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The Japanese designer takes the Samsung LCD TV north to find a sublime blend of East and West…
In picking his setting for the Samsung LCD TV, London-based product and furniture designer Shin Azumi worked backwards. ‘I tried to define the best environment possible to install the TV,’ he says. ‘Its black gloss finish gives it its very particular character. It reminds me of Japanese lacquer, which has a deep shiny black surface. And knowing that Samsung is a Korean brand, I could see that sense of beauty which is cultivated in the Far East.’
Azumi decided that The Hill House in Helensburgh, Scotland, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for publisher Walter Blackie in 1902, was the TV’s perfect home.
‘The Hill House is one of the best examples of Eastern influence on a Western house. The furniture is dark and the design details have a lot of Eastern characteristics,’ says Azumi. The hallway (pictured), which was also used as an alternative living room, is the most startling and successful space in the house. You can see why Azumi was so drawn to it, with its strange but magical mix of design influences: Japanese, Arts and Crafts, Art Noveau and hints at the shift to the abstract in art that is about to happen.
It is a fairy-tale space but also very much a space to be lived in. ‘I simply thought, what if the descendents of the original owners still lived here? How would they adapt their lives to this particular environment? What television would they watch? The Samsung LCD TV is the answer.’
Azumi had an impressive stack of his own designs to bring with him into the hallway. But he settled on just one piece, a Japanese tea set he created for the London restaurant Yauatcha and produced in Tokoname in Japan, an area famous for fine ceramics. ‘The tea set is made of dark, high-quality matt ceramics. It fits well with the dark-coloured furniture and the black finish of the Samsung LCD TV.’
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