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The temperature is rising this week as we check out the fresh talent at Melbourne Design Week and the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, recline on a summer-ready postmodern take on the folding bistro chair, consider the future of African architecture, and plenty more. But first, Stella Roos reflects on a Norman Foster retrospective (pictured) and the passing age of “starchitects”.
Opinion / Stella Roos
Last week the Centre Pompidou’s largest-ever solo exhibition to focus on the work of a living architect opened in Paris. Covering an area the size of five basketball courts, the Norman Foster retrospective had plenty of material to draw from. In a career spanning more than six decades, the British architect has applied his signature steel-and-glass approach to the German parliament, the headquarters of Apple and both the London and New York skyline. Foster, who turns 88 next month, fortunately shows no signs of slowing down. But the exhibition also serves as a testament to an era of architecture that might be drawing to a close: that of the “starchitect”.
Notable architecture offices can be lumped into three categories, in ascending order of prestige: the big corporate firms, the boutique studios and the starchitects. Led by established names that enjoy celebrity status, firms that belong to the last of these categories have frequently been in the running for the most coveted commissions around the world (the Pompidou itself was designed by two of them: Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano). Those deemed starchitects, however, tend to recoil at any mention of the word. In 2018, OMA’s Rem Koolhaas was quoted as saying that the label “makes you sound like an asshole”. Foster even claimed that he doesn’t know what it means. Visitors to the Pompidou’s Gallery 1, however, will definitely understand the implication.
In recent years, the industry has moved to shake up that starry club. Most starchitects are now octo- or nonagenarians (not that any have retirement plans). The Pritzker Architecture Prize, the industry’s top honour, has mostly been awarded to less established names in recent years. Public competitions are increasingly prioritising entries in which local firms partner with global names. This shift might not be a bad thing. At the same time, it only makes the achievements of Foster – who, in the scale of his output, towers above even his peers – all the more worthy of a once-in-a-lifetime show.
Stella Roos is Monocle’s design correspondent and a regular contributor to ‘Monocle on Design’.
Design news / Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, USA
Unexpected forms and colours, playfulness and surprise characterise this year’s Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, which marks the sixth edition of the Spanish brand’s celebration of time-intensive techniques and the skilful manipulation of materials. Eriko Inazaki was named as the winner yesterday for her innovative ceramics (pictured, below); the Japanese-born artist and designer is among 30 finalists representing 15 countries and working across mediums ranging from textiles to wood and glass.
Work by the finalists is now being exhibited at the New York studio of the late Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi; it will be the first public exhibition held there. With a storied past rooted in craft and design, Noguchi’s Long Island studio served as the centre of his practice during the last decades of his life. Loewe’s collaboration with Noguchi’s studio on the award reasserts its longstanding commitment to technical accomplishment, innovation and artistic vision. “As a house, we are about craft in the purest sense of the word,” says the Spanish luxury house’s creative director, Jonathan Anderson. “That’s where our modernity lies and it will always be relevant.”
loewe.com
The project / Silo, Australia
Melbourne Design Week’s seventh edition kicks off tomorrow with 11 days of talks, tours, exhibitions and workshops taking place in the Australian city. Among the highlights is a group exhibition called The Silo Project, housed in six former grain silos near the Yarra river. The structures were decommissioned in 2018 and are now the studio and atelier of artists Roger Mitchell and Corey Thomas, where large-scale commissions for artists such as James Turrell are created.
Thomas co-curated the exhibition with Ancher Architecture Office and Sydney-based artist Josee Vesely-Manning, with many of the exhibiting designers and artists, including Meagan Streader and Volker Haug Studio, creating site-specific works to match the brutalist interiors. “The site informed the type of works that we sought, with the most obvious factors being the industrial nature of the overall space and the interestingly internal silos, with a spacey, futuristic feel,” says Vesely-Manning. “Volker Haug Studio, for instance, is creating a completely temporal installation in one of the spaces, which looks to be quite magical.”
designweek.melbourne
Words with... / Miriam Hillawi Abraham, Ethiopia
This Saturday, the Venice Biennale’s 18th International Architecture Exhibition will open in the gardens of the Giardini and Arsenale building. Among those showcasing work as part of “Guests from the Future”, a section of the exhibition dedicated to young practitioners from Africa and its diaspora, is Miriam Hillawi Abraham, a multidisciplinary designer and architectural researcher. Her contribution, “Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus”, reimagines Ethiopian architectural heritage, offering an alternative history for the monolithic churches in Lalibela, a town in the north of the country.
Tell us about “Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus”. Why did you create this project?
There are so many amazing architectural forms and practices that are excluded from the global architectural canon. For instance, when looking at Lalibela’s archaeological history, I noticed so much contention between religious folklore and the colonial conservation or archaeological practices of the likes of Unesco. Plus, there are frustrations that come from the imperial history of Ethiopia and national narratives being recreated that antagonise certain ethnic groups and voices. With “Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus”, I was looking for unconventional methods to attack these frustrations from outside.
How does your work engage with the theme of this year’s biennale, “The Laboratory of the Future”?
The biennale’s curator, Lesley Lokko, made a beautiful point about how the story of architecture is not necessarily wrong but it is incomplete because it is told in a singular voice. And what she is doing through her curation is juxtaposing new voices, contradictory storylines and temporal conditions. Having all of these broadening perspectives coming from the African diaspora, presenting our worlds side by side, creates this expansive worldview.
What do you see as the future of design and architecture?
There seems to be a shift of consciousness in the design world, which is very uplifting. Particularly in architecture, people are starting to recognise how the formal architectural industry has contributed to the destruction of the environment, violent regimes and colonial projects. And there’s a growing understanding of how many voices have been ignored. Recognising that gives us opportunities to work through new perspectives and methods in technology and design. But there is also a need to keep contending with the idea of using these emerging tools and looking at ways to ingrain justice into them.
For more from the Venice Biennale’s opening on Saturday, tune in to Monocle Radio this weekend.
From the archive / Ligne Kis, France
Across the northern hemisphere, the time of the year has arrived when coffee and aperitivi can be enjoyed in the sunshine on pavements and patios filled with life. But many cafés and restaurants use the same sort of unimaginative outdoor furniture, suggesting that there’s plenty of scope to bring out a few models from the archives. At the top of the list should be the irreverent Ligne Kis, designed by Denis Balland for French brand Fermob in 1985.
The Ligne Kis was a postmodern take on the folding bistro chair in which Fermob’s classic design was tweaked with whimsical shapes and colours. There’s not much information available on Balland and his only well-known design seems to have been these long out-of-production chairs. But it’s easy to see why they have become sought-after rarities: they’re a joy to look at. Fermob’s tagline is “manufacturer of happy outdoor furniture” – so surely the Ligne Kis deserves to be back in its collection?
Around The House / Palosanto, Spain
Garden lighting can be tricky: it should be bold without detracting from the botanical offering, while laying electrical wires across planted beds requires planning. Striking this balance perfectly is Spanish brand Marset’s newest collection, Palosanto. Designed by German-born Christophe Mathieu, the torch-like luminaires are available as a wall lamp and a bollard in three sizes, ranging from ankle to waist height. Every variation in the collection is equipped with a honeycomb grille to prevent glare and has the ability to be rotated 360 degrees, and is also mounted on a stem for easy adjustment of height and direction.
marset.com
In The Picture / ‘Housing in Amplitude’, Chile
What can we learn about architecture from remote parts of the Earth? That was the question that artists Olaf Holzapfel and Sebastián Preece explored as they spent two years documenting the buildings of Chile’s Aysén region for their book Housing in Amplitude. This area in the country’s extreme south remains largely free from man-made plots and property boundaries, allowing it to develop its own nomadic vernacular driven by the requirements of indigenous shepherds and cattlemen.
Published by Ediciones Puro Chile, Distanz and the country’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the book provides a snapshot of the remarkable constructions that arise out of an unforgiving climate. Across almost 200 pages everything from weather-beaten houses to cattle enclosures and even the artists’ own site-specific installations is covered in detailed photography that champions raw materials and hand-made constructions.
puro.chile.cl
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