Here are the first photographs of Zaha Hadid’s almost-completed Heydar Aliyev Centre, an undulating cultural centre in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Expected to open in September, the 57,000 square-metre building is designed by Zaha Hadid Architects as a fluid volume that folds up from the landscape to form a single continuous surface.
Front elevation perspective render
Glazed openings between folds will offer entrances, leading into the library, museum and conference centre contained inside.
Opinion: Sam Jacob ponders the paradox of solid, concrete Brutalist architecture printed onto soft furnishings in this week’s column.
Most evenings you’ll find me reclining on a couch propped up on cushions gawping at the TV. After another hard day at the office it’s great to sit on something soft and stretch my legs out. But sometimes it strikes me as strange that the very thing that makes it so comfortable – those cushions that prop up various parts of my body – are cushions depicting the opposite of softness. Against the small of my back there’s Park Hill, a giant council estate built in Sheffield in between 1957 and 1961. And propping up my head is everybody’s favourite 1960s concrete megastructure, The Barbican.
I’m aware that me lounging on soft versions of 1960s utopian architecture holed up in an actual real life Lubetkin tower block while I spoon my Ben & Jerry’s is an odd scene. But I don’t think I’m the only one caught up in this contemporary phenomenon. If you search hard enough you could probably furnish your entire home with cushions, tea towels and crockery depicting the high points of British Modernism. And it’s not just any old Modernism, but hulking great concrete Brutalism.
There’s something strange going on here. All this giant, hard stuff is turned into cosy domesticity. It’s as though Cath Kidston, the queen of nostalgic domesticity, has swallowed a copy of Towards An Architecture or fallen through a rift in time and found herself participating at the 9th Congress of C.I.A.M.
Such cute nostalgia sits strangely with Brutalism, which was never a project about the past, but about the future. It was part of the post-war reconstruction of the UK and was driven by a set of social and political concerns that informed its raw architectural form. Brutalism emerged in the 1950s as a re-boot of Modernist principles by a generation who believed the movement’s original intentions had been watered down. In projects like Park Hill, The Barbican and the soon-to-be-demolished Robin Hood Gardens, a younger generation built, for their municipal clients, a range of radical projects that read as much as social infrastructure as they did architecture.
Of course our era is entirely different. The Modern project is impossible in any real sense, given our political and economic choices. Its vision of a New Jerusalem, of architecture in the service of public interest and a function of the welfare state, is not just out of step, but out of time. These concerns have been entirely subsumed by the market. Architecture and the public services it once worked for have been given over to the private sector. And any remaining vestiges of welfare-ism are in the process of being finally dismantled.
What passes for Modernism now is simply an aesthetic, not an ethic (although it’s true to say that this might have been the case for very much longer. After all, Reyner Banham, the critic most involved in the Brutalist cause published The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? way back in 1966). We might argue that architecture’s use of Modern or Brutalist aesthetic language is itself nostalgic: an image, rather than a real form, of Modernism. We might argue too that this kind of nostalgia masquerading as reality is far more dangerous than the surreal nostalgias represented by tea cosies in the shape of the Balfron Tower.
These Etsy-fied versions of British Modernism are, of course, nostalgic. They cite a place and time that is beyond our reach. They show projects whose ambition to remake the world through architecture is now impossible. And they do it in an Illustrator-outlined, pastel-coloured manner that renders them far cuter than their rough-poured and bush-hammered subjects.
Unlike many who claim to guard the flame of Brutalism, I have no problem with its return as nostalgia and nu-craft. Sure, it represents a new kind of gentrified, privatised, individual absorption of Modernism. But it does it at a time when British Modernism remains controversial. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets’ decision to blow up Robin Hood Gardens, the partial re-making of Park Hill and the plans to extend the Southbank Centre all represent contemporary responses to the built legacy of Brutalism. And of course, many of these projects remained publicly controversial and politicised. We see this in Policy Exchange’s recent report Making Housing Affordable, in which the Conservative think tank called for these housing projects to be torn down and replaced by traditional homes and streets.
The Etsy-fication of British Modernism represents a strange domestication of the Modern project. But, I’d argue, it might serve another purpose too. Could we read these objects as soft and comforting Ghosts of Architecture Past? Perhaps it’s here that architecture’s political and social ambitions lie dormant, not only as reminders of another time but ready to rise again from the couch and kitchen.
News: Dutch studio MVRDV has won a competition to design 95 homes in Emmen, Switzerland, with plans that give every residence an identifiable colour.
The Feldbreite housing competition called for a new housing block, but MVRDV instead proposed a series of houses and apartment buildings arranged around shared courtyards and individual gardens.
Apartment blocks will be positioned at the corners of the development, while townhouses will line the edges and smaller residences will be inserted into the middle. The architects hope this arrangement will foster a neighbourhood community.
The 95 homes will be made up of 16 different unit types, ranging from 30 to 130 square metres in area, and forming a mixture between one and four storeys.
Different pastel colours will help residents to identify their own homes, based on the traditional paintwork found in historic Swiss town centres.
MVRDV worked with landscape architects Fontana to design the exterior spaces. Fruit trees will be dotted across the gardens, while dividing walls will include demountable tables and benches, as well as folding panels that can be used for table tennis.
MVRDV win Competition in Emmen, Switzerland with Urban Hybrid
The city of Emmen has announced that investment corporation Senn BPM AG together with MVRDV are the winners of the Feldbreite competition for a housing block with 95 homes of 16 different types. The urban hybrid development combines characteristics of city dwelling – central location, privacy, underground parking – with the characteristics of suburban life: gardens, multilevel living and a neighbourhood community. Construction is envisioned to start in 2015.
Instead of the housing block asked for by the brief, MVRDV created a mixed urban block with small apartment buildings at the corners, townhouses along the streets and garden and patio houses inside the block. The 16 different housing types, which vary in size from 30 to 130 m2 and from one to four floors, will naturally attract a mixed group of inhabitants, an important factor in creating a vivid urban environment. The project consists of 9000 m2 of housing, 2034 m2 services and 2925 m2 underground parking.
Each house or apartment will have its own facade colour, emphasising its individual ownership. A pastel range of colour was chosen based on the specific colours traditionally found in historic Swiss town centres in the Lucerne area, such as Beromünster.
An important aspect of the project is the high quality of construction in combination with relatively low prices. Clients will be able to buy a more or less finished house – comparable to the basic model of a new car – with options leading up to almost full fit and finish possible. Home owners with little money can therefore delay investment, or do the work themselves, and still live in a high quality, new build home.
The exterior of the block is a varied urban street front whilst the interior offers the quality of a green and intimate village. The interior of the block is divided into both private and public spaces, with dividing walls used to hang tables or benches and parts of the walls which can be rotated and used for table tennis. A cohesive landscaping plan foresees a wide variety of fruit trees in the courtyard, in both the private and public areas. The garden and patio houses in the centre of the courtyard have their own entrance doors at the outer perimeter of the block. The roofs will be used for additional outdoor space.
MVRDV won the developer’s competition together with development corporation Senn BPM AG, Fontana Landscape architects and Wüest & Partner real estate consulting.
News: public and government opposition has forced fashion tycoon Pierre Cardin to cancel plans for his futuristic Venice skyscraper.
Pierre Cardin and his architect nephew Rodrigo Basilicati have axed plans for their 60-storey, three-finned Palais Lumière (Palace of Light) skyscraper, due to criticisms about how the building would fit into the Venetian landscape.
Speaking to Italian media, Basilicati said: “The decision was inevitable after over two years since presenting the initiative we could not get formal approval on a deal with all public bodies involved.”
Cardin’s Palace of Light was to be built on Venice’s mainland in the former industrial area of Porto Marghera and was to boast swimming pools, gardens and ponds on the upper decks and a helipad on the roof.
Opposition and criticism over the glass skyscraper began in 2012. Locals have been concerned over the impact the 245 metre-high structure would have on the Venetian landscape and its medieval city.
Originally set for a 2015 completion, to coincide with the Milan Universal Exposition, the glass palace was to include housing, hotels, cinemas, restaurants, research centres as well as educational and sports facilities; totalling an area of 250,000 square metres. The skyscraper’s three towers and 60 floors were to be connected by six horizontal disks, located 35 metres apart.
These public toilets in Japan by Tato Architects comprise a single curved wall sheltered beneath a gabled roof (+ slideshow).
The toilets were installed by Japanese architect Yo Shimada of Tato Architects for visitors to the Setouchi Triennale, an art festival that takes place for three seasons on on Shodoshima Island.
Shimada followed the shapes of local soy sauce factories, where large cedar barrels are contained inside timber warehouses, to create an angular canopy with curved forms below.
“I decided to make the toilet adapt to such surroundings and make it the starting point of a walk by partitioning the space with curved surfaces, as softly as a cloth under a traditional cabin roof,” he said.
The curving steel wall outlines three main enclosures, framing toilets for men and women, as well as one for disabled visitors.
The roof is clad with a mixture of opaque and transparent tiles, allowing daylight to filter into each space.
“The smoked tiles and glass tiles cannot easily be distinguished during the day,” said Shimada. “But the difference appears clearly when night falls and light begins to leak from inside.”
I made a public toilet at Shodoshima Island as a part of the project of Setouchi Art Festival in which I came to participate from this time. The site is in the area called “Hishio-no-sato (native place of sauce)” where pre-modern architecture of soy sauce making warehouses remains collectively most in Japan. These warehouses are authourised as registered tangible cultural property, where soy sauce has been made still in the old-fashioned formula. Framing of a traditional cabin and large cedar barrels on the floor are the characteristic scene.
I decided to make the toilet adapt to such surroundings and make it be the starting point of a walk by partitioning the space with curved surfaces as softly as a cloth under a traditional cabin roof.
Due to circumstances on the site the construction had to be completed in about two months. I tried to shorten the construction period by making the curved surfaces with steel plate and by, while making them at factory, proceeding with the foundation work at site at the same time.
I adopted tile roofing following nearby houses. Actually I roofed with smoked tiles and glass tiles in mosaic pattern as these are compatible with each other thanks to the standardisation, and I used FRP plates for the sheathing to make the place light as if sunlight came in through branches of trees.
The smoked tiles and glass tiles cannot easily be distinguished during the day, from outside and may be mistaken for the same as the unevenness of the aged roof tiles of the neighbourhood. But the difference appears clearly when night falls and light begins to leak from inside. The internal space will give feeling of being guided on while walking along the softly curved surface.
I think I may have realised such a place as looks more spacious than actually is and as being secured while being relieved.
Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola talks to Dezeen about her new tile collection for Italian brand Mutina in this movie filmed at the Domus showroom during Clerkenwell Design Week.
Called Azulej, Urquiola‘s new collection of porcelain tiles features 27 different patterns, including a mixture of geometric and floral designs, available in white, grey and black colour palettes.
“The idea of Mutina was always to defend the idea of ceramic tiles as very natural,” says Urquiola. “We never use colours that are strong, always quite natural.”
Azulej is Urquiola’s fourth tile collection for Mutina, and the first to feature digitally printed patterns.
“This year, possibly after all of the work we have done with my studio and other studios, we [decided] to work with printing and with patterns,” Urquiola says. “[Azulej is] a quite industrial tile, very simplified, 20 x 20 cm.”
Urquiola believes that the success of her continued collaboration with Mutina is down to her good relationship with the company, which appointed her as art director in 2011.
“The best [projects] I got were always coming from good relations with people I like,” she says. “In the case of Mutina especially, when they asked me to become art director, [which] is not normally something I want to do, I said: ‘okay.'”
Trend forcaster Li Edelkoort shows there is more to fetishism than just bondage with garments displayed at this year’s MoBA 2013 fashion biennale in Arnhem, the Netherlands (+ slideshow).
“There is a moment in fashion where there is this super need to be very fetishistic,” Edelkoort told Dezeen. “There is animalism, there are children’s behaviours, there is of course bondage, there is lace, there is fur, feathers and so on.”
Edelkoort co-curator Philip Fimmano told us: “[Li noticed that] we’re all born with kinds of fetishes and have a need for belonging and bondage from birth. It’s not just about fashion design, it’s about a movement that’s happening in society.”
“We tried to explore the extent of where fetishism can take us, changing from the sexual side to the shamanistic side,” he added.
Among the eight shows, Elevated is a showcase of high-heeled, platform and other raised shoe designs that looks at obsessions with gaining height. It includes a collection of shoes that undergo physical transformations by Benjamin John Hall.
Another exhibition called Fascination focusses on the secret side of men’s lives and how they collect accessories such as ties, underwear, shoes and scents.
Monsters created from fake fur are on show at a local zoo, forming an exhibition designed for children: “This is really to explore the way we are getting closer to nature and animals and that we want to animate garments with little ears or tails,” Fimmano said.
Elsewhere, the history of the apron is charted from humble utility roots to its place in so many of today’s sexual fantasies.
“We wanted to explore how the apron is an archetypical fetish garment, something that’s been around since Adam and Eve,” said Fimmano. “It’s of course a carrier for lots of different fantasies, whether it be the maid, the waitress, the worker or the farmer.”
All the biennale volunteers are dressed in aprons and visitors on 7 July received free entry if they wore one too.
Fimmano spoke to Dezeen about the reaction from event visitors and how their perception of fetishism changed: “A lot of people have the misconception that the word ‘fetishism’ is just linked to the sexual side,” he said. “I think it was surprising for a lot of visitors that it had so many different aspects such as childhood memories, nomadism, regional identity.” The biennale continues across Arnhem until 21 July.
Furniture design graduate Leala Dymond has designed a sofa where elasticated yellow bungee cord holds cushions and other items in place.
The Bungy Sofa by Bucks New University graduate Leala Dymond features a grid of yellow cord that is tied in knots around the upholstery and fixed to the frame with a system of pegs.
This cord can be used to secure extra cushions, or to hold magazines, books and remote controls.
“This sofa was designed to be adjustable to everyone’s comfort,” says Dymond. “The yellow elasticated cord allows the user to rearrange the cushions to their personal taste, without them sliding out.”
The frame is designed in walnut but Dymond says it could easily be made from cheaper materials.
Italian bank ChiantiBanca has opened a string of new branches in Tuscany that are designed to look more like traditional local eateries than financial institutions.
Poggibonsi branch
Italian design studio DINN! and branding agency Crea International devised the Restaurant Experience Banking concept to integrate ChiantiBanca‘s customer services with a familiar local environment, such as a bar or restaurant.
Poggibonsi branch
“The design concept is a clear metaphor for the typical atmosphere of Chianti inns and their welcoming service,” explain the designers.
Poggibonsi branch
Traditional cash desks are nowhere to be seen, replaced by groups of tables surrounded by bar stools, chairs and cushioned seating cubes. Brochures in the centre of the tables are arranged to look like restaurant menus.
Poggibonsi branch
Digital technologies include video teller machines (VTMs), which replace the standard ATMs, and a touch-screen wall displaying information and advertisements.
Poggibonsi branch
Informal spaces at the front of the banks function as welcome zones, plus there are also play areas for young children.
Poggibonsi branch
“Such innovative service design proves ChiantiBanca’s will to provide Florence’s downtown urban and financial fabric the alternative of a genuine bank that they can empathise with and come back to,” comments Andrea Bianchi, CEO of ChiantiBanca.
Poggibonsi branch
Each branch shares a similar colour and material palette, including timber, Corten steel and earthy shades of brown and green.
Piazza Duomo branch
The first two branches are located in Florence’s Piazza Duomo and the town of Poggibonsi. Others have opened in Fontebecci and Monteriggioni, also in the region.
The first revolutionary bank branch design is coming: a project aimed to upset the relations by blending the local heritage and the strongest customer service innovation of ever.
Client understanding
Restaurant Experience Banking concept is born from the need of ChiantiBanca to enhance the social and economic potential of the Tuscan territory, through an innovative service design for its branches.
ChiantiBanca concept plan
Project insight
Starting from the idea to consolidate the relationships, the new service design gives life to an environment that recalls the inns of Chianti. The relational approach is more reassuring and confidential, thanks to a revolutionary layout that introduces different counselling areas: low tables with chairs, high tables with stools and zones for a closer privacy.
Tradition and modernity have been harmonised to create this new ChiantiBanca branch. The innovation is perceived from the welcome zone, an open and informal space where the banking advisor receives and invites the customer to sit at one of the tables place centrally offering a prompt service with the support of brochures.
The use of digital tools facilitates the direct access to information, underlining the innovative identity of the bank. New ATM stations have been prepared to provide an automated cash service, the use of which will be explained to the users. In this way it is facilitated a multichannel strategy justified by the complete absence of cash desks, moved in an area accessible by the customer only with the operators.
The strong attachment of ChiantiBanca to its origins is further transmitted from the elements on the perimeter, which promote the excellence of Chianti through an integrated displays and a video wall of communication. A digital communication system on the walls, called “Bacheca del Chianti”, communicates the values and identity of the bank through information and graphical tools that recall the materials use in the concept design.
The spaces are characterised by the use of natural and sustainable materials, such ad wood and corten, and of pastel colors, such as walnut and green. The soft lighting enhances the rough pavement, creating a pure atmosphere where involve the client in the expression of Chianti.
The new layout marks the beginning of a new era for ChiantiBanca towards a relational approach with clients innovative that will increase the distinctiveness of the Cooperative Credit. Apart from being just a place for daily banking transactions, the new branches become an opportunity to promote local products.
The design, development and management of the project have been made by Crea International and DINN!
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