Though the museum was originally proposed a century ago, Washington DC’s Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture finally opened its doors this past weekend. Telling important stories about black people, issues and culture……

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A former bank in the historic centre of Montreal has been transformed into an office for a tech start-up and a cafe for freelance workers by local architect Henri Cleinge (+ slideshow).

The Crew Offices and Cafe are located in the city’s old Royal Bank, built in 1926 on Rue St-Jacques.

Cleinge‘s brief was to create a space for both Crew Collective employees and members of the public, with a design that was contemporary and function but sat well within the decorative surroundings.

“The first design challenge originated from the client’s requirements – how to elaborate an architectural relationship and construct boundaries between the various program functions,” said Cleinge.

“The second challenge became a deeper questioning on how to approach design in the context of a heritage building.”

Spread across 12,000 square feet (1,115 square metres), part of the office area is designated for Crew staff.

Glass dividers separate these spaces from the areas for hot-deskers, but are designed to encourage interactions between the two camps.

“This environment was meant to create a flow and possible interactions between permanent and temporary workers, nurturing co-working in the tech community,” said Cleinge, who previously built a house for himself in Montreal with concrete walls inside and out.

Wi-Fi access and lockers for computers are provided for the short-term tenants, who can rent desks by the week or month, as well as casual visitors using the cafe for a couple of hours.

A line of conference rooms – which can be booked by anyone – is divided by internal partitions and clad in bronze-plated steel to match the ornate detailing of the high ceiling.

Teller stands from the building’s previous life had to remain, so they became a divider between the public cafe and more private workspaces.

The bank’s marble floor, painted-plaster ceiling and custom brass light fixtures were all retained and restored.

“The teller stands as well as the existing building shell offered a great design opportunity, as a rich and textured background; a testimony to another era, which could thrive with a new function redefining its purpose,” the architect said.

The project was completed in May 2016 for $75 (£58) per square foot.

Old banks are ideal for adaptive reuse, and other examples from around the world include a cultural venue in Chicago and a dental surgery in Porto.

Photography is by Adrien Williams.

Project credits:

Client: Crew Collective
Team: Henri Cleinge, Paulette Taillefer
Suppliers: Sistemalux, Lighting; Kastella, built-in cabinetry; Atelier B, concrete panels; De Gaspé, tables and movable furniture; Linea P, brass-plated panels; Techni-verre, glass partitions; Authentik, custom light fixtures above cafe counters

The post Henri Cleinge adapts grand Montreal bank for Crew Offices and Cafe appeared first on Dezeen.

Please circulate this among your friends who are not industrial designers. Because just when we think an awareness of our role has finally permeated society, we see we’ve still got a ways to go. Take, for example, the rash of “How Much Does It Cost to Make an iPhone?” videos. In a typical example, last year CTN Technology News broke down the cost of a 6S Plus, then breathlessly exclaimed that “[It] actually costs $236! [It] costs $749 in stores, but it’s definitely not worth anywhere near that!” More recently, CNN Money broke down the cost of the 7:

So the materials cost is $292, and it retails for $749. I’ve noticed that people love circulating these videos on social media, and…

…the impression seems to be that for every iPhone 7 that Apple sells, $457 goes straight into their bank account and stays there.

Laypeople, please think this through. First off the materials cost of an individual unit is what’s known as a Bill of Materials, or BOM, in our industry. (We don’t expect you to have heard of that term any more than you lawyers can expect us to know what the hell tort reform means, but we’re mentioning it here for the sake of edification.) Now consider what the BOM covers: All of the phone’s parts. The ingredients list, if you will. That’s it.

Let’s step forward in time. What happens after it gets out of the factory? These iPhones go into boxes. Those cost a couple of cents, too. Then they get loaded onto trucks. Then ships and airplanes, then trucks again. People load and unload them. And unsurprisingly, there aren’t any companies willing to provide fuel, vehicles, drivers, pilots and longshoremen for free.

Let’s keep going. How did you hear about the iPhone? A lot of it probably came from blogs, news or social media, some of that tied back to Apple employees. Dozens or hundreds of people in Marketing running around creating materials, arranging photo and video shoots and drawing salaries.

Okay, let’s go back in time. Before the factory workers are called in to start building the phones, a bunch of supply chain folks had to figure out where they can get those parts, and arrange for their delivery. And before that, a bunch of engineers had to figure out how all of the parts go together in the first place. And yes, all of these people draw salaries, too.

Let’s go even further back in time. Before the engineers and supply chain folks had problems to solve, there was no such thing as an iPhone 7. It doesn’t come out of thin air. R&D had to be done. A team of industrial designers sat down and started burning through paper and gigabytes to figure out what the hell an iPhone 7 is. And as smart as these people are, they don’t get it right on the first sketch, the second mock-up, the third rendering, the fourth prototype. They spend countless hours producing iteration after iteration, sweating small details and traveling down countless paths that they will later have to abandon in favor of a more promising one.

All of that costs money.

Now, do all of those costs eat up all of the $457 differential? Of course not. Apple is a fabulously wealthy company that enjoys a hefty profit margin on each of their products, and that’s their right. It’s up to them to set the price wherever they want it, and it is up to us as consumers to decide to buy their products or not. If Apple is successful, it is us who have made them so; if they become irrelevant, it will be us who have decided so.

What I don’t like is laypeople being misled into thinking that Apple enjoys a profit of $457 on each iPhone 7. That notion completely disregards the efforts of the hundreds or thousands of people who put in the time to make the product a reality.

A+Awards: brickwork assembled by robots forms wavy facades across these apartment blocks in Switzerland – the latest project in our series about winners from this year’s Architizer A+Awards (+ slideshow).

Designed by Buzzi Studio Di Architettura, Residenza Le Stelle comprises a set of three six-storey buildings in Locarno, each featuring a brick cladding system described by the studio as a “pixel patchwork”.

Buzzi Studio Di Architettura worked with Swiss company ROB to dictate the layouts of the components using parametric software.

The sand-coloured bricks – created by manufacturer Keller using Jura clay – were then carefully placed in the exact locations by robots to form the undulations.

“The final appearance has textile ornamental qualities, like fraying fabric where the bricks have been cut to accommodate the openings for the windows,” said the studio.

“The whole building reminds of a curtain swelling and contracting in the breeze.”

Apartments inside take up a full floor each, though they have slightly different floor plans and window arrangements.

Landscaped areas fill in between the structures, which are orientated to provide residents with views of the surrounding mountains.

Completed in 2015, Residenza Le Stelle was one of the winners in the Multi Unit Housing – Mid Rise category at the A+Awards 2016.

Organised by Architizer, the awards promote and celebrate the year’s best projects and products. Their stated mission is to nurture the appreciation of meaningful architecture in the world and champion its potential for a positive impact on everyday life.

Find out more about the A+Awards »

Photography is by Marcelo Villada Ortiz.

The post Brick “pixel patchwork” envelops Residenza Le Stelle housing by Buzzi Studio Di Architettura appeared first on Dezeen.

Near the top of today’s press release about the growth of Inverse’s readership and additional Series A funding led by Crosslink Capital, the San Francisco-based purveyor of tech, science and culture coverage bills itself as follows:

Think Jesse Pinkman, Tony Stark and Richard Hendricks’ publication of choice.

As in, respectively, Breaking Bad, the Iron Man movies and Silicon Valley.

That’s a hell of demo. We’ve corrected the spelling of the middle fictional fan from the way it appearsa in the release (Richard Hendrix), but who knows, perhaps the best-known person who belongs to that spelling is a fan of Inverse too. The American-Macedonian basketball player was drafted in 2008 by the Golden State Warriors and currently plays in Europe.

Speaking of names, the final paragraph of this release reminds that Alex Fons recently joined the Inverse ranks as senior director of audience development. As in Alexandra Fons who, if not already, must make sure today’s PR gets in front of reps for Robert Downey Jr., Aaron Paul and Thomas Middleditch.

Before joining Inverse in May, Fons spent a number of years, first in Berlin and then in Downey Jr.’s beloved Venice, Calif., working at Moviepilot as social marketing manager and director of digital strategy. Inverse was launched a year ago by Dave Nemetz, previously the co-founder of Bleacher Report.

Pictured: Inverse logo