Skatepark Zap Ados - Bang Architects
20120315
20120303
STAR WHEEL HORIZON
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[Image: From Horizon Houses (2000) by Lebbeus Woods
(with additional design and modeling by Paul Anvar)].
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STAR WHEEL HORIZON
After posting a project by Jimenez Lai back in January, Lebbeus Woods got in touch with an earlier project of his own, called Horizon Houses (2000).
In his own words, the Horizon Houses are "are spatial structures that turn, or are turned, either continuously (the Wheel House) or from/to fixed positions (the Star and Block Houses).
They are structures experimenting with our perception of spatial transformations, accomplished without any material changes to the structures themselves. In these projects, my concern was the question of space. The engineering questions of how to turn the houses could be answered by conventional mechanical means—cranes and the like—but these seem clumsy and inelegant. The mechanical solution may lie in the idea of self-propelling structures, using hydraulics. But of more immediate concern: how would the changing spaces impact the ways we might inhabit them? These self-transforming, perpetually off-kilter structures would, in a sense, contain their future horizon lines within them, as they rotate through various, competing orientations, both always and never completely grounded.
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[Image: From Horizon Houses (2000) by Lebbeus Woods
(with additional design and modeling by Paul Anvar)].
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Each house in the series thus simultaneously explores the visual nature—and spatial effect—of the horizon line and the vertical force of gravity that makes that horizon possible.
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[Image: From Horizon Houses (2000) by Lebbeus Woods
(with additional design and modeling by Paul Anvar)].
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As Woods phrases it, "Gravity is constantly at work on the materials of architecture, trying to pull them to the earth’s center of gravity. An important consequence is that this action establishes the horizon." However, he adds, "in the absence of gravity there is no horizon, for example, for astronauts in space. It is from this understanding that Ernst Mach developed his theory of inertia frames, which influenced Albert Einstein’s relativistic theory of gravity"—but, that, Woods says, "is another story."
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[Image: From Horizon Houses (2000) by Lebbeus Woods
(with additional design and modeling by Paul Anvar)].
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| [Image: From Horizon Houses (2000) by Lebbeus Woods]. |
It also compels the house always to be on the verge of moving again, unlike the jagged, semi-mountainous points of the Block and Star Houses.
The Block Houses appear to be in a state of barely stabilized wreckage following an otherwise unmentioned seismic event—which is fitting, as the rest of Woods's descriptive text (available on his website) offers seismicity as a key force and generative parameter for the project. If the earth itself moves, what sort of architecture might embrace and even thrive on that motion, rather than—unsuccessfully—attempt to resist a loss of foundation?
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| [Image: From Horizon Houses (2000) by Lebbeus Woods]. |
To say that these buildings thus exist in a state of ongoing catastrophe would be to fixate on and over-emphasize their instability, whereas it would be more productive to recognize that each house rides out a subtle and unique negotiation of the planet—where "the planet" is treated less as a physical fact and more as a gravitational reference point, an abstract frame of influence within which certain architectural forms can take shape.
In other words, the urges and pulls of gravity might nudge each house this way and that—it might even pull them over into a radically new orientation—but the architecture remains both optically sensible against its new horizon line and, more importantly, inhabitable.
Taken together, this family of forms could thus roll, wander, and collapse indefinitely through the gravitational fields that command them.
For a bit more text related to the project, see Woods's own website.
From: bldgblog.blogspot.com
20120227
Shinagawa House - News - Frameweb
by Be Fun Design
In a 36-sq-m plot at the edge of Shinagawa, Tokyo, a two-storey dwelling embodies the jaunty spirit of its residents: a young couple who are trekkers and climbers.
The interior is an open vertical space where different areas of the house are defined by volumes instead of simple walls. On the ground floor, the bathroom is in a glass box that rests on an elevated level. Tucked below the bathroom are the bedroom wardrobes, where the simple futons are stored.
A vertical tension is enhanced by the presence of a suspended hollow volume on the first floor. The space is covered with OSB panels to form a climbing wall.
From the exterior, this volume extends through the roof and resembles an oversized chimney. Surprisingly, this chimney doesn’t omit ash or smoke, but people climbing up to a roof terrace.
Photos courtesy Hiroyuki Hirai."
Lik House - News - Frameweb
by Satoru Hirota Architects
Japanese firm Satoru Hirota Architects sets a single family house in three tunnel-like volumes.
Located in Tokyo, where the client was born and raised, Lik House aspires to be a place of comfortable intimacy, says Satoru Hirota.
Three blocks, laid on the plot with angled trajectories, generate an irregular outdoor space that acts as a private square. The courtyard – a place for both physical and visual interaction – projects the interior into the surroundings.
People moving from one room to another feel as if they’re crossing transitional spaces. Dynamic, slender passages are only arrested by intermittent box-like elements in the interior.
Despite its remarkably narrow interior, large openings give the house a sense of openness and transparency and introduce a continuous play of light and shadow"
Lik House - News - Frameweb
'via Blog this'
Villa Spies, Torö, Sweden, 1969 - From the Archive - Domus
Torö, Sweden 1969
From the Archive - Domus
"Villa Spies, Torö, Sweden, 1969— Made entirely of plastic, this fully circular villa was designed by Swedish architect Staffan Berglund for the Danish airline magnate Simon Spies; for years ignored by architecture critics, it has recently been revisited in a monograph."
www.domusweb.it
www.domusweb.it
20120224
Home Office - RIBA
Peter Barber and associate Phil Hamilton
From: http://www.ribajournal.com/index.php/feature/article/home_office_NOV09/
BIG, Holbæk Kasbah
Density
http://archidose.blogspot.com/2008/03/half-dose-45-holbk-kasba.html?m=1
Links:
:: Bjarke Ingels Group - BIG (All images from the architect's page)
:: BIG News Blog (added to sidebar under blogs::offices)
20120212
20120208
Four Eyes House/Edward Ogosta Architecture
Four Eyes House
Coachella Valley, California
by Edward Ogosta Architecture
A weekend desert residence for a family and their dog, the Four Eyes House is an exercise in site-specific experiential programming. Rather than planning the house according to a domestic functional program, the building was designed foremost as an instrument for intensifying a number of onsite phenomenal events.
Four “sleeping towers” are oriented towards four spatiotemporal viewing experiences: morning sunrise to the east, mountain range to the south, evening city lights to the west, and nighttime stars overhead. Each tower contains a compact top-floor bedroom, sized only for the bed, and each with a unique aperture directed towards the view. These bedrooms are equally-sized and unassigned, such that the family’s sleeping locations can be rotated based on each individual’s desired viewing experience. Vertical circulation within the towers is similarly particularized (e.g. ladders, spiral stair, switchback stair, or shallow-riser stair). Ground-floor common spaces form a loose connective field between the discrete tower volumes, and offer a more permeable relationship to the landscape.
The sensations of sleeping and waking are thus inflected by the building’s foregrounding of intensified onsite experiential events. By sleeping in a room elevated off the ground and open to the stars, one might inhabit a deep pocket of silence for a few moments, and perhaps even perceive the movement of the Earth, as it slowly rotates beneath the stars.
Four Eyes House, Coachella Valley, California, by Edward Ogosta Architecture
Coachella Valley, California
by Edward Ogosta Architecture
A weekend desert residence for a family and their dog, the Four Eyes House is an exercise in site-specific experiential programming. Rather than planning the house according to a domestic functional program, the building was designed foremost as an instrument for intensifying a number of onsite phenomenal events.
Four “sleeping towers” are oriented towards four spatiotemporal viewing experiences: morning sunrise to the east, mountain range to the south, evening city lights to the west, and nighttime stars overhead. Each tower contains a compact top-floor bedroom, sized only for the bed, and each with a unique aperture directed towards the view. These bedrooms are equally-sized and unassigned, such that the family’s sleeping locations can be rotated based on each individual’s desired viewing experience. Vertical circulation within the towers is similarly particularized (e.g. ladders, spiral stair, switchback stair, or shallow-riser stair). Ground-floor common spaces form a loose connective field between the discrete tower volumes, and offer a more permeable relationship to the landscape.
The sensations of sleeping and waking are thus inflected by the building’s foregrounding of intensified onsite experiential events. By sleeping in a room elevated off the ground and open to the stars, one might inhabit a deep pocket of silence for a few moments, and perhaps even perceive the movement of the Earth, as it slowly rotates beneath the stars.
Four Eyes House, Coachella Valley, California, by Edward Ogosta Architecture
Gracia Studio: endémico resguardo silvestre
Gracia Studio: endémico resguardo silvestre
From: Designboom
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/18486/gracia-studio-endemico-resguardo-silvestre.html
From: Designboom
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/18486/gracia-studio-endemico-resguardo-silvestre.html
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