Rather than a simple reference guide, “Coffee Makers: Macchine da Caffè” is the first encyclopedia of coffee machines and extensive exploration of the history of making coffee. The result of…
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Giada is a unique case of Chinese-owned, Italian-designed fashion branding—and so far the only existing case in the world of luxury. The Asian side is invested in by RedStone…
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Monolithic limestone totems and cast bronze pedestals punctuate the interior of this Milanese fashion boutique by architect Claudio Silvestrin (+ slideshow).
Claudio Silvestrin combined natural materials including leather and different types of stone to give the interior of the Giada store in Milan’s Montenapoleone fashion district a luxurious feel.
Regimented rows of roughly-hewn limestone columns create a textural backdrop to the clothes, which are hung on geometric metal rails.
The changing rooms feature walls and floors made from leather with handles given an antique bronze finish.
Blocks of cast bronze with differing dimensions provide pedestals for the products, a display island, a screen for the cash desk and a bench in the VIP room.
Rectilinear white leather armchairs continue the geometric theme.
A water feature runs along one of the walls, which are made from porphyry stone with a water-jet finish.
Claudio Silvestrin previously designed a kitchen island made of porphyry stone, which the architect used in his design for rapper Kanye West’s Manhattan apartment block.
Other fashion boutiques that have appeared on Dezeen recently include the extension of Paul Smith’s Albemarle Street store in London, and a boutique in Brussels that features cacti, gravel, concrete floors and a wooden bridge.
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by Claudio Silvestrin appeared first on Dezeen.
by Stefano Caggiano Formafantasma—a studio based in Eindhoven, Netherlands—is run by Italian designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Ferrasin, who have become famous over the past few years for their alchemical approach to design and their use…
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“A living room with a laboratory” is how Pavé defines itself. Located in Milan in the trendy area of Porta Venezia, this bakery and pastry shop represents a singular case of young entrepreneurship and quest for…
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Toiletpaper is one of the best examples of how a niche magazine done right can become a mass phenomenon. This photography-only publication was born in 2010 from a collaboration between artist );…
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The MuSe Museum by Italian architect Renzo Piano has opened to the public in Trento, Italy, and features angled profiles that echo the shapes of the nearby Dolomites mountains (+ slideshow).
The science and technology museum forms part of a wider regeneration by Renzo Piano Building Workshop of Trento’s Le Albere district, a riverside site that formerly housed a Michelin tyre factory. The museum is positioned at the northern boundary of the new neighbourhood, beyond housing, offices, a hotel and a new public park.
Comprising a mixture of steel and glass panels, the dynamic roofline juts up and down between three- and six-storey heights to create a rhythm with the mountains beyond, as well as to divide the building into four sections.
“The idea of the roofs was important because we are in a deep valley, and the area is really visible from above,” project architect Danilo Vespier told Disengo magazine. “You just need to drive half an hour into the mountains and you can look down on the area as if it was an architectural model.”
The two central sections accommodate exhibitions dedicated to natural history, from mountains to glaciers. These galleries centre around a full-height atrium where taxidermied animals and skeletons are suspended below a large glass ceiling.
A huge glass-fronted lobby provides an entrance to the museum, leading visitors to the top of the building so that they make their way down through the exhibits. To its east, an adjoining block contains administration and research departments.
The smallest section of the building is positioned on the western side and functions as a greenhouse for cultivating tropical plants, which are irrigated using rainwater collected from the rooftops.
The entire building is built over a pool of water that emerges around some of the edges. A series of canals feed into the pool from the streets of the new masterplan, while the Adige river runs along the southern boundary of the site.
Renzo Piano has completed a number of buildings over the last 12 months, from The Shard skyscraper in London to a flat-pack auditorium in Italy and a small wooden cabin at the Vitra Campus in Germany.
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Here are some extra details from Renzo Piano Building Workshop:
The Ex-Michelin Area – The “Le Albere” District, Trento
Overview
The area extends from the railway line and Palazzo delle Albere, on Via Monte Baldo, up to the left bank of the River Adige.
This area has an extremely high potential, but is constrained between two physical and psychological barriers to the east and west: the railway, separating the area from the town’s nearby historical centre, and Via Sanseverino, which acts as an urban boundary between the area itself and the river’s natural environment.
The project is mainly aimed at reintegrating the existing urban landscape and exploiting the site’s relationship with the river environment by making better use of its natural resources.
The project’s secondary goal is to urbanise these localities, which for social and cultural reasons have become marginalised with respect to the rest of the city, by including a range of different structures (such as residences, office buildings, shops, cultural venues, conference centres and recreational areas) and by concentrating their volumes within just one sector of the area in order to free up enough space for a large park.
This new district is primarily characterised by its innovative urban fabric, which features a specific dimensional hierarchy of roads, pathways, squares and open spaces.
Via Sanseverino and Via Monte Baldo provide Road access to the area. This new urban fabric is also relatively traffic-free. It is restricted to residents, taxis and public transport, and offers numerous pedestrian walkways that wind into the courtyards of certain building complexes.
The new district therefore offers an atmosphere of meeting places, open spaces, workplaces and trade areas, where individuals can easily get around on foot and explore the large number of aggregation points within this widely varied environment.
The main east-west streets, which traverse the railway embankment in order to unite the new road scheme with that of the existing urban fabric, are lined along their entire length by two rows of trees, and lead directly into the park area on the shores of the River Adige, where cultural and recreational centers are expected to arise.
In accordance with the plans that have already been established by the City Council, it will be necessary to construct new railway underpasses for vehicles and pedestrians, to render this connection both physically and visually feasible.
The construction volumes have even been calculated based upon an examination and careful analysis of the City of Trento’s historic centre, as well as the way in which the different activities will occupy the urban spaces themselves and the proportions between the width of the streets and the heights of the surrounding buildings.
In fact, due to the height, the cadence and dimensional scale of the buildings themselves, which are comparable to those of the city’s historic centre and the existing industrial structures, the project favours a horizontal interpretation of the relationship between the new buildings and the open spaces foreseen by the design.
The entire new district will feature a number of 4 to 5 storey buildings, with an in-line or courtyard layout, along with the presence of two “special objects”, serving as aggregation points at all hours of the day, for both the complex’s residents and the rest of the city.
The Science Museum
The new Trento science museum is located in the northern portion of the new district foreseen for the Ex-Michelin area, and is housed is what is known as the A-block, situated at the end of the main pedestrian route that connects the area’s higher-end activities with the functions of the greatest public interest. It is also located in close proximity to the new public park and Palazzo delle Albere, with which it will boast a respectful and productive relationship.
The idea was based on establishing a perfect compromise between the need for flexibility and the desire for a precise and consistent response to the scientific content of the cultural project itself. The museum’s magnificent exhibition themes can even be recognised in the form and volumes of the structure itself, all while maintaining the flexible layout typical of a more modern museum.
In addition to the volumetric interpretation of the museum’s scientific contents, the architectural design has also been dictated by the museum’s relationship with its surrounding environment: or rather the new district, including the park, the river and Palazzo delle Albere. Thus, all these inputs have physically taken shape thanks to the clearer definition of the specific architectural elements that make up the rest of the district itself, above all in terms of its tertiary, residential and commercial functions.
The building is made up of a sequence of spaces and volumes (solids and voids) resting (or seemingly floating) upon a large body of water, thus multiplying the effects andvibrations of light and shade. The entire structure is held together at the top by its large roof layers, which are in complete harmony with its forms, thus rendering them recognisable even from the outside.
Starting from the east, the first structure houses functions which are not available to the public, such as administrative and research offices, scientific laboratories and ancillary spaces for on-site staff. Next, we find the lobby. It is aligned with the main axis of the district and traverses the entire depth of the building towards the north, overlooking the park area outside Palazzo delle Albere.
The scientific themes of the mountain and the glacier are subsequently dealt with through a series of exhibition spaces, which gradually rise up from the basement level and nearly “break through” the roof, thus creating an observation point immersed within the environment, from which a true “simulation” of the real experience can be enjoyed. This experience is highlighted by ample exhibition spaces on two or three levels, with ceilings high enough to welcome extremely large sets and backdrops.
The building’s shape and/or “rain forest” function also serves to define is interior space and functionality. In fact, the building represents a large tropical greenhouse which, during certain periods of the year, is even capable of establishing a functional relationship with the specific exhibition stands (even outdoors), in which water, lighting and greenery often play a key role in defining the visitor’s natural surroundings.
The educational and laboratory services for the public are offered in a series of aboveground structures located alongside the exhibition areas, thus promoting interactive experiences for each individual subject matter.
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Building Workshop appeared first on Dezeen.
by Ike Onyewuenyi Fashion portraiture in the vein of street style has typified Francesco Vezzola’s creative oeuvre for the last five years, with his PIMPUMPAM work being coveted by…
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Since publishing a residential extension in Italy by architects Plasma Studio earlier this month, we’ve picked another faceted house from the studio’s archives located in the same South Tyrollean village.
Plasma Studio designed the Cube House on a steep site between two existing properties in the village of Sesto, high in the Dolomite mountains.
Triangular sections of the facade jut out to meet the slope, fusing the building with the site.
Main access to the house is past two parking spaces on the lower level dug into the hillside.
The staircase dog-legs up through the centre of the house, surrounded by the living, dining and kitchen area on the first floor. Bedrooms occupy the top storey.
Generous south and east-facing balconies and terraces double the amount of useable floor space. “We opened the facade as much as possible in order to widen up the tight interior,” said the architects.
The house is wrapped in slanted wooden slats, which help to screen balconies and terraces from the main road while still offering views to the mountains through angled openings.
Facing the hill behind, the back corner of the property is rendered white like the surrounding buildings and punctured with small rectangular windows.
Plasma Studio have designed another project in the area – a hotel clad with similar angled wood panels just down the valley.
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Photography is by Cristobal Palma.
Here’s the project description from Plasma Studio:
The major constraints of this project, its steep site, compressed between existing buildings and very limited allowance of development volume have shaped the form of this house.
It is inserted into the earth with two covered parking spaces to the front from where a small stair case leads up to the main living zones in the first floor and further to the bedrooms in the second floor.
Compact circulation
Because of the limited available floor area the staircase and circulation had to be designed in a very space-saving way – this lead to the continuous organisation in the first floor: the single functions cooking, eating and living are positioned around the circulation core in order to give connectivity and privacy at the same time to the single activities.
The staircase and built-in furniture piece, which is storage, oven and service cavity at the same time, divides and connects as a short cut at the same time. On the second floor the single sleeping rooms are connected to each other in the shortest possible way.
View and shelter
Given prominent location of the site directed towards the south and the Dolomites we opened the facade as much as possible in order to widen up the tight interiors – on both main floors ample balconies and terraces double the available floor area and offer great places to play for the kids and rest for the parents.
In order to provide shelter from the views of the passing by road a layer of wooden sticks was wrapped around the big openings directed to the south – depending on the varying size of the openings they provide different degrees of shelter and intimacy.
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Plasma Studio appeared first on Dezeen.
Italian architect Antonino Cardillo used roughly textured plaster to create lumpy brown surfaces across the upper walls and ceilings of this apartment in Rome (+ slideshow).
Using the geometric ratio of the golden section, Antonino Cardillo designed House of Dust with a horizontal division that separates living spaces and furniture from the coarse plaster walls and ceilings above.
The architect wrote: “[I was] craving for primordial caverns, for Renaissance grotesques, for nymphaeums in Doria Pamphilj, for faintly Liberty façades in the streets off Via Veneto.”
Windows are sunken within deep recesses and together with a series of rectangular doorways they emphasise the line dividing top and bottom.
The architect also added a series of arched doorways, intended to reference fourteenth century Italian paintings, which conceal both rooms and cupboards.
One of these doorways features a pink glass doorknob that signifies the entrance to the master bedroom and bathroom, tucked away in the corner of the residence.
The rough plaster surfaces are missing from these spaces, where instead walls and ceilings are coloured in a pale shade of pink. There are also concrete washbasins and a cylindrical shower concealed behind a ghostly white curtain.
The kitchen surrounds the perimeter of the bedroom and can be screened behind a pivoting wall.
The living room is just beyond and features a wooden floor resembling a large rug. Furniture here includes small green tables designed by the architect, large grey sofas and a marble dining table.
Other residential interiors we’ve featured from Italy include a renovated house with honeycomb-patterned floors and an apartment with a rooftop swimming pool. See more architecture and interiors from Italy »
Photography is by the architect. The short film (below) was directed by Pasquale Marino and features a pair of boxers sparring in the apartment, while the ceiling above them appears to be crumbling away:
Here’s a project description from Antonino Cardillo:
House of Dust by Antonino Cardillo architect
In this house classical orders and proportions celebrate dust. The golden section divides the sides of the living room: a light grey base supports a ceiling of rustic plaster of the colour of the bare earth. Craving for primordial caverns, for Renaissance grotesques, for nymphaeums in Doria Pamphilj, for faintly Liberty façades in the streets off Via Veneto. A balanced sequence of compressions and dilatations makes up the space of the house.
On the walls, passages and windows appear, now dug out of the base, now like carvings in a baguette. A series of arches, abstract memories of fourteenth century Italian painting, disguise doors and cupboards. Among these, one studded with a pink glass doorknob introduces the intimate rooms, which too are distinguished by the palest pink on the walls: yearning for dawns and flowers, the colour of beauty, the colour of beauty that dies.
Design and project management: Antonino Cardillo
Client: Massimiliano Beffa
Date: September 2012 – March 2013
Address: Rione Ludovisi, Rome, Italy
Surface: 100 square metres – 1,076 square feet
Featuring ‘Triumviro’ tables designed by Antonino Cardillo
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Antonino Cardillo appeared first on Dezeen.
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