Switching Up the Angles: How Snarkitecture Makes the World Around Us Look Less Boring

Part-artists, part-architects, the art world’s most popular proponents of monochromatic minimalism reflect on 10 projects that define their canon.

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

Daniel Arsham is staring at the top of a whited-out textile cavern he helped make. It’s the middle of Milan Design Week, and we’re standing in the middle of an installation that he and Alex Mustonen—his creative partner in the architectural firm Snarkitecture—devised in collaboration with Karin Gustafsson and Martin Andersson, the head designers of COS, a minimal fashion retailer owned by Swedish clothing company H&M.

COS could be described as H&M’s more discerning older sibling. The price points and overall design aesthetic are decidedly more elevated than H&M’s accessibly priced offerings, and the clothes seem more at home in the luxurious backdrop of Milan’s Brera Design District than, say, the sweltering confines of the Coachella Music Festival.

To reinforce the label’s refined taste level, COS has enlisted several high-profile architecture firms for installations at Salone Del Mobile, the world’s foremost furniture trade show, for the past four years. Last year, the company collaborated with Japanese design firm Nendo on several forward-thinking reinterpretations of the basic white shirt.

Snarkitecture, a firm known for clean lines, a monochromatic aesthetic, and unique, experiential installations throughout its canon, took some 62 miles of textured white fabrics in varying lengths and hung them, piece-by-piece, from the ceiling, like ticker tape stalactites.

“We started with the fabrics, looking at certain fabrics that they were using, and this idea of translucency,” says Arsham of the inspiration behind the installation. “We’ve worked a couple times before with this architecture of subtraction.”

Walking through the installation, it’s impossible to not want to be fully enveloped by the hanging strands of fabric—good thing such behavior is encouraged. The resulting sensation feels a bit like being caressed by hundreds of tiny hands made of toilet paper. It’s the kind of “Hey, look at me!” environment that almost begs for a selfie. And throughout the five days the installation is up in mid April, many are taken. Much of Snarkitecture’s canon shares this sentiment, the idea that posting it on the Internet makes experiencing the art more indelible.

Latest in Style