Sir Anish Kapoor’s studio has been present on a South London street for 20 years. Since 2010 the artist with CFA have collaborated on the transformation of a series of industrial buildings into new flexible studio spaces for making art using a variety of materials and processes.
The project consists of six separate spaces incrementally transformed to allow the continuous use of the site by the artist during the period of the build. The project creates a total of 3,100msq for art making.
Section
The project brief developed through the period of the project to its completion in late 2015. Individual spaces have differing atmospheres from near gallery specifications to robust studio workspaces. The history of the pre transformed spaces was retained with the archaeological surfaces left untreated where the artist had drawn or sketched maquettes of early work.
The new building comprises of 900msq of floor area spread over two floors with three distinct types of interior. A 9 m high north lit ground floor volume created by removing a significant area of the first floor A upper level painting studio together with a ground floor 4meter high volume that retained the fabric and material of the original.
CFA edited openings making new diffuse glazed windows within retained openings and in filling others with low grade brickwork maintaining the discordant surface of previous interventions.
From the architect. This project is to reconstruct an office in a high-rise building, the original space is in inadequate streamlined layout with multiple irregular shapes and dead space, and the overall utilization rate is low. The client wants the designers transform his office into a place where his staff can take a breath of nature behind the reinforced concrete walls. To this end, the designers abandoned the idea of traditional cubilces, and instead, they lined desks and bookshelves in curved shape alongside the walls and ceiling and moved the “forest” into the office, making it an open space with natural vitality.
The client specifically requires the designers to spare the space at the office entrance for meetings and negotiations, which makes the rest of the work area an irregular triangular space. In order to maximize the utilization of space, the designers creatively converts the disadvantage into the highlight of the project by using irregular curves in such an irregular space. The three sides are designed to naturally spread around the center of the area, thereby making the entire space in a streamlined layout without any dead space. In addition, the designers have made full use of sunny windows, making the area by the windows into a free space for exchange and sharing. The introduction of green plants has also brought rhythm and cadence to the office.
Design Concept
Streamlined space with winding entrance makes people feel like straying into the Peach Blossom Garden when entering the office.
Finally, an injection of fresh blood has been brought to the traditional office building. For the interior space, the designers have designed a peaceful and pleasant office garden without changing the original structure of the building, connecting the indoor and outdoor areas naturally and thus creating a new form of boundary.
Here, people can escape the urban fog and haze, feel like working in a tranquil garden, which allows them to relax during intense work and thereby increases work efficiency.
Curvilinear workspace contrasts with the rectilinear corridor, continuous curve divides the office into different spaces, providing people a completely different transition experience.
Floor Plan
The plants interspersed between tables enable the employees to feel the atmosphere of nature, and at the same time can effectively improve the indoor micro-climate and working environment. Plants are mainly those suitable for growing indoors, such as happy tree (Radermachera hainanensis Merr), with relatively low ferns and other small plants among them, making every corner full of green.
Glass partition in the conference room blurs the boundaries of space, which alters the stiff impression of conventional partitions. Natural and lightsome are the themes of this project. Abundant plants bring an attractive highlight to the office.
Traditional office is usually a semi-open space. Now, in this project, the office space is divided into various areas in picturesque disorder interspersed with trees and rocks, which makes the office more interesting and provides employees with a better experience.
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The intensive use of wood conveys a sense of intimacy. Wood tables and decorations, together with white walls, form rich textural levels. With bookshelves and sofa as transitional spaces, the office becomes even more comfortable and pleasant by placing adequate plants. Graphic design elements in each functional area enrich the visual experience.
Collaborators: Luis Fernando Taco, Roberto Alban, Gustavo Aguirre, Mateo Torres, Santiago Egas, Gabriela Loaiza, José López, Tatiana Chávez, Lucia Gómez
From the architect. The projects in which we get involved come as an answer to the understanding of all parties and to the singularities of each particular environment. Our intention is not to look for predetermined solutions, so the ideas for this house are born from wishes, experiences and the clients’ ways of living.
When the owner was a little kid, he wanted to decipher the mechanisms of old clocks. His passion for mechanics drove him into motorbikes and Land Rover cars. He was interested in a very didactic, utilitarian and dismantable house (in the understanding of the pieces in the manner of the mechanics of these vehicles). Constructive solutions had to be visible, no matter their manufacture. When we understood this direct connection to metal, the idea and the desire to live in a container house appeared. One of the main reasons to experiment with this material was the energy saving. These objects become waste after their life cycle (there are so many in the world that it becomes a problem). When changing their function and making them habitable, not only are we giving them a new use but we are also building in a clean manner. Design wise we worked towards simplification using only the necessary pieces.
Seven 20 feet containers and one 40 feet container arrived, later, to La Morita (Tumbaco) from Guayaquil. These units should help assemble a unique housing, located in a big green, fairly flat area and disconnected from the city’s mundane noise.
Containers are imperfect. They keep all their scars as a legacy to their dent register and history of uses. These objects were conceived as the complementary spaces of the house: storage rooms, bathrooms, closets and kitchen. They are basically used in their natural state. It was at this point that we considered to not change their original structure and in case of doing so, finding the responsible justification to intervene. By doing so, modifications were strategic and linked to lighting, air circulation and connection between exterior and interior spaces.
With the intention of showing the essence of the material, factory paint was removed to the exterior (visible metal), whilst a neutral and sanitary nature guided by the colour white was kept at the interior. Works on the floor would be done later, keeping its original wood.
The process
Four building phases were planned:
The first one related to the melting of the platforms, some rectangular basis of polished concrete, strategically laid out and organized along the topography in the manner of small functional stains. Due to a slight variation in the levels of the land’s longitudinal cut, platforms outstand as less as possible from the highest ridge, turning into small blurry island in sight.
The second phase was the assembly, alignment and moorings of the containers to the concrete platforms with a mechanical crane. In all cases, containers are supported on top of the concrete, slightly flying towards the exterior, offering a sense of balance and weight control. These pieces are set apart from each other with the intention of creating and delimiting habitable spaces and at the same time constitute the vertebral column of the house on which the roofs are settled.
The third phase relates to the positioning and soldering of the metallic beams system. These beams cross from container to container and help in the reinforcement of the concrete tiles.
Planta
Lastly, the fourth phase consisted on lowering a system of cables and beams from the roof which helps to give form to the bedrooms, where wood is the main material.
The house keeps a very strong connection with the exterior (green area and mountain) and all spaces in between containers are a sort of lack of material where the only noticeable elements are the metallic frames with the glass.
Three mechanical systems were designed to transform the use of spaces, a manual elevator to go up to the second floor, operable shutters placed in the bedrooms and a flexible floor in the master bathroom which folds and unfolds to discover a bathtub. All these solutions are like a game that allows the user to be a part of a style of architecture thought specifically for them.
From the architect. The Cut-away Roof House is an addition to a semi-detached interwar house on Sydney’s lower north shore. Sited in an undulating suburban landscape of tile and tin roofs, the project is a contemporary timber clad 2 storey addition.
The original semi-detached house is left intact while the rear addition comprises an unconventional pitched-roof form. A large section is cut-away from the roof bringing light deep into the house, leaving a simple C-shaped plan with a courtyard in the middle.
The living dining and kitchen spaces are arranged around the courtyard on the ground floor, while the bedroom looks over the roof to the garden beyond. The spaces around the courtyard each differ in section and volume. The play on suburban shapes and language creates a spatially diverse array of rooms, each with a different orientation to the courtyard.
Elevation / Section
The roof and walls are clad entirely with AFS certified north coast mixed hardwood timbers, designed to operate as a ventilated facade with excellent thermal performance.
The carefully designed, light filled spaces provide a backdrop for the lives of the inhabitants. The spatial layout is both efficient and functional, providing a careful balance between communal and private zones.
Responding to the surrounding context of hip and gable roofs, the profile of the addition appears both traditional and contemporary at once. Viewed from any angle it never looks out of place, yet retains its own unique architectural language.
The client’s brief was for an enduring and functional house, compact in plan, but spatially interesting. Our response captures these attributes while making the most of the site’s ideal private, north orientation to the rear. The additional floor area provided much needed functional space for a growing family, without any excess or waste.
Vo Trong Nghia Architects (VTNA) has unveiled a proposal for a Green City Hall in Vietnam’s Bac Ninh City. Designed as a vertical park, the 36,000 square meter proposal is meant to serve as a new symbol for a traditionally agricultural, but rapidly industrializing area of Northern Vietnam. The VTNA proposal is part of a larger plan to develop a new urban area on the edge of the old city, and is designed to be a catalyst for future green developments in the area.
Courtesy of Vo Trong Nghia Architects
The building is composed of two volumes that lean towards each other – think shuffling cards with a riffle or dovetail method – in a gesture that is meant to symbolize a unity of citizens and government.. Cultural facilities in the structure’s base give way to government offices in one tower with party offices and a citizen center in the other. The two towers culminate in an observation deck.
Placing a building in the centre of a small town asserts our desire to heighten urban density and to take part in livening it up and improving its appeal, instead of choosing a plot on the outskirts. The project itself is an alternative to spreading urbanization. The building fits into a hollow between two existing buildings. It is composed of a mixed program of offices (for architecture) and private flats (one 6-room and two 3-room flats). The L-shaped construction surrounds an open courtyard on the back street and vertical circulation gives access to its half-levels.
A public pedestrian path was made along the west side of the property, connecting the residential north street to the many services and shops on the avenue du 15 septembre.
The main volume comprises an architecture firm at garden-level and ground-level, and a 6-room family flat on the first and second floors. This volume opens widely to the south. Aligned with the street, the north volume includes a technical room in the basement with collective wood-pellet boiler-room, storerooms for the flats and three open garages on ground-level. Two 3-room flats for rent are located on the first and second floors. An underground tank collects rain-water for bathrooms and gardens.
The EFC cabin, a respectful intervention, is situated in the context of the cold and foggy mountains of Dota, over a hill surrounded by a small forest of oak trees that make up the scenery for this dichotomous project.
EFC is an answer to the study of the stereotomy and the tectonic. The project involves a central volume equipped with all the serving spaces required for the adequate functioning of a home: kitchen, bathrooms and laundry room. That is, there are a series of wet spaces focused in the nucleus of the cabin, in such a way that there is efficient use of the resources and installations, and the space for the served areas is liberated. Here the outdoors are integrated with the indoors, being merged together and becoming one. It arises as a stereotomic mass, solid, rocklike, heavy and monolithic that sets itself above ground as if it was born out of it: a continuous, monolithic system that is perforated and sculpted to allow light in the space and its habitability.
Plan
Next to this volume, the served spaces, living, dining and bedrooms, are directed to both sides in such a way that they open on one face to the valley and mountains and in the opposite direction to the oak forest. The interior/exterior relationship makes the environment the main protagonist of the space. It is projected as a tectonic architecture, meaning of assembly, open and light. It is an architecture articulated between pieces of radiata pine wood, plywood and metallic structures that look for support and cling to the mass, a combination of materials that bring warmth to the space within an already cold context.
It is a frigid environment that generates a harmonious contrast between the cold and the warm, the stereotomic and the tectonic, the natural and the man-made, the serving and served spaces to be discovered, inhabited, experimented and lived in by the user.
Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has announced a new project in Moscow, winning a competition to design the Sberbank Technopark at the Skolkovo Innovation Centre. This is the firm’s first announcement of new work since the untimely death of Zaha Hadidlate last month. As the market leader of the Russian banking and economic circulatory system since 1841, Sberbank’s new 131,000 square meter facility will accommodate 10,000 to 12,000 workers in the sectors of marketing and information technology.
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
The project developed out of ZHA’s analysis of the working processes and arrangements of Sberbank’s technology and marketing departments. Elaborating on this, Christos Passas, Project Director at Zaha Hadid Architects, said, “The necessity to innovate and collaborate is fundamental to Sberbank’s operations. Our research into interconnected, multi-function environments has driven the Sberbank Technopark design. It responds to the bank’s requirements for enhanced communication, interaction and diversification. The design reconfigures working relationships and adopts a holistic approach to creating an engaging environment that offers a diversified range of facilities both internally and externally.”
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
The ZHA design beat out competing proposals from SPEECH, Foster + Partners, Eric Owen Moss Architects, and Fuksas. The project is expected to begin construction in approximately 18 months and will take another two years to complete.
A faucet created as a response to AXOR’s prompt for designs that “[anticipate the] meaning of water within the living spaces of tomorrow.” Adjaye’s ‘Ritual’ design is a bronze trough with a wedge-shaped granite inlay.
For Artemide, BIG created a new typeface in wall-mounted, light-up letters. Each form is created with a group of simple elements that are connected by electromagnetic joints that become invisible when illuminated. The system allows for any shape to be created, either a letter or not.
Made from polyurethane plastic, Zaha Hadid’s ‘Mew’ table appears to be two interlocking waves of resin, but is actually one continuous surface. According to Saway & Moroni, “Although it brings a successful summary of two distinct surfaces to mind, the Mew table desk starts out from a single enveloping figure to take the form of a futuristic, magically fluid origami.”
Fashioned from granito nero assoluto (fine black granite), Zaha Hadid’s shelving design for CITCO can be mounted as a group of four brackets or broken up into separate units. “Valle is a shelving system finely crafted in black granite that continues my explorations with Citco into the unique properties and performance of stone,” said Zaha Hadid.
Herzog & de Meuron for Laufen: Bathrooms for 56 Leonard
via Designboom
For their nearly-complete Manhattan skyscraper, Herzog & de Meuron have teamed up with Laufen to complement the tower’s design with meticulously executed bathroom products.
Android / Daniel Libeskind. Image Courtesy of Studio Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind’s ‘Android’ radiator for Antrax is meant to appear like a sheet of paper or fabric rippling in the breeze. An environmentally conscious design, the panels are fashioned from 100% recycled materials and the radiator itself require limited water to operate.
Time Maze / Daniel Libeskind. Image Courtesy of Studio Libeskind
Like erratic pen movements or the scrambling of a stock market chart, Daniel Libeskind’s ‘Time Maze’ disguises an analog clock’s face and function as an intersection of jagged lines.
MAD’s ‘Marilyn’ handle for Olivari recalls the firm’s design for Absolute Towers in Mississauga, Ontario (just outside Toronto). That pair of towers became colloquially known as Marilyn Monroe for their curvaceous shapes.
Nendo’s H-horse for Kartell is a transparent plastic rocking horse inspired by the shape and formal characteristics of I-beams (also known as H-beams). The horse form is achieved by connecting and shaping only three planes of material.
The design of Nendo’s ‘Sway’ table for Marsotto Edizioni plays with the physical limitations of marble by creating tables that appear on the verge of toppling over. According to the designers, “The weight of marble is often perceived as a negative factor, but this element has been actively exploited, resulting in the creation of a table that is tilted to one side.”
Carlo Ratti for Vitra: ‘Lift-Bit’ Furniture System
Lift-Bit / Carlo Ratti. Image Courtesy of Carlo Ratti Associati
In a new frontier for the “Internet-of-Things,” Carlo Ratti’s ‘Lift-Bit’ furniture for Vitra is made modular and mutable by the use of an app. Connectivity gives you the ability to move separate stool wirelessly, enabling users to create armchairs, couches, chaise lounges, and just about any other seating arrangement you can think of.
Durango 133 is an exercise on the insertion of a contemporary project at the corner of Durango and Tonala streets, one of the few vacant lots within the historic fabric of the Roma Norte district of Mexico City.
Elevations
The building is located in a site of atypical dimensions for the area (63m on the facade and a total of 1,100 m2) which borders historic buildings of artistic value within the Heritage Conservation areas of the city.
In the first 2 levels, we propose a series of terraced houses with individual entrances from the street. The ground floor is raised half a level on the sidewalk to protect the privacy of the homes and their relationship with pedestrians and the street.
Grounnd and First Floor
Over these houses there are duplex apartments that borrow the concept of elevated open street, typical of the neighboring buildings from the early twentieth century.
Sig Nordal 