Hasta La Ideas

Compact balconies puncture the solid white facade of this social housing block in Mallorca by Spanish architects RipollTizon (+ slideshow).

RipollTizon designed the building for low income families in Palma de Mallorca’s Pere Garau neighbourhood. It contains 18 apartments, ranging between 35 and 68 square metres, and includes a mixture of one, two and three bedroom apartments.

The corner block forms a six-storey tower, but drops down to three storeys on one side to meet the height of surrounding buildings.

“The result is a solid column with excavated voids where the openings are presented as scenes stacked upon each other,” said architect Pablo Garcia.

The building is divided into two different halves – separating apartments for rent from those for sale. Each side have its own entrance, with separate elevators and staircases with perforated brickwork screens.

The apartments have simple interiors, with white walls and tiled floors, plus each one has its own private balcony.

“The excavated terraces are the intermediate elements that relate interior and exterior while offering a private scenery that is built-in the facade of each dwelling,” added Garcia.

The building replaces a former block of courtyard houses. It sits on a base of grey blockwork and gently projects out towards the street.

Other residential projects by RipollTizon include another social housing project with identical doors and windows and an extension to a traditional family house in Mallorca. See more RipollTizon projects »

Other social housing projects on Dezeen include an apartment with balconies shapes like greenhouses, tower blocks referencing the 1960s and an apartment block clad in green plastic panels.

See more social housing »
See more Spanish architecture and design »

Photography is by José Hevia.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Social Housing in Palma

The project is located in ‘Pere Garau’ neighbourhood. The area was formerly characterised by blocks of single family houses with inner courtyards that followed a typical grid plan. Once the district became central in the city, amendments to the urban planning increased the building volumes significantly and changed the typology to collective housing.

The project takes part of this transformation by redefining a corner plot, resulting from the addition of two former houses, into a new public housing building. The building is conceived according to the new volume specified by the urban planning and playing within its established rules: building depth and cantilevers to the street (of which half of its total permitted area can be enclosed by walls).

The proposal takes advantage of this situation to generate the mechanisms needed to link the housing with their immediate surroundings through controlled openings ‘excavated’ in the building mass. The result is a solid volume with ‘excavated’ voids, where the openings are presented as scenes stacked upon each other.

A small universe of stories organised under no apparent order, and whose arrangement emerges from the dialogue that the building establishes with its urban context. The different rooms of the houses are arranged along a central stripe containing the service areas. The excavated terraces are the intermediate elements that relate interior and exterior while offering a private scenery that is built-in the facade of each dwelling.

Client: Institut Balear de l’Habitatge – IBAVI (Balearic Public Housing Institute)
Location: Capità Vila St. – Can Curt St. Palma de Mallorca
Architects: Pep Ripoll – Juan Miguel Tizón
Project area:2.816,55 metres squared
Budget: 1.156.320,90 EUR
Start of design: 2008
Year of completion: 2012
Collaborators: Pablo García (architect) and Luis Sánchez (architect)
Quantity surveyor: Toni Arqué
Structural engineer: Jorge Martin
Building services: David Mulet
Contractors: Contratas y Obras S.A.

The post Social Housing in Palma
by RipollTizon appeared first on Dezeen.

A collection of 1950s and 1960s products by designers including Dieter Rams, Arne Jacobsen and Dietrich Lubs for German electricals brand Braun are on display at the new Paul Smith store in London (+ slideshow).

Collectors of Braun Design products das programm curated a selection of vintage Braun products in fashion designer Paul Smith‘s recently extended store on Albemarle Street in London’s Mayfair district.

The emphasis of the small exhibition, titled White, is mainly on audio products such as radios, turntables and speaker units.

“We’re showing 45 pieces, mostly 60s audio but also including some classic household designs,” said das programm director Peter Kapos.

Dieter Rams was appointed director of Braun’s in-house design department in 1960 and began applying the standards established by the Ulm School of Design a year earlier.

Under his direction the company became renowned for producing rational and functionalist designs, which are widely credited as Apple creative director Jonathan Ive’s aesthetic reference for the computer company’s products.

“The influence of Braun Design on Apple design is well documented,” Kapos told Dezeen. “From the 2001 iPod onwards, Apple has been helping itself to all kinds of bits and bobs, producing a curiously accelerated collage of Braun Design.”

Other Braun Design members are also represented in the collection. The oldest piece in the store is Hans Guglelot’s combined record player and radio from 1955, and homeware designs by Reinhold Weiss and Gerd Alfred Müller are also on show.

The items will be displayed in the recently opened store until 7 October and Kapos will be giving tours of the exhibition in its final week – more details here.

Earlier this month, Dieter Rams was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Medal from the London Design Festival, honouring “an individual who has made significant and fundamental contributions to the design industry over their career.”

A few months ago furniture brand Vitsœ reissued Rams’ classic 620 Chair Programme and earlier in the year a private collector put his 1000-piece archive of the designer’s Braun products up for auction on eBay.

See more design by Dieter Rams »

Das programm sent us the text below:

White: overview

Amidst the architectural and cultural ruins of post-war Germany, industrial designers considered their role in the task of reconstruction. In 1953 the Ulm school of design opened. It taught that rationally organised objects of daily use might serve as models for a more rational social form and thereby guide the maelstrom of productive forces to a more acceptable result. They called this utopian project ‘systems design’. The following year, the Braun Company approached the Ulm school with a brief to modernise their audio line. Designers Otl Aicher and Hans Guglelot, lecturers at the school, established the Braun style and produced the blueprint for a comprehensively integrated programm of household electronics.

The Ulm school is represented in the exhibition by two pieces: Gugelot’s G 11 / G 12 record player and radio combination, issued in the 1955 the inaugural year of Braun Design, and Gugelot and Rams’ SK 4 phonosuper of the following year. This pair of foundational objects are the first encountered by the visitor.

An in-house design department was established at Braun in 1960; Dieter Rams was appointed its director in 1961. You can see from the pieces on the bridge shelf how the Ulm style was both retained and transformed in the products issued after the services of Ulm freelancers had been dispensed with. Post-1960 Braun designs remain orderly and rational, according to functionalist principles. But the first designs’ rather Scandinavian-modern references to nature are replaced by a more severe and emphatically industrial material vocabulary.

Just as important was the transformation in the interrelation of individual designs. The Braun audio designs of the 1960s were no longer conceived as single items related to others in the programm by a more or less common aesthetic. Now, the program was thought of as a single integrated system consisting of functionally compatible elements under a fully unified aesthetic regime. In this way the entire Braun programm of the 1960s unfolded as a unitary modular system.

The examples presented in the main space have been selected to express the formal and functional unity and systematicity of the 60s Braun program. The audio designs of this period, all by Dieter Rams, may be divided into two groups: light weight turntables, small radios and speaker units, and larger more substantial system elements. The largest of these at the far end of the room is the Audio 1 integrated system sitting on the ‘kangaroo’ modular stand. Despite the formal variety, the distinctive characteristic of 1960s Braun Design is its overarching coherence. It all ‘locks’ together.

It’s interesting to think that at this time Dieter Rams was also drawing furniture designs on the same principles for production and sale by Vitsoe, then Vitsoe+Zapf. The idea was that audio design, furniture design (and toaster design for that matter) should fuse into a single interlocked whole – a total rational environment that we might imagine extending outwards to the design of buildings, districts and cities…

Because space is limited the emphasis of the exhibition is placed on audio products. However, the Braun program of the 1960s also encompassed extensive kitchen, misc. household, lighter, dry shaving and photography ranges. The pair of ‘Das Braun Programm’ posters by the till presents something of this scope.

As in the audio segment, these products related to every other as parts of a rational, aesthetically unified whole. Indeed, the graphic design of these posters itself, in its systematic arrangement on a grid, contributes to this unity, as did the design of every other piece of Braun printed material from packaging down to guarantee cards and instructions for use – see as examples the KF 1000 headphone and MX 1 111 child’s toy.

Presented on the bay of shelves are a few iconic examples of Braun household products. Of these, Reinhold Weiss’ HL 1 multiwind desk fan and KMM 1 coffee grinder are particularly important. Weiss joined the Braun Company as a graduate of the Ulm School in 1960 and continued to practice systems design according to its original idea. Ram’s designs tended to be simple cubular forms. A tension between rational rigour and idiosyncrasy in the arrangement of control elements provides ‘interest’. Weiss’ designs, on the other hand, are both more fully abstract and three dimensional. The device is broken down into functionally discrete units – base, stem, motor block, fan head, cowl – that are then articulated as sculptural elements, a series of volumes, densities, textures and masses. The result is at once functionally and constructionally concrete, and highly abstract.

It’s interesting to compare Weiss’ functionalism with that of his colleague Gerd Alfred Müller, whose iconic KM 3 food processor sits on the top shelf. Müller articulates the functional elements of the device – motorblock/gearing/tool – with great clarity as distinct strata imposed upon a flowing organic form, a horizontally ordered series of cuts. This form encloses the bowl; notice how its lip aligns with the top edge of the gearing block. A distinctive feature of 1960s Braun Design is the fine balance struck between difference and identity. Rams, Weiss and Müller drew up designs with very distinct characters that nevertheless belonged unambiguously to a single programm.

The period of Braun Design is defined as 1955 – 1995, beginning with the first of the modernist designs and ending when Dieter Rams stepped down as Director of the Design Department. However, our exhibition focuses almost entirely on designs issued before 1968. In 1968 the Gillette Company acquired a controlling share in Braun and thereafter stopped the economically irrational practice of cross-subsiding product lines. In particular, profits from the dry shaving sector, which made up the largest part of company earnings were no longer permitted to offset losses incurred by the grandiose design folly that was the Braun audio program.

Interesting as it was, outside a small group of German middle class intellectuals there just wasn’t the demand for it. Post-68 Braun Design was increasingly led by market research, which very quickly brought about the demise of the functionalist adventure in systems design. To be sure, great designs still continued to be produced at Braun after 1968. See for example the astonishing KF 21 coffee filter on the plinth opposite the shelves. But these tend to stand out as singular designs. Shaped by marketing requirements, what remained of the programm increasingly found itself reflecting existing conditions. Perhaps, the expansive ‘kangaroo’ system stand (of which only a small part is shown here) represents the last attempt at designing in a truly utopian mode, that is, one that reaches beyond what presently exists to something qualitatively new…

Under the present stewardship of Proctor and Gamble, owners of the Gillette Company, Braun continues to extend the company tradition of offering products of the highest quality in terms of design and manufacture. Its offering is now almost entirely restricted to personal grooming. Recently, a number of interesting discontinued products of the Braun Design period have been re-issued. Amongst these are Rams’ DW 30 digital watch of 1979, Dietrich Lubs’ AB 30 vs alarm clock and Rams and Lubs’ superb ET 66 calculator. These are displayed for sale in the till area.

The post Braun Design at Paul Smith Albemarle Street
by das programm appeared first on Dezeen.

Neon words and symbols embellish the exterior of this temporary wooden pavilion inside the new Library of Birmingham by designers Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan (+ slideshow).

Designer Morag Myerscough collaborated with artist and designer Luke Morgan to install the pavilion in the new library in Birmingham, England, which was completed earlier this summer by Dutch studio Mecanoo.

The pavilion will host an 18-week programme of workshops with artists, film makers and book makers, and is aimed at challenging people’s perceptions of what libraries can offer.

“The pavilion is meant to be something of a ‘curiosity box’ which closes on Sunday night, undergoes transformation the following day and then when the doors open on Tuesday has become a totally new space depending on what that week’s resident has planned,” said Myerscough.

Brightly coloured words such as “delight”, “discover” and “fantasy” adorn flags attached to the top of the structure and originate from workshops the designers held with youth arts group Birmingham 2022.

“We wanted to greet visitors with a smile and a celebration of the word,” added Myerscough. “It encourages conversation and fun.”

Large openings let light permeate the roof of the pavilion, which is made up of peaks with different sizes and proportions.

A large table surrounded by colourful metal stools forms the central workspace, while exposed wooden battens on the interior walls double up as shelves for displaying images and objects.

Other projects by Morag Myerscough include a temporary cafe covered with the tweets of a poet and a cafe inside a 1960s commuter train. Another installation by Luke Morgan is a skull made from welded plasma-cut steel in an office in London.

Photography is by Gareth Gardner.

Here’s a short description from the designers:

The Pavilion

Centrepiece of the dramatic lobby of the new Library of Birmingham is a temporary pavilion created by Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan. The Pavilion is a multifunctional structure designed to house an 18 week programme of creative residencies for the Discovery Season. Artists, film makers, book makers and a range of other creatives will set up home in The Pavilion for a week at a time, making new work and offering a variety of free activities for visitors. The Discovery Season curated by Capsule is a dynamic mix of exhibitions, activities and performances, with the aim to challenge perceptions of what a library can be.

Entirely hand-crafted, The Pavilion has been designed to reflect the diverse and often radical Discovery Season creative residency programme including. The timber single-storey structure is topped with a neon ‘crown’ of signs emblazoned with words that originated from workshops held with youth arts group Birmingham 2022.

Myerscough, Morgan and two assistants hand-painted the exterior walls with symbols used in on-line communication, embracing digital with an analogue technique. “We wanted to greet visitors with a smile and a celebration of the word,” she says. “It encourages conversation and fun.”

The interior of the timber box structure has been kept as simple and raw as possible, allowing each resident to change the space as much as they wish. Battens can be used as ad hoc shelves, while the ceiling is made from wooden slats which provides views of the neon rooftop signs and delivers a striking internal dappled lighting effect.

Two sides of the structure feature full-height double doors while the others have large windows. These can either be swung open for transparency or closed to create a more intimate environment for projected installations, in stark contrast to the Library’s vast lobby space.

“The Pavilion is also meant to be something of a ‘curiosity box’ which closes on Sunday night, undergoes transformation the following day and then when the doors open on Tuesday has become a totally new space depending on what that week’s resident has planned,” Myerscough adds.

The Pavilion was erected on site in just two weeks, and was designed to make best use of a space directly opposite the Library’s main entrance. It snugly fits between concrete pillars, working within tight spatial restrictions imposed by the Library’s fire protection system.

As part of the Discovery Season, Studio Myerscough also hosted a week-long residency using the intricate interlocking aluminium patterns of the cladding for the Mecanoo-designed Library as inspiration to create a new A to Z font with the people of Birmingham. Designed to be completely demountable, it is hoped that a new home for the Pavilion will be found at the end of the Discovery Season.

The post The Pavilion by Morag Myerscough
and Luke Morgan appeared first on Dezeen.

London Design Festival 2013: the restaurateurs behind east London restaurant Les Trois Garçons have launched a furniture collection in collaboration with Portuguese manufacturer De Pau (+ slideshow).

The collection marks the launch of L3G Designs, an interior design firm led by Hassan Abdullah, Michel Lasserre and James Gold, co-owners of Les Trois Garçons and London bar LoungeLover.

The first collection, called DP pour Les Trois Garçons, launched last week during London Design Festival and comprises twelve pieces including side tables, coffee tables, shelves, sideboards and seating.

Speaking to Dezeen at the launch event, creative director Abdullah said that the collection was designed to fit in different environments. “Having the possibility to change the shape and look of the items also maximises the appeal and the practicality of the items,” he told Dezeen. “For instance the coffee table made of two triangles could be reconfigured from a square coffee table to suit a rectangular space.”

Abdullah further explained that customers can custom-select materials, colours and sizes for each product. “For L3G Designs, we think it is very important that clients can order the products to their own requirements without the price of bespoke furniture,” he said. “Not everyone has the same colour scheme or preference for the type of wood, marble and metals.”

One side table has two brass-clad drawers stacked on top of one another. “It pivots for ease of use and it is also stackable to create a chest or a tallboy,” explained the designers.

A second table features three stacked units of brass, marble and oak, which gradually increase in size towards the top.

A third cube-shaped side table has contrasting colours and retractable sliding trays on all four sides.

A multileveled coffee table made in solid oak has square inserts available in glass, mirror or marble.

A series of interlocking tables with coloured edges and of varying heights form a second coffee table design. “The taller one can be used for TV dinners or playing games,” explained the designers. “The configuration of the tables can be changed to create an ever-changing look.”

A modular shelving unit made from solid oak has compartments that can be moved and fixed at varying heights.

A second shelving system has a solid oak frame and coloured drawers and cabinets that can be positioned in different places.

The collection also includes an oak framed sideboard with coloured drawers and doors, available with brass or wooden feet and door handles.

The new collection was launched during London Design Festival 2013 last week at the newly redesigned Maison Trois Garçons cafe in east London.

Other brands launched during the festival include Joined + Jointed, Wrong for Hay by British designer Sebastian Wrong and Danish design brand Hay, and Noble and Wood.

See all our stories about London Design Festival 2013 »

Photographs are by Les Trois Garçons and Luke Hayes.

Here’s more information from the designers:

DP pour Les Trois Garçons

Les Trois Garçons is delighted to present its debut furniture collection. Designed in collaboration with DP [De Pau], the collection is a fusion of meticulous design, natural materials and traditional skills.

The grace and simplicity of this range combines the refinement and elegance that has brought Les Trois Garcons international acclaim with the uncompromising quality of DP, a family-owned business that has been making furniture in Portugal for three generations.

The simple lines and natural materials make for a collection to suit any home. Comfort and convenience are the hallmarks of the collection; all the furniture comes in a variety of finishes to suit your taste, and many of the items are customisable.

The range will be available for sale on our website and at a handpicked selection of the world’s finest retailers.

About L3G Designs

L3G Designs is a boutique interior design firm that specialises in high-end hospitality, retail and residential projects. Having enjoyed great success with their own restaurant Les Trois Garcons, and bar LoungeLover, L3G Designs also provides F&B consulting services.

Under the creative direction of Hassan Abdullah, L3G create imaginative, memorable and elegant new spaces.

The post DP pour Les Trois Garçons
by L3G Designs appeared first on Dezeen.

A gigantic golden chasm welcomes visitors to this shopping centre in Malmö by Swedish architects Wingårdhs (+ slideshow).

Located to the south of the city in Hyllie, the Emporia shopping centre is Wingårdhs‘ first realised building from a competition-winning masterplan of proposed housing and office blocks. Once all the buildings have been completed, the “amber entrance” will be the only section of the shopping centre visible from the surrounding new streets.

“The main idea of our winning competition entry was to hide inward-looking retail behind a wreath of residential and commercial buildings,” said the architects.

The curving golden glass stretches across a gridshell structure, which curves up and back to allow daylight to penetrate the entrance courtyard. From here, shoppers are led towards three storeys of retail arranged around a figure-of-eight plan.

The roof of the structure accommodates a large park with a faceted landscape made up of lawns, terraces and pavilions.

“In the future the roof will be developed with outdoor dining and a spa facility,” added the architects. “Like amusement parks, shopping centres need to offer new attractions at regular intervals.”

Atriums in bold shades of blue, green and red help shoppers to navigate the building, while the adjoining car park can be identified by an assortment of coloured panels.

Wingårdhs is led by architect Gert Wingårdh. Past projects by the studio include a thatched visitor centre at Sweden’s Lake Tåkern and a high-rise hotel in Stockholm. See more architecture by Wingårdhs »

Other shopping centres on Dezeen include a former bullring in Barcelona and a rippled concrete building in Hong Kong. See more shopping centres »

Photography is by Tord-Rikard Söderström, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Here’s a project description from Wingårdhs:

Emporia

Emporia is first and foremost an urban planning project in which offices, housing, and retail come together in a mixed-use development along Boulevarden and Stationsgatan in Hyllie, on the south side of Malmö. The main idea of our winning competition entry was to hide inward-looking retail behind a wreath of residential and commercial buildings. The whole shopping complex would thereby eventually become integrated into the fabric of the city.

It is a huge development, of which only the corner building with the Amber Entrance has yet been completed. This entrance will be the only part of the Emporia shopping centre that remains visible when the development is completely built out. The idea of lining the streets with mixed-use buildings demanded a strong form that could attract visitors from Station Square to come in and shop. A sequence of vaults from a previous competition proposal, along with a memory from the Pantheon, reemerged in a bronze-ochre tone. Double-bent glass encloses the diagonal slit that cuts through the building. Here the weather of the Öresund Strait, its fast-moving clouds chasing glimpses of sun, becomes present and tangible.

The diagonal entrance from Hyllie Station Square leads deep into the block. Inside, retail is organised around a three-storey figure eight. Shops are grouped together around boldly coloured atriums, each with a different theme. On the north side of the complex, a ramp leads into a rainbow-coloured parking garage (for 2500 cars) with direct access to the figure eight. To the east is a surface parking lot (for 500) right outside the supermarket.

The rooftop park is designed as a bit of cultivated nature. Its vegetation (sedum, prairie grass, and trees) and its sun-facing, wind-sheltered patios are accessible from both inside and outside the building. The hills that provide protection from the wind are actually hiding mechanical rooms. In the future the roof will be developed with outdoor dining and a spa facility—like amusement parks, shopping centres need to offer new attractions at regular intervals.

Emporia can expand upward and to the west, but not in any of the other directions. The freestanding residential buildings facing Boulevarden have yet to be built, as do those that will stand atop the podium along Stationsgatan on the south side.

Emporia’s interior challenges established shopping centre conventions. Its bold colours and bent sight lines break with the norm, as do the project’s size and ambition—which have made it possible to do custom designs for everything from ceilings, floors, and storefronts to signage, ropes of hanging plants, furniture, and cast glass door handles.

Our motto has been “no intermediate scale” — because that is the realm of the products on display. Large-scale patterns and intricate details characterise the interior. The terrazzo floor is typical of this approach, with its oversized triangular joint pattern, its gradual shift from white to graphite in seven steps, and its flashing inclusions of coloured mirror glass. The design has been wrought with extraordinary attention to detail, down to the leather-wrapped handrails and the colour of the stitching on the built-in seating.

Emporia also includes a quantity of art seldom seen in a commercial environment. A lighting installation (ninety-nine bollards) by Petteri Nisunen and Tommi Grönlund lifts the Amber Entrance, bronze sculptures by Joep van Lieshout and a glass art piece (4 x 81 m) by Silja Rantanen adorn the Sea Entrance, and a line painting on film at an extremely outsized format (20 x 114 m) by Per Mårtensson clads the façade of the parking garage. On the interior is a series of photos by Signe Maria Andersen.

Architect: Wingårdhs through, Gert Wingårdh, Johan Eklind and Joakim Lyth
Interior architect: Wingårdhs through, Helena Toresson
Graphic design: Wingårdhs through, Jennie Stolpe
Landscape design: Thyréns AB (Anders Dahl, Pamela Sjöstrand)
Landscape design (roof park): Wingårdhs, Landskapsgruppen Öresund AB
Client: Steen & Ström Sverige AB

The post Emporia shopping centre in Malmö
by Wingårdhs appeared first on Dezeen.