Hasta La Ideas

Hackney studio Gort Scott subtly added the outline of a cat’s ears to the facade of this feline veterinary clinic outside Cambridge (+ slideshow).

The architects wanted to create references to cats in the design, but agreed with the client that these details would be subtle. “After years of designing with human situations in mind, it was quite interesting also designing with cats in mind,” Jay Gort told Dezeen.

The building occupies a former joinery shed in the village of Fulbourn. Gort Scott covered the original facade with cedar slats and picked out the shape of the cat’s ears using wider sections.

“The screen was considered the most elegant and cost effective way of giving the building a more welcoming, joyful appearance in a context of fairly run-down sheds,” said Gort.

The building’s interior is reorganised, creating a large reception and waiting area at the front of the clinic. The reception desk is built from plywood and features ornate feet shaped like cat’s paws.

Beyond the reception are a series of consulting rooms, an operating theatre and a diagnostic laboratory, plus a large preparation room lit from above by skylights.

Interior walls are painted in calming shades of turquoise, with occasional details picked out in yellow.

Gort Scott is led by architects Jay Gort and Fiona Scott, whose past projects include a rugged stone house on the Isle of Man. Jay Gort also spoke at Dezeen’s Designed in Hackney Day last year, where he argued that the beleaguered British high street is actually a thriving location of “collision and conflict”.

Another veterinary clinic completed recently is a combined surgery and home in Japan.

Photography is by Angus Leadley Brown.

Here’s some more information from Gort Scott:

Cambridge Cat Clinic

The site for this new, cat-specialist veterinary practice was originally a joinery workshop, opposite an open field at the edge of Cambridge. Our client was a veterinarian establishing a new business.

Gort Scott obtained planning permission for change of use and remodelling of the existing building to also include a new cedar wood screen on the front elevation, with a suggestion of cats ears. Beyond this screen is a generous reception and waiting area with specially-designed furniture, and views back to the open field.

The main working area for the medical staff is a large multi-functioning ‘prep room’, which is top-lit by two generous skylights.

The scheme’s design includes many aspects that respond to the client’s considered approach to the welfare of her animal patients and their owners.

The building serves both as a general practice specialising in feline medicine, and also as a surgery, with a full operating theatre, lab and diagnostic area.

Above: site plan – click for larger image

Name of project: Cambridge Cat Clinic
Date of completion: 01/ 06/ 2012
Total contract value; £156,000

Credits list
Client: Cambridge Cat Clinic
Start on site date: 05/11/2011
Gross internal floor area: 224m2

Above: floor plan – click for larger image

Form of contract and/or procurement : JCT Minor Works contract
Structural engineer: Charles Tallack Engineering consultancy
Planning supervisor: AFP Construction consultants
Total cost : £156,000
Main contractor: Bob Black Construction Ltd.

Selected subcontractors and suppliers:
Windows: Velfac
Flooring: Forbo
Internal partitions: Rodecca
Joinery: Precision Joinery

Above: front elevation – click for larger image

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by Gort Scott appeared first on Dezeen.

Bold primary colours punctuate this stark concrete extension to a secondary school outside Lisbon by Portugese architect CVDB Arquitectos (+ slideshow)

Braamcamp Freire Secondary School, located in the Pontinha area just outside Portugal’s capital city, was originally built in 1986 as five prefabricated units.

CVDB Arquitectos restructured the dispersed units into a single building by connecting them with new corridors, creating what they call a “learning street”.

The school is now arranged around a central courtyard, created by joining up the existing buildings.

A series of punctured concrete walls support a new set of classrooms on one side of the courtyard and provide a sheltered area where pupils can gather.

The facades combine exposed in situ concrete and prefabricated concrete elements in order to minimise building and maintenance costs.

The windows have been recessed into the facade to create a series of vertical concrete louvres, each painted red, yellow or blue to add a flash of colour to the exterior.

Splashes of primary colours also punctuate the main staircase and selected interior walls, including the blue wall of sound absorbing concrete blocks.

The school hall is lined in vertical timber studs and acoustic panels.

We’ve featured a number of schools on Dezeen, including a gabled extension to an English boarding school and a Vietnamese school with open-air balconies – see all schools on Dezeen.

Other buildings in Portugal we’ve published lately include a home on a golf course complex outside Lisbon and a bright white building in the monastery town of Alcobaça – see all Portugese architecture.

See all schools »
See all buildings in Lisbon »

Photographs are by Invisible Gentleman.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

CVDB Arquitectos
Secondary School ES/EB3 Braamcamp Freire
Lisboa, Portugal

The Braamcamp Freire Secondary School is located at the edge of the historical centre of Pontinha, Lisbon. The site has approximately 17,380 sq m and borders an accentuated topography. The school is part of Pontinha’s urban fabric with the exception of its north boundary which faces an unconstructed valley.

The School was originally built in 1986, with five standardised prefabricated pavilions – a central one with a single storey and four two storey pavilions. These pavilions were organised along an east-west axis, connected by covered walkways. The existing school included a gym as well as an outside playground at a lower level and very disconnected from the buildings.

The rehabilitation project of the building was part of the Portuguese “Modernisation of Secondary Schools Programme”, which has been implemented by the Parque Escolar E.P.E. since 2007. The Programme’s objective is to reorganise schools spaces, to articulate their different functional areas and to open these schools to their local communities.

The project proposes to restructure the dispersed pavilion typology into one single building, to connect all the pavilions through interior circulation spaces. The new buildings are built to work as a link in between the existing pavilions.

The programme is structured as a learning street and a continuous path throughout the various building levels and floors. These pathways consist in a succession of several interior spaces, offering different informal learning opportunities. The learning street therefore articulates the various programmes of the school. The pathways are punctuated with social areas which actively contribute to interactions between students, the various educational programmes and the school community.

The school is structured around a central open space, a “learning square” that expands the “learning street” as an outside social central space of the school. The square’s relationship with the playground areas provides a strong relationship with the existing natural landscape and topography. The Square is open as an amphitheater connecting it to the playgrounds in the northern part of the school grounds.

This amphitheater is below the new classrooms building supported by a series of punctured concrete walls allowing students either to walk through them or to use them as places to sit, talking and playing. The facades of the school are essentially constituted in exposed in situ concrete and prefabricated concrete elements, to minimize maintenance costs. The concrete panels were carefully designed to respond adequately to each façade’s solar orientation.

In the interior spaces, adequate resistant materials were chosen for an intensive use and very low maintenance costs. The multipurpose hall has timber studs and acoustic panels. The circulation spaces walls are mainly done with concrete acoustic blocks. The social spaces present themselves as niches in bright colours.

Project: ES / EB3 Braamcamp Freire
Location: Pontinha, Lisboa, Portugal
Client: Parque Escolar, EPE
Total built area: 15,800 m2
Project and construction period: 2010 – 2012

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

Design Team: CVDB Arquitectos
Cristina Veríssimo, Diogo Burnay, Tiago Santos, João Falcão, Rodolfo Reis, Joana Barrelas, Adam Pelissero, André Barbosa, , Ângelo Branquinho, Ari Nieto, Guilherme Bivar, Hugo Nascimento, Inês Carrapiço, Irune Ardanza, José Maria Lavena, Leonor Vaz Pinto, Luigi Martinelli, Miguel Travesso, Silvia Amaral, Silvia Maggi

Above: upper floor plan – click for larger image

Landscape design: F&C Arquitectura Paisagista
Structure, foundations and services: AFA Consult

Above: section – click for larger image 

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by CVDB Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch architecture firm Groosman Partners has suspended an office complex beneath the eight-metre-high ceiling of a former industrial machine hall in Rotterdam (+ slideshow).

The inserted floor adds 1000 square metres of offices and meeting rooms to the building, which was formally home to the Rotterdam Dry Dock Company but is now used as an education and technology centre called The Innovation Dock.

Groosman Partners wanted to take advantage of the hall’s high ceilings and was inspired by the industrial crane structures that form the building’s framework. The architects hung the new storey from the structure, then added an external staircase and elevator for access.

Dubbed the Innovation Deck, the extra floor is made up of a series of sub-dividable units, as well as a neon yellow social area for informal meetings or lunch breaks.

An enormous aerial photograph of Rotterdam’s port covers the base of the structure, which the architects describe as a reference to the concept of “a city inside a hall”.

The entire storey was designed to be dismountable if necessary and can also be extended to add more units.

The project is one of a handful of recent warehouse renovations in Rotterdam. Others include a steel plant converted into the headquarters of an engineering firm.

Photography is by Theo Peekstok.

See more architecture in Rotterdam »

Here’s a project description from Groosman Partners:

DM Innovation Deck Rotterdam

In the heart of the ports of Rotterdam, Groosman Partners Architecten used a crane track in a former machine hall to suspend 1000 m2 of office space. The hall is situated on the terrain of RDM (Rotterdam Dry-dock Company), a former shipyard recently rebuilt into a campus for education and innovation. The Innovation Dock is in use by schools and small-scale and innovative companies operating in the markets “building, moving & powering”.

Above: floor plan – click above for larger image

An urban shelving unit

In order to achieve a logical system on the ground floor Groosman and Partners used an urban design-like grid painted on the floor. Because of the enormous height a large part of the inner volume of the halls remained unused. Groosman Partners Architecten launched the idea to add a second grid system on the level of 8 meters high, to double the usable surface of the halls. Several ways of use can be implemented within this technical framework and change of use can be easily realised. The plug-in system is extendable as well as dismountable. The floor underneath the added structure is used for production as well as events. Referring to the concept of a city inside a hall, a large photograph of a detailed satellite image of the port of Rotterdam was placed on the underside of the office.

The intermediate floor

The idea of the shelving unit derived from the unused crane tracks, which demonstrated their carrying capacity before. The extra loading capacity is used to “hang” the new functions in the structure. The first unit, the intermediate floor with 1000 m² floor space, is accessed by an external staircase and elevator. These are connected to a system of gangways which lead to the several additional units.

The units, designed as steel structures with light and flexible fill-ins, are attached to supporting beams in between the crane tracks. The suspended level coinciding with the existing construction is kept open, whereby voids are created. In doing so the structure is maximally exhibited and a reference to the former industrial use is assured.

Above: section – click above for larger image

Function: education and offices
Area: 1000sqm
Design: 2011
Constructed: 2012
Site: RDM-kade, Rotterdam

Architecture: Groosman Partners I architecten, Rotterdam
Interior design: Groosman Partners I interieur, Rotterdam
Project Architect: Gert de Graaf
Photographs: Theo Peekstok

Client: Het Havenbedrijf N.V., Rotterdam
Contractor: Era Contour, Zoetermeer
Consultant building physics and installations: DWA, Bodegraven
Structural engineering: Pieters Bouwtechniek B.V., Delft

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by Groosman Partners appeared first on Dezeen.

Rounded shingles create wooden scales across the walls of this small house in Hackney that architect Laura Dewe Mathews has built for herself (+ slideshow).

Nicknamed the Gingerbread House by neighbours, the two-storey house sits behind the reconstructed wall of a former Victorian box factory and its tall windows overlap the mismatched brickwork.

“I and the planners were keen to retain something of the original building envelope,” Laura Dewe Mathews told Dezeen. “The pale grey/blue bricks were part of the workshop when I bought it and the clean London stock bricks were infills.”

The architect drew inspiration from decorative vernacular architecture in Russia to design the cedar-shingle facade, then added windows framed by thick galvanised steel surrounds.

“I was keen that the cladding somehow softened the sharp silhouette of the overall, stylised building form and thought the round ‘fancy butts’ might achieve this,” she said. “Contemporary architecture can often be perceived to be severe and alienating and I wanted to avoid that. I hope the balance of the sharp galvanised steel window reveals and cills versus the round singles manages to be more friendly.”

To avoid overlooking neighbouring houses, all windows had to be placed on the north-facing street elevation, so Dewe Mathews also added a large skylight to bring in natural light from above.

A double-height kitchen and dining room sits below this skylight on one side of the house and opens out to a small patio. The adjoining two-storey structure contains a living room on the ground floor, plus a bedroom, bathroom and small study upstairs.

Walls and ceilings are lined with timber panels, while a resin floor runs throughout the house.

The building was the winner of the AJ Small Projects Awards 2013. Also nominated was a wooden folly that cantilevers across a garden lake and a reed-covered tower that functions as a camera obscura.

Scale-like facades have featured in a few buildings over the last year, including a university building in Melbourne and an apartment block in alpine Slovenia.

Photography is by Chloe Dewe Mathews.

Above: the original site

Here’s a project description from Laura Dewe Mathews:

Box House / “Gingerbread House”

This is the first new build project by Laura Dewe Mathews. The motivation for the project was to create a domestic set of spaces with generous proportions and lots of natural light while working with a limited budget.

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image

The site was originally part of the garden of an early Victorian end of terrace house in Hackney. It was first built on in the 1880s, to provide Mr Alfred Chinn (the then resident of the end of terrace house) with space for his box factory, making wooden boxes for perfume and jewellery.

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image

In discovering the history of the site, Laura Dewe Mathews was drawn to assemble yet another box inside the original envelope of the factory.

Above: cross section through kitchen and dining room

The one bed, new-build house was recently completed using a cross-laminated timber super structure, placed inside the existing perimeter brickwork walls and rising up out of them. The timber structure has been left exposed internally. Externally the palette of materials is limited to the original and infill brickwork, round “fancy-butt” western red cedar shingles and galvanised steel flashings, window frames and window reveals. The soft shape of the shingles contrasting with the crisp edges of the galvanized steel.

Above: cross section through living room and bedroom

The form of the proposal was a response to tricky site constraints, common for urban developments in already built up areas. The neighbours’ rights to sunlight, daylight and privacy needed to be respected. Consequently the only elevation that could have any windows was the north facing, pavement fronted elevation. The proposal counters this with large south facing roof-lights; added to this, light is brought into the main living spaces via a new private yard.

Above: front elevation

At 80msq the result is a small yet generously proportioned house. At ground floor level it retains the openness of the original workshop while feeling a sense of separation from the street immediately adjacent.

Above: side elevations

Structural engineer: Tall Engineers
Main contractor: J & C Meadows, now incorporated within IMS Building Solutions

Above: rear elevation

Sub contractor/suppliers:
KLH – cross laminated timber super structure
Stratum – resin flooring
Vincent timber – cedar shingle supplier
The Rooflight Company – roof light supplier
Roy Middleton – bespoke joinery including kitchen
MPM engineering – stainless steel to kitchen

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by Laura Dewe Mathews appeared first on Dezeen.

German studio Fabi Architekten has stacked a black building on top of a white building to create this house in the Bavarian countryside (+ slideshow).

A rectilinear white volume nestles against the hill at the base of the house, providing a combined bedroom and washroom, while a black building shaped like an archetypal house sits on the top and contains a kitchen, dining area and living room.

Glazed walls line the facades of both storeys, offering views out over the landscape. “The volumes open up to the natural space, the forest,” said Fabi Architekten. “[It is] a minimal intrusion into the hillside topography.”

On the upper floor, the glass doors slide open to lead out to a triangular roof terrace, while on the level below they provide a second entrance to the house.

The main entrance is positioned on the side of the building and is sheltered beneath the overhanging corner of the first floor.

A cantilevered wooden staircase connects the two storeys.

The house is located in Wenzenbach and was completed in 2012.

Other houses completed in Germany recently include a gabled house in Metzingen and a residence in Stuttgart with an inclining profile. See more architecture in Germany.

Photography is by Herbert Stolz.

Above: lower floor plan

Above: upper floor plan

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by Fabi Architekten appeared first on Dezeen.