Over a thousand ghostly white shoes protrude from the walls of this New York store for shoe brand Camper, designed by Japanese studio Nendo (+ slideshow).
Nendo arranged the shoes in a regimented pattern across every wall, intended to look like they are “walking on air”. Each identical shoe is a replica of the Camper Pelota, the brand’s most iconic footwear collection, and is made from white resin.
“When designing such a big space you have to face the challenge of how to use the upper half of the walls to display the shoes in areas with such high ceilings,” says Nendo. “Our new approach involves making models of the Pelotas shoes and decorating the walls with them to fill the space and create the feel of an orderly stockroom.”
There are a handful of openings at the base of the walls for displaying the current collections, which can easily be spotted due to their stand-out colours.
More shoes are displayed on white platforms in the centre of the store, while recessed openings house the brand’s sock and bag collections.
News: developers have unveiled images of Zaha Hadid Architects’ proposed 60-storey residential skyscraper in Miami, USA (+ slideshow).
Named One Thousand Museum, the building will be located on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami.
The 215-metre-high tower will have a concrete “exoskeleton” structure.
“I really love Miami, but I don’t think the architecture matches the city,” Hadid told the Wall Street Journal earlier this year. “It’s a bit too commercial.”
“We wanted to avoid that generic, modernist typology,” she added. “We were interested in the idea of the tall building, and how it lands on the ground, how the structure is manifested.”
The interior images of the tower include items of furniture designed by Hadid.
Prices for the luxury apartments are expected to start at $4 million for a half-floor unit, rising to between $30 and $50 million for a duplex penthouse unit.
Barcelona’s new design museum is an angular metal-clad structure designed by local studio MBM Arquitectes (+ slideshow).
The seven-storey Museu del Disseny de Barcelona is located on the edge of Plaça de les Glories, next door to Jean Nouvel‘s Torre Agbar office tower. Due to the level changes across the site, the building has part of its volume buried beneath the ground and has public entrances on two of its floors.
MBM Arquitectes divided the form of the building into two halves. The bottom section is a bulky volume with glazed walls and a grass roof, while the upper section is a top-heavy structure clad with pre-weathered aluminium panels on every side.
Set to open in spring 2014, the museum will combine the decorative arts, ceramics, textiles and graphic design collections of four existing museums, which have now closed their doors.
The main exhibition hall will be housed in the lower part of the building, while additional exhibitions will take place in galleries on the museum’s upper floors. Other facilities include a large auditorium, a small hall, a public library, education rooms and a bar and cafe.
The area surrounding the museum has been made into a lake, while the grass roof serves as a new public lawn overlooking the water.
The building is the work of MBM Arquitectes, the architecture studio formed by Josep Martorell, Oriol Bohigas and David Mackay, together with Oriol Capdevila and Francesc Gual. The edifice is made up of two parts: one underground (which takes advantage of the slope created by urban development of the plaza) and another which emerges at 14.5 m (at the level of Plaça de les Glòries).
Construction below the height of 14.5m: Most of the surface area of the building is situated below the 14.5m level and is where the more significant installations are housed. They are distributed over two floors and a gallery, and include the main exhibition hall, rooms given over to management and preservation of the DHUB’s collections, the main offices, Clot public library, the documentation centre (DHUBdoc) and rooms for research and educational activities, in addition to high-traffic services such as the bar, restaurant and store. Though below ground level, the basement floor receives natural light from a trench which is worked into the different ground levels and which features a huge lake, creating a dialogue with the outside. Lighting is reinforced with six skylights that look out over the public space and can also be used as showcases for the centre’s contents and activities.
Construction above the height of 14.5m: This part of the building projects over the width of Carrer d’Àvila and has the shape of a slanted parallelepiped. In accordance with the general urban plan it occupies a minimum footprint, primarily in order not to reduce the space earmarked for public use, but also because the vicissitudes of plans to demolish the elevated road and change the tramline route severely limit the space available. The building cantilevers out towards the plaça, enabling the construction potential to be met while at the same time establishing a display of urban architecture over the motorway. This block will house the venues for long- and short-term temporary exhibitions, as well as a small hall and a large auditorium.
Entrance to both parts or bodies that compose the DHUB headquarters is gained through a single vestibule with two points of access: one in Carrer d’Àvila and another in Plaça de les Glòries. Passage through this part of the building is almost inevitable, as it forms a kind of corridor connecting Plaça de les Glòries, the 22@ technological district and Poblenou.
All of the services situated in the basement area can be reached from this semi-public plaza, as well as those on the upper floors by means of a system of escalators, staircases and lifts. While the different spaces have diverse dimensions and architectural characteristics, overall they form a conceptual whole in which the auditorium stands aloft as a fundamental and crowning feature.
Only two materials are used in the building’s exterior, zinc plates and glass, bestowing an industrial feel with metallic accents on the building. The green carpet of the artificial flooring and bright graphics on the pavement are two of the primary components of the outside surfaces. In both cases, the elements employed (natural and manufactured) ensure sustainability and ease of maintenance. The lake, in addition to visually highlighting the work, creates a link between the different levels.
Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has completed a hotel in Miyazaki where guest rooms and dining areas surround a central courtyard and wedding chapel (+ slideshow).
Located on the site of a former factory, Garden Terrace Miyazaki comprises a single two-storey building that features bamboo-clad walls and a large sloping roof with overhanging eaves.
A faceted timber canopy shelters the entrance to the hotel, leading through to a reception where guests are faced with a view of the courtyard.
Kengo Kuma and Associates designed this space as a “calm and tranquil environment”, where a landscape of bamboo trees and pools of water provide a scenic setting to the glazed wedding chapel at its centre.
Restaurants and event rooms surround the other sides of the courtyard, while guest rooms are located on the first floor.
Here’s a short description from Kengo Kuma and Associates:
Garden Terrace Miyazaki
The hotel was built at a vast site near JR Miyazaki station, where a factory once stood. Around it houses and aparrments spread in no particular order.
Facilities of the hotel – guest rooms, banquet room and restaurants are arranged to circle the courtyard.
Loosely sloped roof came out as the result of each function underneath. It wraps the entire building – two-storey structure under the deep eaves.
Bamboo is planted and water is laid out in and out of the hotel and its courtyard, providing a calm and tranquil environment that stretches even to the residential area.
Completion: September 2012 Main use: hotel Total floor area: 4562.04 sqm
German artist Tobias Rehberger has created a temporary replica of his favourite Frankfurt bar in a New York hotel and covered the entire thing in bold geometric stripes (+ slideshow).
New York Bar Oppenheimer has exactly the same size and proportions of the original Bar Oppenheimer, a regular hangout for the artistic community in Frankfurt. It contains the same furniture and details, from the lighting fixtures to the tall radiators.
Unlike the original, Rehberger has decorated every surface of the replica bar with black and white stripes, which zigzag in every direction and are interspersed with flashes of red and orange.
The patterns are based on the concept of “dazzle camouflage”, a tactic employed during World War I to make it difficult for soldiers to pinpoint a target.
New York Bar Oppenheimer opened last week at Hôtel Americano, coinciding with the annual Frieze New York art fair. Functioning as both an installation and a working bar, it will remain in place until 14 July.
“The way I look at it is like a suitcase,” Rehberger told Wallpaper magazine. “I’m going to be in New York for a bit so I’m able to pack up my favourite bar and take it with me. And because I’m there for the art fair, the bar has to come dressed as a work of art.”
Here’s some more information from the exhibition organisers:
Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer
Pilar Corrias, London and Hôtel Americano are pleased to announce a new sculptural artwork, Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer by the German artist Tobias Rehberger. Presented from 11 May until 14 July 2013, the piece opened to coincide with Frieze New York and is on view at Hôtel Americano.
Rehberger creates objects, sculptures and environments as diverse as they are prolific. Drawing on a repertoire of quotidian objects appropriated from everyday mass-culture, Rehberger translates, alters and expands ordinary situations and objects with which we are familiar. It is in this spirit that Rehberger has created a ‘second edition’ of Bar Oppenheimer, the Frankfurt late-night hangout he frequents and which is at the heart of the city’s artistic community. The work is a sculpture and, at the same time, a fully functioning bar. Rehberger remains faithful to the essence of the original bar: dimensions of space and objects are replicated and re-imagined to produce a familiar yet unfamiliar environment. Vodka Steins, Rehberger’s own favourite drink, are seconded to New York, transporting the artist’s own Frankfurt Oppenheimer Bar experience to Hôtel Americano for two months only.
A place where creatives and thinkers meet to form, discuss, argue, and pursue ideas and follies late into the night, Bar Oppenheimer acts as a catalyst for change. Repatriated in New York as Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer, the artist is curious as to the effect that its influence will have on a new audience.
11 May – 14 July 2013 Tues – Sat 5pm – midnight Hôtel Americano, 518 W. 27th Street, New York
This renovated family home in Japan by designer Yasunari Tsukada features large internal windows and a mezzanine loft, creating apertures and vantage points for looking into different rooms (+ slideshow).
Adapting part of a three-storey house, Yasunari Tsukada planned the interior as a grid of partitioned rooms that maintain the same clarity as an open-plan residence.
“The client requested a home where he could feel the presence of his family throughout the building, while at the same time having the calm and relaxing sensation of being in a private room,” explains the designer.
The mezzanine floor runs across the centre of the space, accessed by a metal staircase near the entrance. There are no walls around it, only balustrades, so residents can look down onto any of the surrounding rooms.
Large windows and doorways also open rooms out to one another. There are a few sliding doors, so some of the spaces can be made more private when necessary.
“Each space also contains two or more windows or openings, giving rise to a multilayered space with no sense of hierarchy within it,” says Tsukada.
An existing glass-block wall that previously encased a stairwell gives a curved outline to a new living room, plus a single concrete wall is the backdrop for a television.
The ceiling of the residence follow the angle of the roof. Bare lightbulbs hang down from it on long cables, while others are mounted sideways onto the walls.
Here’s some more information from Yasunari Tsukada:
House in Takamatsu
Our client was initially inclined to build a new house. After much consideration, however, he decided to partly renovate his three-storey family house, and use it as a residence for a two-generation family.
The client requested a home where he could feel the presence of his family throughout the building, while at the same time having the calm and relaxing sensation of being in a private room. By enveloping each room with a sloping ceiling to make use of the existing building, we wondered if we could create an ambiguously defined space that would feel as if it had been partitioned, while still maintaining a sense of coherence and unity.
The components that make up each individual room are gate-like walls, which consist mainly of openings. The roof gradient and heights of the sash windows were determined in accordance with the original height of the living room, which was 2400mm. The heights of the walls also took their cue from this figure, and were set at 2400mm. Although it seems as if this height has been deployed with excessive frequency within the space, doing away with ceilings for the individual rooms while covering them with a single, sloping ceiling and installing windows at a number of positions along the walls allowed us to create a sort of landscape that presented a very different face to the familiar surroundings. Each space also contains two or more windows or openings, giving rise to a multilayered space with no sense of hierarchy within it.
The renovation process involves thinking about how we can devise new spaces while respecting a given set of conditions imposed by the existing building, as well as the client’s requirements. The glass blocks from the large staircase and stairwell were transformed into a part of the living room and the reading space, while the innocuous reinforced concrete wall that originally supported the staircase was given a new lease of life as the wall that one notices most of all on a daily basis. For our client, this space helped to give things and objects new meanings, and became invested with new stories and narratives – a process that prompted him to rethink the possibilities of design through renovation.
Project Name: House in Takamatsu Project Type: residence renovation Location: Takamatsu-city, Kagawa, Japan Completion: 2012 May Design: Yasunari Tsukada design Contractor: Shikoku Housing
A house-shaped shop window frames the interior of this renovated beauty salon in Osaka Prefecture by Japanese office Tsubasa Iwahashi Architects.
Located in the town of Sakai, the Folm Arts beauty salon is designed by Tsubasa Iwahashi to fit in with the surrounding houses. “I wanted to express the close connection of the town and shop,” says the architect.
A chunky wooden frame surrounds the house-shaped glazing, creating the only interruption to an otherwise monolithic facade.
The interior of the salon is divided into two halves, both with clean white walls and pale timber furnishings. A reception desk is positioned at the front, while styling stations line the side wall and a private styling area is tucked away at the back.
Arched mirrors are mounted to the walls and sit proud of the surface.
Read on more a more detailed description from the architects:
Folm arts – Beauty salon
If there is a form of the ideal to the shop, it may be to blend naturally as part of the town. It is that, rather than the sign-lit brilliantly, to continue to be as existence is connected to the people indeed.
This is a renovation of the beauty salon during the ten years have passed since the time along with the town from opening. There was a figure of the shop owner exchanging greetings friends with people of the town who went through the shop front. The figure already seemed to be a part of town. It is a renewal of the shop for 10th year.
The frame of house type reflecting the image of intimate connection with the town provided in the facade of the shop, are beginning to become the icon of the town. While leaving partially, what he continued to use it carefully for many years, we have reconstructed a new space in the shop. In the shop front, the shop owner exchanging greetings with people of the town and is watering trees, as usual. Through the frame of the house type of tunnel shape, connection with the town and the shop, has been practiced in the storefront today.
Overall Excellence *
I thought through the facade of the shop, I wanted to express a close connection of the town and shop. I have decided towards the town, and to have the facade of the shop the opening of the house type. When seen from the street, state of the shop is a glimpse into the frame over the house type. From the shop, view of the street is cut off by the frame of the house type, you can feel the appearance of the street to go move from moment to moment.
The shop and the town, are connected with each other deeply through the frame. And from now, the shop will continue piled up time as part of the town even more
Use of Technology *
The frame type of house that was built in the tunnel shape, is summarising various functions to one. An entrance door, the blind of the measure against the afternoon sun in the evening, the space of a waiting and a bookshelf, and planting, lighting…
Various elements are connected to one and the facade is constituted. It has succeeded in enabling simple composition and excluding an excessive element by collecting various functions to one.
I believe images with shapes that reminiscent the universal, to function as a common language beyond the language. I think from children to the elderly, regardless of country, language of common give people the impression of a uniform. In addition, the effect, I believe is in Asia with similar climate, culture and distance, I can expect even more.
The frame of the house type cited the shape of a house, as reminiscent of an intimate relationship like a family, it was adopted. As an icon of the town, the shop will be rooted in the town in the future.
Commercial and Societal Success *
People of the town which memorises feeling of a certain kind on a house type frame, and it newly visits. People who point out the facade of a beauty salon and talk. People who wait for people. The passerby who parks and observes a car. Gradually, the beauty salon is beginning to function as an icon of a town. From now on, various dramas will start at the store.
One year, three years, and ten years after. The role of a new store has started as a part of town.
Swedish design studio Claesson Koivisto Rune has come up with a stove for the developing world that uses a two-thirds less wood than a traditional cooking fire (+ movies + slideshow).
The Baker Cookstove was designed by Claesson Koivisto Rune for Top Third Ventures, a company set up in 2011 to sell stoves to low-income households in developing countries, with the aim of improving the health of users and lowering carbon dioxide emissions.
In countries like Kenya, where the Baker Cookstove is being launched first, cooking is traditionally done on a three-stone fire – an open fire over which a pot is balanced on three rocks.
This inefficient method not only requires lots of firewood, resulting in children being sent long distances to fetch wood instead of attending school, but also creates a large amount of lung-damaging smoke.
Claesson Koivisto Rune came up with a compact stove made from recycled aluminium that requires only a third of the amount of wood normally used for a three-stone fire.
Diagram of stove
Tests at the University of Nairobi showed the Baker Cookstove achieved a 56% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and a 38% reduction in smoke particles.
The shape of the stove and its bright colours are intended to resemble traditional African cookware.
“As designers we need to put the same effort into an African stove as if we were designing an Italian sports car,” said the designers.
Above: movie shows Claesson Koivisto Rune’s design process
The majority of women in the developing world prepare food on a technology called a three-stone fire. It is basically three rocks that support a pot with an open fire in the middle. This cooking method is very inefficient and leads to many environmental and health problems, one very real side effect being that children are denied education and futures because they are sent to collect firewood, wood that every day is founder at further distances. The walk takes all day and leaves no time for school.
However, since the three-stone method has been a tradition for thousand of years, a new stove must allow the user to keep their way of life intact to be successful. The solution is to make a stove that burns wood, but as efficiently as possible.
The design approach has really been the same as with any design project. Design is about solutions – function, usability, unification – and about adding an immaterial – humane, aesthetic, iconic – dimension.
You can still cook over burning wood, but with the Baker stove you need only one third of the wood of before. In numbers from tests at the University of Nairobi the Baker Cookstove achieve a 56% reduction in CO and 38% reduction in particulate matter.
Local methods of cooking, tools and containers were studied as inspiration and to gain cultural insight. As a result the final shape of the Baker Cookstove as well as its strong colours are reminiscent of traditional African cookware.
The goal was to design a subtly iconic object. A functionalistic design, yet recognisable and memorable. The road up to the final incarnation has turned several times after research and performance optimisation changed the technical parameters. There are good reasons for each and every design choice, like the use of recycled aluminium and the trapezoid folding that correspond to weight, heat transmission, sturdiness etcetera.
The somewhat eye-opening obvious fact is that we all have an emotional relationship with our objects. The psychology is no different if you have less or have it all; if you relate to a basic cookstove in Africa or a high performance car in the streets of Europe. To hand out functioning but crude and cheap cooking tools to “the poor” is commendable but condescending. Would I myself really appreciate a cheap and ugly tool offered to me because it “works and improves my life”? Maybe that’s not good enough. As designers we need to put the same effort into an African stove as were we designing an Italian sports car.
The Baker stove project has inspired us not for the prospect of making money, not for the design itself, but for the extraordinary satisfaction of actually making a tangible, positive difference in many people’s lives and for the environment. And eventually, if the end users will come to tell us that they are proud to own this stove, our day is made.
Design: Claesson Koivisto Rune (through Mårten Claesson, Eero Koivisto, Ola Rune, Louise Bahrton and Patrick Coen) Producer: Top Third Ventures (through Lucas Belenky and Björn Hammar) Manufacturing: Kenya (locally)
French practice AWP has remodelled a water-treatment plant outside Paris to reveal its industrial processes to the public.
Located beside the Seine to the south of the city, the Évry Water-Treatment Plant was first established in the 1970s. Following a design competition in 2003, AWP developed a new masterplan for the site, adding four new buildings and a surrounding landscape of trees and gardens that will all be accesible to visitors.
Each of the buildings has a prefabricated concrete structure, with timber screens wrapping the upper sections to soften the industrial appearance of the facades. These screens surround large external ducts, as well as a number of balcony corridors.
The smallest of the four buildings functions as an entrance and exhibition centre for tourists, who will be able to tour the plant when it opens to the public later this year.
Construction and renovation of four industrial buildings and a water park
Located on the Seine river front, close to a key metropolitan route (the Francilienne), Évry water depuration plant is a major infrastructural element that is at once symbolic and highly functional, reflecting environmental, technical and urban considerations.
The first plant was built in the 70s and the aim of this renovation is to increase and optimise its capacity. The urban dimension of the equipment has guided us towards a strategy of opening-up and hospitality. Previously rejected and hidden, this infrastructure is now relocated on the urban scene, so as to have a public role and to become symbolic. Regularly open to visitors, this equipment will become both a landmark and an experiential water filtering park.
The formal strategy consists of a main axis along the river where gardens, new buildings and tanks are located. Buildings will be renovated and their façades completely redesigned as urban scale filters.
This two-storey extension by French architect Loïc Picquet converts an old farm building into a rural guesthouse in the Alsace region of France (+ slideshow).
Loïc Picquet renovated the interior of the single-storey farmhouse to accommodate a communal living and dining room, then added the timber-clad extension to create four guest rooms, each with a double bed and en suite bathroom.
The timber frame of the existing structure is exposed inside the building, so the architect followed suit by leaving wooden ceiling beams uncovered in each of the new bedrooms.
Floors are also wooden, while stable doors separate bedrooms from bathrooms and timber-framed cubbyholes contain extra beds and storage areas.
“A new wood construction was added as a natural and fluid extension of the old farm, not only renovating it but mostly honoring it by the use of its history and details,” said the architect. “Niches were built in the walls and double doors were chosen over the regular ones, so that a special interaction between the bathroom and the room could be created.”
A chunky wooden staircase with staggered treads leads to the new upper floor and marks the divide between the new and old structures.
New timber-framed panel windows were added to the old building, while square Velux windows were installed for each of the bedrooms in the extension.
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