Monday 30 April 2012

COS Pop Up Store for Salone del Mobile Furniture Fair



COS are launching in Italy this July. To promote their impending arrival the guys at COS asked me to design and build them a pop up store in Milan to coincide with the prestigious Salone del Mobile furniture fair.

I felt like the pop up store should embody the COS ethos, simple yet witty design that doesn’t overpower or distract. This made me think of classic Swiss interior design and the idea of no unnecessary extras.  I thought about a perfect wooden box and how every part of that boxes material could be reconfigured and used, this became the design philosophy for the instillation. 

 I used Mondrian as a starting for this project and thought about how he divided his paintings into sections, I considered how I could transpose this idea into an environment design. This led me to the concept of the box and how it could be fragmented and fold into itself to create a display space. I loved the idea that every part the cube would be used to make every part of the display areas and railing systems, nothing would be wasted. From roof to wall to floor, all would be cut away and re-assembled into all necessary display components. The process of designing this became a kind of elaborate puzzle, as every part that I changed had a knock-on affect to the rest of the structure, ultimately leading to a thoroughly considered piece of design that sits somewhere between retail space, instillation and furniture.
  













Wednesday 18 April 2012

'Salad Days' for T Magazine with Richard Burbridge and Robbie Spencer





I don't envy the poor models who have to work with me a lot of the time. If I'm not getting you to climb into a horribly claustrophobic cage set, I'm pouring jelly over you or gluing fish heads to your face. This is my latest editorial with Robbie Spencer and Richard Burbridge for T Magazine, continuing me and Robbie's ongoing quest to see how much stuff we can throw onto a model before he or she storms off set, this time using all kinds of sticky foods as our weapon. Julia Nobis and Hanne Gaby Odiele were fantastically patient with us as we piled seafood, meat, vegetables and noodles on them for a couple of days.

So let this be a warning to all you budding models out there, if you turn up to a job and see me on set organizing a gigantic table full of wire, glue and all sorts of creepy looking aquatic creatures I'd get on the phone to your agent quick.

Special thanks to Catherine Mudford and Tyler Cancro