Comoco Architects has added a third new structure to the grounds of the medieval Pombal Castle in Portugal – a smooth concrete visitor centre that doubles as a viewing platform (+ slideshow).
This latest project is located within the castle’s perimeter. It runs alongside one of the historic stone walls, offering information for visitors and a new viewpoint through the 16th-century Manuelino-style windows.
“Our design strategy for Pombal Castle’s visitor centre pursues a deliberate ambiguous condition between a topographical feature, a limestone monolith, and an amiable wanderer, a stranger in search of a welcoming new home to rest,” explained architects Luís Miguel Correia, Nelson Mota and Susana Constantino.
“The main challenge of the commission was the definition of a design strategy that could live up to the richness of the castle’s multi-layered history without being either ostensive or subdued, i.e. finding its voice among the very many built artefacts that populate that space.”
The brief was to create a guest reception, a storage area and a room to screen a virtual history of the castle. The architects chose to expand this programme to include the new observation deck.
“On the one hand it should seamlessly mingle with the exiting features in the castle’s ward, and on the other hand it should become a conspicuous new addition to the existing built structures. In other words, we sought for a creative dialogue with the situation as found,” they added.
The staircase ascends slowly up the building’s south-east elevation, offering access to the entire rooftop. The space is surrounded by a thin metal railing that is barely noticeable.
A triangular recess in the facade houses the entrance. Inside, the projection room sits on the right-hand side and the storage area is tucked under the stairs.
The project also included updating an existing Corten-steel viewing deck and exhibition gallery. The architects reworked the internal layout, changed the railings and added new furniture.
The final intervention was to upgrade the surrounding landscaping by repairing the limestone cobbled pathways.
Client: Pombal Municipality Architecture: Luís Miguel Correia, Nelson Mota, Susana Constantino Structural Engineering, Hydraulic and Acoustics: ABL – Gabinete de Projectos Lda Electric devices: Luís Ribeiro Mechanical devices: João Gonçalves Madeira da Silva Contractors: ALVAPE, Construção e Obras Públicas, Lda
For his master’s thesis at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland, Travis Purrington re-imagined the dated look of US currency. Passing on the iconic images of past presidents, Purrington drew up an entirely new set of images focusing on science……
L’artiste Karan Singh imagine des illustrations tape à l’oeil, parfois en mouvement, parfois statiques, mais toujours avec des rayures et des aplats de couleurs vives. En s’inspirant de scènes et d’objets quotidiens, il retranscrit avec son propre style sa vision graphique et sa sensibilité artistique.
Inside Festival: Tony Materne of MPH Architects explains how the Australian firm created a huge construction training facility “within the existing envelope” of a former Adelaide car plant (+ movie).
The centre occupies part of an abandoned car manufacturing plant in Adelaide, Australia, which was built by Chrysler in 1964 and later operated by Mitsubishi, before being abandoned in 2008 due to the financial crash.
“The state government realised the potential for the site and decided to rejuvenate the area as a hub for commerce, education and innovation,” explains MPH Architects partner Tony Materne in the movie.
MPH Architects kept the existing shell of the plant intact and built the new campus inside it.
“The existing structure is quite magnificent, and so we wanted to take the opportunity to really celebrate adaptive reuse,” Materne says. “So the approach we took was to create a campus with buildings within the existing envelope.”
The firm used glass extensively throughout the complex to ensure visibility between the different workspaces and other areas.
“Transparency was absolutely key to the success of this project,” says Materne, “both to showcase the activities within to the general public and to create very strong connectivity between staff and students.”
For the majority of the year, the facility is not air-conditioned, relying on natural ventilation to cool it down.
“The perimeter facade has operable louvres and in the central lanes there are ventilation shafts,” explains Materne. “So we created this air movement through the whole of the facility for most of the year.”
Bold, brightly-coloured signage was introduced to help students and visitors navigate the complex.
“Because of the sheer size of the facility, we needed to introduce a very strong way-finding strategy,” says Materne.
The project was completed last year and the architect claims that it has been a huge success with staff and students alike.
“It’s fabulous to see how staff and students have really embraced the new facility,” he says. “It has taken the lecturing staff on a new journey of delivery of their curriculum and it has been really well embraced by all.”
Inside Festival took place at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 1 to 3 October. Award entries for next year’s festival are open from February 2015.
We’ve been publishing interviews with all the category winners from this year’s event over the last few weeks. You can watch all the movies below.
When Mike Macadaan created the Cord Taco, he feared it might be too simple: a simple leather disk with a metallic snap closure. But many end-users don’t have the skill, tools or time to create a product like this for themselves.
The *cordctrl, made from high-grade liquid injection silicone, is another simple answer to the earbud cord control challenge. End-users just wrap the cord around the *cordctrl, locking the cord in place by running it through the notches at either end. This is the same approach used by the Sumajin SmartWrap, which we wrote about previously.
Both of the items listed above are fine for end users who just want an organized way to carry the cords in their pockets, computer bags, etc. But adding a clip to the products, as Dotz did with its Earbud Wrap, gives the end user the option of attaching it to a bag strap, a shirt, etc. Since not all end-users have clothes with pockets, this could be handy. But the clip does add a bit more bulk to the product—there are always trade-offs!
Acting as a veritable time capsule into Southern California beach and punk culture from the late ’60s to the early ’80s, “Sounds of Two Eyes Opening” offers readers an unfiltered glimpse into a vastly influential time and place. Shot by music producer……
L’équipe du FabShop vient de sortir une série ludique et originale de 14 composants bleus qu’il est possible de télécharger, imprimer et joindre aux légumes de son choix pour le transformer en navette ou même en voiture de course. Aubergines sous-marines et courgettes-hélicoptères sont à découvrir dans la galerie.
Opinion: mobile products have a short lifespan, but Apple has invested heavily in turning them into desirable design objects. For some “luxury” customers that just isn’t enough, finds Alex Wiltshire.
Would you pay $5,000 for a phone? What about $8,000? Handcrafted and utterly distinctive, it won’t be the same phone that’s in the pockets of millions of others. But would you invest all that money into something that will be approaching obsolescence in a couple of years? Something that you might drop down your loo tomorrow, or simply find to have stopped working?
Apple is pretty much the undisputed leader in the design of mass-produced technology. The rest of the tech world struggles to challenge the popularity of the assiduously curved anodised aluminium and planes of glass used in its MacBooks, iPhones, iPads and – inevitably – the upcoming Apple Watch. In Apple’s world, everyone, from a teenager to a CEO, can enjoy the same material perfection for the same price: a sugar-free celebration of what Warhol loved about America.
And yet there is Feld & Volk. This Russian self-described atelier strips away the machined finishes of iPhones and iPads and replaces them with the extravagance of gold and wood, mother of pearl and carbon. And it charges a lot of money for them.
In the Pure Gold model, the iPhone 5s is treated to a custom backing with a backlit Apple logo and a sapphire glass backing (an almost magically tough material that Apple itself only started using with the iPhone 6) screen-printed with a green-gold pattern. The metal surround and buttons are replaced with 18-carat gold and engraved details are added, including Feld & Volk’s logo. Alternatively, you can get the same re-spec but themed with the national colours of the United Arab Emirates, complete with lit coat of arms, or one where only the buttons are gold and the back features a red/gold flower pattern.
In the Wood edition the back is made from the tightly knotted grain of Karelian birch (as used for one of Fabergé’s most famous eggs), hand-treated to make it more resistant to temperature and water, and machined with tolerances for error of no more than half a millimetre. Only 77 have been produced. The Pure Gold? $8,990. The Wood model is $4,799.
Feld & Volk is by no means the only company which is modifying Apple designs. Los Angeles-based Brikk sells the Lux range, which plates the cases of the iPhone 5s and 6, iPads, HTC One and Galaxy Gear and Note 3 in 24-carat gold, pink gold or platinum. Geneva-based Golden Dreams modifies iPhones with alligator leather backs. But the craft of Moscow-based Feld & Volk, recently on sale at the Paris fashion shop Colette and soon to have its own Moscow shop, puts it at the top of this field.
In its products, Apple’s values of necessity and restraint are exchanged for those of luxury. “We are balancing on the thin line between luxury and practicality,” said co-founder Alexander Volkov, explaining that his designs for phones have to take into account their need to take calls and photos, and whatever else. But when it comes to luxury, the materials evidently come first.
When the iPhone 6 launched, Feld & Volk, which currently counts 25 permanent staff, disassembled it to see which components could be exchanged for something more expensive, and that bit less practical. Feld & Volk phones are heavier by around 12 grams and back-lit models will drain the battery slightly faster, though the company claims that the radio signal isn’t affected by the changes in the fabric of the phones.
Not that the kind of people who’d spend so much money on a phone probably care too much. Such modifications reseat the whole purpose of the phone. The everyday workhorse, identical to all others, becomes an individualised status symbol, especially if you have Feld & Volk make you a custom model. Volkov says that his clients range from “men of weight” in business to corporations looking for branded gifts to give to staff, trying to make a personal statement through an object that would otherwise be identical in the pockets of a film star, president and bum.
There’s something bizarre about such ostentation being attached to something as transitory as a phone, whether superseded by next year’s model, passed over by the latest operating system upgrade, or simply dropped. Isn’t luxury supposed to carry a sense of timelessness? Luxury phone maker Vertu tries to soften the bite by adding concierge features to the package, but Feld & Volk’s phone stands with nothing other than its year’s warranty.
It’s tempting to see Feld & Volk’s work as arising from similar impulses that gave Russian Tsars such a soft spot for Fabergé eggs: naked proclamations of wealth. But a Fabergé egg will last centuries. Perhaps the sheer impermanence of such an investment makes it an even headier statement of opulence?
And now Apple appears to be turning down a similar path, with rumours that the gold version of the Apple Watch will cost over £3000. We don’t yet know to what extent its innards will be subject to obsolescence, given that they will rely on iPhones to process the data they display, but it’s hard to imagine one lasting like a Rolex Oyster. Perhaps it’s all a sign of a maturation of such ubiquitous pieces of technology, that they’ve taken up such a central role in life that even obsolescence is worthy of incredible expense.
Interview: ahead of his talk at London’s V&A museum on Friday, typographer Vincent Connare talks to Dezeen about creating the typeface that designers love to hate.
Vincent Connare was one of the early pioneers of digital typeface design, working on fonts for Agfa and Apple in the early 1990s before joining Microsoft, where he designed both the web-friendly Trebuchet font family and the now infamous Comic Sans MS.
“It was important at Microsoft to show people how things could be done. The group back then were doing things five years or more ahead of everybody,” Connare told Dezeen. “We were addressing issues with various types of screens and devices. Today we are actually doing less internally in the code of fonts than we did 15 years ago.”
Originally designed in 1994 to fill in the speech bubbles in a programme called Microsoft Bob, which featured a cartoon dog that offered tips on how to use a computer, Comic Sans was based on the hand lettering in comic books that Connare had lying around in his office.
“I was asked to comment on what I thought of the use of typography in this new application. I said I liked the drawings and cartoon characters and it was fun but I thought it was lazy to just use the system font Times New Roman in the speech balloons,” Connare told Dezeen.
“I looked at the comic books I had in my office and drew up with a mouse on a computer an example of hand lettering that I showed to the group, with images of the cartoon dog Rover talking in this style of font. I did not intend to make a font. I was just showing them how I thought it would look better in a cartoon style.”
Although the sans serif typeface was never used in the program it was originally designed for – it was introduced too late in the development process – it became popular in internal communications at Microsoft.
In 1995 it was included in the company’s standard font package for Windows, putting it in the hands of millions of computer users. It was also included as a standard option in the Internet Explorer browser, expanding its reach even further.
“There are 200-300 fonts installed on every computer but people pick Comic Sans because it is different and it looks more like handwriting and does not look like an old school text book,” explained Connare. “It is a personal decision. The same could be asked of why do people like Ugg boots, Justin Bieber or pink tracksuits.”
Microsoft Bob
By the end of the 1990s, the ubiquity of Comic Sans in home-made signage and children’s school projects was beginning to generate a backlash from some designers. Critics felt it was being used “inappropriately”.
In 2000, Connare received an email from Holly and David Combs, the founders of the Ban Comic Sans website, alerting him to the growing animosity towards his creation.
“Technological advances have transformed typography into a tawdry triviality,” says the Ban Comic Sans manifesto. “Clearly, Comic Sans as a voice conveys silliness, childish naivete, irreverence, and is far too casual… It is analogous to showing up for a black tie event in a clown costume.”
The V&A, where Connare is talking tomorrow night as part of its typography themed late night event What the Font?, describes Comic Sans as “one of the most popular and despised typefaces in existence” and cites its appearance on gravestones and government job applications as examples of its inappropriate use.
Connare once described the typeface as “the best joke I ever told”. He does not regret creating it and believes that people who don’t like Comic Sans don’t understand the purpose of design.
“I think people who don’t like Comic Sans don’t know anything about design,” said Connare. “They don’t understand that in design you have a brief.”
“Comic Sans matched the brief, the brief of the entire Microsoft Consumer Division to put a ‘Computer in Every Home’ and to make something popular for the people of these homes and their kids. Comic Sans is loved by kids, mums and many dads. So it did its job very well. It matched the brief!”
Vincent Connare
Connare is now based in London, where he works for font foundry Dalton Maag training new designers.
“Anybody who says they would not like to design a typeface that makes such an impact and is used by so many people and on so many products, is lying to themselves,” he said. “I would love to make something again that everyone loved and others would hate.”
What the Font? takes place at the V&A from 6.30pm until 10pm and includes talks from Connare, typographer Jonathan Barnbrook and Christian Boer, designer of the Dyslexie typeface.
Read the full transcript from our interview with Vincent Connare:
Anna Winston: Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became a typographer?
Vincent Connare: I began my career in type design back in 1987. I was living in New York City and decided to move back to Massachusetts for work. I started working as a photographer and darkroom technician but got bored of the hours and being in the dark for eight hours, so I applied to [typesetting systems company] Compugraphic in Wilmington, Massachusetts. I worked the second shift from 4pm to midnight. First I was converting their type library from a photographic library to the new Ikarus font format by URW in Germany. I then moved into the Intellifont hinting team, creating fonts for Hewlett-Packard Laserjet printers. In 1991 I was chosen to work on the new TrueType font format that Apple released. I created Agfa’s (formerly Compugraphic) first TrueType fonts. In 1993 I began working for Microsoft in the Advanced Technologies research group. We later were reorganised into Microsoft Typography.
Anna Winston: What led to the development of Comic Sans?
Vincent Connare: In 1994 a program manager by the name of Tom Stephens came into my office with a CD called Utopia, this was the new application that was being released by the new Consumer Division. Its marketing manager was the future Melinda French Gates.
I was asked to comment on what I thought of the use of typography in this new application. I said I liked the drawings and cartoon characters and it was fun but I think it was lazy to just use the system font Times New Roman in the speech balloons. I looked at the comic books I had in my office and drew up with a mouse on a computer an example of hand lettering that I showed to the group with images of the cartoon dog Rover talking in this style of font as opposed to Times New Roman. I did not intend to make a font. I was just showing them how I thought it would look better in a cartoon style.
They liked it and asked me to continue to develop the font and that font became Comic Sans. It was not used in Utopia which was later named Microsoft Bob because the program was in its final beta and they could not change the default font at this time. It was used in another cartoon application called 3D Movie Maker. It got heavily used by the Microsoft administrative assistants in their emails and someone in marketing added it to the first Internet Explorer and the OEM version of Windows 95. This is the version of Windows that is given to computer manufacturers to install in their computers. So every computer sold with Windows 95 had Comic Sans in it and every copy of Internet Explorer had it too.
Anna Winston: What do you think it was about Comic Sans that made it so popular?
Vincent Connare: There are 200-300 fonts installed on every computer but people pick Comic Sans because it is different and it looks more like handwriting and does not look like an old school text book. It is a personal decision. The same could be asked of why do people like Ugg boots, Justin Bieber or pink tracksuits.
Anna Winston: What’s the most unusual use you’ve seen of the typeface?
Vincent Connare: I think the most recent unusual use of Comic Sans is on the Spanish Copa del Rey league cup. The new cup uses Comic Sans to inscribe the years winners.
Anna Winston: When did it begin to feel like some people were turning against it?
Vincent Connare: Probably when I received an email back in 2000 from the people who set up the Ban Comic Sans site. I thought, if they have nothing better to do, why should I stop them.
Anna Winston: A lot of people say they don’t like Comic Sans, why do you think that is? Does it bother you?
Vincent Connare: I think people who don’t like Comic Sans don’t know anything about design. They don’t understand that in design you have a brief. Comic Sans matched the brief, the brief of the entire Microsoft Consumer Division to put a “Computer in Every Home” and to make something popular for the people of these homes and their kids. Comic Sans is loved by kids, mums and many dads. So it did its job very well. It matched the brief! No it doesn’t bother me in the least.
Anna Winston: Has the public’s changing relationship with Comic Sans affected how you think about designing typefaces now?
Vincent Connare: No. I think anybody who says they would not like to design a typeface that makes such an impact and is used by so many people and on so many products, is lying to themselves. I would love to make something again that everyone loved and others would hate.
Anna Winston: How important was that early work at Microsoft in the development of digital typefaces more generally?
Vincent Connare: It was important at Microsoft to show people how things could be done. The group back then were doing things five years or more ahead of everybody. We were addressing issues with various types of screens and devices. This was 15 years ago and it is now commonplace that we have to address type on these new small devices. Today we are actually doing less internally in the code of fonts than we did 15 years ago.
Anna Winston: Screens are becoming smaller and smaller with devices like the Apple Watch – what impact does this have on digital typeface design?
Vincent Connare: Small screens are not a problem. Displaying type on these screens means we have to do less. Something like a watch would have a limited amount of font sizes and doesn’t need scalable font formats. If the font doesn’t scale then you could just use .png or bitmap font formats like we used to do for screens or printers. These are fast and ready to display unlike outline fonts.
Anna Winston: What are you working on at the moment?
Vincent Connare: Currently I am working in the group responsible for training (called Skills and Process) at Dalton Maag. I am teaching new designers the reality of making digital typography and teaching them how to hint or program fonts.
Anna Winston: What makes typography different from other fields of design?
Vincent Connare: Type design and developing fonts is much more technical than other fields of design. The only other field of design as technical is web design and development.
Anna Winston: A lot of people use the words font and typeface interchangeably to describe the same thing. Is this a problem?
Vincent Connare: The term font doesn’t actually apply anymore. The old word fount referred to the specific case of letterpress letters in a style and weight of a typeface. In modern use it refers to a specific font file such as Times Roman Bold. Typeface usually refers to the whole family of Times Roman. On computers the term font is synonymous with typeface because it is used in menus this way. If we want to be pedantic we could say the menu should say Fonts since it is a list of all the font names of the font files on the computer.
In French software, the menu reads: police des caractères. People use the term police to mean a font and a typeface too.
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