From Indecorat

An Urban Refuge by Sergi Pons

Sergi Pons Architecte has designed An Urban Refuge apartment by in Barcelona, Spain:
This project sets out to alter and improve an apartment situated facing away from the road in a 1980’s building on carrer Casanova, on the left side of the Eixample in Barcelona.

In defining the new use of space in accordance with the client’s needs, attention has been given to maximizing the entry of daylight and the visual interrelationships between the different parts of the house, each with its own identity.

apartment in Barcelona An Urban Refuge by Sergi Pons

The aim is to give the occupant a permanent awareness of the entire space from each part of the house. The visual space flows in the same way as does the layout.

The heart of the house is the ironing area where the owner spends a lot of time. An effort has been made to freeze this moment of intimacy and to use a large window to frame an undervalued yet daily activity.

yellow interior An Urban Refuge by Sergi Pons

Pine is used for the floors and some of the walls, and the color yellow for the movable objects.

The clean, well-defined design is intended to work without ornamentation. The functional objects, such as folding tables, hangers, portable mirrors, etc. give the space life, meaning and a sense of domesticity. These objects are the decor of the space.

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From Archdaily

Courtesy of Filipe Magalhaes + Ana Luisa Soares

Architects Filipe Magalhaes and Ana Luisa Soares shared with us their first prize winning proposal in the go.architecture v.03: 48 hours ideas competition. The competition asked for the design of a space of silence and peace, a place which was intended to represent a farewell but who found itself lost in an uncharacteristic and aimless area. The given program was small in such a vast place. In a new concrete body were dispersed the functions within a wall that embraces the woods. More images and architects’ description after break.

Courtesy of Filipe Magalhaes + Ana Luisa Soares

The argument is isolation: the building / stone / wall remains with the durability and strength of its thickness and weight. Within caves and niches, different spaces...

From A Daily Dose of Architecture

Recently I received a couple magazines that are both fairly new, albeit completely new to me. Based out of Italy, Boundaries: International Architectural Magazine is "a quarterly international journal on contemporary architecture, with texts in English and Italian, that offers a critical view over the architectures that today deal, in many different ways, with the challenges of the contemporariness and of sustainability intended as a balance between cultural, environmental, economic and social matters." And then there is the Chicago-based Design Bureau (published by ALARM Press), which "delivers an honest and inspirational global dialogue on design from diverse disciplines and points of view. ...[towards] discovering great design and the people who make it happen." Below are some thoughts on a recent issue of each magazine.



Boundaries:
Unlike many architecture publications put out a few or more times a year, Boundaries gives each issue a theme and strictly makes the content fit the topic. The first issue (July-September 2011), for example, is called "Contemporary Architecture in Africa" and does an excellent in job in presenting buildings, projects, books, and histories on the continent. Each issue is structured into sections: News, Perspective, Architecture, Ideas, That Was the Year..., and Book Reviews. The Architecture section makes up the bulk of each issue and highlights particular types of buildings or related strands within the theme. In this regard, issue 2 -- "Architecture...

From Archinect

In the companion to this post, we took a look at some of the challenges and barriers to creating an incubator culture that could support architectural startups. But, when you take a step back, would accelerating the number of new startups really solve some of our most pressing issues? The notion that architecture is an ‘old person’s profession’ has legs for a reason – to master all the complexities takes years of accomplishment, learning and doing. Starting a firm before you’ve gained the right kinds of experience doesn’t, on the whole, help advance the profession forward. And, by extension, how many young practitioners really want to start out with no clue as to what they’re doing? I’m willing to bet it’s very, very few.

To improve the startup culture of the profession – something any reader of this blog would know is a Martha Stewart “Good Thing” to me – one would first have to address how to properly train young professionals and in an appropriate time frame. Does ...

From Archinect

View The University of Nottingham - The Gateway Building in Make's Archinect profile.

From Archinect

Dirt—edited by Megan Born, Helene Furján, and Lily Jencks with Phillip M. Crosby—(The MIT Press, 2012) presents a selection of works that share dirty attitudes: essays, interviews, excavations, and projects that view dirt not as filth but as a medium, a metaphor, a material, a process, a design tool, a narrative, a system. Rooted in the landscape architect's perspective, Dirt views dirt not as repulsive but endlessly giving, fertile, adaptive, and able to accommodate difference while maintaining cohesion. This dirty perspective sheds light on social connections, working processes, imaginative ideas, physical substrates, and urban networks. Dirt is a matrix; as a book, it organizes contributions from architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, historic preservation, fine arts, and art history. The chapters predict and report on city waterfronts revamped by climate change, the reinvention of suburbia, and cityscapes of ruins; dish the dirt with yet-to-be proven ...

From Archinect

There must be something in the air.  My last post - about a recent conversation FastCo had with fuseproject’s Yves Behar - looked at that design firm’s equity role with some of the startup clients they work with. Later that week, David Fano and Steve Sanderson of CASE took a look at transferring the culture of startup incubator’s to the world of architecture in their Practice 2.0 series with our friends at ArchDaily. Last week, a colleague in town, on seeing my post here, met up for lunch to discuss his ideas and proposals to help re-focus the AIA’s efforts towards supporting more entrepreneurial firms. Throw in a couple of freshly minted discussion posts here at archinect and startup fever, like spring, is definitely in the air.

But really, is this a surprise? Isn't the necessity of the turbulence swirling the past 3 years enough to cause any profession to look deep and hard about how it operates? Especially one which has the dubious distinction of having its rec...

From Notcot

Black + Blum’s new Eau Good filter water bottle - the new water bottle was spotted at NYIGF by Core77 and at IDS by TreeHugger. The concept is interesting ~ the piece of Binchotan active charcoal snaps into place when the bottle is squeezed (and you do the same to release it)… made of BPA free tritan, the bottle is closed with a simple cork. See more pics on the next page…

From Dezeen

Five years ago this week an all-star lineup of architects comprising Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Tadao Ando released proposals for a cultural complex on an island off the coast of Abu Dhabi. Hadid’s designs were for a performing arts centre projecting towards the harbour while Gehry put forward plans for a Guggenheim contemporary art museum, Nouvel proposed a Louvre classical art gallery and Ando designed a maritime museum. All four are currently still in development. (more…)

From Archdaily

Courtesy of Make Architects

Architects: Make Architects
Location: Nottingham, UK
Client: The University of Nottingham
Completed: 2008
Collaborators: Rok Sol Construction, Adams Kara Taylor, AECOM, Faber Maunsell, Craft Pegg Landscape Architects, Davis Langdon, Gardiner & Theobald
Area: 12,000 sqm
Photographs: Zander Olsen, Make Architects

Courtesy of Make Architects

The first phase of the Jubilee Campus expansion project delivers a remarkable new environment for research, study, business and leisure to be enjoyed by both the university and the city of Nottingham as a whole.

Three new buildings and the Aspire sculpture signal the transformation of a former industrial site and create a new identity for the campus. Dramatically angular in form, International House and...

From Industrialdesignserved

From Furniturefashion

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, it seems only appropriate to take a moment and focus on furniture built for two. Today’s roundup of extraordinary loveseats and apartment sofas runs from the classic (see “The Papabear” from Modernica) to the extreme (see “Space Invaders” from Dorothy) but hold one commonality among them: they’re perfectly suited for lovebirds and singles alike. Feel like cozying up to your one and only on the holiday made for couples? Look no further than a loveseat. Spending February 14 flying solo and watching a horror flick while eating as much garlic-laced cuisine as you possibly can? Ironically, there’s no better place to curl up under a blanket and bask in your independence than one of these snug little couches. But no matter how you spend...

From Furniturestoreblog

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, it seems only appropriate to take a moment and focus on furniture built for two. Today’s roundup of extraordinary loveseats and apartment sofas runs from the classic (see “The Papabear” from Modernica) to the extreme (see “Space Invaders” from Dorothy) but hold one commonality among them: they’re perfectly suited for lovebirds and singles alike. Feel like cozying up to your one and only on the holiday made for couples? Look no further than a loveseat. Spending February 14 flying solo and watching a horror flick while eating as much garlic-laced cuisine as you possibly can? Ironically, there’s no better place to curl up under a blanket and bask in your independence than one of these snug little couches. But no matter how you spend next Tuesday, you have to admit these miniature sofas are pretty inviting.

Cityscape Loveseat by Teo Jasmin

Lime Green Loveseat from Younger Furniture

The Trace Loveseat from Armen Living

Turquoise Velvet Loveseat from Room Service

Cityscape loveseat found at Teo Jasmin.

From Archdaily

You may remember our coverage on the Flight Assembled Architecture exhibit by Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea, in collaboration with ETH Zurich, that featured a team of flying drones constructing an architectural structure at the scale of a 600m high “vertical village” out of foam blocks. Well, check this out! Roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab, along with developer Kmel Robotics, have created these autonomous Nano Quadrotors capable of flying in formation and flawlessly performing complex maneuvers. Imagine the possibilities!

Reference: Wired, GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania