Portfolio project
Yellow Brick Road #6 installation

Thibaut Devulder

Continuing our collaboration with artist Morgan Dimnet, of French art collective QuboGas, we developed an interactive installation that explored the relationship between of visual artwork and electronic sound composition.

The Yellow Brick Road #6 installation/workshop at the Frigo (Albi, France)

The project was inspired by the Mélisson, an educational modular sound synthesizer developed in the 1980s at the GMEA — Centre National de Création Musicale Albi-Tarn (France).

Initially created to introduce children to the fascinating world of sound synthesis through experimentation and collaboration, these playful instruments were also used by experienced electronic musicians to create complex soundscapes and compositions.

Morgan Dimnet wanted to place the Mélisson at the centre of his new installation/workshop, inviting pupils of local primary schools to use its intuitive physical interface as a composition tools for not only sound, but also for visual art.

Exploring infinite variations of sounds and visual compositions, the visitors are then invited to create a physical vinyl disc cover for their own musical creation.

Collaborative sound creation with the Mélisson modules (© GMEA)

As the knobs of the Mélisson modules are tweaked to create unique sounds and effects, this soundscape is translated into similarly unique composition of shapes and colours, projected onto the workshop’s wall — ready to be reproduced by the visitors on mini stamping workshops designed by the artist for the exhibition.

We developed for this installation a hardware interface that could “listen” to the Mélisson synthesizers, and a custom computer program that translated the sound creations into unique visual artwork, following the artist’s visual language and aesthetics.

The project took place in 2022 with several primary schools in Albi, and concluded by a public exhibition at the collaborative cultural centre Le Frigo.

Project credits:

  • Visuals and furniture design: Morgan Dimnet

  • Hardware interface and electronics: 2hD Architecture Workshop, with Jean-Jacques Devulder

  • Programming (Processing): 2hD Architecture Workshop

  • Music composition (vinyl edition): Roland Ossart

Portfolio project
The kitchen is the heart

Thibaut Devulder

For this project, we helped our clients remodel their home to create a vibrant and flexible social space at its heart, where the whole family could share meals, be creative, work and entertain friends around a large communal table.

The remodelled kitchen, with its large communal table and views to the garden

Getting to know the existing house

The couple with their twin daughters had lived in this house, located in Bærum — not far from another remodelling projects of ours, for six years before they decided to remodel. Originally built in 1921 as a log house, it had been extended and altered several times over the course of a century.

The most recent of these extensions had caused the sole window of the existing small kitchen to be closed off, so that the only daylight was coming through an adjacent playroom. The neighbouring living-room, with its large windows towards the garden, was mostly used as a TV and music room. Despite its comfortable size, this room was surprisingly difficult to furnish, in part due to an awkwardly placed door to the outdoor terrace, and the large dining table at its centre was only used for occasional festive occasions.

Our analysis of the existing ground floor of the house

Developing a design brief

We sat down with the family to explore their needs and aspirations for their home, bringing in fond memories of former homes they inhabited and loved, and created together a concise brief for this project. Concentrating on three rooms on the ground floor, we were to create an attractive social space at the centre of the house, well connected to the beautiful garden and filled with daylight, to be shared by all members of the family for their daily activities: making food, sharing meals together and with guests, handicraft, playing the piano, doing homework (or home work!), etc. Occasionally, the family should also have the possibility to close off part of the ground floor when multiple activities should be kept separate.

Transforming the house

… and our design strategy to transform the spaces, explained step-by-step

With a clear brief defined, and the house carefully analysed, a solution to unlock the potential of a home can be sought. A seemingly simple change can thoroughly transform the way the home is being inhabited.

With minimal structural changes to the house, we reorganised the internal partitions and windows to create a spacious room with a large communal table as its centrepiece, wrapping the kitchen area around an existing chimney. This creates a unified space while maintaining a gradation of privacy between the more discrete food preparation workbenches of the kitchen, the central table and the desk area close to the new wood stove.

A large French door, aligned with the kitchen benches, opens views and easy access to the garden, seamlessly extending the dining area onto the large terrace outside.

The fully shelved partition, which accommodates on the kitchen side the bookshelves and communal desk space, and on the living-room side the television, creates a soft boundary between the social kitchen and more private living-room, which can be fully shut off by a hidden sliding door when required.

Our proposed new ground floor layout

With the large TV screen discretely tucked out of the way into the new partition, the space in front of the large living-room windows becomes a sort of winter garden overlooking the green areas outside, with a breakout sitting space filled with daylight and plants.

Between this interior “garden room” and the open terrace outside is the covered porch, now free of circulation and transformed into a sheltered sitting corner. Whatever the weather, there is always a comfortable place to sit and enjoy the garden!

And as with most of our projects, the remodelling work was also the opportunity to upgrade the comfort and energy efficiency of the building in a cost-effective manner, allowing for further external insulation of the walls when the external cladding needs changing in the future.

“2hD approached our ideas with a completely fresh eye. They came up with a solution which, in retrospect, feels simple and natural, and yet completely changed the way we use our home to be together!”
— Benedicte Kaltenborn
More articles about this project:
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The kitchen is the heart
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Building work starting in Rudsveien
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Planning permission for Rudsveien remodel

Portfolio project
Care Leavers' Accommodation

Tom Hughes

In August 2022, 2hD was involved in the early stages of a project for new care leavers’ accommodation, collaborating with Simon Middlecote Architecture. Our contribution was focussed on the research process and feasibility stage; with the ultimate aim of developing the design brief.

One of the several diagrams we produced for the study, here illustrating alternative accommodation types

Care leaves are young people aged 16 - 18 who have previously been in foster care, but have now chosen to live more independently. Care leavers’ accommodation acts as a bridging space where these young people can be self-sufficient and live alone, whilst being supported.

We researched case studies of many accommodation types, both past and present and found that most existing models have been found wanting.

One important issue in particular was that many are excessively institutional because of the way they foreground security, whilst others sacrifice safety measures to provide a more adult, independent environment. It was essential that we move on from these established patterns, in order to pinpoint the design challenges in the context of today’s social care.

Timeline for care leavers

Diagram illustrating the layering of security in accommodation

Their housing needs to have a careful balance between public, shared and private areas to provide security without seeming institutional.

Furthermore there is a wide range of support needed within this group that adds further complications. For example, some care leavers need provision that is similar to that of a childrens’ home, and on the other end of the spectrum some need near-total independence.

We arranged visits to existing care leaves’ accomodation to have meetings with staff and care leavers themselves to understand their needs and their views on how the accommodation could be improved. All the stakeholders of this project (such as the care leavers, social workers, staff and the local community) were consulted on their opinions and lived experiences.

The outcome of our work was a briefing document for Simon and his client that clearly identified the needs of the project stakeholders and the current context in which the project design will develop.

 

Portfolio project
Vertical living in a former boiler house

Tom Hughes
A pod-like extension provides services, daylight and ventilation.

A pod-like extension provides services, daylight and ventilation.

This intriguing little project is now under construction in Nottingham. Our client’s town house occupies part of a former builder’s joinery workshop in a Conservation Area. Entry to the main house is through the ground floor of a free-standing former boiler house, complete with an 11m high brick chimney. Our challenge was to re-purpose this special, tiny building to contain a home working office and guest accommodation.

We stripped out and redesigned the boiler house interior to fit a mezzanine level under the opened-up roof structure, and used ‘space saver’ stairs to maximise the floor area. The tiny floor plan is offset by an impressive vertical connection between the levels- with everything needed for occupation accessed off a vertical circulation route culminating in the bed platform.

Careful organisation of the section creates space for a mezzanine level

Careful organisation of the section creates space for a mezzanine level

The temptation is to cut lots of holes in an existing building to let in light, provide ventilation and create new service routes, but in this case we decided to preserve the integrity of the boiler house by adding a highly-serviced pod to the exterior. This provides the necessary service connections, and brings light and ventilation to the interior. The addition is anonymous, in keeping with the industrial heritage of the building whilst creating intrigue and mystery of its own.

Design Team:

Need some creative input to transform an old historical building into a living space?

Portfolio project
A birdwatching 'eyrie' to hover over Wicken Fen

Tom Hughes

We recently achieved Planning Permission for a new birdwatching hide and observation deck for the National Trust at Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire.

Set at the edge of the fen, the structure was inspired by the singular setting of the SSSI site. The fully accessible birdwatching hide is nestled like a cocoon inside a screen of undulating timber battens. The observation deck above gives view over Sedge Fen, roosting site for Marsh and Hen Harriers. A final eyrie-like observation level gives 360° views ,which take in the whole of Wicken Fen nature reserve and the big skies for which it is famed.

The building nestles into the Carr (tree scrub) at the edge of the Fen.

The highly sensitive eco system of the site is based on 3 meters depth of peat soil, so the structure is designed in collaboration with Canham Consulting Engineers to “touch the earth lightly”, elevated above the Fen on piles so that the habitat can flow underneath. A gently ramped boardwalk, designed for wheelchair accessibility, connects the hide to the existing boardwalk footpath some 30m away.

A fully accessible bird hide at the entry level floats 1.5m above the fen, upper levels can be explored via a triangular staircase to the rear.

Wicken Fen is the National Trust’s oldest nature reserves and one of the most important wetlands in Europe, supporting over 9000 species including a spectacular array of plants, birds and insects. 2hD won the commission via a competitive interview in partnership with Sheltered Spaces, with whom we went on to design the timber cladding and the public consultation process. It is a great privilege to be entrusted with such a sensitive site and to be supported by a client keen to think afresh about how visitors might experience and understand the Fen’s sense of place.

Project team:

Timber screen experiments with Marcus of Sheltered Spaces

Portfolio project
A log cabin in Sjusjøen

Thibaut Devulder

The south gables of the completed log cabins, on the snowy fields of Sjusjøen (Photos by Simon Stende)

For this project, we were tasked to design a new winter retreat on the snowy slopes of Sjusjøen, a popular cross-country skiing resort close to Lillehammer, Norway.

Our clients — a family of five — wanted to create a place to gather their extended family and friends for winter vacations and celebrations, accommodating up to three large families simultaneously — up to 16 people.

Unusually, when our clients approached us, they had already selected  a contractor to prefabricate and erect their future cabin, using the traditional log house technique. As they were not satisfied with their existing design solutions, they asked us to develop a custom design, tailored to their specific needs, which would also follow the contractor’s prefabricated construction method.

Our sketch plans of the cabin’s ground and upper floors

At the centre of our design, the large kitchen and the sunken fireplace lounge act as the two main gathering places, where guests can congregate around the main focal points of the cabin: the communal dining table and the large open fireplace. In contrast, each family enjoys its own private accommodation wing, branching off from these main spaces, with the sleeping quarters tucked away from the vibrant social rooms.

Between these two extremes, we intentionally convoluted the internal circulations to create gradients of privacy and strings of informal sitting spaces along them, where guests could interact throughout the day, but also giving opportunities for more quiet, private activities.

Each wing can be used independently, so that the effective size of the cabin can easily be adapted to the number of guests.

The exterior of the newly completed cabin, showing the use of the traditional materials and details of Norwegian log construction (Photo by Simon Stende)

While the interior of the cabin is intricate and spacious, its exterior maintains the compact aesthetics and typology of traditional log architecture — with its multiple interconnected volumes cascading down the sloped site, each visually expressing the different functions of the spaces they enclose.

Three distinct outdoor spaces are tucked around the wings of the building, anchoring further the cabin onto the site: the sheltered main entrance on the north side with access to ski storage, a sunny south courtyard linking the dining space to the open views, and a private terrace to the west, on which an outdoor bath can be enjoyed in the evening sun.

Our design served as the basis for the detailing and production of the hand-sawn logs that were produced and installed on site by the specialist contractor. The result is a very personal cabin, perfectly suited to the needs of its owners and embracing the tradition of Nordic log construction.

Would you like a cabin that really fits your needs and the nature around it?

Portfolio project
A family home in Jar

Thibaut Devulder

Long perspective across the living spaces in the remodelled home

We have just completed the extension and remodelling of a family apartment in Jar, a close suburb of Oslo.

Our clients wanted help to expand their family apartment on the upper floors of a two-family unit that had become too tight for their growing family. In particular, the main living space, which served as a kitchen, dining-room and living-room was over-crowded and awkwardly placed next to bedroom of their three year old daughter. Ancillary spaces were also impractical and a separate washroom was needed to free up space in the bathroom.

Having analysed the existing spaces, we understood that this small extension project could really unlock the potential of the whole house: creating a welcoming and accessible entrance, activating the unused circulation spaces and restoring the connection to the garden — all without increasing our clients’ initial budget.

Our design approach

The remodelled home

We wanted to create a feeling of spaciousness and diversity inside the apartment. This is achieved by opening long perspectives across the whole house, visually linking strings of distinct spaces along them.

A new porch shelters the approach to the house and frames the entrance to the new hallway, now with level access from the exterior. This view extends across the high ceiling space and through a glazed door, all the way to the pergola in the garden. To the side, a more subdued space links the wardrobes to the new washroom.

With the extension of the house, the preserved staircase is now located at the centre of the house and acts as a vertical axis serving four different sub-levels, between the ground and upper floors. These help breaking up the height into a series of separate, yet connected spaces, so that the different floors feel more unified into a whole.

This feeling of diversity is further echoed on the horizontal axis, with a long perspective across four distinct spaces on the upper floor — through the dining-room and the staircase, the new study and TV-room, eventually opening up to the evergreen vegetation outside.

The exterior of this extension integrates seamlessly with the existing structure of the house, both in volumes and materials. Yet, despite its modest scale, the addition of the extension restructures the house to give a sense of spaciousness and spatial diversity to the interior, creating a more flexible home for this family.

“2hD really listened to our needs and ideas. And they managed to integrate them in their design thinking to completely transform our apartment.

We didn’t expect this project to have such an impact on how we experience our home. It used to feel like a small apartment. Now it feels like a spacious house!”
— Per Noring, client

Portfolio project
Creating a roof garden in central Oslo

Thibaut Devulder

We have just been exploring alternative options to create a terraced garden on the roof of an existing residential block in central Oslo. Our clients — a housing cooperative — wanted to create outdoor social spaces that could be used by all residents and accessed with minimum alterations to the existing building.

Coordinating with the builder, a structural engineer and a fire engineer, we developed three alternative sketch design approaches with various level of complexity and size, each complete with an outline budget, scope of work and timescale.

These design approaches will be reviewed on their annual meeting by the residents and, once a preferred options is selected, we will be proceeding with the detailed design and planning application for the project over the summer.

The existing roof terrace, currently not accessible.

The existing roof terrace, currently not accessible.

More articles about this project:
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Roof garden under construction
A roof top terrace in central Oslo
A roof top terrace in central Oslo
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Planning application granted for our roof terrace in Oslo
Creating a roof garden in central Oslo
Creating a roof garden in central Oslo

Portfolio project
Symétriades: visualising contemporary music

Thibaut Devulder

View of our live projection mapped onto the performance stage

Symétriades/Extension is a visual experience that we created for an eponymous contemporary music piece for solo double bass and musical artificial intelligence.

Commissioned by Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains in France, this art performance was presented at a contemporary music festival in October 2018.

In this project, art director Alain Fleischer and music composer Yann Robin wanted to express the idea of an abstract immolation of the soloist through the performance of this powerful musical piece, “plunging the audience into an immersive experience of engulfment” and “a fusion between the worlds of the seen and the heard.”

We developed with the artists a scenography and live video projections generated in real-time by the sounds and movements of the musician on stage, merging the expressionist visual universe of Alain Fleischer with poetic elements from Stanislaw Lem’s book Solaris.

“This is what I call an immersive experience! It was incredible to witness my own avatars being destroyed in real time, as I performed the piece.

2hD’s work, under the artistic benevolence of Alain Fleischer, gave an exponential dimension to Yann Robin’s composition, merging the visual and musical architectures into one.”
— Nicolas Crosse, soloist in the performance
 

Extract from Yann Robin’s musical score, codifying the complex movements of the soloist on the double bass (image © Yann Robin)

Symétriades as a musical piece

Composed in 2013 by Yann Robin, Symétriades is the second opus of three abstract compositions, all titled after the incomprehensible architectural formations described in Lem’s fictitious discipline of solaristics.

Inspired by and written for Nicolas Crosse’s double-bass powerful playing technique, the composition of the musical piece also includes an artificial intelligence that reprocesses in real-time the soloist’s live performance. This electronic system, developed at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM), distorts, filters and reconfigures the music into a network of 8 loudspeakers and 4 sub-woofers that spatialise the sounds around the audience.

 

The visual experience

The artists wanted to visually express the contained ferocity of the music, using the metaphor of the bass as an instrument of self destruction.

Echoing some of the themes from Lem’s enigmatic book, we constructed the visual narrative of the performance as a succession of digital incarnations of the bass player.

Overlaid onto his physical presence on stage as video projections, each of these “doppelgänger” gets corrupted and eventually destroyed under the assaults of the sounds and movements of the musician on stage. Progressively turning into an abstracted version of his image, it finally recomposes itself into a purely abstract visual representation of the music.

To achieve this, our approach mixed real-time filming, 3D motion analysis of the musician on stage and sound analysis. We coded a custom computer program that could dynamically create and composite layers of animations over the image of the musician being projected onto the stage and coordinate them with the electronic sound processing.

The dynamic nature of our system allowed the video projections to adjust to the improvisations of the musician during the performance — something that the musical score specifically encourages during certain parts of the piece!

 

Double-bass solist Nicolas Crosse during rehearsals, seen through the shifting moiré of the translucent projection screens of our scenography.

The scenography

In parallel to the visual effects, we also designed a stage scenography for the performance.

From an early stage, we wanted to keep the powerful delivery of the soloist at the centre of the visual experience. Its perception by the audience should therefore be altered not only by the means of digital video projections, but also through the physical, direct medium of the scenography.

Playing with the perception of depth, we shrouded the stage with multiple layers of finely meshed black fabrics. These translucent surfaces create the screen for the video projections superimposed onto the stage and blur the projection into an elusive volumetric presence.

Positioned between the audience and the stage, they further distort the direct sight of the bass player through shifting patterns of moiré, adding to the expressionist makeup and costume of the performer, and echoing the liquid nature of the book’s protoplasmic being. Modulating the contrast between stage lighting and video projections, we could also shift the audience’s focus between the performer on stage and his abstract projected doubles.

 

The creative process

As we developed and refined the effects over the course of the production phase, we produced a series of video prototypes that precisely simulated the effects, based on high-definition videos and 3D captures taken during the first rehearsal. This allowed the involved artists to visualise the performance in real conditions at each design iteration, keeping the artistic discussion open and adjustments to the system simple.

We also took care of sorting out the technical solutions for the performance, selecting adequate equipment and producing detailed 3D models of the scenography and technical workflows, so that its feasibility could be checked with the technical team as the project developed.

Credits for the project

Art direction: Alain Fleischer
Music composer: Yann Robin
Double bass soloist: Nicolas Crosse
Electronic sound treatment: Robin Meier
Scenography & live video projection system: 2hD
Production manager: Bertrand Scalabre
Stage manager: Alexis Noël
Sound setup: Geoffrey Durcak
Production: Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains, in co-production with L’Ensemble Multilaterale

More articles about the Symétriades performance:
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Symétriades: visualising contemporary music
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The tools we used for the Symétriades performance
Symétriades live performances this weekend!
Symétriades live performances this weekend!
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First rehearsals for the Symétriades art performance
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Visualising interactive art installations with Processing and SketchUp
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New art performance project at Le Fresnoy

Are you an artist working with interactive installations or performances?

Portfolio project
A feasibility study for the housing development in Oslo

Thibaut Devulder

In this project, we helped a housing developer unlock the potential of a complex site in the beautiful neighbourhood of Nordstrand, in Oslo. Bringing together our skills in site analysis and visualisation, we designed and presented alternative development strategies for the site, helping the developer and the site owner to build architecture that is both inspiring and financially viable.

A visualisation of the site with sun access at different season, as part of our site anany

A visualisation of the site with sun access at different season, as part of our site anany

A view of the site before development, with its mature trees and steep north-facing rocky slope at the back

Surrounding by elegant villas with fantastic views to Oslo Fjord, the undeveloped site had a complex topography, with a north-facing rocky slope dropping 11 meter drop across the site, overgrown with several large mature trees.

This unusual configuration made the site unsuitable for standard off-the-shelf housing solutions. So the developer asked us to assess the viability of a development and to bring in some creative thinking to showcase the potential of the site to the site owner.

Analysing the site

Using available topographic information and photos, we started by creating a 3D model of the site landscape and its surrounding, which would serve as the basis for our analysis and presentation.

The various layers of planning regulations for the site were then analysed and compiled into a clear set of constraints applying to the project. The surrounding architectural context was also carefully taken into consideration, so that the development would not only integrated with the landscape, but also related meaningfully with the existing architectural language and scale of the residential area.

Our visual representation of the constraints on the complex site considerably simplified the decision-making process for the developer

Identifying viable development options and their planning consequences

Presenting these constraints visually, together with topographic and climatic data, we summarised a set of alternative scenarios for the development, each with the associated areas, possible building forms, parking and access requirements and consequences on the potential complexity of the planning process.

With all information clearly summarised, the developer could easily review the options — weighing costs versus complexity of the required planning process — to select an optimal development scale matching his financial and marketing approach.

Thinking with the landscape

With the project scale now clearly defined (in our case, three single family units), we proceeded with structuring the site and developed alternative architectural strategies based on this scenario.

Our focus was on preserving the natural feel of the site, making the most of the existing topography and vegetation to create attractive outdoor spaces with extensive access to the sun for a large part of the year, despite the awkward orientation of the site.

The dwellings were articulated around the different levels of the landscape to minimise groundworks on the site, preserve the existing trees and promote accessibility.

Their volumes were laid out to reduce self-shading of the garden areas, balancing open communal outdoor areas with more private garden spaces linked to each dwelling, framing view from the living spaces and preserving a feeling of privacy from neighbours.

Taking an informed decision

The result was five alternative architectural strategies that could be presented by the developer to the site owner.

We organised our presentation around clear diagrams that visually summarised each strategy, with site plans, massing perspectives and outline dwelling organisations. so that the site owner — who had no previous experience in development — could appreciate the potential of the site and take inform decisions about its future.

Portfolio project
Mission Control: an experimental hairy micro-office

Tom Hughes

Nicknamed "Mission Control", our broom-clad micro-office is an exercise in teleportation, designed to take us from the everyday hurly burly to a another world — one of calm, quiet and focus. 

 

The inception of Mission Control

Our UK office was a home office — not squeezed in to a back bedroom but occupying a large ground floor room with direct access to the main entrance and the garden. For some years this served us well, but the arrival of children led inevitably to a loss of separation. As any home-working architect will testify, the room with all the paper and colouring pens is a kid magnet!

To some extent, the injection of informality improved things — collaborations became looser, more relaxed and more creative — but we were left with the need for a ‘cave’ to complement our increasingly lively ‘commons’.

Our working practices have always involved two very distinct modes. The first is highly collaborative and semi-structured, requiring large surfaces, space and materials for analogue production of drawings and models. The second, as a counterpoint, requires periods of immersion in focussed digital design and production work. Our existing home office provided ideal conditions for the former, but creating the conditions for the latter was always extremely difficult.

 

The new office matches the exact volume and footprint of this old shed

Crafting a solution

In the garden was glazed shed, built by the previous owner from repurposed corrugated iron, old windows, offcuts of vinyl and pieces of timber. Rickety in the extreme, we nevertheless blessed it with the name “Mission Control” because it was a great place to retreat to when setting off fireworks on bonfire night.

We decided the replacement for this shed would become our garden office.

 

 

The rise of the garden office has been met by a multitude of packaged solutions, and some truly wonderful bespoke designs. But nothing we could find in the market met our slightly odd needs. 

We also felt the urge to make, at 1:1 scale and with our own hands, something that we had designed from scratch. So we decided to embark on a highly personal journey into design and build.

We designed Mission Control as a sort of antithesis of "the contemplation space with landscape views and flowing inside-outside space". We needed a cell, removed from physical context and worldly distraction, where we could retreat to immerse ourselves in brain work.

Our intention was that the building should create three totally separate experiences: an enigmatic exterior, a serene interior and a ceremonial commute to work...

 

An inscrutable box in the garden

Without any visible door or window the outer facades are entirely clad in natural coco-fibre broom heads: details and junctions are largely concealed, as the broom bristles interlock to provide a continuous and visually diffuse surface. Thus giving no clue as to its status as occupied or empty, the structure existing merely as an object of intrigue.

This is a reverse Tardis: much smaller on the inside than it appears from the outside. The difference in volumes results from the simple shed-like pitched roof hidden behind the parapet. The polycarbonate surface of the roof only pops through the brush cladding to divert — yet eliminates familiar details like fascias and gutters, which would make the box readable as an archetypal shed or garden office. 

The mysterious object, as seen from our collaborative office space

Corner detail of the coco-fibre broom cladding

 

One of the two focussed workstation inside Mission Control

A serene enclosure

The space within is a comfortable and calm isolation chamber for undisturbed concentration. Two back-to-back desks are nested under the low ceilings, reminiscent of the containment created by the sloping ceiling of an artist’s garret. 

Interior walls and ceilings are clad with whitewashed plywood, which adds to the calm and natural feeling environment. The breathable walls, wrapped with sheep’s wool insulation, create a healthy internal environment that is easily heated by body warmth and waste heat from computers.

Daylight and ventilation are provided by a single hidden skylight that perforates through the reflective roof surface. 

View into the garden through the open sliding door, clad in brooms

 

A ceremonial commute

Commuting to work in Mission Control is an important symbolic process: the full experience of ‘going to work’ is here in condensed and enhanced form.

Leaving the house, and travelling the 4 metre journey to the door of the office, provides just enough time to calm and focus. 

Entering the building requires interaction: finding the ‘secret panel’ broom head, sliding back the heavy screen door and pushing through the solid leaf behind...

This is a little ritual that requires concentration and creates distance from whatever else is on your mind. As the door clunks shut behind you, the box seals itself and the separation is complete. Let focus begin.

The boom cladding, momentarily shifted to reveal the space within

How to enter our broom-clad office...

Update: Mission Control has been featured on architecture magazines and websites around the world, including ArchDaily, designboom, TreeHugger, New Atlas, inHabitat and Dwell.

More articles about the Mission Control micro-office
designboom
Mission Control in the architecture press
Photos of Mission Control
Photos of Mission Control
Mission Control: Tom Hughes adjusting a broom head on the facade
546 brooms: the making of Mission Control
Mission Control: an experimental hairy micro-office
Mission Control: an experimental hairy micro-office
Design broom!
Design broom!
Mission Control tops out
Mission Control tops out

Portfolio project
Between a house and a cliff

Thibaut Devulder
The staircase/treehouse, dovetailing the different outdoor spaces, as seen from the garden entrance

The staircase/treehouse, dovetailing the different outdoor spaces, as seen from the garden entrance

For this small landscaping project, we were approached by our clients who had just bought and refurbished a house overlooking Østensjø, a large lake on the outskirts of Oslo.

Located on an elevated spot, the house and its west terraces enjoyed wonderful open views to the neighbouring lake. As a counterpoint, the rest of the outdoor spaces were tucked on a very tight site, terraced over three different levels and had been neglected in the recent years. A 8-metre high cliff backed the property to the east, overgrown with wild vines and bergenias, creating a lush cascade of vegetation and rocks.

Our client asked us to outline a strategy for making the best use of the tight exterior spaces, spread over three terraces, and organise them so that both adult activities and children play could blend together harmoniously.

The “cliff” of vegetation at the back of the property, with its lush vegetation cascading down the rocks.

The “cliff” of vegetation at the back of the property, with its lush vegetation cascading down the rocks.

Carefully analysing the existing opportunities offered by this intricate site, we designed a string of private and social places around the house, each with its unique feeling — from serene and secluded to social and vibrant— articulated by a central winding stair that doubled as a playful “tree house”.

We will be following up the work on site with our clients, impatiently awaiting the children’s feedback on their new playhouse! In the meantime, here are a few of drawings from our design process.

More articles about this project:
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A tree house by Østensjøvannet
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Why a staircase, when you can have a treehouse?
Between a house and a cliff
Between a house and a cliff

Portfolio project
A sensitive contemporary extension

Tom Hughes

How to extend a 1930s 'Arts and Crafts' style detached house? One approach would be to mimic the original building, but that's not always the most sensitive or responsive solution.

The proposed extension takes a back seat to the original house

Our clients asked us to extend their house over a dilapidated single storey 'lean-to' garage, to provide a couple of new bedrooms. They also needed more ground floor space to connect properly with their garden.

Looking at the street scene, it was immediately clear that development pattern was characterised by detached houses with relatively low-key side extensions, containing garages, porches and sheds. To extend with a typical two-storey pitched-roof building would change this pattern and detract from the prominence of the 1930s house. Instead we proposed a subservient, low pitched roof that would sit below the existing building's eaves and drop down into the slope of the land. This would be clad in dark-stained vertical timber boarding, reminiscent of a number of 1930s modernist buildings - a different style but still contemporary with the original.

The extension sits into the sloping site to protect neighbours' views and daylight

Having consulted neighbours and the planning officer, we carefully explained this strategy through our planning application drawings and Design and Access Statement (DAS). This latter document is often seen as a bit of a token gesture on small scale project like this, but we see it as an opportunity to explain the care we have taken in our design and the various options considered along the way.

Massing options considered during design development

We were successfully able to make a case to go against the planning officer's pre-planning advice to use a pitched roof —  it was a sensible suggestion and not one we rejected out of hand, but by careful analysis of the particular setting of this building we arrived at the conclusion that in this case, a pitched roof would not be the best way to go.

The end result will be a sensitively designed contemporary extension that extends the living space and amenities of the home without impinging on the neighbours or detracting from the proud character of the original house.

 

 

Portfolio project
Ooo-Ya-Tsu, an art performance

Thibaut Devulder

We like to describe Ooo-Ya-Tsu as an art performance of "collaborative soundscape painting", exploring the interaction between the gestures of classical hand-drawing, animated computer graphics and electronic music.

Ooo-Ya-Tsu is the fruit of our collaboration with visual art collective Qubo Gas and musician Olivier Durteste (a.k.a DDDxie), which took place during a series of artist residencies and public presentations between 2013 and 2016.

2hD takes part in the live public performances of Ooo-Ya-Tsu, but also developed the computer programme that drove the interaction between the drawing instruments (pencils and paint brushes), the video projection on the canvas and the musical instruments.

A short video of the performance, filmed during one of our public presentations at the multimedia festival Les Pixels, in Beauvais (France)

What is Ooo-Ya-Tsu

The layering of watercolour painting and animated video projection during one of our Ooo-Ya-Tsu performances

Taking place in the midst of the audience, three visual artists draw simultaneously on a large paper canvas laying on the floor, using pencils and watercolour brushes. Each of their actions leaves physical traces on the canvas, but also creates flurries of colours and animated collages — superimposed by a video projection that tracks their drawings movements — as well as layers of sounds and musical rhythms that build on the musical performance of the musician, sitting next to the paper canvas.

Responding to these new sound patterns, the musician himself adjusts his own live composition using electronic music instruments, creating in turn new visual effects on the paper canvas and influencing the live actions of the drawing artists.

As the performance unfolds, a complex graphical and musical dialogue develops between its different actors — each influencing the others' work, while all collaborate interactively to create a unique sound and visual landscape.

Inspired by the principles of phase music, the different rhythmic and visual layers of this landscape come in and out of focus: sometimes momentarily revealing the different musical and graphical universes that constitute them, sometimes recombining them into complex abstract patterns. Until eventually, both music and projected animations begins to evolve autonomously, continuing to shift and echo long after the performance of the actors themselves is over.

Creating Ooo-Ya-Tsu

At the centre of the Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance is a custom-made computer programme created by 2hD, using the Processing programming language. This powerful language allowed us to develop a system that allowed linking all the different aspects of the performance, combining motion tracking, video projections, interactions with physical objects and simulations of autonomous particle systems...

A video showing alternative views of the performance programme in debug mode, revealing the interactions between the graphical particles, as well as the sound phasing partition (scrolling at the bottom).

The visual aesthetic of Ooo-Ya-Tsu is based on the dream-like imagery of French art collective Qubo Gas, whose work poetically combines painstakingly intricate paintings and collage techniques, with scales ranging from miniature to architectural.

Having scanned a series of artwork they produced for the performance, we programmed the system to dynamically recombined them into an near-infinite number of different collages.

These images could then be superimposed and animated onto the paper canvas, responding to the physical ink forms drawn on the canvas during the live performance, which are analysed by the programme in real-time using infra-red cameras.

The modular aspect of the Processing language also allowed us to combine existing programming libraries to interact remotely with the musician's live performance: triggering visual events in response to certain of his composition patterns or sounds, but also playing sounds directly on his electronic instruments in response to drawing actions on the canvas.

The resulting soundtrack of the performance is a layered composition of phase-shifting abstract samples, overlapping and structuring DDDxie's live electronic music:

Details of some of the watercolour images hand-painted by Qubo Gas and used by our programme to generate the animated projections on the paper canvas.

Despite its technical complexity, we conceived Ooo-Ya-Tsu so that the technological aspects of the performance remained mostly inconspicuous, keeping the focus instead on Qubo Gas' poetical hand drawings, the materiality of the paper medium and DDDxie's layered and minimalist sound compositions.

In 2013, the Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance was awarded a production grant from the prestigious Centre National du Cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC), in France.

Ooo-Ya-Tsu's public appearances:

Institutions supporting Ooo-Ya-Tsu:

The Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance was developed and produced with the support of: L'Aéronef / Le Cube / La Malterie / Pictanovo / Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédia (SCAM) / Centre National du Cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC) / La Gare Numérique

More articles about Ooo-Ya-Tsu:
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Prototyping with the CNC router
Ooo-Ya-Tsu, an art performance
Ooo-Ya-Tsu, an art performance
Ooo-Ya-Tsu: video of our live performance at ASCA
Ooo-Ya-Tsu: video of our live performance at ASCA
Ooo-Ya-Tsu at digital art festival Les Pixels
Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance at La Malterie
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Ready for our performance
Artist residency at La Malterie
Artist residency at La Malterie
Another public performance of Ooo-Ya-Tsu
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First Ooo-Ya-Tsu public performance
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Back in Oslo
Ooo-Ya-Tsu à La Gare Numérique
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La Malterie
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Artist residency with Pictanovo
Qubo Gas vs. Diptyque
Qubo Gas vs. Diptyque
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Ooo-Ya-Tsu on Arte TV
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Fabrica
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Ooo-Ya-Tsu gets CNC grant
Artist residency #2
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Pictanovo grant
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Arrows
Artist residency
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Tweaking hardware
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Ooo-Ya-Tsu gets suppport from the Civil Society of Multimedia Authors
Particles
Prefiguration
Art residency for a musical art performance in France
Art residency for a musical art performance in France

Are you an artist interested in interactive installations and performances?

Interested in hosting Ooo-Ya-Tsu for a public presentation or an artist residency?

Portfolio project
Remodeling a family home in Bærum

Thibaut Devulder

We have just finalised the design for the remodeling and extension of a family house in Bærum, near Oslo. The detailed drawings package has now been sent to potential builders and, before construction starts this spring, we would like to share some of the ideas behind our design approach.

Sketch view of the redesigned home, approaching the new entrance

About our clients

Our clients, a young Norwegian couple with a toddler, had purchased a derelict detached house in the neighbourhood of Gjettum. The existing house had been divided into two rental apartments, one on each floor, connected by a shared entrance staircase.

Their plan was to merge these two floors into a single family home, where they would live and host frequent gatherings with their large extended family. The structure and footprint of the existing house was to remain mostly unchanged, but its fabric upgraded to meet modern environmental standards. Our clients were also considering the option of accommodating a rental apartment within the house, to create some additional income until they needed the whole house for their growing family

The existing house

The general feeling of the existing house was somewhat claustrophobic: the redundant spaces created by the two identical floor plans, the small cellular rooms and window-less corridors, the few oversized windows... All contributed to the impression of undersized spaces. A large garden surrounds the house but this was completely disconnected from the interior. It was also mostly spoiled by a garage and a long driveway to the south boundary of the site, which made the approach to the building unwelcoming.

Floor plans of the existing house (click for full view)

The existing house, viewed from the street approach

Our design strategy

An obvious solution would have been to extend the house to open up the main living spaces. However, as in many of our projects, we focussed on making the most of the existing building. Key to this approach was to reconnect the various living spaces — both interior and exterior — so that the different architectural functions could flow into one another.

Our design strategy, as presented to our clients during the sketch design phase. Drawn on top of the floor plan of the existing house (click for a full view)

Connecting the social spaces

Our first step was to move bedrooms to the upper floor, so that we could gather all social spaces on the ground floor, just a step away from the garden. We then removed a few internal walls to open two long perspectives across the whole ground floor. This created a close connection to the garden, making it both visible and easily accessible from all living spaces.

These spaces — where eating, relaxing and socialising take place — naturally organised themselves around these open lines, articulated by the existing staircase and a new wood stove. Each living space is designed with its own sense of scale and openness. Yet, it can be used as an extension of another, giving maximum flexibility both for everyday life and for the large social gatherings that our clients love to host.

The kitchen — the natural heart of the house for the family — is now placed at the very centre of this plan and is connected to all surrounding social spaces. A screen of open shelving wraps around the kitchen, to subtly shelter it and discretely accommodate storage, appliances and a study (that doubles as an accessible guest bedroom) on the north-east.

Opening up to the garden

Each of the living-rooms extends to the garden through large French doors: on the south-east, onto a large timber terrace stepping down to the main garden, and on the south-west to a more private terrace that opens the dining room to the evening sun. Since all windows had to be replaced, we took this opportunity to redesign many of the openings to the garden, drawing daylight from different directions in all spaces and carefully framing attractive views to the outdoors.

To the south, we created a new functional and welcoming entrance to the house that also accommodates an accessible modern bathroom. Both this small extension and the new garage (relocated closer to the access road) are designed with similar flat roof details and horizontal cladding, contrasting with the taller existing house. Together, they frame an attractive new approach to the house that echoes the traditional "tun" of Norwegian farmyards, under the dappled shade of newly planted cherry trees.

An overview of the ground floor in relation to the garden (click for full size)

The remodelled basement, with its separate rental apartment

The private spaces

A new family bathroom and four bedrooms are located on the upper floor. One of these rooms doubles up as a separate TV/play room, where extra guests can stay overnight.

The basement is also remodelled: two thirds of it are transformed into a comfortable self contained apartment, which will be rented out to tenants before becoming an integral part of the house for family guests and teenager children. The large new windows bring plenty of daylight into the space and the separate access to the north and landscaping create a small private garden for the tenants. The remaining space in the basement accommodates a large washroom, as well as the technical installations and storage.

Comfort and sustainability

As part of the remodeling, we upgraded the whole house to meet current energy conservation standards, externally insulating the fabric of the building and replacing the existing windows with highly insulated ones.

We also made the most of the panoramic wood stove on the ground floor by coupling it with a modern balanced ventilation system: diffusing the stove heat in the whole house — including the four bedrooms upstairs— we could design the house so that most of the heating needs would be provided by renewable firewood, while also keeping optimal indoor air quality.

More articles about this project:
The dining room
Rudsveien remodelling underway
Remodeling a family home in Bærum
Remodeling a family home in Bærum