News: the world’s first 3D-printed plastic gun has been successfully fired in Texas, USA.
The handgun, named The Liberator, was assembled from separate printed components made from ABS plastic, with the exception of a metal nail used as a firing pin.
The makers of the gun, who belong to Austin-based libertarian activist group Defense Distributed, now plan to publish the blueprints for the gun on the group’s Pirate Bay-style file-sharing site Defcad.
The BBC later filmed the gun being fired by Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed’s 25-year-old leader, who said that gun control laws had become outdated in the face of new technology.
“I’m seeing a world where technology says you can pretty much have whatever you want. It’s not up to the political players any more,” he said.
The successful test firing came after a year of development by Defense Distributed, which a few months ago launched Defcad to host 3D printing blueprints for illicit items including weapons, drugs and medical equipment.
In other 3D printing news this week, US office supplies retailer Staples is to become the first major US chain to sell 3D printers, with the $1300 Cube 3D Printer arriving in its stores by the end of June.
In our earlier report on Defense Distributed, the founder of collaborative design practice Superflux, Anab Jain, suggested that democratised access to blueprints is “about making sure there is a possibility to debate these things instead of just becoming passive consumers and saying, ‘tomorrow I can order a 3D-printed gun if I want’.”
We report on the rise of 3D-printed weaponry in our recently launched print-on-demand publication Print Shift, which also looks at how the technology is being adapted to architecture, design, food, fashion and other fields.
Japanese architect Kengo Kuma conceived this primary school in north-west Tokyo as the modern equivalent of a traditional Japanese schoolhouse with timber-clad walls (+ slideshow).
The Teikyo University Elementary School comprises a row of twelve connected classroom buildings that Kengo Kuma and Associates also compares to a row of terraced houses.
Like many of Kuma’s buildings, the three-storey school is clad with cedar on every elevation. “We used cedar for the material of the exterior, as an attempt to recover a wooden schoolhouse in the midst of the big city,” says the studio.
Conventional timber siding was chosen for some surfaces, then combined with “yamato-bari” wooden panelling and vertical “renji” louvres to give variation to each of the facades.
The asymmetric pitched roof is made from steel, which breaks down to a skeletal framework in the courtyard between two of the blocks. The slope of the roof is visible on every floor inside the school, due to a tiered flooring arrangement and several double-height spaces.
Most classrooms are arranged along the southern side of the building, which is lined with glazing on all three floors. A first-floor balcony also stretches across this elevation, allowing a double-height recess below the eaves.
A central axis runs longways through the school to connect each set of classrooms. Group study zones are accommodated within this area, while communal activity rooms such as the library, canteen and media centre are lined up along the northern side.
Here’s a project description from Kengo Kuma and Associates:
Teikyo University Elementary School
We aimed at a wooden schoolhouse of our age. The building consists of a big roofing and materiality of wood for interior and exterior.
By changing its length and height of eave, roof can create multiformity to respond to its environment and different programs. In this building, we designed a big roof to run through the entire building, differentiating expressions on each side – a relaxed face toward south where abundant green of Tama hill expands – and subtle appearance to the north facing public housing standing in lines.
We also changed its form accordingly to the volume of each classroom. As the result, it has grown to a building that looks like 12 different-sectioned terraced houses being arranged in a row.
Composition of the space emphasises the atmosphere of the terraced (1-storey) house created by the roof. While the structure is 3-storey, the atrium connects the sections of the special room and the open space on 2nd and 3rd floors, so that you can feel the slope of the roof on every floor. Further, in the center of the building situates the Media Center that skips three stories as a measure to avoid segregation within the building.
We used cedar for the material of the exterior, as an attempt to recover a wooden schoolhouse in the midst of the big city. We also applied three different lining method for the wall, according to the location and function of the parts in the building – siding work, louvers and Yamato-bari (wood panels arranged with its side slightly layered onto the next one – forming as a whole regular unevenness) so that the building can hold various expressions. Cedar is treated in heat to secure durability.
We also utilised the plasticity of trees. We set up a huge wall of a recycled material made from chips of straw, rush and poplar, which can work as a notice board. As there is more freedom in the design of interior for schools, we managed to achieve this environmentally-friendly plan that can enhance the warmth of natural materials.
Big roofing is also good for environment for efficient building facilities. Using the wide roof toward the south, we installed there a device to gather heat. In this solar system, the air warmed under the roof circulates and vents from under the floor during winter. The roof also gathers rainwater. The water flows through the vertical drainpipe to the water conduit in the south, and it nurtures a biotope in front of the science room.
Dezeen promotion: sex toy brand LELO is calling for designers to enter products and experiences that stimulate the senses to this year’s LELO Design Award.
The Swedish company is inviting designers and artists to submit designs that activate smell, taste and sound in new and innovative ways.
The awards will be presented in two categories: fashion and accessories, and products and spaces. Each category winner will receive a €1000 prize and the five best concepts will be exhibited during the London Design Festival in September.
A Journey of Sensual Exploration – LELO Design Award 2013
LELO, the two-time Red Dot Design Award-winning Swedish designer brand and the world’s leading provider of intimate lifestyle products, is set to present an award for concepts that reveal new possibilities for pleasure across a variety of fields.
As a company with a portfolio of premium personal massagers, LELO is challenging next-generation innovators, designers and artists all around the world to come up with products and experiences that offer alternative kinds of sensory experiences.
Applicants interested in participating in the 2013 LELO Design Award are asked to visit www.lelo.com/award to pre-register, before submitting their work by August 1st.
Spread Pleasure Through Design
The overwhelming majority of existing products rely on just two senses: sight and touch. However, LELO believes it’s time to extend the possibilities of design by activating the senses of smell, taste and sound, with the goal of proving that true pleasure is multi-sensory.
Applicants are encouraged to discover the vibrancy of pleasure through design, exploring all materials, possibilities of technology and what it really means to feel good. While LELO’s expertise is sensual pleasure, the company is in search of what other possibilities remain unexplored. In essence, the LELO Design Award provides a chance for designers to give a personal interpretation of pleasure that pushes sensory boundaries.
The LELO Design Award features two award categories:
1. Fashion and accessories – in what way can the clothes and accessories we wear become tools for pleasure and entertainment? What playful and unexpected functions could they hold? Make fashion fun and explore new possibilities for pleasure!
2. Products and spaces – micro-technologies, augmented reality and responsive and smart materials are already changing the ways we interact with objects and spaces. Generate a unique idea and think about how interaction can deliver new forms of pleasure.
Judges
Miroslav Slavic – LELO CEO Sila Songkran – LELO Art Director Matteo Cibic – Creative Director Lanzavecchia + Wai – Conceptual Designers Erika Lust – Erotic Film Director
Prizes
Two 1000€ prizes will be rewarded—one for each category. The winners will also be connected to the most prestigious global design publications, highlighting designers’ profiles and concepts in addition to being featured on the LELO.com homepage. Furthermore, the judges’ favorite five design concepts will be showcased in October during London Design Week.
Chilean design studio Losgogo used reinforcing steel and wood to build these items of furniture against the clock (+ slideshow).
Losgogo set themselves a three-week deadline and a restricted palette of materials to create their collection.
“Polígono is a design project with three requirements: two materials, a method and a due date,” Nico Aracena, one half of Losogo, told Dezeen.
Steel more commonly used to reinforce concrete was welded into angular shapes and painted bright colours, before sections of wood were added to complete the items.
“The chairs and benches that construction workers spontaneously build on their working sites became our approach,” said Aracena.
The result of the time trial was six mirrors and eleven pieces of furniture, including chairs, tables, shelves, a floor lamp and a coat stand.
Triangular, rhomboidal and hexagonal mirrors have simple wood frames stained with softer colours than the furniture.
Doors, windows and recesses are picked out in yellow ochre on the timber facade of this retirement home near Paris by French studio Vous Êtes Ici Architectes (+ slideshow).
The four-storey Morangis Retirement Home was designed by Vous Êtes Ici Architectes with a Y-shaped plan that divides the interiors into three wings.
Siberian larch is arranged in vertical strips over the exterior of the building and also forms canopies across the various entrances.
The primary entrance is located at the junction of two wings and leads into the centre of the building. Additional entry points are positioned along the northern facade for service access.
The ground floor of the building is taken up by communal rooms, health facilities and staff areas. Shared dining rooms, living rooms and other social areas are grouped together around the south-east elevation and open to a private residents’ garden.
Bedrooms occupy the three upper floors of the building. The first and second floors accommodate typical residents and are divided into clusters of 13 bedrooms, each with their own dining and activity room. Meanwhile, the third floor is dedicated to patients suffering from Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.
Central corridors provide clear routes between the different sections of each floor. Rather than relying on artificial lighting, they each feature windows to bring in as much daylight as possible.
The third floor also features two roof terraces with direct access to ground level via a pair of outdoor staircases.
Read on for more details from Vous Êtes Ici Architectes:
Ehpad de Morangis – Vous Êtes Ici Architectes
How could we build a socially orientated retirement home and never neglect comfort and sensorial fulfillment?
A retirement home for all
Based on an off-plan concept led by AXENTIA as a social contractor and IMMODIEZE as a private developer, the Morangis Retirement Home was constructed with financial support from the Conseil Général de l’Essone, Regional support as well as the Regional Health Agency and the town of Morangis.
The operator and tenant of the new building is an Autonomous Public Establishment that offers stays as low as €60 per day. This low and democratic offer was attained without sacrificing the quality of service or the finish of the construction.
An orientated building
The building is constructed on 4 levels and is based on a Y-shaped plan. The building occupies the site as follows: 1) The main public entrance is located where the “Y’ strands connect 2) The north façade is dedicated to service, deliveries and employee’s entrance 3) The south façade is generously opened towards the residents private park
The plan is organized according to a few constraints: compact, rational and open towards the outside.
The living areas as well as the main activities areas (restaurant, salon) are developed around the private gardens. These areas benefit from the view and easy dedicated access to the gardens. The gardens include therapeutically themed spaces as well as more traditional paths around flower beds and a rose garden.
The rooms on floor one and two are dedicated to classical geriatric residents, the rooms are disposed into 6 units of 13 rooms each.
The third floor is dedicated to patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or other similar neurological disorders. The floor includes vast dedicated spaces for specialized activities, rest and well-being.
All the floors are accessible from the central node intersecting all of the buildings functions and patient units.
One of the base lines of this project is to offer, all through the construction and all its sleeping units, framed views. Each unit has a main gathering area for activities or meals as well as a smaller area placed in front of loggia or suspended gardens. All these small areas include large windows and quality framed views.
The corridors, usually blind and suffocating spaces, always include wider spaces with outside views, this allows our elders to move around at their pace towards lights and rest areas in the buildings circulations, they may easily meet and chat with fellow residents without having a difficult and stressing path to do so.
The third floor has two large terraces easily accessible to the residents. These terraces, widely orientated towards the park, are treated as a prolongation of the inner spaces.
On an individual’s point of view, the building rooms were designed differently with windows offering distant views of the countryside and treated as hotel rooms more than hospital rooms. The windows all designed with a glass panel to the floor allowing bedded residents to have a view.
A unique volume with different spaces: unity is not uniformity.
On the outer skin wrapping the building, openings are pierced following no specific symmetry; the sculpted facades offer various views and volumes behind the outer skin.
This envelope covering the building is made out of Siberian larch wood; these wooden boards are warm and comforting. The outer skin vibrates according to the sun and time of the day. The larch boards are top quality solid wood, they are butted together to prevent deformation and to remove defaults.
Wooden awnings extend the facades skin away from the building creating shelter from the sun and rain and protecting the ground floor’s salons and restaurants.
Every time the outer skin is punched in to form a dent in the global volume this corresponds to a specific socializing space: inner rest areas widely opened towards the park or the third floors terraces. The “dents” allow the sun and the light to reach in deeply into the building for those whom have difficulties moving about. As soon as the outer skin is breached to create a volume a different material and color is used to outline these inner volumes. A warm orange to yellow coating has been applied on the outer walls exaggerating the warmth of the light. The ambiance is friendly and warm and the yellow resonates nicely with the natural warmth of wood. As a result the dynamic spaces we offer are worth the effort needed to reach by elderly people.
This bright and lively color, stimulating without being aggressive, is also the one used for the window and door frames of the facades found under the awnings and in the bedrooms. As one approaches the building and passes below the awnings towards the yellow coating, as he is welcomed, will feel and understand the building’s harmony. One will easily understand how the building works and how it is connected to its natural and urban surroundings.
Developer: Immodieze and AXENTIA for the Conseil General du 91 Architects: Vous Êtes Ici Architectes Location: Morangis southern Parisian suburb Program: Retirement home with 91 rooms Cost: 9.4 million euros Calendar: First building permit 2010, final delivery 2013 Area: 5315 sqm, 46 parking spaces, total plot area 9950 sqm Partners and collaborators: Dumez IDF (general contractor), FACEA (fluids engineering) LECARPENTIER (exteriors and landscaping) SPOOMS (kitchen engineering) CAP HORN (Acoustics engineering) LAPOINTE (roads and water engineering)
Milan 2013: this collection designed by Arik Levy for outdoor furniture brand Emu features aluminium seats and footstools with tops that fold down around square frames.
Paris-based designer Arik Levy has created a family of lightweight outdoor furniture for Italian brand Emu with aluminium seats and frames that are resistent to atmospheric conditions.
The Shine series includes a seat, a stackable armchair with teak armrests, a footrest, a low table with a teak top and a large dining table also with a teak top.
The collection is available in a range of colours and was presented at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan last month.
Bernardo Bader Architects used locally sourced spruce, fir and elm to clad the interior and exterior of this rural cabin in Lower Austria (+ slideshow).
Based on the traditional houses of the Bregenz district, the two-storey residence has a simple rectangular plan with a steep gabled profile and a wooden deck driven through its middle.
Austrian studio Bernardo Bader Architects used 60 trees to produce all the wood needed for the house with minimal waste. As well as the walls, the timber provided material for doors, flooring and also some of the furniture.
The structure of the building is concrete, which reveals itself on a selection of walls and ceilings to contrast with the light tones of the wooden surfaces.
Living and dining areas occupy the largest side of the ground floor. A wood-burning stove creates a central hearth.
Additional heating is generated from a ground-sourced heat pump.
A home office sits on the other side of the deck, alongside a garage with room for two cars. Bedrooms and a children’s playroom are located on the floor above.
Entitled Haus am Moor, which translates as “House on the Moor”, the cabin is situated near the market town of Krumbach.
Déjà nominés dans la catégorie Music Video pour les Fubiz Awards 2013, les français Fleur & Manu nous présente leur dernière réalisation pubilicitaire avec ce spot « All Things » pour la marque de téléphonie Sprint. Une production Division proposant de belles images à découvrir en vidéo dans la suite.
Patterns of colourful tiles line the walls and counters of this north-east London pizza bar by architects Gundry & Ducker (+ slideshow).
“We wanted to see what we could do with the 150-millimetre square-format tiles” Christian Ducker told Dezeen. “Our medley of references included graphics from New York in the 1950s and 1980s.”
The tiles spell out “pizza” in large letters along the wall running from outside the restaurant parallel to the serving counter, though the top of the word is cut off by the ceiling.
Dark blue tiles cover the surfaces and seats along the same wall, while columns and beams are wrapped in yellow and red.
The late night pizza slice bar was converted from a nightclub so the architects had to start from scratch in the space.
“We completely gutted the whole place, took out all the flooring and built in a slope at the entrance,” said Ducker. “The space is all tiled at the front, and they gradually fade towards the back where there are just a few clusters left.”
“We left some exposed brickwork because we wanted the one-tile-thick insertion to be noticeable,” he added.
The tiles extend out and around the building’s entrance, branded with a red neon sign by graphic designers Studio Partyline.
Voodoo Ray’s is named after a 1988 acid house track by UK artist A Guy Called Gerald, who switched on the sign at the restaurant’s opening party.
Voodoo Rays is a late night pizza slice shop and restaurant in Dalston East London.
The design is intended to sit within, and celebrate its location on Kingsland High Street, a typical inner London high street strip with its ad-hoc signs and frontages. Its neon signage and brightly light interior is intended to be part of the nighttime street scene.
The design of all surfaces is formed predominately from coloured 6″ ceramic tiles. We wanted to form the interior as a sequence of volumes, reducing in scale and density to reveal the original building interior as you move towards the back of the shop. Each element is expressed in a different colour, the larger elements incorporating giant abstracted text.
A long pizza counter runs the length of the shop and projects beyond the shop frontage, which is recessed, so that the counter feels like part of the street. A hidden door leads to a basement club.
The design is intended to have multiple references taken from both East London and New York, and from between the 1950s -1980s. The references range from launderettes to pie shops, to seaside amusement arcades all of which are reinterpreted with a cartoon sensibility.
High-rise living is no longer just for people. A team of architecture students from the University at Buffalo has recently constructed a skyscraper for a colony of bees (+ slideshow).
Erected amongst a desolate group of disused grain silos beside the Buffalo River, the seven-metre tower provides a new hive for honey bees that had formerly taken up residence in the boarded-up window of an old office block.
The tower is clad with a honeycomb of hexagonal steel panels. Triangular perforations speckle the surfaces, allowing light to filter gently inside.
The bees are housed in a hexagonal wooden box suspended near the top of the tower. The base of the box is glazed so visitors can enter the tower and look up into the hive.
The box is also attached to a system of pulleys so that beekeepers can bring it safely down to ground for maintenance tasks. University at Buffalo students Courtney Creenan, Kyle Mastalinski, Daniel Nead, Lisa Stern and Scott Selin named the project Elevator B, as a reference to this mechanism.
The tower represents the winning entry of the university’s Hive City competition, which asked students to design a habitat for the bees. Other entries included a wooden cube and a geodesic dome.
Elevator B is an urban habitat for a colony of honeybees, which originally occupied a boarded window in an abandoned office building in Buffalo, NY. Although not created for a specific client organization per se, the project has generated a great deal of public curiosity because of the combination of the colony of honeybees, an interesting and until very recently, a restricted-access site, and a well-designed object. The site, Silo City, is a group of largely abandoned grain elevators and silos on the Buffalo River. Elevator B is intended as a symbol of the site’s environmental and economic regeneration.
The 22′ tall tower is a honeycombed steel structure designed and built utilizing standard steel angle and tube sections. It is sheathed in perforated stainless steel panels that were parametrically designed to protect the hive and it’s visitors from the wind, and allow for both solar gain in the winter and shading in the summer. The bees are housed in a hexagonal cypress box with a laminated glass bottom through which the bees can be observed.
This “beecab” provides protection, warmth and separates entry access between bees and humans. Visitors are able to enter the tower, stand below the cypress beecab and look up to view the colony of bees behind glass, similar to an ant farm, as they build their hive. Beekeepers gain access to the hive by lowering it, allowing them to ensure the health and safety of the bees. This feature also caters to the school groups that visit the site, encouraging children to get a close up view.
Visitors to the site have ranged from school groups discussing the natural ecosystems of Western New York and the Great Lakes, to adult photography classes using Elevator B and the site as a subject. A nearby nature preserve has also led several field trips to the project and is in the process of developing a formal education program centered on the bees and on colony collapse disorder, which threatens the species. Interpretive signage about honeybees and the site is currently under development and will be part of the larger redevelopment plan for Silo City.
The questions asked by visitors range from the simple to the complex, but they would never have been asked in the first place if the visitor did not have the access to bees that is fostered by Elevator B. This is a clear demonstration that architecture can and does do more than serve aesthetic or structural purposes. In Elevator B’s example, it sparks children to learn and adults to reconsider what they thought they knew. This includes the designers themselves, who have not only designed for the needs of their clients but have become inspired to become advocates for them as well.
Location: Silo City in Buffalo NY Firm Name: Hive City Team: Courtney Creenan, Kyle Mastalinski, Daniel Nead, Lisa Stern, Scott Selin Project Sponsors: University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, Rigidized Metals Corporation
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.
