Hasta La Ideas

For a country with such a storied history in chocolate, Switzerland has little to show for new players in the cacao game—that is until Niklaus Blumer and Pascal Wirth decided to follow their passion for dark chocolate and the time-honored Swiss chocolate-making process,…

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News: Dutch studio MVRDV has won a competition to design 95 homes in Emmen, Switzerland, with plans that give every residence an identifiable colour.

The Feldbreite housing competition called for a new housing block, but MVRDV instead proposed a series of houses and apartment buildings arranged around shared courtyards and individual gardens.

Apartment blocks will be positioned at the corners of the development, while townhouses will line the edges and smaller residences will be inserted into the middle. The architects hope this arrangement will foster a neighbourhood community.

The 95 homes will be made up of 16 different unit types, ranging from 30 to 130 square metres in area, and forming a mixture between one and four storeys.

Different pastel colours will help residents to identify their own homes, based on the traditional paintwork found in historic Swiss town centres.

MVRDV worked with landscape architects Fontana to design the exterior spaces. Fruit trees will be dotted across the gardens, while dividing walls will include demountable tables and benches, as well as folding panels that can be used for table tennis.

Underground parking will be slotted beneath the buildings and construction is set to commence in 2015.

MVRDV, led by architects Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries, recently completed a glazed shop and office complex disguised as an old farmhouse and a renovation in Gangnam, South Korea. See more architecture by MVRDV »

The architects have also teamed up with Dezeen to give away a copy of their new book, entitled MVRDV Buildings. Find out how to enter »

Here’s some information from MVRDV:

MVRDV win Competition in Emmen, Switzerland with Urban Hybrid

The city of Emmen has announced that investment corporation Senn BPM AG together with MVRDV are the winners of the Feldbreite competition for a housing block with 95 homes of 16 different types. The urban hybrid development combines characteristics of city dwelling – central location, privacy, underground parking – with the characteristics of suburban life: gardens, multilevel living and a neighbourhood community. Construction is envisioned to start in 2015.

Instead of the housing block asked for by the brief, MVRDV created a mixed urban block with small apartment buildings at the corners, townhouses along the streets and garden and patio houses inside the block. The 16 different housing types, which vary in size from 30 to 130 m2 and from one to four floors, will naturally attract a mixed group of inhabitants, an important factor in creating a vivid urban environment. The project consists of 9000 m2 of housing, 2034 m2 services and 2925 m2 underground parking.

Each house or apartment will have its own facade colour, emphasising its individual ownership. A pastel range of colour was chosen based on the specific colours traditionally found in historic Swiss town centres in the Lucerne area, such as Beromünster.

An important aspect of the project is the high quality of construction in combination with relatively low prices. Clients will be able to buy a more or less finished house – comparable to the basic model of a new car – with options leading up to almost full fit and finish possible. Home owners with little money can therefore delay investment, or do the work themselves, and still live in a high quality, new build home.

The exterior of the block is a varied urban street front whilst the interior offers the quality of a green and intimate village. The interior of the block is divided into both private and public spaces, with dividing walls used to hang tables or benches and parts of the walls which can be rotated and used for table tennis. A cohesive landscaping plan foresees a wide variety of fruit trees in the courtyard, in both the private and public areas. The garden and patio houses in the centre of the courtyard have their own entrance doors at the outer perimeter of the block. The roofs will be used for additional outdoor space.

MVRDV won the developer’s competition together with development corporation Senn BPM AG, Fontana Landscape architects and Wüest & Partner real estate consulting.

The post MVRDV wins Swiss
housing competition appeared first on Dezeen.

Transportive and transformative, the following six sculptural pieces found at this year’s Art Basel push the boundaries of the medium and its definition within art. Chaotic, thoughtful and sometimes even funny, each work manages to bring a new world into our own. Continue Reading…

Design Miami/Basel houses the extraordinary. Objects as ordinary as a chair, and as everyday as a bench to sit upon, wow at this annual celebration of collectible design. With deft artistry, designers re-envision the structure and function of day-to-day living across furniture and…

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Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has revealed his competition-winning design for a campus of timber buildings to house the headquarters of watch brands Swatch and Omega in Biel, Switzerland.

The architect will add three new buildings to accompany Omega‘s existing offices, creating a consolidated campus and visitor centre that incorporates exhibition galleries, public plazas and a riverside hiking trail.

Using the engineering technologies of a nearby timber institution, each of the new structures will be built with a solid timber frame. Pillar and beam constructions will be used for a museum building and Omega production hall, while the Swatch headquarters building will feature an undulating timber gridshell.

“I wanted to design something very special and particularly appropriate for this city,” said Shiguru Ban at the project launch. “I know that Biel is very famous for its timber technologies – they have the most advanced timber institution.”

Describing how the structure of his Centre Pompidou-Metz was tested in Biel, he added: “Timber is the only renewable material for construction in the world. This building is going to be very important, not only for the company, but also for creating a new environment, creating the icon for the city of Biel.”

The museum building will form the centre of the campus and will be raised off the ground to open up a new entrance plaza.

The curving body of the Swatch headquarters will branch out from the museum, extending the plaza out across the street.

The project is set for completion in the summer of 2015. It will be the second building Ban has worked on for Swatch, after he completed the brand’s Japanese headquarters in Ginza, Tokyo, in 2007.

Ban’s other recent projects include a pavilion with cardboard columns in Moscow and a New York store for footwear brand Camper. See more architecture by Shigeru Ban.

Here’s a statement from Shigeru Ban:

I was very happy to win this competition to design the Headquarters for Swatch and Omega. This project is very important not only for Swatch and Omega but also for the city of the Biel. I wanted to design something very special and particularly appropriate for this city. And I know that Biel is very famous for its timber technologies – they have the most advanced timber institution. Even the Pompidou Center in Metz – we designed the timber roof and this was tested at the timber institution in Biel. So this city is well known for the timber technology – the most advanced timber technology, that’s why most of the building is designed with timber. Actually timber is the only renewable material for construction in the world. So this is also very important for the environment of the future. And this building – this project – is going to be very important not only for the company, but also for creating a new environment, creating the icon for the city of Biel. So this is the aim for this project – not only for functional reasons.

Also I have to explain that the Swatch Group has been working very closely with us. I also won the competition for the Swatch building which is called the Nicolas G. Hayek Center in Tokyo in 2005. We built the 14 storey building in Ginza Tokyo which is the most important commercial area in Japan. This building is also very innovative. We opened them – all the buildings – to the street to take natural ventilation. So the innovation of the building was the most important point which pleased Mr Hayek when we proposed the competition. And the important point of this building is not only the shape of the building but also the innovative idea for the Swatch and Omega companies – as you know, the Swatch is the innovation of Mr Hayek. That was totally revolutionary for the history of watchmaking. So we tried for the project to propose something very innovative as a building, as the Swatch is very innovative for the watch technologies. So that’s the kind of common idea between watchmaking and my proposal design for the building for Swatch and Omega. Because this is the second collaboration with Swatch Group, we have already established a very, very good relationship between our company and Swatch and Omega. So although this is a very challenging project, I really believe that the whole process will go very smoothly. And we have very good client, they totally understand the spirit of the design. We also have very good local team. Local architects, local engineers. Everybody was especially chosen for this particularly challenging project. So I have a great confidence that this project will move very smoothly, with a very successful proposal for this 21st century – not only for the city of Biel but also for Switzerland and for the world. Thank you.

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by Shigeru Ban appeared first on Dezeen.