A refurbished nineteenth century Italian house with tiles arranged in honeycomb patterns across the floor is the latest instalment from our A-Zdvent calendar. Read more about Casa G+S »
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Casa G+S by Grooppo appeared first on Dezeen.
Students at this cooking studio in Lithuania can prepare meals at worktops with knife-shaped legs, before sitting down to eat in a dining room carpeted with fake grass.
Named Ciop Ciop, the cook-for-yourself restaurant functions as a venue for one-day culinary classes and was put together by Lithuanian designers Martynas Kazimierėnas and Paulius Vitkauskas within an old factory district in Vilnius.
“The establishment is named after the expression ‘chop-chop’, giving a clue for fast, tasty and painless food preparation experiences,” said the designers.
Cooking pots are suspended from the ceiling as lampshades, while plant pots filled with herbs are dotted across the tabletops and surfaces.
“These herbs are important, because the ones in stores don’t have the same taste and they also give a nice touch to the interior,” Kazimierėnas told Dezeen.
Mismatched chairs fill the dining room, but each one is painted white or upholstered with white fabric to give a unified appearance. Diners are also encouraged to take off their shoes and walk barefoot across the grassy floor.
The worktops with knife-shaped legs were especially created by the designers for the studio. “We believe that designers should always reinvent things, even such classics as a table,” said Kazimierėnas.
Another cooking studio we’ve featured recently is a baking school with translucent screens and lamps made from top hats.
This week we’ve also published a restaurant with a bar made out of cooking pots. See more stories about restaurant design.
Photography is by Darius Petrulaitis.
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and Paulius Vitkauskas appeared first on Dezeen.
A hospital lounge for recovering patients is the next extract chosen by Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs from our Book of Ideas. The book makes an ideal Christmas gift and is available for just £12.
“There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how design has lost its sense of social responsibility and indeed, a lot of the stuff we publish on Dezeen doesn’t set out to make the world a better place,” says Fairs. “Meanwhile there are vast tracts of human experience that are virtually design-free zones. Hospitals wards fall into this category – they’ve barely changed since the days of Florence Nightingale and are often miserable, frustrating places to stay or visit.”
“Priestmangoode have, off their own backs, rethought the hospital ward with the same care they might apply to a hotel or passenger jet interior. Even the name Recovery Lounge makes you feel better; so much more positive than Acute Care Ward or Critical Care Unit, which seem designed to scare patients.”
“The Recovery Lounge is one of those ideas that isn’t yet a reality, but deserves to be,” he concludes.
The name alone suggests a radically different approach to hospital design. Rather than a ward, which conjures images of rows of beds, this is a lounge where people can relax. As opposed to focussing on the illness or the medical procedure, it is a place for recovery. Recovery Lounge is a self-initiated project by Priestmangoode. The industrial designers have extensive experience in designing interiors for passenger jets, hotels and airports, and wanted to see if they could apply the lessons learned in those sectors to the neglected area of hospital interiors.
Intended for people recovering from minor operations, the lounge offers each patient their own zone, which is carefully oriented to maximise privacy. These zones are designed for comfort as well as efficiency, with furniture raised above the floor to allow easier cleaning, and push-button reclining beds like those found on aeroplanes.
The lounge borrows its staggered layout from first-class airline cabins, allowing more beds per square metre and improving sight lines, so staff can easily monitor patients and attend to their needs in a shorter amount of time. This in turn could save money by reducing the number of nurses required.
Recovery Lounge is part of a report published in 2010 by Priestmangoode called the Health Manifesto, which looks at how better hospital design could lead to health benefits for patients and significant cost savings for the NHS.
Read more about this project on Dezeen | Buy Dezeen Book of Ideas
Dezeen Book of Ideas features over 100 fascinating ideas for buildings, products and interiors from the world’s most creative brains. The book’s A5 format makes it highly accessible and the £12 price tag makes it the ideal impulse purchase or Christmas gift.Buy the Dezeen Book of Ideas now for just £12.
Reviews of Dezeen Book of Ideas
“From flip-flop art to a mirrored retreat in the sky” – Wall Street Journal
“The Sliding House and The Book of Ideas: Radical Thinking Required” – Forbes.com
“Fairs personally guides readers through the wonders of innovations like a balancing barn, a textile-skinned car, and the first aesthetically pleasing CFL — all of which share an ‘I wish I’d thought of that’ awe factor” – Sight Unseen
“Fabulous” – It’s Nice That
“Totally wonderful!” – Naomi Cleaver
“Handsomely repackages Dezeen’s coverage of the best in architectural, interior and design ideas” – Glasgow Herald
“Teeming with innovative projects handpicked by the people behind Dezeen … readers will be hard-pressed not to find something to gawk over in this intriguing new compendium of beautifully articulated concepts” – Dwell Asia
“Beautifully laid-out, to suit the content, and straight-shooting, non-convoluted descriptions make it user-friendly as well as eye-catching” – Lifestyle Magazine
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by Priestmangoode appeared first on Dezeen.
Eslava&Sauras of Valencia has redesigned the European headquarters of Velcro in Barcelona, using the brand’s handy hook-and-loop fasteners to construct flexible screens and lampshades (+ slideshow).
“We wanted to convey the new values of the Velcro brand through the use of open, transparent spaces,” explain designers Luis Eslava and Lorena Sauras.”The goal was to achieve a creative, modern, and dynamic environment, including movable walls that combine spaces and a bright, upbeat atmosphere where white dominates a few splashes of colour.”
The designers used a spherical mould to build the red globe-like Velcro lampshades, which hang in the corridor and reception spaces.
Glass screens separate the reception from a small exhibition area, while Velcro pads on the wall display a map of the world.
Planting boxes line the edge of the long corridor, leading through to a row of three glazed conference rooms.
Here, the designers have used Velcro strips to create semi-transparent screens that can be easily adapted or moved to provide more or less privacy.
Other projects we’ve featured that use Velcro include a set of stick-like partitions and a collection of lighting.
Other well-known brand headquarters we’ve featured include the Amsterdam offices for drinks brand Red Bull and the headquarters of cake brand Sara Lee in Cologne.
See more office interiors on Dezeen »
Photography is by Jordi Adriá.
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by Eslava&Sauras appeared first on Dezeen.
The new Tokyo flagship store for Japanese fashion brand Takeo Kikuchi has been specifically designed by Schemata Architects to offer a richer experience than online shopping, with spaces for relaxation as well as display.
“Today we can easily buy clothes online, and we already have enough knowledge and experiences and know how to judge good products from bad ones in our economically maturing society. What is the role of a flagship store then?” questions Schemata‘s principal Jo Nagasaka.
The architects created the new Takeo Kikuchi store within an existing three-storey building in Shibuya, where they upgraded the glazed facade that is typical of most retail buildings by adding timber-framed windows that can be opened individually to let fresh air into different spaces.
“We questioned the fact that most shops and offices are enclosed without natural ventilation throughout the year and usually heavily air-conditioned in summer and winter,” explain the architects.
Inside, wooden boxes create partitions and display cases that look like packing crates, while chairs, stools and benches are dotted around between.
There are no checkouts, so shop assistants wander around the store to take payment from customers, who can enter the store using four different entrance points.
Visitors can also take time out from browsing by visiting a garden at the back of the store or having a seat on one of several concrete stools along the shopfront, which the architects cast inside fabric sacks.
On the first floor, glass walls offer a look into the atelier of brand designer, Takeo Kikuchi. ”We intend to create a mutual relationship between designer and customers,” explain the architects.
Other details inside the store include a concrete wall that appears to be padded, a set of reclaimed Windsor chairs that have been sanded to reveal the grain of the wood and cabinets with leather door panels.
“We want to inspire customers to look at things with fresh eyes and minds by revealing ‘extraordinariness’ in ordinary things,” say the architects.
On Dezeen we’ve also featured a Japanese entertainment store designed in response to the rise of online shopping.
See more projects by Schemata Architects, including a food-photography studio and an office with a mirrored wall and a slide.
Photography is by Nacása & Partners.
Here’s a project description from Jo Nagasaka:
Takeo Kikuchi SHIBUYA
Takeo Kikuchi is one of the most distinguished and long-time popular menswear brand in Japan established in 1984. The brand is opening the long-awaited Global Flagship Store in Shibuya.
The site is a very wide and flat site located along Meiji Douri Avenue. Four entrances are located along the street, so customers can enter from various points and freely stroll around the space, while looking at display furniture that is randomly located across the space like a forest.
We didn’t want to set a singular circulation route, and we prepared multiple circulation routes as if the streets are extending into the store. Customers can freely move around and enjoy unique shopping experience according to his/her taste and mood.
We did not provide any cash register counter, as the key to this new Takeo Kikuchi store is intimate person-to-person communication between shop staff and customers.
So we eliminated cash register counters, which would normally strongly dominate space in typical stores, and encourage direct communication for more joyful shopping experiences.
Above: ground floor plan – click above to see larger image
Completion date: November 2012
Location: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Above: first floor plan – click above to see larger image
Building area: 198.96 sq m
Total floor area: 397.92 sq m(1F+2F)
Floors: 1F 2F
Structure: steel
Above: front elevation – click above to see larger image
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Schemata Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
Polish studio Mode:lina Architekci built a tank out of cardboard tubes to make this pop-up shop for Swedish watch brand TRIWA (+ slideshow).
Located in Poznań Plaza shopping mall in the city of Poznań, Poland, the Tube Tank was designed by Mode:lina Architekci to be low-cost and quick to construct.
The tank is built from over 900 cardboard tubes and held together with brightly coloured ratchet straps.
The architects settled on the material first and then discovered that a tank shape would be a simple and secure way to piece the cardboard together.
“When we did some experiments with strapping the tubes with ratchet straps, the most stable construction looked like a caterpillar tread – we decided to follow this look,” architect Jerzy Woźniak told Dezeen.
The display cabinets for the posters and watches are made from chunky chipboard panels.
TRIWA sales assistants stand inside the tank to sell watches to passing customers.
Cardboard tubes have popped up in a few projects on Dezeen, including an installation in a London department store by Nicholas Grimshaw’s studio and a Japanese boutique made of hanging cardboard tubes.
Previous projects by Mode:lina we’ve featured include a stark police station interior and a London soundscape played through tangled pipes, which we filmed as part of our Dezeen Platform micro-exhibition.
See all our stories about cardboard »
See all our stories about Mode:lina Architekci »
See all our stories about shops »
Photographs are by Mode:lina Architekci.
Here’s some more information from the architects:
Once again mode:lina accepted a challenge, to create a temporary store for Swedish watch brand TRIWA. Goals, similar to previous year, were:
Use of renewable materials – Low cost
Speed of constructing
But above all, to further increase global brand awareness.
Previous cooperation between the two exceeded by far client’s expectations – pictures of the store were published around the globe, both online and offline.
Once more, designers decided to use a very well known raw material – paperboard. Only this time it was rolled into tubes. Over 900 of paper tubes, wrapped with ratchet-straps around cabinets built from raw OSB wood panels. That’s how the Tube Tank was born. Meet Triwa Pop-Up store! See you at Poznań Plaza mall (Poland)!
Project: Tube Tank – TRIWA Pop-Up store
Design: mode:lina architekci (Paweł Garus & Jerzy Woźniak)
Project team: Paweł Garus, Jerzy Woźniak, Kinga Kin
Realisation: November / Listopad 2012
Area: 10 m2
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by Mode:lina Architekci appeared first on Dezeen.
Spectators at the stadium of Greek football team Olympiacos can dine overlooking the pitch at a restaurant with an undulating ceiling and a bar made from cooking pots (+ slideshow).
Designed by Greek studio LM Architects, the V’ammos Restaurant is positioned directly above the stands to give diners a panoramic view into the 32,000-seat Karaiskakis Stadium, located in the south-west of Athens.
The architects made reference to the stadium’s coastal situation by giving the space a wave-like ceiling. “We were inspired by this association and the outcome is the replication of the movement of the sea waves,” architects Mariza Angelidi and Lila Galata told Dezeen.
“The construction was adapted to hide the structural elements and the electromechanical installations, while at the same time allowing access to these units,” they added.
Around 300 metal cooking pots were stacked up in a line beneath a wooden counter to create the bar at the back of the restaurant.
Furniture includes tables with round and square surfaces, designed especially for the restaurant by LM Architects.
Other eateries we’ve featured from Athens include a rustic pizzeria and a dimly lit patisserie.
See more projects from Greece »
Photography is by Studio Paterakis.
Here’s a project description from LM Architects:
V’ammos Restaurant in Piraeus
Karaiskakis Stadium
The shell that houses the restaurant- Karaiskaki Stadium, which is built over the water, was a benchmark in the design proposal.
The wave of the sea that existed in place is introduced in the design of the space in the form of an optically moving roof element. This element, which is the result of parametric design, dominates the environment and gives identity to the restaurant.
Strong feature of the composition is the elongated bar, consisted of 300 cooking pots. The bar is an art installation itself, where the identity of the object is lost to highlight the visual impression created by its repetition and correlation in space.
The linear layout of the floor plan is framed by successive separate rooms and the overwhelming ambience of the stadium.
Total Surface: 300 sq.m.
Design: 2012
Construction: 2012
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by LM Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
Interior Design magazine is gearing up to add five members to its Hall of Fame: hotel interiors whiz Alexandra Champalimaud, product designer Patrick Jouin, Seattle-based architects Jim Olson and Tom Kundig, and the multitalented Michael Vanderbyl, who currently serves as the Dean of Design at California College of the Arts (having taught graphic design there for more than 30 years). They’ll be honored at a gala on Wednesday evening at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where the inductees will join the storied ranks of ID Hall of Famers such as Thierry Despont, Frank Gehry, Albert Hadley, and Andree Putman.
Then, on Thursday, the magazine moves downtown, to the Pei Cobb Freed & Partners-designed Goldman Sachs HQ, for its Best of Year Awards. Among the products and projects up for the honor–which comes with a snappy Harry Allen-designed lightbulb trophy–are Gensler’s offices for Facebook, the LED-embdedded swoop that is the Taj lamp designed by Ferruccio Laviani for Kartell, a riveting metallic wallcovering by Phillip Jeffries, and Zaha Hadid‘s London Aquatics Centre, which is something of a ringer in the “hospitality: beauty/spa/fitness” category.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Japanese firm Torafu Architects renovated this auto repair shop in Tokyo to make it look as sleek as a car showroom (+ slideshow).
Type One, located in the Ogikubo area of Tokyo, was designed by Torafu Architects to function as a display area as well as a body shop. “We designed [it to] look like a showroom in order to welcome clients who visit here to repair their car,” they told Dezeen.
The skylights have been tidily boxed in with aluminium panels, which reflect more natural light into the shop, while strip lights travel down the ceiling in two narrow lines.
The walls are covered in cement-bonded wood strips, which feel rough to the touch and add to the utilitarian aesthetic. A new partition wall has also been added to conceal a storage space.
The two-post car lifts are painted grey to blend in with the muted tones of the walls and ceiling and to set off the colours of the cars.
The architects also designed grey push carts and trolleys so that mechanics can easily store and move their parts and tools.
“We treated these new elements as equal to the elements that were originally present, by adopting these material and expressive items that are both essential and emblematic to a repair shop,” the architects told Dezeen.
We’ve featured lots of projects by Torafu Architects on Dezeen, including a concrete house for a wheelchair user and a desk that looks like a doll’s house.
See all our stories about Torafu Architects »
See all our stories from Japan »
Photographs are by Takumi Ota.
Here’s some more information from the architects:
Speedshop Type One
We designed the renovation of a body shop specialising in Honda vehicles that would function as a repair shop as well as a display floor for visitors. The design calls for maximising the working area by thoroughly sorting out essential and non-essential elements with a focus on servicing functionality.
As elements of the interior design plan, we adopted material and expressive items that are both essential and emblematic to a repair shop, such as gray two-post car lifts, aluminum fittings and tool wagons. Care was given to treat elements that were originally present the same way as new ones, such as the aluminum canopy hanging from the top lights, push carts and the rough-feeling cemented excelsior board walls.
The design highlights the vehicles on display in the repair shop by using desaturated colors and common materials to adjust the tone of the space where the old blends with the new.
The picture of a shop with cars on lifts, exposed engines and tools is aimed at creating a functional yet slick-looking space that can serve as a promotional area.
Principle use: Vehicle repair shop / factory
Production: Ishimaru / Sanraku
Building site: Ogikubo, Tokyo
Total floor area: 458.98 sq m
Design period: 2012.07-09
Construction period: 2012.09-10
The post Speedshop Type One
by Torafu Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
Rubber-coated fabric is pinned to the walls and ceiling of this fashion boutique in Zagreb, Croatia.
Croatian architect Vanja Ilić designed the interior as both a shop and exhibition space for fashion designer Branka Donassy, who has a studio nearby.
“Not only was the treatment of the fabric inspired by Donassy’s sculptural forms, perfect cuts and avant-garde fashion garments, but all of the textile elements in the implementation of the project were manufactured in Atelier Donassy,” Ilić told Dezeen.
The shop is located within an old building in the north of the city and the pinned fabric reveals the outline of an existing barrel-vaulted ceiling.
Lighting is positioned behind the material and diffuses through as a subtle glow. Meanwhile, clothing can be suspended from hooks at each of the pinch-points.
Black and white curtains surround changing rooms at the back of the store, while the few solid walls and surfaces are made from black-painted chunky chipboard.
We’ve previously featured a couple of fashion boutiques with fabric interiors, including a temporary store in Budapest and a Melbourne shop covered in tights.
See more fabric interiors on Dezeen »
Photography is by Miljenko Bernfest.
Here’s a project description from Vanja Ilić:
Donassy Open Atelier, temporary exhibition space and shop, Zagreb, 2012
The Donassy Open Atelier project created a temporary, flexible showroom whose purpose is to exhibit the work of the fashion designer Branka Donassy and other visiting artists. The existing storefront is in a historicist building, in a zone between Zagreb’s Upper and Lower Town. It has a barrel vault ceiling and is transformed with minimal budget and no building interventions. Architecture and fashion overlap, with the fashion design fabrication techniques completing the unique conceptual whole. The concept references exploration of avant-garde forms, construction and the meticulous nature of the artist’s work itself.
The basic element of spatial design here is an elastic translucent cloth tailored and sewn according to the principles of couture, with no additional construction, anchored into the existing structure just with bolts, in a dotted pattern, which in the end resulted in an autonomous voluminous structure. Thus the whole space is draped in an elastic membrane which is simultaneously a form making element as well as a system to accomplish a diffuse and uniformed lighting, thanks to fluorescent tubes installed between existing vaulted ceiling and the translucent membrane itself. The anchoring elements are at the same time hooks for exhibits. The clothes racks are flexible and mobile so as to ensure quick transformation of space when needed. The rectangular black rubber coated fabric surface on the façade frames the front glass door, covering the damaged existing façade and accentuating the entrance, being a clear link between two worlds, the interior and exterior one. The floor is finished in contrast with the translucent luminous interior membrane, using black painted OSB panels.
Name of the object: Donassy open atelier
Address, town: Zagreb, Croatia
Author: Vanja Ilić
Architectural office: Vanja Ilić Architecture
Client: Donassy open atelier
Net area: 35 m2
Project: year 2012
Completed: year 2012
Costs 2.600 eur
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by Vanja Ilić appeared first on Dezeen.
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