Hasta La Ideas

Hessian sacks, timber planks and wire mesh hint at the former life of this cafe in Tel Aviv, which Studio Ronen Levin and Eran Chehanowitz converted from an orange-packing plant in the historic port of Jaffa that gives the oranges their name.

The Loveat Jaffa cafe fits into the corner of a former hangar, with three louvred glass facades providing a view of the port.

Inspired by the building’s history, the designers divided the cafe into small boxes of different sizes, stacked like crates.

The kitchen has been placed inside a steel cargo container while the toilet is hidden inside a box of timber planks.

A staircase made from diamond-plate steel decking leads to the upper level of seating, which has a timber-clad wall and a wire mesh balcony.

Heavy twill work shirts in navy blue have been used to upholster the sofa upstairs.

The tables and chairs are made from chipboard or grey steel, while the yellow aluminium bar stools have all been cast from a 1930s tractor seat.

See all our stories about cafes »

Photographs are by Yoav Gurin.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

Studio Ronen Levin in collaboration with Eran Chehanowitz, who have already designed together three coffee shops for Loveat in Tel-Aviv, have recently designed a fourth spot in Tel-Aviv’s old Jaffa port, in the preserved and restored hangar that used to be the packing and shipping plant of the legendary Jaffa oranges in early 20th century.

While strict preservation rules did not allow tampering with any of the existing walls/facades, health regulations and business licensing issues demanded that nearly two thirds of the 70 sq m space was assigned to “back-stage” facilities (such as kitchen, dish-washing zone, storage, employees changing room, toilet, etc.).

Since the space is on the corner of the hangar, and enjoys three glass-louver facades overlooking the old port, the challenge addressed was of allocating such a big portion of the space to areas that by nature need to be hidden, while relying only on one back wall, so as not to hide the special view, nor to block the space with a gigantic disproportionate monolith, estranged to the light materials and fragmented nature of the envelope.

The solution proposed derived from the history of the site as a packing and shipping plant, located in a port – breaking the mass to smaller fragments, by “boxing” each function in a different shape, size and material and “stacking” the various boxes, horizontally and vertically along the back wall, like crates in a shipping yard.

Accordingly, the materials assigned, echo the imagery of packing plants and shipping yards – exposed steel beams, diamond steel decking plate stairs, crimped wire mesh railings, exposed in-situ cast concrete, wire mesh reinforced glass. The kitchen was fitted into a discarded steel cargo container and the toilet was boxed in the timber planks used as casting-form for the concrete.

The furniture design too, was inspired by warehouse and fork-lifts imagery – spruce timber, grey steel, exposed threaded rods and bolts. The bar stools were cast in aluminum from a 1930s tractor iron seat and painted yellow, the dining chairs made of OSB, and a sofa was created with white painted wire mesh upholstered with 25 XL navy colored heavy twill work shirts sewn together, the pocket flaps, white stitching and white buttons of which providing a graphic pattern that breaks the 360cm long surface.

The design, choice of materials and colour scheme were manipulated carefully to echo the site’s narrative while maintaining Loveat’s branding strategy as a young and trendy, frivolous and playful company, in spite of the inherent “heaviness” associated with the visual language of packing plants and shipping yards.

Project: Loveat Jaffa
Client: Loveat Ltd
Design: Studio Ronen Levin
Project designers: Ronen Levin, Eran Chehanowitz, Revital Yariv

The post Loveat Jaffa by Studio Ronen Levin
and Eran Chehanowitz appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects Sharon Neuman and Oded Stern-Meiraz have concealed a modern rectangular residence near Tel Aviv behind a brick wall shaped like a vernacular house with a chimney.

A wooden bridge connects the building’s top floor with a balcony that cantilevers through this grey-painted wall.

A recessed door underneath the balcony leads through to an entrance courtyard behind, where the base of the chimney is revealed to be an outdoor fireplace and barbeque.

Inside the house, polished concrete stairs connect the two upper floors with the basement, while bricks walls are painted in the same colour as the facade.

You can see more projects in Israel by clicking here.

Photography is by Elad Sarig.

Here’s some text from the architects:

260sq m modern minimalist house is located in the unlikely setting of the rural town of even Yehuda, 20 minutes drive from Tel Aviv.

The concept for the house was inspired by the work of minimalist artist Walter De Maria- Gothic Shaped Drawing that’s is showing a basic one line 2 dimensional shape of a house, almost as is drawn by a child.

A tall brick painted wall in a traditional shape of a house, together with an attached outdoor chimney, provide the needed privacy the clients requested towards the front, and contrasting with the rear of the house which is made completely of glass and is open to the back – facing north.

A floating open bridge/balcony on the first floor also acts as a canopy for the main entrance underneath and leads visitors through a long gap in the external wall to the main entrance of the house.

The house is on 3 floors: Basement with a shelter, a cinema and a play room, ground floor with a lounge, kitchen, and a tv room, first floor with a main bedroom suit, children rooms and work areas.

Architects- Sharon Neuman and Oded Stern-Meiraz

Plot 500sqm

Built area 260 Sqm

Located in Even Yehuda, Israel

Dezeen in Israel: here are some images of the recently opened new wing at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which has a dramatically faceted atrium piercing its centre.

Designed by American architect Preston Scott Cohen, the Herta and Paul Amir Building has a spiralling plan with two storeys above ground and three underground floors.

Galleries overlook the 26-metre-high atrium through long windows that slice through its angled walls.

Although the building has a triangular plan, these exhibition galleries are rectangular and display art, design, architecture and photography.

Walls fold around the entrances to these rooms and appear on approach to be wafer-thin.

The museum has a tessellated concrete exterior where windows match the shapes of the triangular and rectangular panels.

You can see more stories about Israeli architecture and interiors here, or if you’re interested in furniture and product design from Israel you can check out our special feature here.

Photography is by Amit Geron.

Here’s some more information from the museum:

Herta and Paul Amir Building
Tel Aviv Museum of Art

The design for the Amir Building arises directly from the challenge of providing several floors of large, neutral, rectangular galleries within a tight, idiosyncratic, triangular site. The solution is to “square the triangle” by constructing the levels on different axes, which deviate significantly from floor to floor. In essence, the building’s levels—two above grade and three below—are structurally independent plans stacked one on top of the other.

These levels are unified by the “Lightfall”: an 87-foot-high, spiraling, top-lit atrium, whose form is defined by subtly twisting surfaces that curve and veer up and down through the building. The complex geometry of the Lightfall’s surfaces (hyperbolic parabolas) connect the disparate angles of the galleries; the stairs and ramped promenades along them serve as the surprising, continually unfolding vertical circulation system; while the natural light from above is refracted into the deepest recesses of the half-buried building. Cantilevers accommodate the discrepancies between plans and provide overhangs at the perimeter.

In this way, the Amir Building combines two seemingly irreconcilable paradigms of the contemporary art museum: the museum of neutral white boxes, which provides optimal, flexible space for the exhibition of art, and the museum of spectacle, which moves visitors and offers a remarkable social experience. The Amir Building’s synthesis of radical and conventional geometries produces a new type of museum experience, one that is as rooted in the Baroque as it is in the Modern.

Conceptually, the Amir Building is related to the Museum’s Brutalist main building (completed 1971; Dan Eytan and Yitzchak Yashar, architects). At the same time, it also relates to the larger tradition of Modern architecture in Tel Aviv, as seen in the multiple vocabularies of Mendelsohn, the Bauhaus and the White City. The gleaming white parabolas of the façade are composed of 465 differently shaped flat panels made of pre-cast reinforced concrete. Achieving a combination of form and material that is unprecedented in the city, the façade translates Tel Aviv’s existing Modernism into a contemporary and progressive architectural language.

Architect: Preston Scott Cohen, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
Project Team: Preston Scott Cohen, principal in charge of design, Amit Nemlich, project architect; Tobias Nolte, Bohsung Kong, project assistants

Consultants:
Project Managers: CPM Construction Managment Ltd.
Structural Engineers: YSS Consulting Engineers Ltd., Dani Shacham
HVAC: M. Doron – I. Shahar & Co., Consulting Eng. Ltd.
Electrical: U. Brener – A. Fattal Electrical & Systems Engineering Ltd.
Lighting: Suzan Tillotson, New York
Safety: S. Netanel Engineers Ltd
Security: H.M.T
Elevators: ESL- Eng. S. Lustig – Consulting Engineers Ltd.
Acoustics: M.G. Acistical Consultants Ltd.
Traffic: Dagesh Engineering, Traffic & Road Design Ltd.
Sanitation: Gruber Art System Engineering Ltd.
Soil: David David
Survey: B. Gattenyu
Public Shelter: K.A.M.N
Waterproofing: Bittelman
Kitchen Design: Zonnenstein

Key Dates:
Architectural competition: 2003
Design development and construction documents: 2005-06
Groundbreaking: 2007
Opening: November 2, 2011

Size: 195,000 square feet (18,500 square meters), built on a triangular footprint of approximately 48,500 square feet (4,500 square meters)
Cost: $55 million (estimated)

Principal Spaces:
Israeli Art galleries: 18,500 square feet
Architecture and Design galleries: 7,200 square feet
Prints and Drawings galleries: 2,500 square feet
Temporary exhibitions gallery: 9,000 square feet
Photography study center and gallery: 3,700 square feet
Art library: 10,000 square feet
Auditorium: 7,000 square feet
Restaurant: 3,200 square feet
Offices: 2,700 square feet

Principal Materials: Pre-cast reinforced concrete (facades), cast-in-place concrete (Lightfall), glass, acoustical grooved maple (ceilings in lobby and library and auditorium walls) and steel (structural frame)

Karina Tollman and Philipp Thomanek of Israeli studio k1p3 have completed the interior for this fashion boutique in Tel Aviv, with a contiunous metal clothes rail dividing the store lengthways.

The shop’s window was narrowed leaving a horizontal strip of glass in the centre, while mannequins and displays inside are lined up to run parallel with the street.

Display stands and counters are made of MDF while horizontal lights hover over the central rail.

More retail interiors on Dezeen »

Photographs are by Daniel Sheriff.

The following information is from the architects:

k1p3 architects designed a new flagship store for the fashion label Rhus Ovata in Tel Aviv.

The premises are located on a busy fashion shopping street, the Rhus Ovata brand identifies itself as a subversive brand and therefore chose a shop set back from the sidewalk. The architects’ concept for the shop was born from this position, trying to accentuate the depth of the shop. Creating a horizontal layering parallel to the street.

The shop façade was redesigned, using steel to close the lower and upper parts of the vitrine and leaving a clear horizontal strip through which the shop shines and draws passers-by in. Openings were introduced in the back wall exposing a back garden.

The materiality was kept minimal and basic in its nature narrowed down to a rectangular steel profile and MDF, and the style draws references from contemporary art.

The shop displays both the Rhus Ovata collection and it’s ‘Borrowed’ vintage accessories collection. The collections were organized in the space according to the layers concept.

The majority of the fashion collection is hanging on a continues single axis across the entire width of the space with three passages crossing it where the steel profile is set into the floor. In the entrance the same steel profile suspends from the ceiling creating a topography within the space.

Along the backdrop of the shop, the ‘Borrowed’ collection is displayed in a library next to selected art books and alongside it is a wall installation of vintage scarves.

Special diamond shaped hangers were designed and hand made to present the bags on a single column.

A great emphasize was given to the design of custom made light bodies. The light bodies generate a dialogue with the floor plan highlighting its orientation and creating a hierarchy in the space.

Long horizontal lamps were designed emphasizing the long suspended rack creating a ‘highway’ of light in alternating positions above it. Vertical, mushroom like, lamps were designed to highlight particular points in the space.

And pink neon was used for the logo, casually leaning against a wall, repeating around the single column. The logo and packaging branding is by Koniak design.

See also:

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Ahoti by Studio Lama	Hila Gaon bridal store by k1p3	Fashion Studio by Irena Kilibarda

Une belle série “Yangtsé, le long fleuve” du photographe Nadav Kander, né à Tel Aviv et travaillant en Grande-Bretagne. Ce travail documente le changement qui affecte les paysages et les communautés du fleuve, en Chine. Il été récompensé par le prix Pictet en 2009.

Previously on Fubiz

• Li Wei Updates
• Between Bears
• Danish Pavilion – Expo 2010