Dezeen is teaming up with Salone del Mobile to live stream a talk on women in design and art institutions today. Watch live from 3pm Milan time.
Dezeen's collaboration with Salone del Mobile will see us live stream a panel discussion in its Open Talks series, curated by Maria Cristina Didero, every day this week during Supersalone.
The second talk in the series will explore the experiences of women within design and art institutions.
Titled Women Within Institutions, the talk will be moderated by creative director and design consultant Tony Chambers.
Tulga Beyerle is the director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe
Beyerle became the director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg in 2018, after acting as director of Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden.
Previously she was director of Vienna Design Week, which she co-founded in 2006, and also worked as an independent curator in Vienna and Glasgow.
After completing an apprenticeship in carpentry, she studied industrial design in Vienna and taught design history and theory at the University of Applied Arts there for seven years.
Lilli Hollein is the director of the MAK museum
Hollein is the newly appointed general director of the MAK Museum in Vienna. Until May this year she was director of Vienna Design Week, which she also co-founded.
Hollein studied industrial design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She has published writing on architecture and design in major international publications, and has curated annual contributions to Vienna Design Week, exhibitions on the Memphis Group and young Austrian architects, and Austria's contribution to the 2007 São Paulo International Architecture Biennale.
Alexandra Cunningham Cameron is curator of contemporary design at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum
Cameron is a writer and curator who specialises in contemporary design. She currently acts as curator of contemporary design at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York.
Cameron was previously editor-in-chief of independent arts journal The Miami Rail and creative director of Design Miami.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Financial Times, Vogue, PIN UP, The New Yorker, and other publications. She was also the organiser of Willi Smith: Street Couture, the first exhibition and monograph on the American fashion designer.
Design consultant Tony Chambers
Chambers is the founder of creative agency TC & Friends and co-founder of design and art platform OTOMOTO.
He is the editor and creative director of Phaidon's monograph of designer Paul Smith, and the co-chair of Brainstorm Design, Fortune magazine’s design & business conference.
From 2003 to 2018 Chambers served as editor-in-chief and creative director ofWallpaper*magazine, and has also acted as art director of BritishGQand art editor ofTheSunday Times Magazine.
This year's edition of Salone del Mobile, titled Supersalone, is curated by architect Stefano Boeri as a response to the coronavirus pandemic, which caused the cancellation of the 2020 edition.
Taking place in Milan in September rather than in its usual April slot, the special edition of the fair will feature products displayed on a series of parallel walls instead of in branded booths.
Salone del Mobile and parallel fuorisalone events will take place from 5-10 September 2021 in Milan. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
Architects André Caetano and Ana Fiúza have converted a former sawmill in the Portuguese town of Oeiras into a house that stands behind a freestanding gabled wall.
Caetano and Fiúza, who are partners in work and in life, worked together to transform the 18th-century building in the heart of the town into a residence for a young couple who wanted an architecturally interesting home.
House in the Sawmill incorporates the 18th-century walls of its predecessor into its architecture
"The volume of the old sawmill was the starting point for the entire project," explained the architects.
"We intended to preserve its volume and its gable roof, [which were] perfectly integrated into the urban imaginary of this town."
A series of patios divide the property
In order to make House in the Sawmill more attractive and functional, Caetano and Fiúza introduced three patios that create a strong connection between the interior and exterior spaces.
The compact outdoor areas help to make the rooms feel larger and brighter while providing different experiences throughout the building as a consequence of the varying views.
The kitchen features limestone counters
The property's entrance is positioned at the base of a freestanding gabled wall that faces the adjacent street and completely conceals the private areas from view.
The doorway leads to a sheltered space containing a raised garden that is lined on one side by a remnant of the original 18th-century stone wall.
"The new facades replicate the geometry of the original construction, respecting its industrial creation," said the architects.
"However, the use of slats and generous windows allow new visual relations with the exterior, creating unexpected frameworks with the limits of the original construction."
The gabled roof is expressed on the interior
Internally, the house features a double-height living space that extends all the way up to the exposed pitched ceiling.
A large opening containing sliding doors looks onto another outdoor space at the far end of the room. A roof light and windows incorporated into one wall contribute to the brightness of the whitewashed space.
Microcement floors add to the minimal aesthetic
A mezzanine study slotted in beneath the sloping ceiling is flanked by an angular window containing a door that leads onto a roof terrace.
The interior features a minimal material palette, with surfaces including the microcement floors, limestone countertops and wooden joinery adding textural details throughout.
The World Trade Center terrorist attacks threw the safety of skyscrapers into the spotlight, but since then they have become taller and more ambitious. As part of our 9/11 anniversary series, we look at how skyscrapers design has changed over the past 20 years.
Following the attack on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2011, which caused the pair of 110-storey skyscrapers in lower Manhattan to collapse, many people questioned the future of tall buildings.
"We thought [9/11] would put an end to the ambitions to build tall for a long time," said James von Klemperer, president of Kohn Pedersen Fox, which is responsible for designing four of the world's 10 tallest skyscrapers.
However, instead, there has been a surge of skyscraper buildings in the past 20 years.
"It's not a question of opinion, the fact is it hasn't stopped us from building tall," Von Klemperer told Dezeen. "Since then, more tall buildings have been built than existed before."
"So you could say it's kind of a renaissance of tall building design and development that happened after September 11."
"Idea of skyscrapers as a symbol of progress has really never gone away"
Alongside a surge in the number of tall buildings over the past 20 years, the height of skyscrapers being built has also dramatically increased.
According to Ken Lewis, partner at architecture studio SOM, which designed the world's tallest building, "one of the most significant changes" to skyscraper design over the last two decades has been the rise of supertalls – buildings that are over 300 metres in height.
"The immediate response to 9/11 as it relates to skyscrapers was that no one would ever want to build above a tabletop again," Lewis told Dezeen.
"Obviously that has not been the case, in fact, the proliferation of supertalls around the world has been unprecedented."
The collapse of the Twin Towers led architects to reconsider the safety of skyscrapers. Photo by UpstateNYer
"In 2000, there were about 25 supertall skyscrapers in the world," he continued. "Today, there are more than 200, with many more under construction. The idea of skyscrapers as a symbol of progress and power has really never gone away."
Eui-Sung Yi, partner at Los Angeles and New York-based Morphosis, told Dezeen that the 9/11 attacks directly led to the creation of ambitious supertall buildings.
"The reason why the towers were targeted was because of their symbolic and iconic stature," he told Dezeen.
"So that reason a skyscraper exists has not gone away, and if anything it probably proliferated it."
Attacks brought building security to "front and centre"
Assisting this increase in skyscrapers and supertalls have been significant improvements made to both their physical and operational security.
Some architects attribute this directly to 9/11, which Chris Lepine, director at UK studio Zaha Hadid Architects, said placed security and life safety at the "front and centre" in the immediate aftermath.
"Physically, protection to the base of a building with vehicle barriers and blast-resistant cladding was a predominant criterion," he told Dezeen.
"Logistics and building access were scrutinized with no parking below sensitive portions of any building."
The supertall Burj Khalifa began construction just three years after the attacks. Photo is by Wael Hneini
KPF's Von Klemperer believes this led to a proliferation of closed-off buildings that became "untenable as citizens in the cast of characters in the city".
As such, architects now have to work "extra hard to look for ways to contribute to the well being of the public" when incorporating security measures into a building, he said.
Techniques include disguising bollards as seating and implementing smart building technologies such as facial recognition that track building occupants without slowing their entry.
"No one wants to build an unwelcoming fortress," added Lepine. "So clever solutions continue to be developed with security systems greatly enhanced by smart technologies that control all levels of building access."
Egress route designs were revisited
In SOM partner Lewis' opinion, "the most direct way that [9/11] impacted skyscraper design is not viewable from the outside", with many countries beginning to collaborate on sharing building codes and best practices for skyscraper designs.
"The aftermath of that day precipitated the incorporation of international building codes into the local codes around the world," he said.
"Today, there is extensive overlap among building codes everywhere. The fact that there is a more universal standard has allowed architects and structural engineers to share information and lessons about successes and efficiencies in core and life-safety design."
Georgina Robledo, associate partner at UK studio Roger Stirk Harbour + Partners, which designed a skyscraper on the World Trade Center site, told Dezeen that one of the biggest changes to the building codes relates to egress following a review of the evacuation of the Twin Towers.
There were only a few narrow staircases in the World Trade Center, which led to a slow evacuation after the attacks.
Scissor stairs are now discouraged and more logical pathways to multiple egress points are required. Wider stairways and backup lighting have also become mandatory.
A dedicated elevator that is protected for firefighters to use in an emergency is increasingly common, alongside lifts for occupant evacuation as an alternative to stairways.
"So there are alternate means of egress and the separation of those," Robledo said. "So you can always enter a stair core, and if that stair in the lower levels gets compromised, you can re-enter the floorplate and change."
The elevator technology used in skyscrapers has also vastly improved in terms of velocity and efficiency in moving people across floors, meaning people can be moved out of a building quicker than before.
High-strength concrete has become commonplace
The materials that are used to build skyscrapers have also been reconsidered in the past 20 years. The building cores that contain these egress routes are now typically built with high-strength fireproof concrete.
At the original World Trade Center, the stair cores of the Twin Towers were contained within low-strength Gypsum-board sheets or drywall. Following the attacks, this meant they disintegrated at the impact zones and trapped building occupants above them.
"9/11 really drove home the critical nature of the building's core and of everything that is within the core," said SOM partner Lewis.
High-strength concrete cores are now commonplace, and large amounts of specially designed reinforcing bars are typically incorporated to help shield them.
One World Trade Center by SOM was built on the site of the Twin Towers. Photo is by Hufton + Crow
Staircases in modern skyscrapers are highly pressurised too, meaning they prevent smoke from seeping through closed doors to better facilitate escape and firefighting access.
"The hardening and the pressurisation of the stairs allow for space that is ventilated, but is not compromised by the risk of smoking during a fire event," Robledo added.
Built-in redundancy used to prevent collapse
Over the past two decades, engineers have also developed ways to create structures with built-in redundancy – meaning skyscrapers are typically designed against progressive collapse.
Progressive collapse is the structural failure of a building that results when a key structural element fails and causes the failure of adjoining elements. This is what happened at the World Trade Centre following the attacks, as the fires and high temperatures that resulted from the collisions led to sagging floor plates and in turn, the buckling of the steel structure.
Adrian Smith, who designed the world's tallest building while working at SOM and co-founded skyscraper specialist studio Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, said that built-in redundancy prevents structural failure as damaged elements transfer their load elsewhere.
"If there was another plane strike on a supertall, the idea is that if it takes out a column or so that the other columns are strong enough themselves to pick up the load that's displaced by the missing structure," Smith told Dezeen.
This played a big part in Smith's design of the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, which began construction just three years after the terrorist attacks.
"Bigger effort" to create mixed-use highrises
Other changes to skyscraper design over the past 20 years that are not attributed to the events of 9/11 include the increase of towers with a mixed-use programme, rather than those dedicated solely to offices.
Morphosis partner Ung Joo Scott Lee said this is one of the most positive changes in skyscraper design as it ensures that these structures are a benefit to the wider community.
Mixed-use skyscrapers such as KPF's Azrieli Tower have become increasingly common
"From a positive point of view, I think the discussion of the tower typology has changed a lot into one where programmatically, how do you make things that can help the communal aspect of a tower," he told Dezeen.
"There's a much bigger effort in cautiously understanding how to truly create mixed-use tall towers...to allow multiple tenants and different kinds of spaces to come together."
Skyscraper design conducted "in a virtual world"
Envelope design has also improved, with the aim of enhancing the environmental performance of skyscrapers.
"The performance of the envelope has been enhanced, and that allows for better solar control, better energy efficiency on these buildings," Robledo explained.
"It's about energy efficiency," she continued. "You are at a point that the higher you go, the less of the context you have to create shadow or to create protection."
According to SOM partner Lewis, this improvement has been guided by digital technology, which ensures towers can be built "in a way that makes more economic sense than it used to".
"Computational design has advanced so much that we are able to work on these supertalls in a way that is far more efficient – iterating them hundreds, if not thousands, of times more than we could at any point in the past," he explained.
"The design is done fully three-dimensionally in a virtual world in which we create digital twins for operational and environmental efficiency."
9/11 anniversary
This article is part of Dezeen's 9/11 anniversary series marking the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
The architecture shortlist was announced yesterday, the design shortlist will be unveiled tomorrow, the media and sustainability shortlists will be announced on Thursday, followed by the studio shortlists on Friday.
A further round of judging by our master jury will determine the category winners, which will be announced in late November.
Vote for your favourite project from next week
Following its success last year, we're bringing back the Dezeen Awards public vote. From next week onwards, you can vote for your favourite project or studio to win the public vote award. Look out for more information on Monday 13.
To receive regular updates about Dezeen Awards, including details of how to enter next year, subscribe to our newsletter.
Below is the full interiors shortlist:
Above: Softie in California, USA, by OPA is shortlisted in the house interior category. Top: Camilla and Mark Armadale in Melbourne, Australia, by Akin Atelier has been shortlisted in the small retail interior category
House interior
› SRG house, Sydney, Australia, by Fox Johnston
› nCaved, Agios Sostis, Greece, by Mold architects
› Softie, California, USA, by OPA
› Canyon House, London, UK, by Studio Hagen Hall
› The Island, Paris, France, by Clément Lesnoff-Rocard Architecture
Art Barn in Devon, UK, by Thomas Randall-Page has been shortlisted in the small workspace interior category
Small workspace interior
› Siersema, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, by Beyond Space
› DJA Studio, Vancouver, Canada, by D'Arcy Jones Architects
› Maruhiro Office, Kyushu, Japan, by DDAA inc.
› Sher Maker Studio, Chiang Mai, Thailand, by Sher Maker
› Art Barn, Devon, UK, by Thomas Randall-Page
