The Agenda: Design & Urbanism

With the advent of concrete-dominated modernism and standardised home building, bricks – once the staple of house construction – gave way to prefabricated elements in the late 20th century, largely because they were cheaper and faster to work with. But Helsinki-based studio Avarrus Architects is helping bricks to make a comeback. “Buildings made using bricks are more durable and easier to repair,” says Atte Aaltonen, one of the designers behind Helsingin Muurarimestari (Helsinki Bricklayer), the studio’s new showcase of brick-based construction. “Solid brick works as a passive heat-storage and cooling structure, making it energy efficient.”

The building’s distinct bricks were manufactured by 60-year-old Finnish family-run atelier Tiileri. Every one of the 300,000 bricks was laid by hand. “Many of the houses made since the 1960s using precast insulated elements have been torn down due to moisture damage and extensive repair costs, whereas brick houses built more than a century ago still stand,” says Aaltonen. Using bricks is also a stylistic statement and lends buildings a more bespoke look that, in this case, has become an architectural landmark.
avarrus.fi

Australian lifestyle brand Country Road has always made a statement: you’ll spot its logotype on T-shirts and tote bags across the country. Now it can be found on a lounger and tables produced in collaboration with Melbourne-based outdoor furniture brand Tait. “Having grown up with Country Road, we view it as a truly iconic Australian brand,” says Susan Tait, co-founder of Tait. “But we have spent more than 30 years developing our outdoor furniture collections and we too have a unique Australian style.”

The resulting partnership has produced an outdoor collection that, much like the Australian landscape, is both beautiful and incredibly robust. Manufactured in Melbourne, the powder-coated white-steel frames of the Saltbush collection, named after a tough Australian native plant, are complemented by travertine porcelain tabletops and a 100 per cent recycled bouclé outdoor fabric for the lounger, with a soft, textured finish. It’s a perch that, despite its hardiness, you might never want to get up from.
madebytait.com.au

It’s a Tuesday night and I’m surrounded by cinemagoers who have turned out to see The Brutalist at the Barbican Centre, London’s most celebrated brutalist building. “This is great for architecture,” I think, as I tuck into my popcorn.

As an art form, architecture has a bit of a reputation problem. Its lengthy academic pathways can make studying it off-putting for many. In everyday life, people’s views on buildings are only sought when councils want feedback on development plans. We’re also accustomed to accepting mediocre, poorly designed environments, from badly lit supermarkets to dingy train stations.

To change this, the discipline needs to find ways to communicate why it is important – and why people should care. And that’s what The Brutalist does. By the time this column is on newsstands, director Brady Corbet’s feature will have likely picked up at least one of the 10 Academy Awards for which it has been nominated.

Other films have touched on architecture before: think Nora Ephron’s 1993 romcom Sleepless in Seattle, about a widower architect finding love, or Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning 2020 thriller set in a strikingly austere residence. The difference here is that Corbet uses both architect and architecture as his film’s protagonists. It tells the story of László Tóth, a Hungarian refugee loosely based on Marcel Breuer and Erno Goldfinger, who travels to the US after the Second World War and introduces brutalism to North America. When Tóth’s concrete walls frame a crisp, blue sky, the audience gasps; there’s a collective intake of breath when a modernist library is revealed in a renovation scene.

After the screening, I hear people walking out of the film discussing the trauma that Tóth experiences but also how the on-screen architecture affected them. I pass a couple talking about commissioning their own light-filled library. The Brutalist is a great PR campaign for architecture. It encourages us to demand more from our environments and reminds us to take delight in great buildings – not just at the cinema. — L

For decades, Piazza Matteotti was just another stretch of terrace, hemmed in by traffic at the entrance to the small town of Castiglion Fiorentino in eastern Tuscany. But with its rolling views of the surrounding countryside, there was ample opportunity to transform the square into a focal point for the community. “The piazza has always been a meeting point for locals of all ages,” says Ilaria Sangaletti of Pool Landscape, the design studio behind the piazza’s recent revitalisation.

The Italian landscape architect’s work, in collaboration with architect Caterina Gerolimetto and agronomist Elisa Frappi, shows how simple interventions can transform a community’s relationship with a pocket of public land with plenty of unrealised potential. Their work filled the plaza with lush vegetation and small, paved squares ideal for hosting outdoor events and pop-up kiosks. This is complemented by new paths to the town and benches offering places to rest. “Our design focused on emphasising its existing social role in the townscape,” says Sangaletti.

But even while emphasising community, the landscape architects kept an eye on the piazza’s vantage point. Seats positioned as lookout points are kept cool in the summer by a shady canopy border of holm oaks. “Light, foliage and wind are our building materials,” says Sangaletti. “We used them to create a place to pause in solitude – somewhere people could contemplate the surrounding landscape from above.”

Despite its 126-year history, Brianza-based furniture maker Giorgetti is anything but complacent. The Italian firm is continuing its transformation from a more classical design brand to one rooted in the contemporary. We asked its ceo, Giovanni del Vecchio, about this transformation.

Giorgetti has talked about a contemporary evolution. What does that mean?
Evolution – and not revolution – has been one of the pillars of our strategy since the company was acquired [by Italian private equity fund Progressio] in 2015. Back then it was probably thought to have a higher attention from the Asian markets than the European or American ones. This is the reason why we have tried to let the company evolve into more contemporary design but it’s also part of our tradition. Even in the early 1980s, Giorgetti launched the Matrix collection: an incredible, out-of-context range made up of colourful pieces and innovative shapes. This need for continuous evolution has always been part of our make-up.

How do you continue to build on this legacy?
One of the directions that we have been taking is to keep collaborating with some of the designers who have been working with us for many, many years. When we start a collaboration, our objective is for it to be long-term because when you learn how to design a Giorgetti piece, we want you to keep doing it.

How do you ensure that Giorgetti doesn’t only look to the past?
We have two other directions. One of these is to collaborate with young designers. This is a commitment that the company must make – giving opportunities to young designers to approach established brands and use the research and development competencies that we have in order to grow their expertise and their design proposals. And the other direction we have is to work with architects who are not really into product design but are helping us to identify how product can become a tool to develop architectural solutions.
giorgettimeda.com