Slnečnice (The Sunflowers) is a pilot project of Južné mesto (South City) development, one of the biggest residential development projects in the city of Bratislava, Slovakia. It consists of 71 houses and three apartment blocks with 200 apartments, shops, and services. The site area is 39,000 square meters. Slnečnice are a middle-class, affordable housing project with a high caliber of design, execution, and energy efficiency. It offers new apartment types, new housing styles, and state of the art recreational zones set next to a lush green forest. Slnečnice represents a new standard of residential development for Bratislava. The unique location neighbors a protected floodplain of forests and offers excellent opportunities for recreation. The easy excess to Bratislava's downtown provides outstanding conditions for those who prefer an active lifestyle. The close vicinity of nature and an innovative segmentation structure for residential areas provides the project with an interesting space for entertainment, sports, and relaxation, thus meeting the strongest energy efficiency criteria. For example, there is a small lake placed directly in the site of Sunflowers, within the vicinity of woods, joining the Bratislava river dam. It is a just setting that predetermines the Sunflowers to range among the leading green developments ...
Slnečnice (The Sunflowers) is a pilot project of Južné mesto (South City) development, one of the biggest residential development projects in the city of Bratislava, Slovakia. It consists of 71 houses and three apartment blocks with 200 apartments, shops, and services. The site area is 39,000 square meters. Slnečnice are a middle-class, affordable housing project with a high caliber of design, execution, and energy efficiency. It offers new apartment types, new housing styles, and state of the art recreational zones set next to a lush green forest. Slnečnice represents a new standard of residential development for Bratislava. The unique location neighbors a protected floodplain of forests and offers excellent opportunities for recreation. The easy excess to Bratislava's downtown provides outstanding conditions for those who prefer an active lifestyle. The close vicinity of nature and an innovative segmentation structure for residential areas provides the project with an interesting space for entertainment, sports, and relaxation, thus meeting the strongest energy efficiency criteria. For example, there is a small lake placed directly in the site of Sunflowers, within the vicinity of woods, joining the Bratislava river dam. It is a just setting that predetermines the Sunflowers to range among the leading green developments ...
Raf Simons has used upholstery materials not only for his own menswear label, but also for women's collections for Jil Sander and Christian Dior. In fact, Simons's experiments have been so successful that the Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat has now asked the designer to create his very own fabric line for the company. All images courtesy of Kvadrat. Inspired by such mid-century masters as Jean Royère, Pierre Jeanneret, Hans Wegner, and Fanny Aronsen, Simons has created an elegant collection of intensely pigmented, richly textured textiles: sumptuous velours in deep red and royal blue; woven woolens in intriguing color combinations like magenta and tangerine; and speckled boucle fabrics in earth tones. The 11 core textile designs add an almost sculptural quality to furnishings, and are also available as cushions and throws. "We are making fabrics that are like a blank canvas for designers," explains Simons. "They are waiting for input from the furniture designers—we don’t control the design they will use the textiles for, so we try to leave it very open; these fabrics should be multifunctional.” Simons’s point was proven at the London debut ...
In the area of La Moraleja, in the north of Madrid, Saint Exupéry School is an extension of the French Lycée situated in a building with a facade of brick, too small to accommodate the growing demand for a growing student body. The project consists of the rehabilitation of the existing building, the construction of a new building extension, and the remodeling of the exterior spaces—sports fields, recreation yards, entrance, and parking areas. The urban landscape of La Moraleja is characterized by single-family houses on tree-clad hills. Thus, the existing villa is preserved and rehabilitated for infant education, while introducing a new component created for primary and secondary education. In response to the climate of Madrid, the new building is organized around four patios that allow natural illumination and ventilation of the classrooms in the south and of all circulation elements, creating a multitude of visual connections. It disposes of two superimposed volumes: A single-level volume providing collective facilities, such as the dining room and the library, is located perpendicularly to the existing building. In a nod to the older structure, its facades and the roof are lined with brick. A two-level volume accommodating the classrooms is placed in line ...
In a world of increasingly faceless warfare, the built environment has emerged as an important character—a witness to secret strikes in places that soldiers no longer dare venture. Alongside his report on drone strikes earlier this week, United Nations Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson also released an interactive website that presents investigations into the locations of over 30 incidents. With the help of Forensic Architecture and SITU Research, each case was visually reconstructed using architectural remnants to give insight into the attacks. All images via Fast Co Design. The teams pieced together information using a technique called video-to-space analysis that reverse-engineers scenes from visual evidence. The technique combines video analysis with technologies familiar to many architects, including graphic illustration and parametric modeling. Other resources included photographs, satellite imagery, interviews, survivor testimonies, press reports, cell phone videos, and computer models. SITU Research had previously collaborated with Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture to employ a similar strategy to investigate the death of 30-year-old Palestinian Bassem Abu-Rahmeh. Image via Fast Co Design. “The forensic architecture methods we have developed are meant to generate evidence ...
Phoenix Valley is a new cultural icon and hub in Wujin, China. The new cultural heart of a city, Phoenix Valley is conceived as a geological entity, carved through time by the canal to form a cultural valley that has exposed the opal-like jewel of its children gallery. The new complex houses the Wujin Grand Theatre for 1000 patrons, four cinemas, sports and dance halls, art galleries, and an invigorating and complex early childhood education center for teaching arts, robotics, dance, and music. The complex also includes a retail hub and public square with canals, screens, and children’s playgrounds. The project was driven from the outset by sustainability, building on Studio505's experience with the Pixel building in Melbourne, and is covered with a detailed pattern-planted green roof that transitions into to green walls, a 2,000-meters-square BIPV solar panel installation and integrated geothermal heating. The interior design of Phoenix Valley manipulates fields of light, of insect exoskeleton carapaces and projections, creating an internal wilderness that is occupied and claimed by inhabitants, whose functions are reconsidered from the geological innards of the buildings' mountain-like forms. These common themes allow for a great range of difference in the areas, and the functional character ...
Landlust "Care Farm" was developed as housing for 24 psychologically challenged inhabitants. The pastoral site is located on the edge of Amsterdam. Work spaces, studios, and accommodations for the cognitively disabled and their caretakers as well as a teashop for visitors of the Diemer forest are all housed in the historical farm and annexes. In the design much attention is given to a relaxed definition of distinct domains for the different users; together if it can, apart if it must. The house and two stalls are restored and renovated. A number of floor areas is removed in order to show the original roof construction. A new stair is added to tie the five different floor levels together. Roof lights in the communal eating hall, refer to the historical ventilation chimneys. Three new buildings house group residences, a work shed for the nursery and a porter’s house as a link between the public yard and the private garden of the residents. The new buildings are modest, but powerful with black wooden facades, large scale barn doors. The small windows that refer the existing farm buildings and the materials used in the new buildings are reflected in the new shutters and doors ...
Black Gables are, simply put, two modestly sized, jet black gabled buildings with metal roofs. The two buildings—one serves as a primary living space and the other as a studio and darkroom—are located at skewed angles to take advantage of the best views, ensure exposure to appropriate daylighting, and create an overall playful composition. The project was designed for small-town physician, acclaimed artist and collector Jonah Samson. (http://www.jonahsamson.net) The house was built between May and December 2013 in Louisdale, a small town on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Jonah Samson lived in Vancouver, Canada for about ten years before deciding that he wanted to return to the east coast to build a home/studio on a forested piece of ocean-front property that had been in his family for generations. It was only after cutting down some of the trees that we realized how spectacular the view from the house was going to be. The goal was to be economical with regards both to the budget and to the amount of space the buildings occupied in the forest. The 1200-square-foot house includes one bedroom and a separate room that the client uses as a library/office. A wide hallway runs down the ...
The coastal town of Miura, Japan is graced with breathtaking views of Enoshima Island and Mt. Fuji. So when architecture firm Yasutaka Yoshimura was commissioned to design a weekend holiday house on the edge of Sagami Bay, they made sure that the residents had access to this panorama from nearly every corner of the compact house. Yoshimura's aptly named Window House features extensive glazing on both the sea-side and street-side façades, flooding the interior with daylight and framing views of the surrounding scenery. Elevated on piloti to avoid flooding from a potential storm surge, the Window House rises three stories above a tiny three-by-eight-meter plot of land, the footprint of which is 60% occupied by the home. The asymmetrical design features sharp angles that contrast with the soft ripples of the Sagami Bay. Yoshimura went further than just capitalizing on the views—the team also considered how the presence of the house would impact its immediate surroundings. Since it was difficult to place a house on this plot without obstructing the sightline of the neighborhood behind it, ...
The latest in Chinese pollution news: global companies feel really, really guilty for sending employees to an unhealthy environment, and to compensate, they're dishing out the cash. Japanese electronics giant Panasonic has announced a new wage policy that introduces “hardship pay” for the employees that it sends to China. Although hardship pay isn't a new concept, Panasonic is the first company in the world to make these compensations for air pollution. The premium is meant to cover the cost of any adverse health effects employees might experience as a result of their time in China. Panasonic is just one of many large Japanese countries to revise its wage plans as part the annual labor talks that have been occurring over the past week. However, it was the only one to include this kind of "pollution premium" in its strategy. It's responding to a fairly extreme set of circumstances: as recently as last month, pollution particle readings in Chinese cities like Beijing reached 15 times the maximum recommended by the World Health Organization (25 μg/m3 24-hour mean). Panasonic cites PM2.5—the “particulate matter” linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths—as the primary danger to ...
Printing company Varigrafica first opened for business in Nepi, a town in the province of Viterbo, in the '60s. Their first factory opened in 1992 and was dedicated to offset printing for the production of editorial and advertising material. The expansion of this industrial building gave rise to the current configuration of the complex: an aggregation of volumes of different sizes, each of them corresponding to a functional scope. In addition to the two existing buildings—one dedicated to services for the staff and “prestampa” (prepress) and the other to digital printing, staging, and storage of the finished product—four others were added: new offices, a new paper warehouse, a new offset printing area, and a new ink warehouse. In response to the highly organized and planned nature of the industrial printing process, the complex is rationally built, based on a 2.4 x 6 meter module repeated and utilized in different configurations. One module is the vertical precast/prefabricated concrete panel used for the façades of the existing building and the paper warehouse; the same concrete module is placed horizontally for the façades of the new production area, and another is made of glass with a metal brise soleil for the façades of ...
Expansive spaces, endless walkways, wide sluices, cryptic signs, and miles of colorful cables and pipes—these are the technical features of the concealed labyrinth of nuclear power plants, public water supplies, and oil refineries that Swiss photographer Luca Zanier has captured for his series Space and Energy. This vast network of coal-firing stations and nuclear waste storage containers influences our daily lives, yet few have physical access to such energy infrastructure. For nearly two years, Zanier traveled to covert locations in Switzerland and Germany, obtaining highly restricted access in an effort to translate technology into aesthetics. The result depicts the architecture of industry like we've never seen it before. Appearing as though plucked from a science-fiction or fantasy film, the colossal machinery, coal-firing stations, nuclear waste storage facilities, and intricate network of catwalks, controls, and computers of Zanier's images are both intimidating and fascinating. Fluorescent lights, neon handrails, and pools of water create an otherworldly effect and radiate a sense of technical cool. The photographs were captured on an ALPA 12 large-format digital camera, the intricacies of which necessitate up to ...
The design of the house developed in direct response to the site and its location within the beautiful village of Yalding in Kent. The building’s structure is composed to reflect the surrounding woodland, the raking columns representing the irregular angles of tree trunks and branches. Large expanses of glass fill the gaps in the structure, allowing visitors to appreciate the landscape and setting as if they were peering out from between the trunks and branches of the trees. The traditional Kentish black-and-white weatherboarding represents foliage, wrapping the building and enclosing the spaces within. The form and lines of the modernist house are geometric and crisp, creating contrast and dialogue with the surrounding natural, organic woodland. For sale, Knight Frank Sevenoaks (01732 744 477) http://search.knightfrank.co.uk/sev130172
Introducing the latest addition to our popular Index series of wool felt and cork wall coverings: Index WIDE. With Index WIDE you can now create a bold and sculptural felt wall installation faster and easier than ever. The larger 12” H x 36” W size of Index WIDE makes for quicker coverage and we offer custom widths up to 42”. The height variation between the wool felt stripes brings a strong linear and dimensional quality to the design. Apply directly to the wall using heavy duty wall covering adhesive. Choose from one of 26 monochrome colors, or work with us to create your own unique colorway with over 60 colors to select from. Index WIDE is also available as mounted panels. As with other designs from the Index series, Index WIDE by Submaterial is made by hand and to order. Each batch contains multiple line compositions to insure a pleasingly random effect on the wall. For both commercial and residential interiors, the dense wool felt and cork of Index WIDE is a great choice for softening harsh acoustics.
The realm of sustainable building design has maintained a focus on the installation of photovoltaic solar panels—on the roofs of structures or incorporated into the façade—as a way to decrease reliance on dirty fossil fuels, minimize projects' carbon footprint, and generate renewable energy. However, wind power, another squeaky clean form of renewable energy, has been underutilized by architects, mostly due the size and space required to install turbines. Wind power turbines are typically constructed in wide open spaces—think the pristine white towers dotting the Dutch countryside and California desert. But Oxo Architect's striking new proposal for the Taichung Museum in Taiwan may change that: the shape and scale of this sky-high urban structure is informed by wind power. Set to stand 350 meters high at a slightly oblique angle, the building will also feature an observation deck with panoramic views of the surrounding mountain range and the South China Sea. Even more breathtaking than these epic views, however, is the building's set of 64 internal helicoidal wind turbines, which will provide enough energy to render the entire museum and tower energy independent. The tower's ...
The new town and tourist information office is located in the Späth’sches Haus, a 19th-century building on the market square in the center of Esslingen. Dittel | Architekten won the invitational competition to redesign the tourist information office against numerous renowned competitors. The design competition was issued by Esslingen Stadtmarketing and Tourismus GmbH (Town Marketing and Tourism). The entrance to the Town Information Office is a glass cube annexed to the Späth’sches Haus. The visitor’s attention is immediately drawn to the ingenious perforated sheet graphic bearing the outline of Esslingen Castle. The sales room is divided into two levels, creating an inviting atmosphere. The information and sales area are located in the entrance on the ground floor. The upper level, which is the original building, is reserved for the sale of events tickets and culinary delicacies grown in the region. A small seating area invites visitors to relax, drink coffee, and browse the literature available. The two levels are linked by a generous staircase made of dark oak parquet. The remaining office floor consists of a neutral concrete layer providing an eye-catching contrast to the oak staircase. The walls are painted in a cappuccino color, generating a warm, cozy ambience. ...
Last year, Vanity Fair published a fascinating investigation into the way London had become a haven for international finance—think Switzerland with a British accent. The author reserved particular energy for unmasking the residents of One Hyde Park, an apartment complex in Kensington that is home to some of the world's richest and most secretive people. Spoiler alert: lots of Russians! And this year, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) opened the exhibition “The Brits Who Built the Modern World,” inspired by a BBC series of the same name. The exhibition focuses on the origins of five of the largest British practices currently working on a global scale: Farrells, Foster + Partners, Grimshaw, Hopkins Architects, and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (designers of One Hyde Park). Hong Kong Shanghai Bank HQ by Foster + Partners. Top photo by Carl Yost The exhibition excels at portraying the rise of the so-called “high-tech” style. As the British Empire wound down in the 20th century, many of its now-sovereign territories remained unified under the British Commonwealth, linked by a shared language and economic ties. As a result, British architects had many opportunities to export modern ...
Four days and a wireless screwdriver are all you need to build your very own Pop-Up House. The structure, compiled of insulating blocks and wooden panels, delivers unbelievably affordable thermal insulation. Heating represents close to 28% of global energy consumption and is one of the largest household costs. Determined to develop solutions, we patented a unique approach to passive construction that delivers outstanding thermal insulation at an affordable cost. No special tools are required. The house is assembled using lightweight, recyclable materials for quick installation. The materials are inexpensive, so the cost is unbeatable and the thermal envelope created can eliminate the need for additional heating. The first of this new passive house prototype has bloomed in the pine valleys of the South of France. The Pop-Up House is an innovative concept that offers all of the qualities of tomorrow's home: it's low-cost, recyclable, and passive, challenging the paradigm of typical home construction. Technical specifications: Area: 150 square meters Foundation: wooden floor mounted on micropiles Tools required: wireless screwdriver Price: 200€ per square meter Thermal insulation: 30 centimeters (ground, wall, and ceiling)—complies to Passivhaus standards www.popup-house.com
This passive solar house was designed and built by Aaron D'Innocenzo; it's his first major project after graduating with a Master in Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. As a result of its passive solar design, the house is able to heat and cool itself year-round, without external energy input from traditional HVAC systems. In many ways, this house is the antithesis of Le Corbusier’s concept of a house as a “machine for living in”: it is highly site-specific, extremely energy efficient, does not rely upon HVAC systems for temperature control, and nearly every element was designed and hand-crafted specifically for this house. The project took nearly eight years to complete as all of the construction was done by the owner/designer himself—no contractors, sub-contractors, or daily helpers were involved.