The Monocle Minute
On Design

This week we’re dazzled by a bold new development in Berlin (pictured), check out a library book about Snøhetta’s breakthrough project and learn about the importance of “designing by doing” from furniture brand Lemon’s creative director. But first, Nic Monisse on the pandemic interventions that are still blighting our streets.

Bang & Olufsen’s new showroom on London’s New Bond Street affirms how exciting physical retail can be when it provides an experience. The Danish electronics company’s new digs was designed by the brand’s own team, led by Nikolaj Bebe. The three-storey shop evokes the early 2000s with overhead LED tube lights and a central aluminium-and-glass staircase. Its focus on sustainability and modularity, however, make it all feel up to date. Nifty display systems that can easily be assembled and dismantled allow the space to function as a typical shop by day – with cases for headphones, speakers and smaller portable items – and to host live music events, podcast recordings and panel discussions in the evenings.

To ground it all in London, the shop features specially commissioned benches by local artist James Shaw, giving this flagship a distinct identity from Bang & Olufsen showrooms in other cities. The retail experience is enhanced by a suite on the top floor with plush seating and a bar that gives the shop the feel of an apartment, encouraging visitors to linger just a little longer. Good retail is about more than just a transaction: it should offer people moments to connect and see how a product works.
bang-olufsen.com

“It’s a modest paint job,” says Jacob van Rijs, founding partner at Rotterdam-based architecture firm MVRDV. That’s one way to characterise the sunshine-yellow exterior of Haus 1, an eye-catching addition to an industrial area in the south of Berlin. The five-storey office block has been given a thorough upgrade. Featuring a zig-zagging outdoor staircase that has also been painted bright yellow, the building certainly brightens up the skyline.

Haus 1 is part of Atelier Gardens, a redevelopment of the sprawling campus of Berliner Union Film Ateliers (BUFA). The vast studios date back to 1913, when the German capital’s silent-film industry was booming. Though BUFA still uses some of the old studios, many of the campus’s buildings had become idle. In 2016, London-based developer Fabrix swooped in to buy the 2.4-hectare industrial area and commissioned Dutch studio MVRDV to lay out a master plan.

Berlin isn’t known for being particularly welcoming to foreign property developers but Atelier Gardens has been greeted with enthusiasm. The site regularly hosts film festivals and launch parties; thanks to means-tested rents, there’s also a diverse mix of tenants, ranging from technology companies to micro-farming collectives. The developers made sure to involve local stakeholders from the very beginning. “We didn’t just show up with our plans,” says Clive Nichols, CEO of Fabrix. “We spent years talking.” Haus 1 is highly visible proof that by paying attention to pre-existing communities and working at a sensible pace, even daring transformation is possible.
mvrdv.com

South African-born Kevin Frankental is the creative director and co-owner of furniture brand Lemon. Established in 2007, the brand is known for its imaginative use of natural materials such as stone, walnut and oak, and pieces that strike the balance between the nostalgic and the contemporary. Here, Frankental tells us about the importance of selecting the right manufacturer and what emerging furniture designers can learn from musicians.

How would you describe Lemon’s style?
I try to find designers who are progressive in both their nature and the way that they approach their work. We collaborate with people who have their own point of view and are putting pieces out into the world that have a reason to exist. These days it feels as though many brands just create pieces because they’re on trend. We want to counter that by bringing pieces into the world that are unique. We have a very organic approach.

You have manufacturers all over the world. How do you choose who to work with?
We don’t work well with mass producers. We prefer smaller, family-owned production facilities that have a strong relationship to craft. Our sourcing team isn’t huge so we look hard to find factories with the right artisanal skills to make our pieces. It’s about collaboration and long-term relationships. The UK is brilliant at manufacturing soft seating. We look to Italy for marble. Woodwork is amazing in South Africa. We’re also talking to some great Portuguese factories. It’s challenging but important that we become friends with our suppliers.

What advice would you give to people who want to establish a furniture brand?
From a design perspective, it would be: try not to make too much. If you’re a musician, you might have an album with 12 tracks and want every song to be a single but you need to acknowledge that they won’t all be. That’s how I have been thinking about it lately. Also, you can make a beautiful piece but if no one can afford it or you can’t ship it, then it won’t work. And it takes a few rounds to get a product right, so designing by doing works well for us: we have made a lot of expensive mistakes but, as we make things, we learn how things work. Sit down at the beginning and figure out what you want the end to look like.

For more from Frankental, tune in to this week’s episode of ‘Monocle on Design’.

Furniture is usually either produced in bulk or made individually. This two-tone plastic seat by Ron Arad, however, was made in pairs. Rotational moulding was used to create a cylindrical shape from polyethylene, a light, synthetic resin. Once the tube was sliced lengthwise, two chairs emerged. First produced in 2002, the design came in two sizes: the upright Nino Rota and the low-slung None Rota. Though sold individually, every piece had a twin from the same mould.

The chairs are named after Italian composer Nino Rota and were first presented by Cappellini at Salone del Mobile in Milan. But the brand never put the seats into production, citing high manufacturing costs (presumably because the cutting had to be done by hand). As a result, only a few rare pieces exist today – all, one imagines, still searching for their other half.

Barcelona-based Marset is a luminary in the world of lamp design. Founded in the mid-20th century, the company is known for statement pieces such as the Discocó pendant lamp, as well as essentials including the Atlas, which transforms ordinary bulbs into spotlights. The company now also caters to food lovers, with a lamp that it says is a tasty addition to restaurant tables.

Devised by Christophe Mathieu, one of Marset’s longest-serving designers, Sips is a portable lamp with an understated, stylish form. Free from cables, the lamp’s lightweight structure allows it to be carried from place to place and also means that it fits into any setting. It joins the brand’s iconic FollowMe portable lamp, designed by Inma Bermúdez in 2014, in Marset’s range of lighting that’s ideal for drinking and dining. Like the FollowMe, Sips is the foodie’s perfect companion, whether used inside or out.
marset.com

In 1989 a little-known group of Norwegian architects won a global competition to design Egypt’s new Library of Alexandria. Reimagined by the now globally recognised Snøhetta, it finally opened in 2002. A new book, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, offers a reflective and intimate celebration of the project that brought the Oslo-based firm to fame. Full of thoughtful essays, interviews and imagery, the book focuses on what the building represents to the people of Egypt. A clear demonstration of Snøhetta’s success occurred in 2011, when locals formed a human chain around the library to protect it during the Arab Spring.

The book is divided into two parts. Its first section is dedicated to the building process, with sketches and photographs from the initial design. The second consists of images taken in 2017 by British photographer Nigel Shafran to show how locals and employees use the library. Printed by Snøhetta Books, the architecture firm’s publication arm, and distributed in dedicated packaging conceived by the studio, this thoughtful examination of a landmark project is both inspired and inspiring. What better way to celebrate a library than by writing a book?
snohetta.com