Alan Voo House | Neil M. Denari Architects

This is some futurisitcplayeristicssupercallifragilisticexpyalladosciousish!

viaarchdaily

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DuPont™ Corian® Design Studio Launches in New York

Located in the flatiron district of new york city, DuPont™ opened the first ever Corian® design studio.viadesignboom

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Platoon Kunshalle

PLATOON KUNSTHALLE opened its doors on 11th april 2009. PLATOON KUNSTHALLE is set up in Seoul as a space for subculture in Asia. its programmatic orientation towards cultural movements beneath the radar creates a dynamic space where new ideas are born and presented.

Concept Design: Platoon Cultural Development
Location: Seoul, Korea

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Safe Haven Library | TYIN Tegnestue

In January 2009 TYIN invited 15 norwegian architect students from NTNU to participate in a workshop at the Safe Haven Orphanage. The workshop was led by Associate Professor Hans Skotte and architect Sami Rintala. The most immediate needs at the orphanage was a library and a new sanitary building. TYIN worked on a bathhouse, together with the Karen workers from Noh Bo, while the workshop participants put their efforts into the library.

The concrete base of the library is cast on a bed of large rocks gathered on-site. Walls made of plastered concrete blocks cools the building during the day, while the open bamboo facade gives a good ventilation. Iron wood makes up the solid frame construction and serves as comfortable floor for the children to play on.

The bookshelves run along the concrete walls in their full height, and the floor is left unfurnished to give room for different activities. The entrance, creates a comfortable buffer between the outdoors and indoors and divides the ground floor into a small computer area on one side and a larger library room on the other.

The most important thing to Tasanee is that her children are provided food and education. In the library the children at Safe Haven Orphanage now have a space to do homework, use a computer with internet and read books written in different languages. The new building has also attained the important role of a gathering space and is frequently used for play, games and crafts.

That NTNU, as an educational institution, contributes to workshops like this is of great importance. It creates a unique opportunity for young, skilled students to engage real problems and make decisions with real consequences.viaarchdaily

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Celosia Building | MVRDV with Blanca Lleó

In Madrid-Sanchinarro the first residents received the keys to their apartments in the just completed Celosia building. Jacob van Rijs of MVRDV and Blanca Lleó have completed the social housing block near the Mirador Building, which is an earlier collaboration. The perforated block of Celosia assembles 146 apartments, communal outside areas throughout the building, and parking and commercial program in the plinth. The total floor area is 21,550 sqm. With a construction cost of 12,6 million Euro the apartments can be sold for affordable prizes. The city block is opened and allows wind and light to enter the building, offering vistas and outside spaces contrasting the surrounding area. The client is EMVS, the public housing corporation of the city of Madrid.viaarchdaily

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Cool Cars: Parajet Skycar V2

“the world’s first usable road-legal flying car” comes along, it would be quite easy to dismiss it into the category of outlandish renderings that have no possiblity of actual construction. In this case, we would be quite wrong, however. The Parajet SkyCar, the world’s first bio-fueled flying car, has been under development for several years, and in January, it made a successful air voyage from Europe to Timbuktu. While finished development and testing are still in the future, you can put a down payment on your very own SkyCar today. For around $16,338 (10,000 pounds) you can reserve a SkyCar, which is priced at $81, 700 (50,000 pounds).viakanyeuniversity


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Brazil Contemporary – Contemporary Art, Architecture, Visual culture and Design

Three Rotterdam museums - Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Netherlands Architecture Institute and Nederlands Fotomuseum - are bringing the rich culture of Brazil to the city on the Maas.

Brazil Contemporary is running since 30 May until 23 August 2009.

Brazil is inspiring, astounding, amazing. It is one of the largest countries in the world, with vast cities of millions of inhabitants that defy the imagination. Brazil is also developing at breakneck speed and is one of the economic giants of the future. But Brazil has its downside too: the depletion of the rainforest, the enormous contrast between rich and poor, the favelas. These phenomena are culturally reflected in an exciting cocktail of high and low art, of street art and politically committed art, and of different art disciplines and traditional craftsmanship. Brazilian culture will go to your head.viaarchdaily














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Branch Bank in Hettingen by Ecker Architekten

A new glass banking pavilion for Hettingen signals an investment in the future of the community. The transparency of the façade invites bank clientele while confidently demonstrating state-of-the-art security measures. The modern building contrasts markedly with the surrounding residential zone of traditional houses and gardens. Hand-polished aluminum curtain walls suspend glass panes of 3.7 meters in height. The flat roof edge conceals exterior sun-shades. The timeless, modern appearance extends through the building interiors.








A free-standing cabinet wall conceals all of the technical functions of the bank, and gives character to the spaces for customer service and private transactions. The building is supported by six cruciform columns, and lighting, cooling and security monitoring devices are concealed in a plenum above a ceiling of fine aluminum louvers. With this new building, the bank has re-established its presence in this traditional town with a decidedly modern architecture.viaarchdaily





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I'M ON A BOAT!!!

Kevin schopfer, a boston, massachusetts-based architect has designed two unusually shaped yachts named 'oculus' and 'infinitas'. Designed to accommodate 12 guests for a long distance cruising yacht, 'oculus' looks like a large-scaled sea creature with the jaw and eyes of a whale and a small fin on the top.'Infinitas' is influenced by the shapes of the figure-eight infinity loops. Both yachts incorporate swimming pools and a sun deck,with a starting price of 95 million US dollars for 'oculus' and 140 million US dollars for 'infinitas'.....In the timeless words of Shawn Carter "Big Pimpin, spending cheese!" Maybe Debonoir will go half on one of these with me?!

ihope you sail, i mean, live before you die.-Wally.Vega

Zevs Electric Motorbike

The ZEVS electric motorcycle concept goes an extra mile to get its retroish aggressive looks. They call it the first electric motorcycle for the “Real Biker” and real bikers probably will agree with them. As they put it, ” Designs for “real men”, dusty roads, in the spirit of Harley Davidson, Custom Chopper culture and the good old Route 66 romance.”viaautomotto








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Coco Before Chanel

ihope you live before you die-Wally.Vega

Vallecas 51 / SOMOS Arquitectos

1. URBAN SETTING AND PROJECT
The proposed building rises eight floors above the ground along one of the limits of the block imposed by the urban planning. The great scale of the building acts like a visual screen for the green area that stands aside, physically protecting it. The volume, specifically fixed according to the rigid city-planning rules that prevail within the scope of the PAU de Vallecas, as well as the optimization of the space to obtain the estimated amount of apartments, drove us to respect the enveloped volume determined in the planning, using another series of tools to give a new urban approach to the intervention. On the ground floor, the apartments are oriented towards the later green area, whereas towards the official facade and the hustle and bustle common of a commercial street, the commercial premises and the three accesses (garage and pedestrian) are placed.



The building raises a scale reduction, a friendly relation with the surroundings spliting the facade in small units that combined with each other might be able to transmit a changing sensation, dynamic, chameleonlike. The facade crystallizes through open celled polycarbonate panels fixed on an aluminum substructure, creating a sustainable and recyclable skin. These panels achieve, through gradation of tones and brightness, combined with a substrate of neutral color determined by the outer shell of the facade, the right combination of both materials in order to make the entire façade to vibrate, entering in resonance with that light so characteristic on the city of Madrid.

In the inside, a courtyard flanked with access galleries provides the apartments with light and crossed ventilation, two facts that in this way would let them become open to two opposed facades. The light galleries made out of steel wind through the inner void and optimize the ratio of vertical access cores on each floor. At the same time they grant renewed aesthetic qualities, as well as hygiene and salubrity to the common space of relation. A translucent polycarbonate ceiling is settled like linen cloths that illuminate the accesses to the apartments. The slim stairs are solved extending out from these galleries in an overhang which jumps in the air connecting each floor.




2. PROGRAM
It is about one promotion of 123 houses of Social housing, 2 businesses and 4 underground floors for garage, to be solved in a quarter of a block. In order to save space, we propose just two vertical communication cores located at the ends of the inner courtyard. The apartments are grouped around this patio, being accessed through steel footbridges. The units prepared for handicapped people are placed on the ground floor looking out towards the green area, whereas in the main façade, access hall and garage find their place, as well as the commercial premises.viaarchdaily

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