Culture | Arper

Brief N°2
Living Systems

Premiering at the 2012 Salone de Mobile in Milan, Arper is pleased to introduce Brief No. 2. Titled “Living Systems” this Brief takes a more in-depth look at Arper and its furniture as a living system of bases, shells, materials, color and contexts.

The Brief pairs Arper furniture alongside diverse images of living systems in ecology, architecture, and urbanism as a form of inspiration, giving an associative and expansive eye into the nature of Arper’s design process.

Features include new photography by Scheltens and Abbenes, a photo essay by Mark Mahaney on Arper’s factory in Treviso, a piece about Arper’s approach of “Soft Technology” and interviews with Lievore Altherr Molina and James Irvine about their 2012 additions to the Arper family.

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Shooting in Portugal

At Arper, we think about our work in many ways: about what elements or places influence and inspire us, and how that influence grows into larger ideas. But, just as important is the consideration of our work in place – how our objects join, blend, and become part of the place they are in. So it is always a good experience to see our pieces in place, and to experience how they become part of the spaces and lives that they join.

This idea was particularly present as we made our way through Portugal and Spain on a recent photoshoot. We had the good fortune to spend time in several extraordinary places – places both simple and refined, quiet and expressive, clearly contemporary yet living with, and listening to, the past.

Photoshoots are complex outings, involving intense work sessions and ongoing technical and aesthetic decisions. But a beautiful space can inspire even admidst the chaos of the creative process. Specially in private residences.

It was a pleasure to spend an entire day in a beautiful house, to see how the light changes, how the house shifts its rhythm and mood, how it speaks about its owners in their absence. And to see how the things we make blend with these spaces.

The Lisboa house, the work of Aires Mateus, was a 17th century city house on a small, quiet street on the hills of Lisboa; its garden has a spectacular view on the river. To the original house, including the kitchen, dining room, living room and library, the owners have added a new wing for the bedrooms and bathrooms. The beautiful original stone floor and steps remain, merging peacefully with a new wooden floor. We were struck by the great sensibility apparent in this place: the grace and talent to respect the old while combining it with the new. Here was history as background to the daily life of a young family with two small boys. Light pours through spaces filled with art and books, where Arper’s furniture seemed effortlessly at home.

In Coimbra we came to the home of two doctors, who have two daughters and a passion for art and architecture. The attention to detail was evident everywhere; each element was carefully executed. The wood floor, salvaged from an old building, was redistributed piece by piece throughout the new house. The construction took 4 years – the deliberate choice of the architect, Joao Mendes Ribeiro, a friend of the owners and passionate about this, his first residential project. The lavish investment of time resonates in every clear, spare line and angle of this space.

The Pontevedra house resembles a miniature fishing village, set on a small bay in Galicia, a region in northern Spain on the border with Portugal. The house, while totally different from the surrounding structures, feels, remarkably, entirely natural and harmonic. Its zinc roofs gracefully reference the traditional buildings of the area. It is a fascinating project: three generations of a family, living together in small separated houses that share common spaces. Using a very intelligent system to join or separate, any space can become an individual area – or can combine with others to be shared.

The owner is a woman who blends warmth with passion for culture and lifestyle. The architect, Alfonso Penela, who’s projects won the Premio de Arquitectura Juana de Vega award, designed both the house and the owner’s small hotel and restaurant.

We returned home recharged and informed, with compelling images in our minds of Arper at home in all of these widely divergent spaces. There was a serene atmosphere and a slow, relaxed sense of time, both in the spaces and their owners. We found a passion for carefully executed details – not in the sense of cold perfection, but a sense of reduction to the essential and relaxed refinement; friendly, simple and warm. All characteristics and values that we work to instill in Arper furniture.

Edited by Jeannette Altherr
Photo credits: Marco Covi

Find more shots here:
Catifa 53, Catifa 80, Dizzie, Duna, Gher, Ginger, Leaf, Nuur, Pix, Saari, Sean, Team.

The legacy of the Messner Mountain Museum

The Messner Mountain Museum, born of the passion of Mountaineer and Statesman Reinold Messner, is dedicated to man’s encounter with mountains. The museum complex is comprised of five small museum buildings located throughout the Alps, each with individual exhibitions, all devoted to the intimate relationship between man and the mountains throughout the centuries and the world.

Each develop a specific theme: the people, ice, rocks, the religious significance of the peaks, and finally, in the charming location of Castle Firmian, an overview of the universal significance of mountains and the region.

“Mountains are a great repository of knowledge” Messner states “that starts from matter, moves through mankind and is finally realized in art. I wanted to build the Mountain Museum to communicate the varied aspects of this extraordinary culture, and leave a sort of personal legacy: a collection of objects, images, and experiences to share with all who love nature and man”.

The Messner Mountain Museum invites visitors to rediscover the essential value of living with nature. Norma chairs can be found in the intimate interior spaces of the Castle Firmian. Palm chairs are used in exterior, public spaces. Fred tables are visibile throughout. Their inclusion reflects Arper’s like desire to create essential and immediate design, intuitively evocative of natural forms that fit seamlessly and elegantly into their context.

Photo credits: Juergen Eheim

Arper at the Topography of Terror

The Topography of Terror is a museum and memorial located in Berlin at the site of the national headquarters of the SS and Gestapo program of persecution and annihilation, dedicated to presenting and understanding the European dimensions of the Nazi reign of terror.

Between 1933 and 1945, the headquarters of the Gestapo and SS headquarters –the Reich Security Main Office, the SS High Command, Security Service of the SS High Command and prison- were located on the present-day grounds of the Topography of Terror. The original buildings that housed the organization were leveled shortly after the end of the Second World War and the lingered, “historically contaminated” subject to random uses and eventual decay. In conjunction with Berlin’s 750th anniversary celebration in 1987, the site was open to the public as for reflection, research and education.

After the German reunification in 1992, a foundation was established to develop the site and an architectural competition was held to create a more permanent structure for exhibition. Architect Peter Zumthor was chosen though the winning entry was never completely built. In 2010, after almost a decade of delay, the Topography of Terror Documentation Center designed by architect Ursula Wilms of Heinle, Wischer und Partner in Berlin opened to the public.

The museum is an unusual cultural artifact, yet an important one. Located at an ominous address, fallow for many years, the overall site intentionally retains the rough, depopulated look it acquired over its years of abandonment. It is one of a very few memorial museums located on an authentic site.

The architecture is a cool, glass rectangle sheathed in steel lamellae, a perforated, screen-like surface, which yields views of the surroundings from almost anywhere on the ground floor. The building houses three permanent exhibitions, a varied program of temporary and special exhibitions, an extensive library, as well as a “Memorial Museums Department” that consults on initiatives institutionalizing national and international memorial sites.

Catifa chairs and Dizzie tables are employed throughout the museum’s offices, conference rooms, auditorium and waiting rooms.

Photo credits: Matthias Könsgen

Color and content combine in “Designers’ Saturday”,
Langenthal

Although the title “Designers’ Saturday” sounds modest enough, this biannual event in the small town of Langenthal, in Switzerland, is a big deal to design aficionados. Langenthal opens up raw spaces in industrial factories to the fantasy of jury-selected exhibitors, who feature their products in artfully designed installations.

Exhibiting in Langenthal for the first time, Arper created a high- concept articulation of the way in which its designs evolve from a single idea to an entire collection.

The resulting visual time-line also emphasized the ways in which color can form a lively conversation when creatively matched with shape and material—a key aspect of Arper’s design philosophy.

Foto credits: Daniel Sutten
Video credits: Architonic AG, Zurigo

Catifa: five collections, one family

What is the essence of family?
Is it a physical attribute—a similarity in looks, a variation on a visual theme that links its members together? Or is it something deeper? A shared history and outlook that leads to a way of navigating the world that’s recognizably unique? All of these are true. But family also has to do with unity within diversity—the cultivation of similar values embedded in a variety of formal expressions and possible uses.

The concept of the Catifa Family – Catifa 45, 53, 60, 70 and 80 – is that of an undulating plane shaped to support a body. An extensive system for both contract and residential applications, Catifa is available as a chair, lounge, stool or bench with custom finishes, fabrics and leathers, bases and accessories.

Catifa 46 is the little sister of Catifa 53. Same sleek profile with a crisp, casual efficiency that is for designed for contract use and spaces that require slightly smaller scale. Extremely flexible, Catifa 46 extends the palette of finishes, bases and accessories for customization to accommodate an almost limitless array of contract applications without altering its essential character.

Catifa 53 is the original: the inspiration that extends to Arper itself. The graceful curved seat and sleek profile are the ultimate synthesis: conceptual purity is achieved through the reduction of the superfluous without loss of sensuality. Utilizing a wide range of finishes, bases and accessories, this almost-universal form may be customized for diverse applications and contexts without altering its essential character.

Featuring the same soft, emblematic Catifa form, Catifa 60 adds more generous proportions and performance. With a variable-height backrest and broad, accommodating seat it is equally distinguished in an office, a boardroom or a stylish home.

Catifa 70 distills the essence of a lounge chair into a slender, ethereal form. Its distinctive, delicate curve creates an intimate space for home or office.

Catifa 80 is a light, low lounge chair with a pronounced horizontal character. Its reduced profile and wide seat are generous without being heavy or bulky. On its own it is a quiet, comfortable resting place or, grouped, a serene space for waiting or gathering.

Whether nuclear or extended, gathered under one roof or spread out across the world, our family bears a distinct—and deeply thoughtful—design DNA.

Photo Credits: Scheltens & Abbenes

Arper at
Venice Biennale

For the British Pavilion at the the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 the theme was Venice itself. Artistic director MUF architecture/art declared that the only items we should take from the UK should be eight small notebooks created by John Ruskin in the 19th century. Borrowed from the Ruskin Library at Lancaster University, Ruskin originally bought the notebooks in Venice and used them for research towards his great book, The Stones of Venice.

Everything else in the exhibition would be sourced in the Veneto, an intention that contained a broader message: in any design project, start by looking at the detail of the place you find yourself.

So we were delighted to have the opportunity to work with Arper and to use their Leaf and Palm chairs in the Pavilion. Arper is both local and global. Based 20 km from Venice in Treviso, it sources the components the its furniture from producers that are part of the Veneto network, though the products have world-class design values.

The Leaf chair, with its delicate wire frame outline, became an integral part of the Lagoon Room at the pavilion, a part of the exhibition dedicated to understanding the relationship between the city of Venice and its natural environment.

In the centre of the room, a drawing table constructed by Giudecca-based carpenter Spazio Legno, invited visitors to sit at bright green versions of the chair and draw the birds that have their natural habitat in the Lagoon. Stuffed specimens (some of them now extinct) were on loan from the Venice Natural History Museum.

They appeared to look out of the pavilion to the Lagoon, and, in the foreground, to a very large tank containing a live slice of Venetian Saltmarsh, complete with wild grasses, reeds, Sea Lavender and Samphire.

Created by scientists Jane da Mosto and Lorenzo Bonometto, the 9metre long tank was one of the most ambitious aspects of the pavilion and has proved to be a big attraction for hundreds of Venetian school children who visited the pavilion.

Now that the Biennale has closed, we hope to travel home light, and to find permanent locations for the exhibition contents in Venice. Only the Ruskin notebooks, and a few boxes of catalogues return to the UK. On the other hand, in what muf describe as the Two-way Traffic of the project, we take with us plenty of ideas that will find their way into future projects.

Vicky Richardson, Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion, British Council and Commissioner of the British Pavilion

Photo credits: Varianti

Arper at
Storm King Art Center
New York

There is something remarkable about the loping, anthropomorphic forms of Calder and Smith passing blithely through the fields of Storm King Art Center. Their presence feels almost natural, though their scale and fierce materiality are anything but.

Arper shares the values of Storm King: meticulous design, open space and public access to art. The rolling hills and grasses seem at first to be wild and untamed, but in fact they have been carefully cultivated over the course of many years. Once the site of a gravel pit supplying materials for the New York State Thruway, the land was sold to Storm King with the agreement that it would be kept open and accessible.
The 50th Anniversary of Storm King Art Center celebrates the complete remediation of the property with the recent opening of Maya Lin’s Wave Field, an undulating series of seven parallel rows of rolling peaks covering 11 acres inspired by mid-ocean waves.

The combination of nature and craftsmanship is also embodied in the Arper Leaf chair, which fits seamlessly into the landscape at Storm King and yet maintains a distinct, eye-catching presence.

At Arper, we support institutions and experiences that are linked to sensitivity and respect for the environment. We are proud to support the 50th anniversary of Storm King.

Photo: Michael Moran

Leaf at Birdbath
New Museum
New York

City Bakery has opened an outpost of their famous Birdbath Café on the ground floor of the New Museum on the Bowery. Arper Leaf chairs surround the café’s square and communal tables, creating a gathering place for museum visitors and the creative community of New York City.

The café, founded twenty years ago by acclaimed baker Maury Rubin, is known for its outstanding food and baked treats, its forward-thinking practices and a strong focus on the environment. Birdbath is an example of the meeting of good design and sustainability.

The Leaf Chair was chosen for the café by the New Museum and Birdbath for its award-winning design and for Arper’s company-wide commitment to minimize its environmental impact at every stage of the chair’s production.

Photo: Michael Moran

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