Pasquale Apollonio, Riccardo Crenna and Simona Flacco Launch Furniture Brand, Vero

Meaning real in Italian, Vero is a name that signifies the values behind the brand-new furniture brand from Pasquale Apollonio, Riccardo Crenna, and Simona Flacco, who enlisted an up-and-coming cast of local and international designers for its debut collection. The pieces are titled with an equally matter-of-fact numerical system. There’s Fredrik Paulsen’s witty and wiggly iron-rod D1-FP-C 01 chair, spray-painted a bright lavender, the rolling green D1-a617-MR 01 magazine rack in lacquered MDF from a617, and the fluid D1-FE-M mirror in MDF lacquered oxide red by Federica Elmo. Those join Cara\Davide’s D1-CD-CT 01, a beveled table-cum-stool veneered in red oak, among other intriguing offerings.

These Sustainable and Sculptural Pieces Made Waves at Alcova in Milan

Valentina Ciuffi and Joseph Grima launched Alcova in 2018 as a showcase of group exhibitions in overlooked locations of historical significance around Milan (think former military barracks, abandoned villas, and old factories). This year hosted two U.S. makers: Refractory, a new studio out of Chicago, proffers furniture evocative of tectonic forces and erosion, including the Heretofore suspension light; Otherside Objects, from Los Angeles, brought Wavy, a bench in deadstock canvas and salvaged Douglas Fir resembling a futon draped over wooden orbs. Duyi Han’s “Ordinance of the Subconscious Treatment” broaches mental health in a room installation modelled after a typical Chinese apartment, its silk upholstery embroidered with the chemical symbols for dopamine and serotonin. Among other highlights: sculptural stoneware lamps (Arche #3 and #4) from Italian ceramicist Elisa Uberti, Formstelle’s Zenso High lounger for Zeitraum, and A. Vetra’s A Gentle Gathering home textiles by Giulia Ferraris.

Field Conforming Studio Creates a Sculptural Memorial to Home, Life, and Loss in China

Field Conforming Studio employs weathering steel for a sculptural memorial to home, life, and loss in central China. Take a look at the making of this intricate structure.

Constructing The Vanished House

For The Vanished House, a permanent steel installation in China’s Wuhan Shimen­feng Memorial Park, Field Conforming Studio began by translating a sketch of a basic pitched-roof home into a cardboard model scaled 1:10.

On it, founder and chief designer Quanchun Hu, who studied oil painting before earning his master’s in architecture, drew an interlaced network of thin lines evocative of ivy vines growing across a facade.

The model was then dismantled, scanned at high resolution, and, using Rhinoceros, turned into vector files that guided the manufacturing of the Cor-Ten structure.

After the plates of ¾-inch-thick steel were laser-cut, a process necessitating multiple machines cutting simultaneously in the factory, support insections and ornamental strips were brought to the site, where they were welded together.

8 installers led by Field Conforming Studio founder and chief designer Quanchun Hu

2,600 square feet

300 hours laser-cutting the Cor-Ten steel

15 days of installation

Field Conforming Studio designed The Vanished House for the second East Lake International Ecological Sculpture Biennale in 2021, but it is sited permanently at the tranquil Wuhan Shimenfeng Memorial Park cemetery.

Cor-Ten steel was chosen for its crimson appearance, which will darken with sun and rain, making the installation increas­ingly prominent, and for its strength, which can support an open-air structure without additional stab­ilization.

Some 30,000 people have visited the work, which is meant to recall a house covered in sprawling ivy and be a symbol of hearth and home.

This Installation by Studiopepe Cofounders References Ancient Civilizations

Arianna Lelli Mami and Chiara Di Pinto, cofounders of Studiopepe, may be young and Italian, yet the stunning sculptural products emanating from their Milan studio have a classical quality suggesting both ancient civilizations and the venerated works of such 20th-century maestri as Constantin Brâncuşi, Isamu Noguchi, and Le Corbusier. All stem from the duo’s ongoing research in anthropology. For Milan Design Week, they collaborated with Galerie Philia to present “Temenos,” a 2,400-square-foot installation named after the word for sanctuary in ancient Greek held in the vacant 1950’s Necchi factory, in the Baranzate district 20 minutes from Milan’s center. Its handmade pieces, named for the nine archetypes of Egyptian cosmogony—like Temu and Isi—include vases, a console, mirror, lamp, and thronelike chairs with backrests of charred wood. studiopepe.info

This Cannabis Dispensary by Superette and Emily Robin Design has Visitors Seeing Green

Although Canada is miles ahead of the U.S. when it comes to cannabis dispensaries, its provincial regulations prohibit recrea­tional products from being visible outside a store. Furthermore, inside, they must be out of reach to customers prior to purchasing. It’s a challenge that Superette, which operates seven outposts across the country, with two more on the boards, leans into by hiding in plain view as an everyday minimart. “Familiar retail environments are at the core of our inspiration,” Superette chief brand officer Drummond Munro points out. The newest Toronto location, called Annex, a collaboration between Superette’s in-house creative team and Emily Robin Design, is a case in point.

The concept centers on a leafy-green palette and an aesthetic inspired by Italian delis of yesteryear. From the street-facing glass storefront, all that can be seen are shamrock-and-white checkered floor tiles, soda fountain–style stools, and a retro wall-mounted telephone—only regulars know the latter is the “Munchie Phone,” a direct line to Rose and Sons, a nearby actual deli. The two back walls are lined with what looks like cans of imported tomatoes and olive oil but are really custom props branded with Superette labels. They are just some of the whimsical points of discovery in the 810-square-foot space. “Design falls quickly off the priority list,” Emily Robin Sauer explains of dispensaries that often get overwhelmed by the regulations, resulting in utilitarian, pharmacylike settings. “But with this client, we’re given the freedom to bring joy and levity to someone’s day. And that’s design at its best, when people can feel your work.”

Farther into the store, out of passerby view, is where Superette’s host of THC-infused goodies can be found and purchased. Amid spearmint-painted walls is a custom menu board as well as a wall of glossy built-ins lined with pre-roll options and a counter display of additional products underneath vitrines in both glass and acrylic. Among the selections are such curios as vegetable-shape candles in deli-paper wrapping. Adds Superette creative director Alex Cirka: “We love to play with people’s perceptions.”

Healthcare Giants 2022

We gather here today to look back at the stabilizing effects 2021 had on the Interior Design Healthcare Giants. But in doing so we find we just can’t quit 2020. In our tracking of business trend data for the group of top 40 firms doing significant work in the healthcare arena since 2019, we have seen huge fluctuations driven by the pandemic. But within those ups and downs, we are just now beginning to see what normal business for the sector might look like. 

These Furnishing Debuts Nod to the Memphis Movement

Take a look at these playful finds that capture the color and whimsy of the design movement born in Milan.

1. RS4 Home x Hey football table by RS Barcelona.

2. Natascha Madeiski’s Flaming Stars Lady Madonna table lamp in glazed ceramic by Pulpo.

3. India Mahdavi’s Loop lounge chair in bent beechwood with padded roller backrest by Gebrüder Thonet Vienna.

4. The Campana Brothers’s Bomboca sofa in a rigid fiberglass-resin leather-covered shell with removable wool knit or stretch velvet cushions by Louis Vuitton Objets Nomades.

5. Marcel Wanders’s Adam sofa upholstered in Origami, a paper-fiber fabric with nylon-flocked chenille backing, by Natuzzi.

6. Wisse Trooster’s Hugo, Paco, and Luis pendant fixtures in merino felt, recycled aluminum and PET, and cast-acrylic discs by Stackabl, a collaboration between Stacklab and Maison Gerard.

7. Ionna Vautrin’s Pion tables with stained-ash tops and lacquered bases by Sancal.

8. Clàudia Valsells’s Tones Pieces Tufting rug in wool by Nanimarquina.

Fashion Designer Arthur Arbesser Collaborates With Abet Laminati on Compelling Graphic Prints

The globe-trotting fashion designer Arthur Arbesser—a graduate of London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins and a LVMH prize recipient—adds another string to his bow. It’s a first-time collaboration with Abet Laminati, which, since its inception in the 1950’s, has infused its surfacing with compelling graphics by a veritable who’s who of design. Now, straight from the runway, comes Arbesser’s Whimsy collection comprising six prints, including Stripes, Zigzag, Sprinkles, and Cabbage, all as brilliantly colored and full of joy as the line’s name suggests. Whimsy made its Fuorisalone debut at the Triennale Milano cladding pieces of furniture in a fusion of fashion and design. To which we add, bravissimo.

A Nearby Quarry Informs the Interiors of This Hotel in China by Cheng Chung Design

Industrial progress can leave deep scars across our landscapes, some of which take a long time to heal. At Tangshan Mountain, once a misty paradise of vegetation and wildlife close to the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, near Shanghai, mining for ores deep into the hillside destroyed the local ecology and resulted in a man-made chasm devoid of life. Abandoned for a century, the quarry has recently been revitalized in an unexpected way: through the creation of the Banyan Tree Nanjing Garden Expo, a luxury hotel with interiors by Cheng Chung Design.

Constructing the Banyan Tree required a major undertaking by the hospitality specialist, which made ecological restoration its priority. “The exploitation and destruction by people have stripped the vege­tation, changed the geography, eroded the soil, and damaged the landscape, turning Tangshan into devastated industrial ruins,” CCD founder Joe Cheng says of this area of the Jiangsu province known for its hot springs. “It became imperative to beautify and restore the site to enable the symbiosis of human and nature.”

Although contemporary in appearance, with pale stone cladding and glass walls, the five-story building is shaped as if it has been carved out of the mountainside—the work of China Architecture Design & Research Group. Stepping down from the access road, its light-toned tiers follow the hewn contours of the quarry, with 115 guest rooms stretching out from the main public areas like roots clinging to the sheer rock face. Topped with landscaped gardens, these accommodation bands begin a series of planted terraces that descend all the way down to the valley floor, where they connect to paths and bridges across newly restored parkland.

In such a unique setting, CCD endeavored to ensure that the over 375,000 square feet of hotel interiors feel appropriate for the location, so the firm drew multiple references from nature when considering the materials and spatial qualities. Rough textures, cavernous hollows, striated surfaces, and interplays of light and dark all add to an atmosphere that is simultaneously primordial and modern. “We deconstructed and reshaped various elements such as light, stone, forest, and rain on the abandoned limestone quarry,” Cheng says. “In this way, a new mysterious wonderland is created in the valley.”

One approach to harmonizing the interiors with the context involved physically bringing in organic elements directly from the surroundings. CCD transferred stones of all sizes from the quarry into the hotel, placing large blocks within pools of water as sculptures, while inserting smaller chunks into gaps in the walls, or piling them into steel cages to form gabions. “The rocks, eroded by winds and rain, show the traces of nature and enable the interiors to fully blend with it,” Cheng continues. “The rocks also echo the spirit of the site, carrying its memories.”

With rebirth as a guiding theme for the project, the concept of “breaking through” appears in reception, where counters are housed within an enclosure formed from a spheroid metal framework. This is shrouded with angled petals of walnut and glowing translucent shells to form what Cheng describes as a “deconstructed” cocoon. “It resembles metamorphosis and a pair of open arms,” he notes, “giving a homelike sense of belonging.”

Walking through the bar is intended to evoke the experience of wan­d­ering a mountain trail. Directly facing the quarry’s rocky escarpments, this space is curved and cut to mimic the depth and variations visible beyond the expanse of the structure’s double-height glazing. An imposing cliff of mosaiced carved-walnut panels undulates behind the sculptural bar, exaggerating the sense of awe felt when traversing a steep canyon. Luckily, this one requires no physical exertion to appreciate, instead serving cocktails and offering streamlined lounge seating from which guests can enjoy the sunset. “It’s full of poetry, presenting a coexisting relationship with the outdoor environment,” Cheng says.

The color palette in the guest rooms was also lifted directly from the views of the exposed rock faces outside. Dusky shades of black, brown, and gray create a moody yet tranquil ambiance, while hints of retro green represent “the vitality of new life, a fusion with nature,” Cheng says. Every room is equipped with a thermal bath, for unwinding and contemplating the connection with the scenery outside. “Visitors experience a lyrical atmosphere.” Adding to that is the Banyan Tree’s spa, a cloistered subterranean center that includes a skylit pool and a geothermal wellspring.

Ultimately, CCD strived to “use the power of design to bring economic and cultural value to this area again,” and it succeeded. The completion of the hotel has had a regenerative and healing effect on the quarry and the wider region, marking the return of both visitors and wildlife. Tangshan Mountain is once again recognized and celebrated as a place of beauty, where human impact on the landscape no longer feels jarring or imposed, but more harmonious and symbiotic. The physical scar remains, but the healing has begun.

gold mantis construction decoration: general contractor

häfele: metal plating (restaurant)

zu: dining chairs (restaurant), sofa (bar)

cherry: lounge chair (bar)

dajiang culture: custom reception desk (restaurant)

Gessi: sink fittings (bathroom)

aliseo: mirror

This Sustainable Home by Pascali Semerdjian Architects Reflects São Paulo’s Style

The first time Brazilian architect Sarkis Semerdjian met clients Renato Lulia Jacob and Emily Perry, the chemistry between them was obvious. Semerdjian, who is coprincipal with Domingos Pascali of the São Paulo-based firm Pascali Semerdjian Architects, had gone to London in late 2019 to visit friends. Jacob and Perry, originally from Brazil and the U.S., respectively, had lived in England for a decade. When the couple learned of Semerdjian’s visit, they invited him for a meal at their Edwardian townhouse in North London. “Being there with them was like sitting at a bar with old friends,” Semerdjian recalls. From then on—despite the challenges of the project they were about to embark on—the relationship “just flowed.”

Not long before that dinner, around the time Perry became pregnant with her and Jacob’s second daughter, the couple had decided to move to São Paulo, where Jacob had grown up. “There was a kind of gravity pulling us back,” he says. They wanted their daughters to grow up speaking Portuguese and have more time with their Brazilian grandparents. “The window for both,” Perry adds, “was getting smaller.”

They hired Pascali Semerdjian, which had worked with several of Jacob’s friends, and began looking for a suitable apartment in Vila Nova Conceicao, a leafy neighborhood adjacent to São Paulo’s Ibarapuera Park, one of relatively few green spaces in a city famously choked in concrete and asphalt. They were looking for a place they “wouldn’t feel guilty over destroying and rebuilding,” as Jacob puts it, eventually settling on a spacious flat in a nondescript 1990’s building, previously owned by an elderly couple who had moved out five years earlier. Jacob and Perry returned to London, intending to visit São Paulo frequently during the gut renovation of the apartment—a plan the pandemic quickly nixed. “All our process was via Zoom,” Pascali reports, noting that the couple was only able to return to the city shortly before the project’s completion.

Having spent practically their entire adult lives as renters—in Buenos Aires, Lisbon, and London, where they’d moved three times in 10 years—the new homeowners “had a checklist of mistakes we wouldn’t make and things we liked,” Perry says. This included wall space for a growing art collection; public areas that were generous but not palatial; avoidance of leather or synthetic fabrics; and certificates of sustainability for every piece of wood used in the renovation. The goal: “A home that was proud of São Paulo,” a city, she adds ruefully, “that people love to hate.”

Gutting the 4,000-square-foot apartment was relatively easy. Removing the worn-out gypsum ceiling revealed the building’s elegant concrete formwork, which is left exposed in some rooms. Save for an unmovable plumbing pipe—wrapped in rope, it’s now part of the daughters’ playroom—there were few structural constraints, allowing the couple to organize the layout as they saw fit: The public areas and guest suite occupy the southern half of the apartment, while sliding doors allow private circulation between the three family bedrooms and the kitchen, an intimate sanctum within the larger context.

In particular, the clients worked with the architects to develop social zones that are both deeply Brazilian and vividly cosmopolitan. In the entry hall, a hemicycle of light blazes through a panel of jade-color Pakistani onyx, “like a sunset at the end of the corridor,” Semerdjian suggests. Board-formed concrete panels line the walls, from which a small, brass key bowl projects like a font of holy water: a secular blessing for the domestic space. The panels continue throughout the public areas, curving around the building’s idiosyncratic chamfered corners to create what Pascali describes as “a kind of tunnel” connecting the entry to the dining and living rooms. In the latter, the panels frame a pair of built-in sofas sitting in a large niche that formerly accommodated a fireplace—the type of fanciful gesture toward old-world glamour that Jacob and Perry were looking to avoid.

The residence comes to life in the refinement of its details, a punctilious approach to junctures and joints, to the points where materials meet. In one corner of the kitchen, shelves in washed freijo wood and pale gray quartz meet in a complex concatenation of boxes and panels, as precise as frames crafted for museums. Nearby, a 9-foot-long table, also fashioned from freijo, cantilevers weightlessly from the side of a monolithic concrete island—a cool, calm defiance of physics that recalls São Paulo’s most iconic buildings, which take heavy concrete masses and levitate them above the earth.

Another aspect of the sprawling inland metropolis—its constantly evolving relationship with a tropical environment that it has never fully suppressed—is reenacted on the apartment’s many planted terraces, which encircle it with an exuberant jungle worthy of neighboring Ibarapuera Park. “The garden is chaotic, like a forest,” Semerdjian acknowledges. “Our goal was to really surround the space. The foliage, the concrete—there’s a lot of identity in those elements.” The residence’s tranquility does not so much erase the stimulating excess of the urban environment outside as highlight its intoxicating beauty, the irresistible pull that brought Jacob and Perry and their young daughters here in the first place.

pascali semerdjian architects: ana luisa cunha

rodrigo oliveira paisagismo: landscape consultant

companhia de iluminação; dimlux: lighting consultants

avelart móveis: woodwork

dix arte metal: metalwork

tresuno: concrete work

steel engenharia e construções: general contractor

Moooi: pendant fixtures (dining room)

etel: table (dining room), chaise longue (living room), desk chair (main bedroom)

through studio schalling: chairs (dining room, living room), floor lamp (main bedroom)

villa remate: custom sofas (living room)

marset: sconce (entry)

pedras bellas artes: custom cocktail table, basalt flooring (living room)

espasso: bench

Sé: black side tables

vitra: lamp

phenicia concept: rug

lumini: sconces (playroom, child bedroom)

deca: fittings (main bathroom)

artek: stools (kitchen)

Nuura: pendant fixtures

docol: sink fittings

savoir beds: bed (main bedroom)

Bert Frank: table lamp

arte final placas: custom storage (child bedroom)

arteal artefatos de alumínio: windows

oscar ono: wood flooring

suvinil: paint