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Bye Bye Big Brother: Airplane Mode House Severs Signals

03 Sep

[ By Steph in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

ram house 1

The curtain of the future might filter out not just light and prying eyes but also electronic signals to give us peace and privacy of another kind. The RAM House by Genoa-based design research collaborative Space Caviar ironically looks a bit like a cage, as if you have to put yourself in time-out in order to escape from all of the texts, emails, app notifications and other distractions of modern life, but the idea of a space with an automatic ‘off switch’ is an intriguing one.

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We’ve reached the point where the gaze of passersby is not nearly so much a privacy concern as the surveillance we’re under inside our own homes with all of the curtains closed, the designers note. “As the space of the home becomes saturated by ‘smart’ devices capable of monitoring their surroundings, the role of the domestic envelope as a shield from an external gaze becomes irrelevant: it is the home that is observing us.”

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“The RAM House responds to this near-future scenario by proposing a space of selective electromagnetic autonomy. Wi-Fi, cellphone and other radio signals are filtered within the space’s core by various movable shields of radar-absorbent material (RAM) and faraday meshing, preventing signals from entering and – more importantly – exiting. Just as a curtain can be drawn to visual expose the domestic interior of a traditional home, panels can be slid open to allow radio waves to enter and exit, when so desired.”

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The house itself is ultra-compact, with cabinet modules on sliding rails offering access to the office, kitchen, library and bathroom functions. When fully collapsed, the cabinets form a solid electronically shielded unit. Once you open them you allow signal traffic to flow.

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It’s kind of frightening to think about just how exposed we are within our supposedly private spaces thanks to technology – convenience comes at a cost, and smart homes learn just about all their is to know about their occupants in order to best serve them. The RAM House is like the proverbial hut in the woods to which we can retire when we want to truly escape, while enabling us to rejoin the modern world at the flip of a switch.

[ By Steph in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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Tiny in Tokyo: Ultra-Narrow House Slotted into an Alley

16 Jul

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

tokyo narrow house main

At just six feet wide, this incredibly narrow residence inserted into an alley in dense urban Tokyo is the latest example of Japanese architects thinking way outside the box when it comes to building new housing. The city is so developed, there’s almost no land left to build anything new, so they tend to get incredibly creative with even the oddest-shaped plots.

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The four-story house by YUUA Architects and Associates extends about 36 feet into a former alley between two older buildings, and while the street-facing facade features floor-to-ceiling windows to maximize daylight and views, intimate spaces like bedrooms, bathrooms and main living areas are tucked into the back for privacy.

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The minimalist interior design scheme includes floating platforms at various levels for a sense of openness, some of them made of metal mesh to let as much light pass through the house as possible. While such tiny residences are often kept bright white to create an illusion of extra space, YUUA makes an unusual choice with dark-painted walls.

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There’s a semi-sunken basement for storage, and the first floor features a study area facing the street and a bedroom in the back. The third floor is comprised of an open-plan kitchen, living room and dining area, while the uppermost floor contains a bathroom, bedroom and terrace. Considering it’s only about as wide as an average adult male is tall, the house looks surprisingly livable.

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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VRchitecture: Interactive Virtual Reality House Feels 90% Real

18 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

vr house

No matter how many drawings and models a client is shown, there is still a leap of imagination needed for someone to understand how a building design will really look and feel when it is realized. The gap, however, is rapidly closing between representation and reality, with digital models that can be experienced and interacted with in realtime.

virtual right real left

Olivier Demangel of London 3D imaging company IVR NATION modeled the home shown above using images found online, and as impressive as the walk-through video above may be, it does not compare to the experience of the space via an 3D Oculus Rift headset.

virtual real comparison

The model’s creator expects full 100% realism to be a reality in just 5 years. In some of the side-by-side images above and below, it is already hard to tell the real from the virtual.

virtual and real

In an interview with Dezeen, Demangel explains the interactivity built into the model, letting you open “doors and turn on the lights” as well as “instantly change materials for the walls, the floor, the position of lights. [Y]ou can experiment with a lot of different options — design, materials, lighting, weather — very quickly.”

virtual real room

The real power lies partly in being able to show designs to clients, but also in the ability to see how every detail of a design works together (or falls apart) from a first-person perspective, essentially a 1:1 scale model complete with every view available, each time of day easy to simulate.

virtual and real house

Will this window really show what the designer intended? Will that patio really get the daylight promised? Individually-rendered scenes and perspectives used to take hours to days to compute, sometimes using multiple machines – now the same can be done in seconds.

Meanwhile, the ‘simulation singularity‘ may be approaching – a day when we will no longer be able to distinguish between virtual and real: “The technological singularity is a hypothetical moment in the future when artificial intelligence becomes indistinguishable from human intelligence—and capable of creating smarter iterations of itself. Apply the same general idea to simulations and you get the simulation singularity: when a simulated world is indistinguishable from reality.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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Pure Gold: 24-Karat Art Center Highlights ‘Haunted House’

05 May

[ By Steph in Drawing & Digital. ]

gold art center 1

Part of a century-old distillery, a structure known as the ‘Haunted House’ now glimmers in the faintest of light thanks to its real 24 karat gold coating. Dutch architecture firm OMA adapted a complex of seven buildings in Milan for Fondazione Prada’s new arts center and added three new buildings, blending them all together with the goal of making it hard to tell which are historic and which aren’t.

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The coat of gold paint makes the old factory building look like it could be as new as the glazed Podium building that was constructed around it, which will host temporary exhibitions. This striking detail was actually a last-minute decision, as lead architect Rem Koolhaas sought a way to “give value to a seemingly mundane and simple element.”

art center 4

When the sun is shining bright, gold-tinted light reflects off that structure onto the rest of the complex, which also includes a cinema camouflaged by mirrors. OMA upgraded the historic structures with modern finish materials and carried an industrial aesthetic throughout the new buildings for a cohesive result. It’s not clear exactly how this could be possible, but according to Koolhaas, “gold is actually a cheap cladding material compared to traditional claddings like marble and even paint.”

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Established by the Italian fashion house, Fondazione Prada aims to provide exhibition space for more diverse art than you’d normally see in a modern museum. The new complex, which is still under construction, will be its first permanent exhibition space.

[ By Steph in Drawing & Digital. ]

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Old New Jersey Factory to House Earth’s Largest Vertical Farm

22 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

aerofarm factory floor

Opening this year in Newark, this 69,000-square-foot space will grow 2 million pounds of pesticide-free produce each year, turning an old steel factory into the largest indoor farm on the planet, 75 times more productive per square foot than open fields. This AeroFarms facility is to serve both as the company’s global headquarters as well as the anchor project for a Maker’s Village designed to grow business in the city and provide a prototype for scaleable urban agriculture.

aerofarms aerial image

Plants rooted in reusable microfleece cloth and stacked in modular planters will be sprayed by a nutrient mist and illuminated by LED lights. These crops require no soil, 95% less water and create no harmful runoff. Located on a 3-acre industrial site in the Ironbound neighborhood, the structure will expand the role of affordable and local urban farming in the community and provide nearly 100 long-term jobs for residents. Such an approach offers a new potential future role to rundown industrial districts around the world, turning unused infrastructure in struggling cities into fresh indoor farming space.

aerofarm interior space

More on the process and key materials: a “reusable cloth medium [supports] seeding, germinating, growing, and harvesting.” This critical cloth “has a number of benefits such as durability and reusability, increased cleanliness and sanitation, and the efficient harvest of a dry and clean product.”

aerofarms hydpropnic indoor agriculture

In terms of LED innovation and efficiency, the company is “targeting specific wavelengths of light for more efficient photosynthesis and less energy consumption. LEDs can also be placed much closer to the plants, enabling greater vertical growing for even greater productivity per square foot.”

aerofarm facility rendering market

Aeroponics is the key to the solution, limiting the need for conventional watering and representing “a cutting-edge type of hydroponic technology that grows plants in a mist. The aeroponic mist most efficiently provides roots with the nutrients, hydration and oxygen needed, creating faster growing cycles and more biomass than other growing approaches. AeroFarms has designed its aeroponics as a closed-looped system, recirculating our nutrient solution and using over 95% less water than field farming.”

aerofarms leafy greens

“We are delighted to introduce AeroFarms, a farming and technology leader, to the City of Newark, creating jobs for local residents and greater access to locally grown produce for our community,” said Ron Beit, founding partner and CEO of RBH Group. “AeroFarms will anchor our broader ‘Makers Village’ development project in the Ironbound neighborhood that will compete toe-to-toe with the Brooklyn Navy Yard in terms of a superior cost structure and greater transmodal access, bringing 21st century ‘maker-type’ businesses to Newark and the State of New Jersey.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Dr. Seuss Tower House: Storybook Structure Grew with the Trees

03 Apr

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Screen Shot 2015-04-03 at 9.56.04 AM

One odd slightly off-kilter story after another was added to this once-modest house in Alaska as the trees decimated by a wildfire grew taller and taller, the owner insistent upon maintaining his view of Mount McKinley. Located in the woods of Willow overlooking the Denali National Park, the tower house began as a one-story that wouldn’t look out of place in any Alaskan neighborhood.

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The forest recovered and the trees got taller and taller, obscuring the mountain. So, the story goes, the owner tacked on a second story. And then a third. After a while, it apparently just became a fun challenge to see how many tiny rooms could be stacked on top of each other until locals began calling the structure the Dr. Seuss House.

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Alaska Aerial Footage swung by the house to capture a dizzying video that really gives you an idea of just how tall and whimsical the house really is. From the footage, it looks as though the upper levels are unfinished, their windows covered in ripped plastic sheeting. The snow-topped roofs and balconies on each level just add to the slightly surreal effect.

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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UP for Auction: Bids Fail to Save World-Famous Holdout House

14 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

fdamous up house

In the esoteric realm of ‘nail houses’ – properties whose owners refuse to sell them to developers at any cost – Edith Macefield‘s may be the most well-known, but her century-old home now appears doomed to face a wrecking ball.

macefield up house

An auction for the property was just completed but no buyers were found – anyone purchasing the house would also have had to adopt its existing $ 500,000 mortgage, which, despite its fame, was not enough to attract either curious collectors or real estate developers.

Macefield herself turned down an offer for $ 1,000,000 from developers trying to buy up the land for a commercial complex, hence the construction of a giant concrete wall on three sides as their project went ahead without this last little lot.

edith macefield home construction

In a strange but heartwarming twist: before she passed away in 2008, Macefield befriended the superintendent of the surrounding commercial development. Apparently she ultimately enjoyed the attention and company brought by the development.

up house in context

As Macefield aged, this superintendent began taking her to appointments and purchasing her groceries and their friendship grew. In the end, she willed him the property – in an attempt to respect the gift, he then tried to make it work as an office or restaurant.

At this point, the house has been boarded up for some time now and the failed sale leaves few possibilities outside of its destruction. It has no historic preservation status, for instance, that might further delay its demolition.

up house movie story

Some fans hoped Pixar Animation Studios, producers of ‘UP’, would buy the house for publicity purposes and spare it the wrecking ball, but there has been no news on that front.

nail house boarded up

Though there are many holdout homes around the world, hers has become a symbol of resistance – her defiance a story that will certainly outlive the structure itself, whatever its fate.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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The High Life: 12 Incredible Residential Tree House Designs

25 Feb

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

residential treehouses

We’ve seen tree houses that function as oversized sculptures, play structures for kids, sky-high tea houses and elevated retreats for work or meditation, but how many tree house designs actually fulfill dreams of living in the forest canopy full-time? These 12 residential tree houses range from traditional huts built over a hundred feet above the forest floor to a stunning ultramodern cylindrical glass house that envelops an entire tree.

Amazing Cylindrical Glass Treehouse

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This ultramodern, all-glass cylindrical house isn’t just in the trees, it contains one. ‘Tree in the House’ by Masov Aibek is a four-story residence in the woods of Almaty City, Kazakhstan with a spiraling staircase leading to each completely transparent level. A few plasterboard walls provide privacy for the bathroom and sleeping areas. The house will be available for rent, and though it may seem like it’s only suitable for exhibitionists, its location deep in the forest makes privacy less of a concern.

Traditional Residential Treehouses of Asia

traditional treehouse

korowai treehouse

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Papua New Guinea’s Korowai Tribe is just one example of people who have traditionally built their homes in the canopies of trees, some as high as 115 feet off the ground. The houses are typically built in a single sturdy Banyan tree, with poles added for extra support. Each house accommodates as many as a dozen people. Elevated houses can also be found in flood-prone areas of India, Cambodia and other Asian nations.

Finca Bellavista Treehouse Community, Costa Rica

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A couple went to Costa Rica in search of a small plot of land and ended up saving 600 acres of rainforest from the chopping block. Uncertain at first what to do with all that acreage, they began to envision a network of tree houses that soon became ‘Finca Bellavista,’ a sustainable treehouse community with individual residences connected by zippiness and suspension bridges. The self-sustaining complex includes a dining hall, open-air lounge, campfire, bath house and ‘wedding garden.’

4Treehouse by Lukas Kos

4treehouse

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Looking a bit like a Japanese lantern when it’s illuminated at night, the 4Treehouse by Toronto designer Lukasz Kos is a modern take on the classic wooden tree house with a facade of slats that provide shade and privacy. A semi-detached staircase on casters provides a stable, steady entrance to the home no matter how much the structure itself may be rocking in the wind.

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
The High Life 12 Incredible Residential Tree House Designs

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Skinny Portable House for Singles Takes Just 1 Day to Build

29 Jan

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

skinny portable house 1

These narrow, movable, single-person residences provide affordable housing for young people shut out of more conventional options by the housing crisis in Europe’s major cities, while also finding uses for a proliferation of vacant lots. The Heijmans ONE project by Netherlands firm Moodworks Architecture can be placed temporarily in virtually any location and takes just one day to set up on the site.

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Designed for a single occupant, the house measures 484 square feet and features an energy-efficient solid wood skeleton as well as solar panels to produce its own energy. It features everything you’d expect in a similarly sized apartment, including a kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom and patio, and can be transported via truck to its destination, whether urban or rural.

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The target occupants are young professionals who want to buy their own home but are unable to afford quality housing as prices skyrocket well beyond the average person’s means. The project also addresses the issue of derelict sites in cities, taking advantage of all manner of vacant spaces, from construction sites that have been put on hold to lots that are currently up for sale.

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The prefabricated houses are available for just 700 Euros per month, and two pilot homes have been placed on Zeeburgereiland in Amsterdam. Contact Heijmans to see them in person by appointment.

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Posts Tagged ‘House’

Bye Bye Big Brother: Airplane Mode House Severs Signals

Tiny in Tokyo: Ultra-Narrow House Slotted into an Alley

VRchitecture: Interactive Virtual Reality House Feels 90% Real

Pure Gold: 24-Karat Art Center Highlights ‘Haunted House’

Old New Jersey Factory to House Earth’s Largest Vertical Farm

Dr. Seuss Tower House: Storybook Structure Grew with the Trees

UP for Auction: Bids Fail to Save World-Famous Holdout House

The High Life: 12 Incredible Residential Tree House Designs

Amazing Cylindrical Glass Treehouse

Traditional Residential Treehouses of Asia

Finca Bellavista Treehouse Community, Costa Rica

4Treehouse by Lukas Kos

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
The High Life 12 Incredible Residential Tree House Designs

Skinny Portable House for Singles Takes Just 1 Day to Build

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