Hasta La Ideas

L’artiste irlandais Ted Pim s’est inspiré des grands peintres de la Renaissance pour retravailler ce style de peinture pour réussir à le faire sortir du cadre et des musées. Il choisit ainsi de se déplacer dans des lieux abandonnés et de prendre le temps d’exposer tout son talent pour la peinture avec des oeuvres époustouflantes, dévoilant ainsi un magnifique contraste.

Sydney design studio Sibling has installed a grid system based on 3D rendering programmes to define the working areas within the new Australian headquarters for digital animation studio Squint/Opera (+ slideshow).

Situated in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, the offices take inspiration from the animated film and visualisation work produced by Squint/Opera, which also has branches in London, Dubai and São Paulo.

The studio’s projects include a series of images depicting imaginary scenes of London in 2090, a short film that illustrates proposals for urban improvements in Abu Dhabi until 2030, and a clip to publicise a campaign to rebuild Powell & Moya’s Skylon landmark.

“The new studio allowed for an opportunity to explore the relationship between a physical space and its rendered simulacra,” project architect Jane Caught told Dezeen. “This was our inspiration, as it is a condition familiar to Squint/Opera, who trade in the imagery of imagined futures.”

“The mesh references the invisible wireframe of XYZ coordinates with which designers use to visualise space in 3D modelling programs,” Caught said.

As well as defining work spaces, the white-coated steel mesh grid is also designed to create a level of privacy while allowing views through the office.

“The new office uses the wireframe space of modelling software as real-time infrastructure through the installation of custom-steel grid-mesh,” said Caught. “Work spaces are carved out of this matrix to provide a sense of spatial division while retaining views across the entire studio.”

Custom-made screens, hooks and plant containers attach to the bars and allow staff members to personalise the areas surrounding their desks.

An informal meeting space with seating covered in sky-print fabric is situated by the large windows and a further presentation room is located at the back of the office.

At the rear of the presentation area, a hydroponic planting system – which doesn’t require soil – shines magenta lighting onto the wall, referencing the colour used in Squint/Opera’s branding.

“The LED hydroponic system is a pilot project for both Sibling and Squint/Opera,” said Caught. “We inserted a system typically utilised in an industrial environment for a workplace context.”

Sibling – a collective that works across architecture, urbanism, cultural analysis and graphic design– has previously created a cage that blocks Wi-Fi signals, a boutique featuring copper clothes rails and shoes that transform into a tent.

Other designs that use wire mesh include Royal College of Art graduate Ying Chang’s modular steel mesh table and The Patrick Parrish Gallery’s Design Miami booth, which featured wire mesh furniture by Minnesota studio RO/LU.

The post Sibling installs wireframe “matrix” in Squint/Opera’s Melbourne office appeared first on Dezeen.

This raw concrete house in Tokyo was designed by Japanese firm Apollo Architects & Associates as a family home for a couple whose interests include contemporary art and cars (+ slideshow).

Named Grigio, the house features a sheltered parking area with enough space to keep two cars protected from the elements, and rooms filled with indirect natural light – well suited for the display of artworks.

“This living space, which resembles a small art museum in a city, also functions as a system to travel back and forth between the ordinary and extraordinary,” explained Satoshi Kurosaki, architect and founder of Apollo Architects & Associates.

Located in a quiet residential area in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward, the 145-square-metre house comprises three storeys – two above ground and one at basement level. It has a reinforced concrete structure, which is left exposed inside and outside.

A courtyard is located in the south-east corner of the plan. Part of the space is at ground level, but the rest is sunken down to the basement floor to ensure plenty of daylight filters into the building.

A single window on the facade is bronze-tinted to help maintain the family’s privacy, while the rest face into the courtyard.

This is similar to several other residences designed by the firm, including a house for a surfing enthusiast in Kanagawa and a home for a surgeon in Chiba.

“In contrast to the exterior that uses exposed reinforced concrete and bronze-tinted glass, the interior space with an L-shaped plan around the courtyard is open and filled with natural light,” explained Kurosaki.

The house’s entrance is located alongside the parking space, beneath the shelter of the overhanging roof. Inside, a staircase with cantilevered treads leads upstairs and a more solid set of stairs descends to the basement.

The main bedroom is located on the ground floor, while the children’s bedroom is on the lower level by a family room – described by Kurosaki as a place “where the family can relax and casually reside as if in a cafe or a library”.

An open-plan room containing the living area, dining space and kitchen occupies the uppermost floor. This room has a simple grey colour scheme, adding emphasis to the brightly coloured artworks hanging on the wall.

“Colourful art pieces by Mika Ninagawa that utilise primary colours add stimulation to the space, and exist while enhancing each other’s presence,” said the architect. “Furthermore, the symbolic tree view from the picture window creates a borrowed scenery.”

Apollo Architects & Associates has offices in Japan, China and South Korea. Other projects by the firm include a narrow house on a Tokyo high street and a combined house and hair salon.

Photography is by Masao Nishikawa.

Project credits:

Architect: Apollo Architects & Associates
Structure engineers: Masaki Structures, Kenta Masaki
Facility engineers: Naoki Matsumoto
Construction: Tsuyuki Kensetsu

The post Apollo Architects creates spaces for artwork and cars in raw concrete Grigio house appeared first on Dezeen.

With some thought-provoking content and an aesthetic inspired by Twen and vintage cycling magazines, Rapha’s new publication Mondial offers a stylish alternative to sport and gear-focused titles, and a beautiful showcase of the brand’s products.

Rapha was founded by Simon Mottram in 2004, with the aim of providing a more subtle and minimal alternative to cycling apparel in clashing colours, swirls and racing stripes. Its early collections were heavily inspired by the jerseys worn by professional cyclists in the 1960s, the brand is named after a French team sponsored in the same decade by aperitif brand Saint-Raphaël, and its logo is based on hand-painted lettering spotted in a vintage book about the Tour de France.

Since its launch, Rapha has demonstrated the same understated approach in everything from its store design to products and marketing. Its brand photography by Ben Ingham has more in common with documentary and reportage imagery than glossy catalogue shots, while short films following its cycling teams – such as a series made by Andrew Telling, which we featured in our December 2013 issue – document not just the gruelling intensity of races, but the quieter moments in a cyclist’s day, and the stunning scenery passed along the way. It’s a strategy that has been hugely successful for the brand (if occasionally mocked), so it comes as no surprise that Rapha’s new print magazine features a similarly refined design and romantic view of the sport.

Produced in-house and art directed by Jack Saunders (Rapha’s in-house art director), Mondial is a bi-annual title, and Rapha’s second venture into publishing. It launched cycling magazine Rouleur in 2006 but sold it to Gruppo Media in 2012. It may seem strange to launch another mag so soon, particularly given the amount of competition that has sprung up since Rouleur’s launch, but in an introduction to Mondial, Mottram says the new title aims to offer a unique take on the sport. “Our ambition for Mondial is to broaden the horizons of what road cycling is and what the sport can be,” he says, describing cycling not just as a sport, but as “a lens through which to view the world”.

“Familiar cycling subjects are given a new angle…. But Mondial also brings a cycling viewpoint to broader cultural subjects and helps expand the sport’s reference points,” he writes, adding that readers “will find features on travel, driving fashion and wine that show just how relevant our sport is to the world around us” in each issue.

It’s a grand ambition, but in the inaugural issue, Mondia succeeds in coupling features on riders, races and the sport’s history with fashion, travel and wildlife content, resulting in a mag which has more in common with broadsheet supplements or men’s style titles than most mainstream cycling mags.

There’s a fascinating article which attempts to delve inside the mind of Sir Bradley Wiggins, looking at his fears and motivations; another on early 20th-century cycling clubs in New York, and another about the journey that inspired the brand’s annual Manchester to London charity cycle. Alongside this, there’s an interview with Mad Men writer Tom Stutts on TV, creativity and cycling to work in Los Angeles, a look at the use of big data in business and an essay by Tim Dee on the falcons, owls and other birds of prey which reside in various mountain ranges around the world. There’s a great deal of content around famous cyclists and races, but just as much about fashion, travel and design.

The magazine’s aesthetic is heavily inspired by old issues of Gazzetta Della Sport, the Italian newspaper which launched the Giro d’Italia race (Saunders says the pink cover is a homage to Gazzetta). Twen magazine, and more recent editorial design by Matt Willey, has also been a big influence, evident in the bold typographic feature openers throughout. The use of a custom typeface created by Colophon, however, gives Mondial its own distinct identity.

“We worked with Colophon foundry to develop the Mondial masthead and headline typeface,” Saunders told CR . “Our brand fonts Trade Gothic and Adobe Caslon have always served us well but we felt there was space to do something new for Mondial – editorially, we wanted to bring more character to the pages.

“The final font is a dense condensed typeface with lots of quirky characteristics – it has an almost woodblock style with slightly rounded edges. Again, as with the other design cues in Mondial, there is an Italian influence. Lots of our research was directed at the Gazzetta and some old Italian type specimen books we have in the studio,” he explains.

Inside, the magazine features a range of paper stocks and some beautiful photography: archive race imagery (including some from back issues of Rouleur) sits alongside new series from Ingham (who will be publishing photo essays from his travels with the brand in each issue) and some brilliant portraits of Wiggins by Jack Davison.

Dee’s article on birds of prey is accompanied by Spencer Murphy’s beautiful series Traces. “We intend to use Mondial as a way of championing long term collaborators and as a means to create new relationships with others that we admire,” says Saunders. “We hope to work with photographers that come from outside the world of cycling as a means of gaining new perspectives on the sport.”

Rapha’s own archive was also a key source of inspiration for Mondial’s design, and Saunders says that everything from early catalogues “through to the most recent expressions of our brand in-store and online provided a rich pool of creative work to reference and reinvent.”

Design is a key focus within the magazine: features include an interview with architect and urban design consultant Jan Gehl, whose work is focused on improving cities for pedestrians and cyclists and another on Christopher Raeburn. This is also reflected in its advertising, with Paul Smith, Bang & Olufsen and Vitra among those who have placed page ads in issue one.

Particularly interesting is the brand’s approach to promoting its own products. There are several features on Rapha collections, but the approach is subtle: there’s a short article on the making of a data print by Accept & Proceed for Rapha’s Pro Team collection, which uses race data generated by cyclist Peter Kennaugh (read our feature on the collection here) and an interesting article on the making of a commemorative jersey to honour of the 50th anniversary of Tom Simpson’s World Champion title (he was the first Brit to receive it). Timothy Everett, a tailor who created a Rapha cycling suit in 2009, and Barbara Agnes, an accessories designer who created silk scarves for the brand this year, have also written articles on their craft and the joy of textiles and tailoring.

While most brands would feature at least a few pages of product shots, Rapha has instead focused on the stories or designers who created or inspired each collection. Most of these articles are accompanied by one or no images, with no prices or links to product pages.

Like all of Rapha’s output, Mondial positions the brand as a lifestyle one, rather than simply a place to buy clothing and accessories. The magazine cements its reputation as a label for cyclists who want to look stylish, but it also contains a fascinating mix of content around the sport and broader cycling culture. Few brands make customer magazines people would be keen to pick up on the news stands, let alone pay for, but Rapha have done just that, and Mondial is a great example of branded content for a premium retailer.

Issue one of Mondial is out now and costs £10. For details or to order a copy see rapha.cc

To celebrate five years of the Brixton Pound, the capital’s only local currency, the organisation commissioned artist Jeremy Deller to design a new B£5 note. The result is both psychedelic and political and continues to challenge more traditional approaches to banknote design…

A handful of other local currencies currently exist in the UK – in Totnes, Lewes, Stroud and, from 2012, Bristol. “It’s a simple premise – [it’s a] local currency that can only be used in independent local businesses,” explains Charlie Waterhouse, creative director of This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll, the studio that designed the second series of the Brixton Pound notes in 2011 and oversaw the new Deller note.

“You buy a coffee in an independent café and the money probably goes to the people who are serving you,” Waterhouse adds. “You buy a coffee in a chain, and the money probably goes to City shareholders. It’s a more virtuous circulation of cash.”

The Brixton Pound initiative was started by volunteers from the Transition Town Brixton community-led organisation. In TARR’s redesign of the currency in 2011 – see our story here – the studio incorporated images of some of the areas most respected sons and daughters: David Bowie features on the B£10 note (above); Chicago Bulls basketball player, Luol Deng, on the regular B£5; and WWII spy, Violette Szabo, on the B£20. Len Garrison, the co-founder of the Black Cultural Archives appears on the B£1 note.

The special edition B£5 has been produced in collaboration with Fraser Muggeridge Studios under the creative direction of TARR. Each note has a unique serial number from its limited print run and is now available from local stockists and online via brixtonpound.org/shop.

For the reverse of the new B£5 note, shown below, Deller chose to feature a quote from Karl Marx’s Capital.

In a forthcoming blog post about the project, Waterhouse asks Nigel Dodd, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics to offer his thoughts on the design: “On the reverse side, Marx reminds us of the dangers of treating money as a fetish, and of viewing it as a thing that can create value all by itself,” writes Dodd.

“He taught us that money’s value depends on the very social relations that such treatment denies, and these are the social relations that a local currency such as the Brixton£ brings to the fore, and which are represented on its front side. What I really like about this note is the way the image on one side speaks to the text on the other.”

According to the Brixton£, Deller’s new design “adds a significant and provocative message that reflects our intention to raise the conversation of how we understand, use and value money in this time of economic instability and what we could aspire to in the future”.

“On two small sides of paper it provides an utterly compelling response to Austerity Kool-Aid,” adds Waterhouse. “It simultaneously challenges and inspires, perfectly enunciating the positivity inherent in much of the grassroots response and resistance to the current economic situation.”

The new design also reflects some of the innovations that the Brixton Pound has brought in over the last few years, such as pay-by-text and contactless payment across the 300-odd independent businesses that take the currency.

“The new Brixton Pound fiver drives home the simple fact that we can all make positive choices around our spending,” adds Waterhouse.

More on the new B£5 at brixtonpound.org. The Brixton£ blog is here. See also thisaintrocknroll.com