Hasta La Ideas

More than 800 buildings open up their doors for Open House London this weekend, including an assortment of unique houses and residential projects. Dezeen editor Amy Frearson reveals the 10 you should visit while you can, including a house with red metal walls and a micro flat.

Valetta House by Office S&M

Catrina Stewart and Hugh McEwen of Office S&M added a series of playful additions in their revamp of this Victorian house in Ealing.

As well as a loft extension featuring wooden shingles and yellow arched windows, it boasts a colour scheme that divides spaces for adults and children.

71 Valetta Road, W3 7TG

Garden House by Hayhurst & Co

A steeply stepped roof covered in over 800 plants is the highlight of this home and studio for Hackney-based leather-design duo Whitaker Malem.

Described by architects Jonathan Nicholls and Nick Hayhurst as a “hanging-basket roof”, this tiered structure comprises a pyramid-like tower of planters containing sedums and heathers.

27 Buckingham Road, N1 4DG

Sun Rain Rooms by Tonkin Liu

Winner of the latest Don’t Move, Improve! awards, this renovated Georgian townhouse in Clerkenwell is the home and workplace of architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu.

The house boasts a curvy new extension, with a concave, plant-covered roof on top and a shallow pool of water at its centre.

5 Wilmington Square, WC1X 0ES

Holland Park House by Architecture for London and Liddicoat & Goldhill

This property is located on Woodsford Square, the housing estate in Holland Park built by pioneering architects Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew in 1966.

A recent renovation has given the property a more open-plan layout and a rear extension, demonstrating the flexibility of the original design.

73 Woodsford Square, W14 8DS

Tin House by Henning Stummel Architects

Located in Shepherd’s Bush, the home of architect Henning Stummel consists of six small red buildings, each clad in red metal and organised around a simple courtyard.

Every block has different dimensions, but they are all topped with chimney-shaped skylights that direct daylight into the rooms within.

Smugglers Yard, Devonport Road, W12 8PB

15 Clerkenwell Close by Groupwork and Amin Taha

A contender in the housing category of Dezeen Awards, this seven-storey-high apartment block features a structural exoskeleton of raw quarried stone.

Each slab was carved by hand and they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

15A Clerkenwell Close, EC1R 0AA

Sunken Bath Project by Studio 304

This tiny house extension provides its owner with a sunken bathtub for Japanese-style bathing.

The 2017 winner of Don’t Move Improve, the project offers an alternative to the kitchen extension that is more typically added to London’s Victorian properties.

Ground Floor Flat, 33 Dunlace Road, E5 0NF

The Collective Old Oak

Cooperative housing models have been growing in popularity, with recent research showing that they can make city life more affordable and pleasurable. These developments offer residents a more sociable style of living, as well as access to facilities they might not otherwise have been able to afford.

As the largest co-housing development in the world, The Collective Old Oak shows what this style of living is really like.

Nash House, Old Oak Lane, NW10 6FF

Islington Micro Flat by CIAO

With a floor plan of just 35-square-metres, this small apartment demonstrates how you can make the most of space in your home.

CIAO director Diego Dalpra completely redesigned the interior, getting rid of the useless corridors and installing bespoke space-saving furniture, to make the space feel as big as possible.

Flat B, 23 Islington Park Street, N1 1QB

Red House by 31/44 Architects

This new addition to a terrace of houses in East Dulwich stands out from the rest, thanks to a bold facade of red bricks and sculptural tiles.

Inside, the open-plan living space is arranged around a lightwell filled with plants and a striking concrete fireplace.

37 St Aidans Road, SE22 0RN

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Chances are, the Perpetuum calendar’s jagged shape looks reminiscent of something but you can’t quite put your thumb on it. The design takes inspiration from the architecture that emerged during the industrial age, nodding to the “sawtooth” roofs of factories built in the 1920s and 30s.

The design also pays homage to the time with its construction method, in which a 3D-printed fabric base emulates the era’s move towards all things synthetic. This analog format encourages connection between object and user, requiring human interaction while simultaneously drawing our attention from the screen and into the physical world. Best of all, it won’t ever run out!

Designer: Alex Yonoh

Base is 3D printed in fabric-like plastic, with 14K gold-plated timepieces.

Mexican architect Abraham Cota Paredes has designed a warehouse-like pavilion for hosting events at a private residence on the outskirts of Guadalajara.

The local architect – founder of Cotaparedes Arquitectos – completed the contemporary white Pabellón Ávila, or Pavilion Ávila, on the expansive grounds of the house that is more traditional in appearance.

The new rectangular building is single-storey, but the space inside is double-height. Glass walls on its sides stretch up to the industrial-style roof, which is slightly pitched and supported by a series of trusses.

White corrugated metal tops the structure and is also visible from underneath. The roof spans the 4,305 square feet (400 square metres) of space intended for entertaining, which is open-plan aside from bathrooms and a kitchen at one end.

Steel, aluminium, brick and glass were all used to building the pavilion, providing a stark contrast to the original home.

As well as their industrial appearance, the materials were chosen to be as cost efficient as possible, and informed the modular design.

“The structure was modulated using the standard measurements of the materials to be used such as steel, aluminium, glass and sheet cover,” said Cotaparedes Arquitectos.

For air to easily circulate, gaps and operable windows run along the roofline, which also aid acoustics in the space.

This roof also projects five feet (1.5 metres) from the external walls to prevent heat gain inside and form covered patios around the perimeter.

The interior of Pabellón Ávila is intentionally bare, so its owners can arrange and decorate the venue in numerous ways. The space can accommodate up to 200 people.

All of the materials are white, inside and out, helping to draw attention to the natural, verdant surroundings of the property.

Cota Paredes typically works in a minimalist style, and has recently completed several projects in Guadalajara that demonstrate this. These include a stark white hair salon and a similarly austere two-storey residence with a courtyard.

The city has emerged as a hot-spot for young Mexican architects to experiment and test ideas, away from the more competitive capital Mexico City.

Photography is by Cesar Béjar.

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The new visual identity for Premier League football team Wolverhampton Wanderers, better known as Wolves, centres around a 3D version of its wolf badge.

Creative studio SomeOne created the new branding for the English football club, which is owned by Chinese organisation Fosun Group, to feature across its physical and online platforms.

As well as the 3D wolf, it features a vibrant yellow and black colour palette, and a typeface with tooth-like details.

Wolves were promoted to the Premier League last season following a six-year absence, after winning the Championship with a record number of points.

The brief given to SomeOne was to help “extend the brand” to appeal to a global audience, but to also respect the long history of the club, which was a founding member of the English Football League in 1888, and a champion in 1974 and 1980.

“Wolves are entering a new exciting era, both on and off the pitch – all under the leadership of the Fosun Group. This dynamic, exciting future needed to be re-positioned to fans through our narrative and identity,” said Russell Jones, head of marketing at Wolves.

“Whilst we had an existing brand style in place, we have been working closely with the team at SomeOne to re-define our messaging and produce a set of modern assets that have refreshed our brand,” he explained.

When designing the new brand identity, SomeOne knew not to touch the club’s “iconic” logo of a wolf’s head on a yellow hexagon with a black border. Instead, the designers used it as inspiration for a new three-dimensional brand property.

Influenced by Wolverhampton’s heritage of steel and ironmongering, the new imagery features a tonal illustration of a wolf’s head with triangular eyes, which looks as if it could be forged from metal.

“The depth of the three-dimensional wolf adds a dynamic, competitive spirit that can’t be reflected in flat vector forms,” said Simon Manchipp, founder of SomeOne.

Accompanying the imagery are two new sans-serif fonts, Wolves Display Cut and Wolves Display, which feature a “bold and condensed style”. The triangles of the wolf’s eyes were used to apply cuts and angles to the lettering.

The club’s original colour palette of orange and black was tweaked to a brighter shade of yellow. The phrase “wolf pack” is also made prominent throughout the brand identity.

According to Wolves, the rebrand has been “well received both internally and externally”.

“The strategy, values, and ethos encompass everything the club stands for, from its passion and progression to its consideration for heritage and engagement,” said SomeOne.

“By using the geometric forms of the eyes, we began removing cuts and angles from the letterforms. Moving forward, this allows the club to speak in a distinctive and ownable voice, without relying too heavily on the badge.”

Also this year, Leeds United Football Club revealed a new logo, only to withdraw it after complaints from fans led to more than 50,000 people signing a petition urging for it not to be used.

Footballer David Beckham has recently also revealed new crest designs for his new Miami football team named Internacional Club de Fútbol Miami, which features a round pink and black badge.

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Furniture maker Malgorzata Bany presents objects made from resin-based material Jesmonite in a London Design Festival exhibition at The New Craftsmen showroom in Mayfair.

Slade-trained maker Bany produces lighting and furniture using Jesmonite, a durable manmade material produced with a mineral base and water-based acrylic resin.

She is showing three side tables, a low table (she prefers the term to coffee table), a console table and two different types of lamp in two finishes.

These are complemented by a selection of accessories: bowls, platters and vases, in a natural-looking brown that resembles polished wood and plaster-toned beige.

The objects will are displayed throughout the festival as a curated room set, alongside Bany’s pick of items from The New Craftsmen’s collection.

The designer’s sensuous pieces have a plaster-like finish, but are stronger than works made in plaster and are cool to the touch like stone. The durable material can also be cast to resemble wood, stone or other materials.

Bany began working with jesmonite on the recommendation of her former tutor when a plaster piece broke.

“It looks similar but you can do so many more things with it. You can laminate it, it’s more flexible, it pigments very well. It’s better than plaster for many things,” she told Dezeen.

Bany’s relationship with The New Craftsmen – a retail space set up six years ago to nurture and promote British craft and its makers – began in 2015 when she first sold a collection of furniture through the Mayfair store.

“She applies the same consideration to simple domestic objects as she does to monumental sculptural furniture and, in doing so, creates moments of ritual and serenity in the everyday,” said Natalie Melton, co-founder of The New Craftsmen.

The designer has a manufacturer who helps her by making the larger pieces, but she makes the smaller accessories herself, as well as bespoke items.  For these, she carves the shape into rigid foam mould and then sands it and coats it, working into the negative space.

Once it’s cast, the mould is ripped apart to reveal the piece.

“Every piece is always going to be different. Because I’m not sculpting the object but rather the mould, it has to be very intuitive. It’s a bit of guesswork,” she said.

For this exhibition, she has created a new capsule collection of table lights in two organic shapes that resemble small hillocks, one rounded, the other flatter, which are paired with delicate tall paper shades. Thin metal stems connect the two.

Bany explains that she is most concerned with the volume of the finished object, with its function being a secondary concern that leads her to an interesting creative solution.

“If you consider that a table needs something flat, or a bowl needs something concave, starting from these principles you can build on top of that. Sometimes thinking this way around is more interesting,” she said.

“What I really care about is the volume, the weight of a thing, and that leads me. It might still end up as a table with four legs but the route is more interesting.”

Many makers will present work made in glass during the London Design Festival, including Ron Arad, Studio Sahil and Jana Němcová. The city-wide festival runs from 15 to 23 September, but the exhibition at The New Craftsmen will continue until 14 October.

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