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Posts Tagged ‘Architecture’

Mini Modernists: 15 Designer Toys for Young Architecture Fans

22 Mar

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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Foster an appreciation for fine modernist architecture and design from an early age with Bauhaus dollhouses, Eames block sets, mini Corbusier lounge chairs and urban planning board games. There’s a minimalist dollhouse that doubles as a coffee table, a Matryoshka-style set of paper modernist estates and of course, the pleasingly all-white Architecture Studio set by LEGO. Sure, you can get these architectural toys and games under the pretense that they’re for your kids, but we all know it’s really you who’ll be playing with them.

Home Puzzle, Babel Tower Game & Archiblocks by Cinq Points
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A 3D puzzle made up of 17 minimalist white pieces that fit together into a house shape, the ‘Home Puzzle’ by Cinq Points is greater than the sum of its parts. The individual pieces are made to resemble pieces of furniture as well as buildings in a town, so kids can use their imagination to change the purpose of each shape. The Babel Tower game is like an architectural version of Jenga, while the Archiblocks construction set is “designed to capture modularity, balance and composition, their form giving them an intergenerational appeal.”

Qubis House Modernist Doll House & Coffee Table
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Functioning as a modernist dollhouse for kids and a coffee table for adults, the Qubis Haus features sliding panels made of wood and perspex so the ‘architect’ can create various room layouts. Made of solid birch, it has clean modern lines honoring a period of architecture that’s not often seen in doll houses.

Dollhouse-Sized Modernist Furniture
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Not just any old furniture should be placed inside a modernist dollhouse. From the Vitra Design Museum Shop comes a series of iconic pieces in miniature form, true to scale and replicating the originals down to the smallest details including the materials, the grain of the wood and the reproduction of the screws. The collection includes chairs by Charles Eames, Marcel Breuer, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe.

Eames House Blocks

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Bring the famous Eames House and Studio to your coffee table or playroom with this “authentically engineered” set of 36 alphabet blocks created in direct collaboration with the Eames family. The colors were so carefully matched to the original, the block set requires 29 separate hand-pulled print passes when it’s being produced.

Blokoshka: A Modernist Architectural Matryoshka

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Rather than dolls, this nesting paper set reveals one modernist building after another, getting successively smaller and smaller as you pull them apart. The Blokoshka set by ZUPAGRAFIKA comes pre-cut and pre-folded so you can put them together and take them apart as many times as you like (or until the paper starts to disintegrate.) “Inspired by the former Eastern Bloc concrete modernist estates, Blokoshka is a playful tour inside out the ‘sleeping districts’ of Moscow, plattenbau constructions of East Berlin, Warsaw estates built over the ruins of old ghetto, and the panelak blocks in Prague.”

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Mini Modernists 15 Designer Toys For Young Architecture Fans

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Fractal Architecture: 14 Intricate Ceilings of Historical Iran

18 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

inlaid iranian ancient architecture

Sharing his findings via Instagram, an architectural photographer in Iran has begun documenting schools, mosques and cultural centers around the country, with a focus on their most mesmerizing feature: the ceilings.

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Mehrdad takes viewers on tours of significant cultural complexes, some of which have been standing for close to 1,000 years as part of one of the world’s oldest civilizations.

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Modestly-decorated and architecturally-muted facades often give way to incredible complex mural works, colorfully-patterned reliefs and mosaics that must be meticulously maintained.

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Buildings pictured here include the Hazrat-Masoumeh mosque in Qom, the Chaharbagh School in Isfahan and the Shah-e-Cheragh mosque in Shiraz.

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Nesting Architecture: Folding Models of Eastern Bloc Buildings

13 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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This series of recycled cardboard models references both the functional styles of postwar Soviet architecture as well as the Russian tradition of handcrafted nesting dolls.

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In the wake of World War II, European cities were forced to rebuild in a hurry, focusing on cheap and efficient structures that could effectively be mass-produced. Blokoshka (from: Matryoshka and blocks) by Polish studio Zupagrafika borrows from the pragmatic minimalism of this architectural history.

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The four units represent four types of building in four places:  the sleeping districts of Moscow, Plattenbau Constructions of East Berlin, ruin-topping estates of Warsaw of moscow, and Panelak blocks of Prague.

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The prefabricated pieces are nestled in sheets of cardboard, ready to be folded into place without the need for glue, scissors or other tools. Each resulting structure tucks neatly into the next, so the sets can be deployed into districts or recombined into shelf-sitting modules.

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First “Drawn in Place” Architecture Made with a 3D-Printing Pen

29 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

3d printed architecture pen

A group of students from the University of Tokyo have created the world’s first work of 3D pen-drawn architecture, extruding thermoplastic filament to generate a structurally-stable arch installation.

3d pen modeling student

A digital tracking system helped builders connect rods with extruded supports, generating a lattice-like system of interconnected trusses (resulting in a kind of lightweight, smaller-scale space frame). The combination of rigid rods and fluid connectors helps the whole structural network, providing tension as well as compression capabilities.

3d pen in use

The handheld device enabling the extrusions operates much like a hot glue gun or static 3D printer, heating the constituent material and making it malleable before it hardens upon deployment. Unlike large-scale printers, this approach enables minute on-site work by anyone trained to use the machine, reducing costs and complexity.

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“Technology has traditionally been used to automate and replace human labour,” design team member Kevin Clement, said in an interview with Dezeen. “The issue with this approach is that it fails to take advantage of human intuition during fabrication. We believe our approach can bridge the current dichotomy between machine and human-made production.”

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Modern Japanese Architecture: Sunny Minimalism by Tomohiro Hata

08 Feb

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Expertly blending the minimalist aesthetics of traditional Japanese architecture with modern sensibilities to meet the needs of contemporary residents, architect Tomohiro Hata graces each of his cleverly-designed homes with his own distinctive style. Haha is particularly skilled at producing sunny, airy residences that feel luxurious, dynamic and fresh despite tight budgets, challenging sites and building regulations.

Re-Slope House
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Modern Japanese architects have found creative ways to enable privacy in densely packed urban residential areas without cutting off access to sunlight, and to balance a cozy cave-like atmosphere in one part of the home with an airy, almost entirely open facade. In the case of Tomohiro Hata’s ‘Re-Slope House,’ the plot is set into a rocky Kobe hillside, cutting off access to light and air in the back half of the house.

Hata’s adaptive design is a wedge-shaped metal volume that follows the slope of the hill, placing oversized windows at the front and inserting wooden platforms inside for varying access to the light. Three open-plan terraced platforms mimic an oversized set of stairs, stepping from a sunny room adjacent to the windows down into the more private rooms. Skylights let the sun pierce through to the back of the home, and sliding glass doors offer access to a top-floor terrace and a set of metal scaffolding on the hillside for plants. The street-facing facade is windowless; nearly all of the glass looks out onto the landscape, blocking the interior from the view of neighbors.

Complex House
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The narrow profile of this plot of land in Nagoya created a challenge for Hata in designing a single-family residence that feels open and spacious, yet also private. The architect’s solution was to create a sharply angled, jagged silhouette pointing most of the windows up to the sky. The series of voids created by alternating pitched roofs brings sunlight in from all directions at various times of day as well as entirely walled-in courtyards.

The clever layout lets the occupants look out without providing passersby with a view into their home, creates a dynamic flow of foot traffic inside and has a far more interesting appearance from the curb than a simple box. The use of simple metal cladding keeps costs down and gives the home a minimalist, streamlined vibe.

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Modern Japanese Architecture Sunny Minimalism By Tomohiro Hata

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Architecture as Art: 13 Unusually Sculptural Buildings

19 Jan

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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When fine art and architecture intersect, especially in our modern era of parametric modeling and 3D printing, the results can be strikingly different from the structures that surround them, in some instances seeming like sculptures were given growth serum and expanded to mind-boggling proportions. Eschewing the ordinary, these buildings feel like a chance for architects to flex their creativity and bring some interesting colors and proportions to their settings.

Melbourne Theater Company
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Abstract shapes glow against a solid black mass on the exterior of this striking complex by Ashton Raggat McDougall, making the Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC Theater some of the most visually unique buildings in the city. The black and white color palette is accented by a vibrant red, with the geometric pattern continuing into the interior, looking three-dimensional when viewed from certain angles.

Tschuggen Grand Hotel
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Rising from the Swiss mountainside like shards of ice, architect Mario Botta’s Berg Oase is a sculptural extension of the Tschuggen Grand Hotel. Serving as a wellness center and spa, the arrangement of towering glass wedges bring light streaming into the interior spaces and almost seem like natural structures themselves among the trees and rocks when viewed from afar.

Cloud House
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A house shaped like a cloud? Why not? It may look like the occupants would be severely lacking in privacy, considering the two glazed facades, but this building by Australian firm McBride Charles Ryan is actually an extension to a more conventional street-facing home, and is shielded from neighbors’ views by the curved cloud-mimicking sides.

Suzhou Science & Cultural Arts Centre Facade
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One way to give a building a dramatic makeover (or just ensure that it stand out from the very start) is to add a parametric facade, like the intricate screen covering the massive Suzhou Science and Cultural Arts Centre in China. Developed by Studio 505, the curving screen is shaped like a parabolic moon crescent and consists of a weatherproofing layer and an outer ornamental mesh screen that provides shading.

Palais Bulles
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A classic example of sculptural housing with an aesthetic that’s so outside the norm, it’s almost alien, is Palais Bulles (“Palace of Bubbles.”) Created by architect Antti Lovag in 1989, the curvilinear house is set into a rocky hillside overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Cannes, France. It’s often used for film festival parties and fashion editorials.

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Architecture As Art 13 Unusually Sculptural Buildings

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Architecture with Nothing to Hide: 13 Glass Box Buildings

14 Jan

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Spotlighting the reflective, shimmering and transparent qualities of glass, architecture primarily made up of glazed volumes interacts with its environment in ways that opaque structures simply can’t, whether they’re overlooking the ocean or in the middle of a busy urban square. Their sense of vulnerability is tempered by this feeling of connection, containing their inhabitants without cutting them off from the world.

Japanese School
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“I wanted to create a building where it isn’t clear if there are any rules at all,” says architect Junya Ishigami of the disorienting Kanazawa Institute of Technology, comprised of little more than 305 steel columns and a whole lot of glass. The structure reflects the trees at its perimeter, seeming to multiply them, making it feel more like a forest itself than a college classroom. Inside, the steel beams mimic tree trunks.

Russet Residence by Splyce Design
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Stacks of glazed boxes jut out from a Vancouver hillside in this modern residence by Splyce Design, stretching out toward the ocean. Some rooms even cantilever from the sides of the house, maximizing the number of interior spaces with an impressive view. All of that frameless glazing helps the home blend in with its surrounding forest environment.

Offices for Junta de Castilla y Leon by Alberto Campo Baeza
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How do you make a structure feel simultaneously open and vulnerable, and as secure as a fortress? Build a glass box inside a stone enclosure. Alberto Campo Baeza’s offices for Junta de Castilla y León utilizes sandstone to disguise the very modern building in its historic environment, the walled city of Zamora, Spain. The perimeter walls provide privacy, while the glazed box within soaks up sunlight.

Skyline Residence
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The incredible Skyline Residence in Hollywood by Belzberg Architects has its very own drive-in theater on the side of a geometric glazed volume. The entirety of the glass facade opens to the sky on the bottom floor, leading out to a 65-foot hillside infinity pool.

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Glitter And Float 13 Glamorous Glass Box Buildings

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DIY Loft Kits Bridge the Gap Between Furniture & Architecture

09 Jan

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

loft kit 1

Add 160 square feet to your tiny, high-ceilinged apartment without consulting an architect or getting a permit thanks to DIY loft kits that fall somewhere between a renovation and the lofted beds you can snag at IKEA. A company called Expand Furniture makes the process of creating a mezzanine level as easy as installing a large piece of furniture, with models ranging from a bed platform to a entire extra room.

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The three kits don’t come cheap, ranging from about $ 1,500 to over $ 4,000, but they’re still less pricey than permanent additions, and don’t require owning your apartment or getting your landlord’s permission to remodel. The DIY Loft Bed Kit has enough room for a mattress, nightstands and a bit of free floor space, and takes just four hours for two people to set up.

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The modular Vancouver DIY Loft T8 Kit is height- and width-adjustable, and you can add on all sorts of accessories, like stairs of varying steepness, skylights and a variety of guard rails. The priciest kit, the New York DIY Loft T15, is large enough to be used as an entire elevated bedroom or office. All of the kits ship flat-pack from North American warehouses.

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Expand Furniture also offers a range of impressive transforming items for compact spaces, including murphy beds, pop-up coffee tables and bookcases that flip around to reveal either a fold-down work surface or a mattress, all in one slim unit. The website is full of fun stuff for small-apartment-dwellers to fantasize about purchasing, if only they had $ 8,000 to drop on a king-sized bed hidden behind a sofa.

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Brutalist Wonders or Blunders? Architecture by Marcel Breuer

05 Jan

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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A master of Modernism whose architectural legacy includes a range of monumental concrete structures around the world, Marcel Breuer remains divisive among Brutalism’s admirers and detractors decades after his death. From the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to the vaguely dystopian IBM headquarters in Paris, Breuer’s work is alternately described as majestic and depressing; cold and clinical to some, and peacefully minimalist to others. Regardless of how you feel about concrete architecture in general and Brutalism in particular, Breuer’s buildings are emblematic of this architectural style. Here are 14 of his most notable creations, as preserved by Syracuse University’s Marcel Breuer Digital Archive.

St. John’s Abbey, Minnesota

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After completing a series of modernist residential projects in the 1930s and ‘40s, Breuer moved on to work on a far more ambitious and awe-inspiring scale, starting with the stunning St. John’s Abbey and University in Minnesota. The cast-in-place concrete wonder features a towering bell banner shielding the church’s honeycombed facade. Breuer also designed a number of buildings on the St. John’s University campus, including a dormitory hall (bottom photo.)

Whitney Art Museum, New York City

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One critic of Breuer’s 1966 building on the genteel Upper East Side of Manhattan called it “one of the most aggressive, arrogant buildings in New York.” An inverted ziggurat, the structure is undeniably bold. The Hungarian-born, Bauhaus-trained architect “believed that modern architecture needed to reintroduce monumentality and symbolism, age-old characteristics that had been disregarded by modernists earlier in the 20th century.”

UNESCO Headquarters, Paris
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As far as surviving Brutalist structures go, the UNESCO headquarters are nothing short of spectacular. Completed in 1958, the Y-shaped administrative building features a sculptural canopy and spiraling fire escape stairs that reach all the way to the roof. The whole building stands on 72 concrete piles.

The Lost El Parador Ariston, Argentina

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Among Breuer’s classics is the Ariston Hotel in Argentina, a curving clover-shaped building that has been abandoned and left to deteriorate despite its status as one of Argentina’s modern architectural landmarks. Architecture faculty and students at the University of Buenos Aires are currently flighting to preserve and restore it.

The Pirelli Tire Building, New Haven, Connecticut

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Originally built as the headquarters for Armstrong Rubber, what’s now known as the Pirelli Tire Building in New Haven, Connecticut stands out as one of America’s foremost surviving Brutalist structures. Testing of the tires on the ground floor research and development facility would be noisy, so Breuer elevated the administrative spaces. The result is imposing and authoritative; it’s easy to imagine it standing in as the headquarters of a villainous corporation or classified government agency in a movie.

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Brutalist Wonders Or Blunders Architecture By Marcel Breuer

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Lego Landmarks: Elegant New ‘Architecture Skyline’ Collection

18 Dec

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

LEGO skyline 1

The phrases ‘adult toys’ and ‘city blocks’ take on a different meaning when applied to architecturally sophisticated LEGO sets like these, enabling you to make your own miniature replicas of the cityscapes including the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Berlin TV Tower, St. Mark’s Basilica and much more. The Architecture Skyline Series explores the most famous architectural achievements of three cities: New York, Venice and Berlin.

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These aren’t your ordinary blank slate LEGO bricks, from which all manner of creations can spring, but rather very specific pieces for very specific structures.

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With the NYC package, you’ll get the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Statue of Liberty and Flatiron Building as well as the brand new One World Trade Center. Berlin includes the Reichstag, Victory Column, Deutsche Bahn Tower, Berlin TV Tower and Brandenburg Gate. The Venice model will give you St. Mark’s Basilica and Campanile, Rialto Bridge, St. Theodore and the Winged Lion of St. Mark, and the Bridge of Sighs.

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LEGO has been teasing the release of these sets on Facebook for weeks, and has now revealed that they’ll be available on an unnamed date in January 2016. Follow the company’s Facebook page if you want to be among the first to find out so you can snatch up your own box.

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These upcoming sets arrive on the heels of a stunning model of the Louvre in Paris, as well as LEGO’s Architecture Studio, which offers 1210 white and transparent bricks to design and build the architecture of your imagination. Check out the LEGO Architecture series for other classic structures, like Rome’s Trevi Fountain and the Lincoln Memorial.

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