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      Connected virtual exhibition sees nine designers craft carbon-negative furniture from hardwoods

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      Dezeen promotion: a range of carbon-negative furniture items created by designers including Ini Archibong and Thomas Heatherwick for London’s Design Museum can now be viewed as part of a permanent virtual exhibition.Jointly commissioned by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), Benchmark Furniture and the Design Museum, the Connected exhibition tasked nine designers with creating a table and seating object for their own home offices.

      Top: Studiopepe’s geometric table and chair. Above: The Connected exhibition was on show at London’s Design Museum
      Designed for their personal use, each designer’s creation was made to suit their new ways of living and working from home as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
      The exhibition aimed to explore how designers and craftspeople have adapted their working methods during lockdown.
      Designers were also invited to record video diaries documenting the process of creating their pieces, which have been compiled and made into a documentary.

      Ini Archibong’s design was informed by the rock formations of The Giant’s Causeway

      Participants included Archibong, who is based in Switzerland, London-based Heatherwick Studio, Jaime Hayon from Spain and Netherlands-based Sabine Marcelis.
      Other designers involved were Maria Bruun, Sebastian Herkner, Maria Jeglinska-Adamczewska, Studiopepe and Studio Swine.

      Ini Archibong designs rock-like furniture with its own drainage system

      While Archibong took cues from the undulating rock formations of Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland for his Kadamba Gate table and seating design, Heatherwick Studio created a modular desk with wooden planters for legs.
      The nine furniture pieces were displayed at London’s Design Museum from 11 September to 11 October. The show, which was digitally scanned by V21 Artspace, is now permanently available to view online as a virtual exhibition.

      Thomas Heatherwick designed a table with planters as legs for the Connected project
      Each design was made from a choice of three sustainable American hardwoods: red oak, maple or cherry. According to AHEC, the resulting collection of objects removed more carbon from the atmosphere than they generated.
      “When considered as a group, the Connected designs are better than carbon neutral,” said AHEC. “The total global warming potential (GWP) – often referred to as the ‘carbon footprint’ – of the nine Connected designs is minus 342 kilograms of CO2 equivalent.”

      Heatherwick Studio unveils modular desk with wooden planter legs

      “It takes a little over 10 seconds for the hardwood logs harvested to manufacture all the Connected designs to be replaced by new growth in the US forest,” it continued.
      “The full environmental Life Cycle Assessments on each of the nine projects prove that these pieces are environmentally sound, going beyond carbon neutrality and leaving a negative carbon footprint.”

      Sabine Marcelis designed a work-from-home cubicle with a bright yellow interior for the show
      Details on the exhibition can be found via the Design Museum website, while more information on the work AHEC does can be found on its webpage.

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      Game On's neon-filled exhibition design paid homage to 80s video games

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      Spanish practice Smart & Green Design re-designed the Barbican’s touring Game On exhibition for a former underground cistern in Madrid, using more than 150 LED arches to evoke the neon colours of the 1980s.The retrospective, which is reportedly the largest international exhibition to explore the history of video games, spans more than 400 collector’s objects and drawings covering the birth of the technology in the 1960s to the present day.

      Visitors to the exhibition can play 150 video games
      Alongside this, 150 original video games can be played as part of the show, including early games like Space Invaders and Tetris, classics like Rock Band, Pokemon and The Sims as well as more recent games like Fifa and Wii Sports.
      After touring more than 30 countries including China, the US and Australia, the exhibition came to Madrid between November 2019 and May 2020 courtesy of arts and culture foundation Fundación Canal.

      The LEDs are arranged into colour-coded arches

      Game On’s revamped set-up, which won Smart & Green Design the public vote at this year’s Dezeen Awards in the exhibition design category, relied heavily on multicoloured LED tubes suspended throughout the exhibition space.
      Set against an otherwise dimly lit interior, these nodded to the vector graphics of early video games such as Battle Zone, in which simple lines and curves on a black backdrop were used to create the illusion of three-dimensional spaces.
      LEDs were arranged into colour-coded arches and tunnels to create the impression of architectural elements, demarcating 15 distinct sections and guiding visitors through the exhibition.

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      “The design follows simple geometries and repetitions as some of the most famous video games did,” Smart & Green Design’s founder Fernando Muñoz told Dezeen.
      “These lines created perspectives and the illusion of a 3D space, despite all the elements being two dimensional.”
      Each section was also signposted through a neon sign proclaiming its theme, which was suspended in the air in a nod to the floating score numbers often found in the top corner of a game’s screen.

      Neon signs read the names of the different sections
      The main challenge for the studio was to balance the buzz and excitement of an arcade with the kind of quiet, contemplative spaces needed to take in the archival objects, sketches and the stories behind them.
      For this purpose, Muñoz developed two distinct spatial typologies.
      While stations for playing the games were placed inside of the cistern’s existing 7.5-metre tall brick arches, each illuminated by an LED frame, the remaining exhibits were housed in “lights tunnels”, running perpendicularly to the arches.

      Stations for playing the video games are integrated into the cistern’s existing brick arches
      “We designed several tunnels using rectangular timber frames with lights integrated into them,” said Muñoz.
      “The rhythm of these structures created the feeling of being inside a separate space and they also hold either walls or vitrines to show the contents.”

      The light tunnels run perpendicularly to the existing brick arches (marked in black above)
      To create these walls, the studio opted for sound-absorbing panels, which had the dual benefit of muffling the noise coming from the gaming area outside as well as being easier to reuse for future exhibitions.
      “We try not to use heavy resources like MDF or drywall, which cannot be reused without generating waste and need a lot of energy both in the assembly and disassembly,” said Muñoz.
      “We try to create lightweight systems that are easily assembled and stored and with standardised dimensions so that they can be reused and adapted to any space or design.”

      Walls are integrated into the light tunnels to house information
      In order to offset the high embodied energy of the LEDs, Muñoz designed the lighting system to be modular, with tubes that are either half a metre, one metre or two metres long, so that they can be efficiently stored and repurposed again and again in different constellations.
      This is part of the studio’s wider strategy to try and cut down the amount of waste produced through temporary installations.

      The walls are made of sound-absorbent panels
      “The exhibitions industry is responsible for a huge amount of waste due to the ephemeral condition of its products,” Muñoz explained.
      “We believe that through design and longterm strategies of collaborating with exhibition organisers, waste can be reduced. We have designed our own carbon calculator and tailored protocols to interact with the administration and coordinators in the exhibitions world.”

      The exhibition was on show until May 2020
      Aside from Game On, other exhibition designs shortlisted for Dezeen Awards 2020 include a memorial filled with items that belonged to victims of gun violence and an installation at Fondazione Prada with 1,400 porcelain plates suspended from the walls of a golden room.
      Although the recipients of the public vote have already been determined, the winners of the official Dezeen Awards, judged by a panel of experts including Norman Foster, Michelle Ogundehin and Konstantin Grcic, will not be announced until the end of November.
      The Game On exhibition took place from 29 November 2019 to 31 May 2020 at Madrid’s Castellana 214. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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      Tom Postma Design suspends 1,400 porcelain plates in gold-gilded room at Fondazione Prada

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      A Fondazione Prada exhibition about Chinese export porcelain, designed by Dutch firm Tom Postma Design, was housed within three prefabricated timber volumes clad in velvet and real gold leaf.From January to September 2020, The Porcelain Room installation was staged in one large exhibition space in the OMA-designed Torre annexe.
      The Porcelain Room has been shortlisted for this year’s Dezeen Award in the exhibition design category.

      Above: two of the timber volumes were clad in velvet and one in gold leaf. Top image: the final, golden room housed 1,400 porcelain plates
      Visitors passed through the walk-through volumes within it, tracing the history and legacy of Chinese porcelain in Europe and the Middle East.

      The installation progressed in chronological order, showcasing porcelain pieces dating back to the arrival of the Portuguese in south China in the early 16th century, all the way up to the 19th century.
      After passing through the first two rooms, the climactic highlight of the show was the final, gold-gilded room. Here, 1,400 of the approximately 1,700 porcelain pieces in the exhibition were suspended from the walls and ceiling.

      Porcelain pieces were suspended from the walls and ceiling of the Golden Porcelain Room
      This offered a modern reimagining of the porcelain rooms found in European palaces and aristocratic houses of the time, such as the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin and the Santos Palace in Lisbon.
      Then, China plates and other tableware pieces were used as decorative rather than functional items, arranged into lavish displays that covered most of the visible surfaces including the walls and sometimes even the ceiling like three-dimensional wallpaper.

      The room was a modern interpretation of the royal and aristocratic porcelain rooms of the time
      “These porcelain rooms were the first examples of people using objects designed for a purpose, usually dishes intended for the table, in a completely different way as pieces of a decorative puzzle,” said Jorge Welsh, who curated the exhibition alongside Luísa Vinhais.
      “To bring the original concept into a contemporary context, we designed a dense, abstract pattern in which each piece of porcelain is used rather as if it were a pigment, chosen for its colour and shape, to create a kind of mural that engulfs the exhibition space.”

      Black display cases housed rare made-to-order pieces in the first room
      In contrast to this, the first two volumes were much more muted, covered inside and out in deep brown velvet.
      The introductory room housed some of the first porcelain editions, which were made-to-order for Portuguese and Spanish clients in the 16th and 17th century.
      Of the approximately 150 pieces of this type that remain in the world according to Welsh, 53 were displayed here, set against a deep black backdrop and illuminated by spotlights to allow their rarity to speak for itself.

      The second room showcased tableware shaped like animals, vegetables and fruit
      The second room took the form of a 12-metre long corridor, flanked by display cases on either side that contained later tableware designs, shaped like different animals, vegetables and fruit to cater to Western tastes.
      This passageway led the way into the golden room, with a layout designed in collaboration Welsh and Vinhais, who also co-founded the Jorge Welsh Works of Art gallery.

      The second room acted as a corridor leading into the last
      Using cutouts of each of the hundreds of plates, they created a scale model of the room, which was then transferred into a digital drawing by Tom Postma Design.
      “We checked every single plate and assigned it a unique code, indexing its display position, diameter, typology, the distance from the wall and other data,” Paride Piccinini, an architectural engineer at Tom Postma Design, told Dezeen.
      “Then we attached a life-sized print out of the drawing to the walls in order to drill the supports in exactly the right positions.”

      Welsh and Vinhais designed the pattern using a scale model
      This allowed the team to develop an unobtrusive system of fixings and lighting that kept the overall design clean and minimal.
      “This immersive environment needs effective lighting to able to reach all the pieces in all directions, without blinding the visitors or showing the source of light,” said Piccinini.
      “This issue has been solved with a system of diffused and hidden spotlights, embedded into the walls, the ceiling, the floor and the glass balustrade system.”

      Tom Postma Design developed the reuseable lighting and supports in the Golden Porcelain Room
      The gold gilding, which took a group of artisans five days to apply to the interior and exterior of the volume leaf by leaf, mirrored the colours of the porcelain and reflected light onto the plates from behind.

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      Aside from the smallest spotlights, the lighting system was developed from reused fixtures from Fondozione Prada’s existing supply. The whole installation was designed to be disassembled and used again.

      Underneath the cladding, the installation consists of modular timber panels
      “The installation is entirely built from timber, with modular panels that can be stored and reused for future exhibitions,” said Piccinini.
      “The metallic supports for the plates, the lighting system, shelves and display cases can also be reused for a similar installation.”
      Other projects nominated for Dezeen Awards include a memorial filled with items that belonged to victims of gun violence and ĒTER’s multi-sensory design for an exhibition about ASMR at ArkDes.
      Photography is by Mark Niedermann.

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      Squashed serpents feature in Polly Morgan's How To Behave At Home exhibition

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      Twisting snakes with iridescent scales squeeze through concrete and polystyrene blocks in How To Behave At Home, the latest exhibition by British taxidermy artist Polly Morgan.The How To Behave At Home exhibition, which looks at themes of societal norms and expectations, comprises a series of sculptures that feature the coiled bodies of taxidermied snakes.  Morgan believes the animal is an apt symbol for the way in which people utilise social media, particularly photo-sharing apps like Instagram.
      “The skins of snakes are alluring, decorating what is essentially a killing and eating machine,” Morgan told Dezeen.
      “These patterns are thought to either camouflage the snake or warn would-be predators away; some non-venomous snakes also mimic the bright colours of poisonous snakes to avoid capture,” she continued.
      “The filters we apply to our social media feeds, either literally or just by our careful selection of one image over another, is done for similar purposes; to allow us to blend in and avoid crowd censure, or to allow a particular perception of us to flourish.”

      Untitled, 2020, by Polly Morgan
      Morgan had a loose idea of what How To Behave At Home’s themes would be from the beginning of this year.

      However, as the coronavirus pandemic hit and millions across the globe were placed under stay-at-home orders, the artist gained a heightened awareness of the disparity between reality and the idealised content presented over social media.
      This influenced the new work that she has created for the exhibition, as well as the selection of older pieces that have been included.
      “Watching the changes in my own and others’ behaviour made me think more clearly about what the work represented and exactly how I wanted it to look,” she explained.
      “I was interested to see how peoples’ Instagram feeds would change, with no parties to attend or events to promote; would they let the veneer slip or turn to a new kind of boastfulness,” Morgan added.
      “I felt celebrities flounder; flaunting their luxurious life was irrelevant and unwelcome and they had to reconfigure their online selves – feeling squeezed and trying to be authentic, my ideas evolved a lot in that period.”

      Untitled, 2020, by Polly Morgan
      Some of the slithering creatures in the exhibition have been given a subtle iridescent coating, which takes cues from the colourful trompe l’oeil effects often seen in nail art.
      Morgan – who has used snakes in several of her previous works – also referenced the appearance of sunbeam snakes, which have shiny, rainbow-like scaling.
      “It struck me that using a highly iridescent snake was the ultimate way to represent the vibrancy of our complex lives,” said Morgan, who experimented with paints, varnishes and nail transfer foils to achieve the final effect.
      “Having used the actual skins of snakes for years they suddenly felt inadequate; once they dry onto the form they lose a lot of colour and all their iridescence,” she continued. “I realised I’d been, literally, hidebound by taxidermy.”
      “Uncharacteristically I went to have my nails done and requested an iridescent finish so I could watch the techniques and learn from them – the fact that nails are everyday veneers fed directly into the work I was producing.”

      Every Other Dance, 2018, by Polly Morgan
      In the majority of the sculptures, the snakes appear as tangled piles squeezed through holes in concrete or polystyrene blocks.
      Polystyrene was specifically chosen to mimic the “accidentally architectural” packaging that Morgan would receive whenever she ordered goods online during the lockdown period of the pandemic.
      “The way these objects were cocooned in these protective forms seemed to parallel our own lives during lockdown, safeguarded in our homes,” she explained.

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      The artist also thought the twisting shape of the snakes reflected how people can shape themselves to adhere to societal expectations.
      “The title of the show, How To Behave At Home, comes from a chapter heading in a Victorian book on etiquette,” Morgan revealed.
      “Etiquette, just like architecture, can encourage us to behave a certain way, to contain our baser instincts and to conform to certain rules,” she added.
      “We no longer have books on etiquette but we do have a new set of social strictures that proliferate online, and I see people contort themselves in every direction in order to avoid censure.”

      Nothing Like Before, 2019, by Polly Morgan
      Polly Morgan is based in London and has been practising sculpture and taxidermy since 2004. The artist’s How To Behave At Home exhibition will be showing at The Bomb Factory in London from 14 October until 2 November 2020.
      For more design and architecture events, visit Dezeen Events Guide.

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      Villa Cavrois serves as backdrop to Muller Van Severen exhibition

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      Belgian design duo Muller Van Severen is exhibiting a selection of their furnishings amongst the rooms of Villa Cavrois, a modernist 20th-century villa near Lille, France.The exhibition, called Design! Muller Van Severen at Villa Cavrois, will see Fien Muller and Hannes Van Severen present both new and old pieces from the oeuvre of their eponymous studio, which was founded in 2011.
      It comes as part of the year-long programme of events that Lille and the wider Lille Metropole area are hosting as the designated World Design Capital for 2020.

      Villa Cavrois is situated northeast of central Lille in the commune of Croix and was built between 1929 and 1932 by the French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens.

      The villa was originally designed as a family home for Paul Cavrois, a successful textile manufacturer, but during the second world war was occupied by German soldiers and turned into barracks.

      It was eventually abandoned and became subject to vandalisation, falling into such a severe state of neglect that it was threatened by demolition in the late 1980s.
      The French state ended up purchasing the villa in 2001 and carried out extensive renovation works to return the building to how it originally appeared in 1932. It then opened to the public in 2015.

      When it came to hosting their own exhibition at Villa Cavrois, Muller Van Severen wanted their furnishings to seamlessly fit in with the modernist grounds and interiors rather than appear as “strange entities”.
      “Time becomes irrelevant in this project,” the pair explained.
      “We want to create the poetic feeling that our objects could originate from the same time as the building. In the same way that the building itself feels very contemporary.”

      One room in the villa that’s lined with green-grey tiles of veiny marble is dressed with Sofa Cavrois, a furnishing that Muller Van Severen has designed specifically for the exhibition.
      The sofa – which is the first the duo has ever designed – curves upwards at two points, merging the shape of a standard chair and a chaise longue. To emphasise its sculptural form, the sofa is upholstered in bright sea-green linen.

      Muller Van Severen constructs Alltubes furniture series from rows of aluminium pipes

      A couple of the Muller Van Severen’s glossy, enamel-topped Emaille tables are also dotted throughout the room.

      Another mint-coloured room with wooden parquet flooring is dressed with the Strangled Rack from the duo’s Future Primitives collection, which comprises two intersecting shelves.
      Muller Van Severen’s Duo seat and lamp, which both boast red tubular framework, is presented just in front of the room’s huge marble-lined fireplace.

      One large maroon-red room displays shiny silver pieces from Muller Van Severen’s recent Alltubes collection, which is crafted from welded rows of aluminium pipes.
      Smaller spaces such as the villa’s kitchen, which features checkerboard floors, is decorated with a couple of brightly-hued Chair 2 models.

      The gridded wire daybeds and rocking chairs that Muller Van Severen originally created for Solo House, an architect-designed holiday home in Spain, are dotted across Villa Cavrois’ yellow-brick terraces outdoors.
      Some of the duo’s smaller homeware accessories are also included in the exhibition – for example, one office-like room features their stainless-steel Bended Mirror #3.

      Design! Muller Van Severen at Villa Cavrois will be showing until 31 October 2020.
      Villa Cavrois isn’t the only building by Robert Mallet-Stevens to become a public attraction. Villa Noailles in the French commune of Hyeres, which Mallet-Stevens designed in 1923, is now an arts centre.
      June of 2019 saw designer and Dezeen Awards judge Pierre Yovanovitch overhaul Villa Noailles’ gift shop, brightening up surfaces by painting them salmon pink, cobalt blue and buttery yellow.
      Photography is courtesy of Fien Muller.

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      Farnsworth House installation replicates Edith Farnsworth's original decor

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      Farnsworth House, the glass house designed by Mies van der Rohe in Illinois, has been redecorated for an installation to feature furnishings and personal belongings of its original client Edith Farnsworth.Edith Farnsworth’s Country House is the centrepiece of an exhibition series called Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered that explores the house’s namesake.
      The installation marks the first time in over 50 years the all-glass residence raised above ground by pilotis is furnished with Farnsworth’s original decor.

      “The Farnsworth House is known around the world as Mies’s ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ (total work of art), but that’s a false history and one that largely ignores the home’s namesake, Dr Edith Farnsworth,” said Farnsworth House executive director Scott Mehaffey.

      For the installation the Farnsworth House and the National Trust for Historic Preservation referenced old photographs of the space taken by Hedrich-Blessing, André Kertész and Werner Blaser. These date back to when Farnsworth occupied it to replicate the design of the space as it would have appeared in 1955.
      Farnsworth, a celebrated research physician, commissioned Van der Rohe to design the country house completed along the Fox River, in Plano, Illinois in 1951.

      While Farnsworth lived there in the 1950s to 60s the house was decorated with her preferred taste of Scandinavian and Italian furniture from designers such as Florence Knoll, Jens Risom, Bruno Mathsson and Franco Albini and with Asian antiques.

      In 1970 the residence was sold to British real estate mogul Baron Peter Palumbo, who outfitted the house with pieces by Van der Rohe and his grandson, Dirk Lohan. These are the furnishings typically on display in the space.
      “For Edith Farnsworth, it was a weekend house – for Peter Palumbo, it was an architectural monument: two fundamentally different viewpoints,” Mehaffey said.

      Geometry of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House illuminated with red lasers

      “So through this installation, we experience the Farnsworth House as the client actually occupied the space – and I think this gives us a much better sense of who she was as a person, and what the house meant to her.”
      In the main living area, which opens out to the two lifted terraces, there is a wood dining table with white metal legs, a black and white rug with a geometric pattern and two curvy lounge chairs with woven straps.

      The centre of the house is occupied by a large rectangular structure used to divide the space and house its mechanics and two bathrooms. One length of the volume is fronted with the kitchen, while the opposite side is furnished with a daybed and chairs that face a small fireplace.

      The bedroom is located at one end of the wood volume and is partitioned by an office tucked into the corner of the house.
      A glass desk with crossed legs overlooks the green landscape in the workspace. On top of the work surface there is a replica of Farnsworth’s typewriter, a framed family photograph and books and on the ground next to the table is her medical briefcase.

      Most of the furnishings on display are commercially-sold reproductions of Farnsworth’s original pieces, while the wardrobe, daybed and Asian slipper chairs are custom-built replicas.
      In addition to the furniture pieces the installation also showcases personal belongings Farnsworth is known to have owned, including potted plants, dish ware, linens, a violin, and a typewriter.

      “We’ve personalised the installation with replicas of her violin, her typewriter, her books, family photos, monogrammed towels and other personal effects – to help conjure her presence,” Mehaffey said.
      Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered and its components will continue through December 2021 with a VR tour and a number of other programmes in the on-site galleries, including an exhibition that focuses on Farnsworth’s life, career and hobbies.

      “Related programmes and events will also celebrate Edith Farnsworth’s life and times,” Mehaffey added. “All of this places the Farnsworth House in a broader, richer context than ever before – it’s no longer ‘All about Mies.'”
      The Farnsworth House opened to the public in 2004 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

      To highlight the house’s unusual geometries and history Iker Gil and Luftwerk projected red lasers across the building and surrounding property. In 2014 there was a proposal to lift the structure with hydraulic jacks to avoid the region’s flooding, however, the system was never implemented.
      Photography is by William Zbaren.

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      Isometric creates toolkit for safely reopening museums following the pandemic

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      Brooklyn design firm Isometric Studio has devised a set of guidelines to help museums reopen safely following coronavirus, including adding signage to encourage social distancing and using masks as entry tickets. Toolkit for Museum Reopening: Design Strategies and Considerations outlines design strategies museums can use to prevent the spread of infection. “Audiences are seeking constructive […] More