The renowned Dutch designer Marcel Wanders' latest project is the newest shop in the luxury retail chain Villa Moda, recently open in Bahrain. For inspiration, the designer turned to an old Middle Eastern tradition, envisioning the shop's interior as a souk - a multicultural, intricate bazaar, mixing old and new, diversity and privacy, where all buyers can find what they are looking for and even more.
Thus Villa Moda presents itself in the form of a Tower of Babel of fashion, whose role is not to separate, but to bring together brands and people in love with beautiful things. Marcel Wanders' vision reflects the European fascination for Middle Eastern mysteries, and the Villa Moda shop represents the space where this fascination meets the high fashion mirage. The noise and agitation of the souk are replaced by a discreet and solemnly distinguished atmosphere, where the mannequins showcasing the creations of some of the fashion world's most important designer are treated with a deference worthy of museum exhibits.

Barking Town Square

As symbols of the communities, and more generally, of the society to which they belong, public squares play a major role in the life of the cities, as they perform various functions, from commercial functions to deeply symbolical ones. While the architectural styles and the activities they foster vary from place to place – depending on the local customs, culture, or religion –, their identity is characterized by a unifying concept. From this point of view, Paris and London are two good examples.
Unlike in Paris, where squares were destined exclusively to public experiences, being left outside of the inhabited urban setting, in London many of the public squares used to serve as semi-private gardens for the people living in the residential buildings nearby, while others used to have an important commercial dimension. As a matter of fact, London is the city that best exemplifies the relationship between public squares and residential developments. And it was this type of organization, more dynamic and more open to evolve with the times, that allowed it to continuously reinvent its public space. The last chapter of this long history is mayor Ken Livingstone’s development plan, aimed to create or rehabilitate, depending on the case, not less than 100 public spaces in London. The programme started in 2001 and it is in its third stage already. The projects completed in this period met a great success (each of them seriously enhanced the quality of life in the area and together they all enhanced the quality of the entire city). Among the most appreciated is the central square in Barking. This project was awarded the European Prize for Urban Public Space last year, making its authors the first British architects to receive this distinction.
The project was designed by the young architecture office muf. It was completed in 2008, with a £2 million budget, and it involved rethinking a complex urban space placed at the intersection of many institutions: a town hall, a library, a University of East London presence, the one stop shop. Conceived so as to generate a multifunctional centre, the project was undertaken in two phases: the first focused on extending and refurbishing Barking Central Library, which was transformed in a Lifelong Learning Centre, while the second phase comprised the construction of 200 apartments, distributed on 6 floors that are located directly on top of the Centre, having access to a central, landscaped courtyard. One of the greatest engineering challenges of the project was ensuring that the building of the library can support 6 additional floors. The studies performed lead to the idea of using reinforced concrete columns, to support the strain of the added building. The collumns create an 8 meter-high pedestrian arcade, lit by oversized chandeliers, created by the famous designer To Dixon and suspended 4 meters above the checkerboard terrazzo pavement.
Near the Town Hall, the muf architects used big slabs of pink granite, and at one end there is a folly of flowers, bricks and found objects. This hard landscape is completed by a soft landscape of mounds, woodlands and benches, subtly inserted in the space between the existing buildings. There is also a green area, resulted from planting 40 mature trees, an area that may be used for ludic purposes, though it is not a playground.
This project of reconfiguration sets apart due to its capacity to absorb many types of spaces as a whole and also due to the respect paid to the cultural identity of the setting. Despite the fact that there are some comments to be made regarding the spatial configuration of the public areas, the project is a good example of urban regeneration and it strongly supports the official programme of the Town Hall.

CLASSICAL WITH A TWIST – MUMUTH

“The relationship between music and architecture is a classical one. Too classical for our times, may be the thought of many contemporary architects. But that is not our view; UNStudio likes classical with a twist…” /Ben van Berkel, Co-founder/Director UNStudio (March 2008)
The great composers of classical music come from Austria, just as the best watchmakers are Swiss and the masons are Armenian. The best bankers are Jewish, the ballerinas are Russian and the Mafiosi are Sicilian. But when architecture must marry a completely different art or science, the Dutch architects will always be there to help. After a greatly arranged marriage between design and mathematical diagrams, in the case of the Möbius house, Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos were looking toward the forever-frequented relationship between architecture and music. The project of a new building for the Art University in Graz was based on two concepts: the spiral, as element generating the internal organization, and the transition from organic to orthogonal, namely the so-called "blob-to-box model". Not many of the premises of the project were kept in the design stage, but these two were highly visible even at the official inauguration, ten years later. Still, let us start at the beginning.
The board of the above named university, i.e. the music department, was dreaming of a pedagogical extension for the students since 1963 – a building that would allow them to be free to experiment, have a real interface with the public, a building whose mere architecture would represent a roaring statement in comparison with other music schools. This is how the Mumuth building (Haus für Musik und Musiktheater) was born, after an international contest, held in 1998 and won by UNStudio. Nine years later, the expression “direct dialogue between music and architecture” was carved with letters of fire in the subconscious of every visitor. But what is the meaning of “direct dialogue”? I will not fall into the temptation of using cheap metaphors, saying that “the walls are singing” or that “the space is harmonious”, because, as I have said earlier, the Dutch are subtler than that.
Diving a little in the troubled waters of theory, it is not hard to notice that the functional typology of theatre / concert hall integrates two very different types of spaces: the extravert space of the foyer and the introvert space of the hall. The main problem of the designer was the connection between the two structures, the way in which the visitor sees them together and the transition between them. Similarly, every box sheltering many smaller functions that need to be harmonized together in a large space, for a wide variety of public, needs a dialogue between the objects it contains and their wrappings, visible to the city. Van Berkel comes with an elegant solution: the spiraling constructing element is a way of making the space flow freely and of welding various functions (from the rehearsal rooms to the foyer), and various forms – vertical walls, ceilings, etc. The ceilings develop and ladder in three-dimensional ribbons that make the connection between various levels and various types of spaces. This connection is not aleatory: it is the somehow spiraling staircase itself, a reminiscence of the initial concept, the "spring structure". This structure works in the architecture of the building in much the same way as Serialism in music. The dodecaphonic technique used by modern composers operates with a line of repetitive tones, which, although altered along the piece, they are to be found at the base of the composition, ensuring its unity. The spiral integrated into the platforms, wall and volumes, and afterwards broken into smaller spirals, is directly connected to the musical influence of the design. The line of the entire conglomerate is unifying, as it fusions into the foyer staircase, and it covers all the interior space of the building; the concrete or glass walls, the installations seem to be hung “to dry” on an extremely complicated rope.
Actually, the fact that van Berkel chose a public symbol for such a role is not at all surprising, for the staircase is the visiting card and the central point of any work worthy of the name. If we think of Frank Lloyd Wright and his prairie houses, where the fireplace had the main role, we may find a slight analogy between the two design approaches. Still, while in Wright’s houses – temples of the household – the fireplace joins and stabilizes the house, as a vertical element and symbol of a united family, in this case, the building is a public place, so the most important element is the staircase in the foyer, defined by vertical continuity and visual impact. The famous stairs of the opera house, always merrily springing out in the main hall, where you see people, and most of all, you are seen, is not fit in a place like this – an elegant, almost pompous space, but far from the bourgeois frivolity of Garnier’s Opera. There are no wide ramps for the herd of the “high society”, none of those baroque effects that are dramatic enough to overpass the drama taking place on the stage, and, of course, there is no sign of the almost pornographically loaded exhibitionism typical of the baroque or rococo decoration. The role of the foyer staircase is precisely to animate the entrance space, to articulate the vertical levels and to lure the humble spectator to walk through the building. Let’s imagine couples and couples of Austrian Hansels and Gretels, with their arms linked, carried towards the first floor, lured to take one step after another by the design crumbles. Besides, the staircase consolidates the idea that persists in the whole building: the free-flowing space, deeply modeled by a glass pliers, and organically connecting functions, levels, and types of public. Speaking of the shape, the “blob-to-box” concept deserves to be mentioned once more. The interior forms are fluid, twisted, in the good UNStudio tradition, so they need a connection with the exterior, a rather “genuine” form. The real façade of the building, hidden behind this quasi-parallelepipedic screen, the connection between the two suddenly becomes important – and here is where we can start discussing about musical motifs. The most obvious of all is repetition, because the architects applied a special structure on the interior of the shiny net over the façade, which is seen from the outside as well as from the outside, but differently perceived. The texture is repetitive, without having a specific pattern: in some areas, it is denser in certain elements, while it is thinner in others, following the rule of musical harmony. I mean mathematics. I mean… I have reached the conclusion and the conclusion is simple, but it is also dramatic enough to end my article by stating it and have you thinking further: the connection between music and architecture, so masterly established by Ben van Berkel in Mumuth is mathematical: we find here repetition algorithms, symbolical geometry and, most of all, harmony – which is a purely mathematic concept; ask Fibonnacci.

Buildings One and Two of the Sema Park complex, an office, retail and housing ensemble developing on the banks of the Dambovita river on the site of the former Semanatoarea factory, are the first ones to be built and they constitute, first of all, a signal, as they are placed as close as possible to the water and the main points of access, the street and the subway station. They also represent a visual landmark for the entire complex that is to be built. The two structures are built on a high urban platform, raised half-level above the ground and the two-lever subterranean parking lot.
The buildings make out a strong and dominating presence for the alignment of the Splaiul Independentei and the fact that they polarize interest and bring order to a desorganized area constitutes a plus for Bucharest's future development in this direction.

A recent entry on the list of “hot” destinations in Soho, the trendiest district in London: the Pan-Asian restaurant and bar Inamo. The Blacksheep designers chose DuPont™ Corian® in order to offer personality to a place that brings together the most appreciated “exports” of the Asian continent: cuisine and technology.
The Inamo experience is unique, due to the ingenious ordering system, allowing clients to directly interact with what is happening in the kitchen. The tables, with a Glacier White DuPont™ Corian® top, have a remarkable graphic design and a simple touch is enough to see the chef’s “works”, life size. Customers use a touch panel to “navigate” through the virtual menu, and their orders go straight to the kitchen. And the innovation does not end here. Each table can be personalized, by changing the virtual “table cloth”, and thus creating the desired ambiance. Also, clients can spy the cooks by means of a web cam, they can play games or book a cab without leaving the table. The high tech surface of the tables is the ideal screen for projections; besides, it looks good and its aspect does not change with time.