Constructed in the nineteenth century, the building previously featured a series of outdoor paddocks and a large courtyard, used for storing livestock before the slaughtering process. As part of the renovation, Sol89 has extended the building into these spaces to create kitchens and classrooms.

Like most of the town's architecture, white-painted walls surrounded the perimeter of the slaughterhouse site and now enclose both the new and old sections of the building.

The original pitched roof is clad with traditional clay tiles, but the architects used modern flat ceramics to give a vibrant red to the asymmetric gables that make up the roof of the extension.

"If we observe Medina-Sidonia from a distance, it seems to be a unique ceramic creation moulded by the topography of Medina," explain architects María González and Juanjo López de la Cruz. "The Professional Cooking School uses this idea of the moulded ceramic plane to draw its geometry. This roof lends unity to the built complex and interprets the traditional construction of the place."

The original arched doorway remains as the entrance to the school and leads in via the old structure. Inside, the architects have replaced the original flooring with exposed concrete that skirts around a set of historic columns in the main hall.

The kitchens are lined with tiles on the floors and walls. High level windows help to bring light in from above, while small glass courtyards are positioned at intervals to provide areas for students to grow vegetables and herbs.

A few slaughterhouses in Spain have been converted to new uses in recent years. Others we've featured include an office and event space in Madrid and a cinema in the same city.

See more architecture projects in Spain, including the restoration of a coastal landscape in Cadaqués.

Photography is by Fernando Alda - see more pictures of this project on his website.

Here's some more information from Sol89

Medina is a historic town in the hills in Cadiz. Its houses are known for their whitewashed walls and their ceramic roofs. The project involves adapting an ancient slaughterhouse, built in the XIX century, into a Professional Cooking School.

The ancient slaughterhouse was composed of a small construction around a courtyard and a high white wall that limits the plot. If you are going to act in the historic city you must adapting, taking shelter, settling in its empty spaces. The density of the architecture of the ancient slaughterhouse, where brick walls, stones and Phoenician columns coexist, contrasts with the empty space inside the plot, limited by the wall. The project proposes catching this space through a new ceramic roof that limits the new construction and consolidates the original building.

If we observe Medina Sidonia from a distance, it seems to be a unique ceramic creation molded by the topography of Medina. The Professional Cooking School uses this idea of the molded ceramic plane to draw its geometry. This roof lends unity to the built complex and interprets the traditional construction of the place, ceramic roofs and whitewashed walls. Some little courtyards are inserted, working as ventilation shaft, and are cultivated with different culinary plants which are used by the students to cook.

At the original building, ancient floors were replaced by slabs of concrete with wooden formwork that recognise traditional building forms, walls are covered with white and rough lime mortar which seeks material memory of its industrial past, and the existing Phoenician columns, displaced from the disappeared Temple of Hercules, have been consolidated. All of those materials, even the time, built this place.

Architects: María González y Juanjo López de la Cruz. Sol89
Team: George Smudge (architecture student), Jerónimo Arrebola (quantity surveyor), Alejandro Cabanas (structure), Insur JG (building services), Novoarididian SA y Rhodas SL (contractors)

Client: Fundación Forja XXI
Location: C/ Rubiales S/N, Medina Sidonia, Cádiz, Spain
Area: 751 sqm
Completion date: 2011

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Ancient Slaughterhouse by Sol89 appeared first on Dezeen.

Tony Fretton Architects collaborated with Dutch firm Geurst en Schulze Architecten to design 16 houses for the Molenplein site, as part of a wider masterplan by West 8 that centres around the redevelopment of the town's former navy base.

Three-storey houses stretch along the front of the site, facing out across the dockyard, while a row of smaller two-storey residences run along behind and are separated by private gardens.

Drawing inspiration from canal houses of the early twentieth century, the houses feature a mixture of linear and gabled profiles, and present both exposed and painted brickwork facades.

Bright yellow doors and ornamental marble panels mark the entrances to each house, plus the windows come with chunky wooden frames.

Each of the 16 houses has one of four standard layouts. There are few internal partitions and finishes, as the architects wanted to give residents the opportunity to design their own interiors.

Tony Fretton Architects is led by Fretton alongside partner James McKinney. Past projects by the firm include a Stirling Prize-nominated museum of fine art in Denmark and the Vassall Road housing project in south London. See more architecture by Tony Fretton Architects.

Photography is by Christian Richters.

Read on for more information from Tony Fretton Architects:

Houses in Molenplein, Den Helder, the Netherlands

Tony Fretton Architects has completed a new development of houses in the Dutch town of Den Helder.

Commissioned by Dutch developer Proper-Stok the development comprises 2 and 3 storey houses designed by Tony Fretton Architects and Dutch practice Geurst en Schulze Architecten configured within a masterplan designed by West 8.

Molenplein occupies a long site between two canals, the Helderskanaal and Werfkanaal, where it looks out onto Den Helder's former Napoleonic naval yard. The development is part of a regeneration strategy by the municipality to attract middle-income people to the area following the relocation of the Dutch navy base. The Napoleonic dockyard has also been redeveloped, providing places for business and culture.

West 8's masterplan for Molenplein preserves the character, scale and diversity of the city fabric along each canal; the plan comprises large three-storey houses facing the dockyard and compact two-storey houses to the rear, with private gardens in between, and intersperses designs by Tony Fretton Architects with those of Geurst en Schulze Architecten.

Houses designed by Tony Fretton Architects are distinguished by a simple profile and generously proportioned windows and entrance doors. The designs are abstracted versions of typical canal front and back houses and aim to reproduce the generosity of scale and abstraction seen in Dutch architecture from the Golden Age and early Dutch modernism. Materials comprise wooden window frames in facades of white painted brick or rose coloured brick with white pointing. A measure of ornament is given through the use of discreet panels of Belgian marble at eye level. In contrast the Geurst en Schulze houses have finely elaborated detail and provide punctuation in the terrace.

Inspired by the openness and energy that the practice observed in an earlier development they designed - De Prinsendam in Overhoeks, Amsterdam - where owners radically personalised their interiors, the houses are presented with unplanned interiors and carefully positioned service risers, fenestration and staircases that support a wide range of possible internal configurations.

Location: Den Helder, The Netherlands
Client: Proper-Stok
Gross external area: 2,300 sq m approx
Internal area: 3,200 sq m approx

Architects: Tony Fretton Architects
Design team: Tony Fretton, James McKinney, David Owen, Chris Snow, Chris Neve
Project Associate: David Owen
Project Architect: Chris Snow
Executive Architects: Geurst en Schulze Architecten
Masterplan & landscaping: West 8
Structural Engineers: Ingenieursbureau Dijkhuis bv
Services Engineers: Wolf Dikken adviseurs
Main Contractor: Tuin Den Helder bv

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Tony Fretton Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Warming explains that the idea behind the design of the MINI Paceman was to combine the signature styling of the classic MINI with new features such as four-wheel drive and horizontal tail lights. "When you look at [the car] you feel and you see MINI, but you realise there is so much new to it," he says.

He also stresses that a lot of the design of the car was done by hand. "People say cars are just [designed] by computers today," he says. "A car is really done by hand. It's designed with sketches, we choose the lines that we like and we also spend a [lot of] time forming the shapes in clay and then from that make the tooling."

The guest in our Dezeen and MINI World Tour Studio is Kieran Long, senior curator of contemporary architecture, design and digital at the V&A museum in London. He believes the work of the current generation of designers lacks the boldness of the post-modern design Italy became famous for in the 1970s and 1980s.

"I sense a sort of tentative nature in the design that you see - even [work by] the younger designers, students and so on," he says. "There's not much boldness either in formal or colour terms, but also philosophical and ideas terms.

"It really struck me visiting the exhibition at the Triennale on Italian design, what a big contrast that is from the grand era of Italian design. You see the boldness of those forms and remind yourself of what Italian design was known for and you see now a sort of pastel-y sort of invisible feeling to design."

Despite this, Long says there are detectable trends that young designers are exploring. "We've had this fixing, repairing, ad hocism thing now for a couple of years," he says. "This year it's really identifiable that young designers work is occupied by new materials, often sustainable materials, new organic materials in the kind of Formafantasma mould. If somebody would just capture that and make a manifesto about it, it would seem like a real movement.

"I think the big problem is that they have no grasp of design history," he continues. "They have no idea of where they sit in relation to anything. It's my observation that most of those designers wish they were taught a formal didactic history of design alongside the freedom that the art school education gives them."

More generally, Long believes that design needs to be less introspective to remain relevant. "I think we've overrated what designers do as the thing that's interesting about design," he says. "What's really interesting is the problem solved, or the relationship made, or the fashion trend started or ended - those cultural currents that design contributes to.

"I think they could learn something from architecture in that sense; when you're an architect, when you write about architecture, you can also write about the city, and the city is everything in it. Design needs to find a category like that. They need to relax and say: 'what I do is not the interesting thing about design, it's what happens after it leaves my office.'"

See all our stories about Milan 2013.

The music featured in this movie is a track called Konika by Italian disco DJ Daniele Baldelli, who played a set at the MINI Paceman Garage. You can listen to more music by Baldelli on Dezeen Music Project.

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of design history" appeared first on Dezeen.

Experimental Jetset developed the graphic identity around the concept of a "responsive W" that forms both a symbol of the Whitney and a framework for accompanying text and images.

"We came up with the idea of the zig-zag line, with the zig-zag being a metaphor for a non-simplistic, more complicated (and thus more interesting) history of art," say the designers.

"We think the line also represents a pulse, a beat - the heartbeat of New York, of the USA. It shows the Whitney as an institute that is breathing (in and out), an institute that is open and closed at the same time."

The designers specified Neue Haas Grotesk - a redrawn version of a 1950s Swiss typeface - for any text positioned alongside the logo, while any images can be positioned underneath.

"We began to explore the possibilities of the W as a frame to put work in, or a stage to place work on," they explain. "The lines [of the W] can be seen as borders, arrows, connections [or] columns."

The new graphic identity replaces the Whitney's thirteen-year-old logo, designed by Abbott Miller of Pentagram, and marks a period of change that will see the museum relocate to a new building by architect Renzo Piano, set to open in 2015.

Other logos designed in recent months include one for the estate of Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson and one for Nivea designed by Yves Béhar. See more graphic design on Dezeen.

Photography is by Jens Mortensen.

Read on more information from the Whitney:

As the Whitney approaches the opening of its new building in 2015, museum staff are taking stock of all aspects of programming and operations. While much of this work is happening behind the scenes, one very visible aspect of this focus is the Whitney's graphic identity. While the museum has changed considerably in the thirteen years since it introduced the word mark designed by Abbott Miller of Pentagram, even more extensive institutional changes will come with the move downtown.

Two years ago, Museum staff began a thoughtful internal dialogue regarding the Whitney's graphic identity and selected the design studio Experimental Jetset to develop an approach which embraces the spirit of the Museum while serving as a visual ambassador for our new building. The result is a distinctive and inventive graphic system that literally responds to art — a fundamental attribute of the Whitney since its founding in 1930. This dynamic identity, which the designers refer to as the "responsive 'W'" also illustrates the Museum's ever-changing nature. In the upcoming years it will provide an important point of continuity for members, visitors, and the public during the transition to the new space.

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by Experimental Jetset appeared first on Dezeen.

Giles Miller Studio designed a single, curved pixel element and collaborated with metal manufacturers Tecan to create 2433 stainless steel and etched brass pieces for its exterior.

The metal pixels are arranged at angles over the curved surface, forming patterns that change according to light conditions.

"We wanted to celebrate Clerkenwell as an architectural hub," Giles Miller told Dezeen, "the target shape stamps the district on the map."

A bullseye of brass panels sits in the centre of the glimmering structure, placed in front of a stone gate that was once part of St John's monastery. "St John's Gate is very iconic," said Miller. "We enjoyed the contrast of what we do against the old brick."

The installation in the central London district is Giles Miller Studio's latest iteration of imagery created by pixellated or reflective surfaces. For last year's Clerkenwell Design Week, the designers created an archway from 20,000 wooden hexagons at the entrance to the Farmiloe Building and designed a bar for a former petrol station the year before.

This year's event continues until Thursday 23 May. Find out who is exhibiting here or register to attend here.

Dezeen Watch Store also has a pop-up shop in the Farmiloe Building at Clerkenwell Design Week, where we are presenting a selection of our latest and best-selling watches - more details here.

Photography is by Jon Meade.

See more design by Giles Miller Studio »
See more installation design »

Giles Miller Studio sent us the following information:

Giles Miller Studio and Tecan present The Heart of Architecture, Clerkenwell 2013

Critically acclaimed Giles Miller Studio is delighted to team up with British precision metal fabricators Tecan, in presenting ‘The Heart of Architecture’. This innovative installation has been constructed at the iconic Saint Johns Gate as a part of this year's Clerkenwell Design Week.

London’s Clerkenwell boasts the highest number of architects per square mile in Europe. The ‘Heart of Architecture’ consists of a giant sculptural target built to stamp Clerkenwell and its inhabitants on the world stage, and to represent this thriving area as the creative core of the British Architectural and Interior design world.

Giles Miller Studio has created this unique installation alongside Tecan, a precision metal manufacturer based in Dorset, who'se intricate and specialist manufacturing process has generated the latest in the studio's range of reflective surface systems.

Featuring Giles Miller’s signature technique of manipulating light and shadow to show intriguing imagery, the installation has been formed from thousands of systematically hand laid stainless steel and brass ‘pixels’. By angling the specifically designed elongated pixels at opposing angles the surface of the installation will become an observation of light and shade, reflecting and bouncing light patterns in a celebration of its historic yet creatively progressive surroundings.

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by Giles Miller Studio appeared first on Dezeen.