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Valencia-based design practice Clap Studio has created The Sea, a temporary modular installation for a television studio that was informed by the ocean and made from gridded mesh boxes and illuminated spheres. More
Valencia studio MUT Design has designed five modular pavilions clad in scales made from leftover wood for a travelling exhibition in Spain.The pavilions will showcase work by 50 designers in five different sections to celebrate Valencia’s title of World Design Capital for 2022.
Each section – design and art, the circular economy, industry and craftsmanship, technology and the transformative economy – is housed within its own mini pavilion formed from two semi-cylinders.
Top image: the exhibition is broken down into five mini-pavilions. Above: each is formed from two semi-cylinders
These consist of four metre-high curved walls, which can be placed separately or together to create a labyrinth of winding corridors and secluded alcoves.
Inside, the units’ pinewood frame and construction are laid bare, while the convex exterior is clad in hundreds of small, overlapping wooden fins, adding up to around 220,000 across all five pavilions.
The units are arranged to form a labyrinth of corridors and alcoves
The wood was originally meant to be turned into the parade floats that are ceremonially burned as part of Valencia’s historic Fallas festival every March, but the event was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Instead, the wood was used for this installation, which is on view as part of the Madrid Design Festival until 14 March before becoming a travelling exhibition.
The pinewood frame is left exposed inside the pavilions
“Here in Valencia, we have a lot of traditional wood ateliers that create works for the Fallas festival,” MUT Design co-founder Alberto Sánchez told Dezeen.
“But it was cancelled due to the pandemic and a lot of materials were left on the shelf. So we decided to collaborate with one of the ateliers to give a new life to the wood and create some work for the builders.”
The pavilions are clad in wooden scales
Each scale was handmade by local woodworker Manolo García and trimmed to three standard sizes of 14, 16 and 18 centimetres. These were then lined up and alternated to create a textured surface not dissimilar to tree bark.
“We wanted to bring together tradition and the avant-garde while recovering something that is really ours – deeply rooted in our city,” Sánchez explained.
In particular, the studio drew on natural textures found in the Albufera National Park just south of Valencia, as well as on the thatched roofs of traditional houses known as barracas.
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Breaking each pavilion down into two semi-cylinders allows the individual units to be combined into “infinite compositions” that can be adapted to different spaces for the travelling exhibition.
“Because it is a travelling exhibition, we want to create one-of-a-kind experiences in each of the several places it will be visiting,” Sánchez added.
The units were also designed to be taken apart into separate pieces, which can be stacked for ease of transport.
Each scale was handmade by Manolo García
Contributors to the exhibition include designer Jaime Hayon, brands Andreu World and Expormim, and a number of emerging studios showing projects including self-ventilating graphene facades and homeware made from olive pits.
“We wanted to bring to Madrid a different selection of projects that are leading a silent transformation of society,” explained Xavi Calvo, director of World Design Capital Valencia 2022.
Displays are fixed to the inside of the pavilions
MUT Design has previously collaborated with Expormim to create a chair modelled on the shape of a flower petal and an outdoor rug made from braided ropes, which were exhibited at the products fair of Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival.
Photography is by Ernesto Sampons.
Valencia Pavilion – The Future is Design is on view at the Fernán Gómez Cultural Centre as part of the Madrid Design Festival until 14 March 2021. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
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The 1960s film Playtime by renowned French director Jacques Tati set the tone for this whimsical co-working office that Masquespacio has designed in Valencia.Cabinette is a co-working space for creatives set inside a mixed-use building in Valencia’s La Fuensanta neighbourhood.
It takes over a ground-floor unit that was originally fit-out to serve as an apartment. Leaving the existing bathroom facilities in place, interiors studio Masquespacio reconfigured the rest of the floor plan to accommodate a series of work areas for Cabinette’s members.
The studio’s founders, Christophe Penasse and Ana Milena Hernández Palacios, wanted to give the 200-square-metre space a retrofuturist aesthetic that’s attractive to millennials but also makes “a clear wink to the past”.
A particular point of reference was Playtime – a 1967 comedy film directed by Jaques Tati that follows character Monsieur Hulot as he navigates a gadget-filled version of future Paris.
It’s revered for its satirical take on modern life and was also included in Dezeen’s list of 10 films with amazing architecture.
Masquespacio creates colour-clashing interior for phone-repair shop in Valencia
“We once visited a museum installation here in Valencia where they showcased some fragments of the movie, especially a moment where the leading actor goes to a meeting,” Penasse told Dezeen.
In the film, when Hulot arrives at the meeting, he enters a huge office where each employee’s desk is closed in by a cabinet-lined box – a feature which inspired Cabinette’s name.
Penasse and Palacious have similarly divided desks in the co-working space, but instead of individual boxes have erected low-lying partitions.
As with the interior of the boxes in Playtime, the desks and chairs in Cabinette are a pastel green-blue colour.
The same colour features across the floor, as well as the counter, tiled splashback and a couple of cupboards in the kitchen, which sits in the corner of the room.
Walls and part of the floor here are painted chocolate-brown, complementing the steel stools from Masquespacio’s Déjà-Vu collection that appear beside the counter. They each feature tiers of brown, ochre and blue fringing.
Another wall in Cabinette is clad in mirrored panels, while one on the far side of the office is a bright lilac hue. It’s decorated with various graphic-print canvases and rows of illuminated tube lights.
A set of stairs leads up to a mezzanine where there are a pair of intimate meeting rooms that members can use for group work or take private phone calls.
They’re screened off by the same shiny silver curtains that hang in front of the full-height windows at ground level that look through to an outdoor terrace.
There is also a more formal boardroom that features deep-purple surfaces. The central lacquered-wood table is surrounded by Masquespacio’s gold-framed Arco chairs, which are upholstered in burnt-orange velvet.
The studio’s eye-shaped Wink lights are also mounted on the wall.
Masquespacio was established in 2010 by Penasse and Ana Milena Hernández Palacios. The studio has applied its colourful aesthetic to a number of projects.
These include a phone repair shop that features a clashing mix of salmon-pink and turquoise surfaces, and a tropical green and maroon restaurant that offers Brazilian-Japanese cuisine.
Photography is by Luis Beltran.
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Iterare Arquitectos has used traditional construction techniques and local materials to update a 100-year-old home in Valencia with a minimalist interior. House of Giants is located in Valencia’s El Cabañal neighbourhood, which was historically populated by fishermen. The three-storey home, which belongs to a local artist and engraver, has been designed by Iterare Arquitectos to […] More
