Hasta La Ideas

Local architecture studio TRANS has rebuilt a factory in a residential neighbourhood of Ghent, with pitched roofs referencing nearby housing.

TRANS oversaw the project for local food packaging business Ryhove, which has been based in central Ghent, Belgium, since the 1980s.

After decades of ad-hoc expansion, Ryhove’s facilities had become outdated and no longer provided the sort of workplace that was appropriate for a successful company.

Rather than moving and building a new facility on a suburban industrial estate, Ryhove chose to retain its current site so its employees could continue to work in their neighbourhood.

The new  factory’s design seeks to complement its setting in an area predominantly containing terraced homes.

At the entrance to the loading area, a gabled form is repeated three times to create a roof over the first-floor office spaces, with space for vehicles to enter underneath.

The roof form references the traditional shape of the tiled roofs on the surrounding houses, but with corrugated metal  used to reflect the building’s industrial use.

Its long, street-facing elevation is separated into bays with a width of five metres that approximately echo the proportions of its residential neighbours.

“An important ambition was to make the industrial expansion acceptable in a residential area,” explained TRANS in a project statement. “That is why the ‘terraced house typology’ was chosen as a reference for the intervention.”

The new building also reorganises the site around a central loading and unloading area, ensuring that the logistical operations, which are central to the organisation’s work, are on display instead of being hidden away.

The building was constructed using standardised, prefabricated elements, including concrete columns and cross-laminated-timber panels that enhance its industrial character.

Trusses made from steel and wood support ceilings lined with timber that lend the interior a warm and comfortable feel.

TRANS is the latest architect to create an impressive looking factory. In 2017 Vitsœ opened a production facility in the UK with “intentionally unfinished” interiors,  while Atelier Ars corn factory in Mexico included a memorial garden.

Photography is by Stijn Bollaert.

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Eindhoven-based designer Lucas Muñoz has combined industrial steel ventilation pipes with a copper seat taken from a scrap yard to create this bulbous chair.

Muñoz designed his Tubular chair as an exploration of the structural potential of different. industrial components. He wanted to showcase their ability to perform a function within a domestic environment.

Muñoz constructed the seat from galvanised steel ventilation pipes and elbow connectors found in his atelier, as well as sheets of copper taken from a metal junkyard.

“The materiality and shape – the practical means – of the industrial components allow them to afford a variety of roles if arranged in a way that offers some kind of furniture function for a domestic context,” the designer told Dezeen.

The chair was displayed at the first edition of 21st-century design fair Collectible, as part of an exhibition called Hardcore, which also previously took place at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven.

This exhibition was divided into several topics – Muñoz’s chair came under the topic of Hyper Ordinary, which featured objects that took a deeper look into our commonplace assumptions about particular materials, components or objects.

“In this case, ordinary ventilation pipes and elbow connectors are arranged in a way that brings them into a field to which they were not designed to belong,” Muñoz told Dezeen.

Muñoz told Dezeen that Tubular was a result of a “very physical” trial and error process, with a very limited use of plans or drawings.

The copper plate was curved by hand to mould to the shape of the pipes, and standard aluminium rivets were used to connect each of the pieces together.

“I find a great richness in all these engineered standard components. Not only visually but also functionally,” Muñoz told Dezeen.

“Great designers and engineers are behind all these industrial components, and they work hard in making their production and durability as efficient as possible. I find the potential for other functions in these materials.”

Tubular is just one example of this attitude: Muñoz’s OFIS (objects from interstitial space) collection also includes lighting pieces made from materials meant for behind and in between our walls that have been reappropriated for a domestic setting.

Also at the Collectible design fair, which took place from 8 to 11 March 2018, were a series of InHale coffee tables by Belgian designer Ben Storms, which saw him position huge blocks of marble on top of inflated metal “pillows”.

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Dutch studio DoepelStrijkers incorporated a variety of innovative sustainable concepts into this multipurpose space at the offices of a bank in Amsterdam.

The Circl pavilion occupies the lower floors of Dutch banking group ABN AMRO’s corporate headquarters. The interior, by Rotterdam studio DoepelStrijkers, employs the principles of a circular economy, in which materials are continually reused and waste is designed out.

“We have a strong belief that design can act as an agent for social renewal, leading to strategies that contribute to a circular and inclusive economy,” said the studio’s co-founder, Eline Strijkers, at a talk organised by Dezeen and Dutch Design Week as part of a the  ‘Good Design for a Bad World series .

“For us, circular means closing material, energy and water cycles, and inclusive means creating trajectories for people with a distance to the labour market,” Strijkers added.

The project incorporates several sustainable innovations based around reusing, repurposing and recycling, within a space intended to provide flexibility and adaptability.

Moving walls and floor elements allow the open ground-floor space to be quickly and easily reconfigured depending on its usage, which can vary from day care to dance events, markets, meetings, exhibitions or film screenings.

The shifting walls are remotely operated by pushing a button, enabling the floorplan to be completely transformed without the need for the occupants to move out of the way.

“Comfort is offered by making the room bigger or smaller, and efficiency is met through functional and flexible design,” said the studio. “Through clever lifting and sliding technology, the changes in space formats can be made within minutes.”

The movable panels are made from recycled aluminium and expanded metal mesh, with a layer of a material made from recycled denim jeans sandwiched in the centre to provide an acoustic buffer.

Throughout the interior, steps were taken to minimise the use of materials and waste by utilising the intrinsic properties of raw materials and assembling structures with dry fixings so they can be dismantled and reused in the future.

Several products and objects were salvaged and reused in the project, including old exhibition display boxes from the Stedelijk Museum ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and unwanted furniture from the bank’s old depot.

In other places, objects are given a new lease of life in a different context, such as the old safe-deposit boxes used for storage in the kitchen.

Recycled materials are also used to create surfaces, including an acoustic textile-plaster wall made from old uniforms donated by the office staff.

Vintage furniture found in the communal areas is suppled by local retailer Mass Modern Design, with the spaces functioning as the company’s second showroom. If a piece is sold it is replaced with something else.

DoepelStrijkers has worked on projects incorporating principles based on the circular economy for a decade, and was able to implement many of them in this interior.

“The challenge for us as an office lies in translating our sustainable ambition into objects and spaces that transcend the traditional image of sustainable design,” the studio added.

“We search for a spatial translation of sustainability criteria into an image that does not directly refer to reuse for example, but rather by incorporating the positive attributes of sustainable building principles into objects, spaces and buildings that reflect our contemporary design idiom.”

Photography is by Peter Tijhuis.

Project credits:

Design team: Duzan Doepel, Eline Strijkers, Chantal Vos with Riekie Brokking, Mikolai Brus, Kasper Zoet
Architect: de Architekten Cie
Project management: Traject, Zevenbergen
Fire safety advisor and acoustics: DGMR, Arnhem
Contractor: BAM, Amsterdam
Plant advisor and supplier: Donkergroen, Sneek
Restaurant and bar: Vermaat (with Ex Interiors)
Motion technique: Levtec, Amsterdam
Interior builder: Vorm & Decor, Rotterdam
Integrated lighting: Jonas Vorwerk, Rotterdam
Showroom vintage furniture: Mass Modern Design

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Bookcases and partitions appear not to meet the ground at this chocolate-coloured workplace in São Paulo, by Studio Arthur Casas.

Ha Office was designed for a law firm, which required an open-plan workspace and kitchen, plus private offices and meeting rooms.

Studio Arthur Casas therefore retrofitted a unit in a tower that was originally designed for private residences, but had been stalled for over 30 years so repurposed.

Due to company’s small scale, the design team was able to reserve a large portion of the space for a library.

The shelving units for the books are clad in dark brown wood, and constructed so they look as if they don’t touch the floor. Lighting underneath accentuates this feature, which is also used on a seating nook close to the entrance.

“Multiple elements are suspended here,” said Casas, founder of the eponymous studio that has offices in São Paulo and New York City.

The colourful book spines decorate the otherwise brown and beige material palette of the space, which was chosen by the client.

“These elements play an interesting counterpoint to the appropriate degree of austerity suggested by the client,” said Casas.

Upon entering the office, a built-in seating area and the “floating” nook cut through the middle of a hallway.

This leads through to the open-plan workspace, furnished with a thick dark wood table and rolling caramel leather office chairs with silvery frames.

A kitchen area brings lightness to the otherwise cave-like interior, with a white dining table and a series of round light wood stools that match the pale floor and ceilings.

In the boardroom – which is also lined with books across one wall – a large dark wood table is surrounded by vintage upholstered leather chairs, with room for fourteen people.

Across the office, hints about its location are created by jacaranda wood and Brazilian ironwood furniture, as well as more decorative vases and sculptures.

Studio Arthur Casas has worked extensively in Brazil, on projects ranging from a low-lying residence with sliding glass walls overlooking a golf course in São Paulo to a colour-coded bookstore in Rio de Janeiro.

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