Blog Archives
Dang! We Could Have Built Homes from Bottles of Heineken!
It’s amazing what a little inspiration and a want to make the world a better place can result in.
Beer brewing magnate Alfred Heineken was visiting one of his companies in Curaçao in1960 when he noticed the location’s lack of affordable building materials and poor quality housing, and the beaches littered with his brewery’s beer bottles. Mr. Heineken would experience a spark of genius when he figured that he could kill two birds with one stone (just a saying….maybe) and, with help from Dutch architect N. John Habraken, created a concept to design an emerald-green glass beer bottle for sale, that could later be reused as a structural building material. Read the rest of this entry
Get Your Own New Home…Made From a Boeing 747!!
Have you ever wondered what the afterlife of a Boeing 747 was like. Do they go to heaven and see the old-timey propeller planes from childhood pasts or are they harvested for parts for repairing or building news planes, a’la “The Circle of Life?” Well, in this case, a particular 747 has been re-purposed into a luxury home. Read the rest of this entry
Twofold House is Ten-fold in Environmental Initiatives
This pair of 4-bedroom luxury townhouses was designed by BKK Architects, where the developer client’s wishes of high quality-low density housing were met with the firm’s interests in addressing issues of containment and scale while still providing a high standard of living amenity. The home also delivers a high level of environmental design with varied green/sustainability measures to complement the home’s luxury. Read the rest of this entry
Helicopter Fueled by People-Power Reaches New (literal) Heights
A few months ago (June, to be exact), a pilot was able to keep the human-powered Gamera II in the air for a 50 seconds. While that sounds very impressive (and it is), it only soaring slightly over the ground. However this flight, while shorter in duration, achieved a record by hovering 8 feet in the air. More information and a video of the demonstration after the break. Read the rest of this entry
Facebooking Gehry, Solar Energy Spheres, Secret Shenmue 3 & E-C-W is Born! – The PractitioNERD, Ep. 10
This week’s episode of The PractitioNERD discusses the World Headquarters of Stalking gets a new HQ (http://goo.gl/sNom9), Solar Spheres better than Solar Panels (http://goo.gl/2gdw0), the subliminal release of Shenmue 3 (http://goo.gl/yL6iu), and ECW? Born out of Controversy? Really? (http://goo.gl/1bgfT)
…also, THE QUESTION OF THE WEEK!! Read the rest of this entry
From a Mustard Lab to Call Center, Amazing what New Aesthetics can do…
Two weeks in a row, two works of architecture involving the repurposing of an existing building into another building, and this project is the conversion of a mustard laboratory in Dijon into a Telecom call center. The project architects, Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, had taken the New Aesthetic at full face value (as you can plainly see). Even though a problem with repurposing existing buildings is the possibility of the spaces being incapable of adapting to any new functions (regardless of building condition), the firm claimed that “the more reuse of the existing is possible the more budget is liberated for interventions.” That statement is made clear by the project’s 4 million euro budget (about $4.89 million), as the design strategy involved only minor changes to the existing exterior casing, and concentrated on almost entirely renovating the interior spaces. Read the rest of this entry
Jason Voorhees Killed Episode 3 – The PractitioNERD, Episode 2.5
After some technical mishaps, this week’s abridged version of The PractitioNERD will be the first of many smaller, more frequent videos, as explained above. Read the rest of this entry
An Old Prison Paroled, Now a Civic Center. YAY!
Originally erected in Palencia, Spain at the turn of the 19th century, this brick building was intended to house criminals from petty crimes to serious offences. Now, over 100 years later, this building — thanks to EXIT Architects – has transformed in a hub of cultural education for the local residents. What used to be the Palencia Provincial Prison is now rechristened the Palencia Civic Center, a neo-mudejar style building which offers services ranging from music lessons, meeting rooms, a public library, and much more. Read the rest of this entry
Return of the London Olympics: The Summer Game’s Shooting Venue
And now…the long awaited “Part 3″ of my “coverage” of works of architecture being erected for the upcoming 2012 Olympic Summer Games that start next month in London. First I covered the nomadic basketball arena, second was the natatorium, and now I’ll be covering the London Olympic Shooting Venue. This building will accommodate the 10, 25 and 50 m Sport Shooting events for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and after the Summer Games have concluded, the three temporary and mobile buildings will be dismantled (a’la the basketball arena before mentioned) and rebuilt in Glasgow for the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Read the rest of this entry
Charge you Cell Phone with FIRE (or candles) & SCIENCE!
For the second time in the last month, the transformer on my street went haywire and the power went out on our street for a few hours. Fortunately, we had plenty of flashlights and candles (old school FTW) to keep the house well-lit enough; unfortunatley, my phone’s battery is about to die, and there was no available power. DIY weblog Tinkernut shows us how to power your phone with the heat of one of those candles, thanks to thermodynamics, thermoelectric effects, and a Peltier effect device.
DjavadMowafaghian Centre for Brain Health; Now, Say That Five-Times Fast.
The DjavafMowafaghian Centre for Brain Health is designed to be a translational research facility defined by present and future medical practices that interact and collaborate under both patient care and research. The facility, to be located at the University of British Columbia (UBC), located in Vancouver, BC, Canada, is designed by Stantec, who aimed to consider all of the spatial dynamics of the building and be able to coordinate interaction between the centre’s researchers and clinicians. The DjavadMowafaghian is 134,500 square feet facility that and includes exam/consultation rooms, patient and animal MRI capabilities, a brain tissue and DNA bank of samples collected from consenting patients, lab benches, and a full conference centre.
PSU Developing Bandages That Dissolve Into Sugar Post-Healing
Penn State University’s Department of Food Science have worked utilizing an electrospinning device to stretch fibrous strands from a solution of biodegradable food-starch. After using the solvent to dissolve the starch into fluid, the long strands are then spun and then can be woven together like textiles—an application that could potentially include the creation of napkins, tissues, paper-like products, and even medical dressings, such as gauze and bandages. Read the rest of this entry
Fan Builds Own Custom House from “The Hobbit”
“Lord of the Rings” fan Simon Dale was tired and uninterested in the typical, cookie-cutter suburban homes (or, in his words, “mass produced box design” homes). Dale, who is neither an architect nor contractor, moved his family to a Welsh countryside and designed and built a house in the fashion of “The Hobbit” of his beloved series. Read the rest of this entry
Concrete Tubing Recycled into Affordable "All-Tube" Hotel
Upon initially seeing this picture below, the first thought that came to mind was:
This is the “Tubohotel,” located in Tepoztlan, Morelos, Mexico, which is less than an hour away from Mexico City. The hotel was designed by T3arc, whose goal was to swiftly build a hotel at a low cost, and it is an affordable hotel that utilizes recycled concrete tubing for the rooms, which allows the rooms to showcase some amazing views of the area’s landscape and natural features. The Tubohotel is said to have been inspired by architect Andreas Strauss’ Das ParkHotel. In contrast, the Tubohotel’s concrete modules have included some glass to provide better panoramic views for the guests (mainly of the local mountain range, Sierra del Tepozteco). Legend has it that Tepoztlan (the site of the Tubohotel) is the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl, Mexico’s ancient feathered serpent god. Read the rest of this entry
