Innehållsförteckning för Issue 32 från Design Anthology, Asia Pacific Edition

One of the silver linings of the last two years has been a renewed appreciation for being outdoors. While all manner of bricks-and-mortar service providers have been forced to close (by government order or otherwise), many of us have turned our gaze outwards — to local parks, beaches, hiking trails and riverbanks to gather with friends and family in a ‘COVID-safe’ way or just spend time alone outside of the house. It’s for this reason that we decided to dedicate this issue of Design Anthology to the great outdoors. In addition to the features our editorial team has scoured the region to share with you, I’m most excited about the five homes in this issue. It’s always difficult to choose a favourite, and these are all definitely up there —…

We can do better. That’s the message at the heart of Lo—TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism by New York-based Australian landscape architect Julia Watson. The richly illustrated volume is a treasure trove of design approaches and technologies that have been developed by Indigenous peoples around the world. Among them are Kolkata’s ingenious waste water filtration system, which relies on a system of wetlands that have been cultivated for hundreds of years, and the awe-inspiring tree bridges of the Khasi people of north-eastern India. Other examples include sustainable farming techniques, floating cities and environmentally friendly dams. All of them offer alternatives to the top-down, technocratic modes of design and development that have been the accepted norm for decades. ‘Right now, all our economic processes and the way the world is constructed…

Every so often, a project comes along that captures the relationship between architecture and nature. The unconventional Chapel of Sound, an open-air concert hall in a remote mountain valley two hours by car from Beijing, is one such project. Designed by Beijing architecture studio OPEN, the Chapel of Sound is situated in an undeveloped valley in Chengde municipality, near a stretch of the Great Wall. OPEN founders Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, who are partners in life as well as architecture, say that since they were given carte blanche with the scope, scale and even the location of the structure, they very quickly realised how fragile the steep-sided, secluded, mountainous site was, its layered rock formations created by the glacier that once surged through the valley. ‘Instead of embedding it…

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01 Built to Inspire: Contemporary Homes by the World’s Great Architects by Philip Jodidio THE IMAGES PUBLISHING GROUP Despite the number of areas in which architecture impacts our lives — from office to museum to recreational facility — the home remains endlessly compelling, much like the chair to a designer. Here, respected architecture writer Philip Jodidio gathers 26 homes he believes exemplify the way architecture can meet the needs of a resident and pay attention to context. They are drawn from all over the world: a cave-like edifice in Portugal, a compact refuge on the windswept Isle of Skye, a sci-fi-inspired villa in Moscow and more besides. Almost all continents are represented, with masters such as Shigeru Ban and Marcio Kogan figuring alongside more emerging practices. Jodidio’s analysis of each project’s…

The Indonesian word padepokan is used to describe a place of gathering to establish fellowship. It’s the word that RAW Architecture founder and principal architect Realrich Sjarief uses when asked to describe the studio and its extended ecosystem that includes Omah Library and an experimental workshop. The description couldn’t be more accurate, as life inside the complex is characterised by a strong communal bond between residents, and the environment is more like a campus, inviting individuals to play different roles in the community while engaging in creative exploration and experimentation. ‘The studio itself was first established in 2011. After I returned to Indonesia from London, I was looking for an outlet to experiment. I participated in many architecture competitions and after one of the winning projects was successfully built, I…

From his studio in the suburbs of Tokyo, Ryosuke Yazaki carves wood into mysterious creations. It’s about 40 minutes west of Tokyo’s city centre that Yazaki has found both his family nest — which he shares with his wife and two adult children — and creative space. From his quiet home and garden, the sculptor only has to walk a few steps to reach the light-filled studio where he spends his days carving. He also has a studio on the second floor of his house, which he uses for making statues and terracotta sculptures. Yazaki began playing with clay when he was only three years old, using the material to make dolls. He inherited this passion at a young age from his grandfather, the renowned sculptor Torao Yazaki. ‘I grew…

Artifactt Singapore ​New online store Artifactt is a thoughtful curation of homewares and tableware made by artisans across Europe and Japan, with Singapore-based owner Annie Li curating pieces that celebrate the subtle imperfections in handcrafted items. Navigating the worlds of East and West, Artifactt showcases a selection of wares from independent makers, as well as Serax’s collaborative collections with Ann Demeulemeester, Merci, Sergio Herman and others. Li’s plans for Artifactt include exclusive partnerships with local potters and a physical showroom in the near future. artifactt.com…

MORNING On Mondays and Fridays Yukari Iki starts her day at three a.m., when she meets her team at the flower market. After buying flowers, a coordinated juggling act follows: making a bento for her nine-year-old son’s lunch, cooking a Japanese-style breakfast, sipping Chinese tea with seasonal herbs and doing the school run. She then heads to The Little Shop of Flowers, her much-loved store tucked away at the end of a stone path in busy Harajuku. She’s been here since 2012, and the space is also home to eatrip, the celebrated farm-to-table restaurant run by close friend and business partner Yuri Nomura. ‘There’s a natural harmony between food and flowers,’ Iki muses. MID-MORNING Spring is the busiest time for Iki and her ten-strong team. ‘For me, spring means death…

Once known as ‘blue gold’, indigo has a storied history spanning centuries and continents. Derived from plants native to Asia and Africa, it’s the world’s oldest natural dye, long revered for its rich colour and medicinal properties. Tutankhamun of Egypt was wrapped in indigo-infused linens before being buried, Japanese samurai warriors wore indigo garments under their armour to help prevent bacteria from infecting wounds, and in India textiles dyed with the deep-blue pigment continue to be treasured and passed down through generations. ‘For many communities in India, indigo was sacred. Some would perform a prayer when setting up the dyeing vat because indigo was seen as a living being that provided people with colour and a livelihood,’ says Anuradha Singh, head of Nila House, a craft centre in Jaipur that’s…

For architect Yasushi Horibe, a space should be designed so that it reawakens our connection to nature while enabling us to be wholly ourselves. It’s a principle that shapes every facet of guntû, an accommodation experience he designed where the sea and the elements are at one’s fingertips. A sweeping, wave-like staircase greets guests at the entrance hall of the vessel, which floats on Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. Conceptualised as a ryokan on water, guntû is an invitation to reconnect with nature and, ultimately, with oneself. Horibe says his desire was to ‘evoke a feeling that the passage of time and the comfort of our mind and body are united’. For him, ‘the beauty of the Seto Inland Sea is profound and stirs deep emotions’, which he seeks to amplify…

Walking through her neighbourhood one day, Singaporean artist Zen Teh noticed hundreds of metres of an oil-like residue coating the water in a canal. ‘I was alarmed, but I looked around and no one was bothered,’ she says. She started investigating and decided to collaborate with an ecologist to create a large-scale installation titled Mirror of Water in 2019. The work consists of a long pool of water with aluminium discs imprinted with photographs evoking the oily surface, as well as a video of the oil deposits; the accompanying wall text discusses the dangers of water pollution. ‘I wanted to bring people something that engaged their physical being, that they had to walk through and engage with so when they reached the end they realised the gravity of the issue,’…

A four-hour drive from Ho Chi Minh City, the Pink House belongs to two sisters who have chosen to live in their hometown of Long Xuyên. It’s the capital city of An Giang, one of the provinces constituting the Mekong Delta region in south-western Vietnam. In choosing Ho Chi Minh-based architecture firm 23o5studio (pronounced ‘23 plus five degrees’) to help them set up an alternative mode of living outside of the normative concrete jungle, the siblings found that the studio’s core values of ‘silence, serenity and intimacy’ expressed and echoed their own personal values. ‘It took us a year to work out the master plan for this house,’ says studio founder and lead architect Ngô Việt Khánh Duy. ‘From our experience, observation and in-depth research, we’ve come to realise that…