Hasta La Ideas

Flexible kitchen design in the Wounded Warrior home. All images and video courtesy of IDEO

In less than a month, the last American troops stationed in Iraq are set to return home. As the United States prepares to celebrate the close of a painfully fraught era of politics and war, veterans and their families face the beginning of their next great challenge: returning home and acclimating to a peacetime “normalcy.” Oftentimes, United States’ military men and women carry the physical and emotional wounds of their service home with them, “find[ing] workarounds to cope with their surroundings based on individual capabilities and preferences.” Today, IDEO unveils a new model for building accessible homes on military installations: the Wounded Warrior home.

The Wounded Warrior project is a collaboration with the Virginia-based real estate firm Clark Realty Capital and supported by a Department of Defense initiative to develop privatized housing for service members. Using IDEO’s human-centered design process, the team interviewed and observed 10 civilians and 20 injured soldiers, “meeting with their loved ones, and getting feedback from nearly two dozen experts. [IDEO] asked questions that shed light on how active duty service members resume civilian life after debilitating injuries, what could make their experience more dignified and healthy, and what might reconnect them with family, close friends, and the world.” The team also immersed themselves in the recovery and therapy process for disabled veterans and consulted with dozens of medical experts and advocacy groups.

Through their process, IDEO’s team quickly realized that there was no one Wounded Warrior, but instead, their work would need to accommodate a wide range of interactions and needs of disabled service men and women. The team identified seven dualities from their research:

• Well-Defined, Undefined Spaces: A home is never set in stone. In a household, roles shift, preferences change and most important, physical and mental impairments dictate an evolving set of challenges. This demands a flexible design that allow for both defined and undefined space. People wish to be the architect of their own home. Open-ended space gives them square feet to imagine an optimism and future they shape themselves.
• Mobile Roots: It’s difficult to sink down roots when they’re yanked up every few years. The constant flux of transient military life places extra demands on a family. People don’t want to feel they’re just passing through, short timers, skipping from base to base. They want home to feel like they’ve finally arrived at their destination. The dynamic of mobility and deep roots often decides a big chunk of happiness.
• Inside Out, Outside In: Poets, explorers, and rehab therapists all know the immense healing powers of nature. It’s a tremendous gift for anyone suffering wounds, physical or mental. The outside world or even back patio is a deep-breath metaphor for freedom. Nature is force of nurture. This duality is about bringing the outside experience inside the home—and equally important, making sure the journey outside is short, effortless, and joyful.
• Visible & Invisible Security: Trauma, post combat stress, reduced mobility—these are issues that make it hard to feel safe and secure. People want the protection of their hidden cocoon but also a total 360 degree visual awareness of their surroundings. It’s about providing security through concealment and reduced exposure—yet also creating security through visibility, instant communication, and control of their environment.
• Social Privacy: Sometimes people view their home as a sanctuary, a retreat, a place of privacy and introspection. Other times, people see their home as a gateway to the outside world—to social and cultural connections that both determine well-being. A home must be a restful oasis and a place for raucous good times—both equally therapeutic.
• Uniquely Normal: Here are two distinct and contrary requirements: the desire to live a normal life despite significant physical and often mental wounds. Normal in the just like everybody-else sense. No special treatment whatsoever. But second, the obvious need for specific accommodations that dramatically improve quality of life. In the home, the goal is to strike that balance: a wheel chair-friendly dream home, but one that appears ordinary, nothing more than plain wonderful normal life.
• Old Self, New Self: Healing is a long and winding road. The early stages are about repairing the damage, rebuilding what was lost. Over time, the unique determination of Wounded Warriors drive them toward self-improvement and transformation. The human beauty is that great loss also inspires tremendous new gain. This calls for an architecture that encourages that recovery, no matter where or how far that journey takes them

Visible and Invisible Security in private nooks in a Uniquely Normal Living Room.

Today’s unveiling of the Wounded Warrior model home represents an innovative and flexible approach to addressing the needs of not only disabled military veterans, but a wide-ranging group of people facing physical disabilities. Clark Realty partnered with architect Michael Graves to build the first homes—Graves brought his personal insights to the project. Graves has suffered from lower-body paralysis that has confined him to a wheelchair for nearly a decade, and through this experience, he has gained significant expertise into how people live and work, whether mobility challenged or not. We’re excited to see which concepts Graves took from IDEO’s work and how the build will be realized today in Fort Belvoir.

Core77 had the opportunity to sit down with Altay Sendil, IDEO designer and project lead for the Wounded Warrior house to learn more about the process and learnings from this unique project:

(more…)

Circular mirrors, glowing acrylic rods and large yellows discs adorn the ceiling of this canteen for German magazine Der Spiegel (photos by Zooey Braun).

Designed by Ippolito Fleitz Group Identity Architects, the dining room is located on the ground floor of the company’s headquarters in the Hafencity development of southern Hamburg.

Over 4000 of the satin-polished aluminium panels cover the ceiling, concealing electrical wiring and fittings behind.

Round lamps hang like upside-down mushrooms above each table and can be individually brightened or dimmed by diners.

The suspended acrylic rods are arranged into curved rows to separate clusters of tables and are illuminated from above.

Painted blacks lines indent the white terrazzo floor to define walkways and discourage encroaching chairs.

Hafencity is a large development beside Hamburg’s Elbe River – other recent projects in the area include a concert hall by Herzog & de Meuron and a curvy apartment block.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

In October 2011 the SPIEGEL Group, whose stable includes Germany’s most important news magazine Der SPIEGEL, moved into its new publishing house in Hamburg’s HafenCity development. This impressive structure on the Eriscusspitze, lapped by the waters of the River Elbe, was designed by Danish architect Henning Larsen.

Ippolito Fleitz Group was commissioned to create a new employees’ canteen for the building. The legacy building’s famous canteen was designed in 1969 by Verner Panton and has since been placed under heritage protection. This inheritance represented a particular challenge.

Verner Panton’s canteen

Our deliberations began with a question: could we integrate Verner Panton’s iconic facility into a new concept? After careful consideration we decided against adopting the facility. One factor which spoke against redeployment was the polygonal format of the new building, where Panton’s square-based modular concept would inevitably lead to virtually uncontrollable spatial remnants.

Furthermore, the new building offers little in the way of large, continuous walls which are crucial to the Panton concept. The old building had three separate, compact spaces which Panton enlivened with the dynamic forms and colours of his ceiling topography. The new space, however, covers a large area and gives a strong horizontal impression. But above all it seemed logical to us to complement the new architecture of the building with contemporary, future-oriented interior design – exactly what Panton’s facility once was for the previous building.

Starting point

The employees’ canteen was and is a calling card of the SPIEGEL Group, reflecting its journalistic philosophy as much as its culture of dialogue – not least because of its prominent position in the building and its high visibility from the exterior. Nonetheless it is a space which looks inward, only accessible to SPIEGEL employees and their guests.

That means it isn’t a “brand space” as such. The starting point for our deliberations was the characteristics of the space and of the building. The building distinguishes itself through its exposed position on the water and its modern architecture, expressed in the vertical interior space of the 14-storey atrium. The floor plan of the canteen defines a large, polygonal space whose strong horizontal emphasis is further highlighted by the uninterrupted row of windows on two sides.

Ceiling and light

Because the space had to be flexible, it was soon clear that the ceiling design would be the distinguishing moment of the canteen. Reflecting both this fact and the harbour location, we developed a matt shimmering ceiling which reflects light in much the same manner as water. It is formed of 4,230 circles made of micro-perforated satin-polished aluminium, laminated onto noise-absorbing supporting material and set at slight angles to each other. This means that the canteen’s natural light ambience reacts to its surroundings.

During the day the ceiling is enlivened by water and light effects from the surrounding area. The matt shimmering “plates” absorb daylight and turn the roof into a lively, gently reflective complement to the water surface of the Ericusgraben canal. Large-scale light dishes use intense colour to divide the space into zones. This colour generates a positive atmosphere in the space, even on grey days. Dimmable lamps suspended directly above tables ensure that light levels are infinitely variable.

In the evening the dishes are transformed into indirectly-lit light objects. The overall mood in the canteen is determined by the warm, white “ambient light” shed by the suspended lamps. Indirect light in selected suspended lamps discreetly illuminates the ceiling discs.Focussed downlights, hidden in the ceiling, complement the nuanced sophistication of the overall mood with light accents.Wallwashers integrated into the ceiling cast an even light on wall surfaces. They create a balance between horizontal and vertical illumination and optimise the sense of space by night, partly through reflections in glass surfaces.

The ceiling also has functional advantages: the area above the ceiling plates is painted black, along with the mandatory technical fittings, rendering them invisible. Ceiling diffusers and sprinklers effectively disappear. In addition, the upper ceiling was configured to be noise-absorbent, complementing the acoustic properties of the micro-perforated plates.

The space and its divisions

Despite the size of the space the visitor should never have an impression of monotonous, interchangeable, production-line construction. Rather the goal is to illustrate, in a dining context, the culture of dialogue which has flourished over the decades at SPIEGEL.

The employees’ canteen is a meeting place, a place of culture and informal exchange of opinions. At the same time it should fulfil functional obligations such as accessibility and spatial clarity.

The round, communicative tables are made from black coated steel frames which seem to grow from the floor in a graceful motion. Granite plates serve as table tops, their lasered surfaces working with the ceiling lights to create glare-free, brilliant light. The tables are placed within the space in three large groups in loose arrangements and so provide an organic counterpoint to the polygonal floor plan. Movement zones are thus clearly delineated.

Three lines are set into the smooth, white terrazzo floor: they ensure tables don’t encroach on walkways. Along these lines four areas are arranged with removable, lightweight spatial filters composed of white, hanging rods. Large yellow light dishes support the zoning of the space just as the hanging lamps locate tables within the space.

Wood panelling lends a sense of depth to structural hubs. The whitewashed, varnished surfaces appear even deeper thanks to a vertical, wavy relief which gives a textile-like effect.

Through a zigzagging glass façade a separate area can be formed at one end for discrete events or for use of the canteen late at night. A shoal of bright, hanging Plexiglas rods creates glare-free illumination and an intimate setting. The glass façade between this area and the canteen is formed of doubly reflective glass. So at times when both areas are in use, the separation is almost immaterial. However when the canteen is closed and thus darker, the façade appears half-mirrored, half-transparent.

The employees’ canteen in the SPIEGEL Group’s new headquarters is a space that meets all functional demands while creating a strong visual impact to form a truly distinguishing space. In so doing it supports the mature culture of communication within the company and in a grand gesture transmits these values to the outside world.

This idyllic pine house by the sea outside Stockholm has a glass-fronted lookout loft on its roof.

Completed in 2008 by Swedish architects Waldemarson Berglund, the two-storey Villa Plus is clad entirely in roughly cut Swedish pine that will grey with age.

Only one room occupies the rectangular first-floor loft, while bedrooms are on the ground floor alongside bathrooms and a large open-plan living room.

A separate bedroom is located at the back of the house and can only be accessed by crossing the wooden outdoor deck.

Timber feet raise the building and deck above the ground to prevent flooding when the tide is high.

Some other Swedish houses from our archive include a house with glazing that is flush with the ground and an island cottage with a raw timber interior – see more projects in Sweden here.

Photography is by Åke E:son Lindman.

The following information is from Waldemarson Berglund:

The building settles in the outer extension of the archipelago near Stockholm, in the borderland between land and sea.

The surroundings are simply water with some rocks and little islands cutting through the surface.

The scenery is very dramatic and horizontal. Every change in weather and light is directly reflected by the sea.

Facing the challenge of building so close to the water, the house lands on the site very pragmatically.

Standing on columns, if the sea goes wildly it simply runs under it.

The client’s wishes of catching the sea and creating calm and contemplative spaces lead the design.

The house faces openly the sea, turning its back towards the city and the urban life.

Even though being modernly designed, it is built in a traditional and uncomplicated way.

This is due partially to the difficult (sometimes impossible), access, depending on the wind and waves.

The harsh weather conditions, with wind, water and ice, also conditioned the choice of materials, taken from the nature around it.

The load bearing walls are built from hand-picked panels of swedish pine, cut to a rough surface. In time, the wood will turn grey, becoming a part of the great surrounding environment.

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

Glass screens fold across the front of this house in Yamanashi, Japan, to transform a covered garden into an indoor dining room.

Japanese architect Takeshi Hosaka’s concept for Outside In was to bring the garden inside, the opposite of previous house Inside Out, which turns indoor rooms into outdoor spaces by letting the rain in.

White-painted concrete walls down the sides of the single-storey house have a zigzagging profile that creates four connected gables.

These gables define the linear arrangement of rooms inside, which include the garden dining room, a kitchen and living room, a row of bedrooms and a row of bathrooms.

The concrete walls are exposed inside the house and contrast with built-in timber furniture that fills every room.

Although the building has no other windows, natural light enters through skylights atop each of the gables.

Some other recent projects by Takeshi Hosaka include one house with a grid of arched skylights in the ceiling and another where a deaf couple and their children can to sign to each other through the walls – see all our stories about the architect here.

Photography is by Koji Fujii / Nacasa & Partners.

Here’s some more text from Takeshi Hosaka:

OUTSIDE IN

Gradation of scenery, from outdoor area to inside area

The project was launched when I was commissioned to enlarge a house for a couple in their 30′s and their three daughters living in Yamanashi Prefecture.

On my first visit there, I found the houses of one story and two stories both stand close together but that there remain some empty lots, farming fields, wooded areas and unpaved roads.

I remember that the bounty and generosity of the place inspired me. My client told me that we would have the opportunity to hear beautiful sound of birds in the early mornings and to see wild pheasants, peafowl and every now and then raccoon dogs.

I looked for how the residents here could live in harmony with such nature and climate even in a crowded residential area.

In the beginning I destroyed half of the main house, and then designed and built a new, one-storied structure with a continuous gradation from the wooded area located on the south side of the house to the inside area – that is, it is a boundary structure built in space between nature and human beings.

Sky above, forest sidelong, ground below

The sky being above the house, the forest close to the house, and the ground below the house, nature is attractive enough to be taken in into the inside area of the house.

I planned a structure in which nature is horizontally and vertically incorporated as an integral part of the design of the structure to create a gradation from the outside area to the inside areas.

To put it concretely, the open shed lies facing the south, which makes it possible for the residents to feel as if they were in one room, filled with a sense of unity with the wooden area.

And the upper part of the house also has an open structure, consisting of some combinations of reinforced concrete V beams and transparent acrylic, as a result of which the residents can see the sky through the transparent acrylic ceiling.

The V-beam structure conveys an impression of durability and reliability, while the presence of the transparent acrylic is next to nothing, which enables us to ignore the acrylic unconsciously and see only the rows of reinforced concrete V beams.

What comes into our eyes is nothing but the beams, so we feel the sky so close to us, being unconscious of the existence of the roof.

And the dining room is located at the end of the house, which is a boundary area between outside area and insider area in terms of the gradation.

I regarded the floor of the dining room as comprising a part of the ground, and therefore I planted flowers and trees there.

Enjoyment of climate

In winter, the temperature here gets -10 C. However, the residents of this house do not need to stay still home during the long winter months. They can positively enjoy the climate in their own house, feeling the outside physically and spiritually.

The cries of wild pheasants echo in the morning air, and will wake the residents up. The peacocks can be seen from their bedroom, and they can enjoy eating in the dining room where flowers and trees are growing up.

During hot summer months, with no air conditioners, opening the window to its full width is to exchange the air inside with the air outside, which is a kind of synchronization of inside and outside temperature.

Even on the rainy days when the rain blows into the room, they do not need to hurry to close the window because the floor of the room is a kind of a flower bed.

Click above for larger image

In the residential area stands the house with the gradation of scenery positively open to the climate, filled with bounty and generosity.

Click above for larger image

Architect: Takeshi Hosaka
Structural Engineers: Hirofumi Ohno
Client: Seiichiro Kawaguchi

Name Of The Project: Outside In
Exact definition of the building: a couple and 3 children (girls)
Location of the project: Yamanashi, Japan

Construction nature: RC structure
Site: 174.48 m2
Building area: 102.14 m2
Floor area ratio: 102.14 m2
Building height: 3400 mm
No. of floors: 1F
Building function: house

Design: January 2010 – May 2010
Planning start: January 2010
Beginning of construction: Jun 2010
Completion: April 2011

(Photos courtesy Wright)

What do you get the design lover who has everything? The answer can inevitably be found in the sublimely photographed catalogue for Wright’s bi-annual Important Design sale, and this season the Chicago auction house has outdone itself with works that include jaw-dropping Gio Ponti pieces designed for Villa Arreaza in Caracas (Santa, we’ll take the dining table!), the largest of Bertoia’s hollow-copper gongs, and a Rembrandt Bugatti cast-bronze condor that would make an ideal Christmas surprise for the Mulleavy sisters. And grab one of those giant Lexus-style red bows for the top lot: the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Kenneth Laurent House and furnishings. The Rockford, Illinois property has been consigned by its original owner, a disabled veteran who recognized Wright’s open-plan designs as a beautiful and functional fit for his wheelchair. Laurent and his wife became chummy with the architect and later commissioned interior furnishings for the home, which Wright referred to as his “little gem.” The place goes on the auction block at Wright on December 15 and is estimated to fetch between $500,000 and $700,000.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.