Hasta La Ideas

News: the two temporary wing-like seating stands have been removed from Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre at the London 2012 Olympic Park, meaning the building can be seen for the first time as it was originally designed.

The two temporary stands increased spectator capacity from 2500 to 7500 during the Olympic games, but their removal will enable the building’s conversion to a public swimming pool, set to open in spring 2014.

The final two 172-tonne trusses were removed yesterday and huge panels of glazing will now be installed along the two side elevations, allowing natural light into the building’s three pools and corresponding with Zaha Hadid‘s original design. Once open, it will also offer a cafe, crèche and dry-dive training area.

The renovation forms part of the £292million legacy programme to convert the Olympic site into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which will open in phases beginning with North Park this July.

The Aquatics Centre could be used as a competition venue again if London wins its bid to host the 2014 FINA Diving Championships and the 2016 European Swimming Championships.

Hadid’s building was completed in July 2011, a year ahead of the London 2012 Olympics and features an undulating wave-like roof and six curved concrete diving boards. See more images of the Olympic venues in our slideshow feature.

See more architecture by Zaha Hadid »
See all stories about London 2012 »

Photography by David Poultney for LLDC.

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Photographer Edmund Sumner has revealed initial images of the filigree-clad Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MuCEM) by architect Rudy Ricciotti, which is set to open next month on Marseille’s waterfront (+ slideshow).

Tying in with the French city’s designation as European Capital of Culture 2013, MuCEM is one of several civic buildings set to open there this year and will be dedicated to the history and cultures of the Mediterranean region.

Ornamental concrete shrouds the glazed exterior of the museum like a lacy veil, moderating light through to the building’s two exhibition floors. Meanwhile, an inclined walkway bridges out from the roof the building to meet Fort Saint-Jean – a seventeenth-century stronghold that will also house museum exhibitions – before continuing on towards the Eglise Saint-Laurent church nearby.

Rudy Ricciotti describes the building as a “vertical casbah”, referring to its arrangement on the harbour. “Open to the sea, it draws a horizon where the two shores of the Mediterranean can meet,” he says.

Other projects to open in Marseille this year include a polished steel pavilion by Foster + Partners and a contemporary art space on the rooftop of Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse housing block. See more architecture in Marseille.

See more photography by Edmund Sumner on Dezeen, or on his website.

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photographed by Edmund Sumner appeared first on Dezeen.

Architectural sketches and motifs are etched across the concrete walls of the Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin by Russian architecture collective SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov.

Architects Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov of SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov designed the building to house the collections of the Tchoban Foundation, which the architect founded in 2009 as an archive of architectural drawings from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Located on the site of a former brewery, the five-storey museum will be the foundation’s first address and comprises a stack of overlapping concrete volumes with a glass penthouse positioned on top.

Architectural reliefs cover all three of the yellowish-grey concrete facades and form repetitive patterns. The surfaces are also broken up into groups of gently angled planes, intended to mimic overlapping sheets of paper.

“This artistic touch is supposed to emphasise the function and contents of the exposition in the museum’s architectural look,” explain the architects.

The ground floor of the building accommodates an entrance hall, shop and library. The collections will be housed on the three middle floors and will only be accessible by appointment, while the the glass penthouse and roof terrace will function as an events space.

The Museum for Architectural Drawing is set to open in June and will present both a permanent drawing collection and loans from international collections.

Architects Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov have worked together on various projects as SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov. Their past collaborations include curating the Russian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.

See more museums on Dezeen, including the new Design Museum for Barcelona.

Photography is by Patricia Parinejad.

Here’s a project description from SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov:

Museum for architectural drawings of the Tchoban Foundation

The Museum for Architectural Drawings is meant for placing and exposing the collections of the Tchoban Foundation founded in 2009 for the purpose of architectural graphics art popularisation as well as for interim exhibitions from different institutions including such famous as Sir John Soane’s Museum in London or École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

For the construction of the Museum, the Foundation purchased a small lot on the territory of the former factory complex Pfefferberg, where the art-cluster is formed. Here are already located the famous architecture gallery AEDES, modern art gallery and artists’ workshops. The Architectural Graphics Museum that is being constructed will become a logical continuation to the development of the new cultural centre in a district Prenzlauer Berg that is very popular among Berlin residents.

The new Museum building will flank the firewall of the adjacent four-storey residential house. Such neighborhood and the location under the conditions of the current development implied the irregular space-planning arrangement of the Museum. The volume that is compact in terms of design rises up to the mark of the neighboring roof ridge, forming five blocks clearly cut in the building carcass and offset in relation to each other.

The upper block, made of glass, hang over the whole volume of the building in cantilever. The façades of the four lower blocks are made of concrete and its surfaces are covered with relief drawings with architectural motives, repeating on every level and overlapping each other as sheets of paper. This artistic touch is supposed to emphasise the function and contents of the exposition in the Museum’s architectural look.

On the first and third floors from the side of Christinenstrasse, the flat surfaces of the massive concrete walls alternate with large glass panes accentuating the building’s main entrance and a recreation room in front of one of the graphic cabinets. On the first floor there will be the entrance hall – library. Two cabinets for drawings exposition and archive are located on the upper floors. The levels are connected by an elevator and stairs.

Address: Christinenstraße 18a, 10119 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, Germany
Customer: Tchoban Foundation. Museum for Architectural Drawing

Authors: Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov of SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov, Moscow
Planning and project management: nps tchoban voss GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin
Architects: Philipp Bauer, Nadja Fedorova, Katja Fuks, Ulrike Graefenhain, Dirk Kollendt

Start: 2009 – 2011
Construction: 2011 – 2013

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by SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov appeared first on Dezeen.

Visitors to the Afrofuture exhibition in Milan built light-up glasses from recycled materials at a workshop organised by Maker Faire Africa (+ movie).

The workshop was a taster for the larger two to three day events that Maker Faire Africa put on in African cities for local makers to exhibit and develop their designs for gadgets or products.

“The concept is that people come together to show their ad hoc inventions that they’ve made in their garages, basements or studios,” said Jennifer Wolfe of Maker Faire Africa, who organises the workshops.

“In Africa, the inventions tend to be focussed on items that solve immediate and fundamental needs – issues such as agriculture, health and electricity.”

At Afrofuture, a series of African-oriented design talks and activities, designer Cyrus Nganga from Nigeria helped visitors create their own versions of his C-Stunner glasses.

The decorative glasses are built from old spectacle frames and recycled wire, metal or other found materials.

Technology expert David Olaniyan was on hand to help integrate arduino microcontroller circuit boards with the designs so LEDs could be programmed to flash.

“We’re trying to bring together some of these emerging technologies with grass root strategies, which you need to couple togther in a place like Africa,” Wolfe told Dezeen.

Maker Faire is a global initiative that runs public workshops for designers to showcase their inventions and Maker Faire Africa has amassed a community of makers across the continent that have presented over 400 inventions.

Wolfe presented other projects championed by Maker Faire Africa during the event, including a generator than can produce six hours of electricity with one litre of urine and conductive woven textiles.

Maker Faire Africa has been running for five years and operates in Ghana, Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria, and has introduced 3D printers to Cairo and Lagos as part of its programme.

The organisation aims to help designers market their products and find funding, as well as introduce them to technologies that could make their items more useful and consumer friendly.

The Afrofuture exhibition took place at the La Rinascente department store in Milan during the city’s design week last month and was curated by Beatrice Galilee.

Upcycling discarded materials in African design was one of the themes that emerged from our Dezeen and MINI World Tour reports from Cape Town – watch Ravi Naidoo explain the movement in our movie.

See more architecture and design from Africa »
See all our coverage of Milan 2013 »

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Copenhagen designer Cecilie Manz has created a collection of aluminium lampshades with softly angled edges for Danish brand Lightyears.

The round Mingus shades by Cecilie Manz for Lightyears have profiles with four facets, giving them an angular appearance.

Each is composed of a matt-lacquered aluminium shade and a white or grey textile cord.

An acrylic fixture sits snuggly within the top of the lampshade, allowing a soft light to seep gently upwards onto the cord.

The lamps are available in two sizes and six colours including white, nearly black, very grey, pale moss, light celadon and dusty limestone.

Mingus can also be bought at Folklore, a north London shop that we’ve previously featured on Dezeen. Read the story here.

The lamps are named after American jazz musician and composer Charles Mingus.

Other pendant lamps we’ve recently featured on Dezeen include two monochrome lamps by Zaha Hadid, and a collection of small and colourful lamps made from recycled aluminium.

See all our stories about lamp design »

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for Lightyears appeared first on Dezeen.