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Textile Art Installation Revitalizes Historic Swiss Laundry Building

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In Mendrisio, Switzerland, a compelling temporary art installation has breathed new life into the former laundry building of Villa Argentina. This collaborative effort by Studio Hug and artist Rachele Monti, commissioned by the City of Mendrisio, serves as a prelude to the building's impending restoration. The project aims to foster a dynamic connection between the historical edifice, its past, and the broader community, utilizing a unique visual intervention that enhances rather than conceals the existing architectural details.

The installation, titled "Waiting Surfaces," strategically places large-scale printed surfaces behind the building's existing windows, railings, and structural elements. This approach creates a new visual dimension while meticulously preserving the original facade's visibility. The printed images, drawing inspiration from Monti's explorations into photography, color, texture, and memory, directly reference textiles associated with the building's former function as a laundry facility. Through patterns, textures, and a diverse chromatic palette, the artwork establishes a profound link between the building's original purpose and its current state of anticipation for renovation. This intervention cleverly uses the existing architecture as a canvas, showcasing how art can reinterpret and celebrate historical structures.

This initiative redefines the period leading up to a building's restoration not as a dormant interval, but as an active phase rich with creative potential. Giacomo Hug, lead designer at Studio Hug, in conjunction with Rachele Monti, designed this fully reversible intervention. Their work demonstrates how contemporary artistic practices can thoughtfully interact with historic architecture, public spaces, and urban evolution processes, all while ensuring the historical authenticity of the structure remains discernible. The installation's supporting framework comprises black-painted timber frames, securely fixed within the portico using wire, guaranteeing that no permanent alterations are made to the building. This meticulous attention to reversibility underscores a commitment to safeguarding architectural heritage while engaging it in a contemporary dialogue. The municipal infrastructure team of Mendrisio, alongside Studio Emmanuel Urban, meticulously brought this vision to fruition.

The "Waiting Surfaces" installation is set to remain visible until the commencement of the comprehensive restoration work, thereby accompanying the building through a crucial transitional phase. By employing a temporary architectural intervention, the project successfully promotes public engagement and offers a novel interpretation of the site's rich history and its forthcoming transformation. This artistic endeavor highlights the potential of temporary installations to serve as powerful tools for cultural preservation and community interaction.

Hermès Beijing Flagship: A Fusion of Digital Craft and Terracotta Tradition
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Hermès Beijing Flagship: A Fusion of Digital Craft and Terracotta Tradition

Pli Office Invites Creatives to Explore Chaos at Paris Design Week 2026
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Pli Office Invites Creatives to Explore Chaos at Paris Design Week 2026

Reimagining Obsolete Technology: An AI-Powered Payphone as the Voice of Earth
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Reimagining Obsolete Technology: An AI-Powered Payphone as the Voice of Earth

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STELLAR: A Dynamic Timepiece by The Trio of Time and Raw Color

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The STELLAR watch, a collaborative creation by The Trio of Time (Anicorn Watches) and the design studio Raw Color, revolutionizes the concept of timekeeping. Instead of merely displaying time, it transforms the watch face into a constantly evolving visual spectacle, blending elements of color, motion, and graphical art. The design challenges conventional watch mechanisms, opting for an expressive approach where time is experienced through a kinetic graphic composition, making every glance at the watch a fresh visual encounter.

This innovative timepiece is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary design, merging product engineering with artistic expression. By emphasizing dynamic visuals over traditional numerical displays, STELLAR offers a novel way to perceive and interact with time. The project successfully marries the functional aspect of a watch with the aesthetic appeal of a moving artwork, creating an object that is both practical and deeply engaging, reflecting a modern sensibility towards design and utility.

Kinetic Art on Your Wrist: The STELLAR Watch Design

The STELLAR watch, a result of the collaboration between Anicorn Watches' The Trio of Time and the Dutch design studio Raw Color, represents a bold departure from conventional watch aesthetics. This innovative timepiece reimagines the watch dial as a vibrant, ever-changing graphic display rather than a static time-telling instrument. Its core innovation lies in the use of multiple layered hands, which, instead of simply indicating hours and minutes, form a kinetic composition that continuously evolves. This artistic approach allows for a unique perception of time, where the passage of each moment is marked by a subtle yet captivating transformation of colors, shapes, and overlaps on the watch face, offering a fresh visual experience with every glance.

The design features three distinct layers, each equipped with six hands, that rotate independently to create an intricate, star-like pattern. This dynamic arrangement ensures that the watch dial is never static; new geometric relationships and color interactions emerge as the layers move. Time indication is minimalist, relying on a small dot within this complex arrangement, eschewing traditional numerals for a more abstract and visually driven language. This deliberate choice highlights the watch's commitment to prioritizing aesthetic experience and movement, transforming the utilitarian act of checking the time into an appreciation of a fluid, graphic composition that mirrors the continuous flow of time itself.

Redefining Time through Graphic Innovation

The partnership between Raw Color, known for its extensive research into color theory and visual systems, and The Trio of Time, a platform for innovative watch design, underpins the STELLAR project's groundbreaking approach. This collaboration showcases a shared vision for exploring alternative methods of representing time, pushing the boundaries of what a timepiece can be. Raw Color's expertise in graphic methodology is seamlessly integrated into a wearable object, creating a watch that acts as both a functional accessory and a piece of visual art. The design ethos positions STELLAR at the intersection of product design and graphic art, where time is not just measured but is actively interpreted as an evolving visual system.

STELLAR challenges traditional notions of wristwatches by balancing utility with decorative artistry. The watch's design focuses on how layered colors, precise geometric organization, and perpetual motion can collectively communicate the essence of time. This results in a product where function and graphic expression are not separate but operate in unison, creating a cohesive and compelling narrative. The continuous interaction of colors and shapes as the layers rotate offers a novel and engaging way to engage with the passage of time, making STELLAR a standout example of how innovative design can transform everyday objects into profound aesthetic statements.

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OXMAN Pioneers Eco-Friendly Textile Dyeing with Bacterial Pigmentation
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OXMAN Pioneers Eco-Friendly Textile Dyeing with Bacterial Pigmentation

Architects Advocate for Adaptive Reuse and Flexible Urban Design at Milan Design Week
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Architects Advocate for Adaptive Reuse and Flexible Urban Design at Milan Design Week

Open Design Week 2026 in Frankfurt RheinMain: A Regional Design Platform
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Open Design Week 2026 in Frankfurt RheinMain: A Regional Design Platform

Building materials

Choi+Shine Architects: Redefining Public Spaces with Large-Scale Crochet Art

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Choi+Shine Architects redefines the boundaries of textile art by transforming the intimate craft of crochet into large-scale public installations. Their innovative approach integrates traditional handcraft with contemporary architectural design, creating immersive experiences that engage with landscapes and urban environments. These works are not merely decorative but serve as interactive spaces that filter light, cast intricate shadows, and gather communities under their handcrafted forms. The studio's philosophy centers on the idea that infrastructure can embody a human presence, making repetitive and often overlooked elements of our surroundings meaningful and inspiring.

The creative process at Choi+Shine Architects is a blend of meticulous planning and collaborative effort. From initial drawings and digital models to structural tests and pattern-making, each project is developed with precision. Crucially, the involvement of community workshops allows volunteers to contribute to the creation of these monumental pieces, embedding a collective memory and shared labor into the very fabric of the art. This participatory model enhances the impact of their installations, turning a simple stitch into a component of a suspended room or transforming a standard pylon into an anthropomorphic figure, ultimately breathing social life into an ordinary technique.

Transforming Infrastructure into Art: The Vision of Choi+Shine

Choi+Shine Architects embark on a journey to infuse human presence into large-scale infrastructure by reinterpreting everyday elements through the lens of art. Their early conceptual project, 'The Land of Giants,' exemplifies this vision by transforming mundane electrical transmission towers into a series of human-like figures. This imaginative re-styling of an industrial system demonstrated how subtle alterations could profoundly change perception, turning power lines into a dramatic procession of colossal bodies across the landscape. This foundational concept laid the groundwork for their subsequent large-scale crochet installations, which similarly seek to imbue overlooked public structures with a sense of wonder and narrative, proving that utility and artistry can coexist harmoniously.

The studio's persistent exploration of how infrastructural elements can hold a sense of place is a recurring theme. By applying this same innovative instinct to their textile works, Choi+Shine elevates crochet from a modest craft to a significant public structure. Projects such as 'The Urchins' and 'The Lace' transcend object scale, becoming functional canopies, screens, and enclosures that shape space while maintaining a porous, inviting nature. These installations manipulate light and shadow, inviting interaction and contemplation, and underscore the studio's belief that even the most ordinary techniques can evolve into public art with a vibrant social dimension. This seamless integration of art and utility highlights the potential for imaginative design to transform our built environment into a more engaging and human-centered experience.

The Communal Fabric: Craft, Technology, and Collaboration

The creation of Choi+Shine's elaborate crochet installations is deeply rooted in community engagement, transforming artistic production into a collective endeavor. The studio orchestrates workshops where local volunteers gather to produce the numerous panels and sections that ultimately comprise the large-scale works. These gatherings are meticulously documented, showcasing tables laden with cord, hands diligently following intricate diagrams, and groups collaboratively assembling pieces. This inclusive process fosters a sense of shared ownership and learning, as novices gain skills from seasoned crocheters, and the repetition of stitches and small corrections collectively culminate in a unified artwork. The embedded labor and communal spirit enrich the final piece, allowing it to enter public spaces not just as an architectural marvel but as a testament to collective human effort and memory.

Choi+Shine Architects masterfully bridges ancestral crafting techniques with contemporary algorithmic thinking, where crochet patterns function as a form of code. This unique fusion is evident in their project 'Distance' for the Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, which integrated local waterways, Chinese zodiac motifs, and traditional lace-making into monumental crocheted forms. While digital tools such as CAD drawings and 3D models are utilized to define geometric precision, the tactile nature of crochet brings the work to life, imbuing it with texture, human scale, and a sense of time. The collaboration with numerous volunteers, who refined patterns and techniques across varying skill levels, weaves a rich cultural fabric into the installation. This harmonious interplay between handcraft and computational design ensures that while the structure is precise, it retains the warmth and character of human touch, making each installation a memorable public experience that resonates with both intellectual depth and communal warmth.

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