ONE is a table calendar composed with three differently-sized rings. The biggest ring with 31 units represents the sun raises everyday, and the middle sized ring with 12 units represents the moon gyrates around Earth. The smallest ring with 7 units represents the people who created the seven days of the week. These rings are held together with magnets, and the intersect points of the three rings indicates today’s date.

+ Designer: Jeong yong | http://www.jeongyong.com

courtesy Jeong Yong

courtesy Jeong Yong

courtesy Jeong Yong

courtesy BAKOKO

Onjuku is a popular seaside resort and fishing town on Chiba’s Pacific coast, about an hour and a half by train from Tokyo. The beach house is sited behind a bluff, 300 meters from Onjuku’s famous white sand beach. Built for an international couple—the husband is a lifelong surfer—who live and work in Tokyo, this weekend getaway may become a permanent residence once they reach retirement.

The home’s concealed entrance is served by a Japanese genkan, a porch separating the home proper from a built-in shed for stashing surfboards and bicycles. This tunnel-like outer porch connects the gated rear entryway and the wooden deck which incorporates a built-in seat and planter. Timber shutters slide across the entire southern eave, securely locking-down the home to protect it from the seasonal typhoons.

courtesy BAKOKO

From the road, the home maintains an intentionally low profile. Its austere stained tongue and groove cladding is sourced from native Japanese cedar. Returning from the beach, a private outdoor shower leads directly into the tiled bathroom. An intimate garden provides a tranquil backdrop to the sunken bathtub.

courtesy BAKOKO

The home’s dark exterior skin contrasts with its light and airy interior. The double-height living space is occupied by a spruce-clad box that supports a loft space above and contains the master bedroom, WC, and bathroom below. Careful detailing has incorporated the staircase and doors that close flush to conceal these private rooms.

courtesy BAKOKO

Sitting at the built-in desk upstairs, one can gaze out the sea for inspiration. The shallow pitched roof is accessible via a ladder extending into a large pivoting skylight. Since the home is intended for casual entertaining, the loft spaces and a timber-lined lower study double as occasional guest rooms.

courtesy BAKOKO

The home is predicated on passive design principles. Generous south-oriented glazing is shaded by the eaves in summer. Cross ventilation captures cool sea breezes. Slotted perforations milled into the wooden balustrade promote air circulation and cleanly conceal mechanical air conditioning units. In winter, the wood-burning stove provides renewable heat energy.

+ Project facts

Project Title: Onjuku Beach House
Location: Onjuku, Chiba Prefecture, Japan
Year: 2012
Floor Area: 135.4 sqm
Architect: BAKOKO
Project Architects: Alastair Townsend, Kayoko Ohtsuki
Main Contractor: Tosho Kensetsu
Photos: BAKOKO (CC BY-ND 2.0)

+ All images and drawings courtesy BAKOKO

The seasons aren't what they used to be, the earth's climate has gone off course. Climate change is transforming how we relate to our world, how we live, even how we experience the city.

What will the winter of 2013 be like? Snowy, cloudy, rainy? No one can predict, but one thing is certain: an Arctic wind has been blowing through downtown Montreal since ATOMIC3 introduced Iceberg, an interactive, architectural, light and sound installation that brings winter right into the heart of the city.

courtesy ATOMIC3

From north to south, from the Place des Festivals to the Place des Arts esplanade, the installation follows the journey of an iceberg, from its birth in Arctic waters to its melting off the southern coast. It features four "skeletons" representing the Iceberg at four different stages in its life. Four life stages: four different shapes and sizes, four illuminated spaces, and above all, four distinct soundscapes.

Centuries old and shaped by time and the elements, icebergs make distinctive sounds. As water enters their cracks and crevasses, they resonate like giant pipe organs, the tones modulating and evolving as these monuments of ice slowly melt.

courtesy ATOMIC3

Inspired by that massive instrument, Iceberg is a series of illuminated metal arches that produce distinctive sounds. The arches form a tunnel inviting visitors to enter, listen, and play this giant organ, where notes and light travel up and down musical passageways.

As visitors explore the arches, motion sensors inside detect their movements, triggering changes to the lighting and sounds and bringing the iceberg to life. Whether alone or in a group, walking underneath an arch or standing in front of one, each visitor "warms up" the iceberg, transforming its northern essence into a symphony for both the ears and the eyes.

The size and shape of the structures call to mind a floating glacier, as it moves through the water and melts. Similarly, the different soundscapes provide their own accompaniment to the iceberg's gradual drift southward. In the north, visitors' movements trigger sounds from nature, but as they move through the installation, the sounds become richer and more harmonious. As the iceberg glides south, nearer to inhabited coastlines, music emerges brought on by human activity.

courtesy ATOMIC3

The iceberg's journey ends at the Place des Arts esplanade, where chunks of ice floating at the foot of a cliff are all that remain. Here, only children can enter the tiny tunnels, transforming them into music boxes. The children, in their innocent play, warm up these ice monsters, barometers warning of global climate changes to come.

Iceberg is a winner of 2012 Light Therapy competition, an event organized by Montreal's Quartier des Spectacles Partnership featuring interactive light installations encouraging visitors to embrace winter. It will run from December 6, 2012 through February 4, 2013.

+ About ATOMIC3

With over ten years of experience in the performing arts, director Félix Dagenais and lighting designer Louis-Xavier Gagnon-Lebrun founded ATOMIC3 to push their artistic development beyond the walls of the theatre, inventing new ways to tell stories and spark the imagination.

Together they design and create urban installations that transform space and light up people's everyday lives. Whether interactive or contemplative, their works invite citizens to look at their environment with new eyes. Their rich and diverse performing arts experience informs their approach, bringing original narrative and poetic dimensions to their work.

Collaborating with a team of partners and designers from all backgrounds, Félix and Louis-Xavier create unique immersive experiences where light, video, music, architecture, and new technologies plunge visitors into the heart of the story, and the heart of the work.

For more information, visit www.atomic3.ca

+ About Quartier des spectacles

For more than a century, Quartier des Spectacles has been Montreal's cultural heart. Today, it is also a hub of economic, urban and cultural development, with many assets that are helping establish Montreal as a leading cultural metropolis. A vibrant creative zone, open to artistic diversity and cultural crosspollination, the Quartier has something for everyone, from digital-arts aficionados to fans of world music. Every month of the year and every hour of the day, Montrealers and visitors converge on its 80 venues, 40 festivals and seven squares and public spaces. Part of a unique urban fabric, the boldly illuminated Quartier des Spectacles is an essential destination for anyone looking for a thrilling cultural experience. For more information, visit quartierdesspectacles.com.

+ CREDITS

ICEBERG
Place des Festivals / Place des Arts esplanade
Quartier des spectacles, Montreal, Canada
Winter 2012-2013

Artistic direction: ATOMIC3.ca (Felix Dagenais + Louis-Xavier Gagnon-Lebrun)
Architectural design: Appareil Architecture (Kim Pariseau)
Lighting design: ATOMIC3.ca
Sound design: Jean-Sebastien Cote
Interactive system design: Philippe Jean
Technical coordination: Guillaume Simard and Alexis Rivest
Production: ATOMIC3.ca

Winner of the 2012 Light Therapy competition, Iceberg was designed and produced with the support of Montreal Quartier des Spectacles Partnership.

+ All images courtesy ATOMIC3

courtesy Destilat

courtesy Destilat

lampshadesofgrey is destilat's latest comment on a popular design theme – the reinterpretation of more or less 'good old' items.

Old, fabric-covered lampshades are undressed and freed from their mildew of past decades. Only their supporting structures and a vague idea of their former shapes remain.

Their wire frames may have been hidden under fabrics in their respective original versions but now these structures serve a far more exposed purpose for this new design – they become aesthetic highlights.

The lampshades' fabrics are replaced by the wire frames' patterns of light and shadow on the surrounding walls. The lampshade's original function as a diffuser is replaced by its new role as a shadow-caster.

+ Designer: Destilat

It is an office refurbishment project for Editpoint (limited), which is a hk-based post production company for TV commercials.

The office has great window views in an efficient rectangular space, occupying one whole floor for editing office, and part of another floor for a sound recording studio.

courtesy Kirk Kenny/E23 interior designers limited

The entrance area of the office is made a comparatively large entrance hall and reception area, enjoying the great exterior view. The space is visually divided into 2 zones, namely the lift hall/bar-pantry area, and the reception-seating area respectively.

The rest of the space is for totally 6 nos. of editing rooms, a small CD recording studio , and some general office facilities. Each editing office requires a long worktop for equipments, with some free seating space for discussion and co-editing work with TVC directors and advertising agency personnel.

courtesy Kirk Kenny/E23 interior designers limited

The Concept

As a creative-oriented production company, Editpoint looked for a relaxing and informal working mood. The space is made a dramatic look where some unfinished concrete is mixing with white painted gigantic enclosure, crashing with metal-mesh ceilings for a 'industrial-but-fine' and informal-but-decent mix.

More literal speaking the reception-waiting area is in fact comes from a thought from an architectural block in white color, projecting a formal corporate image, the rest of the space is conceptualized as landscape surroundings. The green carpet provides, in fact, a very solid evidence of this intention, which more importantly, also gives a relaxing and leisure mood for the long hour working. Besides, the entrance pantry-bar area offers an idling spot in between works and a causal meeting area for ideas and inspirations.

courtesy Kirk Kenny/E23 interior designers limited

The reception/entrance hall serves obviously a greeting area, but more importantly, it is the space for clients from mainland china who probably spend a day or two, as a temporary working place for them during their waiting time for the revisions of editing work.

Each of the editing room is paneled with wood, and the backdrop of the computer monitors are made a green carpet, visually gives a brightening feature in the room, and at the same time, for easing eye-tensions because of long working hours and detail-focused work such as fine photo-touching. The decoration is, actually, a thought of remixing the elements of a tropical house where wood ceilings and green garden are common.

courtesy Kirk Kenny/E23 interior designers limited

The sound studio is located one floor above the office.

The same concept is carried onto the studio, where ceiling wood truss feature is a focal highlight, picturing a roof feature of a resort-wooden house. The fabric and painted strip paneling provides a loosen mood for sound recording environment, and which serves as a good sound reflecting and adsorption wall treatment. And again, the carpet recalls the feeling for a green garden, completes the goal for an informal and relaxing working mood.

courtesy Kirk Kenny/E23 interior designers limited

+ Project facts

Project : Editpoint limited
Size : approxi. 3000 s.f.
Complete : Sept. 2012
Location: Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Designer : E23 interior designers limited
Photo : Kirk Kenny/E23 interior designers limited

+ About E23

E23 interior designers limited (formerly named as EMP architectural interior design, founded in year 2002) is a creative-oriented interior design consultancy practice. Experience of E23 members ranges from 3 to 18 years experience in interior design industry, with design training in Japan and Hong Kong art and design school.

Eric Wong is the Founder and Design Director of the company, has over 18 years of experience in wide range of interior design project types. He is the project and design leader from conceptual design through project execution. He is a graduate of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, with Master of Arts Degree in Design.

+ All images courtesy E23

courtesy Lorenzo Scolari / Alessandro Peccati

The anonymous collective Paradisiartificiali is pleased to present you its project exposed at the exhibition “Shape Your Life!” at the National Museum of 21st Century Art – Rome, for ALCANTARA.

Curators: Alcantara Art Director Giulio Cappellini and Domitilla Dardi, Design Curator of MAXXI.

Together with other 7 designers, Paradisiartificiali was selected through a competition and invited to design a project which would answer this question:

courtesy Lorenzo Scolari / Alessandro Peccati

“Could design contribute to making us feel at home away from home?”

This question was based on the acknowledgement of the increasingly nomadic nature of the modern lifestyle, which often sees us spending more time out of the house than in the house. The challenge of the exhibition is to interpret new scenarios of “(con)temporary” living, the “outside” where we now spend most of the time.

Paradisiartificiali conceived and designed an accessorized habitat to improve, as requested, the sense of “home” in places we share with others.

The habitat is inspired by the Cinema, where often moments of utter intimacy can born, (just like at home!).

The answer is the project KISS! CAMERA! ACTION!

courtesy Lorenzo Scolari / Alessandro Peccati

When the lights go down
there are places where
sounds and images start to dance
on the surface of thin fabric.

Each projection is not an illusion but magic
that can inspire our thoughts and our gestures.
Plunged into darkness, the entire audience enters the same dream,
sharing the same emotions and, in the end, the same reawakening.

This experience makes cinema
a marvellous collective ritual
in which moments
of utter intimacy are born.

If we can give in to our heart,
we will fill an entire void
and, suddenly, each place
will become a home.

+ All photos courtesy Lorenzo Scolari / Alessandro Peccati