Hasta La Ideas

Hackney-based Studio Weave has constructed a network of listening pipes in a back courtyard of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital to create a secret factory of lullabies for children (+ slideshow).

The enclosed space was created by the construction of a new building at the historic children’s hospital and will remain until its neighbour is eventually demolished. Studio Weave designed the installation to occupy the space in the interim and has named it the Lullaby Factory.

The architects were inspired by the messy pipes and drainage systems that already cover the surface of the brick walls. Instead of covering them up, they chose to add to them with a wide-spanning framework of pipes and horns.

“We have designed a fantasy landscape reaching 10 storeys in height and 32 metres in length, which can engage the imagination of everyone, from patients and parents to hospital staff, by providing an interesting and curious world to peer out onto,” explain architects Je Ahn and Maria Smith.

Different types of metal create pipes of silver, gold and bronze, and some of the taps and gauges were recycled from a decommissioned hospital boilerhouse.

Sound artist Jessica Curry composed the soundtrack of lullabies, which are played out through each of the pipes. To listen in, patients and staff can place an ear over one of the listening pipes beside the canteen.

The music is also transmitted via a radio frequency, so patients on the wards can tune in too.

Studio Weave previously designed a set of pipes to amplify the sounds of the countryside. Other projects by the architects include a latticed timber hut on stilts and a 324-metre-long bench.

See more architecture by Studio Weave, including an interview we filmed with the architects at our Designed in Hackney day.

Here’s a project description from Studio Weave:

Lullaby Factory, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children
Studio Weave with Structure Workshop, AB3 Workshops and Jessica Curry

Studio Weave has transformed an awkward exterior space landlocked by buildings into the Lullaby Factory – a secret world that cannot be seen except from inside the hospital and cannot be heard by the naked ear, only by tuning in to its radio frequency or from a few special listening pipes.

The multi-phased redevelopment of Great Ormond Street Hospital, in London’s Bloomsbury area, means that the recently completed Morgan Stanley Clinical Building and the 1930s Southwood Building currently sit very close together. The latter is due to be demolished in 15 years, but in the intervening period large windows in the west elevation of the MSCB look directly onto a pipe-ridden brickwork facade, with the gap between the two less than one metre in places.

In our competition entry we proposed that the Southwood Building, with its oodles of mysterious pipes and plant is not really the Southwood Building, but the Lullaby Factory, manufacturing and releasing gentle, beautiful lullabies to create a calming and uplifting environment for the young patients to recover in.

Our aim for this project was to re-imagine the Southwood façade as the best version of itself, accepting and celebrating its qualities and oddities; and rather than hiding what is difficult, creating something unique and site specific.

We have designed a fantasy landscape reaching 10 storeys in height and 32 metres in length, which can engage the imagination of everyone, from patients and parents to hospital staff, by providing an interesting and curious world to peer out onto. Aesthetically the Lullaby Factory is a mix of an exciting and romantic vision of industry, and the highly crafted beauty and complexity of musical instruments.

The Lullaby Factory consists of two complimentary elements: the physical factory that appears to carry out the processes of making lullabies and the soundscape. Composer and sound artist Jessica Curry has composed a brand new lullaby especially for the project, which children can engage with through listening pipes next to the canteen or from the wards by tuning into a special radio station.

Our design is mindful of the fact that the space between the two buildings is very tight and any attempt to tidy it up too much would have resulted in significantly reducing the sense of space and the amount of daylight reaching inside the surrounding buildings.

Above: concept sketch

We hope the project will inspire engagement in a variety of ways from children’s paintings to a resource for play specialists to a generator for future commissions.

Our design incorporates old tap and gauges reclaimed from a hospital boilerhouse that was in the process of being decommissioned.

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Studio Weave appeared first on Dezeen.

British artist Richard Wentworth has collaborated with Swiss architects GRUPPE to build a pop-up wooden auditorium in the atrium of Central Saint Martins art and design college in London (+ slideshow).

The structure is named Black Maria, after Thomas Edison’s first movie production studio. Built entirely from wood, it was also inspired by both the timber scaffolds historically used in the industrial areas of King’s Cross and the building-site hoardings that surround much of the area today.

A tiered seating area is positioned at the front of the installation and is framed behind a wooden screen, creating what the designers refer to as an “inhabitable billboard”.

Large audiences can surround the structure during open presentations or talks, while more intimate performances can be accommodated by placing screens over the facade and closing off the space from its surroundings.

Two extra entrances are located on the back of the structure. One goes in at ground level, while the other features a grand staircase that leads into the top of the auditorium through an enclosed foyer.

Both GRUPPE and Richard Wentworth emphasise that the installation is also an informal meeeting area, where students can spend time during breaks.

Wentworth explained: “You have to magnetise some venues more than others so that people who feel that they are there ‘by accident’ are mixed with people who have a clear ‘sense of purpose’. This is an obvious condition of metropolitan space.”

Black Maria was installed in the Granary Building of Central Saint Martins this week and will remain in place until 12 March. The school was designed by architects Stanton Williams and is only in its second year of use.

Other recently completed timber installations include a cabin filled with coloured light and smoke and a wooden chamber installed at the Venice Architecture Biennale. See more installations on Dezeen.

Here’s a project description from the design team:

Black Maria by Richard Wentworth and GRUPPE

Black Maria, by Richard Wentworth and Swiss architecture practice GRUPPE, is part of RELAY, a nine-year arts programme that is enlivening the new public spaces at King’s Cross and turning the area into a destination for discovering international contemporary art that a celebrate the area’s heritage and its future. The second commission in the King’s Cross series, Black Maria, is a structure that acts as a place of meeting, based around discussion, performance and moving images.

Launching on 12 February 2013 for an initial 28 days, with the potential to be brought back at a later date, the Black Maria comprises a collection of spatial elements of varying sizes that recall an early film studio of the same name. The structure will be installed in The Crossing, in the Granary Building, the new home of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. The Crossing brings together several departments of the art school, new commercial tenants at the development, a restaurant and the public, which Wentworth and GRUPPE see as the ideal conditions to create a place of exchange.

The emphasis is on flexibility and happenstance, both in terms of the construction’s physicality and in the programming being arranged around it. Black Maria sits at one end of The Crossing, facing the larger part of the hall as a kind of inhabitable billboard with a staircase auditorium behind it. The talks happen “within” the billboard, allowing for different kinds of audience on either side of it: a more intimate audience within the structure; and another potentially much larger audience outside the structure. The billboard makes use of a large door to allow events to be either closed and private, or open to the hall and public. Black Maria recalls the vital but forgotten timber scaffolds used to build King’s Cross’ industrial past, and building site hoardings used today. In a related sense the Black Maria is a support structure for the community activities in the hall today.

Richard, who has lived near King’s Cross since the 1970’s, has witnessed and chronicled the transformation of the area through projects such as ‘An Area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty’, created for Artangel in 2002. Much like Black Maria, the Artangel work was an experiential one, encouraging visitors to walk into apparently unremarkable shops and alleyways around King’s Cross and see them from a fresh perspective. Black Maria has the potential to transform the somewhat neutral crossroads at the entrance to Central Saint Martins into a destination where people can attend scheduled talks and screenings, but also just find a place to sit, gather, eat lunch and chat.

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and GRUPPE appeared first on Dezeen.

Stockholm 2013: Japanese design studio Nendo made a mountain range from laser-cut foamboard at the entrance to the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair, which ends tomorrow (+ slideshow).

As the Guest of Honour at this year’s Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair, Nendo was invited to create a large-scale installation in the entrance hall to mark the start of the exhibition.

The designers laser-cut 80 sheets of five-millimetre-thick foamboard and pulled them out into tall loops to form rows of softly curving partitions.

Above: photograph by Dezeen

The partitions were then arranged in the space alongside matching white lamps and aluminium chairs, which resemble some earlier furniture by Nendo such as the Thin Black Lines Chair.

Above: photograph by Dezeen

Nendo also tried to minimise the installation’s environmental impact by cutting the sheets of foamboard on site so that they could be delivered on just one truck.

Also in Stockholm this week, Nendo unveiled an installation of 30 lamps made from modular parts in collaboration with Swedish lighting brand Wästberg.

We’ve been reporting on product launches and events in Stockholm all week, such as brass coat hooks and flower pots made by a 400-year-old Swedish brassworks and an installation of robotic arms and delicate glass – see all news and design from Stockholm 2013.

Other Nendo products launched recently include bowls so thin they quiver in the wind and a collection of furniture inspired by splintered wood– see all design by Nendo.

Above: photograph by Joakim Blockstrom

Photographs are courtesy of Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair, except where stated.

Here’s some more information from Nendo:

Nendo has been selected as the Guest of Honour of the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair 2013

80 sheets of mountains / Guest of Honour Installation

An installation created for the entrance hall for the main exhibition space at the Stockholm International Furniture Fair 2013, at which we were honoured to be the Guest of Honour.

We laser-cut and stretched 80 sheets of 3mm aluminium into a set of partitions shaped like mountains, and arranged them to create a landscape of snow-capped mountain ranges in the space. It expresses the way design expands, starting from a single small idea – a method at the basis of our design philosophy.

We also wanted to minimise the exhibition’s environmental impact. We stretched the steel sheets on site so that the delivery only needed one truck, and the sheets could be flattened for clearing from the site and recycled.

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by Nendo appeared first on Dezeen.

Stockholm 2013: robotic arms move across a landscape of delicate glass objects at this installation inside Stockholm’s Skeppsholmen Caverns (+ slideshow).

Above: photo by Ann Wåhlström

Glass Elephant is an installation of glass pieces by Swedish designers inside the grotto-like Skeppsholmen caverns belonging to the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities.

Above: glass objects by Ann Wåhlström

Each designer’s collection is paired with an industrial robot carrying out tasks such as brushing the objects with a feather duster, shining a spotlight on them or gently wobbling them.

Above: glass objects by Carina Seth Andersson

Participating designers include Whatswhat, Magnus Elebäck and Chris Martin of Massproductions, Note Design Studio, Johannes Carlström and Åsa Jungnelius.

Above: glass objects by Simon Klenell

“I wanted to personify the robots, to make them as much human as machine,” says Jungnelius. “They could be about to engage in some kind of jerky wrestling match.”

Above: glass objects by Simon Klenell

The objects are glamourised consumer items, she adds. “The desire for material things is universal, but what exactly do we become without our fetishes and the props we surround ourselves with? Cave people?”

Above: glass objects by Simon Klenell

The exhibition also includes work by Simon Klenell and John Astbury, Ann Wåhlström, Carina Seth Andersson and Katja Pettersson.

Above: glass objects by Simon Klenell

Designed by Stockholm-based studio TAF Arkitekter, the exhibition is a collaboration between Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair and ABB and is open until 9 February at the caverns – called Bergrummen – on Skeppsholmen, Svensksundsvägen 5.

Above: glass objects by Simon Klenell

Also in Stockholm this week, Swedish lighting brand Wästberg unveiled an installation of 30 lamps by Japanese designers Nendo – see more design installations on Dezeen.

Above: glass objects by Simon Klenell

We’ve reported on lots of products at Stockholm Design Week so far, including a chair that can be dressed up in an assortment of garments and a tiered spun metal lamp – see all products and news from Stockholm Design Week.

Here’s some more information from the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair:

Glass Elephant – fragile glass and heavy industrial robots in a poetic installation

An elephant in a china shop? No – just heavy industrial robots in a landscape of glass. As part of Stockholm Design Week 4-10 February 2013, Glass Elephant, a design installation in the borderland between industrial design, craftsmanship and performance, is on show in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities’ Skeppsholmen Caverns.

Glass Elephant is a unique, creative collaboration between Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair and ABB.

“The purpose of the installation is to diversify and vitalise Stockholm Design Week’s image as an innovative and dynamic meeting place for the best in Scandinavian design. We want to create inspiring experiences and added value for both industry professionals and interested members of the public,” explains Cecilia Nyberg, Event Manager of Stockholm Design Week and Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair, which acts as the hub around which Design Week has developed in the last decade.

The exhibition explores the properties of glass as material and muse, and tells a story about the meeting of contrasts. Gossamer glass meets robot arms of steel and the advanced tactile technology of the hand meets the indefatigable precision of the machine in a floating, inquisitive interplay. The exhibition architecture has been designed by TAF Arkitekter.

“Our basic concept originates in the cavern setting, which is completely without natural light. We want to emphasise the existing space and have added what was not already there. So the installation design has windows as a theme – they are symbolic, as you can’t see out,” says Gabriella Gustafson, TAF Arkitekter.

The work of some of Sweden’s most trendsetting designers is featured in Glass Elephant, including Åsa Jungnelius:

“I’ve chosen to concentrate on the rock and the forces living within it. That’s why I wanted to personify the robots, to make them as much human as machine. They could be about to engage in some kind of jerky wrestling match. There’ll be a number of glass objects around the robots, fetishes from the consumer society, including a giant pink diamond. This is intended to create a somewhat abrasive image of the love of consumerism, something that’s in the process of changing. The desire for material things is universal, but what exactly do we become without our fetishes and the props we surround ourselves with? Cave people?” wonders Åsa Jungnelius.

Other designers taking part are Ann Wåhlström; Carina Seth Andersson; Katja Pettersson; Magnus Elebäck and Chris Martin, Massproductions; Johannes Carlström, Note Design Studio; Simon Klenell and John Astbury, Whatswhat.

The installation is open to the public 5-9 February 12-6 pm and is located in the Skeppsholmen Caverns, the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities.

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at Stockholm Design Week appeared first on Dezeen.

Troika founding partner Eva Rucki explains the studio’s large-scale immersive light installations in this movie filmed by Dezeen at our Designed in Hackney Day.

Above: one of Troika’s Trixotrope pieces when spinning and illuminated

Rucki, Conny Freyer and Sebastien Noel founded Troika in 2003 after graduating from the Royal College of Art and have set up a flexible workshop space under a large railway arch in Hackney, east London.

Above: Trixotrope frame when still

The first of the studio’s installations she describes is Thixotropes, a series of rotating frames covered in LED strips. The light pieces hung in the atrium of London department store Selfridges for three months last year. “One of the most magic points for me in this installation is when the structure starts spinning and hits a point where it spins so fast that it becomes a solid volume,” says Rucki.

Above: detail of the LED strips used on the Trixotrope pieces

Four different designs were suspended in two columns and alternated on and off so shoppers on all five floors of the store could experience the way the pieces looked at different speeds from various vantage points.

Above: Trixotrope piece when spinning and illuminated

Rucki then describes Troika’s Light Rain project, first created for Thomas Heatherwick’s UK Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo then refined for crystal company Swarovski and displayed at the V&A museum as part of an exhibition of British design. “The way this device works is that you have a lens, a light and when the light comes closer to the lens and further apart and it has an animation written into the mechanism, which is a raindrop,” she says.

Above: Trixotrope pieces spinning and illuminated while hung in the atrium of Selfridges

“It contrasts technology, which is perceived as something often artificial and man made, with something like an innate memory of nature you has as a kid watching raindrops on the ground,” she says.

Above: The Weather Yesterday installation in Hoxton Square

Troika’s commission for Hoxton Square in east London was a light installation linked to yesterday’s weather forecast. “The slightly retro look wasn’t really a stylistic choice, but it’s based on the components the sign is built with: LED strips in modules of five,” Rucki says.

Above: LED strips used for The Weather Yesterday installation

“Quite a lot of our work uses software programming controls as well as typical physical design,” she summarises at the end of the talk.

Above: The Weather Yesterday assembled in Troika’s studio

Dezeen’s Designed in Hackney initiative was launched to highlight the best architecture and design made in the borough, which was one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices.

Above: the back of The Weather Yesterday showing the wires and circuitry

Watch more movies from our Designed in Hackney Day or see more stories about design and architecture from Hackney. See all our stories about design by Troika »

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as well as physical design” – Troika appeared first on Dezeen.