Hasta La Ideas

BA is currently running two digital billboards in London which feature children reacting in real-time to flights going past overhead.

The campaign, which is by Ogilvy & Mather ad agency, is currently on display in Piccadilly Circus and Chiswick. Both billboards are positioned under the flightpath to Heathrow and when a BA flight goes past, a child gets up and points to the plane overhead, and then the specific flight info appears next to them on the board. Clever stuff. The film below shows the Piccadilly Circus billboard in action:

Spanish architects Nook have renovated a small apartment in Barcelona‘s gothic quarter, leaving decorative floor tiles in place to reveal the original layout of the flat (+ slideshow).

Called Roc³, the conversion is the third that Nook Architects have carried out in the same building, following Casa Roc and Twin House.

“We have followed the same conceptual thread in all three projects, highlighting the original envelope,” the architects told Dezeen. “We have retained all original floors as much as possible, and they have been left exactly in the original place, so you can read the old distribution of the apartment.”

It has become fashionable to retain old tiles in Barcelona apartment conversions; see more projects that use this technique in our slideshow.

Nook removed some of the original internal partitions to optimise space, creating a combined living room and kitchen on the street side of the apartment, and a bedroom and bathroom on the courtyard side.

“We thought it correct to once again incorporate the washbasin in the bedroom to make a better use of natural light and to enlarge the sensation of open space,” the architects said.

The bathroom of the one-bedroom apartment has a second door into the entrance hall, meaning that guests sleeping over in the lounge can access it without disturbing the owner.

Nook used a more industrial palette of materials than in the previous two conversions, in order to save money and create longer-lasting fixtures.

A row of suspended steel storage boxes backed with chicken wire separates the bedroom from the bathroom. The waist-high partition is made of white-painted clay bricks.

Much of the furniture was sourced from a local second-hand store while the dining table is topped with an old door. Walls are left unpainted in places, revealing layers of faded plaster and old tile adhesive.

“In all three projects, we have used modular furniture for the kitchen and the bath, concrete floors, ceramic tiles and translucent polycarbonate for interior doors,” the architects said. “The other furniture, door frames and accessories have been made in steel, not like in the other two first projects which were made of wood. The idea is to use neutral materials which can last and get older in a good way.”

Photography is by Nieve.

Here’s some text from the architects:

ROC³ | apartment in Barcelona, third intervention | nookarchitects

With ROC³ we reached the end of a cycle, the renovation of three, very similar, but different apartments on a single building in Barcelona’s gothic quarter.

We were recently advised that in times of economic crisis, as architects, we had to look for a formula to obtain products with scalability to optimise our resources. We understood that a product with scalability was the repetition of valid solutions from one project to the other, a difficult approach within the refurbishment industry. In the midst of that search for a common denominator the opportunity to rehabilitate ROC³ arrived- another diamond in the rough on the very same building where we had done two previous interventions: CASA ROC and TWIN HOUSE.

We approached the project thinking that we could apply the same parameters as in TWIN HOUSE due to the fact that it was a very similar apartment in terms of dimensions, orientation and pre-set requirements.

This meant placing the daytime space towards the Street, the bedroom towards the interior courtyard, and placing the kitchen and bathroom against the median Wall in the form of a humid strip. What seemed obvious, however, was not possible due to the fact that the sanitary drainpipe changed its position on this apartment from the one in TWIN HOUSE, so we had to look for a new solution for placing the bathroom.

We thought it correct to once again incorporate the washbasin in the bedroom to make a better use of natural light and to enlarge the sensation of open space. This time we separated it from the rest of the room with a low Wall and suspended iron cubes that allow storage from both sides. These same cubes were also used to create night tables and extra storage space for recipe books and utensils in the kitchen.

The shower and water closet have independent entries, but can be closed using a single sliding door, a solution first use don CASA ROC. The water closet can also be accessed from the main entry through a second door, which gives the option of guests using this space without having to enter the bedroom. This way, boundaries were set between one space and the other without creating a visual barrier.

The building’s structure and closings are very irregular, so we introduced lineal elements that counterpoint these irregularities and set order within the space. Amongst these elements are a close hanger that integrates lighting (borrowed from TWIN HOUSE) and connects itself with the support of the suspended cubes and the sliding door’s guide. Wood was used to set limits on the pavement which regulates the traces of the previously existing partition walls. This was also synthetised on the living room lamp.

ROC³ was about applying new ideas to new challenges, but maintaining the spirit behind CASA ROC and TWIN HOUSE in which we searched for the original spirit of the building and subtly intervened to achieve today’s levels of comfort while harmonising with the building’s history.

Architects: Nook Architects
Location: Barcelona, España
Year:  2013
Furniture: Casa Jornet, Sillas-Muebles

The post Nook’s Barcelona apartment refurb removes walls
but leaves original tiled floors intact appeared first on Dezeen.

In our continued quest to find the very best coffee, we came across the Kickstarter of Berlin-based start-up Bonaverde. Their revolutionary new machine not only grinds and brews…

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This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to Fred Bould of Bould Design.

Name: Harri Koskinen

Occupation: I’m a designer.

Location: Helsinki, Finland

Current projects: At the moment, we’re doing a lot of work with Finnish-based companies. We are doing work in the safety field, creating some locking systems. We’re also doing tableware objects, and we have some material-based studies in the works—these are innovations with new materials, and we are doing some trials in our workshop around those. Then I also share my time with Iittala; I’m there two days a week as the design director.

Mission: To do my best. I would like to have a big, big mission, but at the moment I’m doing things a bit more slowly, step by step, just trying to do my best in this design field.

Koskinen’s most recent projects include the Cyclebar bike rack for Valpastin (above) and the M Series two-way active speaker for Genelec (below).

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? I never actually made a decision that someday I was going to be a designer. It just happened. I didn’t have any idea about this profession when I was in high school. But I worked with my uncle over many summers, building things with him as a summer job. I felt quite happy doing this, working with my hands. So I thought that design would be something that connects many different interests and skills. And it has been like that, pretty much.

Education: First I studied at the Lahte Design Institute; that was more like workshop studies. Then I applied and entered the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. There I studied industrial design and more conceptual design.

First design job: Well, I worked as a intern at some advertising agencies. But my first actual job as a designer was in 1996, when I was invited to work for Iittala glassworks. And then I was invited to work as an in-house designer at Iittala in 1998.

Who is your design hero? Maybe Dieter Rams—he was perhaps the most important for me. Also Richard Sapper. And, of course, in Finland we cannot forget Alvar Aalto. He’s an obvious choice, but still it’s amazing the amount of work that he made at a really high-quality level.

Above and below: Some of Koskinen’s designs in his Helsinki studio, including his Genelec speakers and subwoofer (above)

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Nonotak Studio a imaginé dans le cadre du Festival Insanitus 2013 à Kaunas, en Lituanie, cette installation audiovisuelle Daydream qui cherche à établir une connexion physique entre l’espace virtuel et réel, voulant brouiller les limites et l’immersion du spectateur. Une création très réussie à découvrir dans la suite.