Scalloped parapet tops Byben & Skeens' whimsical studio in Los Angeles

A scalloped roofline defines this playful backyard studio that Los Angeles architects Byben & Skeens completed for a writer and filmmaker to have a "solitary space for creation".

The compact project replaces a derelict shack in the steeply terraced back yard of a new homeowner's property in LA's Echo Park neighbourhood.

White stucco walls wrap the small writing studio

"The previous owner decorated the backyard in a lyrical antique style, with circuitous crumbling stairs winding up the hill and a hand-made shack on the brink of collapse," explained architects Byben & Skeens.

"Inspired by the whimsical setting, the client wanted to replace it with a writing studio and guest house that evoked the past but was firmly contemporary."

The interiors are neutral, with touches of colour added through textiles

The 480-square-foot (45-square-metre) building is rendered in white stucco, with arched openings that recall the Art Deco style that can be found all over LA.

It contains a single room that the client uses as a writing studio or occasional guest house, with a toilet at the back.

"To the west a full-length skylight illuminates the room, the light modulated and diffused by a curved wall sweeping into the space below," said Byben & Skeens.

The wood-framed windows and doors have arched tops

Two separate entrances lead into the building: one from the back yard, where large double doors allow the interior to be open to the elements; the other from the street.

This allows the owner to invite clients or collaborators over without needing to go through the main house.

The project makes the most of its steep site, which offers it a degree of separation from the owner's home below.

"The arched windows and doors avoid views into the house to focus on the surrounding trees and sky, creating a sense of escape and immersion in nature," the architects explained

The slope also facilitated building in theatre-like seating outside the building's double, doors, allowing the owner to put on small plays in the yard, or to sit and work with rehearsing actors.

A deck with bleacher-style seating is installed on the roof

Towards the back of the property, an exterior staircase leads to the roof, which overlooks the home below and enjoys views of the LA skyline beyond.

"A sun deck is bound by the peaks and arches of the crown-like parapet of the building," said the architects. "Facing East, the deck has an intimate interior feeling produced by the dappled light of a closely overhanging tree canopy while to the South and West, it provides clear views of downtown LA."

The studio sits between the main house and the street, and can be accessed from both sides

Small buildings like this, which are sometimes known as accessory dwelling units (ADUs) when they contain a bathroom and kitchenette, have long been prevalent in Los Angeles, where the relatively large land parcels and high cost of living have driven up demand for accommodation.

In recent years, the trend has accelerated, as the city has offered incentives to homeowners to build these structures in an effort to make more housing available.

A scalloped parapet tops the accessory dwelling unit, also known as an ADU

Those working on replicable ADUs for LA include a startup called Cover, which uses proprietary software to create a design suited to a specific site, and architects SO-IL, which unveiled a prefabricated, flower-shaped design earlier this year.

The photography is by Taiyo Watanabe.

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Curving roof incorporates seating at Yang Liping Performing Arts Center

Architecture office Studio Zhu-Pei has completed a performing arts centre in the Chinese city of Dali featuring an undulating roof that incorporates viewing areas and seating.

The arts facility was commissioned by local professional dancer Yang Liping for a site to the northeast of the city's historic centre, where Beijing-based Studio Zhu-Pei has also designed a museum of contemporary art.

Above: Studio Zhu-Pei built the Yang Liping Performing Arts Center below an undulating roof. Top: the roof incorporates seating

The design of the Yang Liping Performing Arts Center was directly informed by Dali's surrounding landscape, which includes the Cang mountain chain and Lake Erhai.

The building has a rectangular roof that spans a landscape of free-flowing indoor and outdoor spaces, including performance areas that blur the boundary between landscape and stage.

The roof is covered in slate tiles and fitted with walkways

The slate-covered roof has an organic profile informed by the outline of the surrounding mountains. The structure merges with the partly sunken garden spaces, creating a sense of connection between the ground and the roof.

"As with mountains and valleys, the strong shape of the roof reflects the more organic landscape below and points to the old Chinese principle of yin and yang, where two opposites combine together to form a whole," the studio explained.

The underside of the roof is covered in timber battens

A plaza that weaves through the Yang Liping Performing Arts Center intersects with a concrete volume containing the main theatre, allowing its stage to be opened up to the outside.

Outside the main auditorium, a set of steps that ascend onto the roof provides casual seating for viewing performances taking place on the indoor stage or in the plaza.

The roof structure is covered on its underside by wooden battens arranged in a nest-like composition. Skylights incorporated into the canopy allow daylight to filter through the wooden structure.

A cluster of treehouse-like towers extends through the canopy, connecting the ground level with a viewing area on the roof. These contain a cafe and a private teahouse.

Grassy mounds feature throughout the centre

The gently undulating landscape surrounding Yang Liping Performing Arts Center includes grassy areas that extend out towards the surroundings.

Beneath some of the turf-covered mounds is a basement level containing a rehearsal space and service areas.

A trio of treehouse-like structures pierce through the roof

Studio Zhu-Pei was founded by architect Zhu Pei in 2005. Its previous works include a contemporary art museum in a former Beijing factory and a museum dedicated to ceramics production that features vaulted structures made from red brick.

Photography is by Jin Weiqi.

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JG Phoenix references Tang dynasty architecture in minimalist Shantou restaurant

Walnut columns and blackened timber screens nod to the architecture of China's golden age in this atmospheric restaurant in Shantou by local interiors studio JG Phoenix.

Founded by three friends, the eatery is named Sui Han San You or Three Friends of Winter after a Chinese phrase, which refers to pine, bamboo and plum blossom.

Wood panelling features throughout the interior of Sui Han San You

The dimly lit, 1,200-square-metre restaurant was designed around this motif, often used in traditional art to signify resilience based on the plants' ability to thrive even in the colder months.

Wood features liberally throughout the space, forming slatted walls, screens and furniture reminiscent of Tang dynasty architecture – a period at the end of the first millennium that is considered a golden era for Chinese art and culture.

Light grey bricks are contrasted against dark wood panelling

"Architecture in the Tang dynasty was characterised by the perfect integration of strength and beauty, as well as a balance between rigour and magnificence," JG Phoenix explained.

"Such features were incorporated into the design of passages, where walnut columns were orderly arranged at the sides and linked to the ceiling."

A pool runs along the entrance corridor

The dark timber is paired with "austere materials" such as light grey stone bricks and brass to create a sense of balance within the space.

Diners enter the restaurant through a sloping corridor with a pool of water running along its length, which leads to the reception.

This is intended to evoke a traditional Chinese garden and create "a sense of ritual and mystery".

A walnut column rises out of the water, stretching up through a geometric reception desk to the ceiling. Large wooden screens wrap the space, separating the entrance, lobby and stairwell.

Slatted screens feature throughout the interior

A Tang-style writing desk and bookcase furnish the lobby while a dropped wooden ceiling helps to create a more intimate space.

The VIP rooms feature walnut columns with brass trims and walls finished in walnut panelling, light grey stone bricks and floor-to-ceiling murals.

The restaurant was informed by Tang dynasty architecture

"Such designs produce a tranquil, peaceful and superior dining atmosphere, which exactly interprets the essence of Tang style," JG Phoenix explained.

Founded in 2008, the studio has completed various other projects in Shantou including a paint showroom informed by the ancient concept of yin and yang and a fish bladder museum featuring glossy floors, rough-sawn wood and diffused natural light.

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Matteo Guarnaccia designs chairs around seating habits of world's most populous countries

Sicilian designer Matteo Guarnaccia has visited the most populous countries in the world and collaborated with local makers to create a seating design in each country as part of his Cross Cultural Chairs project.

The results, which were unveiled alongside a dedicated book as part of the BASE exhibition at Milan design week, include a chair for cross-legged sitting and an uncomfortable seat inspired by the politics of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

The Cross Cultural Chairs project was exhibited at Milan design week

Guarnaccia's "freestyle research" project saw him spend a month in each country – visiting Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Indonesia, China, India, Russia and Nigeria – and asking the first people he encountered what they thought of as the "local chair".

Aware of his limited perspective as "a white man raised in Europe", he collaborated with a local designer in each location to produce a one-off design, incorporating the aesthetics and culture of that place and analysing how context can shape our concept of sitting.

The Brazilian chair is intentionally uncomfortable to reflect the country's political situation

"My generation wears the same shoes, listens to the same playlists and watches the same movies but do we use the same chairs," Guarnaccia questioned.

"Do we sit the same way? I was driven to understand and see in the first person the impact of globalisation on design among young generations of designers, makers and architects."

The Mexican chair plays with stereotypes by embracing bright colours

The chair made in Japan is legless and designed for use on tatami mats. Working with local designer Mikiya Kobayashi, Guarnaccia wanted to capture his interpretation of Japanese minimalism, which is translated into elegantly joined wood and a smoothly upholstered leather seat.

"Actually, I don't think Japanese style is minimal," he told Dezeen. "There's always this style or this intention to tell a story."

The chair Guarnaccia created in Japan is intended for sitting on tatami mats

The relevance of chairs in eastern societies, where floor-sitting is traditional, was also questioned in India.

Here, chairs were only introduced during British colonial rule and the majority of people still cook, eat and work sitting on the floor. This has resulted in a "hybrid" way of sitting, Guarnaccia observed, in which people remove their shoes and sit on chairs cross-legged, even in formal settings.

The chair he created in India has curved "leg rests" intended to support cross-legged sitting

To honour this, his Indian chair made with Sameep Padora and Ajay Shah features indented "leg rests" instead of armrests for people to rest their splayed knees.

The chair's shape is derived from a modernist German chair common in India while its seat employs a weaving technique normally used for beds.

Guarnaccia presented his work at a local art or design museum at the end of every month to receive feedback from locals, and in the case of Nigeria even altered the final design based on the public's response.

The chair he designed in collaboration with Nifemi Marcus-Bello initially featured an all-wood frame, informed by the DIY furniture he observed on the streets of Lagos and the city's wood market, which is the largest in Africa. But Guarnaccia added metal panelling to the chair's exterior after locals deemed it as too simplistic.

He incorporated metal into the Nigerian chair after feedback from residents

"They were like: 'you're one of those white, heterosexual Europeans that come to Nigeria and you present this wood chair but Africa is much more'," he told Dezeen. "So it also triggered this conversation about colonisation and globalisation."

In Brazil, his collaborator Brunno Jahara felt that the country had become an uncomfortable place under the leadership of Jair Bolsonaro, so the duo made an uncomfortable chair with metal wire for a seat.

In Indonesia, Guarnaccia made a chair from local rattan

Others show a more light-hearted approach, with the Russian chair borrowing its aesthetic from the country's affection for plastic flowers, capable of surviving the winter, while the Mexican chair plays with stereotypes by embracing bright colours.

The Indonesian and Chinese chairs reflect on the country's production methods. Indonesia is the world's largest rattan producer and tends to replicate Scandinavian design in local materials, as does Guarnaccia's chair.

In China he made a chair wrapped in an expensive fabric

In China, reflecting on knock-off practices and his own perception of what "made in China" means, he upholstered a chair in an expensive, recycled plastic fabric by Kvadrat, striving to give it value.

"You can literally trace the evolution of humanity in terms of techniques and materials through chairs," said Guarnaccia.

The project was showcased at the BASE Milano exhibition

The chairs were exhibited alongside the Cross Cultural Chairs book, which includes an introductory interview by FormaFantasma and Aldo Cibic.

Milan design week returned in a more low-key format this year, with exhibitions including a showcase of candleholders by the likes of Marcel Wanders to Patricia Urquiola, as well as a Lost Graduation Show from student designers who weren't been able to exhibit last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Cross Cultural Chairs was exhibited as part of the BASE Milano exhibition at Milan design week 2021, which ran from 4 to 10 September. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix enclosed with polycarbonate walls

American firms 180 Degrees and CoLab Studio have created an educational facility and a greenhouse in the Arizona desert with polycarbonate facades that bring soft daylight indoors.

The Hazel Hare Center for Plant Science is located within the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. Local firms 180 Degrees and CoLab Studio worked with the garden to conceive a masterplan for the centre's 85,000-square-foot (7,897-square-metre) campus.

The Desert Botanical Garden is located in Phoenix, Arizona

"This horticulture campus is the heart of the Desert Botanical Garden, providing world-class facilities furthering the art and science of nurturing the garden's renowned plant collection," the team said.

Since the masterplan was approved, three buildings have been completed: Greenhouse West, the Marley Horticulture Learning Lab and the Ahearn Desert Conservation Laboratory. Future facilities include a headhouse and additional conservatories.

The facility includes a large greenhouse

At 5,184 square feet (482 square metres), the West Greenhouse is the largest of the new structures. It contains space for growing various species of cacti, including rare specimens.

The steel-framed facility has white, polycarbonate cladding – a material that brings diffused light into the growing space. The building is topped with a sawtooth roof and, above it, a broad, metal canopy with perforated aluminium louvres that move.

Sunset at the Desert Conservation Laboratory

At ground level are two metal cylinders for the storage of rainwater, which is used inside the greenhouse.

Encompassing 1,728 square feet (161 square metres), the Learning Lab offers space for lectures, workshops and laboratory work.

The Learning Lab is faced in colourful polycarbonate panels

Rectangular in plan, the building is topped with a sloped roof. Wrapping the exterior are polycarbonate panels in hues of grey, blue and green.

On the south elevation, fins made of salvaged wood help shade a row of slot windows. Glazed openings on the building's north and east facades provide transparency and a connection to the outdoors.

The final building is the Desert Conservation Lab, which totals 2,200 square feet (204 square metres). Roughly trapezoidal in plan, the building has an exterior made of galvanized steel and copper.

The buildings on the horticultural campus are interwoven with walkways, desert landscaping and shaded areas for taking a break. Special attention was given to dividing the campus's public-facing structures, such as the Learning Lab, from facilities that are more operational in nature.

Native plants grow in the greenhouse

"The garden needed a means to separate the 'front of house' from 'back of house' operations at the Horticultural Center, while allowing the public some degree of access," the team said.

Therefore, stretching through the campus is the Great Wall of Boulders, a tall partition made of 24 boulders and a series of gabion cages.

Boulders were sourced from an Arizona quarry

Each boulder is partly buried underground in order to support its weight. To create the wall, over 436 tons of rock were brought down from a quarry in Kingman, Arizona.

"Garden volunteers installed PVC irrigation pockets inside the gabions to create vertical gardens that simulated desert canyon microclimates that native species could happily cling to," the team said.

They form The Great Wall of Boulders, which stretches through the campus

Other projects involving plants include a botanical garden in China that features three giant, domed greenhouses, and a greenhouse with sliding mesh walls that was added to an office building in Santa Monica.

The photography is by Bill Timmerman.

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