A home with a subtle and rich relationship between interior and exterior, in which the fragmentation of their program (horizontally and vertically) offers the user different spatial experiences, new ways of living.
This contemporary home is located in Austin, Texas, USA. The interior is spacious and elegant, done in pale earthy colors and with darker accents to add character. The home is currently for sale. Buy it now!
The Power Station Master Plan Project consists of the restoration of the Power Station and the master plan of the surrounding area. The Power Station is located on a natural harbor in the Bay of Baku, which used to serve as a small shipyard for the ships working for the oil platforms.
The Power Station was built by Siemens around 1900s and has lost its function as a power station but the building, with its beautiful stone construction, stands out from all the other surrounding buildings and has a unique aesthetic.
Although the whole project started with a request to rebuild a new power station, after a period of persuasion, keeping and restoring the power station became the primary objective of project. The scope of the project was to reuse the Power Station and build another building to house cultural and entertainment organizations. The area surrounding the power station was in poor condition, so the scope extended to the design of a master plan for the whole area.
Diagram
The new building was named ‘The Power Station’ and The Old Power House, was proposed to be transformed into a museum.
The new building complex, the New Power House, consists of 2 buildings linked with an enclosed bridge. An axis, starting with the Flagport Square and the highest flag poll of the world, crossing right between the New Power House buildings and ending on the other side of the bay with a possible future bridge, was created to link these elements both virtually and physically.
Section
The New Power House design reflects what defines an industrial building in the collective memory and yet has a contemporary style too. The simple geometric mass, use of zinc and wood for the large sloped roof and the façade helped the building revive the industrial spirit of the master plan area.
The coastal promenade of the Flagport area extends to the small bay of the Power Station master plan area. The direction to the Power Station buildings was strengthened with landscape design to allure more people. Industrial obsolete machinery were implemented as urban sculptures while enriching the activity of the park and giving it an atmosphere of open air museum. The buildings have been completed and started functioning since 2014.
A team of architects have launched an initiative to build a network of “makerspace” structures at Agbogbloshie, Ghana – the world’s largest dumping site for electronic waste (photos by Julien Lanoo + slideshow). (more…)
Apartment with Panoramic Views of Moscow is a residential project completed by Alexandra Fedorova. The 2,691-square-foot home is located in Moscow, Russia.
It is not easy to play with a ball in a city. To use a public sports facility, you need to book two months in advance. As I recall, when I was young, anywhere in the neighborhood would become our playground, as long as we had a ball. Would it be possible to secure the space needed for playing ball in today’s overcrowded city?
Soccer field: 100m x 70m = 108 houses, 30 pyeong in size
Basketball court: 32m x 19m = 7 houses, 30 pyeong in size
Futsal court: 42m x 25m = 12 houses, 30 pyeong in size
Tennis court: 24m x 11m = 3 houses, 30 pyeong in size
Some of the ball games are some of the most mainstream outdoor activities out there, and can take place spontaneously anywhere as long as there are willing participants and a ball. And they are highly flexible with respect to season and time compared to other types of games. We picked four different types of ball games that need no special equipment and which anyone can easily learn how to play. The sides of the polyhedron correspond to these four different types of games, in addition to sporting goods rental. The size and area vary depending on the type of the sport and its characteristics.
#3. RULE
When Folded.
1. Mini soccer: This is a mini soccer goalpost whose size is small. The two teams, 2 people in each, switch between playing attack and defense, and they play for a set period of time.
Unfolded Plan
2. Triangle basketball court: In the triangle basketball court, the basketball rings come in different shapes and there are different numbers of them. The three triangular basketball rings are hung at different heights and locations. Whoeverputs the ball into each and every one of the basketball rings wins the round. Note that multiple goals in the same ring are not counted more than once.
3. Flying disk: The target on the wall shows the countable scores, as well as the animals from the game of yut. The player takes aim and throws a round disk at the target.
5. Sporting goods rental: The equipment room has the tools needed for playing. Also, this place can be used as a sales booth or an office during events.
1.Semicircle soccer field: This semicircle soccer field has the image of the audience attached. The two teams, 3 people in each team, will shoot to score. Note that if you shoot the ball from within the semicircle, it won’t be counted as a goal.
2.Hammock: Nets are taken out of the equipment room and installed at each of the corners to make a hammock.
Hanging Beds Plan
#4.Moving playground
The Undefined Playground is flexible to the participants’ needs, and the structures can be folded or unfolded. When folded, they act as the polyhedron walls, and when unfolded, they transform into a soccer field, and revealing a hidden resting place.
All houses in some way resonate the history of lives spent together. Rachel Whiteread’s “House” installation of 1993 exemplified the notion that memories are imprinted into the spaces in which we live. This project began with a conversation between architect and client around this idea.
The scope of work broadly involved heritage refurbishment and a contemporary rear extension to an inner-city Victorian terrace house. The ambition of the project was to inscribe the owners’ joint experiences as a couple into the spatial character of the building, and provide a new context for their current life together as a family with two young boys. To achieve this, the architectural idea spanned both the historic fabric of the existing building and the new extension.
Section
To establish a brief for the project, instead of asking the clients to produce a written document, we suggested they sketch plans of the previous homes they had lived in. These scaleless hand-drawn reflections – which we referred to as “planometric memories” – revealed in their disproportions, the clients’ subconscious aspirations for the new home. Key aspects of the spatial planning, volumetric character and material palette of the architecture was informed through this process. Circulation spaces vary significantly in scale and meld with the living spaces of the house; and there is an emphasis on level change and the associated experience of implied depth.
The house is also conceived as a nested set of containers: a set of “Russian dolls” that might infer yet other unrevealed histories. The large fibreglass clad pod floating above the kitchen space is one of these objects. To achieve the sense that this cloud-like form is levitating within the larger volume of the kitchen and dining areas, a series of steel hangers drop down from portal frames that span the width of the rear extension, thereby avoiding any visually apparent use of structure. The fibreglass cladding was designed using a 72 piece dia-grid comprising 17 different 3d custom-designed tiles integrating lighting. This was produced from a digital model developed following construction of the framing and lining substrate and a careful on-site survey of the shell by the builder.
Diagram
Contrary to a typical compact terrace house, the ground floor level at the rear is raised to allow for more expansive views to the surrounding street context. This had the added advantage of providing a well-ventilated and less costly timber sub-floor space with additional outdoor storage. The external deck and garden, developed in collaboration with Katherine Rekaris Landscape Architecture, cascades down towards the back fence and is framed by a series of off-form concrete planters that act as impromptu seating from which to look back at the house.
Set back from the beach behind a row of houses, this Mexican villa has terraces and a swimming pool raised up so residents can relax outdoors with a view of the ocean (photos by Edmund Sumner + slideshow). (more…)
The park was designed from 1972 to 1974—before the advent of the American With Disabilities Act of 1990—by architect Louis Kahn, who died in Pennsylvania Station carrying the plans for the finished memorial. At its southernmost end the park features a 12-by-60-foot sunken terrace that, ironically, President Roosevelt himself would not have been able to use with his wheelchair.
The de Blasio administration has declared categorically that the park is not accessible and needs to be fixed, and is currently withholding a permanent certificate of occupancy and hundreds of thousands of dollars in financing until the dispute is resolved.
Board members of the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy have “said that the sunken terrace was a design device created to enhance the views from an open-air enclosure known as the Room, and that those views could be enjoyed by anyone in a wheelchair or motor scooter.”
Courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, LLC
James Stewart Polshek, a Conservancy board member who studied under Kahn, has noted that the sunken terrace was never intended to be a destination in itself. The de Blasio administration has suggested that ramps be installed on either side of the Room, a solution that the Conservancy has explored, but which it believes would ultimately compromise Kahn’s original designs.
While the Conservancy is reluctant to accommodate new ramps that alter the original park design, it has already modified subtle pieces of Kahn’s work to improve accessibility. For instance, loose gravel, a difficult surface for wheelchairs and motor scooters to move on, was replaced by a polypropylene honeycomb grid of two-inch hexagonal voids filled with gravel clusters held together by resin. Moreover, levels of cement and gravel fills between the promenades’ granite pavers were raised, so as to create smoother surfaces. Both of these modifications were made in consultation with the Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities, Victor Calise.
For the time being, the Conservancy is prepared to operate the park as it is now, under a temporary certificate of occupancy. Until the issue is resolved, however, the sunken terrace is closed to all.
