Posts by Natalia Repolovsky - Author at Minimalissimo

Luminous House

This minimal one story house has been recently completed by Shinichi Ogawa & Associates. Located in Kagawa, Japan and surrounded by a rural landscape, the building presents quite a sight. The semiopaque glass wall of the fasade allows the light in during the daytime, and makes the house look like a luminous box in the darkness. Behind these glass panels is an elegant courtyard, which makes the open and airy interior feel more secluded.

The interior consists of two parts – the main rooms, connected lineally, and the utility rooms, aligned into a small section by the North side. The large floor to ceiling windows open completely, removing any boundary between indoor and outdoor spaces. The whiteness of the surfaces reflects the light and makes the space even brighter. It also unifies the design and creates the look of completeness.

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Kopiad

Kopiad is a collection of office accessories designed by Swedish studio Note for Boxit Design and recently unveiled at the Stockholm Furniture Fair. These white paper-thin objects with softly coloured inserts provide a much needed eye candy to any workspace. The line includes a bin in two sizes (with an optional recycling compartment), a magazine holder, a postbox, a business card holder, and a pen holder. All objects are ergonomically designed to accomodate your movements. Designers explain:

The series was developed to function as complementing objects in today’s flexible office. Kopiad’s different shapes, sizes and colors make it easy to place and to decorate your workspace. And now, when you throw your worst ideas in the bin, you’ll score easily because of the tilted walls. We’ve tried it, it works!

The collection comes in three refreshing colours: bright orange, light green and smooth yellow.

Photography by Mathias Nero. 

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Kinetic Lights

These fascinating lamps were created by London based designer Michael Anastassiades. The configuration of each chandelier changes as its various parts move at the joints. Each piece has a different span, depending on the amplitude of the moving segments. Made from black patinated plated brass and mouth blown glass, these objects balance between fine art and design. Minimal and utilitarian, subtle and full of vitality, they call for participation and interaction…

Anastassiades’ work is featured in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. These particular lamps were spotted at the Moss gallery, New York’s design mecca, which closes its doors later this month.

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Sharing Watch

Sharing Watch is a work of Cho, Eun Whan and Shin, Tai Ho of studio MAEZM. They have equipped this unusual timepiece with something more than a reliable mechanism and an air of elegant simplicity. They gave it a communal spirit! Instead of the traditional arrangement of numbers on the dial, there is a slight shift, allowing you to see the time from the side. By simply extending your hand forward or raising it, you can share the time with others. Designers explain:

Such a small change of idea enabled sharing of time with others nearby or others standing opposite site. Through this sharing in this unfamiliar change, we can newly experience the relationship with others by way of time, and that is how Maezm wanted this watch to serve.

The faded numbers make the dial look minimal and uncluttered. They are also quite readable, which is essential for a piece designed to be looked at from a distance.

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Doug Wheeler

If you happen to be in New York, do consider seeing Doug Wheeler’s light and space installation at the David Zwirner Gellery in Chelsea. It might reveal many new and fascinating things about the way you see, experience and perceive reality. And the best part: you will participate in this experiment both as a subject and as an observer…

Doug Wheeler (b. 1939) is a pioneer of the so-called “Light and Space” movement that flourished in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s. His works appeared in such venues as Tate gallery, London (1970), Salvatore Ala Gallery, Milan (1975), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1983), Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2000) and many others.

The installation I saw on the weekend was ambiguously titled SA MI 75 DZ NY 12. It is a large scale exhibit that brings you as close to stepping into the void as a person can get without enduring any imminent danger. You enter the white oblivion and walk toward what you know is the back wall. The shape of the room and the special way it is lit eliminate any depth perception. You feel that your eyes are failing you, all you can see is the infinite whiteness. The experience is thrilling and unsettling at the same time. People’s reactions to the room vary. Some linger on the edge, some freeze in the middle, some reach out, trying to feel the space around them. I kept going forward, and eventually my feet felt the curve. And this was the moment when I saw the room for the first time, its size, its shape, its texture. It was quite a discovery! The light in the room changes gradually from bright to dark in a 32-minute cycle, so you can test your senses within fluctuating light modes.

Doug Wheeler’s SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 installation is on display at David Zwirner through February 25, 2012.

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Fobe House

The Fobe House by Guilhem Eustache graces the otherwise empty two-hectare plot of land, located near Marrakech. This featureless landscape is a perfect backdrop for the pristine white architectural ensemble, which is comprised of four parts – main home, pool house, caretaker’s residence and garage. The facade features two overlapping walls that conceal the staircase to the roof between them. The opposite side of the main building is overlooking the swimming pool and the rest of the premises. Here is how the architects describe the concept of the house:

In this 2.5 hectares area the buildings occupy only 240 sqm. The volumes and their arrangements permit to avoid a floating effect in this empty space. Before discovering the layout we first need to go along the clay walls, which remote the neighbours away while allowing the sight of whites geometries.

I like how the unobstructed sunlight brightens the white cubic structures and creates sharp shadows through the patterned openings. All these elements play off of each other, accentuate the emptiness of the land and focus the eye towards the house.

Photography by Jean-Marie Monthiers.

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White Dormitory

White Dormitory is a renovation project recently completed by Japanese designer Koichi Futatsumata of Case-Real. Located on Teshima Island, Japan, this beautiful dwelling provides accommodation for three employees of nearby restaurant Il Vento. The bones of the initial house were carefully preserved, allowing to insert new elements without disturbing the surrounding landscape of the village which remains unchanged from the old days. Futatsumata elaborates:

Though deteriorated traditional Japanese style roof was replaced, the basic form and color of the original was adopted to the new one only using different materials, you hardly notice the change from the outside. On the other hand, all the furnishings and functional features of dormitory as well as a courtyard are reconstructed using various white materials such as woods, stones, and plasters with different expressions and tones. In Japan, white is not only a symbol of new beginning, but the sacred color representing purity, innocence, and peace.

The interior is comprised of three bedrooms, arranged on one side of the building. The common area is characterized by the beautiful contrast between the monochromatic colour palette and rustic wooden beams. The line of skylights brings constant flow of natural light into the room. The small courtyard with the long white terrace connects the inside and outside of the building and creates the illusion of a much bigger space.

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SleepBox

This futuristically looking object, called SleepBox, is designed exclusively for naps. Envisioned by Caspar Lohner and produced by LG Hausys in collaboration with Kläusler Acrylstein AG, the piece creates a place of comfort and relaxation within airports, offices or other public and semi-public spaces, providing peace and quiet in busy urban environments. The free-form shell is made from HI-MACS®, an innovative material, which is comprised of 70% natural stone powder derived from bauxite, 25% high quality acrylic resin and 5% natural pigments. Here is how Lohner describes his experience working with this unique compound:

Every day was a challenge for me, but when something didn’t work, we tried and tried again until it was resolved. I learnt a lot about HI-MACS® fabrication possibilities thanks to this project.

A porthole on one side of the shell provides an entry to the sleeping capsule, lined with a leather covered mattress. The outer part, thanks to the shape of the object, can serve as seating. SleepBox will be exhibited from 17th to 21th January at Swissbau 2012.

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Living Kitchen

Our constant urge to speculate on the subject of future technology is one of our strong creative traits. Many things that we consider commonplace today seemed science fiction only some decades ago. Chicago based industrial designer Michaël Harboun has his distinct idea of the future. He sees it in the implementation of so called ‘programable matter,’ a material comprised of micro robots capable to communicate with each other and change shape and function of any object. Harboun explains:

Let’s imagine a world where physical matter would gain digital abilities – meaning one could change the shape of any object as one would change the contents of a Smartphone. This would revolutionize our relationship with objects. An object would no longer induce a function by the way it looks. The user himself would define the functions of an object, the user becomes creator.

Through his Living Kitchen concept designer attempted to explore how people would interact within this form follows flow environment. The volumes could be stretched, twisted and bend by the user. And as far as technology goes, a material of this kind is currently being researched by Intel and the Carnegie Mellon University under the name of Claytronics. So, the future might be closer than we think.

Living Kitchen is a Reddot Award winner of 2011 in the concept design category. Watch the video to see the idea in motion.

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House Tokyo

House Tokyo has been recently completed by Sanpei Junichi of A.L.X. architects (Architect Label Xain). It is located in and inspired by the city of Tokyo, hence the name. One of the main challenges of the project was to work with the very limited piece of land (the plot was only 480 sq ft). Amazingly, the bright minds of A.L.X. managed to fit 675 sq ft of living space into the structure.

The facade of the building dominates the environment with its crisp whiteness and abstract shape. The windows are covered with perforated metal blindfolds, which obscure the view into the house yet allow enough light from the outside. This blindfold feature also makes the building look positively stunning at night.

The white exterior beautifully contrasts with the exposed concrete of the interior. I love how pieces of furniture seem to grow from the walls. The choice of the material is a clever and creative nod to the urban setting the house is surrounded by.

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