Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2014: Dutch architecture firm UNStudio has revealed a chair with an S-shaped seat that allows its user to move from sitting upright to relaxing with a leg up (+ slideshow).

Part of UNStudio‘s Gemini collection for Dutch brand Artifort, the asymmetric chair was designed to let sitters “sit up, slouch, lounge, hang, repose or hunker”, as well as to “shift, twist, turn, swing around, pivot to face each other or turn towards the room.”

Set upon an asymmetric frame, the body of the chair curves towards the floor on one side and arches upwards to form both an arm and a backrest on the other. This shape allows a user to sit in a variety of different positions.

“The main concept for the Gemini design is versatility,” Ben van Berkel, co-founder of UNStudio, told Dezeen.

“We approached this not only in terms of where the chairs can be used, but also in terms of how. The shape of the chair allows for a wide variety of seating positions and therefore also for variety in perspectives and views of the spaces in which it is placed.”

The chair is available in two varieties: one curving to the left and the other to the right. The seat shell is made with a metal insert that is padded with foam, covered with Dacron and upholstered with a stretch fabric. There are four types of upholstery available, in two different blues, beige and orange.

The Gemini collection also includes a small matching side table. This features a metal frame, upholstered sides and a tabletop made of solid oak.

The chairs are on display in Pavilion 16, F30 at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan.

Here’s a project description from UNStudio:

Gemini, Artifort (Schijndel, NL) 2014

Gemini for Artifort has been designed as individual furniture pieces which can be placed as single seating elements, in pairs or in groups of various sizes and configurations. The concept for the design of the chair centers on flexibility of movement, versatility in seating positions and variety in spatial experiences.

Set upon an asymmetric frame, the generously proportioned single-surface body of the chair curves towards the floor on one side and arches upwards to form both an arm and a backrest on the other. This contoured composition affords the user variety in seating positions and directionality: they can sit up, slouch, lounge, hang, repose or hunker, but they can also shift, twist, turn, swing around, pivot to face each other or turn towards the room.

Spatially Gemini introduces varying visual orientations of the spaces in which the chairs are placed and offers the possibility to choose between sitting alone, sitting together or simply enjoying different views of the surrounding space. When coupled with either its direct twin or its mirrored twin, the nonsymmetrical silhouette of both the frame and the soft element transforms to create a curvilinear symmetry.

The horizontally subdivided soft body of the chairs can be upholstered in up to three ways in one or two colours, from a choice of many different shades. Gemini can be used in private, public and semi-public settings, such as waiting areas, lobbies, offices, lounge areas and libraries.

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seating positions” for working or lounging appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: Japanese design studio YOY presented a lamp that projects the shape of a shade onto a wall and a rug that doubles as a chair in Milan this week (+ slideshow).

The new collection from YOY includes a tray that appears to defy gravity and a series of drawers that can be mounted on the wall, as well as the rug and two lamps.

“In this exhibition, we tried to make a new story between a product and a space,” YOY co-founder Naoki Ono told Dezeen. “We would like to create strange feelings with humour in an ordinary room.”

The table and floor lamps are both made from aluminium and plastic. Rather than using a light bulb, the designs have a hole in the head with an LED light inside, which projects the shape of a shade onto a nearby wall.

The rug has a 10-millimetre-thick aluminium sheet inside that makes it strong enough to hold the weight of a person when rolled, enabling it to be used as a seat. The black fabric is made from polyester and elastic.

The wooden tray, called Protrude, appears to be perilously perched on the edge of a table when in fact it is fixed with a stainless-steel clip.

The drawers are designed to hang on a wall and have a mirror inside to make them appear deeper. They come in small, medium and large, and are available in black and white plastic.

The pieces are showing at stand D-43, Salone Sattelite, Fiera Hall 15 in the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan from 8 – 13 April.

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with light that projects its shade appeared first on Dezeen.

This zigzagging house in Australia by Iredale Pedersen Hook is raised above the ground on stilts to minimise its impact on the native landscape and wildlife (+ slideshow).

The holiday home was designed by Australian studio Iredale Pedersen Hook for a site near the town of Nannup. Situated between a forest and a flood plain, the area provides a habitat for local fauna including emus, kangaroos and snakes.

The house was given a cranked layout to create different experiences along its length. It was also lifted off the ground to enhance views and reduce disruption to the site.

“This is a holiday house, a place of temporary inhabitation that offers a variety of experiences and relationship to the native landscape,” said the architect. “Spaces are strung in a line, an open-ended line that allows one to enter, exist and then leave and continue.”

The kinked plan optimises different views of the forest on one side and the horizon on the other. It accommodates outdoor living areas, including an enclosed balcony at the rear of the property and a pointed terrace that projects towards the flood plain.

Windows on the angled facades alternate between vertical apertures that make the most of the view towards the nearby trees and longer openings overlooking the plain.

The use of the stilts and their diagonal cross-braces references the fallen trees that are a common feature around the forest edge, while the material palette used for the exterior references its natural setting.

“Materials were carefully selected to dialogue with the context,” the architects explained. “Dark Colorbond steel, rusting steel and recycled jarrah [wood] contributes to the notion of the building as ‘shadow’.”

Long steel grate ramps lead to an entrance at one end of the house and a balcony at the other, continuing past the master bedroom and main living areas to the sheltered terrace.

The main entrance opens into a dark corridor that meanders past bedrooms, a laundry and a study, before reaching the two terraces on either side of the bright, open-plan living and dining room.

The architects said they wanted to enhance the experience of moving between interior and exterior spaces by emulating the experience of “wandering through a forest in and out of darkness and openness.”

Richly textured, dark jarrah wood used on the floor of the corridor contrasts with the bright living spaces, while carefully chosen colours and textures were introduced throughout the interior to evoke the natural surroundings.

Treated plantation pine was used for 90 per cent of the building’s framework and recycled local timber features on the outdoor decks as well as internal flooring and storage.

Photovoltaic panels on the roof supply the home’s power and a solar-powered system heats its water, which includes rainwater captured from the roof.

Photography is by Peter Bennetts.

Here’s a project description from Iredale Pedersen Hook:

Nannup Holiday House

The Nannup Holiday house forms part of a wandering path through the landscape from Perth to Nannup. This path dialogues with the landscape of intense forest, meandering river and rolling hills, each experience is carefully choreographed to enrich the occupancy of the house. A Jeykll and Hyde experience of the landscape is carefully controlled through oscillating vertical (forest) and horizontal (horizon) openings and the contrast of grounded and floating experiences. While the exterior dialogues with the numerous fallen trees, the interior is revealed through a sequence of ‘growth rings’ coded and extruded in relation to the building program.

Program Resolution

This is a holiday house, a place of temporary inhabitation that offers a variety of experiences and relationship to the native landscape. Spaces are strung in a line, an open-ended line that allows one to enter, exist and then leave and continue. The house is part of a broader and longer experience that constitutes the experience of being on ‘holiday’, the travel to and from the site and the experience of visiting local towns and tourist attractions are then contemplated and celebrated in the context of this residence. Spaces are organised to provide a sense of seclusion and retreat, guests view the forest from a distance through vertical windows, the boys view the horizon and rolling hills through shared horizontal openings and the parents almost touch the natural landscape. These areas are collected by a dark, twisting and cranking space clad in recycled jarrah that oscillates between interior and exterior creating a sense of ambiguity and wondering through a forest in and out of darkness and openness. Outlook from this space is carefully controlled to provide detailed relief, openings also align to view through interior to exterior to interior and back to exterior.

Built form context relationship

The building hovers above the native landscape minimising disturbance, it is a shadow to the immense forest, cranking in plan and undulating in section. The plan twists in relationship to program requirements and variety of views. The section undulates in direct dialogue to the backdrop forest enriching the spatial experience with variety and complexity; spatial proportion varies between rooms capturing the verticality of the forest and the horizontality of the horizon.

It sits between the edge of the forest and the edge of the flood plain, the space between fire and flood, a fragile zone of existence. The ground level is dominated by roaming wild pigs (the size of humans), tiger snakes, dugites and other less threatening native fauna including emus and kangaroos. The elevated house with access via the steel grate ramps creates a safe retreat to observe nature.

Materials were carefully selected to dialogue with the context, dark Colorbond steel, rusting steel and recycled Jarrah contributes to the notion of the building as ‘shadow’. This concept continues internally, the main passage being dark and an extension of the exterior (recycled Jarrah) and primary living spaces being lighter and more connected to the exterior (recycled WA Blackbutt). Small fragments of intense colour capture the colours of the forest undergrowth.

Integration of Allied Disciplines

The core building team camped on site during construction; it became an obsession, highly crafted and full of pride. Our structural engineer also travelled regularly to site while visiting his own holiday farm in the vicinity. His knowledge of local conditions and contractors was highly valued. The project enjoyed a high level of respect and collaboration between all teams; this is reflected in the end result.

Sustainability

This project offers a holistic approach to environmental sustainability commencing with design and placement of access paths. The vehicle access path is placed along the site edge an area that requires annual clearing for the firebreak. This enables us to minimise the clearing of land. The materials required to build the access path were quarried from the site (gravel and clean yellow sand). These areas were immediately rehabilitated with plant species already existing on the site.

The house was sited and designed to minimise clearing of bush and removal of trees. The area under the house is then free for re-introducing local species and will be fed by the grey water recycling.

Materials were selected based on a life cycle analysis of embodied energy, Colorbond cladding provides a durable exterior core and inhabited areas include recycled Jarrah and recycled WA Blackbutt. Timber off cuts was re-used for storeroom linings.

The building structure is 90% treated plantation pine and most furniture constructed from hoop pine plantation plywood. The structure was mostly pre-fabricated to minimise building waste.

The long roof form increases the capacity to capture rainwater, this is re-used in the house. Grey Water is recycled for garden watering under the house. Water is heated from a solar hot water system with back up instantaneous gas hot water systems located close to areas of water use to minimise water waste. Water consumption is reduces with rated fixtures and fittings.

Photo Voltaic cells balanced over the year easily cover consumption requirements. Power consumption is minimised through energy efficient equipment, use of LED and Compact Fluorescent globes and feature wall mounted light fittings manufactured from plantation plywood.

Applied coatings are minimised and generally Low Voc or oil.

Architects: Iredale Pedersen Hook architects
Architectural Project Team: Adrian Iredale, Finn Pedersen, Martyn Hook, Drew Penhale, Caroline Di Costa, Jason Lenard, Matthew Fletcher
Structural Engineer: Terpkos Engineering
Builder: Brolga Developments and Construction

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rises above the Australian bush on stilts appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: German designer Hanna Emelie Ernsting has developed a chair with an integrated red blanket that wraps around the sitter like Little Red Riding Hood’s cape (+ slideshow).

Designed by Hanna Emelie Ernsting and called Red Riding Hood, the piece is a round-backed, grey armchair with a grey and red blanket attached around and under the seat.

When there isn’t a sitter the blanket falls, grey side down, over the back of the seat. When someone sits in it they can draw the blanket around them like a cape.

“Evenings are the time for stories, dreams and fairytales,” said Ernsting. “After a strenuous workday, we long to escape for a time from everyday life and lose ourselves in the world of a book or film. These contrasting circumstances underlie the design of this armchair.”

“The chair reinterprets these two facets of day and evening, work and leisure time, reality and fairyland, waking and dreaming – the rational and the whimsical,” she added.

The material used is loden, a traditional German-Austrian woven wool fabric that is often used for coats because of its water and dirt-resistant qualities.

The armchair is on show in hall 13 booth D27 at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan.

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the sitter with a red hood appeared first on Dezeen.

This system of illustrated characters and animations was developed to help people learn to read Chinese, and is one of the 76 projects nominated for Designs of the Year 2014 (+ slideshow).

Taiwan-born entrepreneur ShaoLan first began developing the Chineasy characters as a way to teach her own English-speaking children to read traditional Mandarin Chinese, by creating a visual connection to the words.

Having struggled to find a straightforward way to negotiate the huge number and complexity of Chinese characters, she teamed up with graphic artist Noma Bar to develop a system of shapes representing some of the most commonly occurring symbols, which can be combined to create more complex phrases.

“I created a methodology that breaks down thousands of Chinese characters into a few hundred base building blocks,” explained ShaoLan. “When these building blocks are combined, they form compounds that can in turn be combined to create phrases. Through this method learners can quickly build a large vocabulary of characters with very little effort.”

As well as providing users with a memorable way to understand the characters, Chineasy aims to offer those living in the West an insight into Chinese culture in a visual format.

“It is educational, social, cultural, and I hope, inspirational,” said ShaoLan. “I am demonstrating the beauty of this deep and ancient culture with a modern interpretation through sleek modern design.”

The entrepreneur spent her evenings selecting and sketching suitable characters to form the building blocks of the Chineasy system, which she then modelled on her computer and refined to create contemporary graphic representations that could easily be understood by Westerners.

Having presented the initial idea at a conference organised by innovation forum TED that was published online in May 2013, the interest she received encouraged ShaoLan to begin working on a book and launch a Chineasy website and Facebook page.

A campaign launched on crowdfunding site Kickstarter exceeded its goal of £75000, eventually achieving £197626 of backing that was used to publish the first Chineasy books.

The books are now being published by Thames & Hudson and an ebook and app have also been developed to illustrate how to write and correct stroke order through simple animations and give tips on pronunciation.

Chineasy was nominated in the Graphics category of the Design Museum’s shortlist for Designs of the Year and features in an exhibition at the museum until 25 August.

Here’s a project description from ShaoLan:

Chineasy

Chineasy’s aim is to bridge the gap between the East and the West. I want to give the west a real understanding of China and an appreciation of Chinese culture through their own eyes rather than layers of packaging and manipulation.

It is evident that people are hungry to learn about China. People are keen to be able to communicate with the 1.3 billion people. Tet there is not much out there to enable them to do so. Whilst the entire Chinese population is learning English, the west is struggling to comprehend this complex economy and society with their own eyes and judgment. Knowing their language is the key towards true understanding.

Chineasy will become the first step for anyone in the world who wants to understand China, Chinese culture and its language. It is educational, social, cultural and inspirational. I am demonstrating the beauty of this deep and broad culture through a modern interpretation using sleek and simple design.

Chineasy’s goal is to allow people to learn to read Chinese easily by recognising characters through simple illustrations. The magical power of the Chineasy method is that by learning one small set of building blocks, students can build many new words, characters, and phrases.

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to make learning Chinese easy appeared first on Dezeen.