Hasta La Ideas

The New York home and studio of the late American artist Donald Judd will open to the public next month following a three-year restoration (+ slideshow).

Led by New York-based Architecture Research Office (ARO), a team of consultants and engineers have restored the interiors of the five-storey residence at 101 Spring Street, where Judd lived and worked from 1968 until his death in 1994 and amassed a collection of over 500 artworks.

The project involved maintaining the open-plan layout created by Judd and reconditioning the timber floors and exposed plaster walls. The team also had to replace an existing spiral staircase to bring the building in line with current health and safety standards.

“Our goal has been to preserve Donald Judd’s vision for the building and make it accessible to the public, while satisfying contemporary building requirements,” said ARO principal Adam Yarinsky. “The entire design team worked with creativity, diligence, and sensitivity to resolve the complex challenges involved in reconciling these objectives.”

The team meticulously catalogued the situation of every sculpture, painting and object in the house, including pieces by Judd himself as well as works gifted by artist-friends such as Claes Oldenburg, Carl Andre and Dan Flavin, plus older artworks by Marcel Duchamp, Ad Reinhardt and more. Following the restoration, each object was returned to its exact position.

The ground floor of the house was previously used by Judd as a living room and will now serve as an event and lecture space for the Judd Foundation, the charity responsible for the building. As visitors arrive, one of the first things they’ll spot is a sculpture by Andre comprising a stack of bricks.

A Judd-designed kitchen with a wooden table and central stove features on the first floor, while the fourth floor accommodates a bedroom with a fluorescent lighting installation by Flavin along one side.

The restoration also included the exterior of the building, where the team replaced around 13,000 cast-iron pieces.

See more recent projects in New York City, including a stripy replica of a Frankfurt bar and a Camper store filled with ghostly white shoes.

Here are a few words from the Judd Foundation:

When Donald Judd’s New York City building in the SoHo Cast Iron Historic District opens to the public in June 2013 after a three-year restoration, visitors will experience Judd’s home and studio as originally installed by the artist. The restoration of 101 Spring Street began on June 3, 2010 (the artist’s birthday) and will conclude three years later. Donald Judd lived in the building with his family beginning in 1968, and it was his New York studio until his death in 1994.

Guided visits will be offered for small groups by appointment through an online ticketing system and by telephone. Visitors will be guided through all floors of the home, including Judd’s studio, kitchen, and his stately fifth-floor bedroom, which is installed with a floor-to-ceiling 1969 Dan Flavin fluorescent light piece, extending the length of the loft space.

Each floor will remain as installed by Donald Judd with pieces from his collection of over 500 objects, including original sculpture, paintings, drawings, prints, and furniture designed by Judd and others. Judd installed artworks by Jean Arp, Carl Andre, Larry Bell, John Chamberlain, Marcel Duchamp, Dan Flavin, David Novros, Claes Oldenburg, Ad Reinhardt, Lucas Samaras, and Frank Stella throughout the building, all of which viewers will be able to explore.

Overseen by board members Flavin Judd and Rob Beyer, the restoration project shares the same goal and mission of Judd Foundation: to preserve Judd’s living and working spaces and promote a wider understanding and appreciation of Donald Judd’s legacy. The New York City design firm Architecture Research Office (ARO), led Judd Foundation’s project team of consultants, which includes a preservation architect and engineers.

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by Architecture Research Office appeared first on Dezeen.

South Korean studio VOID planning used handmade paper and gravel to create the appearance of a misty landscape for this exhibition stand at a craft fair in Seoul (+ slideshow).

The stand, for hand-crafted furniture and products brand Onn, comprised a room with walls made from traditional Hanji paper, stained to create a natural gradient from dark to light.

VOID planning added narrow openings at each end to allow visitors to walk though the space over a gravel pathway that spanned the interior.

Furniture was positioned at the edges over a dark mirrored surface reminiscent of water.

“Walking along inside of the exhibition space reminds of taking a walk on a wet foggy lakeside in the morning,” say the architects.

Smaller items were presented on a raw timber shelving unit that formed an obstacle across the pathway.

VOID planning’s past projects include a stone-clad art gallery and a headquarters for a cosmetics company. See more architecture and interiors in South Korea.

Photography is by the architects.

Read on for more details from VOID planning:

2012 Craft Trend Fair [Onn] by VOID planning

The Onn booth of ‘2012 Craft Trend Fair Seoul’ shows the direction successfully under the title of ‘Beob Go Chang Shin’ (which means create new one based on the old one).

Onn is a brand of masterpiece which is carefully classified and selected under the present standard of values and tastes of Millenary Jeonju culture. These premium handcrafted products are well blended traditions with modern designs by cultural asset masters. Materials and colours, products of Onn are inspired by nature and it lights up the traditional peculiarity.

The exhibition booth was constructed to remind a scene of nature as Onn desired, and the space becomes an art piece itself harmonised with the products by Onn. Walking along inside of the exhibition space reminds of taking a walk on a wet foggy lakeside in the morning. Gradation effect of Muk on Hanji which is traditional colour and paper of Jeonju stands becoming the wall and gravels are spread on the floor. All of these extraordinary scenes of nature reflected through the black-mirrored pathway on the floor. This collaboration seemed like watching an epic oriental painting as it was.

Design: VOID planning
Design Director: Shin-Jae Kang, Hee-Young Choi
Art Director: Woong Chul Choi
Location: COEX, 135-731 Samsung-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Floor area: 90m2

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by VOID planning appeared first on Dezeen.

Over a thousand ghostly white shoes protrude from the walls of this New York store for shoe brand Camper, designed by Japanese studio Nendo (+ slideshow).

Nendo arranged the shoes in a regimented pattern across every wall, intended to look like they are “walking on air”. Each identical shoe is a replica of the Camper Pelota, the brand’s most iconic footwear collection, and is made from white resin.

“When designing such a big space you have to face the challenge of how to use the upper half of the walls to display the shoes in areas with such high ceilings,” says Nendo. “Our new approach involves making models of the Pelotas shoes and decorating the walls with them to fill the space and create the feel of an orderly stockroom.”

There are a handful of openings at the base of the walls for displaying the current collections, which can easily be spotted due to their stand-out colours.

More shoes are displayed on white platforms in the centre of the store, while recessed openings house the brand’s sock and bag collections.

Nendo developed a similar concept for a store in Osaka, where shoes appear to walk around the store on their own. The designers also previously completed a stand covered in books for a Camper exhibition in Barcelona. See more design by Nendo.

Located on Fifth Avenue, this is the fourth Camper store to open in New York, following one by fellow Japanese designer Shigeru Ban where shoes are hidden within a zigzagging wall. Other interesting Camper stores include one in Lyon with never-ending staircases and one in Malmö based on ice cream colours and lolly sticks. See more Camper store designs.

Photography is by Jesse Goff.

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by Nendo appeared first on Dezeen.

Italian studio Gosplan inserted a perforated metal gate into a fifteenth century marble doorway as part of their renovation of this fashion boutique in Genoa.

Gosplan was influenced by the doorways of ancient Italian palaces when designing the perforated gate that marks the entrance to the store, which is located in the city’s historic centre.

“The door is a free interpretation of doors of ancient Genoa palaces,” explains the designer. “The small holes are a metaphor for the large ancient nails, while the large hole in the centre replaces the door knocker.”

Called Il Salotto, which means “Living Room” in Italian, the boutique has vaulted ceilings and large windows with a bright blue linoleum floor that contrasts with the rough plastered walls.

Clothes, bags and shoes hang from white-painted reinforcing rods, which have been bent into angular formations that protrude from the walls and floors.

Coat hangers and mirror frames are also constructed from the bent rods, along with a cage-like chandelier that descends from the ceiling and a large circular rail from which curtains hang to enclose dressing rooms.

Brightly coloured cables are strung around the shop with bare lightbulbs dangling loosely from the ceiling.

The shop counter is made from coloured MDF and features a tiled recess used to display jewellery.

The same dove-grey coloured tiles are used to create a unifying band around the walls of the boutique.

The shop is owned by Sara Busiri Vici and Matteo Brizio who also use the space to host small art exhibitions.

Photography is by Anna Positano.

Other shops we’ve recently featured on Dezeen include a boutique with an upside-down living room on the ceiling and a fashion boutique with glass silhouettes of male and female figures that reach out to each other across a tiled floor.

See all our stories about shop design »

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by Gosplan appeared first on Dezeen.

This renovated family home in Japan by designer Yasunari Tsukada features large internal windows and a mezzanine loft, creating apertures and vantage points for looking into different rooms (+ slideshow).

Adapting part of a three-storey house, Yasunari Tsukada planned the interior as a grid of partitioned rooms that maintain the same clarity as an open-plan residence.

“The client requested a home where he could feel the presence of his family throughout the building, while at the same time having the calm and relaxing sensation of being in a private room,” explains the designer.

The mezzanine floor runs across the centre of the space, accessed by a metal staircase near the entrance. There are no walls around it, only balustrades, so residents can look down onto any of the surrounding rooms.

Large windows and doorways also open rooms out to one another. There are a few sliding doors, so some of the spaces can be made more private when necessary.

“Each space also contains two or more windows or openings, giving rise to a multilayered space with no sense of hierarchy within it,” says Tsukada.

An existing glass-block wall that previously encased a stairwell gives a curved outline to a new living room, plus a single concrete wall is the backdrop for a television.

The ceiling of the residence follow the angle of the roof. Bare lightbulbs hang down from it on long cables, while others are mounted sideways onto the walls.

Japanese designer Yasunari Tsukada more recently completed a beauty salon in Osaka with a timber lattice stretching across one wall.

Other new Japanese residences include an apartment with a sunken circular living room and an opaque house balanced above a pet shop. See more architecture in Japan.

Photography is by Stirling Elmendorf.

Here’s some more information from Yasunari Tsukada:

House in Takamatsu

Our client was initially inclined to build a new house. After much consideration, however, he decided to partly renovate his three-storey family house, and use it as a residence for a two-generation family.

The client requested a home where he could feel the presence of his family throughout the building, while at the same time having the calm and relaxing sensation of being in a private room. By enveloping each room with a sloping ceiling to make use of the existing building, we wondered if we could create an ambiguously defined space that would feel as if it had been partitioned, while still maintaining a sense of coherence and unity.

The components that make up each individual room are gate-like walls, which consist mainly of openings. The roof gradient and heights of the sash windows were determined in accordance with the original height of the living room, which was 2400mm. The heights of the walls also took their cue from this figure, and were set at 2400mm. Although it seems as if this height has been deployed with excessive frequency within the space, doing away with ceilings for the individual rooms while covering them with a single, sloping ceiling and installing windows at a number of positions along the walls allowed us to create a sort of landscape that presented a very different face to the familiar surroundings. Each space also contains two or more windows or openings, giving rise to a multilayered space with no sense of hierarchy within it.

The renovation process involves thinking about how we can devise new spaces while respecting a given set of conditions imposed by the existing building, as well as the client’s requirements. The glass blocks from the large staircase and stairwell were transformed into a part of the living room and the reading space, while the innocuous reinforced concrete wall that originally supported the staircase was given a new lease of life as the wall that one notices most of all on a daily basis. For our client, this space helped to give things and objects new meanings, and became invested with new stories and narratives – a process that prompted him to rethink the possibilities of design through renovation.

Project Name: House in Takamatsu
Project Type: residence renovation
Location: Takamatsu-city, Kagawa, Japan
Completion: 2012 May
Design: Yasunari Tsukada design
Contractor: Shikoku Housing

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by Yasunari Tsukada appeared first on Dezeen.