Shanghai Museum of Glass

Shanghai’s shiny new Museum of Glass opened last week as part of Shanghai’s campaign of becoming a globally important cultural and creative centre by launching 100 museums in a decade.

Shanghai-based German architectural firm Logon handled the architecture and exterior of the museum. Germany’s Glashütte Lambets supplied the enameled glass used for the museum’s façade inscribed with glass-industry terms in ten languages.

COORDINATION ASIA, also based in Shanghai, was in charge of the overall museum concept, art direction, design and supervision of the museum interior. It was also the chief consultant for curation, marketing and operation, as well as coordination of an international team of architects, artists, designers, filmmakers and multimedia specialists.

COORDINATION’s Tilman Thürmer tells TCH that they used black lacquered glass for the interior (cases, floor, furniture, walls), but left the existing structure untouched. The museum building is a former glassmaking workshop, one of 30 former bottling-plant structures that the Shanghai Glass Co. still owns.

The black, sleek glass of the interior reflects the LED lights and screens positioned throughout the space, creating a shiny and glittering multi-dimensional feel. This emphasizes the interaction, interdependence and influences of periods, continents, materials and peoples involved in the art, craft and industry of glass.

The design of the space and exhibits and the use of various media help create an interactive and participatory museum experience where the visitor is directed through the story of glass.

“Designwise, we wanted to create a piece of black crystal glass. Sparkling, reflecting, sleek and deep,” Thürmer says. - Tuija Seipell.

For The Love of Wood

Wood is both universal and unique. No other material is as deeply embedded in the history, culture and life of humans worldwide as wood, yet every single piece of wood is unique.

The color tone, texture, durability, flexibility and even sound qualities of different tree species have puzzled and challenged artists, architects, designers, builders and artisans for thousands of years.

Still today, nothing matches wood in versatility or beauty, so it is great to see how today’s designers and architects continue to face the challenge of wood, and use it creatively to interpret sleek, modern designs.

They use wood to meet their current needs and desires for which wood is ideally suited. People seek calm surroundings, simplicity and minimalism to soothe their frayed nerves and to counter the constant visual overload they face. Wood’s warmth and natural beauty works wonders for creating a sense of balance and calm.

People also look for sustainable alternatives, eco-friendly options, greener solutions. When harvested, managed and used sustainably, forests are still the source of the greatest material on earth.

We especially love the influence of Scandinavian and Japanese traditions that we can detect in today’s wood architecture and design. Minimalist, functional, beautiful, and light in both color and weight.

Scandinavian building and design traditions are based solidly on the use of wood. Finnish modernist master, architect Alvar Aalto, stunned the world with Living Wood, his design for the Finnish Pavilion for the Paris World Exposition in 1937. In the pavilion, he combined both traditional and modern architecture and showcased his functionalist design sensibilities. It was considered one of the boldest and most innovative pavilions of the Expo.

Earlier, Aalto’s exploration of the limits of bent wood and mass production had resulted in the Paimio chair (1931) and other furniture classics, and had a permanent impact on how furniture looks even today. Aalto’s work influenced many other modernist masters including Charles and Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen.

The use of wood in Japanese architecture and design is characterized by austere construction methods, the lightness of materials, the connectedness between indoors and outdoors, and the way in which buildings merge with their surroundings.

With hardly any furniture used inside, Japanese master craftsmen were able to focus their skills on the buildings themselves, on skilful joining of sections without nails, and on revealing, rather than covering or adorning, the original texture and tone of the wood.

Wood as a material has held a charmed place in architecture and design for both its simplicity and complexity. It lends itself to imposing, bulky structures, yet also yields to delicate, undulating forms that seem lacy and transparent.

We love this lightness and elegance, the play of light and shadow, the countless tones of color that can be achieved with skilful use of wood both structurally and decoratively.

In more and more residential projects, both big and small, architects and designers are finding new, creative ways to reveal and highlight the beauty and versatility of wood. They manage to create structures that appear current and cool, yet also exude a classic, timeless elegance.

Every day, we come across images of fantastic single-use residences, recreational cottages, furniture, decks and patios, where the qualities of wood are perfectly matched with the users’ needs and the requirements of the surroundings as well.

In retail and hospitality, wood is also making an impact. We love the blocky, clean look of the Aesop stores. At the other end of the spectrum a good example is the lightness and playfulness achieved in RDAI Architects’ use of wood-slat “huts” as departments in the Paris Hermès store built inside an old hotel swimming pool.

In not just eco-lodges, but also in luxury resorts, spas and hotels, wood is becoming the material of choice. As guests are looking for a retreat, a sense of being back in nature, a quilt-free, tranquil vacation, resorts are responding with wood-frame structures, wood interiors and sustainable solutions that also look fabulous.

Wood is not trendy yet it is incredibly cool. It is a demanding, noble, ancient, living material that we have the privilege to use and enjoy. In wood, the architect, designer and builder face the exhilarating challenge of the sculptor — to reveal the character of the specific species, the individual tree. And we, the viewers and users of their work, have the opportunity to discover it for ourselves. We are looking forward to more. - Tuija Seipell.

At TCH, we are so obsessed with wood that we even created Treelife, an event to showcase the most innovate work using wood in the design of Treehouses.

Sephora Same Day Beauty Delivery Service - New York

Here at TCH, we started ACCESS agency for the sole reason of giving brands the opportunity to be BOLD, to do something more than what is safe, more than what is easy, more than what is comfortable, accepted, standard, just good enough.

We are excited to work with brands around the globe who seek us out for that reason. They ask us to shake them up a bit, create something unboring, something truly DIFFERENT

Those in the creative and even in the marketing fields will recognize the syndrome we are fighting against: Everyone wants a great idea. A great idea is found. Everyone is ecstatic. The idea goes through the system, though the layers of approvals, discussions and hesitations, and comes out unrecognizable, ordinary, safe and boring. We see this happen over and over.

Companies that do not have a Steve Jobs-like creative visionary at or near the top, have extreme trouble getting innovation of any kind approved or produced. Bold ideas just do not survive the system.

Recently, we were approached by Sephora’s great team because they had seen our work with MINI car wraps.

Sephora wanted to launch a same-day delivery service for online cosmetics sales in New York. We designed a series of six different head-turning MINI Cooper wraps for their fleet of six vehicles. We were going for bold designs that will really stand out in the busy New York street scene, among the taxis and delivery vehicles. We were gunning for big impact and quick recognition, immediate attention, a bold and cool vibe, something that would generate on-street buzz, even with only six vehicles.

They loved the ideas but in the end asked us to design a black-and-white style that was on-brand. We were sad to see the boldness gone. The black-and-white MINIs have been on the streets since July. - Bill Tikos

The New Stuttgart City Library - Germany

Korean architect Eun Young Yi’s proposal was selected in 1999 from 235 competition entries as the plan for the new central library of the City of Stuttgart.

The building of the 80-million Euro (about $108 mil. US) Stadtbibliothek am Mailänder Platz began three years ago and the opening ceremonies took place last month.

Yi has created a monolithic cube with two floors underground and nine above. Essentially all of the building, both inside and out is white. The main library floors circle an open-plan with the levels connected by open staircases. Books line the outer walls of each floor.

As a cool nod to the fact that the building is a storehouse of words, the word “library” is installed in four languages on the outside walls. On the North wall in German (the local language), West in English (lingua franca), South in Arabic (the language of ancient knowledge and of Stuttgart’s sister city, Cairo) and East in Korean (Yi’s native language).

Yi’s company, Yi Architects is based in Cologne and Seoul. Its work includes public projects ranging from museums and universities to offices and city plans. - Tuija Seipell

Numptia Super Yacht

 Those in the market for a megayacht are already familiar with the 70-meter (229-foot) Numptia. There isn’t a luxury yachting magazine on the planet that hasn’t noticed it. Some at the upper end allocated as much as 25 pages of opulence-oozing imagery and painstaking scrutiny of every minute fact to this steel-hulled, aluminum-structured floating residence.

 And those who didn’t get enough of Numptia in the printed media, had an opportunity to view it at the 21st Monaco Yacht Show in September, where it was hailed as one of the highlights among the 100 top meagayachts from around the globe.

  
The vessel launched in April in Genoa, after a three-year building process. It was completely custom-built for an unnamed Italian-born American businessman who wanted it for his multi-generational family.

 Two specific things about Numptia have attracted the interest of the yachting world. Every aspect of Numptia was custom-created with the highest, most exquisite quality of design, materials, craftsmanship and functional performance. Even in the megayacht circles, this kind of grandeur and obsessive attention to quality and detail are rare.

 The other unusual aspect is the fact that the owner selected a relatively unknown shipyard, Rossinavi Yachts of Viareggio to build it, and a little-known designer Salvagni Architetti of Rome to design the interiors.

 Working closely with the owner, Achille Salvagni combined modern sensibilities with touches of traditional luxury to achieve a timeless feel of well-being. Every piece of furniture, every surface treatment, every doorknob and hinge was custom-designed for Numptia. Silk carpets woven in Tibet, solid marble in the steam bath, quartz floors in the galley, and an oval dining table covered in riveted alpaca nickel silver are just a few examples.

  
Exterior design of the vessel was completed by Design Studio Spadolini of Florence.

Numptia features lavish rooms for up to 12 guests and includes an impressive master suite, a VIP suite, three queen-size double cabins and one twin stateroom. The owner’s suite includes a bedroom, TV area, reading room, his and hers dressing rooms and a bathroom with the solid-marble bath. Numerous common areas, sundecks, a spa deck plus crew accommodations and all behind-the-scenes space complete the spacious picture.

Numptia is available for charter through Burgess for about $646,000 per week, and for sale for an undisclosed price, rumored to be around $85 million. - Tuija Seipell