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Design’s New Frontiers September 2014 The Innovators Reshaping USA $5.99 ELLEDECOR.COM Our World Inspiration Clockwise from below right: Sou Fujimoto. A design for an apartment tower in Montpellier, France. Fujimoto’s House NA in Tokyo.

Architects

With selfies and Instagram posts, today’s most forward-thinking architects share their visions

Japan’s Sou Fujimoto draws on nature— their space-age Velo Towers in , South organic structures like forests, nests, and caves— Korea—a pair of stacked cylinders connected by to upend conventional assumptions about what a sky bridge—seems to inhabit an entirely dif- a space for living can actually look like. His light- ferent galaxy altogether. More than just techno-

filled houses make us question the necessity of logical feats, this duo’s imaginative architecture s even such basic elements as walls and stair- points the way toward the future of design. rce u

cases in favor of a groundbreaking new archi- o s tecture of openness and flexibility. As a result, Western architects are flocking to China, but e Fujimoto’s star is rising in the West: On the Beijing-born Ma Yansong is that nation’s first heels of his acclaimed 2013 Cloud Pavilion at breakout architectural star. Ma, who studied at nde. See R London’s Serpentine Gallery, he is creating one Yale under Zaha Hadid, draws on natural forms i of his biggest structures yet, a “white tree” tower and Chinese Taoist principles to create organic, n Verl

in Montpellier, France. a Lise Anne With his spare but luxurious designs, Antwerp, Couture and Vincent Van Duysen. . dence: J Belgium, architect Vincent Van Duysen shows si e that a minimalist approach need not sacrifice Van Duysen’s comfort and livability. Inspired by the late Bel- Antwerp, Belgium, home. gian decorator Jean de Meulder, who taught him

what he calls “l’art de vivre,” he was one of the n; Antwerp R

first to use natural wood and Belgian linen to aa n B

warm up his interiors. For Van Duysen, the small- a est detail counts, which is why, in addition to A: Iw

homes and skyscrapers, he designs everything e N

from hardware to furniture to chandeliers. us ; Ho O I

Hani Rashid and , the D U avant-gardist husband-and-wife team behind T

New York City–based Asymptote Architecture, SI-S

have a tendency to let their imaginations fly. Yas Viceroy Hotel in Their Manhattan condo 166 Perry Street is , United rtment: R

fronted by a waterfall of angled glass, while Arab Emirates. a Ap

136 elledecor.com ARC Pavilion in Daegu, . Inspiration Bjarke Ingels (left) and partner Thomas Christoffersen. as a ski slope. His approach fuses architecture, Chaoyang Park Plaza in Beijing. urbanism, and nature, and, as Ingels himself explains in his book, Yes Is More, his goal is to engineer environments—even in crowded cities— that do nothing short of making people happy. In the works: the Big U, an eight-mile hurricane bar- rier for midtown Manhattan’s coastline.

Beloved by his fellow architects (he has won Ma Yansong. seven AIA National Honor Awards), Thomas Phifer takes a humanist approach to modern- An aerial view of ism, infusing every one of his projects with a Harbin Cultural sense of craftsmanship and an environmentally Center in China. conscious aesthetic. Whether it is a home or a museum or a courthouse, Phifer’s innovative structures engage the landscape with their sense of proportion and play of light. As if that weren’t enough, his elegant new LED street VM apartment buildings in lamps are lighting up the streets of New York. Copenhagen. Design for Nanjing, China. Snøhetta, based in Oslo, Norway, and New York

City and named after one of Norway’s highest Audemars Piguet shimmering designs that serve as an antidote to mountain peaks, practices what the critic Ada exhibition space in soulless urban structures. Exhibit A: his twin Louise Huxtable has called “the architecture Basel, Switzerland. Absolute Towers in Mississauga, Canada, which of engagement, a building conceived as a social the locals have dubbed the “Marilyn Monroe and environmental act instead of a static, for- Design for a resort buildings” in an affectionate nod to their boda- mal object.” Snøhetta’s principals, Craig in the Bahamas. cious curves. and , inte- Dykers Kjetil Traedal Thorsen s grate architecture, landscape, and interior rce u

Not yet 40, ’s Bjarke Ingels does not design in projects that are deeply rooted in their o s lack for chutzpah (nor a sense of humor): His surroundings—from Egypt’s library of Alexandria e Gammel Sports Hall cutting-edge buildings include a Copenhagen to the recently opened National September 11 in Hellerup, Denmark.

waste-treatment plant with a roof that doubles Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York City. n. See R a r

Clockwise av Design for a i H from top left: r i pedestrian bridge Craig Dykers in Austin, Texas. and Kjetil e: J us

Traedal Thorsen o

of Snøhetta. a h Bibliotheca Alexandrina per ; O

in Egypt. is

Norwegian Ill National Opera and Ballet s W me

in Oslo. a : J a ec h ot i l ib e; B h nd s Li ll: Jen a s H

Thomas Phifer. n; Sport i n Fowel ha

A house in rtment: Jo

Madison, a p Wisconsin. M a V

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