Archive for the ‘home’ Category

Noise Awareness

If youa€™re in London, Berlin, Madrid, Brussels or Milan, keep an eye out for giant posters which are measuring and displaying ambient noise levels.

The giant posters are driving a unique campaign to promote a a€oesilenta€A washing machine from AEG-Electrolux. Decibel meters are being installed in and around a number of the sites to monitor ambient noise levels. These are then connected remotely to LED screens embedded in the giant poster creative where the current decibel level will be displayed.

The decibel levels at each site location will also be fed to a campaign website (www.noiseawareness.co.uk) to allow users to compare noise levels in the five cities as well as find out more information on this issue. overlap

Ninja Homes: Torque House

We’re kicking off a new Wednesday feature here on Myninjaplease: Ninja Homes. Each week we’ll be bringing you coverage of some 9th dan level housing - so drop us an email if you know of a project that you think should be featured.
I first came across this project, the Torque House by Mass Studies, in the February issue of Dwell Magazine - who feature a full page image [the shot above] of the home as a ‘house [they] love’ - and I was compelled to find out more. Located in, Gyeonggi-do, Korea, the project is a three-story, 134-pyeong [I’ve learned from Mass Studies that 1 pyeong equals 3.3 square meters - cool to know] house for a family of four.

Deemed ‘irregular’ by the masterplan due to a curve in the nearby road, the site was programed to house a ‘linear’ building by the planners. This was used by Mass Studies as a basis for the home’s slightly curving volume - described as a building reacting to its surrounding environment - creating the ‘torque’.

As sharp stones are worn down by a flowing stream and transformed into pebbles, a rectangular building becomes torqued through the movement of curves.

Other site conditions - nearby houses, vehicular traffic, etc - were factors in creating the fairly large expanse of solid wall [seen below] on two sides of the house, while the building opens up on the others [particularly in the family space - kitchen + living areas], looking out to the surrounding landscape.

One of the most interesting aspects of the house is the ‘green’ wall treatment. For the Torque House, Mass Studies incorporated a ‘moss catch system‘ [basically a panelized wall system covered in moss] at the suggestion of a local landscaping designer, in the hopes of reducing the ‘spartan’ quality of the large bare walls. Additionally, it serves to absorb noise from the street, further insulate the building, and is ‘green’ [does that whole photosynthesis thing]. Imported from Japan by the previously mentioned landscape company [whose name isn’t given by Mass Studies, oddly], the house is the first building to employ the system - a type of geotextile that has been used to improve the aesthetic quality of roadside retaining walls - in this way.

The product, manufactured by mixing two types of mosses that grow well on both south and north sides, was perfect for applying to this building, and currently sprouts of the mosses are gradually growing on its walls, making it a "synthetic mass" with multiple functions as part of the landscape in Heyri Art Valley.

The project combines working space for both husband and wife [a classical music recording engineer and painter, respectively] with the private living space needed by a small family. Both the atelier for the wife/artist, and the studio for the husband/recording engineer required a level of privacy that was achieved with the previously mentioned long, predominantly solid walls. On the interior, spaces are also separated by private vs public - situating the staircase to allow for visitors going up to the third floor recording studio without disturbing the family’s privacy.

Lastly, we’ve got what I thought was a pretty siiick staircase leading up to a roof terrace, playing on the ‘torque’ of the building. The bend in the concrete wall [image above] to form a ceiling over the stairs offers an interesting frame for a view of the sky while walking up the stairs - while the ‘window’ cut through this wall emphasizes the in-between quality of this space -not in, not out.

::Images + info from Mass Studies - photographers by Yong-Kwan Kim - originally posted on AMNP::

Buildings in Motion

more at weburbanist

Mystery on Fifth Avenue

THINGS are not as they seem in the 14th-floor apartment on upper Fifth Avenue. At first blush the family that occupies it looks to be very much of a type. The father, Steven B. Klinsky, 52, runs a private equity company; the mother, Maureen Sherry, 44, left her job as a managing director for Bear Stearns to raise their four young children (two boys and two girls); and the dog, LuLu, is a soulful Lab mix rescued from a pound in Louisiana.

They are living in a typical habitat for the sort of New Yorkers they appear to be: an enormous a€™20s-era co-op with Central Park views (once part of a triplex built for the philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post), gutted to its steel beams and refitted with luxurious flourishes like 16th-century Belgian mantelpieces and custom furniture made from exotic woods with unpronounceable names.

But some of that furniture and some of those walls conceal secrets a€" messages, games and treasures a€" that make up a Rube Goldberg maze of systems and contraptions conceived by a young architectural designer named Eric Clough, whose ideas about space and domestic living derive more from Buckminster Fuller than Peter Marino.

The apartment even comes with its own book, part of which is a fictional narrative that recalls a€oeThe Da Vinci Codea€A (without the funky religion or buckets of blood) and a€oeFrom the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,a€A the childrena€™s classic by E. L. Konigsburg about a brother and a sister who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discover a€" and solve a€" a mystery surrounding a Renaissance sculpture. It has its own soundtrack, too, with contributions by Kate Fenner, a young Canadian singer and songwriter with a lusty, alternative, Joni Mitchell-ish sound, with whom Mr. Clough fell in love during the project. via

The world is upon us.

The world is upon us.

Bothersome like a whimsical thought of what is apparent of achievement and what needs to get done. To think for a second that what you want is what we want is right. And to think of the later is too late and gone to be done just right. Let us bring flight to those that cannot fly and blind those that can already see.

For in the long run it is us that stand in the way. It is us, the leaders that carry the torch from a land far away to enlighten and then frenzy an irreplaceable interconnectedness. The gates have opened. Signals and co-opted simplicity shed these lights and are only less manly than the comfortable tunnels of Winnipeg, Canadia. Moving on and progressing are the hardest of things, more dense then of the iron, brass, and cult copper that are forged together on a daily commotion.

Let us bring flight to those that cannot fly and blind those that can already see. I’ll see you in station and we will have fun.

thanks for Stanky Plank for sending this in

Gap Evacuee Tells Story

The black van slid to a halt and the good doctor ejected himself from the shotgun seat. a€oeWea€™re evacuating!a€A he said, as he and two friends race-walked toward his house, next door to ours. Hea€™d had to talk his way past the police to get up the hill from Cathedral Oaks, sliding by only because his friends from Carp had left two Labs in his back yard before theya€™d gone to dinner.

Suzanne and I had been having our own dinner on Thursday evening when the lights finally died, after a half-hour of fritzing televisions and power-surging phone messages. We were in the Dream House, the one wea€™d bought in 2001 and moved into exactly one month ago. Wea€™d nested after extensive renovation, doing all the little things you do to make a place yours, down to the anal stuff of alphabetizing books by author, within categories, or happily noting when the hummingbirds found the feeder. When I flew back to the Chicago area for my last graduation as a professor and to check out our for-sale house there, the going-away salutations were tearful but Ia€™d already moved West in my head. I missed our cocoon. via independent

MY NINJA PLEASE! 7.3.08 : WorldsNest :: Habitat Universe

I’ll say it once, and I’ll say it again. DO NOT SLEEP ::: via WorldsNest

High Tech : Ammonite Washbasin

2008 Chicago Street Soccer Cup

We are looking for a few good soccerus to play on a squad….drop a comment and the first 3 players will share in the trophy………..hit us with an e-mail too….