Austrian architecture studio Splitterwerk made this “holiday residence which relates to the slope in an alternative way”.

I can’t verify how well it works as a house, but I think they did a nice job in taking what could be very alien looking and composing it in a way which somehow mediates between our boxy requirements and the uneven earth.

And I wouldn’t mind if I stumbled across it in the wilderness. There’s something so sterile about it that gives it such a good juxtaposition with the land beyond. That’s the kind of unexplainable mystery that I really enjoy when I find buildings I don’t understand — these structures that seem to draw from many typologies and end up becoming more iconic in the way they respond to their context.

Great pieces by Japanese furniture company Truck.

A lot of nice clean lines, but there’s still a raw warmth to the wood and a nostalgia in the classic shapes they’ve appropriated.  It seems like a fine line between a bunch of thrift store gems and custom handcrafted objects, and the ambiguity of the collection’s origin seems to give that time-tested feeling to each of the pieces. 

I’d love to go to Japan and get any one of these. And I’d probably start with that table in the last image…

Nicola Enrico Staübli, previously mentioned in this post, has a new project.  It’s a system of universal furniture joints called INDIE FURNITURE.

The idea is a storage solution designed to reconnect the designer and the user, without a corporate middle man (read: IKEA). After receiving a set of aluminum joint components directly from the designer, and acquiring wood panels locally or from trusted carpenters, the individual consumer becomes actively involved with the creation of each unique piece, constructing it with his own hands. As the aluminum fasteners hold the custom wood in a strict grid, the concentrated design concept is translated across the entire piece, instantly regulating a wide variety of possible configurations and material requirements with one simple repeated form. Rather than disrupting the aesthetic of the wooden parts, the clamps serve to emphasize and highlight the connective details of the shelf as a whole, bringing a compelling and honest form that illustrates its own function.

As a flexible concept, INDIE FURNITURE is non-binding and reconfigurable from beginning to end. The freedom of the initial arrangement and assembly is carried through to the decomposition of the unit, as the robust components are easily dismantled and reused for other shelves. As a straight-forward and restrained design element, the aluminum joint offers an open versatility to a wide range of tectonic possibilities, only limited to the material thickness of 17-20mm. It is an open-source concept of furniture, in which the user’s specific need informs the design, and the language of construction is at its most basic.

INDIE FURNITURE is also a collaborative effort toward a more energy efficient assembly model. With a vast portion of the energy footprint of a product being caused by transportation, INDIE FURNITURE is an opportunity to challenge centralistic business models by outsourcing the heavy and bulky parts to the user himself. As only 6% of the total weight of the shelf, the aluminum clamps offer an easy and accessible solution for local man power to engage the process of design with their own resources and minimal assistance. Since parts and fittings are sold separately, the assembly concept also redirects patronage to community driven craftsmen and the immediate online marketplace. This integration serves to stimulate low-cost and environmentally efficient packaging, distribution and delivery, as well as to amplify the voice of the independent “furniture revolution” through word-of-mouth.

Nicola is one of my favorite young designers, and I’m happy to see that his work with INDIE FURNITURE is currently being exhibited at the Design Museum London.

Check out all of his projects at his portfolio website, Nicola from Bern.

A couple of fine pieces made by Anni Albers. It’s hard to tell if these were made before or after the textiles they represent — as design tests or as post documentation of the fabric itself.

Either way, so timeless… I don’t know what exactly it is about them.

What exactly makes something timeless? Is it the geometry? The restrained color of something? The fact that it is completely non-referential? Or maybe the reference is so obscure… better yet, more ordinary?

This is so great:

MoMA and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center joined forces to address one of the most urgent challenges facing the nation’s largest city: sea-level rise resulting from global climate change. Though the national debate on infrastructure is currently focused on “shovel-ready” projects that will stimulate the economy, we now have an important opportunity to foster new research and fresh thinking about the use of New York City’s harbor and coastline. As in past economic recessions, construction has slowed dramatically in New York, and much of the city’s remarkable pool of architectural talent is available to focus on innovation.

An architects-in-residence program at P.S.1 (November 16, 2009–January 8, 2010) brings together five interdisciplinary teams to re-envision the coastlines of New York and New Jersey around New York Harbor and to imagine new ways to occupy the harbor itself with adaptive “soft” infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a sound ecology. These creative solutions are intended to dramatically change our relationship to one of the city’s great open spaces.

This installation presents the proposals developed during the architects-in-residence program, including a wide array of models, drawings, and analytical materials.

I am now incredibly inspired. Kudos to MoMA and PS1, for realizing the opportunity for such a collaborative and highly relevant challenge. They are so right: it’s times like these, when offices are struggling to find immediate work, when big-picture plans are often neglected. Instead, what they’ve done is in the same vein as the projects themselves: turned a worst-case scenario into a prospect for change — an endless recession into an extended design charrette, and keeping the gears turning and pushing ideas forward until the funding comes around again. Rising Currents is defined by its ethos of “Optimistic Innovation” and I think the same should be true of all of us looking for things to do in this industry right now. 

Check out all the info and updates on the Rising Currents Blog, and if you are in New York between now and October 11, definitely check out the exhibition at MoMA

My design for an Earth Day Klean Kanteen bottle contest at GOOD Magazine.

My concept is a consolidation of the international recycling symbol and a diagram of Earth’s ever-present water cycle.
The intent is to reaffirm recycling and reuse of material as natural life processes, ones that have been in place since Earth’s watery beginning.

Everyone needs water… and with the proliferation of easily destructive products like disposable plastic bottles, safe and sustainable drinking containers have become really important.

My design for an Earth Day Klean Kanteen bottle contest at GOOD Magazine.

(bottle photo by mellisaha)

Going to the dentist is a dreaded experience for most people, but I think I would enjoy it a lot more if this was my clinic.

Keisuke Maeda of UID Architects has designed an office in Hiroshima, Japan which is more reminiscent of a zen retreat than of sterile surgery.

Oliver Wainwright of Icon Magazine says it all:

Squeezed into a long narrow plot, the building’s cedar-clad plywood shell deftly envelops a dental clinic, beauty salon and the architect’s own office -the kind of surreal mixed-programme that can only happen in Japan.

“We tried to rethink the values associated with a mixed-tenancy building,” explains Maeda. “The challenge was to give as much value to the interior spaces as to the street frontage.”

Through a sequence of porous walls that progresses from the street to the back of the plot and inserting “a little forest” of trees in the building’s open core, Maeda has softened the transition between the interior and exterior. “We wanted physical distance to become ambiguous,” he explains, “creating an environment that would spread out in an organic manner.”

Like a multi-layered stage set, each space is separated by a slender plywood screen with seemingly random openings, positioned to ensure privacy while retaining a sense of the adjacent conditions. These varied apertures set up a subtle spatial rhythm as they open and tighten through the different strata of the building, allowing glimpses of neighbouring activities through occasional alignment, but direct views are moderated by the central band of foliage.

While waiting for the drill, you might just be distracted by a glimpse of the curvaceous sunken workspace in the office above, sculpted around the architect’s assistants, they have holes for miniature trees to poke through. “We always tried to break down the borders between the building and the garden,” says Maeda.

I love the idea of the landscape making its way into the perforations of the architecture. It reminds me of why I like ruins: the alternation of walls and vegetation, rooms delineated by man made structure but dissolved in the softness of nature.

Very nice. We need more like this in the US!

Order Is by Louis I. Kahn, 1960.

Found this in my papers, thought I would share.

Nic Webb is an artist who collects wood from the British Isles or overseas, and makes spoons. He describes his process:

When I begin carving I look for the differing qualities in each piece, allowing the grain and character to influence the design. Each spoon evolves to have its own personality and when finished becomes a showcase for the limitless beauty of wood.

Some people collect sand from beaches, or rocks, or air, from different places. But I like this idea more – that you could take your souvenirs and make them an object of everyday use. Your past experience finds its way into your current activity through transformation by your own hand.

Reminded me also of the work of Andrew Montgomery, a fellow VT architecture alum who creates spoons and furniture from salvaged shipping pallets.

Found this at Feasting Never Stops, which is definitely my new favorite image blog. 
It’s basically the But Does It Float for culinary culture.