Hasta La Ideas

Sunglasses by accessories designer Linda Farrow are presented on golden beams embedded into gravel mounds at this pop-up shop in New York by design studio Neiheiser & Valle (+ slideshow).

Neiheiser & Valle‘s installation inside a shipping container was created to display Linda Farrow‘s eyewear as part of the BOFFO Building Fashion series of pop-up shops. The container is filled with and surrounded by piles of stone chips, into which V-shaped beams are embedded horizontally.

Farrow’s sunglasses are displayed in rows along the length of the golden girders, which face both up and down so the eyewear is nestled within the V or balanced on top. “Eyewear mediates our vision and moderates our intake of light, but it also has the power to transform and transport,” said Neiheiser & Valle.

The gravel mounds are piled up against mirrored walls, creating the illusion of infinite dunes. Gravel also surrounds the exterior of the shipping container, providing continuity between the small interior and the large warehouse in which it sits.

The installation opened last week at the SuperPier site, located on 15th Street at the Hudson River Park in New York City, and will continue until 24 December.

Piled up construction materials seem to be a popular choice for installations in the USA at the moment. The entrance to this year’s Design Miami exhibition last week was marked by a giant mound of sand.

Photographs are by Naho Kubota, unless otherwise stated.

More information from the designers follows:

Boffo Building Fashion 2013
Linda FarrowW + Neiheiser & Valle

Thursday, December 12th, 2013 the second installation in the AIA award winning BOFFO Building Fashion series opened with a three week fashion and architecture retail installation by Linda Farrow + Office of Neiheiser & Valle. A shipping container and surrounding warehouse space at the SuperPier at Hudson River Park (15th Street) in New York City, will be radically transformed, inviting visitors to a unique public art experience.

An endless landscape of stone and light by Neiheiser & Valle adjacent to the Hudson River provides the backdrop for more than just Linda Farrow’s collection of luxurious eyewear, but an experience that transforms the brand for its New York City fans.

This BOFFO Building Fashion project is designed to transport the visitor from the dark winter of New York City to an infinite landscape of stone and light. Neiheiser & Valle state, “Eyewear mediates our vision and moderates our intake of light, but it also has the power to transform and transport.” For this installation, the architectural elements are minimised while the spatial qualities essential to both vision and illusion – deep space, radiance, and reflection – are maximised.

The only objects present are the Linda Farrow glasses, suspended against an undulating environment of rich material qualities – coarse piles of stone, gold displays, ethereal mirrors, polished marble, and crisp light. Parallel walls of mirrored reflection multiply the space in both directions, creating an infinite field that is both heavy and light, an expansive landscape paradoxically contained within the confines of a shipping container, an oasis of luxury and warmth unexpectedly discovered in a cold warehouse by the Hudson River.

The installation will offer a selection of eyewear from the Linda Farrow collection, as well as its celebrated international designer collaborations. Unveiling for the first time the SS14 collaboration collections with Suno and 3.1 Phillip Lim, as well as continuing collaborations with designers like Dries Van Noten, Jeremy Scott, Oscar de la Renta, The Row, and Prabal Gurung.

Alongside the eyewear collection, the installation will offer a capsule collection in celebration of the Linda Farrow tenth anniversary of the relaunch of the brand. Expanding into lifestyle for the first time, the capsule collection is a luxurious selection of collaborative projects created with leading designers including shoes by Nicholas Kirkwood, lingerie by Agent Provocateur, jewellery by Mawi and the first Linda Farrow handbag, among other items and will be the exclusive brick & mortar to carry the capsule in New York.

“2013 has been a milestone for Linda Farrow. To be able to celebrate a ten-year anniversary with such exciting projects like the capsule collection, and now partnering with a storied project such as BOFFO Building Fashion series, is incredible,” say Simon Jablon and Tracy Sedino of Linda Farrow.

Linda Farrow offers what most eyewear companies can no longer offer: “innovation” in the purest sense of the word. Established in 1970, the Linda Farrow brand of luxury eyewear rose quickly to acclaim amongst stylish Londoners and international jet set. Originally a fashion designer, Linda Farrow was one of the first to treat sunglasses as fashion, producing collection after cutting-edge collection.

A tireless experimenter, Farrow pioneered many of the shapes and styles that remain stylish today. Linda Farrow’s long tradition of originality has been kept current by the use of collaborating with the most exciting designers to date, who bring a new perspective, whilst respecting the values which have made Linda Farrow a by-word for style, exclusivity and excellence.

Linda Farrow has never lost sight of what its fundamental values are; to create innovative products at a luxury level. Today renowned for its collaborations with many of the world’s most acclaimed designers (Dries Van Noten, Oscar de la Renta, The Row, Matthew Williamson, Alexander Wang, Jeremy Scott, Kris van Assche among them). Its unprecedented range of vintage sunglasses (over 2000 original designs from the 70s and 80s), and its uncompromisingly luxurious 18K and Luxe lines, Linda Farrow has established itself as one of the most exciting brands in fashion today.

Neiheiser & Valle is a multidisciplinary design practice committed to both playful experimentation and serious research. Ryan Neiheiser and Giancarlo Valle see design as a conversation, a loose exchange of forms and ideas, an open dialogue with their histories and surroundings. They approach each project with an intellectual curiosity, an artistic rigor, and a strong commitment to realising their ideas in the world.

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golden girders embedded in gravel appeared first on Dezeen.

Bands of light shine through the perforated metal facade of this sports hall by French studio Ateliers O-S Architectes in north-west Paris (+ slideshow).

Located beside a railway embankment in Asnières-sur-Seine, the Gymnase Curie provides a flexible games hall for a nearby school and was designed by Ateliers O-S Architectes to be “visually homogeneous” to its surroundings.

The facade is glazed at street level to reveal the building’s activities to pedestrians walking by, while the remaining sections of the walls are uniformly clad with the perforated metal panels.

Fluorescent tubes are arranged vertically behind the panels to create the illuminated stripes, allowing the building to glow after dark.

“Emerging from the railway embankment as a rock with straight edges, the gymnasium manifests itself through its massive aspect, leaning over an illuminated rift that shows the interior activities,” explained the architects.

Behind the facade, the building has a timber roof structure that is exposed across the ceiling of the hall.

Clerestory windows bring daylight in from the east, reducing the need for artificial lighting.

Changing rooms, storage areas and bathrooms wrap the south and east sides of the building, while a small public square frames the main entrance.

Photography is by Cecile Septet.

Here’s more information from Ateliers O-S Architectes:

Gymnse Scolaire Zac Bords de Seine

The site is characterised by three special features that led our intentions:
» Its dimension: a narrow piece of land, 30m width and 250m long, along a railway embankment
» Its orientation: the site opens to the south on the river La Seine
» A breach generated by the western entrance of the new district under the embankment

The urban challenge was to develop a coherent project on the site scale that uses these features. The breach becomes a unifying square, a strong link between the gymnasium and the outdoor playgrounds. The length of the site is organised by a sequence of wooden planted wall.

Emerging from the railway embankment as a rock with straight edges, the gymnasium manifests itself through its massive aspect leaning over an illuminated rift that shows the interior activities.

The sports hall, that we wanted visually homogeneous, is located along the street, creating a strong visual link between the city and the gymnasium. Around are organised the changing rooms, the facilities and other additional rooms.

An opening on the roof brings diffuse light, completing the light coming from the wide windows on the facades.

The street facades are composed by two levels: a glassed low level that brings life to the street at pedestrian scale, and a high massive level composed of metallic punched panels that highlight the building with vertical lights.

The structure is made of a wooden framework leaning over a concrete basement along the railway. The high laminated timber beams appears on the roof, giving rhythm and depth. This project is a simple answer to sustainable development concerns and to a particular urban context.

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with bands of light on its walls appeared first on Dezeen.

Faceted concrete blocks protrude from one side of this sports hall in Croatia, while its bumpy southern and western walls were made by casting concrete panels over a bed of stones (+ slideshow).

Designed by Croatian architect Idis Turato, the building is located in the small town of Krk, on the island of the same name, and it functions as both a sports hall for a primary school and an events space for the local community.

The building sits within a new public square surrounded by a mixture of churches, monasteries and school buildings, and the architect created different concepts for each of the building’s elevations to correspond with the varying architectural styles.

“One of the direct inspirations for all the facades and external walls of the hall were the existing walls of the surrounding monasteries,” Turato told Dezeen.

“The wall is the main concept of the hall, being different regarding the context that is in front of it,” he continued. “Each one of those monastery walls, dating back from different periods, have different textures and also different sizes.”

The northern side of the building fronts the town square and features a faceted concrete surface with a terrazzo finish and sliced openings that form windows.

“The monoliths on the facade that face the square are monumental and dominant,” said the architect. “They accentuate the representative character of the newly formed large public square in town, and are a direct reply towards the high towers on the square.”

The southern and western facades are built over the archeological remains of another monastery and a chapel, which were uncovered during the construction process. These dry stone walls informed the design of the new concrete elevations built on top, which were cast against small stones to create a textured surface that inverts the appearance of the existing structures.

“These ‘concrete innards’, as we call them, are a negative of the dry stone walls,” explained Turato. “Our wish was to make contemporary but simple concrete prefabricates that are visually different and recognisable, but also blend in as a continuation of the existing walls and their textures.”

The remaining elevation faces the school and is finished in white render to match the appearance of its neighbour, which was designed by Idis Turato a few years earlier.

The interior of the building is decorated in bold colours that stand out against the raw concrete interior. A first-floor balcony provides seating during matches and events, plus an underground tunnel creates a private route into the school.

Slabs of red terrazzo provide the surface of the surrounding square, intended to contrast with the pale colour of the concrete walls.

Here’s a project description from Turato Architecture:

Sports Hall and Public Square in Krk

One of the main focuses of the Turato Architects’ Hall and Square project in Krk was to finish an architectural dialogue started way back in 2005, when Idis Turato completed an elementary school, Fran Krsto Frankopan (with his former studio “Randić Turato”).

The new hall, which opened shortly before the summer of 2013, is situated in the very vicinity of the above-mentioned school, just across a narrow pedestrian street. The completion of the new sports building and public square was a crown achievement of the architect’s quest to complete an integral urban ensemble on top of Krk’s old town, thereby creating a newly defined focal point of high importance.

The newly built hall, aside from being a gym facility for the school pupils – who can now easily access it through an underground corridor – aims to meet demands of the local community as well, housing sports events as well as future cultural activities and public festivities on a larger scale. This is the reason why the north-eastern corner of the hall’s facade opens up onto the square, providing functional continuity of passing through and enabling them to become almost one.

The school-hall-square assembly is surrounded by several churches and monasteries, as well as by two tall church towers that act as the square’s vertical accents. Together, they all define and describe this wide public space, which, depending on occasion, can function both as a secular and an ecclesiastical pedestrian zone.

On the very site of the new hall there used to be an old student dorm, which had been used in past as a gym facility for the school. Prior to the hall construction it had to be demolished. The demolition, however, unearthed several new and important archaeological discoveries on the site, thus creating a whole new context for the hall itself.

All that had been found on the site had to be preserved as discovered. The architects took this fact to be crucial in redefining the concept according to the new input. This affected directly the very organisational scheme of the project. The excavated and preserved church and monastery walls were to become integral parts of the new building, with new walls and facades of the hall emerging directly from the restored, older ones.

Yet another contextual element was important in forming the shape and size of the building. These are the high walls, seen throughout the old town of Krk, especially around the aforementioned monasteries, enclosing the town lots, lining the narrow streets of the town. These site-specific structures surround the hall itself as well.

Behind these walls different stories are taking place daily, balancing between the public and the private, depending on the usage of the space enclosed. The high walls of the western hall facade, next to the Franciscan monastery, are then but a continuation of these town alleys. This is where the story of the walls, their origin, context and their shape began, resulting in variety of the facade walls, formally corresponding to the context, input and location.

Although seemingly set “back”, on secondary surfaces (the western alley and southern facade), the most recognisable and by far the most unique element of the hall itself is a wall consisting of original and striking prefabricated concrete elements. The architect named these the innards due to their origin and their fabrication, and the ambiguity of the impression they leave upon the viewer, due to a formal factor of its (un)attractiveness.

The innards are in fact unique precast elements produced as a negative of a dry stone wall, or more precisely – made by placing stones in a wooden mould, covering them with a PVC foil and pouring concrete over it all. In this way the negative of the stones forms the “face” of the precast element. This inverse building process, a simple and basic fabrication with a distinct visual impact, is an invention of the hall’s author. It happened as a result of researching simple building materials with a crafty bricklayer, with whom the architect had collaborated on several projects in the past as well.

On the other hand, the most representative facade of the hall, the one visually dominating the square, is the facade constructed out of six impressively large concrete monoliths, weighing up to 23 tons. The monolithic blocks are finished off with a layer of ‘terrazzo’, which is an ancient technique usually used for floor finishes, requiring hours of polishing by hand.

Here, however, the terrazzo is redefined and used vertically, fittingly renamed into a “vertical terrazzo”. While this sudden vertical use of the finish creates a shiny and finely shaded facade, its “normal” use, on horizontal surfaces, is recontextualised and rethought once again, since this finish, usually ‘reserved’ for interiors, is now used for exterior surfaces of the public square.

The red colour of the square’s terrazzo floor panels is in contrast to the lightness of the hall’s facade. Its smoothness and slip-resistance is achieved by application of a layer of epoxy after polishing.

The fourth facade, facing the school, with its formal look and finish (done in plaster lime mortar) confirms that the new building remains in a direct communication with the existing educational facility, sharing its function.

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features both faceted and bumpy facades appeared first on Dezeen.

Swiss firm Haberstroh Schneider Architekten has extended a house in Basel by adding a chain of three rooms, creating a new semi-enclosed courtyard that is filled with stepping stones (+ slideshow).

Haberstroh Schneider Architekten removed a number of previous extensions to reduce Haus von Arx to its original size, before adding the new volumes to the western edge of the building to provide a home office and library.

The architects designed the courtyard and stepping stones to allow the family to move between the existing house and the extension.

“We wanted this area, as small as it is, to be a space for contemplation, where movements slow down and one is not able to rush through,” they told Dezeen.

A sheltered porch creates a separate entrance for the extension, leading through to a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and then on into the small office.

The architects also added a guest bedroom and bathroom above the house’s existing garage, as well as a new swimming pool and pavilion on the east side of the building.

The exterior of the extensions is finished in white render, contrasting with the grainy grey-painted facade of the main house.

Existing living rooms and bedrooms were left to their original layout, but a curving staircase with iron balustrades was painted in a deep shade of green.

“We wanted to enhance the very elegant stairs so we decided to paint them a dark green that, besides contrasting with the rest of the house, is a colour used traditionally on the interior of historical, wealthy and important houses,” added the architects.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Haus von Arx

The former building – originally built in 1951 – had been extended, converted and renovated several times over the past years. As a consequence, it presented itself as an accumulation of heterogeneous rooms and styles.

In discussions with the new owner we developed the idea of reducing the building to both its original size and primary qualities.

The dismantling of all the old additional elements called for a controlled addition of new expansions.

These new volumes were clustered at the western side of the plot, touching the old building only in one place.

While the old building had been freed from any disturbing elements and thus restored to its classic elegance, the new cubes present a composition of simple and plastically reduced volumes.

The cubes, according to their different position, spacing and size, create fascinating passageway- and patio-situations with the old building.

To the south-western side of the plot we removed the former winter garden. In its place we constructed a generous, open garden pavilion which works well as mediating element between old building, pool area and the garden.

Architects: Haberstroh Schneider Architekten, Basel
Planners: Proplaning AG, Basel Schnetzer Puskas Ingenieure AG, Basel ProEngineering AG, Basel Stokar + Partner AG, Basel Locher, Schwittay Gebäudetechnik GmbH, Basel August + Margrith Künzel Landschaftsarchitekten AG, Binningen
Place: Binningen BL, Schweiz
Year of construction: 2012

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inside by Haberstroh Schneider Architekten appeared first on Dezeen.

Paris studio Marchi Architectes layered up timber slats of different thicknesses and proportions to give an irregular texture to the walls of this sunken house extension in Normandy, France (+ slideshow).

Adélaïde and Nicola Marchi designed the single-storey Black House to accommodate a new open-plan kitchen, dining room and lounge for an existing family house, allowing the owners to reconfigure their current layout.

The structure extends from the rear of the property, but is set at the lowest level of the site so that it is barely noticeable from a road running alongside.

Black-stained timber cladding covers the walls and roof of the extension, allowing it to look like the shadow of the main house, while the textured surface was designed to help it blend in with the surrounding woodland.

“The dark timber cladding plays with light and shadows so that the extension disappears in the shade of the forest around,” said the architects.

Shutters are clad with the same material and can be slid across the windows to screen the interior.

Inside, a two-stage staircase folds around one corner to create routes into the extension from different storeys of the house. There’s also an extra door leading straight out to the garden.

The kitchen is tucked into the corner beneath the staircase, while the dining table sits in the middle of the space and the living area is positioned at the far end.

A pair of skylights help to distribute natural light through the room and heating is provided by a wood-burning stove.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Read on for a short project description from Adélaïde and Nicola Marchi:

Black House

The client wanted to move the living spaces to a more open and transparent space, in order to free some spaces in the old house. A unique volume is set up, arranging kitchen, living and dining room. From the interior, wide views are offered to the garden and landscape.

The extension is connected to the existing house as a structurally light volume, as not to overload the foundations. The project is minimal: the volume is integrated in the surrounding, partially recessed in the topography of the ground to stand lower than the street level.

The dark timber cladding plays with light and shadows so that the extension disappears in the shade of the forest around.

Program: Housing
Size: 80 m2
Date of design: 2010-2013
Date of completion: 2013

Project team: Olivia Massimi, Marcello Orlandini
Client: Private
Consultants: Baldeschi, SBH, Valentin, Vauchel-Louvel

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in the forest by Marchi Architectes appeared first on Dezeen.