Sofas have the tendency to be the most visually obtrusive piece of furniture in the house. So what happens when you tap a known minimalist to create one? Just ask John Pawson.

The renowned British architectural designer has revealed the Pawson Drift Sofa group, a new seating collection for Herman Miller. With cocooning solid-wood frames and pillowy cushions, the graceful perches are ideal for aesthetes and loafers like.

‘The sofa’s become the gathering place for the home,’ the British architectural designer tells Wallpaper* from his country home – perched atop his own Drift sofa – in the Cotswolds. ‘It’s a place where everyone in the family gathers. People eat on it, sleep on it. I wanted to do something that did all that, but also remained elegant, if possible.’

Drift marks Pawson’s first partnership with Herman Miller, though he’s known Ben Watson, MillerKnoll’s chief creative and product officer, for some three decades. But the timing felt right to finally partner. The collection – now available to shop online and in-store – feels distinctly architectural, thanks to its solid, wrap-around timber frame, available in both white oak and walnut.

‘The contrast of a solid wood frame, which is visible when you walk around it from any angle, and then the incredibly comfortable and soft cushions, [...] is visually comfortable as well as physically comfortable,’ Pawson says.

There’s a sustainability angle to Drift too. The inviting cushions are filled with a natural latex foam that’s derived from plants. In fact, 80 percent of the Pawson Drift Sofa Group features plant-derived components, according to Herman Miller.

‘It’s very much a 50-50 collaboration. What I do is provide ideas about how people might live and do things, and we try to fit a design to that. I rely on experts for the technical side,’ the designer explains. ‘I am very pleased.’

So pleased, in fact, that Pawson tells us he plans on specifying the couch in his residential projects. His personal Drift sofa has also become a magnet for his cockapoo, Lochie.

‘I’ve always resisted designing a sofa, because they’re big things,’ Pawson reflects. ‘But now that I’ve got one, I am never off it—and neither are my family!’

The dining table is the heart of the home—a place to gather, share meals, and, for some, even work. A great design balances durability and practicality with tactility, warmth, and comfort. Pedestal bases maximise legroom, while round and oval shapes foster intimacy; rectangular tables prioritise capacity. From foldable, space-saving solutions to bold statement pieces, here are a few of our favourites.

See also: our favourite coffee tables

'Colour Wood' dining table by Scholten Baijings for Karimoku New Standard

'Aalto' foldable table by Alvar Aalto for Artek

'Mensa' elliptical dining table by Filippo Carandini for Nilufar

'Planks' dining table by Max Lamb for Benchmark

'Specchio di Venere' dining table by Elena Salmistraro for LITHEA

'Simoon SIM04' dining table by Patricia Urquiola for Glas Italia

'Touch' dining table by Ilse Crawford for Zanat

'Cumberland' dining table by Scheibe Design

'Two-colour' table by Muller Van Severen for HAY

'Cahill' dining table by Bernhardt

The coffee table often serves as the centrepiece of a living room, combining functionality with artistic expression. While its modern form emerged in Victorian England, inspired by the growing trend of informal social gatherings, its roots trace back to cultures like the Ottoman Empire and East Asia, where low tables played central roles in daily life.

By the mid-20th century, designers such as Isamu Noguchi transformed the coffee table into a sculptural statement, pushing the boundaries of form and function. Today, its large, flat surface offers designers a canvas for experimenting with innovative materials and techniques, making it a statement piece that reflects the personality of its maker – and its owner.

See also: our favourite floor lamps and bedside lamps.

‘Meltingpot’ table by Dirk van der Kooij

In Dutch designer Dirk van der Kooij's studio, nothing goes to waste. The 'Meltingpot' coffee tables are crafted daily by the studio's colourist using unwanted plastic prototypes and colour tests, melted and pressed into moulds to create one-of-a-kind pieces. With their distinctive, plasticine-like patterns, each table tells a story of invention, circularity, and material transformation.

From €7,600, dirkvanderkooij.com

'Slon' coffee table by Ana Kraš for Matter Made

Ana Kraš’ 'Slon' tables, named after the Serbian word for 'elephant', debuted in 2015 with Brooklyn-based brand Matter Made. The design rode the rising edge of the 'chubby furniture' movement, which later defined an era of rounded, monolithic forms. Balancing cylindrical legs with a lightweight top, the 'Slon' collection includes a variety of pieces, from benches to tables, among them this portly coffee table.

From $7,100, Matter Made

'Hewn' coffee table by Sebastian Cox

British craftsman and environmentalist Sebastian Cox had been advocating for circularity in design long before it became a major topic in industry circles. The 'Hewn' coffee table, debuted in 2014 as part of his studio's 'Underwood' collection, is crafted from coppiced hazel sourced from his woodland in Kent, South England. The table’s hazel legs feature a rough, almost crude finish that provides a striking contrast to the smooth, neatly tenoned English ash top, grounding the design in its natural origins and highlighting the character of the materials​.

£625, sebastiancox.co.uk

'Plinth' coffee table by Norm Architects for Audo

A collection we admire for its simplicity and versatility, the 'Plinth' series was created for Danish brand Audo by Norm Architects, masters of soft minimalism (who also designed Audo's Tokyo store in 2024). The sleek marble podiums, celebrating the beauty and monolithic nature of stone, function seamlessly as side tables, coffee tables, or platforms for plants, sculptures, and lamps. Shown here is the 'Plinth Grand’, which is offered in four different marble types as well as Kunis Breccia stone.

From £1,250, available through Monologue

'Berg' coffee table by John Pawson for WonderGlass

Appearing like an ice sculpture, the chunky glass 'Berg' coffee table is the result of a collaboration between esteemed designer John Pawson and the skilled craftsmen at WonderGlass in Veneto, Italy. Made from cast glass, which gives its surface a slightly uneven ice-like quality, the table’s sculptural form highlights the possibilities of glass as a medium for delicate yet dramatic design.

£15,055, available through SCP

'Fortune' coffee tables by Egg Collective

Highlighting the hidden powers that objects and symbols hold, the sinuous 'Fortune' coffee tables by New York-based studio Egg Collective nestle together like jigsaw pieces. Available in three sizes and 12 shapes, the modular tables can stand alone or combine to create larger surfaces or sculptural landscapes. Crafted in burnished or polished stainless steel, select pieces feature an optional inlay composition that showcases symbolic motifs from Egg Collective’s 2023 ‘Snake Eyes’ collection. These symbols – such as Protection (Eye), Transformation (Serpent), and Eternal Love (Hand + Heart) – reinforce themes of mysticism and personal meaning.

From $14,000, Egg Collective

'Undique Mas' tables by Patricia Urquiola for Kartell

In 2023, Patricia Urquiola reimagined her existing collection of ‘Undique’ tables for Kartell to create ‘Undique Mas’ – softer, fuller and more generous pieces with an almost cartoon-like appearance. Realised in polyester-lacquered beechwood, the tables are available in three different shapes and sizes and in three complementary colours so that they can be easily arranged in convivial groups.

From £658, Kartell, also available from Heal's

'Monjiro' coffee table by Sori Yanagi for HIDA Sangyo

Japanese designer Sori Yanagi, a pioneer of postwar industrial design, combined simplicity and functionality with modern forms. His 'Monjiro' coffee table, part of the ‘Yanagi’ collection for HIDA Sangyo, features a round solid white oak top supported by a criss-crossed chrome base. Produced in Gifu Prefecture, it reflects HIDA’s century-old woodworking expertise and dedication to sustainability.

£1,818, available through Rarify

Coffee table by Si Hyun Park

Despite its industrial appearance, this bent stainless steel coffee table by Royal College of Art graduate Si Hyun Park is rooted in the practical values of Shaker furniture. Sturdy, lightweight, and low maintenance, the sandblasted stainless steel surfaces feature nature-inspired patterns such as tree bark and animal skin, resulting in an intriguing fusion of references. First spotted by us at London Design Festival 2024, Park later participated in 'Adaptions', a group show of hacked USM furniture at London design store Aram.

£2,300, Si Hyun Park

'Pastille' coffee table by Vonnegut Kraft

The 'Pastille' coffee table was created in 2018 through a collaboration between Brooklyn-based ceramist Natalie Weinberger and designers Vonnegut Kraft. Featuring a tactile matte black ceramic top with a pitted glaze, the table’s graphic stretcher base creates optical illusions, with moire patterns that shift depending on the viewer's perspective.

POA, available through Colony

From the wild expanses of the Khovd Province in Western Mongolia to the botanical oasis of Kew Gardens in west London, a new collaboration between Mongolian-born cashmere designer Oyuna Tserendorj and British architectural designer John Pawson brings together old friends and a shared devotion to sublime simplicity.

The pair have partnered on a cashmere throw collection inspired by Pawson’s 70m-long Lake Crossing (also known as the Sackler Crossing) that meanders through 120m of the Royal Botanical Gardens. Crafted from 100 per cent Mongolian cashmere, the five-piece capsule has been made by the nomad community with whom Tserendorj has directly worked since she started her eponymous ready-to-wear brand, Oyuna, in 2002

John Pawson x Oyuna: how the collaboration came to fruition

'I always say, it’s all architecture, whether it’s a fork, an entire monastery or a throw,' Pawson tells Wallpaper*, regarding his approach to designing textiles as opposed to other mediums. 'At the same time, I have enjoyed the opportunity to focus with such pure energy on matters of colour, tone, pattern, rhythm and texture.'

Their partnership came about instinctively, says Tserendorj, who met Pawson through mutual friends in London over ten years ago. 'I love it when things happen intuitively. I like the process the most; how the collaboration develops, all the work, ideas, and moments relating to creating it.'

This project has been in the works for some time. When it came to choosing an image to translate into abstract patterns for the throws, Pawson initially selected one that Tserendorj had taken of a frozen Tolbo lake in far Western Mongolia on one of her annual trips. But when the first samples arrived, the duo weren’t convinced of the results. 'But we weren’t in a rush,' says Tserendorj. Instead, they turned their attention to Pawson’s celebrated archive and landed on the pathway he completed in 2006 as a stimulus.

As a result, the patterns and elemental colour palette are inspired by the shades and surface textures of the Lake Crossing, along with the cement and slate that Pawson is famed for working with. Meanwhile, the finished pieces celebrate the friends’ shared DNA of architectural lines, pure form, and attention to detail that quietly presents itself and unveils in a sensorial way when encountered.

'I see so much of the thinking that has shaped my own work underpinning Oyuna’s pieces,' says Pawson. 'There are multiple underlying threads of connection. Not in terms of literal correspondence, but thematically… we both understand the defining importance of the material palette.

'Collaborations are very important, they keep the thinking fresh,' he continues. 'It’s always about the scope for genuine exchange [as] design advances through dialogue.'

Each throw, priced at £1,195, may have taken eight to nine hours to be made from cashmere yarn, but the process defines slow luxury and the throws have been conceived – like Pawson’s objects and structures – to be enjoyed for generations.

'The nomads take care of their goats for a whole year, combing 15 to 20 goats’ hair in spring to get enough cashmere for one throw, [working through] the long winters and welcome summers that all [combine to result in] that beautiful natural fibre,' explains Tserendorj. 'If we count that, it took a year to make these throws. [But], if [we consider] the wisdom and tradition of nomads who know how to live at one with the land and the livestock? Then we could say it took centuries.'

John Pawson x Oyuna launches mid-October and is available exclusively from oyuna.com and the OYUNA store, 89 Golborne Road, London.

johnpawson.com

John Pawson: The experience of eating at a restaurant is the sum of so many parts. It encompasses the specificity of the occasion, the physical space, the quality of the light, the nature of the food and how it is served, the character of the human interactions – with people you know and those you don’t – and the atmosphere, which is both the accumulation of all these things and something distinct
in itself.

Feeling at ease is always important to me. This derives in large part from the feeling that those around me are also at ease, but can also be disrupted by something as singular as strong perfume or certain sounds.

I am generally a person of simple tastes: I can find profound pleasure in something as simple as a bowl of soup or a plate of cheese. But at the same time, my mind is currently full of memories of three exceptional meals that I recently ate in Copenhagen: one at Kong Hans Kaelder, one at Sushi Anaba, and the other at Noma. All were exemplary in every detail – a succession of honed sensations, each of them the outcome of unstinting commitments of intellectual and physical endeavour.

This article appears as part of Laila Gohar’s guest editor section of the October 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Danish wood manufacturer Dinesen has announced a bespoke furniture collection with British architectural designer John Pawson. The fruit of a partnership of three decades, the Pawson Furniture Collection continues an enduring collaboration that has shaped the implementation of joinery and its place in contemporary design. As Thomas Dinesen puts it: 'John Pawson has in many ways changed our relationship with the “plank”, from a restoration material for historic buildings to a design element in modern architecture.'

John Pawson and Dinesen present the Pawson Furniture Collection

Starting their relationship in 1992, Dinesen and Pawson first collaborated on a flooring project for the designer’s private home in Notting Hill, leading to a furniture collection for the eponymous Pawson House. Sparked from Pawson’s insight into flooring as a crucial and yet often overlooked part of interior design, the bespoke collection was brought to life using planks of the same dimensions as the floorboards themselves; providing the appearance that they had been lifted directly out of the floor. Drawing on Dinesen’s historic woodworking expertise, and Pawson’s own minimalist influences from Japanese architect and designer Shiro Kuramata, the work became a foundation on which to build their longstanding partnership.

Featuring designs from this period, alongside contemporary additions, the new collection of furniture includes ‘The Dining Series’, which encompasses a dining table, a bench, and a stool, each originally drawn in 1992, and adjusted to modern sensibilities with an added shadow gap detail in the dining table. Combining Douglas fir planks with a slender insert of Dinesen Oak, this subtle update completes the piece with a sleek and refined finish. 

Alongside its established work, ‘The Lounge Collection’ acts as a complementary addition to the original series. A multi-layered collaboration that brought in skilled Danish cabinet makers with upholstery materials from local textile company Kvadrat, it includes a lounge chair, a lounge table, a sofa, and a daybed, each made from Solid Douglas wood. Every piece in the series is made to order, allowing some participation from the customer in choosing their desired textile from Kvadrat’s library.

However, whilst the Pawson Furniture Collection certainly marks an achievement in the prosperous relationship between the acclaimed designer and timber manufacturer, the work on display is also indicative of Pawson’s own distinct sensibility. 

The latest in a celebrated catalogue of work, the collection is a chance to become personally acquainted with Pawson’s ideas and design principles. He explains: 'When I look at this new furniture collection for Dinesen, I see the essence of the thinking that has shaped my work since the beginning. Everything about these pieces is pared back to the logic and poetry of the wood. The dimensions of the timber determine the proportions of the forms and then it’s all about the inherent sensory character of the material.'

dinesen.com
johnpawson.com

John Pawson’s Tŷ Bywyd, or ‘Life House’, is a secluded Welsh retreat designed and built for Living Architecture. Remote, refined and ascetically designed and furnished for a short spell of restorative contemplation, it is the ultimate aspirational modern escape. 

Life House: a contemporary 'contemplation space'

As well as a dedicated ‘contemplation space’, Living Architecture notes that the Life House’s ‘bedrooms have been carefully designed to promote a sense of relaxation and immersion in life’s true pleasures,’ with especially curated libraries of books and music, along with a bathtub overlooking the wild Welsh landscape. Opened in 2016, it is a popular destination in the organisation’s portfolio of seven spectacular architect-design houses.

Yet the Life House also has a sinister side. The project has featured as a crucial backdrop to not one, but two contemporary horror films, You Should Have Left (2020) and The Feast (2021). In each film, the location and the architecture itself – especially in You Should Have Left – is a rich source of the dread and danger that a classic a haunted house movie brings to a location. 

Homes in 'Halloween architecture'

The haunted house trope is as old as houses themselves, giving writers and directors free reign to explore the myriad ways in which architectural space can be made to unsettle and scare. The stereotypical haunted house is all cobweb-covered passages, gloomy corners, dark basements, dusty attics and locked doors. 

Even when films used explicitly modern buildings - like William Castle’s classic Vincent Price-led House on Haunted Hill (1959) – interiors still defaulted to the spider-infested dread of traditional Victoriana, rather than the striking concrete block walls that actually defined Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, inside and out.

From The Haunting (1963), through to The Amityville Horror (1979), What Lies Beneath (2000), The Others (2001) and even Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), each generation has managed its own twist on Halloween architecture, with the house usually playing centre stage, an uncredited character in the drama.

That’s very much the case in the first film to infuse a phantom menace into Pawson’s tasteful rural idyll. In David Koepp’s You Should Have Left (2000), starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried, the house is the stage for a psychological unravelling, its very fabric seeming to change and alter around the characters. Koepp (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel Kehlmann), takes the liberty of digitally extending Pawson’s design, adding an additional floor, whilst also playing around with the internal volumes and reflections as part of the plot. There are allusions to Mark Z. Danielewski’s cult 2000 novel, House of Leaves, which plays similarly twisted games with time and space.

In The Feast, a 2021 Welsh language film directed by Lee Haven Jones, the Life House plays a more subdued background role. The dark tale of a dinner party spinning out of control via an unhinged descent into folk horror. Pawson’s refined and neutral palette and meticulous attention to detail is a distractingly neutral backdrop to a Grand Guignol climax, made all the more unsettling by its incursion into this tasteful realm.

What brings filmmakers to the Life House? Practicalities like the aesthetic solitude and ample space for filming were no doubt high in location managers’ minds (although You Should Have Left used a studio set as well as on location filming). As the scale, detail and atmosphere of traditional architecture retreats ever further into the past, we can expect writers and directors to eke more and more horror out of the modernist present. 

The Life House can be booked for (hopefully) peaceful stays at Living-Architecture.co.uk

John Pawson might be best known as an architect, whose ultra-minimalist, rigorously direct approach probes the fundamental meaning of inhabitation and how the body relates to space.

Pawson’s new exhibition at The Mass, Tokyo, is something of a homecoming for the architect, who lived in Japan in his mid-twenties; first in Nagoya, and later in Tokyo, where he frequented the studio of architect and designer Shiro Kuramata. These formative experiences in the country would go on to heavily influence the distilled, pared-back approach to architecture and design for which Pawson made his name. 

Lunula: John Pawson's sculptural debut

Pawson’s show at The Mass, his first solo show in Japan, will span three gallery spaces and extend to an outdoor area in StandBy, a nearby installation space where he will debut his first sculpture. Lunula is a charcoal-coloured structure that can be entered and inhabited. Although Pawson has remained consistent in his view that his work is architecture, as opposed to art, his new sculpture probes the intersection of these disciplines and more broadly questions the relevance of such labels. Lunula is positioned as a multi-sensory experience, enveloping the viewer in its crescent shape and offering a place to sit and reflect around a cylindrical chimney and billowing incense. ‘I designed Lunula as a piece of inhabitable sculpture, to be experienced as a seamless sensory totality. I want it to be a place that feels comfortable to be in, where all the qualities of a very particular spatial environment come alive.’

In the galleries, Pawson will show chromatically ordered images from his Spectrum series, and debut a new series, Home, in which the architect turns his lens towards his own domestic spaces. In these images, Pawson transcends the precision and often white minimalism of his architecture and design work, inviting viewers on a journey of colour, texture, atmosphere and their collective ability to rouse emotion. 

Pawson’s ability to command light and space in the photographic sphere has come to the fore in recent years. It began in 2012 with ‘A Visual Inventory’, followed five years later by Spectrum, which began in book form and became a 2018 exhibition at London’s 180 The Strand. ‘A Shade of Pale’, curated by Carrie Scott, enveloped the entire gallery space in 320 photographs, staged as an immersive architectural installation. 

‘In accepting the invitation to exhibit my photographic work at The Mass, I have a sense of completing a circle that began nearly half a century ago, when I was living in Japan’, says Pawson, who explains how he enlists his camera in the same way that others might use a sketchbook. ‘Those years, first in Nagoya and then in Tokyo, clarified so much for me and continue to influence what I see when I look through the lens of a camera.’

John Pawson's exhibition at The Mass, Tokyo, runs from 14 April - 14 May 2023. themass.jp

John Pawson’s third collaboration with Tekla takes its design cues from the British designer’s Oxfordshire family home. The bed frame, bedding and textiles of the new collection draw on the natural colour palettes of his 17th-century farmhouse Home Farm, encompassing simple and cleanly drawn forms in a minimalist take on the domestic.

‘When I am designing furniture pieces, the precedents that influence my thinking are principally the work of Donald Judd and of midcentury Danish designers, such as Hans Wegner,’ says Pawson of the aesthetic of the new collection. ‘I wanted to create a stripped-back form that would function without compromise as both a bed and a day bed. The simple hinged panel is the defining move that accommodates this transformation.’

The bed is crafted from oiled elm and set on a low platform, its hinged headrest making it ideal for reading. The white bedding, in 100 per cent cotton, has a comfortable tactility, a result of its textured surface. A bedspread and cushion covers in 97 per cent linen with 3 per cent silk in muted hues make a natural accompaniment to the set.

It is the first time Pawson has created furniture for Tekla, after two previous partnerships focused on blankets inspired by the lush countryside surrounding his house. In earthy reds and soft greys, they capture the shifting of the seasons as reflected in the woods and landscapes of the Cotswolds. ‘All of my work springs from an attitude towards space, surface, proportion and light and the idea of achieving a state of simplicity through reduction,’ Pawson says.

For the designer, the time felt right to build on this history. ‘I like collaborations that extend beyond a single project,’ he adds. ‘Over time, the trust builds, the conversations grow richer and the scope for pushing the ideas deepens.’

INFORMATION

teklafabrics.com

Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood has been undergoing a hotel and construction boom over the past few years but none was more anticipated than this partnership with hotelier Ian Schrager and the architecture studio of John Pawson. While the site holds a full-service hotel, real estate developers Witkoff and New Valley round out the latest dream team collaboration by allowing for residency in this fabled area right on the famous strip.

‘Finding the West Hollywood site in Ed Ruscha’s photographic artwork, every building on the Sunset Strip, provided a memorable moment early on', said Pawson.  ‘A phrase Ian used over and over when he was talking about the brief was ‘gritty sophistication.’ In the way they combine the raw and the refined, the repeating screens and natural textures that are such a feature of the West Hollywood design capture the contradictory energies that Ian identified as such a defining aspect of The Sunset Strip.'

To that end, the private residential lobby connects to the main hotel and a mobile art piece by Sterling Ruby that incorporates elements from previous incarnations of the site - an oil drum and frying pan represent the former gas station and Scandia restaurant where Frank Sinatra frequented back in the day.

While residential perks and amenities include a full-time concierge and a pool, the 190-room hotel (in a partnership with Marriott International) also holds a signature restaurant, basement club, and a second rooftop pool, plus meeting rooms, spa and fitness center, but you may not want to leave your personal home. 

The twenty luxury residences encompass expansive views of the hills and city skyline that showcase a perfect balance of indoor and outdoor living. Pawson brings the outside in with custom automated sliding glass walls that open to sprawling private terraces. Other polished design elements include white oiled oak flooring, Molteni kitchens with custom teak millwork, a freestanding 1,200-pound concrete bathtub in the master bathroom and custom lighting throughout. 

Pawson adds: ‘Another highpoint for me is the sense of calm you get on arrival in the garden, so close to the hectic life of The Sunset Strip.'

Pawson also used travertine, flamed cedar and the bronze-colored screens as the key exterior elements. ‘The travertine we used in West Hollywood was sourced from the Tivoli quarries in central Italy. When test sections of the unfilled stone were produced, the result was such a beautiful quality of porosity we decided not to fill the stone joints either.'

Within The Residences, high ceilings and oversized walls create an opportunity to customize your art collection through a partnership with The Residence Art Concierge Program by Creative Art Partners. With access to more than 15,000 unique and highly desired works, there is an option to purchase or lease a personal collection that can be installed permanently or seasonally. 

‘I think that with all longstanding collaborations, there is always a sense of anticipation in what new possibilities a new site and location will bring. Because Ian and I understand each other so well – we are so comfortable with the shared creative process – there is scope really to push things,' said Pawson.  

Schrager says: ‘I want this project to be great so I have a little more intensity about it. I might be a little more demanding than he is sometimes and I’m always pushing.  I have a genuinely deep affection for John and I respect him and what he does. I went to him and said, I don't want a minimalist space. I want something simple, and refined, and sophisticated but I don't want anything that fits into any kind of category. It’s the perfect working relationship because we like each other and we respect each other. You can’t ask for more than that.' 

INFORMATION

johnpawson.com

Home Farm, in a small village in the Cotswolds, is the second home that John Pawson always resisted having. He was happy with his home base of London, and the idea of an additional abode didn't sit well with his reductionist sensibilities and minimalist approach. But the temptation to build something for himself, free of client demands, proved difficult to resist. ‘I saw a chance for myself to carry out a few things that I wanted to do architecturally,’ he says. 

The project sits on a 22-acre ‘super site’ in the 'golden triangle' of Stowe, Morton and Chipping Norton: on an escarpment, looking down a valley, a long way from a main road, and no pylons. When Pawson's wife, Catherine found it in late 2012, it was a ‘dilapidated farmyard with lots of clearing up to do’. She handed John the particulars and said, ‘this is what we don’t want’. He countered, ‘this is perfect'. So they bought it.

Home Farm was originally built in 1610 as the farm cottage and working farm for a Grade-I listed Jacobean house on the other side of the road. It came with a pond full of carp that predates the house, and an orchard of crab apple trees. Pawson’s only external intervention was adding what he calls 'the link', joining the barn and the cottage. It's set back slightly from the two, with a lower roof line, and constructed in layers of cement, in contrast to the Cotswold stone of the existing property. It's the handiwork of Paul Wolf, a Belgian, who had previously produced Pawson’s cement benches for the twelfth century Cistercian Abbey of Le Thoronet.

The barn had large double doors on both sides. Pawson closed off the pair facing the road, but left it visible from the outside, as the planners did not want passers-by to see a domestic scene. ‘They wanted to keep it as a barn. So apart from this little piece of concrete, you can't tell what goes on here.’

Inside, the barn is made up of two large volumes, with a main kitchen and dining area that leads down two steps to a seating area. The west side looks over the pond, and Pawson has fitted a full-height sash window, operated by a motor due to its weight. ‘I can’t really be in there without opening it a bit, because I love sounds and things.’ 

The built-in kitchen, made up of an island unit and a wall of cupboards at one end, is fashioned in elm, to align with the original floorboards and beams. The new elements are made from two 80-foot high trees, harvested in Germany, the last of their kind that Pawson's suppliers could find. 

A trio of Pawson's Sleeve lamps for Wonderglass is suspended from the beams, under which a 3.6m long table of Pawson’s design, the same width as the sash window, is flanked with Hans Wegner’s Wishbone chairs. The table is, naturally, set with his tableware, stemware and flatware for When Objects Work. Adjacent, three Donald Judd chairs sit in the shallow alcove that hints at the closed-off roadside doors. 

The seating area occupies what was once the threshing room, now furnished with a large 1979 Library bed from Donald Judd, and is carpeted underfoot with jute matting. The TV has been banished upstairs, accessible only via a little ladder.

From here you are led through ‘the link', to the cottage, whose volumes Pawson’s has left pretty much as they were. The road-facing east side retains its original metal-paned glass, while the west side has been given modern glazing to better let in the view. There is another sitting room, complete with an original inglenook and a bread oven with a dome-like roof; then a second dining area; and then another kitchen, plus a pantry that was once a cider press. There's a symmetry to the order of spaces: ‘kitchen, dining, living; living, dining, kitchen,' says Pawson.

Aside from the elm floorboards upstairs, the rest of the floor is poured concrete with chips (deliberate cracking), a kind of ‘un-busy’ terrazzo. Walls are finished in traditional lime plaster, while shelves, tabletops and bathroom counters are all made of white Lasa marble from the Stelvio National Park, above Meran in South Tyrol (where Pawson did a house for Michael Maharam and Sabine Steinmair). It’s an illusion of sorts, a very thick piece of marble with a soft bevelled slither of an edge, set in elm, as Pawson did not want to see too much of the marble.

Also on the ground floor is Catherine’s study, a library, and a reading room. Furnishing is understandably minimal; there are pieces from Poul Kjærholm, Donald Judd, and Pawson himself, plus an 18th century Swedish Gustavian sofa and lamps from the Castiglioni brothers and Issey Miyake. 

Upstairs are three bedrooms. The master and its bathroom both have double-height ceilings, as the attic floor was taken out. Every bedroom has its own amazing bathroom, to make sure that no guest would feel they got the bad room. 

In an unexpected touch, there are actually curtains on the original east-facing windows – in un-dyed boiled wool, almost the colour of the lime plaster walls. Pawson describes them as ‘sort of monk-like, but a very rich monk’. You can tell he's still not 100 per cent comfortable with the soft furnishings when he says, ‘it’s my fault for not coming up with some sort of privacy’.

Across the gravelled courtyard from the main building, the former stables have been made into a self-contained guesthouse, its interior lined entirely in elm. Downstairs is a sitting room, kitchen and dining space, with its own wood burning-stove, and upstairs under a pitch roof is a double bedroom and bathroom.  

Pawson first thought of making this a studio space for him to work. But the project ‘took so long that when I get down there, the last thing I feel like doing is working.’ It’s a new sensation for the designer, who says he’s always worked everywhere he’s gone. Home Farm, says Pawson, has ‘an immediate calming effect’.

INFORMATION

Home Farm is one of 10 new projects featured in John Pawson: Anatomy of Minimum, £49.95 (Phaidon), available from 9 October johnpawson.com

Tekla Fabrics, the new-ish Copenhagen homeware label, has collaborated with architect John Pawson. The result? Four jacquard blankets made in warm, neutral colours that feel as considered as they look.

For established Pawson, agreeing to the collaboration with a younger, smaller brand was an easy decision. ‘Engaging with talented young individuals is always a great pleasure. It also helps keep the thinking fresh,' he says.

With a background in luxury fashion, Tekla founder Charlie Hedin shifted gears towards homeware and founded the textile studio in 2017. ‘Today we can clearly see an evolution in how people spend their time and money,' he says. ‘The home is our most sacred place and gives us the possibility to express ourselves on a level other than fashion.'

Functionality, sustainability, accessibility and innovation are at the core of Tekla’s products – fundamentals that resonated with Pawson. Although the architect is relatively unseasoned with soft furnishings, he says, 'I’ve always been interested in the idea of developing pared back inventories of equipment for the spaces I make. Textiles are part of this essential kit. Because something is functional, does not mean it can’t also be sensuous and beautiful. Sustainability has — rightly — become an integral part of the way we design and this need for responsible thinking is often what drives the innovative aspects of a project.'

The two creatives worked closely to develop the very best blankets, with a weave that felt right for use at home; a lighter, warm soft blanket in Pawson’s signature minimalist style. ‘I’ve always said that, for me, whether I’m designing a monastery, a boat or a blanket, it’s all architecture and therefore all a product of the same thinking,' he explains.

The design of the four blankets was inspired by Pawson’s private family residence in the Cotswolds, Home House, previously a working farm which he has been renovating since 2013. ‘The graphic motifs draw on shapes and patterns in the landscape and in the interventions I have made there. The colours reference conditions of light within the house itself, particularly the red evening sky that reflects around the warm white interior surfaces of the barn,' Pawson explains.

Despite their prestigious creators, the blankets — produced in limited quantities — are intended as just that: not precious pieces to be hung or arranged on the arm of a sofa, but generous rectangles of merino wool to envelope yourself in. ‘There is almost something religious about stepping into Johns' world,' Hedin says. ‘I knew that we would be able to create a product that also gives you that feeling of calmness.' 

INFORMATION

Tekla Fabrics, available from WallpaperSTORE*. For more information, visit the Tekla Fabrics website

Bodil Blain: How do you take your coffee?
John Pawson: Strong Italian espresso shots in my studio. I don't go to coffee shops.

BB: Who was you inspiration to become a creative and how did it evolve?
JP: My father. He was always building things. I knew at school I wanted to be an architect, but the teacher said, ‘oh good lord you can't do maths’. Later I was living in Japan and trying to hang out with Shiro Kuramata. He got fed up with me and said ‘why don't you do it yourself?’ So I went to architectural school in London. That’s where I realised you could learn how to design, before that I thought you just sat down and did it.

BB: Are there any limits to your designs?
JP: No limits – I'm interested in anything, specially if it's useful. I’m not so good at clothes, though. My family were involved in textiles and my father thought I should learn how to cut patterns and sew. I made a dress for my mother, but it didn’t fit – that was her excuse. She had this one elegant Chanel outfit, which she would wear on smart occasions which I loved – she wore it as a sort of uniform.

BB: You are often described as terribly British and understated, how does your nature affect your work, especially abroad?
JP: In America if you don't say ‘I am a genius’, then you are not. The English way is to say, ‘I've had quite a good idea.’ I said this to Calvin Klein once and he said, ‘Well, I don't want quite a good idea, John.’ I always worry about how people react to what I say. I am Mr Night-Angst. My wife says, ‘Just wait until the morning’.

BB: What gives you the most gratification in your work?
JP: The process of designing, just messing around – it reminds me of being at school or at home as a child playing. I am very impatient, I need to flit between things. Luckily, I have an amazing team that can allow me to do that.

BB: Was there a moment in your career that stands out?
JP: I will never forget unveiling the St. Moritz church in Augsburg. I gave the key to the bishop, and he let in 800 people from the local congregation and they were all pushing excitedly to get in. The atmosphere was amazing, the door shut and I shared two hours of service and a concert with them.

BB: Who are three people you admire?
JP: My father, he was very charming with people. At my wedding he made a speech: ‘I had 40 years with John and 40 without, but the later 40 was the best’. That's how I feel about my children.

BB: What are you working on?
JP: A lot of hotels, the Residences at the West Hollywood Edition for Ian Schrager. A project with Sterling Ruby and Ben Rose in Jaffa. I'm also working on a small chapel in Bavaria.

BB: What would you be if you weren't designing buildings?
JP: I have tried fashion, photography, and teaching, but architecture was the one thing I felt I could do. You need to keep your head down for 30 years, then when you raise your head you have a body of work. Kuramata taught me that discipline. I am too impatient for most other things. I love Instagram, however it's so self-indulgent. I think I would be a professional instagrammer.

BB: Now that you're older, how are things different to when you started?
JP: Now I have all this work, but not the energy. It's backwards, the life of an architect. 

A version of this article originally appeared in the June 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*231)

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the John Pawson website

crukafe.com

Swedish lighting company Wästberg introduces a John Pawson-designed model to its latest collection, Holocene, that is inspired by a certain atmospheric temperature of light, ‘kura skymning’. This is an old southern Swedish word that has no translation in English and is rarely used these days, even by Swedes. It refers to the short time between daylight and dusk, when it is too dark to work inside, yet not dark enough to justify burning precious fuel. Before the advent of artificial light, Swedes would use this small passage of time to sit down and talk a while, and when darkness finally came, the fire would be lit.

Kura skymning was very much on the mind of Magnus Wästberg, CEO and founder of the ten-year-old Swedish lighting company Wästberg, when he conceived Holocene as a series of lights that use fire instead of electricity. 

‘It’s about rediscovering something that we’ve forgotten,’ says Wästberg of the series, which is named after the geological period Holocene, stretching from 11,700 to around 100 years ago, when man lived in harmony with nature, was careful with resources and cherished fire. ‘We lived with fire for 300,000 years but for the last 100 years or so we’ve been exposed to electrical light, so it makes sense that we feel better around light that comes from a flame.’

The Holocene collection was a concept that Wästberg dreamt up over a decade ago in a manifesto called ‘lamps for neanderthal man’, but he waited until last year to launch. ‘Our other collections are very high-tech and mostly LED but from the start I had this idea of making a parallel collection with fire as light sources. I didn’t have the guts or idea of how to do it back then. It would have been confusing for the market for us to launch a state-of-the-art lamp and then a candlestick.”

So far, Wästberg has collaborated with a stellar line of designers to produce pieces in the Holocene collection, namely Ilse Crawford, David Chipperfield and Jasper Morrison, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the latest designer to contribute to the series is heralded British architect and master of minimalism John Pawson.

‘I tend to do things on instinct and design things only if I need them for a project, and this is very much something I wanted,’ reflects Pawson examining the clean-lined stainless steel and aluminium lantern. ‘It has surprised me that it has such a presence. It's more like a piece of furniture than a lamp.’

Holocene No.4, as it has been named, is essentially an oil lantern that has been reduced to its essential form. A year in the making, its matt exterior surfaces and a polished internal core amplify the fire within, which burns from a perfectly milled, highly engineered spill-proof canister, which safely stores the oil.

Its long handle with a perfectly-placed kink at the top allows it to be rested on a dining table or a window sill, stood on the floor or hung from a wall.

‘Everything you need for architecture, light being the most important, also proportion, material, scale, all of these things that you apply to buildings and rooms, you would apply to something like this,’ says Pawson. ‘Candlelight gives you an immediate atmosphere regardless of the space, and I'm always trying to make rooms which have atmosphere.’

Holocene will be available to buy online from Wästberg’s e-shop from Monday 12 November 2018.

INFORMATION

Holocene, €349, is available to buy online from Wästberg. For more information, visit the website

‘You’ve come to the right place for slowness,’ says John Pawson in the basement of his King’s Cross studio, from which comes the work that has given Pawson a global reputation as the pre-eminent supplier of architectural calm, be it for houses, hotels, offices, galleries, shops or even monasteries. Often characterised as minimalist, the Pawson aesthetic is actually one of considered reductivism, the removal of extraneous detail in favour of an all-enveloping simplicity. Sometimes this purity is juxtaposed with existing structure to accentuate its simplicity. Sometimes landscape is the foil.

The Casa delle Bottere combines the architect’s legendary asceticism with a full quota of cutting-edge low-energy technology. Pawson’s houses have always received more attention than his other works, largely because they seem to prescribe a very particular way of life. Yet as the architect himself gently points out, creating a domestic environment is always a collaboration with a client, an ongoing conversation that brings together their requirements with Pawson’s constantly refined visual sense.

‘They’re trusting you with something they really can’t envision,’ says Pawson, adding, ‘I understand the client’s point of view more and more as I get older. They’re all hugely successful and talented people, and they have their own point of view. And they’re in the business of testing you. You’re doing them a disservice if you give in.’

This house and chapel in Veneto is a case in point. Casa delle Bottere is being built for a family with a sizeable experience of commissioning architecture, meaning that ‘the client had a very realistic programme for design and construction’. With that established, Pawson explains that the building is always ‘very dependent on the client – that’s the whole point of this game. It’s all to do with trust and courage and patience.’

Together with associate architect Giuseppe Cangialosi, of Treviso-based MZC Architettura, Pawson and his project architect Ben Collins have carved a remarkable dwelling out of the Venetian landscape, with the Dolomites rising in the distance. Inspired by both the rough simplicity of local agricultural buildings and the classical purity of Veneto’s most famous architectural son, Andrea Palladio, the Casa is a strangely satisfying hybrid of vernacular pragmatism and rigorous geometry.

Set within the landscape, the single storey dwelling is placed above a large basement and courtyard. ‘This house had to reach AECB CarbonLite gold standard sustainability status, so it’s incredibly energy efficient,’ says Pawson. ‘All the materials are recycled, it’s triple-glazed, there are photovoltaic panels – it’s a sort of case study.’ Energy efficiency is of course, now integral to every architectural brief, but Pawson stresses that this particular house takes things further – to achieve gold standard, it must put out just five per cent of current average CO2 emissions for a dwelling. ‘When you start saving the energy lost from hot water going down a waste pipe, you’re into quite sophisticated areas,’ Pawson says. ‘The triple glazing, for example, requires custom-built sliding doors.’

Externally, the house is finished with marmorino slabs, a traditional material in the Veneto region (it was used extensively by Palladio in the numerous grand villas he constructed in and around Vicenza). The 30m-long rectangular form of the new house is capped with an asymmetric roof, clad with custom-made white concrete slabs and supported by slender columns. ‘As a result, every room has a different shaped roof,’ says the architect.

The main entrance is from below, where an excavated basement serves as car port and service area. There, the owners can park out of sight, then ascend to a double height entrance hall in the centre of the plot. To the west are the living areas, beneath the highest point of the roof, while bedrooms are off to the east. The deep eaves on the south façade provide shade from the sun and a terrace on which to eat and play – all rooms open up to the outdoors via those hefty glazed doors.

The roof also features an offset gable with a solitary window overlooking the entrance driveway and terminating the long axis that runs through the spine of the house. This cruciform plan references one of Palladio’s key architectural devices, running from the living area in the west to the master suite in the east, and north-south across the entrance hall at the house’s heart. The axis can be opened or closed off depending on requirements. All the bathrooms have rooflights and all public rooms have a dual aspect, while artificial lighting is discreetly concealed.

The landscaping has been designed by Pawson’s long-term collaborator Jonnie Bell, who has planted rows of oak trees that run with the contours to provide screening and shade. The chapel is designed as an object within this landscape, set apart from the main house and intended for family baptisms and private services. An unheated box with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, above which a concealed skylight allows natural light to filter down from behind the walls, it is deceptively simple, with Toscana Pietra limestone flooring and an altar and benches made from local oak.

‘It’s nice for us to do these spaces,’ says Pawson. ‘Churches have been a learning curve – Cistercians, for example, are the ultimate minimalists.’ The practice’s work on the Our Lady of Novy Dvur monastery in the Czech Republic, completed in 2004, won it widespread acclaim and more religious buildings are in the offering. 

An adaptation of a story originally featured in the October 2010 issue of Wallpaper* (W*139)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit John Pawson’s website and the MZC Architettura website

Combining John Pawson’s sleek yet considered, minimalist design and Ian Schrager’s forward thinking hospitality concepts and creative direction, The Residences at The West Hollywood Edition are set to be one of Los Angeles’ most highly anticipated projects to date. The project, which unites private residences with the unparalleled services and amenities of a high class hotel, is a scheme developed jointly by real estate companies Witkoff with New Valley. 

The development consists of 20 residences, ranging from one to four bedrooms, which are set on the edge of the leafy West Hollywood hills, on top of the area’s new Edition hotel. Drawing inspiration from the building’s location at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Doheney Drive and the panoramic skyline views of the city, The Residences at The West Hollywood Edition are modern and comfortable, bringing together the best of both worlds – private residential, and boutique hospitality. Among the hotel amenities that will be available to residents are a full-service spa, a fitness centre, valet parking, while they will also have access to the ground level restaurant and top level bar and lounge. 

Inside, the luxury apartments feature Pawson’s signature architectural style of pared down, understated luxury, within a seamless, serene and minimalist environment. Warm timber and neutral colours create a welcoming cocoon that opens up towards the vistas and green surrounds. Long terraces wrap around the building, offering plenty of outdoors space to the residents. 

The scheme is currently in construction, with completion currently scheduled for late 2018.

INFORMATION

For more information visit John Pawson’s website

It turns out master of minimalism John Pawson also has a painterly approach to pigment. We first saw hints of such a trait in his first tome A Visual Inventory (2012) – a journey through the details, textures, spatial qualities that inspire him – but in the newly released Spectrum, the architect’s colour thesis is given the opportunity to explode.

Organised by hue, the visual library kicks off in the whites and light greys moving methodically through the entire colour spectrum, concluding theatrically with midnight blacks. It’s as if the strict privation of colour that typifies much of Pawson’s architecture – think of the London’s starkly greyscale Design Museum, or the concrete caverns of The Feuerle Collection – here gives way to blushing, staining, tinting expression.

Not just a sensory fiesta, there’s real photographic clout here. ‘Where others might sketch or make notes, my reflex is to reach for a lens,’ Pawson writes of his well-documented passion for image making.

Taken on a digital camera or an iPhone (Pawson has amassed an eager following on Instagram), each photograph represents a fragment from an individual project, or an everyday moment that happened to catch his eye. Readers are given an intimate look over Pawson’s shoulder, travelling with him through his hometown of London to far-flung corners. Dizzyingly, a memory of a mossy bank in Kyoto nestles next to a snap of forest-green bricks in Bloomsbury. Geography, subject matter and scale are eschewed in favour of one reductive, visually therapeutic organisational technique: codes of colour.

To celebrate the book’s release, Pawson will be in conversation with Phaidon publisher Emilia Terragni at the Design Museum on 28 November – a happy way to ring in the Museum’s first birthday in its Kensington home.

INFORMATION                                                                                                                  
Spectrum, £45, published by Phaidon

In December our thoughts turn to entertaining, and we offer up an enticing menu of design, architecture, art, fashion and, of course, food. For us, creativity really is at the heart of life-enhancing entertaining. For starters, we love the pairing of artists and cuisine; and in this issue we serve up Gillian Wearing’s lentil, potato and leek soup, as well as Liz Swig’s innovative oatmeal offerings, with extra ingredients by the Campana brothers.

We also talk to Jony Ive and get the very first sitting at Apple Park’s super-sized staff restaurant, Naoto Fukasawa-designed chairs and all. (Good food is so central to Apple’s working culture that the company operates its own fishing boat.) Apple Park spaces, cooked up by Foster + Partners and Ive’s industrial design studio, encourage the social aspect of working, with the restaurant being the hub of a network of collaborative spaces, places for chance encounters and off-the-cuff creativity.

We’ve nourishment for the eyes courtesy of Ive’s limited-edition cover, using Apple’s original colour spectrum and, naturally, generous white space. We also prepare heart-warming, spirit-calming recipes in a John Pawson-designed Welsh retreat.

We’ll always champion great photography, but this issue celebrates illustration, too, as a fresh way of looking at interiors, adding a dash of personal interpretation and history to the visual narrative. I have a long-held appreciation of illustration, from my formative days as a graphic design student and, later, commissioning works by the likes of Ian Wright, Ralph Steadman, Noma Bar and George Hardie – true mark makers. The first in our new series of occasional illustrated Space stories is a Wallpaper* debut for Dutch artist Leonie Bos (her work also appears on our newsstand cover). A play, and sure hand, with texture and colour are central to Bos’ approach and she brings a unique warmth and vigour to our pages.

The illustrator’s practice, the conjuring of imagined worlds, is a fascination for us. Once we had selected key design pieces to feature, Bos went away and created her fantastical Wallpaper* entertaining space. Her early sketch, above, is an insight into the creative process. Illustrations can be literal, abstract, decorative, conceptual. And so much more. Properly served up, they are a true celebration of print, its tactility and devourability.

Sarah Douglas, Editor

As originally featured in the December 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*225)

INFORMATION

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

Arclinea

Kitchen: Convivium
Designer: Antonio Citterio
Key features: Units by Maxalto, suspended glass cabinet, vintage steel worktops, flush-mounted hob, hood and sink that ‘disappear’
Contact: Arclinea

Valcucine

Kitchen: Artematica 30th Anniversary
Designer: Gabriele Centazzo
Key features: Created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Valcucine's first use of glass in its kitchens. The large sink is made from a single block of cardoso stone, while the tap is installed on the bridging framework above the sink, giving it the look of a fountain. The cabinet pattern is created using graphic vitrum, a new digital technique for customising glass
Contact: Valcucine

Armani/Dada

Kitchen: Slide
Key features: Light sassafras wood doors, bronze steel worktop and sink, champagne marble tops and black panel, monolithic C-shaped island with innovative sliding system that reveals hob and worktop
Contact: Armani/Dada

Modulnova

Kitchen: Twenty Royal Grey
Designer: Andrea Bassanello
Key features: Island constructed using multiple layers of marble to create a unique light and dark effect. Large suspended peninsula made of eucalyptus wood
Contact: Modulnova

Cesar

Kitchen: N_Elle
Key features: Worktop in brushed grey saint laurent marble, doors in rovere termocotto, and framework in rovere bruno and stainless steel. Sharp, clean-cut lines, 2.2cm thick doors, easy to mix and match with other Cesar systems
Contact: Cesar

As originally featured in the July 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*220)

‘Who’s the skinhead with the beard, tight suit and tattoos?’ A few years ago, a distinctive looking chap appeared on the front row of the fashion shows and caught the attention of other regular attendees. ‘He’s the buying director for MyTheresa,’ replied one sage. This particular tattooed gentleman was Justin O’Shea and he was definitely rocking a ‘Thing’. And he was getting noticed. O’Shea came from a humble background. Prior to his Thingness, young Justin grew up in a remote village in Queensland, Australia, working in mines with his dad and shifting boxes at supermarkets. Now he was an unmistakeable feature on the fashion circuit with an exploding social media profile boosted by numerous half naked selfies. Some dismissed him as a bit of a joke. Others said he was a smart guy who knew his fashion retail and also knew how to project himself as a brand – as a Thing.

Fast forward to July 2016 and O’Shea is no longer on the front row but on the catwalk, taking a John Galliano-style bow for his debut collection for Brioni. His appointment as creative director a few months earlier raised eyebrows as he had no formal training or experience as a designer. But it was a reflection of the changing responsibilities of such a role and of the industry and society more widely. It’s no longer just about being able to design or oversee a collection, it’s about communicating a style and a vision. It’s about being an ambassador who projects that vision. It’s about being noticed and talked about. It’s about having a Thing!

I wish I had a Thing. I realised some years ago that anybody who is really successful, who has really made it, has a Thing. I’m doing all right, but if I had a Thing I’d be big. I’d be someone. A Thing gets you noticed and remembered. ‘Do you know Tony Chambers, the editor of Wallpaper*?’ ‘I don’t think I do… oh, hang on, is he the xxx guy with the xxx? Yes, sure I know him.’ Being noticed and  remembered seems to make you better.

Think of Le Corbusier. Would he have been as successful without those black, thick-framed round spectacles? Richard Rogers has his brightly coloured collarless shirts, while Jean Nouvel keeps it monochrome. Peter Marino’s career took off after he adopted the Tom of Finland look. John Pawson keeps it minimal, of course – he has his NOthing.

Steve Jobs had his black polo-neck and 
dad jeans – the low-key thing. While Italian industrialist Gianni Agnelli always wore his wristwatch over his shirt cuff. A bling thing!

Fashion designers are undoubtedly kings of the Thing. Alber Elbaz ‘owns’ the big bow tie and Rick Owens ‘owns’ elegant goth, while John Galliano has borrowed just about everything – currently settling on a sober Savile Row gent Thing. Karl Lagerfeld has about five Things. The greedy Kaiser has his powdered ponytail, his high-necked starched shirts, ever-present dark glasses and fingerless gloves, and his celebrity pussy, Choupette.

Although copper is his big Thing, designer Tom Dixon also had a pet Thing. Until her recent sad passing, Dixon would always be seen at cocktail events with his pet poodle, Molly. Even Molly had a Thing – she had to be carried as she was deaf, blind and 120 in dog years. Dixon also proudly sports artfully dishevelled curly hair, rides a vintage motorbike, and was apparently the first person in London to go sockless.

Ron Arad has his ever-present trademark hat, gallerist Rossana Orlandi her oversized eyewear, and Marcel Wanders has his 1970s playboy Thing. Karim Rashid, Jack Mama and Nina Tolstrup are the undisputed bright things. And the younger generation of designers are not to be outdone. Bethan Laura Wood does her Boy George Thing, while Philippe Malouin and the Formafantasma boys have made facial topiary their favoured chin Thing.

Photographers naturally understand the power of image. Terry Richardson has his retro porn star Thing and thumbs-up Thing. Juergen Teller is unvaryingly in the shortest of short, sporty, short shorts. And the late, great Bill Cunningham was never without his bright blue French worker’s jacket.

Successful magazine editors are inveterate thingsters. Graydon Carter’s sweeping patrician pelt, Anna Wintour’s bob, Suzy Menkes’ pompadour and Grace Coddington’s fiery red locks are their mane Things. The follicly challenged have to take another tack. British GQ’s Dylan Jones resorted to wearing comically large shirt collars. It may look preposterous, but at least it’s his Thing. He’s got a Thing. I haven’t. Even our Bespoke art director Aneel has developed a personal way of wrapping his shoelaces behind his ankle. ‘It’s my Thing,’ he answered proudly when quizzed by puzzled colleagues.

What could be my Thing? A monocle? Nah – too old fogey. A single bright, block-coloured outfit? Nah – too Rashid. A hat? A cane? A polka-dot bow tie? Deerstalker and pipe? Pants outside my trousers? Not right! I was about to give up when, lo and behold, I had a Thing bestowed upon me. Last year I contracted vertigo, an inner ear condition resulting in room-spinning, nausea, loss of balance and, subsequently, deafness in my right ear. All rather unpleasant and irritating, but at least I now have my Thing. ‘Tony Chambers? Oh, is he the wobbly guy with the ear trumpet who vomits involuntarily? I know him, he’s a legend!’

As originally featured in the October 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*211)

The accolade for Best New Hotel in the 2017 Wallpaper* Design Awards went to Aman’s new hotel in Cabrera, with interiors by John Heah. So it was only appropriate for us to host our intimate Design Awards dinner in the Ballroom of The Berkeley, newly redesigned by the architect himself and two weeks off opening.

The Wallpaper* dinner was the first event to take place in the new space – still in the midst of its makeover – and we joined forces with French champagne house Veuve Clicquot for the soirée with notable guests including John Pawson, Liz Swig, Andrea Rosso and Hiroshi Sambuichi among others.

Ascending from drinks in the Motcomb Room, guests sat down on Designer of the Year Jasper Morrison’s ‘Alfi’ chairs for Emeco, while sipping on Veuve’s Vintage 2008 that was paired with the first course. Following the main course, Wallpaper* Editor-in-Chief Tony Chambers set to hand out trophies with the help of architect Amanda Levete (who sat on this year’s six-strong judges panel). Design Awards partners Officine Panerai also presented a new award category – the Next Generation Designer of the Year – which went to Gustavo Martini.

The ambience was set by FlowerBx’s spiky chrysanthemums sat in refined Nude vases on the table, while candles flickered in holders by Patricia Urquiola for Georg Jensen.

Guests were sent off with a hefty gift bag too that included Best New Grooming Product winner Dyson’s ‘Supersonic’ hairdryer; a snazzy gift voucher for Best Outpost Aquavit London; an Iittala and Issey Miyake cup and saucer; a signed Fortnum & Mason cookbook; and a Wallpaper* City Guide to help plan their trip to Lisbon, this year’s Best City award winner.

On a recent visit to the London townhouse of interior designer Jonathan Reed and fashion designer Graeme Black, the subject turned to lighting. Over an aperitif in the kitchen, Reed despaired over a tiny pair of recessed LED spotlights above the hob. His outstretched arm beneath them, he said, appeared ‘dead, with no sign of blood’. During dinner, in a room lit by exquisite architectural lighting and numerous decorative lamps, I quizzed him further. It turns out that for all his projects, Reed makes a decorative lighting schedule that lists the location and description of each lamp, and the name, manufacturer and stockist of each bulb, to ensure enduring perfection and make life easy for his clients.

I realised I was being far from picky enough when it came to domestic lighting. The next weekend, at the Florence home I share with my husband, I started to lay out my own lighting manual, room by room. Despite having architectural lighting designed by Patrick McInerney (the architect who designed the Trufig range of flush-mounted technology solutions), plus a Lutron management system to set scenes and a good selection of vintage lamps, our light-bulb situation was seriously lacking. Basically, we used whatever bulb fitted.

In London, Vincenzo De Cotiis made us a custom silver-plated brass DC606 to hang in the living room. It came with its own four-page manual

I felt my age. Not long ago it was a simple matter of choosing an Edison screw, small Edison screw or bayonet, and a candle, classic, golf ball or globe shape. Now there are spiral bulbs and LEDs, CFLs (compact fluorescent lights, which you can’t dim) and the orange filament lamps seen in every other hipster bar.

Later that week I took tea with John Pawson, who provided me with a 1,200-word essay he’d written, entitled ‘Light’. I learnt that his go-to lighting man is Arnold Chan of Isometrix, who also supplied our recessed lamps. John told me that his wife, Catherine, was in charge of bulbs at home, but then they have just the one freestanding lamp, by Serge Mouille, and their only real challenge is replacing the fluorescents in a Dan Flavin piece – very first-world housekeeping problems. Like me, Pawson has issues with cables and sockets, so most of his lighting is the built-in kind, which rarely requires bulb changes.

I thought I had everything sorted, until I dined with Martin Brudnizki at a Georg Jensen launch for Zaha Hadid’s jewellery collection (verdict, the bracelets make nice napkin rings). Yes, the designer makes lighting schedules, but he also records how every object in his home is arranged on a surface. Cataloguing Nick’s Nacks, as McInerney likes to call them, would be another project entirely. Somehow, I don’t see the Pawsons needing to do the same.

I’m obsessed with these horsehair sconces from Apparatus Studio. Coarse horsehair meets brass and a light source shrouded in etched glass. $5,200

Newly informed Nicky's top lighting tips

Lighting should support the architecture of a space, so design it at the same time, never afterwards

Both quality and quantity of light should be considered

Never underestimate the variety of white light – just like white paint, there is a range of shades

When lighting your spaces, don’t forget the layout of your furniture and the intensity required for different activities

Natural light will move around a space during the day, so control it if necessary with special screening

Create scenes or moods with the help of light management systems, such as Lutron

We are hard-wired for warm light in the evening and cool light during the day, so create options accordingly

Not all bulbs are created equal, so be afraid, very afraid, of cheap LEDs

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

In his ten years as the Royal Ballet's resident choreographer, Wayne McGregor has faced the wrath of the most pointy-tongued of audience members. Dancers – particularly ex-dancers – are a bitter bunch, and we pick up on every mis-step, delighting at the drama of a heavy landing. We're like this at the best of times, let alone when viewing a performance so groundbreaking that it alters the DNA of the dance form we have devoted our childhoods to perfecting. Perhaps this is why McGregor's performances garner such strong opinions. Or perhaps it is because audiences, filled with dancers or otherwise, are resistant to something truly revolutionary. Despite a spattering of negativity, and the odd lukewarm curtain call, McGregor has made a name for himself, deservedly, as the most original choreographer of our age.

He has been described as the king of adaption, a master of surprise and the busiest man in dance. He describes himself more simply, as 'present tense'. Mr Mono-track. Someone who lives in the moment. This single minded approach has been a source of criticism directed at McGregor. There's too many recurring themes in his work. He doesn't evolve enough, apparently. This critique is rarely leveled at artists working in different disciplines. 'No one would question Antony Gormley for producing multiple iterations of his sculptural forms,' McGregor writes in the programme of his anniversary, three-part performance at the Royal Opera House. 'Every artist has preoccupations, themes that they return to again and again. It's interesting in dance that these signatures are often criticised, and that artists seem required to forever change who they are.'

In conversation with Wallpaper*, McGregor owns his trademark movements proudly. 'I think, partly, my ten years at the Royal Ballet have been unified by one focused approach and message. I do have a physical signature, but the dancers I've been working with over the years have developed within this framework, and my physical signature has now become theirs.' The likes of celebrated Royal Ballet principles Edward Watson, Sarah Lamb and Akane Takada spring to mind.

This symbiotic relationship between dancer and choreographer is part of McGregor's criticism-busting appeal. His continual praise and respect of the talented practitioners he works with helps to breed longstanding, working friendships – sparking moments of jointly-constructed genius. By all accounts, he's a joy to work with. 'To strike a balance between each of the different aspects of a production – the music, design, technology, dance – you have to get great team members,' McGregor explains. 'I'm a fan, first and foremost, of everyone I collaborate with. You have to trust them with space and freedom. I think this is what my collaborators are all interested in as well – they want to be challenged.'

This being said, another questioning glance shot McGregor's way over the years has concerned the music's apparent disconnect to the choreography. Some say the music is like a film-score warbling away as the background to a cast of actors. But, as Studio Wayne McGregor's Polyphonic Playground proved earlier this year, the dancers and the music are intimately connected in McGregor's mind – just in a way we've never been seen before. In this instance, the dancers use their bodies to literally play the music, moving across and over an interactive, synthesised climbing frame.

More generally, instead of choreographing his dancers to move in time to the music, it seems McGregor just asks them to feel it. This connection, arguably more intimate than any perfectly timed port de bra is also seen in Carbon Life, first performed in 2014, and again as part of the anniversary special. Directed by Mark Ronson, contemporary musicians mingle among the dancers. Most notably, 'Dave' the rapper, whose rhythmic speaking is near impossible to dance to – yet somehow McGregor makes it work. The feeling is right, even if the timing isn't. And who cares anyway, because there's a rapper on stage, dodging the high kicks of a prima ballerina. 'The idea that "movement should describe the music" is limiting,' McGregor says of this performance. 'You have to ask: what are the landscapes that the music provides; what's the architecture of the music?'

The renowned set designers McGregor works with enjoy a similar level of creative challenge. In Chroma, the performance that bagged McGregor his resident choreographer role back in 2006, John Pawson was given free range to stamp his minimalist mark on the stage. A blank white canvas is punctuated by a flat screen of light, bathing the stage and theatre in a subtly shifting spectrum of blues, greens and greys. This clean minimalism influenced McGregor's choreographic aesethetic. In each of Chroma's many movements, nothing is wasted. Each step is essential, charged with meaning and beautifully poised. These facets have always been the backbone of ballet – McGregor just paired them with a designer who felt similarly. McGregor consulted Pawson's Minimum manifesto, which describes the perfectly minimal object as 'when every component, every detail, and every junction has been reduced or condensed to the essentials'. In this sense, the set and the choreography are moving together, in economical harmony.

There was an air of impossible cool around Chroma that McGregor has somehow managed to maintain for the last decade, aided by his stylish use of the day's technology trends. Notably, in the 2008 production of Infra, where artist Julian Opie's cartoon walking figures strolled in a stream across a stage-wide LED screen. Techno-spectacle ensued again in McGregor's 2014 collaboration with artist Tauba Auerbach, who blazoned the back wall with a series of illuminated geometric glyphs, creating the aura of a contemporary basement bar in the austere Opera House.

Technological stage settings are crucial to McGregor's new performance, Multiverse – his 15th work for the Royal Ballet. American composer Steve Reich penned a new piece for the occasion, Runner, an intense, 16 minute composition for strings, piano, wind and percussion, with no breaks or pauses. It's a challenge the dancers took on with aplomb, set to a backdrop of photographs of the migrant crisis that eventually pixelated into a giant tableau of a classical war painting. With the hyper-extented dancers twisting on stage, the scene was fiercely moving.

McGregor is an unconventional choreographer in almost every sense, so it's fitting that he didn't have a conventional path into the profession. Most choreographers go through formal dance training themselves – but for McGregor, 'choreography and the world of dance kind of crept up on me – I was born in the 1970s among the John Travolta movies, the Saturday Night Fevers. And I loved them. I wanted to come in at a creative level quite early. It doesn't matter where you start, but how creative you can be with it.' After witnessing the remarkable rise of McGregor, we're inclined to agree. But in the artist's own opinion, it's only just beginning. 'I'd love for the goalposts to move even further,' he explains. 'Ballet should be in constant change and flux. There's no limits as to what it can, or should, do.'

If the last ten years are anything to go by, we predict the next decade will see McGregor making increasingly bold use of technology, and the possibilities it offers dance. Bigger sets, bigger sound, more sass and sex. But this is the king of adaptation – the master of surprise – we're discussing, so we're not placing any bets.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Royal Opera House website

John Pawson’s design for the newly relocated Design Museum in London will allow it to step up as an international centre for culture and education. The plan has tripled the gallery space, placing it in closer proximity to London’s leading museums, and fundraising has now enabled it to open up its collections for free.

The sweeping pavilion roof – preserved from the original 1960 Grade II listed Commonwealth Institute with the structural expertise of OMA – symbolises its status as an architectural monument to design.

Original concrete floors were removed with radical engineering techniques directed by OMA, Allies and Morrison and Arup, in order to preserve the iconic roof and restructure the buildings into a contemporary design of sweeping simplicity. OMA’s Reinier de Graaf described how they began working on the structure before it had a purpose or owner; when the Design Museum claimed it, ‘a refurbishment became a conversion on to ever more radical degrees’.

The Design Museum's oak-lined atrium. Photography: Gareth Gardner

Pawson then carved the 10,000 sq m space up, making way for a colossal operation of a vast atrium with stepped seating, a permanent gallery, two temporary gallery spaces, a restaurant, auditorium, studios, library, archive, shop and new learning facilities.

The permanent collection – curated into an exhibition titled ‘Designer/Maker/User’ – sits just beneath the roof on the top floor, allowing visitors to see the impressive structure up close as they curve through the energetic exhibition design by Studio Myerscough. By contrast, the gallery at -2 has high ceilings, open space and low display tables, showing the significant effect of architecture on exhibition display and visitor experience.

Pawson’s first major public work displays attentiveness to a purely human recognition of spatial immersion – an absolute requirement for a museum – through the wide atrium, which is combined with a lightness felt in the smooth oak stair and the softly dynamic spiral of the paraboloid roof.

‘Design is about optimism,’ says Sir Terence Conran, who founded the Design Museum in 1983. ‘It’s clean, fresh, well lit, friendly and full of surprises,’ he adds of the design, 'a dream that has been a long time materialising’ and the most important moment of his design career.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Design Museum website

ADDRESS

Design Museum
224–238 Kensington High Street
London W8 6AG

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

The 20th anniversary of Wallpaper* this year has called for celebrations of all kinds – among them a staff knees-up for everyone who had ever worked for the brand, a pop-up gallery on Mayfair’s Cork Street, and a panel discussion at the V&A. But best of all was an intimate dinner at Claridge’s recently. Joining forces with Dom Pérignon and its chef de cave Richard Geoffroy, we gathered some of our closest friends, representing all the creative disciplines we cover – design, architecture, art, fashion, food and, of course, fine wine.

Wallpaper* was founded in 1996. And as we washed down food by chef Simon Rogan with successive glasses of Dom ’96, we realised that, as Francis Albert Sinatra would say, it was a very good year – for all present.

Barber & Osgerby founded their studio in 1996 and created the ‘Loop’ table, which would attract the attention of their first major patron, Giulio Cappellini. John Pawson, who designed our subscribers’ cover this month, published his seminal book Minimum in 1996. And Amanda Levete, then at Future Systems, brought architectural finesse to London’s Docklands with her West India Quay Bridge.

1996 also saw Ron Arad reinvent the wheel. Not literally, but with his rolling circular bookcase, while Tom Dixon conceived his iconic ‘Jack’ light. Peter Saville, being Peter Saville, moved into his outlandishly louche Mayfair flat. ‘The Apartment’, as it was known, was perhaps a prototype for the Wallpaper* aesthetic. ‘I should have bought it,’ he quipped.

A young Ben Evans, now director of LDF, was working behind the scenes in 1996 to propel a similarly young Tony Blair to 10 Downing Street. Gregor Muir, now director of Tate’s international art collection, was laying the groundwork for his book of record on the YBAs. Lucky Kunst! That’s the title of the book – not a comment on Gregor’s fortunate double decade. Conceptualist artist Joseph Kosuth put the finishing touches on The Boundaries of the Limitless, which remains one of Japan’s largest works of public art.

Our younger friends were well on their way to success in 1996. Artist Conrad Shawcross finished his foundation course at the Chelsea School of Art. Simon Fujiwara was a boarder at Harrow, where he would be mentored by his eventual muse Joanne Salley – now the subject of his video installation at London’s Photographers’ Gallery. Designer Beatrix Ong was interning at Harper’s Bazaar and hot British fashion talent Simone Rocha was just celebrating her tenth birthday.

Finally, 1996 was also a very good year for Dom Pérignon. It was the year that Richard Geoffroy took the helm, and produced one of the brand’s best vintages. So it was fitting that we toasted its newest release, the P2, an exceptional champagne in its second Plénitude (stage of maturation).

It’s hard to improve on a classic, but whether among champagnes or creatives, maturity clearly has its perks.

As originally featured in the December 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*213)

INFORMATION
The December 2016 issue of Wallpaper* is out now! Subscribe here

In 2008, in the context of an international competition, OMA came up with a clever plan to help preserve the former Commonwealth Institute on High Street Kensington, designed by Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall & Partners and completed in 1962. While the building was listed since 1988, it had been empty since 2002 and in urgent need of repurposing.

Enter Holland Green, an apartment complex of three residential blocks that surround the existing structure, now set to become the new Design Museum, come 24 November. This residential element would enrich the site and help support and fund the preservation and redesign of the existing, iconic building on site. The architectural team behind the area’s transformation is OMA with Allies and Morrison (who joined the project in 2011), and John Pawson. OMA with A&M worked tirelessly on the masterplanning, as well as the residential scheme's interiors and the core and shell preparation of the museum’s building. Pawson took over the baton in July 2015 to further perfect the former Institute's interiors and work on the overall building’s redesign into a world-class museum.

OMA with Allies and Morrison took out the former Commonwealth building’s floors, creating a series of voids that allowed breathing space for the new use, making it fit to accommodate the needs of a museum. Its façades were completely replaced with energy-efficient fritted ones (designed to resemble the originals), and a new basement was added for car parking, storage space and service access, leaving only the structure’s iconic hyperbolic paraboloid roof and its supporting structure original (and carefully restored).

At the same time, Holland Green and its three volumes were arranged and scaled proportionately around the existing structure, in response to the immediate surroundings. Calm, orthogonal geometries were chosen for the residential architecture; the aim was not to compete with the museum’s famously curvaceous roof, but rather to highlight it through subtle contrast. Rows of openings and box-like protrusions add plasticity to the complex.

OMA partner Reinier de Graaf led the project, with the help of London office director Carol Patterson. ’The residential blocks give the historical building a new setting,’ he says. ’Their calm, orthogonal geometries pose a deliberate contrast to the dramatic hyperbolic geometries of the exhibition hall’s roof, registering the amplitude of its curvature like graph paper. The residential buildings sit as freestanding objects within the park landscape. Oriented to align with the exhibition hall, they aim to integrate the hall into an ensemble of buildings.’

The new Design Museum site’s transformation is fascinating; the result of a multi-level collaboration between some of the world’s leading international practices. Explore photographer Koto Bolofo’s own look (W* 211) at this captivating transition, and look out for our forthcoming December issue (W* 213) for more on the completed building. 

INFORMATION

For more information visit the OMA website, the Allies and Morrison website, the John Pawson website, and the Design Museum website

ADDRESS

Design Museum
224–238 Kensington High Street
London, W8 6AG

View Google Maps

When photographer Koto Bolofo first visited London’s Commonwealth Institute in 2011, he found a forgotten architectural relic in the centre of London. Shrouded by park trees, overgrown with wild strawberry plants and home to a family of foxes, ‘it was like a dormant cathedral,’ he remembers. ‘Despite the buzz of the traffic whizzing past on Kensington High Street, you wouldn’t even know it was there. That was the strange thing.’

The visit had followed a call from his long-time friend, design entrepreneur Sophie Conran, who is also the daughter of Design Museum founder and trustee Sir Terence Conran. ‘She said, “You know the Commonwealth Institute?’’’ says Bolofo, retelling the conversation. ‘Well, my dad’s bought it and he’s going to turn it into the new Design Museum. Would you like to photograph the renovation?’

South African-born, London-based Bolofo, famed for his award-winning fashion photography and films, was apprehensive about taking on his first ever architectural project, but agreed to a test run. At the time, the 1962 Grade II*-listed building, just south of Holland Park, had been empty for more than a decade. It was yet to be publicly announced as the museum’s new home and it would be a year before ground broke on its £83m John Pawson-designed facelift.‘I was doing 8-12 second exposures, which I’d never done before, so I wasn’t even sure the pictures were going to come out,’ Bolofo remembers. Happily, the Design Museum were thrilled with his ‘non-architectural’ approach and so he spent the next five years revisiting the site every few months in order to track its transformation.

‘I fell in love with the building,’ he says. ‘I photographed it like I would photograph a woman – for me, it had so much femininity. The lines, the curves, there is absolutely nothing masculine about it.’

As the construction team dug out the foundations to reinforce the structure and stripped the building back to its skeleton, Bolofo captured the still moments in between; the rhythmic twists of the roof trusses, the empty walkways and the piles of debris illuminated by shafts of ethereal light. ‘I know nothing about construction; I had to use my instinct and my knowledge of form in order to document it. It was like watching a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis,’ he says.

With the butterfly now almost fully emerged, the finishing touches are being made to the museum’s interior, while, on the second floor, a dramatic cafe and restaurant space is promising to steal the show. ‘Because it’s such a significant and important building, there is very little we can actually do in terms of design in the interior,’ explains Jay Osgerby of Barber & Osgerby, the design studio tasked with fitting out the restaurant interior. Instead, the duo set about creating a scheme that made the most of the restaurant’s spectacular views outwards across the tree tops of Holland Park and inwards towards the cavernous atrium. For this purpose, the duo developed what they describe as ‘quiet and refined’ pieces of exclusive furniture and lighting that will let the view do the talking. A new wooden chair and a range of upholstery is in development with Vitra, while a number of lighting pieces are being produced by Flos.

The menu, provided by Sir Terence’s food, wine and hotel group Prescott & Conran, will ensure that the whole operation lives up to its founding father’s exacting standards. ‘Seeing this quite remarkable project on the cusp of completion makes me tremble with excitement and anticipation,’ beams Conran, who cites the museum as his most rewarding achievement. ‘It really does feel like our moment has arrived, and seeing the Design Museum move to this magnificent building demonstrates just how important design has become to industry in this country. It makes my rather long career absolutely worthwhile because it is putting design at the very heart of British creativity.’

As originally featured in the October 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*211)

INFORMATION

Ahead of going on permanent display in the new Design Museum’s atrium in November, Koto Bolofo’s photographs will appear at 34 Cork Street for ’Wallpaper* magazine is 20! Construction Sight’, an exhibition to celebrate our 20th-birthday issue, in collaboration with Cork Street Galleries.

’Wallpaper* magazine is 20! Construction Sight’ is on view through to 8 October, Monday to Saturday 10am-6pm

For more information on Koto Bolofo’s work, visit his website

Photography: Koto Bolofo

ADDRESS

34 Cork Street, Mayfair, W1S 3NU

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

With the doors to the Design Museum’s much-loved Shad Thames abode now permanently closed, the finishing touches are being made to its new spacious home over in west London.

Set to open on 24 November, the new museum has been built within the Commonwealth Institute – a 1960s Grade II-listed modernist building with a sweeping paraboloid roof that sits just south of Holland Park in South Kensington’s museum district. With building costs coming in at a hefty £83 million, the remodelled Institute is the first UK public build by architect and designer John Pawson, who has thoughtfully brought the 1960s building back to life. Totaling 10,000 sq metres, the new museum offers three times as much space and seeks to attract 650,000 visitors each year.

Of course, it’s not just the building that’s being remodeled; the museum’s format and approach to curation are also undergoing an overhaul. For the first time in its history the museum will house a permanent collection that will be open to everyone free of charge. Located on the top floor of one of the museum’s three gallery spaces, the permanent display will eschew the typical chronological exhibition format and will instead embrace a layout that considers the displayed objects from three perspectives within the design cycle – the designer, maker and end user.

To make the museum experience even more inclusive, a crowd-sourced display of 200 to 300 design objects will be set across a 6m-long entrance wall. ‘We’ve invited our audience to tell us what they think is good design,’ explains chief curator Justin McGuirk. ‘We’re then going to collect these objects and put them into a dynamic display. We genuinely want to have a conversation with our audience – it’s participative curating.’

The museum’s two temporary exhibitions, which will still be ticketed, include a headline exhibition on the ground floor in the main gallery space called ‘Fear and Love: Reactions to a Complex World’. Here, the museum has invited ten architects and designers to create ten major new installations that address the role of design within wider 21st issues such as climate change, social injustice, data collection and privacy. Meanwhile, downstairs on the lower ground floor the museum’s popular ‘Designs of the Year’ exhibition will return for its ninth edition.

‘Until now contemporary design and architecture have either been a small scale institution talking to the already converted or a department within a larger general museum,’ says Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic. ‘Our strategy is to bring the values and scale of a national museum so that design and architecture are not simply a department but take centre stage.’

INFORMATION

The Design Museum will reopen on 24 November. For more information, visit the Design Museum website

ADDRESS

Design Museum
224–238 Kensington High Street
London, W8 6AG

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Ahead of the Design Museum's hotly anticipated relocation to the iconic Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington this November, the new Design Museum Shop on Kensington High Street (just a short hop down the road) opens for perusal.

Small put perfectly formed, the space hints at what's to come from the new Design Museum, as both spaces have been subject to the minimalist eye and artful guidance of British designer and friend of the museum John Pawson. Plain, smoke-grey walls chime with the designer's 'undesigned' aesthetic, while textures of stained oak, glass and a cream terrazzo floor nod to the 1960s – the era that the Grade-II listed museum building was built.

Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum explains, 'The Design Museum shop reflects the values of the museum itself. It’s our ambassador on the high street, always changing, always full of fascinating things, displayed with style, and staffed by people who live and breathe design.'

The shop's 76 sq m space proves size isn't everything, and it packs a well designed punch. Compact shop fixtures come courtesy of Vitra Retail and classic Dieter Rams-designed Vitsoe '606' shelving lines the walls. Large windows on three sides give the illusion that the store is a magnified display case, in which to showcase tempting trinkets from new and established talent.

We were particularly taken by Torafu Architects' 'Air Vases', and the Barber & Osgerby jugs for Royal Doulton. Expect a rotating range of time-honoured classics like these, along with mixed global ephemera at reasonable prices, and a tight edit of more expensive objects and memorabilia, all of which uphold the Museum's commitment to quality, ingenuity and of course, style.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Design Museum Kensington website

Photography courtesy London Design Museum Shop

ADDRESS

Design Museum Shop
224–238 Kensington High Street
London, W8 6AG

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

When British architect John Pawson was asked to create a museum for The Feuerle Collection, in a Second World War telecommunications base in Kreuzberg, Berlin, he didn’t need much persuading. ‘You’re just awestruck when you come in aren't you?’ he says of the 1942 building, which is his first project in the city. ‘It is just so massive, so monumental, with such a charged atmosphere. This is a building designed by an engineer, who had real taste and an eye for proportion and scale. We didn’t want to change anything here.’

Still, the team has done a huge amount of work to make this two-storey, 6,500 sq m enclosed space a functioning museum. The bunker was specifically designed to protect the telecommunication system during the war; the high-quality concrete walls and ceiling are 2m and 3.5m thick, respectively, and the Allies were unable to penetrate them. ‘Physically it was a big challenge for us’, admits Pawson. 'We had to move slowly to keep our intervention subtle and modest.' In the two years of construction, much time was spent recovering the special texture of the aged concrete surfaces – by removing the plaster on the columns, the graffiti and accumulated dirt on the walls, floors and ceilings.

The chicane at the entrance that once acted as a bomb shield is now a passage leading to a unique experience. Starting from the basement, one enters the Sound Room to a background of minimalist tones and silences created by American composer John Cage. Until you enter the vast main exhibition room there is no natural light and the place is left in near darkness, forcing you to readjust all your senses to negotiate the space. Your eyes are then attracted to the ingeniously curated spotlights and centuries-old stone and wood sculptures from the Khmer Empire that seem to appear from nowhere.

During construction the team encountered flooding problems, as a canal runs next to the building. ‘It was rather beautiful when it was flooded; the columns were mirrored in the water like the cisterns in Istanbul,’ says Pawson. And he decided to keep this accidental art piece, calling it the Lake Room. ‘It is essential to preserve a space like the Lake Room, to let the structure breathe, and not intervene too much,' explains collector and museum founder Désiré Feuerle. ‘In that aspect Pawson is really a master – he shows respect for the building in an elegant way.’

Feuerle also brought to the museum his fascination with Asian incense ceremonies, a spiritual tradition dating back over 2,000 years. Pawson planned the Incense Room on an elevated platform in the basement, that features walls made of two-way mirrors, so one can focus on the peace of the ceremonial room while not losing contact with space outside. A set of incense tables and stools were designed especially for the ceremony, crafted by the last carpenter to master the art of traditional Chinese joinery, in precious African blackwood. They show a hint of Chinese spirit together with the architect’s contemporary minimalist touch.

The museum’s exhibits extend from the 7th century to the present; Imperial Chinese lacquer furniture sitting with contemporary works by artists including Nobuyoshi Araki, Cristina Iglesias, Anish Kapoor and Zeng Fanzhi. When talking about this otherworldly, almost religious experience, Feuerle says: ‘The aim is to have something different. Everything today is so quick, so commercial. I like to support the idea of quality.’ The Feuerle Collection was opened for preview across Gallery Weekend Berlin. It will next host the Berlin Biennale from June to September, and open officially in October.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit The Feuerle Collection’s website

ADDRESS

The Feuerle Collection
Hallesches Ufer 70
10963 Berlin

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We may not all be able to have a John Pawson-designed home to our name, but it doesn’t mean we can’t experience what it would be like to live in one. Or at least that is what Living Architecture believe.

Making their vision a reality, the architectural holiday home rental company commissioned the award-winning architect to create their seventh modern marvel and first Welsh retreat, Tŷ Bywyd.

Roughly translating as ‘Life House’, the 260 sq m property sleeps six and is located on the lower slopes of a small Welsh valley in Llanbister, near Llandrindod Wells.

'In this house I wanted to create a modern, secular retreat, where guests can experience the benefits of introspection, solitude and immersion in nature,’ says Pawson. ‘The location is wonderfully remote and I wanted to create a sanctuary where people feel at home, but never insulated from the elemental character of the surrounding landscape.’

Constructed using 80,000 handmade Danish bricks, pale polished concrete floors and Douglas Fir timber ceilings, doors and furniture, the house is imbued with an atmosphere of quiet reflection. Much like the contemplation chambers – one buried deep into the hillside, another outdoors – and various bedroom styles – library, music and bathing bedrooms – which each promote their own pursuit of tranquility.

Working closely with philosopher and Living Architecture creative director Alain de Botton, Tŷ Bywyd is deeply influenced by Japanese design and the architecture of Benedictine monasteries. ‘We were looking to reinvent the monastery for a secular modern age; based upon the concept of a retreat; to take us back to the earliest days of Buddhism in the East and of Stoic philosophy in the West,’ he explains. 

Artist Hamish Fulton has also curated a sequence of walks, ‘so that at certain points in the retreat you can invigorate the body in order further to soothe the mind’.

The sense of calm is decidedly different from the last Living Architecture home which launched last year, a living story created by Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry and FAT Architects.

INFORMATION

For more information or to make a booking, visit Living Architecture’s website

Photography: Gilbert McCarragher

In their search for the ideal year-round holiday retreat from their ‘box-shaped house’ in Tokyo, a Japanese family enlisted John Pawson Architects to design them a modern and minimalist vacation home on the island of Okinawa, the country's southernmost prefecture.

Developed by Taishi Kanemura from Pawson's London office, the execution of the interior program and external shape of the home was led by the site’s catenary curve. ‘The design traces the diagonal footprint of the plot, combining single and double-height spaces within a form that is closed and tapered to the rear, but to the front flares and opens like an eye over the headland, with the ground floor level raised to optimise sightlines to the ocean,’ explains the architect.

Local limestone was used in two locations within the home, featuring different finishes in each place; the kitchen unit’s countertop showcases a honed and polished version, while the property’s external pavement has a brush-hammered look. This play with the material palette continues in other parts of the house too. The bathroom walls are clad in polished marble, with the floor matched by the textured version of the same material. It comes accompanied by a vanity top constructed from solid white acrylic, with bathroom brassware in a chromed steel.

Japanese plaster clads the walls of the home, inside and out, excluding the entrance porch, which is encased in a veneered oak with an oil finish. This creates a welcome but subtle contrast to the house's overall crisp white volumes. The oak makes numerous appearances in the design, emerging again in the outdoor area’s benches and in bespoke pieces of furniture throughout the interior.

The Okinawa house is a bright and open family home that showcases Pawson's signature simple, uncluttered and natural style. Its clean and tranquil atmosphere and far-reaching ocean views provide a calming and meditative residential escape away from the buzz of the metropole.

INFORMATION

For more information on the Okinawa house, visit the John Pawson Architects’ website

Photography: Nacasa & Partners

London-based master of minimalism John Pawson has designed the penthouse for W Hotel's Tel Aviv outpost, drawing on Jaffa's rich historical heritage in the process; and if you were tempted to move to the city's sunny shores, then you'll be pleased to hear that the property has just been released for sale. The catch? This is 'the most expensive penthouse currently on sale in Israel', says developer RFR Holding, proudly.

Offering stunning views of the city's ancient port and the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, the spacious, 1,503 sq m penthouse is just one of the residences on site designed by Pawson and his team.

Located within the walls of the 19th century complex that once housed Jaffa's French Hospital, this project is in excellent company; set, as it is, within a historically protected and upmarket neighbourhood of Tel Aviv that combines art and lifestyle offerings of appeal to tourists and locals alike.

The complex may be getting the contemporary treatment inside, but the project also carefully preserves its more historical elements, making sure the new design bridges old and new. Working with these, as well as the area's ample natural light, Pawson made use of a variety of materials, including a specially designed perforated screen for the property's large openings, created to cleverly filter sunlight and views.

The penthouse is slated for completion later in 2016; the buyer will work with Pawson's office to add the finishing, bespoke touches to their new home.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit John Pawson's website

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

If you have ever wondered what inspires leading British architect John Pawson in his work, then this book will offer an insight into the minimalist's mind. Published by Phaidon and aptly entitled A Visual Inventory, the 320-page tome provides a rich glimpse into Pawson's creative world.

A journey through the details, textures, spatial qualities and even coincidental arrangements that have informed his designs through the years, this book presents a selection of the some 200,000 beautiful photographs Pawson has taken during his 30 year-long career. What could be described as a visual diary is indeed a genuine library of forms, volumes, materials and patterns, as seen through the architect's eye.

Each allocated their own page for suitable 'breathing space', the images are accompanied by Pawson's personal notes and appear in their original state (uncropped and untreated). These photographs explore the architectural elements and fascinations Pawson investigates with his work, such as light, proportion and material.

A Visual Inventory also spans different countries and periods - from Pawson's visit to Peter Zumthor's St Benedict's Chapel in Switzerland, to when he was designing key works like the new Cistercian monastery in Bohemia, and more recent work trips to Japan, Seoul, New York and Paris. The compositions, like his architecture, are serene but powerful.

The book is now on sale and is the latest addition to Phaidon's Pawson offerings - three monographs are already out, as well as a book the architect himself wrote in 1996. And if this is not enough for an in-depth look into John Pawson's sensibility and approach, then a visit to the Architekturmuseum in Munich for his first major show in Germany is a must, running until 20 May 2012.

Terence Conran and John Pawson put in an appearance at what will be the new Design Museum in Kensington this week. Located in the former Commonwealth Institute, the 10,000 sq m building is set to open in 2014, placing the organisation within a stone's throw of 'Albertopolis' - SW7's museum district.

Empty for more than a decade, the Grade II listed building, which features a dramatic tent-like roof, is an example of 1960s architecture at its best. 'The challenge is working inside the skin of an existing building which is more than 50 years old but it still seems very daring, says Pawson, who with his trademark palette of brushed concrete and wooden flooring is striving to 're-tune the architecture so it still feels fresh but also to give the Design Museum what they need'.

The new venue will stretch to five floors and aims to double visitor numbers to 500,000 a year. Rem Koolhaas' OMA is redeveloping the residential area around the building. Project architect Reinier de Graaf describes this as 'an exercise in fading into the background and being humble. We tried to pay tribute to that period [the 1960s]'.

Conran, who founded the original Design Museum at Shad Thames in 1989, has stumped up £17m towards the £80m project. 'We hope it will have the same spirit as Milan's Triennale,' he says, adding: 'We are no longer the workshop of the world, but we can still be a workshop and with the new - and the old - Design Museum, we can be a great one.' 

British architect John Pawson's name has been synonymous with quiet, chic minimalism ever since his celebrated career kicked off in the early 1980s.

Marking a busy and successful year for the architect - his new Design Museum space commission at the former Commonwealth Institute building was only announced a few months ago - the Design Museum exhibition, 'John Pawson - Plain Space' opens today and promises to offer the visitor the full Pawson experience. Not only has the museum's third floor exhibition space been transformed into a calm room of minimal white boards and simple wood pedestals, but a life-size model of a site-specific installation has been constructed at the show's heart, allowing design-lovers to fully immerse themselves in Pawson's gracefully reductivist world.

From his landmark works, like Our Lady of Novy Dvur and the Baron House, to his numerous ongoing projects, such as the house and chapel for the Casa delle Bottere complex in Veneto, Italy (presented in Wallpaper*139)), as well as a thumbnail-style full project list, everything is included in this detailed display.

Long-term Pawson collaborator, Danish wood company Dinesen, has added its elegant touch to the show's final result; all the wood used in it has been sourced from the company's rich product selection. Dinesen first collaborated with Pawson almost 20 years ago on his own house - their shared passion for perfection and beauty meant that the architect was the first to use Dinesen to create furniture and special architectural fittings, and he has since worked with them on many commissions, carefully selecting his raw wood materials with them.

For those who won't be able to make it to the Design Museum in London (the show ends on 30 January 2011), a well-informed publication by Phaidon - written by Alison Morris - is out now, presenting Pawson's 'Plain Space' architecture.

ADDRESS

Design Museum
28 Shad Thames
London SE1 2YD

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