Hasta La Ideas

London Design Festival 2013: concave bookcases and furniture with hotdog-shaped legs feature in the first collection by Joined + Jointed, currently on show at designjunction (+ slideshow).

Joined + Jointed was set up by designer Samuel Chan as an online store, selling furniture by a selection of designers.

A bookcase by British designer Simon Pengelly has a concave front, with shelves spaced closer together at the centre and becoming more curved at the top, bottom and to one side.

The wooden bookcase can be used side-by-side with another that has a mirrored pattern to create a concave front.

Pengelly has also created a set of sofas, chairs and benches with simple grey or beige upholstery.

Lazy chairs and tables by Freshwest have legs similar to strings of sausages, finished in a colourful stain except for a single chipolata-shaped element on one leg. On other models, just one sausage is coloured while other elements are left natural.

The British studio’s Inside Out cabinet has line drawings of possible contents on its doors.

Simple wooden furniture designs by Sean Yoo, Alex Hellum, Henrik Sørig, Wales & Wales and Samuel Chan also feature.

The collection is on display at designjunction, which continues until 22 September, along with wicker lighting by Claesson Koivisto Rune.

See all our stories about London Design Festival 2013 »
See Dezeen’s map and guide to London Design Festival 2013 »

Here’s some more information from Joined + Jointed:

Joined + Jointed, a new online concept offering contemporary furniture pieces from a global collective of established and emerging designers, announces its launch in the UK in September 2013.

Working to the principle ‘creation through collaboration’, Joined + Jointed brings together designers, craftsmen and production experts to create furniture of unique design and exceptional quality – at attainable prices.

Available exclusively through the Joined + Jointed website, the debut collection will include inspired new furniture designs from: Simon Pengelly, Sean Yoo, Alex Hellum, Henrik Sørig, Wales & Wales, Freshwest, Samuel Chan.

Highlights include a monumental bookcase by Simon Pengelly, a graphic drinks cabinet from Freshwest, Samuel Chan’s stacking pallet drawers and a broad selection of tables, chairs and cabinets from the design collective.

Joined + Jointed is being launched by Samuel Chan, an award winning furniture designer and founder of bespoke furniture brand Channels. With more than 18 years in the industry, this new venture expresses Samuel’s desire to collaborate with like-minded designers, using his artisan production experience to bring their best furniture concepts into being.

The end result is a collection of more than 80 brand new furniture pieces, intelligently designed and beautifully crafted, to be discovered now and appreciated forever. All are available to buy online.

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collection appeared first on Dezeen.

Danish office BIG has designed a triangular viewing platform for Brooklyn Bridge Park that angles up from the ground like a huge fin (+ slideshow).

The wooden platform will be constructed as part of BIG’s overhaul of Pier 6 – the southernmost end of the park that is located beside the famous suspension bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Raised off the pier by over five metres, the structure will feature a stepped surface that leads visitors up to two corner viewpoints. From here they will be able to look out towards the bridge, the Statue of Liberty and New York City beyond.

A series of thin steel columns will hold the platform in place, creating a sheltered space underneath that will be furnished with tables and chairs, but could also function as a small events area.

A flower field and several trees will be planted at the other end of the platform to welcome visitors into the park.

BIG, led by architect Bjarke Ingels, also recently worked on a park in Copenhagen that featured miscellaneous street furniture from 60 different nations. See more architecture by BIG »

Other landscape architecture featured on Dezeen includes Louis Kahn’s Four Freedoms Park in New York and a series of undulating bridges and promenades in Copenhagen. See more landscape architecture »

Here’s a project description from BIG:

Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 6 Viewing Platform

The Pier 6 viewing platform is a triangular structure at the northwest corner of Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Sloping upwards 17.5 feet (5.3m) in height from the foot of the large gathering lawn, the platform provides magnificent views of the surrounding harbour, the Statue of Liberty, the Manhattan skyline, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

In conjunction with the adjacent greenery, Pier 6 will be dominated by a flower field and treed areas giving the area seasonal displays of colour. The surface of terraced stairs, softly illuminated, will allow for large and small events and is fully ADA accessible. The pavilion, a cross-laminated timber structure supported by thin steel columns, is brightly lit with up-lights and provides shade, shelter and space for indoor activities.

Movable site furniture underneath the platform will accommodate a variety of programs, from food carts and picnicking to community events and small performances.

Program: Public Space
Status: In Progress
Size in m2: 560
Project type: Competition
Client: Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy
Collaborators: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Knippers Helbig, Tilotson Design Associates, AltieriSeborWieber,Pantocraft, Formactiv
Location: Brooklyn, NY

Partner in charge: Bjarke Ingels, Thomas Christoffersen
Project Leader: Iannis Kandyliaris
Project Manager: Martin Voelkle
Team: Ho Kyung Lee, David Spittler, Dennis Harvey, Isshin Morimoto

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by BIG appeared first on Dezeen.

London Design Festival 2013: a range of cast iron cookware by British designer Jasper Morrison for Japanese brand Oigen has gone into production (+ slideshow).

Morrison worked in collaboration with 160 year-old Japanese cast iron manufacturer Oigen to create the Palma cookware range.

Palma includes cooking pots and pans with lids, a frying griddle, a kettle and a condiment server. The products are all made from cast iron and intend to follow the tradition of Oigen’s production techniques.

The cookware is on display this week at Morrison’s Library of Design pop-up at his east London shop.

The shop is open for visitors to browse 100 of the designer’s books and four products, including his Fionda chair for Mattiazzi, until 22 September.

Other products by Jasper Morrison featured on Dezeen recently included an outdoor chair for Spanish brand Kettal and the Please watch for fashion brand Issey Miyake.

See all our coverage about Jasper Morrison »

See all our stories about London Design Festival 2013 »
See Dezeen’s map and guide to London Design Festival 2013 »

Photography is by Nacása&Partners.

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Jasper Morrison for Oigen appeared first on Dezeen.

Artificial grass blankets one wall of this renovated house in Switzerland by local studio Dubail Begert Architectes (+ slideshow).

Architects Sylvain Dubail and David Begert were tasked with improving the thermal efficiency of the two-storey 1970s house in Saignelégier, north-west Switzerland.

After adding extra insulation, they installed a new facade intended to reference the surrounding ground surfaces.

The rear wall is covered with artificial turf to match the garden lawn, while corrugated fibre-cement panels clad three walls and the roof as a nod to the grey tarmac of the road.

The architects compare the appearance to agricultural structures. “The house refuses the romantic and nostalgic ode to the bygone campaign and scoops out its inspirations contrariwise from the contemporary farm sheds,” they said.

Interior spaces are kept simple, with clean white walls and floors, wooden furniture and ceilings, plus a few details picked out in green.

Other projects on Dezeen to feature artificial grass include a cook-for-yourself restaurant in Lithuania and the former home and studio of pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.

See more houses in Switzerland, including one with a corner missing from its roof and one lifted off a hillside on gigantic concrete columns.

Here’s some more text from Dubail Begert Architectes:

Transformation residential house Saignelégier

Located in a residential area, this house built in 1974 is isolated outside to answer contemporary thermal requirements.

The facades plays on the theme of the mimicry with the materials of the floors of the outdoor spaces: place of access in bitumen and grassy garden. The three facades road side and the roof are coated with plates of fibre-cement corrugated anthracites (eternit), the facade garden side is coated with artificial turf.

The surface of outside spaces is extended so at the farthest and tends to remove the home in its stereotypic context of a neighbourhood of houses, delaying so in doubt the icon of sacrosanct single-family home.

In the middle of a quarter of villas of the years 70-80, composed in the majority of houses drawing inspiration from the traditional farm of the Swiss Jura mountains, the house refuses the romantic and nostalgic ode to the bygone campaign and scoops out its inspirations contrariwise from the contemporary farm sheds, to remind of the past close to a residential quarter and ask the question of the rurban sprawl and the maintenance of environmental heritage.

Indoors, reality plays wood between the white and according to the level of privacy of areas.

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by Dubail Begert Architectes appeared first on Dezeen.

This maritime museum in the Netherlands by Dutch studio Mecanoo features reclaimed wooden cladding and a zig-zagging roof that reference the gabled houses of the surrounding hamlet (+ slideshow).

Mecanoo completed the Kaap Skil, Maritime and Beachcombers Museum in Oudeschild, on the island of Texel. The angular roof profile was designed to match the rhythms of a group of harbour-side buildings, while the louvred wooden facade relates to the driftwood used by locals to build their homes.

Sheets of recycled hardwood were sawn into strips to create the louvres, which allow daylight to filter through to a ground-floor cafe and a first-floor gallery.

“The wooden slats used in the facades come from tropical hardwood piling from the North Holland Canal,” said the architects. “The un-sawed edges have been deliberately placed on the visible side of the facade. After forty years of residence under water the white, grey, rust-red, purple and brown colours are beautifully weathered.”

The large upper gallery is dedicated to underwater archaeology. There’s also a second exhibition space in the basement to present the history of Reede van Texel – a historic offshore anchorage used by the fleet of the Dutch East India Company.

“The entrance and the museum cafe form a natural frontier between the world of the Reede van Texel in the basement and that of the underwater archaeology on the first floor,” explained the architects.

The museum was completed in 2011 and is nominated for an award at this year’s World Architecture Festival, which takes place in Singapore next month.

Mecanoo most recently completed Europe’s largest public library in Birmingham, England, where studio founder Francine Houben told Dezeen: “Libraries are the most important public buildings”. See more architecture by Mecanoo »

Other maritime museums published on Dezeen include one in Portugal dedicated to cod fishing and one in England housing the remains of a sixteenth century warship. See more museums »

Photography is by Christian Richters, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from Mecanoo:

Kaap Skil, Maritime and Beachcombers Museum, Texel, the Netherlands

Tourist Attraction

The island of Texel is situated in the Waddenzee and is the largest of the Dutch Wadden Islands. Every year a million or so tourists visit the island, which is only accessible by plane, boat or ferry. Few however will be familiar with the glorious history of Texel and its links with the Dutch East India Company. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Company’s fleet used the anchorage of Texel as its departure point for expeditions to the Far East. The ships waited there for a favourable wind before weighing anchor and sailing off to the ‘Orient’. While they waited, maintenance work and small repairs were carried out, victuals and water were brought on board and family could see their loved ones one last time.

Many painters visited the ‘Reede van Texel’ (the offshore anchorage of Texel) to depict on canvas the fleet of the Dutch Republic. In the new entrance building of the maritime and beachcombers museum, Kaap Skil, in the hamlet of Oudeschild, the public is taken back in time to the Dutch Golden Age. The showpiece of the museum is an eighteen-metre long, four-metre deep model of the Reede van Texel, displaying in great detail the impressive spectacle of the dozens of ships anchored off the coast of the Wadden Island.

Typical gable roofs

The museum is designed with four playfully linked gabled roofs which are a play on the rhythm of the surrounding rooftops which, seen from the sea, resemble waves rising out above the dyke.

‘The sea takes away and the sea provides’ – this is a saying that the people of Texel know so well. For hundreds of years they have made grateful use of driftwood from stranded ships or wrecks to build their houses and barns. The wooden façade of Kaap Skil is a good example of this time-hallowed tradition of recycling. The vertical wooden boards are made of sawn hardwood sheet-piling from the North Holland Canal and have been given a new life just like the objects in the museum collection.

From within, the glass facade in front of the wooden boards allows an inviting view of the outdoor museum terrain and of the famous North Holland skies to visitors of the museum café. Inside the building the boards cast a linear pattern of daylight and shadow creating an atmosphere infused with light and shelter.

Daylight and artificial light

The entrance and the museum café form a natural frontier between the world of the Reede van Texel in the basement and that of the underwater archaeology on the first floor. The contrast between the two worlds is reinforced by the different experiences of light and space. In the basement visitors are drawn around the exhibition by projections and animations, creating an intimate space that harbours a sense of mystery. On the first floor the North Holland sky floods the objects on display with light. The movable showcases of robust steel frames and glass create a transparent effect so that the objects in the collection seem to float within the space. Under the high gabled roofs the visitor gets a generous sense of being able to survey the sizable collection, the museum grounds and the village of Oudeschild at a glance.

Client: Maritiem & Jutters Museum, Oudeschild
Architect: Mecanoo architecten, bv
Museum design: Kossmann.dejong, Amsterdam
Project management: ABC Management Groep, Assen
Builders: Pieters Bouwtechniek, Utrecht
Installations consultant: Peter Prins, Woerden
Contractors: Bouwcombinatie De Geus & Duin Bouwbedrijf, Broek op Langedijk
Installations: ITBB, Heerenveen
Sawmills for wooden cladding of façades: Pieter Dros, Texel

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Museum by Mecanoo appeared first on Dezeen.