A trip to the ocean with another couple allowed us to score a really cool vacation beach house, obviously owned by some sort of designer that probably built many things themselves. There were a lot of great details throughout with great uses of wood and metal, like the ledge in front of the fireplace in the image below. A nautical theme ran throughout expressed through clean lines and interesting use of materials like the image above where metal cleats where attached to a wood strip for use as coat hooks. This detail was also in the bathrooms for towels.
The house actually sat along the edge of a lake just a block inland from the ocean and in an effort to reduce the disturbance along the lake edge, the house was raised up on metal beams, allowing the natural vegetation flow underneath with a simple gravel path to the staircase leading up to the entry deck.
A rain chain connects the roof to the ground with a stone splash block…
The deck leading to the canoe launch didn’t take out any trees…
The gravel driveway and the vegetated swale…
There were also some fun pieces of art and furniture. My favorites were the chair at the entry that was a simple piece of metal with a strip of tan leather through the top for a seat and especially the fabulous set of 3 paintings of frying eggs in the kitchen.
The non-profit organization of volunteers, Architecture for Humanity is teaming up with PechaKucha, an event for designers to show and discuss their work, to unite 277 cities around the world currently offering this event for one cause. Global PechaKucha Day for Haiti will broadcast a 24-hour wave of presentations on February 20th that will be dedicated to the rebuilding of Haiti.
The event will all be streamed online for everyone in the world to watch in real time and captured on the website and tagged with the idea that these ideas and people could be a great resource for future relief efforts as well as this one. This sounds like it’s going to be an incredible event. The video above features the offical announcement from PechaKucha night founders Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo and Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity. More information from the website:
Already presentations are being prepared – some are intended to offer hope and encouragement through stories of past disaster relief projects, while others offer simple inspiration by showing the power of great creative thinking. Some amazing people have stepped up to the challenge so prepared to be surprised
All of the 2,000 presentations generated from the one-day event – what could be the world’s biggest single day globally distributed conference – will be posted online at PechaKucha Presentation. All presentations will have a donate button to raise money.
All proceeds will go to Architecture for Humanity for rebuilding Haiti. AFH operates globally, and was instrumental in getting projects built after the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Katrina. The design costs for the new buildings in Haiti have been already covered so all donations will go to tangible built projects.
The beauty of the simple 20×20 format is the presentations are so easy to make and voice, so each month AFH will make updates in the 20×20 format which will be posted on line and shown at all the PechaKucha Night around the world in the coming month to show how the PechaKucha Fund is being used and to help keep the interest level high through until completion.
eVolo holds a Skyscraper Competition every year with the main idea focusing on the relationship between the skyscraper and the natural world, the community and urban life. They recently started showcasing some of the entries on their blog from the competitions from 2006-2009. A recent post focused on the vertical element as using more of the traditional horizonal streetscape elements rather than traditional buildings. Too bad they don’t know how to spell “scale” ;-)
From eVolo, “The main idea behind this project is to create a vertical city with the same qualities of traditional horizontal settlements. The goal is to define an outdoors vertical street that is connected to commercial, recreational, housing, and office areas. The vertical street would have a mix of escalators, ramps, elevators, and stairs with green parks and terraces.”
“The grouping of several buildings would create a new type of city with vertical streets and bridges. There is no need for automobiles because a series of electric monorails will connect each building to create a true sustainable city. Farms, wind turbines, solar panels, and water recollection systems are the norm in this true green city typology.”
