A bridge forms the entrance of this house near Tel Aviv by architect Pitsou Kedem, which also features a perforated facade referencing the traditional regional latticework (+ slideshow). (more…)
London-based design firm Caventou has designed a series of “stained glass” everyday objects that turn daylight into electricity, even indoors.
Integrated with solar cells, Current Table and Current Window are both independent, intelligent power sources that function normally as household items.
As the first piece of furniture to harvest energy indoors, Current Table utilizes a colored glass surface—a modern version of stained glass—to generate its own electricity, which can be used to charge other devices, among other purposes.
Both pieces of functional technology can be monitored through an app, which reports light intensity and how much energy each item has harvested.
Learn more about the project here.
News via Caventou.
Casa Jones is a private home located in Brasilia, Brazil. It was designed by Patricia Almeida Arquitetura in 2012. Casa Jones by Patricia Almeida Arquitetura: “The house is located in a residential area of Brasilia that despite being in the city center, provides great interaction with nature. Given the urban planning requirements of the district, the project focuses within the minimum limits of recess from the access road so the..
The project takes place in a long, narrow and stately apartment whose façade connects to the access street via an elegant bow-window and to a large but not very attractive interior courtyard through a gallery. In between, 140 square meters to resolve more or less conventional housing requirements.
Two key strategies drive the design as a whole. The first is that there are no hallways between rooms; they connect directly via an enfilade of sorts. This gives rise to a series of intermediary spaces that lack a defined code or function, which transforms them into potential play, reading, storage rooms, etc. These spaces which serve as a backbone to the dwelling don’t even feature doors, and their partitions fall short of the ceiling, making them, as it were, rooms within an original container space.
The second decision is structuring all rooms on three sections, based on three levels. A top level — the original wooden beam and ceramic vault ceiling — runs throughout the house and is painted grey. Nothing breaks up this level, since partitions do not reach up to the ceiling. Running from 60 cm to 230 cm and painted white, an intermediary level encompasses and structures the rooms, closing in the space even though there are no doors and the partitions don’t reach the ceiling. The lower level, running from the floor to a height of 60 cm, features flooring rising up the partitions in distinctive contrast for each space, while maintaining symmetry with the entrance — tile for wet rooms, wood for living rooms and bedrooms, and a new type of tile for outdoor-facing rooms, the street-side bow-window and the gallery connecting to the courtyards. The thresholds linking the rooms feature a new material, white micro-cement, which likewise covers the partitions in the entrance, which was re-arranged to clearly establish the public spaces facing the street and the private spaces facing the inner courtyard.
The entire interior space is thus organised as a series of rooms which are set off but connected and which always connect to the two exits to the outside, through which light penetrates into more interior spaces, creating a beautiful light gradation. Spaces which require more privacy follow a similar pattern but with greater privacy.
The gallery leading to the courtyards was completely demolished and was re-built (both structurally and in terms of building materials) using enormous wood doors featuring different cuts and glasses of various transparency that manage to illuminate the interior despite its unfavourable orientation while blurring the unappealing view.
Wooden Box 2 is a private home located in Brussels, Belgium. It was designed by SPOTLESS ARCHITECTURE in 2015.
Graduate shows 2016: Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design graduate Liron Gino has designed a set of jewellery-like devices that allow deaf and hearing-impaired people to experience music through vibration (+ movie). (more…)
Ark is a residential project completed by Oleg Drozdov in 2015. It is located in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Ark by Oleg Drozdov: “The plot is sited on one of the five Kharkiv hills among low-rise development with village-like parceling and scarce apartment houses that emerged here at the turn of the xix-xx centuries. It is located right in front of the central hill, with a railroad running along the valley between..
World Heritage Corb: for the next instalment in our series on the 17 Le Corbusier buildings added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list, Australian photographer Benjamin Hosking shares new images of Capitol Complex in Chandigarh – the Indian city that gave the architect a chance to test his Modernist theories on a grand scale (+ slideshow). (more…)
An urban flagship on an old mining wasteland
On the periphery, neither an industrial zone nor an urban area, the project commitment was to create activities to ensure local governments and residents potential expectation. The showroom is the focal point of the building which thus opens on its environment as to become its flagship.
On this site of 13 000m2, a single-story building was essential.
The workshops, administrative offices and showroom are easily accessible from the wide central hall. The hall also overlooks a huge patio with an arboreal metal posts structure covered by a canopy. Thus, both inside and outside, the architectural design clearly distinguishes the administrative functions from that of the workshops, these two components of the program having separate entrances.
The challenge and the essence of this project located in Pas-de-Calais were to provide natural light and create an overall lighting network. Thanks to the patio, to the canopy and the showroom, a bright light is distributed everywhere while the workshops and the chassis modules on the outskirt still enjoy natural light.
What about the site, a mining wasteland located on the grounds of the former Pit 12?
There were no constraints due to the grounds of the former slag heap. Yet it gave the opportunity to discover that the parcel is located partly on a lethal zone called by GRDF; next to a gas pipeline prohibiting the construction of an ERP. A Regulatory provision of mechanical protection was required to protect the pipelines.
The aim of both L’Atelier 2 + 1 and the project management was innovative in order to anticipate the simultaneous work of these two separate but overlapping sites.
