Hasta La Ideas

Wrinkly mirrored walls distort the reflection of an apartment interior in Berlin by local architects Lecarolimited.

The mirrors of different shapes and sizes create geometric patterns across the partitioning walls of the penthouse apartment, surrounding the kitchen, fireplace and seating areas.

Four small tables in front of the mirror-covered kitchen join together to form a six metre-long dining table.

Two guest bedrooms occupy the same floor, while an ensuite master bedroom opens out to a roof terrace on the floor above.

Other popular interiors on Dezeen featuring mirrors include an office with a hidden slide and a hair salon filled with mirrored box cubicles – see all our stories about mirrors here.

Photography is by Gerrit Engel.

Here are some more details from Lecarolimited:

As the result of an invited competition, during the spring of 2010 Lecarolimited was commissioned to remodel the penthouse of a German apartment building, spread over two floors, situated beside an inner-city football ground, on a small but active street in the middle of a large gallery district.

Identifying the existing situation – large apartment, warren of partitions and closed rooms – we instead proposed a unitary object which, not boxing-off, simply shapes and shelters each different activity.

This principle ambition was developed into a new surface logic which, becoming lounge, bar and kitchen…then wall again, instead guides gently with a continuity from space to space.

We tested options and settled on a ‘mirror-belt’, a chimerical insertion which by wrapping also representationally enfolds. In doing this we embraced the variety metaphors in such a material.

We projected into the design both a tradition of Loos-ian sensuality, as well as Mirror’s history of associations with myth and magic; a notion of the unnatural or sinful, where mirror feeds identities, and represents likenesses with an ever-so-slightly distorted truth. Meanwhile, both the material and the spatial application facilitate the dynamic and whimsical aspect over a German city roof-scape.

We constructed the new interior surface as discrete objects on site. Constructed by our carpenter as wooden substrate, they are finished for the ‘mirror-belt’ using a custom painted bespoke glass. The unique character of this material ultimately defrayed the intensity of a standard mirror, each piece arriving in small and nonuniform panels.

Our carpenter worked with the master pattern, which was adapted as the fragile individual glass pieces would allow. Each piece was split by hand, one by one to fit its own space. Full of individual streaks and waves to us seeming though a view from the sea floor or puddle, the defragmentation of the surface animated the space through its ambivalence and partiality.

Main living and bedrooms share the language of this new super-surface, while guest quarters operate thematically
in the space of the reverse or underside. A new darkened coridoor leads to the separate child-like, colourful spaces for the guests, both rooms in a separate character.

The dining table „Triangle Table“ was specifically developed for this apartment. The table has multiple configurations, as a six-meter-long dining table or four smaller tressles, flexibility which allows the room to be used for dining or entertaining. This dynamic profile generates a different view for each guest, and in contrast to most six-meter tables, establishes no hierarchy.

The apartment was also subject to site-specific commissions which were integrated into the design; the Japanese light-artist Takehito Koganezawa, Terry Rodgers, Lori Hersberger Jason Martin.

Private Apartment 400m2
Location: Berlin, Germany
Completed: 2010

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NE by Teruhiro Yanagihara	No Picnic by Elding Oscarson	Très Bien shop by Arrhov Frick

Plywood shingles create fish scales on the walls of a clothes store at Bondi Beach, Sydney, while spherical lights hang from the ceiling inside fishermen’s nets.

Australian architects MAKE Creative designed the shop interior for retailer Little Joe, in line with the branding style developed by ex-model Gail Elliott.

Shingle-covered walls are a feature of every Little Joe Woman store.

The fishing nets are in fact made from cords of black satin.

Walls inside the changing rooms are lined with a montage of photographs.

Austrian architects Superblock have also designed a building featuring scale-like cladding – see our earlier story here.

Photography is by Luc Remond.

Here’s some more text from MAKE Creative:

The latest Little Joe Woman store is located in the Beach House, a new arcade development that links the beachfront of iconic Bondi beach with the eclectic retail precint behind.

The Little Joe Woman brand, designed by ex-model Gail Elliott, has its origins in the Hamptons, origins that are reflected in the screen clad in shingles, an element that is repeated and reinterpreted in every Little Joe Woman store.

In the Bondi store, the store is housed in an exposed concrete shell, with a curved screen of raw plywood shingles wrapping around the space. The clothes display units act as a counterpoint to the unfinished quality of the space, with their sleek white powdercoat finish.

A contemporary reworking of glass fishermans’ floats forms an intriguing lighting installation over the main sales counter, adding to the urban beachside aesthetic. Created in-house by MAKE, a series of opaque glass spheres are knotted together with black satin cords.

The changerooms are lined with a signature collaged wallpaper created by MAKE especially for the Little Joe Woman stores. The wallpaper is built up from a series of layered sheets reproducing elements from Gail Elliott’s eclectic inspiration boards.

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Pop-Out House by Mut Architecture	Sneakerology by Facet Studio	Japanse Winkeltje by Nezu Aymo Architects

A shelving unit displaying children’s clothes doubles up as a plywood playhouse with a sliding staircase, swinging doors and removable furniture.

The playhouse occupies a children’s clothes shop in Paris, designed by French studio Mut Architecture and architect Benjamin Mahon.

The set of steps slide out to allow shop-workers to reach the highest shelves, while a hollow box on wheels rolls away to provide an island table.

Other interiors that integrate children’s play areas include a perforated bedroom wall that can be used as a ladder and a bed with a play den below.

Photography is by Mut Architecture.

The following short description is from the architects:

In collaboration with Benjamin Mahon, Mut architecture has completed a children’s store in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

The main concept for the store was to construct a large doll house within the store, a house you can pull drawers out of, swing doors from, ‪a doll house that lends itself to the imagination of children‬.

Ladders on wheels are embedded in the structure of the house, and a box is set within the house and can be removed to be used as a central island within the shop, to expose products.

From the street the giant house seems to be overwhelming the volume of the 16 meter square shop.

We used poplar plywood for the interior of the store with white stratification and mirrors to accent the fresh feel of the wood surfaces.

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Training Dresser by Peter Bristol	Rocker by Doshi Levien for Richard Lampert	Under My Roof by Christian Vivanco

The timber stalactites of an undulating cave-like ceiling bear down around the bar of a coffee shop in Łódź, Poland.

Light bulbs dangle from between the curved plywood ribs of the Zmianatematu cafe, which was designed by Polish architects xm3.

Shelves are slotted between ridges in the wall, behind a bar that is also made from the ribbed timber.

Patches of plaster are visible on walls, which are intentionally left unfinished. See our archive feature on unfinished interiors here.

Planes of glass atop wavy plywood grids provide coffee tables.

Other interiors on Dezeen featuring slatted timber ceilings include a restaurant with a fanning tree-like canopy and a ski resort cafe with timber lattice partitions.

Photography is by Paulina Sasinowska.

Here are some more details from xm3:

Restaurant: “zmianatematu.”, Piotrkowska 144, Łódź

The city of Łódź located in the centre of Poland is one of three biggest cities in the country. Before the II World War a highly prospering city with lots of industries, now is troubled with poverty and social problems. Although it has high aspirations to be a cultural oriented city of artist and students. Aiming to be a design, fashion and film capital of the country, it acquires the concern from many great architects and artists who are willing to create concept designs for a delayed rebirth of the city i.e.: Daniel Libeskind, Frank Ghery, David Lynch to name a few.

The restaurant is located in the very centre of Łódź – on the most important street in the city – Piotrkowska. The street – once a symbol of wealth of the one of the richest cities in this region of Europe is now an axis of mostly poor and degenerated district with monumental architecture from before the II World War.

With a very small budget we created an outstanding space to host the artistic and culture parties for the creative youth of the city. The owners of the restaurant want to propose a space for happenings, art-exhibitions, and various art-oriented venues.

As young architects from the Capital City Warsaw with the local Łódź art-oriented youth investors we tried to aim at city’s condition and aspirations and create a reminiscent of the cutting-edge environment which has a connection with the city identity. The city’s name translates literally as “a Boat”. Inspired by a Boston BanQ restaurant we tried to create a blobish form similar to the boat roof form which eats in the old monument-building’s space.

The building itself dates to the end of XIX century. The elevation is a typical Neo-classical style. During the years the ground floor has changed function several times. Now being empty and unfinished the inside offered us the space to take and adjust. We decided to leave it as raw as it was possible. The proposal was to make the floor from the epoxy mass, leave the walls in raw roughcast and take the electrical installation out and leave it on the walls covered in steel, black tubes.

The only element added is this alien form, a “hub” that creeps to the volume from the inside of the building, which then creates the bar and divides the space in to several functional areas.

We can also see another division. This what is new and touches with the recently renovated external elevation of the building (the outside classical world) is new and white. The internal: dividing and construction walls as well as ceiling are in raw roughcast.

The “hub” itself is cnc cut plywood. It is designed by sectioning the form, generated by adjusting to the space and to all installations hidden by it. The sectioning and preparing for fabrication was done in Rhino/Grasshopper software. During the prototyping phase we decided to do some additional furniture for the restaurant as the mock-up for the real structure.

The furniture designed for the interior are the coffee tables, made of sectioned grid plywood and the bench which morphs from the bar counter.

Author: xm3
Project team: Maciej Kurkowski, Julian Nieciecki, Mateusz Wójcicki

Location: Łódź, Poland
Client: Eudezet S.C.
Total Area: 104 m2
Usable Area: 62 m2
Volume: 369 m3
Design: 2010
Construction: 2011

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MS café by Wunderteam	Tree Restaurant by Koichi Takada Architects	OneSize by Origins

Milanese collective Carnovsky have decked out east London bar and gallery DreamBags-JaguarShoes in their wallpaper that changes under different lighting conditions.

Called RGB, the papers are printed in red, green, blue and yellow to reveal different layers of imagery when viewed with coloured lighting.

Big game emerge from the undergrowth in red lighting, monkeys in blue lighting and a jungle of plants in green lighting.

A series of limited edition prints is also on show.

DreamBags-JaguarShoes is named after the two shops that occupied the space in the 1980s. The same signs still hang on the shop front.

The exhibition continues until 21 September.

Here are some more details from Carnovsky:

RGB by Carnovsky at DreamBags-JaguarShoes

RGB is a work about the exploration of the “surface’s deepness”.

RGB designs create surfaces that mutate and interact with different chromatic stimulus.

RGB’s technique consists in the overlapping of three different images, each one in a primary color.

The resulting images from this three level’s superimposition are unexpected and disorienting.

The colors mix up, the lines and shapes entwine becoming oneiric and not completely clear.

Through a colored filter (a light or a transparent material) it is possible to see clearly the layers in which the image is composed.

The filter’s colors are red, green and blue, each one of them serves to reveal one of the three levels.

In each image three layers live together, three worlds that could belong to a specific animal kingdom or to an anatomical part, but at the same time connect to a different psychological or emotional status that passes from the clear to the hidden, from the light to the darkness, from the awakeness to the dream in something that could be a sort of exploration of the surface’s deepness.

We have always wanted to explore the concept of “Jungle” or really tangled, intricate and dense tropical forest, and for the exhibition at DreamBags-JaguarShoes we have created some new pieces, new wallpapers and new limited edition prints about this idea.

The jungle subject, with its exuberant, twisted and redundant vegetation that hides bizarre creatures, lends us to the exploration of another theme: the night.

For the first time in fact we are presenting some pieces from a new series that represents an evolution of our RGB project: RGB – The black series.

They follow the same original RGB principles but inverted, so it works over a black background and, looking through the filters, lights or transparent materials in the three colors, the worlds appear on negative.

The space at DreamBags-JaguarShoes that was already divided in two, gave us the idea to divide the installation in two parts, one white and one black, as if they were the day and the night.

Through a green filter or light it is possible to see the jungle clearly, and through a red all the jungle animals appear, well, not all of them, the blue filter makes an entire guffawing monkey’s tribe emerge embroiling with the other creatures behind the dense vegetation.

Carnovsky is a Milan based artist/designer duo comprised of Francesco Rugi and Silvia Quintanilla

28th July – 21st September 2011

DreamBags-JaguarShoes
32-34 Kingsland Road, Shoreditch,
London E2 8DA

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D’espresso by Nemaworkshop	Mocha Mojo by Mancini Enterprises	Restaurant at the Royal Academy by Tom Dixon