Even though the material palette for this church is austere, the overall effect of the gracefully formed concrete seems more humane. Designed by O Studio Architects, the church sits on top of a hill in Huizhou. China. Although the hill is “one of the seven famous Taoist Mountains in China,” the new church is Christian. The addition of a western house of worship among the Taoist and Buddhist temples creates a kind of diversity that the client, who also develops housing, wanted to achieve for the villagers. I can see traces of other famous western churches in this small church (I’m looking at you two, Ronchamp and Bagsvard) and more recently celebrated techniques like in situ concrete, formed here using bamboo. The simple chairs were made by local farmers.

Alex

What’s great about the design of this house, called the FRP House after its fiber-reinforced polymer structure, is the experimental nature of the material. And by experimental, I don’t mean just different like an experimental hairstyle or the kind of experimenting that happens during college; instead, I appreciate that Atelier FCJZ, based in Beijing, is conducting tests and collecting data about an unusual structural system. By testing the compressive, tensile and bending strength of their design, the building mock-ups are approaching building reality. Someone had to be the the first to try reinforcing concrete with steel, right? Someone had to be the first to try braided hair.

The first person who braided his/her hair must have looked alien to folks who had never seen braided hair before. “What is… this… headropes?” But the design of this house is simple and modern in a way that doesn’t look so jarring. I can easily find articles published about fiber reinforced polymers in buildings systems from over a decade ago, and as this experimental material moves toward reality, it will confront new challenges (like how the enclosure system will work in this configuration). Still it’s nice to see architects experiment and to be reminded that building science didn’t stop progressing when we started using concrete and steel. Our future is an infinite series of new materials, the structures they enable, and the hairstyles we will wear inside them.

Alex

This stunning kindergarten finished construction last year in a suburb just north of Shanghai. Designed by Atelier Deshaus, the exterior of the project is dominated by a punctured and screened facade that runs along the south face of the building. The interior of the fifteen-classroom school is organized around an atrium with ramping yellow walkways. The school is colorful in a way that is sophisticated rather than hokey, and the project descriptions says the design achieves a “balance of passion and reason.” The sophisticated palette may be unappreciated and abstract building gestures might be lost on the young scholars, and on me; but the school looks more exciting an inviting than any I’ve seen in a long time.

Found through ArchDaily

Alex

The images above are from small booklet published by the Douglas Fir Plywood Association in 1960. The booklet shows off 18 houses that use real Douglas Fir plywood as the primary building material. In case you were wondering where in a house you might find plywood, there’s a handy diagram (last image) color-coding the different locations and uses of plywood in your future vacation home.

The booklet and homes inside epitomize the early 60′s for me. The houses are modern. This was a time when people could afford vacation houses, even if modest ones. Many of these houses have bunk beds or “bed spaces” which is really just a place to put a mattress on the floor; it’s hard to imagine that people building vacation homes today would be happy sleeping on a bunk or the floor. The book is also page after page of only white people: tanning, riding horses and taking pictures of deer.

I came across the booklet on the Building Technology Heritage Library, an online resource with “a collection of American and Canadian, pre-1964 architectural trade catalogs, house plan books and technical building guides.” Browsing plumbing catalogs from 1926 is more fun than you would expect. The archive is definitely worth a gander.

Alex

A few years ago, I came across a photo of a lighting system designed by Michal Maciej Bartosik, although I didn’t know it at the time because the photo was uncredited. “Who did this?” I didn’t figure it out then, but the smart use of fluorescent tubes as structural components in a glowing dome stuck with me. Years later, I’m happy to have figured out who made it, and just how talented he is. Michal Maciej Bartosik studied architecture (and now lives) in Canada. A newer light sculpture/structure of his employs a structural principle popularized by Buckminster Fuller: Tensegrity.

Tensegrity has always made me a little nervous. It’s a very efficient way to hold something up, but there’s no redundancy: every member of the structure is critical to keep the structure standing. If a single cable snaps, it can cause the whole structure to collapse. So while I think these light sculptures are amazing, I have a hard time figuring out what happens when one of the tubes burns out.

Alex

I came across these lovely photos over on Anthology and was totally surprised to find out that this is not a lovely bedroom, it’s actually a garden shed. The styling that was put into this, while minimal, made me think this was some sort of outdoor vacation lodge that you could camp out in during the warm summer months. And maybe you could? It would certainly be romantic and not entirely impractical. If you’re interested in learning more about this garden shed, you can click here.

Bobby

The video above is made from snippets of 20 interviews with architectural luminaries. Conducted by Luca Farinelli, the interviews are published in the latest issue of Log, and it’s funny to see how the architects’ answers compare to each others… or maybe it’s not surprising that Peter Eisenman thinks that only architects make architecture. And then there are other kinds of surprising answers: When asked if he prefers a Mac or PC, Rober Stern (Dean, Yale School of Architecture) answers: “Never turned on a computer my entire life.” But maybe this just means that he has someone else to turn a computer on for him.

This issue of Log also has an article by Nicholas de Monchaux (remember him?) writing about the painted and unpainted fuel tanks of the space shuttle program. And much, much more.

Alex

Luis Díaz Díaz is a Spanish photographer based in Madrid and the North-Western coast of the country. He does a lot of commissioned projects, but it was his personal project ‘Music Boxes’ which really caught my attention. The series of photographs looks at the open air stages used by orchestras and concerts during the yearly local festivals in Galicia in Northern Spain.

These ‘music boxes’ stand now as forgotten monuments to times past. Where once this structures were places of festivities and celebration, they have now been replaced by modern mobile stages. Luis Díaz Díaz rigidly documents them with a minimalist style that reminds me of the photographs of industrial buildings taken by the influential German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. These empty, abandoned spaces, now seem to haunt rural Galica; leaving only a hollow space where the viewer is left to imagine what celebrations may have once taken place in this part of the country.

Philip

Los Angeles’ very own Michael Maltzan has beat out some architectural heavy weights to win a competition for the design of the St. Petersburg pier. The firm, based in Silver Lake, was unanimously chosen over the likes of BIG and West 8 to develop their scheme that reimagines the Florida city’s waterfront and might resemble a giant tiara from certain angles. The usual experience of a pier is to go all the way out to the end and turn back, retracing all of your steps; instead, the winning scheme proposes a series of interconnected loops. Like the mathematical representation of infinity (or the figure eight), tracks cross each other before arching over a series of programmed spaces both on land and over the water. I’m not entirely sure that I understand the crenelated edge, but my favorite detail from the renderings has to be the smaller balconies that punch through the curving wall at the distant end of the pier. The balconies are small and more intimate, which is a nice moment in large, public works like this one.

This is an excellent project for the firm and it will be exciting to see how the scheme evolves as it moves from design to construction to reality.

Alex

It would be easy to get the impression from perusing The Fox Is Black, that the entirety of Scandinavia is littered with small and delightful contemporary projects and not rainy parcels of land between aging modern housing plots. I’m happy to perpetuate the happier impression using the pubic toilets above as an example. The toilets in question live in Norway, along a road that snakes through scenic Aurlandsfjellet. Designed by Lars J Berge, the solar powered reststop, named Flotane, only looks like it’s falling over as it provides hikers with a place to park and start their hike into the mountains. Folks can even hike to the nearby Stegastein, a stunning overlook featured by Philip last year.

Found through Inhabitat

Alex