Our World Design Guide roundup this month leads with the London Design Festival, taking place from 14 to 22 September, and features 16 more design events around the world.
During the festival we’ll be out and about at exhibitions, talks and parties across our home city, publishing all the highlights and filming movies for our Dezeen and MINI World Tour.
Named ImagineHouse, the one-room residence is designed by A.Masow Design Studio for a woodland area located 15 kilometres outside of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city.
“The customer required a home that will be isolated from the noise, dirty air and bustle of the city,” explained architect Almasov Aibek.
Clear glass walls will surround the building, sandwiched between a pair of thick concrete slabs for the floor and roof. Wooden louvres positioned over the glass will offer shading and some privacy.
Solar panels will be fitted to the roof to provide electricity, while rainwater will be collected and stored beneath the house so that it can be purified and recycled.
Almasov Aibek modelled the building in 3ds Max during the design process, then used Adobe Photoshop to create the life-like presentation images. “I mentally lived in this project for several days,” he told Dezeen.
Dezeen Music Project: our featured music video this week is an animation for techno producer Max Cooper’s track Numb, which depicts the pressures of modern life in the style of an infographic.
Juxtaposing glitchy drums and bass lines with a freestyle jazz vocal by Kathrin deBoer of Belleruche, Numb is the lead track on Max Cooper’s Conditions Two EP, released earlier this year.
“I wanted to make something quite deep and intense, to create an almost numbing experience by overloading [the listener] with the details on the drums and big, noisy drops,” Cooper told Dezeen. “I was trying to numb by intensity, musically.”
Cooper approached German animator Henning Lederer to produce the video for the release after seeing Lederer’s MA project, an animated representation of a machine called Machinatorium.
For the Numb video, Lederer added the running figure of a man to the centre of the machine, surrounded by whirring cogs and pistons.
“I thought that infographic style would work really well if we applied the concept to a man numbed by the capitalist machine,” Cooper explained.
“Whenever I write a piece of music I’m always trying to communicate some sort of idea and the addition of the visual aspect is a way of strengthening the communication of that idea.”
This timber structure clad in recycled food packaging houses a temporary library and book exchange and was designed and built by architecture students in Cēsis, Latvia (+ slideshow).
Summer school students and tutors from Riga Technical University (RTU) modelled the Story Tower on a giant wooden lamp, creating a sheltered destination for people to duck inside and find something to read.
Shelves are integrated within the tapered walls and are filled with books on the lowest levels, placing them at easy-reaching height for visitors.
Students spent two weeks designing the miniature library and built it over three and a half days using reclaimed materials.
The frame and floor were made from locally-sourced soft timber, while recycled Tetra Pak juice cartons were folded, cut and mounted to create the waterproof roof shingles.
Students attached a total of 2250 shingles to pre-fabricated panels, then carried them to the site along with the wooden frames.
Now complete, the book exchange is stocked with unwanted books from a local library that is currently undergoing a refurbishment.
“We sought to use the locally established concept of a free book exchange to create a dialogue between diverse groups and individuals of the town,” said the design team. “[It is] a place where books can be deposited before making a journey, exchanged after finishing a journey or simply borrowed while waiting for a bus.”
The structure is semi-permanent and will stay in the town square until the main library re-opens in 18 months time.
“The tower’s location is the precise point where local shifts taking place within the town are most visible,” the team added, referring to its position between the train station, bus terminus and library.
The Story Tower is the built result of the Building Works Unit run by Theodore Molloy, Niklavs Paegle and Thomas Randall-Page during two weeks in August at the RTU International Architecture Summer school, Cēsis, Latvia 2013.
Designed and built with 9 students, the Story Tower sits in the small city of Cēsis in a busy square between the train and bus station and the civic library and is built intirely from locally sourced and recycled materials – Timber and Tetra-Pak.
We sought to use the locally established concept of a free book exchange to create a dialogue be- tween diverse groups and individuals of the town. A place where books could be deposited before making a journey, exchanged after finishing a journey or simply borrowed whilst waiting for a bus. The tower’s location is the precise point where local shifts taking place within the town are most visi- ble. It is the front door step of Cēsis where the rhythm of the town is most exposed.
The form of the building was conceived as an urban scale lamp, providing light and a place to read 24 hours a day. During winter when day light is short the tower will act as an illuminated external reading room. The building is semi perminent and is designed to stand until the library re-opens in its refurbished premises in 18 months time.
The 2 week workshop guides students through an accelerated production process, compressing local research, brief development, conceptualising, designing, detailing, fabrication, construction, and use in to only two weeks. The workshop allows students to understand the implications of actions early in the design process by feeling their effects first hand.
The Story Tower itself was designed at the beginning of the second week and constructed in three and a half days. It is comprised of three simple elements: a floor to welcome people in, a book shelf structure, and upon this a roof/lampshade to shelter the user.
The floor and structure are from locally sourced soft wood and the cladding is made form Tetra Pak shingles, a material more commonly used for milk cartons. Our workshop was donated a 100kg roll of tetra pack that was damaged and therefore unusable for cartons however we saw huge potential in the material as it is designed to be water proof and is easy to fold, cut and fix.
The team spent a day making 1:1 scale silver origami mock-ups exploring how we could best use the material reflecting light, creating openings, and most importantly shedding water. All 2250 shingles were individually hand made buy the students and fixed to prefabricated panels before they were carried to the site along with the prefabricated frame elements. This streamlined process allowed the team to construct a building with just two days spent on site.
The team also built a relationship with the local library and its staff who are currently undergoing an overhaul of their premises and stock and are in the process of refurbishing the existing library. Through conversation the director agreed to stock the book exchange from their unwanted books and to maintain the structure for the future as a public library out-post. The concept of a book ex- change also links into a local problem whereby many people, particularly of the older generation, have collections of books that they no longer want.
In a post-internet age books find themselves between intrinsic worth and monetary irrelevance, many are both as valuable as ever but with out resale value. The Story tower was designed to celebrate the individual reader and the notion of sharing and exchange.
Viewed from a distance the population of Cēsis, like many regional towns across Europe, can be seen to be shrinking. When viewed close-up however, this local shift has a more human dimension. What emerges is a small but important flow of newcomers to the town bringing new ideas, stories and ventures. The Tower, at the interchange of these diverse groups stands as a monument for the stories brought by new arrivers and the long survivors of Cēsis.  Tutors: Theodore Molloy, Niklavs Paegle, Thomas Randall-Page Students: Artūrs Tols (LV), Christof Nichterlein (DE), Dumitru Eremciuc (MD), Natascha Häutle (DE), Rūta Austriņa (LV), Signe Pelne (LV), Tanja Diesterhof (DE), Ulkar Orujova (AZ), Zoe Katsamani (GR).
Product news: Australian designers Nicholas Karlovasitis and Sarah Gibson have added dining and coffee tables to their range of timber stools with metal collars at the tops of their legs.
The duo own Sydney design company DesignByThem and created the different sized Partridge tables and stools from solid white ash timber coated with a natural wax finish.
They can be self assembled with aluminium brackets that sit neatly against the legs and underside of the seat or table top.
“Our aim with the Partridge tables is to create simple balanced forms that will endure physically and aesthetically,” said Karlovasitis. “We feel that using a warm and tactile material is comforting and allows us to achieve this.”
Two miles from the coast in the southern English county of Suffolk, the 2.5 hectare site is located in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and surrounded by farmland.
British studio Ström Architects designed the house to be built over foundations of a previous structure that burnt down, beside an existing outdoor pool.
It will be orientated at an angle to the ruins, to make a clear distinction between the two and to face the best views.
“The building is set like this so that it can be read on its own and thus touch the existing site lightly,” said the architects.
Flooding is prevalent in the area so the home will be raised 1.5 metres off the ground, with a ramped walkway following the geometry of the old building connecting it to the garden.
The design is long and thin to reference the local vernacular, with glazing along most of the west elevation. Dark wood panels will cover rest of this facade, while Corten steel is to clad the other three sides.
All the rooms are on the ground floor apart from the master bedroom and bathroom, which will fit into the small volume on the roof. Construction is due to start later this year.
The site is located in Suffolk two miles inland the coast, and lies within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The site itself forms part of an overall land ownership of 2.5 hectares surrounded by agricultural land.
The current site has foundations, ruins and some low walls from a house that burned down eight years ago; there is also an existing outdoor pool. Immediately to the west of the pool and ruins, there is a small area of open grass that runs up to the edge of a beautiful copse of mature oak trees. The site is located on the edge of flood zone two and three, and requires a raised floor level 1.5 metres above the old cottage.
The clients’ brief was for a country house – ‘a dream in a wood’, a peaceful place to relax, regenerate, and think of new ideas. The existing site with the pool, ruins and low walls has a very strong presence, and we wanted to keep this as an important part of the site. The design is linear and has picked up on the building form – the ‘long cottage’ found in the locality, and we see the design as an evolution of the longitudinal cottage.
The building sits above the ruins and the edge of the pool, as to respect the current site, but also to deal with the raised floor level that is required, due to the potential flood risk. The building is also set like this so that it can be read on its own, and thus touch the existing site lightly. The building is orientated towards the west-south-west, and sits on an angle above the existing ruins facing the best views as well as creating a clear juxtaposition of geometry to the ruins.
A two-storey element punctures through the roof, and contains a master bedroom suite at the first floor. This is positioned towards the existing coach house, thus minimising the impact of the building on the more open site to the south. This two storey element is recessed from both the west and east facades as to reduce the scale and the appearance of the building.
The building is entered via a bridge that spans from higher ground and above the ruins. This sets up the whole philosophy of the house, even before you actually enter, as well as successfully dealing with safe egress form the house to higher land in case of a flood.
Movie: in our second video interview with Job Smeets of Studio Job, the artist discusses the recent economic crisis but claims that, unlike many in the “design art” world, his studio’s work has not been negatively affected by it.
Job Smeets, founder of Studio Job
“I sometimes talk with young designers who are starting their careers; I would not like to be in their shoes,”says Smeets, who was speaking at Moooi’s Unexpected Welcome exhibition in Milan.
“Having said that, when I started Studio Job, I didn’t care a thing about the economy. I was involved in trying to make a statement in design or art.”
He continues: “But being in a crisis when you’re already ten years old is quite exciting. We had the big advantage of not having to slow down our business. There is still a lot of interest in our pieces.”
Studio Job has been at the forefront of the “design art” world, where limited edition and one-off design pieces are sold to collectors as pieces of art, for over ten years. Smeets says that the marketplace has become much less crowded since the crisis.
“A lot of our colleagues in the art or design business have disappeared,” he explains. “They came up very quickly because they saw there was a market and they went away very quickly because they saw there wasn’t a market anymore. But Studio Job already had a body of work by then.”
Being a small company with a worldwide reputation helped Studio Job steer through the crisis and take advantage of emerging markets in the east, Smeets claims.
“The market changed because, all of a sudden, the USA wasn’t the biggest market anymore. But we are a very small ship; we are lean and mean. A completely new market appeared in the Middle East, in Asian countries and in Russia.”
He concludes: “I don’t think our work changed [because of the economy], so that’s good.”
All the designs featured in the movie are by Studio Job. Photography by R. Kot, D. Stier, L. Blonk, A. Blommers / N. Schumm, A. Meewis, Moooi, Lensvelt.
News: Austrian firm Coop Himmelb(l)au has landed a commission to design a winter sports resort and water park across an abandoned cement-mining quarry and lake near Changsha, China (+ slideshow).
Located at the Dawang Mountain Resort outside the city, the Deep Pit Ice and Snow World will be constructed from cliff to cliff across the old quarry, which itself will be transformed into an artificial landscape of islands, pools and pathways.
Coop Himmelb(l)au‘s competition-winning proposals combine an ice world and indoor skiing centre with a large water park. Highlights will include a cantilevered outdoor swimming pool, set to form a 60-metre waterfall into the pit of the quarry, while an upside-down glass cone will bring light through the centre of the structure.
A 100-metre-high hotel will accompany the resort, on the opposite side of a large public plaza. It will offer over 300 rooms, boasting views towards Tongxi Lake and Dawang Mountain.
Here’s a project description from Coop Himmelb(l)au:
Ice World and Five Star Hotel, Dawang Mountain Resort Changsha, China, 2013
The Deep Pit Ice and Snow World is located in the Dawang Mountain Resort Area near the city of Changsha. The project combines an Entertainment Ice World with an Indoor Ski Slope, a Water Park and supporting restaurant and shopping facilities with a total gross floor area of 120,000m².
The building volume is integrated into a beautiful landscape scenery and positioned directly on top of a historical cement mining quarry pit and lake. In the design solution towards the South and East, the existing quarry pit is revealed and the sculpted shell of the Snow and Ice World spans 170 meters from cliff to cliff over a sunken and hanging garden creating a new functional leisure space of islands, water, cliffside pathways and ramps connecting the building to this natural heritage. This unique framed open space in between architecture and landscape is also characterised through an impressive central glass cone providing controlled natural daylight down through the Ice World structure and on to the islands and water surfaces.
A cantilevered outdoor swimming pool is part of the Water Park attractions and creates a 60m high waterfall into the quarry pit. From the inside the leisure functions of the Snow and Ice World engage the space of the quarry pit with views through large glass façades to the natural cliff faces and hanging gardens, also with overviews to the water pools and islands below. At the same time visitors walking or standing on the Cliffside Pathways can also look into the building through the transparent façade; hence an interactive visual contact with the interior of the Snow and Ice World is created establishing more excitement and maximising the existing value of the industrial heritage.
A separate sculptural 100m high tower on the South end of the site hosts a 5 Star-Hotel and is connected to the Ice World via a Grand Garden Plaza. Arriving from the city of Changsha over Pingtang Avenue, the Hotel tower will be the most significant iconic landmark for the entire Dawang Mountain Tourism Resort Centre. It offers 270 high-class single and double bed suites, 60 Executive Suites with an Executive Club Lounge and a 6-room Presidential Suite, all with impressive views to Tongxi Lake, Dawang Mountain and into the Ice & Snow World. A spacious central Lobby around the tower core opens up into the service plinth containing a bar and restaurant on level one, flexible and multifunctional conference areas on level two and the fitness and spa and beauty facilities on level three. The façade of the Fashion Hotel Tower is a specially designed, highly economical system providing state-of-the-art sun shading, natural ventilation and a unitised, quick construction. The element façade system offers a maximum of flexibility to the inside room layout and allows a homogeneous appearance over the exterior facade.
News: NASA is developing an orbiting factory that will use 3D printing and robots to fabricate giant structures such as antennas and solar arrays of up to a kilometre in length, as part of its ongoing search for extra-terrestrial life.
The US space agency this week announced it was awarding technology firm Tethers Unlimited Inc (TUI) a $500,000 contract to develop the facility.
The NASA funding – a second-phase contract that follows an initial contract issued earlier this year – will allow TUI to continue work on its SpiderFab technology, which allows large-scale spacecraft components to be built in space, avoiding the expense of building the components on earth and transporting them into space using rockets.
“On-orbit fabrication allows the material for these critical components to be launched in a very compact and durable form, such as spools of fiber or blocks of polymer, so they can fit into a smaller, less expensive launch vehicle.” Said TUI CEO and chief scientist Dr Rob Hoyt. “Once on-orbit, the SpiderFab robotic fabrication systems will process the material to create extremely large structures that are optimized for the space environment.
Currently spacecraft components are designed to be built on the ground and folded up to fit inside a rocket shroud. The process is complicated, expensive and limited by the availability and size of existing rockets.
Hoyt added: “This radically different approach to building space systems will enable us to create antennas and arrays that are tens-to-hundreds of times larger than are possible now, providing higher power, higher bandwidth, higher resolution, and higher sensitivity for a wide range of space missions.”
The technology would allow NASA to use far smaller rockets to deliver components to the orbiting factory, which could be used to manufacture trusses to hold solar arrays and solar sails, antennas and masts of almost unlimited size. TUI’s website suggests that kilometre-long trusses or football-field sized sails could be produced.
Space factories would also significantly reduce the risk involved in launching delicate equipment on rockets, where the chance of failure is high. Instead, relatively inexpensive raw materials would be launched into orbit.
TUI will now develop a “Trusselator” capable of using additive manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing to fabricate truss structures in space. TUI’s website describes the Trusselator as a system “for on-orbit fabrication and integration of solar arrays using a combination of 3D printing and automated composite layup techniques”.
“The Trusselator is the key first step in implementing the SpiderFab architecture,” said Hoyt. “Once we’ve demonstrated that it works, we will be well on our way towards creating football-field sized antennas and telescopes to help search for Earth-like exoplanets and evidence of extraterrestrial life.”
Spacecraft that Build Themselves… in Space! – Tethers Unlimited Wins NIAC Phase II Contract to Develop “Self-Fabricating” Spacecraft
Bothell, WA, 29 August 2013 – NASA announced today that the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program has selected Tethers Unlimited, Inc. (TUI) for award of a $500,000 Phase II contract to continue development of its “SpiderFab™ technologies for in-space fabrication of spacecraft components.
The SpiderFab architecture adapts additive manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing and robotic assembly technologies to enable space systems to fabricate and integrate large components such as antennas, solar arrays, sensor masts, and shrouds on-orbit. Currently, large spacecraft components are built on the ground, and are designed to fold up to fit within a rocket shroud and then deploy on orbit.
This approach is very expensive, and the size of these components is limited by the volume of available shrouds. “On-orbit fabrication allows the material for these critical components to be launched in a very compact and durable form, such as spools of fiber or blocks of polymer, so they can fit into a smaller, less expensive launch vehicle.” Said Dr. Rob Hoyt, TUI’s CEO and Chief Scientist. “Once on-orbit, the SpiderFab robotic fabrication systems will process the material to create extremely large structures that are optimized for the space environment. This radically different approach to building space systems will enable us to create antennas and arrays that are tens-to-hundreds of times larger than are possible now, providing higher power, higher bandwidth, higher resolution, and higher sensitivity for a wide range of space missions.”
In the Phase II effort, TUI will develop and demonstrate methods to enable additive manufacturing of high-performance support structures and integration of functional elements such as reflectors and antennas. In parallel with the NIAC effort, TUI is working under a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to develop a “Trusselator” device that will fabricate truss structures to enable in-space construction of large solar arrays.
“The Trusselator is the key first step in implementing the SpiderFab architecture, said Dr. Hoyt. “Once we’ve demonstrated that it works, we will be well on our way towards creating football-field sized antennas and telescopes to help search for Earth-like exoplanets and evidence of extraterrestrial life.”
About Tethers Unlimited, Inc.
Tethers Unlimited, Inc. develops innovative technologies to enable transformative capabilities and dramatic cost savings for missions in Space, Sea, Earth, and Air. Its technology portfolio includes advanced space propulsion systems, high-performance radios for small satellites, and methods for additive manufacturing of multifunctional spacecraft structures. To learn more about TUI and its products, please visit www.tethers.com.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
