SpaceInvading
Villa/Gallery
Designer: Makoto Yamaguchi Design
Location: Minami Karuizawa, Gunma, Japan
Image Credits: Koichi Torimura
Karuizawa is a bijou town favoured by weekending Tokyoites. The Villa is perched on a steep slope oriented south in the forest, and looks out over a towering view of mountain ranges.
It is the villa for the couple of musicians. They wanted a flexible space that could work as a villa, gallery for contemporary art -mainly sculptures- and salon for music concert, place to entertain friends. To fulfill the functions, the ‘blank space’ should be required. The kitchen and bath -usual functions of a house- are built into the floor. The materials, requested interestingly no wood should be visible, glass, mirror and polished stainless steel reflect the light and view in the obstacle-less interior. They create an expanded impression of the space, one storey polygon with plenty of empty, white space.
The outside form a remarkable contrast to the interior. The finish of outside, the roof, wall, oblique foundation, is FRP (fiber reinforced plastics) painted in white. The seamless skin looks scaleless ‘point’ in the forest.
→ whatwedoissecret.org
Posted: 01/15/2009
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Domestic Transformer
Designer: Gary Chang
Location: Hong Kong, HK
Image Credits: Marcel Lam
This room — the “maximum kitchen,” he calls it — and the “video game room” he was sitting in minutes before are just 2 of at least 24 different layouts that Mr. Chang, an architect, can impose on his 344-square-foot apartment, which he renovated last year. What appears to be an open-plan studio actually contains many rooms, because of sliding wall units, fold-down tables and chairs, and the habitual kinesis of a resident in a small space. As Mr. Chang put it, “I glide around.”
→ nytimes.com
Posted: 01/15/2009
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Kokage
Designer: Hirokazu Suemitsu and Yoko Suemitsu of SUEP
Location: Abiko, Japan
Image Credits: Shinkenchiku-sha
“Kokage” means the shade of a tree(s). The name of this house refers to the shape of its pillars. This house built in 2008 was designed by Hirokazu Suemitsu and Yoko Suemitsu of SUEP. The aesthetic of the house is defined by the Y-shaped structural partitions which also serve as the cooling system of the house.
→ whatwedoissecret.org
Posted: 01/15/2009
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Koolhand
Designer: Chris Papasadero (fwis)
Location: n/a
This is something I started a while back and never really finished; a weird display typeface based on the architecture of one of my favorites, Rem Koolhaas. I honestly have no real justification for loving OMA, I think its just highly avant garde and postmodern - very little architecture in the US catches my attention, I am sad to say. I believe this has to do with the conservative attitudes on aesthetics that are prevalent in all walks of life here in the states.
→ type.fwis.com
Posted: 01/15/2009
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Solarbulb
Designer: Miniwiz
Location: n/a
Few can say they took packaging design cues from fast food burger containers… although Miniwiz’s Solarbulb has been making the rounds this week due to their CES presence, and the very interesting concept of a solar powered light that can screw on to your standard plastic water bottles, or on their POLLI-brick bottles that are interlockable to build larger structures… not nearly enough attention has been paid to their packaging prototypes and iconography on them! Basically these solar/wind powered portable device designers make incredible use of cardboard! Also noteworthy is their miniNOTE ~ a cardboard mailer/postcard with a solar panel and battery built in for your recipient to charge and use instantly! Such a beautiful gesture ~ can you imagine sending “power” to a bunch of your friends?
→ www.notcot.com
Posted: 01/15/2009
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