Hasta La Ideas

The three pitched roofs of this bungalow extension in Manchester were designed by Blee Halligan Architects to capture sunlight at different times of the day and frame views of trees in the garden (+ slideshow).

London studio Blee Halligan Architects arranged the extension’s three double-height windows to face east, west and south so that interior spaces receive light at times that are appropriate to their functions.

The kitchen faces east to welcome the morning light and create a bright space for eating breakfast, while the west-facing living room receives sunlight in the evening.

Each of the windows looks out onto the garden and the steeply pitched roofs direct views towards the canopies of the trees bounding the site.

“The brief was to turn a very common low-ceilinged bungalow into a bright, voluminous house,” architect Greg Blee told Dezeen.

“This was the reason we developed the tall pitched-roof composition, which frames views rather than providing expansive views.”

The external walls of the building are clad in dark-stained larch panelling that helps it blend in with the surrounding garden.

“We liked the idea that the extension would be recessive against the house and garden, which is a verdant green with mature trees and planting that accentuates its colour,” explained Blee. “The building does not fight with this garden setting.”

Sliding doors connect a central dining room with a patio that can be used for al fresco dining. The kitchen also leads to a terrace, which is set to be extended to link the house with a proposed garden room.

White-painted timber boards line the interior of the extension to give the space a soft domestic feel that contrasts with the dark external surfaces.

A short set of stairs connects the dining room to the existing house, which contains a reception area, study and the bedrooms and bathrooms.

A new timber porch outside the front entrance incorporates benches sheltered beneath a translucent plastic roof. The slatted aesthetic of this structure is complemented by a chunky wooden fence in front.

Photography is by Mike Black.

Here’s a short description from Blee Halligan Architects:

A dilapidated bungalow is the site for a new rear addition

Three interconnected, pitched volumes, face in three directions – east, west and south, capturing sunlight at different times of the day, appropriate to function – the kitchen faces east for a light-bathed breakfast and the living room faces west to catch the last of the sunlight. They each pitch up to a large double-height window, capturing views of the garden and trees.

The building is clad in black stained larch, so it appears recessive in the context of the garden and possesses an abstract geometric quality at night.

The post Blee Halligan’s Triptych house extension
catches sunlight from three directions appeared first on Dezeen.

A series of steel-braced oak staircases and bridges connect the different levels of this extension to the Manchester School of Art by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (+ slideshow).

London architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios designed the extension to link the original nineteenth century art school building to a 1960s tower, which was also refurbished as part of the project.

A bank of lifts ascends from next to the entrance to every storey of the tower, with bridges and staircases helping to unite the old and new buildings.

The new building provides additional studio, workshop and exhibition spaces for the school’s 3500 students and features a seven-storey glazed facade, which creates an exhibition and events space that can be seen from the street outside.

Behind the gallery-like facade is a longer, lower building containing studios, workshops and teaching areas, which were designed in an open plan format to encourage interaction between students from the 30 disciplines that share the space.

“Private spaces no longer exist,” described John Brooks, vice chancellor at Manchester Metropolitan University, of which the art school is now a faculty. “What you’ll find are lots of spaces that are intersected by passageways, walkways, stairwells and glass partitions, so whatever you’re doing is almost like a performance.”

Referencing the aesthetic of traditional local warehouses, the architects applied industrial materials including concrete, steel and glass throughout the interior, while the open spaces and comprehensive use of glazing fill the building with natural light.

“This building is all about light,” said architect Keith Bradley. “The way that we’ve created a series of cascading floorplates, almost like a landscape of floors, allows light deep into the space so that we can still get the combination of people working together but also get good natural daylight.”

Concrete is treated with different surface finishes to demarcate the spaces; smooth in most areas, but with a rough texture created by casting it against chunky chipboard on the walls of the staircases.

Four of the double-height columns inside the studio and workshop building feature a decorative pattern that was produced during the concrete casting process. The pattern was designed in the early twentieth century by Lewis F. Day, a former tutor at the school.

Oak was used to line the staircases and linking corridors, and provide a warm and tactile contrast to the raw materials that dominate the interior.

Photography is by Hufton + Crow.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Manchester School of Art

Context

Celebrating its 175th birthday in 2013, Manchester School of Art is one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the UK. The school was established in the 19th Century to help keep the region competitive in an international market and support regional industry in a wider marketplace.

Now a faculty of Manchester Metropolitan University this remains an important objective for the Art school and a key part of the brief was to help the school bridge the gap between education and professional life.

The new building celebrates the inter relation of the various art & design disciplines and encourages 21st century students to work alongside each other and enjoy the crossover rather than concentrating always on the differences. With a huge front window, it is also a building that is proud of its product and shows the work to everyone who passes by.

Now one of the leading Art & Design courses in the country, the School has around 3500 FTE students across its various disciplines. Housed within a range of late Victorian and post-war buildings, the School forms the southern edge of All Saints’ Park, a green square at the heart of the city centre campus. The Art School Extension consists of an 8600-metre-squared new building of studios, workshops and a gallery; and a 9000m2 refurbishment of a 1960s Arts tower and plinth.

Concept

FCB’s design of the Manchester School of Art has provided an engaging and lively environment in which to work and study and helped re-assert both the art school and the university’s profile on the national stage. The Dean of the School, Professor David Crow, describes the scheme as “a hugely exciting arena where anything is possible and everything is relevant.”

The working heart of the building comprises open studios, workshops and teaching spaces (known as the Design Shed.) A second element is a seven storey Vertical Gallery. This is the linking piece between the existing 1960s arts tower (known as the Chatham Building) and the new studio building. This vertical gallery provides a showcase space for the output of the School and acts as a shop window to the school itself.

Hybrid Studio Space

The open studio space places a great focus on collaborative working in an atmosphere that is inherently creative. Students and MSA staff from a broad spectrum of contemporary design disciplines can work on projects in close communal proximity. This proximity encourages the sharing of ideas, techniques and methodologies in a way that was previously impossible.

The Hybrid Studio is also an environment in which students can proudly display their work in a setting that is light and easy to explore.

Materials

As a building for designers, and a place for teaching and learning about Art & Design the clarity and articulation of materials was crucial, as was the tonal and textural quality of the interior. The interiors are a study in concrete, with three distinct grades creating different atmospheres. Rough is used in back stairwells giving a sense of rawness and a factory aesthetic; double height cast concrete columns articulate the central spaces of the design shed, punctuated by four very special decorative concrete columns which were developed from an early 20th century wallpaper design by Lewis F Day, an eminent designer of his period, contemporary of Walter Crane a tutor at Manchester School of Art.

A secondary but important material is the use of oak linings to the stairs and linking corridors which span the vertical gallery. These provide a warmth to soften the hard edges of steel and concrete which form the structure.

Collaboration

Working with clients who are artists and designers on a building for training artists & designers was a wonderfully rich experience for us. The level of collaboration was exceptionally high and we worked with the client by testing processes, recrafting ideas and always seeing the design as an iterative, creative process.

Client: Manchester Metropolitan University
Construction value: £23 million
Commissioned: June 2009
Construction Start Date: April 2011
Completion: April 2013
Project Gross Area: 17320sqm
Cost Consultant: Turner and Townsend
Contractor: Morgan Sindall
Structural engineer: Arup

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bridges by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios appeared first on Dezeen.

News: police have seized parts of a suspected 3D-printed gun during a raid on a property in Greater Manchester, England.

In what is thought to be the first such discovery, Greater Manchester Police officers found a plastic trigger (top image) and clip capable of holding bullets, which they believe had been 3D-printed using a MakerBot Replicator 2 that was also discovered at the property.

If verified, the discovery “demonstrates that organised crime groups are acquiring technology that can be bought on the high street to produce the next generation of weapons,” said detective inspector Chris Mossop of the city’s organised crime unit.

Update: Greater Manchester Police issued a new statement following these claims after the 3D-printing community pointed out they may be harmless printer upgrade parts.

“This is a really significant discovery for Greater Manchester Police,” said Mossop. “In theory, the technology essentially allows offenders to produce their own guns in the privacy of their own home, which they can then supply to the criminal gangs who are causing such misery in our communities. Because they are also plastic and can avoid X-ray detection, it makes them easy to conceal and smuggle.”

Forensic experts are analysing whether the parts found could be used to make a working weapon, but Greater Manchester Police already believe this is the first discovery of 3D-printed gun parts in the UK.

The world’s first 3D printed gun was successfully fired in May this year by US anarchist Cody Wilson, triggering a global debate about the social and ethical impact of 3D-printing. Wilson’s gun was acquired by the V&A museum in London last month.

“There’s been a lot of technocratic optimism around 3D printing, particularly in the design world,” senior V&A curator Kieran Long told Dezeen in an interview about the acquisition. “I don’t believe everyone should be carrying guns and that’s not what we’re advocating here. What we are saying is this is possible and we might have to do something about it if we don’t want these things to happen.”

“These could be the next generation of firearms and a lot more work needs to be done to understand the technology and the scale of the problem,” said Mossop. “If what we have seized today can, as we suspect, be used to make a genuine firearm then today will be an important milestone in the fight against this next generation of homemade weapons.”

MakerBot’s Replicator 2 printer went on sale earlier this summer. Open-source designer Ronen Kadushin warned last year that 3D printers could allow people to “print ammunition for an army”.

Read our feature on how 3D-printed weapons are transforming warfare.

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by police in Manchester appeared first on Dezeen.

by Carol Huston “Photography is an experiment, but it’s the results that count.” Art rhetoric is no stranger to Stephen Iles, who divides his time between London and Manchester. A music promoter during Manchester’s media-crazed years, Iles (who studied fine art at the…

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London interior architects Universal Design Studio have completed the interior of a new store in Manchester, UK, for fashion brand Mulberry.

A wall tiled in bespoke unglazed ceramic tiles supports wall-mounted glass cases and wooden hooks.

Collections are displayed on oak shelving and inside brass-framed cabinets.

See also: Mulberry New Bond Street store by Universal Design Studio

More about Universal Design Studio on Dezeen »

Photographs are by Paul Greenleaf.

The information below is from the designers:

UNIVERSAL DESIGN STUDIO COMPLETES NEW MULBERRY STORE IN MANCHESTER.

Universal Design Studio has completed work on the new Mulberry flagship store for the north of England in Manchester. The Manchester store is the latest in an ongoing collaboration between Mulberry and Universal Design Studio, who recently unveiled the new Mulberry London flagship store on New Bond Street to critical acclaim. Mulberry will be rolling-out this new concept created by Universal which is based on elements of craft as well as ecological concerns and Mulberry’s origins in the English landscape.

Hannah Carter Owers, associate director at Universal Design Studio comments: “Our brief from Mulberry has provided an amazing freedom of creativity. We have collaborated to create an interior concept that both reflects Mulberry’s brand values, but also one which challenges the norms of luxury retail design.”

The new store design plays on the idea of two separate ‘zones,’ the ‘Garden’ and the ‘Drawing Room.’ The concept aims to create an environment with a distinct change in pace for visitors, as well as a flexible space for Mulberry to display different collections, both classic and fashion-led. “The Manchester store was actually where the Garden and Drawing Room concept originated, so we are really exciting to see it come to life,” says Carter Owers.

The Garden allows for incredibly flexible display. A bespoke tiled wall acts as a display fixture thanks to wall-mounted glass ‘tanks,’ ready-to-wear rail and removable timber prongs. The wall, made up of unglazed porcelain tiles of varying thickness/angles, also provides a striking textured backdrop to the store. The floor within the Garden is sandblasted limestone with a fumigated, end grain oak centre.
The concept for the Drawing Room juxtaposes the natural feeling of the Garden with a statement, polished brass cash desk and stainless steel clad column. A family of dark oak perimeter units has been designed to house specific collections of product and the shelving has unfinished Mulberry leather inserts. A Rachel Whiteread daybed and Barber Osgerby Zero-In table sit on bespoke carpet just outside the luxurious, large-scale fitting rooms.

Georgia Fendley, Brand Director for Mulberry says: “We began work on the Manchester store some time ago, in fact it was the first store we planned with Universal and it was where the more domestic approach to a luxury retail space originated. The objective was to create a really practical and flexible space with a distinct change of pace for shoppers and an aesthetic more in tune with the Mulberry brand personality, reflecting our authenticity, attention to detail, energy and playfulness and of course our passion for great British craft.”

See also:

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Louis Vuitton Maison by Peter Marino	Reiss flagship store by Universal Design Studio	H&M Seoul by Universal Design Studio