design

Charging Point by James Whitaker

Whitaker Studio’s concept design for a curb-side electric vehicle charging point.

Whitaker Studio’s concept design for a curb-side electric vehicle charging point.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders estimates that the UK needs to have 1.9million road side electric vehicle charging points by 2030. That means that the UK needs to install approximately 700 charging points every day over the next 8 years. (There are currently less than 40,000 public electric vehicle charging points.) So, during this summer the UK government ran a tender to appoint someone to design an affordable cabinet that could be rolled out across the country.

We didn’t win the tender, but it did spark our imagination. I wondered about creating a design that could be fabricated using the same processes and materials already used for street lights. A design that would lend itself to being made by existing manufacturers with their existing tools. Something that’s robust, both in terms of life on a city street and also its resilience to the weather.

Now, I’m a dad as well and have spent plenty of time trying to wind through congested pavements with a buggy. Also, electric vehicles are very much in their infancy at the moment and the equipment that we need to charge a car well might be different in 8 years time. So I concentrated on designing a slender bollard for the curb-side that would really just be a terminal, and then the transformers, fuses, meters etc could all be consolidated into a separate box set back from the edge of the road, so that hypothetically if a council upgraded the system at some point they could just upgrade the equipment in one box, rather than every terminal down the street.

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Business Insider reports on the Starburst House by James Whitaker

Whitaker Studio's Starburst House in Joshua Tree

Business Insider have featured our Starburst House this week. If you visit our instagram feed you’ll see a special little animation that we made for the article that shows the house in a new way!

57'10 Podcast by James Whitaker

57’10’s podcast is out featuring the interview that they recorded with me back in November last year. We chatted about all sorts of things, ranging from my experience of working at Heatherwick Studio, what grand tour I would recommend for students on their summer holidays, and the role computer generated images play in my work. It was lovely chatting so hopefully it makes enjoyable listening!

There are some other interesting podcasts in their series so be sure to explore their back catalogue.

Iterations of a Garage by James Whitaker

Here are a small collection of the iterative maquette models for the garage at the Anywhere House in Canada. Because the rest of the house has been split down into individual rooms the scale of a garage seems huge in comparison. The right answer ended up lying in breaking the garage bulk down, giving it the appearance of two conjoined volumes, each comparable in scale to the other volumes in the house.

Torogips, Spain by James Whitaker

Torogips office by Whitaker Studio

Over the last year we’ve been designing a small office building to accompany a new gypsum factory in Spain. Our building will house the changing rooms, laboratory, office and dining room. The inside of a gypsum factory can be a relatively dark and dusty place and so our main objective has been to create a light filled, airy alternative to that. Working with a very modest budget we have concentrated on drawing northern light into all the spaces to ensure that there is a good quality of light throughout the day.

The material palette will be very simple, with painted concrete block for the walls, expanded metal mesh shutters over the windows and a polished concrete floor internally. On the roof we plan to use Cumella Ceramic tiles. The colours aren’t yet confirmed, but I’m inclined to be bold and go for the pattern shown…

Construction will hopefully start this autumn.

Torogips Roof by Whitaker Studio
Torogips roof by Whitaker Studio
Torogips hall by Whitaker Studio
Torogips hall by Whitaker Studio

by James Whitaker

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This was my first ever design project at university 15 years ago. The idea for the climbers hut was based on a piece of climbing equipment that can be lodged into cracks in the rock face to arrest a climber’s fall.

The hut consists of a Cor-ten steel cage with oak cladding infill and a smooth, curved plywood interior. Once the hut has been lowered into the cliff face and has wedged itself into place the floor joists can be inserted to ensure a level surface. The lower area is for storage of equipment while the upper area is for sleeping and cooking.

I revisited the project as an excuse to experiment with particle systems in 3DS Max. The snow capping on the foreground was produced by raining over half a million particles down on the model and then turning them into a mesh. The images where rendered with Vray and a small amount of photoshop. HDRI skies are from Peter Guthrie’s shop and the rock face textures were made from images sourced from CG Textures.com