INTERIORS and HERITAGE: lifestyle

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Gordiola, traditional artistic handmade glass (Majorca)

A visit to Gordiola and its museum in the centre of Majorca is a visit to a cabinet of wonders!

This centuries-old artistic tradition has been cultivated since late 18th century

in the glass furnaces that the Gordiola family started in Majorca.

Over the years and with successive generations, master glassmakers and artisans have created

pieces for the firm's huge catalogue, some are now part of the museum's collection.

Each piece is unique none are identical, as they are all handmade.

Glass blowing and furnaces, and the waste of production to be recycled.

Room filled with pieces made by hand and following traditional and artisanal techniques.

Casa Errepila: hogar y estudio de trabajo, historia de una reforma exitosa

Yolanda Rodríguez, diseñadora, directora de arte y fundadora de ERREPILA Estudio de Diseño.

"Personal y profesionalmente me gusta explorar os límites como forma de autoconocimiento.

En mi caso el crecimiento personal y profesional están muy unidos y cuando en 2013

decidí fundar Errepila, decidí trasladarme a la antigua casa de mis abuelos para vivir y

trabajar desde allí con el objetivo de integrar ambas facetas en un solo espacio,

manteniendo al tiempo una relativa independencia entre ellas".

"Esta casa es además mucho más que los módulos ambiantes. Lo mejor del lugar se

quedó fuera del proyecto de la reforma y es un proyecto a largo plazo. El pulmón de

esta casa y su razón de ser es el patio exterior: cielo y tierra, verde y aire, es descanso,

un hogar felino de propios y ajenos, mi proyecto personal para los próximos años

y el espacio favorito de los clientes para las reuniones. Es el aire de la casa, de

toda su historia, la de mi familia antigua y ahora de la mía propia".

"Atípico e inusual, divertido y serio, me obliga a tomar conciencia del espacio que

habito así como la manera que elijo de relacionarme con él, en él. Paradigma

arquitectónico de Errepila, como Estudio la configuración del estudio es un juego que

me permite el pensamiento creativo. Una invitación amable para las visitas de trabajo".

"Contacté con un estudio joven de arquitectura para que me aportaran la perspectiva

que me faltaba para intervenir este espacio y hacerlo a medida. La idea de los módulos

fue suya y después lo bajamos a la tierra entre todos(trabajando en equipo). Antes de

aprobar el proyecto medité cuidadosamente cómo resolvía mis necesidades, pero el resultado

final era una incertidumbre. Así que esta solución fue un prototipo a escala real".

"Como un Jekyll&Hyde además de Estudio es también casa y hogar.

Una casa acogedora, llena de vida, de gente y de vecinos".

"Se adapta amablemente a los diferentes modelos de ser y estar: sola, en pareja, con amigos

o en familia, tanto si estoy trabajando, cocinando, descansando o con las tijeras y los collages".

Florist in Ghent, Belgium

Florist Maenhaut, a special place for flower lovers in Ghent, Belgium

The Barbican Complex, architecture and nature, London

The Barbican, London. Text by landscapelover

Barbican is an old word meaning fortification. It is a perfect name for this monumental,
modernist development in the heart of London. Covering fifteen hectares, and having
taken twenty years to construct, the Barbican consists of more than two thousand
high-rise and low-rise apartments with associated cultural and recreational facilities.

It was designed as a series of vast geometric blocks, all finished in the same hammered

concrete, creating a distinctive texture and striking sense of coherence throughout the site.

At forty-three storeys, its three high-rise towers were for a time the tallest residential

blocks in Europe. But the Barbican is not simply concrete: its buildings are geometrically

arranged around open squares and gardens of lawns, trees, flowers, canals, massed fountains and pools.

Hidden away are roof terraces, allotments, even a wild garden. Accessible only on foot,
architecture and landscape are linked together by raised walks, steps and pedestrian
bridges. Cars and parking have been relegated to the concealed street level, with the
Underground [London metro] in tunnels further below.

The Barbican was designed in the late 1950s to revive the largely deserted Cripplegate
area of the capital that had been bombed to dereliction during the Second World War.

Despite pressure to provide commercial facilities, the City of London Corporation—

the public body responsible for this square mile of the city—decided on a largely

residential development, wanting to attract a stable population of young professionals working in the nearby financial and cultural institutions.

It was thus never intended as social housing, but to some the Barbican feels like a

modernist rendering of England’s early twentieth century Garden City Movement,

which sought to create utopian communities for the working classes by balancing

carefully placed housing with allotments and forests, and combining agriculture

and industry, nature and the man-made, all designed on a human scale.

More obvious as an influence on the Barbican is Le Corbusier’s mid-century vision
of high-rise developments that replaced urban slums with large, light-filled
apartments situated in wide green plazas, integrated with public transport,
shops, communal gardens and cultural resources.

The purpose and design of the Barbican was dramatic and brave. Yet its reputation was sullied by the general unfashionableness of modernist design and, more practically, by the impossibility for visitors of finding the major Arts Centre in its midst.