© STUDIO BEEN

When you think of original designs, you know that you’re talking about something unique and special. An innovative design that can change our perception and visual culture: that is exactly what the German designer Elisa Strozyk does with Wooden Textiles, a product line that mixes wood with fabric. 

The designer shows us that innovation remains a fundamental part of design. She imbues wood with living properties and turns it to a flexible fabric with unpredictable movements, changing its color and texture. It’s an astonishing use of this traditional material to create new forms and experiences. 

Wooden textiles seeks to convey a new tactile experience. We’re used to experiencing wood as a hard material. We know the feeling of walking on a hardwood floor, touching a table or just feeling the bark of a tree. But we don’t usually experience a wooden surface that can be manipulated or molded by our hands. 

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Elisa Strozyk explores ways to provide textile-like properties to wood, making it soft and flexible. The result is a material that is half wood – half fabric, a mix between stiffness and flexibility, challenging what is expected of this type of material. It smells and looks familiar, but it feels strange since it is able to move and come to life in unexpected ways. Strozyk explains: 

The world around us is increasingly intangible. We’re used to writing emails now instead of letters, online shopping, downloading music and pressing virtual buttons on touch screens. We live in a society of images, a visual culture full of color; advertisements, television and Internet. It doesn’t allow us to feel. Giving surfaces we want to feel the importance they deserve we can reconnect with the material world and increase the emotional value of an object.

© STUDIO BEEN

© STUDIO BEEN

The process to transform wood into a flexible surface involves breaking it up into triangular pieces and manually attaching them to a textile base. Depending on their size and shape, each piece displays different behaviors in terms of flexibility and malleability. 

This geometric pattern can be used to create numerous objects, such as rugs, carpets, coverings, upholstery, clothing and even furniture. 

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Murals

Dyed – Wooden – Textiles

For this collection wood is stained with a special technique, emphasizing the natural growth patterns in the wood.

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Table Runners

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A collection that alludes to plaid fabrics like tablecloths and table runners, using fading color patterns. It is an exclusive collection for the Gestalten Pavilion store in Berlin.

Colored – Tablerunners

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Fading plaids – Tablerunners

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Lamp

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Miss – Marple

This ceiling lamp shows the use of wood in an unconventional way. The grid of triangles makes a flexible display that can be manually transformed into three-dimensional shapes. Although it generates light in the darkness, the outer surface becomes more evident with daylight, becoming a sculptural object.

Wooden Rugs

© STUDIO BEEN

The potential of this carpet lies in its flexibility. It can be rolled up and easily transported. The ability to move it implements a potential for change. It can be placed on the floor, sculpted in a dramatic way, or placed it on the wall.

Limited Red

© STUDIO BEEN

Grey Black Birch

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Mostly Red

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Ashdown

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Mortimer

© STUDIO BEEN

Sherwood

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Wentwood

© STUDIO BEEN

Furniture

© STUDIO BEEN

Septagon – Bar – Cabinet

With its sculptural three-dimensional surface and the exceptional heptagonal shape, this mounted “bar cabinet” resembles a “wooden crystal.” The inside of the case is covered with a layer of light sensitive padouk, whose bright red fades with each opening of the cabinet door.

The flexibility of Wooden Textiles has attracted interest from other designers in the textile world, which has allowed for various collaborations, where dresses and other garments made of wood were created, and which can be seen at the end of this video: 

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© Wieland Gleich

• Architects: Metropolis Design
• Location: Belair Dr, Witteboomen, Cape Town, South Africa
• Project Year: 2014
• Photographs: Wieland Gleich

• Structural Engineer: Sutherland & Associates (Pty) Ltd – Gerdi Bruwer
• Quantity Surveyor: Shevel and Simpson – Alastair Simpson
• Project Manager: Rogan Hindmarch
• Contractor: Batir Construction

© Wieland Gleich

The project forms part of a larger renovation to a freestanding villa located high up on the slopes of the Vlakkenberg. The clients required a pavilion within their extensive and beautiful garden, from which to appreciate the natural landscape around them.

© Wieland Gleich

Site and Context 

The site consists of a series of terraces, oriented north- south and falling to the east. The house is located over two terraces and overlooks the garden terrace below. There are significant mountain views to the north and sweeping views of the peninsula to the east. South-east winds are severe in summer.The existing garden terrace contained an ostentatious water folly at its southern end, comprising a water cascade falling in to a pond with elaborate fountains. This feature is on axis to a large pool on the far end of the terrace, separated by a large expanse of garden.While this garden folly appealed to the new owners’ sense of humour, they requested that it be ‘toned down’ and incorporated into a meaningful outdoor relaxation area for the appreciation of the back of Table Mountain to the north, a view they love, but cannot really appreciate from the house.The siting concept was to locate the new pavilion both as a termination of the garden, as a backdrop to the water feature and as an evocation of the mountain across the valley. It required both solidity and presence, transparency and lightness.The earth banks behind the pavilion were manipulated to form a natural basin

Plan

Design Intentions    

The pavilion attempts to address a complex question: how to create a meaningful dialogue with place when the surroundings are both de-natured and powerfully ‘natured’. This requires that the relationship between architecture, nature and modernity is carefully considered. The building is intended to be of nature: to contain a distillation of landscape which then allows it to be naturally contained by its surroundingsWe limited our consideration to the timeless, the simple, to charting the movement of the sun, the changing quality of light during the day, the mystery and magic of the landscape at night. To stillness, emptiness, possibility.The intention is to say as much as possible with as little as possible and to leave as much as possible unsaid…

© Wieland Gleich

Concept

An abstract sculpture, which is a distillation of nest and tree canopy, floating over the flat plane of the garden. The abstract form is neither purely aesthetic nor purely rational. It is conceived to be elemental, of itself, more of an object than a building, which can compete in its perceptual power with the strength of the surrounding natural landscape on the one hand and the artificiality of its immediate surroundings on the other. The notion of change, the passing of time expressed through the day and the year, is tracked by a perimeter aperture which mediates an ever changing and subtle play of light on the rough concrete walls of the building. 

© Wieland Gleich

Design Realisation Organisation & Accommodation 

The accommodation comprises a number of seating areas, both under cover and in the open and a barbeque area. A small kitchen, storage and bathroom block are included due to the distance from the house and complete a flexible entertainment place for individual and large scale gatheringsThe pavilion is arranged on intersecting axes. The major axis was an existing one between the existing water feature and the swimming pool. It is expressed by the timber floor plane and is really the axis which connects to landscape on both sides. The cross axis, is defined by the shelter and adjacent services block.The placement of the building was calculated to create a series of outdoor places with different spatial qualities to allow for a layered and varied experience.

© Wieland Gleich

Structure & Material
The materials are minimal- concrete, timber and textured plaster.The entire canopy structure is of self-compacting reinforced concrete, with a Penetron additive. The shuttering was pine planking, planed all round. This smoother surface treatment was specified, in order not to disturb the overall unity of the form in the raking sunlight. 

© Wieland Gleich

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© Eik Frenzel

• Architects: Berrel Berrel Kräutler Architekten
• Location: Rodersdorf, Switzerland
• Area: 172.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Eik Frenzel

© Eik Frenzel

The prefabricated timber-frame house stands on a slope with views over the hilly Alsatian countryside. The cubature of the detached house reflects the skilful orchestration of the local building code specifications, with the interior divided into split levels in order to create four independent levels.The roof and short façades are clad in a skin of copper-titanium-zinc alloy, while spaced wooden slats were used on the long sides. The façade materials accentuate the idiosyncratic volumetry of the wooden house. The structure is formed by a wooden shell mounted under the roof, which serves as the upper storey.

© Eik Frenzel

Section

© Eik Frenzel

The over-height space between the shell and building envelope is the highlight of the house and at the same time its centre. This area is connected to the outdoors via a large window. Narrow skylight-slits in the roof and along the integrated shell bring light into the sculptural interior. At its core it is a wooden installation that divides and connects the entrance, cloakroom, kitchen, dining area, living room and lounge. The precise carpentry work makes the functions in these areas disappear into an all-enveloping abstract sculpture.

© Eik Frenzel

Section

© Eik Frenzel

Access to the upper floors in the installed shell is gained via seamlessly built minimalistic stairs made from solid wood steps. The bedroom, study and bathroom are separated by built-in wall cabinets. The walls and doors are aligned with no projections.

© Eik Frenzel

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© Peter Cuypers

• Architects: Studioninedots
• Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Clients: Van Wijnen Midden, IC Netherlands, DUWO
• Design Team: Albert Herder, Vincent van der Klei, Arie van der Neut, Metin van Zijl
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Peter Cuypers

• Project Team: Stefan Dannel, Wouter Hermanns, Jurjen van der Horst
• Contractor: Van Wijnen Midden
• Project Type: 364 student apartments

© Peter Cuypers

On Zeeburgereiland in Amsterdam, right before the Piet Hein tunnel, a growing student population has been livening up the area. Here Studioninedots designed an iconic block with 364 student apartments. Passersby this summer caught glimpses of the first residents enjoying the sunshine on the shared terraces that form the stepped roof.

Zeeburgereiland is rapidly developing into an urbanised part of Amsterdam, and the city-wide demand for student housing is addressed here on the 134-metre-long site on IJburglaan. Studioninedots utilised the organisation of the outdoor spaces as a way to facilitate a collective culture and the dynamic use of the building. A major strategy relocated the terrace, which was originally allocated on the quiet but unattractive north side of the building, to the roof.

© Peter Cuypers

By stepping the block down southwards, this created space for shared terraces, enabled variety in the apartment layouts and formed an iconic urban silhouette. The clever positioning of the stepped terraces enables the building to function as a barrier against traffic noise for the residences behind.

© Peter Cuypers

Double height glass entrances mark access to the apartments. Complementing the roof terraces is a green zone that lines the front facade, filled with hollyhocks that lean against the brick piers. The terraces of the ground floor apartments open onto here.
The dimensions of the piers vary, widening towards the centre of the building, which appears as a triptych. Each with its own rhythmic quality, the different sections together accentuate the overall upturned form: the building smiles.

© Peter Cuypers

Plan

© Peter Cuypers

Our cities are becoming more compact. In this context Studioninedots sees an increasing need for better collective spaces and public spaces. Its architecture creates characteristic spatial interventions on dense urban sites that function as catalysts for meeting, exchange, connection and activities between people – in this case, between students. 

© Peter Cuypers

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© Soopakorn Srisakul

• Architects: I Like Design Studio
• Location: Thanon Nawamin, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, Thailand
• Design Team: Narucha Kuwattanapasiri , Unnop Tupwong
• Area: 380.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2013
• Photographs: Soopakorn Srisakul

• Client: Kasin Suthammanas

© Soopakorn Srisakul

The project start from the idea that the owner is looking for more living space in the future and existing home with parent may not able to answer. After he is looking back through time, the old house that the owner growth-up and belong to his parent is not yet sold, locate in the same village, and surrounding with good neighbor. That is where the project begins.

The old house is one and half duplex with the mixed between wood and concrete, facing down south and having good air circulation through-out the entire house. He decided to fresh start the project by removes the existing house and start his passion from the ground up. The first request he brief to the architecture is best possible air circulation, and the second request is he love to see 45 degree rooftop because the design speak-out the harmony between modern and Thai design in his view.

© Soopakorn Srisakul

After providing both concepts the architect tone-down the rooftop design by split the house into 2 modules in order to create a better mass of 45 degree rooftop. The rooftop of the left module reflects modern design with flat rooftop, and the right module covers with 45 degree rooftop design. The idea helps overall design of the house and reflect stacking of mass and better shape of the house.

Section

Section

View is another matter of the design. Location of the house is surrounding with 30 years old houses, and not many angle for good views. The architect solved this matter by creates small open spaces in a few zone inside the house in order to bring the light in from the top. This would bring shed of the sun during the day and privacy over the night. Another highlight area of the home is living and dining room which is the largest space of the house with the maximum possible view surrounding with outdoor garden and garage. One of the owner passion is to collect vintage cars and he would please to look at the cars from the living room. Thus, the architect create vintage car view from the living area for him for his personal enjoyment. That is the begin story and concept to bring this compact house to home.

© Soopakorn Srisakul

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Topping out two weeks ago, the structure of Brock Commons, currently the tallest timber structure in the world, is now complete. Measuring in at 18 stories and 174 feet (53 meters) tall, the building was completed nearly four months ahead of schedule, displaying one of the advantages of building tall buildings with wood.

Just 70 days after the prefabricated timber components were first delivered to the site, construction will now turn to the interior, with an expected completion date in early May 2017. In total, construction time will clock in at a speed 18 percent faster than a traditional project.

Check out the timelapse video to see the project come together.

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Center for Sustainable Landscapes / The Design Alliance Architects. Image © Denmarsh Photography

A recent study conducted by Dodge Data & Analytics with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has found that architects and building owners are beginning to place higher priority of the impacts of design decisions on human health. Nearly 75% of architects and 67% of owners responded that health considerations now play a role in how their buildings are designed, indicating that healthy environments have become an important tool in marketing to tenants and consumers.

According to the report, the five healthy building features most often used by architects include:

• Better lighting/daylighting exposure
• Products that enhance thermal comfort
• Spaces that enhance social interaction
• Enhanced air quality
• Products that enhance acoustical comfort

The findings align with the goals of the AIA’s Design and Health initiative, which strives to improve health outcomes for people and communities while enhancing well-being, safety and environmental quality.

For more highlights from the report, visit the AIA’s website here, or download the report in full, here.

News via the American Institute of Architects.

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© Main Street Studio – Wayne Johnson

• Architects: OPN Architects
• Location: Cedar Rapids, IA, USA
• Area: 94000.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2013
• Photographs: Main Street Studio – Wayne Johnson

• Cm: Ryan Companies
• Gc: Knutsen Construction
• Design Engineers: MEP
• Structural: M2B Structural Engineers
• Civil: Ament Engineering

© Main Street Studio – Wayne Johnson

In June 2008 a flood swept through Cedar Rapids, Iowa filling the city’s downtown central library with eight feet of water. In the wake of this natural disaster, the city rallied to build a new central library that would be a dynamic center of the city’s urban core, embrace the transformational shifts of 21st Century technology and minimize the building’s environmental impact and long-term operational costs. 

© Main Street Studio – Wayne Johnson

The new site is a couple blocks from the former flooded facility, outside the flood zone’s reach, and positioned to be an anchor to the city’s urban park. The design of the library embraces this opportunity by creating an urban plaza and positions the vibrant, active library spaces so the large expanses of glass highlight the library services to the community. 

Plan 2

From the exterior, the activity of the library is prominently on display through expanses of floor-to-ceiling glass that wrap around the building on the first and second floor, visually connecting patrons and pedestrians.  A 200-seat auditorium situated on the second and third levels faces the park. The auditorium stage is set against a wall of glass creating a backdrop from the changing seasons and cityscape. As darkness falls, the facade surrounding the auditorium glows with 60 eight-foot-by-one-foot light panels. This language of light is carried inside with a dramatic monumental stair featuring illuminated panels that respond as users walk up and down the stairs. The stairs and light wall are visible from the exterior, functioning as a kinetic sculpture and vividly telegraph the activity within the library to the street.  

© Main Street Studio – Wayne Johnson

Plan 1

© Main Street Studio – Wayne Johnson

The new design broke barriers between the staff and patrons, library and civic spaces, and staff departments. Upon entry, patrons step into a two-story central atrium that brings together all of the core patron services in a hub and spoke system allowing users to orient themselves in the building as well as gather to meet. A café and coffee shop is nestled in the core, enticing visitors to gather, linger and engage with each other. Radiating from the core are the children’s, young adult and adult fiction areas. The views in and out of the collection spaces are seen from nearly every vantage point. The second floor consists of the adult non-fiction collections, a large dividable conference space, and staff and administrative offices. On the third floor is a break-out lobby for the auditorium and public access to the 20,000-square-foot green roof that was a key part of the LEED Platinum storm-water management strategy and has become a go-to spot in the library.

© Main Street Studio – Wayne Johnson

The success of the Cedar Rapids Public Library demonstrates the impact a next generation library can have on a community. The most surprising aspect of the new library is the ways in which the community has embraced and used the facility in ways unimagined. It truly is a participatory library. The metrics on circulation, meeting room use, and computer use have far surpassed expectations and highlight the impact a new library can have on a community.

© Main Street Studio – Wayne Johnson

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Courtesy of Space Caviar

Genoa-based studio Space Caviar has recently unveiled Arcipelago di Ocno, an aquatic installation on a lake in Mantova, Italy, which is the 2016 Italian Capital of Culture. Named after the local demigod Ocno, the installation recalls the form of a lotus, a plant with an extensive presence in Mantova’s lakes. 

Acting as an aquatic piazza for the city, the archipelago of floating islands “[extends] Mantova’s urban fabric onto the lakes that surround its historic center,” utilizing modular units to create a venue for Mantova’s cultural activities for years to come.

Courtesy of Space Caviar

Courtesy of Space Caviar

These modular units can be reconfigured, relocated, or extended according to need, and will expand over the next few years to host concerts, events, performances, lectures, screenings, and more on Mantova’s lakes.

Courtesy of Space Caviar

Courtesy of Space Caviar

Courtesy of Space Caviar

Mantova’s citizens have been deprived for too many years of the pleasure to fully enjoy the relationship with water, said Mantova’s Councilor for Urban Regeneration, Lorenza Baroncelli. The archipelago will be a new, significant step in the effort to absorb the lakes into Mantova’s urban and social fabric. In addition, the archipelago finally represents an element of artistic and cultural innovation with a great international appeal alongside the city’s most historical beauties.

Courtesy of Space Caviar

Courtesy of Space Caviar

Courtesy of Space Caviar

The installation opened on September 11, and will continue to host events through the fall, as well as further in the future.

News via Space Caviar.

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© Jordi Anguera

• Architects: Dom Arquitectura
• Location: Roses, Girona, Spain
• Architects In Charge: Pablo Serrano Elorduy, Blanca Elorduy, Carlota de Gispert
• Area: 230.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Jordi Anguera

• Branding & Marketing Partners: Agencia Hache

© Jordi Anguera

The aim of the project is to renovate and repurpose the first floor of Roses’ ‘Hotel Maritim’, in a ‘tapas’ and drinks bar.

The hotel is located on the seafront of Roses, a traditional fishing village, specifically on the beach promenade. The main objective is to give ‘Mediterranean character’ to the new space. The first floor used to be a closed interior space and a small outside terrace, of 3m wide, divided by a line of sliding doors. The key idea was to eliminate that division understanding the space as a unique covered outer space. For that purpose, we placed on the façade’s edge glass curtains, sliding and folding panels such as those of ‘See Glass’. This move allowed us to unify the whole space, without any frame or division, connecting it to the outside beach promenade and the sea.

© Jordi Anguera

This large outdoor/indoor space can be transformed. During the summer months and good weather, the space may be totally open, but in bad weather days or wind, it can be closed.

© Jordi Anguera

The proposed distribution places the bar counter at the back, parallel to the sea and the facade. The kitchen is also situated at the rear, together with the main access, thus leaving more usable space for tables and bar area for the clients. 

Plan

We generated different areas to create diverse secluded spaces with their own atmospheres. Firstly the drinks area composed by different counters close to the main one and a large high counter attached to the eastern window overlooking Roses. Secondly two big U shape sofas facing the sea compose the ‘chill out area’. Finally the tables are distributed amongst some planters cladded in wood integrated in the pillars. This encloses and gives more privacy to the clients in such an open space.

© Jordi Anguera

The lighting is designed with a scenes system, which controls different types of atmospheres for every moment according to light intensity. As lighting devices we combine spotlights, linear LEDs and hanging lamps on the bars, with mobile and rotating lamps in painted copper tubes that allow the tables mobility specifically designed for the project,

© Jordi Anguera

The materials used intend to give the space personality, integrated in its place and people’s traditions. Several walls, planters and counters are cladded with a stripped wood, evoking the timber of old fishing boats. The facilities and ceiling beams are painted in dark brown. Three different sizes of wicker panels compose the ceiling and carrying sensations of summer beach bars.

Diagram

The furniture’s colors follow the project’s line of natural colors. Fishermen net’s constitute the ceiling at the chill out area, together with the wood, the wicker panels, the plants and the nets we obtain a balanced Mediterranean character needed for the project.

© Jordi Anguera

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