Interior Design Sense

Earth Hour New York City!

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Calling all people who care about the environment! Earth Hour 2009 is tonight — and we are asking everyone to show solidarity and cast a vote for the earth by simply turning off their lights at 8:30 P.M., local time wherever you are. Cities across the world are participating — if you live in the US, you can find out more information at www.earthhourus.org. Otherwise, check out www.earthhour.org. Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007 where 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. This year, the campaign has been taken to the global level to show officials at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen how much this issue matters to all global citizens.

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Greetings from Sydney Earth Hour 2009!
Here in Sydney, the lights went out at precisely 8:30p.m. The Sydney ferries honked the arrival of Earth Hour; the Sydney Opera House turned off its lights; and the Harbour bridge went dark for a little while. I had the pleasure of seeing Sydney from 47 levels above the city, in a candlelit party. It was a sight to see as slowly all the buildings in the city turned off their announcements, the floors went dark, and for a little while you could actually see the city’s inhabitants making a difference and voting for Earth. Sydney was the originator of Earth Hour and it shows. Throughout that one hour, everyone in the party was talking about the initiative, showing an awareness of the environmental cause that even a few years would’ve been inconceivable.

I’ve had the pleasure of going through three Earth Hour events. It is a simple event that I hope I can keep being a part of for much longer.

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Architects: Emmanuel Combarel Dominique Marrec
Location: Paris, France
Project Manager: Dario Oeschli
Project year: 2004-2006
Client: RIVP (Régie Immobilière de la Ville de Paris)
Engineering: BETIBA
General Contractor: LES MAÇONS PARISIENS
Site Area: 550 sqm
Constructed Area: 1,537 sqm
Photographs: Benoit Fougeirol

The construction of the housing project located 45 Louis Blanc Street in the 10th quarter of Paris is the result of a project launched in 1998 by the Paris city real-estate authority. The property developer was expected to take a piece of land measuring 550 m² and replace an abandoned squat there which had been slotted for demolition with a low-cost building proposing 13 apartments (program specifications), that adhered to the HQE (High Environmental Quality) standards still being determined at the time.

The project is sculpted like a piece of a puzzle, responding exactly to the urban constrains and solicitations of the context. It proposes an unusual typology for the Parisian standards which frees the ground floor to propose on the ground level a landscaped parking, adequate with a small plot, above which 17 apartments seem to float. It ensures a chain reaction -> Minimization of the parking print (suppression of the ramp) -> optimization of the realization planning: minus 3 months -> Optimization of the budget: 15% -> Redefinition of the project economy -> and so on…

The environmental attitude has systematically aimed to dissolve the technical and contextual subjections in the architecture of the building and manage maximum potentialities of the construction (Post and beam structure allowing any recomposition of the volumes, etc.)

Group 41, a San Francisco-based firm, has been experimenting with shipping container design. The company is currently working on a large multi-family development in Utah that is to be entirely constructed out of shipping containers.

This proposal is a design for market-rate housing in the suburbs of Salt Lake City Utah. Involving the use of nearly 1000 shipping containers to create up to 200 units of housing, and sitting on a concrete commercial “base” that also includes parking, this major development is slated for a Transit Oriented district near a commuter rail station. Currently, in the preliminary conceptual phase, Container Nation has created two different proposed schemes that take different approaches to the stacking and build-out of the containers. Preliminary local Planning approvals are expected by mid-2009.

For more information, go to Container Nation official website.
More images after the break.

Architects: Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL
Location: Toten, Norway
Client: Ane Kristin Rogstad og Trond Nygård
Project Architects: Einar Jarmund, Håkon Vigsnæs, Alessandra Kosberg
Collaborator: Nikolaj Zamecznik
Contractor: Byggmester Rotstigen AS
Project Year: 2005-2006
Construction Year: 2007-2008
Constructed Area: 165 sqm
Photographs: Nils Petter Dale

This is a small house for two historians and their children, overlooking lake Mjøsa at an abandoned farm which they have inherited. The existing old house in the yard is not insulated and used for guests and storage. The existing barn has to be torn down because the main load bearing construction is rotten. However, the cladding of the barn, more than 100 years old, is still of good quality and now used for exterior cladding and terraces of the new house. Some of the old planks are cut with a varied with at the root of the tree compared to the top. These diagonals are used to adjust the horizontality of the cladding towards the sloping lines of the ground and the angle of the roof. The spatial complexity, exposed construction, and material simplicity of the barn has also inspired and informed the new architecture in a wider sense.

From the main entrance to the south, the interior organization has a dual focus, both opening the whole facade towards the lake to the north, and at the same time stepping the central space downwards to the terrace at the west side of the house. The series of common spaces at these sloping axes are visually connected, opening the full length of the house. Above, there is a children’s loft, below the parent’s part of the house. The main section rises towards the south to allow for the low winter sun to enter the building. The glazed and lofty winter garden works as a heat collector at winter time, and heat buffer for the rest of the house at summer time.

The area is about 150 m2, main construction and surfaces made of wood, windows lined with aluminum, ground floor in exposed concrete. There is 40 cm of rock wool insulation in the roof construction, 20 cm in the walls. There is water based underfloor heating combined with a wood burning stove.

Architects: Sadar Vuga Architects
Location: Portorož, Slovenia
Project Team: Jurij Sadar, Boštjan Vuga, Anamarija Volk, Corina Trunz, Goran Golubič
Structural Engineer: Elea IC
Landscape: GLG projektiranje
Client: Lesnina Inženiring, d.d.
Project year: 2009
Site Area: 626 sqm
Constructed Area: 398 sqm
Photographs: Sadar Vuga

Villa Beli križ stands on the incline of the hill above Portorož. The matrix volume of the villa consists of four two-storey apartments of equal size with an associated outer garden space, terrace on the shadow side and terrace with a pool on the sunny side. Within the villa, apartments are arranged in such a fashion that the large glazed surfaces opening the apartments to the outside offer a colorful variety of views of the sea and of the horizon. At the same time, this arrangement provides for the desired privacy and intimacy between the villa’s residents. In this way, from his apartment on the upper floor, a resident will always have a view of and access to his part of the garden on the lower floor.

Consequentially, this exhibits in the ambient diversity of the apartments’ interiors. Opening of each internal space towards the sea and alternating twin hooded roofs lead towards the “winged” form of the building’s sides. Pairs of apartments are mirrored across the central axis. In conjunction with the villa’s setting on the garden-covered podium of the garage, this serves to emphasize the presence of the villa in the context. Alternating perceptual cinematic opening and closing of the villa’s volume at our passing-by makes advantageous use of the positioning of the villa on the street bend. The white grid of the structure cladding creates a distinguishable element in the near surroundings, as well as a dialog with the white grid balconies of the Porotorož hotels downhill by the sea.