June 6th, 2008

The Museum of Nature by Ilkka Halso
Kate Andrews in Inhabitat
Finnish photographer Ilkka Halso’s photographic series ‘The Museum of Nature’ intelligently challenges how we can imagine the natural environment of the future. This collection of images capture a series of man-made structures that enclose nature, protecting it like a relic of the past. Using images of landscapes and 3D digital manipulation, this photographic collection captures a future vision of nature as a rare display. Challenging the audience’s interaction with the natural environment as endangered artifact, Halso manages to truly visualize a future we so desperately do not want to see become a reality.

(NOT) UNDER CONSTRUCTION
lebbeuswoods in LEBBEUS WOODS
The American Pavilion in Venice’s Giardini, site of the Biennale, is a piece of neo-classical design that strikes an odd note, especially among other national pavilions speaking more eloquently of modernist aspirations. America chooses to represent itself with a faux-historical architecture that frames whatever is exhibited with disingenuousness. The message it sends would be merely absurd were it not for the baleful effect of disingenuous American foreign policy in recent years. All that has had a chance to change in this year’s Architecture Biennale. Under the overall theme of “Out There: Architecture Beyond Building,” the design for the installation at the American Pavilion was addressed by Eric Owen Moss in a remarkably ingenious and straightforward design. Using ordinary construction scaffolding, he creates a lyrically diaphanous structure that serves as a carrier for two- and three-dimensional representations of a diverse selection of architectural projects, including my own. Evoking the ideas of transition and the transitory, he calls the installation “Under Construction: American architecture around the world; international architecture in America.”

Eco-Luxury Hotel for the Bahamas’ Star Island
Cate Trotter in Inhabitat
Next year, eco-luxe travel will get a new destination with the opening of a new five-star resort for Star Island in the Bahamas. In and among diving, playing tennis and drinking a cocktail or two, holidaymakers will discover that the resort is entirely energy self-sufficient, with power coming from solar, wind and micro-hydro generators. And, that the sustainability aspects of the resort’s construction, interior and grounds have also been considered in impressive detail.

House Presenhuber / AFGH
Nico Saieh in Arch Daily
This holiday house is located in the middle of the village of Vnà in the Lower Engadine. The particular challenge of the project was to bridge the divide between the old-world charm of the village and the modern flair embodied in a holiday house for an internationally successful art gallery owner. The aim was to develop a formal language which had a certain proximity to traditional Engadine architecture and yet remained immediately recognisable as contemporary without being conservatively romanticised.

 A Stunning Flatpak House in Aspen, Colorado
Preston D K in Jetson Green
This is a Flatpak house in Aspen, Colorado.  I stumbled upon these shots in Flickr, so I don't have much background on the project.  But we've featured modern Flatpak homes before in the Goodwin-Wise Flatpak and Lazor's Flatpak.  Flatpak houses each have their own particular and interesting features, but the Flatpak system is the same.  It's a menu of components for living that includes walls, cabinets, bathrooms, kitchen, and various built-ins.  The components are pre fabricated and designed to meet the needs of a various owner and/or site. You start with a 8' wide one story wall component.  Every 8', you decide what you want in that component, whether all glass, no glass, part glass, high glass, low glass, etc.  You do that throughout the home floor plate until you have a finished home.  After that, you design the exterior to your needs and choose the materials.  From there, you move on to design and pick out your interior finishouts.