ES EN
OMA*AMO for Prada

Style - 08.05.2020

OMA*AMO for Prada AMO

Envisaged as true architectural projects, the runway show designs developed by AMO permit a high level of creative experimentation that resonates with Prada’s innovative character. Since their first collaboration in 2004, every year AMO – the research and design branch of OMA, the office founded by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas – designs the sets for the runway shows of the Milanese luxury fashion house Prada. Proposing issues like the relationship of spectators with fashion, the hierarchy of the industry, or the use of performative spaces, AMO’s projects transform industrial facilities like those in the group’s headquarters on Via Fogazzaro or those of Fondazione Prada – built by OMA in 2015 in an old distillery – into dazzling stages, turning the fashion shows into true sensory experiences protagonized by fashion and architecture alike. The design of the settings is not necessarily related with the collection presented, but seeks challenging the established conventions, placing the audience in an unexpected place or reinventing the way of walking down the runway. Through resources like lighting, materiality, or color, the catwalks evoke theater scenes, extreme landscapes, or futuristic atmospheres inspired by different cultural or artistic references that take spectators to an oneiric world. The collaboration between AMO and Prada has turned the runway shows of the Italian fashion house into spectacular events that modify and alter the perception of the industrial spaces chosen to present the collections. The catwalks are inspired in different artistic or cultural references like theater, the landscape, or the city, and take to the extreme expressive resources like lighting, material quality, or color. 600 cubes of blue foam create a uniform grid of seats where the audience watches the fashion show, multiplying the runway paths and transforming the point of view of spectators.
Horst Festival

Style - 02.03.2020

Horst Festival

Assemble Studio

Assemble Studio was commissioned to design 2017’s venue of the Horst Festival, a music and art event held in Belgium. A two-month art exhibition and two-day music fest make up the Horst Festival, held on the grounds of Horst Castle, an idyllic Renaissance building near the village of Sint-Pieters-Rode.As the castle was undergoing renovation, Assemble was commissioned to build one of the festival’s two venues. On a budget of 20,000 euros the idea was to imitate the shape and dimensions similar to the original setting’s, hence the three-level scaffold structure on a clearing in the woods, close to the lake.With blue netting all around it and looking different by day and by night, the pavilion seems caught in a permanent state of ongoing construction.In imitation of classic Shakespearean theaters, where the audience interacted with the actors, the performance space or dance floor is overlooked by two levels of balconies. The stage/show is no longer just something to look at, but something to be part of, intensifying the artist-spectator rapport.The festival has established itself as a venue for electronic music, but also for contemporary art and architecture, gathering artists of different fields.
Funicular in Mogan

Style - 24.02.2020

Funicular in Mogan

ATELIER LOPEZNEIRACIAURRI

A funicular for universal access to Hotel Riosol in Gran Canaria, with minimal ecological impact. Commissioned to renovate a 1970s hotel in Gran Canaria, the firm decided to address its unique location, 183 meters above sea level, by installing a funicular system. Choosing this transit system because it presented the possibility of spreading an ecological blanket also over the old roof, where obsolete uses and services have been replaced. Overall, the project sought to put special emphasis on the building’s sustainability.The new facilities include the funicular machinery, grounds for planting, and swimming pools that help reduce energy needs through the exchange that takes place between the heat of the water masses and the air conditioning systems, contributing to the ventilation and cooling of the interior spaces. Energy consumption inside the hotel is substantially diminished.Crowning the hill of Mogán, the funicular, with its 42º incline, manages to connect the hotel’s various levels, ensuring general accessibility. To enhance the user’s experience, the commission included designing the car and all its details, from the buttons to press to the grab handles. The curved and flat glass surfaces have varying degrees of transparency and are tinted yellow. Resting on successive terraces, the triangulated metal structure holds up the six footbridges that lead to the hotel’s different levels. They present metal grilles and blue carpeting that seeks to connect with the sky, resulting in an adimensional experience.The project was recently named best inclined lift in Elevator World’s 22nd Annual Project of the Year Awards, considered the most important international accolade in the sector of transport and mobility in architecture.
Issey Miyake 'A Sense of Joy'

Style - 23.01.2020

Issey Miyake 'A Sense of Joy'

Spring / Summer 2020

Mirth and movement in ‘A Sense of Joy,’ Issey Miyake’s statement for Paris Fashion Week. Issey Miyake’s new head designer, Satoshi Kondo, in grand style presented ‘A Sense of Joy,’ the Japanese brand’s spring/summer collection and spectacle, at Paris Fashion Week. It was held on 27 September 2019 at the Cent Quatre art and cultural center, in the 19th arrondisement of the French capital.Directed by Daniel Ezralow, the show is a modern iteration of the cheer that people find in clothes and dressing up. Through motion Kondo delves into the relationship between the human body and garments.The traditional runway format of fashion shows gives way to a non-conventional one that uses all the space there is for a parade of choreographies emphasizing movement.Divided into chapters, it begins with get-ups of grayish tones, and progressively becomes more colorful. Eventually a musical number brings in models garbed in outfits made of parachute material, and they are followed by others riding skateboards all over. The fabric participates in the dance by billowing as it catches air, increasing the sense of lightness and fluidness through motion. Another musical interlude starts the show’s highlight, where some rings descend from the ceiling over the models and morph into summery dresses of brighter colors, in a faster and happier dance. In the finale, some dancers precede the progressive entrance of the rest of the models, who gather in a circle to bid farewell to the audience before being relieved by the designer himself.Kondo, who previously worked on other Miyake collections, brings a breath of fresh air into the female wardrobe in his debut as a designer of women’s apparel.Source: https://vimeo.com/362814056
Growing Landscapes

Style - 16.01.2020

Growing Landscapes

Zap Buj

An experimental proposal fusing fashion, architecture, and technology Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Madrid's EGO catwalk. The young practice Zap&Buj works at the cross of architecture, fashion, and technology by experimenting with new materials and the digital tools that make it possible.Graduates of the Madrid School of Architecture (UPM-ETSAM), Elena Zapico and Raquel Buj have managed to apply technical and artistic knowledge coming from the engineering branch to give shape to suits and textures that surround the body while engaging it with the environment. They uphold fashion as an expression of principles beyond aesthetics, as something that can connect people to their surroundings and situations, improving life in the process.Through the concept of skin and envelope, the 'Growing Landscape' collection – the firm's second, presented on the EGO catwalk at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Madrid – proposes a uniting of landscape and clothing. With tools like laser cutters and 3D printers heat is applied on shape memory materials like polymers and alloys of nickel and titanium, enabling envelopes to adapt to the contours and movements of bodies. The collection also explores elements not conventionally used in the fashion world: acetate, different kinds of silicone, filaflex, methacrylate, and even thermal insulation sheets.
SELO Store

Style - 25.11.2019

SELO Store

MNMA Studio

In undertaking the restoration project for the Selo brand of handmade shoes, MNMA studio was inspired to create a brief escapism atmosphere at their Brazilian store. To effect a contrast with the chaos of the city of São Paulo, the architects decided on a simple, clear-cut facade: pigmented cement slates and frameless glass reflect the urbanity while achieving some lightness. The studio’s method of developing ideas from outside inward, combined with the pursuit of fluid circulation, led to the final layout, with the sidewalk alignment as a continuum offering access to all. Inside, the atrium was remodeled to create a round skylight framing the sky. The purpose here was not only illumination, but also playful contact with nature, the weather, and the passage of time, besides some human-scale perspective, a reminder that we share the same sky. Inspiration came from some creations of the artist James Turrell, who is celebrated in this project. The toilet sink is another work of artisanship. It involved ‘curving’ a limestone and applying flames to it in order to come up with a very unique rough texture. The occasional furniture pieces are original 1950s samples. During the curing and the overall construction process, the expansion of materials incurred some damage on the floor. The solution adopted was a Kintsugi technique of filling the cracks with a special golden mixture, as if to honor the fact. 
Aesop Stores

Style - 20.08.2019

Aesop Stores

Taxonomy of Design

Founded in 1987 by Dennis Paphitis as a product line in a small beauty salon in Melbourne, the company is present today in 50 countries with more than 220 stores.  In the digital commerce era, the Australian skin, hair, and body care company Aesop pays special attention to in-store experience through art, architecture, and design. The brand’s philosophy – based on principles of quality, honesty, and sensibility – pervades each one of its spaces, but the projects are designed with the creative freedom needed to adapt to the character of the place. Fearing precisely that global expansion could turn the brand into a ‘soulless chain,’ founder Paphitis decided to work with local architects, young emerging teams in most cases, to design the stores. The result is an extraordinary collection of designs that pursue not only a visually attractive image but also calibrate factors such as lighting, scent, and sound to apparently imperceptible levels. To celebrate this process, Aesop launched the web Taxonomy of Design in 2015, where they inform about their products, materials, and strategies, and include the designers and architects of the spaces that embody the essence of the company. Situated in London’s Chelsea district, the Duke of York Square store, designed by Snøhetta, reinterprets traditional brick constructions with a central column that branches out in twelve clay-clad arches.Starting out from a simple element like a block of rammed earth, Mexican architect Frida Escobedo creates a woven tapestry design to clad the main space of Aesop Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York.Designed by Brooks + Scarpa, the Downtown Los Angeles store represents the beauty of simplicity with an envelope of cardboard tubes that create a warm, tactile, and neutral atmosphere. Under an ethereal ceiling of intersecting domes, Oslo’s Prinsensgate store, also by Snøhetta, evokes the mystic qualities of the Norwegian landscape through tactile materiality and the organic neutrality of its furniture pieces and finishes.Steel pipe caps the ame as those used  in the drains of Paris serve in the shop designed by Ciguë in Le Marais as small display shelves that seem to float on the uniform whitewashed walls. Honoring the ancient oman stone baths  that lend the English city its name, the new Aesop space in Bath, designed by James Plumb studio, inserts stone fragments in shelves, sinks, and countertops. Located in Miami’s financial district, the Brickell City Center store – by the Japanese Mlkk Studio – is inspired by typical elements from a day at the beach such as sun-damaged plastic tables and chairs.  The typical pastel hues of the facades in the Kitsilano area of Vancouver are transferred to the shop designed by the studio Naturehumaine, creating a contrast with the neutral gray of walls, floors, and ceilings.The Knox signature store in Dallas, created by Aesop’s in-house design team, is an ode to the chromatic palette present in Wim Wender’s film Paris, Texas, which is screened on a loop in the space.Salmon-pink paint, brass, and terrazzo compose the material palette of the Ngee Ann City boutique in Singapore, planned by the local firm Asylum as a reinterpretation of Peranakan architecture.The brutalist finishes of the ceiling, the table, and floors are balanced with classic materials like velvet, brass, and marble in the Luitpoldblock shop in  unich, designed by the German team 1zu33. The floors, the shelves, and the counter at the store designed by March Studio on Gough Street in Hong Kong are built with translucid glass bricks that give the space an abstract and immaterial atmosphere.Developed by the team of Aesop, the Bordeaux shop seeks recovering the original spirit of the space by restoring the moldings and maintaining the imperfections of the dais to emphasize natural weathering.Designed by the Pritzker laureate Paulo Mendes da Rocha with Metro Arquitetos, the Oscar Freire shop in São Paulo fuses the dynamism and material strength that characterizes modernity in Brazil.The monochrome purity of the different spaces and furniture elements emphasizes the aesthetic beauty of the Fitzroy store in Melbourne, the design of which was completed by the local studio of Clare Cousins.
Bureau Betak

Style - 04.07.2018

Bureau Betak

Fashion Show Revolution

Alexandre de Betak (Paris, 1968) has worked for years turning the most prominent runways and fashion shows into spectacular scenographies that bring together originality and technical skill With offices in New York, Paris, and Shanghai, Bureau Betak has developed its aesthetic around the design and production of fashion shows for the most prestigious international firms (Christian Dior, Tiffany & Co., John Galliano, Hussein Chalayan, Victoria´s Secret, to name just a few). Its set designs, always original, research into all the fields of creation, from pure craftsmanship to high technology, and from the most artificial making to the most natural. The Bureau´s projects are based on four elements. The first would be the venue (working in mythical places like the Louvre in Paris, the Forbidden City in Beijing, or Moscow´s Red Square), which gives the story a narrative thread. Next, the mise-en-scène or set seeks creating something new, be it architectural, dystopian, or fantastic. This is where perfection and technical display are made visible. Light, Alexandre de Betak´s obsession since he was a child, would be the third element, which brings credibility and marks the final success of the intervention. Lastly, the performance would represent the live element: movement and human life. This is where, according to the designer, the rest of the components come together in a precise but subtle balance. The book Betak. Fashion Show Revolution (Phaidon, 2017) takes stock, in almost three hundred pages and with hundreds of photographs, of the work of the French Alexandre de Betak over the past 25 years.
Prada Invites

Style - 17.02.2018

Prada Invites

Prada

Poetry, technique, aesthetics, and functionality. Four approaches to the fashion world, where architecture has much to give. Collaboration between architecture and fashion is possible, once again, thanks to the Prada Invited initiative, through which architects like Herzog & de Meuron and Rem Koolhaas have redesigned the iconic Black Nylon of PRADA during the presentation of its autumn/winter 2018 collection in Milan. The architectural view, also present in the industrial space where the show took place. The backpack, as we know it, is an obsolete and uncomfortable object. Rem Koolhaas speaks of the rhythm of life of current society and its need for storing and transporting belongings. He proposes to move it to the front and make its compartments smaller, adjusting them to the real sizes of everyday objects. An ode to language as a tool of persuasions and sincere communication. Words are joined to create vacuous discourses with no space for criticism nor reply. A mere pattern of the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron applies like texture on a black nylon shirt. The German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic returns to the origins of nylon and to the element it best responds to: water. Conceived as a material for making bags, it is now put forward, with its technical properties improved, for use as a fishing vest, in abstract designs with lines that adapt well to the body. The brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec focused on the aesthetic aspect of nylon. Ronan says that he has always liked people – architects, painters, and students – who go around with art portfolios; the movement of this rectangle, its clean cut and fixed geometry in contrast with bodies in motion.
Drawing cities

Style - 03.05.2017

Drawing cities

Nigel Peake

Nigel Peake (Ireland, 1982) resorts to drawing as a tool to analyze in detail the internal structure of the elements surrounding him, be they animals, objects, buildings, or cities.  Nigel Peake’s drawings crossed the frontiers of his native Ireland thanks to his graduation project at the University of Edinburgh, where he studied architecture. In this project, instead of embracing the widespread digital methodology of our times his detailed hand-drawn plans reclaim artisan processes. This thesis earned him the Silver Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Shortly after he published In the Wilds and In the City, two books that are fascinating for their imaginative capacity and the technical virtue of their author. Hermès, The New York Times and Phaidon are among his clients today.  In his Six Cities project, Peake uses drawing to record and document his trips, creating subjective urban maps that represent the different itineraries and milestones discovered during his travels.  Another virtue reflected in Peake’s drawings is his analytical capacity. As much in the rural studies as in the case of cities he manages to extract just the minimum elements needed to later classify them. 
Milan Design Week SPECIAL

Style - 08.04.2017

Milan Design Week SPECIAL The best of 2017

We visit the best designs of this last edition of Milan Design Week 2017. More than 15 projects of the most famous designers and architects.  Of the hundreds of installations put up at Fuori Salone during Milan Design Week, we mention the most prominent, among them the Nendo exhibition, SO-IL’s pavilion for MINI, Studio Swine’s bubbles for COS, the LAUFEN exhibition: Milestones, Dektonclay, Apparatu’s project for Cosentino, the white cubes by Chipperfield, Zaha Hadid, Aires Mateus, and others for OIKOS, Zaha Hadid’s installation for Samsung, Daniel Germani’s cabinet made of DEKTON, Formafantasma’s delicate lamps for FLOS.