Hasta La Ideas

More than just curious paper packaging (though it is lovely, thanks to design agency Rare Fruits Council), VL92’s Gin & Tonic Emergency Kit is a smart option for the…

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From the founders of technology festival Eyeo comes a smaller, more tightly focused offshoot called INST-INT. Now in its second year, the stimulating three-day experience saw roughly 300 people…

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A secluded passage extends along one edge of this house in Japan by Alts Design Office, bringing natural light into the interior (+ slideshow).

Japanese studio Alts Design Office, whose previous projects include a house filled with pointed doorways and openings, designed the two-storey Kusatsu House for a site beside a car park in Shiga.

The close proximity of neighbouring residences and apartment blocks made it impractical to add glazing on the south-facing facades, so architects Sumiou Mizumoto and Yoshitaka Kuga instead created an open-air passageway along the north-western wall.

“A house with southern exposure is not good because the client wants to secure the privacy,” explained the architects.

“Therefore, we arranged the exclusive path inside of the house. We gave importance to designing an outside space in the inside space, and produced a diverse and interesting space,” they said.

Flanked by a windowless concrete wall, the passageway is glazed at both ends and has a skylight overhead, allowing daylight to permeate the building throughout the day.

A traditional Japanese tatami area is located within the space, alongside a small rock garden. Glazed doors open the passage to the open-plan living room, dining area and kitchen, which takes up most of the ground floor.

“We didn’t separate into inside and outside of house simply,” said Mizumoto and Kuga. “By doing so, we brought a feeling of strangeness in a good sense.”

The room features simple furnishings that define the different areas. A wooden dining table offers seating for four people, while a selection of plants sit beside the walls and a low white wall defines the kitchen.

Wooden panel flooring runs throughout the interior. Chunky timber surrounds doors and windows, while a steel-framed staircase leads up to the first floor.

This upper storey is divided up into four rooms. The largest is the master bedroom, which leads out to a balcony positioned above the passageway.

Two smaller rooms accommodate the family’s children, while the fourth space is a bathroom, with a separate WC alongside.

Photography is by Yuta Yamada.

The post House in a car park by Alts Design Office
hides a covered passage behind its walls appeared first on Dezeen.

This medical centre in San Sebastian, designed by Spanish studio Pauzarq, has consultation rooms with translucent glass walls (+ slideshow).

The Sendagrup Medical Centre occupies the 556-square-metre ground floor of a building in the Zuatzu business park in northern Spain.

“Originally the place was completely empty and Sendagrup Medical Centre asked us for a bright and spacious place where patients can be oriented easily. We have looked for a timeless character, elegant but not going out of fashion,” Pauzarq co-founder Elena Usabiaga told Dezeen.

Pauzarq designed the clinic around a central block containing toilets, a meeting room, a kitchen, two changing rooms, an X-ray room, a store and a room dedicated to plaster treatment. This service island is flanked on either side by a row of consultation rooms clad in contrasting materials.

The middle area and a set of consultation rooms that run along the south-eastern side of the building are constructed from a fir timber frame in-filled with a double layer of glass.

The architects used U-glass – a type of glass known for its structural strength, light diffusion and sound insulation properties – to ensure privacy for the clinic’s patients.

“The poles or vertical wooden elements have a dual function,” said Usabiaga. “First they give stability to the pieces of glass and on the other side they are used to hold the wooden panels inside. Also they serve to mark an interesting vertical rhythm.”

The translucent glass allows light to pass from these rooms into the corridors around the central area.

The six glass rooms are arranged in pairs, each sharing an adjoining wall. Sections of maple panelling along these walls surround examination tables to create an opaque partition.

“This generates an interesting play of transparencies and opacities from the corridors similar to typical folding screens,” Usabiaga said. “The materials generate different textures and reflections and contrast between the coldness of glass and marble and the warmth of wood.”

Along the north-western facade, five more consultation rooms are constructed from locally sourced black marble flecked with grey veins. The “heavy and dark” material offers a stark contrast to the light-filled rooms opposite.

Pale wooden doors punctuate the black facade to pick up on the fir framework that makes up the rest of the space.

All of the rooms open out directly onto a circulation area, which flows around the central island to “create a sense of spaciousness” and to help patients navigate the space.

Waiting areas located between the glass rooms cluster below Perspex signage with black letters that stand out against the neutral toned backdrop, while signs on the marble rooms are lit by individual wall-mounted lamps.

The post Frosted glass and dark marble walls partition
Sendagrup Medical Centre by Pauzarq appeared first on Dezeen.

‘Design Week’ season is very much upon us here in Europe. As things wrap in London, we’ve jetted over to the slightly more sedate and astonishingly grandiose (seriously, Paris ain’t got nothing) Vienna—capital of Austria—to hit the trail of Vienna Design Week, running from September 26 to October 5.

We’re delighted to see the return of the awesome ‘Passionswege’ platform—the program in which the city’s design department pair traditional manufacturing companies still surviving in the region with emerging international design talent, the partnerships sharing skills and often creating some truly inspiring objects and interventions.

First stop in Vienna this year, world -eknowned crystal manufacturer Lobmeyr—who took part in the Passionswege last year— invited the public to their showroom and workshop to see the fruits of their pairing with design duo BCXSY.

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