Archinect - News

Second Home Hollywood pitched as a pandemic-friendly work environment

2020-09-25T15:37:00-04:00

At the end of 2019, Second Home Hollywood opened its doors to the Los Angeles area as a remedy for flipping the script on co-working spaces and a community-driven work environment. Designed by the Madrid-based studio SelgasCano, its fresh take on integrating the indoor-outdoor aesthetic, mixed with lush greenery, open office spaces, and wellness driven design created a working oasis for LA creatives. However, as the pandemic quickly impacted the day-to-day office grind, the transition to working from home forced a new outlook on the future of working in an office and creative workspaces.

Read Archinect's dive into Second Home Hollywood with Eric Lawler. Photograph by Iwan Baan, courtesy of SelgasCano

As California is slowly picking up the pieces and adjusting to COVID-19 safety precautions, businesses are opening; however, office culture is still reshaping its "new normal." Carolina A. Miranda of the LA Times, investigates office spaces in a post-pandemic future. Her case study, Seco...

Selgascano and Second Home prepare for their colorful Los Angeles debut

2019-06-21T12:09:00-04:00

A sea of canary yellow office pods is taking shape on a dusty lot off of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. There, Spanish architects Selgascano and global co-working platform Second Home are busy finishing out the group’s new 90,000-square-foot Hollywood outpost, a mesmerizing construction site brimming with unusual architecture.

While touring the site, Second Home co-founder Rohan Silva explains the basic premise behind the budding social-business venture: “We want to put creative people together and help them do great work.”

Interior community arts spaces will be housed within a repurposed Paul Revere Williams-designed building. Image courtesy of Second Home.

That vision guides the architectural design of the complex as well as the company’s business plan. The site, arranged in two opposing configurations, mixes old and new, formal and ecstatic, staid and colorful. At the front of the complex, for example, an existing 1960s-era Paul Revere Williams-designed building that once hous...

SelgasCano's 2015 Serpentine Pavilion is coming to LA this summer

2019-04-24T16:25:00-04:00

After a successful run in London's Hyde Park back in 2015, SelgasCano's' rainbow-tunnel Serpentine Pavilion is making its way to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles starting June 28. London-based Second Home teamed up with the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County to bring out the installation, which will host a series of free public events exploring art, design, science, and nature.

Serpentine Pavilion designed by SelgasCano 2015. Photo: Iwan Baan

Set to be built at the park adjacent to the tourist hot-spot La Brea Tar Pits museum, the 866-square-foot pavilion will be a polygonal structure covered in a multi-colored, translucent fabric membrane that will create an immersive, stained-glass environment.

Serpentine Pavilion designed by SelgasCano 2015. Photo: Iwan Baan

Visitors can enter and exit at multiple points to experience the structure's interior in various ways “characterized by color, light and irregular shapes with surprising volumes,” SelgasCano previously described....

SelgasCano's floating pavilion invades the canals of Bruges for the city's Triennial

2018-05-09T14:19:00-04:00

Over the weekend, the famous tourist town of Bruges—known for its enchanting canals, Belgian chocolate, and starring role in the movie In Bruges—kicked off the second edition of its Contemporary Art and Architecture Triennial. Themed Liquid City | Vloeibare stad, the event has returned with surprising installations by an international roster of celebrated artists and architects, spread across the historic cityscape.

The Selgascano Pavilion at the Bruges Triennial. Photo by Iwan Baan.

Over 15 works have been commissioned by curators Till-Holger Borchert and Michel Dewildel, their marks and temporary modifications opening up both lesser-known and iconic places around the city for new opportunities. Inspired by the Polish-born British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman—who, coining the term liquid modernity, believed that change within modern society was constant and relentless—the curators wanted to build hospitable public sp...

SelgasCano design pavilion for Africa in Denmark

2015-07-14T13:37:00-04:00

Hot young Spanish architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano of SelgasCano have designed a pop-up exhibition pavilion for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's latest exhibition, Africa: Architecture, Culture, Identity. Made of low-cost materials, such as scaffold poles and plastic sheets, which the architects have jazzed up inspired by traditional sub-Saharan settlements, the pavilion is due to travel to Kenya. The show in leafy Humlebaek near Copenhagen closes at the end of September.

SelgasCano's airy, bright and colorful pavilions are a sought-after commodity this summer: less than a month ago, the practice unveiled its completed design for the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion in London.

To learn more about the Africa: Architecture, Culture, Identity exhibition, click here.

Hot Work in the Summertime: From Helsinki to London to NYC, Archinect Sessions #35

2015-06-25T17:20:00-04:00

Lots of summer blockbuster news to discuss on this week's podcast. The winner of the Helsinki Guggenheim competition was announced (a young husband-wife firm from Paris took the cake), SelgasCano's "psychedelic chrysalis" Serpentine Pavilion opened, and Andres Jaque's COSMO for MoMA PS1's "Warm Up" began its water cycle. And while not quite blockbusting, in what could easily be the premise for a Vincent Price flick, residents of the blighted Robin Hood Gardens dared Lord Rogers to spend a night in their quarters.

Special guests Quilian Riano and Peggy Deamer of The Architecture Lobby join our news discussion this week, dropping their excellent and incisive commentary on ethical practice into every topic. We are collaborating with the Lobby to measure satisfaction with work-life balance in architecture – take the 3-question survey here.

Listen to episode thirty-five of Archinect Sessions, "Hot Work in the Summertime":

iTunes: Click here to listen, and click the "Subscribe" button bel...

SelgasCano's "psychedelic chrysalis" Serpentine Pavilion is now open

2015-06-22T15:42:00-04:00

Monday, June 22 – SelgasCano's design for the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion became a reality today, as the much-anticipated structure was officially unveiled. The pavilion, a series of colorful, interconnected and multi-layered corridors with a café and sitting area inside, has multiple openings for visitors to waft through at their own whim. As pictured, the effect inside is like a creamsicle stained-glass dreamscape, with varying textures to distinguishing the barrier between inside and out.

Compared to initial renderings of the pavilion, the design delivers on its scheme to emulate a vibrant atmosphere of color and light. Also maintained is a distinct playfulness, captured in the renderings by cartoonish figures occupying the space, and evident in the real design through the striking iridescent colors circulating inside. These aesthetics are a remarkable break from the Serpentine's last apparent trend, compared to preceding pavilions by Smiljan Radic (2014), Sou Fujimoto (2013), Herzog...

SelgasCano unveils designs for the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion

2015-03-25T13:00:00-04:00

Earlier today, the Serpentine Galleries in London released the first images of the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, designed by the Spanish firm of SelgasCano headed by José Selgas and Lucía Cano. In keeping with the criteria of the annual program, this will be the first UK project by the award-winning firm, and is also the first pavilion designed by Spanish architects. According to a statement released with the announcement, the pavilion will consist of "an amorphous, double-skinned, polygonal structure consisting of panels of a translucent, multi-coloured fabric membrane (ETFE) woven through and wrapped in webbing." The images released with the statement consist of colorful, playful renders populated by cartoonish figures.

A much-anticipated event each year, the Serpentine Pavilion is one of the "top-ten most visited architecture and design exhibits in the world." Visitors to the SelgasCano-designed pavilion will be able to enter the structure from a number of openings, "passing through a...

SelgasCano creates a stunning members-only workspace for ‘creative nomads’

2014-12-16T14:04:00-05:00

It is to serve this world that Second Home has come into being, a former carpet factory off Brick Lane in east London within whose seductive interiors a fragment of Superstudio’s techno-nomadism has, possibly, come to pass. [...] The architects are José Selgas and Lucía Cano [...] who have just been announced as the designers of next year’s Serpentine pavilion. They bring to this, their first UK project, lightness and grace as well as invention, and an awareness of when to stop.

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