PARA Project designs surreal pavilion floating on a Belgian canal

American studio PARA Project has designed a wooden pavilion on a canal in Bruges, Belgium, to be an uncanny "doppelgänger" of an adjacent 15th-century canal house.

The pavilion, called Bruges Diptych, was designed as an events space for the 2021 Bruges Triennial, which for its third edition invited responses to the curatorial theme of "TraumA".

Top image: the pavilion floats on the canal. Above: it was designed for the Bruges Triennial. Photo is by Iwan Baan

According to its curators, this was an exploration of the "hidden spaces" that reveal the reality of life behind the outward image of the city's famous medieval centre, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"What is going on behind those stately facades?" asked the Biennial's curatorial statement. "How is the 'medieval city' actually being experienced and lived in?"

The pavilion is split into two intersecting forms. Photo is by Jasper van het Groenewoud

PARA responded by designing a pavilion with a form that, from a distance, appears to mimic the form and scale of the neighbouring medieval canal houses.

On closer inspection, the pavilion is split into two intersecting forms that give the illusion of being pulled apart, a conceptual response to the idea of "revealing" what lies behind the city's facades.

It serves as an interactive events space

"The Diptych serves as an event space for the Triennale's programming, addressing issues in urban trauma, and was one of several international commissions open within the city through late fall [2021]," said the practice.

"Its brief proximity with the canal house is a study in formal estrangements," it continued. "Still, through orientation, material, scale, posture, the pavilion recognised something of itself in its new neighbour."

PARA built the pavilion from a timber frame structure

Due to the site's heritage status, the pavilion floats atop 15 connected pontoons in the canal to avoid any impact on the existing buildings, with just a slim gap between it and the adjacent canal house.

It was built from a timber frame structure, which has been left exposed internally to reveal where the roof beams of the pavilion's two gabled forms intersect.

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Large openings at one end of this timber structure frame the facade of the historic canal building, and small projecting areas on either side create spaces for looking out over the canal.

Externally, the timber frame is partially clad with plywood panels, and features on the neighbouring canal house such as the gabled dormer windows and other openings have been left as geometric outlines.

The pavilion floats on pontoons. Photo is by Iwan Baan

This creates the illusion that the Bruges Diptych is a doppelgänger, a double, of the existing buildings.

Thin mirrors installed on the interior columns add to the surreal feel of the pavilion, reflecting fragments of the historic surroundings through the space.

Bruges Diptych has been left exposed internally. Photo is by Iwan Baan

PARA Project was founded by Jon Lott in 2007 and has offices in New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lott is also a cofounding member of Collective-LOK, with which his previous projects include a flexible home for the Val Alen Institute in New York.

The photography is by Stijn Bollaert unless otherwise stated. 

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Adjaye Associates completes rose-hued cultural hub in Florida

British architecture firm Adjaye Associates has designed a collection of pigmented-concrete pavilions in Winter Park, Florida, to house a library and an events centre.

Located on the northwestern corner of the 23-acre (9.3 hectares) Martin Luther King, Jr. Park in Florida, the Winter Park Library and Events Center comprises three pavilions and was described as a "micro-village" by Adjaye Associates.

Winter Park Library and Events Center is a cultural hub in Florida that was designed by Adjaye Associates

The cultural hub, which replaced an existing civic centre, was developed as part of an extensive revitalisation of the park and first announced in 2017.

It comprises a 35,155 square-foot (3,266 square-metre) library, an 18,200 square-foot (1,690 square-metre) events centre and a 2,457 square-foot (228 square-metre) Porte Cochère, a portico-style canopy that will be used as a pick-up and drop-off point.

The three structures were constructed using pigmented concrete

The pavilions were designed as square and rectangular buildings with exterior walls that are angled inwards at their base. Large vaulted arches on the sides of the buildings provide views from the interior across to the parkland.

Materials used were locally sourced, with the precast concrete used across the facade sourced from within 25 miles of the site.

Vaulted arches were fitted with large windows

The project's design also references its surroundings, with the vaulted arches informed by the park's plant life and local architecture.

"Arches, inspired both by local fauna and the region's vernacular architecture, establish the form of the pavilions, with vaulted rooflines and sweeping windows creating a porous relationship between interior and exterior, drawing natural light deep into the buildings," said Adjaye Associates.

The events centre features space for performances

The two-storey library houses collection spaces, a computer lab, an indoor auditorium, a recording studio and youth spaces. It has an open-plan design to aid accessibility throughout and four timber-lined cores that hold archival collections, reading rooms and support zones.

The events centre contains a rooftop terrace and a large auditorium surrounded by flexible open spaces, as well as an amphitheatre and a rooftop meeting room.

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Dramatic black-painted spiral staircases sit at the centre of each structure, contrasting against red-painted walls and connecting the upper levels of the buildings.

Rose-pigmented concrete covers the ceiling above the event centre and the library's mezzanine-style second floor, tying the interior of the buildings together with the exterior walls.

The cultural hub was informed by local architecture

The event centre rooftop terrace overlooks the park, as well as a nearby lake and the concrete embossed roofline of the adjacent library and Porte Cochère.

"As an ensemble, the Winter Park Library and Events Center comes together as a space of social gathering, intellectual nourishment, and enhanced connection to its natural tropical context," the practice said.

Rose-coloured concrete covers the events centre ceiling

The Porte Cochère pavilion is situated beside the events centre and library and has the same rose-pigmented concrete material palette and a similar tapered, square form.

Unlike the library and events spaces, however, the pavilion has no glazing between its vaulted arches. Instead, it functions as an open canopy under which visitors can rest. A large circular opening pierces the roof of the pavilion, adding a sculptural quality.

Materials and concrete used at the cultural hub were sourced locally

The structures were designed with large overhangs to ensure visitors are given shade from the Florida sun, while an on-site solar energy system is projected to produce around 37,865-kilowatt-hours of energy annually.

The project also has a stormwater irrigation system that lets the stormwater filter through its parking lot structure, before being collected in a nearby lake and reused to water the landscape around the buildings.

Other red-hued projects by Adjaye Associates include the proposed campus for The Africa Institute in downtown Sharjah, UAE, and eight rammed-earth domes that the practice designed for the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library in South Africa.

Photography is by Dror Baldinger.

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Project credits:

Design architect: Adjaye Associates
Architect of record: HuntonBrady Architects
Acoustical design: Gary Seibein
Civil engineer and landscape architect: Land Design
Envelope consultant: Thornton Tomasetti
Food service design: Phil Bean
General contractor: Brasfield & Gorrie
Owner’s representative: The Pizzutti Companies
Signage consultant: Poblocki
Structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection engineer + audio visual and security: TLC Engineering

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Framework develops modular laptop that users can fix and upgrade themselves

American technology company Framework has designed a laptop with modular components that can be repaired and replaced to increase the product's lifespan while reducing e-waste.

The Framework laptop is available in either a preassembled or a DIY version that customers can assemble themselves. It comes with a screwdriver and spudger to allow owners to easily customise, upgrade and repair their device.

Individual components such as the motherboard can be repurchased, reused or broken down and recycled, to help facilitate a more circular economic system.

The modular Framework laptop is designed to be disassembled

Framework CEO Nirav Patel said the company's ultimate aim is to tackle the mounting problem of electronic waste.

"We've gone from 44.4 million tonnes of e-waste per year in 2014 to 53.6 million tonnes in 2019," he told Dezeen. "As an industry, we can't keep moving in this direction."

Rather than just focusing on recycling, Framework hopes to combat this issue by helping consumers to generate less waste and making products that last longer than traditional mass-market devices, which Patel describes as "disposable one-offs".

Each component has a QR code directing users to instructions and replacement parts

The lightweight laptop, which is the brand's debut product, features a 16-millimetre-thick, 13.5-inch screen housed inside a casing made from 50 per cent post-consumer recycled (PCR) aluminium.

Framework's Expansion Card system allows buyers to customise the laptop with their choice of ports, from USB to HDMI, which can sit on either side.

By loosening five small screws on the underside of the laptop, the keyboard section can be removed to reveal the device's insides.

The keyboard is removed to reveal the laptop's insides

The laptop's 55-watt-hour battery and motherboard can then be taken out and repaired. Alternatively, the motherboard can be replaced and reused as a single-board computer (SBC) for other DIY projects.

Each component is emblazoned with a QR code that directs users to step-by-step instructions for repair or replacement, as well as a webpage where they can order the spare part from Framework's marketplace.

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Currently on display as part of the Waste Age exhibition at London's Design Museum, the laptop is one of a growing cohort of devices, including the modular Fairphone, that recognise consumers' "right to repair".

"We believe each consumer should have the fundamental right and ability to repair any product they purchase," Patel explained.

"We all have that drawer of shame of devices that are broken or have dead batteries or couldn't get that latest software update. None of us want that, and the right to repair is an essential part of solving it."

Users can choose between four different exchangeable ports

Both the European Union and the United Kingdom have passed some version of the right to repair into law, but laptops and smartphones have so far been excluded from this kind of regulation.

As a result, Patel says major technology companies have gotten away with doing the bare minimum.

The laptop just became available for pre-order in the UK

"We are seeing consumer demand and regulatory pressure starting to push some of the lowest hanging improvements, like Apple's recent announcement of making some replacement parts available to repair shops and end consumers," he explained.

"Big companies aren't in the habit of making changes to their products that risk reducing revenue. So realistically, deeper modularity requires business model transformation to align the incentives around product longevity."

All photographs are courtesy of Framework.

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The Whale apartment in Paris riffs on art deco design

Mirror, brass and simple geometries feature inside this Parisian apartment by local architect Clément Lesnoff-Rocard, which offers an understated take on art deco.

The 65-square-metre flat, nicknamed The Whale, is tucked away in the basement of a residential building in the city's 16th arrondissement.

The Whale apartment is located in the basement of an art deco building in Paris

According to Lesnoff-Rocard, the apartment had undergone a renovation in recent years, leaving it with "perfectly tasteless" interiors that were a pastiche of the building's original art deco style.

Most of the rooms also seemed dark and cramped, the architect explained, with unsightly plasterboard used to conceal the home's technical systems.

Knocking through a false ceiling revealed the apartment's concrete framework

Given carte blanche by the client, Lesnoff-Rocard completely stripped back the apartment by rendering a majority of its surfaces white and tearing down its false ceiling, revealing a network of unexpectedly chunky concrete beams.

"The disproportion between the enormous size of these structural elements and the smallness of this apartment sent the space to a much larger dimension," he explained.

"It's like we were hidden inside a much larger, surreal animal."

This contrast in scale is what ultimately gave the project its name, The Whale.

Marble, mirror and brass are used across the apartment's standout features

Lesnoff-Rocard used brass, mirrors, coloured marble and geometric shapes to subtly incorporate the building's art deco beginnings into the interior.

"My first intuition was obviously to work from the DNA of art deco, not by literally copying it like the previous renovation had done but by questioning it in today's context," he explained.

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The doors that lead through to the sleeping quarters are clad in mirrored panels while storage cabinets are crafted from reflective brass and one of the structural columns has been replaced with a block of pale blue marble.

In the living room, spherical pendant lights with half white, half black shades have been suspended from wires strung across the ceiling.

The kitchen can be found behind gridded partitions

Behind graphic gridded partitions lies the kitchen, where the same blue marble has been used to create a breakfast island.

A number of features in the apartment also nod back to the project's name. Among them is a circular shuttered window connecting two of the rooms, which can be opened and closed to "blink" like a huge whale's eye.

A shuttered circular opening is meant to resemble a whale's eye

Clément Lesnoff-Rocard established his eponymous studio in 2015.

Other projects by the architect include The Island, a double-height home in the Parisian neighbourhood of La Défense that is arranged around a central courtyard.

The photography is by Simone Bossi. 

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Apparata designs affordable housing development A House for Artists in London

London-based architecture studio Apparata has completed a community-oriented housing development for artists with a playful design and a facade punctured by geometrically-shaped openings.

First announced in 2017, A House for Artists is located in Barking, east London, and was designed to provide low-cost housing and workspace for 12 artists and their families.

A House for Artists is a community-oriented affordable housing model

The five-storey concrete structure contains 12 apartments, as well as artist studio workspaces, a community space and a shared working yard that can be opened to the public.

Its design, which Apparata described as "playful," is comprised of a collection of stacked shapes, volumes and openings that are connected by terraces.

A two-storey triangular volume across the upper levels of the building adds variation to the facade, while circular windows and openings similarly contribute to the design.

Twelve artists were selected from an open call to live in the building

"The building is surrounded by several different typologies and scales. We wanted the building to connect to its surroundings but still hold its own and have a presence, as the near future context will be many tall towers." Apparata co-founder Astrid Smitham told Dezeen.

"The overall volume connects to the surrounding blocks and towers, but the triangular roof shapes connects the building to the smaller pitched roof terraces. The stacks of shapes signal a different kind of typologies and apartment and uses."

It aims to provide London with a replicable model for affordable housing

A House for Artists' public and domestic areas are clearly defined, with the ground floor boasting floor-to-ceiling windows that aim to attract passers-by. Meanwhile, apartments on the upper levels are set back behind balconies and terraces that provide its residents with privacy.

Each floor can house up to three apartments and was designed to give residents the opportunity to freely change and adapt the floor plan over time.

The apartments are void of the hallways typically found in traditional housing models. Instead, they have an open-plan arrangement, with bedrooms lined across the southeastern edge of the apartment and living areas running parallel across the northwestern edge.

Tenants will give back to the community by running workshops

"Contemporary apartment design is still largely based on the nuclear family when this model doesn’t reflect the diverse configuration of people’s lives today," said Smitham.

"New kinds of arrangements are needed: the possibility of an elderly parent to live with you temporarily, to share childcare with another household, or to grow a meaningful connection with neighbours."

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Grayson Perry and Apparata team up to create A House for Artists in east London

"The apartments are designed for artists in the first instance, so we had in mind high ceilings, large windows, a larger multi-use main room, and robust finishes," Smitham added.

"But we also wanted to design apartments that fulfil needs for housing more generally, in terms of providing for different configurations of living, and to be able to adapt to changes in peoples lives over time."

The apartments can be adapted and changed to suit the tenants' needs. Photo is by David Grandorge

Walls can be removed to suit the needs of the resident, while one floor of apartments was fitted with double partitional doors that allow tenants to merge apartments with those adjoining for potential co-living scenarios.

Each home also has access to shared outdoor communal spaces.

"In the UK, adaptability that allows you to scale up or create more rooms is usually only possible if you own a house," Smitham explained. "We wanted to create some of that flexibility within an apartment plan, to allow for a social sustainability, so people can meet their changing needs without moving out."

Apparata incorporated playful shapes and volumes across the building

Apparata originally planned to construct A House for Artists using pigmented precast concrete, but chose in-situ concrete to better aid the building's structural integrity, acoustic and thermal performance, as well as fire and weather protection.

It was built using a single skin of 50 per cent Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBS) concrete, in which half the cement is substituted with a by-product of the steel industry.

The building was constructed using a single concrete skin

"The concrete has 50 per cent GGBS substitution above ground and 70 per cent GGBS below ground. This significantly reduces the carbon footprint," said Smitham.

"By making the concrete do several jobs: structure, facade skin, fire resistance, thermal mass, acoustic separation, the material build-ups in the building are actually very lean, so the building exceeds the RIBA 2030 climate challenge with more than 20 per cent less carbon."

Raw material finishes run through the interiors

The tenants at A House for Artists, whose ages range from the twenties to seventies, were selected by a panel that included artist Grayson Perry and will pay 65 per cent of market rent. In exchange for the lower rent, they will contribute to a community-oriented arts programme that will be run on the ground floor of the building.

Arts charity Create, which commissioned the project, will work with the tenants for the first two years of the public community programme, after which the resident group will be self-organised.

The building has decorative circular openings

Elsewhere in London, Peter Barber Architects created a terrace of social housing in Greenwich on an "undevelopable" site.

In Puglia, Alvisi Kirimoto designed an affordable housing complex with perforated balconies.

Photography is by Ståle Eriksen unless stated otherwise. The top image is by Johan Dehlin.

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