This Berlin clothing store by Mexican design studio Zeller & Moye is filled with concertina-shaped display stands made from raw cement boards (+ slideshow).
Zeller & Moye designed the concept store for German-Austrian fashion brand ODEEH in the Bikini Berlin shopping centre in the west of the city.
A zigzag pattern is present throughout the interior. As well as the concertina-shaped stands and seating areas, the space features clothing racks with angular bases and folded partitions and mirrors.
These elements were designed to be arranged in different configurations, creating new ways to display garments for seasonal collections or during fashion weeks.
“The client asked us for a totally flexible system, so that manifold configurations can be set up from the very same elements,” studio co-founder Christoph Zeller told Dezeen. “The series of movable elements offers them maximal flexibility.”
Zeller said the cement boards offered a cost-efficient and sustainable approach, so the store wouldn’t have to be refitted every time their clients wanted a new look.
“The contrast with the clothing was rather a side effect but works extremely well, as ODEEH uses very fragile and sensuous fabrics,” he added.
The industrial-style space also features cross-shaped fluorescent lighting, which hangs below the pipes and services left exposed overhead.
The first concept store for german fashion brand ODEEH inhabits the terrace floor of Bikini Berlin, a modernist icon of 1950’s West-Berlin, offering vistas onto the Memorial church at Breitscheidplatz and the Berlin Zoo.
A landscape of movable elements can be arranged in ever-changing configurations allowing for maximum flexibility in the creation of unexpected spacial formations and curated concepts. The modular system of paravents and podests made of raw cement board is complemented by a series of delicate metal objects such as cloth racks, hooks and trays, specially designed for the store.
The mirrored insides to the paravents create kaleidoscope-like interiors showing individual products at all facets and allowing customers to eyeball the clothes from multiple angles. The reappearing zigzag lines and the cross patterns of the lights refer loosely to stitching methods in tailoring.
A motorway sign symbol of a church was translated directly into the structure of this roadside chapel on the outskirts of Wilnsdorf, Germany, by Frankfurt architects Schneider+Schumacher (+ slideshow).
Photograph by Helen Schiffer
The design for Siegerland Motorway Church was Schneider+Schumacher‘s winning entry to a competition seeking proposals for a chapel to be built on a site overlooking a busy motorway and surrounded by a hotel, petrol station and fast-food restaurant.
The building’s form draws on the visual language of its environs – particularly the standard icon used to depict a church on Germany’s road signs.
This stylised image is visible on two facades on either side of a square nave, which transitions into a long sloping walkway leading to the entrance.
“Whether approached from afar from the Dortmund direction, or from the motorway service area, the church represents a built version of the motorway church signage,” explained architect Michael Schumacher. “Even though its exterior form is abstract, it still signals in an immediate and direct way, ‘I am a church!'”
In a video describing the design process, Schumacher claims the abstract form also suggests other shapes, such as the folded paper of Japanese origami or the pointed ears worn by comic-book character Batman.
The timber structure of the outer walls was assembled from elements produced off site and incorporates laminated timber sections providing extra strength to the roof and towers.
Photography by Helen Schiffer
Following assembly, the whole of the church and the entrance passage were sprayed with a white polyurethane damp-proofing material that unifies the faceted surfaces.
Photograph by Helen Schiffer
Windows on one side of the pointed spire-like towers draw natural light into a nave that features an organic cave-like structure, contrasting with the building’s geometric outer shell.
Photograph by Helen Schiffer
“The interior was meant to come as a surprise, contrary to the expectations raised by the exterior,” said Schumacher. “The exterior is abstract; the interior is warm, friendly, magical and sacred, transporting you to a different world.”
Photograph by Helen Schiffer
A structure made from 66 wooden ribs, developed using parametric computer modelling software, opens up from the entrance to create a high-vaulted dome above the altar.
Photograph by Helen Schiffer
The individual parts required to build the framework were optimally positioned on sheets of chipboard to minimise waste during the cutting process.
The wooden shapes slot together to create a rigid and self-supporting structure, which conceals the sacristy and storage spaces in gaps around its curved edges.
Oriented strand board – a type of engineered chipboard – was used for interior furnishings including simple boxy stools, a lectern and a candle stand.
Daylight from the windows is focused on the altar, podium and cross, which are painted white to give them an ethereal appearance.
Photograph by Helen Schiffer
Artificial lighting is hidden behind the latticed wooden structure and is designed to illuminate the space in the same way as the natural light that filters through the structure.
Asymmetric windows complete the angular timber-clad volumes of this nursery in Heilbronn, Germany, by local studio Mattes Sekiguchi Partner Architekten (photographs by Zooey Braun + slideshow).
Mattes Sekiguchi Partner Architekten designed the wooden Kleinkindhaus as a complex of playrooms and learning spaces for Heilbronn’s Waldorf School.
To complement the building’s green surroundings, the architects sourced Swiss pine to create an exposed wood-panelled facade and a bare wooden interior.
“The timber construction is a natural and elemental method of building,” architect Kristina Heuer told Dezeen. “The building is inspired by nature. It literally grows out of the site and unfolds like an organism.”
Situated between the existing school building and the kindergarten, the timber-clad nursery is inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s architectural theories promoting accessible spaces that open out to nature and are filled with natural light.
“The polygonal shape is a reaction to the surrounding landscape. It provides pleasant, sustainable and healthy space and therefore satisfies the social, physical, and spiritual needs of its occupants,” explained Heuer.
Angular windows puncture the exterior walls, while gill-like slits allow natural ventilation.
The elongated section of the building acts as a backbone for three protruding group activity rooms, connected by a long corridor. These rooms open out into an external play area and include areas for the children to rest.
“For us, it was very important to create a light and open environment for the children and nursery nurses,” said the architect.
The main entrance leads to a multi-purpose room and reception area for guests, while suspended orbs illuminate the way to the kitchen, office and storage rooms.
Other spaces include a computer room and a wardrobe where children can store their coats.
The free Waldorf school Heilbronn is situated in a green oasis, between two poles: the large-scale development of schools and the university in the north and east, and the heterogenous housing development in the west and south. The new Kleinkind-house was built between the main building and the kindergarten in a confined area.
An elongated ridge, opened by a multi-purpose room, houses the administration and the secondary rooms. It points the way to the arriving people, guides and accompanies their way and protects the attached three buildings of the group rooms like a strong backbone.
Those three group rooms stick like fingers into the green space, joggle with it and form individual south- facing open spaces. An in-between zone is formed between the group rooms and the backbone, which self- evidently construes the situation of entrance. Insides, it sets the space for public and semi-public movement and communication.
The whole building is polygonal reshaped in ground plan and elevation. The resulting flowing spaces follow the anthroposophical architectural idea of Rudolf Steiner. It creates diverse and high-quality spacial situations with different connections of views and outdoor spaces. There are places, which invite to stay, to play, to move, to learn or to rest. An open, light and friendly atmosphere couples with good clarity and easy orientation.
Using the wood planking façade and wood panelling interior walls, the wooden frame construction is made visualised and experienceable. The choice of material follows the logic of organic construction. On one side the building is integrated into the surroundings and on the other side it is conform to the users need for natural and harmonic building materials.
News:OMA has seen off competition from BIG and Buro Ole Scheeren to win a competition to expand the Berlin headquarters of multimedia firm Axel Springer.
The firm, led by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, triumphed with a concept for a building featuring a 30-metre-high atrium that “lavishly broadcasts” its interior to the existing Axel Springer building next door.
Tasked with developing a structure that sets new standards in terms of internal atmosphere and room layout, OMA proposes a series of tiered floors that extend out to external terraces.
Hearing about the win, Rem Koolhaas said: “It is a wonderful occasion to build in Berlin again, for a client who has mobilised architecture to help perform a radical change: a workplace in all its dimensions.”
The building will create additional space for the company’s growing business divisions, particularly its digital departments.
“Rem Koolhaas drafted a building which only on second sight reveals its secret, architecturally formulating a new kind of collaborative working at its core,” said Regula Lüscher, director of the city’s urban development department.
“The concept offers a strong symbolic force as it leads the course of the Berlin Wall diagonally through the building, thereby creating an atrium and spectacular interior, which addresses the unification of this city,” she added.
The shortlist for the competition was revealed back in December. The proposals of all three firms will go on show at the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt later this year.
The upcoming exhibition (opening 3 April 2014 at Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau) by the multi-talented and outspoken Ai Weiwei promises to be his biggest solo show yet. Spanning over 3,000 square meters in…
Paris studio Jouin Manku installed a sculptural fireplace and chose materials with natural tones and textures to give this lounge in Munich‘s Bayerischer Hof hotel the feel of a fantasy forest landscape.
Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku of Jouin Manku designed the lounge on the sixth floor of the Bayerischer Hof hotel, along with an adjacent restaurant and a private dining room.
A funnel-shaped chimney drops down from the ceiling of the lounge to cover an elliptical stone fireplace, which is surrounded by curving benches.
Porcelain ribs encircling the base of the chimney also feature on the front of the curving bar and create surfaces with constantly shifting reflections.
Alcoves containing benches interrupt the pale green walls that complement the stone flooring and furniture made from wood and leather.
A restaurant next to the lounge features alcoves containing benches with undulating three-dimensional back panels carved from aerated concrete to suggest a mountainous scene.
“Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku’s idea was to offer guests views even inside the room, recreating a natural landscape and fantasy all at once,” the designers explained.
Lighting hidden in the curving folds of the surfaces illuminates their topographical shape, based on “a mineral horizon made of stone and snow which appears to be carved into the rock.”
A terrace connected to the restaurant provides additional dining space with views across the city towards the distant mountains.
Louvred panels on the ceiling conceal lighting and are arranged in a staggered formation that leads towards the windows.
Supporting beams made from American walnut continue over the walls to enhance the natural feel of the space.
Between the dining room and the lounge is an area dedicated to buffets, with two rounded service areas standing on a concrete floor beneath a copper ceiling that evokes traditional cooking pans.
Jouin Manku designed a further room located on the seventh floor called the Bird’s Nest, set to open later in the spring. It will house a single dining table for private events with a view across the city.
Berlin studio J. Mayer H. has returned to Volkswagen’s Autostadt visitor centre, at the German car brand’s factory in Wolfsburg, to create a landscape of three-dimensional structures for children to interact with (+ slideshow).
Named MobiVersum, the installation was conceived as a “playful learning landscape” of solid wood sculptures that present challenges to different motor skills. Children of all ages can clamber over or climb inside each of the shapes.
“Depending on their individual level of development, children can interact freely with the installation on various levels on their own or with their siblings or parents,” said the architects in a statement.
The designers liken the curving branch-like forms to tree roots and trunks, intended to create a dialogue with the leafy green tones of the Level Green exhibition on the floor above.
“The shape of the imaginative, playful structures of solid wood are reminiscent of roots and tree trunks under the luscious branches of Level Green,” they said.
The team worked with Osnabrück University professor Renate Zimmer to curate the exhibition, making sure it provides children with a broad introduction to all facets of sustainability.
Here’s the project description from the architects:
MobiVersum
In 2013, J. Mayer H. designed MobiVersum as a new interaction surface for young visitors to Autostadt Wolfsburg, integrated as part of the overall context of Autostadt “People, Cars, and What Moves Them”.
A playful learning landscape was developed for a wide range of experiences in dialog with the exhibition Level Green shown on the floor above. MobiVersum provides an active introduction to the subject of sustainability in all its facets for children of all ages: from the issue of mobility, joint learning and understanding, to courses in cooking. In collaboration with Renate Zimmer (professor, Institut für Sport- und Bewegungswissenschaft at Universiät Osnabrück) a large movement sculpture was created that is unique in terms of its design and the challenges it presents to children’s motor skills. Depending on their individual level of development, children can interact freely with the installation on various levels on their own or with their siblings or parents, engaging with the challenges presented by the sculpture for their motor skills.
The shape of the imaginative, playful structures of solid wood are reminiscent of roots and tree trunks under the luscious branches of Level Green. The sculptures, which can be used and entered, structure diversified spatial zones with different thematic emphases and inspire the children’s curiosity to discover and explore. Children as tomorrow’s consumers can thus learn early on the importance of a responsible approach to the world’s resources, for they represent our ecological/economical and social future.
Against the backdrop of the growing relevance of individual responsibility for sustainably approach to global resources, an exhibition on sustainability was already installed at Autostadt Wolfsburg in 2007. The exhibition and experiential surface Level Green, also designed by J. Mayer H., explains the focus on sustainability interactively to the visitors of the Autostadt. Art + Com, Berlin designed and implemented the content of the interactive media used especially for this purpose.
The metaphor of the expansive network with many branches was developed from the familiar PET symbol, one of the first prominent symbols of an increased awareness in environmental protection. By translating the two dimensional graphic to a three-dimensional structure and altering it step by step, the result was a complex structure that makes the essentially abstract quality of the subject graspable on a spatial level.
Together, MobiVersum and Level Green form a synthesis for all generations to explore knowledge in depth, to enjoy their own experiences, and to learn playfully.
Client: Autostadt GmbH, Wolfsburg Site: Volkswagen GroupForum, Ground Floor, Autostadt, Wolfsburg Total floor area: approx. 1600 sqm Architect: J. MAYER H. Architects, Berlin Project team: Juergen Mayer H., Christoph Emenlauer, Marta Ramírez Iglesias, Simon Kassner, Jesko Malcolm Johnsson-Zahn, Alexandra Virlan, Gal Gaon
Elevation – click for larger image
Architect on site: Jablonka Sieber Architekten, Berlin Structural engineering steel construction: SFB Saradschow Fischedick, Berlin Structural engineering wood construction: SJB.Kempter.Fitze AG, CH-Eschenbach Building services: Brandi IGH, Salzgitter Light engineers: Lichttransfer, Berlin General contractor: Lindner Objektdesign GmbH Contractor wood construction: Hess Timber
This Berlin townhouse by architecture office XTH-Berlin features doors that open like drawbridges, sloping floors that function as slides and nets that cover holes in the floors (+ slideshow).
XTH-Berlin inserted staggered floors throughout the building’s 12-metre height to accommodate various living spaces, with bedrooms housed in slanted concrete volumes at the first and third levels featuring flaps that can be used to slide from one level to the next.
The house’s entrance contains wardrobes, a bathroom and a spare room that can be hidden by drawing a full-height curtain, while a gap in the ceiling provides a view of the zigzagging levels that ascend to the top of the house.
Two concrete-walled bedrooms situated above the ground floor feature sloping wooden flaps that can be raised to connect these rooms with a platform where the piano sits.
A gap in this platform level allows light and views between the storeys and is covered in netting to create a safe play area.
A staircase leads past the two bedrooms to a living room containing a bathroom that can be cordoned off using a curtain.
The third bedroom is connected to this living area by a gently sloping wooden bridge, while another flight of stairs leads to a reading platform.
A final set of stairs continues to the top floor kitchen and dining room, which opens onto a large terrace.
This open-plan level features a skylight that adds to the natural light entering the space through the full-height glazing.
A minimal palette of materials is used throughout the interior, including concrete, pinewood flooring, steel railings and laminated spruce used for dividing walls, stairs and doors.
The house is located beside a park marking the site of the former Berlin Wall. Entrances on either side of the property lead to a multipurpose space for storing bikes, clothes and shoes.
Here’s a project description from the architects:
Townhouse B14
The house is all about space and light.
Developed by the section it has a continuous space stretching out over the total height (12 mts), length and width of the building: from entrance hall and playing area to a music level to a living room with an open bath to a reading area to the kitchen with terrace.
This open space is zoned by two concrete elements ‘hung’ between the firewalls. They contain the private (bed) rooms. Due to their slants views are possible through the entire house.
Only few materials determine the interior space: fair faced concrete for the solids, plaster for the firewalls, glued-laminated spruce for dividing walls, stairs and doors, and pinewood planks for the floors, besides steel for the railings, glass for the facades and fringes for filtering views and light. Interiors like the shelves and trunks are designed by us.
According to the site along the former wall – the no-man’s land between East and West – now the Berlin Wall Memorial, the house has a severe outside contrasting the coloured balcony houses opposite in the former West.
The house is built on a trapezoid lot of land of 118 m2 with a small garden in the southeast towards a residential path and the wide side of the house to the northwest facing the plain of the Berlin Wall Memorial which is mainly a park. It’s part of a settlement of 16 townhouses, the two neighbouring houses are by XTH-berlin as well.
The nearly all-over glazed facades are structured by steel girders, which span from one dividing wall to the other and take over the cross bracing. Two lines of fringy draperies in front of the ground and second floor provide screen and cover the window frames.
Technically we use a heat pump (pipes going 80 mts into the ground) with panel heating and rainwater tanks in the garden for use in the toilets.
You enter the house from both sides: From the north beneath the concrete solid in an area with wardrobe, bathroom and the building services room. From the south directly in the living space which opens to the very top of the building. This is the level to put the bikes, do handicrafts, play kicker, a spare room and a storage room can be separated by a curtain.
The stairway leading up crosses the first concrete element with two sleeping rooms inside. Few steps up you reach the music area, a gallery with a horizontal net as a fall protection.
The two sleeping rooms can be opened to this area by the use of 2,5m x 1,5m big elevating flaps (which besides to slide and play are used to ventilate the sleeping rooms to the quiet side of the house). Further up you are on top of the first concrete element: Here you find the classic living space with sofa and oven, but also a bathroom included, to partition by curtain.
Via a bridge you enter the second concrete element, containing another sleeping room. The sloped wall is becoming a huge pillow.
Continuing your way up you come to an intermediate level, which is mostly used as a reading area, looking back down you view the small garden on the back side of the house and the memorial park in front.
Another stairway and you reach the highest level on top of the second concrete element: kitchen and dining area, opening to a terrace. A huge roof light (through which the stack-effect ventilates the to a maximum glazed house) lets the midday sun shine deep down on the lower levels.
International interview-based magazine Freunde Von Freunden (FvF), which chronicles creatives across all fields in their home and work environments, has made a leap from the digital world to the tactile. Only, this isn’t a new print…
Artist Tobias Rehberger has taken over a gallery in his home city of Frankfurt with black and white graphics that play tricks on the eye (+ slideshow).
Tobias Rehberger has filled a series of spaces within the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt museum with a diverse selection of his work for the Home and Away and Outside exhibition.
“Tobias Rehberger. Home and Away and Outside brings together the many strands of this internationally renowned artist’s diverse practice, highlighting the numerous themes and influences that have become integral to his work,” said a statement from the gallery.
Over 60 sculptures, installations and paintings are displayed through the exhibition, which is split into three themed sections.
Known as dazzle camouflage, this optical technique was originally used on ships during the First World War to make them difficult to target.
As a stark contract, the second space is all white and exhibits sculptures with functional qualities.
Among these items are Rehberger’s versions of iconic twentieth-century furniture designs, which he sketched from memory and then had the drawings recreated as three-dimensional objects.
The artist also created a new sculpture that appears to be cobbled together from found neon tubes, lit advertising signs and old fairground lights.
The piece hangs from the ceiling of the building’s cylindrical lobby and is lit from above, casting a shadow that spells “regret” onto a white platform on the floor.
Curated by Mathias Ulrich, the exhibition continues until 11 May.
Read on for more information:
Tobias Rehberger. Home and Away and Outside 21 February – 11 May 2014, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Tobias Rehberger. Home and Away and Outside at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is an exhibition in three parts by Tobias Rehberger (born 1966), one of the most influential German artists of his generation. An artist who defies categorisation, Rehberger creates objects, sculptures and environments as diverse in subject, media and context, as they are prolific. Drawing on a repertoire of ordinary, everyday items appropriated from mass culture, Rehberger translates, alters and expands upon familiar situations and objects causing the viewer to question their understanding and interpretation of art.
Tobias Rehberger. Home and Away and Outside is curated by Mathias Ulrich and narrates Rehberger’s artistic development with works spanning 20 years. Divided into three thematic sections, the exhibition presents more than 60 works including sculptures, installations, and paintings that deal with a broad collection of themes incorporating optical illusions, identity games, and the notion of transience. Rehberger draws upon his own memories; takes inspiration from outdated production techniques; and challenges ideas of ownership, authorship and copyright – themes that are constantly present.
The exhibition starts with a continuation of the 2009 work that won Rehberger the Golden Lion for best artist at the 53rd Venice Biennial – Was du liebst, bringt dich auch zum Weinen. Rehberger has transformed the gallery space into artwork, covering it in a unique dazzle camouflage graphic artwork specifically created for the exhibition. Dazzle camouflage, appropriated repeatedly by Rehberger in his work, was an optical technique originally used during World War I and mainly on ships, making them difficult to pinpoint as targets. Within this space, Rehberger has placed deliberately flawed sculptures that challenge notions of aesthetic perfection and other works that examine the subject of functionality and production of art.
In sharp contrast to this introductory visual statement, the second part of the exhibition is an all white, starkly minimalist landscape that blurs the architectural boundaries of the space. Here Rehberger has positioned sculptures with clearly functional qualities, such as furniture, lamps, and vases, which typify his sculptural work from the 1990s onwards. They pose the question of whether art can be permitted a function or whether it then transforms into a piece of design. Rehberger also presents work that studies issues of authorship, of the artist’s control, and of the artist’s genuine influence on their work if the production process is delegated to others. In one series, We Never Work on Sundays (1994), Rehberger sketched, from his own flawed memories, examples of iconic 20th century furniture designs and commissioned Cameroonian carpenters to recreate them as three-dimensional objects. Again Rehberger plays with notions of cultural codification as well as artistic ownership and authenticity.
For the third part of the exhibition, situated in the freely accessible Schirn Rotunda at the entrance of the Kunsthalle, Rehberger has created a large-scale shadow sculpture that will hang from the roof of the atrium. Created from new but appearing to be assembled from found neon tubes, lit advertising signs, and old fairground lights, a spotlight is placed above the sculpture causing it to cast a shadow onto a large round central pedestal below which takes the form of a word.
Tobias Rehberger. Home and Away and Outside brings together the many strands of this internationally renowned artist’s diverse practice, highlighting the numerous themes and influences that have become integral to his work. The exhibition marks Rehberger’s first major exhibition in Frankfurt, the city in which he lives and works.
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