Mikou Design Studio of Paris have won a competition to renovate a theatre in Dunkerque, France.

Called Théatre le Bateau Feu, the building will be clad in golden-coloured perforated metal, rising in stepped volumes from the square on which it is situated.

It will contain a concert hall, smaller theatre, practice hall, dressing rooms, storage and offices, as well as the foyer, cafe, bar and gift shop.

Here’s some more information from Mikou Design Studio:

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“A theatre as an open, structuring urban venue”

We conceived the new Bateau Feu theatre in Dunkirk both as an open urban venue – which is welcoming by the diversity of the complementary programme of events and activities that it provides and their strategic orientation in the urban space – and as a structuring civic building and arts amenity located on the Place du Général de Gaulle square.

By its location on Place du Général de Gaulle, the Bateau Feu theatre orchestrates several scales and dimensions, with four free façades that face onto and react to various different urban situations: an intimate domestic scale on the west for housing and the planted garden, a public scale on Rue du Jeu de Paume, a developing future major thoroughfare onto which the shops of the future shopping centre face, and a non-institutional scale on Place du Général de Gaulle which questions the expression of a new contemporary theatre in the city.

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On the east, the façade of the theatre’s large hall faces onto the urban space in an architectural and spatial composition which links together the inside and outside of the amenity.

On the south, the theatre “enters the city”, welcoming the public in the flow of spaces designed on the urban site. The open, generous entrance foyer – which is itself in dialogue and spatially connected with the large hall on the ground floor – and the small hall, the café bar, the bookshop and the lounge areas on a south-east diagonal which links together these social meeting-places.

The glazed monumental staircase leading to the raised foyer and to the upper entrance to the large hall, placed on the south façade on the side of the entrance esplanade, also participates in this spatial scenography of the theatre’s significant spaces. Visually, it opens the space on the underside of the forum pierced by large voids, allowing through top lighting and revealing the volume of the large hall. A chandelier designed like a lighted canopy increases the theatrical effect and corresponds to the vibrations of the internal space.

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Expression and materiality

The renovated theatre is a unified building that is arranged in steps that descend to the square in a succession of light, vibrant volumes from the stage-house to the foyer.

The architectural expression chosen for the theatre’s façades is a perforated metal cladding in a range of luminous ochre tones which matches the mystery and magic of the theatre.

The successive setbacks of stepped volumes reveal a series of large illuminated “frames” that face towards the square. An artificial lighting system shall be placed in these frames, between the rain barrier and the perforated metal cladding, to create night lighting and to visually enhance the theatre and the square.

On the west, in the garden, the building melts into the intimacy of the housing with an anthracite brick plinth that matches the scale of the block of housing and creates a visual distance from the perforated metal elements located in the background.

This new theatre is open to everyone. Its extension and rehabilitation provides an opportunity for experimenting the effects of architectural and urban renovation on the public.

It offers a variety of spaces and provides a multitude of possibilities for using, occupying and experiencing the various spaces related to the theatre and its annexes, to cater for different types of people and allow different circulation flows of people at the same time.

Mikou Design Studio is a place of creation and experimentation in architecture and its inter-disciplinary cross-fertilisation. We work in a continuous workshop spirit with a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, graphic artists, scenographers and town planners from very different cultural backgrounds.

Every project is an excuse for re-questioning and redefining the meaning of a brief, a function, and an urban, social and human context, in order to invent new ways of living, places for sharing and gathering that are more sensitive and more sensual, and which stimulate feelings.

Our aim is to get away from preconceptions of form and function in order to transmit more and better.

Mikou Design Studio is currently involved in a large number of projects throughout France, Germany and Morocco, with a focus on cultural, educational, housing and offices.

The two partners, Salwa and Selma Mikou were born in Fes Marocco. After attending school in Paris (Paris Belleville) and Lausanne (EPFL), they received their diploma on Architecture and Urban design in 2000.

During 2000 to 2005 they worked at RPBW (Renzo Piano Building workshop) and AJN (Ateliers Jean Nouvel) Paris where they were in charge of international projects in Abudhabi (Lulu Island), Doha (Urban design of Doha waterfront), Los Angeles (Lacma museum), Seoul (Samsung Chairman house), Beirut (Condominium offices and hotel), Rabat (Bouregreg Valley), Kuwait (Performing Art Center and hotels), London ( legal and general offices).

They co-founded Mikou Design Studio in 2005.

Dunkerque Theater
Competition November 2009
Mikou Design Studio architect
Winning entry
Area 4500 sqm
Program Concert Hall, Black box Theater, Foyer, Practice hall, Dressing room, Backstage,
Storage, café, bar, gift shop, offices
Budget 15 Millions Euros

London studio drdharchitects are exhibiting a miniature city made of clay at the Shenzhen & Hong Kong bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.

Called A Model City, the installation comprises 1500 models of buildings created in workshops with 500 school children in Shenzhen.

The children were each given a clay block with the proportions of a brick and asked to decorate it with windows and doors.

Each model house was inscribed with a code on the base and coated in a white glaze before it was positioned on a white felt grid, laid out by the children.

The biennale began on Sunday 6 December and continues until 23 January 2010.

More about drdharchitects on Dezeen: Bodø Kulturhus and Library

Here’s some text from drdharchitects:

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A ‘Model City’ – drdharchitects
2009 Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture

Our proposal for the Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture seeks to address the individual and collective lives of the inhabitants, and future inhabitants, of the World’s big cities. This seems of particular relevance given the extraordinary and rapid growth of Chinese cities like Shenzhen, as the country goes through a dramatic process of urbanisation. The project focuses on the physical city which most of us actually occupy. Rather than the buildings that become symbolic of a city’s individuality, it considers those anonymous and generic structures that make up the fabric of everyday life and which, as a result of increasingly universalised processes of procurement, seem to characterise the urban hinterland of metropolitan life, the world over.

With the help of local school children from Shenzhen we proposed the creation of a miniature city, made of clay. We wanted to engage local school children in imagining their own city. The process started by asking them to think about their home, through building a collection of miniature clay houses. We asked them a series of questions such as where an entrance or window might be; how these played a part in defining the overall appearance of their buildings and how it might speak to its neighbours. It concluded by asking them to consider the individual house as part of the collective city, how it might be laid out, its patterns and the relationships between things.

Ten workshops were organised in local schools across Shenzhen where 500 children participated in the making of the clay houses. Repetitive clay blocks based on the proportions of western bricks were manufactured by a local pottery school, YoYo Workshop in three sizes using traditional techniques. Smaller blocks for younger children and larger blocks for older ones. Each block was interpreted as either long and low or taller and more tower-like. Each child used wooden clay stamps and tools to decorate their houses. Collectively, the 1500 buildings produced recall a latterday terracotta army for a new China.

The houses were painted with a white glaze giving an “ivory white” appearance that reinforced the collective identity of the model city. Through decorating and the firing process each house became more singular and individual as subtle deformations occurred. Each child was photographed with their finished house which contained a code inscribed on its base as a record.

The houses sit on a surface of white felt squares representing the grid of the contemporary city on which the individual houses are placed. A workshop on site allowed the children to plan out their model city. Long boulevards, public squares, crescents and wide open spaces represent ideas about the way the city could be laid out. Alongside the model city an atlas of portrait photographs of every child with their houses was hung from a wall, relating the anonymous sea of houses to a particular individual.

The model city could have many meanings; it might suggest either an absence or the potential for craft in the making of the contemporary city. The ivory white appearance highlights the anonymous nature of cities as the background within which life exists. On closer inspection however, the variations in tone and form that result from the traditional process of firing used, alongside the subtle impressions of window openings and patterns inscribed in the facades by the children, offer each building an expression of individuality and identity. In doing so, perhaps it suggests a reconsideration of the values that we use both to plan and to reflect upon our urban environments. With the help of the children of Shenzhen, our exhibit seeks to critique and explore the delicate, but necessary balance between the universal and the particular.

Here’s a selection of our favourite Christmas e-cards sent in by designers and photographers, including this one from Duccio Malagamba.

Sebastian Jansson

Moritz Waldemeyer

CTRLZAK

Wolff Olins. Watch the movie here.

Karim Rashid

Zaha Hadid

Droog

Gallery Fumi

Normann Copenhagen

Steve Double

Une collection disponible à partir de janvier 2010.

Yves Béhar of San Francisco design studio fuseproject has unveiled plans for the third generation of the One Laptop Per Child project.

The latest version of the affordable computer – which will retail for an estimated $75 and which is called XO-3 – is a table-format device with a semi-flexible plastic screen.

The XO-3 is expected to ship in 2012.

See previous stories about the One Laptop Per Child project on Dezeen:

XOXO laptop (May 2008)
Yves Béhar wins Design of the Year award for One Laptop Per Child Project (March 2008)
One Laptop Per Child Charity Auction (December 2007)

Here’s some info from fuseproject:

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Two years ago, around this time of year the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop was launched with Nicholas Negroponte.  Now more than one million laptops have been distributed to children around the world to help further the mission of providing education and access to information for all… like in Uruguay where every public school child between 6 and 12 years old has one.

While the distribution of OLPC XO continues, today we and OLPC are presenting the XO-3 (http://www.fuseproject.com/#blogEntry79). Our new design features an all plastic tablet screen which is semi-flexible and extremely durable (compared to current glass screens which crack upon impact), and just like the original XO, the display can be optimized in both transmissive and reflective modes for indoor and outdoor lighting conditions.  The XO-3 supports many use scenarios to fulfill kids’ learning needs: from horizontal book mode to portrait reading mode, to multi-touch, so many hands can play and learn together on the same screen, to a full-touch keyboard and a back facing camera.

Design studio Designerette of London and Amsterdam have created a scaled-up version of a doll’s house tea service.

Called Mini, the full-size teapot, cups and saucers are made of porcelain and retain the shape of the tiny originals.

Here’s some text from the designers:

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Here’s some more

Driven by the influence scale has on the image of our daily use objects, Mini is originated from a porcelain miniature dollhouse teaset, brought back to human scale to fulfill its original function.

Designerette is a young design studio, currently working in London and Amsterdam. The works balance between art, craft and design. They contain recognition and estrangement at the same time. We are showing things that could not be, but try to put them in reality anyway to make the observer think about all those ‘things’ we surround ourselves with. If we are drinking tea, then why not from a pretty cup ?

The transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional and the overlap between the dimensions fascinates. The playing with scale and tactility challenges us to make new designs, trying to figure out how far we can go in bringing the real to fake, unrealistic, as if drawn.

To use that estrangement to the fullest without losing concept and function is the challenge. The works are mainly three dimensional, but based on drawings and graphics, it speaks the language of things that are not real to persuade them into reality after all.

There is a transitional time when dusk fades into night, when manmade and natural light intermingle each other. View from a certain height, not low but not high, reveals commercial areas intermingled with residential areas where people go about their daily business. This midway time and space SATO calls the “twilight zone” spreads out quietly before him with incredible depth beyond the naked eyes. “The time when the new creeps in and the old fades away in a simultaneous slow dance is when the ever-ambiguous city is at its most,” says SATO. The metropolis Tokyo has an abundance of energy, and its cityscape captured by SATO shows maintained exquisite balance intermingled with existence of people in the city.

To find out more about Sato Shintaro visit: http://shinsato.cool.ne.jp

Designers every day, everywhere, look at websites, reading books, watching the beautiful things, could there endless creativity in order to maintain only hope that Muse will not be away from their own. Web design is the inside of the most painful, but the most rewarding design. You want to maintain the source of inspiration, of course, the best way to see more of some good works. Here we have collected many beautiful, avant-garde Web design shots, hope to help inspire.
PS. Unfortunately, the original author did not leave these beautiful sites of the original link, if you know which station’s website, please also provide about Oh!