Architects Heatherwick Studio and Kohn Pedersen Fox have been appointed to design a new wing at Singapore‘s Changi Airport, which will aim to challenge the “sterility and soullessness” of terminal design.
The new terminal will add a passenger capacity of 50 million to one of the busiest airports in the world. There are no renders of the project available yet, but the architects have promised to shake up traditional airport design.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity to break away from the sterility and soullessness we’ve come to expect from typical airport environments,” said Thomas Heatherwick, founder of Heatherwick Studio.
“We’re excited to treat this next phase of Changi as a new piece of city and bring together the rigour of airport planning with an uncompromising interest in the quality of human experience for passengers,” he added.
Moshe Safdie is also building an extension to Changi
Work is already underway at the airport on Moshe Safdie’s 134,000-square-metre extension, which also aims to “reinvent what airports are all about”. The Jewel Changi Airport will feature a giant greenhouse dome with a 40-metre-high waterfall pouring down through the centre.
Stuart Wood, group leader at Heatherwick Studio, said its Changi Terminal Five project would be “the most challenging opportunity” ever undertaken by the architecture practice.
“The scale and ambition of this project is unprecedented,” said Wood.
Aim is to make Terminal Five “homely”
“Our hope is to make Terminal Five the most homely and at the same time spectacular airport in the world for many years to come,” he added.
His studio and KPF will work with Architects 61 on this project. Design consultants on the project include James Corner Field Operations, The Fountain Workshop, Speirs + Major, Lichtvision Design, and Bruce Mau Design with Entro.
Arup, Motts McDonald and Surbana Jurong will be the engineering team leads.
SP-Arte may be best known as Brazil‘s leading art fair, but it also provides a platform for young designers. Contributor Benoit Loiseau selects his highlights of the ones to watch at this year’s event.
Every April, the international art world flocks to São Paulo for SP-Arte.
But at this year’s festival, which takes place from 11 to 15 April at the city’s the Bienal Pavilion, a number of emerging Brazilian designers and studios presented new collections.
From the range of different furniture and product designs on show, we’ve rounded up five studios to keep an eye on:
When she created the Lixo series, which translates to “garbage” in Portuguese, São Paulo-based designer Bianca Barbato considered the lack of recycling policies in the Brazilian capital. Her response is a set of five, limited-edition playful table lamps, cast in brass from moulds made using discarded plastic bottles and cartons.
Founded in 2014, RAIN is a São Paulo-based design duo comprising architect Ricardo Innecco and product designer Mariana Ramos. At SP-Arte, they presented a number of recent design objects and sculptures, but the highlight was their Swimming Pool tables.
As the name suggests, the curved coffee tables are shaped like a swimming pool, designed to evoke a sense of nostalgia and leisure. They are made in powder coated-steel with a painted glass top, and the miniature ladder can be placed in different positions.
Humberto da Mata is probably best known for his extravagant stools and benches, but the young Brazilian designer and architect presented a ceramics collection at this year’s edition of SP-Arte.
Titled Morphus, the series of six, hand-made vases explores the possibilities of lathe technique combined with different types of patterned glazes.
Based in Belo Horizonte, Alva Design was founded four years ago by artist Susana Bastos and architect Marcelo Alvarenga. For this collection of stools, the duo expanded their existing Bench Gui series, producing new pieces in four different sizes.
The wooden frames are built from jequitiba — a popular wood in Central and South America, also known as “royal mahogany” — while the seats are made of leather, suede and plastic.
Noemi Saga’s Nuno Lamp merges Japanese design techniques with Brazilian materials. Influenced both by Japanese origami and Brazil’s legacy of brutalist architecture, this 80-centimetre-long pine lamp is finished using a treatment inspired by Shou Sugi Ban — an ancient Japanese technique that involves charring a wood surface to render it a deep charcoal-black.
Boogertman + Partners, Africa’s largest architecture practice, has promised to tackle its gender pay gap in response to Dezeen’s Move the Needle initiative.
The South African studio made the commitment after using Dezeen’s simple calculator, which showed that it pays women 19 per cent less per hour than male employees.
“Boogertman + Partners saw Move the Needle not only as an opportunity to publicly commit to change as an industry leader, but also as a chance to bring local challenges to the ongoing debate on a global level,” the firm wrote in a statement.
The firm, which employs 96 registered architects among a staff of 260, is the latest to commit to change following Dezeen’s initiative, which highlighted gender imbalance in firms as well as among conference speakers, on awards juries and recipients of major industry honours.
Leading conferences and architects commit to change
Last month architect Foster + Partners committed to improve equality in the light of our initiative, while three of the world’s largest architecture firms – AECOM, IBI Group and HOK – all contacted Dezeen with commitments to improving gender diversity. Dozens more organisations have written to Dezeen expressing support and committing to make changes.
Boogertman + Partners and Populous redesigned Soccer City for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa
“Boogertman + Partners hopes that by taking up Dezeen’s challenge and publicising its score on Move the Needle’s online calculator, it will help lead the way and affect a broader change in the fields of architecture and design in South Africa and Africa,” said Boogertman + Partners director Bob van Bebber.
Gender pay gap reporting “best starting point” to address problem
The firm said that it was surprised by its gender pay gap, particularly as it last year launched “a comprehensive exercise to assess levels of equality in the company” and embarked on a process of transformation to redress imbalances”.
“Measuring the gender pay gap provides a transparent mechanism for benchmarking gender imbalances that go beyond tokenism,” Van Bebber, added. “It is the best starting point to begin addressing the problem proactively and consistently.”
$(“#genderPayGapButton”).click(function() { var male_salaries = $(“#male_salaries”).val().replace(/,/g,””); var female_salaries = $(“#female_salaries”).val().replace(/,/g,””); var male_employees = $(“#male_employees”).val(); var female_employees = $(“#female_employees”).val();
if (male_salaries != “” && female_salaries != “” && male_employees != “” && female_employees != “”) { var male_mean = male_salaries/male_employees; var female_mean = female_salaries/female_employees;
if (male_mean > female_mean) { var diff = (female_mean*100)/male_mean; diff = 100-diff; var result = diff.toFixed(2); $(“#genderPayGapResult”).html(“Gender pay gap = “+result+”%”); } else if (female_mean > male_mean) { var diff = (male_mean*100)/female_mean; diff = 100-diff; var result = diff.toFixed(2); $(“#genderPayGapResult”).html(“Gender pay gap = -“+result+”%”); } else { var result = 0; $(“#genderPayGapResult”).html(“Wow! No gender pay gap.”); }
} else { alert(“All fields are required.”); } });
});
Dezeen created its gender pay gap calculator (above) to give firms a rough-and-ready way of establishing whether they pay men and women the same rates. It was published to coincide with new laws in the UK requiring all firms with over 250 employees to publish pay gap figures each year.
Dezeen’s Move the Needle initiative was launched five months after we published a survey revealing “shocking” levels of gender inequality at major architecture firms. Women occupy just 10 per cent of the highest-ranking jobs at the world’s 100 biggest architecture firms, while 16 companies have no women at all in senior positions, the survey found.
Dezeen’s Move the Needle initiative was launched to improve gender equality in architecture and design. Illustration by Kiki Ljung
Boogertman + Partners acknowledged that while male and female employees are paid the same for equivalent roles, the firm had to go further to tackle gender imbalance.
“The result of our engagement with Move the Needle made it clear to us that the real issue we face is not an equal pay issue, because hour for hour, men and women receive equal pay at Boogertman + Partners, but an issue of transformation at all levels,” said Van Bebber.
“In our own journey of transformation, we believe that real, meaningful change must go deeper.”
To achieve this aim Boogertman + Partners has mentorship programmes and trying to address the reason women often do not reach senior levels – its Johannesburg office, for example, has a dedicated childcare facility.
Boogertman + Partners’ Wangari Mutha Maathai House in Nairobi won an award at WAF in 2016
Established in 1982 Boogertman + Partners has offices in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban and Nairobi in Kenya. This year the practice was listed on architecture magazine Building Design’s World Architecture 100 list of the world’s largest firms for the first time – the only African practice on the list.
The firm has designed projects across Africa and the Middle East including the redesign of Soccer City stadium, which hosted the final of the 2010 World Cup, completed with Populous when the studio was known as Boogertman Urban Edge + Partners. In 2016 the studio’s Wangari Mutha Maathai House in Nairobi was named best future cultural project at the WAF Awards in 2016.
Images courtesy of Boogertman + Partners unless stated.
Dezeen is media partner for this year’s lecture, a prestigious series that has previously featured architects including Alvaro Siza, Peter Zumthor, Wang Shu and Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi.
Farrell and McNamara will use their lecture to explore “freespace”. They define this as a “generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity, something that is at the core of architecture’s agenda, focusing on the quality of space itself”.
In 2016, the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded its inaugural RIBA International Prize to the practice’s concrete university campus in Peru. Photograph is by Iwan Baan
The pair founded their practice Grafton Architects in Dublin in 1978. They have built extensively in Ireland but in recent years commissions have taken their work further afield.
The studio received the RIAI Triennial Gold Medal for Architecture 2007-2009 for its Universita Luigi Bocconi in Milan
Farrell and McNamara have also held numerous teaching positions. They have taught at the University College of Dublin for over forty years, and are currently professors the Accademia di Architettura of Mendrisio.
The Royal Academy’s annual architecture lecture coincides with the institution’s Summer Exhibition – one of the biggest events in the UK’s art and design calendar. The ticket price for the lecture includes a drinks reception and access to the show.
Disneyâ¢Pixar just released the first full-length trailer for Incredibles 2, the upcoming 2018 sequel to 2004’s The Incredibles. Incredibles 2 hits theaters on June 15th, 2018.”Everyoneâs favorite family of superheroes is back in âIncredibles 2â â but this time Helen (voice of Holly Hunter) is in the spotlight, leaving Bob (voice of Craig T. Nelson) at home with Violet (voice of Sarah Vowell) and Dash (voice of Huck Milner) to navigate the day-to-day heroics of ânormalâ life. Itâs a tough transition for everyone, made tougher by the fact that the family is still unaware of baby Jack-Jackâs emerging superpowers. When a new villain hatches a brilliant and dangerous plot, the family and Frozone (voice of Samuel L. Jackson) must find a way to work together againâwhich is easier said than done, even when theyâre all Incredible.”..(Read…)
The guys at XD Design have a reputation of building some of the most criminal-confusing bags. Their bags are designed to cater to the user’s style statement and safety equally. These bags are not only beautiful to look at, they’re bafflingly difficult to get into, without the consent of the owner. The original Bobby backpack’s design sought to make the bag impenetrable by pushing the zipper closer to the wearer, making it difficult to access if someone was wearing the bag. The revised version, titled the Bobby Urban, puts the zipper in an even more confounding position, and secures the bag’s contents in a cut-proof fabric.
Committed to their motto of making the world’s most theft-resistant bags, the Bobby Urban comes with a concealed zipper, further made safer by a steel reinforced combination lock. The bag comes with a roll-top design that not only hides the zipper, it also allows you to control the bag’s inner capacity by determining how much you roll the top. Once the zipper is secure, snap shut the combination lock for added protection. Aside from providing a second layer of security, the combination lock can even be used to fasten the bag to an immovable object like a bench or a lamppost as you would with a bicycle. With the zip inaccessible, the lock unbreakable, and the fabric un-rippable, the only conceivable way to break into the bag would be with the aid of heavy machinery.
The Bobby Urban’s roll-top design gives it a whopping 27 liters of capacity when unrolled, making it perfect for everything from your everyday commute to long travels, allowing you to increase or decrease the bag’s size depending on need. A compartmentalized interior allows you to segregate items, while any extra/bulky items can be tethered to the outside using the additional netting provided. Looking at the term theft through a much wider lens, not only is the bag physically impenetrable, it even comes with an RFID secure pocket too, deterring digital theft as well.
With its signature combination of style, storage, and security (not necessarily in that order), the Bobby Urban may just literally be the most theft-proof backpack in the consumer market. Every single day, 400,000 incidents of pickpocketing occur worldwide. This backpack remains committed to making sure you’re never a part of that statistic!
Voici ces incroyables photographies de la vie dans la savane par Andre Liebenberg, qui a commencé sa carrière en étudiant l’environnement alors qu’il vivait dans le Kruger National Park en Afrique du Sud depuis trois ans. Pendant ce temps, il est devenu guide touristique, et finalement photographe, affichant un talent indéniable pour capturer la beauté de la faune du parc ainsi que le paysage magnifique de sa region. Plus de son travail sur Behance et 500px, et suivez-le sur Instagram.
The function of a doorway is to allow people to pass through a wall.
The function of a door is to seal that aperture, providing visual and sonic privacy, protection from the elements and denying access to people who are not supposed to pass through that wall.
Given those truths saloon doors, of the sort seen in every Western movie, make little sense. Yet we know they existed thanks to not just Hollywood, whose depictions can be suspect, but the actual architectural record. The question is, what was their purpose?
Incredibly dumb and obviously specious theories abound on the internet, and with no Saloon Door Authority to set the record straight, all we can do is use our observation skills as designers to deduce their intended function.
Saloon doors, also known as batwing doors, can be paneled, louvered or planked. But regardless of their construction they consistently have two defining physical characteristics:
1) They do not extend all the way to the floor nor the top of the doorjamb, but instead block the doorway at roughly torso height.
2) They feature bi-directional hinges.
Let’s look at characteristic #1 first, and what that says about the door’s function. Since they do not seal the doorway, they provide little protection from the elements and are unsuitable for denying access. (Saloons were locked at closing time by an additional set of outer, shutter-like doors.)
What they do provide, most obviously, is a modest visual barrier. Nineteenth-century saloons were places for men to consume alcohol, gamble and hire prostitutes, all pursuits that were at odds with religious and temperance movements of the time. We can conclude that barring passersby from getting an unwelcome eyeful of these sins–while still allowing the sound to pass through, to tempt the intemperate–was one goal of saloon doors.
Why not, then, just have a full door? One explanation might be to save on materials, but that seems untrue; if the sole purpose of the door is to block the view, the outer doors would simply be used and no saloon doors would be installed at all.
I think the explanation lies with characteristic #2.
Saloon doors feature bi-directional hinges and no door handle–as do the doors to the kitchen of every restaurant I’ve ever worked in. The purpose of a door with a bi-directional hinge is to allow people whose hands are encumbered to easily pass through them, regardless of whether they’re going in or out. If the door is reduced in surface area and split vertically in half, therefore greatly reducing the weight, it makes it even easier to push through.
Coupled with a need to provide a visual barrier to licentiousness, if we think of a saloon needing to be regularly restocked by someone carrying crates of bottles in and out, and patronized by cowboys who might prefer to carry their gear inside rather than leave it sitting outside on a horse without an alarm system, then saloon doors make good sense. I believe these were an early stab at UX.
This is one of those objects that I find beautiful in one configuration, yet ugly in another. While beauty is a subjective thing, I wanted to go over the object with you and see if we can come to some agreement about universal aesthetics (if such a thing exists).
Here’s the object in question. It’s a jewelry box, and according to the manufacturer it’s an old design that they discovered in a Spanish furniture maker’s archives and put back into production.
I think it looks great when it’s open.
I particularly like the way that they’ve sculpted the side wings.
The problems begin for me when it’s all closed up, which is presumably the configuration it would most often be seen in.
1. I appreciate that this is built primarily out of solid wood (except for the bottoms of the drawers, which the manufacturer says is made out of plywood), but:
I find the discontinuity of the grain (pieces A thru E), particularly the change in color tones, jarring. Obviously this will differ in each one they produce, but the fact that this is the one they chose to photograph tells me color matching is not a priority.
2. I would prefer that the front face of this be all surface F, so that we are not sending endgrain G. I realize that G is left exposed and protruding in order to provide finger purchase to open it, and I typically prize function over aesthetics, but not in this case. To me, curves H and I deserve not to be broken by the seams there. I might have reduced the lid protrusion to a narrower fingerhold that sets into a slot, rather than having the entire width of the lid exposed like that.
3. I find the difference in grain between surfaces F and J jarring as well. I realize there is no practical way to cut F and J from the same board, but I might have gone with a markedly different, complementary tone between the two rather than have them so close in tone that you notice the difference in grain.
4. I could take or leave this rise, K. I think it breaks the line of that “headboard” unpleasantly, but I can see how some people would like it.
All of this criticism aside, I am glad that they did go to the trouble to make it from solid wood, as problems 1 and 3 could easily have been solved with veneer-over-plywood, which I am really growing to hate.
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