360 DEGREES Weblog

Shanghai’s shiny new Museum of Glass opened last week as part of Shanghai’s campaign of becoming a globally important cultural and creative centre by launching 100 museums in a decade.

Shanghai-based German architectural firm Logon handled the architecture and exterior of the museum. Germany’s Glashütte Lambets supplied the enameled glass used for the museum’s façade inscribed with glass-industry terms in ten languages.

COORDINATION ASIA, also based in Shanghai, was in charge of the overall museum concept, art direction, design and  supervision of the museum interior. It was also the chief consultant for curation, marketing and operation, as well as coordination of an international team of architects, artists, designers, filmmakers and multimedia specialists.

COORDINATION’s Tilman Thürmer tells TCH that they used black lacquered glass for the interior (cases, floor, furniture, walls), but left the existing structure untouched. The museum building is a former glassmaking workshop, one of 30 former bottling-plant structures that the Shanghai Glass Co. still owns.

The black, sleek glass of the interior reflects the LED lights and screens positioned throughout the space, creating a shiny and glittering multi-dimensional feel. This emphasizes the interaction, interdependence and influences of periods, continents, materials and peoples involved in the art, craft and industry of glass.

The design of the space and exhibits and the use of various media help create an interactive and participatory museum experience where the visitor is directed through the story of glass.

“Designwise, we wanted to create a piece of black crystal glass. Sparkling, reflecting, sleek and deep,” Thürmer says.

Thanks Coolhunter

Unlike other bookstores, Livraria da Vila in San Paulo, Brazil has doors that double as rotating bookshelves, making use of all available space in an efficient manner. It was designed by Isay Weinfeld.

The Safe House is something of a paradox: — a house that is light, airy and open to the outside thanks to windows both numerous and large, and yet almost impossible to break into. How is this done? By the magic power of Transformers.

The home, designed by Polish architects KWK Promes, exists in two states. When you are at home and feeling safe, you leave it open in “vulnerable” mode. One side of the house is all glass, and the open-plan interior is open to the outside world. There is even a drawbridge at second-floor level across to another building housing an indoor pool.

But at the first sign of trouble — over aggressive trick-or-treaters, for example — you hit a button and the house goes into lockdown, turning from home into fortress. A shutter slams down, protecting the front of the house, huge concrete slabs swing in to plug up the windows, and the drawbridge is hoisted up, isolating the building completely.

Who on earth would want such a home?

Organized criminals? Drug lords? Randy and Evi Quaid? Or just your plain, common or garden U.S paranoid? In fact, it is just an overly cautious client on the outskirts of Warsaw.

A few years back LEGO launched their Architect Series with what is probably the most famous house ever built; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. It was an obvious choice to start with, but now as the collection has grown I’m happy to see they’ve recently added another famous landmark, and one of my personal favorites, the Farnsworth House.

Located 55 miles southwest of Chicago in Plano, Illinois, and designed and built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for Chicago medical specialist Dr. Edith Farnsworth, the house has become an icon of the International Style of architecture, and can now be yours. Of course some assembly is required, 546 pieces worth to be exact, and the set even includes miniature LEGO versions of Mies’ furniture inside. $59.99 available directly from LEGO’s online store.

If you are looking for a perfect relaxing place in your backyard or by the poolside, you might want to consider the Pavillon360 by Austrian firm Glas Marte. Designed by Nuyken von Oefele and Jürgen Stoppel, the Pavillon360 is a column-free glass structure that offers you an unhindered 360-degree view. The idea behind the Pavillon360 is the creation of a modular space that can be expanded and fitted out individually. The surrounding sliding doors on all sides and retractable construction elements give an impression of being an extension to living space. Four pairs of windmill-like glass are arranged together to support the ceiling, like a mirror image of the ground.

They also offer different floor and ceiling panels and a selection of exclusive interior design variants, such as a hanging fireplace or a retractable built-in refrigerator. The glass structure has also received the ‘honorable mention’ award in the Red Dot product design award 2011.

Ultramodern by design, this fantastic cliff-side residence in Thailand thrusts its occupants into the natural surroundings – forests on two sides, chiseled stone on the third and a sensational ocean view on the fourth.

A light, white, contemporary cliff-side cousin to FLW’s falling water, this structure by Original Vision (images by Marc Gerritsen) is composed of a series of linear levels that zig-zig horizontally across the landscape.

On approach, floor-to-ceiling and side-to-side panel doors can be opened to make the ground-floor living room feel like a covered outdoor patio.

The private core residence is lifted off the ground like a bridge, creating a clear view out across the infinity pool, between the trees and to the water beyond.

This is first-ever, bank concept store for BNP Paribas in Paris, created by Paris-based architect Fabrice Ausset of Zoevox.

This far-reaching concept bank is located in the historical building of 2, Place de l’Opéra.
The space is chock-full of completely wacky un-bank features, yet it also has a nice retro touch — the honeycombed ceiling, lovely mirrors — that gives it the elegance and respectability that the building’s history warrants and the bank’s business must convey.

Other than that, it is an almost 1,000 square-meter funhouse of colors, shapes, textures and forms with the goal to entice the customer to discover, interact, experiment and (gasp!) enjoy.

In ten specific zones, all regular banking functions from daily banking to stock-market info, private meetings, staff training can take place with the emphasis on breaking the age-old banking set-up where the client and the adviser (the teller, the banker) are on opposite sides.

All of this plus a temporary exhibition area dedicated to kids, a coffee bar, a  25 square-meter green, living wall set the tone for the unusual banking experience. Of course, such aspects as ergonomics, sustainability, proper lighting and the latest technology, are givens.

In addition to custom furniture and furnishings, Zoevox used furniture by Christophe Delcourt, Philippe Hurel, Paola Lenti, Christian Liaigre, India Mahdavi, Antonio Lupi (lavabo), Pierre Paulin and Philippe Starck,  and lighting by Sylvie Coquet, Adrien Gardère, Poul Henningsen, Marco Merendi, Karim Rashid and Patricia Urquiola. Now, can we all expect our neighbourhood banks to change?

Thanks thecoolhunter

Parking garages, the grim afterthought of American design, call to mind many words. (Rats. Beer cans. Unidentifiable smells.) Breathtaking is not usually among them.

Yet here in Miami Beach, whose aesthetic is equal parts bulging biceps and fluorescent pink, bridal couples, bar mitzvah boys and charity-event hosts are flocking to what seems like the unimaginable marriage of high-end architecture and car storage: a $65 million parking garage in the center of the city.

The garage has an unlikely back story. Its developer, a contemporary art collector named Robert Wennett, bought the property in 2005, inheriting a drab-looking bank office and an unremarkable parking lot at the corner of two well-known boulevards, Lincoln and Alton Roads.

Quirky zoning regulations in the city, which is chronically short on parking, made it profitable to build a large garage — not everyone’s vision of a grand gateway to the retail and restaurant-filled streets that surround the site.

Mr. Wennett, who sprinkles his properties with $1 million Dan Graham sculptures and admits that he hates most of the garages he has ever parked in, aimed high, interviewing 10 top architects around the world. He settled on Herzog & de Meuron, a Swiss firm best known for transforming a power station into the Tate Modern gallery in London and designing the Olympic stadium in Beijing (known, by its appearance, as the Bird’s Nest).

Mr. Wennett told the architects that he wanted something close to the grand hall of a train station — big, airy, light-filled and head-turning. What they produced, in early 2010, was all those things: a garage with floor heights of up to 34 feet, three times the norm; a striking internal staircase, with artwork embedded in its base; precarious looking (and feeling) ledges that rely on industrial-strength cable to hold back cars and people; and a glass cube that houses a designer clothing store, perhaps the first in the middle of a parking garage.

Source: New York Times

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer celebrated his 103rd birthday this week with a special honor, the opening of a museum dedicated to his career in Niteroi near Rio de Janeiro. The museum showcases exhibits that reference the architect’s 70 years of work. His building can be seen all around the world from the swooping modernist concrete buildings in the futuristic capital of Brasilia to U.N. headquarters in New York.

Niemeyer isn’t done yet, he continues to work and showed up at the museum launch. The Oscar Niemeyer cultural center in Aviles, Spain also opened on Wednesday. Niemeyer designed the Niteroi museum himself and the area is also home to several other of his buildings. He has said that the curves of the women of Brazil have inspired his designs.

The organic lounge chairs by Chinese architect Michael CK Chan seem to have been inspired by the sea creatures. We specially loved the LC-018 and LC-019 for their rounded shape and luxury design. The lounge chairs are perfect for taking a nap or cuddling up with a book. The daytime bed comes in two versions, one in one-piece-formed die-cast aluminum, using aerospace aluminum alloy with natural polished aluminum finishes, and the other in two boned fiberglass shells finish with a range of paint finish. A perfect addition to your luxury lounge at home!

Thanks Bornrich