From the architect. In the project we started, facing the current situation – an old warehouse, part of Tel Aviv port complex of restored warehouses (from the Tel Aviv Bauhaus period). The task was to design a showroom of four different kitchen types for two kitchen companies, Le Cornue and SieMatic.
We decided to use the existing cross plan, thus carrying out the idea of four sleeves – four show spaces, each with its very distinguished and articulated character, offering different experience, while part of an organism that functions and breathes with all its parts as one.
The building was ripped off, the four spaces were cleaned of all that is unnecessary, left naked on their construction, this way exposing the authentic materials – bricks, metal and concrete structure of the building.
The four show spaces were knitted together by the overall rough background and the installation ducts passing through it – the electricity and air conditioning, placed in black ducts, while the brass light lines extended like golden threads. The electric installation ducts are exposed and stretched, in order to emphasize the linearity and the horizontality of the space and interconnect everything altogether, being like life veins of the organism, supplying the necessity to each space.
Materials were chosen to make the linkage and to give the desired atmosphere in a performance. On one hand there is the background that is with the authentic bricks, metal and concrete, on the other hand – the repeating brass theme across the building, seen in the library, the delicate light long threads, the decorative lamps over the working area, as well as the elements in the “Le Cornue” part.
The “Le Cornue” kitchens with their particular design like old vintage suitcases gave us a platform to play with materials and forms, turning the space into a scene, giving to it a specific atmosphere. All La Cornue appliances, placed individually, present its real character and pop out like jewels, thanks to the contrast between the luxury metals and the rough background. We added the pot hanger that added character as well as the mirror doors that multiply space and materials, and create illusion.
Left from the entrance, the “Pure Black” SieMatic island has its video art wall as a modern way to experience the kitchen space. In the front the “Urban” kitchen is treated as a loft which also enables the salesmen to use the space as a working place for them. The fourth kitchen type is the “Classic White” kitchen.
When we think “contemporary houses”, our minds automatically go to a number of features. For example, we start to picture clean white surfaces and colour schemes, bright pops of accent colour, unconventional decor shapes, and lots of crystal clear glass. If that sounds like the kind of contemporary house you enjoy most too, then you simply must check out the photos of Turned House in Treviso, Italy! Turned House is..
“When you read Love in the Time of Cholera you come to realize the magic realism of South America.” Yvonne Farrell, Shelley McNamara and I were nestled in a corner of the Barbican Centre’s sprawling, shallow atrium talking about the subject of their most recent accolade, the Royal Institute of British Architects inaugural International Prize, awarded that previous evening. That same night the two Irish architects, who founded their practice in Dublin in the 1970s, also delivered a lecture on the Universidad de Ingeniería and Tecnologia (UTEC)—their “modern-day Machu Picchu” in Lima—to a packed audience in London’s Portland Place.
While this project firmly angled a spotlight on their work, they were today revealed as directors of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale – the most important architectural event on the cultural calendar.
Farrell and McNamara, who together lead a team of twenty-five as Grafton Architects, are both powerful thinkers, considered conversationalists and unobtrusively groundbreaking designers. For a practice so compact their international portfolio is exceptionally broad. The first phase of the UTEC in the Peruvian capital, which began following an international competition in 2011, represents the farthest territory the practice have geographically occupied. It is, in their words, a “man-made cliff” between the Pacific and the mountains – on one side a cascading garden, and on the other a “shoulder” to the city cast from bare concrete.
The scale and character of the UTEC belie a rich portfolio of smaller projects, which began in the mid-1990s. A specialism in higher education buildings has evolved out of successive competitions, culminating (prior to UTEC) in Milan’s Universita Luigi Bocconi (2008). Burrowed into a small site along one of the city’s wide, tall streets, the monumental twenty-two-meter cantilever of the building appears to defy gravity – or, in their words, exists “in dialogue with gravity.” The spatial control required to achieve this structural feat was, for Farrell, a simple matter of “positing the two main beams on the roof, and then hanging the offices so they could be like soffits, adjusted.” Stood in the marble-lined, brightly lit ante-space, one is acutely aware of the weight suspended above.
Ireland, where Shelley and McNamara were both born and educated, and from where they now teach and practice, has been crucial to the development of their temperament as architects. The country is defined on the one hand by geological, primal coasts and landscapes and, on the other, elemental vernacular structures. “The places that you love do seep into your unconscious,” McNamara says. “And they have probably also seeped into our way of thinking. We found at a certain moment that in order to find a way of discussing our own work to ourselves—to be liberated from just the plan, section and elevation—required a different sort of language. We would ask: is it a cliff? Is it something floating, like a cloud?” These sorts of terms have partially transposed Grafton’s practice from the confines of their own discipline into another area of thought.
“At the same time,” Farrell argues, “there is also a fantastic heritage of town, sprawl, and street in Ireland. When I was a child I was part of a town structure but I could always run out and into the fields – there exists this duality between urban and rural.” “Ruined monasteries, tower houses, and fragments standing in the landscape are all incredibly strong,” McNamara suggests. And there is certainly a particular sort of elementalism to these images, particularly where the west coast of the country faces the uninterrupted expanse of the Atlantic. “We’re aware of sky and we’re aware of wind; we’re on an island in which things are constantly changing,” Farrell states. “We are very conscious of weather and, therefore, outside and inside change.”
“We often say that James Joyce,” the great Irish poet and novelist, “held Dublin in the words of a book,” Farrell recalls. “In a similar way I think that we also imagine verbally, and then make.” Projects become more than just a story or a narrative – they become an inhabited physical reality. “When you read Thomas Hardy, for example, you realise that he was an architect. Literature, words, imagination and making are all very deeply connected.”
This approach to architecture has, in recent decades, become more and more a part of how Irish architecture is perceived around the world. “It’s a value system,” Farrell believes. “Irish architects are very well trained. Shelley and I have taught in many architecture schools around the world but the thing about Irish schools of architecture is that students have their feet on the ground, but their eyes on the stars.” This culture developed through the generosity of heads of schools, McNamara recalls. “They gave young architects teaching jobs which meant, for instance, that Yvonne and I were working as teachers only one year out of college. It means that we now have twenty-five years of conversation with people about their work, and our work.”
For a practice born in such an intimate context, Grafton have emerged as highly international. Alongside their creative leadership of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, they are currently working on the London School of Economics’ Paul Marshall Building in London, the Institut Mines Telecom in Paris, the University of Economics in Toulouse, and a new city library for Dublin. “This sort of global practice,” Farrell explains, “can be about learning from new places; being mobile enough to go and understand them. Or it can be about cultural imperialism and homogenisation. Earlier I was reading about what was supposedly the first university in the world, with primarily Chinese and Indian scholars. It was about nothing more than the exchange of culture and ideas – and certainly not about one taking over the other. So ‘globalised’ practice is not about conquering something, or asserting your presence someplace – it’s about contributing to something that you find is good.”
From the architect. Aim of the architectural intervention of Jardin de l’Ange is the requalification of a square that, for its own nature and position has always been the crucial and strategic hub for the community life.
The main goal is to improve and consolidate the fruition of the square, thought as an amphitheatre with permanent bleachers covered by the typical local stones, created in order to mark (delimit) the public space defining the pedestrian access.
The Jardin de l’Ange, if during the day is an interaction point and an open air living room, by the nights, due to its new conformation becomes an interactive social area.
The chalet façade, included as well in the intervention, has been elaborated with a technological wall provided by mechanized LED walls that, when needed, reveal a convertible stage, always different in size and shape, adaptable to any kind of event. Sideways now there’s an innovated technical covering, a white multifaceted texture that, playing with lights and shadows gives a new alternative imagine to the front building.
The project also includes a total white covering composed by a metallic structure with circular section elements, variable in length and diameter. This metallic twist, completely visible in the winter season, during the summer months will be upholster with tie rods and a white technical plastic fabric, which allows the shade in the hottest hours, lighting effects during the summer nights and protection from frequent rains.
The lines that mark the profile of the covering are an explicit reference to the Mont Blanc skyline and its peaks raising behind the chalet. They recall the grandeur and majesty of the majestic “Giant”.
From Office to Creative Atelier The independent branding agency Identity Works is housed in one of Stockholms most iconic commercial buildings from the Swedish Grace era, designed by Cyrillus Johansson. When expanding within the building Elding Oscarson were given the opportunity to thoroughly look into the agency’s workflow in relation to the disposition of spaces. Within a tight framework of standard requirements, a project tailored for the client regarding openness, transparency, communication, and creative flow, could be crafted.
The envisioned creative atelier, however with the need of many enclosed rooms, resulted in a layout where enclosed spaces are arranged to form a series of interconnected open spaces. Like buildings, towards a square, these volumes have been given facades with large windows providing light and transparency. Their contrasting cladding of clear lacquered MDF shelving, highlights the spatial organization while functioning as an ever-changing mood board.
Are you someone who’s easily overwhelmed about the most trivial things? Do you feel anxious so much that you lay awake most nights with thoughts that make you stressed? One of the many reasons why anxiety is hard to cure is because most people suffering from it engage in things that make it worse. Listed below are the common issues that usually aggravate anxiety.
1. Keeping Your Anxiety a Secret
It might feel shameful for you to let people know that you’re suffering from anxiety. You may fear that they’d start avoiding you or treat you unfairly because of it. But the one mistake of people suffering from anxiety is being dishonest about it.
You don’t have to tell the world right now, but the closest people you know, or the ones you spend time with every day is a good start. This will help them understand you, and help you overcome your anxiety.
2. Isolating Yourself
“I feel much better alone, I don’t need anyone else”. Anxious people often distance themselves from other people. And this is very unhealthy. Solitude is good once in a while but too much and it can lead to depression. The thing is: familiarity increases anxiety. The more you stay in the “safe zone”, the more you get anxious when new things come your way.
According to Brianna West, founder of Soul Anatomy, “anxiety is being disconnected from the present moment, other people, or yourself. It is the warning sign that we’re too much in the past or the future so much that it affects the choices we make in the present.”
So stop spending too much time alone. Start doing something different, get out of your comfort zone, and start connecting or reconnecting with the people you have in your life.
3. Validating Your Fears
Imagine if you’re the type of person who gets anxious about traveling by airplanes. You’ll worry about your life so much that you’ll look up death rates for plane accidents. Or if you’re scared of dogs, you’ll read stories about cases of people who got killed by their own pet dogs.
Validating fears is commonly done by people who are anxious about their health. They research to validate their symptoms and worry that they may have a rare disease. Unfortunately, this behavior is not helpful, as it causes more anxiety. And the more you get anxious, the more your anxiety becomes harder to cure.
What you should do is realize that fear is normal and that it’s also liberating. We are all designed to feel fear. But to conquer our fear takes time, and it should be done so with love and understanding for yourself.
4. Lying to Yourself
The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. People like to cover up truths because it doesn’t sound pretty. Or because it hurts. One of the causes of anxiety is contradiction with ourselves. By lying to yourself, you’re masquerading the truth with lies that hurt other people. Lies that make you create an expectation of yourself that maybe you can’t even achieve. That’s what’s going to make you more anxious. If you want to feel freer, you must accept yourself as you are.
5. Having a Poor Diet
We know how media, especially television, can have a huge influence on our preferences when it comes to the ideal body type. It has affected us so much that most of us feel anxious when we gain weight so we consume much less food than we should. Anxiety can alter digestion and water intake in our intestine which affects how food is transported through our digestive tract. This leads to poor bowel movement, blood in stools, and even diarrhea.
6. Pleasing Everyone
Many people suffering from anxiety have an inclination to people-please. These people want to be agreeable and likable to everyone they meet — and may feel hurt or worried if other people won’t like them. Sometimes they go to great lengths to sacrifice their own needs, both emotionally and physically. And become anxious and guilty if they let down someone.
7. Trying to Be Perfect
Someone who feels too scared of being rejected, or too worried to say something wrong will always feel anxious. Instead of trying so hard to do well and creating pressure on yourself, give yourself the permission to look bad. Allow yourself to be imperfect. Don’t feel too worried to violate any invisible social rules. It’s not the end of the world if nobody laughed at your joke or if you made an awkward comment.
Closing Thoughts
Fighting anxiety is a tough battle. I should know, I’ve been suffering from it for more than 22 years now. But in all these years, I’ve learned that anxiety isn’t something to be tolerated, it has to be cured. And the only way you can do is it by surrounding yourself with love and friendship from people who matter most to you. So don’t let anxiety ruin your life. Learn to form connections, find peace, and be yourself in any social situation.
Armela Escalona is a content editor at scoopfed.com. She writes motivational articles about work, health and college life. Stay connected with her through her LinkedIn Account.
The aim of the design is making a house using all familiar local materials and nomal building methods, so the design can speak itself with minimum care for artificial lighting and material use.
The house is a 45degree diagonal block, divided the 18mx20m site into 2 triangle gardens. From here, all the views inside the house and toward gardens are framed in various ways – from the combination of basic elements: white brick walls, wooden beams, openings and the roof.
In order to make the building appear lower, the original three-layer buildings look like only two layers high, which helps create intimate visual experience for children and reduce the pressure of the volume.
Axon
This design paid full attention to the creature of public space. An 8-meter-wide north-south corridor runs through the building is an inner street-style pathway inside of the building, which provides two-story high public communication space for children.
Through linking teaching space with 25-meter distance in the west and serving space with lower requirements in the east, ‘the inner street’ makes the building a whole part. This layout, both conducive to the partition, the function does not interfere with each other, but also to streamline the shortest, each part of the users can easily reach the mostly used regions.
Due to the highway in the east and north side, the design minimized windows in the east and north facade in order to create a quiet environment. To increase th lighting, the architect inserted a variety of large and small courtyard in-between rooms, which constitute interactive small communities for teachers and students together.
Sig Nordal 