Inside Out
The Future of Modern Living
“Art isn’t starting afresh, it’s much more about viewing things in a new way,” says James Shen of the Beijing-based innovative architecture and design firm People’s Architecture Office. In celebration of Lane Crawford’s 165th anniversary, the studio was asked to consider what the future would look like 165 years into the future. In response, the team turned the notion of interior space quite literally inside out. The main material employed is metallic tubing, which the practice used because it has become such a part of our everyday consciousness that it goes largely unnoticed, despite our lives being innately connected to it.
The structures – with different installations for each of the three Lane Crawford stores – are a construction industry fundamental, essential for building our modern-day concrete jungles. Now Shen is putting them centre stage, inviting the public at large to slip off their heels and explore a whole other landscape.
How did you arrive at using the tubes?
The proposal asked us to consider our lives in the future. We realised that our modern buildings couldn’t exist without these metal structures, it’s how you make buildings thick, it’s how you make them tall, and without them, there would be no elevators, no air delivery. They exist on a huge scale but hardly anyone notices them.
Tell us about the interactive nature of the installations.
In every project we do we like to be interactive. This is our first work in a retail space, but it’s no different. Some of the tubes form a staircase, some are horizontal tubes and can be placed like furniture and others are tubular knots and can be used as seating. We’d always imagined a large section stretching across storeys, like a periscope, offering a bird’s-eye view of the store at a different level.
Should art have a place in retail?
What ties the world together is economics. The relationship between art and retail and design is all connected to commerce so the question is how to work within the system. There are quite a few ground-breaking artists working around us in Beijing, including Ai Weiwei, and in economic terms no one is completely independent. Even artists that are controversial, artists that are critical, all work within that system to some degree. For us it’s a chance to bring design to a live space where people can relate to it.
How did you become involved in celebrating Lane Crawford’s 165th anniversary?
Lane Crawford saw some of our work and reached out to us. I’ve always known Lane Crawford – there really still aren’t too many of those recognisable brands that stand out for good taste here in China and Lane Crawford does. As a company it really is able to curate, and lead, what’s coming next.
The project asks that you think about life in the next 165 years. What are your thoughts on that?
The store’s history gives it such a rare viewpoint. For me, it’s almost impossible to be able to think that far ahead. That number –165 years – is approaching the whole history of the United States of America, it’s mind-bending. In China, where I’m based, the current government is only 60 years old. The current economy is just 30 years old. Architecture and design are really still so new that there isn’t even such a thing as product design and yet things are changing fast. Lane Crawford is an ambassador for good design and we really need that in this part of the world right now. It’s so important. Until now, The West has had the monopoly but I guarantee that will change even in the next five years…
