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Cliff House by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects
This project is the first of a series of projects for a large 455 acre site on Nova Scotia’s Atlantic coast. This pure box in the landscape is precariously perched off a bedrock cliff to heighten one’s experience of the landscape through a sense of vertigo and a sense of floating on the sea. This strategy features the building’s fifth elevation - its ‘belly’.
This modest 960 square foot cabin functions as a rustic retreat. Its main level (16x44) contains a great room with a north cabinet wall, along with a service core. The open loft (16x16) is a sleeping perch. A large south-facing deck allows the interior stage to flow outward through the large windows.
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Invisible House by Peter Stutchbury Architecture
The roof cantilevers 4m and is filled with water, to reflect the sky and thus make the house ‘invisible’ from the west.
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These vegetated surfaces don’t just look pretty. They have other benefits as well, including cooling city blocks, reducing loud noises, and improving a building’s energy efficiency.What’s more, a recent modeling study shows that green walls can potentially reduce large amounts of air pollution in what’s called a “street canyon,” or the corridor between tall buildings.
For the study, Thomas Pugh, a biogeochemist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, and his colleagues created a computer model of a green wall with generic vegetation in a Western European city. Then they recorded chemical reactions based on a variety of factors, such as wind speed and building placement.
The simulation revealed a clear pattern: A green wall in a street canyon trapped or absorbed large amounts of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter—both pollutants harmful to people, said Pugh. Compared with reducing emissions from cars, little attention has been focused on how to trap or take up more of the pollutants, added Pugh, whose study was published last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
That’s why the green-wall study is “putting forward an alternative solution that might allow [governments] to improve air quality in these problem hot spots,” he said.Compared with reducing emissions from cars, little attention has been focused on how to trap or take up more of the pollutants, added Pugh, whose study was published last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
That’s why the green-wall study is “putting forward an alternative solution that might allow [governments] to improve air quality in these problem hot spots,” he said.(via landscapeandurbandesign)
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Cities & Memory
Mind Map 2
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Make Public Spaces Useable Both Day and Night by Installing Interactive Light Exhibitions
Please click the link and register to click “me too” to help make this idea a reality.
Public space, as it exists today is currently limited to day time use. At night, instead of utilizing these spaces, we either close them off or avoid them allowing them to become obsolete.
After going to an exhibition at The Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens, that displayed a number of works by artists working with projectors and light it became increasingly clear that installing small scale interactive works of this sort, could increase neighborhood safety, while simultaneously increasing social interaction.
By creating a spectacle and something beautiful the streets and public space take on new life, both through participation and play.
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Cities and Memory 1.
Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
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Bloomberg Pavilion Project by Akihisa Hirata
The exuberant Bloomberg Pavilion designed by Akihisa Hirata is located on the museum entry parterre to become its exciting new symbol. Curators plan to use the pavilion not only as an exhibition space but also for events and performances by young artists working in the Japanese capital. Hirata said that he tried to create a pavilion that resembled a tree, using the same logic. For the Japanese architect, trees are highly symbolic forms because they create shade and can offer ideal shelter and resting places for all of mankind, a function that repeats itself in every corner of the planet.
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Parásito de Las Palmas by Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten
Part of a project of small-scale objects for unused urban sites making ‘parasitic’ use of the existing infrastructure. This one sits on top of the elevator shaft of a warehouse.
I love this.
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Here’s to “cooling off”
The aquatic complex Les Bains des Docks, designed by the 2008 Prtizker-prize winning architect Jean Nouvel opened in 2008 in the historical Port of Le Havre. Inspired by the Roman thermal baths, the 5,000-square-metre complex offers an eerily beautiful atmosphere of tranquility with the fantastic play of natural light soothing the eyes, the masterful acoustics pleasing the ears, and the pools and treatment areas taking care of the rest of the body.
Although the main “colour” of the complex is white, each section’s distinct atmosphere and hue is created by flowing water curtains, colour walls, and various textures and surface treatments. Each pool — lap-pool, children’s pool, whirlpools — is designed, shaped and lit to create a unique “private space” for its specific users. These seemingly enclosed areas help minimize echoing and sound carriage — an annoying aspect of most aquatic centres - as do the varying-height floors and ceilings, and the acoustic false ceilings. Saunas, a hammam, cold and hot baths, and a spa area with hydro-massage and aquagym areas complete the atmosphere of pampering and care. An external lagoon makes the summer use of the complex even more appealing.
The Docks in the south end of the ancient port city of Le Havre are the oldest docks in France. The area is under massive revitalization with the goal of making this a leisure, culture and shopping neighborhood. When completed, the area will include residences, a large park, a tropical greenhouse, cinemas, bowling alleys and a shopping center, plus a Nouvel-designed Sea and Sustainable Development Centre to be completed in 2011. The Sea Centre will be a showcase of shipping and sailing — exploring their economic and industrial significance as well as their environmental impact on coasts and estuaries. It will be a 120-meter-high metallic structure dominating the port and it will include exhibit areas, an aquarium, a meteorological station and a restaurant with panoramic, 360-degree views of Port of Le Havre.
Nouvel’s well-known public buildings literally span the world from New York to Reykjavik, Dubai, Soul and Tangiers. Recent interesting buildings include the bright-red research center for the maker of brakes for luxury cars, Brembo, in Italy. NouveI’s masterpiece for La Philharmonie de Paris will open in 2012. - Tuija Seipell -
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Arc en Ciel
Bordeaux, France
Architects: Bernard Buhler Architects
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House H by Hiroyuki Shinozaki Architects
Photography by Fumihiko Ikemoto
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The Green House by Reinhold Weichlbauer & Albert Ortis
The house resembles MC Escher’s 1953 Relativity, which shows three perpendicular gravity fields acting on different staircases.
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