SpaceTM's Joe becomes outraged (briefly)

Those of you that watch X Factor, American Idol or the equivalent (depending on which country you live in), will know that if you like an act you have to vote for them, otherwise they could be kicked out of the competition. VOTES COUNT.
 
Libraries are one of those institutions that appear eternal, like Simon Cowell's cuboid hairstyle, but how recently have you actually stepped into one? On a recent visit home to see my parents I learnt that their local council was planning to close most of its bibliothèques. This shocked me. "It's an outrage!" I cried, slamming my fist onto the table. Yes, such fervent displays of solidarity are all well and good, but when did I last support my local library? Erm, probably never.
 

This is a ridiculous situation, if only because I love book shops. Have you ever gone into a book shop, spent hours reading and not ended up buying anything? (Me personally, that would be a yes). Browsing for books brings on the same buzz as clothes shopping, but also it invites you into a myriad of possibilities, a different world for every tome. You travel to so many mental places, you step out onto the street having been on holiday. Amazing!

Last weekend the V&A Museum in London opened a new bookshop designed in collaboration with Vitsoe (look out for the company's "iconic" 606 Universal Shelving System, designed by Dietr Rams in 1960). The space has been laid out "to encourage visitors to browse and explore the breadth of what's on offer". So I intend to do just that. And for anyone whose fix is still not satisfied, there's also the National Art Library upstairs, possibly one of London's best kept secrets. It's open to all, but perhaps don't tell everyone or they'll all want to go.
 

Random picture of two people putting together the 606 Universal Shelving System

Your Space [015]

"I made a film a few years ago in the Sonsbeek Pavilion. It’s a sculpture pavilion designed by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld. He designed it in the mid 50s as a temporary sculpture, then it was rebuilt in the mid 60s after he died as a type of memorial to him. It’s in the park of the Kröller-Müller museum in Holland. It houses sculptures by Barbara Hepworth and is actually quite beautiful in terms of that mid-century modernism. It really encapsulates this idea about the relationship between modernism and the ruin, because in a way its like an unfinished building, or a building as a type of fragment. It’s a type of shell, more than anything. A very elaborate bus stop!"

Gerard Byrne, artist

SpaceTM's Joe cracks up

Crack in whitewashed wall, Stockwell, London

  

All pictures copyright Joe Heaney, 2009

Space TM's Joe becomes dizzy on a London tube train

Seat Fabric

Wall Graphics

All pictures copyright Joe Heaney, 2009

Your Space [014]

"My partner’s parents have built an underground eco ‘bunker’ in St David’s on the Pembrokeshire coast, where we spend many happy days. From the outside it looks like a hobbit house, covered with sedum, grasses, wild flowers and butterflies in the summer. You expect it to be dark, but the interior is filled with light. It feels like an upturned boat because of the amazing curved ceiling beams and port-hole windows."

 

"I’m always at peace in this space because it’s part of nature; glass walls mean there’s no real boundary between the inside and the rocks and plants surrounding it. No TV, no traffic – just sunny walks in salty fresh air, barbecues on the beach and the sound of the sea. If I’m in ‘the bunker’, surrounded by the people I love, with fresh fish, good books and red wine – I’m in heaven."

Ellie Tennant, interiors journalist and stylist for Ideal Home magazine, The Design Mole blogger and founder of Molly Cotton

The White Stuff: SpaceTM's Joe explores Maison Martin Margiela

I've always had a rather love/hate relationship with fashion. It started at university when I spent my entire student loan in one afternoon, only to realise white trousers and two-inch soled silver trainers were probably only a good idea if you can stay alive to wear them. And for that you also need to be able to purchase food at regular intervals. Oops.

These days I'm rather more pragmatic. I can coo at a fashion magazine, but I like being comfortable, so I'm happy to leave the flouncier feathers to the peacocks.

That said, I've always had a soft spot for Martin Margiela; the notoriously mysterious Belgium designer who started up his own fashion label – Maison Martin Margiela – in 1988, after working as an assistant to Jean-Paul Gaultier.

He has novel way of doing things. For example, he never gives interviews other than by fax and no one knows what he looks like.* He eschews celebrity and hides the identity of the models he uses with ponytail hairpieces, veils or – in catalogues – by placing black bars over their eyes (a pair of sunglasses from his 2008 spring/summer collection is shaped like such a bar and is named "Incognito"). His products don't come with a flashy logo, but a simple white rectangle, sewn on with four corner stitches (using white thread, natch) onto the inside of the garment.

*Ok, I'm sure his family know what he looks like, you get my drift.

 

As you may have already guessed, white is one of his favourite colours. "White means the strength of fragility and the fragility of the passage of time," the fashion house is quoted as saying in 2008. When it moves into new spaces – shops and the like – it takes over the furnishings of the previous inhabitants and paints them... you guessed it, white! And I don't mean a pretty, super-sleek, gallery kinda white, but a coarse, heavy handed "I had several bottles of WKD before I started this" white.

It also paints its garments. As as you might expect, over time the paint wears off. "Oh no! shhhhit! What am I gonna do?" Chill out, because this is all part of the Maison Margiela aesthetic. Whereas ageing and decay are generally considered taboo in the fashion industry, Margiela embraces the passing of time along with the associated wear and tear a garment may acquire. As the white paint gradually cracks, new textures and colours become visible. It's resurrection IN DRESS FORM.

I love white (see here for evidence of this) so you can perhaps understand why I dig all this sartorial monochromatic fetishism.

Incidentally, I did once try painting an old pair of trainers white. It actually led to me pulling someone in a bar (they were a Margiela fan), but I didn't account for the fact most footwear is designed to allow your foot to breathe in some way. If you pile on the emulsion, they soon start to stink...

 
Maison Martin Margiela 20. The Exhibition, is at Haus der Kunst, Munich, from March 20th till June 1st, http://www.hausderkunst.de/

SpaceTM meets designer Helena Jonasson

This April Hidden Art will be taking six of their designer-makers to the Milan Furniture Fair to unveil new products and prototypes.

SpaceTM particularly fell in love with the work of Helena Jonasson and Yu Jordy, so we decided to ask them a few questions, starting with Helena...

Which do you prefer - black or white?
White.
Modern or retro?
New and old in combination.
City or seaside?
Seaside.
What's currently your biggest inspiration?
Wood. Winter landscapes. Fictional characters & little stories.
What was the last thing you fell in love with and bought?
An Alvar Aalto stool.
What's your favourite room at home?
My home is in an old steel factory with amazing windows - the main room is large, bright and high up, almost in the clouds!
Where's your favourite space.
The headspace at the beginning of a journey somewhere unknown and exciting.

Pictured, extreme top:  Linie cabinet. Top: Funkis drawer unit by Helena Jonasson. Yu Jordy's interview with follow tomorrow.

SpaceTM's Mark muses on light

Above: Sunlight in Soho between 4pm and 4.30pm

The film industry spends millions on special effects that attempt to dazzle and amaze; fashion has become a huge, complex industry that exists to attract and stimulate the eye; and artists spend their lives – in the process sometimes destroying it – struggling to produce something which inspires both awe and thought. 

Yet none of the above, no architect, designer, advertising creative, painter or landscaper can stop me in my tracks, turn my day around and stun me into silence, nor inspire as much desire to live as the simple beauty of sunlight slowly moving across a room.

SpaceTM meets designer Yu Jordy

Where's your favourite space?
The Tate Gallery of Modern Art in London.
How would you describe the interior of your own home?
White. Like a blank canvas. It's the start of creativitity.
What was the inspiration behind your new paper cut lampshade?
The Cloud Lamps were inspired by my architectural design projects. When I was doing my MA in Architecture at the Royal College of Art London, I used paper to make architectural models and exhibited at the Venice Biennale. The public loved my models and wanted to buy them, so I decided to transform the architectural models to a domestic product that people can buy and use to enhance the atmosphere of a home.


 
As an architectural designer, I think three-dimensionally; I don’t see the lampshade as an object but a space. My passion is to create sensational spaces for people. I am interested in how it feels for the 1:50 scaled people on the lampshade in the designed spaces, whether it is a church, playground, shopping mall, park or school; and how it feels like for us when the lamps are lit at home.
 
I don’t see lighting as an additional element to the architecture, but an integrated part of it, driving the relationship between the solid and void, adding life to the architecture.
 
As an architectural designer I wish to create better environments for other people, that’s not only by designing beautiful and sustainable buildings, but also exquisite sustainable product.

Pictured: paper-cut lampshade by Yu Jordy Fu

SpaceTM's Joe muses on cars

Above: Rain on a taxi window, London

I've always thought there was something romantic about staring through a rain-smudged window. It frames the view, turns it into a movie scene and conjures up all kinds of scenarios concerning travel, loss and the arrival of the unknown. 

 

When I was a child I would press my face against the window and enjoy sensation of cool glass against my warm skin (especially if the car heater had created an Amazon-like humidity). Then I would sit back and look at the outline of my features left on the glass. My dad hated that! 

  

I can't drive so I've never had my own car. That means I've never felt that sense of ownership others get from their automobile. Cars have an almost wombic association to me. They carry me around and protect me – and I'm not required to do all that much except just sit there, or maybe give the odd direction once in a while. You can't exactly press your face against the window if you're supposed to be driving. Well, not easily anyway...

SpaceTM's Mark gets all fired-up... again

After experiencing the super-long "statement" fireplace in the Marano Hotel in Paris, my deeply ingrained opinion that fire had no place in a modern building promptly dissolved. If you remember, it was clean-burning, linear, fire-tamed and... well, sorted. What could be better?

To answered simply, how about this fireplace by ODOS architects for their Dwelling at Maytree? It spans the whole interior wall, even extending out into the garden. The twist is, below this strong linear feature lies an honest camp fire placed directly on the floor. It is a beautiful, architectural solution made more powerful by pulling back with such a simple fire.

Photograph by Ros Kavanagh / ODOS architects

SpaceTM salutes Le Corbusier

Love him or loath him, you can't escape the influence of architect Le Corbusier (unless, that is, you live in an igloo). Throughout February and March the Barbican, London, is celebrating this mighty master of construction with an exhibition and a number of special events. SpaceTM took the opportunity to ask assistant curator on the exhibition, Corinna Gardiner, what the fuss is all about.

What do you love about Le Corbusier?
His ideas reshaped residential architecture from the private villa through to mass social housing. As an architect he saw his task as one of improvement for all.
Why is he still relevant today?
Take Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (pictured below), built in the late 1920s – it still looks radically modern near 100 years later. The pared back mode of living he advocated continues to be considered elegant and desirable today.
So, what's your favourite Le Corbusier space?
The Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp is an obvious favourite. At once monumental and intimate, this sacred building is hidden away amongst trees up on hill just outside the small town of Ronchamp. The winding approach and then the sudden revelation of the sculptural concrete form is unforgettable.

SpaceTM meets "Wallpaper Man" Colm O'Gallachor

Colm O'Gallachor, otherwise known as "Wallpaper Man", has over 25 years of experience installing and removing of wall coverings – from grass papers to wide vinyls – so it's perhaps no surprise Farrow & Ball regard him as a recommended paper hanger. SpaceTM reckons he must have seen quite a few interiors, so we took the opportunity to ask him about some of them.

What's the most complicated kind of wall covering you've put up?
The most complicated I have used was a gold leaf. It was more the angles in the room that was difficult.
What's the weirdest?
I think it has to be a graffiti mural I put up in a child's bedroom.
Where is the most amazing space in which that you've worked?
A country home in Fiffe Scotland. I had so many rooms to work with and different wall coverings.
What's the biggest trend in wallpapers at the moment?
I find that I am doing more and more feature walls with Farrow & Ball and Designers Guild papers.
Finally, where is your favourite space?
It is a church in Seville Spain called Iglesia de San Julian. It has the most amazing designs and features. It's something else! If you travel there its worth a visit.

Colm is available for hire and can be contacted on either colm01@blueyonder.co.uk or 07879484286

SpaceTM looks at photographer Joseph Eta

  
Yesterday SpaceTM featured Cameroon photographer Joseph Eta. We like his pictures so much we thought, "hell, why not show another one?!" So here it is – and if you're online, reading this in the middle of an urban jungle somewhere, then this image is especially dedicated to you. 

As Eta himself explains: “You develop a respect for nature when you grow up surrounded by it. I take photographs to help people who live in concrete worlds get a sense of what that respect feels like.”

You can buy prints of Eta's pictures here and he also has an exhibition at the Harbour Club, Chelsea, London, from February 27th.

Your Space [013]

 

"I have always loved the coast. Currently my favourite spot is the Westcombe Bay in south Devon. I unload all the pressures and anxieties of everyday life on the low tide and the ocean takes it away. Then I relax and tank new energy and dreams from the ocean as the high tide comes back. At the beach I can see as far as my eyes can take me and I can also relax and think as deeply as my mind can dive. Staying connected with the natural world always keeps me in check."

Joseph Eta, photographer (pictured: Aurelias Wish by Joseph Eta)

Interview: Liberty's furniture & lighting buyer Michelle Alger

Half Blue Love Seat by Ercol

Liberty's, the famous London department store, is one of SpaceTM's favourite destinations. In particular we like nothing better than spend a Saturday afternoon having a nose round the huge variety of new and vintage furniture on the fourth floor. Here we get to meet the person who handpicks every piece that ultimately ends up in this hallowed space, Liberty’s furniture and lighting buyer, Michelle Alger.

First of all, where's your favourite space?
It has to be my garden in the summer. It backs onto a field full of cattle and horses. I am a plant junkie and spend ages planning the display (with a little help from my horticulturalist younger brother!). My other favourite space would be looking over Sennen Cove in Cornwall – sheer, rugged, natural, beautiful coastline.
Who's your favourite furniture designer?
Danny Lane. I love his use of glass and wood, and the way that he puts the natural elements together.
My favourite new designer is Zoe Murphy, for her quirky re-interpretation of Margate landmarks which she laser prints onto wood. Being a fellow Kent girl I really get her ideas and her re-use of vintage furniture; and, so it seems, do my customers, as we have sold out!
Ercol is making its debut on the fourth floor of the redesigned Liberty. What is it you love about Ercol?
The wood bending technique is something that fascinates me and the clean simple lines and shapes. Their designs still have longevity decades later.

Evergreen sofa by Ercol 

  

Black or white?
Neither, I am drawn to colour most of the time.
Old or new?
Old every time.
Minimalist or ornamentation?
Ornamentation. I like a treat for the eyes and not show homes. Features and character are what’s important to me. The excitement of what you might see round the next corner is the look that I have strived for on the fourth floor of Liberties.
Cluttered or tidy?
Have you not seen my desk? Cluttered!

SpaceTM's Joe on minimalism

I took this picture at my partner's house. 

His house is my muse! I've always liked white walls and wooden floorboards, so I suppose you might be thinking I should go and live in an art gallery. But that wouldn't be the same. The minimalism has to be offset by everyday objects; objects that "shouldn't be there". Or at least wouldn't be if it was a shoot in a style magazine.

That's why I love to see the washing stand.

Your Space [012]

"At the moment my favorite space is Gwithian Towans in Cornwall, where I have studio space – so different from New York where I used to live. This place is unspoiled and I dig that."

Karen Koltrane, artist

Stairs by SpaceTM's Joe [002]

Early Victorian Townhouse

 

All pictures copyright Joe Heaney, 2008

Stairs by SpaceTM's Joe [001]

60s Towerblock

All pictures copyright Joe Heaney, 2008