Hasta La Ideas

UK studio Will Gamble Architects has extended and modernised a Victorian house in south London, using curved shapes and a palette of natural materials to create a calm and minimalist aesthetic.

The clients – a married couple looking to create their forever home – asked Will Gamble Architects to oversee the transformation of the semi-detached house in Putney into a serene sanctuary.

Architecture firm Proctor & Shaw initially developed the planning drawings before Gamble’s studio was appointed to develop a cohesive interior design service throughout the home, including technical drawings and revised spatial layouts for the upper floors.

To fufil the clients’ request for increased space, a rear and attic extension was added.

“We were keen to maximise space and light as much as possible through clever design solutions,” architect Will Gamble told Dezeen.

“This was particularly relevant over the upper floors where the brief called for four bedrooms and three bathrooms which a conventional layout couldn’t accommodate.”

Gamble applied an approach he described as “soft minimalism” throughout the interiors, utilising a restrained palette of textural materials to ensure consistency across all floors.

“Soft minimalism is defined by curved lines, gentle tonal hues, natural materials and carefully curated spaces,” said the architect. “This aesthetic allowed us to deliver a highly bespoke project tailored to our clients’ needs.”

Arched niches, curved walls and a bespoke staircase with semi-circular landings, circular spindles and a turned-oak rail contribute to an aesthetic defined by a gentle geometry.

Muted colours including warm whites and soft pinks provide a soft and coherent backdrop, while more textured materials including pippy oak and richly veined marble add personality to some of the spaces.

The new staircase was illuminated by an oval roof light that continues the theme of gentle, round forms. The roof light casts natural light deep into the floor plan and is openable to allow stack ventilation to naturally cool the interior.

Bespoke joinery brings functionality and visual interest to rooms including the main bedroom, where a headboard unit made from pippy oak provides additional storage as well as concealing the en-suite shower room.

The bespoke bed and headboard with integrated wardrobes are centrally located within the room to maximise the available space. The en suite contains a pair of marble-clad vanities either side of a walk-in shower.

Pippy oak was used elsewhere in the house for furniture including bedside tables and built-in storage. The wood’s distinctive knots and knot clusters stand out whilst complementing the other natural materials.

“The ‘cats paw’ pattern of the pippy oak adds a decadence to the otherwise muted material palette,” Gamble added. “We used this unique material in key areas to help establish a hierarchy across the spaces throughout the project.”

As part of the renovation project, the building’s historic fabric was thermally upgraded to reduce energy consumption and create a more comfortable environment. A home automation system was also incorporated that minimises visible light switches and contributes to the uncluttered, minimalist interiors.

According to Gamble, the owners were interested in “achieving a high-quality finish driven by an acute attention to detail”, which led to a highly bespoke project tailored to their exact requirements.

Will Gamble established his London-based studio in 2018 after working for architectural practices Farrells and Francis Philips Architects. The office specialises in sensitively retrofitting existing buildings through contemporary architectural interventions.

The studio’s previous projects include a home built within the ruins of a 17-century parchment factory in Northamptonshire and a glass-walled extension to a Georgian house in Leicestershire.

The post Will Gamble Architects modernises London Victorian house with “soft minimalism” interiors appeared first on Dezeen.

There is no denying that modern graphic resolutions have reached unachievable heights. Yet, there are many with an emotional connect to pixelated style: an art form that rekindles memories of early computers and video game graphics. If you’re one of them, who rejoices the blurring the lines between analog and digital, you can (when available) lay hands on the Pixel Mirror that creates an inverted pixel image of what’s behind it.

The wearable Pixel Mirror, developed by Hakusi Katei aka Monoli, a Japanese material designer and Ph.D. in engineering, is a crystal that reduces the resolution of what’s behind it – regardless of distance and movement – leaving you with a pixel art of what you are looking at.

Designer: Monoli

Made from light-colored transparent crystal in forest green, gray, and colorless variant, the Pixel Mirror is designed for use in bright environments. While for some of us, it’s only a gimmicky wearable (more on the aspect later) it might have real utility for artists and painters, who can leverage from the immediate, readable fat swatches of the scene behind the prism you’re looking through.

The Pixel Mirror measures 16mm x 16mm x 10mm, which means it’s small enough to be worn as a pendant in a necklace. Monoli’s series of wearable and handheld prisms are all handmade, and because of the nature of polishing natural stones, they are not perfect square “pixels”. They are handmade to suit the condition of the available stone.

After the Pixel Mirror, Monoli now has the Pixel Window in works, which as the artist puts it, “the lens minecrafts scenery without electricity.”  Pixel Mirror is on sale in Japan for ¥ 19,800 (roughly $120). If you’re outside of Japan, you’ll want to keep an eye on Monoli’s tweets for information on international availability.

The post This Crystal Fragment turns everything you see into 8-bit Pixel Art, and it’s FASCINATING first appeared on Yanko Design.

Teenage Engineering has become an inseparable part of the music community in the past decade. Ever since their OP-1 synth debuted on Swedish House Mafia’s music video for their song ‘One’, the company has been on a rise, launching Pocket Operators, recording/playback gear, turntables for children, and even venturing into phones for Nothing and the R1 AI device for Rabbit. Their position in the new-age music industry, however, remains cemented for the next few years to come – but if there’s one device missing from their music-making tech repertoire, it’s a great DJ console. While most people love making music, there’s a case to be made that if you want to connect with your listeners, you need to perform your music too – and deejay consoles help artists do just that. Designed to bridge this product gap, Chris Matthews designed the OP-J, a Teenage Engineering-inspired console for disc jockeys looking to play and remix tunes.

Designer: Chris Matthews

Deejay consoles don’t really need to be portable, but there’s an understated beauty to how sleek the OP-J is. It’s about as thick as its synthesizer sibling, with the same design language running through. You’ve got two rotating discs, knobs, keys, buttons, cross-faders, a speaker, and two screens that guide you through playback as well as effect settings.

Keeping in theme with the company’s focus on music creation, the OP-J allows you to do more than just play and merge tracks. Sure, it’s a pretty capable DJ console, with everything a disc jockey would need to get on stage and drop the bass… but you’ve got 8 keys and 8 more buttons to record/trigger loops, play melodies, or activate certain intros/outros to spice up your songs. Although it isn’t shown here, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could hook the OP-1 to the setup and take your performance to even higher levels.

Color-coded knobs let you control effects and envelopes, while a dedicated display just for the effects lets you monitor what you’re up to. It’s unusual for a DJ console to come with its own speaker, but just in case you want to practice in the privacy of your home or hotel room, the OP-J lets you nerd out without needing a separate speaker system. Yes, audio jacks on the bottom let you hook external speakers if you can, or headphones so you can preview tracks before cueing them.

The OP-J is just a fan-made concept for now, but if someone from Teenage Engineering reads this, we all could use an OP-style deejay console! Besides, let’s also take some time out to appreciate the Darth Vader-esque black and red version below?!

The post Teenage Engineering DJ Console concept brings OP-1 style aesthetics to the deejaying world first appeared on Yanko Design.

On a Newfoundland peninsula only accessible by boat or on foot, Toronto studio Reflect Architecture has transformed a pair of century-old saltbox houses into a flexible vacation home.

Burdens Point Residence is formed of two renovated vernacular properties: Burden House, which was built in 1914, and Dunn House, which was built in 1912. A small outhouse sits alongside.

Located in Salvage, a fishing village of just over 100 people, the houses were sensitively restored by Reflect Architecture for a Toronto-based real-estate agent and her family.

Contemporary details, from a picture window to a galvanised steel roof, are carefully interwoven to fit in with the traditional shiplap cladding and gabled roof construction of the original buildings.

“It was essential that we design a home that felt true to Salvage, while still finding thoughtful and nuanced ways to give these old buildings new life,” said Reflect Architecture principal Trevor Wallace.

“The through-line of this entire project was creating a home that felt familiar to the place, but in an application that was contemporary,” Wallace said.

“It was ultimately an exploration of what lines could be crossed and which couldn’t. How far could we go while still creating a design that was authentic to Salvage?”

The two houses serve as a single property, but each is also self-sufficient. Both feature living, dining and kitchen spaces on the ground floor, with a pair of bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

The slightly larger Burden House serves as the primary residence, with living spaces designed for entertaining guests. Dunn House is intended as a guest house, largely used by the client’s children and their friends.

Both were previously off-grid, but the renovation sees Burden House connected to electricity.

Aside from the new steel roof cladding, which offers a more durable alternative to traditional tar asphalt shingles, the architect studio opted for materials that are common to this locale.

“The salt air is going to take its toll on any material in the long run,” Wallace told Dezeen.

“The biggest mistake we could have made was introducing too many materials that couldn’t be repaired locally. Wood siding, for example, has been used on the village houses for generations; local builders know how to work with it,” he said.

“Inside, kitchen cabinets and surfaces were built of Baltic birch ply. They’re straightforward and use the types of methods and resources that are available locally.”

Burden House required the least work. Interior framing and wall panelling were retained and repaired, while floors were patched and painted.

A more extensive renovation was needed for Dunn House, with new boarding designed to match what was there previously.

Some changes are more obvious than others. As well as shoring up the foundations and slightly raising the bedroom ceilings, Reflect Architecture opted to install windows with projecting box details.

The new picture window is the only break from the original window grid, offering a more expansive view of the landscape and ocean from the north-facing bedroom of Burden House.

“The brief was for an architectural balancing act. We had to realise the client’s needs in a way that was authentic to the place,” said Wallace.

Among the most striking additions is the use of colour-blocking in the bedrooms, with shades of deep blue, racing green and burnt orange offering a sense of cosiness.

These spaces feature platform beds and low lighting that take cues from the berths of a ship.

The project offers a departure from the modern Toronto new-builds that Reflect is best known for such as Walker, with its indoor slide, and North Drive House.

The biggest adjustment the design team faced was logistical; with no connecting roads, all materials had to be delivered to the site by boat.

But Wallace relished the opportunity to work on buildings that serve as local landmarks.

“In some parts of the world, houses tuck into the landscape, but they punch out in Newfoundland,” he said.

“The local houses sit perched on the ground and act as warm, sheltered beacons in a harsh environment. As outsiders, we tried to be tremendously aware of what the local architecture was about and the role it serves.”

The photography is by Julian Parkinson.

The post Reflect Architecture modernises remote saltbox houses on Newfoundland seafront appeared first on Dezeen.

The latest edition of our weekly Agenda newsletter features a series of purchasable house designs informed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Subscribe to Dezeen Agenda now.

Seattle-based manufacturer Lindal Cedar Homes partnered with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to create floor plans for nine houses based on the American architect’s Usonian philosophy.

These principles emphasised integration with nature, the use of natural materials, open floor plans, affordability and energy efficiency.

This week’s newsletter also featured an office extension with a scoop carved into its facade, an opinion piece defending Thomas Heatherwick and the announcement of the next president of RIBA.

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