Folio: Igloodgn
Established in 2005 by award-winning interior designers Alain Courchesne and Anna Abbruzzo, Igloodgn has an illustrious international roster of projects. Based out of Montreal, the company is internationally renowned for creating innovative spaces, from hotels, restaurants and retail projects, to residential and condominium design. With a focus on designing for profitable businesses, the firm’s branding, graphic design and interior design concepts foster advocacy, and ultimately, result in increased lucrative customer experiences.
In 2012, Igloodgn opened its second office in Shanghai to service its strong demand in the Asian market. Both designers bring an unprecedented passion and fresh approach to design, focusing on building a detailed brand identity in each project from inception to completion.
Deeply rooted in distinguishing the overall experience and essence of a brand, Igloo design creates a space while simultaneously establishing its identity. All elements of an experience must be in harmony with one another from branding to interior design to custom furniture design. At Igloodgn, excellence can only be reached by a combination of disciplines that collaborate to create a well-balanced entity.
Floor Cloud
The new Table Cloud and Floor Cloud are a part of Molo’s modular soft collection, joining the existing cloud pendants, cloud mobiles, and urchin softlights. The white textile shade comprises hundreds of cellular honeycomb forms and is internally lit by LED to radiate a gentle, glare free light.
Material
With the Material Pendant, the same unique idea is expressed in just about every material imaginable. From oak to marble, from cork to terracotta, from concrete to cryptonite. The pendant is made for bars and restaurants, but it just as easily lights up a conference room or hotel lobby.
Polaris
Polaris is a series of polished stainless steel structures strung with Full-cut crystal octagons and pendants in various sizes and forms, fitted by nickel plated ring pinnings. Traditional 60W light sources illuminate each ring from within. Polaris is available in 100cm and 70cm widths.
Honeycomb
Honeycomb creates a simple effect from the application of two overlaid fabrics. Its collapsible design is deliberately creased and casual, making it ideal for use in as multiples, to create a moody cluster, or as an individual pendant providing low, direct light over a table or lounge area.
Container
A creation for Ligne Roset, this ceramic table lamp stems from the designers’ ‘materials driven, process led, industrial design’ approach. Container utilises the ceramic to both contain the electronic lighting components and produce a soft, reflected illumination output from the interior glazed surface.
Karim Rashid to present and DJ at May Design Series
Karim Rashid, one of the most prolific designers of his generation, will be taking centre stage at this year’s May Design Series, taking place from 19-21 May 2013 at ExCeL London.
An epic career spanning over 20 years, Rashid has already celebrated a huge amount of success including over 3000 designs in production, over 300 awards and numerous projects undertaken on a global basis, Karim is a design industry legend. His aim to speak about the idea that design shapes our daily lives and our future will be at the heart of his talk as part of the Conversation Series during the show. Rashid’s session will discuss how the move from analog to digital has changed our material world and how design will inform, and social behaviours, will change.
Rashid has worked with beautiful and contemporary brands across every sector including Artemide, Axo Light, BoConcept, Cappellini, Dupont, Herman Miller, Magis, Scavolini and Zanotta amongst others, but has also worked on restaurant, hotels and museum projects including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
However, Rashid’s talents do not end there. He also has a great love of music and is a DJ in his spare time. On Monday 20th May, the event is open until 8pm and during this late night opening Rashid will provide musical entertainment during the final hours of the show.
Musicity will also be entertaining visitors during the Monday evening. Musicity commission recording artists to compose original music in response to an aspect of the city that inspires them. They will be hosting a talk on how sonic design can be used to transform interaction with a building or interior, and will then lead on to DJ and host live performances demonstrating their inspirational music. They will also compose a unique piece of music, inspired by the show that will be available to download during the event.
Andy Vaughan, Brand Director for May Design Series commented, “We are very excited about welcoming Karim to the launch of the May Design Series as he represents our aims to achieve an event with a strong design ethos that spans all sectors. Having both Karim and Musicity involved in creating a unique sensory experience on the Monday night will be a great opportunity for both our visitors and exhibitors to network, socialise and have some fun!”
Tetatet
A portable lamp which ‘turns every table into a place to meet and to love and finally to consider light like a fundamental ingredient of life’. Tetatet is designed to create pools of intimate light whilst maintaining a discrete presence. It comprises a metal base and battery-powered LED head.
Blossoms
Blackbody are at the forefront of creating imaginative pieces from OLED lighting panels. Blossoms is in this vein. “A journey to the land of the rising sun. A celebration of Hanami. A meditative pause under a cherry blossom with interlacing branches and tips embellished with flowers of light”.
www.blackbody-oled.com
Special collaborations at EDIT by designjunction
As the 2013 edition of the Salone del Mobile draws closer, designjunction focusing on a number of specially organised collaborations that visitors can look forward to at EDIT this April.
As part of designjunction’s aim to present design in ‘a new and invigorating light that breaks the mould of the traditional trade show environment’, organisers have teamed up with a host of creative partners to enhance the visitor’s experience.
Pop-Up VIP Lounge by Apartment 58 & Modus
Apartment 58, the new private members club in central London which opened last month, are recreating the relaxed and fluid feel of their club in a site specific installation, furnished by leading British furniture brand Modus.
The VIP lounge will be a place to socialise, relax or work within the comfortable setting of a domestic apartment, with Modus providing new, bespoke and current products from their range to create a beautifully styled environment. The interior, designed by designjunction’s creative director Michael Sodeau, will also combine furniture pieces from Per Soderberg, lighting from Danish brand Muuto and accessories from Iitalla. The lounge will also house a dedicated media centre.
Tokyobike Tours
After the huge success of their London tours, tokyobike will be providing guided tours from EDIT, this time in the Brera Design District, a hotbed of over 200 brand showrooms and one-off design events.
The tours will run from 10am - 1pm and include complimentary refreshments and a goodie bag.
The Wednesday tour will be hosted by regular London guide Duncan Riches of Associate, while Thursday’s will be led by Max Fraser from the London Design Festival. Limited spaces are available, so booking is essential.
Outdoor Cafe by Extremis, La Marzocco and Material Lab
A specially designed Outdoor Café will be created in La Pelota’s T-shaped courtyard, with a bespoke bar designed by Material Lab. The finest artisan coffee and ice-cream will be available for those needing a break.
Squares
Squares is a sculptural object. Though designed to simply lean against a wall, it can also be wall-mounted or suspended from the ceiling, either vertically or horizontally. Formed from powder coated aluminium and opaque glass. 2W warm white LED light sources provide a welcoming glow.
Quadrangle Architects Studio, Canada
Toronto-based Quadrangle Architects have built a solid reputation on their ability to create innovative office environments, often transforming old industrial sites into modern, healthy workspaces. So when the time came to relocate their studio, the practice was presented with a unique opportunity: to apply their hard-held design principles to a site of their own, and in doing so produce a practical example of the team’s creative skills. True to form, they took on a space on the seventh floor of a former data centre in the city’s King West neighbourhood and set about converting it into a fully accessible, highly sustainable creative hub.
Since its formation in 1986, Quadrangle has applied an open plan concept to their studio space, with everyone from principals to interns based at open workstations. As well as promoting dialogue and cooperation, this helps to maximise access to natural daylight, an essential element in the firm’s emphasis on healthy, sustainable buildings. In the new office, daylight is supplied (along with sweeping views of the Toronto skyline) by windows that run the full perimeter of the space. Natural light is supplemented by a lighting system that uses motion and daylight sensing to adjust light levels. The system can be controlled remotely by smart phones and by each staff member’s VOIP phone and computer, conserving energy and improving lighting quality, particularly for those with low-vision.
“Lighting is one of the four main tools of our craft along with space, materials and movement,” explains Quadrangle principal Caroline Robbie. “The quality of light is essential and is never separated from these other elements in our design process.”
The firm’s relocation and its renewed emphasis on openness has been used to refocus its office culture in subtle but significant ways. Staff are asked to eat in the lunchroom rather than at their desks, prompting the kind of informal interactions that help foster a shift towards a collaborative team spirit. To encourage this shift, various touches have been added to the space to make it an attractive, pleasant environment, including the use of custom pendants, created in collaboration with Castor Design. Lined with a golden metallic sheen to create a warm glow and finished on the outside with old technical drawings, these pieces are a product of the two companies’ shared design vision, as Robbie explains:
“Quadrangle approached Castor at an early stage of the project for a joint exploration of how our core architectural materials palette could be translated into objects that would become a demonstrable part of the space.
“Castor brought back initial thoughts on processes to de- and re-construct these materials and over the course of the project, the palette was reduced to paper, metal and fabric.”
In tandem with this, the team focused on the use of decorative lighting within the space. “The collaboration process was fluid with everyone contributing drawings, test prototypes, material research and sourcing,” Robbie continues. “The resulting fixtures successfully blend the material explorations that the collaboration originally sought, with elements of sustainability, beauty and wit.”
Most of the fixtures created by Quadrangle and Castor use CCFL sources. In addition to the pendants in the lunchroom area, a cluster of traditionally shaped lampshades, created in simple white fabric, hangs in the reception area. The largest of the meeting rooms has been given one of Castor’s Invisible Chandelier’s - a cloud comprising hundreds of burnt out light bulbs, illuminated from within - while one of the smaller meeting spaces boasts a Steel Streetscape fixture, a single metal sheet, bent in two around a linear LED lamp.
As well as the bespoke fixtures, there are five decorative pieces located in prominent areas throughout the studio. Each was chosen for both the quality of light it produced and the suitability of its design character to an individual space. In the Snug, for example, intimacy is created with the large dome of Lightform’s Sky Garden, while the multi lamp-headed Dear Ingo fixture by Moooi was ideal for the needs of the model-making and materials area.
A glazed meeting room between the founding Principals’ workstations – wryly dubbed the Penalty Box by staff - has been treated with a mobile of Sentry fixtures by Metalarte. Elsewhere,the Heracleum, a flower-like LED fixture by Moooi, and the clean white, bent form of the Ketamina fixture by Lucitalia both provide an element of juxtaposition to their locations in a muted meeting room and above the industrial metal reception.
All these pieces work alongside a general architectural lighting scheme based around a principle of high sustainability. Given the amount of natural light available in the new location, the design incorporates individually addressable fixtures, motion and daylight sensing and high efficiency lamping selections. There are linear pendant and recessed strip T5 fluorescent, CCFL track and LED under-cabinet and circular down lights throughout the space providing ambient lighting.
The lighting design for the studio was developed holistically with decorative and architectural lighting elements to ensure that sufficient levels of ambient and task-specific lighting levels were provided. Each of the decorative fixtures contributes to the illumination of the space, in levels appropriate to the individual character of each area.
By practicing what they preach, Quadrangle has already seen huge benefits from the new space.
“Since moving, the studio has been able to attract a higher calibre of staff and to convince clients to try unconventional ideas,” notes Robbie. “Thoughtful attention to user needs and comfort and the strong brand message conveyed throughout has resulted in tremendous staff and client satisfaction. Employees have found their favourite spaces to work and this staff ownership fosters collaboration and a strengthened office culture.”
Having completed their own studio, the practice has widened its focus, working with the building owner to attract other creative industries to the site, and so help establish a new, artistic hub in an otherwise overlooked corner of Toronto.
