PUBLIC MARKS with tag archi

This is just brilliant, Coelux is an Italian company that make artificial windows and skylights that mimic the true effect of natural sunlight and the sky, you won´t believe it isn´t real!  Designed for gloomy interior spaces, the high-tech light system uses Nanotechnology, and not only mimics the color temperature, it mimics the quality of daylight, it looks so real even a camera will be tricked. The creator’s claim the system is so effective that it tricks unknowing individuals into thinking they are looking up an actual hole in the ceiling, and at the actual sun. The entire system is incorporated into an elaborate false ceiling that is only a few millimeters thick, you can choose from a wall mounted window that produces a warm, grazing light, or a skylight which presents a 45 degree light designed to offer a balance of light and shadow. It recreates the experience of sun and sky and brings the outside world inside. Check out below some more photos of interior spaces illuminated by this faux sunlight, or watch the video for a better explanation on how the innovative system works.

A few typographical gems that can be found in Guatemala City's Zone 1 - the capital's downtown centre. It's glory days may have passed, but these are still looking great. 

‘Reading between the lines’ is a project by the duo Gijs Van Vaerenbergh, a collaboration between young Belgian architects Pieterjan Gijs (Leuven, 1983) and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh (Leuven, 1983). Since 2007, they have been realizing projects in public space together that start from their architectural background, but have an artistic intention. Their projects do not always originate out of the initiative of a classical client, for example, and carry a large degree of autonomy. Their primary concerns are experiment, reflection, a physical involvement with the end result and the input of the viewer.

Couvrez cette ville que je ne saurais voir ! Depuis quelques années, les décideurs publics et les aménageurs urbains jouent les Tartuffe à trop vouloir se protéger des dérives de nos villes. Mobilier urbain anti SDF, éclairage spécial dans les gares pour éviter les drogués, dispositifs sonores anti-jeunes, la ville préfère contourner ses problèmes par des aménagements à tendance discriminatoire.

L’automne dernier à Vancouver, au Canada, une association a mis en place des bancs spécialement conçus pour les sans-abri. L’initiative fait enfin parler d’elle. Septembre 2013 : l’organisme à but non lucratif Raincity Housing, en collaboration avec l’agence de pub Spring Advertising, installe des bancs destinés aux sans-abri dans la ville de Vancouver. Ces refuges temporaires, modulables pour certains, permettent à ceux qui n’ont pas de toit d’au moins se protéger de la pluie.

Much of the contemporary discourse on urban design is rooted in acclaimed architectural theorist Oscar Newman’s influential 1973 book, Defensible Space. Newman believed that criminal and generally irresponsible behavior was facilitated by (typically modernist) “anonymous public spaces”

MON MAÇON ÉTAIT ILLUSTRATEUR. Et il a gardé de bonnes habitudes.

our vast website collection contains over 20,000 meticulously documented and photographed recovered and/or found artifacts found throughout the united states. new acquisitions are added daily to their respective categories found on the homepage. urban remains does not deal in new or reproduction building artifacts.

Lifestyles and needs are changing, and consequently, our houses are shrinking. The tiny house movement has blown up in the past few years, shifting the traditional North American housing models towards a more practical, finance-friendly blueprint. The movement is garnering attention from people fed up with the current consumerist/utility-based lifestyle which has placed millions of people in debt. Now, the idea of living your dream is no longer a cliché.

The relationships we establish with the objects we own happen on a very special manner at the interior of our houses, we assume spaces we inhabit by surrounding ourselves with our belongings, thus the way in which we accumulate and display our stuff through the space ends up reflecting our personality.

„...You must recover your awareness of the physical world. Architecture may be a tool to emphasize our senses and sharpen our consciousness of reality, which tends to be erased by speed and over-information.“

The Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, looks like a peanut crossed with a honeycomb. This odd, organic-looking building would’ve never been made if not for the powers of computational design and robotic manufacturing.

For the last 8 years the Pathe Foundation in Paris has worked with Pritzker-winning architect Renzo Piano to design and construct their new headquarters. Slated for a grand opening this September, photos have emerged that reveal, in the architect’s own words, “an unexpected presence”: a curved bulbous structure that looks like it’s been squeezed into an opening within a historic Parisian city block. “The art of inserting a new building into an historic city block,” says Piano, “means engaging in an open, physical dialogue with the existing city buildings.” In other words, it’s an exercise in reclaiming space.

Il n’aura fallu qu’un seul jour pour fabriquer la première maison par impression 3D et c’est dans la ville de Shanghai que cela s’est passé il y a quelques semaines. C’est la société Shanghai WinSun Decoration Engineering Co qui est à l’origine de ce baptême dans l’industrie de la construction et explique travailler depuis plusieurs années sur la machine et les matériaux de construction.

Here is a selection of residential projects by South West London practice Giles Pike Architects. Minimalist and contemporary glass structures and glazed extensions have been added to redesigned rear facades, allowing excellent views from the house on to the garden.

A view, not a window

“When I was 14 years old, I wrote myself a letter, which I still have,” says Jeri Wakefield. “It reads, ‘No matter what happens in my life, I pledge to be the best grandmother I can be, so when I have grandkids they will have happy memories of their grandmother and their childhood.’”

In June 2013, a further element will be introduced on the Vitra Campus. On a hill between the VitraHaus and the Dome, the Italian architect Renzo Piano and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) has developed “Diogene”, which to date is Vitra’s smallest building ― but largest product.

The year 2013 may be remembered as the year when micro started to become cool. People had been talking about living in small houses as an alternative to oversize suburban houses and urban pads for decades, but a number of events and projects converged in 2013. In January there was an exhibition and news about microunits in New York City, matched by similar news in San Francisco and other cities. And then every month a new tiny prefab housing unit was unveiled, breaking out of the confines of the city and moving into nature.

In July 2012 New York City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development launched an adAPT NYC competition to develop a building with microunits on a city-owned lot in Manhattan's Kips Bay neighborhood. The competition was spurred by the changing demographics of the city, which now has 1.8 million one- and two-person households (comprising more than 20 percent of its 8.4 million residents) but only 1 million one-bedroom and studio apartments. Furthermore, the current zoning code restricts the size of apartments and their density (number of units per lot), making it impossible to build small units for singles and couples.

We have seen huge advancements in 3D printing. We’ve even seen oversized wrenches printed that measure 1.2 meters in length. Now, we can print an entire 2,500 sqft house in 20 hours. In the TED Talk video below, Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), demonstrates automated construction, using 3D printers to build an entire house in 20 hours.

A retrospective closes this weekend at MoMA on Swiss architect Le Corbusier, best known for his residential projects like Villa Savoye (as well as that chair). But I'd argue that his most genius work was Église Saint-Pierre, a remarkable cathedral in Firminy, France. Here, Le Corbusier manages a kind of architectural alchemy: creating the effect of stained glass windows with only paint and concrete.