Chilean architect Ricardo Torrejón wanted to integrate the garden into this concrete house in Santiago, so he added huge windows at the back and glazed recesses along the front and sides (+ slideshow).
Ricardo Torrejón had originally planned to renovate an existing house on the site, but instead decided to demolish it and start again so that he could direct more views towards a large garden at the rear.
“Despite being uninhabited for almost 20 years, the backyard was luckily well preserved and felt like a forgotten park,” said the architect. “The relationship to the garden, particularly to the existing trees, should be in the foreground.”
The front and sides of the two-storey house are made up of flat concrete surfaces, only interrupted by the slit-like openings that create tiny semi-enclosed courtyards around the edges of the interior.
At the back, the concrete framework is infilled with large glazing panels that provide floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden and swimming pool.
“We thought that architecture should not compete with nature – on the contrary it should enhance its presence, colours and lights,” said Torrejón.
“Architecturally we had to remain neutral and silent in both material and colour in order to let nature play its part,” he added.
The house’s entrance is contained within one of the glazed openings and leads into an open-plan living space that occupies the entire floor.
Two separate doors offer a route out to the garden, while a staircase ascending to the bedrooms is contained at the centre of the plan.
This house is set on a 1,060 square metre site in the last flat urban area of eastern Santiago before the Andes begin. The plot is 15m wide by 67m length with an existing garden with mature 40 year old trees.
The original house, built back in the 70’s, took no particular advantage of the garden. Despite being uninhabited for almost 20 years the backyard was luckily well preserved and felt like a forgotten park. Instead of remodelling, we decided to build a house from scratch. The relationship to the garden, particularly to the existing trees, should be in the foreground.
We thought that architecture should not compete with nature; on the contrary, it should enhance its presence, colours and lights. Architecturally we had to remain neutral and silent in both material and colour in order to let nature play its part.
The house is a solid monolithic concrete block opened up through carvings instead of windows and openings. Externally, each carving becomes a place itself, some fitting just a single person, others more.
Internally, they are a sort of glazed prisms letting light in and natural ventilation and allowing frontal and diagonal views as well as an internal see-through between contiguous rooms.
The most direct result of this carving operation is that the garden is present everywhere in the house. Even in rooms on the opposite side of the house it is possible to have a glimpse of it.
The pieces in this chess set by American designer Stefan Gougherty are formed from voids drilled into transparent acrylic blocks (+ slideshow).
Pieces in Gougherty‘s Negative Space Chess Set are made from transparent acrylic cubes with different negative spaces cut into them. The voids are then painted. “After researching various methods of fabricating something clear,” Gougherty told Dezeen, “I realised that drilling cavities inside acrylic blocks using a milling machine would produce a new expression, especially when exaggerated with paint.”
From left to right: pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen, king
The central voids are shaped to look like paired-down versions of traditional chessmen. “The challenge was [to translate] the classic chess pieces we are familiar with into distilled geometric cousins,” said Gougherty.
Each shape refers to the way the piece moves around the board. For example, the knight is L-shaped to indicate that it can move two squares in one direction and one in another. “Before this project I knew very little about chess,” Gougherty revealed. “It was fascinating to learn how the game evolved and why the pieces are styled the way they are.”
The bishop is represented as an angled line because it travels across the board diagonally. Other pieces are simplified versions of their standard counterparts.
The chessmen can be strung together using the centre holes and cube shapes allow the pieces to stack for storage. The sets were commissioned by American interiors firm Geremia Design and come in either yellow, white or red with black.
The folded concrete walls of this lakeside visitor centre in China‘s Anhui Province were designed by architects Archiplein to mimic the uneven surfaces of the surrounding mountains (+ slideshow).
The two-storey building sits at the base of Jiǔhuá Shān, one of the five Sacred Mountains of China, and provides a restaurant and rest stop for the many pilgrims that visit the landmark each year.
Architects Feng Yang, Leroux Marlène and Jacquier Francis of Archiplein wanted to design a building that merges with the landscape, like in traditional Chinese landscape paintings.
“In this kind of painting, the building and the nature are not two separated systems stuck together; they are represented as an integrated whole where the architecture is not the main focusing point of the composition,” they explained.
The building is constructed from concrete, which was formed against wooden boards to give a rough texture to the exterior surfaces.
The walls zigzag in and out on both levels, creating a series of facets along the lakeside facade.
“The strategy is to consider the building as the continuity of the existing topography so as to reduce its impact on the land,” said the architects. “The building is bended by following the natural movement and defines a set of different faces that minimises its size.”
Dozens of square windows are scattered across the elevations and matching skylights dot the rooftops.
An internal ramp connects the two floors inside the building, which both contain large dining areas filled with tables and chairs.
The architects have also added a shallow pool of water with steps leading down to its surface.
The project is located in Anhui province, in one of the five sacred Taoist mountains of China.
To define the new relation between this building and the surrounding nature, the project has been inspired by the typical Chinese painting.
In this kind of painting, the building and the nature are not two separated systems stuck together, they are represented as an integrated whole where the architecture is not the main focusing point of the composition.
It reproduces in a way the natural form and follows the general movement of the landscape.
For this specific situation we develop this philosophy of vanishing. The strategy is to consider the building as the continuity of the existing topography so as to reduce its impact on the land.
The building is bended by following the natural movement and defines as set of different faces that minimises its size.
Dutch Design Week 2013: Amsterdam designer Pieke Bergmans developed a technique similar to glass blowing to create these plastic lighting installations (+ slideshow).
Pieke Bergmans experimented with heating and rapidly inflating the PVC plastic so the final form is partly left open to chance.
“I don’t like to design as a designer and be very precise about how things should look,” Bergmans told Dezeen. “I prefer that shapes grow into their natural environment, so the only thing I decide is to add more or less air or maybe a few colours, time or material.”
One group of objects have been extruded into twisting, rippled pipes with a light bulb illuminating them from within.
Another series is made by blowing air into the plastic until it stretches into a delicate, translucent tube at one end.
Bergmans explained that the collection is called VAPOR because “the lighting objects fade away into nothing, like a gas that seems to dissolve.”
VAPOR was presented in an old pump house in Eindhoven as part of Dutch Design Week, with the first series displayed nestled amongst the pipes and the billowing second series suspended in the central double-height space.
Here’s a brief project description from Pieke Bergmans:
Vapor
This time Bergmans did not blow glass but plastic instead! As usual she has been exploring new techniques and it resulted again in a stunning body of work. Something that we have never seen. Six meters high, fragile mystical lighting-objects, hanging down from the ceiling. A translucent and solid body that fades away to almost no substance. Illuminated with light.
VAPOR refers to a liquid or solid state where the same substance at a high temperature turns into a gas phase. It’s beautiful, magical and seems almost from a different planet. Either angles or ghosts, I am not sure, but this time for sure they exist. They are real and can be touched.
Name: VAPOR Designer: Pieke Bergmans Year: 2013 Edition: Installation of 6 objects – Unique objects Material: PVC, electric bulb
Opinion: in his latest Opinion column, Sam Jacob argues that objects tell us more about ourselves than literature or imagery and sets out his manifesto for “a culture of design informed by archeology and anthropology”.
My last column talked about new stuff, about how digital culture is changing our relationship to objects. Now, I’d like to think about old stuff. I’d like to do this as a way of forming a kind of manifesto for understanding objects, whether they might be new or old. A manifesto, in other words, for our relationship with objects – a relationship of very long standing that goes back to the very origins of humanity.
We have a longer relationship with objects than any other cultural form. Things emerged before language and before image making. This fact – along with their propensity to survive in the archaeological record – means we could convincingly argue that the history of human culture is written not in text but in objects.
That objects are themselves a form of language is suggested by the idea that language developed out of the kind of complex, sequential, abstract thinking that object-making required. Design, in other words, preceded and enabled the development of language. We could – and should – think of the record of things as a central plank of the library of human experience that only later includes images and writing. Things, in other words, are a form of literature too.
Like literature, objects are containers of human experience. They are embodiments of thought and knowledge made into material form. We might not know, for example, what Stonehenge was used for, but we can trace the outlines of the intelligence that brought it into the world. Its substance and arrangement are a record of the technologies necessary to build it, the organisation of a society necessary to implement it and the imaginative capability needed to conceive it.
Objects occur at the intersection of spheres of knowledge: at the overlap between science, technology, culture and desire. Even the most mundane of objects acts as a roll call of forms of knowledge and intelligence necessary for it to come into the world – even (or especially) the novelty section of the Argos catalogue talks of mining, processing, transportation, engineering and economics, as well as desire and imagination. Each contributes to the possibility of that particular thing being in the world.
It was this kind of imaginative and intellectual capability emerging in early human culture that brought objects into the world for the very first time. The stuff formed by cosmology, geology and biology became, in the hands of someone, somewhere, the first primitive thing. As this first object came into existence so did a new kind of humanity.
When, say, a lump of stone was struck by another to create a sharper edge, it was also an act that projected our imagination into the world. The newly formed edge was an abstract idea materially formed. Things, in other words, are also concepts.
Once formed, that very same stone tool amplified the ways in which we could act. Even in its most primitive form, design gave us the ability to extend our own body’s reach into the world by allowing us to cut in ways our own hands couldn’t. At the other end of the technological spectrum, philosopher of communication theory Marshall McLuhan described electronic communications as extending our nervous systems around the globe (and now, even beyond the edge of the solar system). Design produces things that act as bridges and interfaces between our human state and the environment around us.
Once born into the world, objects helped us transform our natural environment. They began a process that shaped nature into synthetic human habitats. Cutting stone, wood or flesh was the first step that eventually created the synthetic worlds of Tokyo, London, Munich, Paris and so on (and, of course, the equally synthetic places that are preserved as a form of nature: Yosemite, the Lake District, Antarctica even: places that are now just as defined by ideology, law and politics as any city).
The world after objects was no longer a given quantity but something constructed. Design – even the design of the smallest of things – is the act of constructing new worlds.
Our relationship with objects might be even more profoundly linked. Just as we make things, things also make us. A human with a stone tool is an entirely different creature to one without – or rather the human capable of conceiving of an object is an entirely different proposition. The act of designing and making is a two-way street. Intention might shape the way we make something, but once made the made-thing acts on us too. The moment the first transformation of rock to object occurred, the possibilities of being human also changed. If design precipitated language, perhaps it brought something else into the world too. Perhaps objects make us human.
The history of humans and things, intertwined as completely as it is, suggests definitions of design which I’ll set out here:
We’ve come a long way since the first object. The sheer quantity of stuff that now surrounds us is overwhelming. Contemporary material culture seems often to be shallow, marked by excessive consumption, over-infused by marketing, inauthentic and exploitative.
Yet these objects and the design cultures that create them are still part of a continuous culture that spirals back into pre history. Judgements of value – monetary, aesthetic, taste or whatever – are only one way of viewing design. In many ways, these kinds of judgements only serve to narrow the definition of design as a fundamental human activity.
Instead we should argue for a culture of design informed by archeology and anthropology, one that recognises its embedded intelligence, its philosophical and radically propositional nature. Even – or perhaps especially – when it’s something as seemingly debased as a Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza.
Vertical yellow and grey stripes decorate the exterior of this family house in Mexico by León firm tactic-a (+ slideshow).
Located in the city of Lagos De Moreno, the two-storey residence was designed by tactic-a to make the most of natural light while also maintaining privacy for the clients and their two daughters.
An L-shaped plan frames a private garden in the south-east corner of the site. The architects have added a row of south-facing windows behind, which open the space out to a double-height living and dining room at the centre of the house.
A sawtooth roof creates additional windows facing eastward, bringing morning light into the top floor and down into the living room.
Other windows are partially concealed behind the facade, creating sets of thin apertures that are reminiscent of barcodes.
“The north facade is blind and windows on the west facade are ending with full transparency into the garden in search of the best sunlight and thermal conditions,” said the architects.
A staircase with thick wooden treads ascends from the living room to the first floor, which has the master bedroom at one end and the shared children’s bedroom at the other.
The master bedroom also leads out to a roof terrace with a pebbled surface.
A garage forms the south-west corner of the house and features wooden doors that match up to a wooden picket fence that extends around the back garden.
Photography is by Diego Torres + Gerardo Dueñas.
Here’s a project description from the architects:
Huit House
The location of the house in Lagos De Moreno, firstly induces to develop a typology related to its historical condition (north and east facades are open to the outside, trying to get close to walls and colony’s buildings scale) in contrast, the facades of west and south playfully try contemporary living typologies currently undergoing an intense process of change and revision, in this case is peculiarly attractive by the degree of collaboration that occurred with the clients.
While this family is formed by four members, only two rooms were built, one for parents and another (with multiple possibilities of customisation) for their two daughters in order to encourage their negotiation and socialisation skills. In the house there’s also a large social space, a home office where the couple could work and a media room that can also be room for guests.
This program is materialised by an ‘L’ shaped block. The upper level has a light covering, divided into three double sections light oriented triangles pointing eastward. The north facade is blind and windows on the west facade are ending with full transparency into the garden in search of the best sunlight and thermal conditions (south).
A system ‘ladder-bridge-lamp’ located in the heart of the house acts as a filter between activities: work, socialising and cooking. The upper level that contains the two rooms on each extremes of the house allows a double height for the home office and the socialising space.
I Have a Lifestyle included Fabio Novembre‘s interpretation of a man’s wardrobe, with items from the autumn 2013 Tommy Hilfiger Tailored campaign displayed alongside items including a champagne bottle, headphones and a bicycle to create a men’s lifestyle kit.
The kit of parts was split into sections, with a mannequin and small accessories on one side, clothing and larger accessories in the centre, then sports equipment at the other end.
“The final result was a still-life composite of the essential items a man should have in his wardrobe inspired by Tommy Hilfiger’s quintessentially all-American aesthetic,” said Novembre.
Pieces were held in place by interlocking metal tubes and the whole installation was painted blue.
The display was installed at La Rinascente in Rome in September, before it was moved to the Milan store for October.
Fabio Novembre is pleased to announce a collaboration with Tommy Hilfiger for its Fall 2013 Tommy Hilfiger Tailored campaign to create an artistic window display. The unique installation will be revealed in the windows of La Rinascente in Rome from 10 to 23 September 2013, and then in La Rinascente in Milan from 8 to 14 October.
Titled “I Have a Lifestyle”, the installation is Novembre’s creative interpretation of a man’s wardrobe, incorporating pieces from the Tommy Hilfiger Tailored collection. The piece features metal tubing with interlocking pipes running throughout, each coated with navy blue nitro and acrylic paint.
An expression of men’s lifestyle, the final result is a still-life composite of the essential items a man should have in his wardrobe inspired by Tommy Hilfiger’s quintessentially all-American aesthetic. Novembre’s “I Have a Lifestyle” installation will appear in the windows of La Rinascente, Italy’s most renowned department store, in both Rome and Milan.
This furniture collection by designer Silva Lovasová is based on tiny toy products that have been 3D-scanned and enlarged to full scale.
Silva Lovasová scanned dolls’ house furniture and other products, including a miniature tea set and a plastic peanut, and used digital software to expand the resulting 3D models to a functional size.
The smaller items were then moulded in porcelain, while the peanut and lamp were made from epoxy tooling board and an armchair and sideboard were CNC-milled from extruded polystyrene.
Inaccuracies and deformations inherent in the original products are retained and the marks made by the digital manufacturing tools accentuate the imperfect finish that these processes produce.
“The concept of the 1:1 collection was to work with digital technologies in such a manner that their natural character and options are admitted,” Lovasová explained.
The 1:1 collection was Silva Lovasová’s graduation project from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Silva Lovasová – 1:1 Diploma project, May 2013 Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava, Slovakia Art Design Studio of Professor František Burian
In my diploma project I am concerned with the issue of digital technologies from designer’s – author’s point of view. These technologies are not only a way to ease one’s work, but in many cases they become an inspiration itself. The concept of the 1:1 collection was to work with digital technologies in such a manner that their natural character and options are admitted. To create an exact replica of miniature furniture in a human scale would not be possible without 3d scanner and CNC tools.
Mini furniture found in various doll houses is inspired by real elements of an adult world. However, deformations and disproportions often occur in the miniature. By bringing back the miniature furniture to a human scale the circle seems to enclose. When looking closer at the proportions and details of the furniture it becomes obvious that the forms created are completely new. New aesthetics is invented by copying found objects.
The collection 1:1 consists of objects of different materials. Through the smallest ones done in porcelain, bigger ones in epoxy tooling material and the biggest ones in extruded polystyrene. When creating the objects I deliberately kept the marks left after technological processes which objects had to undergo in order to be finished. I worked roughly. I did not care about the perfect manufacturing. In fact imperfect manufacturing is a way similar to how the miniature models are originally created. On a surface of enlarged objects one can notice visible signs of milling operation (these vary based on material used and its size), division lines, glued joints. This imperfect attitude is in contrast to digital technologies which are characterized by and valued for their perfection. Conjunction of CNC tools with handmade work is a natural process in my work.
Originated objects of the 1:1 collection are not cosmetized enlargements of bizzare miniatures. They are imperfect products created by the use of very accurate tools. They are classic components of furniture made of nonclassical materials. They are new forms created by copying those which already exist.
Industrial design firm Dyson has unveiled a cordless vacuum cleaner for hard floors that sucks up dirt and wipes the surface at the same time.
The Dyson Hard combines a suction nozzle for dust and small particles with a wet wipe for mopping up spills, so hoovering and wiping the floor can be done in one round.
The shell of the machine is made from the same material used for riot shields and the wand is lightweight aluminium.
Powered by a lithium-ion battery, the vacuum runs for 15 minutes before it needs recharging. There’s also a boost setting that lasts for six minutes.
The wand can be removed when hoovering tight spaces or tidying up the car. Wipes for the device can be changed suit to different floor surfaces.
Read on for more information from Dyson:
Hard floors just got easier. Dyson’s latest cordless technology vacuums dirt and wipes grime – in one action.
Hard floor cleaning is inefficient. First you vacuum, and then you clean the floors again to remove grime. Engineered for hard floor cleaning, the Dyson Hard vacuum cleaner combines powerful suction with a wet wipe to remove dust and grime in one action. A double-edge cleaner head sucks up dirt and debris with each stroke, leaving the wipe to remove grime.
Busy lifestyles mean that people don’t have time to clean floors twice. Steam cleaning has its own problems, bound to a cord, waiting for steam. All in all, time consuming and inefficient.
James Dyson: “Good technology should make everyday tasks quicker and easier. Dyson’s high-speed motor technology has enabled Dyson engineers to develop a cordless machine capable of vacuuming dirt and wiping away grime simultaneously. One machine doing two jobs, in one action.”
DC56’s double edged cleaner head can be removed, adding a crevice and combination tool for up-top, down below, hard-to-reach and in-between spaces. Remove the wand for cleaning cars and worktops.
Dyson digital motor
Powered by the Dyson digital motor V2, which is one third of the size of conventional motors, yet spins at 104,000rpm. This power dense motor allows the Dyson Hard vacuum cleaner to be compact and light with high performance.
Root Cyclone technology
Dyson’s patented Root Cyclone technology has been concentrated, spinning dust and dirt out of the air using centrifugal force.
Fade-free battery
A lithium-ion battery delivers 15 minutes of fade free performance. For stubborn dirt, there is a boost setting for 6 minutes of high intensity cleaning.
Materials
Dyson engineers used materials that would stand up to tough abuse in real home environments. The machine’s body is made from ABS Polycarbonate – the same material found in riot shields. Dyson engineers designed a reinforced wand, made from aluminium, to allow for extra push force in picking up grime.
Wipes
Dyson engineers worked with scientists to develop wipes for the machine. Two different wipes are available with DC56 – Hard floor and Wood nourishing. Each wipe is designed for different hard floor surfaces, and different tasks. The machine is also compatible with industry standard sized wipes found in most stores.
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