Hasta La Ideas

British studio 1508 London has converted a Victorian post office in London into an apartment where perforated concrete shutters can be used to open and close different sections of the interior (+ slideshow).

Commissioned by an art collector, 1508 London planned an “impactful but warm” space where large artworks can be hung from the walls.

Smaller rooms are clustered together on one side of the apartment, freeing up the rest of the space for a double-height living room.

The concrete shutters were added to shield two bedrooms on the first-floor mezzanine, but the circular perforations offer residents glimpsed views down to the spaces below.

“This concrete elevation is the primary feature, allowing abstracted light to pass into the bedrooms in the morning and creating an unique installation of glowing lenses at night,” Chris Godfrey of 1508 London told Dezeen.

A double-height entrance foyer beyond is lined with steel panels that have been chemically weathered to create a grainy appearance.

“The raw, natural material palette further expresses the formal rationale and, by referencing the owner’s taste for Russian political art, creates a dramatic backdrop to the same,” said Godfrey.

A kitchen and bathroom are tucked away at the back, while a black steel staircase leads up to the mezzanine.

Photography is by Michele Panzeri.

Here’s a project description sent from 1508 Architects:

Converted Victorian postal office

Situated in a converted Victorian Postal office in central London, interior and architectural design studio 1508 London have created this imposing apartment for an art collector.

A clear and legible parti has been derived where strong, orthogonal volumes of accommodation are inserted with the pre-existing, near triangular, double-height space to create playful and intelligent inter-relationships.

The raw, natural material palette further express the formal rationale and, by referencing the owner’s taste for Russian political art, creates a dramatic backdrop to the same.

Each material has been carefully selected and crafted to provide depth, texture and richness.

Chemically weathered steel metal panels clad the double height entrance foyer; creating both a warmth of reception and a striking sense of purpose. A central perforated black steel staircase seems to float within the entrance foyer creating a strong yet delicate link between the two volumes but standing strong as its own element.

In the main reception, a powerful singular form comprising of pre-cast concrete panels define and shield the more private aspects of the apartment. Hundreds of purpose-made acrylic lenses puncture the concrete envelope are carefully positioned to playfully provide amplified light to, and distorted views from, the inner spaces; simultaneously highlighting the mezzanine programme from the reception side.

Imposing concrete doors open up onto the main living space from the mezzanine level, transforming the elevation and the spatial relationships: each space is therefore influenced the contiguous throughout different times of the day and modes of use.

The result is a impactful yet warm interior within which the owner can entertain, relax and display large and impressive pieces of art harmoniously.

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an apartment by 1508 London appeared first on Dezeen.

Italian architects Scape have modernised an apartment in one of Rome‘s oldest neighbourhoods by adding faceted ceilings and a boxy wooden staircase.

The residence occupies the uppermost floors of a detached house on Oppian Hill – one of the seven hills that forms the historic centre of the Italian capital city – and is positioned just east of the Colosseum.

Scape were tasked with rationalising an incongruous interior created by numerous extensions and renovations, but were bound by strict planning laws governing the historic architectural fabric.

“Not only was it a situation that was functionally and spatially compromised, but added to this were the difficulties related to intervening architecturally in a city where the law tends to protect pre-existing elements that are easier to control, thus unfortunately often ignoring aspects of quality that might be improved upon,” they explained.

The interior is arranged around a double-height living room, above which the architects have installed a system of suspended ceilings with angular facets, intended to emphasise the joints of the roof.

“The objective of the project was that of reconstructing the interior of the dwelling to produce a spatially coherent and unified entity while taking advantage of and enhancing aspects of the house,” added the architects.

A separate kitchen and dining room is also located on this main floor, alongside a pair of bedrooms with en suite bathrooms.

New wooden storage closets have been added along the walls and match up with the wooden staircase that ascends to a guest bedroom on the mezzanine floor, as well as to a smaller level above.

Located in the building’s turret, this top floor now functions as a study room and opens out to rooftop balconies on two sides.

Photography is by Francesco Mattuzzi.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Renovation of an apartment in Rome

The transformation of the two top floors of a freestanding house in Colle Oppio is a project that, as is often the case working with the ancient fabric of Rome, involved numerous complex factors.

The apartment, measuring a little over 200 msq, was distributed over three levels; two main floors and a mezzanine, the fruit of numerous interventions that had been carried out in a disorderly and incoherent manner over the last twenty years.

Not only was it a situation that was functionally and spatially compromised, but added to this were the difficulties related to intervening architecturally in a city where the law tends to protect pre-existing elements that are easier to control, thus unfortunately often ignoring aspects of quality that might be improved upon. Finally, the building had static problems that forced the owners to carry out a considerable consolidation of the floor slabs and roofing.

The objective of the project was that of reconstructing the interior of the dwelling to produce a spatially coherent and unified entity while taking advantage of and enhancing aspects of the house such as the high ceilings in certain areas and the presence of several outside spaces, which, although small, are on different levels and provide splendid views of the city.

Two main structural operations dictated the organisation of the various areas of the house: integrating a large body of wood for the internal staircase to connect the various levels and all the cupboard and storage space necessary for the easy running of a house, as well as the homogenisation of the ceilings that were arranged with layered roofing that was interesting but compromised by irrational and disorganised load-bearing elements.

The first operation allowed the redistribution of the various living spaces in the house. On the first floor, the living room takes advantage of the building’s high ceilings and the best views of Colle Oppio.

The sleeping quarters on the other hand are smaller spaces: two bedrooms with their respective bathrooms. Large four-metre high cupboards introduce a connecting element between these two areas of the apartment.

The new positioning of the staircase presented the possibility of introducing visual interaction between the various levels. The mezzanine, which comprises a small area dedicated to the ironing, the guest bedroom and the boiler room, faces onto the living room on one side and the kitchen on the other, bringing to the fore qualities of height and shape in the spaces.

On the top floor, the landing at the top of the stairs links the two upper terraces, one on each side, and the splendid altana or large turret room that will be used as a study.

The second considerable alteration involved the roofing. A new system of false ceilings accentuates the articulation of the joints in the roof, highlighting the movement and interaction with the spaces beneath. It was an intervention inspired by the existing shapes of the roof while strengthening and reinforcing those shapes in a contemporary way.

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faceted ceilings and minimalist staircase appeared first on Dezeen.

Folded steel staircases lead to elevated rooms atop freestanding metal towers inside this old industrial building in Brussels that adn Architectures has converted into an open-plan apartment (+ slideshow).

Belgian studio adn Architectures added the two-storey structures on opposite sides of the space, loosely dividing a living room at one end from a central dining area and adjoining kitchen.

The architects used a mixture of solid and perforated metal to vary the transparency of the more secluded spaces within the towers, which comprise a bathroom and a utility room on the main level, and a bedroom and study on the upper levels.

Cantilevered staircases made from folded steel lead separately to the top-floor spaces and face one another across the dining area.

Describing their intervention as “two volumes and three pieces of furniture,” the architects explained that they wanted to create a simple interior with a limited palette of materials and colours.

The pieces of built-in furniture mentioned are a kitchen counter, a bookshelf and a double-height wall of storage, which stretch along the two long sides of the apartment.

Concrete ceilings are left exposed and three columns come down to the meet the new flooring, which is made up of a polyurethane screed.

Photography is by Filip Dujardin.

Here’s a project description from adn architecture:

Loft FOR

Let’s get straight to the point: an imposed decorum, four walls and a few windows, functional needs to sleep, eat read and wash. Two internal bodies that embrace the envelope without touching it, opaque, translucent, airy, abstract.

A place: An unfinished surface of 96 square meters: walls made of terracotta blocks, raw concrete ceiling, windows on two of the four walls and two technical ducts.

A program: Designed it for a couple who want a loft conversion type of interior design with efficient use of space.

An answer: Seek purity of form and functional simplicity.

Means: Creation of a minimum of two new volumes and use of a very limited set of materials.

Organisation: Two volumes are built and three pieces of furniture are installed to structure the volume.

The two metallic volumes on the ground floor welcome the two functions that require doors that close: the bathroom and the laundry room. The top floors of the volumes conceal a bedroom and an office.

The position of these volumes alongside technical ducts determines different volumes with different qualities.

The three pieces of furniture then structure and give function to the remaining space: a long kitchen cabinet in a narrow space between the entrance and the laundry room, a wall of storage near the entrance and a library in the more intimate space that leads to the balcony.

The materials are polyurethane screed for the floor; solid or perforated metal for the structuring elements, stratified MDF for the furniture, with a paint finish to exacerbate the texture of the various materials. The ceiling is kept as is to remind of the pre-existing unified volume.

The post Loft apartment with super-thin staircases
by adn Architectures appeared first on Dezeen.

This New York loft conversion by local architect Ali Tayar is divided using bespoke prefabricated panels based on a Swiss modular housing system from the 1960s (+ slideshow).

Tayar designed the home for Maryana Bilski, a creative director he previously collaborated with on the interior of a hotel in Switzerland, who oversaw the restoration of the 1872 cast iron building in the city’s Soho district.

Bilski commissioned a small steel-framed pavilion on top of the building, hidden behind a mansard roof and based on a system devised by Swiss architect Fritz Haller in 1967. “As a boy in Switzerland, my partner lived in the first Haller modular house. This was like an extension of that childhood home, here in New York,” Bilski said.

Wanting to continue the idea of this modular construction in the apartment below, Tayar created a bespoke prefabricated system using 1.2-metre-square aluminium panels to build freestanding boxes that house the master and guest bedrooms, and kitchen units and appliances, as well as modular ceiling panels.

“Fritz Haller’s idea of modular architecture informed my whole education,” he said. “So I conceived of the interior of the original loft, below the penthouse, as a custom-made prefabricated system based on the geometric model Haller had developed.”

“The interior is completely free of the building shell,” said Tayar. “It came in boxes and got installed. It can be uninstalled, put back in boxes, and taken out.”

Porthole windows in some of the aluminium panels used to construct the bedrooms allow light to enter during the day and seem to glow at night, while the bright orange panels used for the kitchen inject a hit of colour into the predominantly neutral interior.

Original wooden columns that appear throughout the space influenced the choice of larch for the ceiling, kitchen units and for storage panels clipped onto the bedrooms.

Tayar designed an expansive sectional grey sofa to create a large lounge area, while the antique chairs and settee nearby flank chrome and glass coffee tables designed by Haller.

A staircase leads up to the penthouse, where the glazed walls provide views across the city.

Photography by Eric Laignel.

Here’s a project description from Ali Tayar:

Soho Penthouse

Designing interiors for the Omnia hotel in Zermatt, Switzerland, Ali Tayar of the Parallel Design Partnership developed a close working relationship with Maryana Bilski, the project’s American expat creative director. Tayar subsequently designed a carbon-fiber yacht for Bilski’s Swiss partner. When the couple were planning a move to New York, they turned again to Tayar for their duplex, the final phase in an almost decade long rehabilitation of one of SoHo’s finest cast-iron buildings.

As at the Omnia, Bilski oversaw the SoHo project. She worked with Bialosky + Partners Architects on a painstakingly authentic restoration of the 1872 building’s facade, elaborately ornamented in the style of France’s Second Empire-even recasting replacement elements in iron rather than less-expensive fiberglass.

Then, on a flat section of the roof, hidden by a Haussmann-esque mansard, she asked the firm to erect a small steel-framed glass penthouse pavilion, using a modular system devised by the Swiss architect Fritz Haller in 1967. “As a boy in Switzerland, my partner lived in the first Haller modular house. This was like an extension of that childhood home, here in New York,” she says.

The 1,300-square-foot penthouse pavilion was also an extension of Tayar’s studies at Germany’s Universität Stuttgart and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Instead of subdividing the 4,500 square feet of loft space with conventional studs and plasterboard, Tayar constructed his two principal architectural elements from 4-foot-square modules in grey anodised aluminium, used either on their own or with larch panels snapped in.

These pods contain the master suite and the guest suite, the former raised because the windows at the front of the loft are higher. Translucent portholes puncture the panels of both pods, letting light in during the day and out at night. Similar panels, only bright orange, sheathe the front of a third unit, a freestanding wall with a grandly scaled version of the Pullman kitchen built into the back. The ceiling’s perforated larch panels are modular, too.

He limited his palette to just a few materials, starting with the honey-colored larch – a softwood not normally associated with luxury construction but chosen to coordinate with the original Doric columns. There is also granite for the two baronial fireplace surrounds, the bathroom’s walls and tub and sink surrounds, and the kitchen’s counter and backsplash. The only strong colour is the orange of the kitchen panels.

“Furnishing the apartment was a matter of weaving together the history of the building with the history of the clients,” he says. The result takes a long view of modernism – one that starts with its birth in the second industrial revolution of the mid-19th century, the world of the crystal palace and the cast-iron facade, and continues to develop up to the present. The first purchase was a set of Danish 1950’s dining chairs, fine-boned in rosewood and leather.

That was easy. “I know what I like,” Bilski says. Finding a suitably expansive sofa for the living area was harder. After rejecting several contemporary models, she suggested Tayar design something himself, and he came up with a 15-foot-wide gray sectional with black lacquered elements, a nod to her admiration for Eileen Gray. Less monumental are a pair of Haller’s glass-topped chrome cocktail tables and a century-old settee and armchairs.

In the dining area, a massive silvery table base supports an enormous oval of granite. “It was the biggest piece we could find,” Tayar says. Bilski adds, “It truly anchors the space. They had to bring it in with a crane. I can’t believe they’ll ever be able to take it out again.” The entry’s console table, a long slab of Japanese cedar topping elegantly splayed carbon-fiber legs, is a custom design very similar to a table in his own apartment.

Art offers a link to the Omnia in particular and Switzerland in general. A large black-and-white photograph of the Alps, taken by the late Balthasar Burkhard, hangs in the living area. “We used a lot of his work at the hotel. That one was a gift from him when the project was complete,” Bilski says. Meanwhile, two striking wrought-iron sculptures came from the original Haller house.

As for the entry’s huge Keith Haring graffiti drawing, it was purchased in 1997 from a gallery in SoHo but immediately whisked off to Europe. Bilski couldn’t wait to bring the Haring home.

The post New York loft conversion based on a 1960s
modular Swiss house by Ali Tayar appeared first on Dezeen.

This mixed-use complex in Rotterdam by Mei Architecten en Stedenbouwers features a tower with protruding storage areas that look like welding masks bolted onto the facade.

Dutch firm Mei Architecten en Stedenbouwers designed the eleven-storey tower for the final phase in a redevelopment of the audio-visual production centre complex in Rotterdam’s Schiecentrale district.

The tower is built over the north-west side of a renovated power plant and accommodates offices, apartments and combined live-work units.

Glazing surrounds three sides of the new building, but the east elevation is clad with stainless steel mesh that provides solar shading for communal corridors.

The protruding storage spaces are dotted across this elevation and there are around ten on each floor.

“The store rooms are like loose cubes,” the architects told Dezeen. “They were designed especially for this project and produced in series.”

Each one is formed from a synthetic composite material and is covered with a UV-resistant gel coating.

“The architecture is sturdy and spectacular, and in harmony with the character of the former dock area,” added the architects.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Schiecentrale 4b

A harbour building to live, work and relax in.

Schiecentrale 4b is the final phase in the redevelopment of the former Schiehavencentrale and surroundings. The combination of office spaces, dwellings, and combined living/working units adds life to the area, which has become the audio-visual centre of Rotterdam in recent years.

Schiecentrale 4b consists of a striking new structure built around the north-west sides of the old Schiecentrale building. The new complex provides the media centre with various types of dwellings, for people closely involved in the audio-visual sector and people in other creative disciplines who like the port atmosphere still palpable in the area.

Supermarket

The new structure consists of around 55,000 square metres of space. Office space accounts for 7000 square metres of that. Also included are 156 living/working units and twenty ground-accessed quayside dwellings that are 3.5 floors in height. Additional facilities include a supermarket (2000 square metres), a gym (600 square metres), 400 parking spaces in a supervised garage, and a semi-public deck 3000 square metres in area. A sun terrace, stand and playground complete the picture.

View

A main feature of the project is the tall narrow building, 130 metres long and 50 metres tall, built on top of the old power plant. The 11-floor structure contains the offices and living-working units. These are accessed from a gallery finished in stainless steel. Attached to the gallery are storage spaces, which are situated directly opposite the front doors.

All spaces on the west side of the building are fitted with glazed façades. This part of the building offers a wonderful view of the Nieuwe Maas and the harbour. The partitions of the living/working units can be opened from floor to ceiling with harmonica doors, allowing the creation of an exterior space within the building volume.

On account of the great flexibility, all technical installations in the spaces as well as on the façades are carried out as ‘assembly’. The complex exudes the character of a typical port building in which technology from the offshore and processing sectors has been integrated.

Client: Rotterdam City Development Corporation, PWS Housing Association and Proper Stok Woningen B.V.
Programme: Living/working units, offices, parking garage, quayside dwellings, supermarket, gym and terrace deck
Total: 55,000 m2
Construction cost: €42,000,000
Location: Rotterdam
Project management: BOAG
Project management OBR: Triplan Raadgevende Ingenieurs
Constructor: Pieters Bouw Techniek, Delft and DHV

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by Mei Architecten en Stedenbouwers appeared first on Dezeen.