The Monocle Minute
On Design

This week we head to Bordeaux, where a stadium renovation has been celebrated as a sporting success, both on and off the track. Plus: a deep dive into the Eames Archive in California (pictured) and we turn on a TV from the space age (yes, really). But first, Nic Monisse has some food for thought…

The recently opened Eames Archives in Richmond, California, reveals the true prolificacy of industrial designers Ray and Charles Eames, bringing together everything from their earliest prototypes to the ephemera that they collected over the course of their careers. The curators of the museum, which is based in the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, have taken an idiosyncratic, playful approach to celebrating the duo’s design philosophy. “We call it a working collection,” says Llisa Demetrios, the couple’s youngest granddaughter and the Eames Institute’s chief curator. “That’s because Ray and Charles kept things even when they were broken, so they could figure out how to make them better the next time.”

Demetrios and the collections team have built the inaugural show from the 40,000 objects in the family’s collection. It’s a tribute to the Eames couple’s world, where thinking and designing would happen through making, with surprisingly few sketches or drawings included. Apart from the meticulously preserved house where Ray and Charles lived in Los Angeles, there was no space dedicated to their collection until now. According to the Eames Institute, the designers’ interest in finding materials that don’t cost the Earth and creating products that last is particularly relevant today. “We hope that this is an organisation that does more than just preserve the past,” says its president and CEO, John Cary. “It could offer a road map to the future.”
eamesinstitute.org

For more on the Eames Archives, pick up a copy of Monocle’s March issue.

Paris-based K Architectures recently oversaw the renovation of the Pierre-Paul Bernard Stadium near Bordeaux. The practice refurbished the stadium’s 1970s track and 1,500-seat grandstand, adding a sports complex with indoor practice halls, changing rooms, a gym and an administrative department. The stadium is located on the edge of the protected Thouars Wood, so architects Karine Herman and Jérôme Sigwalt ensured that the project would not encroach on the ancient green space. The wood-framed halls were conceived as a group of barns with low-slung, corrugated-metal roofs and façades cladded with burnt pine, inspired by the Japanese yakisugi (burnt cedar) technique.

The grandstand was updated without changing its structure. Its base, benches and façade were repainted and given a dark tint. The athletics track was expanded from six to eight lanes, making it more useful for national and international athletics competitions. “The asymmetrical overhanging roofs and use of wood evoke girolles, the small traditional houses in the region’s sandy pine forests,” says Jérôme Sigwalt, co-founder of K Architectures.
k-architectures.com

Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind is the founder of New York-based Studio Libeskind. He is best known for designing the Jewish Museum in Berlin and drafting the master plan for New York’s One World Trade Center. Among his latest work is the Maggie’s cancer centre at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London. Here, his aim was to create an uplifting and design-led environment for cancer care. We spoke to Libeskind about his approach to architecture.

You’ve talked a lot about the role of memory in architecture. What guided the design for Maggie’s Royal Free and what are you hoping to achieve? There’s a musicality to the structure of this building. Curving features contrast with planar elements to create a sense of journey. A variety of windows and views also infuse the building with light. Wherever you are, whether it’s in the yoga room, the kitchen or the library, there is a feeling of scale. The design is unlike that of anywhere else. It is as unique as the people who will be using it.

Did you have an end user in mind while designing this building? I don’t view building design as a transaction between the architect and the user. Instead, you must make a beautiful place that will resonate with every person individually. It’s about creating a building that functions well in terms of light, orientation, materials, warmth and scale, rather than arousing specific emotions.

How do you design buildings that are not to a formula? If you’re designing a unique building for a specific purpose, such as Maggie’s, you need to work closely with your clients. They will know exactly what they want and where they want it. From there, you can construct a space that is both functional and poetic.

For more from Daniel Libeskind, tune in to [‘Monocle on Design’] (https://monocle.com/radio/shows/monocle-on-design/647/) on Monocle Radio.

A few years ago curved screens were briefly hyped as a major evolution in TV technology – but the idea of freeing televisions from the tyranny of straight lines is nothing new. Released in 1970 by Japanese manufacturer JVC, the Videosphere was shaped like a round ball, though the screen within was flat. Unlike today’s flat-panel living-room fillers, it was designed to be mobile: compact in size, the TV could be rotated on its pedestal, hung with a chain from the ceiling or taken to the beach, thanks to its rechargeable battery.

The Videosphere’s designer remains anonymous but it’s clear what inspired it: released just a year after the first moon landing, the television looks just like the Apollo 11 astronauts’ helmets. The striking gadget remained in production into the 1980s and has been immortalised in pop culture as a prime example of space-age design, even making a cameo in The Matrix. Forget display size, resolution and colour contrast: in our books, the Videosphere beats any of today’s curved carbuncles.

Danish brand Moebe has been making fine furniture since 2014, when it was founded by cabinetmaker Anders Thams and architects Nicholas Oldroyd and Martin de Neergard Christensen. It has, in the ensuing years, become known for its shelving systems, which provide sleek storage solutions for homes and offices – and they’re clearly a growing market for the brand. This week it announced the addition of two new add-ons to expand storage capacities.

The first is a new Tall Cabinet, which can hold seven internal shelves and store everything from knick-knacks to precious keepsakes. The second is a new panel that can be added to the top of two existing cabinets (pictured), connecting the units and doubling as a shelf of its own. Both offer the opportunity to build on existing Moebe products, allowing the collection to grow and evolve alongside its owner.
moebe.dk

When it comes to industrial design, few brands can rival German consumer-products company Braun and this new book by design theorist Klaus Klemp reveals why. It explores the humble beginnings of the brand’s founder, Max Braun, and his descendants’ mission to turn Braun into a household name for everything from record players and watches to electric shavers.

The book tells Braun’s story by focusing on its different eras and examines its evolving design language, as well as the role that its head of design, Dieter Rams, played in bringing its products to life, particularly during the 1960s and 1980s. His focus on simplicity, utility and long-lasting quality inspired the likes of Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, and British-American designer Jony Ive. Alongside clean product shots and detailed historical expositions, you’ll find essays that reveal how a group of innovative designers came together to build an entirely new aesthetic for common household appliances.
phaidon.com