First step from being a construction site to becoming a home

This post was written back in mid January 2012....life gets busy, things keep on happening, and I never got around to finish it..
So here it is on Seatondale flooring.
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Finally today we are starting on the corridor flooring. 

Although the timber boards themselves have been transported to site from mid-December, in order for the timber boards to accustom to the indoor condition, it was necessary to keep them on site for over 2 weeks before laying them in place.

Because we are installing flooring on top of the uneven concrete slab, firstly we have to start with building the levelled base.  The base battens were built with approximately 30cm spacing, but if they are not all at the same level, the finished floor will not be even at the end.  Like in the photos, line by line, the floorers patiently checked the levels.  It is a painfully time consuming process.  We really had a lot of respect for their professionality.

The first row.  If this one is not straight, everything else follows will not be straight.  The floorers set up the straight line with red laser light, and place the floor board parallel to it.  We could sense the seriousness of the floorers.

After confirming the first row, the floorers moved on to the second and third row swiftly. 

Normally, every 6 rows there will need to allow for an expansion gap of 2.4mm.  However because this is the corridor, so we decided to place the expansion gap in the centre of the corridor.  

Because timber is a living material, it expands and contracts according to the weather; this gap of 2.4mm absorbs this timber movement.

Here the corridor flooring is finished.  As we are using floorboards of 20mm thickness, simply by walking on the new floor, from the foot we can sense this specific feeling created by solid timber.  There are also timber flooring which is engineers and manufactured, which although tricks our eyes, it can not trick the feelings on our skin.  Our senses as human beings do not lie.

This is Ping Wong, the floorer we are working with this time.  We have worked with him on more than 3 projects so far.  We have requested him to carry out the sample test of different finishing paint.

This time we have decided to specify a water-based finishing paint.  

In order to make something good, it is essential to carry out analogue tests like this.

Japanese version of this post can be viewed HERE.

Sneakerology on InDesign Live

Sneakerology and the news of its Frame Moooi Award shortlisting is announced on InDesign Live.

indesignlive.com

Amongst the 10 shortlisted projects, we are the only one from Australia..

Hello Philippe Starck!

The Frame Moooi Award has announced the 10 shortlisted projects, amongst 891 submissions over 79 countries - and Facet Studio is in the top 10!!

www.frameweb.com 

Here is a description of the award from the designboom website:

the FRAME moooi award 2012 is hosted by dutch furniture company moooi in collaboration with FRAME magazine. it's the year’s biggest inaugural interior design award and will be concluded in milan during april’s salone del mobile fair.
the award celebrates the 10 years of production and exhibition activities of renowned design brand moooi. designboom has been the exclusive online media partner and a whopping 891 submissions were received by designers in 79 countries. ... participants were responding to the brief which asked designers and architects to submit interior space design along with furniture and lighting objects that were CUSTOM-developed in a worldwide context.
the contest has been judged by french designer philippe starck, he selected the shortlist with an anonymous approach, in that he didn’t know the designers’ names or countries of origins. ‘I’m often invited to judge competitions,’ he says. ‘I’m happy to say that the level of this one is clearly higher than average, a very nice surprise.’ the designs and their creators will be featured in the may/june issue of FRAME magazine.

Facet Studio custom designed "Shoe Box" for the project Sneakerology.
The 'Shoe box" is made of plywood and resin, each has its own dedicated light source to individually illuminate the displayed item.
The plywood wall of the box houses all the electrical wiring and structural fixing, which enables the "Shoe boxes' to be stacked together and to be structurally strong enough to resist people pushing against the stacked "Shoe Box" wall when it is used as partition screen or shop facade.

Here are a few links if you are interest to find out more about the Frame Moooi Award:

www.framemoooi.com

www.designboom.com

And to find out more about Sneakerology:

Facet Studio official website

Facet Studio blog

Seatondale teaser

A couple of weeks ago the photo shoot for Seatondale interior took place.

The weather held up..... the light condition was perfect.... and some samples of the photos came in.

(c) Story Photography

So here is one for your viewing pleasure.

We have been extremely busy lately, but will try to organise the photos so they can be updated in our website... keep an eye out!

Turning page

Our project Streetology has been included in German magazine, Page, as a leading examples amongst other international projects to show how the celebration of a vending machine culture and a new creativity has taken the idea further into new sales concepts for stores, marketing and communication all over the world (projects from Amsterdam, Okinawa, Frankfurt, US to Sydney.)

Here is a translation of the article for the curious, courtesy of my lovely German friend Nataly:

"Analog Info Graphic"
The shop design for Streetology in Sydney makes reference to the vending machine concept.  Olivia Shih and Yoshihito Kashiwagi who are running the Architecture Office Facet Studio in Sydney have come up with a concept where T Shirts are displayed in transparent tubes. They are sorted by colours and stacked in 2,550 vending tubes. When a customer buys a T Shirt in green all green T Shirts drop down a spot, effectively creating an analog info graphic display; the bar with the most purchased colour is decreasing the fastest.
The shop design, in cooperation with Simpson Design Associates and Agency babekuehl is celebrating a democratic attitude/ Zeitgeist expressing what is popular on the street - as the name says "Streetology".

Let there be light 2

Following on from previous blog entry, we moved on to instal light fitting to the corridor.

from the day of photoshoot

The corridor has a finished ceiling of 3.4m, it is 1.7m wide and 11.5m long... something one would not expect in an ordinary house (but then again, who said Seatondale is an ordinary house?).

opening up the package to understand the wiring requirement

cutting the cable housing which was too long..it came with 2.5m and we only need 1m 

threading through the base plate

fixing the base plate

the assistant has to hold the light fitting while the electrician does the wiring

 assistant: "quick...I can't hold this anymore....!!"

the assistant also needs to stablise the electrician on the high ladder

 finally the first fitting is up, then we need to ensure the fitting is levelled on all sides

"...a bit lower there..." 

starting up the second fitting installation.. first measure the centre of the fitting

inside the ceiling there is no adequate structure to hold up the fitting, so we need to add an extra support (timber piece) to make sure the fitting is not only supported on the plasterboard (the plasterboard is not strong enough to hold the weight of the fitting)

making sure the timber is at the right place

this time the assistant knows to place the fitting on his head rather than holding with his hands..this way it is easier

this one was relatively fast in installation

 two down, one more to go

cutting the ceiling

careful.. careful....

 

checking if all corners are the same distance from the ceiling (the red thing on the light fitting is the level)

 

...and if all corners are the same distance from the floor (with construction, especially old houses like Seatondale, it is very likely that walls are not straight ceilings are not levelled, to name a few)

lets tuck this wire in..

after almost 4 hours the 3 light fitting are finally installed!

Let there be light

On Saturday we were finally able to instal light fitting to Seatondale.

To contrast and enhance the oldness of Seatondale, we have selected the sleek fittings from Kreon in the corridor, and modern yet soft fittings from Axo Lightecture range in the major rooms.  Throughout all the rooms we have designed new joinery with integrated light....which shall be explained in another entry.

The entire installation took 5 very long hours........

So, on the day, we started out with the light fittings inside the major rooms.

first, remove the original light fittings..

make sure we have the right length of cable, so that the light suspends at the height we want (we decided that the bottom of the light is to be in line with the top of the existing doors)

do majority of the cabling first to minimise amount of work on the ladder

up it goes!  Quick lets connect the cables

screw in the base plate through to the ceiling substrate

connecting the suspension wires and putting in the light bulb - the central cable is only for electricity, it is not strong enough to carry the light fitting.

wrap up the light again to make sure it stays nice and clean until the construction is over

Going on to the next room...

This time it is quicker because we have done it once already

Voila!

Up to here it took about 1 hour for the 2 fittings.

Installation for the corridor lights to be continued in the next post....

Deep..

Streetology has been published in the Mexican lifestyle magazine, DEEP.

Cover

 

To see or to be seen

After attempting to take photos ourselves, we finally decided to organize a professional photoshoot for Uchi Lounge.
Today we did the first round of the "empty space" shots, and will come back for "patronized shots" later in the week.

It is a bit of a dilemma...
We architects depend on photographers to record and showcase our architectural work, and we have certain visions we would like to present through photography. At the same time the same architectural work, when seen through different eyes, can be interpreted differently. There exists a fine balance between "make sure our vision is communicated" and "freedom of interpretation from fresh eyes".

I guess I am still curious about how others view our work.. Looking forward to the photos.