Dezeen promotion: registration is open to attend the Interiors UK furniture and lighting fair, which will take place in Birmingham next month.
Desk Tidy by Clea Jentsch at New Design Britain
The 500 designers and suppliers set to exhibit at Interiors UK will be split across different sections of the four-day event.
Tunisia Made by Hend Krichen
The new Design Makers area will include an edited selection of British designers and brands that specialise in bespoke furniture.
Copper and carbon fibre chair by Nicholas Spens at Designer Makers
Returning to the show this year, DesignersBlock will showcase new products by emerging designers.
Furniture by The Velvet Lab
Furniture, fabric, surfaces and accessories projects by the finalists of the New Design Britain Awards will also be on display. There are also areas dedicated to lighting and textiles.
Share Food by Bilge Nur Saltik at New Design Britain
A seminar programme running alongside the event will feature talks by retailer George Davies and architect Piers Taylor.
Blue Sofas, revamped by the participants of Out of the Dark
The exhibition will be held in halls one to four at the NEC in Birmingham from 19-22 January 2014.
Mono Collection fabric lampshades by Ian Mankin at Fabric Pavilion
Read on for additional details from the organisers:
New Designer Makers join a stellar line up at Interiors UK
Show offers an exciting selection of 30 industry furniture designers
Interiors UK, organised by UBM Live Built Environment, is delighted to welcome an impressive line-up of industry experts to the new Design Makers feature. The programme will include British craftsmen and designers adept at making contemporary and bespoke furniture, ideal for buyers looking to select new products at the show.
Furniture by Bridger and Buss
This new, edited area is home to some of the best in British design, well-versed in making bespoke furniture designs ready for market. Key exhibitors include Base Elements, Jason Muteham, Derrick Ibbott Furniture, Angus Ross, B:Bespoke, Mono Furniture by Design and John Barnard Furniture to name a few.
Award-winner Jason Muteham will launch a new product range at the show that incorporates textiles into wooden furniture in collaboration with upholstery specialist Abbey Chic. Jason comments: “It’s great to see recognition from the industry that one size doesn’t always fit all. Design is all about evolving trends and we’re overjoyed to be part of this pioneering concept, nurturing emerging talent and innovation.”
Furniture by The Velvet Lab
Over 500 cutting-edge interior brands are set to take over the NEC Birmingham from the 19-22 January 2014. Interiors UK will be filled with an abundance of new products and interesting seminars offering insightful and valuable industry content. This year also sees the introduction of a dedicated new seminar theatre for lighting, designed to meet visitor demand and ever growing popularity for this part of the show.
Also new for 2014 is the Editors Choice, curated from thousands of items it will showcase the most original new products ideally suited for visitors looking for the fresh designs in the market. In addition all exhibitors will also be supplied with a swing tag to display their most original and new product to ease navigation for visitors.
Furniture by Bridger and Buss
Following the success of last year’s French Pavilion this year the show is set to welcome key international exhibitors from Poland and Portugal with further nationalities to be announced shortly, putting Interiors UK firmly on the map as a destination to see brands from across Europe and beyond.
DesignersBlock is making a popular return to the show with an emphasis on displaying commercially viable product. Set to inject the fun, flare and eccentricity they have become known for, this year visitors can expect to see the latest products from emerging industry talent.
Nineteenth Century Wheelback Chairs by Out of the Dark (also main image)
Interiors UK is home to the UK’s leading competition for Design Talent, the New Design Britain Awards. Entries for this year has hit record numbers with over 50 national universities submitting entries across the four categories of furniture, fabric, surfaces and accessories.
Whether you are looking for the latest products and features, up-to-the-minute industry knowledge or invaluable trend insight, there is something for everyone.
For more information or to register for your complimentary ticket visit the website.
Fashion designer Matthew Williamson has enlisted his celebrity friends including architect Zaha Hadid, actress Gwyneth Paltrow and singer Mary J Blige to design Christmas tree ornaments, which are on display at The Shard in London and will be auctioned for charity.
Zaha Hadid (also main image)
Hadid’s 3D-printed design is shaped like a sinuous Christmas tree, with holes cut through sections of the green form.
Matthew Williamson
“The Zaha Hadid Christmas decoration is a contemporary representation of a traditional decorative object,” states the architect on the project’s Facebook page. “Manufactured using rapid prototyping technology and materials, the piece is a digital creation representing current techniques employed in the field of architecture, design and research.”
Rankin
Williamson’s own design is covered in black and white feathers, interspersed with smaller metal balls intricately decorated using tiny beads.
Mat Collishaw
The bauble by photographer Rankin is a sphere of small metal spikes, while Mary J Blige’s globe is covered in card leaf-like shapes.
Mary J Blige
A blue ball by designer Polly Morgan is being pecked by a stuffed woodpecker and artist Mat Collishaw’s silver orb appears to be oozing out its insides.
Polly Morgan
There are also designs by actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Sienna Miller.
Gwyneth Paltrow
Each decoration is signed by its designer either on the surface or the ribbon use to hang it on the tree.
The building comprises three enclosures, all finished with different materials, which are sheltered beneath a undulating steel canopy and surrounded by a forest of over 200 angular steel columns.
The largest block is clad with sweet chestnut wood and houses the museum’s exhibition gallery. Another features glass walls and houses an education centre, cafe and shop, while a smaller zinc-clad structure is sandwiched between and functions as a ticket office.
The underside of the steel canopy is clad with zinc panels and features an elaborate pattern of square-shaped perforations. It oversails all three blocks, creating sheltered seating areas around the perimeters.
“The design of the centre is based on the idea that it is a prelude to the stones, and its architectural form and character should in no way diminish their visual impact, sense of timeless strength and powerful sculptural composition,” said Denton Corker Marshall’s Barrie Marshall.
“Where the stones are exposed, massive and purposefully positioned, the centre is sheltered, lightweight and informal. And where the stones seem embedded into the earth, the centre rests on its surface,” he added.
Visitors can walk from the centre to the monument via a winding pathway, or can choose to take a ten-minute shuttle ride.
Here’s the full press release from Denton Corker Marshall:
New Stonehenge Visitor Centre Opens
Denton Corker Marshall’s new Stonehenge Visitor Centre opens its doors on 18th December, inviting more than one million visitors every year to experience the transformed ancient site.
Located 1.5 miles to the west of the stone circle at Airman’s Corner, just within the World Heritage Site but out of sight of the monument, the new visitor centre is designed with a light touch on the landscape – a low key building sensitive to its environment.
Sited within the rolling landforms of Salisbury Plain, the design consists of a subtle group of simple enclosures resting on a limestone platform, all sheltered by a fine, perforated, undulating canopy.
Barrie Marshall, director at Denton Corker Marshall, said: “The design of the centre is based on the idea that it is a prelude to the stones, and its architectural form and character should in no way diminish their visual impact, sense of timeless strength and powerful sculptural composition. Where the stones are exposed, massive and purposefully positioned, the centre is sheltered, lightweight and informal. And where the stones seem embedded into the earth, the centre rests on its surface.”
Three pods, finished in different materials, provide the principal accommodation. The largest, clad in sweet chestnut timber, houses the museum displays and service facilities. The second largest, clad in glass, houses the educational base, a stylish café and retail facilities. Located between these is the third, by far the smallest and clad in zinc, which provides ticketing and guide facilities.
Oversailing them all, and resting on 211 irregularly placed sloping columns, is a steel canopy clad on the underside with zinc metal panels and shaped with a complex geometry reflecting the local landforms.
Local, recyclable and renewable materials have been used wherever possible. The material palette includes locally grown sweet chestnut timber cladding and Salisbury limestone.
Stephen Quinlan, partner at Denton Corker Marshall, said: “Various strategies have been adopted in the design to ensure that the centre is environmentally sensitive and uses natural resources in a responsible way. These range from the natural sun shading qualities of the canopy which promotes natural ventilation and reduces the need for cooling in the pods, through to more technical solutions such as heat pumps and high efficiency insulation.”
The new building allows Stonehenge to have dedicated facilities on site for education and interpretation for the first time, with museum-quality exhibits that tell the story of the 5,000 year- old monument.
From the new centre, visitors can either walk to the monument or take a ten-minute shuttle ride. During the trip the henge emerges slowly over the horizon to the East.
Dr Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage, said: “For too long, people’s appreciation of Stonehenge is this mysterious, impressive but anonymous monument. The Neolithic period itself is pretty much a murky expanse of time, shrouded by many outdated notions. We want people to come here and take away a fresh view.”
There will also be an outdoor gallery including the reconstruction of three early Neolithic houses, based on rare forensic evidence found near Stonehenge. These houses will be built by skilled volunteers and are due to be complete by Easter 2014.
Sustainable Design
The building is sensitively designed to sit lightly in the landscape. Reversibility – the ability to return the site to its current state – was a fundamental design concept. The building will last as long as it needs to but could, if necessary, be removed leaving little permanent impact on the landscape.
This is achieved by constructing it on a concrete raft which in turn sits on an area of ‘fill’ with minimal cutting into the soil. The modern construction, using slender steel columns and lightweight framed walls, and semi-external spaces allow the depth of foundations to be minimised.
» An open loop ground source heating system that pumps underground water through a unit to extract/inject heat energy. This enables the building to be heated and provides some cooling without the need for fossil fuels.
» Fully insulated cavity walls – the timber pod is constructed of structurally insulated panels (SIPS), which enables efficiencies in construction whilst minimising material waste and ensuring the building is well insulated.
» Mixed mode ventilation – the building will be naturally ventilated whenever external conditions allow, switching to an efficient mechanical ventilation system that enables the heat energy in the exhaust air to be ‘recovered’ and transferred to the supply air, thereby reducing the load on the heating plant and saving energy.
» “Grey water”, including rainwater collected from the roof of the building, will be used for the bulk of water required at the visitor centre, e.g. for flushing toilets. Other water – e.g. for drinking – will be drawn from the aquifer, a local and renewable resource.
» The facilities will use on-site water treatment for sustainability and to avoid intrusive trenching for connections to water and sewer mains.
This cluster of wooden cabins in Norway by architecture studio Rever & Drage features a hut with a retractable roof and a pair of sheds that slide open to frame views of a nearby fjord (+ slideshow).
Rever & Drage were asked to create a multi-purpose facility near to the client’s existing summerhouse, which they planned to used as a toolshed, a rain shelter and a camping area.
The architects responded by designing a group of three structures surrounding a small patio, entitled Hustadvika Tools. Each building integrates folding or sliding mechanisms, allowing them to be adapted for different activities or to suit changing weather conditions.
The largest of the three buildings is a rectilinear hut with a roof that slides forward, creating a canopy for the patio in front. Rather than exposing the interior to the elements, the open roof reveals a layer of glass that lets light into the space, but protects it from rain.
“Making the roof slide back and forth gave the project a tiny hint of Leonardo da Vinci activity, with its wheels, wires, sliding beams and counterweights,” said architects Tom Auger, Martin Beverfjord and Eirik Lilledrange.
The other two cabins function as storage areas and feature doors that slide apart. The rear walls of both sheds are glazed so that when open they allow views through to the coastline.
“The building in its closed position gives somehow the impression of an old prudent virgin preparing herself for the winter storms, whilst in its open position it is a decorated shed blooming in the midsummer night,” said the architects.
The structures are subjected to a daily spray of salt water from the strong tides, so they architects treated the wood with a layer of tar to protect it from corroding.
“The tar, whilst bringing out the visual depth of the wood, also makes the building quite charming in the low evening sun,” added the architects.
Photography is by Tom Auger.
Here’s a project description from Rever & Drage:
Hustadvika Tools
This small but multifunctional building was designed and constructed, both as an answer to the clients need for a wind-and-rain shelter at their outdoor summer house-piazza, and as a combined tool-shed and special-occasion-sleep-under-the-stars-facility. A complex program for a modest building, making way for double-functional elements and architectural ambiguity.
The site at the utmost north-western-coast of Norway, presented it with some harsh and always changing weather conditions including a daily spray of salt water.
Finally the building turned out looking both new and old. The main forms, in their abstract expression and lack of cornice, are typical modern looking, while the exterior surface is typical old-school with the wood panels coated in tar, just like the traditional waterproofing for local wooden boats. The tar, whilst bringing out the visual depth of the wood, also makes the building quite charming in the low evening sun.
The building in its closed position gives somehow the impression of an old prudent virgin preparing herself for the winter storms, whilst in its open position it is a decorated shed blooming in the midsummer night. All over the final result is also a Stonehenge-like place to be with its high and heavy features transported there from hundreds of miles away.
If the sun is out, but the northern wind is a bit chilly (which is a typical condition in this area), sliding out the doors from the smaller sheds will form a continuos embracement of the small piazza. At the same time the back walls of the sheds are made of glass, such that the ocean view is maintained.
If the weather is warm, but there is some rain in the air, the upper roof of the main building can be slid out by an electrical engine, simultaneously uncovering a skylight inside.
This glass roof is the main-roof of the building in terms of waterproofing, leading water away from the piazza to the back of the building, whilst the wooden roof on top is tilted the opposite way, to face the stronger western winds and also taking the snow burden during winter.
Section
Making the roof slide back and forth gave the project a tiny hint of Leonardo da Vinci-activity, with its wheels, wires, sliding-beams and counter-weights.
In this problem-making, as much as problem-solving, the building generates interested smiles from engineer-hearted passers-by, as well as solving the original program and satisfying the clients.
Opinion: in his latest column, Dan Hill examines what services like the Uber taxi app mean for cities and asks whether the designers of public services can learn something from them.
Uber Über Alles. In my previous column, I suggested that the big deal about self-driving cars was not that they could drive themselves but that they could be shared rather than owned. With that in mind, I’ve been following the apparently unstoppable rise of Uber, though this time with some concern.
With the Uber app, you choose a vehicle to match your need on-demand (SUV, Prius, limo — sadly no ute as yet) and then it finds a nearby driver of said vehicle for you. Payment is cashless and fares are calculated in advance. Maps, apps, credit cards and phones-as-sensors make everything smooth as silk. Thus, it is likely to tear apart the traditional taxi business.
This form of “radical disruption” is now hardly radical at all, but rather obvious. Simply apply the affordances and dynamics of twenty-first century networked business to an existing service. Applying Uber to the taxi business is just the same as applying Amazon to retail, Square to cash, Spotify to music, Taskrabbit to labour, and Foursquare to that most meaningful of all human pursuits, informing your friends that you are in a bar.
We’ve figured it all out. We know how to make signups, APIs, buttons, lists and responsive layouts. We know how to embed a video, a map, a typeface — it’s all done. We know the business models are free, premium and freemium. The name should be one word, short and easy to type (if it could possibly be less that one word, it would be).
Most importantly, the service should be inconceivable without The Network. It is thus globalised, localised and “user-centred” to the extent that, in the now infamous words of one of Twitter’s founders, it suggests that the internet is simply “a giant machine designed to give people what they want.”
That solipsistic view of the world is baked into the dynamics of software like Uber. When you try to sign up as an Uber driver — I clicked through, just to see — the last stage involves ticking a box labelled “By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and understand that Uber is a request tool, not a transportation carrier.”
With that one small tick-in-a-box, Uber is deploying what writer Douglas Adams called a Somebody Else’s Problem field over the entire regulatory “dark matter” of the taxi business. This means their service glides as smoothly as a Prius with the engine turned off over all that bureaucracy concerning safety, hygiene, insurance and so on. The drivers and their organisations have to deal with that lot, but not Uber. Yet Uber is where the value suddenly lies.
The primary example of such unchecked network logics is of course Amazon, and you only have to read Carole Cadwalladr’s recent Guardian article to infer the outcomes of Amazon becoming, as Brad Stone’s bestseller critique has it, “The Everything Store”. It’s a clear formula: deliver an attractive globalised service while sidestepping as much local regulation and tax as possible.
If, as entrepreneur Marc Andreessen has said, such “software is eating the world”, then apps like Uber are just the hors d’oeuvres. The next course contains the more interesting questions: what happens when we apply those affordances and dynamics to the core services of everyday life that are not just serving desires — as Spotify, Vine or Amazon do — but needs, like mobility, health, waste, energy, food, water and education?
Necessarily predicated on rampant growth models, Uber itself is bound to move beyond the high end of the private-hire business into mobility and logistics in general: the Everything Moving Store.
The Uber website is currently more Mr Porter than the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, an embarrassingly aspirational montage of white people in black cars. The styling oozes try-hard tastefulness, leaving a bad taste. It suggests a target market that might just about stretch to the outer orbits of The One Percent. But where next?
There’s the rub. So this, as with Amazon (and Starbucks, J Crew and the rest) is another cultural blitzkrieg, obliterating difference and leaving high-quality homogeneity in its wake. With clothes and coffee it’s a shame, but not that big a deal. However, when it ploughs into a core urban service like mobility I have, well, a few issues.
Although taxis are a form of privatised transport, they remain part of the city’s civic infrastructure, part of their character. As architect and teacher Robin Boyd wrote, “taxi-men teach the visitor a lot about their towns, intentionally and unintentionally.” Boyd was able to to demarcate Sydney culture from Adelaide culture based on whether the cabbie opens the door for you. I recall scribbling a drawing of a Stephen Holl building I wanted to visit in Beijing, as my only way of communicating my desired destination to the taxi driver. Uber makes transactions easier, but what we gain from a seamless UI, and the convenience of the global currency of apps, we lose from the possibility of understanding a place through a slightly bumpier “seamful” experience.
The broader issue is replacement of public services with private services. Kalanick describes Uber as “the cross between lifestyle and logistics” which, to be fair, is not exactly a “cross” many would have spotted. So Uber is now selling movement; or as they put it, “evolving the way the world moves. By seamlessly connecting riders to drivers through our apps, we make cities more accessible…”
This is an egregious untruth. Uber is currently a premium car service, which is as far from accessible as one could imagine. It actually falls to the municipality to build a service that is genuinely accessible, that services “citizens” rather than “customers”. Delivering mobility across a city includes the dispersed areas of low or unpredictable demand, the off-peak as well as the predictable peak, with cost of the former offset by the latter. Uber, however, is beginning to nibble away at both ends, yet without the idea of true accessibility in mind.
Who’s to say that similarly shiny networked services won’t also begin to offer privatised coordination of your waste collection, energy and water provision and so on, to match the trends towards private education, private healthcare and private mail delivery to gated communities? Note also Barclays pulling its sponsorship of London’s bike-sharing scheme. Given that the Greater London Authority can hardly let the service lie fallow until market conditions become attractive for a sponsor again, it is left to them to pick up the tab.
Tony Judt’s book Ill Fares The Land is just about the most powerful retort to the ideologies that underpin this demise of public service. Coincidentally, mid-diatribe, Judt alights upon the aesthetic of London’s taxis:
“Visual representations of collective identity used to matter a lot. Think of the black London taxi, its distinctive monotone emerging by consensus between the wars and serving thereafter to distinguish not only the taxis themselves but something about the austere unity of the city they served. Buses and trains followed suit, their uniformity of colour and design emphasising the role they played as common transporters of a single people.”
Uber.com’s equally monochrome visual representation describes exclusive if guileless aspiration rather than common people. That’s Uber’s brand, and fair enough. Emerging amidst another age of austerity for most, though, the counterpoint with Judt’s admittedly nostalgic recall is a little hard to take. But more broadly, as the likes of Uber become more successful, are we inadvertently accelerating the process that has undermined the very ideas of public and civic?
But cities are not merely “giant machines for giving people what they want” any more than the internet is. They are more than that. They speak of a higher form of human organisation, of different people living together for mutual benefit rather than simply “individual utility maximisation”. That is something worth fighting for.
It may mean that public enterprise has to adopt the popular dynamics, patterns and systems of our age, yet bent into shape for public good. This seems possible, as the GOV.UK project from the UK’s Government Digital Service illustrates. Perhaps by marrying such supremely good interactive work with the ethos and long-term viability of the public sector, services like Uber will be left to play happily in the aspirant niches while high-quality networked public services will be available for all. It is just as viable for public transport systems to apply network logic as it is for Uber to do so, if not easier, as the public sector gets to shape the policy and regulatory environments, as well as the delivery.
Indeed if they don’t, we sleepwalk into an urban future with parts of the city run on privatised globalised apps, parts run by cobbled-together hyperlocal community groups and huge gaping holes in-between, punctuating what remains of a faded and patchy shared public sensibility.
So the design question posed by Uber is: can public enterprises adopt the popular dynamics of private enterprises without also absorbing their underlying ideologies?
Dan Hill is CEO of Fabrica, a communications research centre and design studio based in Treviso, Italy. He is an adjunct professor in the Design, Architecture and Building faculty at University of Technology, Sydney, and his blog City of Sound covers the intersection between cities, design, culture and technology.
There aren’t many architects whose names begin with Q, so our seventeenth A-Zdvent calendar entry is Belgian artist Arne Quinze, who built this 20 metre-high installation in Germany in 2009. Other architectural structures by Quinze include The Sequence, a canopy of tree-like forms installed outside the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.
Portuguese architect José Carlos Cruz claims to have built the world’s first cork-clad hotel, located amongst the olive and cork trees of Portugal’s Alentejo region (+ slideshow).
Situated outside the city of Évora, the Ecork Hotel comprises a cork-clad restaurant and leisure complex with 56 hotel suites contained in a series of adjacent bungalows.
José Carlos Cruz and his design team chose cork to clad the walls of the main building because it is both readily available and highly insulating.
“Portugal is the second biggest exporter of cork in the world, so we thought it would be a good starting point for the building,” project architect António Cruz told Dezeen.
There are only a few small openings in the outer walls of the building, creating large uninterrupted surfaces of the material.
“One of our intentions was to promote cork as a cladding material,” said Cruz. “It’s a good thermal insulator and is also recyclable.”
The two-storey leisure complex accommodates gym and spa facilities, conferences rooms and an indoor swimming pool, which all surround a central courtyard.
The first floor has walls but no roof, accommodating a bar, outdoor pool and sunbathing deck with views out over the rural landscape.
The hotel suites are set back from the main building in a layout based on the typical arrangement of a medieval Portuguese village.
“The general plan is inspired by the medieval villages of the Alentejo, where it was common to find a main complex or castle, and several white buildings around it,” said the architects.
With clean white-rendered walls, the suites form rows that line the edges of walkways. Each one comes with its own private courtyard, screened behind a perforated wall.
Here’s a project description from Jose Carlos Cruz Arquitecto:
Ecork Hotel
Ecork is a Hotel in Évora, Portugal, with aspa, health club, gym, restaurant, bar, conference rooms, outdoor pool and 56 bungalows.
Built on a set of cork and olive trees, the general plan is inspired by the Medieval villages of the Alentejo, where it was common to find a main complex or castle, and several white buildings around it.
All services and hotel facilities are aggregated into a single building, freeing the land outside the bungalows.
Influenced by the vernacular architecture and Arabic, is created a monolithic volume with small openings to the outside, which together with cork coating which is fully recyclable and ensures thermal protection of the building.
Built around a large courtyard, the layout is designed so as to take advantage of crosswinds and air circulation, thus reducing power consumption to the minimum necessary.
In order to ensure the lowest possible occupation and overview of the Alentejo Landscape, outdoor pool and bar are located on the roof of the building.
All 56 bungalows are suites. Their deployment, scattered among the olive trees around the property is defined by the structure of internal thoroughfares.
These paths are read as a series of abstract volumes and surfaces, plastered and whitewashed.
Location: Évora, Portugal Area: 6300 m2 Design time: November 2008 Completion time: May 2013
Architect: José Carlos Cruz Interior Design and Decoration: José Carlos Cruz Civil engineer: Newton, Consultores de Engenharia Mechanics Engineer: ENES.COORD
The interior of Dutch fashion house Viktor & Rolf‘s first flagship store in Paris has been covered in grey felt by French studio Architecture & Associés.
Architecture & Associés was asked to create an unobtrusive design for the duo’s recently opened store on Rue Saint-Honoré, close to Paris’ famous shopping square Place Vendôme.
“We said we would like a store that’s invisible or a store that’s hardly there because often we find store designs very intrusive and just too much,” Viktor & Rolf co-founder Viktor Horsting told Dezeen.
Grey was chosen to line the interior as it provided a simple environment to showcase the duo’s products and is also used in the set designs of the brand’s catwalk shows.
“We wanted to create an environment where the clothes would really stand out,” said Horsting. “Grey is a very good colour as a backdrop because it’s very neutral. It’s a total surreal experience because you’re in an environment that’s entirely made out of fabric, but at the same time it’s something architectural. We like that surrealism.”
The store houses men and women’s ready-to-wear clothing, accessories such as bags and shoes, plus the brand’s line of fragrances.
Neoclassical elements such as arched niches along the walls and a colonnade of arches running over the staircase create shadows to break up the monochrome.
Shelves for displaying products sit in the niches, some of which are illuminated with white light from behind similar to the ceiling panels.
The felt also muffles the sounds of browsing shoppers in an attempt to make the large 650-square-metre store feel more intimate.
“We wanted to emphasise the personal experience of shopping,” Horsting said. “I have to say that it was a little bit of a guess. Of course we thought that the felt would change certain acoustics of the space but we couldn’t really imagine it, so when we were there over the weekend we were glad to hear that the effect was as we had hoped.”
“You’re really by yourself even though it’s a big space, and even though the architecture is rigorous and graphic, it’s not imposing or too grand,” he continued. “It’s really an intimate place. It’s quite beautiful.”
The store opened last week to coincide with Viktor & Rolf’s twentieth anniversary, which was also marked by the house’s return to haute couture in July. The designers will show their Spring 2014 collection in January next year.
Read on for more information from the team behind the design:
The store will be on Rue Saint-Honoré, just a stone’s throw from the Place Vendôme.
The miscellanea of the Viktor & Rolf world will all be available at the boutique: men and women’s ready-to-wear, shoes, the iconic “Bombette” line of bags and leather goods, glasses, accessories and of course, the line of fragrances.
Driven by a taste for the paradoxical, the designers desired an eternal environment for their ever-changing collections, in their own words: “a striking world where every and anybody’s desires or fantasies can be borne upon what we do”.
The innovative design, conceived by Pierre Beucler and Jean-Christophe Poggioli of Architecture & Associés, combines the palatial grandeur of Renaissance Italy with the classicism of the French tradition for a startlingly avant-garde universe.
The spirit of unorthodox innovation that has always driven Viktor & Rolf, whose work has often been characterised by its subtle exploration of scale and shadow, inspired the architects towards a spectral architecture crafted entirely of grey felt. This single-material strategy makes for a phantasmagorical space of shifting apparitions where the uniform surface of the walls, floors and furniture, as a kind of all-enveloping interior skin, creates the effect of complete unity.
News: London architecture office FAT has announced that it will shut down its studio next summer, after “exploring the potential of the projects as much as possible”.
FAT directors Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland and Sam Jacob, who became famous for combining Postmodernist architecture with playful iconography, plan to end their 23-year-old practice with the completion of two major projects – the curation of the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014 and a house inspired by fairytales that they are working on with artist Grayson Perry for the Living Architecture series of holiday homes.
Blue House in Hackney, London
“We feel like we’ve explored the potential of the projects as much as possible,” Jacob told Dezeen. “We don’t want to end up like many architects do, flogging the same dead horse. We think it’s best to go out on a high.”
“In lots of ways FAT has been more like a band than a traditional architecture office,” he added. “We wanted to finish it in a way that’s coherent and makes sense.”
FAT started in the mid 1990s as a collective of architects, artists and film makers, before going on to complete projects such as the Blue House in London’s Hackney, the BBC Drama Production Village in Cardiff and the Community In A Cube (CIAC) in Middlesborough.
Community In A Cube in Middlesborough
“What we’re doing is saying there’ll be two more projects,” said Jacob. “We think this is really the completion of the FAT project which began many years ago, with no intention that we were starting an architecture office and the ‘glittering careers’ we would have.”
After completing the two final projects, the three partners plan to “let the dust settle”, but will continue to work within the architecture and design industry. Jacob is currently also a columnist for Dezeen.
BBC Drama Production Village in Cardiff
Here’s the full announcement from FAT:
FAT announces the end of its practice
The highly successful 23 year collaboration will culminate next summer with the completion of A House For Essex, designed for Living Architecture (in collaboration with artist Grayson Perry), and the curation of A Clockwork Jerusalem at the British Pavilion as part of the 2014 Venice Biennale (in collaboration with Crimson Architectural Historians and Owen Hatherley)
Following on from the completion of a number of architecturally significant projects, directors Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland and Sam Jacob believe that, with the conclusion of these final projects, FAT will have achieved all it set out to do when the practice first emerged in the 1990’s. FAT was always conceived as a project in itself, a vehicle for critically opening up the culture of architecture rather than purely a conventional architectural practice.
“FAT has provided the three of us with the most extraordinary platform for creative collaboration. We have enjoyed 23 years together and want to end our union on a high with two typically FAT projects – A House For Essex and our curatorial role at the world’s most prestigious architectural event – The Venice Architecture Biennale.”
Evolving out of a ‘collective’ of architects, artists and film makers, in the mid 1990’s, FAT became one of Britain’s most influential architecture practices. Their work pushed the boundaries of architecture by developing innovative forms of cross disciplinary practice and new critical directions in architecture while engaging mainstream clients and delivering a series of highly original buildings in the UK and abroad.
Their work has ranged across installations, interiors, buildings and masterplans that include (amongst others) Kessels Kramers offices in Amsterdam, Kessels Kramers offices in Amsterdam, the BBC Drama Production Village, Cardiff for Igloo, Islington Square for Urban Splash and the Great Places Housing Group, The Villa in Rotterdam and CIAC in Middlesbrough, as well as installations and exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, the V&A, MAK and the Vienna Secession House.
FAT’s work has been characterised by a highly conceptual approach, which combined the practical demands of architecture with critical and provocative thinking. Their work demonstrated the creative possibilities for architecture to engage beyond the traditional boundaries of an architecture office and the limits of professional concern.
FAT has also been an influential international presence in architectural education at a diverse range of institutions including the AA, the University of Westminster, the RCA, The Bartlett, the University of the Arts, UIC and Yale.
FAT’s final two projects will realise many of the strands that have characterised its work: Pushing the boundaries of architecture, collaboration and working with fine art, a deep interest in the culture of architecture and how architecture relates to wider culture, society and politics.
FAT would like to place on record its thanks to all our collaborators, the students, critics and journalists, who have avidly followed our progress, the outraged BTL commentators who gave us so much entertainment, and above all to the visionary clients who saw the potential for, and who dared to invest in, a unique approach to twenty first century architecture.
FAT’s directors will continue to be a presence as individuals in the fields of architecture, design, art, writing and education.
They remain open to offers for a lucrative reunion in 20 years’ time.
Japanese architect Kazuhiko Kishimoto designed the ground floor of this house in Yokohama with barely any walls so it can function as a gallery and seating area for members of the local community (+ slideshow).
Kishimoto, principal of Kanagawa studio acaa, planned the lowest level of the timber-clad Beyond The Hill house as a series of courtyards and wide staircases that stagger downwards to follow the decline of a steeply sloping site.
Wicker cushions encourage people to sit on the staircases, plus there’s also a circular hollow that allows a group to sit together and have lunch.
According to Kishimoto, the client asked for a house that would be open to the community. “My answer to the requirement was to build the house ‘afloat’,” he explained.
“The wood deck, tilted towards the sloped road in front of the house, creates a place where the internal and external areas of the house meet and interact,” he added.
A square courtyard is open to the sky at the centre of the building and sits next to a glazed double-height space that functions as the informal public gallery.
Photograph by Ryogo Utatsu
Two staircases within the courtyard lead up to different parts of the building. The first ascends to a small office tucked into the south-east corner of the first floor, while the second leads up into the private spaces of the house.
The kitchen is positioned next to the house’s entrance and is the largest room in the building, as it is used by one of the residents to host cookery classes.
A wide staircase rises up from the kitchen to the second floor, which begins with a dining room. Some stairs curve outwards at the corners to form seats and one extends along the edge of the room to create a worktop.
“In daily life, of course, the space serves as the family’s living room,” said Kishimoto.
Bedrooms are located beyond the dining room. One opens out to a balcony, while the other features a raised platform with storage spaces underneath and a ladder that offers a route up to the roof.
Photography is by Hiroshi Ueda, apart from where otherwise stated.
Here’s a project description from Kazuhiko Kishimoto:
Beyond The Hill
A gallery in the centre creating communications and connecting the house and community
The house stands on a site facing a narrow, steep slope. Across the street is a wood, which promises a pleasant view with fresh greenery in summer and crimson foliage in autumn.
The client’s request was a residential house containing a small gallery and office. The request suggested that the house must be open to the town community. My answer to the requirement was to build the house “afloat”. To be precise, the gallery is the only grounded room, which is surrounded by a breezy and sunny wood deck raised at about 1m.
Round hollow on the deck floor accommodates a round bench, where people can sit and enjoy meals while watching over the wood view. The space may also serve as the external gallery. The wood deck, tilted towards the sloped road in front of the house, created a place where the internal and external areas of the house meet and interacts.
The residential area and office can be approached via respective staircases. The internal space of the residential area consists of a dining kitchen on the right and facing the wood, and a floor on the left, surrounding the courtyard and spirally ascending.
The dining kitchen has a wide counter table suitable for accommodating cooking classes the madam organises, and the uneven floor provides various corners for different number of guests to sit down. In daily life, of course, the space serves as the family’s living room.
Location: Yokohama, Kanagawa Date of Completion: January 2013 Principal Use: Residence, Office, Small gallery
Site Area: 132.47m2 Total Floor Area: 158.39m2 (66.32m2/1F, 79.00m2/2F, 13.07m2/garage,) Architecture: Kazuhiko Kishimoto / acaa Structural Engineer : Takahiro Suwabe
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