At age 17, Stanley Kubrick joined the staff of Look magazine as a photographer. Long before he’d make some of the most important films in cinematic history, he captured thousands of humanist imagery that captured New York City in the mid-1940s. Now……
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Niall McLaughlin Architects has refurbished a 1970s building at Jesus College, Cambridge, adding a new facade with a vertical composition of stone and timber elements.
The London-based practice won a competition in 2014 to redevelop parts of the University of Cambridge college and introduce new facilities including an auditorium, archive storage and a sports buildings on the most westerly part of its existing site.
The proposed masterplan features three phases, with the initial phase focusing on the refurbishment and extension of the heritage-listed Webb Building, as well as the redevelopment of a 1970s block facing onto Jesus Lane.
The renovation work carried out on the red-brick Webb Building involved carefully restoring rooms such as the existing library and dining area, as well as introducing a mixture of offices, social spaces, and student accommodation.
The building was extended to create a cafe and bar for use by students, as well as people attending conferences and functions. A new cafe pavilion rises above a sunken terrace and provides views of the adjacent hockey pitch through full height glazed walls.
The college also wanted to convert the 1970s Rank Building to provide hotel accommodation to support the new conferencing facilities and to generate revenue for the college.
The building’s reconfigured ground floor and first floor now accommodate a new lecture hall, administrative spaces, conferencing facilities and teaching rooms.
It was also extended westwards to create a prominent entrance building facing onto Jesus Lane, which is an important thoroughfare in the city centre.
“A lot of this work was done with a view to improving connections to the existing site, to the public realm on Jesus Lane, but also to give it a prominent frontage and provide routes through to the auditorium that will be built as part of the second phase,” architect Tom McGlynn told Dezeen.
The Rank Building was stripped back to the bare bones of its structure, and even this was significantly altered with new light wells and openings cut in, along with the addition of new staircases and lifts.
Remnants of the existing structure include the brick piers on the front and rear of the building, which were extended upwards. The 1970s aesthetic of horizontal openings jarred with the surrounding Victorian and Georgian terraces, so the studio sought to introduce a more vertical facade composition.
“The main move was to establish a vertical rhythm to that facade that wold tie into its context better,” added McGlynn. “That involved working within the existing piers on the street facade to create a vertical order that diminishes in density as you go up through the building.”
Rough-hewn stone pillars create a robust and private feel that protects the ash-lined ground-floor lecture theatre and teaching spaces from the street. The facade gradually opens up to create balconies for the hotel rooms on the upper floors.
The treatment of the north facade looking onto the courtyard is very different and reflects its more quiet and private character. The upper floors have window desks built into the facade, with operable shutters providing natural ventilation.
Glazed lanterns top a pair of red-brick towers that reference the materiality of the existing buildings around the courtyard. One of the towers accommodates a new entrance and another provides a stair core at the east end of the Rank Building.
The lantern located above the new entrance functions as a beacon that also allows natural light to flood into a triple-height circulation space.
The new entrance building contains a reception for the hotel, along with breakout spaces, offices and a conference room.
The entrance lobby and surrounding corridors are lined with red brick to create a more direct connection with the Webb Building. Patterned square quarry tiles were chosen to match existing tiles used in the old building’s circulation spaces.
Niall McLaughlin Architects has previously refurbished a prayer room and priory in Dublin that features built-in wooden furniture, and designed a fishing hut in Hampshire with walls that fold open to provide views of a lake.
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I never thought I’d say this but… I think I want a landline! I have the Dreyfuss phone to thank for this newfound appreciation. This retro-futuristic phone concept marries the iconic form of the classic telephone with a minimalistic, modern form and material combination.
Specifically, the design is a nod to Henry Dreyfuss, a legendary 20th Century industrial designer. The 1937 Bell 302 telephone happens to be one of his most famous work and serves as an inspiration for this project. Like the classic, the Dreyfuss phone sports a number dial at the center, however, it’s actually a touchscreen with a digital display. While it has a similar footprint to the classic form, the open body allows for additional storage behind it and hides any wiring quite nicely.
Designer: Uji Terkuma
The Saturn hybrid speaker-light begs the question: why shouldn’t our devices also be works of art?! The obvious answer is that everyone has largely different aesthetic taste, but there’s no denying that Saturn’s sculptural form is better looking than plenty of other standalone Bluetooth speaker designs. Aside from providing high-quality audio streaming and stylish accent lighting on its rings, it also features a spinning feature that captivates with motion. Depending on the music tempo, its centered orb will turn to the timing of your favorite tunes!
Designers: Angie Kim & Heejae Choi
London studio TDO teamed up with architect and television presenter George Clarke to create a terrace of prefabricated houses in the English town of North Shields.
Called Fab Houses, the modular homes were designed by TDO and Clarke for joint venture developers Places for People and Urban Splash
The developers are currently overseeing the renewal of Smith’s Dock – a former shipyard that has been dormant for 30 years and is now being transformed into an urban neighbourhood.
Manchester-based Urban Splash is known for working with architects to create diverse properties for sale and rent. Included in its portfolio are factory-built housing units, which are customisable and can combine to form terraces or large apartment blocks.
Liverpool-based architecture studio ShedKM was behind the developer’s first attempt to explore how off-site fabrication could help to deliver affordable and customisable housing solutions.
The terrace of ten Fab Houses is part of a masterplan including a crescent of 24 townhouses, alongside an 80-unit apartment building designed by Manchester architecture office SimpsonHaugh, which is still under construction.
Clarke – who is behind several successful television series including The Home Show and George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces – was keen to be involved in the project because he is passionate about architecture’s ability to enrich people’s lives.
Clarke collaborated with TDO to develop the proposal for a special edition of the original concept, which incorporates features identified by the team as important for contemporary lifestyles.
“Fab House is a really good quality, elegant family home,” said Clarke in a promotional video produced for the project.
“It’s the fruition of 15 years of thinking about prefabricated homes and how we might build new homes in Britain in a very different way – quicker, easier, more efficiently, but more importantly to a better standard, that people are going to really love.”
The prefabricated construction method – developed in collaboration with off-site contractor SIG – involves manufacturing modules in a controlled environment that reduces the time required for construction and ensures consistent quality.
TDO director Tom Lewith claimed, “modular construction has a vital role to play in reaching housebuilding targets, and as a young practice we’re excited to be part of this.”
The building features a series of pared-back living spaces where extraneous details have been stripped away to create rooms that celebrate structural elements and present a range of honest materials and finishes.
Timber joists in the modular cassettes of the floor plates are left exposed to increase the floor-to-ceiling heights and create material continuity with the birch-faced plywood staircase.
The stairwell projects into the open-plan living area and is illuminated by a skylight. Full-height windows lining the reception space and master bedroom above ensure these rooms are naturally bright and feel as spacious as possible.
“We’ve tried to build a good-sized house,” Clarke added. “It’s not oversized because it needs to be affordable. We’re trying to use all the tricks we know as architects to make that space feel bigger: high ceilings, tall full-height windows, flooding the space with as much natural light as we can.”
The exteriors feature grey fibre-cement cladding that creates a homogenous surface to unite the terrace. The architects chose to align the cladding vertically to increase the tolerances and make it easier for the contractor to install.
The grey Equitone cladding contrasts with the more tactile weathered steel used for the window reveals and projecting porches, which was chosen to reference the site’s industrial heritage.
Prefabrication is increasingly being considered for the construction of houses. Artist Bobby Niven and architect Iain MacLeod recently created a prefabricated cabin that can be transported to site by truck, while earlier this year a flat-pack home that can be assembled in six hours was unveiled in Italy.
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Chinese studio Neri&Hu used frosted, blown glass to create a series of lamps that are designed to recreate the softness of early morning sunlight.
The Xi lights take their name from the Chinese word meaning “light of dawn” – a specific time in the morning when the sun is just about to rise.
According to partners Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, when the Xi lamps are illuminated, their soft, full light evokes the early morning sunlight.
“If you look the word Xi up in the dictionary it’s very specific, it’s 5:30 to 6:30 in the morning. It’s that time period when the sky has a special light,” Hu told Dezeen.
“Our interest in this light of dawn was not for utilitarian reasons, as it’s not the brightest, so you don’t see much. Yet there’s something about it, something that’s not so tangible,” Neri added. “It’s just like a sunset – it sort of marks a beginning and an end, while also being cyclical.”
Consisting of two hanging lamps and a table lamp, the Xi collection combines traditional eastern design with Poltrona Frau’s Italian leather and Venetian blown glass.
Each piece incorporates two different types of blown glass – the upper glass part has an evenly ridged surface and is transparent, but coloured with shades of amber, emerald, sapphire or moonstone.
The lower part of the glass is etched with a pearl finish for a translucent, frosted effect, to achieve a “warm and diffused” light. The light is also adjustable via a dimmer system.
Created for Italian brand Poltrona Frau, Neri&Hu also wanted to incorporate the brand’s signature material of leather into the design.
“We thought about the fusion of light and leather because when you think of Poltrona Frau, you think of its excellent leather,” said Hu.
“We wanted to think deeply about what the brand represents, and how we can actually offer something meaningful to them through our design,” she continued.
Strips of saddle-leather are wrapped around the body of the light. In the hanging version, the leather band acts as a support, enabling the light to hang “like a trapezoid or a delicate lantern” from the suspended horizontal bar.
On the table version, the leather band acts as both a support and a handle, anchoring it to its metal base with a natural brass finish.
The hanging lamps are placed on a suspended horizontal bar, which can be adjusted in height. The lights can be moved across the bar to different positions.
“One could ask, is it really the leather that holds all this amalgamation of materials together, or is it the light that holds it together?” said Neri. “Without the light, it looks rather complex and chaotic, and we are notorious as a practice for liking simple things.”
“But when the light comes on, in many ways it dissipates this complexity, and it controls everything – the light becomes that one source that ties everything together,” he added.
Neri&Hu’s Xi collection was unveiled at this year’s Salone del Mobile furniture fair, which took place during Milan design week from 17 to 22 April 2018.
The annual fair also saw Japanese brand Maruni launch two “comfortable” wooden chairs by designers Naoto Fukasawa and Jasper Morrison.
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You may not have heard of Phil Saunders (or conversely you may have if you’re a close follower of his work like I am), but you’ve definitely seen his work. There’s no escaping his brand of concept design that has, to put it mildly, molded my teenagehood. Known as the man behind the Iron Man suit we saw and fell in love with in 2008, Saunders has worked on pretty every Marvel movie since, designing suits, sets, and producing concept art that in itself captures every bit of drama we’d expect from an action movie. Having designed the Iron Man suits from the very first movie to the latest Infinity War Movie, Phil even developed War Machine, Ultron, and HulkBuster suit. You may also be familiar with his work from Tron Legacy in 2010, having worked closely with Daniel Simon to develop every inch of the movie’s visual flavor, as well as work as recent as concept art for Star Wars Episode 9. Scroll down to read what the man himself has to say about how he goes about designing Tony Stark’s incredible superhero suits, and how each design is perceived from the PoV of a concept artist, with the need to create drama, as well as an industrial designer, with the need to make products following a certain visual language, and the honing of an approach that makes them transcend the conceptual realm and look realistic and achievable.
“Tell us about your work in Avengers: Infinity War.”
“I was primarily responsible for designing the Iron Man Mk50 and War Machine Mk4 suits. The challenge this time around was that Tony Stark was going to have the “Bleeding Edge” armor, which is unlike any armor in that it is grown around him with nanotech rather than being built out of stamped, machined and assembled parts. A new manufacturing process and new materials require a completely different form language. If you’re essentially making something out of liquid metal, you’re not going to use it to make traditional nuts and bolts and separate panels. You don’t need traditional cut lines if you can vary the hardness and flexibility of your material at will. But the audience needs something to connect with that telegraphs an understandable functionality, so the Mk 50 was designed around accordion-like semi-rigid joints in the areas that would demand it, so that you didn’t feel like the whole thing was rubber or Terminator T-1000-like.
As well, the form language reflects the flow of liquid metal as it forms the suit. It was tough getting the right balance of organic to mechanical to keep the feel of an Iron Man suit. It’s bound to be his most controversial suit design, because it’s such a departure from what people are used to. Another challenge was developing weapons that also felt like they grew organically out of the suit. I took advantage of that to render them up in keyframes, something I don’t often get to illustrate on Marvel projects. I’m looking forward to showing that artwork when Marvel gives us the green light.”
Phil’s visualization of the Mark 46 suit for Captain America: Civil War
“War Machine Mk4 was a much more classic design problem, but the challenge was advancing that design as well to keep up but in a completely different direction. I always try to contrast the two as much as possible in both form language and silhouette, so this time I went with a more faceted armor look that feels more futuristic to what Rhodey’s worn in the past. I also focussed on developing massive advanced weapons systems that fold up seamlessly into his back but totally change his silhouette when all deployed at once.”
A War Machine suit render for Civil War
“What experiences brought you to where you are today?”
“Well, I always knew since I saw Star Wars as a kid that I wanted to be a concept designer for movies, but along the way I took a lot of detours, into automotive and product design, into theme park ride design and as the creative director of a computer game company. I think the diversity of design experience has helped make me a more well-rounded designer than if I had just jumped directly into concept art. Understanding how things work and how they are really manufactured I think lends a lot of believability to even fantasy design. If every line is placed with a thought to it’s theoretical function I think designs just feel “right” to the viewer. We absorb far more than we realize in our day-to-day experience, and even the layman knows instinctively when something is off, even if they don’t know why.”
The technical detailing behind the Iron Man suit’s assembly was detailed out by Saunders too
“What is your advice for aspiring concept designers?”
“We live at a time when tools and techniques are readily available that let you bypass the fundamentals of both design and image creation. And with the volume, pace and realism expected by the state of the art in games and movies, these tools are essential in the work environment to keep up with demands. But I would caution young artists not to be tempted to bypass learning and applying the fundamentals of perspective, color theory, composition, material indication, lighting, anatomy, by jumping straight into 3D and photo bashing.
Software can do all of the aforementioned jobs for you, but unless you understand them and have mastered them from the inside out, without any tricks crutches, your images will be driven not by your singular vision, but by what you’ve been able to find on Google images, or the kinds of forms that are easiest to make in your 3D software of choice, or simply the path of least resistance to creating an image. Worst of all, it won’t be what you don’t know that limits you, but what you don’t know that you don’t know.”
Hulkbuster and Black Widow from Avengers: Age of Ultron
“As an example I am most commonly asked how I am able to render such realistic metallic surfaces freehand without 3D. All of that experience comes from, as an automotive designer, sculpting surfaces into clay, covering them with shiny material and observing how minute changes in the cross-section of a surface affected where the reflections fell, and how they travelled over that surface as I shifted my point of view. So with that experience, I am never satisfied with what comes out of Keyshot, for example, and I always have to paint it over in Photoshop to make it match what I see in my head. 3D may do a great job of imitating reality, but our job as artists is to give clarity, to simplify, to idealize.
We make choices of where a reflection should be simple, in order to communicate how a form is turning or to complete a graphic composition, or where it should be complex to give texture, granularity and realism. But without a fundamental understanding of what’s under the hood and therefore what it should look like, you will just accept the miracle of what your renderer gives you and not even know the opportunity you are missing to elevate it to the next level.”
An Iron Man 3 suit design with a more gold-heavy approach
“Knowledge is control. I am constantly grateful that I came of age at a time when design was created in gouache and marker, pencil and paper, cardboard and clay, but I’m also constantly lamenting that even with that background I didn’t have more training in traditional painting and art. I know enough to recognize my own limitations, and they don’t come from lack of experience in any software, they come from my own headlong rush 30 years ago to become a concept designer without becoming a solid artist first.”
The development of the concept art from Age of Ultron
The original interview with Phil Saunders was conducted by ArtStation Magazine and can be found here.
All images are the property of Phil Saunders
New York studio Architecture + Information has completed a school in Manhattan, using colour to differentiate between public and private spaces, and create an environment that is “playful, not childish”.
AltSchool is an educational startup that was founded in 2014 with locations in New York and San Francisco. Its teaching methodology is intended to respond to individual student’s needs and integrate technology into their course structure.
Architecture + Information (A+I) therefore designed the interiors to accommodate these requirements.
“Just as each student at AltSchool has the unique opportunity to be taught based on their own learning style, each space was designed to be flexible enough to accommodate many students’ individual needs as well as myriad unique learning styles and uses,” said the architecture firm.
The school’s newest outpost occupies the entire floor plate of an existing building near Manhattan’s Union Square. Located at 90 5th Avenue, it is housed in an 11-storey stone building built in 1903.
At the centre of the school is the Agora – a stepped seating area that allows all the students to gather for presentations or events. The blue structure also integrates small nooks in which children can spend time alone.
Off this space is the Design Lab, an open-ended area with movable tables and chairs. “The Design Lab is the most flexible space, primarily used as maker-space of all kinds, (arts and crafts, large-scale science experiments),” said A+I.
“It is also a computer lab, event space, lunch hall and is flexible enough to serve as an indoor playground on rainy days.”
The rooms that line the outside of the building were designed as classrooms that link with one another to create larger or smaller spaces according to the school’s needs.
“A ‘flex room’ lies in between two classrooms and is used as a breakout classroom to accommodate independent and small group study facilitated in their lesson plans,” the architects said.
Even smaller booths in certain areas allow teachers to meet with parents, or individual work and concentration. These cubbies are soundproofed to encourage privacy and focus.
Throughout AltSchool, the architects used colour to indicate which spaces are for different activities. These accents contrast the concrete flooring, and wooden panels that cover the walls.
“The colour palette doubly acts to code the space: with darker colours indicating quiet, reflective spaces, lighter pastels for gathering spaces that still remain quiet and focused, and bolder, louder colours to encourage collaboration and synergy,” A+I said.
The firm wanted to avoid using design tropes such as bright primary colours or murals that are typically found in classrooms. “In designing, the constant refrain was ‘playful, not childish’,” the team said.
Led by Brad Zizmor and Dag Folger, A+I has also designed several office spaces for tech and media companies. These include the New York City offices of Squarespace, and new interiors for Los Angeles ad agency Canvas.
Photography is by Magda Biernat.
The post A+I designs New York City school with colourful panels and tiered seating appeared first on Dezeen.
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Architect Luciano Kruk’s latest board-marked concrete holiday home on the Argentinian coast has walls wrapped in glazing and blackened wood.
Equestrian House is a holiday residence located in Costa Esmeralda, a picturesque stretch of coastline 250 miles (400 kilometres) south of Buenos Aires. The resort features a number of board-marked concrete residences designed by Kruk’s Buenos Aires studio, including his own summer retreat.
Kruk designed the latest house for a couple with two children, who asked him to use less concrete than previous designs in order to build it cheaply and quickly.
The concrete – which is textured by the imprints of wooden boards and is a popular aesthetic in Argentina – forms the roof, floor and interior walls of the single-storey house. Meanwhile, the exterior walls are made of wood, glass and a metal structure.
Vertical concrete fins between the roof and the floor bolster the wall structure, and extend out in front of large windows placed to make the most of forested views. Blackened pine wood clads the rear to provide privacy from neighbours.
The studio chose the darkened wood and bronze-coloured, anodised aluminium window frames to blend in with the surrounding young forest of acacia and maritime pine trees.
Paler wooden details feature inside, along with the exposed board-marked concrete walls.
“One of the objectives behind this choice was to create a chromatic contrast between the inside and the outside,” said the studio. “On the one hand, kiri wood was used for the former, and on the other, common pine wood treated with burnt oil was used for the latter.”
Equestrian House, named after a stable and two polo courses nearby, is set at the top of a shallow dune on the sandy site. Rather than levelling the area, the studio elevated the house on a concrete podium to create a flat base.
A ramped concrete pathway leads up the front side of the residence to the main entrance. The house has an L-shaped floor plan that wraps around a central outdoor space and terrace covered in wooden decking that is intended to darken as it weathers over time.
The layout divides the house into two wings, with one containing an open-plan lounge, kitchen and dining room. In this space, the dining table and kitchen counter are made out of smooth concrete.
A pair of chairs face a wood-burning stove built into a board-marked concrete volume at the other end of the room, which houses the bathroom inside.
The other wing contains the two children’s bedrooms and the master suite, with a second external terrace placed between.
A room for yoga, an en-suite bathroom, and a private deck are all contained within the couple’s bedroom. The wardrobe is made of concrete and features another wood-burning stove.
Photography is by Daniela Mac Adden.
Project credits:
Project manager: Belén Ferrand
Construction manager: Leandro Rossi, Dan Saragusti
Collaborators: Andrés Conde Blanco, Denise Andreoli
Text editing: Mariana Piqué
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