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.”

images via eVolo

In Brisbane, architects Nettleton Tribe have tranformed an old elevated parking facility into thirteen stories of office space above 9 levels of parking and teamed up with artist Jennifer Marchant to beautify the exterior of the building. The new art piece creates made up of 549 laser cut powder coated aluminum that were custom formed into a lovely mesh that disguises the parking facility while allowing for continual air flow and therefore saving money on mechanical air ventilation.

The artist chose to design a topographical piece called “Landlines”, that depicts the contours of Brisbane’s own Cunningham’s Gap and the Main Range. The inspiration came from the very nature that urban environments tend to be cut off from the surrounding landscape and few people get to take advantage of the views seen by tall buildings that look out from the urban core. Marchant brings the contours of the landscape in and adds a twist by debicting the 2 dimensional graphic traditionally used in the professional world to depict 3 dimensional land forms and show it on a vertical building.

images via world architecture news

With the long winter months of the post holiday season setting in I can’t help but have thoughts of how lovely it would be to get away and lounge in a hot steaming thermal bath in the mountains of Switzerland, in particular, a certain masterpiece hidden in the mountains of the southeastern state of Graubünden designed by Swiss architect and 2009 Pritzker Prize winner, Peter Zumthor.

The Therme Vals is a hotel and spa built over natural thermal springs and partially embedded into the mountainside, surrounding by gorgeous views of snowcapped mountains in the winter and lush green and colorfull hillsides during the warmer months. The structure itself is build from the exquisite layering of Valser Quarzite slabs from a nearby local quarry. From ArchDaily, “The idea was to create a form of cave or quarry like structure. Working with the natural surroundings the bath rooms lay below a grass roof structure half buried into the hillside. This stone became the driving inspiration for the design, and is used with great dignity and respect.”

“This space was designed for visitors to luxuriate and rediscover the ancient benefits of bathing. The combinations of light and shade, open and enclosed spaces and linear elements make for a highly sensuous and restorative experience. The underlying informal layout of the internal space is a carefully modelled path of circulation which leads bathers to certain predetermined points but lets them explore other areas for themselves. The perspective is always controlled. It either ensures or denies a view.”

From Pete Zumthor, via Arch Daily, “The meander, as we call it, is a designed negative space between the blocks, a space that connects everything as it flows throughout the entire building, creating a peacefully pulsating rhythm. Moving around this space means making discoveries. You are walking as if in the woods. Everyone there is looking for a path of their own.”

The thermal spa sits as part of the mountain, an extension of the landscape. The roof of the structure looks as though the ground plane has been lifted up with the same vegetation as the surrounding landscape that even blooms with the same springtime color.

Below is a tour through a virtual model of the Therme Vals…

images via newtonxl, numstead, AtelierFLIR, archdaily

While I am not wild about the turf in this courtyard of a residence in Bangalore, Inida, I am however intrigued by this space, especially that it is above the ground level. Cadence, an architectural group from India, has chosen to abandon the traditional thought of what a courtyard is, typically in the center of a dwelling and instead here the court is shifted to one of the outer quadrants to create a stronger relationship with the outdoor world rather. This enhances an outward connection versus creating a introverted dwelling. The light streaming through the perforated walls exhibits a characteristic similar to light streaming through trees, enhancing the effect of being at a higher level. Perhaps like a tree house.

A sculptural element creates the centerpiece to the open air court. This flexible element houses the tree and allows for an informal outdoor eating and sitting space. I quite like the fluid lines of this piece.

images via archdaily

m3architecture out of Brisbane in association with Brian Hooper Architect designed this lovely Memorial for the Tree of Knowledge in the town of Barcaldine in Queensland, Australia which marks the 1891 founding location of the Australian Labour party. While the design is stunning in it’s simplicity and yet highly textural nature, the most interesting part about this project is that it centers around a dead tree and the building itself, made of wood, is also essentially a dead tree. In this time where designers are trying to find everyway possible to cover things inside and out with living material, it is fascinating to see a “dead” design that is trying to evoke the feeling of the living.

From the architects via Dezeen, “Following the poisoning of the tree in 2006 a memorial was commissioned to commemorate and mark this historical landmark located in the small town of Barcaldine in Queensland, Australia. The design forms an 18 metre high steel and timber structure that follows the canopy, in relief, of the old ghost gum tree using 3,600 individual hanging timber slats. From afar the memorial seems to form a suspended slatted container that surrounds the remaining branches of the original tree; only once visitors stand under the structure they become aware of the canopy that the individual slats form.”

“m3architecture’s, Michael Lavery explains: ‘The design was inspired by the way people create and relive memories. The external timbers are charcoaled to create a veil around the memorial space. This finish and its form reference a place of memory and mourning. The “veil” provides hints to the form and movement inside but it does not fully reveal the impact of this space. This experience is saved for visitors as they enter the shade of the “tree”.’ ”

“Visible from the highway the building also serves as a signpost for the town and acts as a gateway to Barcaldine forming part of the entrance way to the railway station. At night the memorial is illuminated and creates a popular meeting place for social exchange. The original root ball of the tree is preserved and showcased to visitors through a glass floor panel located under the canopy.”

images via dezeen

Whenever I think of the effects color have on the human psyche, I can’t help but remember my childhood years when my mom would obsess over populating our boat with more blue than there was in the sea. She kept thinking that if she stuffed enough blue colors in then maybe one day she wouldn’t actually get seasick. Afterall, blue is supposed to be calming.

There’s no question that colors can have dramatic effects on our mood and the way we feel in a space. Certain colors can stir up feelings of frustration and anxiety while others may have a calming effect, producing an inviting space where people want to linger. Many studies have been done on the effects of color on mood and has revealed that, in general, blues, greens and even pink are on the calming side and good for things like prisons and hospitals, orange can stimulate appetite therefore good in a kitchen, yellow is a memory stimulator but can also raise blood pressure while not as dramatic as red which is a stimulator which can be both good and bad. While I’ve always loved red as splashes of color in a space, I recently realized what can happen when there’s a too much of it.

I go back and forth on how I feel about the Rem Koolhaas design of the Seattle Central Library. Everytime I visit I see something new, experience a different sequence and take on new thoughts. It’s a complex and highly interesting building. But in my last visit, I spent more time in the red hallway that is kind of hidden off the side of the main floor. The first time I came across this space a couple years ago, it was exciting because it was so dramatically different from the rest of the builiding and therefore totally unexpected. There was also no one there but me and I didn’t linger long. This time, there were several people and I wandered around for a bit longer.

It’s not a normal hallway though. It feels like entering the belly of the beast with the organic walls and ceiling, completely painted all around in a bright, very shiny red.

It also has a crazy echo which only heightens the uneasy and anxious feeling. I remember hearing footsteps before I saw people and strange sounds without being able to tell which direction it was coming from. I felt like my eyes were darting in all directions. Knowing that this space was pretty unique in its intensity, I gave in to it and lingered in the hallway to allow myself to fully experience it. It’s an intense feeling, staring at so much red and letting the imagination run wild.

I felt pretty calm upon entering the library as I’d enjoyed a nice, leisurely day wandering around the city with a friend so I could only imagine what the space could stir up in an individual with a less than calm mind. Perhaps it wasn’t the best place to put restrooms. Just a thought.

images (c) Lisa Town

At the end of July I accompanied my husband to a seminar at the Novelty Hill Januik Winery in Woodland, Washington. At first the thought of going to a seminar that I knew nothing about sounded boring and then I realized hey, food, drinks and the chance to tour the new award-winning modern style Mithun design? Cool.

From the winery’s website, “The rhythm and geometries of the agricultural landscape, along with the craft, technology and patterns of wine production, together shape the architecture and landscape of the Novelty Hill • Januik Winery. Seattle-based Mithun, an interdisciplinary firm of architects, designers, and planners, in collaboration with Katherine Anderson, established a linear logic – drawing on both the linear rows of grapes in a vineyard and the rows of tanks in a winery – that guides everything from the shape of the parking lot to the footprint of the building, and sets up a rhythm of parallel shifting walls.”

“From the Tasting and Terrace Rooms, concrete floors, concrete walls and transparent roof canopies extend outside, past glass walls, and into the garden. Here, a sequence of terraces unfolds, beginning with the bocce court and Shade Terrace – so named because of the shade created by the allée of ash trees. Steps lead down to the Sun and Wetland Terraces, and ultimately onto a platform overlooking the larger wetland landscape.”

“These shifting walls, which define the building and move into the landscape, are primarily concrete, stripped down to their function of holding up the building and holding up the ground in the garden. In contrast to these concrete walls, perpendicular infill walls are composed of slatted wood and colored resin, lending warmth and lightness to the in-between spaces.”

“Each terrace has a distinct material quality. The pale gray-pink gravel on the Shade Terrace relates to the dry, dusty ground in Eastern Washington, where the grapes used for making Novelty Hill and Januik wines are grown. Concrete pavers separated by parallel lines of low thyme define the ground of the Sun Terrace, while an outdoor fireplace and a long trough of water respectively warm and cool this space. Finally, the dark gray gravel on the Wetland Terrace evokes the gray days so familiar in Western Washington.”

Out in the garden, the geometries of the planted areas and the restrained palette of plant material also draw on the patterns of the agricultural landscape. The allée recalls the straight, parallel rows of trellised vines on a vineyard, as do the long strips of thyme. The blocks of red-twig dogwood on the Wetland Terrace and under the existing big leaf maple are akin to the blocks of a single crop in the agricultural landscape. In spring, the red-twig dogwood is bright green, while in winter, it is deep red – much like the new green of the grapevine in spring and the red of the grapes in autumn.”

“The design of the winery is inspired by the close relationship between winemaking and the ground where the grapes grow. The soil impacts the taste of the wine. In a sense the soil is embedded in every glass. Similarly, the architecture and gardens of the Novelty Hill Januik Winery engage the ground of the site, rather than hovering above it. Furthermore, the design aims to entangle the building and garden, blurring the edge between architecture and landscape, such as when the concrete walls of the building move out into garden, holding up the ground and defining rooms outside. In this place, architecture and nature enhance and elevate each other.”

images (c) Lisa Town

I might note that when I was there it was in the upper 90′s and so the concrete-filled courtyard was neither cozy nor inviting and all the people were indoors. I had to explore the grounds in a couple different sessions between seeking shelter from the blazing sun. But luckily the 90′s are a rarity up there and I would imagine that in the cooler evenings, the courtyard is lovely…sipping some wine by the fire….

image via Mithun

The people of Osaka, Japan apparently prefer a bit of green space over watching a live game of baseball. Due to poor ticket sales, the stadium that once inhabitated Osaka proved unprofitable and in 2003 shut it’s doors forever. The image above shows the interesting, organic mix of shopping center, office complex, park and garden spaces that became the next generation of the baseball stadium after being converted into what they now call Namba Parks. The design is by Jon Jerde of Jerde Partnership Architects.

images via Jerde

According to the designer, “Given the location [near the railway station], owner Nankai Electric Railway asked Jerde to create a gateway that would redefine Osaka’s identity. So Jerde conceived Namba Parks as a large park, a natural intervention in Osaka’s dense and harsh urban condition. Alongside a 30-story tower, the project features a lifestyle commercial center crowned with a rooftop park that crosses multiple blocks while gradually ascending eight levels.”

imaga via milosch1029

“In addition to providing a highly visible green component in a city where nature is sparse, the sloping park connects to the street, welcoming passers-by to enjoy its groves of trees, clusters of rocks, cliffs, lawn, streams, waterfalls, ponds and outdoor terraces. Beneath the park, a canyon carves an experiential path through specialty retail, entertainment and dining venues. Namba Parks creates a new natural experience for Osaka that celebrates the interaction of people, culture and recreation.”

image via anthonygrimely

I thought this picture of the Namba Parks entry was pretty amusing. The fact that they require dogs to go in carry bags just gives you an idea of the average size of a typical Japanese dog.

image via mrlederhosen