Hasta La Ideas

London studio Haptic has created a forest-like lounge at a hotel in Oslo, filled with trees, stacks of lumber and a plant-covered wall.

The open-plan lounge is also the lobby for the hotel, which contains 300 guest rooms and a business conference centre.

The stacked-up timber beams form the reception counter, while the trees create a protective canopy along the edges of a 350-seat canteen.

“The challenge was to provide spaces that felt intimate whilst being easy to get to, flexible and compatible with large-scale event logistics,” Haptic’s Tomas Stokke told Dezeen.

Instead of using matching furniture, the designers have added a variety of chairs by different designers, including Charles and Ray Eames, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, and Jasper Morrison.

A row of timber columns separates the lounge from the hotel restaurant, where more columns fold outwards to shelter dining tables.

In contrast to the busy spaces of the lobby, the guest rooms have a simplified design, with a muted colour palette and plain furnishings.

Another hotel completed recently is the Hôtel Droog, which opened in Amsterdam earlier this month.

See more hotels on Dezeen »

Photography is by Trine Thorsen.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Inspired by Nature

This interior architectural project for a large, 300-room hotel and conferencing venue, is inspired by the stunning Norwegian landscape and uses a primary palette of natural materials to provide variety in spatial composition, form, texture and colour.

The primary design strategy was to rationalise a complex set of interconnecting spaces and functions, providing consistent themes and architectural tectonics, but variety and specific “installations” to define each space from the next.

The main communal space of the hotel is understood through a simple architectural theme, the “big floor”, which is then subtly sub-divided into zones to define the lobby, from the restaurant/canteen to private dining, lounge/library and conference lobby.

The Norwegian forests are a primary inspiration, whereby timber is used through out in very different ways to create semi-permeable screens, cladding to cores, a bespoke square-log reception and bar, right down to details such as signage and loose furniture.

The main lobby space is framed by a stylised forest wall that divides the lobby from the restaurant but allows glimpses between the spaces and filters natural light from the main skylight above.

The lobby is more than a reception and waiting lounge, elevated to a communal dining and meeting point for hotel and conference guests. Subtle lighting has been installed to work with the planted trees, where shadows from their canopies dance upon the articulated lobby ceiling.

The lounge and library space is defined by a slender timber screen, that seemingly goes off for a walk, creating bar shelving, bookshelves, desks and ceiling.

By contrast, the hotel rooms are pared down, with simple, quality materials and custom-made furniture made in collaboration with B&B Italia.

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by Haptic appeared first on Dezeen.

London Design Festival: Zaha Hadid teamed up with hairdressing brand Fudge to create a pop-up hair salon in London last week.

The Fudge Pop-Up Salon was installed in a monochrome gallery space in Clerkenwell, alongside models and furniture designed by Hadid’s studio.

“Zaha wanted to share that beyond buildings we have a large design portfolio of furniture and product design, and Fudge was excited to have her work as a backdrop to their avant garde approach to hairstyling,” explained project architect Melodie Leung.

The salon was located on the lowest floor of the gallery, where a white relief model of one of Hadid’s latest buildings protruded from one of the walls. Named King Adullah Petroleum Studies and Research Centre, this building is currently under construction in Saudi Arabia.

Above: photograph is by Marcus Peel

Black geometric shapes on the floor fanned out from the model, outlining the positions for each hairstyling station. ”The black shapes were designed to integrate the stations with the relief,” said Leung.

The salon was open for just five days, to coincide with the London Design Festival and London Fashion Week.

Other recent exhibitions by Hadid include a collection of paintings and installations in Madrid and a pleated metal funnel at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

See more projects by Zaha Hadid »
See more stories from the London Design Festival »

Photography is by the architects, apart from where otherwise stated.

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by Zaha Hadid appeared first on Dezeen.

French designers Ciguë modelled this north London store for skin and haircare brand Aesop on a 1930s medical laboratory.

Bottles and tubes are lined up in neat rows on metal shelves, intended to reference the “modest utilitarian spaces of the early twentieth century,” says Aesop.

Ciguë used a palette of traditional materials, including reclaimed wood sourced from a 200-year-old French monastery for the floors and cabinets.

A single surface of polished white marble provides worktops and washbasins, with glass taps and pipes that show liquid flowing through them.

Wooden plant pots infill some of shelves, adding splashes of colour between the dark brown bottles, while more leafy plants grow in a hollow behind the sinks.

Aesop regularly commission designers to come up with unique concepts for their stores and Aesop Islington is the fourth one created by Ciguë. Another we’ve featured by the studio is a Paris shop filled with steel caps from the city’s plumbing network.

Other interesting branches include a Singapore shop with coconut-husk string hanging from the ceiling and a New York kiosk made from piles of newspapers. See all our stories about Aesop here.

The brand’s founder Dennis Paphitis also recently started up a gentlemen’s outfitters in an old factory in Melbourne. Read more in our earlier story.

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by Ciguë appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch designer Ka-Lai Chan has wrapped a whole wall, furniture and ornaments behind an all-encompassing layer of sticky tape at an abandoned apartment in Utrecht.

The installation was one of ten created earlier this year by artists and designers in a building set to be demolished to make way for a new housing development.

Chan took over one wall in the living room and covered picture frames, a table, a chair, a clock and a telephone beneath the white tape.

She claims her inspiration for the project was the way people “adapt to society” by trying to fit in, but also want to reveal their own identities.

“The tape makes everything the same,” Chan told Dezeen. “Object and wall are merged and belong together, but the objects are also rising out of the wall and want to stand out.”

Curators Niels Janssen, Felice Mul and Wilke Heijnen coordinated the PLAY Project within the Eiland8 development area at the invitation of developers Mitros and Portaal.

London designer Dominic Wilcox created a similar installation last year, when he coated every item and surface inside an abandoned office with white paint.

See more stories about installations »

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by Ka-Lai Chan appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch design brand Droog has opened a hotel in Amsterdam where guests who venture out from their rooms can attend lectures, visit exhibitions and shops or relax in a ”fairy-tale garden” without leaving the building (+ slideshow).

Above: the Dining Room 

Droog director Renny Ramakers conceived the hotel as a venue that “brings all of our activities under one roof, from curation to product design, exhibitions and lectures, and invites people to plug in as they choose.”

Above: guest suite

Located in a 17th century building that once housed the city’s textile guild, the hotel contains an exhibition gallery curated by Droog and a dining room serving dishes from local neighbourhood recipes.

Above: the Gallery

Droog also have their own store at the hotel, alongside a Cosmania cosmetics area, a Kabinet fashion store and a Weltevree products area.

Above: the Fairy Tale Garden

French Designers Claude Pasquer and Corinne Détroyat created the garden at the centre of the building and filled it with flowers and edible plants to attract birds, butterflies and insects.

Above: Weltevree

Guest suites are located on the top floor of the building and offer a view out over the Amsterdam skyline.

Above: Cosmania

Ramakers founded the Droog brand with former partner Gijs Bakker back in 1993, and it has since become one of the leading conceptual design brands in the Netherlands.

Above: Kabinet

See all our stories about Droog »

Above: Droog Store

Photography is by Thijs Wolzak.

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by Droog appeared first on Dezeen.