The Porcelain Shoes are each as light as one kilogram due to the half-centimetre-thick heel walls and a pair can withstand weights over 160 kilograms.
Contrasting with the rough heels, smooth white leather is used for the vamps. Each has a different style of opening and slashes up the ankle at various offsets.
The platforms are angled inward from the heel and toe to create smaller soles, which are formed from rubber.
This experimental project was for my bachelor degree. My inspirations were the stone surfaces of dripstones and Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia. My goal was that the rustic features would show up in the heels. I imagined it in white, because it shows the plastics best. The right material was porcelain as it is able to imitate any fine surface, and one of the strongest materials.
The shoes could hold more than 160 kilograms but the platform is not heavy, only one kilogram, because the heel wall is only half a centimetre thick. Finally, three pairs of shoes are made from different gauzes. The vamp is made of leather, which contrasts with the platform. The homogeny and the rustic reinforce each other. The sole of the shoes are made of rubber.
News: Italian firm Mario Cucinella Architects has won a competition to design a telecommunications agency headquarters in Algeria with proposals for a fin-like form referencing sand dunes and traditional Mediterranean architecture (+ slideshow).
Mario Cucinella Architects also used the pointed arch typical in Islamic regions as a reference for the shape, which also resembles the dunes of the surrounding desert landscape.
The building’s form contributes to natural cooling by channeling hot winds over the convex surface of the north facade, while a concave wall on the opposite side helps draw in cool air at night.
Occupying a location next to a major road and close to a new urban park on the outskirts of Algiers, the ARPT (Autorité de Régulation de la Poste et des Télécommunications) building is intended as “the reference point within a neighbourhood and a city where tradition and modernity merge”.
International Competition – ARPT new Headquarters (Autorité de Régulation de la Poste et des Télécommunications)
The building has been conceived as an icon where tradition and modernity are melted, both in form (which arises from a pointed arch typical of Mediterranean architecture and the inclination of the solar diagram) as well as in the treatment of the surface of the body.
The project is inspired by the Algerian desert landscape where the dunes of seem natural buildings, manufactured by wind and sand. Analysing the urban fabric, the location of the lot along a highway of great importance and especially the proximity to the new urban park Bab Ezzouar, offer the possibility to create a building highly visible and representative. An institutional building as the new ARPT headquarters should be the reference point within a neighborhood and a city where tradition and modernity merge each other to create new symbolic and cultural scenarios. For this reason the project proposal draws a highly iconic building far from the predominant aesthetics of the area and which exploits the direct contact with the new park. The desire to create a building that would work according to the principles of bioclimatic architecture and in particular by the natural cooling techniques of the past, such as the tu’rat, suggested an aerodynamic shape, convex on the North side to divert the hot winds, and concave on the South side to capture the cool breezes during the night, and thus to promote the natural ventilation of the building.
Form, energy and tradition are transformed then into a new building that will become a symbol of the development of Algeria.
Place: Algeri, Algeria Year: 2013 Type: International Competition – winner project Progetto: Mario Cucinella Architects
Team: Mario Cucinella, Luca Sandri, Alberto Casarotto, Alberto Bruno, Giulia Mariotti, Rossana Romano, Michele Olivieri, Giuseppe Perrone Stuctures and engineering: Favero & Milan
A jumble of wooden boxes provide a compact storage solution in this São Paulo micro apartment by Brazilian architect Alan Chu (+ slideshow).
In an attempt to save space, Alan Chu confined all the storage to a single wall, with an entertainment system in crate-like boxes at one end and kitchen cupboards that swing or slide open at the other.
“The idea is to use a single element to organise the space of the small apartment with an area of 36-square-metres, distributed over two floors,” he told Dezeen.
Red surfaces inside the pinewood units match the scarlet fridge and rug, the only colour in the otherwise monochrome and wood interior.
“The apartment is the temporary residence of a recently divorced young businessman and the decor plays with the transience of the moment: a time of changes, improvisation and reorganisation,” Chu said.
White tiles laid in a brickwork pattern cover three walls of the lower floor while the fourth is taken up by floor-to-ceiling windows.
A large sofa bed beneath the double-height portion of the apartment takes up the majority of the floor space, though there is also room for a small table and chairs.
A black metal staircase spirals up to the mezzanine through another wooden box that sits opposite the bathroom, tucked in one corner and surrounded by dark walls.
Black is also used for the wall behind the bed, the only item of furniture on the glass-edged balcony apart from a chair and a wall-mounted lamp.
Dark wood covering the ceiling below is also laid on the mezzanine floor and glass panels form balustrades that help retain an open feeling.
This micro house in Beijing by Chinese architect Liu Lubin comprises three cross-shaped modules that can be flipped around to turn a living room into an office or bathroom (+ slideshow).
Designed as both architecture and furniture, the modules are constructed to a minimum size with just enough room for sitting, sleeping or preparing food.
The cross-shaped profile creates worktops along two edges of the space, while square windows hinge open at either end and double up as entrances.
Studio Liu Lubin used a fibre-reinforced foam composite for the structure of the modules, making them light enough to lift. This allows residents to rotate the rooms if they need to swap simple shelves for a desk or sink.
The three modules of this house contain a bedroom, a bathroom and a small office. Lubin explains that more could be grouped together to make larger dwellings, or even neighbourhoods.
The modules are designed to fit neatly into shipping containers and can transported to different locations. Their minute size also allows them to bypass current restrictions governing private homes in China.
Lubin developed the concept as part of a research project at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The Micro House is based on the minimum space people need for basic indoor movement, such as sitting, laying and standing. The form of the Micro House is designed to act as a combination of furniture and architecture elements.
Different uses for the modules
When being rotated, the unit of the Micro House will shift its space which contains all kinds of housing activities, such as resting, working, washing and cooking, etc.
The main material of the Micro House is the fibre-reinforced foam composite structure, which is light but strong. In this case, the Micro House unit can be easily lift and assembled by hand. For the convenience of transportation and replacement, the size of the unit is designed as the size of containers.
The Micro House makes it possible for people to have private housing product under current Chinese land policy.
A village built up from hundreds of modules
Project: Micro House in Tsinghua Location: Beijing Designer: Studio Liu Lubin Project Team: Liu Lubin, Wang Lin, Weng Jia, Wang Xiaofeng, Wan Li, Liang YIfan, Zhao Ye Constructor: Architectural Design & Research Institute of Tsinghua University CO.LTD, Nanjing University Of Technology Advanced Engineering Composites Research Centre Structure Type: fibre-reinforced foam composite structure
A knot-shaped rooftop will be used as a vegetable garden at this kindergarten by Vo Trong Nghia Architects that’s under construction in Dong Nai, Vietnam (+ slideshow).
Set to complete later this year, the Farming Kindergarten is designed by Vietnamese firm Vo Trong Nghia Architects as a prototype for sustainable school design, where children can learn how to grow their own food.
The roof has a continuous surface that loops around to frame the outline of three courtyard playgrounds. It slopes up from the ground and peaks at two storeys, allowing an easy climb to the vegetable garden for children and their teachers.
“While these internal courtyards provide safety and comfortable playgrounds for children, the roof makes a landing to the courtyards at both sides, allowing children to enter a very special eco-friendly experience when they walk up and go through it,” say the architects.
Classrooms inside the building will follow the same loop as the roof and will accommodate up to 500 children. Concrete louvres will shade the windows, offering relief from intense sunlight.
Here’s a project description from Vo Trong Nghia Architects:
Farming Kindergarten
This kindergarten, for 500 pre-school children, is a prototype for sustainable education spaces in tropical climates. The plan was designed for the factory workers children of Pou Chen Vietnam.
The building concept is a “Farming Kindergarten” with a continuous green roof, providing food and agriculture experience to Vietnamese children, as well as a safe outdoor playground.
The green roof is a triple-ring-shape drawn with a single stroke, creating three courtyards inside. While these internal courtyards provide safety and comfortable playgrounds for children, the roof makes landing to the courtyards at both sides, allowing children to enter a very special eco-friendly experience when they walk up and go through it. This green roof is designed as a continuous vegetable garden, a place to teach children the importance of agriculture and relationship with nature.
Architectural and mechanical energy-saving methods are comprehensively applied including but not limited to: green roof, PC-concrete louver for shading, recycle materials, water recycling, solar water heating and so on. These devices are designed visibly for children to play their important role in sustainable education. The building is designed to maximise the natural ventilation through a computational fluid dynamics analysis.
Architect Firm: Vo Trong Nghia Architects Principal architects: Vo Trong Nghia, Takashi Niwa, Masaaki Iwamoto Architects: Tran Thi Hang, Kuniko Onishi Contractor: Wind and Water House JSC Client: Pou Chen Vietnam
Danish architecture studio BIG has completed a sunken sports hall where an arching wooden roof doubles up as a hilly courtyard (+ slideshow).
BIG was asked by Gammel Hellerup high school to design a new building that could be used for sports, graduation ceremonies and social events. Rather than replacing the school’s existing courtyard, the architects decided to sink the hall five metres below the ground and create a decked surface over the top.
Concrete retaining walls surround the new hall, while a series of curving timber joists give the roof its arched shape.
Solid ash was used for the floor and is painted with colour-coded lines that denote basketball, football and badminton courts. A sliver of daylight penetrates the room through a series of skylights around the edges, while narrow lighting fixtures create stripes of illumination across the ceiling joists.
Basement corridors connect the hall with the existing school buildings. BIG also added solar panels onto the rooftops of these structures to generate heating for the new space.
Above the hall, the decked surface was conceived as an informal meeting area, with outdoor furniture installed so that students can work in groups or simply take time out between classes.
“Opposed to placing the hall outside the school’s building – thus spreading the social life even more – the new hall creates a social focal point and connection between the existing facilities of the high school,” explain the architects.
Photography is by Jens Lindhe, apart from where otherwise stated.
Read on for a project description from BIG:
How do we transform a courtyard into a new social meeting point?
Gammel Hellerup Gymnasium is, with its characteristic yellow brick buildings, a good example of a school building in a human scale and a fine architectural example of its time. The sports facilities have, however, become too insufficient and the high school is lacking a large, multifunctional space for physical activities, graduation ceremonies and social gatherings. The Gammel Hellerup Gymnasium, a self-owned governmental institution, wishes therefore to build a new flexible hall for the students’ usage with a particular focus on sustainability.
Photograph by the architects
The new multi-purpose hall will primarily be for the pupils’ physical education and social development. The hall is placed 5 metres below ground in the centre of the school’s courtyard which ensures a good indoor climate, low environmental impact and high architectural quality. The characteristic soft curved roof wood construction will act externally as an informal meeting place that can host numerous activities from group work to larger gatherings. The edge of the roof is designed as a long social bench with easy access across the courtyard and is perforated with small windows to ensure the penetration of daylight. Solar panels placed strategically around the existing buildings provide heat for the hall. Opposed to placing the hall outside the school’s building – thus spreading the social life even more – the new hall creates a social focal point and connection between the existing facilities of the high school.
Product news: these coffee tables with interlocking wooden legs by German studio Ding3000 have been put into production by Danish brand Normann Copenhagen (+ slideshow).
Ding300s‘s design is based on brain-teaser puzzles that join three pieces of wood together as one to form what looks to be an inseparable knot.
“The three legs seem to pierce through each other in an impossible way and our intention is to draw attention to this almost magical detail,” say the designers. “That is also why we have chosen a transparent top, so the table’s key focus point is the joining of the legs”.
The coffee tables are assembled without any screws or tools and the pieces of oak simply slot together to create a single sculptural form, which becomes the base for a glass tabletop. The base is held firm due to specific shapes cut into each individual leg.
These 3D-printed accessories by London fashion designer Catherine Wales can be ordered to fit any body shape and printed on demand (+ slideshow).
Wales creates a digital avatar of the prospective wearer using a 3D scanner so each piece can be custom designed and built specifically for their body shape.
“[The idea] started with a message to the industry that we don’t need size labels in our garments,” Wales told Dezeen. “I felt that the fashion industry needed to integrate more techonology to reflect where society was going.”
The Project DNA collection includes a corset with perforations across the bodice to hold elements resembling scaffolding, which connect to spherical joints that can be added to and altered. “I used my pattern-cutting knowledge to change form and accentuate or reduce parts of the body,” said Wales.
A shoulder piece designed to emulate plumage and a mask that frames sections of the face also feature in the range. She created the attire using a combination of engineering programs to model complicated joints and creative software to build the sculptural forms.
Local studio Digits2Widgets provided the equipment to laser sinter the pieces from nylon, which Wales used because “all the joints needed to be flexible.”
The corset, shoulder adornment and horn mask are on display as part of an exhibition with 3D-printing platform Ground3D at the MoBA fashion biennale in Arnhem, the Netherlands. The event is curated by trend forecaster Li Edelkoort and themed Fetishism in Fashion, which continues until 21 July.
“Corsets have been used in that area for centuries,” Wales states. “Restricting and changing the shape of the body through these accessories all fits in with the fetishism theme.”
Project DNA is the three-dimensional accessories collection from London-based designer, Catherine Wales. At the helm of the world’s third industrial revolution, Catherine’s debut offering cross-pollinates high fashion, technology and science to re-evaluate conventional methods of garment construction and push the boundaries of digital fabrication within the luxury market.
Inspired by identity and the visual structure of human chromosomes, Project DNA is created almost entirely with individual and interchangeable ball and socket components that allow it to be built in a number of directions. Produced using white nylon with a 3D printer, the eight-piece collection encompasses a scaffolded corset, a blossoming feathered shoulder piece and a waist bracelet complemented by four transformative headpieces that hide key areas of the face; including a guilded horn and a mirrored mask, and a cut out visor helmet.
Catherine’s futuristic collection is completely unique and can be used both editorially to stimulate conceptual thinking and scientifically to develop the capabilities of luxury fashion prototyping within the 3D space.
As an expert pattern cutter, Catherine originally approached Project DNA with a view to sustainably solve the current complications surrounding garment sizing and manufacturing restrictions. In this way, the collection embraces technological developments in order to cut down wastage and better support consumer demand.
Roughly hewn concrete gives a rocky texture to the walls of this Alpine holiday home by Austrian studio Marte.Marte Architects (+ slideshow).
The four-storey Mountain Cabin was constructed by Marte.Marte Architects on the side of a hillside in Laterns, Austria, and boasts far-stretching views of the surrounding mountains and forests.
Two rectangular openings wrap around the rectilinear body of the house, dividing it into two and creating a sheltered outdoor terrace on the upper-middle floor. This level functions as the building’s entrance and can be accessed via a staircase at the rear.
A second staircase spirals down from this floor to bedrooms and storage areas on the lower levels and up to an open-plan kitchen and living room on the uppermost floor.
Smooth concrete walls and ceilings are left exposed inside the house and contrast with the rugged surface of the facade. Floors, doors and window frames are oak, as is much of the furniture.
Square windows are dotted around each elevation and are the only other interruption to the clean lines of the facade.
“The openings punched into the double-walled concrete shell are transformed into framed landscape paintings,” says the studio, describing the views from the windows.
Here’s a project description from Marte.Marte Architects:
Mountain cabin in Laternser valley
At the edge of a wooded ravine, beneath the imposing wooden house of the Catholic Community of Sisters, the small tower building rises from the steep hillside.
Striking and modest in appearance, it stretches up out of a small hollow situated on a narrow path along the edge of the forest.
The only change made to the hillside is the driveway and the terrain has been left in its original form.
Fitting into the landscape as if it were a barn, the building, which is a fine example of the homogeneous use of materials, in this case, carefully hewn rough concrete, stands out against the meadow green and winter white. Its ashy-gray colour only contrasts slightly with the heavy oak front doors and the anthracite-coloured handrails blend in with the branches of the surrounding forest. As if they were punched into the walls, the square windows of different sizes are spread out across the walls, and their full effect is only achieved at the corners.
The integration of the outer surfaces requested by the client is a kind of artifice. At the entry level, which is accessible via a flight a steps, the structure narrows down to two supporting corner columns, which not only provides guests with the unique opportunity to look through the building while at the same time enjoying a panorama view of the surrounding landscape, the whole time protected from the elements, but also lends the entrance a sense of significance.
Inside the column, a spiral staircase connects the living area on the upper level with the two more private areas on the lower level, where the bedrooms and relaxation areas are interlocked like a puzzle. Semantically speaking, this gesture of the tower creates archetypes of fortified structures and abstract computer figures in your mind’s eye, making the tower seem familiar and strange at one and the same time.
Inside, the openings punched into the double-walled concrete shell are transformed into framed landscape paintings by wide, matte solid oak window frames that do not take up much wall space. These framed windows direct the guest’s attention to the prominent mountain chain, the gentle slopes and the dense forest grove.
Site plan
Besides the raw concrete surfaces and the untreated oak floors, doors and fixtures, the black metal surfaces complement the harmonious, austere combination of materials. The client and architects haven’t built a flimsy holiday house, but instead a place of retreat that will remain standing for generations, despite any forthcoming changes of climate and landscape.
It might look like these people are scaling the walls of a London townhouse but they’re actually lying on the ground, reflected in a huge mirror as part of an installation by Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich (+ slideshow).
Located in Hackney, Dalston House by Leandro Erlich is a temporary installation comprising a reconstructed house facade lying face-up and a mirror positioned over it at a 45-degree angle.
As a person walks over the surface of the house, the mirror reflects their image and creates the illusion that they are walking up the walls. Similarly, visitors can make it look like they are balancing over the cornices or dangling from the windows.
The brick walls and decorative window mouldings of the three-storey facade are designed to mimic the nineteenth-century Victorian terraces that line many of London’s streets, particularly a row of houses that once occupied this site on Ashwin Street.
Commissioned by the Barbican gallery, the installation opened to the public yesterday as part of the London Festival of Architecture 2013 and will remain on show until 4 August.
Internationally known for captivating, three-dimensional visual illusions, Argentine artist Leandro Erlich has been commissioned by the Barbican to create Dalston House, an installation in Hackney. The work resembles a movie set, featuring the façade of a late nineteenth-century Victorian terraced house. The life-size façade lies on the ground with a mirrored surface positioned overhead at a 45-degree angle. By sitting, standing or lying on the horizontal surface, visitors appear to be scaling or hanging off the side of the building. Sited at 1–7 Ashwin Street, near Dalston Junction, Erlich has designed and decorated the façade – complete with a door, windows, mouldings and other architectural details – to evoke the houses that previously stood on the block. Leandro Erlich: Dalston House opens on 26 June 2013 and is presented on Ashwin Street in association with OTO Projects. It is also part of the 2013 London Festival of Architecture.
Leandro Erlich: Dalston House is installed on a disused lot that has largely remained vacant since it was bombed during the Second World War. The installation extends the Barbican’s programme of Curve commissions to east London and is part of Beyond Barbican, a summer of events outside the walls of the Centre that includes pop-up performances, commissions and collaborations across east London. Beyond Barbican builds on the Barbican’s long history of programming work in east London that connects communities in the boroughs surrounding the Centre with some of the best art from around the world. The commission follows the success and legacy of Dalston Mill by EXYZT, a temporary installation and participatory project staged by the Barbican in Hackney in 2009, which reopened in 2010 as the Eastern Curve Garden.
Dalston House is presented on Ashwin Street in association with OTO Projects. The Barbican is an official partner of the London Festival of Architecture 2013. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Additional support from the Embassy of the Argentine Republic.
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