Filed Under: furniture

The Human Dimension

04 / 01 / 13

Born in 1928, Paulo Mendes da Rocha completed architecture school in 1954 and opened his own office in 1955. In 1957, he completed the now-legendary Paulistano Athletic Club in São Paulo, Brazil. The radical blankness of its raw concrete recalls the Brutalist style of the day, but its poetic simplicity and sculptural forms feel more akin to the International Style and the experimental lines and volumes of John Lautner. Developing a reductive style based on intense training and respect for technique and appropriateness to place, Mendes da Rocha went on to achieve international renown, designing and building numerous public spaces, museums, and exemplary residences. He was honored with with Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 2006.

For the interior spaces of the Paulistano Athletic Club, Mendes da Rocha designed the Paulistano Chair. Made of a single seventeen-foot-long tube of solid steel, the frame is welded in only one place. Still in production, the original version of the Paulistano Chair used a single large piece of leather wrapped around the steel structure to form the shallow seat. The sling-style seat can be adjusted to sit more less upright. Both the steel and the leather are hand finished and weather over time, adding character with the patina of age and use. More rare, however, is the version done in wire mesh. At once delicate and masculine, the mesh cover makes the chair appear to hover in air. Perhaps more grounded, though, is the chair’s relationship to the body. With sensitive proportions, the frame and sling shape to the user: flexing to accommodate the body’s weight and molding to its form, the Paulistano Chair is as sensual as it is simple and functional, adhering to Mendes da Rocha’s emphasis on sua dimensão humana.

Architectural Pottery

03 / 28 / 13

Following in the footsteps of Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, and Frank Lloyd Wright, whose warm geometries, natural forms, and subtle ways with organic materials set the stage for a new way of living earlier in the twentieth century, architects and designers like Gregory Ain, Charles and Ray Eames, A. Quincy Jones, Pierre Koenig, and John Lautner all helped define what we now call “mid-century modernism” in Los Angeles. The distinctly American style that emerged through these and other architects in the middle of the twentieth century, especially on the west coast, combined the graceful lines and human scale of Neutra, Schindler, and Wright with the minimalism and stark rhythms of the International Style and the philosophies of the Bauhaus School in its exuberant experimentation.

Instrumental to the aesthetic and engineering advances of the era was the Case Study House initiative conceived and implemented by Arts & Architecture magazine. As a response to the post-World War II need for housing, the Case Study House program challenged architects to design and build low-cost homes. The majority of the Case Study House projects that were realized were built in Los Angeles, and most of them were featured in Arts & Architecture, documented in now-iconic black and white photographs by Julius Schulman. Along with furnishings designed by Charles and Ray Eames, Harry Bertoia, and Arne Jacobsen, Case Study and other modern homes were decorated with ceramic vessels by Architectural Pottery.

Founded by Max and Rita Lawrence in 1950, Architectural Pottery was formed to produce the experimental pottery being designed by LaGardo Tackett and his students at the California College of Arts in Pasadena. Fans of the new styles in architecture and design, the Lawrences lived in a number of Gregory Ain residences. Ain, like most of the architects who rose to prominence during this period, advanced a style of living that incorporated indoor and outdoor spaces, made possible by the invention of post and beam construction that allowed for large open spaces and glass walls. The Lawrences recognized the need for a new kind of planter to unify minimal architectural forms and respond to the reduction of boundaries between inside and outside.

Tackett and other potters like David Cressey, John Follis and Rex Goode developed the signature style of Architectural Pottery, a look that, like the buildings where they were situated, was both sculptural and minimal. Eschewing ornamentation and favoring an architectural scale, the planters and pots are characterized by elegant geometrical forms that work both inside and outside. Metal or wood stands emphasized the pieces as design objects, while pieces that rest directly on the floor or ground became instantly integrated into the surrounding environment. With references to ancient vessels and totem forms, Architectural Pottery pieces update the timelessness and durability of ceramic, using a reductive aesthetic to express a modern sensibility that endures today.

In the Shadows

02 / 20 / 13

Altaidesign-IsseyMyaki

In 1970, Japanese designer Issey Miyake opened Miyake Design Studio, designing couture and prêt-á-porter for women. By the early 1980s, he was enacting extensive experiments on fabrics, using heat and pressure to alter the structure of the threads. These interventions into the behaviors of traditional fabrics like silk, wool, and cotton jersey eventually led to Miyake’s famous body of work known as Pleats Please. These garments were cut, sewn, folded, and placed between protective paper sheeting before being subjected to a heat treatment that transformed the folds into permanent pleats. As in his Pleats Please designs, Miyake focused on folds for his collaboration with renowned Italian lighting design house Artemide. Known as IN-EI, Miyake’s series of floor, ceiling, and pendant lamps are complex volumes made out of a material derived from recycled PET plastic bottles. The folds are engineered in such a way that no internal frame is required for their structure, and the lamps can be folded down for storage and then expanded again for use. Named after the Japanese word for “shadow” or “nuance”, the IN-EI series of lamps cast a beautiful glow from their eloquently sculptural forms. IN-EI lamps are only available in Los Angeles at ALTAI.

The Hansen Family

02 / 15 / 13

Born in 1981, German-Danish designer Gesa Hansen lives in Paris. Raised in a family of architects, carpenters, and designers, Hansen went on to study at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany and the University of Arts in Nagoya, Japan. Before founding her own design house in 2009, Hansen spent time at the venerable Nippon Design Center, one of Japan’s largest design firms, and worked with Jean Nouvel and H5 in France. Hansen’s low-key, high-concept work reflects the various places where she has lived. Melding elements of the rustic Danish vernacular, the disciplined creativity of the German design tradition, the humble elegance of Japanese design, and the urbane whimsy of contemporary Parisian style, Hansen ties these influences together with strong lines and simple forms.

Hansen’s furniture is made at the highest level of craftsmanship. Primarily made of oak, every Hansen Family piece is handcrafted from wood sourced in German forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council for environmental sustainability. The wood is selected with great care and worked with equal attention to color, texture, and grain. Hansen’s practice allows elegance to emerge from her materials. Recalling Herman Miller designs from the 1950s, Hansen’s forms have strength and heft without being burly or overbuilt. Her pieces are a laid back and a little bit down home while also being polished and grown up. Adding color here and there, Hansen deploys bright hues to add humor and fun without diminishing her work’s seriousness, often using a palette that recalls the graphic punch of design from the later 1970s.

Already the recipient of numerous design awards for her furniture, Hansen has also worked on graphic design projects and has collaborated with Kitsune, Surface to Air, Steven Harrington and now ALTAI. In 2011, she opened Hansen Feutry Interior Design with Pascaline Feutry. The Hansen Family furniture is available exclusively in Los Angeles at ALTAI.

Heavy Love

02 / 13 / 13

Hubert-Float-Altai-Design

English industrial designer Benjamin Hubert opened his acclaimed studio in 2009. At locations around the world, Hubert oversees a team of designers working in furniture, lighting, consumer goods, architectural installations and art direction. Having already received many of the industry’s top awards, Hubert is now known internationally as a leader in the field. Hubert’s process is rooted in research and driven by materials, resulting in innovative, high-functioning, concise objects that are thoroughly contemporary. Often requiring years at the drawing board and in testing, Hubert’s work is reductive but not stark: materials like cork, terracotta, marble, leather, and wood keep his forms grounded in the natural world. Hubert’s series of lamps entitled Heavy, for instance, combine slip-cast concrete shades with wood stands and red fabric-covered cord in a simple, striking composition that balances a high level of craft with an organic feel. With the Quarry series, Hubert has remade the simple pendant lamp over in thinly turned marble that, when switched on, exudes an otherworldly glow. Feats of engineering, Hubert’s chairs prove that a deep engagement with materials and process yields elegance: the unique shapes of his chairs are derived from ergonomics research but are anything but institutional in style. Available in Los Angeles exclusively at ALTAI.

The #2013 Laurel: Amaryllis Knight for ALTAI

02 / 04 / 13

With our prototyping studio in the back of the house, we are able to design and fabricate custom furniture on-site in the ALTAI atelier. Our first editioned piece is the #2013 Laurel coffee table, designed for ALTAI by Amaryllis Knight. Echoing grand 1930s design in scale and recalling a particular brand of 1970s luxe minimalism, the #2013 Laurel coffee table is made to measure. Practical in every sense, this piece was conceived as a clean solution to the problem of displaying and stowing books in a formal area of the home. The #2013 Laurel features two parallel planes of marble set into a metal armature, creating space for large and small volumes in between. Made from a selection of rare marbles and a choice of stainless steel or aluminum, the organic patterns of the marble contrast with and soften its strong geometry. The #2013 Laurel is available for order through the ALTAI showroom.

Fiat Lux

01 / 27 / 13

Founded in Italy in 1959, Artemide is recognized around the world for innovative design. The mark is perhaps best known for the Tolomeo lamp. Characterized by an exposed constant tension structure and a brushed aluminum surface, the Tolomeo was designed in 1986 by Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina and is now a classic of contemporary design. The Tolomeo is found in well-appointed offices around the world, but Artemide’s goal is not merely to provide task lighting. Artemide looks at the design of lighting artistically and philosophically, creating lighting solutions that reach far beyond function. As in the greatest paintings, with Artemide, light tells a story. Look forward to future collaborations between ALTAI and Artemide.