3’Hi NYC + LON Berlin-based 3’Hi is bringing their “sweaty dance floor” vibes to New York and London this spring and, for a hint at what’s to come, check out their promo video montage culled straight…
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Architecture studio AOC has renovated a four-storey townhouse in north London, adding wall-hung vintage bicycles and timber mouldings based on the faces of the resident family.
Named Bonhôte House, the nineteenth-century property was remodelled by London-based AOC to create a contemporary family home for a boutique owner, a film producer and their young children.
The house now features an open-plan interior designed to meet the family’s need for space, with a two-storey-high gallery added for displaying vintage bicycles and artwork.
A large portion of the original ground floor was removed, enabling the architects to create the double-height gallery at the front of the house.
The new entrance hall allows natural light to fill the room through an original Victorian window with folding shutters. Two bicycles hang on hooks from an adjacent wall, ensuring that they can be seen from various angles.
Shelving built into the walls provides a space for displaying the family’s large collection of books and objects.
“The family had a fascinating collection of artefacts they wished to display, from Dan Holdsworth prints to Paris flea market nicknacks,” architect Geoff Shearcroft told Dezeen.
To add character, the architects used the facial profiles of each family member to produce a series of bespoke timber mouldings, which are dotted throughout the interior.
These create a ripple effect when joined together and act as a contemporary counterpoint to the original Victorian skirting boards and architraves.
“Much ornament in architecture has the human form as its basis and we continued this tradition with a very literal translation of facial profile into moulding,” said Shearcroft.
Across the lower ground floor, a tiled floor with a basket-weave pattern connects the living space with the kitchen and provides a hard-wearing surface for the growing family.
“We explored a variety of patterns but the basket weave offered the right combination of rich associations, closed openness and playful variation,” said the architect.
In the kitchen, mirrored laminate surfaces create an extension of the pattern and reflect light back into the room.
A slumped concrete sofa sits at the foot of a brass decorative staircase, which leads up to bedrooms and bathrooms on the first floor.
Continuing up through the property, the original floor plan has been altered to connect the master bedroom to an en suite that overlooks the park.
“We re-configured the plan to create a series of different character spaces that were visually and vertically connected,” added Shearcroft.
The house is located in Stoke Newington, just a stone’s throw away from Dezeen’s offices. AOC Architecture previously remodelled an Edwardian property in Golders Green, north-west London.
Photography is by Tim Soar.
Here’s a description of Bonhôte House from the architects:
Bonhôte House, Stoke Newington, London
The Bonhôte House is a four storey townhouse in Stoke Newington, home to a film producer, a boutique owner and their young children. The couple needed more room for a growing family, and for their contemporary art and vintage bicycle collections, than their previous Shoreditch, East London mews house offered. They asked AOC to design a home that felt big yet intimate, luxurious yet useful, sophisticated yet playful, beautiful yet cosy.
The original 19th century property was narrow, dark and unwelcoming, and had been stripped bare by its previous owners. A key architectural move has been to remove a large area of floor, merging basement and ground levels at the front of the house to create a generous double height gallery, into which a new decorative stair descends from the entrance hall. This act of opening-up brings natural light into the basement living space, and creates expansive walls for display of large artworks and objects and for storage of valuable books.
On the upper levels, non-structural walls have been relocated to shape a range of spaces appropriate to the family’s lives. Throughout the property, new doors and internal windows connect individual rooms while maintaining distinctions between them, offering glimpses through the house itself, and then out into the city beyond.
The family wanted a characterful home, contemporary in tone without feeling ‘new’. In response, AOC enriched bare walls with bespoke timber profiles created from the facial profiles of family members – a reinterpretation of traditional mouldings. Used as skirtings, architraves and linings, these ornamental features ensure each room is uniquely tailored to its inhabitants. In the lower, more public, levels, all four mouldings are combined to create a rippling timber lining that softens and connects.
A unique domestic character has been created through deploying a range of materials, chosen for their associative qualities, to create diverse surface effects. A slumped concrete sofa, tinted green, anchors the new staircase at the centre of the plan, before evolving into a kitchen work surface. The use of mirrored laminate on storage units helps them dissolve into their surroundings, while providing endless games of reflection for the children. A basket weave floor pattern, used in a variety of scales and materials, reinforces the individual characters of different parts of the house whilst creating a coherent whole.
The architects worked closely with the family to ensure the house could support the visual choreography of special objects, while still being a practical space, able to manage their storage needs in a discreet, integrated way. The subsequent combination of bespoke panelling with open shelves, interspersed with glazed, mirror and even secret doors, bestows an ‘instant maturity’ upon the home, as though the family have been there for generations.
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flooring to London townhouse appeared first on Dezeen.
British studio Jonathan Tuckey Design worked with a small team and a tight budget to build this timber-lined gatehouse for a west London primary school.
The new gabled structure provides an activities centre and crèche at the entrance to Wilberforce Primary School in Westminster and is the first of two new buildings by Jonathan Tuckey Design.
Project architect Nic Howett subsumed the roles of quantity surveyor and project manager to keep costs down, working only with a local builder and a small team of engineers to construct the single-storey building.
“The project was coordinated by ourselves, proving that good education buildings can be built for little money without the need for bureaucratic processes, framework agreements and multiple consultants,” Howett told Dezeen.
“All that is really needed are designers with a good level of care and sensitivity to design,” he added. “This could be a model for the way small-scale education work is procured in the future.”
Built around a simple timber frame, the exterior of the building is clad with corrugated fibre-cement panels, while walls and ceilings inside feature a continuous plywood surface.
A long rear wall provides a pin-up area where pupils can show off their work. This sits opposite a wall of glazing that opens the space out to a narrow playground.
Three skylights puncture the roof to bring in both daylight and ventilation, contrasting with the building’s predecessor, which Howett says was a dark portakabin that needed artificial lighting all year around. “It really was quite a depressing space for kids to be in,” he explained.
For the next stage of the project, the architects will give the school a new entrance building and community centre.
Interior photography is by Dirk Lindner.
Here’s a project description from Jonathan Tuckey Design:
A new after-school activities centre and crèche for a City of Westminster primary school in West London.
Envisioned as a new gate-house for the school this project was designed with two ambitions in mind: to provide the school with much-needed additional space and to help the school engage with the wider community.
The first phase of the project, which includes an activities centre and crèche, is designed to inspire young minds through the provision of generous natural light combined with intriguing volumes and shapes throughout.
An entire wall is given over to displaying pupils’ work; another is fully glazed and, as a sliding wall, allows learning and play to take place both inside and out. Materials were selected to deliver a completed building for £1600/m2. Profile sheeting was used externally whilst inside a plywood interior that needed little finishing was fitted. Both were detailed to give these materials a finely finished appearance. The materials ground the Annexe firmly in the context of the site whilst providing Wilberforce Primary with a durable building.
“I was impressed by the extensive research they had done. They clearly understood the needs of the staff and users of the building, and this was reflected in the design which was not only fit for purpose, but also beautiful” – Angela Piddock, Wilberforce Primary Headteacher.
Sustainability
The building is primarily timber, consisting of a timber frame and clad internally with FSC and PEFC certified plywood from sustainable sources. Externally the building is clad in Marley Eternit fibre cement profile sheeting, which achieves an A+ rating in the BRE Green Guide. The resulting lightweight structure meant that minimum foundations were required. Forbo Marmoleum flooring was used which achieves a Cradle-to-Cradle silver certificate. Openable roof lights in the building allow for all spaces to be naturally lit and ventilated.
The second stage is to complete the new entrance building to the site which houses a community centre that will give the school a welcome and revitalised presence on the street. This work is on going.
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by Jonathan Tuckey Design appeared first on Dezeen.
A dramatic oak staircase with a sweeping handrail connects the five storeys of this Victorian convent building in south London, which has been converted into four homes by John Smart Architects (+ slideshow).
The Old St John’s Convent and Orchard was renovated by London firm John Smart Architects to create four five-storey properties that retain the original order of the facades while adding modern interventions and overhauling the interiors.
“The distinctive Victorian skin was largely renovated and reinstated to retain as much of the character of the original convent as possible,” the architects told Dezeen.
“New interventions remained largely hidden where possible on the front facing facade, whereas the back facade required opening up to benefit from the south facing aspect and to improve visual connections with the large gardens,” they added.
Extensions to two of the properties incorporate large windows and Juliet balconies looking out onto the garden, and are clad in pale limestone that contrasts with the existing facade.
“Moleanos limestone was chosen as a pure, unapologetically modern solid element which contrasted against the original London brick,” said the architects.
Inside one of the extensions, a double-height void rises from the lower ground floor kitchen and dining area to a reading room above that features a glass balustrade to retain views of the garden.
The kitchen floor is made from polished screed, while oak was used for built-in cabinetry and an adjoining partition that screens the utility area.
A fluid oak staircase at the centre of the house was constructed from staves with standardised sections and assembled on-site. The wood was exposed to ammonia fumes to darken its colour.
Just two types of wedge-shaped staves were used to build the inner and outer curves that form the handrail and the stringer supporting the treads.
“The stairwell concept was to design a heavy vertical sculptured element, providing a solid core to the overall programmatic framing of the house,” the architects explained. “The building’s history meant it felt appropriate for the staircase to have a strong robust presence, which suggested dark oak.”
On the original main floor of the convent, a large oak bookcase acts as a dividing wall between a living area and the staircase.
The bookcase is constructed from the same fumed oak as the staircase, creating visual consistency between these two vertical elements while contrasting with the pale herringbone wooden floor.
Bedrooms and bathrooms are contained on the second and third storeys, with the staircase continuing to a roof terrace fitted between two sections of the sloping roof.
Photography is by Edmund Sumner.
Here’s some more information from the architects:
St John’s Orchard
Set within a tree lined neighbourhood in South London; a distinctive local landmark has been attentively refurbished and crafted into four elegant houses. The Old St John’s Convent and Orchard at 17 Grove Park has been given a fresh lease of life through combining the rich history of the original Victorian building with new contemporary spaces and interventions. Each house is set over 5 floors and spans over 4000 square feet.
The Great Room Floor
Conceived as an open single space, the Great Room Floor provides three distinct areas within the original ground floor of the convent, whilst still maintaining an open dialogue across the floor.
Library
The oak library unit forms a central ‘furniture wall’ in the Great Room. Concealed full height doors allow space to flow freely around it, creating a fluid space. The fumed oak joinery relates to the fumed oak stair, bringing the verticality of the central core into the spatial dynamic.
Staircase Design
The five-storey oak stair is constructed using staves of standard section sizes that were laminated into a bespoke form. Crafted in a workshop, the elements were assembled on-site into a seamless flight that rises through the core of the house. Detailing is reduced to a minimum – just two types of wedged-shaped staves were used to achieve the inner and outer curves of the stair, which serves as both stringer and handrail.
Kitchen and Dining
At the heart of each house is a cooking and dining space situated under a dramatic six-metre high double height void. Framed by a full height oak window and sliding door, it has vistas onto the gardens and terrace beyond. Inside merges with outside, giving a garden backdrop to cooking, eating and entertaining in one light-filled room. The double aspect space can be used to create two distinct atmospheres if desired, each with their own ambiance, for casual family dining and more structured formal dining. A monolithic polished screed floor unifies the space while storage and utility are concealed neatly behind bespoke cupboards and timber clad walls. The kitchen itself is crafted from fumed oak with framed black granite oak doors and an Italian white marble worktop.
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converted convent by John Smart Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
Objects designed to support political activism including a graffiti-writing robot and a giant inflatable cobblestone made to be thrown at police will form the focus of an exhibition opening this summer at London‘s V&A museum.
Disobedient Objects will open at the V&A on 26 July and will be the first exhibition to present innovative examples of art and design developed by countercultures to communicate political messages or facilitate protests.
“Social movement cultures aren’t normally collected by museums, with the exception of prints and posters,” the exhibition’s co-curator Gavin Grindon told Dezeen. “We wanted to raise the question of this absence of other kinds of disobedient objects in the museum.”
The objects that will be exhibited were created by non-professional designers, mostly using craft methods or adhoc manufacturing processes.
These include a variety of dolls, masks and puppets such as the tableau created by American group, The Bread and Puppet Theatre, which was used in protests against the first Gulf War.
Craft skills such as sewing will be represented by items including hand-stitched textiles from Chile that document political violence and a banner created for the Unite union in the UK.
Painted banners and placards featuring humorous or evocative slogans have also been selected.
Grindon, who is an academic specialising in the history of activist art and current research fellow at the V&A, participated in activist movements and organised workshops with protesters to find out which objects would be most suitable for the exhibition.
“The show is about existing design so it made sense to use a documentary approach to find examples of things that have actually been made,” Grindon explained. “None of this stuff is professionally designed, it’s just happening in the public sphere in various ways.”
Other objects set to feature in the show include a shiny inflatable cobblestone thrown at police by Spanish protestors in 2012 as a harmless version of a weapon traditionally used by rioters.
A robot called Graffiti Writer that paints slogans on road surfaces illustrates a more high-tech approach to creating protest tools.
Spanning a period from the 1970s to the present day, the exhibition will include newspaper cuttings, how-to guides and film content to provide additional levels of context.
One specially commissioned film will document the evolution of “lock-on” devices used by protesters to attach themselves to objects or blockade sites.
Objects and imagery will be displayed alongside a text from the curators as well as explanations from the activists about how they came up with the ideas and how they were used.
“What we’d like people to take away from the exhibition is the idea that design isn’t always about professional practice – it’s something that people can get involved in themselves,” said Grindon. “The actors changing the world are doing so using something that they have in their hands already.”
The exhibition’s approach to identifying and procuring objects is in line with the “rapid response” curatorial process introduced by the V&A recently, which has seen it acquire objects including Katy Perry eyelashes and the world’s first 3D-printed gun.
Disobedient Objects will be on show at the V&A from 26 July 2014 until 1 February 2015.
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designed for political protests appeared first on Dezeen.
Competition: Dezeen has teamed up with London’s Design Museum to give readers the chance to win five pairs of tickets for the upcoming Designs of the Year 2014 exhibition.
The Design Museum will host the exhibition of shortlisted projects for its annual Designs of the Year awards, which honour exemplary projects completed in the past year.
A selection of the 76 projects nominated for the Design of the Year title will be displayed, including a mobile phone you can build yourself and a floating school in a Nigerian lagoon.
It will also feature projects by international names such as Zaha Hadid, David Chipperfield and Miuccia Prada – see the full shortlist here.
Five winners will each receive a pair of tickets to the exhibition, which opens on 26 March and continues until 25 August.
Dezeen readers can also receive 25 percent off the admission price when booking online and using the code DEZ25 under the Dezeen Special Offer.
Competition closes 9 April 2014. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeen Mail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.
Here’s some more information from the Design Museum:
Five pairs of tickets to see Designs of the Year 2014 at the Design Museum
Now in its seventh year, Designs of the Year gathers together a year of cutting-edge innovation and original talent; showcasing the very best in global Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphic, Product and Transport design.
Featuring Kate Moss’s favourite app, a floating school in a Nigerian lagoon, friendly lamp posts, a mobile phone you can build yourself and many others, Designs of the Year 2014 include international design stars such as Zaha Hadid, David Chipperfield and Miuccia Prada, alongside crowd-funded start ups and student projects.
This not to be missed exhibition is a clear reflection of everything that is current and exciting in the world. Someday the other museums will be showing this stuff.
As a Dezeen reader, you can also receive 25% off regular admission price when pre-booking here and using code DEZ25 under the Dezeen Special Offer.
More information can be found on the Design Museum website.
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exhibition tickets to be won appeared first on Dezeen.
News: Chilean architect Smiljan Radic has been named as the designer of this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion and is proposing a translucent domed structure of white fibreglass.
The shell-like pavilion will rest on a bed of huge rocks, based on the Castle of the Selfish Giant imagined by nineteenth-century author Oscar Wilde.
“Externally, the visitor will see a fragile shell suspended on large quarry stones,” said Radic. “This shell – white, translucent and made of fibreglass – will house an interior organised around an empty patio, from where the natural setting will appear lower, giving the sensation that the entire volume is floating.”
The translucent fibreglass will allow the structure to glow after dark. “At night, thanks to the semi-transparency of the shell, the amber tinted light will attract the attention of passers-by, like lamps attracting moths,” said the architect.
Smiljan Radic – a 48-year-old architect who before now has built little outside of his native Chile – will be one of the youngest and least-known architects selected by the Serpentine Gallery in the 14-year history of the programme.
“We have been intrigued by his work ever since our first encounter with him at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2011,” said Serpentine Gallery directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
“Radic is a key protagonist of an amazing architectural explosion in Chile. While enigmatically archaic, in the tradition of romantic follies, Radic’s designs for the Pavilion also look excitingly futuristic, appearing like an alien space pod that has come to rest on a Neolithic site. We cannot wait to see his Pavilion installed on the Serpentine Gallery’s lawn this summer.”
The pavilion will open to the public on 26 June and will remain in Kensington Gardens until 19 October.
Last year’s pavilion was designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto and comprised a cloud-like structure made from a lattice of steel poles. Other past commissions include Herzog & de Meuron, SANAA and Peter Zumthor.
Here’s the full press release from the Serpentine Gallery:
Chilean architect Smiljan Radic to design Serpentine Galleries Pavilion 2014
The Serpentine has commissioned Chilean architect Smiljan Radic to design the Serpentine Galleries Pavilion 2014. Radic is the fourteenth architect to accept the invitation to design a temporary Pavilion outside the entrance to the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. The commission is one of the most anticipated events in the cultural calendar, and has become one of London’s leading summer attractions since launching in 2000.
Smiljan Radic’s design follows Sou Fujimoto’s cloud-like structure, which was visited by almost 200,000 people in 2013 and was one of the most visited Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei, 2012; Peter Zumthor, 2011; Jean Nouvel, 2010; Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA, 2009; Frank Gehry, 2008; Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen, 2007; Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond, with Arup, 2006; Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura with Cecil Balmond, Arup, 2005; MVRDV with Arup, 2004 (un-realised); Oscar Niemeyer, 2003; Toyo Ito and Cecil Balmond – with Arup, 2002; Daniel Libeskind with Arup, 2001; and Zaha Hadid, who designed the inaugural Pavillion in 2000.
Occupying a footprint of some 350 square metres on the lawn of the Serpentine Gallery, plans depict a semi-translucent, cylindrical structure, designed to resemble a shell, resting on large quarry stones. Radic’s Pavilion has its roots in his earlier work, particularly The Castle of the Selfish Giant, inspired by the Oscar Wilde story, and the Restaurant Mestizo, part of which is supported by large boulders. Design as a flexible, multi-purpose social space with a café sited inside, the Pavilion will entice visitors to enter and interact with it in different ways throughout its four-month tenure in the Park. On selected Friday nights, between July and September, the Pavilion will become the stage for the Serpentine’s Park Nights series, sponsored by COS: eight site-specific events bring together art, poetry, music, film, literature and theory and include three new commissions by emerging artists Lina Lapelyte, Hannah Perry and Heather Phillipson. Serpentine Galleries Pavilion 2014 launces during the London Festival of Architecture 2014,

Smiljan Radic has completed the majority of his structures in Chile. His commissions range from public buildings, such as the Civic Neighbourhoods, Concepción, Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, Santiago, Restaurant Mestizo, Santiago, and the Vik Winery, Millahue, and domestic buildings, such as Copper House 2, Talca, Pite House, Papudo, and the House for the Poem of the Right Angle, Vilches, to small and seemingly fragile buildings, such as the Extension to Charcoal Burner’s House, Santa Rosa, The Wardrobe and the Mattress, Tokyo, Japan, and The Bus Stop Commission, Kumbranch, Austria. Considerate of social conditions, environments and materials, Smiljan Radic moves freely across boundaries with his work, avoiding any specific categorisation within one field of architecture. This versatility enables him to respond to the demands of each setting, whether spatial constraints of an urban site or extreme challenges presented by a remote rural setting, mountainous terrain or the rocky coastline of his native Chile.
AECOM will again provide engineering and technical design services, as it did for the first time in 2013. In addition, AECOM will also be acting as cost and project manager for the 2014 Pavilion. While this is the second Serpentine Pavilion for AECOM, its global chief executive for building engineering, David Glover, has worked on the designs for a majority of the Pavilions to date. The Serpentine is delighted that J.P. Morgan Private Bank is the co-headline sponsor of this year’s Pavilion.
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Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2014 appeared first on Dezeen.
News: residents of a Brutalist housing development in London have persuaded Channel 4 to screen a home-made version of the broadcaster’s ident after a lengthy campaign against its “inaccurate” portrayal of life on the estate.
The offending ident is used by Channel 4 as programs are introduced and depicts a desolate concrete urban environment strewn with rubbish, washing lines and satellite dishes.
“The ident includes embellishments such as bin bags, discarded shopping trolleys and graffiti — all added in post production,” explained community worker Charlotte Benstead. “The Aylesbury has had a long and undeserved reputation. Channel 4 is just emphasising the negatives.”
“It’s a bad thing,” Benstead added. “It points a finger at anyone living on a 1970’s estate and makes a statement about how people there live.”
Attention has focused on the ten-year-old ident following a recent campaign by tenants to force it off the air. As part of the battle, Aylesbury’s residents teamed up with filmmaker Nick Street to create a new version of Channel 4’s original.
“Residents are fed up with seeing their homes on Channel 4 shown to be dirty and messy,” said Benstead. “We wanted to remake it showing how the estate really is.”
Following continued pressure from the community and widespread media coverage, Channel 4 has offered to showcase the community’s version “based on liking the creative, not on a belief that the original is wrong and needs to be replaced.”
Channel 4 refutes all claims that they have created negative perceptions of the community and vows to continue broadcasting the ident.
In an email to campaign organisers, Channel 4’s Charlie Palmer stated that the ident is “a conceptual creative which doesn’t claim to represent a specific place and is never identified as the Aylesbury estate.”
Channel 4 will broadcast the ident created by Nick Street on Friday 14 March at 9pm after it’s introduced by an announcer. Residents have been promised a preview of the script but are yet to see it.
The Aylesbury estate was designed in 1963 to house 10,000 people in response to the chronic housing shortage of the day by Austrian architect Hans Peter Trenton. The project was the largest, most ambitious postwar public housing scheme in Europe at the time.
In 1971 the first tenants moved in and the estate’s architecture quickly came under attack. As architect and city planner Oscar Newman toured the estate for BBC’s Horizon program in 1974, his conclusion was that modern architecture actually encouraged people to commit crime.
Victim of cost-cutting and poor construction, the Aylesbury became emblematic of the shortcomings of postwar public housing and a byword for crime and poverty. Incoming prime minister Tony Blair used the Aylesbury estate in 1997 to deliver a message that there would be “no more forgotten people” in Britain. Despite the setbacks, in 2001 the majority of residents voted against its demolition.
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Brutalist housing estate ident appeared first on Dezeen.
by Adam Coghlan Two men in two countries on a serious mission to create a beer for the connoisseur, Ger’onimo by Beavertown + Jameson is a collaboration between a microbrewery in East London founded three years ago and an Irish whiskey distillery founded…
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Le photographe anglais Julian Calverley nous propose des clichés panoramiques de sa capitale. Réunissant trois fichiers à chaque fois pour obtenir un rendu du plus bel effet, ces images prises au bord de la Tamise rendent hommage avec talent aux monuments londoniens. Plus de détails dans la suite.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
