Wasbar Ghent - Pinkeye

Sometimes a solution is so obvious that it makes you wonder how on earth nobody came up with it before. Wasbar, a brand-new launderette/meeting place, is a fine example: while their dirty laundry spins, the people of Ghent can enjoy a drink with friends or get a new hairdo in one of the two hairdresser’s chairs. The all-in-one concept was elaborated by Pinkeye.
The property that Wasbar occupies was formerly a bookshop. Its worn-out parquet floor was given a fresh coat of lacquer, while the ceiling with its decorative mouldings was left intact. The technical aspect presented the biggest challenge. ‘A launderette primarily requires plenty of brainwork and preparatory work: you need extra power to keep everything running and we wanted to hide the pipes and wiring from view,’ Pinkeye’s creative director Ruud Belmans explains. The pipes and wiring are ensconced in the cellar, leaving just the rows of sleek machines in the space above. ‘There’s nothing about a washing machine which says it has to stand in an unpleasant space.’
Wasbar is perfectly suited to the student or young professional who is cramped for space – something that is not unknown in this Flemish city of students. ‘What does the student want?’ wondered the young, ambitious proprietors, Dries Henau and Yuri Vandenbogaerde. To spend their time more usefully, I mean more enjoyably, than sitting in a cheerless, bare space with garish strip-lighting in the midst of a ‘soundcloud’ din of whirring machines.

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Viewing Tower - Ateliereen

In the Netherlands over 50 spots are marked on the map as starting points for recreational use of the rural landscape. People are encouraged to park their cars at these locations instead of other, more preserved, areas. From here they can explore nature by foot, mountain-bike, horse etc. In the small town Reusel, the nomination motivated a local sports merchant to found an outdoor sports park at one of these sites.

A tower, 25 meters high, with sport facilities like climbing and abseiling is the main attraction. It consists of six cubes, hanging on a core of steel columns. Straight flight staircases raise in between and cross the cubes several times in different positions. Two of the six cubes are accessible. The third one is the starting platform for a rope-slide and a high-rope track. In the top cube people can enjoy a panoramic view of the surroundings and there is a starting platform for abseiling. The athletes on the 13 meters high climbing wall are observed by visitors of the adjacent bistro...

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Arcades - Troika

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RSA Chandeliers - Troika

These chandeliers by London designers Troika use large fresnel lenses to shape the light from LEDs suspended below them into overlapping geometric patterns on the ceiling of the Royal Society of Arts' headquarters in London...

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Boundary Pendant - Faudet-Harrison

The Boundary pendant lights come in two different shapes, Boundary 120 is a spot light, and Boundary 300 is both a spot and ambient light. Made from powder-coated spun aluminium, each light has two parts that are joined with small stainless steel fixings. The internal spun section in both lights is finished in pebble grey and has a gentle inward curve at each end. Boundary 120 has a slim outer shade, whilst Boundary 300 has a wide shade, both are finished in white. The Boundary lights are simple, restrained and effortlessly graceful. Lights hang on NUD coloured cable. Spinnings made in Yorkshire, UK.

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Pakta Restaurant - El Equipo Creativo

In the Quechua language of Peru Pakta means “union”; in this case the union of two cultures and their respective cuisines . The interior design created by El Equipo Creativo emerges from this same idea, considering that Japanese cuisine is the basis of the nikkei gastronomy but wrapped in Peruvian tastes, colours, traditions and ingredients. With this in mind, the basic elements of the restaurant such as the bars, the kitchen and the furniture are designed with a clear reference to the architecture of the traditional Japanese taverns.
An explosion of colours evocative of Peru envelopes the space. This chromatic “second skin” is achieved by use of a direct reference to the Peruvian loom, offering a surprising combination of colours which contrast with the austere Japanese design, and underlining the deep-rootedness of this artefact in Peruvian arts and crafts. However, the re-interpretation of the Peruvian loom goes further, sequencing its own elaboration process on the walls of Pakta, transforming this flat surface to offer a tridimensional character to the space, adding vitality and movement and blurring the limits which mark the locale. The traditional Peruvian weaving looms are wooden mechanisms where colored threads intertwine in various directions, forming a suggestive tridimensional space which generates an attractive atmosphere transformed and reinterpreted in Pakta...

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Jeju Ball - Kengo Kuma and Associates

When I visited Jeju Island for the first time, I was so much inspired by this dark, porous volcanic rock and wanted to translate its soft and round touch into architecture. As the result, the entire house emerged as a round black stone. From distance, the house appears like a single pebble and when you are close, you notice that many parts of the house are of the black stone.
The stone eaves should be the principal detail for this house. Our intention was the light to come through the black pebbles. Light highlights the texture of the stone, and the ambiguous roof edge can connect the roof with the ground. The detail, placing the black stone on a steel mesh, enabled us to realize such vague and subtle edge. What determines the landscape of Jeju is this blackness and porousness. So we sublimated its feel in a scale of a house...

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Mass - Tom Dixon

Mass Coat Stand and Book Stand are two huge chunks of heavyweight, metallic minimalism. These two pieces of over scaled furniture are brass-clad which will gradually build a natural patina over time like a prized bronze statue.

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Forms in Nature - HildenDiaz

 
The Light sculpture Forms in Nature resembles Darwinist Ernst Haeckel’s drawings . Using a simple action, such as intensifying the brightness at the center of the artwork, the light transforms the space and adds character, as the work throws oversized shadows onto walls and ceilings in the space in which it hangs.

The light sculpture Forms in Nature is partly inspired by Ernst Haeckel’s (1834- 1919) detailed plots from nature and is a further development of Hilden & Diaz’ fascination with mirrorings, as they have previously applied in other artworks.

Forms in Nature is a artwork with a light source surrounded by a dense and unruly tree and root system created in minature sculpture. The forest is mirrored around it’s horizontal central axis and forms a circle 360 degrees around the light source and thereby leads one onto the notion of a real world versus an underworld...

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Geomatrix Surface Design System - Made By Superior

Created for interiors, pop-up retail installations, visual merchandising solutions and retail window display, GEOMATRIX is our sculptural, lightweight yet robust, modular surface design system. It is made entirely from cardboard and can be digitally printed with any image or colour you wish making it a bespoke, flexible, high impact display solution. It can also be laminated with an extensive range of finishes. PLUS as its cardboard, it is 100% recyclable.


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Karim Rashid For ALLOY

The Karim for ALLOY collaboration has resulted in the development of eight innovative metal tile ‘cells’ designed to change the ‘face’ of metal tiles. Available in all of ALLOY’s materials and finishes including stainless steel, copper, brass, titanium and raw steel, each design has been carefully developed, tested and manufactured in ALLOY’s Australian factory. Every tile is punched from an individual sheet of solid, 1.6mm high quality metal to deliver a seamless, hardwearing finish designed to last a lifetime.

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Helix - Matter Design

We have a pre-occupation with the trans­la­tion of ancient and often lost meth­ods into con­tem­po­rary cul­ture and prac­tice. Helix is a prod­uct of an ongo­ing research agenda that cen­ters on vol­ume as an area of archi­tec­tural exploration.

Helix is a half-scale spi­ral stair. While this reduced size resolves a num­ber of prac­ti­cal concerns—weight, lia­bil­ity, access—the piece cel­e­brates its imprac­ti­cal­ity. It is both col­umn and stair, yet hangs from the ceil­ing. Its uncer­tainty and changed scale inject play­ful char­ac­ter­is­tics into the sur­round­ing space, while main­tain­ing an alle­giance to the past and known.

A sec­ond pre­oc­cu­pa­tion of ours is what we term “plas­tic rhetoric”. The solid, heavy, and vol­u­met­ric action of cast­ing con­crete trans­forms a liq­uid mat­ter into a solid mass that wants to crack. The stair’s rounded, plas­tic, and cur­va­ceous treads reflect the material’s ear­lier liq­uid state. Its twist­ing accel­er­ates as it wraps around the sup­port col­umn, appear­ing to re-plasticize the fig­ure. The entire construct’s organic and mal­leable appear­ance is coun­ter­in­tu­itive in light of the zero-tolerance sys­tem of nest­ing and key­ing from unit to unit.

Spi­rals are ubiq­ui­tous across cul­tures and times. Helix is our spiral.

The stair is pro­duced with pre­cast unre­in­forced con­crete. These treads are unre­in­forced to test some claims as the team move closer and closer to stone as a test­ing mate­r­ial. Unre­in­forced con­crete has lit­tle to no ten­sile capac­ity mak­ing this project a struc­tural pro­to­type in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Matthew John­son of Simp­son Gumpertz & Heger. Each tread is cast in a fully encap­su­lated cus­tom mold. These molds are rub­ber with a solid wood mother-mold to clamp the assem­bly together. The molds are vibrated rig­or­ously dur­ing the pour­ing process and then imme­di­ately steamed for twelve hours to cure...

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Il Treno - Tjep

 

 

 

Il Treno is about intimacy and romanticism: for there is nothing more relaxing and engaging then enjoying a nice dinner while being transported to new landscapes. Il Treno presents a cosy table for two reminiscent of the old steamtrain carriages of the Orient Express...

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