Japanese firm Horibe Associates has completed this combined home and dog-grooming salon in Japan’s Ōita prefecture (+ slideshow).
The house by Horibe Associates is located on a long, thin plot surrounded by rice fields and features a mono-pitched roof.
One end of the building has a living space for a small family, who run their business from a salon at the other end of the building.
“Because the line of sight extends unbroken from the shop entrance back through the garden, the space feels larger than it actually is,” said the architects.
A living and dining room is located towards the back of the house, with views out on to a courtyard garden.
In the same space there is a daybed located beneath a small mezzanine room that can be accessed by a wooden staircase.
Curtains are used throughout the building to separate the internal spaces.
Bathrooms and a kitchen are located in the centre of the house. They can be easily accessed from both the salon and the house at either end of the building.
Toward the front of the salon, a small internal window on the mezzanine floor overlooks a dog-trimming room.
The architects have made concrete floors and plywood ceilings a feature to reduce costs. The building covers 66.25 square metres and sits within a larger 325.41 square metre site.
The SLO_Gen Table is a remarkable piece of innovation in the field of furniture design. The organic design is made using HI-MACS and has become the focal point of Gensler’s Los Angeles office lobby! It was designed using the brief – create a piece that can accommodate standing and sitting space for guests and storage for the firm’s design publications. Solid Surface HI-MACS is the table’s predominant surface material and looks divine with the use of wood. It sports an awesome curvature.
– Yanko Design Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (SLO_Gen Table was originally posted on Yanko Design)
A dilapidated car showroom in north-west London has been transformed into this flexible workspace by Hackney designers the Decorators and community initiative Meanwhile Space (+ slideshow).
Meanwhile Space set up the communal office for creatives to hire. Cottrell House is located on the ground floor of a vacant building close to the stadium and arenas in Wembley.
“The design of the space responds to the context of Wembley, whose landscape is regularly transformed by the large scale events of Wembley stadium,” said designers The Decorators.
A central table in the shape of the nearby national stadium can be surrounded by blue curtains to create a private meeting room.
The unit also contains a cafe, a shared studio, eight fixed desks and hot-desking spaces, which are hired out to more than one occupant to use at different times.
Metal-framed desks backed with peg board can be wheeled outside and used as stalls so designers can flaunt their wares during an event at the stadium.
Black and white tiles randomly pattern the floor, while smaller ones cover the circular columns in a similar style.
The space was built by volunteers in exchange for free membership at the venue.
The following information was sent to us by the designers:
Cottrell House is an enterprise space in Wembley set up by Meanwhile Space and initiated by Brent Council to support local start-up businesses and entrepreneurs with affordable workspace.
Cottrell House overlooks the fast paced, large scale development of Wembley City and is almost invisible amongst the shadows of it’s grand structures. In these shadows, meanwhile projects like Cottrell House are providing local alternatives to inaccessible and intangible large scale development.
For this project The Decorators worked with Meanwhile Space to convert the ground floor of a prominent, long term vacant, building on Wembley Hill Road.
This former retail unit was rearranged to provide a small cafe, one shared studio for rent, eight fixed desks for hire and hot-desking space, catering for different needs and budgets.
The space was built with volunteers from Meanwhile Space’s Coming Soon Club, who gave time to the project in exchange for free membership days at Cottrell House.
The design of the space responds to the context of Wembley, whose landscape is regularly transformed by the large scale events of Wembley stadium.
A central round table with the profile of the stadium was built to give room to the many other things Wembley has to offer beyond its football matches.
The self-contained desk units can be wheeled outside and reconfigured as market stalls to provide an opportunity for makers of Wembley to sell and promote their work.
Products by young local designers are displayed against the rough ochre walls of this boutique in Katowice, Poland, designed Joanna Wołoszyn and Daria Barnaś (+ slideshow).
“Our point is to show the identity of the region in a new, modern way, based on pure Silesian tradition and proudly taking the best it’s got,” says Geszeft owner Michał Kubieniec.
The shop is spilt across two rooms and visitors enter into a cafe area where books and other small items are presented on shelves.
Garments and larger merchandise can be browsed in the second adjacent space, reached through gaps in the concrete structure.
The coffee menu is written in chalk on the only black wall in the shop, from which the facetted L-shaped serving counter protrudes.
Other surfaces have been stripped back to show a patchwork of old plasterwork layers and original concrete, then polished to finish them.
Tubular lights high up and black clothing rails lower down are suspended from the ceiling by thin wires.
A wooden shelving unit takes up an entire wall, though a few horizontal elements are missing to provide access to the fitting room behind.
London firm Paul Crofts Studio has completed a bakery on a high street in Suffolk, UK, with a motif based on a magpie’s nest set into the douglas fir serving counter.
The Two Magpies Bakery in Southwold produces fresh bread and patisserie at the back of the shop every day and the kitchen can be seen through a window onto the seating area.
“The space is made up of a series of bespoke elements made from douglas fir finished in white lye, creating clean lines with a contemporary feel and a pared-back canvas on which to display the highly crafted products on sale,” said Paul Crofts Studio.
The birds-nest motif was created by illustrator Katharine Gorham and picked out in white resin. It’s repeated on the opposite side of the shop with criss-crossing white dowels supporting long shelves above the seating area, where a silver ring entangled in the sticks references the collecting habits of magpies.
White timber dowels also protrude from the wall behind the counter to accommodate a series of bespoke wooden serving boards, as well as alongside the window where they provide perches for displaying loaves to passersby.
“Warm wood, clean white detailing and a high level of craftsmanship combine to create an intimate and relaxed setting in which to enjoy the exceptional food on offer,” the studio added.
The rear wall of the shop is clad in overlapping wooden shingles in shades of grey and tables in the seating area have their legs dipped in black.
Cardboard luggage labels tied with string present information and pricing on the produce and the seasonal menu can be written on a brown paper roll hanging next to a blackboard behind the serving counter.
Dezeen archive: here’s a roundup of some of the most beautiful Barcelona apartments we’ve featured with decorative geometric floor tiles (+ slideshow).
The most recent story from the Catalan capital to include ornate tile work is an apartment laid with triangular floor tiles that gradually change colour from green to red.
Up with upholstery! In a move that makes us want to recover all of our furniture in a hazy wool that is simultaneously ethereal and sweatshirtesque, Design Within Reach has launched a proprietary textile program. The nine textiles in 42 colorways, which debuted online and in DWR studios this week, range from a creamy cotton twill and a broad weave that plays well with saturated brights to a moody ducale wool and a textured, tiger lily-toned take on post-industrial recycled polyester. Seven of the fabrics, including a smart lama tweed, come from a family-run mill in Italy, while the aforementioned dreamy wool melange and eco-friendly textiles are all-American, made by Maharam, which was acquired by Herman Miller in April.
In this movie Dezeen filmed at the opening of the new Camper store in New York, Japanese designer and Nendo founder Oki Sato explains why he covered the interior walls of the store with over a thousand white plastic shoes.
Oki Sato of Nendo
“I’ve been working with Camper for the past few years on their small retail stores,” says Sato.
“The concept [for the small stores] was these shoes walking in mid air, showing that Camper shoes are not for running fast or for luxury or things like that, but something to enjoy walking.”
However, Sato goes on to explain that designing the interior for the larger New York store located on Fifth Avenue, one of world’s biggest shopping streets, was much more challenging.
“Camper asked me a few months ago to find a solution for the big stores that have really high ceilings,” he says. “Because the product is obviously very small, we weren’t sure how to use the ceiling height. Before they used a lot of graphics on the ceiling but it looked really empty.”
Nendo‘s solution was to completely cover the walls in the store with white plastic replicas of Camper Pelotas, the brand’s signature shoe design. The current collections are then displayed amongst these replicas in spaces at the base of the walls where customers are able to reach.
“What it’s doing is making the products really stand out – the colours, the forms of the products,” says Sato. “It starts from a single product but by copying and pasting it becomes an interior element. It catches a lot of light and shadow and gives a lot of texture to the space.”
The protruding shoes also provide an important acoustic benefit, Sato says: “It absorbs the sound so it feels much more comfortable as well.”
Sato goes on to explain that he believes physical retail environments are still important, despite the rise of shopping online.
“Just one click on the internet and you can buy any of these shoes from wherever you are,” he says. “But I guess it’s really the experience of the space that is the most important thing. It’s a space that you have to be there, you have to feel something.”
“In the end if a guy comes into the store and he doesn’t want to buy any shoes in the beginning but he gets excited and he buys a shoe I think that’s the victory of design. That is the goal for interior design in a way.”
This sexual health clinic by London studio Urban Salon features an enormous green cat on the wall and a mobile referencing sexual organs.
Slotted beneath two railway arches in south London, the Burrell Street Sexual Health Centre was designed by Urban Salon to provide a non-clinical environment that encourages more people to come in for a check up.
The architects worked alongside artists Arnold Goron, Allison Dring and Martin McGrath to add a series of colourful graphics and motifs. The two suspended mobiles hang above the heads of patients in the waiting room, while abstract wallpapers based on sexual puns and imagery cover the ceilings in the consultation rooms.
“The brief was to create a welcoming clinic, which had a look and feel that was very different from the standardised hospital environment to help break down taboos around the nature of the clinic,” explains the studio.
The reception and waiting areas are positioned behind a new glass facade, which is screened with graphics to protect the privacy of patients. A long table stretches across the space and offers coffees and newspapers.
A looping double-height corridor leads through to 16 consultation rooms, each with blackboard-clad doors that allow practitioners to chalk their names across the surface.
Urban Salon’s Burrell Street Sexual Health Centre opens for business
Urban Salon’s first project for the NHS, the Burrell Street sexual health centre has been completed and has opened to the public. The clinic is run by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust in London.
The project came out of a design competition that engaged designers and architects from outside the healthcare specialism. The brief was to transform two railway arches in Burrell Street, Southwark and create a welcoming clinic, which had a look and feel that was very different from the standardised hospital environment to help break down taboos around the nature of the clinic.
The spaces at the front of both arches are used for registering and waiting for appointments. The waiting room is welcoming and informal and features a communal table for visitors to read newspapers and drink complimentary coffee. Located next to the full height glazing to the street, the waiting area incorporates graphics that strike the balance between allowing views into reception from the exterior and protecting visitors’ privacy as they sit in the waiting room.
Circulation in each arch is arranged around the central pier that supports the two arches, creating a central circulation loop that is double height to maximise natural daylight and create a generous space. The consultation rooms are located off this space and the doors to the consultation rooms are finished in blackboard laminate that is used by clinical staff to write their names on in chalk when in use.
To put visitors at ease, the consultation rooms are divided into two separate areas – a warm and conversational space at the front to encourage discussion that can be screened off from the clean and fresh clinical section at the rear that is used for examination. In addition to the consultation rooms, there are two rooms used by health advisors for counselling. Located away from the busier parts of the clinic, these rooms have sofas, lower light levels and Eames Elephants chairs for when children are present with their parents.
Throughout the clinic, we commissioned art to create a positive and welcoming atmosphere that puts users at ease. In the waiting room, the artist, Arnold Goron created two suspended mobiles comprising forms that are reminiscent of sexual organs. The pieces gently rotate and are visible from the street. Each of the sixteen consultation rooms feature brightly coloured ceiling art developed by artist/designer, Allison Dring. These artworks cover the entire ceiling and take sexual puns and imagery as their theme. The ceiling art is designed to be read from the examination couch and to slowly reveal themselves to the viewer. Graphics designed by Martin McGrath that references the ceiling art and provides a friendly tone of voice is used for wayfinding signage.
A 120 seat auditorium has been created on the first floor for use for teaching, internal meetings and to hire out to outside organisations. The ceiling of the auditorium is curved to fit the curve of the arch.
Since its opening, the clinic has proved popular attracting high numbers of visitors and has generated positive feedback. Comments have included ‘A lovely new building’, ‘I was impressed with the waiting room as it had a welcoming atmosphere unlike most hospital waiting rooms’, and ‘interesting cat theme…’.
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