Architecture

It's been compared, possibly with fairness, to both a bathtub and a kitchen sink. Indeed, "the bathtub" appears to be its unofficial nickname, coined by lead architect Mels Crouwel. What's undeniable is that the newly-completed extension to Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum is different, and in a very specific sense.  Read More

On the eve of the opening of the European Solar Decathlon, a team from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics is ready to present its innovative solar-powered prefab home, which produces twice the amount of energy than it consumes. The Solar Decathlon Europe is an international competition among universities which promotes research in the development of energy-effective and light-structured residential buildings that only use solar energy. This year the prestigious competition is being hosted in Madrid, Spain and will see a selection of university entries from across Europe, including Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, The United Kingdom and Romania, and four more from China, Japan, Brazil and Egypt.  Read More

Designed by architecture and design practice Nilsson Pflugfelder, Verbandkammer is conceived as an all-in-one living and working space aimed at visual artists, cramming an impressive number of building functions through its 40 modules, including work desks, meeting areas, archive shelving and sleeping quarters, into a compact, efficient (if perhaps a little cramped) space. And, as you'd probably expect these days, the 40 modules can be rearranged so that the Verbandkammer can be reconfigured at will.  Read More

Heating and cooling a house are two of the biggest ongoing costs for homeowners and are responsible for the bulk of the average household’s energy consumption. A new kind of roof-and-attic system field tested at the DoE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) improves the efficiency of both winter heating and summer cooling. Importantly, the new system can be retrofitted to most existing roofs.  Read More

Artist Nova Jiang scoured the sidewalks of her native New York (Brooklyn, to be precise) to extract moss samples to embed into the moving planters of her Landscape Abbreviated art installation. Jiang describes her creation as a "kinetic maze," but the intention seems more to have been to delight and inspire than to confuse or bamboozle.  Read More

San Francisco architectural firm SpaceFlavor has given tiny living a Feng Shui makeover with its prefabricated mobile cube. The eight-foot (2.4-meter) cube was commissioned for Feng Shui expert Liu Ming, and includes an office, bed, storage and meditation space. Drawing from the Chinese principles of Yin (private and closed) and Yang (public and open), the mobile dwelling was designed to modestly accommodate Ming’s personal activities such as study, meditation and sleep.  Read More

Mini House is a functional prefabricated modular home that comes delivered flat-packed and can be constructed on-site in just two days. The first prototypes, which were designed and built by Swedish architect Jonas Wagell in 2010, are currently being used as summer houses in different parts of Sweden and an upgraded Mini House 2.0 is on the way.  Read More

The best cabins have an special aura – separate from civilization without roughing it, and immersed in nature without drowning therein. Cabins that hit this precise balance must be designed and built in harmony with their surroundings. Sneeoosh Cabin is such a place, built on a wooded shoreline in the beautiful fjords of Puget Sound in Washington state. Located within the Snohomish Indian Reservation, this modern cabin combines a glass-enclosed great room with stunning views of the woods, the waters, and the Olympic mountains in the distance with a sleeping loft whose comfort, quiet, and darkness insure a night of the soundest sleep.  Read More

Michael Jantzen may operate in the sphere of architecture, but he doesn't think of himself as an architect. Instead he describes himself as "an artist and inventor who often uses architecture as an art form." Much of his work is conceptual, but his compact, transforming M-Velope shelters, which he described to Gizmag as "sculptures that you can sit inside" (and definitely not as gazebos) have stepped out of the conceptual and into the physical realm. Jentzen shared his latest design (above) with Gizmag.  Read More