Hasta La Ideas

Following the popularity of our story about a Starbucks designed by Kengo Kuma, here are some images of a concept store that the coffee-shop giant has completed inside a historic bank vault in Amsterdam.

Design director Liz Muller assembled a team of local artists and craftsmen to create features that include repurposed oak furniture, antique Delft tiles and wall coverings fashioned from the recycled inner tubes of old bicycle tyres.

Over 1800 individually cut wooden blocks make up the undulating ceiling, while the vault’s original marble and concrete floor has been restored and exposed.

A bakery is positioned at the rear of the store, while raised platforms provide stages for live music or poetry performances.

You can check out the Starbucks by Kengo Kuma and Associates here.

Photography is by Rien Meulman.

Here’s some more text from Starbucks:

Starbucks Coffee Experience ‘Laboratory’ to open at New Concept Store in Amsterdam

In a few weeks, Starbucks will open a new concept store in Amsterdam, but with its ‘Slow’Coffee Theatre, hyper local design, floating community gathering spaces and  on-site baking, Starbucks – ‘The Bank’ is a glimpse into Starbuck’s vision to the future.

While over the last few years Starbucks has gone to great lengths to reinforce the superlative quality of its coffee and products, under the radar they’ve been re-defining the atmosphere in which we drink it. In Seattle, New York, London, Paris and now Amsterdam, Starbucks has been stealthily unveiling unique and highly individualized concept stores across America and Europe.

Starbucks – The Bank

Situated in a 430 square meter subterranean space in the vault of a historic bank on the popular Rembrandtplein, the new shop is the 9th Starbucks concept store to open in the last three years across the globe, but the first shop they are openly referring to as a ‘laboratory’. A large beautiful store inspired by Dutch culture and tradition, ‘The Bank’ will raise the bar on how Starbucks openly innovates.

The laboratory

Considering its well-earned progressive reputation, Amsterdam might be the perfect spot for trying out new things. Starbucks ‘The Bank’ will function as a testing centre for innovative coffee brewing methods in its ‘Slow’ Coffee Theatre and offer small batch reserve coffees available no where else on the continent. It will also premiere Starbucks first ever Clover® brewing system in Europe. The Clover® is one of the most significant innovations in coffee brewing since the introduction of the espresso machine. Starbucks – The Bank will also feature new food concepts including in-store baking. What works at ‘The Bank’ will make its way to the rest of Europe.

Repurposed hyper-local design

As with all Starbucks concept stores, the Amsterdam shop will be a radical aesthetic departure. Under the direction of Dutch-born Liz Muller, Starbucks Concept Design director, more than 35 artists and craftsmen have kitted the subterranean space with quirky local design touches and sustainable materials. Local design details include antique Delft tiles, walls clad in bicycle inner tubes, wooden gingerbread biscuit moulds and coffee bag burlap, and a ‘tattooed’ ‘Delftware’ mural highlighting the important role 17th century Dutch traders played in exporting coffee around the world.

And while all the design and constructions adheres to strict Leed® sustainable building guidelines to reduce the impact on the environment, the designers have gone out of their way to integrate repurposed design. In addition to reclaiming the vault’s exposed concrete and 1920s marble floor, the entire shop is kitted out in repurposed Dutch oak – the benches, the tables and the undulating ceiling relief made from 1,876 pieces of individually-cut blocks. Also a radical departure from Starbucks house style are the various types of chairs and stools, reclaimed from local schools and spruced up.

Neighbourhood hotspot

With window seat cushions, a centrally-situated oak table and multi-level spaces that cameo as stages for local bands, poetry readings and other cultural activities, ‘The Bank’ is positioning itself as a cultural gathering spot in the middle of Amsterdam. With literally thousands of people living within a minute’s walk, the shop will also playfully use social media to communicate relevant moments. For example, the bakery will send out a tweet announcing ‘warm cookies’ the minute a batch rolls out of the oven.

Slideshow: no two items of furniture or pieces of tableware are the same in the dining room that British artist Martin Creed has designed at London restaurant Sketch.

The Gallery is the first in a series of artist-designed spaces planned at the multi-restaurant venue.

Marble tiles zig-zag across the floor, while squares and stripes are painted in bold colours across the walls.

Read all our stories about restaurants and bars here.

Photography is by Ed Reeve.

Here’s some more information from Sketch:

Martin Creed at Sketch

“I want the whole world to be in it”
Martin Creed, 2011

Turner Prize winning artist Martin Creed has transformed the Gallery restaurant at London’s iconic Sketch, in the first of a new long-term programme of artist-conceived restaurants at the venue. The project seeks to blur the boundaries between art, food, design and functionality. Martin Creed at Sketch launches today, 1 March 2012, coinciding with Sketch’s 10th anniversary and a pivotal year for London as a cultural centre.

Through a series of new works both functional and decorative, Creed has created an environment that is at once as an exhibition, an artwork, a restaurant and an Events space. Exemplary of the logical and welcoming systems that recur throughout his work, the floor, walls and furniture take the form of new artworks inspired by the boundaries of art and functionality.

Work No. 1347 consists of 96 different types of marble, in a formation of zigzagging lines across the floor, along with a series of paintings and large-scale wall paintings. Work No. 1343 is a new work specially made for the restaurant in which every single piece of cutlery, glass, chair and table is different. This work brings together a mix of the mass produced and handcrafted, from classic antiques to contemporary design from all around the world.

Sketch’s co-founder and three Michelin starred chef Pierre Gagnaire has designed a new menu in unison with the artist’s concerns, allowing freedom to experiment and create dishes directly influenced by Creed’s artwork. The series of artist restaurants at Sketch will look to establish a forum for artists’ imaginings and innovations in art, design and social space, creating playful propositions for interaction with art in the public realm.

Sketch was inaugurated in 2002 by restaurateur Mourad Mazouz and masterchef Pierre Gagnaire. Mazouz’s commitment to art and design led to the establishment of Sketch Gallery Foundation as a non-profit arts organisation and Sketch has hosted over fifty major exhibitions of moving image over the last decade including work by Carsten Nicolai, John Baldessari, Jonas Mekas and Sylvie Fleury, as well as numerous off-site projects such as the CINACT series at The Gate Cinema in collaboration with Serpentine Gallery. Since 2006 the exhibitions programme has been curated by Victoria Brooks.

With this new initiative sketch continues to contribute to 9 Conduit Street’s rich heritage as a destination for experimentation in design, art and architecture having previously housed the headquarters of RIBA and the Atelier of Christian Dior.

Danish architects 3XN have transformed a warehouse at popular Copenhagen restaurant Noma into an experimental food laboratory filled with modular wooden furniture and star-shaped lighting.

Restrictions placed on the existing structure prevented the architects from affixing anything to the walls or floor of the building, so they instead designed four central storage cabinets to divide the room into a laboratory, a herb garden, a staff area and an office.

Each fabricated from over 500 stacked wooden cubes, the four digitally-designed cabinets take the form of circular towers with protruding arms and are illuminated from inside.

The herb garden-on-wheels was also constructed from a set of digitally-designed components, which all slot together like pieces of a jigsaw.

Architects 3XN received a great deal of press coverage last year, following the opening of their heavily criticised Museum of Liverpool – contribute to the debate here.

Photography is by Adam Mõrk.

Here are some more details from 3XN:

NOMA Lab: An Architectural Cookbook for the Nordic Cuisine

3XNs interior for NOMA Restaurant’s food lab unites the creative worlds of gastronomy and architecture in a modern expression of the Nordic aesthetic.

New Inspiration

As the number one ranked restaurant on theworlds50best.com for two years in a row, the expectations for creative innovation at NOMA are higher than ever before. Therein lay the need for an inspiring ‘experimentarium’ where chefs could continue to take their skills further in the evolution and development of Nordic cuisine. This commission was given to 3XN’s Innovation Unit, GXN, whose experimental design was an excellent match for NOMA’s innovative gastronomy.

We have been happy to work with GXN on the transformation of our former meeting rooms. The result is great and has contributed to not only the space, but also organizational life and inspiration,’ says Founder and Chef of NOMA, Rene Redzepi.

Head of GXN, Kasper Guldager Jørgensen refers to the project as an Architectural Cookbook and says of the collaboration, ‘We move in parallel worlds. NOMA’s dedicated and creative engagement in gastronomy is similar in many ways to GXN’s experimental take on new materials and ingredients in the architectural world.’

Nordic, Raw and Playful

The NOMA Lab is connected to NOMA situated in a former warehouse on the national registry of protected buildings. The tight restrictions meant that GXN was required to design the interior without using so much as one single nail in the walls or flooring. The approach was to design four central multi-functional storage units; each composed from over five hundred uniquely formed wooden cubes. Curving playfully throughout the space, these units divide the 200M2 room into smaller areas accommodating the Food Lab, the herb garden, staff areas and office. Raw and simple, through colours and forms, it captures a unique Nordic aesthetic. True to the restaurant’s philosophy, the NOMA Lab is developed exclusively using Nordic materials.

The organic forms of the furniture pieces stand out through use of integrated light features, which also give the interior a lighter feel. The additional lighting is provided by GXN’s specially developed STAR lamp, whose reflective light casts dramatic geometric shadows into the surroundings.

Three Dimensional Puzzle

The NOMA Lab has been an opportunity for GXN to experiment with digital design methods. ‘For the project, we developed a ‘living software’ which made it possible to send drawings direct to fabrication from the computer. It’s kind of similar to printing a text one has just typed – but instead we are printing furniture pieces,’ explains Kasper Guldager Jørgensen on the design method. In practice, it meant that the interior was delivered as a three dimensional puzzle of over 5000 pieces that were assembled without the help of any carpenters.

In addition to the ‘direct from computer to printer’ interior pieces, furniture manufacturers GUBI, CPH Square and Gaggenau have been major contributors to the NOMA Lab.

Management:
Architect: GXN (Innovation Unit of 3XN)
Project Director: Kasper Guldager Jørgensen, Head of GXN
Project team: Kim Herforth Nielsen, Kasper Guldager Jørgensen, André van Leth, Lila Held, Morten Norman Lund, Lars-Erik Eriksson, Pedram Seddighzadeh, Matthew Scarlett, Bjørk Christensen, Kyle Baumgardner, Elliot Mistur, Tore Banke, Simon McKenzie and Jacob HilmerProject:

Client: Restaurant NOMA
Project Type: Interior Design
Use: Experimental food laboratory, storage, office, personel lounge, meeting room, herb garden
Location: Strandgade 93, 1401 Copenhagen, Denmark
Completion: January 2012
Size: 200 m2
Materials: All done in Nordic wood, for example plywood
Price: Confidential

Click above for larger image

Suppliers and Production:
Kitchen: CPH Square. Contact person Thomas Seloy: Thomas@cphsquare.dk
Household appliances: Gaggenau. Contact person Anne Herskov: anne.herskov@bshg.com
Furniture: GUBI. Contact person Allan Torp: ato@gubi.com
Lighting: Normann Copenhagen (STAR Lamp by GXN). Contact person Johanne Toft: johanne@normann-copenhagen.com
Production: 1:1 Production. Contact person Frederik Agdrup: frederik@eentileen.dk

This maple-veneered staircase twists and turns between the floors of an Olympic Museum in Georgia refurbished by UK and Georgia firm Architects of Invention.

The architects created openings in the interior walls of the four-storey building to connect the new staircase with exhibitions and other rooms on the upper levels.

A new reception desk was also added as part of the renovation, which features a large fissure that makes it look like it’s been sawn in two.

Other projects we’ve featured in Georgia include a knobbly observation tower and a new international airport.

You can also see more stories about staircases here.

Photography is by Nakanimamasakhlisi Photo Lab, Nika Mdivani and I. Kopocova.

The text below was written by Architects of Invention:

National Olympic Commettee House 
Tbilisi, Georgia 2011

This work represents the idea of dynamics in sport with the abstract compositions of the staircase and the reception table.

The first object you encounter is the introverted desk with its never-ending fissure, and then you meet the extroverted staircase – like the open path to Olympus, where the summit meets its own reflection, inferring that striving never ends, that there is no limit to human achievement.

The building was built at the end of the XIX century for a private investor and it was later used as the residence of one of the leaders of the Communist party.

Later it was renovated in the 1960′s for government purposes and remained untouched until this year.

The structure was reinforced at the basement level which allowed us to make significant openings in the walls of the upper stories and place the staircase so it shifted from one space to another thus penetrating the structure.

The staircase was constructed on a steel base with MDF panels and it was finished with maple veneer. The steps and the side railings were made from the same wood.

The staircase was completed in three months.

Project – Office Building Interior
Status – Completed

Location – 22 Machabeli str. Tbilisi, Georgia
Program – Olympic Museum, Geonoch Offices

Building Area – 3000m2
Budget – 1m USD

Credits: Niko Japaridze, Gogiko Sakvarelidze, Nika Maisuradze, Dato Tsanava, Viliana Guliashvili, Ivane Ksnelashvili, David Dolidze, Soso Eliava, Devi Kituashvili PM, Eka Japaridze

Here’s our second project this week by architects Kengo Kuma and Associates – a rural Italian villa converted into a showroom for ceramics company Casalgrande Padana.

The refurbished brick building provides an event space and a series of galleries for product displays.

Large white tiles placed onto pebble-covered floors mark pathways through the building, while some other tiles provide the treads for a staircase that leads to the two upper floors.

More tiles hang from the ceiling as decoration, plus some mounted onto bookshelves function as louvered lighting screens.

This week we also featured a Starbucks coffeeshop by Kengo Kuma and Associates – see it here.

Photography is by Marco Introini.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

Casalgrande, Reggio Emilia, Italy

We converted a private brick house in Reggio nell’Emilia’s grassland to a gallery run by Casalgrande Padana, a tile manufacturer. In its adjacent rotary, we had designed a monument called “Ceramic Cloud” using large-sized tiles.

The design theme for both the Old House and Ceramic House is lightness, thinness and strength of the tile. In 20th century, tile was used as a finishing material for concrete, a kind of cosmetics in architecture.

However, with the development of technology in recent years, they now produce denser, stronger, and larger tiles. Our objective was to create a light, “particled” interior space using those larger tiles.

The tiles are used mainly for treads of the stairs, bookshelves, tables and reflective plates to disseminate light. In each purpose, we pursued delicate details to emphasize the thinness and lightness of the tile.

Adding “lightness” of the tile onto the “weightiness” of the old brick house would be an interesting way to conserve historical architecture. This came from my notion that nature itself could be gradational, and I began to think how we could make things gradational.

If people’s activities also can be described gradational, so would be their houses, in various parameters.

Name of Project: Casalgrande old house
Location: Casalgrande, Reggio Emilia, Italy
Client: Casalgrande Padana
Type of Project: Renovation
Principal Use: Event hall, gallery
Design and Supervision: Kengo Kuma & Associates
Construction site supervision: Mauro Filippini (Casalgrande Padana)
Structure: Enrico Rombi, Alberto Zen (C.C. Prog.), Ejiri Structural Engineers
Number of Stories: 3 stories
Site area: 2540 sqm
Built area: 224 sqm
Total area: 470 sqm
Floor area for each story: GF：189 sqm, 1F：185 sqm, 2F：96 sqm
Height of stories: varies
Height of ceilings: varies
Maximum height: 11,000mm
Maximum eave height: 8,220mm
Structure: brick wall, Steel reinforcements
Utilities, Equipment: BACCARANI & TORRI
Construction: P.L.COSTRUZIONI
Electricity: BACCARANI & TORRI
Air condition and hygiene: PIFFERI IMPIANTI
Design Period：2009.11-2011.04
Construction Period：2010.04-2011.07