Hadid at Tokyo Opera
City Art Gallery

Below Flora collection –

winner of Idea Award - by
Zanini de Zanine

20 years of the leading light.

Since 1994, Slamp has aimed to create something
really new in the Italian design arena: something
that could offer high quality lamps, where a
craftsman’s eye to detail meets the excellence of
industrial production. All the products, made in
patented and innovative materials (immediately
recognisable), are characterized by an innovative
light technology. An internal R&D department
works everyday to improve the LED technologies
adapting them to the design of the lamp and to
the decorative shape that originates from the
designer’s ideas.
“Today it is one of the most representative
brand-names in the field of decorative designer
lighting, an actual reference point for anyone
wishing to possess a much soughtafter, original,
exclusive object, yet within reach for everyone”
declares Roberto Ziliani (CEO Slamp) to explain
that the main aim that moves the people behind
the company is to emotionalize every interior.
The dialogue among design, research and
innovation is the perfect combination that allowed
Slamp to collaborate with great designers like
Zanini De Zanine and Elisa Giovannoni and
Archistar such as Zaha Hadid. Aria and Avia,
exhibited in huge installations like Tokyo Opera
City Art Gallery and Harrod’s in London, are an
evident example of this Slamp’s philosophy.
The successful combination between
technologies materials and handcrafted
techniques makes the lamps bright, suggestive and
versatile objects dedicates to those curious, to
those not satisfied, to those who believe in beauty,
to those who choose to move their home wherever
instinct suggest, to those who fall in love every day.

BLUEPRINT PROMOTION 251

FROM THE ARCHIVES
April 1989
As the 126-year-old Whitworth Art Gallery in
Manchester reopens, following a transformation
by London-based MUMA (page 188), we look back
at the state of the city in 1989, when it was on the
cusp of gentrification following its bid to stage the
1996 Olympics. The insurance companies and mill
owners who had given Manchester its landmarks
had moved out to industrial estates and suburbia,
leaving a group of run-down and long-abandoned
buildings — particularly around the Whitworth/
Princess Street conservation area — earmarked
for change.
The strip was designated a conservation area
in 1974, and by the time the Blueprint issue had
come out, 17 buildings had been listed, ‘forming a
museum of Victorian/Edwardian architectural
eclecticism that ranges from Venetian palazzo and
French renaissance to Scottish baronial and English
baroque’. Many had been built as warehouses for
the textile industry, with offices occupying the
grand bays at the front. (The imposing red-brick
and terracotta Whitworth Art Gallery was founded
as a resource to inspire this industry.)
But only traces of that once-great industrial
past remained. Instead there were plans for luxury
hotels, apartments and new residential blocks.
Wimpey, for example, planned to demolish several
buildings in Bombay Street to make way for its
upmarket Granby Village development, described
here as ‘yuppy heaven’. Meanwhile, Martin
Charles’ atmospheric black-and-white photographs
gave a glimpse of this time-capsule before the
bulldozers descended. CSH

252
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