Green House

Green House dissolves the large scale of the typical enclosed block volume into a new xx structure, thereby creating an expressive and spatially varied building, which relates to the large scale of the surrounding urban fabric, while at the same time creating series of micro-environments such as courtyards, squares and plateaus with different degrees of openness. Green House creates synergy between inside and outside, between summing metropolitan life and landscape(d) space. Green House is a vision for a new urbanity of social and spatial exchange between private domain and public space which creates plus value for both parts, reinforces local connections, and enriches the public space.

Year: 2007
Competition: Europan 9

Team: Serban Cornea, Kristina Adsersen, Sue Ling Choong Knudsen, Pietro Bairati,Cathrina Thingstadengen, Astrid Hald, Nanna Jee Lind Eriksen, Jørgen Hedrich og Allan Lyth
Collaboration: Moe & Brødsgaard

MORMOR by Johannes Torpe and Rune Reilly Kölsch

Johannes Torpe and Rune Reilly Kölsch’s sofa MORMOR from HAY received “The Danish Design Prize 2007”.

The jury says, "A rejection of conventions, innovative production approach, provoking and funky design, visual and sculptural furniture, a fine example of renewal in Danish furniture design.

Innovative sofa design is a difficult task, so there is every reason to applaud the new sofa concept MORMOR, whose unique expression is both funky and provoking without compromising on design and product quality. MORMOR is an almost monolithic object in the form of a visually exciting, light and sculptural piece of furniture. Thanks to the self-contained shape and low weight, the sofa does not have to go against a wall, which allows for a less conventional look.

MORMOR is a fine example of renewal in Danish furniture design. The innovation is not only evident in the sofa’s expression but also in its production form, which emphasises its unique character. The materials are well-chosen, the detailing is excellent, and the combination of leather and textile makes for a striking and beautiful solution."

When the half-brothers Johannes Torpe and Rune Reilly Kölsch work together on a furniture design, provoking and funky details are bound to ensue. The sofa ”MORMOR” (Danish for maternal grandmother) is no exception. An innovative mix of fabrics and materials keeps the weight at only 26.5 kg, even though it is a 3-seater. But why MORMOR? Rune Reilly Kölsch explains: ”it’s a pun on the English pronunciation. MORMOR is Danish, but in English it sounds like ”more more”. Our next sofa will be FARMOR (”far more”, or Danish for paternal grandmother) – and the chair will be FASTER” (Danish for aunt).

MORMOR was part of the exhibition “The Danish Design Prizes 2007” at the Danish Design Centre.


Design: Johannes Torpe and Rune Reilly Kölsch

Providence chapel by jonathan tuckey design

British architect Jonathan Tuckey has designed a timber-clad extension to a 19th century Baptist chapel in Wiltshire, England, as part of the building’s conversion into a residential property.

The timber cladding on the walls and roof references the local “tin tabernacle” churches, which are clad in tin.

The proposal includes rainwater harvesting and insulation made from recycled newspaper.

Construction is due to be completed later in 2008.

The following information is from Jonathan Tuckey Design:


CONTEMPORARY TIN TABERNACLE

Jonathan Tuckey Design have been granted planning permission for the extension of a grade II listed Baptist chapel in Colerne, Wiltshire.

The 19th Century chapel which has been converted into a single family dwelling, will provide the living accommodation while the new addition to the rear will provide bedrooms and bathrooms overlooking the drystone walled garden.

Conceived as a shadow of the existing chapel, the silhouette of the new building, echoes the simple nature of the existing bath stone structure.

The design was executed in close consultation with the North Wiltshire District Council and makes use of changes of level to keep the overall height of the building as low as possible.

The timber cladding used to clad all walls and the roof, is a direct reference to the tin tabernacle churches, which are vernacular to the area. Alongside the solarised windows it provides a material that is both sympathetic to the location and yet strikingly contemporary.

The design encompasses a number of sustainable features, utilising rainwater harvesting, with a composite timber I beam and recycled newspaper insulation construction.

Brio54

” ….A young, design-driven development firm, Brio54’s mission is to provide sustainable, affordable design while delivering high quality construction. Home buyers of all types will delight in Brio54’s wide variety of offerings - whether you live in a suburban area, are looking to refurbish or rehab, or have an empty urban infill lot. Brio54’s first prefab prototype, the H1, (pictured above) is currently in the final stage of planning, and construction is slated to begin production in the spring of 2008.


Each Brio54 home is full of healthy green features including centralized efficient heating and cooling, moisture and ventilation control, clean V.O.C and toxin free materials, dual flush toilets, on demand heating, energy star HVAC and appliances, ICF’s, passive solar energy design, all natural wood and stone flooring, and 3Form Ecoresin countertops. All of the wood framing shown is prefabricated in advance of arriving onsite. The photovoltaic panels on their prototypes are currently under investigation along with solar heating, graywater recovery, and possibly rainwater harvesting systems which will need to be determined based on individual siting of each home.


A full development service, Brio54 provides in-house financial, design and construction services. If you’re not ready to completely build-out a new home, Brio54 is also available to work on an individual case by case basis to customize the prototypes within your existing site conditions.”

A Garden Blooms in Queens

In 1999, when the Queens Botanical Garden began planning its new visitors’ center, the LEED program that is now the currency of the green-building movement was still a nascent tool. New York City, meanwhile, was in the process of creating its own guidelines for “high-performance” buildings. Especially in the realm of publicly financed projects, the era of green architecture was just dawning.

“ One of New York’s lesser-known botanical gardens emerges as a leader in sustainable design.
By Fred A. Bernstein

In 1999, when the Queens Botanical Garden began planning its new visitors’ center, the LEED program that is now the currency of the green-building movement was still a nascent tool. New York City, meanwhile, was in the process of creating its own guidelines for “high-performance” buildings. Especially in the realm of publicly financed projects, the era of green architecture was just dawning.


Now the newly opened $14 million visitors’ center and administration building, designed by BKSK Architects, is on deck to receive a Platinum LEED rating, making it one of the city’s first structures in that exalted category. Moreover, two years after the passage of local law 86, which requires many new city buildings to receive Silver, Gold, or Platinum ratings, the 16,000-square-foot Queens structure “is showing people that it can be done,” says John Krieble, who heads the Department of Design and Construction’s ­sustainable-design unit. “It’s one thing to talk about it; it’s another thing to see it here in three dimensions, working.”

Krieble, who inherited the city’s green-building program from Hilary Brown, its founder, says his group is currently advising on 40 buildings. But that’s just the beginning: Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s blueprint for future development, dubbed PlaNYC 2030, contains ambitious environmental goals, for which the Queens building is both trailblazer and laboratory. For city officials charged with making the mayor’s vision a reality, the Queens project “demystifies LEED and green building.”


Its effects are also being felt beyond the halls of government. Unlike other green city buildings—such as the LEED-certified NYC Office of Emer­gen­cy Management, in Brooklyn, by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects—the Queens facility is open to the public. And it makes lessons in sustainability easy to grasp. On a wet day visitors can watch rain collect on the gull-shaped roof over the outdoor plaza, then spill into a pond that naturally filters the water before it starts a picturesque journey across the site. But this is no mere “water feature.” Conditions in the streambed will reflect past and present weather conditions. “If there’s been a drought, the streambed will be empty,” says BKSK partner Joan Krevlin, the lead designer. “The building helps to tell the story of the site.”

The rainwater-collection system, which keeps runoff out of the city’s overtaxed sewers, is only one of the building’s myriad green features. There’s also a planted roof that serves a surprisingly diverse list of environmental functions. Brises-soleil on the southwest and southeast sides reduce the need for air-conditioning (and, on a sunny day, make the administrative suites feel almost like tree houses). Photovoltaic panels on the roof are already generating 16 kilowatts of electricity. The gray-water recycling system takes water from the shower (itself a green feature meant to encourage bicycling to work), cleanses it in constructed wetlands, and recycles it through the toilets. Then there are the geothermal wells, which use 55-degree water from 300 feet underground to heat and cool the building.

The rectangular building that houses the administrative offices ends in a cantilevered conference room shielded from the sun by a black-locust brise-soleil.
Nearly all these features are reflected in the architecture. The single largest space, an auditorium, is buried under the planted roof, which slopes up from grade level, creating a gentle transition from garden to building. In the adjacent plaza, a dozen angled steel columns support the 3,000-square-foot water-collection roof. The pillars, painted a russet color, suggest a forest. “You have a sense of tree trunks turning into columns,” Krevlin says. Behind the plaza is the main building, with the brises-soleil creating complex shadows. To Brown, one of the project’s great strengths is showing that “environmental initiatives can generate aesthetic richness.”
Eight years ago, making the building green was only one of the garden’s priorities. Another was responding to Queens’s diversity—the borough is a melting pot, with particularly large Asian and Latino communities in the neighborhoods surrounding the garden. Some 75 percent of its visitors speak a language other than Eng­lish at home. Every morning a large Chinese contingent uses the grounds for the meditative martial art Tai Chi.

“We thought those were two very different missions,” Krevlin says, recalling her initial response to the cultural and environmental mandates. But as the design process got under way, garden officials began meeting with community members to learn about their cultures’ responses to landscape. “Every time we had an event that year, we had drawings out, and we would talk about the ideas and get people’s input,” says Jennifer Ward Souder, director of capital projects. “And what we found out was that every culture had some significant relationship to water.” Soon the garden was looking at ways to incorporate water features into the design of the new building. Souder, Krevlin, and the garden’s executive director, Susan Lacerte, realized that the very features that would draw residents could also become exemplars of sustainability. If water represents continuity and cycles of life, recycling technologies give new meaning to those ancient concepts.

The Queens Botanical Garden has its origins in a horticulture exhibit in the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In 1963, Robert Moses moved it to a 39-acre site near the fairgrounds and gave it a banal beige-brick administration building. Even worse than the building’s design was its location: directly inside the pedestrian entrance on Main Street, a bustling Queens thoroughfare. “When you looked through the main gate, the first thing you saw was a bad building that blocked your whole view of the garden,” says Souder, a landscape architect who was one year out of grad school at the University of Michigan when she was hired in 1998.
Souder’s first major responsibility was to develop a master plan for the garden. She brought in Conservation Design Forum, of Elmhurst, Illinois, and Germany’s Atelier Dreiseitl, whose plan—not surprisingly—called for scrapping the old building. Ashok Bhavnani, a civic-minded architect then serving on the garden’s board, pushed to make the replacement structure green. “We’re an environmental organization,” Lacerte says. “If we’re not going to do it, who is?” Of course, a manifestly green building would help distinguish the Queens garden from its better-established Brooklyn and Bronx siblings.

Because the project would be largely funded by the city, it had to be built under the auspices of the Department of Design and Construction (DDC). At the time, the DDC had a program, created by Brown, then its assistant commissioner and design director, to make new city buildings models of sustainability. But the DDC stipulated that the garden, a pilot project under the program, choose an architect with whom it already had a requirements contract. “We had little choice of who we hired,” Souder recalls. “We got very, very lucky,” she says of BKSK, one of the firms on the department’s list.
BKSK, a 40-person Manhattan outfit with a nearly even mix of residential, institutional, and commercial clients, had recently completed a playground at the New York Hall of Science—the children’s museum just across Flush­ing Meadows Park—in the process making itself known to the DDC. BKSK’s lack of green-building experience wasn’t a problem. In fact, one of Brown’s goals at the DDC was to mainstream sustainable practices by having generalist firms design green buildings. To be sure, the team (which included Julie Nelson, Paul Capece, Gerry Smith, and Dirk Hartmann) had a lot to learn, not only about sustainability but also about the workings of city government. For example, the building was subject to Wicks Law, which requires each subcontractor on a project costing more than $50,000 to enter into a contract directly with the client (rather than with a general ­contractor). Accomplishing that was tricky in a green building—the scope of each company’s work had to be defined precisely, but the results had to interconnect. (The gray-water system alone involved the efforts of a landscaper, plumbing contractor, and structural engineer working in concert.) In the process, the architects—and the DDC—gained valuable experience in facilitating collaboration while satisfying prohibitive ­regulations.
Meanwhile, Souder applied for grants from agencies like the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Along with capital, the grants provided a morale boost. “It helped to be able to say, ‘It’s not just a kid out of grad school pushing for this,’” Souder says. “There are city and state programs.” Bhavnani, Lacerte, Souder, Krevlin, and Brown formed a close-knit team, with Brown remaining involved in the project as an adviser and cheer­­leader long after she had left the DDC. (She now runs the consulting firm New Civic Works.)
One of the project’s greatest assets was Souder’s desire to look beyond green labels. For the brises-soleil, BKSK had selected ipe, a Brazilian wood of unusually high density. But the fact that the wood was certified by the Forest Stewardship Council wasn’t enough for Souder. “I think certification is important,” she says, “but I also think the program isn’t perfect.” Satisfying herself about the wood’s sustainability, she says, would have required “visiting the forest myself and seeing how it’s managed.”
But had she visited and come away impressed, she still would have been reluctant to use a tropical wood. “I don’t feel it’s necessary to ship something around the world,” she says. “Especially since this is a pretty important architectural element that people might want to replicate.”
Finding a replacement required months of research into the density and rot-resistance of North American woods. After talking to hundreds of people, Souder eventually settled on black locust. “It was harvested on Long Island and milled in Pennsylvania, and so far it’s doing the job just fine,” she says. She plans to closely monitor the wood’s performance and, true to form, will share the results with anyone who asks.


Souder also learned that LEED’s point system can have drawbacks. Some parts of the building have carpeting—designed by William McDonough and made of recycled material—because LEED bestows a point for the use of “sustainable” floor­ing materials. Without the checklist, the offices might have had no carpet, Souder says—surely a greener option.
For BKSK the project wasn’t a moneymaker; according to Krevlin, the DDC fee structure didn’t begin to account for the length or complexity of the project (or the number of consultants that had to be brought in). But the project has given BKSK the credentials to take on other green projects. “It was a great gift to the firm,” Krevlin says.
More than that, it was a gift to a city determined to lessen the environ­mental impact of its buildings. And it was a well-timed gift at that. Completed just as New York was announcing its ambitious plans for 2030, “It has,” Krieble says, “become a very important symbol.” 

Lounge furniture StingRay

This beautiful lounge furniture is called the rocking chair. This piece of furniture is a graduation project by Danish architect, Thomas Pedersen from Aarhus School of Architecture.

Relax, doze-off or just recharge your batteries again, this lounge furniture is formed to accommodate a variety of sitting positions. Its organic form is rough on the outside yet smooth and protective on the inside providing a unique experience of inner peace.

“The name of the chair derives from the stingray. The Danish word for stingray is “rokke” which sounds like the first part of the word “rock” in “rocking chair” and the shell does resemble a giant stingray moving across the seabed. But it was the functionality that came first, not the design.”

Wooden serving trays by Anders Lunderskov

These wooden serving trays make great kitchen gadgets. Designed by Danish furniture designer, Anders Lunderskov, these serving trays or Lift-up Trays as they are called, are created from oven-dried basswood and laminated cherrywood.

When you lift this wooden serving tray, it makes a solid, varnished wooden frame, and the tray is ready to carry. Setting it down, a beautiful cherrywood surface appears, making it useful both for serving and as a decorative table piece.

The Lift-up tray is practical and decorative. Inspired by Japanese design for its simplicity, with Denmark inspiring the functionality and the idea for the contrasts arising from Italy. Available in a round and a square version, the bottom of both serving trays is made from cherrywood while the frames come in black, white, orange and turquoise.

Prefab home boathouse

This prefabricated boathouse is a beautiful prefab home for boat lovers. Designed by Andersson Wise Architects, this prefab boat house, located on Lake Austin, is connected to the main residence by a 200 foot cable-stay suspension bridge crossing a deep ravine providing a convenient access with a minimal impact on the landscape.

Entering this prefabricated boathouse from the upper level, you will find a two-story prefab steel and wood structure, housing a covered boat slip, rowing scull, jetski slip and outdoor shower with a screened, open space outdoor room on the second floor. The screens are convertible, allowing the room to be open-air facing the water.

Raveau House by Fellipe assadi +Fansisca pulio

The house is located on the way to Farellones, in the first section of the path going from the city towards the mountain range. The land, with a 100% slope, showed a small plane about 60 meters long by 10 meters width. This area was useful to site the house. Another significant factor was the potential crumbling of the hill due to rainwater. For this reason, the full construction was done over piles and at one meter from the natural land. The general arrangement mixes two readings: the first one has to do with the natural descending slope of the hill that leaves a zigzagging line until the river is reached. The second one, is the horizontal of the rooms (bedrooms, living and dinning). The first reading,originates an element that collects the basic circulation of the hill, carrying it to the plane of the circulations of the house and that superposes and interlaces with the second, that gives origin to a 42 meters long neutral pavilion over the preexisting plane.
From the mixture of both readings, two opposed volumetries, but of equal predominance, can be concluded, the circulations and the rooms (bedroom, living and dinning rooms). In the encounter of these two volumetries it creates a patio that separates the rooms from the services, being this patio both an extension of the dinning room and a first sight to the landscape, after entering the house. The first volume beside the diagonal circulation rests over the second one, that of the rooms, it separates from it, descents with the hill, gets into the pavilion and then exits to follow the run towards the river. The operation, with a high degree of diagrams, implements a house supported over 60 iron piles at an almost 100 meters height over the Mapocho river. The materials used were at sight reinforced concrete, metallic structure and pine saturated with tar paint.

Buzeta House by Fellipe assadi +Fansisca pulio

Casa Buzeta is a vacations family home located south of Maitencillo, over a creek 120mts high from the sea. Since the place presents excellent conditions for kite diving, the house structure has a volume that confronts the wind, boosting the slope and generating a striking sight of the sea. This volume is looking to the orient as and opaque façade, made out of a huge wood sticks look. The side facades have been worked with to round windows, which added to the west inclined façade, seem to be a ship over the sea contrast. Inside the distribution is symmetric, organized by a double high space, where the rooms are. A curved surface, inspired in pump up kite, covered by copper, goes around the house from east to west, forming a room alley, all of the looking to the sea. The materials used are pine insigne in the structure, Oregon pine in the exterior and copper on the covers and fireplace.

SCHMITZ HOUSE by Fellipe assadi +Fansisca pulio

A country house, at a 4.5 há land at Calera de Tango, for a marriage with no children. Living room, dinning room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, sauna, swimming pool and basement. A land planted with small fruit trees. To the east the cordillera de Los Andes and the coast cordillera to the west. The south and north are determined by closer sights of eucalyptus. The sight and the rithm of the fruit trees propouses a new ground level. The previous statement, along with the idea of artificial occupation of the land, given by the contrast, creates to volumes and a foundation wall. This one - a concrete box 1 meter high and 2.7 mts wide upon the eats -west center point, fosters the swimming pool, the basement and constitutes the foundations of the house at the same time. Over the tres high, the first volume contains the public program, incide a paralelepipedo made out of glass and alerce. Using the north -south center point, the second volume - uncovered hormigón armado- hangs a glass box producing a new contrast effect, this time stiking vertically.

Hydro-Net by IwamotoScott

” San Francisco architects IwamotoScott have won a competition to propose a futuristic vision of their city, organised by the History Channel.

Hydro-Net proposes a new, underground network of tunnels for hydrogen-powered, hovering vehicles plus a forest of new towers sprouting from lowland areas inundated by rising sea levels. The project will now compete against History Channel City of the Future winners from Washington DC and Atlanta, with an overall winner being chosen by public vote.

More info on the architect on Dezeen

Hotel Aire by Monica Rivera + Emiliano Lopez

Hotel Aire in Navarra (Spain), a work of the Barcelona-based firm formed by Monica Rivera (Porto Rico) + Emiliano Lopez (Argentina)…

Lounge furniture by Trubridge

Lounge furniture, by British designer David Trubridge, has a delicate flow about it. This low chair lounge furniture is called Nananu and it is best suited for indoor use.

Trubridge’s lounge furniture are light, flexible structures which are influenced by his Pacific travels. This beautifully-sculptured lounge furniture is produced in New Zealand using only natural, eco-friendly materials; it is made from steam bent ash and untreated hoop pine ply.

“In a planet overloaded with material things what justification is there for one more new design?…the only justification for me is not the object itself but its message…”

Outdoor storage sheds ModernShed

Outdoor storage sheds should be integrated into the surrounding landscape, since outdoor sheds design will complement your home. Modern-shed basic shed design is perfect for storing tools and sport equipment. These outdoor storage sheds can also be converted into a home office or art studio.

This prefab outdoor storage shed kit is available in multiple configurations ready for your assemble. All sheds come with pre-painted parts, T&G wood ceiling, galvanized metal roof, painted plywood floor and more. Built with material that will last, these outdoor storage sheds are designed to fit your contemporary lifestyle, making your home extension a great place to dwell.

OMA in Singapore

” Office for Metropolitan Architecture has announced a large residential complex containing over 1,000 apartments in Singapore.

The project will comprise 32 apartment blocks, each six stories tall, stacked in hexagonal arrangements. The announcement follows OMA’s appointment last year to design a 36-storey residential tower in Singapore.”

Hadid’s Oxford union

” Zaha Hadid Architects has revealed designs for an extension to the Middle East Centre at St Anthony’s College, Oxford.

The centre occupies two historic buildings in a Victorian suburb, and Hadid’s scheme aims to link the pair.

Set over three storeys, the Softbridge Building, which is at a pre-planning stage, is clad in composite glass, which can take a variety of finishes, and will be fabricated off site.

A model of the scheme, which was exhibited before Christmas, met with concern from the Oxfordshire Architectural & Historical Society and the Oxford Civic Society. They questioned whether the design was appropriate for the context.

The scheme features reception and exhibition areas on the ground floor, accessed via a semi-sunken forecourt. The main reading room will be on the first floor, along with the storage area for the library, while the library itself will be on the second floor.

A basement area will boast further storage space and a state-of-the-art lecture hall.

The design also features a series of skylights to increase natural daylight in the library, while the south-facing facade of the archive reading room has fritted glass windows which control solar gain.”