Hasta La Ideas

This wooden holiday house by Swedish studio Strömma Projekt Max Holst Arkitektkontor is perched on the edge of a gorge in Vindö, an island on the Stockholm archipelago (+ slideshow).

Strömma Projekt Max Holst Arkitektkontor designed the single-storey house on a series of black concrete plinths, elevating it above the gorge so that surrounding trees appear at eye level from the windows.

The dark timber exterior is surrounded by a sheltered deck, leading into a combined kitchen, living and dining room, while two children’s bedrooms are connected to a playroom and sit adjacent to a bathroom and sauna.

Large windows offer views out into the woodland from all four sides of the house, while wooden ceiling beams are left exposed beneath the gabled rooftops.

Timber lines the walls, ceilings and floors throughout the house, complemented by wooden furniture and kitchen units.

“The material palette is simple and essentially rooted in local building traditions,” said the architects.

Wooden steps lead down to an exposed deck beneath the main house, then onwards to a small shed stacked with firewood at the end of a narrow walkway.

Other holiday homes we’ve featured include a cluster of holiday apartments around terraces connected by small alleys, a tiny wooden cabin containing a sauna and bedroom and a riverside house raised on tree trunks to prevent flooding.

See more holiday homes »
See more Swedish architecture and design »

Photography is by Hannes Söderlund.

Here’s some information from the architects:

Holiday house Vindö

The site is located on Vindö, an island in the Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. Upon first glance the site appears a fairly typical archipelago plot with granite outcrops, pine trees and blueberry bushes but soon reveals it’s unusual dramatic topography presenting an exciting opportunity to the architect Max Holst as well as for the developer Strömma Projekt.

The building stands on a ridge bordering a 10 m deep drop into a gorge. In which a number of magnificent trees, mostly pine but also some hardwood grow. On the sheltered terrace and in the house one finds the tops of these trees at eye level.

The orientation of the ridge dictates the building’s form and the spatial subdivisions and the spatial emphasis is on the large living, dining and kitchen space, which leads onto to a large sheltered terrace towards south/east.

Children’s bedrooms are of a modest scale with a master bedroom located to the east. As a buffer between the living and sleeping areas, a bathroom and is located.

The hallway acts as a spacious playroom to the neighbouring the children’s rooms. The material palette is simple and essentially rooted in local building traditions.

Tectonically, the house is composed on black concrete plinths and exposed timber rafters highlight the repetition of a 120mm module on which the construction is based. The only setback from this strict systematisation occurs in the bathroom where the room is simply not suited for these measurements.

Room dimensions fell easily into place, becoming an exercise in creating dynamic spaces with a constant connection to the sky and surrounding forest, all within this framework.

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Max Holst Arkitektkontor appeared first on Dezeen.

Corten steel columns alternate with floor-to-ceiling glass to bring stripes of light and shadow into this funeral home outside Barcelona by Spanish firm Batlle i Riog Arquitectes (+ slideshow).

Located west of the city in the town of Sant Joan Despí, the stark concrete building nestles against a hillside and was designed by Batlle i Riog Arquitectes with a sloping grass roof that appears as an extension of the landscape.

At the front of the building, this roof pitches back up again to frame a long and narrow facade, where columns are arranged in two rows with a glazed perpendicular entrance in between.

“The steel pillars generate a light gradient, establishing visual filters and protecting the interior from the direct sunlight,” explained the architects.

The interior is divided into two sections that separate ceremonial activities from preparation areas. At the front, a succession of spaces lead guests from a spacious reception area into the main auditorium, then out via a private courtyard.

Each of these spaces features an assortment of raw materials that include stone floors, concrete ceilings and timber wall panels, as well as the vertical Corten elements.

Small plant-filled courtyards also intersperse the interiors and are surrounded by glazing to allow them to function as lightwells.

“The materiality generated by the assortment of exposed structural element textures together with the natural light qualify and determine the atmospheres of each space, accompanying the visitors’ mourning at every turn,” added the architects.

The rear spaces contain preparation areas where coffins can be housed before funerals take place.

Other funeral homes featured on Dezeen include a stone chapel with a sharply pointed gable in Germany and a whitewashed hall with a copper roof in Finland. See more memorial architecture »

Photography is by Jordi Surroca.

Here’s a project description from Batlle i Riog Arquitectes:

New Funeral Home in Sant Joan Despí

The building integration on site parts from the adaptation to the existing topography, with a set of pitched roofs on the terrain. The vegetation treatment of part of these roofs pretends to fade with the adjacent green slopes and improve the vision of the ensemble from the perimeter streets, on a higher level. With this strategy, in addition, the apparent building volume is reduced, lowering the vision of the construction and increasing the green surfaces.

The floor plan of the building, lays out an organisation in two areas clearly differentiated, by a public area composed by set of rooms designed to serve the users of the facility and a private area composed by the needed service rooms for the deceased preparation and the coffins movement between them. A system of patios completes the layout of the floor plan, these patios organise, rank and illuminate the spaces and establish filters between different ambiances.

The structural system is composed of walls and reinforced concrete slabs formed with pinewood boards and Corten steel pillars made of flat bars. All these elements define the building image and character providing simplicity to the materiality of the piece. The materialisation is completed with natural stone pavements and wooden vertical facing producing interior warmth. The steel pillars generate a light gradient, establishing visual filters and protecting the interior from the direct sunlight.

The materiality generated by the assortment of exposed structural element textures together with the natural light qualify and determinate the atmospheres of each space, accompanying the visitor’s mourning at every turn. In this way each space is illuminated by a specific light different from the rest. In essence, light and matter.

Authors: Enric Batlle I Durany, Joan Roig Duran, Albert Gil Margalef, Architects
Collaborators: Miriam Aranda, Architect / Dolors Feu, Agricultural Engineer & Landscape Designer / Diana Calicó, Elisabeth Torregrosa, Technical Architects / Sj12, Albert Colomer, Installation Engineering / Static, Gerardo Rodríguez, Structural Engineering

Builder: Vopi4
Surface: 700 Sqm
Location: Sant Joan Despí, Barcelona
Project & Execution Date: 2009-2011

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by Batlle i Riog Arquitectes appeared first on Dezeen.

Here are the first photographs of Zaha Hadid’s Library and Learning Centre at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, which opened last week in the city’s second district.

The library and learning centre is one of seven buildings that make up a new campus at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien), designed to accommodate 24,000 students and 1800 staff.

The most distinctive feature of Zaha Hadid’s 28,000-square-metre building is a large black volume that is perched over the roof and cantilevers out across a public square at the main entrance.

This structure houses the main library, as well as function rooms and an elevated cafe, and is clad externally in Rieder glass fibre-reinforced concrete panels.

To contrast, the rest of the building is finished in white panels and accommodates the non-public areas, including classrooms, an auditorium, workspaces and offices.

The facade is inclined at an angle of 35 degrees, allowing floorplates to increase in size towards the top of the building.

Zaha Hadid Architects won a competition to design the library and learning centre in 2008. We recently featured an animation by London visualisation firm Neutral giving a tour of the building.

The architect has also recently completed the Innovation Tower at the Polytechnic University in Hong Kong and is finishing off an undulating cultural centre in Azerbaijan.

See all our stories about Zaha Hadid »
See more stories about architecture for education »

Photography is courtesy of Rieder.

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by Zaha Hadid Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Mexican designer Liliana Ovalle has created a carafe and set of tumblers printed with fine black lines that overlap to create a moiré effect when the pieces are clustered together.

Each item in the Cumulo collection by Liliana Ovalle is decorated with fanned-out linear patterns that become finer as they radiate outwards, creating a cross-hatching effect where they reach round to the other side and can be seen through the layers of glass.

“The glasses and carafe acquire a more complex three-dimensionality when combined together,” said Ovalle. “As the patterns overlap in various arrangements, the accumulation of lines reveals hidden depths and densities.”

The prototypes were blown in borosilicate glass. They were exhibited at the Okay Studio & Friends exhibition in Ben Sherman‘s Mod_ular Blanc event space during London Design Festival last month, along with opaline glassware by Mathias Hahn and a circular mirror with a large brass weight by Hunting & Narud.

Having graduated from London’s Royal College of Art in 2006, Ovalle joined the Okay Studio design collective in 2011 and continues to operate from their space close to the Dezeen offices in Stoke Newington – see more projects by Okay Studio designers.

Ovalle also presented a series of clay vessels based on the geological phenomenon of sinkholes as part of a group show at Gallery Libby Sellers in London for the festival.

See more work by Liliana Ovalle »
See all our coverage of London Design Festival 2013 »

Photography is courtesy of the designer.

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Liliana Ovalle appeared first on Dezeen.

Mexican studio Agent has designed a concept for a transparent football that changes colour when it passes over the goal line.

What Agent claims would be the world’s first see-through football would employ sensors that detect kick force and travel speed, plus provide GPS information to track the exact position of the ball.

Electronic components embedded in its centre would communicate information gathered from the sensors to control stations in the stadium.

As the ball would be locatable relative to the pitch, lights in its core could be programmed to change colour if it goes out of bounds or into the goal.

A stabilised on-board camera could relay a ball’s eye view to the screens around the stadium.

The ball is designed in a flexible plastic, which would allow it to bounce in the same way as a standard design. “The flexibility provided by the materials emulates the bounce of an inflated pneumatic soccer ball, but offers the advantage of not losing air,” said the designers.

An internal web would provide the structure and a transparent spherical shell full of holes would form the kicking surface. This composition means the ball wouldn’t rely on air or need re-inflating after use.

We’ve also featured Nike’s ultra-light football boot featuring components made from beans and recycled plastic and news that a stadium in Brazil is to be equipped with a solar-powered roof for next year’s FIFA World Cup.

See more design for football »
See more architecture and design for sport »

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by Agent appeared first on Dezeen.