Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2014: a product designed by Dutch designer Pepe Heykoop to be made in an Indian slum has been a runaway success, creating employment for 80 families within a year of launch (+ movie + interview).

Speaking to Dezeen in Milan last week, Heykoop said workers making his Paper Vase earned the equivalent of eight Euros per day, which is eight times the average wage in the Mumbai slum.

“The ambition is to have 700 people out of poverty in ten years time,” said Heykoop. “We are pretty much half way”.

Initially launched in February last year, Heykoop presented the vase at Ventura Lambrate in Milan this year along with a range of other products he designed as part of a project organised by charity the Tiny Miracles Foundation to lift people out of poverty in Mumbai.

Online orders for the vase are averaging around 100 per day, allowing the foundation to keep 80 families in regular employment.

However the other products proved unsuitable to the project, which struggled for the first couple of years.

“In 2012 we never thought this was actually happening and now there’s light at the end of the tunnel and there’s a really good vibe going,” Heykoop said.

The success of the flat-pack vase – which is made of paper and sewn together – has led Heykoop to develop another folded paper product. Prototypes of his flatpack Paper Lamp were on show at Ventura Lambrate.

“The paper vase was the breakthrough and for 2014 I have this paper folded light, which has the same principal and has been flat-packed in an envelope,” said Heykoop.

After they’re made, the products are shipped from Mumbai to Heykoop’s studio in Amsterdam then distributed to consumers worldwide. However, if the buyers live east of India then the designs are shipped straight from there to save them travelling all the way around the world.

The Tiny Miracles Foundation, set up in 2010, is half way towards its goal for 2020 to provide 150 families with a wage of ten euros a day – the UNICEF standard for a middle class wage – in return for their production skills.

Heykoop’s original ideas for the project were lampshades from lambskin, transforming traditional water carriers into leathery vases, but the products proved difficult for the community to produce and too expensive for consumers to purchase.

“I started off with leather lampshades; they’re like 550 Euros in the shop,” he said. “It’s nice when you sell a bunch of them but you have work and then you don’t have work for a few weeks. These ladies were coming to me and asking ‘can I work next month’, and I wanted to say yes but I couldn’t, because the products were not selling on a daily basis.”

Heykoop hopes to train the families in Mumbai to manage the distribution themselves, so the process becomes contained within the community after the programme finishes in six years time.

“This foundation stops in 2020 but it doesn’t mean that this workshop stops in 2020,” Heykoop explained. “If we stop the workshop in 2020, it will all collapse again. If the foundation stops providing the information, then they should be self sustainable.”

Here’s an edited transcript of the interview with Pepe Heykoop:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the project that you’re showing in Milan.

Pepe Heykoop: I’ve been a collaborator for four years with Tiny Miracles Foundation, which has been set up by my cousin. This community group that we’re aiming at lives in a slum in Mumbai and they used to be basketry weavers. They earned one euro a day for the whole family.

Most of them were illiterate, couldn’t count to ten it was like hardcore surviving on the streets. Then my cousin started the foundation and she asked me: “Pepe can you design some items that we can produce with them because we want to bring education, we want to bring healthcare but we also want to provide jobs so they can eventually pay for the healthcare and education themselves.”

So I went there and for me it was the second time in India, and it’s such a different world. When I started designing things, it was really heard to blend in with their way of thinking and their world and my world. It took two and a half years to find something that really worked.

Marcus Fairs: What’s the ambition of the Tiny Miracles Foundation? To employ people?

Pepe Heykoop: The ambition is to have 700 people out of poverty in ten years time. I’m only working on the creating jobs pillar and Laurien [Meuter] was taking care of the healthcare and education, other pillars.

Marcus Fairs: So the idea was for you to come up with some products that they could manufacture?

Pepe Heykoop: Well all of them can do basketry weaving with their eyes closed but I said I don’t want to do something with weaving or bamboo, because it has this ethnic look and this fair-trade image and I think we should focus on something new. That a product should sell itself. You want it because you like it, you buy it and then the story is a plus, an extra.

Marcus Fairs: You don’t buy it because you feel guilty, or feel sorry for people.

Pepe Heykoop: No, there’s a lot of good initiatives. You want to support them and then you get an ugly basket, you know what I mean. So these products don’t look like they’ve been made by these people living on the street and that’s where I wanted to go.

But it’s hard. It’s hard when people cannot count to ten to work with them but luckily there was this force within me to not give up and act like a pit bull, hanging on. We found something with the folded paper vase covering to be put around an empty bottle and shipped in an envelope. It comes as a gift and it works out really well. We’ve sold like 100 pieces a day at the moment and that’s why now, starting off with seven people in 2011, now we have over 80 people employed in 2014. We’e heading towards a goal of a group of 700 people, equal to about 150 families.

Marcus Fairs: So that’s the target?

Pepe Heykoop: This is half way. The project takes until 2020, so in four years we are pretty much halfway. In 2012 we never thought this was actually happening and now there’s light at the end of the tunnel and there’s a really good vibe going on since about one and a half years ago.

Marcus Fairs: Tell us briefly about the other two products.

Pepe Heykoop: The paper vase was the breakthrough and for 2014 I have this paper folded light, which has the same principal and has been flat packed in an envelope. The weight’s really low.

These samples I’ve been making during the last week in the studio are prototypes, and I’m testing colours now and colours of the treads and we’ll see which one it’s going to be. This paper should be coated and then within three seconds you just pop it up and there’s a certain tension in the paper, which gives it shape. So then we’re going to sell this separately, the electricity and separately the shade, if you want to change it for a different colour.

It should also be a low price range. The Paper Vase is 19 euros in the shop and this one we want to have 35, 39 euros for the other. Everybody can buy it, because that’s the only way we can have these women working on a daily basis.

I started off with leather lampshades; they’re like 550 euros in the shop. It’s nice when you sell a bunch of them but you have work and then you don’t have work for a few weeks and then there’s work and then there’s not work. These ladies were coming to me and asking “can I work next month”, and I wanted to say yes but I couldn’t, because the products were not selling on a daily basis.

Marcus Fairs: So what techniques do they use to manufacture these?

Pepe Heykoop: There’s paper and sewing. Actually I started off in 2011 with the welding and way too complex techniques, and I had failure after failure. Then at a certain moment, I said I’ll get a folding class and I invited 30 women to come and fold a sheet of paper in half. None of them could do this correctly and then I was shocked because I thought “this is the final try” if folding a sheet of paper doesn’t work.

So then of course after some training, I made something like a game out of it, because I want this workshop to have a really positive vibe and I hate production in China where you’re not allowed to see how stuff is done. If you know where your T-shirt is coming from in these factories in Bangladesh, you don’t want to wear it. So I said we can do, of course we can do production in such a nice way as I can do it in Amsterdam. We can do it there as well and we don’t just take something but we also give something back. That’s the whole.

Marcus Fairs: Do they work from home or is there a workshop they go to?

Pepe Heykoop: We started off with a really dark crappy spot near the street; there were rats running round and cockroaches and rain was coming in, but you should start from something. Then in 2012, we changed into a bigger room and now we have a big room, a proper room that’s clean and light. There’s no rain coming in.

Marcus Fairs: And you said that people get paid to eat, one euro a day. Do you pay them the same, or do you pay them more than the average?

Pepe Heykoop: No no no, they used to earn one euro a day with basketry weaving for the whole family and we go up to ten euros a day, which is the UNICEF standard for middle class. Now it’s eight euros but by 2020, it will be something around ten. If you increase the salary ten times more, you will only ruin the system over there because they will hate each other; who can work with us and who can’t. So we integrate this amount in education and doctor visits. So now behind the scenes we are paying that and every year they should pay 10 percent more for education and doctor visits. So within ten years, they are paying this themselves gradually.

Marcus Fairs: And finally, do they make the products and also ship the products to the customers, or do they put them in a big crate and send them to you in the Netherlands and then you do it from there?

Pepe Heykoop: For the moment, we have everything sent to Holland. Except for orders that go to Japan or Australia, like the other way round, then we ship them directly. But it involves a lot of training, because there should be final checks, so we do some final checking in Holland but we want to train them to do that.

This foundation stops in 2020 but it doesn’t mean that this workshop stops in 2020. So the foundation helps with understanding how it works, with the doctor visits and the schooling and whenever they make the money. If we stop the workshop in 2020, it will all collapse again. If the foundation stops providing the information, then they should be self sustainable.

The post “These products don’t look like they’ve been made
by people living on the street” – Pepe Heykoop appeared first on Dezeen.

Australian architecture office Iredale Pedersen Hook has renovated a 1930s property in Perth and added an angular rear extension that contrasts with the traditional street-facing facade (+ slideshow).

Architects Adrian Iredale and Caroline Di Costa of Iredale Pedersen Hook own the house and have been gradually conducting renovations over the past four years to adapt it to the changing needs of their young family.

Mindful of preserving the property’s historic aesthetic while updating its functionality, the architects retained the front facade and based the faceted shape of the extension on the multiple sloping surfaces of the original roof.

“Folding forms developed from the existing roof achieve a reinterpretation of the surrounding streetscape and roofscape, binding old and new [as well as] historic and contemporary,” said the architects. “A Jekyll and Hyde quality, the street appearance remains almost untouched; a silent figure, a backdrop, the rear is the extrovert, complex and challenging.”

When viewed from the adjacent street, the house appears to retain the appearance of the Queen Anne Federation-style properties typical in the city’s Vincent district, which feature details reminiscent of the Baroque style of architecture that gained popularity in England during the early eighteenth century.

A key feature of this style is a sheltered verandah next to the entrance, which was popular with the Italian and Greek immigrants who moved to the neighbourhood following the First World War. The architects reintroduced this element to the building to enhance the connection between the house, the garden and the street.

The faceted extension extends upwards and outwards from the existing sloping roof at the rear of the property, which prevents it from being seen from the street.

Folding doors on the ground floor can be pulled back to connect the dining room and kitchen with a terrace that projects into the garden.

Above the terrace, the upper storey leans forward to shield the interior from the low summer sun and to make the most of views across the surrounding rooftops.

The facade of the extension is covered with fabric panels, which allow light to permeate and display shadows from the branches of nearby trees. Some of the panels at eye level can be opened to provide views of the horizon.

A cooling system that drips water down the fabric panels to chill hot air before it reaches the interior was based on the principle of the Coolgardie Safe – a traditional refrigeration technique employed by Western Australian miners to cool food.

The angular interior of the study and living room on the upper floor is entirely clad in plywood panels. The sloping back wall replaces the tiles of the original roof and provides a surface that Iredale and Di Costa’s two-year-old daughter uses as a slide.

As well as the roofline, the architects retained features including the chimney, which has been converted into a water collector, and a 1950s sliding door with an amber glass panel at the top of the stairs.

A multipurpose pavilion constructed in the garden features a pyramidal polycarbonate roof, culminating in a transparent panel that allows daylight to reach the interior and provides views of the sky.

Photography is by Peter Bennetts.

Here’s a project description from Iredale Pedersen Hook:

CASA31_4 Room House

Conceptual Framework

CASA31_4 Room House re-interprets the role of memory, tradition and social and cultural value in a rich spatial experience that is simultaneous familiar yet unfamiliar. Our architecture preserves and reinterprets the past. History is layered but never erased. Fragments of the past continually remind us that we are only another layer in the rich and unfolding history of this place.

All spaces contain elements of the past, often manifest as objects of intrigue, the sloping floor (the former roof), the barge scrolls on the front fence, the roof tiles creating a musical score along the boundary, the chimney as water collector and the up-cycling of former building elements as decks, gates, architraves and furniture.

A front deck engages with the street, re-introducing the role and value of the front garden as social setting and meeting place, a past tradition by the immigrant Italians and Greeks that has almost disappeared in societies obsession with privacy and security.

Over the last 3 years we have explored our 1936 Queen Anne Mount Hawthorn Federation house scraping, layering, and peeling with 4 primary spatial ideas; the room to the interior, the room to the garden, the room to the horizon, the room to the sky.

The room to the interior explores what existed, years of layering, the art of construction, knowing what to keep, what to reveal and what to remove, knowledge gained from 13 years indulging in the past. Rooms become the embodiment of a city, a microcosm of the qualities that make a great city. The room to the garden focuses attention to the exterior at ground level, it is purposely heavy and grounded engaging with the earth, the section expands to the exterior, a series of folding screens layer the engagement.

A space of deep sensory delight, an architectural palette cleanser, transitions the ground and upper level, the eyes and nose are overpowered by the burnt and waxed plywood walls and the amber light cast by Nan’s 1950’s sliding door.

The room to the horizon filters the suburban roof tops, the screen abstracts the exterior world, the interior is one folded space formed through a play on the one point perspective that intensifies the horizon. Openable screens create a direct view framing the horizon, releasing the interior volume. The space is cooled with an interpretation of the old Coolgardie safe, water is dripped down the fabric cooling the outside air. The newly restored, 1956 Iwan Iwanoff Guthrie residence cabinet finds a new home after 15 years of storage in numerous architect’s garages. The roughly painted ‘I love Linda’ remains on the chimney, a rear window frames the distant Saint Mary’s Church.

The room to the sky creates a vertical spatial experience, a halo of love poems embraces us (former wedding installation) and at night a cross of light abstracted by polycarbonate awakens but unlike St Mary’s Church our little spire opens up to the heavens.

Contribution to lives of inhabitants

After 4 years of renovating it is now time to enjoy the richness and intensity of experience that this renovation has created. Every day is a different experience, one that is tender, unexpected, personal and embedded with history. The design enables our children and us to grow and evolve in a sequence of spaces that encourage engagement with each other and the dwelling and offers new ways of understanding and exploring family relationships and an understanding of space. Our house is simultaneous a memorial, playground, place of celebration, stage set, place of community interaction and most importantly ‘home’.

Program Resolution

The design exploits all areas of the site with an inherent flexibility for not only day to day use but the long term capacity to adapt to evolving and changing requirements as the family grows and ages.

It re-engages with the street and community allowing our children to play in safe environment connected to the street and house. Spaces are specific and flexible, while offering sufficient capacity for personal interpretation and use.

Sustainable Architecture Category

This project includes both a macro and micro approach to sustainability. It also extends the meaning of sustainability beyond environmental to include contextual, social, cultural and economic concerns.

This house will be a case example for the City of Vincent demonstrating the importance of preserving the 1935 Queen Anne Federation home with the capacity to embrace contemporary expectations of living, without comprising the street context or privacy of adjoining properties. The neighbouring house completes the street sequence of ‘twins’ and twins should never be separated.

The removal of material from site is minimised, an attitude of ‘upgrading’ ensures that materials once concealed for structural purposes are now used for furniture, decks, doorframes and architraves.

The upper and lower level spaces are protected from the low, intense summer sun with timber framed fixed and operable screens, the upper level is cooled with a manually operated reticulation system that drip feeds water on to the fabric, hot moving air is rapidly chilled, this is Perth’s largest ‘Coolgardie Safe’, a 19th century low-tech refrigeration system used by the Coolgardie WA gold miners to cool edible goods. Windows are strategically located to maximise cross ventilation or for winter heat gain (north facing highlight window with a deep reveal for shading).

All interior spaces preserve elements of the past, history is layered but never erased. Low energy light fittings, recycled light fittings, low water use and storage, pv cells and solar hot water systems all form part of the sustainable equation but is the focus.

Economy is achieved through re-cycling, restoring, re-interpreting building materials and historic traditions and minimising waste. This project represents a holistic approach to design and dwelling, where memories are preserved, carbon footprint minimised and the concerns of the broader community celebrated.

Context

Folding forms developed from the existing roof achieve a re-interpretation of the surrounding streetscape and roof-scape, binding old and new/ historic and contemporary. A Jekyll and Hyde quality, the street appearance remains almost untouched, a silent figure, a backdrop, the rear is the extrovert, complex and challenging.

A front deck engages with the street, re-introducing the value of the front garden as social setting, a past tradition by the immigrant Italians and Greeks. A mosaic tiled seat offers a place to rest for neighbours. All exterior spaces contain elements of the past, often manifest as objects of intrigue.

Integration of Allied Disciplines

As architect owners we were keen to maintain an open line of discussion that enabled details to be developed and refined as the project evolved. This often involved the capacity to re-use building waste. Our structural engineer and builder eagerly entered in to this arrangement in particular the role of the builder extended beyond the traditional role.

Architects: Caroline Di Costa Architect and iredale pedersen hook architects
Architectural Project Team: Caroline Di Costa, Adrian Iredale, Finn Pedersen, Martyn Hook, Brett Mitchell, Sinan Pirie, Matthew Fletcher.
Structural Engineer: Terpkos Engineering
Builder: Hugo Homes
Completion: December 2013

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Perth house with a faceted extension appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: Alessandro Mendini recreated his iconic Proust chair in marble for an exhibition of products shown by Italian company Robot City at Ventura Lambrate in Milan.

Made for the Italian marble company’s Solid Spaces show, the new iteration of the Proust chair is an attempt to create an object with a “hyper-realist” appearance by using marble to create an “almost surreal” effect, said Robot City.

Originally created in 1978, the Poltrona di Proust chair became Mendini’s best-known work. It was the first in a series known as Redesigns, which brought together his academic theories on the importance of historical context for design and the significance of surface appearances in a fast-moving world.

The Proust chair was developed after Mendini stumbled across a copy of a Neo-baroque chair while researching ideas for a fabric pattern for Cassina, influenced by the work of French writer Marcel Proust. The original version of the chair was covered in a multicoloured fabric, with a pattern carried through in its hand-painted frame, enlarging and reproducing an artwork by Pointillist artist Paul Signac.

It was originally a one-off design, but its popularity led Mendini to produce variations in limited numbers.

This marble version is one of four creations by different designers produced from a single 38.7-tonne block of white marble, excavated from a quarry owned by Robot City leader Gualtiero Vanelli.

The designs “give unexpected twists to the interchange between form, function, visual appearance, ergonomics, tradition and innovation”, said Robot City in a statement.

“Each of them enhanced the expressive and functional potential of this ancient, fascinating material, transforming it into advanced contemporary expressions according to their personal style and language.”

The other three projects in the exhibition included shelves by Paolo Ulian, an undulating glass-topped table by Stefano Boeri, and a table with three rabbit-shaped chairs by Stefano Giovannoni.

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for marble exhibition appeared first on Dezeen.

A family home slotted behind a nineteenth-century stable facade and a portable printer that connects wirelessly to your smartphone leads this week’s Dezeen Mail issue 198, as well as the latest news, jobs and reader comments from Dezeen.

Read Dezeen Mail issue 198 | Subscribe to Dezeen Mail

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White ceramic tiles contrast with sections of chipboard inside this Reykjavik fashion boutique by local design office HAF Studio (+ slideshow).

Icelandic designers Hafsteinn Júlíusson and Karitas Sveinsdóttir of HAF Studio fitted out the four-storey shop interior for Danish clothing label SUIT. Located on a popular shopping street, the store sells a range of mens’ and women’s clothing.

Designer Hafsteinn Júlíusson said the glossy white tiles were chosen to create a contrast with the oriented strand board – a kind of engineered wood that was used for walls and joinery throughout the boutique.

“We wanted to add a bit of an unexpected twist,” Júlíusson told Dezeen. “We think these tiles enhance the refined roughness that we were aiming for.”

The tiles create geometric grids across parts of the wooden walls, but also extend down to cover sections of the concrete floor.

“More known for serving slaughterhouses or swimming pools, the tiles give a good contrast against the warm wood and the raw concrete,” added Júlíusson.

On the ground floor, strips of fluorescent lighting spell out the word ‘suit’, next to a tiled serving counter with low-hanging black pendant lamps, also designed by the studio.

Shelving units are mounted to the walls to display folded clothes, while other garments are piled up on benches or hung from orange clothing racks.

Cheeky phrases are printed onto the walls of the shop to help visitors find their way around – the words “Do you fit in?” highlight the entrance to the fitting rooms.

Photography is by Gunnar Sverrisson.

Here’s a short description from HAF Studio:

SUIT

The clothing brand SUIT opened downtown Reykjavík recently. The store was designed by HAF Studio which is an Icelandic interdisciplinary design studio run by designers Karitas Sveinsdóttir and Hafsteinn Júlíusson.

The design intention behind the new store was to tie the brand’s raw and rough character together with clever and elaborate detailing. With this in mind, the HAF team created a space that offers a unique customer experience beyond that of the conventional clothing store environment.

The raw concrete floors and walls meet a warm OSB wood cladding where white glossy ceramic tiles give the store a refined finish. Finally orange and black fluorescent details create contrasts and highlights together with crisp lighting.

Client: GK Clothing
Collaborators: Ása Ninna Pétursdóttir & Guðmundur Hallgrímsson
Year: 2013

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mixes chipboard with ceramic tiles appeared first on Dezeen.