From the architect. Contemporary version of a medieval donjon: Five-story wood construction made from prefabricated frame elements. The isolated mountain location mandates the greatest possible self-sufficiency. The ambivalence between a sense of security and being exposed defines the building’s structure: below are the communal areas with surrounding ribbon glazing, above the closed sleeping quarters. The cascading spiral stairway opens panorama views when ascending, follows the course of the sun, captures the solar irradiation, and distributes the warmth of the sun throughout the entire house.
If you’re on this Pick The Brain, you already know how essential productivity is. It supports you to work-smart and lower the time you spend on dumb stuff that doesn’t make an impact. You want to be uber-productive, grow your empire and still have social time to spend with friends.
Just 5 minutes per day can make a massive difference when multiplied across a lifetime. 5 minutes a day can save around 100 days in a normal lifetime – imagine what you can do!
I think there are 2 different facets to productivity:
Rid of waste
Power-up work
Below, I’ve left the important tools that I use and the category I believe they fit in. Let’s start with the “Rid of waste” section
Unroll.me – I found this tool a couple of months ago. Simply download the app, add your email and swipe you subscriptions as if it were tinder. I deleted 700 subscriptions in half an hour and that means no more spam emails that I don’t care about. I now don’t spend 10-20 minutes every morning deleting annoying emails. Remember, that’s 200-400 days I’m saving over my life! On a serious note, this is a great product and couldn’t be thankful enough for the amount of time they have saved me. Get rid of those pesky spam emails!
GetGistly – Fed up of going through 300 page books to hear the same thing repeated again and again? This tool provides audio and text summaries for the best entrepreneurial books so you can listen or read in 15 minutes. I can’t wait for this product to launch so you guys can see how cool it is! I’ve been invited to their early adopters program and already love the app.
StayFocusd – A Google Chrome extension that blocks you from accessing time wasting sites e.g. Facebook or Twitter. We all know how simple it can be to type in “fa” and then click enter or how easy it can be to sit back, open Instagram and submerge in user content. This tool will destroy your instincts and stop you in your tracks.
Next up, let’s talk about how you can improve your work so that 1 unit of input equates to 3 units of output! So, how do we “Power-up Work”?
Skimm – this service sends a newsletter that gives you the lowdown on current affairs. Rather than browsing through your boring news outlets, just get sent the most salient news in your inbox every day. Skimm has gathered a great following and even received funding, so it’s becoming more and more popular every day! Oh and, if you don’t like reading the news, this will get you in to the habit so you can talk the talk with the wisecrack political expert at your college re-union!
Instagress – Personal brand equity is becoming more and more important everyday. Instagram gives you the platform to grow this personal brand but managing a social account can take a ton of time. This is why Instagress is super-useful! The tool automates your Instagram growth by commenting, following and liking under hashtags relevant to your niche.
Now that we’ve got our grand list of tools, it’s time to put them into practice. Try them out and tell me how they worked for you in the comments
The image of the urban area nearby Xirongxian Hutong seems like other places in second ring road of Beijing City. It is like a collection of typologies: towers; multistories residential districts; monumental buildings near Changan avenue; and also reserved hutongs and courtyards.
At the city scale, it is difficult to tell the logic and relationships between those different urban landscapes. For the local people, they seem not worry about the vanishing of past experience or the relationship between daily life and memory. They also pay little attention to the public spaces outside buildings by the street, and to what the relationship is between public and private. “Isolation”, this is also happening on the building scale.
This house is about 30 square meters, and sandwiched between 5 nearby houses. Most of the exterior walls become interior walls in between the different houses. The only door and window openings are on the south wall, where there is hardly any light or fresh air in the room. The place is isolated from outside world, this condition is bad especially for a such a tiny space.
In the yard, a small building belonging to another neighboring family is located at the center, by the tree. Other things litter the places in the yard as well. Before the renovation, we can hardly tell that this is a yard and not a pathway.
Diagram
Diagram
This 30 meter site with a small “yard” will be occupied by a young couple and their 6 year old boy.
In order to respond to the “Isolation”, a series of independent and easy to build units were introduced and cooperate with the original building system. They construct a gradation between public and private, outside and inside, build a path for light, wind, events and people’s movement. Also, the cooperation between new elements and original building structures establish the connection between past and present.
The first building unit is the porch, with a solar roof in the yard. The position of room door moved correspondingly. Places were created on the path where people would be going home from the outer street. An open lobby for changing clothes, a porch facing the tree for outside events in good weather. A transition space between house and yard.
Plan
The second building unit is the double-slope roof gallery. It can also be defined as the enlarged building facade. First, it maximize the lighting area. Beside it the chimney and air system are also introduced on the gallary roof. This prevents unexpected damage to the original structure and roof system.
The most importantly, The new spaces created are the two long tables constructed based on the window from the outside to inside. When the window is opened, people might sitting around the table in good weather, events might happen here. Since there is limited area in the room, the table places some daily events out in the yard.
The third building unit is children room. It includes small flats on second floor, a ladder, and a lighting roof. The flats divided the space into two independent rooms: one for the parents, one for the child.
The sunroof window faces the north to improve the air and lighting conditions. It establishes a route for wind going though from south to north. The height of space is raised allowing for the new structure to grow through the original roof.
The three new building units all worked well within the old structure. At the same time, the differences between new and old are obvious. Wood and steel, heavy and light, dark and bright colors, no unnecessary additional structure.
Model
The principle of the plan arrangement is to place all assistant spaces and furnitures on the perimeter in order to maximize the size of the central open plan.
In Japan, two major types of pharmacies can be found. The first is the drug store, or what can be described as retail pharmacies. This type offers services related to basic medicines as well as parapharmaceutical products. The second type is the dispensing pharmacies, usually related to a nearby clinic or hospital. In this type of pharmacies, the products are prepared in the backyard after the customer presents prescription issued by his doctor. Once prepared, the pharmacist has to explain to the customer about the prescription.
This dispensing pharmacy is located nearby a general hospital and owned by its president. The Idea behind this pharmacy is to promote the hospital by giving it a new image as it is subject to a strong competitiveness.
The starting point of this design was to question the criteria that customers use to select a pharmacy, beside the geographical location. What would make a pharmacy better than another one? The purpose of visiting a pharmacy is the same, purchasing medicines and seeking healing.
The keyword for medical related design is healing, commonly associated with peaceful nature. Subsequently, this type of design traditionally tries to incorporate natural elements like trees, green walls and flowers.
Floor Plan
Nature is undoubtedly a source of healing, nonetheless, the simple fact of coming to a medical institution lays on the trust that the patient puts on modern medicine. The more advanced medicine is the more trustworthy it becomes; true peace of mind is reached when the medical care is at its “Cutting Edge”.
The pharmacy is situated along one of the most important streets in the region. The façade is totally glazed and contoured by protracted sharp edges. The edges are also projected into the minimalist white interior demarcated by a black cross. The vertical line of the cross is the gate towards the backyard where the prescriptions are prepared. The horizontal line is a console for exhibiting key products. The entrance is on the left side of the building in the direction of the hospital liberating the glazed façade from unnecessary additional lines. This minimalistic space designed in clean straight lines and enhanced with indirect lighting slits creates the High-Tech sharp image that the patient expects from an advanced medical care.
Additionally to the appearance, the quality of service is a major criterion for selecting a dispensing pharmacy, and this is not without affecting the design. Traditionally, the patient handles his prescription at the reception counter; the pharmacist will then prepare the medicines in the backyard whilst the patient is sitting in the waiting space. Once done, the patient will be called again to the counter to get explanations about the prescription. This pharmacy differs in that the patient will not be called to the counter again. Instead, the pharmacist will meet him at his waiting space furnished in chairs and tables. These small attentions can make a big difference by providing an image of High Quality services inducing the process of healing.
Product Description. While selecting the materials, we were focused on the sharp image we wanted to give to the building. The choice of Takiron metallic panels helped much for creating this image; these seamless and thin panels are also mat, a reflective panel would make the joints easily recognized, while a mat one seems more integrated.
From the architect. Tsiaogou teaching school locates in Song County of Luoyang City, Henan province and has 49 students and 4 teachers. The school has no reading room so that the 320 books they currently have are scattered in all the classroom. This project will add a new reading room and supply more books. All the current and new books will be put in the reading room for all the students to borrow.
The campus is pretty tight. there’s no empty classroom can be transformed into reading room and the playground cannot be occupied as well to make sure the children have enough space for outdoor activities. So the school planned to use the corner of the fencing wall adjacent to the teaching building as the site for the new reading room.
Floor Plan
When we visited the site and saw the beautiful big cedar, we decided that the reading room shouldn’t crouch in the corner. Instead, it should be treated as a cottage underneath the tree umbrella.
The final design uses a fanlike shape to form a space surrounding the cedar. In front of the reading room, we set a exterior wood terrace of 8m in diameter. Together with the big tree umbrella, this terrace become a comfortable semi-exterior space where children could leisurely sit and enjoy their reading, or watch the games on the play ground of their classmates. The shape of the reading room doesn’t occupy the corner of the teaching building ,so that the window of the office is not blocked and the small parterre is reserved. We also put doors on the backside of the reading room from which children can go to the small parterre. This design makes the reading room not just a functional room, but also an interesting connection between indoor and outdoor activities that reconstructs the entire space of the campus.
We make the reading room slightly lower than normal height. The height of the inner side of the slopping roof is only 1.8m and relatively tight for adults. We hope to make the children feel that this is special for them through this detail.
We exposed the structural grid in interior to use as bookshelves.
Because the site locates in mountain area, wood structure is selected to make the transportation and construction easier. To ensure the thermal performance, we didn’t use too much glass openings, but introduce skylight to make the interior brighter, and solar system for lighting. The uses of these facilities is also an introduction of sustainable technologies to the children besides functional consideration.
During the construction process, we already heard from the school that the children were very curious about the new reading room and often came to see the construction site. Now the reading room is open and becomes a beloved place of the children. On the blackboard beside the reading room, we found that the children call it big sailboat that is their imagination of it. We hope that the wood cottage under the huge tree umbrella could become a beautiful memory of their childhood.
From the architect. Klopf Architecture, Arterra Landscape Architects and Henry Calvert of Calvert Ventures Designed and built a new warm, modern, Eichler-inspired, open, indoor-outdoor home on a deeper-than-usual San Mateo Highlands property where an original Eichler house had burned to the ground.
The owners wanted multi-generational living and larger spaces than the original home offered, but all parties agreed that the house should respect the neighborhood and blend in stylistically with the other Eichlers. At first the Klopf team considered re-using what little was left of the original home and expanding on it. But after discussions with the owner and builder, all parties agreed that the last few remaining elements of the house were not practical to re-use, so Klopf Architecture designed a new home that pushes the Eichler approach in new directions.
One disadvantage of Eichler production homes is that the house designs were not optimized for each specific lot. A new custom home offered the team a chance to start over. In this case, a longer house that opens up sideways to the south fit the lot better than the original square-ish house that used to open to the rear (west). Accordingly, the Klopf team designed an L-shaped “bar” house with a large glass wall with large sliding glass doors that faces sideways instead of to the rear like a typical Eichler. This glass wall opens to a pool and landscaped yard designed by Arterra Landscape Architects.
Floor Plan
Driving by the house, one might assume at first glance it is an Eichler because of the horizontality, the overhanging flat roof eaves, the dark gray vertical siding, and orange solid panel front door, but the house is designed for the 21st Century and is not meant to be a “Likeler.” You won’t see any posts and beams in this home. Instead, the ceiling decking is a western red cedar that covers over all the beams. Like Eichlers, this cedar runs continuously from inside to out, enhancing the indoor / outdoor feeling of the house, but unlike Eichlers it conceals a cavity for lighting, wiring, and insulation. Ceilings are higher, rooms are larger and more open, the master bathroom is light-filled and more generous, with a separate tub and shower and a separate toilet compartment, and there is plenty of storage. The garage even easily fits two of today’s vehicles with room to spare.
A massive 49-foot by 12-foot wall of glass and the continuity of materials from inside to outside enhance the inside-outside living concept, so the owners and their guests can flow freely from house to pool deck to BBQ to pool and back.
During construction in the rough framing stage, Klopf thought the front of the house appeared too tall even though the house had looked right in the design renderings (probably because the house is uphill from the street). So Klopf Architecture paid the framer to change the roofline from how we had designed it to be lower along the front, allowing the home to blend in better with the neighborhood. One project goal was for people driving up the street to pass the home without immediately noticing there is an “imposter” on this lot, and making that change was essential to achieve that goal.
This 2,606 square foot, 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom Eichler-inspired new house is located in San Mateo in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
Product Description.Accordingly, the Klopf team designed an L-shaped “bar” house with a large glass wall with large sliding glass doors that faces sideways instead of to the rear like a typical Eichler. This glass wall opens to a pool and landscaped yard designed by Arterra Landscape Architects.
You won’t see any posts and beams in this home. Instead, the ceiling decking is a western red cedar that covers over all the beams. Like Eichlers, this cedar runs continuously from inside to out, enhancing the indoor / outdoor feeling of the house, but unlike Eichlers it conceals a cavity for lighting, wiring, and insulation.
A massive 49-foot by 12-foot wall of glass and the continuity of materials from inside to outside enhance the inside-outside living concept, so the owners and their guests can flow freely from house to pool deck to BBQ to pool and back.
Sig Nordal 