Royal College of Art graduate David Steiner has turned his house into a factory by adapting household appliances to create a range of tableware and lighting (+ slideshow).
“The project began as an experiment in self-sufficiency, to some extent a reaction against the growing prevalence of desktop digital manufacture,” said David Steiner, adding that he wanted to show what can be achieved using his existing possessions.
Simple interventions transformed everyday objects that can be found in most homes into tools that replicate industrial manufacturing processes, such as rotational moulding and steam bending.
A lampshade made from a baking tray was cut with scissors before being pressed into shape in the edge of a door frame.
An embroidery hoop and sections of a notice board frame were used to make a framework for a polypropylene mould that was put in a washing machine to create a device for rotation casting tableware.
Cutlery was cast from pewter in a mould made from a cereal box cut into shape and fixed to a chopping board.
Cork from notice boards was layered and turned on a lathe surface attached to the top of a blender.
A mixer was transformed into a pottery wheel used to throw a cup made from sugar paste.
Wooden rulers dunked in water were heated in a microwave and bent to form a tray in a process replicating steam bending.
News: a host of international architects including Zaha Hadid, UNStudio, Snøhetta and Safdie Architects have been shortlisted to design the World Expo 2017 exhibition in Astana, Kazakhstan.
This image: Safdie Architects, main image: Zaha Hadid
Coop Himmelblau, J. Mayer H, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas are also among the 45 architects competing to masterplan the 2017 world fair, which will take place for three months in the summer of that year.
UNStudio
Also in the running are Mecanoo, HOK, Stefano Boeri, GMP Architekten and Serie Architects.
J. Mayer H.
Bearing the title Future Energy, the Astana Expo 2017 is set to be centred around the promotion of sustainable energy sources and technologies.
Snøhetta
“The theme of our exhibition is closely related to ‘green economy’, which takes into account the possibility of using alternative energy sources and the autonomous water and heat provision in each of the constructions,” said Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who suggested that some of the proposals could be combined to form a “symbiosis project”.
Coop Himmelblau
The competition attracted over a hundred applications from 20 different countries. The proposals being taken forward will be revealed in September.
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
Astana Expo 2017 will follow the Milan Expo 2015, which is named Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life. The most recent Expos to take place were the Yeosu Expo 2012 in South Korea and the Shanghai Expo 2010, which featured Thomas Heatherwick’s Seed Cathedral.
Royal College of Art graduate Lauren Davies has designed a range of copper, maple and glass tools to make scented oils, creams and cosmetics at home (+ slideshow).
The Alchemist’s Dressing Table project by Lauren Davies features a three-tier distiller for making scented oils, a scent infuser for creating creams and balms, and a double-sided copper bat for mixing eyeliner.
“The tools I’ve designed will enable women to forge a stronger connection to their personal beauty rituals and a more magical relationship with nature’s intricate mysteries,” said Davies.
Distiller
The three-tier distiller features a glass globe and a stainless steel stand with a cork rim. Water can be boiled in the spun-copper bowl on the base, which is heated by an oil burner positioned underneath.
Steam passes up through scented plants that are placed on the first copper sieve and again through a second sieve. The top compartment is filled with ice and the spun copper funnel acts as a condenser, turning the rising steam underneath into a scented liquid that trickles into a glass, positioned in the centre.
Glass pan and copper hot plate, scent infuser and copper kohl plate
Davies has also created a pan for melting oils and waxes, and for mixing scents and pigments. The pan is made from borosilicate glass and has a maple wood handle. It sits on copper hot plate that is positioned on a stainless steel stand.
Glass pan with maple wood handle
For creating creams and balms from scented plants, Davies has designed a scent infuser. “The scent is built up over time as unscented fat traps the airborne scent molecules from the plant material above,” she explained.
Scent infuser
The final tool is a copper plate with a wooden handle for making kohl eyeliner. A single disc of copper is place over an oil burner. Carbon collects on the underside and then the disk is flipped over for making the eye makeup.
Copper plate with maple wood handle
“The black carbon deposit can then be mixed with almond oil for a smudged finish or aloe vera and witch hazel to allow a brush drawn line and used as eyeliner,” Davies explained.
Davies’ collection also includes a pair of copper tongs for picking up plant material, a maple wood stirrer, a mixing tool and four copper measuring spoons.
Hand tools include copper tongs, four measuring spoons and a mirror
All the products are made from five materials. “The palette of copper and maple wood are chosen for their traditional and folkloric symbolism respectively,” said Davies. “Cork is used for its insulating properties, borosilicate glass for its heat resistance and stainless steel for strength,” she added.
Here’s a short movie featuring the alchemist’s table:
The Alchemist’s Dressing Table is a collection of analog tools for the production of natural cosmetics at home, inspired by beautiful ancient rituals and the transformative powers of alchemy.
The palette of copper and maple wood are chosen for their traditional and folkloric symbolism respectively. Cork is used for its insulating properties, borosilicate glass for its heat resistance and stainless steel for strength. All components are fabricated in collaboration with London-based craftsmen.
Together, the tools form a statement piece; reigniting a dialogue about our relationship with nature and the materials we use. I believe this could be the future of cosmetics for the modern woman who has a desire to be more in control of what she uses on her skin and the impact they have on the environment.
The tools I’ve designed will enable women to forge a stronger connection to their personal beauty rituals and a more magical relationship with nature’s intricate mysteries.
The distiller can be used to make hydrosols and essential oils. Water is boiled in the spun copper bowl using an oil burner. Steam then passes up through the scented plant material sitting on the handcrafted sieve above. The top compartment is filled with ice allowing its spun copper base to act as a condenser. The steam carries the scent particles up through the second sieve and hits the condenser where it cools, turns into liquid and drips down into the collection glass below.
Oils and waxes can be melted in the pan over the hot plate and mixed with scents and pigments. The scent infuser is for the cold maceration of volatile scented plants to make creams and balms. The scent is built us over time as unscented fat traps the airborne scent molecules from the plant material above.
The kohl plate is for the preparation of black kohl eyeliner. Carbon collects on the underside of the copper plate from the almond oil burning in the oil burner below for a period of time. This black carbon deposit can then be mixed with almond oil for a smudged finish or aloe vera and witch hazel to allow a brush drawn line and used as eyeliner.
The hand held tools comprise of a pair of copper tongs to be used with plant material in the distiller or scent infuser, a stirrer for the pan, a mixing tool for use with the kohl plate and a set of measuring spoons (TBSP, TSP, 1⁄2 TSP, 1⁄4 TSP) to be used where accuracy is needed.
Play “spot the woman” in this photo set of an apartment that references Tel Aviv’s 1950s interiors by Israeli practice Jacobs-Yaniv Architects (+ slideshow).
As the clients are modernist enthusiasts, Jacobs-Yaniv Architects used materials, colours and furniture from the movement’s heyday to inform the design of the 190-square-metre space.
“It was a great joy to study flats of Tel Aviv’s 50s, which were designed very cleverly,” said the designers.
Spaces are kept as open as possible in keeping with this style and to allow maximum flexibility for the family.
A corridor denoted by wooden flooring runs the full length of the long plan, utilised as a study area and library.
The master bedroom sits at the far end, with an adjacent dressing room and its own terrace.
Another larger terrace is positioned at the other end, accessible from the dining and lounge areas used for entertaining guests.
Placed in the centre of the flat, kitchen units supported on an L-shaped black steel frame have oak doors lower down and lacquered yellow cupboards on top. These finishes are also used for storage compartments elsewhere.
The children’s play area can be closed off with sliding doors to create a private guest room.
Jacobs-Yaniv Architects sent us the following information:
Tel Aviv of the 1950s meets 2000
For the clients, who were born and bred in Tel Aviv, but spent most of their adult life in a house in the suburbs raising their family, the ultimate dream was to come back to Tel Aviv as mature and independent individuals, available to enjoy all that the city has to offer.
Informed and inspired by their love to modernist Tel Aviv of 50s and modernist design, with today’s influences and technological advantages, they gained what they had hoped for.
The clients asked that the majority of space is kept open for maximum diversity in family activities.
There is only one formal bedroom placed in the far end of the flat while all other functions are concentrated in the centre of the space, holding the family area, a desk for two people, the kitchen and a play area which is a flexible space used both as a play room and guest room.
This room is placed right by the family area and can be isolated by two sliding doors – very typical of Tel Aviv’s 50s. The design of the kitchen, which was placed in the centre of the flat as a piece of furniture, involved meticulous detailing. The oak and coloured Formica cupboards, lined with black internal finishing, are held within a steel structure.
The structure also houses all the required electric fittings – smart home control panels, lighting and speakers. The kitchen was tailor-made to the requirements of the owners who love to cook and host.
Great thought was put into day-to-day functionality. There is plenty of storage space and display shelves for items that the clients have collected throughout the years.
The utility room is placed by the master bed room. It serves also as the guest bathroom and can be accessed through the main living space too, providing great ease around house work.
We strongly believe that optimum functionality and harmonious living in a home should be as flexible and fluent as possible. Therefore we plan a variety of access points from room to room and design at least one space as a ‘flexible room’ which can be used in different ways.
It was a great joy to study flats of Tel Aviv’s 50s, which were designed very cleverly providing exactly that; function, comfort and pleasure.
Product news: London designer Paul Crofts has put the series of lamps he designed for a crêperie in west London into production, in response to readers’ encouraging comments about them on our story.
The conical pendant lamps were designed specifically for La Petite Bretagne in west London, but Paul Crofts decided to start producing them separately after a reader called them “amazing”.
“It was actually from the comments made on Dezeen when the La Petite Bretagne was published that convinced me to invest personally and put the three lights into production,” Crofts told Dezeen.
The three Nonla lights are named after the Vietnamese word for traditional Asian hats of the same shape.
Each has a different angled profile and can be displayed individually or as a set.
They are made from powder-coated spun aluminium with a CNC turned and routed American white oak top.
Two towering walls of Corten steel lead into this four-bedroom guesthouse at the Cloudy Bay winery in Marlborough, New Zealand (+ slideshow).
Australian firm Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects teamed up with local studio Paul Rolfe Architects to design the house, which accommodates visitors such as distributors, journalists and wine sellers. It replaces another that burnt down in 2009.
Named Cloudy Bay Shack, the house is orientated so that glazed walls face out towards the scenic landscape. “We shaped the building to gain vistas along the vineyards to the Richmond Ranges, whose silhouette adorns each bottle,” explained the architects.
The two weathered steel walls frame entrances at both ends of the house and were designed to reference the rural architecture of the surrounding region.
“[The exterior is] evocative of rustic buildings seen nestled in the pastoral landscape. This ensures that the building as an object sits comfortably in its environment,” said the architects.
The interior is lined with timber, and includes a series of zig-zagging panels that separate living and dining spaces from the central corridor.
Set down by three steps, these rooms feature floor-to-ceiling glazing that allows them to open out to the garden.
Bedrooms and bathrooms occupy the first floor, screened behind louvred panels that hinge open.
Here’s a project description from Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects:
Cloudy Bay Winery Shack II Guest House
Cloudy Bay Shack establishes the connection between the image on the wine label and the direct experience of the vineyard. We shaped the building to gain vistas along the vineyards to the Richmond Ranges, whose silhouette adorns each bottle.
An entry sequence has been established to deliberately dramatise the ‘Cloudy Bay’ view. On arrival, visitors face two weathered steel walls, resembling someone holding their arms out to welcome an old friend. When the door is opened, a warm timber interior is revealed and the view is obscured by a series of concertina timber panels. As guests enter, the view is revealed by degrees until they walk down three steps to the entertaining level where the full view of the receding vines and Richmond Ranges are presented.
Site plan
Bedrooms and bathrooms are focused on the same view, with the added benefit that the visitors can be concealed behind their personal timber screen or gain the view directly by opening the screen.
The exterior is composed of materials typical of the region: weathered steel and timber, evocative of rustic buildings seen nestled in the pastoral landscape. This ensures that the building as an object sits comfortably in its environment. To provide unexpected contrast, the interior is lined in well detailed, sophisticated timber and stone.
Project team: Tim Greer, Elizabeth Muir, Ben Daly in association with Paul Rolfe Architects, NZ Client: Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH Group) and Cloudy Bay Vineyards Location: Marlborough, NZ Timeframe: 2010 – 2012 Project Value: $1.4 million
An elasticated egg cup, a fork that bends to pick up food and a glass tumbler with a cheeky bottom all feature in a collection of utensils by Royal College of Art graduate James Stoklund (+ slideshow).
Danish designer James Stoklund said he wanted to “challenge the traditional way we eat or pick up food but at the same time consider the food and its consistency in a playful way.”
Fresh Eggs
Stoklund’s rubbery egg cup, named Fresh Eggs, has a white silicone surface that stretches to hold different sized eggs. They can be pushed into the holder from underneath through a hole in the elastic membrane.
Lick It Clean
Lick it Clean is a round plate that also features an elasticated surface and stretches when pressure is added, allowing the user to scoop up all the food.
Flexible Fork
Stoklund’s curved fork has a flat surface and features eight long prongs that bend when pressure is added to pick up food from a normal plate.
Extend the Pleasure
An extra-long stainless steel spoon, called Extend the Pleasure, offers users a longer and bigger spoonful.
Extend the pleasure
A glass tumblr, named Shake that Booty, appears to sit at an angle and rest on two bum cheeks.
Shake That Booty
Pour Thing is a white silicone milk jug that looks like a tea cup and forms a spout when the liquid is poured in one direction.
Pour Thing
Pass the Salt is a salt shaker that features an empty egg attached to a spoon. The egg is fixed in place via two tiny interlocking tubes. Salt is dispensed from the egg when the spoon is tipped downwards.
Pass the Salt
Stoklund, who graduated from London’s Royal College of Art this summer, said that he wanted to challenge traditional tableware design.
“Everyone knows the feeling of having a spoon in their mouth or the sound of a fork against the plate,” he said. “These are experiences we have known since we were born. However, most of us do not question the function of these everyday life utensils and what a simple change can do.”
In our second movie with Tom Dixon filmed earlier this year in Milan, the British designer discusses his foray into fashion design and says that his capsule collection for sports brand Adidas is based on the idea of creating a personal survival kit for Milan design week.
Tom Dixon
“I’m doing a collaboration with Adidas,” says Dixon in the movie. “So I am now no longer a lighting designer, I am a fashion designer, okay?”
“That’s been a fascinating experience of diving into a much bigger infrastructure and going in there with a very naive view but also a very different view on sportswear.”
He adds: “It’s been a riot working in this completely new playground of a different typology of goods, in which I can use some of the same ideas but in a completely new world.”
Dixon’s collection, which was on display amongst the steam trains at Milan’s Museum of Science and Technology as part of MOST, includes underwear, trousers, shirts, shoes and waterproof jackets that fold easily and can be packed efficiently. Dixon also designed a coat that doubles up as a sleeping bag.
“Adidas started off with a bag and then I thought, I’m not just going to do a bag, I’m going to fill that bag with everything that I need for Milan,” Dixon explains.
“So I started thinking about my personal problems. I always forget to pack the right number of pants or socks, or I forget that there’s going to be a volcano and I’ll get trapped in Milan and so I’ll need a sleeping bag [a reference to the 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland, which suspended air travel for weeks].”
He concludes: “All of those adventures I had in Milan went into that collection. It’s as much as I can fit into a carry-on bag on a low-cost airline, with everything that I need for a week away.”
An inflatable pavilion that looks like a soap bubble, by architects Plastique Fantastique, has been popping up around Copenhagen this month (+ slideshow).
Aeropolis is a transparent blow-up structure, designed by Berlin temporary architecture firm Plastique Fantastique, that can be inflated in any location and used as an enclosed event space.
The structure is made from a fire-proof PVC and when inflated industrial ventilators are used to retain the air pressure required to keep the bubble’s shape. Visitors enter the bubble through a zipped door on the side.
The Aeropolis pavilion has been used as an event hub for the Metropolis Festival 2013 in Copenhagen and has been erected in 13 locations, including a green park, under a bridge and inside a church.
Events held inside the bubble have included a light installation, dance performance, a star-gazing evening and a music concert.
Plastique Fantastique director Marco Canevacci told Dezeen the firm is looking to install the pop-up bubble at Remake Festival in Berlin.
Watch Aeropolis in use inside a church:
Here’s another movie, that features a yoga class taking place inside the bubble:
The Aeropolis community centre breathes new life into the city, and make the invisible visible.
The architecture of the 100 m2 pneumatic installation allows maximal mobility and will be installed in 13 different locations during the Metropolis Festival in August 2013. On its tour of the various Copenhagen districts, it will be a base for urban activities with all kinds of changing themes – all curated together with staff from the local community centres.
The scenography changes with the specific environment: there’s meditation and yoga by the lake, it opens up towards the sky above us in a cemetery, it invites us to a soundless discotheque at one of the noisiest intersections in the city, it provides performance at Islands Brygge, martial arts at Superkilen and Karom competitions in Versterbro, it blows up inside a church and shows a future cultural centre in Valby.
About Plastique Fantastique
Plastique Fantastique is a collective for temporary architecture that samples the performative possibilities of urban environments.
Established in Berlin in 1999, Plastique Fantastique has been influenced by the unique circumstances that made the city a laboratory for temporary spaces.
Plastique Fantastique’s synthetic structures affect surrounding spaces like a soap bubble does: similar to a foreign body, it occupies and mutates urban space. Their interventions change the way we perceive and interact in urban environments. By mixing different landscape types, an osmotic passage between private and public space is generating new hybrid environments.
Regardless the way people view a bubble, walk around its exterior or move inside it, the pneumatic structure is a medium to experience the same physical setting in a temporary extraordinary situation. A Plastique Fantastique installation has the ability to remove a subject from its surrounding context and transfer them into a new spatial realm.
Plastique Fantastique creates light and fluid structures that can lie on the street, lean against a wall, infiltrate under a bridge, squeeze into a courtyard, float on a lake and invade an apartment to generate an “urban premiere”.
Simon Conder Associates completed the Black Rubber Beach House in 2003 and it was the first building in the UK clad in this particular kind of rubber waterproofing.
Built as a fisherman’s hut in the 1930s, the house had been through a number of changes and extensions over the years. This most recent adaption involved stripping the building back to its timber frame and replacing all of the walls.
Photograph is by Stephen Ambrose
Interior and exterior surfaces were clad in spruce plywood, before the rubber skin was stretched across the facade.
“This project demonstrates that the careful choice of low-cost materials combined with the innovative use of new products can create domestic architecture of real quality at very low cost,” said Simon Conder. “It also shows that it is possible to design a building in the context of the bodged ‘squatter architecture’ that typifies Dungeness beach.”
Two large living rooms take up most the house’s interior. A small bedroom and bathroom are tucked into one corner, while an additional guest room is housed inside the silver Airstream caravan parked adjacent to the house.
Photograph is by Stephen Ambrose
The kitchen and dining room features timber-framed glass walls that open out onto a wooden deck.
In the bathroom, the bath is cantilevered out over the beach and features a long rectangular window that maintains a bather’s privacy, whilst allowing a view towards the sea.
Photography is by Chris Gascoigne, apart from where otherwise stated.
Here’s a project description from the architects:
Black Rubber Beach House, Dungeness, Kent
This project demonstrates that the careful choice of low cost materials combined with the innovatory use of new products can create domestic architecture of real quality at very low cost. It also shows that it is possible to design a building in the context of the bodged ‘squatter architecture’ that typifies Dungeness Beach, which both re-invigorates this tradition and captures the unique spirit of the place. Although this project started life as a conversion project, by the time it was finished 75% of the fabric was effectively new build. This reflects the fact that when the original roofing and cladding were removed the softwood framework behind was found to be virtually non-existent, and it is something of a mystery how the building had not previously been blown away by the winter storms.
Dungeness Beach in Kent is a classic example of ‘Non Plan’ and the houses that populate the beach have developed through improvisation and bodge. This scheme develops this tradition in a way that responds to the drama and harshness of the landscape. The original building, which itself is the product of a series of changes and extensions since it was built as a fisherman’s hut in the 1930s, has been stripped back to its timber frame, re-structured, extended to the south and east to capture the extraordinary views, and clad both internally and externally in Wisa-Spruce plywood. This plywood provides all the internal finishes, including walls, floors, ceilings, doors and joinery. Externally both walls and roof are clad in black rubber, a technically more sophisticated version of the layers of felt and tar found on many local buildings. The bath is cantilevered out over the beach giving dramatic views to the sea. Internally priority has been given to maximising the living areas and the house only has one small bedroom. Visitors are accommodated in a 1954 Airstream caravan which is parked next to the house, the silver of the aluminium caravan providing a striking visual contrast to the black rubber.
The project is the first to use EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer) rubber waterproofing to clad an entire building. The main advantages of the material can be summarised as follows:
» Water resistant yet vapour permeable » Withstands extremes of temperature between -50°C and +130°C » Elongation of over 400% with no degradation over time » Resistant to ozone and UV » No fire risk » A natural product » Individual elevations including cut-outs for doors and windows can be manufactured in the factory with vulcanised joins between roll widths.
The Wisa-Spruce plywood used for both the interior and external cladding of the timber frame was chosen specifically because it comes from managed forests in Finland.
One of the characteristics of the beach environment is the constant wind and this, in combination with the black rubber cladding, combines to provide an energy efficient internal environment. In summer windows on opposing sides of the house are left open to provide positive cross ventilation which effectively dissipates the potential heat gain through the black rubber. In the winter the windows are generally closed and the black rubber acts as a heat sink with the result that the use of the back up heating system is minimised.
Architect: Simon Conder Associates Design Team: Simon Conder and Chris Neve Structural Engineer: KLC Consulting Engineers Contractor: Charlier Construction Ltd EPDM Sub-Contractor: AAC Waterproofing Ltd Completed: November 2003
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