The Monocle Minute
On Design

We visit a museum designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates, stop in for a screening at a recently renovated cinema in Berlin and talk Swiss-inspired architecture in the US. First, Nolan Giles on the busy months ahead.

With its grain and growth rings shaped by the environment, few materials tell stories as well as timber. So it’s appropriate that Kengo Kuma & Associates – with the help of Danish timber suppliers Dinesen – used wood as the feature construction material in a new museum dedicated to master storyteller Hans Christian Andersen. HC Andersen’s House is in a lush garden landscape behind the former family home of the 19th-century author in the Danish city of Odense.

Drawing inspiration from Andersen’s fairy tale The Tinderbox, in which a tree hollow functions as a portal to an underground world, the new museum comprises three timber pavilions sitting above a network of subterranean exhibition areas. And while these underground spaces are clad in concrete, almost everything else is constructed from wood. The circular pavilions are made from spruce and feature roofs supported by exposed larch beams; ash benches and floors, by Dinesen, are also found throughout. The result is a materiality that matches the depth of Andersen’s stories and creates inviting spaces that are perfect for luring people into the museum’s underground world.

For more on HC Andersen House, see our tour of Odense in issue 148 of Monocle.
dinesen.com

A trip to the cinema is always more charming when the seats are plush, the foyer is gleaming and the popcorn fresh. Now one of Berlin’s oldest cinemas, Passage Kino, has been sensitively restored by interior design and architecture firm Batek Architekten. The neoclassical building in the borough of Neukölln was built in 1908; it served as a cinema until the end of the 1960s, when it was repurposed as a furniture warehouse. Since Yorck Kinogruppe reopened it as a cinema in 1989, it had remained mostly untouched.

Given the brief of bringing the building’s foyer and two of its smaller auditoriums up to date, Batek was also asked to retain its historical details. Picking up on the motif of its original arched façade windows, the architects repeated the pattern in their design for the new foyer bar. Original brass light fittings and plaster mouldings were carefully restored; new rows of plush, upholstered yellow and red chairs fill the two auditoriums. Prussian-blue fabric on the walls soften the interiors of one auditorium, while long vertical lights subtly illuminate the other. It’s a revamp that will delight design enthusiasts and movie buffs alike and inspire audiences to return for more than just the popcorn.
batekarchitekten.com

What does the Swiss canton of Glarus have in common with a small town in Wisconsin? Both are home to fine Swiss architecture. Established by Swiss immigrants in the 19th century, New Glarus, in the heart of America’s Midwest, is dotted with buildings that wouldn’t appear out of place in central Europe. It’s a phenomenon that Nicole McIntosh and Jonathan Louie (pictured), who run the firm Architecture Office, have explored in a new book, Swissness Applied. Now an assistant professor at Texas A&M University, McIntosh studied at ETH Zürich, which gives her a valuable Swiss-American pedigree. She explains why this phenomenon developed on a recent episode of Monocle on Design.

How did New Glarus end up looking like a Swiss town?
It was founded by people who had immigrated from Glarus in 1845. At first the town looked very American: there was a main street with typical American buildings. But that changed with an economic downturn in the 1960s. After the milk company that employed most of the people closed, they had to find another way to survive. So they decided to make New Glarus – their houses and businesses – look Swiss from the outside to attract tourists. Today the main street of the old town still has American buildings from the 1800s but, on the front of them, there are elements such as balconies and shutters that mimic traditional Swiss building styles.

This started in the 1960s. How has it continued?
In 1999 the town implemented a code called “Swiss architectural theme” in its building laws. It stated that future buildings in the commercial districts have to keep the Swiss approach and have a Swiss appearance. And so any renovation or new building has to look Swiss on the outside. The code is interesting in the sense that it references a lot of images of Swiss chalets from different parts of the country and shows the typical elements, such as shutters and doors. These images inform what is built in the town today.

So buildings in New Glarus are being designed based on reference images?
Yes. There is an extensive history of designing with images and reference photos, especially in the context of preservation. Designers use them to mimic older buildings but often working in a slightly different way, using different materials and so on.

For more from Nicole McIntosh, tune into ‘Monocle on Design’.

The official name of this sofa from 1972 is C275, the model code assigned by Dutch manufacturer Artifort. But it is better known by the moniker given by its designer Pierre Paulin: Blub Blub. Covered in a stretchy jersey fabric that came in bright hues, the seats are detachable, allowing the sofa to be assembled in smaller or larger clusters and for colours to be mixed or matched.

Created as part of a fruitful collaboration that Paulin enjoyed with Artifort in the 1960s and 1970s, the C275 helped the designer cement his status as one of the most influential names in the pop movement. Despite this, his irreverent designs fell out of favour during the more sober-minded decades that followed. But, thanks to a spate of recent museum retrospectives and product reissues, the Frenchman’s work has become highly coveted once again. Today more than a dozen of his pieces are in production by Artifort and this modular sofa would make for a cheerful addition to the offering.

Perth, Western Australia, is the world’s most isolated major city. And its remoteness means that, from time to time, architectural masterpieces slip under the radar. Case in point is the work of designer Iwan Iwanoff. Born in Bulgaria in 1919, Iwanoff studied architecture in Germany before moving to Perth in 1950, where he went on to create some of the city’s most outstanding homes – houses that photographer Jack Lovel, who grew up in one of Iwanoff’s designs, has captured in this new book Catching Light.

“What’s really unique about Iwanoff’s work is that being in Perth, the most remote city on the planet, he had free reign to practise how he liked,” says Lovel. “He was given expansive landscapes to build on, in a very harsh climate and remote environment – and that enabled him to create these unique homes.” Indeed, they are homes that pushed boundaries: Iwanoff was known for creating ornamental exterior and interior walls, arranging concrete blocks to play with texture and light. Lovel thinks that today’s architects could learn from such an approach. And it’s why he’s hoping they’ll pick up the book, which has been released in a limited run of 400 copies.
jacklovel.com

After a two-year break between releases, Vanmoof has added two new bikes – the S5 and A5 – to its offering. And both are perfect for city life. For the S5, the Dutch e-bike maker has revisited its trademark tubular frame, with smaller wheels and chunkier tyres providing control and balance in urban settings. In contrast, the A5 involved the re-engineering of Vanmoof’s typical form: the aluminium bike has a step-in frame that’s perfect for riders of all experiences, allowing first-time cyclists to hop on and off with ease.

Both models are available in cloud grey and have black matte handlebars with embedded lights that convey real-time information on battery levels and speed. Safety is assured by wide-beam front and rear lights, keyless locking and unlocking systems and anti-theft technology that includes GPS tracking. Cargo can be carried too, courtesy of generous front and rear baskets. Running late? Just hit the Turbo Boost button.
vanmoof.com