An orange year

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

The Chinese in Singapore welcome the Lunar New Year with tiny tangerines commonly referred to as kumquats, although they’re not exactly that. The Chinese word for these mandarin oranges is similar in sound to the word for good fortune, and the color is also considered auspicious.

I wonder if Pantone was taking a page from the Chinese when it decided that Tangerine Tango would be the color of 2012.

In any case, the hue’s everywhere these days.

It’s a “vivacious color” as Pantone would have you believe. There was one summer I wore it all the time. But many are finding it’s not so easy to apply. Paired with black and white, it feels halfway between Halloween-y and prison jumpsuit.

A lot of people can’t bring themselves to pair it with brights (I’m really liking H&M’s orange-and-pink). It can come off as a candy or children’s room scheme.

And with shades of brown, it might just feel retro, unless you use a light, light khaki.

What are you pairing with your Tangerine Tango?

Verona, ti amo

We had a free weekend during that Milan trip with Space Furniture. While my travel friends went shopping (first weekend of the summer sales!), my Milan-based ex-model aunt took me on a road trip to Verona.

You cannot truly appreciate design without studying its history; I know there is still much for me to see in person. Verona is not just a charming place full of conservation architecture, it’s also such a literary destination. How can I not go?

From this arched entryway, it’s basically pedestrian-only traffic.

Although there are little side streets – the “modernized” zones – where residents can bring their cars and Vespas.

People flock to Verona for two things. The opera in this coliseum.

They were performing Aida that season, hence the sphinxes outside the theater.

The other reason: Romeo and Juliet. Here is the path towards Juliet’s tomb.

The fictional Juliet is “buried” in this little garden.

This courtyard is supposedly the monastery or convent guarding Juliet’s tomb.

After a while the buildings all look the same.

Until you get to this graffiti’d gate. There are letters everywhere: on the walls, stuck in the bricks, tied to the roof eaves and grilles.

The balcony from which those immortal lines “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou…” were supposedly said.

Here’s the view from inside the balcony.

Juliet’s bedroom.

A sitting room.

The balcony view from the highest room inside Juliet’s house.

My fabulous tour guide, Tita Annie, also drove me over the border to Lugano, Switzerland.

Ciao, Milano

I’ve been holding on to this post since July, but now that the stories are all out (The Peak, Domain and Home & Decor), I can share!

Space Furniture took us to Milan to meet their Italian brand partners.

We arrived earlier than our first appointment, so we walked to 10 Corso Como for a look-see first. Didn’t buy anything that day, because summer sales were just about to kick off the coming weekend.

Walking back to the hotel to meet B&B Italia for lunch, we passed by these bicycles for rent.

For dinner, Giorgetti took us to Bagutta, the trattoria of Milan trattorias, where writers have congregated since 1924.

The next few days were a whirlwind of showroom and factory visits. Flos on Corso Monforte, in a villa restored and interior-designed by Jasper Morrison.

Flos took us to The Studio Achille Castiglioni, where the Italian master worked.

And then lunch overlooking the Duomo di Milano.

We walked through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II at the Piaza del Duomo to get to our next appointment.

The Driade showroom, located in an honest-to-goodness palazzo with restored frescoes.

From Driade, we walked to its founder Mr. Astori’s house for a home-cooked Milanese dinner (cooked by his Filipina maid haha).

We went to the Kartell Factory, which housed its own museum chronicling its development of plastic furniture for the past half-century.

We went to Bergamo, hometown of the innovative Acerbis brand. They took us on a lovely walking tour of the historic higher city of Bergamo…

…its cobblestone streets…

…and Renaissance architecture.

We went to more factories: Poliform, Flexform, Giorgetti. This is B&B Italia.

And this, I can’t remember anymore.

We had morning slushies at the Bulgari Hotel before hitting Milan’s summer sales.

On our last night, Giorgetti took us to dinner at Il Gato Nero, where George Clooney reportedly broke up with Elisabetta Canalis.

After dark, there were fireworks because it was the Fourth of July!

BTW, we stayed at the tiny, family-run Park Hotel, which had Miro paintings all over the lobby.

And Achille Castiglioni lights in the bedrooms. How designer can it get?

Next post: Verona and Lugano.

Roundtable discussion with Lissoni

There’s a reason I don’t like press conferences and roundtable discussions: I was at a press conference for Queer Eye (yes, that was a long, long time ago), and it was with general media, and I asked Thom Filicia a design question for the architecture magazine I was then writing for. And two days later, this newspaper lifestyle writer published all our questions in her column. All. Not having a journalism background then, I didn’t understand that such open Q&As could be free-for-all, no such thing as etiquette for journalists.

So when we were invited for a roundtable discussion with one of contemporary Italian design’s masters, Piero Lissoni, we nearly declined. What, no exclusive? We’ve quite convinced ourselves that we only publish exclusives (I mean the collective authority “we”).

But I’m glad I went. It was an interesting discussion. Piero Lissoni is a very funny, self-deprecating design icon who reminds me of my mentor, UP College of Architecture former Dean Dan Silvestre (aka Boss D), but with much less angst. He – Lissoni – thinks there are too many design schools, and too many kids who want to be architects and designers, who shouldn’t be because they want it for all the wrong reasons. He thinks certain cultures don’t deserve to breed designers because they haven’t created a design-centric environment that will foster curiosity and creativity. He says: “Unfortunately, in our world architects, like Genghis Khan, are responsible for many many horrible things” – and this, just after he admits to making many mistakes in his career. And yes, Piero Lissoni is an architect. And he says all this with a quiet, melodious voice, and eyes twinkling as if with an inside joke.

I sat across from Lissoni, offered him a band-aid because he cut his finger on the edge of the table (fortunately he didn’t design it), and snapped a picture while he spoke and then signed our monographs. And I’m not scooping us (the collective authority “us”) because some of the other titles at the roundtable have their stories out already. Besides, there’s something altogether different in my story. And an exclusive picture. At least that, we got.

I want to ride my bicycle

When he visited Singapore, my brother asked, why don’t I have a bicycle? The short of it is, I’m too lazy to lug it up and down the apartment complex.

But Singapore is, at least, a cycling-friendly city. Even if a pedestrian can get run over by two cyclists coming from opposite directions on the sidewalk, where you WALK. The city does have bicycle lanes and parking thingies where you can chain your bike outside MRT stations. Sadly, we don’t have a bicycle sharing system.

So, imagine my delight when I saw those yellow two-wheelers in Milan. Suddenly, bikes were everywhere, without obnoxious, inconsiderate cyclists (After all, if you’re fostering a cycling culture, you must have some form of cycling etiquette, right?). I couldn’t stop taking pictures of bikes, and they turned out better than my pictures of buildings! Here are my three favorite shots:

Inspired by Unhappy Hipsters

They’d rather read magazines than talk to each other.

Ironically, one of my go-to sites when I need a good laugh during deadline week is Unhappy Hipsters, which makes fun of photos published in design and shelter magazines.

Today we were waiting for the perennially tardy Piero Lissoni (he said so himself – “I am precise, but I am always late!”) at Dream Interiors, where he was launching the newly-revived PierAntonio Bonacina, and I couldn’t resist shooting photographer D and acting-art director N. How would you caption this picture?

From the archives

Does your house have a pedigree?

In Singapore, it’s very rare for us to have the honor of photographing a house with a prestigious provenance. Unlike in the Philippines, where I was spoilt for choice when I wrote for Bluprint and Lifestyle Asia, I can count on one hand such homes I’ve met in the three years I’ve lived here.

The easiest excuse here is that there just isn’t enough land to build the kind of houses that would become distinguished landmark architecture.

Second, most pedigreed houses belong to the kind of people whose names, if this were Western high society, would only ever appear in the newspaper thrice: to announce their birth, their marriage and their passing.

Third – and in my opinion, a lame excuse, because if you’re not keen on educating the masses about good design by sharing your project with them, what kind of architect are you – a lot of the better-known architects here balk at having a mass-market publication like the one I write for feature the residences they’ve designed.

Today I just finished an article on a pedigreed house.

When I used to live on Upper East Coast Road, my bus would pass this Post Modernist house and I would wonder what it looked like inside. Three years (and a new owner) later, its gate and its doors (all but one!) were opened to me. But even during the photo shoot, I didn’t realize the house’s provenance. Only during the course of my backgrounding research did I learn: this house was designed by one of Singapore’s pioneer architects, Tang Guan Bee, who also co-designed the Gallery Hotel. After he built it, the Singapore Institute of Architects awarded it a citation for design excellence in 1992.

It is an interesting study in designing for a long, narrow plot of land. It has, as most PoMo buildings do, a bold and playful, geometric massing. And because it was built as a pair of mirror-image houses, it even demonstrates symmetry and some deconstruction if you compare and contrast the pair.

Its current owner has freshened up the house with a more sophisticated black-and-white exterior paint job and very sleek, designer-name interiors. And by opening the house for us to shoot, she has – perhaps unconsciously – given a lot of Singaporeans the chance to learn something about the contemporary architectural heritage that they have.

Blogged on Dish on Design, May 29, 2009

I’m hitting a wall in my Milan story…

So, I thought I’d clear my head a bit by quoting:

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

I wish I’d had the guts to say it when I walked through Casa di Giueletta. Although since I don’t have it memorized, I probably would have sung instead:
“Only you, you’re the only thing I’ll see forever
In my eyes, in my words and in everything I do
Nothing else but you
Ever.”

Sigh. I want to go back where I can feel the cobblestones through my ballet flats while I walk between century-old buildings made in the Palladian style, and eat tongue-tingling gelato from Massimo’s on Via Castelvetro.

Ok, now back to design writing.

Eye candy at the Milan Fair

So now that the Milan Fair report’s been out on newsstands, I can write about the stuff that caught my eye… which, of course, is all about color!

New hues of Fabio Novembre’s Nemo for Driade were launched this year, and they make the mask-inspired chair much less scary. I saw them lined up along the entrance hallway of Driade’s flagship store in the Palazzo Gallarati Scotti, and they were so much more inviting than their black, white and red predecessors.

I’m not a big fan of molded plastic armchairs, but Cappellini’s Tron chair, designed as an homage to the Walt Disney movie, surprisingly feels as comfy as it looks (bet it would be so much better in molded polyurethane!). The color, of course, is why I’m really writing about it.

Meanwhile, from the traditionally plastic-furniture maker, Kartell, is a good-looking sofa to snuggle in – Patricia Urquiola’s Foliage, with an upholstered foam seat (yay!). I like how the leafy cushion sits on the branchy thermoplastic legs.

Stackable marshmallow poufs from Casamania! Marshmallow! In color! Ok, I can actually live with the white because they’re even more marshmallowy. Who can resist?

More color from the Gemmy pendant light by Slamp. So pretty!

Color PLUS denim – now that’s another combination I’d go for. Moroso’s collaboration with Diesel continued this year with a good range of denim pieces. I like the Tiramigiu sofa bad, first for the turquoise top, and second because I have a soft spot in my heart for sofa beds.

This denim chair from Casamania is called Remember Me because it’s made of recycled denim. Interesting concept. But I’m not so keen on sitting on other people’s jeans.

A new version of an old favorite: Alessandro Mendini’s Proust chair for Magis can now be used outdoors because it’s in plastic.

Also not new, but appearing in more eye-popping shades, is Patricia Urquiola’s Bend sofa and Naoto Fukusawa’s Papilio chair for B&B Italia (I shot this in the flagship store on Via Durini, because I only went to Milan, post-fair, but that’s another post).

Another Pritzker for Portugal

Some countries pride themselves in being able to afford a Pritzker Prize-winning architect. Some countries, well, they just make their own. This year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate is 58-year-old Eduardo Souto de Moura, a fairly-under-the-global-radar Modernist.

(The Cinema House, completed in 2003, photographed by Luis Ferreira Alves)

(House in Serra de Arrabida, completed in 2002, photographed by Luis Ferreira Alves)

(The Paula Rego Museum, completed in 2009, photographed by Luis Ferreira Alves)

Jurors praised Souto de Moura’s consistency in his Modernist approach (he’s been referred to as neo-Miesian). He will be conferred architecture’s highest honor for a living architect on June 2 at the Andrew W. Mellon auditorium in Washington DC (what I’d give to be a fly on the wall there!).

At 58, Souto de Moura isn’t the youngest laureate (last year’s winner, Ryue Nishizawa, one-half of SANAA, has that honor, being 44), but he’s probably the most low-key. The bulk of his portfolio is located in Portugal. Although looking at the fact sheet from the Pritzker Architecture Prize it seems Souta de Moura’s career path was directed toward this honor. Wannabe-winners would do well to note that the prolific architect made very good decisions that would bring him to June 2, 2011. He began his career working for the first Portuguese architect honored with a Pritzker laureate, Alvaro Siza; he designed a good balance of residential and civic buildings; he is widely published, and he entered (and won) a lot of design contests.

If that’s not enough, wannabes might want to take a page from another Pritzker Prize-winner’s book (click here) and nominate themselves.

(Images courtesy Pritzker Architecture Prize)