Interior Design Sense

Architects: Takao Shiotsuka Atelier
Location: Saiki-city, Oita, Japan
Client: Private
Project year: 2008
Constructed area: 81.94 sqm
Photographs: Toshiyuki YANO (Nacasa & Partners Inc.,)

The cottage in the silent village between mountains. We wished to make the silence a space. It seemed to me that the concrete block is a silent material compared with concrete. Silence is made by the thing being alive It becomes coldness if there is no breath of a life there.

The block fit this place nicely. There are no fittings in the opening of the outside wall. Brock was just merely stacked, and the hole was merely vacant there. Quiet scenery exists.

In October 1958 the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored a small conference on urban design at the University of Pennsylvania, attended by Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Louis Kahn, I.M. Pei, Kevin Lynch and other notable architects, planners and journalists. It sparked a revolution in urban planning and changed the face of our cities.

Fifty years later, planners, architects and yes, even bloggers have gathered in Philadelphia again to look at the issues that will affect our communities in the next fifty years: Re-imaginging cities after the age of oil.

I will be reporting from the conference for the next two days, as will correspondents from Grist, Metropolis, Planet…

Most of us, really appreciate when seeing a new design, but this awesome sculptural home in Somosaguas, Spain, is more than just a modern design and managed to get me drooling. Designed by A-cero Architects on the water’s edge, it’s a stratified building with texturized dark concrete facades, that promotes open space and will sure get you a wow when looking at the pictures. The most amazing things are the rooftop swimming pool that will get all the neighbors to die of envy and the fact that it has some breathtaking lights at night. Now that’s a place I’d love to live for the rest of my life, if I were to choose.

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Awesome Sculptural Home in Somosaguas : Spain

Back in July I posted a href=”http://archidose.blogspot.com/2008/07/21st-century-street.html”a notice/a about “a href=”http://21stcenturystreet.org/”Designing the 21st Century Street/a,” an open design competition sponsored by a href=”http://www.transalt.org/”Transportation Alternatives/a, which I thought of entering at the time but didn’t evenutally do. Regardless, three winners were a href=”http://transalt.org/newsroom/releases/2769″announced/a today, and my first impressions are, um, mixed. But I’ll admit that it is hard to fully grasp a piece of urban design from only one image. Below are snippets of the a href=”http://21stcenturystreet.org/press”three winners/a, at a large scale to show one aspect of urban design, namely the small details that compose the public realm: lights, bike racks, paving, planters, etc.br /br /img src=”http://www.archidose.org/Blog/TA21a.jpg” alt=”TA21a.jpg” /br /["Shared Space" by Steven Nutter, Somerville, MA. | image a href="http://21stcenturystreet.org/press"source/a]br /br /img src=”http://www.archidose.org/Blog/TA21b.jpg” alt=”TA21b.jpg” /br /["Streets for Everyone" by a href="http://www.rogersmarvel.com/"Rogers Marvel Architects/a, NY, NY. | image a href="http://21stcenturystreet.org/press"source/a]br /br /img src=”http://www.archidose.org/Blog/TA21c.jpg” alt=”TA21c.jpg” /br /["Streets Come Alive" by team LEVON, Philadelphia, PA. | image a href="http://21stcenturystreet.org/press"source/a]

Architects: KWK PROMES
Location: Opole, Poland
Project Architect: Robert Konieczny
Collaborators: Marlena Wolnik, Łukasz Prażuch
Design Year: 2002-2003
Construction Year: 2003-2006
Site Area: 10,057 sqm
Constructed Area: 660 sqm
Photographs: KWK PROMES

Location

The house is situated in Poland, close to Opole. Majority of low density settlement in the surroundings is formed of “cube – houses”, buildings typical for the 1970’s.

Idea

One hectare site near the forest, where the building is designed has only one weak point: south-western access. An obvious conflict develops between the driveway and the garden. The idea arose to lower the driveway in order to separate it from the garden. This prompted another idea – of a driveway leading inside to the ground floor level, from underneath the building, which became possible thanks to the creation of an inner atrium with the driveway in it.

New type of the house

As a result, the building opens up onto all sides with its terraces in an unrestricted manner, and the only way to get into the garden is through the atrium and the house.

This in turn has made it possible to obtain a new spatial model of the house, which is the reverse of an atrial building. The aatrial house is closed to the inside and opened to the surroundings.

Structure and materials

The gateway is situated in the highest point of the site sloping to the east side. The 10 metres wide driveway following slope’s declivity, was additionally lowered underneath the ground level, while the garden was partly raised above this level. As a result, the garden is separated from the driveway and the surroundings with a 2.5m high retaining wall. The building was situated on the garden level. For the sake of neighboring buildings, typical polish “cube – houses” arisen it 1970’s, the structure of the house results from various transformations of a cube.

As a result of stretching and bending particular surfaces of the cube, all the walls, floors and ceilings were defined, together with inner aatrium and terraces. This principle of formation has not only created the structure of the house, but also defined interior and exterior architecture, including use of materials. The building is a reinforced concrete monolith, and concrete is at the same time the finishing material of the transformed cube, while all additional elements are finished with dark ebony.

The driveway and retaining walls were made out of quarried granite blocks, the material characteristic for the surroundings.

What is it that you expect from new residences or from newly built hotels? High class, isn’t it? Well, in Downtown New York on 123 Washington Street, a 57-storey tower designed by Gwathmey Siegel Architects is going to be built and should most likely meet the above criteria. Dubbed the W Hotel & Residences and with the help of interior designers from GRAFT, the hotel rooms and the flats are really astonishing. With Great large windows that offer great views over the city, extremely modern furniture and top notch furnishings. I just can’t choose the best picture of the ones you’ll see below, but that’d definitely be the apartment of my dreams if I were to buy one. Wonder what the prices will be over there. Expensive, huh? – via Contemporist

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W Hotel & Residences in New York

What is that thing in the middle at the top of the proposed Anara tower in Dubai? In most of the renderings it looks like a wind turbine integrated into the building, but when you look closely (image below) you can see that the hub is inhabited and that it is supported by the three blades. So now architects don’t even bother with the real thing, they just borrow the imagery and put fake turbine-like things on the top of their buildings because they look cool. …

Here’s a couple shots of a href=”http://www.rotermannikaubamaja.ee/”Rotermann Centre/a in Tallinn, Estonia by a href=”http://www.kosmoses.ee/”Kosmos Architects/a, 2007. Photographs are by a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/88829008@N00/”rokdd/a.br /br /a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/88829008@N00/2991776036/” title=”Kaubajama Rotermann, Tallinn, on Flickr”img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3241/2991776036_8f217b39dd.jpg” alt=”Kaubajama Rotermann, Tallinn” width=”375″ height=”500″ //abr /br /a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/88829008@N00/2990931357/” title=”Kaubajama Rotermann, Tallinn, on Flickr”img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3170/2990931357_a1a6c715a3.jpg” alt=”Kaubajama Rotermann, Tallinn” width=”375″ height=”500″ //abr /pTo contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:/p blockquote:: Join and add photos to the a href=”http://www.flickr.com/groups/archi-dose/”archidose pool/a, and/orbr /:: Tag your photos span style=”font-style: italic;”a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/archidose/”archidose/a/span/blockquote

Architects: Sou Fujimoto Architects
Location: Hokkaido, Japan
Project Team: Hiroshi Kato
Project Year: 2006
Site Area: 14,590 sqm
Constructed Area: 2,536 sqm
Photographer: Daici Ano & Sou Fujimoto

This is the treatment center for mentally disturbed children where they live together to get regaining their mental health. It may be thought that it is a very special building when I write so, but it is truly rich life space that requested in origin like a large house and also like a small city, the intimacy of a house and also the variety of the city. This is a proposal of a loose method.

The method of being random

A precise planning / Accidental landscape

If It was possible to make a building with such a method how something was merely scattered, I thought it was a dreamlike building. And, as for this method, surprisingly precision planning is possible. As opposed to the complicated program called for, moving a box delicately, the plan can be flexibly packed just because it is random.

However, the first feature of this method is over there.
Although, this space is created as a result of an infinite, strict and artificial design process, it stands as a place which is not planned at all, or which has been made automatically with no intention. The place which is vague, unpredictable, filled with unlikelihood. Something that is not meant is produced as a result of an intentional and strict design act. And plenty of a place is achieved because of ambiguity for not being intentional.

Selectivity and contingency / freedom and inconvenient

A surely irregular alcove-place is produced between the boxes placed at random. It is the place of a small scale where children can hide in while they are connected to the living area. Although it is the space with no function in which it can make it avoidable in a simple form strangely, children play with the place like the primitive man who interprets landscape freely and lives very well in it. They hide in a place behind something, show up, relax at back, and run about here and there. By being separated and being connected are compatible, freedom and inconvenient live together in the meantime. Plenty of the place for living is achieved.

It can be said that there is nothing center here and conversely, it can be said that there is a countless center. They are “relative centers” which always interchanges and changes with the consciousness of those who are there or the condition of light. For the staff, a staff room is a functional center. For children, living room, a single room, or an alcove is a center. The occasional center is found out in fluctuation of space.

Architects: Wiebenson & Dorman Architects PC
Location: Cleveland Park, Washington DC, USA
Project year: 2001
Contractor: Enterprise 6
Structural Engineer: JGK Structural Engineers
Photographs: Wiebenson & Dorman Architects

An addition and renovation to this pseudo-colonial house utilizes modern forms and materials, improves circulation, allows for abundant natural light and includes complete living facilities on one level.

We believe that our efforts, in most projects, should result in a design that is appropriate to the property, to the users, to the existing amenities, to the neighborhood and especially to the times in which we live. In order to achieve such designs, we consider opportunities to take advantage of the Owner’s goals, the site and its views and its features, light (natural and artificial), circulation (vertical and horizontal), energy efficiency (including passive solar) and other factors that we believe create dynamic, enjoyable, comfortable and responsible architecture.