Hasta La Ideas

A perforated concrete wall screens the courtyard of this Singapore house by Formwerkz Architects from low sun and prying neighbours (+ slideshow).

Formwerkz Architects punctured the concrete wall joining the house’s two blocks with a pattern of holes that looks like inverted braille.

“The perforated concrete wall allows for air-flow and glimpses of the garden beyond but shields the western sun and its adjacent neighbours,” said the architects.

The blocks sit either side of a pool in a central courtyard and have gardens to the front and rear, a layout modelled on a northern Chinese typology but adapted for the tropical climate.

“Similar to the traditional courtyard typology, the inner core is a private, secure and well-ventilated outdoor space intended as an extension of the family space,” the architects said.

From street level the house is approached via a flight of stairs that lead up to a decked terrace, which sits on top of a garage next to the staff quarters in the basement.

The ground floor is tiled with travertine both outside and in, divided by the central pool that separates a living area on one side and a dining room and kitchen on the other.

Upper storeys overhang these spaces, protecting them from rain to remove the need for walls that would face the interior.

A spiral staircase leads up to a series of bedrooms, studies and bathrooms on both sides, connected by a balcony that circles the courtyard partly indoors and partly out. This walkway breaches the concrete walls so the residents can amble above the jungle-like garden.

Rooms on the first floor are screened with wooden strips, used either vertically or criss-crossed. A large bathroom, library and outdoor seating area take up the top floor.

Formwerkz Architects has also designed a house with bedrooms sheltered under a long canopy and a couple of the studio’s projects have been shortlisted for World Building of the Year 2013.

See more residential architecture »
See more architecture and design in Singapore »

The architects sent us the following information:

The Courtyard House

The courtyard house is located in a three-storey mixed-landed residential district, on the eastern part of Singapore. Built for a multi-generational family who seeks a communal way of living but wanted a space that are private, screened from the prying eyes of surrounding neighbours.

While inspired by the Si He Yuan courtyard house, the project seeks to readapt the vernacular typology found in the northern regions of China, to a detached house typology in an urbanised tropical context.

The massing, comprising of two blocks in a north-south orientation, delineate the site with a front garden, the central courtyard where all the rooms looked into and a back garden. The public and private realms are layered in a spatial procession from the street. Circulation within the house circumambulate the courtyard on all floors.

The main spaces are organised around this central, outdoor atrium where a lap pool runs parallel to one edge. The ground floor is finished entirely in hone travertine without any drops to blur the boundaries between indoor and outdoor, unifying the entire ground floor as a singular, seamless, communal space. The perforated concrete wall allows for air-flow and glimpses of the garden beyond but shields the western sun and its adjacent neighbours.

The house expresses the relationship between periphery and core. Similar to the traditional courtyard typology, the inner core is a private, secure and well-ventilated outdoor space intended as an extension of the family space. While the periphery is surrounded in dense tropical foliage, the courtyard is tranquil and contemplative.

Through a series of spatial appendixes of bridges, wall perforations, pool extensions, shower stalls, stairs and bay windows that penetrate the two side walls that bound the inner sanctum, the residents gets to experience the tropical garden on the periphery.

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Formwerkz Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura has completed a cultural centre in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, which is designed to look more like a machine than a building (+ slideshow).

Positioned alongside a library by Álvaro Siza and a leisure centre by Fernando Tavora, Eduardo Souto de Moura’s three-storey building is the final addition to a stretch of land between the Limia River and a new tree-lined public square.

Huge aluminium pipes and services clad the upper walls of the building, intended to reference the nautical aesthetic of the Navio Hospital Gil Eannes, a 1950s ship that is anchored nearby and used as a museum. Meanwhile, the recessed ground-floor elevations are glazed to allow views through to the river.

The plan of the building centres around a large multipurpose hall that can be used for sports, music performances, talks and other events.

This space is located at basement level, but is surrounded by wooden bleachers that lead up to the entrances and viewing corridors on the ground floor. Additional stairs and lifts lead up to administrative areas on the first floor.

The completion of the building marks the end of a five-year construction period. The two original constructors suffered bankruptcy and funding had to be subsidised by the local authority.

Eduardo Souto de Moura was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2011. His previous buildings include the red concrete Casa das Histórias Paula Rego museum and the Casa das Artes Cultural Centre in Porto.

See more architecture by Eduardo Souto de Moura »
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Photography is by Joao Morgado.

Here are some extra details from the design team:

Multipurpose Pavilion in Viana do Castelo

The building is implanted in the zone foreseen in the plan, aligned in the south side with one of the buildings projected by architect Fernando Távora.

In front of the north elevation it is foreseen an arborised square with alleys that mark the entries of the Pavilion. In this square will exist a slope that will make the access to level -1.

Formally the building is defined by a table where an aluminium box and every necessary equipments to the function of the different activities promoted in its interior will be placed. The whole image intends to be associated with the naval architecture, existing a relation with the image of the “Gil Eanes” ship.

The multipurpose pavilion will be a space directed to cultural and sport events. The main accesses will be situated in the north and south extremities. The service entrances will be made in the other elevations.

Its interior will be ample and permeable, existing the possibility of viewing the sea from the entrance floor. It is pretended that its transparency will be able to make it as lighter as possible in relation to the other buildings.

Author: Eduardo Souto de Moura
Locality: Viana do Castelo
Client: City Hall of Viana do Castelo
Collaborators: Diogo Guimarães, Ricardo Rosa Santos, João Queiróz e Lima, Jana Scheibner, Luis Peixoto, Manuel Vasconcelos, Tiago Coelho
Structural consultants: G.O.P.
Electrical consultants: G.O.P.
Mechanical consultants: G.O.P.

Building size: 8.706,7 sqm
Cost: €12.000.000,00

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by Eduardo Souto de Moura appeared first on Dezeen.

In our next movie focussing on the work of Richard Rogers, the British architect talks exclusively to Dezeen about the challenges of designing an interesting office building and explains how the new Leadenhall building in London, dubbed “the Cheesegrater”, got its distinctive shape.

The Leadenhall building is a new 225-metre skyscraper by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in the City of London, which topped out in June and is due to be completed in 2014.

Positioned opposite Richard Rogers’ famous Lloyd’s building, the 50-storey office building features a glazed body that is tapered on one side – hence its popular nickname.

Watch a time-lapse movie documenting the construction of the Leadenhall building »

Office buildings, Rogers admits, “tend to be very boring”. The key to creating the Leadenhall building’s distinctive angular form, he says, was creatively working with the constraints of the site.

“One of the arts of architecture is to use constraints, turn them upside down and see whether they can help you to design the building,” he explains.

“The main constraint on Leadenhall was the view to St Paul’s [Cathedral]. London is unique in being partly controlled by views; you have to leave certain views open to St Paul’s and we were on one of those views. So we made use of this and we cut it back at an angle and that gave us that prominent section and profile, [which can be seen] from all over London.”

The Leadenhall building’s criss-crossing steel frame will be displayed prominently through the external glazing. Rogers claims that this has an important role to play in giving the building scale.

“The building itself expresses its system of construction because it’s one of the things in which we get scale,” he says. “Scale is critical. Height and length have limited use. You can make a building immensely large and overbearing, which is basically a single storey, or you can make a building which is very light and it’s got fifty storeys. How you break it down is critical.”

Rogers claims that many of the ideas that informed his earlier buildings, such as placing the mechanical services on the outside of the building, are also present in the Leadenhall building. However, the nature of changing technology means that they are implemented in different ways.

“The elements which we’ve got to know well we’re using here,” he says, pointing out the banks of elevators located on the back of the building. “We are using a lot of flexibility obviously. So we’re using that but in a way that, more or less forty years after Pompidou, is very much machine-made.”

He adds: “We thought Lloyd’s was the absolute ultimate in the art of technology. When I look at it now, it’s handmade practically. We had [a few] pieces [built] off-site. Leadenhall is all built off-site.”

Rogers says he enjoys the contrast between the two buildings, which stand in such close proximity to each other but were built nearly 30 years apart.

“It’s very exciting to see the dialogue between these two, and actually, I think it’s really exciting to see the dialogue between Lloyds of London, Leadenhall and the dome of St Paul’s in the background, of a totally different period,” he says.

“To me that’s what architecture is all about. It’s not about fitting in, it’s setting up these dialogues. The enjoyment of St Paul’s was that it was seen against a very low and rather poor medieval background. That was a flourish. It’s exactly the same with any form of architecture. It’s a dialogue, it’s a beauty that comes from contrast.”

Rogers was speaking to Dezeen to mark the opening of an exhibition called Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Watch our previous interview with Rogers about the exhibition »
See our earlier story about the exhibition »

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boring” – Richard Rogers appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Swedish furniture retailer Ikea has added an augmented reality function to its 2014 catalogue, allowing customers to see what products will look like in their homes.

The 2014 Ikea catalogue works with the Ikea app on a smartphone or tablet. Customers put the catalogue on the floor as a marker and can then select the product they want to see in that location via the app.

The room is shown on-screen through the camera on the device and superimposed with the chosen object as though in-situ.

The app currently features 90 products including sofas, chairs, desks, beds and bookcases.

“Our customers want to be able to test out whether the products they’ve been inspired by in our catalogue will work in their own homes – particularly when it comes to larger pieces of furniture,” said Peter Wright, country marketing manager of Ikea in the UK and Ireland.

“Offering a way of using mobile technology to enable to test products means the technology has a practical purpose and really helps customers visualise the way their homes could look.”

Watch how the augmented reality functionality works in this film:

The new app will launch in the Apple App Store and Google Play on 25 August 2013.

In recent news, Ikea relaunched the three-legged, leaf-shaped side table that sparked a revolution in self-assembly furniture and unveiled designs for a flat-pack refugee shelter. See all our coverage about Ikea here »

Earlier this year we covered news about 3D technology company Inition who developed an augmented reality iPad app that allows architects to look inside static architectural models, visualise how their building will look at night and track how wind flows around their design proposals.

Here’s a press release from Ikea:

Ikea uses Augmented Reality so customers can furnish their homes digitally

Mobile app means customers can test furniture from the comfort of their own home

Ikea will make its most extensive ever use of Augmented Reality (AR) when it launches its new mobile Catalogue this month. AR will be used to place its products into customers’ rooms to enable them to find their perfect fit. The new app will launch in the Apple App Store and Google Play on 25 August 2013.

The 2014 Ikea Catalogue app (available on iOS and Android) will enable customers to try out 90 products for size (and shape and colour and positioning) in their own homes. The app uses the catalogue itself to judge the approximate scale of the furnishings – measuring the size of the catalogue itself (laid on the floor) in the camera and creating an augmented reality image of the furnishings so it appears correctly in the room.

Customers will be able to see what different Ikea sofas, chairs, beds, bookcases, chests of drawers and desks look like in their rooms virtually, simply by using their mobile phone camera.

How the Augmented Reality features works: Customers can put the physical Ikea Catalogue into their room in the space where they want to test a product. The Ikea Catalogue App picks up the catalogue and uses it to gauge the correct scale for products that will be shown on-screen. The product then appears on the customer’s mobile phone camera within the Ikea Catalogue App so it can be tested for colour and size. Customers can then test different products to find the right one for their home – finding the perfect fit.

Ikea’s research has shown that many of its customers suffer from “Square peg, round hole syndrome” as 14% say they’ve bought the wrong-sized furniture for their rooms and over 70% say they don’t really know how big their own homes are. Making the most of the available space is particularly important in the UK because it has the smallest houses in Western Europe, with the average house having shrunk to as little as 85 square metres.

Peter Wright, Country Marketing Manager, Ikea UK and Ireland said: “When our designers and interiors experts started to think about how we could use augmented reality to help our customers, we felt that we could solve some of the very real problems they face.

Our customers want to be able to test out whether the products they’ve been inspired by in our catalogue will work in their own homes – particularly when it comes to larger pieces of furniture. Offering a way of using mobile technology to enable to test products means the technology has a practical purpose and really helps customers visualise the way their homes could look.”

“It means they can bring the Ikea catalogue into their own homes from the comfort of the very sofa they’re planning to replace.”

The print version of the Ikea catalogue will also feature over 50 pages that readers can scan with their mobile to get access to additional product information, videos and alternative views of products.

The 2014 Ikea catalogue gives you the ability to place virtual furniture in your own home with the help of augmented reality. Unlock the feature by scanning selected pages in the 2014 printed Ikea catalogue with the IKEA catalogue application (available for iOS and Android) or by browsing the pages in the digital 2014 Ikea catalogue on your smartphone or tablet. Then simply place the printed Ikea catalogue where you want to put the furniture in your room, choose a product from a selection of the Ikea range and see how it will look in your home!

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reality catalogue appeared first on Dezeen.

Belgian studio Areal Architecten inserted this brick and concrete townhouse into a residential streetscape in Mechelen near Antwerp.

Internally the three floors are united visually by a void topped with a skylight, which brings light down the stairwell to the ground floor.

This internal “canyon” separates the open-plan living spaces from the bedrooms.

“It’s a single family row house in the city but with amazing views and voids, and the use of a combination of raw and refined materials,” says Thomas Cols of Areal Architecten.

The brick facade is sliced and faceted to relate the otherwise austere volume to its neighbours.

Instead of a front door onto the street, the house is entered via a porte-cochère.

Inside, the material palette is restrained, with ribbed concrete soffits, brick walls, timber and concrete floors and large internal single-pane windows.

The staircase is of white-painted steel and features blade-like treads.

The upper floors are of timber while the living quarters and kitchen have fitted timber-fronted storage units.

The open-plan first floor features a living room giving on to a terrace while the kitchen is on the ground floor.

The stone-clad ground floor rises in steps to manage the transition between the street level and the lower garden.

Here’s some text from the architects:

House in Mechelen

By a set of subtle surfaces, the front facade is struggling to blend into the template of the street. It balances between integrating and standing out. Inside a continuous open space made of large and generous rooms, connected to each other by some unexpected views creates a compressed urban-like space.

A “canyon” of light allows to create a dinstinction between the living spaces and the bedrooms while extending itself to the ground floor through a void which receives the staircase.

The traditional spaces of a house are put together here into a single organic space with raw finishing such as a concrete grid on the ceiling and the prominent interior brick wall.

A difference of level on the ground floor creates a smooth transition between the street and the back of the house which is ended with a longitudinal garden.

Through precise openings and a terrace in extension of the living room, the boundaries between inside and outside in this townhouse are fading.

Project title: Town house EM

Architect(en): AREAL  ARCHITECTEN

Location: Vrijgeweidestraat 42, 2800 Mechelen, Belgium

Finished: March 2013

Program: single family house, house in a row

Client: private commission

Built surface: 340 m²

Architect’s website: www.arealarchitecten.be

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Areal Architecten appeared first on Dezeen.