Contract Magazine - July/August 2018 - 12

EDITORIAL

Feeling
at Home
Wherever
We Go
As we were putting this month's international issue to bed, I was
reminded about one of the biggest influences on our workplaces
today: home. At Neocon last month, the Best of Neocon competition
winner Keilhauer won for their "soft contract" approach to their
furniture design. Herman Miller's new partnership with HAY-
a refreshing brand with everyday design at affordable prices-
is another nod to the residential crossover. And when I recently
visited the headquarters of Knoll in New York, they had already
integrated furniture, lighting and, accessories by another one of
my favorite Scandinavian brands, Muuto (Knoll acquired the Danish
Company for $300 million late last year). It was a move that returned
the company to its roots: afterall, Florence "Shu" Knoll's designs for
her company's Madison Avenue showroom in 1948 created vignettes
that looked like someone's home, at a time when most of the interior
projects she was designing were for the commercial sector. Shu,
who studied in London at the Architectural Association during the
late 1930s, with her dry sense of humor once described residential
influence to me as what the British called "homely." Call it what you
want: resimercial, soft contract, or the latest buzzword transversal,
the need to create workplaces that embody our home life is a big
trend that's here to stay.
This month, we kick off the issue with a cover story on
the London-based interior architect Sevil Peach. I first came across
her work a few years ago, when I visited the Vitra offices she designed
at their Weil am Rhein Campus in Germany. From multinational
headquarters to co-working start-ups, Peach's human-centric
designs can be found across continents for other clients as well,
such as Kvadrat, Sony, Microsoft, and Artek. Kevin Sauer, a former
employee at Microsoft perhaps best described the experience that
SevilPeach Architecture and Design created in an office: "It is very
much like coming home after a long trip, stepping through the front
door of your home and knowing that you are where you most want
to be-home!" For the Spaces Hopflein (page 86) in Rotterdam,
Sevil Peach and ZZDP transformed a 1970s Brutalist tower into
a co-working workplace designed to serve core human needs.
She approached the project as she designs every office-building
a mix of environments with an open plan to support the different
ways people work, from group collaborations to solitary deep work.

Peach creates architectural spaces that care for the people who
are going to occupy them, describing them as: "spaces that have some
kind of spirit, and that spirit is combined with the people and the
architecture, so they kind of fuse into each other."
We also visit another co-working space, this time in London.
Long before WeWork and NextSpace, The Office Group-known
for its curatorial approach to selecting project locations-has created
co-working spaces where the interior spaces connect to the context,
whether it be the building itself or the neighborhood. We focus
here on the collaboration between Stanton Williams and Universal
Design Studio to rethink a 1960s London building, resulting in
Tintagel House (page 102), a workplace for the future with nods
to the past.
Finally, one of my favorite museums in Amsterdam is the
Stedelijk, which inspires me every time I visit. Five years ago, the
museum opened Bentham Crouwel Architects' "bathtub extension,"
and as part of the final phase of its transformation, the museum,
in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas's AMO, created a new showcase
for its permanent collection in its Lower Level Gallery renamed the
Stedelijk BASE (page 96). The space rethinks the art gallery concept
with a unique architectural element that engages visitors and invites
them to experience the works of art in a way that is personal to them.
Visitors can choose how to navigate the Stedelijk's collection and
make unexpected connections between design and art.
Whether it's a coworking space that make us feel cozy
but still productive, or a gallery space that responds to the new ways
that we absorb information-being capable of focusing on many
things at the same time-it's exciting to experience design, whether
here at home or abroad.
Sincerely,
Paul Makovsky
Editor in Chief

12

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