ON THE EDGE OF CHAOS (ORYX MAGAZINE)

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He has been kicked out of one the world’s best art schools, designed iconic interiors from the Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht to Bonn’s Kameha Grand Hotel and been dubbed the ‘Lady Gaga of the design world’ by the New York Times – now he is in Doha. Meet Marcel Wanders, the man behind the first Mondrian hotel in the Middle East.

Expelled from Design Academy Eindhoven before graduating with the highest honours from ArtEZ University of the Arts in 1988, Marcel Wanders has gone on to become a designer of international repute: establishing his eponymous interior design studio in Amsterdam; co-founding furniture and lighting brand Moooi; and creating products for the likes of Alessi, Swarovski and Puma. His Knotted Chair is in MOMA’s permanent collection, BusinessWeek called him ‘Europe’s hottest designer’, and Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum held a major retrospective of his work.

His latest project is the Mondrian Doha, the first Middle Eastern hotel from American hospitality giant SBE. With 270 rooms and suites, the largest ESPA Spa in the world and seven restaurants – together with a brief that asked for something that was ‘authentically Doha’ and yet international, and part of the Mondrian family and yet reflective of Wanders’ distinctive style, he had his work cut out. ‘That is a lot of things that just don’t fit together,’ he laughs. ‘And that is the quest we had – in the chaos of the final design all those aspects had to find their own place in the guests’ experience.’

 

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To achieve that, Wanders started by making sure everything worked like clockwork – from the way the light falls through certain windows to the flow of guests around the space – but he doesn’t want you to know that. ‘Let’s be super rational,’ he says, ‘And when we are done, let’s make sure people think it is just stupidly beautiful, that it is poetry – sheer aesthetics. Let’s make sure they never find out what went into making it work. I want it to be as non-rational as possible, without it becoming chaos. It is on the edge of chaos that we stop. I don’t want chaos, but I don’t want you to understand it either.’

His inspiration came from Doha. ‘There is an energy in the Middle East,’ he says. ‘There is a sense that around every corner there is endless desert and stars, and that is very romantic. When people think about this part of the world today, all too often they think about problems, oil, and big cities, but years ago we talked about the romance, the stars in the sky, the amazing culture. I wanted to recapture the excitement of that time – that’s what I want people to feel when they walk through the door.’ Combine that energy with Wanders’ belief that a hotel should have not just one idea, but a thousand ideas, and you start to get a sense of the visual feast that is the Mondrian Doha. A geometric checkerboard pool is topped with a giant Tiffany-style stained-glass dome, huge bells encase oversized chandeliers placed between white columns adorned with golden eggs, and a black helical staircase with ornate cut-out balustrades snakes up a four-story atrium. It is very nearly chaos, but not quite.

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ARCHITECTURE: NOW IN GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR (ENKI MAGAZINE)

Photography by Luke Hayes

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Ever wondered why our cities are so grey? Design journalist Katie Treggiden explores the lack of colour in architecture and talks to the chromophiles pioneering brighter buildings.

The architectural ‘whitewash’ that started after World War Two was a response to the dirt and rubble of war as new materials enabled clean, hygienic spaces, but the seed of ‘truth to materials’ was planted by the arts and crafts movement and then embraced as a central tenet of Modernism. However, our suspicion of colour dates back centuries. ‘It goes back a long way, via Adolf Loos in the early 20th century and neo-classicism in the 19th century, and all the way back to Plato and Aristotle,’ says David Batchelor, author of Chromophobia. ‘There’s a long Western tradition that equates colour with falsity, seduction and dishonesty. Modern architects are just its latest incarnation.’ Batchelor’s book references an ‘aggressively white’ interior – in which there is ‘no possibility of lying’. And yet, as Bachelor points out, even white is a lie. ‘Le Corbusier fetishized white,’ he says. ‘And most of his buildings were painted’ So if the pioneer of ‘truth to materials’ was hiding them under white paint, and if even he said: ‘polychromy is as powerful an architectural tool as the plan and section’, perhaps it is time for architects to embrace colour.

Some of them already are. Maggie’s Centres are domestic buildings in the grounds of hospitals offering support to people with cancer. Designed by the UK’s best architects, they are often very colourful. ‘The green we chose for Maggie’s Nottingham was in deliberate contrast to the red brick of the existing hospital buildings, so it would be seen as spiritually separate.’ says Piers Gough of CZWG Architects LLP. Similarly, Ivan Harbour of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners chose a striking orange for Maggie’s West London. ‘We wanted to create an environment that felt warm, homely and welcoming,’ he says.

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British designer Morag Myerscough uses colour in hospitals, schools and community spaces, saying: ‘Colour is powerful’. Her 200m x 3m ‘spine’ for Sweden’s Linkoping Hospital was six years in the making. ‘I wanted it to be hand-painted, so the colour would be vibrant. Everybody stops and says how beautiful it is.’ And while colour can lift people at their most vulnerable, it affects us all. ‘Colour brings joy,’ says Camille Walala, an artist who covers buildings in Post-Modern-inspired colours and patterns. And she’s right – psychology, neurology, and ergonomics studies all show that colour affects us both physically and mentally. ‘I am on a mission to bring more colour into architecture,’ she says.

But for every client who is brave enough to commission the Camille Walalas of this world, there are ten for whom colour still represents risk. Architects Lara Lesmes & Fredrik Hellberg might have found the solution: ‘Colour is often seen as a risk that does not need to be taken,’ says Lara. ‘But the advancement of the augmented and the virtual will change this – buildings will be able to be transformed by the second.’

The future’s bright. The future’s digital.

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