Hasta La Ideas

Architects Herzog & de Meuron have uncovered three underground concrete tanks at the Tate Modern gallery in London to create new spaces for art and performance, which open this week (+ slideshow).

The huge industrial cylinders previously held oil that fuelled the turbines of the former power station, but have lain empty since the building was decommissioned in 1981 and later converted into a gallery.

The eastern tank reopens with an exhibition of light and movie projection by Korean artist Sung Hwan Kim, while the southern tank is hosting an ongoing programme of performance art and the western tank has been subdivided into dressing rooms and other ancillary spaces.

Glass doors lead visitors through from the turbine hall into the cylinders, where the raw concrete structure is left exposed.

The Tanks are the first phase in the construction of a new wing at the gallery, scheduled to complete in 2016 – see images in our earlier story.

Herzog & de Meuron also collaborated with Ai Weiwei on the design of the Serpentine Gallery, which is currently open in London’s Kensington Gardens. See images here or watch the tour we filmed with Jacques Herzog here.

See all our stories about Herzog & de Meuron »

Photography is by Tate Photography.

Here’s some more information about The Tanks:

New Tate Modern Tanks Open to the Public

A new commission by Korean artist Sung Hwan Kim was unveiled today in The Tanks at Tate Modern. This major new work is the first installation to be created especially in The Tanks, the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works. In Kim’s work, visitors are plunged into a fantastical world of optical illusions that draws on a rich history of performance and film. The commission for the Maja Hoffmann/Luma Foundation Tank is supported by Sotheby’s and runs from 18 July to 28 October. The launch is part of the London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad.

The Tanks are the first phase of the Tate Modern Project, which is being made possible by a number of significant donations from public funders and foundations including a £50m investment from the Government, £7m from the Greater London Authority, an important donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation and generous gifts from The Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation and The Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation.

On the occasion of the opening of The Tanks, Tate has announced a group of major individual donations. These include gifts to support The Tanks, new galleries, learning spaces and other areas of the new building. The donors include a number of Tate’s current and former Trustees among them Lord Browne, Mala Gaonkar, Maja Hoffmann, Elisabeth Murdoch, Franck Petitgas and John Studzinski as well as other individual donors including Christina and John Chandris, James Chanos, Ago Demirdjian and Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian, George Economou, Lydia and Manfred Gorvy, Noam Gottesman, Catherine Lagrange, Pierre Lagrange, Allison and Howard W. Lutnick, Barrie and Emmanuel Roman and others who wish to remain anonymous.

The generosity of early donors to this phase, Maja Hoffmann and John Studzinski, is recognised through The Maja Hoffmann/Luma Foundation Tank and The Studzinski Galleries.

Tate Members have also supported the project and altogether over three quarters of the total capital costs of £215 million has been raised.

Art in Action, a fifteen-week festival celebrating performance, film and installation and the historical works that have shaped these art forms, will run in The Tanks until 28 October. The festival allows audiences to explore new developments in art practice and learning, see bold new work being developed by artists, and engage more deeply with the programme. The Tanks are raw, industrial spaces which provide an anchor and home for the live art and film programmes which have previously been presented in diverse spaces around Tate Modern.

A rolling series of projects will take place in the southern Tank addressing the history of performance, film and interdisciplinary work alongside new work. The renowned choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has worked with visual artist Ann Veronica Janssens to adapt Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich 1982 to be the first performance staged in The Tanks. Two recent acquisitions to Tate’s collection also go on display for the first time: Suzanne Lacy’s The Crystal Quilt 1985-87 and Lis Rhodes’ Light Music 1975. From the 16th to the 27th August The Tanks will also host Undercurrent, a programme specially created by and for young people involving sound, performance, film and the digital. In addition to three major symposia, Art in Action will include interventions and participatory events for visitors of all ages. The opening programme is supported by The Tanks Supporters Group.

Over 40 established and emerging artists from around the world are taking part in Art in Action, including Ei Arakawa (Japan), Jelili Atiku (Nigeria), Nina Beier (Denmark), Tania Bruguera (Cuba), Boris Charmatz (France), Keren Cytter (Israel), Tina Keane (UK), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Belgium), Liu Ding (China), Jeff Keen (UK), Anthea Hamilton (UK), Sung Hwan Kim (Korea), Rabih Mroué (Lebanon), Eddie Peake (UK), Yvonne Rainer (US), Lis Rhodes (UK), Aura Satz (UK), Patrick Staff (UK), Aldo Tambellini (US), Kerry Tribe (US) and Haegue Yang (Korea).

The new development, by internationally celebrated architects Herzog & de Meuron, will create a spectacular new building adjoining Tate Modern to the south. This will be Britain’s most important new building for culture since the creation of the British Library in 1998. The new building will increase Tate Modern’s size by 60%, provide more space for contemporary art and enable Tate to explore new areas of visual culture involving photography, film, video and performance, enriching its current programme for a broader audience.

The first phase of the new development begins with the opening of Tate Modern’s spectacular Tanks dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works. These massive industrial chambers have lain unused since Bankside Power Station was decommissioned in 1981. They have now being transformed into some of the most exciting new spaces for art in the world.

The opening programme for The Tanks is curated by Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art and Performance, Kathy Noble, Curator of Interdisciplinary Projects and Stuart Comer, Curator of Film in collaboration with Learning colleagues including Marko Daniel, Convenor (Adult Programmes) and Mark Miller, Convenor (Young People’s Programmes).

The post The Tanks at Tate Modern
by Herzog & de Meuron appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen Wire: as the shortage of housing in the UK worsens, British architects including Charles Holland of FAT, Glenn Howells and Sarah Wigglesworth offer their opinions and solutions – The Guardian

“I’d like to see more rent regulation and buildings reused in creative ways,” says Holland, while Wigglesworth suggests that “what we need is greater flexibility.”

The article follows the news that New York City are seeking designs for “micro-units” to help solve the shortage of of small apartments in Manhattan.

See more stories about housing on Dezeen »

The post British architects comment
on UK housing crisis appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects AL_A have been granted permission to construct a subterranean gallery beneath a new entrance courtyard at the V&A museum in London.

Bounded by the existing museum walls on Exhibition Road, the public courtyard will provide a space for installations and events, with a cafe and an additional route into the building.

Patterns in the paving will correspond with the folds of the 30-metre-long exhibition room ceiling below, while glazed inserts will let in natural light.

“We’re reimagining the dialogue between the V&A and Exhibition Road,” explains architect Amanda Levete, ”and in doing so, creating a new public space in the cultural and learning heart of London.”

AL_A won a competition to design the extension last year, ahead of proposals by six other candidates.

The project is scheduled to complete in 2015.

The V&A also recently announced plans to open a new furniture gallery later this year.

See more projects by AL_A here, or click here to read more about the V&A museum.

Here’s the full press release from AL_A:

AL_A V&A Exhibition Road project receives planning permission

AL_A announces that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has granted planning permission for the V&A Exhibition Road development to create a new gallery, public courtyard and entrance into the museum from Exhibition Road. AL_A’s design aims to unlock the potential to bring in audiences to the V&A by proposing a relationship between museum and street that does not exist today.

The scheme creates a physical permeability with the formation of a new public space, a courtyard, which will provide not only an additional entry point, but has the potential to change the visitor journey through the museum and to allow them to discover more of the collections. An outdoor room bounded on all four sides by architecturally-significant façades, it will create a place to pick up a coffee or have a drink after work, a space for major installations and events, but above all a space for appropriation by visitors.

The design celebrates the descent to the new gallery as an important part of the visitor’s journey, woven into the fabric of the museum and framing unique views of the museum’s fine façades. Visitors will be drawn to the gallery below by natural light, lessening until reaching the bottom where a dramatic pool of daylight appears magically underground. Descent and ascent have been designed with a specific focus on the manipulation of light and interplay between new and old.

The gallery will be a new home for a full programme of the V&A’s world-class exhibitions. A folded plate ceiling will span 30 metres and soar over the visitor despite being underground. Its design was inspired by the neo-Gothic and neo-Classic museological tradition of ornate ceilings, continuing the didactic role in promoting the art and craft of manufacture.

The structural form and geometry of the gallery ceiling seeps through to the pattern of the courtyard above, giving a perspective of the exhibition space below. The visitor will be aware of the gallery directly beneath their feet. In turn, the structural solution of the ceilings generates the paving pattern of the courtyard.

Amanda Levete, Principal of AL_A said: “This is a defining project for AL_A. We’re reimagining the dialogue between the V&A and Exhibition Road and in doing so, creating a new public space in the cultural and learning heart of London. It’s made particularly special by the V&A collections having inspired so much of our work.”

Work on site will commence in 2012 with proposed completion by the end of 2015, opening in 2016.

The post V&A Exhibition Road
by AL_A appeared first on Dezeen.

These London townhouses by architects Piercy & Company have chunky banisters formed from thickly layered birch plywood.

The stairs zigzag up from the basement floor to the second floor roof terraces of each of the three residences, which are located behind a listed wall within the conservation area of Bloomsbury.

The two-storey-high facades of each house are constructed from a sandy-coloured brick that is lighter in colour than the brown and red brickwork of the surrounding historic buildings.

The heights of the buildings intentionally line up with their neighbours, while window sills and lintels have been designed with matching proportions.

Perforated steel louvers shade the windows and skylights bring daylight into each house from above.

Other projects with interesting staircases include an empty tower and an Olympic Museum. See more staircases on Dezeen »

Photography is by Jack Hobhouse.

Here’s some more information from Piercy & Company:

Three contemporary townhouses in London’s Historic Bloomsbury

London, UK: Three contemporary townhouses have been completed in Bloomsbury, Central London. Designed by Piercy&Company for Great Marlborough Estates and located within the Bloomsbury Conservation Area, the townhouses marry contextual sensitivity with contemporary urban living.

The townhouses are adjacent to a number of Grade II listed buildings, a Grade II* listed Historic Gardens and bounded on one side by a Grade II listed wall. The buildings’ design echoes the materials, proportions and forms of the surrounding conservation area.

Heavily textured masonry and finely detailed stone cills, lintels and stringer courses create a contextually sensitive skin whilst the window proportions and generous floor to ceiling heights reflect those of the surrounding Georgian buildings. These fine grain details and proportional references interpret the existing language of the Bloomsbury Conservation Area into a contemporary idiom.

Inside, the layout of the internal spaces is highly flexible. The houses can be configured as 2, 3 or 4 bedrooms. In addition to upper floor bedrooms, the ground floor can be a lounge + study, or bedroom + study, or two bedrooms to make it a 4 bed house. This spatial fluidity responds to contemporary conditions of urban living where household compositions are varied and family living arrangements change over time.

The penetration of light down into the lower levels of the houses informs many aspects of the design; from the skylight playfully positioned above the top floor bath to the large corner windows and sliding glass doors which feature throughout. An open-plan kitchen and dining area at lower ground floor level leads onto a light-filled sunken courtyard which also provides private outdoor living and dining space beneath the historic listed wall.

A key architectural statement in each townhouse is a bespoke staircase, handmade in birch and ash. The staircase is fully revealed with open landings and internal glass partitions, naturally lit from above, allowing light to penetrate from roof to basement. This open staircase is only made possible through sophisticated fire engineering, including the use of domestic sprinklers.

Views over St Georges Gardens provide a green backdrop for many of the living/bedroom spaces. Careful alignment of laser cut shutters and louvres provides privacy to residents whilst preventing visitors to St George’s Gardens feeling overlooked.

As Piercy&Company’s Stuart Piercy describes:
“The site presented many issues with a beautiful grade II * garden and listed buildings to all sides – so it was very sensitive with an extremely vocal residents group. The key was to introduce a finer grain to the facade interpreting motifs from the conservation area in a contemporary language, while on the inside the opposite is true – we wanted large volumes of flexible light filled engaging spaces. For me the project’s success is that the spaces feel light and generous while the houses sit very gently in the context of the 300 year old gardens.”

Project Address 8, 9 and 10 Wakefield Street, London WC1N

Project Team Members
Client: Great Marlborough Estates
Architect: Piercy&Company
Project Manager: Paragon LLP
Structural Engineer: Pringuer-James Consulting Engineers
Mechanical and Electrical Engineers: Martin Design Associates
Main Contractor: Forcia Limited

The post Wakefield Street Townhouses
by Piercy & Company appeared first on Dezeen.

Wall panels and shelves in this north London design shop are made from reclaimed floorboards and scaffolding planks.

Folklore was set up by designer Danielle Reid and her husband Rob to sell a curated selection of handmade and antique products.

The old floorboards are arranged diagonally behind lengths of rope suspended from metal railings, which support the sanded wooden shelves.

See more stories about shops on Dezeen »

Here’s some extra information from Folklore:

Folklore, A New Design Store Opens In London

Folklore was set up by Danielle Reid and her husband Rob with a simple idea that better living is possible through design; both the online and offline shop features a selection of goods for home and life that are created with care and made to last.

Some are handmade, antique or made from recycled or found materials. Others are easily recyclable at the end of their life. All are made in an environmentally mindful way.

The interior of the shop was designed by Folklore. Danielle’s background is in design. We curate mindful design for the home and work with brilliant designers and makers. We source everything ourselves.

We look for craftsmanship, quality, simplicity and durability in our range and this is reflected in the design of the store. We chose a simple colour scheme with raw, natural and reclaimed materials.

For example, the hanging shelving is made from reclaimed scaffolding planks. We sanded them back and left the wood untreated to allow the natural beauty of the wood to come through. The wall cladding is Victorian floorboards which we left bare.