Maison&Object 2014 French design duo Colonel has launched its third furniture collection, featuring items based on camping equipment (+ slideshow).
Designers Isabelle Gilles and Yann Poncelet of Colonel have released a series of new products and updated items in their previous collection, released at the same exhibition last year.
“[We] drew this new collection in the same spirit as the previous one, which makes the brand signature – light wood, patterns and fresh colours reminding travel and holidays throughout the year,” said the designers.
The two sliding doors of a small beech wood sideboard are cut with perpendicular slots, which create a grid pattern when they overlap.
Designed to look like a shepherd’s stool, the three-legged Bob wooden coffee table with a curved lip comes in beech or light grey and at two heights.
The Swarm lamps comprise a metal frame covered with a layer of coloured fabric behind a honeycomb mesh, pulled in at the top and bottom with drawstrings. The lamps sit on three spindly legs, either long or short, and also come as a pendant version.
A piece of wood veneer curved into a cylinder is hand painted with watercolours and mounted on a metal frame to form another lamp called Dowood.
The collection also includes a set of turned wood containers with patterned fabric rims and mirrors with curved ladder-like metal frames.
Updated items include the Caracas chair – a contemporary version of a 1960s camping chair – that has been revamped with new graphics for the seat material.
Also new fabrics are available for the tiltable faceted shade of the Faces floor lamp, which has a branch halfway up its stem for hanging coils of the colourful cord.
The full collection is on display at Maison&Objet, taking place outside Paris until tomorrow.
News: architecture firm BIG has unveiled a proposal for an apartment block in the Bahamas featuring a honeycomb facade where every balcony contains a swimming pool (+ slideshow).
BIG, the firm led by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, is designing the eight-storey residential building for a site on the south coast of New Providence Island, where it is set to become the tallest structure in the Albany community.
The honeycomb facade will form the south face of the building. The hexagons will frame balconies belonging to each of the apartments, which will contain sunken pools facing directly onto the marina through clear glass balustrades.
“Our design is driven by an effort to maximise the enjoyment of the abundant natural qualities of Albany in The Bahamas: the landscape, the sea and the sun,” said Bjarke Ingels.
“A honeycomb facade functionally supports the pools making them sink into the terrace floor and provides spectacular sight lines while maintaining privacy for each residence,” he added.
Named Albany Marina Residences, but also known as the Honeycomb, the building will be completed as a collaboration between BIG and smaller firms HKS Architects and Michael Diggiss Architects. It will join three other new buildings proposed in the area.
The hexagonal pattern will continue down onto the paving of an adjacent plaza, and will also provide a framework for soft landscaping, seating areas and an outdoor pool.
“Drawing inspiration from its coastal setting, the hexagonal design evokes the natural geometries you find in certain coral formations or honeycombs,” said Ingels.
Shops will be contained on the ground floor, alongside a lobby leading to the entrances of each apartment.
Here’s a project description from BIG:
BIG designs centrepiece for a new resort in the Bahamas
BIG + HKS + MDA have unveiled the design for the new Honeycomb building and its adjacent public plaza in The Bahamas – a 175,000 ft² (ca. 16,000 m²) residential building with a private pool on each balcony overlooking the marina.
Albany is a modern paradise-like beach and golf resort community, located on the south coast of New Providence Island. The Honeycomb will be the tallest structure in Albany, making it a landmark in the resort, and a beacon from the ocean.
The facade has a hexagonal pattern that uniquely frames the natural beauty of the Island. The balconies are deep enough to not only provide outdoor spaces, but also summer kitchens and a pool sunken into the balcony of each unit. These pools have a transparent edge towards the plaza, eliminating the visual barrier between the pool and the environment. Bathers can be fully immersed in the view of the marina and the ocean beyond.
On the ground level, the facade pattern melts into the pavement of the plaza, creating a subtle topography on the square. Along the edge, various hexagons transform into green mounds with plants, palm trees, and integrated seating. The centre of the square is formed by a shallow pond, which is fed by fountains scattered around the plaza, and a network of small creeks between the hexagonal pavers.
The residences in the building offer a variety of floor plans that will suit the diverse lifestyles of its tenants. The residential lobby and high-end retail will activate the public plaza. A golf cart parking and storage units are oriented towards the parking lot on the north, in close proximity to Albany’s championship golf course.
A wooden ladder and a pair of winding steel staircases link the rooms of this lofty house in Sapporo, Japan, by Jun Igarashi Architects (+ slideshow).
Named Case, the three-storey residence was designed by Japanese firm Jun Igarashi Architects to centre around a family living room with a seven-metre-high ceiling, from which residents can see into almost every other room of the house.
The first of two lightweight steel staircases curves up from the living room to lead to a wooden mezzanine just below the roof, which can be used as a study, a children’s playroom, or simply as a corridor.
Another staircase winds down from this level to a bedroom on a second mezzanine, while a third platform is positioned directly above and can be accessed by climbing a wooden ladder that clips around the edge of the floor.
All three wooden lofts are connected to ceiling by slender steel rods, which double as supports for handrails that extend around both the floors and the staircases.
A full-height partition runs along one side of the living room to separate it from the adjacent kitchen, but a large rectangular hole in its centre allows a view into not only this space, but the bedroom and storage level overhead.
Rather than adding simple doorways between rooms on the ground floor, the architects built three curvy corridors that extend out beyond the house’s rear wall. One leads to bathroom spaces at the back, while another sits at the end of a long and narrow entrance lobby.
Externally, the house is surrounded by vertical wires that the architects hope will become a framework for climbing plants.
Here’s a short project description from Jun Igarashi Architects:
Case
This house is located on the suburb of the city of Sapporo. The site is a typical suburban subdivision and height difference between the road is large. Footprint isdetermined by building coverage and wall retreat of the architectural law and the slope of the site approach.
I set the long corridor of entrance as a buffer zone (windbreak room) between the large heat load space.
Because of the site area is small, to set the buffer space into the inside is difficult. So I spread the thoughts and invent the space of growing plant on stainless steel wire around the house as the new type of buffer zone between outside and inside.
Location: Sapporo, Hokkaido Principal use: Private residence Design period: 2011 Construction period: 2011-2012
Architects: Jun Igarashi Architects Structural engineer: Daisuke Hasegawa & Partners Construction firm: Oooka Industry
Site area: 197.50 sqm Building area: 50.52 sqm Total floor area: 80.84 sqm Number of storeys: 3 above ground Structure: Timber frame
Interview:Iwan Baan is the rock star of architecture photography, shooting buildings from helicopters and “living in a hotel 365 days a year”. With a new exhibition documenting his hectic schedule now open in Germany, Baan spoke to Dezeen about his unique lifestyle and technique (+ slideshow).
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan started out as a documentary photographer but moved into architecture after a chance meeting with architect Rem Koolhaas. He has since become the most sought-after name in architectural photography and spends his life travelling the world to shoot buildings by names such as Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron and SANAA.
“It’s continuous travelling,” he said. “When you look on the map, it’s flying back and forth all over the world.”
Inflatable concert hall by Anish Kapoor and Arata Isozaki in Matsushima, Japan
Baan is known for eschewing the traditional approach of shooting buildings in isolation. He says his aim with every shoot is to capture the life both within and surrounding the built environment. “It’s still very much my interest to show what’s happening around these buildings, what people do there and what kind of role these projects have for people,” he explained.
For most shoots the photographer rents a helicopter to capture his subject from above. “It’s very important for me to give the larger overview and try to get some distance from the architecture. That really tells you where it is and that it’s not just a building that could be anywhere.”
Sanmenxia, Henan Province, China
The new exhibition, entitled 52 Weeks, 52 Cities, shows a selection of Baan’s photographs from the last year accompanied by short commentaries. “It’s really a view into a year of travelling with Iwan,” he said.
Subjects in the exhibition vary from glossy architectural projects to a settlement in Lagos where over 150,000 people live in self-built structures perched on stilts over a lagoon, a village in China where locals have excavated a network of underground caves to live inside, and a secretive Japanese shrine that is rebuilt every 20 years. It also includes the iconic shot of post-Sandy New York that threw the photographer into the limelight when it made the cover of New York Magazine in late 2012.
New York City, New York, USA
“Most people know my photography from the commissioned architecture work but there are also a lot of other places that fascinate me, that show how people are building informally. My work is about looking at all the different aspects of building and the built environment, from the very well-planned cities to what people build themselves out of necessity,” he said.
52 Weeks, 52 Cities is on show at the Marta Hereford gallery in Hereford, Germany, until 30 March.
Here’s a full transcript of the interview:
Amy Frearson: Your new exhibition is called 52 Weeks, 52 Cities. Are you on the road all the time, or do you get opportunities to go home?
Iwan Baan: I haven’t had a home for almost three years. I live in a hotel basically 365 days a year.
Amy Frearson: Talk me through how you go about shooting a particular place. How many cameras do you tend to take on a typical shoot?
Iwan Baan: I always get an idea very quickly about how I want to document a space from an architectural point of view. I work very light and I usually only want one camera with me. I don’t work with tripods or large cameras. It’s really all about capturing the life of these places. That’s what is important for me.
Larabanga, Northern Ghana
Amy Frearson: Do you try to shoot each project from the air?
Iwan Baan: More or less yes, it’s part of my visual language of describing projects. It’s very important for me to give the larger overview and try to get some distance from the architecture. Using a helicopter is always a good way to capture that kind of thing, and to give an architecture project its place in the city or landscape. That really tells you where it is and that it’s not just a building that could be anywhere.
Amy Frearson: Do you do all your own post-production on your images whilst you’re travelling?
Iwan Baan: Yes, but I do very little post-production on my images, usually only colour corrections, and I always do it right after the shoot.
House K by Sou Fujimoto in Osaka, Japan
Amy Frearson: Most architectural photography tries to present the building in isolation but your photos often capture the social and urban context as well.
Iwan Baan: Yes that’s very much the way that I take my commissions. They should be more than just architectural projects. They should be able to tell more about the story and the life around these buildings.
Amy Frearson: You didn’t actually start out as an architectural photographer did you?
Iwan Baan: Yes that’s right, I started out doing much more documentary photography. It was only eight years ago when I met Rem [Koolhaas] and fell into this whole architecture field. So it’s still very much my interest to show what’s happening around these buildings, what people do there and what kind of role these projects have for people. This exhibition tells that story by showing these unique areas and showing why these architecture projects are in these specific places.
Cairo, Egypt
Amy Frearson: Tell me about the exhibition.
Iwan Baan: Marta Herford approached me about nine months ago or so. I had worked for Marta Herford before, about three ago years on an exhibition of all the Richard Neutra houses all over Europe, which I documented. I came back about nine months ago and they asked me if I was interested in doing another exhibition. I thought, with all my endless travels, it would be interesting to show a diary of my last year of travelling. Not only showing the new architecture, but also all the other things that happen around it. It’s really a view into a year of travelling with Iwan.
Amy Frearson: Did you have an idea of what places you were going to be visiting across the year or did you work it out as you went along?
Iwan Baan: With my schedule, things always come up around a week before. It’s continuous travelling. When you look on the map, it’s flying back and forth all over the world.
Floating School by Kunle Adeymi in Lagos, Nigeria
Amy Frearson: Tell me about some of the cities and places you’ve captured over the year.
Iwan Baan: Most people know my photography from the commissioned architecture work but there are also a lot of other places that fascinate me, that show how people are building informally. I’m really interested in how people build themselves unimaginable living conditions, for instance in the slums of Nigeria, or in Lagos where people have built this whole city in water, basically in a lagoon. My work is about looking at all the different aspects of building and the built environment, from the very well-planned cities to what people build themselves out of necessity.
Toilet by Sou Fujimoto in Ichihara, Japan
Amy Frearson: Is there an underlying theme that ties all the photographs together?
Iwan Baan: All the pictures are really about telling the stories of why a project is very specific for a place, whether they’re very large, like a Zaha Hadid building in Azerbaijan that could only have been built there, to the tiniest project where I flew across the globe to Japan to photograph a toilet by Sou Fujimoto. I like telling these kinds of stories with my pictures.
Sanmenxia, Henan Province, China
Amy Frearson: Do you have any favourite photographs in the exhibition?
Iwan Baan: That’s hard to say, there are so many of these incredible places. One that comes to mind is of underground houses in China. It’s a whole region in the centre north of China, around Xi’an, where for centuries people have dug out these courtyard houses that are basically carved out of the earth. They could only do it there because of the special earth, it’s a kind of loose clay soil, so it’s easy to dig it out. These people didn’t have money to buy materials to build new houses, so for them the most logical step was to carve them out, since it is only manpower they needed to create these incredible houses.
At the most recent count, almost 40 million people live there. It’s one of those things that is so specific for this area and reveals a lot about how people build and live in these places. These kinds of things always fascinate me.
Shrine at Ise, Japan
Amy Frearson: Can you describe some of the more historical places that you’ve photographed?
Iwan Baan: One place that comes to mind was a couple of months ago. It’s the Ise Shrine in Japan. It’s an incredible story of a series of shrines in a village in Japan. They started building the first shrines there in the year 600, and since then they have rebuilt the shrines every twenty years. There’s this enormous tradition of craftsmanship, rebuilding all these frames every twenty years. I was very lucky to be there a couple of months ago during that whole rebuilding process and afterwards, when there were all these ceremonies there. So my pictures were really telling a story of this incredible architectural history, how people experience that, how people build it and how people have lived with it for 1400 years.
Nanping Village, Anhui Province, China
Amy Frearson: Did you find any of the places particularly challenging to shoot?
Iwan Baan: There’s a place in China, a series of incredible courtyard houses in the Anhui Province where I was last year. From the outside, you come into a village which is completely closed off. It only has narrow roads and you can hardly see any of the architecture, so it’s hard to document. When I came to this place I got a little frustrated about how I was going to shoot it, but then I found a doctor in a little village in the countryside and asked if I could tag along with him. I walked for two or three days with him and went to all these family houses. All the doors were open and I would step into all these incredible homes and was really able to photograph the life happening inside these places.
Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, India
Amy Frearson: Can you tell me about any other countries you’ve been to?
Iwan Baan: Last January, I was with a whole team from Harvard University in India. There was an event that happens once every 12 years, it’s called the Kumbh Mela. It happens in the north of India near Varanasi, where the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers come together. It’s basically a big delta, but between December and April it’s dry season there so the water level drops.
Once every 12 years the Indians organise a festival there and it’s basically the largest human gathering in the world. Around 100 million people visit the site over a period of about a month and a half. It’s in this river bed that has dried out, so this piece of land about the size of Manhattan becomes available. They literally build a pop-up mega city for 100 million people there, including all the infrastructure. They build roads, they make electricity and there’s this whole city made out of bamboo sticks, saris and curtains. A city for 100 million people and after two months it disappears again.
Glass floors allow residents to look down from a dining table into a toilet inside this windowless concrete house in Shanghai by Chinese firm Atelier FCJZ (+ slideshow).
Yung Ho Chang of Atelier FCJZ originally designed the Vertical Glass House as an urban housing prototype for a competition in 1991. Twenty-two years later, the studio was able to realise the project as part of the West Bund Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary Art.
The building now functions as a guesthouse for visiting artists and architects. Closely based on the original design, the four-storey house has a glass roof and glass floors between each level, meaning that residents can look all the way up from the basement to the sky.
According to project architect Lu Bai, the house is a 90-degree rotation of the typical glass houses completed during the Modernist period, placing more of an emphasis on spirituality and materials.
“With enclosed walls and transparent floors as well as roof, the house opens to the sky and the earth, positions the inhabitant right in the middle, and creates a place for meditation,” he explained.
A single steel column extends up through the exact centre of the building. Together with a series of criss-crossing joists, it dissects the floors into quarters that each accommodate different activities.
On each floor, one of these quarters is taken up by a steel staircase that spirals down to the basement from a double-height second floor.
The house’s austere concrete walls were cast against wooden formwork, which was left rough on the outside and sanded on the inside to give a contrast in texture between the facade and the interior walls.
Each glass floor slots into a pair of narrow horizontal openings in the walls and the architects have added lighting along these junctions to create stripes of light on the building’s facades after dark.
The overall footprint of the house is just 40 square metres.
Here’s a project description from Atelier FCJZ:
Vertical Glass House
Vertical Glass House was designed by Yung Ho Chang as an entry to the annual Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition organised by the Japan Architect magazine in 1991. Chang received an Honorable Mention award for the project. Twenty-two years later in 2013, the West Bund Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary Art in Shanghai decided to build it as one of its permanent pavilions.
Basement plan
Vertical Glass House is a urban housing prototype and discusses the notion of transparency in verticality while serving as a critic of Modernist transparency in horizontality or a glass house that always opens to landscape and provides no privacy. While turning the classic glass house 90 degrees, Vertical Glass House is on one hand spiritual: with enclosed walls and transparent floors as well as roof, the house opens to the sky and the earth, positions the inhabitant right in the middle, and creates a place for meditation. On the other hand, Vertical Glass House is material: vertical transparency visually connects all the utilities, ductworks, furniture pieces on different levels, as well as the staircase, into a system of domesticity and provides another reading of the modern theory of “architecture as living machine”.
Ground floor plan
The structure erected in Shanghai in 2013 was closely based on the 22-years old design scheme by Chang and developed by the Atelier FCJZ. With a footprint of less than 40 square meters, the four-storey residence is enclosed with solid concrete walls leaving little visual connection to its immediate surrounding. The walls were cast in rough wooden formwork on the exterior and smooth boards on the interior to give a contrast in texture in surface from the inside out. Within the concrete enclosure, a singular steel post is at the centre with steel beams divide the space in quarters and frame each domestic activity along with the concrete walls.
First floor plan
All the floor slabs for the Vertical Glass House, which consists of 7cm thick composite tempered glass slabs, cantilevers beyond the concrete shell through the horizontal slivers on the facade. The perimeter of each glass slab is lit from within the house; therefore, light transmits through the glass at night to give a sense of mystic for the pedestrians passing by. All the furniture were designed specifically for the rooms inside the Vertical Glass House to be true to the original design concept and keep a cohere appearance with its structures and stairs. Air conditioning was added to the house.
Cross section
The Vertical Glass House will be operated by the West Bund Biennale as a one-room guest house for visiting artists and architects while serving as an architectural exhibition.
Original drawings
Office: Atelier FCJZ Principal Architect: Yung Ho Chang Project Architect: Lu Bai Project Team: Li Xiang Ting, Cai Feng
Original drawings
Location: Xuhui District Longteng Road, Shanghai, China Client: West Bund Building Area: 170 m2 Structural Type: Housing/Exhibition
Dutch studio Bureau SLA has inserted a smooth white house-shaped art gallery into a timber nineteenth-century Dutch military building.
By excavating a three-metre basement, Bureau SLA added an extra storey to the former armoury but kept the original timber structure intact. The building at Fort Asperen in the Netherlands is now used as an art gallery.
The move turns a long, low barracks-like building into a much larger, generously proportioned one. The original timber frame, window-frames, eaves and roof were retained, the exterior repainted and a new structure inserted within the existing building fabric.
Architect Peter van Assche describes the new structure as a “little house” that contains the bar, stairs and elevator and exhibition space. Its exterior is clad in Corian.
“Where the old interior looks more like the inside of an Austrian ski-hut, the new addition looks shiny, bright and white. The skin of the white house has more of an iPhone feeling: seamless, smooth and white, which maximises the difference between old and new,” said van Assche.
Internally the triple-height space is timber-lined, with large glass tiles placed beneath the original skylights. The original beams and metal ties pierce the ceiling of the new volume.
Van Assche describes the practice’s light touch to restoration. “By not restoring the original wooden monument ‘to death’, the look and feel of the building is not destroyed in the name of sustainability.”
“Our restoration philosophy is simply put: repair what is broken, do not touch the rest, make outstanding new additions,” van Assche said.
The armoury building is an outbuilding of the Fort Asperen military complex. It sits within the New Dutch Waterline, a network of defensive channels which circle the Dutch cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk and Gorinchem.
These channels were developed in the nineteenth-century to protect the Netherlands from invasion from the east. In times of war the network could be flooded by a system of sluices, dikes and flood canals.
A layer of water only 40 centimetres deep was enough to make the land difficult to pass for soldiers, vehicles and horses. At the same time, it was not deep enough to navigate by ship.
Each year hundreds of bats come to hibernate in the adjacent Fort Asperen. The fortress island used to be completely closed during the winter season, but from now on visitors can visit the renovated monumental armoury all year round.
Here’s a project description from Bureau SLA:
The Armoury
Fort Asperen is one of the most treasured fortresses of the so-called New Dutch Waterline. This longstretched military complex of a series of inundations was made in the 19th century to protect the Netherlands against invasions from the east. The Waterline is so unique, that it was nominated for Unesco World Heritage in 2011. Fort Asperen has been open to the public since 1986, hosting controversial art- and design exhibitions. The fortification is not only popular with people: bats also love it. Each winter the fortress tower closes its doors to make sure that the hundreds little mammals have an undisturbed hibernation. The fortress island used to be completely closed during the winter season, but from now on visitors can visit the renovated monumental armoury all year round.
Originally, the armoury consisted of little more than a bare wooden shack next to the fortress tower. Wooden beams, wooden floors, wooden walls and wooden window frames with wooden shutters. An Austrian ski hut, really. The designers of bureau SLA made sure that this rather rustique atmosphere of the armoury was fully kept. This was against the given brief: the intention was to insulate the wooden shack from the inside and to make sure that the place could be used through summer and winter in comfortable climatic conditions. To provide the necessary spaces bureau SLA did a trick: they lifted the shack by a few meters, poured a concrete basement and placed the wooden building back in its original position – now on a new foundation. The insulated basement spaces take care of perfect climatic conditions, while the old armoury provides the authentic feeling of the military past.
The basement extension peaks through the ground floor with a shiny white little house. The cladding of the white house is made of the smooth and seamless composite material Himacs/Corian, so that the contrast between old and new is maximised. In the white house we find the main exhibition and conference room. Daylight enters through big windows, that also allow spectacular views from both sides. Bureau SLA strategically placed custom-made glass tiles on the roof, so daylight pours in abundantly where needed.
The new Armoury is an example of bringing back life to a (state) monument in a new and unconventional way. By not restoring the original wooden monument ‘to death’, the look and feel of the building is not destroyed in the name of sustainability.
Bureau SLA had a similar approach with their design for the New National Glass Museum – not far from Fort Asperen. Their restoration philosophy is simply put: repair what is broken, do not touch the rest, make outstanding new additions.
Bureau SLA also came up with the design of the tables. They are made from leftover wood from the removed attic.
Name: Armoury Fort Asperen Architect: bureau SLA, Amsterdam Client: Foundation Monument Fort Asperen Address: Langedijk 60, Acquoy, The Netherlands Start design: 2010 Completion: 05/2013 Gross Floor Area: 381 m2 Building costs: ca. € 650.000 ex. VAT Program: conference and exhibition space, office, bar, restaurant Contractor: Van den Dool Bouw, Leerdam Structural Engineer: ABT Delft Sustainability: Van der Weele Advies, Groningen Glass Rooftiles: Royal Glass Factory Leerdam, Carina Riezebos Design team: Peter van Assche, Mathijs Cremers, Hiske van der Meer, Laura Maeztu
Dutch designers Bernotat & Co have created a range of coverings for chairs that are modelled on a grandma’s dressing gown, baggy overalls and an oven mitt.
Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
Dutch designers Bernotat & Co developed the concept for people to recycle old chairs and make them more comfortable to sit on.
“Being slightly strange, some of them maybe even awkward, they trigger emotional reactions,” said the designers. “People relate differently to the chairs when they’re dressed up and the chairs suddenly acquire a certain anthropomorphic quality.”
Big Baggy. Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
The newest piece of the chair clothing, Big Baggy, is made from heavy duty canvas used in overalls and work wear. The back features two big pockets for newspapers, books and magazines, while the side pockets have space for stationary, iPads, iPhones and a hanging loop for headphones.
Pique Pocket
Pique Pocket is made from a quilted fabric similar to that of an oven mitt and slips over the back of a chair, tucking in at the sides like an apron. Users can slips their hands into the large pockets that hang down behind when they are seated.
Hoodini. Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
Hoodini features a multifunctional cover with a hood attached that can be slipped over a person, completely obscuring their head from view or used as a storage space when it hangs behind the chair.
Photograph by Rogier Chang
The quilted fabric is reminiscent of a grandma’s dressing gown or a Chesterfield sofa.
Knit-Net. Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
The foam packing for apples inspired the designers to create the Knit-Net design, a stretchy slip-on cover made from acrylic and wool filled with foam. Four press studs help secure it in place at the base of the seat.
Photograph by Rogier Chang
The Chair Wear Prét-á-Porter Collection is a selection of their favourite designs from the Haute Couture Collection, presented at Milan and Dutch Design Week last year. The designers have since introduced new colours and one new design.
Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
Here’s a some more information from Bernotat & Co:
Chair Wear
Chair Wear started as a mildly ironical joke, and ended up in a very inspiring new way of looking at furniture upholstery, of seeing it as a separate item, leading to new constructions, productions techniques and materials. With a real collection as a result.
The idea of dressing up chairs evolved while working on the Triennial Chair for Gispen. This chair has a separate cushion in the back, which allows it to be upholstered in two different kinds of fabrics, in endless combinations. With Chair Wear, the idea is taken even further: Bernotat&Co looked at upholstery as a separate item, as clothing for chairs, specially designed and custom-made for this purpose.
Chair Wear stimulates re-use by upgrading old furniture. But the aim is not just restyling. Instead, Bernotat&Co researched the possibilities of adding comfort to hard wooden chairs, or of creating additional functions for simple chairs. For this purpose, the chairs are dressed up with unexpected textiles, ranging from high-tech to industrial to traditional.
For our ‘Prêt-à-Porter models’, we used a variety of techniques and materials, like we did in the initial ‘Haute Couture collection’: Three-dimensional knit-and-wear for Knit Net, the innovative 3d knitted textiles from Innofa for Pique Pocket and Hoodini, and for Big Baggy we used heavy duty canvas that is normally used in overalls and work wear. All of them provide a soft contrast to the hard, basic chairs forming the framework.
In addition, the Chair Wear models give a nice twist to the rather tacky subject of chair covers. As ambiguous objects with various sources of inspiration, they’re open to associations. Being slightly strange, some of them maybe even awkward, they trigger emotional reactions. People relate differently to the chairs when they’re dressed-up, and the chairs suddenly acquire a certain antropomorphic quality. After all, the Dutch word for upholstery is ‘bekleding’ – its root including the word ‘clothing’, creating a direct relation to the human body.
This soil treatment centre in Copenhagen by Danish studio Christensen & Co was designed to resemble the mounds of earth being used to sculpt the landscape of a developing harbour-side community (+ slideshow).
Soil Centre Copenhagen is located on the coastal edge of Nordhavn, a new urban quarter underway to the north of Copenhagen’s centre. It was designed by Christensen & Co as a facility for decontaminating soil excavated from construction sites across the city.
The building has an angular profile, which slopes up from the ground to create the shape of two connected hills, and its outer walls are clad with rusty panels of pre-weathered steel.
“Soil Centre Copenhagen grows out of the landscape with its characteristic shape and rusty red facades,” said the architects. “The building has a distinctive silhouette against the vast horizon, and is an integrated part of the landscape and an obviously man-made object.”
The roof surfaces are covered with plants and grasses, intended to fit in with ponds and shrubs already present nearby. The architects also hope that in time trees and bushes will grow over the structure.
“In this sense the building makes up for the piece of the landscape it has occupied, and will help preserve the natural biodiversity of the area,” they said.
There are more plants inside the building, where the architects have added a living wall and a row of trees inside a double-height entrance lobby.
Offices and laboratories are arranged around this space, while garage and workshop areas are positioned on either side.
Wooden shelving grids are build into the walls to provide storage and seating areas in various spaces and skylights help to bring daylight through the interior.
Here’s a project description from Christensen & Co:
Soil Centre Copenhagen
Between the sky and the ocean
On the edge of Øresund, where the sky meets the ocean behind the Freeport and the Container Terminal lies Copenhagen Municipality’s new soil treatment centre, Soil Centre Copenhagen. It is here millions of cubic metres of dug up soil from construction projects and metro building sites around Copenhagen create new ground for Copenhagen’s new urban area Nordhavn.
The landscape at Nordhavn is flat and makes for a fascinating and ever-changing scenery, giant piles of soil and huge excavations. To the north-west of Soil Treatment Centre, Copenhagen, the landscape is contrastingly lush with little green hills, shrubbery and little ponds and lakes fringed with rushes. A wild nature site filled with sounds from birds, swans and mewing seagulls. It is also here the protected European Green Toad, has made a new home for itself.
With this very unique context Soil Centre Copenhagen grows out of the landscape with its characteristic shape and rusty red facades. The building has a distinctive silhouette against the vast horizon, and is an integrated part of the landscape and an obviously man-made object.
The facades are clad in stretch metal made from rusty weathering steel. On the roof tall grass and, in time, even smallish bushes and trees will grow. In this sense the building makes up for the piece of the landscape it has occupied, and will help preserve the natural biodiversity of the area. The weathering steel is protected by a red layer of rust, visually connecting it to the area and the ambitious environmental profile of the building.
The building consists of an office section for employees, laboratories, dressing rooms, two large workshops, garages and storage spaces. At the centre of the building the office section makes for a peaceful oasis with a view of the surroundings through the carefully placed windows, each offering beautifully framed views of the landscape or the waters of Øresund. At the same time, placement of the windows in the facade optimises the use of natural light, so the character and quality of that light becomes an integrated part of the architectural narrative.
A green and luxuriant interior
Two large indoor trees, along with the lush plant wall, create a green and delightful internal contrast to the dusty and rough exterior environment. A large number of roof windows shower the building with a pleasant light from above, and along with the facade windows, allows for some very good natural light conditions in the office section. The floor plan encourages interdisciplinary synergy between the centre’s very different departments ranging from engineers to excavator drivers.
The first DGNB certified building in Nordhavn
Soil Centre Copenhagen is the first DGNB certified building in Denmark built after the test phase has ended and the very first certified building in Nordhavn. It is a zero-energy building, which combines passive and active energy efficiency measures based on an overall view, which encompasses energy efficiency, building materials and social aspects. The design of the building results in an extremely low energy consumption and the necessary energy is provided using geothermal energy from the many kilometres of piping underneath the black asphalt in front of the building as well as solar panels and solar cells integrated into the slanting roof surfaces.
Soil Centre Copenhagen General contractor: CPH City & Port Development User: Copenhagen Municipality. The Technical and Environmental Administration Area: 1,800 m2. Architect: Christensen & Co Engineer: Grontmij
Rather than slotting onto chains, these 3D-printed pendants by Italian designer Maria Jennifer Carew hang from the edge of the wearer’s clothing (+ slideshow).
Maria Jennifer Carew stripped the pendant necklace down to its most essential component and created her LessIS collection of simple geometric designs that clip onto garments.
“Today accessories are a key element in any outfit, so I decided to focus on the concept of necklace where often the most important role is played by the pendant and not by the chain that supports it,” she told Dezeen.
Each design is based on a continuous strand of material, which loops back on itself into a thin element that hooks behind a lip of fabric.
Shapes range from circles, triangles and squares to more complex polygons. Some pieces have extra bars within the outer edge for added decoration.
The jewellery can be clipped onto the collar of tops, and can also be placed over the placket of a shirt or into the top of a chest pocket.
The pendants are printed in bronze, brass and black or white nylon.
Ben Davidson of London studio Rodić Davidson Architects designed this garden shed in Cambridge, England, to the exact proportions of his grandfather’s old workbench and added pegboard walls for displaying a collection of handmade tools (+ slideshow).
The Garden Workshop is one of two wooden sheds that Rodić Davidson Architects has built at the end of Davidson’s garden. The other functions as a home office, but this one is used by the architect as a model-making workshop.
The building is designed around the size of two components. The first is a series of glazed panels the architect had been given for free by a contractor several years earlier, and the second is an old workbench originally belonging to his grandfather that he inherited after the recent death of his father.
“My grandfather was a carpenter by trade and extraordinarily talented; he should have been a cabinet maker,” said Davidson. “I recall many summers in my early teens, being packed off for two weeks to go and stay with my grandparents in Norfolk and spending the entire time with him in his workshop.”
“My father sadly died in 2012 and this led me to inherit my grandfather’s workbench and tools which had sat in the garage, unused and rusting, for almost 30 years since his death in 1985,” he added.
The building has a simple wooden box frame that is left exposed inside, fitting exactly around the old workbench.
The square recesses around the frame are infilled with pieces of lacquered pegboard that accommodate hooks for hanging the old tools, many of which Davidson says he made with his grandfather at the age of ten.
Modular wooden shelving boxes also slot into the recesses, while an extra workbench made from maple runs along one wall beneath a window.
Two skylights offer a view up to the sky through the canopy of an adjacent tree and a concrete base gives the shed its floor.
The exterior is clad with black-stained plywood over a layer of rubber waterproofing.
Photography is by the architect.
Here’s a project description from Rodić Davidson Architects:
Garden Studio, Cambridge
A black timber garden studio and model-making workshop
Hidden in amongst the trees at the end of a long garden in Cambridge, we have designed and built two separate timber-framed buildings for use as a home office/studio and a model-making workshop. The structures are clad in vertical black-stained softwood boarding of varying widths – wider on the studio and narrower on the workshop. On the studio, the cladding forms a continuous rainscreen and wraps the entire building. The larger studio building is very highly insulated (using 150mm Cellotex combined with Super Tri-Iso) and incorporates a super efficient air-source heat pump. Calculations indicate that the annual heating bill will cost less than £21 in electricity costs. The building is wrapped with a black timber rain screen over a complete wrapper of a rubber membrane for water-proofing.
Free glass
We moved to Cambridge in 2008 and, not long after having done so, I was offered – free of charge – some large Velfac glazed panels from a contractor that we were working with who had incorrectly ordered them for a new school. If I hadn’t have taken them, they would have gone in the skip.
The panels arrived at my new house in Cambridge on the same day that we moved in. For 4 years they sat in the garden under a blue tarpaulin.
Beautiful tools to restore and display
My father sadly died in 2012 and this led me to inherit my grandfather’s workbench and tools which had sat in his garage, unused and rusting, for almost 30 years since his death in 1985. My grandfather was a carpenter by trade and extraordinarily talented: he should have been a cabinet maker. I recall many summers, in my early teens, being packed off for two weeks to go and stay with my grandparents in Norfolk and spending the entire time with him in his workshop.
The two events – my father’s death and came together and led me to design and build the workshop. The design was led by numerous very specific criteria: The size of my grandfathers workbench, the size and number of glass units, the wish to not only store – but to display the wonderful tools (most of which my grandfather had made – indeed some we made together when I was 10).
The final briefing constraint was the wish to build the buildings under Permitted Development.
Floor plan
The design
The workshop is made using a timber frame on a concrete base. The frame is set out precisely so as to form internal square sections. The timber is cheap 6×2 softwood used for stud work. The frame was clad with ply (2 sheets on the roof) and then cross battened and clad again with staggered roofing battens (50x25mm). Internally, pegboard was cut and placed between the stud work squares and the entire internal space was then prepared and sprayed with 7 coats of Morrells satin lacquer. This was extremely time consuming. Birch ply cupboards were then fitted into the openings.
Cross section
A workbench was made from maple accommodating a lower platform for the Meddings pillar drill and a sink. The elevation above the workbench is fully glazed and north facing.
Two roof lights were installed which look up into the canopy of the lime tree over.
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