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• Architecture
• Industrial Design
• Interior Design
• Sustainability

• Avinash Rajagopal
• biobased materials
• Ege Carpets
• Filzfelt
• Koukos de Lab
• Lingrove
• Mater
• Model No.
• Normann Copenhagen
• Spinneybeck

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• Architecture

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• Net Zero and Net Positive
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Furniture maker and Italian heritage brand Poltrona Frau distills an ether of slender silhouettes, sacred geometries, and expressive hardware from Gio Ponti’s original 1965 Dezza armchair. The contemporary editions stay true to the spirit of Ponti—the late Milanese multi-hyphenate architect who pioneered aesthetically pleasing and functional domestic architecture and objects—with three configurations and two seating types available in proprietary upholstery options.

The collection showcases Ponti’s penchant for a simple construction system as the beechwood armchair comprises only four pieces: two sides of varying pronouncements, a backrest of correlating postures, and a deep seat. Dezza 12 is petite with a low profile and thin armrests. Dezza 48 builds on that form with an integrated headrest in the backrest. And Dezza 24 stands taller as a more substantial armchair also available as a sofa alternative. While the seat suspension varies by chair, the cushions are accentuated with a pair of buttons and the side mounting elements are articulated with chrome-plated brass hardware. Finishes for the feet, articulated as legs from the front and rear elevations, are black or white open-pore lacquered ash.

Poltrona future-proofs the styling of this timeless artifact with its Redevance woolen satin fabric upholstery, and a flat pattern derived from the company’s collaboration with Archivio Gio Ponti and local manufacturer JSA Art Textile. The graphic illustration, originally conceived by the architect himself, is composed of repeated circular elements and complementary figures that sit in contrast to the field within which they appear to vibrate. Updated with shades of blue and gray, the broken-down and repeated geometric sequences create a number of potential configurations that can be scaled across platforms. Upholstery can be further customized with external and internal refinements for greater visual impact. Molto bene. 

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• Industrial Design

• Gio Ponti
• Joseph P. Sgambati III
• Poltrona Frau

The design variations within the new PrentaLux line of 3D-printed luminaires add up quickly—designers can specify any combination from four performance pendants, 16 hospitality pendants, 18 colors, three inner textures, and three outer textures. But the sustainability benefits remain constant across the line with recycled or bio-based content, recycled packaging, and full chemical transparency.

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• Industrial Design
• Wellness

• American Specialties
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• Cosentino
• Grohe
• Infinity Drain
• Kohler
• Sherwin-Williams
• SPA products

Mass and cross-laminated timber are all the rage in sustainable architecture. But generally wood building products are milled into precise blanks for use in construction. Amelia Baxter, CEO and cofounder of WholeTrees Structures, has a better idea.

“When you leave a tree unmilled and with the outer fibers intact, it is 50 percent stronger than sawed timber with the same cross-sectional properties,” says Baxter, who majored in environmental studies at the University of Chicago and founded WholeTrees with partner architect Roald Gundersen. After initially culling trees in Gundersen’s home state of Wisconsin, they have expanded their efforts to use forests nationwide. Baxter’s overall goal is “to create prosperity between humans and forests.”

But this is not Abe Lincoln log cabin technology. “We have a sophisticated process of working with foresters on what kind of tree we will buy,” she says. “We use a center line and gauge how much fiber is around that. We don’t buy trees whose wobble is too great.”

So far, WholeTrees has focused on commercial and institutional projects instead of residential ones. There are two examples they are especially proud of: the Children’s Museum of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, by Steinberg Hart; and the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Peacemaking Center in Dowagiac, Michigan, by Seven Generations Architecture and Engineering. In addition to having large trunk members for the main building support, the Eau Claire building has an elaborate system of whole tree trusses engineered in collaboration with WholeTrees.

While L.A.’s San Fernando Valley contains many lovely people centered residential streets, most of its commercial thoroughfares are anything but. Lined by row after row of standoffish horizontal sprawl, they’ve been designed (if you can call it that) with practicality in mind: to be seen from cars, parked in, and populated with little connection to community, humanity, or nature.

Los Angeles architects Patterns, helmed by Georgina Huljich and Marcelo Spina, set out to challenge this condition when they designed a multilevel medical and wellness facility along Victory Boulevard.

The project centers on the adaptive reuse of a 1940s bowstring-truss supermarket warehouse into two floors of space for WelbeHealth, a full-service senior care facility, along with forthcoming upper-floor wellness facilities for yoga, Pilates, physical therapy, and psychotherapy.

Despite increasing the building’s usable square footage significantly, the firm’s most important moves involved taking pieces away, or “liberating” the boxy, sealed-off design, as Spina puts it, and creating a sense of connection and community.

“We managed to do things that are more human,” adds Spina. “We kept the spirit of the original building but made it better with meaningful interventions. Light comes in in surprising directions. You’re surrounded by existing things in new ways.”

The first interventions you notice are the unification of the campus via a palette of dark gray paint, the retrofit of the old facility’s signage with a more subtle corrugated tower, and an expanded outdoor plaza filled with fixed and movable seating, grassy areas, and steps for seating and events. Beyond that, the firm carved out four vertical courtyards—one on each side of the building, and all but one dug into the ground—pulling natural light into all levels and creating unique public sites lined with furnishings, concrete planters, and layers of lush greenery, all of which can be enjoyed in person or simply via views from the inside.

Inspired by (among other things) the sharp angles of the beams making up the building’s central truss, the firm “played with the mass,” slicing diagonal cuts into exterior brick walls that bring still more light and air into the building while creating a unique sense of visual tension.

(An uneven rhythm of windows along the edge adds to this sense of off-kilter visual variety.) Above the base of the bowstring truss, the firm installed a level of podlike volumes that break down the complex’s overall scale, creating a village-like feeling that subtly alludes to the Valley’s singlefamily residential tradition. Clad in dark gray corrugated metal walls (matching the standing seam roofs here), this upper zone provides large windows and balconies, enhancing the connection to the street. These spaces hadn’t yet been leased at the time of writing, but a tour through them revealed spacious, light-filled rooms shaped by the original bow truss’s arches and energized by forests of exposed wood and steel columns and beams.

Patterns did not design WelbeHealth’s interiors, but the company, which has facilities around California, has fit nicely into the architects’ core and shell with modern, light-filled interiors that take advantage of the project’s natural light, spacious interiors, and lovely courtyards. One hopes the firm gets a chance to redevelop the client’s adjacent building, a 1970s “Valley Brutalist” structure that thus far has only been repainted. And that local taggers stop using the building as their dramatic new palette.

Indeed, hope springs eternal in the effort to bring the midcentury Valley into the 21st century. “It still feels familiar, but it’s not what you expect,” notes Spina. And that’s exactly the kind of approach that this dated urban/ suburban realm needs.

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• Infrastructure

• Books
• James Sanders
• Los Angeles
• Sam Lubell
• Urban Design
• Woods Bagot

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• Architecture
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• Avinash Rajagopal

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