CMYK Lamp by Dennis Parren

During the Design Academy Eindhoven’s 2011 graduation show, Dutch designer Dennis Parren presented his experimental CMYK Lamp colored shadows with LED light. Whilst discovering by accident that the shadow lines were 3D, this LED technology lamp embodies the colorful mysteries of light.

“You can’t really say ‘that chair is red’. Actually, the chair is reflecting red light while absorbing green and blue light. It is the light that colors the world. This CMYK Lamp plays with the mystery of light and color and projects an elusive network of lines of cyan, magenta and yellow light on the ceiling. Designed not to be understood but to show that light is the only rightful owner of color.”
- Dennis Parren

CMYK Lamp by, Dennis Parren, via: flodeau

McDonald’s Architectural Identity by Patrick Norguet

McDonald’s has put Patrick Norguet in charge of designing the new architectural identity for its restaurants in France. A project which is exciting in terms of its scope as well as in its technical and sociological constraints since it concerned McDonald’s returning to its founding myth: familial fast food. If the brand was originally founded on the family, its image has little by little slid towards a more urban and adolescent tone. A return therefore to McDo’s DNA with this new interior design that Patrick Norguet, literally and figuratively, matches with getting back to roots.

The plant metaphor, with its branching development, this root common to the brand and to the family, is transformed here into an architecture which is transversal and expansive: birch plywood takes root and branches out in the restaurant in order to create areas, functions and moods for different social requirements without compartmentalizing. This organic and functional furniture/architecture offers several possibilities, several eating choices from eating standing up for lone teenagers, alcoves providing privacy to family table service, a small revolution at McDonald’s with digital control terminals integrated into the base and distributed throughout the restaurant. Henceforth, a mother can settle with her offspring at a table, order from a nearby terminal and wait for the meals to be brought to the table.

Patrick Norguet’s design, which as always hits the spot, uses contemporary white which he counterbalances with fun colours without falling for “toy” conventions like for example the storage elements with the painted metal boxes included in the base template. The luminous ambiance and the quality of the acoustics are exceptionally meticulous and offer customers a comfort which is rare today, whilst the quest for a certain radical nature is revealed through the choice of materials (plywood, sheet metal, concrete, etc.), tested in conditions of heavy passage to respond to the constraints of such a popular restaurant.

The designer is using his “Still” metal chair for Lapalma for the seats with a new high stool version specially designed for the occasion. The ceramic floor also designed by Patrick Norguet for Lea Ceramica immediately lends a distinctive tone to the venue. These huge, ultra-slim 2 metre slabs break with usual visual conventions: warm and graphic without being carpet, they change our habits in terms of flooring to create a brand new typology. Piloted at the start of the year in the Villefranche-de-Lauragais restaurant 40 km from Toulouse, the concept was immediately appealing and spoke volumes. 6 restaurants are currently in the pipeline throughout France.

McDonald’s France Architectural Identity by Patrick Norguet

Intervalle by Pierre Charpin for Crystal Saint Louis

Intervalle, by Pierre Charpin, for Crystal Saint Louis

Residência em Aldeia da Serra by MMBB

With reinforced concrete structure made of plastic shapes for waffle slab module in 90 x 90 cm and metal anchors, your plant is solved in a square of 16.20 x 16.20 m with a central void that contains the stairs and lights service environments. Resting on four pillars it is high off the ground so that makes a similar area under it and another on top. As a backyard in the sun and another shade. But the characteristics of the relief these three levels are always the land, as if all levels were on the floor.

All the walls of the house were made in mortar, all glass is free of frames, the internal floors in graniteware and external concrete sanded. The roof slab is protected with a water surface. The outer walls are shaded with a panel made of industrial wood and cement pressed.

Residência em Aldeia da Serra, by MMBB, via plastolux

Exhibition: Mobilier National at Demisch Danant

The Mobilier National is the successor to the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne (the entity originally responsible for the safeguarding of royal furnishings and tapestries), which was reorganized by Colbert in 1663; its structure still serves as the basis for the current administration’s organization. In addition to maintaining inventories and conserving and caring for furnishings, the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne also acted as an important force for preserving classic techniques through its traditional workshops. It was responsible for furnishing royal residences and issued the commissions necessary for these programs. This remains the central role for the Mobilier National, which is now responsible for the interior design and furnishing of presidential residences, as well as official buildings (ministries, embassies, major government agencies, the National Assembly, and the Senate).

In the early 1960s, the French government, under the leadership of André Malraux, then the Minister of Culture, inaugurated a policy of supporting creative endeavor; the objective was to provide genuine patronage that would foster the revival of French furniture design. As part of this commitment, the Atelier de Recherche et de Création (ARC) was established in 1964 under the direction of Jean Coural. The mission of this entity was to promote contemporary French styles, providing designers with modern technical resources and manufacturers with distribution opportunities, based on carefully directed research.

The ARC is a research laboratory with a highly qualified staff devoted to studying new materials and creating prototypes that are developed through collaboration with designers and in close cooperation with interested manufacturers. The design models remain the property of the government but may be subsequently distributed by a French producer.

The finest designers of the 1960s and 1970s worked with Mobilier National, and the most significant creations of the era were products of this venture. Since its inception, the ARC has produced over 500 pieces of furniture, including special commissions for french pavilions at expositions of Montreal and Osaka, presidential residences and offices, and more recently the French embassy in Berlin and the Ministry of Culture and of Communication.

Exhibition: Mobilier National, New York, November 8 – February 11, at Demisch Danant

Woollahra Residence by Katon Redgen Mathieson

Located in Woollahra, Sydney, this existing free standing Victorian Italianate villa was re-designed and extended to accommodate a Sydney art dealer, and family. A white rendered modern pavilion has been added to the rear of the house, replacing a series of haphazard earlier additions. The house has been designed to function as a home, gallery, workplace and venue for large gatherings. The new interiors and architecture form a canvas for the changing art collections. The original four room Victorian plan, with central hall, iron lace detailed verandah and Italianate chimneys and parapets, have been retained. A large open kitchen and dining space dominates the new extension with a dramatic seven metre long fixed central table.

Woollahra Residence, Sydney, Australia by Katon Redgen Mathieson

Mingskatable by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac & LAQ Executive

Intrigued by the confrontation between savoir-faire and contemporary culture, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac accepted the challenge proposed by LAQ to be involved in the creation of the Mingskatable. From discussions to reflections, the designers from LAQ and JCDC designed a resolutely contemporary coffee table combining beauty and originality. Resulting from the clash between the history of Chinese Ming furniture, the ancestral art of Japan and urban culture, the Mingskatable table evokes both the golden age of Chinese furniture and ‘street culture.’

Mingskatable, by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and LAQ Executive, at Galerie BSL, Paris

Boros Residence by Jens Casper

In the Boros residence – a former Second World War air raid shelter built in 1942 in central Berlin – visitors can easily lose their way in the maze-like corridors of bare concrete.

Bullet holes from the Second World War testify the historical significance of the building. The heart of this hermetic concrete cube contains an exhibition of contemporary works from the private collection of ad agency founder and publisher, Christian Boros. In order to create a suitable space for the collection, architect Jens Casper deconstructed the 3,000 square meter bunker, which was once devoid of natural light, transforming it into a complex room arrangement. The glass superstructure of the penthouse is the polar opposite of the cube’s massiness.

There, Christian and his wife, Karen, live with their son amidst paintings by Elizabeth Peyton and a series of installations by groundbreaking artists such as Olafur Eliasson. It is a dream home that once seemed impossible to realize, but has now become an art manifesto for Berlin’s historical Mitte district, where change is the norm.

Boros Residence, by Jens Casper, for Karen and Christian Boros, Manager and Art Collector, Penthouse, Berlin-Mitte, via: Freunde von Freunden

Boros Collection, Edited by Boros Foundation, Photographs by Noshe, German, English, 2009. 198 pp., 68 color ills. 24 x 32 cm, hardcover, ISBN 9783775724784
Buy the book: Amazon

Beaver Street Reprise by Craig Steely

Beaver Street Reprise is a conceptually modern house that fits contextually into a Victorian neighborhood. It contains an apartment, an office, and a split-level living area that opens onto a deck with sod roof.

Beaver Street Reprise, San Francisco, California, by, Craig Steely

The Grand Dame by ASKarchitects

One such rough diamond was a 310sqm neoclassical private residence. Originally built for the French Councilor, this residence is a fine example of a typical Landmark Piraeus building. The architecture practice ASKarchitects co-founded by the Greek architect Stella Konstantinidis, was approached in 2007 with a brief to renovate the existing landmark while introducing a new built extension penthouse opening up the green roof. For this project, outmost care and sensitivity was paid to the historic values of the structure. New life has been introduced without forgetting about those that have gone by.

The finished residence consists of a four-story building with the new built section consisting of 90sqm. The aim was to create an open plan residence to house a family of four. The building was stripped to its bare bones and minor but effective interventions were applied to reinforce the original structure. All interior walls were demolished and replaced with sliding doors/walls for flexible living. The most flexible being the timeless old world courtyard reminiscent of the former days of outside neighborhood chit-chat now with over scaled glazed doors giving/retaining the sense of the endless height now bestowing a point of contact to all boundaries of the daily life. As the architect herself puts it ‘this courtyard area has become the lungs of the house’.

The Grand Dame, Piraeus, Athens, Greece, by, ASKarchitects
Photography by, Vangelis Paterakis, via: Yatzer