DOS Architects On The Way Up

DOS Architects is the style behind the stars - from the recording studio to the ultimate luxury resort, and the funky hip hop set design. Their flair takes centre stage all over the world, putting the swing into bus shelters, the sweetness into a day at work, and the sparkle into a concrete jungle.

These young European architects are rapidly capturing the market for creative, cutting-edge design and architecture - from all corners, in both the global and contextual sense. Residential reinventions in London's suburbia and the heart of Rome; clothing retail store interiors from London to Moscow and Guangzhou, China; a vertiginous luxury apartment tower and a sweeping multimedia hotel in Dubai; innovative bus shelters for Sydney's local streetscape; a gem-like exhibition centre in Granada, Spain; two creative office fitouts; an underground lounge and club refurbishment; and even the stage layout for hip-hop artist Kanye West's latest tour.

DOS's two directors embody the firm's cosmopolitan style and flair. Italian born, raised, educated and practiced Lorenzo Grifantini has a distinguished MA in Architecture from La Sapienza University, where later lectured and tutored before moving to London in 1999. Tavis Wright, borin in Spain, has worked in Edinburgh, Paris, New York and Barcelona, and with Ron Arad Associates on the Design Museum project in Holon, Israel, which is currently under construction. The two talents combined after each spent a year-and-a-half working on projects and competitions with Foster and Partners in London, and in May 2002 they formed DOS Architects, merging an impressive shared wealth of industry experience and inspiration - the lifesource of the firm's designs.

In 2005, DOS architects won the international design competition for a tower that looms massive at 373 metres above the Dubai seaside, comprising 93 floors and 632 apartments. Designed to reflect its natural surroundings, the waveform of the façade mirrors both the sand dunes of the Arabian desert, and the rippling waters of the Persian Gulf.

Solar panels will provide up to 25 per cent of the total energy consumption of the finished building, and the design incorporates other active and passive mechanisms to reduce air conditioning use, running costs and environmental impact, while increasing the health and comfort of its inhabitants. The mass and thickness of the building – to which it owes its curved scimitar-like presence – also provide thermal resistance to the harsh temperature fluctuations of the desert, and the geometry of the design makes the tower almost entirely self-shading, yet still allows for unobstructed panoramic views over the marina.

The tower partners DOS’s existing feature in Dubai, The Crescent. Again working with the local environs and culture, this combined luxury hotel and state-of-the-art entertainment production facility emerges from the scorching desert, its sweeping curves and luminous waves evoking the opulence of crescent moons and shifting sand dunes. Born from a recurring urge to design spaces for the performing arts, the hotel has a series of integrated recording studios and facilities aimed at the music, film and theatre industries: an oasis where artists, musicians, actors and designers can live, work and play.

DOS Architect’s design with Whitby Bird Engineers for a new bus shelter and transit entryway system in Sydney, Australia recently won the People’s Choice Award in the RAIA-endorsed ‘2006 International North Sydney Bus Shelter and Canopy Entrance Competition’. DOS architect’s ambition was to design a series of objects that would become internationally iconic additions to Sydney’s urban landscape, and yet form a familiar part of life for the day-to-day users of Sydney’s transit facilities. With a boomerang as the core template, the design is replicated and fitted together so as to form a range of skeletal canopies and shelters, recognisable as part of a common body regardless of their many locations throughout the city. Red River Gum timber was chosen as the construction material, for its bold Australian identity, its affordability, its availability and its durability. The independent panel of judges for the design competition included architect, urban designer and President of the RAIA, Deborah Dearing; architect Camilla Block; and Chairperson of DARCH, Eva-Marie Prineas.

DOS architects’ supreme originality and flair is showcased no better than in its Framfab ‘honeycomb’ office fitout and Cinema Studio warehouse restoration in Rome. The former aimed to liberate great expanses of open space in a previously overcrowded office space, with a hexagonal honeycomb motif forming the basis of the entire project. After all, bees are social insects, so the bright modular communal workspaces facilitate optimum co-operation and productivity with minimal waste of space. The latter Roman warehouse restoration was, as with the Dubai Crescent, designed as means of integrating recording studios into a more general-use structure. Here, DOS architects needed to work with the existing shell and vast former industrial interior, to provide a space shared by hi-tech audio recording facilities and open general offices alike. With designs as stylish as they are substantial, DOS Architects are certainly on the way up. +

Previous. The glazed elements of the Marina Tower, Dubai are intended to be self-shading, using this shape derived from the sand dunes of the Arabian Desert.

Top. The interior of The Crescent uses the sweeping curves of the crescent moon to connect the centre's facilities, while providing a space for creative minds to interact.

Second. The Terraplana shoe store in Guangzhou, China is a larger-scale expression of the flagship London store, also designed by DOS.

Third. The Marina Tower rises 373 metres into the Dubai skyline, using its thermal mass to derive maximum efficiency from the desert sun. Up to 25 per cent of the tower's energy use will be solar powered on-site.

Bottom. "Spatial discontinuity" is the theme of this Loft Conversion in Rome (2004): the main feature is a staircase breaking through the central void.

Images courtesy of DOS Architects.