Hasta La Ideas

Dutch design brand Droog has opened a hotel in Amsterdam where guests who venture out from their rooms can attend lectures, visit exhibitions and shops or relax in a ”fairy-tale garden” without leaving the building (+ slideshow).

Above: the Dining Room 

Droog director Renny Ramakers conceived the hotel as a venue that “brings all of our activities under one roof, from curation to product design, exhibitions and lectures, and invites people to plug in as they choose.”

Above: guest suite

Located in a 17th century building that once housed the city’s textile guild, the hotel contains an exhibition gallery curated by Droog and a dining room serving dishes from local neighbourhood recipes.

Above: the Gallery

Droog also have their own store at the hotel, alongside a Cosmania cosmetics area, a Kabinet fashion store and a Weltevree products area.

Above: the Fairy Tale Garden

French Designers Claude Pasquer and Corinne Détroyat created the garden at the centre of the building and filled it with flowers and edible plants to attract birds, butterflies and insects.

Above: Weltevree

Guest suites are located on the top floor of the building and offer a view out over the Amsterdam skyline.

Above: Cosmania

Ramakers founded the Droog brand with former partner Gijs Bakker back in 1993, and it has since become one of the leading conceptual design brands in the Netherlands.

Above: Kabinet

See all our stories about Droog »

Above: Droog Store

Photography is by Thijs Wolzak.

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by Droog appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects Allies and Morrison have added this gabled extension to a nineteenth century boarding school in Brighton, England.

The three-storey addition nestles against the brick and stone walls of the listed boarding house at ground floor level, but steps away with its upper storeys so that it barely touches, as requested by the planning authorities.

Terracotta batons clad the building’s facade, creating vertical stripes above the band of glazing that surrounds the ground floor.

The main entrance to the building is on the middle storey, while the lowest floor sits level with a sunken quadrangle to one side.

A double-height cafe on the ground floor opens out to this courtyard, while a top-lit staircase leads to classrooms, offices and a health centre on the upper floors.

Other schools we’ve featured include one shaped like a crocodile and one with a shiny copper chapel inside.

See more stories about schools »

Photography is by Robin Hayes.

Here’s some extra information from Allies and Morrison:

This project provides academic and social facilities for staff and students at Brighton College, one of the most successful co-educational independent schools in England.

The simple linear building adjoins a listed nineteenth century boarding house to form the edge of a new courtyard, the Woolton Quad. Its double-height cafe/ entrance space negotiates the storey height between the new court and the school’s principal quadrangle, to which it is linked externally by amphitheatre-like steps.

A dramatic roof-lit stair and circulation space links the gabled 3-storey building with its neo-gothic neighbour, providing access to new classrooms, offices and a new school health centre.

Axonometric – click above for larger image

Client’s brief

To provide an exemplary building to improve boarding and staff facilities fit for the 21st century.

Exploded axonometric – click above for larger image

Accommodation

A students cafe, a small new school health centre, 4 new staff offices, a staff senior common room and workspace area, a boardroom, staff changing and shower facilities.

Site plan – click above for larger image

Planning constraints

The site lies within a conservation area, as well as directly adjoining the Grade II Listed C19th Abraham boarding house. The way in which the new building meets the existing building was the most contentious part of the scheme.

Lower ground floor plan – click above for larger image

To address this, the building sets back from the Listed Building on the upper 2 storeys. When it does touch, it does so as lightly as possible. A linear glazed roof light, for example, sits delicately between the new and old structures along the circulation spine.

Cross section – click above for larger image

Materials and method of construction

» Steel frame with structural timber panel floor decks.
» External walls are a rain-screen facade system on a steel stud backing wall, with a vertical terracotta ‘baguette’ outer screen.

North Elevation – click above for larger image

Summary of time-table

May 2009: Project start
October 2009: Planning application submission
April 2010: Tender
July 2010: Construction start on site
December 2011: Practical completion

West courtyard elevation – click above for larger image

Programme and budget constraints

Meeting the client’s expectations for high quality and value for money, within the constraints outlined above, meant that careful attention was paid to all aspects of the design throughout the project

South elevation – click above for larger image

The start on site date, which was set by the client, was chosen to ensure that disruptive demolition and groundworks could be carried out during the school summer vacation 2010. This date and programme were achieved.

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Allies and Morrison appeared first on Dezeen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See more projects by Duggan Morris Architects on Dezeen »

See more stories about houses »

Photography is by James Brittain.

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

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

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

Site plan – click above for larger image

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

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image

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

First floor plan – click above for larger image

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

Section – click above for larger image

Section – click above for larger image

Section – click above for larger image

North elevation – click above for larger image

South elevation – click above for larger image

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Duggan Morris Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

London Design Festival: the first project by MAP, the new studio of designers BarberOsgerby, is a digital laboratory at London’s Science Museum where visitors can interact with internet-users around the world using musical instruments and robots (+ slideshow).

Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby have founded MAP as an industrial design consultancy that will operate alongside their interior design company Universal Design Studio and their design studio BarberOsgerby.

The Google Web Lab was designed in collaboration with Universal Design Studio and comprises a series of physical devices that can either be operated in person at the museum, or online at chromeweblab.com.

“Web Lab offers the opportunity for visitors to be more than just spectators,” Universal Design Studio director  Jason Holley told Dezeen. “Online and in-museum visitors are equally able to enjoy a dialogue with the museum; engaging, interacting and affecting the exhibition content.”

One device is a electronically-controlled orchestra (above), where different instruments are controlled by different users, while another is a data tracer that maps the sources of images and information and shows where they’ve travelled to (below).

The Sketchbots (below) are robots that photograph the faces of users and draws them on a plate of sand.

Above: photograph is by Andrew Brennan

Other devices include a virtual teleporter (below), which functions as a set of windows to locations around the world, and a computer that charts the locations of everyone who has taken part in the experiments.

“Museums worldwide struggle with trying to understand how the digital can expand their reach to engage a wider and more diverse audience,” said Holley. “Web Lab offers the possibility of making the online experience integral, not secondary. It offers new opportunities for richer experiences online and physical spaces that expand beyond the walls of the museum”

Cameras are positioned around the exhibition, so users can continue to operate the devices when the museum is closed.

The project was also completed with interactive design and engineering group Tellart and graphic designers Bibliothéque.

See all our stories about London Design Festival »

See all our stories about Universal Design Studio »

Photography is by Lee Mawdsley, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s a lengthier description from Universal Design Studio and MAP:

Universal Design Studio and MAP collaborate with Google on exhibition that merges physical and virtual

Universal Design Studio and sister company MAP are responsible for the 3D design and architecture of a dramatic new Google exhibition. Web Lab brings the extraordinary workings of the Internet to life through a series of interactive, web-connected physical experiments, aiming to inspire the world about the Web’s possibilities and to explain its complex technological processes. Exhibition visitors can make music with people across the world and trace the physical route taken by a simple web search. The exhibition at London’s Science Museum is open to the world online at chromeweblab.com, with online visitors experiencing the exhibition day and night through 24-hour web cams installed at the museum.

Above: photograph is by Andrew Brennan

Partnering with interactive design and engineering group Tellart, Universal Design Studio and MAP together designed the exhibition environment, creating innovative architectural and design archetypes for this new kind of physical/ digital collaboration. The design approach focuses equally on the experience of the space physically and the experience of it online via web cams. Architecture and design tools help to deconstruct technology and tell the story of how digital and physical realms are connected. New archetypes were created to separate users from their familiarity with objects, reinforcing the experimental nature of the exhibition, and to ensure each experiment could be appreciated both in the museum and online.

Universal Design Studio and MAP have created an immersive lab setting in the basement of the Science Museum, a scheme that foregrounds the idea of Web Lab as an interactive place of testing and continuous experimentation.

An industrial, functional aesthetic forms the backdrop to the series of playful experiments. At the exhibition’s entrance, a centrally positioned glass and wire mesh workshop provides a highly visible ‘curated lab’ space for events, simple repairs and displays. A key feature conceptually, it represents the ‘living lab’ nature of the exhibition, where visitors are not spectators but are engaged in and part of a working space.

Above: photograph is by Andrew Brennan

Universal Design Studio and MAP were challenged to design a space that would be experienced both physically and online through ‘the eyes of the web’. In order for online visitors to easily interpret the space, architectural planes are clearly and directly articulated. The ground plane maps out the territory as a graphic surface. Bibliothèque created graphics for the rubber floor which, as well as providing an additional narrative layer to the exhibition, creates zoning and flow of movement, and adds a supportive description of each experiment’s function.

The ceiling plane consists of a bright yellow steel grid delivering the network of cables that service the experiments. Rather than be concealed, the grid articulates the physicality of the web, illustrating its data flow – the ‘life source’ of the experiments. Throughout the exhibition, cabling to experiments is intentionally exposed, emphasising this physicality.

A secondary skin of semi-transparent wire mesh lines the walls of the museum gallery, blurring the distinction between the existing building and the new installation. The space is acoustically controlled creating an optimal environment for the Universal Orchestra experiment, which provides the soundtrack to the exhibition experience.

Above: photograph is by Andrew Brennan

Working with Tellart (who prototyped the experiments) and Universal Design Studio, MAP oversaw the industrial design, look and feel of the exhibition’s five Chrome Experiments:

Universal Orchestra: An Internet-powered eight-piece robotic orchestra creating harmonious music
Sketchbots: Custom-built robots able to take photographs and then sketch them in sand
Data Tracer: A map that traces where the world’s online information is physically stored
Teleporter: A series of web-enabled periscopes through which you can instantly access the world (including a 24 hour US bakery)
Lab Tag Explorer: A real-time visualisation of all Web Lab visitors from around the world that groups and categorises participants in incredible ways

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and MAP appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects MVRDV have shown residents of Bordeaux their plans to extend the city by inviting them to walk between rows of model houses on stilts (+ slideshow).

The models show the masterplan for the 35-hectare Bastide Niel development, which will provide approximately 2400 homes, as well shops, offices and other community facilities on the east banks of the Garonne River.

The blue-painted miniature buildings were erected on the opposite side of the river on top of the Miroir d’Eau, or ‘water mirror’ fountain, which caused clouds of mist to rise up and surround the exhibition.

Tennis umpires’ chairs around the edges provided a viewpoint over the rooftops, which will “reference the medieval town centre,” said MVRDV’s Jan Knikker.

The architects used a model of Thomas Heatherwick’s Rolling Bridge to show how a new, but not-yet-designed bridge will connect the development with the city centre.

A similar masterplan of little blue buildings was presented at the Dutch Pavilion for the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale – take a look here.

See more projects by MVRDV here, including a call centre covered in QR codes.

Here’re a few words from MVRDV:

People are invited to walk in the model and see the shapes of the new neighbourhood.

The roofscape with its characteristic spires can be observed from elevated tennis chairs.

MVRDV and the Communaute Urbaine de Bordeaux present the inner city extension Bordeaux Bastide Niel by means of an abstract model to the population.

In the course of the next 10 years the project with its 2400 homes will be realised. AGORA, Biennale Architecture & Urbanisme & Design, September 13-16, Bordeaux.

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by MVRDV appeared first on Dezeen.