Walters & Cohen clads King's International College building in weathered steel

Architecture firm Walters & Cohen uses weathered steel and concrete for King's International College in Canterbury, Kent, to reference the site's industrial heritage.

The new college building for King's School provides teaching areas and accommodation for students aged 11-16 who are entering the English school system from abroad.

While the school's main campus occupies the Canterbury Cathedral precinct, the new college occupies an ex-industrial site at the edge of the city centre.

It's the focus of a wider masterplan drawn up for the school by Walters & Cohen in 2016.

King's International College's robust concrete base and orange steel cladding of the college were designed to echo an adjacent 19th century malt house building.

Nicholas Hare Architects recently converted this structure into a theatre.

"It was crucial that the new building complemented the site's industrial heritage as well as the existing buildings surrounding it," Walters & Cohen.

"This was achieved with a striking mix of weathered steel, concrete and glass."

King's International College faces out onto a newly created civic square.

A run of tall, thin windows in its concrete base forms a colonnade-style facade.

A large opening in this concrete facade leads into the college, the square plan of which is organised around a central private courtyard.

This courtyard is wrapped by a glazed, cloister-like corridor that provides circulation around the school.

It doubles as a bright, communal meeting space, with semi-private areas that can be isolated using sliding doors.

"As an international college, communal spaces where students can meet and interact with their fellow students are very important, which is why we designed the building to wrap around a central courtyard space," said Walters & Cohen founder Cindy Walters.

"Many of the students gather here as a meeting place, and use it for open-air presentations, plays and recitals. It is a joy to see."

Around this courtyard, teaching spaces and offices occupy the ground floor.

The two storeys above house 34 en-suite bedrooms providing boarding for 80 students as well as staff accommodation.

At first floor level, an internal balcony overlooks the courtyard below.

Bedrooms either look inwards or out to the site's surroundings, which feature several landscaped garden areas.

"The landscape complements and connects the many elements of the site; a civic square shared with the Malthouse is an important focal point of the campus," said the practice.

Contrasting the more industrial exterior, the interiors have been finished with a crisp combination of wooden floors and white walls.

Glass partitions allow the classrooms to see through the corridor and out into the courtyard.

The area masterplan also includes a new sports court and changing facilities located to the north of the college, to be used by both the local community and students.

Walters & Cohen Architects has previously worked with the King's School to complete an accommodation block in the precinct of Canterbury Cathedral clad with rusty red tiles.

Photography is by Dennis Gilbert/VIEW.

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Project credits:

Architect: Walters & Cohen
Client: The King’s School, Canterbury
Structure: Price & Myers
Building services: Skelly & Couch
Landscape: Bradley-Hole Schoenaich
Quantity surveyor: Fanshawe
Planning consultant: Hobbs Parker
Project manager: Fanshawe
Contractor: R Durtnell & Sons

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Ater Architects uses blue curtains as walls in Kyiv apartment

Cobalt-blue curtains hang in place of walls in a small apartment in Kyiv renovated by Ukrainian architecture and interiors studio Ater Architects.

Called EGR Apartment, the 65-square-metre space was cramped, featuring a compartmentalised layout with separate rooms connected by corridors.

The owners, a  young couple, asked Ater Architects to transform it into a light and minimalist space.

Ater Architects removed most of the partition walls to create an open-plan layout.

Only the bedroom area is separated from the main space by walls.

Everywhere else cobalt blue curtains are used to delineate zones within the apartment.

The curtains are intended to contrast with the apartment's otherwise monotone colour and material palette.

"The ambition [was] to balance the vigorous coloured accents and make the space brighter and airier while maintaining some rigour," said Ater Architects.

The ceiling in the kitchen and bathroom areas was lowered to accommodate ventilation.

An existing concrete slab ceiling was painted white across the rest of the apartment.

On the floors, the architects used wide plank oak engineered flooring everywhere apart from the kitchen and bathroom areas.

The latter feature breccia flooring – a surface made from fragments of broken marble with polymer grout-filled joints.

In the kitchen, the architects installed black ceramic tiles with pink grout that matches the cylindrical base of the customised dining table.

Oak veneer cabinets and a copper Flowerpot lamp designed by Verner Panton in 1968 add warmth.

In the living room, a powder-pink sofa contrasts with the blue curtains.

A white 265 wall lamp by Paolo Rizzatto for Flos lights the space.

"The living room is an area for communication," said the architects.  "At the request of the clients, neither television nor projector was provided."

Instead of a television, the room revolves around a graphic art work by Yulia Popova.

The owners also requested an office area with a custom-designed mixing deck.

"The specific request of the apartment owner was the workplace arrangement where he would be able to do his favourite thing – composing electronic music," explained Ater Architects.

"To do this, we have designed a table that can fit all the necessary equipment. Above the table, we have placed a photograph of the cult Berlin techno-club Berghain by Michael Belhadi."

Other custom-designed furniture includes an oak dressing table with a round backlit mirror in the bedroom and a spacious wardrobe.

This dressing area is separated from the bedroom zone by the same blue curtains.

Throughout the apartment, storage is hidden behind built-in oak veneer cabinets.

Mirrored panels in the living room, bathroom and bedroom to create the illusion of "endless space".

Ater Architects, founded by Alexander Ivasiv and Yuliya Tkachenko, recently created colourful interiors for a children's clinic in Kyiv.

Curtains are a flexible and colourful option for apartment renovations.

Floor-to-ceiling pale blue curtains carve up the interior of this open-plan apartment in Bilbao, Spain, which has been overhauled by architecture studio Azab.

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Discover the most stylish home offices on this week's Pinterest board

As working from home becomes more common due to the coronavirus outbreak, we've updated our Pinterest board featuring the most well-designed study nooks to inspire your own home office set-up. Follow Dezeen on Pinterest or visit our updated board to see more.

This study area connects to a small library mezzanine that is reached via a spiralling steel staircase

New additions to the Pinterest board include the double-height study area in house by the sea in Sweden, which opens onto a small terrace, and the desk corner of a house in Los Angeles, which boasts breathtaking views of the surrounding Hollywood Hills.

A bright shade of light blue brings a touch of colour to the walls of the study area in this London apartment

Other projects you can find in the board showcase a huge penthouse in Brazil, designed by local Studio MK27, with floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves, as well as an elegant study in London with a brass-topped desk and a velvet burgundy chair.

Dezeen's Pinterest account features thousands of images, organised into hundreds of boards. Follow us on Pinterest to keep up to date with our latest pins.

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Martin Massé designs chunky Orsetto 02 coffee table for Studio Twenty Seven

Architect Martin Massé has designed Orsetto 02, a rounded stone coffee table for the New York gallery Studio Twenty Seven.

The Orsetto 02 is formed of a wide, rounded mushroom-style tabletop supported by a ring of stubby legs.

It is part of a collection of furniture called Orsetto designed by French architect and designer Martin Massé for the gallery.

Orsetto means baby bear or teddy in Italian, and the pieces of furniture all have a cute, chubby appearance despite being made of unyielding stone.

All of the collection's tables have rounded legs that look like the limbs of a child's teddy bear. The collection also includes soft furnishings such as poufs and chairs in a similar cuddly style.

The Orsetto 02 coffee table sits low to the ground. At only 35 centimetres high it comes up to the shins of a standing adult.

Despite its squishy appearance, thanks to the creamy smooth stone and soft edges, the table is heavy enough to need to be winched in place to be moved safely.

The Orsetto 02 was fabricated by stonemasons at the Ateliers Saint Jaques in France's Chevreuse valley.

Just 12 of the coffee tables, which are hewn from Italian Pietra dei Medici marble, have been made.

Studio Twenty Seven, which also has a gallery in Miami, recently showcased an entire collection of furniture made from the same limestone, designed by French designers Francesco Balzano and Valeriane Lazard.

Called Primitif, it included a stool, table, bench, side table, coffee table, jars, wall light and paperweight. Its monolithic forms were created, said the designers, as a tribute to Stonehenge.

Because of its heft, limestone is more commonly used as a surface in interior design, or as an architectural element. It is less usually chosen for furniture.

To change this perception, a group of students at Estonian Academy of Arts, who designed a collection of furniture made a traditional Estonian limestone. Called Dig Where You Stand, it includes a spinning floor lamp.

Photography is by Arthur Fechoz.

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Oscar Niemeyer apartment building in Berlin captured by Pedro Vannucchi

These photographs by Brazilian architect Pedro Vannucchi capture an experimental apartment building Oscar Niemeyer completed in Berlin, Germany in the 1950s.

Oscar Niemeyer Haus was completed in 1957 for Interbau, a social housing initiative launched after the second world war.

Niemeyer was among 48 architects including Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier and Sep Ruf tasked to design projects for the scheme in Berlin's Hansaviertel district. He was the only non-European architect invited to design for the programme.

Vannucchi said Oscar Niemeyer Haus reminded him of residences in Brasília, which Niemeyer masterplanned in 1958 with modernist architect Lucio Costa. In particular, it is similar to the structures that made up the superquadras, or super blocks.

"It is more similar to some residential blocks in the superquadras in Brasília, possibly because both are located in planned green areas, and perhaps because he was working on them in the same period," Vannucchi said.

Oscar Niemeyer Haus is elevated on chunky V-shaped pillars to create a shaded walkway underneath the building.

"The open and fluid ground floor is a typical modernist solution, and the V-shaped pillars are part of this vocabulary," Vannucchi said. "All of this is very well done, with perfect proportions, including the elegant solution of the slightly elevated ground floor."

The apartments in the building are fronted with terraces and glass patio doors.

Each unit has a deck with mesh and metal railings, and retractable orange awnings. For Vannucchi, the umbrellas set up on the outdoor patios evoke Brazilian charm and flair.

"The awnings and the sun umbrellas might not be acceptable by the extreme purists, but they give this wonderful building a sense of life and a touch of Brazilian 'bossa'," the architect said.

Rectangular structures clad in red and blue tiles are tucked underneath the main building. Staircases are housed inside the large tiled blocks and provide access to all the floors.

On the back exterior, two volumes extend from a prism-like elevator tower to the two floors of the main building that have lift access.

Interbau was completed as part of the International Building Exhibition in Berlin. Vannucchi described his visit to the planned neighbourhood like touring an "open-air museum of modern architecture".

"As an architect and photographer, the experience of visiting Hansaviertel, a neighbourhood built in Berlin in the late fifties, is like being inside an open-air museum of modern architecture," Vannucchi said.

"Scattered buildings within a green area with public access, low population density and much tranquillity."

Oscar Niemeyer was a Pritzker-prize winning Brazilian architect who died in 2012.

Since his passing other photographers have shared images of his work, including New York photographer Andrew Prokos who photographed the architect's Brasília buildings. Brazilian photographer Pedro Kok has captured a number of his key projects in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte.

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