Hasta La Ideas

Dublin designers Notion have established their own design brand called NTN with an inaugural collection featuring wooden sunglasses, an aluminium watch and a table with a hammock underneath (+ slideshow).

Collection 01 is the first range of furniture, lighting and fashion pieces by NTN, a brand set up by Irish studio Notion.

“This has been an in-house project from the beginning really,” Notion director Ian Walton told Dezeen. “We established Notion four years ago and having our own products was always something we hoped to achieve.

Included in the range is the white wooden Hammock Table, which has a fabric shelf for storing items stretched between its four legs using rope.

A matching Windsor chair has been adapted so the row of vertical wooden poles that form its back are covered with a sheath, creating the Dowel Chair.

The Waterford Lamp has a bottle-shaped glass shade joined to a grey braided cable by a three-armed aluminium section. It also features a spiral-filament bulb.

Wearable pieces in the collection include glasses with curved plywood frames connected by aluminium corners, which conceal brass hinges.

These G1 Glasses are available in teak and natural aluminium with brown-tinted lenses, or black-stained ash and black anodised aluminium with black-tinted lenses.

The case of the W1 Watch is CNC-machined from solid aluminium, with minute markers etched onto the crystal above the face. The timepiece features a vegetable-tanned leather strap and the case is available in natural aluminium or black.

Walton and fellow designer Marcel Twohig formed Notion in 2009, and they hope to source production of their first NTN collection themselves.

“As far as production is concerned our primary aim is to take it to market ourselves,” said Walton. “We believe in the ability of designers to create autonomous brands and if the collection is well received then we will do everything we can to continue down this route.”

We recently interviewed young designer Hanna Emelie Ernsting, who is producing her latest furniture collection herself following a “really tough” experience with a major brand.

Here’s the information that Walton sent to us:

In 2009 Marcel Twohig and I founded an industrial design studio in Dublin called notion. After four years notion is, and continues to be a living breathing professional design practice. Earlier this year we took a hiatus from client work to focus on our own sketches and ideas, something that we have wanted to do since forming the studio. The result is a new product brand NTN and our first collection.

NTN designs and produces collections of products. These products are connected by design rather than category, a model much more akin to fashion than industrial design. It is our goal to continue the creation and curation of these product collections biannually, each of which will clearly come from the same design thinking, but which will each contain varying product categories.

Collection 01 contains five products; the Dowel Chair, Hammock Table, Waterford Lamp, G1 Glasses and W1 Watch.

Hammock Table

The Hammock Table is a low coffee table defined by a suspended fabric shelf. The shelf is kept in tension by rope connecting to aluminium leg mounts. The solid table top is of bleached Irish sycamore which is blended into the round legs.

W1 Watch

The front and back body parts of the W1 watch are CNC machined from solid aluminium. The integrated aluminium dial is created in the same process. The floating increments are etched directly onto the crystal. The watch is finished with a vegetable tanned leather strap. Available in both natural and black anodised aluminium.

Dowel Chair

The Dowel Chair is a modern take on the classic Windsor chair. Constructed from solid bleached irish sycamore the seat back consists of sixteen spindles with a removable fabric cover. On the underside the legs are blended into the seat.

G1 Glasses

The character of the G1 Glasses comes as much from the materials as the shape. Formed plywood frames and temples are connected by a CNC machined aluminium armature. This armature also incorporates the custom brass hinge. Available in teak and natural aluminium with brown lens or black stained ash and black anodised aluminium with black lens.

Waterford Lamp

This pendant lamp consists of a thick, clear glass shade hand blown in Waterford, Ireland. A machined aluminium hanger suspends the shade from the grey braided cable. The lamp is finished with a hand stitched filament bulb.

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Decorative tiles salvaged from different apartments are rearranged in stripes across the floor of this Barcelona residence by Spanish studio Bach Arquitectes (+ slideshow).

Architects Anna and Eugeni Bach were asked to renovate a pair of existing apartments on the upper two floors of a housing block in Barcelona’s Eixample district to create a two-storey home for a young family, which is named Urgell Apartment.

While the upper flat had been built in the 1960s, the one below it was considerably older and still contained some of the original encaustic floor tiles, which were made by pouring differently pigmented ceramics into a mould divided by walls before pressing the tiles to create a pattern that goes right through.

“In Barcelona it is quite typical to find these kind of tiles in old flats from the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth,” Eugeni Bach told Dezeen. “The problem was that there were not enough tiles for the whole flat because in some rooms they had been replaced for newer ones.”

Luckily, the architects managed to find more of the tiles when another flat in the block was being refurbished. “We asked them what they were doing with the old tiles and they wanted to get rid of them, so we took them to our site,” said Bach.

With seven different kinds of tiles, the architects created a variety of stripes across the entire lower floor, including a large living and dining room, a children’s bedroom and a small bathroom.

A new pine staircase ascends to a master bedroom, bathroom and study on the level above.

This staircase is contained with a boxy structure that encompasses kitchen units and storage closets on the lower level, as well as laundry facilities and a desk on the upper floor.

“The second most important material in the flat is the pine wood for the cupboards, the stairs and the flooring on the upper level,” added Bach. 

Two voids are punched through the stairwell to improve views between floors. The first is a window that looks through to the kitchen, while the second provides a view onto the stairs from the study.

A decked terrace runs along the side of the upper floor and features a folding metal staircase that leads up to a larger terrace on the top of the roof.

It’s become quite fashionable to retain or reuse this type of traditional floor tile in Barcelona – see our slideshow of similar projects here.

Here’s some extra information from Bach Arquitectes:

Apartment Refurbishment in Urgell, Barcelona

The top two floors of a block in Barcelona’s Eixample should be reformed into a single apartment that could take advantage of the existing terraces.

The lower floor consisted of an apartment of about 65 m2, heading the street and getting some light to the kitchen and bathroom via an inner patio. The upper apartment, of about 40 m2, had been built later, probably during the 60s. It consisted of a simple volume built on the terrace, separated from the street and from one of the neighbouring buildings, leaving an L-shaped narrow open space.

The organisation of the apartment orbits around the staircase. This element becomes something more than just a communication device between the two floors by absorbing the kitchen and a storage space on the lower level, and the study and laundry space on the top floor. The staircase is as well the space for visual relationship between the two floors, via an inner window and a big opening on the upper studio which allows to get visual contact from the upper floor until the kitchen downstairs. This easy visual contact helps you understand the flat as a whole, and not just as the superposition of two different floors.

Given the surface of each floor, we understood that we had to organise the lower one as the main floor, which accommodates the entry, living room, dining room, kitchen, a room for children and a bathroom; while the upper floor is a more intimate place for the parents, with their bedroom, bathroom and a study room.

On the outer spaces, a folding ladder allows the lower terrace to gain room, leaving the top terrace as a space for occasional events. A shade on the top terrace offers shadow to all these spaces and, most important, closes the space giving a feeling of being somewhere between inside and outside.

The existing hydraulic floor tiles had been removed in earlier refurbishments and there were only enough pieces for half of the lower floor surface, but we were lucky enough, and we looked for such luck, that at the same time that we started the works, there was an other refurbishment in the same block where they were going to throw all their floor tiles away.

We picked those tiles and together with the existing ones in our apartment we checked the possibilities for different patterns on the lower floor. The final solution was to place the different tiles in stripes, despite the walls and partitions, so that we gained a feeling of continuity that helps you understand the floor plan as a continuous space.

On the lower floor, all the woodwork, both doors and windows, were preserved, maintaining the “spirit” of the Barcelona Eixample that this flat once had. Upstairs, where there were no elements worth preserving, both floor and windows were replaced by new items.

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Barcelona apartment by Bach Arquitectes appeared first on Dezeen.

Design Miami 2013: designer Simon Heijdens has created a series of hand-blown glass vessels that turn data from wind movement into projected patterns of light (+ slideshow + interview).

Heijdens’ Phare No.1-9 consists of nine suspended vessels that contain transparent liquid. A light source at the top of each vessel shines into the water and creates abstract patterns, which project onto the white walls and floor of the installation.

The project, commissioned by Champagne brand Perrier-Jouët and presented at Design Miami this week, is intended as a contemporary interpretation of the Art Nouveau movement.

Art Nouveau, which flourished from the 1890s to the First World War, is known for its florid lines but Heidjens said that its artists exploited the latest technological developments.

“They saw themselves as naturalists, making big lavish botanicals, as natural as possible,” he said. “But looking further underneath that skin, there is a really strong geometry and mathematics to their formal language and to the way the technology of their time was used in their work.”

Phare, which means lighthouse or beacon, takes data from outdoor sensors that monitor the wind and transforms it into a narrow beam of light that shines into the liquid within the vessels. When the light hits a photo-sensitive dye within the liquid, it produces delicate three-dimensional “drawings” in the vessels.

The dye gradually dissipates and becomes transparent again, changing the patterns that are projected around the room.

“It’s activated from above electronically and the dye is activated downwards through the volume of the water,” said Heijdens. “I find it interesting that you get a drawing between sculpture and graphic, because you can walk around it and see it from different angles. The dye is in flux and it dissolves in half a minute.”

Heijdens was reluctant to talk about the technology behind the piece, saying: “The conversation about technology is not one I really want to have because I think it’s not the interesting part of the project. I think the true value of people walking in here, without any baggage or any understanding, hindered by any kind of perception, is just the sudden wonder.”

Here’s an interview with Heijdens conducted at Design Miami yesterday:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us a little bit about the project.

Simon Heijdens: So there are nine glass containers that are filled with water in which I developed a technology which enables me to make a drawing in water; a 3D drawing. The round bottom of the glass containers filled with water gives a lens effect and projects the drawing into the space.

All of the pieces were commissioned by Perrier-Jouët. I was asked to look into their heritage of Art Nouveau, which is very strong. It wasn’t a movement that I’ve ever been particularly interested in but looking into Art Nouveau in a greater sense, and also how it’s set in its time, it’s kind of fascinating to see in the early 1900s there were massive things happening in industry, technology and the popularisation of the printed poster, photography, and the invention of cinema; basically the pillars of our concept in media.

I find it interesting in that case how technology is very strongly affecting what the artists and designers and architects of their time are doing. All the classic Art Nouveau posters, the specific type of colour area and vector lines are very defined by technology and I think that was the first connection I felt to my practice. My generation had the digital wave when I graduated, and suddenly there was this enormous amount of new materials and enormous, really sudden possibility to use the materials much more than 10 years before that.

I find it very interesting how that part of technology is affecting industry and I think that specifically for Art Nouveau, because looking at it objectively you see the very strong curve. They saw themselves as naturalists: big lavish botanicals, as natural as possible. But looking further underneath that skin, there is a really strong geometry and mathematics to their formal language and to the way the technology of their time was used in their work.

Marcus Fairs: How would you describe your work?

Simon Heijdens: My general practice is about countering the perpetual nature of architecture, the perpetual character of architecture that we live our lives in, increasingly in this perpetual manmade surrounding which is more and more designed to function day and night, with climate control and 24 hour lighting, also socially, designed to work with people across the world, the objects in space around us makes us more homogenous.

And also on a larger scale, how cities and high streets are designed more to look like each other and I suppose the general aim of my practice is to counter that and to use materials with a variable nature and a certain character and softness, to bring back the timelines of a certain space because when these spaces are soft enough to bury the imprints of their use, that gives you a much more sense of place.

Marcus Fairs: So tell me how it actually works. How do you draw in water with light?

Simon Heijdens: The dye inside the water has the ability to switch from being completely transparent to its reddish tint.

Marcus Fairs: So is it a photo-sensitive pigment?

Simon Heijdens: It’s activated from above electronically and the dye is activated downwards through the volume of the water. I suppose, cutting a long story short, I find it interesting that you get a drawing between sculpture and graphic, because you can walk around it and see it from different angles. The dye is in flux and it dissolves in half a minute.

Marcus Fairs: What triggers the dye to become that colour?

Simon Heijdens: I don’t think that’s a conversation that I’m interested in. I think it’s not the point, it’s not because it’s a secret but I think the true value of people walking in here, without any baggage or any understanding, hindered by any kind of perception, is just the sudden wonder. Like do you remember the first time you saw a Polaroid develop? I think the strongest thing I remember of that is the sheer magic and poetry of that. Therefore the conversation about technology is not one I really want to have because I think it’s not the interesting part of the project. The important thing with technology is what you do with it.

Marcus Fairs: But how does it work?

Simon Heijdens: You’ve seen how it works. I find it really important to not make that the basis of this story and the piece.

Marcus Fairs: I want to know how it works.

Simon Heijdens: I told you.

Marcus Fairs: You’re not going to tell me.

Simon Heijdens: We could have a three hour conversation about the science of wavelengths of light or we can speak about what you thought when you walked in there and what you felt like.

Marcus Fairs: Honestly, I want to know how it works. When I saw a Polaroid for the first time, I wanted to know how it worked. I think people will look at this and wonder how this works.

Simon Heijdens: I think in that nanosecond of seeing it and being really amazed and then starting to worry about how it works, even if it’s just half a second, I think that’s something to cherish, especially now because everything is explainable in life. Everything you walk up to you understand, you don’t really ask any question about it.

Marcus Fairs: I believe the opposite. If someone says to me something’s magical I’m like, bullshit, it’s not magical. How does it work?

Simon Heijdens: I’m not saying it’s magical, I’m interested in you seeing it or Mr A walking into it, without having read it or having a technological mindset from reading your article. I think its important to me that there is a carelessness about that.

Marcus Fairs: Okay. So it’s some kind of photo-sensitive dye and the light triggers that change?

Simon Heijdens: Yeah.

Marcus Fairs: Did you see that thing that Troika did in Kortrijk last year? They had this old barn or something and they had these lights shining up from the floor and the light curved in an arc. There was this brief moment of magic, when you went, f*ck, how did they make light bend like that?

Simon Heijdens: And did you ask that?

Marcus Fairs: There was a sign on the wall that told you. It explained how it was done, using Fresnel lenses to refract the light to create an illusion of curving light. The light didn’t really curve; that’s impossible. So there was the wonder of first seeing it and then there was the explanation to satisfy your curiosity.

Simon Heijdens: Right, I think there’s a structural difference, Troika are my best friends, but there’s a structural difference between what they aim to do with their practice and what I do. The way you are going to put this [interview] up is going to define someone’s expectations of the piece before seeing it.

Marcus Fairs: Yeah that’s my job, sorry. That’s what I do!

Simon Heijdens: Well the same for me. My job isn’t a scientist. I’m not like, hey guys, you’re going to see what I can do. I understand that you’re providing the shortcut.

Marcus Fairs: Yeah but it’s not a shortcut. This is bloody hard work! It’s not an easy interview but it all started a couple of days ago when I first saw it I asked how it worked and I was told that nobody knew. So I’ve got a bee in my bonnet. I want to know.

Simon Heijdens: That’s amazing though. Even if it’s just three days of just you with a bee in your bonnet, that’s an achievement on its own.

Marcus Fairs: Yeah, you got me interested.

PR person: Maybe it’s interesting to talk about the wind and the movement and how that triggers the drawings.

Marcus Fairs: Yeah, what triggers the drawings? Magic, right?

Simon Heijdens: A little bit. I don’t know if you know much about my work in general but like including fluctuating timelines from the exterior to reflect inside and to bring back a natural timeline. It’s also here but perhaps in a less apparent way in my lights in the project in Chicago that you published. That was the only other thing that you published of mine, Marcus.

Marcus Fairs: And this is going to be the last at this rate! Also, it’s sometimes very hard to publish this kind of work in a convincing way. The one in Chicago – the window thing – looked really good on screen. But often it requires video to get this kind of project across.

Simon Heijdens: You don’t think this looks really good?

Marcus Fairs: Yes. That’s why I’m here talking to you.

Simon Heijdens: Interesting though. The other project you published, you didn’t come and ask me about it…

Marcus Fairs: I didn’t write that story. But this is going to be the best interview of the week. So back to the project: what does it draw and why?

Simon Heijdens: The patterns of wind that are passing outside are defining the drawings that are moving from one container to the next. I’m kind of making not just individual elements but part of a larger space because this setting is not just a technology room. It’s about how it makes that step from existing on a millimetre scale and becomes projected towards the space as a whole through the lens.

Below is the press text about the project from Perrier-Jouët:

Phare No.1-9, the new light work from designer Simon Heijdens, commissioned by Perrier-Jouët House of Champagne, was today unveiled at Design Miami. Heijdens’ immersive piece creates a captivating experience that reveals the poetry of the natural world through an avant-garde narrative. Heijdens’ work blends art, craft, design and new techniques seamlessly, resulting in an exciting re-interpretation of what Art Nouveau means to the 21st Century.

Phare No. 1–9 is nine hand-blown glass vessels, part filled with transparent liquid, suspended in a pure white room. Light emanates from each ‘Phare’, referencing its namesake: a lighthouse. In a reflection of Perrier-Jouët’s own material essence the work explores water as a dimensional volume, and it becomes a translucent refracting medium for light. A constantly evolving story grows within the water and is illuminated to fully immerse the space in pattern that moves from one Phare to the next. The totally white environment thus becomes both a screen and a narrative that one can walk inside, allowing the experience of the piece from different perspectives.

With Phare No.1-9 Heijdens has found a completely new way of drawing and building up images. Just as Art Nouveau saw Jules Chéret introduce the printed poster, and Louis Lumière create moving pictures, Heijdens presents a new medium of expression that echoes the period’s temperament of aesthetic innovation. His work explores the concept of coincidence, to trace and reveal the hidden essence of the spaces and objects that surround us in everyday life. Phare No.1-9 delves to the core of Art Nouveau and its principles of a studio-based, crafted art-piece, and merges the organic with avant-garde technology. The installation breaks boundaries of how we experience the natural world, and opens up the static character of our structured surroundings.

“I am interested in how we relate to objects and the space around us,” says Heijdens, “I try to bring back a sense of nature and coincidence back into the homogeneity of the everyday. With Phare No. 1-9, I have worked with water for the first time, exploring its narrative qualities and variable character. It’s been a joy to interpret the brief from Perrier-Jouët, and I hope that with Phare No.1-9 I have captured a characteristic of water and light, revealing something that we couldn’t normally experience, in a totally new way.”

“We believe Phare No.1-9 by Simon Heijdens truly takes the Art Nouveau ethos into the 21st Century, and creates a remarkable experience unlike any other. The craftsmanship and vision of Simon, combined with his unique take on expressing the natural world, has resulted in an astounding work.” said Axelle de Buffévent, Style Director for Perrier-Jouët. “We are extremely proud to be part of Design Miami/ through this commission, and to have made a genuine contribution to the contemporary design world.”

This marks the second successive year that Perrier-Jouët has taken part in Design Miami/, both through commissioning original work, and as the exclusive champagne partner for the fair. The role as a patron for contemporary design began in 1902, when the champagne house worked with the significant French Art Nouveau artist Emile Gallé. He created the iconic anemone of its Belle Époque cuvée, still used today. Since then the house has commissioned many established and emerging designers as part of its continued artistic heritage.

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creates “3D drawings in water” appeared first on Dezeen.

G is for Frank Gehry in our seventh A-Zdvent calendar window. The American architect’s Guggenheim Museum in the Spanish city of Bilbao (pictured) famously sparked a trend for cities commissioning iconic buildings as catalysts for regeneration, while other high-profile projects include his Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the upcoming new headquarters for Facebook.

See more architecture by Frank Gehry »

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Frank Gehry appeared first on Dezeen.

News: architect Daniel Libeskind has unveiled plans to build an angular apartment block in Berlin that will feature a gleaming metallic facade.

Daniel Libeskind, whose previous Berlin projects include the Jewish Museum, designed the eight-storey building for a corner plot on Chausseestrasse, in the Mitte district of Berlin.

Set to complete in 2015, the building will accommodate shops at ground level and 73 residences on its upper storeys.

The facade will be clad using a specially developed stoneware tile with a reflective metallic coating, which the studio claims will be both self-cleaning and air-purifying.

Large asymmetric windows will be added to maximise natural light within the building and parking will be located underground.

A penthouse apartment at the front will feature a double-height living room, as well as a roof terrace looking out across the city.

Describing the building, Libeskind commented: “Even as my studio is often called upon to design skyscrapers these days, I continue to love to build homes, the basic unit of human life.”

Here’s a more detailed description from Studio Daniel Libeskind:

Daniel Libeskind returns to Berlin to build and apartment building in centre of city

Studio Daniel Libeskind has just unveiled the design for a residential building in Berlin that, upon completion in 2015, is expected to brighten the already emerging neighbourhood of Chausseestrasse. With large angular windows designed to catch maximum light, canted walls, and a metallic-­coated ceramic facade, the 107,000 sq. ft. (10,000 m2) Chausseestrasse 43 occupies the corner of a block in central Berlin. Says the architect: “Even as my studio is often called upon to design skyscrapers these days, I continue to love to build homes, the basic unit of human life.” In this case, Libeskind is adding a dash of brightness and transparency to a key spot in Berlin, one that also happens to be located directly opposite the headquarters of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service.

Daniel Libeskind’s challenge was to create 73 desirable one-­ to four-bedroom apartments on a more or less rectangular plot a little less than half an acre (16,000 sq. ft.), accommodating attractive retail on the ground floor, underground parking, and a common outdoor area. The architect achieved this and more. The dramatic coda is found at the top, where a penthouse apartment, perched on the prow of the building, embodies the ultimate in inside/outside urban living. Here, a double-­height living room is lined on one side by a sloping wall of obliquely shaped windows, which leads out to a patio overlooking Berlin. A floating stairway ascends to an open-plan living area, bedrooms are tucked into the rear, and the ceiling sweeps up to a height of 21 feet.

The facade cladding is an innovative three­‐dimensional stoneware tile that Libeskind designed with the Italian company Casalgrande Padana. The geometric ceramic panels not only create an expressive metallic pattern, but they possess surprising sustainable properties such as air purification and they are self-­cleaning.

This cathedral for modern living occupies a piece of land where the Wulffersche iron factory once operated before being expropriated from its Jewish owners during World War II.

The Berlin-­based real estate developer, MINERVA, is handling the technical and economic implementation of Chausseestrasse 43 in partnership with the Berlin-based property developer, econcept. The 20­-year-old MINERVA specialises in real estate development for commercial and residential projects, such as the contemporary Alexander Parkside apartment and hotel complex that recently opened in Berlin. Econcept specialises in the construction of new residential buildings, such as the Palais KolleBelle, a new residential complex in Berlin inspired by the architecture of 19th-­century Paris.

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