Escobedo Soliz updates compact apartment in Mexico City's modernist CUPA tower

Mexican studio Escobedo Soliz has renovated a family's residence inside a 1940s housing complex that was modelled on Le Corbusier's Radiant City masterplan.

The project entailed the renovation of an apartment in the Centro Urbano Presidente Alemán, or CUPA, a notable housing project in Mexico City's Del Valle neighbourhood.

The renovated apartment is inside a housing complex modelled on Le Corbusier's Radiant City

It was the first modernist residential complex in Mexico, and it was among the first social housing experiments in the world, according to local studio Escobedo Soliz.

Completed in 1949, CUPA was commissioned by the government to address a housing shortage. It was designed by architect Mario Pani, who based his scheme on Le Corbusier's Radiant City, an urban design concept that featured residential towers set among green space.

Wood panelling covers wall in a bedroom

CUPA was built in two years and set a new record for high-rise construction in Mexico, the architects said.

The complex consists of 1,080 apartments that are distributed across six towers and six smaller buildings. There are five different types of units, ranging from 48 to 76 square metres.

The two-level apartment is for a family with two sons

"On the ground floor, the buildings are equipped with urban infrastructure such as commerce spaces, sport facilities, schools and green areas for its inhabitants," the architects said.

"The buildings have a robust and modular structural system of concrete beams and columns that avoid structural walls and allow flexibility to reconfigure the interior of the apartments."

Concrete beams and columns define the apartment

Escobedo Soliz was tasked with updating a 55-square-metre, two-level apartment for a couple with two sons. The family had been living in the unit for 15 years.

The upper level of the unit – called the access level – held a kitchen and dining room and totalled 12 square metres.

Terrazzo tiles are found in the kitchen

The 43-square-metre lower floor encompassed an open room with three beds, a television and a sofa, along with an enclosed bathroom and laundry room. Bikes and storage boxes were tucked under the stairs.

The goal of the renovation was to provide more privacy and storage space, along with upgrading the floors, surfaces, doors and windows.

Escobedo Soliz modified the staircase to create more space

To make more space, the team modified the staircase.

"Our proposal intervenes the original wooden staircase by making it steeper and shorter to gain area in the access level and gain height in the dead space below the staircase," the architects said.

"By increasing the floor area on the access level, we were able to grow and build a new dining room, relocate the new kitchen, and generate a laundry room and bike storage behind the new kitchen."

On the lower level, the space under the stairs was converted into a television room. The bathroom was reconfigured and fitted with new cabinets and tile.

A simple bunk bed was constructed in the children's room

In the open area, partitions with integrated storage cabinets were added to form two separate bedrooms.

"This carpentry element respects the different heights of the concrete beams, allowing the beams to pass freely over the top in order to have more light in the TV room and embrace the structural continuity of the concrete beams," the team said.

Built-in storage furniture echoes 1940s design

Wooden elements were also used to form desks in each bedroom and a new bunkbed in the children's room. The team also created built-in storage furniture that was originally proposed for the units in 1947 by Cuban designer Clara Porset, who worked in Mexico.

In certain areas, solid walls were replaced with glass blocks, helping increase the amount of light in the apartment. The team also swapped out dark linoleum floors with white terrazzo, and removed plaster from beams and the ceiling to reveal the concrete formwork.

The project is in Mexico City's Del Valle neighbourhood

The renovation also included new lighting, the restoration of original gates, and a new galvanised steel ceiling underneath the neighbour's staircase to provide protection from recurring water leaks.

Founded by architects Pavel Escobedo and Andrés Soliz, Escobedo Soliz has completed several residential projects, including an inward-facing house in Mexico City that consists of two brick arms that flank a central patio.

In 2016, the firm won the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program contest and installed a web of brightly coloured rope at the museum's courtyard in Queens, New York.

The photography is by Ariadna Polo.

---

Project credits:

Design and construction: Escobedo Soliz (Pavel Escobedo and Andrés Soliz)
Collaborators: Francesca Lauretta, Diana Rico, Alberto Hernandez

The post Escobedo Soliz updates compact apartment in Mexico City's modernist CUPA tower appeared first on Dezeen.

from Dezeen https://ift.tt/3DGfEbc

Parsons School of Design's master's degree programmes aim to redesign the future

Dezeen promotion: Parsons School of Design offers 19 master's programmes that intend to equip students with the interdisciplinary tools needed to redesign the future.

Parsons is part of The New School, a university based in New York City. As part of the wider university, Parsons students collaborate with a diverse range of academics, including social scientists, artists, and policy analysts. This enables them to develop projects that draw on a wide range of subjects.

The diversity of the collaborations aims to encourage students to explore and experiment across disciplines with the intention of developing their creative abilities.

"Because art and design both reflect and shape the concerns of the day, it's no surprise to find our community applying its skills, critical thinking and creativity to create a better world in a time marked by climate change, social inequity, and faltering systems," said Rachel Schreiber, executive dean of Parsons School of Design.

Below is a selection of the school's postgraduate programmes. Explore more of its courses on its website.

---

Data Visualization MS

Data Visualisation is a one-year programme where students combine their design computer science skills with statistical analysis and insights into social and ethical consciousness.

The programme intends to produce graduates who can analyse data and turn their findings into meaningful conclusions in order to shape policy across different sectors.

"The programme responds to the increased demand for experts who can turn data into insight," said Aaron Hill, assistant professor of data visualization at Parsons.

"You learn to understand and develop the ways in which the presentation of data shapes opinion, policy, and decision making in today's information economy."

---

Design and Urban Ecologies MS 


In the Design and Urban Ecologies programme, students learn how to transform public spaces by redesigning urban processes.

The course aims for students to develop a deep understanding of urban space while creating projects that reconstruct and enhance diverse communities.

"99 per cent of what constitutes our cities doesn't belong to the people who live there," says Miguel Robles-Duran, associate professor of urbanism at Parsons.

"We want our students to be able to readdress that imbalance and to deal with the complexities of the whole. They gain a wide understanding of the complex forces at play within urban systems, and learn to problem-solve with ethics in mind."

---

Fashion Management MPS

Fashion Management MPS is a one-year online programme where students develop insight and concepts for fashion businesses and start-ups while challenging the industry's paradigms.

The course aims to equip students with advanced skills in marketing, mechanising, ethical production and value chains. There is also the option to study the course online.

"Parsons created the fully online version of the Fashion Management programme for one reason: access. It allows students anywhere in the world to access the same dedicated faculty, industry insights, and degree curriculum that we offer on our NYC campus," said Keanan Duffty, founding director of the programme.

---

Lighting Design MFA

In Parson's Lighting Design MFA, students develop a deep insight into light's technical and aesthetic dimensions by exploring lighting design and its relationship to social and environmental sustainability.

"The MFA Lighting Design programme at Parsons, the first of its kind in the world, has trained leaders in this rapidly evolving field for more than 45 years," said Craig Bernecker, director of the Lighting Design programme.

"You explore the relationships between theory, technical application, energy conservation, and social and environmental aspects of electric and natural light."

Students have the option to combine the programme with studies in Interior Design or Architecture.

---

Strategic Design and Management MS

The Strategic Design and Management MS is designed to enable graduates to develop the management, strategy and business skills needed to develop the 21-century economy.

Students also build on their skills and understanding of prototyping, leadership and environmental and social sustainability.

"Bringing together design thinking, management, and applied social sciences, the graduate programme in Strategic Design and Management responds to the need for businesses and organisations to address complex 21st-century economic, environmental and social challenges," said Koray Caliskan, associate director of the programme.

---

MFA in Fashion Design and the Arts

MFA in Fashion Design and the Arts is a recently launched programme based at the Parsons Paris campus.

The two-year degree equips students with a sustainable approach to fashion design via real-life projects closely linked to the city's fashion industry.

"Graduates are prepared to challenge traditional forms of understanding, making, and disseminating fashion beyond the traditional boundaries set by gender and market positioning," said programme director Tuomas Laitinen.

---

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Parsons School of Design as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

The post Parsons School of Design's master's degree programmes aim to redesign the future appeared first on Dezeen.

from Dezeen https://ift.tt/3AGzAsu

Loggia Multi-Colored carpet by Talk Carpet

Dezeen Showroom: Talk Carpet has unveiled its latest travel-inspired design, the Loggia Multi-Colored flooring, which takes its pattern from a 15th-century Italian mural.

The Loggia Multi-Colored carpet was born while the Talk Carpet team explored Italy, and alighted on Verona's Loggia del Consiglio, a Renaissance building from 1476.

In particular, their carpet borrows from a mural on one facade that features multicoloured squares spreading in a grid-like design across the wall.

The Loggia Multi-Colored carpet has a pattern of squares based on a mural in Verona

Talk Carpet's design adapts this mural with muted tones of yellow, khaki green, mint green, and red.

"Each has the same shading as the squares in the façade to give them a 3D shape," said Talk Carpet founder Christophe Prosper Rammant.

"We love how this gives the illusion that they extend outward from the carpet and immediately add dimension to any space."

The design is part of Talk Carpet's custom carpet programme, which lets users choose their own pattern, colour, material, and dimensions.

One per cent of sales go to the charity Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS.

Product: Loggia Multi-Colored
Brand: Talk Carpet
Contact: cpr@talkcarpet.com

About Dezeen Showroom: Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.

The post Loggia Multi-Colored carpet by Talk Carpet appeared first on Dezeen.

from Dezeen https://ift.tt/3mZ15sC

Stefano Boeri covers social housing tower with 10,000 plants

Italian architect Stefano Boeri has completed the plant-covered Trudo Vertical Forest social housing tower in Eindhoven.

The housing block is 70 metres tall and surrounded with staggered, protruding balconies that support over 10,000 plants.

It is Stefano Boeri Architetti's first "vertical forest" in the Netherlands.

The Trudo Vertical Forest by Stefano Boeri Architetti is located in Eindhoven. Photo by Paolo Rosselli.

Unlike earlier vertical forests including Bosco Verticale that contained luxury apartments, the 18-storey tower has 125 affordable social housing units.

"The Eindhoven social housing tower establishes the possibility of combating both climate change and resolving the problem of housing through interpreting the idea of urban forestation," said Stefano Boeri Architetti partner Francesca Cesa Bianchi.

"Not only as a necessity in order to improve the environments in cities around the world, but also a great opportunity to improve the living conditions of poorer citizens," he told Dezeen.

The building incorporates over 10,000 plants and trees across its exterior. Photo is by Paolo Rosselli.

Trudo Vertical Forest is wrapped in white concrete horizontal bands that envelop the building between strips of solar-reflective glazing.

From the horizontal concrete bands, staggered planter balconies were extruded at different widths, heights and depths. These balconies support 10,135 plants, shrubs and trees.

The exterior is covered in protruding balconies of different sizes. Photo is by Paolo Rosselli.

The extruded planter balconies house the vertical forest and were fitted with sensors that monitor the hydration and nutrition levels of the soil.

The studio explained that it rationalised a number of technical solutions, used prefabricated components and cost-efficient materials in order to meet the budget constraints of social housing.

Plants and trees will annually absorb over 50 tonnes of CO2 and over 13 tonnes of oxygen

"The use of latest generation construction technologies, the rationalisation of certain technical solutions for the facades and more generally, the optimisation of resources related to the project and the construction of the building allowed to achieve the goal to realise a Vertical Forest especially intended to accommodate low-income users and young couples," said Cesa Bianchi.

"The materials chosen such as concrete and prefabricated components ensured cost containment in a strategy consistent with the inner nature of social housing," he continued.

"The design itself focused on finding the best performing solution, which could provide the right balance between aesthetic and economic objectives."

Apartment terraces are adjoined to the large planters 

According to the studio, each year the vertical forest will absorb over 50 tonnes of CO2 and over 13 tonnes of oxygen.

The practice added solar panels to the roofs of adjacent buildings in order to produce some of the energy consumed by the tower, while a reservoir-cum-rainwater collection system was installed to irrigate the planting.

The apartments are to be rented as affordable social housing

Each of the 50-square-metre apartments has reconfigurable space with ceiling heights of at least 3.5 metres. Every apartment has its own balcony fitted with green boxes that contain a single tree and 20 bushes.

"On Trudo Tower plants and trees are inserted not only in tanks – just as in the Bosco Verticale in Milan – but also in vases placed at the same level as the terrace," added Stefano Boeri Architetti founder Stefano Boeri.

"This design has been led by the desire to offer multiple connections between inside and outside and humans and vegetation," he told Dezeen.

The apartments each have a balcony

The building accounts and accommodates for its tree's increase in weight and size by estimating that each tree could double in weight during its lifetime.

The tower's vertical forest will be monitored by abseiling gardeners who will maintain and prune its trees and shrubs.

The practice used prefabricated components to construct the building

Trudo Vertical Forest is one of many vertical forests designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti. In 2019 the practice unveiled plans to build a tower with vertical forest in Tirana, Albania.

More recently the practice completed a building in Antwerp which was wrapped in over 1,000 plants.

Photography is by Norbert van Onna unless stated otherwise.

The post Stefano Boeri covers social housing tower with 10,000 plants appeared first on Dezeen.

from Dezeen https://ift.tt/2YNrSzk

“I'd like to think I'm having success regardless of my skin colour” says Mac Collins

Nottingham-based designer Mac Collins recently won the Emerging Designer Medal at the London Design Medal awards. In an exclusive interview, he tells Dezeen how he doesn't want to be pigeonholed as a "Black designer".

The 26-year-old furniture maker, who graduated from Northumbria University three years ago, is one of a small number of Black designers working in the UK.

He told Dezeen that work by Black designers is rarely covered in university courses.

"I didn't really know of any Black designers," said Collins. "They weren't put to you by your college or university. And if it's not within the curriculum, you don't just naturally come across it."

Above: Mac Collins. Top: his afrofuturist Iklawa chair

Instead, Collins looked to the American civil rights movement and artists operating at that time for motivation. His dissertation explored the roles and responsibilities of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

This led him to Afrofuturism – the reimagining of the Black experience using science fiction and fantasy – and his breakthrough Afrofuturism-informed chair.

Made from ash and oak wood, the chair went into production with British furniture producer Benchmark in 2020. Its throne-like shape is designed to empower its sitters.

"Black characters are never seen as superheroes"

Although Collins "genuinely was not aware of the film", the chair's launch coincided with the release of Black Panther, which brought the term Afrofuturism into public consciousness.

"I thought, 'we've got this chair – would it work to elevate the person within it?'" Collins remembered.

"It's being imaginative about the future in a way that presents Black people in a light that we particularly hadn't been presented before," he added. "Black characters are never seen as superheroes."

Collins often draws on his own personal history for his furniture. Born and raised in Nottingham with six sisters, he grew up listening to his grandma's stories about her experience living in the Caribbean and migrating to the UK as part of the Windrush generation.

"My grandma has all these really funny, really interesting stories from what she saw," he said. "I feel like sometimes these things [his designs] are a way to feel like I can connect back to these stories."

"I don't want to be pigeon-holed"

However, Collins doesn't want his heritage to define his work. He was produced work for a range of brands, including a homeware range for Finnish design brand Vaarnii.

"I'm quite keen to put across that I am working on projects that represent my heritage," he said.

"But at the same time, I'm also working on projects that do not do that: I can do both of these things and I don't want to be pigeonholed into a position where people then want to get me involved in a project because it fits a narrative."

Collins' bowl collection for Vaarnii

According to research by Ethiopian American industrial designer Jomo Tariku, just 0.32 per cent of the furniture produced by leading brands is created by Black designers.

Collins is aware of his position as a visible Black designer, but is also concerned about tokenism.

"People have reached out to me for certain things, I imagine because it's convenient to present me in that position for the narrative that they want to push; this whole 'Black is urban, Black is cool' thing," he said.

"I'd like to think I'm having success regardless of my skin colour."

When asked whether thinks the design industry has changed since the Black Lives Matter movement reignited in the summer of 2020, Collins is hesitant.

Like many, he recognises there has been some progress to foster a more diverse environment, however also acknowledges that the pace of change is slow.

"The whole thing has been very, very tricky," he explained. "It definitely feels like people are more aware of underlying biases but it was never something that was going to change in a year."

"To exhibit at the Design Museum is huge"

Collins recently won the Emerging Designer Medal at this year's London Design Medal awards, which recognises an impact made on the design scene within five of graduation.

He also designed a chair for an exhibition at the Design Museum by Wallpaper* and the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC)'s Discovered, proved to be a form of escapism or a "liberating project".

Collins' Concur chair and table, which was shown at the Design Museum

"To step out of the pandemic world and to work on a project that was kind of open to your interpretation was really great," he explained.

The designer particularly enjoyed exploring how to work with cherry timber – a material which he hadn't worked with before.

Aside from playing with materials, the exhibition marked a pivotal moment in Collins' career.

"To exhibit at the Design Museum is huge," he says. "That's a massive thing for me to be able to say, even if I suck off design tomorrow."

The post “I'd like to think I'm having success regardless of my skin colour” says Mac Collins appeared first on Dezeen.

from Dezeen https://ift.tt/3AGPzqg