Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: architect Terrence Riley takes us on a tour of downtown Miami and says that redevelopment of the historic area has coincided with a new emphasis on outdoor living in the city.

Downtown is a small nineteenth-century area of Miami located to the north of Miami River and the west of Biscayne Bay. Formerly the economic hub of the city, the neighbourhood was largely abandoned in the nineteen-seventies.

“The developers, their clients and the tenants needed bigger spaces,” explains Riley, a partner at Keenen Riley Architects and former director of Miami Art Museum and curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. “Eventually you saw empty stores, empty office buildings and it was really across the river, in the south, where all the development began.”

Miami Art Museum, which moved to a new building designed by Herzog & de Meuron in December, was originally based in the historic downtown district as part of a cultural complex designed by American architect Philip Johnson.

“This is a very familiar tactic,” Riley says. “Take a really lousy neighbourhood and what do you do? You put the cultural facilities there, because they’ll go anywhere those people.”

“Miami Art Museum, from its earliest days, was put into this situation of trying to be a catalyst for spurring development downtown.”

Riley claims that downtown Miami is now a very different place compared to when the museum first opened in the nineteen-eighties.

“What were empty lots are being redeveloped,” he says, pointing out the old post office, which has now been taken over by the American Institute of Architects.

The redevelopment and repopulation of downtown Miami has coincided with the emergence of a renewed interest in outdoor living in the city, Riley says.

“A lot of people in Miami lived this air-conditioned life 12 months a year,” he explains. “Now I think the attitude is changing. You see that reflected in all the outdoor cafes and things like bike riding.”

“The whole idea that you can live downtown now, shop downtown and have restaurants downtown is something completely new.”

Many of the buildings in downtown Miami feature long arcades to shelter people on the streets from the elements.

“Miami was [originally] laid out as a pedestrian city,” Riley explains. “Miami lost a lot of that common-sense architecture with air conditioning and underground garages where you go directly from your car into the building.”

However, he believes that architects are now using similar principles in the design of new buildings.

“You’ll notice on the Herzog & de Meuron museum these long, broad, overhanging eaves that provide protection all the way around the museum,” he says. “These recall some of the more thoughtful, intelligent things that they used to do in the traditional city.”

We drove around downtown Miami in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Jewels by Zequals. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

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“laid out as a pedestrian city” appeared first on Dezeen.

Chicago firm Studio Gang Architects has completed a boathouse on the northern bank of the Chicago River with a rhythmic roofline intended to capture the alternating motions of a rower’s arm movements (+ slideshow).

Located beside Clark Park in the north-west of the city, the WMS Boathouse provides a home for the Chicago Rowing Foundation. It is one of four boathouses proposed as part of a city-funded regeneration of the Chicago River, and the first of two designed by Studio Gang.

Structural roof trusses that alternate between M and upside-down V shapes give the building its jagged roof profile, which was conceptualised by tracing the time-lapse movements of rowing.

“The architecture is meant to visually capture the poetic rhythm and motion of rowing,” said Studio Gang principal Jeanne Gang, “but by providing a publicly accessible riverfront, it also reveals the larger movement toward an ecological and recreational revival of the Chicago River.”

The boathouse comprises two buildings positioned alongside one another. The first is a single-storey shed for storing rowing equipment, while the second is a two-storey structure containing offices, community facilities, a fitness suite and a rowing tank where teams can practice indoors.

The exterior of the building is clad with a mixture of slate tiles and zinc panels, which share the same silvery grey colouring.

Interior spaces are lined with timber, which also extends outside the building to wrap the inside of balconies and undersides of overhanging eaves.

South-facing clerestory windows extend up to the edge of the roof, bringing high levels of natural light through the building, but also helping to warm the interior in winter and allow natural ventilation during the summer.

Studio Gang’s second boathouse will be located on the south side of the river and is set to complete in 2015.

Read on for more information from Studio Gang Architects:

Studio Gang Architects completes WMS Boathouse at Clark Park

First of the two new boathouses along Chicago River designed and constructed by SGA state-of-the-art, 22,620-square-foot facility now open to the public

Studio Gang Architects (SGA) is pleased to announce the completion of the WMS Boathouse at Clark Park along the north branch of the Chicago River. Designed and built by SGA, the state-of-the-art facility opened to the public on October 19, 2013. It is located at 3400 North Rockwell Avenue on the northwest side of the City of Chicago.

The Clark Park facility is one of four boathouses proposed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as cornerstones of his riverfront revitalisation plan, anchoring the river’s future development. Emanuel’s initiative was spurred by the provision of nearly $1 million in grant funds by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to help clean up the river and drive job creation. Studio Gang was commissioned to realise two of the four boathouses, with the second facility to be located along the south branch of the Chicago River at 28th and Eleanor Streets. It is scheduled for completion in 2015.

The WMS Boathouse at Clark Park is currently home to the Chicago Rowing Foundation (CRF). In partnership with the Chicago Park District, the CRF offers a wide range of indoor and outdoor activities year-round, including learn-to-row sessions both in tanks and on the river, youth and masters team rowing, ergometer training, rowing-inspired yoga classes, and lessons tailored to individuals with disabilities.

As the City of Chicago works to transform the long-polluted and neglected Chicago River into its next recreational frontier, Studio Gang’s boathouse at Clark Park helps catalyse necessary momentum. “The architecture is meant to visually capture the poetic rhythm and motion of rowing,” said Jeanne Gang, Founder and Principal of Studio Gang Architects. “But by providing a publicly accessible riverfront, it also reveals the larger movement toward an ecological and recreational revival of the Chicago River.”

The boathouse’s design translates the time-lapse motion of rowing into an architectural roof form, providing visual interest while also offering spatial and environmental advantages that allow the boathouse to adapt to Chicago’s distinctive seasonal changes. With structural truss shapes alternating between an inverted “V” and an “M”, the roof achieves a rhythmic modulation that lets in southern light through the building’s upper clerestory. The clerestory glazing warms the floor slab of the structure in winter and ventilates in summer to minimise energy use throughout the year.

The 22,620-square-foot complex consists of a two-story mechanically heated and cooled training centre, one-story boat storage facility, and a floating launch dock. The main building houses row tanks, ergometer machines, communal space, and an office for the Chicago Park District. Boat storage accommodates kayak and canoe vendors and includes office space, as well as clear span storage for rowing shells and support equipment.

The total building cost is $8.8 million, with $3.2 million in private funding—including $2 million from WMS, $1 million from North Park University, and $200,000 from the Chicago Rowing Foundation—and $1 million matched by Alderman Ameya Pawar (47th ward) with TIF funds.

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to echo the rhythms of rowing appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: French botanist Patrick Blanc, the inventor of green walls, explains how he created the hanging gardens on the outside of Herzog & de Meuron‘s new Pérez Art Museum in our next movie from Miami.

The new Pérez Art Museum Miami by Herzog & de Meuron, which opened last month, features clusters of columns covered with plants suspended from the building’s large overhanging roof.

Blanc explains that the Swiss architects approached him to create these vertical gardens after they successfully worked together on the CaixaForum arts centre in Madrid, completed in 2008.

“We had already covered a wall totally with plants in Madrid,” says Blanc. “Here, for the museum, they asked me: ‘Do you think it’s possible to have the plants on columns instead?’ I said: ‘Yes, of course.'”

Unlike a green wall, which faces in one direction, Blanc had to use different types of plants on each side of the hanging columns.

“For the outside surface, facing the sea, [the plants] have to face full sun, they have to face strong winds, sometimes salt and sometimes hurricanes,” he says. “The side facing the museum is very dark, so [I used] shade-loving plants.”

Blanc claims the key to creating a successful vertical garden is the diversity of species used.

“I use many, many different species,” he explains. “Here, in Miami, I used 80 different species. Sometimes, I use up to 400. When you have so many species, it looks much more natural.”

Vertical gardens are more than just aesthetically pleasing, Blanc goes on to claim.

“Because the roots are growing on the surface, [rather than into the ground], all of the micro-organisms associated with the roots are totally in contact with the air, [which is important] for de-pollution,” he says, “Also, you have benefits of insulation.”

He continues: “And, of course, the target it to use water collected from the roof. With a horizontal garden you lose a lot of water through percolation in the soil. You only have useful water when you have a vertical garden.”

Blanc believes that vertical gardens have become so popular because they provide an interesting and space-efficient way of introducing greenery into cities and claims he doesn’t mind that so many other people have taken on his idea.

“You use vertical space and usually it is empty space,” he says. “I think that is why they have been such a big success.” “Everybody in the world is doing vertical gardens. Of course, 20-25 years ago, I was the only one. But I am happy because with this idea I created a new vision of the interaction between human beings, the town and plants.”

We drove around Miami in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Jewels by Zequals. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

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Pérez Art Museum create “living walls” appeared first on Dezeen.

One thousand editions of literary journal The Paris Review cover the ceiling of skincare brand Aesop‘s new store in Chelsea, New York (+ slideshow).

The Aesop Chelsea store is located a few streets away from the journal’s New York headquarters. “I first discovered The Paris Review in a vintage Melbourne bookstore many years ago,” said Aesop founder Dennis Paphitis. “I have since that time tried diligently to read every issue in a sober state.”

The walls are lined with monochrome extracts of 60 years of The Paris Review, including photographs and letters, while the issues on the ceiling are in full colour.

One side of the store features a cast-iron sink with tube lights fitted into the wall above. The opposite wall displays Aesop products on five freestanding black lacquered shelves.

A small black wooden table in the centre of the store displays more issues of The Paris Review, while a 1950s-style wooden cabinet acts as the counter at the rear of the shop. The floor is covered with black slate tiles.

No two Aesop stores are the same and Dennis Paphitis told Dezeen that he was “horrified at the thought of a soulless chain”. The brand also completed it’s Marylebone London store earlier this year, a restoration by Studio KO that references the rustic English brick house. 

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in copies of The Paris Review appeared first on Dezeen.

Continuing our coverage of the recent explosion of tech company headquarters in San Francisco, here’s a look inside the offices of online property rental service Airbnb, which feature rooms modelled on eight of the company’s listed apartments (+ slideshow).

Airbnb currently offers rental accommodation in over 34,000 countries cities, but the company’s first ever listing was a San Francisco apartment, so the team’s in-house designers decided to transform one section of the interior into an exact replica of it.

They sourced items from various countries to furnish the spaces and even installed a bed in one of the rooms.

Other sections of the headquarters mimic properties from various other places around the world, including Reykjavík, Bali, Amsterdam and Paris, and are filled with casual seating areas where staff can interact.

“We asked ourselves, how can we create the sense of travel in an office?” explained Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky. “Simply having photos of listings and far off places was not enough. It is not just about recalling the memories, but about feeling that you’re there.”

Named  888 Brannan, the offices occupy a renovated 100-year-old industrial building. One of the structure’s original rooms was a conference suite modelled on the War Room in the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove, which has been completely restored.

The office canteen features long communal tables where staff can hold informal meetings, while the walls are covered in over a hundred sketches relating to different employee experiences.

“We wanted to create a space that encourages our employees to move around, interact across disciplines, and see movement and activity,” said Chesky.

Another feature is a green wall that extends up one side of the main atrium.

Here’s the full design statement from Brian Chesky:

888 Brannan

The opening of 888 Brannan is an exciting moment for Airbnb because the building embodies what we value as a company: creativity, community engagement, and thoughtful design.

Joe, Nate and I started Airbnb when we saw the potential in something others had overlooked – the spare space in our apartment. In the same way, we saw massive potential in 888 Brannan. The building is a hundred­‐year‐old city landmark that had been practically forgotten about, but we saw the opportunity to turn it into the perfect space for our growing company and community.

The first time we stepped into the atrium, we imagined looking up and seeing a cross section of the very homes that are featured on our site – immediately knowing, without seeing any logos or signs, that you were at Airbnb. We invested a lot into the space, learning about its history, and transformed it from a non-­descript building into a physical representation of who we are and what we believe.

At the core of Airbnb is the connection between people and spaces. In designing 888 Brannan, we asked ourselves how we could use the space to encourage connections between people. All too often, office design doesn’t consider collaboration, creativity or spontaneity. At Airbnb, we wanted to create a space that encourages our employees to move around, interact across disciplines, and see movement and activity.

To achieve this, we wanted as many lines of sight as possible, both inside the building and to the neighbourhood outside. Not only is this visually interesting, but we believe it inherently creates connections. We also created spaces for these connections to develop. In an open floor plan, you typically have two types of spaces: desks and meeting rooms. We focused on creating a third shared space as well. Sofas scattered amongst the desks, the communal dining area, and project rooms with long standing tables all provide an opportunity for our employees to have casual conversations, spontaneous collaborations, or informal meetings.

Another key focus for our new home was to create a truly comfortable place for our employees, whose hard work is fundamental to everything we do. We believe investing in them is the foundation of our success. A lot of companies under‐invest in their office space, and therefore under‐invest in their employees and their growth. We believe that if our team is working in an inspirational and creative space, they will be inspired to create a better product and service for our hosts and guests.

One exceptional aspect of the new space is the ability to experience travel without leaving the building. We asked ourselves, “how can we create the sense of travel in an office?” Simply having photos of listings and far off places was not enough. It is not just about recalling the memories, but about feeling that you’re there. We replicated some of the most unique places on Airbnb to create this feeling. Each room, from Milan to Reykjavik, Bali to Amsterdam, not only celebrates our global community, but also lets everyone who visits them truly experience a different place.

In designing Airbnb’s new home, we wanted to create a place that would bring our mission to life, a place where people could instantly see what is at the heart of our company. At 888 Brannan, we are creating a space not just for our employees, but for our hosts and travellers, our neighbours and friends. Airbnb is creating a world where you can be at home everywhere, and everyone can be at home at Airbnb.

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