Hasta La Ideas

Long wooden panels give a shed-like aesthetic to the walls and cabinets of this apartment in A Coruña, Spain, by Sinaldaba Estudio de Arquitectura.

Spanish studio Sinaldaba Estudio de Arquitectura adapted the narrow, confined layout of the apartment to create a single, open-plan living space at one end and a bedroom at the other.

Working with a limited budget, the architects used recycled materials to construct partitions between rooms, as well as to build worktops and cabinets for the kitchen.

White tiles were stripped from the kitchen worktop and replaced with a stainless steel surface and sink.

Rugged stone walls were painted white, as were the timber floorboards and ceiling beams. Architect Ignacio Reigada describes this as a “necessary luminosity” that results in “a neutral volume – white, bright [and] airy”.

An entrance corridor, bathroom and small study space separate the bedroom from the living and dining area.

Bare lightbulbs and recycled furniture complete the interior. “The furniture is all recycled. We saw it in other apartments of this building, that still aren’t restored, so we decided to include it in the project,” added Reigada.

Other Spanish apartments we’ve featured include a seaside home with an all-white interior and an apartment with mosaic floors and a decorative ceiling. See more Spanish architecture and design »

Photography is by Abraham Viqueira.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

A Coruña

A top floor in a late nineteenth century building, located one of the central streets of A Coruña, in conditions very unfavourable maintenance, on a shoestring budget but with total freedom and trust from the client to choose the solutions, have us believe appropriate.

The house has the classic spatial configuration of a Gothic story plot: elongated, narrow, narrow, multi confined spaces? Is that what we all wanted? Quite the opposite. We proposed to completely empty the floor early on, keeping only the main stairwell. We got a single space, open, broad, bounded by a strip that houses furniture-kitchen-toilet-cabinet-study, i.e. a longitudinal continuous section running along the floor and containing all needs, freeing the volume and providing a spatial and visual continuity to housing.

The solutions adopted for the realisation of the idea happen to be fully reversible. We basically reinforced all beams that needed it with metallic elements, fir wood is used for the longitudinal strip and to repair the core of stairs. Both the stone walls and floors and ceilings are painted white, providing a necessary luminosity, as it is also the cheapest option. The result is a neutral volume, white, bright, airy, acting as a container for a small wooden box for communications and other longitudinal collecting the necessary elements to inhabit.

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Estudio de Arquitectura appeared first on Dezeen.

Paper-thin shutters fold out from the walls of this narrow timber house in Tokyo by Japanese firm Unemori Architects (+ slideshow).

Unemori Architects clad the entire exterior with timber boards, then added matching shutters across the large windows.

“At the second and third floor there is a large hinged door in each room. If it’s opened, the inside of the room is enveloped in light and wind as if you are outside,” explained architect Hiroyuki Unemori.

Unemori positioned windows to offer the best views of the building’s surroundings. “The window is so big against the small rooms that every time a window opens or closes the view inside dramatically changes,” he added.

Small House accommodates a couple with a small child and is located within a densely populated suburban area of the city.

An entrance slotted into the corner of the building leads through to a circular white staircase, which spirals up to three storeys above and down to one below. Each floor contains one room, including two bedrooms, a dining room and a kitchen.

A glass-fronted bathroom is positioned on the roof and faces out onto the surrounding rooftops across a triangular roof terrace.

The architects used single layers of timber to construct the floors, which match furniture, surfaces and cupboards in the dining room and kitchen.

The compact site also includes a small driveway and a narrow space to park bicycles.

Other Japanese residences we’ve recently featured include a house with a staggered interior and gently sloping roof, a house lifted off the ground by a single central pillar and a tall house with views of a nearby observation tower.

See more Japanese houses »
See more architecture and design in Japan »

Photography is by Ken Sasajima.

Here’s some project description from the architects:

Small House

The small house which the married couple and their child live stands in the densely populated area in Tokyo. Though the neighbouring houses is very close, I aimed to design the house which exceed the physical narrowness living at the city.

I laid out the 4m×4m building as small as I could at the centre of site area 34m2 and made some space for flowing of light and wind around it. And by making the space, it’s possible to avoid setback regulation and it has the 9m high volume like a tower.

The inside is simple structure what is separated by the 4 floor boards and is jointed by spiral stairway.

Especially, by making some extremely thin floor boards (thickness 70mm) , the up and down floor boards got close and connected the whole space of the house without a break.

The space of around the house is useful to let light and wind in. The wall of the rooms borders the outside, so I put windows in the best position that harmonising with its surroundings.

And the window is so big against the small room, every time the window opens or closes, the inside view dramatically changes.

Especially, at the second and third floor there is a large hinged door each room, if it is opened, the inside of the room is enveloped in light and wind as if you are outside.

By making the thin floor boards for connecting with their life and making the large windows what are opened toward the city, I aimed to exceed the segmentation, for example the upstairs and the downstairs, the inside and the outside, a building and the town, etc. to broaden the whole image of a house.

Location: Meguro-ku,Tokyo
Principal use: private residence
Family type: couple and child
Parking space: One car
Site area: 34.27 m2

Building area: 17.47 sqm
Total floor area: 67.34 sqm
Plot ratio: 146.4%
Structural systems: steel frame
Scale: 1 basement and 4 storeys
Completion: August 2010

Materials：Exterior wall – flexible board t=8mm siding water-repellent coating, roof – FRP waterproof t=3mm topcoat, interior wall – whiteboard t=3mm, ceiling – lauan plywood t=4mm CL, floor – lauan plywood t=12mm UC
Architect：Unemori Architects
Structural engineer：Structured Environment
Developer : Taishin Construction

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Unemori Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

London Design Festival 2013: British brand Another Country has launched its third series of wooden furniture and first range of patterned textiles at designjunction (+ slideshow).

Another Country has created a range of beech and oak tables, stools, benches and desks modelled on Edwardian workshop furniture.

Trestle-style tables and benches have rounded corners, with legs and edges of flat surfaces coloured grey, red or green.

Textiles for blankets and cushion are made from hand-dyed wool in three colourful geometric patterns.

The collection is on display as part of designjunction at The Sorting Office, 21-31 New Oxford Street, in London’s West End until Sunday.

Other products on show at the exhibition include a furniture collection by new brand Joined + Jointed and a set of wicker lights by Claesson Koivisto Rune.

Also during this year’s London Design Festival, Another Country launched a collection of bedroom furniture for London retailer Heal’s.

See more design by Another Country »
See all our stories about London Design Festival 2013 »
See Dezeen’s map and guide to London Design Festival 2013 »

More details in the text from Another Country below:

Another Country launches Series Three and Soft Series at London Design Festival

The blockbuster contemporary design show; designjunction, is back for another outing at London Design Festival 2013 and so is Another Country; who will be taking their place amongst the three floors and 120,000 square feet of contemporary design in the 1960s Postal Sorting Office in Covent Garden.

Another Country has a spectacular show planned for this September that includes the launch of Series Three, the latest collection of designs inspired by Edwardian workshop furniture, and a new textiles range; Soft Series, which includes cushions and throws. There will be some new adaptations of old favourites; new additions to the Pottery Series and a spectacular stand design besides.

Series Three

Another Country has applied its extensive knowledge of producing craft-inspired contemporary objects to create a series of Beech and Oak furniture that is their most functional to-date. The tables, stools, benches and desk that make up the Series Three collection is intended to be the perfect marriage of traditional craft construction and contemporary form.

A trestle-style table base was inspired by the utilitarian and adaptable design of Edwardian industrial workbenches. The base supports a solid Beech top and the joint where these two elements meet is a decorative craft detail that is carefully celebrated. Series Three is an articulation of Another Country’s mission to produce furniture that is efficient to make and to use; unconcerned with fashion and unfussy it is charming and hardworking. The rounded corners, thoughtful scale and splashes of colour – ‘Chamberlayne Grey’, ‘Wellington Red’ and ‘Oxford Green’ are the points of difference to note.

Beech is an underused but effective timber: hard, handsome, uniform and plentiful. Another Country is championing its revival as a contemporary wood in their Series Three collection alongside the equally beautiful oak.

Finishes: white oiled and waxed beech, white oiled and waxed beech + stained colour oiled and waxed oak, oiled and waxed oak + stained colour

Soft Series

Another Country is pleased to announce the launch of its very first textiles collection, which acts as a perfect accompaniment to each collection.

Another Country’s first textile collection is something special. The blankets and cushions that make up their Soft Series are jacquard woven, meaning they could produce complex patterns, and are made from soft, hand-dyed, 100% wool. We worked with Scottish textile designer Ruth Duff and acclaimed weavers Gainsborough Silk to produce three different graphic fabric designs.

Patterns: Small Cubes Green, Small Stars Blue and Large Cubes Purple

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by Another Country appeared first on Dezeen.

Designer Hella Jongerius and architect Rem Koolhaas have renovated the North Delegates’ Lounge at the United Nations buildings in New York (+ slideshow).

Working alongside a team of Dutch creatives that included graphic designer Irma Boom, artist Gabriel Lester and theorist Louise Schouwenberg, Jongerius and Koolhaas have reconfigured the layout and added new furniture to the lounge – one of the key spaces in the complex designed during the 1960s by a team of architects including Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer.

Koolhaas’ OMA began by removing a mezzanine that had been added in 1978, opening up a view towards the East River. Hella Jongerius then added a bead curtain made from hand-knotted yarn and 30,000 porcelain beads.

Furniture is arranged so that one end of the lounge accommodates formal meetings and the other is more suited to coffee and drinks. Jongerius designed two new pieces for the space – the Sphere Table and the UN Lounge Chair – which are accompanied by original Knoll chairs.

A new bar is made from black resin, while the existing information desk is retained and repositioned alongside the original clock and signage.

Jongerius was responsible for the colour palette, adding an orange carpet alongside the purple, blue and green upholstery.

“The renovation and redesign of the lounge is a gift from the Netherlands to the UN,” said the designers.

Dezeen recently filmed a series of interviews with Jongerius discussing her latest projects and why she chose to relocate to Berlin. Watch the movies »

See more stories about Hella Jongerius »
See more stories about Rem Koolhaas »

Photography is by Frank Oudeman.

Here’s a project description from Jongeriuslab:

New interior for United Nations North Delegates’ Lounge (New York)

More than sixty years after the opening of the UN North Delegates’ Lounge, Hella Jongerius has redesigned the lounge in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas, Irma Boom, Gabriel Lester and Louise Schouwenberg.

Their aim was to create a space of both comfort and professional informality. The team carefully edited the history of the space, retaining some of the iconic Scandinavian designs and creating a new perspective on the works of art already on display. They removed the mezzanine that had blocked the view of the East River, restoring the open architectural space.

Jongerius designed two new pieces of furniture for the lounge: the Sphere Table and the UN Lounge Chair, produced by Vitra. For the East Facade Jongerius designed the Knots & Beads Curtain, with hand-knotted yarn and 30,000 porcelain beads made from Dutch clay by Royal Tichelaar Makkum. Jongerius was also responsible for revitalizing the colour palette, selecting the furniture and designing the cradle-to-cradle Grid Carpet.

The UN buildings in New York date from 1951, six years after the foundation of the UN. Referred to as ‘A Workshop for Peace’, the complex was designed by a team of architects including Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer and Wallace K. Harrison. In 2009, the UN launched a large-scale renovation project, which is now nearly complete. At the request of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hella Jongerius formed a team to redesign the lounge and bring it into a new era. The renovation and redesign of the lounge is a gift from the Netherlands to the UN.

The lounge will be officially opened on September 25, 2013 by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands and the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Frans Timmermans, in the presence of Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Year: 2013
Material: Various
Dimensions: Various
Commission: United Nations/ Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Category: Industrial production

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by Hella Jongerius and Rem Koolhaas appeared first on Dezeen.

Here’s another project from Dutch firm Mecanoo: a sports college in Eindhoven featuring a black brick exterior with perforations in the shape of athletes (+ slideshow).

Mecanoo completed the sports centre last year in Eindhoven’s Genneper Park for students at Fontys Hogescholen – a local science university. It houses swimming pools, indoor sports facilities, a 15 metre-high rock-climbing wall and student classrooms.

“The sports complex’s logistics are sophisticated and provide maximum opportunities for cross-disciplinary interaction between sports and education,” said the architects.

“The teaching areas can be sealed off so that only the sports halls are accessible, for example at sporting events or sports association gatherings,” they added.

Images of cyclists, gymnasts and other athletes decorate three of the facades, plus more are printed onto brightly coloured walls inside the building. There are also sporting motifs adorning some of the pieces of furniture.

A large window offers a view from the main reception area towards the climbing wall, which is slotted into a corner.

Other facilities include a canteen, a multimedia library and a sports laboratory, plus there’s a car park underneath the structure.

The building generates its own electricity and heating from solar-panels on the roof.

Terraces and seating line the perimeter, leading down towards trees and large grassed areas in the surrounding parkland.

Mecanoo recently completed Europe’s largest public library in Birmingham, England. We also recently featured a maritime museum with a zig-zagging roof by the firm. See more architecture by Mecanoo »

Other sports centres we’ve featured are a gymnasium with copper-clad panels, a sports hall with a wooden roof doubling as a hilly courtyard and a sports hall in Japan with huge clerestory windows. See more sports centres »

Photography is by Christian Richters.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Fontys Sports College, Eindhoven

Athletics estate

The first step has been made in turning the sport park into a sport estate with the new Fontys Sports College coming to Eindhoven’s Genneper Parks.

Mecanoo’s design for the new Fontys Sports College creates an important link in the network of sport accommodations and facilities in Genneper Parks.

Starting in 2012, 2200 students and teachers will make daily use of sports facilities in their own building, including the National Swimming Centre, the Tongelreep and the Indoor Sports Centre.

Fontys Sports College, with state of the art sports facilities and a comprehensive sustainability concept, will house Fontys Sports College’s three curricula which are currently housed at the Sittard and Tilburg locations. Mecanoo has created a social sports facility design that contributes to the vibrancy of Genneper Parks.

Social

The intelligence of this building is that most of the sports accommodations are located on the first floor. This creates not a closed off sports box, but a completely transparent ground floor which is in relationship with the environment. The compactness of the building’s layout provides the advantage of room left for a stage to the building – in the form of a plinth – inviting athletic and social encounters in the outdoors. The glass plinth gives way to a black brick facade beginning on the first floor and sculpturally building up and around the rest of the building.

The literal highpoint of the building is the climbing wall which is situated at the corner of the building and acts like a beacon. A huge glass window offers a distant view of the climbers. The sports complex’s logistics are sophisticated and provide the maximum of opportunities for cross disciplinary interaction between sports and education.

It is possible to see into the sports halls from the corridors, study areas, the restaurant and the entrance halls. Simultaneously, sport and education are logistically separated. The teaching functions can be sealed off so that only the sports halls are accessible, for example at sporting events or sports association gatherings. Also in the evening, the building is lively, contributing to the security of Genneper Parks.

Sustainable energy system

The building is equipped with a sustainable energy system, making it largely possible to provide for its own energy. The educational features in this compact building are efficiently oriented to the north.

To save on cooling, the south side features a building canopy. The energy roof makes use of solar energy. Further the excess of heat and cold of the buildings in the vicinity is being used and stored in two buffer tanks in the garage.

Programme

Sports complex of 16,500 m2 with 5 sports halls of which several meet the NOC * NSF requirements, 1 with 400 seats, a 15 meter high climbing wall, a restaurant, a library and educational facilities as a multimedia centre and a sports lab, and a parking garage with 200 parking spaces.

Design: 2009-2010
Realisation: 2010-2012
Client: Municipality of Eindhoven, Fontys Hogescholen, Eindhoven
Architect: Mecanoo Architecten, Delft
Structural engineer: Buro JVZ Advisory Engineers bv, Deventer
Building costs consultant: Basalt Bouwadvies bv, Nieuwegein
Engineer: Technical Consultancy Becks, Vught
Acoustics, building physics, fire safety and durability: Peutz b.v., Mook

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by Mecanoo appeared first on Dezeen.