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Peeling plasterwork exposes brick walls inside this small renovated house in Melbourne by Australian studio Edwards Moore.
The Dolls House is a former worker’s cottage in Fitzroy. Edwards Moore sought to simplify the layout by dividing the building into three main rooms and slotting little courtyards in spaces between.
An extension at the rear of the house creates a large en suite bedroom, while a combined kitchen and dining room occupies the central space and a living room is positioned at the front.
Unfinished walls feature in each of the spaces and the architects built plywood bookshelves and worktops. They also added mirrored golden panels to a selection of surfaces.
“We left fragments of the building as a visual memory of the existing worker’s cottage,” architect Ben Edwards told Dezeen.
The two courtyards sit within newly created alcoves on the southern elevation, where they benefit from long hours of sunlight.
Other details include an original fireplace, pale wooden floors, a sculptural pendant lamp and a ladder leading up to an original loft.
The smallest house on the street, a renovation of a workers cottage in Fitzroy, Melbourne.
Retaining the existing street frontage and primary living areas whilst fragmenting the building addition beyond. Creating courtyards which serve to separate yet connect the functions for living.
A collection of raw and untreated finishes create a grit that compliments the owner’s desire for an uncomplicated living arrangement.
Echoes of the home’s history are reflected in discreetly choreographed gold panels located throughout the space. An abundance of natural light refracting off the all-white interiors creates a sense of the ethereal, an otherworldly environment hidden amongst the urban grain.
Dezeen promotion: a new magazine called Alef focussing on cultural topics in the Middle East will launch at the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London this Saturday.
Articles in both Arabic and English will cover art, craft, interiors and food, plus other creative and cultural topics from across the Gulf region.
The bi-monthly publication was founded by editor-in-chief Jack Thomas Taylor and is edited by Luma Bashmi, both based in Doha, Qatar.
Issues will be distributed globally and available to purchase at independent newsagents. Visit the Alef Magazine website to find out more and set up a subscription.
Throughout the day, a series of speeches, talks and installations will explore London’s connections with the Arab world. The event is open to everyone and free to attend.
Images shown here feature in the first issue of the magazine.
The editors sent us the following information:
Alef is an independent magazine published out of Doha, Qatar. Printed bi-monthly in a bilingual format (English and Arabic) the magazine focuses on cultural topics that are indigenous to the Gulf region.
Alef magazine is for anyone who has a vested interest in the culture movement in the Gulf region. Whether you are an artist or a doctor, a journalist or a tourist, Alef aims to educate both residents and visitors from all walks of life.
In partnership with the London Mayor’s Shubbak Festival, a biannual event that celebrates Arab contemporary art, and Qatar UK, the 2013 bilateral celebration, Alef magazine will be launched on 6th July at the new Serpentine Pavilion, to an audience who has a vested interest in Arab art and culture.
Alef will be launched during an event co-hosted by London’s Serpentine Gallery and Qatar’s Mathaf. The event will explore London and its connections with the Arab world through discussions, oral histories and interactive environments. The event will be open to the public.
The magazine is being supported with a foreword by HE Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, member of the Qatari royal family, and with a letter by The Lord Mayor of London, Mr Boris Johnson.
Alef is an international magazine. From the first issue Alef will be distributed on the global newsstand and in independent newsagents around the world. In order to reach its target audience Alef will be available via retail, subscription, and complimentary through strategic partnerships.
Spanish studio Langarita-Navarro Arquitectos has created an arts centre in Madrid by installing a flexible structure behind the concrete walls of an old industrial building (+ slideshow).
The renovated building functions as a research laboratory and exhibition space for Medialab-Prado, a city-funded organisation exploring the production and dissemination of art and digital culture.
Photograph by Luis diaz diaz
La Serrería Belga, or The Belgian Sawmill, was built in the early twentieth century. For the renovation, architects María Langarita and Víctor Navarro decided to leave the facade of the old building intact and insert a more flexible structure inside, which they nicknamed La Cosa, or The Thing.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
“[It is] a light and articulated structure with a certain pre-technological air that, infiltrated in the building, enables a large potential for transformation,” they explain.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
The architects used lightweight and durable materials that can easily be taken apart and repurposed to facilitiate the changing needs of the organisation.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
“Any duplication or incorporation of elements or solutions that had already been contributed by the Serrería building was avoided,” they say.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
A three-storey volume was inserted into a void at the centre of the building and features translucent walls that can be illuminated with different neon colours.
A series of wooden boxes provides an entrance and smaller rooms elsewhere in the building. There are also new staircases, wooden furniture and blinds that function as projection screens.
Here’s some more information from Langarita-Navarro Arquitectos:
Medialab-Prado Madrid, Spain
Perhaps more than anything else, it is the very strangeness of the diverging intentions found in the La Serrería Belga adaptation project for the Medialab-Prado that makes it possible for them to coexist, though not without a certain measure of irony.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
The first of these caustic coexistences stems from a certain institutional schizophrenia. While the ‘Paseo del Arte’ was transformed into Madrid City Hall’s banner to attract international tourism, an architectural competition was simultaneously promoted in the same area, which would end up serving an institution that sponsored debates that were deeply critical of this model.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
Medialab defines itself as “a space for the production, research and dissemination of digital culture and the confluence between art, science, technology and society”, and, in contrast to the traditional exhibition model, it promotes production as a permeable process, supplanting the figure of the spectator with that of the actor, or the figure of the mediator as a facilitator of connections.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
La Serrería vs La Cosa is another pattern of coexistence that, like a conflicting dialect, facilitated the occupation of the intermediate space existing between both rivals, beyond the conventional concept of restoration.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
La Serrería Belga (The Belgian Sawmill) was built in various stages starting in the 1920’s by the architect Manuel Álvarez Naya and it was one of the first architectural achievements in Madrid to employ reinforced concrete. For its part, La Cosa (The Thing), is the name that we have used to refer to the group of mechanisms, installations and facilities that, when assembled, made it possible to bring the building up to date with current requirements.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
A light and articulated structure with a certain pre-technological air that, infiltrated in the building, enables a large potential for transformation. Ultimately, it is the coexistence of opposites that made it possible to think of the halfway point between these interlocutors not as a consummate product, but rather as an open, versatile process activated by its users.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
These forms of coexistence created the scope for some of the strategies used in this adaptation:
» The appropriation of the existing building, not only as a historic narration, but also as a container for latent energies that have joined the project as effective material. Any duplication or incorporation of elements or solutions that had already been contributed by the Serrería building was avoided.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
» The non-specific treatment of the spaces. This condition resulted in a homogenous approach to material solutions and the uniform distribution of installations.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
» Thinking about the action as a stratification with different levels of change over time. Lightweight construction systems that can be disassembled were chosen, as were materials whose durability and adaptability will not condition future transformations.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
» Looking at each new intervention as an opportunity to incorporate support systems for creative actions and research. This included solutions such as the use of double blinds as projection screens, taking advantage of voids in the existing structure to create a retro-projected floor, the use of the dividing wall as a digital facade and the design of La Cosa as a mechanism for digital experimentation.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
Project: Adaptation of the Serrería Belga for the Centro Medialab-Prado location Location: Madrid Architects: María Langarita and Víctor Navarro Collaborators: Elena Castillo, Marta Colón, Javier González Galán, Roberto González, Juan Palencia, Guillermo Trapiello, Gonzalo Gutiérrez, Paula García-Masedo
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
Surveyor: Santiago Hernán Martín Structures: Mecanismo Installations: Úrculo Ingenieros Landscaping: Lorena García Rodríguez Project date: January 2008 Client: Área de las Artes. Madrid City Hall Budget: 1600 euros/m2
Furniture made of guns by Mozambican designer Gonçalo Mabunda will be on show in London next week.
Gonçalo Mabunda works with weapons that were recovered at the end of the civil war in Mozambique, which divided the country for sixteen years until 1992.
Deactivated rocket launchers, rifles and pistols are welded together to create a range of thrones and African-influenced masks.
The collection will be on show at Jack Bell Gallery in London from 12 July to 10 August.
Jack Bell Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Gonçalo Mabunda, in his second solo show with the gallery. Mabunda is interested in the collective memory of his country, Mozambique, which has only recently emerged from a long and terrible civil war. He works with arms recovered in 1992 at the end of the sixteen-year conflict that divided the region.
In his sculpture, he gives anthropomorphic forms to AK47s, rocket launchers, pistols and other objects of destruction. While the masks could be said to draw on a local history of traditional African art, Mabunda’s work takes on a striking Modernist edge akin to imagery by Braque and Picasso. The deactivated weapons of war carry strong political connotations, yet the beautiful objects he creates also convey a positive reflection on the transformative power of art and the resilience and creativity of African civilian societies.
Mabunda is most well known for his thrones. According to the artist, the thrones function as attributes of power, tribal symbols and traditional pieces of ethnic African art. They are without a doubt an ironic way of commenting on his childhood experience of violence and absurdity and the civil war in Mozambique that isolated his country for a long period.
Mabunda was born in 1975, in Maputo, Mozambique. Having trained in Mozambique and South Africa, he has been working full time as an artist since 1997. His work has been exhibited at Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf, Hayward Gallery, London, Pompidou, Paris, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg among others. His work was included in Caught in the Crossfire, a recent group exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, UK.
Criss-crossing concrete columns surround this colourful multi-storey car park by Austrian studio Kleboth Lindinger Dollnig for the classical music venues of Erl, Austria (+ slideshow).
The steeply sloping site allowed the architects to design the building as an extension of the hillside, with a grass roof that visitors can walk over.
“We wanted to create a magic structure but not a typical house,” architect Gerhard Dollnig told Dezeen. “Visitors to the Festspiele Erl should have the feeling that the garage is something like the start ramp of the event.”
Drivers access each floor using entrances at different points along the hill, so there was no need to add an additional ramp inside the structure. This allowed room to fit more parking spaces in.
Gaps between the cross-bracing columns permit views inside the structure, plus a skin of steel mesh will encourage plants to grow around the facade.
“The steel net should be overgrown with special plants over the years to become a ‘sleeping beauty castle’ that changes its skin over the seasons,” said Dollnig.
To avoid adding lines on the floors, the architects used blocks of white and orange to show the boundaries of parking spaces.
“The colour scheme should not just be seen by the cars inside the building but also by those passing on the street,” added Dollnig. “Together with the lighting, the building glimmers in the night.”
Here are a few words from Kleboth Lindinger Dollnig:
Parking Garage Tyrolean Festival Erl
The new festival parking garage is the final component in the repositioning of the Tyrolean Festival Erl. Not far from the famous Passionsspielhaus and the spectacular new Winter Festival Hall, the new parking garage with 550 parking spaces is built. The garage develops a unique character. Seen from the south it is very carefully embedded in the landscape, from the north, however, it is clearly visible.
Here, the garage becomes a stage for the festival guests: When exiting the garage, visitors enter a gallery overlooking the Inn valley. Only gradually the festival houses come into view. A clean cut 150m long wall creates a clear separation between outer space and car parking area.
Optimal orientation is guaranteed by an innovative, cheerful colour scheme.
News: students at the Eindhoven University of Technology have unveiled what they claim to be the world’s first solar-powered family car.
Called Stella, and resembling a squashed, wingless aeroplane, the vehicle can seat four people and can travel up to 600 kilometres, powered by solar panels mounted on the roof.
The vehicle has been developed to take part in the new Cruiser Class category of the World Solar Challenge – a biannual 3,000km race race through the Australian outback from Darwin to Adelaide.
This new category will be introduced for the first time at this year’s event, taking place from 6-13 October, to reflect the growing interest in commercially viable solar cars.
Unlike the other categories, where speed is the main concern, the Cruiser Class is judged on criteria including comfort and usability. Cruiser Class vehicles must also carry a passenger as well as a driver.
“The design of the car of the future has to meet the needs of modern consumers,” says Solar Team Eindhoven, which is based at Eindhoven University of Technology. “The car must be capable of transporting a family from the Netherlands to France in one day, it needs to be suitable for the daily commute to work, and it needs to achieve all this in comfort.”
“Since the Solar Team Eindhoven wants to contribute to the development of a car of the future, the design demands more than just a focus on speed,” the team adds. “Comfort, ease of use, and feasibility are all key terms.”
The carbon and aluminium car features a buttonless, touchscreen dashboard and a responsive steering wheel that expands or contracts according to your speed.
Solar panels on the car’s roof will generate around half the energy it requires, with the remaining power coming from solar recharging stations.
Solar Team Eindhoven’s website provides more details of the World Solar Challenge race. “A large part of the energy to be used will be collected by solar cells as we travel,” it says. “During the race, there are only three opportunities to recharge the relatively small battery, which means the car has to be able to independently drive a minimum of 750 kilometers on electric energy. Besides the issue of energy and its management, navigation, safety and support will be essential.
“Once the race starts in Darwin, the teams are permitted to drive until 5.00 p.m. in the afternoon. After that, they have to set up camp in the outback and be ready to leave again at 8.00 a.m. The teams must be completely self reliant and must reach all seven checkpoints.”
Photos are by Bart van Overbeeke/TU Eindhoven.
Here’s some info from Eindhoven University of Technology:
TU/e student team unveils world’s first solar-powered family car
Solar Team Eindhoven starts World Solar Challenge in Australia with four-seater family car
The Solar Team Eindhoven (STE) of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) presented the world’s first solar-powered family car today. ‘Stella’ is the first ‘energy-positive car’ with room for four people, a trunk, intuitive steering and a range of 600 kilometers. This is the car being entered by the student team in the Cruiser class of the World Solar Challenge that starts in Australia in October 2013.
A car that produces electricity
The solar cells of ‘Stella’- Latin for star and also a reference to the family character of the car – generate more electricity on average than the car uses and that means the surplus electricity can be returned to the power grid, thereby making the car ‘energy-positive’.
The car of the future
Solar Team Eindhoven has set itself the goal of developing the car of the future. By combining aerodynamic design with lightweight materials like carbon and aluminum, a very fuel-efficient car has been designed, which also has ingenious applications like a LED strip and touchscreen that make all the buttons and knobs we know today superfluous. Intuitive driving is enabled by a steering wheel that expands or contracts when you are driving too fast or too slowly. STE will have the car officially certified for road use to prove that this really is a fully-fledged car.
World Solar Challenge
University teams from all over the world will be competing in a 3,000 km long race through the Australian outback. Solar Team Eindhoven is taking part in the Cruiser class in which the emphasis lies on practical and user-friendly solar cars rather than on speed. The ‘solar race’ takes place from 6 to 13 October 2013. Back in the Netherlands there will be a tour of high schools to promote engineering and science in education.
The engineer of tomorrow
Thanks to Solar Team Eindhoven entry, TU/e is represented for the first time in the Solar World Challenge. A multidisciplinary team (with 22 students from six different TU/e departments) has spent a year on this project that involves challenges from the fields of energy and mobility. Cooperation with industry has given the students an opportunity to become familiar with top-notch entrepreneurship, thereby underlining TU/e’s vision of educating the engineer of tomorrow. TU/e professors prof.dr. Elena Lomonova and prof.dr.ir. Maarten Steinbuch are members of the steering group.
Eindhoven University of Technology
Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is a research-driven, design-oriented technology university with a strong international focus. The university was founded in 1956 and has around 7,200 students and 3,000 staff. TU/e is geared to the societal challenges posed in the areas of Energy, Health and Smart Mobility.
“The motivation was to utilise the power of unconventional thinking and apply my own dyslexia to objects to create products which have dyslexia and function better as a result,” Franks told Dezeen.
Confused Hangers can be hung either way round
One of Franks’ products is a coat hanger with two hooks, so it can be hung either way round. “The Confused Coat Hanger wasn’t paying attention when being told which way round it was supposed to be,” Franks explains. “As a result, it has a double-hooked head and can hang either way round when hanging your clothes up.”
Franks’ Poor Memory Pen Pots can hold just two or three pens because they “have a terrible memory due to their dyslexia and can only remember a couple of things at a time,” says Franks. Yet this apparent shortcoming prevents the pot overflowing with items and keeps just a few essential writing tools to hand.
Coaster Plinth, an oversized cork drinks coaster, ended up as an elevated platform rather than a flat disc because it “misread the dimensions it was supposed to be and hasn’t understood the question,” says Franks. Despite the apparent precariousness of a cup placed on top of the plinth, it makes the cup more noticeable so it’s less likely to be spilled.
Franks’ upside down Muglexia mugs
Muglexia, a range of mugs, are inversions of the traditional shape and refer to the way dyslexics invert and flip letters and words when reading. “These three mugs illustrate inversion and as a result are more stable and more balanced in the hand,” Franks explains.
Franks was given the award at the New Designers Part 2 opening ceremony at the Business Design Centre in north London last night.
Franks receives a £1000 cash prize, £1000 worth of advice from intellectual property lawyers Briffa, £2000 worth of advice from accountancy experts Rhodes & Rhodes, and a half day with PR consultancy Four Colman Getty.
Muglexia mugs refer to the flipping around of letters and words and keep drinks hotter
“Henry joyfully combines utility with human behaviour resulting in a clever, well rounded collection, brimming with unique ideas,” said the award judges.
See Henry’s winning design collection on Northumbria University’s stand at New Designers 2013 until 6 July at London’s Business Design Centre.
Coaster Plinth makes a drink more obvious so you’re less likely to spill it over
New Designers is an annual showcase of graduate projects from design schools around the UK. Previous New Design of the Year winners include boiled leather furniture and an extending shelving unit.
Los Angeles architects Kyle and Liz von Hasseln have set up a business that produces 3D-printed sugar sculptures for wedding cakes, table centrepieces and pie toppings.
The duo founded 3D printing company The Sugar Lab while studying at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where they graduated last autumn.
Their sugar sculptures are made using a process similar to standard 3D printing: a mixture of alcohol and water is applied selectively in layers to wet and then harden the sugar.
“If you’ve ever made frosting and left the mixing bowl in the sink overnight, you know that moistened sugar gets quite hard,” said the designers. “That’s the underlying concept of 3D printing with sugar.”
The resulting pieces taste like normal sugar, but could be flavoured. The pair are working on a range of custom projects including cake toppers, centrepieces, pie-crust lattices and a four-tiered wedding cake with a 3D-printed sugar stand.
“That’s an exciting part of 3D printing sugar for us – transforming sugar into a structural, sculptural medium that can start to define the form of the food instead of the other way around, and even to support it structurally,” the designers added.
“We see 3D-printed sugar as the best place to start, in terms of 3D printing food,” they continued. “There’s an existing cultural ritual of desert and celebration that embraces experimentation and embellishment. It’s primed to embrace technology like 3D printing as a design tool, and we’re just tapping into that.”
The Sugar Lab is a micro-design firm for custom 3D printed sugar. With our background in architecture and our penchant for complex geometry, we’re bringing 3D printing technology to the genre of mega-cool cakes. 3D printing represents a paradigm shift for confections, transforming sugar into an dimensional, structural medium. It makes it possible to design, digitally model and print an utterly original sugar sculpture on top of a cake.
All of our projects are custom. The design process begins from scratch, when we hear from you. Tell us your idea/theme/vibe. Give us a swatch of lace from your gown/a polaroid of the wrought iron gate at your venue/a postcard of your hometown skyline. Or just come to The Sugar Lab and brainstorm with us. It doesn’t even have to be a cake; centerpieces, chandeliers, cupcake toppers, sugar cubes, pie-crust-lattice, grapefruit sweeteners, all possible and possibly awesome.
How we got started We’re Kyle and Liz von Hasseln, a husband and wife architectural design team in Los Angeles. The Sugar Lab started about two years ago, when we were graduate students in architecture. We were living in a tiny apartment in Echo Park with a correspondingly tiny outdoor kitchen. We didn’t have an oven, and when we realized that meant we couldn’t bake our friend Chelsea a cake for her birthday, we decided to try to 3D print one, instead.
After a period of trial and error (during which her actual birthday came and went!) we managed to print a simple cupcake topper that spelled out ‘Chelsea’ in cursive sugar. Chelsea loved it! We thought other people might like 3D printed sugar, too, so when we graduated last fall, we spent the time to really optimize our process, and we started The Sugar Lab–officially–in our new studio here in Silver Lake.
Our process
After some brainstorming and messy hand sketching, we work to translate our ideas into 3D digital models. Our backgrounds in architecture serve us well during the modeling process, which has a lot to do with structural and material considerations as well as making design moves. We’re always aiming for a sculptural, dimensional form that maximizes what 3D printing brings to sugar.
As for the actual printing process, if you’ve ever made frosting and left the mixing bowl in the sink overnight, you know that moistened sugar gets quite hard. That’s the underlying concept of 3D printing with sugar. We use a mixture of water and alcohol, applied very precisely in a layer-wise manner, to selectively wet and harden the sugar substrate. The process is fundamentally similar to other 3D printing applications, we’ve just optimized the process for resolution and strength with sugar, rather than with a standard 3D printing material.
What’s so cool about 3d=printed sugar?
3D printing transforms sugar into a structural, sculptural element that can interact with food on different terms. 3D printed sugar can be used to sweeten or to ornament, but it can also start to define the form of the food instead of the other way around, or even to support it structurally. For example, we’re very excited to be working right now with some seriously talented cake artists at a well-known bakery in Hollywood to design a four-tiered wedding cake with a 3D printed sugar cake-stand, and 3D printed sugar-tiers supporting traditional cake tiers. What’s exciting for us is, in terms of the possibilities of 3D printed sugar, is how differently everyone thinks about how to use it. People are constantly suggesting things we’ve never thought of, and it’s very fun to try to implement those ideas.
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.
