Innehållsförteckning för Issue 35 från Design Anthology, Asia Pacific Edition

Is it just me or has this year flown by? Or does the tail end just feel that way in comparison to the relative slowness of the last two years? Either way, another year is drawing to a close and I, for one, am looking forward to all that the festive season brings, not least the change in temperature and hopefully a change in pace too. In this issue of Design Anthology, we cast our gaze further afield for our annual international issue. We’re excited to introduce you to creatives in London and Los Angeles, as well as in Mumbai and Bangkok. And since international travel has just about reopened entirely — bar a few exceptions here and there — we’re equally excited to be profiling new hotels and desirable…

Cassina Italian brand Cassina has developed Patricia Urquiola’s Trampoline love bed — originally designed for its first outdoor collection — into a range that includes a new armchair, a two-seater sofa and three combinable modules. The curved forms, both comfortable and inviting, are made from innovative and circular materials such as recycled fibreglass panels, polyurethane foam and a new outdoor textile made from recycled PET plastic. The pieces are characterised by the same rounded shapes and playful air of the original Trampoline. As Urquiola explains, ‘The out-of-scale weave that accompanies the backrest of the seat also references the tension cords of trampolines, and those cords also become fringes around the cushions.’ Atelier A+ is the distributor for Cassina in Hong Kong. Find out more at instagram.com/cassina_hk cassina.com Hem × Kwangho…

Rising above the waterfront in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui, K11 ARTUS is a singular residential concept realised as part of entrepreneur Adrian Cheng’s Victoria Dockside development. Opened in 2019, the property was designed in collaboration with globally acclaimed interior architect André Fu, with the aim of redefining the luxury residence experience by providing Asia’s first hybrid ‘artisanal home’ concept. Upon arrival, guests are immersed in a sophisticated environment and a heightened sense of serenity. From the lobby to the library-themed reception and various salon-style lounges, multicultural references are interwoven with bold geometries, rich textures and earthy colours. Marble and brushed brass accents, Persian and Chinese textiles and mid-century details come together in a narrative that evokes the modern Asian sensibility for which Fu is known. Punctuating the spaces are…

When Huzefa Rangwala and Jasem Pirani struck up a friendship during their time in the US, where they were both studying architecture, the seeds for co-founding a design studio were sown. A few years after returning to Mumbai and working for other practices, the two founded MuseLAB in 2012. At first, the duo worked out of a conference room at Pirani’s father’s office, and later from a 23-square-metre studio space in Prabhadevi — an old industrial estate in the southern part of the city. Now, MuseLAB operates out of an office five times that size, on the second floor of an erstwhile residential chawl (a type of tenement building originally built to house mill workers) now zoned as a commercial block, nestled among the tall trees in a quaint neighbourhood.…

Vietnamese designer Tom Trandt has recently been appointed the new art director of lacquerware brand Hanoia, the move cementing the beloved homeware brand’s segue into contemporary fashion. A Parsons alumnus, Trandt (whose Vietnamese name is Trần Minh Đạo) has established himself as a new and exciting voice in Vietnamese fashion since he moved back from New York in 2016 and established Môi Điên (the name translates to ‘mad lips’, meaning ‘outspoken’), his unisex label that has become a favourite among Vietnam’s alternative musicians, artists and writers and their fans. ‘The interweaving between functionality and aesthetics and how we can harmonise time-honoured craft with contemporary universality — that’s something I want to convey with my collections for Hanoia,’ Trandt says. ‘The partnership with Hanoia came from our mutual love for new…

AWARDS The industry awards for the region’s design community, celebrating and showcasing high-calibre work by emerging and established designers design-anthology.com/awards SHOP A selection of Design Anthology back issues plus books and accessories, with worldwide shipping to wherever you are design-anthology.com/shop SUBSCRIBE Receive two issues, as well as access to the digital edition and exclusive invitations and discounts, with an annual subscription design-anthology.com/subscribe EVENTS Online and offline, we bring thought leaders together to explore the future of design and inspire the people making it happen design-anthology.com/events EMAIL The Dispatch is a collection of original stories from our globetrotting team delivered straight to your inbox each month design-anthology.com/dispatch AUSTRALIA EDITION Published in Melbourne, Design Anthology Australia focuses on Australia and New Zealand’s burgeoning creative landscapes design-anthology.com/australia PODCAST Take an international tour to…

01 Cape to Bluff: A survey of residential architecture from Aotearoa New Zealand by Simon Devitt, Luke Scott & Andrea Stevens The quality of architecture in Aotearoa New Zealand and the talent in the country’s design community belie its size, as anyone who has visited or even opened a copy of one of its several architecture magazines can attest. In Cape to Bluff, author and former architect Andrea Stevens and award-winning architectural photographer Simon Devitt document 30 homes — many never before published — that span the country’s dramatic geography and encompass multiple microclimates. Each home is introduced with an essay that includes insights from the architect. The layout by designer Luke Scott privileges Devitt’s imagery, which in turn highlights the homes’ relationships to their breathtaking locations. Volume, light, materiality…

MORNING Teerapoj Teeropas considers his days rather ordinary, but while his mornings typically start out uneventfully — he usually gets up around 8 a.m., makes himself some eggs and rice for breakfast and spends an hour checking his emails — it’s his work and the process behind it that are nothing short of extraordinary. Teeropas’s interest in design stems from his mission to preserve the traditional values and crafts of his home country. His bespoke furniture brand Kitt. Ta.Khon, which he co-founded with Thai designer Suwan Kongkhunthian, merges contemporary industrial design with local know-how that’s now become scarce even in rural villages, resulting in handwoven pieces that are both art and furniture. ‘I work for the craftspeople in my country,’ Teeropas says. ‘Seeing them receive opportunities, bettering their lives, improving…

Shanghai-based Cometabolism Studio works at the intersection of art and design to reinvent traditional notions of furniture and find new ways to fulfil immediate needs. ‘We prefer our works to be in an undefined state, between art installations and furniture design. Not specifying form and function leads to more innovation and unrestrained expression,’ says designer Ning Zhang, who established the studio with artist and long-time collaborator Yafei Yang in 2020. As they explain, ‘cometabolism’ is a biological term for the decomposition of non-biodegradable materials. The studio’s name alludes to the wasteful industrial processes that create backlogs of such components, which they repurpose with their work. ‘We call them industrial metabolites, and we hope to redefine them through a metabolite upcycling process,’ says Zhang. Cometabolism’s eye-catching designs feature transparent acrylic sheets…

The picturesque islands and pristine watersof Mozambique’s Bazaruto Archipelago alone are enough to entice visitors in search of dreamy escapes. Every day, fishermen head out in fleets of dhows, the way they have for generations. Below the surface, reefs teem with fish and megafauna, including dolphins, whales, turtles, sharks and rays. Then there’s the archipelago’s trump card: the incredible transformation of its channels into an otherworldly seascape. During high tide, Mozambique’s oldest marine reserve sparkles in fifty shades of blue. As the sea ebbs, it reveals dazzling white sandbanks as far as the eye can see, giving the illusion that you could walk all the way from the mainland to one of its six islands. On one of these islands, a new lodge is set to put this remote destination…

01 Echo —Antarctica Established by polar explorers, travel company White Desert has launched its new camp, Echo, in the rarely seen interior of Antarctica. Combining luxury with adventure, the camp has six heated ‘sky pods’ featuring floor-to-ceiling windows, retro space-age detailing and luxurious furnishings. Echo caters for groups of up to 12 guests with a team of chefs and hosts, as well as expert guides on hand to facilitate White Desert activities like biking, skiing, hiking, ice climbing and mountaineering. Remaining true to its commitment to sustainability and maintaining White Desert’s carbon-neutral status, the camp is designed to be dismantled without leaving a trace on the landscape. 02 Harding Boutique Hotel —Ahangama Paying homage to the Sri Lankan pioneer of Tropical Modernism Geoffrey Bawa, the six-suite Harding Boutique Hotel in the coastal…

Intentional, minimal, serene. The Milan home of Japanese designer Tsukasa Goto and Italian architect Elena Naldi is a perfect reflection of the owners themselves. Built in the early 1970s on the northern edge of Milan’s centre, the Brutalist high-rise building was designed by Gabriele D’Alì and Giacomo Scarpini and sits atop a villa that had originally been conceived by Scarpini for his parents. In their original project, Scarpini and D’Alì brought friends together to create living spaces that acted as empty ‘containers’ to be filled with the energy of their distinct private lives, while also catalysing close-knit relationships between the inhabitants through the building’s layout and structure. Then, as now, the ‘villa with overlapping tower’, as it came to be known by locals, was D’Alì and Scarpini’s answer to increasingly…

Kenneth Chao studied in Melbourne and Zurich and spent more than a decade working in advertising agencies before turning his hand to photography in 2018. Chao, who is based in Hong Kong, was inspired to visit the Church on the Water in Tomamu, Hokkaido, after the sudden passing of a family member in 2017. Designed by Japanese modernist Tadao Ando, the concrete and glass structure is a meditation on nature and sacred spaces, and is one of Ando’s best-known projects. ‘I felt a strong connection to the architecture, and photographing it became a therapeutic experience for me during a difficult time,’ Chao says. ‘This was also a transitional phase in my life, when I was reconsidering my path. This journey ultimately helped me come to a decision about a career…

Vipp Shanghai Vipp began when its founder, Holger Nielsen, crafted a pedal-controlled bin in his one-man metal workshop in 1939. Today, the family-owned Danish design company is run by Holger’s daughter, Jette Egelund, and her two children, Kasper and Sofie, from its headquarters in Copenhagen. Vipp has expanded into kitchen design, furniture, lighting and accessories, as well as architecture and hospitality projects like the Vipp Hotel, with six locations in northern Europe. Vipp already has a presence in Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, but this new flagship store in Shanghai — launched with the support of a local partner — marks the brand’s entry into mainland China. The 500-square-metre store is the brand’s largest to date, and takes over a building originally designed by Japanese-Chinese architecture firm…

Storytelling, especially the cinematic kind, lies at the heart of Holloway Li, the architecture and interiors studio set up by Alex Holloway and Na Li in London in 2018. ‘We talk a lot about world building,’ says Holloway, who was an undergraduate with Li at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London before they both ended up at Michaelis Boyd. ‘You always need a narrative. We ask “What’s the story here?”’ While Nanjing-born Li leans towards the lyricism of Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai — ‘It’s almost spiritual,’ she says — Holloway’s reference point is Stanley Kubrick’s one-point perspective. ‘What is the view that pulls you into the project? What is that moment when everything that you’ve worked so hard on connects?’ he asks. In a way, these…

Originally from Indonesia and Singapore respectively, Amanda Gunawan and Joel Wong chose Los Angeles to launch The Only Way Is Up (OWIU), an architecture and design studio that takes a slow, considered approach. A child of architect parents, Wong would visit the construction sites of the houses he grew up in, so it’s perhaps natural that he followed in his parents’ footsteps. Gunawan, too, realised early on that she’d pursue architecture. ‘I also knew early in my career exactly the type of architecture I wanted to do,’ she says. ‘It’s not so much a question of aesthetics, because that changes and evolves, but rather the type. I wanted to design and build thoughtfully, meaningfully and intentionally, and I wanted this to be both at a micro and macro level.’ The…