Hasta La Ideas

These hand-drawn illustrations by Hackney design studio Something & Son explain the designs for a temporary spa that opens tomorrow in Barking, east London.

Above: bar and cucumber plants
Top: relaxation room

The Barking Bathhouse will be open for seven weeks in the heart of Barking’s town centre and will feature a series of treatment rooms, a cocktail bar and a makeshift beach made from piles of pebbles.

Above: pebble bays

Homegrown cucumbers will spout from a canopy of plants above the bar and will be used to make drinks, as well as for spa treatments.

Above: sauna room

One room will provide a wooden sauna, while another will contain a cool room chilled with dry ice.

Above: massage room

The structure is being assembled from a series of prefabricated wooden huts and is one of twelve projects taking place this summer as part of arts festival CREATE.

Other projects with imaginative illustrations on Dezeen include a tiny theatre and a row of houses for London’s east end.

Something & Son are based on Dalston Lane in the London Borough of Hackney. Scroll down to see their location on our Designed in Hackney map.

Here’s some information from CREATE and Something & Son:

The Barking Bathhouse, Something & Son
27 July – 16 September

CREATE has commissioned Something & Son to design and build The Barking Bathhouse. Focusing on wellbeing, The Barking Bathhouse will experiment in the latest design, health and beauty ideas to help people feel happy and relaxed this summer during perhaps the most hectic period in London’s history. The Bathhouse will open on 24 July in Barking town centre and provide affordable spa treatments as well as a free social space for people to meet. Something & Son are the design practice behind the hugely successful FARM:shop in Dalston which saw the practice create a fully functioning farm within a disused shop. This new project is one of the Mayor’s Outer London Fund projects being delivered for Barking and Dagenham Council.

The Barking Bathhouse will combine a spa with a bar, where visitors will be able to sip healthy cocktails under a canopy of growing cucumbers and sunbathe in seaside-inspired pebble bays. After soaking up vitamins and being pampered with a variety of treatments – using produce grown by local allotment gardeners – visitors will be able to sweat it out or cool down in a traditional wooden sauna or a cold room with a pioneering ‘dry ice’ chiller. The purpose-built design of the Bathhouse is inspired by 20th century working men’s bathhouses, ultra modern spas and Barking’s industrial heritage.

Andrew Merritt of Something & Son said: “Ideally relaxation should be an everyday experience and we wanted to design a space that can increase happiness and explore ideas of relaxation in an urban context. The juxtaposition of traditional spa techniques and the industrial setting will create a raw but very human space.”

Paul Smyth of Something & Son said: “When you travel the world, some of the best, most memorable experiences can happen in a simple massage hut or bathhouse. And many other cultures see visits to a bathhouse as an essential way to de-stress or spend time with others. We hope to recreate that unpretentious but effective philosophy at the Barking Bathhouse.”

The building design

Drawing on the industrial heritage of Barking, as well as the aesthetic of darkened timber farm buildings found in nearby Essex and the wooden beach huts of Kent, Something & Son will combine functional design and new spa technologies to create the Bathhouse building. The clear roofed structure of the bar area will allow high levels of sunlight into the communal space. In the treatment area, strong spotlights will pinpoint areas such as the nail bar, creating some drama in an otherwise low lit, tranquil space. A raw aesthetic throughout will challenge traditional notions of ‘luxury’ while creating a blissful space to relax.

The pod-based structure, to be prefabricated and docked together on site, has been planned with the future in mind, and when the Bathhouse closes at the end of the summer the different pods will be separated with the aim of relocating them locally for continued use by the community, including local allotment owners, playgrounds and youth centres.

The spa

The spa area will consist of a series of massage and treatment rooms in addition to a traditional sauna and a cold room lined with ice blocks will bring traditional bathhouse rituals to the experience. There will also be a relaxation area with loungers. Massages, body treatments, manicures and pedicures will all be offered, and Something & Son are working with local beauticians and local allotment gardeners to develop natural and refreshing treatments. To reduce excessive water use the Bathhouse will not have communal pools or energy-wasting hot tubs.

The bar

In the bar cocktails, smoothies, snacks and spa treatments will all be offered on the bar menu, the cucumber canopy above the bar providing fresh produce for use in beauty treatments. Next door a beach-inspired pebble bay is set aside for socialising and sun bathing under a partially open roof. Shingle dunes will provide the perfect space to relax and unwind between treatments, or just to come and catch some rays over lunchtime.

Events programme

The Bathhouse will also run a rich and varied events programme with workshops, talks and discussions with happiness and wellbeing as the central ethos. From talks on whether money can make you happy to chocolate making and meditation workshops, the programme will focus on establishing personal happiness. A workshop on the beauty myth will offer photoshop makeovers showing how media images of beauty are unattainable, while laughter yoga, clowning workshops and comedy nights will all bring an extra bit of happiness to the day.

Anna Doyle, Producer, CREATE, said: “We have developed a relationship with Something & Son over the past two years and are thrilled to have commissioned The Barking Bathhouse. Working with Barking and Dagenham we hope that the project will reinvigorate Barking town centre, bringing back a social space for local people, as well as providing a place for visitors to escape the crowds in central London during the Olympic period. CREATE is a great place to nurture new design talents like Something & Son, and The Barking Bathhouse is very exciting project for east London.”

Councillor Collins, Cabinet Member for Culture, Leisure and Sport, said: “I am thrilled that Barking and Dagenham is taking part in the CREATE festival this year, and in such a big way too. The Barking Bathhouse sounds like a fantastic concept and I am looking forward to seeing it operational. I am sure it will have something of interest to everyone and would like to encourage everyone to visit and take advantage of the facilities on offer.”

Entry

Public areas are free. Treatments can be reserved in advance or ordered on site. Spa: £8, £2 for Barking and Dagenham residents
Events: £4

CREATE in partnership with London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and the Mayor of London. Part of the London 2012 Festival.

The history of bathhouses

While the practice of travelling to hot or cold springs in hopes of curing ailments dates back to pre-historic times, the earliest structured baths are found in the ruins in of the Indus Valley Civilization (present-day Pakistan). These were large communal baths reminiscent of modern day swimming pools. It was in ancient Greece and Rome that public baths became a centre of social and recreational activity. The bathing ritual was developed past immersion or sweating with the development of separate areas for massage and relaxation. Gardens, exercise spaces and even libraries and theatres were added. Meanwhile, in Japan, the historical origins of bathing are based in ritual purification with water, with many early Buddhist temples including saunas for free public use. Bathing in these ancient times was a necessity and socialising and relaxing in these spaces was central to daily life. Roman style public baths were introduced to England in the medieval period but these gained a bad reputation as a front for brothels and many closed during the 15th and 16th centuries. It was not until the mid-19th century that Britain’s first true public bath houses were opened, and by 1915 most towns in Britain had at least one.

Designed in Hackney map:

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Key:

Blue = designers
Red = architects
Yellow = brands
Green = street art

See a larger version of this map

Designed in Hackney is a Dezeen initiative to showcase world-class architecture and design created in the borough, which is one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices. We’ll publish buildings, interiors and objects that have been designed in Hackney each day until the games this summer.

More information and details of how to get involved can be found at www.designedinhackney.com.

The post The Barking Bathhouse
by Something & Son appeared first on Dezeen.

Bright yellow spectator stands line the edge of this timber-framed sports hall in the Netherlands by Dutch firm Koppert + Koenis Architects (+ slideshow).

Above: photograph is by Bart Solinger

Named Sportcentrum Nieuw Zuilen, the centre is located at a riverside park in Utrecht and contains changing facilities to serve six neighbouring football pitches, as well as a multi-purpose hall, a daycare centre and a bowling alley.

The two-storey building is set into the ground and has a cafe on its first floor, which is connected to the sports field by brick bleachers.

Glazed facades are shaded beneath the overhanging roof.

We also recently featured changing rooms for London’s amateur football leagues, which you can see here.

Above: photograph is by Bart Solinger

See more stories about design for sports »

Above: photograph is by Bart Solinger

Photography is by Mark Prins, aprt from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from Koppert + Koenis Architects:

Sportcentrum Nieuw Zuilen

The sports hall will become the new social and functional heart of the sports park Zuilenselaan in Utrecht. The building is located at the bottom of a tree lined lane.

With its eye catching wooden pitched roof that references the barn typology, high quality masonry and large glazed facades the sports hall has manifests itself as a modern friendly building with artisanal details.

The pitched roof and the fact that its partly sunken ground floor level gives the building a modest look and embeds it naturally in its green surroundings.

The connection with the sport fields is made through sloping surfaces.

The fact that the ground floor is lowered makes it possible to create generous stairs and stands that mediate between the level of the outdoor fields and the restaurant on the second floor.

The materialization of the interior spaces support the overall concept. Especially the wooden roof structure gives the building a robust but friendly image and its cantilever provides shade for the transparent facades.

The building is fitted with a heat pump and to a great extent built with materials from renewable sources and recycled materials.

This, together with a high thermal mass, makes the building highly sustainable while providing an excellent climate for sports and relaxation.

Apart from the main sports hall the building provides spaces for numerous social functions serving the surrounding neighborhood such as a daycare centre, multifunctional areas, cafeteria, dressing rooms for the football club and a skittle alley, thus becoming a valuable addition to the Nieuw-Zuilen area.

Location: Utrecht, Nieuw Zuilen
Area: approx 4.200 sqm

Click above for larger image

Design/Construction: July, 2006 – December 2011
Architect: Koppert + Koenis Architects

Chief Designer: Erik Slangen
Team: Herman Tweeboom, Peter Baas, Sjef Vosters, Aad van den Berg, Bas Vogelpoel

The post Sportcentrum Nieuw Zuilen by
Koppert + Koenis Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Drivers along a coastal road in Iceland can now stop at a curved concrete service station styled like an American diner by architects KRADS of Iceland and Denmark.

Designed for the Icelandic branch of fuel company Shell, the Stöðin accommodates a restaurant and drive-through, as well as a shop and petrol station.

A thick concrete band wraps around the top of the exterior walls to create a canopy with an illuminated underside.

The ceiling inside the building is also exposed concrete, while cushioned panels of red, orange and yellow provide seating inside the restaurant.

Other interesting service stations from the Dezeen archive include a roadside restaurant in Spain and an alpine petrol station in Switzerland.

See all our stories about service stations »

Photography is by Kristinn Magnússon.

Here’s some more text from KRADS:

Stöðin – Roadside Stop

“Stöðin”, a roadside stop in the Icelandic countryside, is a conjoined restaurant, drive-through, convenience store and gas station. Icelandic culture is in many ways shaped by American influences due to the 65-year long presence of an American army base in the country.

Stöðin addresses this cultural relationship by incorporating architectural elements from the American diner that contrast the traditional Icelandic building method of in situ cast concrete.

The exposed concrete of the exterior bestows the diner with a permanence unknown by its American counterparts creating a friction between its streamlined aesthetics and the rustic materiality’s gravity. An elongated bar-desk transforms into seating arrangements and characterizes the semicircular restaurant, which offers panoramic views of the scenic fjord Borgarfjörður.

Location: Borgarnes, Iceland.
Size: 312 m2
Building lot: 4.840 m2
Year compl.: 2012
Client: Skeljungur, the Icelandic arm of Shell.
Collaborators: Aok-design (on interior), Ferill (engineering, structural/HVAC),
Mannvit (electrical engineering).

Chinese firm Urbanus has created a cylindrical registry office in Shenzhen that looks like it’s been showered with confetti.

The architects wanted to create a more romantic environment for marriage registration, which they claim has lost its sense of ceremony due to the setting of most registry offices in China.

Wedding parties at the Nanshan Marriage Registration Centre arrive and depart ceremoniously across long narrow bridges, which oversail a pool of water in front of the building.

Small square panels speckle the building’s gridded aluminium skin to create the confetti-like exterior.

Inside the building, all the partitioning walls are curved and the metal facade is visible behind a glazed curtain wall.

Other wedding venues on Dezeen include a pop-up chapel made of cardboard and a coin-operated marriage machine.

See all our stories about weddings »

Photography is by MengYan and Wu Qiwei.

Here’s some more details from Urbanus:

Nanshan Marriage Registration Centre

In China, the marriage registration office’s image is closely linked with the Government. In reality, the Registry is an office of the civil affairs department, so it is normally perceived as a common and dull place, as part of the bureaucracy. This situation turns the supposedly romantic and exciting idea of marriage registration into a routine and boring experience.

Nanshan Marriage Registration Center is a new architectural type, for which the architects hope to bring new life experiences to new couples, and to create a medium for information display, recording of newly registered couples, and also retain for the city a permanent memory of the journey of marriage.

The site of the project is in Lijing Park in Nanshan district, located in the Northeast corner of the park, approximately 100 meters long and 25 meters in width. The main building is placed in the northern side of the site, close to the street corner.

A small pavilion on the southern side is connected with the main building by two bridges floating on a reflecting pool. The overall arrangement reveals this series of ceremonial spaces gradually. At the same time, it also makes the main building a symbolic civil landmark.

A key point of this design is to discover how to organize the personal ceremonial experience. A continuous spiral shows part of the process in the whole sequence—“arriving, approaching to the wedding hall with the focus of relatives, photographing, waiting, registering, ascending, overlooking, issuing, descending slope, passing the water pool, and reuniting with relatives”.

For the design of the building, the whole volume is divided into smaller spaces to achieve relative privacy. The remainder of the whole building is full of a flow that creates a rich spatial effect.

The building’s skin is separated into a double layer structure, with the first layer using a floral mesh aluminum to reveal the interior, and the second layer using glass walls to provide a weatherproof structure. The overall inside space and the outside facade are all white in order to show the saintly atmosphere of marriage registration.

Location: The intersection of Changxing Rd.and Nantou St.,Nanshan Distrit, Shenzhen
Design Period: 2008-2011
Construction: 2009.11-2011.10
Site Area: 3002.5m2
Floor Area: 977.5m2
Description of Structural System: Steel Structure
Principal Materials Used: Steel, Aluminum plate, Glass, Stone, etc.

Project Designers:
Design Director: Meng Yan
Technical Director: Zhu Jialin ，Wu Wenyi
Project Director: Fu Zhuoheng, Zhang Zhen，Wei Zhijiao

Architecture Designers: Wang Jun, Hu Zhigao，Yin Yujun, Li Qiang, Zhang Xinfeng
Landscape Designers: Liao Zhixiong, Lin Ting, Yu Xiaolan, Liu Jie

Collaborator: Guoqun Studio (Interior Design);
Shenzhen Keyuan Construction Group co.,Ltd (Curtain wall Design)
Client: Public Works Bureau of Nanshan District
Construction Bureau of Nanshan District

(LDI) Structure/ MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing):
Guangzhou RBS Architecture Engineer Design Associates
General Contractor: Shenzhen Decoration and Construction Industrial co.,Ltd
Guangdong 8th Construction Group co.,Ltd

This cafe by Harris Butt Architecture is perched on the edge of an active volcano in New Zealand’s oldest national park (+ slideshow).

Also located beside a ski resort, Knoll Ridge Cafe is built to withstand sub-zero temperatures, wind speeds of up to 125 miles per hour and heavy snowfall in the winter season.

Despite its heavy-duty specification, the building had to be constructed from prefabricated modules light enough to be carried to the site and assembled by a helicopter.

The base of the building is a system of concrete panels, while the angled roofs and glass curtain walls are supported by a chunky timber frame.

Dining areas for up to 400 visitors occupy most of the ground floor level and spill out onto terraces that face down towards the foot of the mountain.

For more architecture featuring volcanos, see our earlier stories about an observation deck in Chile and the entrance to a volcano park in Spain.

See more projects from New Zealand »

Photography is by Simon Devitt.

Here’s some extra information from Harris Butt Architecture:

Knoll Ridge Cafe

Knoll Ridge Café is located at Whakapapa Ski Field on Mt. Ruapehu, Tongariro National Park. Situated on the side of a mountain the commercial ski field is also sited on what is New Zealand’s largest active volcano.

The café replaces the original Knoll Ridge Chalet which was destroyed by a fire in February 2009. As a result an ambitious design and build programme was initiated to replace the chalet with a temporary prefabricated facility for the 2009 winter season.

Once the debris of the original chalet were removed, a 220sqm temporary cafe was erected on the remaining floor slab. This tested the methodology which was later adopted for the construction of the café.

Rapidly changing weather is typical of the conditions encountered on New Zealand mountains, with Mt. Ruapehu no exception. Designing a building for such a severe environment provided its own set of unique challenges.

Limited road access to site and stringent requirements meant extensive planning and logistics were required just to get materials to site.

Prefabricated concrete floor panels had to be rapidly constructed and delivered before the snow melted, these were then hauled over snow 700m up to site before construction began the following summer.

A major consideration in the design of the building was the issue of the remote location. The entire building, from foundation beams/floor panels to roof sections and windows was broken down into a modular panelised system, which allowed for delivery, placement and erection by helicopter on site.

Insulated sandwich panels constructed of plywood and LVL form a large extent of the walls and roof of the café. These like most of the buildings components had to be designed with careful consideration not exceed the helicopters 800kg max load limit.

A 100% thermally broken purpose built glass curtain wall was designed for what is possibly one the most challenging environments to build in.

The glass and framing system had to withstand wind speeds of up to 200km/ph and temperatures well below freezing. Twenty-five tons of glass was used in the 415m2 of glass façade which was all predetermined and ordered from calculations without a site measure.

All the glass units were fitted with 3 equalizing tubes to facilitate onsite argon gas filling, equalizing tubes were also used as a precaution for rapid altitude acceleration during flight.

In the summer season the eastern face of the building can be seen set above the volcanic rock formations located on the edge of the drop off to the Te Heuheu Valley. The north face looks back down the mountain whilst to the west is the chair lift and ski area.

The form of the building reflects the strong geological features of the mountain. The “gull wing” roof was to appear to “cradle” the mountains peak. On a practical level is used to manage the snow. The building is designed to cover with up 3.0m of snow.

Timber has been used extensively inside and out to create the warm “feeling” of the “traditional” mountain chalet without adopting the traditional form.

The glass exterior (particularly to the east wall) is the other feature of the building – allowing full exposure to the magnificence view to the Pinnacle Ridge.

The new café is located approximately 50m down the mountain from the original chalet site, with the main café floor at approximately 2010m ASL.

The new building accommodates café seating for approx 400 people with servery, kitchen and support facilities all on one level.

At this same level, a deck area for approximately 200 people is provided.

The main public toilet area, staff facilities and storage are on the level below with separate access from the outside as well connection to the café via an internal stair.

Architects: Harris Butt Architecture Ltd.
Location: Whakapapa Ski Field, Mt. Ruapehu, Tongariro National Park, New Zealand

Architecture Team: Grant Harris, Ian Butt, Kerry Reyburn, Ben Brown
Completion: 2011
Building Size: 1,516 sqm