January 31, 2015, 3:01 pm
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The house is in the south part of Kurume, Fukuoka, built with the Minou mountain ranges in view. At the client’s wish, the house is designed to be able to feel these ranges from every room. We use deep eaves and hold windows low to control the incoming sunlight to limit the use of air-conditioning. The surface is made of pure and natural materials. Also, cedar is used, which one can see is going to harmonize with the landscape as it ages. We set the surface cedar boards unevenly to accent shadows. We look for wind and snow to beautifully affect that surface.
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January 31, 2015, 3:01 pm
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This project is a ‘house within a house’ built in a 20-year-old warehouse. A year ago, in October, a young couple in their late 20s visited our studio to build their house for after they married. They were the youngest clients who required our design. The couple was thinking of renovating the concrete warehouse in the bride’s hometown as their new house. They said they wanted to fix it and take it as the starting point of their new life. Her hometown was a small town next to the East Sea between Pohang and Gampo, which is 240 miles from Seoul. Listening to their story, we could foresee the difficulties of the project and tried to come up with excuses to refuse politely, but when we saw the photographs of the old concrete warehouse standing inside the rice paddy and field like magic, it was like hearing the sound of a pied piper. We already answered that we’d take the project. The warehouse was built 20 years ago by the bride’s father. He bought some property to start a new business in his hometown, and the warehouse was an animal-feed factory for a chicken farm. To let big machinery in, ...
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February 1, 2015, 3:55 pm
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The thermal spring facilities are an important element of the touristic health and recreation resort in the Black Forest. The complex mostly consists of a historic bath, an inoperative terraced sanatorium, a bath hotel with a spa plaza, and surrounding administration buildings. To complement the offer, large outdoor spaces on the second and third floor of the inoperative sanatorium were activated and rebuilt for the use of the spa area. The new atmospheric wooden landscape with outdoor pool, terraces, saunas, and additional facilities offer an attractive outlook to the valley. Over open staircases and an enlarged elevator, the new spaces are developed from the courtyard of the historic building. To prevent views from the neighboring hotel building, a translucent and white membrane spans over the north area. It frames the outlook to the south and east and is also a shelter shield for most parts of the wooden terraces.
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February 1, 2015, 3:55 pm
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A distinctive five-bedroom house designed to sit comfortably in its unique woodland setting. A key design principle is the connection of the house to the landscape through glimpsed vistas and links reflecting the natural setting with its colors and materials to enhance the conservation area. The building’s linear form opens up to a southern aspect and views in to woodland along both principal elevations. The plan of the building is simple, with a key axis creating a divide through the building where circulation and links to the garden occur, separating living and ancillary spaces. Wherever you are in the building, you have a visual link with the garden and distant views to its green setting. A limited palette of high-quality materials has been chosen for aesthetic merits, robustness, and ability to reflect the natural surroundings. We have used zinc cladding, crisp frameless glass balustrades, Purbeck stone, cedar louvers, and cladding. Together, these materials create a simple, elegant house. The building is designed and constructed from materials that are almost entirely recyclable at the end of the building’s life. Offsite construction of the steel frame led to efficient and rapid construction, thus avoiding wasted time on site. The building is highly ...
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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As a contrast to the old vicarage with thick walls and small windows, the ensemble was completed by an airy and bright wooden pavilion serving as a small concert room for the clients. To guarantee a certain amount of privacy in the glass pavilion, perforated solid larch wood shutters were attached to the east façade oriented to the orchard (and the street). These create a filter between the indoors and outdoors and can easily be opened in only two steps.
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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The ingenious philanthropic model of the public/private partnership has long sustained America’s cultural and civic assets, relied upon by museums, historic places, parks, hospitals, and libraries for design, building, and ongoing program operations. The model constitutes the core of the nation’s uniquely market-reliant nonprofit sector — it is the bedrock of civic goodwill and public benefit. This tradition dates back at least to 1869, when a burgeoning City of New York first gave land on the western edge of its new Central Park, along with construction funds, for the recently incorporated American Museum of Natural History. Architect J. Wrey Mould conceived the first, long-subsumed Gothic Revival structure. Five years later, the City did the same for the Metropolitan Museum of Art across the Park on Fifth Avenue; its initial architectural iteration by Calvert Vaux can still be detected by an informed eye. Both museums were launched in this symbiotic public/private manner in accordance with the Central Park Commission’s 1857 “Greensward Plan.” Olmsted and Vaux’s winning proposal called for for the placement of such buildings on street-accessible edges as places “to humanize, educate, and refine a practical and laborious people.” Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image via Shorpy ...
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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“The unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence,” wrote Italo Calvino in his masterpiece Invisible Cities. Beyond designing the Ecole Normale Supérieure Cachan in Paris and the Columbia University Campus Plan in New York City, architect Renzo Piano has spent last year looking for fragments of happy cities around Italian suburbs with a team of six young architects. In August 2013, the 77-year-old architect was named “Senator for life” by Giorgio Napolitano, the President of Italy. Reinforcing the role of political engagement in society, Piano decided to invest his funds as politician to develop a plan to rescue periferies, or the suburban areas of major cities: “I was wondering: Me, an architect who reads about politics on the newspapers, what could I do for my Country? [...] I said to myself: architect is a political profession, after all the word politics is coming from polis, the city […] So my answer was: what I am going to do is a long-term project, as my role of senator for life will be […] I guess that the big project for my Country is the one that include periphery: the city is our future, ...
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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The site is located in a residential district, which is easily accessible from a principal road. It is a so-called “flagpole-shaped site,” meaning that the rectangular site is located at some distance from the public road and linked to it by a long and narrow path. The site is surrounded by two- and three-story buildings on the four sides. The client requested an indoor garage, so that he can enjoy looking at his beloved car from the living room, and also an inclined roof with solar panels. We decided to build a one-story wood house for two reasons: the floor area requested by the client was relatively small in comparison to the site area and the allowable bearing capacity of the ground soil was low because the land had been used for farming and, therefore, the building had to be lightweight with a relatively large building area. Our biggest challenge was to provide natural light inside the one-story house and also to ensure enough solar energy on the roof in the congested area surrounded by two- and three-story buildings. It was also essential to design the house in harmony with the surrounding townscape. Therefore, the roof design became the key ...
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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Rejoice and be merry, for architects are on the rise again! Ok, that statement may be overselling it. Nonetheless, new statistics indicate that a key trio of design and construction sectors — architecture, landscape architecture, and engineering — is continuing a steady recovery following the global financial crisis of 2008. Figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that average annual employment for firms providing architecture and engineering services rose by around 50,000 jobs last year; we have not yet reached pre-recession levels, but we are getting there. While the data represented in the graph above is reason to be cautiously optimistic, these growing blue bars belie the stark variation in fortunes from sector to sector. The full set of data has been dissected and published by Architect Magazine, which looks not only at the overall health of the industry, but also highlights which disciplines are recovering more quickly than others. Take a look at the breakdown below. The numbers make most pleasant reading for those in engineering and drafting services, which have been amongst the most resilient sectors in the construction industry during the ...
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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The Japanese Bath finds its cultural roots in Japan, where bathing is considered a social ritual. Diamond Spas is known for their Japanese baths, which are customized with sophisticated contemporary curves. They feature a bench seat and a deep well for deep soaks.
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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Hot on the heels of the appointment of Aaron Betsky as dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, we're excited to hear more news about America's best-known architect: Ten of his masterpieces have been nominated to the United Nation’s World Heritage List. If selected, Wright’s works will join the likes of the Sydney Opera House, the Bauhaus School in Germany, and the city of Brasilia as exemplars of modern architecture on the list of just over 1,000 culturally or naturally significant sites, including everything from forests and mountains to buildings and monuments. Image via Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy Last week, the US Department of Interior announced that these ten "Key Works of Modern Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright," as they are officially known, will be considered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for official listing come summer 2016. All ten Wright buildings are already designated as U.S. National Historic Landmarks, and will join just a few other buildings — Monticello, Independence Hall, Taos Pueblo — among the United States' 22 Heritage Sites. Here are the nominated designs: 1. Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois {% ...
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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A group of 11 undergraduate students from Tecnologico de Monterrey have constructed a parametric pavilion as a final exercise in the class “Tecnologias Avanzadas en la Arquitectura” by Alex Rodriguez. The project started with an algorithm created by one of the students; a pyramidal-shaped component was placed across a vaulted surface, creating a strong differentiation by changing its height. Another algorithm was elaborated to unfold the 195 components into a flat surface to be laser-cut and then folded to generate the pyramidal shape from a single piece of three-millimeter Coroplast. The team carefully assembled the components using an industrial staple gun and plastic cable zip ties and reinforced the structure with PVC pipes that were fixed to the ground. The pavilion will encourage future students to use digital fabrication techniques. Coordinator: Alex Rodriguez Design: Andres Martinez
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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You spend all day staring at screens. Wouldn’t it be nice to occasionally look up and see a friendly face? Going against the current tide of all-too-smart automated kitchens, Moscow-based designers Tanya Repina and Misha Repin go low-tech with LO-LO, a simple suite of wooden “microkitchen” units ideal for storing refreshments around the office. Each oval-shaped unit is specifically geared toward a single appliance and its requisite accessories: The coffee machine unit also has pegs to hang mugs; the microwave unit has cupboards for plates and drawers for cutlery; all of them have holes in the back for running electrical cords. Sketches highlight its resemblance to a birdhouse. LO-LO, as you maybe guessed from its name, is also saccharinely twee. You can now hide the unsightly watercooler behind a pair of painted semi-circle eyes and a wooden peg or drawer-pull nose. It puts a new face on office gossip. Co-workers are still likely talking trash. via Tanya Repina h/t Contemporist
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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“Summer house” is a subtle residence in the wood in Beddingestrand, on the Skåne south coast. The plot is located on a dyke, which forms a coastline but is now overgrown with forest. In summer, it is hot, while in winter, the sea blows fresh and roars. The view opens onto the water in the south and the forest in the north. The building has been positioned as a large wooden deck, which rests on three longitudinal concrete beams. The housing body is built of light wood walls and glass that give the building a distinctive shape, which is integrated with the landscape. This creates a direct vision to the sea and a little more closed to the forest. The terrace slab is nonorganic and belongs to the ground. The foundation is slightly dug into the site, which has been favorable for plant growth. The intention is to leave nature intact as far as possible. So, the flat roof and slab seem to float above the grass and sand, which gives a better vision from the surrounding sea and countryside. The owner of this house became the master of different variety views with a shady north side and a sunny ...
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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Chicago has been in the architectural news quite a bit lately, with much of it surrounding the lakefront area. Between the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the Windy City's waterfront will be getting some lake-effect architecture soon. (I know Chicago doesn't get lake-effect snow, but its on the lake, so moving on.) Image via art.newcity.com However, the city might also be getting one other feather in its cap. Artist Matthew Haussler recently completed what might be the world's longest hand-drawn picture maze, and its subject: Chicago's lakefront. The 73 1/2 feet long by 3 feet tall drawing shows many of the landmarks from downtown's east side, but with the linework forming a navigable labyrinth. There are views of Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum along with park-goers and even a marathoner, who is working his way toward the finish line in Grant Park. A real, live, solvable maze, the panorama takes on another layer of artistic meaning by depicting samaritans doing selfless acts Image courtesy Matthew Haussler. The drawing will be submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records, and there is a good chance it ...
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February 2, 2015, 4:01 pm
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New York has seen an explosion in a new type of food experience: the marketplace. These are rather tamer versions of Spanish boqueria or bustling marketplaces the world over, with a very tightly controlled space and often high-end shops. Chelsea Market, Gotham West, Gansevoort Market, Berg'n, Brooklyn Night Bazaar, Hudson Eats, and an upcoming Anthony Bourdain joint are permanent manifestations of the ever-popular pop-up food bazaar, such as Smorgasburg or Madison Square Eats. Images courtesy Yannis Halkiopoulos But these venues, delicious though they may be, are pretty prosaic. While they do serve some communal purpose and offer a twist on the dining experience, they don't exactly break the mold architecturally. A new proposal by Yannis Halkiopoulos of the University Of Westminster in London seeks to drive the marketplace beyond just a food mall with dining area. Located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (a target of urban renewal), "Brooklyn Co-Operative" is a slow-food-inspired marketplace that uses the site's unique architectural history to propel it far out into the food-architecture stratosphere. Halkiopoulos transforms the former officers' housing known as Admirals Row into a reinvented space for food production and consumption. This includes fields, a ...
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February 3, 2015, 4:14 pm
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Cloverdale749 is located around the block from the historically significant Miracle Mile hub comprising the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, and other noteworthy cultural destinations. Adhering to a strategy to maximize land use and capitalize on zoning, the building’s 10,500 square feet push against floor-area and density limitations determined by the lot’s size and location. In essence, this project is a volume that cannot expand further. Cloverdale749’s footprint and volume were determined by zoning and development needs, yet within these parameters, LOHA explored the threshold between the unit and the street, establishing a veil of transformable layers that promotes a hybridized relationship between private and public zones. The project’s façade is a study in juxtaposing simplicity with complexity, celebrating the structure’s volume with a choreographed display of permeable layers. The building envelope introduces a visual fragmentation that allows for varied experiences of privacy along the edges of each unit. A blurring of interior and exterior spaces is integral to the design and, dependent on viewing and lighting angles, the building’s sheathing reveals and conceals patios. Circulation is pushed to the exterior, eliminating the need for climate-controlled inner hallways. Private open balconies front the ...
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February 3, 2015, 4:14 pm
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What role will architecture and landscapes play in the newly authorized park?
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February 3, 2015, 4:14 pm
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Architectural Visualization. Its a harsh mistress. We are seduced by it, but sometimes it leads us astray. While modeling, rendering, and post-production capabilities are always increasing, the realism that we see in renderings is not always proportionate to our ability to produce it. In other words, some renderings don't even look try to look real anymore; they are often dramatized until they look like science fiction or a romantic painting. There are examples of realistic visualization, however. One of the best is the recent Unreal Paris, a tour of a digitally modeled Parisian apartment. The video was produced with Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4, their latest game-producing software. The hyper-realistic video weaves through a very nice looking apartment. The towels in the bathroom are the only thing that really gives it away. IKEA uses 3d modeling to produce their catalogs, so that they don't have to style every single shot in real life. They can re-arrange and swap colors or patterns more easily, plus it saves them on cost. Their realistic images look just like the real thing when it arrives at your house, er, after you assemble it! Ironically, IKEA is proud of their print ...
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February 3, 2015, 4:14 pm
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Not many educators would look at a shuttered lumberyard on Chicago’s Northwest Side and declare it the perfect place for a new school. The original 41,000-square-foot open structure provided the perfect opportunity to transform into an innovative space and support the Blended Learning curriculum. Instead of traditional classrooms, it features oversized teaching spaces called “pods” that foster the personalized instruction to which the school is committed. Half of each tandem pod focuses on humanities instruction while the other targets science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Three teachers rotate students through learning stations, offering targeted instruction, support for independent work, and facilitation of Socratic discussion and project-based learning. Intrinsic's design adapted and reused 75 percent of the existing lumberyard structures, all originally bowstring truss buildings. It includes an open-air shed that is more than 40 feet tall — built in 1954 with solid wood columns cut from trees hand-selected in the Pacific Northwest — and two buildings from 1911 and 1928. The bowstring truss, an early 20th-century long-span structural support, provided the wide, column-free interior spaces that are perfect for Intrinsic’s needs. Each learning station in the pod includes easily identifiable elements to guide students. The “coastline,” for example, features adaptable-height desks ...
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The house is in the south part of Kurume, Fukuoka, built with the Minou mountain ranges in view. At the client’s wish, the house is designed to be able to feel these ranges from every room. We use deep eaves and hold windows low to control the incoming sunlight to limit the use of air-conditioning. The surface is made of pure and natural materials. Also, cedar is used, which one can see is going to harmonize with the landscape as it ages. We set the surface cedar boards unevenly to accent shadows. We look for wind and snow to beautifully affect that surface.
This project is a ‘house within a house’ built in a 20-year-old warehouse. A year ago, in October, a young couple in their late 20s visited our studio to build their house for after they married. They were the youngest clients who required our design. The couple was thinking of renovating the concrete warehouse in the bride’s hometown as their new house. They said they wanted to fix it and take it as the starting point of their new life. Her hometown was a small town next to the East Sea between Pohang and Gampo, which is 240 miles from Seoul. Listening to their story, we could foresee the difficulties of the project and tried to come up with excuses to refuse politely, but when we saw the photographs of the old concrete warehouse standing inside the rice paddy and field like magic, it was like hearing the sound of a pied piper. We already answered that we’d take the project. The warehouse was built 20 years ago by the bride’s father. He bought some property to start a new business in his hometown, and the warehouse was an animal-feed factory for a chicken farm. To let big machinery in, ...
The thermal spring facilities are an important element of the touristic health and recreation resort in the Black Forest. The complex mostly consists of a historic bath, an inoperative terraced sanatorium, a bath hotel with a spa plaza, and surrounding administration buildings. To complement the offer, large outdoor spaces on the second and third floor of the inoperative sanatorium were activated and rebuilt for the use of the spa area. The new atmospheric wooden landscape with outdoor pool, terraces, saunas, and additional facilities offer an attractive outlook to the valley. Over open staircases and an enlarged elevator, the new spaces are developed from the courtyard of the historic building. To prevent views from the neighboring hotel building, a translucent and white membrane spans over the north area. It frames the outlook to the south and east and is also a shelter shield for most parts of the wooden terraces.
A distinctive five-bedroom house designed to sit comfortably in its unique woodland setting. A key design principle is the connection of the house to the landscape through glimpsed vistas and links reflecting the natural setting with its colors and materials to enhance the conservation area. The building’s linear form opens up to a southern aspect and views in to woodland along both principal elevations. The plan of the building is simple, with a key axis creating a divide through the building where circulation and links to the garden occur, separating living and ancillary spaces. Wherever you are in the building, you have a visual link with the garden and distant views to its green setting. A limited palette of high-quality materials has been chosen for aesthetic merits, robustness, and ability to reflect the natural surroundings. We have used zinc cladding, crisp frameless glass balustrades, Purbeck stone, cedar louvers, and cladding. Together, these materials create a simple, elegant house. The building is designed and constructed from materials that are almost entirely recyclable at the end of the building’s life. Offsite construction of the steel frame led to efficient and rapid construction, thus avoiding wasted time on site. The building is highly ...
As a contrast to the old vicarage with thick walls and small windows, the ensemble was completed by an airy and bright wooden pavilion serving as a small concert room for the clients. To guarantee a certain amount of privacy in the glass pavilion, perforated solid larch wood shutters were attached to the east façade oriented to the orchard (and the street). These create a filter between the indoors and outdoors and can easily be opened in only two steps.
The ingenious philanthropic model of the public/private partnership has long sustained America’s cultural and civic assets, relied upon by museums, historic places, parks, hospitals, and libraries for design, building, and ongoing program operations. The model constitutes the core of the nation’s uniquely market-reliant nonprofit sector — it is the bedrock of civic goodwill and public benefit. This tradition dates back at least to 1869, when a burgeoning City of New York first gave land on the western edge of its new Central Park, along with construction funds, for the recently incorporated American Museum of Natural History. Architect J. Wrey Mould conceived the first, long-subsumed Gothic Revival structure. Five years later, the City did the same for the Metropolitan Museum of Art across the Park on Fifth Avenue; its initial architectural iteration by Calvert Vaux can still be detected by an informed eye. Both museums were launched in this symbiotic public/private manner in accordance with the Central Park Commission’s 1857 “Greensward Plan.” Olmsted and Vaux’s winning proposal called for for the placement of such buildings on street-accessible edges as places “to humanize, educate, and refine a practical and laborious people.” Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image via Shorpy ...
“The unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence,” wrote Italo Calvino in his masterpiece Invisible Cities. Beyond designing the Ecole Normale Supérieure Cachan in Paris and the Columbia University Campus Plan in New York City, architect Renzo Piano has spent last year looking for fragments of happy cities around Italian suburbs with a team of six young architects. In August 2013, the 77-year-old architect was named “Senator for life” by Giorgio Napolitano, the President of Italy. Reinforcing the role of political engagement in society, Piano decided to invest his funds as politician to develop a plan to rescue periferies, or the suburban areas of major cities: “I was wondering: Me, an architect who reads about politics on the newspapers, what could I do for my Country? [...] I said to myself: architect is a political profession, after all the word politics is coming from polis, the city […] So my answer was: what I am going to do is a long-term project, as my role of senator for life will be […] I guess that the big project for my Country is the one that include periphery: the city is our future, ...
The site is located in a residential district, which is easily accessible from a principal road. It is a so-called “flagpole-shaped site,” meaning that the rectangular site is located at some distance from the public road and linked to it by a long and narrow path. The site is surrounded by two- and three-story buildings on the four sides. The client requested an indoor garage, so that he can enjoy looking at his beloved car from the living room, and also an inclined roof with solar panels. We decided to build a one-story wood house for two reasons: the floor area requested by the client was relatively small in comparison to the site area and the allowable bearing capacity of the ground soil was low because the land had been used for farming and, therefore, the building had to be lightweight with a relatively large building area. Our biggest challenge was to provide natural light inside the one-story house and also to ensure enough solar energy on the roof in the congested area surrounded by two- and three-story buildings. It was also essential to design the house in harmony with the surrounding townscape. Therefore, the roof design became the key ...
Rejoice and be merry, for architects are on the rise again! Ok, that statement may be overselling it. Nonetheless, new statistics indicate that a key trio of design and construction sectors — architecture, landscape architecture, and engineering — is continuing a steady recovery following the global financial crisis of 2008. Figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that average annual employment for firms providing architecture and engineering services rose by around 50,000 jobs last year; we have not yet reached pre-recession levels, but we are getting there. While the data represented in the graph above is reason to be cautiously optimistic, these growing blue bars belie the stark variation in fortunes from sector to sector. The full set of data has been dissected and published by Architect Magazine, which looks not only at the overall health of the industry, but also highlights which disciplines are recovering more quickly than others. Take a look at the breakdown below. The numbers make most pleasant reading for those in engineering and drafting services, which have been amongst the most resilient sectors in the construction industry during the ...
The Japanese Bath finds its cultural roots in Japan, where bathing is considered a social ritual. Diamond Spas is known for their Japanese baths, which are customized with sophisticated contemporary curves. They feature a bench seat and a deep well for deep soaks.
Hot on the heels of the appointment of Aaron Betsky as dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, we're excited to hear more news about America's best-known architect: Ten of his masterpieces have been nominated to the United Nation’s World Heritage List. If selected, Wright’s works will join the likes of the Sydney Opera House, the Bauhaus School in Germany, and the city of Brasilia as exemplars of modern architecture on the list of just over 1,000 culturally or naturally significant sites, including everything from forests and mountains to buildings and monuments. Image via Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy Last week, the US Department of Interior announced that these ten "Key Works of Modern Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright," as they are officially known, will be considered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for official listing come summer 2016. All ten Wright buildings are already designated as U.S. National Historic Landmarks, and will join just a few other buildings — Monticello, Independence Hall, Taos Pueblo — among the United States' 22 Heritage Sites. Here are the nominated designs: 1. Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois {% ...
A group of 11 undergraduate students from Tecnologico de Monterrey have constructed a parametric pavilion as a final exercise in the class “Tecnologias Avanzadas en la Arquitectura” by Alex Rodriguez. The project started with an algorithm created by one of the students; a pyramidal-shaped component was placed across a vaulted surface, creating a strong differentiation by changing its height. Another algorithm was elaborated to unfold the 195 components into a flat surface to be laser-cut and then folded to generate the pyramidal shape from a single piece of three-millimeter Coroplast. The team carefully assembled the components using an industrial staple gun and plastic cable zip ties and reinforced the structure with PVC pipes that were fixed to the ground. The pavilion will encourage future students to use digital fabrication techniques. Coordinator: Alex Rodriguez Design: Andres Martinez
You spend all day staring at screens. Wouldn’t it be nice to occasionally look up and see a friendly face? Going against the current tide of all-too-smart automated kitchens, Moscow-based designers Tanya Repina and Misha Repin go low-tech with LO-LO, a simple suite of wooden “microkitchen” units ideal for storing refreshments around the office. Each oval-shaped unit is specifically geared toward a single appliance and its requisite accessories: The coffee machine unit also has pegs to hang mugs; the microwave unit has cupboards for plates and drawers for cutlery; all of them have holes in the back for running electrical cords. Sketches highlight its resemblance to a birdhouse. LO-LO, as you maybe guessed from its name, is also saccharinely twee. You can now hide the unsightly watercooler behind a pair of painted semi-circle eyes and a wooden peg or drawer-pull nose. It puts a new face on office gossip. Co-workers are still likely talking trash. via Tanya Repina h/t Contemporist
“Summer house” is a subtle residence in the wood in Beddingestrand, on the Skåne south coast. The plot is located on a dyke, which forms a coastline but is now overgrown with forest. In summer, it is hot, while in winter, the sea blows fresh and roars. The view opens onto the water in the south and the forest in the north. The building has been positioned as a large wooden deck, which rests on three longitudinal concrete beams. The housing body is built of light wood walls and glass that give the building a distinctive shape, which is integrated with the landscape. This creates a direct vision to the sea and a little more closed to the forest. The terrace slab is nonorganic and belongs to the ground. The foundation is slightly dug into the site, which has been favorable for plant growth. The intention is to leave nature intact as far as possible. So, the flat roof and slab seem to float above the grass and sand, which gives a better vision from the surrounding sea and countryside. The owner of this house became the master of different variety views with a shady north side and a sunny ...
Chicago has been in the architectural news quite a bit lately, with much of it surrounding the lakefront area. Between the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the Windy City's waterfront will be getting some lake-effect architecture soon. (I know Chicago doesn't get lake-effect snow, but its on the lake, so moving on.) Image via art.newcity.com However, the city might also be getting one other feather in its cap. Artist Matthew Haussler recently completed what might be the world's longest hand-drawn picture maze, and its subject: Chicago's lakefront. The 73 1/2 feet long by 3 feet tall drawing shows many of the landmarks from downtown's east side, but with the linework forming a navigable labyrinth. There are views of Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum along with park-goers and even a marathoner, who is working his way toward the finish line in Grant Park. A real, live, solvable maze, the panorama takes on another layer of artistic meaning by depicting samaritans doing selfless acts Image courtesy Matthew Haussler. The drawing will be submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records, and there is a good chance it ...
New York has seen an explosion in a new type of food experience: the marketplace. These are rather tamer versions of Spanish boqueria or bustling marketplaces the world over, with a very tightly controlled space and often high-end shops. Chelsea Market, Gotham West, Gansevoort Market, Berg'n, Brooklyn Night Bazaar, Hudson Eats, and an upcoming Anthony Bourdain joint are permanent manifestations of the ever-popular pop-up food bazaar, such as Smorgasburg or Madison Square Eats. Images courtesy Yannis Halkiopoulos But these venues, delicious though they may be, are pretty prosaic. While they do serve some communal purpose and offer a twist on the dining experience, they don't exactly break the mold architecturally. A new proposal by Yannis Halkiopoulos of the University Of Westminster in London seeks to drive the marketplace beyond just a food mall with dining area. Located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (a target of urban renewal), "Brooklyn Co-Operative" is a slow-food-inspired marketplace that uses the site's unique architectural history to propel it far out into the food-architecture stratosphere. Halkiopoulos transforms the former officers' housing known as Admirals Row into a reinvented space for food production and consumption. This includes fields, a ...
Cloverdale749 is located around the block from the historically significant Miracle Mile hub comprising the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, and other noteworthy cultural destinations. Adhering to a strategy to maximize land use and capitalize on zoning, the building’s 10,500 square feet push against floor-area and density limitations determined by the lot’s size and location. In essence, this project is a volume that cannot expand further. Cloverdale749’s footprint and volume were determined by zoning and development needs, yet within these parameters, LOHA explored the threshold between the unit and the street, establishing a veil of transformable layers that promotes a hybridized relationship between private and public zones. The project’s façade is a study in juxtaposing simplicity with complexity, celebrating the structure’s volume with a choreographed display of permeable layers. The building envelope introduces a visual fragmentation that allows for varied experiences of privacy along the edges of each unit. A blurring of interior and exterior spaces is integral to the design and, dependent on viewing and lighting angles, the building’s sheathing reveals and conceals patios. Circulation is pushed to the exterior, eliminating the need for climate-controlled inner hallways. Private open balconies front the ...
What role will architecture and landscapes play in the newly authorized park?
Architectural Visualization. Its a harsh mistress. We are seduced by it, but sometimes it leads us astray. While modeling, rendering, and post-production capabilities are always increasing, the realism that we see in renderings is not always proportionate to our ability to produce it. In other words, some renderings don't even look try to look real anymore; they are often dramatized until they look like science fiction or a romantic painting. There are examples of realistic visualization, however. One of the best is the recent Unreal Paris, a tour of a digitally modeled Parisian apartment. The video was produced with Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4, their latest game-producing software. The hyper-realistic video weaves through a very nice looking apartment. The towels in the bathroom are the only thing that really gives it away. IKEA uses 3d modeling to produce their catalogs, so that they don't have to style every single shot in real life. They can re-arrange and swap colors or patterns more easily, plus it saves them on cost. Their realistic images look just like the real thing when it arrives at your house, er, after you assemble it! Ironically, IKEA is proud of their print ...
Not many educators would look at a shuttered lumberyard on Chicago’s Northwest Side and declare it the perfect place for a new school. The original 41,000-square-foot open structure provided the perfect opportunity to transform into an innovative space and support the Blended Learning curriculum. Instead of traditional classrooms, it features oversized teaching spaces called “pods” that foster the personalized instruction to which the school is committed. Half of each tandem pod focuses on humanities instruction while the other targets science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Three teachers rotate students through learning stations, offering targeted instruction, support for independent work, and facilitation of Socratic discussion and project-based learning. Intrinsic's design adapted and reused 75 percent of the existing lumberyard structures, all originally bowstring truss buildings. It includes an open-air shed that is more than 40 feet tall — built in 1954 with solid wood columns cut from trees hand-selected in the Pacific Northwest — and two buildings from 1911 and 1928. The bowstring truss, an early 20th-century long-span structural support, provided the wide, column-free interior spaces that are perfect for Intrinsic’s needs. Each learning station in the pod includes easily identifiable elements to guide students. The “coastline,” for example, features adaptable-height desks ...