Hasta La Ideas

News: wellness entrepreneur Nell Waters is attempting to raise £146,000 on crowdfunding website Kickstarter to build a prototypal ecological urban bathhouse from shipping containers in San Francisco.

Waters wants to create an “urban bathhouse for healthy hedonists” that could pop up on any available lot in the city and operate autonomously from the municipal power and water supplies.

The design of the SOAK spa was developed by San Francisco design studio Rebar, and consists of stacked containers arranged around a courtyard that house changing rooms, toilets, a lounge, a sauna, hot tubs and a roof deck.

“This container-spa joins the wave of tactical urbanism currently happening in San Francisco and other cargotecture projects that have created a local zeitgeist around the recognisably corrugated exterior,” said the project team in a statement. “No city is better positioned to launch this first iteration of the mobile, pop-up spa.”

A small garden next to the entrance would lead to an internal courtyard housing the reception, enclosed showers and two cold plunge buckets. Stairs would provide access to the roof lounge and an additional hot tub.

Rainwater would provide half of the spa’s water, while greywater would be filtered through plants and particle filers and used to irrigate a garden on the rear patio. All of the water used would be heated by solar hot water heaters and photovoltaic panels on the roof.

“The challenge that we set out in developing this proof of concept prototype is to use absolutely the least amount of water possible, use the least amount of energy possible – we try to catch as much as we can from the sky,” explained Blaine Merker from Rebar in a video on the project’s Kickstarter page.

The project team has engaged engineers to analyse the spa’s energy performance and, if it achieves its funding target by 1 January 2014, will work on refining the structural criteria of the containers and assessing water usage with the aim of realising a two-container prototype sometime in 2014.

More details from the project’s co-ordinators follows:

Soak – an urban bathhouse for healthy hedonists

Designed to be modular and self-contained, the urban bathhouse called SOAK identifies with a changing urban landscape and literally pops-up where there is interim use for creative activity, simultaneously taking advantage of lower real estate costs and incubating activity in up-and-coming neighbourhoods. With its unique anti-spa ethos, SOAK creates an experiential bridge between the ancient practice of ritual ablutions and a modern approach to wellness that makes “soaking” a social practice.

SOAK provides a dynamic space for personal wellness, connected experiences, and healthy hedonist gatherings. Built from repurposed shipping containers, the structure of SOAK helps reframe an answer to the question: what is wellness? In part, SOAK’s aim is to change the way we think about water-intensive day spas, instead substituting a creatively designed ecological bathhouse for a modern, urban environment. This container-spa joins the wave of tactical urbanism currently happening in San Francisco and other cargotecture projects that have created a local zeitgeist around the recognisably corrugated exterior. No city is better positioned to launch this first iteration of the mobile, pop-up spa.

Inspired by saunas in Amsterdam, Japanese bathing culture, and San Francisco’s former Sutro Baths, SOAK’s founder, Nell Waters, consulted designers about building a truly ecological urban bathhouse. Was there a way to scale back the opulent use of natural resources? Could they redefine the meaning of wellness through the materials used? Could social interaction replace meditative silence? At SOAK, sustainability, sociability, and healthy hedonism are the guiding principles.

Its structure demonstrates its flexibility. Two shipping containers surround an interior courtyard, one housing the changing facilities, lounge and restrooms, the other housing the hot tubs, a roof deck and sauna. The bathhouse seamlessly transitions between interior space and garden, inviting visitors to soak in the heat, cool off under a cold plunge bucket in the garden, rest among the plants, and lounge with a view of the city on the roof deck. Greywater from hot tubs, sinks and showers is collected and filtered through surge tanks, purifying plants and particle filters. Filtered water is then used to irrigate the siteʼs permanent garden.

Take the urban bathhouse concept to its extreme, and you get SOAK: a pop-up spa inside of shipping containers. Mobile, autonomous, and sleek. One step further and you get something more. An urban bathhouse for healthy hedonists. SOAK hired the San Francisco based Rebar Design Studio and principal Blaine Merker to design the urban bathhouse because of their smart creative process, and award winning reputation.

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Warsaw studio Moko Architects has unveiled plans to build a diving and indoor skydiving centre outside Warsaw by surrounding a pair of abandoned cement silos with a tower of shipping containers.

The facility is proposed for the industrial district of Żerań, where a series of channels transport water between the city and Zegrze Reservoir, and a number of abandoned factories, warehouses and silos stand empty.

Moko Architects has designed a ten-storey structure where diving and skydiving activities can take place inside the cylinders of the converted silos. The first will be filled entirely with water to allow divers to plunge to depths of 25 metres, while the second will contain an underwater “cave” at its base and a skydiving tunnel at its top.

Shipping containers will be stacked up around the outside of the silos to provide offices and training facilities, as well as hostel accommodation, an exhibition area, a reading room, sports shops and a summer cafe. Balcony terraces will also be created on each floor by the irregular arrangement of the containers.

Construction is due to start in 2015.

Other architectural projects that use shipping containers include offices for an organic farm in China, a hotel in Germany and a sea-facing observation deck in South Korea. See more shipping container architecture.

Here’s some more information from Moko Architects:

Modernising the existing silos at the Żerański channel into a Diving and Indoor Skydiving Centre open all year round

The area for the investment is located ca. 12 km away from the centre of Warsaw. This is a part of a house factory in Żerań which operated in the past. Today, there are abandoned halls, warehouses and non-developed area. Main facilities include wholesale warehouses of construction materials and other products. The Żerański channel flows through the entire area, which creates a unique municipal landscape.

The collection of elements described above has a huge potential. The channel is a great water communication route between the City and the Zegrze Reservoir which provides the opportunity of doing water sports and staying active. The remains of the factories, warehouses and silos may be attractive for investors interested in their modernisation into lofts, offices, studios or erecting new buildings which will interline into the surrounding landscape.

This area is also becoming a popular place for amateurs of extreme sports, artists or people who like exploring abandoned buildings.

Our design assumes development of a Diving and Indoor Skydiving Centre open all year round in the old silos where bulk cement used to be stored in the past. The existing facility is a perfect base for this investment and will be the only place in Poland where people wishing to learn the skills of diving will have the opportunity to safely train at the depth of 25m under control. The well located in one of the silos is connected to the “cave” of the other cylinder. This is an ideal place to train wreck diving. The diameter of the well is 7m.

Apart from the cave, the second silo will feature a technical area as well as an Indoor Skydiving Centre. This place will make dreams about flying come true. In the “tube” where air will flow at high speeds, you will be able to safely train skydiving.

The Diving and Indoor Skydiving Centre will feature additional functions for people who will only visit the centre for a few hours with their families as well as for organised groups coming for training sessions lasting a couple of days.

The ground floor will feature the entrance area with exhibition space, professional magazines reading area, external café open in the summer season as well as a workshop. Level 1 will house sports stores. Level 2 and 3 will feature offices and administration. Level 4 will feature a hostel for indoor skydivers while level 5 will house training rooms and changing rooms for skydivers as well as the entrance to the area where the practical training of indoor skydiving is conducted. Level 6 will house a hostel for divers, level 7 will feature training and presentation rooms for divers while on level 8 there will be changing rooms separate for women and men. The will also be a buffer zone for divers to directly access the place where they start diving. At the same level, the facility will also feature a warm-up room. In the retained control room area at level 9 a small bar with a view onto the city panorama is designed. There will be terraces on all levels where you can relax after training while watching the industrial scenery intertwined with the Żerański channel.

The modules forming the space for additional functions are applied onto the existing structure of the silo walls looking as if they were growing on them. They are made of light self-supporting steel structure located on both sides and connected by a staircase. They comprise system cubes operating on the basis of single containers which are relatively cheap to manufacture and easy to rearrange in case of the need of changing the functional arrangement of the entire project. Polycarbonate plates will be the covering material through which the structure will be visible.

Completion of this project will set a direction for the development of this district and may become an alternative cultural centre in this part of Warsaw.

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News: Amsterdam’s problem families are to be moved to isolated caravans or shipping containers in the outskirts of the city under new plans announced by mayor Eberhard van der Laan.

The £810,000 programme will see social housing residents that continue to harass and intimidate their neighbours placed under surveillance for a period of six months. If they refuse to improve their behaviour, they will then be faced with eviction and relocation to one of several special units.

The new communities have been dubbed “scum villages” following earlier statements from right-wing campaigner Geert Wilders, who told Dutch newspaper the Telegraaf that offenders should be completely separated from society. ”Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum,” he said.

Van der Laan’s spokesman Bartho Boer has denied claims that the initiative will create “scum villages” and insists that the plans will encourage good behaviour and improve communities. “A neighbourhood can deal with one problem family but if there are more the situation escalates,” he told Dutch News.

According to Boer there are over 13,000 complaints of anti-social behaviour every year in Amsterdam from victims of abuse and homophobia. Frequently it is these law-abiding tenants that are forced to move, rather than their nuisance neighbours.

“The aim is not to reward people who behave badly with a new five-room home with a south-facing garden. This is supposed to be a deterrent,” he said.

Shipping containers are already being used for student housing in Amsterdam, but a set of ten have been set aside as a trial project for the scheme, where several persistent offenders have been housed under 24-hour supervision.

Another Amsterdam project that will use shipping containers is temporary retail centre Boxpark, set to open next year. Shipping containers are also being increasingly used as housing in other countries, including as emergency accommodation for victims of natural disasters in Japan. See more stories about shipping containers on Dezeen »

See more stories about housing »

Photograph courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Students at the Geneva University of Art and Design have formed a travelling commune inside a collection of shipping containers and have been staging performances around Switzerland.

Under the direction of Bureau A designer Daniel Zamarbide, the students created the community in a courtyard at the university and spent several nights living there as part of their research into domestic rituals.

Photographer Regis Golay also joined the community by staying at the site for a few days and capturing all of the activities on camera.

Installations include a dining room intended to demonstrate habits of gluttony and lust, plus a bedroom where students are testing the effects of short-term sleeping by taking naps whilst wearing foam sleep-suits.

In the bathroom, students carry out a ritual dance as they take off their clothes and wash themselves, while the meeting room is a fabric filled tube that attendees stick only their heads and arms inside.

Other performance spaces include a dark smoky sound room, a dream room funished with car seats, an energy-generating room filled with Ikea furniture and a series of cupboards for climbing inside.

The ninth installation is a modular framework of bamboo that surrounds the eight containers to provide outdoor lighting and decoration.

See more projects featuring shipping containers »

Photography is by Regis Golay of Federal Studio.

Here’s some more explanation and details of each of the performances:

The Commune
Summer semester 2012. February-June 2012

Geneva University of Art and Design students, under the direction of Daniel Zamarbide of BUREAU A have just finalised a series of living units forming an autonomous community. With the purpose of questioning our living habits and inspired by the social experimentations of the 70’s, The Commune has produced and lived in for a short period of time an ensemble of 8 shipping containers located in the courtyard of the school.

The Commune will travel around Switzerland in different cultural events and festivals reproducing the experience and aiming to engage debate in the contexts where they will be welcomed. Régis Golay of Federal Studio has produced as series of images of the event.

Description of the 9 projects realised during the semester.

DREAM
Students: Celine Mosset, Charles de Oliveira

In a David Cronenberg type environment and atmosphere, this project proposes an installation based on the transformation of automobile pieces that create a dream-like experience. The dreamers, comfortably seated on ergonomic and transformed car seats will adapt their own sleeping rhythm to the one of the living engine.

THE COMMITTEE
Students: Gaspar Reverdin, Paolo Gnazzo

Decisions are taken in a communal consensus and in a specific space conceived uniquely for this purpose. Like a Cistercian gathering, the cultural differents among the members disappear behind a binnacle-suit that embraces the 18 members of the commune. Faces and hands participate to the ritual. Bodies are left outside, in the black. Faces and hands are inside, in the white.

SLIPING BATHS
Students: Jessica Brancato, Danja Uzelac

The space for bathing is sequenced in a way that pushes the bathers to a rhythmic and ritual dance. They strip of their clothes pulling them out of the visual reach and then slip into an all-over soap space highly suggestive of sensitive sensations. The drying sequence is a friction of the body against a series of black towels suspended in the air in a black space. The clothes are found at the end of the loop.

SOUND CONTEMPLATION
Students: Aurélien Reymond, William Roussel

This is a space for sound and sound objects. This is a place where the body interacts with sound and noise provoking and producing unexpected relations between the. The atmosphere is dark and intense. The relief of the architecture-sculpture can be seen as furniture and sound design environment creating an acoustic vacuum where solitude is confronted to reflexion.

ENERGY
Students: Violaine Bourgeois, Youna Mutti

Within the irony of simple and comfortable 100 % Ikea set-up, a strange creature, an aesthetic parasite, inhabits this space for work. Six electrical batteries manifest their presence here and there to remind us that there might be a relation between comfort and producing energy. This projects suggests that the notion of work in our society could be seen otherwise.

SLEEP
Students: Zoé Simonet, Valentine Revaz

Poly-phasic sleeping is at the origin if this projects conceptual approach. The possibility of sleeping during short periods of time could replace our all night sleeping therefore opening new possibilities of the utilisation of our everyday life and the spaces that accompany it. A series of bespoke suits have been designed in order to allow the members of the commune to experience a diversity of possibilities of sleep. A specific space has been designed for the optimum and most profound sleep. It proposes a range of foam qualities to allow different comfort possibilities.

EAT
Students: Vincent de Florio

Two capital sins are put into play in this project: Gluttony and Lust. The communal meals are moment of entertainment and fun. 4 objects of furniture have been designed for the event and the eating accessories, glasses, vases, food itself, recipients, have been also thought and realised to accompany the eating performance. All conceived as mobile pieces they contribute to the questioning of the bourgeois institution of the politeness related to food. A Buñuelesque piece.

THE LIMITS OF BANALITY
Students: Antoine Guay, Barbara Jenny

A Standard environment is brought to a perfected replica in this project. The saturation of our corporate society spaces produces inevitably a counter reaction, a subversive space. The space outside the rules occupies empty holes left by society and is always ready to a potential explosion. The duality of these two spaces is presented in an intense manner in this project.

VERNACULAR
Students: Léa Villette, Clémence Dubuis et Amélie Freyche

The exterior spaces have participated to the global concept of the commune. The students have reacted to the architecture of these lieu in a vernacular manner. From a simple and cheap material, bamboo, they have crafted a triangular modular structure forming spaces, partitions, decoration and furniture. A light system has been produced articulating the diversity of entrances and circulation. Finally, the system simply and efficiently invites to conviviality.

Drop City Revival Team:
Daniel Zamarbide, architect (BUREAU A), professor and workshop leader.
Sebastien Grosset, philosopher and dramaturge. Responsible of the workshop theory.
Juliette Roduit, interior designer. Teaching assistant.
aReanne Clot, interior designer. Teaching assistant.

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of Art and Design students appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects Stephen Williams Associates have completed a hotel that looks like a shipping warehouse beside the harbour in Hamburg.

Named the 25hours Hafencity, the hotel features a ground-floor lounge with gridded markings on the floor and a conference room inside a freight container.

Visitors check in at a desk of plywood boxes and can pile up their luggage on industrial trolleys.

Each room comes with a trunk that hinges open to reveal a desk stocked with drinks, a logbook, information packs and electrical sockets.

A boxing punch-bag and bespoke sit-up chairs are all that comprises the hotel gym, but neither is sheltered from the rain.

A row of telephones boxes made from salt-bleached driftwood house Skype booths for guests, while a printer can be found inside a rusty metal cage.

The hotel is located in the Hafencity development area in southern Hamburg and is our second story this week from the district – see our earlier story about a canteen with a spotty ceiling and see all our stories about Hafencity here.

Here’s some more information from Stephen Williams Associates:

A modern maritime story: the 25hours Hotel Hafencity

Hamburg’s Hafencity is one of the most ambitious urban construction sites in Europe. A new district is emerging creating a lively city quarter, a microcosm of modern life where people come together, mingle, confer and celebrate. So it was the idea behind the new 25hours Hotel Hafencity to give this new district a new „living room“ in the heart of the Hafencity.

“We wanted to create a web of meaning with interrelating signs and symbols referring to seafaring and harbour life. A place where old and new stories come to life,” describes the British Architect and Designer Stephen Williams. It all began from the poems of Joachim Ringelnatz with the fictitious sailor Kuttel Daddeldu, a good soul who’s deeply rooted in the seafaring life, but also coarse and a little cheeky.

From the projects inception the idea of a multi-disciplinary team played an important role – The client was an integral part of the design team from day one and formed part of a creative collective co-ordinated by Stephen Williams Associates. The ultimate user-generated architecture where all participants bounced ideas within spacial structures – a storyteller, an event agency and an illustrator giving meaning at all levels. “We worked together like story editors in epic TV-series where a team of writers and professionals with different backgrounds fiddle about to get the perfect story that works at various levels: truly reflect life and it’s meaning,” says Stephen Williams. “It could be considered, that our role is a like that of director of space balancing narrative identity with feasibility and, on top producing unique ideas.”

Modern seamen or ‘maritime nomads’ have something in common with travellers, dubbed as ‘urban nomads’: mobility. In search of this spirit, Markus Stoll, a storyteller for brands, interviewed 25 international sailors in the Seaman’s Club Duckdalben in Hamburg. Passionate about the contemporary notion of the seafaring world, he adapted the first-hand accounts into semifictional stories that became one of the guiding themes of the hotel’s concept.

The seamen’s stories were illustrated by Jindrich Novotny and appear not only on wall surfaces but also in specially created log books in each room.

Guests when retreating to their rooms experience the intimacy of cabins. Conventional furniture replaced with built-in elements and a ‘travel trunk’ providing the visitor with all that they will require: information, log book, drinks, working space with writing instruments and electrical connections. The sea trunk and its contents evoke the emotion of a transitory existence, the seafarer now on land for a short period with all his belongings.

The hotel offers a classical typology of spaces but comes up with surprising interpretations. The rooms are cabin-style suites, the business center is called the ‘Radio Room’. Privacy is catered with 3 Telephone boxes built from salt bleached driftwood, to include skype. Business and private travellers alike have everything they need including a printer located in a rusty metal cage – the ‘Radio Room’‚ a communication point for a new breed of business traveller.

The ‘Hafen Sauna’ is on the rooftop built within a rusty container with panoramic views over the industrial harbour. It is the furthest from wellness that one could imagine. Fitness is achieved by punching a boxing bag and sit-ups on a specially designed seat from Stephen Williams has the roughness a sailor would appreciate. Not only that it is not protected from the Hamburg weather but even the showers are outside.

The ground floor, with discrete lobby, restaurant, bar and shop presents a comfortable version of harbour living, and is the hub of the hotel. It is a public space of inclusivity that invites guests or non-guests to stay and drop in.

There is no fear of being asked by some stiff concierge if you need any help, the buzz of the lobby is a democratic coming and going of all types, the staff in Breton shirts and red neckties augmenting a space with no sign of cliche. Furniture chosen by Connie Kotte  has the patina of years which makes it seem as this industrial space has been there for ever. The import export warehouse has become the living room in the Harbour city but here people are the commodities coming in and going, as it would seem with the natural elements of wind and tide.

Hapag-Lloyd, Hamburg’s well known shipping company kindly donated a shipping container which forms one of the conference rooms and overspill from the restaurant for larger groups. The movable container wall hoisted up to the ceiling to allow access, a reference to the nearby container cranes in constant movement.

Every seafarer longs for home: HEIMAT Küche + Bar is the restaurant of the hotel (in German ‘Heimat’ means ‘Home’) in an elegant industrial aesthetic. Warehouse shelves, rough wooden boxes, floor markings, stacks of oriental carpets and an eclectic range of maritime finds are not decorative but usable storage space for this multifunctional room. Furniture which can be stored, moved around and configurated when wished. Floor markings give an order to many different seating typologies.

“We want to create a space of cultural relevance”, summarizes Stephen Williams. “That for me is linked to the understanding of social structures and how people define themselves within space and how they relate to each other. I would term it ‘designing the invisible’  – spaces, not objects, provide the framework essential to influence human behaviour. Objects are just like characters in the script, they are not the story itself. It is the interplay that brings this to life, the context of spatial sequences. To achieve democratic spaces where everyone can feel comfortable and be who they are is worth achieving. Then we have created the true living room of the Harbour city.

Architecture can only be the backdrop for human activity and not an end in itself.The 25hours Hotel Hafencity is a place to interact, explore and to be oneself. And like all journeys the discovery of something new. A destination to be and start exploring by yourself.”