Luxury Without Formality

Derek Lam Store New York, SANAA

interieur magazine 04/20/09

The fashion world was still a party when Derek Lam selected Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the Tokyo based firm SANAA to design his store in the trendy neighborhood of SoHo’s lower Crosby Street. Lam, although not yet a household name, is considered one of the rising stars in high-end fashion. Sejima had been his friend for several years and also one his first customers when he started his label in 2003. Both firms share more than a passing similarity in their design sensibility. What Lam envisions as “luxury without formality”, a design that is “modern but never cold, fantastical but always rational”, would also be a fitting description of SANAA’s delicate minimalism.

Lam had given little directive for the concept of the store, other than the desire to separately highlight each collection, and SANAA translated this idea into a layout of incredible simplicity; literally an extruded bubble diagram. The design strips the enclosing loft space of the original warehouse to a white gallery-like box, occupied only by 4 organically shaped transparent rooms, housing the different collections and changing rooms. Add some sparsely distributed pieces of custom-built furniture, mannequins, potted plants, and woven gold lamé curtains, and the store is complete.

And yet the result is everything but plain. Walking through, or between the curved walls is an intensely physical and slightly disorienting experience. The space feels ambiguous, simultaneously limitless and constrained, and the difficulty to merge visual and physical perception compels the visitor to a somewhat measured, probing stance. One becomes keenly aware of objects and people in the room, their proximity and movement, and the fact that the space serves to exhibit clothes as well as and their buyers.

Although an endless amount of study models had been produced, project architect Toshihiro Oki explains that the actual effect of the acrylic walls was difficult to test in advance: “ We learned in the Toledo project, that it is not possible to completely simulate or even imagine the effect of a space made entirely from transparent walls”.

The construction of the acrylic wall posed it’s own difficulties. The architects had chosen the material over glass for it’s completely clear optical properties, and the comparable ease of manufacturing, as well as safety concerns, but to give the partitions their immaterial quality, they would ideally have to be seamless and structurally independent. The architects engaged a company in Las Vegas specialized in large scale aquariums to bond narrow sheets into 7 meter long section, and bend them into shape. The completed sections were inserted into the space after all other construction work was done. With only minimal remaining clearance between floor and ceiling, they were rolled into position on thin steel tubes, and finally joined together with small metal brackets.

What makes the design so compelling is that non of this logistical and physical weight lifting is visible. It all looks simple and effortless. The prevailing experience is a sense of refinement, not based on precious materials or elaborate details, but rather the very absence of materiality: A space enveloping the body, like a well-cut dress.

La nueva Domesticidad

por Florencia Kratsman

Consultora para projectos especiales, de EurodesignHomes.

Según Terence Riley, el comfort que comunmente asociamos con el hogar y el orden que lo mantiene, son una representacion de el hecho de que durante más de dos siglos las capacidades físicas y psicológicas de la mujer habian sido canalizadas a la casi exclusiva responsabilidad de atender de su hogar y su familia.

El mundo de lo doméstico, era el mundo de la mujer. En el solitario universo de la casa, las actividades diarias y el orden de los objetos, se transformaron en rituales. Bajo el cuidado de la mujer, lo doméstico se transformó de un simple espacio de refugio, a un ambiente dedicado al comfort físico y psicológico que asociamos con el hogar.

Al Final de la segunda guerra mundial se abrieron posibilidades para la mujer de trabajar afuera de el hogar. Según el Departamento de Estadísticas Laborales, desde entonces, el número de mujeres que trabajaban fuera de sus casas a alcanzado el 60% y no muestra señales de disminuir. Sin embargo, el diseño espacial de la vivienda no se ha redefinido en base a este importante cambio.

El significado y función de el hogar cambió en el momento que la mujer sale a trabajar fuera de la casa. Porque si bien el cuidado de el hogar, era lo que representaba a la mujer en sociedad, en el momento en que la mujer se representa a si misma por medio de su trabajo , la casa deja de ser el  único escenario donde representar quien  es. El hogar pasa de ser una representación de la mujer a un espacio de representación familiar. Los espacios formales  se vuelven prescindibles, y el hogar se transforma en un espacio de disfrute y relajación para todos. La casa sigue siendo un ambiente dedicado al comfort físico y psicológico, pero el comfort  ya no esta bajo el cuidado de la mujer, y no se basa en el trabajo doméstico de la misma.

Entonces, ¿En que que se basa la nueva domesticidad?

La búsqueda de comfort a través de objetos que dan placer dan definición al nuevo espacio domestico: quizás no tengamos a nadie que nos dé un masaje al llegar a casa, pero el jacuzzi se encargará de que nuestra espalda se encuentre relajada; quizás no hay nadie con la cena lista cuando regresamos al hogar, pero la cocina último modelo tendrá la cena lista en una fracción de el tiempo de el que le tomaba a nuestras madres y abuelas; quizás no tenemos a alguien esperandonos con quien conversar, pero los medios de comunicación nos harán sentir acompañados.

La nueva domesticidad también se define a traves de nueva relaciones funcionales. Espacialmente,  las zonas de servicicio se funden con las zonas de relajamiento creando un espacio libre de jerarquías donde el servidor esta igualmente comodo que el servido. Por ejemplo, la cocina, ya no es mas un espacio de servicio, sino un espacio integrado, ideal para la preparación de comidas en grupo, que facilita el contacto con los demás miembros familiares o visitas  durante el proceso de cocina.  El baño ya no es un espartano espacio de higiene, con el tamaño justo para acomodar el inodoro, el lavamano y la bañera. Hoy, el baño es un Spa, un espacio donde relajarse al principio o al final de el día laboral. El uso de ceramica, tipicamente blanca ha sido suplantada por superficies con diferentes proposiciones estéticas como la madera, la piedra, el cristal y el acero inoxidable.

La  solución para el establecimiento de una nueva domesticidad está en basar el planeamiento de el hogar en las necesidades domésticas personales y  familiares en vez de en  nociones de domesticidad históricas, pluralistas y caducas. El hecho de que no haya una persona dando servicio domestico las veinticuatro horas no debe sacrificar nuestra noción de lo que es un hogar, sino adaptarlo. Por esta razón, a la hora de comprar o hacerle mejoras al hogar lo mejor es cuestionarse como la casa y su interior pueden proveernos de una sensación de comfort fisico y espiritual, aunque mamá sea la última en llegar a casa por la noche o ya no viva con nosotros.

La autora trabaja y vive en Nueva York . Es  fundadora de Anima LLC, Architecture + Furniture. Ésta columna es parte de una serie de artículos que intentan señalar transformaciones en el concepto tradicional de el hogar a la luz de influencias contemporaneas en diferentes ámbitos. Para mas informacion puede accesar la pagina de Internet www.eurodesignhomes.com ó escribir al correo electronico florencia@anima.cc

Solo En Casa

por Florencia Kratsman

Esta columna es parte de una serie de artículos que intentan señalar transformaciones en el concepto tradicional de el hogar a luz de inluencias contemporaneas en diferentes ámbitos.

La creencia de que el matrimonio y la  paternidad son los estados mas deseables para la mujer y el hombre adultos es tan evidente en nuestra sociedad que nos olvidamos de que la convivencia de el núcleo familiar no es una condición permanente en nuestras vidas.

Tradicionalmente, cuando se compra una propiedad se evalúan las necesidades familiares y no se considera la adaptabilidad de esa vivienda a usos futuros. Alrrededor de un veinte por ciento de los hogares puertorriqueños consisten de una persona viviendo sola y la mitad de las familias en Puerto Rico no tienen hijos menores de dieciocho años. En ciertas partes urbanas de la isla, el cuarenta punto cuatro de las familias son mujeres sin maridos presentes.

Éstas estadisticas parecen indicar dos cosas: En primer lugar, que la composición de el hogar puertorriqueño es mas compleja y variada de la que generalmente apunta el mercado y en segundo lugar,  que la mayoría de las personas viven la mayor parte de sus vidas solas o en pareja ,pero sin hijos en casa.

El diseño lógico para una casa familiar debe tener la flexibilidad de adaptarse  a los cambios temporales  de sus dueños además de reflejar sus deseos y necesidades . La idea no es establecer nuevos modelos de vida, sino  responder a  necesidades específicas creadas por el desarrollo familiar.

La casa sin niños genera variaciones , ya que sin la necesidad  de privacidad acústica y espacial que ellos requieren , la división entre lo que es público y privado y su proporción relativa cambia. La casa continua siendo un derivado de los ritos domésticos,pero las actividades domésticas son otras y con ellas los niveles y tipos de privacidad. El hogar  es vizualizado como una secuencia de movimientos cotidianos y no necesita ser dividido en una secuencia de cuartos .

Una estrategia que puede ser adoptada fácilmente por arquitectos y constructores es hacer una distinción mas rigurosa entre los elementos estructurales y programáticos en el planeamiento y construcción de viviendas, lo que permitiría una transformacion de la casa a través de el tiempo así cambien las circunstancias de el dueño.

Si bien el costo  de una vivienda de éste estilo podría llegar a ser un poco mas alto inicialmente,a lo largo de la vida de el edificio y a la hora de modificar el hogar, las ventajas serían múltiples.

El atractivo de una vivienda de éstas caracteristicas, a la cual podríamos llamar tipo “Loft“, no radica únicamente en los placeres espaciales y visuales que ofrecen la apertura y la flexibilidad. Elegir vivir en un espacio con una estructura programática mutable puede ser visto como el deseo de vivir en una casa que refleja los patrones domésticos de la vida contemporanea ,así los habitantes de la casa sean una persona, una pareja o una familia. En un “Loft “,el espacio se transforma por medio de puertas corredizas, puertas pivote y muebles. De esta manera,lo que define el espacio son cosas que se mueven, haciendo una virtud de la inestabilidad y variedad de los usos familiares.

La idea de una planta de piso flexible no es nueva. Sin embargo, en un momento histórico donde tantos aspectos de la vida cotidiana parecen mas transitorios que permanentes , una vivienda adaptable al cambio es tanto un gesto metafórico como uno funcional. Más todavía, si éstas variantes ayudan a crear una sensacion de permanencia y estabilidad, y evitan el tener que abandonar una casa después de vivida en familia. Después de todo, de eso se trata el hogar.

Somewhere better than this place, CAC Louis & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art by Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid has been a celebrated name in the world of avant-garde architecture since 20 years, not to a small extent due to the exposure she has received in the established art institutions of the United States. Ironically, the following that her visionary work on paper has created might also have obscured the fact that, although an indispensable tool for her spatial and conceptual experimentation, these were only means to an end – architecture. To see her work now completed for the first time in America in the Center of Contemporary Art in Cincinnati comes almost as a shock, a confrontation with a spatial virtuosity that finds little comparison in recent architectural production.

Although the CAC appears from the exterior to be one of Hadid’s most contained and cubic projects, (she herself compares it to the image of Magritte’s floating rock), the difference to its context is radical. Huge interlocking volumes of concrete and glass shear and overlap as if frozen in a tectonic shift, articulating two distinct facades, a layered elevation along 6^th Street and a deep cross section along Walnut Street, all floating above a transparent lobby.

Like a widely traveled visitor from the metropolis in his designer clothes, the building is self-confidently overdressed for the provincial occasion. A radical crease in the urban fabric that intends to unfold “the dormant routes within the neighboring context”, as Hadid puts it.

And there is much to awake. Downtown Cincinnati is the prototype of a provincial American “drive-in” city. An anonymous patchwork of office and hotel towers, parking garages and vacant lots, choked by multi-lane highways, sports arenas and a decaying urban ghetto. Of the 2 million inhabitants of Cincinnati, only 5,000 live in this area of roughly 40 city blocks. Pedestrian traffic has been minimized or exiled into a system of elevated “skywalks” and interior malls, leaving the ground plane a welcome territory for panhandlers and homeless. The CAC itself was no stranger to this agoraphobia. Although it had been a forum for contemporary art for over 60 years, it was until now housed in a second floor commercial space above a Wall Mart store, accessible by escalator.

Time for a change. The choice of architect fell on Zaha Hadid not least because it was assumed that her design would have the maximum urban impact and manage to engage the neighborhood in a dramatically different way. She consequently declared the “Urban Carpet” as the mediator between museum and city. The streetscape now enters the building through a fully glazed and publicly accessible lobby and continues in a smooth transition as a backdrop of the vertical circulation.

This “Vertical Street” is clearly more than its earthbound counterpart could claim to have inspired. If the visitor chooses to ignore the comfort of the elevator he is gently pulled into the circulation void by a system of floating ramps, which extend in shifting locations throughout the upper floors. Sometimes sliding by, sometimes crossing the exhibition spaces, these black bars become the visual stitching of the spatial sequence, their stark contrast against the sky-lit atrium walls making them both background for the art and sculptures in themselves. Each turn of direction along the path of travel reveals partial views of the exterior and anchors the movement back into the city.

The galleries vary in size, proportion and shape from several story high halls to dead-end corridor appendices. Hadid describes this as a result of the open-endedness of the program (the CAC has no permanent collection) and the diversity of spatial requirements of Contemporary Art in general. The aim was to create the largest possible variety of extra-ordinary spaces instead of the flexible open plan the client had originally suggested. Although still roughly organized by levels, the exhibition spaces are clustered within and across floor levels, lending them an intentionally labyrinthine quality. The overlaps and fissures between the volumes allow for partial glimpses back and forth in the route, thus creating a sense of anticipation and suspense but also of spatial continuity.

The gallery interiors are more hermetic than the exterior massing suggests, with the most prominent exposures reserved for the staff offices and the boardroom. This visual silence is clearly beneficial for the displayed artwork and a visit to the “Un-museum” shows how disruptive too much panoramic view can be, especially in this less than inspiring top floor exhibition space. Leave that to Marcel Breuer.

As in all of Hadid’s work, the animated spatial event is the generating force or even the “raison d’etre” of the building and much has been written about her cinematic approach to design. No doubt, the building displays a masterly control of space and time but it is the surprisingly subtle interaction with the exhibited artwork and the openness toward the visitors’ appropriation that helps to “eliminate the barrier between art and real life outside”, as a CAC’s was hoping.

The first exhibition in the new building is adequately titled “Somewhere better than this place”, and might as well be the motto of the museum itself. Like her drawings that start in the dark space of the black canvas and solidify into spatial ciphers, Hadid’s Contemporary Arts Center is a becoming of space, a realization of what can be.

It seems that the cowboys like their new designer boots. The architect’s next commission is the extension of Frank Lloyd Wrights Price Tower Arts Center in Oklahoma, and the first models and drawings of the building indicate that she is doing just fine in this sublime company.

The Power of Green, Bank of America New York Headquarters by Cook + Fox

The American glass skyscraper, once the symbol of unlimited resources and power, has now become a competitive field for ecologically responsible construction, and the race for the “tallest” building has been joined by the claim for the “greenest”.

One Bryant Park, the latest of a series of high-efficiency office towers designed by the architecture firm Cook + Fox (formerly Fox & Fowle) stands to be a leading competitor on both fronts.

At 1,200 Feet is not only the second tallest structure in New York, and at $1.3 Billion one of the most expensive, but also the first office building in the US to seek Platinum LEED certification for it’s outstanding ecological performance.

The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system was established in 1998 by the U.S. Green Building Council to provide nationally accepted guidelines and a benchmark for the design, construction operation of “green” buildings. Rating is based on a 69 point scale for different construction types, with categories raging from site selection, public transportation, water and energy consumption, light and indoor air quality, to recyclable material use.

To attain “Platinum” certification, Cook + Fox and the associated consultants had to dig deep into the trick box of sustainable design. There were the obvious choices, such as recyclable and renewable low-toxin building materials, automatic daylight control and adaptable lighting, or hi-efficiency insulation glass, but also a whole array of pioneering energy saving features.

An on-site 4.6-megawatt natural gas power plant will supply the building with 70% of its energy, reducing transmission losses and buffering energy consumption during peak loads.

Thermal Energy Storage in the cellar produces and stores ice in large steel cylinders during the evening hours, when demand is low and electricity cheaper, and uses the cooling effect of phase transition from ice to water for peak air conditioning demand during daytime.

All intake air, as well as exhaust air, is fully filtered from pollutants and particles. The building thus not only produces clean and healthy air for its inhabitants, it also functions as a gigantic air filter for the city. C02 detectors monitor the air quality throughout the building and automatically adjust the amount of fresh air supplied.

The building features waterless urinals, and a “gray-water” system collects all rainwater run-off and wastewater for re-use as toilet flush water, resulting in an overall reduction of freshwater use by about 40% or 10.3 million gallons per year, the equivalent of 125 households.

These extensive ecological measures come at a considerable price, estimated to be about 5% of construction, and reduced energy usage alone would not offset the additional expense. But energy amounts to only 10% of the costs of business operations, whereas employee payroll accounts for 60-70%.

The real savings, according to Douglas Durst, co-owner of the building, are therefore in productivity gains due to a healthier and more pleasant work environment. At a staff of 5,000 employees, a 1% reduction in the amount of illness-related absenteeism would result in a yearly savings of $10 million per year, compared to $3 million for reduced energy use. “We believe you can get 10% to 15% productivity gains. That’s the biggest allure of a green building,” says Durst in a recent Business Week interview.

In addition, “green” buildings occupancy rate and rents are higher, building value increases above average, and companies understand an ecological work environment as a marketable asset.

In other words, “green” construction no longer needs to justify itself with lofty environmental claims, it can trade in the “green”[the US dollar] that shareholders tend to better understand.

Read article in “de Architect“

MoMA, Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling

After having been dormant as a topic for almost 30 years, prefabrication has in recent years once again become the focus of architects, the media and design-conscious consumers alike. Consequently the MoMA felt compelled to take stock of the current discourse in the context of newly developed technologies, and changed social as well as ecological awareness.

In it’s current exhibition, “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling”, the museum outlines the history of prefabrication from the mid 19^th Century until today, and presents a selection of exemplary contemporary prefabricated dwelling units, including 5 commissioned full-scale houses, erected on an unused adjacent lot.

The show features renowned designs by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller, Gropius, Prouvé, Eames and others, as well as more recent examples, ranging from Kisho Kurokawa and Richard Rogers to Greg Lynn and Reiser/Unemoto.

What curiously joins most of these projects is that in spite of having become icons of architectural history and the public imagination, like Buckminster Fullers’ Dimaxion houses or Archigram’s Living Pod, they never made it beyond the prototype stage or a low production run. With very few exceptions, they were complete economic failures.

At the same time, “Catalogue Homes” and “Mobile Homes”, which are only briefly mentioned in the exhibition, have been produced in huge numbers over the last 60 years, largely ignored or derided by the architectural community.

Consequently architects have shifted their attention from developing affordable shelter or entry-level housing to more lucrative commissions or conceptual speculation, like “the dwelling of the future”, and explorations of new manufacturing and assembly techniques.

The old paradigms of industrial production are today being questioned due to advances in digital design and tooling, and the necessity to fabricate large numbers of identical units to create Economies of Scale has become a less important factor.

Prefabrication has thus become a method to increase control, precision and speed of construction, without having to sacrifice variation and customization. “Prefab is not about saving money; It is about controlling risk”, as Jeremy Edmiston, designer of the BURST*008 house proclaims.

Today’s affluent consumer no longer buys prefab because he cannot afford “real” architecture, but because he prefers the ease and predictability of design, purchase and installation.

The majority of the displayed dwelling units, like the “Micro Compact House” of Horden Cherry Lee Architects, are therefore intended as thought-provoking architectural statements, rather than answers to an immediate need, and it would be unfair to evaluate them in light of their humanitarian relevance. Still, considering that according to the UN Refugee Agency an estimated 20 million people worldwide are in need for immediate shelter, one wonders if the idea of architects’ responsibility to design affordable minimum housing has truly become obsolete as an agenda.

The “Digitally Fabricated Housing for New Orleans” Project, developed by MIT students in conjunction with Professor Sass, addresses both the practical and emotional needs of the “instant home” dweller, by maintaining familiar vernacular elements of local architecture in a laser-cut modular building system.

Technically forward-looking, this project also stands out because it recognizes that the most important reason for the failure of modernist prefabricated houses might have been that they simply did not resonate with people’s image of “home”.

Directly reacting to the reality of housing need is also the “Maquiladora” project of Estudio Teddy Cruz. The proposal suggests a simple space frame, manufactured from prefabricated elements built by a local palette-making factory in Tijuana/ Mexico, arranged as inhabitable urban infrastructure, and to be filled in with salvaged materials from dismantled buildings in nearby San Diego.

Cruz’s project is, quite literally, worlds apart from the “Cellophane House” by Kieran Timberlake Associates, which explores the open frame concept from an ecological high-tech perspective.

What both of these concepts, and to some extent all projects in the exhibition have in common is an explicit change of the role of the architect in their emergence.

This is partly a result of the shift from direct to indirect client relationship caused by the reversed sequence of design and sale in pre-fabrication, but the move from “top-down” to a more open-ended design approach is also consciously adopted as a design philosophy.

If architects are to embrace the logic of pre-manufacturing, they might have to question some core beliefs of their profession, such as the generative importance of context, the one-on-one relation to the client, as to some extent, the importance of their own ego.

Judging by the enthusiastic public response to the exhibition, the Prefabricated Home might have finally found a buyer.

InterActiveCorp HQ New York, by Frank O. Gehry

Frank O. Gehry’s has had a long and rocky relationship with New York, leaving him after almost 20 years of much discussed but unrealized projects with not much to show for than the Condé Nast Cafeteria and an Issey Miake store interior.

But the tables have finally turned. The architect is currently planning some of his largest projects to-date in the city, including the gigantic Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, a 750 feet residential tower in the Financial District, and a cultural center at Ground Zero.

Gehry’s first completed structure is the new headquarter of Inter Active Corp on the Westside Highway, housing a conglomerate of 60 separate internet-related companies, headed by the CEO and former movie and TV executive Barry Diller.

At completion, the building still had the privilege of being a newcomer at the far edge of West Chelsea, the once bleak and industrial rear-end of the city. It is a context that tends to suit Gehry’s buildings well, as he can play out both difference and affinity between his playful forms and the urban frame.

There has been a recent flurry of now buildings planned or under construction in immediate adjacency, from Jean Nouvel to Shigeru Ban and Robert Stern, and it remains to be seen how well Gehry’s building will relate to these decidedly more egocentric neighbors.

Different from most other “signature buildings” in the area, the volume of IAC is limited to 10 floors, with a set-back on the 6^th floor, due to Zoning restrictions. The building is thus at first sight surprisingly unimposing, it’s convex and concave volumes slowly emerging in passing by.

The choice of glass as a uniform cladding material lends the building a solid, sculptural appearance from every angle, more iceberg than “billowing sails” (the often-mentioned metaphor inspired by Barry Diller’s passion for sailing), but also created particular aesthetic and geometric challenges for the design.

Diller had rejected the idea of mirrored glass, although it would have been a logical choice given it’s unifying, abstract quality, and Gehry’s tendency to seek the poetic qualities of materials that are considered “cheap” or “tacky”.

The glass now used is imprinted with a fine white ceramic dot pattern, creating a distinct horizontal banding across the facade. This resolves the conflict of shading and visibility, but it also creates a slightly uneasy relationship between rigid horizontal striation and organic building volumes.

Gehry had initially explored surface triangulation to generate warped geometries with flat surfaces, but this approach was later replaced with a technique called “cold forming”, essentially the forcing of one point of each window frame out of plane, to create a warp in the individual panel itself.

As is to be expected in a Frank Gehry design, the play and control of geometries and volumes in the urban context is truly masterful, only the building’s relation to the ground seems oddly unresolved.

Unlike earlier study models which had the “skirt” of the curtain wall lifted, the façade now bluntly hits the sidewalk, revealing very little of what lies behind. This is especially surprising as the lobby features a 75 foot long video wall, designed by Bruce Mau. Adding to this is a nondescript building entrance on the side street, giving the Ground Level an altogether concealed quality.

The interiors of the building were designed by the New York offices of Studios Architecture. As Todd Degarmo, a principal of the firm explains, the challenge was to integrate 60 disparate companies into a coherent office environment, and to develop a design that would complement Gehry’s free form envelope. The mix of open and closed spaces, and the casual flow of furniture systems, colors and materials make for a pleasant and organic workspace, leaving much of the treasured views of the exterior unobstructed.

Gehry’s building is daring for New York standards, but within his own oeuvre surprisingly disciplined. No collisions or conflicts between materials, no “bricolage” details, rather what one would consider well executed corporate architecture. It seems that between reason and transgression a balance was struck that leaves the client happy and the public pleased, but neither one particularly challenged.

Future Re-visited, Notes about Karim Rashid

I want to change the world. Nothing less is the often quoted motto of designer multi-talent Karim Rashid. And this is not just clever hyperbole; he seems determined to use his inexhaustible energy to reshape every possible aspect of our everyday life.

Rashid has become a household name through his affordable and wildly successful mass market products like the Garbo trashcan and the Oh stacking chair, but he has designed more than 800 things since he opened his office in New York in 1993, ranging from disposable packaging, perfume bottles and ashtrays, to wallpaper, manhole covers, print dresses and art installations, to name a few. He has also released his own music CD’s, teaches at various universities and has recently received several commissions to design interiors and entire buildings.

Across this diversity of tasks he has maintained a coherent message that is driven by an almost religious belief in newness and technology and a desire to infuse pleasure into the objects that surround us.

Rashid is a radical modernist. He despises historic references (or history altogether), finds nature dull, fiction and poetry irrelevant, insists that everything around us genuinely reflect the time we live in and advertises himself and his own lifestyle as proof.

In his design monograph he explains: “Our physical world can captivate the energy and phenomena of this contemporary universal softness of the digital age, the birth of new industrial processes, new materials, and new design tools. Global markets are new organic systems. I feel new culture demands new forms, new spaces, new ways of living, material and style.”

The objects he creates for this new world are intended to transcend the notion of natural and artificial, global and local, they can exist and be appropriated anywhere and in any context. Biomorphic but thoroughly unnatural, they are shaped by the language of computer software and executed in synthetic materials. These “Blobjects”, as he refers to them, can become furniture, architecture or artwork, floating signifiers of meaning and content.

Although biomorphic shapes have become a trademark of Rashid’s style he insists that form itself is not the end but a means of his design, the interface to communicate ideas and experiences, what he describes as “Sensual Minimalism”.

The move from design to architecture came for Rashid as a natural extension of this all-encompassing design philosophy. He received his first commission in 1997, when he was asked to design 3 flagship concept stores for Armani. Being both a fashion and technology addict, he developed a line of stores that would not display any clothing but instead feature body scanners and computer monitors, where customers could try on virtual simulations of the collection. Apparently the technology was ready but Armani was not, and the project was eventually abandoned.

Soon other projects followed, first a hotel in Miami, Marimoto restaurant in Philadelphia and Powder nightclub in Manhattan and by today the office has no less than 2 nightclubs, 6 restaurants, 4 hotel interiors and 2 full-scale buildings completed or in design progress.

Rashid feels that his education and experience in Industrial Design has allowed him to enter architecture “from the inside”, giving him a fresh perspective at established rules and conventions. The empiricist tradition of Industrial Design is in his opinion a healthy antidote to the prevalence of theory in today’s academic discourse and the tendency to view buildings merely as shapes:

“The missing link between architecture and everyday life is that architecture misses the human scale. Because architecture is now looked at on the computer screen, architects tend to design buildings as objects. It is almost as if architecture and Industrial Design have reversed positions and architects now have become product designers.”

But Rashid also insists that architecture adapt to the conditions of industrial manufacturing if it wants to stay technologically and culturally relevant. “Biomorphic architecture”, he explains “has never really happened because there is no technical process to implement it, it cannot be built economically. Industrial Design is very pragmatic, derived from production, and soft form and fluidity are logical and practical”.

Much of this technological paradigm had to remain rather metaphorical in Rashid’s current projects due to budget, program and time constraints but that did not keep him from developing a distinctive signature. He is clearly less interested than other architects of the so-called “Blob Movement” in the conceptual or ontological aspects of form generation but in the specific ephemeral quality of actual space, the “seamless experience” as he calls it.

Ideally this architecture would only be temporary and become part of what he sees as the perfectly cyclical “Disposable Society” of the future: “We live in a world where everything is temporal and disposable, more and more is leased, we do not own it. Maybe architecture could work like that, too. What if architecture, interior design was not permanent, it could be cyclic, it could be there to experience, not to own.”

If his installation in last year’s Cologne Furniture Fair “Concept for Future Living” is any indication of how such a future would look like, we might be in for some wondrous, if not all that unfamiliar dreamscapes. But one thing is certain, the future looks bright for Karim Rashid.

GLASS Bar & Lounge, by Thomas Leeser

Glass is Thomas Leeser’s latest creation in a line of innovative restaurants and bars that have been a central part of his architectural practice. His ambitious designs, some of which are by now extinct, have spread throughout several of New York emerging neighborhoods and distinguished themselves by setting subtle counterpoints to the prevailing surroundings. Glass continues this tradition.

Set just off the sidewalks of Chelsea’s upscale gallery district between rows of garage doors and brick facades, Glass reveals the meaning of its name at first contact, a literally animated glass storefront. Bathed in a bluish hue as if lit from an invisible TV screen, we watch attractive men and women in the process of fixing their hair, restoring their make-up or entering toilet stalls while being strangely oblivious to the fact of being on public display. A second glance confirms: The bathrooms, which we have come to expect as the hidden design highlight of every fashionable venue are here exposed to the street, in full frontal vision.

After such transgression we are glad to find ourselves entering a decidedly futurist but comforting interior. A white and seamlessly rounded shell merges ceilings, walls and floors as well as furniture into a continuous extrusion and creates the now familiar atmosphere of “smooth space”. The details and the furnishing are so decidedly ahead of the times, down to wall-imbedded seats and rows of molded plastic bubble chairs, that we cannot help but feel nostalgic for the times when people still used to dream about the future. How could anyone not be seduced by those aerodynamically integrated acrylic headlights and soft contoured leather benches, while the DJ is playing progressive pop and synthesizer tunes. After all a lounge is a place to make us feel glamorous and at the same time comfortable.

But at some point we can no longer resist and curiously wait in line for the bathrooms and those one-way mirrors we so enjoyed as pedestrian voyeurs. And when it is our turn to evaluate our reflected image while vaguely observing the waiting crowd outside it suddenly strikes us: We have become willing participants of the architecture-spectacle.

This is just where Thomas Leeser wanted us to arrive. He explains that his interest lies not in provoking us with radical form, but in twisting our expectations and habits within the familiar environment. Formal references and Irony are integral parts of this game. His projects ask us to become conscious of the active role of architecture in our everyday experience. Where BOT questioned the atmosphere of Italian restaurants and POD provoked associations of suburban America, Glass explores the nature of leisurely late-night social life.

Leeser is reluctant to be considered a bar and restaurant architect, since his work has in recent years excelled into various scales and programs. He nevertheless admits that this type of commissions has allowed him to explore more radical ideas than what would have been possible within the context of “serious architecture”. Entertainment space provides a playing field where both clients and users can enjoy the unexpected in ways they would resist in most other settings.

Many ideas thus developed have found their way into Leeser’s current discourse and it will be interesting to see how these discoveries will inform his work on the building or even urban scale. One thing is certain, we will be entertained.

Form Follows, Marc Newson at Gagosian

When Larry Gagosian, one of the world’s most powerful gallerists, opened his first furniture exhibition with limited edition designs by Marc Newson last month, it was clear that this would once again stir the debate of “what constitutes art”.

The dividing lines between art, decoration and furniture have long been a topic of discussion, and we are not likely to ever come to a universally accepted conclusion. For the time being, it might suffice to rely on a time-honored measure of distinction: if you are not allowed to touch it, it’s art.

It goes without saying that at Gagosian one is not allowed to touch anything, and therein lays the dilemma. Not only do the furniture pieces on display evidently suggest that they were made to sit, dine or even surf on, they virtually beg you to feel them. More than anything, these massive stone sections, polished metal lattices and delicate resin surfaces have an intense physical presence that clearly sets them apart from average consumer products.

Their language is modern, following the ideal of a seamlessly executed single material product, but their existence is not concerned with the demands of mass production, material efficiency, or even functionality. They are luxury products, collector pieces. All of these objects could have easily and cheaply been produced with other materials, but Newson’s aim was to explore the limits of new technologies, not to create another piece of good industrial design.

Ironically most pieces were decidedly more complex to manufacture than their form suggests. This paradox is most obvious in the Extruded Tables which seem to be derived from a generic extruded T-section, but which were undoubtedly rather challenging to mill from a solid block of marble.

What gives these furniture objects their sublime quality is exactly this absurdity of their making. The sheer wastefulness of their production, the tons of marble dust produced or months of nickel branches grown, provoke questions of value and the nature of beauty, questions that are relevant for both art and design.