Hasta La Ideas

A total of 140 designers from around the world including Pentagram‘s Giorgia Lupi have collaborated to produce a blood-red typeface made out of punctuation to highlight period poverty in American schools.

Called Periods for Periods, the typeface is a group of loosely circular, playful shapes that are “periods” – a play on the common American word for full stops.

Canadian agency Rethink Communications asked designers, illustrators and typographers to create their own take on the punctuation, which is available to download as a typeface through the Periods for Periods website.

“We created this font as a protest against the current requirement for young people to pay for period products in schools,” Rethink Communications told Dezeen. “One in seven teens have missed school due to a lack of period supplies.”

Periods for Periods’ proliferation of punctuation designs are intended to communicate the campaign’s tagline, “end a sentence, start a revolution”.

The project aims to raise awareness of period poverty in schools across North America, although people who menstruate experience a lack of access to sanitary products all over the world.

Designers created a wide range of full stops for the typeface, ranging from literal to abstract shapes.

Pentagram designer Giorgia Lupi created an asterisk-like star on a red blob, while typeface designer Alanna Munro spelt out the word “period” in a circular formation.

Graphic designer Ellen Lupton opted for a simple tilted square, and Meg Lewis and Rachel Denti were among a group of contributors who chose recognisable smiley faces for their full stops.

Designers such as Debbie Millman and Lindsey Hampton expressed themselves in ambiguous squiggles.

“The biggest aspect of our design process was colour,” explained Rethink Communications.

“We wanted the colours to connect with the subject matter, but of course there was debate around whether pinks and reds were too well-trodden in the category. In the end, we decided not to shy away from it. Blood is blood, and we wanted to represent it honestly.”

Everyone is invited to download the free typeface and use it in order to creatively raise awareness of period poverty, and users can also create their own “period” graphic using an online tool.

Its website also features a section where users in America can tweet their local education officials and demand free sanitary products within schools in states that do not currently offer this to students.

According to the campaign, product shortages caused by the coronavirus pandemic have worsened period poverty across the world, while youth and people of colour are affected by the issue at higher rates.

Rethink Communications believed that the viral nature of a typeface would provide the most effective way of spreading the message.

“Hopefully, the periods themselves will be used in designs as an act of protest, spreading our message even farther,” concluded the agency.

Rethink Communications is a Toronto-based creative agency founded in 2010.

Other period-focussed designs include a reusable menstrual cup cleaner by Emanui which allows users to clean their sustainable menstrual cups while on the go, and a wearable spandex pouch called Carrie created for soldiers and police officers to carry sanitary products in at work.

Image courtesy of Rethink Communications.

The post Periods for Periods is a typeface of fullstops to protest period poverty appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects Yuki Mitani and Atsumi Nonaka have transformed an unusual bare-concrete storage room on the side of their home in Nagoya, Japan, into a multi-functional reception room.

Taking inspiration from traditional Japanese rooms, the minimally furnished space offers a departure from the western-style interiors elsewhere in the flat.

This additional room allows the married couple, who run the studio Nanometer Architecture, to use their home as a space for entertaining clients and other guests. They call the project Reception House in Higashiyama.

When the couple were first looking at the 49-year-old rental flat, the room was labelled on the floor plan as “concrete exposed”. This was an accurate description in that, unlike the rest of the flat, the room had no floor or wall finishes.

As the 60-square-metre property already had a sizeable kitchen and living space, and a separate bedroom, it was unclear what the space was intended for.

“I doubted my eyes,” said Mitani, describing his first visit to the flat. “The reinforced concrete was exposed with the floor still open, not to mention the ceiling and walls. I wondered how the former resident had lived here.”

“I heard that this was the only property with this condition out of thousands,” he added.

Initially Mitani and Nonaka used the room as an office, but as their business grew they were able to move their workplace to a separate location. After that the space was simply used for storage, but the couple felt this was a waste of its potential.

“Since there were people coming and going as an office from the beginning, there was no hesitation in letting people in even when it is only a residence,” said Mitani.

Their renovation puts a contemporary spin on the Japanese room, with pale grey tatami mats on the floor and a wooden bench seat in the corner.

Shelves are suspended from the ceiling, attached to existing screw fixings that were originally intended for hanging ceiling boards.

These are made out of basic materials that include square light-gauge steel tubing and corrugated perspex.

In the same spirit, a pair of small tables were constructed from off-the-shelf elements, while silver foil curtains enclose storage areas in the rear corner.

Nanometer Architecture now uses the whole apartment as an events space, so the kitchen has been reconfigured to create more of a social atmosphere. The entrance area has also been updated, with a shoe storage closet that resembles a traditional alcove, or “tokonoma”.

“The room of unknown use jumped over the frame of the room,” said Mitani, “and the entire house became a reception house.”

“It is interesting to expose ourselves to the public while retaining the small public of reception in our hands.”

Mitani and Nonaka are even considering whether they might further adapt the reception room, to become an indoor-outdoor terrace space.

Photography is by ToLoLo Studio.

Project credits

Architects: Nanometer Architecture
Contractor: Hirata Construction

The post Nanometer Architecture takes advantage of extra space in Nagoya flat appeared first on Dezeen.

Glass walls and a gridded steel frame define Avala House, which architecture studio Ten has created in a sloping orchard on the Avala mountain in Belgrade, Serbia.

The dwelling was commissioned by a local craftsman and decorator, who wanted to challenge himself and his skill set by creating a house with local resources and a limited budget.

According to Belgrade and Zurich-based Ten, the project became a collaborative experiment with the client to see what could be achieved within the budget.

It was built with local craftsmen, construction techniques and materials, all in standard lengths, which will ensure the project can be easily repaired or updated in the future.

“The central premise of the project was to include the future owner in the process of making by specifying only available local material and construction knowledge,” the studio said.

“This challenged the norm of architecture being a complete conceptual product, delivered to the site via the client, but instead opened the process as a genuine conversation on the process of construction, the future use and practical and necessary maintenance.”

Avala House is planned around a 16-by-16-metre steel grid, which is divided into 3.2-by-3.2-metre modules. A large courtyard punctures its centre.

Enclosed living spaces are positioned along one side of the grid, while the other three sides are left open for use as terraces.

The grid only touches the ground at three points. One is where the grid meets the slope of the landscape, and the others where the frame rests on two concrete structures.

These concrete structures are designed to resemble boulders in the landscape. The biggest one contains a bathroom, while the other doubles as a staircase to the house.

Inside, Avala House is designed as one long, open-plan space with a sleeping zone, a kitchen and dining space, alongside a lounge area and bathroom.

These zones can be divided up by floor-to-ceiling curtains if required.

The living spaces are lined with glass on one side and a wall of 10 large, pivoting steel doors that open fully to the terraces on the other.

According to the architects, the decision to make the design so open “was simply logical” as it maximises views of the surrounding landscape and large trees on the site.

“We were sure nature had to come in, you have to be able to shower next to the fig tree,” the studio told Dezeen.

“You would sit in the living room while being outside, like a veranda at times.”

The structure and details of Avala House are exposed throughout, designed to showcase the locally sourced materials and detailing by the craftsmen.

Each terrace is complete with different but changeable surfaces, including hammock-like nets, wooden decking and concrete slabs positioned around an existing tree that extends through the frame.

Other homes built with glass and steel featured on Dezeen include a retreat in a forest glade near Madrid by Penelas Architects and a double-height extension to a pitched-roof house in Germany by Aretz Dürr Architektur.

Michael and Patty Hopkins used lightweight steel and glass to create their own high-tech home, Hopkins House, in the north London suburb of Hampstead.

Photography is by Maxime Delvaux.

Project credits:

Architect: TEN
Project leaders: Nemanja Zimonjić and Ognjen Krašna
Engineering: TEN, Miodrag Grbić
Tools and workshop: TRI MB Univerzal

The post Avala House is a steel-framed residence on a mountainside in Serbia appeared first on Dezeen.

New three-dimensional weaving technologies could revolutionise architecture and lead to lighter, more flexible buildings according to Dutch designer Hella Jongerius.

Computerised looms that can produce 3D fabrics could lead to a new type of “pliable architecture”, the designer said.

“Textile is the lightest and strongest construct that you can have,” she said. “So with this, we could replace concrete and cement in the building industry.”

3D weaving is in its infancy but it has already been used to create medical implants from polyester and to form aircraft bodies from carbon fibres.

But the technology could be scaled up to create buildings, the designer argued.

Jongerius made the comments during a live Dezeen talk to mark the opening of her Woven Cosmos exhibition at Berlin’s Gropius Bau.

In the talk, broadcast live from the museum, the designer shared an early preview of the show and discussed how she has used high-tech weaving applications.

3D weaving in particular, she argued, could be used to interlace building materials with photovoltaic solar yarns and create architecture that responds to the weather.

The technology, also known as multiaxial weaving, relies on advanced looms that allow fabric to be woven along multiple different axes as well as creating 2D textiles that can then be unfolded into 3D objects.

“It’s the future,” said Jongerius. “You could make facades or solar panels, now that we know how this technique works.”

“You can have balconies that pop up when the sun shines”

As part of the Woven Cosmos exhibition, Jongerius is showcasing a number of experimental prototypes for what this kind of construction could look like in the form of her Pliable Architecture series.

Created over two years, the series consists of fabric modules that are woven as flat units using an advanced digital jacquard machine but can be unfolded into multi-dimensional pop-up structures, achieving a large volume with minimal use of material.

Several of these are interwoven with conductive yarn and laminated strips of photovoltaic cells, in a technique that Jongerius said could one day be used to create new kinds of solar farms.

“With solar yarns, we could replace our solar panels that are now on our roofs or in fields,” she said. “You could have structures and sculptures instead of looking at technology.”

Jongerius revealed that she is working with university researchers to use the electricity generated by the solar fibres to transform the two-dimensional fabric modules into 3D forms.

She predicts that this kind of technology could be scaled up to create solar-powered, carbon-fibre balconies that automatically unfurl on sunny days.

“You can have balconies that pop up when the sun shines or platforms to have drones arriving,” the designer explained.

3D weaves can outperform 3D knits

According to Jongerius, 3D weaving is more versatile than 3D knitting, which has proven popular among footwear and furniture manufacturers in recent years.

“Knitting is not so strong and it’s quite a simple technique,” she said.

“It’s one loop over another loop, so it’s restricted.”

“In weaving, you have many more possibilities,” she added. “In a way, weaving is an empty vehicle. So you have one [yarn] up, one down and then you can add all kinds of functions like absorbing moisture or sound, antibacterial functions, solar cells.”

Jongerius first began working with multiaxial weaving for her 2019 exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris. Here, she created woven bricks using a special multiaxial loom, developed with the team at her studio Jongeriuslab by hacking and combining four separate handlooms.

“I really wanted to build a loom because a machine for this way of working does not exist,” she said. “So it’s more a vehicle that can raise questions, a research loom.”

In contrast to the automated 3D weaving machine created by Nigerian American designer Oluwaseyi Sosanya, Jongerius’s version is entirely operated by hand in the hope of offering more space for experimentation.

Called Seamless Loom, the machine will be exhibited as part of Woven Cosmos alongside a number of interactive installations that will take form over the course of the exhibition, with members of the Jongeriuslab team coming in to work on the looms every day.

According to Jongarius, the exhibition also offers a space to consider the healing possibilities of weaving as well as suggesting ways that the textile industry can become more sustainable.

“It’s the most polluting industry and the labour conditions in low-wage countries are really terrible,” she said. “So I wanted to address this sustainability topic.”

The Woven Cosmos exhibition can be explored digitally via the Gropius Bau website and will be open for visitors as soon as coronavirus restrictions allow. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

The post 3D textiles could “replace concrete and cement” in construction says Hella Jongerius appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese architecture studio SANAA has revealed its design for a museum in Shenzhen, which will be enclosed by a collection of hemispherical forms blanketed by a mesh louvred roof.

Dubbed Clouds on the Sea by SANAA, the 100,000-square-metre Shenzhen Maritime Museum will have a long horizontal, cloud-like structure that was designed to appear as if it was rolling off the South China Sea.

“Shenzhen Maritime Museum is a continuation of its natural environment between the mountain of Dapeng Peninsula and the sea of Longqi Bay,” SANAA told Dezeen.

“Shenzhen Maritime Museum is a horizontal landmark imagined as clouds emerging from the sea, like a museum born out of the ocean.”

SANAA designed the building to become a landmark on Longqi Bay. It will take shape as a collection of low-lying lattice domes covered in a stainless-steel louvred mesh.

“Structurally, the hemispherical dome space is designed as a glass sphere to introduce natural light and an opaque sphere to shield the natural light,” said SANAA.

“Above these spheres lies a light floating stainless metal louvres mesh that shades visitors from the subtropical hot sunlight and provides a unified appearance with the landscape.”

“Ultimately, the white cloud floats above the sea and changes its appearance at different weather and time.”

The Maritime Museum will be organised into three exhibition areas positioned around a large lobby and several courtyards.

Its ground floor will be arranged as a continuous open-plan space without columns that will allow visitors to freely roam.

The building will connect with surrounding green spaces and a nearby wetland park to expand the museum’s activity area toward the natural landscape.

“The low-lying large organic building is based on an ocean-museum-park integration concept and is both a continuation of the unique marine landscape and a celebration of marine culture open towards the city,” said SANAA.

SANAA’s design was selected as the winning proposal to an international competition arranged as part of the Shenzhen New Ten – a city-wide development plan that will see 10 new cultural buildings constructed.

Other projects being developed as part of master plan include the Shenzhen Opera House designed by Jean Nouvel and a pebble-shaped science museum designed by Zaha Hadid Architects.

All images are by SANAA.

The post SANAA designs cloud-like structure for Shenzhen Maritime Museum appeared first on Dezeen.