Showing posts with label Örnsköldsvik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Örnsköldsvik. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Cauldron Claw

Visiondivision has made a flaming bathtub for an old man in the very north of Sweden.


An old welder wanted a bath in his childhood creek in the deep forests of Northern Sweden.
Old metal scrap was welded together and fused as legs to a bath tub from the WWI.
Custom made metal hooks carry a perforated steel plate that hangs over the creek, where you put logs to heat the water inside the tub.
The stream under the tub gives the fire a steady flow of air through the perforations.
A steel plate regulates the flow of the water from the creek and has medicinal plants growing on it, to give the bath a soothing experience for aching bodies as the water trickles through this pharmacy of nature and in to the cauldron.
The first phase of the project was carried out during winter time so that we could transport the heavy structure on the hard snow all the way to the site.
When the winter finally subdued and turned the landscape around the Cauldron Claw into a lush and paradisesque environment, we went back to pick the medicinal plants and constructed the steel aqueduct and witnessed the old man take his premiere bath.
See the movie of the building process here or the premiere bath here.






Sunday, July 1, 2007

Mirror woods



We were hired by the Swedish architectural firm "Tema" to cooperate with them in an invited competition for a housing project in Örnsköldsvik, the Swedish Mecca of Ice Hockey.
The prices on apartments in northern Sweden are fairly low since there are a lot of available empty houses in that region, so the proposal needed to be cost efficient. While the floor plan were designed as efficient and simple as possible with cheap extravaganzas such as sight lines, zoning and so on, we put our efforts on making something unique with the outdoor spaces. Since the houses are laid out pointing towards the sea, they create a sloping space towards the ocean which in this case where filled with birch trees. We tried to make a façade that mimic the aesthetics of the birch trunk to get a building that corresponded with its surrounding environment. We put highly reflective and slightly tilted steel sheets between the windows, making a façade that mimic the pattern of a birch trunk and at the same time reflected the birch trees in the voids between the buildings. The result became quit poetic we must say.


Steel sheet façade


Site Plan


Floor Plan



Diagrams showing zoning, direct light, movement, construction lines, sight lines, options



Apartment