Hasta La Ideas

Slideshow: here’s another of the six artists’ studios that Norwegian firm Saunders Architecture designed for an island off the coast of Canada, this time a white angular cabin.

Located on the eastern coast of Fogo Island, Squish Studio has painted wooden walls that extend beyond the limits of the interior to create sheltered triangular terraces at both ends.

These provide both a south-facing entrance foyer and a north-facing deck with a view out across the ocean.

The ground beneath the studio is so rocky and uneven that the southern end of the building is raised up by just over six metres to maintain a level floor surface inside.

Like the other completed studios, Squish Studio provides all its own heating and power, plus facilities to treat its own waste.

This is the third of the studios that we’ve featured on Dezeen. See the first two here.

Photography is by Bent René Synnevåg.

Here’s some more details about the project:

Squish Studio

Tilting, Fogo Island, Newfoundland

The Squish Studio is located just outside the small town of Tilting on the eastern end of Fogo Island. First settled in the mid-18th century, Tilting is known for its strong Irish culture and its recent designation by Parks Canada as a National Cultural Landscape District of Canada.

The Squish Studio’s white angular form, sited on a rocky strip of coastline, that could rival Italy’s western coast, offers sharp contrast to the traditional vernacular architecture of the nearby picturesque community of Tilting. As its architect, Todd Saunders, has commented on the studio’s siting, “…it is out of sight, but close.”

The approach to the front entry of the studio is dramatic, as the most southern end of the studio rises twenty feet above the ground, in sharp contrast to its most northern tip that measures only half that dimension. The compact, trapezium-shaped plan of the studio is augmented by the extension of the east and west exterior walls to create a sheltered, triangulated south entry deck and a north terrace that overlooks the ocean. From a distant view, the streamlined form of the Squish Studio becomes apparent with its high back and low (squished) front designed, in part, to deflect the winds from the stormy North Atlantic.

As we approach the entry of the studio we are greeted by Silke Otto-Knapp, a London-based artist and the first occupant of the Squish Studio. As Silke brings us through the studio, the spatial compression of the tall and narrow entry area gives way to the horizontal expanse of the main room. The downward angled roof leads the eye to the full height oblong glass window focused on a splendid view of Round Head.

The vertical white planks that line the interior walls are interrupted by a playful series of narrow windows integrated with an expanse of built-in cabinetry. Silke’s quick figurative studies on paper are posted on the walls, as well as, several large scale canvasses. She is delighted to work in such an architecturally inspired space, especially when it is stormy and she can experience the immediacy of the sea and, on some days, observe the dramatic shift of the island’s weather.

The Squish Studio, like most of its other counterparts, is equipped with a compost toilet, a small kitchenette and wood-burning stove. Power is supplied by stand-alone solar panels, mounted on an adjacent hilltop. Both the interior and exterior of the studio, including the roof, is clad with spruce planks that are painted white.

At night, the studio, illuminated by the soft glow of its solar-powered lighting, appears as a lantern or a lighthouse placed strategically on a rocky cliff to over- look the North Atlantic. In its isolation, one can also imagine a sole occupant, vulnerable but protected from the elements – inspired to work late into the night, occasionally distracted by the crash of the waves, or perhaps, fully immersed in the work at hand, the first glimpse of the sunrise through the Squish Studio’s slot windows that face the north-eastern horizon.

Client: Shorefast Foundation and the Fogo Island Arts Corporation
Architect: Saunders Architecture – Bergen, Norway
Team architects: Attila Béres, Ryan Jørgensen, Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach, Nick Herder, Rubén Sáez López, Soizic Bernard, Colin Hertberger, Christina Mayer, Olivier Bourgeois, Pål Storsveen, Zdenek Dohnalek
Associate Architect: Sheppard Case Architects Inc. (Long Studio)
Structural Engineer: DBA Associates (Long Studio)
Services Engineer: Core Engineering (Long Studio)

Builder: Shorefast Foundation
Construction Supervisor: Dave Torraville
Builders: Arthur Payne, Rodney Osmond, Edward Waterman, Germain Adams, John Penton, Jack Lynch, Roy Jacobs, Clarke Reddick
Construction photos: Nick Herder
Text: Michael Carroll

Size: 130 m2
Location: Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada
Status: Finished 2011

Here are the other two Fogo Island studios we’ve featured:

Tower Studio by Saunders Architecture

Long Studio by Saunders Architecture

American firm Handel Architects have completed a New York hotel with porthole windows that give it an uncanny resemblance to children’s game Connect Four.

Comprising one seven-storey block adjoined to another that is twelve storeys high, the Dream Downtown Hotel occupies a renovated former annex of the National Maritime Union of America.

Overlapping layers of perforated metal clad the smaller of the two blocks, where the circular openings create juliet balconies for the guest rooms behind.

Porthole windows also feature on the taller block, which has a slanted exterior of stainless steel tiles.

The architects split the building into two during the renovation, when they removed the middle sections from four floors to create a screened pool terrace at the centre.

The hotel building also contains two restaurants, a gym, an event space and shops.

See more stories about hotel architecture in our dedicated category.

Photography is by Bruce Damonte, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from Handel Architects:

Dream Downtown Hotel is a 184,000 SF boutique hotel in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. The 12-story building includes 316 guestrooms, two restaurants, rooftop and VIP lounges, outdoor pool and pool bar, a gym, event space, and ground floor retail.

Dream sits on a though-block site, fronting both 16th and 17th Streets, and is adjacent to the Maritime Hotel, which sits adjacent to the west. In 1964, the National Maritime Union of America commissioned New Orleans-based architect Albert Ledner to design a new headquarters for the Union, on Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets.

Two years later, he designed an annex for the headquarters on the site where Dream currently sits. A few years later, Mr. Ledner designed a flanking wing for the annex, which would eventually be converted to the Maritime Hotel.

In the 1970s, the Union collapsed and the buildings were sold and used for various purposes in the years that followed. In 2006, Handel Architects was engaged to convert the main annex into the Dream Downtown Hotel.

The otherness of Ledner’s 1966 design for the National Maritime Annex was critical to preserve. Along the 17th Street exposure, the sloped façade was clad in stainless steel tiles, which were placed in a running bond pattern like the original mosaic tiles of Ledner’s Union building.

New porthole windows were added, one of the same dimension as the original and one half the size, loosening the rigid grid of the previous design, while creating a new façade of controlled chaos and verve.

The tiles reflect the sky, sun, and moon, and when the light hits the façade perfectly, the stainless steel disintegrates and the circular windows appear to float like bubbles.

The orthogonal panels fold at the corners, continuing the slope and generating a contrasting effect to the window pattern of the north façade.

The 16th Street side of the building, previously a blank façade when the building served as an annex, was given new life. The skin is constructed of two perforated stainless steel layers, its top sheet of holes a replication of the 17th Street punched-window design and the inner sheet a regular perforation pattern.

Cellar – click above for a larger image

The outer rain screen is punctured with porthole-shaped Juliet balconies for the guestrooms and peels up at the ground level to form the hotel canopy and reveal the hotel entrance.

Ground floor – click above for a larger image

The original through block building offered limited possibilities for natural light.

2nd floor – click above for a larger image

Four floors were removed from the center of the building, which created a new pool terrace and beach along with new windows and balconies for guestrooms.

3rd floor – click above for a larger image

The glass bottom pool allows guests in the lobby glimpses through the water to the outside (and vice versa) connecting the spaces in an ethereal way.

7th floor – click above for a larger image

Light wells framed in teak between the lobby, pool and lower level levels allow the space to flow.

8th floor – click above for a larger image

Two hundred hand blown glass globes float through the lobby and congregate over The Marble Lane restaurant filling the space with a magical light cloud.

9th floor – click above for a larger image

Fixtures and furnishings were custom designed for the public spaces and guestrooms to complement the exterior design and to continue the limitless feeling of space throughout the guest experience.

12th floor – click above for a larger image

Handel Architects served as both architect and interior designer for the project.

Click above for a larger image

Paris firm Moussafir Architectes have blanketed the roof of this concert hall in Tours, France, with a synthetic material that looks more like a quilt.

Named Le Temps Machine, which translates as The Time Machine, the venue contains two auditoriums that burst up through its roof, one displaying a glowing digital clock.

The glazed facade and entrance are sheltered beneath a canopy of projecting eaves.

The walls of the remaining elevations are exposed concrete, as are those in the corridors of the building.

Above: photograph is by Benoît Faure

We’ve featured quite a few concert halls on Dezeen. You can see them all here.

Photography is by Jérôme Ricolleau, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some extra information from Moussafir Architectes:

‘Le Temps Machine’, Concert Venue, Joue-Les-Tours, France

The former Joué-lès-Tours youth centre was a blocky, opaque, inward-looking building that failed to interact with the surrounding public space and no longer met current standards and requirements. The architectural design for the new music facility responds to a three-fold objective: to open the building up to its surroundings, to improve the way the opaque block integrates with existing buildings, and emphasise the festive dimension of the facility by making a unique architectural statement.

Above: photograph is by Luc Boegly

We chose to situate the new building where the old one stood, and to reinterpret some of the latter’s salient features (such as its prow-shaped auditorium) while offering the space a radically new image by opening it up to its context.

With its generously glazed street-side entrance, the building’s exterior features deep projecting eaves and a strongly cantilevered auditorium providing both an impression of lightness and a sense of hospitality vis-a-vis the public space and dwellings nearby.

To improve its contextual integration, we have divided the structure into two parts functioning in different registers: a determinedly horizontal 2m50 tall concrete and glass base housing a fluid, open interior space, and a roof with the three main components of the design brief (the two performance areas and the resource centre) bursting through it like opaque excrescences.

This duality is emphasised by the use of contrasting materials: hard on the outside (raw concrete, glass, stainless steel) and soft on the inside (membrane stretched over exterior insulation materials).

With its complex volumetrics and textured outer surface, the new building stands out like a beacon in the urban landscape.

The contradictory image we were aiming at is one of a unique yet familiar object that is challenging and yet invites appropriation: a sculptural design that refers to nothing that already exists, but which users can easily engage with, both in functional and symbolic terms.

Client: TOUR(S) PLUS (Tours City Council)
Address: 49, rue des Martyrs, 37300 JOUE-LES-TOURS

Above: photograph is by Benoît Faure

Brief: Concert facility to replace the existing youth centre, including a concert space for a standing audience of 650, a 150-seat cabaret-style space, a resources centre, and 3 rehearsal studios with service areas.

Materials: Colourwashed raw concrete, solvent- and plastics-free FPO roofing membrane by Sika Sarnafil, glazed stainless steel, Fibracoustic panels of wood fibre and rockwool, door/windowframes aluminium (exterior), steel and wood (interior).

Budget: 5,300,000 €. ex tax.

NSA: 1,753 sq m.

Architects: Jacques Moussafir avec Nicolas Hugoo, Alexis Duquennoy, Narumi Kang, Sofie Reynaert, Jérôme Hervé and Virginie Prié

Partner engineers: A&T (stage designers), Ayda (acoustic designers), Batiserf (structural engineers), LBE (mechanical engineers), Bureau Michel Forgue (quantity surveyor).

Contractors: DV Construction (general contractor), AMG Féchoz (stage machinery), Bideau (stage electrics), VTI (wooden stage flooring), Edmond Petit (stage fabrics).

In the second announcement from Rem Koolhaas’ office today, OMA have unveiled their designs to convert a 5400 square metre 1960s pavilion in Stalinist-era Gorky Park in Moscow into a new venue for the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture. 

Above: Garage Gorky Park – overview

The renovation of the famous prefabricated-concrete Vremena Goda restaurant, which has been derelict for over 20 years, will preserve some of the original Soviet elements and will create exhibition galleries on two levels, a creative centre for children, a shop, café, auditorium and offices.

Above: hinged panels raised

Translucent polycarbonate will clad the exterior, while inside the galleries hinged panels will fold down from the ceilings to create white walls when necessary.

Above: hinged panels lowered creating an instant white cube 

One of the floors will also be removable, allowing the lobby to be converted into a double height space that can accomodate larger artworks and sculptures.

Above: education platform

Completion is scheduled for next year.

Above: south gallery view

OMA have also announced that they won the first round of a competition to oversee an expansion of the Russian capital. See all of our stories about OMA here.

Here is some more information from OMA:

Rem Koolhaas’ OMA to design new home for Garage in Moscow

Today, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture unveiled concepts for a new building in Gorky Park, designed by Rem Koolhaas’ OMA.

Garage Gorky Park – due to be completed in 2013 – will be a renovation of the famous 1960s Vremena Goda (Seasons of the Year) restaurant, a prefabricated concrete structure that has been derelict for more than two decades.

Above and top:  entrance to the pavilion    

OMA’s design for the 5,400 square meter building includes exhibition galleries on two levels, creative center for children, shop, café, auditorium and offices.

The design preserves original soviet-era elements – including a large mosaic, and decorative tiles and brick – while incorporating a range of innovative architectural and curatorial devices. OMA is collaborating on the project with the young Russian practice Form Bureau.

Above: outdoor events

Dasha Zhukova said, “Our move to Gorky Park marks an exciting new phase in Garage’s development. I am delighted that we have one of the world’s leading architects, Rem Koolhaas’ OMA, working on the project, and I am sure their plans will attract a new generation of visitors to Garage.”

Above: ‘conventional’ gallery

Rem Koolhaas commented, “We are very happy to work on turning the almost-ruin of Vermena Goda into the new house for Garage. We were able, with our client and her team, to explore the qualities of generosity, dimension, openness, and transparency of the Soviet wreckage and find new uses and interpretations for them.”

Above: exhibition concept

Garage, founded by Dasha Zhukova in 2008, is a major non-profit arts project based in Moscow, dedicated to exploring and developing contemporary culture. At the beginning of this year, Garage moved from its original home in the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage to Gorky Park in Moscow.

Above: hinged panels

Garage aims to bring important international modern and contemporary art to Moscow, to raise the profile of Russian contemporary culture internationally and encourage a new generation of Russian artists. It also organizes and supports a wide range of cultural projects internationally.

Above: before – Vremena Goda Pavilion March 2012

The Stalin-era Gorky Park was planned in the 1920s by renowned soviet Constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov, who also designed Garage’s previous home, the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage. Opened in 1928, Gorky Park extends 300 acres along the Moskva River in the heart of Moscow.

Above: Garage Gorky Park location

The park is undergoing a major renovation and regeneration project, of which Garage Gorky Park is a major part.

Above: Garage moves

Co-founded by Rem Koolhaas in 1975, OMA is a leading international office practicing architecture, urbanism and cultural analysis.

Above: before – Vremena Goda Pavilion March 2012

Dedicated for over thirty years to the design and realization of buildings and masterplans, OMA is led by seven partners – Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, David Gianotten and Managing Partner Victor van der Chijs – and sustains an international practice with offices in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing, Hong Kong and soon Doha.

 Above: before – Vremena Goda Pavilion and Hexagon in 1970

The work of Rem Koolhaas and OMA has won several international awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000 and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2010 Venice Biennale.

Our interview with the designers of New York’s new boutique hotel

You know a neighborhood has made it in New York when it receives its own abbreviated nickname. The latest addition to the map is NoMad—short for North of Madison Square Park—which is also fittingly the name of Andrew Zobler‘s newest lifestyle hotel. Zobler, who is also responsible for the Ace Hotel across the street, was initially drawn to the distinct architecture along that section of Broadway. While the Ace set the neighborhood in a thrilling new direction, Zobler set his sights on the preserved facade of the NoMad to create something entirely new. “The challenge from an overall perspective was that we didn’t want to do anything that was duplicative of The Ace—we wanted to compliment it,” he says. “That was the impetus for going with something that felt more luxury, more European and more romantic.” Using the Beaux-Arts style facade of the newly opened NoMad Hotel as inspiration for the interior, Zobler tapped French architect Jacques Garcia to complete his vision.

“What we really wanted was to explore Jacques at his roots, so we found a photograph of an apartment that he lived in when he was in his 20s in Paris, and you can see in the image the very early stages of the Garcia style—but much more bohemian and eclectic,” explains Zobler. “It was that image that we wanted to achieve—his very early work.” Garcia, who is behind Paris’ sleek Hotel Costes, sourced many of the NoMad furnishings directly from France, including a 200-year-old-fireplace.

Also brought over from France is Parisian boutique Kitsuné, now located within the NoMad thanks to Zobler’s young business partner Tanner Campbell. Says Zobler, “He identified the Kitsuné folks as having this sort of style that fit the hotel. We wanted to find people who were really talented but were also idiosyncratic.”

From the inside out, the hotel boasts a distinctive feeling that mixes European hospitality with downtown NYC details. We checked in with Garcia to learn a little more about his design process for the NoMad, from the opulently dark hotel bar to the bright, spacious bedrooms.

What drew you to tackle the NoMad Hotel project?

The fact that a lot of Americans (especially New Yorkers) are fascinated by the Hotel Costes in Paris encouraged me in a way to accept the challenge. With this Parisian success, from my experience, most New Yorkers who visited Paris visited the Hotel Costes property at least once—either for dinner or to say overnight. I wanted to find the same craze in New York for the NoMad Hotel—which, in my opinion, has both a French and American spirit.

What about the original space did you find inspiring?

The building is extraordinary. The fact that it was a historical building was a blessing for me. I was also very impressed by the views of the city from the rooms. Also, the volume of the ground floor enabled us to build the central veranda, which recalls the Hotel Costes courtyard.

What was your main goal when defining the interior aesthetic of the NoMad Hotel? What do you want every guest to experience with their stay?

My goal for public spaces in a general way is often the same. I had to go through the 1980s during which the public spaces were all white or grey and the lights were so white and cruel that the women looked like they were 20 years older. This didn’t please men, and therefore, men wouldn’t be interested in seducing women under such conditions. With the NoMad Hotel, I tried to do the exact opposite. This philosophy will be the case for all my future creations because these public spaces are made for encounters—and not to be satisfied from a specific aesthetic.

You’ve defined luxury as knowledge. So, what defines the luxury component of The NoMad?

The luxury component of the NoMad is the simplicity in the sophistication with a feeling of eternity.