Polished concrete within interiors

The Centre Pompidou-Metz will be a large hexagonal structure with three galleries running through the building. A central spire will reach up 77 metres, alluding to the 1977 opening date of the original Centre Pompidou. Viewed as a whole, the architecture evokes a vast marquee surrounded by a square and garden

The Hepworth

Each of the gallery blocks is different, but not too different, in terms of height, shape, size and, crucially, quality of light. Where many galleries insist on an even distribution of light, there is a play on light and shade that Chipperfield describes as ‘part of the humanity of the space’. The offset geometry and staggered doorways afford oblique views from gallery to gallery, or rather from artwork to artwork: the hope is that visitors will be drawn through the building by exhibits ‘beckoning’ from room to room.


These floor-to-ceiling windows, made flush with the concrete facade, render the external appearance almost excessively sparse. Thecombination of a cheerfully mismatched roofscape and a super-pared down form creates a cartoon-like abstraction of a fortress town, displaying evidence of Chipperfield’s astonishing gift for creating forms that are at once figurative and abstract, playful and austere.


Holding equal importance to these views through the building, are the generous views out to the city. It is, of course, impossible for a single building to stitch together an urban fabric that is hopelessly tattered and torn. But Chipperfield has done his damndest to bring the beauty that lies within the chaos more sharply into view. Weir and warehouses are isolated, celebrated and framed. The chapel - too small, too distant and too obscured by motorway traffic to be viewed in isolation - gets not only a window, but a window seat, as if to acknowledge that a true appreciation of its beauty requires an investment in concentration and time.


http://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/culture/the-hepworth-wakefield-by-david-chipperfield-architects-yorkshire-uk/8616599.article

Mlk Bar Site / 1950s !

Frank Lloyd Wright

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During the later 1920s and 1930s Wright's Organic style had fully matured with the design of Graycliff, Fallingwater and Taliesin West.

Design Museum 29/03/11 Architecture Awards

shweeet

The woods around the villa are dark, which means it is important to ensure that as much light can enter the house as possible. However, the more glass is used in a building, the more difficult it is to maintain the dividing line between inside and outside, private and public. Therefore the building plot is divided into three long strips at right angles to the road. The bottom and southernmost strip is reserved for the garden, the middle strip contains the villa itself and the most northern strip offers access to the house: this is where the drive, parking space and the entrance are located. This layout of the site means that those parts of the house that the residents prefer to keep private are out of sight.

To create openness and lightness and tot give the residents the feeling living outside in the green, the house is entirely oriented to the secluded garden at the south. Every room in the villa looks directly out on to this garden, because three of the four façades are made of glass.
The spacious wooden terrace forms a room outdoors, partly covered by a wooden awning supported by steel brackets that taper upwards. This gives it the appearance of floating above the ground. Ponds have been laid on both sides of the villa, so that the house here, too, appears to be raised above ground level, emphasising the lightness of the building.
Dutch Villa Berkel Netherlands by Paul de Ruiter

Honeymoon Hotel yes pelase

Ubud Hanging Gardens Hotel & Resort

Ubud Hanging Gardens is a haven of peace set among the smoky volcanoes and emerald rice terraces at the heart of Bali. This Orient-Express hotel in the cultural centre of Ubud perches on a gorge with an exquisite  temple on the opposite cliff. Its luxury pool villas are built in traditional style, as if in a Balinese village. Recline in a private plunge pool and you are totally enveloped by nature: jungle-covered mountains and exotic flowers. Stay here and you truly feel a part of the surrounding destination.

Beduur Restaurant

Riverside Deluxe Pool Villa

Valley View Family Pool Villa

Panoramic Deluxe Pool Villa

Sustainable house

ARCHITECTS: Johnsen Schmaling Architects
http://www.johnsenschmaling.com/
PROJECT: OS House
Racine, Wisconsin
For many preservationists, the prospect of a boldly contemporary house in the middle of a historic district is the stuff of nightmares. But not in Racine, Wisconsin, an old manufacturing city south of Milwaukee, on the shore of Lake Michigan, where Frank Lloyd Wright built his famous S.C. Johnson Wax Administration Building, in 1936, and a handful of other structures. There, in a vintage neighborhood close to downtown, a new, stunningly modernist dwelling has been attracting gawkers and winning mostly raves.
The house has also won kudos—and a LEED Platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council—for its sustainable features, which are so seamlessly integrated as to be virtually invisible. These include geothermal heating and cooling; photovoltaic roof laminates; a solar water heater; bamboo floors and other renewable materials; high-efficiency windows that flood the house with natural light; rain barrels and a rain garden; subtly layered fiber-cement panels that create a rain screen and an insulated air cavity; and permeable pavers.

My kind of design

With the House of Culture and Movement, MVRDV aims to offer the Flintholm neighbourhood in Denmark a meeting point for people of all ages to take part in a wide range of activities.

The main building, the House of Culture and Movement – or Ku-Be (Kultur- og Bevægelseshus) – is a rectangular, glass volume containing six stacked programmatic elements. A circulation space, as well as a ‘play zone’ housing various activities, is formed between the volumes. Within the stacked elements are a theatre, a health zone, food zone, a Zen area, a study centre and exhibition hall, fitness and activity centre, a wellness centre and an area for the administration. The theatre is adaptable to different stage and audience settings. In addition, its large windows allow it to be used as an open air theatre.

The garden, designed in collaboration with SLA Landscape Architecture, follows the themes of the interior of the House of Culture and Movement with a performance area, health and activity zones, a quiet zone, connecting zones and an empty area reserved for House of Culture and Movement 2.

The project will be phased. The House of Movement, the garden and the urban curtain will be first realizations. In later stages a commercial building and a second House of Movement will be added. Solar panels, natural ventilation and underground hot and cool storage is utilized for a highly efficient, low-energy building.

Nice Lighting

The Leaf chapel designed by Klein Dytham architecture sits within the grounds of the Risonare hotel resort in Kobuchizawa, a refreshingly green setting with beautiful views to the southern Japanese Alps, Yatsugatuke peaks and Mt.Fuji. The chapel is formed by 2 leaves – one glass, one steel – which have seemingly fluttered to the ground. The glass leaf with its delicate lace pattern motif emulates a pergola and the structure holding it up reminds one of the veins of a leaf which slowly become thinner the further they get from the central stem. The white steel leaf, perforated with 4700 holes, each of which hold an acrylic lens, is similar to bride’s veil made of delicate lace. Light filters through the lenses and projects a lace pattern onto the white fabric inside. At the end of the ceremony when the groom lifts the bride’s veil for the legendary kiss the ‘steel veil’ magically opens too, revealing the pond and the enchanting nature beyond.
Well, I’ve lifted the entire text from the designers’ website…..I guess the structure needed the detailed description to be fully appreciated. I quite liked the idea, it is both modern and baroquish at the same time. And it is a refreshing new way of looking at a chapel, both architecturally and spiritually.