Famous Homes: Hill House by Charles Rennie Mackintosh

The architect, artist, and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh is credited with helping to creating a genre of art and design known as the Glasgow School (a streamlined version of the concurrent Art Nouveau style, previously here), and his exemplary masterpiece, Hill House, is the subject of this month's installment of Famous Homes.

Located in Helensburg, Scotland--about 25 miles north-west of Glasgow--Hill House started as a plot of land purchased in 1902 by publishing magnate Walter Blackie. He intended to have a home built for his family and Blackie's friend Talwin Morris recommended architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh to create it. After seeing other homes he designed, Blackie hired Mackintosh. It seems it was a perfect match as Blackie's style direction for the house--no bricks and plaster or wood beam construction, and no red-tiled roof, but grey rough cast walls, and a slate roof instead--dovetailed neatly with Mackintosh evolving work within the Glasgow School. And in 1904, Mackintosh delivered just that.

All of the interiors were designed by Mackintosh as well, along with his wife, the artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. Between them, they created a unique, bright white interior that supported the Mackintoshes belief that a minimalistic exterior should shelter an extraordinary interior. Textiles, rugs, furniture, fittings, and lighting fixtures were designed by the Mackintoshes as well as art work. Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh's gesso panel Sleeping Princess resides here along with some lovely embroidered textile hangings in a bedroom.

Along with highly stylized florals, the  rectilinear design of the interior is emblematic of Mackintosh, especially the use of perforated squares seen at the top of the classic ladder-back chair he designed specifically for this house, and which is currently available through license-holder Cassina here.

To clad the exterior of Hill House, Mackintosh selected portland cement harl, then a newly introduced product, for the surface finish but this was found to be less durable than traditional lime harl and by 2017 it was discovered to be in a precarious, soggy condition, putting the integrity of the whole building at risk of sever water damage. But the National Trust have built a very ambitious structure around the house to protect it. Their website describes it:

Mackintosh was a revolutionary designer, but the materials and techniques at the cutting edge of architectural design in 1900 haven’t withstood a century of the west of Scotland’s harsh, wet weather conditions.

The external render of the property has not proved watertight and the walls have gradually become saturated and are crumbling, with water now threatening the interiors.

If we don’t act soon, the house will be irreparably damaged and we’ll lose its iconic architecture and unique interiors forever.

We’re embarking on a 10-year conservation programme, which will allow continued public access to the house, but also offer views of the Hill House that have never been seen before, even by Mackintosh himself. Stage one opened to visitors in early June 2019, with a protective steel frame structure covered in chainmail mesh, featuring walkways around and over the top of the house. This structure, along with a new visitor centre, will deliver a unique heritage visitor experience.

You can visit the Hill House in Scotland and see The Box as well as eat some delicious Mackintosh inspired treats at the cafe. See the website for details.

Happy designing!

Know Your Chairs: The Coconut Chair by George Nelson

This is definitely a chair you should know: let me introduce you to the delightful Coconut Chair.

One of the founders of Modernism, George Nelson (previously here and here) designed this chair for the Herman Miller company in 1955 based on the shape of a coconut shell cut into eight pieces. Nelson said he developed the chair “to give lounge seating comfort, together with great freedom of movement.” Modern, whimsical, functional, and timeless in its design...

The George Nelson Coconut Chair can still be purchased through Herman Miller and Vitra.

Happy designing!

The UP5 and 6 Chair Becomes A Work of Art

Italian designer Gaetano Pesce created a special gigantic version of his iconic UP5 and 6 Chair, also known as the "Donna" Chair (previously here) for this month's Milan Design Week.

Gaetano Pesce originally created his chair for B&B Italia (then known as C&B Italia) in 1969 out of polyurethane foam and a jersey stretch fabric. Primarily an architect, Pesce is also an industrial designer working on creating chairs with organic forms. His UP5 and 6 Chair--5 is the chair and 6 is the attached ottoman--is also known as the "La Mama Chair" or the "Donna Chair" (donna being the Italian word for woman) because the form is unmistakably female. The chair is still in production through B&B Italia who describe the chair this way:

"The chair is a metaphor of a large comfortable womb and recalls ancient statues of fertility goddesses. However, it has something extra: a spherical ottoman tied to the armchair. Therefore, the image of comfort and convenience is combined with a more figurative image of a woman with a ball and chain on her foot. Gaetano Pesce explains the project as follows: 'At that time, I was telling a personal story about my concept of women: I believe that women have always been unwilling prisoners of themselves. This is why I decided to give this armchair the shape of a woman with a ball and chain, a traditional image of a prisoner.'"

Perhaps what Pesce more accurately means is that women, by being themselves, have always been prisoners of men.

So to mark the 50th anniversary of the chair, and to highlight the ongoing struggles that women around the world face on a daily basis, Pesce revisited his Donna Chair, creating a 26-foot high version pierced with arrows to bring attention to violence against women. Titled "Maestà Soffrente," or "Suffering Majesty," the piece was shown from April 7 to 14, 2019 in the Piazza del Duomo, in front of the Milan Cathedral.

Photos of "Maestà Soffrente" by Matteo Piazza

Happy designing!

Legends of Design: Philippe Starck

We've looked at a few designers from the past but for our continuing Legends of Design series, let's look at a living legend: Philippe Starck.

A man of many talents, Starck's career has bounced around the design world, from commercial (restaurants and hotels) to residential to product design to architecture--even naval design. He started his career in 1969. He was named artistic director of Pierre Cardin's publishing house, he opened his own industrial design company Starck Product, and in 1983, he designed the private rooms of President François Mitterrand at the Élysée Palace in Paris.

With former Studio 54 owner and hotelier extraordinaire Ian Schrager, Starck pioneered the idea of the boutique hotel by creating The Royalton in New York City, where guests checking in had to traverse a veritable fashion runway of blue carpet to reach the reception desk at the far end...

...and a very unique men's room with a stainless steel waterfall urinal, a pedal-operated, round communal sink in the middle of the space, and hidden stall doors. When I visited The Royalton in the early 90s, just a few years after it opened, it was quite the hot spot, and I can indeed attest to the uniqueness of the rest room--it seemed like something out of a science fiction film with nothing resembling what I knew of as a men's room.

Starck went on to design a slew of unique hotels, each a true work of art. Just look at his work in the lobby of The Paramount: a checkerboard rug upon which is arranged, like game pieces, a collection of designer seating that includes sofas by Jean-Michel Frank, upholstered chairs by Marco Zanuso, a wooden chair by Antoni Gaudi and Marc Newson’s chaise lounge. A grand staircase to the mezzanine level is backed with a canted wall covered in silver leaf.

One of my favorite hotel spaces Starck created is the wildly imaginative bar at The Hudson. The lighted floor and Louis XVI furniture deliberately recalls the final set where Dave Bowman ages in Kubrick's masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey." I especially love the log bench with chair backs attached to the top.

Starck also worked successfully in the world of product design. In addition to mineral-water bottles for Glacier, watches for Fossil, and luggage for Samsonite, he created the iconic Juicy Salif citrus squeezer (it looks like an alien pod from "War of the Worlds") for Italian houseware brand Alessi.

But I think Starck is best known for designing hundreds and hundreds of pieces of furniture and lighting, and the best known of those pieces must be the Louis Ghost chair for Kartell. The classic incarnation is clear acrylic but it also comes in tinted colors and opaque black as well.

Happy designing!