Hasta La Ideas

A spaceship-style shelter, and oversized “sofa island” and virtual-reality experiences all featured in furniture brand Cassina‘s Milan design week exhibition.

The Cassina 9.0 installation – shown at the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli during Milan design week – showcased pieces from the company’s archive and explored what the future might hold for domestic life.

An area decorated in pale pink – seemingly the colour of the moment – showcased historic furniture, alongside projected imagery. Chunky virtual-reality headsets were on hand to offer “interactive, engaging and ironic experiences” based on Cassina‘s products.

A separate area, marked out with bright green walls and curtains, functioned as an open-plan living space, with a “sofa island”, created by Italian designer Piero De Martini in 1975, at its centre.

More VR headsets offered an alternative experience of the space, and a chance for visitors to immerse themselves in collages created by Finnish artist and architect Martti Kalliala.

At the top of the building, the brand recreated a rocket ship-like mountain shelter – the Refuge Tonneau – which was first created by French architects Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret in the 1930s.

Elsewhere, Cassina filled a reading room with Konstantin Grcic‘s Soft Props sofas, which were also unveiled at Milan design week. In the evenings, the space hosted talks, and visitors were encouraged to rearrange the modular sofas as beds.

“As the architectural historian Beatriz Colomina explains, the 21st century will be the century of the bed, and thanks to technology we will be able to conduct so much more of our life from a horizontal position,” explained Cassina.

The entire exhibition – curated by Patricia Urquiola, who was appointed the brand’s art director in 2015 – is themed around the brand’s upcoming This Will Be The Place monograph, which will be published by Rizzoli in September 2017.

Fashion label Marni also created an immersive installation at Milan design week to showcase its collection of woven furniture, while SHoP architects set out to offer a moment of solace to visitors with a terracotta enclosure.

Photography is by Omar Sartor.

The post Cassina marks 90th anniversary with installation exploring its past and future appeared first on Dezeen.

MC Bin Laden: É Grau Olha pra Traz e da Tchau
An incredibly catchy vocal sample sets up the simple rhythmic structure in “É Grau Olha pra Traz e da Tchau,” a vrooming track from Sao Paolo sensation MC Bin Laden, and it’s a great introduction to the……

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OMA’s trouser-shaped CCTV tower and Herzog & de Meuron’s Bird’s Nest stadium feature in this photo series by Kris Provoost, which documents the “weird architecture” China has tried to ban.

Architect Kris Provoost, who lives and works in Shanghai, spent seven years creating The Beautified China photoset. In it he captures some of the more unusual projects created by world-renowned architecture practices during the country’s recent construction boom.

The series, which focuses on the buildings’ details rather than context, includes Zaha Hadid Architect’s complex for real-estate developer Soho China, completed in 2014, and Herzog & de Meuron’s National Stadium.

Better known as the Bird’s Nest, the stadium opened in 2008 and hosted track and field events as well as the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games.

The Belgian architect also included Rem Koolhaas’ CCTV headquarters in Beijing, which opened in 2012, and famously sparked president Xi Jinping to call for an end to “weird architecture” in the country.

The OMA founder defended his project – which has garnered the nickname “big pants” – and told Dezeen that the building played an important role in “conceptualising, liberating and realising structure that did not exist in China before”.

“The CCTV headquarters is definitely a unique project, both from engineering point of view, but more so from an city image building point of view,” Provoost told Dezeen.

“Having lived and worked close by for many years, it has amazed me every time I looked at it. There has never been a moment of lost interest,” he added.

“I will never forgot riding on the expressway at golden hour, and seeing the sun rays peak through the large opening. There is no building that can play better with sun rays than the CCTV headquarters.”

But Provoost said the series also marks a change in the architectural style in the country, with architects moving away from these bold, landmark designs towards proposals more focused on context.

“The photo series marks the end of a very flamboyant architectural high point of the architectural scene in China,” he said. “Since 2016 or 2017 there is a visible shift, sort of away from this iconic architecture into a more ‘context-aware’ kind of architecture.”

He cites Zaha Hadid Architects’ 46-storey Leeza Soho Tower, which will feature the world’s tallest atrium, as an example of a more “rational” approach.

“In my opinion, the change in architectural style has to do with maturity. There was a time of exploration on a very large scale. And with this exploring came a sense of awareness that was not present at the beginning, or had at least less importance at that time,” said Provoost.

“There came a realisation that cities can not expand indefinitely. With this realisation came the notion to look back at its city centres. Is this flamboyant architecture still necessary?” he added.

“There is however still a clear race vertically but nowadays there is a noticeable difference in the perception of conservation instead of complete replacement.”

The “newest kid on the block” in the series is the Bund International Finance Center – Theater by Foster + Partners and Thomas Heatherwick, which was completed last year.

Other projects include Zaha Hadid Architects’ International Youth Centre in Nanjing – a vast cultural complex made up of two glazed skyscrapers that morph out of a perforated concrete base.

The post Kris Provoost photographs the most flamboyant architecture of China’s building boom appeared first on Dezeen.

Rows of perforated aluminium shades intended to represent the feathers of an eagle shield the facade of this concrete and glass church in the Taiwanese city of Tainan.

Tainan Tung-Men Holiness Church was designed by local studio MAYU Architects for a site surrounded by residential buildings in the city on Taiwan’s southwest coast.

The architects said building was prompted by an epiphany experienced by the church’s pastor, which also directly influenced the symbolism applied throughout the design.

“This project originates from a vision that the pastor received from God,” said MAYU Architects. “[The church] symbolises an eagle as a biblical metaphor and is like an airport, serving as a boarding gate for non-believers to enter into God’s kingdom.”

Spaces on the building’s ground floor and basement level are dedicated to public functions including a coffee shop and a bookstore, which serve to invite the public into the church.

The concrete building features a glazed facade that enhances its connection with the surrounding neighbourhood.

Metal screens fixed in front of this surface are twisted to soften the church’s appearance and create a flowing effect intended to resemble the soft and flexible feathers of a bird.

“The aluminium perforated screens or ‘feathers’ on the church exterior pay homage to the eagle metaphor, connecting this contemporary architecture to the members of the church on the emotional level,” said the architects.

“Looking out from inside, the feathers form a sheer fabric that presents the secular world outside in a different light.”

The orientation of the screens is based on the mathematical Fibonacci sequence and each panel is rotated by two degrees in relation to its neighbour to create a smooth, twisting surface.

To one side of the building, a glass-lined concrete staircase that ascends from the public spaces to the prayer areas above provides a bright and tranquil circulation route.

The top of the tower features a folded glass form that frames views of a large white cross outside as visitors ascend towards three prayer rooms on the church’s highest floor.

The first floor contains a small sanctuary, the pastor’s office and a pair of classrooms, with the main sanctuary on the next level.

The sanctuary is housed in a double-height cast-in-situ concrete box featuring wooden flooring that provides a warm contrast to the cool, smooth surfaces of the walls.

Soft light filtered through the perforated screens illuminates the space, which has a raised stage at the front and a wooden cross suspended in front of the windows.

A cantilevered oak staircase at the rear of the sanctuary leads up to a mezzanine level through a narrow opening lined with a vertical window that connects seamlessly with a skylight.

The sanctuary space is overlooked by additional seating on the mezzanine level and by a window in the adjacent nursery area.

John McAslan + Partners and Triad Architects recently collaborated on a cathedral on the edge of a tea plantation near Nairobi, which also incorporates louvers into its design.

The post “Feather-like” screens front church in Taiwan by MAYU Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

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