Hasta La Ideas

This social housing block on the Spanish Canary Islands was designed by local studio Romera y Ruiz Arquitectos with a pleated facade and three hidden courtyards.

Located in Las Palmas, the five-storey building contains eight apartments, each with at least three bedrooms. There are two per storey and the first pair is located on the first floor.

The pleated facade integrates a series of shutters, which fold back to reveal pastel-coloured undersides. Each pleat creates a small recess, helping to shade the windows from sunlight and shelter them from prevailing winds.

Romera y Ruiz Arquitectos added three separate courtyards within the plan and gave each one a different colour. A blue-painted courtyard sits at the centre of the building, while a green space is on one side and a yellow ocre courtyard is positioned at the back.

All three courtyards can be overlooked from the windows of the apartments above.

To deal with the intense temperatures on the island, the ground floor and facade integrate ventilated chambers, while air conditioning units are housed in the basement.

Other recently completed social housing projects include a pile of buildings outside Paris and a 16-storey tower in Barcelona. See more housing projects on Dezeen.

Here’s a project description from Romera y Ruiz Arquitectos:

Eight Inscribed Houses and Three Courtyards

The inscribed houses, with their small boundaries, are thought and built as a microcosm. The term inscribed, borrowed from geometry, induced us to find new qualities. The confinements of the irregular and broken limits of party walls, far from being perceived as a negative quality, heightened forms and bodies to us.

Conferring them the quality of limitless consequently made them infinitely manipulable in the interior.

Controlled spaces where container and contained elements establish dialogues which create a sequence of border spaces. These articulate a route that gently discovers three courtyards that filter natural light, dyeing it with shades of blue, ocher and green. Almost monochrome atmospheres. The diagonal relations between the common spaces frame cuts and fragments of the sky and are naturally ventilated and brushed with natural light.

Above: site plan

Every element plays a significant role. From the street to the deepest stay, one circulates along vestibules, courtyards, corridors, footbridges and slots of light. Telescopic houses, inscribed one on each other.

Above: floor plan concept diagrams – click for larger image

We formulate a dialogue to formalize the found tensions: between lines and thickness (those offered by the mismatch of alignments and party walls); between inner glances and outer tangencies. Thus, a vertical sequence of broken planes is drawn up, where light slides and shadows become more expressive throughout the day. We turn the only façade into a changing game. Simple origami, fold, unfold, that speaks thickness.

Above: cross section – click for larger image

Users, according to their needs or customs, will configure the image to the street within the possibilities of the proposed game.

 Above: facade design concept – click for larger image

The post Eight Inscribed Houses and Three Courtyards
by Romera y Ruiz Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

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Milan 2013: French designer Matali Crasset has designed a sofa that breaks down into a bed, two armchairs and two footstools.

Called Concentré de Vie, the system by Matali Crasset comprises two upholstered chairs and two pebble-like cushions, housed in a triangular base that doubles as a single bed.

The elements are upholstered in neutral fabric with orange highlights and can be rearranged to accommodate different numbers of guests or activities as required.

Italian brand Campeggi showed the design at Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. The brand has produced a few interesting pieces of furniture for house guests, with past products we’ve covered including a sofa wrapped in a fabric wall, a chair that transforms into a single bed and a coat stand that conceals a spare bed by Crasset.

See all our stories about design by Matali Crasset »
See all our stories about furniture by Campeggi »
See all our stories about design at Milan 2013 »

Here’s some more information from Campeggi:

Concentré de Vie is a project allowing diversity to express itself thanks to a set of elements that can be moved everywhere within the domestic landscape. It’s a mutant structure able to welcome from two to seven people turning from sofa to living room and proposing, at the same time, a different kind of comfort.

A team among which each member plays a main role: two square elements that become, one after the other, armrest, footstool or pouf; a box element acting as a binding agent that can be used as a single bed and finally two relaxing elements, real core of the whole system, which can be used together or separately.

The post Concentré de Vie by Matali Crasset
for Campeggi appeared first on Dezeen.

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