Hasta La Ideas

Ernesto Artillo est un artiste espagnol qui a longuement observé son père réaliser des collages, pendant sa tendre enfance, avant de se lancer dans cet art du papier. Depuis, il travaille pour des marques telles que Oysho ou Mango afin d’illustrer leurs nouvelles collections de vêtements et ajoute aussi des touches de peinture pour créer plus de reliefs à ses oeuvres florales faites d’orchidées et de pétales.

This timber-framed house by architect Tatsuyuki Takagi is raised up by a cantilevered concrete slab, keeping it away from a busy road in Toyohashi, Japan (+ slideshow).

The cantilevered volume provides a two-storey-tall living space for the family home called Fly Out, which was designed by the Tokyo-based architect for a couple and their young child.

The building faces a busy road in Toyohashi, a city in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture. The awkward piece of land was selected specifically for the project by the couple, who asked Takagi to come up with a design for a house before they bought the land.

Their brief was for a low-budget building that would marry together their desire for a large open-plan living area, but also allow ample parking space for the husband’s car collection.

“To leave most of the budget for the living area, this project began by proposing a blueprint which will provide enough parking space and create comfortable space by taking an advantage of the less valued sloping land,” Takagi told Dezeen.

“Generally speaking, clients in Japan will ask for a blueprint after land has been purchased,” he added.

“However in this case the client came to us before the purchase, so it became our target to bring the most effective cost between which sort of land to purchase and the design to be built on top.”

The cantilevering volume is set above ground level to avoid direct views of passing traffic, instead framing views of housing on the opposite side of the road.

A deep balcony was also added to the front of the tall living space to act as a buffer zone between the hubbub of the street and the primary living areas, allowing bedrooms to be tucked away in the more secluded area at the rear.

Large expanses of glass front the double-height living space, which is lined in plywood and clad in strips of Galvalume – a type of steel sheeting with a protective zinc and aluminium alloy coating. This metal and wood sleeve extends around the balcony at the open end of the cantilever.

Beneath it, the gravelled parking lot has enough space for the couple’s three cars.

At the rear of the house, a plywood staircase leads to the bedrooms and bathrooms, where windows are directed towards several trees.

Related content: see all our stories about Japanese houses

“This space has won harmony with the openness and the surrounding environment,” added the architect. “It’s low cost, but realised an impressive space.”

Japan’s commuter roads have given rise to a number of innovative projects that aim to create a buffer from traffic. Others include an office with an armoured facade and a cafe that reflects an avenue of cherry trees in its mirrored gables.

Photography is by Satoshi Asakawa.

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This wooden beehive by Italian designer Francesco Faccin has a 4.5-metre chimney to keep its inhabitants away from children and vandals (+ movie).

Currently installed in the garden of the Triennale design museum in Milan, the Honey Factory houses a traditional beehive and all the equipment needed to process the sweet liquid the bees produce from nectar.

Faccin designed the structure to protect the hive from bad weather, and to keep it at a constant temperature with optimal ventilation.

“It can be considered as a real micro architecture that leaves a mark in the urban landscape where it’s placed,” he said.

Built around a steel frame, the four-sided hut has a parallelogram plan that tapers inwards slightly towards the side where the mono-pitch roof is highest.

Its tall shape allows the “flight step” – the point from which the bees take off – to be raised high above the ground, out of the way of anyone who might harm the insects.

“The big ‘chimney’, which is a clear sign of the project, helps to keep the entrance of bees far possible from children and possible vandalism,” said the designer, who has previously created a manual fire-lighting kit and the interior for a Milanese restaurant.

The project also aims to promote the idea of urban beekeeping and provide information about its environmental benefits.

A door in the back features metal-mesh panels and the front has a thin window, so passersby can watch the bees and the beekeeper at work inside.

“Honey Factory will play a role of educating and allowing citizens to approach a complex and fascinating world of insects, observing them, listening to the bee buzz,” said Faccin.

“Through a processing of materials, bees create a rich, comprehensive and sustainable food without reworking, comes directly from the producer to the consumer.”

There has been a recent push from the design community to increase efforts to protect the welfare of bees and encourage them to live in cities. Snøhetta installed a series of wooden hives in Oslo, while Bettina Madita Böhm designed a cylindrical concrete beehive for urban beekeepers to use on rooftops.

A team of architecture students from the University at Buffalo went as far as constructing a skyscraper for a colony.

For his project, Faccin worked with beekeeper Mauro Veca to design an optimal habitat for the bees.

“I was able to work starting from accurate and reliable information, which is a key condition for an experimental project but scientifically correct,” the designer said.

Italian furniture company Riva1920 produced the prototype Honey Factory for its preview at the Satellite exhibition for emerging designers, which took place as part of this year’s Salone del Mobile furniture fair in Milan.

It was then moved to the Triennale for a six-month residency to coincide with the city’s Expo 2015, which is themed around ideas for sustainable food production and farming. The museum is hosting an exhibition about the relationship between art and food to coincide with the event.

At the main Milan Expo site, the British pavilion is shaped to reference the honeycomb structures found in beehives, and presents visitors with information about the lifecycle of bees and their role in pollinating food crops.

Photography is by Delfino Sisto Legnani. Video is by Mario Greco.

The post Francesco Faccin creates “micro architecture” for bees with Honey Factory appeared first on Dezeen.