Lego imagination

Recently, I stumbled upon this simple, powerful advertisments by Lego. The advertisements simply display the creativity and imagination this toy can (and will) sparkle in any child...

Reading light

French designers Jun Yasumoto, Alban Le Henry, Olivier Pigasse and Vincent Vandenbrouck collectively worked on a simple, yet brilliant reading lamp. It's sensitive to touch, meaning that the lamp shuts off when you put a book on it, and it illuminates if you remove the book. Lovely, isn't it?

I've discovered this via core77.com

Fixing the city with Lego

Sometimes, it's difficult to look around in the city and see all the decay. Many people just walk by without noticing, or without being bothered. Well, not artist Jan Vormann. However, his method of repairing holes in the walls is a bit unconventional, to say the least. What he does is basically filling holes in brittle walls with blocks. Thus far nothing too unconventional. However, the blocks are not ordinary blocks, but pieces of Lego. The repair probably doesn't last too long (because the neighborhood children will probably add the lego bricks to their private collections), but the initiative is a playful, colourful statement against careless decay.

The blue city

"Jodhpur is the second largest city in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It was formerly the seat of a princely state of the same name, it was the capital of the kingdom known as Marwar. Jodhpur is a popular tourist destination, featuring many palaces, forts and temples, set in the stark landscape of the Thar desert."
At least, that's what wikipedia says.

But there's one thing that's remarkable enough in itself to draw huge crowds into town: large parts of the buildings around Mehrangarh Fort in the city are coloured in a bright blue. The city makes for quite an intriguing view, with the indigo colouration of the buildings in the desertous landscape.

At this point, you might be pondering "why on earth did they colour the place blue"? And surely, you are not alone in this. There's no conchise reason that is clearly stated, but there are plenty of theories, some of which are more believeable than others.
1) It is claimed to have started with blue as a symbol of a Brahmin living in that particular house. (makes me wonder: how many Brahmins could one city possible entail?)
2) It is claimed that blue works charms against mosquitos and other buggering bugs.
3) It is claimed that blue absorbs rather little of the heat of the sun.

I don't know which of this is true, and to be honest, I don't really mind too much. The thing is, it just looks spectacular, a blue city within the earth-coloured surroundings...



In case you want to see more images, the Boston Globe has a nice feature on Jodhpur.

Fly-overs done differently

When I look at many of the larger east-Asian cities, I am perplexed by infrastructure. Fly-overs are obiquous, swirling and curling through the city, and twisting and turning above it, just occupying whatever space it's able to take within the city - whether it's on the ground, or in the sky above.


In many ways, the new walkways in Telok Blangah Hill Park reminds me a lot of those infrastructural fly-overs. The walkways are respectfully woven throughout the park above the level of the trees, reaching a height up to 40 metres above the forrest floor, creating a spectacular way for the visitors to observe the stunning natural beauty of the area.



However, what I cannot quite put my finger on is the formal language of the bridges. Some are excessively curvy and flowy, others have a demure high-tech appearance, it's really a mix of things. But on the other hand, it also really offers a broad range of experiences. For instance, the narrow bridge is actually so narrow that one has to walk single file, with views not blurred by crowds standing on the edge of the bridge, while other areas offer luscious viewing platforms.
All in all, the new system of bridges and walkways offers a completely new perspective on the park.

Inside / Outside

What if an outside wall of a house would be more than a stringent division between inside and outside? What if a house would be able to intermingle the inside and the outside?

Well, that's exactly what Sou Fujimoto achieved in their House N in Oita (Japan). In this project, parts of the outside are integrated in the building, creating a weird mix-up that's neither inside or outside. Or both, at the same time.

The basic idea behind this is the concept of stepped privacy, by nesting three cubic volumes in eachother. This makes the space of the building a continuous whole with different parts.

It might even be a bit like a traditional Japanese house. These normally consist of a ornamental garden, a transitional area and the living area. The last one is always the really private space with a exeptional position in the whole.
However, the way the walls are punctured has nothing to do with traditional Japanese houses - where the walls are mainly layers of translucent sliding doors on top of eachother. The wall openings of the House N are more like traditional western windows - whether or not the frames are filled with glass. The only way these resemble the traditional Japanese wall is by means of the roller blind, that can close the window opening to vary the privacy of the spaces of the house.

Beer goggles?

It's nothing new to build pavilions out of beer crates. For instance, Atelier Kempe Thill designed and built a mobile pavillion out of translucent beer crates, called the Light Building.
However, the (unknown/unnamed) designers/builders of the Pavilion Du Bonheur Provisiore in Brussels (Belgium) must have thought that here's always something more extravagant that can be done. And they designed this cathedral out of Jupiler crates. This pavilion is an extension of the exhibition about the 1958 expo, and is situated near the Atomium, and it took 19 builders a total of 3900 hours to build this.

In case you are wondering about the name of the building: "the pavilion of temporary happiness" (the official name of the pavillion) might be a joyful play on the function of the former contents of the crate - or a contemplation on the short joyous life of the pavilion, which is probably just temporary.

Dreamspaces

You don't have to be a car buff to enjoy the television show "Top Gear". They just have a way of presenting things that gives it a bit of a twist in comparison to other television programmes.

Well, just recently, I've discovered the architectural equivalent of Top Gear: A TV-show called Dreamscapes. It has the same kind of quality - I can only imagine that people are just not that much into architecture would thoroughly enjoy this show. And at the same time architecture geeks would probably love the show, too. It was a simply irresistable combination of architectural freakshow and travel guide, hosted by David Adjaye, Justine Frischmann and Charlie Luxton.

However, the sad thing is that this BBC 3-programme only existed for the duration of one season of twelve episodes, some years ago. But just today, I came across a post on idents.tv, inluding download links to 11 of the 12 episodes.

Oh, and in case you wonder why the famous drawing of the "Walking City" by Archigram's Ron Herron is placed with this post? Just because I wanted a sexy architectural image - and there's a report about "The Beatles of Architecture" in episode 10...

Treehouses

There are many architects that specialize themselves at one time or another in their carreers. And there are many specializations for architects to choose, be it dwelling, infrastructure, office buildings, public space or whatnot. But some specializations are just too insane to be true. Really, who'd ever imagine an architect that only does treehouses? Really, think about it: designing treehouses, and nothing else. Wouldn't that be a child's dream come true for many architects? Just think about it - isn't the treehouse the typical kind of dreamy, crazy building - but also with a strong engineering side.

Really, how great would it be if you could just earn your living doing what Andreas Wenning, of Baumraum does in Bremen? Truth be told, not all treehouses he designs are "real" treehouses (some are supported on stilts instead of on the actual trees themselves), and not all treehouses are equally attractive, but in essence it's just great to see an office that solely does treehouses. I cannot imagine anybody doing that ever going to work in a bad mood...

They say classics never go out of style...

But apparently, forgotten classics can be reinvented. Like the "commode", a piece of furnite of which I was pretty sure it was about to become extinct. At least, as a contemporary piece I thought it was doomed, pretty much.
But luckily young austrian designer Marek Gut stepped up to the plate. He took a traditional piece of furniture (the commode), traditional woodworking skills and combined that with a contemporary style of form, material and colour. The result is pretty sexy. If one could actually claim that a piece of furniture is sexy, that is. Let's, for now, just say that it looks pretty damn smooth...