Format Architecture Office imbues Manhattan office with "boutique sensibility" and cafe seating

Cafe-style seating and muted interiors outfit this New York office that local studio Format Architecture Office has designed with places to mingle, eat and work.

Called Midtown Office, the project spans an entire floor of a high-rise building in New York City's Midtown area. Close to Bryant Park, it was designed for a global tech company that occupies several floors of the building.

Brooklyn studio Format Architecture Office designed the renovation of one floor for the company's executive and sales teams.

Interiors feature white walls and many different floor materials, ranging from pale wood in a herringbone pattern to polished concrete, white tiles and grey carpet. The flooring changes to signal different areas acting like a "code social and work zones," the studio explained.

"Polished concrete and bespoke wood flooring differentiate circulation and gathering space from more utilitarian work zones," said Format Architecture Office.

Other details like white panelled walls of ash wood veneer, nooks with cabinets in different colours, terrazzo and dark accents to offer further distinctions between the different spaces.

The middle of the floor is filled with volumes that house individual pods with glass doors, other meeting areas, private offices, stairwells and restrooms.

A walkway wraps around the centre structure to connect to the meeting rooms and open offices that are arranged around the perimeter of the floor plan, culminating in a long room with a kitchen and dining areas.

"The design approaches the layout of the space from two distinct angles – one, by creating a variety of collaborative and private work zones that maximise efficiency without sacrificing personal space; and two, by anchoring the plan with 'jewel-box' social zones that imbue the project with a boutique sensibility and help to break down the large scale of the floor," the studio said.

Furnishings that add to this "boutique sensibility" include a series of small, black cafe tables and rattan chairs, curved wood booths and a built-in bench that runs across a wall.

Round terrazzo tables attach to the built-in structure with rods in a hooked shape for support.

Pale green cushions add colour, and a geometric mural with soft blue, orange and mustard hues anchors another area with a white high-top table and black barstools. Nearby is a prep station constructed from a free-standing, pale wooden volume.

Rows of white desks, black office chairs and desktop computers can be seen through an archway.

The office spans 30,000 square feet (2,787 square metres) and is complete with a large boardroom.

Swedish studio Halleroed has also designed a floor for an office that has multiple storeys in a building in Manhattan's Garment District with moody details evocative of a David Lynch movie.

Other New York offices include Glossier's headquarters with curvy pink couches, BIG's architecture office in Brooklyn, and the home base of Arianna Huffington's Thrive Global.

Photography is by Nick Glimenakis.

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Project credits:

Engineering and lighting design: Cosentini Associates
Consruction management: AECOM Tishman

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Cluster of hull-like roofs form The National Maritime Museum of China

Australian practice Cox Architecture designed The National Maritime Museum of China in Tianjin as four metal-clad wings that fan out to overlook Bohai Bay.

China's first National Maritime Museum, the building is located in the Binhai New Area. This wetland area has been recovered from the bay and extensively developed over the past decade.

Cox Architecture won a 2013 international competition to design the museum, which has been six years in the making.

Across an area of 80,000 square metres, the museum houses six display areas and 15 exhibition halls.

Diamond-shaped panels of silver aluminium cover the exterior of each form, with some perforated and others solid.

The underside of the of the roofs deep reveals –  designed to cope with heavy snowfall in winter – are lined with of wood.

Landscaped areas create a new series of promenade-like routes along the bay, sheltered by the cantilevering forms of the museum.

Winding paths that cut through its wooded parkland surroundings and extending into the bay with two long jetties.

Rather than a single, monolithic structure, Cox Architecture broke the museum down into a cluster of long, thin pavilions, that project towards the bay like upturned hulls of large ships.

"From Philip Cox's initial watercolour sketches, the design evolved and certain compelling metaphors either resolved or emerged," said Cox Architecture.

"Jumping carp, corals, starfish, moored ships in port and and open palm reaching out from China to the maritime world."

This "open palm" arrangement is focused around a central glazed reception hall, providing access between the three exhibition levels and lower-level storage areas, creating a dramatic visual axis through the building and out towards the bay.

Inside the wings, each of which is dedicated to a particular exhibition theme, a ribbed steel structure creates a dramatic space alongside the core areas housing exhibitions and circulation.

A stone floor and white walls create bright, open atrium spaces, overlooked at the upper levels by balconies in contrast to the more enclosed exhibition halls.

"The articulated pavilions provide a constant connection between inside and out," said the practice. "The user experience exists within the landscape and is a key organising device of the plan, helping to orientate visitors on their journey."

Cox Architecture was founded by Philip Cox in Sydney in 1967. The practice recently revealed designs for a new airport in Sydney designed with Zaha Hadid Architects.

The National Maritime Museum of China joins several other interestingly-shaped public buildings in the city.

Bernard Tschumi Architects has designed a copper-coloured museum in Tianjiin shaped like a factory with chimneys, and MVRDV built a public library shaped like a giant eyeball.

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Project credits:

Architect: Cox Architecture
Cox Team: Hang Ling, Alex Leese, Jack Dodgson, Ashley Beckett, Jayson Blight, Jaegeun Lim, Alex Munoz, Michael Bailey, Philip Cox, Lei Li, Leon McBride, Troy Rafton, James Ryan, Mitchell Page, Julian Farrell, Andrew Butler, Belinda Williamson, David Reasbeck, Ayo Akinola, Mark Sierzcula, Perry Gustafson, Kim Huat Tan, Spyros Barberis, Megan McKenzie, Gary McFeat, William Gray, Michael Rayner, Adrian Taylor, Roger Mai, Joseph Hartley, Karen Appleyard, Matthew Napper, Brendan Gaffney, Katy Roberts, Katie Holzberger, Mark Hadfield, Maxie Navius, Jaclyn Sun, Casey Vallance, Marianella Picon, Robert Callanan, Martin Hayes, Tae Won Kang, Solomon Romion, Brendan Kenny, Vesna Lazarevic, Steve Hunter, Thomas Nelson, James Sia, Tracey Maree, Akiko Spencer, Joachim Clauss, Tim Morgan, Brett Miles, Tommy Miller, Anya Meng.
Client: National Maritime Museum Preparatory Office Chinese Government and Tianjin Municipality
Local design institute partner: Tianjin Architecture and Design Institute (TADI),
Key consultants: Arup, Lord Cultural Resources, Urbantect

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Read and Rest Hotel in Beijing includes a library dedicated to print magazines

Guests can flick through a curated selection of contemporary publications in this Beijing hotel, which Office AIO has finished with minimal greyscale interiors.

Read and Rest Hotel is nestled amongst the winding alleys of Beijing's Xiang'Er hutong.

Office AIO – which completed a coffee bar in Xiang'Er back in 2016 – has designed the hotel's 60 guest rooms, communal areas and its in-house library, which is stocked with a global roster of print publications.

"While reading spaces are not traditionally regarded as a 'standard' in terms of hotel amenities, we do find this focus especially embraceable and refreshing," said the studio's founders, Tim Kwan and Isabelle Sun.

"Though the habit of reading can happen essentially anywhere, incorporating a library into a hotel highlights and promotes this action," they told Dezeen.

The hotel takes over a solemn grey-brick building that had been originally constructed for government use in the 1960s.

To make its facade appear more inviting, the studio expanded two ground-level doorways and a pair of windows on the first floor to create four huge openings.

These look through to a dramatic double-height entryway, which is meant to feel like a marked departure from the busy Beijing streets.

It features natural stone floors and pleated grey-plaster walls.

"Through this passage of scale and space the guests can let go of their sense of time and reach a state of enlightenment much like entering a utopian fairy tale," explained the studio.

After traversing the hotel lobby, guests eventually reach the library which is almost entirely lined with oakwood.

It's flanked on both sides by a sequence of alcoves – one side has been fitted with creamy cushioned bench seats, where guests can perch with a publication of their choice, while the other has built-in work tables.

Magazines are displayed on a tiered, wall-mounted shelf towards the front of the room. Domed glossy lamps have been suspended from the ceiling.

During the booking process guests are encouraged to share their personal interests, so that complementary print titles can be included in their rooms upstairs.

The studio has tried to make each room a "quiet nest" where guests feel they can retreat to unwind. Walls have been washed with a soft-grey plaster, complemented by light-hued wooden flooring.

Chunky ledges installed beneath the windows offer a spot for reading, along with the writing desks that appear in the corner of the rooms.

Some of the larger suites also come with a relaxing lounge area. These are separated from the bedrooms by sliding cane screens.

Office AIO was established in 2014 by Tim Kwan and Isabelle Sun, who will both be on the judging panel of this year's Dezeen Awards.

The studio's Read and Rest Hotel isn't the only getaway that's great for reading enthusiasts – at the end of 2019, Atelier Tao+C completed a glass-walled capsule hotel in the mountains of China's Zhejiang Province, the interiors of which are lined with bamboo bookshelves.

Photography is by Wen Studio.

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Project credits:

Design: Office AIO
Lead design: Tim Kwan
Project team: Isabelle Sun, Xue Zhao, Steven Tse, Haipeng Ren
Contractor: Beijing Dongyi Yuanda Building Decoration Engineering
Cement surfaces: Beijing DaGu Architecture Technology Development
Graphic designer: MEAT

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There are only two days left to enter Dezeen Awards 2020

With only two days left to enter Dezeen Awards 2020, it's time to start finalising your entry.

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Mexican students build low-cost solar lamps from natural waste materials

Six students from the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico have designed low-cost solar lamps made from mud, beans and cactus slime for people living in isolated rural areas with limited electricity.

Led by Moisés Hernández, the Solar project saw six students develop six different lamps made from waste materials found in rural Mexico, such as wicker, coconut bark and the maguey pulquero plant.

Using solar cells and LED technology, the lamps propose a sustainable solution to the need of nearly seven million Mexicans that live in isolated rural areas with limited or no access to electricity.

Each of the six solar lamps are made from waste materials found in rural Mexico including wicker, coconut shell and mud

Taking cues from the solar-powered Little Sun lamp by Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, Hernández and his students aimed to create lights with the lowest possible carbon footprint using bio-materials and low-cost manufacturing methods.

While some of the chosen materials will not last as long as Eliasson's plastic Little Sun, Hernández told Dezeen, the goal of the project was to design lamps with bodies that can be easily produced using local materials.

This way, people would need just the simple electronic components and the solar panel. The main structure could be fixed or replaced by making another from materials found in the surrounding environment.

Rafael Sánchez Brizuela made the body of his lamp from a coconut shell

"What we intend with this project is to look for new ways of production in rural areas or isolated communities where they do not have any injection plastic facilities to make the main bodies of lamps," Hernández explained.

"With these new material ideas that came from different sites across Mexico, where the weather and context are so different, the students visualised new scenarios where these type of technological objects can be assembled and distributed to local people."

Luis Fernando Sánchez Barrios' lamp is made from mud, recycled paper and cactus slime

The Adobe solar lamp by Luis Fernando Sánchez Barrios is built from mud, recycled paper and cactus slime – a mixture that the designer says offers a substance similar to cooked clay.

Designed for marginal communities that are dispersed throughout Mexico, Barrios' lamp references "pre-hispanic knowledge" of materials as well as an environmental awareness.

Oscar Andrés Méndez Hernández used black beans to build his solar lamp

Oscar Andrés Méndez Hernández looked to the black bean when considering natural materials for his solar lamp, which is designed to provide light on a worktable.

The LED sits above a circular cut-out in the centre of the structure, allowing the user to appreciate the texture and colours of the material as the light shines on its surface.

Discarded animal tissue was used to create Naoto Ricardo Kobayashi Utsumoto's lamp

A coconut shell was used to form the body of Rafael Sánchez Brizuela's lamp, while animal tissue waste – also known as collagen – that has been pulverised and injection moulded was used to create Naoto Ricardo Kobayashi Utsumoto's translucent, brown-hued lamp.

Viridiana Palma Dominguez used waste from the maguey pulquero plant to make her lamp

Viridiana Palma Dominguez made the body of her lamp from the cuticle and skin of the maguey pulquero plant – the contents of which is used to make an alcoholic drink called pulque.

Aniela Mayte Guerrero Hernández, on the other hand, looked to more traditional materials, using handmade wicker by craftsmen in Tequisquiapan, Queretaro, a region located in the centre of Mexico.

Aniela Mayte Guerrero Hernández's lamp body is made from wicker

Hernández and his group of students are just some of many designers who seek out unusual materials to make more interesting and sustainable products.

Other creations include a fashion collection made from seaweed, lighting made from discarded cow intestines and tableware made from out-of-date eggs.

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