Note Design Studio recently completed their latest project in Stockholm, Sweden; ‘Café Foam’. Its a cafe bar with bright and playful colors. They dare the contrasts of color that brings freshness and cheerfulness.

Note Design Studio says;

Café Foam is a place that you either love or hate, but that nobody is indifferent to. We were fascinated by the bull and bullfighter’s mutual movements and the sharp angles of their battle. Their struggle along with the materials and colours of the bullfighting arena where the inspiration when designing the new Café Foam.


We allowed the Spanish temperament to meet the Scandinavian coolness creating a vivid place for meeting, cheating and eating. The glass lamps were designed especially for this project and hand blown by Kosta glassworks.

Photographs by STEFANO BAROZZI

“The small house which the married couple and their child live stands at the densely populated area in Tokyo. Though the neighboring houses is very close, I aimed to design the house which exceed the physical narrowness living at the city.

I laid out the 4m×4m building that as small as I can at the center of site area 34m2 and made some space for flowing of light and wind around it. And by making the space, it’s possible to avoid setback regulation and it has the 9m high volume like a tower.

The inside is simple structure what is separated by the 4 floor boards and is jointed by spiral stairway. Especially, by making some extremely thin floor boards (thickness 70mm) , the up and down floor boards got close and connected the whole space of the house without a break.

The space of around the house is useful to let light and wind in.
The wall of the rooms borders the outside, so I put windows in the best position that harmonizing with its surroundings. And the window is so big against the small room, every time the window opens or closes, the inside view dramatically changes. Especially, at the second and third floor there is a large hinged door each room, if it is opened, the inside of the room is enveloped in light and wind as if you are outside.

By making the thin floor boards for connecting with their life and making the large windows that are opened toward the city, I aimed to exceed the segmentation, for example the up stair and the down stair, the inside and the outside, a building and the town, etc… to broaden the whole image of a house.”

Via [Home Design]
+Unemori Architects

The owners of this duplex apartment, located on a beautiful tree lined street in the East Village, retained Pulltab Design to create a unique living environment for a young family of four. As a starting point, the clients requested that their 2,400 square foot apartment be selectively renovated and that the new design revolve around not only creative architectural additions but also the thoughtful selection of free standing furniture and lighting. In the schematic design phase, initial conversations revolved around modern masters such as Geoffrey Bawa, Carlo Scarpa and Richard Neutra.

Based on these conversations, it became apparent that the new design should strive to create a warm and open living environment with unique handcrafted detailing. Materials such as stained concrete, American black walnut, bronze and steel were selected along with modernist finishes, including hand applied active patinas, true pigment paints and high gloss lacquer surfaces. 

The heart of the apartment centers around the living/dining areas. As part of the architectural construction, a new cantilevered dining ‘pod’, extending from the 5th floor slab, was added to increase the size of the kitchen. On the outside surface. of this pod, a custom planted garden wall was installed with the intent of creating a focal point, with a slightly mysterious quality, for the living room.

In combination with the vertically planted wall above, a shallow reflecting pool, custom fabricated from folded steel sheets, was placed in the living room. This reflecting pool functions both as a means to capture water droplets, from the vertical garden wall’s concealed irrigation system, and also allows for the addition of a calming indoor water garden, stocked complete with colorful goldfish.

On the east wall, a new double height panel system was installed, assembled from painted furniture grade plywood. The panels, both fixed and functioning, are separated by a pattern of reveals which add both texture, interest and most importantly a sense of scale, to what was originally an overwhelming surface. Several of the individual panels, denoted by custom routed hand pulls, open to reveal (from right to left) a chess table, a large 8′ long claro walnut dining table and a fold down illuminated bar with glass shelving.

To delineate the function of each panel, three colors were chosen: a bright orange, a glowing yellow (for the concealed bar) and a deep blue. These colors add an active layer to the space while tracing their connection back to Piet Mondrian’s inspirational composition paintings, from the 1920′s and 30′s.

Chevron House, West London designed by Andy Martin Architects is inspired by the architecture of the existing elegantly proportioned spaces, the design sets out to exaggerate, by scaling the space by removing walls, and attaching new space to create a large Edwardian warehouse on each of the three levels. The ground floor, the public level is essentially one space which is divided only by the use of colour and material. On the second and third levels, the private floors, bedrooms merge into bathrooms and visa versa.

The rear of the property has new extensions off both the living and kitchen reaching into the garden to absorb the light from the south. The client’s brief to use colour extensively was applied in such that the walls and ceilings are left light in colour (off white) and that only elements or interventions (joinery etc) would be strongly coloured giving the house a lighter atmosphere with greater sense of perspective.

Re-act Now Studio says;
Into a white space with floating objects all around, a spectral THING took place inside.
Reflections, transparencies, colors are changing continuously as far you are moving.
The THING is controlling everything around.
A twister of feelings and sensations is taking us apart.
Perhaps the THING is trying to communicate.
That is why we have to take care what we are saying…
Who knows perhaps IT is HUMAN after all!…
The apartment is located in a block of flats in Constanta, directly on the Romanian seacoast of the Black Sea.
It was the priming intention of having a beautiful open space with a continuous “sea coast feeling”.
The white color is almost everywhere.
A glass partition cut out the main sensation of “innocence” of the existing space, through its folding trace and through a special spectral film sticked directly on it.
The 3M Radiant Color Film product is usually supposed to be used on some small gadgets or promotional products. This 3M film gives through its optical properties a “real life” to the entire space.
A continuous change of colors and reflections is perceived by whoever is moving inside the apartment.
In the end having a “living” element is the main challenge on a white surrounding.

Most Architecture

We projected into the design both a tradition of Loos-ian sensuality, as well as Mirror’s history of associations with myth and magic; a notion of the unnatural or sinful, where mirror feeds identities, and represents likenesses with an ever-so-slightly distorted truth. Meanwhile, both the material and the spatial application facilitate the dynamic and whimsical aspect over a German city roof-scape.

We constructed the new interior surface as discrete objects on site. Constructed by our carpenter as wooden substrate, they are finished for the ‘mirror-belt’ using a custom painted bespoke glass. The unique character of this material ultimately defrayed the intensity of a standard mirror, each piece arriving in small and nonuniform panels.

Photography is by Gerrit Engel.

It’s also durable, acoustic, fireproof and environment friendly. Which doesn’t mean it was easy to make all of these items in one material!
i29 always looks for choices that answer to multiple questions at the same time. They tell a conceptual story about the company, the space and the users of the space. They deal with specific practical and functional issues and they have to have some autonomous quality as well. These ‘levels’ are intertwined; one leads you to the other. If you see how smart it serves it purpose practically it leads you to the company. If you see the powerful image that is non-depended, it leads you to the functionality, and round it goes.

We believe that simplicity builds character. Compare it to a human being; strong individuals always have one or few characteristics that stand out. We all know how hard it is to stay focused on the one thing that is most important to you. The same way it is with a design. The result of being very selective is that you have to push the one choice to the limit. It also provides a field of tension, and gives energy in a space without falling into chaos. But more importantly it leaves you with a charismatic environment.

Photographs by Steve King

Concept Design
Since, the two apartments are built on top of the existing Cental London post office, the postal delivery system has been the inspirational source of the concept design. Paul McAneary Architects responded to the brief by expressing and magnifying the ‘post box component-concept-element’ into large boxes of natural materials accommodating for the private program. We placed three bedroom boxes within the large double height loft space, to provide rooms for sleeping accommodation: additional to the master bedroom and two further bedrooms, they accommodate for the master bedroom walk- in wardrobe, en-suite bathroom and a shared bathroom.

In line with a more contemporary domesticity, the private program area is relatively modest in size. The client expressed the desire to have a large versatile living space perfect for relaxation and parties, as a result the living area is spacious and serves multipurpose events.

The overall architectural language is modest and dramatic at the same time: mixed timber tectonics have been applied with an emphasis on their texture and intrinsic beauty. The amount of ‘vertical natural light’ flooding through the large skylights, walk on glass and the horizontal curtain walling maximise the exquisite effect of the natural grain and pattern of the timber ceiling, oak beams and floor as well as the bronze ‘timber texture’.

The Panteón Nube located in Murcia, Spain and built by studio Clavel Arquitectos is a modern tomb, which features an asymmetrical design and ambient and an ambient light provided by the onyx stone. The tomb’s entrance can only be opened by turning its four doors in a certain way.

Clavel Arquitectos say:
‘In this project we worked with two images.The first one was the medieval unfoldable boards, which used to work as removable façades or altarpieces, and now get remade in the zigzag façade. Death inspires human beings with something between mystery and fear. To die means a transition between this world and others that nobody knows. The tomb is where this transition takes place. In this project we worked with two images.

The first one was the medieval unfoldable boards, which used to work as removable façades or altarpieces, and now get remade in the zigzag façade. Death inspires human beings with something between mystery and fear. To die means a transition between this world and others that nobody knows. The tomb is where this transition takes place. In this project we worked with two images.

The first one was the medieval unfoldable boards, which used to work as removable façades or altarpieces, and now get remade in the zigzag façade. Death inspires human beings with something between mystery and fear. To die means a transition between this world and others that nobody knows. The tomb is where this transition takes place.’