Jul 23
Don McMillan: Life After Death by PowerPoint
Posted in: UncategorizedThanks Carol for sending this.
Jul 23
New Designers 2011: Kingston University graduate Andre Pereira has created a series of products to help with tricky DIY tasks, including these paint brushes that clip onto the edge of a tin of paint.
The DIY series also includes a brush guard that holds bristles together for neater corners and edges.
In addition, Pereira presented colour-coded wire strippers to help with wiring a plug and proposes that a plug’s prongs could be insulated with colour-coded plastic.
A heat-sensitive sticker attached to radiators would indicate when they need bleeding.
Pereira presented the project at graduate show New Designers 2011, which took place 6-9 July in London.
See all our coverage of the event here.
Here are some more details from Andre Pereira:
DIY Series: Painting
Brush Guard, Overhang Paint Can, Hanging Brush
The painting series promotes a clean working environment, through permitted conveniences, and reducing the amount of skill needed to carry out a professional job.
The ‘Brush Guard’ restricts the brushes bristles from spanning out when pressure is applied, giving the user greater control when painting straight lines. It also promotes tool longevity to often throw away tools keeping the brushes shape when not in use. Both the ‘Overhang paint can’ and the ‘Hanging Brush’ permit the user to rest wet paint brushes providing the user with a clean working environment. The Overhang paint can’s handle rests on the stopper permitting the user to rest their paint brush on the groove. The ‘Hanging Brush’ has notch which hooks onto paint can edges allowing the paint to drip into the can rather than down its side and the floor.
DIY Series: Maintenance
Plug Strippers, Coloured plug, Radiator Sticker
The maintenance series has been designed to simplify often overlooked tricky household tasks.
The Plug Strippers are designed to cut and strip the wires of a cable to the required lengths making the fiddly task of wiring a UK plug easier. The order the wires are stripped relates to the order in which they are attached to the plug. The strippers would consist of three blades 2 stripping blades and one cutting blade with the housing being compression moulded.
The Coloured plug is simple, by colouring the existing insulated pins with the according colours of the wires that would attach to them, assures the user they are wiring the plug correctly preventing the plug from being accidentally mixed up.
The Radiator sticker is thermochromic, meaning it reacts to a specified temperature; indicating to the user when to bleed their radiator. Air is a poor conductor of heat so when it builds up at the top of radiators it greatly reduces the heating systems efficiency increasing the amount of energy needed to heat a room. This means the bottom half of the radiator would be hot and the top half colder. By putting the sticker at the top of the radiator you are able to tell whether there is air trapped: When the heating system is on a red ring should appear showing that the system is working. When the system is on and the sticker remains completely yellow,then there may be air trapped.
See also:
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| Ben Fursdon at New Designers | Hannah Niskanen-Benady at New Designers | Oscar Medley-Whitfield at New Designers |
Jul 23
House 20 by Jolson
Posted in: Jolson, Residential buildings
Australian architects Jolson have completed a house in Melbourne where cantilevering concrete slabs appear to balance on top of a bronze garden wall.
Residents enter the middle floor of the three-storey House 20 beneath this cantilever.
A basement floor is set into the sloping landscape below and contains an indoor swimming pool, gym, steam room and games room.
A small pond is also located on this floor, at the base of a light well that is driven through the full height of the house.
Living and dining areas are located on the ground floor, while bedrooms and studies can be found on the top storey.
Alarming cantilevers have featured on a number of buildings on Dezeen lately – see all the stories about cantilevers here.
See more stories about Australian projects on Dezeen »
Photography is by Peter Bennetts.
Here are some more details from the architects:
House 20
A series of concrete buttresses extrude from the sloping natural ground line reinforcing the north-south orientation. These rhythmic elements form a continuous datum upon which the first floor rests; concrete blades in an east-west orientation, which cantilever and stagger beyond the precipice of the bronze wall below. This craning assemblage hovers over an organic knoll of delicately curling asparagus fern, and shelters the entry below.
The house is a sculptural object. The brutal exterior surfaces of the forms jostling concrete blades penetrate the interior, diffusing the interior/exterior threshold and creating a series of individual rooms. The interior unfolds as it is engaged with, rooms fold into each other and are defined by layers not walls.
The interior is dissected by a 3 story void; an empty vertical room within a room. The upper and lower floors are veiled by a knitted stainless steel mesh which allows textured shadow to dance within the interior.
The kitchen & scullery are designed as a piece of furniture to divide the continuous living spaces.
The basement experience embraces dark tones, rich textures, and celebrates ambient natural light. There is a strong dialogue between surfaces and object; polished monolithic black stone, raw mild steel, black leather, knitted mesh, and ‘slick’ body of black water that embodies the indoor pool.
The first floor is the clients retreat with Master bedroom, dressing room and ensuite. The Study hovers above the landscape knoll and engages with the streets’ plane trees. The contrasting light and dark furniture pallet articulate ‘her’ study from ‘his’ amongst the blade walls.
The building faces north and draws in sunlight across its breadth. Along the terrace horizontal awnings extend toward the landscape to maximize shade as required. The void acts as a thermal chimney, drawing fresh air through and expelling above. At its base the pond has a cooling effect. The steel mesh veil reduces direct sunlight entry.
The design affronts the general fascination with mock architectural styles, or adorned boxes with inward looking spaces and a total lack of relationship with site and environment. It engages with the notion of grandness without drawing on imitation, decoration, porticos or columns. Anti-decorative, anti-column.
Location: Inner City Melbourne, Australia
Date of Construction Completion: 21/09/2010
Gross Floor Area: 1250m²
Practise Team: Stephen Jolson, Mat Wright, Abe McCarthy, Andrew Prodromou, Chloe Pockran, Sue Carr, Jaclyn Lee
Construction Team: Len Bogatin and Associates
Consultant team:
Arup Melbourne (Structural/Civil Engineer)
Medlands (Electrical/Mechanical/Hydraulic Engineer)
SBE (Environmental Consultant)
WT Partnership (Cost Consultant)
BSGM (Building Surveyor)
Aloha (Pool)
Urban Intelligence (Home Automation)
Julian Ronchi (Landscape)
Primary Materials used:
Structure: Concrete
Facade Undercroft Wall: Bronze Panels
Glazing: Frameless & Anodized Aluminium
Flooring: Timber & Bluestone
Internal Walls: Concrete, Plaster, Polished Plaster, Bluestone
Products used:
Lightwell Mesh: Locker Group
Timber Floorings: Eco-Timber
Lift: Kone
Air Conditioning: Daikin Ducted
Appliances: Miele, Subzero, Qasair
Door Hardware: Bellevue
Gas Fire: Realflame
Concealed Speakers: Stealth Acoustics
Home Automation: Urban Intelligence – employing CBUS
Garage Door: Ross Doors
Cabinetry Manufacture: Splinters Joinery
Bronze Panelling: Bronzeworks
Trenches & Grate: Aco & Stormtech
See also:
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| Balmain House by Carter Williamson Architects | Port Fairy House 2 by Farnan Findlay Architects | Ross Street by Robert Mills Architects |
Jul 23
Smart Lights
Posted in: Uncategorized
Smart Lights is a series of whimsical hand-blown lights intended as “little brainiacs with male and female sensibilities.” Measuring 17&rd..
Jul 23
Jackknife Collection
Posted in: Uncategorized
Hand blown glass vessels that look beautiful when placed by a window capturing the light of the sun.Custom sizes available.
Jul 22
Police guarding the Turkish Consulate in Hanover have upgraded their VW bus for a tiny mobile office.
The Mobile Police Station was designed by German architects Gesamtkonzept and is parked on the roadside.
The mobile container is clad in laminated panels finished to look like wood and features floor-to-ceiling windows.
Other mobile projects featured on Dezeen recently include a caravan-cum-disco and a diamond-shaped cabin on legs.
See also a story from the archive about miniature booths for sleeping in.
Photography is by Nils Günther.
More information is provided by the architects:
Young German architects office Gesamtkonzept has recently completed a mobile police station in Hanover, Germany.
The police station is placed in Hanover, in the Nordstadt district, across from the Turkish consulate. It replaces an old aged – police Volkswagen bus, which permanently has to protect the consulate.
Because this police car is placed at an exposed location and did not look particularly attractive in the cityscape, Mr. Wilhelmsen had the idea of designing a new, modern solution for a mobile station. His claim here was both to create a high quality and mobile architecture, as well as to establish an open and transparent working place for the police officers, that also can be produced quickly and inexpensively.
The draft includes a curtained, insulated and ventilated facade, with floor to ceiling windows. The colour of the outer facade is selected to be close to the red-brown tone of the opposite Christ Church.
So we decided, to use the steel frame of a conventional container for the supporting structure, that is used on many temporary buildings, such as mobile construction site offices. Good insulation and ventilation of the facade provide a good indoor climate without any air conditioning. In addition, transparency and openness of the station ensure a modern image of police in public.
With these ideas and a first feasibility study we approached the heads of the local police commissioner’s office. Other than initially expected, the officials enthusiastically accepted the design, because they too were of the opinion that there was need for action concerning the old aged police bus.
Quickly they managed to overcome the bureaucratic, which often bar the way to project realization. Because all the responsible bodies indicated their approval we soon were able to carry on with the planning in close cooperation with the police to a ready for implementation state. The production of the container was done by a company that produces mobile container solutions for different sectors and industries nationwide, in cooperation with several regional companies. So one year after the initial idea, the mobile police station in Hanover was finished.
The police station not only provides a significant improvement in the quality of working, compared to the old VW bus, but now also offers a modern appearance, which fits in well with the urban and architectural situation in the vicinity of Christ Church.
Facility: Mobile police station in Hanover, Nordstadt
Client: Nordstadt Police Department
User: Police officers
Architect: Gesamtkonzept Architekten, Hanover
Material: Steel-frame construction, insulation of walls and roof, curtained rear-ventilated facade, panels made of high pressure laminate(HPL)
Planning and construction period: 07.2010 – 07.2011
Effective area: 8 sqm
See also:
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| Feral House Nichoir by Matali Crasset | Nomad by 1/100 | Vostok Cabin by Atelier Van Lieshout |
Jul 22
Seeking Submissions for Rural Interventions Book
Posted in: Uncategorized
Award-winning Boston architecture firm Moskow Linn, editors of the must-have book “Small Scale: Creative Solutions for Better City Living,” are seeking submissions for their latest project, “Rural Interventions.” In their own words, a rural intervention is an “innovative, small scale insertion that seeks to make the natural world more accessible and facilitates interacting with the environment.” The final book will feature 50 of these interventions, both “realized and theoretical.”
Submit a project description and low-res images to KM [at] MoskowLinn.com or download the prospectus here.
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