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Despite us having already extended the deadline once, our awards team has been inundated with requests for a further deadline extension for this year’s Annual. So we’re giving you until February 9 to get your best work to us. Please note though, this is the absolute final deadline.

And for those who missed the news, we’ve also made some changes to the awards categories themselves this year, with the introduction of a Client of the Year award, and the judging responsibility for Agency of the Year and Design Studio of the Year now resting with Creative Review’s editorial team.

If you’d like to enter, or to find out more, step this way.

Pascal Grasso Architectures of France have installed a landscape of blocks across the ceiling in this monochrome apartment in Paris.

The plaster boxes conceal functions like lighting, air-conditioning, a sound system and ventilation.

Further volumes creep down the walls to form storage and furniture.

Storage units curve round the walls of the first floor bedrooms.

Photographs are by Nicolas Dorval-Bory.

More apartments on Dezeen »

The information that follows is from the architects:

APARTMENT IN PARIS

The project data are promising and simple: a private client, an apartment in the center of Paris, duplex, an area about 280 m², a large terrace. The challenge is to connect the apartment with the terrace.

A large volume, opened directly on the terrace, is created. It will become the main space of the floor, the reception room. The bedrooms are rearranged on the first level.

Device, consisting in visual accumulation of volumes, creates rhythm in the new space. They invade the floor, walls and ceiling. The ceiling is the strong element structuring the room.

Composed of suspended plaster boxes, it makes the space more dynamic. It integrates and hides functional and technical components such as air conditioning, lightning, sound, ventilation.

These elements gradually invest the place turning into storages, kitchen appliances, balustrade for stairs, bar, coffee table, etc… The lightning system, hidden behind the volumes, provides diffused, indirect and scalable light.

The bedrooms are designed with the same process: clarity of the space and functional “furniture-objects”. A large furniture includes common functions such as bathroom, bed, desk, closet, etc… The set is made of grey painted MDF. Colours and shapes customize the rooms.

Program: Designing an apartment
Location: Paris
Architect: Pascal Grasso Architectures
Completion: 2010

Assistants: Damien Descamps – Juliano Bottari
General Contractor: Bane-Déco
Carpenter: Art et confort

See also:

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Stella K Showroom by Pascal Grasso Architectures	DG House by Geneto	Nomiya temporary restaurant by Pascal Grasso

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As with most stories, there are typically more than one side to them. Such is the case with the recent developments in Shanghai we reported on last week concerning the demolition of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei‘s studio on the outskirts of that city. Reader and Taiwanese-American community activist, Charles Liu, dropped us a line over the weekend, including a link to a story that had originally appeared in the Beijing-based business and financial magazine Caijing, which tells a decidedly different tale. Says Liu, “I am very sorry to say, these accounts paint a very different picture than the narrative being presenting by our media. [In my opinion, it’s] an example of sensationalist China reporting, these disproportionally one-sided narratives, twist of facts and half-truths, greatly contributed to America’s re-surging anti-Chinese sentiment I have witnessed.” In the interest of getting both sides of the story, and because Liu was very kind to translate the article and format it into key points, after the jump, you’ll find a rundown of Caijing‘s account of how Weiwei’s Shanghai studio met its end.
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