Your correspondent was recently laid up for four days with the flu, an inevitability in an urban world where one must touch subway turnstiles, doorknobs and handrails used by millions. And while germ-spreading is a mere inconvenience for your average healthy blogger, it’s a potentially deadly problem for heathcare environments.
Recognizing this, and reasoning that a fair amount of their fixtures are going into medical facilities, fixtures manufacturer Häfele has addressed the problem by developing Alasept, an antibacterial and antiviral coating that they can use to coat stainless steel fittings. Doorknobs, window handles and furniture components can be treated with Alasept, which not only prevents the adhesion of the germs, but actively kills off what bugs do stick to the material.
When choosing a mascot that’s a dinosaur with the lower body of a pony, you’re setting the bar high for crafting a beer that will be just as memorable in taste. Started last year by Keil Jansen (who quit his job as a…
Architect Anupama Kundoo discusses the power of craft and working with traditional stone masons, in the second of our series of movies from BE OPEN’s Made In… India Samskara exhibition in New Delhi.
Architect Anupama Kundoo, who designed the exhibition
For architect Anupama Kundoo, being surrounded by work made using hand-crafted techniques is a reminder that there is an alternative to the “standardised industrial products”, people have become used to.
“We are all different, we are all unique, and it’s very strange that we have to be adjusting ourselves continually to standard products.” she says. “We have just accepted and surrendered ourselves to this future: it doesn’t have to be like that.”
The granite slabs rise up from the floor to create plinths to support the exhibits
She describes her installation as an undulating landscape, made from three principle elements: ferrocement slabs, pools of water and modular slabs of hand-levelled granite. This landscape hosts the homeware, lighting, clothes and furniture on display.
The granite slabs were hand-levelled in Tamil Nadu
Kundoo teamed up with stone-cutters from Tamil Nadu in the south of India to produce the slabs that dip and rise throughout the space. These long granite strips make up both the floor of the space and the surfaces for displaying the exhibits.
Detail of the granite slabs, here supporting a terracotta speaker
“These heavy slabs flow through the space like ribbons,” says Kundoo. “They frame the space and the undulations come out [of] the function: to raise the slab to the level required to display a particular object.”
Exhibits raised on plinths above one of the pools in the exhibition
“The actual elements are modular. The pieces rest on a sand bed and they can be reassembled in a wide range of ways and it can all be directly reused,” she says.
View of the entrance to the exhibition, showing the granite floor in the foreground, the ferrocement to the rear of the image
It took the masons six week to level the granite used in the exhibition, through a painstaking process of hand-levelling, a technique normally used to make stones for grinding masala paste, says Kundoo.
The exhibition contained two pools of water
Seeing the exhibition design, with these familiar techniques used in unexpected ways, had a dramatic effect on the craftsmen, said Kundoo.
“They’ve been making stone slabs for generations. But when they see [them], in this kind of composition, they realise that that they can make anything.” she says.
Three pieces by designer Gunjan Gupta on a ferrocement plinth
Kundoo works between Spain and India. In 2012 she exhibited her Wall House project at the Venice Architecture Biennale. This project also used the skills of Indian craftsmen — she brought a team to Italy to construct a full-size replica of a house inside the Arsenale.
Samskara, which ran from 10 to 28 February at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, launched BE OPEN’s Made In… programme, a two-year-long project focussing on the future of craft in design.
The music featured in the movie is a track called Bonjour by Kartick & Gotam on Indian record label EarthSync.
With their new proposed timepiece, design firm Box Clever offers up a refined amalgamation of what we love in analog watches and what we’ve come to expect from modern technology. A jump hour, quartz-driven timekeeping…
Competition: Dezeen has teamed up with MVRDV to give readers the chance to win a pink Twin House cushion from the studio’s Vertical Village furniture collection, which launched in Milan this week.
The Twin House cushion is one of 26 colourful foam “houses” that have just been put into production by Dutch architecture studio MVRDV and Belgian furniture label Sixinch.
The cushions were originally designed for the centrepiece of an exhibition in Hamburg about the studio’s Vertical Village research – which examined alternative solutions for apartment blocks in East Asia – but were used as seating by visitors and staff.
The Twin House cushion
“The flexible, durable foam elements became an instant crowd pleaser,” said MVRDV in a statement.
MVRDV decided to develop a furniture collection from these foam elements and chose to make 26 objects in the shape of houses proposed for the Vertical Village.
“The objects are not furniture in the traditional sense, they are more experimental and appeal by being surprising: how does one use a soft house in a living room?” said MVRDV.
The Twin House cushion is shaped like a semi-detached house, with the space in-between the roofs becoming the seat or a cradle for a baby.
The centrepiece of the Vertical Village exhibition in Hamburg
Other pieces in the collection include The Barn, The Factory, The Depot, The Cloud, The T and The Terrace House.
The cushions are made from foam rubber with a PU coating and come in a range of colours. The winner of this competition will receive a pink Twin House model, as pictured.
The Vertical Village furniture is currently on display as a sculpture at Interni‘s event Feeding Ideas for the City at Università degli Studi in Milan.
Due to shipping limitations, this competition is only open to readers in the EEC countries however the cushions are available to buy on the Vertical Village website.
Competition closes 7 May 2014. One winner will be selected at random and notified by email. The winner’s name will be published in a future edition of our Dezeen Mail newsletter and at the top of this page.
Here’s some information from MVRDV:
What started as a radical urban vision for the densification of the East Asian Metropolis has now turned into an iconic series of furniture, bringing vision and innovation to your home. The pieces are available in a wide variety of shapes and colours – allowing you to tailor your own personal Vertical Village. The product is flexible, waterproof, seamless, hygienic and comes in a range of striking and sophisticated colours. The objects are made of foam rubber with a PU coating, which is 100% recyclable and safe according to DIN EN71-3 standards for Children’s toys.
After the Vertical Village exhibition in Hamburg, a 4 metre tall installation made of 80 of these foam elements returned to the MVRDV offices, it was spontaneously used by the staff and visitors as furniture becoming part of office life. In daily changing settings it is used as seats, waiting lounge, playground, pedestal for models and even for the odd deadline powernap. And so a furniture collection was born as a by-product of urban research. The 26 objects are in the shape of houses proposed for the Vertical Village and one can sit, lounge, work and play. The coated foam is resilient and can withstand office life, family life and even outdoor use.
The centrepiece was made from 80 foam elements
And why not put some unexpected architecture in an interior? A semi-detached house, a volume with a gap or a cloud shape? The objects are not furniture in the traditional sense, they are more experimental and appeal by being surprising: How does one use a soft house in a living room?
Under the title ‘The Vertical Village – Individual, Informal, Intense’ the research project explored the rapid urban transformation of East Asia, the qualities of urban villages, and the potential to develop much denser, vertical settlements as a radical alternative to the identical block-like architecture of standardised units and their consequences for city life. The research was exhibited in Taipei, Seoul, Sao Paulo and Hamburg, usually accompanied by a large sculpture of a possible Vertical Village. After metal and plastic shapes in Seoul and Taipei in Hamburg the foam was the best solution for the 4 meter tall sculpture, leading to this furniture application.
The foam objects are in the shape of houses proposed for the Vertical Village
The furniture is available from April 7th online at www.vertical-village.com. The sculpture will be displayed at Interni’s Feeding New Ideas for the City, at Università degli Studi in Milan, in collaboration with Viabizzuno lighting.
There’s a clear difference in taking some precious morning moments to brew a fresh cup of coffee for yourself and paying a visit to your local caffeine watering hole. I, for one, would choose waking up earlier to make a personalized brew to skip the cellphone clad crowd at the local Starbucks (and I think many of you might agree). In Chicago-based designer Craighton Berman‘s words, making your morning cup from a pour over system is an opportunity to take in “the slowness, the meditative qualities of pouring water by hand, the open-air aromas, and the flavor profiles.” Berman is the guy behind Manual—a series of products aimed at bridging the intersection of slow food and design. You may remember the first two products in the line: Pinch and The Sharpener Jar. His newest addition to the brand comes in the form of Manual Coffeemaker No. 1, which is seeking funding via Kickstarter.
Berman’s design isn’t looking to fool anyone with extravagant features or processes: “There’s a really strong coffee subculture made up of enthusiasts and baristas, and I knew I didn’t want to be so audacious as to assume I could ‘re-invent’ coffee and force it on the community,” he says. “The manual brewing devices that exist today are very ‘pitcher-like’ or ‘funnel-like’ and I wanted something that felt like a proper appliance, in that it lives on the countertop in between uses and gives you the convenience of placing a mug directly under it.” The bamboo base is meant to be oiled and treated as a cutting board. The reward for your extra care: a rich, patina from errant coffee drops.
Réalisées par James Gilleard, ces illustrations sur le thème de l’oiseau et de sa cage, en particulier le pigeon, sont à la fois jolies et amusantes. Un certain caractère humoristique ressort de ces illustrations. De belles créations et une série « Birds And Cages Illustrations » à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
While the latest in material tech is sure to generate buzz for your brand, sometimes taking a step back and looking to nature will work wonders for inspiring new designs. Italy’s Moroso did just this with…
Austrian firm Coop Himmelb(l)au has completed a major new concert venue and music school in the Danish city of Aalborg, which claims to be “one of the quietest spaces for symphonic music in Europe” (+ slideshow).
Located on the edge of the Limfjord – the body of water that bounds the city – the House of Music was designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au as a cultural hub that accommodates both a 1300-seat performance venue and a music college.
The architect worked closely with an acoustic consultant to develop a curvaceous auditorium that will offer exemplary acoustics. This is encased within a U-shaped volume that contains the classrooms and rehearsal areas of the school.
“The idea behind the building can already be read from the outer shape. The school embraces the concert hall,” said Coop Himmelb(l)au principal Wolf D. Prix.
Externally, the building’s facade is a composition of boxy volumes, undulating roof canopies, circular windows and latticed walls of glazing.
According to Prix the design is intended to represent the unity between music and architecture: “Music is the art of striking a chord in people directly. Like the body of musical instruments this architecture serves as a resonance body for the creativity in the House of Music.”
Visitors enter through a five-storey-high atrium with a concrete staircase winding up through its centre. This provides access to different levels of the auditorium, but also leads to an observation area facing out over the fjord.
Windows within the interior offer glimpsed views into the auditorium from the surrounding spaces. There are also three smaller performance spaces located underneath the foyer.
Water-filled pipes run through the concrete floor slab to provide heating in winter and help keep the building cool in summer. This will be controlled as part of an intelligent building management system.
The House of Music opened with a thirteen-day extravaganza of concerts, performances, film and fireworks.
Scroll down for the project description from Coop Himmelb(l)au:
House of Music as a creative centre for Aalborg
After four years of construction, the “House of Music” in Aalborg, Denmark was ceremoniously opened on March 29, 2014 by the Danish Queen Margrethe II.
This cultural centre was designed by the Viennese architectural studio Coop Himmelb(l)au as a combined school and concert hall: its open structure promotes the exchange between the audience and artists, and the students and teachers.
U-shaped rehearsal and training rooms are arranged around the core of the ensemble, a concert hall for about 1,300 visitors. A generous foyer connects these spaces and opens out with a multi-storey window area onto an adjacent cultural space and a fjord. Under the foyer, three more rooms of various sizes complement the space: the intimate hall, the rhythmic hall, and the classic hall. Through multiple observation windows, students and visitors can look into the concert hall from the foyer and the practice rooms and experience the musical events, including concerts and rehearsals.
The concert hall
The flowing shapes and curves of the auditorium inside stand in contrast to the strict, cubic outer shape. The seats in the orchestra and curved balconies are arranged in such a way that offers the best possible acoustics and views of the stage. The highly complex acoustic concept was developed in collaboration with Tateo Nakajima at Arup. The design of the amorphous plaster structures on the walls and the height-adjustable ceiling suspensions, based on the exact calculations of the specialist in acoustics, ensures for the optimal listening experience. The concert hall will be one of the quietest spaces for symphonic music in Europe, with a noise-level reduction of NR10 (GK10). Thanks to its architectural and acoustic quality, the concert hall is already well-booked: there will be concerts featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with violin soloist Arabella Steinbacher and the Danish National Radio Orchestra with soprano Mojca Erdmann in April.
The foyer serves as a meeting place for students, artists, teachers, and visitors. Five stories high with stairs, observation balconies, and large windows with views of the fjord, it is a lively, dynamic space that can be used for a wide variety of activities.
Instead of fans, the foyer uses the natural thermal buoyancy in the large vertical space for ventilation. Water-filled hypocaust pipes in the concrete floor slab are used for cooling in summer and heating in winter. The concrete walls around the concert hall act as an additional storage capacity for thermal energy. The fjord is also used for cost-free cooling.
The piping and air vents are equipped with highly efficient rotating heat exchangers. Very efficient ventilation systems with low air velocities are attached under the seats in the concert hall. Air is extracted through a ceiling grid above the lighting system so that any heat produced does not cause a rise in the temperature in the room.
The building is equipped with a building management program that controls the equipment in the building and ensures that no system is active when there is no need for it. In this way, energy consumption is minimised.
Planning: Coop Himmelb(l)au, Wolf D. Prix & Partner ZT GmbH Design Principal/ CEO: Wolf D. Prix Project Partner: Michael Volk Design Architect: Luzie Giencke Project Architect: Marcelo Bernardi, Pete Rose Design Architect Interior: Eva Wolf
Dalton Maag has worked with design agency Red Peak to create technology company Intel’s first ever proprietary font, Intel Clear. We spoke to Bruno Maag about the project…
Intel Clear is designed to work across all writing systems and on any media platform. Dalton Maag has so far released Latin, Greek and Cyrillic styles in a range of weights, and the font will eventually be applied to all Intel communications in every language.
The new font is part of Red Peak’s ongoing efforts to simplify the company’s branding: as Intel’s previous font choice was only available in Latin, similar looking ones had to be sourced for other scripts, resulting in inconsistent branding and multiple complex licensing deals. It also wasn’t optimised for use on screen, and Red Peak felt the company needed one that would work just as well on tablets as billboards.
“[The old font] looked outdated and had a slightly mechanical feel,” says Dalton Maag creative director Bruno Maag. “Intel needed a brand font with personality… to be read by a five year old as much as by an 80 year old, used in small, large, in print, on screen and on devices that haven’t even been invented yet.”
Dalton Maag has been working on the project for around a year, and spent a month with Red Peak developing 20 initial concepts. The old Intel font was “completely disregarded,” says Maag, in favour of a cleaner design that references Intel’s logo and its values of openness and friendliness. “We picked up a few elements and basic proportions from the logo – you can see it in the way strokes are rounded off,” adds Maag.
Consistency is achieved across various scripts in the contrast, terminals and soft angles and Maag says characters are designed to have a “human” feel. “If you look at the way the lower case ‘a’ terminates, there’s a nice feature in the bottom of the stroke, a little like calligraphy pen lettering. We wanted the characters to have a human, friendly quality,” he says.
While Intel Clear had to communicate the brand’s personality, however, Maag says it was important to exercise restraint. “If you have too much personality, it leads to a fashionable design, which feels outdated in five years,” he says. “For a company like Intel, it needs to live at least 10-15 years and ideally even longer.”
It was also important to ensure Intel Clear looked contemporary across different scripts, says Maag. “Designing a font like this, you have to really think about functionality and how it looks in other languages. Something might look contemporary in a Latin font but old fashioned or totally inappropriate for Arabic. You have to find the one that works for both,” he says.
Throughout the development process, Intel Clear had to be tested on a range of different screens, from smartphones to tablets and PCs. The main challenge, says Maag, was creating one that would cater to various screen sizes and resolutions. “In print, you have a fairly clear idea of where the font’s going to end up but with digital, you have to consider legacy devices, such as black and white or low resolution phones used in the developing world, [as well as] multi colour, hi res tablets. We had to exclude some devices below 100dpi,” he explains.
Another technical challenge was creating characters that would meet the height restrictions set by bounding boxes on digital devices. “Some Hindi letters, for example, are extremely tall, so we had to contextualise the proportional relationship. It did mean some compromises on design,” says Maag. To avoid text looking too condensed on small screens, Maag says characters had to be generous and relaxed.
Intel Clear is still a work in progress (some scripts have yet to be released) but from what we’ve seen, Dalton Maag and Red Peak have created a versatile font that gives Intel a more distinctive yet streamlined identity system. Every modern technology company should have a font that’s optimised for on-screen usage, and by creating one that works across all scripts, the agencies will likely save Intel a great deal of money in long term legal and licensing costs.
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