Hasta La Ideas

Dutch Design Week 2013: designer Daan Roosegaarde has unveiled a “Lego from Mars” installation consisting of hundreds of wireless LED crystals that light up when placed on the floor (+ movie).

Crystal, a permanent installation that has opened in Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week, allows visitors to arrange the glowing crystals in patterns – and even steal them.

“We made thousands of little crystals which have two LEDs in them,” Roosegaarde told Dezeen. “When they’re placed in the area that you see here, they light up. It’s a sort of Lego from Mars. You can play, you can interact, you can steal them.”

There’s no battery, no cables,” he added. “The floor has a weak magnetic field, which gives light to the Crystals by wireless power.”

The installation is located in a void created at the newly refurbished Natlab, a building that once contained the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (Philips Physics Laboratory) and which played a key role in the development of products including the electric lightbulb and the compact disc.

“This location is quite special. Philips produced the lightbulb here; Einstein worked here on a lot of ideas,” said Roosegaarde. “So the city commissioned us to think about the future of light, where light gets liberated. It jumps out of the lightbulb and becomes free.”

LEDs are housed inside plastic tokens which visitors can tesselate to form patterns or words. Roosegaarde plans to publish the designs so that people can produce their own open-source versions in future.

“Every month we will make new crystals,” said Roosegaarde. “We will open-source how to make them, so students can make their own in different colours and shapes. New crystals will arrive and I will have nothing to do with it. People can do whatever they want. In that way it becomes an eco-system of behaviour. That’s going to be super-exciting, to let go of control and see what will happen.”

Visitors to the installation have already used the Crystals to write messages, including a marriage proposal. “We had one lady whose boyfriend proposed to her last night. He wrote ‘Marry me’ and he brought her here.”

Today Roosegaarde also unveiled a concept for an “electronic vacuum cleaner” that could remove smog from urban skies.

Here’s some text from Studio Roosegaarde:

Innovative Crystals of light in Eindhoven

Daan Roosegaarde: “People can play and share their stories of light”

At the start of the Dutch Design Week on Saturday 19 October the interactive light artwork CRYSTAL can be experienced in Eindhoven. The permanent artwork consists out of hundreds of LED-crystals which brighten when people touch them. Artist Daan Roosegaarde calls them “Lego from Mars”. The name refers not only to its futuristic design, but also to its endless potential to play. CRYSTAL has been previously exhibited in Amsterdam, Paris, Moscow and is now permanent in Eindhoven NL.

The Crystals are placed in a black tunnel at the Natlab, the place where Einstein once worked, where Philips produced its lightbulbs, and the first CD-ROM was presented. They are part of the light program Light-S which wants to create new experiences between people and space. CRYSTAL is a perfect match, the Crystals are white geometric shapes with LEDs inside. The local floor has a magnetic field which allows the Crystals to light-up. CRYSTAL is therefore one of the latest innovations in light. The artwork CRYSTAL can be experienced at night at Natlab, Kastanjelaan 500 in Eindhoven NL.

Interactive crystals

CRYSTAL is not only innovatie in terms of appearance, but also the interactive element makes the artwork unique. With Crystals people can share their creativity. For example someone used Crystals for a wedding proposal to his girlfriend by writing the letters ‘Marry me’. Artist Daan Roosegaarde describes this phenomenon as “Facebook Square”, where social media and light are combined to create new public places.

The future with CRYSTAL

Studio Roosegaarde will continue to make new Crystals with the vision that light is enhancing the relation between people and their environment. The coming years the studio will develop Crystals with different shapes and colors together with high-tech companies and cultural organisations. Crystal keeps on growing.

About Daan Roosegaarde

Daan Roosegaarde (Nieuwkoop, 1979) is artist, innovator and ambassador of the Dutch Design Week 2013. With his Studio Roosegaarde he explores the relationship between art and technology to make the world more interesting, better or beautiful. Interactive designs such as ‘Dune’ and ‘Smart Highway’ have been exhibited around the world. www.studioroosegaarde.net

About Light-S

Light-S is an innovative project by the city of Eindhoven and Park Strijp Beheer. Within Light-S several projectteams are researching how light can create new experiences between people, space and technologies. www.light-s.nl

The post Crystal wireless LED installation
by Studio Roosegaarde appeared first on Dezeen.

Here’s another project from Dutch firm Mecanoo: a sports college in Eindhoven featuring a black brick exterior with perforations in the shape of athletes (+ slideshow).

Mecanoo completed the sports centre last year in Eindhoven’s Genneper Park for students at Fontys Hogescholen – a local science university. It houses swimming pools, indoor sports facilities, a 15 metre-high rock-climbing wall and student classrooms.

“The sports complex’s logistics are sophisticated and provide maximum opportunities for cross-disciplinary interaction between sports and education,” said the architects.

“The teaching areas can be sealed off so that only the sports halls are accessible, for example at sporting events or sports association gatherings,” they added.

Images of cyclists, gymnasts and other athletes decorate three of the facades, plus more are printed onto brightly coloured walls inside the building. There are also sporting motifs adorning some of the pieces of furniture.

A large window offers a view from the main reception area towards the climbing wall, which is slotted into a corner.

Other facilities include a canteen, a multimedia library and a sports laboratory, plus there’s a car park underneath the structure.

The building generates its own electricity and heating from solar-panels on the roof.

Terraces and seating line the perimeter, leading down towards trees and large grassed areas in the surrounding parkland.

Mecanoo recently completed Europe’s largest public library in Birmingham, England. We also recently featured a maritime museum with a zig-zagging roof by the firm. See more architecture by Mecanoo »

Other sports centres we’ve featured are a gymnasium with copper-clad panels, a sports hall with a wooden roof doubling as a hilly courtyard and a sports hall in Japan with huge clerestory windows. See more sports centres »

Photography is by Christian Richters.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Fontys Sports College, Eindhoven

Athletics estate

The first step has been made in turning the sport park into a sport estate with the new Fontys Sports College coming to Eindhoven’s Genneper Parks.

Mecanoo’s design for the new Fontys Sports College creates an important link in the network of sport accommodations and facilities in Genneper Parks.

Starting in 2012, 2200 students and teachers will make daily use of sports facilities in their own building, including the National Swimming Centre, the Tongelreep and the Indoor Sports Centre.

Fontys Sports College, with state of the art sports facilities and a comprehensive sustainability concept, will house Fontys Sports College’s three curricula which are currently housed at the Sittard and Tilburg locations. Mecanoo has created a social sports facility design that contributes to the vibrancy of Genneper Parks.

Social

The intelligence of this building is that most of the sports accommodations are located on the first floor. This creates not a closed off sports box, but a completely transparent ground floor which is in relationship with the environment. The compactness of the building’s layout provides the advantage of room left for a stage to the building – in the form of a plinth – inviting athletic and social encounters in the outdoors. The glass plinth gives way to a black brick facade beginning on the first floor and sculpturally building up and around the rest of the building.

The literal highpoint of the building is the climbing wall which is situated at the corner of the building and acts like a beacon. A huge glass window offers a distant view of the climbers. The sports complex’s logistics are sophisticated and provide the maximum of opportunities for cross disciplinary interaction between sports and education.

It is possible to see into the sports halls from the corridors, study areas, the restaurant and the entrance halls. Simultaneously, sport and education are logistically separated. The teaching functions can be sealed off so that only the sports halls are accessible, for example at sporting events or sports association gatherings. Also in the evening, the building is lively, contributing to the security of Genneper Parks.

Sustainable energy system

The building is equipped with a sustainable energy system, making it largely possible to provide for its own energy. The educational features in this compact building are efficiently oriented to the north.

To save on cooling, the south side features a building canopy. The energy roof makes use of solar energy. Further the excess of heat and cold of the buildings in the vicinity is being used and stored in two buffer tanks in the garage.

Programme

Sports complex of 16,500 m2 with 5 sports halls of which several meet the NOC * NSF requirements, 1 with 400 seats, a 15 meter high climbing wall, a restaurant, a library and educational facilities as a multimedia centre and a sports lab, and a parking garage with 200 parking spaces.

Design: 2009-2010
Realisation: 2010-2012
Client: Municipality of Eindhoven, Fontys Hogescholen, Eindhoven
Architect: Mecanoo Architecten, Delft
Structural engineer: Buro JVZ Advisory Engineers bv, Deventer
Building costs consultant: Basalt Bouwadvies bv, Nieuwegein
Engineer: Technical Consultancy Becks, Vught
Acoustics, building physics, fire safety and durability: Peutz b.v., Mook

The post Fontys Sports College
by Mecanoo appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Dutch Design Week has announced its new director as business manager and consultant Martijn Paulen.

He will be tasked with providing financial stability to the annual Eindhoven event after an audit last year revealed that Capital D, its publicly funded parent body, had racked up losses of €945,000.

Paulen, who is director of innovation and learning strategies at TiasNimbas Business School, an institution with campuses across the Netherlands, takes over from interim director Bas Braad, who was appointed in December to replace creative director Hans Robertus and business director Robert-Jan Marringa.

Capital D has now obtained additional financing to cover last year’s deficit and fund this year’s Dutch Design Week and the Dutch Design Awards, the Eindhoven organisation announced. The new funding will also enable Capital D to continue running two European schemes – digital media project SmartCulture and design initiative PROUD.

Eindhoven’s design community has undergone a turbulent year, with Design Academy Eindhoven last month appointing graphic designer Thomas Widdershoven as its new creative director after a period of turmoil that saw the departure of school’s chair Anne Mieke Eggenkamp and the resignation and subsequent return of the heads of the three masters courses.

Our coverage of last October’s Dutch Design Week included a furniture production line set up in an old factory and a lamp that can cast coloured shadows – see all news from Dutch Design Week 2012.

The post Dutch Design Week announces new director appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch studio architecten|en|en have created a home office in Eindhoven by wrapping a garage in corrugated aluminium.

Tiny perforations pierce this ridged metal exterior to make it partially see-through.

Daylight filters into the room through a south-facing skylight that separates the new and existing roofs.

Shutters fold back from the facade to reveal sliding glass doors that lead onto a projecting platform outside.

The refurbished garage is now named Studio R-1 and is used as a workplace for a furniture designer.

Other interesting buildings on Dezeen clad in corrugated metal include an artists studio in Australia, a steel-clad gallery and studio in France and a film storage bunker in England.

Photography is by Post & Van Leeuwen.

Here’s a few more words from the architects:

Studio R-1

A Villa build for a former Philips executive in a green suburb of Eindhoven named ‘Schuttersbosch’ gave designer Hugo de Ruiter the perfect possibility to combine living and working with the existing indoor garage used as studio space.

“I don’t want to feel like I am working in my garage” was the main goal of the assignment. The solution was found in adding a mask-shaped volume to the existing garage. By covering this with a perforated corrugated aluminium skin  as mono material for the walls and the roof, a subtle continuation of the clay-roofing of the existing home arises. A  collar of galvanized steel that acts as a terrace boundary highlights the disengagement of existing and new.

On the interior the addition provides extra floor-space and height. An abundance of daylight can enter the studio through a south faced strip of glass dividing the addition from the existing roof.

Architect: architecten|en|en
Location: Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Client: Hugo de Ruiter Design
Project year: 2011

See also:

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Duncan Terrace by DOSarchitects	Extension by Cut Architectures	The Jewel Box by Fraher Architects

Voici les premiers clichés depuis l’ouverture du Eindhoven Concert Hall, avec son interieur futuriste de salles de concerts et de spectacles. Une collaboration très réussie de Niels Van Eijk et Miriam Van der Lubbe avec Philips Design, pour une structure et une atmosphère très fluide.

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