The Paper Pavilion, which was inaugurated yesterday, is constructed in the university's Serrano garden and will serve as a multi-purpose space for events, meetings, talks and exhibitions.

The project had a restricted budget, so Shigeru Ban designed a system of cardboard roof trusses and columns which were cheap to install and can be easily recycled when the building is eventually dismantled.

The tubes were manufactured and waterproofed locally in Spain and were assembled by members of the surrounding community.

The IE School commissioned the pavilion, supported by the Japan Foundation. The opening event was a lecture by Ban entitled "Appropriate Architecture".

Tokyo architect Shigeru Ban has used cardboard to construct a number of pavilions and structures in recent years, which ties closely to his work on disaster relief projects. He is currently working on a cardboard cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, and has also built a pavilion with cardboard columns in Moscow and a temporary tower made of paper tubes.

See more architecture by Shigeru Ban on Dezeen or see more design with cardboard.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

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by Shigeru Ban appeared first on Dezeen.

Cristina Parreño Architecture worked with a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create the Paper Chandeliers installation in the VIP area of ARCOMadrid.

The white cardboard tubes were suspended from a wire mesh structure and the cables holding the tubes were cut to different lengths to create the varied topography.

Lights were fixed above the installation to shine down through the gaps in the tubes.

"The light was extremely simple – it was really the geometry of the surface that created the light effect," Parreño told Dezeen.

The team from MIT comprised James Coleman, Sharon Xu, Koharu Usui, Natthida Wiwatwicha and Hannah Ahlblad.

We've featured lots of paper installations on Dezeen, including a canopy of 11,000 patterned paper sheets and a tunnel made from hollow paper stars – see all paper design.

Other installations we've published lately include a wall of clocks that make patterns with their moving hands and a warehouse filled with luminous tissue paper clouds – see all installations.

Photographs are by Luis Asin.

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Architecture and MIT appeared first on Dezeen.

Spanish architects VAUMM designed the store for group discount voucher website Deskontalia as a place where customers can pick up their deliveries and find out about the latest offers.

Unlike most shops, the space has no products to display, so the architects were challenged with filling an empty room. Inspired by the cardboard boxes used to transport purchases, they developed a concept to cover the floor and walls with boxy wooden furniture and shelving.

"Cartons are converted into the measurement unit of the architectural proposal," explain the architects. "Small cartons are elements to generate a kind of sculpture that envelops the walls and roof to create different environments which users can interact with."

Most of the boxes are used as shelves that can be reconfigured to suit different displays. Others are made from wood and provide tables and stools where customers can sit and browse the website.

A reception counter lines the edge of the room and also resembles a pile of boxes.

Aside from the boxes, the shop's interior is kept simple, with existing walls and columns painted white and plants positioned beside the windows.

Other cardboard interiors include a cardboard meeting room for Bloomberg, a cardboard bank and a fold-out cardboard shop.

Spanish architects VAUMM are based in San Sebastian. Past projects by the firm include a golden culinary centre and an outdoor elevator.

Photography is by Aitor Ortiz.

Here's a project description from VAUMM:

Deskontalia store in Donostia - San Sebastian, Gipuzkoa, Spain.

When somebody thinks about a shop, he can hardly avoid thinking about the products sold inside, and therefore those products are those which give sense of the need for a space. What would it happen if that object of desire was any? What if no one?

For Deskontalia store, located in a urban downtown street, the sale has occurred even before one reaches the local. The space should be a pick up point for any product that one could imagine buying over the Internet, but even something else.

From that point of view the space should become not only a space to sell, but a space to be a meeting point between brand and people, an open space, a place of the city where an online business becomes a physical reality.

The store activity is linked to package traffic, cardboard containers in which travel purchased products, which are collected in this new architectural space. A small counter where to exchange these packages of hands, solves all the functional requirements of the trade.

The space has been treated as a white empty space where old items such as masonry walls or casting pillars are bathed in this colour, as well as more contemporary new resin pavement, in an attempt to transform the store not in a shop but in a store where different transformations may occur.

Cartons are converted into the measurement unit of the architectural proposal. Small cartons are elements to generate a kind of sculpture that envelops the walls and roof to create different environments which users can interact with.

Above: floor plan - click above for larger image

These packaging boxes incorporate the graphic image of the brand, a d-, like a strip on both sides, 90 degrees in space. Thus, the store gets a sculptural object at its scale by stacking the cartons with multiplications of their shapes and cubic components, qualified by the impression of the brand. Somehow it has been generated a kind of recycled space, in which low cost boxes transcend the value and meaning we could give to them individually, to become artistic and modulate the space when considered together.

The walls are not only boxes bookshelf but also part of the shell, the roof parts are not only sculptures but also shapes that break the echo sound of the store which also modulate the sound.

Above: ceiling plan - click above for larger image

Cartons are organized this way in which the white container has become the store, which can be moved at any time, changed or simply replaced by other objects. The cartons composition will be transformed as easily as the other part of the store, which is the Deskontalia web site, which is also shown in the store through two digital projections which interact with users.

Furniture is also involved in this changing condition, so its module-based design lets multiple configurations of the store, so you can have a lecture, read a newspaper, show a new product, or just hang out in internet.

Above: shelving concept - click above for larger image

The counter, stools and tables, somehow show the same packaging language, that besides also incorporates to the design other meanings such as low cost, the ephemeral, the changing and the casual, all of them concepts that underlie also the Internet purchase which serves to this commercial space.

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by VAUMM appeared first on Dezeen.

The Snug Vases come as a flat-pack, ready to be folded into shape and placed over a glass or bottle of water.

The vases come in two sizes and three colours – white, grey and copper.

Hanover-based snug.studio was founded in 2010 by interior designer Kerstin Reilemann and architect Berit Lüdecke.

Other angular vases we've featured on Dezeen include richly coloured vases made by a 3D printer and faceted vases that emerge from a custom-made machine.

We've also featured lots of projects using cardboard, such as a bicycle with a cardboard frame and wheels and ceiling lights made from scraps of corrugated cardboard – see all our stories about cardboard.

See all our stories about vases »
See all our stories about homeware »

Here's some more information from the designers:

The German design label snug.studio, based in Hannover, has designed this vase. It's a folding sheet made of brightly coloured cardboard. you can fold the geometric shape on your own. In combination with a small glass of water or a small bottle you will have a beatiful faceted vase for your flowers. It comes in two forms and three colors (white, grey and copper). Flat packed with assembly and ready to fold.

Snug.studio are Kerstin Reilemann, interior designer, and Berit Lüdecke, architect. Since 2010 they create design-products in their studio in Hannover, Germany. Clear, minimalist and classic, this is the style of snug. By shape, paint scheme and processing from ordinary materials such as plywood or laminate they develop high quality interior-products and jewellery. Each design tells his own story. "We always follow our intention and we have high ambitions for what we do. Everything what will go into production we would like to have for ourselves."

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by snug.studio appeared first on Dezeen.

Located in Poznań Plaza shopping mall in the city of Poznań, Poland, the Tube Tank was designed by Mode:lina Architekci to be low-cost and quick to construct.

The tank is built from over 900 cardboard tubes and held together with brightly coloured ratchet straps.

The architects settled on the material first and then discovered that a tank shape would be a simple and secure way to piece the cardboard together.

"When we did some experiments with strapping the tubes with ratchet straps, the most stable construction looked like a caterpillar tread – we decided to follow this look," architect Jerzy Woźniak told Dezeen.

The display cabinets for the posters and watches are made from chunky chipboard panels.

TRIWA sales assistants stand inside the tank to sell watches to passing customers.

Cardboard tubes have popped up in a few projects on Dezeen, including an installation in a London department store by Nicholas Grimshaw's studio and a Japanese boutique made of hanging cardboard tubes.

Previous projects by Mode:lina we've featured include a stark police station interior and a London soundscape played through tangled pipes, which we filmed as part of our Dezeen Platform micro-exhibition.

See all our stories about cardboard »
See all our stories about Mode:lina Architekci »
See all our stories about shops »

Photographs are by Mode:lina Architekci.

Here's some more information from the architects:

Once again mode:lina accepted a challenge, to create a temporary store for Swedish watch brand TRIWA. Goals, similar to previous year, were:
Use of renewable materials - Low cost
Speed of constructing
But above all, to further increase global brand awareness.

Previous cooperation between the two exceeded by far client’s expectations – pictures of the store were published around the globe, both online and offline.

Once more, designers decided to use a very well known raw material – paperboard. Only this time it was rolled into tubes. Over 900 of paper tubes, wrapped with ratchet-straps around cabinets built from raw OSB wood panels. That's how the Tube Tank was born. Meet Triwa Pop-Up store! See you at Poznań Plaza mall (Poland)!

Project: Tube Tank – TRIWA Pop-Up store
Design: mode:lina architekci (Paweł Garus & Jerzy Woźniak)
Project team: Paweł Garus, Jerzy Woźniak, Kinga Kin
Realisation: November / Listopad 2012
Area: 10 m2

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by Mode:lina Architekci appeared first on Dezeen.