Hasta La Ideas

Portuguese architect José Carlos Cruz claims to have built the world’s first cork-clad hotel, located amongst the olive and cork trees of Portugal’s Alentejo region (+ slideshow).

Situated outside the city of Évora, the Ecork Hotel comprises a cork-clad restaurant and leisure complex with 56 hotel suites contained in a series of adjacent bungalows.

José Carlos Cruz and his design team chose cork to clad the walls of the main building because it is both readily available and highly insulating.

“Portugal is the second biggest exporter of cork in the world, so we thought it would be a good starting point for the building,” project architect António Cruz told Dezeen.

There are only a few small openings in the outer walls of the building, creating large uninterrupted surfaces of the material.

“One of our intentions was to promote cork as a cladding material,” said Cruz. “It’s a good thermal insulator and is also recyclable.”

The two-storey leisure complex accommodates gym and spa facilities, conferences rooms and an indoor swimming pool, which all surround a central courtyard.

The first floor has walls but no roof, accommodating a bar, outdoor pool and sunbathing deck with views out over the rural landscape.

The hotel suites are set back from the main building in a layout based on the typical arrangement of a medieval Portuguese village.

“The general plan is inspired by the medieval villages of the Alentejo, where it was common to find a main complex or castle, and several white buildings around it,” said the architects.

With clean white-rendered walls, the suites form rows that line the edges of walkways. Each one comes with its own private courtyard, screened behind a perforated wall.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s a project description from Jose Carlos Cruz Arquitecto:

Ecork Hotel

Ecork is a Hotel in Évora, Portugal, with aspa, health club, gym, restaurant, bar, conference rooms, outdoor pool and 56 bungalows.

Built on a set of cork and olive trees, the general plan is inspired by the Medieval villages of the Alentejo, where it was common to find a main complex or castle, and several white buildings around it.

All services and hotel facilities are aggregated into a single building, freeing the land outside the bungalows.

Influenced by the vernacular architecture and Arabic, is created a monolithic volume with small openings to the outside, which together with cork coating which is fully recyclable and ensures thermal protection of the building.

Built around a large courtyard, the layout is designed so as to take advantage of crosswinds and air circulation, thus reducing power consumption to the minimum necessary.

In order to ensure the lowest possible occupation and overview of the Alentejo Landscape, outdoor pool and bar are located on the roof of the building.

All 56 bungalows are suites. Their deployment, scattered among the olive trees around the property is defined by the structure of internal thoroughfares.

These paths are read as a series of abstract volumes and surfaces, plastered and whitewashed.

Location: Évora, Portugal
Area: 6300 m2
Design time: November 2008
Completion time: May 2013

Architect: José Carlos Cruz
Interior Design and Decoration: José Carlos Cruz
Civil engineer: Newton, Consultores de Engenharia
Mechanics Engineer: ENES.COORD

The post José Carlos Cruz completes
“world’s first cork-clad hotel” appeared first on Dezeen.

For those fortunate enough to have deeper pockets than the average gift-giver, have a look at the Cool Hunting gift guide for an array of ideas that go well beyond a Bentley or fancy watch. From U-Boat’s private submarines to Gufram’s iconic cactus coat stand, and with personalized travel…

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When I read that production on Volkswagen’s iconic “magic bus” is about to cease, I thought the same thing as you: They still make the magic bus?

Well, they do in the land of bossa nova. The Type 2, as it’s officially called (the Beetle being VW’s Type 1) has been produced for over half a century in Brazil, where it’s known as the kombi. It’s managed to hang on so long due to Brazil’s automotive safety laws being more lax than in the rest of the world; everyone else has foregone the kombi due to its dangerous design, which places the driver forward of the front axle. (In a head-on collision, all you’ve got between you and whatever you’re gonna hit is sheet metal.)

With a recent revision to Brazil’s safety laws, VW’s plant in Sao Bernardo de Campo will shortly be ratcheting kombi production down from 250 a day to zero.

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The interior of Dutch fashion house Viktor & Rolf‘s first flagship store in Paris has been covered in grey felt by French studio Architecture & Associés.

Architecture & Associés was asked to create an unobtrusive design for the duo’s recently opened store on Rue Saint-Honoré, close to Paris’ famous shopping square Place Vendôme.

“We said we would like a store that’s invisible or a store that’s hardly there because often we find store designs very intrusive and just too much,” Viktor & Rolf co-founder Viktor Horsting told Dezeen.

Grey was chosen to line the interior as it provided a simple environment to showcase the duo’s products and is also used in the set designs of the brand’s catwalk shows.

“We wanted to create an environment where the clothes would really stand out,” said Horsting. “Grey is a very good colour as a backdrop because it’s very neutral. It’s a total surreal experience because you’re in an environment that’s entirely made out of fabric, but at the same time it’s something architectural. We like that surrealism.”

The store houses men and women’s ready-to-wear clothing, accessories such as bags and shoes, plus the brand’s line of fragrances.

Neoclassical elements such as arched niches along the walls and a colonnade of arches running over the staircase create shadows to break up the monochrome.

Shelves for displaying products sit in the niches, some of which are illuminated with white light from behind similar to the ceiling panels.

The felt also muffles the sounds of browsing shoppers in an attempt to make the large 650-square-metre store feel more intimate.

“We wanted to emphasise the personal experience of shopping,” Horsting said. “I have to say that it was a little bit of a guess. Of course we thought that the felt would change certain acoustics of the space but we couldn’t really imagine it, so when we were there over the weekend we were glad to hear that the effect was as we had hoped.”

“You’re really by yourself even though it’s a big space, and even though the architecture is rigorous and graphic, it’s not imposing or too grand,” he continued. “It’s really an intimate place. It’s quite beautiful.”

The store opened last week to coincide with Viktor & Rolf’s twentieth anniversary, which was also marked by the house’s return to haute couture in July. The designers will show their Spring 2014 collection in January next year.

Read on for more information from the team behind the design:

The store will be on Rue Saint-Honoré, just a stone’s throw from the Place Vendôme.

The miscellanea of the Viktor & Rolf world will all be available at the boutique: men and women’s ready-to-wear, shoes, the iconic “Bombette” line of bags and leather goods, glasses, accessories and of course, the line of fragrances.

Driven by a taste for the paradoxical, the designers desired an eternal environment for their ever-changing collections, in their own words: “a striking world where every and anybody’s desires or fantasies can be borne upon what we do”.

The innovative design, conceived by Pierre Beucler and Jean-Christophe Poggioli of Architecture & Associés, combines the palatial grandeur of Renaissance Italy with the classicism of the French tradition for a startlingly avant-garde universe.

The spirit of unorthodox innovation that has always driven Viktor & Rolf, whose work has often been characterised by its subtle exploration of scale and shadow, inspired the architects towards a spectral architecture crafted entirely of grey felt. This single-material strategy makes for a phantasmagorical space of shifting apparitions where the uniform surface of the walls, floors and furniture, as a kind of all-enveloping interior skin, creates the effect of complete unity.

The post Viktor & Rolf’s first flagship boutique
is covered with grey felt appeared first on Dezeen.

Boardroom techniques and grad school habits have been trickling down the education spectrum for ages. But decorating coloring books and building haphazard “houses” with wooden blocks are becoming more of a educational experience than ever for tiny learners. Creative education is the topic of choice for the first conversation in a series of discussions from the City and Country School and The New School. At “The Power of Progressive Education: Can Creative Thinking Be Taught?” on January 10th, attendees will learn about the century-old history of the City and Country School’s progressive educational programs.

With words from creative standouts like The New School President David E. Van Zandt, Kickstarter Co-Founder Charles Adler, Industrial Designer Tucker Viemeister and Vimeo CFO Mark Pinney, you can expect a thought-provoking discussion on the state of today’s creative education.

The event will take place at the Tishman Auditorium at the New School from 6pm–9pm. You can purchase $20 advance tickets until December 17th. After the 17th, tickets will be sold for $30.

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