Number of years the site stood vacant: 12
Interior design: John Pawson
Why you should know him: Recently he’s done stage design for major ballets and operas as well as a temporary exhibition in the Geometric Staircase of St. Paul’s Cathedral. See all his work.
Number of floors: 5
Square-meters: 10,000 (about 33 square-feet)
Height of peaked roof: 16 meters (about 55 feet)
Estimated annual visitors: 500,000 (double the previous amount)
Estimated cost: £80 million (about $126 million)

“It’s a true icon and example of post war modernism,” Pawson said. ”The challenge was working inside the skin of an existing building. For me it’s about retuning the existing architecture so it still feels fresh. The palette we’ll use is quite quiet and simple…and will retain and enhance the extraordinary special qualities of the building.”

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Photographer Carl Kleiner and his recent campaign for IKEA proves that flatware is anything but boring. If he can work that kind of magic with IKEA’s simple line of dishes, imagine what he could do with Alessi’s new flatware collection “Dressed,” designed by Marcel Wanders. If you’ve never heard of Wanders, you can think of him as “the Lady Gaga of the design world.” Wanders has worked with Puma, Droog, B&B Italia and Moooi, where he serves as co-owner and art director. His pieces have been exhibited and collected by museums like MoMA and the V&A.

Now he’s turning his attention to the formidable Italian brand Alessi. What I love about this collection is its play with embellishment and restraint. The plates and serving trays are adorned with curlicues and floral patterns that give a nod to ancient Islamic art. The design of the side plates and bowls is one-step more  refined, with the pattern showing up only along the edges. There are some marvelously delicate touches, like the silverware. It’s stainless steel, of course, but the simple form of the utensils is set off by decoration that is both lavish and quiet at the same time. My favorite piece in the collection is the saucer for the Mocha Cup. The cup itself is a very simple, minimal coffee mug, yet the saucer, which is perfectly flat, is encrusted with the collection’s signature pattern. True, it’s probably not the most practical saucer – I’d use it more like a coaster – but it’s quite beautiful and hey, there’s no blood!

 

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Granted, this is no ordinary road. The Timmelsjoch Pass cuts through the Alps along the Austrian/Italian border. Rising to 10,000 feet, building anything up there is a feat; Can you imagine trucking construction materials back and forth along those sharp switchbacks? As you might imagine, this isn’t a museum with rotating exhibitions. Its sole purpose is to pay homage to the pass itself. There’s a model of the pass in a single glass display case planted in the center of the one-room museum. There’s also some information behind the faceted glass walls, designed to echo the structure of the one of several icy caves nearby.

Tscholl was a natural pick for this project given his origins as well as his propensity for designing buildings that often jut out precariously over steep edges. Many of his projects are situated in remote locations, which means he’s used probably used to low turnouts sat his unveilings. This is a good thing because I’ve got a feeling The Timmelsjoch Experience Pass Museum is going to hit a new low on the list of annual visitors.

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Photographs by Alexa Rainer and Werner Tscholl

All three chargers (for home, travel and car) shut off automatically when your phone is fully charged, putting an end to phantom energy as well as ‘top-off stress’ on your phone’s battery (yes, even your phone gets stressed out). While it’s not the “most eco-friendly and efficient way to charge mobile devices,” as their site claims – my mom has them beat with her solar powered charger hub – it’s definitely better than the current energy sucking system, and at $22-$29, it’s affordable, too.

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The goal of making popular books available on the ground floor alongside a cafe is to encourage passersby to pop in, have a coffee and check out a new book – something people might be less likely to do if they knew they had to hike up to the top floor to browse through new releases. Or you could stay all day, “…learning in the morning, listening to a poetry performance at lunchtime, studying in the afternoon, watching first class theatre at night, and then relaxing in the cafe after that,” says Councilor Veronica Ward.

The inverted pyramid shape isn’t just a lark; Rather, it’s an incredibly creative way of meeting a design challenge. Based on their client’s needs, CZWG knew they would need to build a larger space than the site allowed for. They also couldn’t just build straight up because it would cut off the interaction between user groups on a given floor and it would have required the library to staff those additional stories – so they designed outward. Instead of going higher, they went wider and the result is a library that’s both stunning and completely unique. Piers Gough, a partner at CZWG, calls it “a futuristic Pandora’s box of possibilities.”

CZWG is producing some of the most exciting new work in architecture right now. I profiled their other recent project, a cancer treatment center in Nottingham, but readers might be more familiar with some of their higher profile work with the Smithsonian and in New York City.

As a side note, if you think this library is a stunner, check out the “20 More Beautiful College Libraries From Around the World.” Books never had it so good.





Photos by Tim Crocker

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[ frank gehry ]
Frank Gehry grew up in Canada. In his free time as a child, he would make small versions of buildings out of pieces of wood. In 1947 his family moved to the United States. That is where Frank Gehry began his university studies in architecture. He believes that architecture is art. He has said that, in some ways, he has been more influenced by artists and sculptors than by architects. This may be why his buildings often look like energetic sculptures made from bold geometric forms.

Gehry’s body of work favors the style of Deconstructivism, which is often referred to as post-structuralist for its ability to go beyond the modalities of structural definition. Its architectural application tends to depart from modernism in its absence of cultural givens such as societal goals and functional necessity. Deconstructivist structures are not required to reflect specific social or universal ideas, such as speed or universality of form, nor a belief that form follows function per early modernist structures. Gehry’s own Santa Monica residence, which he applied his conceptual studies into a reality, is a commonly cited example of deconstructivist architecture, as it was so drastically divorced from its original context, it cloaks its original spatial intention.

Gehry’s style sometimes feels unfinished using inexpensive found objects and non-traditional media such as clay and has been called “the apostle of chain-link fencing and corrugated metal siding”.

There are critics. Art historian Hal Foster reads Gehry’s architecture as, primarily, in the service of corporate branding. Other complains include complaints that the buildings waste structural resources by creating functionless forms, do not seem to belong in their surroundings and are apparently designed without accounting for the local climate.

Famous examples of Frank Gehry’s work include the “Dancing House” in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. This playful building, finished in 1996, looks like two dancers. His most famous building is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. It was completed in 1997. Most of the curving building is covered in titanium. It looks like a dancing metal wave sitting on the edge of a river. The curved surfaces of this building and others by Frank Gehry are so complex to build that they require computer programs.
 
Frank Gehry’s buildings are so popular that some people say they create a “Gehry effect.” This term is used for a building that attracts visitors because of the architect who designed it.

To Gehry’s credit he has an ability to conceive and execute his surreal sculptural architecture. As there are critics of flying to the moon or jupiter, Gehry’s architecture is akin to space exploration. His work does inspire and someone will figure out how to apply concepts that will be less costly and more sustainable to build. [ gehry partners ]

[ project credits ]
Project Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Las Vegas 
Client Keep Memory Alive 
Architect Gehry Partners, Los Angeles—Frank Gehry, FAIA (design partner); Terry Bell (project partner); Brian Zamora (project designer); Kristin Ragins, Ronald A. Rosell, David Rodriguez, Michael Sedlacek (project architects); Andrew Galambos, Eun Sung Chang, AIA, Izaburo Kibayashi, Michael O’Boyle, Mok Wai Wan, Natalie Magarian, Natalie Milberg, Nora Wolin, Sameer Kashyap, Sarah David, Yvon Romeus (project team) 
Structural Engineer WSP Cantor Seinuk 
M/E/P/FP, Security, Telecommunications Engineer Cosentini Associates 
Lighting Design L’Observatoire International 
Acoustical Engineers McKay Conant Hoover; Nagata Acoustics 
Building Transportation Edgett Williams Consulting Group 
Life-Safety Engineers Aon Fire Protection Engineering Corp. 
Climate Engineer Transsolar 
Door Hardware Finish Hardware Technology 
Landscape Architect Deneen Powell Atelier 
Civil Engineer G.C. Wallace 
Building Maintenance Lerch Bates 
A/V Engineer Spurgeon Design and Development 
General Contractor Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. 
Size 85,180 square feet (site area), 60,000 (total building area)

Did you know that if you reduced your room temperature by just 2 degrees you would, according to Jacob, “save a ton CO2 a year and cut cost by 40%?” Since my heating bill skyrockets in the Winter months, that last part sounds awfully nice, but if I lower my room temp by even 2 degrees, won’t I freeze to death? Jacob makes the excellent point that the old style of radiators were made for poorly insulated homes and need to be stored beneath a window in order to create a heat wall. But if your home or apartment has been updated in the last couple of decades, you can free yourself from the wall-hugging radiators of the past and get one of Jacob’s campfire-inspired heaters instead.

“The design refers to the analogy of a campfire,” Jacobs says, “which represents the social aspect and essential importance heating once had in our culture. Heat is a emotional value.” Made from wood and plastic, Jacob’s radiator also works with hot water, but it can be integrated into the center of the room to distribute heat more evenly and increase the interaction between user and object, which just might encourage you – and by you I mean me – to think twice before jacking the heat up to 85.

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about boo hill

Designed and built by LEAPfactory, “an Italian firm specializing in modular structures with low environmental impact,” the Alpine Pod uses nautical and aeronautical fabrication techniques to create a self-sufficient structure capable of withstanding extreme weather, like 124 mph winds and 26 feet of snow.

Nothing like this has ever been attempted before, and as such it looks nothing like typical alpine structures. Luca Olivari, the project’s structural engineer, used glass-fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP), which he said is “an ideal material for extreme conditions because the fiber’s weight and orientation can be precisely defined in every area of the structure to support high-concentrated loads.”

As for the pod’s features, it’s 250 square-feet and has a kitchen as well as dining and living areas, twelve bunks, storage for gear and a weather monitoring station. Photovoltaic panels produce 2.5 Kwh of solar energy; It weighs almost 3 tons and cost about $327,000 to construct. And because it’s based on a modular structure, with “individual modules designed for specific functions like eating or sleeping,” the pod itself can actually be rearranged and expanded, should demand require it.

It’s an amazing feat of specialized building under extreme conditions. I’m anxious to follow this project to see how the pod functions after months of wear. But even if the cute sweater design gets rubbed out by wind and sleet, it’s still an oasis in a frozen, forbidding landscape for adventurers heading into the alps on foot.

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It took her a year to design, produce and fund (via Kickstarter), but it looks like the MOON case is ready to begin its mission of replacing all the ugly conta-ct lens cases of the world.

“It’s a routine that many of us go through at least twice a day and it’s an object that holds a prominent place on the bathroom sink,” said Moon. “I wanted an object that complemented my space and felt good in my hands. So I applied simple, modern design to beautiful materials to make the MOON Case for a more refined everyday experience.”

The case is made from Corian, a hypoallergenic, non-toxic material that’s also non-porous, so it doesn’t harbor the growth of bacteria. Also, it’s beautiful. Corian not only gives it a heft heretofore unseen in contact lens cases, but they seem to glow from within – at least the ones in white do (they also come in Concrete and Sand). Moon also had the cases made at a local manufacturer, minimizing the environmental impact and giving her the ability to work face-to-face with the machine operators during the process.

MOON is just the first in what will hopefully be a long line of projects as part of her Pretty Mundane Objects series, an annual undertaking that aims to make the everyday beautiful. “It’s not about designing new things,” Moon said, “but refining the experiences and relationships between us and our objects. It’s about looking at products that are essential to our routine, but that most designers haven’t bothered to observe. To take a second look at the mundane objects that we use daily and re-think our interactions with them.”

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