by Mya Stark Being “discovered” is a storied tradition in the tribal memory of the film industry. Drugstore soda fountains were crowded with hopefuls in the ’40s, presenting their pretty cheeks for the same kiss of fate as );…
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Buildings that make up this house in Finland by architects OOPEAA are arranged to protect a courtyard from the cold northerly winds blowing down the valley (+ slideshow).
The shape of House Riihi subtly resembles a traditional Finnish farm, with a main L-shaped building with wings faced by rectangular outbuildings to form a square courtyard.
OOPEAA used this arrangement to keep the outdoor space sheltered from the harsh weather conditions experienced in Finland during the winter months.
“The three buildings, the house, the atelier and the garage, give shape to an intimate garden, creating an optimal microclimate around the house by minimising the impact of the northerly winds blowing in the valley,” said the architects.
Located in a small village in eastern Ostrobothnia, the house sits beside a small copse of fir trees on the side of a field.
It was commissioned by a family of four who needed ample space to accommodate the children’s hobbies and a studio for their mother’s artistic work.
All three timber-framed buildings are clad in vertical timber?? slats, while sheets of aluminium cover the pitched roofs. Compressed wood provides insulation between walls and paper has been used for sealing.
“Being a low energy building, the L-shaped house is made of wood in its exterior, interior and frame, with large pitched roofs clad in aluminium reflecting the landscape in an unexpected way,” the architects said.
A series of openings in the facade of the main building lead into porches along sections of the house, creating buffer zones between outside and in.
The sheltered areas are panelled with boards of the same wood on the ceilings, walls and floors, as well as window frames and doors.
Inside, one wing is taken up by the master suite, which includes a double bedroom, bathroom, study area and sauna.
“The interiors are arranged according to three different functions into areas with each their own atmosphere,” explained the architects.
The corner of the building contains the living and cooking areas, separated from the formal dining space by a grey structure that contrasts with the sawn spruce walls, ceilings and furniture.
This central block incorporates audio-visual equipment for the living room, a fireplace and a alternating tread staircase that ascends to reach a platform extending into a dormer window.
Situated in the other wing, two more single bedrooms for the children share a bathroom and a larger sauna.
A guest suite at the end of the building, against the only angled wall, has it’s own entrance and bathroom.
The taller of the two outbuildings contains the double-height atelier, lined entirely with spruce boards painted white to make the space as light as possible.
The gable end wall is completely glazed, flooding the space with natural light and offering views down the valley.
A central structure similar to the one in the house is also painted white, bringing together a bathroom and fireplace on the ground floor.
It also provides a raised seating platform beside the chimney stack, which is accessed via a straight flight of stairs.
The third building houses the garages and a hobby space, minimal decorated to accommodate multiple functions.
Four fireplaces providing heat and hot water for the complex, while the lighting system is solar powered.
“It is possible to live in the house without being dependent on the power grid and water and drainage grids,” claimed the architects.
Buildings in Finland are often clad in wood due to the surplus of fast-growing timber. Other examples include a home in Helsinki with a kinked plan and a shard-like timber hut for artists.
The post House Riihi by OOPEAA shelters
a courtyard from wintery gusts appeared first on Dezeen.
Ask your doctor if Silk Leaf is right for you
Stop the Green Dream presses. Julian Melchiorri has built a leaf that absorbs CO2 and sunlight and produces oxygen. Rather than just growing a plant like most of us who want leaves in our lives, Melchiorri’s work got positively semi-scientific. By breaking down the tough proteins in silk, and plucking out useful chloroplasts from plant matter, the end product “lives” on light and water, and produces what we breathe. Produced as a part of the Royal College of Art course “Innovation Design Engineering,” the Silk Leaf project was conceived as a way to manage emissions and neutralize environmental impact with a space efficient, “biological” material.
Japanese studio Nendo’s range of watches based on draughtsmen’s tools is now available for pre-order exclusively at Dezeen Watch Store.
The Draftsmen 01-Scale watches are the first in a series of timepieces by Nendo that replicate graphic elements from ruler increments.
Related story: Scale watches by Nendo mark the time with ruler increments
Thin lines of various lengths surround the face, with hour markers extending to meet numbers that sit above them like inch or centimetre indicators. These marks are printed directly onto the crystal rather than the face.
“We hoped our design would function like a tool to help wearers measure time as they would measure length,” said the studio.
Two sizes designed for men’s and women’s wrists both have calf-leather straps that pass through deep 9.5-millimetre brushed stainless steel cases.
The watches are available to pre-order throughout August. Orders made during this period will be shipped week commencing 1 September.
Dezeen Watch Store is unable to take orders from Asia due to an agreement with the manufacturer.
The post Nendo’s Draftsmen 01 series available
to pre-order at Dezeen Watch Store appeared first on Dezeen.
Photographs, paintings and posters have been the standard go-tos for sprucing up apartment walls, and now SF-based St. Frank would like to us consider another option: textiles sourced from around the world. And forget those mass-produced…
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Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: RCA graduate Oluwaseyi Sosanya shows us the 3D-weaving machine he invented, which he claims could be used to create better sportswear, medical implants and even architecture.
Sosanya‘s machine, which he developed as part of the Royal College of Art‘s Innovation Design Engineering course, uses adapted CNC-milling technology to weave complex 3D structures with varying densities.
“There are structures that are extremely rigid and structures that can be completely soft,” Sosanya explains. “In architecture we can look at custom panels for insulation and custom extrusions, varying the properties throughout the piece as it’s woven.”
“At one extreme you [might] have a lot of load on a beam and the other extreme less load, so you want less material. You can [weave] a lightweight structure with a continuous process. Anything where you can reduce the number of joints but maintain structural integrity is an advantage. It’s a benefit. So it’s reduction in cost but also [better] structural integrity.”
The machine works by feeding thread through a nozzle that weaves around warp posts in X, Y and Z coordinates. A silicone resin is extruded at the same time for added structural stability.
However, at its current scale, Sosanya’s machine is better-suited to creating shock-absorbing sportswear than buildings.
Dezeen Book of Interviews: our new book, featuring conversations with 45 leading figures in architecture and design, is on sale now
“For the show I wanted to show something that people can readily identify the material with at its present scale and for that I designed a pair of shoes,” Sosanya says. “It’s just a single thread that weaves the sole all the way into the three-dimensional shape that it is and then it’s laminated to the bottom of the upper.”
He continues: “But there are other applications for this. Let’s say I’m making a kneepad. Towards the upper thigh I would definitely want a lighter more flexible structure but right on the kneecap itself you’d want something that can withstand a lot of impact.”
At the other end of the scale, Sosanya says there is interest in the technology from the medical industry.
“Medical textiles are really taking off right now,” he says. “If [you use] natural fibres, natural resins, it can be really interesting. There are things like heart-stints, implants, non-invasive surgery, where you need to put something soft and malleable that can expand inside the body. With this process you can crush the structure, slide it into the body and then it expands.”
He continues: “I have been talking to some bioengineers at Brunel [University]. Moving forward I would like to team up with an industry leader in this area and take the project to another level.”
Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.
Footage of the 3D Weaver in action used in this movie is courtesy of Zuzanna Weiss.
The music featured in the movie is a track called October by UK Producer Jo Noon. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.
The post 3D weaving can “reduce cost and improve
structural integrity” in architecture appeared first on Dezeen.
This weekend saw the unveiling of the collaborative bicycle designs that are going head to head in the third edition of the Oregon Manifest, in which five teams in as many cities set out to create and craft the best urban utility bike. As of Monday morning, the public is invited to vote on their favorite one, which may well be produced by Fuji Bikes in the near future. We are pleased to present exclusive Q&As with each team so they have a chance to explain why their bicycle is the best before the voting period closes this Sunday, August 3.
Yesterday, we featured Teague × Sizemore Bicycle of Seattle; our final stop is Chicago, where MNML × Method designed the Blackline.
Core77: Did you and Method know of each other before the collaboration? What was the matchmaking process like?
Chris Watson (Project Manager & New Product Strategist, MINMAL): MINIMAL and Method were paired by Oregon Manifest. Coincidentally, our studio and Method’s shop were located only blocks away. Our proximity made collaboration much easier during the early stages of the design process.
By its very nature, the design-fabrication relationship for this collaboration is far more intimate than your average designer’s relationship with a contractor or manufacturer. To what degree did you educate each other on your respective areas of expertise?
We relied on Garry to keep us grounded. From the beginning, we made the decision to showcase Garry’s craft on our frame. Rather than limiting our design, choosing to make the entire frame using traditional craft was a good counterweight to our team’s desire to push boundaries with different forms and materials. Conversely, the design team pushed Garry to experiment with different frame architectures that were outside of his comfort zone. Our collaboration was a constant exchange of ideas in which we arrived at a solution that could have only been realized through our joint efforts. Has the collaboration yielded broader lessons? What was a particularly memorable area of difficulty when translating the design into fabrication? A major element of our frame design is the single main tube, which is constructed by mitering and brazing several tubes together. It was not clear from our original drawings if the frame would hold up to the abuse of city riding. No amount of analysis could have helped; we needed to build and test a frame. Garry did an amazing job translating our ideas into a working prototype in order to confirm our design would work for the final product.
Mohammad Domiri, jeune photographe iranien et étudiant passionné d’architecture aime immortaliser les monuments du Moyen-Orient, c’est pourquoi la plupart de ses séries photo sont consacrées aux grandes mosquées traditionnelles. Motifs géométriques et mosaïques fascinantes sont à découvrir dans l’article.
This blackened timber holiday home in northern France by Nantes studio Raum contains two mobile bedrooms that can be wheeled onto a terrace to provide outdoor sleeping cabins (+ slideshow).
Raum created the House in Sarzeau residence on the edge of the town in Brittany for a couple with two children, who wanted a rural escape with the option of both indoor and outdoor living.
“The clients asked for a shelter, a place for recharging their batteries,” architect Thomas Durand told Dezeen. “They wanted it to be simple and comfortable, both open on the outside and cosy and intimate inside.”
The building responds to the clients’ requirements by providing several external spaces that offer different ways to experience the adjacent forest and views towards the Gulf of Morbihan.
Situated on a sloping site that backs onto the forest at the top of a small lane, the rear of the house is partly submerged in the hillside. The front facade rises up to provide extensive views from the first floor bedroom.
The exterior is clad in vertical timber slats that were painted black to help the structure merge with its surroundings and to reference traditional farm buildings and salt stores found throughout the coastal area.
The ground floor is designed as a flexible space filled with freestanding furniture, including two mobile bedrooms for the children.
These birch plywood cabins are mounted on wheels so they can be moved to a terrace accessed through glazed sliding doors or onto a fully enclosed patio at the rear of the property.
“The wheeled beds are something we suggested to the clients in order to replace the children’s bedrooms and to give different ways of living in the house,” said Durand. “It also refers to traditional box-beds used at the beginning of the century in Brittany.”
Electrical extension cords can be plugged into external sockets to provide power to the bedroom units when they’re wheeled outside.
A kink in the northwest facade shelters the decked terrace, which creates a direct connection with the garden.
An entrance on the opposite side of the building leads into the open-plan living, dining and kitchen area, with a bathroom and toilet located at one end underneath the first floor.
At the far end of the living room is a decked patio area with a built-in bench and white-painted walls, which provides a sheltered sun trap.
A simple plywood staircase leads to the master bedroom, where a large picture window frames views over the neighbouring rooftops.
On top of the building, a planted sedum roof covers the sloping surface between its apex and the edge of the patio wall.
Photography is by Audrey Cerdan.
Project credits:
Client: private
Architect: RAUM
Program: holiday home
Place: Sarzeau, Golfe du Morbihan, France
Surface: 69m²
Materials: wood, concrete, green roof
The post French holiday home by Raum
features bedrooms on wheels appeared first on Dezeen.
Swedish cab firm Taxi Stockholm has launched Taxi Trails, a new website for tourists that uses data from millions of taxi journeys to highlight the top destinations in the city.
Designed by Swedish ad agency King, the site aims to offer tourists a guide based not on the opinion of critics but on the places where local residents really go. The site features a map of the city with the areas visited highlighted by ‘heat’ – the more orange an area is, the more of a ‘hotspot’ it is.
Searches can be refined to look at the most popular destinations over the last week and also the journeys taken from certain areas of the city, so audiences can see where the ‘posh’ (those from Östermalm) or ‘hip’ (from Södermalm) people go and follow them. There is info on restaurants and tourists sites in the various areas, and the option, of course, of booking a cab to get you there.
Taxi Trails a fun project and a different take on the city guide concept. Various brands have been trying to own the online tourist guide over the last few years, but usually these sites fall flat, due in the main to a lack of real content that would be of use to a genuine tourist. I don’t know Stockholm well enough to know whether Taxi Stockholm has got that content right here, but its basis in data is an interesting twist on a familiar idea, and feels like it offers some credibility. Whether tourists will actually use the site instead of Time Out and its equivalents remains to be seen, however.
Visit Taxi Trails at taxitrails.se.
Credits:
Agency: King
Creative team: Christopher Dymling, Johan Tesch, Josefine Wallin
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
