The Monocle Minute
On Design

This week we look at how Portuguese design studio Summary is transforming the world of prefabrication, admire a swan-shaped boat on Japan’s Lake Yamanaka and take a tour of the Elizabeth line Liverpool Street station with the man behind its design, Oliver Tyler, director at Wilkinson Eyre. But first, here’s Nolan Giles on the joys of plugging out...

Thanks to its Gomos System (read: housing module), Portuguese design studio Summary is a world leader in prefabrication – it even won a Monocle Design Award for Best in Construction earlier this year.

Made from modified versions of a standard concrete sewer pipe (fitted with insulation, windows and electrics, prior to being installed on site), the units can be quickly erected in almost any location, making them perfect for communities facing housing shortages. More importantly, though, the end results are outstanding architectural interventions. Summary always plays a hand in Gomos installation, carefully considering volume, proportion and light in its placement of modules.

The recently finished “woodland cabins” in Alvarenga, Portugal, are a perfect proof of concept. Working in a remote environment, the architects at Summary were able to carefully place 11 Gomos structures on location without disturbing the site’s terrain. It meant that existing bushes were preserved, offering residents and visitors undisturbed views of the surrounding forest.
summary.pt

Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis’s first exhibition with the Vitra Design Museum in Germany is one that’s all about hues, tints and tones. For Colour Rush!, which is on show at the Herzog & de Meuron-designed building until May 2023, Marcelis worked alongside curators Susanne Graner and Nina Steinmüller to categorise the museum’s permanent collection of more than 400 pieces of furniture by colour.

The exhibition space’s sets of shelves have been reorganised into different colour groups with pieces dating from the 1800s to today. Several podiums have been added to the hall, where transparent works and colour studies by designers such as Le Corbusier, Hella Jongerius and Verner Panton are on display.

Visitors are offered a new perspective on design, with Marcelis showing the power of colour to unite works from different eras and designers. “I love to make singular bold gestures with my work,” says Marcelis. “And the same applies to this installation.”
design-museum.de

For architect Oliver Tyler, director at Wilkinson Eyre, the Elizabeth line Liverpool Street station has been a labour of love. The project, which he has worked on for nearly 20 years, will be one of the most important stations on a route running across the British capital, connecting the Square Mile in the city’s east to Heathrow airport in the west, with a journey time of little more than 30 minutes. “I started working on it when I was a very young man,” he tells the Monocle On Design team on a tour of the soon-to-open station. Here he discusses the importance of intuitive travel, keeping people moving and the new Liverpool Street’s sculptural qualities.

Liverpool Street station is one of London’s busiest Tube stops so easing the flow of people through it must have been a challenge. How did you address this with your design?
Stations have to be very efficient in moving people. You don’t want them blocking the platform so you have to get them flowing through. One of the crucial things here is that everything is designed to aid this flow: the walls curve and the corners are gentle to make people feel comfortable and safe, and also so that they can see where they’re going. Having a nice experience when you’re walking through the station is important because it’s a key part of any journey.

As people step off the platform and move towards the east entrance, they come up to street level on a long escalator in a grand space. Tell us about this environment and how you wanted people to feel in it.
The idea is that, as you step off the platform and head towards the street, you enter a space that is similar in scale to the nave of a cathedral. We used a folded concrete form here; it’s a unifying architectural element that runs through this space and into the ticket halls.

Once they are out of this grand nave, they reach street level at the eastern end of the station. What consideration went into the design of this entrance?
It has a glazed canopy to allow daylight into the underground ticket hall. To come from that subterranean area and step out into a bright space is amazing. The light comes in through stainless steel fins that fan out and filter it. It’s quite sculptural and echoes the ceilings elsewhere in the station. At night, when you’re on the street, you also see the light from inside illuminating the entrance. The idea is that people can see it and feel confident about where they’re going. There is no confusion about where they’re heading.

For more from Oliver Tyler tune into ‘Monocle On Design’ on Monocle 24.

Lake Yamanaka, the largest body of water in Japan’s Fuji Five Lakes region, is famous for its swan population – both natural and man-made. On its glassy surface bobs Swan Lake, a one-of-a-kind pleasure boat shaped like the bird that takes daytrippers on 30-minute cruises that feature views of Mount Fuji and the chance to feed swans.

Designed by Eiji Mitooka, it features two floors of indoor seating below deck and an open-air observation spot at its nape. It’s worth noting that Mitooka, a respected designer of vehicles in Japan, hasn’t stopped at Swan Lake: he has also designed an amphibious bus that can move from water to solid ground and is also in use on Lake Yamanaka.

All of this makes the Monocle team sitting by Lake Zürich a little envious. Of course, not every body of water can (or should) boast a swan-shaped boat. But many transit agencies would do well to commission more unique designs for ferrying tourists around. A pleasure boat, after all, might as well be fun.

Mallorca has a rich craft tradition but much has been lost over the years and succeeding here today as a designer or maker involves being not just a skilled artisan but also a dab hand at social media and a keen collaborator with other island crafters. You must be on your toes. Yet it is not a closed world and can work well as a base.

Anna Lena Kortmann (pictured) grew up in Cairo, studied in Mainz, Melbourne and Paris, and became an interior architecture and exhibition designer in Los Angeles and Berlin. But she wanted to use her hands again and was drawn to Mallorca. Here she discovered traditional chairs with beautiful weaving and sought out someone who could teach her how to make them. “It was not a business idea to start with but it became one,” says Kortmann at her atelier-shop in the capital, Palma.

Her Studio Jaia collection of stools and benches is beautiful – modern, simple lines matched with almost traditional weaving. “The guy who taught me showed me the knots, the tension needed in the cord, but I changed the frames as I didn’t want to use dark wood and I found a finer cord, a recycled cotton,” she says. The business is just three years old and is thriving; she now has the help of a carpenter. And she’s trying new things too: she’s creating a woven pattern derived from a tile that she saw in the now decommissioned Tegel Airport in Berlin. Its design is inspired by the island but with a look that travels well.
studiojaia.com

To meet more makers and artists from Mallorca, get the new June issue of Monocle.

British luggage-maker Globe-Trotter is hoping that its new range of suitcases might, to the surprise of many, prove something of a laughing stock. The brand has teamed up with David Shrigley (pictured) to add some of the Brighton-based artist’s signature wit to a new limited-edition run of carry-on cases.

Known for his comically captioned sketches drawn in a youthful scribble, the artist has created two largely blue designs for Globe-Trotter. One has an image of a suitcase emblazoned with the caption “I have some baggage but it is not much of a problem” on the front, while the other has the words “Be an ass” next to the face of a donkey.

“We love the irreverence of his work,” says Globe-Trotter’s community and partnerships director Darius Alavi-Ellis. “We thought that it would be interesting to work with him and perhaps dispel some of the seriousness surrounding so much of the luxury-goods industry.”
globe-trotter.com