Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2019 i AZURE

It isn’t every garden-design project that has a lifesized elephant sculpture as its jumping-off point, but that’s exactly the feature that Australian landscape architect Matt Walsham was asked to consider when he agreed to create a green roof for a backyard studio and carport. The new structure, designed by Pleysier Perkins for a sloping site behind a single-family home in a suburb of Melbourne, was also entirely exposed, meaning that the roof garden would require hardy, suntolerant plantings and a way to irrigate them in extreme weather conditions. The elephant, by artist Geoffrey Ricardo, has yet to be installed, but all of the elements (potential anchoring points, a sufficiently sturdy roof) are in place for the day it does get its perch. In the meantime, the garden as designed by…

JEFF MARTIN JOINERY, VANCOUVER At ICFF, where established Canadian brands Bensen, Molo and ANDlight dominated, Jeff Martin Joinery brought the quirk. His Cymatic Lenses series includes the chandelier above, composed of blown glass and mandrel-bent steel, and a sconce with a textural hand-carved and -painted base. His unique aesthetic met with a positive response. “Hopefully, we’ll be seeing some of the pieces in New York restaurants and hospitality projects next year,” he says. jeffmartinjoinery.ca LALAYA DESIGN, TORONTO Returning to WantedDesign, where she won the Launch Pad competition for lighting last year, Hanae Baruchel showed a number of recent works from her Lalaya label, including the modular Bim Bom bookshelf. Made with hand-cast concrete pillars and wooden shelves, the ingenious, brutalism-influenced system can grow or shrink to meet the user’s needs.…

“Fifty Years of Queer” is the slogan announcing the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s semicentennial celebration this year. Yet despite its steadfast presence in the city, the organization – which says it serves more LGBT people than any other body in the world – has never had a cohesive facility that could accommodate its multi-faceted mission. Over the years, the Center’s health and housing services, education and advocacy programs and administration have all operated from disparate locations around Hollywood. With the April inauguration of the Anita May Rosenstein Campus, designed by New York–based Leong Leong with local firm Killefer Flammang Architects (KFA), that changed. The master plan (which covers over 17,000 square metres) employs a layered series of glass and white stucco volumes to accommodate 12 distinct programs, including transitional and…

Over View, as its name implies, is a view overhead – and one that is transformative. The permanent ceiling installation – a massive 3D drawing – was created for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh’s new Museum Lab, which spills into the former Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny. “It’s this really spectacular building, but it had been renovated pretty brutally at a few points over the last century,” says Brennan Buck, a partner at FreelandBuck, the firm that masterminded the design. “We were interested in evoking the history of the building, its gravitas and beauty.” To that end, the textile structure belies the room’s actual height to reveal an evocation of its former grandeur. From the centre point beneath the canopy, the viewer sees it expand upward, mimicking the original ornate…

Located in the north of Spain, the province of Soria is known for its quaint medieval capital (also called Soria) and, unfortunately, its rural joblessness and gradually emptying villages. Among the latter is Almenar de Soria, which has only about 200 residents and is the hometown of Valentín Sanz. The young architect studied in Madrid and finished school during the Great Recession, when many architectural practices had to close their doors and numerous practitioners were left unemployed. In 2009, Sanz founded his own studio, LiquenLAV; like many in his cohort, he has pursued a varied career that includes work in furniture and product creation, in graphic design and in urbanism. Recently, though, he returned to the village of his birth to work on a potentially gamechanging interiors project: a single…

As spring turned to summer this past June, a crowd of over 500 – from as far away as Mexico, Belgium and Peru – gathered at the Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto, where they joined Azure in celebrating the 20 winners (and 48 Award of Merit recipients) of the ninth annual AZ Awards. Representing the very best in international design, architecture and landscape architecture this year was a diverse group of projects, including a Chinese art museum built into a sand dune, an inflatable reimagining of construction hoarding and an Infinity Mirror–esque art installation in a residential basement. Each of the 2019 winners took home a sculptural trophy of zigzagging steel, designed by Umbra’s Matt Carr and etched with agamographic letters. The crowd was treated to an evening of drinks,…

On the outskirts of Chiang Mai, in mountainous northern Thailand, the wooden architecture of the Old City transitions quietly into shingled pitched-roof houses thanks to a common material palette. Tasked with inserting the contemporary Little Shelter Hotel into this verdant landscape, Bangkok firm Department of Architecture Co. envisioned something that was unconventional, yet deeply rooted in tradition. Likening the ubiquitous wooden shingles to fish scales, the firm created a shimmering structure perched on a peaceful stretch of the Ping River and clad in translucent shingles. Riffing on the hipped roofs common to the area, the architects devised an asymmetrical form clad in wood shingles on the top and sides. On the roadfacing facade, the wood pieces gradually blend out, giving way to luminous polycarbonate. The translucent shingles are custom made…

Dark wood. Fine leather. Shiny hits of bling. Chase Hospitality Group’s wish list for their latest Toronto venture, Arthur’s Restaurant, initially included all of the staple ingredients for a traditional steakhouse. But rather than just emulating an old country club, the group’s design team, gh3*, sought to combine this time-honoured palette with the more modern, geometric character of the restaurant’s setting, an octagonal podium at the base of a 1970s office tower. The local architecture firm’s skilful blend of sharp angles and suave sophistication is epitomized by the project’s showpiece: an eight-sided, nearly 12.5-metre-wide wood and bronze ceiling sculpture. Impressively, this gemlike construct also integrates sprinklers, speakers and spotlights – all the while looking as seamless as a cut-crystal tumbler. Credit for the design’s clean millwork goes to Unique Store…

Serious architecture begins with serious aspirations. And when the London practice Gort Scott took on a house in Whistler, British Columbia, it came with the loftiest of goals. “This is not a typical resort residence project,” the client wrote in a vision statement to the designers. “It is an architectural expression of self.” Yet the client also wanted a house that would harmonize with its context, a dramatic ridge above Alta Lake in B.C.’s Coast Mountains. Gort Scott shaped these ideas into a home – rendered in concrete, brass and wood – with its own complex personality. Dubbed The Rock, the six-bedroom house and two-bedroom guest house constitute a set of volumes placed between stands of hemlock trees, the architecture rising and falling with the land. According to the architects,…

Organic-Style Washbasins 1 Giro Pronounced veining and an appealing elliptical form enhance the simple beauty of this basin, one in a series by Ludovica+Roberto Palomba, Matteo Bollati and Stefano Contini. Materials Carrara, Nero Marquina or Pietra Grey marble Dimensions GR019 (shown), 12 H × 35 W × 39 D Manufacturer Inbani, inbani.com 2 Terra Expanding its portfolio of glazed finishes, Alape’s new Terra line offers an organic matte look with a powdery feel. Four soft colours are available: grey, blue, pink and oyster. Materials Stove-enamelled glazed steel Dimensions 13.7 H × 35.8 W Manufacturer Alape, alape.com 3 Gessati Using a special mechanical processing technology, GUM Design turns traditional Carrara marble into a pinstripe-like motif, combining one- and two-centimetre sheets of stone and tinted resin “glue.” Materials Carrara marble Dimensions Round,…

At NeoCon 2019, the contract world continued to show its softer side. Responding to the ever-increasing call for spaces that foster health and wellness, palettes were awash in calming, nature-inspired hues such as sky blue, moss green and rose-petal pink, while acoustic solutions were rendered in materials, shapes and patterns as soothing to the eye and touch as to the ear. Comfort was also abundantly on offer in the form of expansive seating systems. One standout was Vitra’s new – and aptly named – Soft Work by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, which effortlessly incorporated all of these trends. The British designers, who are known for straightforward designs that manage to feel fresh, precise and elegant, first devised the seating system for the Ace Hotel in their home base of…

BENE BOX BY TEKNION A simple box becomes desk, table, stool, shelf and storage in this ingenious system. Made from pine plywood in one size (38 by 36 by 36 centimetres), the lightweight crate can be stacked or aligned in endless arrangements. Seating pads and wheel trays add to the versatility. teknion.com AXYL BENCH BY ALLERMUIR A literal expansion of Layer’s award-winning Axyl chair, the bench version opens up the inverted cast-aluminum Y-frame base and tops it with an oak veneer plywood shell. Multiple hues are offered for the frame and seat; an upholstered option is also available. allermuir.com GEIGER ONE BY GEIGER Taking casegoods to a new level, this customizable kit of parts can be wall-mounted or freestanding. The various elements are offered in an array of materials, colours…

FLUX BY ARKTURA Though preconfigured, these easy-to-install, approximately 152-by-182-centimetre hexagonal modules express a dynamic, site-specific character. A recent addition to the SoftGrid series, Flux can be specified in 30 colours and finishes, including the wood-grain texture shown. arktura.com OCTAVE BY UNIKA VAEV Part of the Ecoustic baffle collection, Octave can be mounted on existing rail and suspension systems in horizontal orientations, as well as custominstalled to walls, suspended from cables or introduced as freestanding partitions. Two sizes of the recyclable PET fins are available; each is sold in 11 bold or neutral colours. unikavaev.com SWITCHBLADE BY TURF A magnetic system that snaps to existing tee grids, Switchblade features three designs – Classic, Organic and Geometric – in three depths that can be mixed and matched to create angular, undulating or…

Interior Openings 1 Woodwork Italian designer Piero Lissoni experimented with milling techniques and textures to develop Matrix, a decorative finish for Lualdi’s swing and sliding interior doors. Realized in canaletto walnut, the graphic combinations of vertical and horizontal grooves in the wood panels create a soft play of grain and shadow. lualdiporte.com 2 Magnetic Appeal Offered in a variety of materials, including the porcelain finish shown, Rimadesio’s Moon series is a versatile choice for modern spaces. Designer Giuseppe Bavuso achieved an unusually minimal aesthetic by cladding the door’s handle in the same material as the panel. Available in a double-swing iteration, Moon features a unique magnetic closing system. rimadesio.it 3 Deep Dive Measuring 10 centimetres in thickness, Linvisibile’s FILO 10 Vertical Pivot door matches the depth of standard interior walls…