All posts from CONTEMPORIST

Venice, California-based designer Ilan Dei has sent us his Awake Your Inner Vandal collection of furniture that features graffiti hidden inside or underneath the pieces.

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Description from Ilan Dei:

In his obsession with nature and ongoing exploration of water, Ilan Dei has created a contrasting collection between well crafted contemporary furniture and urban graffiti.  Unnoticeable at first glance the graffiti is like a seedy underbelly of the furniture that you can only experience from certain angles and interactions. The elegant wood credenza, console and side table were inspired by Dei’s travels to the desert coastlines of Namibia, while the subtly constrained graffiti is applied as an urban infusion inspired by the street art around the Venice Beach Studio.

Visit Ilan Dei’s website – here.
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Seattle glass artist, Jean-Pierre Canlis, has sent us his Wheat glass installation.
Each stalk of wheat is hand made by the Seattle, Washington-based glass artist. The Wheat can be scaled down to be placed in the center of a dining room table, or scaled up to fill a space as tall as seven feet in height.

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Visit the Canlis Glass website – here.
Photography by Aaron Leitz
©Canlis Glass
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Owen and Vokes Architects have designed the Point Perry Beach House in Queensland, Australia.

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Point Perry Beach House by Owen and Vokes Architects

Our client approached us by referral from Lindsay Clare, the original architect of the mid 1990’s beach house. The new owners wished to extend the house whilst preserving the character of the existing house. New programme includes additional bedrooms, bathrooms and car accommodation.
The original fibro beach house appears as indigenous to the steep Coolum Hill site as the scrubby coastal vegetation amassed at the rear of the site. The remnant vegetation is valued as providing a counterpoint to the ocean view – a dense, shaded reprieve from the panorama of sea and sky. The siting of the extension preserves as much of this existing vegetation as possible, and as a consequence, bridges over an existing pool to occupy the remaining build-able volume on the site as dictated by height controls. A new courtyard re-orients the entry, connecting living spaces physically to the hillside and providing views to the remnant vegetation beyond.
Manipulation of the existing built and natural topography establishes new connections between living spaces and the garden. Masonry elements manage levels across the site, forming new landscape spaces and embedding the fibro-clad extension into the hillside. At street level, a concrete bunker accommodates cars on the site, negating the need for a steep driveway and reclaiming space for a garden overlooked from the living spaces and decks above. Minor excavation reveals a courtyard space below what was previously a timber pool deck. The promenade through the site reveals the nuances of setting and topography. The  entry courtyard, positioned at the centre of the site in both the vertical and horizontal plane, is accessed by climbing external stairs from street level. The existing internal stair connects the external circulation route from the street to the open air circulation of the extension. Within the extension, a linear verandah provides access to bedrooms and bathrooms, culminating in a daybed nestled into the fringe of the remnant vegetation.

Project Location:
Coolum, Sunshine Coast
Queensland, Australia
Architects: Owen and Vokes
Lead designer – Emma Hodgkinson
Project team – Stuart Vokes and Paul Owen
Photography by Jon Linkins
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Singapore-based designers Cici Chen and Lui Honfay of Cilicon Faytory have sent us their Squeeze and Mushroom collection of light weight outdoor concrete seating.

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Description from the designers:

Using a unique light weight concrete system, this collection displays the mouldability of the material. Re-defining the concept of outdoor concrete furniture, this new material application means light weight yet still incorporating the look and feel of concrete product. With a special sealing agent, the concrete furniture would be virtually free of maintenance. Shaping of the sinuous curves and organic volume is easy with the shaping technique of this light weight concrete system. In addition, the concrete material allows different colours to be applied, making the furniture to be extremely adaptable to different surroundings.

Visit the Cilicon Faytory website – here.
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Dutch designer Roderick Vos has created the Paxton candleholder for the Netherlands-based furnishings brand Functionals.

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A-cero Architects have completed the Concrete House II in Madrid, Spain.

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Concrete House II by A-cero Architects

The architecture studio A-cero presents one of its latest works about a big single-family house. It takes place in the outskirts of Madrid on a 5000m2 plot. It is a single storey building and it has a 1.600 m2 built surface.
The first sensation that this house produces when people go into the plot is that the building seems to be hidden between concrete walls and vegetable ramps that extend up to the roof. They are dyed in dark gray and contain, between them, vegetation areas that seem to climb towards the sky. The house´s façade show a spectacular organic view of the whole house and so even the hard concrete shows its most kind face.
The back front of the house is totally opened towards the garden where the lounge, dining room, library, study and bedrooms are. In this façade the wide windows, the volumes set and the projections (made of concrete too enhance.  These elements cover the several house´s porches. The large window of the main lounge hides itself automatically in order to make this stay completely opened to the exterior areas.
The plot includes also an elegant garden, a small lake and a pádel track.
The ecological aspect is very in this A-cero´s work: the façade and the roof have the main ecological roles because they are covered with low consume vegetation. Furthermore on the house´s roof has been implemented a renewable energy system made of wide surfaces with solar tubular collectors who allow that the energy autonomy of the house.

Visit the A-cero website – here.
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Italian manufacturer Tecno have won a 2010 Red Dot award of high design quality, for their Beta workplace system of furniture that was designed by Pierandrei Associati.

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The Beta Workplace System by Pierandrei Associati for Tecno

Beta, which springs from an ethnographic research on the workplace from the design of Pierandrei Associati and from the technological skills of Tecno, is an operating system designed to meet the requirements of a creative office and to grant a new shape to space, while adjusting to people’s behaviours and evolving over time.
The creative office represents the novelty in workspaces. By reducing repetitive tasks and by focusing on experience sharing, today’s offices are contemporary -agoras-, where different working styles overlap and where the individual’s wellbeing turns into working performance.
Having a space where to work on one’s own, relax not only during breaks, present one’s work also in informal meetings, are still all main features of the contemporary office we have all become familiar with. Beta, which draws inspiration from the evolution logic of nature, is able to meet these requirements, and by means of a range of “fluid and flexible” elements, it makes workplace reconfiguration and renewal easier. Rather than being a plain system, it is an actual environment, with a non-linear growth logic, which generates spaces without simply filling them.
Whereas, from a conceptual point of view, the features on which beta works are space, time and mankind, from a functional point of view, beta is conceived to contain, display and support. Thanks to its components, it is able to create different layouts, ranging from the most intensive ones to the most evolved ones, by handling primary factors – such as privacy, noise and environmental features – in a way that differs from traditional systems, and at the same time create greater interaction among people.
The beta system combines an advanced technology and recyclable materials (including wrapping), with a natural logic, which allows the system to develop over time. Indeed beta’s construction features make it possible, at the end of the product’s life or depending on maintenance programmes, to simply replace certain components, so as to adjust the system to the new requirements and bring the product back to fully functional conditions.
The system is made up by three product families, which are: worktops (desks), containers (backbone) and accessories. The composition logic for these components is aimed at a customised space configuration and at maximum enjoyment, also by disabled users. The whole office created by beta appears as a space created around man.

Visit the Tecno website – here.
Visit the Pierandrei Associati website – here.
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Italian designer Giuseppe Viganò has created the Oyster bed for NEST Italia.

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Visit the NEST Italia website – here.
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Bembé Dellinger Architects have designed the House D in a suburb of Munich, Germany.

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Description from the architects:

A house, south of Munich, in a traditionally grown, 100-year-old garden suburb. The plot was large and it was possible to spread out. A totally transparent ground floor with a clearly protruding upper level. The view is focussed on the garden, not the neighbours. The upper storey is a simple white tube with a saddle roof built without disturbing flashings and a flush roof covering made of white fibrous concrete.

Visit the website of Bembé Dellinger Architects – here.
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Inhouse Brand Architects have sent us an office interior project they designed for Union Swiss,
a skincare company in Cape Town, South Africa.

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The Union Swiss Office Interior by Inhouse Brand Architects

Union Swiss, the maker and global marketer of “bio-oil” required a completely Eco-friendly office environment that allowed for their expanding growth, a space which illustrated their funky fresh work ethic whilst “living the green life”. A logistical challenge:- we demolished, core drilled, constructed and fitted out floor by floor whilst maintaining the air of mystery (Not one employee saw a glimpse of what was happening in the offices until the final unveiling)
The “green”brief fulfilled every design aspect, from sustainable bamboo joinery pieces and a self sufficient bamboo garden to low energy consuming Led lighting and a mechanical skylight allowing natural air flow . No drywalls were used in the open plan office area:-Partitions were created from joinery pieces and glass, enhancing spatial connectivity and a familial feel. The polished entrance with spiral staircase is contrasted with the unapologetic parking lot creating a visual impact on entrance, alerting the client they are about to enter something special.
The love was in the detail for this project from custom made letter in-trays, quirky specialised clocks to implementing the ‘bio-oil’ box barcode as the signature vinyl application to all glazing work- thus reaffirming that the Union Swiss brand breathes subtly and easily in their new ‘green’ home.

Visit the Inhouse Brand Architects website – here.
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Korean designer Cho, Hyung Suk has sent us the B-Chain lamp.
Description from the designer:
When I ride the bycicle, I always think the bycicle chain is so funtional. and Each unit’s shape is so unique and complementary. The “b-chain lamp” can have most various shape than any lamp. This is motivated from the bycicle chain. so, it’s 8 joints can shine wherever you want to light. “b-chain lamp” is consist of four type modues. It is possible whatever length and shape you want to make. “White b-chain lamp”’s both sides are different. one side is the stainless nut and other side is the clean bolt.

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Visit Cho, Hyung Suk’s website – here.
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Bark Architects have designed the Marcus Beach House, located on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia.
Full description after the photos….

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The Marcus Beach House by Bark Architects
The Marcus Beach house celebrates a natural, coastal setting providing its occupants with an inextricable relationship to the landscape and sensitive surrounding environment. The dwelling explores lightness, filtering natural breezes, layers of transparency and integrating indoor / outdoor spaces within dynamic patterns of light and shadow, being a simple frame to enable a contemporary sustainable lifestyle to unfold.
Whilst feeling like a ‘beach house’ sited 250 meters away from Marcus Beach, the basic ‘pavilion’ plan was sketched out in the sand during an early site visit: a simple diagram of two pavilions placed either side of a venerable 100 year old Morton Bay Ash that takes centre stage to the scale, proportions and life of the house around it. The pavilions sit lightly on the site and are linked by a transparent bridge in an arrangement that opens all the spaces to the light, breeze and garden views of the north. The garden is protected by a perimeter wall wrapped in endemic vines providing an acoustic ‘green’ buffer to a nearby busy road.
On approach from the street, the sloping terrain naturally guides an axial timber boardwalk under a simple timber pergola structure arriving in the courtyard opposite the Morton Bay Ash. The main pavilion to the west accommodates living spaces focused around a double height deck space overlooking the swimming pool and northern garden. The Master Bedroom suite is accessed via a polycarbonate clad stair tower that is by day a contemplative space and by night, a lantern. The Morton Bay Ash casts shadows onto the polycarbonate further animating the edges of the courtyard and bringing the landscape inside the house. The recent additions of a study ‘pop out,’ enclosed passage link below the bridge, Laundry and Powder room further animate the edges of the courtyard space whilst responding to the needs of its new occupants.
The house is open and light and possesses simple sustainable design principles to passively defend the occupants from the elements. Windows and doors are strategically positioned to capture the prevailing breezes whilst roof overhangs are generous protecting the house from direct summer sunlight. Air conditioning has not been installed in the Marcus Beach House nor is it desired. Artificial lighting is kept to a minimum due to the generous amount and position of glazing, particularly facing north. The roof over the Master Bedroom pavilion rises to the north providing a band of high level, operable, clerestory glazing capturing daylight and allowing any warm air to escape, setting up an effective ‘stack effect’ natural cooling process.
The connection between the deck and living spaces is dynamic and direct. As the heart of the house, the covered double height outdoor room is actively used all year round as dappled sunlight is filtered through a timber batten screen hung below the roof structure. Indoor and outdoor realms are connected through an interlocking series of alcoves and nooks like a low edge deck seat and reading nook pop-out located off the stair landing. The courtyard and Morton Bay Ash are a focal point in which almost all rooms within the dwelling enjoy a connection.
Architecture: Bark Architects
Location: Marcus Beach, Queensland
House Area: 260m2
Site Area: 727 m2
Builder: Murray Wall
Structural Engineer: Meecham Engineers
Materials: Spotted Gum hardwood Timber, zincalume sheeting, corrugated zincalume, clear & opal polycarbonate, Fibre Cement sheet cladding, timber tongue & groove flooring, plasterboard wall lining, plywood ceiling lining.
Photographer: Christopher Frederick Jones
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