Japanese firm Kengo Kuma & Associates has won a competition to design the Gare Saint-Denis Pleyel, one particular of three key stations that will be created to serve a new stretch of the Paris Metro.
The station by Kengo Kuma & Associates will be positioned in Saint-Denis, a suburb to the north of Paris, and is one particular of the principal interchanges for an extension to the metro that will develop a circuit close to the capital.
Kuma’s 45,000-square-metre station will be nine stories tall – with 5 amounts over ground and 4 below – and will also residence retailers, a multimedia library and a business centre.
“The venture is created as a exclusive chance to open up the district by connecting the two sides of the city above a enormous railway network of the Parisian North station,” said Kengo Kuma & Associates. “It will allow the website and the city to enhance its metropolitan scale drastically.”
Kuma’s Gare Saint-Denis Pleyel will comprise wedge-shaped tiers constructed from glass and steel, which in accordance to the architects pay homage to the rail tracks. Overground train tracks will run across the front of the creating, whilst entry to the metro station will be at basement level.
“The station turns into an extension of the public spaces on a lot of amounts,” explained the architects. “Several levels continue in spiral, so the station functions as a complicated that brings in streets in vertical layers.”
The constructing will be surrounded by a massive pedestrianised plaza broken up by patches of planting. Sloping terraces will run all around the exterior of the three upper stories, providing accessibility to a roof garden.
“The station will be a new centre of the city, and its complementary programme will deliver about a dynamic social and cultural dimension to the district of Pleyel,” added the architects.
The station is element of the Grand Paris Express project, which aims to create an automated metro ring-route about the outskirts of the city. 3 branches from this route will serve establishing neighbourhoods – Saint-Denis, Clichy-Montfermeil and Le Bourget.
A total of 72 new stations will be built, but each of the branches has a principal station that has been designated as an “iconic” project, with the patterns commissioned through global competitions.
Spanish architecture firm EMBT is designing the Clichy-Montfermeil station in collaboration with French architects and engineers Bordas + Peiro, even though Brazilian-born Paris-based Elizabeth de Portzamparc will design and style the Le Bourget station.
Building dates for the task have not been released, nonetheless in 2013 €300 million (£220 million) was invested in the very first 20 miles of the Express network.
It is anticipated that 130 miles of track will be laid by 2030, connecting the new network to airports and key TGV high-pace train stations that link Paris to other areas of the nation.
Images courtesy Kengo Kuma & Associates.
Project credits: Architects: Kengo Kuma & Associates Developer: Société du Grand Paris Quantity Surveyor: LTA Landscape design: AC&T Paysage Lighting design and style: 8’18” Acoustics: PEUTZ & Associés Sustainibility: AIA Studio Environnement Facade engineer: RFR Protection and fire consultant: VULCANE
Opinion: regardless of tweaks and refinements, automobile layout has been restricted by mechanics for over 100 years. Now the growth of driverless and electrical technologies gives a bewildering array of choices, explains branding professional Dylan Stuart.
With driverless autos now being trialled in the actual planet, the automotive market is set to encounter its largest revolution in one hundred years. Car layout in the near long term will not be bound by the constraints of the last century – like internal combustion engines, forward-facing seats, static dashboards and numerous other familiar elements. In truth, the automobile could be totally reimagined.
It’s about time. Few devices in our lives have superior so much technologically but remained so static in their all round style. Now, the driverless and electric revolution could radically modify how the vehicle is packaged within and out. The mechanical constraints that limit how the interior is configured – like gearboxes, engines and drive shafts – will be eliminated.
Out of the blue, there is an possibility to feel about how autos can truly grow to be living spaces. Do seats usually need to have to encounter forward? Do windows often need to demonstrate what’s going on outside? How need to all the enjoyment, communication and data possibilities be configured as soon as the driver is freed from driving?
Couple of products in our lives have advanced so considerably technologically but remained so static in their total layout
Car manufacturers that previously know how to create desirability by means of seductive sheet metal and driving pleasure will now want to take into account how to offer a extremely different knowledge – from enjoyment and communication appropriate by means of to the mobility knowledge past the automobile. This will imply thinking considerably more broadly about exactly where to produce lasting emotional brand connections, even even though the end buyer may neither drive or very own the auto any longer. In a nutshell, this means making a entirely diverse customer encounter.
Most auto brands today are recognisable since they have a visual language grown out of constraints set by 20th-century technology – the “encounter” of the car developed by consumption grilles and lights proportions normally dictated by having an engine in the front, external mirrors, and so forth. Will automobile companies try to protect the design cues that have historically defined their brand names? Or will they evolve and adjust based on new parameters?
To give a extremely true illustration, electric vehicles don’t have radiators so they will not demand a front grill. Even so, the grill is a single of the most distinctive design factors auto manufacturers use to create solution recognition. The challenge will be generating something right away recognisable, without having the acquainted cues.
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California’s Tesla brand has currently made the conscious decision that the car of tomorrow need to seem really considerably like the automobile of right now. Their products have not been conceived with a futuristic and paradigm-breaking layout. If anything, they are rather conservative. There is still a front grill – but it really is fully fake. This was done intentionally to allow far more men and women to accept what is a really progressive merchandise through its reassuringly familiar physical appearance.
If Tesla’s good results is an indication of factors to come, there will be a substantial period of time in which vehicle style remains broadly equivalent to right now in spite of large technological shifts, if only to advertise client acceptance of new technology.
Skeuomorphism, the concept that led to Apple’s authentic camera app seeking like an previous camera on screen, will perform a key role. We consider touchscreen technologies for granted now but when gesture handle very first came into existence, skeuomorphism allowed one thing quite new to feel acquainted and intuitive.
Skeuomorphism will perform a main function
The exact same will come about with the automobile. There will come a level when several of those familiar design cues will just not be needed. But due to the fact men and women normally require time to adjust, a whole lot of redundant layout features will linger. The key unknown is how lengthy it will consider for shoppers to accept and trust new technologies without having the want to hold on to the familiar, and subsequently how vehicle manufacturers will reply to a new freedom in design.
I think that we’ll see a faster adjust in the use of interior finishes and materials. Autos of nowadays are typically woefully conventional, largely sticking with wood, leather and plastic – and the plastic typically has a leather effect! The resources utilised in vehicle interiors may differ in high quality across diverse versions and brands, but are surprisingly consistent in how they are applied.
As the auto evolves, far more higher-function and large-tech supplies will be allied to exclusive, proprietary finishes. Is leather actually the most premium materials for a automobile seat? Is wood actually the cue which is most suitable to connote luxury? If a lot more surfaces grow to be interactive, do finishes need to have to be completely rethought? Do they even need to have to be true? As the car turns into a platform for communication, transportation, perform and entertainment, the prospects for reimagining the auto interior – the way it truly is laid out, constructed and completed – turn out to be nearly infinite.
At a more fundamental level, the way a auto looks on the outdoors will only stay some thing that matters as extended as the vehicle continues to be a implies of self-expression – a road-going avatar. If folks nevertheless want to self-actualise via the automobile, then the exterior styling will nonetheless be crucial: projected image and pride of ownership will nonetheless have worth.
Of program there will even now be fans who enjoy vehicles as they always have
Perhaps the real differentiation will move inward, the exterior getting irrelevant and the interior turning out to be the only factor that matters. Consider of a very first class seat on an aircraft that looks the exact same as each and every other.
Of course there will even now be enthusiasts who really like vehicles as they constantly have for the elegance of the object and the visceral encounter of driving. I am going to be a single of them. But this will turn into a narrow, costly niche. Considerably like owning a horse.
The automobile market is on the verge of its biggest style possibility ever. Engineering is allowing us to completely reinvent the aesthetics and encounter of mobility. The transition will, of course, consider time. But the shift has begun.
Dylan Stuart is a spouse in charge of method at style and branding company Lipincott. His preceding clientele have incorporated American Express, BP, Four Seasons Hotels, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz and NBC. He was previously a brand strategist with Landor Associates, focusing on the automotive, entertainment and aviation sectors.
Carousel dining tables and trampoline seats are amid the cartoonish fittings in the Stockholm offices for King, the organization behind common video game Candy Crush Saga .
Produced by Swedish layout company Adolfsson & Partners, the offices for interactive game developer King are split above two floors inside of a huge 1940s building positioned at Sveavägen 44.
The spaces are divided into zones themed all around distinct landscapes, incorporating characters and designs from King games.
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Photo by Kristian Pohl
The agency’s aim for the task was to design “a imaginative office landscape that communicates King’s soul, a area that with ‘fun’ and ‘magic’ as its watchwords can be named a kingdom”.
“We produced a colourful and vitality-filled workplace featuring each humour and intelligent answers,” explained Adolfsson & Partners. “This is an office that reflects King – what they produce and what they think in.”
Visitors are greeted at a white, egg-shaped reception desk and directed to the coloured meeting places by coordinated signage.
The largest area is called Pavilion Park and is developed as a “party space” to accommodate all of the company’s employees at as soon as.
Green planks cover the walls and form picnic tables in the centre of the room, while booth seating is designed within carousel-like structures.
Desk spaces around the outdoors of the reduced level are zoned into versatile regions named Magic Forest, Green Hills, Treasure Island, Countryside and Deep Sea – each with its own meeting services, personal perform rooms and rest spaces.
Photograph by Kristian Pohl
Meeting rooms are based on different King games, with their characters displayed as vinyls on the tinted glass walls.
Photograph by Kristian Pohl
“King utilizes a scrum-primarily based perform strategy and as a result demands a versatile remedy for its workstations when the teams adjust their size and composition, as effectively as spots for the two fast stand-up meetings and longer meetings in rooms,” explained Adolfsson & Partners.
The operate places are divided by mobile textile screens shaped like trees, waves and other landscape characteristics depending on the zone they are positioned in. These support to supply sound insulation along with the grey carpet, which is speckled in various hues from zone to zone.
Perforated partitions, custom-made furnishings units and other workplace add-ons are also coloured to match their “landscape”.
An internal staircase back links the upper and reduce floors, positioned in a communal area named Kingtown that is split more than the two amounts.
“The theme is the city with its outdoor life, creating internet sites and street art,” said the agency. “A meeting spot for every person and a room for playing, lounging about in the sofas or chillaxing in the giant hammocks.”
Much more open-plan workplace space in areas named Sandy Dunes, Mountain Tops and Wild Jungle can be discovered on the upper floor, which measures around half the size of the storey under.
Sandy Dunes attributes desert-coloured partitions and cacti plants, as properly as a yellow relaxation area furnished with the Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola’s Bandas seating, which is patterned with oversized stitches.
Elsewhere, a carpentry workshop has walls lined with yellow-painted pegboard, whilst a library made for quiet activities is coloured dark green. There’s also a video games area and a pinball hall for personnel to use for the duration of their breaks.
“Using King’s 200 video games for inspiration, we designed an atmosphere in which all the employees can work and be inspired inside a planet of games,” the designers explained. “We didn’t create an workplace – we created a kingdom.”
Photography is by Joachim Belaieff unless specified otherwise.
A glass wall spotted with reflective yellow and orange windows produces a false facade for this extension to a secondary school in south-west Germany, created by Netzwerk Architekten .
Darmstadt-primarily based studio Netzwerk Architekten won a competition to style the €4.2 million (£3.one million) extension for the Fichte-Gymnasium grammar college in Karlsruhe, a city near the France-Germany border. The three-storey block supplies a new dining hall, foyer and extra classrooms for the college of 850 pupils.
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A glazed display erected in front of the concrete structure gives privacy for the street-dealing with side of the block. A smattering of square windows coated in golden foil reflect the facades of the school’s neighbours – developed in the Wilhelminian style employed in Germany close to the flip of the 20th century. One corner of the new concrete building is minimize away, permitting light to pass by way of the glass and into a playground.
“In the street facade, ribbon windows with coloured inner glazing interact with framed casement windows, picking up and interpreting the theme of the perforated facades of the Wilhelminian buildings,” stated the architects.
“In the rhythm of the exercise zones, ‘lookout windows’ with deep alcoves at prominent spots offer a focused see of the urban space,” the architects extra.
A strip of transparent glazing at ground level produces a “display window” into the college foyer and dining hall, which is accessed by way of a glazed door in the west of the facade. A passageway reduce via the eastern corner of the building supplies a direct route to the playground.
Within, a temporary wall between the foyer and dining space can be eliminated to generate a more substantial space for performances.
A wide set of wooden measures prospects from the foyer into the major stairwell, which is lit by a huge skylight. Toilets and support rooms are found on the landings of the split-level staircase, although a partial basement is positioned underneath.
The block backs onto a paved playground dotted with wooden planters that double as seats. An irregular pattern of square windows tasks from the white-plastered facade.
The windows have deep frames that type alcove seating along the corridors and in the classrooms.
“Coloured glass panels are embedded on the corridor side, providing the corridors with various shades of colour depending on the place of the sun,” explained the architects.
I just lately figured out that I’m extra picky when it comes to refrigerator magnets—who knew?! I just can’t get behind individuals cheesy ceramic souvenir magnets you get from the seaside (you know the kind—where you pop your image in behind the molded frame and all of a sudden you looks like a chunkyfemale in a polka-dotted bikini, shovel in hand). And don’t even get me started out on free of charge pizza menu magnets from the location down the street. I swear they clone themselves overnight on our currently-crowded fridge door.
So, I spent a minor time in my studio crafting up three DIY refrigerator magnets that suit my taste, my colour scheme and my really like for excellent, clean, whimisical design and style. Grab all 3 tutorials above on eHow—which would you create?
Area Dezeen
Photo by Kristian Pohl
Photograph by Kristian Pohl
Photograph by Kristian Pohl
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