Hasta La Ideas

News: Saint Laurent has opened the doors to its new flagship store in Paris, the first to be designed by Hedi Slimane since he became creative director of the fashion house last year.

Located on Avenue Montaigne near the Champs-Élysées, the art deco-inspired Saint Laurent store features a marble staircase encased by rods of nickel-plated brass.

Black and white marble has been used for the walls, floors and a row of shelves, above which hang nickel-plated bars for displaying clothes.

The monochrome interior is reflected in the black and white photographs accompanying the opening of the store.

Formerly known as Yves Saint Laurent, after its founder, the fashion house’s name was changed soon after Slimane took over as creative director last spring.

Saint Laurent’s Sloane Street concept store in London is set to open in the autumn.

Other fashion boutiques we’ve featured lately include a shop in Warsaw with an upside-down living room on its ceiling and a Milan boutique featuring glass silhouettes of male and female figures – see all shops on Dezeen.

An exhibition of high fashion inspired by punk recently opened at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art – see all fashion design.

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flagship store in Paris appeared first on Dezeen.

Belgian studio AWG Architecten added pivoting golden cabinets and a golden platform to adapt an old church into a cultural centre in the Dutch village of Leegkerk (+slideshow).

Leegkerk Church dates back to the thirteenth century, but the local community felt that in the present day it would better serve the village as an centre for education, exhibitions and conferences.

AWG Architecten chose to leave the existing interior mostly unchanged, but added a series of interventions to allow flexible use of the church’s two large rooms.

The first addition is a freestanding golden cube, a two-storey metal-clad structure in the centre of the church’s nave that can function as a pulpit, a stage or a viewing platform. Toilets and a kitchen are relocated inside it, while a staircase ascends through its middle to reach the upper level.

Architects Jan Verrelst and Maarten Verdonschot told Dezeen: “The golden colour of the material, a copper-aluminium alloy, grew into the project as a result of the search for a material versatile enough to refer to ecclesiastical architecture.”

The architects also installed glass doors on either side of the cube to enclose a new meeting area tucked behind.

The pivoting golden cabinets were added between the nave and altar, where they double-up as room dividers.

Other recent church renovations on Dezeen include the conversion of a fourteenth century chapel with skeletons in its basement and a Romanesque church with a new marble podium. See more renovations on Dezeen.

Photography is by Harold Koopmans.

Here’s some more information from AWG Architecten:

Leegkerk Church, The Netherlands: Interior Renovation Completed

Renovation work on the interior of Leegkerk church has been completed. awg architecten has designed a new education and exhibition space, a conference room and polyvalent areas in, on and around a freestanding golden cube inside the monumental church.

The historic Leegkerk church, a national monument, dates from the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was originally conceived as a place for contemplation, assembly and refuge on high ground. Leegkerk church is inextricably linked to the locale and to the people of the province of Groningen.

The foundations “Stichting Oude Groninger Kerken” and “Bijzondere Locaties Groningen” realised that Leegkerk church merited a new function as a centre for appreciation of the environment and their (cultural) history. The foundations saw that the church needed to be integrated into their (super)regional recreational/educational networks. Furthermore it was essential that the church retain its original, “traditional” multifunctional spaces for social, cultural and spiritual activities. The range of facilities and their quality – both technical and ’emotive’ – necessitated preeminent treatment. The architecture firm awg architecten, from Antwerp, designed a new interior to achieve these ends and to add a new layer to the church’s long and significant history.

The aim of the plan was to come up with a design for multiple functionality. Certain (prosaic) additions that are necessary for the church’s infrastructure are now housed in a free-standing volume that was constructed to be as compact as possible: a golden cube, a treasure chest as it were, a shrine.

New (revolving) golden cabinets between the nave and the choir function as rotating room dividers. Ample space for modern pursuits is reconfirmed thanks to these additions. Setting the cube at the centre of the church, detached from any walls, defines functional zones and maximises spatial experience. Placing the education and exhibition space on top of this volume, accessible by an almost monumental staircase, accentuates its broad range of possible functions. From this “balcony/stage” it is possible not only to oversee the church interior but also to overlook the landscape of Groningen from an entirely new perspective.

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AWG Architecten appeared first on Dezeen.

A narrow atrium brings daylight into windowless rooms on four storeys at this renovated house in Hanoi by Vietnamese office AHL Architects Associates.

The existing building was a typical Vietnamese “tube house”, with a long, thin plan and few windows. AHL Architects Associates was tasked with reorganising the plan to make better use of space and to increase natural light and ventilation.

The architects began by relocating the staircase from the centre of the house to along one wall, then added a large skylight overhead. They also removed sections of the floor, creating the four-storey atrium and a series of indoor balconies.

“The staircase and corridors were designed not as a simple and boring path but as a continuous and sequential space which becomes a living space,” explain the architects.

The wall running alongside the atrium is lined with white ceramic tiles, giving it a ridged texture, and all of the balustrades are glazed to let more light through.

Just in front of the staircase, the entrance to the house is set within a recessed driveway at the end of a ramped platform. Once inside, residents can walk through to a kitchen on the ground floor or head upstairs to a double-height living room on the floor above.

Bedrooms are located on the first, second and third floors, and the top storey also features a dedicated worship room and a roof terrace.

Another “tube house” we’ve previously featured on Dezeen is the four-storey Stacking Green house, which features a a vertical garden on its facade. See more Vietnamese architecture on Dezeen.

Photography is by Anh Duc Le.

Here’s more from AHL Architects Associates:

4.5×20 House

This house was designed for a young family with one child and grandmother, located in Van Phu, a new urban area in Hanoi, Vietnam. The existing design is boring (like thousands of other houses in Vietnam): lost of natural lighting and ventilation; simple space with core (staircase and toilet) in the middle and two bedrooms at two sides. Client (young family) needs something different from the existing. They need their own house, their style. This situation requires a smart solution for traffic, thereby creating interesting solutions of space, daylight and natural ventilation.

Based on their requirements, the program is quite simple: garage (for 2 cars), kitchen on the 1st floor, bedroom (for grand mother) and living room on the 2nd floor, master bedrooms on the 3rd floor, small guest room, sky terrace and worship on the 4th floor… but they need the architects focus on the creation of public spaces.

With a simple strategy “traffic creates space and function”, we started by changing the location of staircase. Unique and continuous spaces were proposed based on the new staircase. The staircase and corridors were designed not as a simple and boring path but as a continuous and sequential space which becomes a living space.

Along with identifying new locations for staircase, the voids are also determined for natural lighting and ventilation. An atrium in the middle of house was created to bring daylight to lobbies and all rooms without window to outside. In addition, that allows full connection between the four levels of the house vertically.

The central space is the biggest volume where a double height living room locates, is surrounded by opening staircase, autrium and big windows.

The restrained and limited material palette of white painted ceramic tiles, wood, and glass avoids unnecessary ornamentation in order movement through a variety of opening spaces.

Type of development: Renovation of typical tube-house
Dimension: 4.5×20
Location: Van Phu New Urban Area, Hanoi, Vietnam
Status: Finished
Cost: 112,000 usd
Date: 2012

Architects: AHL architects associates
Architects in charge: Hung Dao, Tuan Anh Mai, Son Chu, Hieu Hoang, Nghia Mai, Tung Nguyen, Truc Anh Nguyen

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AHL Architects Associates appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese studio nano Architects has inserted a sunken circular living room into a 1960s apartment in Fukuoka (+ slideshow).

The apartment hadn’t been renovated since its construction and contained three traditional Japanese rooms lined with tatami mats. The renovation by nano Architects retains just one of these spaces, while the remaining two are converted into a split-level room with the sunken circle at its centre.

“The design concept is for the coexistence of two styles of different eras,” said studio principal Yasuhiro Shinano. “I believe that the use of a Japanese-style room transplanted with a new design can be given a new value.”

The architect installed a wooden platform around the edge of the room to create the central hollow, which has a contrasting concrete floor. Acid yellow panels wind like ribbons around the floor and ceiling, while a string curtain forms a see-through partition in between.

Four spherical pendant lights are suspended within the room, connected to a grid of cables that snake across the ceiling.

Other Japanese apartments featured on Dezeen include one where a wooden plank extends through three rooms and one where the floor was laid using timber from the ceiling. See more architecture in Japan.

Photography is by Yasunori Hidaka.

Read on for a project description from Yasuhiro Shinano:

The Times Transplantation Building

Abstract

Sanno apartment was completed in 1967. Since 1967, this room has not been renovated. This room has been renovated only after 45 years.

This room, which was completed in 1967, is a Japanese style. Re-sectioning part of the Japanese-style room, I transplanted the new style in 2012. The design concept is for the coexistence of two styles of different eras. My intention is to make the birth of the room with a new value. I believe that the use of a Japanese-style room transplanted with a new design can be given a new value.

The Times Transplantation

Loss of value of the space left behind the times. Cutting off a part of it and removed, transplanted and compound a different times there. This seems to like a surgical operation, but it is also like a plastic operation. These are classified by 3 parts of lifeline that is, first, “a drainage pipe, a service pipe, and a gas pipe” as vein, and “electric wire” as nerve, at last, that is “oil supply machines” as internal organs. To displace the broken lifeline and transplant new items.

Space left behind the times in 1967. Cutting an incision in the part of the interior that make up the surface like the skin. The same way as the fresh air is brought through the open door, the world of 2012 is transplanted into the world of 1967. It seemed as if value was lost in 1967 by remix of design effect that different times stand in line, new values like a new story were produced. Paralleling of the world of 1967 and 2012, different times and design are born as combination of different times of the space.

Architects: nano Architects
Location: Fukuoka, Japan
Designer: Yasuhiro Shinano
Area: 48 sqm
Year: 2012

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by nano Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Mirrors curve down from the ceiling on thick steel frames at this hair salon in Berlin by German studio Karhard Architektur + Design (+ slideshow).

Constructed from a combination of black steel and oxidised stainless steel, the suspended mirrors create a pair of two-sided styling stations in the large front room of the Viktor Leske salon.

Karhard Architektur + Design used a materials palette of concrete and steel for the surrounding surfaces of the room. “The only briefing from Viktor Leske was to create something extraordinary,” architects Thomas Karsten and Alexandra Erhard told Dezeen. “We tried to use less materials to create more atmosphere.”

The floor is concrete, while wooden ledges line the walls to provide seating areas and a concrete lectern forms a reception desk.

A few stairs lead up to a second room at the back of the salon, where a hair-washing area is surrounded by illuminated panels that change hue from blue and green to pink, purple and red.

“The design concept deals with the different characters of the big front room and the narrow back room,” said the architects. “We tried to find two different expressions in material and light.”

Other recently completed salons include one in Japan with a wooden lattice across one wall and one that looks like a cross between a warehouse and a dungeon. See more salons and spas on Dezeen.

Photography is by Stefan Wolf Lucks.

Here’s a little more information from Karhard Architektur:

Viktor Leske International

In the middle of “Mitte” Karhard has created a second salon for hairdresser Viktor Leske.

A striking element are the mirrors made from black steel and oxidized and polished stainless steel which are suspended from the ceiling. In combination with dark wood and concrete they provide a minimalist yet warm atmosphere.

The constriction of the space in back is dissolved by an elaborate light installation within a folded mirror wall. The wall, made from glass, one way mirrors and mirrors, can be rhythmically lit by programmable LEDs. Clients can hang out at the black bar, which comprises the waiting area.

Project name: Viktor Leske International
Completion: 02/2013
Construction area: 65 sqm
Owner: Viktor Leske
Architects: karhard architektur + design

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Karhard Architektur + Design appeared first on Dezeen.