A new 5,000 sq ft beachside home in Poole, Dorset is being offered by Savills, presented in a contemporary style with luxury guest facilities and a carefully engineered design aimed at waterfront living. The home also features direct access to the beach and a 40ft mooring.

At a glance

The house comprises:

• Ground floor: reception hall; open-plan sitting room and dining room; family room; kitchen; study; cloakroom
• First floor: master bedroom; double guest bedroom; two en-suite bedrooms
• Basement: cinema; gymnasium; sauna; laundry room; plant room
• Integral double garage
• South-west facing garden and terrace

Features

All bedrooms are built overlooking the garden and ocean, as have all main reception rooms on the ground floor, while the south-west facing exterior of the house is made entirely from double-glazed glass with powder-coated aluminium framing, creating a synergy between the house and the harbour. The uniquely-shaped roof, which forms a curved shape in solid metal, adds to the modern beachside theme that continues into the garden itself, which boasts a wooden decking area (with built-in Jacuzzi) and landscaped garden with direct waterfront access.

The interior maintains a holiday home style, with well-appointed open-plan family rooms and linked kitchen/dining/sitting areas, which open out onto a raised terrace looking over the garden. On the first floor, bedrooms are equally highly-fitted, with large dressing rooms in the master and main guest bedroom, and en suites attached to the two smaller guest bedrooms. The two larger bedrooms also feature access to a first floor balcony, which juts out towards the sea in a unique wave-shape form.

The minimalist design of the home is modern contemporary throughout, with pale hues and bold, stand-out furnishings, using a simple colour palette and premium technologies to create a residence that is welcoming and fosters social interaction. The living room and bedrooms use small splashes of colour to complement the sea view, while other living areas such as the kitchen offset the pale shades with linear brown and bronze embellishments. Wood furnishings are used throughout, creating a natural look and feel which extends out to the wooden decking and into the garden, bringing the home together as one cohesive design.

This waterfront property has all the makings of an ideal family or holiday home. A luxurious collection of rooms designed in the most up-to-date styles using high-quality furnishings, it is already one of the most significant properties in Poole, and a magnificent architectural structure both inside and out, contributing a modern elegance to the harbour and coastline.

J Schatz introduces mordern tube bird feeder – Hang out with the birds at the Bistro Bird Feeder – a lunch spot for birds. Designed for those who want a modern, colorful, and gorgeous tube bird feeder that will attract birds and looks beautiful in the backyard, terrace or patio. Easy to use, durable, squirrel proof, and available in six glossy colors.

Beautiful & Durable

Bistro Bird Feeders provide a beautiful place for your birds to gather and an easy way for you to feed them. The glossy stoneware feeding tube with four feeding holes accented by four aluminum perch poles and aluminum cover is a handsome addition to any backyard, terrace or patio. Finely crafted by hand in stoneware, Bistro Bird Feeders are durable and easy to use in any environment. The aluminum cover, poles and vinyl coated hanging wire are rust resistant. The stoneware tube has a small drainage hole to prevent water accumulation in bird food.

Easy To Use

Bistro Bird Feeders are easy to use. They feature a single stoneware feeding tube is suspended by a vinyl coated wire with an aluminum cover that slides up the wire to reveal a fill hole. Birds eat from one of four 3/4" diameter feeding holes that are positioned on each side of the Bistro Bird Feeder. The feeding holes are positioned at four different heights (1 3/4″, 3 3/4″, 5 1/2″, and 7 1/4″) so that birds may eat from the Bistro Bird Feeder until it is completely empty. Each feeding hole has an aluminum perch beneath it so the birds may rest while retrieving their food. To fill the Bistro Bird Feeder with bird food you simply lift the aluminum cover to reveal the top fill hole and fill. Each Bistro Bird Feeder holds 9 1/2 cups of bird food and comes with an easy to use seed scoop and user-guide. We recommend using black oil sunflower seeds for optimal Bistro Bird Feeder performance.

Squirrel Proof

Squirrels will not be able to eat from the feeder if it is hung at least three feet away from surrounding surfaces. When squirrels are forced to jump onto the feeder they simply can’t hold onto the slick aluminum cover. The aluminum cover also has a 1 3/4″ overhang that prevents squirrels from reaching the feeding holes.

+ Product Specifications

Dimensions: 11 1/2″ High x 10″ Diameter
Material: Stoneware and Aluminum
Weight: 3 1/2 Pounds
Available in 6 glossy colors: Bittersweet Orange, Bright White, Goldenrod Yellow, Light Aqua, Moss Green & Sumac Red

Handcrafted Stoneware made in New York

J Schatz products are handmade exclusively in their upstate New York studio employing local artists and using energy-saving production methods.

 

 

The Riverside, a higher educational building designed by KKE Architects for the University of Worcester, has won the Higher Education Building category of the AJ Retrofit Awards 2012.

The awards, created by the Architects' Journal ('the voice of architecture in Britain'), recognise the vision of clients and the skill of architects in re-purposing existing buildings to create cost-effective schemes with low energy usage and reduced carbon emissions. The innovative Riverside building, which appears purpose-built, but was in fact created from a former car dealership with associated workshops, has achieved a C energy performance rating (EPR): a significant achievement for a refurbishment and especially one created on a tight budget. At a total project cost of £2.3m, the scheme cost approximately half what it would have cost to build from scratch (at a £1000 per sq m rather than £2000 per sq m for a new scheme).

Martin Mayfield of award sponsors Arup commented on the 'Higher Education Buildings' category:

Universities and colleges must not only rationalise their estates, but improve their performance in response to the changing agenda on carbon, teaching, research and finance. Reducing carbon emissions while using more energy demands a strategic, long-term approach to estates management. It's inspiring to see the innovative ways in which these projects are dealing with these issues.

Project Background

The Riverside project sought to extend the University of Worcester's building portfolio on a strategic new central site in Worcester (also a conservation area), linking the original campus to the new City Campus. Applications to the University had, in recent years, grown seven times faster than the national average and its investment programme aimed to provide a mix of new, improved and refurbished facilities throughout Worcester, to provide excellent educational, sporting and performance spaces to benefit both students and the wider community.

Existing building and brief

A former car showroom and servicing garage, which had fallen into disrepair after being empty for over a year, was re-imagined for the new scheme as a centre for sports science and performance arts teaching, encapsulating a sports hall, sports teaching rooms, a dance room, full changing rooms and a large social space with café facilities.

was to optimise the layout for the required teaching and social functions and to concentrate the refurbishment efforts into reducing energy use, seeking innovative ways to retain as much of the original building envelope and adding elements to help with energy conservation, as well as giving the building increased scale, impact and authority.

'Our approach' Phil Kavanagh, KKE Architects' Director & Project Leader

Landscaping

Landscaping on the scheme was by KKE Architects' Director and Chelsea Flower Show gold medallist garden designer Olivia Kirk.

The planting scheme was robust and was created in order to provide privacy and breakout spaces for students using the new social learning space.

A long curve of Cornus Midwinter Fire and Eleagnus Limelight provide year-round interest, with eight multi-stemmed River Birch providing a striking boundary between the university building and the adjacent busy road. Traditionally associated with river banks, the trees are visually pleasing, with the flaking, cinnamon-coloured bark contrasting in winter with the bright red of the Cornus.

Olivia Kirk, Landscape/garden designer

Architectural Approach & Energy Conservation

The existing building was steel-framed with external cladding and single-glazing to the front and minimal insulation. KKE Architects removed all the cladding back to the steel frame and specified new cladding with high levels of insulation, whilst most of the glazing was replaced with double-glazing, even though the 'C' EPR was achieved even with some levels of single glazing retained. In addition to the new rendering, more functional areas to the west of the building were re-clad in smooth silver cladding panels, attaching stretcher bond over the existing façade to simplify the exterior.

The architects introduced a steel and louvre loggia system around the large curtain-walled area of the building, facing the River Severn.  This functions as solar shading, working together with the tree avenue to give shelter to the pathways around the building, whilst the new roof over-sail and colonnades lend the building greater presence on the important river and main road frontage. The resultant reduction in solar gain removes the need for mechanical cooling, whilst good daylight levels are maintained.

What this means is that when the sun is high in the sky, heat gain is cut out, but when the sun is lower in the sky, light is not lost.

Phil Kavanagh, KKE Architects' Director

Mechanical and Electrical Systems

When it came to energy usage, a combination of mechanical and electrical systems' design and integration both passively and actively lowered energy consumption and carbon emissions. Window openings within the other areas of the south-facing façade were reduced and vertical screening was introduced that reduces the mechanical and venting energy use in the teaching rooms. Wind-catchers and natural ventilation were used within the social spaces to reduce energy use, whilst the high spaces in the café and sports hall areas were exploited to drive the natural ventilations system, promoting increased airflow through the wall and roof terminals.

Modern systems feature throughout to promote reduced energy consumption, from demand-based M&E systems to ultra-low NOx condensing boilers, as well as variable speed/volume pumping systems; demand-based ventilation; mixed-mode cooling systems; cooling provided on 'peak lopping' basis to minimise consumption of energy; heat recovery ventilation systems; electronic flow controls for showering facilities to minimise hot water consumption; fully-automated building management system controls; efficient high frequency fluorescent lighting; daylight-linked lighting controls in heavily-glazed areas and automatic lighting controls to reduce the 'on' time of lighting systems.

'High levels of insulation and passive ventilation help to keep in-use-costs low and assist towards lowering carbon emissions' added Phil Kavanagh. 'Additionally, only 5 tonnes of waste from the site went to landfill, with 212 tonnes recycled and 16 further tonnes retained on site.'

Interior Design & Colour

The university's existing branding is blue and a range of complimentary blues was introduced to the scheme with all internal doors using a different shade. Orange was chosen for the external feature wall to be bright and vibrant and sit well tonally with the blue. A new grey paving belt around the building replaced the existing red brick garage forecourt, along with the new landscaping.

Internally, blue and orange are also used for loose furniture and screening within the double-height social space. The ceiling in this space is a suspended acoustic ceiling by Echophon, with all services above painted-out in black. New large-sale pendant lighting in the space is contemporary and striking and serves to lower the ceiling slightly to create a more human scale, as well as providing an eye-catching feature at night through the glazing.

Blue is used also for the graphic figures on the walls of the sports hall, designed by KKE Architects to add interest to the space.

Success of new building

Dr Susie Hart, Head of Sport and Recreation Strategy at the University of Worcester, commented:

The conversion of the old garage workshops into a physical activity hall and dance studios has been equally well received by students, recreational users and high performance groups.  We are extremely pleased with the complex in that, without exception, our range of client groups love the design and accessible location.

The social learning space is well-used by the University students and many take advantage of it as a stopping-off point when travelling between sites, whilst also using it as a destination. The central location further encourages greater use of cycling and public transport.

+ ABOUT KKE Architects

KKE Architects (www.kkearchitects.co.uk) is an architecture and landscape design practice, established in 2005 and named after its founding directors (Kirk, Kavanagh & Eguiguren). The practice is a specialist in healthcare design – especially the design of hospices with over 25 completed projects to date – alongside a growing portfolio of education, residential and office projects.

KKE Architects’ work has won or been nominated for a number of leading awards, including the RIBA and Civic Trust Awards, as well as the new AJ Retrofit Award

Three of the practice directors have a background in architecture, whilst the fourth, Olivia Kirk, is a landscape/garden designer and a Chelsea Flower Show gold medal winner for her 2011 garden for Worcester Bosch.

German designer Simon Michel shows in his design concept how functional a cake pan can be. His design concept “Flexy” can individually be deformed. This makes it possible to back small and large cakes in the same cake pan.

The Problem

Baking a cake for some one is very personally. But the shape of cakes is nearly always the same, and thats not very personally. The assortment of baking mixtures in supermarkets is large and every family have there one recipe to. All these mixtures and recipes have different volumes. Therefore you need different cake pans, with different sizes. But all these cake pans are fixed shapes, they can not be individually designed or adjusted on are different volume of a cake.

The Solution

Flexy is a customizable cake pan. The shape is narrower and shallower than usual cake pans which allows to individually design the shape of the cake. Whether round, square, straight or curved.
Flexy can get playful in a variety of different forms. Flexy can also be adapted to the volume of different baking mixtures, and makes it possible to bake small or large cakes in just one form. Flexy consists of a flexible and Food-safe plastic. The flexibility of Flexy allows that the cake can be easily removed from the mold. The cake pan can also fold up to save space in the kitchen.

This is a brief introduction of our next Competition [PACIFIC 06]. The aim of this International Competition is to design a New Prison afloat the Pacific Ocean, using an oil Platform as a reference structure.

The imprisonment of people is probably one of the bigger taboo within our modern society. A Prison is a place in which people are physically confined and usually deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime.

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.

+ For more information about the competition, please visit www.ac-ca.org

Note: this is an open international competition hosted by [AC-CA]™ to generate progressive contemporary design ideas.
There are no plans for the Platform Prison to be built.