Hasta La Ideas

The sides of this 4.5 metre-high stilted cabin lift open to offer inhabitants an uninterrupted view of the Latvian landscape (+ slideshow).

Designed and built by a group of students at the Riga Technical University summer school, the structure is part of a plan to make better use of an open space that links the Pirtsupites Grava Valley in Cēsis to a historic castle.

Working alongside the town mayor, the team of 13 proposed “re-wilding” the valley by intentionally allowing the grassy park to become overgrown.

“We suggested to simply stop to cutting the grass within a defined zone,” said programme tutor Theo Molloy. “Through this simple act the valley would develop naturally into a wild flower meadow and biodiversity corridor connecting the Castle at the heart of the town with the wilderness of the natural park around.”

The students and tutors then worked together to design a tall structure that would allow uninterrupted views of the valley, which they describe as being like a strange creature walking out from behind the trees.

“We researched all sorts of tower and wild life structures from hides, bird watching towers, lookouts and cabins,” Molloy told Dezeen. “In the end though we wanted to bring something completely new to the valley that was not any of these things.”

“It was almost an accident that the structure itself started to become creature like through the design process,” he added.

Sloped walls that have been clad in rubber shingles form the four sides of the cabin. Each of the walls can be pushed open from the inside, with counterweighted timber poles keeping them in place.

“The rubber flaps were used as buffers between the rail and the sleepers along the nearby rail tracks, and would otherwise have gone to landfill,” said Molloy. “Various configurations were tested with the flaps and a system of shingles was developed.”

A bench large enough to seat six people is housed inside of the structure, and a window in the ceiling allows views of the sky.

Aiming to emphasis its creature-like presence, the cabin has been mounted upon wooden A and V-shaped legs.

“We chose the A and V frame legs to make it look as though it is walking,” said Molloy.

The Wild Thing will stay in place for at least two years – or until the meadow grows so high that it becomes inaccessible, according to the team.

Riga Technical University hosts a design-and-build workshop every summer to encourages students to look at community issues. Previously, students from the summer school created a library tower where passers-by could drop off and exchange unwanted books.

Photography is by Building Works Unit.

Project credits:

Tutors: Niklāvs Paegle, Theodore Molloy, Thomas Randall–Page.
Assistants: Lucas Facer, Chloe Leen.
Students: Mariana Meneguetti, Amanda Sperger, Joséphine Devaud Koenig, Wojtek Pisarczyk, Jennifer Whittaker, Ozan Toksoz Blauel, Lu Mursalimova, Arta Buceniece, Anja Milojevic, Kairit Sõlg, Zivan Miletic, Aivars Žogla.

The post The Wild Thing is a “creature-like” cabin that stands tall above a Latvian wildflower meadow appeared first on Dezeen.

Seed is a hyper-detailed trip deep into photo scanning territory. Made by the Aixsponza crew in Munich.(Read…)

Dutch studio Atelier Van Lieshout has unveiled its largest installation to date: a giant art village at the Ruhrtriennale arts festival in west Germany (+ slideshow).

A showcase of more than 20 pieces from the art and design studio, dating back to the late 1990s, has been installed in the grounds of the event’s Jahrhunderthalle conference centre, forming an art “settlement” around the hall.

Named after the well-known Western film The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – also the name of a 1998 mobile art lab by the studio – the pieces together form an art village that will serve as a focal point for the festival and a retrospective of the studio’s work.

Dutch theatre director Johan Simons, who also serves as artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale, invited Atelier Van Lieshout to contribute to the festival, which takes place across the Ruhr region in west Germany.

Set across the course of six weeks, the Ruhrtriennale brings together art, theatre, dance and music, and last year attracted more than 50,000 visitors.

Included in the showcase of pieces is Atelier Van Lieshout’s 2005 BarRectum – a large-scale recreation of the human digestive system that doubles up as a meeting place and bar.

The Head Claudio & The Head Hermann – a pair of giant heads, placed horizontally on the ground – is also on display, alongside three pieces from the studios AVL-ville – a utopian village state created in the port of Rotterdam in 2001.

More recent artworks include Black Madonna, which shows an axe-bearing mother holding her child, and two monumental canons that draw on techniques developed from the past century of weapon design.

The festival marks the debut of new large-scale building work Domestikator, which depicts an intimate encounter between a four-legged and two-legged cubic figure. This will serve as “a totem, a temple and a beacon” for the entire art village.

“Domestikator symbolises the power of humanity over the world,” Atelier Van Lieshout said in a statement. “It pays tribute to the ingenuity, the sophistication and the capacities of humanity, to the power of organisation, and to the use of this power to dominate, domesticate the natural environment.”

“The act of domestication, however, often leads to boundaries being sought or even crossed,” the studio added. “Only a few taboos remain, and it is these taboos that the Domestikator seeks to address.”

Set up by Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout in 1995, Atelier Van Lieshout has presented a diverse range of projects over the years – from a sliding sofa system for furniture brand Lensvelt, to a six-bed capsule hotel that was purchased by Brad Pitt.

The studio recently presented a hybrid cave dwelling and pool house at Design Miami/Basel 2015.

Ruhrtriennale 2015 opened on 14 August and continues until 26 September.

The post Atelier Van Lieshout takes over German festival with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly installation appeared first on Dezeen.

This Seoul residential block was designed by local studio Archihood WXY to look like a cluster of four buildings, with each facade featuring a gabled profile in just one corner (+ slideshow).

Archihood co-founders Woohyun Kang and Youngjin Kang designed the four-storey block for a plot in Bokjeong-dong.

The densely populated neighbourhood in the South Korean capital is popular with students and young professionals. This has led to the construction of closely packed residential blocks, often without ample outdoor and communal space.

To combat the lack of gardens, Kang and Kang conceived the building as four house-shaped blocks with long balconies that create channels through the facade from the street to a central courtyard.

On the uppermost floors, these tall narrow terraces sever the roofline to define each block.

The gaps created by the terraces bring sunlight and natural ventilation into the heart of the building, and give the project the name Gap House.

“The area has become very crowded with multi-dwelling units, studios and student accommodations,” said Kang and Kang.

“The typical character of high-density residential areas in the capital such as the monotonous and generic-looking units – which were designed for maximum profit and efficiency of space – has left residents with living spaces that were poorly designed to support the ideal lifestyle and routine.”

“The concept of the Gap House is to support the new lifestyle of the young, single-demographic household by sharing common spaces such as the living room, kitchen, and dining area,” they added.

Living spaces and balconies are stacked alternately through the levels of the building. Pale timber floors run throughout, while the surfaces of the stairwell are finished in exposed concrete.

These communal spaces are designed to encourage interaction between residents, who the architects refer to as housemates.

The positioning of the balconies, as well as the recessed oblong windows that puncture both the street and courtyard-facing facades, provide some privacy for the overlooked plot.

“Typically, balconies placed in front of the house have caused serious privacy issues because of very close distance from neighbours,” said the architects.

“To prevent this, balconies are designed to be more linear in shape and are placed deep inside each of the units to keep onlookers outside from looking in.”

Downstairs, a U-shaped block contains a shop and stairwell, and wraps three sides of the courtyard, blocking through-access. An opening in the fourth side of the building is supported by rows of grey metal pilotti.

“The Gap House invites people who like to breath and enjoy peace of mind by escaping from their busy and complicated city life,” added the pair.

Dezeen has recently published a series of projects in Seoul with distinctive forms and facades, including this concrete tower for a cosmetics company that tapers towards its tip so as not to block the views of neighbouring building.

Photography is by Woohyun Kang/Archihood WXY.

The post Seoul apartment block by Archihood WXY features tunnel-like balconies and gabled corners appeared first on Dezeen.

How To Dress Well’s gorgeous, lush album What Is This Heart? has passed its one-year anniversary, but he’s released a video for one of the record’s standouts, “Precious Love” (the one which cleverly samples hold music from Cisco). The casual video……

Continue Reading…