February 29th, 2008

Amazing Sinquefield House, Osage County, Missouri by Barton Phelps & Associates
Mohammad Fahmi Tri Wahyudi,ST in Best House Design
Amazing Vacation House in Osage County, Missouri by Barton Phelps & Associates - Architects and Planners
About the site: a wooded limestone bluff overlooking the Osage River on a thousand acres of working farmland in the rolling Ozarks - the name derived from the explorers’ term, “aux arcs”, referring to the bows of the region’s rivers. The house initiates a rural retreat /

Fun and Energy Efficient
Michelle Linden in Atelier A+D
 I'm really digging this energy effiecient chandelier by AWARE.

Korean green housing
Snell in Lost At E Minor: Music, illustration, art, photography and more
Korean architects, Mass Studies, have attacked the idea of housing typology in this project for a Seoul Commune in the year 2026. The buildings are comprised of public and private cells; technology is harnessed to make the private cells more private and the public cells more public. From your private cell, you can monitor the goings on in the public cells.

Upon Closer Examination of 'The Gates'
Bryan Finoki in Subtopia
Not only did Pruned save Subtopia’s proverbial ass last night, Alex also “tagged” us with the intent of continuing an ongoing relay that compiles random book passages from blog to blog to blog, grafting little swaths of worded real estate from our favorite authors and posting them here. Who knows what scattered narrative that will yield but I like the idea of sampling our respective reading lists this way, towards some loosely trackable sequence of storied body parts. This is only all too crazy when you think about what happened to us last night, which was essentially the opposite of this meme; that is, Subtopia was literally censored with ALL (not just a few sentences) of our text being stripped from this blog entirely. Who knows, maybe we were the victim of some other meme in the works that doesn’t just stealthily borrow but literally steals the text from its source, who knows what happens to it from there.

The Subterranean Water Cannons of Leadville, Colorado
Geoff Manaugh in BLDGBLOG
There was a fascinating article in the New York Times yesterday about a mine disaster just waiting to happen.
In Leadville, Colorado, we read, people now wake up every morning wondering if they "will be washed away by toxic water that local officials fear could burst from a decaying mine tunnel" on the edge of town.
For years, the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the Environmental Protection Agency have bickered over what to do about the aging tunnel, which stretches 2.1 miles and has become dammed by debris. The debris is holding back more than a billion gallons of water, much of it tainted with toxic levels of cadmium, zinc and manganese.
The article continues, describing the background for this "potentially catastrophic release of water":

stream house, kovac architects
Justin in materialicious
Stream House, Nichol’s Canyon, L.A., CA. Interesting addition to an existing house on a very steep hillside. I love the glass floor insert overlooking the stream! More photos, text and link after the jump.

Rocio Romero Prefab Home Tour Kicks Off Tomorrow in NY!
Ali Kriscenski in Inhabitat
Rocio Romero is one of our favorite prefab designers mastering the art of fusing modernist design with affordability. Her LV series articulates her commitment to minimalism with clean, comfortable lines that attend equally to indoor and outdoor spaces. To date, more than 110 LV prefabs have become home to owners throughout 23 states in the US, with 40 more under construction. While prefab fans have been able to tour the Rocio Romero show home in Missouri for several years, this weekend marks the first time that a finished LV is available for viewing in New York. The first National LV Open House Tour kicks off on March 1st (tomorrow!) in the Hudson Valley!

PREFAB FRIDAY: The Magic Box gets creative with prefab
Ali Kriscenski in Inhabitat
A new prefab from Jun Ueno brings a fun, modern aesthetic to accessory spaces for garden, courtyard or rooftop. The Magic Box is an extension room that can be used as an office, studio or serve any purpose that the user imagines. We haven’t gotten the whole scoop on how sustainable it is, but we can say that this creative foray into the design of a small prefab space makes prefab look a lot more spacious, interesting and appealing than the typical ‘Modern Shed’ style box.

ONV Architects Prefab Homes
architecture.MNP
Unfortunately, I don’t read [or speak, for that matter] Danish - so I don’t have that much information on the project. Designed by Danish firm ONV Architects, the home is a modular [really?] prefab that is both customizable and [supposedly] affordable.
Personally, I’m a huge fan of the overall form - that the house is contained within such a clean rectangular shape, and that the porch is formed by carving out a void, rather than attaching something extra to the building.

erin adams luna tile collection
Justin in materialicious
Erin Adams collaborated with Pedro Hernandez of Alumillenium Tile to create an environmentally-conscious glass and aluminum fused tile collection, called Luna. Adams’ complete tile line is available through Ann Sacks Tile & Stone showrooms nationwide.

Holst Transforms Decrepit Downtown Motel Into Hotel Modera
Brian Libby in Portland Architecture
The old Days Inn Portland City Center is currently undergoing a transformation into an upscale boutique hotel called Hotel Modera that will also bring the work of one of the city’s best firms, Holst Architecture, to downtown. The intent is to embrace the original mid-century modern original architecture. The five-story hotel has 174 rooms and suites and takes up nearly an entire city block between SW Fifth and Sixth and Columbia and Clay.  It will feature an outdoor courtyard that includes a “living wall” of vegetation, fire pits and plenty of seating.  The plaza courtyard will integrate the indoors with the outdoors and is intended to provide guests and Portlanders with a place to gather and unwind in downtown. It’s also a big improvement on the ugly surface parking lot that’s been there.

artist’s studio, atema architecture
Justin in materialicious
Funkhouser/Hufnagel Artist’s Studio, Frelinghuysen Township, NJ. I picked this 25×40 passive-solar shed design to showcase the weathering properties of the Cor-Ten steel siding. See a few more pics and read the text at Atema Architecture. Above: After weathering. Below: before weathering.

February 28th, 2008

Vancouver Convention Center Expands on Green
Piper in Inhabitat
There are numerous approaches to making greener buildings- from the inside out, from the ground up, density through urban infill, integrating into the landscape, to name a few… but when an existing 133,000 sq. ft. building aims to expand to 500,000 sq. ft., covering a frightening 6 acres- you have to think BIG. That is the vision of the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Center (VCEC), as it triples in size in time to accommodate the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In the Round
sabine7 in MoCo Loco
Luflic had some amazing chairs at Toronto’s Interior Design Show this past weekend, really catching the collective eye with two pieces called In The Round. Both these production-ready chairs, designed by Brent Cordner, are named after the in-the-round knitting technique and over 50 feet of wool sleeve is used to cover the tubular steel frame for the felt version and 30 feet for the stitch version. The Snowshoe chair (after the jump) won an award at IDS for Best prototype and it is an incredibly light chair made from a composite of wood and Kevlar and based on the traditional snowshoe. The Meander chair is a continuous length of nickel-reinforced copper tubing that results in surprisingly comfortable sculptural seating.

Cabinets: When Wood is Good
Joel Bittle in Green Options
So you’re building or remodeling green, and you’re trying to decide what to do about the cabinets. Scanning the requirements for various green building programs, you seem to have two choices. First, you can try to find cabinets made with Forest Stewardship Council certified wood from companies like Neil Kelly Cabinets. But if the company [...]

Andrei Codrescu's Innovative Infrastructure
jimmy in Life Without Buildings
In a recent Architect Magazine article, a diverse group of professionals were asked how they would change infrastructure if they had $1.6 Trillion to play with. Most of the response were what you'd expect -- get rid of cars, more greenspace, light rail systems -- but a couple stood out from the rest. By far, the best (well, at least most original) response was from writer, NPR correspondent, and New Orleans resident Andrei Codrescu:A dense network of hydrogen-fueled magnetic fast trains with...

London’s Palestra Going Green With New Wind Turbines
Cate Trotter in Inhabitat
Palestra, the stunning home of the London Development Agency and the London Climate Change Agency, is due to have new wind turbines installed after a component failure in 2006. Two new types of turbine will be trialled, with the more successful of the two to be installed in full in the first quarter of 2008. We’re also using this news as an excuse to cover the RIBA-award winning building as a whole, which is as gorgeous as it is green.

Hawaii Gateway Energy Center, a Fascinating Display of Solar Potential
Preston D K in JETSONGREEN.COM
The Hawaii Gateway Energy Center (HGEC) is a 3,600 sf, $3.4 million facility situated on the south coast of Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii.  The new building serves both the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii and the Hawaii Ocean Sciences and Technology Park.  And as you may be able to gather from the images and models below, HGEC is a fascinating display of the future potential for synergies of solar power and building efficiencies.  The entire building is designed as a thermal chimney that captures heat and creates air movement using the structural form and thermodynamic principles.  Also, with the help of glazing, the building orientation and design pretty much eliminates the need for electric lighting during the day.  Notably, HGEC consumes about 20% of the energy that's required by a comparable building.

Events Guide: urban artworks and Keep Toronto Reading
Todd Harrison in Spacing Toronto • understanding the urban landscape
WHAT: my City: urban artworks exhibition
WHEN: Friday, February 29 at 7pm
WHERE: Urbanscape Gallery, 2959 Dundas Street West
The opening reception for my City: urban artworks, a group exhibition presented by Urbanscape Gallery, is tomorrow (Friday) from 7pm to 10pm. This exhibition, on until March 12, is focused on exploring city themes: the experience of urban living, the people, the buildings, the spaces, the relationships, and whatever else.
For more information, visit www.urbanopathy.com.

2 Questions for Jade Rude
Greg in MoCo Loco
Staying at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto gave us an opportunity to get a closer look than most at the Come Up To My Room exhibit on display there. One of our favorite exhibits was Jade Rude's "frames" shown on the walls of the stairs on the way up to the show. We met with Jade to discuss her work and we had two questions... more after the jump. JGB

Cabin by Lode Architects
architecture.MNP
uilt on the site of a former 12 x 4.5 meter barn near Honfleur, France, this cabin by Lode Architects gives a feeling of elegant, earthy minimalism. Very much your typical - if not well built - cabin from the exterior, the architect’s intent is truly expressed inside - where the cabin walls are a clean, unfinished plywood and the floors are a contrasting black rubber. All of the cabin’s functions are grouped in the center of the building, with a galley kitchen opening out onto the deck [seen below] - opposite which sits a large tub [also below] within an open space, looking out through a large window onto the landscape.

Mile-High London Eco Tower by PopularArchiture
Cate Trotter in Inhabitat
The term “mile high” isn’t just for airplane action anymore- British firm Popularchitecture has proposed a mile-high eco tower for London that’s sure to be just as exciting. At a full mile tall and housing over 100,000 people, this concept tower really is just that: a cool, uber-green concept. With 500 floors would contain schools and hospitals to shops and pubs, and everything else under the sun. While it will likely never be realized, the design does push our thinking forward.

No Babies Falling Down That Well
Michelle Linden in Atelier A+D
 Even though Christian Randall specializes in conservation architecture, the design of the glass cover on this well is quite modern. I'm not exactly sure of the particular location within the house, but I'd love to think that this well is just located in the middle (well, maybe not quite the middle) of some room or hall, and that the inhabitants' daily routine causes them to walk over it, just like any other floor finish. To me, imagining that this well cover is used just like any other floor makes the surprise of what is below all the more special.

February 27th, 2008

GRAVIA: Gravity Based Kinetic Energy Lamp
Ali Kriscenski in Inhabitat
Gravia, a gravity based kinetic energy lamp concept, wowed our panel judges and the crowd at the Greener Gadgets Conference, earning a second place accolade in the design competition. Created by Clay Moulton, Gravia evokes the lines of a classic timepiece in a modern aesthetic and uses human powered kinetic energy to light an ambient LED floorlamp. It’s a fantastic concept - but one that has stirred up some debate across the blogosphere recently in regards to whether or not it is possible to build such a lamp right now with the technology that exists today.

upcher house, bates masi architects
Justin in materialicious
Upcher House, East Hampton, NY. $190 psf; a two-story cube clad in tinted fiberboard and rough plywood. Love that catwalk….

Dwell Emerging Designer: Jake Barton
architecture.MNP
Dwell has come out with a new video series, adding to their growing video selection, entitled ‘Emerging Designers‘: The emerging designers chosen by our Dwell.com edit team are innovative designers, original thinkers and will likely be influential players in the world of design for years to come. Jake Barton is designing a new breed of museum, one that favors local voices over curatorial authority. They are places for dialogue, not lectures.

The Staten Island of Tomorrow
Brendan in Where
The following comment was made in response to a post at the NY Times blog Dot Earth about the future of suburbia: "The answer to can we uninvent Suburbia is Queens, which in my youth was essentially a suburb and is now a city. Before that in my father’s time it was Brooklyn, a borough of little villages, and more recently Staten Island. The best way of accomplishing this is through good urban transit. In the DC area where I now live, the biggest mall (Tyson’s corner) is in despair trying to attract a new Metro line. The most successful new malls (White Flint and Pentagon City) are on the Metro."

New York, New York
Zac in Lost At E Minor: Music, illustration, art, photography and more
Ah, New York. What a wonderful city! I was there for a few days visiting the main man behind Lost At E Minor, my brother Zolton. In amongst all the walking and talking, I managed to whip out my camera every now and then. These shots capture the vertical scale of the city, the wonderful deco architecture, and the vast blocks of blue that engulf the city on a clear day.

Toronto meets Marrakesh
Thomas Wicks in Spacing Toronto • understanding the urban landscape
Given the winter we’ve been having it would seem impossible to think of Toronto as being in any way exotic, much less to draw comparisons between our city and one in Morocco or the Middle East. That is, until you encounter a work of exotic revival architecture. Like many cities within the sphere of Anglo-American influence, Victorian Toronto had a small love affair what they saw as the “exotic” architectural forms of Islam. Bearing few children, this affair left only small vestiges behind. These buildings, often described simply as “Moorish,” draw their inspiration from north Africa, Turkey, and the Middle East. The few examples that survive today are easy to miss, which is why encountering one on a snowy winter day is all the more surprising — looking at home yet somewhat foreign under a thick blanket of snow.

OFT by Sand & Birch
Young in Architecture
 Nothing is new under the sun. Images shows concept of modular spaces to be assembled to form spaces for families and possibilities of rearrangement.
 "The name OFT comes from the word Loft, in which it has been taken out the "L", that has to be meant like the dimension "Large". The OFT is in fact of limited dimensions in its basic composition, but, as well as the loft, it is characterized by spaces adaptable to changeable necessities."

Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation Synagogue, a Modern LEED Platinum Building
Preston D K in JETSONGREEN.COM
The Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation synagogue is a beautiful building on 303 Dodge Avenue in Evanston, Illinois.  The Chicago Tribune reports that it's "believed to be the first synagogue designed to achieve the highest level -- platinum -- in the [USGBC's LEED] rating system."  That's probably true.  The  JRC board of directors mandated LEED Platinum certification, but my search of LEED Certified projects does not list the JRC synagogue yet.  Nevertheless, it's a fine example of green architecture in the religious building context, which is something we don't see too often. Designed by Ross Barney Architects, the $8 million, 32,000 sf building opened its doors this month. Originally, the plan called for a 42,000 sf building, but Evanston's zoning ordinance required a scale back, so the 32,000 sf building is full of flexible, convertible-type spaces.


Australia Builds the Largest Solar Plant (for now)
Maria Surma Manka in Green Options
Every time I turn around, it seems like a new state or new nation is building the world’s largest solar power plant! So here’s the latest one: Australia will break ground next year on a 154-megawatt solar plant in Victoria. That’s nearly twice the size of the largest solar plant in the U.S. Once it’s up [...]

Firm Faces #7
John in A Daily Dose of Architecture
Today, 8:00 AM
STL Architects is "a collaborative group of design professionals with a common vision and a passion for architecture, planning, and design...led by Luis Collado, Jose Luis de la Fuente and Tracy Susanne Salvia" with 15 professionals. They "believe that good architecture evolves through humble, team-based efforts."

This Week from Tokyo
Jean in MoCo Loco
+ Plusminuszero's 2.5R series, initially including an analog alarm clock and a thermo-hygrometer, has finally gone on sale.

RUSSIA TOWER - World’s largest naturally ventilated building
Jill Fehrenbacher in Inhabitat
What is going on with all these gigantic spiky eco towers popping up all over Russia and the former Soviet Union? First it was the piercing Siberian eco-tower in Mansyisk, then the sharp and very aggressive looking ‘Peace’ Center in Astana, Kazakstan, then the enormous volcanic Crystal Island spire in Moscow, and just yesterday, this new, blade-like green tower going up in St. Petersburg. Seriously, what gives? Iconic British architect Norman Foster is responsible for 4 out of 5 of these pointy eco towers, so clearly the man has a thing for building sharp, angular ‘environmental’ towers in the former Soviet Union. But is there a connection in terms of the geography and clients as well? Is it something in air?

Random House Purchases The Monacelli Press
mediabistro.com: UnBeige
Big news in the world of art and design publishing, as it's been announced that Random House has purchased The Monacelli Press, who, if you're not immediately familiar with, you likely recognize the titles they've published, from Bruce Mau...

zeroHouse wins Texas Society of Architects award
Young in Architecture
 like prefab house alot. Normally, prefab house requires several aspects: -
1. It’s aesthetic requirement.
2. It needs to look nice, cute and preferably small and clients are normally young couples or younger generation that prefers high-tech stuff.
3. Its’ well-thought and neat consideration of the living conveniences that pre-fabricated into the house.
4. Its’ easy to construct and installation cuts down the construction time...

Bird's Nest meets Bubble Wrap
Lynn Becker in ArchitectureChicago PLUS
Our roving correspondent architect Iker Gil, fresh from a trip to pre-Olympics Beijing, provides us with these two images. The first is of PTW/Arup's National Aquatic Centre, wrapped in 100,000 square meters of EFTE, a plastic which both absorbs solar radiation and reduces thermal heat loss.

February 26th, 2008

Mixed-Use Infrastructure
Brendan in Where
Cities are extremely complex organisms made up of hundreds of independent and interdependent systems. The most basic and oft-overlooked of these systems are some of the most vital. Sewers, which remove waste and excess water, keep our streets clean and dry. They do this out of sight. Canals, rivers, bridges, and roadways allow for the transportation of goods and people within densely populated urban centers. We take them for granted. We have many large facilities for cleaning our water, recycling our trash, and producing our energy, and we hate it when we have to look at them.

laurie baker: guru of low-cost housing
Justin in materialicious
Laurie Baker, a British architect living in India, died last year at age 90. A fascinating man. Anyone know about him? From the obit at BDOnline: Gandhian principles infused his work, as they did his life. “I now think Gandhi was right,” he wrote in 1975, “when he said that all the building materials should be found within five miles of the site”, and “Low-cost techniques should not be considered only for the poor — our aim should be to design only the simplest of buildings for all.”

Radiant Dark: Part 1
sabine7 in MoCo Loco
Although in its inaugural year, Radiant Dark was an important exhibition that took place last week in Toronto, alongside Come Up to My Room and IDS. Curated by MADE’s Shaun Moore and Julie Nicholson, Radiant Dark was a show that focused on themes of darkness and luxury, very interesting in light of the massive fire that destroyed several historic buildings in the very same block the day the show was meant to open. ...

Book: Campbell House
Dylan Reid in Spacing Toronto • understanding the urban landscape
He walked west along Queen Street, away from the centre of town. On the northwest corner of University and Queen sat a little building called Campbell House. It occupied a postage stamp of grass and looked out on nothing that had been there when its lawns had been laid. At some point in the past, some cherishing landowner, now dead, had fought off the parcelling of his little estate to an interest of some kind. Maybe a tiny hermit’s cabin on his grounds had been put forth as hallowed, a place the loss of which would spell an end of something important....

The Louvre Most Visited Museum of '07 By a Huge Margin
mediabistro.com: UnBeige
Don't be surprised if, the next time you're in Paris, you see those gigantic foam "We're #1" hands for sale at the Louvre's gift shop. Sure, it's a little tacky, but you have to give it to them, as...

Jetson Green: Carbon Neutral Lighthouse
architecture.MNP
Philip over at Jetson Green, writes: In England, a handful of efficient demonstration homes have been built on the grounds of the Building Research Establishment Ltd, including “The Lighthouse,” which is the first net zero carbon house in the UK. The house is also the first to attain level six in the Code for Sustainable Homes, which indicates that it is carbon neutral. The two-bedroom house is only 93.3 square meters (barely over 1000 sq. ft.) in a 2-1/2 story building. The building has solar panels and evacuated solar tubes on its roof, as well as making use of passive measures with ventilation chimneys. It also incorporates rainwater catchment as part of the building design.

furniture from reclaimed oak wine casks, cliff spencer
Justin in materialicious
From Leigh Spencer: American and French Oak are used during the fermentation process to impart subtle flavors to wine. At the same time, the wine leaves its mark on the wood. The 1/2” thick staves we reclaimed from the vineyards are stained through by the grapes. The Pinot Noir makes for the darkest stain while the Pinot Grigio leaves the lightest. Except for the non-toxic adhesives and the water base finishes, the furniture is made from 100% recycled materials. And yes, the shop smells like a winery while the wood is being processed…..

February 25th, 2008

Niland Residence, Austin Texas by Andersson Wise
Mohammad Fahmi Tri Wahyudi,ST in Best House Design
Yesterday, 11:47 PM
This project was an extensive renovation of an existing residence built in the late 1980's on a wooded site in West Austin. The project consisted primarily of redesigning the living and dining rooms and the master suite within the interior and a complete redesign of the swimming pool and entry deck for the exterior.
Interior materials and surfaces

Höweler + Yoon on Boston City Hall 2.0
architecture.MNP
Some of you ninjas may remember the posts we had up a few months back featuring Boston’s City Hall - and the exhibition at Pink Comma of the ‘alternative’ schemes that had recently been presented in Architecture Boston. One such proposal [or, two+, really] was designed by our current architecte de la semaine, Höweler + Yoon Architecture.

Soft, sand and birch design
Justin in materialicious
An interesting concept from Sand & Birch Design: The name OFT comes from the word Loft, in which it has been taken out the “L”, that has to be meant like the dimension “Large”. The OFT is in fact of limited dimensions in its basic composition, but, as well as the loft, it is characterized by spaces adaptable to changeable necessities. We have imagined a home that would easily allow one to assemble different pieces and to change them during the time. Adding or subtracting elements, also temporarily.

New Gazprom Tower To Be Europe’s Tallest & Greenest?
Karim Yergaliyev in Inhabitat
The historic city of St. Petersburg in Russia will soon be home to the tallest tower in Europe. The UK-based architectural firm RMJM was given a go by the Russian gas giant to build the new Gazprom Neft headquarters in the former Russian capital. Officially called the Okhta Tower, the eco skyscraper is promising to be “one of the most environmentally sustainable high rise buildings in the world,” according to the RMJM...

The Surreal Thing
Lynn Becker in ArchitectureChicago PLUS
Even as it celebrates the 40th anniversary of the city's landmarks ordinance, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks not only continues to leave many of Chicago's most essential buildings unprotected, it's upending the very definition of what a landmark building is...