Design Considered #04
The wonders of Yoshino hinoki wood, a ghostly Le Corbusier building, and a new bible for lighting design.
#01 - Opening Thought
For nearly a century, having a multi-shade PH pendant lamp by Danish designer Poul Henningsen (pictured) hanging above your dining table has been a signifier of good taste in domestic decoration. In a well-appointed Danish home, it's more of a must - it's estimated that one in five homes in the Scandinavian country have at least one PH 5 model. Of course, there is more to the story of Louis Poulsen, the light maker behind these legendary objects, than a lovely series of lamps. 150 years after the brand was born, a new book exploring its rich heritage and showcasing its impressive visual archive is being launched by Phaidon next week. Edited by TF Chan, Louis Poulsen: First House of Light brilliantly spotlights the evolution of lighting design through this Danish favourite's product developments and collaborations with design greats like Arne Jacobsen and Verner Panton.
#02 - Words From The Editor
How often do we sit back and think about where, precisely, the materials forming our favourite furnishings come from? For a design writer like me, frequently praising virtuous natural material in soft linens or tough slate tiles, the answer is ‘not enough’. I realised this chatting with Swiss-based Japanese architect Yuichi Kodai, who imports sugi cedar and hinoki cypress timber from his home nation's Yoshino region.
When used in interior design, hinoki makes us feel closer to the natural world. The rich aromatic scents you absorb soaking in a traditional hinoki timber tub, like the fine ones Kodai creates (pictured), provide a calming sensory response. And even though it's cultivated on the other side of the world, carbon sequestered in planks of this light-coloured softwood easily offsets transport emissions. Hinoki, therefore, is a luxurious material that designers can feel good about enshrining European or American bathrooms in.
Sadly, the idea of improving our homes with Yoshino hinoki and sugi timber elements—long coveted in Japanese residences and temples—might not be around much longer. The traditional cultivation techniques that lend these materials their qualities are in danger of disappearing. Kodai says the younger generation in Japan is turning away from the forestry industry, putting the uncelebrated yet highly sustainable way of growing trees in Yoshino at risk.
"These are monocultural forests, but remain considerate of nature," says Kodai, explaining the centuries-old cultivation technique (pictured in textbook illustrations). The meticulous work involves the careful thinning and pruning of hinoki and sugi trees as they grow to produce timber beams with a seemingly impossibly sleek, straight grain. This method allows sunlight to reach the forest floor, encouraging biodiversity and improving soil quality. It's an old technique from which the modern forestry industry could learn a lot.
"The goal for me and my team is to save this region. The foresters are in their 60s and 70s, and the trade is not being passed down, and a 500-year legacy could end," Kodai says, noting that celebrating the story behind this material beyond Japan is just as important as highlighting the beautiful implications of using it in design. "If the knowledge is not passed on, it would be an incredible loss. This is something our building and creative industries should know about and support."
#03 - Design Selection
After launching the successful Frame dining table, John Pawson’s new (1) Frame Low table is the most magnificently minimal design we’ve seen in a long time. It is crafted by timber masters Nikari in Finland in oak and ash. It’s a coffee table so fine that we decided to devote the rest of the round-up to nice things to complement it (rather than compete with it) in the home. First up is this beautiful new (2) A24 Screenplay Books Series, published by MACK and available in the US (Europe in September); it uses tasteful colour tones and sharp typographic design to differentiate photo-led storytelling of some of our favourite indie films. The (3) ‘Anymals’ card game provides something a bit more fun in print-form for kids and design-loving grown-ups to play atop a nice timber coffee table. First created by legendary graphic designer Ken Garland, Portugal’s Architoys has re-issued the create-your-own-creature concept, aided by Studio Andrew Howard. Our final playful piece is just for the adults, but the (4) ES17 - Corkscrew by Ettore Sottsass from 1989 is a universally beloved work of design, which is part of the recently updated Twergi collection, available now.
#04 - For Your Consideration
Snøhetta’s stunning harbourside Opera House is cast in Visit Oslo’s hilarious new promotional film, which sarcastically lays out all the reasons why this walkable, liveable and wonderfully designed city is worthy of visiting.
Some solid weekend reading (or listening) can be found in The New Yorker’s in-depth feature on how the artist formerly known as Kanye West destroyed the exacting design of a Tadao Ando beach-front residence.
If you are in Japan right now, admiring Ando designs or otherwise, you might want to check out the retrospective exhibition on the work of the brilliant British graphic designer Veronica Ditting at Kyoto’s DDD Gallery. It showcases her famous framed The Gentlewomen covers and more.
Staying with London editorial design projects, a wonderfully clever identity for Prose, the creative agency behind Port magazine, from Acre, uses the ‘o’ from the tasteful logotype as a graphic container for brand storytelling.
Finally, while The New Yorker provides more nuanced design take-downs, if you’re up for a straight-up shredding of bad residential architecture, you might want to start following James Howe Studio on Instagram, who comedically unpicks the flaws of new homes built down under.
#05 - Through The Lens
Guadalajara-based César Béjar’s photos capturing Le Corbusier’s buildings in Chandigarh, India, reveal a sense of beauty in their abandonment. While the famed modernist works of Le Corbusier in Europe are so well-maintained that they feel more like museums than the homes or churches they were intended to be, in Chandigarh (where a Le Corbusier planned city remains in various levels of order), César found a new perspective. “In India, you understand his buildings differently because of how they have been ruined; you read the architecture differently and find beautiful chairs designed by Pierre Jeanneret - who worked with Le Corbusier on this project - on the street. Being there is beautiful,” he tells Design Considered. “The scale of the place where the Tower of Shadows (pictured) is located is truly remarkable. It’s situated in the middle of a vast square that seems endless. This vastness creates a unique experience; you keep walking and walking, feeling as if the tower is just within reach, but it remains far away.” Béjar, who is as talented at architecture as he is at photography, shots of the building (originally designed to capture solar movement) effectively convey its current surreal and ghostly atmosphere—enhanced by the urban smog that lingers in the air and the absence of the crowds.