Astute readers may remember the penultimate sentence of my notes in the last issue of this magazine. “Each issue of AN Interior is essentially a little adventure.” That exploratory vibe remains intact in our latest offering. As you flip through these pages, you may notice that some work has been done to the spread. The award-winning publication’s art direction was previously led by Maiarelli Studio and has now been expanded by Studio Loutsis. The result is playful, with more colors, typefaces, and collages added. Our ongoing goal is to wisely share new products, objects and interiors to an expertly eyed audience. Magazines, like all magazines, are design projects, and along the way they are refined as constraints and opportunity boundaries change.
Perhaps the best example of Studio Loutsis’ innovation is its annual Top 50 list presentation. How would we present this selection of established companies and new voices? After some sketches, we came up with the idea of shrink-wrapping the list. The result is a shiny, metallic, and unexpected finish, perfect for representing the office’s celebrated creativity.
The functions that promote the following renovations are also lean meta-architectures. Witness the spaces architects have created for themselves or for architectural production and teaching, such as the interiors of the Sam Jacob Studio at Kent School of Architecture. Their scale ranges from a small Madrid apartment reimagined by HANGHAR to two buildings designed by modernist architect Gene Reedy and reimagined by STRANG. The last one is perhaps the most informative, with Outpost Office providing an installation that responds to Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center’s colliding grids with fun, bizarre details like oversized neon sims.
Archmongers’ raw Terrace House redo reminded me of Christopher Wool’s SEESTOPRUN, an exhibition that brought together the artist’s work from the past ten years, which opened in New York this summer. Set on the vacant 19th floor of Greenwich 101, just a few blocks from Ground Zero, the show pleasantly mixed artwork with the chaos of a construction site. (Interestingly, this space previously housed the offices of Studio Libeskind, and recently hosted performances of Richard Maxwell’s new play, Buildings I and II.) SEESTOPRUN ignores the capitalist standards of real estate and art galleries for a more materially honest presentation, more like an indicative X-ray than a perfect image. Many architects have adopted similar research methods with promising results.
Installation shot of Christopher Wool’s SEESTOPRUN in New York (Courtesy of Christopher Wool)
There’s more. The opening pages feature new furniture, paint, shops and restaurants, while the Focus section delves deep into the world of tiles, textiles and surfaces. There is also criticism! Elizabeth Goodspeed wrote and illustrated works about the aggressive revival of postmodern design. Reaching issue 26 means the magazine has fully grown up, conceptually freed from its parents’ health insurance and forced to fend for itself in the world. If this edition is any indication, I’d like to think we’re on track.
