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      Mythology crafts warm plywood interiors for Shen beauty store in Brooklyn

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      Plywood covers almost every surface in this store that creative studio Mythology has designed for beauty retailer Shen in Brooklyn, New York.Shen’s new retail space is nestled in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighbourhood and measures 1,550 square metres.
      The former store of the beauty retailer – which is known for selling a roster of independent makeup and skincare brands – had been located in the nearby area of Carroll Gardens and featured a mix of white and lavender-pink walls.

      The interior of Shen’s store is lined with plywood
      Manhattan-based Mythology has fashioned a warmer fit-out for this location, opting to line every surface in Baltic birch plywood.

      “We challenged ourselves to use a singular material because we wanted to juxtapose a humble utilitarian material like plywood with the high-end products featured in Shen’s product offering,” Ted Galperin, a partner and director of retail at Mythology, told Dezeen.
      “Using both the face and end-grain of the plywood allowed us to create a multitude of custom applications, and add visual variety to the space.”

      Colour is provided by hand-drawn wall murals
      Inside, Shen has been loosely divided into three sections. The first section is dedicated to customer browsing and lies towards the left of the store.
      Plywood has been used here to make a sequence of storage units that fan outwards from the wall, each one complete with vanity mirror and shelving where products are openly displayed. Names of different brands that are on offer have been carved into plywood panels set directly above the units.

      Plywood counters displaying products slope out from the walls
      The second section comprises a couple of triangular plywood islands in the middle of the store, where Shen staff can spotlight certain products and talk through them in detail with customers or demonstrate how they’re used.
      On the right-hand side of the store is the third section, which is used for services like makeup tutorials. There’s also an angled plywood counter here that showcases candles and scents for the home, running beneath a three-dimensional plywood sign of Shen’s company logo.

      The store includes an area for makeup tutorials
      Excluding a handful of restored 1950s stools from Thonet, furnishings and decorative elements in the store have been kept to a minimum.
      A splash of colour is added by a bespoke mural created by New York artist Petra Börner, which features a black-line illustration of a person’s face surrounded by wobbly blotches of green and turquoise paint.

      Beauty treatment rooms lie towards the rear of the store
      Another mural by Börner using pink and orange tones appears in the treatment area at the rear of the store, where customers can come for treatments like facials, waxing, and microblading.
      Walls here have also been painted a pinkish hue, but exposed plywood can still be seen on the floor, built-in sofas and beauticians’ cupboards.

      Walls in the treatment rooms have been painted pink
      Mythology isn’t the only design studio that has created a striking retail interior using just one material.
      Brooks + Scarpa lined the walls of an Aesop shop in downtown Los Angeles with cardboard fabric rolls salvaged from local fashion houses and costume shops, while Valerio Olgiati blanketed a Celine store in Miami in blue-tinged marble.
      An Ace & Tate store in Antwerp is also lined exclusively in white terrazzo tiles inlaid with red and blue aggregate.
      Photography is by Brooke Holm.

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      Architensions creates colourful Children's Playspace with plywood climbing frame and tunnel

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      New York studio Architensions has designed structures modeled on clouds, treehouses, tunnels and igloos for an indoor playground for children in Brooklyn.Called Children’s Playspace, the space was designed for a wellness professional who wanted an intimate play area for children.
      Architensions’ response was to create structures in different colours and shapes that could offer different sensory experiences based on natural landscapes.

      Among these is an eight-foot-tall (2.4-metre-tall) green cylinder, known as the Treehouse, which is composed of a stepped bottom and gridded top wrapped in mesh.

      The Tunnel meanwhile has a slanted, gridded exterior and arched opening carved through it that leads up steps and down a ramp. Geometric windows with colourful frames protrude from the exterior to offer views out and inside to the brightly coloured orange walls.

      “As designers, we had to challenge ourselves and ask a number of questions,” said Architensions co-principal Alessandro Orsini.
      “How can the built environment relate to children’s imagination, cognitive development, and aesthetic appeal? Is it possible to merge aesthetics and function for a space that appeals to children?”

      Another structure, called Igloo, has a circular white base and a suspended triangular top covered with semi-translucent washi paper.
      Architensions said the project took cues from other architect-designed playgrounds such as the structures architect Aldo van Eyck’s built in his series of of Amsterdam playscapes and the never-built Contoured Playground Japanese American artist and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi designed to encourage freeform play.

      “The goal is to iconise the forms to make them recognisable and welcoming for the children,” Orsini added. “And, at the same time, to create inspiring spaces where they will always feel in control of their environments.”
      ‘This environment allows them to assume different body postures, to create boundaries, and to manipulate and re-invent their surroundings,” added co-principal Nick Roseboro.

      Other playgrounds recently completed by architects and designs with bold forms include a colourful playground in Madrid designed by Aberrant Architecture and an open-air space made of geometric structures by French designer Olivier Vadrot.

      Olivier Vadrot designs sculptural outdoor playground for children

      In Children’s Playspace, all the plywood is sanded and clear stained, ​and covered in non-VOC (volatile organic compounds) natural stain paint, in order to make it safe for the children.

      Three cloud-like structures made from slats of white-painted foam also hang from in the 875-square-foot (81-square-metre) playground, while a soft tan-coloured rubber floor was chosen to reference a forest floor covered in pine needles.
      Some of the walls are draped with with a silky textile to look like water or sky, while another is covered in a mural of woodland.

      Children’s Playspace joins a number of projects Architensions, which has offices in New York and Rome, has completed in New York borough Brooklyn. They include the renovation and extension of a Brooklyn townhouse and a tiny writer’s studio.
      Photography is by Cameron Blaylock.

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      Worrell Yeung designs industrial artist studios in historic Brooklyn factory buildings

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      New York architecture studio Worrell Yeung has transformed historic factory buildings in Brooklyn Navy Yard into multi-use workspaces and artist studios featuring time-worn brick walls and weathered beams and columns.The adaptive reuse project involved remodelling 77 Washington, a six-storey former masonry factory built in the 1920s, and four other buildings situated around on the property.

      It is located at the corner of Washington Avenue and Park Avenue in Brooklyn Navy Yard, a former shipbuilding complex between the Dumbo and Williamsburg neighbourhoods undergoing regeneration.

      Worrell Yeung drew from the area’s historic architecture and the design of early 20th-century New York warehouses to update the 38,000-square-foot (3530.3-square-metre) multi-use art and office space.

      “The existing buildings were so rich with history and layered with texture that we wanted our design to highlight these found conditions while also updating to accommodate new uses and new programs,” said co-principal Max Worrell.

      A six-storey brick structure occupies the centre of the property, with a cluster of three one-storey buildings situated on its south end and a single garage unit located on the opposite side.
      On the main building the brick facade was left untouched, while the sides of the building are painted white.

      Storefronts situated along the street level were restored to house artist and photography studios. Each of the exteriors is painted dark blue and is fronted with large windows that flood natural light into the interiors.
      The low-lying structures are connected by a central courtyard filled with gravel and plants laid out by landscape firm Michael van Valkenburgh Associates. To form the outdoor patio and bike storage area the studio removed a roof that previously covered the space.

      In the garden three solid oak logs form a series of benches. Over the past decade a local shipbuilder gathered the reclaimed wood used for the seating following a number of storms in the region.
      Inside the materials and patterns are evocative of old Brooklyn factories and warehouses. The floors are covered with concrete and metal diamond plates.

      Macro Sea turns abandoned Brooklyn warehouse into New Lab co-working space

      Exposed brick walls coated with layers of old paint pair with structural wood columns and beams in the open-plan spaces, which include meeting rooms, a small kitchenette and a large lobby area.
      Brooklyn Navy Yard woodworker Bien Hecho repurposed timber floor joists from the building into a custom-built conference table and a bench.

      Steel grids installed across the elevator shaft windows are visible from the building’s exterior and match the pattern on the translucent glass and plywood walls located in the lobby.
      “These interventions are a nod to the aesthetics of storied factory buildings and Navy Yard warehouses, which historically featured grids in their sash windows, fencing, and ship docks,” added co-principal Jejon Yeung.

      Worrell Yeung was founded in 2014 by Max Worrell and Jejon Yeung. The studio has completed a number of renovation projects in New York City, including a loft in Chelsea and an apartment inside Dumbo’s Clocktower building.

      Other office projects in Brooklyn Navy Yard are a space for tech entrepreneurs located in a former warehouse renovated by New York developer Macro Sea and Marvel Architects and a new 16-storey co-working building by S9 Architecture.
      Photography is by Naho Kubota.

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      WORKac adds curving perforated steel staircase to Brooklyn apartment

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      New York studio WORKac has inserted a white perforated steel staircase into this three-storey Brooklyn apartment as part of a renovation designed to brighten its dark interiors. Wyckoff Street Residence was designed for a family looking to bring more natural light into the upper levels of its home. The 2,550-square-foot (236-square-metre) space comprises three levels, […] More

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      Arnold Studio designs Brooklyn sensory deprivation spa Vessel Floats

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      New York architecture firm Arnold Studio has covered the walls of this sensory deprivation spa in Brooklyn neighbourhood Greenpoint with rigid felt and bold colours. Vessel Floats is a spa designed for the practice of sensory deprivation, a process that involves cutting off all external stimuli including sounds and light. Arnold Studio has outfitted the meditative […] More

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      Bohlin Cywinski Jackson touches up its design for Williamsburg's Blue Bottle Coffee

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      Pale wood decorates this Blue Bottle Coffee cafe in Brooklyn designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, which the American practice has updated to accommodate more people. Bohlin Cywinski Jackson created the Blue Bottle Coffee space in New York’s Williamsburg neighbourhood in 2017. The firm was enlisted to return to the project to make more space for […] More

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      Arnold Studio modernises 19th-century Brooklyn house with black and white

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      Brooklyn practice Arnold Studio has designed this light-filled apartment inside a historic brick house in the borough’s Clinton Hill neighbourhood. The project, called Clinton Residence, occupies the upper two floors of a four-storey brick home that dates back to the 1800s. Designed as a grand mansion, the building has a red brick and stone exterior, with […] More

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      The Wing Williamsburg is a black and beige co-working space

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      Women-focused co-working company The Wing has used a combination of neutral tones and pops of black for its Williamsburg space, which contrasts the colourful aesthetic of its other outposts. The Wing Williamsburg occupies the upper two floors of a newly built three-storey brick building in Brooklyn, New York. The co-working spaces are topped with a spacious rooftop patio […] More