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Interior designer Tola Ojuolape demonstrates how to apply materials and finishes to a project using SketchUp in the second part of her Design Workshop, produced by Dezeen for the software brand. More
In the latest instalment of Dezeen and SketchUp’s Design Workshops, interior designer Tola Ojuolape explains how she used SketchUp’s software to create a virtual library for Clerkenwell in London. More
In the first instalment of Dezeen and SketchUp’s Design Workshops, Uchronia founder Julien Sebban explains how he used SketchUp’s software to create a fictional bar interior characterised by amorphous forms and soft edges. More
A hotel overlooking a Japanese castle and a neurodiversity-friendly office building are among the winners of Shaw Contract’s 2023 Design Awards, revealed in this video produced for the brand by Dezeen.
Global flooring company Shaw Contract recognised five winners in the 18th edition of its Design Awards, which celebrate impactful living, working, learning and healing interior spaces around the world.
In total, five Best of Globe winners were chosen by a panel of design professionals from 39 regional winners, which had been narrowed down from over 650 project submissions from 40 countries.
The winners include architecture studio Tatsuro Sasaki, which won an award for its OMO5 Kumamoto by Hoshino Resorts hotel built on Mount Chausu in Kumamoto City, Japan.
The hotel is located in the city centre overlooking Kumamoto Castle and is nestled in amongst the landscape to blend in with its surroundings.
Shaw Contract reveals Naelofar Office by Swot Design Group as one of the winners of its 2023 Design Awards.Four workplace designs were also recognised, including Boston Consulting Group’s headquarters in Toronto designed by HOK.
The office features ample open spaces to flood it with natural light and is equipped with circadian lighting to follow people’s natural rhythms and improve productivity.
Another winner was the 345 North Morgan office design by Eckenhoff Saunders, which is located adjacent to Chicago’s metro tracks. The design of the office was informed by classic railway stations and draws from the neighbourhood’s rich industrial history.
Shaw Contract reveals Boston Consulting Group Canadian Headquarter by HOK as one of the winners of its 2023 Design Awards.Other winners include Swot Design Group’s Naelofar Office in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, which was designed to foster relationships and collaboration in the workplace.
It features meeting rooms with operable glass panels that can be rearranged to open up spaces for functions such as training sessions or events.
Rezen Studio’s Newmont office in Subiaco, Australia also received an award, which Shaw Contract described as an example of “the rapidly evolving office typology which responds to the changes in which businesses are operating”.
Shaw Contract reveals Newmont by Rezen Studio as one of the winners of its 2023 Design Awards.”We believe that design has the power to shape the world around us and create a better future for both people and the planet,” said Shaw Contract.
“That’s why the Shaw Contract Design Awards programme is so important to us. It allows celebration of the designers who share our commitment to creating a positive impact in all interior spaces.”
Each winner was awarded a £2,000 USD charitable donation in the name of their studio to an organisation of their choice. They also received a trophy designed by Singapore-based artist Kelly Limerick using recyclable Shaw Contract’s recycled yarn.
Find out more about all of the winners on the Shaw Contract Design Awards website.
Partnership content
This video was produced by Dezeen for Shaw Contract as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
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COS architectural creative lead Marcus Cole explains how more sustainable design principles were used in its recently opened concept stores, in this exclusive video produced by Dezeen for the brand.
The brand recently opened two stores, located in Stockholm and Mexico City, which according to COS exemplify its commitment to sustainable building and circular design. Cole talked to Dezeen about the brand’s approach when creating the new retail spaces.
“This flagship store in Stockholm is the first in Europe to adopt the most sustainable store concept from COS to date,” he said.
The Stockholm flagship store reflects the brand’s promise to lower CO2 emissions. Photograph by Åke LindmanAt 566 metres square and spread over two floors, the store, located on Biblioteksgatan, is also the brand’s largest concept store.
When creating the space, COS wanted to address their existing waste flows, finding ways in which byproducts that would traditionally be categorised as waste could be reused and repurposed.
“The design focuses on circularity in both our material selection and our design strategy,” explained Cole.
“The floor throughout our sales area is a terrazzo tile that has been made from 90 per cent quarry waste from our own suppliers’ production line. The majority of the rugs are a collaboration using waste yarn from our suppliers’ chain, each bespoke in their own way.”
“We prioritised materials that can be easily repaired, and are designed for disassembly by avoiding mixing materials that are hard to decouple later down the line,” Cole added.
The Stockholm store uses 66 per cent more recycled materials than the original store design. Photograph by Åke LindmanThe brand also took the same approach when creating the furniture and fixtures used in the store, choosing to prioritise more sustainable and recycled materials.
“Our vitrines and wardrobes are made from a combination of recycled acrylic and bamboo,” said Cole.
COS reflects 18th-century frescoes in Bolzano store with mirrors and mesh
“Bamboo is a more renewable choice than traditional hardwoods, because of the speed at which it grows, its carbon storage capacity, and also its durability,” he continued.
“If we look to our fitting rooms and some of the softer fixtures in our stores, the panels are made from 60 per cent recycled plastic bottles that have been spun into felt, [and] the floor consists of a PVC free linoleum, which is made from a mixture of recycled and natural materials.”
Sustainable and recycled materials were prioritised during the design process. Photograph by Åke LindmanOther changes include 30 per cent recycled aluminium rails, 100 per cent recycled mannequins and the removal of all concrete fittings.
The brand also found it important to make use of the existing building where possible to reduce unnecessary CO2 emissions and to give new life to unused materials.
“This concept store is actually a rebuild of an existing store,” Cole explained. “We were able to reallocate and reuse 50 per cent of our interior elsewhere in our portfolio, making sure we have as much emphasis on what we’re taking out of the store as what we’re putting in it as well.”
A selection of paintings and sculptures by visual artist Liselotte Watkins decorate the store interior. Photograph by Åke LindmanFollowing on from the Stockholm store, the brand also unveiled another sustainable concept store in Mexico City. The store is located in the Polanco neighbourhood, and the interior references Mexico’s artisan craft traditions.
In addition to operating as a fashion store, the shop also exhibits artworks by local creators, such as Caralarga, a female-led enterprise which focuses on sustainability and female empowerment.
The Mexico City store is the first in the Americas to embrace COS’s sustainable store concept. Photograph by Fernando Marroquin”We have very ambitious plans to bring this sustainable approach and all of our learnings from it to more stores in the future,” Cole said.
“The stores that have adopted our new concept now have an average of 68 per cent recycled materials. And this is a percentage that we’re both really proud of because of how far we’ve come, but also challenged by because of where we want to get to,” he continued.
“Whether it’s a flagship store or a smaller activation, we worked hard to embed agility into the core of our interiors so that we’re not wasteful in the future.”
COS is a London-based fashion brand. The brand has 252 stores, spanning 47 physical markets.
Partnership content
This video is produced by Dezeen for COS as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen’s partnership content here.
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UK-studio Tsuruta Architects has combined artificial intelligence with CNC cutting in a revamp of a home in London’s Notting Hill.
Dragon Flat features engraved wall panels and joinery incorporating AI-generated images, including a map of the River Thames and a graphic floral motif.
AI-generated engravings feature on both floors of the homeA CNC router – a computer-controlled cutting machine – allowed these designs to be directly transferred onto wooden boards, which have been used for surfaces within the interior.
Taro Tsuruta, founder of Tsuruta Architects, said that he decided to experiment with AI because there wasn’t room in the budget to collaborate with a graphic designer.
A map of the River Thames features in the living spaceUsing DALL-E 2, an AI program that transforms text instructions into high-quality images, he was able to create bespoke designs for the kitchen and bedroom space.
“I typed a series of prompts and ran a series of variations, then came up with an unexpected yet expected result,” he told Dezeen. “It was like sculpting a form with a keyboard.”
Upstairs, a tatami room features a row of engraved peoniesTsuruta’s clients for Dragon Flat were a young Asian couple who moved to London five years ago. The property they bought was a two-level maisonette in a 1950s council block.
The renovation sees the home subtly reconfigured.
Tsuruta Architects incorporates 27,000 cat faces into five homes in Catford
The lower level is opened up, allowing the kitchen to become part of the living space, while the upper level has been adapted to create more storage.
This revamped upper level includes a walk-in wardrobe and a tatami room – a typical space in traditional Japanese homes – as well as a main bedroom.
The designs are etched into OSB wall panelsThe River Thames image features in the new living and dining room. Engraved plywood panels front a grid of cupboards, creating an entire wall of storage.
The floral pattern, designed to resemble “an army of peonies”, can be found in the tatami room.
Images of these flowers are etched into white-washed oriented strand board (OSB), which forms wall panels. This creates a colour contrast that allows the design to stand out.
Whitewashed surfaces allow the floral design to stand out”We did quite a few sample tests, changing the needle size of the CNC router to get it right,” said Tsuruta.
The aim here, he explained, was to create a design that playfully references Arts and Crafts, a movement that embraced floral imagery but rejected the technological advances of its time.
“Arts and Craft was very labour-intensive,” said the architect. “Our process is the opposite, but we share a common goal of enriching the lives of occupants.”
The addition of a walk-in wardrobe frees up space in the bedroomCNC cutting has played a pivotal role in many of Tsuruta’s projects. Examples include The Queen of Catford, a group of five flats filled with cat faces, and Marie’s Wardrobe, a home with a highly intricate custom staircase.
Dragon Flat is his first completed project to incorporate AI, a process he said provides infinite options but requires human input in order to achieve a successful result.
A floating timber staircase allows light to filter through”This process is pretty much the same as with any tool,” he said. “At the end of the day, we were the ones to select and move on to the next variation or stop there.”
The interior also features other playful details, including a floating timber staircase. Built in the same position as the original stairwell, this perforated volume allows more light to filter between spaces.
OSB and marble contrast in the bathroomThe bathroom combines marble with OSB, creating an intentional contrast between luxury and low-cost materials, and also includes some small motifs showing bats.
“The symbolic meaning of peonies, dragons and bats, together with the Thames River, is ambiguous,” added Tsuruta.
“We want people to keep thinking and talking about them, but overall they are believed to bring prosperity and a happy life.”
The photography is by Tim Croker.
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An exhibition at Chatsworth House including designers including Michael Anastassiades, Faye Toogood and Formafantasma, features in this video produced by Dezeen for the stately home.
Called Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth, the exhibition brings together a collection of furniture and objects displayed throughout and responding to Chatsworth House and its gardens.
In total, 16 international designers and artists created pieces that respond to the interiors of the building.
The exhibition introduces new art pieces and objects into the house and gardenSome responded by sourcing materials from the property itself, while others focussed on themes and ideas taken from decorations within the interiors.
“The designers of the exhibition have responded to Chatsworth in all sorts of fascinating ways,” said co-curator of the exhibition Glenn Adamson.
“Throughout you really see this kind of conversation between the present and the past.”
Jay Sae Jung Oh designed a throne using musical instrumentsThe exhibition continues Chatsworth House’s 500-year-long history of working with leading artists and designers and collecting an extensive collection of art and objects.
“An artist’s new work can create a new way of looking at these spaces,” said Chatsworth House Trust director Jane Marriott.
“It can capture their imaginations and hopefully inspire them to explore Chatsworth in a different light.”
Toogood’s monolithic furniture creates a pensive space within the exhibitionBritish designer Toogood took over Chatsworth’s chapel and adjoining Oak Room. As a nod to the historical use of the space as a place of worship and gathering, she created an installation of monolithic furniture made from bronze and stone.
The sculptural forms were designed to evoke ecclesiastical structures and to reflect the local landscape.
“These objects give a sense of meditative calm, a sense of massiveness or monumentality that feels appropriate to the space,” Adamson said.
Dutch designer Joris Laarman designed a series of benches for the exhibitionTwo stone benches by Dutch designer Joris Laarman made from locally sourced gritstone , which was the material used to build the house itself, were placed in Chatsworth House’s gardens.
The surfaces of the benches were carved with undulating patterns in which moss and lichen have been planted and will continue to grow over time.
Other objects in the exhibition include a throne-like seat wrapped in leather made from musical instruments by Jay Sae Jung Oh, a fibrous cabinet designed by Fernando Laposse, and sinuous steam-wood sculptures by Irish furniture maker Joseph Walsh.
Laposse’s fluffy cabinet is made from agave plant fibresAnother section of the exhibition, which occupy Chatsworth’s Sculpture Gallery built in the early 19th century, features pieces by British designer Samuel Ross.
Ross’s pieces were designed to echo the surrounding sculptures, mimicking their form to invite viewers to imagine the body that would recline on them. The designer has used a material palette of stone and marble to further reflect the sculptures within the gallery.
Chatsworth’s collection contains art and design pieces spanning 4,000 years”It’s a kind of collision of past and present, of the artisanal with the technological, the classical with the industrial,” Adamson said.
“It’s a great example of how the show in general tries to talk across generations, across centuries.”
Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth is on display at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire until 1 October 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
Photography is courtesy of the Chatsworth House Trust.
Partnership content
This video was produced by Dezeen for Chatsworth House as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen’s partnership content here.
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The winners of the Shaw Contract’s 2022 Design Awards, which include an orthopedic hospital in USA and a workplace in a restored building in Brazil, are revealed in this captioned video produced by Dezeen for the brand.
Flooring company Shaw Contract recognised five winners in the 17th edition of its Design Awards, which celebrates impactful living, working, learning and healing spaces around the world.
Each of the winners was awarded a $2,000 charitable donation in the name of their studio to an organisation of their choice.
HGA’s design of the Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Centre was noted in the awards.”The Shaw Contract Design Awards program is our chance to recognise the spaces that inspire new ways of living, working, learning, and healing through the design lens,” said Shaw Contract.
“The awards place a spotlight on a diverse range of talents from across the globe, celebrating design in action and purposefully rewarding the innovative and truly inspiring work being done by the architecture and design community.”
In total, five winners were chosen from 37 finalists, narrowed down from almost 600 project submissions from 37 countries by a panel of design professionals.
The Hilton Singapore Orchard hotel was awarded in the hospitality categoryThe winners included architecture firm HGA , which won an award for its Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Centre in Akron, USA.
Three workplace design projects were also recognised. These were the mining IGO offices in Perth, Australia, designed by Rezen + Templewel, the headquarters of Sede Insole Energia in Recife, Brazil, designed by Mobio Arquitetura and the EY Melbourn workplace in Australia by Gensler.
EY Melbourn was recognised for workplace designThe final winner was the Hilton Singapore Orchard hotel in Singapore, designed by Avalon Collective, which won an award in the hospitality category.
Read more about all of the winners on Shaw Contract’s Design Awards website.
Partnership content
This video was created by Dezeen for Shaw Contract as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
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A historic community centre that was saved from demolition by activists – including Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon – has been given a new lease of life by architecture studio New Practice.
New Practice founders Becca Thomas and Marc Cairns opted for a light-touch approach in the renovation of Kinning Park Complex, a century-old former school building in the southwest of Glasgow.
A new roof dotted with skylights makes the building weather-proof againAlthough the building was in a poor state, with an extremely leaking roof, faulty electrics and a broken heating system, the Glasgow-based architects’ approach was to save as much of the existing structure and interior as possible.
They adopted a reuse and recycle strategy, while also making subtle changes that improve the building’s functionality and accessibility.
Pink denotes the community space on the first floorThe revamped interiors are animated by a system of colour-blocking, which helps to ensure the building can be easily navigated by people of all literacy levels.
“One of our key aims was to keep the building feeling familiar,” explains Thomas in a video about the project.
First-floor workspaces are picked out in yellow”Lots of people have hugely strong memories and love for the building and we didn’t want to change that too much. By taking this adaptive reuse approach, we just kept the building feeling like itself and tried to elevate that,” she said.
“Every choice to remove something original has been taken only where we absolutely needed to remove that, for the safety and for the future of the building.”
Kinning Park Complex was originally a school buildingKinning Park Complex first became a community centre after the school closed down in 1976, but looked set for demolition when the council announced plans to close it in 1996.
Local residents and campaigners, including a then-25-year old Nicola Sturgeon, staged a sit-in to protest the closure. After 55 days, the council agreed to let the community take over the building’s running.
The building stayed in use for another two decades, but over time its problems became hard to ignore.
A reconfigured ground floor features a large community kitchenThe trustees, led by local resident Helen Kyle, approached New Practice after seeing Many Studios, a creative hub that the architects created in a converted Glasgow market hall.
The challenge was not only to refurbish the building but also to help support the community’s ambition to buy the property, by improving opportunities for income generation.
RCKa designs Nourish Hub to tackle food poverty in London
Thanks to government and lottery funding, the architects were able to plan a full overhaul of the interior in collaboration with engineering firm Max Fordham.
The roof was replaced as sensitively as possible, while the interior layout was gently adjusted to make room for a lift.
A double-helix staircase, originally sub-divided, has been opened upThe atrium, which was once subdivided to separate boys and girls, is now opened up. The result is a space that feels generous and bright, thanks to the skylight overhead.
Three floors of classroom and office spaces have been adapted for a range of uses. A community kitchen can be found on the ground floor, while the second level has become a co-working space.
The building was taken over by the community following a sit-in in 1996″A key decision that we had to make was to ensure that the work that we were doing in the building didn’t sanitise this rich, abrasive history of activism and community-led dialogues and debates,” said Cairns.
“We really tried to keep that at the forefront of our thinking.”
Original wood floors have been rejuvenatedFlexible partitions allows the ground- and first-floor halls to be easily subdivided if required.
Other spaces include a quiet room that could be used for anything from prayer to breast-feeding, and a series of small studios and workshops.
The restored handrails are painted in the same burgundy they were in the pastRealising the project in the context of the pandemic proved a challenge. With the architects unable to be on site all the time, they found it difficult to fully realise their ambition to reuse as much as possible.
Thomas and Cairns recall coming to site to find elements such as doors and balustrade railings had been thrown away by builders, despite their instructions.
Nonetheless there are still plenty of recycled details to be found, including a framed patch of original wallpaper and a series of storage cabinets built into the walls.
Original details, like a patch of ageing wallpaper, are celebratedThey hope the building can help to become a positive example of adaptive reuse, particularly in light of the COP26 environmental conference that recently took place in Glasgow.
This sentiment is echoed by Sturgeon: “The challenge of refurbishing and imagining a building like this, for decades to come, is fantastically dynamic for the architecture and design industries,” she said.
“We just took it for granted that buildings would reach the end of their natural life and then they would sort of fall into dereliction, and thankfully communities decided that that wasn’t going to happen. So we’ve learned how to reimagine things for the future and preserve for the future.”
Photography is by Will Scott. Video is by Pretend Lovers.
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