Hasta La Ideas

The resident of a compact apartment in Madrid demonstrates how she can rearrange walls and pull furniture out of the ceiling in this movie by photographer and filmmaker Miguel de Guzmán.

Designed by Spanish studio Elii Architects, the Didomestic apartment occupies the loft of an old building, so it was designed to make optimal use of space by creating flexible rooms that can be adapted for different activities.

Sliding pink partitions allow the main floor to be either opened up or divided into a series of smaller spaces, while a new mezzanine loft provides a bedroom where floor panels hinge open to reveal a vanity mirror, toiletry storage and a tea station.

The architects also added several fun elements to tailor the space to the resident’s lifestyle; a hammock, playground swing and disco ball all fold down from the ceiling, while a folding surface serves as a cocktail bar or ironing board.

“Every house is a theatre,” explained the architects. “Your house can be a dance floor one day and a tea room the next.”

The movie imagines a complete day in the life of the apartment’s inhabitant, from the moment she wakes up in the morning to the end of an evening spent with a friend.

“The idea was to show all the different spaces and mechanisms in a narrative way,” said De Guzmán.

Getting dressed in the morning, the resident reveals wardrobes built into one of the walls. Later, she invites a friend round for a meal and they dine at a picnic table that lowers down from the kitchen ceiling.

A rotating handle on the wall controls the pulleys needed to bring this furniture down from overhead, while other handles can be used to reveal shelving and fans.

A metal staircase connecting the two levels is contained within a core at the centre of the apartment and is coloured in a vivid shade of turquoise.

A shower room lined with small hexagonal tiles is located to the rear of the kitchen, plus there’s a bathroom on the mezzanine floor directly above.

Photography is also by Miguel de Guzmán.

Here’s a project description from Elii Architects:

Project for the complete refurbishment of an attic in downtown Madrid

The scope of the project covers from the development of a customised functional proposal for a user that is turning a new leaf to the rehabilitation of the structure, the insulation, the facilities and the modernisation of the existing construction systems.

The selected approach removes all obstacles from the floor to provide the greatest possible flexibility. Two basic elements are used: firstly, the central core, comprising the staircase, some shelves and the larder. The core is at the centre of the main space under the mansard roof. It connects the access floor and the space under the roof and allows the natural lighting coming through the roof into the living room. Secondly, there are two side strips for the functional elements (kitchen, bathroom, storage space and domestic appliances).

This basic arrangement is complemented by two strategies that provide flexibility to the domestic spaces.

Firstly, the moving panels that are integrated into the core and run along guide rails. These panels can be used to create different arrangements, such as adding an extra room for a guest, separating the kitchen from the living room area or opening the whole floor for a party. The panels have transparent sections so that the natural lighting coming through the mansard roof can reach this space.

Secondly, the secret trap doors that are integrated into the ceiling of the access floor and into the floor of the mezzanine and that house the rest of the domestic functions. The ceiling doors are opened with handles fitted on the walls. These handles actuate pulleys that lower part of the furniture (such as tables and the picnic benches, a swing or the hammock) or some complementary functions and objects (such as the disco ball, the fans to chill out on the hammock or an extra shelf for the guest room).

In addition, the floor of the space under the roof has a series of invisible doors that can be opened to alter the functionality of the raised space where the bedroom area is (these spaces house the dressing table, the tea room and the storage spaces for the bathroom).

All these elements are integrated within the floor and the ceiling and they appear and disappear at the user’s whim. The secret trap doors and the sliding panels complement the basic configuration, fit the needs of the moment and provide different home layout combinations.

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Movie: in our next exclusive interview from Inside Festival, Per Anders Borgen of Ratio Architects explains how the design team used raw materials to “remove the institutional look” from the interior of a student facility at St. Olav’s Hospital in Trondheim, Norway.

The Knowledge Centre by Norwegian studios Ratio Architects and Nordic Office of Architecture is a medical student research, training and teaching facility at St. Olav’s Hospital in Trondheim. It won the health category at last month’s Inside Festival.

The outside of the building features a black and white glass facade, designed together with artist Anne Aanerud, which provides shade from the sun as well as decoration.

“Architecture and sunshading form the facade and the expression of the building,” Borgen explains. “That is connected to a very high demand on energy reduction.”

Inside, the architects chose to leave much of the building’s wood and concrete structure exposed.

“Because this is very much a university building, we tried to keep it a little bit rough,” Borgen says. “In hospitals you [usually] have all these clinical, sterile materials. We tried to avoid that.”

“We wanted to use natural wood and concrete. The construction is the interior and that’s part of our concept.”

Patient wards and visitor areas, as well as the student library and cafeteria, feature specially commissioned art works painted on the walls.

“We were trying to remove the institutional look,” Borgen explains. “I don’t think a hospital needs to look like a hospital. That is a convention you can challenge as an architect.”

“It’s very hard because you have all kinds of demands that force you to do something. But [the Knowledge Centre] is an attempt to make a good building with function and good form joined together. It’s not different from every other architectural concept or task in that sense.”

This movie was filmed at Inside Festival 2013, which took place at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 2 to 4 October. The next Inside Festival will take place at the same venue from 1 to 3 October 2014. Award entries are open February to June 2014.

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Movie: Julia Borghesi of design studio Hassell discusses the hybrid aesthetic of advertising agency Clemenger BBDO’s office in Sydney, which topped the office category at last month’s Inside Festival. 

Clemenger BBDO‘s Sydney office has an informal layout with open offices and meeting areas.

“We were given a brief to connect the teams together,” Borghesi says. “So we really wanted to focus on the people and the work that they produce.”

“There are areas for relaxation, there are areas for collaboration and there are areas for individual work.”

The client had a strong idea of what the office should look like, Borghesi says.

“Clemenger came to us with an ideal aesthetic, combining this industrial loft aesthetic with Scandinavian detailing,” she explains. “The space we ended up with quite nicely combines those two visual elements: the New York loft with Scandinavian design.”

She continues: “You can see [the loft influence] throughout the centre of the space. The timber panels on the ceiling, also the floorboards. The Scandinavian design really comes in through the loose furniture and the joinery detailing.”

The office features a large, open meeting area in the centre of the space.

“It becomes a pivotal point where the executive team from other areas of the building can actually congregate and strategise within the space,” she says. “It’s also a space that’s highly visible to the staff as well.”

Borghesi believes that creating an open office environment has been successful. “Every time I visit there, the energy and the vibe in the place is amazing,” she says. “It’s really inspiring.”

Photography by Nicole England.

This movie was filmed at Inside Festival 2013, which took place at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 2 to 4 October. The next Inside Festival will take place at the same venue from 1 to 3 October 2014. Award entries are open February to June 2014.

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Movie: Wong Mun Summ of WOHA explains how the Singapore studio tried to recreate geological forms in the architecture of PARKROYAL on Pickering, which won the Hotels category at last month’s Inside Festival. 

PARKROYAL on Pickering by WOHA is a 367-room hotel on the edge of Singapore’s Central Business District, which features large balconies and terraces covered in 15,000 square metres of tropical plants.

“We wanted to create a hotel in a garden,” explains Wong. “We have achieved more than 200% of the site area in green replacement. So the green areas in the building are actually larger than the site itself.”

The balconies are made from layered slabs of contoured concrete, which continue inside the hotel in the reception areas on the ground floor. Wong explains that they were arranged to suggest natural landscapes.

“All the inspiration comes from rock formations,” he says. “It’s a very organic feeling that you get from the building.”

He adds: “We wanted to mimic the idea of the sedimentary layer and that is actually quite obvious from the form of the various strata in the building. Each layer is grooved, so that it has more shadows and is more refined.”

The hotel rooms themselves are more simple in design, but Wong says that the layout of each one is designed in relation to the garden outside.

“We wanted create a very warm feeling that is extending from the gardens,” he says. “The hotel rooms are configured in such a way that all of the rooms look into the sky terraces. Not only do you get a city view, you get a garden view.”

The large windows in the bedrooms are broken up by an irregular pattern of timber mullions, which is replicated by the bespoke furniture and fittings inside the rooms.

“Because we were the architects [as well as the interior designers] we wanted to make sure there was a good transition from architecture to interiors,” says Wong. “So the idea was to transform [the windows] into framing structures for the cabinets, the shelves, and even the lamp fittings.”

Wong says that he believes the hotel can be enjoyed by both passers-by and guests.

“We succeeded in creating a building that the man in the street can relate to,” he claims. “Quite often high-rise buildings tend to be very abstract, almost lacking in details. In this case what we have tried to do is humanise the skyscraper.

“It’s not just the guests that benefit from it, but also people who walk around in the city.”

This movie was filmed at Inside Festival 2013, which took place at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 2 to 4 October. The next Inside Festival will take place at the same venue from 1 to 3 October 2014. Award entries are open February to June 2014.

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Movie: in our next video interview from Inside Festival, Cara Ang of Asylum Creative discusses the Singapore creative agency’s pop-up store for watch brand Hublot made from thousands of crystal-like folded paper shapes.

Asylum Creative‘s pop-up store for Swiss watch brand Hublot, which won the display category at this year’s Inside Festival, ran for ten days in September 2012 in the Paragon shopping centre on Orchard Road, Singapore.

It comprised over 35,000 black crystal shapes made of paper suspended on fishing wire to form a pavilion in the shopping centre’s main atrium.

“Being a pop-up store, we liked the idea that it was momentary,” explains Ang. “We wanted to create the effect of crystals that are falling but captured in a single moment.”

The shopping centre’s atrium space is six storeys high and Ang says Asylum Creative wanted to design something that made use of this generous vertical space.

“Rather than having a pop-up store that is just sitting on the ground level, we thought it would be great if we could create something that goes upwards,” she explains. “We wanted to catch the attention of shoppers that are on the different levels of the mall [so they would] come downstairs to check out the pop-up store.”

Ang continues: “The gems were made from paper. It was a glossy, reflective black cardboard that we found to be quite suitable because it catches and reflects light in a way that makes them glow.”

Inside Festival 2013 took place at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 2 to 4 October. The next Inside Festival will take place at the same venue from 1 to 3 October 2014. Award entries are open February to June 2014.

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“creates the effect of falling crystals” appeared first on Dezeen.