Steam-bent timber tunnels through Melbourne showroom by Woods Bagot

Architecture studio Woods Bagot has used sculptural timber battens to create pathways through this immersive showroom space in Melbourne, designed for local cladding manufacturer Sculptform.

The mixed-use space is located at the ground level of a tower in central Melbourne, where it serves as a "billboard to the street" and shows off the brand's manufacturing capabilities.

Timber battens form tunnel-like pathways through the Sculptform Showroom (top and above)

Described by Woods Bagot as a "working showroom", the space includes not just product displays but also a staff workspace, meeting rooms and collaboration spaces.

Initially briefed to be 'out the back,' these private spaces are brought into the open and arranged around a glazed central workshop that makes a performance of the production process.

Wooden steps offer a place to sit

"Removing the line between front and back-of-house allows Sculptform's client base of architects and designers to work and co-create in the space alongside their own clients and contractors," said the firm.

"Linking its city-based clients with its regional manufacturing site, the showroom reduces the need for travel and highlights Sculptform's own product and expertise."

The showroom integrates workspaces for the Sculptform team

The interior is defined by a curving tunnel-like pathway, with walls and ceilings clad in steam-bent timber battens that guides visitors through the space in a figure of eight.

It was made in Sculptform's Bendigo factory using machinery acquired specifically for the project, which the brand has since used to create a new product range for its collection.

In the evening, integrated lighting emphasises the drama of the curving timber forms.

"Sculptform's name inspired the design team to explore a concept for sequencing these spaces that was both immersive and sculptural," explained Woods Bagot.

"What visitors experience in the showroom is a physical and tactile connection to Sculptform's products, processes and their makers – something that can't be found online."

A glazed workshop sits at the heart of the space

The Sculptform Showroom has been shortlisted for large retail interior of the year at the 2021 Dezeen Awards.

Other projects nominated in the category include a self-service collection point in Helsinki with brightly-hued interiors and a "banking conservatory" designed by Ministry of Design for Citibank's wealth management centre in Singapore.

Photography is by Peter Bennetts.

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Natural materials fill Desinchá tea shop in São Paulo by SuperLimão

Trailing plants and a rope-lined staircase feature in the flagship store for a tea company designed by Brazilian studio SuperLimão.

The shop serves as the first brick-and-mortar location for Desinchá, a fast-growing tea brand that was started in 2017. The company is focused on selling products that promote good health.

Desinchá tea shop features a kinetic facade

Local firm SuperLimão was tasked with creating a retail space that would represent the brand and provide a memorable experience for shoppers. The chosen location was a 16-square-metre, two-storey space on Oscar Freire, one of the busiest avenues in São Paulo.

"With no way to grow sideways, the out-of-the-box solution was to verticalize and confuse the senses," the designers said.

Inside, a staircase emerges from a bed of small rocks

The experience begins out front, where the team created a kinetic facade composed of metal leaves set within a grid of concrete blocks.

"Approximately 1,000 aluminium sheets inserted into the hollow concrete elements move with the wind, mimicking a treetop," the team said.

A external vending machine is always in use

The front elevation also has a brightly coloured vending machine, which enables customers to purchase Desinchá products at any time.

Upon entering the shop, visitors encounter a light-filled space with wooden shelves and greenery. A staircase emerges from a bed of rocks and invites shoppers to head upstairs.

Rope was used to form staircase railings

Rope was used to form the staircase railings and the risers between wooden treads.

"Little by little, the conventional store is transformed into a playful environment," the team said.

On the upper level, the team created a domed installation comprising more than 50 mirrors. Plants are reflected in the mirrors, giving the illusion of a vertical garden.

The domed installation serves more than an aesthetic function. The reflective surfaces direct sunlight to a large tea-making device called the Cold Drip, which floats in the centre of the stairwell.

Mirrors direct sunlight to the Cold Drip

Made up of borosilicate glass vessels, the device enables customers to see a special way of brewing tea using ice and sunlight.

"In an almost magical way, the sun's rays melt the ice, cold water drips into a funnel full of herbs, and this process slowly extracts all the essence and aroma of Desinchá," the team said.

Reflections are seen throughout the shop

Similar to boats, the team made use of every nook and cranny in the compact shop for storage and equipment. A small bathroom is hidden upstairs.

"Perhaps the most unusual solution is the bathroom on the upper floor, camouflaged behind a wooden panel," the architects said.

Plants are scattered throughout the project

Other projects by SuperLimão include a dental office with pink accents, a cave-like beer hall with gabion walls, and a pared-down apartment in an Oscan Niemeyer-designed building.

The photography is by Maíra Acayaba.

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Project credits:

Architecture: Superlimão
Team: Lula Gouveia, Brunna Dourado, Maria Fernanda Elaiuy, Diogo Matsui, Maria Fernanda Bellodi
Landscaping: Teco Paisagismo
Lighting: LdArti
Locksmiths: Oficina 27
Woodwork: Detalhe04 + Desinchá
Cold Drip: Classe A vidros
Vending machine: lab 220
Cementitious floor: Mapei

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Trolle Rudebeck Haar floats prefabricated sauna on Lake Geneva

Lausanne University of Art and Design graduate Trolle Rudebeck Haar has built a pre-fabricated floating sauna, which offers views over the Alps, using local wood.

Löyly is a 2.2-square-metre floating wooden sauna and was Haar's graduate Diploma Project at Lausanne University of Art and Design (ÉCAL) in Switzerland.

The sauna was constructed using Douglas fir

"After living in Finland for a while and experiencing the sauna culture there, I wanted to build my own sauna and explore the topic of micro-architecture," Haar told Dezeen.

The sauna was built to host up to three people and features a sloped roof, a wooden stove, a bench, translucent glass windows and an exterior deck.

The sloped, shed-like roof of the sauna was constructed using corrugated polycarbonate

It was constructed using Swiss Douglas fir, which Haar treated with teak oil in order to create a neutral and almost untreated and unstained look.

"The sauna is constructed by Swiss Douglas fir and finished with teak oil," the designer said. "I chose Douglas fir because of its durability for outdoor use and lightweight. It's sourced from a nearby sawmill business."

People can swim to the sauna to use it

The sauna was built on top of a floating pontoon deck that was fitted with hollow barrels to give the structure buoyancy.

This buoyancy allows it to be placed on lakes, ponds, ports and lagoons with low wave motion, or, like in these images, Lake Geneva.

Light wood was used across the exterior of the sauna

Harr aimed to "make everything stable with the perfect amount of weight, not too light or too heavy for the barrels," he said.

"Its movability also determined the design with the prefabricated elements, and everything can be taken apart and assembled."

Löyly can be reached by swimming to the floating structure and accessed through a glass sliding door, for which Haar took inspiration from traditional Japanese sliding doors called shōji.

"I was excited about learning and creating a shōji, Japanese sliding door. The lightweight door can easily slide aside and block wind and steam to go out from the sauna," said Haar.

The sauna contains a bench, a log burner and views out to the alps

Ribbed translucent glass was placed within the tallest walls of the structure to allow light to flood into the space while also providing privacy to the interior.

Haar explained that in the future the project could be altered to become a scalable structure.

Translucent glass lends privacy but also allows views out to the exterior

"The project has the potential to be scalable, and I imagine it can be used for pop-up events, festivals, and urban planning," said Haar.

"I wish the scale stays small, so the sauna session is still a cosy and intimate experience."

Haar incorporated a Japanese-style sliding door

Other saunas include a floating charred-timber sauna built by Small Architecture Workshop.

Australian art and architecture collective Studio Rain built and installed a prefabricated, off-grid, temporary sauna next to Melbourne's Yarra River.

Photography is by Noé Cotter.

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YODEZEEN inserts atmospheric Japanese restaurant in former Kyiv Arsenal building

Restrooms housed within a red metal mesh structure and a central open kitchen feature in this Japanese restaurant in Kyiv by local architecture and design firm YODEZEEN.

Located in an 18th-century brick building with art nouveau elements, the Virgin Izakaya Bar is in a central area of the Ukrainian city that was previously dedicated to weapons production.

The restaurant is located within a former arsenal

Izakaya refers to a type of informal bar serving drinks and small plates of food that are ubiquitous in Japan. The word izakaya (居酒屋) is made up of three kanji with the meaning: stay-drink-place.

YODEZEEN's design concept was based upon retaining the industrial building's existing architecture and all of its original art nouveau details, while creating a welcoming and contemporary design evocative of the izakaya experience.

An open kitchen and bar are located at the centre of the restaurant

Measuring 405 square metres, the Japanese restaurant's dining hall revolves around a central open kitchen that serves as the interior's focal point. Positioned at the same level as the restaurant's seating and spanning almost the entire length of the restaurant, the kitchen is edged with a long bar counter and designed to be visible from every angle.

Wooden tables are placed around the main hall, and some places have single stick stools reminiscent of those found in izakaya across Japan.

Weathered wood and copper was used throughout the restaurant to add warmth

"Everything that used to be carefully hidden is now in the public realm," said the studio, which has offices in Kyiv, Los Angeles and Miami. "The guest finds himself face to face with the chef and becomes an attendee of a real culinary master class."

To add warmth to the bare brick walls and concrete surfaces, which the studio deliberately kept raw, the design team selected a palette of natural materials such as wood, copper and natural leather.

Oxidised metal panels and metal mesh were added to create zones within the interior and also create special decorative elements. This is demonstrated in the restaurant's restrooms, which are houses in an independent red metal mesh structure.

"We wanted the elements of the Japanese style not to be flashy, but to be read in certain solutions," said Artem Zverev, YODEZEEN studio co-founder and the project's lead architect.

A red metal mesh volume houses the restaurants bathrooms

"It is about the concept of restrooms, expressed in a separate building in Japanese style, about three metres high," Zverev added.

"We have implemented this interior building in the form of a red metal mesh, which made it possible to view a part of the hall from the restrooms and vice versa."

"We have created an atmospheric, conceptually complete space," concluded Zverev. "Brick walls, rough wood, oxidized metal, bare concrete, opposed to the warm and pleasant atmosphere, created by the right statement of light and greenery."

The interior of the bathrooms has a similar raw and untreated finish

The Virgin Izakaya Bar has been shortlisted for restaurant and bar interior of the year at the 2021 Dezeen Awards.

Other projects nominated in the category include another restaurant in Kyiv with bumpy clay walls and rough concrete surface by local studio Yakusha Design,
 and a restaurant with a lighting installation made up of a tangle of red neon tubes in Berlin.

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EBBA Architects builds Construction Skills School using only reusable components

EBBA Architects has used hundreds of pieces of timber to give identity to a set of repurposed cabins, creating a temporary education centre that can be easily recycled in the future.

Located on London's Olympic Park, the Construction Skills School will occupy its site for a minimum of five years, providing building skills training to local people.

The school is housed in three repurposed modular cabins

To keep costs down and reduce waste, the project repurposes three modular buildings that were previously used as classrooms by a local primary school.

The challenge for EBBA Architects founder Benni Allan was to design a facade that could give these buildings a distinct identity, but also be achieved on a tight budget.

Lengths of wood create a new facade for the blocks

Allan was also keen to create something that could be easily recycled at the end of Construction Skills School's five-year tenure.

It was this that led him to design a facade screen system using off-the-shelf timber, namely two-by-twos and two-by-fours made out of larch wood.

The facade is designed to give the building a distinct identity

"The primary intention was to activate the frontage and make a building that could generate interest in the area," Allan told Dezeen.

"But as it is a temporary building, we also wanted to consider the life cycle," he said, "so that at the end of the building's life, we can imagine the screens as something new. It's an idea that we are continually trying to push within the practice."

The design differs between the exterior facades and the inward-facing elevations

Allan designed the system to be flexible so that it can be applied to any modular cabin.

The beams are arranged in a grid system that lines up with the positions of the windows. The idea was to give a sense of a structural framework, which ties in with the building's intended use.

The construction joints are expressed as a design feature

"We tried to make the assembly as straightforward as possible while also aiming to create something that celebrated the idea of making," said Allan.

"We enjoyed the idea of trying to assimilate the construction to a way of stacking elements and a system of layers, so that vertical elements support horizontals, which then support verticals and provide places for the screens to be fixed between."

The wood gives additional height to the street elevations, creating space for signage

The concept specifies different treatments for the exterior facades and the inward-facing elevations. Externally, the timbers are positioned close together to create a more dense screen, while the inward walls are more simple and open.

"This helped to save dramatically on the cost of the project, yet still managed to create a very considered scheme that feels cohesive," added Allan.

Both the cabins and the wood can be recycled in the future

Construction Skills School is among a handful of projects that EBBA Architects has completed since Allan founded the studio in 2018, although it is not his first project to feature a clever cladding design.

Allan previously used colourfully painted panels to brighten up his former school in Alicante, Spain.

Read:

Benni Allan gives his old school a facelift for just £1,000

He was commissioned on this project after winning a design competition hosted by the London Legacy Development Corporation and Transport For London (TFL).

The building will be run by the Construction Industry Training Board and The Skills Centre, providing hands-on experience for those interested in a career in the building industry.

The facility will remain in place for at least five years

Allan hopes the design will inspire people in "the art of construction".

"Often temporary buildings don't get the same care as others that will be there for much longer, yet temporary buildings can have a dramatic impact on the way an area develops," he added.

Photography is by James Retief.

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