Hasta La Ideas

Movie: in our next exclusive video interview from Inside Festival, interior designer Joyce Wang discusses the custom-made fittings and furniture she designed for Ammo bar and restaurant in Hong Kong.

Ammo, which won the Bars and Restaurants category at last month’s Inside Festival, is part of a new museum and headquarters for the Asia Society in Hong Kong.

“It was previously an ammunition storage facility that the British used to store explosives about a hundred years ago,” Wang explains. “We were asked by the client to convert the space into a museum café and from that a more luxurious and high-end dining experience was born.”

Despite only having three months to take the project from design conception to completion, Wang says that most of the furniture and fittings were custom-made for the project, including three sculptural chandeliers shaped like spiral staircases.

“Practically everything apart from the lightbulbs [was custom designed],” Wang claims. “We didn’t want people to identify any of the furnishings, accessories or bits of furniture.”

She continues: “The space has three feature staircase chandeliers. We worked closely with the fabricator and lighting consultant on how to use plumbing pipes to construct these really complicated forms and have electricity running through them.”

Wang says she wanted the restaurant to be dramatic because many people would use the space to enter the museum as well as eat there.

“The arrival experience was very important to us,” she says. “Instead of conceiving of it as a museum café it became this lobby of arrival for the museum. We wanted it to have different clues as to what was going to happen upstairs in the museum.”

“A lot of people visit the restaurant and they don’t realise that the bunker-like ceiling pays tribute to the vaulted ceiling of the museum above.”

The restaurant has been very successful since it opened, Wang claims.

“There’s a two-month-long waiting list and it’s difficult to get into, especially for dinner,” she says. “I think it’s an interesting space because from lunchtime to dinner it really feels quite different.”

This movie was filmed at Inside Festival 2013, which took place at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 2 to 4 October. The next Inside Festival will take place at the same venue from 1 to 3 October 2014. Award entries are open February to June 2014.

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features “spiral staircase” chandeliers appeared first on Dezeen.

Conceived by a team of entrepreneurs including Caron Proschan (a natural product devotee) Simply Gum was created after the founders discovered that regular chewing gum contained up to 80 hidden chemicals. These chemicals include some of…

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The U.S. is presently one of the world’s largest manufacturers, and consumers, of automobiles. What percentage of Detroit’s profits, would you guess, comes from trucks as opposed to passenger cars? The Big Three aren’t saying, but according to a Reuters analysis looking at the EBIT—that’s Earnings Before Interest & Taxes—an astonishing 71%* comes from trucks and SUVs.

“There is no doubt that full-size trucks are still the single largest component” of pre-tax profits at General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler Group LLC, a unit of Italy’s Fiat SpA, according to Sterne Agee auto analyst Michael Ward.

Even more surprising is that sales of full-size pickups grew 20% from last year.

Gas is still expensive (by American standards) and the economy is still pretty lousy, so what’s going on? Why do hybrids continue to be money-losers while low-MPG truck sales are soaring? Why has Ford’s F-150 been the best-selling automobile for three decades? The old stereotype of soccer moms with misconceptions of safety ensconcing themselves in SUVs doesn’t explain the bump in full-size pick-up sales, nor the F-150’s success.

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Colour-coded meeting rooms and private workspaces are tucked behind wooden arches at the Google offices in Madrid by London practice Jump Studios (+ slideshow).

For Google‘s headquarters in the Spanish capital, Jump Studios fitted out two floors of the Torre Picasso – a high-rise to the north of Madrid city centre.

“The office spaces now boast a higher degree of flexibility and functionality, which fulfil the aspirations of the client who wanted a unique and friendly workplace with local character,” said the studio.

The lower level houses the reception area, lecture theatre and canteen, as well as office space.

Graphics and patterns are printed on the walls, ceiling and around the front of the reception desk.

The kitchen serving the canteen is surrounded by a curved wall clad in cork, which contains storage shelves and cabinets.

On the floor above, timber arches designed to reflect traditional Spanish architecture separate the workspace around the outside of the floor from meeting rooms and cubicles for private work.

There’s also a multi-functional recreation area with a ping-pong table and self-catering equipment.

Google is springing up new offices across the globe. Earlier this year Allford Hall Monaghan Morris applied for planning permission to construct a 27-hectare headquarters for the company in London’s King’s Cross.

Here’s the information sent to us by the designers:

Google Madrid HQ

The extensive fit out and refurbishment of Google’s Madrid HQ sets new standards in office interior design on the Iberian peninsula.

Jump Studios, a London based architecture practice with a recently launched satellite office in Lisbon, has completed Google’s new Madrid office using advanced materials to deliver a highly sustainable and inspiring new workplace for the company’s Iberian operations.

Jump Studios is currently shortlisted for the BD Architect of the Year 2013 Award in the Interior Architecture category for a range of projects including Google Madrid.

Overview

The Google Madrid project comprises the fit out of two floors in one of Madrid’s most prestigious high-rise buildings – Torre Picasso.

Working with the concept of a timber arched core element – a reference to the spatial and material qualities of traditional Spanish architecture – the scheme has greatly improved the efficiency of the floorplate and created a highly characteristic ambience that is relaxed and sophisticated at the same time.

The office spaces now boast a higher degree of flexibility and functionality, which fulfil the aspirations of the client who wanted a unique and friendly workplace with local character.

Now an approachable and usable space with a strong identity, productivity has greatly increased.

Project Details

The lower of the two adjacent levels occupied by the client houses the main reception, lecture theatre, canteen and a multi-functional area with fully equipped kitchen catering for the entire office.

On the upper level can be found the bulk of the office space as well as more extensive breakout spaces with room for games, additional informal presentation areas, shower facilities, a massage room and hammock area.

The overall layout and arrangement of particular spaces and elements has been carefully considered and developed to suit the working style of the company in general while meeting the more exact needs and requirements of the local workforce.

The very specific acoustic requirements of the project for both the meeting rooms and the individual video conferencing cabins necessitated the careful selection of subcontractors and the very close co-ordination of all the teams involved to provide both robust and aesthetically pleasing solutions and details.

The use of sustainable materials contributed to the project’s LEED Gold rating.

Project Delivery and Sustainability

The project was delivered in five separate phases, which allowed the offices to remain open throughout.

It involved a high level of co-ordination and collaboration between the architectural, engineering and contracting teams – Jump Studios, Deerns and Construcía with strong project management from Artelia Spain.

The post Google’s colourful Madrid headquarters
by Jump Studios appeared first on Dezeen.

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