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Architecture firm Perkins&Will has completed an office interior in Dallas, Texas for healthcare provider Signify, centred around a large steel staircase and tiered wooden platform for meetings. More
New York studio Space4Architecture has brought natural light into a townhouse in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighbourhood by adding a staircase topped with a skylight. More
Interior designer Kelly Wearstler included eye-catching details such as vintage rugs and a white oak staircase that doubles as a ceramics display in her design for the Austin Proper Hotel and Residences.Built in 2019 by New York firm Handel Architects, the 32-storey hotel and apartments managed by McGuire Moorman Hospitality is located in Downtown Austin, Texas.
Los Angeles-based Wearstler, who will be on the interiors panel as a Dezeen Awards 2021 judge, created the aesthetic for the 244 rooms and 99 “branded residences.”
Panels of Shou Sugi Ban cypress clad the walls
Her interior design for the hotel revolves around local art and textiles, with some eclectic vintage elements thrown in.
A focal point is a sculptural staircase made of white oak wood with stepped balustrades.
Vintage rugs are draped over the wooden stairs
An interesting backdrop has been created by showcasing the underside of the staircase steps, while a ziggurat of plinths below is used to display a range of glazed earthenware pots and vases.
Custom panelling along the walls of the hotel is made from cypress wood, charred using the traditional Japanese technique of Shou Sugi Ban to create a tiger-striped effect.
Patterned tiles and rugs feature in the Peacock restaurant
Mismatched vintage rugs run up the stairs, and a mix of chairs and armchairs upholstered in patterned fabric are scattered around the lobby.
Tiles by Austin ceramicist Rick Van Dyke appear as inlays on furniture such as cabinets, and fibre artwork by local artist Magda Sayeg, known for her yarn bombing installations, are hung in the bedrooms alongside antique mirrors.
Wine racks and botanical wallpaper decorate the restaurant
The fifth floor features a pool deck clad with locally quarried travertine, where Mexican restaurant La Piscina serves small-batch tequila.
There are three other eateries in Austin Proper Hotel and Residences including Peacock, which serves Mediterranean food against a backdrop of parquet floors covered in more vintage rugs and walls covered in Portuguese-style tiles.
A private dining area, screened off by walls made of full wine racks, features botanical wallpaper.
Pastel tiles decorate the Mockingbird cafe
The interior of The Mockingbird, a coffee shop that serves Greek frozen yoghurt, was decked out in more colourful tiles by Wreastler.
Small square tiles cover the walls and form a pattern of powder blue, seafoam green, inky navy blue and pale burnt orange colours.
The bar has a flocked wallpaper ceiling
Austin Proper Hotel and Residences also has a drinking establishment called Goldie’s Sunken Bar, which has a cobalt blue-painted bar, low stuffed armchairs and a high ceiling covered in opulent wallpaper.
All over the hotel, walls are hug with art and niches are filled with ceramics. Pot plants filled with hardy desert species add splashes of greenery.
Pot plants and mismatched furniture
The 99 apartments attached to the hotel also have interiors designed by Kelly Wearstler. Their occupants have access to the hotel’s amenities as well as a private pool, along with dog grooming and concierge services.
Kelly Wearstler is an interior designer based on America’s west coast. Recent collaborations for the same hotel franchise include the San Francisco Proper and the Santa Monica Proper.
Photography is by The Ingalls.
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Canadian design duo Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster have created a playful all-blue cafe in a century-old house in Buffalo, New York, with an optical illusion staircase.Named Tipico Coffee, the cafe’s identity was formed with the intention of designing a space that encourages social interactions and supports local craftsmanship.
The cafe’s main bar is grafted from reclaimed furniture
Reclaimed furniture and lighting made from construction-site string lights feature alongside an oversized staircase to nowhere which forms amphitheatre-style seating.
The cafe’s main bar is made from ten reclaimed wooden tables sourced from classified advertisements website Craigslist.
The main bar encourages social interactions
The tables are grafted together and painted in sky-blue, forming a unified bar which runs along one wall of the cafe.
“The process of designing the cafe really started with the idea of the social infrastructure of the grafted bar,” Jamrozik and Kempster told Dezeen.
Drinks on ice are displayed between the bar’s table-tops
The open bar has clusters of swivelling stools arranged around blue table-tops that jut out of the bar’s customer side, allowing easy socialising between customers and staff.
“The different shapes of the tables come together to create opportunities for conversations,” continued the designers.
“This is augmented with the use of swivelling bar stools that allow patrons the ability to turn their bodies to orient themselves to a new connection.”
Swivelling stools encourage random encounters between customers and staff
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Groups of circular olive-green garden tables and chairs, as well as built-in blue benches, make up two intimate seating areas behind each side of the bar, which are separated by a wall.
The tables and chairs used are purposefully outdoor furniture. This means that the seating can be moved onto an exterior patio in the summer months.
Tipico’s atmosphere is a mix of indoors and outdoors
Various scattered potted plants blend green and blue furniture together and continue the theme of bringing the outdoors inside.
Jamrozik and Kempster explained their intentions for using sky-blue as the cafe’s dominant colour.
Ménard Dworkind creates retro coffee bar in downtown Montreal
“We wanted to use a vibrant colour to visually tie together the bar and benches to create continuity in the space and give visual emphasis to the bar as the main design gesture.”
“We chose blue to both complement the olive green furniture and plants, but also to create moments of contrast with the bespoke yellow lights,” they continued.
Potted plants are scattered around the space
The bespoke lights designed for the cafe are composed of construction-site string lights, wound around sections of aluminium stock tubes. They hang above the bar and the seating areas.
“We wanted to transform the string lights, while still making it clear what the source product was,” explained the designers.
Lighting made from construction-site string lights
Metal pegboard is another off-the-shelf material used in the space, making up a menu board behind the bar, a merchandise display board and a community message board.
The bottom of the main bar and built-in-benches was also lined with wooden pegboard in order to “give them both a visual texture, taking advantage of the acoustic properties of the perforations,” said Jamrozik and Kempster
A merchandise display board made from metal pegboard
A sense of the building’s historic charm remains in the existing fireplace that is preserved, which is painted in a strip of the same sky-blue paint as the main bar.
An over-scaled stairwell acts as an additional, cosy seating area fit for a couple of customers at a time.
The building’s original fireplace and its playful stairwell
Sealed off by a mirror and leading to nowhere, the stairwell is intended as an “Alice in Wonderland moment,” enhancing the cafe’s playfulness.
“The stairway’s oversized steps effectively shrink the visitor and act as seats while the mirrored ceiling gives the impression that the space continues up,” explained Jamrozik and Kempster.
“We imagine people will be drawn to the curious space and hope that they enjoy the tongue-in-cheek reference that plays on the domestic history of the original building,” continued the designers.
Sealed off by a mirror, the stairwell is an optical illusion
Jamrozik and Kempster note the importance of playful design in their work, which they believe connects people in public spaces.
“We use the language of play to create social infrastructures: physical prompts which encourage contact between strangers.”
“We believe that questioning the way people use and occupy space and their relationship to one another through playful encounters has enormous potential to speak across generations and cultural differences,” they continued.
The importance of play is an influence in Jamrozik and Kempster’s design work
Designers everywhere are acknowledging the importance of designing public spaces to maximise social interactions. In Montreal, Ménard Dworkind has created a cafe with a central standing bar, while Central Saint Martins graduates have created blocky outdoor furniture for a public square in Croydon, London.
Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster have collaborated on design projects since 2003. Their varied work spans temporary installations and permanent interior and architectural commissions.
Photography is by Sara Schmidle.
Project credits:
Architecture team: Abstract Architecture PC
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A nearly six-metre-high green wall and a basement floor with a walk-on skylight are among the additions made by design and development firm Echlin to this remodelled mews house in Knightsbridge.The resulting design is described by the local firm as a “reinterpretation” of a classic London mews house, with plenty of useable and flexible space, an abundance of natural light and a strong connection to nature.
The ground floor living space, top image, is separated from the dining area via an open shelving system, above
Located on a quiet mews in easy reach of Hyde Park, the 225-square-metre family home is arranged across three floors and connected by a helical oak staircase, which was handmade in East Sussex.
Entered through an oversized bronze door, the ground floor features an entrance hall cast in grey Pietra marble. This is separated from a generous living space, dining area and study via a sliding partition wall.
The basement level features a sunken seating area and a kitchen
The newly created basement level accommodates a large, split-level kitchen and living area while the first floor is occupied by three bedrooms, each with its own en-suite bathroom.
A 5.5-metre-high living wall stretches between the lower ground and ground floors.
The ground floor dining area features banquette seating
Each floor follows a “broken-plan” layout, in which built-in furniture and level changes help to loosely demarcate different areas.
“The vision was to transform a small mews with compromised rooms into a contemporary home with a great feeling of space,” explained Steve Clinch, Head Architect at Echlin. “This has been achieved by opening up the plan and providing views into other spaces, allowing the full width and length of the house to be experienced.”
The ground floor also accommodates a small study
Wide, sliding and pocket doors create views through the different spaces, as does bespoke joinery such as the open shelving that divides the dining, study and living areas on the first floor.
On the lower ground floor, which was added in by the firm, a sunken seating area is located beyond the kitchen and dining area. The level change is intended to create a visual separation while allowing the spaces to remain connected to each other.
The kitchen is made from walnut wood
The walnut kitchen has been designed by Echlin so that all utilities can be concealed behind pivoting pocket doors when the owners are entertaining.
A walk-on skylight on the ground floor terrace is located directly above the sunken seating area to maximise the amount of daylight in the basement. This is also helped by the fully-retractable, floor-to-ceiling glass door that leads out onto a small terrace and frames the view of the green wall.
The basement’s ceiling is a walk-on skylight
Three bedrooms are located on the first floor, where pitched ceilings create a feeling of spaciousness while skylights ensure the spaces get plenty of daylight.The sliding doors in the master bedroom create a visual connection all the way through from the dressing area into the en-suite.
Sliding doors lead into the master bathroom
Much of the furniture in the house is designed by Echlin and made in collaboration with a network of skilled craftsmen. Bespoke pieces include the pale timber table on the lower ground floor, which was handmade in Brighton, while the sofas on the lower ground and ground floors come from Oxfordshire.
According to the studio, the home’s “sense of calm and tranquillity” was created through the use of natural materials, organic textures and a gentle colour palette informed by the nearby park. Meanwhile, the use of metallic surfaces and heritage colours nod to the home’s historic location.
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“The current climate has placed an even greater emphasis of the importance of how our homes are designed, how we use them and its impact on our moods,” said Sam McNally, who co-founded Echlin in 2011 with Mark O’Callaghan.
“We recognise that mood, wellbeing and happiness are all shaped by what surrounds us and we are committed to making these spaces as stylish but also as user-friendly as we can.”
A helical staircase connects the three floors
In a thought piece written for Dezeen last year, design writer and TV presenter Michelle Ogundehin outlined 11 ways in which the pandemic will impact the home.
As well as predicting a return to practical kitchens and more intimate room layouts, she believes there will be a desire for more human-centric homes, where natural materials are used to benefit the occupier’s wellbeing.
Photography is by Taran Wilkhu.
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Structural ash and pine joinery – including a staircase, mezzanine and double-height storage wall – delineate the space within this refurbished, open-plan apartment in London by EBBA Architects.Located in an old matchstick factory in the city’s East End, the one-bedroom, 80-square-metre apartment belongs to a young professional couple, who asked the emerging local firm to “completely reimagine” its layout.
The apartment features a bespoke wooden staircase, top image, and a double-height shelving unit, above
The former plan featured subdividing walls, which created a small kitchen and lounge area, and a dark bedroom upstairs. An enclosed staircase took up almost a quarter of the floor space.
EBBA Architects began by removing most of the walls and the large, existing staircase to provide a more functional and flexible living space.
A dining area is tucked under the mezzanine
The remodelled apartment is split across a ground floor and mezzanine level, both finished in a palette of subdued neutrals. A double-height living area is located downstairs alongside a dining room and kitchen, which are tucked under the mezzanine.
Upstairs, a bedroom and en-suite bathroom sit next to a desk area, dressing room and a snug that doubles as a guest bedroom and can be sectioned off with a curving curtain.
The staircase is made from white-stained ash
“Key to the brief was extending the mezzanine to add space upstairs and rearrange the bedroom from the dark corner of the flat,” EBBA Architects founding director Benni Allan told Dezeen.
“The need to extend the floor upstairs prompted us to imagine the new stair and mezzanine as a large, functional piece of furniture.”
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Made from a slender framework of white-stained ash, the staircase helps to prop up the new joists to the mezzanine, which the architects left exposed.
The apartment’s bespoke joinery also includes a double-height shelving unit made from white-stained pine that helps to emphasise the height of the main living space.
The shelving system stands next to the open kitchen
“We looked at the brief as a way of questioning how to provide a mix of spaces in the compact plan, including places to rest and work,” added Allan.
“Budget was tight, so we maximised the potential to express features in the project through the joinery and exposing all the timber.”
White-stained pinewood was used to create the storage unit
According to the architects, the white-stained ash serves as a “soft background to the apartment”, which is in harmony with the interior’s other neutral-toned materials.
This spans everything from the cement floor to the kitchen counter – a terrazzo-like slab made of translucent aggregate and fine black basalt – and is complemented by simple, unobtrusive lighting fixtures.
Other interiors where furniture merges with structure include the Spinmolenplein penthouse in Ghent by Jürgen Vandewalle, where a “bed-cabinet”, kitchen island and boxed-in bathroom help organise the floor plan.
Photography is by Benni Allan.
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Interior design studio Deferrari+Modesti renovated a house in Prato, Italy, adding a blue staircase that doubles as a climbing wall for its sporty owners. The two-storey house in the Tuscany region, which was built in the 1980s, was in a state of disuse and required a complete refurbishment. Deferrari + Modesti designed an integrated furnishing […] More
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
