The Monocle Minute
On Design

From an architect’s vision for futuristic flying holiday homes to a transformation of a derelict Detroit bakery into a thriving arts space, this week’s missive has sky-high ambitions. We also drop into a 19th-century Aarhus showroom and meet a British-Caribbean designer pushing boundaries of creative practice. First up, Nic Monisse on what Hong Kong (pictured) can teach us about good design.

Since 2018, a late 19th-century building in Aarhus has served as showrooms for flooring company Dinesen and Garde Hvalsøe, a Danish brand known for its kitchens and cabinetry. The building is split into two wings. One was designed by New York-based Bunn Studio; Djernes & Bell has now reworked the other. The Copenhagen-based architectural practice has retained many original features, such as the ornamental glass ceiling and colourful glass windows. The updated space showcases the region’s crafts through three rooms typically found in a home: a salon, a kitchen with a pantry and a study.

Every room is furnished with materials that reflect both brands. A curling room divider, made from Dinesen’s Douglas fir and finished with ash oil, surrounds a meeting area with a handcrafted round table and chairs by Magnus Olesen. Meanwhile, timber seating booths in the study and a handsome kitchen-cum-pantry demonstrate the craft skills and attention to detail of Dinesen and Garde Hvalsø. There are also glass artworks by Alexander Kirkeby and lamps by Scandinavian lighting house Wästberg. “We admire the creative perspective of Djernes & Bell and its concept of paying homage to originality by narrating a past story through a present design,” says Garde Hvalsøe co-founder Søren Hvalsøe Garde. “It’s fascinating to see its vision materialise in the new showroom. It’s a celebration of the origins of things.”
gardehvalsoe.dk; dinesen.com; djernesbell.com

Since declaring bankruptcy in 2013, Detroit has struggled to fully bounce back, with more than 70,000 buildings still unoccupied across the city. The New York branch of Dutch architecture studio OMA is helping to turn things around: it has overseen the transformation of a derelict early-20th-century bakery into an arts space called Lantern. Finding that part of the old structure’s walls and ceiling had fallen away, OMA decided to leave the area open, converting it into a courtyard surrounded by galleries and artists’ studios.

Other original features have also been incorporated into the space: shuttered windows were strategically reopened, while holes were drilled into walls and filled with cylindrical glass blocks to gently invite light in. “We tried to work both with and against the former structure,” says OMA partner Jason Long. “The result is a building that welcomes light and creativity.”
oma.com

After studying graphic design and illustration, and a stint as Virgil Abloh’s design assistant, Samuel Ross founded sportswear brand A-Cold-Wall* in 2014 and design studio SR_A SR_A in 2019. Over the past 10 years, the British-Caribbean artist and designer has collaborated with industry leaders such as Nike and Apple, showcased work at galleries including White Cube in London and New York’s Friedman Benda, and been awarded an MBE for services to fashion.

You describe yourself as an artist and designer. Is this distinction between the disciplines important?
At the moment, the term “multi-hyphenate designer” is being used a lot. If you decide to dedicate yourself to the creative arts, you need to have different levers that you can pull. Some of those are commercial levers, which tend to fall under the remit of service design and commercial work. On the other side, it’s about the desire to contribute to the future index of the history of the arts. It’s like church and state: the arts are a complete expression of self and design is the gift of servitude.

You work across a range of disciplines and industries. Why is it important to push yourself in this way?
You have to try to etch new ground. A well-versed, nuanced audience is looking for a product or object that will elicit a response or hold emotion. My obligation as an artist and a designer is to explore new concepts. That carries a level of risk. I also feel a personal obligation to work with market leaders and try to push concepts through commercial practice.

How does this idea of pushing boundaries go hand in hand with that of design being a service?
In design, you have to engage in servitude, questioning and inquiry. It’s less about the idea of good and bad than about pulling apart what we know in the hope of moving things forward.

For more from Samuel Ross, tune in to this week’s episode of ‘Monocle on Design’. And pick up a copy of Monocle’s June issue, which is out now on newsstands and available online.

In 1964, Indonesian-born French architect Guy Rottier exhibited his vision of a flying holiday home at the Salon des Arts Ménagers in Paris. He presented a small model of a helicopter that contained quarters for a family of four behind the cockpit, including a living area, a kitchen, a shower and beds.

The Maison de Vacances Volante is featured in Forgotten Architecture, a collection of lesser-known modernist projects, edited by Bianca Felicori and published by Nero Editions. Felicori, a Milan-based architecture researcher, unearthed the plans for the holiday home at Rottier’s archives in Nice. Rottier described the aim of his project as “forming mobile holiday towns suspended in the sky”. Perhaps an ambitious aviation entrepreneur will one day turn his dream into a reality.

Vegetarian restaurant Altatto is just around the corner from 6:AM Glassworks’ studio in Milan’s northern Greco neighbourhood – and the two businesses are close in more ways than one. When Altatto needed an outdoor dining area at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, it used 6:AM’s garden space. Now, the collaboration continues with a beautiful new glass collection designed for the restaurant that is also available to the public.

Edoardo Pandolfo and Francesco Palù founded 6:AM Glassworks in 2018 with the aim of introducing the skills and traditions of Venetian Murano glass to a new, contemporary audience. These are characteristics present in the Altatto collection, which features a narrow water glass inspired by Asian tea glasses, a wider cocktail glass and a cylindrical carafe. Lines of colour, the result of traditional glass-rod work, make every piece unique. The collection comes in various colourways, including the white and acid green version designed for the bistro. The pieces feel so precious that we’re already fretting about breaking one.
6am.glass

In the early 19th century many wealthy New Yorkers escaped the city’s chaos by building a “country retreat” across the river from Manhattan. Brooklyn Heights is now hardly a suburb but the district, largely spared from redevelopment, retains its original brownstones and sleepy character. That’s what drew Berlin-based photographer Robert Rieger here. While in New York on hectic work trips, he would seek respite by taking long walks in the neighbourhood. “I spent hours going from house to house,” he says. “It’s like falling back in time.” Rieger’s strolls turned out to be productive. Snaps that he took on his ambles are now collected in a book from Pool Publishing, Façades of Brooklyn Heights.

Across about 90 pages, Rieger’s warm signature style proves a perfect pairing with the leafy streetscape. Cars, people and other reminders of the present day are left out of frame and the attractive jumble of Greek-revival, Italianate and Queen Anne architecture is presented without explanatory captions. “You can imagine the stories,” says Rieger. An antidote to our novelty-fixated era, Façades of Brooklyn Heights lets its readers relish the sight of a place that’s suspended in time.
p-oo-l.com