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      ASKA creates escapist TV set for Stockholm Design Week interviews

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      Swedish architecture studio ASKA designed a set with terracotta colours, architectural shapes and real sand to create a sense of escapism for live interviews conducted during Stockholm Design Week.The backdrop was created for PR company Trendgruppen’s Design TV initiative, which was shown as a part of the Swedish capital’s annual design week.
      The 15-minute daily live episodes were conceived as a way of reaching an audience that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, were unable to attend the fair this year.

      A sculptural, terracotta-coloured sofa stands out against the peach background colour

      Reflecting the fact the much of the audience may be stuck at home, ASKA aimed to envoke a sense of escapism for the Design TV viewers.
      “Since we haven’t been able to travel for a while now we believe that the longing for exotic atmospheres is getting stronger – and we wanted to respond to this desire,” ASKA co-founder Polina Sandström told Dezeen.
      “The choice of colour therefore goes in tones such as peach, beige and terracotta, and the soft forms are inspired by the organic curves found in the Mediterranean area.”

      Linnea Legerfors and Polina Sandström of ASKA were interviewed by Stefan Nilsson for the live show
      The set also featured architectural shapes and a curated selection of glass, steel and ceramic accessories, as well as a pile of sand to underline the travel theme.
      The studio started the project by deciding on an angle and frame for the digital recording, and then designed and styled the setting from that one camera perspective.

      A variety of different materials including steel and glass created visual interest
      “By working with objects in different heights and placing details in different places – such as the sand pile, the folded fabrics and the vault backdrop – we were trying to create different focus points and thereby a more lively setting,” Sandström explained.
      “While placing interior objects with different distances from the wall and working with shadows we wanted to add a sense of ‘depth’ to the picture.”

      Architectural shapes were used to create a sense of stability
      ASKA chose a rich peach background colour, as digital settings require a lot of artificial light which can make the backdrop disappear.
      It also designed its own furniture, including a backdrop with vault-shaped openings, a coffee table and decorative pedestals to be used for the set. This was in an attempt to create a set design that would feel recognisable and safe.

      Tom Dixon finds “more inventive ways of reaching people” by visiting Stockholm Design Week as a hologram

      “We believe that being part of a very fast everyday rhythm while tangling unpredictable life scenarios has created a desire for stability and that people are drawn to a design language that is recognisable and familiar,” Sandström said.
      “Fundamental architectural elements such as vaults and columns provide this sense of safety and stability. In this setting we chose to reuse some of these large scale elements and show them in a small-scale context, as interior decorations.”

      Trendgruppen PR’s Karin Sköldberg interviewed by Stefan Nilsson
      With the coronavirus having severely affected physical attendance at design fairs, a number of organisers and brands have turned to digital solutions, such as livestreamed interviews, to showcase their events and products.
      Trendgruppen’s aim was for the Design TV broadcasts to share its design news with the media as well as architects, interior decorators and a design-interested audience.
      “The fair was closed, and we couldn’t arrange any press meetings or VIP cocktails – like we usually do – due to the pandemic,” Trendgruppen CEO Karin Sköldberg said.
      “The design companies had news to introduce, and we wanted to do something attractive, digital.”

      Beckmans students create furniture for the work-from-home era

      Though she thinks virtual talks will replace real-life conferences to some extent, Sköldberg still believes physical meetings will remain important.
      “There will still be live meetings and conferences,” she said. “We are humans and need to meet, and see each other. There is a lack of interaction when you only meet virtually.”
      Many other events have gone fully digital this year to reach people during the pandemic, including The World Around, while brands have also come up with innovative solutions – Tom Dixon’s eponymous founder attended Stockholm Design Week as a hologram.
      As part of Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival, we livestreamed numerous Screentime interviews and events.
      Photography is by David Thunander.
      Trendgruppen Design TV took place during Stockholm Design Week on 8 February – 12 February. 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.

      Formafantasma designs recyclable displays for Rijksmuseum exhibition

      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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      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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      Lorem Ipsum's experience design shows the “power of dramatic narratives”

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      VDF studio profiles: Lorem Ipsum is a creative studio that crafts exhibitions and experiential installations, such as an audiovisual recreation of an airstrike, that fully immerse visitors in a story. Since being founded in New York in 2000, the company has expanded to include London and Moskow offices where designers and architects, writers and filmmakers […] More

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      Masa exhibition in Mexico City castle “celebrates contradiction”

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      A curving metal streamer, mirrored room screen and bulbous fibre chandelier are among the objects in an exhibition hosted by travelling gallery Masa in Mexico City. Recover/Uncover exhibits a mixture of furniture, lighting and sculptures across the property Recover/Uncover showcases furniture, lighting and sculptures with contrasting elements from designers such as Misha Kahn, Masa co-founder […] More

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      Formafantasma investigates impact of timber industry at Cambio exhibition

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      Formafantasma has curated a research-focused exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, UK, which aims to unravel the global impact of the forestry industry. Entitled Cambio, the show sheds light on the legality and environmental impact of the extraction, production and distribution of wood to make products around the world. Ahead of the exhibition’s opening, […] More

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      The Sculptor's Residence installation lets you step inside an artisan's home

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      Norm Architects has worked alongside furniture brands Menu and Dux to curate an installation that resembles eclectic living quarters as part of Stockholm Design Week. A “staged fantasy” intended to “immerse guests in the mind of an artisan”, The Sculptor’s Residence is peppered with an array of design-focused objects. The four-room installation takes over an […] More

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      Soft Schindler​ installation of works by architects and artists contrasts modernist The Schindler House

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      This exhibition of works by architects and artists installed at Rudolph Schindler’s house in West Hollywood, California takes the fraught relationship between the architect and his wife as its theme. The Soft Schindler​ exhibit features works by 14 architecture studios and artists that intend to add softness to or contrast with the house, which the […] More