CULTURE Design stars

CULTURE Design stars FROM ARCHITECTURAL VISIONARIES TO PRODUCT, DIGITAL AND GRAPHIC DESIGN EXEMPLARS, J-MAGAZINE PROFILES SEVEN DESIGNERS WHOSE ORIGINALITY IS CHANGING THE WORLD WORDS: Johnny Tucker INTERIOR EXPERT: LEE BROOM Lee Broom is a whirlwind of energy, designing and producing his own interior products from a studio in the heart of Shoreditch in London. As a measure of the man, last year where most chose to launch a few products at the biggest annual design event in Milan, Broom took over a string of shops, knocked them into one and created The Department Store in which he launched no less that 20 new pieces. It even had its own London taxi parked outside and a uniformed doorman. His design tenacity is astonishing. One Carrara-marble sleeve for a fluorescent tube (appropriately called Tube), took months of testing and a pile of broken marble pieces, to get his manufacturer to create exactly what he had in his mind’s eye. Most would have given up. Broom has an aesthetic that often harks back to the 80s in form and colour, and materials with a quiet and elegant simplicity, from the aforementioned marble to the crystal glass of two of his most popular pieces – lampshades made from old decanters, and crystal lightbulbs, which cast beautifully cut-glass shadows when switched on. Top: Broom’s signature crystal lightbulbs with cut-glass shadows. Right: Lee Broom and his light crescent range. Below: Interior for Old Tom & English restaurant, Soho 44 j THE DESIGN ISSUE

DESIGN SUPER COUPLE: NERI & HU Top left and right: The Waterhouse at South Bund, Shanghai. Above: Together Chairs for Fritz Hansen Shanghai-based Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu work across the design spectrum from small furniture – many of which populate their own Design Republic store – to architecture. They began their journey in California, at Berkeley, before travelling eastward, via Harvard and Princeton and large east coast architectural firms to Shanghai where they set up neri&hu in 2004. From this “centre of contemporary chaos” as they’ve dubbed it, they maintain a world view with projects from the Philippines to London, where they’ve just opened another office. Their architectural canon is broad, from the Oxford International College in Changzhou, China, whole retail developments and even a cemetery. But it is their hotel work that has received most plaudits, especially the Waterhouse hotel in Shanghai where the old warehouse building was stripped to its bare bones. The main foyer, reached via huge rusted steel doors, is a massive triple-height void, with a concrete check-in desk, a dramatic statement that oozes cool chic. No matter what scale they are working at, Neri & Hu’s projects all share a beautifully balanced eye for detail, form and a love of materials THE DESIGN ISSUE j 45