Scape is a housing block for 600 students in London's East End and contains study bedrooms that are no more than 12.5 square metres in area. Inspired by sleeping quarters in train carriages, the rooms feature space-saving measures such as cupboards that double up as desks and seating in the windows.

Ab Rogers says his vision was to "create a forward-thinking design language for small spaces that would appeal to a young target audience and be able to be reapplied in other environments".

Corian surfaces give each room a clean white aesthetic, plus each one includes brightly coloured furnishings in one of six vivid shades.

"For the Scape project, we started with the rooms, which are highly engineered pieces of industrial design given a domestic veneer," said Rogers. "Each is an individual pod, made off site."

Block colours also aid orientation through the building, as a bright red staircase spirals up from the reception to floors that are each labelled with a different colour.

"The common parts needed to support a complicated social infrastructure for socialising, study and care for hundreds of young people," added Rogers. "Dynamic integral wayfinding systems and vibrant colour codings knit the buildings’ internal parts together, while the individual rooms offer complete calm for every occupant."

The accommodation is accompanied by two restaurants; a cafe named The Kitchen and a Pan-Asian restaurant entitled Box Noodle. Students can either dine inside, or order takeaway to eat in their rooms.

The Kitchen (above and below) comprises a busy European-style cafe with bright green chairs and suspended yellow lighting.

Box Noodle (below) features a more minimal interior furnished with long tables, wooden stools and narrow red pendant lights.

Scape welcomed its first occupants in September 2012.

Another student accommodation concept was recently revealed by MEK Architects, whose MySpace housing in Norway was modelled on the concept of a social network. See more stories about student housing.

Photography is by John Short.

Here's a project description from Ab Rogers Studio.

A rethink of student accommodation by Ab Rogers Design

In September 2012, SCAPE, an innovative rethink of student accommodation, will welcome its first occupants. Two minutes walk from Mile End tube station in East London, its 600 rooms might be small, at 12.5m2, but have been perfectly conceived by Ab Rogers Design. Created for serious study and student socialising, cupboards turn into desks and the bed becomes a bar. Each room has its own compact bathroom and neat fitted kitchen, as well as a window seat that makes the most of all the available light.

Ab Rogers Design was inspired by the railroad couchette, and looked to other examples where space is limited and function is key, such as submarines, yachts and caravans, to come up with a solution that has maximized efficiency and minimized any loss of usable floor or wall area. The result is rooms that are innovative, livable and attractive. Materials include Corian, foil wrapped furniture and woven textiles, and each room has a simple colour scheme, matching white with lemon yellow, turquoise, vermillion, violet, electric blue or spring green.

For the communal areas and the bar, deli and restaurant, ARD has looked to multi-use public places such as museums and galleries and introduced a system of partitions on tracks and grids that allow spaces to be reconfigured to best suit the changing needs of the building. Colourful and flooded with light, it’s hoped that these areas will be at the heart of the community.

There are two affordable, high quality restaurants on site, The Kitchen, which is an all-day deli café, and Box Noodle, which offers a fresh take on Asian-fusion cooking. A state of the art fitness centre will be opening soon, below the main accommodation.

Design: Ab Rogers Design
Architect: Ernesto Bartolini, DA Studios
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Praline Design
CLIENT: Grosvenor House Group PLC
CONTRACTOR: HG Construction

The post Scape student housing
by Ab Rogers Design appeared first on Dezeen.

Walker, who also consults for Zaha Hadid Architects, replaces architect Nigel Coates, who retired in the summer - read about that here.

See more stories about Ab Rogers here.

Here's the full press release from the Royal College of Art:

AB ROGERS AND CHARLES WALKER TO JOIN THE RCA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

The Royal College of Art has announced that two new Heads of Programme are to be appointed to its newly formed School of Architecture. Charles Walker and Ab Rogers will take up their posts in the summer term 2012 in Architecture and Interior Design respectively.

Ab Rogers is a London-based designer known for a wide-ranging international practice. A former cabinet-maker, Rogers earned his MA in design from the Royal College of Art. He has lectured widely and held various teaching roles, including in the RCA Design Products department, where he ran Platform 9 with Tord Boontje. In 1997 he cofounded Kitchen Rogers Design (KRD) with Shona Kitchen. Kitchen and Rogers' projects included the Comme des Garçons store in Paris, the Al-Ostoura luxury department store in Kuwait City, and the Michel Guillon flagship store in London. In 2004, he founded Ab Rogers Design (ARD), now an established studio that plays with colour, materials and function to inject a sense of poetry, magic and wonder into the everyday world.

ARD’s multifaceted work includes designing for hotels, restaurants, retail environments, domestic interiors, museum exhibitions, websites and brands; past clients include the Pompidou Centre, Tate Modern, Science Museum, the Australian Centre for Moving Image, Conde Nast, Pizza Express, Price Waterhouse Cooper and Parc1, a mixed-use development in Seoul.

Charles Walker is an architect, structural engineer and industry leader on the effects of digital technology on modern architectural design and construction. Having first studied architecture at the University of Waterloo in Canada he then received an MSc in structural engineering from Imperial College London. Charles has been teaching at the Architectural Association’s School of Architecture since 2003 where his students design and build the annual AA summer pavilion.

Walker has worked at the forefront of the current international architectural discourse with many of the worlds leading architects including: Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Oscar Niemeyer and Renzo Piano. Early in his career Walker worked in a number of architectural offices including Richard Horden Associates, Michael Hopkins and Partners and Ron Arad Associates. He has also worked in design based engineering offices Whitby and Bird where he designed the Merchants Bridge in Manchester winning an Institution of Structural Engineers Special Award and Ove Arup + Partners where he co-founded in 2000 the Advanced Geometry Unit. In early 2007 Charles left Arup to found from-work projects and to join Zaha Hadid Architects where he currently consults.

The two new Heads of Programme join the Royal College of Art during a period of expansion as the College completes its new campus development. The College’s strategic plan aims to widen the Masters’ programme to advance new developments in design and art, ensuring 21st century relevance; consolidate research excellence; and strengthen the culture of design innovation and entrepreneurialism with closer links to industry. The new MA in Interior Design will receive its first intake of students in September 2012.

Professor Alex de Rijke, Dean of the School of Architecture said: “I am excited about these two appointments to the School of Architecture. Both are internationally recognised practitioners as well as skilled teachers. Charles combines wide ranging experience in architecture with an equally strong background in structural engineering and Ab’s impressive track record in embracing new materials and technologies will be especially valuable in framing and launching our new Interior Design programme.”

Ab Rogers said: “I’m delighted to have the opportunity to head up the new Interior Design programme. I plan to create an inspiring and purposeful course that deals with space and the object – abstract and concrete – on a human scale, and this is why I particularly look forward to contributing to a multidisciplinary School of Architecture along with Alex and Charles.”

Charles Walker said: "It's a privilege and an honour to be taking this post at the RCA, which is unique among architectural programmes in being positioned within such a rich and diverse art and design context and tradition. I am very much looking forward to working with Alex and Ab."

Professor Susannah Hagan completes the team, having been appointed as School Research Leader. Prior to joining the College, Susannah was Director of R/E/D (Research into Environment + Design), and Professor of Urban Studies and Director of the Office for Spatial Research at the University of Brighton. She has written and lectured extensively on the theory and practice of environmental design in relation to contemporary architecture and urban design. Susannah is a Fellow of the Institute for Urban Design, New York, and a member of the Royal Society of Arts, the International Development Network, Royal Town Planning Institute, the Newham Borough Design Review Panel, and the Urban Buzz Programme Committee. She was a finalist in the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Competition 2008/09.

The post Charles Walker and Ab Rogers to head up
architecture and interior design at RCA appeared first on Dezeen.

Customers can play their own music inside booths at this pizza restaurant in Richmond, UK, designed by Ab Rogers of London.

Created for restaurant chain Pizza Express, the interior features projections on either end wall and a central kitchen with suspended mirrors over the counters so diners can watch their pizza being prepared.

Domes hanging over the booths allow customers to alter the lighting and plug in their own mp3 players.

Customers can attract a waiter's attention by pressing a button to illuminate the dome above their table.

See also: Little Chef by Ab Rogers.

Here's some more information from Pizza Express:

Pizza Express have launched the Living Lab concept restaurant, designed by Ab Rogers, at their Richmond location in London where they are experimenting with just about everything, from design and acoustics to service and food.

The brief was to celebrate the skill of authentic handmade pizza and also expand the concept of feeding great conversation and reconnect with the pioneering spirit of the founder Peter Boizot who opened the first PizzaExpress in Soho in 1965, and who worked with lots of the artists, musicians and designers of the sixties. The creative team included Italian chef Antonio Romani; singing baker Liliana (who runs the Food Lab); fashion Designer Matthew Miller (juggling us with London Fashion Week); professor of accoustics Sergio Luzzi from Florence; theatre director and conversation expert Karl James; graphic designers GTF (also working on all the graphics for Frieze at the moment); Mumsnet co-founder Carrie Longton; DJ Nick Luscombe (Radio 3 & Resonance FM); games designers Spiral; film and soundscape artist Dominic Robson; Writers Rob & Molly (who have just set up We All Need Words); and artist and designer Enzo Apicella. Enzo, now 88, designed the original PizzaExpress in 1965 and the famous logo and painted a huge mural for us (ably assisted by Tom Saunders).

The project has covered re-looking at everything from design and furniture, crockery and acoustics, opening hours and uniforms, to all the food, wine and service. The kitchen is more like a stage with all the ingredients on show, and pizzaiolos who do acrobatics with the dough. The restaurant's full of cutting edge accoustics, including conversation booths with domes designed for to create the perfect audio environment for talking to one another. Inside you can dim the lights, play your own music by plugging your ipod into the docking station, and if the customer need serving they just press a light and the dome glows. Projections play at either end of the restaurant (currently silently screening a series of 1960s italian films), and a soundscape plays in the toilets. There is also a whole new graphic style - including taking the idea of the stripes of the pizzaiolo's shirts and using it in suprising ways and creating a new typography based on old newspapers. There's a creative area to keep kids happy and quiet with a big shared drawing table, books and interactive games to help teach them about food and ingredients.

Ab Rogers said of the project “we’ve been developing a new layout for the restaurant, a layout which brings colour and energy, a layout that puts food first and displays the food, a layout which has the chef in the centre.”

See also:

.

Little Chef by Ab Rogers Design	Pizza Perez by Francesco Moncada	More restaurants and bars

The post Living Lab by Ab Rogers for Pizza Express appeared first on Dezeen.

London designers Ab Rogers Design have designed the interior of a Little Chef restaurant in Popham, UK, for chef Heston Blumenthal.

Inspired by "influences from the history of roadside eating,"  the interior comprises red vinyl upholstery, and white ceramic tiles with cooking tips and illustrations printed on them.

In collaboration with graphic design studio Praline, ARD also created the graphic design of the menu and uniform, signage and food packaging.

The designers installed "an interactive extract sound, all about food, which triggers when the customer enters the toilets," created in collaboration with Dominic Robson of Robson & Jones, to encourage visitors using the toilets at the roadside restaurant to stay for a meal.

The restaurant was redesigned for a Channel 4 documentary called Big Chef takes on Little Chef, broadcast last week.

Here's some more information from  Ab Rogers Design:

--

Ab Rogers Design (ARD) was appointed by Michelin star chef Heston Blumenthal and commissioned by Little Chef to design a new future-facing Little Chef restaurant ready for the 21st Century.

Heston Blumenthal and ARD’s new Little Chef in Popham is a multi-sensual oasis, an escape which reflects the best of modern 21st century Britain: fresh food, good service, and a positive outward attitude.

With a limited timeframe of three months from commission to completion, and a comparatively tight budget, ARD embraced the challenge of redesigning all the elements within the Little Chef brand, from the interior design of the restaurant to the graphics, from the menu and the uniform, to the signage and food packaging.

Working closely with Heston and the Little Chef team, ARD has developed the concept in collaboration with graphic design studio Praline for the branding and graphics, and Dominic Robson of Robson & Jones for the sound and interactive elements.

The result is an inspirational eatery, which engages and excites the old customers whilst welcoming and inspiring the new.

Drawing influences from the history of roadside eating – from coaching staging posts to turnpike taverns, early inns with their ‘snugs’ to chop houses, from eel and pie shops to American diners – a vocabulary of common materials and prefabricated details combined with timeless elements has been created. Key features are the use of laminate, vinyl upholstery, ceramic tiles, and pendant lighting.

These simple materials have been put together in a sensitive manner. For example, the walls are covered in a grid of traditional butchers tiles, but at the same time they are contaminated by splashes of colour or some even have cooking tips and illustrations printed on them.

The tiled floor grid flows up to form an innovative micro-mosaic bar.

Standard perforated ceiling tiles make reference to a blue sky with a flock of seagulls flying across it. The sky feature connects all three of the restaurant’s dining areas: the Booth area, the Communal table area and the ‘Grab and stay’ lounge style low table area.

ARD and Praline have developed a palette for Little Chef’s new brand colour as part of the new brand identity by focusing on a new spectrum of red, and using Charlie, the much-loved brand character of Little Chef.

ARD has brought Charlie into the 21st Century, by minimising the design and making it coloured and mirrored.

ARD has created a sophisticated yet humorous and intimate graphic identity that calibrates the history of Little Chef whilst uniting nostalgia with the modern colours and materials of the 21st century.

This is displayed in every element of the new brand, from the uniform to the restaurant, into the toilets, onto the signage and far beyond.

Another of the issues to be solved was to convert the many passers-by who stopped to use the toilet without spending a penny. ARD’s aim was to capture the imagination of these potential clients.

The new scheme incorporates a unique and unforgettable experience: Cooking tips screen-printed on the walls, the ambient sounds of the kitchen in the lobby, the aroma of coffee passing through the space, and an interactive extract sound, all about food, which triggers when the customer enters the toilets.

Together with Heston’s special new menu, ARD has turned Little Chef into a bright, clean space filled with wonderment and excitement.

A place where one can happily escape and discover a new world, a new environment, new tastes and new smells. A scene of discovery with nostalgic corners with a sense of modernity that engages the past, and celebrates the future.

The Little Chef, Popham is a trial site and will operate as a blueprint for future roll outs following customer feedback.

Name project
Little Chef, Popham

Used materials
Laminate / Ceramic Tiles / Vinyl / Printed perforated ceiling panels / Mosaic tiles / Sounds and Colour

Construction methods
Assembled and Applied (Nothing’s been moulded). By ATLAS

Furniture manufacturer
Ethos Design Limited

Lighting manufacturer
Liminaires Limited (Consultant)

Floor manufacturer
Ceramic Tiles (Domus Tiles) + Glass Mosaic tiles (Domus Tiles) + Vinyl Floor (Altro)

Wall manufacturer
Ceramic Tile Wall (Domus Tiles)

Floor area (m2)
Approx 210 squared metres (Including Servery and Toilet)

Costs (€)
Approx £ 115,000 -> € 130,000 (Including New WC services and full architectural refurbishment)

Budget
Approx £ 100,000 -> € 113,000

Date of completion
21st November 2008

The post Little Chef by Ab Rogers Design appeared first on Dezeen.

Click the play icon above to pay the podcast.

The exhibition, shown in these photos by Luke Hayes, gives a detailed account of collaborations between Rogers and his partners spanning 40 years.

See our earlier story for more information about the exhibition, which was on show at the Pompidou Centre in Paris until last month.

The post Richard Rogers in conversation with
Deyan Sudjic at the Design Museum appeared first on Dezeen.