Archive for the ‘home’ Category

Tokyo Lounge Table / Godfather Chair

These two designs above and below by Skate Study House are amazing. Apart from these two pieces they are currently having a black friday lead-up sale called Launch of Cool. It is a limited-time promotion that is offering the collection’s most popular pieces at a special discount:

Astro Clock : $200 (regular price $495)

Nova Lamp $200 (regular price $695)

Hang Up: $200 (regular price $495)

SKATE STUDY HOUSE (SSH) is an innovative design concept specializing in recreating popular furniture through the vision of a skateboarder. The movement of a skateboarder constantly changes — it recreates itself by transcending boundaries and inventing ways to conquer obstacles. It’s constantly about anticipation and adaptation to one’s environment. The same is true for living design. The combination of the two produces a mixture of contemporary lifestyle, art and action sports culture, which is all found in this unique collection.

Ninja Homes: Villa Grow

Sweden-based Kjellgren Kaminsky Architects, in conjunction with Emrahus, has created a housing model that will potentially met the needs of expanding family needs - using a type of modular housing system that would allow for personal customization and additions to an initial structure.

[Image: Plan of home for individual]

All units start based on the needs of an individual - so they are inherently smaller than a typical home, while meeting the various needs of different people [studies, offices, larger living space, etc]. The project would allow for customization of the unit to meet a buyer’s lifestyle, along with being an appropriate size for a single individual.

[Image: Plan of expanded home, now for a family]

As the need of the individual then change, the home can be adapted. A woman owning one of these homes may get married, and her and her spouse could then chose to expand. Times goes on, and they may have children - and choose to expand again, further personalizing the home to fit their specific needs [note: the plan shown is an example, and different variations would obviously be available - see video].

[Image: Potential aerial of a community of these dwellings]

While the simple concept of adding an addition isn’t that spectacular [you can obviously ad to any structure you may own, in some way] - the idea of designing with that expansion in mind could drastically change housing typology. Imagine a young person being able to afford a home, because she / he could buy smaller and expand later. You could afford an apartment-sized home to start with, and slowly move on from there, customizing your space to fit your specific needs - could be siiick.

What could be even better, that is not a part of this project [yet?], is adding a degree of mobility to these homes. Creating a highly-customizable home that is easily transported and replanted in a new community could address both issues of affordable homes [only buy/build what you can afford], but could also help homeowners adapt to changing economic trends [both global and personal]. Maybe you’re not making tons of money - but you save enough to buy one of these starter units and a small property in a ‘questionable’ neighborhood. That’s great when you’re young with no children - but maybe something like this gives you the opportunity to take you customized home and move to a better location [with better schools, for instance] to raise your kids, then move again to someplace warm when you retire. Just a thought…

.:more info -> via Kjellgren Kaminsky Architects->

::All info and images courtesy of Joakim Kaminsky::

.:view more of ourNinja Homes feature,here->

Ninja Homes: L House

Here we have the L House by the Polish firm moomoo architects -proposed for a site in ??d?, Poland. The home - which is another in this popular simplified gable form, which looks like a child drew the end elevation in an art class - is set to be completed in 2010. This simplified massing is based on a traditional Polish home, both in the simple elevation and in the way that the roof slopes upward from one side of the structure to the other.

To achieve the clean + continuous form of the home, moomoo is using a plastic insulating material named Thermopian - which is usually reserved for roofs. This both creates these smooth, unbroken wall/roof surfaces, and allows the home to be built in just about any color the designers choose.

The plan is simple and efficient, making for a modestly sized home - the only detail in plan that is really worth pointing out specifically is that wall splitting off at an angle from the main volume of the house. Apparently local building codes require that the building’s facade be parallel to the site boundary - and this is the architects’ way of meeting this local requirement while having the house oriented in the direction they would prefer. It does make for an interesting window looking at what seems to be an essentially unusable space, perhaps protecting the inhabitants’ privacy from the street.

.:moomoo architects->

.:view more of our Ninja Homes feature, here->

Ninja Homes: ADOC’s University Housing

Designed by ADOC [Arquitectura Design Ordenamento Consultores], what we’ve got here today is a proposal for university housing in Zaragoza, Spain. Say it with me now: my ninjas, please… Now, I warned readers in my post on KKA’s fishmarket project that I had a collection of projects that utilize the iconic gable-roofed home shape - and this university housing project is definitely the most extreme / strangest use of the form I’ve come across so far.

The project starts out with a simplistic, minimalist take on the gabled roof house form, creating a single volume to house the university students in an individual module. This module is then multiplied, stacked and arrayed - creating 5 storey housing blocks, seemingly connected by the long central hallways familiar to a typical apartment building.

ADOC likens each floor to a street - individual homes, connected by a shared pathway. We can see this idea in the section best - where the drawing shows not just a narrow hallway, but what looks like a small, two-storey, space that connects the individual volumes to the shared path. Now, I have no idea how big this space is - but it looks to be at least the width of the hallway itself.

That said, if the ‘outdoor’ space is also as long as the individual volume itself and double-height - does this create a useable, individual, ‘outdoor’ emulating space within the structure created by the amalgamation of these individual ‘houses’? It’s definitely a fascinating idea - combining forms we associated with the things we like about single-family homes to create structures that use the land more efficiently, and achieve a higher density without depriving residents of a sense of individual, private space.

Assuming any of this is the case, I think we need to imagine this type of project post-occupancy -where I would expect to find that residents had really taken ownership of their personal volume. Painting, personalizing, decorating, planting - I wonder if you could really achieve the diversity found on an actual street in a project such as this one. I would argue that it may even have to capacity to exceed the individuality found on many streets - as so much single-family residential construction looks so so similar, and the simple fact that single-family homes having clear owners/residents and addresses/land seems to reduce the occupants’ desire to personalize the exterior of the building in additional ways.

Thanks to our ninja Manuel for the link - don’t hesitate to hit me up if you come across something that you think ninjas should know about. Email me at architecture@myninjaplease.com - or drop me a DM on Twitter @ArchitectureMNP.

This project was also covered a while back by our ninjas over at plusmood, which you can read here.

.:info+images->via ADOC

.:view more of our Ninja Homes feature, here->

Vertical, 2D Living

I’m not sure that this is these two ninjas are still going strong - but lived 12 hours a day on the side of a building! Ridiculous!

Two brothers in Brazil are literally living on the outside of a building in Rio?s Old Center. Since May, twenty-seven-year-old Tiago Primo and his twenty-year-old brother Gabriel, have been sleeping, working and eating on the side of a building 33 feet up in the air for twelve hours every day. They plan to continue this display until August.

My ninjas, PLEASE.

.:via -> Archinect

Ninja Homes: de Manio/Downing

[image: entry stairs to porch]

Designed for a family of 4, the de Manio/Downing Residence is a single-family home occupying a 5-acre, wood site outside Boston. Meeting the demands of the contemporary family, the home’s program called for 4 bedrooms, a large, formal living/dining space for entertaining, more casual spaces for the family’s day-to-day activities, and home offices for both parents.

[image: exterior view from north, across courtyard]

Dan Hisel, our current Ninja of the Month, saw the project as two connected volumes, "highly crafted boxes in the woods", which are connected by a shared entry/porch space. These ‘boxes’ then form an L-shaped plan for the house, an underutilized [in the US, at least] housing typology that really locks the home into the landscape - as if placing the building in the site rather than on it. This relationship between the two volumes allows for an entry stair [seen above] that moves along the smaller ‘box’, directing you towards a centrally-located entrance in the main, larger ‘box’. It also creates an entry courtyard space for the family, which - when the trees have had a few more years to grow - will be like walking through their own personal, domesticated woods to enter the house.

[image: exterior view from south]

The design solution places 2 highly crafted boxes in the woods whose entry sequence orchestrates a dramatic threshold welcoming people into the forest. These two volumes adopt three primary orientations corresponding to the different activities engaged by this active household: a formal entertaining space and a library for adults directed towards views of the woods, informal kitchen and family/breakfast spaces oriented towards the large yard, and offices in and over the garage, oriented towards the public zones of the street and driveway.

[image: living / dining looking towards kitchen]

[image: living / dining]

Looking to the plans [below], we can see that the combination of the home and the office is handled through what could be seen as a more ‘urban’ strategy than you would typically see in a single-family residence in the woods: the home and office share a common porch, accessed through a shared public space [the courtyard]. The office space is even provided large windows looking out onto the entry stair, much like one would expect to find in a building attempting to engage with pedestrians on a sidewalk.

[image: first + second floor plans]

[image: section]

View more of Dan Hisel’s work - and more images of the de Manio/Downing Residence - at his website - and / or check out coverage of other selected works here at AMNPs NotM: Dan Hisel.

::all images + any quoted text provided by Dan Hisel::

::photography by Peter Vanderwarker::

.:view more of our Ninja Homes features, here->

Black + White Digital Clock

So I really want this clock - I mean, look at how ridiculously sick it is. With a touch sensitive interface, the clock is set and applied to a wall - no frame, no case, just the four simple digital displays that will produce the numbers. During the day, the clock numbers show as black - and then this color inverts, becoming white for night time visibility. Too too ill.

Digital clock: only figures, no case, only the necessary a€" only accurate time. Each figure has self-contained power supply and independent control, it can be fixed to any surface autonomously. A light sensor will switch the clock to an invert mode: the figures are white in the dark time of day and black at daytime.

~ Kibardin Design

Unfortunately, Kibardin has yet to find a manufacturer for the clock - but when they do, we’ll be sure to let you know.

.:info + images via -> Kibardin Design

.:first seen via->Boing Boig Gadgets

Bruno Fosi: Branch Light

A modular LED branch light system- gotta love LEDs..
.::designculturelab->

Test Collective: Record Storage

Storage and display unit in bamboo and corian, 2009

Digital media has brought new significance to the act of listening to music. Vinyl records now represent an auditory and visual delicacy; art objects to be played an displayed.

.:via->Test Collective