Artek Pavilion up for Auction at Sotheby’s

At last year’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile, in Milan, Artek debuted a Shigeru Ban–designed pavilion constructed of UPM Pro-Fi, a wood-plastic composite made, in part, from recycled sticky labels.  Sotheby’s announced that the pavilion, which has since been exhibited in Helsinki and Miami, will be auctioned off in June at an expected selling price of $800,000 to $1.2 million.

Pavilion up for Auction, $800,000 to $1.2 million, by Shigeru Ban, for Artek
via: Metropolis

Jean Nouvel Awarded Design for Tour Signal Paris

In July 2007, EPAD launched an international call for projects for the construction of the Tour Signal, which forms an integral part of the plan for Tour Signal, La Défense, Paris, France. Due for completion in 2015, the Tour Signal will symbolise the renewal of La Défense. The winner is Ateliers Jean Nouvel. The team has chosen to locate its project at the Porte Ouest to open up the La Défense neighbourhood to Puteaux.
The project comprises 71 storeys, forming a mixed-use building which brings together apartments, hotels, offices and retail premises in the lower section. It is made up of four blocks piled one on top of the other with atriums forming huge windows, each facing in alternate directions. These perspectives reveal floor levels which form balconies within each of the atriums.

Tour Signal, La Défense Paris, France, by Jean Nouvel, for EPAD

Model: Louis Kahn

Louis I. Kahn. (American, born Estonia. 1901-1974). Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Overall building complex (final version). 1957-65. Basswood.

Permanent Collection MoMA

Rothschild Tower, Tel Aviv by Richard Meier

Located in the heart of Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard and Allenby Street, Meier on Rothschild will soar above the city, and will offer spacious living spaces and unique private facilities. It will combine the convenience of city living with the elegance of an exclusive residential tower.

Rothschild Tower, by Richard Meier, for Berggruen Holdings

Leonardo’s organic HQ by 3deluxe

A distinctive corporate architecture for the brand Leonardo. The integrative design concept combines architecture, interior design and landscape design into a complex aesthetic entity.

Corporate HQ, by 3deluxe 

Therme Vals Spa Switzerland

The remote alpine village of Vals is best known to the world at large as the home of Switzerland’s popular Valser mineral water. Since 1996, though, architecture fanatics and spa connoisseurs have known Vals as the home of Peter Zumthor’s Therme spa, an ultra-modernist design statement in grey Valser quartzite, a place that somehow crafts a near-religious experience out of little more than stone, water and judiciously applied light. The combinations of light and shade, open and enclosed spaces and linear elements make for a highly sensuous and restorative experience.

Therme Vals, by Peter Zumthor,
+ Therme Vals

Crescent House by Make

The Crescent House exemplifies how a novel form can fulfill the requirements of a brief better than a conventional box. As a shape, the crescent is ideally suited to personal living space, because it shelters and encloses while at the same time opening out and forging a sense of connection with the exterior world. The accommodation is formed by two nested crescents connected by a curving circulation and gallery space that runs the length of the building. The outer crescent contains bedrooms, bathrooms and private living areas and turns a solid convex wall to the nearby road, while the inner crescent is devoted to cooking, eating and relaxing. A full-height concave glass wall draws the early morning sun into the house and offers an uninterrupted prospect of the garden, while the arms of the inner crescent extend to frame the view, offering privacy and enclosure without confinement.
- Make Architects

The Crescent House, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, by Make Architects

Rocky Coast House in Japan

A weekend house for a couple located on a rocky coast two hours drive from Tokyo. The site is a rocky stretch facing the Pacific Ocean with approaches sloping down to the water level. The characteristic of its plan, imagined like the branches of a tree, is a continuous one room. All the required spaces, entrance, living area, dining area, kitchen, bed room, Japanese style room, study room and bath room are arranged in this continuous one room. Oriented in different directions, one can find various views of the ocean walking throughout the house. Living area, bedroom and bathroom each has its unique relation to the ocean. Architecture as primitive, “in-between natural and man-made”. 

Weekend house, by Sou Fujimoto Architects
Photos: Edmund Sumner

Necklace House by NAP

Necklace House, Yamagata, Japan by, Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP

The Alan Family House by Denari Architects

The clients for this house renovation / extension, a couple with three daughters, are a creative, democratic unit. The father directs film trailers, the mother is a graphic designer and illustrator. The scheme leaves half of the house for the daughter’s bedrooms and incorporates the other half plus new extensions in front and back into a public zone and a private bedroom for the parents. Multi-toned, bright colors accentuate the new pieces which suggests a graphic expression representative of the family’s interests.

Alan Family House, Los Angeles, USA, by Neil Denari and Duks Koschitz with Joe Willendra, for NMDA