Frame

The Great Indoors

The International Magazine of Interior Architecture and Design

Quarterly | No. 57 | January/February 2010

WhiteThe

Issue

White Power Two trend-forecasters take time to look at, listen to and experience white.

Try Again. Fail Again. Fail BetterScandinavian artists Elmgreen & Dragset ponder the success of failure in Berlin.

Shampoo and ShadowsIsolation Unit creates a lot by doing little at this Tokyo hair salon.

ShadowlandsMartin Margiela presents a dance of light and shadow in Milan.

Lap of LuxuryBurdifilek goes black and white in Holt Renfrew’s Toronto store.

Do the BambiA cute ’n’ clumsy Disney character inspires Jun Aoki in Osaka.

The Inner CircleNike and Torafu celebrate Air Force 1 at a circular shrine in Tokyo.

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Party’s OverA truly grand buffet is served in Amsterdam by Hans Op de Beeck.

Mind Over MotorA George Yu retreat houses Honda’s dream team in Pasadena.

Great ExpectationsShigeru Ban’s wood-plastic pavilion is an antidote for Artek’s Milan hangovers.

Making WavesClive Wilkinson brings ’60s beach culture to an LA property developer.

Dinner for 500J. Mayer H. bases his Karlsruhe refectory on a Nutella sandwich.

Going UndergroundIn Milan, Fabio Novembre puts jeans label Meltin’ Pot where it belongs.

Point BlankGijs Bakker aims, shoots and leaves a café interior in Middlesbrough.

Party With the PresidentStuttgart’s Theodor Heuss Straße 12 is Ippolito Fleitz’s ode to party central.

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JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2010


The White IndoorsC

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Why creatives clear out the clutter and cover everything with a coat of white.

Frame | No. 57 | 5

Details Franklin Azzi, Shop, Paris

Geneto Studio, Showroom, Osaka

Cassandra Complex, Bar, Melbourne

HMC Interactive and Newangle,

Installation, Birmingham

Studio Pha, Shop, Prague

Matter, Exhibition, New York

Gordon Kipping, Shop, New York

Keiichiro Sako, Shop, Hangzhou

Stephan Jaklitsch, Shop Window, London

Andreas Angelidakis, Shop, Milan

Designrichtung, Showroom, Bern

Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Dance Studio, New York

Mario del Mare, Clinic, Kanagawa

Maurice Mentjens, Parking Garage, Roermond

Visionworks, Trade-Fair Stand, Las Vegas

3Gatti.com, Office, Shanghai

Antonio Bertone, Shop, Tokyo

Bellprat Associates, Trade-Fair Stand, Geneva

Philippe Starck, Ceiling, Beijing

Bleed, Showroom, New York

Fox Lin, Installation, Los Angeles

Carbondale, Shop, Nagoya

Diezinger & Kramer, School, Eching

Jehs + Laub, Hotel Room, Jukkasjärvi

Nendo, Fitness Club, Tokyo

News Frame launches The Great Indoors Award.

Furniture[Portrait] Bertjan Pot.

[Market] Salone del Mobile Milan.

[Introducing] Vujj.

[Process] Translucent stool by Kazuyasu Kochi.

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FinishesFabrics.Phase 01 fabric by Elvira

Softic & Gabi Schillig.

ExhibitionsLisa Jones in Sydney.

Antoni Arola in Barcelona.

Frame PromotionOutdoor furniture by Extremis.

Danish firms Randi, Magnus Olesen,

Penlau, Erik Jørgensen.

Kitchens and tiles by Eiffelgres, Miele,

Ariostea, Canakkale Seramik Kalebodur, Iris

Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti, Steuler Fliesen,

MK Kitchen.

Materials[1 Artist, 1 Material] Peter Callesen.

White and transparent materials.

Displays Adidas shop in Paris.

Lighting Adaptable lighting.

Fixtures and Fittings [Talk] White Collection by Gavin Harris.

BooksFour Dutch monographs and more.

NextOpposites collide in Frame 58 when gin

meets tonic and shopping meets surrealism

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Making Waves

Ocean metaphors abound in the office fit-out that Clive Wilkinson designed for property developers Maguire Partners in Los Angeles.

Frame | No. 57 | 126 JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2010

Michael WebbPhotos Benny Chan

Entrance to the blue conference room. Clive Wilkinson enclosed

the room with shard-like white planes and glazing to conjure up

an image of breaking surf – appropriate, given the location of the

office, just one block from Santa Monica Beach.

Frame | No. 57 | 127JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2010

Making Waves


Everyone grew up at the beach,’ says property developer Robert Maguire, recalling the surfing culture that flourished in LA in the

1960s and the songs of the Beach Boys that once conveyed Southern California to the world. The exuberant spirit of that vanished era is revived in the executive offices that Clive Wilkinson Architects designed for Maguire Partners in Santa Moznica. The ocean beckons from beyond an iconic row of palm trees, and the beach is re-created as an interior landscape of pebbles and waves. Shards of blue and green glass provide an abstraction of light glinting off water, and the whole expanse of the open office seems to roll with the surf. Things are in a state of becoming. It’s an appropriate image for a company that takes billion-dollar gambles on prestigious developments and new communities, such as Playa Vista, all over America. Maguire Partners has a handsome base in downtown LA, where the firm is a leading force in urban renewal, but the powerful lure of the ocean recently led to the opening of a second office, which

‘Interior of the green executive conference room located at

one end of the oblong office. Shard-like slanting walls and

panels of green glazing enclose the space.

Frame | No. 57 | 128

‘We took the ocean metaphor and played with it. Colours, textures, materials and shapes all connect to the beach’ Clive Wilkinson

JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2010 Frame | No. 57 | 129

The Plane Game: low between workstations,

angled around conference rooms, large overhead.


Enlivening one end of the office are an open pantry

(right) and adjoining dining tables (left).


symbolizes the oufit’s involvement with beachfront projects in Orange County and San Diego. The pleasure principle was also a factor, as it was for the artists who settled in the vneighbouring district of Venice when it was still a slum by the sea with nothing to offer besides low rents, the beach and fresh breezes. Now, Venice is being gentrified, and Santa Monica has already become one of Southern California’s more desirable and expensive places in which to live and work. Maguire shares its glass tower with the prestigious Rand Corporation, which recently commissioned a new headquarters on the adjoining site. Yet the laid-back vibe of the old beach community is still there, and Wilkinson cleverly exploited this mellow atmosphere. It’s a big leap from the vibrant colours, jazzy patterns and pop artefacts of Chiat Day and FIDM (see Frame 31, page 114). ‘We were breaking out in a new direction, because these clients are very different from the advertising guerrillas and fashion students we’ve worked with before,’ says Clive Wilkinson, adding that the new direction was ‘also because the programme was so simple, and I yearned to turn it into something special without getting overly decorative. We didn’t want to have a conventional grid of high partitions, so we took the ocean metaphor and played with it. Colours, textures, materials and shapes all connect

to the beach.’The downstairs lobby is generic, offering no hint of what is to come and thus enhancing the surprise of emerging from the elevator into a gleaming white penthouse that is suffused with light. The floor is covered with tiny pebbles set in epoxy resin that is xtruded up to support counters topped with fibreglass or Corian. The exposed ceiling and its beams and ducts are wrapped in reinforced paper like a work of art by Christo - an agreeable change from the customary matte-black surface – and are partly concealed by a soffit that is cut away in long curved sweeps and pierced by deep-set lighting slots.

Nothing blocks the view across the floor and out through the exterior glazing. Glass-walled perimeter offices (‘something we learned to do when Google insisted on enclosing its executive suites’) are separated by the same curved dividers that separate the open workstations: partitions made from white-lacquered drywall wrapped around metal armatures. Some of these waveform screens have rounded edges in an ironic nod to the local fetish for ‘Mediterranean style’ interiors, others are sharp-edged, and all provide a modicum of privacy without compromising the sense of openness. Everyone can be seen, but there’s no feeling of being in a goldfish bowl.

‘The soft tones and repetitive shape respond to the panorama of buildings and beach that can be viewed from every point’


Floating ceiling planes connect the conference rooms and

the workstations in between. The ceiling integrates lighting,

conceals mechanical systems and allows the overall building

envelope to be exposed beyond.


The Gwathmey Siegel-designed galleries at New York’s International Center of Photography are punctuated with narrow passageways, decon angles and idiosyncratic slits. In conjuring up an exhibition design for the show Ecotopia, the Brooklyn design practice Matter took advantage of these quirks by inserting appropriately organic forms in, through and around the architecture. Dubbed ‘pods’, Matter’s creations would house video monitors and cordon off projection rooms throughout the 697-m2 museum. That much was certain.

Black Blobs: With polyethylene foam tubing commonly

used to insulate piping, design office Matter makes a subtle

reference to issues raised by the Ecotopia exhibition.

the cuffs into flexible, standard-issue pieces of chicken wire and animal netting, which Matter then assembled onto standing wood and metal armatures. To fabricate screens, the miniaturized tubes were connected using commercial tagging guns. Wheeler waxes rhapsodic about Tubolit, saying that it met the requirements for affordability, sound absorption and ease of construction. Better yet, its environmental paradoxes – non-biodegradable but recyclable, petroleum-based but energy-conserving – resonated with the exhibition’s images of the natural world and climate change, which were equal parts damning, hopeful and pessimistic.

‘But we had no idea what it would be made of,’ admits Sandra Wheeler, a principal in the firm. Wheeler and partner Alfred Zollinger had been presenting preliminary models made of polypropylene-foam acoustic insulation, a graphite-coloured material in which hollow cells are packed into irregular rows. Ultimately, they replicated the material with Tubolit, polyethylene foam tubing used to wrap plumbing and heating pipes.

The architects ordered over 8000 linear metres of black insulation tubing and sawed it into thousands of cuffs. The museum’s crew laced

David SokolSoftCellMatter, Exhibition, New York

Details

Photos Harry Zernike


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MaterialsMatério’s latest selection of products features

white and transparent materials for covering all

Artema

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PixelComposed of expanded polypropylene beads, this recyclable, lightweight, sound- and energy-absorbent foam can be moulded into virtually any shape imaginable. A product made from ARPRO always returns to its original shape. Exposure to water – as well as to most oils and chemicals – does nothing to alter the functionality of the material. Densities vary. The foam can be adapted to ensure UV protection, to withstand physical abuse, and to tolerate extreme temperatures and other environmental conditions.

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Textile designer Emma Jeffs introduces Pixel, a series of decorative, self-adhesive, plastic films for covering windows. Pixel offers privacy without reducing the amount of light that enters the interior. Available in six designs, the product has no top, bottom, left or right: it can be applied as desired. White patterns are printed on frosted film.

Dimensions (one roll): 100 x 120 cm.

Surface Material Design UK

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Extra-durable Artema is a new type of weather-resistant concrete suitable for outdoor use. Especially applicable for projects with convex surfaces, such as curved façades. Available in six finishes, including textured patterns, and 16 colours.

Maximum dimensions (h x w x d): 240 x 100 x 1.6 cm. Weight per m2: 38 kg.

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