Gucci collaborates with nine global artists to reimagine the themes from the brand’s archives – flora, fauna, nautical, equestrian and the GG monogram – through a new silk scarf collection
Gucci printed silk twill carré created in collaboration with Jonny Niesche for the 90 × 90 project. Photography Patricia Schwoerer
There’s a lot of change happening at Gucci right now. As we all know, Demna Gvasalia has taken the helm as the brand’s creative director, thus ushering in an exciting next chapter for the 104-year-old house. In the meantime, a new collection of silk scarves, made in collaboration with artists across the world, riffs on the brand’s history, affirming the timelessness of Gucci and the little details that endure from era to era.
Gucci began developing its silk craftsmanship in the 1950s. By the 1960s, it was collaborating regularly with the illustrator Vittorio Accornero de Testa to create the kind of elegant, iconic scarves that we still recognise today. Drawing on that legacy, this latest project tasks nine artists of different disciplines to reinterpret the house codes and create a fresh, modern take on the silk scarf.
Gucci printed silk twill carré created in collaboration with Currynew for the 90 × 90 project. Photography Patricia Schwoerer
The themes – flora, fauna, nautical and equestrian – are all familiar. The collaborators, however, are new to the Gucci family. Robert Barry, Everett Glenn, Sara Leghissa, Currynew, Jonny Niesche, Gio Pastori, Walter Petrone, Yu Cai and Inji Seo all responded to these concepts and symbols with varying ideas. The result – referred to as the ‘90 × 90’ project, a reference to the measurements of the classic silk twill scarf – is eclectic and diverse, just what we imagine the brand was after.
For Inji Seo, the Seoul-based illustrator – who, in one scarf, imagined a bright pink and neon-green jungle of luscious trees, verdant plants and characterful animals (with a particularly bashful-looking giraffe) – family couldn’t be more at the forefront of her mind. “What made this project even more special is that I found out I was pregnant while working on it,” she says. “Since our baby was born, an entirely new world has opened up for us. Exploring this world has brought me new emotions, new perspectives and a whole new narrative universe to draw from in my work.”
Gucci printed silk twill carré created in collaboration with Inji Seo for the 90 × 90 project. Photography Patricia Schwoerer
Moving to Seoul from Gyeongju, a traditional and nature-rich city in the country’s southeast, Seo dived headfirst into the capital’s world-renowned, fast-moving cultural scene as soon as she arrived. “I encountered a flood of animation, books and visual art all at once,” she says. It quickly began seeping into her illustrations. “It was overwhelming in the best way, and those impressions remain vivid in my memory. I believe they became the foundation of the work I create now.”
“I’ve always been someone who chases after fun, and I see my work as a way to express and share the things I find fun or fascinating,” she continues. “No matter what kind of project I’m working on, I need to include the elements that spark joy for me. And through my work, I hope that others can feel it too.”
Gucci printed silk twill carré created in collaboration with Robert Barry for the 90 × 90 project. Photography Patricia Schwoerer
When it came to collaborating with Gucci for the 90 × 90 project, the brief invited her to freely interpret these themes, offering her a lot of creative freedom. “This was both exciting and a bit daunting at the same time,” she says. “The more I looked into Gucci’s beautiful and intricate patterns, the more I felt a sort of respectful hesitation – like, ‘How could I possibly change something already so perfect?’” She decided to approach it from a lighter, more playful angle, reimagining the brand’s Animalier motifs as scenes from her own animations, “and for the nautical theme, I pictured a magical girl riding a yacht. It was a fun way to blend my imagination with the world of Gucci.”
“I’ve long admired the strength and clarity of Gucci’s visual identity, so when this opportunity came true, I was both thrilled and deeply moved,” she finishes. “Especially the process of connecting my work to Gucci’s traditional archives, it was both delicate and exciting. I felt like I was weaving a little part of myself into their grand, iconic story.”
Gucci printed silk twill carré created in collaboration with Sara Leghissa for the 90 × 90 project. Photography Patricia Schwoerer
In Frescobol by Design, photographer Gabriele Rosati and architect Alberto Simoni reinterpret Brazil’s beach sport through a series of sculptural works and photography
A skirt made of bats. A stacked column of curved wooden paddles. Wall-mounted arrangements that appear like oversized brooches. In one room, a floating ring of polished forms hangs mid-air, each one identical yet slightly off-beat in rhythm. Elsewhere, a portrait of a figure is dressed in what looks like a garment, but is in fact an assembly of repurposed equipment. The material across all these works is the same: layers of smooth, striped wood, destined for the beach. This is Frescobol by Design, an exhibition and project from Brazilian menswear and lifestyle brand Frescobol Carioca, made in collaboration with Gabriele Rosati and Alberto Simoni, who have pulled apart, reassembled and reimagined the famed Brazilian beach sport.
Frescobol originated in the mid-1940s on Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, and is credited to Lian Pontes de Carvalho. The game is cooperative rather than competitive, where players rally to keep the ball in motion, not to win points. It was first played using bats made from driftwood and repurposed tennis balls and, over time, the equipment saw heavier bats swapped with lighter, varnished wooden versions and rubber racquetballs replaced with improvised ones. It’s highly indicative of Rio’s laid-back beach culture, where the sand becomes a playground for games, relaxing, exercising, eating, flirting, napping, dancing and selling things. The sport’s collaborative spirit later inspired Frescobol Carioca’s founding in 2013, with handcrafted frescobol bats at the heart of its offering, alongside swimwear, resortwear and accessories, all rooted in the rhythm and ease of Rio’s lifestyle.
This same energy can be found in Frescobol by Design, a project developed by Frescobol Carioca in collaboration with Milan-based photographer Rosati and architect-sculptor Simoni, who were brought in by Graeme Gaughan. “Gaughan has known our work for a while and was interested in how we often bridge fashion and architecture – using objects as tools to explore narrative, materiality and space,” says Simoni. Together, the pair worked “side by side on the creative direction, approaching the project as a sculptural study more than a product campaign.” Harry Brantly, CEO of Frescobol Carioca, adds: “Frescobol Carioca was founded on a single product that embodies both craftsmanship and the spirit of collaboration. Partnering with emerging creatives for Frescobol by Design felt like a natural extension of that ethos – a way to reimagine our eponymous frescobol bat through fresh perspectives, while staying true to the values that shaped the brand. It’s a celebration of heritage, creativity, and the ongoing dialogue between tradition and innovation.”
The result is a series of sculptural and photographic works that reframe the frescobol bat as something more than a sporting object. “I developed a series of sculptural pieces and images that reinterpreted the frescobol bat as an object beyond its original use – somewhere between artefact, artwork and symbol,” explains Simoni. By altering scale, stripping back function and using raw, often reclaimed materials, the bat was transformed: “They became characters, almost totems.” Rosati’s photographs built on this approach, presenting the objects in carefully composed settings that “echoed architecture, fashion and product design”, says Rosati. As Simoni notes, “We approached the whole thing as a single system – object, image and setting all part of the same language.”
Rather than depict the game directly, they focused on the ideas embedded within it. “It was less about representing frescobol as a sport, and more about drawing out its underlying codes like duality, rhythm, fluidity and connection,” says Rosati. Those values were mirrored across the exhibition (which took place in London earlier this month) through repetition, mirroring, spatial tension and careful abstraction, achieved through a process of detaching the bat from its function. “By isolating its silhouette, shifting its scale, or multiplying it, we allowed new meanings to emerge,” Rosati explains. Meanwhile, Simoni approached the bat “almost like a raw module”, experimenting with “cutting, mirroring, stacking” to create forms that hover between art and architecture. “In some cases, it was no longer clear if it was meant to be held, observed or inhabited,” he says. That ambiguity was key, encouraging the viewer to reconsider the bat’s shape and symbolic weight.
Working closely with the material itself also became central to the project. “The wood isn’t just a surface or a shape; its grain, texture and natural composition carry the true meaning of the product,” says Simoni. By incorporating damaged bats and leftover materials from production, the project embraced a reuse strategy that both honoured the object’s origins and disrupted expectations with a gloriously surprising outcome – not least a beautiful collection of objects that radiate the warmth of a sizzling hot day on Copacabana.
Standing as a collection in its own right, the project also responds directly to Frescobol Carioca’s new ethos, The Art of Summering – a phrase Rosati and Simoni interpreted through space, time and intentional design. “We tried to refer to it as a spatial concept,” says Rosati, “a way of inhabiting time with ease, clarity and intention.” Drawing inspiration from the curves of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and the openness of Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle-Marx, the work sits “in that tension between stillness and movement, function and contemplation”. Rosati adds, “It wasn’t about decoration, but about shifting perception and inviting the viewer to reconsider the object’s role in space.”
Ultimately, the project reframes sport, design and material as interconnected tools for looking at the world with a fresh perspective. “While frescobol as a sport provides the foundation,” Rosati reflects, “the work invites viewers to reconsider familiar forms as sculptural and spatial experiences.”
“It’s less about function,” he concludes, “and more about engaging with the object as a trigger” – a prompt to observe, reflect and slow down. And maybe get yourself down to the beach.
For the third chapter of The Dalmore’s Luminary Series, architect Ben Dobbin distills landscape, whisky and tensegrity into a twisting, dynamic sculpture unveiled at the Venice Architecture Biennale
The Dalmore 52 Year Old Luminary No.3 – The Rare
Architecture, according to the famous Italian architect Ernesto Rogers, encompasses everything from the broad scale of a city to the fine detail of a spoon. Ben Dobbin, a partner at one of Britain’s best-known architectural firms, Foster + Partners has thought a lot about both. He has worked on the design of such remarkable landmarks as Apple’s circular HQ in Cupertino in the suburbs of San Francisco, which is big enough to house 12,000 people and is popularly described as the spaceship. And his latest project is small enough to sit comfortably on one of the elegantly minimal desks inside the Apple building.
It is a piece of sculpture that was unveiled at the Venice Architecture Biennale in an exhibition inside the gothic brick tower that marks the entrance to the city’s ancient shipyard, the Arsenale. Crafted with extreme precision from twisted bronze rods, the sculpture is the result of a close creative partnership between The Dalmore and V&A Dundee, Scotland’s design museum – brought to life through a shared vision with architect Dobbin as part the third edition of the Luminary Series. Designed to accompany the distillery’s 52-year-old single malt whisky – known as The Rare – the piece distils a spirit of collaboration into sculptural form. Though it is modest in size, the oscillating curves of Dobbin’s sculpture have a dynamic energy that can make themselves felt in any space.
Only two complete sets of The Rare exist: one was auctioned by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in 2025 in support of programmes at V&A Dundee, while the other will be held at The Dalmore Distillery. “I was thinking about who might acquire it, and where they might put it,” says Dobbin. “It would be exciting to see it rotating, it is very symmetrical as a composition, but as you move around it becomes more asymmetrical.”
Though Dobbin grew up in Newcastle, he knows Scotland well. He was a student in Edinburgh, and was taught to become a discerning whisky drinker by his father. He suggests that the sculpture’s form is inspired by the landscape on the north shore of the Cromarty Firth, where the Dalmore distillery was first established in 1839 at Alness. He says that its intricate structure is a tribute to Scotland’s engineers who built the country’s great bridges.
The launch in Venice also saw the unveiling of the Luminary No.3 Collectible, an edition limited to 20,000 bottles of a 17-year-old single malt, that Dobbin played a part in creating with Gregg Glass, the Dalmore’s master whisky maker and Richard Paterson, the master distiller. “As an architect, if you are designing a laboratory, you have to understand the scientist’s method, you have to know how they think.”
“It was like that at the distillery, where I was less confident about asserting an opinion. I was fortunate. I had two brilliant geniuses to work with who knew how to take on my loose ideas. I sketched out what the Collectible might taste like, using colours to suggest flavours, along with some written notes for Gregg. It was about what do you want to taste first, and then what would come next?” Dobbin describes the Collectible as The Rare’s younger cousin – brighter and more playful – while its older relative is deeper, more complex and refined.
The balance between tension and compression in Dobbin’s sculpture could also be seen as evoking the qualities that he, Paterson and Glass were looking for in maturing a single malt in a sequence of casks that range from calvados to port and sherry. Architects call that balance ‘tensegrity’, the word that Buckminster Fuller, the guru of the geodesic dome, came up with as a combination of tensional integrity. Fuller was an inspiration for Norman Foster, the founder of Foster + Partners, who recalls being reduced to silence when Fuller asked him, “Norman, how much does your building weigh?”
Dobbin’s work is the third commission from leading architects in the Luminary Series, a project that The Dalmore began in 2020 in support of V&A Dundee. The distillery asked Kengo Kuma, the Japanese architect of the museum’s striking building on the banks of the Tay and his protégée Maurizio Mucciola to design the first sculpture. It took two years to realise and was then auctioned to raise funds for the museum. They were followed by Melodie Leung, a director at Zaha Hadid Architects, whose glass sculpture was unveiled in 2023. Now, with the designer’s proof of The Rare sculpture joining the previous two commissions on permanent display at V&A Dundee, the full arc of the Luminary Series comes together – a lasting tribute to creative collaboration, and the evolving conversation between whisky and architecture.
Find out more about The Dalmore’s Luminary Series here.
There’s a semi-circular pouffe that plays a central role in Kusheda Mensah’s home. It’s a simple shape, thigh‑height and thickly cushioned, upholstered in a fine off‑white and brown checkerboard Kvadrat twill. It stands, it rolls, it’s readily repurposed and moves around the room. For her young children Sior and Soleil, who are four and two years old respectively, it’s a seesaw or a step‑stool – another excuse to be always in motion. For Kusheda, the pouffe doubles as an unlikely (but very gorgeous) desk chair; though she has had many studio spaces, she works mostly from home, happy and at ease in the window of her south‑east London living room.
Though it’s far from the best‑known piece her brand, Modular by Mensah, has made, this pouffe is a pleasingly powerful expression of Kusheda’s practice as a designer. Bold, functional and playful. “Things can be so simple,” Kusheda tells me from her spot on it, on a Tuesday morning early in spring. “I’m always thinking about how I want people to feel.”
Modular by Mensah first launched in 2018, as part of a showcase to the great and good of the design industry at Milan’s Salone Satellite, a fair dedicated to the most promising designers under 35. From the moment the doors opened, she drew a crowd. Her first collection, Mutual, harnessed rich, warm colours, tactile textures and expressive shapes to encourage interaction – and in so doing, enhance social wellbeing. “A seat is a seat, a pouffe is a pouffe – people sit down, they get up, they go,” she says. “Modular by Mensah is about creating shape that changes the flow in a room. In public spaces – a foyer, say, or a gallery – it’s hard to feel like ‘I’m here now, let me just relax.’ I want people to feel able to be still, to engage with their environment, but also to engage with one another.” This aspect – creating a focal point that encourages conversation, interaction, exchange – is crucial for her. “Without community, who are we?” she asks. “A big part of why Modular by Mensah exists is to bring people together. That is so important to me, personally, and my practice was born out of wanting to do that for other people too.”
Now, seven years since it was founded, the spirit at the core of Modular by Mensah is stronger than ever – but Kusheda’s practice as a designer is growing, evolving and deepening around it. She has grown, birthed and nurtured two small children in that time – a seismic shift that feels all the more tangible because we are friends and neighbours, and I’ve been doing something similar, sometimes together with her, in my own home two doors down. (She is the kind of comrade that an expectant parent dreams of sharing the toddler years with: warm, thoughtful, fun, real – generous with her time and energy, always, even when both are in short supply.) In early motherhood, life becomes an elaborate rear‑ranging; the pieces are painstakingly carved out, set next to one another, then thrown up into the air to scatter and reorganise again. Where once the ‘modular’ in her name spoke to the way objects coexist in a space, now it speaks to something greater, more abstract, and rich with possibility. Different materials. Different fabrication techniques. Different people. There are so many different parts that make up the whole.
Kusheda came to furniture design by way of textile design, which has always been her first love. Born to Ghanaian parents and raised in London, texture and print are embedded in her cultural identity. “When I was growing up, my mum was always picking out fabrics for a particular occasion, looking at colours, textures, symbols,” she says. She studied Surface Design at London College of Communication, where she was drawn first to printmaking, before she began exploring the ways structures could disrupt or redirect how a space is used. Lately, she’s been experimenting with printing again. “How can one symbol be broken down and multiplied through printmaking to create an immersive experience?” she asks, thinking aloud and talking loosely through some recent tests. Printing offers her a welcome return to process, absorption and experimentation.
Symbolism plays out in her work in larger ways too. Last year she began exploring language, creating large‑scale sculptures inspired by Adinkra – visual symbols that represent concepts, proverbs and aphorisms in language in Ghana. “There are so many symbols that the Ghanaian community and the culture relate strongly to,” she explains. “I was exploring phrases in Twi [a variety of the Akan language] and there was one that stuck out to me: onipa ya de. It means, ‘being human is sweet’. It’s a reminder to embrace humanity and enjoy one another.”
This phrase became the title for a seating installation that she exhibited last summer as part of the 2024 edition of the Harewood Biennial, an event which celebrated craft and connection while elevating artisanal heritage. In the collection, angular and curved pieces slot into one another to create seating, exhibited within a library room. Visitors could curl up solo inside a curved form, or perch next to strangers and loved ones alike, on functional objects which represented communication and interaction on both a micro and macro level. It’s a space she’s excited to continue exploring.
A few months after the Harewood show opened, Modular by Mensah debuted another new collection at London’s V&A, as part of the London Design Festival. Against the backdrop of one of the museum’s majestic Medieval and Renaissance rooms, Unhide showed seating which combined metalwork with fine, sustainably‑sourced leather provided by Bridge of Weir Leather, to create an elevated and ambitious new collection.
Still sculptural, still playful, but with new structure – another hint of things to come. At the Festival’s opening night, Sior and Soleil clambered gleefully over the banquette‑style elements, as if modelling to the mostly adult crowd how their mum’s work could be used.
Their joyful and intuitive interaction with these rigorously crafted pieces was a powerful reminder of the ways in which raising children can expand a creative practice. Kusheda’s vision is dynamic, innovative, vital and bold because of, and not in spite of, the ways that parenting shapes her point of view. The work is harder to get done, certainly – but it’s infinitely better for it. “I give so much to motherhood. I give so much to my career. Both are part of my identity,” she says. It’s exhausting and enriching work, but she always has one eye on the legacy she’s building. “As a Black designer, as a mum, I’m creating that representation for my children – or any precious little child, honestly, that deserves a leg‑up somewhere. My peers and I are opening the doors. It’s hard work. But one day, other people will be able to just stroll through.”
The accolades reinforce the point. In 2022, Kusheda was one of eight designers to be nominated for the coveted Hublot Design Prize. A few weeks ago the World Design Congress named her one of 25 trailblazers leading the Design for Planet movement. There’s an exciting collaboration with independent design brand Hem in the works, due to launch later this summer.
And in spite of all the spinning plates, the competing deadlines, the drop‑offs and pick‑ups and unexpected sick days, there’s a sense of space in Kusheda’s design practice right now: a fertile ground in which she’s trying out new things. Screenprinting. Textile design. Ideas for education. Books. A studio space, maybe.
These new building blocks are all becoming part of her approach – strong, flexible, always evolving, always growing. This is modularity, in practice.
From clubland to the art world, Leigh Bowery shaped culture in ways that are still felt today. As Tate Modern stages a retrospective, his longtime friend and muse, Sue Tilley, recalls their nights out, the making of an icon and the quieter moments beyond the theatrics
“I get myself in a muddle saying things I shouldn’t,” is among the first utterances out of artist and model Sue Tilley’s mouth. Of course, oversharing only gets you in trouble if the stories you’ve got to spill are good – and that’s certainly the case in this instance. She might now live by the seaside, but she’s a London legend. A staple of the capital’s avant-garde nightlife scene, her social circle has included notables like Stephen Jones, Boy George, Princess Julia and, of course, the late Australian multimedia artist Leigh Bowery, who I’m here to talk about today. Fittingly, for two club kids, they met on a night out at the LGBTQ+ venue Heaven, shortly after Tilley moved to London from St Albans. “I met this lovely boy with a very cheeky face and not normal clothes, but same as everyone else’s, you know,” she recalls. “I mean, he wasn’t Leigh Bowery as such, he was just a boy on the scene. We made friends straight away.”
Despite having a day job – the dancer Michael Clark, with whom she lived with in a house share, “thought I was a bit boring because I worked in the Jobcentre” – Tilley spent many evenings immersed in London’s clubs as both a punter and front-desk cashier. It was in these hedonistic, experimental environments where Bowery’s creative spirit was able to flourish. While he would go on to co-found the infamous club night Taboo, he first attracted attention for his outrageous fashion sense. “When Leigh and I would go out, at first he was just one of the crowd. Then he started inventing looks,” Tilley explains. “He put his first look on Trojan because he was too nervous to wear it. When he saw the attention Trojan got, that was it, he was wearing it. Then his whole life changed.”
From there, Bowery gained the confidence to embody a larger-than-life persona that would launch him from the “boy on the scene” whom Tilley first met, to nightlife phenomenon and later art world darling. His multifaceted career would see him stage surreal art performances, craft colourful, kitsch costumes that scrambled the boundaries of gender and personhood, showcase his work as far afield as New York, and perform as part of the art-pop band Minty. Tilley sees Bowery’s rebellious spirit living on in the zeitgeist – particularly in today’s shape-shifting queer culture. “I see his influence in the fashion shows, I see it everywhere. Most of the people in the music charts are non-binary, lesbian, gay… people underestimate Leigh’s position in popular culture. He made dressing weird and being gay more acceptable.”
Now, Bowery’s energetic work is the subject of a major Tate Modern retrospective, a chance to bring together the ephemera of his career. Tilley features in the shadows – through letters, a painting she did of Bowery, holiday snaps and postcards. But her influence can be felt in other ways. Tilley recalls having gone with him to meet the musician Boy George for the first time, helping her artist friend to soothe his nerves as he met 80s music royalty. She also shares that Bowery’s iconic ink drip look was informed by her own practical nature. “You know, I helped him make . He was just using ink. I said, ‘I watch Blue Peter, you should add Copydex, like a rubber solution glue. Then it’ll stay and you can rip it off at the end of the night’.”
Some of Bowery’s best works, in Tilley’s opinion, are his visceral birthing scenarios, which he would perform as part of Minty. In these electric, shocking performances, he would carry his future wife Nicola Bateman (positioned upside down) in a harness attached to his front. Then, in an elaborate sequence, she would slither on stage covered in lube, sausage links and fake blood – as if she was being pushed out of a cervix. During these performances in the 1990s, Bowery was already ill with HIV. Looking back, Tilley is astounded at his physical resilience. “I think about the fact that he was ill at the time and how he had the strength to do it,” she recalls. “She’s only small, but it’s still heavy to have her hanging upside down. It was just an amazing thing they did.” As she notes, the performance has proved to be a rich reference in the world of fashion. “The look was copied by Rick Owens, you can see influence in the fashion shows.”
Despite the power of Bowery’s presence on the club circuit, Tilley points to his stint modelling for Lucian Freud as a major turning point in his career. “Nobody really takes club kids seriously, you have to have something more behind you,” she explains. “Lucian helped make Leigh more accepted in the art world.” It was Bowery who set up a meeting between Tilley and Freud. “Leigh thought I should work for Lucian, to be glamorous,” she laughs. “Leigh was a control freak and Lucian was a control freak. Leigh had to be the bigger control freak so he put the idea of me modelling into Lucian’s head, so that Lucian thought it was his idea.” Despite receiving advice from Bowery on how to navigate her first meeting with the celebrated portraitist, Tilley characteristically did her own thing: “I completely ignored Leigh’s instructions and did what I wanted.” Tilley would go on to become the subject of a series of arresting Freud nudes. Notably, one of the paintings – Benefits Supervisor Sleeping – broke the world record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist at the time of its sale in 2008 for $33.6 million.
In 1994, just three years after Tilley began sitting for Freud, Bowery passed away on 31 December, aged 33. Decades later, the memory is still fresh in her mind. “We heard the news in the clubs on New Year’s Eve, such a big, strong person going like that. No one could believe it, because no one knew he was ill – he didn’t want them to,” she recalls. “I can’t believe, in 30 years, how much has changed. Even if he lived about six months longer, he’d probably still be alive now, because they found new HIV treatments.” Following Bowery’s passing, Tilley was approached by The Guardian to write his obituary, an article which would cause editors to take notice of her passion and dedication to her friend’s legacy. Shortly after, she was entrusted to write Leigh Bowery: The Life and Times of an Icon, a 1997 biography of his life which includes interviews with his social and creative circles, all of whom were eager to dedicate his effervescent talent and wit to the page.
The book gathered cult status among Bowery fans, and has been recently reissued by Thames & Hudson. This has offered Tilley a chance to revisit the book, while the Leigh Bowery! retrospective at Tate Modern has reaffirmed her friend’s importance to contemporary art history.
But the Bowery commemorated in books and art galleries is not the only Bowery who Tilley remembers. While he was powerfully, formidably creative, Tilley liked him best as a “daytime friend”. “To be honest, when he was all dressed up, I didn’t really like going out with him, it was so difficult to chat to him,” she says. “I was more of a daytime friend. People think he was really peculiar but he was perfectly normal and he was so funny, hilarious even. If you had troubles and tribulations, he’d help. He’d always be there for you.” The kind-hearted boy who would sometimes get nervous or starstruck, who was generous to a fault, and who would spend hours on the phone with her talking about nothing – that’s the Leigh Bowery which Tilley will know and hold dear forever.
Escale, the once experimental face of Louis Vuitton’s horological output, has been reimagined as a simple three-hander. But that doesn’t mean it’s lost the ability to astound
Photography Ivona Chrzastek, featuring Louis Vuitton’s Escale
There are few brands, apart from Chanel maybe, who have parlanced their iconography as well as Louis Vuitton. From the Monogram – which was invented in 1896 by George to pay tribute to his recently deceased father Louis and inspired by earthenware kitchen tiles in the family home in Asnières-sur-Seine – to the markedly different Stephen Sprouse graffiti that dominated the early aughts, they are all instantly recognisable as Vuitton.
When, in 2002, Louis Vuitton decided to make a foray into watches, it went back to the maison’s codes to influence the design. The first Tambour – French for “drum” – had a dial in the same shade of chocolate brown associated with its luggage and handbags. Hammering home the connection, the seconds hand and those on the counters at 12 and six o’clock were in the same shade of yellow as their stitching. The brand repeated the approach 12 years later when it unveiled the Escale Worldtime. This dial was a riot of colour, with each of the city markers represented by pictograms and emblems used on vintage Louis Vuitton trunks. Emblems that had also been hand painted; something made possible by Louis Vuitton’s acquisition, in 2012, of specialist dial workshop Léman Cadran. The previous year, in a bid to boost its horological savoir faire, it had also taken into its fold complex-watchmaking company La Fabrique du Temps. Now Louis Vuitton had at its fingertips the know-how of Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini – men who had spent time working on haute complications at Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe and who had previously set up BNB Concepts – a kind of skunk works out of which came such mechanical marvels as the Concord C1 Quantum Gravity with its aerial bi-axial tourbillon. And Louis Vuitton certainly used that knowledge to its advantage. The Escale became its watchmakers’ playground. They combined its Spin Time complication, where time is told using spinning blocks in the hour marker positions, with a tourbillon, and added a minute repeater to the World Time. With the Escale, experimentation was the name of the game. In its 10 years, it was never time only. Until now.
You could argue that, given how Louis Vuitton has been positioning itself in the last couple of years, this new streamlined Escale was inevitable. Gone are the fireworks and in their place is refinement as illustrated by the re-imagined Tambour of 2023 – a beautifully proportioned, elegant sports watch where delight is found in every detail, from a dial with three different finishes to the brand-new movement. Named the LFT023, it is a masterclass in movement making – unsurprising seeing as it was developed in collaboration with Le Cercle des Horlogers, a workshop that specialises in “extensively personalised” movements. This movement is also in the new Escale.
Paris HQ has said that this new Escale is part of an elevation, one that brings an added dimension to the collection’s earlier scope of complicated timepieces; one that introduces a profundity in design approach and reinforces the integration of the maison’s heritage and values within the fine watchmaking collection. That integration is so wonderfully subtle, it’s like a 39mm luxury game of Where’s Wally? – except here you’re trying to spot all the little nods to Louis Vuitton’s history.
Louis Vuitton Escale in pink gold – £25,400
The easiest thing to notice is the central disc, which has been given a grainé finish to evoke the grained surfaces of its Monogram canvas. A custom dial stamp was made to create this effect, refined over several material trials before the exact texture was achieved. The minutiae draw the attention next. Dotted around this beautifully brushed, subtly concaved track are 60 tiny gold studs reminiscent of the nails of the lozine, or leather trim, that run along the exterior of a Louis Vuitton trunk.The hand-applied quarter hours are made to resemble the brass brackets on the corners of the trunk, while the crown looks like its rivets. Even the shape of the hour and minute hands, finely tapered needles, are intended to pay tribute to the myriad artisans, all experts in traditional métiers d’art, that have made the maison what it is today. The platinum versions with their meteorite dials, or inky black onyx with a surround of sparkling baguette diamonds showcase the maison’s skills in gem-setting and lapidary. Then there’s the technical things that maybe you don’t see. The seconds hand is shaped to follow the curve of the dial to minimise the possibility of a parallax error. This is a misreading that occurs when an object is viewed from an angle, causing it to appear in a different position to its actual one, like looking at a water level through glass. That same seconds hand appears gold but is actually PVD-treated titanium, chosen for its lightness to improve precision and energy efficiency. Louis Vuitton may have dispensed with obvious signs of R&D budget spend but its new era feels like good cashmere. It doesn’t telegraph how much it costs, but if you know, you know.
Louis Vuitton Escale in pink gold – £25,400
Louis Vuitton Tambour in steel and pink gold – £26,400
Samuel Ross speaks on TRANSPOSITION, his immersive installation for The Balvenie at Milan Design Week, and how craft, emotion and experience shape the next chapter of his career
TRANSPOSITION: Samuel Ross x The Balvenie ®️ Francesco Stelitano
Last year, Samuel Ross entered a new chapter. Having sold his stake in A-COLD-WALL*, the designer and artist began what he describes as a renewed decade – an ongoing recalibration of identity and output. “It’s an interesting time where everything we’ve built as a sense of identity is tied to this idea of youth,” he tells me. “As soon as you leave that – which is at age 30, I believe – it’s: who actually are we? And we almost have to rediscover, re-articulate ourselves.”
It’s a perspective that’s stayed with me since we last spoke for a profile in Port’s sister magazine, Anima, and one that resonates more deeply now as I also enter my early thirties. For Ross, renewal is more than a shift in mindset. His trajectory has moved steadily from graphic T-shirts to institutional exhibitions, from the language of streetwear to that of sculpture, painting and now, immersive spatial design. And yet the foundations remain the same: self-sufficiency, tenacity and an obsession with material. “The idea of work-life balance feels absurd to me,” he says. “The work is inseparable from who I am.”
His latest commission, TRANSPOSITION, encapsulates that ethos. Developed in collaboration with The Balvenie and unveiled at Milan Design Week 2025, the large-scale installation transforms the atmospheric Old Foundry in Milan’s Isola district into an abstract sensory environment. The site-specific work marks the first partnership between The Balvenie and Ross’s studio, SR_A, and draws on elements from whisky making – copper, oak and flowing water – as well as The Balvenie’s dedication to craft. Upon entering, visitors are greeted by a gust of wind infused with floral and earthy notes. Cascading water sounds fill the space, forming a natural rhythm alongside soft, percussion-less music. It’s a tactile experience, housed within exposed concrete and steel, where every sensory element, from mist to material, has been carefully orchestrated.
The installation also aligns with the release of The Balvenie Fifty Collection, a rare three-part series of aged single malts that celebrate five decades of craft. Like the whisky it honours, TRANSPOSITION is measured, deliberate and layered. “How do we offer people something they can’t experience online?” Ross asks. “It’s really leaning into this idea of performance, installation and runway, to deliver something worth visiting.”
In this Q&A, Ross reflects on the making of TRANSPOSITION, how the definition of the craftsperson is evolving, and what this new phase in his practice looks like – one that’s matured, sharpened and entirely self-defined.
The Balvenie x Samuel Ross Artist Studio
So tell me, what stage are you at now?
There’s a space of economic freedom, which I’m super grateful for, because I spent the last 12 years working 14-hour days, every single day. That’s not changed. Work is all I do, and I couldn’t see another way of living where I don’t. I’ve always built companies or value and placed them into a market or a context or an institution. There’s never been this guise of provision coming from outside of myself. I have to establish the value in the market, which is a great affordance – to not have to run away from the work – because the work is inherently part of my identity. And the output, as we were saying, evolves and matures over time. Perhaps, arguably, you can say it’s moved from spray painting a T-shirt to abstraction in the metal at the V&A. There’s been a development. But the way of producing work hasn’t necessarily changed.
Do you think you have a healthy work-life balance?
No, probably not. I sleep well. If I feel like I have a mental block or creative block, I’ll go to the gym or I’ll paint as an unlock mechanism. But fundamentally, I’m aware my entire life is dedicated to producing emotional works that will go out into the world. And I couldn’t think of a better, more fulfilling practice.
Are you still doing your painting?
Indeed. I have a solo show at the moment at SCAD Museum of Art, which went live last month. It’s my first American survey of an institution. It will sit there for about six months, and they’ve just acquired three pieces of work, which is fantastic.
It’s the first time that there’s been a survey of the work between garment, sculpture and painting in a single space, which is very exciting, because it gives an opportunity to see the cohesion between the work. And I was saying earlier to another member of our crew: it just takes a series of years to establish continuity across the disciplines. And finally, that’s now quite palpable.
Would you say that’s the definition of success?
I think that’s for other people to determine. But I feel there is a sense of synergy and cohesion between the messaging, the storytelling, and the application of the work – whether it be the aesthetics, the materiality, the scale, context, the potency. I know where I sit within the dichotomy of the arts, and it’s a place I want to continue to establish further.
TRANSPOSITION: Samuel Ross x The Balvenie ®️ Francesco StelitanoTRANSPOSITION: Samuel Ross x The Balvenie ®️ Francesco Stelitano
You’ve talked a lot about craft as something inspired by your family and your parents. Do you think the definition or purpose of a craftsperson has changed over time?
I feel over the past decade we went through a spur of growth when it came to expression and creativity, whether it be luxury consumer goods or new artists entering the canon. There’s always a delicate dance between leveraging a moment of growth and ensuring we’re still making the right decisions with the work. Arguably, now the market is just adjusting and restabilising, which gives artists more time to really think about the work being put out there.
And bring more traditional techniques and methods of making to the fore?
Yeah, I agree. Now, the artist’s practice ideally has more time to think about what value they bring to the market. It might be the extension of a particular movement. Like for myself, it was looking at Black British abstraction, seeing there are so many missing holes or cavities within the canon, but still being quite discerning about what I have to offer to that canon. For me, it was about material – like including volcanic ash from the Caribbean islands my family hails from, with turmeric and ink and pigment and honey – to offer a new material composition within the lens of abstraction. That was the research that occurred over the past few years. And from a craft standpoint, it’s also about the quality of craftsmanship in the maker. With some of the partnerships we’ve structured through SRA, we only work directly with families who are still involved in the running of their organisations and companies. It’s typically a value proposition tied to learning how ateliers and maisons function. Because fundamentally, I want to build a maison from SRA across the next 10 to 15 years, which will sit parallel to my practice. But as a company, it will take on the behaviours of a maison.
How would you define that?
There are modern versions of maisons now which are really interesting: the Byredo that Ben Gorham has established, or 1830 L’Officine Universelle Buly that Ramdane Touhami has recontextualised and grown. Those are the two I look at, because they have a new tilt on what European luxury looks like for a particular generation. Perhaps they’re closer to Gen X, but as a millennial, I’m searching to determine what that can be for our generation. The beauty of the maison model is that it takes time to establish it, which means you have less pressure to bring your ideas to market.
The Balvenie x Samuel Ross Artist Sketch
In terms of the installation for The Balvenie, you mentioned you like to bring in new materials or unexpected mergings. Do you think you’ve achieved that with the installation?
When it comes to spatial installations, you have a few different KPIs to establish. One is that the main actor in a commercial partnership needs to be the product itself. Hence why there’s such a focus on the animation of water and this idea of different stages of the fermentation and distillation process leading to whisky from a raw mineral well. Particular aspects are quite clear to understand. When it came to material – after visiting Dufftown – the focus on patinated copper and lacquered oak were two extractions brought into the install here. But also, as an artist, you’ve got to be gracious to the resources each partner has to put forward. There’s a dance, always pushing to articulate things well. Each partner has a different capacity for what can be delivered. If we think about Kohler last year, for example, you could imagine the capacity put forward there was in the millions to establish such a grandiose approach. When you’re dealing with private European companies, it’s a much more delicate and intimate process and output. In this instance, it was more about delicacy and intimacy – not necessarily pushing The Balvenie into a distortion through a heavily abstracted environment with lots of plastics and a postmodern building. That wouldn’t make sense for The Balvenie. If I think about The Balvenie, I think about procurement, almost – finding ways to bring installation in, but also preserving and making sure there’s a sense of comfort. It’s the first time the brand has ever been introduced in that way.
It’s very intimate. And I think what elevates that is the sensory experience.
When I think about performance art and installation, it’s more about what can be conveyed in person that can’t be conveyed digitally. How do we drive people to the space? And if they are coming to the space, how do we offer them something that can’t be online? It’s light, temperatures, the animation of water, the flex of the water, the mist according to the body, the temperature shift and the scent. It’s really leaning into this idea of performance, installation and runway, to deliver something worth visiting.
The Balvenie x Samuel Ross Polaroid
Do you think that installations therefore need to have that performative element? I’m aware you often apply that to your work.
I think back to runway shows at A-COLD-WALL*, where we had misters dispersing water onto models and the audience, or models running through black water. This idea of installation and performance and environment comes down to a love of public art. How do you enamour the public with emotion first? It’s interesting – when you sit between this weird gorge or blur between design and art, there has to be enough intent with design. It’s always the assertion of justifying, justifying, justifying – because there’s typically a clear conversion point. Whereas within the arts, it is much more of a Jungian or psychedelic experience of being arrested by an emotion or a reality on behalf of the artist. And with spatial installations, you’re mediating the two, finding a way to bring them together.
A psychedelic experience – I love that. So is that how you expect or hope visitors will experience it? To walk in and have a psychedelic moment of respite?
I think it’s more that they enter the space and the temperature drops, and the acoustics delivered from the water – that sense of percussion and animation, which dances quite well with the soundtracks playing within the space – offers them respite in the midst of the city. There’s enough abstraction of what you expect from a corporate partnership offered from that experience, but it still supports how special and potent the whisky is itself, through the volume of water being presented.
TRANSPOSITION: Samuel Ross x The Balvenie ®️ Francesco Stelitano
Do you think you’ll continue working in this space, that being collaborations with alcohol brands?
I think it’s pretty interesting. Before we go into any category, I do a lot of R&D – who else has activated the space historically? And I think with the maturity of my career moving forward, these are the keystone moments that define an artist’s impact on a generation. You’ll do an alcohol partnership with some kind of synchronicity, whether it’s Gary and Hennessy, or Murakami and Hennessy, or Futura and Hennessy, or Virgil and Moët, or Kim Jones and Moët. It’s a space artists consistently inhabit. Historically, artists and alcohol partnerships lead to artistic commissions. It’s actually just a part of the creative economy. We’ll stay within that remit. This will expand and tour – potentially globally – which is great. North America and APAC are currently on the cards.
Congrats!
It’s just been an incredible, incredible process. It’s the first moment of many to come, and you’ll see this really start to scale up and take new forms.
At Milan’s Chiostri di San Simpliciano during Salone, Gucci presents seven artist and designer commissions exploring the possibilities of bamboo
Queues of suave, sunglasses-clad people snake down the street. Gucci bags of all shapes and sizes are strapped to arms like prized accessories in a fashion safari. It’s packed, of course – it’s a Gucci event during Salone, and everyone wants a peek (or a selfie, depending on the mood).
Gucci’s Bamboo Encounters, staged within the cloisters of Milan’s Chiostri di San Simpliciano until 13 April, is a sensory shift from the surrounding frenzy. Here, bamboo shoots sprout through gravel beds; strange forms hang from ancient walls; light glows softly against decaying frescoes. It’s part serene sanctuary, part design daydream. Everything on show explores the symbolic and structural significance of bamboo – its legacy rooted in the 1947 Bamboo Bag, and its future imagined through seven very different artistic lenses. Curated by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli of architecture and research studio 2050+, the exhibition shows the strength of bamboo as a sustainable resource and a medium through which to think about ecology, craft and collective memory.
Bamboo is something of a design shapeshifter. It’s fast-growing, lightweight, surprisingly strong and endlessly versatile. It’s these qualities that have made it a favourite across disciplines, from scaffolding in architecture to slatted chairs in sun-drenched courtyards. In interiors, its warm tones and natural texture lend a calming, almost meditative quality to a space. Think spa energy, but with structural integrity. In fashion, bamboo fibres are spun into fabrics prized for their softness, breathability and gentle touch on the skin. Perfect for the kinds of garments no one sees but everyone appreciates (underwear, socks, T-shirts). Its moisture-wicking, antibacterial properties even make it fit for the gym, if you’re so inclined. And with low water needs and zero pesticides, bamboo ticks all the sustainability boxes, which is even more proof that going green doesn’t have to mean going drab.
Gucci’s pioneering use of bamboo began in 1947 with the creation of the Bamboo Bag. During the post-war period, traditional materials were scarce, prompting Gucci’s artisans to explore alternative resources. They discovered that bamboo could be heated and bent into a durable, curved handle, leading to the birth of said Bamboo Bag. This design addressed both the material shortages and also introduced a distinctive aesthetic that became synonymous with Gucci. Over the years, the Bamboo Bag has been reimagined in various forms, maintaining its status as an emblem of Gucci’s heritage and artistry.
So across the must-see exhibition, bamboo’s versatility is explored at length – at times poetically, elsewhere with precision-engineered resolve. Swedish-Chilean artistAnton Alvarez, known for his eccentric machines that extrude colourful furniture from string and glue, presents a bronze fountain inspired by the watery ecosystems of bamboo forests. The piece carries his signature logic of mechanical improvisation while evoking the meditative rhythms of a garden spring. It’s a play between man-made process and natural flow, and utterly meditative.
Dima Srouji, a Palestinian architect and founder of Hollow Forms Studio, contributes a quietly powerful installation combining found bamboo baskets with hand-blown glass forms made by artisans in the West Bank. Her work often dwells on archaeological traces and material histories – and here, bamboo speaks to fragile geographies and the endurance of craft in politically fractured landscapes.
Dutch collective Kite Club, comprising designers Bertjan Pot, Liesbeth Abbenes and Maurice Scheltens, brings a lighter, wind-borne reading to the material. Their handmade kites float in the wind (on a particularly cloudy and breezy day in Milan, I might add). They’re sleek, aerodynamic and colourful, celebrating bamboo’s historical use in flight, but also its role in play, resistance and communal experience. Meanwhile, Vienna-based designer Laurids Gallée, who often fuses traditional techniques with high-tech materials, presents resin furniture that references the structural elegance of bamboo without mimicking it outright. His pieces, translucent and grid-like, glow faintly under light, hovering between sculpture and utility.
Memphis Group alum Nathalie Du Pasquier, one of Milan’s most quietly radical figures, contributes PASSAVENTO – a layered installation of bamboo and silk panels that filter light like folding screens. Du Pasquier has always worked between disciplines, from painting to textile to industrial design, and this piece is no different: its opaque white translucent, structured and soft. Korean designer Lee Sisan, whose practice spans traditional craft and parametric design, debuts a set of aluminium furniture engraved with bamboo motifs. Her work often nods to the heritage of Korean joinery while also using modern fabrication tools. Here, the cold gleam of metal is warmed by rhythmic, almost calligraphic surface patterns, drawing out a contrast that’s hard to miss.
Finally, design duo The Back Studio – comprising Eugenio Rossi and Yaazd Contractor – offers a neon installation that outlines the silhouette of bamboo stems in acid-bright tubes, suspended like botanical blueprints in space. Known for blending pop culture references with sculptural installations, their work here speaks to the tension between nature and artifice, and how tradition might be lit anew through contemporary eyes.
Together, the seven commissions within Bamboo Encounters form a polyphonic meditation on bamboo as a material and metaphor. It also provokes a splendid dialogue between Gucci’s historical use of bamboo and those working in the contemporary design landscape. So, by inviting artists to reinterpret this material, we see themes of sustainability, innovation and cultural exchange brought to the fore. Not to mention Gucci’s ongoing efforts to explore new creative horizons while, of course, honouring its rich heritage.
So if you haven’t already, best get in line – bamboo’s having a moment, and Gucci’s not about to let it pass quietly.
Bamboo Encounters is running until 13 April. Find out more about the event here.
BC architects discuss their evolving approach to circular materials and sustainable architecture
Photography Guillaume Blondiau
Laurens Bekemans, one of four founders of BC architects & materials & studies, is unequivocal when asked how he responds to fellow architects who argue they can only work within the imperfect, unsustainable building industry as it is. “I say that’s wrong. It’s true the system will not change overnight, and will not change from black to white. But if you’re able to imagine the type of impact you wish to have it helps you to understand the trajectory you can set out on.”
Bekemans and his co-founders, Nicolas Coeckelberghs, Ken De Cooman and Wes Degreef, certainly haven’t set out on an easy or conventional path. Their practice is now composed of three entities: BC architects, an architectural studio; BC materials, a cooperative creating circular, earth-based building materials; and BC studies, a non-profit education laboratory. “If, in our first year, you had laid out the trajectory we would take, I would have said ‘Oh my God’,” Bekemans smiles, looking relieved the founders nurtured the practice into its current form by evolution more than design. “We started out as friends at university and had an initial vision that went further than only building. This helped inform how we should grow as an office, not in size or in the number of projects but rather to grow in impact.”
And the impact they seek is ambitious: nothing less than a change in the building culture towards what they define as “bioregional, low-tech, circular, beautiful and inclusive design”. BC tend to go far, and then further, in their experiments towards this aim. They first developed circular building materials for use in their own projects with earth excavated from construction sites. Then they took the step – you might say leap – of moving into mass producing and marketing circular materials as off-the-shelf products. Bekemans explains, “BC materials allowed us to develop a network around these materials, to allow other architects to use them and to facilitate the construction sector using them.” BC’s work producing materials led to further challenges, including the development of building norms for earth-based materials.
Photography Guillaume Blondiau
Bekemans is unfazed when reminded of this diversity of headache-inducing challenges, his focus apparently rarely straying from the ends when faced with the means. “Suddenly you realise how deep you should go if you want to have an impact at certain levels.”
BC, short for Brussels Cooperation, was forged far from their current base on an industrial site in the north of their home city. In 2012, the practice’s founders designed and collaboratively constructed a library in Muyinga, Burundi. Their stumbling into the use of unfired earth blocks for this project came initially not from a desire to use hand-crafted materials but pragmatism: these blocks could be made on-site affordably. Conventional wisdom would, however, say that what worked so successfully in Burundi may be unrepeatable in Belgium. BC, on the other hand, were enthused by their hands-on experience and the credentials of earthen materials which, when compared to those made with cement, have lower embodied carbon, better regulate indoor humidity and can be returned to the earth harmlessly. They bravely decided to take a similar approach to the construction of an education centre in Edegem, a wealthy suburb of Antwerp. Here, compressed earth blocks were made onsite through what has become one of BC’s trademark tools, the workshop: 19,000 blocks were produced and 312m2 of hempcrete – an insulating material made from hemp and lime – was installed as the building took shape with the help of 150 volunteers.
Since then, BC’s roster has quickly grown to include increasingly ambitious and sizeable projects. Lot 8 in Arles, France, designed in collaboration with London-based Assemble, is a tour de force of locally sourced materials. Rammed earth walls using by-product from local quarries and acoustic plaster using waste from the sunflower industry are two among a list of bespoke, beautiful and – in the end – “pragmatic” materials used. All integrate to form an outcome that is not only ecologically sound but also architecturally captivating.
Photography Guillaume Blondiau
Responding to whether BC have found it creatively beneficial, as well as impactful, to be involved in the ‘dirty’ side of architecture and construction, Bekemans has no doubts. “100%, yes. A hands-on practice, one that is open to these different perspectives on architecture, means that you’re open to a whole new range of inspirations that can inform your work.” Traversing boundaries between architectural practice, materials research and the circular economy is becoming a popular approach for architectural practices seeking to change the polluting habits of the building sector which, at 37% of global emissions, is by far the most polluting sector today. “The idea of the architect has been evolving in the past few years and has to keep evolving in the coming years due to the challenges we’re facing,” Bekemans continues.
In this context, BC stand out for their ability to wear many hats and yet create coherent outcomes where ‘design’ and ‘ecology’ are intertwined, neither dominating at the expense of the other. Their finished projects have a feeling of inevitability despite, and perhaps because of, their material experimentation. “We’re not either thinking of ecology or thinking of architectural quality,” Bekemans elaborates. “When designing, we’re thinking about the logics of materials and places and the outcome is a result of this process.” It’s a process for which the intrinsic qualities of materials, rather than only their surface appearances, are central. “I think of a haptic beauty of these materials. Once you use them and design with them according to their characteristics, then beautiful buildings will follow. If you start the other way around, where you design something and then you start to think ‘which materials do I want?’ Well, you design such a space that you can choose only two types of materials, and neither are very ecological.”
Captions: To promote carbon neutral construction, BC architects developed circular building materials for use in their projects with earth excavated from construction sites.
Porro launched Nao Tamura’s Origata console, designed by the Japanese New York-based designer, in 2024. It’s made from a folded aluminium sheetDieter Rams designed the original version of his 621 table for Vitsœ in 1962, in injection-moulded plastic. In 2014 it was re-engineered to take advantage of advances in plastic technologyAlvar Aalto designed Screen 100 in 1936 for Artek, the Finnish company that he set up. It’s a special favourite of Paul SmithPatricia Urquiola designed the Dudet 526 upholstered armchair for Cassina in 2021Bellhop was originally designed for the Design Museum’s restaurant as a table lamp by Barber Osgerby in 2016. Flos now makes a table lamp and a suspension versionPiero Lissoni designed the Eda-Mame sofa for B&B Italia in 2018Giampiero Tagliaferri designed Minotti’s Pattie armchair in off-white, made with structural plastic and a swivelling mechanism, in 2024Gio Ponti designed a range of chests of drawers in the early 1950s for Molteni&C. They are now being manufactured based on original drawings from the Ponti archive, using elm wood and brass feetPoliform’s Mush coffee table was designed in black elm by Jean-Marie Massaud in 2022Le Miniature collection pays homage to iconic furniture pieces by recreating them in miniature form, designed by Poltrona Frau Style & Design Centre. This includes the Miniature Archibald, a version of Jean-Marie Massaud’s Archibald Armchair, originally designed in 2009Joe Colombo designed the Additional System seating in 1967. It was in production until 1974 with Sormani. Tacchini put it back into production this year
Photography assistants Amar Gill and Daiki Tamija
Production Lalaland Retouch Touch Digital
This article is taken from Port Issue 35. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here
