Hasta La Ideas

Swedish firm Tengbom has designed a ten square-metre wooden house for students.

Linda Camara and Pontus Åqvist of Tengbom architects worked in collaboration with students from Lund University in Sweden to create the living unit, which is meant to be “affordable and sustainable”.

“Through an efficient layout and the use of cross-laminated wood as a construction material, the rent is reduced by 50 percent and the ecological impact and carbon footprint is also significantly reduced,” said Camara.

Inside the unit there is a small kitchenette with shelving and green storage cupboards, a small bathroom and a loft for sleeping that is accessed via small wooden steps fixed to the wall.

Two window shutters on the lower level can be folded down to use as a dining table and a desk. Under the loft area there is a hammock.

“The main issue was to design really smart units with no unnecessary space,” Camara told Dezeen. “Only well-designed space is afforded when designing for small living.”

The unit is constructed from cross-laminated wood that was sawn and shaped by timber firm Martinsons and mounted on site by Swedish building firm Ulestedt.

“Since this is a fairly new material on the Swedish market, we wanted to show the qualities, such as the possibilities to make the non-rectangular forms,” Camara said. “It is easier to make round corners than sharp 90-degrees.”

In 2014, 22 of the student units will be built and ready for students in Sweden to move into.

One of the student micro-homes is currently on display at the Virserum Art Museum as part of the Wood 2013 exhibition, which is open until 8 December 2013.

Other micro-homes featured on Dezeen recently include a cloud-shaped holiday home that sits next to a lake in south-west France and a concept for narrow apartments that fill tiny gaps between existing buildings.

See more micro-houses »
See more student housing »

Photography is by Bertil Hertzberg.

Here’s more information from the architects:

Tengbom Architects design a smart student flat

A student flat of only 10 square metres is currently exhibited at the Virserum Art Museum in the county Småland, Sweden.

Tengbom Architects has designed a student flat for students which is affordable, environmental-friendly and smart both in terms of design and choice of materials. The project is a collaboration with wood manufacturer Martinsons and real estate company AF Bostäder.

To meet the needs of students in a sustainable, smart and affordable way was the key questions when Tengbom in collaboration with students at the University of Lund was designing this student flat of 10 square meters. The unit is now displayed in Virserum Art Museum. In 2014, 22 units will be built and ready for students to move into.

To successfully build affordable student housing requires innovative thinking and new solutions. The area in each unit is reduced from current requirement, 25 square meters to 10 square meters through legal consent. This truly compact-living flat still offers a comfortable sleeping-loft, kitchen, bathroom and a small garden with a patio. Through an efficient layout and the use of cross laminated wood as a construction material the rent is reduced by 50 % and the ecological impact and carbon footprints is also significantly reduced.

Energy efficiency is a key issue when designing new buildings. Choosing right material and manufacturing methods is vital to minimise the carbon emission and therefore wood was chosen for its carbon positive qualities, and as a renewable resource it can be sourced locally to minimize transportation. The manufacturer method was chosen because of is flexible production and for it’s assembling technique which can be done on site to reduce construction time.

By exhibiting this well planned and sustainable student flat we want to challenge the conventional views and show new ways of thinking. What is good living? What materials can we use? To meet the future in a sustainable way we must be innovative in all aspects and have the courage to break new ground, says Linda Camara at Tengbom Architects.

Location: Virserums Konsthall Kyrkogatan 34, 570 80 Virserum
Architect: Linda Camara & Pontus Åqvist, Tengbom
Assistent Architect: Lina Rengstedt, Olof Nordenson, Magnus Juhlin

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by Tengbom appeared first on Dezeen.

In this movie by film studio Stephenson/Bishop, architect Carl Turner describes the importance of flexibility in the London house he designed for himself and his partner, which last night was awarded the RIBA Manser Medal 2013 for the best new house in the UK.

Located in Brixton, south London, Slip House is a three-storey residence with walls made from planks of translucent glass and staggered upper floors that cantilever towards the street.

The house features a spacious ground floor that is currently used by Carl Turner as a studio for his architectural practice.

“The house is really flexible,” he explains. “We’ve got this amazing space on the ground floor that we’re currently using as our office and studio space, but the idea is that if we move out of there, we can use the whole space as a house again.”

The first floor accommodates an open-plan living and dining space, but Turner says this space could be easily converted into bedrooms if the ground floor was turned back into a living room.

“It’s a kind of frame structure and that allows us these open floor spaces that mean we can then have really flexible uses,” he adds.

Slip House was awarded the RIBA Manser Medal 2013 last night in a ceremony that also saw an addition to a twelfth-century castle in Warwickshire win the Stirling Prize. It was praised for sustainable features that include rooftop solar panels, a rain-water-harvesting system, a ground-sourced heat pump and a wildflower roof.

“Slip House demonstrates an admirable commitment to the creation of an exemplary low-energy house, with a suite of sustainable enhancements that are integrated effectively into the building design,” said the judges. “However, at no point do the sustainable ambitions of the project crowd out or dominate the refined quality of the spaces that are created.”

The project was completed last year and first featured on Dezeen in September. Another project by Carl Turner Architects is an extension to the couple’s former home in Norfolk.

Other recently completed houses in the UK include a Corten steel bunker that provides a home and studio for a photographer and a small home that looks a gingerbread house. See more British houses »

Movie is by Stephenson/Bishop. Photography is by Tim Crocker.

The post “We’re sharing the house with the studio”
– Carl Turner on Slip House appeared first on Dezeen.

Nick Olson & Lilah Horwitz ont tout laissé tomber pour construire la maison de leur rêve dans l’Ouest de la Virginie : une cabine dont la façade est faite de fenêtres qu’ils ont collectées dans des brocantes au travers des Etats-Unis. Un très beau projet raconté par Half Cut Tea, studio de Matt Glass et Jordan Wayne Long.

Here’s a full set of photographs of Zaha Hadid’s new extension to the Serpentine Gallery, which features a glazed restaurant with an undulating fabric roof (+ slideshow).

Located five minutes walk from the main gallery building in London’s Kensington Gardens, the Serpentine Sackler Gallery opened earlier this week. Exhibition spaces occupy a renovated nineteenth century munitions store, while the restaurant is housed in a new structure that curves out from one side.

“The idea here was to use a new material – a tensile structure – and to look at domes and a shell structure to achieve a lightweight contemporary project,” said Zaha Hadid at the launch.

Built from a glass-fibre textile, the new tensile structure forms a free-flowing white canopy that is supported by five tapered steel columns and outlined by a frameless glass wall.

Describing the contrast between the new and old structures, she said: “We don’t look forward by looking backwards. It is necessary sometimes to to be able to match and be adjacent to historic buildings. The idea here was to really prove that you can have these two worlds, which are the new and the old, and then the garden and the park together in a seamless way.”

“This structure is meant to be a very contemporary light touch that leaves the existing structure autonomous,” added senior designer Patrick Schumacher. “I think we have achieved the acuity of space and structure, of sculptural elegance, lightness and transparency.”

Dezeen published the first photos of the gallery and restaurant from the press preview earlier this week.

This year’s Serpentine Gallery pavilion by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto is also still on show nearby and features a cloud-like grid of steel poles. See more stories about the Serpentine Gallery »

Other recently completed projects by Zaha Hadid include a building at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Heydar Aliyev Centre cultural centre in Azerbaijan. See more architecture by Zaha Hadid »

Photography is by Luke Hayes.

Here’s a statement from the architects:

The Serpentine Sackler Gallery, Zaha Hadid Architects

The Serpentine Sackler Gallery consists of two distinct parts, namely the conversion of a classical 19th century brick structure – The Magazine – and a 21st century tensile structure. The Serpentine Sackler Gallery is thus – after MAXXI in Rome – the second art space where Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher have created a synthesis of old and new.

The Magazine was designed as a Gunpowder Store in 1805. It comprises two raw-brick barrel-vaulted spaces (where the gunpowder was stored) and a lower square-shaped surrounding structure with a frontal colonnade. The building continued to be in military use until 1963. Since then The Royal Parks used the building for storage. The Magazine thus remained underutilised until now. Over time, much amendment and alteration hasoccurred inside the historic building and its surroundings.

Instrumental to the transformation into a public art gallery was the decision to reinstate the historic arrangement of The Magazine building as a free standing pavilion within an enclosure, whereby the former courtyards would be covered and become internal exhibition spaces.

In order to reveal the original central spaces, all non-historic partition walls within the former gunpowder stores were removed. The flat gauged arches over the entrances were reinstated whilst the historic timber gantry crane was maintained. Necessary services and lighting were discreetly integrated as tonot interfere with the ‘as found’ quality of the spaces. These vaults are now part of the sequence of gallery spaces. The surrounding structure has been clarified and rationalised to become a continuous, open sequence of exhibition spaces looping around the two central powder rooms, thus following the simplicity and clarity of Leo von Klenze’s Glyptothek as an early model for a purpose-built gallery.

What was a courtyard before, became an interior top-lit gallery space. Longitudinal roof lights deliver natural daylight into the whole gallery sequence surrounding the central vaults and witha fixed louver system they create perfectly lit exhibition spaces. Retractable blinds allow for a complete black-out of the galleries. The continuous sky-light makes the vertical protrusion of the central core of the building (containing the two vaults) legible on the inside. These reconstructions and conversions were designed in collaboration with heritage specialist Liam O’Connor and in consultation with English Heritage and Westminster City Council. In addition to the exhibition spaces the restored and converted Magazine also houses the gallery shop and offices for the Serpentine’s curatorial team.

The extension contains a generous, open social space that we expect to enliven the Serpentine Sackler Gallery as a new cultural and culinary destination. The extension has been designed to complement the calm and solid classical building with a light, transparent, dynamic and distinctly contemporary space of the 21st century. The synthesis of old and new is thus a synthesis of contrasts. The new extension feels ephemeral, like a temporary structure, although it is a fully functional permanent building.

It is our first permanent tensile structure and realisation of our current research into curvelinear structural surfaces. The tailored, glass-fibre woven textile membrane is an integral part of the building’s loadbearing structure. It stretches between and connects a perimeter ring beam and a set of five interior columns that articulate the roof’s highpoints. Instead of using perimeter columns, the edge beam – a twisted ladder truss supported on three points – dips down to the supporting ground in front, in the back, and on the free west side. On the east side this edge beam (and thus the roof of the extension) swings above the parapet of The Magazine. A linear strip of glazing gives the appearance that the roof is hovering above The Magazine without touching. The Magazine’s western exterior brick wall thus becomes an interior wall within the new extension without losing its original function and beauty. This detail is coherent with the overall character of the extension as a ‘light touch’ intervention. The envelope is completed by a curved, frameless glass wall that cantilevers from the ground to reach the edge beam and fabric roof.

The interior of the new extension is a bright, open space with light pouring in from all sides and through the five steel columns that open up as light scoops. The anticlastic curvature of the roof animates the space with its sculptural, organic fluidity. The only fixed elements within the space are the kitchen island and a long smooth bar counter that flows along The Magazine’s brick wall. The tables, banquets and chairs are designed as a continuous Voronoi pattern, reminiscent of organic cell structures.

Our aim is to create an intense aesthetic experience, an atmosphere that seems to oscillate between being an extension of the delightful beauty of the surrounding nature and of being an alluring invitation into the enigma of contemporary art.

The post Serpentine Sackler Gallery by Zaha Hadid
photographed by Luke Hayes appeared first on Dezeen.

A gigantic golden chasm welcomes visitors to this shopping centre in Malmö by Swedish architects Wingårdhs (+ slideshow).

Located to the south of the city in Hyllie, the Emporia shopping centre is Wingårdhs‘ first realised building from a competition-winning masterplan of proposed housing and office blocks. Once all the buildings have been completed, the “amber entrance” will be the only section of the shopping centre visible from the surrounding new streets.

“The main idea of our winning competition entry was to hide inward-looking retail behind a wreath of residential and commercial buildings,” said the architects.

The curving golden glass stretches across a gridshell structure, which curves up and back to allow daylight to penetrate the entrance courtyard. From here, shoppers are led towards three storeys of retail arranged around a figure-of-eight plan.

The roof of the structure accommodates a large park with a faceted landscape made up of lawns, terraces and pavilions.

“In the future the roof will be developed with outdoor dining and a spa facility,” added the architects. “Like amusement parks, shopping centres need to offer new attractions at regular intervals.”

Atriums in bold shades of blue, green and red help shoppers to navigate the building, while the adjoining car park can be identified by an assortment of coloured panels.

Wingårdhs is led by architect Gert Wingårdh. Past projects by the studio include a thatched visitor centre at Sweden’s Lake Tåkern and a high-rise hotel in Stockholm. See more architecture by Wingårdhs »

Other shopping centres on Dezeen include a former bullring in Barcelona and a rippled concrete building in Hong Kong. See more shopping centres »

Photography is by Tord-Rikard Söderström, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Here’s a project description from Wingårdhs:

Emporia

Emporia is first and foremost an urban planning project in which offices, housing, and retail come together in a mixed-use development along Boulevarden and Stationsgatan in Hyllie, on the south side of Malmö. The main idea of our winning competition entry was to hide inward-looking retail behind a wreath of residential and commercial buildings. The whole shopping complex would thereby eventually become integrated into the fabric of the city.

It is a huge development, of which only the corner building with the Amber Entrance has yet been completed. This entrance will be the only part of the Emporia shopping centre that remains visible when the development is completely built out. The idea of lining the streets with mixed-use buildings demanded a strong form that could attract visitors from Station Square to come in and shop. A sequence of vaults from a previous competition proposal, along with a memory from the Pantheon, reemerged in a bronze-ochre tone. Double-bent glass encloses the diagonal slit that cuts through the building. Here the weather of the Öresund Strait, its fast-moving clouds chasing glimpses of sun, becomes present and tangible.

The diagonal entrance from Hyllie Station Square leads deep into the block. Inside, retail is organised around a three-storey figure eight. Shops are grouped together around boldly coloured atriums, each with a different theme. On the north side of the complex, a ramp leads into a rainbow-coloured parking garage (for 2500 cars) with direct access to the figure eight. To the east is a surface parking lot (for 500) right outside the supermarket.

The rooftop park is designed as a bit of cultivated nature. Its vegetation (sedum, prairie grass, and trees) and its sun-facing, wind-sheltered patios are accessible from both inside and outside the building. The hills that provide protection from the wind are actually hiding mechanical rooms. In the future the roof will be developed with outdoor dining and a spa facility—like amusement parks, shopping centres need to offer new attractions at regular intervals.

Emporia can expand upward and to the west, but not in any of the other directions. The freestanding residential buildings facing Boulevarden have yet to be built, as do those that will stand atop the podium along Stationsgatan on the south side.

Emporia’s interior challenges established shopping centre conventions. Its bold colours and bent sight lines break with the norm, as do the project’s size and ambition—which have made it possible to do custom designs for everything from ceilings, floors, and storefronts to signage, ropes of hanging plants, furniture, and cast glass door handles.

Our motto has been “no intermediate scale” — because that is the realm of the products on display. Large-scale patterns and intricate details characterise the interior. The terrazzo floor is typical of this approach, with its oversized triangular joint pattern, its gradual shift from white to graphite in seven steps, and its flashing inclusions of coloured mirror glass. The design has been wrought with extraordinary attention to detail, down to the leather-wrapped handrails and the colour of the stitching on the built-in seating.

Emporia also includes a quantity of art seldom seen in a commercial environment. A lighting installation (ninety-nine bollards) by Petteri Nisunen and Tommi Grönlund lifts the Amber Entrance, bronze sculptures by Joep van Lieshout and a glass art piece (4 x 81 m) by Silja Rantanen adorn the Sea Entrance, and a line painting on film at an extremely outsized format (20 x 114 m) by Per Mårtensson clads the façade of the parking garage. On the interior is a series of photos by Signe Maria Andersen.

Architect: Wingårdhs through, Gert Wingårdh, Johan Eklind and Joakim Lyth
Interior architect: Wingårdhs through, Helena Toresson
Graphic design: Wingårdhs through, Jennie Stolpe
Landscape design: Thyréns AB (Anders Dahl, Pamela Sjöstrand)
Landscape design (roof park): Wingårdhs, Landskapsgruppen Öresund AB
Client: Steen & Ström Sverige AB

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by Wingårdhs appeared first on Dezeen.