Atrium Champagne Bar by Foster + Partners

Winners of the 2013 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards have been announced. Norman Foster’s Atrium Champagne Bar in London won for Best Bar.

Atrium Champagne Bar, London, by Foster + Partners, Overall Winner 2013 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards

Strick House by Oscar Niemeyer ll

Connoisseurs architecture of the middle of the twentieth century, Michael and Gabrielle Boyd discovered a forgotten masterpiece of Oscar Niemeyer and brought him back to life.

Strick House, Santa Monica, California, USA, by Oscar Niemeyer
via: Architectural Digest

Read More: Strick House by Oscar Niemeyer I

Firmship Headquaters by Moooi

Firmship Headquaters, Monnickendam, Netherlands, by Suzy Vissers, Moooi
Photography by Matthijs van Roon
Firmship 42 by Willem Nieland & Studio Job

Atrium House by Eduard Ludwig

With a sure hand bfs architects have helped an atrium house in Berlin’s famous Hansaviertel back to its former glamour. The modernist building was part of the 1957 building exhibition in Berlin’s Tiergarten park. It was designed by Eduard Ludwig, who among other things also designed the airlift monument at Tempelhof airport.

Atrium House, by Eduard Ludwig, via: Bergdorf

Hotel Zenden by Wiel Arets Architects

Hotel Zenden is located within three monumental town houses near the river Maas in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The hotel’s history begins in the late 1960s, and originally contained only a pool for swimming lessons. Over the years other functions such as hotel rooms and a Judo school were implemented into the program. During the renovation, the scattered program was recrystallized into an iconographical and integrated whole. Newly created openings in the hotel’s walls allow for views between all areas of the new program, as well to as the exterior. The renovation led to an abstraction of the structure in both plan and section, not least because all ceilings heights were kept to a maximum. The resulting interior sculpture is completely clad in white, with the exterior inversions painted anthracite. New program elements were placed if and where necessary.

Hotel Zenden, Maastricht, Netherlands, by Wiel Arets Architects

Exhibition: Konstantin Grcic: Appt 50

There is an apartment in Le Corbusier’s famous Cité Radieuse (radiant city) in Marseille, which is almost completely preserved in its original 1952 condition. Appt. No 50 is privately owned and it is thanks to the generosity and passion of its owner/occupant that the place is made accessible to a wider public during the summer months of each year. As proof that Le Corbusier’s visionary Unité d’Habitation has the same vibrancy today as when it was originally conceived the apartment is turned into a temporary stage for the ideas and works of contemporary designers.

A short series of scenographic installations has been realized over the years; Konstantin Grcic’s project is the third in line following Jasper Morrison (2008) and Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (2010). Apart from placing a selection of his favorite furniture and objects Grcic decided to tag the walls of the apartment with four blown up scans from an original punk fanzine.

“The punk motifs are tempting a slightly devious link between two completely unrelated worlds: Le Corbusier’s architecture and punk rock. Without forcing the idea of common grounds, I find that both have a rawness and uncompromising spirit which I have always found compellingly beautiful. Bringing both cultures together in this project felt most inspiring and, in the end, surprisingly fitting”, explains the designer.

15 July -15 August 2013, Cité Radieuse, Unité d’habitation, Le Corbusier Appartement 50, rue 280 boulevard Michelet, Marseille, Photography by Philippe Savoir & Fondation Le Corbusier / ADAGP, via: Domus

Gallery Sèvres Cité de la Céramique by A+A Cooren

The aim of the display system for the Manufacture of Sèvres is to enhance their four centuries of creation through a selection of 100 pieces. Reminiscent of the sunrise in Asia, the vaporised yellow gradation opens a vertical evasion of the space. The void created between the thin-edge plywood shelves and the light wire-cube structure, expresses the lightness and the impression of floating shelves.

Galerie de Sèvres – Cité de la Céramique, Paris, France, by A+A Cooren
Photography © Lorenz Cugini

In Residence: Claudio Silvestrin

…a minimalist masterpiece, free of any physical clutter but filled instead with light, shadow and sculptural forms. The architect’s reductive, contemplative, near-ecclesiastical spaces can be found across the globe. He has designed beautiful residences from Moscow to Majorca, and currently on his drawing board is a Miami home for Kanye West. Silvestrin’s signatures are employed in his own home to full effect: the vertical is emphasized in columns of material that lend the double height living space an air of classical structure; the horizontal is emphasized by a parapet that extends the length of the living space. Monolithic forms that reference the ageless minimalism of Stone Henge and The Parthenon are everywhere, while his use of materials such as stone and wood bring raw and harmonious results. Groceries and even an extensive library of philosophy are hidden behind paneled doors. Only the occasional Wegner chair or Calder mobile breaks through the interior’s clean planes. “This is a space to reflect in,” says Silvestrin-one where guests quickly shed the hubbub of the London streets below and in which, he confesses, they always seem to linger a little longer than intended.

In Residence: Claudio Silvestrin, via: Nowness.com

Restaurant Farang by Futudesign

Farang is located in Norrmalm in the heart of Stockholm. Farang combines the intimacy of contemporary Asian restaurant with the urbanity of a Stockholm street level space. Ground floor of an old industrial building was turned into a 700 m² fine dining restaurant. The restaurant contains a dining hall with 160 seats, as well as a cocktail bar with 50 seats and cabinet. Industrial character and charm of the old space was kept while adding contemporary restaurant and cocktail bar facilities of very high quality. The design makes a clear distinction between old and new elements by leaving the old space as a fully visible frame for the new functions. The simple material palette such as wood, steel, concrete and fabrics allows the enjoyment and visuality of food to take center stage.

Restaurant Farang, Stockholm, Sweden, by Futudesign

Tel Aviv Penthouse 2 by Pitsou Kedem Architect

Tel Aviv Penthouse 2, by Pitsou Kedem Architect