It’s a little clinical but still pretty cool, check out Deiter Rams’ shack. (Click for hi res)
Yatzer: Dieter Rams is not comfortable with fame. He might be a superstar designer, but if the raised German tones I heard when this was suggested are an indication of his feelings towards this title, he would not want to be remembered in that way. Sitting in a bar on the top floor of a hotel in Osaka three years ago, at the opening of his seminal exhibition ‘Less and More’, Rams was deep in conversation about this very subject proclaiming that he was not a star designer, or at the very least, did not wish to be.
Architect Pierre Koenig’s 1960 Stahl House, Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, California. Photo: Julius Shulman
‘l wanted to breathe some air into the house, not to pose them (the girls) with their faces in the camera necessarily, but to get a feeling of natural activity, as well as using them for scale. After all, architecture is for people. It was a warm night, and I was inside photographing the house with Pierre. I happened to step outside and saw the view, and here the girls were sitting through the glass, just having a conversation. My assistant was setting some lights for me (we were doing an interior photograph) and then when I saw what was going on, I quickly came back in the house and told everyone, ‘We’re changing the composition,’ brought the camera outside, and readjusted the lights. My wife used to say. ‘After all, it’s only a glass box with two girls sitting in it.’ But somehow that one scene expresses what architecture is all about. What if I hadn’t gone outside to see the view? I would have missed a historic photograph, and more than that, we would have missed the opportunity to introduce this kind of architecture to the world.’
The former home and studio of mid-century modern architect A. Quincy Jones, known as “the Barn” was originally designed as a photographer’s studio in 1950. Located at 10300 Santa Monica Blvd, the traditional wood building was remodeled by Jones in 1965 after his home burned down in a hillside fire.
The barn’s renovation was spearheaded by AIA award-winning architect Frederick Fisher. In an interview with Dwell in July 2010, Fisher explained why it was important to rehabilitate the Barn, even though Jones did not build the original structure. “Quincy Jones was one of the premiere California modernists out of the Case Study era, part of the second generation after Schindler and Neutra,” Fisher says. “The Barn was remodeled by him and so it has a very distinctly A.Q. Jones feel to the interior. It was his place of residence, his workplace and a place where many of the activities revolved around his being dean of the School of Architecture at USC.
I was walking round Armadale and was pretty impressed by the front of this place the other day, but the interior is wild. Inhabitat’s got a profile on this great shack by Jackson Clements Burrows.
As Brazil readies itself for the upcoming 2014 World Cup, an even larger global sporting event looms just a couple more years in the future. In conjunction with the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, several new structures will be erected in Rio’s cityscape. One of the many projects creating huge buzz is the Solar City Tower, an artificial waterfall designed to generate clean, renewable energy.
Designed by Swiss firm, RAAFA, Solar City Tower won the architecture competition for the 2016 Olympic Games. Inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfall series, the Solar City Tower will be built on Cotunduba, one of the islands in Rio’s Guanabara Bay.
The vertical structure will be used as an observation tower, and it will capture and distribute solar power to the Olympic Village and to the city. The 345 foot structure will have solar panels around its base, used to store energy during the day, releasing it through turbines for use at night. For special occasions, the turbine will pump seawater into the tower and then shoot it back out to sea, creating a waterfall effect in the middle of the ocean.
In the 1970s, Best Products contracted with James Wines’ “Sculpture in the Environment” (SITE) architecture firm to design nine highly unorthodox retail facilities, notably a tongue-in-cheek structure called the “Indeterminate Facade” in Houston, Texas with a severely distressed facade.
‘I first saw these amazing buildings, almost all of which have now either had their facades removed or have actually been demolished, in the November 2007 issue of Wallpaper. The BEST Products Company of Richmond, Virginia commissioned architect James Wines’ SITE (Sculpture In The Environment) to build nine commercial buildings for them in the 1970s and early 80s. BEST was founded and owned by the Lewises, a Virginia family interested in art and design. BEST stores were famous for their willingness to trade store merchandise for art and as a result the company, as well as the Lewises, gathered a significant collection of 20th century pieces. Much of the Lewis Collection can be seen at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. (See Wikipedia for a more detailed story.) Apparently more photographs of the building above have appeared in books on 20th century architecture than any other modern structure.’
Here’s an awseome little doco documentary called Site Best Stories directed and produced by Howard Silver. There’s some great candid responses from people on the streets. Click for the rest.
Check out a couple of the 10,000 overgrown abandoned houses in Detroit. The photographer followed a pack of 9 dogs into one of these, apparently they’re living there.
I’ve just been put onto an awesome blog called Cabin Porn.
It’s got a heap of great high res photos of cabins of various type from all over the world. It’s fun to imagine but I think i’d probably have a meltdown early on day two, due to withdrawals from Vietnamese soup. Then it would inevitably lead to a Shining-eske showdown between me and some kid over who’s go it was on the tricycle.
The top is a cabin on Black Butte, Oregon. Submitted by Tamiesie
The orange one is Mt. Brown Hut in the Southern Alps
The bottom red one is a Mountain hut above Waimakariri Falls on South Island, New Zealand by Hugh Van Noorden
Got a spare $750k? Go buy a house that’s built out of an old 9-story Cold War era Atlas F underground missile launch site. ScoutingNY has a heap of photos
I’ve just been going through the 50 top Yatzer articles of 2011 and found this. A former Cement Factory turned into the workspace and residence of architect Ricardo Bofill. I guess it would be bearable to live here. Click through to see heaps more photos, including some of how the factory looked when the site was found in 1973.
