Hasta La Ideas

The Brazil headquarters for retail conglomerate Walmart’s online division by Estudio Guto Requena has colour-coded levels and a terrace with a miniature golf course (+ slideshow).

Brazil firm Estudio Guto Requena aimed to create informal meeting spaces similar to those found in workplaces of technology companies on each of the floors at the Walmart.com headquarters, which occupies the sixth to tenth levels of a tower in São Paulo.

Communal areas are treated like balconies or patios, with outdoor furniture such as deck chairs, hammock-like seats and wicker swings set up for employees to socialise like neighbours.

“This is a very special project for us,” studio founder Guto Requena told Dezeen. “The very first time in Walmart history that they invested so much attention in design for their space. Pushing their newest office to have a strong identity and a cosy interior… an interesting overlap between Walmart DNA and strong Brazilian culture.”

Meeting rooms are grouped into volumes at the centre of the open-plan office space on each level, surrounded by curved walls clad with timber strips on the outside.

Surfaces, furniture and window frames in these spaces are treated in a different wood and a colour from Walmart’s branding on each floor.

The yellow floor includes the employees’ cafe, while a pool table is situated in the green zone, and a lounge with sofas and guitars is set up in one of the orange rooms.

The informal meeting spaces are located in pockets formed by the odd shape of these blocks, with carpet and furniture matching those in the adjacent rooms.

A minigolf course was designed especially for the terrace on the sixth level, where there’s also a space for yoga and a seating area in front of a stage for hosting small events, concerts and film screenings.

Photography is by Fran Parente.

Here’s some more information from Estudio Guto Requena:

Walmart.com Office

Pre-design Research Methodology

The design for the Walmart.com Offices was derived from a research methodology developed by Estudio Guto Requena. Interviews and dynamic online exchanges with company employees were conducted to assess values, needs and expectations.

Three principal focal points emerged from this process: digital culture, the Walmart.com brand and brasilidade (Brazilian identity). This research also informed the choice of colours, materials, forms, programming and design concepts.

Conceptual Framework

We applied these three focal points and their commonalities to an exploration of the building’s prominent terrace and developed from this a guiding concept for the company’s headquarters: the Urban Veranda. Design choices reference the Brazilian habit of engaging outdoor areas for social interaction and relaxation.

Elements include beach chairs, the many large buildings with terraced facades, picnics (visible in the carpet patterning), the patios and balconies of Brazilian homes, and the rural habit of placing a chair in the street to enjoy the evening and chat with neighbours.

Program and Identity

The headquarters occupy five floors with over a thousand square meters each. One of the challenges of this project was to bring a more human dimension to the work environment with spaces that are welcoming and comfortable, even pleasant and informal, while maintaining professionalism and practicality. Other challenges included a lean budget and a tight deadline.

To help locate and guide visitors and employees in this large area, we created a unique visual identity for each floor through centralised cocoons that develop organically between the pillars and break the rigidity of the orthogonal space. Each floor was designed with a predominant wood type.

Pine, OSB, Eucalyptus and Masisa Zurich combine with a single colour in various shades, all chosen from the official Walmart colour palate of yellow, orange, blue and green. Different floors house individual departments, such as Business, Sales, Human Resources or Finance, and also contain lounges and decompression environments, including games rooms, film screening areas, video games and a library. These areas are to encourage the exchange of ideas and interaction between employees from different departments.

Lighting

Workstations are located near windows to take advantage of daylight, and the lighting design prioritises economy. In lounges and decompression areas indirect light is used in amber hues with decorative fixtures. Specifically created for this project is the hanging Gourd Lamp made from the fruit itself.

Traditionally, these have been used in Brazil as containers, and also as resonators in musical instruments such as the chocalho, the berimbau and the maracá. Dried gourds were painted gray inside and arrayed on a wooden support, with colorful wiring left exposed.

Furniture and Decoration

We prioritised the use of domestic furniture in both the offices and lounges, with signed pieces by the established Brazilians designers Maurício Arruda, Jader Almeida, Lina Bo Bardi, and Paulo Alves and Fernando Jaeger. We also included pieces that are part of the popular Brazilian imagination, such as rocking chairs, beach chairs, porch chairs and picnic tables.

For the production of objects and decorative elements we used images of contemporary Brazilian photographers, as well as maps, illustrations and Brazilian folk art. Skateboards and bikes reference the lifestyles of younger employees.

Greenery

Throughout the office we emphasised the use of plants, and created a green belt that runs through the peripheral spaces and contributes to the identity and warmth of the work environment.

Terrace

The outdoor area was designed for both work and relaxation. Wood decking orders the environment, together with porch furniture, shaded areas, a space for yoga and a grandstand facing the facade that can host small events, concerts and film screenings. A mini-golf course was also specially designed for the terrace.

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crazy golf course on the roof appeared first on Dezeen.

A spiral staircase made from Brazilian ironwood links two floors inside this São Paulo house, which was designed by Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld as a private gallery and guest house for two art collectors (+ slideshow).

Isay Weinfeld was commissioned by the couple to create a house they could use to present exhibitions, host parties and house guests during events such as the São Paulo Art Biennial.

Located on the same street as both the client’s own home and the Isay Weinfeld-designed Yucatan House, Casa Cubo is a three-storey building in São Paulo’s Jardins district.

A double-height living room on the ground floor is the largest space in the house. With white walls and a poured concrete floor, it offers a blank canvas for displaying pantings, sculptures and a selection of designer furniture pieces.

Two staircases are visible inside the room. On one wall a folded steel staircase leads up to a first-floor mezzanine accommodating a library, while on the opposite side a wooden staircase ascends from the first floor to three bedrooms at the top of the house.

Both staircases are suspended from above and appear to be floating just above the floor.

Furniture chosen for the living room includes pieces by Alvar Aalto, Pierre Jeanneret, Gio Ponti and Lina Bo Bardi. Glass doors run along one edge and open the space out to a terrace, garden and lily pond.

The exterior of the house is primarily clad with cement panels, apart from a section near the top that is covered with wood.

Photography is Fernando Guerra.

Here’s some more information from Isay Weinfeld:

Casa Cubo by Isay Weinfeld

Casa Cubo, the initiative of a couple of art collectors, was conceived to house a lodging and support center to artists and the development of the arts, but with all necessary facilities to serve as a home. The program was solved within a cubic block, split vertically into three levels and a mezzanine, whose façades are treated graphically as a combination of lines defined by the cladding cement plaques, by the glass strip on the mezzanine, and the striped wood composition that changes as the bedroom windows are opened and closed.

The service nucleus is located at the front of the ground level, comprising a kitchen, a restroom, a dining room and an entrance hall giving way to the wide room with double ceiling height and polished concrete floor, intended to host events, exhibitions or even work as a lounge that opens onto the backyard.

The mezzanine of the lounge, standing on the slab topping the service nucleus on the ground floor, houses the library, which is marked by three strong elements: a shelving unit extending the whole back wall, a strip of fixed glass next to the floor and a spiral staircase covered in wood that leads to the private quarters upstairs.

Private quarters consist of 3 bedrooms and a living room thoroughly lit through a floor-to-ceiling opening. The garage and service areas are located in the basement.

Architecture: Isay Weinfeld
Collaborators: Domingos Pascali, Marcelo Alvarenga
Project manager: Monica Cappa Santoni
Design team: Juliana Scalizi, Leandro Garcia

Location: São Paulo, Brazil
Built area: 715m²

General contractor: Fernando Leirner – Bona Engenharia
Structural engineering: Benedictis Engenharia Ltda
Staircase mettallic structure engineering: Inner Engenharia e Gerenciamento Ltda
Electrical and plumbing engineering: Tesis Engenharia Ltda
Air conditioning: CHD Sistemas De Ar Condicionado e Instalações Ltda
Landscape design: Isabel Duprat Paisagismo

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Isay Weinfeld appeared first on Dezeen.

Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld designed this apartment block in São Paulo as 62 “houses with yards”, which are stacked on top of one another like the blocks of a Jenga game (+ slideshow).

The 360º Building, which was presented at the World Architecture Festival earlier this month, is a 20-storey tower block located at the peak of a ridge between the neighbourhoods of Alto de Pinheiros and Alto da Lapa in the west of the city.

Isay Weinfeld wanted to avoid the typical São Paulo typology of compact apartments with little or no outside space. “We have strived to introduce 360º Building as an alternative to the vertical multi-family housing model, which, in its commonest form, merely stacks up apartment units,” said the studio.

Rather than adding small balconies, the architect gave each home its own terrace. These spaces are all tucked between apartments, offering shelter from the elements and a degree of privacy.

Apartment sizes vary from 130 to 250 square-metres in area, and there are between two and four homes on each floor.

These specifications provide a total of six different floor types, which alternate to create a volume reminiscent of Jenga – a children’s game where wooden blocks are removed from a tower and placed back on top.

The base of the building is set into the hillside. Residents enter via a suspended walkway at first-floor level, bridging a swimming pool that runs around the perimeter.

Communal lounge areas and laundry facilities are located on the ground floor, while three floors of parking are housed in the basement.

The project was shortlisted in the housing award category at the World Architecture Festival, but lost out to an apartment block inside a former YMCA building in Los Angeles. One year earlier, Weinfeld’s Fazenda Boa Vista Golf Clubhouse topped the sports category.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s more information from Isay Weinfeld:

360º Building

360º Building will be erected in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, where currently over 10 million people live spread over 1,525 km2. In this setting, unfortunately the “norm” is to live not at one’s best, but crammed and confined, and to commute long distances everyday between home, work and other commitments, by car, bus, or subway. The time left for leisure is scarce, and few are the options to enjoy activities in the open air.

Mindful of the urban reality in São Paulo, of the market and of the client brief, we have strived to introduce 360º Building as an alternative to the vertical multi-family housing “model”, which, in its commonest form, merely stacks up apartment units – ordinary, compact and closed onto themselves.

360º Building, rising on top of the ridge separating the districts of Alto de Pinheiros and Alto da Lapa – a geographic location that will offer privileged sights of the surrounding area and the city -, will feature 62 elevated “homes with yards”: real yards, not balconies, designed as genuine living spaces, wide, airy and bright. It will present 7 types of apartments – either 130, 170 or 250 m2 – combined in sets of 2, 3 or 4 units per floor, in 6 different arrangements.

Leaving the street and past the reception, a suspended walkway will lead to the building’s lobby, surrounded on all sides by a reflective pool. Down one floor, on the ground level, entertaining areas and other facilities – gym, lounge, party room and laundry – will be located, as also the janitor’s living quarters. Further down, there will be 3 parking levels, and, on the lowermost level, employees quarters, storage and engine rooms, in addition to a sauna and an outdoor swimming pool. The land, a steep downwards slope, allowed the lower levels to be semi-subterranean, always keeping 2 sides open to the light and to ventilation.

The building projects to all sides showing no distinction between main and secondary façades.

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Isay Weinfeld appeared first on Dezeen.

News: London studio Weston Williamson has won a competition to design a new athletics stadium for Brasilia with a concept for a shape-shifting structure that opens like a flower in response to wind direction and sunlight.

The competition called for ideas for a 70,000-seat athletics venue and Weston Williamson’s winning response features a circular building with a skeletal structure modelled on the wings of a bird in flight.

A series of feather-like sections would make up the animated exterior. Each would be able to shift itself independently, adapting to changing weather and lighting but also creating a spectacle during ceremonial occasions.

“The exterior form of the new athletics stadium reflects the utopian spirit of the Brasilia plan by incorporating a geometry that is ever-changing,” said the studio. “The stadium, therefore, has no fixed identity, but alters in relation to the condition of its surroundings.”

The base of the stadium would be elevated on a wooden plinth and surrounded by pools of water and trees, using passive cooling to moderate the interior temperature.

The competition, which was organised in connection with the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, was intended to be “design constraints free”, allowing applicants to “be creative and test the boundaries of what is possible”. A $12,000 prize is awarded to the winner.

Other sports venues in Brazil include the National Shooting Centre and the renovated 1960s Mineirão Stadium in Belo Horizonte. See more architecture in Brazil »

Here are a few words from Weston Williamson:

Weston Williamson + Partners Wins First Prize

Weston Williamson + Partners has won 1st prize in the Brasilia Athletics Stadium Competition run in connection with the upcoming Olympics.

The exterior form of the new Athletics Stadium reflects the utopian spirit of the Brasilia plan by incorporating a geometry that is ever-changing. The stadium, therefore, has no fixed identity, but alters in relation to the condition of its surroundings.

The stadium references the iconographic plan for Brasilia, that represents a bird in flight, by incorporating massive feather like structures that envelop the interior. These fine structural elements shift in relation to wind direction and sunlight, meaning that the form is constantly in flux. The movable envelope also acts ceremoniously, reaching upwards to the sky when an event is about to unfold, adding another layer of visual spectacle to the games.

The stadium is situated on a wooden plinth surrounded by water pools and dense greenery which helps to cool the site in the intense heat. A network of shaded facilities is situated beneath this plinth, all lit with top light from perforations within the timber structure above.

The design proposes a fluid icon, suited to an environment that is being continually redefined.

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shape-shifting stadium for Brasilia appeared first on Dezeen.

Difficile de ne pas avoir envie de se rendre dans la ville brésilienne de Rio de Janeiro après avoir regardé cette vidéo. Intitulée « Rio », cette création tournée en time-lapse par Scientifantastic sur une musique de Jan Baumann propose de découvrir sous son plus beau jour la ville qui accueillera les Jeux Olympiques de 2016.