Hasta La Ideas

Architects FAT have teamed up with artist Grayson Perry to design a house inspired by fairytales on the east coast of England.

A House for Essex is the latest project from Alain de Botton‘s Living Architecture enterprise, which commissions celebrated architects to design contemporary houses for UK holiday rentals.

Scheduled for completion in 2014, the house will feature four slanted roofs with symbolic statues on the apex of each one, arched dormer windows and patterned walls. ”The exterior of the house responds to this contemporary romantic landscape, forming something that is both ancient and modern, archetypal and imbued with narrative,” said architect Charles Holland.

“The idea behind this project relates to buildings put up as memorials to loved ones, to follies, to eccentric home-built structures, to shrines, lighthouses and fairytales,” added Perry. ”There are much loved buildings all over the county and the country built in the same spirit.”

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Perry’s colourful tapestries will hang from the walls inside the house, and the artist will also add mosaic floors, decorative timber panels and a series of ornamental pots. Meanwhile, two bedrooms on the first floor will have balconies that overlook the double-height living room, while a bath will be suspended over the entranceway below. ”It is a hybrid building, part house and part gallery,” explained Holland. ”Internally, this combination of domestic and formal uses creates a rich interplay between public and private space.”

First floor plan – click above for larger image

Other projects in the Living Architecture series include a house that cantilevers over the edge of a hill and a boat-like structure on the roof of London’s Southbank Centre.

See all our stories about Living Architecture »
See all our stories about FAT »

Here’s some information from Living Architecture:

Living Architecture is delighted to announce that it will be working with architecture practice FAT and artist Grayson Perry to build a unique new house in the north Essex countryside.

End elevation – click above for larger image

The house, near Wrabness on the North Essex coast, is both an artwork in itself and the setting for a number of works by Grayson Perry exploring the special character and unique qualities of Essex.

Side elevation – click above for larger image

The building has been designed to evoke a tradition of wayside and pilgrimage chapels. It is a singular building, appearing as a small, beautifully crafted object amongst the trees and fields. It belongs to a history of follies, whilst also being deeply of its own time.

Visitors entering the house from the south will pass through a series of spaces that become increasingly formal, culminating in a double-height living room lined with decorative timber panelling and Grayson Perry’s richly coloured tapestries. Upstairs there are two bedrooms which will have views across the landscape to the east and west.

Context elevation one – click above for larger image

The stepping up of the volumes creates a series of interlocking spaces on the inside where each pushes into the other. The first floor bedrooms, for instance, will also have balconies that look into the living room space, and the bath offers an unusual location from which to observe visitors in the hallway.

The interior of the house will contain a number of specially commissioned art works by Grayson Perry including beautiful tapestries, pots, decorative timberwork and mosaic floors, celebrating the history and psyche of Essex.

Context elevation two – click above for larger image

Living Architecture is delighted that the planners at Tendring District Council approved the planning application, following strong local support for the project. Construction will start in 2013, and the house will be completed in 2014.

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and Grayson Perry appeared first on Dezeen.

Planks of translucent glass provide the walls for this house in south London designed by architect Carl Turner for himself and his partner (+ slideshow).

Positioned amongst a row of traditional Victorian houses, Slip House is a three-storey residence with staggered upper floors that cantilever towards the street.

“We set out with a simple sculptural form of three cantilevered, or slipped, boxes,” explained Turner. “The upper box houses our living space, the middle box houses sleeping and bathing, and the ground box is given over to a multi-purpose space, currently housing our studio.”

The translucent glass walls extend up to form a parapet around a terrace on the roof, and also surround a set of photovoltaic panels that generate electricity.

Other sustainable features include a wildflower roof above the ground floor, a rain-water-harvesting system and a ground-sourced heat pump that generates energy.

Inside the house, the ground floor studio features a moveable study area, comprising a combined desk and shelving unit attached to wheels.

On the first and second floors, rooms are equipped with inbuilt storage walls, so residents can hide their belongings away behind plywood screens.

Floors throughout the house are concrete and sit flush against all the walls and fittings.

Another project we’ve featured by Carl Turner Architects is the extension to the couple’s former home in Norfolk – see it here.

See more houses on Dezeen »

Photography is by Tim Crocker.

Here’s a project description from Carl Turner Architects:

Slip House, Brixton.

Occupying one of four plots forming a gap in a typical Brixton terrace, Slip House constitutes a new prototype for adaptable terraced housing.

Three simple ‘slipped’ orthogonal box forms break up the bulk of the building and give it its striking sculptural quality. The top floor is clad in milky, translucent glass planks, which continue past the roof deck to create a high level ‘sky garden’.

Designed to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5, it features ‘energy piles’ utilising a solar assisted ground source heat pump creating a thermal store beneath the building. PV’s, a wildflower roof, rain water harvesting, reduced water consumption, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery within an airtight envelope with massive levels of insulation make this one of the most energy efficient houses built in the UK.

A prototype brownfield development offering dense, flexible, urban living – the house is a vehicle for in-house research into sustainable design, seamlessly integrating the often conflicting aesthetic requirements of architecture and alternative low energy systems. We are working to develop this model for multiple developments and as affordable housing.

Living and working (‘Living over the shop’) is something that really interests us. We see a prototype new ‘terraced’ house, squeezed into under-utilised city (Brownfield) sites. This flexible type of home can allow for the artisan or home-worker to sub-let or downsize. This can enliven local communities and produce ‘homes’ which create opportunities rather than be dormitories or financial assets. Slip House is flexible and can be used as a single home, studio workspace and apartment, or two apartments.

The perimeter walls are load bearing, freeing up the internal areas of supporting columns or additional load bearing walls. The house’s open-plan layout ensures that walls / dividers are simple to erect and require minimal construction effort. This aspect of Slip House is not only financially sustainable but also environmentally so, as it helps to ensure the permanence of the overall structure, as minimal modifications can allow the house to adapt to changing lives and living situations indefinitely.

Our approach was to model the building as a series of simple orthogonal box forms that use the full width of the site. This allows future buildings to simply adjoin the flank walls.

The house takes the idea of three slipped boxes. The boxes are carefully placed to maximise light and outlook from inside while not intruding on neighbour’s outlook. The shifting planes also break up the bulk of the building and give it its sculptural quality.

Axonometric diagram

Ground floor plan

First floor plan

Second floor plan

Roof plan

Section – click above for larger image

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Carl Turner Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

London Design Festival: designer-makers East London Furniture have temporarily fitted out the interior of London bar DreamBags-JaguarShoes using nothing but scrap materials found on the local streets.

The fit-out is the latest in a string of installations at the venue by artists and designers. ”Normally it involves mostly the walls and perhaps some lighting,” East London Furniture’s Christian Dillon told Dezeen. ”We wanted to take over the whole bar.”

The team removed all the furniture and replaced it with tables made from pallets and ceiling joists, plus benches inspired by nineteenth century Shaker furniture.

“We created all of the free-standing seating, tables and lighting in our workshop, but left the inbuilt elements to be created in situ,” said Dillon. “So much of the inbuilt seating, especially the booth or ‘pulpit’, were conceived in the space from materials we had to hand.”

The team have lined the walls and front of the counter with wooden panels, while the throne-like seating booth is made from old skirting boards and fills the recess beside a staircase.

The cube-shaped lights hanging above the bar were created from the offcuts of other furniture made by the team and the wall-mounted lighting was produced from recycled wooden blocks.

Friend and regular collaborator Alessandro Mistrulli has decorated many of the surfaces with illustrations showing severed arms and wood-working tools. “I think I saw him reading a book on Russian prison tattoos the night before he delivered the main graphic,” said Dillon.

The installation will remain in place for two months, but was completed to coincide with the London Design Festival last week.

“For us to have a show in the festival, where people are actually using the furniture to have a nice meal, a nice beer or chatting to a nice girl or guy is so much more interesting than a static display of our furniture,” explained Dillon.

Dillon and team mates Ben Green and Reuben Le Prevost founded the Hackney-based furniture company in 2011 – see our earlier story about them here.

A past installation we’ve featured at DreamBags-JaguarShoes featured wallpaper that changes under different lighting conditions.

See more stories about the London Design Festival »

Photography is by Jeff Metal, courtesy of JaguarShoes Collective.

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at DreamBags JaguarShoes appeared first on Dezeen.

The sounds of the countryside are amplified when you place your ear towards one of these four enormous trumpets built by architects Studio Weave (+ slideshow).

Named The Hear Heres, the horns are dotted along a walk through the grounds of Kedleston Hall, a stately home in Derbyshire, England.

One horn is pointed down towards the surface of a lake (above), while another angles up towards the sky (below).

The third trumpet winds around the the trunk of a tree, so listeners can hear the movements of the branches (below).

When describing the fourth and largest of the trumpets (below), Studio Weave’s Maria Smith told Dezeen how “it’s fun for two people to sing to each other from opposite ends.” She explained how the sound is loud on one side, but “sounds distant” from the other.

“We thought people would play and experiment with them,” she said.

Each trumpet is made from fibreglass and coated with zinc, and a set of metal struts holds each one in place.

“The struts have metal plates welded to their bottoms and are staked into the ground, said Smith. “When The Hear Heres are removed, the ground will be left untouched.”

Other unusual projects by the Hackney-based architects include a floating cinema, a latticed timber hut on stilts and a 324 metre-long bench.

We’ve also featured a couple of other listening installations on Dezeen, including a room in a shipping container and two riverside pavilions.

See more installations on Dezeen »

See all our stories about Studio Weave »

Masterplan sketch

Water horn sketch

Sky horn sketch sketch

Tree horn sketch

Woodland horn sketch

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by Studio Weave appeared first on Dezeen.

A converted nineteenth century farm building once used for drying hops has been nominated for the RIBA Manser Medal for the best new house in the UK, following a renovation and extension by architects Duggan Morris (+slideshow).

Set amongst the agricultural fields of East Sussex, the restored buildings of Old Bearhurst include the brickwork oast house, with its two circular towers and pointed cowls, and a timber-clad barn.

The architects constructed a single-storey extension to tie these two structures together, but set the floor of the building slightly below ground level to prevent the new roof rising above the eaves of the oast towers.

Roughly sawn green oak clads the exterior of the new block, which accommodates a kitchen, living room and playroom for the client’s growing family.

Utility rooms are sunken by another half a storey to separate them from the main domestic activities.

Only the original buildings feature a first floor, creating bedrooms and bathrooms at opposite ends of the house.

Concrete floors dominate at ground floor level, while timber lines the floors and surfaces of rooms upstairs.

Last year Duggan Morris were awarded the RIBA Manser Medal for the renovation of a 1960’s residence.

This year they face competition from four other projects, including a holiday home from Alain de Botton’s Living Architecture series.

See more projects by Duggan Morris Architects on Dezeen »

See more stories about houses »

Photography is by James Brittain.

Here’s some text about the project from Duggan Morris:

Old Bearhurst involved the extensive remodelling of a two century old Oast House to provide space to accommodate the client’s growing family. The scheme included a complete overhaul of the existing barn and roundels as well as the construction of a new annex.

The building is set within agricultural land and defined by an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which has drawn out a unique response to the topography, landscape, history and setting.

Site plan – click above for larger image

The project was aimed at creating a unified series of flowing, contemporary spaces, allowing a greater degree of flexibility, linking internal spaces to the impressive rolling fields to the south, and the higher meadow land of the north. Equally, the brief called for a building with character and personality, respectful of the existing Oast house, and taking advantage of the views and surrounding environment.

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image

A key objective of the brief was to ‘rediscover’ the integrity of the building through careful observation and research where new additions and alterations would work harmoniously to create a new envisioned whole.

First floor plan – click above for larger image

However, the core ambition of the scheme was to create a dwelling which, over time, would come to reflect an exemplar approach to contemporary rural renovation work and to create a flexible living environment for the growing family within the exceptional surrounds.

Section – click above for larger image

Section – click above for larger image

Section – click above for larger image

North elevation – click above for larger image

South elevation – click above for larger image

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Duggan Morris Architects appeared first on Dezeen.