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Footwear brand Birkenstock has worked with design studio Vinson & Co to create a showroom inside a grandiose Paris apartment, where shoes are displayed in living-room-style spaces.

Nestled amongst the high-end boutiques that line Paris’ Rue Saint Honoré, Birkenstock 1774 is a dedicated space for the brand to present special projects and collaborations.

It takes its name from the year that Birkenstock was founded in Germany.

The 170 square-metre showroom occupies a 19th-century apartment, complete with ornate panelled walls, stone fireplaces and wooden parquet floors.

London-based studio Vinson & Co – who were charged with developing the showroom’s interiors – allowed these features to serve as a backdrop to the brand’s shoes, simply adding a selection of new and vintage furnishings to complete the space.

“Birkenstock’s brief was to keep the showroom simple, full of light, neutral and with handmade finishes – they wanted a space that gives them flexibility,” Nick Vinson, founder of the studio, told Dezeen.

“I deliberately left the patina of age visible – to me these qualities are very consistent with a Birkenstock sandal, which age well.”

An oak table perched on a wheat-coloured woven rug now centres what would be the apartment’s living or dining room. Various models of shoe are displayed on chunky, four-legged stools dotted around the room’s perimeter.

A couple of pairs have also been placed intermittently on the dividers of a timber bookshelf by Italian designer Achille Castiglioni.

The illusion of extra space is created by a floor-to-ceiling mirrored volume.

Doors lead through to an adjacent room that has been dressed in much the same fashion, except here the central table is surrounded by worn leather chairs created by Italian architect Mario Bellini in the late 1970s.

A pair of Faye Toogood’s signature Roly-Poly fibreglass chairs also appear in this room, along with a wood-framed Chandigarh chair by Pierre Jeanneret that has a perforated cane back.

Even the apartment’s study has been used as a display area, where shoes are placed on cushioned bench seats by contemporary designer Simon Hasan.

Other than the vases and ceramic pots that line the home’s sideboards, decor is largely provided by a series of textile artworks by embroiderer Geraldine Larkin.

Each features abstract shapes made from jute and felt – a nod to the materials the brand uses for the soles and uppers of its footwear.

Birkenstock has previously collaborated with fashion designer Rick Owens to reimagine three of their classic sandal designs in unusual materials like calf hair and felt.

Back in 2017 the brand also forayed into furniture design by launching a line of beds that adapted the same comfort principles as its shoewear.

The post Birkenstock 1774 showroom occupies a classic Parisian apartment appeared first on Dezeen.

The Layover Travel Blanket($99+) is specifically for travelers, the Layover takes care of some of the headaches that come with the standard airplane issued blanket. Designed with the soul of a sleeping bag, this innovative blanket has incorporated a ton of clever features to keep you comfortable on the go, it is crafted with a breathable nylon exterior and an insulated interior, keeping you cozy and warm in those often-chilly flights. It features leg pockets at the lower part of the blanket with an insulated foot pouch to eliminate cold drafts, kangaroo pockets to keep your hands extra toasty, plus a storage pocket sized to hold small items like passports, smartphones, boarding passes, and the like…(Read…)

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Con Form Architects has converted a small London loft into a bright home office by inserting a glazed section with a large steel dormer window.

Called Domore – a portmanteaux of “dormer” and “more” – the loft conversion has turned a difficult, low-ceilinged space into a bright workspace for the client, who has started to work from home.

Con Form Archictects made a simple yet dramatic move of taking a large slice out of the back of the roof and infilling it with glazing, flooding the otherwise cramped attic space with light.

Rather than blending in with the surrounding roofs, the new dormer window has been placed atop this new glass roof section.

The dormer is wrapped in anthracite steel cladding, subtly marking it as distinct from the tiled roofs of the surrounding buildings.

“The large opening facilitates an intriguing, tactile relationship with the existing prominent brick chimney and parapet, typically confined to the otherwise distant world of roofscapes,” said the studio.

Continuing the existing stairwell, a compact folded steel staircase leads up to the new loft space, passing a small roof terrace accessible via a large rotating window.

For the study itself, areas of the existing brick wall and chimney have been left exposed, covered by a horizontal oak datum and shelving spaces, below which sit white wooden elements and a whitewashed floor.

A small bathroom has been squeezed in by stepping up the floor level, creating a distinction between the office area and a small, low-ceilinged space underneath a skylight.

“Domore proves that even in contentious locations, or tiny resultant spaces – more is possible,” said the studio.

Con Form Architects was established in 2017 by Ben Edgley and Eoin O’Leary. The practice has worked on several residential schemes in London, including a rear extension with criss-crossing steel beams at its centre.

Dormer windows offer a neat solution for loft conversions that are short on space. Konishi Gaffney added a zinc-clad dormer to create an extra bedroom for a house in Edinburgh, and Fujiwara Muro Architects used multiple dormers to make more space in a sloping house in Tokushima.

Photography is by Ståle Eriksen.

Project credits:

Architect: Con Form Architects
Structural engineer: Foster Structures
Party wall surveyor: Alexander Elliott
Flooring: Direct Wood Flooring

The post Con Form Architects opens up loft with a glass and steel dormer appeared first on Dezeen.

You don’t have to stand on one leg or bend over backwards to get that perfectly composed shot. If you’ve got a tripod and the FlexTILT Head 2, your camera can do the bending for you! Edelkrone’s FlexTILT Head 2 is a small intermediate connector that sits between your camera and your tripod, giving your camera the stability of three legs, and the flexibility of two knees.

It’s a simple idea with powerful applications, really. The FlexTILT Head 2 comes with a CNC machined aluminum body and friction hinges that allow you to position your camera in multiple ways. You can lift the camera up, set it down, face it at any angle without messing with your tripod’s settings, or even face it downwards. The FlexTILT Head 2 supports a load of up to 5 kilograms, allowing you to work even with those big, heavy lenses. The friction hinges only work when you operate them (much like a laptop’s screen), and there’s even a spirit level as well as an angle-adjuster so you can tilt and even rotate the camera with relative ease. Moreover, the FlexTILT Head 2 even lets you swap your camera’s batteries without needing you to unscrew it off the tripod.

The FlexTILT Head 2 sort of opens a wide variety of possibilities. It can be used independently, as a makeshift stand, on a tripod, or even with dolly-sliders too, and is compatible with practically every camera that uses the traditional threaded mounting system.

Designer: Edelkrone

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