Cut + Run New York
Cut + Run has opened a new sustainable edit facility at 599 Broadway in NYC in a building we first admired back in 1985 . . . 51% studios’ radiant interior for the award winning editors of An Inconvenient Truth mixes natural light with reclaimed materials to create an inviting and earth friendly editing experience.
Recycle and reduce: The facility embraces green building strategies, paying special attention to promoting the use of natural light. A family of seven suites is crafted from recycled, lightweight and translucent materials with a monolithic resin floor to reflect and amplify the natural light. No dry wall and little glass is used, and suites made from formaldehyde-free, post-industrial recycled wood fibreboard are soundproofed with recycled jeans.
Suite interiors are individually decorated and furnished, with one wall left predominantly raw and finished in a natural soy based clear sealant. Split battens enable the constant technical upgrade and maintenance whilst keeping cables discreet. Computer aided construction by Showman Fabricators allowed a rapid fit out on site, and produced beautifully clean interiors.
The combination of translucent polycarbonate walls, top lit with dimmable low energy diodes and a mocha coloured resin floor give the overall effect of a calm radiance. Five offline suites, a graphics suite and a new HD finishing suite are the creative heart of the space. All rooms have been the latest versions of Avid and Final Cut and are SD/HD compatible.
Mumsnet Towers
51% studios would like to wish Mumsnet a very happy 1oth birthday. It’s been wonderful working with you, and amazing to consider the action your new shed meeting room has seen over the last year alone ! Congratulations and all the best for the next 10 years!
Shed Modernism: Biscuitgate happened here …
When Justine Roberts approached us to design a meeting room for Mumsnet Towers, the parameters were simple: it had to provide privacy and yet allow natural light through it and it had to be good value for money. Oh, and it also needed to be lightweight, demountable and sustainable.
51% studios chose polycarbonate panels over glass to provide acoustic insulation, filter the light and give privacy whilst still being light and easy to transport and handle. Panels were cut to size on site and can be recycled after use.
The framing is from sustainable British grown cedar, adapted from a rainscreen profile we have been using in Dungeness, set back-to-back to provide stiffness whilst supporting the panels without any fixings. Cedar is also lightweight, and weathers to a soft silver over time. We achieved the clean floor to ceiling finish with the help of Tripledot’s fine carpenters who scribed the cedar to the undulating planes of the existing warehouse shell.
We love the clever components Item Products makes for packaging and have used on the their heavier duty handles for the sliding door. We exposed the self finished polycarbonate edge so no frame was needed on the leading edge of the sliding door, allowing it to slot effortlessly into the same cedar detail as the other panels.
For photos and videos of Mumsnet 10th Anniversary Party at Google HQ, do have a look at these links on Flickr or Mumsnet
Urban Birds: Nestworks 1 2 3
51% studios has been invited by the Architecture Foundation to develop strategies and designs for birdboxes around the area designated as the Banside Urban Forest in Witherford Watson Mann’s masterplan.
The birdboxes will be deployed as part of the London Festival of Architecture in June 2010.
The Experimental Station
In collaboration with our friends at Johnson Naylor, we have just let the tender for three environmentally conscious studio buildings on the site of the former Trinity Experimental Station in Dungeness. Nuclear power / Airsource Heatpump. Locally grown cedar / Matt black concrete. Shingle roof / Thermal Mass. Floating slab / Existing footprint. Carefully framed views / Low u values.
Drawing on the City
A collaborative work by Catherine du Toit and Peter Thomas of 51% studios with artist Hannah Collins.
‘Drawing on the City – A walk through history’ is an architectural and sculptural project of seven installations conceived as a route through the changing landscape of Barcelona and St Adria. The route and installations make visible again the cultural heritage and experiences of the people of Barcelona, which has sometimes been overlaid, sometimes forgotten, sometimes displaced …
The new structures embed collective memory and imagery in the cityscape, bringing a continuous and present sense of history to the city by pointing to the real and developing landscape it contains.
Along the route visitors and local residents are able to see and understand the cityscape, becoming aware of essential historical structures and newly developing urban plans.
The work is an active and engaging series of dialogues around the role of the city in the making of communities and individual experience. A positive role is created for both the sculptural scenarios and the audience/participants.
Drawing on the City was exhibited in the Caixa Forum during the summer of 2008. For more information, please see Hannah Collins’ website.
The House of Doors sits at a meeting place between the land and the sea, and makes reference to the sea as a first point of contact for many of the cities early migrants. Floating pale like a ghost, from the moment the first light illuminates the sea to the lower light of the evening, the House of Doors evokes two distinct moments in time: a memory of using doors to build his house in 1962 recounted by a former resident of Somorrostro and a photograph of a home built from 16 wooden doors, taken by Hannah Collins in 2003. The small pontoon tempts swimmers out to use it as a meeting place. For those not swimming it provides a resonant image seen from the shore.
The Portal is the site of the intersection between Cerda’s diagonal, the Tramvia and Avinguda Litoral. It is also a node in a series of walkable and cycable loops linking Barcelona, Barceloneta and Poble Nou with San Adria and Badalona. The portal is an orientation map for the overall project, an extension of the tram platform worked in coloured enamels with each of the seven installations colour coded and linked into the fabric of the city. The portal entices you to explore the neighbourhood, to venture deeper…
In San Adria,at a thriving Tuesday market below the freeway local bird keepers meet to compare, exchange or trade their birds. The Singing bird wall is set in a quiet spot under trees near one of the entrances to the market.
The diverse areas around la Mina were, until recently, home to many horses, kept in backyards and on a horse farm on waste ground. Horses formed an integral way of life in the area and were used to pull recycling carts, for transport and for trade. Recent changes have seen the horses disappear. A place of horses is a happening/event that sees the horses return to la Mina, and is inspired by the work of Muybridge and Asger Jorn at Albisola. A series of identical concrete panels will bear the immaculate detailed evidence of a horse-run through specially prepared troughs on the rivers edge. Once dry they will be tilted and lifted into position on the adjacent retaining wall to form a permanent sculpture.
During the Summer the ground surface of Paseo Cameron is covered in the extraordinary drawing of the children of la Mina. By night-time often the whole plaza of over 200 metres is covered by drawings which are replaced by renewed activity the next day as the drawings fade and are walked off the Plaza. The Wall of Dreams is located in a local cultural centre. It is made from ceramic tiles, various shades of gold in colour which carry imprints of the childrens’ chalk drawings.
Pavilion is a collection of green structures dedicated to providing a series of amenities within the park. It is sited on the raised ground beneath the trees to create a series of discreet spaces which can be open to the sky, shaded by the tree canopy in summer, or in the winter sun.
