The Monocle Minute
On Design

There’s plenty to celebrate this week as Michael Booth reflects on the 50th anniversary of Sydney’s most recognisable building. We also shine a light on a bright brand in London, take a lesson in adaptive reuse in Brussels and see Isamu Noguchi through a new lens in New York. Let’s get the party started.

London-based contemporary lighting brand Tala recently opened its first permanent showroom space in east London. It joins the likes of Swiss furniture powerhouse Vitra and British manufacturer SCP in setting up shop in Shoreditch – a significant milestone given that the firm was founded in 2015 by three university graduates. The brand’s transition from an online shop to bricks-and-mortar retail reflects its own design evolution from specialist bulb manufacturer to comprehensive lighting designer.

Designed by London-based architect Thomas Longley, the new space is open and airy. On display are works including Tala’s Shore Table Lamp (pictured, top), which is defined by its spherical bulb, and the slender Mantle Portable Lamp, which is intended to mimic candlelight by creating a low-lit ambience at the dinner table. Plinths made from recycled white goods, as well as exposed brickwork and generous natural light, provide a backdrop for Tala’s products to take centre stage, proving that the future is bright for physical lighting retailers.
tala.co.uk

Pioneering film-maker Marie Menken’s 1946 solo debut, Visual Variations on Noguchi, is a frenetic short film that dances through Isamu Noguchi’s MacDougal Alley studio in New York. Raised between the US and Japan, Noguchi, one of the 20th century’s greatest sculptors, was renowned for his experimentation across mediums and his interdisciplinary style – a combination that makes his studio an intriguing backdrop for Menken’s work. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 16mm format, on which Menken shot her short, The Noguchi Museum is screening the film alongside an exhibition, A Glorious Bewilderment, at its space in Queens, New York, until 4 February 2024.

Visual Variations on Noguchi is a dizzying portrait of Noguchi’s sculptures with an inventive, hand-held style and rapid changes of perspective. In 1953 composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, a friend of both Menken and Noguchi, produced a haunting score for the film. Those attending the screening, which takes place among a collection of sculptures from A Glorious Bewilderment, will be able to see Noguchi’s theory in action that “sculptures move because we move”.
noguchi.org

Renzo Piano was always going to be an architect. The octogenarian Italian designer – whose studio, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, has offices in Paris and his hometown of Genoa – was born into a family of builders. “I grew up with this idea of the architect-builder.” It’s an approach that saw him develop a style that is both experimental and practical, helping him land the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998 and be appointed a senator for life in Italy in 2013 – an appropriate post for a man whose work has helped to shape cities and countries for more than 60 years. For Monocle’s November issue, we caught up with Piano (pictured, right) at his studio in Genoa.

Tell us about your approach to architecture.
In my view, architecture is about telling stories. There is no building in the world that doesn’t. Even the most modest hut is telling a story – it’s not just answering a need but answering the desires and aspirations of the person who lives in it. Architecture is a profession where you need to be very serious about seeking truths. You also need a vision of humanity and a better place to live.

What makes you happy in your work?
In 1976, after finishing the Centre Pompidou with Richard Rogers, the film-maker Roberto Rossellini came to make a film there. It was the last piece that he made before he died and it was at a time when I was very worried about how people would react to this unexpected building. I was there one day, walking around anxiously, and Roberto told me, “Renzo, you should not watch the film. Watch the people watching the building. That’s much better.” It was a very good suggestion because you see the structure reflected in people’s eyes. Since then, I have always done this. I sometimes go back to look at my buildings and the people using them. It makes me happy to see happy people. If they are happy, the building is happy.

It seems like some architects fear their buildings being lived in and changing as people use them.
I love to make buildings that change. They are like an organism. I don’t believe in perfection. I try to design for the quality of flexibility and this means that you make spaces that can adapt. Take the Centre Pompidou. In the past 40 years it has been changed twice – and it will change again – but being able to change with the times is an essential quality of buildings, especially public ones.

For more from Renzo Piano, pick up a copy of Monocle’s November issue.

It’s a common refrain for designers to say that they want to make everything from “a spoon to the city”. The quote, which is credited to Italian architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers, summarises the ethos of postwar modernists who believed that objects of every size deserved the same level of attention. One member of this rarefied group of designers who realised this ambition was Gio Ponti. The godfather of Italian design authored everything from skyscrapers to cutlery, including this, called Domus Flatware, which was manufactured by Krupp Italiana in the 1950s.

Fans of Ponti might recognise the angular silverware as typical of his favourite shape, a hexagonal diamond, which can be spotted on the tiles of the Parco dei Principi hotel in Sorrento and the façades of many of his churches. For this cutlery set, Ponti simplified the motif to just four corners instead of six. It shows why the “spoon to the city” principle makes sense: a formal aesthetic can be applied to any design, from a concrete building down to something as small as silverware.

As mentioned above, when it comes to instantaneously recognisable design, few buildings have left a lasting legacy quite like Danish architect Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House. To commemorate its 50th anniversary this week, Copenhagen-based company &Tradition is releasing a dark-blue iteration of the Utzon pendant light first conceived in 1947, 12 years before the architect began work on Australia’s landmark monument.

The lamp’s angular shape, which is made up of curved sheets of glossy lacquered steel, foreshadows Utzon’s design for the Sydney Opera House and is inspired by the time that he spent in his father’s shipyard as a child. “The more time we spent digging through archival materials, the more we saw the steel-blue shade reappear in Utzon’s work,” says Els Van Hoorebeeck, creative and brand director of &Tradition. “And, since the Sydney Opera House is surrounded by water, blue also serves as a reference to this.”
andtradition.com

In 2017, real-estate company Befimmo made a call for applications for the redevelopment of two World Trade Center towers in the Northern Quarter of Brussels. Belgian design collective 51N4E, Jaspers-Eyers Architects and Paris-based firm L’Auc were then selected, forming the team behind the redesign. The towers, originally built in the late 1970s as offices, have become vacant in recent years and threatened with the prospect of demolition. How Not to Demolish a Building tells the story of the structures’ complex repurposing and the challenges of sustainable urban development.

The 152-page book, published by Ruby Press, documents the issues that arose during the completion of the project, alongside photographs, diagrams and floor plans. The first section is dedicated to the troubled past of the buildings, which involved demolishing an entire area of the Belgian capital for their construction. Though the Brussels World Trade Centre is a unique case study, How Not to Demolish a Building can serve as a handbook for architects seeking advice on how best to approach a retrofit anywhere in the world, from New York to Melbourne.
ruby-press.com