Hasta La Ideas

In this movie we filmed at Domaine de Boisbuchet in southwestern France last month, design curator and collector Alexander von Vegesack gives us a tour round the estate, which features pavilions including Shigeru Ban’s first building in Europe, pioneering bamboo structures by Simón Vélez and experimental domes by German structural engineer Jörg Schlaich.

Von Vegesack also explains how he turned the run-down 15th-century country estate into a magnet for leading architects and designers, who come to teach workshops each summer and build pavilions and installations in the grounds.

“It was always my dream to work with young people and [create] a surrounding that is very inspiring for new ideas,” he says.

Von Vegesack, who was also the founding director of the Vitra Design Museum, bought Domaine de Boisbuchet in the eighties and set about restoring the 50-hectare estate’s agricultural buildings and commissioning a series of new structures.

“I collected for quite a long time,” says von Vegesack, who assembled an important collection that included a wide range of Thonet bentwood furniture – a subject in which he became an expert. “I was very much interested in industrial design and I sold a part of my collection to the Austrian government and acquired this property.”

The first workshops were held in 1989 and since then leading international figures including Tom Dixon, Maarten Baas, Oliviero Toscani and Patricia Urquiola have led workshops for young people in the summer months.

Dezeen was at Boisbuchet in June for the Blickfang design workshop, which was led by designer Sebastian Wrong.

In the movie above you can see von Vegesack giving the Blickfang workshop attendees a tour of the estate. “We did quite a lot of pavilions with [people including Japanese architect] Shigeru Ban and [bamboo architect] Simón Vélez, who built his first bamboo houses here in Boisbuchet. One of them blew away in the storm of 1999-2000 but the other ones became quite well known.”

While building his pavilions and guest houses at Boisbuchet, Vélez pioneered new ways of using giant bamboo from his native Columbia on an architectural scale.

Boisbuchet is dominated by the imposing nineteenth-century chateau, which is still not fully restored but which is used for exhibitions. There is also a traditional Japanese village house dating from 1863, which was dismantled, shipped from Japan and reassembled, and a contemporary bamboo building, donated by the People’s Republic of China.

“In the garden of the chateau there is Shigeru Ban’s pavilion,” von Vegesack continues. “It was his first [permanent] building here in Europe. And there are two buildings by Jörg Schlaich, the engineer who worked with Frei Otto, building the Munich Olympic stadium.”

Ban’s building uses wooden connections and recycled paper tubes to create a semi-cylindrical structure. Schlaich built two domes, one using split bamboo rods to create a structural lattice and the other employing fibreglass rods.

Each summer Boisbuchet invites architects, designers, artists and other creative professionals from around the world to lead workshops attended by young people and students. “It’s not important to be an expert, but just to have an idea and try to make it happen,” says von Vegesack.

“It’s more about developing ideas with a goal you want to demonstrate in three dimensions. And above all to build up a network of good friends, sharing an interest in creating something that might be important for your professional life.”

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The music featured in this movie is a track called Filtered Sunshine by Jordan Thomas Mitchell. You can listen to more music by Jordan Thomas Mitchell on Dezeen Music Project.

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in Europe is here” appeared first on Dezeen.

Playground swings can be hung both inside and outside this Japanese house with a corner sliced off by Level Architects, the firm that previously completed a residence with a slide connecting its floors (+ slideshow).

Located in the city of Kamakura, the three-storey family house was designed by Level Architects with a series of children’s play areas, including a courtyard garden, a rooftop balcony, a large bedroom and a loft playroom.

Metal hooks allow residents to attach a swing to the ceiling in the ground-floor hallway. They can also hang either a swing or hammock across the L-shaped balcony on the middle floor.

From the street, the house appears as a large timber-clad cuboid that appears to have had its western corner sliced away, revealing the location of the courtyard garden and surrounding balcony.

“The cutaway corner of the exterior wall is adjusted so that it comes down to a height of a handrail, creating privacy at just the right level without completely enclosing the [first] floor outdoor terrace,” said the architects.

The building’s entrance leads through to an area that the architects refer to as an “inner terrace”, which is separated from the surrounding rooms by split levels. “The floor level can also be utilised as a bench,” added the architects.

The double-height living and dining room spans the width of the first floor and features high-level windows that bring in natural light without compromising privacy.

Two mezzanine loft rooms flank the space from above and feature internal windows so that parents can keep an eye on children playing upstairs.

Children’s playgrounds have provided the inspiration for several of Level Architects’ projects. The studio completed its house with an indoor slide in 2011 and have also worked on a residence with an indoor skateboarding area.

Other Japanese houses on Dezeen recently include a combined home and dog-grooming salon and a house raised up on pilotis. See more houses in Japan »

Photography is by Makoto Yoshida.

Read on for more details from Level Architects:

House in Ofuna

This design, which cuts away the western corner from this extruded volume of the site, created a focal point within the house, while still enabling a connection to the surrounding exterior environment. The cutaway corner is able to establish a direct view onto the small hills west of the house, as well as retaining privacy from the street below.

The use of natural wood material for the extruded volume itself allowed the design to incorporate a hard edge at the cutaway corner, creating a sharp and distinct separation from the rest of the design. This triangular surface edge also helps to break up the solid aspect of the design and somewhat control its presence onto the street.

The interior planning of the first floor revolves around layers of space; the terrace, inner terrace, and then the private bedrooms, all surround the enclosed symbolic tree planted in the inner garden. Level changes were also implemented to create different opportunities for the children’s room and its relation to the inner terrace; the floor level can also be utilised as a bench, allowing multiple uses to the open space. The inner terrace can also be viewed as a spacious entrance hall, which allows the extensive walls to be enjoyed as large storage areas as well.

The second floor living/dining/kitchen space enjoys a ceiling height of more than 3.5 meters. Looking towards the street you are able to view the triangular cutaway corner framing the hills beyond, as well as the symbolic tree sprouting up from the first floor. This tall ceiling brings in enough light to brighten up the loft, creating a sunny, playful space for the children, while still being connected to the living room below.

The cutaway corner of the exterior wall is adjusted so that it comes down to a height of a handrail, creating privacy at just the right level without completely enclosing the second floor outdoor terrace. The windows placed throughout the east and south side of the house take into consideration the neighbouring buildings and so are located at relatively high locations, controlling both light and the view into the home.

Site: Kanagawa Pref., Kamakura City
Site area: 135.44m²
Building footprint: 66.64 sqm
Total building area: 121.70 sqm
1F area: 66.64 sqm
1F terrace Area: 7.94 sqm
2F area: 55.06 sqm
2F terrace area: 11.43 sqm
Loft area: 10.69 sqm
Loft terrace area: 11.81 sqm
Construction type: Wood frame
Stories: 2 stories + Loft
Completion date: 03/2012

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Level Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

German photographer Roland Halbe has taken new photographs of Casa Klotz, a rural beach house in Chile by architect Mathias Klotz (+ slideshow).

The two-storey wooden house is located beside the seafront in Tongoy, north of Santiago. It was designed by Mathias Klotz in 1991 for his mother and was the Chilean architect’s first major project.

Clad with white-painted timber boards, the rectangular house has barely any glazing on its southern facade, while its northern elevation features large windows and balconies that face out across the beach.

The house centres around a large double-height living room with a chequerboard of floor-to-ceiling glazing stretching across one wall. Wooden decking covers the floor and extends out to a terrace suspended 30 centimetres above the ground.

The rest of the house is arranged with a symmetrical layout, with a ground-floor dining room and small bedroom that mirror a larger bedroom and bathroom area. Two identical bedrooms are located upstairs and both open out to recessed balconies.

The entrance to the house is a ramped bridge that angles up from the ground.

Since completing Casa Klotz, Mathias Klotz has worked on a string of houses and other buildings. Recent projects include Casa 11 Mujeres, a holiday home for a family with 11 daughters.

See more architecture in Chile »

See more photography by Roland Halbe on Dezeen or on the photographer’s website.

Here’s a project description from Mathias Klotz:

Casa Klotz/Klotz House

The Klotz house is in the vicinity of Tongoy on a beach situated 400 km to the north of Santiago. The bay is 24 km long and has very few buildings along it. The outline of the cove is recognisable from a distance, as is the coastal mountain range in the background.

The powerful contrast between the house and its surroundings is what defines the building. The work consists of a rectangle box 6 x 6 x 12 m which sits upon the ground and rises 30 cm above it.

The outside presents a blind face which serves as the access over a curved bridge. The opposite façade, facing the sea, has large openings.

The ground plan has two clearly defined sections on the first floor. The narrowest, of two meters, is for the entry, the stairs, the bathroom and a small bedroom. The larger, of four meters is for the main bedroom, the kitchen-dining room and the double-height living room. On the second floor, the bedrooms are set back from the sea facing façade to allow space for terraces. The staircase and bridge that connect the bedrooms continue the concept of the corridor or gallery on the first floor.

The fine white carpentry, the openings in the wall, the added and subtracted features, the interplay between the proportions, the horizontal lines of the wooden sealing fillets on the facades are all touches aimed at producing a detailed close-up effect in contrast with the panorama of the surroundings and the abstraction of the building itself.

Client: Isabel Germain
Construction: Mathias Klotz
Engineers: Jaime Frerk
Construction date: 1991
Completion date: 1991
Terrain surface: 5.700 sqm
Built surface: 99 sqm
Location: Playa grande, Tongoy, Chile

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photographed by Roland Halbe appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: Berlin studio Halb/Halb has created a creased circular mirror that allows two people to see their reflection at the same time.

The Mirror #180 by Halb/Halb has a fold down the centre that splits it into two halves and it can be hung in three different rotations.

One option allows two people to use the mirror at the same time, a second can show people at different heights and a third position reflects the ceiling and another area of the surrounding room.

The mirror is made from glass and a wooden fixing is attached to the back to hang it to a wall. It measures 50 centimetres in diameter and is available to buy from Berlin Design Store.

Halb/Halb is a new design studio based in Berlin, founded by Nikolaus Kayser and Nicole Losos. Kayser also works at design studio Böttcher+Henssler, whilst Losos works for Werner Aisslinger.

We’ve also featured Losos’ design for a triangulated wall-mounted structure that you can sit, sleep, read, eat and keep things on.

We’ve published a number of mirrors recently including one with angled tessellated steel panels and another that only works when it’s placed in front of a dark wall. Leandro Erlich also used a large mirror to create an illusion of people scaling the walls of a London townhouse.

See more mirrors »

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by Halb/Halb appeared first on Dezeen.

More cardboard design: Italian lighting brand Slamp worked with designer Nigel Coates to create a cardboard house for displaying the company’s range of lights.

A team of ten young designers from Slamp took part in a workshop with the brand’s art director Coates to create a neutral backdrop for capturing the lighting designs.

Designs by Coates, Zaha Hadid and various others were set among cardboard furniture arranged into rooms at Slamp’s headquarters just outside Rome.

Book shelves, kitchen appliances and cutlery were all crafted from the brown material and set out to create different environments around the home.

Three hundred and fifty square metres of cardboard were milled and assembled using a hot glue gun over the ten-day workshop.

Other designs that utilise cardboard include a pavilion in Madrid by Shigeru Ban and an internet shopping collection store in San Sebastian.

See more cardboard architecture and design »
See more products by Slamp »

Here’s some more information sent to us by Slamp:

In a workshop with Nigel Coates “Casa Slamp” was born

A special cardboard house by Slamp Creative Team.

The premise

Nigel Coates, Slamp art director since 2007, gathers ten young designers from the creative department. The boys, coming from the best design schools, are 24 years old on the average, some have been working in the company for few months, someone for few days, someone for a couple of years.

They discovered Slamp as a space where they can express their energy, with the certainty of being able to compare themselves to big international names.

Coates supports them with the three seniors of the group in order to give them more expertise: Luca Mazza (head of the creative department), Stefano Papi (responsible for the engineering) and Adriano Rachele (full-time designer – Red Dot in 2012).

The brief is clear

Designing a setting for the next photo shooting of Slamp’s lamps.

The need is to create a neutral architecture without deflecting attention away from the products but, on the contrary that is able to enhance their decorative and lighting effects.

The brainstorming

The location is Slamp’s headquarters, just outside Rome, in the 200-square-metre open space of the creative department, among being defined prototypes and history of design volumes, with a classic rock soundtrack played by iTunes Radio.

Around the six-metre table (also designed by the department few years before), lines on the sketch book are about to be traced, brains are about to be set and opinions of all kinds are about to be discussed.

The academic wisdom of Nigel Coates, and the technical know-how of seniors, immediately lead to identify the solution of cardboard.

Furniture, accessories, and even a mid-century radio are sketched. A healthy competition in the group, mixed with a game of tips and contamination among everyone is arising.

The realization

Numerical control milling machines are activated, more than 350-square-metres of cardboard are used, hot glue guns are switched on. With 2680 joints and almost 1000 creases, the set is ready in less than 10 days and does not betray any of the Slamp values: it is original, experimental, innovative and evocative.

The result is Casa Slamp

A real home where every room becomes a set to show how our lamps perfectly fit to different home environments.

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Nigel Coates appeared first on Dezeen.