Jean Nouvel’s design for the new complex in Le Havre, France, consists of 12 pools, including a 50 x 21 metre outdoor pool, several leisure pools, a sauna, hammam, spa and fitness room.Archive for January, 2009
30/01
30/01
The Double Club
The artist Carsten Holler has created, with the help of the Prada Foundation, a bar, restaurant and nightclub in an old warehouse in Angel, London. The concept is based around putting Congolese culture and Western culture together, without mixing them. The image shows the bar, which is split into four lines of vision, each representing either a Western or Congolese environment. The restaurant servers both Congolese and Western food, and the nightclub has a rotating dance floor, alternating between Western and Congolese music.21/01
Exhibition Designers – Putting up a Good Show
Exhibition design is a relatively new branch of the advertising industry that is gaining popularity at a rapid rate. Exhibition designers decide how a trade show should be set up in order to attract maximum attention from prospective clients. They may also suggest the way an automobile trader can improve his sales figure by modifying his showroom structure. Attracting consumers’ attention is the first line of success for any business, and these people know exactly how to go about getting that.
Exhibition designers may also advise individual ad agencies or companies about the way they should put up their stands at a show. It is their job to decide whether a Space Stand would be suitable for catching a consumer’s fancy, or whether a better effect can be achieved using a custom-made designer stand. In either case, the exhibition designer will design the stand on pen and paper, and submit the design to the directors of the organization. Once it is approved, he/she will go about having it created the right way.
Exhibition designing is not an easy job. One should expect long working hours; equivalent to ad agency jobs. People aspiring to take up this challenging field need to prepare themselves through intense studies. Knowledge of conceptual design, Computer Aided Design (CAD) & 3D visualization, safety regulations and applicable standards, and model making skills are essential to have in this field.
The rewards are not bad either. Skilled and experienced exhibition designers can expect to get really good remuneration for their efforts. Besides, the praise from the client after a successful show makes the whole effort worth it.
13/01
Unbox the Box
Audi has used cardboard to advertise its Q5 car, using the it in a different way to B3’s Cardboard Cafe. The simple material is given an amazing edge through the use of clever animation, based on Saul Steinberg’s box illustration (left).
View the video below.
06/01
Cildo Meireles
Tate Modern
14 Oct 2008 – 11 Jan 2009
A piece of work in the Cildo Meireles exhibition at the Tate uses the concept behind B3 Designers’ bar ‘Babel’. Also called Babel, the piece consists of a tower of radios in different styles, each tuned to a different channel and adjusted to the minimum volume at which it is audible.
The tower reaches all the way to the ceiling, conceptually recreating the Biblical story of the tower of Babel, using the confused murmur of voices and noise to physically construct it. By using larger, older radios at the bottom and smaller, electronic ones towards the top the impression of height is intensified.
Images of Babel by Cildo Meireles
06/01
The Contemporary Workspace
In a more and more image conscious society, the workspace has become a space to promote the company’s essence to its employees and clients. The advent of shows such as Grand Designs means that good design is now something that the general public is aware of and demands. People have started to expect a general level of quality in the spaces that surround them, and this extends to the workplace. Given a choice, everyone would prefer to work in an inspiring environment and this is a fact that employers have had to recognise, designing their offices in order to attract and retain employees.
History
This is not a new idea – the Hoover Building, completed in 1932 by architects Wallis, Gilbert and Partners and the Van Nelle factory (1930) by Johannes Brinkman are examples of great design used to attract workers in a time of shortage of labour, as well as promote their image as an industrial power to passing trade. Used not only as a functional workspace, they also become massive monuments to the brand, projecting an image of wealth and prosperity. A recently completed cactus factory in Bleiswijk, Ovata, by Studio Leon Thier, harks back to this age of industrialism, incorporating the Ovata leaf print into the structure of the building, giving it a decorative feature whilst subtly branding it.
Jump Studio
Red Bull’s London offices include a slide, literally incorporating the company association with adrenalin into the building design. Jump Studio’s design used the site’s rooftop glass extension to its full potential by using this as the reception area, accessible by lift, and then cutting through the building to create a series of vertiginous views. Their brief was to encourage interaction between employees, something that the dynamic interior clearly promotes.
Another Jump Studio project, Wieden+Kennedy’s Shoreditch office also uses the space to encapsulate the company’s values, but in a more passive way. The building was opened up to create a gallery-like showcase of the advertising agency’s work and culture. Eye-catching graphics on the car parking spaces give the normally mundane yellow lines a refreshing lift.
Village Underground
Village Underground’s offices take their environmental consciousness to a new level, creating offices from disused tube carriages that were then hoisted on to the top of a building on Great Eastern Street.
They are not only 100% recycled, but also powered by green energy, still retaining the original push button door opening system of the 1983 Jubilee line carriages. Designed by Auro Foxcroft, who was inspired by a trip on an old mountain train in Switzerland, the seating has been stripped out and partitioned desk areas now face the windows. He now hires the offices out to various creative organisations. The graffittied carriages perched above London’s media centre have become so desirable that there is already a waiting list.
Alex Haw
Alex Haw’s design for a temporary workspace looks at ways the body uses a given working environment, and expands its use by catering for multiple body positions, ranging from vertical to horizontal. This reassessment of the way the workspace is used is perhaps the start of a future reconfiguration of the idea of the office. Haw talks about the social value of the workspace, the moments of inspiration that arise out of physical proximity that might be lost in a more virtual way of working. Still, the possibilities of virtual communication cannot be ignored, and workspaces may become more of a space of expression of the brand ethics, an ideal, conceptual meeting place, such as Another.com’s offices, designed by Nowicka Stern, which feature a “meeting room” lawn that is watered from underneath with ultraviolet light providing daylight conditions.
However the workspace may develop, it is always designers who will push it into becoming a more relevant and useful tool as ways of working change.
Hospitality Interiors
August-September 2008
Article by B3 Designers
06/01
Architectural Interior Designers: What is their role?
What is an Architectural Interior Designer?
Architectural Interior Design, also referred to as Interior Architecture or Interior Design, is a skilled profession that bridges the fields of architecture and interior design. Almost all degree honours standard designers within the field of interiors will have had a thorough training in the semiotics and aesthetics of architecture. Simply put, they apply knowledge from both of these fields to make sure that a client’s space meet the expect requirements from imaginative design to sustainability. The initial assumption is that interior designers only deal with doing up swanky houses and penthouse apartments, however the list of spaces they deal with is extensive: hotels, corporate spaces, offices, schools, hospitals, private residences, shopping malls, restaurants, bars, theaters, airport terminals and yachts. Architectural interior designers deal with the parts of the building you can touch.
Architectural Interior Designers specialise?
Architectural interior designers can specialize in a particular interior design discipline, such as residential and commercial design. Commercial design includes offices, hotels, schools, hospitals or other public buildings. Some interior designers develop expertise within a niche design area such as hospitality, health care and institutional design.
Architectural interior designers must meet broad qualifications and show competency in the entire scope of the profession, not only in a specialty. An architectural interior designer will often have to work closely with construction workers and should also know how to interact with these people properly. So having people management skills is certainly a great bonus.
At B3 Designers, an architectural Interior design practice we specialise in preparing designs for Restaurants, Bars, Retail environments, exhibitions spaces and residential properties. We have designed an extensive range of properties and we encourage our clients to test us with new areas. Most good architectural interior design consultancy will be able to apply their niche skill base to any type of designed environment.
What skills do Architectural Interior Designer have?
Architectural Interior Designers come with a host of skills, ranging from having a creative imaginative mind, good spatial awareness, an understanding of structure, ability to evaluate and problem solve.
Then there is the more pragmatic side, which involves being able to translate ideas onto paper so that a contractor can build from and see a space fitted out and completed to meet the initial vision. I’ve heard it said if a designer, architect, engineer can draw it then it can be made. The difficult process is enabling ideas to happen whilst dealing with budgets and feasibility issues.
Do architectural interior design account for sustainability within the environment?
An architectural interior designer will be familiar with construction techniques and the process of creating sustainable structures. Most architectural interior designers will concentrate on converting old building into new spaces, rather than demolishing a site or building something new straight out of the ground. For this reason alone their skill is more in tune with the sustainability argument.
Why choose an Architectural Interior Designer over an Architect?
Well this really depends on the size of the contract, if the build is to develop something straight out of the ground, a sky scraper, a block of flats the skills of an architect are very much needed. If however it is an existing building the skills of an architectural interior designer are sometimes far more suited. They will work with structural engineers to ensure that any structural works are properly calculated and approved by the local authorities. They will take the remodeling of the space right down to the intricate details of what all the internal fixtures and fittings are.
On average most Architects enter the field to do large scale projects and specialise on the detail of major structures and sometimes they will design down to the language of the form that dictates the interior. Architectural Interior Designers also like to work on large scale redevelopment projects, but will relish at the possibility to detail form the largest to the minutest scale within an interior space. They will start where the architects finish. That is not to say architects don’t do that, they can do and do but on average it is the skills of an architectural interior designer that will develop the interior brand of a space. An example would be an architect developing a new shopping center but the individual shop outlets will be left as empty boxes. This will be when an architectural interior designers will take over the space and convert it into a space that is relevant to the individual brands. Architectural interior designers turn spaces into places.
06/01
Dior Homme Paris Installation Review by B3 Designers
Andrea Mastrovito installation for Dior Homme
Young Italian artist Andrea Mastrovito has been commissioned by Dior Homme artistic director Kris Van Assche to create an insatalltiona piece for the store in Paris. The artist took inspiration from Van Assche’s Fall/Winter ‘08 collection which featured butterflies throughout.
Inside the store, nine thousand black cut out butterflies are fixed to the ceiling, collums and walls, forming and elegant 3d pattern on the pristine white walls of the space. The installation is delicate
but also a little bit eery as the butterflies seem to be
alive and ready to flutter around you and settle somewhere else
02/01
Interior Designing Solutions for your Restaurant / Colour
Restaurant interior designers are facing greater challenges now as customers are getting to be more discerning and demanding. They want comfort, beauty and innovation at the same time, and delivering all of these in a satisfactory package may be a daunting task for quite a few restaurant interior designers. The good news is, it need not really be all that hard.
The Wikipedia entry on interior design makes the task appear to be quite a daunting endeavour. It says, “The work of an interior designer draws upon many disciplines including environmental psychology, architecture, product design, and traditional decoration (aesthetics and cosmetics).” Of course, few of us can claim to be masters of all the disciplines mentioned. So is there an easy way out? Actually, yes. You don’t even have to spend a ton of money to get the desired effect in restaurant interior design. All you have to do is keep in mind certain basics. what is the colour of your restaurant?
Colours
When I went to see a talk given by Kevin McLoud on his book COLOUR, he mentioned that he was constantly asked by people “what colour should I paint my room”. He rather wittingly said “paint it cream”. I was expecting him to give some complicated answer regarding space, and appropriateness. It is the universal colour of safeness. It is near to impossible to decide on a colour for a space without seeing it in context. But I believe Kevin’s advice is helpful as a starting point. In most cases cream or white are colours that are ideal to enable the space to stay light and bright and practical. However, if every interior was this colour the world would be a boring place.
In a restaurant one needs to think through this process and start with defining what the brand is, where the space is positioned and who is the target audience. Below is a selection of colours that have been pulled together whilst being inspired by the adjacent photograph. The palette is diffused and harmonious. These colours could be used through out the space in different materials, wall colours and fittings.
In a restaurant it is good to use a far wider range of colours to fulfil any demands from the brand identity. If we were looking at the other end of the palette we would be suggesting aubergine, charcoal and fawn as below.
We specialise in developing colour palette for our clients, so that we can make a big change to a restaurant space without having to spend a fortune. If you would like us to speak with you about developing a new colour palette for your restaurant, please do not hesitate to contact us at colours@b3designers.co.uk
