News: British firm Foster + Partners has unveiled plans for two residential skyscrapers as part of a mixed-use development in north London.

The skyscrapers will form part of a cluster of residential towers proposed for the City Road area in Islington, including Dutch firm UNStudio's Canaletto building and another proposed by US architects SOM.

The 250 City Road project, led by property developers Berkeley Group, proposes the redevelopment of a 1.9 hectare site currently occupied by a cluster of commercial buildings.

Foster + Partners' plans include 800 homes across two towers, which, at 41 and 36 storeys in height, would be significantly taller than any other buildings in the surrounding area.

Additional buildings containing shops, cafes, restaurants and a community space would be arranged around a central public park and courtyard garden.

Berkeley Group initially employed London practice DSDHA to explore the potential of the site before a public consultation in July last year, after which the project was handed over to Foster + Partners.

The project team, which includes landscape architects Gillespies, has now submitted the planning application to the local council.

Last month UNStudio unveiled its own plans for a 30-storey residential skyscraper on City Road, which studio head Ben Van Berkel introduced to Dezeen at the launch event.

Elsewhere in London, Foster + Partners recently received planning permission for three residential towers on the south side of the river Thames near Lambeth Bridge.

The firm also recently completed a new gallery wing clad with golden pipes at the Lenbachhaus art museum in Munich and an airport terminal under a canopy of domes in Jordan – see all architecture by Foster + Partners.

The post Foster + Partners reveals plans for
two London skyscrapers appeared first on Dezeen.

Referencing ornate baroque decoration from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana created a series of items from jumbles of metal emblems and figures.

Gold and bronze keys, leaves, animals and figurines were all welded together to create elements such as the legs of stone tables and furry chairs.

Shades for floor and pendant lights were constructed in the same way, while small gold crocodiles pile up to form one of the candle holders.

Crafted in a Roman workshop specialising in bronze work, the detailed pieces were first shown at The Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris last year, though the small tables are now on show for the first time.

The Brazilian Baroque collection will be on show at David Gill St James’s, 2-4 King Street, London, until 15 June.

The duo recently exhibited five beds including one surrounded by hairy curtains in Milan and a series of items for Louis Vuitton in Miami.

See more design by the Campana Brothers »
See more architecture and design exhibitions »

Read on for the full press release:

Campana Brothers to show new ‘Brazilian Baroque' collection in first show at David Gill St James's, 1 May – 15 June 2013

Bernini meets Brazil as David Gill Galleries prepares to host a major exhibition of works by the internationally renowned designers, the Campana Brothers. Entitled Brazilian Baroque, the exhibition opens at David Gill St James’s, 2-4 King Street, London SW1Y 6QP from 1 May to 15 June 2013.

This Brazilian Baroque collection takes its inspiration from the intensively decorative and sumptuous Baroque style of the 17th and 18th centuries, combined with the Campana Brothers’ own take on Brazilian art and culture. The collection includes new coffee tables, to be shown for the first time at David Gill Galleries, as well as a selection of works first shown at The Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris last autumn.

The Brazilian Baroque collection introduces a strongly theatrical, gothic and sensual element to the Campana Brothers’ distinctive style. The pieces on show revel in a sense of luxury, channelling the glories of the Rococo period and its sumptuous gold and bronze decoration.

Each piece is made by craftsmen in a Roman workshop, specialising in bronze work, demonstrating magnificent skill in welding together a jumble of decorative motifs – keys, leaves, cupids and crocodiles - to create organic and playful shapes which are combined with other materials. The Campana Brothers’ fascination with the natural world and their sense of humour can be clearly seen, for example, in the tiny, detailed crocodiles, which can be seen clambering up the stem of the Candelabro Coccodrilli

David Gill says: ‘The work of the Campana Brothers never fails to surprise us. Their choice of material, research and use of found and created objects makes their work new and contemporary.’

Using the purest traditions of craft techniques, the Brazilian Baroque limited edition series is a personal allegory celebrating the riches of the Campana Brothers’ style.

This exhibition of Brazilian Baroque by the Campana Brothers will be on show at David Gill St James’s, 2-4 King Street, London SW1Y 6QP until 15 June.

The post Brazilian Baroque by the
Campana Brothers appeared first on Dezeen.

"We wanted to see what we could do with the 150-millimetre square-format tiles" Christian Ducker told Dezeen. "Our medley of references included graphics from New York in the 1950s and 1980s."

The tiles spell out "pizza" in large letters along the wall running from outside the restaurant parallel to the serving counter, though the top of the word is cut off by the ceiling.

Dark blue tiles cover the surfaces and seats along the same wall, while columns and beams are wrapped in yellow and red.

The late night pizza slice bar was converted from a nightclub so the architects had to start from scratch in the space.

"We completely gutted the whole place, took out all the flooring and built in a slope at the entrance," said Ducker. "The space is all tiled at the front, and they gradually fade towards the back where there are just a few clusters left."

"We left some exposed brickwork because we wanted the one-tile-thick insertion to be noticeable," he added.

The tiles extend out and around the building's entrance, branded with a red neon sign by graphic designers Studio Partyline.

Voodoo Ray's is named after a 1988 acid house track by UK artist A Guy Called Gerald, who switched on the sign at the restaurant's opening party.

Gundry & Ducker's other projects in London include a sushi restaurant in Soho and a blackened larch house extension south of the city.

Photography is by Hufton + Crow.

See more architecture and design by Gundry & Ducker »
See more restaurant interiors »
See all our stories in London »

Here some further details from the architects:

Voodoo Rays is a late night pizza slice shop and restaurant in Dalston East London.

The design is intended to sit within, and celebrate its location on Kingsland High Street, a typical inner London high street strip with its ad-hoc signs and frontages. Its neon signage and brightly light interior is intended to be part of the nighttime street scene.

The design of all surfaces is formed predominately from coloured  6" ceramic tiles. We wanted to form the interior as a sequence of volumes, reducing in scale and density to reveal the original building interior as you move towards the back of the shop. Each element is expressed in a different colour, the larger elements incorporating giant abstracted text.

A long pizza counter runs the length of the shop and projects beyond the shop frontage, which is recessed, so that the counter feels like part of the street. A hidden door leads to a basement club.

The design is intended to have multiple references taken from both East London and New York, and from between the 1950s -1980s. The references range from launderettes to pie shops, to seaside amusement arcades all of which are reinterpreted with a cartoon sensibility.

The post Voodoo Ray's by
Gundry & Ducker appeared first on Dezeen.

Following their earlier refit of Hostem's shop floor, James Russell and Hannah Plumb were asked to redesign the shop's subterranean level to provide a quieter space for displaying the brand's most important collections.

"We wanted the space to be different from upstairs: a discreet addition for the store's most cherished goods," Russell told Dezeen. "We opened the space up, painted it dark and dimmed the lighting; this created a calmness by making the corners and edges of walls disappear."

The designers added a few unique furniture pieces for displaying different garments and accessories. These include a wardrobe that appears to be collapsing and a Chesterfield sofa with a table growing out of its centre.

"Our work often starts with things we love that are broken and damaged," explains Russell. "When we found the sofa it had no seat and was just this filthy rotten leather, but we didn't want to just reupholster it into another Chesterfield, we wanted to celebrate it."

Other furniture pieces include a Wurlitzer harp case converted into a display case for a single garment and an old crate formerly used for the transportation of pigs. There's also a fitting room, screened behind a thick layer of draped fabric.

The Chalk Room is currently dedicated to Hostem's bespoke service, which provides made to measure clothing and accessories, but shoppers can also order furniture by JamesPlumb. This includes chests of drawers made from stacks of suitcases and chandeliers made from clusters of antique lampshades.

JamesPlumb designed the original interior for Hostem in 2010. The project won the retail category at the inaugural Inside awards and Dezeen interviewed Russell and Plumb about their design as part of the event.

See more design by JamesPlumb, including the brand's most recent collection.

Here are a few words from JamesPlumb:

The Chalk Room by JamesPlumb
Bespoke Menswear Store Redchurch Street, London

JAMESPLUMB created this discreet addition to their award winning interior design for menswear store Hostem in East London.

Briefed to create an environment to celebrate the craft and skill of the store's most cherished designers, they created a quietly removed space, downstairs from the main showroom.

A brand new collection of one off assemblage form the perfect theatrical showcase - including an antique Wurlitzer harp case transformed into a wardrobe for a single garment, a weather worn Chesterfield married with a table, and a crate formerly used for carrying pedigree pigs, that now presents handmade footwear.

The post The Chalk Room
by JamesPlumb appeared first on Dezeen.

Currently under construction in the north-west corner of the British Museum's Bloomsbury quadrangle, the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre will provide new galleries, storage facilites and conservation studios within a nine-storey structure conceived as a cluster of pavilions.

Referencing both the nineteenth and twentieth century architecture of the museum, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners designed a steel-framed building clad with a mixture of stone and glass. The height of the roof will align with the eaves of the existing building, while three of the storeys are to be buried underground.

The Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery will occupy the ground floor of the new building and will be accessed via the north side of the Norman Foster-designed Great Court. The column-free rectangular gallery will feature a large door to allow access for larger exhibits, as well as a series of floor-to-ceiling windows that can be easily screened to protect light-sensitive objects. The space could also be subdivided to house smaller exhibitions.

Other floors of the building will be dedicated to conservation of the museum's collection. The uppermost floor will contain top-lit studios for working with smaller artefacts, such as metal, glass or ceramic objects, while additional laboratories and offices will surround a two-storey atrium in the lower levels of the building and will be used for examining larger objects.

The three basement floors will function as a storage and lending hub for over 200,000 items. Each floor will contain a study room, plus a 16-metre truck lift will allow items to be transported in and out of the building.

"The World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre represents a vitally important combination of a purpose-built exhibition gallery and a celebration of the amazing behind-the-scenes activities," said architect Graham Stirk. "These facilities will be contained in a bespoke twenty-first century building that provides the next stage of the museum's evolution."

The World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre will complete in March 2014 and the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery is scheduled to open with an exhibition dedicated to the Vikings.

London firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) is led by Richard Rogers in partnership with Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour. Other recent projects by the firm in London include the NEO Bankside apartment blocks beside the Tate Modern art gallery and a fabric walkway over the roof of the O2 Arena. See more architecture by RSHP on Dezeen.

Here's an update from the British Museum:

British Museum celebrates progress on the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre development

With less than a year to go until the first exhibition opens in the new exhibitions gallery, the British Museum today reveals the extent of progress on the construction of its new capital project, the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre (WCEC). Designed by Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners (RSHP) and constructed by Mace, the new Centre will cement the British Museum's reputation as a world leader in the exhibition, conservation, examination and analysis of cultural objects from across the globe. The WCEC will enable the Museum to build on current successes, to store, conserve, study and display the collection for the future.

Located in the north-west corner of the Museum's Bloomsbury estate, the WCEC is one of the largest redevelopment projects in the Museum's 260 year history. The Centre will provide a new public exhibitions gallery, state-of-the-art laboratories and studios, world class stores for the collection, as well as facilities to support an extensive UK and international loan programme. This will rationalise and greatly improve the Museum's operations on-site, and modernise facilities 'behind the scenes'. These will allow the Museum to extend support to our UK and International partners in terms of increasing capacity for staff training and joint projects.

The building consists of five pavilions (one of which is sunk into the ground) and the design is sensitive to the British Museum's existing architecture, connecting to the historic building whilst maintaining its own identity. The exhibitions gallery is due to open in early March 2014 with a new exhibition devoted to the Vikings (supported by BP). It is anticipated the conservation studios, science laboratories, loans hub and stores will be fitted out and occupied by summer 2014.

The total cost of the project is £135 million. The Linbury Trust, established by John Sainsbury (Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover KG), and the Monument Trust, established by Simon Sainsbury have together committed £25 million towards the project, one of the largest gifts to the arts in the UK in recent decades, which will be used to fund the exhibition gallery. The Heritage Lottery Fund has committed £10 million towards the project. Other significant benefactors include the Wolfson Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the A.G. Leventis Foundation and the family of Constantine Leventis, the Clothworkers' Foundation, the Fidelity U.K. Foundation, Sir Siegmund Warburg's Voluntary Settlement, the Band Trust and others as well as continued support from the Department for Culture Media and Sport (worth £22.5 million over 4 years). A fundraising campaign from the British Museum Members is underway.

The post World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre
by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners appeared first on Dezeen.