Announced at the Future Investment Initiative, NEOM might just represent the next generation of urban planning. This future Saudi Arabian mega-city will cost $500 billion to build, connect to Jordan and Egypt and be powered completely by renewable……
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My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James quite accurately taps into Brian Wilson’s vocal delivery for “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” James’ new Beach Boys cover tune. There’s definitely an authenticity and respect within the track, but there’s more……
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The cylindrical frame of a gasholder at Stockholm’s old gasworks will host an events space, in plans by Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron that will see another of the structures demolished to make way for a skyscraper.
Called Gasklockan, the residential development is overseen by Oscar Properties and is being constructed on the site of the former gasworks in the north east of the Swedish capital.
The original brick gasholders dating to the late 19th century were designed by Swedish architect Ferdinand Boberg, with cylindrical metal structures added in 1912 and 1932.
The 1930s gasholder frame has been taken down to make way for a cylindrical glass tower by Herzog & de Meuron, while the remaining 100-year-old frame is due to be converted to host a konsthall for exhibitions.
The skyscraper and exhibition hall will be surrounded by a wildflower meadow and public parkland by Dutch landscape designers Piet Oudolf and LOLA Landscape Architects.
When it is completed in 2019, the 140-metre-high tower will contain 500 apartments spread over 45 floor.
The faceted facade is designed to echo the original ironwork structure. The modulated plan means every apartment will sit on a ‘V’ formation, with bedrooms on one side and living areas on the other, providing panoramic views out over the city, the park and the archipelago coastline.
The layout will also afford the individual apartments privacy, something likely to be high on Herzog & de Meuron’s list of priorities after their design for the aptly-named Public hotel in New York drew complaints from neighbours who were subjected to full-frontal views of guests’ X-rated activities.
The Basel-based architects are also behind the Switch House extension to London’s Tate Modern museum, which has had privacy issues of its own. The inclusion of a viewing platform caused a palaver when residents of the Rogers Stirk Harbour-designed Neo Bankside housing development next door accused visitors to museum of spying on them and threatened legal action against the Tate.
Located within the Ekoparken, an unbroken area of royal parkland that is also the world’s first National Urban Park, Gasklockan is unlikely to face the same issues.
The landscaped area will provide a green space for residents and local people to enjoy. Snaking pathways will connect two plazas, and an 88-metre-long bench will curve around the edge of a new meadow garden planted with wildflowers.
A sculpture park is planned, and the Konstall will also include a cafe, bar, bakery, delicatessen, shop and children’s day-care.
Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, who specialises in planting perennials, is perhaps best known for his work on the High Line in New York, where a disused railway track was transformed into an elevated park.
Oudolf designed the gardens in collaboration with fellow LOLA Landscape Architects, the Rotterdam-based firm that designed the grounds of the Adidas World of Sports campus in Germany.
Recent projects from Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron include a research campus on a mountain ridge above LA that takes its cues from monastic architecture, and a staggered tower with planted terraces overlooking a marina in Beirut.
The King’s Cross area in London is about to get it’s own converted gasholder project later this year. Wilkinson Eyre Architects have painstakingly deconstructed the Grade II listed cast-iron frames and had them specially restored in Yorkshire, before re-instating them around a new development of apartments and penthouses.
As part of that area’s redevelopment Bell Philips designed Gasholder Park, a public park with a circular lawn that sits inside an old gasholder.
Main image courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron.
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A backpack radio station designed to warn remote communities of impending natural disasters and a bio-degradeable tower that harvests water from air are among the projects shortlisted in What Design Can Do‘s Climate Action Challenge.
Dezeen is media partner for the Climate Action Challenge. The contest – organised by What Design Can Do (WDCD) in collaboration with the IKEA Foundation and Autodesk – asked creatives from around the world to come up with new ways to combat climate change and its impacts.
The 35 shortlisted designs were selected from 384 submissions from 70 countries, which focused on the topics of water, energy, food, housing and health.
On the shortlist alongside Iman Abdurrahman and Joris de Groot’s backpack radio station is Arturo Vittori’s bio-degradable Warka Tower, and Mirjam de Bruijn’s condensed household cleaning products, which come in the form of waterless capsules.
Other selected projects include Ilteris Ilbasan’s low-cost treatment beds, which are designed to be used for contagious disease outbreaks in developing countries, and a self-powering greenhouse by Marjan van Aubel.
“The results of WDCD Climate Action Challenge show that creatives worldwide are concerned with our planet, and have a focus on the future,” said Richard van der Laken, co-founder and creative director of What Design Can Do.
“These projects tell me that if we act now, we can work on creating a conscious and active next generation,” he added.
A winner from each category – professionals, startups and students – will be selected from the shortlist by an international jury, to share an award package worth €900,000 (£800,000). This includes a production budget and an acceleration programme that will assist designers in developing their proposals.
The jury includes Joe Speicher, CEO of the Autodesk Foundation; Elizabeth McKeon, head of strategy at the IKEA Foundation; Joel Towers, executive dean at Parsons School of Design; and Naresh Ramchandani, partner at design firm Pentagram.
The winner will be announced at What Design Can Do’s live event in São Paulo on 23 November 2017. To find out more about the competition and other nominated projects, visit the What Design Can Do website.
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For a site just outside of San Francisco, American studio Faulkner Architects has created a family residence clad in Corten steel panels and shaded by large oak trees.
The residence, called Miner Road, is located in the town of Orinda, on a gently sloping site at the base of the Oakland Hills. The property encompasses nearly eight acres (three hectares), and is blanketed with rich green foliage and native oak trees.
The three-bedroom home was designed for a couple with two young sons, who wanted a distinctive home imbued with an environmental ethic.
“They wanted to construct a house that was deeply ecologically site-specific, energy-efficient, and had a strong design identity,” said Faulkner Architects, a studio based in Truckee, California.
To inform the design, the team drew from a “dense observation of the landscape, climate, culture, and existing uses and patterns of the site”. The footprint of the new residence was influenced by an ageing house that once stood on the property. The team retained a large fireplace from the old dwelling, which was wrapped in concrete and serves as a major structural element and visual anchor.
The hillside was left open and natural. The home is shaded by mature oak trees, which were integral to the design.
“Those big trees felt like refuge before we even built anything,” said architect Greg Faulkner. “They’re a free material that became part of the house.”
The architect sheathed exterior walls in a Corten steel – a brand of weathering steel that is low-maintenance, but also will “refresh every time it rains, just like the landscape”, the architect said. Cutouts in the metal screen enable views outward, while also ushering in natural light.
The home is entered from the north, where a covered walkway leads to the front door. Inside, one finds light-filled rooms with high ceilings and views of the landscape.
Providing a strong connection to the outdoors was a guiding concern for the architect. In the main living area, a 12-foot-wide (3.6-metre) retractable glass wall opens onto a patio and garden.
“This bridging between interior and exterior is major feature of the main living space, and an entire wall is devoted to connecting the two visually,” the studio said.
The second storey features a long outdoor “pacing deck”, which runs alongside an interior workspace. The wooden deck, which overlooks the front of the property, is lined with perforated metal screens and rectangular openings.
The home features a material palette that is at once minimal and earthy. White gypsum walls are paired with basalt floor tiles and weathering steel accents. In many areas, white oak was used for walls, ceilings and floors – with the wooden boards arranged in a very specific manner. “The rhythm of the interior boards was conceived as a controlled representation of tree growth,” the studio said.
The residence has a number of sustainable features, including a rainwater collection system, photovoltaic panels, and various devices for reducing energy consumption.
“All in all, the mechanical and electrical systems were designed at a 44.9% improvement over code, which results in lowered ongoing operational costs and a measurable environmental impact,” said the studio.
The home recently won a design award from the California chapter of the AIA. Other winners included the Alamo Square Residence by Jensen Architects, which involved updating a historic Victorian residence in San Francisco.
Photography is by Joe Fletcher Photography.
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Dutch Design Week drew to a close this weekend and, as usual, the Design Academy Eindhoven exhibition was one of the highlights. Design editor Alice Morby has selected 10 of the most promising students from the show.
Design Academy Eindhoven is regarded as one of the most influential design schools in the world. As with previous years, the university’s graduate show took place as part of Dutch Design Week at the Eindhoven campus, from 21 to 29 October 2017.
Here, over 175 projects were on show from Design Academy’s undergraduate and postgraduate students, and ranged from practical products to more conceptual art-focused pieces.
Here are 10 designers we predict big things from in the coming years, following in the footsteps of alumni such as Maarten Baas, Hella Jongerius and Marcel Wanders.
Kostas Lambridis
Kostas Lambridis‘ monumental, maximalist cabinet was the last thing visitors saw before they left the show, and is based on the 18th-century Badminton cabinet that twice set the record for the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold.
Through his Elemental cabinet, Lambridis aimed to create a “non-hierarchical approach to design”. So he made each level of the piece made from different materials, including stone, metal, wood, plastic and textile.
During her time at the university, Alissa Rees drew upon her own experiences as a cancer patient to create a project based on “humanising the hospital”.
Among the different concepts she created was a wearable intravenous drip, which would give hospital patients more freedom to move around and get outside.
Aiming to create a sustainable alternative to standard cleaning products, Mirjam de Bruijn has condensed detergent, dish soap and shampoo into solid forms that are activated by water.
She came up with the idea that the remaining 20 per cent of non-water ingredients be concentrated and sold as either a powder, a bar, or a liquid capsule.
For her graduation project, Shahar Livne created a clay-like material using discarded plastic, which she envisions as a valuable commodity that future civilisations will mine for.
To create the Lithoplast material, she layered the plastic with minestone and marble dust – two byproducts from the coal mining and stone masonry industries, which are usually discarded.
Nienke Helder
Nienke Helder has developed a series of tools for those affected by sexual abuse, which are designed to be used away from a medical environment.
Each of the objects aim to help women recovering from trauma figure out what brings them pleasure again, instead of just focusing on the physical symptoms.
Christian Hammer Juhl
In response to shrinking living spaces, Christian Hammer Juhl has created a range of furniture pieces that can be deflated when not in use.
The 10:1 collection includes a sofa, a chair and a stool – and each one is filled with a dense foam, making them more comfortable than inflatable furniture. When not required, each piece can be compressed to 10 per cent of its original size.
Lauren Leerdam
When creating his graduate project, Lauren Leerdam looked to the industrial heritage of his hometown of Deventer, Holland.
The designer came up with a set of “paper-thin” stools that are based on the production of metal cans, showing a weak sheet of metal measuring 0.5 millimetres can be turned into a sturdy piece of furniture.
Kristaps Polïtis
At the show, Kristaps Polïtis presented a set of 25 3D-printed parts that can be put together to make a musical instrument.
Polïtis’ Prinstrument aims to make learning music fun for children. Parents would be able to 3D-print different parts at home, allowing the child to experiment with different sounds and change the complexity of the instrument as they get older.
Kim Hou
Kim Hou’s About a Worker project aims to show the imbalance of power in the fashion industry, between behind-the-scenes skilled workers and top-name designers.
She worked people from factories to create their own clothing collections, which she then presented at an installation at the show that took the form of a clothing workshop – complete with sewing machines, desks and boards filled with sketches.
Léo Schlumberger
Léo Schlumberger‘s toilet aims to change the way European culture willingly wastes water by flushing away excrement.
He proposes adopting a dry toilet system, that doesn’t need to be plumbed in so that it can be placed wherever it needs to be – while also saving on water.
The post 10 designers to watch from the Design Academy Eindhoven class of 2017 appeared first on Dezeen.
Publisher and events company Media 10 has apologised for the presence of “inappropriately dressed” promotional models at this year’s UK Construction Week, following social media criticism from industry figures.
Four female actors in “Vegas show girl” outfits presented awards and posed for photographs with visitors to UK Construction Week (UKCW), which took place from 10-12 October 2017 in Birmingham.
The women were employed as part of a Vegas-themed stand created by event sponsor Easy-Trim, a manufacturer of roofing ventilation and dry fix products.
It attracted heavy criticism from architects and industry figures, who questioned whether using women to sell products was appropriate in an industry struggling to promote equality.
Media 10 was forced to issue a statement of apology. Events director Nathan Garnett insisted that UKCW does not condone the “use of promotional models”, but said this particular instance had slipped through the net.
“None of us want to return to the days where promotional models were used as marketing method to attract visitors to exhibition stands,” he told Dezeen, in a statement later published on the event’s website.
“The use in this instance was described to us as part of the overall theme, along with Elvis and other stage-dressed actors.”
Critics of the Easy-Trim stand included London Festival of Architecture director Tamsie Thomson and Denton Corker Marshall partner Angela Dapper.
So this is happening at #UKConstructionWeek today in 2017. What happened to bringing equality to the sector? pic.twitter.com/KACBT5gypy
— Tamsie Thomson (@TamsieThomson) October 11, 2017
“What happened to bringing equality to the sector?” tweeted Thomson.
“Not an appropriate choice of entertainment. Sexualising women is not supportive of equality in construction,” replied Dapper.
Replying to Thomson and Dapper, a spokesperson from UK Construction Week tweeted: “#UKCW2017 is proud and committed to support equality, which is why we dedicated our day 2 seminar programme to diversity in construction.”
Garnett reiterated this in his statement, stating that the event was proud of “championing diversity in the industry”.
“At this year’s UKCW we were aware of the promotional drive from Easy-Trim that involved Vegas-style promotional staff (predominantly female) as well as an Elvis impersonator, roulette wheel and giant slot machine,” Garnett continued.
“For those offended by the use of promotional models at exhibitions we would like to stress that we at UKCW do not condone the practice. In this case it was all staged in the context of a Las Vegas theme.”
UK Construction Week was set up in 2015 by Media 10, the publisher of several key industry magazines including Icon, Onoffice and Grand Designs.
Garnett said guidance was offered to all of the 650-plus exhibitors prior to the event but that a more thorough system would be deployed in the future.
“We will put in place a rigorous monitoring system for stands in future years which will include the prohibition of inappropriately dressed staff on stands (male or female),” said Garnett.
“We will strive to continue the work we have done in promoting diversity in the workplace and we apologise if anyone was offended by the content on this particular stand,” he added.
In a statement released by Easy-Trim, the company’s marketing director Rachael Gibson said its “meticulously planned” theme Why Gamble? was intended to promote British manufacturing as the UK moves towards Brexit.
“As marketing director for Easy-Trim and being a female professional in the construction industry, I am passionate about our brand, our development, the diversity across our business and its work force, and of course promoting diversity and equal opportunity throughout the industry,” she said.
“Our theme and the concept was to deliver a message, not to disrespect anyone’s views, nor indicate a lack of support of continual improvement in diversification in our sector,” continued Gibson.
“I again want to apologise for any upset caused and stress that each element of the stand was as important as the other and made up our vision of the stand theme.”
Gibson added that the stand was awarded Best in Show by UK Construction Week for its design and theme.
“Our stand consisted of a full sized roulette wheel and black jack table, and a fun oversized one arm bandit, and to support this we engaged ‘themed professionals’, specifically a male and female croupier, a male Elvis impersonator, two female professional stilt walkers in traditional Vegas show girl outfits, and two female professional dancers also in traditional Vegas show girl outfits,” she explained.
“Our core principles resonate throughout everything we do, and for any element of our stand at this event to upset just one person causes myself and all the team, both female and male considerable regret and upset and for this we apologise.”
Official statistics published by the UK government earlier this year revealed that white men are dominating the creative industries, with women filling less than 40 per cent of jobs in the sector.
Dezeen columnist Anna Winston argued that the architecture industry has a culture of quietly condoning sexist behaviour in her latest piece written following the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
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