Hasta La Ideas

An angular installation by Zaha Hadid has been unveiled in front of the architect’s Fire Station at the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany (+ slideshow).

The work was commissioned by crystal manufacturer Swarovski to mark the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Vitra Fire Station, Zaha Hadid‘s first completed building.

Called Prima, it comprises five components that can be arranged in different configurations to create adaptable seating landscapes.

Hadid’s original drawings for the Fire Station were translated into three-dimensional fragmented forms to create the seating. Highly polished surfaces reflect the sky and the angles of the nearby building, while strips of LED lighting illuminate the structure at night.

“I have a particular affection for Vitra Fire Station as it was my first building,” says Hadid. “Returning to Vitra to work with Swarovski on this installation has been a very rewarding experience.”

Prima will be on show at the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, from tomorrow until 11 August.

First established in the 1980s, the Vitra Campus has become well-known as an unofficial museum of contemporary architecture, including Herzog & de Meuron’s VitraHaus showroom, the Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry and a conference hall by Tadao Ando.

A SANAA-designed Factory Building is the latest addition, opened in April, and the building proposed for the site will be a children’s art workshop by Chilean architect Ale­jan­dro Ar­ave­na.

Zaha Hadid has recently proposed a masterplan for a site beside a lagoon in Izmir as part of Turkey’s bid to host the World Expo 2020 and has also been appointed to design a stadium in Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

More about architecture and design by Zaha Hadid »
More about the Vitra Campus »

Photography is by Hélène Binet, unless stated otherwise.

Here’s some more information from Swarovski:

A spectacular new Swarovski commission – Prima

Swarovski has commissioned Zaha Hadid to create a celebratory installation marking the completion twenty years ago of her first major built project, the Fire Station at Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein, Germany.

The installation, entitled Prima, is an angular piece made from five highly polished components that can be moved into different configurations. It will be installed in front of the Fire Station, reflecting and honouring the design process of the building. The project recalls the dynamism of Hadid’s original drawings created for the Vitra Fire Station, exploding in three dimensions from the lines and planes of the paintings and sketches. Its reflective surfaces contain seating for visitors and are illuminated with LED technology.

One of the world’s most celebrated architects, Zaha Hadid was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture. For years, her radical designs remained on the drawing board, but the turning point came in 1993 with the opening of the Vitra Fire Station commissioned by Vitra’s Chairman Rolf Fehlbaum.

Painting formed a critical part of Hadid’s early career as the design tool that allowed powerful experimentation in both form and movement – leading to the development of a new language for architecture. Hadid’s interest in the concepts of fragmentation and abstraction is evident throughout her repertoire and continues to this day. Originally engaging with the work of Kazimir Malevich, Hadid translated the warped and anti-gravitational space of Russian avant-garde painting and sculpture into her own unique architectural practice.

Using the advanced design and manufacturing technologies available today, the facets of Prima are a direct translation of the dynamic two-dimensional lines and planes on the canvas, reflecting Hadid’s detailed experimentation to perfect the Fire Station design. The installation continues this research, documenting Hadid’s remarkable journey as an articulator of complexity: a 2D sketch evolves into a workable space, and then into a realised building.

Zaha Hadid commented: “I’m equally proud of all my projects as they each represent different times of my career and periods of research, but I have a particular affection for Vitra Fire Station as it was my first building. Rolf Fehlbaum shares my passion for architecture and was inspired by my early visualizations. He dared to engage me without seeing a prior track record and without the certainty of public success. Returning to Vitra to work with Swarovski on this installation has been a very rewarding experience.”

Nadja Swarovski, Member of the Swarovski Executive Board, commented: “Zaha is an astonishing force of nature who imparts her designs with power and grace in equal measure. It has been an honour to work with her once again on this exciting celebratory commission. Prima is a dramatic sculptural installation – half art, half furniture, and stunningly beautiful.”

Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman of Vitra, said: “I am happy to have worked with Zaha Hadid at such an early stage of her dazzling career. Her Fire Station is a spectacular building and it looks as impressive now as it did when it was first built. Few other architects would have been able to transform a modest commission like ours into a masterpiece of contemporary architecture. Zaha has been able to do so, thanks to an incredible sense of space and a radically new vision of what architecture can represent.”

Prima by Zaha Hadid for Swarovski at Vitra Fire Station on the Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein, Germany. Prima will be showcased outside the Fire station from 12 June to 11 August 2013. The installation can be viewed as part of the public architectural tours.

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Swarovski at Vitra Campus appeared first on Dezeen.

New work by the Campana Brothers including a cabinet made from the skin of the world’s largest freshwater fish is on show at gallery Friedman Benda in New York (+ slideshow).

The exhibition features several new series, including Boca – a range of pieces upholstered in a patchwork of roughly stitched cowhide.

The Pirarucu cabinet is made from the leathery skin of the eponymous fish, which is sustainably harvested in Brazil.

Racket is a collection of chairs and screens made from bent brass rods with nylon threads used for the seat and back, which also features sections taken from the backs of old Thonet chairs.

The Fitas series consists of a buffet, cabinet and table featuring surfaces filled in with spiralling strips of bent steel.

A new sofa and chair covered in stuffed alligators is made by Orientavida, an NGO that teaches underprivileged women embroidery skills.

The Detonado chair is made from stainless steel with a wicker patchwork covering the arms, back and seat.

Amethyst rocks sourced from the brothers’ home city of Sao Paulo are fixed to glass surfaces in the Ametista collection.

Concepts is the first solo gallery show dedicated to the work of the Campana Brothers in the United States and is at gallery Friedman Benda until 3 July.

A collection of furniture decorated with detailed gold motifs by Fernando and Humberto Campana is currently on show at David Gill gallery in London and their bed surrounded by hairy raffia curtains was presented in Milan in April.

See more design by the Campana Brothers »
See more architecture and design exhibitions »

Photography is by Fernando Laszlo, except where stated otherwise.

Here’s some more information from the gallery:

Campana Brothers: Concepts
June 5-July 3, 2013
Opening reception: Wednesday, June 5, 6-8 PM

New York, NY — Friedman Benda will present Campana Brothers: Concepts, the first solo gallery show in the United States by the renowned Brazilian designers, June 5-July 3, 2013.

The exhibition will introduce several new bodies of work that demonstrate a different direction for the brothers, while offering a complex and in-progress view of their practice as it stands during a pivotal moment in their careers. Loose and experimental in nature, Concepts will see the Campanas exploring a series of new approaches to their practice while overturning previously held certainties and expectations.

Arguably the most influential and acclaimed designers from any emerging country in the world, the Campana Brothers’ work is strongly influenced by their home country, Brazil, and thematically touches upon issues ranging from globalization to sustainability. Light-hearted and playful in nature, the Campanas’ designs often employ the use of recycled and humble materials, elevating these materials to a higher level in the creation of works that cross cultural boundaries while incorporating themes of transformation and reinvention.

The new works for Concepts include the Boca (Portuguese for “mouth”) series–new works in cowhide including a wall-mounted bookshelf, table, and standing shelf; the Racket collection–chairs and a screen in bent brass with a nylon stitched base and a hand-stitched motif made from remnant Thonet chair backings; Fitas (Portuguese for “stripe”)–a buffet, cabinet, and table made from bent steel; Pirarucu — a cabinet made out of the sustainably harvested tanned and leathered skin of the Brazilian Pirarucu, the world’s largest fresh water fish; and the Ametista collection–a series of glass hanging panels adorned with Sao Paulo-sourced amethyst rocks. Concepts will also include a new sofa and chair created out of a series of life-like stuffed alligators made by OrientVida, an NGO that employs underprivileged women.

The Campana Brothers, Fernando (born 1961) and Humberto (born 1953) have steadily built a career, achieving both national and international recognition since opening their studio in 1983. Based in Sao Paulo, Estudio Campana is constantly investigating new possibilities while creating bridges and dialogues where the exchange of information is a source of inspiration.

Campana pieces are part of the permanent collections of renowned cultural institutions including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, and the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo.

The brothers were honored with the Designer of the Year Award in 2008 by Design Miami/ and were awarded the Designers of the Year Award by Maison & Objet in 2012. That same year they were selected for the Comité Colbert Prize in Paris, honored at Beijing Design Week, and received the Order of Cultural Merit in Brasilia. In May 2013, they will be awarded the Order of Arts and Letters in Paris.

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at Friedman Benda appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Zaha Hadid has masterplanned a 276-hectare site beside a lagoon in Izmir for Turkey’s bid to host the World Expo 2020.

Located just outside the city centre, the site is part of the Inciralti region designated as a future tourist destination and renowned for its hot springs. Zaha Hadid‘s designs would transform the region into one of Europe’s largest urban recreation areas and it would remain as a public park once the fair was over.

The theme for the fair is entitled New Routes to a Better World/Health for All and will focus on mental and physical well-being as well as the well-being of society and the environment. The site and its surrounding infrastructure are thus designed to be environmentally friendly with a low carbon footprint.

Izmir narrowly missed out to Milan on the bid for the Expo 2015, while its competitors for the 2020 fair are São Paulo in Brazil, Yekaterinburg in Russia, Ayutthaya in Thailand and Dubai. The Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) General Assembly in Paris is expected to reveal the winning city in November.

Zaha Hadid is currently also working on designs for a Qatar stadium for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a metro station in Saudi Arabia and a residential skyscraper in Miami.

See more architecture and design by Zaha Hadid on Dezeen »
See more stories about Turkey »

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for Turkey’s Expo 2020 bid appeared first on Dezeen.

Ma Yansong of Chinese studio MAD is exhibiting architectural models and sculptures in a Beijing courtyard to illustrate his vision for a future city inspired by nature and shaped by human emotion (+ slideshow).

The exhibition centres around an architectural model of Shanshui City, a new urban development proposed by MAD for Guiyang, China. Inspired by a concept first developed in the 1980s by Chinese scientists, the city is named after the Chinese words for mountains and water and is intended as a model of how cities and their inhabitants can reconnect with the natural world.

In an accompanying book, Ma Yansong explains: “The city of the future development will be shifted from the pursuit of material civilisation to the pursuit of nature. This is what happens after human beings experience industrial civilisation at the expense of the natural environment.”

The Shanshui City exhibition also contains more than 20 models and artworks added to further demonstrate the importance of nature and human emotion in architecture. They include a skyscraper with gardens on every level and a village of apartments blocks in the Huangshan Mountains.

All of the models are nestled amongst bamboo stems, stone walls and pools of water in the Qing Dynasty courtyard garden of the WUHAO design store in Beijing, which houses seasonal installations by young designers and brands.

Ma Yansong leads MAD alongside partners Dang Qun and Yosuke Hayano. See more architecture by MAD on Dezeen, including a museum for wooden sculptures and a pair of curvaceous twisted skyscrapers.

Read on for more information from MAD:

Ma Yansong’s “Shanshui City” Book Launch and Exhibition Held in Beijing

On June 6, 2013, Ma Yansong’s “Shanshui City” exhibition officially opened; the exhibition is displayed in a Qing Dynasty courtyard garden at Wu Hao in Beijing. More than twenty architectural models and works of art are scattered around the ancient courtyard. Among rocks, screen walls, bamboo groves, pools of water and beneath the sky, the scale of each piece varies and collectively they form a futuristic utopian urban landscape.

The pieces on display range from a fish tank to the conceptual model of the “Shanshui City” which represents a proposal of hundreds of thousands of square metres in size. All the pieces exhibited express the sentiment of humans towards nature and depict the “Shanshui City” as the social ideal of the future. The newly issued book “Shanshui City” – released simultaneously with the exhibition – is an important turning point for Ma Yansong’s ten years of architectural practice and theory.

In the book, he says: “The city of the future development will be shifted from the pursuit of material civilisation to the pursuit of nature. This is what happens after human beings experience industrial civilisation at the expense of the natural environment. The emotional harmonious relationship between nature and man will be rebuilt upon the ‘Shanshui City.'” This small brochure illustrates the young Chinese architect’s ideals concerning futuristic habitation. “It would be a great pity if the vigorous urbanisation could not breed new urban civilisation and ideal.”

The famous Chinese scientist Qian Xuesen proposed the concept of “Shanshui City” in the 1980s. In view of the emerging large-scale cement construction, he put forward a new model of urban development based on Chinese Shanshui spirit, which was meant to allow people to “stay out of nature and return to nature.”

However, this idealistic urban concept was not put into practice. As the world’s largest manufacturing base, a large number of soulless “shelf cities” appeared in contemporary China due to the lack of cultural spirit.

Qian Xuesen pointed out that modern cities’ worship of power and capital leads to maximisation and utilitarianism. “Buildings in cities should not become living machines. Even the most powerful technology and tools can never endow the city with a soul.”

To Ma Yansong, Shanshui does not just refer to nature; it is also the individual’s emotional response to the surrounding world. “Shanshui City” is a combination of city density, functionality and the artistic conception of natural landscape. It aims at composing a future city that takes human spirit and emotion at their cores.

In the opening forum of “Shanshui City,” a round-table dialogue was held with the participation of Liu Xiaochun, Li Xianting, Bao Pao, Wang Mingxian, Jin Qiuye and Ma Yansong, leading to be, undoubtedly, a historic moment. Perhaps the “Shanshui City” ideology is the very progress that China’s urbanisation can contribute to the world.

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by Ma Yansong appeared first on Dezeen.

Photographs depicting examples of unsung architecture from around London chosen by architecture critics are on show at the Design Museum in London (+ slideshow).

Curated by independent writer, editor and curator Elias Redstone, the series of original images by photographer Theo Simpson documents overlooked buildings and infrastructure, including an oil refinery jetty, a bus garage and a cemetery.

The ten colour offset prints are on display in the Design Museum‘s Café and Tank space until 22 July and have been compiled in a journal published by Theo Simpson and graphic designer Ben Mclaughlin’s publishing company, Mass Observation.

We recently published a set of photographs by Alastair Philip Wiper of the world’s largest solar furnace and wave-reflecting chambers and Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers documented a series of World War Two monuments in Yugoslavia.

See more photography projects on Dezeen »
See all stories about the Design Museum »

Here is a selection of photographs from the exhibition, with the explanatory texts from the critics:

Sam Jacob of FAT, a regular contributor to Dezeen’s opinion column, nominated Welbeck Street Car Park in Marlyebone.

Its neighbour is buried beneath Cavendish Square; modern necessity camouflaged beneath apparent historicism. But Welbeck Street is qualmless, a multistory car park celebrating itself as though it were the crowning glory of civilisation. Designed for Debenhams in 1971, it sits like a block-sized sculpture, its elongated diamond-shaped prefabricated concrete panels locked together into mesmeric and scaleless pattern that genuflects to the oddities of its historical boundary.

It is part of a small gang, a batch of buildings produced in a small window when car parks were treated as civic monuments, significant structures that expressed the modernity of the moment. This moment saw a coincidence of the tail end of brutalism and the megastructure along with enthusiasms for grand infrastructural highway planning.

Of course all of those things – cars, architecture, planning, concrete – soon found themselves if not blamed for the collapse of society at least tarnished with doubt, falling on the wrong side of every contemporary ideological debate.

Blampied’s architecture explores and expresses the possibilities of the multistory car park. Its frame remains open to the elements, a giant grill that ventilates fumes from the buildings interior while also, perhaps, referring to a cars radiator grill. It is simultaneously practical and symbolic. Its rawness casts it as part of the infrastructural landscape: highway engineered into vertical stack. But here infrastructure is handled with such delicacy that all its rawness is elevated to sublime beauty.

Welbeck Street Car Park should be regarded along with other great structures occurring at the intersection of transport and architecture, alongside Gilbert Scott’s St Pancras, Brunel’s train sheds and Grand Central Station. It also stands as a template for a problem that is not going to disappear any time soon. The building acts as an interface between cars and the city. It resolves this often troubling relationship beautifully, a structure for cars articulated as a fully urban phenomenon.

Tom Dyckhoff of the BBC Culture Show selected Berthold Lubetkin’s Bevin Court flats.

It felt a little like the white rabbit falling down the hole in Alice in Wonderland; only we fell up. It was the mid-1990s. We were at university, on an architecture field trip, trudging past Islington’s Farrow & Ball-ed brick townhouses and cappuccino-selling cafes (flat whites hadn’t been invented yet). Yuppies. We still called them yuppies, then.

Our tutor was a Marxist; he was having none of this. He marched his comrades, who, by now, were looking a little green with envy, down Percy Street (more posh townhouses), turned right, ta-dah! Oh… Is that it? A block of flats. And…? Designed by Berthold Lubetkin in the 1950s, we obediently scribbled in our notebooks. Yes, we get the message: we bothered to build homes for the proletariat back then.

It was originally to be called Lenin Court, containing a statue of the Soviet leader, until geopolitics shifted. Very interesting. But, basically, so what? Still not as nice as those Georgian houses. He continued: “Council cut the budget, usual story, so Lubetkin scaled back the ambition. Apart from…”

Our tutor opened the block’s little entrance door. That one single act will stay with me till I die. It was as if our tutor had slipped us all a tab of acid. We walked in and entered… what? Another universe. Another dimension. Whoosh. That staircase! Now, most staircases in postwar blocks of flats are nothing to write home about. This one, though, was plucked from an Escher print. We scampered up, dizzy, eyes wide open. Imagine coming home from work to this. Imagine popping out for a pint of milk. Going to school. Those Georgian houses didn’t have a staircase like this. Our tutor smiled. This was what architecture was all about. We got the message.

The Cabmen’s Shelter that provided refreshments to Victorian horse-drawn cab drivers was chosen by Oliver Wainwright of The Guardian.

Looking like a cross between a quaint country cricket pavilion and a large garden shed, the Cabmen’s Shelter is an enigmatic part of the London streetscape. With its green-painted timber panelled walls, pitched tiled rooftop and decorative air vent poking out of the top, it squats at the side of the road like an emerald Tardis, waiting to transport you back to Victorian London.

There are only 13 of these mysterious structures left, scattered from Chelsea Embankment to Russell Square, all of which are now Grade II listed, but at their height there were over 60 across the city, built at a cost of £200 each. They were the product of the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund, established in 1875 by the philanthropic Earl of Shaftesbury to provide “good and wholesome refreshments at moderate prices” for London’s army of horse-drawn cab drivers – of which there were 4,600 by 1869.

Law stated that cabbies could not leave their horse and cab at the stand unattended, so they had to pay someone to keep watch if they wanted to go for a break. Providing a place to rest at the head of the taxi rank, the shelters solved this problem. Occupying a place on the public highway, their dimensions could be no larger than the size of a hansom cab and its steed – that is “seven bays long by three bays wide”.

Built partly to tempt cabbies away from the pub, the shelters had a moralistic bent: each displays a sign declaring that gambling, swearing and political discussion is strictly forbidden, and alcohol cannot be served. Inside, there is space for 12 people, sitting on benches that run along both walls around a u-shaped Formica-topped table, hinged at the end to allow you to squeeze in. In the corner, an impossibly small kitchen serves up strong tea – and some of the best bacon sarnies in London.

Owen Hatherley of The Guardian nominated an oil refinery jetty in Canvey Island on the Thames estuary.

Canvey Island was ‘oil city’, a seaside town with a massive sideline in the petrochemical industry. The exceptionally long, spindly, worn jetty that was once part of the Occidental Petroleum site is both a remnant of and currently provides a view of one of the least commented-on but most astonishing ‘unknown architectures’ around – the buildings of the petrochemical industry, here more specifically, the Coryton refinery in Essex.

Anonymous and hardly even strictly definable as ‘architecture’, refineries are among the most dreamlike and complex things in the built environment, usually placed at a safe distance from actual cities, the sort of zones where the real workings of the economy, and the structures that house them, can be seen. Refineries themselves are the unacknowledged architectural inspiration for the Lloyds building and much else, bafflingly intricate steel structures made up of dozens of little towers, protrusions and connections, which have a spectacular sense of sheer spatial exuberance and a total lack of the cowardice of so much actual architecture.

Pick a refinery, it doesn’t matter which – Wilton, Fawley, or Canvey, where the beach and the jetty provide a view of a site that was mostly established by Mobil in the 1950s; the village of Coryton was razed for the purpose. By day, refineries are stunning enough, but  lit up at night, each one is a pocket metropolis, a constructivist’s dream of steel, flares and flashing lights, from a distance much more impressive a skyline than many actual cities. Therein, these all-but-illegible, bafflingly complex structures are processing our increasingly irrational oil economy in an appropriately mind-boggling way.

Here’s some more information about the exhibition:

Lesser Known Architecture: A Celebration of Underappreciated London Buildings

Lesser Known Architecture is a free exhibition celebrating extraordinary London architecture. Nominated by leading architecture critics, these ten buildings, structures and subways contribute to the mix and diversity of the city but are all too often overlooked and forgotten. Curated by Elias Redstone, Lesser Known Architecture presents an alternative architectural map of the city. Each site has been photographed by Theo Simpson and will be displayed as a series of single colour offset prints in the Design Museum Café and Tank. The installation is designed by Ben Mclaughlin.

The Ten London Buildings Featured and their Nominators:

» Bevin Court nominated by Tom Dyckhoff (BBC Culture Show)
» Brownfield Estate nominated by Owen Hatherley (The Guardian)
» Cabmen’s Shelters nominated by Oliver Wainwright (The Guardian)
» Crystal Palace Subway nominated by Rory Olcayto (The Architects’ Journal)
» London Underground Arcades nominated by Edwin Heathcote (Financial Times)
» Mail Rail nominated by Ellie Stathaki (Wallpaper*)
» Nunhead Cemetery nominated by Hugo MacDonald (Monocle)
» Occidental Oil Refinery Jetty nominated by Owen Hatherley (The Guardian)
» Stockwell Bus Garage nominated by Tom Dyckhoff (BBC Culture Show)
» Welbeck Street Car Park nominated by Sam Jacob (Dezeen / Art Review)

Each nominator has written an overview of their buildings historical and design credentials that will be published in the accompanying journal, Lesser Known Architecture, Vol. 1: London.

The Lesser Known Architecture photographs will also be produced as limited edition prints available to purchase from the Design Museum Shop.
Lesser Known Architecture is part of the London Festival of Architecture 2013.

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at the Design Museum appeared first on Dezeen.