Wednesday 3 May 2023 - Monocle Minute | Monocle

Wednesday. 3/5/2023

The Monocle Minute
On Design

Virtuous cycles

This week we find out why Switzerland’s Studio Atebo opens up its atelier to the public, how a Los Angeles design firm reworked a beachside trailer into a covetable Malibu bolthole, what drives Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis to work across such a wide range of projects and clients, and plenty more. First, our Madrid correspondent heads to Logroño in northern Spain, where a design festival (pictured) is quietly inspiring lasting change.

Opinion / Liam Aldous

Making connections

Over the past week several beguiling objects have appeared across Logroño in northern Spain. An enormous, enclosed ball pit; huge, free-standing accordions; colourful sandboxes; an improvised tennis court in the middle of the City Hall square – all were part of Concéntrico, a weeklong festival of architecture and design that wrapped up yesterday. And, as it has done since 2015, the event had the town talking about the use of public space.

“Our intention isn’t to transform the entire city but to de-stigmatise areas that have fallen into disrepair,” says Javier Peña Ibáñez, who founded the event in 2015. It’s a comment that hints at both Ibáñez’s ambitions for Concéntrico and what sets it apart from other festivals: a commitment to using these short-term installations to bring about permanent change. Around the city, you’ll spot the legacies of past editions – proof that temporary interventions can have a lasting effect. In 2021, Berlin-based design collective 44flavours converted a neglected inner-city lot into a polychromatic skate park. Once an informal car park, it was re-baptised Plaza de la Villanueva and transformed into a place for recreation and conversation. This year, a collection of perforated bird and bat boxes, designed by Finnish studio Hollmén Reuter Sandman Architects and installed before the event’s official launch, have made people flock to a neglected park that adjoins a recently renovated high school. The return of wildlife has made it feel safer and more welcoming.

“We’re always seeking to ensure that every space retains the magic of its temporary rebirth once the exhibition ends,” says Ibáñez, who negotiates all of the design projects with city authorities while lamenting their tendency to submit streets and squares to endless facelifts. “[As communities], we need to agree on the fundamentals of urbanism. Re-instilling a more human, domestic scale to the public arena helps us to integrate habits that are linked more closely to the home, making public space feel more intimate and personal.”

The emerging spirit of negotiation and consensus-seeking has resulted in people asking more poignant questions about their surroundings. “Humanising public spaces creates a more caring mindset,” says Ibáñez. In Logroño, it’s planting the seeds of a more playful, connected community too.

Liam Aldous is Monocle’s Madrid correspondent. For more on Concéntrico, pick up a copy of our dedicated design newspaper.

Design News / Studio Atebo, Switzerland

Public domain

“The reason why we’re open to the public is to be visible and to receive instant feedback,” says Fabio Rutishauser, product designer and creative lead of Studio Atebo. Founded in 2021, the Swiss design firm – which picked up the prize for best creative studio in Monocle’s Design Awards, published in our May issue – specialises in locally sourced wooden furniture and accessories, from rolling pins and tables to sleek shelves and stools. What sets the firm apart is its willingness to open up to the public: anyone can make an appointment to visit the atelier and workshop in Steinach, on Lake Constance (and recently its pop-up showroom in Zürich too). “We’re trying to reach people who aren’t necessarily design enthusiasts,” says Rutishauser.

Image: Samuel Schalch
Image: Samuel Schalch

A carpenter by training who also studied at Zürich’s University of the Arts, Rutishauser believes that exposing more people to Studio Atebo’s process, in which woodworkers and designers work closely together to hone pieces, is not only good for broadening the appreciation of design but good for business too. “Explaining the process to our customers is an effective way to tell the story of our products,” says Rutishauser. “People come here and become interested in the process and the manufacturing.”
studioatebo.ch

For more outstanding works of design, pick up a copy of Monocle’s May issue, which features the third-annual Monocle Design Awards.

The Project / Paradise Cove by Reath, USA

Trailer flash

Mention the words “caravan park” and many will shudder, recalling cramped family holidays from their childhood. That’s certainly not what you’ll find at Paradise Cove, a picturesque plot on a sun-soaked stretch of Malibu coastline that’s home to almost 300 pint-sized surf houses. Many of the once humble caravans that have been transformed into compact, beautiful holiday homes are now in the hands of Hollywood A-listers and Californians looking for an easy escape from Los Angeles.

Image: Laure Joliet
Image: Laure Joliet
Image: Laure Joliet

Among the latest to undergo a well-appointed makeover is a holiday home owned by Sofie Howard, founder of photo agency Commune Images. To oversee the fit-out, Howard enlisted Los Angeles-based Reath Design to rework the two-bedroom trailer into a colourful beachside bolthole (pictured). Frances Merrill, founder of Reath Design, had met Howard while working at Commune Images. This is the third interiors project on which they have collaborated. Merrill filled the home with a cosy, tactile mix of soft furnishings and exposed wood, with furniture from designers such as Ilse Crawford, alongside characterful vintage finds. On the walls is photography by Ed Templeton, a client of Howard’s, as well as works by other artists including Aidan Romick and Salomón Huerta.
reathdesign.com

Words with... / Sabine Marcelis, The Netherlands

Best practice

Since its inception three years ago, the Monocle Design Awards, published in this month’s issue of the magazine, has acknowledged one individual as the designer of the year. In 2023, Sabine Marcelis picked up the prize for her outstanding recent body of work. An industrial designer by training, she practises across scales and mediums. The Dutch designer has worked on civic installations in London, launched a collection with Ikea, designed furniture for Danish brand Hem and curated a show at the Vitra Design Museum. Here, she tells us about the importance of timelessness in design and how climate change will affect her industry.

Image: Younes Klouche

Your body of work is so varied in terms of scale and clients. Is that by choice?
I’m a designer because I’m really curious. I love to be challenged and think creatively in scenarios that I’m not so well-versed in. At the same time, I’m fascinated by creating interesting interactions with light and materials. I consistently work with glass and cast resins, and build on my knowledge of those materials to keep pushing the settings or scenarios in which they can be applied. In terms of working across scales, it is definitely to keep things fresh and interesting for me and my studio. It would be sad if we ever got stuck in a pattern and were not consistently challenging ourselves, the production process and the materials. That’s why I do it: I want to keep finding the limit.

How do you approach your work?
I like design to serve a purpose and am a firm believer that it should be timeless. I’m allergic to trends and things that look specific to a time because inevitably it will age badly and people will want to get rid of it. I hope that people will keep everything that I design forever and that there’s never a need to get rid of it. That approach to design is a way of thinking about sustainability – you’re not designing something that, in four years’ time, will make someone say, “Oh, this is so 2023. I need to update it.” By working with elementary shapes, you can make pieces that are universal and aren’t defined by a time period.

What should designers be looking for in 2023?
Embracing new material conventions. We’re at a unique moment now with the climate crisis because there’s an urgency to change what materials we’re working with. There is a lot of research – and companies are releasing really interesting materials that generations of designers didn’t have access to before. It’s an exciting moment to embrace that.

For more from Sabine Marcelis, Monocle’s Designer of the Year, pick up a copy of Monocle’s May issue, on newsstands and online now.

From The Archive / Subaru SVX, Japan

On the road again

Giorgetto Giugiaro is widely (and for good reason) seen as the 20th century’s most influential car designer. Since the 1960s, his Turin-based company Italdesign has created renowned models for all kinds of car brands, countries and classifications, from Alfa Romeos and Ferraris to the Volkswagen Golf and Fiat Panda. Many of Giugiaro’s creations are still ubiquitous on city streets and we think that there’s room to bring back one more: the Japanese-made Subaru SVX.

Illustration: Anje Jager

The SVX was Subaru’s foray into higher-end sports cars and debuted as a concept vehicle at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1989. It was so well received that it was put into production two years later. The four-seater coupé has an arrow-like shape and a canopy made entirely of glass, as well as special windows-within-windows, a feature borrowed from aircraft engineering. Subaru ceased production of the SVX in 1997 and pivoted to putting road-oriented SUVs on the international market. With this Giugiaro masterpiece hiding in the archives, it wouldn’t be too late to change gear.

Around The House / Crate, The Netherlands

Simple pleasures

Image: HAY

In 1934, Dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld created an affordable furniture collection using surplus wooden shipping crates. Headlined by this lounge chair, it has been revived thanks to furniture brand Rietveld Originals – founded in 2004 by the designer’s grandson to preserve his legacy – and Denmark’s Hay. The appeal of the collection is in the strength and simplicity of its forms. Built from solid pine wood and treated with a water-based lacquer, the lounge chairs are equally comfortable whether used outside or indoors. Sold by leading design shops across Europe and North America, they’ll likely be a feature of many a sun-soaked terrace this summer (including Monocle’s: we picked up a few Crate chairs at London’s SCP Furniture).
rietveldoriginals.com; hay.dk

In The Picture / ‘Rough Work’, Chile

Escape to the unfinished

Architect Smiljan Radić, who is something of a celebrity in his native Chile, rose to global prominence when he brought his nebulous design philosophy to London for the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion, which merged organic and rigid forms. It’s among 24 of his works that are included in Rough Work, a book whose title refers to the structural parts of a building that keep it upright. Like many of Radić’s buildings, the publication challenges readers to consider how something that might look unfinished can be a complete work.

Image: Tony Hay
Image: Tony Hay
Image: Tony Hay

Rather than a straightforward retrospective, Rough Work, published by Puro Chile, is presented as a scrapbook of Radić’s career up to 2015. Renderings of his significant projects sit alongside snippets of theory, poetry and reflections on art. Skeletal construction drawings occupy much of the visual space, set against the jagged Chilean landscape and populated by peculiar figures. The result is a book that, while feeling rough around the edges, gives readers a deep insight into the architect’s approach.
puro-chile.cl

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