Tag Archives: Selda

Colorado architecture students build micro cabins clad in sheets of hot-rolled steel

Students at the University of Colorado Denver have designed and built a series of rustic dwellings for a base camp operated by an outdoor education program.

Called COBS Year-Round Micro Cabins, the project consists of seven insulated dwellings, each containing 200 square feet (19 square metres) of interior space and a 100-square-foot deck (nine square metres). Located deep within a pine forest, the shelters are accessed via a narrow dirt road.

The rugged structures were built for a base camp operated by the Colorado Outward Bound School (COBS), a nonprofit organisation focused on wilderness education.

The camp is situated in Leadville, a small Colorado town located 10,150 feet above sea level (3,093 metres).

“The orientation and articulation of each of the seven cabins react individually to the immediate site conditions present in the landscape,” the team said. “No two cabins are alike.”

The shelters were created by 28 students in the Colorado Building Workshop, a design-build programme in the architecture school at the University of Colorado Denver. The programme constructed 14 similar cabins for the COBS camp in 2015.

The new structures are skinned with sheets of hot-rolled steel, which form a low-maintenance rainscreen. Cedar-clad porches were carved out of the main rectangular mass.

The buildings are elevated off the ground by short metal columns with concretefootings. The composition is meant to “blend with the pine forest, minimising the visual impact”, while also reducing each structure’s footprint.

Source: www.dezeen.com

Antonio Citterio unveils design for glass Arte tower on Florida beach

Italian architect Antonio Citterio has been tapped to conceive a luxury residential building in Miami Beach, marking his first architectural project in America and the latest in a string of residential developments in the area.

Called Arte by Antonio Citterio, the 12-storey apartment building is slated to rise on a vacant, one-acre (0.4-hectare) parcel in Surfside, an exclusive beach community situated between South Beach and Bal Harbour.

The oceanfront tower will contain 16 “ultra-luxury condominium residences”, with Citterio-Viel and Partners – founded by Citterio and Patricia Viel – designing both the architecture and interiors. Units will measure 5,500 square feet (510 square metres) and larger, and will be delivered “furniture ready”, according to reports.

Renderings show a glass-clad, rectilinear building with protruding floor plates that form deep eaves and balconies. The beach-facing elevation appears to taper upward.

Interior materials will include Italian travertine with bronze accents, according to the team.

Based in Italy, Citterio has designed a number of hospitality projects around the world, including a series of Bulgari Hotels in Dubai, London, Milan and Bali. His residential work includes Salaino 10, a condo complex in Milan.

He also is a well-known product designer and has worked with B&B ItaliaKartell and Vitra, among other brands.

Encompassing 150,000 square feet (13,935 square metres), the Miami development will offer amenities such as a spa, fitness centre, and indoor and outdoor pools. Each residence will be allotted three parking spots in an air-conditioned garage.

The developer plans to construct an amenity building across the street that will contain a golf simulator, club room, cigar room and rooftop tennis courts.

The landscape will be designed by Enzo Enea, who has a Miami studio and two offices in Switzerland. The grounds will feature an aluminium sculpture by artist Robert Indiana, as part of his ART series conceived in 1972.

Kobi Karp Architecture and Interior Design, a local firm with studios in the Middle East, will serve as architect of record.

Source: www.dezeen.com

Customers arranged around one communal table inside Taiwanese hair salon

Visitors to this hair salon in Taiwan all sit face-to-face around one long table, which was custom-made by local studio Soar Design.

The hairdressers – which is based in Taiwan’s Changhua City – has a long and slender floorplan. To make the most of the space available, the designers chose not to section off the room into separate workstations and instead organised areas around a single communal table.

The custom-made long rectangular table divides the salon’s 45-square-metre room into waiting and haircut areas, with people sitting across the table from one another.

Circular mirrors rest in wooden bases for easy movement, allowing the owner to rearrange the space as needed. Long pendant lights hanging just above the table emit a soft glow.

Paint has been removed from the walls, which were hand-drilled and stripped back to their original materials to make the atmosphere “closer to nature”.

“Just like the artistic behaviour of the hairstylist, you can see the conversation between textures, perception and space,” said the studio.

The salon’s sinks sit on a raised wooden platform tucked away towards the back of the building, which is divided from the rest of the space by a steel counter.

Throughout the salon, products are housed in wooden shelves and on steel panels jutting out from the walls.

This Melbourne salon also avoids the typical hairdresser interiors, and features bold colours and geometric shapes based on the work of postmodernist designer Ettore Sottsass.

Other interesting pamper spots include a minimal Japanese salon with space for the owner’s books, art and music, and a Parisian hairdressers with a hexagonal-patterned ceiling made from sheets of plywood.

Cun-Design converts Beijing house into film studio with weathering steel and glass extensions

Chinese firm Cun-Design has transformed a typical suburban house in Beijing into a film production studio featuring glass and pre-rusted steel extensions.

Cun-Design was asked to oversee the refurbishment of the existing property in the Chinese capital’s Tongzhou District to create a new workspace for Blue Moon Films.

The detached house located on the bank of the Wen-Yu River in the east of the city was only built in the 1990s, but had already fallen into a state of disrepair.

The architects recognised that the house’s facades and structural framework could be retained and adapted, but sought to completely transform the cramped interior to give it a more modern feel.

“Our first impression on this house is that it is out of tune with today’s people and their way of living,” said Cun-Design. “We maintained its original structure during the renovation and formed a contrasting boundary between old and new within the project.”

The refurbishment began with the removal of all non-structural internal walls, resulting in more open and flexible spaces. Doors and windows were also removed to create uninterrupted circulation throughout the building.

GT2P melts rock from Chilean volcanoes to create Remolten furniture

Chilean studio GT2P has designed a set of boulder-like stools using re-melted volcanic rock.

The studio coated porcelain, stoneware and concrete – all of which are resistant to high temperatures – in the lava. The result is furniture with rough, smooth or drip-covered exteriors.

By controlling the temperature, GT2P could produce this range of different finishes, using heat to influence the final texture and colour.

“The control of this natural matter allows for the potential for soft and rough pieces, and through this unique sculptural process each piece develops its own unique texture,” said the studio. “The Remolten series celebrates nature’s ability to create beauty while paying homage to Chile.”

GT2P collected a porous lightweight rock known as basaltic andesite to create the stools, visiting the slopes of active volcanoes to collect it. The studio’s home country has 2,000 volcanoes, with 500 of them still active.

The furniture, which was created for New York gallery Friedman Benda, is a continuation of GT2P’s ongoing investigations into volcanic rock. It has already incorporated the material into a collection of lightsusing smoothed chunks of lava as dimmer switches.

As part of its early Remolten experiments, the studio also created smaller, solid objects, made using moulds. This allowed them to trial the effects of different temperatures and produce pieces such as jars, candleholders or kitchen tools – which make the most of the material’s durability and heat resistance.

Incorporating the lava with a base object allowed the studio to create larger objects, and progress to stools and other furniture.

“These experiences create a great potential for volcanic lava to be disseminated from Chile to the rest of the world, creating bridges between the academic, the artistic, the industrial and the artisanal world,” added GT2P.

As a result of its versatility, volcanic rock has also been turned into everything from shelves to cups and plates.

Source: www.dezeen.com

10 minimalist bathrooms that have barely anything in them

Although bathrooms tend to be the most minimal room in the house, we’ve rounded up 10 of the most extreme examples, including a lonely bathtub in a Dutch townhouse and a copper-lined washroom in an English countryside property.

This article is a great source for some minimalistic inspiration.
www.dezeen.com

O’Neill Rose creates elongated wooden home in the Berkshires

A long cypress-clad volume that projects from a hillside in rural Massachusetts forms this home, designed by US studio O’Neill Rose Architects for a nature-loving couple.Undermountain by O'Neill Rose Architects

Called Undermountain, the house is located in Sheffield, a town in the Berkshires region in western Massachusetts.

A popular getaway destination for city dwellers, the picturesque area is known for its tree-covered hills, sparkling lakes and swathes of farmland.Undermountain by O'Neill Rose Architects

The architects “took a simple house to the extreme” in order to strengthen the building’s relationship to its setting.

Studio Mumbai presents MPavilion 2016 built using seven kilometres of bamboo

Studio Mumbai founder Bijoy Jain has unveiled his completed MPavilionin Melbourne – a square structure built from bamboo and wood, but not the cow dung originally planned (+ slideshow).

The Indian architect used seven kilometres of bamboo, 50 tonnes of stone and 26 kilometres of rope to create this year’s MPavilion, an annual commission billed as Australia’s answer to London’s Serpentine Pavilion.

Jain had also planned to use karvi panels, which are made by mixing cow dung and earth. But this material – in use in India, and tested on several prototypes built in Mumbai – would have taken too long to dry in the Melbourne climate.

The completed 16.8-square-metre structure features an intricate bamboo framework pinned together with approximately 5,000 wooden pegs.

Its awning-style roof canopy is made from Karvi sticks, which extend down at the corners to create dramatic points, while the flooring is bluestone, sourced from a quarry in Port Fairy – about 300 kilometres west of Melbourne.

Source: www.dezeen.com

Neri&Hu creates “stair of encounters” inside Bloomberg’s Hong Kong office

To encourage Bloomberg’s Hong Kong employees to interact more, architecture studio Neri&Hu has given them a staircase with generous landings, seating areas and strategically positioned windows.

The media giant previously had a “sculpturally iconic” spiral staircase connecting the three floors of its Hong Kong headquarters. But the company decided it would be better to swap this for something that inspires its workers.

Neri&Hu’s response was to create a more elaborate, boxy staircase that offers a variety of spaces for both informal meetings and spontaneous encounters.

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“The client’s brief was to design a staircase to connect the three different floors of their office, with the explicit rule that this stair should be used daily as the only vertical connection,” said the Shanghai studio, which is led by Lyndon Neri and Rossana

“Our challenge was to redesign a staircase that would work within the structural limitations of the knock-out panels in the floor slab, while still creating a more spacious journey.”

Called the Curio Stair of Encounters, the new staircase is deliberately less transparent than its predecessor. Neri&Hu’s aim was to “actively deny the view to Victoria Harbour” – a typically sought-after view in Hong Kong offices.

Source: www.dezeen.com

Studio Gang clads Chicago student housing complex in wavy strips of concrete

US firm Studio Gang has completed a student residential complex for the University of Chicago that features towers sheathed in glass and sculptural white concrete panels (+ movie).

Scheduled to open on 17 September 2016, the complex – called the Campus North Residential Commons – is the latest addition to the university’s campus, which features works by prominent architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, Rafael Viñoly and Helmut Jahn.
Encompassing 400,000 square feet (37,160 square metres), the complex is located on the northeast corner of the campus and is meant to serve as a “front door” for the private university. It was built to help the institution achieve its goal of housing students closer to campus.

The complex contains apartments for 800 undergraduate students, along with dining facilities, classrooms, community rooms, offices and courtyards. At street level, it features shops and a public plaza that are intended to benefit residents in the surrounding neighbourhood.

“We designed an architecture that really feels like home for the students, but that simultaneously opens to and engages with the community,” said Jeanne Gang, founding principal of Studio Gang Architects, which has offices in Chicago and New York.

The site consists of three towers, a low-scale building with a green roof, and several outdoor spaces. “Students have access to two landscaped courtyards that are located above ground level to provide beautiful, readily accessible outdoor spaces,” the team said.

The buildings’ facades – clad in customised precast concrete panels – feature “subtle arcs that recall the university’s history of Gothic and New-Gothic architecture”, the team said. From a distance, the strips of concrete resemble wavy white ribbons.

Windows vary in width and have a ceramic frit that helps prevent birds from flying into the building.

The towers vary in height depending upon their location on the site. A five-storey tower is scaled to the residential district to the east, while a 15-storey tower looks toward a busy commercial context to the north.

Source: www.dezeen.com