British Museum Shortlisted World Interior 2016
INSIDE World Festival of Interiors, the leading global interior design and architecture awards programme, has today announced that a shortlist of 63 projects will compete to be crowned World Interior of the Year 2016.
Projects from across the globe were entered across nine diverse categories, ranging from grand civic spaces and hospitals to transportation hubs, bars, clubs and shops. Hosted alongside the World Architecture Festival (WAF), the Festival attracts in excess of 2,000 attendees annually for three days of talks, awards, exhibitions and fringe events.
The theme for INSIDE 2016 is ‘Fluid Interiors’ and will explore how crossover design is transforming how we live, work and play. An in-depth talks programme will explore this topic and debate the implications for interior architecture and design regarding the increasing fluidity of uses, as the boundaries between workplace, home and leisure spaces become blurred.
Shortlisted designers reflect the global reach of the awards and include Eight Inc. (USA), Draft (Japan), Kerry Phelan Design Office (Australia). noa* - network of architecture (Italy), OHLab (Spain), Rosan Bosch Studio (Denmark), Studio Lotus (India) and studioMK27 (Brazil). Chinese practice Neri&Hu Design and Research Office can celebrate as the practice with the most shortlisted projects, four in total, while fellow Chinese practice One Plus Partnership and Australians BVN achieve three shortlisted projects apiece.
All nominees will present their projects to distinguished international juries during the Festival to compete for one of the nine, coveted INSIDE category awards. Open to all Festival attendees the presentations are followed by a live exchange between the designers and jurors. The overall winner of the World Interior of the Year will be announced at an exclusive gala dinner on 18 November.
Additional highlights on this year’s shortlist include:
UK practice Stanton Williams have designed a new gallery within the British Museum to house the Waddesdon Bequest, an outstanding collection of Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces left to the museum by the Rothschild family in 1898. The design evokes the qualities of the great Schatzkammer (treasury) collections of the Renaissance courts in Europe, on which the collection was originally modelled. In this tradition, it aims ’to create an element of surprise and wonder’, reinterprets the collection for the twenty-first century, and revitalises one of the museum’s most historically important spaces.
In the Creative Re-Use category, WOW Architects’ Niven Road Studio is a dynamic refurbishment and extension of a traditional Singaporean shophouse has created a series of spaces for use by the city’s artistic and cultural community.
Woods Bagot has been shortlisted for the design of their Melbourne studio. Overcoming the challenge of ‘a group of interior designers and architects pulling in different directions’ they took inspiration from acclaimed chef Ferran Adria’s cook book The Family Meal. Drawing on the dishes and the ethos of the famed El Bulli restaurant, the book focusses on the most important time of the day - when the chefs come together to socialise, share ideas and collaborate. This notion of the gathering conditioned the main central auditorium space which provides a forum for invited speakers, movie nights and tiered dancing on Friday nights. Timber and steel are the materials of choice. Defining each of the key spaces within the studio, the timber weaves itself into natural steel plates which are used as transitional elements to define the various level changes.
German interior specialists Hülle & Fülle are making the most of the Festival’s relocation to Berlin, celebrating with two shortlisted projects. Their Münster showroom project once housed a ballet studio, and now stages ‘dances’ of beautiful high-end carpets, featuring rotatable 3,50 x 2,70m steel frames that are fixed off-centre to tubular steal rods which are stretched between floor and ceiling. Acting like a canvas any size of carpet can be pinned on the felt background. Each piece is given enough room to work individually while at the same time all five display panels present an ever changing dynamic collage. White oak flooring and a six meter long counter in handmade glazed tiles on the upper level, divided only from the lower part by a glass balustrade to assure transparency, provide the setting for this installation.
Residential interiors feature heavily on this year’s shortlist, with new build apartments and penthouses set to rival historic houses from a variety of locations. The Playhouse, a 6,000 square feet, two-level apartment by House of Beast, is situated in a typical Hong Kong industrial building. Transformed into an industrial loft as a private hideaway for parties and as a vacation home, the materials have been carefully sourced worldwide: aged Italian brick tiles, blacken steel I-beams and cement panels throughout complete the retro rustic atmosphere of a New York-style loft.
