MUT Design's sculptural Roll chairs are informed by workout machines

Spanish studio MUT Design took visual cues from the leg press machines found in gyms when designing the Roll chair for Sancal, whose true function is unclear upon first view.

The Roll chair is made up of two cylindrical cushion elements that function as a seat and backrest, and four steel tubes arranged in an X-shaped structure that create the frame and legs.

This simple configuration was designed to avoid any "superfluous ornaments" or details, reducing the conventional shape of a chair down to two basic elements.

Though MUT Design took inspiration from leg press machines for the Roll chair's form, it turned the equipment's function on its head by adapting it to create a chair that invites users to rest and pause.

As the studio explains, the chairs are so lightweight that "they don't seem to be there", yet they simultaneously have a striking presence.

The Roll chair was created for furniture brand Sancal as an industrial take on the trompe l'oeil art technique – a term that translates to "trick of the eye", and is used to reference artworks and objects that use realistic imagery to create optical illusions.

This effect is amplified when the chairs are stacked on top of each other, forming a "sculptural figure".

"They are chairs that look like something else," said MUT Design founder Alberto Sánchez.

"Perhaps Roll chair's complex simplicity may mislead you at first, as well as its inspirational concept," the studio added. "Maybe this is the most ironic and contemporary design created by MUT."

The cushions can be upholstered in any of Sancal's fabrics, and the chairs are available in 12 different lacquer finishes on the metal tubes.

The Roll chair – which is set to be launched at the next edition of Salone del Mobile in Milan – was designed as part of MUT Design's A la Fresca exhibition that was held during the latest edition of Das Haus at IMM Cologne furniture fair.

The Das Haus show, which took place earlier this year in January, saw MUT Design create hybrid indoor-outdoor furniture prototypes for an installation that aimed to blur the line between exterior and interior, and architecture and nature.

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Folkform bases ceramic tile mural for public swimming pool on Spånga town plan

Swedish design duo Folkform has installed a mural composed of over 1,000 individual glass and ceramic pieces in an indoor public swimming pool in Spånga, Stockholm.

The mural was commissioned as an art installation by Stockholm Konst, a municipal fund for public art works, and inspired by Spånga's town plan.

Its pattern forms an abstract visualisation of the town seen from above and was created from a collage of different materials.

"The composition is reminiscent of a topographical map with its town square, a tree-lined avenue, the train track and train station," Folkform co-founder Anna Holmquist told Dezeen.

The studio sourced different utilitarian materials, including glass brick, clinker bricks and ceramic tiles, for the mural, which is ten metres long and four metres tall.

Installed by hand over three weeks, the tiles and bricks were juxtaposed with pieces of handmade glass dating back to the 1950s that were sourced from the Orrefors glassworks in southern Sweden.

The pale pastel green, blue and beige hues used for the mural complement the subdued colours of the 1960s building, as well as the blue tones of the pool.

Folkform intended the installation to be an abstract artwork that people could rest their eyes on while exercising.

"All the different materials have a gentle white or transparent shiny finish, allowing reflected and refracted light from the windows to dance across the surface," the studio said.

Folkform also aimed for the project to draw attention to the practice of reusing materials.

"Instead of manufacturing all new materials for the project, the glass represents a creative practice of reuse and the tiles and bricks are an instance of employing industrial ready-mades," Holmquist said.

"It is utilising old ornamented vintage glass and new pressed glass prisms that were going to be discarded, bringing them back to life," she continued.

"It's important to inspire this practice within such a public setting, as it prompts people to think about the practice of creative reuse and recycling in their own lives."

Folkform was founded in 2005 by Holmquist and Chandra Ahlsell. The studio and has previously designed bookcases to make physical books more desirable.

Photography is by Erik Lefvander.

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Monumental Ballpoint Pen Portraits Are Rendered on Vintage Collateral by Artist Mark Powell

All images © Mark Powell, shared with permission

From his Brighton-based studio on the seafront, Mark Powell (previously) pieces together crinkled book pages and postcards laden with travel dispatches. The vintage collages serve as backdrops for the artist’s oversized portraits of older folks, whose pensive stares and deep wrinkles are rendered gently in ballpoint pen. Often magnified, the subjects complement the weathered, ephemeral surfaces that span multiple feet. “I’m currently working on a series of larger works because they have much more impact on the viewer, more confronting yet comfortable I’m hoping. It is also much more tricky because by just using a ballpoint pen no mistakes can be made, and it would be a terrible shame to ruin a map, document, or letter that has survived hundreds of years only to be destroyed by me,” he shares with Colossal.

Each enlarged illustration—which sometimes depicts famous subjects, like Basquiat and Hunter S. Thompson— takes about a month to complete, and Powell generally works on more than one simultaneously. Recently, he’s started to slow down his artistic production as he shifts away from creating for dozens of shows every year. “The past two years, I’ve taken a step back from shows slightly to allow that evolution space to breathe. It has meant that the quality of the work has increased immeasurably (still much room for improvement of course),” he says.

Powell’s detailed illustrations will be included in an upcoming show at Hang-Up Gallery in London. Until then, dive into his repurposed projects on Behance and Instagram, and check out the available prints in his shop.

 

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Folding polycarbonate wall reveals earthy interiors of São Paulo wellness space Dois Trópicos

Brazilian studio MNMA has designed a spiral concrete stair and folding polycarbonate doors in this botanical store, yoga classroom and restaurant in São Paulo.

Dois Trópicos has a calming earthy palette featuring local materials and crafts that MNMA chose to complement the functions of the wellness hub.

"The concept of the project is a hybrid space, there is no determination or boundaries. We want a space that integrates gastronomy, the practice of yoga and botany," MNMA explained. "Where people can feel in every way the importance of spending time in the chaotic city of Sao Paulo to take care of themselves, slowly and with pleasure."

"A commercial space that creates a homelike hosting experience, using nostalgia and natural matter, crafted by artisan hands that desire to achieve not perfection but real environments," it added.

Translucent polycarbonate doors set in aluminium frames front the exterior to contrast the earthy aesthetic, and allow natural light and cross-ventilation.

"By contrast, the facade is technological, drafted and executed with precision, thought to allow sun and wind in, to avoid artificial air conditioning systems," the studio explained.

"The general purpose is to create a contemporary element that, when opened, would bring back some lost time of ancient forms of construction, a slow passing of time, an earthy place... it feels like 'home'." the studio continued.

Slender terracotta-coloured bricks made by local craftsmen cover the flooring and form structures for washbasins, while textured soil-based render is applied by hand to the walls throughout.

"We don't use conventional paint to colour the walls, we literally use earth (like clay) to give this colour, the walls and ceilings are natural earth colours, we don't use anything chemical," MNMA said.

"The soil reacts allegorically to the sunlight movement along the day, turning walls, ceilings and the floor not into limits or boundaries, but into canvases for the light to express itself gradually in various forms," it added. "As it is possible to enjoy comfortably great and authentic food, full of flavours."

A spiral staircase at the entrance has a rendered banister and concrete treads with a marked underside that was built using leftover wood on the construction site. It leads up to an open studio space for yoga and massages.

"The shape was made with materials reused from demolition," it explained. "The experience was more important than the performance of the technique, so the drawings that are usually super strict gave voice to the empiricism of the local artisans workers," the studio added.

A circular door punctured in the rear wall to provides access to stairs that lead down to a restaurant on the lower level. Granite gravel is laid the floor of the outdoor areas to allow for drainage of water. A glazed roof partially covers the restaurant and bar – which is also made from the pale bricks.

Founded by André Pepato and Mariana Schmidt, MNMA has used a similarly pared-back aesthetic for a number of spaces in São Paulo. They include a retail space for Brazilian women's clothing store Egrey and a store for shoe company Selo.

Photography is by Andre Klotz.

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Robert Hutchison Architecture creates Chapel for Luis Barragán on roof of Mexican architect's home

Seattle-based Robert Hutchison Architecture has built a "ghost-like" pavilion on the roof of Luis Barragán's house in Mexico City as part of his Memory Houses exhibition at the architect's former residence.

The installation, which was placed on top of Casa Luis Barragán during August and September in 2019, was a half-scale reinterpretation of an unbuilt memorial chapel Robert Hutchison Architecture founder Robert Hutchison designed in 1994.

"The chapel installation itself is a memory of something that never was," he told Dezeen. "Here, memory takes on physical form, with the chapel 'remembering forward' to create new connections to the site."

The structure was designed to be a homage to the late architect, who is celebrated as one of Mexico's most important, while allowing visitors to reinvestigate the house's rooftop and the surrounding cityscape.

"Chapel for Luis Barragán 'remembers forward' to serve as a homage to Luis Barragán and his lifelong interests in solitude and spirituality, just as it provides a new vantage point for understanding this hallowed site and its neighboring urban context," explained Hutchison.

"The ethereal enclosure creates a space on the rooftop where you can experience both the immediate context of the roof with Alberto Kalach's planters of trees and grasses, just as it frames the more distant skyline of Mexico City rooftops."

The chapel formed part of an exhibition of nine speculative works of architecture by the studio that each "investigate how memories can become a source for architecture".

"It originated as one of the nine allegorical buildings that make up my Memory Houses project, which was being exhibited in drawings and models inside Barragán's studio below," explained Hutchison.

"It continues the questions which begin in the Memory Houses exhibit below, putting viewers in a place of questioning the relationship between architectural representation and actuality."

While the original chapel was designed to be built with a concrete structure topped with a wooden roof covered with a combination of wood and glass shingles, the memory chapel was stripped back to a frame.

For the built structure, hundreds of plastic monofilament lines – similar to fishing line – were stretched across a dark-stained timber frame.

"The installation's minimal wood frame combined with the monofilament fishing line challenges people to reconsider the qualifiers of 'architecture'," continued Hutchison.

"How much can you pare down a form and still call it 'architecture'? The inhabitable installation is undeniably ghost-like, walking the line between presence and absence, form and frame, space and void."

Hutchison placed the structure on the house's roof to take advantage of an underutilised space, which in turn determined the final size and form of the installation.

"Originally, we weren't sure where the chapel installation would be placed, but quickly realized the rooftop was the place to put it," said Hutchison.

"Once we decided on that location, the chapel literally clicked into place – it lined up perfectly with the geometry of the rooftop that Barragán designed."

"Barragán had a very strong connection to his faith, so when we were planning the installation with Catalina Corcuera Cabezut, the director of Casa Luis Barragán, she became excited about the relationship between the memorial chapel, the chapel installation, and the site," he continued.

"In this way, the installation is as much about process as form – we posed an idea, and then let the site conditions shape the final outcome."

Seattle-based Robert Hutchison Architecture is led by Hutchison. The studio has previously designed a blackened-wood house in a forest on the outskirts of Seattle and a cantilevered house with Panoramic views of Seattle's harbour.

Photography is by Cesar Bejar.

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