Advanced Interior Design published a three-book series on “commercial,” “home & public” and “furniture & pattern,” including the works of associate professors Craig Borum and Karl Daubmann, principals of PLY Architecture. The series highlights 267 projects with 64 design teams. Eight of PLY’s projects are represented.
In the “commercial” edition, focused on retail, restaurant, designers’ stories, PLY’s design and build of Big Ten Burrito, in East Lansing, Mich., restaurant space, and the btb cantina, Ann Arbor, Mich., is illustrated.
Excerpts about the restaurants:
- Big Ten Burrito: “The ceiling is the dominant and most spatial component, creating a varied height throughout. The walls create an intense red backdrop that the other parts are able to play off. The diners come into direct contact with the furniture components… which creates a smaller scale and sense of tactility.”
- btb cantina: “…Building on the logic of the PLY_paper lights where two thin surfaces intersect to create a rigid form, a wall surface was developed to link the different areas of the interior. At one point the surface is wall and another it creates a bottle display for tequila behind the bar.”
In the third book of the series “furniture & patterns,” Borum and Daubmann’s wood and paper lights and the creation of complex formal and spatial readings with an economy of means are shown with illustrations of project work.
During an interview in the book with the architects, Borum and Daubmann revealed some of their inspirations, including cars, vernacular buildings, biology, botany and food. They elaborate on their design aesthetic: “Pattern and surface are reoccurring themes in their work. The patterns are often dictated by the spatial or programmatic concerns.”
In addition to talking about the their preferred professions if they were not designers and about one project in particular that they wish would have been built, they list characteristics students who want to be designers should have: “Obsessive tendencies, dedication to work, thick skin.”
The series was published by DAMDI in Sept. 2009.
