Hasta La Ideas

Rotterdam-based Studio Makkink & Bey, led by architect Rianne Makkink and designer Jurgen Bey, has long envisioned a progressive office in which the multitasking extends to the furnishings: a seat that doubles as a self-contained desk and cupboard, a flexible “WorkSofa,” a cozy chair that can be coupled up to create instant meeting space (the “EarChair,” pictured above). The studio is showcasing these designs and more as part of “Fantasy Room for Working,” an exhibition on view through Sunday within the Creative Lounge MOV, a huge shared office space in Tokyo. Earlier this week, among the KadE Chair, Vacuum Cleaner Chair, stools, and aprons, was Bey himself–he put his designs to the test by working from the flexible fantasy office for eight days. Studio Makkink & Bey’s Prooff (Progressive Office) “working and living landscape” interior was also recently acquired by Utrecht’s Centraal Museum, where parts of it are on view through May 25. Take note, Marissa Meyer.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This week Dezeen is in Cape Town so here’s a steampunk-inspired coffee shop in the city by South African designer Haldane Martin.

As the headquarters for local coffee chain Truth Coffee, the cafe occupies the ground floor of an ageing warehouse that Haldane Martin stripped bare as part of the renovation.

The space centres around a huge vintage coffee roaster, which inspired the design concept. “We immediately came up with steampunk as an appropriate conceptual reference, as both coffee roasters and espresso machines display elements of romantic, steam powered technology,” explains the designer.

A leather-covered bar runs along in front of the machine and is clad with shiny panels made from pressed tin, while bare lightbulbs and bells hang down from the exposed timber ceiling rafters.

Aside from some vintage pieces, Martin designed all of the furniture for the cafe. This includes high-backed leather seating booths, steel tables with ornate profiles and smaller tables shaped like giant cogs.

A seven-metre-long table runs through the centre of the space and was made using industrial pipes and the building’s old ceiling panels. Stools swing out from underneath and power sockets hang overhead as charging points for laptops and mobile phones.

Original cast-iron columns are dotted across the room, while new glass doors open the cafe out to the street.

Dezeen is in Cape Town all this week on the first leg of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour. Keep watching for more details here.

Past projects by designer Haldane Martin include lamps with ostrich-feather shades and the Slant shelving system.

Photography is by Micky Hoyle.

Here’s a project description from Haldane Martin:

Truth Coffee – Steampunk roastery and café – designed by Haldane Martin

A turn of the century warehouse building on Buitenkant Street, in the Fringe innovation district of Cape Town, was stripped back to its bare bones, and transformed into a Steampunk coffee roastery, café and barista training school. With the exception of the authentic vintage fixtures, all of the furniture was specifically designed for Truth Coffee by Haldane Martin.

Truth Coffee approached us in 2011 to design the interiors of their cafés including a new 1500m² headquarters in Cape Town Fringe innovation district. We were briefed to deepen Truth Coffee’s brand identity and promote their coffee roastery business through interior design.

We immediately came up with Steampunk as an appropriate conceptual reference, as both coffee roasters and espresso machines display elements of romantic, steam powered technology. Steampunk’s obsession with detail and sensual aesthetics also captured the essence of Truth Coffee’s product philosophy – We roast coffee. Properly.

David Donde, the main face behind Truth, loved the idea, as this Victorian futuristic fantasy style and literary philosophy resonated strongly with his “maverick inventor” personality. David worked closely with us throughout the design process, and he and his one business partner Mike Morritt-Smith, physically built many of the designs that we developed for them.

A three story, turn of the century, warehouse building on Buitenkant Street was chosen by the Truth partners to be their new headquarters. The building was stripped back to its bare bones, exposing beautiful cast iron pillars, Oregon pine roof trusses and floors, and original stone and brick walls. We also opened up the ground floor façade onto busy Buitenkant Street with a series of tall steel and glass doors. Most of the buildings natural, aged patina was kept intact and complimented with raw steel, timber, leather, brass, and copper finishes.

The top two floors were converted into creative studio office rental space. The 600m² ground floor was kept as Truth’s headquarters and needed to include a 120 seat restaurant, café, bar and kitchen, their newly acquired 3 ton Probat roaster, a barista trainee school, public event space, coffee bean warehouse, espresso machine workshop, management office, and restrooms.

The huge, fully functioning vintage roaster became the kingpin for the space. Once this was located centrally on the ground floor plan, everything else fell naturally into place. We surrounded the roaster machine with a 6m diameter circular steel shelving structure, reminiscent of a Victorian gasworks.

The leather top main bar, clad in pressed tin ceiling panels, is located symmetrically in front of the roaster shelving. Purpose designed overstuffed, leather and steel, chairs, barstools and copper clad tables create a formal raised dining area in front of the bar. A series of 5 horseshoe shaped, deep buttoned, high backed, banquet seats run down the right hand wall of the space. Each private banquet seat surrounds a leather clad, long, narrow, profile cut steel table.

A small cocktail lounge of blue leather chesterfield couches and a crazy pipe bookshelf is located behind the original industrial lift and a raw steel staircase that leads to the upper floors.

The front café space is dominated by the longest table in Cape Town, a 7.2m long communal table with swing out stools. It is built from industrial pipe, malleable castings, and a table top made from Oregon pine reclaimed from the building’s stripped out ceilings. A flickering candle bulb lighting and power cable installation hangs over the table, cleverly providing laptop and cellphone charging access for the café patrons.

Further café seating is provided by the vintage French worker chairs. The over scaled cog teeth on the edges of the Café tables tops, encourage groups of patrons to engage tables together to facilitate larger informal gatherings.

Further café seating is provided by the vintage French worker chairs. The over scaled cog teeth on the edges of the Café tables tops, encourage groups of patrons to engage tables together to facilitate larger informal gatherings.

The barista coffee school is located in the front right hand corner of the space and has a coffee & sandwich hatch open onto the sidewalk for passing pedestrians. Vintage steel stools and old worn school desks placed on the sidewalk create the ideal environment for a quick coffee break for the creative entrepreneurs that work in the area.

The kitchen, public event space, coffee bean warehouse, espresso machine repair workshop, and management office is located towards the back of the space.The owners of Truth Coffee demonstrated their understanding of the value of taking a concept all the way through to the finest details by allowing us to treat the restroom spaces with the same Steampunk aesthetic – exposed copper pipes, Victorian tap levers, pull chains and floor tiles, spun brass basins, and brass shaving mirrors. The Little Hattery also created the most outlandish Steampunk uniforms and hats for the eccentric staff to complete the look.

With the exception of the authentic vintage fixtures, all of the furniture was specifically designed for Truth Coffee by Haldane Martin and his interior design team. The result is an iconic space with true Steampunk character.

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Haldane Martin appeared first on Dezeen.

Sliding blue and yellow walls hide the sleeping and storage spaces in this 1970s-inspired beach apartment in the south of France by Turin-based designers Studio UdA.

The compact apartment is in a 1970s block overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in the town of Juan-les-Pins on the Côte d’Azur.

Studio UdA’s renovation was inspired by an Italian comedy movie from 1977 called Casotto, which means “beach hut”.

The residents requested a spacious lounge area and two separate sleeping quarters, so the designers built two structures on each side of the space.

The blue and yellow partition walls slide open to a double bedroom and bunkbeds on one side and a further set of bunkbeds on the other.

“Micro-works of architecture made of metal and wood generate unusual spatial relations between the people staying in the apartment,” said the designers, adding that the lightweight structures are easy to assemble and can be altered according to the residents’ preferences.

Teak, a wood frequently used inside yachts and boats in the 1970s, has been used for the kitchen cupboards and bench, while vintage lounge furniture made of wicker and plastic has been placed in the living area.

The walls are decorated with posters from the same period and wallpaper patterned with marine landscapes.

Valter Camagna, Massimiliano Camoletto and Andrea Marcante founded Studio UdA in 1992, and were joined by interior designer Adelaide Testa in 2005.

Other apartment interiors we’ve featured lately include a series of homes on Miami Beach designed by John Pawson and a Barcelona apartment with mosaic floors and decorative mouldings – see all apartments.

See all interiors »
See all projects in France »

Here’s some more information from the designers:

Fun House – Apartment in Juan Les Pins

The project for an apartment in Juan les Pins designed by Studio UdA tackles the issue of holiday homes. The small size of the apartments (40 m²), inside a building overlooking the sea that dates back to the 1960s/70s, provided the input for a study into various ways of setting out space and establishing interpersonal relations. In this way, the decades in question and the communal life of Italian families on the beach in summer holiday locations constitute a sort of latent memory and one of the inspirations underscoring the project.

The beach and the momentary pleasure of a day at the seaside are merely evoked in the design, just like in a well-known Italian film from the 1970s: “Casotto” directed by Sergio Citti, in which the interior of a beach hut along the coast constitutes the entire setting for all the stories about different people related in the film. In the project designed by UdA it is micro-works of architecture made of metal and wood that generate unusual spatial relations between the people staying in the apartment.

As well as managing to physically embody the different patterns of human relations during leisure time on holiday, the chosen design also met the client’s request to have a spacious lounge area and two separate sleeping quarters inside such a confined space, all with sea views. The reference to beach huts and self-built cabanas has led to the creation of lightweight structures inside the apartment; they are easy to assemble, relatively inexpensive and can also be set up according to the inhabitant’s taste and whims, while constantly offering views towards the outside.

The colour schemes of nature are also reflected in the interior colours of the various partitions, whether they be sliding doors or built-in wardrobes. Just like life on the beach, the physical boundaries and cultural differences between people and the various activities they engage in are incorporated in the project: relaxation, children’s games and meal times are all reflected in different shades and tones. This enhances a sense of sharing inside the domestic space.

The stylistic languages used for setting out the spaces do not immediately distinguish the various functions of the elements into which the apartment is divided. This enables conventional hierarchies between spaces and the people inhabiting them to be broken down, focusing on relations between the members of the family and people sharing vacation time together, just as is the case in the aforementioned film in which all the relations and stories involving the various characters take place inside the beach hut.

Above: axonometric projection

The general idea behind the project points towards the materials used: from teak, a type of wood frequently employed in the nautical industry in the 1960s/70s, vintage lounge furniture made of wicker and plastic, and also more decorative features such as the wallpaper showing marine landscapes and posters designed by Domenico Gnoli from the period in question, characteristic of a certain way of looking at the world through details. A part evoking the whole, an absence that actually alludes to a presence, just as the word ‘vacation’ refers to a making way for something else: Fun House because sharing is always an enjoyable experience.

The post Fun House by
Studio UdA appeared first on Dezeen.

Spanish architects Anna and Eugeni Bach have renovated an ageing Barcelona apartment to show off its mosaic floors and decorative ceiling mouldings.

Located inside a 100-year-old building, the apartment had been kept in bad condition but the original floors and ceilings were still intact, so Bach Arquitectes planned the refurbishment around them.

The room layout matches the original plan, so the colourful tiled floors still line up with the walls. However one wall is removed to convert two former bedrooms into a combined living and dining room.

The architects swapped the kitchen and bathroom, creating an ensuite for the main bedroom.

The floor in the new bathroom is raised by 60 centimetres to squeeze a bath in underneath the shower. Three steps lead in from the bedroom.

Shelves added to the hallway form a makeshift library with a long bench running along underneath.

Furnishings were also planned by the architects, but include various items from the client’s former home.

“We understand the furnishing of a house as a long-term process,” Eugeni Bach told Dezeen. “The design of the home should be open enough to accept these new elements, furniture, objects, books. On the other hand we usually design some elements to allow these things to be collected and placed well in the house.”

Bach also explained how they chose a few pieces, including the art on the living room walls: “We suggested a couple of pieces, like the Bouroullec lounge chair in the living room, the 14 Gordon Matta-Clark prints on the living room wall and the Kuutti Lavonen ‘Barabbas’ lito-offset,” he said.

Above: layout diagram – click for larger image

The apartment was completed in 2011 and is located in Barcelona’s Ensanche district.

Above: floor plans – click for larger image and key

We’ve featured a few Barcelona apartments in recent months. Others include one where mosaic floors reveal changes to the layout and one with sliding partitions and bright green surfaces. See more apartment interiors on Dezeen.

Above: detailed section through new bathroom

Other projects by Bach Arquitectes include a children’s playhouse in Finland.

Photography is by Tiia Ettala.

Here’s a project description from Bach Arquitectes:

Apartment Refurbishment in Consell de Cent, Barcelona

This project changes the manner of inhabiting a flat in Barcelona’s Ensanche district through small and very specific operations that make the most of every corner as if dealing with a jigsaw puzzle and giving over the protagonist role to the existing elements, conserving, reusing or modifying them in order to create new spaces that seem to always have been like this.

The project consisted of the integral reforms of a dwelling in Barcelona’s Ensanche district that dates from the year 1910 and had never undergone any substantial modification in its 100 years of history. The state of the flat, however, was deplorable, as its previous occupier suffered form compulsive hoarding syndrome and had accumulated all kinds of waste, leaving many of its elements in very poor condition. The ceilings (with magnificent rosettes and mouldings) and the floors (hydraulic paving made from small ceramic pieces) had been conserved relatively well, as was the case with some of the original joinery.

The starting point therefore consisted of conserving a layout that would permit the suite comprising the magnificent existing ceilings and floors to be maintained, concentrating any necessary changes required by the new programme on the spaces that did not possess such characteristics.

In order to meet this objective the work was done room by room in an attempt in each case to adapt the new programme to the rooms defined by ceilings and floors, recessing wardrobes or shifting partitions without modifying the limit of the rooms so that they would gain in functionality without losing their original limits. All the joinery has been conserved in either its original position or by shifting it to new rooms opened up in the flat’s “interior” volume, always respecting the original position of the floors and windows giving on the patio.

The generous height of this flat has been made use of to raise the floor of the en-suite bathroom by 60 cm, making room in a single space for the bath underneath the shower as well as a very useful storeroom-pantry underneath the floor, accessible from the corridor and next to the kitchen. This raising of the bathroom also means that in order to access it three steps have to be climbed from the bedroom, giving the flat a greater feeling of “domesticity” by introducing an element that is more typical of a detached family house than of a single-story flat.

A characteristic space of this reform is the long internal corridor, quite common on this dwelling typology of Barcelona’s Ensanche. This space had an ideal width for converting it not only into a transit space but also into something more, in such a way that with a few simple shelves that stretch the full length of the corridor and with a few low units of the same length the corridor space has been transformed into an ample library and a place for storage.

A few Ikea tabletop lamps hanging upside-down from the ceiling contribute to giving the space a surrealist touch while providing a very pleasant specific light.

Architect: Anna & Eugeni Bach, arquitectes
Completion date: 2011
Built surface: 130 m2
Constructor: Petropolis, S.L.
Site: c/ Consell de Cent, 423, Barcelona

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by Bach Arquitectes appeared first on Dezeen.

Croatian design studio Brigada was inspired by cigarettes and smoke rings to create glowing cylindrical rooms for an exhibition about the culture of smoking (+ movie).

The Culture of Smoking: From Taboo to Taboo took place at the Gliptoteka gallery in Zagreb and focussed on the role smoking has played in Croatian art, photography, graphic design and film over the last 150 years.

Brigada was interested in the idea of smoking as a social taboo. Although a ban on smoking in enclosed public places in Croatia was lifted in 2009, there are still strict regulations on the promotion of smoking in the country.

In response, the designers wanted to hide the paintings, photographs and artefacts on show. They created a series of glowing fabric cylinders, which they describe as “reminiscent of smoke circles or oversized cigarettes”.

The interior of each space was lit from above to avoid any shadows, plus artworks and prints were hung from scaffolding structures, as they couldn’t be mounted onto the walls.

The walls of the surrounding gallery were painted black to contrast with the brightness of the white fabric. Curtains hung over the entrance to every room.

Past projects by Brigada include an installation for a book that can only be identified in the dark.

See more exhibition design on Dezeen, including an architecture exhibition with looping walls and a performance exhibition filled with concertinaed ribbons.

Photography is by Domagoj Kunić and Domagoj Blažević. The movie is by Red Studio.

Here’s some extra information from the designers:

The Culture of Smoking: From Taboo to Taboo / exhibition design

Brief

Glypthoteque HAZU, an art institution in Zagreb, Croatia, wanted to explore the link between smoking, art, and the concept of taboo – a hazy relationship made even more complex by Croatia’s strict laws on the promotion of tobacco. The resulting exhibition, The Culture of Smoking: From Taboo to Taboo, ­focuses on the role smoking has played in artistic and popular culture by bringing together paintings, posters, photographs, films and ephemera created over the last 150 years.

Idea

Taking inspiration from the phenomenon of smoke, the main goal of the agency Brigada was to recreate its very essence in the gallery space itself by completely altering a well-known exhibition space. Playing with the idea of taboo, their intention was to design an anti-exhibition – a display that hides the exhibits even from the museum itself.

Execution

They decided to create a ‘nonspace’ that plays with perception on different levels. By transforming and concealing all the existing elements of the gallery and painting the entire area black, the conventional exhibition space disappeared. Inside of it they built a completely new space, one that has no walls or ceilings, only cylindrical display rooms reminiscent of smoke circles or oversized cigarettes.

Softly illuminated from within, their enticing glow invites visitors to come take a closer look. But only after stepping into the space are the objects of taboo revealed. With no walls to hang paintings on, they designed modern easels that hint at the moment of artistic creation – usually in a smoke-filled studio. A special system of freestanding display cases and slender cylindrical rods exhibits smaller objects.

Ceiling lights illuminate the exhibits without creating any shadows to provide a contrast between the outer (black) and inner (white) space without disrupting the ephemeral feeling of the whole exhibition.

The display rooms create an atmosphere charged with mystery, discovery, and sustained interest. Visitors excitedly move back and forth between display spaces, revisit their favorite rooms, and ultimately create their own path through the exhibition.

Design team:
Brigada – Damjan Geber (Creative Director), David Kabalin (Architect, Project Manager), Simon Morasi Piperčić (Product Designer), Marina Brletić (Architect), Kristina Jeren (Architect), Lorenzo Cetina (Assistant)
Bruketa&Žinić OM – Davor Bruketa, Nikola Žinić (Creative Directors), Zrinka Jugec (Account Director), Ana Baletić (Art Director), Branka Lovrić (Designer)

Curators: Igor Zidić, Feđa Vukić

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by Brigada appeared first on Dezeen.