Educational YouTube series Second Thought breaks down what it would cost to build and operate a real-life version of the Galactic Empire’s Death Star space station from the first Star Wars film…(Read…)
Fail Army presents a collection of best and funniest fail videos that hit the Internet in the second week of March 2018…(Read…)
Marvel Studios just released the second trailer for Avengers: Infinity War, the upcoming 2018 sequel to 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, and nineteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Infinity War charges into theaters on April 27th.”As the Avengers and their allies have continued to protect the world from threats too large for any one hero to handle, a new danger has emerged from the cosmic shadows: Thanos. A despot of intergalactic infamy, his goal is to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of unimaginable power, and use them to inflict his twisted will on all of reality. Everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment – the fate of Earth and existence itself has never been more uncertain.”..(Read…)
Journaliste depuis plus de 25 ans, Abirato s’échappe de la réalité avec une photographie noir et blanc, minimaliste et très graphique. Lors d’un séjour dans le Golfe Persique, où il a passé cinq ans, il a pu capturer l’immensité du désert vide, où toutes les courbes et les motifs, lui ont offert un champ photographique unique. Son travail est à découvrir sur son compte Instagram.
Belgian designer Ben Storms placed huge blocks of marble on top of inflated metal “pillows” to create this range of coffee tables, exhibited at this year’s Collectible design fair.
Storms wanted his InHale collection to give the illusion that each heavy mass of marble has “a light state of being.”
Weighing between 200 and 900 kilograms, each marble slab is designed to look as though it is softly placed on top of its inflated metal support.
Each block of stone has been recovered from the waste of a recently reopened quarry, which had been closed for over a century.
The designer wanted to bring together two contrasting elements by applying new, innovative techniques to an old piece of marble.
Each table is composed of a block of marble that has been left in its original, unrefined state underneath but buffed on the top to leave a smooth, even surface.
To create the inflated table bases, Storms used a hydroforming technique. This saw two pieces of metal sheet welded together, positioned on top of the marble surface and injected with high-pressure air.
This forms what he describes as a “pillow”, which is then sculpted onto the uneven underside of the marble using a mould.
The pillow takes the shape of the stone and is formed into levelled position. In order to withstand the heavy weight of the marble, the inflated metal is then injected with foam to keep it in its original shape.
The Inhale coffee tables were exhibited at the first edition of the 21st-century design fair, Collectible, which took place last week from 8 till 11 March in Brussels.
According to creators Liv Vaisberg and Clélie Debehault, the new fair was the first of its kind, exclusively dedicated to contemporary design.
Among Dezeen’s pick of the best pieces on show were a series of architecturally-inspired cubic, tubular lights by Dutch designers Mieke Meijer and Roy Letterlé, and Studio Job also offered a series of cartoon-like objects, including a punching bag patterned with bricks and a giant plastic cactus.
The post Ben Storms creates Inhale tables from metal cushions and marble slabs appeared first on Dezeen.
La photographe russe Ekaterina Busygina capture la merveilleuse verticalité de la ville de Hong Kong dans sa série City Maze. Que ce soit en regardant la ville depuis le Peak, ou depuis les rues vers le haut des immeubles vertigineux, nous découvrons cette métropole étonnante, toujours animée de gens, de lumières, de sons et de mouvements. Voir plus de son travail ici et la suivre sur Instagram.
Hailey Tuck: Alcohol
Gently jazzy and undeniably charmed, Hailey Tuck’s cover of “Alcohol” keeps the original Kinks’ wit intact but lends it some glamour. The track will appear on Tuck’s forthcoming album Junk (out 4 May) which is produced by Larry……
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IKEA and Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek have created a range of furniture and homeware that showcases imperfections, rather than hiding them.
The collection, named Industriell, marks the second collaboration between IKEA and Hein Eek.
It includes a range of limited-edition pieces, including chairs, tables, ceramics, textiles and glassware. With their craft-like aesthetic, the products are all designed to look slightly different from one another.
The aim was to “redefine mass-produced products by turning uniformity on its head”.
“When I graduated from design school there was a great drive for perfection in design,” said Hein Eek. “If you made a thousand copies they all had to be identical, and there was nothing in the design that hadn’t been put in there by the designer himself.”
“I wanted to strip that idea away, and make objects feel more human and personal while still having an industrial production process.”
Hein Eek did this partly through his use of materials. For the chair, bench and tables, he chose to use pine wood that would have otherwise been considered waste.
Each piece features its own unique knots and grains. Colourful stains range from bright yellow and blue, to soft grey and black.
Ceramic vases each have a lumpy form, created from different handcrafted moulds. Texiles – one in a checkerboard pattern and another with stripes –are decorated with designs hand drawn by Hein Eek.
Glassware was created by two different machines – giving the full collection a mismatched feel.
“Industriell is a beautiful collection, because you can feel a personality behind each of the products and know that each is unique,” said IKEA‘s creative leader Karin Gustavsson.
“They’re also made to mix in with the other products you have used to style a room, so hopefully they become part of your personality too.”
IKEA, which topped the Dezeen Hot List in 2017, first announced its long-term collaboration Hein Eek in 2015.
The designer, best known for his scrap-wood furniture made from timber offcuts, revealed the first products from the collaboration in 2016. They included a collection of furniture and homewares based on traditional Indonesian and Vietnamese crafts.
The post IKEA’s latest collaboration with Piet Hein Eek celebrates imperfections appeared first on Dezeen.
Slovenian studio OFIS Arhitekti has created an isolated desert retreat in Andalusia, featuring glazed walls that take advantage of the vast landscape and dramatic night skies.
OFIS Arhitekti developed the Glass Pavilion in collaboration with experts from specialist manufacturer Guardian Glass, which challenged the architects to design a structure that would test its products to their limits.
The site chosen for the building is renowned as an excellent spot for stargazing, due to its elevation and lack of light pollution.
But it is also one of the harshest environments in Europe. Temperatures in the Gorafe desert, in the province of Granada, can soar beyond 40 degrees celsius, resulting in a local vernacular of troglodytic homes dug into the clay earth.
Guardian Glass wanted the pavilion demonstrate the technical capacity of its highly insulated Guardian SunGuard glass, which features an almost invisible coating that filters solar radiation, to ensure a comfortable environment in buildings with large glazed surfaces.
The 20-square-metre pavilion uses the vertical glazing panels of the envelope as structural walls, so the interior is entirely lined with unprotected glass.
“If we would have used bad glass the space would get overheated, which would mean that someone who lives here could die,” pointed out architect Spela Videcnik, who founded OFIS Arhitekti with Rok Oman in 1998.
“With this high-quality glass there is no external shading needed to protect the inside from the strong sun,” she added. “If you can make a building that can resist these conditions you could make a building anywhere.”
Oman and Videcnik specialise in architecture for extreme environments. Their previous projects have included tiny cabins for use by mountaineers, one of which perches on a rocky outcrop on Slovenia’s Skuta Mountain, while another cantilevers over the edge of a mountain on the Slovenian-Italian border.
The Glass Pavilion’s structural glazed walls are robust enough to withstand the desert’s strong winds, and envelope a floor plan comprising three arms that radiate outwards from a central core. They offer uninterrupted views of the surrounding desert.
The glazed volume is sandwiched between a plinth and roof that extend beyond the walls to form a shaded external platform.
Both the deck and roof are constructed from timber cassettes, clad in mirrored panels that reflect the surrounding landscape and further reduce the visual impact of the pavilion on its setting.
Curtains suspended from tracks integrated into the edges of the roof can be drawn around the structure to increase the amount of shade.
The pavilion’s interior is organised into three distinct spaces housed in each of the arms: the first contains a compact living area, another houses the bedroom, and the third features a jacuzzi set into its floor.
A central core contains services including a toilet, storage for the bedroom and a kitchenette next to the living space. Timber floor boards extend from the minimal interior spaces onto the exterior decking to enhance the connection with the outdoors.
The Glass Pavilion was developed for use as a holiday rental. It will be made available for individuals or couples to book through Airbnb and other platforms.
Photography is by Gonzalo Botet, apart from where otherwise indicated.
Project credits:
Architecture: OFIS Arhitekti
Project team:
Rok Oman, Spela Videcnik, Andrej Gregoric, Janez Martincic, José Navarrete Jiménez, Lucas Blasco Sendón, Jakub Chaloupek, Agnieszka Sukienniczak
Structure and envelope: AKT II
Climate engineering : Transsolar
General contractor: Permiz
Electrical engineering: Energovat
Local contractor: SHN Constructora
The post OFIS Arhitekti’s Glass Pavilion is a star-gazing retreat in Spain’s Gorafe desert appeared first on Dezeen.
Dominique Coulon & Associés has completed a sports centre for a school in Strasbourg, featuring a pair of double-height halls that project upwards from a concrete-and-glass base.
Dominique Coulon’s practice designed the building for a school created for the children of the international civil servants who work at the nearby European Parliament and European Court of Human Rights.
The sports centre is positioned on the opposite side of a road from the main school building, which was designed by German firm Auer Weber and French studio DRLW Architectes.
Its combination of distinct concrete forms references the existing school, which comprises a cluster of volumes grouped around a central courtyard.
“Beyond the actual architectural and functional qualities of the building, the sports centre creates a balance and establishes a dialogue with the European school,” suggested Dominique Coulon & Associés.
“It prolongs the logic of the fragments already used for the school building.”
The centre is intended to meet the needs of the local community as well as almost 1,000 pupils who attend the school. It contains a large multi-sport hall, alongside a multipurpose hall that can be used to host non-sporting events.
The two halls are united by a podium at ground-floor level that also contains the central entrance hall. The glazed entrance provides a view through the building towards the woods beyond.
The pair of volumes protrude vertically to create the double-height spaces required by the activity areas.
These boxes are angled to emphasise the separation of the different functional zones and optimise their relationship with the site.
The larger hall is positioned perpendicular to the street on the northern edge of the plot, and extends away from the road to make optimal use of the site’s depth.
The multipurpose hall is angled inwards slightly, creating a more enclosed and welcoming feel to the entrance. Both of the halls are lined with glazing that promotes a connection between the building and its surroundings.
The two halls are flanked by service areas including changing rooms and storage spaces. Glazed walls wrap around the open circulation that extends towards the rear of the building and looks onto a private garden.
A reduced material palette of concrete, galvanised steel, glass and linoleum results in a muted, monochrome aesthetic that emphasises the different qualities of natural light experienced throughout the day in the various spaces.
“Depending on the light, the variations in grey featured in the project range from milky and rough to transparent and reflecting,” the architects added. “Perception evolves as the day draws on, setting up a valuable dialogue with nature.”
The box that tops the sports hall is clad in translucent polycarbonate to ensure an even diffused light during the day, and transforms into a glowing lantern-like volume when illuminated from within at night.
Inside the sports area, perforated MDF panels which are coloured to match the rest of the building’s palette wrap around the lower portion of the walls to help improve acoustics.
The interior of the square multi-purpose hall features colour that contrasts with the rest of the building and creates a warmer, more relaxing environment.
Varnished oak parquet flooring extends onto the walls of the space and is laid in a pattern that mirrors the chequerboard configuration of the dark-green coffered ceiling above.
Dominique Coulon & Associés recently completed a theatre in French town of Freyming-Merlebach, which feature a red auditorium hidden with a white concrete block. The French studio also built a media library in the city of Thionville in 2017.
Photography is by Eugeni Pons and David Romero-Uzeda.
Project credits:
Architecture: Dominique Coulon & Associés
Architects assistants: Thibaut Muller, Fanny Liénart, David Romero-Uzeda
Structural engineer: Batiserf Ingénierie
Mechanical plumbing engineer: Solares Bauen
Electrical engineer: BET Gilbert Jost
Cost estimator: E3 Économie
HQE specialist: Solares Bauen
Acoustics: Euro Sound project
Landscape: Bruno Kubler
The post Glass walls create visual connection between Strasbourg sports hall and its surroundings appeared first on Dezeen.
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