With smart design, basic local craft skills and a flexible experimental attitude, even the most ordinary warehouse-like space can become an appealing selling environment.

This was recently proven in the Yuntai Ice Chrysanthemum Industry Park in Houyanmen Village in Huanfeng Town, where Beijing-based LUO Studio www.luostudio.cn transformed a hurriedly built steel-frame warehouse into a locally relevant, charming  display space by creating a delicate-looking wooden sub-structure inside the bland hall.

The purpose of this specific building is to function as a display area and showroom for the region’s famous Ice Chrysanthemum products that have a multitude of medicinal and cosmetic uses. The selling channels of these products from this space include hosted tour groups, franchisee marketing and livestreaming. It was also becoming clear that because of social media and online channels, the physical selling and display environment have become crucially important.

In addition, the pandemic has interrupted the influx of tour groups and the ice chrysanthemum plantations in the village have suffered severe production decrease because of recent floods. All this required the space not only to help boost sales but also do it with minimum costs.

Designers and construction instructors Luo Yujie, Wang Beilei, Huang Shangwan, Zhang Chen of LUO Studio worked with local people to create the 602 square-metre (6,480 sq.ft) exhibition space with all this in mind. Local affordable materials, and uncomplicated techniques that did not require special equipment or specialised skills, were the answer. LUO Studio chose thin wooden panels with a high lumber recovery rate manufactured by a local timber factory as main construction material. The panels can be assembled by hand and easily relocated and reused.

Onsite experimentation helped the designers and local workers to arrive at the best solutions especially in terms of bending the wood to an optimal, safe shape. The result is a delicate and organic-looking display area that is thoroughly local, and cleverly disguises the unseemly industrial hall.

Luo Yujie, founder of LUO Studio, is known for his creative and bold design solutions using reclaimed materials, especially wood. His award-winning project include the Longfu Life Experience Center and the Luontuwan Pergola. He often strives to counter the quick-and-cheap construction characteristics of governmental bodies with the smart use of local materials and craft skills, and with the reuse and recyclability of materials.

Yuntai Mountain is located in the Yuntai Geo Park, a popular tourist attraction with its impressive rugged nature including Yuntai Waterfall which at 314 metres (1,030 ft) said to be the tallest in China. Tuija Seipell

Images: Weiqi Jin

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Chicago-based Luftwerk is an artistic collaboration of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero founded in 2007. The duo explores light, colour and sound in immersive temporary installations that are often based on the topography and history of the site.

Earlier this year, they created installations within two of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s famous installations, the Barcelona Pavilion and the Farnsworth House.

To create the works, they collaborated with Chicago-based architect Iker Gil of MAS Studio and Barcelona-based sound designer Oriol Tarragó who was awarded Best European Sound Designer title in 2018 by European Film Academy.

In February, Geometry of Light took place at the German Pavilion in Barcelona, presented as s part of the Fundació Mies van der Rohe’s ongoing program of artistic interventions, and corresponding with the LLUM BCN Festival and the Santa Eulàlia Festival.

Fundació Mies van der Rohe was created in 1983 by the City Council of Barcelona with the initial goal of rebuilding the German Pavilion designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with Lilly Reich for the International Exhibition of Barcelona in 1929.

The program of artistic interventions with architects and artists began in 1999 with Jeff Wall and has continued with Enric Miralles, Dennis Adams, Antoni Muntadas, Iñaki Bonillas, SANAA Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa, Ai Weiwei, Andrés Jaque, Anna & Eugeni Bach, and Domènec among others.

Lufwerk’s installation focused on the gridded plan of the pavilion, animating and highlighting the architecture and altering the composition of the pavilion. To emphasize the projected light and to create an immersive experience, Oriol Tarragó custom-designed sound piece for the installation.

In October, coinciding with the currently ongoing third edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the second edition of Geometry of Light was presented at Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois.

Luftwerk has also created temporary works at Chicago’s AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park that is famous for Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, and at Garfield Park Conservatory, one of the largest greenhouse conservatories in the United States.

In addition to the two installations with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s buildings, Luftwerk has created r installations within architectural works by Renzo Piano and Frank Lloyd Wright. Tuija Seipell.

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In many cultures, weddings are colourful affairs with costume changes and other colour-adding traditions dating back hundreds of years. In the Westernized world, however, weddings usually bring up visions of a lacy white bride and a black-suited groom. Lots of white flowers, gauze and princessy embellishments.

Weddings are big business with various sources reporting that in 2018 the average wedding in the U.S. cost a staggering $32,000 – $44,000. And in the U.S. alone, the wedding industry is worth an estimated $72 billion while the global wedding market is an estimated $300 billion.

Big business indeed, with magazines, blogs and bridal shows fuelling the flames. So it is no wonder that even otherwise frugal couples seem to go crazy in their quest for the perfect fantasy wedding and that they generally opt for a white wedding.

In this light, it is refreshing to see a couple deciding to go completely their own way with their event yet still manage to accomplish most of the things that weddings generally do – the ceremony with the dressed-up couple and their dressed-up guests, and a boisterous party afterwards.

But for Von and Ryan Bishop’s wedding, there was no white. It was all black and bright colours to reflect their contrasting personalities. Von is all black, Ryan is all colour.

After knowing each other for 12 years, the couple got engaged last year and married this August. Initially they didn’t want a wedding at all, but then decided to please their parents and have a real party but make it into a bit of a work-related project, too. Von is a graphic designer and owner of Ivy creative. Ryan is a printer and owner of Boom Studios. Both are in Collingwood neighbourhood of Melbourne, Australia.

The project started with the two finding a space they liked, Neon Parc an art gallery in the Brunswick neighbourhood. It is not for rent but they managed to convince the owner that a wedding built for one night only is really an exhibition.

They set to work designing their wedding within the confines of the 30 x 7-metre (98.5 x 22 ft) empty, grey space. The concept idea was a collision of neon-bright colours against black. They build everything from scratch including a kitchen in the parking lot behind the gallery. Only a 23-metre (75 ft) table fit in the space so that determined the number of guests: 74.

The table was designed by Boom’s industrial design team and built on site from leftover materials from other projects. The table setting was designed by Von and her sister, interior designer Danica. They scoured second-hand shops, flea markets and garage sales for statues and toys that were painted and/or velvet-flocked at Boom.

Each of the couple picked out their personal favourite graphics. Boom printed and installed in total 552 square metres (5,942 sq. ft) of graphics made of heading-to-garbage material donated by various suppliers.

The guests were told nothing in advance, except the couples were asked to select either all colour or all black. Single guests were told which colour to wear so that they would match the décor perfectly. They didn’t even know where the wedding would be, until the day of the event. 
Upon entering the space they were served a colour cocktail and a dark cocktail. After a short mix-and-mingle and a super-short ceremony, the real party started with food served banquet-style. “We had the best party of all time, and we ate and drank till 4 a.m.,” the happy couple says. Tuija Seipell.

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One might think that a disco is the last place to look for design inspiration, but like everything else, time heals all wounds. What once was the latest craze, hip, trendy and edgy, became tired and schmaltzy and then often turned retro, cool and interesting again. Not only that, nightclubs have always reflected their time.

For those interested in understanding how nightclubs have both reflected and influenced popular culture, there is Night Fever: Designing Club Culture 1960 – Today. It is an exhibition currently on at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein in Germany.

In addition to giving a wide-ranging review of the design history of the nightclub scene, the exhibition also examines the cultural context in which clubs have existed and exist today.

Nightclubs are presented as mirrors of their time, as experimental hubs of interior design, new forms of media, alternative lifestyles and counterculture, and as places that are both secretive and highly visible where one goes to hide from prying eyes and at the same time to be seen.

From New York and Chicago to London, Berlin, Turin, Manchester, Florence and Forte dei Marmi, the exhibition follows the nightclub scene and its many famous players from the worlds of design, architecture, art, fashion and celebrity chronologically.

At the same time, the visitor experience is enhanced by several additional features including a music and light installation created by exhibition designer Konstantin Grcic http://konstantin-grcic.com and lighting designer Matthias Singer. Tuija Seipell.

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It is a rare pleasure to run into a design project that stuns in its intelligent simplicity.

When the designers have had the wisdom, courage and tenacity to leave out everything that isn’t essential, everything that doesn’t belong.

We crave this clarity and simplicity more today than ever. With the ever-increasing array of technology and tools everything can be made more complicated – even if the apparent intention is to make it simpler, clearer, easier or more convenient.

And complicated is always easier than simple. It is so much easier and so tempting to just add one more thing. But by doing so, we confuse and inconvenience our audience and muddle our message, no matter what our medium.

Architects Henrique Marques and Rui Dinis of Parades, Portugal-based spaceworkers® achieved the elusive stunningly elegant simplicity with their work for the Damião de Góis Museum (Museu Damião de Góis e das Vítimas da Inquisição) in Alenquer, Portugal.

The museum is housed in the restored Church of our Lady of the Valley. The architects decided to give the beautifully aged brick walls their due prominence and kept the exhibit panels away from them by creating a simple tunnel with a series of black arches.

The sleek, matte black arches contrast with the surrounding surfaces without appearing glaringly modern or intrusive.

The arches seem to imply a route or a passage and they also have the feel of a protective canopy or container. The visitor never feels trapped in or constricted as daylight filters in through the openings between the panels.

The new museum is dedicated to the 16^th century life in Alenquer, to the Jewish community and the Inquisition, and specifically to the life and work of the Renaissance humanist and historian Damião de Góis who was born there.

In addition to restoring and protecting the heritage of the area, the museum aims to increase tourism in the area especially from countries where de Góis travelled, including Belgium, Holland, France and Germany. Tuija Seipell.

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Vilnus, Lithuania-based artist Tadas Cerniauskas who uses the name Tadao Cern has been experimenting with balloons for some time. 

His concept and idea, Black Balloons, is based on experimentation with various gasses, suphur hexafluoride, carbon dioxide and helium, to control the weight of the balloons and, through that, manupulate where the balloons stay within a place without any tethers.

We love the concept for several reasons. We’ve been fascinated by balloon art for a while but these black balloons carry a different kind of weight, both literally and conceptually.

The round shape is a familiar often connected with  happy and positive ideas: the earth, moon, sun and many other celestial bodies, berries, fruit, the pupils of eyes, and of e, pubbles, balloons and pebbles.

But when represented in black, even the happy balloon takes on a weight wnd starts to look slightly menacing and dangerous. We think of cannon balls and bullets, heavy rocks and Indiana Jones.

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Since the early 1980s, Fuorisalone events and exhibitions during the Milan Design Week have grown grown from just a few happenings to an entire week’s worth of programming.

While the Design Week’s main showcase is still the furniture and furnishings event, Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Fuorisalone events are now covering many other segments including automotive, technology, art, fashion and food.

One of the intriguing pop-ups included in this year’s Fuorisalone was the four-day Cartier Precious Garage installation at Garage Sanremo on Via delle Fosse Adriatine.

Created for Cartier by Desi Santiago, the Puerto Rico-born visual and performance artist based in New York, Precious Garage was a fantastical mix of gold, mechanics and jewellery.

Everyday mechanical shapes and tools have long been Cartier inspiration and the garage references worked in this installation perfectly.

The pieces of jewellery on display were from the new Juste un Clou and Écrou de Cartier collections inspired by nuts and nails, but the visual centerpiece was the gold-painted 1978 Corvette C3 hovering over the precious pieces.

Santiago used elements of a garage – the car, car parts, tools – and slathered it all in gold creating a jewellery-like space that felt as luxurious as each of the Cartier pieces.

A luxe garage with a seriously splendid parts department, the inside of a timepiece, an art installation – Cartier Precious Garage evoked all of these. What it was NOT, is a boring, prissy showcase of jewellery. Tuija Seipell.

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The Museum of the Moon is a touring artwork installation by multidisciplinary UK-based artist Luke Jerram.

It has already been presented at indoor and outdoor locations in six cities in the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. So far this year, another six stops have been added to the tour.

The installation’s main physical feature is a massive internally lit spherical moon sculpture, seven metres in diameter.

The moon balloon’s surface features detailed imagery of the lunar surface captured by Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera launched in 2009 on board of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a robotic spacecraft that orbits the moon.

At an approximate scale of 1:500,000, each centimetre of the balloon represents five kilometres of the moon’s surface.

Jerram’s Museum of the Moon showcases past and ongoing lunar exploration and research. The installation has its own surround-sound music created by award-winning composer Dan Jones.

But the most interesting part of the installation is how it invites every location to add its own touches to the Museum experience, and how those additions then become a permanent part of the travelling installation.

As the installation travels, it will highlight the latest moon science but also gather new musical compositions, personal responses, stories and mythologies from each stop.

This flexibility stems from the moon’s importance, in many different ways, in every culture since the beginning of human history.

The moon is known or believed to be a measurer of time and light in the lives of all living things. It is an inspiration for science, thought, ideas and art, as well as a rich source and object of beliefs, suspicions, myths and rituals.

Each venue and location also presents its own series lunar-inspired events, performances, lectures and art during the Museum of the Moon stop.

For the past 20 years, the 43-year-old Luke Jerram has presented sculptures, installations and live arts projects globally, from all across Europe to Australia, the US, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico and Brazil. Tuija Seipell.

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Many fascinating stories of colonialism, manufacturing, selling, trading, culture, design and art make up the 170-year history of the iconic Dutch fabric design brand, Vlisco.

An exhibition “Vlisco 1:1 Un à Un” at the Helmond Museum recently celebrated the anniversary of the company by telling many of the colourful stories and in particular elaborating on and celebrating the link between Vlisco and Africa.

Founded in Helmond in 1846 by Pieter Fentener van Vlissingen, Vlisco merges Dutch and African art and design to produce objects and fabrics. Surprisingly, the first bright, graphic patterns of roller-printed wax fabrics popular in West and Central African culture have their origins in the Netherlands and Indonesia.

While the incredibly vibrant African textile patterns in themselves would have given the exhibition visitors’ much to look at, Vlisco’s creative director, Zara Atelj, gave the exhibition design team the kind of freedom that most commercially slanted exhibitions seldom have. They were asked to “Go crazy, please.”

In an article, former Vlisco designer and a key member of the exhibition team, Michiel Schuurman, was quoted as saying about the creative process that “I just like the whole maximalistic approach. Just a bunch of truly creative people hanging out, with no commercial hindrance, makes for a truly radical exhibition.”

The most radical and head-ache-inducing part of the exhibition were the ‘skins’ of designs by Schuurman with which the exhibition design firm Studio Harm Rensink covered the floors, walls and pillars.

The overall effect of the exhibition, that sheds light on an intriguing collision of colours and cultures, was delightfully overwhelming, immersive and informative. Tuija Seipell.

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His installations, often focused on water, air, sound and light, are thought-provoking and as close to scientific innovation as they are to art.

A good example of this is Andrea, one of his two pieces included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He describes it as ‘an indoor air purifier that absorbs, through the plant which is housed inside the unit, toxic particles released by plastic, wood, fabric or metal items in the places where we live.’
Lehanneur works with well-known brands as well, including Veuve Cliquot, Cartier, Poltrona Frau, Issey Miyake and Nike, and with hotels and public institutions.

Our recent favorite of Mathieu Lehanneur’s work is the commission he completed for Galerie Chenel, the well-respected gallery of archaeological objects and Roman antiquities on Quai Voltaire in Paris.He created the eye-catching framework and concept to display the prestigious objects at Galerie Chenel’s 60 square meter booth at this year’s Biennale des Antiquaires at the Grand Palais, Paris.

Lehanneur conjured up a fascinating mix of specific and sublime, allowing the art pieces to remain the main focus, yet clearly indicating that something new and fresh is going on. – Tuija Seipell.

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