Dark spaces
After a century of light and white, a certain propensity to darkness returns. Whether it’s a metaphor of our times or simply a little-explored trend, there are many projects this year that use darker tones but with a warm effect. The key colours are black, burgundy, midnight blue and velvet green, always accompanied by gold accents. An example for all is the project of an apartment in Kiev by Studio Marra Group.
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Sci-fi and retrofuturism
Cultural spaces, offices, bars and even airports. Shy attempts at new languages are being experimented almost everywhere, but always within the safe “reference to the past”. After the 30s and 40s mania, there are those who dared more, borrowing the look to the future of the 60s (the most innovative years ever) and 80s, to give shape to new visions. Representative of the genre is the interior of Didier Fiuza Faustino for the cultural space Zebrastraat in Ghent, Belgium.
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Collage
Also for 2018 the masters of collage are Spanish studios, with projects increasingly refined and defined. These are domestic spaces that balance low-cost solutions, historical references and innovative uses of traditional building materials, with the ‘unfinished’ final effect. Every centimetre is custom-made and personalized in a creative way, suggesting a certain harmony between the client, the designer and the builder. Below is the terraced house of SMS Architects in Palma de Mallorca.
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More pink
The millenial pink, which has gone from pastel tones to fluo and the very recent Living Coral by Pantone, is a cultural phenomenon that still survives. In 2016 we collected a sample of projects soaked in pink, but in the meantime the list has grown longer. The pink interior that we propose is a residence for the elderly that uses this color for its warm and calming character. It is a building of Dominique Coulon & Associés in Huningue, France.
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Critic house
Furniture, lighting and colour can be a way to tell society and politics. The history of a place can be re-read and given back in new ways. The architect can use the available tools to make critical statements about his/her time. This is the case with a house built during the Spanish economic boom of the 1990s, renovated by Casanovas Blanco studio in Barcelona.
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Cylinders
Inserting a large cylindrical body into the interior has been one of the gestures of 2018. In addition to the showrooms, where dressing rooms are housed in these cylinders, houses also renounce to open space in favor of more dynamism. The flows are redefined, and the circular partitions create unconventional spaces. Din-a-ka is an apartment in Taipei designed by Wei Yi International Design Associates for a retired couple.
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Revamped modernism
Belgian interior design studio GoingEast has transformed a 70s concrete building in the Belgian capital into a modern and comfortable shared workspace, maintaining the original spirit. In many of this year’s renovation projects, such as Jean Prouvé’s Demountable House taken over by Rogers, the Modern is celebrated and reinterpreted while leaving its avant-garde spirit intact.
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Tile stravaganza
Tiles are always popular. While the market is struggling to get rid of the vicious circle that sees ceramics as an imitator of another materials (cement, wood, or ceramics themselves), designers are able to restore its beauty with original and often unprecedented solutions, using tiles as a color palette for walls and floors. One of the most representative is the TEd'A arquitectos studio with its interior in Can Picaford, Mallorca.
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Indoor exteriors
After the exteriors as interiors trend – with decorative lights, welcoming furnishings, even carpets on the lawn – there have been many projects that read the outdoor in the opposite way, with open and fluid interiors with undefined boundaries. In recent years we have had houses with trees inside, or the architecture of Junya Ishigami that replaces the floors with soil. What’s new here is the program: not only single-family houses of wealthy and enlightened clients, but entire residential buildings and health care spaces, as in the case of the Caritas project by Vylder Vinck Taillieu in Belgium.
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Infinity wood
The “eco” material par excellence – still a controversial issue, however – is undoubtedly the warmest and most expensive. In 2018, the number of interiors that make massive use of it multiplies: floors, walls, ceilings, windows and doors are mixed up because they are made with the same essence. There is no room for much more than a few furnishing elements and the graphic touch of filiform lighting systems, usually black. In Chile, architect Alejandro Soffia has designed a series of prefabricated houses in “infinity wood”.
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