Le studio de design suédois Kovac Family a conçu la lampe LED en bois « 25 » : pour réduire les émissions de CO2, ils souhaitaient créer un packaging aussi petit que possible. Si cette suspension s’appelle « 25 », c’est tout simplement parce qu’elle est faite de 25 couches de bois qui s’emboitent. Disponible en édition limitée.
The Big Foot dining table by Sydney design studio Daast features oversized rounded legs that slot into its slim tabletop.
The rotund legs, which are angled out slightly, slot through the tabletop, so the elliptical top edge of each one is visible in the surface of the table.
“The form and size of legs was inspired by natural properties of tree trunks,” said Alex Kashin, who co-founded Daast with Andrew Southwood-Jones. “We wanted to translate the feeling of warmth, softness and steadiness that is usually associated with trees.”
The legs are milled on a five-axis computer numerically controlled (CNC) cutting machine. “This shape of leg is very hard to achieve using traditional wood-turning methods because of the top detail,” said Kashin.
Related story: Wooden table by Ruben Beckers weighs just 4.5 kilograms
They are fixed to the tabletop using a steel plate that also braces each leg – enabling the table to be taken apart for transportation.
“The Big Foot table explores soft round shapes within a mismatching of size that questions visual perception of scale,” Kashin told Dezeen. “Glued, carved and slotted together, the table surface reads as a diagram of its own assembly.”
Big Foot is available in American oak, ash or walnut. “The design accentuates the natural properties of timber and in particular American oak: grain, warmth, tactility and strength,” said the designers.
“We chose American oak because of its warm colour and consistent grain,” they added. “It is also very stable timber which is very good to work with.”
Photography is by Rodrick Bond.
The post Daast’s Big Foot table sits
on chubby wooden legs appeared first on Dezeen.
This eight-storey tower covered in golden louvres and raised up on pilotis accommodates new academic and research facilities for Deakin University in Melbourne (+ slideshow).
The Burwood Highway Frontage Building was designed by architecture firm Woods Bagot to expand the teaching and research facilities for the university’s health faculty, as well as accommodating administrative and support areas.
The building takes its name from the adjacent road and its position between two main entrances to the campus, where its visibility demanded a suitably bold statement.
“The architectural intention centred around two key concepts: the spatial composition required by the functional brief, and the client’s aspiration to create a gateway building for the campus,” said the architects.
The building is formed of two interconnecting blocks – a small silver wing that extends along the boundary facing the highway, and the golden tower raised on slender concrete pilotis, which projects towards the rest of the campus.
The two volumes combine to create an L-shape, with the inner edge of the podium flanked by a pair of north-facing courtyards that add further communal outdoor spaces to the landscaped grounds of the campus.
Both portions of the building are clad in aluminium sun-shading louvres, with the silver finish of the podium and the gold of the tower emphasising the junction between the two separate volumes.
The tower cantilevers above curving concrete walls and ramps that meander around its base, creating a softer visual element alongside the hard-edge metal cladding above.
“Applying a crisper material like aluminium for the louvres provided a strong contrast to the abundance of Brutalist concrete,” the architects explained.
“The number of materials used was reduced to create a monumental architectural language.”
The angular aesthetic of the building’s elevations is continued in the forms of a glass entrance that protrudes onto one of the courtyards, as well as a series of metal-clad free-standing structures dotted around the periphery of the site that contain parts of the building’s mechanical plant and services.
Inside, the design for the study areas was based on principles borrowed from modern workplace design. Flexible spaces facilitate both individual study and group work.
Areas for relaxation and socialising are interspersed amongst them, intended to encourage more interaction between staff and students.
The building also accommodates underground car parking, a public art gallery, a library and a cafe.
Communal areas throughout the building are framed by curving surfaces, while colourful geometric floor tiles demarcate different zones.
Raw materials including exposed concrete and slatted timber contrast with brightly coloured upholstery and painted joinery, including panels that conceal ceiling lighting.
Photography is by Peter Bennetts.
Project credits:
Architects: Woods Bagot
Principal in charge: Sarah Ball
Principal design leader: Bruno Mendes
Project architects: David Ley, Karl Engstrom
Team: Emma-Louise Matthews, Henry Ly, Ian McDonald, James Burrell, Matt McDonnell, Matthew Si, Melissa Blandford, Rob Donegan, Richard Galloway, Sebastian Hecker
Project manager: Deakin Facilities Services
Service engineers: Umow Lai Pty Ltd
Structural & civil engineers: John Mullen & Partners
Building surveyor: PLP Consultants
Quantity surveyor: Wilde & Woollard
Acoustic Consultants: Marshall Day
Façade Consultants: BG&E
Signage: Univers
High rise access: Vertigo
DDA: Architecture & Access
Traffic: Cardno
Landscape architects: Rush Wright Associates
The post Woods Bagot adds elevated golden tower
to Melbourne’s Deakin University appeared first on Dezeen.
Voici une magnifique création photographique réalisée par Mladen Penev et Clemens Franke. Publicité pour la marque de bijoux Mevisto, la composition mêle le bras d’une femme avec des pétales de fleurs et a été rendue possible grâce à une manipulation de photo ingénieuse.
Haoshi Design, dont nous avons déjà parlé sur Fubiz, a imaginé de nouveau une petite horloge murale comme un nid de moineaux. « The Sparrow Clock » est faite en résine et représente un vol d’oiseaux blancs sur le mur où l’horloge est accrochée. L’idée de ce produit vient des moineaux que ces créatifs voyaient s’envoler depuis leur fenêtre.
Slender batons of untreated larch cover two extensions erected in the garden of this semi-detached home in London, as part of a refurbishment and remodelling by architecture studio Haptic (+ slideshow).
London-based Haptic added an open-plan kitchen and dining room in the first of two extensions to the rear of Highlever House, a two-storey Victorian property in west London.
The second is a small guest annex positioned against the brick gable of a neighbouring property at the bottom of the garden.
Both are clad with narrow slats of untreated larch that will naturally grey over time. Large panels of glazing set into the ridged timber cover direct views into the garden, and trailing plants that hang from the garden walls soften the outline of the two rectilinear volumes.
“The untreated timber slats create a surface, which appears soft, drape-like and tactile, with a subtle three dimensionality,” said studio director Timo Haedrich.
Two large skylights illuminate the white-painted kitchen and dining area, which are separated by a white breakfast bar with integrated storage.
Metal details including an angular extraction hood and taps contribute to a minimal aesthetic that contrasts the Victorian features in the original parts of the house.
“We utilised a limited palette of materials and colour, with oak and concrete featuring throughout the property and contrasting to the white walls and kitchen,” Haedrich told Dezeen.
“These materials were used and detailed in a variety of ways to provide varying tactile experiences for the family.”
Poured-concrete floors visually tie the lounge at the front of the house with the kitchen and dining area at the rear. A short flight of wooden steps leads from the sunken kitchen to the lounge, where a fireplace is built into a slim concrete counter.
Although the architects removed “unsympathetic” additions to the property to make way for the new extensions, the Victorian layout, decorative moulding work and a wooden staircase were retained.
“The intention was to form a connection between the old and the new, to juxtapose the Victorian craftsmanship and love for intricate detail with modern construction techniques and to create generosity of space and light,” explained Haedrich.
Old paintwork has been stripped from the wooden staircase that leads from the new timber floorboard of the property’s hallway to the three bedrooms and a family bathroom positioned across the upper storey.
“The original Victorian staircase was left intact with the patina on show,” said Haedrich. “We enjoy the contrast of this with the rest of the house, with crisp and refined detailing.”
The largest bedroom faces the street, while the remaining rooms have windows that overlook a decked patio by the kitchen and the garden beyond.
Photography is by Simon Kennedy.
Project credits:
Architect: Haptic Architects
Team: Timo Haedrich and Chris Wong
The post Haptic adds a pair of extensions to
a Victorian home in west London appeared first on Dezeen.
Basée à Seattle, l’artiste botanique Bridget Beth Collins, connue sous le pseudo Flora Borager sur Instagram, aime confronter la nature et la beauté à travers ses délicates compositions de fleurs qu’elle partage quotidiennement sur son compte. Beaucoup de races différentes d’oiseaux, d’autres animaux, des scènes à l’image du Petit Chaperon Rouge dans les bois et des portraits comme celui d’Audrey Hepburn à découvrir dans l’article.
Photo essay: 70 years after the second world war ended, there are still over 6,000 defensive structures along Britain’s coastline. Photographer Richard Brine has been documenting them (+ slideshow).
The series, entitled Defensive Structures in the British Landscape, depicts the field defences installed between 1940 and 1941 when the country was on the brink of invasion by Germany. They were popularly known as pillboxes, because of their cylindrical and hexagonal shapes.
“To describe how these curious structures sit in the landscape has always been my intent, but in doing so I wanted to convey a sense of place, and capture the atmosphere of their environment,” explained Brine, who is currently showing the images in an exhibition at London’s Architectural Association.
This essay, written by Dominic Bradbury to accompany the exhibition, tells the story behind the small yet resilient buildings.
Our countryside and coastline are populated with an enigmatic and eccentric collection of buildings that are now nearly 75 years old. Partly forgotten and often ignored, the old pillboxes and defensive emplacements built across Britain in 1940 and 1941 represent and record an extraordinary achievement.
In the space of just a short number of months thousands of these buildings were built across the country in a desperate attempt to prepare for the very real threat of German invasion.
A Directorate of Fortifications and Works drew up a range of pillbox designs that could be built quickly and easily right across the country. These designs were ingenious and functional, but also possessed a sculptural sense of abstraction.
The fact that thousands still survive right across Britain points to how well they were designed and how robust was their construction. Yet there was also a degree of localism and amateurism to many of these buildings, with the character of these buildings shaped by local materials and the abilities of local soldiers, labourers and volunteers to turn the designs into hard reality.
Some were made with brick and some were woven into the fabric of existing buildings. Most were made with reinforced concrete according to a pattern book laid down by the Directorate, but even the mix of concrete varied depending on the availability of sand, cement and shingle. This gave variation to the appearance of pillboxes, while they were also shaped by context and the land itself, with some standing out in the landscape as obvious sentinels and others partly submerged within fields or cliffs.
The sheer scale of the enterprise was staggering, with around 28,000 separate structures built across the countryside with over 6,000 still remaining. Most are neglected and many are crumbling, yet they remain a distinct and common presence across the British landscape.
They are buildings that we stumble upon on cliff tops and beaches, brought down by coastal erosion but still surviving the onslaught of the waves for decades at a time. Others crop up in surprising and unexpected places, where the line of defence appears unclear or confused to us now. Yet at the time they represented strategic thinking turned to reality upon future battlefields.
Today, these buildings are resonant and full of meaning. They are sculptural and engaging in themselves and carry the poignancy of relics and lost structures. They become all the more dramatic when they sit within wild, exposed and untamed rural panoramas.
Yet they are also emblematic of a desperate enterprise that connects with what we sometimes call Britain’s finest hour – a time when the country struggled to come together to stave off the threat of defeat, helped by its island geography. The country itself became a fortress and the pillboxes and embrasures were our first line of defence.
These small, obscure buildings have a poetic importance, combining and encapsulating many themes that still have the power to arrest and engage us. They are poignant reminders of many aspects of our own identity and national character and their increasingly vulnerability, after so many years of ‘service’, lends them a particular pathos.
Nature is doing her best to reclaim these buildings at last, with their concrete shells juxtaposed with swallowing sand and choking bushes, vines and undergrowth. They serve, then, as metaphors of both victory and gradual decline at one and the same time.
Given their history and depth of meaning, it is no wonder that these strange, seductive structures captured the attention of architectural photographer Richard Brine.
Yet Brine has not sought to simply catalogue or document these buildings out of a sense of historical duty. There is a richer purpose to Brine’s photographs, which aim to encapsulate some of the wider themes that these buildings suggest.
Brine concentrates on the place of these buildings within vivid and powerful landscapes and their particular resonance within a very specific local context – whether on the Norfolk coast or the Oxfordshire countryside.
In doing so, Brine uncovers individual stories that bring together aspects of architecture, planning and local endeavour. These stories build into a striking collection of engaging images that coalesce into a much larger and thought provoking narrative.
The post Richard Brine photographs the concrete
“pillboxes” left over from the war appeared first on Dezeen.
‘naboo_2’ is a simple bar-stool suitable for domestic or public spaces. The ‘naboo_2’ has a neat yet memorable silhouette. The..
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