Hasta La Ideas

Il primo premio per l’ Untho Artee Contest è andato a…Gioia Di Girolamo! La quale si porta a casa, oltre all’ onore di vedere stampata la propria grafica sulla nuova collezione Untho autunno 2010, anche 300 euro di materiale targato Untho!

Remember on Friday when we said that everyone would be pleased with the Stirling Prize shortlist? Scratch that. The Guardian‘s Jonathan Glancey has chimed in with his editorial on the award’s latest picks and he finds the whole thing a little dull, the reaction to the world’s financial downfall causing the Stirling to go way too safe and restrained (except for two of the six picks, which Glancey describes as seeming “to represent the very economic culture that has caused so much pain”). What’s more, Glancey doesn’t just feel blah about these awards, but he uses them as a springboard to question the value of all awards, wondering how you can pit such wildly different pieces of architecture against one another. This, we feel, is a bit of a reach for the critic, since any sort of awards (outside of sports) are a completely subjective things with miscellaneous things put up against one another (see: every single movie/television/music awards). That’s not to say we love awards and will defend them to the end, and we should say what huge Glancey fans we are, but it just felt a little odd to read that from him, seeing as architecture competitions are sort of routine in that industry, aren’t they?

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Tough terrain doesn’t make construction easy, but Ruth Slavid’s upcoming book “Extreme Architecture: Building For Challenging Environments” proves that it’s not only feasible, but the outcome is completely worth the effort.

A journey through the elements, the book covers the major environmental factors—hot, cold, high, wet and space—categorized into five chapters and led by a brief summary explaining the difficulties of each climate.

The range of impressive architectural feats includes a tropical summer home, a Swiss chairlift station, a floating sauna, a lunar hotel, African school buildings and an underground global seed vault, to name a few. With the photographs just as inspiring as their subjects, the book makes not only for a great reference point but also as an objet d’art.

Each structure is explained over a multiple-page layout, providing details on the complications of its location and a small rendering of the building. In addition, Slavid supplies the annual rainfall, average temperatures and the altitude for each of the case studies—just the jumping off point for the challenges faced by each of the architects.

Available in August, “Extreme Architecture” can be purchased from Laurence King Publishing and Chronicle Books.

See more images after the jump

Ribbon is a sculptural, wall-mounted coat rack.  Inspired by a ribbon blowing in the wind, Ribbon is an attempt at functional art.  On its o..

Perhaps the biggest design buzz of last week happened just a little too late on Friday afternoon to catch a whole slew of notice. Also, because the internet pretty much shuts down over the weekends, it’s something you’ll likely see explode over the next couple of days. Gizmodo, the popular gadget blog, received a copy of the design concepts for Microsoft‘s new retail shops, which they’re planning to open this fall. Although a spokesman from the company says they’re only ideas submitted to them by the consulting firm Lippincott and aren’t the final product, Gizmodo speculates that, since the images were date stamped in early July and Microsoft hopes to open in the fall, they’re likely very close to what we’ll see as the real deal. Our opinion? It looks a lot like the Apple Store, just with more stock photography. And we’re sure we’re going to hear that sort of critique everywhere, but in Microsoft’s sort-of-defense, isn’t every new retail concept trying to look like the Apple Store? Heck, we were in a yogurt store on Friday afternoon and that looked like you could get an iMac with your smoothie. Anyway, Gizmodo has a huge batch of images, which are a kick to browse. Go forth.

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