Following 20 years of fits and starts, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will open to visitors on 11 December 2026, according to an announcement released today. The museum, designed by late architect Frank Gehry, will join a cluster of starchitect-designed cultural institutions on Saadiyat Island, a 10-square-mile landmass off the coast of Abu Dhabi.

The project, a partnership between the Guggenheim Foundation and Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism, will be a temple to modern and contemporary art from around the world – a collection the museum has been amassing since 2009.

While details about programming and specific artworks have yet to be released, the museum says that it will display works across mediums, including painting, sculpture, film, installation, digital art and more. A 2015 exhibition titled 'Seeing Through Light: Selections from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Collection' included works by artists including Yayoi Kusama, Rachid Koraïchi, Robert Irwin, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Douglas Wheeler.

‘The museum’s art collection is uniquely local and global, centered in the region but with works from all continents,’ said Guggenheim Foundation director and CEO Dr. Mariët Westermann in a statement.

Gehry, who died in December 2025, conceived of the building as an assemblage of 10 conical volumes that together create a ‘skyline’ of stainless steel mesh, glass and onyx. The 125,000 sq ft structure will contain 30 galleries which surround a towering central atrium. The museum, according to the Guggenheim Foundation, ‘is designed to impress at every level.’

The Guggenheim Foundation first revealed that it would build a satellite museum on Saadiyat Island in 2006, a project that would join Guggenheim locations in New York, Venice and Bilbao, Spain – a Gehry-designed project so successful that it became a byword for urban revitalisation.

Reaching the project’s finish line, however, wasn’t without hurdles and controversies. Contract changes and economic strain caused the museum, first projected to open in 2013, to be delayed for years. The treatment of migrant labourers on Saadiyat Island construction sites also drew fire from human rights activists and artists, sparking protests and eventually leading Gehry to engage a human rights lawyer to monitor site conditions.

Still, said Westermann, the ‘Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will be a source of wonder, a hub of connection, and a place of curiosity and joy for people from the United Arab Emirates and the world.’

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will join multiple museums and cultural sites on Saadiyat island, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Jean Nouvel; the Zayed National Museum, designed by Foster + Partners; the Abrahamic Family House, designed by David Adjaye; in addition to the under-construction Dar al Funoon Abu Dhabi, a performing arts centre also designed by Gehry.

The Sirmai-Peterson house, which Frank Gehry and his then partner Greg Walsh created in the mid 1980s, is hidden away on a leafy estate in Thousand Oaks, a 1960s planned community north-west of Los Angeles. It’s one of the most ambitious, though little-known, of the houses that the firm designed close to home, using simple forms and materials to brilliant effect, before the commissions for the Bilbao Guggenheim and Walt Disney Concert Hall marked a radical shift of scale and expression.

Tour Sirmai-Peterson house, an early Frank Gehry design

Forty years ago, Frank was beginning to win attention from high-profile clients, but most of his commissions were still small-scale and frugal, and his practice was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Like Robert Rauschenberg and other artists he admired, Frank created assemblages of humble materials, transforming simple forms into sculptural masses and magical labyrinths. The Sirmai-Peterson house, designed for a couple from Minneapolis, is a cluster of cubes with a towering lantern that plays off the softly rolling terrain and is reflected in a tranquil pond. The material palette is basic: concrete blocks, stucco and Douglas fir, with accents of galvanised aluminium.

Flagstones lead to the understated, slate-paved entry hall, which flows into a dining area, kitchen and one of two primary suites in a linked pavilion. The house is set on a gentle slope, and steps lead down to a spacious living room, from where one descends to a second bedroom pavilion. Expansive windows frame a landscape of oaks and olive trees resembling that of Tuscany, and light filters in from above. The geometry of the plan turns the house into a cinematic experience of shifting perspectives.

A jutting balcony overlooks the pond, which is fed from a waterfall and a stream. It’s home to frogs, migrating birds and even bass that have strayed in from a neighbouring pond. An elevated walkway leads to a guest house, set on a rise, that doubles as an office. This impassive block of fair-faced concrete with huge square windows was designed by Brian Murphy, an inventive local architect, to serve as a foil to Gehry’s cubic composition.

This house and the Schnabel house in West LA that followed represent the culmination of Gehry’s early residential work. Little noticed when new, they have been overshadowed by the later masterpieces. That’s a pity, because they were radical departures from convention at the time and their power to surprise and delight is undiminished.

Brian Linder and Rick Grahn of The Value of Architecture, who handled the recent sale of the house, came with low expectations but were blown away by its complexity and the way that each room feels like a little house in itself. They didn’t have far to look for a buyer who would respect the integrity of the original design. A medical professor and his wife, who had lived thirty years in a ranch house a short walk away, were tipped off by their window washer, fell in love with the house at first sight, and snapped it up.

It represents a radical departure from their previous home and its picturesque neighbours, and there’s the challenge of fixing a leaky roof and integral gutters, but the house can now enjoy an extended life as part of the rich legacy of modernism in southern California.

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Frank Gehry was the greatest architect of the past 50 years and a lovable — if sometimes cranky — human being whose passing today at the age of 96 will leave a gap in the lives of his many friends.

We were never close but I consider myself blessed to have explored and written about so many of his buildings, and by his willingness to talk candidly about himself and his work. His range was extraordinary, designing an unrealized Xanadu for insurance mogul Peter Lewis and a vast Guggenheim satellite in Abu Dhabi while taking on humble tasks pro bono. Classical music was a passion and he created a dozen innovative venues, like the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin and the hall for the Coburn School of Music in downtown LA.

The early years were a struggle for survival. Gehry turned his back on commercial jobs that provided a steady income but little creative freedom and struck out on his own. Working on meagre budgets he employed clustered forms and commonplace materials to create a succession of quirky gems. His house served as a manifesto: a carapace of corrugated metal, plywood and corrugated metal wrapped around what he called 'a dumb Dutch colonial.' A few recognized it as a brilliant work of art but neighbours hated it and it was widely ridiculed. It now takes its place among the landmarks of 20th-century architecture.

In 1987, Gehry was the focus of a travelling exhibition at the Walker Art Center; had two monographs published; and had secured four high-rise commissions. One Sunday morning I went to interview him at his tiny office in Venice, Los Angeles and congratulate him on his success. He confessed he could barely make payroll and he shrugged off the prospect of working on larger projects. 'When they see the house they’ll all go away,' he remarked. They did, but it was the market crash that doomed the towers.

His misgivings were well-founded. When a jury headed by MOCA director Richard Koshalek chose him over three Pritzker laureates in the competition to design Walt Disney Concert Hall, a delegation of suits demanded they select someone else. Koshalek stood firm and the winning design morphed into the masterpiece that now symbolizes the best of Los Angeles just as his Guggenheim draws the world to Bilbao. Those two buildings and the 1989 Pritzker Prize cemented his reputation world-wide, but without turning his head. He continued to work—with a greatly enlarged team of associates and design partners—in the same hands-on, intuitive way that he always had. He had no interest in theory. Concept sketches would be followed by crude study models and finally large presentation models. These would be scanned and turned into the digital files that made it possible to build such complex forms.

The process is captured in a documentary, Sketches of Frank Gehry filmed by his friend Sydney Pollock in 2005. 'Is it hard to get started?' asks the director. 'You know it is,' Frank responds in an anguished tone. Cut to a sequence in which he and partner Craig Webb fiddle with a model of the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Years later, Gemini GEL, the LA print workshop he had designed early in his career, produced a limited edition in translucent resin of a maquette Frank made for conceptual artist Sophie Calle, who had it installed as a temporary structure on a bridge over the Seine. He called it a flower and its softly molded petals evoke an orchid.

That sense of artistry and craft infused almost everything he did. Intrigued by the dynamic character of a fish, he employed it as a monumental sculpture in Barcelona, a restaurant in Kobe, Japan, and as lamps, using jagged fragments of Formica as scales. Two series of cardboard furniture — one rigid one squishy — were followed by chairs and tables fabricated from bent maple strips and named for moves in ice hockey, a game the Toronto-born architect took up in middle-age.

Renaissance man is an overworked term, but Frank Gehry earned that distinction, rivaling Frank Lloyd Wright in the originality and breadth of his oeuvre. How we will miss him!

Read more about the life and work of Frank Gehry

• A guide to Frank Gehry's mesmerising — and sometimes controversial — architecture
• Frank Gehry’s Louis Vuitton handbags see fashion meet architecture
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• Frank Gehry's twisting tower opens in Arles

Frank Gehry's name is said in the same breath as those of leading architects of the 20th and 21st centuries – including Herzog de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas and Tadao Ando. The Los Angeles-based architect and his practice, Gehry Partners, became prolific pioneers of building design through Gehry’s expressive experimentations with form, space and material, challenging the status quo with their intensity, allure and unexpected nature. It earned him the prestigious 1989 Pritzker Architecture Prize – and that was just one in a long series of recognitions for the architect, including a Guest Editorship in the Wallpaper* October 2014 edition. Well into his tenth decade, Gehry showed no signs of slowing down – building and nurturing the next generation of architects in his office, before his passing on 5 December 2025, aged 96.

In an interview with Wallpaper* in 2011, he said: 'The best thing [that could happen] for me is to train these young guns [partners in his firm] and mother-hen them out into the world and watch like a proud papa while they grow. That's my dream.'

Frank Gehry: a brief history

Canadian-born American architect Frank Gehry (b. 1929) famously explored becoming a truck driver and a chemical engineer before landing on architecture – a profession that attracted him because of its strong relationship with art, a field he was naturally drawn to and which he often explored through his designs. His belief that 'architecture is art' was part of his approach since day one – his appreciation for sculpture, in particular, was highlighted when he won the Pritzker, citing artists as some of his key 'idols'.

Gehry graduated from the University of Southern California before working full-time at Victor Gruen Associates, serving a year in the army, and being admitted to Harvard Graduate School of Design's urban planning course. He later worked for Pereira and Luckman. A second stint at Gruen led to a year's stay in France and finally, Gehry’s return to Los Angeles and setting up shop on his own in 1962.

Right from the start, his work experimented with rough, even industrial materials and forms – he often works with steel and titanium sheets to this day. Chain-link fencing and 'unfinished qualities' are also frequently found in his designs – in particular, early-day ones – which are distinctive and often instantly recognisable for their dynamic shapes and bold compositions.

‘His sometimes controversial, but always arresting body of work has been variously described as iconoclastic, rambunctious and impermanent, but the jury, in making this award, commends this restless spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of contemporary society and its ambivalent values,' the Pritzker Prize jury wrote in their citation in 1989.

His career spans buildings of all typologies and sizes – from offices to pavilions, and from single-family houses to skyscrapers. Gehry also worked with the smaller scale, creating furniture pieces that resemble sculptural works of art. His portfolio in objects and products includes a line of furniture for Knoll, jewellery for Tiffany & Co, a limited-edition bottle for Hennessy cognac in 2020, and limited-edition sculptural bags for Louis Vuitton.

Gehry was also the force behind what has been called the 'Bilbao effect'. Completing his Guggenheim museum in Bilbao in 1996 propelled the relatively small town in Spain's Basque Country into the global spotlight, completely transforming its fortunes in one fell swoop – this demonstrated the power of contemporary architecture in an unparalleled way.

Asked about how his career changed after Bilbao, in our 2011 interview, he said: 'There's a measure of credibility that accrued to me after Bilbao. It wasn't only that it made the community happy, it earned a lot of money for the community and revenues for the city. And the building was built on budget. So all of those things were helpful. And when I go there, people seem very happy with the building – the Guggenheim people are happy and a lot of the artists are happy. There are some diehard curators out in the world and museum directors who think that's the wrong way to show art and they still grumble about it, but that hasn't been proven correct in show after show. So it's just some kind of grumble.'

And while Gehry is considered by many one of the original 'starchitects' of the 20th century, he remained sceptical about using the term 'iconic architecture'. In the same interview, he said: 'I think history has shown that there's a need for iconicity in public buildings because they become a source of pride for the community. The Greeks, the Romans, up until present time, we've always focused on public buildings as having architectural importance. It's the accumulation of these buildings as icons that identifies the community. What's happening in the world today is everything is iconic.

'It seems that we're starting the baby steps of a new language or new paradigm for city building. And there's now a backlash against that. But that means you go back to the 1960s where you build boxes, banality. That seems wrong. Seems we've been there before. But there's a move by artists now to jump into the fray, to bring character and beauty to cities. They have offices as big as mine, and they know how to build. A lot of artists have big projects in mind, like Olafur Eliasson and Anish Kapoor, and they have the finances, the contacts and the technical resources to develop big things, as big as the Eiffel Tower, probably. There's a lot of talented artists out there who have a lot more juice than some of the banal box guys. I welcome them.'

Frank Gehry's key architectural projects

Gehry House, Santa Monica, USA (1978)

The home of Gehry and his family, this 1920 home in Santa Monica, California was redesigned and extended by the architect in 1977. It features a metallic exterior wrapped around the original building, wrapping the period structure with a rougher, utilitarian envelope that displays hints of the architect's passion for dynamic volumes and intense geometries.

Nationale-Nederlanden Building, Prague, Czech Republic (1996)

Completed just one year before what is likely Gehry's most famous project, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague was created together with Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić. It's easy to see why this office was nicknamed Dancing House, or Ginger and Fred – its dynamic outline evokes the image of a pair in a dancing embrace, skirt twirling and top hat on.

Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (1997)

The transformative effect of architecture is exemplified at its finest in Guggenheim Bilbao. The project, completed in 1997, took a slightly rough-the-edges port town and turned it into a cosmopolitan city with a world-class art museum the crowds flock to visit to this day. ‘There’s two Bilbaos: the one before Guggenheim, and one after,’ said the museum’s director, Juan Ignacio Vidarte ahead of ‘Reflections’, a week-long celebration of its 20th birthday in 2017.

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, USA (2003)

Echoing the success of Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall now instantly conjures up images of downtown LA, where it is located, on 111 South Grand Avenue. Gehry was commissioned to design it a little before being announced as the recipient of the Pritzker in the year he won (1989), and it was his first major project in his hometown of Los Angeles.

IAC Building, New York City, USA  (2007)

Gehry also designed the headquarters of American holding company IAC in Manhattan. Completed in 2007, it was the architect's first completion in New York and defines its waterside location with flowing, ethereal forms and reflections that seem to evoke ripples on water or waves. Its form, clad in translucent glass instead of the titanium sheets used in Bilbao or the Walt Disney Hall, consists of a group of twisting towers which come together on the base and emerge slimmer towards the top.

Serpentine Pavilion, London, UK (2008)

The ninth in the famous series of the Serpentine Galleries' architectural pavilions, Gehry's design was mostly made out of wood and engineers with the help of Arup. He said at the time: 'The pavilion is designed as a wooden timber structure that acts as an urban street running from the park to the existing gallery. Inside the pavilion, glass canopies are hung from the wooden structure to protect the interior from wind and rain and provide shade during sunny days. The pavilion is much like an amphitheatre, designed to serve as a place for live events, music, performance, discussion and debate.'

8 Spruce Street, New York, USA (2011)

8 Spruce Street, previously known as the Beekman Tower and New York by Gehry, is a New York high-rise that was the tallest in the Western Hemisphere when it first opened in 2011. The mixed-use tower blends residential with retail spaces, alongside a school, hospital and amenities.

Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2014)

Commissioned by Bernard Arnault, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, located within the green fields of the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, is a masterpiece of flowing forms and lightness. The structure is a composition of white blocks (also known as 'the iceberg'), featuring 12 curving glass 'sails', supported by wooden beams. Gehry was inspired by the lightness of 19th-century glass and garden architecture, and placed inside 11 exhibition galleries for temporary and permanent shows from the foundation's collection. The project also includes an auditorium, meeting rooms, a café, a bookshop and education facilities. The views from the top terraces stretch across the park.

Luma Tower, Arles, France (2021)

Gehry's twisting, geometric Luma Tower is the unquestioned architectural centrepiece of Luma Arles. Set at Parc des Ateliers, a 27-acre campus, the project is finished with 11,000 stainless steel panels, and boasts the architect's vision for creating otherworldly, gravity-defying structures. The 15,000 sq m space will be home to exhibition galleries, project spaces and the foundation's research and archive facilities, alongside workshop and seminar rooms.

Prospect Place at Battersea Power Station, London, UK (2022)

Prospect Place at London’s Battersea Power Station is Frank Gehry’s first residential building in the UK. Comprising two buildings and a total of 308 homes, the scheme was recently completed and welcomed its first occupants in 2021. ‘I love London,’ said Gehry at the time. ‘It has culture, history and diversity and the buildings we have created at Battersea Power Station are designed to stand artfully on their own amongst all of that, whilst also framing an internationally recognised icon.'

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When Bernard Arnault, the chairman of French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, was searching for an architect to create a building to house his vast private art collection, he remembered being struck by the fluid forms of Frank Gehry’s 1997 Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In 2001, the pair met and, by 2006, the plans for Fondation Louis Vuitton – named for the Parisian fashion house at the centre of the LVMH empire – were announced, marking the first collaboration between Arnault and the Canadian-American architect.

Eight years later, in 2014, the Fondation Louis Vuitton opened its doors in the Jardin d’Acclimatation, a historic amusement park in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne. A spectacle in scale and form, the 126,000 sq m gallery was described by LVMH as a ‘transparent cloud’, its shimmering, overlapping ‘sails’ appearing as if preserved in perpetual movement.

Frank Gehry’s architecture-inspired handbags for Louis Vuitton

A decade on, Gehry remembers walking through the Jardin d’Acclimatation with Arnault with ‘tears running down my face’. ‘The site was so filled with history, and the project was so modern,’ he says. ‘I felt incredibly honoured that Bernard Arnault would trust me with such a rare project.’

He is speaking on the occasion of a new collaboration with Louis Vuitton, which sees the architect design a limited-edition collection of handbags for the house. Smaller in scale but no less architectural in scope, the 11-piece collection draws inspiration from some of Gehry’s most notable designs while building on the architect’s initial handbag for the maison’s 2014 ‘Celebrating Monogram’ project. Called ‘Twisted Box’, its hard shell twisted in the architect’s unorthodox style, the bag is now available in embossed leather rather than the original canvas.

The new collection also features more architectural styles, like the angular ‘Capucines MM Concrete Pockets’, which recalls the concrete exteriors of Gehry’s most memorable buildings, or a shell-like iridescent Plexiglas model that evokes the façade of Gehry’s distinctive Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. Other creations feature fish and crocodile motifs in an echo of interior fixtures Gehry has created for various buildings (the crocodile appears in London’s Sexy Fish restaurant; the fish nods to lamps at Fondation Louis Vuitton), or reference the glass toppers Gehry created for Louis Vuitton’s Les Extraits perfumes.

‘It’s not so much about making sure that the original vision is translated,’ says Gehry. ‘Rather, it’s about working with the team to create the object of desire together. The craftspeople working on the bags have constraints in what the leather or materials can do. You have to work with those limits and pick and choose where to push the boundaries… [but] they were able to produce things that were beyond my wildest dreams.’

The project also saw the architect work with his daughter-in-law, Joyce Shin Gehry, who is also a colleague at Gehry Partners. ‘Joyce is very talented and has a great eye,’ he says. ‘She started making all sorts of bags – playing with different themes and shapes. Working inside the “Capucines” shape [one of Louis Vuitton’s most enduring handbag styles] meant that we started exploring texture, colour and graphics more than we might have if we were starting from scratch.’

The idea, says Gehry, was that each handbag had a unique story to tell. ‘What Louis Vuitton brings to the table is a deep respect for the artistic process,’ he says. ‘We try things, we see what works and what doesn’t.’ As for the exactitudes of each bag’s construction, unlike the painstaking process of creating the Fondation Louis Vuitton – which involved the placing of 3,600 panels of curved glass – Gehry largely left it to the expertise of the Louis Vuitton atelier. ‘They made everything look effortless to me.’  

A version of this article appears in the April 2024 issue of Wallpaper* available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Set design: Thomas Conant. Photography assistant: Matt Bramston.

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Beginning this past week in the beachside locale synonymous with glamour and style, the blockbuster Miami Art and Design Week – which encompasses Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 and Design Miami 2023, as well as a slew of other happenings across the city – once again attracted an eclectic array of guests seeking out the next big thing (or, indeed, the next big purchase). 

As ever, alongside art and design, a host of other disciplines was represented – among them food, entertainment, hospitality, beauty, architecture and fashion, the last an industry whose presence has been growing in recent years. And it’s not simply in the designer-heavy get-ups worn by attendees, but also in an array of events, launches and collaborations held by international fashion houses and brands. 

The 2023 edition was not an exception. Here, we round up the best crossover moments at Miami Art and Design Week 2023 – including a special handbag collection designed by Frank Gehry for Louis Vuitton. 

Best fashion moments of Miami Art and Design Week 2023

Fendi unites with cult design duo Bless on ‘Backfrontal’ installation

When secretive design duo Bless – comprising Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag, who create provocative objects across disciplines – were initially approached by Fendi to work on an installation for Design Miami, they were sceptical. ‘We were not familiar with Fendi, apart from our on-the-surface understanding of a post-Karl Lagerfeld era,’ Heiss tells Dal Chodha in the December issue of Wallpaper*. ‘We couldn’t see why we were being approached, but then we didn’t expect to feel the connections we did upon entering the Fendi world.’ 

The resulting collaboration – revealed in Miami this week and led by Simon Parris of Kim Jones Studio – is titled ‘Backfrontal’, comprising four double-sided screens crafted by Fendi Casa, set alongside a variety of other objects dreamt up by Bless. These include a shearling intarsia blanket, broom handles and detergent bottles adorned with pieces of fur, as well as a version of Fendi’s Peekaboo bag which playfully evokes a shipping label-stamped parcel. ‘Design – with considerations on functionality, durability and endurance – is the closest form of art to what I do,’ says Silvia Venturini Fendi, who leads the house’s menswear and accessories collection. ‘It’s increasingly important to engage in conversation with talents who can contribute to the evolution of the Fendi aesthetics beyond commercial boundaries.’ 

Read more here.

Frank Gehry creates a sculptural set of bags for Louis Vuitton

Frank Gehry has had a longstanding relationship with Louis Vuitton; in 2014, he designed the sweeping Fondation Louis Vuitton gallery in Paris, with its distinctive transparent glass ‘sails’, while in 2019, he designed the house’s equally dramatic Louis Vuitton Maison store in Seoul, South Korea. Now, on the occasion of Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, the architect has revealed a collection of handbags for Louis Vuitton, each capturing his distinct postmodern design philosophy, complete with unexpected angles and sculptural silhouettes. Due to launch in summer 2024 and separated into four themes – Architecture and Form, Material Exploration, Animals, and Twisted Box, the last inspired by a previous creation for the house’s ‘Celebrating Monogram’ series – the unique designs span a curved top-handle bag in monogram leather, a futuristic style in patchworked transparent plastic, and an array of bags adorned with fish and crocodiles. 

Japanese wrestling league Sukeban’s surprising Miami Debut 

An unexpected crossover of fashion, design and art met at what surprisingly became the week’s most anticipated event: an American outing for Sukeban, the Japanese women’s professional wrestling league, which held a championship fight in the city on Wednesday evening (6 December 2023). Following a sell-out fight in New York earlier this year, Sukeban – named after girl gangs of the 1960s and 1970s – presented a Miami edition including collaborations with fashion designer Olympia Le Tan on the colourful costumes (she said she drew inspiration from anime heroines), make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench (who has worked with numerous fashion brands including Vivienne Westwood, Thom Browne and Junya Watanabe), who created custom looks for each wrestler, as well as Marc Newson, who created the winner’s belt, featuring an enamel plate adorned with illustrations by Ayako Ishiguro. Attended by an array of people in town for the art and design weeks, the Sukeban League might well become the industry’s latest obsession

Read more here.

Birkenstock 1774 reveals art deco-inspired collaboration with Concepts

Massachusetts-born American brand Concepts has been collaborating with Birkenstock for ten years, a milestone celebrated this year as part of Miami Art and Design Week. This time, the pair collaborated on a rainbow-hued take on Birkenstock’s cult Arizona two-strap sandal. The colourful collection comprises four shades – pink, mauve, lime green and faded orange – which are used across a cowhide version of the signature sandal. The bold palette was said to be inspired by Miami’s art deco heritage, an architectural style on view throughout the beachside city, while the collection was celebrated with a special event at the newly opened Birkenstock store in Miami’s Design District (where the collection can be purchased, alongside on 1774.com and cncpts.com).

‘Concepts has a rich history in Miami product storytelling. We found that art, design, and fashion share parallels with the times of art deco,’ says Concepts CEO Tarek Hassan. ‘We are thrilled to partner with Birkenstock on a capsule around this week’s moment in Miami.’

Hollywood’s Seventh House gallery opened in 2021 within the spaces of Frank Gehry’s Danziger Studio and Residence. A design gallery dedicated to early 20th century, postmodern and contemporary design, it made itself right at home in the cubic building.

Started as an off-project of nearby Galerie Half, a Melrose Avenue gallery specialising in antiques and early 20th-century furniture, Seventh House gallery features a more modern interpretation of design, mixing earlier examples of modernism with pieces from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as contemporary design.

Conceived like a house, the gallery’s interiors are curated to be in dialogue with Gehry’s original architectural features. Described as ‘an understated token of early Gehry architecture’, Danziger Studio and Residences is located at the intersection of Melrose Avenue with North Orange Drive, and appears as two offset grey cubes with a stucco façade. Designed in 1965 and commissioned by graphic designer Louis Danziger, the building explored some of the themes that would later recur in the architect’s work, including material exploration and the intersection between aesthetics and sustainability.

Inside, the airy structure is defined by exposed ceiling beams and tall windows, giving the space a distinct lightness. The interiors of the historic landmark were kept as a home, with each room maintaining its original function and at the same time displaying modern works by the likes of Maria Pergay, Enzo Mari and Le Corbusier. These are complemented by contemporary pieces by American designers Courtney Applebaum and Giancarlo Valle, while New York-based Green River Project LLC has created sculptural bedroom furniture among other pieces. In the compact courtyard, designs include Gae Aulenti’s legendary poolside furniture as well as 1950s lounge seats by Walter Lamb. 

The house's architecture means Seventh House gallery is completely insulated from the busy streets outside, and makes it a peaceful, quiet design escape in the city.

INFORMATION

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7001 Melrose Avenue
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The highly anticipated new Conrad Los Angeles has been completed and is open for business. Set in a building designed by legendary architect Frank Gehry – located opposite his iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall – and with interiors by renowned studio Tara Bernerd & Partners, this hospitality offering is the first California property for the Conrad group (one of Hilton’s three luxury hotel brands). Combining location, design, architecture, wellness and culture, the hotel is a mesmerising proposition. 

The building’s sculptural forms and highly expressive composition follow the signature approach of Gehry’s past, well-known works. Meanwhile, Bernerd's interiors take their cues from the structure’s inherent dynamism to craft spaces that feel vibrant and full of life. At the same time, the team worked with a sense of ‘timeless elegance', they explain. ‘Working with Frank Gehry, we wanted to bring in more warmth, so we created curves and layers. The connection between indoor and outdoor has been intentional,’ says Bernerd. 

Attention to detail was paramount in creating the desired effect, which walks the tightrope between characterful and functional, rich and comfortable. There is an undulating lobby ceiling that mirrors the façades’ lines; verdant outdoor areas; a bar made out of polished and glazed lava stone that is 11,000 years old; Italian Ceppo di Gré stone features; polished concrete; and artwork curated in collaboration with Judith Tatar of Tatar Art Projects. 

A state-of-the-art in-house spa ensures guests are relaxed through a range of wellness programmes, including an infrared sauna, a Gharieni Welnamis wavetable, and dedicated recovery cabins. Meanwhile, food and beverage options include two signature restaurants from chef José Andrés. The building culminates in an expansive rooftop terrace and swimming pool deck, overlooking the neighbourhood's cultural hub and downtown Los Angeles beyond, connecting visitors intrinsically to the city’s magic, as well as the warm Californian sun.

‘Conrad Los Angeles is the first urban resort of its kind, and both key to the project and an exciting yet pivotal approach was to ensure that the warmth and layers we introduced melted seamlessly into the architecture of Frank Gehry. [There are] surprises from arrival: the proximity to almost touching Walt Disney Concert Hall, the discovery of the bars, terraces and then, when you think you have seen it all, the gallery that leads out to the promenade and second bar and restaurant and sunset deck!’ says Bernerd. 

INFORMATION
tarabernerd.com

hilton.com

foga.com

Frank Gehry’s first residential buildings in the UK, Prospect Place at London’s Battersea Power Station, have welcomed their first occupants. The two buildings comprise a total of 308 homes, marking the completion of part of the Battersea Power Station regeneration project ahead of its opening to the public in September 2022.

The homes are a combination of studios, apartments, four-bedroom townhouses and penthouses. While all have a unique design, they subscribe to common codes, including an emphasis on spacious, open-plan living and access to outside space, whether a garden or a terrace.

Two colour palettes chosen by Gehry Partners define the new living quarters. The ‘London’ palette nods to the history of the building, reflecting its industrial past with metal finishes and rich textures, while lighter hues prevail in the ‘LA’ palette encompassing pale woods and warmer tones.

‘I love London,’ says Gehry Partners’ founder Frank Gehry. ‘It has culture, history and diversity and the buildings we have created at Battersea Power Station are designed to stand artfully on their own amongst all of that, whilst also framing an internationally recognised icon. It is important we create social places for future generations and our goal from the start has been to create a neighbourhood that connects to the historic fabric of the city of London but also has its own identity and integrity.’

Residents will also be able to access the amenities of the neighbouring Battersea Roof Gardens. Designed by Foster + Partners, these apartments come equipped with rooftop gardens designed by James Corner of Field Operations, workspaces, a cinema and a gym. High street Electric Boulevard, Prospect Park and a children’s playground round out the neighbourhood facilities.

‘Frank Gehry and his team have gone above and beyond in the delivery of world-class buildings at Prospect Place,’ says chief executive officer at Battersea Power Station Development Company, Simon Murphy. ‘It is an honour that Frank’s first UK residential project is at Battersea Power Station and its completion marks an important milestone in the development. When we first designed the masterplan, we envisioned a thriving community where people can live, work and play, and with every milestone achieved, we are ever closer to making that vision a reality, particularly as we prepare to open the Power Station to the public from September.’

INFORMATION

batterseapowerstation.co.uk

This October, Louis Vuitton and Frank Gehry are coming together to launch a groundbreaking collection of perfumes. Les Extraits collection features five new fragrances by the brand’s master perfumer, Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud, in bottles designed by Gehry. Both figures are titans in their respective industries, but this Louis Vuitton perfume collaboration marks a new chapter for them both as they deconstruct and reshape their previous work. 

For Cavallier-Belletrud, this means his first collection of perfumes from Louis Vuttion with no top, heart or base notes, the basic building blocks of a typical fragrance. ‘I wanted to venture where no one goes anymore. To reinvent the notion of an Extrait [the most highly concentrated form of perfume] in a contemporary way,’ he says. 

For Les Extraits, the perfumer has reassessed perfume’s major families, ‘to give them a twist, expand them, exaggerate certain facets, and reveal purity. In revisiting chapters, florals, chypres, and ambers, you create movement and rounded, caressing forms every time.’ 

Those ‘rounded, caressing forms’ find their visual counterpart in Gehry’s fragrance bottle, his first ever. The bottle is a continuation, in miniature, of Gehry’s now iconic design of the Fondation Louis Vuitton. The nautically inspired building used 3,600 curved glass panels to create the impression of 12 sails colliding in a mass of fluid, wind-swept lines. This bottle, conceived as the 13th sail, echoes that movement with a curved glass body and a crumpled aluminium top that sways like fabric caught in the wind. A complementary leather case features similar, twisting shapes. 

‘How do we make it so captivating that it catches the eye and says something both about the house and its contents?’ muses Gehry. ‘That’s how we started looking at these shapes. We wanted to create something that elicits emotion. That brings a sensation to life. That when you look at it, you say, “Oh!” Then when you smell it, you say, “Ah!”’

INFORMATION

louisvuitton.com

A version of this article appears in Wallpaper’s October 2021, 25th Anniversary Issue (W*270), on newsstands now and available to subscribers – 12 digital issues for $12/£12/€12

The Luma Foundation's anticipated creative campus in the historic French city of Arles is ready for its grand launch. The complex is throwing open its doors to the public tomorrow, 26 June 2021, featuring a striking central tower designed by Frank Gehry.

Located at the Parc des Ateliers, the 27-acre campus is the brainchild of Swiss art maverick Maja Hoffmann, who established the Luma Foundation in 2004. Since, she has masterminded a network of creative projects in the city, collaborating with a roll call of renowned creative figures – like artist Jorge Pardo on hotel and artist residence l’Arlatan, for instance, and Selldorf Architects on the conversion of four of the campus' former railway factories into arts spaces. Tom Eccles, Liam Gillick, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Philippe Parreno, and Beatrix Ruf are all named as advisors on the project, which has been ongoing since 2008. The work of more than 100 artists and innovators has already been presented across the city over the last decade, but this summer marks the campus' official opening.

The unquestioned architectural centrepiece of Luma Arles – Gehry's twisting, geometric tower – is finished with 11,000 stainless steel panels, and boasts the American architect's singular vision for creating otherworldly, gravity-defying structures. The 15,000 sq m space will be home to exhibition galleries, project spaces and the foundation's research and archive facilities, alongside workshop and seminar rooms. Gehry quotes Van Gogh’s Starry Night, the ‘soaring rock clusters you find in the region', and ‘the plan of the Roman amphitheatre' as inspirations for the building's design. Landscape architect Bas Smets has lent his eye to the surrounding gardens and public park.

Arles has long been a cultural hotspot. It's a haven for painters chasing the Provencal sunlight on fields of lavender, sunflowers and the Côte d’Azur, while the city's summer photography festival, Les Rencontres d’Arles, brings more than 100,000 visitors in a typical year. Hoffman's campus promises to attract a new and global audience, with Luma Arles set to be a collaborative space for ‘artists and innovators of the future'. ‘There is one driving metaphor for Luma at the Parc des Ateliers: that of a living organism,' says Hoffman. ‘As such the balance between form and function determines its viability. It is about composing a polyphonic score where everything is ordered, yet where everything is possible.'

The opening programme will include work by 45 artists and designers and special new commissions for Luma by international artists, such as Etel Adnan, Ólafur Elíasson, Koo Jeong A, Kapwani Kiwanga, Helen Marten, Pierre Huyghe, Carsten Höller, Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija. 

INFORMATION

luma-arles.org

ADDRESS

Luma Arles
Parc des Ateliers
33 avenue
Victor Hugo 13200
Arles

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Miami is a heady swirl of art deco architecture and luxury condos, tropical climes and pristine beaches, glitzy nightclubs and well-worn divebars. More recently, however, it has embraced a series of trophy buildings designed by the Who’s Who in architecture, from Rafael Viñoly to Frank Gehry, Foster + Partners, Bjarke Ingels, and Herzog & de Meuron. Here, we look at the architectural projects and real estate developments shaping Miami today.

Park Grove, OMA

Rem Koolhaas’ firm has already made its mark on a significant swathe of Miami, with the completion of a trio of buildings in Faena District in 2016. Now, it’s full steam ahead with a multi-tower residential enclave in Coconut Grove, backed by powerhouse developers The Related Group and Terra Group. Drawing inspiration from Biscayne Bay, OMA partner and project lead Shohei Shigematsu has imagined the towers as linked barrier islands. Each residence features open floor plans, 12ft ceilings with floor-to-ceiling windows, kitchens and bathrooms by designer William Sofield, Sub-Zero and Wolf appliances, expansive terraces, and private elevator access. Over 50,000 sq ft of the development has been parcelled for luxury lifestyle amenities, ensuring residents will almost certainly never want to leave Park Grove. Read more here.

LOCATION: Coconut Grove, Miami
YEAR: 2013 – ongoing
KEY FEATURES: Wine tasting rooms with private storage, five acres of private gardens by Enzo Enea, art collection, mind-body wellness lounge and bio-sauna, Meyer Davis-designed interiors, restaurant by James Beard Award winner Michael Schwartz

One Thousand Museum, Zaha Hadid Architects

Described astutely in a PBS documentary as ‘one of the most complex skyscrapers ever to make it off the drawing board’, One Thousand Museum was Zaha Hadid’s final undertaking before her death in 2016. Completed at the end of last year, the 62-storey tower has already cemented its status as an architectural icon of Downtown Miami’s skyline, thanks to its bold exoskeleton design. The 84 museum-quality units have been realised as half-floor, full-floor and duplex residences, fitted with Gatto Cucine kitchens, Gaggenau and Sub-Zero appliances, Molteni & C custom closets, integrated smart technology, and a choice of luxurious finishes chosen by Hadid herself. Potential buyers can also choose from curated collection of turnkey residences by design houses Artefacto, B&B Italia, Roche Bobois, Meridiani, and Luxury Living Group. Read more here.

LOCATION: Biscayne Boulevard, Miami
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: Exoskeleton design, aquatic centre, rooftop helipad, bank-quality vault, indoor/outdoor spa, private beach club, on-demand house car, multimedia theatre, specialised security and valet personnel

El Espacio 23, Jorge M Pérez

Forty years in the making, El Espacio 23 is a private museum dedicated to philanthropist and entrepreneur Jorge M Pérez’s vast art collection and first opened to the public during Art Basel Miami Beach last year. A passion project of the billionaire real estate developer, the space is housed in a repurposed 28,000 sq ft warehouse in Miami’s Allapattah neighbourhood and designed by Pérez himself who sees it as an extension of his home (amenities include a library, living room and bar area to entertain guests). The year-round programming includes a series of residencies for artists and curators representing a range of diverse range of disciplines and ethnic backgrounds, as well as activations inspired by the surrounding neighbourhood of Allapattah.

LOCATION: Allapattah, Miami
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: Artist apartments reserved for residency programmes, shared workspace, library, bar and lounge area

Rubell Museum, Selldorf Architects

When Mera and Don Rubell were looking for an architect to convert a former industrial complex into a museum-worthy setting for their family’s collection, the Miami mega-collectors turned to art world favourite Annabelle Selldorf. Located in Miami’s emerging Allapattah neighbourhood, the museum will draw on the Rubells’ extensive holdings of over 7,200 works by more than 1,000 artists. Selldorf Architects gutted and transformed six warehouse units into a cohesive 100,000 sq ft campus – tripling the exhibition capacity of the collection’s previous space. The Rubell Museum now unfolds across a single level, comprising 40 galleries, a flexible events and performance space, a richly stocked research library, a bookstore, an outdoor bar and restaurant serving Basque cuisine. Read more here.

LOCATION: Allapattah, Miami
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: Refinished concrete floors, single-storey complex, courtyard garden featuring rare plants native to the Everglades and Florida

Eighty Seven Park, Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Flanked by a 35-acre public park to the south and a private park to the north, few condominium projects in Miami – if any – can boast the green credentials of Renzo Piano’s Eighty Seven Park. ‘What we’re expressing is that this building belongs to nature,’ said the Italian architect when we first checked on the development’s progress in 2017. The 70 residences, spread over 18 elliptical floors, emphasise outdoor living – each comes with a generously sized wraparound terrace ranging from 15-25ft wide. Paris-based design firm RDAI notes the interior design was built around natural materials collected at the site: the Venetian terrazzo flooring that recalls Miami’s white sand beaches, for example. Read more here.

LOCATION: North Shore, Miami Beach
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: 24-hour concierge and butler service, enoteca (wine shop), onsite botanist, oceanfront swimming pools, spa, state-of-the-art fitness centre, outdoor juice bar, private elevator access to all units

Monad Terrace, Ateliers Jean Nouvel

‘From the beginning – and always – it has been important to me to put the spirit of place in all my work,’ says Jean Nouvel. ‘Here in Miami, I wanted to create a building that is like the reflection of the sun on the water.’ Comprising 59 luxury waterfront residences nestled around a shimmering lagoon, Monad Terrace in South Beach is the Pritzker Prize winner’s first and only residential project in Florida. The striking sawtooth façade is made up of honeycomb glass screens, which diffuse sunlight and provide privacy to residents while maintaining unobstructed views of Biscayne Bay. Vertical gardens on the north and south façades offer additional shade.

LOCATION: South Beach, Miami Beach
YEAR: 2020 (under construction)
KEY FEATURES: Honeycomb sawtooth façade, 116ft swimming pool and hot tub, climbing gardens, private or semi-private elevator access, wellness centre, residents’ lounge

Residences by Armani/Casa, César Pelli

This sleek, monolithic oceanfront tower was the last project designed by venerable architect César Pelli before his death in July last year. The 56-storey structure is composed of ‘two intertwined sail-like shapes, billowing and expanding as they rise’, says Gregg Jones, principal of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, while its blue-hued glass was designed to flow seamlessly into the water below. Giorgio Armani has stepped in personally to deliver Armani/Casa’s first residential project in the US, envisioning elegantly understated interiors fitted materials like white gold leaf, onyx and bronzed mirrors. Imagined as ‘homes in the sky’, the residences feature expansive terraces, master suites with his-and-hers bathrooms, and are wired with smart technology to access select building amenities.

LOCATION: Sunny Isles Beach
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: Ocean-view yoga studio with Pilates equipment, Armani/Privé lounge, museum-quality art collection, 24-hour multilingual concierge service, cigar room, wine cellar, two-storey revitalisation spa, exclusive beach amenities, classic Hollywood-inspired movie theatre

Mr C Residences, Arquitectonica

Fourth-generation members of the storied Cipriani family, Maggio and Ignazio Cipriani are the forces behind Mr C, a hospitality and residential brand for luxury modern living. Following projects in Los Angeles and New York, the brothers are now making waves with Miami, teaming up with Terra’s David Martin, architect Ray Fort of Arquitectonica, and interior design firm Meyer Davis to bring a taste of old world Europe to a bayside residential tower in Coconut Grove. The 118 residences in the 21-storey building will feature 11ft ceilings, open floor plan layouts, private outdoor terraces, custom-designed Italian kitchens by ITALKRAFT with terrazzo and quartz countertops, European porcelain tile floors, and spa-like bathrooms.

LOCATION: Coconut Grove, Miami
YEAR: Expected Q3 2022
KEY FEATURES: Sail-inspired design, private Bellini bar on the pool deck, speciality gourmet market, lifestyle and nautical concierge, Bayshore owners’ club, peloton studio, indoor yoga studio, in-home delivery from on-site café

A reconstruction of the living room of the model home presented by Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret at the 1929 Salon d’Automne in Paris, when the trio’s now iconic tubular chrome furniture was first shown to the public. The pieces, which visitors are welcome to try, were recreated by Cassina in the finishes and colours used at the time. The designs were later named, from left to right, ‘LC6’ dining table, ‘LC7’ chair, ‘LC3’ and ‘LC2’ armchairs, ‘LC1 Villa Church’ chair, and ‘LC4’ chaise longue.

This October, the Fondation Louis Vuitton is dedicating all of its 11 galleries, covering the four floors of the Frank Gehry-designed building in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne, to the pioneering French architect and designer Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999). Including 180 pieces of design and 180 artworks by 17 different artists, drawn from the Archives Charlotte Perriand, but also from private collectors, international museums and the Italian furniture brand Cassina, the show shines the spotlight on an exceptional woman who defined an entirely new way of living, and narrates the evolution from modern to contemporary society.

Reconstruction is the show’s modus operandi. Exhibitions and interiors devised by Perriand have been reassembled to her exact specifications. Her groundbreaking tubular chrome furniture, created alongside Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, and later, independently designed pieces in wood and bamboo come to life in their original context. Perriand liked to juxtapose her pieces with artwork from the likes of Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Hans Hartung and Alexander Calder, and these too have been painstakingly sourced to recreate her intended displays.

The reconstructions start with Perriand’s Saint-Sulpice apartment from 1927, followed by the 1929 Salon d’Automne, and La Maison du Jeune Homme, shown at the Universal Exposition in Brussels in 1935. A painting by Léger, commissioned by Perriand for that project, was presumed lost, but curators tracked it down in a private collection and have secured it for the show. Further reproductions include the Refuge Tonneau, a mountain shelter designed in 1938 with Jeanneret and since created by Cassina; rooms for the Maison du Mexique and student housing units for the Maison de la Tunisie in 1952; and the Maison de Thé, made in 1993 for Unesco. Also present will be her 1934 Maison au Bord de L’eau, reproduced in 2013 by Louis Vuitton for Design Miami, and now fittingly displayed next to the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s outdoor water features.

To illustrate the years Perriand spent living in Japan, where she worked as the official advisor on industrial design to the Japanese government, and her dialogue with its culture, the show also includes reproductions of her exhibitions in Tokyo: ‘Sélection, Tradition, Création’ from 1941, and ‘Proposition d’une Synthèse des Arts’, from 1955.

Perriand collaborated with Le Corbusier and Jeanneret on the now-iconic chaise longue and the ‘Grand Confort’ armchair. These were presented to the public at the 1929 Salon d’Automne, within a 90 sq m model home that served as a manifesto for modern living. According to Jean-Paul Claverie, art advisor to the president at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the best way to present these pieces was to remake the original display entirely, including drawing room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. To oversee this resuscitation, the foundation called upon Arthur Rüegg, the architect and historian responsible for the recent restoration of the Pavilion Le Corbusier in Zurich. Cassina, with whom Perriand started a working relationship in 1964, not only provided pieces from its Perriand collection, made expressly in the finishes and colours used at the time, but replicated the metal cabinets that doubled as partitions between the drawing room and the rest of the space, and produced new replicas of several pieces, including a double bed and a daybed. In a departure from standard museum practice, visitors are encouraged to use the furniture in the recreated living space.

The show took four years to plan and execute. Aside from the usual research and careful negotiation with private collectors, galleries, estates and over 40 different international museums to coax essential works, it also involved complex restoration work and the recreation of total environments. In this the foundation collaborated closely with Pernette Perriand, who had worked alongside her mother and now manages her estate, and Pernette’s husband Jacques Barsac, Perriand’s biographer.

Within a partial reconstruction of the 1955 Synthèse des Arts exhibition in Japan, ‘you will really see how Perriand straddles disciplines’, says chief curator Olivier Michelon. ‘You will see a table, but also tapestries by Le Corbusier and Léger, a drawing by Hartung, and so on. She had a specific vision of art and space. The art alone could have warranted its own show, but here you get to see it in a real context.’

Claverie hopes visitors to the show will come to recognise Perriand as a pioneer of modernity, who touched on every aspect of our lives. ‘She elevated the place of the woman in society, highlighted our relationship with the environment and nature, and championed the integration of the artist and art.’

In a life that bookended the 20th century, Perriand never stopped creating. More than a designer, she was a visionary who was committed to changing the world softly. And our way of living today would not be the same without her.

As originally featured in the October 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*247)

INFORMATION

‘Charlotte Perriand’ is on view from 2 October – 4 February. fondationlouisvuitton.com

ADDRESS

Fondation Louis Vuitton
8 Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi
75116 Paris

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A new office building at Facebook's headquarters at Menlo Park by Frank Gehry has opened. Named MK21, the office building was designed and built in less than 18 months and has a focus on sustainability.

The building is an extension to MK20, a previous building that completed in 2015. ‘All the things we learned doing building 20 prepared us for building 21,’ says Gehry in a video released by Facebook on the project. ‘We were getting lessons in Facebook culture and we’re making a new kind of architecture within that culture.’

Among the improvements and enhancements to the extended design, rooflines were updated to bring in more natural light, the roof garden was brought down into the office space and the circulation was concentrated to the heart of the building into a central channel.

Aiming to have a minimal impact on its environment and bring back nature to its formerly industrial context, MK21 includes a reclaimed water system – designed to save approximately 17 million gallons annually. Solar power supports activities at MPK 21, where there is a 1.4-megawatt photo-voltaic solar panel system on the roof and on the carports.

Nature and wildlife are embraced by the design that features fritted windows to protect birds as well as a 3.6 acre rooftop garden featuring over 200 trees and a half-mile meandering pathway, helping employees to unwind and relax.

Other outdoor social spaces filled with green plants and scenic landscape design include the ‘Town Square’, a sheltered green space with soaring 12m-high redwood trees, while ‘The Bowl’ is a courtyard designed like an amphitheatre to connect MPK 21 with the earlier deisgned MPK20, also designed by Gehry.

The office interior was designed with teamwork and collaboration as a priority. The offices are open plan, yet also include designated areas for quiet, independent work. A single pathway runs the length of the building like a stem connecting each part of the office. Following the path will unfold five dining rooms, 15 art installations and a vast event and meeting space.

Facebook continues to add to the Menlo Park hub and plan the completion of a two-acre park with public plaza and event space for 2019. This will also include a bike and pedestrian bridge over the Bayfront Expressway for the whole community.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Gehry Partners website

Frank Gehry has launched new designs for the Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center in Inglewood, Los Angeles, the first permanent, purpose-built facility for Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), an initiative of the LA Phil founded in 2007. This new building will join Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl as a key hub for the LA Phil's cultural activities.

The design transforms the former branch office of Security Pacific Bank, located at 101 South La Brea Avenue, in the civic center of the City of Inglewood. The light-filled, flexible facility for rehearsals, classes, and performances serving as many as 500 students a year, providing a community gathering space and a cultural resource.

YOLA currently serves more than 1,200 students in South Los Angeles, the Rampart District, Westlake/MacArthur Park, and East LA, with free instruments, intensive music training and academic support, empowering participants to become ‘vital citizens, leaders, and agents of change’.

The new building will enable YOLA to double its student intake and continue working to bring music education to the communities it serves.

Led by Gustavo Dudamel, music and artistic director, YOLA has become one of the most influential community-based music education programmes in the United States.

‘It’s a privilege for me to work with Gustavo to create a place where students can feel comfortable, secure, and welcome as they learn to express themselves through music,’ says Gehry.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the LA Phil website and the Gehry Partners, LLP website

Over the last 20 years, Bilbao has transformed from a rusty-round-the-edges port town to a cosmopolitan service city. Its pre-existing patchwork of 18th century townhouses and severe Francoist facades has been punctuated by contemporary structure upon surprising contemporary structure.

‘There’s two Bilbaos: the one before Guggenheim, and one after,’ says the museum’s director, Juan Ignacio Vidarte ahead of Reflections, a week-long celebration of its 20th birthday.

Indeed, it seems a roster of the world’s most famous architects have spent the last two decades using Bilbao as their playground. Santiago Calatrava’s white, tied arch Zubizuri bridge (1997), is framed by Arata Isozaki’s The Isozaki Atea (2008), comprising two, 83m tall towers that dwarf the smattering of dock buildings that still cling to the edge of the Nervión.

Elsewhere, Sir Norman Foster’s glass-domed Metro entrance ways, (affectionately called ‘Fosteritos’ by locals) brightfully arch out of the pavement. And Philippe Starck’s Alhóndiga Cultural and Leisure Center (2010) houses a 6000 sq m indoor plaza, peppered by 43 pillars that hold up a glass-bottomed rooftop pool.

Today, Bilbao is a map of contemporary architectural abandon that simply wouldn't have been drawn without Frank Gehry’s cultural calling card 20 years ago. But, as Vidarte is keen to point out, Guggenheim was far from the sole player in this city-wide regeneration. Instead, it was ‘the catalyst for change’ and a ‘beacon’.

Last week, Reflections ignited this great, titanium-coated beacon literally. A 20-minute lightshow, created by 59 Productions (of London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony fame) was projected onto the vast, reflective North-facing wall of the museum each evening.

World-leaders in large scale projection, the artist-led team made use of 3 miles of fibre optic cable, 120 tonnes of equipment, 160,000 watts of speaker power and more than a million lumens of lighting equipment, in a public artwork that spanned a Guggenheim-worthy scale. The thousands of Bilbaínos that gathered to watch the performance paid testiment to the Guggenheim's local popularity. 

At moments, the museum appeared to crumble away into the river, at others, it’s alive with flames. One sequence sees the waves lapping at the hull as the museum is transformed into a giant blue boat; another sees Louise Bourgeois’ giant spider Maman (1999) come alive to spin her web across the facade. The artistry and sheer technological achievement of the production pays homage to Gehry’s masterpiece, and all the others housed inside it, celebrating them as the progressive, city-shaping works that they are.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Gugenheim Bilbao website

ADDRESS

Guggenheim
Abandoibarra Etorb
48009 Bilbao
Bizkaia, Spain

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

This month marks Wallpaper’s coming of age: our 21st anniversary. It’s also my tenth year as editor-in-chief, having switched from being creative director in April 2007. I must confess that my coming of age came a number of years earlier. Time flies.

One of the earliest projects I worked on in my new role was our inaugural October Guest Editors’ Issue. Now, many media outlets have given over their editorial reins to appropriate talents in order to bring a fresh perspective and generate some PR buzz. But because of Wallpaper’s multi-faceted editorial remit, we felt our spin on the concept should be equally all-encompassing – we would invite not just one, but up to three diverse creatives each year who would reflect our offering, but also push us to try new things.

So year one saw a purist industrial designer, Dieter Rams, an iconoclastic artist, Jeff Koons, and a much-more-than-a-fashion-designer fashion designer, Hedi Slimane. To rebalance the unintentional male bias for 2007, the next year saw Louise Bourgeois, Zaha Hadid and Rei Kawakubo bring art, architecture, and fashion girl power to our pages. Subsequent editions have seen Karl Lagerfeld, Philippe Starck, David Lynch, Robert Wilson, Kraftwerk, Christian Marclay, Lang Lang, Ole Scheeren, Taryn Simon, Laurie Simmons, Elmgreen & Dragset, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, William Wegman and Liz Diller have fun at our expense. That makes 21 in total, and therefore a convenient excuse to take a retrospective look, as well as request some updates for our latest issue. (Our thickest issue yet, the spine also happens to measure a serendipitous 21mm)

In addition to a 20-plus page section within the magazine, each of our Guest Editors was also invited to design a cover. Many called for unusual paper technologies – Hedi used specialist printing inks to simulate glitter, whereas Karl invited readers to strip the Dior Homme suit off his muse by means of a peelable layer. Starck constructed a transparent front cover using three layers of tracing paper. And Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hütter tacked on a pair of 3D specs, to go with his 3D cover portrait and portfolio of exclusive images tied to key Kraftwerk compositions.

If I had to pick one favourite project it would be Zaha’s. Her cover was a gatefold construction using multiple die-cuts, while inside she produced a 16-page die-cut sculpture, which was a take on her ‘Lotus’ room installation at that year’s Venice Biennale. ‘I want to put a big hole in the magazine’, she told us. We dutifully obliged.

Zaha was profiled by art critic Matthew Collings, who visited her at her London offices and provided a pleasant distraction from discussions about cement. Collings and ‘Big Z’, as he affectionately called her, hit it off immediately. ‘Her architecture is the greatest art of the moment,’ he said.

So it’s a huge pleasure for me and I think a fitting tribute to Zaha (who tragically passed away 18 months ago) that this anniversary issue’s cover was created by Zaha Hadid Architects and its principal and torchbearer, Patrik Schumacher.

Enjoy this special issue and raise a glass to Big Z.

Tony Chambers, Editor-in-Chief

As originally featured in the October 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*223)

Our thickest issue yet, the spine also happens to measure a serendipitous 21mm, in keeping with our celebration of 21 years, and 21 guest editors

INFORMATION

The October 2017 issue of Wallpaper* is out now. Subscribe here

After the triumphant debut of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in northern Spain, Anne d’Harnoncourt (then director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art) offered Gehry a bold new challenge. 'She said, "You just made a building in Bilbao that’s sculptural, exciting, and created a miracle. Could you do the same thing to an existing building? But you can’t do anything on the outside,"' explains Gehry. 'I loved that idea. I think it’s a very perverse idea, and that’s the kind of stuff I like.'

Selected in 2006 as architect for the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s ambitious interior renovation, he recently celebrated the kickoff of its latest phase: a three-year, $196 million project that will open to the public a total of 90,000 sq ft, all within the building’s original footprint.

'This is a building that was planned in the second decade of the twentieth century. The role of museums has changed dramatically since then,' says Timothy Rub, director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 'The work that Frank and his staff have done to reorganise the building—to rezone it, so to speak—is critically important. It will work far better in the near future than it does today.'

Designed by the collaborating architectural firms of Horace Trumbauer and Zantzinger, Borie, and Medary, the grandly scaled neoclassical building opened in 1928. Subsequent renovations, including the once-exuberant 1980s manoeuvres of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown 'clogged the arteries' according to Gehry. 'Classical buildings have x and y axes, and this museum had that, but it was obfuscated by a lot of interventions over the years that didn’t respect that geometry,' he explains. 'The DNA and the bones of this place are really fantastic, and they showed us the way to make it all work.'

The current 'core project' focuses on the heart of the building. It will remove the current auditorium, opening a west-east axis and creating a multi-level public space (and circulation hub) known as 'the forum' complete with a grand staircase. Additional galleries for American art and contemporary art will be joined by a newly designed restaurant, café, and meeting rooms. The first results will be apparent in 2019, when the historic north entrance is reopened and a major section of the long-shuttered vaulted walkway – a splendid north-south promenade that stretches 640 feet – is completed.

'There are going to be some "wow" moments,' predicts Rub. 'To be able to walk in and see the building unfold in front of you and begin to map out your path through it, is not only satisfying, it’s also going to help the building function.'

Before commencing this 'clarifying' phase, which will continue through the spring of 2020, Gehry was tasked with upgrading the museum’s back-of-house functions (care, storage, and movement of the more than 240,000 objects in the collection). 'They had me start by building a new loading dock, and I thought "Why the hell are they building a loading dock?"' he says. 'Anyway, we did it and we built it, and it’s the best damn loading dock in history!' The 68,000-sq ft art handling facility opened in 2012.

Gehry has found the rather stealthy work of reimagining a museum’s insides energising and inspiring rather than restrictive 'We just did a small concert hall in Berlin in an office building, which maybe I wouldn’t have done if I had not had this experience,' he says. 'I think you can turn potentially limiting things into an asset.'

At 88 ('That’s a little precarious, but I’m swimming and I’m working'), he is especially eager—even a little impatient – to see this most recent phase completed. 'The Philadelphia Museum of Art represents a nexus of American art and culture, of history and the future,' adds Gehry. 'Can it do what they did in Bilbao? Hell, yes! This is going to be an amazing museum.'

INFORMATION

For more information visit, The Philadelphia Museum of Art website

Artist James Jean lives and works in a modern house with history. The Hide Out, in the Little Osaka district of Los Angeles, was designed by Frank Gehry in the 1970s, but the clients, art collector Edwin Janss Jr and his wife, radically altered his plans. The house became a private gallery, guest house and entertaining space. Just a handful of Gehry’s original ideas made it through, including a vast skylight illuminating the ground floor. For Jean, who was looking for a new home after an extended period in Japan and Asia, this context was not only intriguing but also offered relative freedom for him and his architect, Dan Brunn, to adapt and tailor the Hide Out. ‘Since art is an all-consuming aspect of my life, I could see that the house could become an efficient machine for the production of my work, while also functioning as a fun and beautiful environment for my family,’ says Jean. ‘The history certainly added to its allure, but even without that history the space was incredibly special and well suited to my work.’

Born in Taiwan, Jean moved to the US with his family as a boy and grew up in New Jersey. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York, he began a career as a commercial artist and illustrator, working on covers for DC Comics and artwork for clients in the creative and advertising sectors, including Atlantic Records and Prada. From 2008 onwards, Jean refocused on painting. Exhibiting his work worldwide, he started to spend an increasing amount of time in Japan, where his wife comes from. Today, Jean exhibits and spends part of the year there. His Japanese influences have extended into the Hide Out, which includes a tea room and a garden created by Japanese designer Hitoshi Kitajima. Jean and Brunn first met at an art festival in Hawaii. It was a fortuitous meeting for both, and Jean and his wife later spent a few weeks staying at Brunn’s LA home as they looked for a place to buy.

A pull-down bed allows the library and tea room to be converted into guest quarters

The Hide Out was the perfect solution – a raw, open space that could be moulded to Jean’s needs. ‘Interestingly, the design choices I made align to Gehry’s original intentions for the house, although expressed in my own language,’ says Brunn. ‘My intent was to take inspiration from James’ own work and mesh it with Gehry, and yet create a unique feel to the space and elements. Picking up cues from the arabesque strokes in James’ paintings, combined with some sculptural Gehry geometry, we created a new experience.’ The fresh focal point for the reinvented house is a sculpted, latticed timber staircase, drawn up by Brunn on his computer and handmade in walnut.

The fluid, semi-open-plan spaces of the ground floor largely revolve around this centrepiece. It leads you through the building from front to back and to the upper level, which has two bedrooms and an open roof garden, originally conceived by Gehry as a glass-encased box. The heart of the house is a large, open space with Jean’s art studio on one side, benefiting from the upgraded skylight, and the main seating area on the other, floating upon a charcoal rug on the concrete floor. This space, which flows through to the new kitchen, also hosts the family dining area. The emphasis on fluid living continues in the library, which can act as part of the main space or be separated off by a vast pivoting door. The library doubles as a guest room, with a pull-down bed hidden in one wall, and joins with the walnut-panelled tea room to one side.

The exterior has been refreshed with new landscaping and cladding

This is another crafted gem, offering a restful retreat that connects vividly with the garden. ‘Since moving into the house we have actually lived in the space in a variety of different configurations,’ says Jean. ‘We began by using the tea room and library as our bedroom, since it was easy to keep an eye on our baby son in one space, but now that he’s older we have migrated upstairs. My studio has also gone through a few configurations.’ Sitting right at the heart of the house, the open studio suits Jean perfectly.

Top-lit and spacious, it is practical as a painting and creative space, while keeping him connected to the daily rhythm of family life. ‘There are constant interruptions throughout the day, but they provide a much-needed friction to creativity that sometimes leads to more interesting work,’ says Jean. ‘I love the light and the open space and how the simplicity of the house is punctuated by incredible details, like the staircase and the tea room. The façade of the house doesn’t reveal much, but once you step through the door it’s like entering the playground of my mind.’

As originally featured in the May 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*218)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Dan Brunn website and the James Jean website

It was nine years ago to the day that I first visited Abu Dhabi. I was there for the launch party of the island of Nurai, a tadpole-shaped sand mass about 20km off the coast of Abu Dhabi, which local developer Zaya and luxury real estate marketer Michael Shvo were planning to turn into an off-shore paradise. New York based industrial designer Dror Benshetrit, who was tasked with creating the overall scheme, drew up plans for 36,500 sq m of over-water villas and 31 meticulously landscaped beachfront estates. Nurai would be the height of luxury but the developers’ commitment to innovative architecture and design would set it apart from previous Emirati developments aimed at the extremely well-heeled.

Curator Jean-Luc Martinez opens up about the Louvre Abu Dhabi in our April issue – see a preview here

These were the heady days before the financial crisis hit, and Shvo was a swashbuckling figure with a flair for theatrics. He constructed a multi-million dollar sales centre replete with an elevated boardwalk above actual water and virtual reality fly-throughs on floor-to-ceiling screens. He ferried in 300 potential buyers by helicopter, orchestrated a fireworks display, and enlisted Lionel Ritchie for a private performance. Over $750m worth of real estate was bought within the next two days, prompting Shvo to declare that he’d ‘made gold from sand’. But just a few weeks later, markets plunged. Construction on Nurai continued, though its plans had to be scaled down. Other less fortunate projects never left the drawing board.

On the same trip, I also visited Saadiyat Island and saw the ambitious plans to make Abu Dhabi a cultural capital, a highbrow rival to noisy neighbour Dubai’s flashier developments such as The Palm and The World. It would be the largest new artistic cluster on the planet, with monumental contributions from architectural titans Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando and Norman Foster. Beset with inevitable post-crash complications, only one of the five grand projects is now close to completion – Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi, a 600ft-wide dome raised above waterways, plazas and galleries. Read John Arlidge’s exclusive interview with Louvre president director Jean-Luc Martinez, the man charged with making a success of the project, who admits he’s ‘just a little bit terrified’. We’ll be back there later in the year and be the first to reveal the interiors of a remarkable monument to Abu Dhabi’s ambitions, architectural and otherwise. It’s been a long time coming, but some things are worth waiting for.

As originally featured in the April 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*217)

INFORMATION

The April 2017 issue of Wallpaper* is out now. Subscribe here

A new edition from Metropolis Books, Never Built New York explores what the Big Apple might look like in an alternative universe of unbuilt projects. Through sketches, renderings, prints and models, co-authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell tell the stories of nearly 200 projects proposed by architects over the last two centuries. More than just failed plans, the unrealised buildings make us question how the urban environment effects how we live today.

In the foreword to the book, Daniel Libeskind compares architects to composers, seeing their drawings as scores hidden in the back of drawers; never played yet laden with genius. The book shows architects as idealistic, yet often unrealistic dreamers; the Skyscraper Bridges of Raymond Hood emerge eerily from their pencil sketches and R Buckminster Fuller’s glass dome over Manhattan, half a mile in diameter, looks positively futuristic.

Many of these radical plans looked to solve problems that still haven’t been tackled. William Zeckendorf’s floating airport, designed in 1945 in an attempt to reduce air-travel time, rose 200 ft above street level on steel columns with elevators rising from runways; while Robert Moses’ 1949 expressway, planned to combat congestion through a six lane path, sat ten floors above the street.

Many of the plans would replace the structures which define New York today. What if the High Line didn’t exist and Steven Holl’s 1980 Bridge of Houses existed instead? There'd be a housing system combining studios for the city’s homeless with luxury apartments, devised to reuse space and solve social problems.

Other designs feel like a great loss to New York. Moshe Safdie’s triangular patterned M-shaped Columbus Centre, George Howe and William Lescaze’s blocky, modernist Museum of Modern Art or Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, which could have landed bang in the middle of Manhattan, could have completely changed our relationship with the city.

Somehow, Goldin and Lubell still manage to tell an architectural history of New York, through economic crises, changing mayors and governments, technological developments and trends – an inverse history of a city that never was.

INFORMATION

Never Built New York, $55, published by Metropolis Books. For more information, visit the Artbook website

When Norman Pearlstine and his wife Jane Boon decided to up sticks from their rented apartment in Manhattan and put down real roots locally two years ago, it was understandable that only something truly special would do. ‘We’d been renting downtown for a decade – first in Tribeca and then in SoHo, so we’d become very comfortable with the neighbourhood,’ explains Pearlstine. ‘We’d also gotten very comfortable with not having a doorman. Having a lot of interior space and access to private space on the roof were big factors. And we loved the idea of an old building that had good bones and a good history.’

Pearlstine, executive vice president and chief content officer of Time Inc, and Boon, an industrial engineer, shortlisted an apartment on a quiet street not far away, in a five-floor Ruskinian Gothic building dating from 1875 and designed by J Morgan Slade for soap manufacturer David S Brown. With a cast iron storefront and a robust red brick facade that features polished granite ionic columns, pointed and round arches, a Venetian-style arcade and a round attic window, the landmarked building is distinctive to say the least.

‘We used to walk past and admire this eccentric building,’ Boon recalls. ‘So when we learned that the penthouse, spread over the building’s top three floors, was for sale, it was a must to check out.’

Boon and Pearlstine worked with David Mann, the founding partner of the locally based design firm MR Architecture + Décor, to create the perfect dwelling. ‘I told a couple of other designers we interviewed that I had this fantasy of living in a cave and they sort of looked at me in horror. But David said, “Yes! I can live in a cave too. It would have to be exquisite, but…” And I knew that this was my guy,’ says Boon. ‘There are some real cave-like elements. The ceiling is painted the same colour as the walls. We didn’t shy away from dark colours; there’s a continuity. 

‘Originally, the penthouse was designed for a single guy, who I think liked to entertain his family, so it wasn’t really how Norm and I wanted to use the space,’ she continues. ‘David jokes that he turned this three-bedroom apartment into a really great one-bedroom apartment, and there is some truth to that.’ Pearlstine was happy to give his wife and Mann carte blanche: ‘Knowing David’s work and Jane’s inclinations, I had a pretty clear idea of where we were going. I very much like the dark look myself; a home is supposed to be enveloping,’ he says. ‘It’s a pretty elegant and pretty big cave. I actually love being in it, so there’s no complaint.’

Painted in tonal shades of grey, the elegant apartment is a restrained mix of modern furniture, contemporary design accents and science-inspired decorative features including floor-to-ceiling stainless steel cabinets in the dining area and molecule-like assemblages of Fritz Nagel candleholders in an alcove in the staircase. 

In the living room, two re-appropriated car headlamps, which flank a bookcase as standing floor lamps, were selected in tribute to Pearlstine’s early days as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Detroit. A ledge, located under the large round window, was built in to provide additional seating, while a glass skylight looms high overhead.

The kitchen, a cool, minimalist dream of metal countertops and appliances, is what Boon affectionately refers to as ‘a high-class morgue’. ‘Whenever I say that, Norm’s eyes kind of roll,’ Boon adds, laughing. ‘Quite frankly, Norm and I came out at the same place in a lot of instances. I’m crazy about the metal cabinets, for instance, and he likes them too.’ Pearlstine confirms: ‘What I love is the carpentry and the fabrication of everything from the closet to the bookshelves to the brushed aluminum storage unit adjacent to the Espasso dining room table, what Jane calls “the medical lab”. I find them both beautiful and functional.’

Throughout the home, artworks on the walls serve as subtle references of their owners’ vocations. ‘One of the treats that I had access to thanks to Norm’s work was the Time-Life archives; my inclination was to find photos that spoke of industry or Norm’s work,’ explains Boon. ‘That included a fantastic image by Margaret Bourke-White of a paper mill, an aerial view of the stock trading floor, and then some more machinery things that excited me. We had them blown up and printed on aluminium. They really resonate for both of us: they’re technical and a little abstract, and also speak to the businesses that we have both been involved with.’

Tucked away on the same floor is a cosy den, where books, Boon’s desk, more collectibles such as Poul Kjaerholm’s 1956 ‘PK101’ sculptural candelabra, and concealed storage are located. Gauzy, textured curtains provide just a suggestion of natural daylight, but preserve the hideaway quality of the black-walled space. 

At the core of the home, a skeleton-like staircase leads up to the roof deck above, and down to more rooms below. One of the original bedrooms was transformed into Pearlstine’s office (‘I sort of have a cave within a cave in terms of my office,’ he says) and the other into a spacious dressing room that the couple diplomatically shares. Pearlstine’s watch collection is stored here in custom-built drawers. ‘The only thing I’m collecting at this point is watches,’ he explains. ‘I have a collection of about 300; mostly American and from the 1920s and 1930s almost exclusively.’

The spacious master bedroom suite is one of the places where Boon says they spend most of their time. Flanked by a row of thin arched windows on one side and painted grey brick walls that reveal imprints of the building’s architecture on the others, the room is a haunting Gothic haven, albeit decorated with a Noguchi lamp, a Frank Gehry armchair, a sculptural cast-metal mirror and coffee table by Silas Seandel, and a pair of century-old optical instruments hanging above the bed. There’s also a ship captain’s chest, the last remnant of Pearlstine’s once large collection of chests, which Boon asked that he part with when they moved into the new apartment. 

‘A lot of this stuff is my doing, because Norm is just game. I like to joke: “Poor Norm, he’s living in Barbie’s dream house, except that Barbie is a mad scientist with a fetish for metal and black,”’ she says. ‘We took on this project not long after Norm returned to Time Inc and I would chuckle at the symmetries because we were trying to turn something kind of old and fantastic into something modern that we love. Meanwhile, Norm was at work trying to turn all these legacy assets into something people would really want to curl up with.’ 

As originally featured in the June 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*207)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the MR Architecture + Décor website

Photography: François Dischinger. Producer: Michael Reynolds

Three heavyweights of contemporary architecture go on show during the Venice Architecture Biennale. Pictured: the Norman Foster Foundation’s Droneport project at the Arsenale’s gardens was conceived as a response to Africa’s exploding population and lagging infrastructure.

There’s a saying that the writer and chef Anthony Bourdain likes to use to epitomise the attainment of success, and the perpetual recognition that said success tends to create. To paraphrase, one goes to see a band like the Rolling Stones because you know that they’re going to play Satisfaction, and peering through the crowds, thronging a trio of exhibits at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, one gets the feeling that, come rain or shine, the crowd-pleasing combination of blockbuster names and dramatic centrepieces will always pull the masses in.

Such sentiments do not diminish in the least the power of these exhibits; if anything, they make the displays during this year’s Biennale by Frank Gehry, Lord Foster and the recently departed Zaha Hadid even stronger.

Gehry’s exhibition at the Espace Louis Vuitton near the city’s teeming Piazza San Marco retraces the story of the architect’s dream of ‘designing a magnificent vessel for Paris that symbolises France’s profound cultural vocation’, referring to his dramatic design for the Fondazione Louis Vuitton in Paris that opened in 2014. Entitled ‘Building in Paris by Frank Gehry con l’intervento di Daniel Buren’, it was initially unveiled in Paris for the inauguration of the Fondation, but has been imparted new life via a special redesign by Gehry Partners. The building’s architecture is being presented via a series of scale models.

The Canadian-American architect’s display is evenly matched by artist Daniel Buren’s spectacular in-situ installation that shares main billing with the exhibition, which works with the space’s glass roof to create a striking multicoloured vision in line with the artist’s best work.

Literally flying closer to the Biennale’s ‘Reporting from the Front’ theme is the Droneport concept, revealed by the Norman Foster Foundation at the Arsenale as its inaugural project. Conceived as a response to Africa’s exploding population and lagging infrastructure, each Droneport will serve as a base from which Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can deliver emergency medical supplies to remote communities previously difficult to access by conventional means, with the maiden flight set to launch later this year in Rwanda.

‘The Droneport project is about doing “more with less”, capitalising on the recent advancements in drone technology – something that is usually associated with war and hostilities – to make an immediate life-saving impact in Africa,’ says Foster. The structure’s vaulted form is made from two layers of a new type of compressed earth block dubbed Durabric, developed by the LafargeHolcim Foundation in conjunction with researchers at the Block Research Group from ETH in Zurich and Meco Concept in Toulouse.

Last, but certainly not least, is an artfully grand tribute to the late Zaha Hadid, organised by the Fondazione Berengo cultural institution and set within the walls of the spectacular 16th century Palazzo Franchetti. While no tribute or retrospective could truly encompass the breadth of Hadid’s work and process, this abridged version will more than suffice for most. Spanning her early works – including the distinctive, competition winning Peak in Hong Kong – all the way to works set to be completed by her studio ZHA this year (such as the Port House in Antwerp), the exhibition will offer new appreciation and insight to both experienced observers and architectural neophytes.

In particular, longtime fans will be glad to see familiar works juxtaposed with detailed visualisations; three milestone projects (the evergreen Vitra Fire Station, Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati and the MAXXI Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome) are given their own dedicated spaces, alongside a room reserved for Hélène Binet’s powerful images of the studio’s built work. In a career decorated with innumerable accolades and awards, it’s fitting that the architect's first tribute exhibition takes place during what is considered by most to be the world's biggest architecture celebration.

INFORMATION

The Venice Architecture Biennale will run until the 27 November. For more information, visit the Biennale’s website

Few would look at a building as incomparable and architecturally complex as the Fondation Louis Vuitton and see a blank canvas. But in a sense, that’s how Frank Gehry arrived at inviting long-time friend Daniel Buren to create an in-situ work that casts new light – and a riot of colour – on the soaring volumes and oblique angles.

Officially revealed this week after five weeks of after-hours installation, Observatory of Light covers all 12 'sails' with a precise grid of filters to produce an effect that is dynamic and ever-changing. Depending on weather, time of day, placement within or outside the building and proximity to the pattern, the experience shifts in dramatic degrees. Sun will paint shadows; greyness will emphasise the geometry. Whereas the overlapping panels viewed up close become chaotic, from a distance, the building becomes a deconstructed rainbow. Wallpaper* visited the museum on a rainy afternoon when the light remained flat; yet the tones of dandelion, azure blue, emerald and rose made the giant partitions feel like vibrant shields.

For Buren, who says he is always inclined towards 'a multitude of different aspects', the beauty of this project came down to the interior-exterior relationship between the upper terraces and enveloping expanses of glass – and how he could subsequently introduce the sky as an active participant. Of the 3,528 total panes, 1,472 are covered in transparent PVC film and another 287 boast white strips that run parallel to the ground. Buren selected 13 colours among an existing palette of ORACAL 8300 filters.
 
While Buren’s penchant for tiling would seem to share the same vocabulary as the iconic Louis Vuitton 'Damier' pattern – a concept not lost on Marc Jacobs, who asked the artist to create the maison’s runway set for the S/S 2013 collection – he insists the checkered motif has more to do with the interplay of sky. For comparison, covering the surface in solid colour would prove impactful yet preclude the same graphic dance. As Suzanne Pagé, the Fondation’s artistic director, points out in a video detailing the project, '[Daniel] has an exceptional sense of visual strategy'.

Like several other large-scale works by Buren, this one offers an enchanting accessibility; of course, the experience is heightened from within the Fondation Louis Vuitton, but even those passing by can admire its lively statement. This, combined with the openness of interpretation is what he continues to find so satisfying. 'One of the most important things is to give to people the freedom to see the way they'd like,' he says.

INFORMATION

Observatory of Light will be on view for an unspecified period of time. For more information, visit the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s website

ADDRESS

Fondation Louis Vuitton
8, avenue du Mahatma Gandhi
Bois de Boulogne
75116 Paris

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Abbots & Kinney, Adelaide, by Studio-Gram and Alex Hall

Finely crafted pastries deserve a shop to match. Jonny Pisanelli is a pâtissier with a passion for making artisanal pastries. His inspiration was Abbot Kinney, the man who, in 1905, brought the magic of Venice’s canals to Los Angeles. Pisanelli’s pastries are all about giving bespoke craft a contemporary twist, something architects Studio-Gram and Alex Hall, as well as art director Dave Lawson of Crafty Design, wanted to highlight. Photography: David Sievers

A 'crumpled paper bag' has Sydney agog. Frank Gehry's $180 million Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, created using over 300,000 hand-laid bricks, is drawing eyes and visitors away from the famous bridge and opera house as people take in its gravity-defying folds and twists. Creating the rippling skin of Sydney's University of Technology's new building was a task so tricky that retired bricklayers with the required skills had to come out of retirement to complete the job. The 85-year-old Pritzker-prize-winning architect attended the unveiling of the building, assured that he had created a new icon in the city.

Gehry is one of many foreign designers to make a move on Australia. In Melbourne, NADAAA, headed by Cooper Union School of Architecture dean Nader Tehrani, joined forces with John Wardle Architects to create the Melbourne School of Design. The addition to the University of Melbourne has earned a United Nations award for green architecture – and the praise of its design-savvy students.

Just 1 km away, Malaysian firm UEM Sunrise has broken ground on $730 million residential project Aurora Melbourne Central, designed in collaboration with Melbourne-based Elenberg Fraser (the small Australian team is currently working on an impressive seven boutique residential towers).

Not that it's all about multi-million dollar buildings. Stirling Prize winner Amanda Levete (best known as the co-designer of the Lord's Media Centre and Selfridges in Birmingham, UK) has been called to design the MPavilion in Melbourne. The Australian version of London's Serpentine Gallery, MPavilion runs until 7 February 2016. This year, it also spotlights the work of local architect Sean Godsell, who continues to live up to Wallpaper's lofty 2002 prediction that he was 'destined to change the way we live'.

Perth's fortunes have fallen with the drop in commodities prices, which has seen Hobart and Adelaide emerge as the cities to watch. Multi-millionaire art gallery owner David Walsh recently floated a new CIRCA Morris Nunn-designed wharf into Hobart's harbour. In the space of one afternoon the city found itself with a new three-storey building. It serves as the terminal for the MONA art gallery ferry and will soon be joined by Walsh's top-secret Heavy Metals Lab – a partially submerged science lab-meets-arts space designed by Tasmania's Room 11 architects that will soon surface on the city's central Derwent River.

Adelaide continues to be the surprise hub, scoring high marks on world's most liveable city surveys thanks to a new-found love for exceptional architecture – big and small.

The city's once shabby West End has been given a timely makeover with the $80 million Jeffrey Smart Building for the University of South Australia. Jeffrey Smart's teacher, Fernand Léger, would surely have approved of the building's cubist zig and zags, which cut into each other as it jags upwards eight-storeys, its folded glass facade revealing delicate abstracted pattern as the sun catches it. The building wraps around a courtyard that is open to the community and attracts a contented lunchtime crowd. Nearby, the Woods Bagot-designed South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, nicknamed the 'cheesegrater', adds wow factor, its faceted silver skin shimmering like an enormous mirror ball.

On a smaller but no less important scale, Adelaide's Studio-Gram, run by Canadian Graham Charbonneau and local Dave Bickmore, has worked in alleyways, abandoned buildings and unloved areas of the city, creating a portfolio that spans bars, cafes, art zones, festival arenas, dance spaces and restaurants. Some are one-night-stands, others are here to stay, all are still talked about. A nice touch; Studio-Gram ensures that at least one bespoke item of furniture survives even the shortest-lived of their creations. Local DJ Oisima now plays on a Studio-Gram-designed mixing desk. Architecture rarely gets smaller than that.

Look to the sky for the next big thing in Sydney and Melbourne, but keep your nose nearer the ground, river or dancefloor for the projects that are reshaping Hobart and Adelaide.

Abbots & Kinney, Adelaide, by Studio-Gram and Alex Hall

The result is bespoke timber bleachers facing a black wall that a define a pathway to the products. The store, however, is designed to be more than just an architectural beauty. Abbots & Kinney often takes to the road, serving up trademark sfogliatelles and more from vending carts and market stalls. The shop serves as a business card, allowing for brand recognition that in turn enables the agility needed to take the choux on the road.

Aurora Melbourne Central, by UEM Sunrise

Named after the natural light display Aurora Australis, (Down Under’s equivalent of the Northern Lights), Aurora Melbourne Central is set to become Melbourne’s largest integrated mixed-use development and the world’s third largest residential development. Curvy and coated in a special glass, the building will reflect the city lights as well as the silvery hue of the nearby bay, creating its very own light show

Aurora Melbourne Central, by UEM Sunrise

Developed by Malaysian-based UEM Sunrise and designed by Elenberg Fraser, the 92-storey, 269m skyscraper, to be built at a cost of $770m, will be located in the central business district

Aurora Melbourne Central, by UEM Sunrise

It’s still four years away from completion, but the 941 residential apartments, which will look out to both the sea and mountains, are already selling fast

Brooke Street Pier, Hobart, by Circa Morris Nunn 

It’s a rare building commission that sees an architectural practice team up with a boat-building team, but when you’re planning to float your 4,300-tonne building into place, someone who knows how to keep things above the waterline comes in handy. MONA gallery owner David Walsh’s Brooke Street Pier floated into town in January 2015, and it is as innovative as it is beautiful

Brooke Street Pier, Hobart, by Circa Morris Nunn 

A lightweight superstructure made of lightweight polycarbonate ribs injected with insulating nanogel, creates a diaphanous skin that lights up at night. Inside, you’ll find a local produce and product market, two cafes and a dining area with views over the harbour

Brooke Street Pier, Hobart, by Circa Morris Nunn 

There’s also a waiting lounge for the ferry that takes you to MONA. The boarding level can also be used as an entertainment venue, filling with up to 1200 people at night for events such as MONA FOMA – an annual festival curated by Brian Ritchie from Milwaukee alt rockers the Violent Femmes

The Bicycle Hub, Sydney, by Hill Thalis Architects

Cycling has been closely associated with Sydney’s Centennial Park for more than 100 years. The Empire Games cycling events were held here in 1954, the Sydney Olympic road race took in part of the park in 2000 and, more importantly, it’s a place where people come for a relaxing ride. A recent survey of park users found that many visitors wanted a chance to saddle up, too, so Hill Thalis was commissioned to create a bike hire venue and cafe. The result is more than just a functional success.

The Bicycle Hub, Sydney, by Hill Thalis Architects

The Bicycle Hub is wrapped in perforated metal and luminous acrylic paneling, giving off a warm glow as it reflects the sun’s rays and serving as a marker for those seeking out a bike or a bite. The Hub also offers a covered picnic area and will later form part of a project to create a new cycling route into Centennial Park, that will link it with a new light rail project. The Bicycle Hub will open to the public in late 2015.

People’s Republic of China Embassy pool enclosure, Canberra, by Townsend + Associates

Townsend + Associates have created a place of reflection and beauty on the grounds of China’s Embassy in Australia’s capital city – the People’s Republic of China Embassy pool enclosure.

People’s Republic of China Embassy pool enclosure, Canberra, by Townsend + Associates

Its opaque glass pavilion is flooded with natural light all year round, allowing users to bathe in sunlight, as well as water

People’s Republic of China Embassy pool enclosure, Canberra, by Townsend + Associates

A simple palette of materials has been used, including double-glazed glass, steel and timber for a new deck area in the corner of the building which serves as a place to relax (just in case all that floating wasn’t sedate enough).

CSL corporate headquarters, Sydney, by BatesSmart

Small pox green and blood red are not obvious inspirations for the colours of a building, but when you’re famous for plasma products and play a key role in health as the nation’s vaccine provider why not wear your achievements with pride? The upgrade and expansion of a 1960s modernist building designed by Bates, Smart and McCutcheon (one of the world’s oldest architectural firms) into CSL’s corporate headquarters was carried out one with one eye on honouring the company’s history of innovation, the other on reflecting the high-technology of the company’s manufacturing processes.

CSL corporate headquarters, Sydney, by BatesSmart

The result was silver pods that are layered with colour, creating a strong branding statement and a unique light that filters in during the day. At night the pods glow like a billboard, trumpeting CSL’s cutting-edge work

Green Chemical Futures building, Melbourne, by Lyons architects

Look closely at Lyons architects’ Green Chemical Futures building – it’s one big molecular structure, and it inspires bonding (pardon the pun). Doors opened this year at the $80m Monash University lab building, which unites 100 researchers across education, research and practice

Green Chemical Futures building, Melbourne, by Lyons architects

Collaboration is the central focus of GCF – highly visible internal circulation promotes the concept of a transparent, shared enterprise.

Green Chemical Futures building, Melbourne, by Lyons architects

The building also offers new lab spaces for over 1000 students and 100 industry partners. GCF will partner with a number of international institutions including Yale University and Waseda in Japan.

Moonlight Cabin, Victoria, by JCB Architects

How small is too small? This was the question JCB Architects set out to answer with their 60 sq m Moonlight Cabin, completed in April this year.

Moonlight Cabin, Victoria, by JCB Architects

Screened in a native spotted gum timber, its shutters open out to enable ventilation and take in the stunning vista of the Southern Ocean from Moonlight Head, in southwest Victoria.

Moonlight Cabin, Victoria, by JCB Architects

With a views like this would anyone really complain about the size?

Upper House, Melbourne, by JCB Architects

Can you create a highrise from concrete and clouds? Melbourne firm JCB Architects say yes. Their 17-storey Upper House is home to 110 one- and two-bedroom apartments – which means a lot of people in a small space. The first 11 floors are formed of precast natural matte concrete topped by a communal space for the many residents. The communal 11th floor boasts a lounge, gym, dining space and generous green roofscape. And then the cloud appears. A white glass curtain wall, partially transparent, floats atop the shared space.

Upper House, Melbourne, by JCB Architects

Admittedly it’s a very cubic cloud, but it’s a cute way of enabling an extra five storeys. A clever touch – the ’ravine’ that runs vertically down the building features louvres that open and close automatically, triggered by data sent from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. JCB Architects includes Australian Institute of Architects president Jon Clements as a director, and the firm is setting a fine example.

Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, Sydney, by Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry loves to defy architectural norms; no one makes a building ’like’ the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao or the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. And this, his first building in Australia, stands as another unique creation. Its curved 11-storey brick facade – an homage to Sydney’s sandstone heritage – folds like fabric, yet dramatises the corbelled texture of its 320,000 buff-hued bricks. On the western side, a dramatic glass curtain wall mirrors the building’s contemporary surrounds.

Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, Sydney, by Frank Gehry

Billionaire Australian-Chinese businessman Dr Chau Chak Wing’s son Eric studied architecture at UTS, so the good doctor donated $20m to the project, along with an additional $5m for Australia-China scholarships. However, if it’s something of a mouthful to say Dr Chau Chak Wing Building. If you go looking for it, ask for ’the paper bag’ – any one of its 1600 academics and students will be glad to lead you to their wonderfully crumpled new building.

Thomas Street building, Sydney, by Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and BVN

Inspired by nearby tree formations, the soft, fluid and undulating facade of the Thomas Street building by Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and BVN, dotted with some 700 recycled glass windows, is as friendly as it is distinctive. This sculptural building welcomes new students in, and once inside, they find that the fluidity continues – a sinewy spiral staircase leading them up and down the eight-storey building (five above, three below), encouraging flow within the building and contact with researchers.

Thomas Street building, Sydney, by Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and BVN

The building’s bright-green 200-seat undergraduate ’super-lab’ is a cheeky counterpoint to the traditional labs and research areas. UTS Thomas Street shares a campus with Frank Gehry’s Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, so it has been most unfairly overlooked since opening in February 2015.

Westmead Millennium Institute, Sydney, by BVN

Bright minds tend to work best in bright spaces. With this in mind, established architectural practice BVN created a light-filled building that has allowed medical researchers to escape their gloomy labs housed across six sites of the Westmead Hospital campus and work together under one roof.

Westmead Millennium Institute, Sydney, by BVN

The design for the Westmead Millennium Institute in Sydney is built around a ’bench to bedside’ approach, encouraging the sharing of knowledge from research team to frontline medical staff.

Westmead Millennium Institute, Sydney, by BVN

Light-filled with exterior glazing, a deep atrium and generous garden welcome the sun and provide an optimal space for the crucial research done by 380 medical researchers and their support staff.

For what seems like eons architecture schools have debated the role of speculative artistic endeavour in their curricula. 'Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarksy and the Architectural Association', opening today at the Cooper Union School of Architecture, makes one of the most powerful arguments for its value that you'll ever see.  

The show, co-organised by the RISD Museum and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis (it was displayed at each before arriving at Cooper Union), highlights the collection of drawings and ephemera assembled by the late Alvin Boyarsky during his tenure as chairman of the Architectural Association (AA) in London from 1971 until his death in 1990. 

Boyarsky oversaw the blossoming of some of the greatest talent in contemporary architectural history - largely a testament to his steadfast advocacy for experiment and his ability to nurture creativity.  He received the 44 pieces in the show from John Hejduk, Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Lebbeus Woods, Eduardo Paolozzi, Coop Himmelblau, Bernard Tschumi, Superstudio, and Archigram's Michael Webb and David Greene, to name just a few. 

These works, which showcase an astonishing range of techniques, styles, and philosophies, reflect not just the flourishing of the groundbreaking school, but a time of unprecedented ingenuity, particularly in drawing, which arguably reached its pinnacle (and perhaps the pinnacle of artistic freedom in architecture, before software began to dictate aesthetic and practical choices) in this time just before the dawn of the digital age. 

While the exhibition does contain a few technically-inspired pieces, such as Tschumi's striking sketches for La Villette in Paris and Hadid's study for the Irish Prime Minister's residence in Dublin, most of the depictions dive deep into alternate urban worlds, mega-structures, abstracted buildings, mashed-up landscapes, and visual manifestos. At times their sensibilities merge with Pop Art, collage, Cubism, Futurism, Hi-Tech, Russian Constructivism, or Japanese ukiyo-e. 

Drawing Ambience also includes plates from AA publications containing these artworks, and construction photos of large-scale installations (by Hedjuk, Mary Miss, and Coop Himmelblau) in nearby Bedford Square during Boyarsky's tenure. Most of the drawings were exhibited at the school shortly after they were created, but with few exceptions this is the first time they've been accessible to a wider audience. 

The sketches were given to Boyarsky as gifts, while these masters-to-be were still students, visiting lecturers, or pre-tenured professors, shedding light on their early processes and inspirations, and yielding unexpected surprises. Untitled by Libeskind, reveals a rare desire to break from ordered chaos into organic form; graphically-rich pieces by OMA's Alex Wall and Zoe and Elia Zenghelis reveal the firm's artistic depth (beyond Koolhaas' contribution) from its early days; and Hadid's four works expose a profound variety of investigation, from painterly, dimensional forms to surreally altered cityscapes. 

'It was very much a time of pure experiment,' said Boyarsky's son Nicholas, who grew up with much of this art at his family's home. 'They didn't know where it was going.' He adds of his father: 'He was very much interested in the beginnings of things, and where they would go.'

Steven Hillyer, director of the Architecture Archives at Cooper Union, argues that the show will help today's students 'think more alternatively and poetically about their approach,' particularly because the bold inventions came during these architects' formative years. 

Boyarsky, along with Joan Ockman, Tschumi, Webb, former Cooper Union Dean Anthony Vidler, and current Dean Nader Tehrani will be participating in a panel discussion inspired by the show on November 6.

INFORMATION

’Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association’ runs until 25 November

ADDRESS

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture
The Cooper Union
30 Cooper Sq, New York,
NY 10003, USA

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Architects have long turned their hand to product design – from David Adjaye to David Chipperfield and Zaha Hadid – these A-listers have all occasionally thought small in scale and occasionally wiggly. (Yes, Frank Gehry, we’re looking at you!)

To mark our 200th issue, we decided to double our Power 100 into a meaty, two-ton Power 200; an upscaled calibration of design achievement. Or rather 100+100 (normal disservice will be resumed next year) – including the top 20 architects to turn their pencils to product design.

Rising in the ranks are the likes of master multi-tasker Antonio Citterio, great British minimalist John Pawson and the monochromatically stylish Richard Meier. Daniel Libeskind, Isay Weinfeld, Shigeru Ban and Toyo Ito feature prominently as well, pushing the boundaries of product and material ever further. There are also illuminaries like Nigel Coates, Jean Nouvel, Mario Bellini, Renzo Piano and Rem Koolhaas/OMA who have and pretty much done it all. While collaboration isn’t a requirement, many have turned their talents to similar brands, including legendary Italian brand Alessi which counts Peter Zumthor, SANAA, Norman Foster, Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas among their stylish ranks. 

Let the debate begin...

See the Power 200 in full here

INFORMATION
See the Power 200 in full

Congratulations are in order for Zaha Hadid, for she is to be awarded the 2016 Royal Gold Medal.

The first woman to earn the honour, the prestigious prize is awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects and personally approved by Her Majesty the Queen. Awarded since 1848, previous recipients include Frank Gehry (2000), Norman Foster (1983), Frank Lloyd Wright (1941) and Sir George Gilbert Scott (1859).

Like her predecessors, Hadid shares ‘the precious role of towering, distinctive and relentless influence upon all around her that sets the results apart from the norm’, explains Professor Sir Peter Cook, 2004 recipient of the Royal Gold Medal and selection committee member.

To say Hadid’s work ‘stands out’ is an epic understatement at worst and gross misconception at best. Fluidity, biology, avant-garde, mould-breaking, futuristic, daring – and expensive – are all terms that make perfect sense when describing her work. Building impressive structures from the Swiss Alps to UAE, the ‘Zaha’ brand has been showered with accolades and medals, twice receiving the RIBA Stirling Prize – for the MAXXI museum in Rome and the Evelyn Grace academy school in Brixton – and she was the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker prize more than a decade ago.

Hadid has a penchant for lattice-like forms, complex curves and seamless structural shapes that seem to have been developed in a scientific laboratory light years away. Indeed, she was once described by her mentor Rem Koolhaas as ‘a planet in her own inimitable orbit.’ Her personality and character without a doubt match the complexity of her buildings, but perhaps it is that defiance which has led her to such greatness.

‘Let’s face it, we might have awarded the medal to a worthy, comfortable character,’ says Professor Sir Peter Cook. ‘We didn’t, we awarded it to Zaha: larger than life, bold as brass and certainly on the case. Our heroine. How lucky we are to have her in London.’

On the heels of last year’s widely acclaimed Fondation Louis Vuitton opening, Frank Gehry has been enjoying a bit of a victory lap, with a new biography and exhibition that each take a long view at the life and work of the 86-year-old architect. 

In Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, Paul Goldberger sympathetically presents Gehry’s story, beginning with his childhood in one of Toronto’s working class neighbourhoods (as Frank Goldberg), moving through his early architectural experiments in Los Angeles (as a moustachioed leftist), and culminating with his project for Bernard Arnault in Paris (as an architectural statesman and Pritzker laureate). While he has tended to be pigeon-holed, over the years, as a formalist starchitect, the Gehry that emerges in Goldberger’s narrative is someone not only committed to the art of architectural form, but also a practitioner with a deeply held conviction about architecture’s responsibility to social concerns. 

The author and subject have known each other for over four decades, and the book reflects this personal dimension. For his research, Goldberger interviewed Gehry over the course of months, and the insights and quotes that he includes reveal a reflective and unguarded image of the man. Archival images from Gehry’s life – on a tricycle in Toronto, on the beach with a young Thom Mayne, and aboard his boat 'Foggy' – animate the text. 

For those looking for an even more visual presentation of Gehry’s career, LACMA are currently hosting ‘Frank Gehry’, a major retrospective that first opened at the Centre Pompidou last year. There, visitors will be able to see over 200 drawings and 60 models, all set in the city so integral to Gehry’s life and work.  

Information
‘Frank Gehry’ is on show at LACMA until 20 March 2016

Address

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036

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A stone's throw from the iconic Chateau Marmont, 8150 Sunset Boulevard is Frank Gehry's latest Los Angeles project. Earlier in the year, Gehry was selected by US developers Townscape Partners to work on the large site on the city's landmark strip. The designs, featuring the architect's signature dynamic style, have just been unveiled.

Gehry and his team revealed a mixed-use complex of 'five interrelated and complementary structures'. The scheme includes two residential buildings - comprising some 249 units - retail, entertaining, as well as public and green spaces.

The site is located at the eastern end of the Sunset strip and faces Hollywood Hills to the north. The composition was conceived so as to create a dialogue with the surrounding buildings' scale and to relate to the area's eclectic urban fabric. A mix of heights ensures a lower profile towards the street and secures great views for the apartment units behind it. Carefully thought glazing and transparency will help the volumes appear lighter.

The team will be involved in the design in all scales, from buildings and interiors, to landscaping - in fact pedestrian spaces were central to the proposal. Sustainability is another of the project's key aspects, as the buildings are expected to achieve a LEED environmental rating of Silver or higher. Townscape Partners are aiming to break ground by early 2017.

Louis Vuitton's newest venture in China – the first of a series of cultural 'outposts' emanating from Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris – opened this week with a monographic exhibition in Beijing that captures the curious creative complexity of Frank Gehry's work.  

Presented, somewhat ironically, in an understated, white box-like annex to the China World Shopping Mall West Wing (home to the Peter-Marino-designed Louis Vuitton Maison), the exhibition offers an intriguing perspective on the 85-year-old architect's trademark design process.

Devised as part of Louis Vuitton's 'beyond-the-walls' programme of events, the exhibition features a complete set of original free-form sketches and architectural models revealing various Fondation design elements – most notably illustrating how the design team progressively reworked clusters of 'volumetric blocks' to define the building's core spaces, their relationship to one another and circulation within the building.

'It starts in the early stages with understanding the programming,' explains Gehry's design partner David Nam. 'That establishes the core functions and creates the basic form of the building before exploring the vocabulary or appearance.' 

Further, the show also highlights the investigation of materials that led to Gehry's development of the Fondation's showstopping facade, including the curvaceous glass panels that make up its distinctive fragmented exterior.

Time-lapse video showing the construction process and aerial footage of the unique location in the Jardin d'Acclimatation, Paris, are distinct highlights. 

The exhibition's darkened space and soft-lit models 'floating' on black podiums or suspended from the ceiling deliberately create an aquarium-like experience, says the exhibition's co-curator Frédéric Migayrou. 'Works appear as a group of fish or even a floating whale,' he says. 'It is not speaking about the building itself as much as it is about making the body move through it, inside it. It immerses visitors in the brain of Frank Gehry.' Ushers clad in tailored black trousers and crisp white shirts received intensive training on Gehry's architectural theory so as to provide visitors with additional details.

The show will next travel to Tokyo, where it will be held in the Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo from 15 October 2015.

The Beijing exhibition – held within the city's China World Shopping Mall West Wing –features a complete set of original free-form sketches and architectural models revealing various Fondation design elements.

The exhibition also featured a number of Gehry-designed stools (left); as well as displaying his unconventional approach to even the smallest details of architectural design – here he uses crumpled paper instead of regular model tree foam (right).

ADDRESS

China World Shopping Mall West Wing
No. 1 Jianguomenwai Dajie
Chaoyang District
Beijing 1

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There is no doubt about the influence and extent to which technology has changed our experience; our world even. But has it been for the better or worse? And what are the implications for artist and their craft? These are the questions Liberatum - the global multidisciplinary cultural and multimedia organisation - poses in its latest video, Artistry / Technology.

Liberatum founder and co-director Pablo Ganguli comments, ‘Great developments have occurred thanks to technological advancement but it is also ruining our sleep at night, [these] devices we can't leave behind and bring to bed with us. Creative people are increasingly using technology to produce their art but can they still excel without it or are they completely attached and dependent on it?’

Some of the greatest creative minds of our time - among them Ed Ruscha, David Hockney, Frank Gehry, Francis Ford Coppola, Marc Quinn, Miranda July, Marcel Wanders and Kehinde Wiley – analyse their personal paths and relationships with technology in the film.

‘I got an iPhone and then I found you could draw on it,’ begins David Hockney. ‘I made about two hundred drawings on the phone and then I read about the iPad. So I thought the moment the iPad is out I will get that because drawing on a bigger thing would be better.’

Francis Ford Coppola points out that advents in technology have allowed for art, ‘There could be no cinema without recorded images, moving images, recorded sound and as the technology changed, as different elements were added to it such as colour, talking capability then the cinema evolved.’

However, not all are quite so positive in their outlook: ‘You go out to dinner and people are just on their phones and no one is talking to each other,' says actress Susan Sarandon. 'Everyone is walking down the street and not paying attention to what’s going on or constantly taking pictures of their food and their lives and not in their food or their lives.'

Whether you believe in the power of communication or the ability to share a common experience with many rather than a few, the documentary – presented by Swire Properties – illustrates the stark contrast between the rival camps. As Ganguli told Wallpaper*, 'Technology is not the only answer. It is a tool that can be a gift for us to use for our craftsmanship and creativity but it is not the main ingredient. The human touch and physical artistic connection is far more crucial.  Technology can never replace an idea or poetry that has the power to move us to tears.'

Descend to the lower level of the Fondation Louis Vuitton - the bowels of Frank Gehry's anchored ship with its soaring glass sails - and straight ahead in the first gallery of six, you will find 'The Scream'. On loan from the Munch Museum in Oslo, it has been mounted into dark paneling that runs the expanse of the wall and, for obvious reasons, hangs behind a pane of glass.

But that protective barrier unintentionally unlocks the secret to Keys to a Passion, the third stage of the Fondation Louis Vuitton's inaugural programming and first 'historic' exhibition since opening in October. Stare into the reflection and you see Edvard Munch's iconic expression of 20th century angst responding to the other major works occupying the room. Is it aghast at Kazimir Malevich's 'Bust with a Yellow Shirt', or Alberto Giacometti's attenuated 'Walking Man I' in bronze? Maybe that swirling malaise is a reaction to the disquieting duo of male studies, both from Francis Bacon; or the vampish allure of Anita Berber, the dancer rendered in red by Otto Dix in 1925.

Each of these works alone is an aesthetic exercise in psychoanalysis; as a group statement, combined with four self-portraits from lesser-known Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck, they all but drown the room in beautiful dread. It's not by accident that the second gallery presents two of Claude Monet's large 'Nymphéas' ('Water Lilies') along with three comparatively smaller - but equally calming - landscapes from Piet Mondrian, painted decades before the more recognisable 'Lozenges' in the following room. By the time you reach the final gallery and are confronted with Henri Matisse's 'Dance' from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, it's as if you've just cartwheeled through a cross-section of modern art's greatest hits.

Indeed, the fluctuating emotional registers from room to room offer an indication of the massive effort required pull off such an ambitious show; the 60 works from 22 artists originated from 40 galleries and private collectors. Negotiations for 'The Scream' and 'Dance' began nearly two years ago. And while provoking dialogue between works is among the motivations of any group show, seldom does a showing represent such widely recognised icons from so vast an array of institutions. To face three dynamic paintings from Fernand Léger is to witness a family reunion of sorts.

'Everything co-exists,' co-curator Suzanne Pagé told Wallpaper*, adding that 'the well-considered "mise-en-regard" deliberately positions pieces so that each can be experienced individually among the collective arrangement.'

The goal, added Pagé, was to keep the quantity of works low but the quality exceptionally high, all while ensuring the pieces best represented the four devised 'sequences' rather than standard isms or linear chronologies. Seemingly arbitrary, the themes - subjective expressionism, contemplative, popist and music - actually align with the Fondation's mission as a multi-dimensional cultural destination.

And as noted by Jean-Paul Claverie, advisor to Bernard Arnault and deputy director for the Fondation, an appreciation of today's contemporary art cannot exist without acknowledging the seismic shifts shaping recent art history.

Or, as Mr. Arnault expresses in the exhibition's catalogue, 'in the ever-changing realm of creativity, isn't looking at the past the most convincing way to welcome the most innovative new ideas?'

Obviously, the privately held Fondation has benefited from such significant loans thanks to Mr. Arnault and LVMH's ongoing support of arts institutions around the world. Since October, 500,000 people have already visited the building on the periphery of central Paris. Beyond assuring attendance, the show proves the power of a private museum today - and will address this issue head-on during a two-day conference June 12-13. In the meantime, for those who will never have the opportunity to visit the Bacon in Melbourne or Rothko's 'No. 46 (Black, Ochre, Red over Red)' in Los Angeles, Keys to a Passion brings pivotal works under one voluminous roof. You will likely never see them together like this again.

ADDRESS

8, avenue Mahatma Ganhdi, Bois du Boulogne, 75116 Paris

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Created as a space to celebrate artistic creation in all its forms, the brand new Fondation Louis Vuitton was commissioned by Bernard Arnault and designed by celebrated architecture master and Wallpaper* guest editor Frank Gehry (see W*175); the latter's grand retrospective at the Centre Pompidou also opened in Paris earlier this month.

Located within the green fields of the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, the structure was created as a composition of white blocks (and is also known as 'the iceberg'). The building's twelve curving glass 'sails', supported by wooden beams, define its shape. Gehry was inspired by the lightness of 19th century glass and garden architecture. Transparency was key to the design.

Inside, eleven exhibition galleries will host temporary and permanent shows, from the foundation's collection. The project also includes an auditorium, meeting rooms, a café, a bookshop and education facilities. The views from the top terraces stretch across the park.

ADDRESS

Fondation Louis Vuitton
8, Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi
Bois de Boulogne
75116 Paris

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The work of Frank Gehry has revolutionised the way we see architecture, and a big, comprehensive retrospective of his work in Europe has been long overdue. The architect's portfolio, including iconic projects such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1997) and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003), features widely recognised landmarks in architectural history. 

So, the exhibition that just opened at the Centre Pompidou in Paris will be a welcome chance for professionals and architecture aficionados alike, to dip into the considerable body of the master's oeuvre. An earlier show around the architect's work in 1992 - also at the Pompidou - offered a taster of what was to come, however this exhibition aims to be bolder and bigger, 'a global survey of his work'. 

A staggering 225 drawings, 67 models and supporting material and a total of 60 major projects will be on display to present a detailed portrait of the architect's career, since he first started his office in Los Angeles in the early 1960s. 

Key projects such as his own world-famous house in Santa Monica, the Vitra Design Museum in Germany and 8 Spruce Street in New York will take the visitor to a journey that describes the development of the architect's design language throughout the decades. The show also revolves around two main themes: urbanism and the development of new systems of digital design and fabrication. 

The show opens at a key time for the office - Gehry's Museum of Biodiversity in Panama is also inaugurated this October and his Fondation Luma in Arles is currently on site, while the first ever permanent Gehry building in England has been announced recently as part of the Battersea Power Station development. At the same time, his seminal Louis Vuitton Foundation is also due to launch later this month. Watch this space. 

ADDRESS

Centre Pompidou 
Place Georges-Pompidou
75004 Paris, France

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Frank Gehry's architecture often looks like it's in motion, but for an exhibition currently showing in Arles, it is actually moving. The 'Solaris Chronicles' exhibition, produced by the Luma Foundation, ties in with the beginning of construction on a new arts centre, designed by Gehry to form the centrepiece of the foundation's 20-acre campus.

The show's curatorial team includes the definition-defying French artist Philippe Parreno, British conceptual artist Liam Gillick and Serpentine Gallery curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Looking for a dynamic way to present a selection of Gehry's architectural models, they turned to Anglo-German artist Tino Sehgal, a master of experience creation.

Sehgal choreographed a team of assistants to push around large rolling tables bearing models of Gehry buildings, realised or not, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, the Guggenheims in Bilbao and Abu Dhabi, the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, New York, and the National Art Museum of China. A dissonant score by Pierre Boulez, one of Gehry's friends, accompanies Sehgal's choreography. Overhead, a lamp glides along a ceiling track like a rapidly moving sun, while Parreno's flashing marquees add their own staccato rhythm.

The exhibition's goal, says Maja Hoffmann, founder of the Luma Foundation, is to examine the California-based architect's vision and explore how his freeform spirit is close to other forms of art. 'I said we need to present Gehry to the local people because they only know what they've read and it's not what we have in mind for Arles. Our project is going to be different. We did not commission a starchitect to build a second Bilbao.'

Hoffmann created Luma in 2004 to produce and support contemporary art and culture, including the annual photography festival in Arles. The festival occupied the site of an abandoned railyard whose closure in 1984 plunged Arles into an economic downturn from which it has yet to recover. In 2007, she learned the derelict site needed a serious overhaul and decided to develop a campus for photography. The concept evolved as she began thinking about how to draw a larger public to Arles, and now the grounds will be turned into a complex for all contemporary creation. Rather than just 'doing art', she says this is an undertaking that will benefit the whole town.

She hired Gehry, a personal friend, to design a new arts centre that would house research facilities, artist studios, workshop rooms and presentation spaces. His 56m-tall tower will be a deconstructed mirror of the region, its jagged steel edges like the rocky peaks of the Alpilles mountains above a round drum like the city's Roman arena. (The New York architect Annabelle Selldorf will also be renovating a series of historic industrial buildings on the same site.)

Hoffmann also put together a core group, a sort of think tank made up of art-world personalities who share a similar outlook - Parreno, Gillick, Obrist and the curators Tom Eccles and Beatrix Ruf. They meet two or three times a year and take turns mounting projects while the others assist. Hoffmann refers to the group as a peloton, a pack in a cycling race who ride close together and look out for one another.

Together, the group are considering new ways of producing exhibitions beyond displaying static objects in a museum. Each one of their projects is collaborative and multi-disciplinary. 'I have nothing against institutions from the last century,' Hoffmann says. 'They are great. But we hear from people working inside the business how difficult it has become to produce within these structures. We are trying to create a space for more flexibility and partnerships with other players and producers.'

This approach is second nature for Parreno, who is surprisingly unassuming for an artist who recently took over the entire Palais de Tokyo in Paris (see W*176). 'I started out making art that way, putting the project before the object,' he says. As for creating a show in conjunction with so many other talents, he notes: 'It may seem a bit chaotic but ultimately it isn't, because we have a common grammar. It's like if you go to see a rehearsal at the theatre or opera, it looks very chaotic but each person knows what he or she is doing.'

'Solaris Chronicles' is a prime example of this new type of exhibition - a loose and ever-changing show with contributions by Parreno, Gillick, Sehgal, Boulez and John Baldessari. In July, photos by David Lynch, fireworks by Cai Guo-Qiang and an interactive installation by Rirkrit Tiravanija join the mix, along with Gehry's models of Facebook's new West Campus building in Menlo Park, California.

Parreno likes the idea of an exhibition evolving over time. Artists who are not ready can still take part after the opening, just like Gehry's arts centre will assume its place in the foundation's overall project upon its completion in 2018. As Parreno explains, the experience is 'a journey we started without architecture because the passengers are already here. Then the building - the spaceship - will arrive. And we'll climb inside and it will take us somewhere else.'

This article - and a collectible copy of Philippe Parreno's 'Harey' postcard - appears in the August 2014 issue, out now

ADDRESS

Atelier de la Mécanique
Parc des Ateliers
Arles
France

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It's hard to imagine Frank Gehry having any more surprises left up his sleeve, yet the opening of an exhibition of new works from the starchitect at Joni Moisant Weyl gallery in New York last week proved us to be very wrong.

Over the last decade, Gehry has been creating prints and sculptures with the Los Angeles-based artists' workshop Gemini G.E.L. The abbreviation stands for Graphic Editions Limited, and the workshop has been challenging artists to draw or carve directly onto printing elements since its inception in 1966.

Joni Moisant Weyl's exhibition brings together a survey of Gehry's previous works, including lithograph prints of both past and unrealized architectural projects that offer a rare glimpse into the architect's creative process. In most cases, Gehry approaches each project with a sketch, which then undergoes several rounds of refinement before they take a three-dimensional form.

While many of the works on display don't quite count as preparatory sketches, it is easy to spot the forms of the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi, the IAC building in New York and the Walt Disney concert hall in Los Angeles, amongst others.

The gallery, which has been Gemini's East Coast platform since 1984, also debuts a new resin sculpture titled 'Memory of Sophie Calle's Flower', which refers to the telephone booth Gehry created with the conceptual artist in 2006 and had installed on a bridge stretching across the River Seine in Paris.  

To do the works their due justice, the gallery enlisted the expertise of their architects Stamberg Aferiat + Associates to design the exhibition. The pair chose to dress the gallery walls in vibrant orange, making it the perfect backdrop for the large vinyl sketch of Gehry's iconic Marques de Riscal Winery.

ADDRESS

Joni Moisant Weyl

535 West 24th Street

New York NY

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Travelling all the way from the Vitra Design Museum, a new show at London's Design Museum celebrates influential 20th century architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974), the great American known for his expert moulding of building forms and unparalleled use of light. 

Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture is a thorough exploration of the visionary architect's work through a wealth of architectural models, original drawings, sketches, photographs and films; in fact the several clips on display, showing interviews with prominent contemporary architects - including Sou Fujimoto, Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry and Peter Zumthor, and Kahn's former collaborators, like Balkrishna Doshi - attest to Kahn's lasting global reach, weight and legacy. 

Kahn's masterpieces are spread across the globe, from California, USA to Exeter, UK and Dhaka, Bangladesh. His buildings come in all shapes and scales, from the relatively bijou Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas - next to which a new addition by Renzo Piano opened last year - to the grand and iconic Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. His influences similarly range from historical references and ancient ruins, to more contemporary, modern work. Yet all his buildings share a sense of place and represent their creator's strive of perfection and architectural exploration. 

The show looks at the prominent architect's rich body of work through several angles, arranged in broad themes and respective sections. 'Landscape' examines the architect's work in relation to nature and water, and the importance the environment had to his work; 'community' explores Kahn's approach to the social significance of architecture and to spatial hierarchies; and 'science' looks into Kahn's search for new forms in architecture. Other sections of the show highlight the architect's early life and travels, his approach towards the city and the house. The exhibition closes with the acclaimed Franklin D Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park - posthumously completed in October 2012.

A rich program of events is planned around the show to last through its conclusion, while a separate film installation on show on the museum's second floor, created by Alice Masters and produced by Pete Collard, presents Kahn's work in a contemporary context.

ADDRESS

The Design Museum
28 Shad Thames
London SE1 2YD 

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Somewhat sidelined in his day, yet now cited as an influence by the likes of Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid, Bruce Goff is finally getting his moment - albeit posthumously. The expressionist devotee of the 'found' object and pioneer of the organic ornament, Goff was also director of the school of architecture at the University of Oklahoma (OU), which is about to stage a major exhibition of his work. This October its Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art is hosting a survey of the architect's never-built or subsequently destroyed projects, using images, models, and the latest 3D rendering technology to bring them to life.

With Goff's original drawings as their chief resource, Skyline Ink Animation Studios have created virtual tours of some of Goff's most staggering projects, which are seen here for the first time.

Take an animated tour around Garvey House

Realising Goff's designs in amazing detail, these short films will be screened on three walls at the Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art, giving viewers an immersive take on Goff's world.

See Joe Price studio come to life

The exhibition will also include a tour of Ledbetter House, one of Goff's most astonishing projects (see our October issue, W*139) and currently home to the museum's director, Ghislain d'Humières. Using old photographs, original paint samples found in the basement and his own collection of mid-century furniture, d'Humières and Los Angeles-based interior designer Paul Raubertas have restored the house to its 1940s glory for the exhibition.

ADDRESS

Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art
555 Elm Avenue
Norman
Oklahoma 73019-3003

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