When the people of Auckland were asked what they wanted out of their museum-going experience, the message was clear. They wanted the gallery itself to be a work of art. They wanted an iconic work of architecture that respected all of New Zealand’s cultures and fit well with the gallery’s existing 131-year-old portions. Too often, radical designs are imposed on a site by architects disconnected from both the building’s context and the people living around it. In this case, Aucklanders had their say.

The most recent version of the gallery, officially known as the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, was completed in the fall of 2011 after an arduous 10-year construction period. The cost of completing this renovation? $121 million NZD, or approximately $80 million USD by today’s exchange rates. Its exhibition space was enlarged twofold, giving it the ability to showcase larger international collections alongside their own pieces.

Visitors enter the gallery via a transparent and capacious lobby covered by an undulating roof structure made from already-felled kauri trees. This structure’s golden maritime look comes courtesy of the Sydney-based architecture firm FJMT and the Auckland-based Archimedia, both of whom clearly know how to make an entrance.

Other vaulted roofs can be found in other parts of the gallery, translating a coherent message between its newer and older spaces, which themselves date back to 1887 when the building was mainly used as the city’s Free Public Library and Municipal Office. The oldest portion of the building was constructed in the style of a French château, and the fact that the architects were able to so seamlessly blend that aesthetic with contemporary additions is a complex achievement indeed.

The Auckland Art Gallery is quite the theatrical work of architecture. It’s like a symphony of old and new, stone textures and intricate wooden patterns. Even just standing on the outside and peering through it’s expansive glass at the activity within is exhilarating. This transparency is exactly what most older gallery and museum structures lack. In this way, the art, hidden behind opaque walls and charming architectural styles from the past, often suffers from its container. Few but the privileged feel welcome in older structures. Now opened up to the city with a clearer entrance, the Auckland Art Gallery’s conversation with the city is more purposeful and democratic, even if the art is still kept in galleries out of sight from the street.

The post Auckland Art Gallery’s Mix of Old and New first appeared on Dornob.

At the forefront is A³, a Silicon Valley subsidiary of Airbus, and their urban aircraft, the Vahana. The company chose to establish itself in Silicon Valley to take advantage of the speed of innovation and tolerance for risk-taking that exist in the area — factors that allow A³ to iterate much faster than its parent company.

During an interview at LA CoMotion last month themed “Highway in the Sky: Is Air Transport the Answer to Our Urban Congestion Woes?,” A³ CEO Rodin Lyasoff spoke in a subdued but positive tone about the high-minded activities going on at his company.

“We have a flying taxi,” he explained. “It’s a tilt wing, which means that it takes off and lands vertically, but in forward flight it’s essentially an airplane, which makes it a lot quieter and actually gives it a meaningful range with batteries.”

“Vahana”  is a VTOL aircraft, meaning it can hover, take off, and land vertically. It will take 90 seconds to hover up to the maximum cruising altitude of 1000 feet and transition to horizontal motion, then another 90 seconds to hover down to a particular destination. It is fully autonomous and features no manual controls. Eight electric rotors make Vahana aerodynamically superior to most helicopters.

“The project’s not even two years old, and our first full-sized, fully autonomous vehicles are already doing final testing before flight,” says Lyasoff. “And they will fly within the next couple of months.”

There are several other companies testing similar flying vehicles. For instance, Boeing recently acquired Aurora Flight Sciences Corp. and will provide UberAIR with 50 air taxis to test by 2020. Despite the competition, none offer both the VTOL flexibility and autonomy of Vahana. Plus, Vahana’s form language (and especially its canopy), make commuters want to use it over other services.

Of course, showing the public glossy renderings and videos is not as powerful as showing them a real-world demonstration. In São Paulo, A³ launched Voom, an air taxi mobile app that lets users hire a helicopter from one of six helipad locations throughout the city. According to its website, by using Voom, “you can travel from downtown to the airport for about the price of a private car.” Voom, which does not own or pilot any of the helicopters, simply connects people to certified operators in the area. It even offers a few ground transportation connections.

“We recognized that operations on the ground (and regulation) for some of these vehicles will be a challenge…this (Voom) gives us the footprint on the ground with current vehicles.”

It’s important to note that the biggest challenge to urban air mobility is not the technology, but the regulation. Lyasoff believes that figuring out how these aircrafts could operate while minimizing their energy consumption, cost, and noise footprint are questions that became easier to answer with the advent of the iPhone. He gave a brief description of how we got to flying taxis so quickly:

“Batteries finally got to good enough energy densities that you can actually do something useful with just batteries. You could go across an average metropolitan area. You could go 100 kilometers. Once that was possible, we could do distributed electric propulsion, which meant that you don’t have to push power to the propellers using mechanical gear boxes and shafts, and that all of a sudden makes them a lot lighter. And it allows you to have levels of redundancy that you couldn’t do before, which means that you can actually make them safer. And we could achieve that safety at a lower cost. But then they do require a degree of autonomy that traditional vehicles hadn’t required because they are so many actuators that a single pilot couldn’t directly control. A lot of that was enabled by the iPhone, because a lot of the sensors that we in the aviation industry developed, like accelerometers, GPS…(the iPhone) took them and commoditized them on a scale that was completed unprecedented in the aviation industry. I think that’s what actually miniaturized (batteries), lowered the cost, improved the performance, and enabled drones. And it really got people thinking about what’s possible and it became less of a black magic and more accessible.”

For now, Vahana needs to be tested so that regulators can approve of its use in urban environments. Luckily, it seems like A³ already has an idea of how to cross that looming threshold of bureaucracy.

“The main challenge is that regulators track innovation, but they track it with a latency that is prohibitive to deployment. You have to solve this very complex problem of implementing a policy, and in the case of airspace flight rules, you don’t really know how they are going to work until you deploy them.”

What A³ did was create Altiscope: a tool that allows regulators to simulate the experience of air taxis in real-time, both alongside and hovering below existing air traffic. It’s a way for the regulatory process to be enhanced and sped up while the actual vehicle is being tested.

“It will show you in real-time what your policy will look like when implemented. That’s our attempt to enable regulators to engage better with technology innovators and at the same time dry run their decisions before they deploy them to shorten that time and close that feedback loop.”

With Vahana about to undergo flight testing, and A³ helping regulators approve of urban air mobility, how long will it take for our traffic daydream to become a viable and safe option? Lyasoff is sure it won’t be long.

“I think in five or six years, it is feasible to have some of these vehicles fully certified and operating commercially. We can make them safe today, but we have really high standards for what it takes to make a safe airplane that we trust to sit inside and to fly overhead…I believe that Airbus is well positioned in this space, because there aren’t that many companies that know how to do that and know how to build a manufacturing process around that.”

The post How Autonomous Urban Air Mobility Became a Reality So Quickly first appeared on Dornob.

The first solution featured in the exhibit dealt with Lower Manhattan. Landscape architecture firm DLANDstudio proposed an idea called “A New Urban Ground,” which combined nature and infrastructure. The firm proposed the building up of wetlands just off the coastline, and on the coastline itself, it suggested berms to protect the city from rising sea levels and storm surges caused by an increasing number of hurricanes. For the streets, they proposed a network of green spaces that would absorb excess water. Architecture Research Office collaborated with DLANDstudio on this tripartite solution, which considered both the behavior of water and the fact that a single line of protection would not suffice.

Though entirely theoretical, “A New Urban Ground” showed what could be done for Lower Manhattan and created a new set of expectations that other designers could build upon — something that the Bjarke Ingels Group is currently in the process of doing. In 2014, BIG won a Department Of Housing And Urban Development competition that was initiated in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The objective of the competition was to protect the coastal areas around the New York metropolitan area from future storm surges.

The project, called “The Big U,” will take the form of a 10-mile system of parks, berms, and infrastructure around Lower Manhattan. Forming a big letter “u,” the 247-acre system will stretch from East 40^th Street, around the southern tip of the island, and up to West 54^th Street. Built in collaboration with several firms from the fields of landscape architecture, engineering, and environmental planning, “The BIG U” will be an area that New Yorkers can enjoy like any other part of the city. On purpose, it will not be a “no-go” area, but an attractive space. It will be integrated into the city but still feel like a separate world where people can uniquely experience New York.

It is astonishing how one film, and one image within that film, can truly move oceans. The “Rising Currents” exhibit and “The BIG U” demonstrate how imperative landscape architecture is to the resiliency of cities challenged by the effects of climate change. Collaboration with other fields is necessary, but landscape architecture must be at the forefront.

If you never visited “Rising Currents” and would like the read more about it, you can do so on the MoMA/MoMA PSI blog. To follow the progress of “The BIG U,” click here.

The post Can Landscaping Save NYC from Climate Change? first appeared on Dornob.

“Through our design projects, we had opportunities working with some interesting material manufactures in Japan,” explains Masa Kaneko, the firm’s Founder and Head Interior Designer. The IPPIN Project is just one of their most recent endeavors, giving Japanese makers of furniture and home decor an outlet to sell their products abroad.

“Their products were very high quality and looked very attractive to us, and they also intended to introduce [them] internationally, but they couldn’t find any reps who [understood] their products and interior design,” Kaneko recalls. “Thinking about our background and what we can contribute to our origin, based in [the] USA, we believe that IPPIN Project is one of the ways to [contribute] to our own culture and the next generation.”

That contribution is facilitated by the appreciation for Japanese design that has grown in the West over the last several decades. As interest in Japanese design has increased, Japan has also gained an appreciation for styles outside of their country. “Japanese culture is very much influenced by Western culture,” says Kaneko, “but they still have their own way to live with and it makes Japanese design [that much] more interesting.” What he says is true, too — at the turn of the 20th century, it was fairly easy to distinguish between different styles of design and architecture. Today, globalization has blurred the lines a little, leading to influences between some cultures in everything from food to fashion.

“The sense of beauty for Japanese people or Japanese culture itself is basically to be very minimal and modern, less decorative,” Kaneko describes. This was on full display in May 2019 at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York. A repeat visitor at the event, IPPIN Project presents “Japanese Design for Fine Living” for design consultants and members of the public interested in sourcing products for their upcoming projects. There, they get a sense of the needs of the global design market. Even better, the IPPIN Project booth was the first one that made us stop at the ICFF, just after glancing the intricacy of its Kumiko Ramma Screen.

“The products we carry from Japan are not mass products,” explains Kaneko. “The fabrication is limited and only able to be made by skilled artisans.” Through IPPIN Project, CRAFITS uses their understanding of the American interior design market to act as the liaison between manufacturers in Japan and U.S. designers or clients. “There is a lot of alternation of ideas and design materials in the world, so we [hope] we can be one-of-a-kind Japanese Materials and Product Library for non-Japanese customers.”

The post IPPIN Project: A New Source of Japanese Fine Living first appeared on Dornob.

The architecture of older stadiums would often mirror the shape of the field, whereas contemporary ballparks allow for greater deviation from that norm. That creates extra nooks in the field where hit balls can get lost for an extra second or more, often giving runners enough time to get a whole extra base. The architecture of the new Diablos Rojos Stadium in Mexico City may mirror the field like the stadiums of old, but it still presents a refreshing departure from the standard ballpark template. The stadium was (mostly) completed in March of 2019, just in time for the start of La Liga Mexicana de Béisbol season in April.

The most obvious departure here is the design of the roof, which covers 11,500 seats and stretches outward over the exterior plaza almost to the street. Designed by the Chicago-based FGP Atelier, the roof is employed predictably to protect the fans from the sun and the rain, and also to cover the plaza. But the material of the roof, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), sets Diablos Rojos Stadium apart by only diffusing sunlight during the day rather than blocking it completely.

Anyone who’s ever been to a baseball stadium and sat under a solid roof has experienced sitting shade, which is even darker at night. By using a translucent material for the roof, the Mexico City stadium is able to cover seats without giving the fans the feeling of having a roof casting a shadow over them when the sun starts to set. On top of that, the roof also acts as a large light at night, reflecting the stadium lighting downward rather than all around.

For some people, the fun part about going to a sporting event is not the game itself, but the atmosphere. For instance, just outside of a baseball stadium prior to the first pitch is an exciting moment of activity. As lines begin to form at concession stands, families play in-stadium games for team-themed prizes, while other fans wait for their friends. The sound is that of a carnival, with the constant digital pings of tickets being scanned at the gate punctuated by hawkers peddling programs and snacks. This activity happens at all high-level sporting events, but at Diablos Rojos Stadium, it’s extra special. The presence of the roof over the plaza brings the festivities that animate the pregame moments into the stadium itself. This removes the tension that fans usually have when they attend sporting matches, as most want to take in the ambiance outside the stadium but also want to get inside the building to be ready for the start of the match. At Diablos Rojos, fans can enter the stadium without feeling like they’re missing out on the pregame party outside, because the party has already been brought inside for them.

The concessions, restrooms, shops, and other amenities are kept inside six volcanic rock pyramids, which themselves are a nod to the Pre-Columbian temples of Mesoamerica. Between the pyramids and the home plate part of the stadium is a wide pedestrian pathway that runs under the roof. Older baseball stadiums often used architectural styles of the late 19^th or early 20^th centuries. Even contemporary stadiums try to create a faux imitation of those styles. It’s extremely rare that the architecture of a stadium reference ancient architecture, but FGP and their stadium collaborators Taller ADG knew they wanted to give fans a deep connection to Mexico’s rich history.

What is most laudable about the Diablos Rojos Stadium is the way it uses architecture to enhance the enjoyment of the overall baseball experience. It doesn’t just focus on the enjoyment of the spectacle inside the diamond, but also on the fun that occurs outside it during pre and post-game moments.

The post A Refreshing Design for Mexico’s Newest Baseball Stadium first appeared on Dornob.

Whether a passenger is departing or arriving, they’re sure to be shocked by the scale of West Kowloon Station. Boasting the same grandiosity as many airport terminals in Asia, the soaring roof here twists and rises like the back of a monstrous beast: a dragon of steel and glass helping to bring influence from mainland China, sneaking its way into Hong Kong only to rise its head right in the middle of West Kowloon Cultural District.

If someone wanted to take such a nefarious view of the station, they’d probably be right. Another view of the station is that of a grand palace celebrating the triumph of advanced transportation. Then there’s the benign political view — surely in the minority in the city if recent events are any indication — that the station represents a coming together of mainland China and Hong Kong. Mixed in with all of the politically-charged symbolism around the site, there are also those who see it as just great civic architecture. But no matter what, there’s no denying that the scale of this building provokes people to consider all of these competing interpretations of its form.

Since it first opened in September of 2018, visitors to West Kowloon Station have used it, and the seven acres of public space around it, as a park. Its curtain wall is made up of over 4,000 curved glass pieces, reflecting sunlight and giving the area’s many plazas and paths an extra glow. And since the roof of the station begins from the ground on one end, visitors can gently walk up steps between its garden spaces, taking in the view of the city as they climb. Don’t worry, though — this ascent is gradual and understated. Before visitors realize it, they are right on top of the highest point of the building, some 80 feet above the ground.

Aedas, the international architecture firm known for its stunning large-scale projects, designed the station’s interiors to be chalk-full of memorable moments for visitors. Here, people move through a capacious public atrium framed by 8,000 tonnes of curved steel. The ceiling is a representation of the relationship between mainland China and Hong Kong, in that it is hard to demystify patterns that exist elsewhere, either from the inside or the out. The fluidity between ceiling and roof, and between the station’s different ribbons of fenestration, is also difficult to predict. Columns rise from one part of the slab, seemingly curving to form a part of the roof, but then curving unexpectedly again to support another part of it. However, within that visual chaos are opportunities for sunlight to shine deep into this mainly underground station. As the bands of windows follow the form of the roof, they contort to create these moments where the arriving passengers can catch their bearings as they ascend from the trains. The flowing interchange between clerestories and skylights gives people an even greater sense of the city outside as they take their first steps back into the real world.

For departing passengers, the high-speed trains featured in West Kowloon get them faster to mainland China than ever before. Hongkongers now have easy access to 44 cities in the Chinese mainland, and they can even get to major Chinese hubs like Beijing and Shanghai in under 9 hours. The station has 15 tracks in total: nine of which are for long-haul trains, and the other six for regional ones. The overt division between those two types is another aspect of the architecture that has proved controversial in the country.

Although it takes several hours to get there, the influence of Beijing is still right there in the station thanks a co-location arrangement that allows mainland Chinese customs officers to screen passengers prior to boarding. Yes, departing passengers must first pass through Hong Kong customs, after which they enter a corridor called the Mainland Port Area. Along the way, they walk over a yellow line demarcating where the laws of Hong Kong end and the laws of mainland China begin. Once across the line, even before passing through mainland customs, passengers are no longer subject to Hong Kong law, even though they are still physically in Hong Kong.

This co-location operation creates a series of checks for passengers to navigate, and it all takes place underground out of reach from the sunlight in the atrium above. The arrangement can also be interpreted as yet another example of Beijing trying to encroach upon Hong Kong territory.

West Kowloon Station is a symbol of many things. It represents the converging of high-speed train lines from across China at a single massive hub. This convergence is also represented architecturally in the structure of the building, especially on the ceiling and roof. Last but not least, the station represents the converging of disparate world views. It is a work of architecture loaded in meaning: attractive enough to be a favorite location for selfies, but unsettling enough to start an uprising.

The post High-Speed Trains Converge at Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Station first appeared on Dornob.

In May 2019, in a renovated industrial warehouse on the west side of Manhattan, Alejandro Vidal Ruiz stood proud. He had just won WantedDesign’s 2019 Launch Pad online voting competition.

For the past seven years, WantedDesign, a New York-based platform that promotes design and fosters creativity all across the globe, has been hosting an exhibition where emerging designers can introduce their furniture, lighting, and home accessories on an international scale. Launch Pad happens every year during NYCxDESIGN, a much larger city-wide festival that showcases everything from the latest in New York architecture to prototypes from emerging furniture designers.

When we first met Ruiz at this year’s event, he was standing in the main hall with the other exhibitors. Unlike the work of his peers, however, we found Ruiz’ work to be refreshingly humble, with fine craftsmanship always at the forefront of each design, and ergonomic.

Yes, the work that Ruiz had on display was impressively subtle among the works of more seasoned designers. You could scarcely believe that just seven months earlier, he was only studying industrial design. It was October of 2018, and he had just graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) with a diploma in Industrial Design of Objects.

So just how did Ruiz go from the graduation podium to the top of a digital podium at an international design exhibition in such a short window of time?

Back in 2013, her started a company called Trotamundo Wood & Design out of Mexico City. At the time he was working towards his Master’s in Architectural Design, but it was more theoretical than technical. “I had a scholarship that didn’t allow me to work,” he explains, “so I decided to study carpentry at the same time as well to balance some theory with some practice.” About two months after that, Ruiz was loving carpentry so much that he began making furniture for his family and friends. By 2016, he had completed both his Master’s program and his carpentry studies.

After the completion of the program at UNAM, Ruiz submitted the plans for his Bifront bench set to participate in Launch Pad and gain exposure for his furniture making. By February of 2019, he had been selected to participate in the WantedDesign exhibition. The only challenge was that he had to cover the exhibition entry fee and the shipping costs from Mexico City to New York City. He thus turned to Kickstarter, setting a crowdfunding goal of $40,000 MXN (just over $2,100 USD).

To sweeten the deal for his backers, Ruiz made wooden coasters in his shop for rewards, along with tote bags, screens with the Bifront logo on them, stickers, and t-shirts. By the time the second week of March came around, Ruiz had already met 50 percent of his initial goal. This achievement was so impressive, in fact, that Kickstarter even catalogued the Bifront campaign as one of their favorites. Two weeks after that, the goal had been fully met.

That is how Ruiz came to stand among an international set of designers (and come away with a bit of acclaim) at the exhibition. Not only that, but immediately after the exhibition was over, the Bifront set shipped to New York was bought by a New Jersey woman who wanted it for a showroom that she was curating. “It was very helpful because we didn’t have to bring it back home,” he says, “and [it] also helped a lot to pay for some of the expenses.” He has already started work on the second generation of Bifront furniture.

As a designer, it’s not uncommon to get attention for a fleeting moment only to have it immediately taken away. People are always searching, scrolling, and swiping for something new. Nevertheless, designers continue their work for the love of the craft. Based on the success of his Kickstarter campaign, our reaction to his work, his winning the award at the exhibition, and a complete stranger buying his work on a whim, it’s pretty safe to say Alejandro Vidal Ruiz will be busy making furniture for a long time to come.

The post How Alejandro Vidal Ruiz Went From Graduation to International Exhibition in Just 7 Months first appeared on Dornob.

When you’re in an airport terminal looking for something to eat before a flight, you don’t always have the best selections available to you, making the choice more difficult than it would normally be out on the street. With McDonalds in the Sky, the laminated yellow glass acts as a beacon for all to see. Similar to the lights on a runway, the bright color of the box is powerful and captures the eye. And since it’s so specific to one company, it also evokes a sentiment of familiarity for the brand, even before the arches themselves are seen camouflaged on the glass.

Those who don’t like the brand probably won’t appreciate that glowing aesthetic, but in an airport terminal full of signs and symbols, it only makes sense that McDonald’s in the Sky would try to outshine them all. It draws attention to itself and stirs brand recognition by design, and not by a logo.

Beyond the glass, you’ll see an example of efficiency that, even if you aren’t eating there, is fascinating by itself. Meals are prepared in this location as in any other location, but rather than have an employee walk a few feet to bring the meal to the register, a conveyor belt brings each meal down in an orchestrated fashion.

One by one, like watching planes take off and land, purposely timed so as to not mix up the order, each meal comes down. The conveyor belt takes each meal up the to ceiling of the preparation area within the yellow box and loops them around before descending to the exposed service area on the floor, where staff members collect the meals to hand them over to customers. If the staff misses a meal in the event of a sudden rush at the registers, the conveyor belt simply pulls the meal back up to the preparation area, where it loops around to come down seconds later for another try.

Together, the stark color of the restaurant and the efficiency of the process are part of the theater that is McDonald’s In The Sky. In most of locations for the brand, you can see meals being made, but in this location they really feel on display. To observe the staff scurrying on both levels, with the conveyor belt acting as the link between the two, is undeniably impressive — even for someone who isn’t necessarily “lovin’ it.”

The post McDonald’s In The Sky: The Sydney Airport’s Theater of Fast Food first appeared on Dornob.

Some get the passion at birth, and, for as long as they can remember, have always been passionate about a particular subject or an activity. For Brooke M Davis, an artisan and furniture designer based in Austin, Texas, those moments of ignition occurred more than once, each time bringing her closer to being the professional she is today. In May 2019, the Dornob team had the privilege of discussing her work with her in person at Wanted Design in New York City.

“We can create objects that people are drawn to and should strive to create new and exciting things that people want to investigate further,” says Davis. “I create objects that challenge me, and I hope that others gravitate to them with the same enthusiasm.”

Above all else, Davis is passionate about wooden pieces. She’s previously designed furniture using rich maple, walnut, mahogany, cherry, birch, and several other woods, with the quality of each one depending on how long a piece is suppose to last.

“When learning to make furniture by hand, it is often a long and tedious process when you do it the first time,” she describes. “I often tell students, if this was the only piece you ever made that demanded this much of your attention, wouldn’t you regret not choosing a nice wood to make it out of?”

With so many television shows and websites devoted to do-it-yourself furniture making these days, it seems like an increasing number of people are forgetting to take the time to search for good quality wood. Only the surface-level color of the wood is seen and compared to others, but of course a superficial judging of materials will never satisfy the person looking to design something truly special.

“If you’re going to make an heirloom piece, expand beyond your limited knowledge of the hardware store,” suggests Davis. “Anyone can get pine from the hardware store, but going to a lumber yard to choose rough lumber and discover the beauty of its pattern is a bit of a zen experience.” Most people wouldn’t even think to take that step, going only as far as the end of the lumber aisle at the local home improvement store.

“My two personal favorites are mahogany and walnut for the depth and richness in the wood textures,” she adds.

The passion that Davis has for these rich woods is a response to what she saw as a child. But rather than draw direct inspiration from what she saw during those years, she had a desire to go in another direction.

“I’m kind of a purist that loves the depth and richness of the wood grain seldom found in cheaper materials,” she describes. “I grew up in Texas in the 1980s, and it seemed like the decorating rage was to do terrible things with red oak, and to (try to) make it interesting by whitewashing it. It’s probably why I will never use oak in any of my designs.”

Although she had seen wood all around her growing up, and even had a critical eye for its application, Davis swears that her childhood was still not the time when her passion for furniture design started. That began much later in life.

“I got into making furniture in college as an elective. There was something very satisfying to see an object sitting there and thinking not only did I make that, but hey, I can use it too,” she explains. As a result of that one course, Davis stirred desires, experiences, and curiosities within her that were being reinforced pedagogically.

“The allure of furniture is that it can [either] be this mass-designed product or a very personal piece. Furniture connects to us at a personal level that reflects our sense of self. It can be an expression of the self, tell a story through history, or it can reflect who we want others to see us as. Unlike cars though, the buy-in for this reflection is a much more tangible price point.”

For a furniture designer, sketching is every bit as important as working with software. After all, it allows the mind to create a piece line by line. Davis uses sketching and software in her design process too, but another passion of hers which began during her days in college became a much more integral part of her process early on.

“I was this artist that was studying photography but really enjoyed getting my hands dirty,” she describes. “I started taking my electives in furniture and industrial design and learning different processes. I was surrounded by car designers and they were making clay car models as part of their process. At some point, the influence through friends, classes, and professors creeped in.”

It didn’t stop there, either. Even later on in her academic career, the idea of sculpting as part of the design process was hard to escape.

“While doing my Master’s at Purdue University in Industrial Design, I had a professor who was a former car designer and he shared his processes with us as a class for car design. From that point on, it seemed that every model image involved pushing clay around as part of the process to make the idea evolve three-dimensionally.”

Since then, she has been using clay to test out forms for furniture in between sketching and actually building it.

“There’s something very natural and instinctual about physically adding and subtracting materials to communicate an idea,” explains Davis. “We have been [making things like this] since we were little kids.”

The post Furniture Designer Brooke M Davis on the Origins of Her Passion first appeared on Dornob.

In November of 2017, St. Mary Mercy Livonia began construction of a new, 2,600-square-foot chapel — one that would not only serve the same purpose as the old one, but also cater to the needs of the broader religious community that used the hospital. After all, St. Mary is a Catholic hospital, but the new chapel also provides spaces of worship for Protestants and non-Christian Abrahamic worshippers.

To create this blend of faiths within a single space, the chapel had to be given an irregular shape. Indeed, it does not have the symmetry of a conventional chapel from the outside, but an organic form that’s simultaneously subtle and expressive. The curves of the north elevation are formed by an intricate pattern of brickwork.

On the inside, the walls do not entirely follow the footprint of the plan, which makes for even more odd spaces and peculiar relationships between rooms. The architects behind the redesign, PLY+, did this so that each faith would not feel disturbed by the presence of the others. Whether or not that works from a deeply spiritual perspective is a personal question for each worshipper. However, it is understood by everyone that the chapel is a place for miracles, regardless if it is a Muslim, Jew, or Christian coming to pray. At the front of the main hall is the altar, which itself is hewn from Wisconsin Corastone.

The front of the chapel faces north, with skylights positioned for southern solar orientation. Clerestory windows hidden high in the ceiling draw light downwards onto the cherry wood pews and walnut liturgical chairs. The structure also boasts a healing garden with a Japanese maple tree and a crucifix that was handcrafted in Germany.

When construction of the new chapel first got under way, David Spivey, president and CEO of St. Mary Mercy Livonia, said: “The new chapel is an important addition that will allow us to meet the needs of our patients, visitors, staff, and community members who seek healing for their body, mind, and spirit.”

In these polarizing times, chapels like these prove that no matter what we believe, we all have moments when we cannot control the outcome of our lives. In hospitals everywhere, there are moments of great weakness to overcome, and sometimes even grief to live with. When those times do come around, it’s comforting to know that there are spaces where we can seek out strength.

Once again, architecture has shown us that when used correctly, it can be used to bring people together, not drive them apart.

The post Different Faiths Find Hope Under the Same Roof at New Hospital Chapel in Detroit first appeared on Dornob.

Dart, who worked for almost a decade and a half as an industrial designer, then as a furniture designer, now uses his varied experiences to manufacture distinctive pieces for clients who desire something different. His works range in size from skinny to corpulent, but there’s a still common theme which he has thread through them all. A theme inspired by his upbringing in Vernal, Utah.

“I grew up near a dinosaur bone quarry. There they would put together new species of dinosaurs from the bones that were excavated,” he reminisces. “After the skeleton (was) put together they would try to figure out what the dinosaur actually looked like and how it moved and survived.”

The word “bones” relates to that which is within, the internal framework separate from the soul and spirit. Typically, in both living creatures and furniture, the bones are concealed by an external skin. For Dart, however, there’s a special appeal to leaving the bones of his pieces exposed.

If you imagine a simple wooden chair or bench, its rigid structure is apparent, and yet that doesn’t stop people from sitting on it. Dart uses that excepted experience to create furniture that has curvaceous forms without cushions or upholstery. If people don’t have a problem sitting on the exposed structure of a chair or a bench, then they shouldn’t have one sitting on the exposed structure of a sofa, either.

“My pieces are like a skeleton. When they are looked upon people try to figure out how they are made, what is the implied form, why does it look like it is alive?” he says. “The beauty of the pieces are internalized by the viewer’s imagination.” In May 2019, that curiosity is exactly what led many attendees to stop, look, feel, and experience his work firsthand at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York.

Of the four collections of furniture that Bones Studio manufactures, none is as comfortable or as popular as “Quarry.” Ironically, each piece in this collection has a smoothness to its surface, even though half of those surfaces are made up of nothing but voids. Better than the bones of a dinosaur, or even the human body, the closeness the Quarry collection’s bones and their geometric intimacy suggests a skin while enhancing their core strength.

“When looking at various pieces in the flesh, they calm my soul,” admits Dart. “I don’t know if it is because of my internal fight to design the piece is over or that I am lost in the rhythm of the piece.” We are familiar with exposed structure in architecture, infrastructure, and even interior design, but Bones Studio takes it even further, turning the structure into the skin.

Dart muses: “The idea of creating a volume or form from flat substrate is not a new idea. But [in terms of] the complexity and design that has emerged from the form, this is something nobody has seen before.”

Watch this short video of Dart discussing the thinking and process behind his work:

The post Inside Out: The Beauty of Bones Studio’s Skeletal Furniture first appeared on Dornob.

“One day, I entered a large sporting goods store, where a large number of wheels were displayed in the bicycle department,” recounts Antinori. “As a daily cyclist, I was fascinated by that vision, so I decided, almost instinctively, to take three (wheels) of different sizes.” This was an example of an impulse buy with a creative purpose that was not fully formed. At first, Antinori had no idea how he was going to repurpose the wheels, but felt like there still must be some way he could use them. Then something happened that had nothing to do with cycling that gave his creative instincts a clear direction.

“A few years ago, the first high-capacity LED strips began to appear on the market, so the idea of associating a known object — a wheel — with a new emerging one — the LED — led me to the first experiment,” he adds.

When you bike to work everyday like he does to his studio, you form a personal connection to it — or at least more so than you would to driving or taking public transit. This closeness is undoubtedly another part of the inspiration that helped Antinori realize his vision.

“I have always loved (Marcel) Duchamp’s art, so perhaps it was my subconscious that guided me there,” he reveals. “The fact remains that all the people who came into the house and saw this strange object — an illuminating wheel — hung from the ceiling, were struck by it.”

The positive feedback that he received from friends, family, and associates soon got him thinking more in commercial terms. He recounts: “I understood the potential of the idea, and so I started to think of it as not only an extravagant object — a unique but approximate piece in the realization — but instead as an object that had all the characteristics of a product to be reproduced in series, of high quality, which could be part of the large family of lamps.”

To go from having an inkling of undefined inspiration to thoughts of productization is the path that many successful entrepreneurs take. It is proof that a simple idea born on a day that you were not expecting can quickly put you in front of customers all over the world, like at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York, where I had the pleasure of meeting with Antinori in May of 2019.

It took Antinori two years to develop the technical aspects of the lamps. In case you were wondering, the wheels themselves are stationary and cannot spin. He also came up with the marketing campaign for the lamps, which in turn got him thinking about his idea in broader terms. “I created an image and a communication strategy, (which included) conceptual films, the website, and graphic design,” he explains, “until I found myself creating a brand that could contain these curious objects, named CYCLAMPA.”

A trademark brand of his company Kaleideas, CYCLAMPA resonates with customers because of its relationship to the environment. It would be wrong to create a product that blends energy-saving LED technology with a zero emissions bicycle, only to wrap and ship it in an excess of plastic. For this reason, Antinori only uses plastic for a few components, but the majority of the packaging for the lamps is recycled cardboard. “The bicycle (and the light) become a cultural object,” he explains. “Watching it stimulates us to return to environmental issues, where sustainability can marry beauty.”

Along with their environmental significance, these lamps also carry an emotional meaning for Antinori. He says: “These lamps represent for me the desire to look beyond (the usual), and to discover everyday objects, like a banal wheel, that can still suggest something new.”

The post CYCLAMPA: The Upcycled Bike Wheel Lamps Born from a Trip to the Local Sporting Goods Store first appeared on Dornob.

Of course, the real problem here is buildings that are showy with no meaning connected to their surrounding context. Then there’s buildings like the new Xiqu Centre in Hong Kong, which has quickly become a radiant example of both imagery and substance.

Since January of 2019, Hongkongers have been invited, by the building itself, to experience this new home for traditional Chinese Xiqu opera in the city’s new arts and culture district, West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD). Indeed, the new building is decidedly cube-like, with curved edges and a facade that resembles the curtains on a stage. At each corner, the curtain wall, a name that carries both technical and symbolic meaning, is pulled back to allow light from the interior to shine outwards, thereby creating an alluring beacon for the public. The center is also meant to be contemporary take on the Chinese Moon Gate.

The firm responsible for the project, Revery Architecture (formerly Bing Thom Architects), designed the silky exterior because they were inspired by the costumes worn by xiqu performers and traditional Chinese lanterns. Within the modular system of bays that make up the “curtains” are 13,000 scales, each cut from extruded aluminum pipe by a CNC machine. The scales were then given their distinct texture using glass beads and connected to frames by stainless steel brackets.

Fabricating the scales, building a mock-up to test them, transporting them to the site, and installing them as a curtain wall was a delicate process that took eight months. In that respect, the seven-story building itself is kind of a performance, with a facade emblematic of curtains hiding the performers as they prepare for a show.

Unlike most performing arts space, the parts of the Xiqu Centre that are accessible to the public are expansive, going way beyond a simple foyer and ticket booth lounge. A large 65-foot-high gate draws the public inside, directing them to a voluminous atrium for exhibitions, workshops, and other public events related to educating people on Xiqu culture. To top it all off, this atrium is open to the public 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The reason that the architects were able to create a 21,000-square-foot, naturally-ventilated interior public space is because the center’s main hall, the 1,073-seat Grand Theatre, is suspended 90 feet above the plaza below by six thick columns and two 20-foot-deep roof trusses. The position of the Grand Theatre has two functions: first, to reduce vibration and noise from the surrounding infrastructure, such as the nearby subterranean high-speed train; and second, to make the building more accessible to the public by creating spaces for programming around the atrium, such as classrooms and stores.

The Xiqu Centre plays a dual role of performer and stage: a work of architecture performing a cultural artform that dates back to the Ming dynasty of a few hundred years ago, and the canvas for its own expression. A contemporary home for an ancient heritage.

The post Pulling Back the Xiqu Centre’s Spectacular Curtain Wall first appeared on Dornob.

This is the upside-down world of the late 2010s. A time where we have become experts at compartmentalization. What we should see, we choose not to see, and what should not monopolize our attention, does just that. We love our silos, we love hot takes, and we are absolutely transfixed by spectacle.

The spectacle that sadly commandeers our architectural discourse may give us the what, why, who, and the technical how of things, but only when a key player dies do we actually learn about the human how. For Qatar’s Al Janoub Stadium, the game plan is for the human how to be forgotten altogether, buried under layers of positive press regarding its retractable roof and large attendance capacity. And while it may be the home of the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup, are we really so willing to get lost in the spectacle that we lose sight of the human how?

Al Janoub Stadium was commissioned specifically for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, with a design by the world-renowned Zaha Hadid Architects. It officially opened in May 2019. Today, it stands as a 40,000-seat stadium, with plans to become a 20,000-seat venue after a tournament that some critics are predicting will be the worst ever. As a matter of fact, all the stadium’s seats and facades are temporary, but they still have to be built for the sake of the event.

From the outside, Al Janoub looks like any other modern marvel of world football. Its swooping facade and roof recall the maritime traditions and decorative patterns of the area. The inside is decidedly more run-of-the-mill, even with the roof pulled back during scorching afternoons, or in the middle of the Qatar winter.

It feels wrong to celebrate the design of Al Janoub Stadium without acknowledging all that was lost leading up to its opening. Not the technical how that makes us marvel, but the human how that should make us uncomfortable.

The human how is how many of the stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup are actually being built. It is the migrant workers from South Asia and other countries being forced to work long hours and live in squalor as they cobble together subsistence for their families back home. The human how is the claustrophobia those workers experience after being lured by the chance to support their families, which they can never leave to visit because their passports have been confiscated by their employers.

Somewhere within the facts about the number of trusses in these venues and the ingenuity of their architecture is the close to 4,000 migrant workers that will be killed to build them in time for the event. Then there are the tears of family members whose loved one sacrificed for them. When people laud or like the designs of these stadiums on social media, or even stand to celebrate a goal scored in the quarter-finals, it will be because of this human how.

Should the architects care? And what about us, the public who supports and lives for such events?

Construction is dangerous, and one or two workers dying on a large site is unfortunate, but not abnormal. 4,000 workers dying to build soccer stadiums for a one-month tournament, however, is way beyond that. It’s a massive cause for concern.

As a soccer fan, I enjoy watching the sport and the thrill that accompanies big matches, both at the club and international levels. However, knowing what I know about the human cost of building glittering architectural baubles like the Al Janoub Stadium, I simply cannot watch it anymore without remembering all those lost. For now, we can only hope FIFA finally gets its act together and starts being more mindful of that human how.

The post Should We Really Be Celebrating the Al Janoub Stadiums of the World? first appeared on Dornob.

From a design perspective, these are just aberrations of unlearnt practitioners. But from the real estate perspective, where the primary focus is profitability, these deviations from the norm are refreshing and ultra-appealing to the worldly client. In the hospitality sector especially, that mix of what the international traveler expects and what the local culture represents can lead to some truly distinguished designs, like at WE Hotel Tōya in Hokkaidō, Japan.

Opened in 2018, this boutique hotel is both a modest reflection of Japanese architecture and a global space of luxury. In contrast to its facade, which looks like it could comfortably fit in anywhere in the world, other parts of the hotel reveal the traditional intricacies worked into its design. This can be seen as soon as the entrance, which itself is lined with cedar logs on the walls.

The ceiling is a multi-layered surface of logs, all of which start at their highest points outside but slowly come down as they approach the corner where guests turn right to enter the hotel. At night, light from below these logs creates a golden hue that makes for a very warm welcome. The entrance, along with the overall facade, signifies the dual personality that WE Hotel Tōya must show the traveler to be successful. Sure enough, the design has done nothing but add to the respect that Kengo Kuma & Associates have earned both abroad and at home

Inside the lobby, pleated cloths are draped to form soft and elegant interiors. Other than the floor, the hardness of the walls and ceilings is completely concealed by the plushness of the backlit fabric, providing a calming area from which to view the tranquil waters of Lake Toya.

The cloth motif carries through to the hotel’s other common areas and hallways, but in the seating area for the EZO Cuisine restaurant and lounge, the fabric is replaced by rigid paper. Folded with the precision of origami, the paper creates lightweight interior surfaces to hide columns and beams. All guests see is the form of a groin vault, but the patterns reminiscent of those from a fan vault. On the window side, each vault shapes a wide semicircle for guests to look out onto the lake while they enjoy their meals and cocktails.

In the TARU Bar, the style is decidedly more contemporary, with barrels being the theme for both the counter and ceiling. The neighboring cigar bar is even more modern, with an aesthetic that would look just as at home in Los Angeles, Milan, or Melbourne.

With the exception of the two bars and the spa, the boutique hotel’s lobby, restaurant, karaoke room, and other common areas have a distinctive Japanese feel. The guestrooms retain the same graceful meekness that Japanese design is known for, while offering all the amenities that guests from South America or Europe would expect.

Guests can also enjoy a bathtub made of hinoki wood on the balcony (with privacy walls on either side, of course) and use the room’s espresso machine before going for their morning walk. These comforts provide the balance to the vernacular of the design, making people feel at home even when they’re miles away from it.

The post WE Hotel Tōya: Where Modern Luxury Meets Japanese Tradition first appeared on Dornob.

A photographic exhibit at this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, entitled “A Love of the World,” looks at how architectural photography can be used to tell a project’s story. Curated by Jesús Vassallo, the exhibit features the work of James Welling, David Schalliol, Luisa Lambri, Marianne Mueller, and many others.

James Welling’s use of multi-film exposure techniques creates colorful, 1960s-style photographs of Mies van der Rohe’s typically neutral buildings, placing these already famous structures in a strange new light. Anyone who’s familiar with Mies’ buildings knows that many of them have become icons of the modern movement. Welling adds flashy textures to staid photographs, forcing your attention on them. It’s almost like watching Babe Ruth hit a home-run in color.

Marianne Mueller used the biennale’s venue, the Chicago Cultural Center, as a subject to show attendees parts of the building that they would normally never look at when admiring the exhibit itself. Typically, curators place the focus on the work being exhibited, not on parts of the event space.

The subversion of the established narrative is most obvious in the work of photographer and sociologist David Schalliol.

In the early 2000s, when the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) received more than a billion dollars in federal funding to demolish and reconstruct that city’s public housing, Schalliol was there to document the process in photographs. To this day, the CHA’s established plan is to turn low-income areas into mixed-income neighborhoods. This massive shift is most evident in the demolition of large-scale projects in residential areas, which ultimately results in a decreased sense of community as people wait their turn to be evicted from their homes. As of this year, only 16,846 households, or 7.81 percent of the CHA’s units, are located in mixed-income neighborhoods. That means a lot of other people are still watching their communities crumble around them.

Schalliol’s photographs are a symbol of the spatial and emotional tumult experienced by the residents. However, when one watches the video produced back in 2010 by the CHA about the progress of the plan, the sense of disruption and degradation is not as glaring as it is in these photos. In the city’s eyes, the change is for the better, but for most public housing residents, it is a forced transformation into the unknown.

Not all works in “A Love of the World” are part of a counter-narrative. Some, like Luisa Lambri’s photos of Mies’ “Farnsworth House,” simply juxtapose the austere interiors with the chromatic changing of the leaves outside.

Still, architectural photography can be used as an alternative to, or a protest against, an established narrative, and it can add in the realism that has been glossed over.

The post Architectural Photography that Tells a Story first appeared on Dornob.