Original objects

A Portuguese company Matrioskas, which was founded in 2007 with an office in Porto.
A nice selection of unique pieces.


www.matrioskas.com









CONSOLE / BOTTLE CABINET  "DOVE"    110 cm x 220 cm x 50 cm
• iberian walnut tree veneer and shine lacquer (2 colours)







DRAWER CHEST "BURT" 135 cm x 90 cm x 43 cm 
• shine lacquered and walnut tree veneer
• shine lacquered and pau ferro veneer
• polished steel stand
• lacquered or textured iron stand (6 different colours)







CHAISE "THOM"  67 cm x 150 cm x 50 cm 
• walnut tree solid wood and fabric (4 different colours)

Spring sun

Cassiopée » glasses in coral acetate

www.andreeputman.com

www.racparis.com

Wise architecture

eEeee

Domus profiled the Pritzker-winning architect nearly twenty years ago for a single-family home in southern Portugal

Originally published in Domus 754/September 1993

Recent architecture in Portugal has permitted influences to come as much from external masters as from internal ones. The widely discussed School of Porto is a lineage of practitioners that has closely studied each other's projects as well as referred to bodies of work that would support a particular stance for and against local and contemporary tendencies. In this sense, the buildings of the 1950s and 1960s by one of Eduardo Souto de Moura's teachers, Fernando Távora, reveal a synthesis of local vernacular traditions with processes of abstraction (as developed in the art and architecture of the first decades of the twentieth century), countering the false consciousness of Salazarist "traditionalism". Souto de Moura's Braga Market (1980) was in part a homage to Távora's famed Tennis Pavilion (1957) at the Quinta de Conceição in Matosinhos. Alvaro Siza, another teacher of Souto de Moura, has opened architecture's plastic and figurative dimensions to his student. While Siza looked in particular to Alvar Aalto for social and architectural inspiration, Souto de Moura's sensibilities and intellect are closer to the emphatic tectonics of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the work of the Dutch De Stijl architects. The personal freedom, as might be argued to exist in Siza's work, is considered by some younger Portuguese architects to be a unique privilege, to which they either cannot or do not wish to add. Perhaps a similar situation existed in Finland since World War II, but certainly since the death of Aalto.

House in Alcanena, from the south. It stands on a hillock in a completely green area. Left, the more 'domestic' part of the house is plastered, and right, the more 'public' zone, on the access side, is in stone. Above: Study sketch.

Souto de Moura's Cultural Centre in Porto and his early houses could confidently and appropriately draw on the architectural theme of Mie van der Rohe's courtyard house, as their densely built settlement structure were rightly seen a providing the ideal framework within which introverted buildings might be placed. Furthermore, Souto de Moura's design for the low-rise cultural centre and the single storey houses permit the use of the aforementioned emphatic tectonics, even to the extent of seeing the union of walls and roofs idealized as table-like structures. In the tradition of Mies van der Rohe, Souto de Moura conceives of architecture as a precise frame for life, neither its reflection nor its induction. These above considerations are recalled as a general architectural context within which one might read the recent work of Souro de Moura. Numerous houses and now public buildings by the Porto architect are under construction or are being completed, and it is noteworthy to follow the work's development from the simple single-storey domestic structures to the multi-storey public buildings. The table metaphor is thus increasingly coming under scrutiny for its appropriateness, and Souto de Moura has been able to adapt his penchant for essentialist reduction at the nearly completed Faculty of Geology building for Aveiro University.

With regard to the single family house at Alcanena, in southern Portugal, a project that was conceived in 1987, Souto de Moura was reinvestigating the notion of extension in Mies van der Rohe's Brick House of 1923 and combining this with the hierarchical disposition of courtyards. The house sits on a raised mound overlooking lightly undulating terrain of vineyards and fig tree orchards. As one of the few buildings in the area, it commands a panoramic view over the agricultural countryside, and Souto de Moura took this to be the generating thrust for the single storey house's organisation. Approaching the house across an orchard from the nearby road, a square cour d'honneur with an inscribing circular granite pavement forms the nucleus of the house. Opposite to the gate is the house's main entrance: a glazed corridor that acts as a fulcrum between the western public and eastern private rooms. Each wing is in some way organized around subsidiary courtyards, be it facing the garden or internalised. While Mies van der Rohe's courtyard houses of the 1930's were in some instances object within a walled garden, Souto de Mourass House at Alcanena enter a dialogue with Mies van der Rohe's Hubbe House project of 1935 with its partly enclosed yard that define an interior while also giving on to the larger surroundings. The House at Alcanena deals with differently dimensioned external spaces. Architectural history has seen numerous versions of such compositions, whether it be the case of Aldo van Eyck's iterative Orphanage in Amsterdam, or Louis Kahn's Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, or even John Lautner's spectacular House at Silver Lake, Los Angeles. The House at Alcanena does not stress the differences of the external space to the extent that the abovementioned buildings do, it is a quality that might be enhanced in the house if some of the external elements of the earlier design were to be realised, such as the east-facing pergola in combination with the swimming pool, as well as a more geometrically sympathetic landscape treatment.

Nobel architecture

for Eduardo Souto de Moura:




Portugese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura claimed Architecture's top honor, the Pritzker Prize, on Monday. Souto de Moura becomes just the second Portugese architect to win the award.

Although not well-known in the U.S. and with no buildings on U.S. soil, Souto de Moura's completed projects include a stadium in Braga, Portugual that was the site of the 2004 European soccer championships. According to the Chicago Tribune, other finished works run the gamut from single-family homes to shopping centers, art galleries and museums, schools, subway stations and a cinema.

Souto de Moura, 58, joins Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando and Renzo Piano in receiving the top honor in the field.

Endowed by Chicago's billionaire Pritzker family, the Pritzker Prize recognizes a living architect who has "produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture."

The winner receives $100,000 and a bronze medallion.

The Pritzker jury praised Souto de Moura, as many have in the past, for his creative use of materials, as well as unexpected dashes of color in his works.

"During the past three decades, Eduardo Souto de Moura has produced a body of work that is of our time but also carries echoes of architectural traditions," the seven-member Pritzker Prize jury said in its citation. "His buildings have a unique ability to convey seemingly conflicting characteristics � power and modesty, bravado and subtlety, bold public authority and a sense of intimacy �at the same time."

According to the Associated Press, Souto de Moura's past remarks showed a humble architect interested in creating buildings that fit in their surroundings, perform their function and become part of a global, architectural landscape.

"There is no ecological architecture, no intelligent architecture, no sustainable architecture � there is only good architecture," he said at a building forum in 2004. "There are always problems we must not neglect. For example, energy, resources, costs, social aspects � one must always pay attention to all these."

The award is to be presented June 2 in Washington, D.C. at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in the complex of government buildings known as the Federal Triangle.

www.prtizkerprize.com

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Let`s go surfing

with Charles and  Ray Eames` Coffeetable, nothing new, but beautiful: 

Vitra Elliptical Table ETR white | Vitra

The Elliptical Table ETR by Vitra (Charles & Ray Eames, 1951): This low coffee table with its elegant elliptical shape ressembles a surfboard and was quickly given the nickname "surfboard table". With its double chromed base, the table formally references a theme repeatedly varied by the Eameses, that of shaped steel rods welded together to make a fixed, static structure. 

ETR = Elliptical Table Rod Base.

Materials: laminate table top, chromed round steel base.

2267 x 746 x 235 mm.

Charles & Ray Eames

Biography:

Charles Eames, born 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri, studied architecture at Washington Universityin St. Louis and opened his own office together with Charles M. Gray in 1930. In 1935 he founded another architectural firm with Robert T. Walsh. After receiving a fellowship in 1938 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, he moved to Michigan and assumed a teaching position in the design department the following year. In 1940, he and Eero Saarinen won first prize for their joint entry in the competition "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" organized by the New YorkMuseum of Modern Art. During the same year, Eames became head of the department of industrial design at Cranbrook, and in 1941 he married Ray Kaiser.

Ray Eames, née Bernice Alexandra Kaiser, was born in Sacramento, California in 1912. She attended the May Friend Bennet School in Millbrook, New York, and continued her studies in painting under Hans Hofmann through 1937. During this year she exhibited her work in the first exhibition of the American Abstract Artists group at the Riverside Museum in New York. She matriculated at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1940 and married Charles Eames the following year.

Projects:

Charles & Ray Eames designed and developed stretchers and leg splints made of moulded plywood between 1941-43, and showed an exhibition of experimental moulded plywood furniture at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1946. The Herman Miller Company in Zeeland, Michigan, subsequently began to produce the Eameses' furniture designs. In 1948, Charles and Ray Eames participated in the "Low-Cost Furniture Competition" at MoMA, and in 1949 they built their Case Study houses. Around 1955 they began to focus more on their extensive work as photographers and filmmakers, and in 1964 an honorary doctoral degree from the Pratt Institute (New York) highlighted Charles’ achievements.

The Eames Office designed the IBM Pavilion for the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York, and the year 1969 offered the opportunity to participate in the exhibition "Qu'est-ce que le design?' at theMusée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In 1970-71, Charles was invited to hold the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry lecture series at Harvard University. MoMA again presented an exhibition of their work, entitled "Furniture by Charles Eames", in 1973. Charles Eames died in St. Louis in 1978; Ray's death followed in 1988.

The influence of Charles and Ray Eames was fundamental to the development of Vitra. Its activity as a furniture manufacturer began in 1957 with the production of their designs. Yet it was not only the products of Charles and Ray Eames that left their mark on Vitra. With their approach to and understanding of design, they made an ongoing contribution to the values and goals of the company.

Additional information on Charles and Ray Eames can be found at: www.eamesoffice.com

Table is ready

Please come to share a meal with:



The Hansen Family‘s new Dining Table 

COLLECTION / REMIX / DINING TABLE

The Dining Table exists in three models that offer space for 6, 8 or 10 people.
The solid tabletop of the Dining Table has two cases to either hide or present things. The cases are covered by plates. The plates are made out of solid wood on one side and slated plates on the other so that hot dishes can be posed in the middle of the table. The leg-construction prevents the top from warping whilst allowing it the necessary movement.

Like our wood, the slate stone comes from the area surrounding our atelier.

Function : table/ tisch / tabel
Dimensions HxDxW: 76 x 80 x 180 cm (table for 8 people)
Material : solid oak
Colors (cases) : black / red – orange – yellow – blue
Designer : Gesa Hansen

http://www.thehansenfamily.com/

Space in the woods

Apartment in El Born by Arquitectura-G

Spanish studio Arquitectura-G have renovated this apartment in the El Born area of Barcelona by adding wooden storage and mezzanines. 

www.arquitectura-g.com