Milan 2014: what started as a conversation between Swedish furniture brand Offecct and Milan-based Fattorini+Rizzini+Partners at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in 2013 has come full circle with the launch of the MEET sofa (+ slideshow).
“Our very first meeting during Salone del Mobile in 2013 quickly turned into a fascinating philosophical discussion about what informal meetings mean, and from there Fattorini+Rizzini+Partners have carried out this project perfectly,” said Offecct design manager Anders Englund.
Design studio Fattorini+Rizzini+Partners‘ brief for MEET was for a sofa fit for different types of activity, from work and informal meetings to casual time.
“When we work on projects aimed at the environment between office and residential space, we always want to see and feel how this product will actually work in a space so it can be of full service to the people who will use it,” said chief designer Robin Rizzini.
“We wanted to create a sofa that gives you the feeling of being virtually anywhere,” he continued. “Offecct’s new sofa system MEET is designed for this purpose. Its functions address Offecct’s main areas: the sustainability and sound absorbing qualities of their products, the importance of injecting life through plants in indoor environments and Offecct’s craftsmanship in working with wood and fabrics.”
This house in the Oxfordshire countryside was designed by London studio The Manser Practice with a Cotswold stone facade and a cantilevered terrace overlooking the woods (+ slideshow).
The Manser Practice created the building for a professional couple, as a place to live and work. Nestled into the woodland, it features a sheltered open-air swimming pool and a Cotswold stone exterior designed to fit in with the surrounding landscape.
“We looked at a wide range of stones and materials to use, but the Cotswold stone offered the best variation between the base tones and some blue hues which reflects the colour of the surrounding trees,” architect Mark Smyth told Dezeen.
Employing a local building technique, the firm worked with nearby quarries to source stones from the surrounding regions to clad the exterior of the house.
“We used a dry stone-walling technique where we back mortared the stone, so from the front it looks like it’s stacked. The stone was actually sorted into different sizes and is angled from the top to the bottom, which creates a camber,” Smyth explained.
A south-facing cantilevered terrace hangs from the steel roof, overlooking the woodland and providing views of an old birch tree on the property.
Photo by Agnese Sanvito
At the centre of the building, a glazed hall and steel staircase divide the two main wings and allow visitors to see straight through to the trees beyond.
Bedrooms are stacked on the north side of the house and face out to the east. The master bedroom opens straight onto the terrace and has an en suite and dressing room, while two guest bedrooms sit below.
“We wanted something to fit with the landscape and built the house up high enough to enjoy the spectacular views of the morning sun over the trees from the master bedroom,” Smyth said.
In the adjacent block, slender columns support an open-plan living, dining and kitchen area on the first floor, while a workshop below provides space for one of the clients – a medical scientist – to work from home.
The swimming pool is also located on this level and can be exposed to the elements by sliding back a glazed canopy.
Photo by Agnese Sanvito
Photography is by Hufton + Crow unless otherwise stated.
Here’s some more text from architect Mark Smyth:
House in Henley-on-Thames , Oxfordshire, England
This private house is set in deciduous woodland near Henley-on-Thames, Oxford and is a 500sqm home for a professional couple. The house is divided into a living wing and a bedroom wing – with a fully glazed stair hall forming the fulcrum of the composition.
The first floor living space and master suite benefit from spectacular views of the surrounding woodland. A cantilevered terrace runs along the length of the south facing façade, extending the living space into the landscape with dramatic effect. The exterior of the building is clad in Cotswold stone affording the house a great sense of solidity. The stone exterior creates an interesting juxtaposition with the buildings modern detailing and slender steel roof.
The house has a complex M+E system. House heating, hot water and pool heating are supplied by air source heat pumps located in the existing stable block. Major plant is also housed here and pumped via super insulated pipework in ducts under the driveway to the main house. A heat exchange system allows energy to be recovered from the living spaces and the pool.
Milan 2014: Dutch designer Frederik Roijé has created a series of metal trays that form criss-crossing patterns when stacked on top of each other (+ slideshow).
Frederik Roijé‘s set of three Texture Trays are made from bent powder-coated steel bars, which run in parallel diagonal lines.
These curve up at the edges and join a bar forming the rim around the top. A grid pattern is formed when the different-sized trays are stacked inside one another.
The two smaller pieces are designed to sit inside the largest tray.
“We were inspired by all the different textures around us so you can play with it and make different combinations,” Roijé told Dezeen.
Designed to fit together on a desktop, the trays can be used for organising files and stationery.
“You can put magazines and other things in there. We have all these phones, keys and stuff like that on the table so we wanted to put them somewhere,” said Roijé.
The trays were on show as part of an exhibition of Dutch design at Via Savona 33 in Milan’s Tortona district last week.
A 100-year-old house in Paris has been renovated and extended by local studio CUT Architectures to frame a garden facing the morning sun and create a shaded terrace overlooking a nearby park (+ slideshow).
CUT Architectures refurbished the existing House in Meudon, which is home to a family of three. The building was constructed by the client’s grandfather and was only 42 square metres in size, so a timber extension was added to create extra room.
“We wanted to keep the sentimentality and feel of the existing house in the new extension,” architect Yann Martin told Dezeen. “It was very much a working house, with rabbits in the garden and wood for the chimney.”
The new extension doubles the size of the building and provides extra space for the parents to work separately from their teenage child.
The architects sourced native red cedar and used it to wrap both the existing structure and extension. They then constructed a south-facing timber terrace at the front.
“We liked the idea that the established house was wooden framed and wanted the new extension to be constructed from steel and wood, with the trees and view surrounding it,” Martin explained. “The use of timber helps to create a continuous surface across the build.”
Raised one metre above the ground to match the original property, the extension contains a large living room with bare white walls that contrast with the black-framed windows.
“It was difficult to build on the soil that was marked from years of clay and chalk digging in the undergrowth, so when we built the new extension, we provided a concrete base that gave the house a strong footprint and two separate gardens,” Martin said.
The terrace sits just in front and features a slatted roof to shade it from the sun, creating a pattern of shadows that filters through the facade.
A master bedroom and bathroom are tucked away at the rear, leading out to a sheltered garden where the owners can enjoy the morning sunrise over breakfast.
In the original structure, a bedroom and bathroom offer separate living spaces for the youngest member of the family.
Here’s some more text from the architects:
House in Meudon, France
The project is the extension and refurbishment of a very small detached house in Meudon, one of the nearest suburbs of western Paris. The location is exceptional; the plot is on the hill offering fantastic views and facing a park. The existing house was in a very bad condition but the owners had a sentimental attachment to it and didn’t want to tear it down.
The extension is twice the size of the existing house including a 20m² terrace. The extension is a wooden structure with a zinc roof almost invisible from the garden. Both the extension and the existing house are wrapped with vertical timber giving a continuous surface to the two volumes.
The living space and the terrace are lifted 1.2m above the garden level to match the existing house ground floor level and turning the terrace into a promontory for the views. The bedroom and bathroom space is on the natural ground level on the back of the plot. The articulation of the extension creates two gardens for the house: the one in the back for the morning sun and the one in front, facing the park and south-west from the terrace.
Swedish architect and designer Mia Cullin has produced a range of benches and stools with adjustable seats modelled on traditional wooden peg furniture and piano stools.
Mia Cullin‘s Orkester collection features benches with two or three seats as well as individual stools. The flat circular seats are attached to cylindrical pieces of timber by large wooden screws.
Four wooden legs are splayed from beneath the horizontal section of wood.
Mia Cullin said the design was influenced by a type of piano stool with an adjustable seat and “simple traditional wooden furniture assembled with plugs without any screws or metal fittings”.
“As the seats are adjustable, you can choose the height suitable for you but still sit next to your friends, parent or child,” explained Cullin.
The furniture is made entirely from ash wood, without the use of any screws or metal fittings. It was designed for use in schools and nurseries, but can also be used in waiting rooms, entrances and other public spaces.
The benches and stools come in natural or stained colour variations. Photography is by Mathias Nero.
Milan 2014: the second project debuted by London studio Doshi Levien for Danish design brand Hay this year is a collection of mirrors with geometric shapes resembling jewels.
The 13 different mirrors in Doshi Levien‘s Maya series are produced in variations on diamond, oblong, octagon, almond, drop and circular shapes that can be combined to create unique wall installations.
“The shapes are coming from a meeting point between Indian tribal culture and modern geometric abstraction,” Jonathan Levien told Dezeen. “The forms were thought of as jewels for the wall, as constellations or sentences of different shapes.”
Combining the mirrors in different configurations allows the user to create arrangements comprising practical and decorative elements.
“The larger mirrors are designed to offer face-height reflections, whereas the smaller ones are like satellites to accompany the larger mirrors, or to be used in numbers simply to bring glimmering light into the space,” Levien added.
Doshi Levien originally designed the mirrors in 2012 for a room they curated as part of an exhibition called India Art Now at Arken Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen.
The mirrors were installed on a wall opposite portraits of famous Indian icons displayed in similarly shaped frames and were intended to “bring the steely grey sky of Denmark into the space.”
The designers showed the mirrors to Hay, which chose to add them to its collection and now produces them from laser-cut glass set in pressure die cast aluminium frames with a black powder-coated finish.
Milan 2014: British designer Ross Lovegrove has created an aluminium stacking chair for Italian furniture brand Moroso.
The Diatom chair is made entirely from aluminium to make it suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, and can be stacked vertically without tipping forward.
“It is entirely computer generated, resulting in a universal geometry that is ergonomically neutral, lightweight and providing a vertical stack that is rarely achieved,” said Lovegrove, who wanted to explore contemporary aluminium-pressing technology developed by the car industry with this project.
“My path in the designing of chairs is to embrace technologies that open up new possibilities and with this a commitment to exploring the moment where industrial investment can result in products that are aesthetically uplifting, long lasting and respectful of environmental issues yet economically accessible from a cultured design house to a wider audience,” Lovegrove added.
Each chair is produced in five stages: the first involves drawing aluminium, a process that involves using tensile forces to shape the metal.
This is followed by a 3D laser-cutting stage, which defines the outer surface, and then another stage of drawing to create the inner parts including slots for the legs, all the raised elements and the outer edge. A fourth stage finishes off the seat and finishes the leg slots and the chair is then ready for its final assembly.
The idea for shape of the design was generated from “the beauty and logic of natural lightweight structures familiar to architects and marine biologists who study intelligent growth logic,” said Lovegrove.
Its curved seat design is based on pieces of fossilised plankton that fascinated Lovegrove as a child, and the chair takes its name from one of these single celled organisms.
Swiss watch brand Mondaine has introduced two new colours in its Stop2Go range that pay homage to its home country’s iconic Railway Clock (+ buy now from Dezeen Watch Store).
The new Mondaine Stop2Go watches come in two colour ways: a black case with black silicone strap, and another variant with a silver case and red strap.
Both of the watches have a unique time-keeping feature that was first seen in the Swiss Railway clocks that have kept time on the country’s train network since the 1950s.
Designed by Zurich-born engineer Hans Hilfiker, the Swiss Railway clock has a red second hand ticker that completes a full minute revolution in just 58 seconds.
When the second hand reaches the 12 o’clock mark, it pauses for two seconds. As it does so, the minute hand ticks forward, starting the second hand again.
This feature was designed to help trains leave exactly on schedule, as railway timetables in Switzerland are timed to full minutes. The same red second hand and movement is incorporated into the Stop2Go watches.
The design also features a unique crown. Instead of a circle, the Stop2Go has a switch that allows easy adjustment of the electronically controlled hands. When the crown is pulled out, the second hand moves to the 12 o’clock dial, and a twist to the left or right moves the minute hand incrementally.
The all black variant of the watch features a 41mm stainless steel case framed with matching steel braces. The black silicone strap has a clasp that can be adjusted for size by sliding the pins up and down pre-cut holes.
The red model is encased in a 41mm stainless steel case matte-brushed to reduce glare. The red leather strap features a standard buckle and prong fastener.
Rows of rectangular windows are designed to frame rooms like an “advertisement board for well-designed living” on the facade of this apartment block in Tokyo by local studio PANDA (+ slideshow).
Located in Japan’s Asakusa district, the two-storey apartment block was designed by PANDA to create a home for an elderly couple to spend their final years together and provide a second apartment for rent.
Large black-framed windows create four rows across the bright white facade, allowing natural light to flood through the two apartments.
“It seems as if the facade becomes a picture frame in which lives inside the building emerge like vivid motifs of a painting, against the background of monotonous commercial buildings,” said the architect.
The apartments are stacked vertically and each have two floors of living space. Internal staircases are positioned at the front, creating double-height spaces behind the facade.
“Seen from the frontal road, the enclosed boxes containing different functions are visible through the open curtain wall,” the architect explained.
An entrance on the ground floor leads through to both apartments. The first accommodates living spaces, a bathroom and a bedroom on one floor, with two separate staircases leading up to a mezzanine loft and a storage area.
Wooden floors are spread throughout the apartment, while other surfaces are finished in white to match the exterior of the block.
The upstairs apartment features a similar layout and finish but has a smaller upper level, creating a roof terrace that can be accessed from both homes.
Photography is by Koichi Torimura.
Here’s some more text from PANDA:
Asakusa Apartments, Tokyo, Japan
This is an apartment building in a commercial area in the historical town district of Asakusa, Tokyo. Our clients, a couple in their 60’s, requested us to design their “final home” to enjoy the rest of their lives happily and comfortably, with attached rental housing units to secure a regular income after retirement. The site is placed adjacent to a park across the frontal road on the south side, while being surrounded by tall commercial buildings on three sides.
After reviewing the balance between construction cost and rental income, we decided to allocate some portion of their property for rental car parking for a steady income and use the rest to construct a building comprised of the client’s home and a rental apartment unit.
The building is a two-story wooden construction and our challenge is to build a wooden “curtain wall” facade, which would be atypical of regular wooden construction. It is because we intend to achieve the following purposes; one is to open up the facade to integrate the beautiful view of the park into the interior space, and another is that the facade is expected to act as a sort of “advertisement board” to promote a well-designed living environment of the apartment.
The building is comprised of two duplex housing units stacked vertically. Plans on 1F and 2F are flipped horizontally, except for a fixed position of the bathroom, toilet and stairs in the back, in order to locate lofts, in-floor storage and balconies effectively. Bearing walls on the front side are located between the stairs to the loft space and the bedroom, which are placed symmetrically in section.
Seen from the frontal road, the enclosed boxes containing different functions are visible through the open curtain wall. It seems as if the facade becomes a picture frame in which lives inside the building emerge like vivid motifs of a painting, against the background of monotonous commercial buildings.
Architect in charge: Kozo Yamamoto Structural engineer: a・s・t atelier Contractor: B・L home Structure: two-storey wooden Total floor area: 94.62 sqm Building area: 87.71 sqm
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