You Are the Context, the latest publication from FR-EE (Fernando Romero Enterprise), posits an expanded meaning of the term “context” and speaks to its importance and relevance in contemporary architectural culture. What was once defined as the “placeness” of a particular site and intended as a critical tool by which to guide new larger-scale projects, context is now mobile and even personalized, as applicable to building as it is to finding your next dinner spot. As the book emphatically states, you are the context, and you carry it in your pocket wherever you go. Click through for more about the book, plus how to win a copy!

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“Chandigarh” by Doshi Levien; All images: Doshi Levien for Moroso via

Atavism can be quite the repellent thing, especially in design. The return to or the appropriation of past forms inevitably requires a dilution of the cultural histories and sources that originally gave rise to them. We’re still living with modernism in one form or another, from industrial design to architecture, though one that’s long been stripped of its founding social and utopian content. But on occasion “retro” design can be a delightful indulgence. See London-based Doshi Levien‘s “Chandigarh” collection of new armchair and sofa designs that purport to tap into the strains of Indian modernism established by Le Corbusier and the mid-century capital he built.

Produced for Italian furniture maker Moroso and displayed at the Salone del Mobile last month, “Chandigarh” consists of upholstery pieces set within a bent tubular steel frame. The foam-molded seats are covered in either leather or patterned fabric, custom designed to evoke the redeeming rectilinearity Corbu’s modernity represented. A pair of circular terrazzo and glass coffee tables offset the rigid geometries while adding to the sets rich palette of materials.

The forms possess the same graphic-like profiles that are ubiquitous in Corbu’s Chandigarh, from the flatness (and symbolically flat) of the “Open Hand” and the architect’s hieroglyphic murals and sgraffito emblazoned on the government buildings to the city’s now much-prized engraved sewer tops. These symbols are rooted in Chandigarh’s collective urban identity that marks, in the words of the designers, “the coming together of modernity, sensuality, graphics and eccentric qualities”.

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Since taking the interiors market by storm in 2005, Canadian design studio ROLLOUT has been known for the eclectic designs and community-based inspiration behind their custom-printed wallpapers. While many designers have been eager to embrace and faithfully reproduce the minimalist aesthetic, ROLLOUT chose to hail texture, expression, emotion and color as pillars of design that have been unduly silenced since the peak of modernism. Cheering the mantra of “more is definitely more,” ROLLOUT has scoured every corner of the graphic arts, from illustration to photography to pattern the spaces of countless clients with vibrant expressions of art, innovation, individuality and community.

On their trip to IDS Toronto, MoCo Loco spotted one of the latest designs from ROLLOUT, a wallpaper that mirrors and arranges the iconic photograph of the Eiffel Tower during its stages of construction to appear like kaleidoscopic ink blots. Modern in its subject matter, baroque in its detail, and abstract in its full-scale form, the wallpaper tastefully welcomes the city of lights into any room. The design is part of the first collection from a series called Wanderlust, a series inspired by travel and cities. First stop—if you couldn’t guess: Paris.

[Click the image for larger view]

[All images via MoCo Loco]

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When the Philips Pavilion was opened at the Brussels World Fair in 1958, Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis, along with Edgar Varese, introduced a mode of spatial production in which the arts and the built environment were synthesized in a way that had never been seen up until that time. Though the pavilion stood only for a season, it remains to this day a testament to the historical moment in which architecture began to expand its interests and pursuits beyond the founding Greco-Roman truisms that had dictated the parameters of the field for so long. In addition to these and other salient points that can be made for the work’s influence–among which the corporate sponsorship (and manufacturing) of art and cultural objects that built it cannot be ignored–the pavilion also gave birth, somewhat indirectly, to the technological light show. Xenakis’ later installations and experiments would expound on the initial propositions advanced by the Philips Pavilion, while increased computing power and readily accessible 3d-modeling and scripting sets, not too mention the open-sourced mentality of contemporary digital culture have accelerated the development of dynamic, interactive light shows. Which is what we get a whole lot of nowadays, from urban pinball games to psychedelic cathedrals.

“Augmented Structures v1.1: Acoustic Formations / İstiklâl Caddesi” by Salon 2 is the latest of these “interactive architectures.” The 400m2 architectural installation premiered in İstanbul last fall, hypnotizing visitors with a 6-minute dance of light and form. The piece can be described as a negotiation between the virtual medium of mathematically-generated visuals and the architectonic tradition.  A large undulating frame was mounted on the façade of a public building at Galatasaray Square and served as the “canvas” on which the fluid-like graphics–which feature references to the triangulated surfaces of the Rhino age–unfold, bend, and mutate. According to the makers, the project “forces each discipline to alter its own ‘material’ state; transforming sound into mathematics, mathematics into architecture and architecture into a living canvas, while presenting the viewer with a new media experience that is multi-levelled, produces sound, moves and breathes.”

Image: Salon 2

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