Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen Wire: plans for a 40-storey tower designed by British architect Richard Rogers to sit on top of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York have been shelved following the Chinese backer’s decision to pull out – The New York Times

See a skyscraper in London completed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners earlier this year.

These four concrete apartment blocks by Spanish architects TASH were only completed last year, but they already look strangely abandoned in these photographs.

The buildings are located in Toledo, central Spain, halfway between the historic city and the new town.

The six-storey buildings sit above two brick-clad car parks, which are almost entirely buried underground.

Balconies line the south elevations of each block, where walls of differently coloured brickwork walls create a pattern of vertical stripes.

Some otherinteresting Spanish projects we’ve featured include a raised viewing platform around a Roman temple and a social housing tower – see more stories about Spain here.

Photography is by Miguel de Guzmán.

The following text came from TASH:

144 Protected Collective Houses in Toledo, Spain.

Description:
The collective housing complex is located in the Ecobarrio, an ambitious project located in a very important area for the future development of Toledo because is called to become an union nexus between the old town and modern town of Toledo.

Sustainability and optimal bioclimatic behaviour of the building are principles pursued all through the project design process and became, along with the public protection housing derived factors, such as areas optimization and minimal resources and a tight budget, the main criteria followed throughout the project development.

According to the previously established criteria the dwellings are grouped in compact blocks whose shape favours a good bioclimatic behaviour. These blocks are placed following a North-South orientation, allowing to free as much surface in ground floor as possible for common and entertaining areas.

The volumetric compacity and sobriety of the buildings makes a search for formal expressivity necessary by other means as different materials combinations or different scale-textures oppositions.

The material combinations does not only mean great variety on their application but a careful study in other topics as constructive details and encounters between different materials for a better final result.

As for the opposition of different scales-textures, it happens all over the different façades, confronting concepts as mass and simpicity of the concrete slabs on the East-West façades, as other concepts such as dynamism, lightness and complexity of the South façade, perceived as a continuous balcony front with mobile sliding elements that allow sunshade to the housings.

Click above for larger image

In the North façade a more plain and enclosed composition prevails, following a rythm of vertical walls made of different kind of bricks.

Data sheet:
Architects: TASH (Taller de Arquitectura Sánchez-Horneros)
Location: Toledo, Spain

Team: Emilio Sánchez-Horneros, Antonio Sánchez-Horneros.
Collaborators: Javier Rodríguez, Emilio Gómez, Alberto Di Nunzio.

Structural Engineering: Antonio García de Blas
Technical Engineering: Alberto de la Cal, Francisco Ruiz Guadamillas
Client: Servicaman

Construction: FCC Fomento de Construcciones y contratas
Project Area: 21.484,95 m2
Project year: 2008-2010

Peter Bristol’s “Cut Chair” (Photo: Peter Bristol)

With Helsinki poised to begin its reign as 2012 World Design Capital, a couple of crafty Finns have issued a challenge to designers worldwide: go a year without designing a chair. Carpenter/artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri and blacksmith/designer Jesse Sipola of Ore.e Refineries are spearheading the No Chair Design Challenge, with goals ranging from freeing up time for non-chair-design-related activities to altering the world’s view of sitting. “We believe that the world already has enough chairs. Designing new ones only takes time away from renovating the ones we already have,” say Sipola and Yli-Vakkuri. “Consider this the ultimate challenge for you to rethink how sustainable design should be manifested.” Show your support by committing not to design a chair in 2012 through their online petition. Beginning in January, the duo will solicit text message-based updates from participants about what they’ve accomplished when not designing chairs, and five designers will be rewarded with “DnS – Design and Craft Diplomas.” Take a seat—or better yet, stand—as you watch this video tutorial on how not to design chairs.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

In theory, I don’t have issue with this week’s unitasker selection (the idea of not having flat soda is a good one). In practice, however, the Fizz Saver 2-Liter Soda Soft Drink Dispenser is an accident waiting to happen:

We all know that 2-liter bottles of soda are difficult to handle and unwieldy in smaller hands. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine a full bottle of soda could sit on that itty bitty stand and not fall over or off the counter and make an enormous mess. On the first use, I would end up wearing every ounce of liquid in the bottle. Plus, there would be little drops of soda on the counter or floor beneath the dispenser that would create a sticky blob. Who knows what would happen at a party of junior high students and a half dozen of these?! Heck, just looking at them I’m tempted to have a soda fight!

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I loved everyone’s entries for last week’s You write the commentary. You are a very creative lot of folks! But, alas, I had to pick a favorite.

Honorable Mentions
Ruth: “It’s like looking at Berlin after the wall went up … or Romeo and Juliet. Sad little cereal exiled from that lovely lake of milk. That little escape route on one end just doesn’t do it…these two aren’t lovers any more, they have to meet on supervised visits. Tear down that bowl! Make breakfast, not war!”

Marianne: “Would you want to eat out of something that was named after the Greek coins buried with the dead to secure passage to the afterlife? Or maybe named after a Swedish company involved in a major fraud scandal? (Source Wikipedia). But maybe that is what it’s all about: to swindle you out of your coins.”

My Favorite
J.P.’s fictional saga of getting revenge on cereal for the death of his mother: “… Now, each morning, I fill my Obol with milk, then slowly, oh so slowly, pour the cereal into the adjacent compartment. I want it to know whats coming. Drowning? Too good for cereal. Annihilation by mastication? Over too fast. No, the cereal must wait, sitting in its compartment, anticipating the suffering to come.”

To all who participated, thank you. I had a really great time reviewing the entires.

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.

A team of illustrators and graphic artists camped out for a week in this Rococo-style dome hidden under a carpark in Soho, London, covering every surface and arch with a sinister, sprawling illustration for new restaurant and bar Meat Liquor.

Interior architects Shed of London and Singapore commissioned design collective I Love Dust to adorn the walls for food brand Meatailer, which is making the former Italian restaurant its permanent home after touring major festivals in the form of a partying burger van called the Meat Wagon.

Referencing factories and butchers, Shed fitted out the interior with an industrial rubberised floor, an eight metre-long stainless steel bar and blood-coloured banquettes, plus industrial lighting hung from galvanised steel hooks and red cords.

The restaurant opened to the public on 11 November.

Other recent projects by Shed include the Harrods Shoe Salon, and flagship store for fashion brand Spencer Hart.

Photographs are by Adam Luszniak.

Here are some more details from Shed:

The Meat Wagon; a legendary food offer known by keen foodies and avid trend forecasters alike. The infamous burger van has globetrotted it’s way around any festival worth mentioning, spearheaded it’s own events and become synonymous with great food, delicious drinks and relentless parties. Now the legend continues, but instead of four wheels, it will be presented in a more permanent fixture.

When interior architects Shed first collaborated with the Meatailer enterprise, a design formula was created that would mean no two establishments would ever be the same; originality and nonconformity are at the heart of the Meat Wagon’s philosophy so all environments had to embody this ethos while taking on their own character.

The concept: to take an idea borne of location and environment and mince that up with the Meat Wagon’s utilitarian ‘no nonsense’ approach – all materials in their raw form, all elements explicit in their function.

Lurking beneath a car park just behind Oxford Street resided the perfect site for Meat Liquor – the Meatailer’s next venture. Previously the site of an Italian restaurant, the site was appropriately kitted out with an impressive Rococo style dome and a mass of ornate columns and architraves. So with this influence the idea came: a modern day mural to make Michelangelo weep, a ’tattoo’ that would envelop and intertwine with the obscurity of the building. A scene that would tell some of the Meat Wagon’s story so far and mutate the classical architecture into something far more appropriate to the Meat philosophy.

Shed commissioned the prolific design collective ‘I Love Dust’ to administer the monumental illustration. in just a week, a team of illustrators and graphic artists camped out on site to adorn as much visible surface as possible, with colourful tales from the Meat Wagon’s past, culminating in an extreme and almost hallucinogenic visual experience.

Red ‘liquor’ signs have been suspended in the windows to splay dull light over the dyed oxblood red, leather banquettes. Industrial cage lamps are hooked and gathered around galvanised steel hooks and suspended over blackened steel framed tables. Red cord is looped from the centre of the dome to reach salvaged industrial work lamps, positioned to highlight poignant images trapped within the trailing mural.

Industrial rubber flooring and an 8-metre long stainless steel bar with corrugated sheet façade resonate the sterility of a factory environment. Occupying the floor is a small army of vintage industrial seating, all powder coated in just two utilitarian colours. A length of ‘butchers’ curtains contains the lower level ‘Pit’; the Meat Liquor’s VIP area where guests can enjoy the thoughts of Hunter S Thompson that adorn the walls.

Shed are delighted to have had this opportunity to venture out of the realms of the corporate world. ‘A project like this comes up once in a lifetime. To have a chance to push boundaries of what may be considered indecent, inappropriate and down right wrong, and to have this concept whole heartedly backed by the client is one in a million. The history of the Meat Wagon has been the driving force behind every aspect of this project but what remains now is an entirely new beast.’

74 Welbeck Street,
London W1G 0AB