David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum opens in Berlin 20 October, 2009
Posted by teovdb in mydeco guest blogger.Tags: Berlin, David Chipperfield, mydeco, Neues Museum, SANAA, Teo van den Broeke, wallpaper
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Whilst, when it comes to architecture, I’d like to think of myself as a well-rounded all-rounder – I should probably confess that at heart I’m a sucker for all things shiny, glassy and a wee bit space-age.
As predictable as this may sound – coming from a journalist whose area of expertise happens to be contemporary design – my lack of enthusiasm for long gone architecture has proved itself, upon occasion, a point of embarrassment – particularly when faced with the toughened stares and sharpened tongues of hard-headed architectural purists.
When it comes to my own space, give me a Georgian terrace over a 60’s pre-fab any day of the week – but on a purely visual level show me a SANAA, Studiomama or Stad and you’ll have me purring with architectonic pleasure.
It came as something of a shock then, when super-contemporary British firm David Chipperfield Architects announced the ambitious plans for the all but bomb-flattened throes of Berlin’s 19th Century Neues Museum. What sounded, at first, like little more than an over-worded reconstruction project has this month revealed itself as an astoundingly incisive and accomplished work of architectural sensitivity.
Taking Fredrich Stüler’s 1859 original as his jump-off point, Chipperfield – working on a case-by-case basis – excavated every original door, dome and pillar of the fresco-clad original, refitting each, filling in the gaps as he went, being sure never to imitate the original with his distinctive, high-polished additions.
Stüler’s original in it’s untouched form was – to me at least – a neo-baroque nightmare, but with the help of Chipperfield’s white marble cladding, boxy glassy stairwells, uninvasive dark timber pillars and incredibly intricate restoration of each individual tile– the resulting building – which has this month been completed – has me flying in all directions. Mr Chipperfield, you have me floundering in the miasma of my own architectural ignorance – and I can’t thank you enough for the experience.
London Design Festival? Yes please. 9 October, 2009
Posted by teovdb in mydeco guest blogger.Tags: Gallery Fumi, Haunch of Venison, Max Lamb, Studio Toogood, Teo van den Broeke, Thomas Heatherwick, V&A Museum, Wallpaper* magazine
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When it comes to the London Design Festival, there’s little – in my eyes, at least – that the capital’s most understated celebration of all things creative can do wrong. That said, most years it seems that there’s almost just too much to see, and 100% Design’s hulking Earls Court location certainly doesn’t help.
As with any major creative event where the predominant collective activity is to spectate – things can get pretty tiresome, pretty quickly. A well-positioned lamp here, a repetitive chair there – it all comes coated in a blur after a while – and I’m not just referring to Big Game’s latest fade-out collection.
This year however, it felt as though the designers were working that little bit harder to give themselves the edge – and in honour of the all-round improvement in offerings, it seemed only right and proper to pick out a few favourites from the span of this year’s festival.
Thomas Heatherwick's Extrusions exhibition at Haunch of Venison
First up we have Thomas Heatherwick’s mesmeric Extrusions exhibition, which remains on show at Mayfair’s Haunch of Venison Gallery until November 7th. Featuring a lucid range of sliced-up, stretched, crumpled and polished ribbons of aluminium – Heatherwick’s exhibition is the culmination of 8 years in the pursuit of a 100 meter-long extruded aluminium bench.
Whilst Heatherwick may not have achieved his somewhat ambitious target, the resulting six slices are nonetheless impressive. Take into account the 300 man-hours spent polishing them up – and they’re all but celestial.
Next up – and I’d be shunned from polite society if I neglected to include at least one piece of overtly eco-stable design – comes Gallery Fumi’s Corn Craft exhibition.
Gallery Fumi's Corn Craft exhibition, courtesy of Studio Toogood
Featuring a range of commissioned pieces from a smattering of big name designers – think Max Lamb and Nacho Carbonell – the only (curious) catch was that each piece had to have been produced with that Mexican favourite, corn, firmly in mind. The low-slung corn ear-inspired table from Raw Edges was a particular highlight, whilst Max Lamb and Gemma Holt’s barley-influenced blown glass was unassuming – and yes, sustainable – design at its best.
Last, but by no means least, comes the veritable jewel in the Design Festival crown, Wallpaper* magazine’s Chair Arch – which came inspired by Queen Victoria’s rather less high-gloss chair arch of 1877. Taking residence outside the ever-so-fitting locale of London’s V&A Museum, the arch came constructed from 160 original Ercol stacking chairs.
Wallpaper* magazine's soaring, V&A-bound Chair Arch
Soaring languidly over the V&A’s John Madejski Garden, the overlapping arches – one in a graded rainbow hue, and the other in untreated wood – came together to form an organic, self-supporting structure – the sight of which literally whispered high-design elegance. But let’s face it, this is Wallpaper* we’re talking about, we’d have been foolish to expect anything less.
Amsterdam: Under the Red Light 2 September, 2009
Posted by teovdb in mydeco guest blogger.Tags: Amsterdam, Kienholz, prostitution, Red Light District, Teo van den Broeke
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Whilst perhaps not the most palatable subject of post-supper conversation, prostitution is an issue that tends to rear its head at most of my dinner parties, and as such it’s been something of a relief to reveal myself as a bit of an expert on the subject of late, following an impromptu visit to Amsterdam’s Red Light district.
Organised – ever so slightly bizarrely – by the National Gallery earlier this year, the trip was proposed as a bid to highlight the changing face of the Red Light district in relation to one of the gallery’s recent acquisitions – the grizzly, Red-light inspired Hoerngracht installation by American pre-Pop maestros Ed and Nancy Keinholz.
Although the work itself was conspicuously absent, the chance to see a little more of Amsterdam’s ample underbelly proved too exciting to ignore. A trade hub for the past 400 years, Amsterdam has long attracted those looking for a quick fix at the end of a long trip – whether a 45-minute Ryanair flight can still be counted is open to debate – but these days, things in the ‘Dam are really beginning to change.
My first point of call was the home of 60-something ex-prostitute turned photographer Metje Blaak. Draping herself seductively over an expansive white bed, Blaak paints a positively bucolic picture of her life in the game, placing herself on a par with the local baker – providing ‘social sex’ for the community.
Fully legalised back in 2007, the Amsterdam City Council – under the guise of the 1012 regeneration project – is now wielding full control over the sex industry. Planning to ‘dismantle the criminal infrastructure’ and, in their own words, return a ‘chic and shady’ sense of balance to the community, brothels are closing left, right and centre.
With plans for a Las Ramblas style red carpet from Central Station into the Red Light District featuring ‘a Harrods of Amsterdam’, the city has called in creative consultants HTNK to commission up-and coming Dutch fashion designers to fill the ever-emptying windows before squatters set in.
There is certainly some interesting stuff on show. With black, red and aquamarine 3D-print tunic dresses from …andbeyond, and avant-garde masks, dolls and out-there streetwear from the omni-pierced Bas Kosters – there is talent a-plenty. Though the prostitutes tend not to agree, as Metje reveals in her husky, filed-off tones – ‘the girls don’t like the mannequins, they make them feel self-conscious’
Artists are also getting a look-in with the Red Light Art scheme. Producing less in-your-face window displays, the artists live, breathe and work in the ex-brothels – Dutch/French artist Laurence Aegerter for instance, has transformed her space into everything from a temporary Turkish snack-bar to a golf club during her year long tenure.
Despite all this, the artists and fashion designers on board are only too aware of their tentative position within the municipal machine. In reality, their residencies are mere stopping points en route to the brothel-that-was, being transformed into a prime piece of real estate.
Even considering the range of creative input being pumped into the area, prostitution remains a pivotal part of Amsterdam’s culture, and one can’t help but wonder whether the creativity would be better spent elsewhere – working alongside the sex industry, rather than in place of it.
That said, streets lined with seedy British stag haunts and spaced-out skunk dives could certainly do with an injection of good bars, clubs and restaurants, which are surprisingly lacking.
The National Gallery will be bringing over Kienholtz Hoerengracht piece this November. An expansive, walk-in tableau depicting Amsterdam’s Red Light District in the 80’s, the work is a gruesome theater of dim lights, raw squalor and buyable bodies – not far off from the Red Light district itself, however the brothel owners may protest otherwise.
Gilbert and George at the White Cube 13 July, 2009
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Rocking up at Gilbert and George’s much anticipated opening at the White Cube last week, I had visions of the Spitalfields odd couple shouting a new art world order from Jay Jopling’s Sacred spires – prescribing a searing vision of 21st Century society and its follies.
‘bombs’ (2006) by Gilbert & George © Jay Jopling and The White Cube
At least that’s what I had been led to expect from the hyperbole surrounding Jack Freak Pictures – apparently the ‘most iconic, philosophically astute and visually violent work that Gilbert & George have ever created’. What I was confronted with however, was an off-key disappointment.
With an artistic agenda visible from space, it seems to me that Gilbert and George have struggled to live up to their hype – a point made startlingly evident at the Hoxton Square opening last Thursday.
Spurred on by a few free bottles of Asahi, I skipped expectantly into the church-like space on the packed out East London Palazzo and came confronted by the Gilbert and George we’ve come to know…and, well, know.
Now don’t get me wrong, what G&G do, they do fantastically well – but the Jack Freak Pictures offer nothing new to the oeuvre. Perhaps the subject matter was a little darker, and the alien facial montages of the pair a little more menacing, but in reality the most striking thing about the show was the clarity of print that the pair had managed to achieve on such a large scale.
That said, there is something beguiling about Gilbert and George’s self-referential pictorial stories – however repetitive they may be. With a style which is unarguably their own, and a back story that reads like a ghoulish East London fairy tale, Gilbert and George have shrouded themselves in an enticing artistic mythology.
Producing the same old work over and over again, and selling it for the same, sky-high prices over and over again however, no doubt does wonders for Jay Jopling’s dreams of White Cube world takeover, (and I’m sure it has bought G&G a fair few spare mustard-coloured suits), but in terms of artistic merit, the prints for which the pair are so famed, seem to have breathed their last.
That’s not to say that nothing can be salvaged from the wreckage. Despite the tried and tested formula, there is boundless physical energy caught within the G&G brand of Technicolor, and a sculptural potential that they would do well to tap. But, let’s face it – one trick ponies just don’t take well to other things, it makes them nauseous.
Skystation lands on the Southbank 8 July, 2009
Posted by teovdb in mydeco guest blogger.Tags: Anthony Gormley, Hayward Gallery, Peter Newman, plinth, Skystation, Southbank, Wallpaper* magazine
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I know this may arch a few (perfectly polished) eyebrows – especially considering that plinthmania has currently got the entire country in its grip – but I just can’t help but take issue with ‘public art’. The artist-over-artwork agenda that tends to be behind even the most well-intentioned public works, seems to me, to be entirely missing the point.
Peter Newman’s Skystation. Courtesy of FutureEditions
I’m obviously generalising – oftentimes this narcissistic inclination isn’t entirely down to the artist him (or her) self. Issues such as funding, commissioning and patronage dictate a lot of where an artist’s time and efforts are spent and, as such, they alone are not always entirely to blame. That is unless ‘they’ happen to be Anthony Gormley.
Ensconced in his messianic fantasy land, Gormley has forgotten that perhaps ‘society-at-large’ doesn’t really want a world populated with goulish Gormley-alikes. That said, the plinth is undoubtedly all about the people and for that I applaud Mr Gormley – although I do feel a twinge of concern that his future plans may be reaching towards the bigger plinth, nextdoor. Lord Nelson, keep your wits about you.
This week however, my public art opinions have been somewhat placated. Peter Newman; British artist, cultural philanthropist and all round nice guy, will today open his latest project on the Southbank, and I can assure you, there are no cast bronze Newman’s anywhere in sight.
The Skystation – a community-seating console of sorts- is set to become the first installment in a nationwide seating project from the artist, in collaboration with the cultural regenerators at Futurecity.
Inspired by the faultless ergonomic form of Le Corbusier’s LC4 Chaise Lounge (just flipped 360º) Skystation will sit like a giant chrome droplet frozen mid-bounce on the Southbank, for the entirety of the summer, and is set to eventually be followed by 99 more permanent Skystation’s scattered across the country.
Designed to bring the heads of loungers closer together as they stare into the sky, Newman’s altruistic work of art is for everyone from Matinee-venturing pensioners to homeward-bound clubbers. For me this is real point of public art – unassuming, interesting, incredibly sexy, and above all, it’s for the public.
Does the city really need another private club? 7 July, 2009
Posted by teovdb in mydeco guest blogger.Tags: Eight Moorgate, Gherkin, St Paul'sWallpaper*
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Why is it that anywhere you go in the city, everything seems to be so damn muscle-bound and masculine? Do the financial powers-that-be not get that things have moved on from the days of savaloy stuffed shirts and Oliver!-esque exorbitance?
The 150 square meter terrace stretching out in-front of Eight Moorgate Members Club
From stucco archways to soaring glass phalluses – surely, if the city ever really wants to regain it’s footing, it needs to get shot of the days of architectural one-upmanship and move into an era of feminine restraint and transparency (Fred Goodwin, please read on).
That said, one opening I’d been looking forward to for a while was that of the Eight Club – a new members-only retreat set in the heart of the city, right next to Moorgate tube, and just down the road from the Bank sister club in EC3.
Attending the well-lubricated opening party last week, the interior was all that I’d come to expect from the city – dark leathers, masculine oakiness, lots of brushed steel and floors you could bounce a brandy balloon off.
Always a sucker for a view (particularly when a sunset’s involved) the scene from the expansive 150 square meter terrace skirting Eight is, I have to admit, utterly breathtaking. Rolling out towards the Thames, swallowing St Paul’s in its wake – this is one view that I would fork out the sky-high membership for alone – especially as the outlook from my kitchen currently consists of a horizontal wheelie bin, a wall, and the occasional, bedraggled looking cat.
Ok, so despite my ranting, I’m an absolute sucker for exclusivity, and let’s face it – the real reason I now love Eight comes down to little more than the free champagne – a luxury I was beginning to fear had all but disappeared, even within the gated confines of the square mile.
Whilst things have calmed down in the city, we definitely haven’t seen the last days of banker decadence, and the opening of Eight goes to show that after only a few months of relative restraint, things are already returning to normal.
When it comes to luxury, the city has always got it wrong – macho posturing has never produced real luxury – it has only ever produced bigger, brasher versions of things that weren’t that great in the first place. Luxury is about taste, creativity and a little opulence – not who has the bigger desk chair (if you know what I mean).
My first ever guest blog for mydeco! 7 July, 2009
Posted by teovdb in mydeco guest blogger.Tags: Fredrikson Stallard, party-popper chandeliers, red polyurethane rugs, Stuart Haygarth, wallpaper
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Writing a blog is never quite as easy as it seems (I’m assuming it seems easy, it probably doesn’t) – striking a tone, setting a mood, saying something remotely interesting – it’s all quite intimidating really. Despite my apparent reticence, this month I am set to step up to the plate as mydeco’s newest guest blogger – and I suppose there’s no better way to start than by introducing myself.
Well, my name is Teo and I’m an arts and design journalist living in London, I write for Wallpaper* magazine among others, and aside from spending my time scouring blogs in search of the latest trends, and hot -footing it round town to keep my finger on the proverbial pulse, I like to cook, talk, eat, drink and eventually sleep – oh, and I do the occasional bit of painting as well.
When it comes to design I’m partial to anything with a bit of an artistic edge (you can take the boy out of Wallpaper* etc…) -some of my favourites at the mo include Fredrikson Stallard’s gloopy polyurethane rugs – like big, glossy red paint spillages, and lighting by Stuart Haygarth – his stunning high-colour chandeliers come made from hundreds of party poppers, old specs and recycled bottles (living proof that good design can (and should) always start at home).
Stuart Haygarth’s Millennium Chandelier
When it comes to my own space, I tend to take a bit of a hodge-podge approach, a few over-the-top traveling trinkets here, a Habitat vase there, a homemade photo frame or two – I’m pretty relaxed on the whole. My latest acquisition (an antique Guatemalan wall hanging) should give you some sort of an idea of the directionless direction I like to take – to my mind, design without personality is more often than not, just bad design.
So now that I’ve revealed a little more than perhaps is decent about myself, I’m hoping that you, the good readers of the mydeco blog, will indulge me in the occasional vent of my design spleen. I’ll be providing a weekly account of everything going on in the worlds of art and design that I think is great – in the hopes that you’ll think so too.
