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You don’t necessarily need to have a background in fashion to successfully design your own suit. With a little bit of curiosity, creativity and a desire to wear something above and beyond the ordinary—all with the…

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The three volumes that make up this house in Japan by Keitaro Muto Architects stagger downwards like a huge set of stairs (+ slideshow).

Japanese studio Keitaro Muto Architects designed the Sunomata house for an extended family living in the small city of Ogaki, who had originally requested a pair of separate dwellings to accommodate different generations.

The architects instead chose to create a single property with visibly separate layers, creating some spaces that can be shared by all family members and a south-facing communal courtyard garden.

The stepped layers help to mediate between the scales of the surrounding two-storey residences and the neighbouring rice fields.

“The building steps down towards the rice fields to the west, and this has played an important role in how the internal spaces have been organised,” explained the architects.

The building occupies around two-thirds of the plot, which is the same site as the family’s previous home, and can be broken down into three layers of rooms. One of these is single storey, while another features a sheltered rooftop balcony, and the third extends up to a second storey.

All three offer views out to the garden, where a series of large rocks have been left in the same positions as they were when the previous building was in place. These are accompanied by smaller stones that create informal seating areas.

“Each of the internal spaces has a different relationship to the Japanese garden, whether this is visual or physical,” said the team.

A sheltered parking area frames the building’s entrance. A ramp runs along one edge to create a route to the front door that is accessible for a wheelchair user, which was part of the brief from the clients.

The two ends of the building accommodate the bedrooms and living rooms for the two different sections of the family. The area for the older generation is all on one level, but can be opened up into a single space if required.

The two-storey end belongs to the younger residents, and features three bedrooms upstairs. The staircase connecting the two floors extends up along the edge of the kitchen and uses the worktop as part of its route.

Communal central spaces include a study, a generously sized closet and a sun room with a double-height ceiling. There is also a traditional Japanese-style room tucked away in one corner.

The team specified a wooden structure for the build. Walls both inside and out are rendered white, accompanied by a mix of floor textures that vary between different tones of wood, tiles and concrete.

Keitaro Muto founded his studio in 2009. Other projects completed since then include a house with a black wedge-shaped facade and a residence that cantilevers across part of the garden.

The post Three overlapping blocks make up
Keitaro Muto’s Sunomata house appeared first on Dezeen.

« Web Popularity Products » est une série originale créée par le photographe anglais Valerio Loi. La série met en scène différents réseaux sociaux sous la forme de vrais produits alimentaires exposés sur des étagères de supermarchés. Facebook devient une pâte à tartiner et Instagram se transforme en boite de conserve. Le tout avec des étiquettes intelligentes.

Amsterdam designer Quintus Kropholler has created this collection of nine products using asphalt concrete to highlight the impact of diminishing petroleum supplies (+ movie).

Quintus Kropholler‘s Black Gold collection comprises eight objects: two bowls, two vases, a side table, a bookstand, a small tray, and a pyramid, as well as the prototype for a bench.

Each is made from asphalt – a sticky, black, viscous liquid form of petroleum – mixed with rock fragments to create asphalt concrete, also known as tarmac and more commonly used for surfacing roads, pavements, car parks and airport runways.

“Asphalt is a ubiquitous material in our urban fabric,” said Kropholler. “It is everywhere, but since it is only regarded in purely functional terms its potential remains unseen.”

“If we take a second look, asphalt has rather unique properties and aesthetic qualities,” he added. “One can simply call it beautiful.”

The objects were cast in steel moulds at 180 degrees centigrade, which were then pressed to bind and solidify the material.

Each was formed from a different chemical mixture, modified from standard asphalt to make them more durable. The materials were then cut, milled and drilled on computer numerically controlled (CNC) devices into the final pieces.

Kropholler hopes that creating “luxury” items from this finite material will highlight its value and provide a more tangible awareness of the environmental issues that surround it.

“With the Black Gold objects I intend not only to show an aesthetic that has been overlooked for almost a century, manifesting the capabilities of the material and it’s industry of today, but rather aim to show, and reflect upon, a piece of our current consumer society that in time will cease to exist,” the designer told Dezeen.

He designed the objects to have a longer lifespan than traditional oil-based products such as fuel and plastics, and even the oil industry itself.

“These objects are designed to outlive this resource’s lifespan, becoming a future monument of today and its passing centuries of oil driven industry and economy, challenging the system of supply and demand from which petroleum earned its name Black Gold,” Kropholler said.

Black Gold was presented during Milan design week 2014 in April.

University of Brighton graduate Josh Bitelli also made a series of furniture and vases from asphalt and road-marking paint, moulding the material over metal pipes.

Photography is by Irene&Quintus.

The post Black Gold homeware collection by
Quintus Kropholler is made of tarmac appeared first on Dezeen.