Hasta La Ideas

Performance venues don’t get any more intimate than this. Folk in a Box provides just enough space for a single musician to play to an audience of one.

Above: photograph is by Sakiko Kohashi

The mobile wooden venue was designed by London architect Cristina Monteiro to be easily dismantled and reassembled in different locations.

An arched doorway on the front provides an entrance for the spectator, while an arched stable door at the back serves as both a whiskey bar and the stage door.

Built by artisan carpenters, the box features a patterned exterior that makes it look like a staircase is positioned in front of it.

Other mobile buildings we’ve featured on Dezeen include a disco caravan and an armoured cabin.

Photography is by David Knight, apart from where otherwise stated.

The text below is from the Folk in a Box team:

Folk in a Box

Architect Cristina Monteiro has designed and delivered a unique one-on-one performance venue for an acclaimed musical collective.

‘Folk in a Box’ is the UK’s smallest performance venue. One audience member is allowed in at a time. The door is closed behind them. They are given one song, performed by one musician. By the time the song is the over, the musician is just about visible in the darkness and intimacy of the box. The experience is compelling.

In earlier incarnations, the Folk in a Box project has featured at Tate Britain, the Royal Festival Hall, and Battersea Arts Centre, plus a host of music festivals and street-corner appearances. The new, high-spec and easily assembledbox has been made ready for a tour of the UK later in 2012.

The box is designed to feel familiar yet strange in a wide variety of places, from living rooms to high streets. It’s not quite sure if it’s a building or furniture, new or old.

Client: Folk in a Box
Designer: Cristina Monteiro
Construction: Aldworth James & Bond

Project funded by the Joyce Carr Doughty Trust with the support of BAC.

Brooklyn artist Mark Reigelman has installed a wooden hut in an unusual city location – suspended on the side of a San Francisco hotel like a bird box.

Reigelman claims that the Manifest Destiny! project demonstrates the rights of the urban explorer to find an unoccupied parcel of space in which to make a city home.

Lights visible through the windows give the impression that someone is home.

Electricity to power these lights is generated from a solar panel mounted onto the roof.

The project was constructed in collaboration with architect Jenny Chapman and engineer Paul Endres and will remain in place until October.

Photography is by Cesar Rubio.

Here’s some more words from Reigelman:

Concept

Manifest Destiny! is about our God-given imperative as modern explorers, to seek out parcels of unclaimed territory and boldly establish a new home front in the remaining urban voids of San Francisco.

Overview

Manifest Destiny! is a temporary rustic cabin occupying one of the last remaining unclaimed spaces of downtown San Francisco—above and between other properties. The cabin is affixed to the side of the Hotel des Arts, floating above the restaurant Le Central like an anomalous outgrowth of the contemporary streetscape. Using a 19th-century architectural style and vintage building materials, the structure is both homage to the romantic spirit of the Western Myth and a commentary on the arrogance of Westward expansion. The interior space of the tiny house can be seen day and night through the curtained windows, a lonely beacon in the city’s dense landscape, and an incongruous, haunting vision from below. The installation will remain in place and be slowly transformed by the elements through October 2012.

The cabin is a temporary site specific installation in San Francisco, California. The project was commissioned by Southern Exposure and funded by the Graue Family Foundation.

The project will be on view through October 28th 2012.

Artist

Brooklyn based artist Mark Reigelman in collaboration with architect Jenny Chapman and engineer Paul Endres.

Details

The cabin is approximately 7′ wide x 8′ deep x 11′ tall and sits approximately 40′ in the air. The cabin frame is made of welded aluminum while the exterior is finished with 100 year-old reclaimed barn board from Ohio. The rear roof has a 3′x4′ solar panel which charges during the day and lights the cabin interior at night. The cabin weights over 1,000 lbs.

This scaly apartment block in alpine Slovenia appears to have had its corners sliced away to create triangular balconies.

Completed by Ljubljana studio OFIS Arhitekti, the three-storey-high building contains six studio apartments on its upper floors, as well as a pharmacy at ground level.

Each apartment has a private balcony, where recessed larch walls contrast with the cement shingle-clad shell that encases the majority of the building.

Locally sourced stone walls frame the entrances to both the residential stairwell and the pharmacy, which are set back from the facade and sheltered by the floors above.

We’ve published a few projects by OFIS Arhitekti over the years – see them all here, including a social housing development inspired by computer game Tetris.

Photography is by Tomaz Gregoric and Jan Celeda.

Here’s some more text from OFIS Arhitekti:

Alpine Ski Apartments
invited competition
2007-2011

The project is located in the Slovenian alpine town Kranjska Gora on the north western corner of the country. The brief required a public ground floor and small apartments on the upper floor that could be converted into bigger units.

Concept design-initial urban cube-cutout the cube in vertical and horizontal planes.

The concept design was initially dictated by strict local building regulations, height and footprint plot limit which partially led to the building form.

The first step was pasting maximum volume on the site -a cube on the allowed urban footprint. The final form derived from cutting the cube in the vertical and horizontal planes.

Horizontal cut – pitched roof with flat top to hide service ventilation pipes and chimneys.

Vertical cut – angled corners with inserted wooden balconies allowing the building a softer, less substantial volume appearance.

Program organisation

The pharmacy is located on the ground floor with larger glazed elements and a recessed entrance creating a more open and inviting level for the public space.

First and second floors contain 6 studio apartments of different sizes, each with own balcony and large glazed opening affording views towards the surrounding mountains.

The basement level is a communal space with a shared area, sauna and leisure room.

The materials used have also been chosen as a response to the local historical tradition, using materials to emulate those of the existing building environment.

Cement tile cladding as the principal material which visually gives the impression of a tiled roof, however provides continuous skin which is used on both the roof and walls to emphasize the form of building further.

Larch is used for the balconies on the corners of the building in order to indicate the location the buildings form has been cut to reveal external spaces for the apartments.

Natural stone from the region is used as a material for the ground floor to indicate the entrance and difference between private and public areas.

Both these materials have been chosen due to their use historically in local traditional architecture.

Location: Kranjska Gora
Type: Housing apartments
Client: GRADIS G Group d.d
Site Area: 462 m2
Bldg. Area: 177 m2
Gross Floor Area: 457 m2
Coverage Ratio: 0,38
Gross Floor Ratio: 0,98
Structure: reinforced concrete and steel
Max. Height: 11.7 m
Landscape Area: 180 m2
Inner space: 439 m2

Design team: 
Rok Oman
, Spela Videcnik, 
Andrej Gregoric
, Janja Del Linz, 
Anna Breda
, Janez Martincic, Katja Aljaz

The stripped concrete skeletons of three former factories in A Coruña await conversion into public buildings by Spanish architects Díaz&Díaz.

The architects decontaminated both the site and the towering, barrel-vaulted structures for the first phase of development.

You can see more projects from Spain here, including a bright red psychiatric centre and a pearlescent music hall.

Photography is by Xoan Piñon.

Here’s some text from Díaz&Díaz Arquitectos:

Rehabilitation of the Old Factories Structures Cros. Phase I

Faced with the Burgo estuary, along the new promenade stand proud of the old factory Cros structures. The first phase project includes the decontamination of structures and terrain as well as a complete renovation. To undertake this phase structures were settled with pine wooden formwork and the roof was recovered ceramic tiles.

Cultural Centre Built in Cros Old Factory

Carefully studying the circulation of the Cros Old factory buildings and in knowing, that when considered together, the three existent buildings have a great value for its urban and architectural system, volumetric plastic qualities and spatial configuration, Díaz y Díaz Architects sought an integration of architectural space. In doing so, their design is perceived as a unified whole.

The auditorium, as the Library and the cafeteria, have their own entrances and circulation systems, so they can be operated independently.

From the formal point of view, all new projected spaces are conceived as free bodies, with a clear volumetry, staying within the existing buildings, touching them in essential and specified points. The special treatment, seeking to adequately express the contrast between old and new: on the one hand the ships restored with its original volumetry of barrel-vaulted naves and visible structure; furthermore, the new bodies based parallelepiped volumes smooth surface.

These old factory buildings are a magnificent example of industrial architecture of the time, which are parts of architectural modern heritage to preserve and to convert in a great cultural pole of attraction and urban entertainment not only for the municipal level, but to the entire metropolitan area.

Architects: Díaz y Díaz Architects (Lucas Díaz and Gustavo Díaz)
Location: Galicia, Spain
Project: Rehabilitation of the old factories structures Cros. Phase I. El Burgo. A Coruña
Client: Culleredo Town Hall
Surveyor: Ramón Rodilla Marcos
Area: 9.000 m2
Date of Construction: 2011 (phase I)

French studio Bang Architectes has converted a former peanut factory in Calais into a skateboarding park with a bright orange mesh facade (photos by Julien Lanoo).

In order to increase natural light inside the warehouse the architects removed concrete walls from the east and west elevations and replaced them with glazing, screened behind the layer of steel mesh.

Two new volumes project from the facade to reveal the locations of a youth centre positioned along one edge of the building and a raised platform opposite accommodating more skating tracks.

An enclosed passageway with entrances at both ends crosses the width of the building to provide a safe place for spectators to stand.

If skateparks grab your interest, check out one designed by a skateboarding champion in Germany.

Here’s the full description from the architects:

ZAP’ADOS

Create a signal in the landscape

The operation takes place along a canal in St. Pierre, which is the former industrial district of Calais. It continues the urban renewal initiated by La Cité de la Dentelle (by Moatti & Rivière Architects) located a hundred meters downstream. In this bleak urban landscape, the conversion of the existing industrial hall has to be visible.

The future facility must signal its presence and invite potential users, the young and curious, to enter. The high clearance at the front of the building offers increased visibility of the west gable from the surrounding area. This gable, which has been completely redesigned, will project a strong signal into the public space.

Reclassify the hall

The existing building is a common industrial hall with no outstanding features, consisting of a concrete structure filled with precast concrete panels and a roof of cement sheets. The hall was once a roasted peanut factory, followed by various other incarnations (including a go-kart track) before being abandoned for several years.

Prior to handing and processing it had been dilapidated, vandalised and had become structurally unsafe. The first task was to open the dark hall before curettage and structural recovery. This was achieved by removing precast concrete panels on the eastern and western facades to release through-views and bring natural light into the heart of the building.

Express the new assignment of the building

The youth centre and the skate park extends beyond the gable and form two protrusions, which clearly signifies that the building has a new purpose. One protrusion stands on the floor and emerges from the skateboarder club and youth centre, forming a point of contact between the inside and outside space. The other is cantilevered and a launch pad that overlooks the front square, featuring skaters waiting in turn before taking off.

The two prismatic volumes, like opened arms, reclassify the free space of the front square and act as an invitation to enter. The architectural expression is unified by a common envelope made of expanded metal, which turns the silhouette from a hanger into a prism protruding from a singular hybrid form.

The metal mesh allows spectators to watch activities inside and is gradually perforated from top to bottom. The mesh acts like a shutter, controling direct sunlight and the color is stricking; it is deliberately conspicuous. This colorful mesh protects the equipment as the expanded metal is very resistant and anti-graffiti. It is doubled with a curtain wall to protect users from prevailing winds and reduce any noise nuisance to nearby houses. Outside the building the front square is treated using an orange frame to draw parking spaces, which overlap the textures of the existing floor coatings.

Linking the two programs

Inside the hall the various program elements are organised longitudinally, to optimise the length of the skate tracks and provide an entrance to the youth centre along the southern facade. When entering the building, there are a series of enclosed and heated rooms installed on the right identified by emerging prism. This set is built with a light frame and placed on the existing slab, with entrances distributed along an indoor walkway.

This walkway is fully integrated into the space used for the skate park, separated using a handrail that runs its entire length. It enables “spectators” to watch the skaters safely. The long wall is covered with an acoustic fabric stretched to form large “dimples”. This absorbing surface is designed to reduce reverberated sounds caused by skateboarding on hard surfaces.

The wall is also provided with vertical windows offering views for both users of the skate park and youth centre. A sinusoid layer of large acoustic baffles is suspended from the ceiling to increase acoustic comfort for users. These technical elements offer inexpensive modifications that morph the inner space and hide the unsightly ceiling.

Create skate tracks

The modules are arranged in a strips logically oriented along the full length of the hall. On the west side a raised platform overlooks the front square. It serves as a high point: the launcher. The bowls (rare in the region) are installed at the east end of the hall to maintain space clearance. These complex curved surfaces are works of joinery and carpentry of great sophistication.

In the center of the hall is the funbox. A calm initiation zone is arranged along the indoor walkway and punctuated by modules. The modules are made of wood (not concrete) to maintain the adaptability of the skate park and the reversibility of the original allocation of the hall.

Construction system

• Structure of the gables and volumes emerging: structural steel
• West facade: the existing concrete columns and structural steel are “sandwiched” by painted gradually expanded aluminum on the outside wall and the curtain wall noise attenuation inside
• Acoustic wall on the indoor street: textile glass fiber coated with PVC stretched over two layers of cotton batting and put on a sheet of extruded PVC formed.
• Ceiling: industrial acoustic suspended baffles made out of melamine
• Skate joinery: wood frame and covering in birch plywood from Finland coated by a clear glaze.
• External joinery: aluminum with double glazing.
• Roofing of emerging volumes: self-protected bitumen.

Operation’s name: ZAP’ ADOS
Location: 87 quai de Lucien L’heureux 62100 Calais
Client: Ville de Calais
Design Architects: Bang Architectes (Nicolas Gaudard and Nicolas Hugoo) Engineer: B&R ingénierie
Program: conversion of industrial hall into Skate Park and Youth Centre Floor area: 2 760 m2
Total cost: 1,5M € H.T.
Start of study: June 2010
Delivery: December 2011