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      White stucco Casa Mami by Working Holiday Studio contrasts California desert landscape

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      Los Angeles design firm Working Holiday Studio has transformed a property in the California desert into a shoppable holiday home that “stands out” against its desolate landscape Casa Mami is located in Pioneertown, California, an unincorporated community outside of Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.
      After visiting the area Carlos Naude and Whitney Brown of Working Holiday Studio wanted to purchase a house of their own to spend holidays in and to rent out to overnight guests.

      The 92-square-metre stucco house has an adobe-style construction and is situated on five acres (1.6 hectares) overlooking the barren desert landscape.

      To make the tiny building “stand out” against its surroundings a black portico contrasts the updated white exterior and light-coloured gravel around the property juxtaposes the sandy ground.

      “Most houses around the desert in that area try to blend in with the environment through earthy and brown tones, we wanted the opposite, we wanted our house to stand out which is why we chose to surround the house with white gravel to create a separation between the desert ground and house and painted it white and black, which not only made it really stand out but also brought a Mediterranean feel to it which is a good contrast to the dry hot desert,” Naude told Dezeen.

      For the interiors, the designers took cues from Scandinavian and Japanese design styles. This was coupled with bright colours found in work by Mexican architect Luis Barragán and a mix of pattern and shape used by French interior designer Jacques Granges and British designer Terence Conran.

      “I would say that we borrowed Luis Barragán’s use of colour – like the monochromatic yellow hallway, Jacques Grange’s ability to mix styles – between Scandinavian and Japanese, and Terence Conran’s incorporation of playful shapes and silhouettes,” he added.

      An Aesthetic Pursuit designs shoppable Airbnb in Maine

      Beige walls are paired with white moulding and painted grey floors throughout the house. In the kitchen the cabinets and drawers are punctured with a tiny hole to form a handle instead of with a traditional metal knob.

      A set of translucent glass doors with black trim is situated between the open-plan kitchen and living space frames the desert landscape, which is speckled with vegetation. Another pair is located in the master bedroom furnished with two semicircular nightstands and black light fixtures.

      In the living there is blue couch with rounded cushions and a circular coffee table topped with a terrazzo surface. The furnishings face a white, sphere-shaped fireplace installed to heat the tiny home.

      Photograph is by Candida Wohlgemuth
      The studio worked with over 30 brands to decorate the space with furniture, appliances and houseware items that guests can purchase online, forming part a new trend to design “shoppable stays”.
      Others include a holiday house in Maine designed by An Aesthetic Pursuit to showcase its new furniture collection and a rental property in Long Island Studio Robert McKinley has decorated to double as a showroom.

      Other details of Casa Mami are a hallway with bright yellow walls, decorative potted plants and an outdoor patio nestled into a corner of the structure.
      It is also powered by solar panels and a hauled water system, so the homeowners and guests are more conscious about their energy and water usage.

      Casa Mami has been longlisted in the hotel and short stay interior project category of Dezeen Awards 2020, with shortlists set to be announced at the start of September.
      Working Holiday Studio is a Los Angeles design studio led by husband and wife duo Carlos Naude and Whitney Brown. It worked with Francesca de la Fuente on the renovation of The Ruby Street co-working space in Los Angeles.
      Photography is by Carlos Naude, unless noted otherwise.

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      OMA designs glass volume to top Tiffany & Co's New York flagship store

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      OMA New York, led by Shohei Shigematsu, has unveiled its design for a glass addition to top the historic Tiffany & Co store on Fifth Avenue in New York City.The project involves the preservation of the jewellery brand’s 80-year old flagship location, a renovation of its ground floor and the construction of a rectangular glass volume that will span three storeys, adding space for hosting exhibitions and events.
      Built in 1940 by Cross & Cross, the existing limestone facade of the Tiffany & Co building is marked by its grid of windows and scalloped edges. In 1980 an upper volume was added to the building to house offices, which will be demolished and replaced by the new glass structure as part of this latest renovation by OMA.

      “Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue Flagship is more than a retail space, it is a destination with a public dimension,” said OMA Partner Shohei Shigematsu. “The new addition is informed by programmatic needs of the evolving brand – a gathering place that acts as a contemporary counterpart to the iconic ground level space and its activities.”

      “The floating volume over an existing terrace provides a clear visual cue to a vertical journey of diverse experiences throughout the building,” he added.
      OMA’s design plans to form the new volume using two stacked glass structures. The lower one will comprise a recessed box covered with glass windows, while the upper portion will be wrapped with slumped glass walls modelled after the building’s decorative parapet.

      OMA adds iridescent glass escalator to New York’s Saks Fifth Avenue

      The ridged glass requires minimal vertical support and has a reflective surface designed for viewing the city from the interiors while offering privacy looking in from the exterior.
      An outdoor patio for hosting events surrounds the lower, two-storey volume. The existing space is furnished with tables and plants that overlook Fifth Avenue and on to Central Park. Its double height walls are wrapped with smooth glass panes and vertical silver frames to tie the two volumes together.
      “The two spaces of the upper volume that make up the new addition is a moment of clear but complementary contrast to the original flagship,” the studio added. “It is a symbolic ending to the building that reflects an evolved luxury experience that is more a journey than a destination.”

      The project is currently under construction and is expected to complete in Spring 2022.
      Shigematsu leads OMA New York with fellow partner Jason Long. The outpost is intended to function independently from the studio’s international offices, including Rotterdam, Beijing, Hong Kong, Doha and Australia, as part of an initiative of founder Rem Koolhaas.
      Last year the studio installed a multicoloured escalator inside the renovated Saks Fifth Avenue department store.
      Other recent projects by the New York office include a plan for the 11th Street Bridge Park in Washington DC and a series of galleries inside Gio Ponti’s Denver Art Museum.

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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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      Greek islands inform design for Monastery Studio facial spa

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      A pale green lacquer table and dried plants are among the references to Greek architecture and “Californian freshness” in this spa in San Francisco designed by Jacqueline Sullivan.Monastery Studio is a spa and retail space in San Francisco, founded by Athena Hewett, that offers a range of facial and body services.
      The light-filled space is designed to take cues from Hewett’s Greek heritage and her time spent in the Cyclades.

      “Monastery Studio is inspired by Athena’s Greek heritage and memories of summers in the Cyclades – sun bleached architecture, ancient pottery, soft stones, the salty sea, diffused sunlight,” Sullivan told Dezeen.

      “Though the space has an old world feel it also has a distinctly Californian freshness and sensibility,” she added.
      Walls and flooring in the space are painted white to provide a neutral backdrop for the custom-built furnishings, ceramics and dried floral sculptures.

      At the centre of the shop there is a chartreuse-coloured lacquer table with chunky circular legs and rounded edges designed by Shin Okuda of Los Angeles furniture studio Waka Waka. The surface forms a display area for the spa’s range of oils and serums.

      Bottles of products and other trinkets, including dried flowers, rocks and pottery, are arranged across the thin boards that comprise a massive built-in shelving unit.

      Proem Studio uses muted shades to design Cheeks & Co facial spa

      To add texture to the space Sullivan installed a curving sculpture of brown and red plants that extends from the ground to the ceiling onto one of the walls.

      “We played with shape, texture, colour and scale in a way that feels informed by the past but simultaneously very contemporary,” the designer added.
      “Ultimately, we wanted the space to feel soft, special and thoughtfully considered, just like the Monastery oils themselves.”

      Curved archways lead into the treatment rooms which are also painted white and flooded with natural light from a row of windows. The rooms are outfitted with a wood chair for patients, wooden stools and potted plants.
      The exterior of the spa and store is clad with planks of black wood and fronted with three large windows.

      Other facial spas include a skincare studio in Los Angeles with light pink accents designed by Proem Studio and a skincare store in England with cane and ash wood cabinets.

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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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      Ravi Raj and Evan Watts expose chunky timber in Spears Building Loft renovation

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      Architects Ravi Raj and Evan Watts have created a monolithic, concrete-like chimney in the overhaul of a loft apartment inside a former cigarette packing factory in New York City’s Chelsea neighbourhood. Raj, who runs RARARA, worked with Watts of D&A Companies to overhaul the residence in the former factory, which was completed by the Kinney Brothers in 1880. It also served as a furniture warehouse before it was converted into a condo building in 1996.

      Previously featuring “dark dwelling spaces”, as described by the team, the residence was renovated to create a bright and open living space for a couple.

      This included stripping out walls and dropped ceilings to create larger spaces and revealing existing brickwork and timber columns and beams.

      At the rear of the residence, the team reconfigured the layout of the bedrooms and bathrooms, creating a third bedroom and making a new hallway.

      “Extraneous millwork and partitions blocking daylight to the interior were thoughtfully removed to help open each room and improve the flow between them,” said Ravi Raj Architect.
      “The great room presented an unexpected discovery after the team removed the dropped ceilings and unnecessary wall enclosures, revealing the original heavy timber structure – in surprisingly great condition. This move both simplified the layout while also paying homage to the building’s historical fabric.”

      Throughout Spears Building Loft, the designers chose a soft and pale material palette that complements the existing details and also brightens the interiors.
      Bleached walnut planks covers the floor in the living area, while the walls and built-in storage are painted bright-white or yellow.

      Gold paint drips down green mural at Chelsea Pied-à-Terre by Stadt Architecture

      A wood-burning stove is updated with a hearth covered in a plaster that looks like concrete and extends into a bench either side. The team chose the render because it is meant to reference the warehouse’s poured concrete floors.

      Pale wood also forms the base of the white-marble island in the kitchen topped and old corner cabinets are ebonized black. They form a series of dark detail throughout, like the dark wooden dining chairs and artwork.
      “The owners took care in selecting minimal yet soft and textured furnishings paired with colourful art that highlight the industrial-like quality of the space,” the team added.

      The red brick is painted white in the bedrooms to make them all them light and bright, while the bathrooms display a mix of black, white and grey marbles.
      Spears Building Loft is located in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood next to the city’s elevated park, the High Line.
      Other renovation projects in the area include a residence that architecture duo BoND turned into a light-filled home with a stainless steel fireplace surround and an apartment with a green mural dripping in gold paint.
      Photography is by Nick Glimenakis.

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      Kelly Wearstler's “fiercely local” Santa Monica Proper Hotel named AHEAD Americas Hotel of the Year

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      American designer Kelly Wearstler describes how she worked with local artisans and artists on the Santa Monica Proper Hotel in this video produced by Dezeen for the AHEAD Awards.Wearstler is the designer of Santa Monica Proper Hotel, a 271-room boutique hotel seven blocks away from the beach in Santa Monica, California.

      American interior designer Kelly Wearstler designed the Santa Monica Proper Hotel
      The project was named Hotel of the Year at the 2020 AHEAD Americas hospitality awards, as well as winner of the Guestrooms and Lobby & Public Spaces categories.

      The Californian interior designer, who has appeared as a judge on the Bravo reality show Top Design and designed homes for celebrities including Cameron Diaz and Gwen Stefani, described the hotel as “fiercely local” in an exclusive interview filmed by Dezeen.

      Santa Monica Proper Hotel was named Hotel of the Year at the AHEAD Americas awards 2020
      “We wanted to design a hotel where it felt like you’re in Santa Monica,” she said. “The inspiration came from everything that surrounds the hotel, the palm trees, the organic nature of the architecture, everything that you would find at the beach.”
      Natural and heavily textured materials, neutral colours and vintage furniture are used throughout the hotel to create a sensory experience that references Santa Monica’s beachside identity.

      Kelly Wearstler designs relaxed and beachy Santa Monica Proper hotel

      “There is a connection of materiality that speaks to the location” said Wearstler. “Organic materials, neutral colour stories, everything has a texture.”
      “There’s a patina, there’s a hand, there’s something that feels very warm.”

      The hotel also won in the Guestrooms and Lobby & Public Spaces categories
      Santa Monica Proper Hotel is filled with artworks and furniture pieces created specifically for the property by local artists and artisans.
      “Everything’s connected to somebody that is local in the city,” Wearstler said. “We’re so lucky to be in Los Angeles, the talent pool here is extraordinary.”

      The site comprises an historic 1920s building and a new curvilinear extension
      The site consists of the 1920s Santa Monica Professional Building, to which an extension by local firm Howard Laks Architects was added.
      “There’s an historic building that was built in 1928, in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, and then there’s a new contemporary building,” explained Wearstler. “We had to connect these two buildings with one voice.”

      Kelly Wearstler furnishes San Francisco Proper hotel with vintage European design

      “The atmosphere is something that’s just very relaxed,” the designer asserted. “When you come to California, it’s just super relaxed and it’s friendly, and there is a sense of style – it’s just cool. We can connect you to that coming to Santa Monica Proper.”
      The hotel is the latest in the Proper brand, which was founded by Wearstler’s developer husband Brad Korzen alongside hotelier Brian De Lowe, following the San Francisco Proper which Wearstler also designed.

      Wearstler collaborated with local artists and artisans to furnish Santa Monica Proper Hotel
      Previous hospitality collaborations from Wearstler and Korzen include the Tides hotel in South Beach, Florida, the Avalon and Maison 140 hotels in Beverly Hills, and hotels for the Viceroy brand in Miami, Palm Springs and Santa Monica.
      This year’s AHEAD Americas awards were shown in a video ceremony as part of Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival after the event was called off due to the coronavirus pandemic. Previous winners of the Hotel of the Year award include the opulent Siren Hotel in Detroit and the Calistoga Motor Lodge and Spa, a renovated motel in California.

      Natural materials and neutral colours reference the hotel’s beachside location
      This video was produced by Dezeen for AHEAD. Photography is by The Ingalls and Matthieu Salvaing.

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      Virgil Abloh and AMO design flexible flagship Off-White store in Miami that “can host a runway show”

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      Fashion designer Virgil Abloh and AMO director Samir Bantal have designed the Off-White flagship store in Miami Design District to be a fulfilment centre and a multipurpose events space. Abloh, who owns the brand Off-White, and Bantal, director of architecture firm OMA’s research arm AMO, designed the store to rethink how physical shops should operate amid the growing popularity of digital shopping.

      “We’re niche entities, AMO, Off-White, Samir and myself, so we’re able to sort of wear our heart on our sleeve or our brain on our sleeve,” Abloh told Dezeen. “The first slide that Samir sent for the development was like, is shopping relevant?”

      “If we’re able to kind of fulfil our needs by ordering a lot of things online, what’s the role of a physical store?,” Bantal added.

      The idea is that the store is flexible, according to Abloh, who citied the annual Art Basel and Design Miami events that take place in Miami as examples of when it could be used to host a variety of activities, like art and music events, and talks.
      “There might be 1,000 people, you know, in key moments of that year where the shop can host a runway show, it can host a talk, it can host a cafe,” Abloh said.
      “It’ll be a cafe that extends out into the street, it’ll be what the environment needs it to be rather than the betting on, hey, this square footage needs to be used for retail 24 seven,” he added.
      “Who knows, by the time it opens I might turn it into like an Uber delivery of Off-White – that’s the freedom and the fun.”

      In response, the store is stripped back to only provide storage space for apparel on sale so it could easily be used for a variety of activities and cultural events.
      “We played with the idea of translating the store into a fulfilment center,” Bantal explained. “Fulfillment of not only the monetary transaction you do by buying a product, but also fulfilment in terms of like the engagement you have with a brand, or the aura of a brand.”
      “This, of course, being in Miami Design District led to the idea of creating a space that is adjustable and transformable over time,” Bantal continued. “We should be able to kind of compress the retail parts to almost like a storage element in the store, and open the store to a kind of variety of cultural events.”

      Located at 127 NE 41 Street, the two-storey store is fronted with an opaque polycarbonate wall on the ground floor that can be pushed back, squeezing the storage of the apparel to the rear and opening the front to the street.
      “You almost push everything that is retail and compress it in the space behind and then of course, ultimately it ends up in storage,” said Bantal. “While the space in front of that facade is completely open and free and can be used for any function.”
      Above the moveable wall is the word Shop with a red cross in front – a tongue-in-cheek nod to the concept behind the project.
      “This is the first Off White store to have a facade you know, that street level so the expression, the signage, you know, as the words Shop is a shop, but then has like, an X through the middle, and it’s very, like monolithic,” said Abloh. “The face of the concept is expressed on the facade.”

      Inside, the team aimed to continue to the theme of the fulfilment centre through a stripped-back industrial aesthetic – including floors rendered in lightly stained concrete, walls lined in corrugated metal and mesh ceiling panels.
      Off-White apparel will be displayed on either stainless steel shelving or black marquina and white Carrara marble rails. All the furniture is placed on wheels or is collapsible so it can be moved about to accommodate events.
      The pared-back style acts as a backdrop to a series of artworks that will be installed in the store and the bold electric blue stair that leads to the first floor. On this level, the brand intends to host more intimate events like dinner parties.

      Abloh, who is also the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection, founded his Off-White brand as a ready-to-wear streetwear label in 2012. He previously teamed up with Bantal to design Figures of Speech, a retrospective exhibition of his career at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA).
      The store joins a number of fashion flagships in Miami Design District, which Craig Robins transformed from a formerly neglected area into the hub for design boutiques, luxury fashion brands and art galleries.
      Others include Joseph, which London firm Sybarite design with a spiral black staircase, Christian Louboutin, which is covered in tree bark, Dior, which has a boutique sheathed in curved white concrete panels, and Tom Ford, which is housed in a pleated concrete shop designed by ArandaLasch.

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