Hasta La Ideas

French studio Dank Architectes wanted to make this minimalist apartment they designed near Lyon look “more alive” in the photographs, so they staged scenes depicting the days before and after a messy party.

Steven Guigoz of Dank Architectes told Dezeen they came up with the idea after paying the new owners a visit and finding the place in complete disarray. “It was a complete mess, with empty bottles of Champagne on the table and wrapping paper all over the floor,” he said.

“It was a nice surprise because when you manage a construction you’re always trying to keep the building site as clean as possible until you deliver the project,” he continued.

The event prompted the architects to recreate the situation for a photoshoot. “Our idea was to try to make the architectural photos more alive by making the place look a little messier, contrasting with the minimalist aspects of the architecture we designed,” said Guigoz.

“In our mind it could be the day after a birthday party or New Year’s Eve, but it doesn’t really matter. We want people to ask themselves what happened, just like drunk people waking up and trying to remember what they did the night before,” he added.

Named Project Amou, the renovated two-storey apartment is home to a couple and their two children in a residential neighbourhood just outside the city.

The architects removed the old partitions to create an open-plan living area on the ground floor and relocated one of the bedrooms to the first floor.

A double-height living and dining room sits alongside a row of glass doors that open the interior out to the garden.

A new grey-painted volume separates the entrance from a television room. A laundry room and closet are contained within it, while bookshelves and a study area are built into its external walls.

The original staircase is replaced with a new metal structure that matches the family dining table.

Photography is by Frenchie Cristogatin.

Here’s a project description from Dank Architectes:

Project Amou

French architects Dank have renovated a 160 square meters garden flat in a residential neighbourhood close to Lyon to make it an open-plan apartment.

The plans were designed for a couple with two children who wanted a loft conversion type with efficient use of space. The concept was to open up the ground floor by taking down the existing partitions wall and placing the bedrooms on the upper floor.

On the ground floor the addition of a big grey structure in the middle divides the entrance at one end from a living room area on the other hand. This large grey piece of furniture then structure and give function to the remaining space: a wall of storage near the entrance a laundry and store room in the middle and a library in the more intimate space which is the living room.

The dining room and the kitchen were placed close to the existing French windows facing the city skyline in a double height volume.

The staircase was made from industrial beam (UPM), the step are made out of oak wood and varnished on the spot. The design of the dining table was made to echo the ironwork of the staircase so it doesn’t look like usual furniture but becomes part of the apartment and “structures” the open-plan ground floor.

The materials are polyurethane screed for the floor; MDF wood panel and laminated wood for the furniture; corian for the kitchen work plans, assembled parquet for the upper floor and the living room.

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before and after a party appeared first on Dezeen.

Angular zinc-clad volumes fold around a central courtyard and stretch out towards ocean views at this house designed by Australian architect John Wardle on the scenic Great Ocean Road in Victoria (+ movie).

Named Fairhaven Beach House, the three-storey residence is perched on the top of a hill. John Wardle Architects laid out the building with an uneven U-shaped plan to create a wall of windows facing the water and an east-facing courtyard that is protected from coastal winds.

The route from the entrance to a large living room was intended as a dramatic progression through the building, passing by a cantilevered study and through a pivoting asymmetric door.

“It is a dynamic, fluid journey through the house from arrival to the ocean view,” said the architects, whose past projects include a house on a working sheep farm in Tasmania.

“It is choreographed to increase anticipation before reaching the main living space,” they added.

A large kitchen and dining room is positioned on one side and projects even further towards the coastline, plus a secluded balcony provides an opportunity to dine outdoors.

“The house is carefully zoned to allow for privacy and communal gathering,” said the architects.

While the exterior of the house is clad with grey zinc panels to blend in with the tones of the bush landscape, the interior features timber surfaces across every wall, floor and ceiling.

Two bedrooms are located on the ground floor and a wooden staircase leads up to a third on the upper storey.

A garage, wine cellar and informal living room are tucked away in the basement.

Fairhaven Beach House topped the residential category at the Australian National Architecture Awards earlier this month. Judges described it as “a masterful control of form and space, scale, material and detail”.

Photography is by Trevor Mein. Movie is by Maximilian Mein.

Here’s more information from John Wardle Architects:

Fairhaven Residence

The Fairhaven Beach House is located on top of the ridgeline above the Great Ocean Road on the Victorian coastline. The site enjoys panoramic views over the southern ocean and surf beach below.

The proportions, orientation and dimensions of windows have been tailored to particular views and to reveal internal spaces. The design process has been one akin to scenography, bringing together sensory and spatial experiences to frame the theatre of inhabitation within.

This beach house coils and steps around a protected central courtyard, which creates an outdoor space sheltered from the harsh prevailing winds. The living area doors and an oversized sliding kitchen window open up and integrate the courtyard with the house during fine weather.

It is a dynamic, fluid journey through the house from arrival to the ocean view; it is choreographed to increase anticipation before reaching the main living space.

As you step beneath a cantilevered study into a dramatic vertical entry space, you become acutely aware of a number of twists and folds along its length that make the transformation into the horizontal living space. Its main window aperture matches the cinematic proportions of the ocean view.

The house is carefully zoned to allow for privacy and communal gathering. The upper level houses a suite of private rooms including a main bedroom, ensuite, study and viewing terrace. The entry level contains a pair of bedrooms and bathroom. The main living and dining space is where the occupants come together. A garage, laundry and informal living space are hidden from view in a basement level.

Materially the house is clad in a green-grey zinc cladding, for both its longevity and natural colouring that merges with the scrub and tea tree landscape. In contrast, the interior of the house is completely lined in timber (floors, walls, cabinetry and ceilings) to form an enclosure for living that its inhabitants become completely immersed within. The eye is then always drawn back to the outlook beyond.

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stretches out towards the ocean appeared first on Dezeen.

Movie: in our final exclusive interview from Inside Festival, Emre Açar of Alatas Architecture & Consulting explains how the Turkish studio converted a dark, narrow nineteenth-century house in Istanbul into a light office space.

Dardanel Administration Building by Alatas Architecture & Consulting, which won the creative re-use category at last month’s Inside Festival, provides office space for Turkish tinned tuna company Dardanel‘s 25-person administrative team.

The building required significant structural reinforcement to make it earthquake-resistant, but Açar says the key to the success of the project was getting enough daylight inside it.

“The [original] windows were so small and the central parts [of the building] were completely dark because of these small windows,” he explains. “We needed to find some solutions to create lighter spaces.”

Alatas Architecture & Consulting chose to preserve the nineteenth-century wooden front of the house, but added a second set of glass doors to the entrance to allow light into the building while keeping the elements out.

“The main entrance doors, these historical wooden doors, are always open,” Açar says. “We have [added] two double glass doors to give us some connection from [to outside to] the interior .”

The back of the building was altered much more dramatically, with the addition of floor-to-ceiling windows and a glass-roofed extension, which houses the main meeting room. Glass panels in the floor of this room in turn allow daylight to pass into the server room below.

“We made the top part of the building completely from glass,” Açar says. “With this glass roof we tried to provide lighter spaces inside.”

The architects also added a completely new spiral staircase and elevator shaft made of glass through the middle of the building, which dissipates light from a skylight above it.

To make the building feel less narrow, Alatas Architecture & Consulting added mirrors to the bright white interior walls.

“The building’s width is just 5 metres,” Açar says. “It was like a tunnel. We wanted to make [the building seem] like it continues on the other side, so we used reflective materials. The workers feel like they are in a bigger building.”

This movie was filmed at Inside Festival 2013, which took place at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 2 to 4 October. The next Inside Festival will take place at the same venue from 1 to 3 October 2014. Award entries are open February to June 2014.

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office for Turkish tinned tuna company appeared first on Dezeen.

Plants could be genetically engineered to produce textiles at the same time as food, according to this synthetic biology project by designer and researcher Carole Collet.

“Would you eat a vitamin-rich black strawberry from a plant that has also produced your little black dress?” questioned Collet, whose Biolace concept responds to the need to produce enough food and textiles for the world’s rapidly expanding population by proposing that the DNA of plants could be adapted so they produce synthetically-enhanced foods and lace-like fabrics grow from their roots.

“Biolace proposes to use synthetic biology as an engineering technology to reprogram plants into multi-purpose factories,” explained Collet, who is a full-time academic and deputy director of the Textile Futures Research Centre at Central Saint Martins College in London.

“Plants become living machines, simply needing sun and water to be operational. In such a scenario, we would harvest fruits and fabrics at the same time from the same plants.”

Collet believes that by 2050 advances in biological technologies could enable the “hyper-engineered” plants to be grown in huge greenhouses with their roots embedded in a mineral nutrient solution.

The project proposes four genetically-engineered plants including a tomato plant with high levels of a nutrient called lycopene that could help improve the skin’s resistance to sunburn and protein-rich edible lace growing from its roots, and a basil plant that could produce anti-viral medicines as well as perfumed lace for use in decorative fashion applications.

A strawberry bush with black lace growing from its roots would yield black strawberries enriched with enhanced levels of vitamin C and antioxidants, while a spinach plant could produce micro biological sensors for use in electronics at the same time as providing a multi-mineral food supplement.

“The aim of this project is to bring to light the potential of emerging living technologies and to questions the pros and cons of such extreme genetic engineering,” said Collet. “Could biological engineering promote a new kind of sustainable textile manufacturing, less reliant on chemicals and less energy-hungry than our current models of production?”

The project is presented alongside floor tiles made of snail poo plus over 50 other ideas for combining biology with art, architecture and design presented at an exhibition called Biodesign at The New Institute in Rotterdam, which continues until 5 January 2014.

Photography is by the designer and the film is by Immatters.

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grow lace amongst their roots appeared first on Dezeen.

These hyper-realistic renderings by designer Michael Samoriz depict a cafe proposed for Ukraine with wooden beams criss-crossing over its ceiling.

Ukraine designer Michael Samoriz, co-founder of Umbra Design, created the 3D visualisations to show his design for the Bristol2 cafe planned for the city of Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine.

The designer modelled the interior with black walls that will be textured using a cement-based covering called Microcemento, which creates continuous surfaces without joints and grooves.

European birch beams will intersect at different angles across the ceiling of the 110-square-metre space, contrasting with the black walls. “We wanted to make the project expressive, fresh and modern, using natural materials and finishes,” said Samoriz.

A wooden dining surface at bar height will be cantilevered from a central concrete pillar, while large conical lampshades will hang over individual square tables.

At one end of the cafe, angled lamps will hang from a horizontal I beam on the wall, directing light onto circular black tables surrounded by stools.

Wine racks will store bottles above the bar and doorways, while wooden toilet cubicles stamped with a “fragile” motif like a packing crate will sit at the rear of the store.

The project is due for completion in summer 2014.

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in Ukraine appeared first on Dezeen.