Prayer rooms with walls of red concrete lead out to a staggered sequence of graveyards at this Islamic cemetery in western Austria by local studio Bernardo Bader Architects (+ slideshow).
Photograph by Adolf Bereuter
Located within the Alpine countryside, the cemetery serves the eight-percent Muslim population in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg and comprises a simple rectilinear building with five burial enclosures.
Photograph by Marc Lins
Bernardo Bader Architects used red-tinted concrete for the construction of the building and its surrounding walls. The surfaces remain exposed both inside and outside the complex, revealing the rectangular imprints of wooden formwork.
Photograph by Adolf Bereuter
A long rectangular window stretches across the facade, screened by a latticed oak framework that displays one of the traditional patterns of Islamic mashrabiya screens.
The building accommodates both prayer rooms and assembly halls. The largest room opens out to a private courtyard and features lighting fixtures set into circular ceiling recesses.
Photograph by Marc Lins
The five rectangular graveyards are lined up at the back of the building. Each one contains several trees, benches and small patches of grass.
Photograph by Adolf Bereuter
Completed in 2011, the Islamic Cemetery is one of 20 projects on the shortlist for the Aga Khan Award 2013. Five or six finalists will be revealed later this year and will compete to win the $1 million prize.
Here’s a short project description from the Aga Khan Award organisers:
The cemetery serves Vorarlberg, the industrialised westernmost state of Austria, where over eight percent of the population is Muslim. It finds inspiration in the primordial garden, and is delineated by roseate concrete walls in an alpine setting, and consists of five staggered, rectangular grave-site enclosures, and a structure housing assembly and prayer rooms.
The principal materials used were exposed reinforced concrete for the walls and oak wood for the ornamentation of the entrance facade and the interior of the prayer space. The visitor is greeted by and must pass through the congregation space with its wooden latticework in geometric Islamic patterns. The space includes ablution rooms and assembly rooms in a subdued palette that give onto a courtyard. The prayer room on the far side of the courtyard reprises the lattice-work theme with Kufic calligraphy in metal mesh on the ‘qibla’ wall.
Industry body the Crafts Council said the announcement had been met with “incomprehension” by the country’s craftspeople.
“The response has been mostly a sense of disbelief and incomprehension,” said research and policy manager Julia Bennett, pointing to the dozens of messages left on the organisation’s Facebook page today.
“There’s a lot of frustration, a sense of feeling undervalued and a fear that this will make people invisible.”
As reported yesterday, the proposed change is part of a review of the UK’s creative industries set out in a consultation paper released by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) earlier this week, which stated that craft occupations are largely “concerned with the manufacturing process, rather than the creative process.”
“I am so frustrated by this,” said crafts blogger Jen Smith of The Make Box. “The craft industry is booming right now and should be wholeheartedly supported by our government.”
Commenters on the Craft Council’s Facebook page said the decision revealed “a total lack of respect and understanding [of] the craft process” and was “obviously made by people that shuffle bits of paper around and have never created a thing in their lifetime.”
Dezeen commenters also branded the move “saddening” and “a symptom of myopic thinking.”
The decision to remove crafts from the list of creative industries seemed to be a reaction to the difficulties of gathering economic data on the sector, Bennett told Dezeen.
“The reason I think that [the government] is going down this route is that it’s challenging to come up with a methodology for measuring craft. We are working with DCMS and would welcome their investment in a methodology that would actually count craft,” she said.
In a blog post earlier this week, the Crafts Council said it was “disappointed” at the government’s proposals, adding that the methods of data collection and classification used by the DCMS did not present an accurate picture of the UK’s craft sector.
According to the council, nearly 90% of makers in the sector are the sole employee of their company, and many of them have an annual turnover of less than the VAT threshold of £79,000.
“If a sole trader falls below the VAT threshold, then because the government chooses not to gather business data below that level, they become invisible,” said Bennett, who argued that relegating crafts from creative industries would obscure the sector’s economic value and make it increasingly difficult for makers to obtain funding and support.
“We provide a lot of programmes at the Crafts Council to help people’s businesses grow. To get funding for things like that, we need to be able to say how many businesses we’re contributing to and what the scale of the sector is.
“We estimate in the UK there’s over 23,000 craft businesses with a gross value added of £220 million in 2011. It’s not as big as some other parts of the creative industries, but nevertheless it’s a substantial bit of business that’s not being made visible, not counted,” she said.
The proposed changes are intended to update the government’s 1998 Creative Industries Mapping Documents, one of the first attempts to quantify the value of creative businesses to the economy.
Consultation on the revised classifications closes on 14 June 2013. Details of how to respond can be found here.
This social housing complex in Ibiza by Spanish office Castell-Pons Arquitectes features two jagged apartment blocks arranged around a central courtyard (+ slideshow).
The pair of three-storey buildings accommodates 14 apartments, each with either two or three bedrooms, and every residence has its entrance within the oval-shaped courtyard rather around the perimeter of the complex.
“In Mediterranean culture the transition between public and private spaces has always been understood as something sequential,” says Castell-Pons Arquitectes. “The intermediate spaces, like the interior courts or the covered streets, the porches or the pergolas, have a very important role as spaces where people interact.”
Six apartments are located on the ground floor and a staircase leads up from the centre of the courtyard to eight more on the two upper floors.
The rooms of the apartments fan out around the site, giving jagged edges to the outer walls.
This arrangement creates more windows, allowing residents more control over light and natural ventilation.
“We tried to give a response to the complex surroundings by raising a building with its own geometry,” add the architects.
Painted red panels are lettered A to N to identify each residence, while gridded steel balustrades surround the balcony corridors.
Here’s some more information from Castell-Pons Arquitectes:
14 Official Protection Housing, Can Cantó, Ibiza
The project combines the preexistences and the urban development conditions, to interact with the users’ way of life.
City: Interaction architecture – surroundings
On the one hand, we tried to give a response to the complex surroundings by raising a building with its own geometry. A volume with different heights that takes the most advantage of solar orientation and ventilation where the game between emptinesses, hollows and interior court gets the maximum use of the space.
The only central core leads to all the housing. The use of exterior covered gangplanks facilitates the crossed ventilation and the facades’ liberation, and also leads to the use of an exterior dynamic skin where the principal areas are located. Thanks to its spiral form the differents housings are allowed to have free exterior spaces such as terraces and gardens.
In Mediterranean culture the transition between public and private spaces has always been understood as something sequential, where the intermediate spaces, like the interior courts or the covered streets, the porches or the pergolas, have a very important role as spaces where people interact.
With this intention, the building access is promoted from both streets generating a traffic between them and giving to the interior court the aptitude to stir the social life into action between the neighbours.
Economy and sustainability taking the most advantage of the passive systems, but also promoting the social values and comfort typical of our architecture.
Dezeen Book of Ideas features a selection of over 100 beautiful ideas by the world’s best creative brains, chosen from the pages of Dezeen over the last five years.
A group of students from the Royal College of Art in London has developed headsets that allow the wearer to adjust their sight and hearing in the same way they’d control the settings on a TV or radio (+ movie).
The Eidos equipment was developed to enhance sensory perception by tuning in to specific sounds or images amongst a barrage of sonic and visual information, then applying effects to enhance the important ones.
“We’ve found that while we experience the world as many overlapping signals, we can use technology to first isolate and then amplify the one we want,” say the designers.
The first device is a mask that fits over the mouth and ears to let the wearer hear speech more selectively. A directional microphone captures the audio, which is processed by software to neutralise background noise.
It’s then transmitted to the listener through headphones and a central mouthpiece, which passes the isolated sound directly to the inner ear via bone vibrations. “This creates the unique sensation of hearing someone talk right inside your head,” they say.
The second device fits over the eyes and applies special effects – like those seen in long-exposure photography – to what the wearer is seeing in real-time. A head-mounted camera captures the imagery and sends it to a computer, where it’s processed by custom software to detect and overlay movement.
It’s then played to the wearer inside the headset, allowing them to see patterns and traces of movement that would normally be undetectable.
Possible applications could include sports, allowing teams to visualise and improve technique in real time, and performing arts where effects normally limited to video could be applied to live performance.
The audio equipment could enable concert-goers to enhance specific elements of a band or orchestra. The designers also suggest that filtering out distracting background noise could improve focus in the classroom for children with ADHD and assist elderly people as their natural hearing ability deteriorates.
Two prototypes styled with faceted surfaces and graduated perforations were presented at the Work in Progress exhibition at the Royal College of Art earlier this year. “Our final objects convey the mixing of digital technology with the organic human body,” explain the team.
News: Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic passenger spacecraft broke the sound barrier during its first rocket-powered flight in California yesterday.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo was brought to an altitude of 14,000 metres before being released by its carrier craft over the Mojave Desert.
The pilots then rotated the spacecraft to a vertical position and ignited its rocket, which propelled it beyond the speed of sound and took it to almost 17,000 metres above ground.
Image by VirginGalactic.com
“The first powered flight of Virgin Spaceship Enterprise was without any doubt our single most important flight test to date,” said Branson, the British entrepreneur who founded Virgin Galactic to be the world’s first commercial space travel company.
“Today’s supersonic success opens the way for a rapid expansion of the spaceship’s powered flight envelope, with a very realistic goal of full space flight by the year’s end,” he added.
Dezeen promotion: free registration is open for Clerkenwell Design Week 2013, taking place from 21 to 23 May in London.
Heart of Architecture installation by Giles Miller Studio (also top)
As part of the three-day event, a series of installations and exhibitions by local architects and designers will be presented around the central London district.
Heart of Architecture installation by Giles Miller Studio
A giant target made of stainless steel and brass panels by Giles Miller Studio will be installed at St John’s Gate.
Mercurial table by Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid Design will open its gallery of furniture, design and architectural models to the public for the first time.
Preview of installation by Jaguar and Royal College of Art students
Car brand Jaguar is collaborating with the Royal College of Art to create an installation for the Farmiloe Building, where Jaguar will also show its new F-Type vehicle.
Clerkenwell Curated: a look at Clerkenwell Design Week’s cultural highlights 21-23 May 2013
Alongside the innovations shown by the festival’s many exhibitors and showrooms, Clerkenwell Design Week (CDW) is proud to present a series of curated installations and exhibitions under the banner Clerkenwell Presents. Challenging and inspiring the design community and visitors alike, these attractions have become an integral part of the three-day event, together with the Fringe events hosted by the numerous architectural, design and creative practices that make Clerkenwell the most important creative district in the UK.
Zaha Hadid opens her Gallery to the public
For the first time since its inception, local resident Zaha Hadid Design will open the doors of their design gallery to the public for the duration of the festival. The gallery features a collection of Zaha Hadid’s furniture and design pieces on the ground floor, and a never-before-seen archive of architectural models spanning over two decades of the architect’s stellar projects on the first floor.
‘The Heart of Architecture’ with Giles Miller Studio
Giles Miller Studio will create an installation at St Johns Gate, inspired by the unique concentration of Clerkenwell’s creative community. The installation will take the form of a giant target, representing Clerkenwell as the architectural and design nucleus of London, formed of stainless steel and brass ‘pixels’, laid at opposing angles to reflect light in various degrees and depict subtle and intriguing patterns. A signature device of the studio, the elongated shape of these ‘pixels’ has been especially designed for this installation.  The Ten Tables installation with Lubna Chowdhary and Domus Tiles
The Ten Tables installation in Charter House Square is a cross-fertilisation of ideas, materials and techniques resulting from a collaboration between Lubna Chowdhary and Domus Tiles. A series of ten tables, each uniquely tiled by Chowdhary, will be used as a meeting place for visitors, to congregate, dine and share ideas. The tile surfaces will be applied to Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione table. The designer’s 1974 manual re-emphasised the empowerment of craft and making, offering nineteen furniture designs using readymade cuts of timber and usually requiring nothing more than a hammer and nails.
Design Exquis by Florian Dussopt and Géraldine Vessière
Showcasing at the Order of St. John Museum during the festival, Design Exquis is an exhibition of four designers from completely opposing disciplines. Based on the ‘Cadavre Exquis’ technique, each designer is inspired by the previous participant’s design, and the exhibition is shrouded by secrecy to ensure each designer’s interpretation is spontaneous and without external influence. The result is a fascinating journey through the creative process and four completely unique exhibits.
Inspired by the medical history of the Priory of the Order of St. John, Birmingham- based furniture designers Plant & Moss began the chain, passing their finished piece to British designer Dominic Wilcox. Dominic’s design was then interpreted by Georg Oehler, one of the three designers behind Pudelskern, into a completely new product. The final work is an interpretation by artist Matthew Plummer Fernandez, adapting Oehler’s design to exploring emerging digital cultures.
2 (hundred) is company? with Assemble
During the festival, a landscape of 200 chairs will appear en masse in the garden of St James’ church. The chairs will be designed, built and arranged by London-based design and architecture collective Assemble. At times appearing absurd and otherworldy, the multitude of chairs in each arrangement is intended to challenge visitors and create new crowd behaviours. Throughout the festival, the arrangements will be continually changing, facilitating different events and uses throughout each day. The chairs will be manufactured in Assemble’s workshop at Sugarhouse Studios as a prototype low-cost DIY chair and instructional manuals for their fabrication will be given away for free.
Mirare Maze Folly with Mobile Studio
London-based architectural practice Mobile Studio will revisit and reinterpret the concept of the classical garden maze, playing on light and refraction to present Mirare Maze Folly. With walls made entirely of clear acrylic, the structure will sit as a ghost-like folly within the festival, allowing the setting of St John’s Square to permeate through the maze.
The Huts at Clerkenwell Design Week with Architecture for Humanity
Not-for-profit organisation Architecture for Humanity is specially designing and building a village of huts for CDW – each with a different theme reflecting the ethos of the global charity. A Green Hut will be clad with edible plants, a Water Hut will feature an arrangement of pipes and bottles, a Textile Hut will explore soft materials and finally a Remakery Hut will showcase objects from the Brixton Remakery centre. The collaboration follows last year’s successful “Love Architecture” campaign, which saw the “Love Hut” presented in St John’s Lane. Founded in 1999 by British architect Cameron Sinclair, Architecture for Humanity is a global charity which promotes a more sustainable future through the power of professional design.
Making Designers exhibition with onoffice in collaboration with MARK
Taking place during CDW at the SCIN Gallery, The Making Designers exhibition will explore the schoolwork of well-known designers, including Nigel Coates, Michael Marriott, Linda Morey-Smith, Matthew Hilton, Tom Lloyd, Simon Pengelly, Ab Rogers, Gala Wright, Anna Hart, Mark Gabbertas and Terence Woodgate, with more still to be announced.
The exhibition is the initiative of John Miller, founder of MARK, in reaction to proposed reforms in educational policy from education secretary, Michael Gove. Despite a welcome u-turn on the EBacc scheme, which would have all but eliminated design from the UK curriculum, education still faces a steady decline in making and creativity. By exhibiting the earliest work of design industry leaders, Miller and onoffice hope the Making Designers exhibition will boost the importance of “making” and inspire the next generation of designers.  Jaguar and the Royal College of Art (RCA)
The headline sponsor of CDW, UK-based manufacturer of performance and luxury vehicles, Jaguar, will also bring an innovative and engaging design installation to the festival, in partnership with the RCA. Students from both automobile and textiles design courses have been tasked to create their vision of a future design language for Jaguar. The winning creation will be showcased within the Farmiloe Building during CDW, providing a unique reflection on the design process for the car giant. Jaguar’s relationship with the RCA is long established, with Jaguar’s leading designers Ian Callum and Julian Thomson both being RCA alumni of the Masters in Vehicle Design. Jaguar will also show the new F-TYPE at the Farmiloe.
London Transport Mobile Canteen
Transport for London (TfL) and restaurant chain Canteen present the next instalment in their ongoing collaboration, with the London Transport Mobile Canteen. Unveiled at Clerkenwell Design Week, the canteen will take up residence at the Farmiloe Building in the main courtyard. The mobile Canteen has been designed by Very Good and Proper, a design practice founded especially to make products for London’s Canteen restaurants.
From the turn of the century to the 1970s, the London Transport Canteens provided food and beverages to the capital’s transport workers, with over 180 canteens – both static and mobile – feeding over 100,000 employees. The London Transport Pop-Up Canteen is a contemporary celebration of TfL’s canteen history. along with a range of outdoor furniture inspired by TfL’s design heritage. The mobile unit will be serving a selection of classic British food and beverages from Canteen’s menu.
It’s all happening in New York during May, with new city-wide event NYCxDesign running alongside the established International Contemporary Furniture Fair. We’ve also added five new events to the World Design Guide.
British design studio JamesPlumb has created a dimly lit showroom filled with antique furniture in the basement of east London menswear store Hostem (+ slideshow).
“We wanted the space to be different from upstairs: a discreet addition for the store’s most cherished goods,” Russell told Dezeen. “We opened the space up, painted it dark and dimmed the lighting; this created a calmness by making the corners and edges of walls disappear.”
Photograph by Thomas Giddings
The designers added a few unique furniture pieces for displaying different garments and accessories. These include a wardrobe that appears to be collapsing and a Chesterfield sofa with a table growing out of its centre.
Photograph by Alex Duffner
“Our work often starts with things we love that are broken and damaged,” explains Russell. “When we found the sofa it had no seat and was just this filthy rotten leather, but we didn’t want to just reupholster it into another Chesterfield, we wanted to celebrate it.”
Photograph by Alex Duffner
Other furniture pieces include a Wurlitzer harp case converted into a display case for a single garment and an old crate formerly used for the transportation of pigs. There’s also a fitting room, screened behind a thick layer of draped fabric.
Photograph by Thomas Giddings
The Chalk Room is currently dedicated to Hostem’s bespoke service, which provides made to measure clothing and accessories, but shoppers can also order furniture by JamesPlumb. This includes chests of drawers made from stacks of suitcases and chandeliers made from clusters of antique lampshades.
The Chalk Room by JamesPlumb Bespoke Menswear Store Redchurch Street, London
JAMESPLUMB created this discreet addition to their award winning interior design for menswear store Hostem in East London.
Photograph by Alex Duffner
Briefed to create an environment to celebrate the craft and skill of the store’s most cherished designers, they created a quietly removed space, downstairs from the main showroom.
Photograph by Thomas Giddings
A brand new collection of one off assemblage form the perfect theatrical showcase – including an antique Wurlitzer harp case transformed into a wardrobe for a single garment, a weather worn Chesterfield married with a table, and a crate formerly used for carrying pedigree pigs, that now presents handmade footwear.
Four courtyards penetrate the rectilinear volume of this concrete library in Ibiza by Spanish architects Ramon Esteve Estudio (+ slideshow).
Completed in 2010, Biblioteca Sant Josep is a single-storey public library in the village of Sant Josep de sa Talaia.
Ramon Esteve Estudio slotted courtyards into recesses on three of the building’s four elevations. One accommodates the entrance approach, while the other three are filled with plants and trees.
Every window faces towards a courtyard, rather than out the building’s perimeter. “This library is a small closed universe in which light and green penetrates under controlled conditions,” say the architects.
The outlines of the courtyards continue through the inside of the building, generating the curved shapes of four reading rooms with a communal lobby at the centre.
One of the curved spaces contains a children’s library, while another houses the multimedia room. The third has an area for magazines and newspapers in its corner and the fourth includes the lending desks.
The board-formed concrete walls remain exposed both inside and outside the building. Books are slotted into plain white bookshelves, while circular lighting fixtures are dotted across the ceilings.
The spaces behind the courtyards are filled with offices and storage areas.
Here’s some more information from Ramon Esteve Estudio:
Sant Josep Library
The library is a detached building within green surroundings splashed with trees that penetrate into the openings of the building. It is a prism box where the interior fragments with planes that flow between the spaces of the layout of the library. Between two fissures, the building opens to the exterior and allows the interior spaces to reach out to the vegetation that surrounds all of the building.
The building is composed of two different rooms, part of the functional design: the multi-purpose space, the children’s one, the general background, and the space for magazines, newspapers, music and images. The soul of the library is the books that accompany the walls that form the structure that organizes the different areas.
The surroundings give unity and include all of the space of the different areas, marking the limits but maintaining the continuity and fluency of the spaces.
The building opens to the exterior through polygonal courtyards that generate intersecting views between rooms and fleeting views of the environment. A large amount of skylights of different diameters filter a similar, neutral, clean light, generating a warm atmosphere that encourages reading and reflection.
Architect: Ramon Esteve Collaborator Architects: Esther Broseta, Rubén Navarro, Olga Badía Collaborators: Silvia M. Martínez, Tudi Soriano, Patricia Campos, Estefanía Pérez Building Engineer: Emilio Pérez Promoter: Ajuntament d’Ontinyent Construction company: Díaz-Sala Works manager: Manuel Pamies Project: 2008 Completion date: 2010
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