Ninja Homes: MON Factory
[click images for larger view]
"House with Crest"
The holes are lined up on a cross shape. The hole is made on the architecture like the perforated line. This architecture is "House with Crest". A light that penetrates into the architecture always moves and never stays. It is a symbolic spectacle. A light that goes through the hole is projected in a circle shape, moves unlimitedly, and never stays. Occasionally, it disappears, and it appears.
Here for this week’s edition of ‘Ninja Homes’ we have the MON Factory/House 8 in Kyoto, Japan designed by EASTERN design. Completed in 2007, the 260 m2 project houses both a workshop of a traditional craftsman and his family home.
The owner wanted a home that could accommodate his business - creating crests for traditional Japanese clothing - while keeping the living and work spaces distinct and separate. EASTERN’s solution was to raise the majority of the project off of street level, creating a parking area beneath the main structure of the building, with a storefront for the craftsman’s business on the street. The workspace is then directly above the shop, connecting the two spaces while making the actual workshop more private.
The second level - with the workshop and living spaces - is divided by two courtyards into it’s primary parts, namely the workshop, the living room / kitchen area, and the bedroom, by two small courtyard spaces. Essentially, hallways run along both sides of the house [around these courtyards, which don’t reach the perimeter of the building], connecting the various spaces. Get a better look at the plan in larger detail, here.
We "lift the one-storied house to the sky" to create calm interior space. It is lifted to 3m in the sky. The space under that is lent as a parking lot. The one-storied house lifted to the sky makes "two outside spaces placed among three inside spaces". The wind and the light of nature gather from the sky into two outside void spaces. And that extends to three inside spaces.
The only break in the exterior concrete walls of the building come in the form of a series of circular ‘holes’ - which speak directly to the circular shape of the tradition crests being made in the workshop.
Two street side walls overlap on "Mise (show/shop)" space from right and left as like the breast of the Kimono. The "breast" interior becomes the shop space. The circular holes made for a cross shape becomes a pattern that decorates the wall as a crest. The kinds of crests reaches 7000. Any complicated crest pattern is formed from circle.
The workshop area and the living area are separated and also connected. The client and his daughter have such living style. The crest making is a delicate work and also a business work. It is quiet, and also busy. The drifting cloud is seen, and they finish working, and relax in the living room at the middle space.
The reflected light becomes an infinite line of light and extends into the darkness of twilight on both side window of the living room. And the dark becomes deeper. In this one-storied house lifted to the sky a night goes on like that.
::photographs by Kouichi Torimura::
Posted: March 3rd, 2010
at 9:06am by orangemenace
Tagged with design, architecture, home, ninja homes, EASTERN design
Categories: home,architecture,ninja homes
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Bloom Box : Powering the Future?
I’m sure many of you have seen this by now somewhere on these here internets - the Bloom Box, designed by Bloom Energy. Long story short, this super-secretive project claims that just 2 of these little boxes could power your family home - and that a stack of just over 60 could power a small business.
They don’t seem like that revolutionary of a solution to me, really, as most of those installed so far are using natural gas as the fuel going in to the fuel cell - but they do seem to be SUPER efficient.
Best part of the video - the green tech guy being interviewed is asked if we’ll all have Bloom Boxes in 10+ years - he says "there’s a 20% chance that we will - but it’ll say GE on it". HAHA.
Head over to Gizmodo for a technical breakdown of the Bloom Box and it’s potential.
Posted: February 25th, 2010
at 10:34am by orangemenace
Categories: myninjaplease,youtube,life,too good to be true,green,home,fo' real?,real life news
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Aspiral Clocks
Aspiral Clocks are handmade in London. The face of the clock slowly turns, sending the ball on a 12 hour journey along the spiral ledge. When it reaches 12 o’clock the ball drops through a hole and begins the process all over again! via: Apartment Therapy
Ninja Homes: Maison du Beton
I’ve had this project sitting here as a draft post for a few weeks now [titled ‘silly sick concrete house’]. I first came across the house, ‘Maison du Beton‘ [‘House of Concrete’] by Atelier st, over at Arch Daily about a month or so ago and knew it had to find its way to AMNP.
Located within a ‘typical’ residential community in Cainsdorf, Germany, the house picks up the scale of the local homes - and then breaks with tradition. The angular geometries of the project are accentuated by the use cast-in-place concrete as a building material - creating simple, almost monolithic, facades that stand in stark contrast to the building’s surroundings.
The interior of the home then breaks further away from local norms - where large, open spaces have been created within the concrete shell. Additionally, the designers played with the heights of spaces on the interior, creating double-height spaces that do not necessarily correspond to the treatment of the exterior - so that the house doesn’t "give it all away" from the outside.
Posted: February 24th, 2010
at 8:00am by orangemenace
Tagged with architecture, home, ninja homes, housing, concrete
Categories: home,architecture,ninja homes
Comments: No comments
Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City
[note: if this video won’t play, visit the original here at PBS]
Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City examines how Detroit, a symbol of America's diminishing status in the world, may come to represent the future of transportation and progress in America. The film debuts nationally on PBS on February 8 at 10 pm (check local listings).Detroit is the crucible in which the nation's ability to move toward a modern 21st century transportation infrastructure is put to the test. The documentary shows how investments in the past a beginning with the construction of canals in the 18th century a profoundly shaped Detroit's physical layout, population growth and economic development. Before being dubbed the Motor City, Detroit was once home to the nation's most extensive streetcar system. In fact, it was that vast network of streetcars that carried workers to the area's many car factories. And it was the cars made in those factories that would soon displace the streetcars in Detroit a and in every major American city.
Detroit's engineers went on to design the nation's first urban freeways and inspired much of America's 20th century transportation infrastructure system a from traffic signals to gas stations a that became the envy of the word.
But over the last 30 years, much of the world has moved on, choosing faster, cleaner, more modern transportation and leaving America a and Detroit a behind. Viewers are taken on a journey beyond Detroit's blighted urban landscape to Spain, home to one of the world's most modern and extensive transit systems; to California, where voters recently said yes to America's first high speed rail system; and to Washington, where Congress will soon decide whether to finally push America's transportation into the 21st century.
Posted: February 22nd, 2010
at 7:22am by orangemenace
Tagged with green, video, documentary, Detroit, urban design, planning, automotive, whips
Categories: youtube,life,home,film,fo' real?,real life news,documentary
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Boston Arcology
Say it with me now: My ninja, PLEASE!
Dubbed "BOA", for Boston Arcology, the project was designed by E. Kevin Schopfer as a floating arcology much like the one proposed for New Orleans a few months back. Capable of housing over 15,000 people in new apartments, condos, hotels, offices, and a new city hall, the ?BOA [Bank of America might sue…] extends as a long linear box from Rowe’s Wharf - supposedly in an attempt to preserve existing views and sitelines, while emulating the general massing of Boston by "exud[ing]a rigorous geometric format."
The proportions are, of course, based on the Golden Ratio - and the diagonals within the rectangular frame are actually meant to be a reference to the Boston Common [criss-crossing paths contained within the rigid boundary of the city].
What? It’s a huge box on the waterfront…
Ridiculous.
Posted: February 20th, 2010
at 6:30am by orangemenace
Tagged with design, architecture, my ninja please!, for real?, Boston
Categories: myninjaplease,home,architecture,fo' real?
Comments: No comments
Chrysalis P E T A L S Concept
Posted: January 6th, 2010
at 11:24pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: green,home,architecture,development
Comments: No comments
Map Lampshades
Lampshade designer Sarah Walker makes lampshades out of maps. She's used Ordnance Survey and Bartholomew maps, likes using out-of-date maps "because I prefer the look of the print colours and enjoy the recycling aspect," and even applies strips of paper to cover up map folds.
My Ninja PLEASE ! 12.4.09
Homeless to illin’ with a couple billion. Seriously. Read the story below the break.
Two brothers who are so poor they live in a cave on the outskirts of Budapest and get by selling scavenged junk are in line to receive a $6.6 billion inheritance from a long-lost grandmother, the U.K. Daily Telegraph reports.
Zsolt and Geza Peladi have been informed that they are entitled to the fortune, along with a sister who lives in the United States the newspaper reported Wednesday.
Charity workers in Hungary passed on the good news to the brothers after being contacted by lawyers handling the estate of their maternal grandmother, who died recently in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, the Telegraph said.
"We knew our mother came from a wealthy family but she was a difficult person and severed ties with them, and then later abandoned us and we lost touch with her and our father until she eventually died," Geza Peladi, 43, was quoted as saying by ATV television in Hungary.
"If this all works out it will certainly make up for the life we have had until now - all we really had was each other - no women would look at us living in a cave," said Geza Peladi.
"But with money, maybe we can find a partner and finally have a normal life. We don’t know yet if she even told our grandmother about us. I understand it was only while they were carrying out genealogical research that lawyers found we existed."
Under German law, direct descendants are automatically entitled to a share of any estate. As the grandmother’s daughter is dead, the money goes to her grandchildren.
Posted: December 4th, 2009
at 6:01pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: hood status,myninjaplease,celebrity,too good to be true,web,home,business,mnp is for the children,fo' real?,real life news,9th dan,"ninja",philanthropy
Comments: 2 comments