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Mangroves Inspire Screened Luxury Apartment Building

The architects brief was to design an iconic building to be used for luxury apartments in Australia overlooking the central business district of Brisbane across a river – on a site had been previously occupied by a dilapidated motel building from the 1950s.

So architects Damian Barker & Paul Brace of Jackson Teece used biomimicry to pay homage to the angles created by mangroves and melaleuca trees to create an iconic building while responding to the sub-tropical climate, riverside environment.

Inspired by nearby mangroves and melaleuca forests, the sinuous screens provide a visual identity and visual privacy, while providing thermal protection from the fierce tropical heat beating down in this part of Australia.

Up close, these nature-inspired screens formed of cast concrete elements, are authentic reproductions of the organized randomness found in nature, as if organically grown – on an assembly line. Read the rest of this entry »

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A Sweet Garden Home in Tokyo from Ryue Nishizawa

This strange, charming, ethereal residence wedged between two much more solid structures in downtown Tokyo is barely more than a series of white platforms interspersed by greenery.

The tiny house from Ryue Nishizawa and Sou Fujimoto drifts in place within the tiny lot, with barely any boundaries, so that apparently nothing but vases, planters, concrete benches, plexiglass railings and curtains form its sides.

Essentially just a series of platforms for plantings, living here would create a feeling of living within a hanging garden. An adjustable “wall” of curtain, hanging from a curved curtain rail is a shockingly ethereal cladding material for a residence.

By dispensing with walls, natural light floods the interior. Privacy is protected to some extent by little more than filmy curtains that let in light, but blur the view in.

The narrow structure, with no true facade is tightly wedged between two buildings that are are mostly just walls on each side. Read the rest of this entry »

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A Cozy New Student Center at Coventry University

Student’s centers are those comfortable hang-out spots at universities that combine studying with social life during your years of college.

Coventry’s new student center ‘the hub’ (sited at the center of the university campus) designed by Hawkins\Brown Architects is one of the best.

For many students at university, this is their first experience of living away from home. Coventry University in the UK tries to make that a little less of a sudden adjustment to the cruel world with a new student center that exudes cosiness, intimacy and security.

Covering an area of 91,000 square feet and able to comfortably accommodate 1,000 students at the same time, the new student center really gives the feeling of a home away from home in what could be a large and impersonal setting for the 10,000 students enrolled at the university. Read the rest of this entry »

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Design Dilemma: 5 Options for Organizing Gadgets

A few years ago, we were all  worrying about how to organize our growing collection of books. Remember bookshelves? But this is 2012, and these days we’re concerned not about organizing books but a growing collection of electronic devices, including our Kindles, Nooks, Ipads, Iphones, Netbooks, cellphones, external hard drives, flash drives and other assorted gadgetry and the cords that come with them.

Are electronic devices taking over your life? Here are 5 ideas to help you get organized:

1) The Door Dropspot (pictured above). Need a safe place to stash your continuously disappearing cellphone? Invest in the Door Dropspot which provides a nifty place to keep cellphones, keys, letters that need to be mailed, etc. Since it all hangs from a doorknob you’ll be reminded of what to take out with you each time you’re ready to leave the house. This handy gadget, called the Doorganizer©

2) The Backpack from TwelveSouth. Got an external hard drive that is eating up a lot of desk space? Well, if you’ve got an iMac or an Apple Cinema Display, check out the Backpack. By clamping down on the mounting arm of the display, it acts as a little shelf, tucked out of the way. They even come with wire ties for cord management, and a silicone mat so that the spinning of the drive doesn’t cause too much noise.

3) Velcro. Here’s another option for tucking away that pesky external hard drive. Try affixing industrial-strength Velcro underneath your desk to hold your drive and any USB cables or USB hubs you may need.

4) The OneLessDrop cord organizer. Has your life disintegrated into a tangle of cords? Check out the “H” which elegantly sits on your desk to keep your cords in place and out of sight.

5) The OXO Cord Catch. It keeps your unplugged cables and cords off the floor and within easy reach. No more crawling underneath desks to find cellphone cords of computer cables!

And here are some other ways to cut down on gadgetry clutter:

• Buy less. Do you honestly need the device you’re considering buying? Will it improve your life or complicate your life?
• Become a late adopter. Instead of running out to buy the latest Kindle, Ipad, Iphone, or what have you, take your time and wait for the products to improve (and come down in price). You’ll get a better product that you can hang onto for longer, you’ll pay less and you’ll save the environment by not making multiple purchases of the same product.
• Edit relentlessly. Are you the type to hold onto all the old gadgets and cords you’ve ever owned, even if perhaps the gadget is now broken and unusable? Don’t be afraid to toss.
• Identify where to send old electronic gadgets before it’s time to toss. Sometimes, we are reluctant to get rid of an old laptop, a broken TV or cellphone because we have no idea how to safely dispose of such items. Make a point of researching when and how you can dispose of your electronic gadgets ahead of time, so that there’s no hesitation about tossing an item when it has reached the end of its useful life.

Images: via apartmenttherapy.com

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A Greenhouse Sleep-Out Under glass

In New Zealand’s many beachside resort areas that swell up to accomodate four times as many inhabitants during the summers, it is common to have a garden “sleep out” for extra guests: just a room for an extra bed.

Here is an example of that rather unique kind of structure, from Scandinavia.

Prefab greenhouses are available that are modular: they can be constructed to be any size.

Designer Linda Bergroth took a prototype garden greenhouse prefab, added a beautiful floor, a brick pathway and steps leading to the door, painted the wood a chic black, and created a wonderful sleep out bedroom in the garden. Read the rest of this entry »