To decode the warm minimalism of Berlin architecture practice Studio Mara reveals a reverence for the natural, the raw and the nuanced. Yet it’s what the duo’s spaces leave out that defines their subtle atmospheres – something felt more than seen. Whether rehabilitating Berlin lofts carved up by misguided ‘90s renovations the or unfurling a hunched Majorcan finca towards an ocean view, the architecture of Mirjam Danke and Olaf Schulz is a practice of subtraction. In an exclusive editorial feature, the partners in life and work invited Ignant into their new workspace at Glint in Berlin-Mitte, whose gentle essentialism exudes a powerful presence.

Read more

The post Studio Mara: Architecture of Subtraction appeared first on IGNANT.

A spongy carpet of velvety green oozes out of a corner, spilling along a corridor between perforated concrete and glass. A string of yellow beans winds itself down a stainless-steel shelf. Mounds of grapes atop a banquet table recall a Nature Morte painting. Each is the work of Studio Lilo, the practice of Kreuzberg-born and -bred artist Lilo Klinkenberg, whose darkly romantic living sculptures have over the past few years unfurled across industrial spaces, art institutions and high fashion installations around the world. In conversation with Ignant, Klinkenberg shares her trajectory from fashion to hospitality and floral design, her unlikely sources of inspiration, and her enduring appreciation for chicken wire.

Read more

The post Studio Lilo’s Living Sculptures Reimagine Floral Design appeared first on IGNANT.

A mainstay atop quality-of-life charts, Zurich is synonymous with polished efficiency, pristine nature and its financial powerhouse status. Yet beyond beauty and banking, it has a few secrets to keep – like playing host to the world’s most attended techno parade. Every August, the movers and shakers of the city’s music, arts and rave culture welcome up to a million visitors – almost three times the city’s population – to the Street Parade, an exuberant, inclusive celebration of its storied underground rave culture. Photographers Sophie Green and Christian Werner ventured beyond its surface and into the city’s cultural underground, capturing its moods and moments in off-parade events, hidden local institutions, and liminal spaces. Released exclusively on Ignant, their images shed new light on the city’s vibrant electronic music and rave scene. To accompany the series, entitled ‘Uncovering the Underbelly’, Sophie and Christian reflect on their routes through the city, the moments that caught their eye, and how their experience cut through the stereotypes to reframe their view of Zurich’s subcultural credentials.

Read more

The post Zurich’s Club Culture Shines Through the Lenses of Sophie Green and Christian Werner appeared first on IGNANT.

Some architects take their time embedding themselves into the public conscience, while others burst onto the scene in the splash of a single project. For young Berlin practice Atelier Sunder-Plassmann, that project was Hof Ahmen, a 55m2 glass-walled holiday home on the “gentle landscape” of a working sheep farm in the brooding coastal grasslands of Schleswig-Holstein between the Baltic and North Seas. To accompany an exclusive editorial for Ignant, Founder Malte Sunder-Plassmann shares how a personal project realized in his “night hours” catapulted an architecture office into being.

Read more

The post The Essentialist Cabin: Hof Ahmen by Atelier Sunder-Plassmann appeared first on IGNANT.

Cloudbursts of sienna bloom across large-format canvases, effusive in their warmth. With time, an apparition appears to hover through. Below the surface of Leonardo Anker Vandal’s Adagio paintings, a disquiet gathers force, drawing the viewer into the fluid mirror of minimal abstraction. In the work and world of the self-taught Danish artist, beauty and sorrow are intimately entangled. Embedded in the existential preoccupations of his 18th-century Romantic muses – Keats, Yates, Mahler – his work is forged through the “excavation of memories;” a personal therapeutic process with widespread resonance. From his studio in Brescia, Italy, accompanied by his beloved Border Collie, Nemorino, Anker Vandal speaks with radical openness about the arc of his autodidacticism, existence outside the art establishment, and the figurative trail of breadcrumbs he hopes to leave for those who need it most.

Read more

The post The Inner Work of Leonardo Anker Vandal appeared first on IGNANT.

Mountain peaks have borne witness to the Sun’s rise and fall for millennia. Dusty paths have been carved by centuries of footfall. Still, every day the tide ebbs and flows, lapping sparkling sands. In the presence of nature, time feels expansive. The steadfast cycles of the natural world offer perspective on the arc of our days, attesting to what has gone before while paving the way for all that is yet to come. A journey to the Cycladic island of Tinos to celebrate the release of the Hermès Cut timepiece invited reflection on centuries of craft, history’s traces on the land, and the nature of time itself.

Read more

The post Exploring the Shapes of Time With Hermès appeared first on IGNANT.

A new exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie sheds light on the oeuvre of Hans Uhlmann, one of Germany’s foremost, yet forgotten, sculptors of modernity, whose large-scale public works engage in dialogue with Berlin’s modern architectural icons. Across seven chapters, the exhibition retraces the forgotten luminary’s life and work, from his formative ‘wire sculpture’ typology to the indelible imprint his public sculptures have left on western Berlin’s urban fabric.

Read more

The post At The Berlinische Galerie, Explore The Experimental Forming Of Sculptor Hans Uhlmann appeared first on IGNANT.

Frothy waves lazily lap powder-white sand. Overhead, palm fronds filter a soft breeze. The curved sail of traditional dhow boat carves a striking silhouette against a sky smudged pastel pink. A sanguine moon hangs plump above the shimmering sea. Perched on a sliver of land between ocean and lagoon in Mozambique’s Bazaruto Archipelago, paradisical Sussurro appears as a mirage; a rare destination deserving of superlatives. Taking its name from the Portuguese word for ‘whisper’, the off-grid, eco-inclined, six-bungalow hotel opened in 2022 after five years of building that began with its founders, Zimbabwean couple Sarah Birkett and Adam Humphreys, integrating into the local community. Realized exclusively by African designers, builders and growers, Sussurro celebrates craft, ingenuity and creation across Mozambique, East Africa and the continent at large. Every element of its considered guest experience exemplifies the potential of privileging locality, time, and genuine human connection. In conversation with Ignant, Sarah Birkett shares how her idyll found its form.

Read more

The post In Celebration of African Craft, Sussurro Brings A New Consciousness to Travel appeared first on IGNANT.

Prized since ancient times for its alluring hue and medicinal properties, indigo holds an illustrious history of textile coloration and enhancement across Asian, Africa and South America—from Tutankhamen’s burial linens to the garments Samurai wore under their armor. Today, its use as a pure natural dye has become a rarity; its methods industrialized; its recipes forgotten.

Read more

The post Deep In The Balinese Jungle, TianTaru Preserves The Lost Art Of Indigo Dyeing appeared first on IGNANT.

When Ignant Founder Clemens Poloczek invited Shizuko Yoshikuni and Manuel Kuschnig of Berlin olfactory studio AOIRO to translate Ignant’s visual world into a room scent, a pair of complementary references—calm focus and the forest floor—formed the point of departure. Distilled through AOIRO’s holistic approach to scent creation, the result takes the form of a singular sensory experience conveyed through warm woods, earthy pine, and clarifying frankincense tempered with sage and rose geranium. To mark the release of the Ignant Scent, Shizuko and Manuel opened the doors of their studio, offering a rare view into their aromatic interpretation of an aesthetic.

Read more

The post How Olfactory Designers AOIRO Conjured The Essence Of Ignant appeared first on IGNANT.

Crafted with olfactory design studio AOIRO, the limited-edition Ignant Scent translates the visual world of Ignant into a singular olfactory experience. Intended as an atmospheric interpretation of a distinct aesthetic focus, the room spray comes in a sculptural 100 mL glass flacon featuring a fine-mist spray dispenser. Its bespoke packaging in a traditional Kiribako box handcrafted from paulownia wood reflects AOIRO’s Japanese origins and a mutual emphasis on artisanship.

Read more

The post Introducing The Second Ignant Shop Product: A Room Scent Created With AOIRO appeared first on IGNANT.

To spatial designer and creative director Vanessa Heepen, design is inherently discursive. It is a tool for fostering dialogue between disciplines, geographies, materials, eras, and ideas. Acting on the instinct that it was time to dial up the conversation in Berlin’s design scene, in early summer 2023 Heepen launched the first edition of FORMA, a nomadic gallery presenting an eclectic assemblage of contemporary art and design objects alongside select 20th-century pieces. To bridge the gap as the city eagerly awaits the gallery’s 2024 edition, Ignant Founder and photographer Clemens Poloczek invited her to co-curate an exclusive editorial, catalyzing new chemistry between unexpectedly complementary works.

Read more

The post Furthering FORMA: Vanessa Heepen’s Exclusive Editorial Collaboration Blurs The Art-Design Divide appeared first on IGNANT.

Activist. Cultural trailblazer. Successful entrepreneur. Advocate for underrepresented artists. Berlin’s youngest gallery owner. Since opening her first exhibition space in 2015 at age 26, gallerist, dealer, and collector Anahita Sadighi has been lauded with many labels. Yet in her personal and work life, she elegantly eludes categorisation, preferring to initiate intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogue to create new connections in the spaces between. In doing so, she expands the role of the gallerist beyond its traditional mandate to incorporate a plurality of perspectives, cultures, eras, geographies, and disciplines. Now, in November 2023, the dialectic between her two galleries—Anahita Arts of Asia, focusing on ancient art from across Asian and other non-Western cultures, and Anahita Contemporary, showing international contemporary painting and photography—finds its synthesis in her new namesake gallery in Berlin-Charlottenburg, designed by Gonzalez Haase AAS. In an exclusive interview on the eve of its opening, Sadighi spoke with Ignant about the vision for her next era, making space for multiplicity, and why West Berlin is where it’s at.

Read more

The post On The Cusp Of Her Next Era, Anahita Sadighi Is Redefining The Role Of The Gallerist appeared first on IGNANT.

Though he views photography as a medium for storytelling, Zissou’s images don’t insist on a narrative. Both crisp and ethereal, they’re encoded with an ambiguity—a certain tension—that lets the viewer find their own story within them. Portraying daily chores and sacred celebrations, the faces of foreigners and locals, they reflect the view of a self-described “long-term tourist,” who over the course of a decade, has woven himself into the fabric of the Balinese landscape and his local community, and who through his presence and participation has earned the respect of its members to bear witness to it. In his own words are fragments of his story. In conversation with Ignant at his open-air bamboo home, the self-taught photographer offers his perspectives on image-making and manipulation, the camera as a tool for storytelling, and the things that really matter.

Read more

The post Capturing Bali’s Many Faces, Zissou Documents The Sacred And The Mundane Of A Fragile Island appeared first on IGNANT.

In the landmark-laden Graben District at the heart of Vienna, the interior architecture of a newly renovated and expanded Hermès store in an 18th-century building honors the arthistorical riches of its city. Centred around a show-stopping travertine staircase in a delicate blend of architecture and craft, tradition and modernity, the store’s renewal was spearheaded by RDAI. The Paris-based architecture firm was founded in 1972 by the late Rena Dumas, whose long-standing partnership with Hermès commenced four years later. Today, the firm is led by Denis Montel and Julia Capp. The project marked their first collaboration with fellow Parisian artist and interior decorator Pierre Marie, who applied his trademark opulent ornamentality to the store’s crown jewel, the salon privé.

Read more

The post A Sculptural Travertine Staircase Takes Centre Stage in RDAI’s Hermès Vienna Store Renovation appeared first on IGNANT.