I’ve recently been working on this project in Berkeley where we’ve abstracted the archetypal house in a modern way. You can see our design for this cottage here shrouded by the palm trees.

Herzog and DeMeuron take this archetypal house to the extreme by extruding the form out like house “logs’ and stacking the logs up five stories as if it were a children’s toy. Simply amazing.

VitraHaus / Herzog & de Meuron | ArchDaily.

I’ve been bored lately with just talking about design objects. I’m an architect, and I’ve recently been obsessed with what I’m calling “temporary architecture”. Temporary architecture , to me, is simply the space created and removed over a short period of time, like for an event.

So I ask you all, dear readers, to tell me if you’ve been somewhere recently that made you feel special in the moment when, normally, you would not consider that space as special.

My first example is a Palio dinner in one of the contrade of Siena. The Palio is an annual horse race that pits neighborhoods against each other. Before the race, a vast dinner is held in each contrada where thousands of neighbors come out to eat in the street. At the head table the guest of honor is the horse.

This example transforms a city street into a dining room for thousands with light, tables, sounds, colors, flags, and people. And although Siena has a natural and man-made beauty that transcends this temporary architecture of the Palio Dinner, I would argue that the temporal experience of the dinner is the basis for falling in love with the city of Siena. The event is fleeting and only a memory, and it’s this intense memory of civic transformation that truly creates the lasting impression of a city rather than it’s day to day stasis.

Temporary architecture also helps resolve what is really important for inhabitation. Is the importance of space derived from a static building’s material quality or sculptural aesthetics? I would say no, and that these qualities only augment an architectural experience which is more based on a memory of a building at that moment. So architecture is just the moments at which we experience it and the temporary elements which affect the static buildings at that time.

Flickr Photo Download: Palio, Onda Dinner.

Most people’s wine cellars have been relegated to the garage, but if you have the cash I would suggest you go for the super sexy trap door wine cellar. Why do this? because you can.

Cool Hidden Spiral Wine Cellars.

I’ve see this beautiful house around the internet, and I know right off that it is one of the freshest combinations of graphic design and architecture that I’ve see in a long time. There used to be a time when graphics went hand in hand with the structure itself such as the sistine chapel’s paintings. OK, today there’s murals, but they aren’t as fully integrated into the design.

Items – Kavellaris Urban Design.

The Puma Store is an inspiration to all architects out there with lots of time and energy and access to a supply of old shipping containers. I consider this store to be a sort of dialogue with some of the past stores Ive seen where the designers have stacked 6 units high by one wide. This one answers the gravity challenge by creating a massive cantilever with no visible support. How’d they do that? Look back at some of Rem Koolhaas’ earlier works to remind yourself ho.

This Just In-box: new Puma VS new Nike VS new Adidas – Core77.

I have very little to say about this house. When trying to come up with a reason for including it on the blog, the only thing that came to mind is: "looks cool". This is not the criteria I hoped to use when I started design crack. But what the hell… One funny thing about the house is I saw the image before I saw the location of the house and I thought to myself, " That’s so Oscar Niemeyer". Of course, the house is in Brasilia.

Osler House / Marcio Kogan | Arch Daily

Ping Mag has posted an insightful account of the pachinko architecture industry leading me to believe that I will never be able to know as much as I would want about this world. I could spend a lifetime studying the accuteness of this strnge design style.

PingMag – The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” » Archive » Tokyo Odyssey: Pachinko Parlour Glitz

When I received this press release almost a week ago, I thought to myself: I have to write about this immediately! I was so excited to see another commission for Herzog and De Meuron, famed Swiss architects, in New York City. I have visited 50 Bond Street in the Bowery many times and stood there slack jawed that such a bold building could actually be built here in this country. Now, I will witness a new building, now under construction in Tribeca, that will push the boundaries of what people thought possible in a 57 story sky scraper.

About this building: It is for the rich. Each unit is a completely unique configuration. No unit repaeats. The prices start at $3.5 million and work their way up to $33 million for the penthouses. The beauty of the building is its unique integration with the exterior. The inside and the outside, in many ways, become one on each floor of this building.

For those who are not multi-millionaires, we can still enjoy the exterior of the building which will feature a form that is not unlike a rickety house of cards. It defies laws of gravity, seemingly, which give it a character on the skyline that might be called post-apocalyptic. This is not a bad thing, though. It’s just something that has never really been seen before. Only time will tell of its success. I’m just happy it will be built. In an architects dream, one can image neighbors on different floors interacting with each other as new adjacencies are created never seen before in high rises. In reality, the form could lead to ever-increasing condo lawsuits as the innovated design is seen as an invitation to peeping toms. Is that too cynical?

One last thing about Herzog & De Meuron that I like to tell people about: They were fired by my own alma matter for not putting a red tile roof on top of their museum design. This happened at the University of Texas where there are a number of prominent Swiss-loving architecture professors who had suggested them for a new museum. As the story goes, H&DM were hired. At the time they had no reputation in the U.S. The design they gave the University was beautiful and modern, but did not meet the red tile roof design requirement for that part of campus. The University and H&DM were at an impasse. Eventually, the architects were fired. Since then, Herzog & De Meuron have gone on to design some of the world’s most prominent contemporary buildings such as the Bird’s Nest in Beijing and the Tate Museum in London. I can only hope that the officials at the University of Texas have recognized their foolish decision to fire this duo.

Wallpaper has created another interactive post of new modern residential architecture. This month, they feature the Holley House, a simple Miesian brick house built near Garrison, New York. The work borrows the smart use of heavy planes that ground the house in a similar way to the Barcelona Pavilion.

Holley House, New York – Architecture – Wallpaper.com – International Design Interiors Fashion Travel