Une forêt de 150 arbres en pot a été totalement intégrée à un immeuble de 5 étages à Turin. Conçu par l’architecte italien Luciano Pia, la structure « 25 Verde » absorbe près de 200.000 litres de dioxyde de carbone par heure et crée une protection à ses résidents en éliminant une grande partie des gaz nocifs causés par les voitures et le bruit extérieur.
To mark St Patrick’s Day, we’ve assembled some of the best examples of domestic architecture in Ireland from the pages of Dezeen – including a timber-frame house with sliding doors, a black glass extension to a period home, and a seaside retreat.
This wooden house was designed by John McLaughlin for his own family, and features walls of sliding glass doors on the front and back facades that open onto patios and a small garden, with matching windows on the upper level.
“I had never built in timber and never self built before, so I bought a book called Timber Framed Construction from the Timber Research and Development Agency and followed it,” said the architect.
“The dimensional accuracy and jointing of components is so much better than masonry that I was completely converted to timber.” Find out more about the Open House »
House at Goleen by Niall McLaughlin Architects
A rural cottage on the south coast of Ireland was extended with the addition of four mono-pitched blocks clad in uniform Irish blue limestone. The blocks are staggered to create the appearance of gabled structures when viewed from either end.
“Outside of the local development boundary and set just below one of Europe’s most scenic roads, the character of the views and the landscape seen from the land around the house and the sea had to be maintained,” said the architects.
“The pavilions step down the 1.6 metre fall of the site creating a meandering path through the house from the entrance on the west to the living space and sea views to the east.” Find out more about House at Goleen »
This small extension to a 1990s mews house in a Dublin suburb is actually a garage conversion. The street-facing window replaces a rolling shutter at the front of the space, while a sideline has been converted into a parking spot.
“Originally the ground floor at the back was split into a narrow kitchen and living room so we opened it up to create a generous living and dining space, and the kitchen was pushed into what used to be the garage,” said architect Cian Deegan from TAKA. Find out more about the Waterloo Road conversion »
Featuring interiors made from sandblasted concrete and timber, this house in Dublin was designed for a family of five and is spread spread across two staggered volumes. A connecting space, described by the architects as a “concrete tube” cuts through the building, contains the communal areas.
“Divided by joinery elements, the tube of space is twisted between ground and first floor to allow a relationship to the garden and daylight from above,” said Diarmaid Brophy of FLK.
“The house is an exploration of diagonal space within an orthogonal form and the possibilities of integrating environmental concerns at a fundamental level.” Find out more about A House »
C-House by Dot Architecture and Soc-Arc
This dark grey house in Kildare was built on the remains of a 1980s home that had been ruined by flash floods. It is made up of three connected blocks, with sloping roofs designed around large chimneys that bring in natural light and ventilation.
“The project is a contemporary interpretation of an Irish bungalow, answering issues of context, planning and site levels,” said Dot Architecture. Find out more about C-House »
Scale of Ply by NOJI Architects
The complicated form of this extension to a terraced house in Dublin features three different kinds of structure – all made from plywood.
“The project uses plywood as a primary and secondary structural material, and as an internal skin,” explained NOJI Architects.
“This house was dark and damp, with a poorly constructed conservatory as the main source of light and link to the garden,” added the architects.
“The layout maximises the south-west orientation, and allows both internal window seat and external covered areas to relate to the garden.” Find out more about Scale of Ply »
The textured brick facade of this Dublin mews house by TAKA reflects the brickwork of its neighbour, a Victorian house that was also remodelled by the architects for the same clients.
“These two new homes house two generations of the same family – a renovated Victorian House for the parents sharing a rear garden with a new mews house for one of the daughters,” explains date studio.
“The memories of the family are used as a conscious architectural driver throughout both houses. Typical domestic objects are distorted in material and scale to form a psychological landscape specific to the occupants,” added the architects. Find out more about House 1 and House 2 »
This glazed extension on the back of an 1860s property in Rathmines was designed to feel like part of the garden, with full-height sliding frames of glazing hung outside the main structure to disguise the thickness of the concrete roof.
“The extension is as light and transparent as possible to create this sense, as well as visually connecting the new courtyard with the garden beyond,” architect Michael Pike told Dezeen. “We wanted to make the room feel like part of the garden.” Find out more about the Ormond Road extension »
Seaside House by A2 Architects
The seaside house on the east coast of Ireland is divided into two wooden-clad blocks made from Douglas fir, that replace a holiday chalet that previously occupied the site. One side contains nothing but a large living and dining room, while the other contains two bedrooms, bathrooms and a kitchen.
“A coastal garden and raised planter afford privacy to the main bedroom and a sheltered evening terrace enjoys west sun and views of the horizon through the living room,” said the architects. “The large seaside family terrace is the focus for daily beach life; a place to gather and enjoy the sun or the shade.” Find out more about Seaside House »
Carnivan House by Aughey O’Flaherty Architects
Locally source rubble was used to construct the walls of this house in Fethard on Sea, on Ireland’s south coast. The single-storey home is perched on top of a cliff, and makes the most of the resulting views with full height windows and a roof terrace, with a small garden sheltered by the L shape of the building.
“The challenge was to deal with the potentially conflicting objectives of creating a home that was sensitive to this beautiful landscape and that also made the most of it,” said Aughey O’Flaherty.
“The house is a combination of new and traditional construction technologies – a super insulated air-tight prefabricated timber structure, slowly wrapped in a local random rubble, sitting on a polished concrete base.” Find out more about Carnivan House »
This 18th century townhouse in Dublin was completely remodelled, converting it back from 11 studio flats into a family home and adding a small extension at the back clad in panels of black glass.
A wide oak staircase connects the new space and an adjoining dining area with the open-plan living area on the first floor – the kitchen is tucked away under the stairs.
“The view over the black glass roof of the rear extension, flawlessly reflects the Victorian surrounding architecture and the movement of the moody overcast sky overhead,” said the architects. Find out more about the Leinster Road extension »
Precast House by FKL Architects
FKL created this polished precast-concrete house on a site in Dublin Bay, Howth, with a matching garage and a swimming pool. The main building emerges out of the sloping site, with large glass windows to take in the views.
“The project is defined in conceptual terms as three discrete forms, each emerging from the landscape, their respective heights being determined by the use of each form,” said the architects.
“The relationship between the three elements is a casual one, slipping past each other, sliding towards the sea.” Find out more about Precast House »
House Extension in Dublin by GKMP Architects
When seen from a distance, this extension might look like its made from exposed red brick – but it is actually covered in terracotta tiles.
Constructed from blockwork, the addition to the 1950s semi-detached house contains a kitchen and dining area, with angular spaces determined the faceted shape of the structure .
“The angled walls create deep thresholds between inside and outside and make niches for benches,” said the architects.
“The timber roof of the extension is covered in sedum to have a visual connection with the garden when viewed from the upper floor.” Find out more about the House Extension in Dublin »
The post 13 of the best contemporary
homes in Ireland appeared first on Dezeen.
Last Friday, we wrapped up our ten-part Tech Specs interview series, in which we talked to designers from a variety of sectors about their computer setups, most-used software, favorite apps, biggest tech gripes and related issues. Obviously, this is too small of a sample size to extrapolate any broad generalizations about the design community’s tech needs and wants. Nevertheless, we noticed a handful of outstanding themes (and complaints) emerge from the interviews. Here are our seven top Tech Specs takeaways.
Immediacy is key
Over and over, our interviewees pined for a more immediate digital experience—for a way to interact with software via less clumsy interfaces and with fewer redundant tools, and with a far greater feeling of directness and intimacy. As Microsoft’s Andrew Kim pointed out, even with relatively straightforward drawing apps, “there’s still that difficulty of getting out the tablet, turning it on, going into the app, opening your notebook, creating a new page. It’s not the same as just opening your sketchbook and putting down an idea.” The digital artist Jonathan Harris made much the same point: “I wish it could be more direct, the same way a pencil is direct—you just make a mark and there is the mark, whereas with software there are all of these steps you need to go through in order to make a mark.” Maybe software can never achieve the same immediacy as paper and pencil, but the designers we interviewed are hoping it can get a lot closer than it has so far.
After immediacy, designers crave speed
From laser-scanning pickup trucks to generating experimental architecture through code, faster digital processes have made it easier than ever before to create innovative designs. And for the designers we spoke to, more speed would mean even more possibilities. As THEVERYMANY’s Marc Fornes said, “speed equals variation, and in our work, variation equals design. . . . The reason we change our laptops every two years is to keep building up speed.”
Of course, some of our interviewees were also wary of the effects of too much acceleration in the design process. As Ammunition’s Victoria Slaker told us, “being more responsive with the hardware [design] side of things, and more iterative—that’s something we’re always chasing. And that has pushed the ID and engineering side of hardware to go faster and just be more nimble.” And this can be a blessing and a curse.
Elaborate work does not necessarily require an elaborate computer setup
As a writer, I have a pretty bare-bones computer setup—laptop, external monitor, printer . . . that’s about it. Going into this interview series, I expected designers to have much more complex and personalized configurations, and for the most part this was not the case. Most of our interviewees use a MacBook Pro with an external monitor. A few also had a Wacom tablet or maybe an iPad, but for the most part everyone was focused on keeping their hardware as streamlined as possible.
Indeed, most of our interviewees do not consider themselves early adopters of new technology, and many were wary of adding new digitals tools to their workflows until absolutely necessary—and careful not to let the tech itself become too central to their designs. As Local Projects’ Paul Hoppe put it, “The technology is fascinating and it allows us to do what we do—but if that becomes the focus of the work, instead of thoughtful ideas and compelling stories, then we’re missing the point of why we’re designing and who we’re designing for.”
Analog tools still rule
This one is not so surprising: The designers we spoke to still sketch with a pencil or pen; they still build models using an X-acto knife and paper or foamcore; they still make to-do lists on sticky notes or whiteboards. Not everyone we talked to starts with physical media—Bresslergroup’s Thomas Murray has switched to 100-percent digital sketching—but everyone incorporated analog tools at some point in their process.
Apps are not a crucial part of anyone’s workflow
Designers certainly rely on their smartphones for e-mail, text messages, maps, photos and social media—as does virtually everyone these days. But when asked for apps that are crucial to their workflow, most of our interviewees struggled to name more than one or two kind of useful examples. Their favorites included some neat tools for distraction-free writing, photo editing, ordering lunch, creating legal agreements and viewing 3D files on the go. But none of them were absolutely essential to anyone’s design process.
Everyone just wants to work from the couch
OK, maybe not everyone—only a couple of our interviewees specifically mentioned the couch as an ideal spot for their design work. But almost everyone we talked to placed a high value on portability, and many of them were willing to sacrifice a bit of computing power in exchange for being able to work from anywhere. Ram Trucks design chief Greg Howell, for instance, initially worried that he wouldn’t be able run Alias on a laptop, but now he’s so hooked that he’s hoping for a tablet version next. And Outlier cofounder Abe Burmeister has embraced a dual computer setup, with a powerful desktop workstation and an iPad Mini for couch work sessions. Guess which one he spends the most time working on.
Dude, back up your work!
This last one is more of a recommendation than a takeaway. When we asked designers for to tell us about their most epic tech fails, most of the stories involved lost data—a hard drive that fell onto the floor at the worst possible moment; a MacBook that died in a remote mountain cabin; an office auto-backup system that turned out to be faulty. All of these designers learned the hard way the importance of religiously backing up their data. So if anyone out there has not yet devised a rigorous backup system, take heed! You don’t want to be the next designer to lose months of work to a spilled Coke.
This article is part of the Core77 Tech-tacular, an editorial series exploring the myriad ways that technologies are shaping the future of design.
It’s not on the LinkedIn resume. But it’s in the Vivid press release.
From 2000 to 2010, Natalie Oliveros (pictured) worked for Vivid Entertainment as adult film star Savanna Samson. Along the way, she educated herself about fine wines, launched her own vintage in 2005 and became a co-owner with Roberto Cipresso of an Italian vineyard in 2011. Currently, she is in Italy to film, as host, a TV show pilot about wine titled The Lady in Red. From today’s announcement:
“We were looking for ways to extend our knowledge about how to make a popular show about wine and trying to take it international,” said Appelbaum creative director Jan Kooyman. “When we found Natalie, we knew she would be great for hosting our show about wine. We are thrilled she wants to work with us and we are very positive this show will be interesting for a lot of channels. With so many wine aficionados around the globe, this will be a show that can air in a lot of countries.”
The New York-based Oliveros’ wine brand is called Sogno Uno, which means Dream One in Italian. Appelbaum, based in Amsterdam, currently produces another TV wine show headed into its fourth season on Netherlands public broadcaster NPO. For a list of where you can pick up Sogno Uno in NYC, <a href="http://www.savannasamsonwine.com/Where-to-Purchase" target="_"click here.
[Image via: savannasamsonwine.com]
Effective today, Mike Bruno (pictured) at our sister publication Billboard has a new title. A VP of digital content since March of 2014, he has been promoted to senior vice president, digital content.
From Janice Min’s memo:
Under Mike’s leadership, billboard.com has experienced phenomenal growth in the past year, making its story one of the greatest media reinventions in recent years. In January, the site registered 15.2 million worldwide uniques (according to comScore), marking an increase of 77 percent year-over-year. February is shaping up to be even bigger, eclipsing January, with billboard.com registering its best month ever in early comScore reporting, setting an all-time high for a second month in a row with a 15 percent month-over-month increase.
The Billboard/Hollywood Reporter group now has become the fifth-largest entertainment/news site and comprises a vastly larger U.S. audience than such outlets as vice.com, rollingstone.com, Spin Entertainment, Complex Music, TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly, according to ComScore’s February 2015 U.S. multi-platform report. Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter today have a combined reach of 27.9 million U.S. uniques for the month of February (according to comScore), a 20 percent increase over January’s record total of 23.1 million.
Interestingly enough, Bruno worked at EW from 2007 to 2014, as news editor and executive editor/news director. He started his career in 2005 with Soap Opera Digest.
Another interesting tidbit from the Min memo. She writes that she was “blown away” by a presentation made last month by Bruno about what th VP is envisioning at the billboard.com end over the next few years. As part of the promotion, Billboard EIC Tony Gervino will now report to Bruno.
Redbook has named Nicole Lapin its first-ever financial columnist. Lapin is a CNN anchor and has contributed to MSNBC and the Today show. She has also served as a correspondent for Bloomberg TV.
“Nicole’s engaging, creative and relatable financial tips resonate with women, who are making daily decisions about their finances,” said Meredith Rollins, Redbook’s editor in chief, in a statement. “Making the right choices is enormously important to our readers, and we’re thrilled to have Nicole join our team of experts.”
Lapin’s first column appears in Redbook’s April issue, which is available now.
New York has named Christian Lorentzen its book critic. Lorentzen most recently served as a senior editor at the London Review of Books. He will continue to work there as an editor-at-large.
“Christian’s a gifted writer and original thinker, and I’m thrilled to have him join us and expand on the book-critic role,” said New York’s editor, Adam Moss, in a statement. “We’re conceiving of it more as literary essayist/observer/provocateur, with a home base in books, and look forward to evolving it with Christian. He will explore reading in many contexts, as well as language, argument, storytelling, and so on.”
Lorentzen will write for New York and Vulture starting in April.
For a team of scientists at Texas A&M University, cockroaches are anything but pests—they may be the key to surveillance cyborgs. By implanting electrodes into the bug’s brains and outfitting them with recording equipment, scientists can control (with……
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BMW unveils its latest Urban Racer Concept Motorcycle. Powered by a 1200cc twin cylinder engine..(Read…)
Designed for Blackfin Titanium Eyewear, this retail stand is an architectural reflection of the brand’s cool, modern aesthetic. Materials of pierced sheet metal and concrete communicate simplicity and robustness, also characteristic of the solid Japanese titanium frames. Inside, the exhibition is tidy and rational, with visual impact given by freestanding displays and a central monolithic block. Simultaneously stark yet inviting, the structure is optimized for trying on high-end optics. Take a peek inside —>
Designer: Arch. Nicola De Pellegrini – anidridedesign
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