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News: British inventor James Dyson has donated £4 million towards building a new cancer centre in Bath, UK, based on the principles underlying his successful redesign of a neonatal ward at the same hospital.

Dyson, who lives and works near to the Royal United Hospital, said he hoped the new centre would be able to replicate the success of the Dyson Centre for Neonatal Care.

“Research has shown the incredible effect that a healing environment can have on recovery,” said the inventor, whose best-known products include a bagless vacuum cleaner and a fan heater with no blades.

“This new cancer centre will use cutting edge technology and well considered design to improve the health of its patients.”

By reducing background noise from hospital machinery and increasing natural light, doctors at the hospital found that the condition of sick and premature newborns improved substantially.

“We have been hugely impressed by the outcomes,” Dyson said of the baby unit, which was designed by local architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

A study funded by the James Dyson Foundation, the charitable body set up by the designer, found that 90% of babies recuperating in the unit went home breastfeeding, compared to 64% in the old building.

Large windows and skylights increased natural light by up to 50% and exposed babies to changing outside conditions, helping them gain awareness of day and night.

Noise levels were decreased by over 9 decibels on average, helping babies to sleep on average for 22% longer than in the old unit, while nurses in the new building spent 20% more of their time with the newborns.

The cot rooms are arranged in a clockwise circuit from intensive care through to high dependency, special care, the parents’ rooms and finally home, so that parents can clearly track their baby’s route to recovery.

Medical equipment is fixed to the ceiling and pulled down when in use, reducing clutter at ground level.

Dr. Bernie Marden, a consultant neonatologist and paediatrician on the ward, said the study had allowed doctors to build up an accurate picture of how babies respond to their environment.

“We have found that the design of the building is leading to better fed and better rested babies, contributing to their recuperation,” he said.

See more of The Dyson Centre in our earlier post, published shortly after the unit opened in 2011, or see more hospitals and healthcare centres on Dezeen.

Here’s more information from Dyson:

The Dyson Centre for Neonatal Care is leading the way in improving the quality of life for sick and premature babies. Pioneering research funded by the James Dyson foundation, has found that of babies studied, 90% recuperating in the new unit went home breast feeding, compared to 64% in the old building. The study also showed that babies are better rested – sleeping on average for 22% longer than in the old unit.

Through award winning architecture, the new Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) creates a healthier environment for babies, parents, and nursing staff. The project was funded in partnership with the NHS and private donations, including £750,000 from the Dyson family and the James Dyson Foundation. The building has a progressive layout. A clockwise circuit of cot rooms, starting with intensive care and leading to special care and finally home. This creates a psychological effect of development. Large windows give controllable natural light throughout, allowing babies, parents and staff to be aware of changing outside conditions, gaining an awareness of day and night.

The Research

A £100,000 donation by the James Dyson Foundation is enabling research to ascertain the full benefits of the new building. Collecting data from both the old building and the new, the hospital is building up a picture of the ideal environment for recuperation.

Consultant neonatologist and paediatrician, Dr. Bernie Marden said: “We have collated vast amounts of data using new techniques to build up a really accurate picture of how babies respond to their environment. We have found that the design of the building is leading to better fed and better rested babies, contributing to their recuperation.”

James Dyson said: “New technology has been specifically adapted to monitor a baby’s sleep cycle and respiratory patterns in a far less invasive way than ever before. The findings show the way in which design and technology can have an effect far beyond the hands of a single consumer – aiding health.”

Accelerometers measure speed and movement; they are used in aircraft and smartphones and increasingly in sports and athletics. Bath Rugby Club uses the technology to analyse player training techniques and fitness.

This research is the first in the world to adapt and use accelerometers to measure the respiratory and sleep patterns in a baby in order to monitor their reaction to the surrounding environment, using an extremely low power, self contained wireless device. Previously intrusive methods including ECG and information from ventilator circuits have been used to measure this.

The accelerometers have been found to be sensitive enough to provide remote and wireless respiratory information. Doing away with invasive tubing and tangled wires. This is a significant result which may allow for remote monitoring of apnoea, effort of breathing and the quality of sleep. The studied babies in the new centre were found to be asleep or in a restful state for longer than in the old building.

Infrared tracking technology was used to pinpoint staff movements in the building and test the efficiency of the design. The study found that nurses in the new building spend 20% more of their time in the clinical rooms, with the babies. Meaning more time spent caring for the babies.

Lux meters were used to take light measurements according to specific times, dates and outside weather conditions. Up to 50% more natural light was measured in the new building. This ensures a more natural circadian rhythm – allowing the babies, parents and staff to perceive the changing day, aiding the babies sleeping and eating habits.

Sound pressure level meter readings were taken and an average level for each hour was documented in decibels. Noise levels in the special care unit have decreased by over 9dB on average from those in the old building. It is suggested that the increased sleep observed in the babies relates to this reduction in background noise.

Cot side diaries used in the research captured the physiological state of the babies in each environment and the interaction of parents with their babies. In addition a qualitative aspect of the project measured how the ‘intervention’ (the building) affected parental and staff experience, taking the form of semi structured psychological interviews.

The post Dyson to build cancer centre after his
ward redesign improves baby care appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron has been granted planning permission for a school of government and public policy at the University of Oxford, UK.

The £30 million Blavatnik School of Government will be built within the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, masterplanned by architect Rafael Viñoly.

Herzog & de Meuron’s building will appear as stack of discs decreasing in size, unevenly aligned to create overhangs and terraces.

Inside, the building will be arranged like “an auditorium or a concert hall”, say the architects, with interconnected terraces stepping up from the ground floor to the upper levels.

Lower levels will house teaching and public spaces, while the quieter upper levels will be occupied by academics and research programmes. The top level will contain a library overlooking an outdoor terrace.

The building is expected to be completed in 2015.

The school was launched in 2010 with a £75 million donation by American philanthropist Leonard Blavatnik, and offers a one-year master’s degree in Public Policy with a curriculum drawn from across the university.

Herzog & de Meuron was recently chosen to design the new National Library of Israel in Jerusalem and shortlisted for a new headquarters for the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Sweden – see all architecture by Herzog & de Meuron.

Other projects at the University of Oxford include Zaha Hadid’s under-construction centre for Middle Eastern culture and Rick Mather’s extension to the Ashmolean Museum, completed in 2009.

Image is copyright Herzog & de Meuron Basel.

Here’s some more information from Herzog & de Meuron:

Blavatnik School of Goverment, Oxford, UK

Project 2011 – planned completion 2015

“The Blavatnik School of Government will become a global centre of excellence for the study of government and public policy. The School’s aim is to teach the practice of government and leadership in ways which will strengthen communities, create opportunities and foster cooperation across the world. The School offers Oxford University a new way to contribute to the world.” – Blavatnik School of Government Brochure

Such a vision requires a specific response and building. Our starting point is from the inside, from the heart of the building, the Forum. This space cuts through the school as a vertical public space connecting all the levels and programs together into one whole. Central to a school of government is the idea of openness, communication and transparency, the central forum takes this principle literally by stitching all levels together. In the first instance the Forum provides access between spaces, but more importantly it provides congregation, meeting and social spaces. In our proposal its arrangement is in many ways like that of an auditorium or a concert hall with a series of interconnected terraces that step up from the ground floor all the way to the upper levels of the School. Each terrace could operate as a separate space, for example as a study area or as part of one connected whole volume for a larger presentation. The Forum will be a space that allows and positively encourages communication and discussion, formal and informal, planned and accidental.

The Blavatnik School of Government will house teaching and academic spaces which are supported by meeting, administration, research and service areas which are all connected by the Forum. At its lower levels, the building houses large public and teaching programs. The upper levels around are occupied by academic and research programs that require a more quiet atmosphere to foster focus and concentration. Crowning the School will be the library research tower which overlooks an outdoor terrace, Library Square to the north, and the whole of Oxford beyond. The School offers a wide range of teaching-space types from small flexible seminar rooms to larger flat floor teaching rooms.

Prominently located at the southwest corner of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter (ROQ) the School will be the first building pedestrians, visitors and students encounter when approaching this quarter from the south. The School has the potential to become a gateway into this new part of the University and a symbol of its development.

The immediate context is a complex situation with the adjacencies of St Paul’s Church and Somerville College to both sides and the Oxford University Press across Walton Street. The concept of the Forum in the interior sets the decisive and room-defining impulse for the entire building. This circular hollow also defines the exterior appearance of the school. Its cylindrical shapes show analogies to government buildings and universities in different places all over the world.

Our proposal of a series of shifted discs, pure geometric circles, is developed from the parameters of the site and plot boundaries. The shifting in floors creates overhangs and covered volumes and reflects the principles of the masterplan massing with the mass of the building moved northwest towards the centre of the ROQ site. The main entrance is located, in a classical manner, in the middle of the Walton Street elevation, centred underneath the main teaching floor of Level 1 whose circular geometry at Library Square is transformed into a rectangular form along Walton Street, resulting in a ‘Sheldonian’ like shape. The introduction of this orthogonal form addresses the historic setting in a classical manner, both continuing the line of the St Paul’s Church portico and echoing the symmetrical entrance of the Oxford University.

With this proposal we aim to provide a project that can act as a focal point both for the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter and the academic activity of the study of government and public policy; a landmark building housing a ground breaking School.

The post Herzog & de Meuron wins planning permission
for Oxford university building appeared first on Dezeen.

Patterns of colourful tiles line the walls and counters of this north-east London pizza bar by architects Gundry & Ducker (+ slideshow).

“We wanted to see what we could do with the 150-millimetre square-format tiles” Christian Ducker told Dezeen. “Our medley of references included graphics from New York in the 1950s and 1980s.”

The tiles spell out “pizza” in large letters along the wall running from outside the restaurant parallel to the serving counter, though the top of the word is cut off by the ceiling.

Dark blue tiles cover the surfaces and seats along the same wall, while columns and beams are wrapped in yellow and red.

The late night pizza slice bar was converted from a nightclub so the architects had to start from scratch in the space.

“We completely gutted the whole place, took out all the flooring and built in a slope at the entrance,” said Ducker. “The space is all tiled at the front, and they gradually fade towards the back where there are just a few clusters left.”

“We left some exposed brickwork because we wanted the one-tile-thick insertion to be noticeable,” he added.

The tiles extend out and around the building’s entrance, branded with a red neon sign by graphic designers Studio Partyline.

Voodoo Ray’s is named after a 1988 acid house track by UK artist A Guy Called Gerald, who switched on the sign at the restaurant’s opening party.

Gundry & Ducker‘s other projects in London include a sushi restaurant in Soho and a blackened larch house extension south of the city.

Photography is by Hufton + Crow.

See more architecture and design by Gundry & Ducker »
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Here some further details from the architects:

Voodoo Rays is a late night pizza slice shop and restaurant in Dalston East London.

The design is intended to sit within, and celebrate its location on Kingsland High Street, a typical inner London high street strip with its ad-hoc signs and frontages. Its neon signage and brightly light interior is intended to be part of the nighttime street scene.

The design of all surfaces is formed predominately from coloured  6″ ceramic tiles. We wanted to form the interior as a sequence of volumes, reducing in scale and density to reveal the original building interior as you move towards the back of the shop. Each element is expressed in a different colour, the larger elements incorporating giant abstracted text.

A long pizza counter runs the length of the shop and projects beyond the shop frontage, which is recessed, so that the counter feels like part of the street. A hidden door leads to a basement club.

The design is intended to have multiple references taken from both East London and New York, and from between the 1950s -1980s. The references range from launderettes to pie shops, to seaside amusement arcades all of which are reinterpreted with a cartoon sensibility.

The post Voodoo Ray’s by
Gundry & Ducker appeared first on Dezeen.

News: crafts will no longer be considered part of the creative industries under proposals published by the UK government this week.

The proposed change is part of a review of the UK’s creative industries set out in Classifying and Measuring the Creative Industries, a consultation paper released by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport yesterday.

“We recognise that high-end craft occupations contain a creative element, but the view is that in the main, these roles are more concerned with the manufacturing process, rather than the creative process,” says the paper.

Arts and antiques will also be dropped from the list of recognised creative industries, while other categories will be merged into “broad creative industry groups”.

A number of new IT categories are proposed to reflect the growing technology sector.

Announcing the consultation, culture minister Ed Vaizey wrote on his blog: “Huge and rapid changes in the use of technology and digital media in the creative industries means that it’s time to take a full review of our classifications.”

He added: “Digital tools are now utterly embedded in the creative process, so we want to introduce some areas of IT that are used creatively.”

Adopting the new classification system boosts the number of people employed in the UK’s creative industries to 1,487,000 people, according to the DCMS, compared to 897,000 under the previous methodology. The figure rises to 2,153,000 if creative occupations outside the creative industries are taken into account.

IT, software and computer services is the biggest of the new broad creative industry groups, with 470,000 employees, according to the paper. Publishing employs 214,000 people while Film, TV, radio and photography account for 205,000 jobs.

Music, performing and visual arts employ 182,000 people. Advertising and marketing is the next largest with 144,000 workers, followed by Design and designer fashion with 103,000. Architecture is the smallest of the new broad creative industry groups, employing 99,000 people.

The proposed changes are intended to update the ground-breaking 1998 Creative Industries Mapping Documents, which were one of the first attempts to quantify the value of creative businesses to the economy.

The review adopts the “creative intensity” methodology to discern which sectors should be included as creative industries. Any industry where more than 30% of workers do creative jobs is considered a candidate for inclusion.

Consultation on the proposed changes closes on 14 June 2013. Details of how to respond can be found here.

Top image of a potter courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post UK to drop crafts from
list of creative industries appeared first on Dezeen.

Unrivaled in their field, Rapha never misses an opportunity to impress with impeccably crafted, aesthetically superior soft goods designed for the city dwelling cycling enthusiast. As long time supporters of the UK-based brand, we were excited to learn about their upcoming spring…

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