Hasta La Ideas

This house in rural England was designed by British architect Lucy Marston to reference old English farmhouses and features red brickwork, a steep gabled profile and a corner chimney (+ slideshow).

Located in the county of Suffolk, Long Farm is a three-storey family residence clad in a mixture of regional materials that includes terracotta roof tiles, lime mortar and timber details.

“We wanted to make a building that belonged on the site,” says Lucy Marston. “Familiar building elements and materials were carefully composed to create a house that is clearly of its time, but with an identity firmly routed in its locale. It was intended to be immediately recognisable as a Suffolk house that feels at home on the farm.”

Skylights are lined up along both sides of the roof, while large windows cover all four elevations, allowing light to filter into the house at different times of day.

A similar materials palette continues through the interior. Martson explains: “Whitewashed brickwork, painted timber linings and exposed ceiling beams were used to give honest depth, texture and character to a modern interior.”

The client works as a writer and requested quiet spaces for working as well as larger areas for entertaining guests or spending time as a family.

Marston thus added a a series of rooms on the ground floor that can be opened out to create a large living room or subdivided to create a “snug”, a reading room and a playroom for the children. There’s also a study across the corridor.

A large kitchen is located at the opposite end of this floor and features a dining table that can seat up to ten people, as well as a traditional farmhouse sink and a double stove.

Four bedrooms occupy the first floor and include two master bedrooms with private bathrooms, plus a pair of children’s rooms that can be combined to form one large room.

“The clients wanted to build a simple, modest building that would adapt to accommodate them as the family developed,” says the architect.

Other rural English houses featured on Dezeen include a converted stable block in Hampshire and a stone house on the Isle of Man. See more houses in the UK.

Photography is by Jack Hobhouse.

Here’s the full project description from Lucy Marston:

Long Farm, Suffolk

Long Farm is a new family home in rural Suffolk, England. The house sits high among a group of existing farm buildings, facing east across salt marshes and open fields, towards the sea.

We wanted to make a building that ‘belonged’ on the site and so the design emerged from its context. The steeply pitched roof and linear form were influenced by the traditional ‘long house’ form that can be seen throughout that part of the country.

Familiar building elements and materials – a corner chimney, brick and lime mortar, teracotta tiles and timber – were carefully composed to create a house that is clearly of its time, but with an identity firmly routed in its locale. It was intended to be immediately recognisable as a Suffolk house that feels at home on the farm.

Capturing the unique views around the house, in all directions was key. From the dawn in the east over the sea to sunset over the reed beds to the far west, windows and rooflights were placed precisely to track the sun and and views throughout the course of the day. Windows were kept large to frame dramatic views, but balanced with the occupants’ domestic desire for enclosure, privacy and warmth.

Internally, the vernacular references continue: a super-sized inglenook in the sitting room, a generous hall and landing that almost become rooms, window sills deep enough to sit in and a ‘farmhouse kitchen’ arranged around a large family table. Whitewashed brickwork, painted timber linings and exposed ceiling beams were used to give honest depth, texture and character to a modern interior.

The house was designed to accommodate a family of four with guests, with room for different age groups to carry out activities in different parts of the house.

As a writer with young children, the client had conflicting requirements, requiring solitude in order to work and also sociable interlinked spaces for the everyday bustle of sociable family life and frequent visitors.

The plan, an update of the traditional single room depth long house layout, was developed as a series of smaller rooms with their own identities (a playroom, a reading room, a snug).

These can be closed off and used separately with access via the hall or opened up with sliding doors to create a more fluid semi-open plan space. Likewise the childrens’ bedrooms can be opened up to form one big room or closed off for privacy.

The clients wanted to build a simple, modest building that would adapt to accommodate them as the family developed. They also wanted a building that would weather well, would require little or no maintenance and minimal energy to run.

At Long Farm, we aimed to make a building that was not only robust and flexible enough to age well over time, but one that aimed to be sustainable long term in an aesthetic sense, that had a timeless or ‘classic’ quality to it.

Landscape Consultant: Marie Clarke, Clarke Associates
Structural Engineer: David Cantrill, JP Chick and Partners
Contractor: Robert Norman Construction

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Lucy Marston appeared first on Dezeen.

These garments made from interlocking foam pieces by Croatian designer Matija Čop reference construction techniques and shapes found in gothic architecture (+ slideshow).

A series of tabs and slots are lasercut from rectangular sections of soft, water- and UV-resistant foam, which link together without the use of stitches or glue.

The layouts of these sections are taken from the plans of cathedrals such as St. Jacob’s in Šibenik, Croatia.

Different sized elements can be assembled to create sculptural shapes that reference the arches and domes of gothic buildings, then taken apart and rearranged.

“Object 12-1 can be deconstructed and reconstructed in a completely different shape whenever one wishes,” says Čop.

One dress curves out from the hips, away from the body, then back past the head like the arc of a ceiling vault. The circular top of a hat resembles a rose window.

Another item has sleeves that are narrow around the wrist then expand toward the body, reaching from shoulder to hip and creating triangular shapes that look like turrets.

Garments in shades of grey or bright blue can be worn inside-out to expose the irregular surfaces of connecting tabs.

“The qualities of the material make both sides soft and easily adjustable to the body,” Čop says.

Čop graduated from the University in Zagreb‘s Faculty of Textile Design with a degree in fashion design and last year designed the costumes for Croatian film Šegrt Hlapić.

More fashion collections we’ve featured recently include angular clothing accessorised with concrete cuffs and foil-printed silk attire.

See more fashion design »

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by Matija Čop appeared first on Dezeen.

This coastal holiday house and swimming pool by Mumbai practice WE Design Studio is positioned over a stone retaining wall in the hilly landscape of Alibaug, India (+ slideshow).

Accommodating a family of four, the single-storey residence has a rectilinear plan orientated to face a view of the Arabian Sea to the west.

A glazed wall stretches across the sea-facing facade, offering a panoramic view from the living room and two bedrooms positioned alongside. The panels slide open to lead out to the swimming pool and surrounding terrace.

WE Design Studio constructed the walls of the house from brick and they are coated in lime plaster to give a uniform colour.

“The brief was to build a compact house for a family of four, which is easy to manage and maintain,” architect Saahil Parikh told Dezeen. “We were given a very moderate budget to work with and the construction and material choices have been largely influenced by it.”

The pale-coloured exterior contrasts with the dark grey tones of the basalt stone retaining walls that surround the building. These walls lift the house up from the steeply sloping hillside in front, but also support an access road at the rear.

Flooring inside the house displays the same texture as the surface of the terrace outside, finished in a locally sourced limestone called Shahabad.

Other houses featured on Dezeen from India include a residence with a scooping concrete roof and a house with a rooftop swimming pool on stilts. See more architecture in India.

Photography is by Ira Gosalia.

Here are a few words from WE Design Studio:

House in Alibaug, India

This 3500 square foot single family house is located on a two acre hill in Kashid, Alibaug. The house comprises two intersecting monolithic volumes that are oriented to maximize a spectacular panoramic view of the Arabian Sea.

Two stone retaining walls made of locally available basalt wrap around the front and rear of the house. The articulation of spaces is governed by the different ways in which these volumes interact with the stone walls.

The pool and deck seamlessly integrate interior with the surrounding landscape, establishing a strong sense of continuity. The house is a result of a continuous negotiation between topography, programmatic requirements and economy.

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WE Design Studio appeared first on Dezeen.

Foster + Partners has completed a new gallery wing clad with golden pipes at the Lenbachhaus art museum in Munich (+ slideshow).

The three-storey extension branches out from the southern facade of the 120-year-old Lenbachhaus, which was first constructed as the home and studio of nineteenth-century painter Franz von Lenbach. It was converted into a museum in the 1920s and had been incrementally extended over the years, so architecture firm Foster + Partners was brought in to rationalise the layout, as well as to add the new gallery wing.

“Our main challenge has been to maintain the same amount of exhibition area within the museum’s footprint, while creating new circulation and visitor spaces,” said architect and studio founder Norman Foster. “Given the way that the different parts of the museum had evolved, there was no such thing as a typical space – every corner is unique and required individual attention and different design decisions.”

Rows of metal pipes made from a copper-aluminium alloy clad each elevation of the extension, designed to complement the restored yellow-ochre render on the walls of the original building. Together, the new and old structures frame the outline of a new courtyard with an entrance at the point where they cross.

Beyond the entrance, visitors are greeted with a triple-height atrium that wraps around the corner of the old exterior walls. A long narrow skylight runs along the edge of the roof and is screened by louvres that cast stripy shadows across the walls, while an installation by Olafur Eliasson is suspended from the centre of the ceiling.

“[An] important aspect of our design has been creating new opportunities for works of art to be exhibited outside the traditional confines of the gallery, such as in the atrium,” added Foster. “This space develops the idea of the ‘urban room’. It is the museum’s public and social heart, and point of connection with the wider city.”

Galleries occupy the two upper floors of the new wing and are dedicated to the display of the Blue Rider collection of expressionist paintings by artists including Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc.

The ground floor contains a temporary exhibition space and an education room, plus a glazed restaurant that opens out to a terrace around the edge of the building.

As part of the renovation, the architects also addressed the energy efficiency of the existing building. They added new heating and cooling systems in the floors, replaced lighting fixtures and introduced a rainwater harvesting system.

Past museum and gallery projects by London firm Foster + Partners include the Sperone Westwater gallery in New York and the Great Court at the British Museum. The team is also currently developing an art museum with four overlapping peaks for Datong, China. See more design by Foster + Partners.

Other museum and gallery buildings we’ve featured with golden cladding include a brass arts centre in Portugal and the Islamic art galleries at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. See more golden buildings on Dezeen.

Photography is by Nigel Young.

Here’s a statement from Foster + Partners:

Lenbachhaus Museum reopens

The Museum’s historic buildings have been carefully restored and the exhibition spaces augmented by a spectacular new wing, which provides an ideal environment for viewing the magnificent ‘Blue Rider’ collection. As well as radically improving the buildings’ environmental performance, the remodelling has created a new entrance and social spaces, including a restaurant, terrace, education facilities and a dramatic full-height atrium, where the old is articulated within the new.

Built in 1891 as a studio and villa for the artist Franz von Lenbach, the Lenbachhaus Museum has been gradually extended over the last century. However, its buildings were in need of renewal and the museum lacked the facilities to cater to a growing audience of 280,000 people a year. Redefining circulation throughout the site, the project has transformed a complex sequence of spaces of different periods into a unified, legible museum that is accessible and open to all.

Peeling away the unnecessary historical accretions, a 1972 extension has been removed to reveal the wall of the original villa, which has been sympathetically restored in ochre render. The different historical elements are then unified along Richard-Wagner Street by a new gallery pavilion, containing two levels of exhibition space. The new building is intended as a ‘jewel box’ for the treasures of the gallery – it is clad in metal tubes of an alloy of copper and aluminium, their colour and form designed to complement the villa’s rich ochre hue and textured facades.

Inside the new building, a sequence of intimate galleries display the Museum’s internationally-renowned ‘Blue Rider’ collection of early twentieth-century Expressionist paintings, echoing the domestic scale of their original setting in the villa Lenbach. As many of the works of art were painted in ‘plein-air’, indirect natural light has been deliberately drawn into the upper level galleries to create the optimum environment for their display.

A new entrance has been created adjacent to the restaurant, accessed via a new landscaped piazza to the east of the museum – this move reclaims the courtyard garden, turning it from a pedestrian thoroughfare into a tranquil space for visitors. The restaurant is open outside of the Museum’s opening hours and its seating continues outside, helping to enliven the surrounding streets and attracting new visitors into the galleries.

The new social heart of the building is a dramatic top-lit atrium, with ticket and information desks, access to a new temporary exhibition space on the ground floor and a grand, cantilevered stair to the upper level galleries. Clearly articulating the old within the new, its impressive volume incorporates the ochre exterior wall of the original villa and is scaled to accommodate large-scale works of art. The Museum commissioned the artist Olafur Eliasson for a site specific work titled Wirbelwerk. During the day sunlight washes the white walls via a long, slender opening at roof level and horizontal louvres cast changing patterns of light and shade within the space.

As well as repairing the fabric of the existing buildings, one of the main aims of the project has been to radically improve the museum’s environmental performance. A water-based heating and cooling system within the floors has been implemented – using significantly less energy than an air based heating, this represents an innovative step in a gallery context. Rainwater is also collected and recycled and lighting has been replaced and upgraded with low-energy systems.

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by Foster + Partners appeared first on Dezeen.

An exhibition showcasing 15 years of design by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec has opened at Les Arts Décoratifs museum in Paris.

Called Momentané, the show looks back at the Bouroullec brothers’ career so far and features furniture, lighting, spatial designs, drawings, videos and photographs.

The largest room is dominated by a 12-metre-high textile installation and a series of partitions designed by the brothers.

Objects such as the brothers’ Losanges rugs for Nanimarquina and Assemblages furniture for Galerie Kreo are displayed on podiums covered with their Pico tiles for Mutina.

In one of the side aisles is a collection of their office furniture, including the Copenhagen furniture designed for the Danish city’s university and produced by Hay, and the Ready Made Curtain system for Kvadrat.

Six alcoves contain objects designed for domestic spaces, such as the Alcove sofa for Vitra and the Cloud modular shelving system for Cappellini, as well as drawings and photographs exploring the brothers’ creative process.

The Momentané exhibition continues at Les Arts Décoratifs, 107 Rue de Rivoli, Paris, until 1 September 2013.

Recent work by the Bouroullecs includes a courtyard installation of rotating cork platforms in Milan last month and an aluminium chair and sideboard for Magis – see all design by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.

Here’s more information from Les Arts Décoratifs:

From 25 April to 1 September 2013, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec are revisiting fifteen years of creation in the Arts Décoratifs nave. Conceived as a gigantic installation combining the spectacular and the intimate, the 1,000 square-metre exhibition covers their entire career, highlighting every facet of their production: their objects and spatial designs, their limited editions and industrially produced pieces, their furniture for public spaces and the home, and their drawings, videos and photographs.

The Bouroullec brothers are focussing on three approaches to their work in the nave and its two side-aisles: in the nave in an installation in a vast architectural space; on the Tuileries side, with their reflection on the office and workspace, and on the Rivoli side with a more intimist approach highlighting their creative process.

Beneath a 12 metre-high textile vault in the nave, Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec have created an abstract landscape structured by their partition designs (Algues, North Tiles, Twigs, Clouds), which divide the space and guide visitors through the exhibition. On entering this monumental, surprising universe one is immediately immersed in its singular atmosphere. Like an openwork screen, the polystyrene Nuages opens the exhibition, then one is led by the partitions through a series of their creations displayed on podiums covered with the Pico tiles produced by Mutina, including the Losanges rugs for Nanimarquina and the Assemblages furniture for Galerie Kreo. These confrontations play on changes in scale and highlight their delicate, sensual aspects. Through the Algues screen one has a view of the Textile Field, originally created in 2011 for the Raphael Cartoons room in the Victoria & Albert museum.

In the Tuileries aisle, the Bouroullec brothers are focussing on their reflection on the workspace, which began with the Joyn desks for Vitra, a collaboration they are pursuing with their most recent creations, Workbay and Corktable. The Copenhagen furniture, produced by Hay, was specially designed and created for the new university of Copenhagen. Their designs for the office environment are pragmatic responses to the most recent evolutions in working practices: alone or with others and therefore requiring either intimate spaces conducive to concentration or, on the contrary, collective work areas. Visitors will be able to test the ergonomics and use of these pieces by trying out the furniture themselves. Separate workspaces can also be created with the Ready Made Curtain, a new system of very light, ready-to-install curtains developed for Kvadrat. 300 abstract drawings, either free expressions or linked to a specific design project, are being shown on the walls of this gallery.

The six alcoves in the Rivoli aisle focus on objects designed for more domestic and intimate spaces. These pieces, chosen for the dialogue they create with one another, are contextualised by models and a constellation of images. Preparatory drawings and photographs of factory production and details show the processes of creation and production.

In only fifteen years of prolific creativity, the Bouroullec brothers have produced an impressive body of work – furniture, objects, partitions, etc. – in an always simple and functional style and providing new solutions to contemporary lifestyles. They are particularly interested in problems of space and modularity. They often work on a quasi-architectural scale: one of their first pieces, the Lit Clos bed, created in 2000 for the Milan Furniture Fair, was designed for people living in a single room, and the Alcove Sofa (Vitra, 2007) can be transformed into a sofa or partition. The Cloud modular system (Cappellini) combines shelfs and partitions, the Algues (Vitra) and Twigs (Vitra) modular systems are assembled to create openwork screens, and the North Tiles (Kvadrat) and Clouds (Kvadrat) partitions are designed for acoustic comfort.

Fifteen years of creation

Ronan Bouroullec studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and began his career working alone, immediately showing his originality in the Torique collection of combinatory vases and ceramics he produced at Vallauris in 1997. In 1999, Ronan was joined by his brother Erwan, who trained at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Paris- Cergy. Their continual creative dialogue and prolific output was concretised by their collaborations with major design publishers. The first of these, Giulio Cappellini, enabled them to rapidly assimilate industrial production methods in creations such as the Hole collection in 1999 and the Spring Chair in 2000. They then began their close creative relationship with Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of Vitra, which produced many of their projects, including the Joyn modular desks (2002), the Algues modular partition system (2004) and more classical types of objects such as the Slow Chair (2007) and Vegetal Chair (2009).

The brothers also produced designs for other design manufacturers in Italy such as Magis (the Striped and Steelwood furniture) and Kartell (the Papyrus chair) and in England such as Established & Sons (the Quilt sofa and Lighthouse lamp). In France, they developed several pieces for Ligne Roset, a manufacturer specialised in seating, including the Outdoor chair, the origami-inspired Facett sofa and armchair collection and the Ploum sofa, whose exceptional comfort is the result of intensive research.

Their collaboration with Galerie Kreo from 2000 onwards enabled them to develop more experimental designs and explore themes dear to them, particularly the frontier between furniture and architecture, in pieces such as Cabane and Brick. Kreo provided them with a free environment in which they could propose projects unaffected by habitual industrial constraints: the Bells lamps, the Rizière table and the Lianes lights.

In parallel, the Bouroullec brothers have also designed exhibitions and interiors, including Issey Miyake’s first A-POC shop in Paris in 2000, the Maison Flottante for the Centre National de l’Estampe et de l’Art imprimé at Chatou, and more recently the Camper shops. The design of the showrooms of the textile brand Kvadrat in Stockholm was an opportunity for them to develop the Tiles and Clouds modular textiles partitions. From 2010 to 2013 they began new collaborations and widened their fields of activity. They designed a complete bathroom range for Axor (Hansgrohe group), the Piani and Aim lamps for Flos, the Losanges rug for Nanimarquina, the Ovale table service for Alessi, the Pico ceramic tiles collection for Mutina and university furniture for Hay. Their creations are now in numerous museums, including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Musée National d’Art Moderne–Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Design Museum in London and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Publication

To coincide with this exhibition, DRAWING, a book of 800 drawings dating from 2004 to 2012, is being published by JRP Ringier. Drawing is their main day-to-day activity and the pencil the principal tool in their creative process and means of concretising their emotions, both as part of specific research in a project’s development or as a means of free personal expression.

The Arts Décoratifs Museums
107 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris
Open Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm (late opening Thursday until 9pm: Temporary exhibitions and jewellery gallery only)

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Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec appeared first on Dezeen.