Sustainable House Design by H Arquitectes
This green and sustainable house was designed by H Arquitectes in the rural areas of Catalunya Spain. It is built on a platform of natural rock, designed to be extremely easy to build. What’s more, it makes use of dry building methods that save substantial amounts of water – something especially important in arid areas. This also means that the financial and temporal investment is minimal.
The inner layout of the house is based on a lineal sequence of rooms, which are all of different proportions and linked to the structure. Part of the beauty of the design is that the building can work either as an open-spaced layout if required, or alternatively as a closed one. The house’s use of natural wood for the outer shell of the building seems to be a perfect match to its surroundings, blending in seamlessly with the natural environment in which it sits.
Photos via H Arquitectes
Diane von Furstenberg Studio Headquarters
In the mid-70s Diane von Furstenberg made her name with the iconic wrap dress. From there she set about building her business into what it is today, a luxury fashion house with international reach. The company’s new headquarters are located in the ultra trendy Meatpacking District in New York City. The HQ occupies a six storey building, which is topped off by a jagged edged glass sphere which makes up part of the penthouse suite. The design was headed by WORK Architecture who aimed to maximise natural light and interblend the historic surroundings with contemporary design. Thus according to them, “instead of hiding new elements behind the historic facades, the project is conceived of as a dialogue between contemporary materials and the renovated elements.”
[Pictures via WORK Architecture]
KBP West Offices – San Francisco
Advertising agency KBP West has recently commissioned Jensen Architects to design its San Francisco head offices. The offices are very vibrant, colourful and quirky to say the least. They incorporate three separated wings, partioned by acoustically sealed folding doors. This allows the areas to be used simultaneously for different tasks without interference, while at the same time if required the doors can be opened to merge into a large meeting space. There are also four meetings rooms, each with different themes, materials and colours. Despite the use of strong themes and colours the whole office seems to compliment each segregated part, thereby creating a unity.
Other cool features include walls coated with chalky substance, allowing for quick and easy notation of ideas in the heat of the moment. It is also a very aesthetically pleasing touch, working well with other components of the design. Lastly, there is also an indoor garden and 16ft dining counter to finish off the space.
[Pictures via Jensen Architects]
Casa Fez – Portugal
Casa Fez is a new development built by the well known Portuguese architect Álvaro Leite Siza Vieira. He is the the son of Álvaro Siza Vieira, probably Portugal’s greatest and well known architect – winner of the 1992 Pritzker Prize and the 1988 Alvar Aalto Medal. The son, Álvaro Leite Siza Vieira, was born in 1962 and is a graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Escola do Porto. He is most prominently known for his Casa Tolo in northern Portugal, and designed Casa Fez for his personal use
The house is characterised by an abundance of natural light, which interplays nicely with the use of wooden floors. The windows are also all unadorned, giving the project a clean aesthetic feeling which is not too dissimilar to a modern art museum or gallery. In some ways perhaps the project lacks a homely fee, perhaps it is something which is better admired from a distance rather than admired through use? What do you think?
[Pictures via]
Marina Bay Sands Building in Singapore
Marina Bay Sands is a multi use resort complex fronting Marina Bay in Singapore. The complex is supposedly the world’s most expensive standalone casino property, costing a staggering S$8 billion (Roughly 3.8 billion pounds). Apart from the casino, the resort also boasts a 2,560 room hotel, a 120,000 sqm convention centre, a 74,000 sqm retail arcade, and an Art & Science museum. The complex is topped by a 340m SkyPark, which has the capacity to accommodate 3,900 people. Lastly, there is the 150m infinity swimming pool, set on top of the world’s largest public cantilevered platform.
Marina Bay Sands has been designed by Boston-based internationally renowned architect Moshe Safdie. Safdie was invited by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation to develop a competitive design proposal for Marina Bay which would be presented to the Government of Singapore. According to Safdie “our challenge was to create a vital public place at the district-urban scale, in other words, to address the issue of mega scale and invent an urban landscape that would work at the human scale.”
Furthermore, Safdie selected five international artists to create eight monumental large-scale public art installations for Marina Bay Sands. The artists worked closely with Safdie to ensure that the site-specific commissions complement the architecture and energized the public spaces.
The Sky Floating Observatory – Cloud 360
Situated in Sungnam, South Korea, the “Cloud 360” from Kyungam Architects is an observatory in Daewon Park that literally floats in the sky. Designed by Taehyung Lim, Kyeongmin Kim and Yunmi Kang, the floating structure leaves the ground floor open, and visitors are transported through two colossal elevators to the raised structure, which presents a mesmerizing view of the adjacent landscape. Spreading in 340 square meters, the cloud observatory presents a 929.32 square meter floor area enclosed with low e double glass glaze. Based on the idea of a floating sky, the Cloud 360 also accommodates a restaurant, cafe and media center in the upper levels of the observatory.
[ Article Source: DesignBlog ]
Urban Forest SkyScraper
Introducing natural surroundings to urban topography
, the MAD Architects have popped up a high-rise building, the Urban Forest, which seems to uplift both the environment as well as economy of the area. Situated in Chongqing, China, the commercial structure features curved, abstracted shaped floors connected by a core cylindrical structure. Almost all the floors incorporate green spaces to create a natural environment throughout the structure. The floors enveloped in full length glass windows with a see-through, wrap around balcony have been layered off-center (to some extent) from one another, giving it an appearance of a floating structure. The see-through facades of the structure create an amazing vision for both the people within and outside.
[ Article Source : DesignBoom ]
Vals Mountain Home
An astounding project in Vals (yes the place of Zumthor’s termal baths) by SeARCH in collaboration with Christian Müller Architects – A mountain home, in a mountain.
Magnus Larsson – Turning Dunes into Buildings
Architecture student Magnus Larsson details his bold plan to transform the harsh Sahara desert using bacteria and a surprising construction material: the very sand itself. This incredible initiative could stop desertification, in a period of unprecedented population growth this could be a crucial step toward reclaiming the desertified lands in our world and building sustainable environments.
The Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge
The pictures of the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge are amazing! The photos were shot in September 2009. The entire project is expected to be completed by September 2010. The $240 million, 2,000-foot bridge is part of a larger project, a 3.5-mile corridor that begins in Clark County, Nevada, and ends in Mohave County, Arizona. More construction photos check out here.
[ Article Source DRG industrialinterface ]