SITE
The project is located in a field in Geroskipou. To the north is the only neighbour, another residence, sitting higher than the project. To the east is a public road, with a row of mature conifer trees forming the boundary. The plot is generally level and exposed to the neighbour and views from the public roads to the south and west. Access to the site is from the road to the east.
CONCEPT
The concept was born of the combination of two materials often found near this location: concrete tube pipe sections and metal sheet. The materials are translated here to the residence’s two separate envelopes: a metal structure clad in metal and glass, and the two walls of stacked concrete pipe sections running along the north and south facades of the residence.
The first envelope comprises the load-bearing structure of metal beams and columns sitting on a concrete slab foundation. The roof is formed of corrugated metal sheet, and the exterior walls are formed of aluminium-framed double glazing, fixed and moving. The glass envelope contains the interior of the house, providing unobstructed views to the outside. Clean, minimal, and technologically advanced, it creates a strong contrast with the second envelope.
The second envelope of concrete tubes is heavy, earthy, low-tech. It provides additional sheltering from the environment, specifically the sun and air, and filters views from and towards the house. The tube walls is where the privacy of the residence ends.
DESIGN AND LAYOUT
The layout of spaces is linear along the east-west axis. The open plan living area is to the east, providing a dining area, kitchen, and sitting area. Three bedrooms and a study are placed along a corridor-gallery that runs the length of the house. Huge glass doors slide open to the deck veranda that runs outside to the south. The veranda is dispersed with garden pockets, containing small trees and fragrant plants.To the North is a water corridor that abuts the house. The same large sliding doors open directly to it. The water corridor sets the ambience of the soundscape and influences the light, reflecting it to the interior.
Product Description.The interior benefits from a high degree of thermal insulation thanks to the Envelop system. In the winter the south façade enjoys passive solar gains. An awning above the glass provide shade in the summer and prevent overheating, whilst the concrete tube walls shelter from strong winds.
The Envelop 3D system used here is an integrated system with modules for different functions: fixed external walls, sliding and fixed windows, entrance door, all are provided by the system. It is installed in a single continuous track, 76 metres long, without the need for extra framing.
The walls contain polystyrene and fiberglass thermal insulation and are sealed externally with white glass. The internal surface is a double layer of plasterboard.
The sliding doors are designed to lock in an open position, small enough to be secure, whilst allowing natural ventilation to all spaces.
You’re reading How Ready Are You To Take On New Challenges Of 2017?, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
The as the New Year unfolds, we leave behind the worries and challenges of 2016 but bring the lessons we learned with us.
The year 2017 is another chance for us to create a story in the new chapter of our lives. This is the time to discover new things and explore new possibilities. However, along with new opportunities, 2017 is also a year full of new challenges. So let me ask you, how ready are you to take on the challenges of 2017?
If you not sure yet if are ready for the challenges, here are some simple tips all of us can make use of to prepare ourselves as the New Year starts.
We don’t need to be in hurry all the time. When times get tough, sometimes, we just need to stop and ponder. Set aside time for self-evaluation. This is the time where we ask ourselves several questions with can help us determine your personal mission and our state of mind.
Self-reflection is especially useful when we are at our lowest and darkest time. We have to go to the deeper part of our soul to re-evaluate our goals. What we will discover about ourselves will help us come up with a set of rules and guidelines on how we are going to face the challenges ahead of us.
This year, it is time to think differently. Oftentimes, tough challenges need a non-traditional solution. You just have to summon your creativity and innovativeness.
Let us try to look at adversities at different angles. Maybe it is not as difficult as it may seem. Maybe it’s our approach that makes them difficult. Start from simple things and practice creativity. A simple garage makeover for our new home will help us exercise our creativity. It would be easier for us to think outside the box if we start from our simple daily activities.
There is a time that the best solution to overcome challenges is to let go and adapt. Overcoming challenges does not necessarily mean that we have to push our hardest to take control of the situation, there are times that we just have to go with the flow and let things happen.
When things go out of control and let us allow things to happen naturally, and more likely, things will work out better. Letting go means freeing ourselves from unnecessary sufferings which can bring us to a more peaceful life.
Success is not as fulfilling as it may be when we are not happy. We’ve seen this in movies, people who gave up everything in life to chase success but in the end, they ended up still unhappy. Success and happiness should be on the same page to find fulfillment in life.
To be happier this 2017, we need to chase success as guided by where we will be happy. We want to achieve our dreams but chasing for our dreams won’t be easy. There will be trials, but what is important is that we chase our dreams because that is where our happiness is. And whenever there is happiness, there lies our success.
Last Words
None of us have an idea what lies ahead as this year starts but it doesn’t matter whether we have different struggles to take. We need to face it whether we like it or not and the outcome really depends on how well we handle the situation.
The tips mentioned above are just a few tips which could help us get a head start but what we can do is not limited. It is still up to us on how we approach every situation. What is important is that we learn from them and we keep our heads up as we face every challenge that comes.
You’ve read How Ready Are You To Take On New Challenges Of 2017?, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Headquartered in Beijing, Xiaozhu commissioned People’s Architecture Office and People’s Industrial Design Office to design Sliced House, their latest office space located in the city’s hi-tech center. Xiaozhu (literally ‘small pig’ but homophonous with ‘short stay’) is a peer-to-peer housing rental website. The startup is China’s rival to Airbnb and part of the country’s new ‘shared economy’.
Launched four years ago, Xiaozhu is now valued at $300 million plus. The unpredictability of such rapid growth requires a highly flexible work environment. Our design features spaces and furniture that easily combine and separate, mobile meeting rooms, and power outlets that swing to desired locations. Like Xiaozhu’s online business, the office interior consists of a collage of various domestic spaces. The design inserts the casual comfort of home life into the workplace, reflecting the company’s open spirit.
Sliced House is conceived as a house that has been divided and its parts dispersed throughout an otherwise banal office interior. Shared interior finishes between split spaces make apparent that adjacent portions refer to a single room. These sliced samples of domesticity include kitchen, living room, and bedroom and double as ad hoc meeting areas. Sliced House also features converted tricycles – workspaces and informal meeting areas on wheels – that are inspired by our Tricycle House and the often unique living spaces found in China. Such spaces reflect Xiaozhu’s rental offerings, providing users with a wide spectrum of settings to choose from.
The office features custom-designed furniture by PIDO. Long span cantilevering tables supported by only four legs create undisrupted space underneath to provide seating flexibility. Not only does this allow for space to expand, but passersby can sit down and squeeze in for spontaneous conversation. Numerous mobile Tetris Tables can be detached, combined and rearranged to working in groups or individually. Red ‘umbrellas’ swivel to different locations to provide overhead light and electricity. A long conference table can be separated into three smaller tables, allowing the conference room itself to be divided into three smaller rooms when necessary.
At Xiaozhu’s headquarters flexibility and diversity of workspaces and furniture facilitate spontaneous interactions in order to encourage the exchange of ideas. Such designs are essential in fostering innovation in China’s emerging service economy.
New York City – New York – USA (by Jake Kitchener)
Santa-Monica-based Steven Christensen Architecture has won the 2016 AAP American Architecture Prize for Recreational Architecture, with its design for the Liepāja Thermal Bath and Hotel in Latvia.
In an exploration of the role of the dome throughout the architectural history of public baths, the project utilizes dome shapes—both upright and inverted “as a rhizomatic formal and organizational embodiment of a contemporary public that is democratic, horizontally empowered, and increasingly networked” explained the architects.
Through these spherical forms, the project aims to create an unorthodox spatial experience “that is both spirited at atmospheric.” Furthermore, the use of the dome form in the bath and hotel seeks to “undermine the conventional symbolic performance of the much-maligned hemisphere by challenging its centripetal tendencies as well as its hierarchical basis.”
The Liepāja Thermal Bath and Hotel project was selected by a jury, and won the Silver Award for Recreational Architecture, under the 41 categories of AAP American Architecture Prize awards, as well as five other national and international awards.
Learn more about the project here.
News via: v2com.
In somewhat of a departure from its usual parametric, experimental work, Margot Krasojević Architects has created a recycled, 3D printed LED light, in an investigation of the importance of reappropriating plastics. The project—Lace LED—however, aligns with the firm’s exploration of renewable energy and environmental issues within architecture and product design.
Printed with post-consumer plastics like synthetic polymer packaging from takeout food containers and 3D printer off-cuts, Lace LED is a light diffuser with fractal pattern configurations resembling a piece of woven lace.
The light’s geometry is a series of complex dimensions, similar to a fractal the shapes perceived are neither one or two-dimensional, they are considered fractional dimensions suggesting the surface is neither a plane or a complete form. Fractal dimensions reserve self-similarity across scales, only being restricted through context, in this case the envelope boundary of the light’s form explains Margot Krasojević.
Moreover, Lace LED is an example of scale invariance, “where at any magnification, there is a smaller piece of the object that is similar to the whole.”
The light diffuser is hinged on a pivot, which rotates within a frame, allowing for light dispersion to vary.
The LED bulb is energy-efficient, emitting no heat, [and] is a bright 60 Candela white warm, visible for four meters in a dark room.
News via: v2com.
Sig Nordal 