Technorati Tags: house plans, Hus1, modern design, modern house

Recent years have seen a flourishing of organizations that gather people with common interests participate in do-it-yourself activities

In a reaction to the digital age, creative people are finding ways to build community in the real world to share knowledge, projects, and ideas. People are looking to the Internet to find outlets for active creativity, rather than merely passive entertainment or consumption.

Cases

The Make Lounge

North London’s Make Lounge brings arts and crafts into the 21st century. One-off workshops are delivered in a branded “drop-in” environment, attracting those looking to dabble in activities such as millinery, jewelery making, or knitting.

The School of Life

Located close to some of London’s top universities, The School of Life makes adult education accessible and cool. Opened in September 2008, the space features a shop that sells books, art, courses, vacation packages, and consultancy to those seeking intellectual adventure. Beneath the shop is an underground classroom that hosts regular courses across five central themes - work, play, family, politics and love.





Maker Fair

Dubbed “Woodstock for inventors,” Maker Fair is a two-day event for people who love to make things themselves. Everything from arts and crafts to engineering and science, sustainable design, food, and music are represented. The event is no small job for organizers Make Magazine and Crafts Magazine: the last Maker Fair attracted 65,000 people.

Trend Impact
Although the Internet may provide us with instant, free information, we still thrive on real-world human interactions. Creative people are going online to connect people with common offline interests.

Slight change to our weekly Meta MoCo survey post, we've decided to split it into two parts; Best MoCo Architecture This Week and Best MoCo Objects This Week. With the number and quality of design blogs steadily growing, the quantity of design objects and architecture has virtually exploded. The name change also more aptly describes the content we are presenting. Best MoCo Architecture This Week will be posted every weekend and Best MoCo Objects This Week will now be posted on Mondays.

+ Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter's prefab Read-Nest, "Measuring only 10 m2, Read-Nest is a small pre-manufactured structure that is designed to sit in the landscape like an architectural folly. Being flexible in both situation and use, the owner can place Read-Nest where he or she feels would best suit their needs, whether for study, relaxation or both.". At Arch Daily.

+ Also from Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter; Summerhouse in Jørlunde at Arch Daily. "Raised above the ground by concrete pillars, the house extends over the sloping terrain with interior spaces and terraces filtered from the outer landscape by movable fabric screens stretching along the perimeter.".

+ Splitterwerk's 32 sq. meter "Ivory and fresh Shell" apartment # 1 in Black Treefrog, Bad Waltersdorf, Austria. Converted from an old farmyard and a fire station, "The new interior envelope is conceived as a continuously active media surface - Projections, enlarged picture screens or TV - that makes the spatial divisions into virtual phenomena.". Via Judit Bellostes and We Make Money Not Art.

+ Jan Konings and Droog Lab's Hotel Experimenta*. "a temporary hotel at the northern IJ-river front in Amsterdam. It can be seen as an inverted hotel - the neighbourhood as a whole functions as a hotel, the streets are the hotel corridors, and the inhabitants are the hosts that offer the guests services, activities and excursions.". Via Judit Bellostes, Droog lab and Frame magazine.

+ Allied Works Architecture's Dutchess County Guesthouse profiled in the NYT's Style Magazine. "A cool guesthouse for a pair of art collectors upstate New York by the firm that redid 2 Columbus Circle.". Via Materialicious.

+ "Koji Tsutsui Architect & Associates design a house for an industrial designer in a quiet residential area in Tokyo." at World Architecture News.

+ Curiosity, Inc.'s C-2 House at rolu | design, with "a dash of something 70's here. picture the exterior covered in cedar shakes.".

+ Swedish designer Jonas Wagell's Mini House, "a 15 square metre house that can be built in a weekend". At Dezeen.

+ DeMaria Design's Redondo Beach House, "constructed with a combination of prefabricated shipping containers and traditional building materials". At Inhabitat.

+ Morten and Andrea's Gotland island sommarhus at Hemfeber.

I should share some snippets from last Friday when I’ve joined several of my peers in The Hague, NL. However please allow for some digesting of my impressions and thoughts! I will write a follow up for sure ;-)

After all what we’ve touched in our panel discussion as well as during the ‘after show’ talks has been (amongst others) the question how to best enter the ‘Design Management Sphere’. From regular email conversations as well as face2face talks this seems to be an urgent question in particular for fresh (design) graduates.

What I usually respond (and this is not meant as ‘fobbing off’) is that independent from their focus of study (let it be design or business administration just to name the two most dominant ones) graduates should try to gain as many and rich experiences in their field of profession as possible. This enables them to comprehensively explore the pros and cons of the field and will help them to render more precisely which domain of the Design Management sphere they are most interested in: Digital, Brand, Corporate, Industrial, Consumer, Services, just to name a few.

Ultimately and this is what I truly believe in: Design Management to a large degree is to a large degree nurtured by the application of (for sure!) cross-disciplinary experiences and skills that tend to rather grow over time. This does however not mean that undergraduate BA & MA programmes in Design Management are not useful. This is however a different discussion to be discussed at another time.

So, for those of you who are seeking for these cross-disciplinary experiences delivered in a highly condensed format you might want to have a look at the MoHo Website. Here’s a snippet from their vision statement:

“Innovation is hampered by a myriad of factors in today’s globalised world. The lack of communication between knowledge centers such as engineering, marketing and design in companies, creates distortions and miscomprehensions between people that heavily penalize the innovation process.

These problems are further amplified if economic reality is brought into the picture. Too many products have been ‘invented’ in the past with little or no potential for economic success. ‘Inventors’ very easily forget the importance of market reality.”

Unfortunately I haven’t been aware of this initiative and hopefully they will share some of the findings publicly soon!

Side note:

These are the facts & figures of the event I do miss more designers here for sure:
# 7 days in Palo Alto
# June 1 - June 8
# 1 house
# 16 partners
# 15 endorsements
# 15 engineering students
# 3 design students
# 15 business students
# 10 social entrepreneurs
# 10 artists
# 5 venture capitalists
# 2 design professors
# 3 business professors

If it works, the next step is the fall of per-stream fees and download fees. Instead labels will see music consumption for what it really is - free marketing. Labels will compete to encourage song downloads and streams to move those songs up the charts, attracting premium advertisers, merchandise sales and sold out concerts."

What's interesting to see here is the role music has played as a glue to generate revenue for media companies, but the context of that revenue generation has changed over time.

"We are a team consisting of a developer, architect, and
contractor who were getting frustrated by the dismissive response to
modern design by clients and real estate professionals in our area,
so we decided to do our own thing with incredibly positive results.

We couldn't understand why people would seek out the latest design
and technology in cars, electronics, etc., but new builder/spec. home
construction seemed to be stuck in the year 1900. How many people
would go to a store for a new computer and happily walk out with a
univac the size of a refrigerator that only did addition and
subtraction? Yet people were making a similar decision every day with
a new home. We just didn't get it.

So, we design and build homes that respond and complement modern
life, are extremely efficient in terms of energy, space, livability,
constructability, and are affordable."

+ The Ideaco & Muku collection of brings together a lovely collection of wooden desktop accessories.

+ Tokujin Yoshioka's Venus chair will be the centerpiece of the "Second Nature" exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight. Via Dezeen.

+ The Good Design Award 2008 "Best 15" has been announced. JS

The concerns about their system that I have are: The use of wood as the primary building material is not generally sustainable in this day of lost forests. With the double envelope design, you are practically building two houses to end up with one. Relying on wood as a thermal mass material compromises the potential thermal performance because wood does not serve this function nearly as well as traditional masonry thermal mass materials. So, I guess what I am saying is that a more sustainable and less costly design can be accomplished in more traditional ways.

1. Solid wood envelope. They seem to be using the old “mass enhanced R-value” argument for why solid wood walls perform well thermally. I think it’s well established that this is true only in very specific climatic situations. Touting solid southern yellow pine walls in comparison to solid white pine walls is like saying a Chevy Suburban gets better gas mileage than a Hummer…that’s not really a useful statistic.
2. Energy without oil. The presentation intimates that this is a completely passive design. For example, no heating system is mentioned. That simply isn’t credible for most climates using the technology they are describing.
3. Passive means local. You simply can’t create a design that relies heavily on passive techniques and generalize it across climates. In my area where we have high humidity, I’d wonder about this convective loop through the attic and basement, for example.

I could go on. I’m a passive design freak, so I’m all for the basic concepts they are dealing with. However, I don’t see anything really new here, but see marketing claims touting what they are doing as a major breakthrough and “the answer”. That always makes me nervous."

David Eisenberg, of www.dcat.net wrote, "After a skimming around their website, I see that they sell kits and their base prices don't include a lot of things - some of which are enumerated:

We decided quite early in the process to excavate under our garage and take advantage of the 200 sqft that would have otherwise sat unused. I don't believe this is particularly common, but it's a relatively inexpensive way to maximize the space on a small lot. Our original intention was to use a product called Insul-Deck to support the garage floor, however we've since had to abandon this approach in favor of a straightforward concrete & rebar structural slab.

+ 360winnett.com

• P&G’s Innovation Culture
  Good case on how the idea of a 'Blue Ocean Strategy' can be applied: "The heart of a company’s business model should be game-changing innovation. This is not just the invention of new products and services, but the ability to systematically convert ideas into new offerings that alter the very context of the business."
  (tags: Innovation P&G Blue Ocean Strategy applied research)

One of the great perpetrators of the United States’ wastefulness is urban sprawl, which leads to SOV (single occupancy vehicle) disorder. Many Americans drive to work, and we usually don’t carpool. Beyond driving to work, we use our cars for other things – soccer practice, forgotten items at the grocery store, and trips across our giant country. It doesn’t need to be that way. If we could break ourselves of this habit of hyper-convenience, we could have better bike lanes, rail, and bus systems. Or we could share our cars. Zipcar is an innovative car sharing service that prides itself upon its convenience and accessibility. We recently caught up with Zipcar spokesperson Lesley Neadel to ask a few questions about the company’s green cred.

(more…)

Technorati Tags: 6030 House, 6040 House, ecosteel, modern design, modern house, prefab house