The IMAGE spacecraft, an acronym of Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, launched back in March 2000 to observe activity in the Earth’s magnetosphere. It ceased communication with NASA in December 2005. Entirely unexpected and sudden……
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by Michael Raver
Fender has unveiled a new line of guitars with a super-slick take on classic guitar design: the American Original Series. Inspired by their most iconic models from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the collection of 11 new electric……
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A light-toned coffee and pastry shop in Manhattan’s NoMad district provides a front for a secret subterranean bar behind, both with interiors by Carpenter + Mason.
Patent Coffee and Patent Pending occupy the cellar of the Radiowave Building, where inventor Nikola Tesla once lived and worked, in the area named for its location north of Madison Square Park.
Opened earlier this year by Ryan McKenzie, a founding partner of hospitality-focused creative agency Simmer, the concept has two identities that allow it to operate both during the day and after dark.
The space is divided into two, with the coffee shop located at the front and open during daylight hours. Only when evening comes does the hidden speakeasy behind come into use.
“After 5pm, the doors lock and things get a bit more surreptitious,” said a statement from Patent. “To access the 34-seat cocktail cave, patrons buzz in at street level, traverse through the candle-lit coffee shop and slip through a concealed door.”
To design the pair of distinctly different spaces, Simmer collaborated with Carpenter + Mason – the Brooklyn-based studio behind the interior of the recently opened Tonchin restaurant not far away.
In the cafe, white walls and light-toned wood contrast exposed red brick and black mosaic tiles. Colourful marble chosen for the countertop is also used as frames for floral decorations on the walls.
Behind the inconspicuous folding door, the “cocktail cave” is much more cellar-like in appearance. The brickwork is painted black, along with the majority of other surfaces.
The long, narrow space has the bar along one side, and booth seating upholstered in teal-coloured leather down the other.
Arched niches in the walls are fitted with mirrors to give a greater sense of depth to the space, while cage-like cabinets are slotted into the alcoves behind the bar to store and display liquor bottles.
An installation of metallic-coated light bulbs above the counter nods to Tesla and his work with electricity, as does the cocktail menu.
The dimly lit space also features candles hung from the walls, and placed along the bar. The entrances to bathrooms at the back are surrounded by wallpaper patterned with giant floral prints, while fresh greenery is sourced from the nearby flower district.
Speakeasies gained popularity in the US during the prohibition era around the 1920s, when the sale of alcohol was illegal across the country.
Although this ended in 1933, the type of hidden bar remained in use and became popular around the world. Examples in Hong Kong include an establishment hidden behind an umbrella shop, a bar disguised as a stamp shop and a cocktail lounge tucked behind a grocery stall.
The post New York’s Patent acts as cafe by day and speakeasy by night appeared first on Dezeen.
This week’s comments update is led by a debate between readers over the significance of sexual identity within the workplace, after an LGBT+ survey revealed that the number of British architects that are “out” at work has fallen.
Loud and proud: the results of the Architects’ Journal’s LGBT+ survey showed the number of architects who are openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender at work has fallen to 73 percent, but some readers believed this was irrelevant.
Guest was not interested by the results of the survey: “How did we ever manage to function without such information at our fingertips? A little more architecture and design, when you get a chance, please Dezeen.”
“So what? Why does this have any relevance to the field of design whatsoever? I’m a heterosexual man, and I’m ‘out’, should that make a difference to you? No,” agreed a seemingly agitated Steve Florida.
“It does make a difference, Steve. People’s fundamental humanity and dignity should not be up for debate. Respect matters. Visibility matters. And so does a healthy, welcoming professional environment.” responded Jon.
“Dezeen is geared toward the architecture profession. This survey addresses issues faced by the LGBT community in said profession,” wrote Barry O Shea, simply.
“Design is political. Saying otherwise is just plain ignorant,” added Marco Sosa.
Mr Walnut Grey suggested the figures had revealed that change was needed: “I’m infuriated by some of the disrespect shown by many commenters on here. We need to challenge the idea that sexuality in the workplace isn’t an issue. It very much is.”
One reader took the survey as a chance to reflect and remain optimistic.
What do you make of the results of the LGBT survey? Have your say in our comments section ›
Brave new world: reader’s were unimpressed with a 130-metre-tall spherical concert hall, planned for near the Olympic park in Stratford, east London, which was published by Dezeen last week but gained traction over the past few days.
Rthko felt the plans belonged in the past: “Honestly, I’d appreciate this more as a never-built conceptual design from the 60s.”
While Chris Becket pondered: “Does London really need this?”
Malgorzata wasn’t a fan of the design either, highlighting some perceived impracticalities: “It seems to me impossible that such a huge, wide and heavy building could really stand on only three thin, narrowly placed legs. It looks unstable.”
“Futurama’s Madison Cube Garden comes to mind,” joked Kryštof Hejný.
The plans had sparked the imagination of this reader, who had a different location in mind.
Read the comments on this story ›
Not bowled over: ahead of the Super Bowl, commenters offered their critique of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta by architecture firm HOK, which will host next year’s NFL championship game.
Fabian Künzel felt the project missed the mark: “In my eyes, it doesn’t appear contemporary. It has a 2000 look and feel. And it’s not that sensitive to the surrounding space. I like the idea of the roof, but the result of this thought is rather monstrous.”
“Why are all modern American stadiums so eye-searingly, gleefully hideous?” asked Jon.
Hexagons had a theory: “The answer may be that these stadiums are not intended to last. Sports teams require new stadiums every couple of decades or they move to other cities.”
“So many architects are more concerned with staying in business than a lasting legacy,” bemoaned Cubbiesseven.
This reader didn’t hold back with their evaluation.
Read the comments on this story ›
For the birds: MVRDV unveiled renderings for an office block with an interactive mirrored facade, but readers were more concerned about the welfare of the local wildlife.
“I have heard of similar buildings causing birds to lose their lives. They don’t need any help dying with our world as it is,” lamented Sheila Lynch.
“Honestly people, stop making mirrored buildings,” wrote an angry Simon.
This reader needed to put the kettle back on after seeing the images:
Read the comments on this story ›
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The post “People’s fundamental humanity and dignity should not be up for debate” appeared first on Dezeen.
Architectural photographer James Brittain has explored the hidden nooks and apartments of Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67, offering a glimpse of day-to-day life in the famous brutalist complex in Montreal over 50 years after it was completed.
Rather than focusing on the “formally breathtaking” elements of the Israeli-Canadian architect‘s groundbreaking 1960s housing complex, Brittain‘s Revisited: Habitat 67 series documents how building is today – including its occupied apartments and water-marked concrete walls.
The local photographer spent a period of 12 months capturing Habitat 67, working in collaboration with its residents who let him into their homes and take their portraits.
“My interest for the photography was less in the formal architectural qualities, and more in how the place is lived in, has been adapted, and is experienced by the residents,” Brittain told Dezeen.
One shot shows a couple looking directly at the camera, and the surrounding apartment decorated with wooden furnishings and plants.
In apartment number 243, residents have furnished the doorstep with a potted plant, stone bench and sculpture.
Other living spaces include a light-filled dining room encased by a ribbed wooden structure that covers the wall and ceiling. A cat can be seen sitting on the floor, just in front of its food bowl.
Also exploring the communal areas of the complex, Brittain has photographed a cleaner at work with the building’s impressive concrete structure rising in the backdrop.
He found dark nooks in between some of the 354 stacked “boxes” that make up the building, and more mundane aspects like a car parked in the garage.
Habitat 67 was presented by Safdie at the 1967 World Expo in Montreal. Located at 2600 Avenue Pierre-Dupuy on the Marc-Drouin Quay, the concrete complex is a example of brutalist architecture – the controversial 20th-century style that has since come back in vogue.
The development is highly regarded for its experimental approach to housing, creating high-density living in a way that allowed for fast construction and for each home to have plenty of outdoor space. During his project, Brittain observed that Safdie’s ideas were still successful today.
“The core ideas [Safdie] originally pioneered at Habitat 67 are still highly relevant today,” he said. “Prefabrication, and how to make a place for living in a city that is spatially generous, efficient and with an abundance of natural light and outdoor space – while retaining a similar density to a traditional tower block.”
“And with a strong emphasis on people and community,” Brittain added.
The Revisited: Habitat 67 series forms part of his “ongoing” experiment into architectural photography, which he said was prompted by the lack of experiential qualities found in contemporary shots.
“The photographs are a response to the daily dose of digital imagery of architecture on social media and the web,” said Brittain.
“Mainstream photography of architecture has largely withdrawn from communicating the experience of buildings and spaces, and specific moments spent in places.”
Brittain’s Revisited: Habitat 67 is being exhibited at the London studio of architectural firm Jonathan Tuckey Design, alongside archival material that the photographer sourced from the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Canadian Architecture Collection at McGill University.
The photography exhibition will be open to the public on 10 and 11 February 2018 at Jonathan Tuckey Design, on 58 Milson Road. It marks the first in a series of showcases and talks focused on existing structures that architects Jonathan Tuckey and Peter Youthed have organised for a programme titled Building on the Built.
The post Photographs capture cats, laundry and everyday life in Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 appeared first on Dezeen.
Plenty of companies have tried to get clever with the pop-top can but this one is actually a functional twist that makes perfect, simple sense! Everyone’s experienced a drink mix up at one time or another and this packing concept, called My Can, helps to prevent that situation. After pulling up the tab, simply fold it over the rim and mark the first letter of your name to indicate that it’s your drink! Perfect for parties, you’ll never get mixed up even after a few brewskis!
The My Can is a Bronze Winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2017.
Designers: Binglin Wei, Fang Lu & Maoyuan Bai
There’s a certain reverence one feels looking at the S1 Gyuto Knife. It, by no means, is an ordinary kitchen knife, but is rather a product of culture, heritage, dedication, and finesse. Crafted by third generation Osaka master bladesmiths, the S1 Gyuto knife is made from pure black Japanese steel (the same material as Japanese swords) that involves 131 distinct production steps to give you a blade that looks exquisite and is obscenely sharp. Additionally, Hinoki’s techniques ensure that the knife stays sharp for longer periods of time.
The S1 Gyuto comes in three variants, with different wooden handles that complement the black steel blade in both color as well as shape. Choose from Charred Walnut, American Walnut, and European Oak, for the faceted handle that’s a pleasure to hold and use as it, with sheer ease, cuts through whatever you need it to cut.
Designer: Hinoki
The Compound Camera is a twenty-foot inflatable installation composed of 109 pinhole cameras, each of which projects a slightly different view of the surrounding environment onto its interior surface. The structure’s flexible fabric invites visitors to push on and distort the projected images, allowing them to play with the fundamental properties of light, optics, and vision in a tangible way. In our increasingly digital world, the Compound Camera offers an analogue perspective; it reminds us that relatively simple construction methods and old technologies can continue to profoundly impact how we perceive our surroundings.
Your dog shits free energy. As do mine. And every day I pick it up with a plastic bag and throw it in the garbage, where it does no good.
British inventor Brian Harper is doing something about this. Harper lives in Worcestershire’s Malvern Hills, designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (a UK designation of conservation/protection from development). Harper noticed that inconsiderate dog owners were leaving plastic bags filled with poop on the ground near his house. “I looked and I thought this is a crazy way,” Harper told the BBC. “There must be a way of trying to give dog poo a value so people would do something sensible with it.”
Harper spent two years creating an old-school gas lamp that’s hooked up to an anaerobic digester. A dispenser next to it provides free paper bags. Dog owners can bag their dog’s poop, toss it into the digester, crank the handle, and the microrganisms within break the poop down into methane. Ten bags of dog poop are enough to power the lamp for two hours.
The concept isn’t Harper’s; he states that he got the idea from the Park Spark Project, an art installation in Boston that installed a similar contraption at a dog run.
Sadly, their Facebook account hasn’t been updated since 2014, so we assume the project is defunct. Hopefully Harper’s flame will burn a bit longer.
“[The] amount of poop I scoop,” one Facebook user commented on Harper’s project, “I could do the Blackpool Illuminations.”
The Blackpool Illuminations is an annual lights festival held in Lancashire. For this year’s Core77 Design Awards, we’re conducting in-depth interviews with each of our jury captains to get in a glimpse into their creative minds and to hear more about what they’ll be looking for in this year’s awards submissions.
Our first interview is with 2018 Built Environment Jury Captain Dror Benshetrit. Founder of New York based Studio Dror, Benshetrit does not allow the conventions of the present to interfere with his ambitious goals for the future of design. He chatted with us about his upcoming Lookback project that simulates a walk on the moon, his vision for the future of architecture, and a designer’s responsibility to think sustainably.
Great, so, that’s actually not the easy one. That’s actually the most difficult one!
I’m not joking, actually. I think that there’s nothing more difficult than to explain what is it that we do, but I like to say that we are an idea-driven design practice that looks at design comprehensively and doesn’t differentiate by design disciplines, meaning we don’t have boundaries between product design, art installation, architecture, and planning.
We have clients ranging from product brands to companies that ask us to create temporary and permanent installations, interiors, architecture, and organizations that we are doing master planning for.
Yes! So we actually recently won a competition to design the first self-driving-car neighborhood in Canada. We are doing three residential towers in Brazil. We’re doing a couple of interior projects and working on a couple of kitchen appliances and the future of cooking. We’re working on a very interesting, confidential project that is in the area of hygienic products. We’re working on a new light-bulb concept. We’re working on an art installation that mimics the feeling of what it’s like being on the moon. What else? We’re working on new, innovative systems in the area of 3D printing steel. What else is going on now…
Never bored. That’s definitely not in the vocabulary of my life right now. Last month, we debuted an installation in New Zealand for a wine brand. It had a couple of delays with the earthquake in New Zealand, but it’s just been debuted and completed last month. Prior to that, we debuted our construction for Galataport in Istanbul, which is an ongoing project that is by far our largest project to date. It’s 1.2 kilometers on the Bosphorus Strait, and we basically did the master plan and design of the cruise-ship terminal, the boardwalk, and the 18 buildings on the site.
I studied design in the Design Academy in Eindhoven, and prior to that, really considered myself more of an artist and studied art. When I finished school, I was of course trying to think, in what area of design do I want to master and specialize? And I very quickly realized that I’m too curious to choose one particular area and actually like the idea of collaborating with specialists and specializing in my own way of looking at design and creativity.
So that was the initial direction for the practice, not knowing that actually beyond design, there’s architecture. Beyond that, there’s planning and landscaping and all of those things that are under the title of “design” as a whole, but I initially couldn’t even comprehend thinking of those kinds of scales. I think after we did our first interior project, it was very clear to me the relationship between product, design, and interior. We then pushed it to the next scale when working on our first architectural project.
I’m not formally trained as an architect myself. We have a lot of architects on the team and we are always working in collaboration with structural engineers, architects of records, and more, but I strongly believe in this cross-organization between disciplines. One of the most interesting things for me is how to break those boundaries that actually often create more limitations than strengths.
There are many things that can change the world. I think, in general, that creativity has tremendous power of solving the world’s biggest problems, and that a lot of time we’re looking more at data and analyzing data and studying a certain pattern; sometimes those are not necessarily the only places to look at. Really thinking about experiences, in particular, is the essence of art in my opinion. Art has always been about trying to provoke human behaviors and provoke new feelings by doing things differently, whether you’re standing in front of a canvas, a sculpture or you’ve immersed yourself within something sculptural like a building.
One of the things that excites me specifically with this lunar installation is that many of us have never been in a dark space that is extremely bright at the same time. That kind of relationship doesn’t exist currently because everywhere that you go, we are still within the atmospheric air particles that are here on earth, so if you’ve been to the middle of the desert where there were some strong, bright projection, you could gauge the distance from you to the particles in the air and be able to get this kind of depth, or if you’ve been to a big stadium that is dark outside and bright.
What this installation tries to do is to create an indoor space that deprives you of the ability to gauge how far the structure itself is. We’re using this new nanotechnology material called Vantablack, which essentially is the closest thing to the black of the infinity. They call it the blackest black material there is, which has 99.97% non-omitting light, so you can brighten the surface pretty intensively and then stand literally a couple feet from the wall and not know that it’s there. The idea [behind the installation] is to basically see if that can provoke a new feeling in us, to see if that could change something in how we feel towards that relationship.
I think that, of course, coupled with the idea of standing on the lunar terrain, looking back at planet Earth, just has a huge power in terms of helping us understand how magical this one and only planet we have is.
I think that we live in the most exciting time to be a designer and a creator ever, period. If we’re not paying attention right now to how we are going to utilize artificial intelligence, how we’re going to utilize parametric softwares, how we’re going to utilize 3D printing, we are missing the boat. Each one of these of course cannot be viewed in silo. They’re all interconnected, but 3D printing alone is changing our world as we speak, and robotic manufacturing is going to take over pretty much everything in the next two decades. They’re going to construct buildings, they’re going to pretty much replace manual labor, and the complexity of the vocabulary of forms that we’re going to see as a result of 3D printing robotic manufacturing is insane, which is crazy exciting.
I think that the machine-learning approach we are already seeing now is going to, at first, make a lot of boring designs, but eventually it’s going to show us how we could use that as a tool and add to our own human creativity—then we’re going to get, in my opinion, to a very, very, very exciting path of creating what I call “superstructure supernature.”
I just debuted two weeks ago the initial direction that we are going to open another practice in January called SUPERNATURE Lab, and our intention is to work on creating structures that are in collaboration with nature. They’re basically encompassing nature in a new way. So one of the biggest problems that I see in architecture today is the fact that it’s either urban or natural. We are basically taking a piece of land, demolishing what was there, getting rid of the trees and soil and vegetation, pouring concrete foundation, and that’s it.
Studio Dror’s 2012 “HavvAda” projectWhat we set to do with this practice is to work on new ways architectural systems can incorporate soil and nature within them and allow for people and vegetation. By doing that, we hope we can change the way the ugly sprawl of metropolis around the world looks. Population growth cannot be avoided. We are growing very fast, and our city as a need will grow accordingly, so hopefully we’re not going to just build more and more ugly mid-rise and high-rise buildings everywhere.
It’s both. It’s absolutely both. First of all, when you’re talking about being inspired by nature and natural forms, that’s a big aspect of that, because nature builds much more efficiently than we do today. Nature builds much more beautifully, and the one thing that nature definitely doesn’t do is build boxes like we do for everything.
The other aspect is building from nature, meaning how do we incorporate and utilize the benefits that soil has in construction? How do we use benefits of vegetation, whether it’s the purification of air, the production of O2, and of course the beauty, which I think that we are now finding more and more ways to link a physical relationship of our health to our emotional health, and I think that beauty is a part of that. We just don’t know how to measure it yet.
Absolutely. For one, I dream that every architect will consider themselves an artist and would realize that they are working on the most valuable canvas we have, which is our planet. I think that it’s a huge problem in the design and architectural profession that sometimes what we do is considered planning or just pure logic and problem-solving. I think that what architecture and design is more about is creating the right emotion with what we do. When you talk about how productive your office is, in terms of the well-being, it’s not necessarily measured in just pragmatic and logical charts. It’s much more than that, and as designers and architects, we need to make sure that we are feeling those things, not just thinking of them, and reasoning them more with the heart than necessarily with the logic of the brief that we are getting.
When you ask somebody, “What do you want to do?” it’s very similar to “What are you dreaming about?” And I think that in every design phase, there is a moment of kind of leaving the knowledge aside or leaving the pragmatic decisions aside that relate to manufacturing capabilities or cost or whatever it is and just kind of letting your imagination go wild for a moment. Because it is really necessary and I think that in general, it’s something that we’ve lost recently in design. It’s something that I’m hoping to see: a little bit more personality, a little bit more unique dreaming.
Well, that’s an easy one. My prediction is the name of the lab that we are setting up: SUPERNATURE. I really think that we are going to see products and structures that mimic nature more and are inspired by nature, not taking away from the natural terrain but enhancing it, making it even more beautiful.
It’s interesting. If you look from the angle of product design, like a chair or a vase or a coffee mug, unless you’re designing a new typology that you don’t even have a name for, you are essentially redesigning something that has been designed before. In this case, your motivation is always to make the best, most beautiful, most logical version … like, if you have a chart of different reasons, you’re trying to basically score better than anything you know on each aspect of the chart.
But when we are taking a piece of nature and we’re saying, “Well, this is an undeveloped rural area. Let’s build 70 mid-rise building here,” how come we’re not applying the same questions of, “Am I going to make this area look better than what it looks like right now?” It’s almost always uglier. It’s almost always worse. I just hope that even if we just let that question sit somewhere in the back of our mind, we are going to make a better project, and I just hope that designers and architects have that kind of mindset to strive and do better with all of those kinds of decisions that relate to what it’s going to be and what it is today.
Submit your work to the 2018 Core77 Design Awards today! Regular Deadline to receive submissions is March 8.
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