The former Saint Jakobus Church, a municipal monument, located in Utrecht, Netherlands is not what it appears to be from its exterior facade. Originally built in 1870 the church holds a lot of historical value.
The current owners hired renowned Utrecht-based firm of ZECC Architects to transform the church into a home with a great attention to light, space and functionality. The interior design was done by Thomas Haukes to compliment the original style and proportions of the space.
Upwards of 14,000 sq ft. the home is flooded with light from all the surrounding windows.
House in Sao Paulo, built and designed byFernanda Marques Arquitetos Associados. The property is designed in the form of a spacious bungalow of about 250m², where nature plays much more than a mere supporting role: one just has to note the intense use of daylight. The use of materials in their rough state. Its total openness to the outside.
SWAROVSKI WALLPAPER
Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich created this fake pool called The Swimming Pool, for The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. Leandro put two clear acrylic glasses about a foot apart and filled the space in between with water. The top surface is also filled with about 4 to 5 inches of water so that it looks like a realistic pool.
Vitra Haus, the new home of Vitra’s Home Collection, has been covered widely by design media, and not in vain. It is a beautiful example of Jacques Herzog’s and Pierre de Meuron’s ability to take the ubiquitous stacked-houses concept and still make it look new, interesting and inviting.
Reaching five storeys in height and containing 12 separate houses, Vitra House is geared toward the general public, design-aware consumers who will appreciate the building as well as the Vitra products inside. The entire contraption appears both grandiose and intimate at the same time, with the gray exterior disguising the disheveled heap within the site, while the open glass-walled ends and stark, white interiors facilitate the presentation of residential-scale displays.
Vitra House is the latest addition to the ever-expanding Vitra Campus that started as an industrial park with the manufacturing facilities. Now the Vitra Design Museum–Frank Gehry’s first European building opened in 1989 — the Conference Pavilion by Tadao Ando (1993) and the Fire Station by Zaha Hadid (1993) already provide magnificent visual attraction. Vitra Haus and a new circular manufacturing facility by Kazuyo Sejima/SANAA are this year’s entrants to the site.
The Hollywood sign was originally erected in 1923 with the letters spelling out Hollywoodland. The letters have inspired both tragedy and affection. In 1932, young Welsh-born actress Peg Entwistle, frustrated with ongoing rejection by the city’s film directors, climbed 45 feet up to the top of the letter ‘H’ and jumped to her death. The 24-year-old became known as ‘The Hollywood Sign Girl’. When the sign fell into disrepair in the 1970s, it was restored after a campaign which saw nine donors pay $27,777 to ‘adopt’ one letter each.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner paid $900,000 to save the Hollywood sign from near destruction. Now architect Christian Bay-Jorgensen says the sign could be transformed into a hotel, with each letter hosting guests and rooms with amazing views of Los Angeles. The hotel letters would be twice the height of the current 45-ft tall sign, and include an observation deck.
For a short time I lived in a house very close to the sign. When I closed my eyes at night it was the last thing I saw from the bedroom window. The hills are beautiful there. It’s such a juxtaposition from the LA hustle and bustle just ten minutes away on Franklin Avenue. It’s so serene and natural. It feels like you are in Napa Valley. The houses are backed on to this gorgeous all natural hilly mountainside. There are hmmingbirds, wild coyotes, rabbits and deer. Calla lillies grow wild. The long dirt path takes you for miles around the sign that only the locals know about to have their daily runs or take their dog for a walk. The skinny roads to get to your house are hairpin turns all the way. If you miss one turn you will end up on the other side of Mulholland Drive and completely lost. I don’t think that the owners of these beautiful multi-million dollar homes will be happy about the traffic and noise that this proposed hotel may bring.
RICK OWENS FURNITURE AT SALON 94
NY LOFT 7,000 sq ft
NY Loft
AMSTERDAM LOFT
IL BUCO RESTAURANT – ATHENS GREECE
Designed by the Athens-based Sotovikis and located on the third floor of a neo-classical building, Il Buco has views of the Acropolis. The restaurant consists of three separate spaces clustered around the cocktail bar.
Property developer Land Securities owned office space in 80 Victoria Street, London SW1. One vast floor’s space was due to be split into four sections and then let to separate companies. Agents showing prospective tenants around required something to demonstrate this clearly. Radford Wallis went for maximum impact by creating four scaled-up stationery items, used to mark out the huge space. The giant objects were then positioned where the partitions would eventually be built.
HAYTON STUDIO INFO CENTER AT GRONINGER MUSEUM
If you like the concrete/industrial look but have boring white walls, here is the solution: Norwegian company ConcreteWall created concrete wallpapers that can be applied on any walls with regular wall glue. All different styles of concrete are available for purchase online at Concrete Wall.
1111 Lilcoln Road project in Miami, designed by Herzog & De Meuron. This is a hybrid structure that combines a multistorey car park with commercial and residential functions, restructuring some pre-existing buildings.
Pat Hanson and Diana Gerrard, each with over 30 years of experience in their respective careers, own the Toronto-based practice. Individually, they have designed and run major projects throughout North America. Together, in 2005, they founded gh3 and have quickly established themselves as a major design practice. Working globally, in both the public and private sectors, and in all fields – educational, institutional, commercial and leisure – gh3 has completed award-winning projects at many different scales that have been extensively published internationally.