Design is the passionate search for the essential nature of objects. Only simple forms permit intense communication between human beings and objects

People often ask me why my designs never go beyond the simplest basic geometric forms. The “Optima” camera with the res sensor is a pure cuboid, the circular forms dominates the “Orbis” lamps, the forms of The “Orion” is an unadulterated cylinder and the kitchen systems display only a square and rectangular surfaces.

My answer to their question is that I follow the creative principles that I believe in. And for me those aren’t primarily aesthetic values and criteria, but ethical ones. I have never said that objects that are designed according to the canon of basic geometric forms look better by virtue of their forms alone, that they are more aesthetically pleasing. I just think they’re better suited for creating a sensibly designed environment, which means a higher quality of life for people. And that’s what I strive for.

My creative credo is a reaction to the sensory overload that we are continuously subjected to. Not only on the street but also inside buildings, we are surrounded by random collection of diverse objects, most of which have been designed in a haphazard manner. The total effect of such surroundings is a perpetual state of visual unease. Clarity, tranquility and a sensible order that provides orientation are lost.

I don’t see that as a primarily an aesthetic problem. It’s deeper anthropological issue. If a human being is to have a high quality of life and a sense of being sheltered and at home in the world, it’s crucial to have a positive atmosphere. But the creation of such an atmosphere is permanently blocked by the complex environment of heterogeneous objects and unsorted information that surrounds us. This leaves a fundamental need of human beings unsatisfied. We can’t escape from this negative atmosphere. It affects us through many channels, and the way we experience and process it is largely subconscious. Moreover, it has a long-term effect on people’s general state of mind.

From the investigations carried out by the social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, we know that every objects that draws our attention initially drains off a certain amount of physical and psychic energy. Because every individual possesses only a limited amount of energy, the natural result of this constant drain is physical and psychic exhaustion – the condition we know today as “burnout syndrome”. In this respect, it can’t be denied that the field of design has anthropological relevance.

That we are not suffering from collective burnout syndrome is due to the fact that pictures and objects that are appropriately designed also transmit positive energy to the viewer. In the ideal case, a certain sense of give-and-take arises in the communicative relationship between human beings and objects- a feeling that Csikszentmihalyi calls the “flow experience”, or a sense of intense motivation. “It’s harmonious experience in which the body and the spirit work together effortlessly and the feeling arises that something very unusual is happening to you”, he says. In the other words, it is an intense relationship between the individual and his or her activity or surroundings –the very pinnacle of communication.

But this kind of intense communication between human beings and objects can take place only if people have established a direct relationship with them. And this, in turn, is possible only if the objects themselves are essential –that is, if there are essential nature has been expressed. Creating this kind of object requires concentration from designer. He or she must express the essential nature of the objects and discard all of their nonessential elements.

Herbert Schultes takes on design challenges of every magnitude. His designs range from innovative ski binding, for example, to a restaurant in a high-speed train for Germany’s railway system, The Deutsche Bahn. Herbert Schultes made his mark with AG, and for many years he was the company’s head designer. In addition to a passion for his creative work, Schultes is committed to fostering up-and-coming young designers. He founded the Industrial Design program at Munich Technical College and taught at the Cologne design schools.

Photography and architecture are allies. But a purely visual understanding of buildings comes at the expense of many other means of perceiving architecture’s pleasures

As a result of, or in reaction to, this acquired way of thinking about architecture, some of my most memorable architectural experiences have occurred in spaces that are difficult if not impossible to photograph. Unable to reduce the experience to snapshot, a slide to be filed in a mental collection of architectural images, different senses kick in to record, comprehend and calibrate the experience.

1. I visited a museum where Richard Serra’s sculpture his series of “torqued spirals” of two-inch thick, was installed in an exterior courtyard. It is around 125-ton. Compresses in this seamless channel, seem less like heavy metal. As the passage narrows I feel the day’s  heat, making me realize once again how thick Serra’s ever-bending surfaces are.
2. I had the chance to visit Peter Zumthor’s so-called spa in the town of Vals in a mountainous region of Switzerland. I say “ so called” because the term “spa” with all its connotations of indolence, does not seem to capture what is really going on there. To me the experience was indeed, therapeutic, but for the mind as well as the body. To go to the spa, I descend through a transformative experience: a Parsifal scenario for activating the senses. After leaving my clothes and other articles of daily life –cell phone, wallet, keys- behind, I find myself in a damp, somewhat dark environment punctuated by streams of light from above. The main spaces are series of interlocking open areas with shallow steps leading info pools of water bounded by massive walls with equally, massive piers, which rise up out of the pools and provide the central support. The walls and the piers are made of the same greenish marble, cut into long flat slabs and stacked in the manner of ancient Roman brickwork. The arrangement of the three pools further references classical themes: a frigidarium,a tepidarium and a caldarium contain, as did Roman baths, cold, lukewarm and hot water, respectively. Becoming intensely aware of how well the body functions as measure of experience, it suddenly seems silly that everyone is wearing a bathing suit.
3. There is a relatively new museum in Tokyo –The Gallery of the Horyuji Treasures –dedicated to displaying the magnificent artefacts form an ancient temple in Nara. Mainly of wood, paper and textiles, the works are very fragile and light is very subdued. I am in the main gallery. A bronze wall serves as a screen and backdrop to the individually illuminated works. Goodly, it seems to me, two columns puncture the space. I ask the architect, Yoshio Taniguchi, about his intentions. He explains that all the famous temples of Japan were wooden structures. The most important of them were also largest and because wood was not very reliable for spanning great lengths, they usually had two columns, one on either side of the statue of Buddha in the centre. And the bronze wall? Temple bells are made of bronze, and the architect hoped that the bronze wall as well as the two columns might subliminally suggest the objects original setting.
4. Very few people knew Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, except from black and white photographs. A friend of mine showed me this diary entry from the day he visited it: “Walking through the pavilion, I become aware of what space is for the first time, the way a fish might come to understand water, if it could”. For me the real shock was the color, I had mistakenly come to think of the Pavilion, like an ancient Greek temple, as a composition in whites and greys. How different it was to see the polychromatic reality – in both cases. Training my eyes to focus on the surfaces of the materials. I also become intensely aware of the incredible series of reflections in the water, glass, chrome, polished marble and onyx. Could this really have been Mies’ intention? Where was the austere functionalist that the post-modernists had railed against?

TERENCE RILEY has been the head curator fro architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1991. Born in Elgin, Illinois, Riley studied architecture at the University of Notre Dame and Columbia University before opening and architecture firm together with John Keenen, where he is still active today.

In the name of the mother.

How Dan Lerner is continuing the tradition that his mother began.

Dan Lerner dedicated his tenure at bulthaup Culinary Academy in Tel Aviv to the culinary legacy of his mother, a food writer whose enthusiasm for food was contagious, not just in the family but in an entire country hungry for the good life. Her son goes out of his way to pass on her legacy to a new generation.

March 2011, in a fine-dining restaurant in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv. Gastronomic food critic and writer Dalia Penn-Lerner was awarded the highest decoration by the Chaîne des Rôtisseur’s Israeli Chapter. With her typical modesty, surrounded by family, friends and members of the order, she said: “I am thrilled to be here, it really is fun. I’m not a woman of speeches, I will only say thank you.”

For 30 years Penn-Lerner, known as “The First Lady of the Israeli Culinary World”, served as Culinary Director of the order. She was responsible for checking, approving, and selecting the dishes to be served at the Chaîne’s culinary gatherings. With her vast amount of knowledge, her exquisite palate, a highly developed sense of taste and her strong passion for food, no one could have done it better. Now, at the age of 75, she is stepping down. “I have done my share,” she continued, with some emotion. “It’s time to leave the stage.” A year later, in September 2012, she passed away.

July 2014, south Tel Aviv. Dan Lerner, Penn-Lerner’s youngest son, opens the door to his gorgeous loft workshop on the 11^th floor of an industrial building; this is where he writes, cooks, and lives. Throughout the loft the walls are lined with hundreds of cookbooks, evidence of his mother’s long, illustrious culinary career. Dalia Penn-Lerner lives and breathes in every corner of this loft–from her book collection to the hundreds of recipes and articles she published during her long career in Israeli culinary journalism. All of the items are now arranged in binders and cartons by her son, who dedicated his tenure at the bulthaup Culinary Academy in Israel to the enormous legacy left to him by his mother.

In order to comprehend that legacy, one must go back decades to London and a time when Penn-Lerner was a young actress who married Dr. Alec Lerner, a member of the board of directors of Marks & Spencer. As a young lady, Penn-Lerner enjoyed the good life filled with extensive culinary travel and frequent visits to wineries and restaurants with or without Michelin stars. In the late 1960s, as the Six-Day War broke out, the Lerner’s immigrated to Israel–they wanted to contribute to the war effort.

When the war ended, they stayed and Penn-Lerner decided to study at “Le Cordon Bleu” cooking school both in Paris and London. She was tired of her housekeepers’ cooking. The combination of personal ties with international master chefs, the enormous amounts of culinary information she collected, and her natural talent turned her into a food authority. “She possessed a vast amount of knowledge and devoted her time to research and study,” says Chef Erez Komarovsky, a pioneer of the new Israeli kitchen and a close personal friend. “She had such a precise sense of taste, and an ability to decipher flavors and give them historical perspective, actually analyzing the pedigree of every dish. She could identify, out of all my dishes, what was the newest, the best, the most interesting — and she always got it right.”

“Mom loved good ingredients and insisted that food should taste natural,” says Dan Lerner. “She liked simplicity in cooking. She loved to discover chefs who were just starting out and helped promote them. She would call the greatest chefs around the world, who were her friends, and arrange internships for them, never asking for a thing in return.” In the 1980s, Penn-Lerner started writing. It was the first time non-kosher food appeared in any Israeli newspaper or magazine, and her weekly columns brought the message of the international culinary world to Israeli cuisine. “I’ll never be able to step into mom’s shoes,” Lerner says humbly, adding, “Those are very big shoes.”

Maybe he won’t be able to fill her shoes, but his involvement in the field is definitely connected to and affected by her. Perhaps it’s because from a very young age he absorbed food and authentic culinary culture directly into his bloodstream. “While my sister played soccer outside, I cooked with mother,” he says with a laugh. “At first I would watch her. As time passed she allowed me to cook. In fact, for many years I was her sous chef.”

“She taught me everything, from the foundation up: sauces, vinaigrettes, how to hold a knife and use it, how to taste food and how to evaluate a dish. Despite smoking three packs a day, mom had an excellent, precise palate, like a computer. She could uncover secret ingredients in dishes.“

In his family’s home, food was everything. “We talked about it during the meal, we got lectures on what we were eating, we knew where every raw ingredient came from,” says Lerner. “At school I would breezily tell my friends that I had eaten sushi, or lobster, or Wiener schnitzel the day before. They didn’t know what I was talking about. When friends would come over, and they’d open the refrigerator to get some cold water, they would be taken aback because there’d be a bunch of live lobsters, or oysters. It was exotic. Even as kids, we would join our parents on culinary tours abroad, including Italy, France, and Spain.”

With that kind of childhood, it’s not surprising that at the age of 21 Lerner opened his first bar and restaurant, B Square in Jaffa. The menu was built around his mother’s recipes. In the early 1990s, he moved to Switzerland to earn a Bachelor’s of Science in hospitality management and business administration. When he returned to Israel, he managed a few restaurants before going back to Europe for the Marks & Spencer managerial training program in London. From there Lerner went to New York, where he opened Azafran, a Spanish tapas restaurant. “The Spanish tradition is my favorite, and in fact it’s the only cuisine in which I am more of an expert than mom was,” he says. When Azafran closed, Lerner became the Assistant General Manager and Wine Director at New York’s legendary Brasserie restaurant. After 10 years in New York, he returned to Israel to be near his mother, who was already ill, and served as CEO of the Catit group (by top chef Meir Adoni) and as New York City project manager of Breads Bakery, a highly regarded Tel Aviv bakery. Earlier in 2014, he took over the reins of the first bulthaup Culinary Academy. Moreover, he served as a judge in the Kansas City Barbeque Society world BBQ championship, an annual event.

Your mother left behind a rich culinary tradition. In what way are you continuing it? Her legacy is part of me; everything I do in my personal or professional life is influenced by it. She always told me, ‘Follow your heart, don’t cut corners, and don’t sell your soul to the devil, stay honest’. On the professional level, if I look back at my work at the Academy, mom’s spirit is expressed in my attempt to position the institution as a food authority, a place that is a stage for younger, less experienced, less famous chefs. I try to include them in our educational programs. I approach restaurants with leading chefs and ask them to allow their sous chefs to participate. It doesn’t always work.

What marks your own influence in this tradition? My uncompromising insistence on the finest ingredients, within the bounds of kashrut, of course. While it is true that in the end it’s market forces that decide which workshops will be held and which ones won’t, it’s important to me to expose the Israeli audience to cuisines that for whatever reason are less popular here. Israelis love the meat, Italian and Mediterranean food workshops, but are less into Indian, Chinese, or Korean food, for example. Like mom, I believe simple food, simple and precise cooking methods, good raw materials and instructions, and a glass of wine make up the ingredients for a good meal. What is your vision for the academy? At the end of the day, it’s an experiential center. It is not really a classic cooking school, the academy isn’t going to produce Israel’s next top chef, but it is absolutely a center for serious foodies, for people who have seen the world, who’ve had a taste and want to know more about cooking and cooking techniques. Mom always told me: ‘Make it simple, don’t be pompous.’ And so, considering that bulthaup is selling high-end kitchens, it is important to communicate with the academy’s clients at their level, to have them make things they can do at home. It’s important they leave with added value, for them to be able to distinguish different varieties of spices, oils, and herbs. How to read a recipe, to understand its ingredients, to learn new techniques. Let’s give them the tools to understand the whole picture.

If your mother were to teach a course at the academy, what would it be? That’s a good question… I think Indian food. She always said that Indian food was what kept her warm in winter, and she was an excellent Indian cook. Do you miss her cooking? Every day, especially for its simplicity and precision, which I can’t find anywhere unless I reconstruct her recipes. At family events we often make her curry, her artichokes in vinaigrette (see recipe) and other dishes, which eases the cravings.

You’re aware that without the groundwork laid by your mother this conversation wouldn’t have taken place. Without her, an institution like the bulthaup Culinary Academy in Tel-Aviv wouldn’t exist. Absolutely, and that saddens me. When young chefs, food writers, and bloggers don’t know who she was and who started it all, it pains me. Mom never leveraged herself; money and fame never interested her. She did it all out of the love for cooking and for food, and unfortunately she never gained the wide recognition that she truly deserved.

Did she feel that way too? I don’t think she thought about it, I think about it now. In order to change the situation, if only a little, Lerner is currently working on a cookbook and website that will collect and document his mother’s lifelong work and all her recipes – the ones that were published in newspapers and magazines and the ones that only her friends and family had the opportunity to enjoy. With the exception of “Sun, Sea and Food” a Mediterranean cookbook she wrote with two colleagues, Penn-Lerner did not publish any other cookbooks. To be able to focus on this project, her son has handed over his position as head of the Academy to his successor Avner Laskin. “I decided to prepare her recipes and photograph the dishes, as a homage to her and to make her articles more accessible–to others and myself,” says Lerner.

Avner Laskin, a celebrated Artisan Chef and Baker, is now at the helm of the bulthaup Culinary Academy. Just as Dan Lerner’s mother, has was educated at the renowned Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. He also holds a diploma from the Ecole Lenôtre Bakery School in Paris and is the author of many popular books on cooking and baking.

Dalia Penn-Lerner’s Artichokes with Vinaigrette Ingredients (for 6 portions):

6 globe artichokes

1 lemon, cut in half

4 tablespoons

white wine vinegar or lemon juice

salt

For the dressing:

2 tablespoons wine vinegar

coarse-ground salt and pepper

6 tablespoons olive oil

yolks of two hard-cooked eggs, coarsely chopped

2 green onions or scallions, chopped

1 tablespoon capers, chopped

Preparation: Dissolve salt in the vinegar and add pepper. Slowly pour in the olive oil, stirring constantly. Pour into jar with closely fitting lid, close tightly and shake well. Taste, and correct seasoning as needed. For each artichoke, cut off the stem, close to the base, and slice 3 to 4 centimeters from the crown. Rub the cut edges with lemon to prevent browning. Boil water in a large pot, add salt and the white wine vinegar or lemon juice, place the artichokes in the pot stem-side down, and simmer for 30-40 minutes. Toward the end of the cooking time, check occasionally for doneness: The artichokes are ready when the leaves detach easily. When they’re done, remove from pot, drain, and refrigerate briefly. Place each artichoke on its base, reach into the center of the artichoke from the top, grab the group of thin leaves and with a twisting motion pull it out. Using a spoon, scrape out the fuzzy center that is the “beard,” or choke.

The dressing: Mix the egg yolks, the scallions and the capers into the vinaigrette. Pour about 2 tablespoons of the dressing into the hollowed center of each artichoke and pour the remainder into a gravy boat to serve alongside. To eat, simply tear off a leaf and dip it in the dressing.

From Dalia Penn-Lerner’s “Sun, Sea and Food” / Modan Publishing House

Photo: Shay Afgin 

Christoph Keller has turned the “Stählemühle” into one of the most innovative fruit brandy producers in the world, and exclusive herbal distillates are used by the best chefs in the world: top chefs clamor for his exclusive herb distillates. He is an expert in condensing aromas and refining the ability to savor.
bulthaup: Mr. Keller, why are you calling your fine fruit brandy distillery experimental?
Christoph Keller: At Stählemuhle, it’s all about sensory experiences. We distill all kinds of things and we capture their aromas. We experiment, for example, a lot with herbs form our large garden. Our goal is to transfer herbs into single-source distillates, not for drinking or digestives, but rather as an aroma additive in cooking.
bulthaup: To appreciate such fine products require highly trained palates. Is this the reason that sensory organizes seminars?
Christoph Keller: Yes, sensory seminars aim to sensitize people for distillates. Working with fruits or herbs represents an excellent opportunity to discover a huge spectrum of aromas.
bulthaup: How do the training courses work?
Christoph Keller: First transmit basic knowledge such as the stone fruits or “drupes” always contain a touch of bitter almond, which can be deduced that all distilled with a note of bitter almond necessarily come from a drupe. At the same time we open new sensory perspectives, for example lavender. Almost everyone associated lavender to a perfume or a closet freshener, but few knows that has a fantastic flavor. Lavender flowers dissolve well in sauces and can be used as distillates.

bulthaup: Do you also learn anything about the art of refining?
Christoph Keller: Of course. We explain the process using specific examples. Let’s take vodka combined with raspberries, for example. The vodka, being a neutral alcohol, takes up the aroma of the raspberries. This produces a starting schnapps that the aromas produced by distilling are much more refined, more elegant and much sharper. There are no oily, earthy, blunt aromas- they are eliminated by the distilling process. In the art of aromas, this means reaching a higher level with very pure flavors.        .

bulthaup: And aside from the theory?
Christoph Keller: The culmination of these sensory seminars usually a blind tasting with very interesting results. Sensory sensitivity of people is very diverse. The women are better than men; the young, better than older people; and nonsmokers, better than smokers … of course, always speaking in general terms. There are also extreme differences in people’s sensory training levels.

Christoph Keller.Staehlemuehle

Rotis: A place in the Allgäu region, not far from Leutkirch-with forest, meadows and small rivers. Behind a converted corn and sawmill built in 1414, studio houses stand on wooden piles. Sun light streams through these light and airy buildings and out onto meadows. Author Ilse Aichinger once wrote about Rotis, saying that nobody could ever fully understand this place, the place is “as reserved as it is open”. In early 1970s, Otl Aicher chose Rotis as his place to live and work, thereby converting it, as he put it, into an “autonomous republic”. This internationally renowned man exuded true individualism. Aicher was the man commissioned with designing the Summer Olimpic Games in Munich. With his visual concept for the Summer Games, he delivered a true masterpiece. It was a self-contained communication design, comprising complementary shapes and colours, a language that everyone understood. The internet was far away and compared to today, information technology was still very much in its infancy. And yet, even back in 1972, Otl Aicher  was practicing what, thirty years later, was to become known as “integrated communication”, a keyword for global marketing. In other words, the combination of all forms of communication to create a uniform and concordant effect. Otl Aicher’s designs for the visual self-representation of companies and institutions gave rise to the formulation of a “corporate identity”. He created an internationally-understandable pictogram system, bases on geometric figures, and became the “father of geometric man”. Otl Aicher really caught on-at the Summer Olympic Games in Munich, his colours became the colours of the Games –sky blue, lime green, yellow and orange-. To Aicher, internationalism was something inspiring, liberating and diverting. Following his success in Munich, the organizers of Moscow Summer Games also wanted to work with Aicher. But the `plan ultimately failed, for a simple reason- Aicher would not place red, the colour ideologised  by the Communists, at the forefront of his design. The man was stubborn and had his principles. And he remained true to them. His pictograms form Rotis are known all over the world. There isn’t a single airport building or railway station that his characters and pictograms do not adorn. The ZDF News clock and the font of the Heute Journal come from Rotis, a special type of font created from a humanist point of view, and is named after the place in Allgäu. For companies such as ERCO or Braun, Lufthansa or Gruner+Jahr, Aicher created a new, public appearance. And he did it for bulthaup too. The logo and font come from Otl Aicher.  bulthaup has been working with the creative forge in Rotis for many years now. “When I met Otl Aicher in the late 1970s”, recalls Gerd Bulthaup today, “it was Aicher’s wish that we create an image involving eating culture”.Otl Aicher and Gerd Bulthaup went on many trips over three years, and talked about kitchen appliances and the art of cooking in Europe. The fruit on his labour was produced in 1982 – a book entitled “The Cook’s Kitchen” (“Die Küche zum Kochen”). It also paid homage to the philosopher Ludwing Wittgenstein, who once said: “Learning how things are used yields the key to all knowledge”. The carefully-researched experience of materials, ergonomics and the value of functionality all flowed into bulthaup’s product philosophy. The result was sophisticated products, created with ethically-sound materials. When it came to functionality, Aicher posed probing questions about the point and purpose,  and sought answers regarding the nature of things. His realization: In everything, there is a basis structure, an ideal form. Aicher’s message was heard far and wide. His ideas and influences had numerous creative heads form the world of business, politics and culture spellbound. Architect Sir Norman Foster recalls: “It was three o’clock in the afternoon. I picked up the telephone and called Otl Aicher. Otl is often on his travels but to my amazement, I reached him in Rotis.” Aicher is said to have asked. Replied Foster: “No, in my London office, but I can meet you in Leutkirch at quarter past seven”. His private jet landed that same evening at the small airport in Leutkirch. A lot of people came and stayed in Rotis.

Aicher wasn’t just a communications designer. He was also an author and philosopher. He took the basic human right of self-determination literally. “In my own self-understanding”, wrote Aicher once, “my four-acre property is an autonomous republic, an enclave”. Autonomy born of resistance against the power of the state. Aicher relied on his own electricity generator, and his own vegetables form the garden. He wanted to live independently, free, close to the nature. He fought for the abolitions of aircraft noise and joined the political battle against militarization in the age of the Cold War. Despite the disasters, his life’s work tells of love for his fellow man. Otl Aicher, born in Ulm in 1922, died in 1991 after a tragic road accident in Rotis.

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Architecture is perfect when simplicity is pushed to its logical conclusion. It contains a vast potential for richness and sensuality and creates spaces in which one can dream.

„The art of building emerges from the art of living, just as the art of cookery can be said to be the product of art of eating“ Witold Rybezynski.

„ That plainness has such an impact bespeaks the excess of noise that has invaded the landscapes around us“ Peter Zumthor

For a period in the 1970s I lived in Japan. I have a powerful memory of a visit I made to the Katsura Palace. I remember sittir looking over the moon-viewing lake, with traditional cake and tea. It was the distillation of everything which has always draws me to simplicity. Every detail was perfect: the table, the view, the lake, the ritual of getting there and then of leaving again. Nothing jarred, nothing was wrong. The writer Bruce Chatwin once said that “a room-any room, anywhere- should be a space in which to dream“. Here was the perfect space in which to dream, architecture which was the consequence of pushing simplicity to its logical conclusion.

The Katsura place is one of a range of examples which have informed the way I think about space. The list is diverse, historically and culturally. It includes Cistercian architecture, the Bauhaus, the Saker movement and the work of Mies van der Rohe. You can’t repeat the perfection of the Katsura Palace or the Farnsworth Pavilion in a literal way. These things have to be done for a particular time and place to work. It is not the detail or a particular time and place to work. It is not the detail of a particular style that matters, but the sensibility behind it. The common thread is the notion of simplicity, with its vast any paradoxical potential for richness and sensuality.

Simplicity and ritual: these for me are the keystones of architectural practice. I am interested in creating spaces which are visually comfortable and where a particular set of actions feels natural. The state of minimum is definitively not one of austerity or deprivation – in terms of aesthetics or of function. It is clarity –of surface, line, proportion and use. It acknowledges the need for the eye, the mind and the physical body to be comfortable if a space is to feel good to be in. The reverse of a dehumanised aesthetic, this is architecture which is meticulously shaped around the individual inhabitant, which derives from rituals of use rather than conventions of form.

„The designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, when there is nothing left to take away “Antoine de Saint Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars (1939)

The authentic state of minimum is extremely difficult to achieve. There persists an idea that it is somehow a case of throwing out the sofa and painting the walls white. The serious thought which underlies the endeavour is missed. This is not architecture of absence: It is defined not by what is not there, but rather by the rightness of what is. You reduce, you simplify and at first there is less and less to look at. Then, as you go on attenuating and compressing, you come to a point at which you go through a barrier and pass through into what I described in my book Minimum as a kind of mirror world, in which you see, looked at with enough clarity, not emptiness, but a sense of richness. The lushness of restraint is revealed, simplicity acquires an epic quality, proportions come alive and you find that there are 50 different shades of white.

 As Richard Serra so rightly said: „ the reason to work is to find out what I don’t know; I don’t want to recycle what I know“

Every time I take on a commission, I start from scratch, begin again. My own house in London falls into category of a project which involved working within an existing envelope and thus the attendant challenge of flipping comprehensively new patterns of living into the frame of the old. The raw material I had to work with was a nineteenth century row house in Notting Hill. The first step was to paint everything white, put down rush matting and get to know the house it was. It is crucial to see how the light and views affect the spaces, to understand where the proportions work and where they don’t and study the patterns of use engrained in an existing layout. It is this preliminary stage which makes possible the comprehensive work which follows.

Light is of paramount importance in my work. Artificial ambient light has it part to play, but it is the changing play of natural light and shadow which is the focus of my attention. A while ago I spent time in Mexico, visiting buildings designed by Luis Barragán. His mastery of light was consummate.

Simple, even austere materials and forms are rendered rich and suggestive. Architecture which dissolves conventional barriers than compromises our need for houses to be places of a sanctuary and retreat.

 „No matter how small the room“ observed Bruce Chatwin, „ providing your eye could travel freely around it, the space it contained was limitless“.

The crucial quality of seamlessness-of a space which retains the abstract quality of thought-is perhaps most dependent on the quality of the junctions.

A picture I had seen in a magazine of a work of the Japanese architect Shiro Kuramata. This picture had set something resonating inside me. I experience a powerful sense of rightness. Here was a work of discipline and poetry which acknowledged the scope for grace every day. This, for me, is of the very essence of minimalism- the relationship which it makes possible between the profound and the everyday.

John Pawson was born in Halifax. Before turning architecture, Pawson worked in his family’s textile factory and lived and taught in Japan for several years. After returning to England, he studied architecture briefly before founding his own firm in 1981. Pawson has applied his purist aesthetic to a small apartment for the author Bruce Chatwin and to the remarkable Calvin Klein flagship store in Manhattan.

In Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona, Penélope Cruz’s character slaps her hand down hard on the worktop of a bulthaup system b20 kitchen in a memorable outburst of anger. The kitchen belongs to her former husband, a painter played by Javier Bardem–her current partner in real life­. It is a rather cluttered, cozy corner in the live-in studio that sets the stage for one of the most hilarious scenes in this film, shot in Spain by Woody Allen.

Practically everything in Mostly Martha happens in a kitchen. The main character does not have much of a life elsewhere; the kitchen in her restaurant is the place where she feels at home, the backdrop of her everyday life, of her successes and her sadder moments. To create this atmosphere that is crucial for the plot to unfold, German director Sandra Nettelbeck chose the multiple possibilities of the bulthaup brand. How could it be otherwise?

The amnesic Jason Bourne, played by Matt Damon, searches desperately for clues that will help him reconstruct his lost identity. In his frantic, terrifying escape from dangers he is unable to understand–he has no idea what he has done wrong–he suddenly walks into an apartment and is dumbstruck: “This is my kitchen!” Somewhat cold, but unquestionably his own. A powerful memory has been unleashed. In The Bourne Identity, once again, bulthaup was the chosen brand.

Juliette Binoche and Jeremy Irons in Damage; Hugh Grant in About a Boy… a long list of major film stars move about sets where bulthaup contributes to creating the appropriate atmosphere.

In a wide variety of productions, ranging from Hollywood to independent European cinema, stylists have been choosing bulthaup time and time again. Sometimes, they set new trends by creating hugely appealing open living spaces; but beyond shaping these new paradigms, the choice of bulthaup often hinges on the brand’s enormous versatility–on its ability to provide further depth to characters by showing the clues of what they have chosen for their homes.

bulthaup: a place on the silver screen is a hard-earned privilege that few brands have managed to achieve.

Sissel Tolaas’s world is made up of molecules. She creates smells that inform

instead of perfume, and encapsulates reality in olfactory formulas.

bulthaup: So what’s so fascinating about our noses?

Sissel Tolaas: Everything. The nose already knows vast quantities of information before

our other sensory organs even realize something‘s going on. Most people are unfortunately

“blind to smell“, because we live in a world in which vision is king. The nose barely

plays any role any more in our society. We simply don‘t know anything about what this

olfactory organ can do. Scents are only communicated through perfume advertising. Too

much attention is given nowadays to whitewashing, deodorizing and keeping the world

clean. We really need to re-learn what smells are and what they mean.

Have you re-learned how to smell?

I’ve done a lot of research into noses and smells, and I’m constantly asking myself: How

can I make my nose tolerant to all smells – how can I become neutral? It is possible to break

down prejudices to smells. With the aid of the perfume industry, I’m able to reproduce real

smells without limit – and therefore train my awareness and that of others of smells.

Is it a difficult process?

The older you are, the harder it is to “reprogram“ yourself. The preconceptions of our

olfactory senses are fundamental, and are anchored deep in our subconscious. That‘s

because the first moment in which we perceive a smell is the crucial one. Whether this moment

is associated with a positive or a negative emotion determines our relationship with this smell

for the rest of our lives. We should therefore start encouraging our noses early.

You offer smell training for kindergarten and elementary school children. What do you teach

them about smells?

When children smell a molecule for the first time in their lives, they associate it with a

meaning and store this in their subconscious. I let them play with abstract smell molecules as

though they were numbers or letters. They sniff them and try to describe them – using labels

other than ‚good‘ or ‚bad‘. Then they start to combine these with other molecules. This way,

they experience what lies behind the abstract molecules. I tell stories using smells and I try,

using other methods, to generally make people aware of smells. I make every effort to give

them access to other tools of perception. In a way, I‘m increasing their awareness.

You have created an impressive smell archive in your Berlin apartment. When did your passion

for collecting begin?

From around 1990 to 1997, I collected smells and archived them in a basic manner, without

having any knowledge or expertise from the industry. Between 1997 and 2004, I was involved

in a lot of smell projects, working in and with various laboratories – often commissioned

and supported by companies. Since 2004, I have been working with IFF INC., one of the

largest scent and flavor manufacturers, which creates perfumes for Prada and Calvin Klein, for

example. They have provided me with a fullyequipped smell laboratory in my Berlin studio.

How do you capture a scent?

I use something called headspace technology, which allows scents to be aspirated using a

vacuum method. This scent is then broken down into its tiniest components, molecules,

and analyzed. As soon as I know the formula, I can recreate it chemically.

One of your current projects is called “Nasalo”. Is this project about “hidden stories” too?

Nasalo is a lexicon of smell. It‘s about trying to express scents in words. As part of the “City

Smell Research Projects“, I work in cities such as Mexico City, Paris, Liverpool, Detroit or Cape

Town, collecting smells – of food, babies, human sweat and anything through to the smells

of rooms or suburbs – and reproduce them. I then bring the smells back to their corresponding

reality and ask analytical questions: How can these be described in words? What does

a smell tell us about companies, bodies, cities, materials, products? These statements are analyzed

in collaboration with anthropologists and linguist and reformulated into specific terms.

They are used in communication systems such as city guides, educational programs and in the

PR and advertising industry, for example.

How do you perceive the smell of food?

Flavor and smell are extremely important. The experience of eating is partly determined by my

nose. Sometimes, I eat pure rice and then smell only the main dish. It‘s interesting to know that

the gourmet pleasure can actually be intensified with this method. The more complex the

smell of a dish, the more exciting it becomes to eat it.

Sissel Tolaas, the Norwegian smell researcher analyzes everything

that passes her nose in order to reproduce it later. Tolaas calls herself a “professional

in-betweener”, between science and art. The native Norwegian is in fact many

things: Artist, linguist, mathematician and a doctor of chemistry. In her Smell

Re_searchLab in Berlin, supported by IFF INC. (International Flavors & Fragrances),

she researches and develops interdisciplinary projects on the subject of smell. She

works with a network of globally active companies, renowned institutes and the

best universities, including Harvard, Stanford and Oxford.

Creativity is the result of the routine and the inner peace that comes from work and meditation. 
Based on this philosophy, Tadao Ando creates spaces that invite quiet contemplation.