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Dimensions, Croatia’s four-day underground electronic music festival, is a veritable force for any fan to take on. The festival’s UK-based team gathers over 300 artists to perform in Fort Punta Christo’s seven unique venues, and…

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London Design Festival 2013: designer Philippe Malouin built an analogue 3D printer to create moulds from piles of sugar for this range of plates and bowls (+ movie).

The Dunes collection by Canadian designer Philippe Malouin has been commissioned for Staffordshire ceramics company 1882 Ltd.

Malouin’s custom-made machine features a box frame and a wooden turntable that is powered by a small motor and controlled by a computer.

Grains of sugar are poured into a funnel and fall onto a spinning cylinder positioned on the turntable beneath, where they pile up to form structures like cylindrical sand dunes.

The resulting shape was used to make a silicone negative, then cast in plaster and given to 1882 to produce in bone china. The final bone china pieces retain a sandy texture and have been finished with a matte glaze.

Originally Malouin tried using sand, however explained the material was difficult to use. “I originally started to try and ‘freeze’ these sand dunes by spraying resin onto them, but each time I would try and cast the resulting shape with silicone, the sand would stick to the cast and the shape would be altered,” said Malouin.

He later realised that sugar was the perfect substitute, as any grains clinging to the silicone could be washed away with water.

The printer created shapes that Malouin said could not be designed by hand or a computer and was perfect for creating plates and bowls. “All that was needed was to change the diameter of the sand dune in order to create a smaller dish,” Malouin told Dezeen.

“I was interested in designing the process that would produce the shape of the dishes. Not necessarily designing the dish directly,” said Malouin.

Here’s a video showing the making process:

The Dunes collection is on display – alongside Max Lamb’s crockery made from lumps of plaster – at the Sand & Clay exhibition at Paper Tiger, The Basement, 10 Exhibition Road, SW7 2HF until 22 September.

See all our stories about Philippe Malouin »
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Photographs are by Eva Feldkamp.

Here’s some additional information from the gallery:

Dunes by Philippe Malouin

Dunes is a stunning collection of fine bone china tableware featuring skillfully hand-crafted plates and bowls from one of the design world’s most applauded new talents. Slip-cast from plaster models, the collection maximises Malouin’s beautifully minimalistic patterns through analogue 3D printing. The analogue 3d printer made by Malouin, creates shapes that cannot be designed by hand or computer. Only movement, imperfection and randomised material deposition form the pieces. The shapes formed are carefully utilised and transformed into functional china pieces, highlighting the skill of the craftsman and creating a collection that wonderfully exemplifies its title of – Dunes.

About 1882 Ltd

1882 Ltd. is thrilled to announce their new collections for September 2013, fusing 130 years of traditional British heritage with fresh and contemporary new designs. The collections feature works from some of the world’s leading talents. These included an extended collection of ‘Crockery’ by Max Lamb, ‘Fragile Hearts’ by Mr Brainwash, ‘Standard Ware’ by Fort Standard and ‘Gashu’ by Alan Hughes and ‘Dunes’ by Philippe Malouin: all made of fine bone china, harnessing the tradition of the company originally set-up by the Johnson Brothers in the heart of the Stoke-on-Trent potteries in 1882. To this day, 1882 Ltd. remains a family business following its rebirth in 2011 by Emily Johnson and her father Christopher.

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for 1882 Ltd appeared first on Dezeen.

This north London house extension by Lipton Plant Architects features a walk-on glass roof that can be accessed by climbing through a window (+ slideshow).

Local studio Lipton Plant Architects added a two-storey extension to the rear of the Victorian townhouse, transforming the kitchen into an open-plan living space and adding a small office and utility room.

The architects used blue slate bricks to build the new structure, contrasting against the original brown brickwork of the existing house.

“The extension has provided a wonderfully modern addition to a beautiful Victorian property and through the dark brick and subtle refined detail, has helped maintain much of the original character of this historic Islington building,” said Lipton Plant Architects.

“We decided to present our client with the blue brick as it was an appropriate material to use in relation to the host building and provided a contrasting natural colour match to the weathered yellow stock,” they added.

The upper and lower levels are separated into two distinct halves by a band of horizontal brickwork, usually referred to as a soldier course.

A small glazed office is positioned above the utility room and can be accessed from the house’s main staircase.

The roof terrace sits above the living room and can be accessed via a window leading out from one of two existing living rooms.

“Providing an abundance of light, the glass roof creates the connection between the upper and ground floor formal living room, and then a less formal dining and lounge space below,” said the architects.

Other London house extensions we’ve featured include an addition to a Chelsea townhouse, a narrow studio with a sloping roof, and a space where a wall of books folds around a staircase.

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Here’s a project description from the architects:

Alwyne Place, Islington

Alwyne Place lies within the Canonbury Conservation Area in the heart of Islington, London. The property is a large semi detached, locally listed Victorian villa. The house is of an impressive scale located on a quiet tree-lined street.

Our clients fell in love with the building’s proportions and location. The building did however require extensive modernisation including the addition of a full width lower ground and part width upper ground floor extension.
The brief was simple, to bring light into the building and restore some of its former historic elegance.

Sitting a little wider than the average similar-sized property in Islington provided the opportunity to introduce large format, thin framed sliding doors across part of the new rear extension elevation. Located above the doors is a large walk-on glass roof with access from the upper ground floor. Providing an abundance of light, the glass roof creates the connection between the upper ground floor formal living room and the less formal dining and lounge space below.

The rear extension works for a number of reasons, the most visually obvious being the choice of material, the Staffordshire Slate Blue Smooth brick. We looked at a number of choices including render, which all too often stains and marks and timber, which would require regular maintenance and is prone to fade with time.

We decided to present our client with the blue brick as it was an appropriate material to use in relation to the host building and providing a contrasting natural colour match to the weathered yellow stock. The slate blue brick was chosen for its colour, crisp straight edges and smooth elevation, creating a strikingly beautiful addition to the property.

The elevation has been broken into distinct halves, the lower and the upper ground separated by a deep soldier course band. The upper floor office comprises a wrap of frameless glass to the wall and roof flanked by two monolithic brick walls framing the view to the landscaped garden beyond.

To the side, overlooking the roof terrace, sits a long thin window providing natural ventilation to the office. The continuous soldier course above the doors is formed from brick slips fixed to a GRP board fixed back to the structural steel. The underside of the lintel has been clad in the same brick concealing the lintel and reinforcing the overall affect. The brickwork has been sealed with linseed oil to provide further protection and lustre.

The extension has provided a wonderfully modern addition to a beautiful Victorian property and through the dark brick and subtle refined detail has helped retain much of the original character of this historic Islington building.

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Lipton Plant Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: the next stop on our Dezeen and MINI World Tour is our home town of London. In our first report, Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs takes a trip through the east of the city and explains why the area has become such a hotbed for design and technology.

Starting off in Stoke Newington, a former village in the north-east of the city where Dezeen is based, Fairs follows the route of an old Roman road called Ermine Street to the city centre, passing through Dalston, Shoreditch and the City of London before ending up at the River Thames.

“These areas have come to symbolise the new creative economy of London,” says Fairs as he passes through Shoreditch, a former industrial district bordering the City of London where a proliferation of architects, designers and, increasingly, technology companies are based.

“They’re stuffed full of digital companies, technology companies, design companies; [there’s] a real focus of new types of creativity.”

Last year, Dezeen celebrated the rich diversity of design talent in the area as part of our Designed in Hackney initiative, which culminated in a day of talks and workshops with many of the borough’s upcoming creative companies.

“We plotted on a map all of the design studios in the area,” Fairs explains. “We found that the pins on the map were so dense you couldn’t see the map behind. It really felt that we’d discovered a critical mass of design talent that is unrivalled anywhere else in the world.”

There are a number of reasons why so many designers set up in London, says Fairs, despite the city being “really expensive, really competitive, really unfriendly to newcomers.”

“London is full of really amazing design schools, I think that’s a really important point,” he explains. “People from all around the world come to London to get their design qualifications; they make friends, they enjoy the culture and they stay and set up studios.”

Another major factor is money, Fairs claims: “There’s lots of money in London. That’s created problems – the property market has been going up non-stop – but it also creates wealth and wealth is the thing that turns the gears of creativity in many ways.”

The wealth of the city is most visible in the new skyscrapers being built to the south of Shoreditch in the City of London, where projects like Richard Rogers’ Leadenhall Building and Raphael Viñoly’s 20 Fenchurch Street, dubbed “The Cheesegrater” and “The Walkie-Talkie” respectively, are transforming London’s skyline.

“London used to be a place where world-class architects didn’t really feel like they could get any decent work” Fairs says. “But now London is really coming into its own.”

Of course, one of the main attractions of Shoreditch for the creative industries was that rents were comparatively cheap. Fairs says it is inevitable that young designers are now being priced out of the area, but is optimistic for the future of designers in the city.

“London is a big city,” he says. “People are already moving further to the east, to the south, crossing the river. London, I think, will always be able to regenerate itself.”

We travelled through east London in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music featured in the movie is a track called Temple by London band Dead Red Sun.

See all our Dezeen and MINI World Tour movies »
See all our stories about London Design Festival 2013 »
See Dezeen’s map and guide to London Design Festival 2013 »

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creative economy of London” appeared first on Dezeen.

Architecture firm dRMM has combined fifteen staircases to create an Escher-style installation outside Tate Modern, ahead of the London Design Festival beginning tomorrow (+ slideshow).

“Stairs are always the most interesting things about architecture, they’re places where people meet,” dRMM co-founder Alex de Rijke told Dezeen at this morning’s opening presentation.

The interlocking wooden staircases are configured to create a maze of walkways and a viewpoints towards the city’s skyline across the Thames.

“It’s up to you what you want to look at, it gets you up high so you can see out over the river to St Paul’s,” de Rijke told us.

Visitors can climb up, down, over and under the structure, with some stairs leading from one to another and others to dead ends.

Steps and balustrades are made from cross-laminated timber panels of tulipwood taken from offcuts usually used for skirting boards.

The vertical panels used to form hand rails overlap to look like treads turned on their side, adding to the optical illusion.

Initially proposed to sit next to St Paul’s Cathedral, the installation was relocated to the lawn in front of Tate Modern – an art gallery housed in a former power station on the south bank of the river.

“St Paul’s was an interesting site but it was very constricted, the project was difficult to realise there whereas this space is much more open,” de Rijke. “This seemed like the best possible place to put it.”

The Endless Stair was created in collaboration with the American Hardwood Export Council and engineering firm Arup.

Taking place from 14 to 22 September, the London Design Festival will also feature a giant chandelier installed at the V&A museum. See our map of all the best exhibitions, talks and parties here.

Photos are copyright Dezeen.

See more design installations »
See more projects by dRMM »
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by dRMM appeared first on Dezeen.