Vintage Appeal: The Old Cinema

Long gone are the days of cookie-cutter interior design; one size no longer fits all. Today clients and customers alike are looking for individuality in their interiors; opting for vintage is one way to achieve this. Seen in offbeat bars, chain restaurants, and even mass-market retail, we appear to be in the grip of a retro-revolution. 

Will Hanness of The Old Cinema – a destination vintage furniture store - thinks there are plenty of reasons for our current obsession. “This kind of furniture is usually well-made, and is built to last” he says. He explains customers associate vintage with quality, and being environmentally friendly. Hanness also points out that the current economic climate has meant tastes have changed. “Our appetite for glamour, and shiny things has waned. People like things that are distressed and understated.”  

Nostalgia also plays a part; “if people relate a memory to a piece, that is very attractive,” adds Hanness, “it can be poignant.” 

It is clear talking to Hanness, that he thinks it is uniqueness that is the drive behind vintage furniture’s popularity within commercial interiors. “If you have a venue where you invite clients or customers, you want to make the best impression you can,” he says. “You want to seem like a unique company, with your own style? Opting for vintage furniture is a good way to go about it,” he advises

You can take Hanness at his word, as The Old Cinema is a growing success. Occupying a former picture house in West London, the store has been trading since 1989. Their roster of clients includes streetwear retailer Superdry, and hospitality group Soho House. Their stock appears in television, advertising, and film, even cropping up in the new Bond Skyfall. 

Over the past 20 years, Hanness has seen his vintage customer change, alongside the trends within the market. “The Old Cinema’s customer base now covers a wide age range; buyers are in their early 20s, and onwards,” he says. Mid-20^th century British labels have become popular, and a few years ago he began to see industrial furniture appearing in bars and restaurants. As for current trends, stripped and polished metals resonate, but for a more domestic look combine metal with wood; “it makes metal softer and more homely. That is popular right now,” Hannes says. 

3D visualisation company MX 3D Models has been working with The Old Cinema to create models of their vintage items, available to download for designers. Picking highlight pieces from Old Cinema’s collection, MX has produced finely detailed models, built to original dimensions. These models mean designers and clients can now envisage the uniqueness that vintage can provide to a space, even in the early stages of designing. Models can be used alongside the iconic and contemporary items already available in the MX library. Easy to download, and royalty free, these products ensure designers can create high spec, holistic interiors for their clients.  

www.theoldcinema.co.uk

mx-3dmodels.com/the-old-cinema.htm

Designer Profile - Benjamin Hubert

Born in the UK in 1984, Benjamin Hubert studied Industrial Design and Technology at Loughborough University and graduated in 2006.

The London based studio was founded shortly afterwards in 2007 and specialises in industrial design across furniture and lighting sectors working with international manufacturers in Europe and Asia. 

The studio works on a diverse range of projects including both mass produced consumer products to limited editions. Benjamin Hubert has received international critical and media acclaim and has been exhibited internationally.

The studio has also received a number of prestigious awards including: Design of the year (British Design awards 2010) Best Product (100% design/Blueprint awards 2009) Homes and Gardens Young Designer of the Year (Design Classic Awards 2010) EDIDA International Young Designer of the Year 2010 and the A+W Audi Mentorpreis 2012.

Benjamin Hubert 

Designer Profile: BarberOsgerby

Internationally acclaimed designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby founded their eponymous studio in 1996 after graduating with Master’s degrees in Architecture from The Royal College of Art in London. From their first studio in Trellick Tower in London, they designed their first piece, the Loop Table, produced by Isokon in 1997.

Much of Barber and Osgerby’s early work involved the folding and shaping of sheet material, influenced by the white card that they had used frequently in architectural model making. Plywood and perspex were used in the development of the Pilot Table in 1999.

Known for their use of colour, with the limited edition Iris tables, Barber and Osgerby developed a new direction, using colour as the starting point for the work. The same year saw the launch of Tab for Flos, a return to the folded form. In 2009, Barber and Osgerby launched their first major commission for Murano glassmakers, Venini which resulted in a series of unique, large-scale glass vases, created in limited editions and shown in Milan, Porto Cervo and London.

 Both professors of design, Barber and Osgerby have lectured internationally and hosted workshops at Ecal, Switzerland and the Vitra Design Museum. Their work is held in permanent collections around the world including the V&A Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Design Museum, London; the Art Institute of Chicago and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Barber and Osgerby now work with the critically acclaimed Haunch of Venison gallery, London.

Most recently, the pair successfully won the contract for the design of the London 2012 Olympic Torch. The design has proved to be very popular and has become an iconic symbol of the London Olympics.

BarberOsgerby

Designer Profile: Bark Furniture

Bark is a collaboration between husband and wife team, Jonathan Walter and Lakshmi Bhaskaran, both of whom are trained bespoke cabinetmakers with a passion for modern design. Having developed their craft creating one-off pieces for individual clients, in 2010 they decided to join forces and established Bark Furniture.

"Infused with the spirit of the southwest, our work is confident, yet playful, allowing the natural materials to take centre stage"

They offer a fresh take on bespoke, British-made furniture and accessories. The company mission is to create stunning, original designs, made by hand using traditional cabinet-making skills. All Bark furniture is made to the very highest standard using wood from sustainable sources. Their furniture is expected to to last generations.

Their work harks back to a bold period in furniture design and is inspired by the mid-century modern era, when confidence in proportion, modesty in detail and simplicity of construction were the defining characteristics.

Each of their collections are designed and manufactured with different inspirations and foundations. Each boasts its own story and reasoning. The 'Acorn Collection' was simply intended to reflect their views on what great furniture should be. While the 'Beacon Collection' was all about expanding horizons and introducing a collection of fabrics and home accessories. The 'Kustom Collection' was inspired by fifties Americana, and used strong motifs.

Their work was recently displayed at Clerkenwell Design Week, where it proved to be very popular.

Philippe Patrick Starck (born January 18, 1949, Paris) is a French product designer and probably the best known designer in the New Design style. His designs range from spectacular interior designs to mass produced consumer goods such as toothbrushes, chairs, and even houses.

He was educated in Paris at École Nissim de Camondo and in 1968, he founded his first design firm, which specialized in inflatable objects. In 1969, he became art director of his firm along with Pierre Cardin.

Starck's career started to climb in earnest in 1982 when he designed the interior for the private apartments of the French President François Mitterrand.

Starck has worked independently as an interior designer and as a product designer since 1975. Most notably, in 2002, he created a number of relatively inexpensive product designs for the large American retailer Target Stores.

His most recent notable designs include an optical mouse for Microsoft, yachts, and even new packaging for a beer company. He was commissioned to design the Virgin Galactic "spaceport" in New Mexico (Foster and Partners are its architects).

He made the exihibt Democratic Ecology with Pramac.

In autumn 2009 Starck appeared in a BBC 2 programme 'Design for Life' in which 12 aspiring design students competed to gain a six month placement with Starck's Paris based company.

Design

Unlike most other New Design artists, Starck's work does not concentrate on the creation of provocative and expensive single pieces. Instead, his product designs are of usable household items which Starck himself helps to market for mass production. His products and furnishings are often stylized, streamlined and organic in their look and are also constructed using unusual combinations of materials (such as glass and stone, plastic and aluminum, plush fabric and chrome, etc.).

Products

Two of Starck's designs include stylized toothbrushes (1989) and a sleek juicer dubbed the Juicy Salif created for Alessi in 1990. The Juicy Salif has become an affordable and popular cult item. In 2004 he designed the first toothbrush sanitizer for the Yonkers, NY based company VIOlight which won the 2005 Industrial Design Excellence Award. In 2008 he created wireless speakers for the iPod and iPhone : Parrot Zikmu.

Furnishings

Regarding Starck's furniture designs, he is famous for his designs for the Italian manufacturer Kartell, many of which are made from polycarbonate plastic. World famous products he has designed include the transparent Louis Ghost chair, Ero|S| chair, Bubble Club sofa, and La Bohème stool. He has also been involved in the relaunch of the World War II-era Navy Chair in the U.S., designing a classic furniture collection around it.

The Bubble Club chair is featured prominently in the television series Boston Legal. A pair sit on the balcony outside Denny Crane's office, where he and Alan Shore end each episode with a cigar and a glass of Scotch while discussing the events of the episode.

Starck's furniture has been featured at Pinkberry locations.

Restaurant interiors

Among his interior designs for restaurants, Starck designed the Felix restaurant-bar at the The Peninsula Hong Kong, a classic hotel facing the Hong Kong harbour on the Kowloon side. This design, located on the 28th floor, is known for several design features including the men's washroom, which features urinals facing glass, and a spectacular view of the Kowloon cityscape.[8][9]

An earlier design by Starck, now world famous, was for the Café Costes in Paris (1984).

Hotel interiors

In 1988, Starck was commissioned by famed nightclub impresario Ian Schrager, former co-owner of Studio 54, to refit the Royalton Hotel on New York's West 44th Street. It was a design moment that has since changed the hotel industry; boutique hotels, where design is an important factor, became the industry buzz. However the Schrager hotels are also known for their celebrity and publicity orientations that attract attention to the hotels.

The Starck-Schrager design hotel partnerships continued in New York at the Paramount hotel, and then spread to Miami with the opening of the Delano Hotel in South Beach in 1995, to Los Angeles with the Mondrian Hotel in December 1996, to London with both the St. Martins Lane hotel in 1999 and the Sanderson hotel in 2000, to San Francisco and the Clift hotel, and finally back to New York with the Hudson hotel, with what is described as "Cheap Chic".

The look and feel of Starck-Schrager hotels has been highly influential, including the approaches at Starwood's W hotels.

Starck also designed Jia, the first Philippe Starck-designed boutique hotel in Asia.

From 2007 until 2022, Starck is under an exclusive contract with nightclub mogul Sam Nazarian to design Nazarian's new hotel brand, SLS Hotels. The first property, SLS Los Angeles at Beverly Hills (a massive renovation of the former Le Méridien At Beverly Hills), was opened on October 28, 2008, and was entirely designed by Starck. The hotel lobby features unique Starck-designed display cases presenting rotating design items curated by gallerist Murray Moss.

From December 2007, Philippe Starck and his daughter Ara were involved in the redecoration of public areas at Le Meurice, Paris.

Lebbeus Woods (born 1940 in Lansing, Michigan) is an American architect and artist. Woods, who envisions experimental constructs and environments, has stated, "the interplay of metrical systems establishing boundaries of materials and energetic forms is the foundation of a universal science (universcience) whose workers include all individuals".

The majority of his explorations deal with the design of systems in crisis: the order of the existing being confronted by the order of the new. His designs are politically charged and provocative visions of a possible reality; provisional, local, and charged with the investment of their creators. He is best known for his proposals for San Francisco, Havana, and Sarajevo that were included in the publication of Radical Reconstruction in 1997 (Sarajevo after its civil war, Havana in the grips of the ongoing trade embargo, and San Francisco after the Loma Prieta earthquake).

Woods studied architecture at the University of Illinois and engineering at Purdue University and first worked in the offices of Eero Saarinen, but in 1976 turned exclusively to theory and experimental projects. He is currently a professor of architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City. He has designed buildings in Chengdu, China and Havana, Cuba. In 1988, Woods co-founded the Research Institute for Experimental Architecture, a nonprofit institution devoted to the advancement of experimental architectural thought and practice while promoting the concept and perception of architecture itself.

Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no "sacred and primordial site." I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air." I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.

Influence on film

Woods sued the producers of the film 12 Monkeys, claiming that they copied his work "Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber". Woods won a "six figure sum", and allowed the film to continue to be screened. The end credits state that his work "inspired" the Interrogation Room set.[4]

Woods is credited as the "conceptual architect" for Alien 3, establishing the look and feel of the film, especially the opening sequence.