Stone – the Multifunctional Kitchen from Ezzo Design on Vimeo.

photo via Apple

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” — Steve Jobs

http://milimet.com/2011/06/new-apple-campus-to-the-cupertino-city-council.html

http://milimet.com/2011/08/6453.html

milimetdesign – Where the convergence of unique creatives

Bulgarian designer Jovo Bozhinovski has created a hybrid desk and conference table for a construction company in Bulgaria.

Description from Jovo Bozhinovski:

The project is created as per order of a construction company from Bulgaria. The assignment was to design an office, which to be different and remembered. Constructing the functions, which are necessary for one such space we found out the idea to make a hybrid between the desk of the manager of the company and a conference table, which he needs in order to organize meetings with clients, as well as the working meetings with its personnel. This piece of furniture  turned into an accent of this office and gave it a unique appearance.

Lead by the fact that the main activity of the company is construction, we have decided that we have to design a product, which to be clearly constructively built with a visible construction, a modern vision and innovation in the organizing of the working space. We have tried to embody the main principles of this construction company in a unique piece of furniture, which occupies a central place in this office and giving it unique appearance. This way we have created  this “working station”. Having in mind the hierarchy in a company we have decided to put it on a platform in order to obtain differentiation in the levels between the desk and the conference table, this way the manager of the company took a proper place in the centre and on idea higher than the others. We have used metal profiles of incorrosive steel in order to construct the frame and glasses with which to cover it. We have created one product, which besides with its appearance it impresses and with its construction.

We have designed it in such way, so it can allow us to carry 2/3 of this furniture in air, or said in other words 2,30m. stick out consolely in the air. We used adhesives for the main part in the platform – this way we obtained the necessary stability. Besides the huge sizes and the heavy construction the consolely pending part and the profile gilling have given a light appearance of this piece of furniture, obtaining a sensation that as if it is floating in the air.

This observation tower by Munich office terrain:loenhart&mayr rises over the river Mur at the Austrian border with Slovenia.

The aluminium-clad structure staircase curls back on itself at the top, forming a double spiral so that visitors on the way up pass those on the way down.

Here’s some more information, written by Lilli Hollein:

A society that generally focuses on results tends to lose its sense for gradual emergence and for the discoveries one can make during processes and journeys to a destination. Already 2,500 years ago, Confucius had written: “The journey is the reward.” Some might consider that a nice way of skirting around disorientation, but is it worthwhile to be rushed off one’s feet?

Architecture is a wonderful means of representing, imposing, or arousing states of human nature. The concept of the recently completed Murturm by the architects Klaus K. Loenhart and Christoph Mayr then involves not only the elation of having reached the top, but also the enjoyment of the stages on the way there.

A deliberate foreign object made of steel and aluminum rises from the riparian forest in Southern Styria: a somewhat geometrical observation tower that nevertheless fits into the landscape as naturally as a harmonic counterpoint.

The border to Slovenia is marked by the Mur river in this part of Southern Styria, near Bad Radkersburg. Once a public-excluded security zone along the former Iron Curtain, the area became a de-facto nature reserve and is now part of the European Green Belt. Today, the view of the opposite river bank is relaxed, and both countries join forces to renaturate the course of the river and the pasture landscape.
Supported by Naturschutzbund Deutschland [German Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union], the tower was originally only meant to mark the European Green Belt. In fact, however, it has become an architectural sculpture and a lookout that offers a panoramic view of the landscape.

Climbing up the 168 steps, one follows one’s own path, and yet one is drawn in by the landscape that can be observed from different heights and by the eyes of those one inevitably meets, because two intertwined stairwells wind up into the sky. At the highest point of this significant visual anchor, at a height of 27 meters, one finally realizes that the path never ends. The doubling of the ascent and descent and the three-dimensional interweaving bring forth the vis-à-vis.

The double spiral staircase with its opposed flights of up and down steps has a famous forerunner nearby: ever since 1499, it has been witness to the eagerness of Friedrich III of Habsburg to experiment and to the brilliant architectural design of his castle in Graz. The special three-dimensional experience it creates has made the castle a place of pilgrimage for architects. Among them was Klaus Loenhart, Director of the Institut für Architektur und Landschaft at Graz University of Technology. Impressed and inspired, he and his colleague Christoph Mayr managed to transfer the poetry of this historical location into nature.

The supporting structure of the observation tower is designed like a tree. The lower part corresponds with the trunk, whereas the steel structure made of thinned-out tubes represents the more delicate branches up above. The tower was certainly an engineering challenge for the Office for Structural Design in Frankfurt. It is all the more surprising to feel the edifice, which looks amazingly massive and multi-braced, softly sway as one climbs the stairs. Seen from down below, one first notices the elegant nodal points of the structure. The steel girder joints result in a sophisticated and skillfully designed geometry that exhibits the three-dimensionality of the tower.

Depending on the weather and time of day, the wonderful gleam of the aluminum-clad stair balustrade continuously changes the appearance of the edifice. The beveled aluminum boards create a body and a play of surfaces without destroying the translucence. The flowing element of the recessed river bed and the piled-up flotsam is mirrored by the tower, which emerges from the topography with the same softness and precision.

With this project in an unspoilt countryside that belongs to the European Green Belt biotope compound system, terrain:loenhart&mayr have set an example that puts nature in the limelight in two different ways. First, visitors enjoy rotating views of the surrounding landscape as they walk up and down the continuous spiral stairs. Their attention is directed both inward and outward. From a distance, the silhouette of the tower is interwoven with the landscape, but the watchful steps of those who climb up the stairs define a sensed inner space.

Second, the sculptural edifice itself explores the essence of nature, the double helix structure along which DNA components are stringed in parallel turns. It does not take a microscope to see that organic forms are often impressive compositions of curves and edges, of geometry and free, unlimited escalation.

Not mountain summits, as Goethe wrote, but the treetops of the wonderful riparian forest along the banks of the Mur river near Gosdorf unfold before the eyes of those who climb all the way up the tower. And yet, up there all is still. This is a place to pause for those who have come to the tower by bike, on their early morning jog or their Sunday walk. It is also a place that was quickly taken over by locals and—especially biking—tourists alike. One of the reasons for the public identification with the project is that the members of the surrounding communities were able to participate by making donations. Now, they visit the tower as if it were an old friend, they proudly read their own name on a plate, and again and again, they come to the same spot to take in the changing moods of the surrounding nature in all seasons. At the same time, they can watch the progress and efforts in renaturating this unique pasture landscape, in which terrain:loenhart&mayr are also taking part. Here, Styria has found its landmark. While Graz has its Uhrturm, Gosdorf now has its Murturm. The contemporary contribution has won the architectural competition.

Client: Gemeinde Gosdorf Orts- und Infrastrukturentwicklungs KG
Design + planning of observation tower and exteriors: terrain:loenhart&mayr architects and landscape architects, Munich/Graz
Structural planning: osd – office for structural design, Frankfurt
Construction period: March – September 2009
Opening: 20 March 2010

physalia – floating agora
all images courtesy of vincent callebaut architecturesvincent callebaut architectures have designed ‘physalia’, an architectural prototype of
an amphibious garden – a floating agora which is meant to clean waterways in europe.
the project aims to meet the needs of maintaining a sustainable management of
water resources.east elevationeast elevationpotential locations for the physalia:


letna, prague

the roof of the structure contains a double pneumatic membrane chiseled with smooth
photovoltaic solar cells. under the hull, hydro-turbines transform the energy of the fluvial
stream into hydro-electricity. the surface of the vessel is made from an aluminum covering
which covers the multi-hull steel structure. the silver-plated dress is covered by a TiO2
layer of anatase shapes that when reacting to ultraviolet rays, reduces water pollution.
in addition to being a self-cleaning vessel, it can absorb and recycle by photo-catalytic effect.
physalia is crossed in its double hull by a hydraulic network that filters the fluvial water
and purifies it biologically thanks to its planted roof. the interior is divided into four thematic gardens:
water, fire, earth, air.

green roof of phytopurification and photovoltaic pneumatic lens

steel hull construction and aluminum superstructure with view of the air garden

interior scenography – view of the water garden and earth garden

profile

inside view of the air garden

view of physalia’s deck

thames, london

seine, paris

seine, paris

physale – starting point of the structure’s form

longitudinal section

level of the air garden

cross section

diagrams and bionic transposition of bio-luminescent pneumatophorous

• Source: designboom
• milimetdesign – Where the convergence of unique creatives

‘freshwater factory’
all images courtesy DCA

as they were looking for the redefinition of the term ’skyscraper’ through the use of
new programs, we decided to look for somewhere else to implement a skyscraper.
obviously, it has to be the countryside. the main question we had to answer then
was: why would we build a skyscraper in the countryside? what issue could justify
the need to build skyscrapers in the countryside?

although water is very present on earth, 97% is salted and 2% is blocked as ice.
there is only about 1% left of liquid freshwater and the UNO and the world water council
estimate there might be a crisis affecting half the worldwide population by 2030. freshwater
will be a major stake in the 21st century. Indeed the production of a daily food intake for
a human being requires 3000 liters of freshwater and the annual rate of freshwater needs
is 64 billions cubic meters.

farming makes up 70% of the worldwide freshwater consumption. our proposal is a totally
new building: an unseen response to sustainable development and the up coming stakes.

the tower is made of several circular tanks filled with brackish water. these tanks are sheltered
in spherical greenhouses. the brackish water is brought up in the tower by tidal powered pumps.
the water pipes network is incorporated in the tower main structure. the tanks are planted with mangroves: these plants have the particularity to grow on brackish water and to sweat freshwater.
so, the mangroves feed on brackish water and then their leaves perspire freshwater. this freshwater
sweat evaporates in the greenhouse and condensates by the night into dew on the sphere plastic
wall to be collected in a freshwater tank. then, thanks to its at altitude storage, the produced
freshwater can be distributed to the fields by gravitational flow. the total surface of the tower is one hectare. one hectare of cultivated mangroves should produce 30000 liters of freshwater a day.
for example, the tower will be able to irrigate a one-hectare field of tomato a day.

almeria is a province located on the south of spain, along the mediterranean coast. this is the
place where most of european fruits and vegetables are cultivated. any kind of fruits or vegetables
can grow there at any time of the year. sun does shine more than 2965 hours a year. greenhouses
fill more than 90% of the ground: that is why this area is nicknamed ‘the plastic sea’. greenhouses
spread over the landscape, undulating over the course of the hills.

this is in this sunny and arid climate that their project is to be built. the tower is designed to
produce freshwater to irrigate the cultivated lands standing at its feet. they implemented
their proposal in almeria as a case study however the project can apply anywhere.

this project is a new solution for farming’s needs: s skyscraper which is a freshwater factory.

detail of the freshwater factory

inside the greenhouse

the spherical greenhouses
base structure

the spheres built around the structure

-

Posted by Rose Etherington

–

Posted by Sarah Housley