Hasta La Ideas

Raw concrete and rough limestone clad the interior of a London ice cream parlour designed by branding studio Vonsung.

Located inside a historic building in Fitzroy Square, the gelato shop is filled with bulbous black sofas and cylindrical white stools.

Ice cream packaging and signage were also designed using a monochrome palette.

The only colours to be found in the shop are inside the ice cream cabinet.

This is the second story on Dezeen this week about an ice cream shop in London, following an Italian gelato stall that evokes the seaside – see all our stories about ice cream parlours.

Here are some more details from Vonsung:

Polka Gelato

Vonsung recently completed the total identity design for Polka Gelato, from naming, identity, branding, signage, website to spatial design. Based in a conservation area, Fitzroy Square, Polka Gelato opens its doors to showcase their artisanal way of creating ice cream. Despite all the talk of a double-dip recession in the UK, the client’s wish was to offer something enlightening, from old to young, a sense of affordable luxury amid these difficult times.

The ambition of the new ice cream brand was to open a gelato store sourced only from the finest ingredients of precious, exotic fruits, herbs, spices and flavors. The vision was to bring the age-old history of Italian gelato to London, while a recent trip to New York sparked a new revolutionary thought – the gelato popsicle. To realize this vision, London’s design studio, Vonsung, was invited to work on the dream.

The character of the listed building situated near the Fitzroy Square, is clearly that of a London period building. The dilemma was how to avoid the ice cream parlour formula of pop-culture, primary colours interior decoration, without making a disconnected piece of modern design that clashes with the building’s original identity.

An early decision was to place the Polka’s colourful, beautifully crafted gelatos as the central focal point and make the surrounding interior resemble the sculpted nature of the hand-made gelato.

The concept of the store plays with the complementary characteristics and the related dichotomy between male and female; child and adult; night and day. This is reflected in the design through the formal language and tactile quality of the finish materials used. The surrounding interior is unified with a single colour used on all surfaces.

Housed inside a concrete/limestone mix surrounding, the furniture piece on the floor is designed as a strong, masculine and dynamic form whilst the lighting enunciates femininity to create more fluid contour lines. The store is designed in a more playful manner creating different zones that maintain the perspective view between them.

Joseph Sung (Creative Director Vonsung) has strived in his precedent projects to experiment variant ways to explore materials. Among the natural, old, and time-proven material, Sung has derived at lime concrete for this project. Being situated in a historical setting, Sung felt that juxtaposing old and new material would give expected meaning for both, as exemplified using external architectural material within the interior space of the gelato store.

Stemming from the client brief, Sung identified with the key word, ‘artisan’, and made every effort to not to allow the solid masses of concrete material to feel uncomfortable for the visitors, but feel a sense of skill, artistry of the space. The boundaries of the interior wall and ceiling were made to be permeable as possible by way of shadow gaps and openings. Also, to reduce the monolithic manner of concrete, Sung mixed limestone into the batch and applied a smooth finish to the raw concrete.

The result was an interior space, which kindles the feeling of being an insider in an environment; simply put, it recognises what may feel like being within a creamy gelato batch. By adopting this method of design, Sung drew the attention to the timeliness of the space and architecture. All faculties of perception and senses, particularly tactility, facilitate the customer experience.

Known for increasingly severe minimalism, this project is Sung’s latest interpretation of totality of branding design, however restrained and serene but rich in texture and delicate modulated light. With the aim of creating a space that will age better with time, our design creates a circular passage allowing the customer to experience the space in multiple ways and interpretations.

Furniture staged in key points throughout the store creates the spatial concept using a small space changing to an open condition.

Looking from the outside, the interior resembles a tale of a spaceship landed on the moon. If you taste a scoop of Polka Gelato, you may well think you are (over) the moon.

Completed: August 2011
Design: Joseph Sung (Vonsung)
Design Assistants: Jing Chen, Teresa Wong
Branding: Michiko Ito (Vonsung)

Contractor: MKM Contracts
Lighting: iGuzzini
Carpentry: Valchromat
Furniture: Modus, HAY

Click above for larger image

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Dri Dri by Elips Design	Snog frozen yogurt by Cinimod Studio	Leggenada Ice Cream by SO Architecture

Leather-bound blades displayed against chunky wooden blocks adorn the walls of a Finnish knife shop in Helsinki by designers Suunnittelutoimisto Amerikka.

The specialist shop sells furry animal hides and traditional Finnish knives named Puukos, which are crafted in Lapland by manufacturer Martiini.

The knives are affixed by magnets and each block can be lifted to reveal storage behind.

Elsewhere, mounted timber vases display bunches of knives as if they were flowers.

Other interesting shops recently featured on Dezeen include a kiosk made from over 1000 copies of the New York Times and a clothes store with naked mannequins on the walls and ceiling – see all our stories about retail interiors.

The following information is from the designers:

Martiini shop

The “Puukko” is a traditional Finnish knife; a crafted object and an everyday tool. Marttiini has manufactured knives in Lapland, Northern Finland since 1928.

The new Marttiini shop is situated in the heart of Helsinki, with Senate Square and the Cathedral seen from the window. The new shop combines Marttiini’s long tradition and history with contemporary design. The materials used in the shop; wood, metal and leather, are the same materials used to construct the knives. All details have been designed with functionality in mind, allowing this small space to display more than 200 different products. The new Marttiini shop is just like the “Puukko”: beautifully functional!

Shop design: Amerikka Design Office Ltd.
Shop opened: May 2011
Address: Aleksanterinkatu 28, Helsinki, Finland

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Aktipis Flowershop by Point Supreme	Shop&Show by Tracey Neuls	Streetology by Facet Studio

We’ve already run a post this week about toilet paper, so why should we stop ourselves when considering writing about more bathroom-related material? We can’t think of a single reason, other than perhaps dignity, so here we go. The company Cintas has once again brought back their contest/marketing effort with the annual “America’s Best Restroom,” wherein they let we Americans vote on what public restroom looks the most inviting. It’s design-related, sure, as would be expect, some of these bathrooms look about as nice as the come. However, this year our interest was piqued by the promotional stunt because of the inclusion of two culture-based organizations, The Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and the Field Museum in Chicago. Because we’re sure you’ll find all of this extremely important, you can vote on your favorite until September 19th after reading up on the great short descriptions of each facility in the press release. And as this writer is based out of Chicago and therefore obviously biased toward the Field Museum, here’s that:

With two large family-friendly restrooms on the ground floor, the Field Museum features sufficient stalls and sinks, as well as eco-friendly hand-dryers. The women’s restroom has a special nursing room with a shut door, sink, and small sofa for new mothers. The women’s restroom also has a large “Tot Area” with smaller toilets for our littlest guests.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Undulating timber panels line the walls and ceiling of a Japanese hotel room renovated by Touhoku University students.

The project entailed the modernisation of the Hourai 1111 suite in the Kameya Hotel, which is located in the Yamagata prefecture.

Lengths of cypress wrap around the main room to create beds, which face windows with a sea view.

The timber also curls below the windows to create a bench and raised platform.

Doorways on one wall lead to an entrance hallway and study, opposite to a duplicate upside-down doorway that leads to bath, shower and wash rooms.

These three adjoining bathrooms are finished with black paint and tiles, contrasting with the light-coloured spaces elsewhere in the suite.

Other recent Japanese projects with unusual interiors include a house with a basket-weaved timber wall and another designed around the movement of the client’s pet cat – see all our stories about Japan here.

Photography is by Shin Suzuki.

Here are some more details about the project:

By inviting many architects to renovate some standardized rooms, a Japanese-style hotel Kameya (Kame means a turtle) has been trying bringing diversity and prosperity of a town to the large old-fashioned hotel.

Hourai project, the industry-university cooperating project, is a part of Kameya’s renovation project. The top floor of the hotel is renovated as a executive one.

Cooperated by Prof. Masayoshi Takeuchi (Mikan) and associate prof. Masataka Baba (Open A) in Touhoku University of Arts and Design, the regional university and their students designed one of the room.

Also, cooperated by associate prof. Daisuke Nakayama (Daicon. Inc), his student designed graphic arts of the floor. Yasutaka Yoshimura (Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects) was in charge of the project management and designed rest of the rooms of the floor.

Because of the legend of Mt. Hourai-san, where the mysterious turtle and Japanese gods are said to live in, the director of this project, Hiroyuki Komatsu (K.K.H.K Brand Design), gave us a concept Hourai.

Hourai 1111 (Design: Touhoku University of Arts and Design)

It was designed as a big one room to see the horizon through the horizontally long windows with lying on the huge bed. The room is consist of curved surface, which is made of cypress wainscot of 40mm width. And it makes visitors feel so relaxed as if they were enwrapped by something, or they are in the clouds on the Mt. Hourai-san. The big room was arranged as if it whiteouts, on the other hand, the 2 bath rooms were designed as a dark black rooms. One is for the ocean view in front of the room, the other is for a meditation.

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Quotel by Mode:lina	Lords South Beach by BHDM	HI matic by Matali Crasset

Tiled surfaces, scientific apparatus and plastic curtains turn this Paris cafe into a coffee laboratory.

French studio Cut Architectures tore down a suspended ceiling and stripped away wallpaper from the former shop to reveal bare walls and original mouldings.

Visitors to Café Coutume are served drinks from conical flasks and can choose pastries from a white tiled display cabinet.

Flowering plants grow inside stainless steel sinks and an industrial coffee grinder is kept behind a clear plastic curtain.

Flooring and tables in the cafe are made from oak.

Fluorescent tubes hang vertically from the ceiling behind low-energy Plumen bulbs, which won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award 2011 earlier this year – see the story here.

Other recently featured cafes on Dezeen include one flanked by woven steel wire and another overlapping a car park – see all our stories about restaurant and bar interiors here.

Here is some more text from the architects:

Coutume is a new coffee roastery in Paris offering a cut edge selection of pure origin roasted coffees.

CUT architectures designed the first Coutume café in the centre of Paris combining a roastery and a café offering the best coffees in Paris and a neat selection of fresh and organic food and delicacies.

In the spirit of speciality coffee, the experts at Coutume give the opportunity to rediscover the coffee culture with high end tools and machines.

The blend of tradition, alchemy and technique inspired CUT architectures design.

Tearing down the walls and ceilings brought back a typical Parisian interior with high ceilings, mouldings, columns and an old shop door. A new oak flooring adds up to the Parisian atmosphere.

CUT architectures set in this decor a laboratory of coffee using square white tiles, grid lighting, stainless steel, industrial plastic curtains, laboratory glassware.

The plain oak tables were designed for Coutume as the fusion of this Parisian interior and the laboratory.

Coutume café’s design has been selected along wih Rem Koolhaas le Dauphin and Patrick Bouchain’s la Grenouillère by the restaurant critics of lefooding.com

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Grand Cafe Usine by Bearandbunny	Hatched by Outofstock	Federal Café by Barbara Appolloni