Hasta La Ideas

Atelier Chang has designed a sequence of brightly coloured tents for the SJCC Glamping Resort to offer tourists a luxury camping experience on a cypress-covered mountain near the South Korean city of Suncheon.

The 16 brightly pods are oriented to enjoy views over the Suncheon Ecological Bay, which is located around 300 kilometres south of Seoul on the southern coast.

The glamping tents at the SJCC Glamping Resort are designed for would-be campers who want to be close – but not too close – to nature.

Plumbed and wired into the mains, tourist can enjoy cooking in their pods, as well as dining at an on-site restaurant.

“We wanted guests to feel as if they are living deep in the forest – directly in touch with the natural environment rather than being disconnected from it, as is the case with many ‘destination’ resorts,” said Soohyun Chang, the founder of London- and Zurich-based practice Atelier Chang.

A double layer of fuchsia, lime-green or pastel-blue fabric is stretched over steel frames to create the pods, making them insulated enough to be inhabited year round.

Temperatures in the region plummet to minus 15 degrees celsius in winter and soar to 40 degrees in summer, and the chamfered and curved forms of the structures are designed to help resist wind and snow loading.

Each pod is affixed to a wooden deck that is raised on piles above the terrain to minimise impact on the site.

Inside, the 50-square-metre floorplan has space for two beds in a mezzanine arrangement, as well as an open-plan lounge and kitchen, and a bathroom.

The clubhouse and restaurant makes use of the same steel and fabric construction techniques, and has a zig-zagged facade of white steel louvres that open onto a terrace facing down the mountainside.

The shell of each structure was completed for approximately £80,000, offering the client – the South Korean steel company Posco – a high return on nightly rates, which are aligned with four-star hotels in the nearby city.

Chang was already creating glamping tents when she was approached by the steel company to come up with designs for an alternative resort that would appeal to younger travellers.

“They wanted to do something that was a bit more alternative for the city of Suncheon,” Chang told Dezeen.

“Suncheon is a very beautiful city but they just don’t have enough accommodation for people to stay for a long time,” she continued.”They thought it would be a great idea to launch something that was an alternative resort.”

The popularity of glamping has been gathering momentum in recent years. Once the reserve of flush festival-goers, luxury camping has started to take root in the hospitality industry.

In 2014, ArchiWorkshop created a group of worm- and doughnut-shaped glamping tents for a remote campsite in Yang-Pyeong. Proving the success of its model, the South Korean practice went on to create another glamping site near Seoul just a couple of years later.

Chang now plans to bring her glamping model to the UK, where hoteliers like Soho House have already made successful forays into luxury rural retreats.

But she believes the lifespan of her glamping tents – up to fifty years with a fabric reskin every decade – could also find a spot in the housing market.

“I think housing is a great market for it,” Chang told Dezeen.”The lifestyle of ‘mini living’ is something valuable for us to take on as a permanent lifestyle, not just a temporary lifestyle.”

“For millennials like you and I, I think we would be willing to take a bit less space in our bedroom to get more space in our garden. It’s not about about having a house full of marble floors or golden faucets for us,” she continued.

Photography is by Kyungsub Shin.

Project credits:

Architecture: Atelier Chang
Team: Soohyun Chang, Carole Froidevaux, Jinman Choi, Ilia Varvaroussi
Client: Postmate/Posco (SJCCglamping)
Contractor: Mind Glamper
Structure design: KwangLim

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Students from ETH Zurich have pioneered a method of casting complex, one-off architectural structures from metal in 3D-printed moulds.

Deep Facade, a six-metre-high aluminium structure with ribbons of metal looped in an organic fashion that recalls the folds of the brain’s cerebral cortex, is the first metal facade cast in 3D-printed moulds.

The facade was created by masters students on the Architecture and Digital Fabrication course working with senior ETH Zurich senior researcher Mania Aghaei Meibodi, whose research explores how 3D printing can be used to create bespoke metal building elements.

Deep Facad follows on from another innovative work created by last year’s students – the Digital Metal Pavilion, which Aghaei Meibodi says was the first architectural structure of any kind to make use of 3D-printed moulds.

The use of 3D printing in this way is significant as it provides a quicker, more cost-effective way to manufacture complex forms for custom architecture.

“Cast metal parts have a long tradition in architecture due to their extraordinary structural properties and possible 3D form,” Aghaei Meibodi told Dezeen.

“Today the amount of manual labour involved, especially in the mould-making process makes them too expensive.”

“With our approach using 3D-printed moulds, we make it possible and affordable again to fabricate bespoke structural metal parts — parts with unseen richness of detail and geometric complexity,” she continued.

“This approach can unlock an entirely new vocabulary of shapes for metal structures in architecture, previously unavailable with traditional mould-making systems.”

The process works well in conjunction with the computational design method known as topology optimisation, where strong, stable structures are realised with the minimum amount of material.

“Computational techniques such as topology optimisation allow designers to design lightweight parts, but the parts optimised with this technique are often difficult to manufacture through traditional methods,” continued Aghaei Meibodi, who is the university’s chair of Digital Building Technologies.

“Our proposed fabrication approach doesn’t encounter the same limits as traditional manufacturing methods and can go further with shape optimisation thanks to the ability of 3D printing to print complex moulds that could be used to fabricate more efficient structures.”

While metal can be 3D-printed directly — steel has recently been 3D-printed into a bridge in Amsterdam by MX3D — it is only useful to do so in some cases. Otherwise, Aghaei Meibodi says the process can be expensive, and only applies to a limited range of printable metal, with limited material properties.

The Digital Building Technologies group instead 3D-printed moulds from sand and cast molten metal in the traditional way.

“In this synergy we benefit from the geometric freedom offered by 3D printing and the structural stability of cast metal,” said Aghaei Meibodi.

The Deep Facade is made of 26 articulated panels, combined into a structure that’s six metres high and four metres wide. Its ornamental design is produced by a differential growth algorithm, meaning it mimics the development of certain living organisms.

The design is meant to highlight the “liquidity and strength” of metal — some sections could not have been rendered in other traditional materials like sandstone or concrete as they would have been too fragile.

In contrast, the previous year’s Digital Metal Pavilion is a spindly aluminium space-frame structure composed of 240 non-repetitive joints. These joints took seven days to manufacture, a duration that Aghaei Meibodi says is 80 times faster than typical production processes for complex metal parts, and therefore much more cost-effective.

Aghaei Meibodi told Dezeen she would like to see her group’s process applied to a one-of-a-kind project on a large scale.

“With this new approach of casting metal, one can imagine a return of 3D detailing and 3D articulation, perhaps a fusing of ornament and structure,” she said.

“My dream application of it would be in the building envelope and interior structure of large spaces as large-span supporting structures.”

ETH Zurich is among many universities exploring new frontiers for 3D printing. Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Self-Assembly Lab revealed the first 3D-printed inflatable structure, which boasts an intricate geometry enabled by the group’s pioneering rapid liquid printing technique.

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Located in a shopping centre in Chengdu, China, this store Neri&Hu designed for Italian accessories brand Valextra, features hovering walls and a conical light funnel modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. 

To create the store the existing shopfront, which was designed to match its neighbours in the shopping centre, was demolished and replaced with an imposing solid wall of dark concrete that spans two stories.

A strip of glass runs around the bottom of the black wall, making it appear as if it is hovering above the ground.

Narrow vertical and horizontal windows are carved into the thick wall to provide glimpses of the store within, while a deep set arched entrance with a curved glass door detailed in brass and curved green tile is positioned off centre.

Inside, the 160-square-metre store is divided into two connected spaces: the library and the reading room.

Upon entering the store, the customer is welcomed into a circular library space lined with a grid of walnut shelving. The shelving, which displays the Italian accessories brand’s spotlit merchandise, is backed by walnut baton screens that are suspended from the ceiling.

Like a library, ladders are used to access the merchandise placed on the upper shelves.

Reclaimed grey bricks are laid on the floor, sliced and twisted in a circular motion, reflecting the deep conical light funnel in the ceiling above – a design element that Neri&Hu said was used to recall the oculus of the Pantheon in Rome.

Lit like a museum, the space uses both artificial spotlighting and natural light, which penetrates the space from the deep façade windows. At the centre of the library the grey brick rises from the floor plane to meet a slab of solid white marble that forms a display table.

Through the library screen, customers enter the rectilinear reading room, which is clad in vertically placed rectangular bright green tiles. The tiles’ curved glazed surface create a reflective undulating effect that the designers said adds “texture and depth”.

Here, Valextra’s most exclusive products are presented on a monolithic table made up of layers of reclaimed grey brick, white porcelain tile, green fabric and solid reclaimed wood.

The Italian brand is well versed in working with renowned design studios and artists on its store interiors and displays.

Last year during Milan design week, to mark its 80th anniversary, Valextra unveiled a pop-up store filled with clouds of folded fabric created by New York studio Snarkitecture.

Photography is by Pedro Pegenaute.

Project credits:

Architecture and interior design: Neri&Hu Design and Research Office
Design team: Lyndon Neri & Rossana Hu (founding partners, principal in charge), Federico Saralvo (senior associate), Jacqueline G. Min (associate), Alfie Huang, Callum Holgate, Nicolas Fardet (associate, product design)

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The Morpheus Hotel by Zaha Hadid Architects, which has the “world’s first free-form high-rise exoskeleton”, and the set designs for Björk’s Utopia tour feature in the latest edition of our newsletter Dezeen Weekly. Subscribe to Dezeen Weekly ›

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British architect David Adjaye has spoken about the design decisions behind his textured concrete skyscraper for Manhattan, as more details and renderings of the project are released.

Located at 130 William Street, the residential tower will feature facades textured with lumpy hand-cast concrete all the way up to its peak.

This will make the high-rise perfect for drone photography – which could capture close-up images of the material even close to the top – and for avian wildlife to cling to, according to the architect.

“The building all the way to the top is going to be great for drones and birds,” Adjaye told a group of journalists during the opening of a sales gallery for the project at 19 Beekman Street, on 18 June 2018.

Shown in a 1:1 model of the building’s concrete exterior mounted on the wall of the gallery – just a few blocks from where the 66-storey high-rise will be built – the lumpy form of the concrete facade will cast darker shadows across the grey surface.

But Adjaye intends the nubbly surface for his first New York skyscraper to only be revealed on closer inspection.

“I call it a lava stone texture – almost like a molten material that’s just frozen,” he said. “I really wanted the reveal to have this texture where you saw the crystalline nature of the aggregates.”

“I’m always talking about the weight of material that they’re gravity based things, we tend to panelise everything and turn them into flat surfaces,” said the architect. “What I didn’t want is it to just be flat.”

By choosing this facade treatment for the skyscraper, Adjaye is among several architects ditching “default” glass facades for their towers in New York.

He hopes the exterior will provide a complementary, contemporary addition to the surrounding historic, brick commercial buildings in the city’s Financial District.

“I wanted something that would be part of this collection of high-rise buildings here but be very distinct in its own right,” he said. “It’s very much a 21st-century building.”

At the event, hosted by the project’s developer Lightstone, Adjaye also presented new exterior and interior renderings, maquettes of the tower, and a model apartment with an open-plan kitchen, living and dining room, and a bathroom.

130 William’s arched openings form a key structural component of the facades’ stacked composition, which will cause the skyscraper to gradually taper inwards and created channels for collecting rainwater.

This stacked “motif” will continue through the interiors of the building, for elements including a cantilevered reception desk. Adjaye describes this as one of many technically difficult but apparently “simple gestures” inside.

“I like to make things seem effortless, even though they are not,” he said.

Renderings also reveal designs for a host of amenities – from a children’s play area designed for different activities and a “religious” basketball court with clerestory windows, to a dark cavernous swimming pool that appears to be in the basement but is actually “in the sky”.

The dark palette in the pool matches a mock-up of one of the 244 luxury condominiums inside the building. Standout features include a bathroom lined with serrated, monochrome marble tiles.

Adjaye – who is a keynote speaker at the AIA Conference on Architecture in New York today, 21 June 2018 – gained his fame in the US for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.

His firm, which has offices in New York and London, recently completed a spy museum in New York and is working on a number of projects across America – from a library and events complex in Florida to a concrete art museum in Texas.

Renderings are by Binyan, courtesy of Lighthouse.

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