Moving down a gear (Financial Times How to Spend it)

There is little point in attempting to reinvent the wheel. The 130 year old ‘safety bicycle’ is a simple, perfect machine currently enjoying a long overdue renaissance. It’s enticing a new kind of rider onto the road and reinventing a culture that for years was dominated by fluorescent Lycra-clad 18-gear vulgarity. The most popular bikes for the contemporary urban rider are simple, largely single speed models that have infiltrated design stores and fashion shoots, and chime with a sunny, sepia-toned Continental dolce vita. These updated classic frames are as practical as they are beautiful. No fuss, minimal or no gears; get on and ride off.  Forget the aggressive trappings of the Tour de France; think instead of the freewheeling lovers in Truffaut’s Jules et Jim and the romance of cruising in the open air. As James Thomas, product designer and editor of the influential website bicycledesign.net says, ‘People want objects that do one thing very well and don’t have a lot of extra features that just add clutter to their lives.’

Many of the most coveted bikes on the market have an impressive design pedigree. The Pedersen Model T (£1855) – based on Danish designer Mikael Pederson’s 1893 design – has the visual presence of an updated museum piece. Originally built in Gloucestershire at the turn of the 19^th century, to very high specifications, manufacture is now in Denmark, though no less craft-intensive. Its look is thrillingly modernist, a whisper-thin crossbar angling upwards from the saddle at the top of a frame that resembles an artful bow and arrow. It’s also exceedingly comfortable, forcing you to sit pronouncedly upright.

‘Nostalgic bikes are actually a perfect fit for modern life,’ explains Tom Morris of the Islington cycle boutique Bobbin, the self-proclaimed ‘most beautiful bike shop in Britain’. ‘The chains are often covered so you don’t need trouser clips. You have mudguards, lights and broad handlebars for luggage. You can choose a step-through frame if you wear a skirt. It’s all pared down and functional.’ As well as selling their own brand of bikes – constructed by Pointer in Holland – Bobbin stocks the very popular entry-level Pashley, the Poppy (£435).  ‘It has straight handle bars so you sit a little more forward than usual and feel nippy through traffic,’ says Sian Emmison, Tom’s business partner and wife. ‘Also, it comes in blush pink and has cream tyres which is rather delicious.’

British heritage brand Pashley is one of the most renowned manufacturers of classic town bikes. ‘We’ve found that, all of a sudden, we’ve been “doing retro” for 84 years,’ says Pashley MD Adrian Mills. ‘The bikes seem to click with people’s imaginations. A daily commute through the city feels more like a Sunday ride down a leafy village lane.’

Pashley bikes are amongst the most popular at Adeline Adeline, a boutique-styled store that opened in New York’s Tribeca in May, aimed primarily at Manhattan businesswomen. It’s the first New York space to stock classic European frames. Owner Julie Hirschfield rides a Pashley herself, which she likes for its ‘stability and comfort’, but appreciates that some of the lighter-framed Abici bikes she stocks – the GranTurismo Donna and GranTurismo Uomo (both $950) – might be more suitable for New Yorkers with walk up apartments. ‘I ask people how they are going to use their bikes and where they live before making recommendations,’ she says. Adeline Adeline also stocks Biomega’s Amsterdam bike ($2000), a piston rather than chain-driven model with no exposed greased elements. Alongside this, there are carbon belt-driven bikes entering the market; unlike chains, the belts do not need to be changed every 30-50km. These new bikes are for people who don’t do maintenance.

In the window of Push, a new cycle store on London’s Newington Green, there is a latte-coloured Bianchi Pista Via Brera (£699) with cork grips and a light praline-toned suede saddle. It’s simple, slightly retro and so beautiful that it stops passing foot traffic. ‘Those bikes are like gold dust now,’ says Push’s proprietor Ciaran Carleton. ‘We’ve had so many people see it and come in who’ve never cycled before.’ Push is a paradigm of the new culture in bike retail. ‘I initially thought about having a sign above the door saying “no Lycra”,’ says Ciaran. ‘I’ve never liked bike shops. They’re stuck in the past. I used to work for Paul Smith and I wanted to open somewhere that would offer the same quality of service that you’d get if you go to Floral Street to buy a jacket. After all the expense is the same, if not more.’

Adeline Adeline is based on the same principal. The casual design-literate cyclist doesn’t necessarily know anything about mechanics and doesn’t want to. ‘I wanted a retail experience that made sense to me as a woman rather than going into a gritty and cluttered garage atmosphere,’ says Julie Hirschfield. Adeline Adeline have adopted a system first pioneered by Bobbin in London – the appointment-only, personalised consultation and test drive. As Sian at Bobbin says ‘It doesn’t have to be about talking techy. Sometimes it can just be about getting the right red bike to match your red jacket.’ Customers try out what looks good, and buy according to what feels right.

One of the first boutique-style cycle stores to appear in the UK was Velorution, which opened in London five years ago. ‘I’ve seen changes comparable to the development of the restaurant scene in the 80s,’ says owner Andrea Casalotti. ‘We’ve seen a huge boom in the number of riders, but also more interest in different designs. We’ve seen a lot more women come in. When we opened, the riders in London were probably 80% male, now we have more women customers than men.’ The Brompton, the award-winning British-designed fold-up bike (from £600) is a key functional and commercial success story at Velorution. It’s a bike that Castalotti believes ‘will end up in every home at some point’.

Many of those who will be taking advantage of the planned ‘cycling superhighways’ within central London, and who have been making use of the recently opened 170 extra miles of cycle lanes in Manhattan are part of the Bobbin, Adeline Adeline, Push and Velorution zeitgeist. They are more likely to own Dutch, upright, town bikes, not garish mountain ones. Some of them may be nostalgia enthusiasts who take part in the annual Tweed Run in London, meandering 12 miles through the capital in dapper attire, but more of them will be patrons of the recently opened Old Street café Look Mum, no Hands! where they can have a puncture fixed while working on their laptops with an espresso and a slice of millionaire shortbread. It’s a functional and stylish lifestyle enterprise on one of the capital’s main cycling arteries.

Patricia Barrameda is a Financial Services Manager at KPMG LLP and rides a limited edition Pashley Phantom Roadster, numbered 75 of 80; Bobbin continue to stock several versions of the original (£495-£615). She’s typical of the new urban cyclist. ‘I cycle because I gain a different perspective on the city than when travelling on foot or by tube,’ she says. ‘I also like the new London bike culture because it’s thriving and accepting of everyone and a bicycle can say a lot about a person, it becomes an expression of the individual.’

Barrameda was recently photographed with her Pashley by Marcus Ross, editor of the online style magazine Jocks and Nerds. He’s been working on a documentary project called LondonBikeStyle, shooting portraits of Londoners with their bikes. It’s a personal passion for Ross. He believes that cycling is the most sensible as well as handsome form of modern conveyance. ‘For all the engineering, technology and money bestowed on cars, it’s difficult to see how they function better than a bicycle. They’re certainly not quicker in London. I’ve often ridden several miles through the city and kept pace with or whizzed past a Porsche.’ One of Ross’s photo subjects is Sir Paul Smith, who has collaborated on two bike frames with Mercian and a sold-out limited edition striped saddle with Kashimax of Tokyo. Smith is a cycle devotee. ‘My love of cycling started when I was 11,’ he says. ‘And I think bikes are just getting more and more special and beautiful.’

The advances in design-led bike culture can be attributed partly to the style press. Liberated from its garish sporting shackles, cycling is more fashionable than it’s been in over 100 years, something that has prompted Giorgio Armani and Chanel to collaborate on long sold-out limited edition frames. Filmmaker and journalist Mikael Colville-Andersen set up the website Copenhagen Cycle Chic in early 2007, documenting riders going about their business in one of the most sophisticated cycle cultures in the world. Now there are similar websites documenting riders in cities from Japan to Canada. ‘It started when I took a picture of an elegantly poised Copenhagener at a red light,’ says Colville-Andersen. ‘I didn’t notice the bike. I just saw the morning light, the poise and the street. The photo proved to get a lot of attention on Flickr; so many people thought it was odd that the subject was wearing a skirt. I thought it was ridiculous because that’s how you ride, in your normal clothes.’

People are now, as Sian at Bobbin says, ‘buying bikes the same way they buy shoes, on impulse.’ And the accessories are just as desirable, from polka dot pannier bags to helmets disguised as bowler hats and stylish jackets cut from fabric that blends traditional tweed with high visibility reflective material. More than anything, the cycle revolution is happening because the bikes are beautiful and they fit with their owners’ lifestyles. People who never saw themselves as cyclists are being seduced by the healthy, eco-conscious ‘two wheels better’ ethos. As Mikael Colville-Andersen says: ‘Go and open your closet. It’s already filled with cycling clothes.’

Adeline Adeline, 147 Reade Street, New York NY 10003 (001 212 227 1150; www.adelineadeline.com)

Bobbin, 397 St John Street, London EC1V 4LD (020 7837 3370; www.bobbinbicycles.co.uk)

Look Mum No Hands, 49 Old Street, London EC1 9HX (020 7253 1025; www.lookmumnohands.com)

Pedersen Manufaktur, Kalle Kalkhoff, Donnerschweer Straße 45, 26123 Oldenburg (00 49 441 88 50 389; http://www.pedersen.info)

Push, 35c Newington Green, London N16 9PR (020 7249 1351; http://www.pushcycles.com)

Velorution, 18 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 8BD (020 7637 4004; www.velorution.biz)

LA interiors: Sam Nazarian (Sunday Times Style)

Sam Nazarian is the new king of Hollywood nightlife. You might know him from cameo appearances on The Hills and Entourage, but LA’s A-list know him best as the Iranian-born jetsetter who owns and operates their favourite velvet-roped stomping grounds. From various branches of Katsuaya – the futurist-chic Japanese restaurants that have out-Nobu’d Nobu – to the SLS hotel, which opened last year in Beverly Hills, he’s the man making the scene in LA right now.

‘We’ve come a long way in a short time,’ says Nazarian. ‘Three years ago it was Paris Hilton turning up at Hyde (his 100-capacity, ultra exclusive hole in the wall lounge bar next to the Chateau Marmont), and this week we had the Beckhams having dinner with Kate Beckinsale at XIV (his lavish, highly acclaimed restaurant with chef Michael Mina). He counts many of his guests as close personal friends, including his neighbours in the Hollywood Hills: ‘Leo (nardo) and Toby (Maguire) live next door to me, we grew up together.’

Nazarian might be the man about town, and the brains of the club, hotel and restaurant operation, but it’s Philipe Starck who has given his company its look. ‘We’re creating the next generation of smart luxury with Starck,’ says Nazarian. ‘When he was working with Schrager some of those projects were done very cheaply, and I think he’s ready for the next chapter… a lot of people questioned my choice and said that Starck is finished, but I felt that he’s just beginning.’

Nazarian’s most exclusive venue is, undoubtedly, his home, which he built from scratch and which he moved to in 2007 after selling his previous mansion (which he bought from Jennifer Lopez) to Gwen Stefani. For his recent 34^th birthday party (Nazarian is nothing if not a business prodigy) he threw a party for 175 guests on his pool deck overlooking the city. ‘This house has the best spot on the best ridge in the Hills,’ he says, which would, ipso facto, make it the best house in the city. But then, it’s only fitting that the king of Hollywood has the most impressive castle in La La Land.

INTERIORS

The furnishings in the guest bedroom are 1950s in style. ‘We’re a culture based on trends and cycles,’ says Sam. ‘The green upholstery is something you might see in my grandmother’s house, but it’s warm and comfortable.’ The photograph is by Slim Aarons. ‘His work gives me a peek into the 50s, yet some of the beach scenes could have been shot yesterday.’ A red leather chair is vintage Scandic from JF Chen in LA (www.jfchen.com); try www.danish-homestore.com in Nottingham for similar.

Sam Nazarian poses next to an artwork by Milton Glaser, the designer who created the ‘I love NYC’ graphic: ‘It was for my 30^th birthday,’ says Sam. ‘He actually hates LA – the pink is supposed to be a Playboy Bunny colour and the grey is smog.’

Sam Nazarian describes his home style as ‘ a mixture of warm contemporary with mid century modern.’ The white oval dining table, by Eero Saarinen, is available from the Conran Shop (£4,395 for the same size as pictured; www.conranshop.co.uk). The chairs are a 1930 Brno design by Mies van der Rohe, made by Knoll. Beach stock reproductions in black or cream for £350 (www.beach.uk.com).

Nazarian has a sizeable collection of art – the triptych is by Kirtland Ash and the mirror by the entrance is a Jeff Koons.

Much of Nazarian’s furniture is custom made, including the armchair in the lounge. For similar styles try www.leatherdiningchair.co.uk. The black chandelier is a Zenith 24L by Philippe Starck for Baccarat and sells for over £25,000 from Baccarat in Paris. ‘I also have one of Starck’s gun lamps and a crystal floor lamp identical to one at the Delano hotel in Miami.’ Try www.chandeliersandmirrors.co.uk for a range of black crystal chandeliers, from £124.99.

Many of the walls in Nazarian’s lounge are covered floor to ceiling in framed family photographs: ‘Parts of my life that I never want to forget,’ he says.

The lounge opens up to a vast deck with an incredible view over West Hollywood and the rest of the city.  Much of Nazarian’s furniture is custom made. For similar low L-shaped sofas try the Como and Celano modular ranges at Bo Concept (www.boconcept.co.uk).

The house offers astounding privacy: ‘When I stand in the tub and shower I get to enjoy the view across the city but no one can see me because the house isn’t overlooked,’ says Sam. For a similar bath, try the Cleo Freestanding (£1771 from http://www.thelivinghouse.com).

When Nazarian has friends over for dinner, they invariably dine at the long dining table on the pool deck. He can also host up to 200 people for private parties. ‘This is actually a serene house for me, not a party house,’ he says. ‘There are stairs to the decking from the front of the house so that people don’t have to go through the house.’

Ballard of the motorway (Quintessentially)

There’s an elephant in the room, hiding behind a sacred cow: JG Ballard wasn’t a particularly great writer. There were landmark novels but then there were airport thrillers let down by clunky prose and clumsy deus ex machina endings. What made him such a genius was a bold, glacial, prophetic style that had little to do with turns of phrase. Ballard was the urban soothsayer, armed with ideas that continue to manifest themselves in, and shape, the worlds of art and design. He is gone, but all around us.

Like ‘Kafkaesque’, ‘Warholian’ and ‘Jarmanesque’, ‘Ballardian’ has quickly passed into the lexicon of popular culture, describing a particularly modern dystopia of industrial landscapes and the effects on their inhabitants of technological, social or environmental depredations. Like Warhol, Ballard had a heightened awareness of the effects on British post-war society of developing technologies and media. He was also very conscious of Brand Ballard.  Like Jarman, he mapped out his physical territory with precision. Instead of Dungeness and burning Union Flags, he had Shepperton and car wrecks.  His imagery was potent, pernicious and miraculously ahead of the curve. He was punk before punk existed. Think of the Seditionaries period at McLaren and Westwood’s World’s End, with its intimidating frosted glass frontage, bombed out ceiling and civil unrest propoganda. ‘Why I want to fuck Ronald Reagan’ and ‘Plans for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy’ are chapter titles from The Atrocity Exhibition from 1970, but could just as easily have been World’s End T-shirt slogans six years later.

When Kingdom Come was published in 2006, it was easy to raise an eyebrow at the central conceit: society enslaved by consumerism and the shopping mall as fascist cathedral. It felt over-familiar, something revisited ad nauseum ever since George Romero set his slow-walking zombies loose in Dawn of the Dead in 1978. Two years later, in 2008, Westfield opened in London to a curiously hysterical press and public, in defiance of the implosion of global finance. The culture vacuum of Westfield is classic Ballard, from the LVMH and Gucci luxury stores at the Village, never troubled by more than a couple of bemused visitors a day, to its identikit All Saints and its multiplex cinema. Shoppers sleepwalk towards it, reassured by its shiny surfaces, distracted from shootings in the local Nandos. Across the Atlantic, the insular 1111 Lincoln Road development in Miami, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is gloriously Ballardian – effectively one big multi storey car park that also happens to be an apartment and retail complex. 1111 Lincoln Road is a place for cars rather than people.

Architecture is key to Ballardian philosophy, and he was one of the most high-profile members – along with Ian Sinclair and Will Self – of a loose collective of British literary psychogeographers. His perspective on urban planning and the motorways of the hinterland was contrary and radical. ‘He touched the imaginations of architects as diverse as Nigel Coates and Rem Koolhaas,’ says the Design Museum’s Deyan Sudjic. ‘They shared his interest in dystopia.’ Dystopia for Ballard wasn’t the traditional ghetto, defined by socioeconomic conditioning, it was the Costa del Gated Community and the ‘new town’ and how it altered the state of mind. He would have been enthralled by the Olympic developments, destined to become immense white elephants. Likewise the sleek overground trains which now run through a reinvented Dalston full of new build apartments with floor to ceiling glass and balconies, sterile and halfway to ethnic cleansing – Ballardian, all of it. It is the architecture of wealth, disenfranchising to the last brick.

The flipside of all of this can be found in the brutalism of Trellick Tower in W11 – once reviled, but now adored without much sense of irony by lovers of modernist design, its walkways reduced to a Margo Selby textile print used on luggage, ties and furniture. Meanwhile, Paramount, on the top floor of Richard Seifert’s rehabilitated 1960s Centre Point, has become one of the most desirable destination dining rooms – and sumptuous Ballardian experiences – in London.

Ballard was in love with roads and runways – transient zones. He believed the Westway should have extended right through NW1 and Hampstead. He embraced an unsettling future, and hungered for change. His favourite building in London was the Heathrow Hilton, designed by Michael Manser, which, he said, ‘resembles a cross between a brain surgery hospital and a space station. Sitting in its atrium one becomes, briefly, a more advanced kind of human being. Within this remarkable building one feels no emotions and could never fall in love, or need to.’ He wanted all of London to look like this, as if ‘everybody was getting ready to leave for Mars’.

Ballard’s attitude towards architectural design was wilfully anarchic and nihilistic: windows broken, swimming pools drained. We are so used to the cosy and preordained nature of interiors and architecture that dereliction and the ability to explore a space unintended for lingering has a dangerous frisson to it. It’s popular subject matter for contemporary art photographers. Dan Holdsworth – whose work will be appearing in this year’s Out of Focus: Photography Now show at the Saatchi Gallery in London –  creates gloriously light-saturated imagery of abandoned motorways, shot at slow speeds so that they take on a hyperreal quality. The light-sensitive materials in the camera work in a way that the eye cannot, creating a visual opera of yellow-striped concrete and starbursting streetlights. Troy Paiva, who documents crumbling, vacant American landscapes, shoots in a similar style, and has been profiled by the Ballardian.com website as a particularly Ballardian photographer. ‘There is that sense of desolation and isolation,’ Paiva says, ‘the fetishism of decay.’

The artist Roger Hiorns created what must surely be the most Ballardian piece of art in recent years. His Seizure installation, filling an abandoned council flat in Elephant & Castle with dazzling blue, alien-like crystals, was the very essence of The Crystal World (1966). There were layers and layers of Ballardian ideas present in a space that was as unsettling as it was beautiful. Hiorns has spoken of ‘the desire to capture the building, to impregnate it – introducing strangeness into a functional utilitarian space’, as well as a ‘pscyho-sexual element’ in the installation. ‘… introducing a liquid in the building so that the host environment is seeded, and then the crystal grows out… an aggressive process.’ The project strikes an amplified chord with the cinema of perennially Ballardian director David Cronenberg, the perfect choice of filmmaker for the 1996 big screen adaptation of Crash. His mid-70s film Rabid dealt with residents of a suburban high rise who turn into sex-crazed fiends when exposed to a fast-spreading virus, with obvious parallels to Ballard’s High Rise (1975). Cronenberg’s 1983 Videodrome created a world where pornography carries a deadly virus which causes its users to hallucinate and mutate. The latter film, along with much of Ballard’s more sexually aggressive work, predicts today’s world in which the internet has sexualised the media, and a whole generation, to a degree that would have been seen as science fiction in the 1970s: a world of Grindr casual-encounter iPhone applications and DIY suburban-pornstars getting their 15 minutes of fame on Xtube.com.

The Ballardian style was celebrated in the Crash show at the Kings Cross Gagosian gallery earlier this year, an exhibition which captured his aesthetic perfectly. Adam McEwen’s Honda Teen Facial – the undercarriage of a 747 –echoed Ballard’s self-staged Crash exhibition of car wrecks at the New Art Laboratory in 1970, while Chris Burden’s L.A.P.D. Uniform, an 88 inch high policeman’s boilersuit, loomed with menace and implicit violence. Plans are now afoot for a more underground – and literally subterranean – show in London, planned by Ballard’s partner Clare Walsh and artist Gee Vaucher, while Ballard continues to be namechecked by cultural commentators and artists dealing with subjects as diverse as postmodern architecture and reality TV.

Ballard’s vast body of work is a national treasure (his archive, which takes up 12 metres of shelf space, made its way into the British Library in June), but the Ballardian style was most succinctly nailed down by his poem What I Believe. ‘I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile graveyards, in the mystery of multi-storey car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels.’ From whorish media celebrity and legal highs to 9/11 TV footage, BP oil slicks, Cumbrian massacres and imploding, brutalist council estates, Warm Leatherette to Madonna’s Drowned World, road rage and beyond, his influence will continue to be seen and heard for decades to come.

Michael Nyman’s Mexico City (Financial Times How to Spend it)

“From the window of my house in the Roma district I can hear the continual sound of an ice cream van with a particular kind of repetitious chime. I’ve tried to transcribe it several times in my mind to work it into a piece of music but it hasn’t happened quite yet. At my other home, in Islington, the street is so quiet that a car horn would be dramatic, but in Mexico City it’s all noise, noise, noise – as London would have been in the 16^th and 17^th century. These are the cries of the city.

La Colonia Roma is full of local industry, artisanry and loud, drinking people. It’s a reality of existence that goes back decades and generations, and I really like that. The pavements look like they haven’t been repaired since the earthquake in 1985, just after I first came to Mexico City at the invitation of my artist friend Felipe Ehrenberg. The city blew my mind. I remember my first meal here with Felipe was at a Pre-Colombian restaurant where I ate fried grasshopper.

I have three terraces in the house looking out towards the downtown area. I hear the children playing in the primary school opposite my house, people selling corn on market stalls, and people singing out to the owners of empty gas bottles to come and have them refilled. I like to make secretive films of the old men and women walking around the streets with my little Leica, visually and conceptually self-contained pieces that I score myself while editing. When I’m making these films, music is the last thing I think of, but I’m the best filmmaker I’ve ever worked with – sometimes I sit at my piano for weeks trying to get the music right with a director and sometimes the negotiations break down and they find another composer.  When I work with myself here, I always make the right decision.

After my first visit to Mexico City I revisited every two or three years to play concerts and then three years ago came to play a solo date in Puebla and stayed on with Marc Silver and Max Pugh, who I work with on my personal film projects, to edit something. We stayed in the Hotel Condesa DF for a week having a really good time, and the experience introduced me to the experience of Mexico City as a resident rather than as a tourist.  The hotel is very elegant – it’s rather ‘boutiquey’, the rooms are nicely turned out and it and has a fantastic roof terrace. You can sit and have breakfast and bump into interesting people, like Rhys Ifans with Sienna Miller, or an American digital philosopher. I love the Condesa district, which is familiar but unfamiliar at the same time. There are elements of Hoxton in the way it’s been remodelled but it’s still Mexican rather than something that feels transplanted. It’s very vibrant, with dozens of restaurants and lots of nightlife. It has a strange combination of elegance, freedom and control.

The same people who own Condesa DF own the similarly contemporary Habita, which was the venue for a great party I went to and which, like the Condesa, has a fantastic roof terrace with a pool. The hotel restaurants in Mexico City are surprisingly good, the Mexicans tend to really enjoy them; I particularly like the Hip Kitchen and Bar at the Hotel Hippodrome.

In 2008 I came here to edit another film with Max and Marc and we set up in a large suite at the Red Tree House, which is a sort of post-hippie kind of hotel that reminds of being in Istanbul in 1966. I stayed on to look for a house, initially in Condesa and then in La Roma, where I found the perfect 1930s art deco place.

My whole life here is the reverse of what it is in London, where I protect my work and don’t socialise in the day. Here, I live outside and have lunch with friends and speak to people. There’s a brilliant old cantina quite near me that I like to go to called Covadonga. It used to be a typical hangout of old dominoes players but seems to have been taken over, not unacceptably, by a younger arty crowd.

There are a lot of extravagant individuals in Mexico City. There’s a fantastic French guy called Emamanuel Picault who has a design store called Chic by Accident. His furniture is brilliant but staggeringly expensive, but it doesn’t stop me buying it. I tell him how expensive I think it is and he just shrugs in that French way and says ‘yes… it is.’ He’s something of a design guru and created the interior for the very chi-chi French tea shop, Maison Francaise of Thé Caravanserai, which has excellent cakes.

I often take breakfast at a beautiful place called Casa Lamm. It’s very elegant and has an excellent art bookshop inside, Libreria Pegaso. It’s a cultural centre, in a classic 19^th century building, with a glassed-in restaurant very stylishly added on. There’s also Atrio, a short walk away, which is a café with a lot of tables on the street and three-piece suites inside with books on shelves, all for sale. They also have regular live jazz there.

My favourite fish restaurant in La Roma is Contramar, which is only open until 6.30pm, and which might well be the best quality restaurant in the whole city. I also love Pesces, partly because it’s so close to my house. Outside the restaurant there’s a sign that reads ‘the only restaurant in Mexico City not owned by Carlos Slim.’ Pesces is a tiny space with tables outside and live music. It’s run by a wonderful middle-aged woman called Teresa who sings every Friday night. After just a few days of living here I felt like a family friend. There are some artists who frequent the restaurant that I’m acquainted with, and the film director Carlos Reygadas, who made the best film I have seen in the last 20 years, Silent Light, is a regular.

The best thing I have discovered in La Roma is Mercado Medelin, the most immense fruit and veg market. It’s utterly fantastic and has eight or so restaurants inside. It’s great to wander around in and find ten different varieties of mango.

There’s a café and bookshop close by called El Péndulo which has a fantastic collection of Spanish language books that make me realise how relatively uncultivated Britain is in terms of the number of foreign language books that are translated into English. I have a hankering to learn Spanish, which I still don’t know, in order to read books translated from German and Croatian that aren’t available in English. A strange reason to learn, I suppose, as the most usual reason would be to be able to explain to the cleaner what needs doing. They have a bookcase with English language title books and I think if I lived there permanently, its turnover would be enough to satisfy me. The second time I went in I was amazed that they had three copies of my book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, sitting next to Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. I had my photograph taken in front of them. I doubt it was ever restocked.

I sometimes force myself to be a tourist for an afternoon, and leave La Roma. There are fantastic museums and churches that I still haven’t been to. Obviously every time you come to Mexico City you should visit the Frida Kahlo museum and Trotsky’s House – where he was assassinated by a Russian agent with an ice pick in 1940 – and I think the best way to understand the Mexican people is to go to Alameda park, where everyone hangs out.

I have a great desire to play in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, facing Alameda Central. It’s a most beautiful art deco theatre and it also has a great art bookshop inside. On the other hand, you could lose yourself in the Museo Nacional de Antropologia (the National Museum of Anthropology) for days. Every region in Mexico has its own room, and it makes you realise that the British Museum’s Montezuma exhibition was very Eurocentric.

I prefer to stay within La Roma – I feel totally self sufficient there. I could live in Polanco, with the Armani and Gucci shops, but I’d forget I was living in Mexico City – it could be Milan. Santa Fe is interesting for it its high-rise tower blocks if you have an interest in contemporary architecture, but I’d never live there. I like to photograph and shoot films in the streets where I am.

One of the best things about the city is that it invites you into a social scene much more quickly, directly and effortlessly than somewhere like London, where everyone welcomes you and pushes you away at the same time. I have met the most wonderful people here, and had the most extraordinary experiences. I went to a party held by an art book publisher and the next day my hosts invited me to Plaza Mexico, the largest bullring in the world, to see a bullfight. They are season ticket holders. I hate bull fighting but I went along and took my Leica and shot an anti-bullfighting film by removing the bull from every shot. I made a study of the men in the red jackets and trousers who repaint the white lines in the ring and respread the sand after each fight.

I recently made a short film of a guy pushing a cart through the streets of La Roma, and it highlighted my preconceptions and cultural misinterpretations of the city. I’d assumed he was dispossessed and carrying all of his possessions with him. Three of his bags fell off and a dustman picked then up and threw them into his dustcart. I thought he was throwing the man’s belongings away, mistaking them for rubbish. I showed it to a friend who explained to me that I’d got it wrong – the man with the cart was collecting rubbish for the dustbin men, and being paid to do it. I can’t imagine how he knew where the dustmen would be, but this is what happens. There’s a whole dustcart culture here that’s really worthy of study. Like so many things in Mexico City, it’s entirely unique.”

HOTELS

Prices are for a double room per night with breakfast.

Habita, Avenida Presidente Masaryk 201 (+52-55 5282 3100; www.hotelhabita.com), from $175 (about £109).

Hotel Condesa DF, Avenida Veracruz 102 (+52-55 5241 2600; www.condesadf.com), from $175 (about £109).

The Red Tree House, Culiacan 6 (+52-55 5584 3829; www.theredtreehouse.com) from $50 (about £32).

RESTAURANTS AND CAFES

Prices are for a three-course meal with half a bottle of wine, unless stated

Atrio, Orizabo 127 (+52-55 1054 7250).

Casa Lamm, Alvaro Obregon 99 (+52-55 5514 8501), about £20.

Contramar, Avenida Durango 200 (+52-55 5514 9217), about £30.

Covadonga, Puebla 121 (+52-55 5533 2922).

Hip Kitchen and Bar, Hotel Hippodrome, Avenida Mexico 188 (+52-55 1454 4599), about £25.

Maison Francaise of thé Caravanserai, Calle Orizaba 101-A (+52-55 5511 2877).

Pesces, Jalapa 237 (+52-55 8596 9004), about £20.

SHOPS

Chic by Accident, Alvaro Obregon 49 (+52-55 5511 1312).

El Pendulo, Nuevo León 115 (+52-55 5286 9493)

SIGHTS

Museo Frida Kahlo, Londres 247 (+52-55 5554 5999); Tue-Sun 10am-5.45pm.

The Leon Trotsky Museum, Viena 45 (+52-55 5554 0687); Tue-Sun 10am-5pm.

Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Paseo de la Reforma y Gandhi (+52-55 5533 6381); Tue-Sun 9am-7pm.

Palacio de Bellas Artes, Avenida Juárez y Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas (+52-55 5130 0900); Tue-Sun 10am-6pm.

Plaza Mexico, Augusto Rodin 241 (+52 55 5563 3961)

LESS THAN AN HOUR AWAY

Xochimilco is 17 miles south of the city centre and is all that remains of a time when Mexico City was originally built on water by the Aztecs. The area looks  like, and functions like, Venice – visitors explore the artificial islands and canals in brightly decorated boats. It’s quite surreal.

WHEN TO GO

The weather is warm but changeable year-round. July-September are the wettest months and best avoided. The high altitude keeps mornings and evenings consistently cool.

HOW TO GET THERE

Air France (0871 66 33 7777; www.airfrance.co.uk) flies twice daily to Mexico City from Heathrow via Paris to Mexico City, from £546 return.

Lufthansa (0871 945 9747; www.lufthansa.com) flies daily from Heathrow to Mexico City via Frankfurt, from £633 return.

Sam Nazarian’s nouveau nightlife (Aston Martin magazine)

Dorothy Parker’s jibe about Los Angeles being ‘seventy-two suburbs in search of a city’ has been a truism for over a century, but the landscape is changing. The home of film and television is morphing into a different kind of influential cultural force, from the regeneration of Downtown and the expansion of the Pacific Design Center to the work of Michael Govan at the LACMA and the arrival of Jeffrey Deitch at the MoCA. Arts aside, no one has done more in recent years to give downtime in the city a provocative and distinctive look than Sam Nazarian. His SBE group includes four Katsuya restaurants, the haute dining rooms XIV and The Bazaar, three Hyde lounges and the SLS hotel in Beverly Hills. While his short-term aims have been to reinvent the leisure industry in Los Angeles, his vision is global, and he curates every design aspect of his growing empire masterfully.

Iranian-born 35-year old Nazarian has an acutely visual way of working. His home in the Hollywood Hills, sprawling across 6,000 square feet and cantilevered from a cliff face, embraces a multitude of fantasies of Californian living, from the Rat Pack to David Hockney’s Bigger Splash. His pool deck can entertain 200 guests, he has his own screening room complete with classic Cretor popcorn machine, and the panoramic view through floor to ceiling glass from his lounge evokes architectural photographer Julius Shulman’s most glamorous work. On one wall hangs a birthday present from Milton Glaser, the designer who created the iconic ‘I love NYC’ logo; it’s an LA version of the same piece but against a graduated tone of pink and grey. ‘Milton hates LA,’ explains Nazarian, ‘the pink is supposed to be a Playboy Bunny colour and the grey represents the smog.’

Nazarian, of course, loves LA. He’s hard-wired-in to its culture of celebrity. On the desk in his bedroom there is a framed picture of him courtside at a basketball game sitting with David Beckham. He’s appeared onscreen in The Hills and Entourage, playing himself. This is his milieu, and sets the criteria and parameters of SBE. ‘This city is home to 70% of the celebrities you see in the media every day,’ he says. ‘But it’s never really had a central heartbeat, like Manhattan or London. When I started this business eight years ago I looked at the world of design and LA was light years behind. I aimed to change that by bringing the right people here.’

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Nazarian’s enterprise is that the key Right Person for him was Philippe Starck who was commissioned to generate the bulk of the Nazarian Look. A curious choice perhaps – after all, Starck was firmly aligned with Ian Schrager and the Morgans hotels, and his brand of surreal wit can seem passé and horribly over familiar next to the likes of Marcel Wanders or Droog. ‘A lot of people questioned my choice of Starck,’ says Nazarian. ‘Many feel he’s over, but I think he’s just beginning. We’ve proven that with the SLS, XIV and Katsuya. We’ve given him the scope for much more creativity than he’s had in the past. A lot of those initial projects with Schrager were very low-budget.’

Starck’s SBE projects are anything but thrifty. The SLS hotel in Beverly Hills is intended to be the first in a chain to rival the Four Seasons rather than a louche, over-grown boutique stunt. It feels grown-up. Starck’s work has always been most successful with either a light touch (the Faena Hotel + Universe in Buenos Aires) or a grand scale (the Delano in Miami) and the SLS falls between the two. The hotel’s launch at the end of the 2008 may well come to be seen as the moment that the Starck aesthetic passed from iconoclastic to modern classic.

Nazarian has cleverly forced function to dictate the way the SLS works. It’s not all about the lobby. There’s an outdoor living room richly furnished with oversized plant pots and couches that look like they’ve been designed for a Sun King in Space. In a city of constant sunshine that lives outside as much as it does in, it’s a clever, flexible area: Aston Martin launched the Rapide here last November. It’s also a pleasant café in which to work on a MacBook and a practical place to wait for valet parking. The indoor public spaces are aggressively contemporary but also deeply plush and serene – the non-stop late 90s lobby party has been moved next door, to Jose Andres’ buzzing molecular gastronomy restaurant, the Bazaar (the most financially successful restaurant, in terms of profit per square foot, in the States). The guest rooms are slick but subdued, and without the baffling bells and whistles of over-designed utilities. The open-air rooftop pool sells the hotel on image alone: the cabanas and immense baroque-style mirrors that disguise the balcony structure are inspired and chic and guests aren’t elbowed out by twentysomething local hipsters in stupid little hats. There isn’t a pool “scene”, it’s for residents only.

Nazarian’s XIV restaurant, billed in foodie auteur terms as ‘…by Michael Mina’, has a stately feel. Starck has created a ‘European chatueau’, albeit one that combines elements of futurism with Versailles. It might be considered a gentleman’s club with a flamboyant penchant for Murano goblets. The most striking element of XIV is the exterior – the structure is a bold reductionist grey squared-off bunker with the restaurant’s name/logo grown neatly in green foliage beside the door. Nestled between the Chateau Marmont and Nazarian’s original Hyde nightclub – the quintessential bottle service lounge, where waitresses light sparklers and parade from bar to table to herald the popping of each new cork – XIV is designed to be a one-off, or at least the first in a very limited edition. Katsuya, conversely, has been conceived as a chain.

Executive chef Katsuya Uechi’s involvement in the project has brought gravitas to the cuisine, but Katsuya is branded as being ‘…by Starck’, the designer’s logo incorporated into the restaurant’s. These rooms are, perhaps, his finest interiors work to date: holistic, futurist zen-tinged spaces that make the idea of eating contemporary Japanese food exciting and glamorous and which don’t regurgitate any of the predictable Starck canon. You don’t feel assaulted by Alice in Wonderland kitsch or confused by the chairs, instead there are pared-down counter areas and quiet booths, and a palette that is all-white, with graphic wall-sized back-lit high-contrast, extreme close up beauty shots of geisha girls. It’s pop, but it’s appealing rather than grating. ‘We’ve created a brand by using the model of Nobu and then pushing the envelope,’ says Nazarian. More Nobu than Nobu? Maybe.

Nazarian is sticking with Starck, but not exclusively. A rocky economy necessitated a slow down of expansion plans in 2009 and right now the focus is back on nightlife, but with a typical emphasis on all things visual – a new club space, Industry, opened in March with an art deco influenced interior and an intent to capture ‘the spirit of the exclusive Hamptons lifestyle.’ He launched MI-6 last September with a ‘multimedia environment’ designed by Montreal-based company MomentFactory, best known for their work with Cirque du Soleil. Shortly afterwards, a branch of Hyde opened at Staples Center and another at ski resort Mammoth Mountain. Nazarian still has the immensely successful Abbey bar in West Hollywood in his portfolio, continues to keep one foot in Las Vegas (where he owns the Sahara Hotel & Casino and spends at least one night a week), and remains involved in film production and real estate. New York, predictably beckons, but he’s looking for the right project. He’s honing the SBE brands right now while planning to turn the Sahara into an SLS, as well as opening up another in South Beach, Miami next year. The ultimate goal remains, of course, to take his distinctively LA lifestyle product and to export it to the rest of the world. A little bit of Hollywood can go a long way.

Harris Tweed (Quintessentially)

No textile, apart from the kind that grows around a pair of bright Bambi eyes and Maybelline lashes, carries quite the emotional weight as Harris Tweed. Beloved of the Victorian country gent and produced exclusively by just three mills in the Outer Hebrides, this raw-looking wool has a texture akin to something that Rei Kawakubo may have magicked up at her most inventive, while at the same time reflecting the mossy wind-blasted colours of the Hebridean landscape… oranges, blues, emeralds and pinks; as dense as they are bright; masculine and warm. It’s impossible not to love.

A new wave of designers are reclaiming Harris Tweed from the deathly shortbread gift shops north of the border and are taking it on more inspiring creative journeys.  Earlier this year Ann MacCallum of the label Hebridean Dreams created a Harris Tweed wedding dress for the singer Alyth McCormack; a butter-soft, white, lamb’s wool weave that was fashioned into an elegant sleeveless, flowing gown. In terms of subverting expectations, it was akin to Jeff Koons creation of inflatable children’s pool toys out of dense metal, though infinitely more practical. MacCallum has also been working with a denser, grey version of Harris Tweed on more traditional, but no less contemporary, pieces, including dramatic, ankle-length overcoats with off-centre buttoning and sweeping asymmetric collars. They would be more at home making an entrance at the Minetta Tavern in Greenwich Village in January than on the Stornoway to Ullapool ferry.

The potential for Harris Tweed has never fully been explored, although Vivienne Westwood – whose logo is an adaptation of the fabric’s trademark – first dragged the material into the world of directional fashion with her 1987 Harris Tweed collection, remembered best, perhaps, for Stephen Jones’ iconic woolly crown. Its appearance in the international collections has been cyclical but patchy, but it’s having a moment again. Judy R Clarke’s fantastically coloured gowns share some of the Alice in Wonderland-meets-Marie Antoinette-on-acid aesthetic of Dame Westwood at her most extreme.

When avant-garde Glaswegian designer Deryck Walker instructed the models at his January show in Paris to get tactile with his audience it was to dispel the misconception that the Harris Tweed collection may be ‘itchy’. In November of 2009 Walker – Designer of the Year at two consecutive Scottish Style Awards – opened a tiny industrial-chic store in Glasgow’s Argyll Arcade: Micro, inspired by the diminutive directional boutiques of the backstreets of Tokyo, is full of modern, wearable, tailoring-with-a-twist, the bulk of it in Harris Tweed sourced from heritage wool merchants Holland & Sherry.

London’s Dashing Tweeds, who sell through Dover Street Market – the capital’s most directional fashion store – recently started working in a specially commissioned variety of Harris. In the east end of the city, the burgeoning DS Dundee label has fuelled the trend with a range of very modern Harrington and belted jackets that are nothing if not a very smart twist on casual. Similarly, womenswear designer Sara Berman’s tweed Tulip coats have been a sensation at US-import Anthropologie.

Edinburgh-based Howie R. Nicholsby creates made to measure mod kilts in a variety of Harris Tweeds, styled in a contemporary rock star way: Robbie Williams and Vin Diesel are clients, and his kilts are hipster-style (in both senses), with detachable pockets. They smack of work wear as much as wedding garb and are infinitely more Omotesando than Highlander.  Most exciting is the work coming out of the Harris Tweed Artisan’s Co-operative, which launched in February. It’s early days yet, but clothing and accessories designs by Co-op members Diggery Brown, Sunny Bunny and Rarebird have already gone transatlantic, and made it across the Atlantic to Saks 5^th Avenue.

Some of the most unusual and inspiring work is developing in the world of interiors. A new mill, Harris Tweed Hebrides (which already supplies the likes of Paul Smith, Margaret Howell, Ally Capellino, Balmain, Lanvin, Prada and Comme des Garçons) has been collaborating with Graven Images, the cutting edge Glasgow-based design agency responsible for the Hotel Missoni interior, on a range of fabrics, lampshades, soft seats and the Bradan, a sculptural, scalloped, charcoal grey throw for a king size bed; it’s a beautiful, textural and boldly three dimensional piece. The range launched to great acclaim in Tokyo last year and was used to furnish Glasgow’s newest and best-dressed hotel, Blythswood Square. Even if you aren’t sporting Harris Tweed this season, your living room soon will be.

Blythswood Square, 11 Blythswood Square, Glasgow G2 4AD (rooms from £133 per night including breakfast) 0141 248 888 http://www.townhousecompany.com/blythswoodsquare

Deryck Walker

http://www.deryckwalker.net

Harris Tweed Artisans Co-Operative

http://www.lewisstudio.co.uk/HTAC

Harris Tweed Hebrides

http://www.harristweedhebrides.com

Sara Berman

http://www.saraberman.co.uk

21st Century Kilts

http://www.21stcenturykilts.com

Hot off the press (Financial Times How to Spend it)

No shopping safari in New York’s SoHo is ever complete without a visit to Kate’s Paperie. The Spring Street flagship’s is lined with meticulous displays of journals, cards and an infinite rainbow of fine papers and envelopes that make you want to abandon your Macbook and email software in favour of handwritten missives using only the most luxurious of stationery. Amongst the most seductive product at Kate’s are the bespoke letterpress items that they produce to order. From monogrammed writing sets to wildly ornate Christmas cards, letterpress – where inked plates press into paper and leave a distinctive textural mark along with the imprint – is the vellum-white-hot trend in stationery right now. Partly it’s a reaction against the trite and corporate lack of creativity that spelt doom for the unlovely Clinton Cards empire and partly its because we’re embracing nostalgia for early 20th century modernism, but mostly it’s because the paper products made this way are utterly lovely.

‘I think the charm of holding something in your hands and having a connection with the person who made it is very basic and universal,’ says Krista Stout, the designer behind the boutique letterpress studio Papered Together. ‘People want something authentic and personal, something with a story behind it.  When I send a box of 500 wedding invitations to a client, I’ve personally held every piece of paper in my hands at least twice, and often four or five times.  I’ve spent hours mixing the ink to perfectly match a paint chip or a fabric swatch, or the October leaves, and many, many more hours printing and reprinting until each one is just right.’ Stout sells a range of cards through the homecraft website Etsy.com and Luxepaperie.com but the focus of her business is bespoke, combining vintage elements and nature-inspired imagery with seasonal colours and, of course, the clients needs. Her style is chic and pared down, taking something from letterpress’ past and mixing it with contemporary design. Her thistle and cross-stitch adorned cards (£2.50) are typical and enchanting. Greenwich Letterpress, a studio with a store in New York which also stocks through Etsy, has a similar aesthetic. Many of their cards feature classic animal prints, while their ‘a holiday toast’ Christmas cards ($18 for six) are a charming nod to Victoriana, with two hands clinking goblets, one with a ruffed sleeve end.

A lot of modern letterpress work is a direct descendant of the medium’s core beginnings in publishing, so by inspiration and homage is largely text-oriented. The commercial artist Alan Kitching is widely regarded as a genius for creating bold imagery purely with letters and a variety of colour – his work has been shown at the Pompidou and the Barbican. Echoes of his work can be found in some of the greeting cards produced by small UK based letterpress companies: Typoretum sell three-fold greeting cards that spell out, prosaically in bold type, ‘WITH LOVE’ and ‘THANK YOU’ in four different colours (£3).  Similarly, Turnbull & Grey is another small London company who produce quirky greeting cards (£6 for three) with the word ‘Humbug’ next to a graphic of the boiled sweet – a neat twist on the festive seasonal salutation – as well as ‘Kiss xx’ and ‘LOVE’ Valentine’s cards, all distinguished by the rough hand-set, imperfectly flecked block type that’s reminiscent of playbills and vintage rock concert posters. The designers at Elum riff on a similar style: their range of customised Christmas cards, which come with the sender’s name incorporated into the text, and personalised envelopes (starting at $327 for 50), include the Holiday Woodblock design, which resembles the advertising for a circus or carnival, with artfully gnarled type. Rather like John Cage’s silences between notes, it’s not so much the ink, as the gaps within the inked areas that make the works so special, that and the obvious passion that its creators have for the process.

Chris Turnbull of Turnbull & Grey discovered a love for printmaking in the letterpress studio at Camberwell College of Art. ‘I loved all the presses, machines and blocks of wood and ink,’ he says. ‘It reminded me of being in my grandfather’s shed as a child. There is a magical moment in printmaking when you pull the paper up from the press and see the printed image for the first time. It’s crafted and it’s handmade.’

There is such romance around a return to those simplistic production techniques – not least because so much of the iron letterpress machinery is so ornate that it could serve as an interiors feature – that London letterpress company Harrington & Squares offer the kind of one-day workshop gift vouchers (£125) more commonly associated with wine tastings. For those interested solely in acquiring their product, they offer a wide range of bespoke services, from Z-fold Christmas cards to wedding stationary, as well very lovely editions of the Brothers’ Grimm’s The Golden Key (£65), gold foil blocked, hand sewn and hand perforated.

In the States the taste for letterpress stationary has been growing for some time. Kimberly Yurkiewicz who manages the print studio at Kate’s Paperie says that she used to see around three or four letterpress designers at the National Stationery Show in New York every year, ‘and then it jumped to about 20, and then it seemed there were hundreds, as if a legion of art school students were simultaneously taught that a great way to make a living was to create a letterpress studio line. But it grew out of being a cool in-the-know secret.’ The designers that work on the ranges at Kate’s Paperie are at the very top of their game, including Julie Holcomb who is a veteran of the art. The possibilities with bespoke at Kate’s are endless, from the simple to the avant garde. ‘Bespoke stationery has become a personal signature for some customers,’ she says. ‘I like it to accessorizing rather than a business product.’ Such a bespoke approach is, of course, time and craft intensive, and large sets of elaborate invitation stationery from a high-end letterpress studio can carry a price tag of up to $5,000.

Much smaller in scale are boutique US letterpress operations like Sesame Letterpress and Lucky Paperie. Like many of the more progressive designers, Sesame Letterpress work with photopolymer – designing often complex plates on the computer and then, by exposing light sensitive polymer through the design, creating a raised pattern. The process is similar to printing a photographic negative. Then they ink and print with the plate in the traditional letterpress way. Sesame Letterpress’ designs are a blend of ornate scriptwork and Victorian natural history imagery. As well as short runs of cards that they sell to stores worldwide, they offer their own bespoke service. The bulk of Lucky Paperie’s business is creating wedding invitations, with prices from £300 for 50 cards, in four different categories of style: ‘elegantly traditional’, ‘beach chic’, ‘vintage-style’ and ‘modern minimalist’, and 15 different designs.

The Luxepaperie website stocks letterpress work by Egg Press – their sasquatch and their ‘What’s growing on’ cards (£2.80), emblazoned with a selection of moustaches, are particularly eye-catching – and Carrot & Stick, who make their green apple and leopard-patterned pieces on five letterpress machines in California. Also at Luxepaperie, and perhaps the biggest success story in modern letterpress, is Hello! Lucky, run by Eunice and Sabrina Moyle, two sisters based in San Francisco. Compared to most of their competitors, their off-the-peg range is huge, from gift wrap to Dorothy Parker-style ‘It’s a marvellous party’ RSVP cards. Their Christmas cards, from their Woodland Friends to their Folk Angels (£9.65 for six), are refreshingly unique and Santa-free. The Moyle sisters began making cards after buying an old Vandercook printing press on eBay, and now make 2,000 cards a day. ‘Our style is happy, vintage, graphic and bohemian,’ says Sabrina. ‘Our L’Oiseau wedding invitation suite cards (£432 for 25) is most representative of our style – it’s graphic and chic but light hearted.’ Sabrina cites the rise of Etsy.com as evidence that the zeitgeist is handstitched, handsewn and letterpressed. ‘Letterpress is part of a broader, and growing, swell of interest in the handcrafted and the “slow”; just like hand-fed beef, artisan-crafted cheese and the slow food movement. When something heartfelt has to be conveyed, an email can’t compete with the human hand. The stationery of the future will be increasingly unique and handcrafted. If it feels mass-produced, why bother?’

The style moves easily from greeting cards to other gift ideas. UK company Hand & Eye create their own children’s books (£15) as well as ‘Thank you’ cards (£3.75) and posters  (£50) in tribute to the typographer Eric Gill that read, in one of Gill’s classic 20s fonts: ‘If you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.’  Gill may have been talking about design, but it’s a truism that reads well when framed on a hallway wall.

Ironically, some of the most sophisticated Adobe imaging software around today is being used by designers to ape letterpress style, and the web is full of tutorials for designers who want to ‘get the look’. But, just like the quality of leather on a piece of Hermes luggage, or the softness of Loro Piana knitwear, you can’t fake it, you have to feel it. And as Kimberly Yurkiewicz at Kate’s says, ‘a letter is a gift, receiving it is one of life’s great joys, and regardless of how hyper-tech reliant we become, that won’t change. It’s a universal feeling that will keep letter-writing alive.’

 

Elum; 001 858 453 4500

www.elumdesigns.com

 

Greenwich Letterpress, 39 Christopher Street, New York, NY 10014; 001 212 989 7464

www.greenwichletterpress.com

 

Hand & Eye; 020 7488 9800

http://www.handandeye.co.uk

 

Harrington & Squires; 020 7267 1500

www.harringtonandsquires.co.uk

 

Hello! Lucky; 020 7378 9740

http://www.hellolucky.co.uk

 

Kate’s Paperie, 72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012; 001 212 941 9816

www.katespaperie.com

 

Lucky Paperie; (US) 866 531 6609

http://www.luckypaperie.com

 

Luxepaperie.com

 

Osborne Samuel, 23a Bruton Street, London W1; 020 7493 8939

www.osbornesamuel.com

 

Papered Together

www.paperedtogether.com

 

Sesame Letterpress

www.sesameletterpress.com

 

Typoretum

http://www.typoretum.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Surrealism in design (Quintessentially)

Injecting a sense of humour, or at least a sense of fantasy, into design is a perilous business. For every person who loves a colourful Alessi espresso cup, there is another who feels like offering violence when presented with a grinning corkscrew or any other kitchen draw item that comes day in, day out with a personality and punchline. In the last few years there’s been a new movement taking place at the more adventurous and higher end of the design pitch, one that does embrace wit, but which has been looking to the anti-disciplines of classical surrealism to fashion inventive and radical pieces. It’s a movement that has developed in tandem with the way in which the furniture editions market has caught up with the fine art market, and developed a parallel kudos. These aren’t items to fill with salt and pepper, or to grate cheese with. These are grand, investment, showcase pieces. These are objects that, surface functionality aside, are unique and special, like any great work of art.

You can physically sit on Fredrikson Stallard’s Pyrenees Sofa, a foam and steel structure that resembles an Alpine landscape, but a POA limited edition piece like this is unlikely to ever be troubled by a human bottom, even if its designers, Ian Stallard and Patrik Fredrikson, have a fantasy of seeing Jerry Hall splayed across it.

London-based partnership Stallard and Fredrikson are at the forefront of the surrealist movement in high-end design. ‘Form following function is so yesteryear!’ says Patrik Fredrikson. ‘It is a boring and imprisoning term. Any “law” like this backfires against creativity.’ The duo’s work, shown by the David Gill gallery at October’s DesignArt fair in London, has also been at the focus of the ‘art or design?’ debate. It is beginning to seem more and more of a moot point: Gill launched his gallery in the 80s with furniture by the conceptual artist Donald Judd, while the very name of DesignArt London suggests a collapsing of boundaries. ‘A new futurism’ is how Francis Sultana, the director of the Gill gallery describes it, often with a surreal or even disturbing tendency, such as Fredrikson Stallard’s urethane rug, The Lovers, which resembles two pools of intermingled blood, each containing the precise volume of liquid tissue held by the human body. ‘It would be amazing to see that piece in a monastery or convent,’ says Ian Stallard. ‘Though it would be equally exciting to see it in an elegant apartment on 5^th Avenue.’

Much of what Fredrikson Stallard are doing taps into notions of pure sensation as well as the surreal: Their Rubber Table makes no sound when you place a glass on it, while Unit Number 4 is a coffee table made from solid ice. While that may be taking surrealism to the extreme, as much as a clothes iron with nails jutting out from its ironing surface, it’s no less arresting than Dutch avant garde interior company Moooi’s life size Horse Lamp, designed by Front in 2006, or any of Studio Job’s oversized Alice in Wonderland  white gold mosaic pixel tea service pieces which were rapturously received at last year’s Salone di Mobile in Milan. The pieces were surreal in scale, but in a very modern way: ‘If these objects were scaled down to their conventional sizes, the pixels would create the illusion of smooth silver surfaces,’ explains Nynke Tynagel of Studio Job. Rather like Margiela’s playful upsizing of doll’s clothes to adult size, Studio Job’s ‘eat me… drink me’ aesthetic says something about the unfettered imagination of childhood, and our place in the world of logic and scale. In the editions market, there are also practical concerns too. As the celebrated author and design critic Alice Rawsthorn says: ‘Big equals better… you can see that you are getting more for your money’. Equally, there’s no confusing an unusably gargantuan item – with the exception of perhaps Marcel Wanders’ cartoon-huge lamps which, no matter how much space they take up, still act as a light source – with a functional item, and a form that doesn’t follow function has to be interpreted as art, or at least as an extravagance in the same way that wearing a pristine white Chanel coat with a pencil skirt and perilous high heels suggests that you don’t get the bus.

Linked in with the seductive exclusivity and collectibility of the new wave of surrealist furniture is the notion of craft. Designers are reacting against mass-produced flat packed furniture by prototyping pieces that necessitate more care and attention from the human hand. The designer Hella Jongerius produces a range of what she calls ‘unique plates’, with animal figures in their centre. Each one is unique and is intended to ‘place greater emphasis on the manufacturers handcrafted products and to show the numerous steps involved in finishing a product.’ Her Props collection for Vitra last year consisted of simplistic looking vessels and spoons that had sprouted ears and wings. ‘They are a hybrid of functional product and a character from the fantasy world of animals fables,’ she explained.

In summer 2009 the V&A in London is showing Telling Tales, a collection of work by furniture and product designers split into three sections: The Forest Glade, The Enchanted Castle and Heaven and Hell. The exhibition will be a showcase not only of furniture that falls into the design art category by having a narrative and an inherent complexity that prices it way out of Heals and Habitat, but of the surreal tendency in design today. Studio Job will feature, as will Maarten Baas, who in the past has had shows based around antique furniture that he has burnt and charred, and whose ‘Hey, chair, be a bookshelf!’ is an assemblage of items subverting their function: A lampshade became a vase, a violin became a coat rack, etc.

Not all surrealist edition work is entirely avant garde in nature. David Linley is a designer whose work often has an edge to it (he has produced one-off couches with tribal-style slashes across the leather), but is more at home in plush, moneyed Mayfair than in East London lofts. His Time Table, produced in an edition of 20, is a wonderfully classic piece that is also classically surrealist. Like much of his work it is tasteful and, finished in rosewood, it has the air of the establishment about it. The acrylic clock dial set into its top surface is, however, quietly subversive – is this a table or a time piece? Can a form follow more than one function? No matter what your take on the surrealist trend in furniture, it’s certainly displaying a level of accomplishment and style that is in a different league from the world’s superfluous inane kitchen gizmos and jokey Mr Suicide bathtub plugs.

Wood and it be lovely (Financial Times How to Spend it)

Shrink-wrapped, disposable design is dead. There’s a huge shift going on in the marketplace for contemporary furniture and the best of it has nothing to do with post-Corbusier chrome tubing or clear and coloured acrylics. It’s in wood – lovely, old-fashioned, ultramodern, timeless wood. And what we’re seeing produced is as radical as any carbon fibre chaise, but in infinitely better taste.

When SCP, one of the UK’s most innovative high-style furniture manufacturers and retailers unveils its stand this April at the most influential furniture show in the design calendar, the Salone de Mobile in Milan, it will consist entirely of wooden furniture. Designs showcased will be from some of SCP’s most directional names: Russell Pinch, Matthew Hilton, Donna Wilson and Kay + Stemmer. Sheridan Coakley, SCP’s MD, has identified a sudden shift in the market, and taste: ‘Making furniture out of carbon fibre is ridiculous,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t need to survive hitting a wall at 200 miles per hour.’ As for a renaissance in carpentry, he believes that ‘wood has never really been away. It’s the only material you can really restore if it’s damaged, and it has such a long life. People allow it to age and reflect its use and it looks good with the patina that it picks up.’

Certainly one of the reasons that people are engaging with wood again is an appreciation of its longevity. As well as recent financial realities and a new, almost moral disdain for reinventing your interiors seasonally, there is the inherent humanity of wood: scratched resin surfaces cry out for replacement in the minimalist home, but scuffed wood suggests life being lived. There is also a wonderfully naïve quality to it, over and above our nostalgia for it.

It is the green quality that underscores wood’s current popularity. At last year’s 100% Design show in London, one of the most newsworthy stands was run by the Advanced Timber Concepts Research Centre, an incentive by the University of Western Australia bringing together State government and the furniture industry to design, promote and produce high-end, high-style furniture from sustainable timbers. The ATCRC Shimmer Chairs and Shimmer Table – delicate yet sturdy and superbly attractive textural pieces with impeccable eco-credentials – should go on sale sometime this year. In the future, it’s entirely possible that wood production will eclipse pollutant-producing plastics. As Gary Marinko of Advanced Timber Concepts says: ‘There are currently a very large number of forests being planted as “carbon sinks” that will need to be harvested eventually. Conversely, plastics may become less socially acceptable because of their petroleum base.’ Even more emotively, most of us simply don’t want disposable stuff any more. We want the antiques of the future: something to cherish and to pass to future generations; furniture with a soul.

There’s no hint of the antiques market or the vintage auction about the new wave of wood furniture; far from it. When Sebastian Wrong and Richards Woods debuted their WrongWoods collection of sideboard units (from £998) at Wrong’s Established & Sons gallery in London in 2007, the pieces were a bold type exclamation mark announcing a new modernity in wood. Each plywood piece is covered in woodblock print panels in acid bright colours, an exaggeration of the grain of real wood. ‘Extravagant and gestural,’ as Wrong describes it, ‘but based on an extremely basic process of printing.’ The cartoon colours of the pieces are arresting in themselves, but it’s the grain print that is so enchanting – like Warhol’s silkscreens, which stripped down images of Liz Taylor and Marilyn and heightened them again in fluorescents, these are pieces that play on our strong emotional attachment to something visually quite elementary. In this case, it’s the very texture of wood… the knots in the surface are the icons and wood is the star attraction.

The WrongWoods pieces have discreet design pedigree, referencing postwar British G-plan functionality. ‘The carcases of the pieces are plywood as opposed to MDF,’ says Wrong. ‘This was very important because plywood was an important material to fill a void in the postwar years in terms of people needing items for their homes. It was a simple and structural material.’

If 1940s frugality dictated materials and influenced form, it was the subsequent school of Mid Century Modernism which saw designers using wood to create truly radical work. This was the furniture of the future, produced in what many had erroneously perceived to be the material of the past, and it’s this period that’s echoed in 21^st century wooden furniture. As Bradley Quinn, author of Mid-Century Modern: Interiors, Furniture, Design Details and Ultra Materials, says: ‘Mid Century craftsmen perfected the art of working with wood, engineering design methodologies and production process to streamline manufacturing and eliminate waste. Few materials surpass the versatility of wood.’

Mid Century Modernism changed the silhouette of wooden furniture and the way we perceived a simple wooden chair. From the Eames brothers to Robin Day and the 1951 Festival of Britain, the new shapes were inspired by aviation, elements of science fiction and notions of a utopian future. The movement was embraced by Lucian Ercolani who showed his work at the 1946 Britain Can Make It expo at the V&A: his curved and flared Butterfly chair still looks fresh today. The company Ercolani founded, Ercol, has consistently produced top quality if often staid wooden furniture since its inception – but it also has a wild side which, since the fashion designer Margaret Howell championed its early archive and started selling its classic range in her flagship London store (including the beautiful beech Butterfly, now back in limited production of around 200 a year at £400 a unit), it has begun to explore again, employing the likes of Matthew Hilton for special projects.

Matthew Hilton has a genius for contemporary wooden design. He approaches his designs as a sculptor as much as furniture designer, ‘finding very odd ways to make chairs… the stranger the way, the newer the form,’ he says. ‘It’s sculpture but the sculpting tools are very limited – you either work in straight lines or circular motions. With my Fin chair (£675) I started out with the idea of splitting a back leg all the way up.’ The work he has been producing for his new eponymous label, Matthew Hilton, displays elements of Scandic and British 50s chic – consider the oval surface, tapered crows-feet legs and heavy walnut grain of his Light Oval Table (£3145). Hilton talks of being inspired by ‘the funny, amateur 1950s modernism that was somehow diluted and softened for England: very domestic and nice.’ Consider it Eames with a pinch of the Ealing comedy if you will – sharp, but rounded with British charm: in a way, the very essence of his client Ercol. Charm aside, Ercol’s quality is superb, as is that of Hilton’s mainline which consists of small-scale-production and beautifully detailed pieces – chairs are made in conjunction with wood-specialists De La Espada in batches of a maximum of 20 at a time, all by hand.

Matthew Hilton and Russell Pinch, Britain’s other key practitioner of modern wood design, are both designing new ranges for Ercol. Hilton’s first chair for them is being produced initially as a luxe edition in walnut with a soft pad (£845); clear lacquer and stacking ply versions will follow. The new chair is an incredibly strong, pure design – the back and seat panel create a stark, angular single-ribbon S-shape when viewed side-on. It’s a future design classic, as are some of the other pieces in the pipeline at Ercol.

Edward Tadros, Ercolani’s grandson, is enthused by the new work that he hopes will build on Ercol’s renaissance: ‘By rekindling the enthusiasm for the Ercol Classics, we’re opening the door for the Hilton and Pinch projects.’ Tadros has some truly wonderful pieces at prototype stages at his ultra modern Buckinghamshire factory with its state of the art  £180,000 five axis CNC computer milling machines, including paneled sideboards and dining tables by Hilton and Pinch which reflect that ‘domestic and nice’ element, but with a vibrant edge and modernity.

As anyone who has searched for the perfect modern chair will know, the 20^th century obsession with machine and information age materials has led to a 21^st century style hangover of overly fanciful colours, superfluous decoration and peculiar silhouettes – the interiors equivalent of a gilded lily, with bells on. The rehabilitation of wood is changing all that. Although the SCP Classics range, featuring iconic designs by Noguchi, Saarinen, Bertoia and Eileen Gray, hasn’t a single grain of wood in it, the new collection being unveiled in Milan will broaden SCP’s scope widely and promote more organic materials in the contemporary market. ‘Those 20^th century classics in the SCP Classics range are still regarded as modern furniture,’ says SCP’s MD Sheridan Coakley, ‘but that perception is changing.’ The Perfect Chair already arguably exists at SCP, and it’s in wood. Russell Pinch’s Avery chair (£200) is a new kind of modern, exactly the sort of pared-down piece the market so sorely lacks. It has lovely straight horizontal and vertical lines, like a child’s drawing of a chair subsequently articulated by perfect proportion and draftsmanship. It’s not afraid of being A Chair; as Sheridan says, ‘It’s visually and physically light.’ It has all the simplicity of Gio Ponti’s Superleggera, updated for today. The Avery just doesn’t have a wrong context – which is incredible. A new version, with almost imperceptible tweaks to make it more comfortable, has been released for 2009.

Russell Pinch is renowned for his work in wood, and his interest in the material began at an early age. ‘My dad made our kitchen table,’ he says, ‘and it holds hundreds of fond memories. Its top was periodically sanded down as its surface was finished, and it’s since been updated with one of my designs, but the original lives on at my sister’s house with another generation eating at it.’ As well as elliptical Harper’s dining tables (£1880-£2265) and a selection of Marlow armoires (£2955-£4485) in different one-colour finishes with a variety of graphic paneling, one of Pinch’s most exciting wood products is his Twig wall panel (POA), which covers an entire surface, floor to ceiling, with hundreds of bisected Ash logs. ‘En masse it creates a soft rhythm that engages without shouting,’ says Pinch. ‘It’s very alluring – when you look at it you want to reach up and touch it.’

The Istanbul-based design firm Autoban create work in wood that is as playful as it is aggressively modern. Much of their seating, with exaggerated curves and leanings, has a touch of the retro-futurist, while their Ladder Bookcase (£1415), which looks as it sounds, is wonderfully smart and functional. All of it has a touch of the childlike, or ‘the beginner’ as one of Autoban’s designers, Oznur Comlek puts it. ‘We started making products in plywood because it was strong, funny and cheap and suited our style. Now we work in oak and walnut. All wood is emotional – natural, renewable and warm, enjoyable to touch and to watch change over time.’ The new, more sophisticated work from Autoban is being produced by Matthew Hilton’s partners, De La Espada, who as well as working with the most dynamic designers internationally are also the go-to company if you’re looking for the Perfect Wooden Desk – their 023 Bureau Desk (£1095) and 009 Console Table (£995) are some of the smartest home office pieces around.

One of Established & Sons’ most exciting editions shows of the year, running at their London gallery until late March 2009, is a showcase of wooden pieces by Seattle artist Roy McMakin. His work takes folk traditions as a starting point but exaggerates and manipulates them – his Kountry Chairs resemble twisted and scaled-up children’s seating. The pattern of pale square patches on his dark 4 Drawer Chest looks, from a distance, like a wood detail blown up on a computer screen to the point of pixellation, but is actually, as Sebastian Wrong explains, ‘the replacement of inconsistencies with good material and aligned wood grain… there is incredible detail in the pieces.’ McMakin’s furniture has the heft and presence of fine art objects: his slat-back ebonized chairs make as much of a statement for a dining room as a Bridget Riley above the fireplace, and priced at £4,000-£40,000 they represent serious investment. McMakin works in Douglas fir, the most graphic of woods. It’s bold and strong, not a clean or apologetic wood or an IKEA laminate. These are pieces that, as with all quality wooden furniture, can only look more beautiful as they weather. Of course, anything carefully chosen should look better with age. It’s just unfortunate that an occasionally puerile single mindedness within modern design caused us to doubt that reality for so long.

Advanced Timber Concepts Research Centre, The University of Western Australia, Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts, M433, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western Australia 6009; +61 8 6488 1560; www.atcwa.org

Autoban, from De La Espada; www.autoban-delaespada.com

De La Espada, Clerkenwell Workshops, 31 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R 0AT; 0207 096 1154; www.delaespada.com

Established and Sons, 2-3 Duke Street St James’s, London, SW1Y 6BJ; 0207 968 2040; www.establishedandsons.com

Ercol, Summerleys Road, Princes Risborough, Bucks HP27 9PZ; 01844 271 800; www.ercol.com

Matthew Hilton, from De La Espada; www.matthewhilton.com

Margaret Howell, 34 Wigmore Street, London W1U 2RS; 0207 009 9006; www.margarethowell.co.uk

Russell Pinch, 6 Horsford Road, London SW2 5BN; 0207 501 9252; www.pinchdesign.com

SCP, 135-139 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3BX; 0207 739 1869; www.scp.co.uk

Pure form (Quintessentially)

There’s still something of the naked ape about man when you put him next to, or inside, certain modern structures. More than merely sculptural forms or places of shelter, they transcend their function and become a kind of totem for what we wish we were. Think of the black monolith that appears throughout 2001 A Space Odyssey – the inscrutable object that apparently brings intelligence to Neanderthal Earth. It is the pure essence of a technology we can’t comprehend, the badge of modern civilisation. Within its simplicity and blackness lie all possibilities. Also sprach Zarathustra.

A radical new skyscraper being planned for downtown Zagreb, designed by Croatian architects Hrvoj Bakran, Drazen Plevk and Zdravki Krasic, doesn’t so much recall as replicate on a much larger scale the black monolith of 2001 A Space Odyssey. The 160 metre high, slender jet-black minimalist building will tower over an unremarkable landscape like an intergalactic visitor. In Zagreb it will be the tallest building in the city, and the public excitement around the plans couldn’t be greater if it came with the promise of alien advanced intelligence for all in its proximity.

The sinister sheen and geometry of the 2001 monolith has inspired more than just architects: you can see it in the work that Hedi Slimane produced at Dior Homme and in Peter Saville’s book and album covers and installations. Its purity is as much about its lack of colour and reflectivity as its form. Pure black or white buildings strip things down to form and magnify their impact.

As Vicky Richardson, editor of the architecture and design magazine Blueprint says: ‘It’s a pared down reductionalism rather than minimalism; an anti-design statement. Featureless black and white facades make a statement that they – unlike so much gratuitously iconic architecture – are serious, restrained, contextual and not trying too hard. It’s a rejection of self conscious architecture.’

OMA’s Dubai Renaissance tower was conceived as ‘anti-icon,’ according to OMA’s Rem Koolhaas. Though this self confidently blank, white, 200 x 300 metre monolith lost out in competition to Zaha Hadid’s Dancing Towers and won’t be the central feature of the Business Bay in Dubai, plans are going ahead with it on another site. Dubai, where every new piece of architecture is all singing, all dancing, would seem the most radical context in which to reject self conscious architecture. Thankfully the Dubai Renaissance’s gimmick (to revolve) has been dropped after Koolhaas admitted it was a novelty with an eye on the competition. The resulting tower will be eminently more powerful in its restraint.

The use of white in architecture is nothing new, of course. It has a functional pedigree in that it reflects the heat of the sun, something that gives Santorini and many other Greek towns their gleam. But a number of European contemporary architects have gone beyond Mediterranean function, most notably Portugal’s Alvaro Siza, whose elegant modernism is often celebrated with him hailed, according to Chris Twaddle, of London based architecture studio kennedytwaddle, as ‘the architect’s architect.’ As Twaddle, one of the UK’s rising stars of modernist urban design, says: ‘Siza uses white as a response to climate, but it’s the clarity that it gives his buildings that’s magical. His work shows that “colour” is only one of the many elements that make a scheme successful.’

Siza’s Santa Maria Church, built in the early 90s in Marco de Canavezes in Portugal, is illustrative of how the practicality of white in a hot climate can become transcendental. From one end it appears to be a simple whitewashed concrete construction of three tall windowless  columns, while from the exterior of the altar end, a smaller column attaches to a larger one with a sweep to the rest of the ‘box’ of the building. Although the windows, where they exist, appear small in scale, they are cut into the curves in such a way that they flood the inside white stucco space with light reminiscent of a Hammershoi painting. As fellow architect Marc Dubois puts it: ‘It’s a space which assigns a sacred dimension to the light.’ Siza’s use of white strips things down to pure form. In a similar way, Delugan Meissl’s new Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, which is much more playful and angular, and looks inherently ‘Porsche’, could have appeared overbaked with an over reliance on texture or glass, but with so much white on it, it’s pared back. Equally, plans for Daniel Liebeskind’s Creative Media Centre, to be completed in 2010 in Hong Kong, detail a building with sharp, aggressive points, slashed horizontally with windows, tempered by a calm white surface. Both of these projects share a sense of futurism, something that the use of white has always signified. New fabrications are also being used to accentuate the sci-fi element: The Seeko’o (meaning ‘glacier’ in Inuit) Hotel in Bordeaux has been clad in Corian, a material more commonly used for ultra sleek high-style interior surfaces.

The UK architect David Chipperfield works repeatedly in pure white. His studio design for sculptor Antony Gormley in London is blank and necessarily industrial (Gormley needs the kind of space that any light-to-medium industry would require) but resonates with more impact than that of a mere factory: the punctuation of windows (or rather the lack of punctuation) makes the frontage more sparse, the roof is in a geometric saw-toothed pattern and the inner walls are seamless, like those of a gallery.

Chipperfield’s background includes work on shopfittings for the likes of Issey Miyake and Joseph in the 80s, when minimalism was all, and the focus was on both stock and the rarified air between that stock. His own brand of reductionism has carried over into his architecture today. ‘I think that “icon architecture” has a certain danger,’ he says. ‘Everything has to look spectacular, everything has to look like it’s changing the world, even if it’s not really doing that much.’ Chipperfield is leading the move away from icons and ego.

The plans for his Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate are at once eyecatching and restrained. It has a discernible dialogue with its environment: there is a maritime feel in the building’s sail-top silhouette. Though nowhere near as literal as something like the crazed Vasa Museum building in Stockholm with its masts, wooden construction and slanted slate roofs, there is still an echo of the majesty of big ships sailing around the Kent coastline. ‘We are trying to make something that’s abstract and contemporary on the one hand but completely inspired by its own task and function,’ says the architect. Similarly, his Gormley studio plays artfully off the Kings Cross warehouses surrounding it, but is focused on its purpose – a place in which Gormley can sculpt.

Pure black is more commonly used on smaller, but still sensational, projects. David Adjaye’s Dirty House, the live/work site of artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, is one of the most celebrated buildings in London’s burgeoning new look East End. It too has the impenetrable look of the 2001 monolith – its brickwork has gone incognito behind thick black anti-graffiti painting and its windows are reflective with no apparent frames visible from the street. It sits one block back from Bethnal Green Road, quiet but ominous, like the architectural equivalent of one of Mark Rothko’s Black-Form paintings.

Simon Conder has built two beach houses on the eerie Kent no-man’s land of Dungeness and the first of these, finished in black rubber, has brought as much attention to the area as did artist Derek Jarman’s similarly black, but traditional, fisherman’s cottage, a short walk away. Conder’s structure is a modernist take on the ramshackle homes that line the beach, but its intense, vulcanized blackness makes it the most dramatic structure on the coast. In many ways it’s the inverse of Siza’s white – there are environmental issues to consider on Dungeness, and many of the traditional cottages are black from weatherproofing with pitch. Conder takes the image and accentuates it without turning it into a cartoon. That said, there is something delightfully fantastical about the house, sitting on the pale shingle as if it had been dropped there by a tornado from a weird parallel Kansas.

The use of pure black or white has a trickle down effect. Two of Cazenove Architects’ UK projects have been on small scales, and used dense black exteriors but also colour. Their Abbey Children’s Centre has some of the dandy, diagonal flair of mid-century modern on top of a low-rise strip of rooms, painted black but with a door panel of hot pink and windows of sunflower yellow and aqua. Their offices for Lee Valley Regional Park Authority are black but with prominent angular windows working on horizontal, vertical and skewed axis. Both buildings find their strengths in the core weight of the use of black.

Reductionalism isn’t without its problems or controversy. It can be challenging. It can be unnerving. Last year saw the completion of work to reinvent the façade of Edward Durrell Stone’s landmark building at 2 Columbus Circle in New York. The work, which was carried out as part of the conversion of the building into the new home for the Museum of Art and Design, has been condemned as ‘the rape of 2 Columbus Circle’ by the City Review’s Carter B. Horsley. The original 1964 structure was an undeniable folly – a mixture of Venetian palazzo elements in odd, stretched proportions, and almost entirely windowless. The new building has a façade of bands of glass, arranged in lines that appear to read, ‘HI”. It’s an unremarkable building. Inelegant. But the former structure was remarkably unpopular. Why? Arguably because it was unsettling in the context of midtown Manhattan; it did have a marvellously sinister tone – its blank Vermont marble facades suggested a Moorish mausoleum.

Author Tom Wolfe was one of those who defended the old building, and blames its fall in part on the rise of Ephemeralism in architecture, which he claims ‘arrived in 1994 with Jean Nouvel’s Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris… embracing transparency with plain glass walls, voyeurism and branding – making the exterior design remind you of the enterprise within.’ Ephemeralism and Reductionism are almost polar opposites. Ephemeralism would appear to be a perfect fit for big business in big cities, while the latter is a far bolder school of pure vision.

What’s happening in Zagreb, and in Dubai, would suggest a shift away from transparency, voyeurism, branding and, of course, ego. It might be challenging, scary even, but then these are challenging and scary times.