Category: Project

Working in collaboration with iconic Italian brand Molteni&C, Paris-based designer Joseph Dirand was tasked with creating the furniture for The Surf Club. Inspired by the Miami club’s décor, Dirand designed a series of special custom-designed travertine furniture – almost all made-to-order – that features simple and elegant lines. The designer carefully selected our Navona Travertine for his Navona Sofa, a piece of veined stone furniture that has the ability to make the surrounding space even more architectural.

Trained as an architect, Joseph Dirand is an interior designer who draws his inspiration from modernist architecture. He tackles furniture as self-standing objects. Deprived of a given context of existence or preconceived environment, each design is given a strong personality and a solemn monumentality. Dirand’s pieces hold an aura similar to that of large architecture: an affective force generated by the tension of the materials, the physical presence, the narratives they embed.

Dirand works closely with the finest craftspeople, allowing for a wide versatility in the choices of material stone, copper, stone, precious woods, and bronze – all backed-up by the insistent excellency of their implementation.

This Henry J. Lyons’ project for developer IPUT is a subtle landmark office building in the heart of Dublin’s business and cultural life. The design combines contemporary architecture with superior craftsmanship and meticulous attention to detail to produce a unique building finished to exceptionally high standards.

10 Molesworth Street is a sensitive and contemporary response to the remarkable streetscape in which it sits in the epicentre of Dublin’s Georgian and commercial core. Completed in 2018, this six-story above double-basement corner building adds a landmark office building with a heavily landscaped garden at its heart.

The site is located on the corner of Molesworth Street and South Frederick Street and forms part of the vista which terminates with Leinster House. The striking double height entrance is framed by full height, floor-to-ceiling windows and features a carefully composed texture of finely honed travertine pavements and cladding.

The One Kensington Gardens residential development in London is located on a prominent site facing Kensington Gardens, bounded by Victoria Road and De Vere Gardens. The project comprises 97 high-quality residential units and includes the internal reorganisation of the existing site and three new buildings facing Kensington Road, Victoria Road, and Canning Passage respectively. It also involves the reuse and incorporation of the nineteenth-century terraced house façades along Victoria Road and De Vere Gardens, which sit within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s De Vere Gardens Conservation Area.

At the very edge of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, where the sea unites the new and the old continent, emerges a stone platform built in Roman Travertine as if it were sand. To materialize this elevated plane, which is the main living room of the house, Alberto Campo Baeza built a large box with 20 meters of frontage and 36 meters deep. And under those first 12 meters he excavated two floors in the solid rock to develop the whole living space.

The platform is distinguished by the presence of a panoramic pool and several slits in the floor, which form skylights for the stairs below leading outside. Strong winds that rage on this stretch of land are contrasted by three imposing walls whose only purpose is to split the air flow and guarantee the right breeze for those enjoying the panorama from the terrace or diving into the pool.

Bolonia, the ruins of the fishing factories where the Romans produced garum and built temples to their gods a handful of centuries ago, is just a stone’s throw away. In their honour Alberto Campo Baeza have built the House of the Infinite, an infinite plane facing the infinite sea.

OMA’s design for New Court is the fourth iteration of Rothschild’s London headquarters, all of them built on the increasingly dense and architecturally rich site on St. Swithin’s Lane, a narrow medieval alley in the heart of the City. The building offers the opportunity to reinstate a visual connection between St. Swithin’s Lane and St. Stephen’s Walbrook. Instead of competing as accidental neighbours, the church and New Court forms a twinned urban ensemble, an affinity reinforced by the proportional similarity of their towers.

New Court is made up of a central cube of ten efficient and flexible open-plan office floors – which facilitate views over St. Stephen’s and the surrounding City – linked to four adjoining annexes, with meeting rooms, enclosed offices, vertical circulation, reception areas, and a staff cafe and gym. The top of this central cube features a landscaped roof garden with outdoor meeting areas. This in turn is overlooked by an adjacent Sky Pavilion – a small tower with three double-height storeys peering out over the city – which houses meeting and dining rooms and a multifunctional panorama room with extraordinary and unfamiliar views across the City, including St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The new building unites all of Rothschild’s London staff in one location for the first time in decades. A reading room and space for displaying the family’s archive ground the new building in the bank’s illustrious history. Through the reconnection of two precious open spaces in the City – the courtyard of New Court and the churchyard of St. Stephen’s Walbrook – the new New Court promises to transform St. Swithin’s Lane.

This project for developer Derwent London – an elegant Travertine-clad complex of connected office blocks – draws on the urban character of the local area and retains an existing 19th Century building on Took’s Court. The 40 Chancery Lane building is located in the City of London’s ‘midtown’, on a large corner site close to Chancery Lane station. Several existing, dilapidated structures were replaced with a ‘U’-shaped series of connected office blocks, surrounding a rear courtyard.

The Bennetts Associates’ design creates a mix of new office and retail space in the City. The historic street pattern of narrow passages leading to open spaces and courts is reinforced by a landscaped courtyard with a gated entrance off Chancery Lane. Located on a prominent corner site within the Chancery Lane Conservation Area, the scheme has been designed to respect adjacent listed buildings and to acknowledge surrounding scale, materiality and key views.

40 Chancery Lane will be the new London home for globally renowned advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which is part of the Publicis Groupe. Working closely with Saatchi & Saatchi, Jump Studios has taken the 100,000 sq. ft, seven storey blank canvas provided by this Bennetts Associates’ designed and created a bespoke and welcoming workspace that evokes the spirit of Saatchi & Saatchi as soon you enter the building.

Arup’s historic involvement in Broadgate, which began with the design of the original campus buildings in 1985, continues with the recent Broadgate Circle redesign, bringing it back to life as the most vibrant and iconic open space in the City of London. The Circle has been transformed into a new civic hub at the heart of the Broadgate Estate. The changes dramatically improve and enrich the retail, civic and social amenity at Broadgate, whilst enhancing the original qualities of the Circle.

The Broadgate Estate is located in the north east corner of the City of London. This frenetic and active environment is complemented by the regenerated Circle which is now a bustling place for people gathering and social interaction. The project integrates multiple functions including civic space, performance and events space, restaurants, cafes and bars all united by clear and direct circulation routes.

The 4,150m2 circular space of the famous colonnade structure – formed by 54 travertine columns – has been maintained, while three new double-width staircases have been added to provide access between the upper and lower levels. Beneath the colonnade sits the scheme’s reconstructed first floor restaurant. The triple aspect unit has been widened and the first floor now cantilevers over the colonnade with a new structure designed to transfer the loads back to the original columns.

ExxonMobil’s state-of-the-art campus north of Houston serves as home to its Upstream, Downstream, Chemicals and XTO Energy companies and their associated service groups. The facility opened in 2014 and accommodates more than 10,000 employees and visitors. The iconic jewel of the campus, the Energy Center is designed to embody the company’s commitment to leading technology and engineering while showcasing its heritage, people and leadership. It serves as the front door of the campus, reception for dignitaries and visitors and space for training as well as larger community events.

The campus is located in Spring, Texas, on 385 wooded acres immediately to the west of Interstate Highway 45, approximately 25 miles from the cultural vibrancy of downtown Houston. By bringing many global functional groups together, the campus provides employees with the tools and capabilities needed today, and in the future, to achieve business objectives and accelerate the discovery of new resources, technologies and products. It was designed to foster improved collaboration, creativity and innovation and enhance the company’s ability to attract, develop and retain the top talent in the industry.

Monolithic blocks of stone mimic man-made quarry landscapes for Grupo Arca’s showroom and cultural centre in Guadalajara, Mexico, designed by Esrawe Studio. The complex is designed to promote culture and education over business transactions, with a focus on Mexican architecture, design and fine arts.

A quarry is the evidence of man’s action on nature; a manufactured landscape created in search of raw materials. The nature of this landscape nourishes the concept behind the Grupo Arca’s showroom and warehouse. Rectangular cut-outs on the building’s facade reveal a layer of ocean blue travertine underneath the black concrete exterior cladding.

Visitors access the building through a small opening in the monolithic facade and are led down a narrow corridor to the central internal courtyard. The access in the monolithic facade links the visitor with the monumental central space, the Agora.

The legendary Surf Club in Surfside, Florida, was founded in 1930 by Harvey Firestone as a private membership club. The Surf Club development include a new Four Seasons Hotel rising from the center of the Club’s original exterior courts, while two 12-story residential buildings located to the North and to the South of the historic Surf Club buildings flank the hotel. The design also incorporates additional programming including a private membership club, two restaurants, four swimming pools, a state-of-the-art spa and fitness center, more than 40 beach cabanas, and an expansive park and oceanside gardens. The design for the buildings utilizes Richard Meier’s clear and iconic visual vocabulary while the idyllic interiors are designed by Parisian architect and designer Joseph Dirand.