Hasta La Ideas

A sweeping, sculptural staircase extends through the centre of this monochrome inner-city loft apartment in Melbourne, Australia, by Adrian Amore Architects.

Adrian Amore Architects renovated the apartment interior for an investor to create a stark, modern space.

The building was originally used as a butter factory and converted into apartments in the 1990s. The architects removed a steel truss through the centre of the space and replaced the roof to make room for additional bedrooms.

Adrian Amore told Dezeen the twisted staircase, that is made from steel and covered with plywood and plaster, was constructed and tested on site.

“I wanted to dramatise the form of the stair, to give it more movement than a conventional circular stair, almost as though it had been pulled or stretched at its mid point,” Amore explained.

“This was challenging to build, to distribute the loads evenly, as the stair naturally wanted to flex at at its mid point, and so we were worried about it bouncing,” he added.

The stair treads are covered in a dark-stained hardwood.

The ground floor features a bathroom, laundry and pantry space are concealed behind more curving plaster walls. The kitchen, living room, dining room and studio are all open-plan.

Grey marble covers benches and splash backs, while low-hanging lights are fixed above the kitchen table, which is also covered with marble.

Sliding doors between the downstairs areas also mean the space can be separated or left open for entertaining.

A pair of bedrooms upstairs sit across from a bathroom and another large studio space, while a wooden roof deck offers views over the city.

Photography is by Fraser Marsden.

Here’s a project description from Adrian Amore:

Loft Apartment, West Melbourne, Australia

Walls tear, bend and converge in this sleek loft apartment interior housed in a former butter factory, in West Melbourne, Australia, by architect Adrian Amore.

A sculptural stair sits at the converging point in the space, twisting dramatically, and soaring up towards a recreational roof deck which overlooks the city of Melbourne.

The original apartment contained a steel truss which sliced through its centre, polarising, and its removal, together with the removal of the existing roof generated accessible space for addition bedrooms.

A monochrome palate of white on white with charcoal and black, plays with the abundant natural light which is drawn in from the large north facing windows and ceiling void.

An essentially open ground floor plan is defined by bending, wrapping walls which contain a bathroom, laundry and storage spaces.

Sliding doors further create the opportunity for expanding or containing, depending on how the ground floor space is used, whether it be as a studio, bedroom or for entertaining.

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News: Google‘s latest research project equips smartphones with the ability to map their surroundings and build navigable three-dimensional virtual environments that can be used to give directions indoors.

Google’s hope is that the phone could give precise directions to any given point, inside or outside, by learning the dimensions of spaces just through moving around them.

“What if directions to a new location didn’t stop at the street address?” said a statement on the project website. “What if you never again found yourself lost in a new building?”

The Tango device works by using a motion-tracking camera and depth sensor built into a prototype Android smartphone. As the user walks around pointing the camera at what it sees, the sensors in the phone take 250,000 measurements of its surroundings every second and fuses this information into a three-dimensional map.

The tech giant has made 200 of the devices to give to software developers so they can design and build new mapping tools, games and algorithms.

While the initial application is to help create better navigation tools, Tango could be used to create augmented reality games or assist visually impaired users when they’re attempting to navigate an unfamiliar area.

It could also be used to give precise measurements of each room in your house, so if you’re wondering whether that new sofa will fit into your living room, Tango will be able to tell you.

The project has been developed by the tech giant’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, which is one of the few remaining acquired parts of Motorola that Google decided to hang onto when it subsequently sold the company to Lenovo.

Other projects to emerge out of Motorola include Project Ara, a modular smartphone that allows users to create their dream smartphone via a series of customisable building blocks.

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phone to map your home appeared first on Dezeen.

Swiss automobile company Rinspeed has unveiled a self-driving concept car that transforms into a mobile office so owners can make the most of their time on the road (+ slideshow).

To create the XchangE car concept, designers at Rinspeed took a standard Tesla Model S sedan and altered it to give an idea of what a driverless car in the future might look and feel like.

“So far hardly anyone has taken this to its logical conclusion from the perspective of the driver,” explained Rinspeed founder Frank M. Rinderknecht. “How will the interior of a vehicle have to be designed to let the now largely unburdened driver make optimal use of the gain in time?”

When the driver engages autonomous driving, the steering wheel would slide away and a desk could be pulled out to accommodate laptops and other office equipment.

Once the car is driving itself, the driver could swivel their seat to face the passenger, or explore any of the 20 possible seating positions at their disposal, including a flat bed. While relaxing, passengers would have access to an entertainment system spread across four separate screens.

The XChangE would also have its own wireless 4G connection, which Rinspeed believes could be used to access cloud services such as warning messages or recommendations en route and driving profiles.

A 1.2-metre-wide display strip on the dashboard would provide information such as distance to travel and remaining fuel. In the rear of the cabin, a 32-inch monitor could be used to access on-demand films and TV via gesture control.

The interior would feature 358 individually controlled LEDs, as well as an extra 98 in the instrument panel to gently light the cabin. The seating and carpeting, developed by textile specialist Strähle+Hes, would use natural materials including Merino wool and silk.

The XchangE is the twentieth concept vehicle produced by Rinspeed, which plans to unveil the car at the Geneva International Motor Show next month.

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for use as mobile offices appeared first on Dezeen.

Uruguayan designers Mercedes Arocena and Lucía Benítez created this collection of garments entirely using wool sourced from their native country.

Arocena and Benítez, who studied together at the Escuela Universitaria de Diseño in Montevideo, Uruguay, made their Dominga collection solely from local wool as a nod to the material’s historical use in the country.

“Dominga comes as a result of an experimental investigation process that begins with the wool – a natural, sustainable and warm fibre that is part of our history and our culture,” said the designers.

“We intended to intervene as far as we could, on the transformation process of the material, starting from the raw wool to the finished garment,” they added.

Various craft techniques such as felting and embroidery were employed while making the pieces by hand. The duo reinterpreted traditional garments worn by gauchos – farmers that live and work in rural areas of South America.

A ruana – a blanket worn over the shoulders – has been drawn in at the waist by a woven belt with a frayed skirt-like hem. A belt is also incorporated into a patterned poncho, fed through holes around the midriff to give the garment more shape.

Vertical folds of fabric are layered into a shin-length skirt as a twist on a chiripá, traditionally a cross between a skirt and trousers. Squares of material are staggered on top of each other to form the large flared bottom of a dress, which also features oversized half-length sleeves.

Details on the garments were created by platting strands of the material into lengths that were stitched onto the clothes or formed into lasso-like loops.

The collection was awarded at the Mittelmoda fashion contest in Italy last November.

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by Mercedes Arocena and Lucía Benítez appeared first on Dezeen.

These interactive installations by artist Daniel Rozin use sensors and motors to rearrange objects into a mirror-image of whoever stands in front of them (+ slideshow).

In his Mechanical Mirrors, Rozin connects motors to items including wooden pegs, plastic spokes and pieces of rubbish, then assembles them on large picture frames.

Behind each image is a hidden camera that feeds what it sees in real-time to a computer, which converts the image into an 830-byte video signal. Software designed by Rozin then instructs each motor to move the panel it controls accordingly to make up the image. The result is a mirror-image of the person or object in front of the panel.

“The mechanical mirrors are made of various materials but share the same behaviour and interaction,” explained Rozin. “Any person standing in front of one of these pieces is instantly reflected on its surface.”

His most recent installation, the Angles Mirror, used 465 plastic spokes arranged in a triangle-shaped steel frame to achieve this effect.

With his Weave Mirror, Rozin used 768 motorised and laminated C-shaped prints to mimic the look and feel of a homespun basket.

For his Trash Mirror meanwhile, he assembled 500 pieces of variously coloured bits of rubbish collected from the streets of New York and the artist’s pockets.

“This piece suggests that we are reflected in what we discard,” said Rozin. “The piece celebrates the ability of computation to inflict order on even the messiest of substances – trash.”

Rozin’s first mirror used 830 square pieces of wood. He continued to experiment with the material, most notably in 2007, where he used 650 wooden pegs, cutting each one at an angle to create the illusion of pixels.

“The silently moving wood components in this piece flicker like jewels or coins in the spotlight, challenging our notions about what constitutes a ‘digital object’,” he said.

Rozin has been commissioned to build an installation using this technology at the Taiwan Taoyuan international airport later this year. Rozin’s work will also be on display at the Barbican in London this summer as part of the gallery’s Digital Revolution exhibition.

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images using everyday objects appeared first on Dezeen.