American architect Jerome Byron has created a series of colourful stools by pigmenting glass-fibre reinforced concrete and setting it in curved shapes.
Jerome Byron infused concrete reinforced by glass fibre, also known as GFRC, with various pigments to create the Concrete Stools in hues of blue, yellow, pink and purple.
He then placed the material, which he describes as "pigmented slurry", into a flat rubber mould where it was left to dry slightly before being curved over woodwork to create the U-shaped seating.
Byron chose to use GFRC in order to create a juxtaposition between shape and weight, and the material. The reinforced material enabled the architect to create slim pieces that are more lightweight than concrete.
"Cast and finished by hand, the works use a pigment infused, glass-fibre reinforced concrete (GFRC) which appears deceptively monolithic," he said. "They present a play of materiality by appearing at once smooth and rough, heavy and buoyant."
In addition to this, the pigment is intended to give the concrete a more playful look than it is usually associated with.
"The combination of a raw, permanent material with a lightweight colourful treatment and anthropomorphic scalloped form re-inserts a sense of playfulness and control into a material often associated with weight, ruins or architectural Brutalism," he added.
Concrete Stools, which Byron completed in 2018, includes three different size seats: a 55-pound bench, a 40-pound high stool and a 34-pound low stool.
Each can be made in the limited range of colour, although the finishes vary on each because the pieces are handmade.
Byron is an architect who received his masters from Harvard's Graduate School of Design in 2014, and then worked in offices of Francis Kéré, Barkow Leibinger and Tacklebox NY. He founded his studio, formerly known as J Byron-H, in Los Angeles in 2017.
Los Angles practice Studio Collective has renovated a mid-century building in the city designed by modernist architect Welton Becket in the 1960s to create a laid-back hotel.
Hotel June is a 250-room property in a white, 12-storey tower designed by Los Angeles architect Welton Becket in 1968.
Becket built a number of modernist buildings in the city, including the rounded Capitol Records Building, Koreatown's Equitable Life Building skyscraper and the Los Angeles Music Center's Ahmanson Theater near Frank Gehry's metallic Walt Disney Concert Hall.
This building, which is in Los Angeles' beachside community of Playa Del Rey on Lincoln Boulevard, was previously another hotel before it was overhauled by Studio Collective.
While the exterior was left intact, the interiors are refreshed with many built-in oak pieces, terrazzo floors and woven accents. Pink and green details add a pop of colour.
The interiors have "a sense of the new and dynamic through coastal influences and a true California spirit" said the studio. The hotel features a pared-back feeling with natural materials and subtle use of colour.
A lobby has cream terrazzo floors, a wood-clad ceiling and a bright painting on a wall designed by Brooklyn artist Alex Proba. Becket's granddaughter, Alexandra Becket, also created wallpapers for other areas of the hotel.
Hotel rooms have white walls, woven carpeting and a mixture of modernist and more contemporary furniture pieces, including Hem sofas. Bright blue and grey are integrated into the suites for visual contrast.
"Hotel June is at once airy and cosy, blending clean lines and warm natural woods, earthy finishes, and custom furnishings," the studio said.
White oak closets, custom platform beds and wooden daybeds are intended to evoke mid‐century designs, like those by Charles and Ray Eames and relate to the building's history.
"Guestrooms and corridors play with colour-blocking geometries (that recall the work of local mid-century industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames)," Studio Collective said.
Bathrooms have black fixtures and showers are clad in small, square tiles in grey with dark grout.
In the hotel's restaurant and sitting area, glass walls are shaded by slatted oak wood screens to help filter natural sunlight. A white, curved sofa and a large woven light fixture decorate the lounge, while the dining area has dark terrazzo floors and wood furniture.
Hotel June is complete with an outdoor swimming pool, patio, an outdoor bar and restaurant, a fire pit and indoor gym.
The property, which is called Hotel June to reflect new beginnings and California's year-round summer sensibility, is the brainchild of Proper Hospitality co-founders Brian De Lowe and Brad Korzen.
New York City architecture studio New Affiliates has launched an initiative to reuse large-scale models for garden sheds and community spaces in the borough of Queens.
New Affiliates and architect and historian Samuel Stewart-Halevy created the Testbeds project to repurpose architecture models from luxury real estate projects in the city, which are often built of durable and high-end materials but soon discarded, and turn them into community projects like garden sheds and classrooms.
An architectural model envisioned for a narrow community garden in Manhattan
The concept was developed after they realised the similar sizes between such mockup structures and existing sheds around New York. They wanted to reuse the designs that typically go to waste for projects in underserved communities.
"While mockups often consist of high-end and resilient materials, they are usually discarded after undergoing a series of reviews," the team said. "A significant amount of waste results."
Testbeds has launched a pilot programme with a gabled community centre in Queens
The programme is a way to funnel "architectural resources from New York's luxury real estate market to neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs that have been historically disinvested," it added.
A pilot programme is currently underway in Queens at Edgemere Coalition Community Garden with New York City Parks' GreenThumb division that supports over 550 gardens in the city.
Renderings of the design show a gabled building with corrugated concrete panel walls and covered outdoor walkways that link a greenhouse, community room and tool shed. A covered patio overlooks the garden, and a chain-link fence encloses the property.
One part of the building is clad in wood inside
"The idea that you could take a fragment from 100 feet up in the air in Tribeca and put it on the ground in the Far Rockaways and someone can actually walk up to it and access it and inhabit it is exciting to us," said New Affiliates.
The team is currently raising funds for construction for later this fall and is also seeking help to discover more models and build the projects. Another site is proposed for a garden in the East Village neighbourhood of Manhattan with a proposal to create a small white volume in a garden between two apartment buildings.
The American Institute of Architects has criticised the federal government's termination of a provision introduced to help dismantle racial segregation in housing.
The organisation "strongly opposes" the dismantling the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), which required communities receiving federal funding for housing to analyse barriers to housing and create a plan to rectify them, said AIA chief executive officer Robert Ivy.
"We need to do more to provide equitable opportunity to all Americans"
"Our federal government should confront the legacy of discriminatory housing policies as intended in the Fair Housing Act of 1968, not shrink away from the responsibility of ensuring our communities are equitable," Ivy added.
"At such a critical moment in time for addressing racial inequity, it's clear we need to do more, not less, to provide equitable opportunity to all Americans, especially for a basic human need such as shelter."
"Washington has no business dictating what is best to meet your local community's unique needs," he added.
US president Donald Trump has been vocal about his opposition to AFFH – describing as a way to "force" low-income housing into suburbs, as reported by Politico – and celebrated its end in a series of tweets.
"I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low-income housing built in your neighborhood." Trump tweeted
"Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!"
AIA and Trump lock heads over a number of political issues
AFFH will be replaced by the Preserving Community and Neighbourhood Choice provision, under which the grantee is able to continue to receive funding if they go beyond statute to promote housing that is affordable, safe, decent, free of unlawful discrimination and accessible under civil rights laws.
The rollback is the final move to end AFFH, which hasn't been enforced since HUD eliminated the Assessment of Fair Housing Tool for Local Governments used to analyse segregation in 2018.
Most recently, the architectural organisation condemned a government proposal to introduce an order that all federal buildings should be built in the "classical architectural style".
A glass and steel dome modelled on the shape of a turtle shell rises from the top of a historic building in New York City's Union Square to pay homage to an indigenous group that settled in the area.
Tammany Hall is a brick building situated at the east corner of Union Square Park built in 1928.
It is the former headquarters of the Tammany Society, a political organisation named after chief Tamanend, who was the leader of an indigenous group called the Lenape people that settled on land along the East Coast, including present day New York City.
BKSK Architects consulted with the Lenape Center, an institution led by Lenape elders that upholds the legacy of the group through programming and exhibitions, to realise the project.
It involved a restoring the landmark building's facade and an expansion of its usable space, which was created by the three-storey-high glass dome on top of the structure.
The rounded roof takes cues from the shape of a turtle shell, a reference to the origin story of the Lenape, which says the group believes it rose from the water on the back of a turtle.
"Using symbolism from the Lenape creation story, a glass dome inspired by the form of a rising turtle shell has been added to the building bringing an additional 30,000 square feet (2,787 square metres) to the interior," the studio said.
To form the circular dome the existing hipped roof was reconstructed using steel and glass panels that are covered with grey terracotta sunshades.
On the top floor sunlight beaming through the domed roof projects the geometric pattern of the steelwork across the floor and rounded walls.
To protect the building from solar heat gain and unwanted glare the studio chose a transparent glass material that also provides clear views of the nearby Union Square Park.
In addition to the new roof, the brick and limestone facade was also carefully restored and new bronze storefronts, similar to the structure's original design, run along the street level.
"BKSK welcomes the opportunity to develop a visual, meaningful dialogue between contemporary and historic architecture," added partner Todd Poisson.
"We believe that many structures, Tammany Hall among them, can accommodate change and vertical expansion without a loss of integrity."
BKSK, Edifice Real Estate Partners and owner Reading International have positioned the building to house several retail or commercial leases or to act as a single flagship location for a business.
US architecture firm CLB Architects has wrapped two gabled structures with dark cedar planks to form this house in Wyoming situated to face the mountains.
Lone Pine Residence is located in Wyoming's Teton Range, a mountainous region known for its ski resorts and other outdoor sports. CLB Architects, formerly Carney Logan Burke, built the residence for a couple from New York City who wanted a house with rustic Wyoming charm and refined Upper East Side style.
"When abstract, agrarian architecture coalesces with intricate interior detail, a perfect marriage of 'Mountain West' meets 'Upper East Side' takes shape," said CLB Architects.
"The New York clients were specific in their request that their Jackson Hole home not surrender to the typical rustic ruse that many find so charming about the region."
The house comprises two barn-like volumes clad with dark cedar that are connected by a low-lying glass structure rectangular in shape. The glass box links the two-storey structure to a one level volume and also serves as the house's entryway.
"Anchored by two simple but bold agrarian volumes linked by a transparent connector, the architecture is conceived as abstractions of common ranch structures," the local studio added.
Large windows are situated to face views of the nearby ski slopes and rugged landscape that encircles the site, while neighbouring structures are masked by the building.
Portions of the volumes were cut away to position porches and outdoor living spaces towards the surrounding nature and to control the light.
"Sited to take advantage of open spaces and view sheds, the house is oriented to screen neighbouring structures while capitalising on near views of the adjacent ski resort and surrounding mountain ranges," the studio said.
"The subtractions in the primary structures also serve to direct views, manage the effect of light, and foster connections to the outdoors," it continued.
Roof overhangs form covered patios along the sides of the residence. An expansive dining terrace, located at the north end, extends from the indoor dining space.
Inside, a range of materials including mahogany, oak and rugged stone stand out against the white plaster walls. White oak floors run throughout the interiors contrasting with the dark mahogany millwork used to form the "jewel box" wall panelling in the main entryway as well as cabinetry and shelving units.
A fireplace clad with various-sized blocks of grey and brown stone has a pointed top that reaches the ceiling. It is outfitted with a steel fire screen and a long, narrow shelving unit for storing logs.
There are two bedrooms located on the lower level with the master suite and an additional bedroom upstairs.
A bunk room is furnished with two sets of built-in bunk beds that are outfitted with storage cubbies and a red and black ladder for accessing the top bunks. In another bedroom a wood headboard with shelves spans the length of the wall.
Other details of the design are the staircase balusters made out of leather strips, the custom-built steel and leather front door and several colourful art pieces and paintings arranged throughout the space.
Architecture project team: Eric Logan, Sam Ankeny, Jen Mei Interior design (except living and dining rooms): CLB Architects Interior design project team: Sarah Kennedy, Jaye Infanger Interior design (living and dining room): Pepe Lopez Design Landscape architect: Hershberger Design Builder: Ankeny Construction Management
Architecture firm Collective has inserted a stage with a green curtain for hosting events in the back of the ONS Clothing store in New York City.
The flagship location of ONS, a menswear apparel brand, is located on 201 Mulberry Street in New York's Nolita neighbourhood.
It is located inside an existing structure situated 1.5 metres below street level that was previously a garage.
ONS intends to use the stage space for hosting cultural events, such as exhibitions and pop-ups that it says will change regularly.
Steel railings, ceramic tiles and asphalt flooring are among the references Collective has taken from the streetscape to guide the store's design.
To balance the dark colours and textures of the flooring the studio has inserted pops of colour using light blue tiles on the changing room pods and blue and green counter surfaces.
"The material we used in the store were carefully chosen for the feeling of the street – ceramic tiles, steel ramps, fibre glass objects while their bright array of blue and green colours balance out the crudeness of the black asphalt and steel," Collective said.
Pale wood floors and wood panelling cover the walls in the front room of the store, which the studio conceived as a "standalone wooden box". In the space there are two wood counters for displaying accessories, while rectangular cutouts in the walls to hold clothing racks.
An asphalt ramp replaced the existing wheelchair lift to create an accessible pathway from the street into the storefront and to the rear of the space where the studio has constructed a large stage.
"The ramp allows a natural flow of circulation from a higher point entering the very deep area at the back of the store, and at the same time, its hovering presence performs as an object in space," the studio added.
There are several "props" on the stage including blue- and white-tiered shelving units, curved plinths for displaying products and potted plants, added as a decorative element.
Angular green drapes attached to a steel rack on the white ceiling and wrap around the space to form an adjustable divider. When closed the fabric curtains extend 30 metres forming a backdrop for the retail displays.
"Together with the rearrangement of the bright colour display props, the back room area of the ONS," it continued.
"Flagship is immediately domesticated and activated into a stage for events, with a light touch of living room like domesticity and comfort."
Collective is a studio that practices architecture, interiors and exhibition design founded in 2015.
It is led by Betty Ng, Chi Yan Chan, Juan Minguez and Katja Lam and has offices in Hong Kong, Madrid, San Francisco and New York.
London studio Sybarite has designed a store for fashion label Joseph in the Miami Design District to include round balconies, curved railings and spiral stairs as a reference to the city's seaside architecture.
A black metal corkscrew staircase is among the details that takes cues from Miami's seaside architecture dating back to the 1940s and 50s.
Featuring contrasting white polished-marble stair treads, it twists through a circular opening to lead from womenswear on the ground floor to menswear and accessories on the first floor.
Smoked-black glass wraps around the opening with a curved black balustrade adding to the decorative motifs. Sybarite said other details include the irregular wall cutouts that form windows.
Marking the fashion label's largest store to date, the 243-square-metre Miami Design District space is among a number the British studio has designed for the fashion label.
In each, Sybarite follows the theme of opposites common in Joseph apparel with contrasting tones of black and white, and harsh and soft materials.
"Our designs for Joseph are based on opposites and the unexpected to provide a complete brand experience for the customer," said Sybarite co-founder Simon Mitchell.
White-painted walls and concrete floors are a backdrop to black metalwork fitted with LED lighting that forms frames around clothing rails and extends up in an angular form to meet the ceiling.
Plinths for bags and shoes made from oriented-strand board (OSB), brass and Corian are arranged in groups on an area of the ground floor marked by a brass grid embedded in the concrete floor.
A pop of colour is provided by the till desk made of Italian green marble, following on from a recurring concept in Jospeph stores in which a different marble from around the world is used.
Sybarite has also used geometric shapes of softer carpeting, as and rich shearlings and velvet upholstery in the changing rooms, to add a more cosy elements.
Architecture studio SO-IL has built a green-mesh structure with suspended seating in this installation on the Renzo Piano-designed plaza of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
Green agricultural netting is pulled taught over a six green metal poles and stretched across curved metalwork to create a canopy that shades circular hammocks suspended beneath.
The shape of each canopy – which tapers in at the top and the bottom – is intended to reference that of trees. Plants are then woven throughout the netting.
"As they cross the Piazza, guests are enveloped by a foliage-filled mesh canopy suspended from a steel framework, evocative of the tree canopies found throughout the region," SO-IL told Dezeen.
The New York studio, which is led by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, came up with the installation as part of its effort to give migratory birds a place for respite in the city. Its shape and name draws on a Murmuration, which is when a huge flock of birds flying together and form different patterns, and is decorated with bird feeders.
"Using the lens of bird migrations, it reacts to Atlanta's relationship with the natural world," said SO-IL.
"Creating a sustainable future for Atlanta includes maintaining or increasing the number of trees," it added. "In its title and concept, Murmuration also directly advocates for conservation efforts toward birds, questioning their loss and the terms for our future environment."
In addition to seating for museum visitors, Murmuration also features bird feeders hanging from its frame.
SO-IL worked with local engineers Uzun & Case to complete the design of the 218-square-metre structure, which was fabricated in Mexico and then transported to site.
The intention is that it can be disassembled and installed elsewhere following its stint at High Museum of Art, which ends in November 2020.
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).
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.
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.
Architecture firm Collective has inserted a stage with a green curtain for hosting events in the back of the ONS Clothing store in New York City.
The flagship location of ONS, a menswear apparel brand, is located on 201 Mulberry Street in New York's Nolita neighbourhood.
It is located inside an existing structure situated 1.5 metres below street level that was previously a garage.
ONS intends to use the stage space for hosting cultural events, such as exhibitions and pop-ups that it says will change regularly.
Steel railings, ceramic tiles and asphalt flooring are among the references Collective has taken from the streetscape to guide the store's design.
To balance the dark colours and textures of the flooring the studio has inserted pops of colour using light blue tiles on the changing room pods and blue and green counter surfaces.
"The material we used in the store were carefully chosen for the feeling of the street – ceramic tiles, steel ramps, fibre glass objects while their bright array of blue and green colours balance out the crudeness of the black asphalt and steel," Collective said.
Pale wood floors and wood panelling cover the walls in the front room of the store, which the studio conceived as a "standalone wooden box". In the space there are two wood counters for displaying accessories, while rectangular cutouts in the walls to hold clothing racks.
An asphalt ramp replaced the existing wheelchair lift to create an accessible pathway from the street into the storefront and to the rear of the space where the studio has constructed a large stage.
"The ramp allows a natural flow of circulation from a higher point entering the very deep area at the back of the store, and at the same time, its hovering presence performs as an object in space," the studio added.
There are several "props" on the stage including blue- and white-tiered shelving units, curved plinths for displaying products and potted plants, added as a decorative element.
Angular green drapes attached to a steel rack on the white ceiling and wrap around the space to form an adjustable divider. When closed the fabric curtains extend 30 metres forming a backdrop for the retail displays.
"Together with the rearrangement of the bright colour display props, the back room area of the ONS," it continued.
"Flagship is immediately domesticated and activated into a stage for events, with a light touch of living room like domesticity and comfort."
Collective is a studio that practices architecture, interiors and exhibition design founded in 2015.
It is led by Betty Ng, Chi Yan Chan, Juan Minguez and Katja Lam and has offices in Hong Kong, Madrid, San Francisco and New York.
US studio Field Architecture has designed the dining room of this house in a suburb of Silicon Valley, California so it is open to the outdoors and frames an oak tree.
Field Architecture, which is based in Palo Alto, completed Dawnridge House in Los Altos Hills on a site with two key features: a creek that flows intermittently and large oaks.
It is split into two volumes other so that it can wrap around one of the existing and also follow the flow of the water.
"Formally, a low-sloped ranch form splits to make room for the giant live oak tree on the site, that anchors the home by sheltering an internal courtyard," said the firm.
"The split in the building's volume doesn't just make room for the tree; it also follows the bend of the stream, settling in perfect complement to the shape of the land and breaking the symmetry of the building's geometry," it added.
Dawnridge House's wings – one is one storey and the other is two – are linked by a tall glazed structure and encase an outdoor yard underneath the shades of the tree.
"This central knuckle of the home – located off the main living space – offers a melding of natural landscape with built form at its most elemental: the yard is sheltered on its sides by build form and above by the tree canopy," Field Architecture added.
The firm said the design of the house was borne from careful study of the surrounding landscape, which also led them to leave much of the surroundings untouched.
"We began with a careful study of the site's topographical qualities, its native flora and fauna, and the particularities of its relationship to the areas that surround it," the studio explained.
"We designated more than half of the site as a natural, protected habitat, prioritising the restoration of an intermittent freshwater stream that winds along the northern edge of the site."
"Allowing these movement patterns to influence our design process, we thought also about the way in which visitors would move through the site and through the architecture, and the way in which the architecture itself would wind through the landscape," it added.
As part of an ambition to provide a strong connection to the outdoors, the studio designed the house's dining room so that it is open to the outside. Sliding glass doors open the kitchen onto the covered dining area with a barbecue. A path leads from here into the woodland around.
Glazing also links other spaces in the house to complementary outdoor areas including the living room, which opens onto a triangular gravel yard filled with large boulders "borrowed from the site", and the master bedroom on the second level, which opens onto a terrace. Large amounts of glass throughout the residence also open up to vistas.
"The windows descend to the floor, allowing the grasses that blanket the grounds to sketch their shadows across the interior floors," said the studio.
The glass is teamed with concrete and slatted cedar to forms part of a simple material palette that draws on the surroundings.
This is continued through the furnishings and decor with elements like grey stone flooring, pale built-in wooden cabinets in the lounge and the kitchen, and greyed wooden treads. Other details include wooden furniture – such as a table made from a tree stump – and muted textiles.
Field Architecture completed Dawnridge House in 2018. Other projects by the studio that are set in California's natural habitats are Pinon Ranch home in Portola Valley, just south of San Francisco, which was also designed to ensure that no trees had to be removed from the site.
The studio has also completed two homes in Napa Valley – the wood-clad Zinfandel House, which takes cues from vernacular architecture, and the Sentinel Ridge dwelling, which has facades wrapped in salvaged wood and tan stucco.
Design collective Framestudio has completed the renovation of this mid-century house near San Francisco, which was designed by architect Henry Hill in a boomerang shape around a swimming pool.
The house called Ridgewood is located in Alamo, a suburb 20 miles east of San Francisco, and was completed in 1959 by Bay Area architect Hill.
Featuring two glazed wings that open up to views of San Ramon Valley and Mount Diablo, and an irregularly shaped swimming pool, Framestudio said the house is one of Hill's "dramatic midcentury homes".
But its history since completion has been "patchy", including being abandoned, renovated and extended, and had left the house "in quite the state", according to the studio.
"Putting together a patchy history from the real estate agent, we understood that the home had at one point been abandoned, then subsequently been updated by two previous owners," it explained.
"Those owners had stripped virtually all of the original interiors, including signature elements like the indoor planter box at the entry which gave the original architect, Henry Hill a reputation for being a 'flamboyant modernist'."
Framestudio's refurbishment, designed for a couple who were about to become empty nesters, aimed to preserve existing details where possible, update the house in the style that followed the ethos of its original architect, and fit the needs of the new resident.
"We preserved the few original interior elements that remained, and approached the interiors with the mindset of 'what would the original architect design for the current owners, if he were alive and tasked with creating a peaceful sanctuary, inspired by the natural surroundings on the other side of those big panes of glass?'," Framestudio founder Chad DeWitt told Dezeen.
Following this, it added even more windows to the two wings of the house – which feature the bedrooms in one, the lounge, kitchen, dining room, and den in the other.
A secondary bedroom received a new glass wall modelled on an existing one in the main bedroom, while the kitchen's original small windows were merged into one.
The den, which was added to the property in the 1970s but had few openings, was also updated with large expanses of glazing, and a new fireplace that referenced the existing brickwork fireplaces in the house.
Other changes include reconfiguring the layouts of the guest and main bedroom bathrooms, a new wine room and the addition of floor to ceiling wood closets in the hallways. Ceilings in the hallway were also lowered to introduce a new air duct system for heating and cooling the bedrooms. All the original single paned glazing was also replaced with double glazing.
"In short, we did our best to honor the soul of the original home, improving the seismic performance of the home, and updating the mechanical systems and building envelope to improve energy performance, all designed to be almost invisible," said DeWitt.
Throughout the house, the floors are covered in either pale wood boards of large grey tiles, and the walls and wood ceilings are all painted white.
The interior decor was updated to follow the style of lesser-known international midcentury modern designers, according to the studio, with references to the work of Swiss designer Pierre Jeanneret, and Cuban designer Clara Porset. Details include white marble and pale wood in the kitchen, and wooden cabinetry and dark-pained wooden wall panelling in the bathrooms.
Born in England to American parents in 1913, Hill moved back to Berkeley, California as a child. He studied architecture at local college University of California and Harvard Graduate School of Design under Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus' first director.
Hill completed hundreds of houses during his career, mainly in the Bay Area and Carmel, and was a proponent of the Second Bay Tradition, an architectural style that merged a rustic aesthetic and modern lines.
Framestudio's other mid-century renovations include restoring a 1960s Sea Ranch Cabin that was originally built by American architect Joseph Esherick as a model for low-cost holiday housing.
Architecture firms Snøhetta, Studio Gang and Henning Larsen have unveiled proposals competing for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota, with designs that draw on the surrounding, rugged Badlands.
The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is intended for a plot in North Dakota city Medora, which is in the Badlands National Park and abuts Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Each design proposal aims to draw on the rough terrain of the Badlands and the conservation policies Roosevelt worked on while president.
Henning Larsen's proposal (top and above) is fragmented into four angular volumes topped with green roofs
"There is a unique and awe-inspiring beauty to everything about the Badlands that you simply cannot experience anywhere else," said Henning Larsen's design lead, Michael Sørensen. "The landscape only fully unfolds once you are already within it; once you are, the hills, buttes, fields, and streams stretch as far as you can see."
Henning Larsen and its project partner, the landscape architects Nelson Byrd Woltz, have developed a scheme composed of four angular grey volumes that are spliced with glass and topped with grass.
Inside, the volumes would be linked underground. Exhibition spaces would be punctuated by different views of the surrounding, and begin in darkness and then gradually become more light as visitors move through the exhibit.
"The design fuses the landscape and building into one living system emerging from the site's geology," Nelson Byrd Woltz founder Thomas Woltz added. "The buildings frame powerful landscape views to the surrounding buttes and the visitor experience is seamlessly connected to the rivers, trails, and grazing lands surrounding the library."
Studio Gang and OLIN have designed a scheme composed of three horse shoe-shaped structures
Studio Gang, which is collaborating with landscape firm OLIN, has proposed a library that act as a "basecamp" for the nearby Badlands national park.
Drawing on the formation of the Badlands, the building is separated into three horse shoe-shaped elements that each host different elements of the programme. The spaces between each are intended to be like "cracks" in the park soil.
The curves of the three volumes meet in the middle to form a dome in the centre of the building with a latticework roof, and the exterior is intended to open up to the surroundings.
"Our design is inspired by [Roosevelt's] dual love of learning and the outdoors," said Studio Gang founder Jeanne Gang.
A dome covered by latticework will provide the connection between the three structures
According to the firm, the library will also be net-zero, carbon-neutral, and will integrate an ecological restoration and management plan for the surrounding site.
"As the first Presidential Library attached to a National Park, the project is poised to foster greater understanding, environmental stewardship, and healing in one of North America's most incredible natural places," Gang explained.
"Intimately connected with the ecology of the North Dakota Badlands, Basecamp will at once draw people inward for intellectual exchange and direct them outward for physical exploration, allowing them to discover new connections with each other and the natural world."
Snøhetta's proposal has a huge curved accessible rooftop designed to act as an extension of the landscape. It would be located to the northeast edge of the butte and built with "natural and renewable" materials, according to the firm, with visuals showing large expanses of wood and glass.
A curved pathway would connect to the Maah Daah Hey Trail and additional pavilions.
The project is also intended to extend beyond its site, including connections to Little Missouri River, a former military camp called the Cantonment, and the original train depot in where Roosevelt first arrived in the area. There would also be a parking option near these external sites for visitors to catch an electric caravan to the site.
Snøhetta's design has a curved grassy roof that appears to rise from the butte
Born in New York City, Roosevelt first travelled to North Dakota, which was then known as part of Dakota Territory, aged 24 on a hunting trip. Over the years, he invested in two ranches and split his time between them and his home in New York.
Studio Gang, Henning Larsen and Snøhetta were shortlisted for the project from 12 practices that applied to the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) that the foundation made public in April to find a suitable architect for the project. The winning design will be selected in late September 2020.
The studio said the library would be built with renewable and natural materials
Once completed it will join the 13 presidential libraries in the US that serve as archives and museums illustrating the life and work of each president since Herbert Hoover, who was in office from 1929-1933. They are each built in their president's home state, with the most recent library completed for George W Bush, in Dallas, Texas.
Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien are designing the 14th presidential library for Barack Obama, who ended his term in 2017. They were selected for the project in June 2016 from a strong-list that included Snøhetta, Renzo Piano and David Adjaye.
Called the Barack Obama Presidential Center, the project has encountered controversy because of its siting in the historic Jackson Park, which was designed in 1871 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.
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.
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.
With Burning Man 2020 taking place in virtual format, architect John Marx and artist Absinthia Vermut have created a digital tour of the museum-like pavilion they had designed for the event.
The virtual experience offers a preview what the structure would look like, by clicking arrows to view and move through its interiors and view artwork as they would be arranged in the physical pavilion.
The tour shows that Museum of No Spectators is composed of eight triangular volumes in a fan shape, which host eight gallery spaces and a gift shop that doubles as an art studio inside.
Wood and diamond-shaped panels are laid across the top of the pavilion to form its roof, with natural light streaming through the gaps to project a linear pattern on the walls and floors.
Its name Museum of No Spectators, flanks a rectangular doorway outfitted with wood latticework, also used to decorate walls in each of the gallery rooms.
Marx and Vermut are aiming to build the pavilion for Burning Man 2021. As an in-person experience, it is intended to be an alternative to traditional museum settings and offer an inclusive and interactive space that meets Burning Man culture and values.
"Burning Man as an event invites you to experience art as not just something you might passively appreciate, but as a joint enterprise that unleashes your own creative potential," Marx said.
"This is why Absinthia and I thought that a museum on the playa that encourages all Burners to make works of art in an uncurated and spontaneous environment is an ideal way to reconsider what museums can be."
"It also raises interesting questions around the range of cultural inclusion and how this might impact society in general," he added.
Visitors would enter into the "Gifting Shop" where they would be asked to create an object using available art supplies before proceeding into the museum. Built-in shelvings, as shown in the virtual showcase, would wrap around the perimeter of the room to form display areas for showcasing their pieces.
Revellers would also be encouraged to create their own art to decorate the walls or add onto existing works. There are also plinths in several of the spaces for exhibiting three-dimensional or sculptural art pieces.
Burning Man's virtual event will take place from 30 August to 6 September.
Following the announcement the annual festival in Black Rock City, Nevada would be hosted digitally, architect Arthur Mamou-Mani put out a call for game designers to help him virtually create the timber amphitheatre he planned to build at the festival.
First lady Melania Trump has been criticised on social media for her pared-back redesign of the Rose Garden at the White House, with users comparing her to French queen Marie Antionette.
Melania Trump's design, which was created with landscape architecture firms Perry Guillot and Oehme, van Sweden & Associates, was described as "upsetting" and "an uninteresting patch of lawn".
The first lady, who is married to US president Donald Trump, redesigned the Rose Garden with a look that combines largely green shrubbery with white and pastel flowers.
Excited to honor history & celebrate the future in our beautiful @WhiteHouse Rose Garden this evening. Thank you to all who helped renew this iconic & truly gorgeous space. pic.twitter.com/ggiqLkdGbw
However, Twitter users criticised the decision to remove the cherry trees and colourful tulips from the garden, which was laid out in 1962 by former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who was known as Jackie O after her marriage to Aristotle Onassis in 1968.
"I normally think Melania has impeccable taste – but removing Jackie O's rose garden and all the beautiful flowers and color for whatever reason I find really upsetting not to mention not nearly as beautiful," Tweeted American columnist Meghan McCain, daughter of former US senator John McCain.
"Not everything historical is meant to be redone."
Others criticised the timing of the redesign, which was unveiled during the coronavirus pandemic and will be used as the backdrop for the first lady's Republican National Convention speech on 25 August.
New York Times columnist Charles M Blow likened Melania Trump to 18th-century French queen Marie Antoinette, whose lavish spending was blamed for the country's financial crisis that led to the French Revolution.
"If this isn't a Marie Antionette moment I don't know what is," he tweeted.
"Who cares about a redesigned rose garden when we're in the middle of a pandemic, 175,000+ people are dead and millions are out of work?"
Melania Trump. Photo is by The White House
Social media users also criticised Melania Trump's decision to pave over part of the lawn.
According to the White House, Melania Trump's redesign was intended to "restore and enhance the White House Rose Garden".
"The plan will provide a renewal of the design first implemented by Rachel Lambert 'Bunny' Mellon during the Kennedy Administration, which has been the guiding blueprint for the Rose Garden since that installation in 1962," continued the statement.
According to the first lady, some of the changes were made to increase the garden's accessibility.
"This renewal included improvements to the infrastructure and utilities, allowing this beautiful garden to more readily meet the needs of a busy White House," she said.
"These improvements also make the garden fully accessible to all Americans, including those with disabilities."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
