It's one thing to have the benefit of superstar mentors, a harder thing to emerge beneath from their colossus intact. Christian Wassmann was introduced to the theater impresario Robert Wilson while still a student in Zurich. The result was a ten yearlong mentorship, which spawned a significant number of collaborations. When Wassmann moved to the US, he took a position with master architect Steven Holl and soon became his protégé. In 2005 Wassmann decided to leave Holl's firm and go solo. Since then, with a variety of unique design and installation projects, Wassmann has been transmitting his own distinct signal and charting a trajectory all his own...
+ more...
Born and raised in Lausanne, Switzerland, the son of a Turkish immigrant father and an East German mother, Yves Béhar is certainly no stranger to confluence. He came to the U.S. in 1990 to study at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Eight years ago he founded the aptly named fuseproject, a multifaceted design enclave he helms out of San Francisco.
In the past decade, Béhar has become one of the most acclaimed and sought after names in contemporary design. He wields an award winning design proficiency that spans the gamut: furniture, fashion, graphics, packaging, environments and strategy... So we imagined he's put some thought into the art of living well—that's why we asked him to list 5 innovations he couldn't live without.
+ more...
A house: glass, concrete, steel: wheels crank open, flowing to the lake...
The staircase, a dragon /angles through the house /light, exit...
Tom Kundig's structures resemble haiku: brief in their economy, utilizing the minimum and most immediate of materials to invoke resonance; they have zen capabilities—they bend in the wind, glisten (and rust) in the rain, illuminate with the snow... Haiku emphasizes the place of man or culture in relation to nature: in Kundig's work, a natural syncopation occurs with the environment...
+ more...
At ten, Nina Egli decided she was going to become an actress, and then forgot about it. In the meantime she had circus aspirations—as a tightrope walker. She studied dance, developed her gift for painting... At twenty, she was randomly asked to be in a movie—playing a fire eating trapeze artist. Somehow all her forgotten childhood ambitions were fulfilled in one fell swoop. From the experience, she recouped the acting bug, discovered she was terrified of heights and moved to New York to pursue a thespian life...
There is an element of wish fulfillment in this tale that echoes throughout Toujours Toi, Egli's whimsically elegant line of jewelry:
"Anna Magnani, pirate ships, my old 70’s storybooks, ports from France to Mexico, shiny dance floors, freshly washed lace, my grandpa’s sneakers, Swan Lake, the Swiss Alps, Harold and Maude, dark forests, high tea, the daybreak in Barcelona...”
+ more...
Image There's a School of Visual Arts subway ad with a tag-line that says something like "Follow your passion" beneath an impressionist painting of an empty bank tell. The bank teller's nameplate reads "Paul Gauguin". You might remember Paul Gauguin, the French modernist painter worked in a bank till he was thirty-five, then left it all behind to become an artist. He moved to Tahiti where he lived out his days painting exotic landscapes and women. Here's the Swiss version:
Stefan Jermann did a three year apprenticeship at a bank in Bern (the Swiss capital), then moved to Los Angeles to further his business studies. There he was lured into a life of photography and eventually found himself at the Art College Center of Design in Pasadena. He focused on his new found passion as well as magazine design. Here's the departure from the French story: he returns to Switzerland, lands in Zurich, teams up with Walter Stähli, an art director. Together they form TRUCE a magazine that somehow defies "magazine-ness", but somehow also fulfills it.
+ more...
It's one thing to have the benefit of superstar mentors, a harder thing to emerge beneath from their colossus intact. Christian Wassmann was introduced to the theater impresario Robert Wilson while still a student in Zurich. The result was a ten yearlong mentorship, which spawned a significant number of collaborations. When Wassmann moved to the US, he took a position with master architect Steven Holl and soon became his protégé. In 2005 Wassmann decided to leave Holl's firm and go solo. Since then, with a variety of unique design and installation projects, Wassmann has been transmitting his own distinct signal and charting a trajectory all his own...
Born and raised in Lausanne, Switzerland, the son of a Turkish immigrant father and an East German mother, Yves Béhar is certainly no stranger to confluence. He came to the U.S. in 1990 to study at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Eight years ago he founded the aptly named fuseproject, a multifaceted design enclave he helms out of San Francisco.
Cabin standing on stilts, shuttered gliding rust steel, sliding reveals light...
At ten, Nina Egli decided she was going to become an actress, and then forgot about it. In the meantime she had circus aspirations—as a tightrope walker. She studied dance, developed her gift for painting... At twenty, she was randomly asked to be in a movie—playing a fire eating trapeze artist. Somehow all her forgotten childhood ambitions were fulfilled in one fell swoop. From the experience, she recouped the acting bug, discovered she was terrified of heights and moved to New York to pursue a thespian life...
Image There's a School of Visual Arts subway ad with a tag-line that says something like "Follow your passion" beneath an impressionist painting of an empty bank tell. The bank teller's nameplate reads "Paul Gauguin". You might remember Paul Gauguin, the French modernist painter worked in a bank till he was thirty-five, then left it all behind to become an artist. He moved to Tahiti where he lived out his days painting exotic landscapes and women. Here's the Swiss version:
