Hasta La Ideas

Gaps between the three brick boxes of this house near Barcelona by local firm H Arquitectes can be transformed from enclosed rooms into covered patios by folding back glass doors at both ends (+ slideshow).

Located in the town of Sant Cugat near Barcelona, the house was designed by H Arquitectes for a couple with a large art collection, who wanted plenty of wall space and a strong connection between indoors and outdoors.

“One of the main goals was to achieve a close and essential relationship between the house and the garden in such a way that they both became the extension of each other,” the architects explained.

Instead of inserting large windows into the facade to connect the house’s interior with the garden, the architects enclosed the main living room and entrance hallway with full-height wooden doors that can be folded to one side to open these spaces up to the garden.

The entrance hall is simply furnished with a bureau by the doorway and leads through to a long outdoor table, while sofas and armchairs in the other interstitial space create a comfortable living area which the architects said acts as “a green house during winter and a fresh porch in summer.”

Both of the gaps between the boxes act as routes from the front of the house to the back and feature polished concrete floors that extend into the garden on one side and a gravel pathway on the other.

Load-bearing brick walls give the exterior of the three volumes a uniform appearance. In the living room and hallway the red brick becomes the surface of the interior walls, while in the other rooms the masonry has been whitewashed.

Windows are carefully positioned to make the most of the garden views while maintaining privacy where required, and feature traditional external roller blinds to protect the interior from the sun.

The box at the eastern end of the site houses three children’s bedrooms on the first floor and a playroom on the ground floor.

The single storey central box contains a large kitchen, while the third box provides the parents with a bedroom on the ground floor and a studio space above.

Concrete slabs sheltering the spaces between the brick volumes are left with a raw finish, creating a textured ceiling that continues throughout the ground floor rooms.

Brick is also used to clad the edges of a small swimming pool in the western corner of the plot.

Photography is by Adrià Goula.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

House 1101

Not so many jobs begin like this one, with an owners’ list of wishes and hopes for their new home. A list much closer to the principles and values architects usually work with, often secretly, than the ordinary expectations of those couples facing this unknown challenge. Lists always full of good intentions but often incomplete. This was the start, loaded with responsibility, yet an excellent start.

The plot, located in a residential area of Sant Cugat, near Barcelona, had enough good attributes to become the project main line. One of the main goals was to achieve a close and essential relationship between the house and the garden in such a way that they both became the extension of each other. All that, without falling into the unavoidable, often out of proportion, and so recurrent large glazed panels: they wanted walls, and we also did. A house with walls in a garden for an art collectors couple.

For those reasons, from the right beginning, the proposal searches the balance between placing the maximum number of rooms on the ground floor yet keeping the garden free from masonry work volumes. This idea is developed through a volumetric composition shaped in three boxes spread throughout the garden, almost aligned and located in the plot northern side creating a wide outer zone facing south. The first box, to the east, houses the children’s area with three single bedrooms upstairs and a playroom on the ground floor. The second one, in the centre, accommodates the main room: the kitchen, a nearly 30 square metre and 4 metre high room dominated by a large fireplace. The third box, to the west, contains the parents’ zone, with the bedroom at the garden level and a high ceiling studio on the first floor.

The spaces created between the three boxes are covered sheltering two different environments, open to the garden in north-south direction and can be closed with big folding windows. These spaces offer a very different atmosphere, much more related to the garden area than to the house. The first of these interstitial ambiences, between the children’s area and the kitchen, serves as entrance hall. The second one, bigger, between the parents’ zone and the kitchen, is the living room but not a conventional one: a green house during winter and a fresh porch in summer.

The residence is all circled by the garden, the most part of it facing south. The corner (west), sharp-shaped, gathers the kitchen garden and a pond to bath in. In the north, the distance between the green fence and the house varies between 5 and 6 metres and increases up to 9 metres at the uncovered car parking place. This space is connected through a 3 metres wide path, parallel to the east fence, with the main southern garden. The interstitial spaces of the house (entrance hall and living room) become connecting porches between the front and back gardens.

About volumes, the house is composed of three brick masonry cubes of different heights set parallel to the back street. Although having several dimension windows that depend on their function, the cubes are predominantly massive. Besides, the interstitial areas between cubes, covered by a concrete slab and framed by folding wooden glass doors, are essentially ethereal. Actually, the space becomes an open porch when windows are folded back.

According to its materiality, the house is built on double face brick load-bearing walls, using red masonry for the outer face while white painted inside; wooden window and door frames with traditional outer roller blinds as sunscreen when required. The house is conditioned with a geothermal heat pump and an under floor heating system that slightly refreshes the house during summer, avoiding an air conditioned system to dehumidify.

Site: Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona.
Architect: HARQUITECTES (David Lorente, Josep Ricart, Xavier Ros, Roger Tudó)
Collaborators: Blai Cabrero Bosch, architect (HARQUITECTES); Carla Piñol Moreno, quantity surveyor (HARQUITECTES); Iñaki González de Mendiguchia Garmendia, quantity surveyor; DSM arquitectes (structural engineer); Àbac enginyers (insallations); Eliseu Guillamón / Pere Cabassa (landscape)
Project year: 2011-2013
Constructed surface: 323m2

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that double as sheltered patios appeared first on Dezeen.

Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey mapped sight lines along the narrow streets of the London School of Economics campus to generate the faceted red brick structure of the university‘s new student centre (+ slideshow).

The Saw Swee Hock Student Centre consolidates all of the university’s student facilities under one roof at the LSE‘s historic Aldwych campus. Designed by architects Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey, the seven-storey-high building has an irregular faceted shape informed by the angular geometries of its site and surroundings.

Walls angle inwards along the eastern facade to give the centre a recessed public entrance that lines up with approaching streets to the north, south and east.

“The public space at the threshold of the student union, on axis with St Clement’s Lane, creates a place of exchange; a spatial bowtie that intertwines circulation routes, splices visual connections between internal and external movement, and pulls pedestrian street life into and up the building,” said the architects.

“Like a Japanese puzzle, our design is carefully assembled to make one coherent volume from a complex set of interdependent component parts,” they added.

Red brick was used to construct the walls of the building using a typical flemish bond. In some places the material forms solid walls, while in others it creates perforated screens across windows.

“The perforated planes are constructed from a single leaf of brickwork with spaces in the flemish bond pattern to allow light to both infiltrate the interior spaces and filtrate out at night to create a pattern effect,” said the architects.

Spaces within the building accommodate a variety of functions, including an events venue, a bar, a cafe, a gym and dance studios. There are also prayer rooms, offices and multimedia facilities.

Designed to resemble a “lived-in warehouse”, the building has an exposed structure that combines steel columns and trusses with concrete floor slabs.

Floor plates differ in shape and size on different floors. Angular stairwells are positioned at three corners of the building, while a spiral staircase is positioned near the entrance.

“Space flows freely in horizontal plan and vertical section, with stairs gently twisting and slowly turning to create a variety of diagonal break-out spaces at landings and crossings throughout the building,” said the architects.

An assortment of windows and skylights ensure that each corridor receives daylight, and an events hall in the basement can be naturally lit though a row of clerestory windows.

The building will open next month, but its surrounding landscaping is not set to be finished until the summer.

Photography is by Dennis Gilbert/VIEW.

Here’s a project description from O’Donnell+Tuomey Architects:

Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, London School of Economics

Client Brief

The brief was to bring student facilities together under one roof. The multi-functional building includes a venue, pub, learning café, media, prayer, offices, gym, careers, dance studio and social spaces. The brief asked for the “best student building in the UK” and had the aspiration for BREEAM Excellent rating. The design achieved BREEAM Outstanding.

Planning Constraints

The site lies within the Strand Conservation Area. The context was complex and the site was restricted by surrounding building lines. Specifications were closely monitored by Westminster planners, who supported the ambition for a contemporary design integrated with its setting. Throughout the building process, the planners maintained a commitment to the enduring quality of carefully crafted construction.

Street Life

The site is located at the knuckle-point convergence of narrow streets that characterise the LSE city centre campus. The faceted facade operates with respect to the Rights of Light Envelope and is tailored to lines of sight, to be viewed from street corner perspectives and to make visual connections between internal and external circulation. The brick skin is cut along fold lines to form large areas of glazing, framing views. Analysis of the context has influenced the first principles of a site specific architectural design.

Embodiment

The building is designed to embody the dynamic character of a contemporary Student Centre. The complex geometries of the site provided a starting point for a lively arrangement of irregular floor plates, each particular to its function. Space flows freely in plan and section, with stairs turning to create meeting places at every level.

Construction, Colour and Atmosphere

London is a city of bricks. The building is clad with bricks, with each brick offset from the next in an open work pattern, creating dappled daylight inside and glowing like a lattice lantern at night.

The building has the robust adaptability of a lived-in warehouse, with solid wooden floors underfoot. The structure is a combination of reinforced concrete and steelwork. Steel trusses or ribbed concrete slabs span the big spaces. Circular steel columns prop office floors between the large span volumes and punctuate the open floor plan of the café. Concrete ceilings contribute thermal mass with acoustic clouds suspended to soften the sound.

There are no closed-in corridors. Every hallway has daylight and views in at least one direction. Every office workspace has views to the outside world. The basement venue is daylit from clerestory windows.

Inclusive Design

The building is designed with accessibility and inclusive design as key considerations. Approaches are step free. Floor plates are flat without steps. Circulation routes are open and legible with clearly identifiable way-finding. Services are located at consistent locations. The central wide stair was carefully designed to comply with standards and details agreed with the approved inspector.

Architect: O’Donnell+Tuomey Architects
Executive Architect: O’Donnell+Tuomey Architects
Structural Engineer: Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners/Horganlynch Consulting Engineers

Services + Environmental Engineer: BDSP
Security / Fire / Acoustics / Transport & Logistics / Venue: Arup
Catering: Tricon Foodservice Consultants
Access:David Bonnett Associates
Archaeology: Gifford
Project Manager: Turner & Townsend

Quantity Surveyor: Northcroft
Planning Consultant: Turley Associates
Party Wall Consultant: Anstey Horne
Building Control Consultant: Carillion
CDM Coordinator: Gardiner & Theobald
Main Contractor (D&B): Geoffrey Osborne Limited

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student centre at London School of Economics appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: Suzanne Lee of BioCouture explains how she makes clothes that are “grown using bacteria” in this movie filmed at the Wearable Futures conference in London in December.

“There’s a whole spectrum of organisms that can grow material,” says Lee, who founded BioCouture to explore how organisms like bacteria, yeast, fungi and algae could be harnessed to produce fabrics.

Lee showed the Wearable Futures audience a range of jackets and shoes made from bio-materials produced by bacteria in a vat of liquid to produce bacterial cellulose – a material that has similar properties to leather.

“The recipe that I’ve been exploring to grow a piece of clothing is using a symbiotic mix of yeast and bacteria,” she said. “It’s a fermentation method that grows you bacterial cellulose. It’s kind of like a vegetable leather if you like.”

She adds: “What attracts me to it is that it’s compostable. It’s not just biodegradable, it’s compostable. So you could throw it away like you would your vegetable peelings.”

BioCouture is a London-based design consultancy that is pioneering the use of bio-materials for the fashion, sportswear and luxury sectors.

Lee is a former senior research fellow at the School of Fashion & Textiles at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design, and author of the 2007 book Fashioning The Future: tomorrow’s wardrobe, which was the first publication to explore how technology could transform fashion.

“Through an engagement with biology I’m really excited about how we can think about organisms like microbes as the factories of the future,” says Lee. “What most people know BioCouture for is a series of garments that were grown using bacteria. So the fibres, the material itself and the formation of the garment has been done by a microbe rather than a plant.”

In future, Lee believes that clothing materials themselves could be living organisms that could work symbiotically with the body to nourish it and even monitor it for signs of disease.

“What we have right now are living organisms making us materials, but then the organism is killed and the material just exists like any other,” she says.

“But I can imagine that we will eventually move towards the material itself being living while it’s on you, and having a direct relationship to your whole body in this happy micro-biome environment and perhaps diagnosing and treating, nourishing in some way the body surface so becoming part of your wellbeing.”

The two-day Wearable Futures conference explored how smart materials and new technologies are helping to make wearable technology one of the most talked-about topics in the fields of design and technology.

The music featured in the movie is a track by DJ Kimon. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

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Stockholm 2014: here’s an interactive slideshow showcasing the latest collection from Finnish brand One Nordic Furniture Company, which features flat-pack designs specifically created for online retail.

All the items in One Nordic‘s range are designed to pack flat. The brand recently launched an online platform so the ordering and shipping process can all be managed on the web.

“It’s not innovative to ship effectively or to buy things online, but the idea of us developing every product in this collection with that brief is innovative,” One Nordic creative director Petrus Palmér told Dezeen at Stockholm Furniture Fair last week.

He explained that furniture is lagging behind other online retail sectors due to the size of items such as sofas and dining tables.

“The furniture industry is still a bit behind the [online sales] developments of the rest of the world, thanks to the size of the products we’re dealing with,” said Palmér.

This is why all items in One Nordic’s collection can be broken down into parts and shipped more efficiently. “The products have to be adjusted for the world we live in today,” Palmér added.

All the designs unpack and assemble with minimal effort once they arrive. For example, the Bento chair by Palmér’s own design studio Form Us With Love is fixed together with just one clamp.

New items launched at Stockholm Furniture Fair include the Kuu pendant lamp by Jenny Stefansdotter and Kerstin Sylwan, developed from a design released last year.

The lampshade is formed from a structural textile that diffuses the light, and is pulled into a sphere using drawstrings at the top and bottom.

Nicole Losos and Nikolaus Kayser’s circular Vinkel mirror is split in two so the angled halves reflect different areas of a room. The mirror is delivered in two sections to take up as little space as possible.

Prints by fashion photographer Erik Wåhlström depicting photography shoots behind-the-scenes and still life images are also new additions.

Product lines that have been extended include Hai by Luca Nichetto, who has designed an ottoman to accompany his armchair with a folding backrest.

One Nordic’s inaugural Bento family now comes in a walnut frame and leather seat, plus dining and conference tables have been added.

The Lift shelving system by Steffan Holm has been created as a modular piece so it can be formed into a giant storage unit and mounted on the wall or stood on the floor.

One Nordic founder Joel Roos told Dezeen that the way design is sold to the public is “stuck” in the past during an interview last year.

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Company extends flat-pack furniture range appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Norman Foster has become the latest architect to design a Maggie’s Centre offering support to cancer sufferers and has unveiled plans for a timber-framed structure and flower garden in his home town of Manchester.

The Foster + Partners-designed centre will be located at The Christie hospital in south Manchester and, like the 17 existing Maggie’s Centres around the UK, it will offer a non-clinical environment where anyone affected by cancer can stop by for advice or support.

Norman Foster, who won a battle with bowel cancer over a decade ago, has designed a lightweight timber and glass pavilion intended to “engage the outdoors” by interacting with the surrounding garden.

“This project has a particular personal significance, as I was born in the city and have first-hand experience of the distress of a cancer diagnosis,” said the architect. “I believe in the power of architecture to lift the spirits and help in the process of therapy.”

Slender timber beams and a timber lattice will support the roof and help to partition spaces. A mezzanine floor will be naturally lit from a glass roof overhead, plus a greenhouse will be added to the south end of the building to create a warm gathering space.

Foster added: “Within the centre, there is a variety of spaces – visitors can gather around a big kitchen table, find a peaceful place to think or they can work with their hands in the greenhouse. Throughout, there is a focus on natural light and contact with the gardens. The timber frame, with its planted lattice helps to dissolve the architecture into the surrounding greenery.”

Interior spaces will feature wooden surfaces and tactile fabrics, while the surrounding garden designed by landscape architect Dan Pearson will offer clusters of flowers and calming water features.

Here’s the full announcement from Foster + Partners:

Maggie’s applies for planning permission for new Norman Foster designed centre at The Christie

Maggie’s, the charity which provides practical, emotional and social support for people with cancer, has applied for planning permission for a new Maggie’s Centre in the grounds of The Christie in Manchester. The centre is designed by world-renowned architects, Foster + Partners.

Working in partnership with The Christie – a global leader in cancer treatment and research – the new Maggie’s Centre will provide free practical, emotional and social support for anyone living with cancer as well as their family and friends. The centre will significantly enhance the cancer support already offered at The Christie to include Maggie’s evidence-based core programme of support delivered in an uplifting non-clinical environment, as well as a comprehensive service of complementary therapies. The new centre is due to open in 2016.

As one of the leading architects of his generation, Lord Norman Foster’s works include an international portfolio of famous buildings including 30 St Mary Axe – otherwise known as “The Gherkin”, Hong Kong International Airport and Hearst Tower in New York. The design of the new Maggie’s Centre at The Christie is particularly personal to him as he was both born in Manchester and has had first-hand experience of the distress of a cancer diagnosis.

Set in a peaceful garden, the existing green spaces inspired the centre’s design, which draws upon natural themes that engage the outdoors. Arranged over a single storey, the natural timber structure focuses around a wide, central spine with the roof rising in the centre to create a mezzanine level beautifully illuminated with natural light. Exposed lightweight beams and timber lattice support the roof while also defining different spaces. An integrated glass house extends from the south of the building, providing a space for people to gather and enjoy the therapeutic qualities of nature and the outdoors while the interior palette combines warm, natural wood and tactile fabrics.

To complement Lord Norman Foster’s design, the surrounding gardens are designed by landscape designer Dan Pearson, combining a rich mix of spaces, from the working glass house to bright clusters of flowers and tranquil water features. The colours and sensory experience of nature will become part of the centre through micro gardens and internal courtyards, which relate to the different spaces within the building.

To the south of the centre, a pool and moving water will provide a calm space for reflection set amidst the greenery. Deep canopies will shelter the centre’s open terraces from rain, allowing people to enjoy fresh air and the garden whatever the weather.

Maggie’s Centres are warm and welcoming places with qualified professionals on hand to offer a programme of support that has been shown to improve physical and emotional well-being. The support available at the new Maggie’s Centre at The Christie will include psychological support, benefits advice, nutrition workshops, relaxation and stress management, art therapy, tai chi and yoga.

There are already 17 Maggie’s Centres in the UK and all are designed by leading architects. Each architect offers a unique interpretation of the same brief, based on the needs of a person living with cancer, to create the calm environments so important to the people who visit and work in the centres.

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for home town of Manchester appeared first on Dezeen.