Hasta La Ideas

Dutch studio i29 have coated everything in grey at this pop-up furniture shop in Amsterdam.

Located inside fashion store SPRMRKT, the As Good As New concession is the launchpad for the designers’ new furniture collection, created from second hand pieces they’ve found in flea markets and charity shops.

An industrial spray-on plastic creates a homogenous layer of matte grey over everything.

“We chose this material because it sticks to almost everything, and is very durable,” designer Jeroen Dellensen told Dezeen.

The shop is furnished like an old-fashioned living room, with a chandelier, a globe, a hunting trophy and pair of old boots.

“We selected quite outspoken and weird items,” explained Dellensen. ”In the same finish, the collection of furniture becomes a powerful unified sculptural image and has a surreal alienating effect.”

Other objects in the space include mannequins, ornaments and a set of vintage pedal bins.

The installation follows on from one of the studio’s past projects, where they furnished an office in the same style. See all our stories about i29 here.

Similar projects we’ve featured include an apartment with furniture covered in sticky tape and an abandoned office where everything is painted white.

The post As Good As New pop-up shop
at SPRMRKT by i29 appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch design brand Droog has opened a hotel in Amsterdam where guests who venture out from their rooms can attend lectures, visit exhibitions and shops or relax in a ”fairy-tale garden” without leaving the building (+ slideshow).

Above: the Dining Room 

Droog director Renny Ramakers conceived the hotel as a venue that “brings all of our activities under one roof, from curation to product design, exhibitions and lectures, and invites people to plug in as they choose.”

Above: guest suite

Located in a 17th century building that once housed the city’s textile guild, the hotel contains an exhibition gallery curated by Droog and a dining room serving dishes from local neighbourhood recipes.

Above: the Gallery

Droog also have their own store at the hotel, alongside a Cosmania cosmetics area, a Kabinet fashion store and a Weltevree products area.

Above: the Fairy Tale Garden

French Designers Claude Pasquer and Corinne Détroyat created the garden at the centre of the building and filled it with flowers and edible plants to attract birds, butterflies and insects.

Above: Weltevree

Guest suites are located on the top floor of the building and offer a view out over the Amsterdam skyline.

Above: Cosmania

Ramakers founded the Droog brand with former partner Gijs Bakker back in 1993, and it has since become one of the leading conceptual design brands in the Netherlands.

Above: Kabinet

See all our stories about Droog »

Above: Droog Store

Photography is by Thijs Wolzak.

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by Droog appeared first on Dezeen.

Victims of human trafficking can find refuge behind the faceted walls of this sheltered housing block in the Netherlands by Dutch firm KAW (+ slideshow).

Named Veilige Veste, meaning ‘safe fortress’, the three-storey building in Leeuwarden, Friesland, provides a home for 48 girls that have suffered as victims of prostitution or abuse.

The building was first constructed as a police station in the 1970s and the new diagonally folded facade panels act to both screen the original structure and provide room for additional insulation.

Beatrice Montesano of KAW compares the faceted white squares to diamonds. Unlike refuges “tucked away in anonymous back alleys,” she says that the facade of the Veilige Veste has “a subtle gleam that interacts with its environment.”

Beneath the white squares, wooden panels and large windows regularly alternate along the ground floor elevations.

Offices, meeting rooms and treatment rooms occupy this ground floor, while bedrooms and living rooms for residents are split into six separate groups on the first and second storeys.

Rooms on the second floor surround a roof terrace, which offers a protected outdoor space that the girls can use without having to leave the building.

“A patio in Italy has a very important function,” said Montesano. “That is where the family comes together, where you relax, where you find tranquillity in a busy city. The atmosphere in the patio is always completely different from outside the building; here you sense a much more warm and intimate atmosphere.”

Other refuges we’ve featured on Dezeen include a centre for drug and alcohol rehabilitation in London and a centre for blinded sailors, soldiers and airmen in Scotland.

Here are a few words from the architects about the building’s energy consumption:

Massive Energy Reduction through Passive House

What is revolutionary about the ‘Veilige Veste’, is that this is the first large office block in the Netherlands to be renovated according to the Passive House standard. ‘Passive House’ is a standard for energy efficiency in a building, reducing its ecological footprint. It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling. In this case, the fact that the former police stations’ substructure was placed outside the building, meant an enormous energy abuser to be dealt with.

The substructure created a thermal bridge that works exactly like a tunnel sucking in the cold outside air. By wrapping the building with the diamond-cut square panels, the substructure is now within the building and the whole building is covered by a thick layer of insulation. At some points, the façade is over 3 feet thicker now. Thanks to optimal insulation, draft proofing and the use of very little, highly energy-efficient equipment, the ‘Veilige Veste’ consumes exceptionally little power.

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by KAW appeared first on Dezeen.

Horizontal grooves create tactile stripes across the plaster-covered walls of this house in Leiden, the Netherlands, by architects GAAGA (+ slideshow).

Named Stripe House, the three-storey residence is one of the 670 architect-designed homes being completed in the residential district masterplanned by architects MVRDV.

The building is located at the end of a row of houses and the stripes wrap around all three exposed elevations.

“The grooves are not purely decorative, but also have an architectural function,” architect Arie Bergsma told Dezeen. “They enhance the ‘all-sidedness’ of the volume, to link the facades and enhance the perspectival effect of the cube-like shape.”

Bergsma also explained how the grooves make the facade more tactile. “The funny thing that we did not expect is that a lot of people are actually touching the facade with their hands,” he said.

The stripy grey walls also extend beyond the front of the house to enclose a small garden, which leads residents into the dining room and kitchen on the first floor.

A concrete staircase connects the ground floor with the first floor living room, while metal stairs lead up to bedrooms on the top floor.

We’re previously featured other housing projects from the development zone in Leiden. See them all here, including two others by GAAGA.

Photography is by Marcel van der Burg.

Here are a few words from GAAGA:

Stripe House

Stripe House is a small, mixed-use house located in the city of Leiden, The Netherlands. It takes its name from the characterizing horizontal stripes carved deep into the façade.

The house resides in a new urban planning area where clients can develop their own houses. It is on a corner plot adjacent to the park nearby and south-east of pedestrian streets.

Despite its limited size, the plot is not entirely built on. One quarter of the plot is reserved for a small enclosed garden, creating a soft transition from public to private space as well as a distance to neighbouring houses. Opting for a garden implied also a concentration of program on one side of the plot.

The cube-like structure encloses a stacking of three floors, all similar in size but different in program. Going upwards the functions have an increasingly private nature. The ground floor houses the office space and the patio, the next level contains the kitchen, living and dining space, while the upper floor holds two bedrooms and a bathroom.

The large void along the north façade is the focal point in the house. It connects the two upper floors and it spatially zones the kitchen area. The enormous window at the top offers an abundance of natural light as well as an impressive and poetic sight on the Dutch sky.

Because the house is situated on a corner it has an almost all-round orientation and presence. There are not many window openings, but the ones that are present are large and oriented towards interesting views. On the first floor the three windows together form a triptych. They show three different scenes each representing a specific side of the house: the park on the east side, the neighboring houses on the west and the sky on the north.

Plans – click above for larger image

The huge exterior walls are made tangible and appealing by means of horizontal grooves in the plaster. The grooves, with a total length of approximately 7000 meters, are handmade and carved into a semi-hardened plaster by using several moulds. The result is an unparalleled piece of craftsmanship.

Section

The Stripe house is also a very sustainable house that scores well in several energy performance and environmental index calculations and labels.

Elevation detail

Architects: GAAGA
Team: Esther Stevelink and Arie Bergsma
Location: Leiden, The Netherlands
Realisation: 2010 – 2012
Contractor: Verbeij Bouw, Boskoop.
Plasterwork: Mulder Afbouw – Maarten Mulder
Structural Engineering: IMD Raadgevende Ingenieurs BV, Rotterdam
Energy performance & building physics: GAAGA – Arie Bergsma
Paintings: Marion van Egmond, Emmy Stevelink-Willemsen

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by GAAGA appeared first on Dezeen.

These offices for the Dutch Football Association in Zeist by interior designers Hollandse Nieuwe were inspired by mown grass, painted white lines and football kits (+ slideshow).

The contemporary offices are concealed behind the classical facade of a three-storey mansion, which architects StudiOzo completely reconstructed after all that remained of the original building was a facade.

Hollandse Nieuwe used studs like those on the soles of football boots to create the shapes of sporting figures on the inside walls, as well as to spell out words.

Numbers are stitched onto sofas so that resemble the backs of football players’ shirts, while opaque circles look like little balls on the glazed partitions to meeting rooms.

Surfaces are predominantly green and white in each room, matching the colours of a freshly painted pitch.

Other football-related projects we’ve featured include a football training centre in South Africa.

See more stories about football »

Photography is by Gerard van Beek.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

For the Dutch premiere and first league football association as well as two other associated organisations, Hollandse Nieuwe developed an inspiring office.

The building is a rebuilt villa and only the facade is original.

Whilst the exterior looks like a traditional mansion, the interior has no reference to its historical context.

An abstract of the world that is associated with professional football were the inspiration to develop a visual language based on studs, stitching, leather, chalk lines, patterns of mowed grass and shirt numbers.

Without becoming literal these elements form a new language where for example studs are used to make logos, patterns and figures; stitching is used in detailing benches; the green and white create a fresh and crisp atmosphere. The meeting place for football professionals.

Project: Dutch premiere and first league football association
Delivered: 2012
Size: 1500 m2

Above: original building before reconstruction

Above: original building before reconstruction

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image

First floor plan – click above for larger image

Second floor plan – click above for larger image

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by Hollandse Nieuwe appeared first on Dezeen.