Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka will show a glass chair that refracts light around its edges for Italian brand Glas Italia in Milan next month.
The Prism chair by Tokujin Yoshioka is created from sheets of thick high-transparency glass.
The chamfered edges are cut so light bends as it passes through the material, creating a rainbow of colours across the surfaces.
“This creation will be a chair like a shimmering sculpture,” said Yoshioka. “Miraculous expression is brought by the refraction of light.”
Four rectangular sheets fit together to create the seat, with the bevelled edges facing inward.
Yoshioka will present the chair in Milan during the city’s design week, alongside the reflective glass Prism table he has also designed for Glas Italia.
News: musician Imogen Heap is to put an experimental electronic glove into production, creating a tool that will allow anyone to interact with their computer remotely via hand gestures (+ interview + movie).
Heap has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise £200,000 to develop and produce a limited production run of open-source Mi.Mu gloves, with a wider production planned for the future.
Imogen Heap wearing the latest version of the Mi.Mu glove (blue) and an earlier version that is demonstrated in the movie above
“Funding this campaign will enable us to make a really important developmental leap to finalise the gloves’ design so they’re ready to go into production,” Heap said in a video accompanying her Kickstarter campaign.
Each gesture-control glove contains a range of sensors that track the position, direction and velocity of the wearer’s hand, the degree of bend in their fingers and the distance between their fingers. It can also understand “postures” such as an open palm, a finger-point or a closed fist.
The latest version of the Mi.Mu with all the sensor technology and battery integrated into the glove
The resulting data is sent wirelessly to a computer, keyboard and other electronic music equipment, allowing musicians to create music by moving their hands rather than by playing a keyboard or pressing buttons.
“Fifty percent of a performance is racing around between various instruments and bits of technology on stage,” Heap told Dezeen in an exclusive interview ahead of the Kickstarter launch. “I wanted to create something where I could manipulate my computer on the move wirelessly so that music becomes more like a dance rather than a robotic act like pressing a button or moving a fader.”
Various versions of the glove from the development process
The latest version of the gloves was developed as part of Heap’s ongoing The Gloves Project, which began four years ago. In 2012 she performed with an early version of the gloves at the Wired 2012 conference.
While developed for musicians, Heap said the gloves could be “hacked” for other uses.
Fingertips and palms remain free so the user can play instruments or interact with other devices
“I’m not claiming they’re going to be the answer to every interaction with the computer but there’s a lot of applications where it just feels wrong to use a mouse and a keyboard,” she said. “You might want to be able to make something in some architecture software where you could stretch a building or draw little windows and quickly move them around like play-dough and maybe we’ll get to the point where people will start to develop software like that.”
She added: “It’s essentially a remote control and anything that you could potentially do with your hands, you could do with your gloves.”
Imogen Heap wearing the old and new versions of the glove
The key piece of technology in each glove is an x-IMU board developed by x-IO Technologies, which is mounted on the back of the hand and contains an accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope and wifi transmitter. The latest version of the gloves features e-textile technology, where movement sensors are integrated into the fabric.
Below is an edited transcript of the interview with Heap:
Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the gesture-controlled gloves you’ve been working on.
Imogen Heap: I’m a musician but more recently I’ve been developing some gloves with an amazing team of people to help me make music on the move gesturally, enabling me to interact more naturally with my music software, to more freely create music on the move, in the flow of things.
Marcus Fairs: So they’re to allow you to make music without having to be tied to keyboards or other physical instruments?
Imogen Heap: Fifty percent of a performance is racing around between various instruments and bits of technology on stage. For instance, pressing a record button doesn’t look or feel very expressive but actually that moment of recording something is a real creative act; it’s a musical act.
But these actions have always been hidden from the audience and they disengage me in my performance, so I wanted to find a way to do that and integrate it into the performance. It’s the unseen that I’m interested in bringing out of hiding.
There are so many types of sounds or effects that don’t have a physical existence. They are software, they are hidden inside the computer. A bass-line might sound sculpted; it might have this blobby, stretchy sound. For me doesn’t feel natural to play a sound like that on a keyboard because a keyboard is very restrictive and very linear and you only have two hands. I can play a melody but if I wanted to manipulate any kind of parameter of that sound, my other hand is completely used up. It’s quite restrictive.
I wanted to find a way to be really expressive in using these software instruments and effects that feel like how I feel they should be played and how I feel that represents the sound that’s coming out of the speakers.
So in order to free myself up on the stage from my various bits of technology and to bridge the gap between what’s going on on stage and the audience, I wanted to create something where I could manipulate my computer on the move wirelessly so that music becomes more like a dance rather than a robotic act like pressing a button or moving a fader.
Marcus Fairs:How do the gloves work?
Imogen Heap:They have bend sensors in the fingers, they have lights for feedback, they have buzzers integrated in the side so I can sense where I am if I want to get a haptic feedback. They also contain a microprocessor unit that has an accelerometer, a magnetometer and a gyroscope in it.
We’ve been developing them for about four years and they’ve come a long way. We started with fibre-optic bend sensors in the fingers but we quickly realised that we needed positional data, accelerometer data, gyroscope data so that we could really be inside the music. Because actually just having the bend sensors in the beginning was almost like just pressing buttons. It felt very unnatural.
It began with little lapel microphones, which are made by Sennheiser. Seven years ago I began to stick them onto my wrists so that I could make sound with wine glasses or I could play my mbira on stage. I would be able to avoid putting microphones on stage for festivals or touring so it would cut down on the weight and the transport costs, which is also a reason for the gloves.
In the early versions of the gloves it all connects to a hub that I wear on my upper body. It’s quite complicated but it basically communicates with the computer wirelessly so I can use it to manipulate music software, enabling me to unchain myself from the computer, to humanise the missing bits of how I interact with technology in music.
I use these gloves with a Kinect so that I can have an extra dimension on top of local gestural movements; I can use the stage as a playground like different zones for whole different presets. I could map the centre of the stage for a certain key, and if I go over to the right and I combine it with a gesture so that I don’t accidentally go in there, then I can have a whole different key or a whole different set of sounds to play with. I could unmute and mute different instruments that are inside the music software.
There’s really nothing out there on the market like this, that enables me to be this expressive with music on the move in the studio and on the stage. It’s very exciting. When you see me play, not maybe every time because maybe it goes wrong or I go wrong, but when it works, when it’s effortless and when your movement is part of the music, it’s almost like a dance. It’s so natural that the tech disappears.
Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the latest version of the gloves.
Imogen Heap: It’s very exciting because it’s so much simpler and it needs less gear, less setting up. As you can see it’s compact and doesn’t need so many extra wires and the main reason for that is this: it has an x-IMU board by Seb Magdwick of x-IO Technologies containing an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer but the main difference is it now has wifi built into the glove. So it doesn’t need an extra unit to send information to the computer.
That is incredible because it’s sending Open Sound Control data instead of MIDI serial data. There are two bend sensors in the wrists and we’ve still got the bend sensors in the fingers and “forchettes” between them telling us how closed or open my hands are and equally how much my hands are bending. We’re finding that the bend sensors so far are the simplest solution but really we want to get to the point where it’s all e-tech style. So that we can separate the hard tech from the soft tech.
Marcus Fairs:What’s e-tech?
Imogen Heap: E-tech is electronic textiles. So information is passing through fabric by using conductive threads or materials. This is where we are and it’s beautiful.
But at the moment it’s really simple, it just sees this exoskeleton as a device and then it comes up on your computer as a wifi device and you’re ready to go. It’s super simple and it’s great.
Marcus Fairs:Could the gloves be used for other creative uses besides music?
Imogen Heap: A lot of people have been in touch. For instance a guy suggested that he could take all the international sign language which you only need one hand for and translate that sonically, so that each posture for a word or gesture for a word could be mapped and generate a word. You could hack a little speaker onto the system so it could actually speak for you as well. So that’s one idea.
And in the video for Me, The Machine, which is a song that I wrote with the gloves and for the gloves, you see me manipulating visuals with them. Just drawing lines onto a screen that’s in front of me so you can see me drawing in real time.
It’s great fun to do. I can draw little arrows and houses and people. It’s not like using a pencil; it’s incredible to be able to create these grand shapes, to be able to shift everything, painting out of nothing and spinning it around and stopping it and moving it over here. So I imagine a few people might start to use them with visuals.
Marcus Fairs: What about non-creative uses? Could these gloves be used by surgeons for example, or pilots or bus drivers?
Imogen Heap: I think there’s a lot of applications; it doesn’t have to be like you’re painting or making music with them. For our Kickstarter campaign, we’ve been starting to think about funny things we could pretend to do with them. So I suppose as long as you can access your computer inside your car, there’s no reason why you couldn’t just sit in the back of your car and indicate right or left. It’s a remote control. It feels like an expressive musical instrument sometimes but it’s essentially a remote control and anything that you could potentially do with your hands, you could do with your gloves.
Marcus Fairs: Do you plan to manufacture and sell them as a product?
Imogen Heap: We would love the gloves to be as affordable as something like a MIDI keyboard in time. Imagine if this was something that people would just go to use as one of those expressive things that they feel can’t be done with certain types of more rigid technology, because what is exciting about them is that they’re totally customisable.
You can even hack them, so you might want a screen or maybe you’ll want a push button thing, but something that gives off a smell when you move your hand. It’s really exciting to see what people might do with hacking them. The software is going to be open source and so is the hardware. We can’t wait to see what people do with them. It’s early stages.
Marcus Fairs: There’s a lot of talk about how wearable technology could remove the need to interact with computers. How do your gloves fit into that trend?
Imogen Heap: I’m not claiming they’re going to be the answer to every interaction with the computer but there’s a lot of applications where it just feels wrong to use a mouse and a keyboard. You might want to make something in some architecture software where you could stretch a building or draw little windows and quickly move them around like play-dough and maybe we’ll get to the point where people will start to develop software like that. That would be amazing.
This multi-storey car park for Copenhagen by local firm JAJA Architects will feature a plant-covered facade to hide the cars inside and grand external staircases leading to a landscaped park on the roof (+ slideshow).
The Park ‘n’ Play car park concept by JAJA Architects won a competition organised by the Copenhagen Port and City Development for a site in the emerging Nordhavn area. It will provide locals and visitors with a new public plaza and play area.
“This project is based on a standard, pre-defined concrete structure,” said the architects. “As a second layer, our proposal becomes the active filter on top of a generic, multi-level car park.”
The car park’s functional concrete frame is used as the basis for a staggered pattern of planting boxes that wrap around the building and contain greenery to shield the parking spaces from view.
“Instead of concealing the parking structure, we propose a concept that enhances the beauty of the structural grid while breaking up the scale of the massive facade,” the architects explained.
Many of the harbour buildings in the former port region are constructed from red brick, so the architects specified that the car park should be built from concrete that has been tinted a similar shade.
Influenced by the staircases on the outside of the iconic Centre Pompidou in Paris, stairs rise from the ground floor across the long sections on the north and south sides of the car park.
The walls behind these staircases will be decorated with a frieze created by Copenhagen visual designers RAMA Studio, which will depict the area’s industrial history.
A handrail will follow the staircase as it ascends across the facade and then continue when it reaches the roof, transforming into an architectural feature that unites the various leisure spaces and play areas.
“From street level, the railing literally takes the visitors by the hand, inviting them on a trip to the rooftop landscape and amazing view of the Copenhagen harbour,” said the architects.
Axonometric diagram showing the planted wall
As well as connecting playgrounds featuring swings and climbing structures, the rooftop railing will incorporate fences and plants to help provide sheltered spaces for relaxing.
Here’s a project description from JAJA Architects:
Park ‘n’ Play
Parking houses should be an integral part of the city. But how can we challenge the mono-functional use of the conventional parking house? How do we create a functional parking structure, which is also an attractive public space? And how do we create a large parking house that respects the scale, history and future urban culture of the new development area Nordhavn in Copenhagen?
The site
The new parking house will be situated in Århusgadekvarteret, which is the first phase of a major development plan for Nordhavn. It is currently under development and will in the near future host a mix of new and existing buildings. Today, the area is known as the Red Neighbourhood because of the historical and characteristic red brick harbour buildings. The future development will build upon this historical trait and merge existing characteristics into new interpretations.
Diagram showing car park structure
The project
The starting point for the competition project was a conventional parking house structure. The task was to create an attractive green façade and a concept that would encourage people to use the rooftop. Instead of concealing the parking structure, we propose a concept that enhances the beauty of the structural grid while breaking up the scale of the massive façade. A system of plant boxes is placed in a rhythm relating to the grid, which introduces a new scale while also distributing the greenery across the entire façade.
The grid of plant boxes on the facade is then penetrated by two large public stairs, which have a continuous railing that becomes a fantastic playground on the rooftop. From being a mere railing it transforms to becoming swings, ball cages, jungle gyms and more. From street level, the railing literally takes the visitors by the hand; invite them on a trip to the rooftop landscape and amazing view of the Copenhagen Harbour.
Structure
This project is based on a standard, pre-defined concrete structure. As a second layer, our proposal becomes the active filter on top of a generic, multi level car park. The structure has a rational and industrial crudeness, which suits the area’s spirit and history; however, the traditional concrete parking structure can appear cold and hard. As a natural continuation of the area’s red brick identity, we propose a red colouring of the concrete structure. With this simple measure, the grey frame is transformed into a unique building structure, which radiates warmth and intimacy through its materiality and surface, in harmony with the surroundings that are dominated by red roof tiles and bricks.
Diagram showing the green facade
The green façade
The building will be a large volume in a compact, urban setting, and because of its proximity to the surrounding urban spaces, the parking house will predominately be seen from close-up. To provide scale to the large building, we propose planted façades where a green structure interacts with the building behind. The green façade is made up of a plant “shelving system”, which emphasises the parking structure and interacts with the rhythm of columns behind. Plant boxes introduce scale and depth, and provide rhythm to the façade.
The placement of plant boxes follows the grid of the parking house, and there is a box placed in a staggered rhythm for every second column, in the full height of the building. The system of plant boxes brings depth and dynamic to the façade, while also matching the neighbouring buildings’ proportions and detailing. The plant structure covers all four façades, and provides coherence and identity to the whole building. The green façade is planned into a time perspective, to provide for the quickest possible plant growth against the tinted concrete. The expression of the façades is based on an interaction between structure and nature, the structural vs. the organic, and provides an exciting interdependence between the two.
Diagram showing the active roof
The staircase and the roof
The basic principle of an active parking house is the idea of an accessible and recreational roof offered to local inhabitants and visitors alike. Visibility and accessibility are therefore essential when creating a living roof. A staircase towards the open square provides a diagonal connection between street and roof level, and invites people to ascend along the façade. The course of the staircase follows the building’s structural rhythm, and each landing provides a view across the surrounding urban spaces and at the top, a view to the roofs of Copenhagen.
The staircase has references to Centre Pompidou, where the movement along the façade is an experience in itself. Along the back wall of the staircase, we work with our friends at RAMA Studio to create a graphical frieze, which, in an abstract, figurative form conveys the history of the area. The narrative can be seen from street level, and followed more closely when the visitor ascends along the staircase. Along here, we also establish alternative access points to the parking levels. The frieze tells a story of past and future, and becomes a modern tale of the area’s industrial history and its future as Copenhagen’s new development by the harbour. The two flights of stairs on the Northern and Southern façades stand out as vertical passages through the greenery, and clearly mark the connection between street level and the active roof.
Proposed elevation – click for larger image
The red thread
The red thread is a physical guide through the parking structure’s public spaces, which leads the visitor from street level, where the guide is introduced as a handrail on the staircase. As a sculptural guide it almost literally takes the visitor by the hand, and leads along the stairs to the top and through the activity landscape on the roof. Here, it becomes a sculpture and offers experiences, resting spaces, play areas and spatial diversity. Activities along the red thread could be traditional such as swings, climbing sculptures etc., but also more architectural elements such as fencing and plants, which can emphasise or establish spaces while providing shelter from the weather.
The elevated activity sculpture above the roof provides great flexibility, and makes the exciting activities visible from street level. The sculpture’s journey across the roof continues uninterrupted, before leading back along the second staircase towards the street. Combined the stairs through the green façade and the active roof make up a living, urban landscape that invites for both rest, fun and excitement.
As such the structure becomes a red thread through the project, and connects the façade, the stairs and the activities on the roof as one single element. Copenhagen’s new parking house will be a social meeting ground and an active part of its local environment – as an urban bonus for locals, athletes and visitors alike.
Project description: Park ‘n’ Play Program: parking structure Architect: JAJA Architects, Copenhagen Client: Copenhagen Port & City Development Year: 2014 (completion 2015) Size: +20.000M2
The bright yellow facade of this cafe in Seoul by local studio Nordic Bros. Design Community references the exterior of a Scandinavian house, complete with small square windows and a roof gable (+ slideshow).
Nordic Bros. Design Community designed Kafé Nordic inside an existing residential building at the end of a side street in the South Korean capital.
The designers said they added the yellow house-shaped facade on the front of the red brick building to create something different from the “quiet and peaceful mood of red bricks in the area”.
Glazed double doors at the entrance lead into a small lobby space, then a set of stairs lead down into the semi-basement cafe.
The designers altered the original space by moving the bathroom from the middle of the room to the far edge, and converting the former washroom and part of one room into the kitchen.
The cafe is filled with brightly coloured chairs in different shapes and sizes, and a mixture of round and hexagonal tables.
Black and white geometric patterned wallpaper covers sections of the otherwise white walls, and extends down to cover parts of the wooden floor.
A black-painted unit housing the front of the serving counter, kitchen and drinks cabinet has octagonal, hexagonal, quadrangle, and circle shaped mirrors up its sides.
This shape pattern continues on the back wall, providing borders for the menu that is printed straight onto the painted surface.
Small vases with flowers and animal figurines are scattered through the interior, while a plant grows up into a corner of the bathroom.
Here’s a project description from the designers:
Kafé Nordic
Kafe Nordic, located in Itaewon, Seoul, Nordic Bros. Design Community have completed its design and construction. Kafe Nordic is located in a residential area nearby the street of Commes Des Garcons, emerged as the newest hot spot, and a place that mixed of various food, fashion and culture.
Nordic Bros. Design Community has an in-depth discussion of “Nordic” with the clients; enriched life, new life style, humour, artistic expression based on functionalism, smaller but stronger. So, they developed the space design under the concept of “aesthetic of inconvenience” in which space is situated in a semi-basement built as residential space.
Exterior of yellow house shape, covered with red bricks as a whole, is designed by one of CEOs of Kafe Nordic and it is motif of Lune du Matin pakage, collaborated with Nordic Bros. Design Community. This gives yellow as a main colour among 50 district colours of Seoul and is designed to be able to energise from quiet and peaceful mood of red bricks residential areas.
Meaning of Kafe Nordic is combination that is “Kafe” from Swedish, make household of daily life be more beautiful, and “Nordic”, northern Europe. They offer homemade sandwiches, Panini and tea.
Hall space (25.93 sqm / 7.85 py) is work, in which Patricia Urquiola and Mutina are collaborated, of Azulej collection, combination of 27 patterns. It shows each different characteristics and taste by covering its classical wood flooring and highlights a designer’s expression by having deviation.
The space is filled with the mixture of shape and colour as well as designers and brands; Emeco/ Flototto/ Hay/ Ton chairs and cafe table gives variety to Candlestick Table, made by Yong-Hwan Shin, Light Au Lait by Ingo Maurer and Lune du Matin.
Also, space is completed with graphic primitive for menu, which becomes a symbol of Kafe Nordic from a client’s suggestions: octagon, hexagon, quadrangle, and circle.
8.72 sqm / 2.64 py of kitchen and 2.27 sqm/ 0.69 py of toilet restore order that forms the platforms by adding and moving pipes. Open kitchen is made through a solution to our big worry, selection and storage of kitchenware. Origami (Mutina-Folded) floor and wall linked to a toilet that is a private space and it is a place can give some pleasure to the guests.
Interior designer Olena Yudina used a monochrome colour palette for the redesign of this apartment in Kiev, adding glazed brick walls to every room and a recurring bird motif to bring the owners good luck (+ slideshow).
Olena Yudina remodelled the interior of an apartment in a multi-storey residential complex to create the home for her friend’s young family.
White masonry with contrasting dark grouting provides a consistent element throughout the interior, which has a minimal colour palette of white, black, grey tones and warm wood.
Yudina told Dezeen that the birds, which appear in a sculpture, on cushions and as suspended decorations, were included because she believes that “birds bring luck and a feeling of freedom”.
The apartment is divided into private and guest areas, with the bathroom, dressing room, a laundry room and a spare bedroom located off a small corridor.
The rest of the interior is arranged as an interconnected series of rooms that maximises the available space by avoiding the need for further hallways.
Additional glazing between the living room and two balconies was installed in place of solid walls to increase the amount of daylight reaching the interior.
Tall radiators in a graphite grey contrast with the white walls they’re mounted on, helping to enhance the height of the living area.
Wood was used for flooring, furniture and fitted cabinetry to add colour and texture to the simple scheme, while pot plants in the living room provide a natural element with a green accent.
Much of the furniture is freestanding to avoid reducing the available floor and wall space of the rooms. “Though this furniture looks more massive, at the same time it is roomier and gives more usable space to store things,” said Yudina.
The bathroom is entirely clad in grey stone tiles with black details such as the window frame, sink unit structure and a suspended towel rail complementing the taps and bath fittings.
From the entrance, apartment divided into two parts: private and guest. In a small corridor are symmetrically situated auxiliary rooms: guest bathroom (closer to the living room), extra dressing room (closer to the bedroom) and compact laundry.
Rest of the space was set aside for the residential room: living room, cabinet, bedroom with dressing and another bathroom. Rooms in an apartment arranged in a circle, one room passes into another; thereby we have avoided lots of small corridors, and living room can be extended by the space of cabinet. We dismantled walls of two balconies and glazed them to make more space and to bring more light to the rooms.
The monochrome range of the apartment – this is on what you firstly pay attention, and perhaps, wins over by its evenness and emphasis this apartment. The main colors we used in interior are black, perfect white, gradation of grey and rare speckles of green – wooden texture looks great in such an environment (variation on the theme of eco).
Fragmentary, there is brickwork in every room, which can be controversial as an idea, but in whole it connects all the rooms in one space. Also we made graphite radiators on the white background – looks very effective, by such contrasting verticals we wanted visually to extend the space, for the same reason we have overstated doorways. The furniture is minimized and looks extremely simple.
The apartment looks very clean, restrained and minimalistic, there are not lots of details, but it still not rid of them – everything is pertinently. Together with foreign furniture manufactures there are represented Ukrainian brands: Zuccheti/KOS, Meridiani, Arbonia, La Lampe Gras, Odesd2 (Kiev), LoveMosaic (Kiev), SwetaYaremko(Kiev), Gizmo(Lviv).
Architecture firm Snøhetta has unveiled images of a hotel that will wind across a rocky outcrop in Norway’s Lofoten archipelago.
Expected to start on site later this year, the Lofoten Opera Hotel will be located on an outlying site in Glåpen flanked by a mountain range. The new low-rise structure will loop a central courtyard, but will offer views out across the sea to the south and west.
“The spectacular view and the feeling of being ‘in the middle’ of the elements are the premier qualities of the site,” said Snøhetta in a statement.
“In a unifying gesture the site is captured in a circular movement, the complex layers of references to nature, culture, land qualities are translated into a band that transforms the site into a place.”
The 11,000 square-metre building will accommodate a mix of hotels and apartments within its curved body. There will also be spa facilities, seawater basins, hiking resources and an amphitheatre.
The project looks set to attract new guests to Lofoten, which is home to one of Norway’s 18 national tourist routes. Stretching along an 184-kilometre road, the route encompasses facilities for tourists exploring the natural landscape, including the Eggum rest stop completed by Snøhetta in 2007.
Eggum rest stop completed by Snøhetta in 2007 in Lofoten
Here’s a description of the project from Snøhetta:
Lofoten Opera Hotel
Furthest west of Lofoten, in Moskenes community close to the town Sørvagen, is Glåpen.
The site extends out to sea to the south and west, linking the contact between ocean and the tall, shielding mountains to the north and northwest. The location is spectacular, sunny, in the mighty landscape elements, yet in touch with old settlement and sheltered harbors.
Snøhetta has developed a project and looked at a number of factors: the landscape “critical load” vs. new construction, functional and technical aspects of access, infrastructure, ecology and sustainability, connection to outdoors areas and existing buildings. The main goal is to find the development patterns and shapes that trigger the functional, architectural and experiential triggers the plot’s formidable potential. We think it will be essential to find a building program and a scale that “hits”, both in terms of economy, market and individual experience opportunities.
The spectacular view and the feeling of being “in the middle” of the elements are the premier qualities of the site. Plot view, organisation and habitat as form have been inspiring elements behind the concept. In a unifying gesture the site is captured in a circular movement, the complex layers of references to nature, culture, land qualities are translated into a band that transforms the site into a place.
This form creates an inner and outer space, and enhances the site’s inherent potential of an architectural expression. Concept and program are balanced in a mix of hotels, apartments, amphitheatre, spa, hiking and sea water basins within a total size of 11,000 m2. The local beach culture and storstuga are included in the project. The organic form protects and opens at the same time.
Location: Lofoten Typology: Residential & Hotel Client: Lofoten Opera AS Status: Ongoing Size: 11,000 sqm
This coat rack by German designers Christine Herold and Katharina Ganz is designed to look like birds perched along a power line.
The Birds in a Row coat rack features pointed peg-like birch hooks that clasp onto a coated aluminium rail.
The designers told Dezeen that they modelled the coat rack on “an abstract picture of a group of birds, sitting in a row, lifting up their beaks”.
The hooks can be twisted around the rail and positioned so they point up at a 45-degree angle to each side. They rest on a ridge that runs along the underside of the pole that prevents them pivoting too far.
The removable and adjusable hooks allow the coat rack to be used from both sides and the large beak-like shapes can also be used to store hats, umbrellas and bags.
Christine Herold and Katharina Ganz created two versions of the storage rack: one that hangs from the ceiling and another that is supported by wooden legs.
When suspended from the ceiling, the rail sits inside teardrop-shaped hangers made from CNC-milled birch to match the pegs.
The white aluminium rail slots onto A-frame birch legs to create the freestanding version, so it resembles electricity pylons.
This house in northern Switzerland, by local architect Pascal Flammer, frames views of a vast rural landscape through round and rectangular windows, as well as through entire walls of glazing (+ slideshow).
Located between a wheat field and a thicket of woodland, House in Balsthal is an archetypal wooden cabin with a steeply pitched roof and overhanging eaves, but also integrates modern touches such as full-height glazing and flush detailing.
Pascal Flammer specified timber for the building’s structure, cladding and joinery. Externally, the wooden surfaces are stained black, while inside the material is left uncoloured to show its natural grain.
Criss-crossing timber braces support the structure and are visible from both inside and outside.
The base of the house is sunken into the earth by 75 centimetres, allowing the surrounding ground level to line up with the bottom of windows that surround the building’s lower storey.
“In this space there is a physical connection with the nature outside the continuous windows,” explained Flammer.
A large fuss-free space accommodating a kitchen, living room and dining area occupies this entire floor. Cupboards built into the walls create an uninterrupted surface around the edges and can function as worktops, desks or seating.
While this storey features noticeably low ceilings, the bedroom floor above comes with angular ceilings defined by the slope of the roof. “The height defines the space,” said Flammer.
The upper floor is divided up evenly to create three bedrooms and a bathroom. Each room has one glazed wall, but the round window also straddles two rooms to create semi-circular apertures.
“Whereas the ground floor is about connecting with the visceral nature of the context, the floor above is about observing nature – a more distant and cerebral activity,” added Flammer.
A spiral staircase winds up through the centre of the building to connect the two floors with a small basement level underneath.
The Ventura Lambrate design district in a former industrial area in the north-east of Milan will be open from 8 to 13 April 2014, showcasing young and upcoming creatives and companies from over 39 countries.
From 8 to 13 April, 76 exhibitions by emerging and established designers, academies, institutions and labelsfrom 39 countries will transform northeast Milan into the only fully curated district of Fuori Salone.
Casa della Luce: Arte, Technologia e Design by Catellani & Smith
Designs, projects and other works will be on show in a massive 13,000 square metres of exhibition space, across 19 varied and authentic locations, including familiar locations and new venues. The new home base of this year’s event will be the Ventura Living Room, at Via Ventura 14. Until a few months ago, it was a working snow shovel factory, and an industrial feel still permeates the building.
Stationery by Archivia
The activities in the authentic printing factory at Via Dei Canzi 19 will be twice as big as last year’s: the group exhibition Ventura Hive will be staged in a genuine beehive structure, and in Ventura Team Up, collaborative projects will rule the day.
This celebrative fifth edition of Ventura Lambrate also launches the special project VENTURA X, in the city center of Milan. The first edition of Ventura X is in collaboration with designer Maarten Baas, BAAS IS IN TOWN, coproduced by the 5VIE district.
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