Vintage shop opening at Gaarder Gård

Thibaut Devulder

All construction work and upgrade of the annex building at Gaarder Gård is now completed, and the new 7th Heaven Vintage shop — hosted in the transformed listed building — opened its door to the public this weekend!

facade of the newly converted building

The space is now converted and open to the public, with minimum changes to the historical facades of the listed building

We were responsible for converting this unused garage space into a commercial space in a listed building in the centre of Eidsvoll. Despite stringent conservation requirements for the facades and being located within the flood zone of the Vorma river, we successfully collaborated with our client and Eidsvoll municipality to secure planning permission, infusing new life into an otherwise abandoned urban space.

Opening day at the vintage shop

Opening day at Vintage 7th Heaven (photo © Chriss Brohaug)

Visualisation for new build house

Thibaut Devulder

Some marketing visualisations we produced for our developer client, for a new build house we designed last year. With a planning application granted, building work should start this summer.

Portfolio project
From basement to master wing

Thibaut Devulder

Our transformation of a family house in Oslo in now complete and our delighted clients can move into the brand new master wing of their home, converted from an existing disused basement.

View from the window of the master wing, looking onto the new landscaped stair linking it to the garden

 

The brief

Our clients wished to create a parent wing to their family home — a single floor on a two-unit house in Oslo. The new quarters were to accommodate their new master bedroom, together with a comfortable bathroom, home office and kitchen space. With the children growing up, the clients also liked the possibility of renting out part of the house in the future,

It was not possible to extend the house further onto the site, but the apartment had access to an existing basement, mostly unused. This low ceiling space was dark and uninsulated, and therefore cold and damp, and had no fire escape. High levels of radon gas were also measured in the underground space, making it further unsuitable to use as a living space. To complicate matters, this basement could only be accessed through a steep staircase, from a shared area outside the flat.

The dark and damp basement space, before the conversion

 

The new master bedroom (photo © Ann-Kristin Syversen)

A new wing, filled with sunlight…

We focused our approach on creating new spaces that felt integrated into the existing home, with a sense of privacy yet avoiding the common claustrophobic feeling of converted basement spaces.

Since the conversion of the basement needed new fire escapes, we made the most of these required new openings, transforming them into landscaped staircase and planted light wells, bringing daylight and views from the garden deep into the new spaces. Transforming technical constraints into creative opportunities!

With minimum changes to the existing structure and services of the house, we relocated the staircase to the inside of the flat, connecting the new space below to the existing circulation, so that it became a natural extension of the home. All technical functions were concentrated in the middle of the plan, with a large bedroom, home office, gym space, kitchen and modern bathroom wrapping around them along the new large windows. Deeper into the floor plan, where no daylight could be brought, we tucked efficient storage space for the family.

The new lower floor has generous access to the garden, through a cascading timber terrace, transforming what could have been a dark access staircase into a attractive and private exterior space, streaming sunlight into the new bedroom.

“2hD has helped us to evolve an old, dusty and mouldy basement into a place we love to spend our time at home”
— Ann-Kristin Syversen, client and user
 
 

Comfortable and future-proof

Our remodelling strategy integrated a full upgrade to the basement fabric, adding high insulation levels in the new lowered basement floor and existing walls — greatly improving both thermal comfort and energy efficiency — as well as in the ceiling to create acoustic privacy from the upper floor.

In the long-term future, renting out the lower floor as a separate apartment will be as simple as closing a couple of doors, to separate a fully living unit equipped with kitchen, bathroom and wood oven, and with direct access from the street through its private terraced exterior staircase.

 

Early in the design process, we developed technical solutions to bringing daylight and thermal comfort to the basement, later specified in details for the tender documents and the construction phase

Exterior view of the apartment house, with terraced staircase to the new lower floor

The existing apartment house, with the new terraced staircase, leading discretely down to the transformed lower floor

Do you want to breathe new life into unused parts of your home?

Photos of the converted barn in Gabillou

Thibaut Devulder

I got a chance over the summer to visit the fully converted stone barn that we designed in Gabillou, in south-west France.

This 19th century agricultural building was transformed into a stunning home between 2007 and 2018, by our self-builder clients themselves, who lived in the building over the course of the conversion process, thanks to our phased construction design approach.

With an amazing attention to detail and a lot of enthusiasm, the couple has now become expert self-builders and joiners, already looking forward to a new conversion project to use their skills!

Below is a collection of pictures I took of the finished barn this August. Click on the pictures for a full-screen slideshow!

 
(Click on the photo to enlarge the slideshow...)
Looking down at the half-floor lounge from the upper floor
Looking up the lightwell from the living-room
The new wall opening to the garden, from the living-room
Stairs up to the half-floor lounge, and down to the guest suite, from the living-room
Glass railing detail from the lounge
Looking toward the kitchen and upper floor, from the lounge
The lounge
The kitchen and upper floor, from the lounge
Roof over the lounge
Detail of the lime mortar pointing of the stone wall
Looking up the south gable, from the lounge
The historical timber structure, supporting the new roof, insulated with wood fiber
Custom staircase, built by our clients
Looking up the staircase to the upper floor
Home office on the sunken landing of the upper floor
View from the master bedroom, past the light well over the children's bedrooms
Looking up from one of the children's bedroom
South gable, with the new opening to the lounge
South east corner of the barn
Lavender along the south gable
Outside details of the workshop door
South east corner, with the separate entrance to the guest suite
New workshop door
The entrance door
Detail of the guest suite entrance
The main terrace to the east, with the new openings

Dreaming of converting a historical building into your new home?

Paws Project : Doggy wellness centre in an agricultural barn conversion

Tom Hughes

Our conversion of a former cow shed into a canine wellness centre for The Paw Project is complete.

We opted to keep the new development low and spreading to create a welcoming outdoor sheltered space for owners and their dogs. This lack of formality reduces stress for the dogs, giving them space to mingle and to see where they are going.

Two main enclosed spaces house an office and acupuncture studio, and a grooming and treatment area. An open barn-like space is hidden behind a sliding gate for use for agility and behavioural classes.

A seating area and sales point/event space are located under a protective canopy, creating an intimate scale under the soaring barn roof. These features, along with the enclosed spaces, screen the rear of the barn from view.

A phased development plan means that there is space to expand the facilities in the future, whilst presenting a complete environment to visitors in the short term.

Client: @the_pawproject Design & build contractor: Sheltered Spaces

Møllenberg: Urban gardening in Trondheim

Thibaut Devulder
Visualisation of urban farming over a historical picture of Møllenberg, in Trondheim, Norway

Our photomontage for the cover of the competition entry

We have just collaborated with Ur Arkitekter on a prequalification entry for the masterplanning competition of the Møllenberg neighbourhood in Trondheim, Norway..

Rethinking the identity and social dynamics of this historical neighbourhood in the centre of Trondheim — today mostly populated by students — our concept proposal explores how communal urban farming can be used as a catalyst to foster social diversity and renew community engagement in the city.

Riddle: a sculpture from waste plastic

Thibaut Devulder

Future Makers is a Nottingham-based creative studio who has been spending the last five years researching the potential of waste plastic, bringing together the local community, design creatives and artists to create innovative artwork and products.

Having recently acquired a whole set of waste plastic recycling and manufacturing equipment (which we have already started experimenting with), they announced an open call for a lead artist to craft an outdoor public artwork in front of their building, using one tonne of locally-sourced plastic waste.

The street facade of the existing Waste Plastic Studio (photo © Future Makers)


Our proposal

Continuing our exploration of community-built urban interventions in Nottingham, we responded to this open call with a diaphanous facade sculpture, to transform the Future Makers' building itself into a large art piece, and create a visually striking and intriguing street presence that hovers over the public space.

Questioning the ubiquitous nature of plastics in today's built environment and consumer society, the sculpture takes the form of a diaphanous mesh appearing to deform in and out of the building facades, to exude from the fabric of the building itself: the manifestation of the presence of plastics in a new, recycled form — and its metamorphosis from undesirable waste to creative potential. This large undulating sculptural mesh creates a unified identity across the site, linking the public space, the building entrance and the large industrial shed at the back.

 

How we use recycled plastic

Despite its visual complexity, the mesh of the sculpture is created entirely out of identical recycled plastic modules, assembled in a repeating reciprocal pattern. The mesh derives its three-dimensional shape from the pattern of assembly of these modular components, linked together with a simple zip-tie-like "cilium" component.

Building the sculpture

The form of the sculpture emerges not from the complexity of its components, but from the assembly process itself: simply varying the pattern of assembly along the mesh allows shear, deformation and stiffening of the surface into a complex shape that symbolically intersects with the building's facades.

Assembling the sculpture is deceptively simple and can happen almost entirely on the ground, before being attached to the facades. The assembly and erection of the different sections of the sculpture will be carried out during community workshops involving neighbours, local schools and fellow artists, creating a sense of ownership while introducing a large audience to the potential of recycled plastics as a creative material, through practical, hands-on workshops.

Examples of alternative assembly patterns for the modules that can be combined to create different levels of curvature and stiffness, and achieve the desired three-dimensional mesh form

 

Continuing our journey

Since its inception, 2hD has explored the relationship between architecture, visual arts and community engagement, through a series of successful international art projects ranging from architectural pavilions to collective sculptural work, interactive installations, scenography and audio-visual performances.

The common thread through all these different projects is our personal research into architectural elements as a receptacle for our own stories, emotions and daydreams, introducing a fractional dimension to surfaces to invite this projection — and exploring how, in turn, it affects how we perceive and inhabit the spaces they define.

This proposal also keys in with our love for reusing ubiquitous and repurposed materials: transformed cardboard boxes for collective community sculptures in The Lost Cuckoo, recycled plastic tubing to introduce school children and architecture students to complex geometries during hands-on teaching sessions, and natural fiber broom heads to clad an entire building for our Mission Control micro-office.

 

Creative solutions for plastic waste

Tom Hughes

Plastic is a material that we’ve tended to avoid, put off by our awareness of the environmental problems that its irresponsible use has created. The reduction in plastic use, finding more ecologically friendly alternatives, is still a great idea. But what about the mountains of plastic waste that already exist? Can we contribute in some way to preventing these carbon-intensive materials from ending up in landfill, or in the gullets of turtles, fish and sea birds?

At Future Makers, a creative hub in Nottingham, we’ve been learning about plastic waste and helping set up facilities for turning it in to useful recycled (and recyclable) products. Adding value to a waste product makes the process of collecting and recycling it worthwhile and cost effective. The Future Makers ethos is to approach these problems in a creative way; they bring together the infrastructure required with the expertise and knowledge that enables artists and designers to explore new ways of working.

Importantly, there is an economically sustainable approach. New ideas aren’t just conceived as one-off experiments, instead they build the knowledge and experience required to create viable commercial opportunities. In this spirit we were commissioned to work with the initial, terrazzo-style production run from Future Makers’ industrial sheet press, to create some simple-to-build furniture pieces.

Using the HDPE sheets, made with waste left over from artist Joshua Sofia’s 2001 Regulated Exhibition at Backlit, and in collaboration with Marcus Rowlands (Sheltered Spaces), we designed a slot-together furniture system for an armchair and coffee table. Easy to assemble and disassemble, without fixings or complex brackets, this can be transported to exhibitions and events. As a product, it could be mass produced and shipped, flat-packed to customers. As a single type plastic, it is recyclable again at the end of its useful life as furniture.

In itself not THE solution to the problem, but hopefully another piece of evidence that plastic waste has value. And a thoroughly rewarding project to be involved in!

 

Natural clay floor

Thibaut Devulder

The finished clay plaster floor

Hands-on course last week at our collective work space Kroloftet in Oslo, where I got a chance to practice natural clay flooring techniques under the guidance of our collaborator Kristian Møystad Bjørnland (of Ur Arkitekter) and Marc Charneau (of Kroloftet).

This little practical exercise aimed at resurfacing the unfinished floor of one of our meeting rooms, exploring clay plaster mixes, workmanship and surface treatments to create a natural, durable and, of course, beautiful floor.

We aimed are reclaiming as much existing materials as possible: taking as a starting point the strangely laid out parquet in the middle of the room over a rough concrete floor, we collected unwanted clay materials from our ceramics workshop, waste wood shavings from the wood workshop and hand sifted sand from a local quarry to experiment with various mix of clay-sand-fibre-water.

The rough concrete floor around the parqueted area, before applying the clay plaster

After an initial layer of clay mix compressed in place, we progressed through several layers of finer clay mixes to achieve a smooth end result. Since we used reclaimed materials of uncertain composition, we decided to experiment with various mixing proportions, some of which more successful than others, which gave us a chance to practice our reparation techniques on the less optimal mixes that developed cracks upon drying!

We finally applied a coat of boiled linseed oil and wax, purchased from the local building conservation shop, to seal and harden the surface.

The workshop was rich in discoveries and allowed me to experience the theory and process behind clay plastering.

With beautiful moisture control abilities, low embodied energy and full recyclability, we are looking forward to applying clay plastering techniques to create stunning and durable interior finishes for our future projects!

Construction started in Hagalykkja

Thibaut Devulder

Building work has started on our family house remodel in Eidsvoll. with the timber framing of the new extension now completed.

The timber frame of the new extension under construction


In this first phase of the construction process, this extension will be fully built and fitted with a new kitchen connected to a winter garden, before being integrated into the house. The second building phase will then start, whereby the old kitchen will be converted into an accessible master bedroom and a new modern bathroom.

This careful phasing informed the design process and was developed in collaboration with the clients to minimise disruption to the family life, allowing them to continue using the house throughout the construction period.


Thinking of remodelling your home while still living in it?

Oslo roof terrace getting ready for National Day

Thibaut Devulder

Most of the building work for our new roof terrace on a residential block in central Oslo is now completed, and the finishing work is progressing quick, on time for the festivity of the Norwegian national day in May!