Dezeen and MINI World Tour: architect Alex de Rijke of dRMM talks to Dezeen about his practice’s Escher-inspired installation of staircases in this movie filmed outside Tate Modern in London.
Alex de Rijke of dRMM
The Endless Stair installation, constructed on the bank of the River Thames as part of this years London Design Festival, comprises 15 interlocking staircases demonstrating a new cross-laminated timber material.
“Endless Stair is a prototype,” explains de Rijke, who is co-founder of architects de Rijke Marsh Morgan and dean of architecture at the Royal College of Art. “It’s a research project into making a new material, or a new version of a material, namely a hard wood version of laminated timber, which is generally soft wood.”
dRMM chose to create an installation of stairs to demonstrate the material because of the sculptural quality of staircases, de Rijke says.
“Stairs are one of the nicest things about architecture,” he explains. “Somebody once said sculpture’s gift to architecture is the staircase.”
He continues: “My team were interested in Escher’s endless stair as a conceptual conceit. We thought we would make a very simple version of Escher’s sophisticated ideas.”
To recreate one of Escher’s drawings in 3D would be impossible, and de Rijke admits that the installation is not literally endless.
“Endless Stair is obviously a real staircase with a real end,” he says. “The idea of Endless Stair is that it can be endlessly reconfigured; it’s something that can be recycled and reused. There are 15 flights in this example, and they can be reconfigured with more or less in many different contexts.”
De Rijke says that the sculpture is meant to be fun, but forms part of a serious research project.
“All useful architecture has its origins in some kind of experiment,” he says. “We wanted to make a new material and we wanted to apply it and we did so with a kind of sculpture, but actually there’s a serious intent behind it, which is the application at the scale of buildings and larger structures.”
We drove to Tate Modern in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music featured in the movie is a track called Temple by London band Dead Red Sun.
Dimensions, Croatia’s four-day underground electronic music festival, is a veritable force for any fan to take on. The festival’s UK-based team gathers over 300 artists to perform in Fort Punta Christo’s seven unique venues, and…
Contemporary artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have turned five galleries at the V&A museum in London into the apartment of a fictional architect for an exhibition that opens next month.
The V&A invited Elmgreen & Dragset to develop an installation for its former textile galleries, which have been closed to the public for several years.
The artists appropriated over 100 objects from the museum’s collections and combined them with their own artworks and antique market purchases to create a mock up of a domestic interior.
“Making this exhibition is like creating a detailed set for a film, but with access to the incredible collections of the V&A to choose from,” said the artists. “While selecting objects to furnish the apartment we began to envision pieces of dialogue between characters that we could imagine might inhabit the space.”
To accompany the set design, Elmgreen & Dragset have written a script that describes the lifestyle of the disillusioned retired architect who inhabits the space.
Visitors will be given a copy of the script and invited to wander through the rooms, interacting with character’s furniture and possessions so they can better understand the societal issues of ageing, disappointment and alienation that inspired the story.
“We are excited to be working with two of the world’s leading contemporary artists on this ambitious project,” said V&A director Martin Roth. “The result will be unsettling and provoking and above all will present the V&A’s collections in a radically new and memorable way for our visitors.”
The exhibition opens to the public on 1 October 2013 and will continue until 2 January 2014.
Tomorrow – Elmgreen & Dragset at the V&A In partnership with AlixPartners 1 October 2013 – 2 January 2014
The V&A has commissioned a major site-specific installation over five galleries by leading contemporary artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Opening in October 2013, Tomorrow will transform the V&A’s former textile galleries into an apartment belonging to a fictional, elderly and disillusioned architect.
The installation will feature over 100 objects from the V&A’s collections, which will sit alongside works by the artists, as well as items sourced from antique markets. The juxtaposition of objects, which will be arranged as a grand domestic interior, will create ambiguity and raise questions about cultural heritage. Martin Roth, V&A Director, said: “We are excited to be working with two of the world’s leading contemporary artists on this ambitious project. The result will be unsettling and provoking and above all will present the V&A’s collections in a radically new and memorable way for our visitors.”
Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibition Tomorrow will appear like a set for an unrealised film. To accompany it, the artists have written a script, which will be available to visitors as a printed book. The drama centres on a retired architect who had great vision but very little success in his professional life. In his twilight years, and with the family fortune long gone, he is forced to sell his inherited home and all his possessions. The script comments on issues of ageing, disappointment and alienation in today’s society.
Within the domestic setting, visitors will act as uninvited guests, able to curl up in the architect’s bed, recline on his sofa, or rifle through books placed by the artists to hint at the imagined events that could have taken place here.
Tomorrow will examine interests that have abided throughout the artists’ careers – those of redefining the way in which art is presented and experienced, issues around social models and how spaces and objects both inflict on and reflect our behavioural patterns. Such ideas are visible in many of the artist duo’s previous exhibitions, including The Welfare Show at Serpentine Gallery in 2006, The Collectors at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 and The One and The Many at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 2011.
Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset said: “On one of our early visits to the V&A to discuss the show, we encountered the former textile galleries which were being used for storage and closed to the public. When we found these spaces we knew right away what we wanted to do. Making this exhibition is like creating a detailed set for a film, but with access to the incredible collections of the V&A to choose from. While selecting objects to furnish the apartment we began to envision pieces of dialogue between characters that we could imagine might inhabit the space. So we wrote a script. It was sort of a reversed process where the props in our film set initiated the narrative. Now it’s our hope that visitors will interact freely with this set and discover their own clues as to who our fictional and quite eccentric inhabitant might be.”
Elmgreen & Dragset have worked closely with V&A curator Louise Shannon to research and select objects from the V&A collections.
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: the next stop on our Dezeen and MINI World Tour is our home town of London. In our first report, Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs takes a trip through the east of the city and explains why the area has become such a hotbed for design and technology.
Church Street in Stoke Newington
Starting off in Stoke Newington, a former village in the north-east of the city where Dezeen is based, Fairs follows the route of an old Roman road called Ermine Street to the city centre, passing through Dalston, Shoreditch and the City of London before ending up at the River Thames.
Heading down Kingsland Road towards Shoreditch
“These areas have come to symbolise the new creative economy of London,” says Fairs as he passes through Shoreditch, a former industrial district bordering the City of London where a proliferation of architects, designers and, increasingly, technology companies are based.
“They’re stuffed full of digital companies, technology companies, design companies; [there’s] a real focus of new types of creativity.”
“We plotted on a map all of the design studios in the area,” Fairs explains. “We found that the pins on the map were so dense you couldn’t see the map behind. It really felt that we’d discovered a critical mass of design talent that is unrivalled anywhere else in the world.”
There are a number of reasons why so many designers set up in London, says Fairs, despite the city being “really expensive, really competitive, really unfriendly to newcomers.”
“London is full of really amazing design schools, I think that’s a really important point,” he explains. “People from all around the world come to London to get their design qualifications; they make friends, they enjoy the culture and they stay and set up studios.”
Richard Rogers’ Leadenhall Building and Raphael Viñoly’s 20 Fenchurch Street
Another major factor is money, Fairs claims: “There’s lots of money in London. That’s created problems – the property market has been going up non-stop – but it also creates wealth and wealth is the thing that turns the gears of creativity in many ways.”
Tower Bridge, with the City of London behind
The wealth of the city is most visible in the new skyscrapers being built to the south of Shoreditch in the City of London, where projects like Richard Rogers’ Leadenhall Building and Raphael Viñoly’s 20 Fenchurch Street, dubbed “The Cheesegrater” and “The Walkie-Talkie” respectively, are transforming London’s skyline.
“London used to be a place where world-class architects didn’t really feel like they could get any decent work” Fairs says. “But now London is really coming into its own.”
Of course, one of the main attractions of Shoreditch for the creative industries was that rents were comparatively cheap. Fairs says it is inevitable that young designers are now being priced out of the area, but is optimistic for the future of designers in the city.
“London is a big city,” he says. “People are already moving further to the east, to the south, crossing the river. London, I think, will always be able to regenerate itself.”
Marcus Fairs
We travelled through east London in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music featured in the movie is a track called Temple by London band Dead Red Sun.
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: the next stop on our Dezeen and MINI World Tour is our home town of London. In our first report, Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs takes a trip through the east of the city and explains why the area has become such a hotbed for design and technology.
Church Street in Stoke Newington
Starting off in Stoke Newington, a former village in the north-east of the city where Dezeen is based, Fairs follows the route of an old Roman road called Ermine Street to the city centre, passing through Dalston, Shoreditch and the City of London before ending up at the River Thames.
Heading down Kingsland Road towards Shoreditch
“These areas have come to symbolise the new creative economy of London,” says Fairs as he passes through Shoreditch, a former industrial district bordering the City of London where a proliferation of architects, designers and, increasingly, technology companies are based.
“They’re stuffed full of digital companies, technology companies, design companies; [there’s] a real focus of new types of creativity.”
“We plotted on a map all of the design studios in the area,” Fairs explains. “We found that the pins on the map were so dense you couldn’t see the map behind. It really felt that we’d discovered a critical mass of design talent that is unrivalled anywhere else in the world.”
There are a number of reasons why so many designers set up in London, says Fairs, despite the city being “really expensive, really competitive, really unfriendly to newcomers.”
“London is full of really amazing design schools, I think that’s a really important point,” he explains. “People from all around the world come to London to get their design qualifications; they make friends, they enjoy the culture and they stay and set up studios.”
Richard Rogers’ Leadenhall Building and Raphael Viñoly’s 20 Fenchurch Street
Another major factor is money, Fairs claims: “There’s lots of money in London. That’s created problems – the property market has been going up non-stop – but it also creates wealth and wealth is the thing that turns the gears of creativity in many ways.”
Tower Bridge, with the City of London behind
The wealth of the city is most visible in the new skyscrapers being built to the south of Shoreditch in the City of London, where projects like Richard Rogers’ Leadenhall Building and Raphael Viñoly’s 20 Fenchurch Street, dubbed “The Cheesegrater” and “The Walkie-Talkie” respectively, are transforming London’s skyline.
“London used to be a place where world-class architects didn’t really feel like they could get any decent work” Fairs says. “But now London is really coming into its own.”
Of course, one of the main attractions of Shoreditch for the creative industries was that rents were comparatively cheap. Fairs says it is inevitable that young designers are now being priced out of the area, but is optimistic for the future of designers in the city.
“London is a big city,” he says. “People are already moving further to the east, to the south, crossing the river. London, I think, will always be able to regenerate itself.”
Marcus Fairs
We travelled through east London in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music featured in the movie is a track called Temple by London band Dead Red Sun.
Turntables and Tokyobikes will be available to hire at the latest addition to the Ace Hotel chain, designed by London practice Universal Design Studio and opening later this month in Shoreditch.
Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby’s Universal Design Studio designed the interior and exterior of the 258-room hotel on Shoreditch High Street, behind a new facade designed by the team.
Dark engineering brick will clad the ground floor, with lighter rendering on the upper storeys.
“Both exterior and interior design focus on traditional craftsmanship, embedding the space within the historic context and material heritage of Shoreditch,” said Universal Design Studio director Jason Holley.
A large glass-walled event space on top will have panoramic views of London and the basement will feature a bar and performance space. The hotel will also contain a flower shop, brasserie, takeaway juice bar and cafe.
Cork ceilings fitted with custom copper light fixtures and timber parquet flooring are to be installed in communal areas on the ground floor.
Original work by local artists will adorn walls of the minimal bedrooms, in some of which guests can request to have Martin guitars and Rega RP1 turntables. Guests will also be able to hire bicycles to explore the city from local shop Tokyobike.
Monochrome tiles will line the bathrooms, which will feature mirror-faced bathtubs and lights designed for outside.
Ace Hotel worked with London-based architecture and interior design firm Universal Design Studio to design exteriors and interiors, including 258 guest rooms, an 1,800 square foot seventh floor event space, a 2,700 square foot restaurant, Hoi Polloi, and a 3,900 square foot lounge and reception area comprised of retail units, a bar, café and art gallery. Our approach was to tune in to the authentic voice of Shoreditch, to engage local artists, craftspersons and builders to foster a sense of place at home with its surroundings, a place that is, according to Ace co-founder Alex Calderwood, “of London and for London.”
Known for their distinctive design aesthetic, recognisable for its simplicity and clever use of material details, and a bespoke approach to each client, Universal Design Studio was a natural choice to help translate the Ace ethos into a London vernacular. Both exterior and interior design focus on traditional craftsmanship, embedding the space within the historic context and material heritage of Shoreditch. Material choices are informed by East London’s longstanding role as a centre for the performing arts, as well as a historic home to skilled trades like shoemaking, furniture making, rope making, ship building and silk weaving.
External rendering by Forbes Massie
Façade & Exterior Details
Immediately facing a conservation area, the area surrounding Ace Hotel London Shoreditch has a rich architectural history, composed of a tightly knit grain of warehouses, shops, residential and industrial buildings. The intent of the façade is to mesh with the urban fabric around us. Contemporary takes on traditional material cues use expressive brickwork, infill and pattern to reanimate the street level of the building, bringing activity to the front and breaking the façade into a number of independent units and uses. Dark ‘engineering brick’, often found in traditional utilitarian buildings is used to ground the base in local tradition. A rich mixture of textural changes — brick bonds and receded bricks alongside glazed and unglazed patterning — create a series of distinct identities across the span of the façade. In reference to local metalwork traditions, Crittall windows, doors and industrial elements like grids, cast bronze, galvanised steel and waxed finishes add to the authentically local character.
Public Areas
Communal areas at Ace Hotel London Shoreditch include the ground floor lobby, a communal table, café, lobby bar and gallery space. The lobby is envisioned as a hub for interaction for hotel guests as well as the surrounding community, and continues the real-Shoreditch tone set by the exterior, with common local materials like brick, metalwork and Crittall glazing. A series of room-like zones are created through furniture arrangements and a series of full-height Crittall glass and steel screens, inviting the language of articulated shop fronts, that begins with the façade, indoors. A cork ceiling fitted with custom copper light fixtures and timber parquet flooring steeps the setting in the local visual culture.
A rich theatrical history is reflected in moments throughout the communal spaces as well, like a custom theatre-style light grid installed in the external entrance foyer. Ace Hotel London Shoreditch sits on the original site of the Shoreditch Empire, later the London Music Hall. The Empire, designed by prolific theatrical architect Frank Matcham, opened in 1856 and played host to stars like Charlie Chaplin.
In the lobby bar area, a lighter colour of brick, articulated brick patterns, and a skylight that draws natural daylight lend to the uniqueness of the space. Artist Max Lamb was commissioned to design the bar cladding, bar stools and cocktail tables. A long, sixteen-seat communal work table by Benchmark in the lobby is a bespoke piece made of cast iron, oak and copper which can be used as an informal meeting or work space.
The café features a range of rich finishes including handmade tiles and patterned timber floors. The gallery space will rotate artist exhibitions and we’re collaborating with local artists on details throughout the lobby.
External rendering by Forbes Massie
Restaurant Concept
At Hoi Polloi, Universal and Atelier Ace worked with the Hoi Polloi team to create an English modernist brasserie inspired by mid-twentieth century European bistros. Stepping in from bustling Shoreditch High Street, Hattie Fox’s That Flower Shop is a floral interlude before discovering the restaurant. On entering Hoi Polloi, guests encounter an informal bar area made up of a series of banquette booths. The high-ceilinged space accommodates a variety of paces — fast-moving and leisurely. Moving into the main dining space, soft banquette seating creates a range of areas focused around a central seating section. A sense of spontaneity fosters the feeling of ‘an occasion,’ somewhere for everyday, yet special every time. It’s a dynamic space, as ideal for daytimes spent working on a laptop as it is for evening drinks or supper.
Design details include a complex palette of materials like fluted timber-paneled walls with horizontally mirrored panels to create further depth. The bar is wrapped with natural stone while banquettes are finished in leather. Flecked linoleum tabletops contrast with stone surfaces, while Douglas Fir-paneled banquettes standout against warm Iroko timber wall panels. Hexagonal timber flooring in the bar area shifts to encaustic ceramic tiles in the dining room. Polished brass light fixtures sit on low walls behind banquette seating and custom pendant lights by Philippe Malouin light the main dining space. Ercol Love Seats and classic Butterfly chairs echo classic British dining rooms.
Guest Rooms
The approach to the guest rooms was to think of them as a friend’s Shoreditch apartment, a collection of furniture and objects acquired over time, each with stories and memories attached. Each guest finds a curated shelf with a distinct identity and experience of place — useful crafted elements (maps, sketch pads) from local makers, records, books, a pin-up cork board and found curiosities. This magnetic shelf by T Nevill & Co. can be changed or added to by guests during their visit.
A utilitarian colour palette on the walls of the rooms creates a modest shell, a low-key canvas for simple but considered bespoke elements like folding metal display shelving, matte-finish oak bed platforms and expansive daybeds with reverse-denim upholstery. The full-width daybed encourages social interaction and a round table replaces the standard hotel room desk with something more domestic and multi-functional. The mixture of matte-finish solid white European oak, black powder- coated metal and fabrics add texture in consonance with the cool, pared-back approach throughout, to allow for curated objects to stand out.
Custom tile patterns, mirror-faced bathtubs and ‘exterior’ light fittings in bathrooms are complementary patterns against a monochrome palette.
Lovage
Lovage is a seasonal farm-to-street elixir and treat stand rooted in the essentials of British folk medicine and based on the idea that wellness comes from nature. The menu content will change seasonally and the interior walls will transition accordingly from white washed spruce to dark, charred cedar panels. The reversible panels are hung from raw breeze block walls with blackened steel barnyard ironmongery, a material gesture inspired by unfussy, rural Japanese kitchens and traditional village apothecaries.
Other notes include cast bronze light fixtures and a Noren curtain made of vintage boro fabric, contrasted with stainless steel work surfaces and a floor made of black hexagonal encaustic tiles. Signage and graphics are screen-printed on plywood. The warm, earthen atmosphere, set against a clean, utilitarian space complements the objective of providing natural, holistic sustenance in the midst of travel and work.
“Cricklewood is a community with no public space: no town hall, no library, no square, not even a single bench,” explained the designers. “The square will take the form of a civic folly on the back of a rickshaw bicycle, housing everything necessary to create a bona fide town square, including benches, stools, a clock tower, games and signage.”
The miniature square will be installed at a number of temporary locations, including outside a DIY superstore, on a pavement near a bingo hall and a rooftop car park. It will be used to host events for the local community such as dances and film screenings.
“The project aims to show what public space can do for a community, and how even these scraps of land can be used to create a sense of place,” said the designers.
When the town square is fully installed it covers 10 metres squared. The mobile folly including the bicycle is 1.22 metres wide and 2.8 metres long. It rises to 3.2 metres in height.
It has a custom-made five-wheeled base with 12 millimetre plywood covering, faux-brick cladding and a hand-made clock. Inside, there is a collection of furniture including umbrellas, benches, tables and chairs.
“The structure is both a practical solution – a vehicle to move the kit around – and a folly, providing a civic backdrop, helping to frame the spaces,” said designer Kieren Jones. “I hope this playful solution can be the town hall that Cricklewood never had.”
Cricklewood Town Square will be travelling around north London until 28 September. It will also be exhibited at the RIBA Forgotten Spaces exhibition at Somerset House in London, which runs from 4 October to 10 November 2013.
Spacemakers produce the world’s first mobile town square
Spacemakers, the civic design agency behind the successful transformation of Brixton Village market, has enlisted Studio Hato and Studio Kieren Jones to create the world’s first mobile town square. Constructed from a clever kit of parts, the innovative town square will travel by bike and move across north London from 31 August to 28 September, inhabiting patches of disused land and turning them into vibrant public spaces for all.
Cricklewood, north west London, has an intriguing history but little civic amenities left to show for its heritage – not only is there no town hall or library, there’s not even a single public bench. Now the team that created the cult Brixton Village renaissance are turning their attentions north, seeking to highlight the dire lack of public space in Cricklewood via their ingenious mobile town square.
Designed and built by Studio Kieren Jones, the mobile town square will emerge in a series of forgotten spaces: from an unloved patch of grass next to B&Q, to an empty pavement outside a bingo hall, and even a rooftop car park. The square will take the form of a civic folly on the back of a rickshaw bicycle, housing everything necessary to create a bona fide town square, including benches, stools, a clocktower, games and signage.
To bring the Capital’s newest public space to life Londoners are invited to join in, with a dynamic programme of events running throughout the installation, from dog shows and chess championships, to tea dances and debates. Many of the events play on Cricklewood’s little known past, with film screenings on a car park roof referencing the area’s long lost film studios, and a DIY library where locals can read books by the town’s famous literary progeny.
Designer Kieren Jones explains: “In response to the relative lack of civic space in Cricklewood, I have created a miniature and mobile town hall, which will enable the activation of places and spaces within the town centre that have been previously underused. The structure will also house a set of bespoke furniture, using local suppliers, that can be flexibly deployed. The clock tower is a reference to the Smiths clock factory that used to exist in Cricklewood, and to the decorative clock that used to exist on Anson Road, but which was sold for scrap during the war.
The structure is both a practical solution – a vehicle to move the kit around – and a folly, providing a civic backdrop, helping to frame the spaces. Cricklewood has a thriving community, but no space for this community to exist. In a way, I hope this playful solution can be the town hall that Cricklewood never had.”
The fully installed space will be up to 10 metres squared, the mobile folly including the bicycle is 1.22m wide x 2.8m long x 3.2m tall and made from a bespoke, dip-coated 5-wheeled bike base, a steel frame, with 12mm plywood covering, faux-brick cladding (polyurethane, resin and brick dust) and a hand-made clock. The square’s furniture is made from a welded steel base, dip-coated in Cricklewood by local car-resprayers and finished with locally sourced, reclaimed wood.
Studio Hato were tasked with creating the signage and graphics for the square. Their solution was to come up with a DIY sign-making workshop, where local people could use stencils to create their own signs, and set their own rules, for the space.
A unique font, based on the standard British ‘transport’ font used on street signs across the country, has been created, and will be applied using stencils to pre-cut, temporary boards, with marker pens in official signage colours: blue, red, green and brown. Wayfinding signs will also be created, pointing towards the square, and re-positioned each time the square moves.
For Spacemakers it’s the incidental activities which take place on the structure which will be the most fascinating element of all, as project director Tom James reveals: “It’s these unplanned elements that will really generate the social life of these squares, attracting passers by. Our project is all about giving local people permission to sit, rest, play and meet in these spaces. This free, public space, open to everyone, is vital to making any place feel like a real community.”
James notes that the project aims to show people what’s possible, even in these scraps of land, but more than this, it aims to start a conversation. “We hope to use this project to get an idea into Cricklewood, to set a precedent that local people can use to help them work towards a permanent public space. The structure will stay in the community long-term: but just as important is the inspiration.”
Cricklewood Town Square is funded by the Mayor’s Outer London Fund, as part of a set of interventions in Cricklewood, led by Gort Scott Architects.
Cricklewood Town Square director Tom James is a writer and urbanist. His previous projects include GO, a cult fanzine about Sheffield which was named as one of Britain’s Top Ten Arts Secrets by the Observer, featured at the Venice Biennale for architecture in 2006, and is part of the V&A’s Permanent Art Collection; and Sheffield Publicity Department, an imaginary tourist board for Sheffield.
Furniture
Kieren Jones is a designer and maker. His award winning work includes the Sea Chair project, a method of harnessing waste plastic in the oceans to make furniture, and the Blue Fence project: a proposal to reuse olympic fencing to create social furniture. In 2006, his ‘Flatpack Rearranged’ project, repurposing Ikea furniture, gave rise to the ‘Ikea Hacking’ subculture. Kieren leads the Materials Futures MA course at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.
6a Architects abstracted Paul Smith‘s hand drawings to create a repetitive relief pattern of interlocking circles to cast in iron, a common material around the British capital.
“Cast iron forms an understated background to the city’s streets; its railings, gratings, balconies, and lamp posts,” said the architects.
Thin edges of the circles are embossed to cast shadows across the surface, which is patinated and marked from the casting process.
The facade covers an existing eighteenth century shop front, and its colour and style provides a sharp contrast to the other Georgian buildings in the Mayfair area of London.
Three small drawings by Smith have been cast directly into sections across the facade.
Curved glass cabinets protrude through the ironwork to display items of furniture, set against a white background.
At the entrance to the shop, the panels curve inward to the large stained oak doors.
The new Albemarle Street shop front for Paul Smith builds on a familiar material tradition in London. Cast iron forms an understated background to the city’s streets; its railings, gratings, balconies, and lamp posts. Paul’s brief was an eclectic collection of references, images, textures and traditions, encompassing military medals, woven hats and finely drawn gold ingots alongside sharp tailoring, the soft fall of cloth, craftsmanship and delight in surprise.
The ground floor rustication of the Georgian townhouse and the ornamental language of the 18th century shop front were reinterpreted and abstracted in a sinuous pattern of interlocking circles cast into a new solid iron facade. The repetition of the typical Regency shape brought an optical complexity, which with the play of sunlight and shadow turns the pattern into a deep surface texture. Seen obliquely it seems woven, like a fine cloth.
The surface is further enlivened by the latent makers’ marks of the casting process and the natural patination of the cast iron. A more intimate discovery is to be made in the trio of small drawings by Paul cast directly into panels scattered across the façade.
Curved windows project from the darkly textured iron as luminous vitrines, with a nod to the curved glass of the nearby arcades. A secret door of stained oak lies flush with the cast iron panels: the inverted carving of the timber recalls the mould and sand bed prepared for the molten metal.
The cast iron panels curve in to the recessed oak entrance door, a gently bowed iron step evokes worn away treads. Over time, the iron threshold will polish under foot, recording the life of the building in its material.
News: architect Rafael Viñoly has admitted he knew the facade of his curvy Walkie Talkie skyscraper in London would focus an intense beam of sunlight onto a neighbouring street, but says that he “didn’t realise it was going to be so hot”.
“We made a lot of mistakes with this building,” he said, “and we will take care of it.”
The architect claims to have identified the problem during the design stages, but says he was without appropriate tools or software to analyse the precise effect.
“When it was spotted on a second design iteration, we judged the temperature was going to be about 36 degrees,” he said. “But it’s turned out to be more like 72 degrees. They are calling it the ‘death ray’, because if you go there you might die. It is phenomenal, this thing.”
He also suggested that the problem could be down to changing climate. “When I first came to London years ago, it wasn’t like this,” he said. “Now you have all these sunny days. So you should blame this thing on global warming too, right?”
This week developers installed a two-storey netted shield to cover the facade of the building, now nicknamed “Walkie Scorchie”, while city officials have suspended three parking bays until a more permanent solution can be found.
“That was a completely different problem,” Viñoly told the paper, stating that the brief for that project had called for curvy towers. “We pointed out that would be an issue too, but who cares if you fry somebody in Las Vegas, right?”
The Walkie Talkie is scheduled to complete next year.
London studio Duggan Morris Architects has completed a community facility in south London that combines exposed concrete frames with raw brickwork and warm oak (+ slideshow).
Named ORTUS, the three-storey building provides an education and events centre for Maudsley, a charitable foundation that acts to promote mental healthcare and well-being, and is used to host workshops and exhibitions that involve the entire community.
Duggan Morris Architects drew inspiration from neighbouring Georgian architecture to formulate the proportions of the building’s facade. A precast concrete framework gives each elevation a strict grid, which is then infilled with a sequence of brickwork and glass.
“The building has a simple rectilinear form, with elevations composed to compliment the Georgian principles of proportion, scale, hierarchy and materiality,” said architects Joe Morris and Mary Duggan.
The brickwork appears to fade from the base of the structure to the top, changing from a typical London stock to a lighter greyish red.
Floors inside the building are staggered to create half storeys, helping to integrate activities in different spaces. These level changes are visible on the exterior walls and all centre around a grand top-lit staircase.
A cafe located near the ground-floor entrance is intended to entice visitors into the building. The first of several events spaces is positioned on one side, separated by a wide staircase that integrates an informal seating area.
“At ground level, the landscape is envisaged as a series of connected rooms, mirroring the internal configurations thus ensuring that learning activities can spill out in a controlled manner,” said the architects.
Flexible and sub-dividable spaces fill the two storeys above, plus there’s a concealed terrace on the roof.
ORTUS, home of Maudsley Learning is a 1,550sqm pavilion housing learning and event facilities, cafe and exhibition spaces. The central focus of this unique project, initially coined ‘Project Learning Potential’, is to create a totally immersive learning environment generating a series of interconnecting spaces to encourage intuitive learning activities either in groups or individually and also to create possibilities for digital learning via social media.
Site plan
The project was initially developed through an 18 month immersion process involving research and consultation workshops with user groups, Kings College Hospital, the Institute of Psychiatry and community groups, with Duggan Morris Architects commissioned to develop the client’s brief. This process was ultimately captured through a series of ‘Vision Statements’, which guided the wider team through the project providing a constant reference point during the design development stages.
The building is now home to Maudsley Learning, a Community Interest Company which has been set up to run the building. It’s vision is to raise knowledge and awareness of mental health and wellbeing which it intends to achieve through the building, through the development of a virtual learning environment and the creation of learning events focusing on mental health and wellbeing across a broad audience.
In response to locally evident contextual influences the building has been conceived as a free standing pavilion, regular in both plan and volume.
The building has a simple rectilinear form, with elevations composed to compliment the Georgian principles of proportion, scale, hierarchy and materiality. A 1200 mm vertical grid, of precast concrete fins, articulates the contrasting materials of brick and glass, whilst floor slabs are expressed in the same material ensuring the stagger of the floor plates is abundantly clear to even the casual passer-by. Terraces at ground, inset balconies above, and a large roof terrace further articulate the simplicity of the building, whilst creating positive connections between internal spaces and the abundant landscape which sits in and around the project.
At ground level, the landscape is envisaged as a series of connected rooms, mirroring the internal configurations thus ensuring that learning activities can spill out in a controlled manner. A cafe at the ground floor is intended as a marker near the building entrance, aiming to help de-stigmatise preconceptions of mental health and well being, by making the building more accessible to the wider community, sharing with the campus a vision which includes doctors, nurses, teachers, service users and carers in promoting an integrated learning environment; ‘Learning for anyone, anywhere, at anytime’.
Spatially, the building is planned as a series of flexible, sub-dividable spaces positioned around a central multifunctional tiered space, navigated by a grand ‘open’ staircase. In cross-section, these floor plates stagger across the section by a half storey, thus the grouping of learning spaces appears to extend from the half landing of the open stair; the aim being to create a stronger visual link between floors enhancing the ethos of an immersive learning environment. The open staircase with its shortened connections across the plan is intended to encourage a domestic scale circulation system and is set away from the lift core to encourage movement and visible activity.
The central space is key to controlling the environmental performance of the building, which is uniquely passive, by introducing abundant natural light from a glazed roof into the heart of the plan, feeding each floor plate. In turn automated glazed vents throughout the building envelope introduce cooling air as required at each level throughout day and night, feeding the central stack of the void.
The building was delivered through a PPC 2000 Partnering project, tailored for Construction Management procurement. It was delivered on time and on budget. As a highly sustainable building it is designed to BREEAM excellent standard and has an ‘A’ energy rating.
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