This hotel by architecture studio Metro Urbe occupies a series of former industrial buildings on the banks of the River Douro in Porto, Portugal, and features interiors by Quiet Studios.
The Rebello Hotel is spread across several 19th-century buildings, which have been overhauled and adapted with new additions by Metro Urbe, in Vila Nova de Gaia – across the river from the city proper.
At The Rebello Hotel, nods to the site’s industrial past and Porto’s nautical history can be found in artworks and decor choices
Operated by Bomporto Hotels, which has two properties in Lisbon, the new addition to its portfolio was designed with a local approach and to take full advantage of its prime riverside location.
The Rebello is named after Porto’s famous rabelos – wooden boats that used to transport barrels of port wine down the river – and located beside the city’s only remaining boatyard.
The lobby bar and cafe was designed for digital nomads to work and relax
The collection of buildings was once a kitchen utensil factory and had been unoccupied for some time before work began to reconfigure the site.
The team restored two long buildings that face onto the river, preserving their historic stone facades, and constructed two new volumes in the centre of the site that incorporate smaller original structures and resolve the sloping topography.
A variety of soft seating options enliven the industrial-style interiors of the hotel’s communal spaces
Presented with a blank canvas, Spanish interior designer Daniela Franceschini – founder of Lisbon-based Quiet Studios – worked with local artists and creatives to transform the industrial spaces into warm and comfortable guest facilities.
Using vintage and contemporary objects, she based the interiors around four key elements: water, wine, wood and industry.
Bedrooms are bright and neutral, with splashes of colour introduced through contemporary furniture
“There’s a nautical feel to the colours, materials and textures,” said Franceschini. “That also comes through in the lighting, which is suggestive of floating and sailboats, and in the lamps with chains, the wooden shelves by Tomaz Viana, the ceramic nets by Fig Studio and the undulating mirrors that evoke the movement of the sea.”
Above the retro-style reception counter, fronted by a metal lattice, is an artwork crafted using reclaimed materials from the rabelos, which was designed by Studio Ther in collaboration with a local artisan.
Guest room types vary from studios to three-bedroom penthouse apartments
The lobby lounge and bar was designed for digital nomads to work or relax on a variety of comfortable soft seats, within a bright space that features polished concrete floors and exposed ceiling ductwork.
As a nod to the site’s history, the ground-floor Pot&Pan restaurant serves family-style dishes in large pots and pans within a space decorated with dark-toned walls and plants to create a casual atmosphere.
There’s also a cafe and store selling local produce and crafts, and meeting rooms that can be hired separately or combined for private events.
The Rebello Hotel’s 103 guest rooms and apartments are split into 11 different types, ranging from studios to three-bedroom penthouses that span 37 to 195 square metres.
The hotel’s spa is modelled on ancient Roman baths
The interiors of its light-filled suites have been decorated with walnut, steel, concrete and tiles, along with contemporary furniture that introduces splashes of bright colour to the otherwise neutral palette.
The bedrooms also include “tailor-made pieces influenced by nautical and industrial design, such as the sinks inspired by old water tanks and the organically styled bed headboards that resemble the rippling waters of the Douro”, according to the design team.
The fourth-floor rooftop bar offers views across the Douro River to the Porto skyline
The Rebello Hotel guests can enjoy a spa, modelled on ancient Roman baths and encompassing a heated pool, sauna, fitness centre and treatment rooms.
Finally, the Rooftop Bello bar on the fourth floor offers a spot for al fresco cocktails overlooking the river, with a view of the city’s terracotta-tiled skyline beyond.
The riverside site, a former kitchen utensil factory, was converted and extended by architects Metro Urbe
Other interior design projects in Porto include a rustic restaurant interior designed by Space Copenhagen, which features a ceramic mural by Álvaro Siza, and a sushi bar by Paulo Merlini where 8,000 wooden chopsticks hang above diners.
Mexican architecture studio Productora has restored a concrete industrial complex in Mexico City into a series of studios including its own office.
Productora has been gradually renovating the building, which was originally a textile factory built in the 1920s, since it moved its offices to the structure following an earthquake in 2017.
Productora has renovated an industrial site in Mexico City where it has an office
The studio originally took up residence in an empty “nave” in the factory in Mexico City’s Doctores neighbourhood along a furniture company.
Since then, the studio has been “slowly rebuilding the complex while inhabiting it” and more than twenty other companies have moved into the complex, which is now called Laguna,
New buildings were added to the cleared courtyards in the middle of the complex
For the renovation, the studio focused on the interior of the complex while leaving the street-facing, painted-concrete exterior, generally untouched so that one might not know the complex is there at all.
The complex is now orientated around two courtyards that were cleared of existing structures to create new circulation and gathering areas.
The site was once a textile factory
Within these courtyard spaces, a mix of newly built concrete workshops and the renovation of existing brick-and-mortar and concrete buildings will continue to take place over the next several years. The studio said it hopes that the project will be one of “constant adaptation and transformation”.
Now, the most significant aspects of the renovation have been the cleared courtyards and added buildings, as well as expressive walkways and a new freight elevator that towers above the site.
Green detailing was chosen because it was prominent in the trim of the windows and roof on the facade of the original structure, and these green details continue along the causeways and in the gridded window frames.
Gathering spaces have been included in the courtyards. Photo by Camila Cossio
Social spaces have been installed in the courtyards so that members of the various companies can gather.
In the future, Productora plans to build wooden workshops on top of the preexisting structure to create flexible and modular extensions to the current program.
Jozz Gómez, a coordinator for Laguna, said that the presence of the complex has also positively changed the environment around the complex.
“It started to bring more employment, but also changed the neighbourhood,” she told Dezeen.
“It was known to be a very dangerous neighbourhood, but after the project started, you can see foreigners, students, and young people walking around the streets.”
It holds office space for creative studios. Photo by Camila Cossio.
Productora was founded in 2006 and has additional offices in Brooklyn. Recent projects include a hotel in San Miguel de Allende clad in red and green tile as well as a bright-blue cohousing project in Denver, Colorado, USA.
The photography is by Pablo Manjarrez. Top photo by Camila Cossio.
UK studio Most Architecture has converted an industrial shed in west London into an all-black-and-white showroom and production facility for electric car start-up Charge Cars.
Created to manufacture Charge Cars‘ first vehicle the ’67 – an all-electric version of the 1960s Ford Mustang Fastback built using components from electric vehicle brand Arrival – the facility also acts as an office and showroom.
Most Architecture has created a factory for electric car start-up Charge Cars
“Charge designs and makes its unique cars in a single facility,” said Most Architecture founder Olga McMurdo. “Like an open-kitchen restaurant, everything is on display to the staff and customers.”
“So we created an environment that allows immediate access to every aspect of the process from design through to production,” she told Dezeen. “The factory, and all of its contents, are at once an agile design and manufacturing centre, a customer showroom, and a design statement.”
The building is arranged around the workshop
The facility in Stockley Close, west London, was designed around the idea of promoting a connection between Charge Cars’ clients and the engineers building and customising the cars.
At its centre is a large open workshop where the cars are built and customised, which is overlooked by various offices and meeting spaces.
Charge Cars’ ’67 will be manufactured in the factory
“Our client came to us with an ambition to re-define a classic design icon using cutting-edge electric vehicle technology and to create a customer experience that engenders a visceral response to the product, and the process of creating it,” said McMurdo.
“Their space had to accommodate both the manufacturing and the design process, facilitating teamwork and recreation, testing, a showroom, and areas for customer engagement,” she continued.
“All that had to happen within one architectural volume, and so the primary challenge was to facilitate all of these activities simultaneously and symbiotically, whilst projecting a clear and coherent design statement reflecting the client’s philosophy.”
Office spaces overlook the workshop
Unlike the majority of car factories, the Charge Cars facility was designed so that its customers can visit at any time to observe how the vehicle is designed and assembled.
“Charge wanted the customer journey to be mapped out by the design of the building,” said McMurdo.
“The customer’s access to, and experience of, the factory is an integral part of the product,” she continued.
“They have a personal relationship with the engineers that are making their car, and are able to see the car as it is being constructed.”
The Charge Cars factory is almost entirely black and white
Most Architecture designed the spaces with a stripped-back aesthetic united by a largely white and black colour palette, including a black light fixture above the building’s entrance.
“The white and the black amplify each other by contrast, representing the fusion of a laboratory and a garage, and the constant dynamic between research and production,” explained McMurdo.
“Using this pallet we also wanted to make an impactful design statement on entry to the building. The result was a large anamorphic light fixture, which coalesces into a Feynman diagram from a single vantage point, becoming a composition of independent pieces.”
Cars are designed, built and tested at the facility
Other recent electric car factories featured on Dezeen include a black steel and glass facility designed by Snøhetta for car brand Polestar in Chengdu, China. In Sweden, Danish architecture studio Cobe is designing a development centre for Chinese car manufacturer Geely, which it describes as a “chamber of secrets”.
Client: Charge Cars Lead architect: Most Architecture Interior concepts: Evgeniy Bulatnikov Mechanical engineer: Airon Electrical engineer: Smart Techno Systems Structural engineer: HLS Structural Lighting: Gaismas Magija Building control: The Building Inspectors Wind consultant: Buro Happold Fire engineer: QFSM CDM advisor: Andrew Goddard Associates Main contractor: Hansa Group Steel mezzanine contractor: System Store Solutions Lighting manufacturer: Esse-Ci
Architizer is thrilled to announce the winners of the 11th Annual A+Awards! Interested in participating next season? Sign up for key information about the 12th Annual A+Awards, set to launch this fall.
Designing industrial buildings, particularly factories, is usually a process that is dominated by the complicated functional and logistical requirements that limit architects creatively, overpowered by the technical specifications of the machinery and the production lines that occupy the entirety of the building space and leave little space for the form to develop beyond the functional limitations.
That being said, one would ask, What comes first? Form or Function?
The Oatmeal Factory in Ningwu, Shanxi province by JSPA Design.
This question has been the topic of hot debate among architects throughout history, with contrasting perspectives among the modernists and postmodernists, among others. During the late 19th and the 20th century, particularly within the field of industrial design, architects believed that “form follows function,” as expressed by architect Louis Sullivan, which indicated that the function of the building is what generates its form and guides its design process. For Frank Lloyd Wright, that design principle has been misunderstood, because, “Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”
When studying the design of the Ningwu Oatmeal Factory in Shanxi, China, which was both the Jury Winner and won the Popular Choice vote during Architizer’s 11th Annual A+Awards, one could argue that JSPA Design was inspired by Wright’s principle. This is especially evident in the way they eloquently strike the balance between both, breeding what could be described as a spiritual union between form and function. The design shows a high level of attention to the factory’s user experience, the selection of materials and the relationship with the site. In short, JSPA Design conceived of a home for production processes that is more than just a factory; the Ningwu Oatmeal Factory is a building that produces a lot more than just oatmeal.
The main entrance to the factory emphasized by the use of brick walls.
The Beijing-based French design studio produced a design that strokes the right balance between the complicated functional requirements and the humanization of the work environment, juggling the different design components while also introducing an interesting user experience that invited the public into the building while redeeming the integrity of the factory’s different operations.
From the outside, the surrounding context was challenging to work with, with the factory being located within dry and arid industrial landscapes punctured with coal mines on their outskirts. In response to this context, the design team chose to orient the building inwards, introducing a variety of horizontal and vertical boundary-demarcating elements that fostered a crisp and clean indoor environment, experientially detaching the building from the outside while enhancing the user experience and orchestrating an interesting walkthrough across the complex’s different sections. Meanwhile, visitors are spatially separated from staff for safety and logistical reasons.
An overview of the factory’s industrial context.
From an environmental perspective, the building’s relationship with the outdoors is further regulated through a network of patios and gardens that invite sunlight to enter the factory’s various spaces. These design provisions enrich the quality of the indoor environment, allowing floods of northern light to illuminate the central production space through a sequence of skylights.
A cross section through the main production space showing the skylights and the production machinery.
By using grey bricks as the main construction material, the designers establish a more materialistic connection with the surrounding context. By harnessing local construction methods to erect a series of brick walls that became the prominent design feature, the material amplifies the building’s relationship with the site and the surrounding landscapes.
Similar to the flow of production lines that transform raw oat into flour products, a variety of brick walls organize the circulation flows through the factory, starting at the entrance and leading each user group to their designated section, while also organizing entry and exit to the building, the delivery of materials and the loading of products. For the visitors, the ground floor serves as an opaque passage, with the brick walls concealing the technical spaces from the public that are lead instead to the first floor where the public spaces are located, including a café, a shop and a garden.
Brick walls guide the different users groups through the factory.
At the factory’s entrance, the public are greeted with a seating area and kids pools, mediating the relationship between the inside and the outside and softening the edge that separates the functional from the social sections of the factory. Brick makes a gradual and smooth appearance at the entrance, first appearing on the benches, before moving to the fences, and then extending vertically and becoming a series of walls that soon become the factory.
The seating area in front of the main entrance that acts as part of the public spaces of the factory.
The bricks walls that organize movement through the landscape aligned with the factory walls.
Despite how the brick walls have acted as boundary demarcating elements that organized the factory’s spaces, circulation and relation with the site, this project is an excellent example of architecture that blurs the line between form and function, with each fundamentally playing a role in shaping the other, without one necessarily needing to precede the other.
One of the interior gardens of the factory that regulate the relationship with the outside, demarcated by the brick walls .
The design team strategically chose key places to expose and conceal the factory’s different spaces, as well as varied sites where the factory is either connected or disconnected from the outside. Other binaries include rhythmic alternations between soft and hard, experiential and technical; and outward-reaching and inward-turning (click here to see plans, sections and more details from the A+Award-winning project). The sum of these complex calculations is proof that factory design need not be entirely automated. It shows that there is always a space for humans to intervene and be present within industrial sites.
Architizer is thrilled to announce the winners of the 11th Annual A+Awards! Interested in participating next season? Sign up for key information about the 12th Annual A+Awards, set to launch this fall.
Spotted: As the global community seeks ways to scale solutions as part of the commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, experts agree that terawatts of renewable energy are needed. Scaling solar is the mission of California-based company Terabase Energy. With more than 50 terawatts of solar energy needed as quickly as possible in order to achieve world decarbonisation goals, the company recently introduced the world’s first automated field factory for solar farm production.
Terabase works as the lead construction partner for utility-scale solar plant projects, providing everything from performance modelling and terrain mapping, to in-the-field manufacturing and grid-friendly plant management technologies. The new factories, called Terafab, use robotics-assisted construction, IoT-connected (Internet of Things) sites, and round-the-clock capability.
By using a digital twin of the solar plant location, Terabase’s systems help developers make the most of limited resources. The Terabase platform can reduce the time engineers need to spend on site by up to 40 times, and its simulation ability helps plant managers track and predict voltage outputs for multiple years.
The Terafab factories greatly reduce safety risks to human workers by eliminating the need for them to lift and carry heavy panels in harsh weather conditions. The automated aspect means that the construction of a plant can run continuously, thereby reducing the overall time and cost of development.
Terabase opened its Terafab manufacturing facility – a “factory to make factories” – in Woodland, California earlier this year. The company also recently raised $25 million (around €22.3 million) to support its expansion, and has several commercial projects lined up later in the year that will use Terafab for their construction needs.
Other innovations from Springwise’s archive that showcase developments in the photovoltaics field include a fully circular and open-source solar cell design and solar-powered cooling sheds for communities without access to steady refrigeration.
Weathered walls and concrete floors feature in this design gallery that creative collective The Guild of Saint Luke and architecture firm Studio ECOA have set up inside a former factory in Paris.
Spread across one storey and two mezzanines, GSL Gallery provides a mixture of studio and exhibition space for the group of architects, artists and artisans that make up The Guild of Saint Luke.
GSL Gallery sits inside an old factory
The gallery occupies a disused factory in Pantin, a neighbourhood in northeastern Paris with a growing arts and culture scene.
In recent years, the building operated as a classic car garage but was purchased by art dealer and gallerist Hadrien de Montferrand during the pandemic with the aim of transforming the site into a gallery.
The building’s concrete floors were retained
De Montferrand enlisted locally based Studio ECOA to carry out all the necessary architectural changes and asked The Guild of Saint Luke (GSL) to steer the building’s design and become its first tenant.
“We were charmed by the space and found the patina and raw walls to be punk and accidentally on-point,” GSL’s creative director John Whelan told Dezeen.
Clean white panelling was added to give the space the look of a typical gallery
“Working in close collaboration with Studio ECOA, we proposed a project that retained all of the rawness of the spaces with very minimal design interventions,” he continued.
“We felt that it would be criminal to interfere with the existing mood, which is melancholic and eerily beautiful.”
Studio ECOA restored the building’s facade and aluminium roof, as well as preserving its original concrete flooring.
A live-work space can be found on GSL Gallery’s first mezzanine
Boxy storage units were built on either side of the front door to form a corridor-like entrance to the ground floor, where white panelling was added across the lower half of the patchy, time-worn walls to emulate the look of a typical gallery.
This ground-floor space will be used to display a changing roster of avant-garde installations, which GSL hopes to finance by using the gallery’s workspaces to produce more commercial projects for design brands.
“Commercial endeavours will help to fund more proactive ‘passion projects’, where we will exhibit GSL’s own designs along with designers and artists that we admire,” Whelan said.
“Our chief motivation is creative freedom, as we hope to produce installations that do not necessarily adhere to a commercial brief.”
Bathroom facilities are contained in a mirrored volume
The building’s two existing mezzanines were cut back to create a central atrium, which draws natural light into the gallery’s interior.
The lower mezzanine now houses a hybrid live-work space where GSL members or visiting artists can stay the night.
This space is centred by a large Donald Judd-style wooden table and also accommodates a bed, kitchenette and a bathroom concealed within a mirrored volume.
Metal sanitary ware reflects the light in the bathroom
Extra exhibition space is provided on the secondary mezzanine that sits beneath the building’s roof, directly under a series of expansive skylights.
Prior to now, GSL has largely specialised in hospitality interiors – restoring historic brasseries across Paris and devising opulent restaurants such as Nolinski near the Musée du Louvre and Maison Francois in London.
The lower mezzanine also houses a bed and a large table
“We hope that the gallery will be an extension of the aesthetic that we are trying to develop, embracing new ideas but never abandoning the pursuit of beauty,” Whelan explained.
“It feels like a good time to do so, as Covid has cleared and a mood of optimism in design has emerged. This bracing, minimal space feels almost like a clean slate and invites a multitude of possibilities.”
The second mezzanine sits directly underneath the building’s skylights
Other recent additions to Paris’s cultural landscape include a major extension of the Musée Albert Kahn by Kengo Kuma and Associates, which made room for a historic collection of 72,000 photographs.
Elsewhere in the French capital, Bruno Gaudin Architectes just completed a 15-year renovation of the National Library of France, incorporating a number of new circulation routes and public spaces.
Chinese studio Dongqi Design has turned a disused factory in Shanghai into a multi-brand fashion and lifestyle store, adding glossy marble and metal surfaces to offset its exposed concrete shell.
Set across three floors, the XC273 retail space houses designer showrooms and pop-ups alongside a small cafe, as well as providing spaces for temporary exhibitions and events.
Dongqi Design has turned a former factory into a fashion boutique
Formerly a state-owned towel factory, the building had already been changed several times before the latest round of renovations.
Dongqi Design strived to preserve and emphasise these different layers of history, which are contrasted against shiny new finishes to create a kind of “nostalgic futurism”.
“All the differences of the space were kept as part of the building’s history so that people walking in could feel that the boundaries between the past and the present are blurred, as if they had walked into a timeless space,” the studio explained.
The XC273 store houses a cafe alongside designer showrooms and pop-ups
The building is organised around three voids, which now form the basis of the store’s circulation routes.
The largest of these voids consists of a double-height space at the core of the building, where Dongqi Design added a small reflecting pool surrounded by a collonade.
Glossy surfaces are contrasted against the building’s raw concrete shell
The collonade’s raw concrete columns are left exposed where they face the pond, while their other three sides are wrapped with either marble, wood or metal.
This approach is replicated across the store’s display fixtures to create a sense of spatial continuity. It can also be seen on the first floor, where new paving was added to enhance the existing geometric flooring.
A sound tunnel that provides visitors with an experimental music experience was placed near the cafe on the ground floor.
The second floor is accessed via a metal staircase, which is suspended above the reflecting pool and winds its way up through a small hole in the ceiling.
A reflecting pool was installed at the core of the building
“The key element connecting all the spaces is the stairs,” the studio explained.
“The stairs are designed in their purest metallic form, further enhanced by the details of the balustrade where the fence becomes a simple element sliding into the structural beam at the bottom while having a profile on the top to allow visitors to grab the handrail comfortably.”
Concrete paving was added to complement the geometric flooring on the first floor
On the second floor, Dongqi Design selected a bright white finish to emphasise the old wooden structure of the building’s pitched roof. A series of square windows let light into the space and offer views out across the city and toward the sky.
To balance out the otherwise all-white interior, the VIP room is finished in a darker palette. During spring and summer, these darker shades also contrast with the colour of the trees outside.
Dongqi Design gave the second floor a bright white finish
XC273 has been shortlisted in the large retail interior category of this year’s Dezeen Awards.
Other projects in the running include a second-hand bookshop in Shanghai that uses supermarket-style crates to display its wares and a reusable sales showroom with fabric walls.
Architecture firm BIG has constructed a mass-timber Passivhaus factory in a Norwegian forest for outdoor furniture maker Vestre, which features a green roof and solar panels as well as an exterior slide.
Instead of being hidden away on an industrial estate, The Plus factory development is nestled in 300 acres of woodland near the village of Magnor on the Swedish border.
The cross-shaped building consists of four double-height wings, each housing a different stage of Vestre‘s production process and radiating out from a central office area with an internal courtyard at its heart.
The Plus factory has a distinctive cross shape
Constructed in just 18 months, the 7,000-square-metre factory is made mostly from wood and stores 1,400 tons of carbon dioxide in its structure made of PEFC-certified cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glued-laminated timber (glulam), Vestre said.
The building combines energy-efficient Passivhaus strategies with a streamlined, robot-assisted production line, which according to Vestre reduces its energy consumption by 90 per cent compared to a conventional factory.
Its energy and heating demands will be partly met with the help of 900 rooftop solar panels, 17 geothermal wells and heat pumps hidden behind the walls to capture excess heat from the production process.
The factory is nestled into a forest on Norway’s border with Sweden
Taken together, Vestre says this makes The Plus the “world’s most environmentally-friendly furniture factory”, generating 55 per cent lower emissions from energy and materials than a comparable building.
The company claims this also makes the project “Paris-proof”, bringing it in line with global targets set out in the Paris Agreement to halve emissions by 2030.
However, this assessment does not account for emissions generated during the building’s whole lifecycle including those related to Vestre’s production process.
Overall, The Plus falls short of achieving net-zero emissions, which every building both old and new would have to reach by 2050 to help limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in accordance with the Paris Agreement.
Its exterior is clad in charred larch
Instead, the project is reportedly on track to become the first industrial building in the Nordic countries to reach the highest rating in the BREEAM environmental certification scheme, which is only awarded to the top one per cent of projects.
“There are no industrial buildings that have even come close to the highest standard, not even the second-highest,” BIG design lead Viktoria Millentrup told Dezeen. “So BREEAM-wise, there was not even an example building we could follow.”
“It’s untraditional for a factory to focus so much on sustainability,” agreed lead architect David Zahle. “For a lot of companies, production is about keeping costs low and hiding it away.”
Exterior stairs allow the public to access the roof and look into the factory
In comparison, the interior of The Plus is laid bare by huge windows running up its charred-larch facade and by the glazed courtyard punctuating its centre, both of which are accessible to the public using huge exterior staircases.
In this way, Vestre says The Plus is meant to bring ideas about more sustainable building and production methods to the general public and “build a bridge between the Greta Thunberg generation and industrialists”.
“The project is very transparent, almost open-source both in terms of how the products are made but also in how we’ve opened up the facade to bring people closer,” Zahle said.
“You invite people to play and you invite people to walk up on the roof and you create a park around it so that even a factory can become part of creating a good life.”
A yellow spiral staircase leads from the roof into an internal courtyard
Each of the Plus’s four wings is topped with green roofs grown from seeds that were collected from the surrounding forest and solar panels that together will produce 250,000 kilowatt-hours of renewable energy a year.
Underneath, the roofs are held up by giant glulam girders spanning up to 14 metres and weighing up to five tons, bent into a double-curved structure using “long screws and a lot of force”, according to Magnus Holm Andersen, project manager at timber supplier Woodcon.
“As far as we know, this has never been done before,” he added.
From the central roof, visitors can take a yellow spiral staircase down past glazed office spaces and into the internal courtyard, which is supported by recycled reinforced steel beams and centred on a lone Norwegian maple tree.
A slide, visible in the top left-corner of the building, leads from the roof to the forest floor
Alternatively, a 14-metre long slide – reportedly Norway’s tallest – winds its way around the side of the building and back down onto the forest floor.
The square roof above the office area is one of only two concrete elements in the building alongside the foundation, both made from a mixture of high-strength and low-carbon concrete to minimise emissions and material use.
Stairs are mirrored on the interior and exterior of the building
On the inside, the factory is clad in light pinewood that stands in stark contrast to the exterior’s charred black finish.
Each of the four wings – housing Vestre’s woodwork and powder-coating workshops, as well as a warehouse and an assembly station – features colour-coded equipment and flow-chart-style floor markings designed to help visitors follow the production process from above.
The production line itself combines efficient machinery and artificial intelligence, which Vestre says helps it to “manufacture faster, greener and less expensively”.
Colourful floor markings illustrate the production process
In the colour workshop, for example, two industrial robots named after Norway’s first female engineers are powder-coating metal components using AI and object recognition, and are capable of changing colours in seconds rather than minutes.
Hidden behind the walls of each wing is a technical corridor, in which waste products from the manufacturing process are recycled for reuse.
Here, the water needed for washing metal components is cleaned and filtered so that 90 per cent of it can be cycled back into the process, while wood chips and sawdust are collected and sent off to a biomass power plant to be burned for electricity.
Two self-learning industrial robots paint metal furniture parts
Meanwhile, heat pumps capture excess energy from the process of drying the components and convert it into heat that is then fed back into the production line and used to warm the building.
“Since there’s one owner, it’s easy to do that,” said project manager Jan Myrlund. “Normally, one company owns the plant and another the inside and they deliver their own systems.”
Reducing waste and emissions was also a key consideration in the construction phase, with all equipment powered either by electricity or biodiesel and all felled trees reused as part of the building’s structure or stored for use in Vestre’s furniture.
Trees surround the building on almost all sides
The building’s footprint was deliberately rolled back to leave as many trees standing as possible and where the forest floor was removed, it was preserved and put back in so that greenery hugs the building on all but two sides.
“Normally, when we construct a building in the middle of the forest, we would take a lot more trees away,” said the project’s design manager Sindre Myrlund.
“Originally, we drew a line 10 metres away from the factory, which is more normal. And Vestre moved the line five metres in and said: if you need to remove more trees, you need to ask and get it approved.”
Vestre has previously claimed to be the “first furniture manufacturer in the world” to declare the carbon footprint of all its products.
These figures were prominently displayed on the brand’s award-winning stand at the 2020 Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair, which was later disassembled and reused to form an installation at Milan design week.
Click here to read the Chinese version of this article on Dezeen’s official WeChat account, where we publish daily architecture and design news and projects in Simplified Chinese.
A large steel-clad cube encloses the Dance House in Helsinki, which local architecture studios JKMM and ILO architects have created by converting and extending part of a former cable factory.
Providing over 7,000 square metres of space, the Dance House forms part of a wider redevelopment of the old industrial building that was acquired by the city in 1991 to create the Kaapelitehdas, or Cable Factory, which is Helsinki’s largest cultural centre.
JKMM and ILO architects have created the Dance House. Photo is by Hannu Rytky
JKMM and ILO architects were tasked with reconfiguring part of the existing structure while adding new spaces to its eastern end, housed inside a steel-clad cuboid informed by the “gravity, lightness and weight” of dance.
“The Dance House adds a striking contemporary layer to the history of the former factory and its surroundings,” said JKMM.
The centre occupies part of a former cable factory
“The new and old are placed in contrast, but also in dialogue with each other. Together, the Dance House and the Cable Factory create a meaningful destination and a revived neighbourhood,” JKMM continued.
Inside are two black-box dance studios. One of them is housed in the Cable Factory’s redesigned Pannu Hall, which now seats up to 400 people, and the second is the new 1,000-seat Erkko Hall – the largest dance performance space in the Nordic countries.
Metal clads the exterior of the building
These two performance spaces sit on either side of an entrance lobby, which connects to an enclosed street-like space between two existing facades, described by JKMM as a “glass courtyard”.
An underground club, cloakroom facilities, restaurant, rehearsal and back-of-house spaces are organised across the building’s five levels, with all of the circulation spaces designed to have the potential to be used for performance.
“All the public spaces in the Dance House have been designed with performance in mind,” explained JKMM’s project architect Harri Lindberg.
“It is possible for dance to take over, for example, the entire Cable Factory for the duration of a performance,” he continued.
An entrance links to an enclosed street-like space. Photo is by Hannu Rytky
Large steel panels, one of them highly reflective and one weathered, form the facade of the extension, hung slightly above the ground and at different levels to give the effect of them shifting away from one another.
On the building’s north elevation facing a nearby park, the stacked levels have been covered in hundreds of small aluminium discs, designed to create an “abstract rhythm” against the sky.
There are two black-box dance studios. Photo is by Tuomas Uusheimo
“Dance deals with gravity, lightness, and the weight of the human body,” explained JKMM.
“The ‘floating’ metal facades were custom designed by using laser welding technology, to create bespoke sandwich panels with the biggest possible surface,” it continued.
“Dance performers also create illusions. The light, satin-like steel surface can be transformed with light, becoming part of the scenery of dance events.”
It has the largest dance performance space in the Nordic countries
Inside, robust materials such as raw steel and concrete have been chosen to complement the existing structure of the former factory.
JKKM recently incorporated heritage structures into another of its designs in the Finnish capital, creating a new home for the University of Arts Helsinki that partially occupies an old soap factory and silo building.
The photography is by Peter Vuorenrinne unless stated otherwise.
Spotted: Modular housebuilder TopHat, which claims to be the UK’s first zero-embodied-carbon home builder, recently announced that it will be opening a hi-tech home building facility in Corby, Northampton next year. The new factory will be 650,000 square feet in size and will incorporate the latest in robotic technology.
TopHat was founded in 2016 and began production in early 2018 at its manufacturing facility in South Derbyshire. The company builds modular, zero-carbon homes with a sustainable core. The company claims their homes have less than one-twenty-seventh the embodied carbon of a traditionally built home. To achieve this, the company uses low-carbon materials, such as timber, while reducing waste and travel at every stage.
One way that TopHat achieves its low-carbon usage is through the streamlined logistics and lean manufacturing techniques that are made possible by building modular homes in a factory using robotics. The company is also able to tailor solutions to clients, acting as either a supplier, contractor, or developer. The first residential site to use TopHat’s product was the historic Kitchener Barracks in Chatham, Kent, which opened in 2019. The company has also seen a £75 million (around €89 million) capital investment from Goldman Sachs, which has helped to finance the new factory.
There is no end of creative proposals for developing housing that is both more affordable and more sustainable. Springwise has often covered innovations in this space. Some of the most recent have included carbon-neutral tiny homes, all-timber buildings and the use of tech to maximise efficiency and sustainability.
