Words Jen Renzi

“These days, people use the phrase ‘design hotel’ purely as a marketing vehicle,” says Marcel Wanders, who just completed his first such large-scale property, the Mondrian South Beach in Miami. “But you can’t just put a fancy sofa in the lobby and call it a day; a design hotel is an experience that goes beyond—it’s a place to pour your ideas and your dreams.

Wanders is not alone in his sentiment. Industry professionals may be the design hotel’s most insatiable audience, but they are also the genre’s harshest critics—the first ones to call out colleagues on watered-down schemes or savvy marketing plans masquerading as high design. For all the talk about newness and reinvention, few designers truly rethink how guests live in these spaces. Indeed, the basic design of hotel rooms has not changed in decades, according to Raefer H. Wallis of Shanghai’s A00 Architecture. “Bath next to the entrance, bed in the middle of the room, desk wedged in a corner. Add Thai decoration and it becomes a Thai-themed room; add curtains and designer furniture everywhere and it becomes a Philippe Starck,” he says. So much for novelty.

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Words Jim Larkin

Indian Modern

Anish Kapoor probes the great mysteries at ICA/Boston

Through September 7

www.icaboston.org

Anish Kapoor is one of the most compelling sculptors on the global art scene. The London-based artist appeared in the 1980s with sumptuous installations of enigmatic mounds of sculpted powder pigments. Over the ensuing years, there were smooth and rough stone sculptures carved with dark cavities, intimating metaphysical dualities, and massive, mirror-surfaced forms like “Cloud Gate,” at Chicago’s Millennium Park, that reflect and distort their surroundings. More recent works like “Svayambh,” an enormous installation of carmine-colored wax exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, challenge the boundaries between art and architecture.

Through all these phases, Kapoor has remained constant in his subtle evocations of his native India, Western classicism, and existential mysteries. This summer, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston is having the first survey of his work in a United States museum in 15 years. The show features a selection of pieces created over the past 28 years, including a new resin work, that demonstrate the breadth of Kapoor’s cultural probing, the versatility of his forms, and the daring of his material deployment, which has ranged from bronze to PVC. Prepare to have your perceptions altered.

Past, Present, Future (2006), wax mixed with oil-based paint. Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery.

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Words Damaris Colhoun

Kartell’s marketing and retail director talks fashion, marketing and innovation.

www.kartell.it

Ami Ami by Tokujin Yoshioka

Sales have nearly doubled at Kartell since Lorenza Luti took over as marketing and retail director in 2005. The plastics manufacturer is a true example of business Italian style. Claudio Luti, Kartell’s owner and chairman, is Lorenza Luti’s father, and his mother Anna Castelli Ferrieri, was the company’s fabled art director during its innovative postwar years. This spring, Fulcrum spoke to Lorenza Luti about Kartell’s latest business initiatives and research achievements.

Under your direction, Kartell has begun collaborating with fashion designers. What’s the synergy?

My family has a long history in fashion. Before my father Carlo Luti bought Kartell in 1988, he was the chair of Versace and a founding partner with Gianni. My first marketing job was at Ermenegildo Zegna. Kartell’s products aren’t just furniture; they’re somewhere in between fashion and furniture. Our chairs tend to be impulse buys, like fashion products, and our fashion collaborations helped us sell twice as much this year over last.

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The fiber-reinforced plastic panels that serve as the skin of Zaha Hadid’s sensuous—and portable—Chanel Art Container (see “Nomad Architecture”). Photograph: Virgile Simon Bertrand.

SB: There seems to be a trend toward more graphic work. Is it due to our desire to liken our surroundings to the graphic world of electronic media? While all of these textural environments are visually fascinating, overkill can be exhausting. Especially when the environment not only resonates with graphic dynamism, but also attempts a nostalgic reassurance. No place for the eye to rest is not always a good thing.

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Words Marisa Bartolucci

www.asymptote.net

A sudden spate of major commissions around the world belies Asymptote’s long, circuitous route to ascendancy. A look at some of the milestones on the firm’s path from bytes to buildings.

Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid

Arrival in the New World - 1967
The Rashid family emigrates from England to the “new world” of Canada. Upon arrival they visit Montreal’s Expo ’67. “Buckminster Fuller’s 20-story-tall geodesic dome, linked by an elevated monorail with the other pavilions, was the most futuristic skyline ever seen,” Hani Rashid recalls. “That’s where Karim [Rashid’s younger brother] and I thought we were going to live.” Instead, the Rashids move to suburban Toronto. “What we’re both trying to do is make a correction. We really believe in a powerful, poetic, magical future.”

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