A realy nice web resource for Housing Prototypes, each project has extensive text, images, drawings, and references. You can also search by Architect, location and building type. I’ve seen and used this site a few times but kept loosing the address, buried deep in my del.icio.us links no doubt.
Houses in Japan typically last for 30 years and are never sold before they are demolished. This article in the economist explains the economic reasons behind this but I instantly remembered that at least some Japanese temples like the Ise Shrine are remade every few years. The ideas of time, ageing and solidity seem tantalisingly [...]
We don’t really think about it day to day but we live in an energy grid, a complex system of infrastructure and activity of which we know only the vaguest details and definetly rarely think about beyond plugging the light in when its dark. But that really has to change soon, if we are [...]
The scale and velocity of world population increase over the last fifty years has been unprecedented in human history. Urbanisation, with over a billion people living in cities has become the key signature of this growth, with the urban population for the first time greater than in the country. These facts are startling, if common [...]
(image from Arkkitehtitoimisto ALA Oy)
ALA just won the design competition for the new urban plan of Hanasaari. As can be seen from the graphic the new housing blocks are going to make a real statement from the sea, with large balconies and an extended wave like form or possibly boat hulls. This development will start [...]
Reading about the recent coverage of the bienalle and more specifically on the talk ‘My kind of Town’ which included a discussion between Rem Koolhaus and Alain DeBotton on Architecture, PartIV quoted something DeBotton said and which was taken up by rob about ugliness;
When at the end, he (A de B) said that he was [...]
For the Taivallahti Residential Area competition in Helsinki Stephen Holl beat Jo-Coenen, Dominique Perrault, and Cino Zucchi to win. This is Stephen Holl’s second success in Helsinki after Kiasma (some slides here) and actually I don’t know of any other project by a foreign Architect completed in Finland other than this one! The winning entry [...]
If you go to Helsinki this summer you can get a very good idea of the current state of Architecture and Design in Finland by going to three exhibitions. There is the the Asuntomessut (Housing Fair) in Espoo, the 0405 Architecture Exhibition at the Finnish Architecture Museum and at the Design museum there is [...]
