Nice to see that our experimental micro-office Mission Control has been featured on architecture magazines and websites around the world, including:
Mission Control in the architecture press
Our log cabin is now on site
Having been prefabricated off-site, the timber components of our log cabin in Sjusjøen are now being erected on the snowy slopes of inland Norway!
Visualising interactive art installations with Processing and SketchUp
While developing the scenography for the Symétriades performance, I experimented with mixing the 3D model of our proposed stage setup with a sketch program, to communicate our proposed concept.
This simple example maps an early animation prototype of our Processing program onto layers exported from our SketchUp model of the scenography. The multiple projections are mapped over surfaces using the KeyStone Processing library, while lighting is controlled by dynamically adjusting layer opacities in the program. The mapped animation responds to a real-time spectral sound analysis of a rehearsal recording, as well as mouse movements on the modelled stage screens.
The integration of Processing sketches and SketchUp 3D models has a great potential for communicating ideas of the art installations in an interactive way. To be explored further…
Why a staircase, when you can have a treehouse?
A client have just sent us some photos of the finished staircase we have designed for her house.
We designed this little structure to provide access from the upper terraces of the house down to the garden space. Since the garden was also a prime spot for children play, we designed the staircase wrapped around a “treehouse”, in which the children can hide and play, or take a fun shortcut climb back home!
New art performance project at Le Fresnoy
Double bass player Nicolas Crosse and music composer Yann Robin
(photo © Franck Ferville)
We have just started a new art performance collaboration at the Studio National des Arts Contemporains (a.k.a. Le Fresnoy) in Tourcoing, France.
Titled "Symétriades/Extension" (a reference to Stanislaw Lem's book Solaris), the performance project is a collaboration with Nicolas Crosse (double bass player), Alain Fleischer (visual artist) and Yann Robin (composer).
The artists' intention is to:
... give rise to a gigantic, organic, “living” creature whose every component is interdependent and whose nerve centre whose vital organ is constituted by the double bass player and his instrument. The soloist and the double bass will be positioned on a structure placed in the middle of the “playing” space. The instrumentalist’s body, the double bass, as well as the structure, will act as surfaces on which various visual dimensions will come to life. By extension, this visual entity, whatever its forms, will extend and proliferate in the architectural space hosting the performance.
Using our experience with the Ooo-Ya-Tsu performance, also interweaving music and interactive visuals, we will be helping the artists to develop the concept and scenography for the art performance and to create the real-time interactions between live projected visuals, the soloist’s gestures and electronic sound manipulations.
The first public performance of the piece is planned for October 2018.
2hD Director Chris Heuvel appointed RIBA Fellow
Our director Chris Heuvel is one of only 15 architects to be awarded Royal Institute of British Architects Fellow status in the 2018 list. The RIBA says of the award that "Fellow Membership gives us the opportunity to recognise our inspirational Chartered Members, the sometimes unsung heroes of the profession, who have made a real contribution to architecture, and the community."
Chris' full citation reads as follows:
"Chris is a Director at 2hD Architecture Workshop and a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), where he delivers the professional practice elements of both the undergraduate and postgraduate architectural programmes, in addition to acting as Professional Studies Advisor for students in practice. He also runs the Design Studio module followed by first year undergraduates.
Chris champions architectural education as an integral aspect of professional practice, and is currently undertaking a major research project on behalf of NTU into how practitioners’ engagement with their local communities can be compatible with their business development objectives. All his teaching is substantially informed by a lifetime of active involvement in community engagement projects – previously in Norfolk and now in Nottingham, where (in conjunction with 2hD Ltd) he is currently helping a local group develop a business plan for the revival of their recently closed community centre."
Congratulations Chris, the recognition is thoroughly well deserved!
Photography: Nordisk Film & TV Fond
Some images from my photoshoot of the office interior at the Nordic Film & TV Fond in Oslo, freshly redesigned by Kubik Interiørarkitekter.
Photos of Mission Control
Some photos of our new experimental micro-office Mission Control, in all its broom-clad splendour!
Photoshoot: Holbergsgate 21
Some images from my photo session at Kubik’s latest interior design for Oculus, in Oslo.
546 brooms: the making of Mission Control
Crafting our micro-office Mission Control has been a great opportunity for us to experiment with many of the technologies we implement in our larger projects, such as natural materials, prefabrication, breathing construction and self-build techniques.
Let's look back at how Mission Control was actually made.
Bringing one of the 13 prefabricated units on site for assembly
Prefabricating the structure
We wanted to approach the making of our new micro-office as a full-scale architecture project and develop further our expertise in prefabrication and self-build techniques.The structure of the building is composed of 13 timber panels that were prefabricated in our workshop situated 50 meters (and 3 door frames! ) away, before being transported and assembled on the site,
One of the prefabrication manuals: we created one for each timber panel
Each panel was designed so that its size and weight would allow two people (Tom and me) to carry it on site safely. To simplify this, we created a small plugin for SketchUp to automatically check this as we modelled the structural panels, as well as to create detailed material lists and clear fabrication manuals for each module.
Assembling the construction
Once fabricated, each module was connected on site to the existing foundations of the former garden shed and to its neighbouring panels. It was then insulated with natural sheep's wool insulation, which was a real treat to install. The whole assembly was finally wrapped in wood-fibre boards for weather-tightness, extra insulation and breathability.
Section through the breathing wall construction
The interior climate is then simply regulated by natural ventilation (adjustable with vents in the door and skylight) and the heating provided by the waste heat produced by our computers. The whole wall construction is vapour-open, complementing the natural ventilation to maintain a healthy and comfortable environment inside.
Corner detail of the cladding, showing the interlocked broom heads
The broom cladding
The outside of the enclosure was finally clad with a total of 546 wooden broom heads, with natural coco-fibre bristles, screwed to battens wrapping around the breathing walls.
The selection of broom heads as a cladding material has been the result of a careful search for a material that would fulfil all our needs: a natural material with an interesting texture, readily available and affordable, friendly to the touch, yet resistant to break-ins by concealing any opening into the building.
Broom heads actually proved a rather economical cladding materials, as well as creating beautiful shades of browns and greys that evolve with the seasons and ambient humidity, reminiscent of some traditional thatching techniques.
Imagine, design, build and own...
Designing and crafting our micro-office Mission Control has been a long story: we started toying with the idea almost ten years ago! And it has sometimes been a frustrating one, especially when trying to fit this project between our other "more urgent" projects.
But, in the end, this has been an immensely satisfying project and something we are very proud of — having converted our initial idea into an actual architectural space that we love and truly feel our own, every bit of it designed and crafted with our own hands. A project that embodies many of our ethical values and architectural sensibilities at 2hD Architecture Workshop.
Photography: Akersbakken 12
A photoshoot of Kubik's latest interior design, on Oslo's riverside.
Portfolio project
Mission Control: an experimental hairy micro-office
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.
Portfolio project
Between a house and a cliff
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.
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.
Design broom!
I have just returned from England, where Tom and I completed our latest self-build creation. Here is a little video teaser, with more photos coming soon...
Photography: Kubik's Nedre slottsgata
A new photoshoot forKubik Interiør Arkitekter: a newly redesigned staircase in Oslo's city centre.
