Berlin’s Music and Lifestyle Hotel

The nhow Berlin is a music and lifestyle hotel by architect Sergei Tchoban on the banks of the river Spree. With the eccentric Karim Rashid behind the interior design, it’s a place where colour and sound come together and a breeding ground for creative energy, or at least that’s the concept behind it. I heard little buzz and saw little action when I visited.

Fitting for a city at the cutting edge of the global music scene, Europe’s first music hotel is intended to be a “revolutionary new model of living and lodging.” Certainly Rashid’s use of psychedelic colour does a lot to set it apart from the others within the NH chain. The lobby itself has a lot of furniture types going on – very slick and trendy; seems to me they’ll be dated before long. But I suppose that’s part of the big idea. With changing artwork and multi-media installations, the interior is in a permanent state of flux, and in stark contrast to the austere, industrial exterior of the building. Although dynamic and rounded lines pervade the space and the furnishings, I didn’t find much alluding to music in the architecture itself, at least on the main floor, and while the building has a state-of-the-art sound system, the acoustics weren’t exceptional there. The branding and marketing materials, however, are great – for one, brochures are designed to look like vinyls. The hotel offers ‘guitar’ room service and has an integrated high-end recording studio overlooking the city. Perhaps next time I’ll get to experience the hotel rooms and a concert or two on the terraces… (Note: Rashid seems to be in his element here. I saw the rockstar DJing at a party in SoHo.)

The nhow is located within the creative districts of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, near the historic Oberbaumbrücke (bridge) and the 30m tall, symbolic ‘Molecule Man’ aluminium sculpture on the river that had marked the division between East and West Berlin.

The nhow Berlin is located at Stralauer Allee 3. 10245 Berlin, Germany.

Countdown to Milan Design Week : Lea Ceramiche in the spotlight

(Cross-posted from Azure, a Toronto-based magazine of architecture and design)

With two stunning installations – a courtyard sculpture by Zaha Hadid, and a showroom revamp by Diego Grandi – Lea Ceramiche shows off its versatile tiles.

Zaha Hadid’s Twirl at the University of Milan

This dynamic installation, which transforms the school’s 18th-century courtyard, also demonstrates the architect’s flexible and unconventional use of Lea’s porcelain stoneware. It comprises a vortex of one-metre wide ultra slim (we’re talking three-millimetre thick) Slimtech slabs staggered in ranging heights, up to a maximum of two metres. The lines that create the sinuous form are plotted from the columns of the surrounding buildings; meeting at the centre, the slabs cover nearly the entire 800-metre-square outdoor area. Panels in seven different colours, from milk white to black coffee, bring the 3-D structure to life with constantly shifting shape and colour as they rise and fall.

The swirling mass is equally effective at nighttime, when fluorescent light tubes by Artemide uplight the building in punctuated streaks, creating a link between the formal layout of the setting and the flowing lines of the project.

The installation is part of the Interni Mutant Architecture & Design event, featuring nine independent installations throughout the University of Milan’s campus, during Milan Design Week, April 11-17.

Diego Grandi revamps the showroom

At the Lea Ceramiche showroom, you can see behind-the-scenes video and photographs of Twirl under construction. The showroom’s interior has been re-conceived by Diego Grandi (a frequent and always imaginative collaborator of the brand), who revamps the Slimtech line in his own curious way. A play on domesticity, Grandi’s concept, “Gita al Faro”, or “To the lighthouse”, ironically interprets the bathroom, combining ceramics and furnishings with a heavy-handed maritime theme.

Grandi introduces the Gouache.10 version of Slimtech, lending a new colour range and a soft surface to the razor-thin slabs. Tiles of Deep Sea line the wall while Crystal Water cover the floor, their joints defining a mosaic of triangular elements. Small round non-vitreous ceramic wall tiles from the Paillettes collection are framed in panels on the wall.

The Bowl tub and urinals from Ceramica Globo reinforce the spirit of water with geometric forms covered with Gouache.10 tiles in Cool Rain, like rocks submerged in the sea. Nautical furnishings like Galileo’s telescope by Odoardo Fioravanti for Palomar add to the scenery.

The installation is on view on the ground floor at the Lea Ceramiche Showroom, Via Durini 3, until the first week of April. Lea Ceramiche will be at both Salone for Milan Design Week from April 12-17 and the Coverings expo in Las Vegas from April 21-24.

Artek gets graphic

(Below is a post I wrote for Azure magazine’s blog.)

The renowned manufacturer lends its iconic furniture to German artist Tobias Rehberger, who has used it to captivating effect in the design of a Finnish café.

Rehberger’s passion for experimentation is well suited to the city in which his latest project is causing a big stir. Turku has been designated this year’s European Capital of Culture. The Logomo café, located in its core, is a buzzing cultural hub that opened in mid-January to coincide with the festivities.

For its yearlong run, Rehberger’s interior transforms the café into a comprehensive art installation where paint ignores traditional boundaries. While furnishing the space with Artek seating, such as the Stool 60 and Sedia 1 chair, the artist has created his own interpretation on how to utilize the pieces, painting the typically unfinished wood products to blend into the overall scheme. Artek custom designed the one hue – a vivid orange – that weaves through the black and white space as a stripe and as the finish on a pendant light here and there. But the most striking thing about the Turku café is the ensemble effect: an all-encompassing, visually disorienting environment created by a painting method based on the ‘razzle dazzle’ decorative style used to disguise battleships during the First and Second World Wars.

The artist, who began his career in the early nineties, has been exploring the conflict between functionalism and aesthetics for a while now. His conceptual work, which combines painting, sculpture, architecture and design, was originally put to use for Artek in a similar installation in 2009. His camouflage intervention in the cafeteria at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni was even awarded a Golden Lion for Best Artist at the Venice Biennale.

“I like the idea of creating a visual art project which is about ‘not seeing something.’ The sculpture I created for Turku is based on the same concept as the one in Venice,” says Rehberger. “It applies a completely different pattern to the space, but despite its very different look, it should have the same dazzling effect.”

Tobias Rehberger’s art installation/café is on view daily from 11am to 7pm through December 18, 2011.