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Posts Tagged ‘House’

House in Reverse: Rooftop Driveway Leads to Hillside Home

09 Jan

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

House in Reverse 1

Most people with single-family homes are used to pulling up into their driveways and then ascending flights of stairs to get to the living spaces. But in this case, a ground-level driveway leads directly to an open-air rooftop terrace, and to enter the home, you go down.

House in Reverse 2

House in Reverse 3

‘Car Park House’ by Anonymous Architects takes advantage of the hilly Los Angeles landscape. Built on a steep plot of land just off a winding road, the home makes the most of a challenging site, maximizing views from every level. Local building code requires the home to have two parking spots.

House in Reverse 4

A steel frame and a series of concrete pillars support the modern house as it projects out from the hillside, with two separate terraces looking out onto the San Gabriel mountains from the kitchen and master bedroom.

House in Reverse 5

House in Reverse 6

Calling it a ‘car park house’ puts the emphasis on the least attractive part of the home, but perhaps it’s appropriate considering Los Angeles car culture. But it’s a lot more than just a driveway with a view.

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Open House(s): 10 Wonderful Open-Plan Home Designs

Open floor plans allow even the smallest cottage to seem spacious and luxurious. These 10 homes with open plans are the pinnacle of modern architectural design. Click Here to Read More »»


House of the Future: 12 Ultra-Modern Home Designs

With sharp angles, sterile white interiors and built-in furniture, these 12 house designs may give us an idea of what the homes of the future will look like. Click Here to Read More »»


Amphitheater of the Dead: Hong Kong Hillside Cemeteries

This terraced structure is not the remains of some ancient amphitheater, but a metropolis of the dead that’s just as dense as that of the living city of … Click Here to Read More »»


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Climbing Wall Treadmill: Exercise Machine Rocks Your House

02 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]

rock wall interior rotating

Far more exciting than a walking treadmill or elliptical machine, this infinite rock wall brings the challenges (and hard exercise) of scaling sheer cliffs right into your local gym or living room.

rock extreme tilt example

The Climbstation can be rotated between a slope of 15 degrees and negative 49 degrees, simulating everything from relatively generous slopes or dizzying upside-down climbing experiences.

rock wall climber demo

The device can also rotate through different slopes, speeds and durations on demand, in response to programmatic difficulty levels or in a pre-selected sequence. As in typical bouldering rooms at climbing wall centers, a mat placed below the device will cushion any fall.

rock wall slope tilt

rock wall example treadmill

Between climbs, users can swap out 90 holds that come with each machine between 600 potential positions, dynamically changing the landscape from one session to the next to keep things interesting and challenging.

rock climbing treadmill diagram

rock wall gym version

The mid-five-figure price tag will be enough to put off casual users, but could also be sufficiently low for these to start showing up not just at the homes of the rich and famous but also at regional fitness centers – a great way for recreational climbers or professionals located far from mountains to train or simply stay in shape.

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Sensational Skate Park & Urban Climbing Wall in Spain

Factoria Joven, a skate park and climbing wall in Spain, sets an example for urban youth centers worldwide with its bright and beautiful architecture.
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Standing Tall: 24 Jaw-Dropping Rock Climbing Walls

Climbing walls allow one to clamber up and over obstacles in a socially acceptable manner, and still chalk it up as exercise. Here are some of the coolest.
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Domestic Daredevils: 12 Insanely Cool Home Climbing Walls

From small and kid-friendly to rugged and challenging, these 12 indoor climbing walls turn living rooms, bedrooms and more into scalable surfaces.
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Bounce House for Adults: Blow-Up Bubble Strung with Nets

21 Nov

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

Inflatable Bounce House for Adults 1

Admit it – you’re jealous of the little kids who get to romp in those inflatable bounce houses. Once we reach a certain age (or weight), we’re just not welcome in those primary-colored playgrounds any longer. But some lucky kids-at-heart got a chance to relive the fun of that experience with ‘Net Blow-Up,’ most recently installed near the waterfront in Yokohama by Croatian-Austrian design collective Numen/For Use.

Inflatable Bounce House for Adults 2

The inflatable play structure looks like a big white bubble in its spot beside the water, glowing like a lantern once the sun goes down. Inside, it’s strung with multiple levels black netting that’s just stretch enough to climb, jump and flip to your heart’s desire.

Inflatable Bounce House for Adults 3

Inflatable Bounce House for Adults 4

Watching it from the outside might be almost as fun as bouncing around within it, as the soft-sided structure deforms and mutates with each movement of those inside. “The outer membrane acts both like a ‘soft box’ diffuser of the outside light, or a projection screen in case of inner illumination of the installation,” say the designers.

Inflatable Bounce House for Adults 5

Inflatable Bounce House for Adults 6

Inflatables are popular as temporary installations, since they’re so easy to install and take down. Plus, they tend to have a lighthearted, comical look. Two recent examples include the Bridge in Paris and the world’s first inflatable concert hall, the Ark Nova.

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Blow-Up Buildings: 17 Inflatable Works of Mobile Architecture

Temporary – sometimes even transient – these 17 blow-up structures create enclosed event space where there was none, in public squares and gritty city corners.
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Blow-Up Building: Inflatable Concert Hall Tours Japan

A giant purple bubble will rise from a pile of plastic to bring music, workshops and performance to Japan’s northeastern coast, which was devastated by …
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Strung Along: Twine Guides Visitors Through Abandonments

Acting as a minimalist and silent tour guide, lengths of black yarn were carefully suspended to direct guests along a route through the broken walls of a …
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The Art of Tranquility: 14 Modern Tea House Designs

05 Nov

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Modern Tea Houses Main

In Asia, tea houses are typically striking examples of traditional architecture, reflecting the culture and history of the nations in which they’re built. But many architects are re-imagining this concept of a private, tranquil space dedicated to sacred or meditative activities through the lens of modern design. These 14 tea house designs include floating glass structures inspired by lanterns, temporary flat-pack huts and digitally designed shelters.

Glass Tea Houses in the Woods

Tea Houses Glass Woods
A trio of minimalist glass cubes serve as tea houses, meditation and brainstorming getaways in the wooded backyard of a home in Silicon Valley. “Each tea house is designed as a transparent steel and glass pavilion, hovering like a lantern over the natural landscape,” says architecture firm Swatt Miers. “Cast-in-place concrete core elements anchor the pavilions, supporting steel channel rim joists which cantilever beyond the cores to support the floor and roof panes. With its minimal footprint, the design treads lightly on the land, minimizing grading and preserving the delicate root systems of the native oaks.”

Fujimori Tea House on Stilts

Tea Houses Stilts

Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori has a little fun with traditional tea house designs by placing them high on stilts, stringing them between posts or otherwise removing them from any sense of being grounded. This one is precariously perched on just two narrow trunks in Nagano Prefecture, and is accessible by a rather intimidating freestanding ladder. Fujimori intentionally pushes the limits of tea house architecture, making it a bit of a challenge to access them, but rewarding once inside.

Paper Tea House by Shigeru Ban

Tea Houses Paper Shigeru Ban

Architect Shigeru Ban is renowned for making unexpected things out of paper and cardboard – like bridges and even churches. The Paper Tea House was created as part of a sale of Japanese art and design, constructed of square paper tubes with an indoor space measuring just over 5 meters long.

Floating Glass Tea House

Tea Houses Floating

This tea house floats over the landscape, a glass and bronze rectangle suspended from a frame in the image of a Japanese lantern. The backyard structure, by David Jameson, is also used as a meditation space and a stage for the family’s musical recitals.

Modern Tea House and Meditation Hut

Tea Houses modern Meditation

This private tea house is elevated on the edge of a peaceful lake in Illinois on the property of architect Jeffery Poss. The vaulted roof reflects the dappled light from the surface of the pond onto the interior ceiling, and also pours rainwater into the pond. A low horizontal window frames a view of the water.

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A Tree Grows Inside This Modern Cylindrical Glass House

17 Oct

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Tree Tower Glass House 1

Would you give up all your privacy in order to live in a spectacular glass cylinder with a tree growing up the center? Perhaps the secluded forest location will help make that decision for you. ‘Tree in the House’ by Masov Aibek is a stunning four-story modern treehouse in the woods of Almaty City, Kazakhstan with transparent walls and a spiraling staircase.

Tree Glass House 2

The staircase takes you from one floor to the next along the outer perimeter of the house, with an opening in the center of each floor that grows wider as the tree’s branches stretch out toward the top. Plasterboard inner walls provide a little bit of organization and section off areas for lounging and a bed.

Tree Glass House 4

Aibek set out to create a romantic retreat for couples that nurtures “spiritual and creative development.”

Tree Glass House 3

Real as it looks, this is currently just a concept – but it’s on its way to being built. Construction will begin in early 2014 at an estimated cost of U.S. $ 361,000, and the architect is currently taking orders for more.

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House of Hemp and Blood: 16 Futuristic Building Materials

07 Oct

[ By Steph in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

Future building materials main
Future buildings could be made of artificial human bone, hemp, bacterial byproducts or concrete that absorbs greenhouse gas emissions and lasts thousands of years. Innovations in building materials have led to synthetic creations that are stronger, lighter and more sustainable than those we already use, potentially leading to architecture unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

Animal Blood Bricks

Future Building Materials Blood Bricks

Abundant and yet almost always wasted, animal blood is an unlikely – and grisly – possible base material for building bricks. Architectural graduate Jack Munro sterilized the blood, added sand and baked them together to yield a strong, traditional-looking brick that’s also waterproof.

Translucent Concrete

Future building materials translucent concrete

Litracon is a combination of optical fibers and fine concrete, produced as prefabricated building blocks for a translucent glass-like look with surprising strength. It’s handmade, so each block has its own individual pattern of light.

Bacteria Building Blocks

Future Building Materials Bacteria

Will bacteria build the walls of our houses in the future? Scientists have directed the creation of bioplastics, cellulose and other materials by feeding certain materials to specific varieties of bacteria. The resulting metabolic process produces solid, surprisingly durable byproducts that could be used for all kinds of processes. Bacteria might even create bricks that could be used for building on Mars.

Concrete That Lasts 16,000 Years

Future Building Materials Concrete 16000

Not only would the new concrete being developed at MIT drastically reduce the carbon emissions currently associated with the manufacturing of this material, it would also result in an astonishing reduction in the amount needed in the first place. That’s because it’s strong enough to last for an incredible 16,000 years. This concrete will not only be stronger, but also lighter and thinner, so large-scale, lightweight structures require far less material.

Hempcrete: Hemp Biocomposite

Future Building Materials Hempcrete

A new bio-composite, thermal wall material made of hemp, lime and water is not only eco-friendly but actually carbon-negative thanks to the amount of CO2 stored during the process of growing and harvesting hemp. It’s 100% recyclable, waterproof and fireproof and could be used for everything from walls and insulation to flooring. Once demolished, the material can be used as fertilizer.

SensiTile

Future Building Materials SensiTile

Sensitiles are made up of a light-conducting matrix embedded in a substrate, so that they redirect and scatter incoming light in a similar way as fiber optics. Shadow-producing movements around these tiles produce an interesting rippling effect, and the tiles absorb and ‘bleed’ colors.

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House of Glass: Cabin Facade from Antique Window Frames

16 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

house glass front facade

On an unusual kind of cross-country road trip, this couple visited garage sales, antique dealers and added these to other roadside finds, all toward the quest of assembling an an eccentric collection of windows for a unique dream home.

house of glass

house glass room interior

Creators Lilah Horwitz and Nick Olson are, respectively, a designer and photographer, but with a common architectural vision of a home where one whole facade would be made of windows. The goal: let sunsets illuminate the structure’s entire interior space, creating a multitude of views, wood-framed through artfully arranged window openings.

house glass night view

The result sits on the sunny hills of West Virginia, a rustic-style cabin in which the front-facing fenestration is the dominant design feature. The assemblage reflects their personalities – the hands-on approach Olson takes with his camera and images, and the landscaping and fashion experience of Horwitz.

house glass hill context

house glass exterior view

In turn, Matt Glass and Jordan Wayne Long interviewed the couple for a short seven-minute film on Half Cut Tea. The result shows the pair of creatives but also the context of their creation via shots of the surrounding landscape and entry path as well as the dwelling itself by daylight and at night.

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Animal House: Woodland Creatures Adopt Deserted Cabins

29 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned home animal portraits

These interior photos by Kai Fagerström depict wild forest inhabitants who have made derelict human-owned dwellings their own – domestic portraits-at-home with a undomesticated twist.

abandoned space fox hole

An abandoned series of small shacks and quaint cottages in Finland, slowly reclaimed by nature, show hints of slowly-invading of plant life,  but the even faster introduction of woodland animals including squirrels, foxes, owls and more.

abandoned room animal pictures

This surprising variety of crafty creatures have adopted and reshaped the existing spaces to suit their own needs, tunneling through vents and fireplaces, nesting and resting between walls and below floors.

abandoned home wild animals

Though this photography project started with a few quick shots in a set of cabins in the woods near the photographer’s summer home, the deserted spaces have turned out to be so rich in potential wildlife portraits that the results now populate an entire book of images (The House in the Woods).

abandoned building door squirrel

Great patience is required to wait and take just the right desired shots, which are so well-composed you could almost imagine the animals posed to have their picture taken. “Deserted buildings are so full of contradictions [and] I am fascinated by the way nature reclaims spaces that were, essentially, only ever on loan to humans.”

abandoned space animal series

abandoned window sill squirrel

abandoned house badger family

Each image has a story, often elaborate, about how it was taken. About the last one above, for instance, from National Geographic: “On a summer night a family of badgers file into the kitchen from a tunnel they dug under the fireplace. It took four years before Fagerström finally caught the skittish, nocturnal weasels. For this shot he set his camera on a windowsill, then stood outside on a ladder for hours before pressing the shutter via remote control.”

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House Turned Inside Out: All Walls Cut, Flipped & Reattached

15 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

inside out house project

An ambitious art project, the House Turned Inside Out peals away facades, those outer layers of mystery physically surrounding abandoned buildings, and reveals the internal structure. From floors, rooms and walls to hidden support elements, heating fixtures and more, innards are turned outward for the world to see.

building facade home turned

Artist Martin Papcún (images by Ryan Pearl) “gained access to [this] abandoned Cleveland house and then convinced a building contractor, many volunteers, and city officials to allow him to alter the structure so that all of the interior walls were physically on the exterior of the house.”

inside building flip idea

One by one, each building face was carefully cut, rotated 180 degrees with the help of volunteers and a crane, then slotted back into the same place, just in reverse.

inside wall cut paste

Dilapidated, disused and ultimately deserted, the subject structure was reanimated in both a literal and twisted sense, like an architectural corpse come back to life. It is lit up at night, but the lights shift between rooms as if the house were still occupied.

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Transformer Theater: Deserted House, Upcycled in Disguise

08 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

transformer house theater

This incredible transforming theater, built from salvaged pieces of a deserted home, is more than meets the eye. A community theater in disguise, its contents unfold from a conventional A-frame to reveal a dynamic on-demand public viewing space.

transforming converted abandoned home

Dubbed Open House by creator Matthew Mazzotta, what was once a dilapidated home in downtown York, Alabama, has been turned into a secret room on a large scale. The pieces were taken apart and turned into convertible stage and seating for 100+ people, but are still recognizable as elements of the house from which they came – a tribute to history with new functionality.

The venue features performances, films, music and dances. Located between the town’s central grocery store and post office, it is ideally situated to be the area’s primary community space.

transforming convertible community space

Mazzotta’s “work evolves from an interest in exploring the relationship between people and their environments, as well as between each other. My practice is conceptual and manifests as participatory public interventions that aim at bringing criticality and a sense of openness to the places we live …. The objects, situations, and spaces I create as community projects and participatory interventions.”

transforming secret stage theater

“Often times these projects include working with local laborers, academics, engineers, builders, community members, activists, artists, poets, and anyone else that is willing to be involved in something experiential and participatory … By piercing through the roles we play in public, we break up the narratives of specific public spaces. “

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