The Monocle Minute
On Design

As we lead up to spring in the northern hemisphere, we’re celebrating nature this week, while keeping our feet planted in the city. From admiring a urban oasis in Singapore to visiting cabins nestled in the Norwegian countryside, this week’s dispatch flourishes with good design ideas. Plus: the Catalan painter and sculptor inspired by our built environment. But first, Annick Weber has a few tales from Paris…

A host of gatherings have been taking place across the French capital over the past week, with fashion designers, retailers and journalists attending Paris Fashion Week. It’s now increasingly common for the event, however, to extend beyond the fashion realm and spill over into other industries – and this year was no exception.

Take new design salon Matter and Shape, which made its Paris debut this year at the Jardin des Tuileries. Over the course of the four-day event, 33 exhibitors from the fields of design, fashion and craft gathered to showcase their latest objects and collaborations. There were established brands, such as Alessi, Rick Owens and Lobmeyr (pictured, on right) and emerging names, including jeweller Charlotte Chesnais (pictured, on left) silversmith Natalia Criado and homeware designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen. These were complemented by a series of talks that involved the likes of Milan-based studio Formafantasma and Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis, who shared their views about the industry today. Guest accreditation was free and open to all, resulting in an eclectic mix of visitors, with design enthusiasts rubbing shoulders with fashion-week attendees.

“Many people in the French capital and in fashion will have never been to the [world’s biggest furniture fair] Salone del Mobile in Milan,” says Matter and Shape’s artistic director Dan Thawley. “We felt that the designers who we were exhibiting deserved to have a bigger platform. We wanted to be more democratic as a space and speak to a wider audience, not just industry insiders.” Initiatives such as Matter and Shape are a welcome break from the feeling of exclusivity that is often associated with fairs and fashion weeks – and a testament to the unique energy that comes out of cities during these creative fixtures. Everywhere you look, Paris is abuzz with pop-up boutiques, new exhibitions and temporary art installations. It’s a sign that perhaps the most relevant trends emerge not in insider circles but beyond their confines, in spaces such as these.

Annick Weber is Monocle’s Luxembourg correspondent. For more news and analysis, subscribe to Monocle today.

Porsgrunn-based studio Feste Landscape Architecture has designed a series of cabins for the Norwegian county of Agder. Located in various landscapes across the region, the 25 identical structures cater to those who want to immerse themselves in nature. Each has floor-to-ceiling windows, a fireplace and a built-in library. In 2021, Agder County Council commissioned Feste to create homely cabins that could be installed in remote locations. It was a priority of the project’s lead designers, David Fjågesund and Sigurd Aanby, that the natural environment would not be compromised.

Their solution was to develop a modular design that could be prefabricated elsewhere and then positioned by helicopter. “This eliminated the need to use heavy vehicles and machinery to [install the cabins], which could have caused a lot of damage,” says Fjågesund. The designers were also eager for the cabin experience to feel distinct at every location. “By carefully selecting the plots and making considered interventions in the landscape, we gave each cabin its own unique quality,” he says. The result is a model for rolling out modular construction in a way that’s sensitive to nature and doesn’t feel repetitive.
feste.no

For more design briefings, pick up a copy of Monocle’s March issue, which is available on all good newsstands now.

The Air Circular Campus and Cooking Club, a new dining project from Bali-based Potato Head, officially opened this week in Singapore’s leafy Dempsey Hill neighbourhood. David Gianotten and Shinji Takagi of Dutch design firm Oma have transformed the original modernist building, a clubhouse for civil servants built in the 1970s, into a multi-use space with a restaurant, cooking school and farming programmes aimed at promoting sustainable culinary practices. The result shows how top hospitality and architecture firms can come together to have a positive effect on local communities and ways of building. “We are convinced that architecture and design can make a difference through active engagement with different disciplines,” says Gianotten.

The architects opened up the two-storey building by adding wooden terraced patios for outdoor dining, which spill onto the front lawn. Footpaths are threaded through lush green spaces for visitors to wander through the farm and enjoy picnics on the grass. True to Potato Head’s love of sustainable and upcycled materials, all the furniture, which was created by Catalan designer Andreu Carulla, is made from recycled timber, plastic and styrofoam. A round, orange steel frame at the back of the building houses a spiral staircase. The campus offers a rare abundance of greenery in densely urban Singapore and is a welcome addition to the city’s culinary and cultural landscape.
oma.com; aircccc.com

The Ralph Saltzman Prize was founded in 2022 by his daughter, Lisa Saltzman, in collaboration with the Design Museum in London. Saltzman was the co-founder and president of materials company Designtex and the prize aims to champion emerging creatives, selected by a cohort of more established designers who operate within the museum’s network. Leading the prize’s selection committee is Johanna Agerman Ross, the Conran Foundation chief curator at the Design Museum. Here, she explains the significance of the prize and what she hopes people will take away from this year’s winner, Attua Aparicio, whose selection was announced in a ceremony in London last month.

The judges for The Ralph Saltzman Prize are established career designers. Why is this important?
It's nice to have a peer-to-peer nomination. Some of the nominees are not directly familiar with the people nominating them, so it feels flattering that they know of their work. It's also a testament to camaraderie within the design community. Designers find different things to look for in the work of others than critics do. It might be that they appreciate a particular production process, which is perhaps something that a curator or writer might not have the same understanding of. This year many designers experimented with materiality.

What do you hope that people will take away from the work of Spanish-born, London-based designer Attua Aparicio, who is this year’s winner?
When you see her work on display in the Design Museum, you understand the experimentation that has gone into it. There is a real urgency to her work; you can see the imprints of Attua’s fingers up close. We were really convinced by her exploration of clay and borosilicate glass. She uses waste materials that otherwise would just go to the landfill, so her work felt extremely important to us.

Aparicio’s work is defined by extensive rounds of research and testing. Could you speak to the importance of this approach to design more broadly?
This year’s prize highlights the importance of design research. It’s something that is talked about in academic institutions but not necessarily highlighted in museums. A new display by Future Observatory, the Design Museum’s national research programme for the green transition, explores this. Attua’s work beautifully embodies design research in everyday practice. She has been able to develop and engage with the concept through residencies in both Europe and Asia. This is important for any designer.

For more from Johanna Agerman Ross, tune in to ‘Monocle on Design’ on Monocle Radio.

For many people today, Flávio de Carvalho is seen as a key figure in Brazilian modernism – but his contemporaries were not all so fawning. The Amparo-born polymath, who designed buildings but also directed surrealist theatre productions and made a collection of skirts for men, could cause such outrage that his shows were regularly shut down by the police. It not only cemented his position in avant-garde circles but also meant that this armchair, which De Carvalho made for his own home in 1955, was never put into production.

The spindly FDC-1 is worlds apart from most mid-century Brazilian furniture, which is typically chunky and heavy on wood. This lithe look also makes it more suitable for a reissue, as the leather-and-steel design doesn’t require chopping down any tropical trees. The FDC-1 is a staple in the collection of Objekto, a French brand that licences Brazilian modernist designs. Benoît Halbronn, co-founder of Objekto, says that the statement chair still divides opinion. “Some see in it a sculpture, some a tribal mask, others even a hint of sadomasochism,” he says. “It’s a chair that doesn’t leave anyone indifferent.”

Catalan painter and sculptor Ramón Enrich often looks to the geometric qualities of our built environment when creating his graphic, and at times barren, landscapes. Now, an exhibition of his architecturally inflected paintings, Imminència, is on show at London’s Cadogan Gallery. Enrich was inspired by the rationalist movement in architecture from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as African architecture, when painting his colourful grid structures. “Architecture and architectural painting allow me to play around with fiction and the mystery required to show the symbolic power of elements,” says Enrich.

The simple and repetitive structures of Enrich’s oil paintings, rendered in earthy hues such as burnt red, sage green and ochre, exist in a landscape devoid of people. Instead, square houses, conical trees and spherical structures co-exist and are infused with a dreamlike sensibility that transports the viewer to a dry and abstract landscape. Those looking to immerse themselves in such landscapes would do well to visit Cadogan’s space on Old Brompton Road before the show closes on 28 March.
cadogangallery.com

Swiss furniture brand USM has joined forces with New York-based Symbol, an audio-dedicated homewares brand, to create a collection of vinyl storage pieces (in other words, audiophiles are in for a real treat). The line comprises metallic storage systems in signature USM colours, including a display cabinet and record crate, tailored to provide a spot for turntables, speakers and prized vinyl. We have our eye on the display cabinet, a sleek storage piece that features integrated dimmable lighting, sliding bookends to accommodate a growing vinyl collection and hidden storage compartments.

This collaboration pulls from both brands’ ingenuity, combining USM’s trademark modular system and Symbol’s audio-driven designs. “We’ve held USM in high regard for a long time, not only for its incredible products but also for the clarity of its vision in the world of furniture,” says Walker Tovin, brand director at Symbol. This collection is an ideal home addition for vinyl enthusiasts, offering functional pieces that celebrate the place that music and sound have in our homes.
us.usm.com; symbolaudio.com