Hasta La Ideas

Spanish studio M2arquitectura has renovated a Barcelona apartment by adding sliding partitions, bright green surfaces and furniture that folds out of the walls (+ slideshow).

The architects began by removing all the original partitions from the apartment, then divided the space into two halves that each feature green-painted screens.

“We demolished all partition walls, reinforced the ceiling and floor framework and kept the structural walls,” explained Meritxell Lázaro and Mischa Essletzbichler of M2arquitectura. “We built two green objects to separate atmosphere and functions.”

The first of the two halves is a large living and dining room, where a green bookshelf separates the front of the room from a smaller space at the back.

White cupboards line the walls of this space and both a double bed and a desk fold out from behind the doors.

The second half of the apartment contains a master bedroom that can be opened out to a dressing room and ensuite bathroom, creating either three separate rooms or one large one.

The green object here is a wall that folds around the bathroom sink, positioned at the centre of the three connected rooms.

“The game of opening and closing the sliding doors modifies the spaciousness and lighting of the spaces,” said the architects.

Oak flooring runs throughout the apartment, while mirrored walls help to reflect light.

“Natural oak wood on the floor gives warmth to the apartment, contrasting with the neutral white of the ceilings, walls and the green color of the object-pieces of furniture,” added Lázaro and Essletzbichler.

We’ve also recently featured a Barcelona apartment with mosaic floors and a loft in Brooklyn with bedrooms inside white boxes.

See more apartments on Dezeen »

Photography is by José Hevia Blach.

Above: original floor plan

Above: new floor plan

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by M2arquitectura appeared first on Dezeen.

Polished mosaic floors reveal the original room layout of this renovated apartment in Barcelona by local studio Vora Arquitectura (+ slideshow).

During the refurbishment Vora Arquitectura removed several existing walls, before constructing wooden partitions that would highlight the contrast between new and old structures.

“We believe that refurbishment work must make the most of the existing elements,” said architects Pere Buil, Jordi Fornells and Toni Riba.

They added: “This is the case in the urban fabric, which is a conglomerate of different historical times. These different eras contaminate each other in a complex and ambiguous whole that can be touching.”

Only some of the flat’s colourful tiled floors were in good enough condition to be restored. Others were too badly damaged and needed replacing, but instead of aligning tiles with the new layout the architects chose to follow the outlines of rooms that existed before.

“Although the pre-existence was not of exceptional historical or heritage value, it was perfectly reusable and attractive,” said the architects. “It has led us to a strategy of reuse and transformation, with fuzzy boundaries.”

Brick walls inside the apartment are cleaned and painted white, while the wooden walls are coloured to match.

Each of the new partitions is made of several panels that can be opened and closed in various configurations.

Behind them, the architects have inserted a kitchen, a bathroom, a utility room and two bedroom storage areas.

Above: floor plan

The apartment is located in Barcelona’s Gràcia neighbourhood and was completed at the end of 2011.

Above: previous floor plan

Photography is by Adrià Goula.

Above: axonometric diagram

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by Vora Arquitectura appeared first on Dezeen.

Architecture studio Neri&Hu has opened a design gallery, shop and event space in a former colonial police station in Shanghai’s Jingan district.

Named Design Commune, the renovated brick building houses a series of design stores and showrooms, including the new flagship for Neri&Hu‘s own furniture brand, Design Republic.

“The concept for the Design Commune is to bring designers from around the city to hopefully have a place where they can have a discourse in architecture, in product design, in interior design,” Lyndon Neri told Dezeen. “To have a place where they could shop, a place where they could rest, a place where they could meander and wander and see different shops and different stores, different products, and at the same time be a part of an exhibition, or be part of a gallery, or be part of a talk.”

The architects hope the spaces will be able to showcase the vibrancy of China’s growing design scene. ”We want to bring the best of what the world can offer to China and hopefully one day bring the best of what China can offer back to the world,” said Neri.

For the conversion, the architects peeled back the decaying layers of wood and plaster, before restoring the original brickwork and adding new walls and rooms using a materials palette of glass, metal sheeting and white plaster.

“The existing building has a heaviness, and a kind of institutional feel,” explained Rossana Hu, before describing how they wanted to offset this with lighter materials. “Big open glass lets you see through a lot of visual corridors, or openings between floors that didn’t used to exist.”

A new glass structure runs along the facade of the building, creating a modern shopfront for Design Republic.

Elsewhere in the building, the architects have created a restaurant, a cafe, a lecture hall and a one-room hotel.

Dezeen visited the The Design Republic Commune last week to take part in a series of discussions about architecture and design in China and you can see our snapshots in an album on Facebook. We’ll also be publishing a full movie interview with Neri&Hu soon and you can also read about another Design Republic showroom in Shanghai in our earlier story.

During our visit, Hong Kong-based designer Michael Young also tipped China to have as many world-class designers as Japan within 20 years.

See more stories about Neri&Hu »
See more stories about Shanghai »

Photography is by Pedro Pegenaute.

Here’s a project description from Neri&Hu:

The Design Republic Commune (Shanghai)

The Design Republic Commune, located in the center of Shanghai, envisions itself as a design hub, a gathering space for designers and design patrons alike to admire, ponder, exchange, learn, and consume. It houses the new flagship store for Design Republic, a modern furniture retailer, alongside a mixture of design-focused retail concepts, including books, fashion, lighting, accessories and flowers. The Commune will also have a design gallery, an event space, a café, a restaurant by Michelin-Starred Chef Jason Atherton, and a one-bedroom Design Republic apartment.

Situated within the historic relic of the Police Headquarters built by the British in the 1910s, the project takes a surgical approach to renovation. First, gently removing the decaying wood and plaster, then carefully restoring the still vibrant red brickwork, while grafting on skin, joints, and organs onto parts that needed reconstruction. And finally with the attachment of a brand new appendage which, like a prosthetic, enables the existing building to perform new functions, the nearly abandoned building begins its life again.

Replacing the rather dilapidated row-shops on the street front, Neri&Hu introduced a modern glassy insertion onto the brick façade. To accentuate the historic nature of the main building, the street level periphery is enveloped by transparent glazing to reveal the existing brickwork and rough concrete structures. Breathing new life into a traditional colonial building plan, Neri&Hu strategically removed certain floor plates, walls, as well as ceiling panels, to allow a renewed experience of the existing building, one that is fitting for the new functions to which the building now needs to respond.

Various small and precise incisions have been made in the interior architecture to reveal the building’s history and integrity while creating experiential intersections for a coherent experience when moving through the building. Contrasting with the exterior which has mostly been left intact due to historic preservation guidelines, the interior has been completely transformed. The starkly modern white rooms are juxtaposed with untouched remnants of brick walls, and in some cases, exposed wood laths underneath crumbling plaster walls. The clear intentionality behind the detailing of connections between the old and the new creates a visually and spatially tectonic balance in relation to the building as a whole.

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image and key

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image and key

Above: second floor plan – click above for larger image and key

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by Neri&Hu appeared first on Dezeen.

A converted nineteenth century farm building once used for drying hops has been nominated for the RIBA Manser Medal for the best new house in the UK, following a renovation and extension by architects Duggan Morris (+slideshow).

Set amongst the agricultural fields of East Sussex, the restored buildings of Old Bearhurst include the brickwork oast house, with its two circular towers and pointed cowls, and a timber-clad barn.

The architects constructed a single-storey extension to tie these two structures together, but set the floor of the building slightly below ground level to prevent the new roof rising above the eaves of the oast towers.

Roughly sawn green oak clads the exterior of the new block, which accommodates a kitchen, living room and playroom for the client’s growing family.

Utility rooms are sunken by another half a storey to separate them from the main domestic activities.

Only the original buildings feature a first floor, creating bedrooms and bathrooms at opposite ends of the house.

Concrete floors dominate at ground floor level, while timber lines the floors and surfaces of rooms upstairs.

Last year Duggan Morris were awarded the RIBA Manser Medal for the renovation of a 1960’s residence.

This year they face competition from four other projects, including a holiday home from Alain de Botton’s Living Architecture series.

See more projects by Duggan Morris Architects on Dezeen »

See more stories about houses »

Photography is by James Brittain.

Here’s some text about the project from Duggan Morris:

Old Bearhurst involved the extensive remodelling of a two century old Oast House to provide space to accommodate the client’s growing family. The scheme included a complete overhaul of the existing barn and roundels as well as the construction of a new annex.

The building is set within agricultural land and defined by an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which has drawn out a unique response to the topography, landscape, history and setting.

Site plan – click above for larger image

The project was aimed at creating a unified series of flowing, contemporary spaces, allowing a greater degree of flexibility, linking internal spaces to the impressive rolling fields to the south, and the higher meadow land of the north. Equally, the brief called for a building with character and personality, respectful of the existing Oast house, and taking advantage of the views and surrounding environment.

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image

A key objective of the brief was to ‘rediscover’ the integrity of the building through careful observation and research where new additions and alterations would work harmoniously to create a new envisioned whole.

First floor plan – click above for larger image

However, the core ambition of the scheme was to create a dwelling which, over time, would come to reflect an exemplar approach to contemporary rural renovation work and to create a flexible living environment for the growing family within the exceptional surrounds.

Section – click above for larger image

Section – click above for larger image

Section – click above for larger image

North elevation – click above for larger image

South elevation – click above for larger image

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Duggan Morris Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Budapest architects MARP have replaced the missing corner of a ruined Renaissance palace with a Corten steel lookout point.

The L-shaped structure is part of a renovation of the ancient site in the city of Pécs, Hungary, which was almost completely destroyed. The architects stabilised the site and added new elements, including the lookout point, a low-level stage for open-air theatre and Corten steel seating blocks.

“We chose Corten steel as the primary material of our intervention to make the new structures significantly distinguishable from the older parts,” architect Márton Dévényi told Dezeen. ”The old remaining structures had been so incomplete for centuries that we did not want to rebuild them, we preferred to show their absence.”

The lookout point offers vistas over the Tettye valley, similar to those that the original two-storey palace would have enjoyed, while an aperture in the steel wall frames views of the internal courtyard.

Visitors ascend a staircase hidden within one wall and emerge on a walkway that runs along the length of the adjoining wall. A perforated pattern allows light to permeate the structure and filter into the staircase.

Photography is by Tamás Török.

Check out our Pinterest board for plenty more projects made from Corten steel.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

The reconstruction of the Szatmáry Palace

The existing ruins of the renaissance Szathmáry Palace is one of Hungary’s most valuable protected monuments. The palace is situated in the city of Pécs which is one of the oldest town of the southwestern region of Hungary with long historical background. The ruins are located in a park of Tettye Valley in the northeast part of the city, where the dense historical urban fabric meets nature. The valley rises almost from the heart of the city, offering a magnificent view of the city from the top. Bishop György Szathmáry (1457-1524) built his own Renaissance style summer residence here at the very beginning of the 16th century. The palace must have been a two-storey building with inner patio, made of local stone. It was said to have been a U-shaped building arranged around a courtyard open towards the South, that is to say, towards the city. A former archeological excavation confirmed that the Bishop of Pécs had a building with inner courtyard built that was rebuilt a number of times later. During the long occupation of Hungary by the Ottoman Empire from the mid-16th century, the palace housed probably a Turkish dervish cloister. This is when the south-east tower must have been built that is still untouched. After the Ottomans had been driven away, the building was left empty and its condition became worse and worse. At the beginning of the 20th century, one part of the building was demolished, and certain openings were strengthened with arches, thus providing a sense of romantic ruin aesthetics. Until recently the ruin was used as a background scene for a summer theatre. Despite the long history and its superb location, the palace in its bad condition was not able to fulfil the proper role following from its historical and architectural importance.

In 2010, it was Pécs, Essen and Istanbul that were awarded the title of European Capital of Culture. As part of this, a priority project focussed on the renewal of public areas including Tettye Park. This project provided an opportunity to put the ruin in a new context and the park could be present in its redefined way as a whole. The ruin in its dense complexity carries a number of qualities, therefore the designers of the intervention studied the current context and condition of the ruin as a starting point.

The Szathmáry Palace are, mostly, ruins of a building, but today this quality does not say too much in itself. It does not particularly reflect a significant renassaince feature. Obviously it lacks the architectural details we know very little about (few of the renaissance stone fragments kept in Pécs can be attributed to the building in Tettye). So it can be said that the architectural reality of the ruins continue to exist through the spatial relations generated by the remains of the wall. However, this shows a very mixed picture caused by natural and human erosion. The volume of damage at the southeast corner is so big that one can hardly picture the supplement of the ruins.

At the same time, the badly damaged ruin, particularly due to the neglected state of the park, appeared as a picturesque landscape element in the valley of Tettye. Pre-war postcards represent the atmosphere of a nice, picturesque tourist destination which undeniably rule the whole landscape. However, the abandoned park began to re-conquer the ruin so much that during high season, the character of the ruin can hardly be made out. From certain angles, it looked like a geological creature. This feeling has still remained if one looks at the ruin closely due to the intense erosion of the former southern side of the building. The image of the picturesque ruin is emphasised by the strengthening arches made through the early 20th century.

The third important peculiarity about the building is that the originally closed inner space of the palace has continued to be part of the park’s public areas today, dissolving the former differentiation between the landscape and the building. Thus the ruin has gained a public space quality in the meantime. Interestingly enough, the open-air performances of the summer theatre set in the ruins emphasised this feature even more.

The reconstruction programme of the Tettye Park basically made it unavoidable to re-define the role of the palace ruin as an emphatic landscape element and architectural monument. When defining the interventions, our main aim was to avoid overwriting the intellectual layers as well as the quality resulting from the ruin’s complexity. The starting point was to accept the existence of these even if the layers were developed either through centuries or just a few decades. At the same time, it was unavoidable to revise and ’retune’ the quality and the meanings carried by the ruin.

During the course of the architectural interventions, together with the monument protection authority, the ruin’s wholescale floorplan and its partial spatial reconstruction was carried out based on the scientific results of the archaeological excavations that preceded the design phase. During the excavation, the base walls of the southern wing believed to have been missing for a long time were discovered, which seemed to support the hypothesis that the building did not have a U-shape. As a result of the excavations, we were now able to draw the ascending wall parts and construct the original floorplan. What we basically did during the reconstruction of the floorplan was to repair the floor level inside the external outline of the whole of the original ruins, and we also attached retaining walls along the eroded southern side and the south-eastern corner, behind which we filled up the eroded ground up to the floor level. This supporting wall has a stabilising role in stopping the erosion that resulted in the sliding. The original floorplan is marked by the walltrace.

During the local spatial reconstruction, we designed an L-shaped, steel structure building part that had been missing from the south-eastern side, which includes a look-out tower and stairs leading to it, as well as a technical facility required for theatre use. It is important to mention that the new construction did not mean to be a formal reconstruction (the latter one was not an aim in fact and the amount of data that was available was insufficient), therefore it does not repeat the original mass properly. What happened instead was that we wanted to create such a mass in the place of the former wall corner that strengthens the building character of the ruin as opposed to its ruin character, framing the city view along with the current corner resembling it to the act of viewing out of a building. On the territory of the ruin, no more reconstructions were done, that is to say, we did not mean to ’complete’ the ruin. Evidently, the look-out tower offers a fascinating view of the city, but at the same time there is a nice view too to the inner part of the ruin, making the floor plan reconstruction neat and revealing.

As a part of the floor plan reconstruction, we re-defined the ground surfaces inside the outer walls of Palace, referring the former usage of spaces: the inner patio became a green lawn zone, while the other older inner areas, where the inner rooms were, received a surface course of mineral rubble of local stone granulations. As part of the interpretation of the ruin’s space as a public space, we applied surfaces that refer to the current public space use rather than to the original floor carpet. In the former inner space of the ruin’s Western wing, a new carpet-like stage was completed for theatrical purposes, rising above the surface level very slightly. The new corner construction, the stage and the street furniture (sitting facilities) all received the same Corten steel carpet.

As part of the reconstruction of Tettye Park, both the ruin’s immediate and distant environment have been renewed. Having replanted the green area around the ruin, the formerly covered, fragmented building that could be characterised as a more unified, magnificent whole has managed to regain some of its original character. We also managed to restore both the physical and intellectual layers that contribute to the ruin’s complexity through applied interventions. It was also an aim to rather define new directions to its future destiny when we placed the parts endowed with the remaining meanings in a new context. Furthermore, the whole area could become a new, exciting part of the city context, in which the re-defined palace ruin plays an outstanding role. Through the re-arrangement of the green surroundings, which included the removal of the traffic located south of the ruin, we created a triple terrace system that defines the centre of the Tettye valley in this place again.

Architects: Marp, Budapest
Márton Dévényi, Pál Gyürki-Kiss
Assistants: Ádám Holicska, Dávid Loszmann

Landscape planning: S73, Budapest
Dr. Péter István Balogh, Sándor Mohácsi, János Hómann

Structural engineering: Marosterv, Pécs
József Maros, Gergely Maros

Steel construction planner: J.Reilly, Budapest
Zoltán V. Nagy, Péter Bokor

Electrical Planning: LM-Terv, Pécs
Gábor Lénárt

Mechanical services: Pécsi Mélyépítő Iroda, Pécs
Erzsébet Bruckner, Ferenc Müller

Competition phase: 2007
Design phase: 2008-2010
Construction: 2009-2011
Gross area: 1040 m2
Client: City of Pécs

Photos: Tamás Török

 Above: site plan

Above : section

Above: floor plan 

Above : elevations

 Above: details

Above : axonometry

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by MARP appeared first on Dezeen.