Jewellery that resembles stove pipes is among body adornments by Dutch fashion design duo Gijs+Emmy to go on show at Amsterdam‘s Stedelijk Museum later this month (+ slideshow).
Sonja Bakker with Large Collar by Gijs Bakker, 1967, from collection Stedelijk Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Photograph by Matthijs Schrofer.
The Gijs+Emmy Spectacle revisits a sensational collaborative exhibition of work by husband and wife team Gijs Bakker and Emmy van Leersum that was at the Stedelijk Museum in 1967.
Sonja Bakker in blue and black pantsuit with Large Collar, 1967. Pantsuit from collection Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag. Collar from collection Stedelijk Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch. Photograph by Matthijs Schrofer.
“In the late 1960s, Bakker and Van Leersum, both trained jewellery designers, created a furore with their avant-garde jewelry and clothing that fused fashion, design and art,” said a statement from the museum.
Sonja Bakker with Stovepipe Collar and Stovepipe Bracelet by Gijs Bakker, 1967. Collar from collection Centraal Museum, Utrecht. Armband from collection Stedelijk Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch. Photograph by Matthijs Schrofer.
The pair’s duct pipe bracelets and curved aluminium collars caused a stir when first exhibited, displayed on live models who moved to electronic music under futuristic lighting.
Sonja Bakker with Ten-loop Bracelet by Gijs Bakker, 1965. Photograph by Matthijs Schrofer.
For this new retrospective, the original exhibition will be recreated with the help of first-hand accounts and consultation from Bakker.
Sonja Bakker with Large Collar by Gijs Bakker, 1967, from collection Stedelijk Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Photograph by Matthijs Schrofer.
Sculptural jewellery and fashion designs created by the duo between 1967 and 1972 from the museum’s collection and other sources will go on show.
Sonja Bakker with Large Collar by Gijs Bakker, 1967, from collection Stedelijk Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Photograph by Matthijs Schrofer.
Iconic designs such as Bakker’s purple Stovepipe Necklace and matching bracelet are among the pieces to be exhibited.
Sonja Bakker in turquoise halter dress with Neck Ornament by Gijs Bakker, 1967. Dress from collection Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag. Neck ornament from collection Stedelijk Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch. Photograph by Matthijs Schrofer.
Hinged metal collars that curve downwards over the shoulders and upwards around the sides of the face will also feature, alongside gold bangles with sinuous shapes and oversized earrings.
Sonja Bakker with Onion Bracelet, 1965 and Untitled Earings, 1966 by Gijs Bakker. Photograph by Matthijs Schrofer.
In these images the designs are worn by 1960s model Sonja Bakker, who isn’t related to the designers.
Stovepipe Bracelet by Gijs Bakker, 1967, from collection Stedelijk Museum ’s-Hertogenbosch. Photograph by Rien Bazen, courtesy of Gijs Bakker.
Bakker and Van Leersum met while studying at the Institute of Applied Art in Amsterdam during the 1950s. Bakker went on to found Droog, the avant-garde conceptual Dutch design collective in 1993.
Scholderpiece by Gijs Bakker, 1967. Photograph by Rien Bazen, courtesy of Gijs Bakker.
The exhibition opens on 22 February and will continue until 24 August.
Renie van Wijk with PVC Head Ornament by Gijs Bakker, 1967. Photograph by Sjaak Ramakers.
Dutch firm Unknown Architects has modernised a small seventeenth-century house by adding a large wooden structure that incorporates a staircase, storage facilities and sofa (+ slideshow).
Unknown Architects was careful to restore some of the 200-year-old building’s character and spatial simplicity by removing the non-original partitioned walls and suspended ceilings.
Located in the Dutch city of Leiden, the house’s ceilings were purposefully left uncovered to contrast with the more modern plastered walls and bamboo furniture in the rest of the property.
Working with a limited space, the architects designed a bamboo staircase that merges into a fixed sofa with integrated storage space, similar to the design of a ship’s cabin.
The sofa also acts as a pull-out guest bed, providing views of the garden through floor-to-ceiling glass doors at the back of the building.
Keeping to their client’s preference that the kitchen was the hub of the home, Unknown Architects combined it with the living space to take over the entire ground floor.
The kitchen table, work surfaces and storage space are all made of bleached nutwood, which acts as a natural accompaniment to the white, compact kitchen units.
The first floor has a master bedroom overlooking the property’s garden through floor-to-ceiling windows, and a children’s room intersected by a bathroom.
Unknown Architects was founded in 2012 by students Daan Vulkers and Keimpke Zigterman. They are currently involved in a number of projects in both Leiden and Amsterdam, where they are based.
Unknown architects completed the renovation of a 17th century house in the historic city centre of Leiden
Unknown architects is established by two students, studying at the Technical University in Delft. During their studies they became curious about working with clients. As a part of the honours programme they started this project, where they tried to translate the ambitions and wishes of a client in a design proposal. This cooperation turned out so well that this client decided to commission unknown architects for their first project, which was completed in November 2012.
All the non-authentic parts of this monument, like partition walls and suspended ceilings, were removed to bring back the authentic character and spatial clarity. In this relatively small house three fixed multifunctional furniture elements were added.
The ground floor functions as office and second bedroom. One bamboo furniture element incorporates storage space and a platform, covering a guest bed which can be pulled out.
An important wish of the client was to make the kitchen ”the heart of the house” where all activities could come together. This was translated in two kitchen elements, made out of bleached nutwood. The central element includes a table, kitchen dresser and a fixed bench that shields the stairwell and provides the best sightlines to the outside.
Cross section
On the second floor we added one small dresser made of bamboo shielding the stairwell and providing a place to sit under the dormer.
The walls are finished with white clay plaster. The uncovered ceilings are intentionally kept as we found them and form a contrast with the new.
Client: DoorZigt B.V. Location: Leiden, The Netherlands Program: renovation of house and office Gross floor area: 75 m2 Project architects: Daan Vulkers, Keimpke Zigterman Interior design: unknown architects Contractor: Bouwbedrijf Degewij Interior fit-out: Klaas Olthoff Keukenmakerij, Intopmaat
Dutch firm Wiel Arets Architects has completed an academic campus in Rotterdam‘s Hoogvliet district comprising six concrete and glass buildings with subtle surface patterns designed to resemble ivy (+ slideshow).
Wiel Arets Architects used fritted glass and textured concrete to suggest traces of climbing plants on the pared-down walls and windows of Campus Hoogvliet – a school and college campus providing housing and teaching for students between the ages of 12 and 27 years.
All six buildings sit over the asphalt ground surface that defines the limits of the campus. These include a sports centre, an arts school, a safety training academy, a secondary school, a business academy and a housing block for up to 100 residents.
A glass fence surrounds every building and is fritted with the abstracted ivy pattern to maintain privacy for students. The same motif also embellishes the ground floor windows of each building.
A scaled-up version of the pattern reoccurs within each of the buildings, where exposed concrete walls are broken up by stripy concrete reliefs.
Each building can be identified by a different colour, which can be spotted on the glass balustrades that run alongside each staircase, but they are otherwise all identical in materials and finishes.
“Unity defines the campus and its clustered buildings, which are therefore experienced as continuous architecture,” said the architects.
The largest of the buildings is the sports centre that contains a 300-seat multi-purpose hall. The ground floor of this structure is raised up by a storey to make room for car parking, while an outdoor basketball court is located on the roof.
Custom-designed seating is dotted around the site, including white terrazzo benches and circular planters containing Japanese maple trees. There’s also a running track, bicycle storage areas and a campus-wide lighting system that illuminates outdoor areas after dark.
Here’s a project description from Wiel Arets Architects:
WAA complete construction on Campus Hoogvliet in Rotterdam
Campus Hoogvliet is a cluster of six buildings that together compose one academic and socially focused campus, located just outside of Rotterdam. These six new buildings – a sports centre, an art studio, a safety academy, 100 residential units within one building, and two schools – have been plugged into a programmed tarmac that communicates the campus’ boundary, and includes custom-designed seating, a running track, and other place-making denotations.
The campus’ immediate surroundings are characterised by mid-twentieth century housing developments – which were prolifically constructed during its booming period of post-WWII growth – and the campus aims to rectify the social and cultural deterioration that coupled the demolition of this once historic village.
A glass ‘fence’ – equal in height to each ground floor facade – surrounds every building. Every fence is fritted with an abstracted, pixilated image of ivy, so as to create an exterior terrace that is both private and transparent. The ground floors of each building are fritted with the same pattern, and all exterior glass was made with a kiss print, which introduces texture to each facade.
A white ring surrounds every building and denotes the transition from public tarmac to private terrace, each programmed with bike parking and play areas. All six buildings share a similar procession of entry: spaces compress in volume when transitioning from the campus’ tarmac toward the glass-fenced terraces; decompress when entering each building’s ground floor communal spaces; and compress again when traversing circulation paths toward upper levels.
The sports centre’s tribune seats 300 and overlooks its multi-purpose and double height activity space, which functions as an exercise area for students and is also available for local events and sports teams. This sports centre – the largest of the campus’ six buildings – has been raised one level in order to accommodate a 80 space parking garage on its ground floor; this introduces a ‘zero-zero’ level to the campus, which compounds the notion of ‘interiority’. Additional parking for 200 aligns with and compliments the campus’s boundary, so as to not disturb its highly trafficked pedestrian areas. An outdoor basketball court occupies the roof of the sports centre’s ground floor; it is perpendicular to a monumental staircase that allows for views over the sprawling campus below.
Load-bearing facades with open corners – combined with concrete cores for stability, and non-polished concrete floor slabs under tension – structure each building. Cores are notable for their concrete relief, derived from an enlarged pattern of the fritted ivy, adjacent to which are each building’s shifting sets of staircases. Balustrades are finished with coloured glass, and each building has a unique colour, to impart a visual identity within each.
Custom-designed white terrazzo seating dots the campus’ programmed tarmac, and Japanese Maples set in custom-designed black terrazzo planters dot each fenced terrace. The entirety of the programmed tarmac, and every terrace, are illuminated at night to ensure the surrounding community’s cohesiveness. Unity defines the campus and its clustered buildings, which are therefore experienced as continuous architecture.
Location: Lengweg, 3192 BM Rotterdam, The Netherlands Typology: Educational, Housing, Retail, School, Sport Size: 41.100 m2 Date of design: 2007-2009 Date of completion: 2014
Project team: Wiel Arets, Bettina Kraus, Joris van den Hoogen, Jos Beekhuijzen, Mai Henriksen Collaborators: Jochem Homminga, Joost Korver, Marie Morin, Julius Klatte, Olivier Brinckman, Sjoerd Wilbers, Raymond van Sabben, Benine Dekker, Maron Vondeling, Anne-Marie Diderich Client: Woonbron Consultants: ABT BV, Wetering Raadgevende Ingenieurs BV
This hilltop staircase by Dutch firm NEXT Architects appears to create a continuous pathway, but it’s actually impossible to walk round more than once without climbing off (+ slideshow).
NEXT Architects designed the rusting steel structure for a grassy peak in Carnisselande, a suburb south of Rotterdam, where it provides a viewpoint overlooking the city skyline.
Rather than designing a simple loop, the architects based the form of the structure on the single-surface volume of a Möbius strip. This means the surface of the pathway wraps around onto its underside, making it impossible to walk around the entire periphery.
“Based on the principal of the Möbius strip, the continuous route of the stair is a delusion – upside becomes underside becomes upside,” explained the architects. “The suggestion of a continuous route is therefore, in the end, an impossibility.”
The structure is built from pre-weathered Corten steel, giving it a vivid orange tone that contrasts with the bright green of the grass below.
It was completed as part of a local art initiative entitled The Elastic Perspective.
Here’s a project description from NEXT Architects:
The Elastic Perspective
A rusty steel ring is gently draped upon a grass hill in Carnisselande, a Rotterdam suburb. It’s a giant circular stair leading the visitor up to a height that allows an unhindered view of the horizon and the nearby skyline of Rotterdam. The path makes a continuous movement and thereby draws on the context of the heavy infrastructural surrounding of ring road and tram track. While a tram stop represents the end or the start of a journey, the route of the stairway is endless.
However, the continuity and endlessness have a double meaning. Based on the principal of the Möbius strip, the continuous route of the stair is a delusion – upside becomes underside becomes upside. It has only one surface and only one boundary. The suggestion of a continuous route is therefore, in the end, an impossibility.
The Elastic Perspective is a local art plan for which NEXT architects designed this stair. The project reflects on the ambiguous relationship of the inhabitants of the Rotterdam suburb Carnisselande with their mother-town, which is expressed in both attraction and repulsion. “The view on Rotterdam is nowhere better, then from Carnisselande” as one of the locals put it.
The circular stair offers the suburbians a view on the Rotterdam skyline – only a couple of kilometers ahead – but forces them to retrace their steps back into their suburban reality. Rotterdam, by tram just minutes away, but in perception and experience tucked behind infrastructure and noise barriers; far away, so close.
Location: Carnisselande, Barendrecht NL Client: Municipality of Barendrecht Programme: Local Art plan Design: NEXT architects, Amsterdam Engineering: ABT consult, Velp Contractor: Mannen van Staal, Leeuwarden Budget: 150.000 euro
Crystal is a permanent installation that opened in Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week. It consists of hundreds of wireless LED crystals that light up when placed on the floor.
“The city of Eindhoven commissioned us to think about the future of light, where light gets liberated and jumps out of the lightbulb,” Roosegaarde explains. “We developed thousands of little crystals, which have two LEDs in them. The floor has a weak magnetic field and the moment you play with them they light up. No battery, no cable – it’s Lego made from light.”
Roosegaarde says that people have already started using the crystals in creative ways.
“People use it to write letters,” he says. “We had one lady, her boyfriend proposed to her. It’s great to make environments that are open to the influence of people. You can play [with the crystals], you can interact with them, you can share them, you can steal them. And I like it the most because it’s an experience you cannot download. You have to go here to experience it. The crystal and the location need each other.”
Roosegaarde will replenish the crystals every month, to replace those that are stolen. He also hopes that students will contribute their own crystal designs.
“We will open source how to make [the crystals] so students can make their own in different colours and shapes,” he says. “So Crystal will keep on growing. More crystals will be added, new shapes will arise, I will have nothing to do with that, people can do whatever they want.”
He adds: “In that way, it will be an ecosystem of behaviour and I think it’s going to be super exciting to see how the design will evolve.”
Daan Roosegaarde. Copyright: Dezeen
We drove around Eindhoven in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Family Music by Eindhoven-based hip hop producer Y’Skid.
Dystopian Brutalist Outerwear, which Van Strien exhibited at the Design Academy Eindhoven graduate show during Dutch Design Week last year, consists of five coats made out of cut sheets of folded tarpaulin.
“It’s a kind of trend forecast for a dystopian future that, when everything is not so great with the economic stuff that’s going on right now, we might be heading towards,” says Van Strien. “It will be cold; people will be unhappy; we’ll be living in buildings that are just grey blocks. These are coats that we could produce for people that don’t have a lot of money, when we don’t have a lot of materials, when a coat needs to last for a lifetime.”
Van Strien says he chose tarpaulin because it is cheap, resilient and simple to work with.
“[The coats] are all cut from a single piece of black tarpaulin,” he says. “You then have to weld the parts together with heat. In the front I’ve made closures with magnets and that’s pretty much it. This material is super easy to work with, you don’t need to finish it or anything and it will last forever.”
The coats were designed to provoke a reaction and make people think about where the world could be heading, Van Strien says.
“A lot of people feel a bit creeped out [by the coats] and that is the goal, that we think about how we’re handling our social malaise,” he explains. “I see myself as a fashion designer, so I’ve looked at this from a purely aesthetic point of view. But the thought behind it is something that I feel very strongly about. I never make a garment just because it’s pretty, it always has to tell a story.”
Despite being designed for a future that does not exist yet, Van Strien says he has been approached by a number of people interested in putting the coats into production.
“I was not planning on putting these coats into production when I first made them, it was just a statement,” he says. “But a couple of parties have come up and they asked me if I wanted to take them into production so now I’m considering it.”
Martijn Van Strien. Copyright: Dezeen
We drove around Eindhoven in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Family Music by Eindhoven-based hip hop producer Y’Skid.
Skryf consists of an adapted CNC milling machine on wheels, which van Bon controls with a laptop via a simple piece of software he developed.
“I can just type in text and it converts it to a code that the machine accepts,” he explains. “It writes letter by letter and in the four hours that I write per day it will write about 160 metres.”
Van Bon travels to different festivals around the world with Skryf and chooses new pieces of literature to write on the ground in each place.
“I’ve been with Skryf throughout Europe and once to Australia,” he explains. “In Eindhoven, I’m writing the poems of Merel Morre. She is the city poet of Eindhoven; she reflects on what is happening now in the city.”
Skryf’s carefully-written lines of poetry are destroyed by passersby or the wind almost as quickly as it can write them. Van Bon says that the whole idea behind the project is that the lines of poetry exist only momentarily.
“When you’re writing one [line of] text, another one is going away because people start walking through it,” he explains. “Once I’ve finished writing, I walk the same way back but it’s all destroyed. It’s ephemeral, it’s just for this moment and afterwards it’s left to the public and to the wind.”
Gijs van Bon. Copyright: Dezeen
We drove around Eindhoven in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Family Music by Eindhoven-based hip hop producer Y’Skid.
Baas’ career was launched by the success of his Smoke chair, which he developed for his graduation show at Design Academy Eindhoven in 2002.
“That was quite an instant success,” he says of the chair, which he created by singeing a second-hand piece of furniture with a blow torch and is now produced by Dutch design brand Moooi.
Smoke exhibition by Maarten Baas at Moss, New York
Baas continues: “In 2004, with Murray Moss [founder of design art company Moss] in New York, I made a solo show in which I did some design icons of the 20th century according to the Smoke principle – burning the furniture.”
Clay furniture by Maarten Baas
Baas describes his range of Clay furniture, which is created by hand-moulding a synthetic clay around a metal frame, as a “next step”, before moving on to discuss his Real Time series of of video clocks.
Baas’ video clocks include Analog Digital (above), in which a performer replicates a digital clock by painting over and wiping clean panels on a glass screen. His Sweeper Clock (below) features two men with brooms pushing lines of debris to form moving clock hands.
He also created a grandfather clock, in which an old man seems to draw the hands of the clock from inside.
“Actually, all the concepts are still developing and still running,” he says. “Currently we’re working with Carpenters Workshop Gallery to make a series of two clocks: a grandfather clock and a grandmother clock.”
Grandfather and Grandmother Clocks by Maarten Baas, presented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery at Design Miami 2013
“As we speak, we are filming the grandmother clock. We are making a twelve-hour movie in which she is drawing the hands of the clock. In twelve hours time we should be finished.”
Maarten Baas’ Grandmother Clock being filmed at his studio
Although Baas has based his studio in the countryside outside of Eindhoven since 2009, he says that the city where he studied is still close to his heart.
“Eindhoven is a very industrial city, which makes it a very practical city,” he explains. “There are a lot of production companies that support people that want to make something and I like the rock and roll style of Eindhoven. It’s kind of rough and people have a lot of energy.”
Maarten Baas. Copyright: Dezeen
“I didn’t want to be part of the city that much anymore, so I went out of the city to the countryside. But still, if I come to Eindhoven I feel that energy of everything that is going on there and I really like that.”
Our MINI Paceman in Eindhoven
We drove around Eindhoven in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Family Music by Eindhoven-based hip hop producer Y’Skid.
This house in the Dutch city of Almere by Swedish architect Johan Selbing and Swiss landscape architect Anouk Vogel is completely covered in reflective glass to allow it to blend in with its surroundings (+ slideshow).
Selbing and Vogel designed the private house for a plot in an experimental housing development in Almere – a city that was only established in 1976 but now has over 195,000 residents – in response to a competition brief calling for a building that would relate to a site within a forest clearing.
The house’s simple boxy shape is constructed from an aluminium frame that supports panels of toughened mirrored glass, with a mirrored composite panel running around the top and bottom edges of the facade.
“The Mirror House is a private villa with a facade consisting entirely of reflective glass, which acts as a camouflage and an obstruction of the view of its interior,” explained the architects.
Doors sits flush against the facade and are only noticeable thanks to handles that project from the surface and a change in the ground level that rises to meet the height of the floor inside the building.
An entrance at the the side of the building leads into a compact interior with a home office at one end and master and guest bedrooms at the other.
Sliding partitions between these rooms and the open-plan kitchen and living space can be opened or closed to meet different requirements.
“Long sight lines in the interior make the house appear larger from the inside, and anchor it to its surroundings,” the architects pointed out.
Surfaces are covered in pale birch multiplex panels that compliment the light-filled interior and views of the nearby trees.
Built-in storage covers one wall and is punctuated by a secret window that looks onto the street but is invisible from outside.
Selbing and Vogel were one of twelve winning entrants in the design competition. They were invited to construct their building but had to source a client to pay for it.
“In dialogue with the client, the competition proposal was worked out to the smallest detail, taking a demand for optimum accessibility into consideration,” the architects added.
The Mirror House is a private villa with a facade consisting entirely of reflective glass, which acts as a camouflage and an obstruction of the view of its interior. The floor plan has been designed to be as compact as possible, with the possibility to adapt to different lifestyles. All interior walls are covered with a birch multiplex panel, whose warm appearance contrasts with the elegant and strict glass facade.
After De Realiteit and De Fantasie, the third edition of small experimental housing settlements in Almere has been launched under the title De Eenvoud. The brief of the competition called for an individual house with a strong relation to its surroundings. The twelve winning teams were given the possibility to realise their designs in an open area in the forest of Noorderplassen-West, but had to find the buyers of the houses themselves.
The Mirror House is a private villa with a facade consisting entirely of reflective glass, which acts as a camouflage and an obstruction of the view of its interior. The floor plan has been designed to be as compact as possible, with the possibility to adapt to different lifestyles. In dialogue with the client, the competition proposal was worked out to the smallest detail, taking a demand for optimum accessibility into consideration.
The original concept with a slightly raised floor (for a better view), sliding doors, built-in cupboards and a single-level layout, has therefore been further refined. Long sight lines in the interior make the house appear larger from the inside, and anchor it to its surroundings. All interior walls are covered with a birch multiplex panel, whose warm appearance contrasts with the elegant and strict glass facade.
Shiny aluminium-clad walls allow this small house in Almere by Dutch studio MONO to reflect the colours of its setting (+ slideshow).
Named Rebel House, the single-storey residence was designed by MONO to be deliberately alien to the typical brick buildings of the local neighbourhood.
“The house looks like a spaceship which touched ground to mother earth,” said architects Gijs Baks, Jacco van Wengerden and Milda Grabauskaite. “It seems to want to leave any moment again.”
The house was constructed on a tight budget, so low-cost corrugated aluminium was used to clad all four walls. The same material also covers doors, allowing them to blend into the facade.
The interior surfaces of the walls are fronted with timber to give the appearance of warmth to the open-plan living spaces.
A grid of shelves stretches across one of these walls to accommodate a kitchen, storage areas and a large window seat.
The rest of the space is loosely divided up by the presence of a boxy bathroom that integrates extra storage areas and a sliding partition to screen off the bedroom.
Double doors open the house out to the garden, where the architects have added a triangular shed clad with the same aluminium panels.
Rebel House liberates itself from existing prejudices, and appears radically unconventional for a house. The house looks like a spaceship which touched ground to mother earth. The corrugated aluminum sheeting reflect the sun and the surroundings, and create an extreme lightness. The house seems to want to leave any moment again.
Both this dream and the raw realities of site parameters and proximity to its boundaries, budget limitations and the desire for low maintenance were crucial in the design development of Rebel House.
In contrast to the exterior the interior is warm and convivial. The timbered walls integrate a kitchen, an open cupboard and a deep windowsill as a ‘hangout’. The detached box houses all services of the house. Living around it is a continuous experience. The hidden, double doors open the house to the garden. The triangular, aluminium shed in the garden seems to provide an anchor for the house and completes the composition.
Client: private Architect: MONO (www.mono.eu) Location: Almere – The Netherlands Area: 77sqm Team: Gijs Baks, Jacco van Wengerden, Milda Grabauskaite Stuctural Engineer: On Man Interior Fit Out: Thomas Meubels
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