Hasta La Ideas

Fumihiko Sano Studio has created a cafe and shop for San Francisco chocolatier Dandelion Chocolate, which occupies a century-old house in Kyoto, Japan.

Dandelion Chocolate is a small-batch bean-to-bar craft chocolate maker from San Francisco that has cafes dotted across the US and Japan.

The brand’s latest Kyoto branch is located on a quiet street in the city’s Ichinenzaka neighbourhood.

Shortlisted in the restaurant and bar category of the 2019 Dezeen Awards, the 200-square-metre cafe is arranged over two floors of a 100-year-old timber-framed house.

It comprises a cacao bar where customers can order pairings of alcohol with chocolate desserts, a shop and a traditional Japanese courtyard garden.

The self-titled studio of Tokyo architect Fumihiko Sano, which was charged with developing the cafe’s interiors, opted to use cedarwood as the main material for the project.

“Considering the parallels between craft chocolate and cedar, both require authentic craftsmanship and carefully selected natural ingredients – so I made the decision to place cedar at the centre of materials used for this project,” said Sano, who began his career as a Sukiya-Daiku – a carpenter for traditional teahouses.

“Cedarwood is also one of the main materials of Japanese architecture.”

The interior of the building was completely renovated years ago, making it impossible for the studio to know exactly what it would have originally looked like. However, Sano’s redesign features the building’s original exposed beams and columns.

“My plan was to revive the atmosphere of the traditional Kyoto to which this building used to belong, while at the same time creating a casual, open space reminiscent of San Francisco, where this brand was born,” he said.

“The interior needed to be recreated as if it had never gone.”

Customers enter the cafe via the shop space, walking past a coffee bar through to a foliage-filled courtyard wrapped with tall panels of glazing. A corridor leads from here to the cacao bar that’s situated at the rear of the store.

Here staff serve chocolate dessert and drink pairings from a counter lined with vertical planks of 700 – 900 millimetre-wide Yoshino cedarwood.

A wide staircase nearby takes customers up to the first floor where more seating is located.

“The store is designed to make you feel you are in a dynamic open space,” said Sano. “The floor plan is laid out to give reinforcement to the building where needed..”

“It is my pleasure to give a new purpose to a building that has stood there for more than one hundred years. May it thrive for another hundred, full of new memories.”

Fumihiko Sano Studio has previously an installation made up of Muji shelving units and a wood-lined members club in Paris.

Other sweet-treat stores include Mast Brothers in New York, which features stripped-back interiors that allow visitors to view the chocolate-making process and Glace et Chocolat in Tokyo, which boasts stacked-soil walls that resemble layers of cake.

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American architect David Rockwell has designed a collection of more sustainable office furniture for Benchmark that draws on the adaptability of his theatre set design.

Rockwell Group designed the Sage Collection for furniture manufacturer Benchmark to comprises workspace furnishings like sofas, benches, storage units and movable desks all constructed with sustainable materials.

The New York firm, which has designed sets for Broadway plays, approached the collection’s design with a similar mindset to create pieces that are flexible, but that also promote wellbeing. Several of the furnishings can be transformed and customised to suit multiple functions and environments.

“It’s similar to set design; you need to create the right pieces for the actors to manipulate and advance the storyline,” Rockwell told Dezeen. “Adaptability, privacy, and wellness are key to establishing a sense of wellbeing in your personal space.”

Sage Collection is designed to align with environmental and sustainability standards set forth by WELL and Declare.

WELL is a certification that credits buildings enhancing the health of their inhabitants, while Declare is an initiative that was launched earlier this year by the International Living Furniture Institute. It calls for material transparency, so consumers know where parts are sourced from, where the product was manufactured, and its expected lifetime and recyclability.

All of the materials and finishes in the Sage Collection, which include, walnut, sycamore, oak, wool and copper, are natural and non-toxic. Upholstery on the sofas, lounges and benches is filled with coir, latex, sheep wool and recycled cotton, rather than plastic foam.

“This overcomes the significant environmental concerns surrounding the disposal of plastic foam in landfill as well as eliminating the need for toxic, fire-retardant chemicals,” the studio said.

Among the collection is the Sage Sofa which comes in two heights. One features an extended wooden back that curves around the upholstered base to allow for separation and privacy from surroundings.

The Sit-Stand Desk and Workbench is modelled after the craftsmanship of a classic drafting desk, and combines contemporary technology and timeless design. At the touch of a button the height of both can be lengthened, allowing users to work on their feet.

A rounded panel, made with wool felt and cork, extend up from the desks to act as a functional space divider.

Other pieces in the collection include circular oak and sycamore side tables, upholstered benches that can include a wood backrest, dining tables with rounded or rectangular edges and patinated copper details that can also double as adjustable height meeting surfaces and a sideboard that serves as both a divider and storage unit.

Founded in 1984, Rockwell Group has completed a variety of projects across the fields of architecture and design – including a plywood stage for Diller Renfro + Scofidio’s The Shed, furniture for Chinese brand Stellar Works and interiors for hotels including Moxy Chelsea.

Benchmark was founded by Terrance Conran and Sean Sutcliffe over 30 years ago it brings sustainable and innovative technology to all of its products. The Sage Collection, which launched this week at London trade event 100% Design, follows other collaborations with architectures including Foster + Partners.

Photography is by Petr Krejci.

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Le photographe Carlos Jimenez Varela combine des images libres de droits et ses compétences en Photoshop pour créer des scènes surréalistes d’animaux sauvages errant dans les rues de la ville. Varela a joué avec l’ampleur et la proportion de chaque animal par rapport à l’architecture, ce qui a conduit des pandas de la taille d’un King Kong à s’enlacer contre les murs des bâtiments ou de gigantesques escargots à glisser le long de la route. Pour donner au projet une esthétique cyberpunk, l’artiste a baigné chaque scène de la lueur des néons. Plus d’informations sur le site Web de Varela, Behance et Instagram.

There’s a lot more to sound design than special effects, says Yuri Suzuki. The London-based designer talks Dezeen through seven projects that show how he is using design to improve our relationship with noise.

Born in Japan, Suzuki trained as a designer rather than as a musician. He is now a partner at major design agency Pentagram, working on installation, interaction and product design, and also sidelines as a DJ.

Suzuki’s work explores how the world of sound can be made more tangible, through its relationship with objects and technology.

“So much sound is not well designed”

“My definition of sound design really comes from the perspective of a designer, thinking about how we can design the sound of our environment,” he told Dezeen.

“So much sound in our surroundings is not well designed, like in public transport for instance,” he explained. “I want people to know that product design can offer an answer.”

First sound designer at Design Museum

From now until January 2020, Suzuki is presenting some of his “strange and fun” projects at the Design Museum in London, alongside the installation Sound in Mind, for which he has installed a network of listening tubes in the building’s main atrium.

He is the first sound designer ever to exhibit at the museum. But he hopes to inspire more people to work in the field.

“Music and sound can really help in communication,” said the designer, “and physicality can really emphasise the presence of the sound.”

Here are seven projects that Suzuki is particularly proud of:

Acoustic Pavilion/Sound in Mind

The first iteration of Sound in Mind was created inside the Le Corbusier-designed Saint-Pierre church in Firminy, France in 2015. Visitors were invited to piece together tubes, to make listening devices in varying shapes and sizes.

Different shapes created different sound effects. “This project was about the participation of people, building their own sculptures” said Suzuki.

At the Design Museum, the structure has been designed to climb up a staircase in the atrium.

Sonic Playground

Following on from the Acoustic Pavilion, the Sonic Playground was a series of sculptural horns installed outside the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2018. They were designed to encourage interaction between strangers.

A person might scream or shout at one end, while another person might stick their head inside the tube at the other end to hear the result. Different distortion effects were applied, and the sounds came out of different places, so the result was often surprising.

“I wanted to make a moment for communication with somebody else,” said Suzuki.

OTOTO

OTOTO is an electronic device that allows you to turn any object into a musical instrument. Colourful crocodile clips connect anything – from a solid object to a liquid – to a synthesiser, then any touch will cause the device to make a sound.

It is also possible to change the type of sound each object makes.

The project stemmed from Suzuki’s own frustrations trying to understand computer programming. He wanted to make it easy for everyone, regardless of their experience, to make electronic music.

“When I was child, I was always making my own electronic musical instruments, but you need to have programming and physical computing knowledge, so it was really hard for me to build anything,” said the designer.

“There are plenty of people who have no idea how to make an electronic project, but those kind of people could still have really amazing ideas for how a music interface should be.”

Colour Chaser

This is another toy-like project that Suzuki developed in response to his own struggles making music. Being dyslexic, one of the biggest obstacles for him was being unable to read musical scores.

The Colour Chaser was born out of the desire to create a type of musical notation that could be drawn by anyone. A robot follows lines drawn in felt-tip pen, and when it passes over a colour, it plays a corresponding sound.

“I wanted to create a new kind of musical notation that would allow more visual people to understand how sound works,” said Suzuki.

Amateur Music Production

This project, which Suzuki created in collaboration with Jerszy Seymour, considers how the rise of digital music means that analogue mediums, like the CD or cassette tape, will soon be little more than a memory.

The pair developed a primitive stamping device to allow people to make their own vinyl records, as records of their digital purchases.

“Records are really difficult to copy, so records keep their value in their physicality,” said Suzuki. “It made me think about how we could create records in a craft way.”

Tube Map Radio

Suzuki created this radio, which takes the form of the London Underground map, for the Design Museum’s Designers in Residence programme back in 2012. Every component has a reference, for instance the battery sits in the location of Battersea Power Station and a speaker can be found on Speaker’s Corner.

The idea was to make it easy for people to understand how the circuit works and how to fix it if necessary. It was a reaction against today’s consumer culture, where it is often easy to replace rather than repair.

“I created this circuit board design to help people visually understand what’s happening with the electronics,” said Suzuki.

“From commuting, you know each Tube line really well already. So we actually linked the component functions to stations.”

Sound Taxi

This installation from 2012 saw Suzuki transform a typical London taxi into a sound machine. Covered in speakers and microphones, the car recorded the sounds of the city and transformed them into music.

“As we walk down the street, it is really provocative in way, because people treat us with noise that is not music at all,” said Suzuki.

“By driving this car, the street can have a totally different music composition. We translate the street noise into something else.”

The post Yuri Suzuki shows the fun side of sound design in seven offbeat projects appeared first on Dezeen.

The Bio-Integrated Design Lab at the Bartlett School of Architecture has created a modular system of tiles inlaid with algae that can filter toxic chemical dyes and heavy metals out of water.

Called Indus, the tiles are on display in the UK for the first time as part of the London Design Festival. They are designed to be built on site in areas with contaminated water sources, where artisans can pour water over the tiles to purify it.

Each tile is made simply by pressing clay – or a similar low-cost, local material – into fan-shaped moulds with a series of “vein-like channels”.

These mimic the structure of leaves and their ability to distribute water evenly to every part of a plant.

The ravines are then filled with micro-algae which are suspended within the “biological scaffold” of a seaweed-derived hydrogel. This keeps the algae alive while also being completely recyclable and biodegradable.

“The materials required to prepare the hydrogel along with the algae cells can be supplied in powdered form,” explained the project’s lead, Bartlett PhD student Shneel Malik.

“Much like cooking, you can add just the right amount of powder to water in order to prepare the hydrogel for application to the tiles.”

Once filled, the tiles are assembled into a wall and water is poured into the system through inlets at the top. It trickles through the tile channels and is collected at the bottom.

As it flows over the channels, the water is subject to a process called bioremediation, in which microorganisms such as algae or fungi are used to consume and break down pollutants in the environment.

This is a symbiotic relationship, explained Malik: “The algae produce a set of compounds called phytochelatins, which enable them to capture these metals, without which they would be unable to grow.”

The compounds remove the pollutants from the water and deposit them within the cell of the algae, where they are stored.

“At some point, the hydrogel will become saturated and will need to be replaced,” she told Dezeen. “The exact timing depends on the amount of pollutants in the water, but we have made several formulations that are stable for months.”

Once they are saturated, the algae can be replaced with a fresh batch. The base tiles, however, can be continually reused and re-filled.

Each modular tile unit is attached to the next through half-lap joints, and so can be individually removed without taking apart the entire system. This is crucial, as it allows for easy maintenance and adaptation to the constraints of the local built environment.

The particular size of the tile wall can be customised to suit the available space and the distance the water must travel to be fully purified.

“Through our site visits, we realised that the artisan workers had no space available for westernised high-tech water treatment solutions,” said Malik.

“Neither did they have the economic capacity to get additional support. So we needed a system that was spatially compatible and could be constructed and maintained by them.”

Hence the idea of moulding the tiles via templates which, once the project is rolled out, would be custom-made by the Bio-ID Lab with a different system of channels to correspond to different contaminants.

Future milestones for the project include performance tests in the UK and then, Malik hopes, a pilot project on-site in India, where an estimated 80 per cent of surface and ground water is polluted.

While in the current iteration of Indus, pollutants are merely captured, she has ambitions to expand the system to include a second stage, in which the hydrogel is processed to remove the heavy metal nanoparticles from the algae cells.

In an “incentive-based closed loop system”, these valuable raw materials could then be sold on to high tech companies, which use them within their own manufacturing processes.

Indus is one of several works on show in and around the V&A for London Design Festival 2019 which runs until the 22 September.

More than 400 installations and exhibitions will be on show across the city as part of the event, including Kengo Kuma’s bamboo nest and an exhibition of sustainable, animal-centric wildlife shelters.

Other recent projects that use algae as a sustainable biomaterial include a fully compostable T-shirt by start-up Vollebak and a single-use plastic alternative by Chilean designer Margarita Talep.

Photography is by Andy Stagg.

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