Architecture References - Flipboard Cafe, by Brolly Design

Flipboard Cafe

Melbourne, Australia

Brolly Design

Area: 25 sqm

Year: 2013

Photos: Tanja Milbourne

Project's description on ARCHDAILY [by the architect]: 
"Flipboard Cafe, calved from a lost site in the city, is a tiny multi-level nook that serves fine space with a side of excellent coffee and healthy food. The cafe is nestled in the intersection of an emergency exit from Bennetts Lane Jazz Club below, the thoroughfare to Brolly Studios behind, and a two decade old unused shop-front window.

The space had once been a transient uncentered passage but has now become its own destination whilst still maintaining its other activities. In the renovation of the front facade we found spaces that had been lost to previous weak and unimaginative occupants who had plasterboarded it shut. We opened it, and it is now one of the few eddies that interrupt the flow of foot traffic on La Trobe street as you can inhabit the facade in cosy cubbies.

The central staircase is an obvious feature, helping to shift the paradigm of coffee shops from the horizontal to the vertical. It also helps to build depth in the space and interrupts the eye just enough to make it hungry to see more. The nooks and niches where you can deposit your time are intimate by nature, being small, yet expansive due to the light, the openness of the windows and their proximity to other recesses – a secondary interiority that folds out in its own temper, like the backstage of a theatre."

-  Brolly Design

 

FAHR 021.3 - between Art and Architecture (featuring "Glassberg" and "Hairchitecture")

Giving continuity to the effort of spreading new concepts related with Architecture and Art, today we publish the contents sent by FAHR 021.3, after an invitation made by our blog. FAHR 021.3 is a "collaborative practice" composed by Portuguese architects established in the city of Porto.

Besides their general profile, today's post highlights two specific works: "Glassberg" and "Hairchitecture". The office's work can be followed through several social networks, being the links available in the collective's website.

Our blog is open to publish works from Portuguese and international artists - starting from the areas of Architecture, Visual Arts and Design there isn't really any limitation with regard to the scope of the presented works. All proposals should be sent to david.cardoso@dimscale.com.

"FAHR 021.3 is a collaborative practice that focuses its work between the disciplines of art and architecture. Exploring different architectural concepts FAHR aims to create unexpected and provocative realities. 

After working in international offices as lwarchitects or J. Mayer H. in Berlin, Filipa Frois Almeida and Hugo Reis returned to Portugal to start the project FAHR in 2012. Its experimental, innovative and daring language, seek to breach reality. Using new applied architectural concepts, the team bases its interventions in the exploration of the different senses of the observer as well as merging concepts."

- FAHR 021.3

 GLASSBERG

"The idea comes at the same time as the invitation to attend into a festival of music, art, sport and gastronomy - Fusing Culture Experience in Figueira da Foz, Portugal. Once the theme is this fusion of different areas, the idea was to expose local assets in the form of installation and looking through the key industries of the city we find the element of unity, the glass bottle, standing in Figueira da Foz one of the most distinguished factory in the national and international scene.  

The development of the piece part from a transformation of the traditional concept of a portico, as a crossing moment that marks the limbo between interior and exterior. The installation is based on a “romance” of two towers that dialogue in a short distance and whose proportions sink the visitor along  10 meters before meeting within the festival site. As two bergs drifting that stood out from a single block, it reveals the grandeur of the piece that serves as a milestone and attractive object in the city and just before the climax of the festival.

Its materiality is extremely important in this relationship with the surrounding  urban space. Reflections are multiplied in big screens where the pixel is the bottle and the reflection is a distorted surrounding. A thousands of small movements are generated by the reflex of each person and it dissolves in the sky through the spire shapes from each bottle and multiple organic patterns intersecting one and another as the levels increase. The repetition of the form with the appointment demarcated by horizontal honeycomb card also emphasizes the colonnades and friezes that marked the great classical monuments with extremely important porch.  

The glassberg, is also a sensory experience for the viewer, generated by an antithesis between the massiveness of each wall represented by its volume and weight, contrasted by the subtlety and apparent fragility of the glass bottle.  

By its presence in public space to the more detailed reflection of this portico is a break with the conventional access to common festival spaces, bringing creativity and the theme of the festival to the entrance." 

Materials: 

50.000 glass bottle 

1.332 m2 honeycomb cardboard 

Sponsors: 

Verallia  

Gopaca Rebelo – Artes Gráficas 

Intelilar

- FAHR 021.3  

 HAIRCHITECTURE

"The HAIRCHITECTURE results from an association between a hairdresser - Gijo, and a group of architects - FAHR 021.3. They propose an idea to merge two creative methodologies, Architecture & Hairstyle.   

Hairchitecture 2.0 was inspired in the Brutalist architecture of Le Corbusier, Bo Bardi, Niemeyer, between others. A theme presented in four essays that explore some of this trend elements, from linear forms and organic structures to sharp volumes. The research began by finding the architecture some very strong moves in terms of form and materiality, we consider Hairstyle a way to play raw materials, structures and form. Brutalism privileged structural fact of the buildings, to never hide their structural elements. Despite the harsh criticism of the Brutalist "unnecessary ornamentation" in many cases they find themselves in situations formalistic in the extreme."

- FAHR 021.3

Projects Wanted - Gardening Pavillions, by Israel Alba

Today we publish the second project among the ones that were kindly sent by the Spanish Architecture office Israel Alba. "Gardening Pavillions" is, as described by the architect, a "home for gardeners", located in the area of Las Tablas/Vallecas in the city of Madrid. Has an area of 160 sqm and was built for the client Ayuntamento de Madrid (Madrid City Hall). The photographic work was conducted by Jesús Granada.

Access also the first Israel Alba's project published in our blog - Environmental Technology Centre in Valdemingómez.

We are open to receive projects from all around the world, regardless of their dimension or typology. Please send us high quality photos (indicating their authors), drawings and descriptive texts in English to our Marketing e-mail - david.cardoso@dimscale.com. It will be our pleasure to help spreading new Architecture concepts and ideas.

"More than just a gardening pavilion, what we have truly wanted to build is a home for gardeners. The project, perceived as a unique system of pavilions, enables the repetition and serialisation for providing unity to the image of the woodland facility, mainly dealing with the topography and the interior distribution according to the needs of every district, which are not always the same. The variation of colours used allows for the personalisation of each pavilion and, furthermore, responds to criteria related to gardening and the identity of the facility. The first decision was to place the pavilions inside the city’s network of green spaces, in the new parks within the recently-built suburban areas, in an attempt to establish a new relationship between architecture and landscape where all is one. We propose simple surrounding or an extruded section by way of framework, where the roof is in continuity with the short vertical planes. We have built the framework using a system of light, pre-industrialised-concrete panels, thereby reducing the time taken to complete it. The two long fronts, in contact with the parks and their system of access points, constitute the framework locks, built with micro-perforated and folded galvanised steel, in floor-to-ceiling parts which link the interior and the exterior. By day, the pavilion is a solid, opaque and mysterious object while from the interior the limits dematerialize and connect the pavilion to the park. At night, the interior lights up and the pavilion becomes a reference lamp that reaffirms its public nature."

- Israel Alba