Reference Page: June 2009

Act of Alchemy
Not a great time to open a luxury hotel in Mexico City! The recent wave of kidnappings and drug-related violence already wasn’t good PR for the Mexican tourism industry. Now the swine-flu epidemic has emptied hotel rooms, beaches, restaurants, and airplanes. In spite of it all, the Yabu Pushelberg–designed Las Alcobas hotel is set to open this fall, with the hope that its delicate leather panels, ironwork gates, and Moss and Lam etchings (www.mossandlam.com) will attract adventurous travelers to the trendy Polanco neighborhood. And, hey, let’s not panic quite yet: the Toronto firm (www.yabupushelberg.com) is known for designing “spaces that sell and sell” (search www.canadianbusiness.com for “Glenn Pushelberg”). In 2002 sales at Victoria’s Secret’s Manhattan flagship, which the firm designed, were roughly twice as high as at other branches. And in just one month after its opening, the YP-designed Graves 601 Hotel, in Minneapolis, generated more cash than ithad spent. Stay tuned to see what happens when that magic touch meets Mexico’s beleaguered tourism industry—updates soon at www.lasalcobas.com.

What a Catch!
Designed by GAD (www.gadarchitecture.com), the Turkish fish-market pavilion we’re featuring this month is located in the heart of Besiktas, a lively Istanbul neighborhood that is rapidly going “from gritty to glamorous,” according to a recent New York Times story (search www.nytimes.com for “newly chic in Istanbul”). The area now boasts a W Hotel with its own Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant, two Marc Jacobs stores, and a Jimmy Choo boutique. With such chic neighbors, the authentic but stinky Bes¸iktas¸ market was beginning to seem out of place. That’s why the district mayor, Ismail Unal, supported the new GAD pavilion project, and since its completion he has been posing with fresh fish for the local media (www.besiktas.bel.tr/t/15/newsDetail.jsp?n=22629). Now fishermen sell their catch in a brand-new market with VitrA (www.vitrakaro.com) tiles and running water. The abundance of lightbulbs allows customers to inspect thoroughly the freshness of their mullet and mackerel. Some fishermen lamented the loss of business during the eight months of construction, but others are happy: their years of paying fines for hygiene offenses are officially over.

Beyond the Hype
It comes as a relief to learn from our columnist Karrie Jacobs that the experience of walking the High Line actually surpasses expectations, because this magazine has certainly done its part to raise them. In December 2005 Metropolis’s former senior editor Karen E. Steen wrote a terrific profile of Robert Hammond and Joshua David, the founders of the High Line, that told the whole story. Three years later we ran a profile of James Corner, by Andrew Blum, which corrected the mistaken impression that the park is solely the product of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Friends of the High Line has an excellent Web site (not surprising, given its media savvy), with news and links to the latest developments in the park’s opening: www.thehighline.org.

A Bright Future
The genesis of Parupu—the cute new biodegradable chair for children—actually involved more continental design collaboration than our story lets on. The Stockholm-based designers Claesson Koivisto Rune first got the idea for an affordable paper-pulp chair from their conversations with Giulio Cappellini, of the esteemed Italian manufacturer that bears his name (www.cappellini.it). Later, when the DuraPulp material proved too weak for an adult-size chair, it was Tom Dixon (www.tomdixon.net)—a longtime friend of the firm’s—who suggested that CKR make a children’s chair instead. Learn more about the chair’s design and manufacture at www.sodrapulplabs.com, which features video interviews with the designers and photos from Parupu’s debut last April in Milan.

Design for Purpose: HandleEasy
Before Oxo, there was Ergonomidesign (www.ergonomidesign.com). Nine items by the Swedish design firm, founded in 1969, have made it into the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection, and Maria Benktzon had a hand in all of them. No wonder Doro (www.doro.com) turned to her to develop a line of accessible phones with broad appeal. Benktzon’s best-known project, a 1987 coffeepot for SAS, was commissioned when the airline’s flight attendants (this was after they were called stewardesses but before the emergence of the “cabin crew,” with its implicit erosion of customer service) became burned out from hauling around five and a half pounds of hot liquid. Her lighter, better-balanced alternative proved popular with regular folks suffering from hand weakness and remained in production until 1996. It’s still used by the airline today. To see the painful before—and euphoric after—search for “SAS” at www.designforalleurope.org.

Nelson & Company
As you would expect, there is a wealth of literature on George Nelson. The best books include the Vitra Design Museum’s George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher (Vitra Design Stiftung, 2008) and Stanley Abercrombie’s George Nelson: The Design of Modern Design (The MIT Press, 1995). Nelson was also a prolific writer himself. Check out Problems of Design (Whitney, 1957), George Nelson on Design (Whitney, 1979), and How to See: A Guide to Reading Our Manmade Environment (Little, Brown & Company, 1977; rereleased in 2003 by Design Within Reach). A good account of the Nelson office’s designs for Herman Miller is included in “Nelson, Eames, Girard, Propst: The Design Process at Herman Miller” in Design Quarterly 98/99 (1975). For a comprehensive account of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, see Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan’s Cold War Confrontations: U.S. Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War (Lars Müller Publishers, 2008).

Reductive Power
Although this is our first profile of the designers Sam Hecht and Kim Colin, of the London firm Industrial Facility, several previous Metropolis stories have touched on the couple’s work. In March “Banal Genius” presented some of the objects in Hecht’s Under a Fiver collection—examples of good utilitarian design that cost less than five pounds. In the same issue, “Empty Promise” examined the stripped-down beauty of Japanese design, using Muji products as the primary example. In June 2008, “Out of the Shadows” described a new line of office furniture for Herman Miller, including a desk and cabinet by Industrial Facility. And “Without Thought,” our May 2007 cover profile of the Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa, drew on interviews with Hecht, who worked with Fukasawa at IDEO and helped him set up the firm’s Tokyo branch. Search for the headlines on www.metropolismag.com to read the stories. And be sure to keep an eye on the firm’s Web site, www.industrialfacility.co.uk, where Hecht and Colin will soon be launching an online store to sell some of the unique design knickknacks they have picked up in their world travels.