When Cerri first released the Ouverture sofa in 1982, it was unlike any other furniture at the time (or any that had come before). The design draws inspiration from music, architecture, and technology, incorporating industrial elements like a distinctive metal frame perforated by circles. And while the framework of most sofas remains hidden beneath upholstery, the Ouverture puts it on full display, leaving the T-shaped steel bar and simple legs visible as a major design element.

The sofa’s load-bearing beam is free of joints, supporting its weight in such a way that it almost appears to float. Finished with matte black epoxy powder, the metal is meant to evoke a high-tech aesthetic, contrasting with the warmth and malleability of the cushions. Poltrona Frau has only tweaked a few small details from the original for this new reissue: the cushions were modified to be more ergonomic, and the sofa now comes in two sizes, a two-seater measuring 239 centimeters long and a three-seater measuring 318 centimeters.

The Ouverture sofa may be 40 years old, but unlike most other furniture pieces from the 1980s, it remains a contemporary classic. Original vintage sofas from the first release are sought-after collectibles, selling on sites like 1stDibs for $7,000 to $10,000.

“Apparently simple in form, the cushions conceal a wealth of details: from the backrest buttons, a recurring detail of 1980s designs and nod to traditional upholstery, to the slight tapering of the joint between the seat cushions and the backrest, for the optimum overlapping of the two elements,” says Poltrona Frau. “The cushions, with removable covers in either leather or fabric, are filled with goose down and polyester wadding with a polyurethane foam insert that ensures non-deformability and absolute comfort.”

Poltrona Frau rereleased Ouverture as part of its celebration of the company’s 110th anniversary in 2022. It’s available in various upholstery options, including bouclé, twill, piqué, and the company’s signature Pelle Frau leather in a pleasing variety of shades. Dusty eggplant, tomato red, malachite, tranquil marine blue, and a bright goldenrod are among the more colorful options, alongside plenty of neutrals. Prices are available on request.

Pierluigi Cerri died on November 29th, 2022 at the age of 83. He is celebrated as a visionary three-time Compasso d’pro laureate. In addition to his work in the worlds of design and architecture, he was a curator, graphic designer, academic, and editor for Casabella and Rassegna magazines. He handled the design of collections for Italian publishing houses like Electa and Einaudi and designed objects and layouts for well known brands like B&B Italia, Unifor, Desalto, and Fontana Arte.

The post Poltrona Frau Reissues Pierluigi Cerri’s Iconic Ouverture Sofa first appeared on Dornob.

Recently, a new contender has stepped onto the scene, eager to make its mark and find a place in the pantheon of evergreen design trends. But what exactly is organic brutalism?

Though it’s been gaining a lot of steam lately, brutalism has been around for decades, first making a splash post-WWII with its strong geometric shapes and use of raw materials like concrete, metal, and wood. Organic brutalism takes a softer approach, eschewing dramatic metals and clunky concrete in favor of deep woods and timeless, textured feels.

Don’t Be a Square

One of the cornerstones of organic brutalism is a reliance on bold, geometric shapes that catch the eye and make an immediate statement. A deep wood palette is ideal for these pieces, as the raw texture marries the organic wood with the sharp brutalist shapes for a match made in heaven (as seen in the 1970s credenza above).

Monolithic Marvels

It’s not just the textures of classic brutalism being redefined — the forms are also changing. Blocky silhouettes and monolithic shapes make a visual impact with their boldness, while the imperfectly perfect wood adds depth and warmth to the spaces they inhabit. And “blocky” doesn’t have to be a negative word — those with an appreciative eye for organic brutalism may want to try giving the trend a raw, unfinished twist, as seen in these curvy stools whose added charm is enhanced by their bulky design.

Setting the Scene

A little goes a long way with organic brutalism, and a neutral color palette is the best way to highlight the trend’s more dramatic forms. You can also incorporate textiles to soften the look. You can’t go wrong with subtle metal touches, neutral-toned fabrics, and a couple small splashes of color.

Brutalism is back and softer than ever, relying more heavily on natural materials like heavily-textured wood to make a big statement. While classic brutalism leans into a more industrial feel with sharper edges and angles, organic brutalism adds depth, warmth, and life to the mix. The result is a trend that’s sure to make a welcome addition to any 21st-century home.

Images sourced from Style by Emily Henderson

The post Is Organic Brutalism the Next Big Design Trend? first appeared on Dornob.

While it might not be the first thing that comes to mind when one hears the term “Brutalism,” this cold, concrete movement in the architecture world is something most people either love or hate. Yes, when it comes to Brutalism, what you see really is what you get, with structural workings being celebrated and accented rather than hidden away.

The movement first spread across Europe in the 1940s, and its international influence can be seen virtually everywhere today. And while many people are happy to see the blocky, rigid structures crumble and fade with age, dismissing them as nothing but a passing fad, others embrace the history of Brutalism, going so far as to restore and maintain its ice-cold charm.

Australia’s Brutalist legacy is grouped in its cities around the coast, notably in Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney, as well as in Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane, with a few examples located as far north as Cairns. Rather than viewing these examples as ugly piles of concrete, Budget Direct Travel Insurance recently decided to honor 29 standing examples of Aussie Brutalism through a visually striking series of graphic posters. Notable examples include the Perth Concert Hall and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

In putting their list together, the team outlined three criteria: the buildings/structures must be located in as many cities as possible, they must still be standing (thereby disqualifying the dozens of already demolished Brutalist buildings in the country), and they must have some kind of unique story or special background attached to them. The Harold Holt Memorial Swim Centre stands out as a particularly iconic example here — perhaps the most notable on the list from Melbourne. Its Brutalist elements are obvious in the concrete pedestrian ramps and semi-circular staircase, and both its pool and diving tower are on the Victorian Heritage list. Ironically enough, that pool just happens to be named after a prime minister who died by drowning.

Also in Melbourne, the Total House boasts a classically Brutalist, immensely controversial design, with a parking garage that boasts open space above it (inefficient by most modern standards). On top of this unused gap sits a seemingly floating office building that makes a statement — though we’re not entirely sure how we feel about it yet.

Not all examples on the list are even old enough to consider tearing down, such as the Canberra concrete bus shelters. Erected in the era spanning 1974 to 1992, the total 450 structures are nearly indestructible and offer protection for riders of public transit while they await their next bus.

While not everyone views Brutalist architecture as art, anyone who’s visited National Gallery of Australia has at least appreciated it inside an existing example of the style. Architects Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Partners also designed another Brutalist example on the list, the High Court of Australia, spending a staggering 14 years in the planning and construction phase of that building. The result is over 20,000 square meters of nearly windowless space in which to display exhibitions.

If you want to learn more about the Brutalist movement, you might head to the library, two of which also made the Brutal Beauty list. The Northam Town Library, located outside of Perth proper, is perhaps the best example of architect Iwan Iwanoff’s work, with intricate brickwork around the perimeter and open airy spaces inside. In contrast, the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library sits at the heart of Queensland’s James Cook University, a three-story eye catcher by architect James Birrell with an overhanging steel-framed copper roof and of course, a harsh concrete facade.

The post Brutal Beauty: Budget Direct Honors Australian Brutalism With Striking Poster Series first appeared on Dornob.

The design duo joins Zaha Hadid, Kazuyo Sejima, and Carme Pigem to respectively become the fourth and fifth women among 48 laureates to have won the illustrious Pritzker Architecture Prize. Hadid took the prize on her own in 2004, while Sejima shared the 2010 prize with Ryue Nishizawa and Pigem shared the 2017 prize with both Rafael Aranda and Ramon Vilalta. Interestingly, NPR news observes that awarding the 2020 prize to McNamara and Farrell reflects the field’s growing population of women architects, although the Chicago Tribune points out there are “struggles women architects still face in a male-dominated profession, including lesser pay and fewer opportunities for advancement than their male counterparts.”

People magazine, meanwhile, showcased McNamara and Farrell’s teamwork and mutual appreciation for each other’s strengths. McNamara says of Farrell in the article that “Yvonne has an enormous sense of humanity and integrity, and she has the talent to bring that right into the center of our work.”

Farrell likewise complimented her business partner, noting that “Shelley is unbelievably tenacious. I would say fearless as well. Shelly is an architect in every molecule of her existence. She will not let things be, other than the very best.”

Leveraging the traditions of brutalist architecture, the pair employs massive rigidity, block-like appearances, and raw geometric concrete at an immense scale in the university buildings they’re renowned for designing. The Guardian has, for instance, noted that McNamara and Farrell “have a preference for weighty materials, such as concrete and stone, often sculpted in massive volumes [to] give their buildings a tough, primal quality.” Of course, they also work in other touches to offset the harshness, like “airy atria, broad meandering staircases, views between floors, [and] places to perch and loiter, celebrating the ‘free gifts’ that architecture can provide to the public beyond merely fulfilling a client’s brief.”

McNamara and Farrell are also deeply committed to extending a building’s aesthetic to encompass its location’s cultural ethics. The Guardian notes that the duo pays attention to “the spaces in between,” which accounts for their architecture being designed “as a kind of ‘scaffolding’ on which lives and events can be played out.” It is no wonder that, as Architectural Record cited, the Pritzker Prize jury selected McNamara and Farrell because of “their deep understanding of ‘spirit of place.’” The jury also emphasized that Grafton Architects, “without grand or frivolous gestures, have managed to create buildings that are monumental institutional presences when appropriate, but even so they are zoned and detailed in such a way as to produce more intimate spaces that create community within.”

The two met as fellow architecture students at University College Dublin during the 1970s. In 1978, they opened Grafton Architects with three other partners who eventually moved onto other things, gaining prominence in the early 1990s when they designed some buildings for the city’s Trinity College and Temple Bar Square.

By 2003, the pair ventured into designing architecture outside of Ireland, even winning an international competition to design the Universita Luigi Bocconi economics building in Milan, which was completed five years later. Many in international architecture circles praised the design, granting it the distinction of World Building of the Year at the 2008 inaugural World Architecture Festival and solidifying Grafton Architects’ place among the world’s premiere designers of university campus buildings. What followed after Italy were projects with universities in Peru, France, and several more in the United Kingdom. In the British Isles, McNamara and Farrell updated the University of Limerick’s university president’s campus residence, freshened up a multi-use building at Kingston-upon-Thames’ Kingston University, and most recently have begun work on a London School of Economics building, which The Guardian says will be completed next year.

In 2018, McNamara and Farrell were asked to curate the 16th edition of the Venice Bienniale, which they did with the theme “Freespace.” They also used the opportunity to articulate their ethos, explaining that “in creating our manifesto for the Bienniale, we wrote down a litany of our shared values. That came very easily, because architecture is not just ideas; it’s translating ideas into very physical realities.” The McNamara-Farrell “Freespace” manifesto, as Architectural Record cited, “highlights the generous, democratic quality of architecture to provide ‘spatial gifts for those who use it’ and to leverage resources that they call ‘nature’s free gifts’ — sunlight and moonlight, air, gravity, materials.”

Besides being architects, both McNamara and Farrell are also architecture professors, teaching the youth about their profession and often highlighting the joys of the design work they do. When asked why they were so interested in designing architecture for universities, McNamara explained that both Farrell and herself were “passionately interested in education. The university should be a place where knowledge is tended like a garden. And we’re the guardians of knowledge.”

“Teaching for us has always been a parallel reality,” Farrell added on Irish Central. “And it’s a way of trying to distill our experience and gift it to other generations coming along so that they actually play a role in the growing of that culture. So it’s a two-way thing, we learn from students, and hopefully students learn from us.”

The post In Historic First, Coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize Awarded to Two Women first appeared on Dornob.

“Zicatela House” is proof that appearances can be deceiving. Designed by Mexico City-based architect Ludwig Godefroy and named for a nearby beach in the town of Puerto Escondido, it’s meant to look like a bunker to outsiders. Inside, it’s an entirely different story, with every one of its rooms and spaces designed around access to sunlight, fresh air, and views of the sky.

“The house was designed with one main purpose: to give the owner the opportunity to leave Mexico City to make a break with the megalopolis and urban habits by coming to get some rest and relax[ation] while enjoying the heat of the Mexican coast and the peaceful light of Oaxaca,” Godefroy says. “This house responds to a double landscape, on one side in the background the beach and the sea, on the other side the mountains and agave fields, the plant from which is made mezcal and tequila.”

Godefroy began working on Zicatela House in 2014 alongside his design partner Emmanuel Picault. The duo is best known for their nightclubs and bars, with their work often representing an alluring combination of modernist and pre-Hispanic influences. They based the design for this house on a Mesoamerican ball court surrounded by large symmetrical stepped walls.

The concrete and simple rectilinear shapes bring in the brutalist element Godefroy and Picault are known for, while the home’s tropical feel comes courtesy of elements like wood, greenery, and a tranquil swimming pool. What’s even more surprising, given the house’s outside appearance, is the fact that there’s no glass to be found anywhere inside. Those large shutters you see all throughout the courtyard can be closed for privacy, but otherwise, the residence is remarkably open to the world at large.

Godefroy adds that “this project has a very interesting personality of being a countryside house next to the sea, instead of a beach house. The house is based on this duality, the duality of its surroundings and its [ability] to respond to the mountains and be protective as a fortress as well as a wide-open space; giving you the feeling [of living] outside in a garden, making the border between in and out disappear.”

“Zicatela House is built on a small 300-square-meter plot, using a typology of defensive architecture, where a wall surrounds the terrain completely, helping create a 100-percent controlled area on the inside, turning it into an open-sky fortress, with only one main view towards the sky, the only permanent element in time. The house is a bunker on the outside, one of those massive concrete structures I used to see in Normandy — where I was born — protecting a Mexican pyramid on the inside, one of those I see when I travel around Mexico, the country where I’ve been living and working for 10 years now.”

The post This Concrete Bunker House Hides a Secret Central Oasis first appeared on Dornob.

For all the strange and wonderful Brutalist buildings that have sprouted up all over the world, the style has rarely translated to functional design objects that are usable in real-world contexts. A Brutalist chair, for instance, might consist of solid concrete blocks set within a steel frame — not exactly comfortable. It tends to be more successful when it manifests as sculpture, lighting, or inert decorative objects. Now, this espresso machine is here to destroy our preconceptions about what Brutalism can look like in the home, using concrete to a surprisingly beautiful effect.

San Francisco Bay Area design studio Montaag presents the AnZa Espresso Machine, an appliance unlike any you’ve ever seen. Born in its creators’ Berkeley backyard shed, the AnZa is more than just the sum of its parts. Its origins lie in the unusual pairing of a design studio and an espresso repair shop sharing the same workspace.

The studio believes that “every designer has the responsibility to bring something new to the table. In a sea of coffee machines, we asked ourselves: if something is made from the same material and produces the same quality coffee as other machines in its price point — then where is the added value? AnZa’s added value comes through its material choices, thoughtfully rendered and completely real, and its accessible functionality. Combined, AnZa delivers a café-quality experience, truly earning a bit of valuable real estate on your home countertop, and in a fashion unlike any other appliance.”

Along with the concrete model, the AnZa is also available in glossy white Corian. Both machines will be equipped with connectivity, so users can remotely program them and integrate them into their smart home systems. While many unconventional high-end design objects remain intangible concepts or prototypes, never becoming available to the public, Montaag began crowdfunding for the AnZa just last week, and the machines are expected go up for sale to the broader public in early 2018.

“After several years of design, prototypes, and refinements we’re ready to hit GO! on full-scale manufacturing,” says the company. “This campaign will secure the funds to do just that.”

It’s chic, it’s minimalist, and it’s a seemingly solid hunk of concrete on your kitchen counter. Don’t worry, though, the concrete is actually just a veneer. In reality, the AnZa isn’t much heavier than a conventional coffee machine. Plus, it appears to be just as serviceable. Hoping to snag one for yourself? You can stay updated on its progress by signing up for emails on the AnZa website.

The post Brutalist Espresso Maker Made of Concrete first appeared on Dornob.

Even if you don’t mind their dramatic shapes and extensive use of rather unforgiving materials, it’s hard to deny that Brutalist structures don’t exactly age well. The concrete used to create many of them started to crumble within decades, and today, they’re commonly stained, gray behemoths surrounded by buildings in clashing styles. Many of them have already been demolished, or are at least in danger of being lost. But could more of them be salvaged with simple makeovers, even in places where they’re despised?

German architecture firm J. Mayer H. answers this question with “Casa Morgana,” a reimagining of a former Brutalist building in the north of Germany. The blocky home previously had a severe, gloomy feel that was out of step with its lush surroundings. Joining it with that greenery was the first and most important element of its transformation.

The firm hired landscape architect Tita Giese to pull some of that vitality into the structure itself with new gardens full of bamboo, palm trees, and ivy. The result almost makes it feel like an ancient, secret temple accidentally discovered on a long trek through the jungle.

“Casa Morgana is somewhere else,” say the architects. “Surrounded by neighboring homes dating from the late nineteenth century, the building is like an abstract volumetric study for a potential building and seems to have fallen out of context. Surrounding nature simulates a subtropical oasis and locates the residential sculpture between optical disturbance and atmospheric displacement.”

“The three-story building consists formally of several differently-sized cubes placed at staggered levels on top of one another, connected by a central stairway. The existing building from 1972 and its annexes from 1991 were reduced to their shells and then retaken with targeted interventions: not as a cosmetic makeover, but as a location that distills and continues the archaic and brutalist aesthetic from the time of the building’s original emergence.”

The house is still indisputably Brutalist, but it’s been nicely adapted to the needs and preferences of contemporary times. The architects partially removed some ceilings and walls to create staggered floors and different room heights, allowing the house to slowly unfold in surprising ways as you move through it.

Mirrored walls, speckled terrazzo surfaces, and shimmering metallic accents play with the concrete instead of working against it, brightening it up all throughout. Enormous operable glass doors eliminate some of the barriers between inside and out, as do the concrete elements that continue out into the yard. They also cleaned up the concrete surfaces to give them a bit of a facelift.

Obviously, a home like this still isn’t for everyone, even after its transformation. But perhaps, in the hands of J. Mayer H., it can help persuade more people to give Brutalist buildings a second chance — regardless of whether they think they’re wonders or blunders.

The post Casa Morgana: Brutalist German Home Transformed with Plants first appeared on Dornob.

History is in the details, as seen in the simple yet striking designs of Dutch furniture designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld. A collection of Rietveld’s furniture pieces, gathered and appreciated by the Housden family for decades, recently went to auction with renowned auction house Christie’s. The collection not only represents the time in which it was crafted, but also their creator’s longstanding appreciation for professional creative design.

The first piece in the collection grabbed the attention of Brian Housden and his wife Margaret during a trip to The Netherlands in the 1950s. Housden, also an architect, was visiting Rietveld’s landmark Schroder House in Utrecht when Barbara commented on the “Red Blue” chair she was sitting on. Rietveld then gave it to her as a gift.

Although working mostly as an architect during that era, Rietveld had created many furniture designs during the late 1910 and early 1920s, even starting a furniture factory before also becoming an architect. Always having the vision of his furniture being mass-produced instead of individually crafted, Rietveld’s designs were aimed at simple construction rather than ornate or complicated features that would be difficult to reproduce. The results turned into pieces like the Zig-Zag chair, Schroeder occasional table, and Elling sideboard, of which the Housdens’ daughter remarked, “The sideboard was always in use, a vital piece of furniture for storing crockery, napkins, and glasses in the cupboards, and the surface areas were used for cutlery, small vases, mats, and the much-used cheese bell.”

The Housdens made their own impact in the architectural world after being influenced by their visit to the Schroder House, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At the time of their visit, Brian was working on designs for his own family home, which was also influenced by the bold statements he saw at Madam Dalsace’ home in Paris, The Maison de Verre. This culmination of design ideas became the blueprint for one of the first Brutalist-style buildings in the UK, at 78 South Hill Park in London.

The friendship between the designers resulted in the Housdens receiving 14 pieces of Rietveld furniture, all of which were scattered throughout the original house and adored by the family for decades. The couple also collected many more pieces over the next several years.

Tess Housden, daughter of Brian and Margaret, worked with Christie’s to prepare for the auction following the passing of her parents. She had many stories to share regarding the history of the furniture both before and during the time the family owned it. Rietveld designed his furniture with the intention that it would be used rather than preserved, and Tess reports the family did just that, stating: “After school, we would sit on the Berlin Chair to do our homework, as it had a large, flat armrest that could accommodate exercise books. I remember our dad often sat on the Red Blue Chair to watch television, smoke his pipe, and read the daily paper. I would definitely say that this piece of furniture was the most used. This was ‘his’ chair.”

Tess adds: “‘The importance of the furniture came from the fact that our father was very proud of his friendship with Gerrit Rietveld; in many ways, Rietveld was instrumental in encouraging our father to be bold and adventurous with the plans of the house he was to build in South Hill Park. In this same way, the furniture Rietveld designed for the house also became a key part of our time there, and I cannot think of our time growing up in the house without these pieces.”

The post Striking Gerrit Rietveld Furniture Pieces Go Up for Auction first appeared on Dornob.

Architecture practice 2001 found inspiration in John “Hercule” Gruen, a local hero who appeared in circuses, music halls, and theaters throughout Europe and the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Gruen’s feats included tearing apart iron horseshoes with his bare hands, breaking blocks of stone on his chest, and halting moving cars. The architects echo this brute strength in “Hercules House” with an inscrutable concrete mass devoid of decorative flourishes.

Set in the sleepy Mondorf-les-Bains community, the monumental modern home recalls another visual as well: that of a glacier jutting above the surface of the sea. The architects draw this comparison themselves, noting its “fierce” emergence and the soft blue tone of the front facade as it mimics the sky. Its footprint is decidedly compact, with much of its bulk hidden underground and its windows hidden behind blind concrete walls for the sake of privacy. And while the interior is just as austere, it’s also much lighter and airier than you might imagine.

Follow a slope down into the house’s basement level and you’ll find the common spaces, including a large open-plan living room, kitchen, dining room, laundry room, fitness and spa area, wine cellar, and garage. The rooms set within this subterranean space could easily seem dark and dank (especially given all the raw concrete surfaces) if not for the fact that nearly all of them open onto a sunken courtyard that allows natural daylight to come streaming inside. A 46-foot-long glass wall looks out onto a private outdoor area, which itself is screened in by both opaque and translucent boundaries. The wall also retracts on demand to open the living spaces to the outdoors.

Stairs leading from the courtyard up to the ground level deliver you to the home’s minimalist bedrooms and bathrooms. In each of them, the textural concrete imprinted by the home’s formwork complements steel framing, speckled terrazzo floors, and built-in elements like wardrobes and cabinetry made from smooth, pale wood.

“The project results in a multifaceted artifact, an architectural bastard, dealing with the context complexity and defining vital spaces for a young family in the 21st century,” says Philippe Nathan, founder of 2001.

“Only the main structural elements are visible, and [they] are enhanced through the use of formwork or sanding. The resulting austerity, which is unusual for contemporary domestic standards, underlines the essence of the project: the minimal quality of the interiors fosters a relationship with the context. The design facilitates the appropriation and the application of timeless architecture by its users in their daily lives.”

The overall effect of “Hercules House” may be a bit brutalist, but its interiors are more livable than its exterior may suggest. Would you want to live in a home this bold?

If you’re looking for another modern concrete monolith, you’ll definitely want to check out this urban Japanese concrete home inspired by caverns.

The post Glittering Modern Home Takes Inspiration from Icebergs first appeared on Dornob.

When it comes to the visual language that the new Norra Tornen brings to Stockholm, it looks the city may need a little help in the way of translation.

Norra Tornen (Swedish for North Towers) is a landmark project being built in the city’s Hagastaden district, consisting of two swanky residential towers. The first of these structures, the 35-story Innovationen Tower, was completed in November of 2018, while the second Helix Tower is expected to be finished in 2020. Despite being half-done, the complex is already the tallest residential project in all of Sweden.

Compared to the rest of the neighborhood, the OMA-designed Norra Tornen seems to be speaking an entirely different language, and doing it loudly at that. With no other precedent to compare itself to or communicate with, the towers struggle to relate to their surrounding low-rise context.

While juxtaposition can be harmonious in architecture, allowing the best qualities of disparate styles to really pop while remaining respectful to one another, Norra Tornen strikes no such balance. With the béton brut of Brutalism, the project tries to relate to its brick-clad neighborhood, but its size and height negates all of its efforts. The only respect shown here is to the country as a whole, with the towers’ fluted façades being made up of colored concrete panels made entirely in Sweden.

To fill in some leftover space on the site, the base of each tower has been slightly twisted, which at least makes the buildings look less bulky at street level. That’s just one of two pleasantries Norra Tornen exchanges with the rest of Hagastaden, but even here things feel inappropriate. The windows of the project are out of scale for the area, making the whole thing feel as if storefronts have been stacked to make a 460-foot-high complex. The upper-middle class and upscale residents will love it for its abundant natural light and warmth, as well as the level of emotional well-being it’ll bring them. But did the windows really have to be that large?

The second positive is the way the buildings taper as they rise, consequently reducing the presence of their shadows in the surrounding neighborhood. Unfortunately, it just reads like one of those standard apologies that follows architectural narcissism. You can almost hear the architects using that tapering to defend the project in public consultations, which is why feels like little more than a token design move — one normally enforced by city bylaws and local design standards anyways.

When all is said and done, Norra Tornen is as much of a social media landmark as it is an investment for wealthy Swedes. The problem with buildings that grab your attention online is that they do not always translate well within their geographic context. In cities where too many of these buildings are erected, their impact becomes the equivalent of a a noisy out-of-control party with distinct conversations happening all throughout. The Innovationen Tower will just have to talk to itself until Helix arrives.

The post How Will Norra Tornen Affect Stockholm? first appeared on Dornob.

Improbable Beginnings

Sam Grawe, former brand director for enigmatic designer Herman Miller, was happy living with his wife and son in the San Francisco Bay area for 15 years. In fact, when the family began toying with the idea of moving to Michigan so Sam could be closer to Miller’s headquarters, the couple had just purchased an Eichler home in upscale Marin County.
Despite the sudden change in lifestyle, the Grawes managed to find the perfect home in Grand Rapids (about an hour away from Miller’s headquarters). Designed by local architect Richard Wright in the 1970s, Sam recalls being particularly smitten by the big bronze panels hanging on its front doors. Coupled with the rest of the home’s architecture, that bronze proved irresistible. “It just seemed like this totally bizarre, Brutalist, postmodern house,” he recalls.

Visionary Potential

The Grawes immediately saw the potential hidden behind the home’s 70s trappings, which had obviously been built to the highest possible standards of the decade. An intercom system had been installed for communication between all rooms, the home’s walls were covered with upscale Evelyn Ackerman wood panels interspersed with elegant grasscloth, and chic teak parquet floors abounded. A particularly opulent Koi pond even graced the landing of the central stairway.

Not long after they moved in, Grawe started doing some rough sketches of his visions for the house in Adobe Illustrator and presented them to Becker & Sanders, a local contractor recommended to him by a fellow Herman Miller associate.
Eventually, every floor and wall in the home was resurfaced, otherwise altered, or removed entirely. The Grawes notably knocked out a wall in the dining room and got rid of a kitchen bar. Simultaneously, they also preserved several aspects from the original design, including the unique front doors (sans the brass panels) and their diminutive rosewood door handles, as well as the striking brown glazed bricks in the foyer.

Since both Grawes are passionate about cooking, it’s no surprise that their kitchen was completely overhauled, with matching state-of-the-art appliances now filling the space and a charming nook displaying their cookbook collection on one end. The room’s rough walls (and the walls all throughout the home) were smoothed out to soft, silky finishes, and huge skylights were put in above the central staircase to flood the space with natural light. Original furniture pieces are mingled with new styles to strike an ideal balance. Sam was particularly delighted to find a classic George Nelson coffee table from the 1960s for the home — a piece he’d desired for a long time.

The Grawes did nothing to alter the house’s exterior, as they already felt that it was perfect, including the windows graced with Romanesque arch detailing. Although the family will soon be moving out of the dream house, they cherish the memories they have of watching their sons grow up in it and will never forget its magical ambiance. “Even when there’s snow covering the skylights, light in the house is always great, no matter [the] season,” Sam fondly reminisces.

The post 1970s Michigan Dream House Transformed Into a Modern-Day Marvel first appeared on Dornob.

WHBC Architects strikes a fine balance with “Tropical Box House” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contrasting concrete’s materiality and dramatic Brutalist flair with a breezy porosity and perfectly framed views of the nature outside. Measuring over 7200 square feet, the home is monumental without being imposing thanks to a gridded structure with an unusual source of inspiration.

“Set in the tropics, we designed a concrete egg-crate structure that envelops the house to keep the heat out but draws daylight in to create comfortable spaces within,” the architects explain. “The perforated nature of this envelope allows the existing overgrowth to grow into the volume of the house, thus softening the boundary of inside and outside.”

Like most of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur remains in the 80-90ºF range by day and around 70º by night throughout the year. Consistent rainfall and lots of sun make it an ideal climate for spaces that blur the lines between indoors and outdoors, sheltered from the sun yet open to the fresh air. WHBC Architects allow Tropical Box House to embrace the jungle, the irregular pattern of frame openings casting shadows in the interiors to cool the home without making it feel closed off from the world outside. The concrete grid has been made 35 inches deep (900 millimeters) for extra stability.

Built on the edge of a gradual slope, the entire home is elevated from the ground on stilts to protect it from dampness and humidity — a crucial consideration in a tropical climate. As a bonus, the spaces in the rear of the house feel like they’re floating among the trees. Tropical Box House is set back slightly from the road, with a bridge crossing the slope between mature Albizia trees to reach the main entrance.

Once inside, visitors are immediately dazzled by an indoor/outdoor swimming pool that stretches out into the leafy canopy. The living and dining spaces gaze onto the shimmering surface of the pool, while bedrooms are hidden away on the upper floor for privacy and even better views. The dampness-prone ground level is reserved for utility rooms and a three-car garage, which itself is accessed by a ramp that flows down the side yard from street level.

“Looking beyond the pool and the garden, one is greeted with a clear and extended panoramic view of the forest,” say the architects. “On upper floors, windows are specially designed to capture views of big beautiful trees. A seemingly heavy concrete box, it touches the ground lightly, places itself among the trees and encourages the enduring landscape to grow within it.”

Even if you aren’t normally a fan of large-scale concrete architecture, you can probably agree that the only thing “brutal” about this house is its undeniable beauty.

The post Concrete in the Jungle: Malaysian Home Design Takes Inspiration from Egg Crates first appeared on Dornob.

One new café in Melbourne’s trendy Fitzroy suburb is taking all its cues from the color, texture, and character of bricks, working them into both its interior design and its branding. The Bentwood café is located in a former showroom that belonged to the famed furniture manufacturer Thonet, who themselves made the iconic Bentwood chair that’s now widely used in cafés and restaurants around the world.

Before the building was home to the Thonet showroom, it belonged to C.F. Rojo & Sons, a company that also made wooden furniture, so it’s safe to say that craft has always been at the heart of this 20th-century building. Today, it’s owned by local coffee magnate Julien Moussi, who had the idea to turn it into a café whose design would go beyond that of the average coffee shop. The building wasn’t much more than an empty shell when architects Ritz & Ghougassian came on board to transform it into the Bentwood café, but in a lot of ways, that blank canvas (along with the openness of the brief) left a lot of room for interpretation. The architects explain: “There wasn’t a whole lot that was left other than the original red brick facade. However, I think the essence of its past is still there.”

This “essence” was taken and turned into the starting point for the café’s design and identity. The industrial character of the surrounding area has been respected and channeled into a contemporary yet understated treatment of the building. The color of the interior is executed in a range of rusts, reds, and browns, all of which sprung out of the original brickwork. One of the biggest alterations to the space was the installation of a deep coffered ceiling, which itself was comprised of sheets of steel that were treated with a red oxide primer. This treatment is similar to that of the walls, some of which have been clad in bespoke metal sheeting to create a uniform layering throughout the interiors.

Red bricks make up the floors and the exposed walls. The seating in the café is, unsurprisingly, comprised entirely of Bentwood chairs, while the tables are made from clean and crisp cuts of pale timber, allowing the interiors’ russet tones to do most of the work from an aesthetic point of view. The café’s generous glazing is fitted with matte black frames, providing customers with ample views out onto the leafy street beyond. Thick concrete columns have also been added into the space, with their gray providing a beautiful contrast to the red of the walls and ceiling.

The architects perceive the project as “pay[ing] homage to the old custodians of the space with the use of Thonet furniture and carefully detailed joinery, whilst reflecting Fitzroy’s brutalist industrial heritage through the use of primed steel wall cladding and ceiling.”

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Lead architect Fouad Samara, whose eponymous firm enjoys a new office on the ground floor of the building, approached the project with a whole checklist of expectations. He wanted the building to have lots of light, a sense of spatial luxury, honesty in its use of materials, and functional flexibility.

The stack of luxury lofts addresses a need for dense high-end housing in the city while also contributing to the beauty of Beirut itself. The architects drew inspiration from traditional Lebanese houses known as “beit,” marrying their orderly and streamlined sense of purity with the flexibility of late modernist urban lofts in cosmopolitan cities like London.

“Functionally, we tried to fulfill the demand for flexible — truly and effortlessly flexible — small to medium size residential units in the heart of vibrant Beirut,” says Samara. “It was important for us to create an architecture that met this rising demand that also created an inspiring addition to the city, and an uplifting place to live.”

“I think this is what Le Corbusier was referring to in Vers Une Architecture, where I think he was yearning for not “another” architecture or “new” architecture as he was mistakenly interpreted, but for architecture as it had always been, and always ought to be — a relevant, ordered, and coherent architecture: a ‘modern’ architecture.”

Each apartment is double-height, fulfilling the architects’ desire for a spacious quality. Dark steel, pale wood, and exposed board-formed concrete give the structure a raw industrial character, and generous glazing opens each of the seven stacked units up to daylight and spectacular views of the city. But for Samara, the most crucial element was the ability to transform the interiors to meet the occupants’ changing needs, imbuing the lofts with a sense of home that’s often lacking in modern apartment towers.

Flexibility is especially poignant in fast-changing Beirut, which Samara calls “chaotic” in its constant evolution. If your apartment can shape-shift along with your life, you can stay in one place much longer, feeling a little freer to put down some roots.

Each apartment features two rooms or modules on a lower level and another two linked by a bridge on an upper level. Internal staircases and storage like built-in cupboards are located in the main open living space, while exterior staircases, elevators, and utilities are contained within a narrow space at the back of the building. But it’s those sliding walls that really make the Modulofts apartments so striking and novel, sliding right out of the apartment and into the air to create 16 different interior configurations.

The bedrooms can be self-contained by the walls or opened to the main space at will. Occupants can shift the layout for all sorts of purposes, making certain areas feel cozier or enlarging them to host gatherings. As they transform their homes individually, they also transform the look of the building as a whole, so it rarely looks exactly the same way twice in one day.

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Balfron Tower was originally designed by renowned architect Erno Goldfinger, who was also responsible for designing the famous Trellick Tower and a controversial residence in Hampstead that angered resident Ian Fleming, who in turn named the Bond villain Goldfinger after the architect. The tower is located in Poplar, East London, and has gone on to become something of a icon since its completion in 1967. It is currently a Grade II listed building. Intended for social housing, the local housing authority began refurbishing the building, which had fallen into decline, in 2011, bringing it up to current standards. Nonetheless, the Balfron was still slated for private sale in 2014, and since then, the architects have been overseeing its conversion into a high-quality apartment building.

More specifically, the two firms have been working with the graphic designers over at Brody Associates to develop an identity for the project. They’ve also reached out to artist Ryan Gander, who is turning his hand to fixtures and fittings inspired by Goldfinger’s original plans. The good news is that there’s ample precedent in London for desirable brutalist residences, including the coveted Barbican towers in the city center. Thus far, the strategy has been to retain many of the building’s standout elements, including the service tower, which will be equipped with communal cooking and entertaining facilities to allow more room in the units themselves. The presence of other communal areas like a gym, workshop, cinema, and rooftop terrace will foster the sense of community that Goldfinger envisioned when he first designed the tower.

The designers will also retain the tower’s original layout and structure. While these components will be stripped back to their cores, single story and duplex apartments will continue to be accessed from the linear service corridors that defined the typology of tower housing back in the 1960s. Within this scheme, the apartments themselves will be reconfigured to be open-plan, connecting the living and kitchen spaces and refitting the bathrooms, services, and finishes. The interiors will be closely aligned, mostly adhering to Goldfinger’s original color palette but giving it a contemporary twist. 140 apartments will be converted, while six will be restored to their original design to act as heritage units, displaying the architectural and design-based thinking of their era.

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