yohji yamamoto gansevoort : junya ishigami

We bid farewell to the Yohji Yamamoto Gansevoortstore as the company, plagued with financial troubles, begin to wind down its North American operations, ceasing all distribution on the continent.

The short lived Gansevoort store which opened with great fanfare in 2008 is designed by Junya Ishigami, a protege of Kazuyo Sejima. It is a remodeled wedge shape single storey building at the corner of a street junction. The exisitng brickwork was exposed giving the facade of the building a raw tactile quality. The brickwork is also rendered with a certain lightness, looking as if it is a thin skin folded with precision, forming razor sharp corners and soft subtle curves. The brickwork, punctuated with generous openings of clear frameless glass, provides a clear vista into and through the interior space.

The building volume is spliced into two portions with an oblique cut in the centre. The triangular volume housed the retail space while the other volume contained the stockroom and private areas. The urbanistic quality of this move is undeniable, it also gives the store it's quirk. which is the need for sales staff to go out of the building and go into the other wing to have access to stock and sizes not displayed on the sales floor.

According to ny.racked.com, the store closed last Tuesday with a flash 90% sale before the shutters went down for good. And apparently, Yohji's fanancial troubles are in great part caused by the recent spurt of lavish store openings, which besides the Gansevoort store, includes the Rue Cambon store in Paris and Antwerp store in the MOMU building. And as the mens fashion weeks begin for the fall winter 2010 season with Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme missing on the schedule for the second season, we hear murmurs that the company is planning to close down the Antwerp and Rue Cambon stores. The company is now going through a great structural change, that will have a lasting impact on its future as a viable label. We can only hope that Yohji's creative integrity will not be further compromised.

paisajes emergentes : scenography

Stumbled upon these wonderfully seductive sectional perspectives rendered in grayscale presented as part of the proposal for the Museum of Polish History in Warsaw by the studio Paisajes Emergentes. Like little pieces of scenography, each is a vignette of a different period of polish history, framed within the gallery box. The actors on stage are miniscule beside the overscaled set, made to illustrate events bigger than life. The visitors are the unsolicited actors, walking unwittingly into history by chance, or by fate, becoming part of the cast performing to an audience unseen beyond the virtual proscenium.



pictures from here.

Paisajes Emergentes is a studio collective based in Medellin and Bogota, Colombia.

papa palheta

On an island overrun by starbucks and numerous other coffee chains, bombarding us with a staggering array of fancy (and often highly adulterated) coffees, it is sometimes hard to find a place who just wants to serve you a nice cup of cappuccino.

Recently, I've been recommended by a friend to check out Papa Palheta, a coffee tasting bar with a nice environement,located at the lower stretch of Bukit Timah Road, one of those sleepy areas of prime real estate at the edge of the city centre where you have no business there unless you work or live in the area. Having walked around the area quite a few times for a work project in the area, i was surprised, and somewhat embarassed, to have missed a nice coffee joint just a few numbers down from where my project is.

Occupying the back portion of a not-so-old shophouse, Papa Palheta is hidden from the main road, accessible only through the service lane turning in from Hooper Road off Bukit Timah Road. Entrance is only through the back door of the shophouse, unless you work in the interior design office occupying the space in the front of the building, which not so coincidentally is run by the same owner. And through the door, one enters into the backyard of the shophouse. The concrete paved floor and the bare white plaster walls are softened with some plants. Part of the yard is sheltered by clear polycarbinate sheets, almost greenhouse-like. Mismatched chairs, benches and tables are scattered around the yard, forming an informal sitting area. And at the end of the yard, one can see, through the window, the indoor sitting area which is furnished with an eclectic mix of furniture (Chinese style 3 seaters and wicker chairs and glass cabinets stuffed full with bolts of fabric). The overall ambience of the place is akin to the backyard or living room of somebody's home, a stranger's home, but a friendly stranger's home.

Papa Palheta specializes in estate, micro lot and single origin coffee beans which are roasted in-house and packaged for retail. The space is techinically not a cafe but more of a retail space (as we were reminded numerous times by the wait staff) but patrons are able to sample the coffee within the premises, as many cups as they like, after which the patron may pay as muc or as little as they want by dropping money into an unguarded jar within the living room. Or one may choose to buy some of the coffee beans are available for sale on the spot.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, whichever way you see it, the Singaporean buffet mentality didn't quite come over me during my visit and I left having enjoyed only one glass of cafe latte and good conversation with some friends. I'm not sure how well kept a secret Papa Palheta is, but I now know a place for a good cuppa the next time I'm in the area for work, crossing my fingers that a nice bakery will open next door soon.

papa palheta

140 bukit timah road

eprfect verything

Came across this carpet sweater from Bless Nr. 34 while surfing yahoo.jp . It is one of the many wacky things that I have always been fiending for, ever since I saw the presentation. The garment is an irreverent and random intersection of two completely unrelated classic objects, one part goofy knit sweater (made by John Smedley no less), the other part a small persian carpet fused to the back of the sweater forming a thick cape, as if the creator had read superman comics and aladdin simultaneously, an eprfect combination.

pictures by samuel de geode

Bless n°34 Eprfect Verything

daniel svahn pallarna

"Daniel Svahn brought the concept of Chinese Whispers to the designing of his Pallarna (Swedish for stools). He took an image of Jacobsen’s ‘Seven’ chair and wrote a description of it without explicitly saying it was a chair. Another designer then sketched a design based on his text. A third designer wrote a text based on that image which was passed to a fourth to draw it. ‘Each step created variations and produced a final design that I might not have come up with myself,’ says Svahn. ‘The shape took off based on different interpretations so it was an intensely shared process.’ "
wallpaper graduate directory 2010

It would be interesting if he had also made the chair that was sketched by the second designer and placed them along side the Jacobsen 7 series chair which was the starting point. The design process plays on the idea of multiple (mis)interpretation and using the limitations of text into an exploratory tool, which in itself is intriguing, but in this case, the execution might have been more provocative if the concept was pushed a little further by repeating the steps a few more times, resulting in a more drastic departure from the original, perhaps letting it transform into another type of furniture or even into something outside the realm of a functional object.

daniel svahn
wallpaper graduate directory

menya shinchan

Menya Shinchan is a small ramen house located at a discreet spot in a little yard off the main pedestrian street at Robertson Quay, a spot I always think of as the armpit of Robertson Quay or if I were to be asked for directions to the place, I would say it is "somewhere near the toilet" and people fairly familiar with the sanitary geography area would almost immediately understand. Personal hygiene aside, I have not noticed the shop until a friend pointed it out to me one evening on our way for some drinks (while waiting for another friend who was using the toilet! haha!).

The shop sits beside a Thai restaurant (which is pretty excellent by the way) facing the yard, its full glass shop windows plastered with homemade signs and menu board, modestly proud, like a small family business. The interior is a little sparse but warm, almost charming. The space is wide and shallow with the kitchen at the back, sceened with more homemade signs and short fabric curtains. Counter seating line the exterior side of the kitchen with stacks of bowls, utennsils and condiments placed in front of diners. Tables for 4 fill up the rest of the dining area, save for the cashier counter near the door. The mood is reminiscent of the cramped ramen shops in Tokyo but the scale is palatial in comparison, and perhaps, lacking little buzz of after-work chatter or the excitement of the cook flinging hot ramen into bowls of hot soup right in front of you.

I ordered the shoyu pork bone sinjiro ramen expecting a typical bowl of ramen, perhaps a slightly tweaked version with a signature twist or some secret stock. But it turned out to be a a bowl piled high with a heap of blanched cabbage and bean sprouts drizzled with a bit of soya sauce. The egg and chashu were lined at the side, leaning against the mountain of cabbage. My first thought was" where are the noodles?!", which prompted my next course of action which was to start excavating the mountain. Like a hidden pot of gold, the noodles were buried at the bottom, I almost had to overturn the pile of greens to find it. The noodles were not the typical ramen noodles but thicker and more chewy, similar to something one might find in prawn soup noodles or fishball noodles in Singapore. The shoyu pork bone stock was robust in flavour with a film of oil floating on top giving the stock a little aromatic boost. The cha-shu at the side was unimaginably tender, literally dissolving with the press of the tongue in your mouth. The egg, though, was somewhat disappointing with the yolk fully cooked. A well cooked liquid centre egg, to me, is essential to the ramen experience. The ramen was also served with chopped garlic which I had forgotten to add, as I dove straight into the noodles (or rather, trying to find the noodles).

This particular style of the ramen was not something I am familiar with. A little research revealed that this style is in fact a version of the well known Ramen Jiro of Tokyo. While quite a handful of franchise Ramen Jiro shops can be found in Tokyo, all of their lineage can be traced to the Mita Honten (三田本店) in Mita, catering to the hoards of hungry students from Keio University with their hearty portions. Sinjiro 新二郎 in fact means new jiro, its provenence of the style undoubtable.

The serving portion at Menya Shinchan (as at Ramen Jiro) is, at the risk of sounding sexist, very manly, but if you happen not to have the appetite for a full porion of the sinjiro ramen, Menya Shinchan serves a smaller version called the madame sinjiro ramen, for people with more petite stomachs.

menya shinchan
30, robertson quay
riverside view #01-05

holl in herning

Lying on the flat landscape of Herning, is the recently completed Herning Center of the Arts designed by Steven Holl. Resembling a pile of white shirt sleeves, it forms a counterpoint to the old Angli shirt factory sitting across the street., which is shaped like a dark grey shirt collar. The "sleeves" are interwined and forms the roof of the building, draping over the spaces within, forming a convex underbelly that is reminiscent of Jørn Utzon's Bagsværd Church and the Kuwait National Assembly.

However, the most in triguing part of the building, for me, is the wrinkled concrete surface found on the exterior of the building. Created by inserting fabric tarps into the formwork in which the fresh concrete is poured - allowing the concrete to take the shape of the creases and folds created by the tarp, the wall yields a kind of softness that is hard to create using conventional casting techniques.The quality is fabric like and visually soft, uncharacteristic for concrete; the tactile nature of the wall begs the visitor to touch it, to verify its materiality. There is an element of chance involved in its creation; neither the builders nor the architects have total control of exactly what the surface would eventually look like till the formwork of the concrete has been removed. They can only set the condition in which the surface is formed, almost like playing a surrealist game.

More about the building here and here.

some lang

reminding myself how awesome pre-Theory Helmut Lang was (and still is), some detail pictures from his shows in 03 that I came across on while forum surfing. it is startling how little the design of the pieces have aged, if at all.

aesop store singapore

"In our Singapore store, thirty kilometres of coconut husk string, a regional product, was used to construct a dynamic whole-ceiling light fixture. When combined en mass, the seemingly insignificant threads mesmerise and remind one of airline magazine flight maps."

“Geography, climate and light all inform which path we take with our design decisions. For Singapore, we referenced the humble ball of twine with which we wrap and detail our gift boxes. The entire store is framed with meticulously detailed grids that suspend twine from the ceiling. The idea is to work with a sombre material palette in an unexpected way. We’ve used coir matting as carpet and marine plywood to detail our storage units which conceal a palette of Corbusier-inspired coloured wall panels.”

Designed by Melbourne office March Studio, in collaboration with Aesop director, Dennis Paphitis, the new Aesop store in Singapore at Millenia Walk is a great departure from the typical cool and clinical Aesop store interiors. Applied across the whole ceiling, the dangling strings diffuses the light emitting from the naked bulbs nestled within, casting a warm glow onto the simple interior space. The deep fuzziness of the ceiling fixture visually lowers the height of the space, bringing it to a level that is more appropriate for the floor area, forming a flatter spatial proportion that is more pleasant and intimate. Maintenance issues aside, the result is decidedly modern and powerful for such a small space, creating a kind of visual tactility (or physical if you are tall enough) and restrained sensuality that you do not often find in many of the flamboyantly patterned architectural surfaces that are all the rage right now.