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NEWS | Calling All Designers: Next Gen Design Competition

05Oct08

Metropolitan Magazine is looking for a design superhero. Could it be you?

Rising energy costs present new design problems”

– Metropolis Magazine

It’s a competition challenging us to “redesign the broken models of the 20th century. Challenge our patterns of living and working in a fuel-hungry world…come up with solutions that connect us, make us more efficient, more humane.

Ask yourself…
How would I bring work closer to home?
Can a product help eliminate long commutes?
What can I do to revitalize old ideas such as living above the store?
What kind of interiors or furnishings does a telecommuter really need?
Or follow your own dreams…what calls out for a major redesign?

Focus on one area that needs fixing—products, interiors, buildings and landscape, communication systems, or anything else you can imagine—and develop your idea fully.

The competition is open to all designers in practice 10 years or less. For details on this and other design competitions visit Metropolis Magazine.

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FURNITURE | Proof that the Japanese Can Design Anything

01Oct08

In America, we turn trash into treasure. In Japan, they recycle by design. Case in point: Doug Aamoth’s post about this dining table made from a washing machine drum. He stumbled upon it and the coordinating chairs during a tour oversees at a Japanese recycling plant devoted to handling home appliances like refrigerators, washers, dryers, and TVs. The plant not only recycles, it apparently likes to design too.

The chairs are made of a really, really dense plastic derived from some of the bits of scrap from the various machines. It looks and feels like wood, though, and apparently there are picnic tables, chairs, and benches in nearby parks that Panasonic has supplied with this type of furniture.

Mythbuster fans will probably get a kick out of Doug’s video tour of the Panasonic recycling plant where you get to watch things get crushed, pulverized and blown up — all in a fabulously green day’s work.

Spotted at Curbly

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INTERIOR DESIGN | Medieval Church Turns Bookstore

29Sep08

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Booklovers now have their own house of worship: the Selexyz Bookstore. Designed by Dutch firm Merkx + Girod, the Selexyz in Maastrict takes its Gothic aspirational feel from the medieval Dominican church that contains it.

The conversion of the church into a retail store centered around a simple, elegant idea: create a freestanding three-story bookshelf within the church so that architectural elements could be in view and preserved intact. The perforated steel contrasts the stone carved quatrefoils, arches and stained glass. On the ground tables, seating and display cases complete the look without major renovation required. Quite genius.

Choosing a church as a space almost begs you to design high, providing shoppers a unique, visceral experience of reaching loftier heights, the way a good book often does. Walk up the stairs and you get a rare glimse of the world from the top of a church looking down. Look above and you are almost arm’s length away from frescoes painted hundreds of years ago.

I can’t help but giggle at the irony of all this secular conversion. Metropolis Magazine goes as far to call these church conversions a trend for the Dutch city. Friars’ homes turned into capitalist “dens of commerce.” Oxymoronic though it is, the space really works. The inspirational and aspirational mood of church architecture with a space for reading and books? Maybe not so far fetched.

Photos courtesy of Metropolis Magazine

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ARCHITECTURE | Hybrid House for a Briard

13Mar08

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If you’re in the Los Angeles area this March 14-16 weekend and love modern design and architecture, don’t miss the 5th annual Caboom Show: the largest showcase of independent, contemporary design on the West Coast. On the list of special home tours includes one project particularly close to my heart and had the opportunity to work on: the Residence for a Briard designed by Sander Architects.

Three years ago, the clients Thomas Small and Joanna Brody threw down a gauntlet: to build the greenest house that had ever come out of the Sander practice. They wanted a house that was modern, green, and Briard-friendly (a very, very, large dog).

On a very tight budget. The challenge called for innovations on many fronts: beginning with the use of prefab components for the frame of the house, to our experimentation with materials. Insulation made from recycled denim jeans, wall boards made from sunflower seeds — surprisingly gorgeous enough to leave exposed sans paint. We had even talked about using cheap red wine to stain the concrete floors.

Whitney Sander, the principal, found his design inspiration from a painting by George Braque. I remember in my second week of work, being sent off to research Venturi roofs (to promote “natural” A/C) and every possible green product under the sun. It was the crash course of a lifetime — and was in part, the foundation of knowledge I used for the birth of Fabulously Green (thanks Whitney, Catherine, Thomas and Joanna).

Green Strategies and Materials:

  • greywater system (for capturing used water and reusing it for landscape irrigation)
  • passive heating and cooling strategies
  • a cistern to capture rainwater for watering landscaping
  • recycled denim insulation, bamboo flooring, Marmoleum, structural steel frames from recycled steel

To see the house in person, sign up for the Saturday Westside House Tour. Maybe I’ll see you there!

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