UK-based studio Duffy London are pleased to announce an addition to their seating range, the Milli Sofa. Taking inspiration from nature this unique piece of furniture is handmade by UK based craftsmen and used materials all sourced in Britain.

+ Materials:
Upholstery fabric is 100% wool sourced and woven in the UK, Wood is from Forest Stewardship Council managed forests and other controlled sources.

+ Dimensions:
3 Seater – (H) 85cm (W) 260cm (D) 80cm -  £1,995
2 Seater – (H) 85cm (W) 180cm (D) 80cm – £1,795 Arm Chair – (H) 85cm (W) 105cm (D) 80cm – £1,295

+ Link to product page: http://www.duffylondon.com/product_d/Chairs-Sofas-C59/Milli-Sofa-P258.html

Milli Sofa, image courtesy Duffy London

Milli Sofa, image courtesy Duffy London

Milli Sofa, image courtesy Duffy London

The "Europe 40 Under 40" program was initiated by The European Center as an annual program to spotlight and identify the next generation of architects and designers who will impact future living and working environments, cities, and rural areas.

Presented annually, the program is open to all young architects, landscape architects, urban planners, industrial designers, graphic designers, and fashion and textile designers who are under the age of 40 who are working independently or in a firm or on a specific project where they are the lead designer.

The deadline for the 2011 program is November 30, 2010.

The results of Europe 40 Under 40 are announced in Summer 2011 and take the form of an exhibition opening in Europe and scheduled for travel. The exhibition is also presented in the United States by The Chicago Athenaeum. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition and documents the work of the 40 selected architects.

Applications are available online at The European Centre’s website at www.europeanarch.eu.

image courtesy COOP HIMMELB(L)AU

If you now are in China, you probably have a chance to attend the lectures by world renowned architects Wolf D. Prix/ COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. Here are the time and venue during Wolf D. Prix’s schedule in China.

Shenzhen, China
Venue: Shenzhen Municipal Urban Planning Bureau, 2nd Floor, Trade Hall, No. 8009 Hongli West Road, Shenzhen 518034, China
Date: October 11, 2010
Time: 3:00 – 4:30 p.m.

Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
Venue: School of Architecture, Tianjin University, Lecture Hall of 4F, TianNan Lianhe Building, 92 Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin 300072, China
Date: October 12, 2010
Time: 6:00 – 8:30 p.m.

Tsinghua University, Beijng, China
Venue: School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Jackson Wong Hall, No.30 Shuang Qing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100084, China
Date: October 17, 2010
Time: 3:00 p.m.

Additionally:
EXPO Shanghai, Austria Tec Week, China
Title: The City of the Future 2050
Venue: Urban Future Pavilion, 3 Floor, Lecture Hall, EXPO Shanghai, China
Date: October 17, 2010
Time: 3:00 p.m.

Rome-based architecture practice Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners designed the Hanoi / Vietnam: Medlac Pharma office, Italian pharmaceutical company specialized in dermatological products and trans-dermic plasters, has started its construction works for its new offices and plants, designed by Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners and situated in the Hoa Lac Hi-TechPark near the Vietnamese capital Hanoi

Roman architecture firm Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners designed the new branch of Medlac Pharma – Italian pharmaceutical company specialized in dermatological products and trans-dermal plasters – set in the recently developed industrial area Hoa Lac Hi-TechPark, 50 kilometres from Hanoi, Vietnam, and now under construction.

Medlac Pharma Office by Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

The industrial complex is characterised by horizontal volumes and strong visual lightness. Built on a 15,000 square metre land surface it includes an office building and a production plant for a total amount of approximately 3,400 square metres of built surface.

Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners have even prepared the new Medlac building, whose construction will be completed by the end of 2010, for a possible future extension by addition of a second complex with a mirror-inverted layout.

The new Medlac branch in Vietnam designed by the architects Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners consists in two blocks. The smaller one develops on two levels and houses the administrative offices. The larger one holds the production plants.

The office building with rectangular plan is characterised by an entirely transparent outside skin made of structural U-profile glass walls.

Medlac Pharma Office by Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

Numerous portions of the glass walls, of different width and positioned in a random pattern, can be opened. Adjustable sunshades made with white lacquered wood panels, lending the building a light mood and visual movement, screen these windows.

An imposing whole-height niche that frames and defines the entrance to the office building dominates the longer side of the facade. The front of the niche is clad in large glass panes, while the side walls are plastered in orange, a bright colour that is used all over the complex confer a fresh look to the new Medlac facilities.

The whole-height entrance hall features reception, courtesy lounge and main staircase with metal frame and glass parapets.

The ground floor is divided into two areas. The management area includes a dedicated secretariat and two large executive offices with connected bathrooms. The second area features a large corridor leading to the conference hall, a second secretariat, administrative offices and other service and bathrooms. The remaining area on the floor plan of the building includes even part of the staff canteen.

The upper floor is characterised by the same division between management and administrative area. It also offers the possibility to temporarily create two large conference halls by uniting one small meeting room and one office for each.

The Medlac production area is set on the back of the office building and is connected to it by means of a low, orange volume hosting the larger part of the staff canteen.

Medlac Pharma Office by Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

The production plant is made of lacquered sandwich panels. The opaque structure features openings towards the square covered by two large cantilevered roofs with a bright orange ceiling. Even the façade round the entrance to the technical area, not aligned with the facade of the buildings but slightly dislocated in order to create a sort of yard, is orange.

The complex is set in a green area conceived by Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners the architecture firm. This green, natural frame with lawns and trees, including the accesses and the car park, creates a friendly atmosphere and welcomes at best employees, clients and guests.

+ Project credits / data

Project: Medlac Pharma Office
Location: Hanoi, Vietnam
Program: Office
Architect: Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

+ About Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners architecture practice was founded in 2002 by Massimo Alvisi and Junko Kirimoto after important experiences achieved through the collaboration with international studios like the ones of Renzo Piano, Massimiliano Fuksas and Oscar Niemeyer.

In 2008, the practice has been transformed into a studio for architectural engineering joined by Alessandra Spiezia and Arabella Rocca.

With a staff of twelve professionals, Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners offers architectural project development and engineering, feasibility study and project management for their own works and for renowned architects like Rem Koolhas and Renzo Piano.

Numerous are Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners' projects concerning the construction and restoration of concert halls, theatres, industrial complexes and office buildings. The studio has also developed important projects of shop and restaurant design, residential interiors and architecture and concepts for museum and exhibition installations.

Competitions and awards:

• winner of the "Meno è più di 4" competition: kindergarten, civic centre and public library in Rome
• winner of the international competition for the restoration of the municipal theatre of Corato (Bari, Italy), under construction
• awarded for the international competition "Piccole Stazioni Ferroviarie" (small railway stations)
• awarded for the project of the rowing canal, developed for the candidacy of Madrid as Olympic Games site 2016
• awarded for the competition upon invitation of Giustiniano Imperatore area in Roma

Primitive Collection | Nucleo, image courtesy Secondome

Nilufar e Secondome present PRIMITIVE COLLECTION | Nucleo via degli orsini 26/27 Rome | 21st of October – 20th of November 2010.

Primitive collection, designed in exclusive for Nilufar, is presented in Rome at Secondome Gallery starting from 21st of October at 6.30 pm.

Continuing the creative process, Nucleo develops a series of new elements adding fresh peculiarities to the collection.

The lines diverge and evolve, preserving the volumetric severity and the geometric solidity opening to further forms.

Primitive as primary geometric figures.
Primitive as computer language called the simplest solid objects.
Primitive as, in English, are defined original, coarse and wild objects.

+ The project

A project focusing on erasing all excess decorative style after the last neo-baroque objects created.

The project aims to fragment and destruct. To reduce aggregated forms to elementary geometry. Nothing more and nothing less than volume, crucial and bearing structure, strength and vital consistency of materials. Sofas, armchairs, tables and lamps comprise an outstanding environment in space and time.

Primitive Collection | Nucleo, image courtesy Secondome

Primitive Collection | Nucleo, image courtesy Secondome

A free territory, mindful of history and, at the same time, a peace and listening place, invites one to live the present, and take the mind back to ancestral forms, to design new images and ideas.

The workmanship makes unrepeatable and unique objects: made entirely by hand without the use of presswork and finished with non-toxic resins that reveal signs and imperfections.

Living Primitive elements reflect on elementary forms used by Le Corbusier to create architectural and urban space.

The return to structure is a twentieth Century leitmotiv, with artistic avant-garde, from Cubism, to Abstract art, to Constructivism, Suprematism. The art is free from ‘enslavement’ to the subject, able to translate the motions of the human soul with the pure colour or pure form.

Primitive Collection | Nucleo, image courtesy Secondome

Primitive Collection | Nucleo, image courtesy Secondome

In "Spiritual in Art", Kandinsky devotes many pages to elementary figures, Malevic entrusts artistic representation of a single subject, the famous Black Square on a white background.

“Arte Povera” of the Sixties and the current “minimal” expression in art and design are a ceaseless research into the great depths that the simple form does have.

Primitive is a tribute to this research, and, retaining the double meaning of rationalism and geometric primordial spontaneity, evoking the paradox, field favourite to creation.

Primitive Collection | Nucleo, image courtesy Secondome

+ About

Nilufar

Nilufar is known today as one of Italy's most active and original galleries in the fields of historical design and antique Oriental carpets and furniture. The gallery–now housed in a three-storey space on Milan's prestigious via della Spiga–was founded by Nina Yashar in 1979 and, since then, has presented exhibitions of an unmistakable style: always eclectic, and always to be read in novel, unexpected ways.

November 2006 saw the opening of the exhibition Short Cuts: a fascinating collection of different designers and pieces, Ignazio Gardella, Piero Fornasetti, Gaetano Pesce, Jacques Adnet and Paul Evans, just to mention a few. Once merged and linked together, they give a unique rich mosaic work. "Many small short cuts turn into a beautiful full-length film."

Nilufar's first exhibitions were dedicated to Persian carpets, kilims, and gabbehs (from southern Persia), to Chinese and Tibetan carpets, and also to European Aubusson carpets. In 1988, Nilufar presented furnishings and carpets by Alvar Aalto, Hans Wegner and Arne Jacobsen, thus beginning its exploration of the juxtapositioning of rugs and furnishings from diverse epochs and regions of the world–an exploration which then was to find its natural continuation in the Crossings exhibitions of 1999 and 2000. 2001 delivered a review of the work of the French rationalists in the years preceding and following the Second World War (Adnet, Jansen, Leleu, Motte, Old, Perriand and Prouvé) and also presented three silicone carpets realized especially for Nilufar by Gaetano Pesce.

In 2002, the exhibition Objets d'affection introduced Italy to the work of Roger Tallon. Why, of 2003, explored the tension between rationalism and intuition in the projects of Borsani, Aalto, Boyer, Buzzi, Juhl, Mollino, Moos and Pergay. Gallery, in 2004, flanked an important group of objects and furnishings by Gio Ponti with the work of the great American designer Paul Evans. October 2005 saw the opening of the exhibition Metropolis: The Birth of a Style for the Global Cities, 1940–1980, with works by Josef Frank, James Mont, Jordan Mozer and Lino Sabattini.

Secondome

Secondome is a Design Gallery based in the historic center of Rome. In 2008 it became Editor and was founded Secondome Edizioni. Located in the prestigious Palazzo Boncompagni the space of the Gallery Secondome, designed by the architect Claudia Pignatale, is a design container in its purest form in which the objects will be the only players. The Gallery concentrates on discoveries in the world of design, dedicates itself to new designers and innovative projects, focuses on independent Italian producers as well as on the editions that Secondome produces, promotes and exports around the world. In 2010 Secondome has exibited at Design Miami/Basel the collection Cut&Paste commissioned to Kiki Van Eijk, young dutch designer.

Claudia Pignatale, architect, is a businesswoman in her 30's who wanted to express in material form her passion for art and design. Claudia's mission: that Secondome become a center of attraction and attention for design for central Italy, bring Rome onto the international design scene and export design and italian creation around the world.

Nucleo

Nucleo is a collective of four artists directed by Piergiorgio Robino, created in 1997 at Turin, Italy. Nucleo is an interdisciplinary team work as a multi-platform, active in contemporary art, design and architecture fields.

Nucleo works, able to find a contact point between art and design, were exhibit all over the world – at the MoMa of New York, at the Beaubourg of Paris, at the Triennale Design Museum of Milan -.

Nucleo is the synonym of research, innovation, introspection, we continues to inspire by the contemporary reality freely and sometimes ironically.

Center of Technical Services of LA Grande Motte City is one of the latest completed project designed by French architectural practice N+B architects. The project is part of a deep respect of the present natural elements while offering a determinedly contemporary image allowing a revival this site.

The landscaped and architectural project presents a strong unity stemming from qualities of the place to compose spaces where the environmental quality will be a vector of the development. So a particular attention is brought to its insertion in the site. It is conceived as a topographic line drawn by the same materials (wood) offering it a spatial but also visual unity. It is under this line of landscape established by a flat roof that the entities of the program come to take place.

The project is completely built wooden. It is an environmental choice which we made by working with local pines essences of, but also to insure a technical, constructive and functional simplicity. The intervention which we propose allows restoring coherence and featuring to the group by means of a new spatial scenography and a development of the existing holdings.

Elodie Nourrigat & Jacques Brion, N+B Architectes

Center of Technical Services of LA Grande Motte City, image courtesy N+B architects

+ Project description courtesy N+B Architectes

La Grande Motte city, situated at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, benefits from a soft and moderate climate. The project of construction of new offices for the technical services of the city of La Grande Motte takes place in a very widely afforested ground. It is a remarkable environment, thanks to the natural elements that surrounds it. So the project testifies of a profound respect for present natural elements while offering a new determinedly contemporary image. The landscape and architectural project presents a strong unity, stemming from the qualities of the place, in order to compose spaces where the environmental quality will be a vector of development.

Center of Technical Services of LA Grande Motte City - Site plan, drawing courtesy N+B architects

The architectural concept is deeply connected to the necessary feature for such a program, as well as to the existing landscape. It was essential to answer this problem vigorously.

Our will is double: think of a functional project, and, set up a place of life in agreement with the Mediterranean climatic conditions. This has to take place as simply as possible, with humility and efficiency. We thus propose simple volumes for the whole building, with sober and pure lines to assert its insertion in the site.

Center of Technical Services of LA Grande Motte City, image courtesy N+B architects

A particular attention is so brought to the insertion of the building in the site. It is conceived as a topographic line, drawn by a unique material (wood), offering it a spatial but also a visual unity. It is under this landscape line established by a flat roof that the entities of the program take place. It was thought to emphasize the surrounding landscape while identifying and protecting exploitable outer spaces. Conceived in the continuity of the surrounding vegetable masses, these limits ease the incidence of the new building in the landscape and create a visual and hearing filter protecting the workspaces of the outside nuisances. So, the building consists of a fold, developing two side walls constituted in a homogeneous way.

Center of Technical Services of LA Grande Motte City, image courtesy N+B architects

The project proposes a stake in retreat of the glazed facades and the implementation of wooden canopies connecting the high and low entities of the fold. This device creates a thick façade, protecting from the sun, while allowing taking advantage of a direct connection between the inside and the outside thanks to wide openings. The device also allows a spatial and visual continuity while answering the Mediterranean climatic constraints. The project is completely wooden built. It is an environmental choice which we made by working with local essences of pines, but also in order to assure a technical, constructive and functional simplicity.

Center of Technical Services of LA Grande Motte City, image courtesy N+B architects

We are aware that in this place, in the heart of a wooded space but also in an urban zone, the notion old perpetuity is a real stake of construction. The reflection we wish to set up is of order qualitative. We answer it by the implementation of long-lasting materials, by the adapted conception of the building and its arrangements, allowing a cost cutting of maintenance for the project owner and the users, as well as by the potentiality offered to the new building to adapt itself to the requirements of environmental quality.

Thinking of a sustainable development requires naturally taking into account the quality of materials, to make a technical work on the energies uses, but also to set up a logic space. It is in the sense that we undertook this project. The intervention we propose restores coherence and feature to the site entities thanks to a new spatial scenography and to the development of the existing heritage.

Center of Technical Services of LA Grande Motte City - Elevation + Section, drawing courtesy N+B architects

+ Project credits / data

Project: Center of technical services of la grande Motte city
Location: La Grand Motte, France
Program: Office
Calendar: June 2008 – June 2010
Floor area: 1515m²
Start of construction: June 2008
Completion: June 2010
Cost: 835 000 € HT

Project manager:
Representative Architect | Elodie Nourrigat & Jacques Brion, N+B Architectes
Associated Architect | Julien WAFFLART
Photograph: Paul Kozlowski
Client: La Grande Motte City
Images: Elodie Nourrigat & Jacques Brion, N+B architectes

+ About

Elodie Nourrigat (born in 1971) and Jacques Brion (born in 1963) architects, had created in 2000 in Montpelier, the agency N+B architects. They both graduate of the School of Architecture of Montpellier (ENSAM) and obtained in 2002 a Master's degree in Philosophy of the University of Lyon III. Elodie Nourrigat is finalizing a Doctorate in Architecture supervised by Chris Younès philosopher. They are also professor of architecture at the ENSAM.

The projects of the agency join different scales, architectural or urban. They have just finish to construct a new school to Morières Avignon and the restructuring of the High school Paul Valéry in Menton. The agency works at present on a development of Urban Zone to the city of Gignac, the construction of a parking and a public place to Carros and the restructuring of the Office of General Finance of Montpelier. Their work was recognized through various distinctions.

In September, 2008, they were invited in the 11th Biennial event of architecture of Venice and presented in the French Pavilion. The same year the agency was a prize-winner of the prize "Europe 40 under 40?, organized by European Centre for Structure Art Design and Urban Studies, prize distinguishing every year 40 betters agencies of less than 40 years in Europe. Elodie Nourrigat has received in June, 2008 in London the prize "Atkins Insprire Awards" in the category International, prize recognizing the investment of the women in the construction. Thought their research works their allowed to live in 2001 in Kyoto in Japan, in the "Villa Kujoyama", a program of research in residence, organized by Cultures France and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Experience renewed in 2002 by the obtaining of the grant Electra from the EDF foundation, awarded to young architects for a research work abroad. Their experiences abroad are also completed by invitations as professor in the schools of architecture, such as Laval in Quebec (Canada), RMIT in Melbourne (Australia), Tohku University to Sendai (Japan), College of Design – University of Kentucky (Lexington, Kentucky USA).

Finally, this year the project of Park of Activity of Camalcé to Gignac distinguished by “International Award on 2009″ awarded by Chicago Athenaeum Museum As architect too, they are investing in the communication of the architectural culture and the want to offer a visibility to young architects. For that, in 2006, they create and since organize each year in June, the Festival of the Lively Architectures in Montpellier which invites young architects to construct a project in the courtyards of mansions of the city of Montpellier.

+ All images and drawings courtesy of N+B architects