Identically proportioned rooms are arranged in a grid behind the yellow-dyed facade of this house in rural Chile, designed by architect duo Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen.

The two Pezo von Ellrichshausen founders originally designed Casa Meri as the permanent residence for a couple in Florida, central Chile, but a later change to the brief transformed it into a smaller building that can be used as a second home or guest house.

The concrete structure originally chosen was swapped for pine, which was impregnated with chemicals to make it stronger and more durable, but the design otherwise remained much the same.

“We did not only try to keep its luminous and relaxed presence but to trace it literally on top of a kind of fictitious footprint of the previous project,” said Pezo and Von Ellrichshausen, whose past projects include their own house and studio.

“On top of the same existing artificial podium, the new house extends itself horizontally as an attempt to follow the flow of a sinuous river at the foot of the hill,” they explained.

Externally the 170-square-metre house is clad with roughly sawn pine boards, which extend vertically up the walls and around the overhanging roof.

Theses surfaces are stained in a deep shade of yellow that stands in sharp contrast to the red tones of the landscape, the surrounding greenery and the blue sky overhead.

Pairs of glazed doors puncture all four facades at regular intervals, revealing the gridded arrangement of the 10 rooms inside the building. This means every room can open up to the outdoors.

Internally, every partition has a central doorway so that all rooms are connected to those adjacent to them. These openings vary in width.

“Each side has five rooms with a system of openings in the exterior walls indifferent to orientation or program, and another system of apertures in the interior walls that is relative to the degree of privacy from one room to the other,” said the architects.

“Both sequences are structured by another system of ceiling apertures that forces diagonally the perception of the plan’s depth,’ they added, referring to a series of square and circular skylights.

The various living and dining spaces occupy the rooms at the front of the house, with the kitchen in the middle. The five rooms at the rear include five bedrooms, with bathrooms slotted in between.

“Towards the open landscape there is a continuous arrangement of common functions and to the immediate hill there is another discontinuous one with individual functions,” added Pezo and Von Ellrichshausen.

Untreated pine covers the walls and ceilings of all the rooms, while the floor is covered in eucalyptus boards. Kitchen and bathroom fittings are also wooden wherever possible.

Photography is by the architects.

Project credits:

Client: Maria Rosa Gonzales, Alejandro Woloszyn
Architects: Mauricio Pezo, Sofia von Ellrichshausen
Collaborators: Diego Perez, Valentina Chandia, Simon Guery, Philpe Kempfer, Orlando Hartmann, Luisa Rocco
Builder: Ricardo Ballesta
Structural consultant: Luis Mendieta
Building services: Luis Valenzuela, Daniel Garrido

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10 matching rooms and no corridors appeared first on Dezeen.

Transport for London’s ‘Bus Stop Not in Use’ signs inevitably cause some level of frustration for the capital’s bus passengers, but designer Keith Gray has reworked these messages of disruption into a series of courier-style bags…

Gray’s latest project for TfL reworks one of the bus network’s most infamous signs – the ‘flag’ which is placed over the top of a bus stop when it is temporarily closed.

“A couple of years ago I found a Bus Stop Not In Use sleeve discarded on a pavement in Hackney,” Gray explains. “At the time I needed a portfolio bag to take my screenprints to and from Printclub – it was an ideal size, so I reconstructed it to be of use in that way.”

According to Gray, the Not In Use sleeve has two open sides, so he attached a heavy duty zip to these and designed two ‘webbing’ straps into the construction, so it could then be carried over the shoulders – particularly handy when travelling by bike.

“I then took it to TfL and they liked it so much that they put it into production as a celebratory project for their ‘Year of the Bus’ initiative that kicked off last month at Design Junction,” he adds.

“I like the idea of taking something used as signage for something that is out of use – a bus stop – and transforming the ‘dis-used’ into ‘useful’. It’s a kind of positive spin on a ‘Bus Stop Product Recall’, if you like.”

In 2003, Gray was one of CR’s Creative Futures. For that year’s scheme each recipient was given a window in Selfridges in London to install a project: Gray’s idea was to produce a graphic representation of the noise pollution outside the store.

In 2010 he produced the set of alternative commemorative plates for the wedding of Prince William & Kate Middleton while at KesselsKramer in London. More recently he published Product Recall, a book of ‘product recall notices’.

Bus stop is not in use bags are priced at £45 each and will be available to purchase online from winter 2014 from shop.tfl.gov.uk. More of Gray’s work at pagefailedtoload.com.

We recently toured the cavernous Kawasaki Motors plant in Lincoln, Nebraska. Within the endless production lines—making products ranging from ATVs to subway cars—we found the company uses several fascinating industrial processes. This is the first…

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Scotland’s first annual Graphic Design Festival takes place in Glasgow next week, with a five-day programme of hands-on events that aim to help connect young creatives with industry. Here’s a look at the line-up, plus we have one ticket to a two-day workshop with Hort’s Eike Konig to give away…

Graphic Design Festival Scotland runs from October 22-26 and was organised by Gilchrist and Beth Wilson. The pair, who also run Glasgow design studio Warriors, came up with the idea while studying at the University of Edinburgh.

“There are so many successful design festivals abroad and a lot of events going on down South. With so many students, creative studios and great universities [in Scotland], we just thought, ‘why shouldn’t there be one here?'” explains Gilchrist.

Rather than a traditional programme of talks and exhibitions, Gilchrist and Wilson have opted for a more collaborative model, which aims to showcase local talent and help young designers network with established studios.

The programme begins with a live two-day project, in which a group of creatives selected from online applications before the festival will be given a conceptual brief and asked to create a piece of work individually.

Participants will work independently but be split into groups, with each receiving advice from a mentoring studio or designer throughout the project. Mentors include Graphical House, Freytag Anderson, O Street and Edinburgh creative agency Touch.

Freytag Anderson’s branding for The Fableists

Graphical House branding for Scotland Can Make It!

At the end of the event, work will be judged by a panel from INT Works and Grafik and winners from each team will receive a work placement with their mentor studio. They’ll also get a ‘Best up-and-coming 2014’ award and a bundle of prizes.

“[The live event] is all about giving designers a chance to showcase their work and have it reviewed. Everyone will be working independently but in an open-plan space and mentors will give one-on-one advice throughout,” explains Gilchrist. “We’ll also feature the students and young designers who took part on our website, so it’s another chance for them to show their portfolio,” he adds.

Following the live project are a series of one and two-day workshops: one day events are priced at £80, two-day at £160, and prices include a free ticket to the festival launch party on October 24 and an informal talks night on October 25.

Freddy Taylor of KesselsKramer and riso printing studio Risotto will be holding workshops

Workshops range from risograph printing with local studio Risotto, animation with STV Creative and hands-on ‘construction based’ projects with Berlin arts collective 44 Flavours.

Hort’s Eike Konig will also be running a print workshop, OK-RM will focus on type and print, and KesselsKramer designer Freddy Taylor’s will be based around a conceptual product.

“We wanted to feature a good selection of home-grown talent and international studios,” explains Gilchrist. “The one and two-day workshops will follow the same concept, but the two-day ones from international studios will be more comprehensive, focusing on developing an idea as well as creating something physical,” he adds.

This year’s programme also includes an exhibition at In Public Gallery featuring shortlisted entries to an international poster design competition held by the festival earlier this year.

The exhibition was curated by Felix Pfaffli, Pierre Vanni, Morgan Fortems (founder of My Monkey gallery in France) and Warriors, and the shortlist was selected from over 3000 entries. Winners will be announced at a launch night on October 24 and you can see shortlisted names here.

To celebrate the launch of the festival, Graphic Design Festival Scotland has given us one ticket to a two-day workshop with Konig on October 25 and 26th, worth £160. To win, simply leave your best design-punning movie title in the comments section below (top marks if there’s a Scottish connection too), and remember to include your name and email address alongside your answer.

The competition closes at midnight tonight and the winner will be notified by midday on October 20th.

For more information on the festival or to book tickets for events, see graphicdesignfestivalscotland.com

Aberrant Architecture renovated the interior of this small private school in London with brightly coloured walls and furniture that pays homage to the building’s Edwardian roots (+ slideshow).

Aberrant Architecture designed the interior for Rosemary Works primary school in De Beauvoir, an area bordering Regent’s canal in Hackney, east London.

The south-London studio took the school’s Edwardian construction and waterside location as points of reference for the design which includes brightly painted period features and a fleet of wooden canal barges.

“During the design process we stripped back the layers of paint, plaster, wallpaper and ad-hoc building work that had accumulated over the years to reveal an original layering of forgotten materials and features,” studio co-founder David Chambers told Dezeen.

The architects restored the original parquet flooring and entrance steps, while pipework and radiators were reconditioned and coated in brightly coloured paint, to highlight them as a feature of the building’s heritage.

“What most attracted us about the late Edwardian design language of the original school building was the way in which they borrowed from the past,” said the architect, whose studio’s previous projects include a mobile performance venue and a market stall.

“It was not in a revivalist way like the Victorians, who tended to copy earlier styles wholesale. It was more about only borrowing features that were appropriate for present day needs,” he explained.

Each area of the school has been painted a range of intentionally clashing colours. One classroom has bright yellow walls, floors and furniture, with wooden storage walls and sky-blue radiators.

In one toilet block, cistern pipes above the toilets have been painted bright blue to contrast with the lime green walls, while purple shaded lights hang over the stalls.

This scheme continues into the main play area for the school, which has blue columns and green flooring.

Dimmer areas of the building, including hallways, are painted a dark leafy-green.

The architects say they took inspiration from Edwardian colour theory for the colour scheme.

“Late Edwardian colour theory suggested that light complementary colours are to be used in areas of the interior where there was plenty of natural light and to use rich complementary colours in areas where natural light was not so dominant,” said Chambers.

“Borrowing this idea ourselves we experimented with over 220 different colour samples and combinations before arriving at the final colour scheme.”

Walls have been split into three sections with different functions. The lower areas of the walls are aimed at children and include storage, seating and chalk boards, whiteboards and projection screens for teachers in the middle area, while children’s work can be displayed on the uppermost section of the wall to create a contemporary frieze.

“The late Edwardian interior treatment of the original building divided the walls into different sections for both practical and decorative reasons and comprised the dado rail, picture rail, the frieze and the spaces in-between which were either painted or panelled,” Chambers told Dezeen.

During a workshop to find out the needs and desires of the different users, the architects received a number of suggestions for additions to the building – including the wooden canal boat playrooms, which reference the nearby Regent’s Canal.

“During the workshops we asked the participants to become architects for the day and draw the aspects of the school that should be celebrated, identify areas for improvement and think about what needed to be added,” added Chambers.

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playful furnishings to an east London school appeared first on Dezeen.