Freeze Frame

Staff -- Interior Design, 10/1/2001 12:00:00 AM

Heart Felt

The patented, award-winning light baffles AC/2 Studio (right, story on page 242) developed for Sunny Bates Associates address a number of design conundrums: how to "de-harsh" and disguise the bare fluorescent fixtures and introduce soft, sound-dampening surfaces into the space. Anthony Caradonna, Anita Cooney, and Evan Douglis brainstormed the idea of "attaching a flexible plane of material to the light," skewered by the fluorescent tubes, and experimented with paper models before settling on three basic shapes rendered in an easy-to-handle, inexpensive synthetic felt that "folds and flops" in undulating waves.

On the Side

According to project leader Anette Schäfer, the installation of neon lights (right, story on page 286) behind a glass-and-stainless-steel armature in the SIDE Hotel's elevator cabins has a quasi-symbolic function. "Each cabin has two windows," she explains. "Behind one, there is always the red light, because red is Matteo Thun's color. Behind the other, the color changes with every floor. It's another way of locating yourself within the hotel, of knowing what floor you're on, where your room is."

Repeat After Me

Bisazza design director Fabio Novembre decided to leave the space's original dark cement floor (left, story on page 156) so that it would accentuate the colorful mosaics rising out from it. He used fiberglass moldings around the columns for the base, as well as for the freestanding stalagmites, giving each of the "trees" a different radius to make them appear random. A layer of plaster was used to further harden the bases before applying the mosaics to varied heights, creating the look of a man-made forest.