bad banana blog

Dresden Drainpipes

Something to think about when you go to attack your next creative project. Not all necessary evils are necessarily evil.

Via Crib Candy.

Lemonade

What do you do when you want to create a restaurant in a space with a low ceiling and a tangled maze of plumbing, sprinkler, and electrical pipes? Why, add more pipes, of course. Introducing Conduit, a new San Francisco restaurant designed by architects Stanley Saitowitz.

Via Dezeen.

Loblolly House

Named for the local pine trees, Loblolly House is a contemporary prefab dwelling designed for a breathtaking site on the Chesapeake Bay. According to Dwell, Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake tackled the design, fabrication, and assembly of the Loblolly House as though it were an automobile. In essence, they reduced the house to a handful of components capable of being fabricated and assembled offsite. If you want to learn more, Princeton Architecture Press just released a book about the project.

Via Dwell Blog.

Klein Bottle House

For this residential project, architect Rob McBride found inspiration in a Klein bottle—a 19th century innovation with no distinguishable inside or outside. The house in Rye, Australia won the Australian Institute of Architecture's prestigious Harold Desbrowe-Annear Award last Friday. Read more about the project here.

Via Dwell Blog.

Restaurant Praq

Praq (Dutch for "mashed food for children") is a restaurant concept designed to be inspiring and fun for children, while still being comfortable and enjoyable for parents. I absolutely love how this interior speaks to children without speaking down to them. The photos above were taken at the new Amersfoort location.

Via Dezeen.

Rolling Huts

Perhaps you remember the awe-inspiring Delta Shelter from Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects. Well, here are some prefab guest quarters to go with it—on wheels, no less. The simple, low-tech huts are a comfortable step above basic camping, and open up on one side for soaking in the amazing views. The mobile "herd" of six huts all face the same way (so you don't look into the others) and share a common bathroom in a nearby barn. The design recently earned OSKA a National Design Award.

Via Dwell.

The Pixel Tower

A residential building for the young and trendy of Dubai, the Pixel Tower takes its inspiration from the moving bubbles within a champagne glass. The project, designed by James Law Cybertecture, is scheduled for completion in 2010.

Via Contemporist.

Inspired Supermarkets

MPRIES is a family-owned supermarket chain in Austria who understands the value of good design. Instead of using the same, generic blueprints for each new store, MPRIES hires up and coming architects to create site-specific plans. Each store is unique, with an unusual attention to detail inside and out. Inspiring.

Via Quipsologies.

63.02˚

This 234 square foot house/home office in Tokyo is built at a 63.02˚ angle to the road. Fantastic.

Via Dezeen.

Bold and Cold

The Richard B Fisher Center for The Performing Arts at Bard College (Annondale-on-Hudson, New York) as captured by Yoshie231. Like many, I have a love/hate relationship with Frank Gehry's work. If you haven't seen Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry, however, you need to rectify that situation. It's a fascinating look into Gehry's mind and process.

Via Contemporist.

Book Lights

Fun light fixtures outside a library in Heinola, Finland. Designed by Vesa Honkonen.

Via Dezeen.

Watercube: Now Open

Last May, I wrote about my admiration for the Watercube; the stunning swimming and diving arena then under construction for the Beijing Olympics. On Monday, the National Aquatics Center officially opened. If you ask me, the final product looks even more spectacular than the architectural renderings. Check out even more photos over at dezeen.

Selfridges Building

Selfridges Department Store in Birmingham, England as photographed by Daugirdas. Beautiful.

Via Contemporist.

Delta Shelter

Flipping through the winter issue of Objekt International yesterday afternoon, I was stopped by this breathtaking home. Actually, it's a weekend cabin, built by architect Tom Kundig on the banks of the Mazama River in the eastern part of Washington state. Weekend cabin or not, I'd still like to live there. Read more about it on the Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects site, or pick up your own copy of Objekt at your local bookstore.

Leonardo Building

The German headquarters of glassware company Leonardo. I love how the building exterior spills into the surrounding grounds. I wouldn't want to be the guy in charge of mowing the lawn, though.

Via Contemporist.

Blue and Beautiful

A modern art museum? A stylish office building? Nope. A parking garage in Cardiff, Wales. Very cool. And great pictures from Wentloog over on Flickr.

Via Contemporist.

Crystal Island

It's one thing to design a crazy, futuristic building. It's another to get it built. Sir Norman Foster gets his built. Crystal Island, Foster's ambitious city within a city, will be the world's largest inhabited building when completed. The Moscow building will be 1,500 feet tall and, even more impressively, will contain 27 million square feet of floor space. Truly unprecedented in size, the building will hold 3,000 hotel rooms, 900 apartments, offices, shops, museums, theaters, and an international school for 500 students. The $4 billion development is one of the world's most ambitious building projects. Amazing. It should be completed in the next five years.

Via Inhabitat.

Fallingwater Revealed

Take four and a half minutes of your time and check out this well-done short film by Cristobal Vila. Using computer animation, Vila takes us on a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's 1939 masterpiece, Fallingwater. Even if you've poured through all the textbook pictures and looked through the architectural drawings, you'll find something new here. Views from different angles. A greater sense of the natural surroundings. Little design gems that get overshadowed by the ingenious big idea concept. Unless you're lucky enough to actually walk through the house, this is as good as it gets.

Via City of Sound.

Feeling Alive

This past weekend, I finally had the opportunity to visit the new addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.
    I was completely blown away.
    But first, a little background. The Nelson-Atkins is considered by many to be the top museum in the Midwest. The collection is first-rate and extensive. The original building, built in 1933, is majestic. It sits atop a hill overlooking a long green field and Kansas City itself. It's a beautiful sight.
    To me, however, it has always represented what I hate most about so many museums. Overly formal. Overly serious. Way too ornate and pretentious. Gallery spaces that overwhelm and treat the artwork as a nuisance. Giant paintings placed in narrow hallways or small spaces where one can't back up to gain a proper perspective. Worse yet, the building and grounds always felt like they were designed to fend off some sort of peasant invasion. Stay out, poor people. Art is for the educated, the rich, the serious.
    Fuck that.
    Which is exactly what architect Steven Holl did. His $200 million addition pays no tribute to the old building; but it doesn't humiliate it either. His solution was to create an addition that is everything the old building isn't. And by placing his new addition side by side with the old building, both are the better for it.
    The old building is now exposed for what it is, really. A relic. An artifact from a time when art was something different. The 1933 building is no longer the keeper of the collection, it is now part of the collection.
    The glowing "lenses" that run alongside the old building draw you into a space that is open, airy, and inspiring. Unique curves, surprising angles, and natural light work together to make you feel alive. And that's before you even engage the artists.
    Pollock. Kline. Warhol. Rauschenberg. de Kooning.
    And that's when it hits you. These artists belong in a space just like this.

    I left inspired. My kids did, too.

    The new addition opened in early June to rave reviews. Check out this New Yorker article to learn more, and then check out this article from Wired which explains how the "lenses" bring natural light to these underground galleries. If you do nothing else, please watch this short video and hear from the architects and the museum director themselves. A fascinating look into the creative process. I especially love the quotes about creativity and novelty near the end.

Thinking from the Inside Out

Too many of us creative types get trapped into making something into something it is not. We mean well. But we err in our craft when we create that hip, funny ad campaign for a product that is anything but. Or when we create a product design that is so clever it actually compromises its intended use.
    Here's an example where a building's sole purpose is artfully conjoined with its design.
    The Watercube in Beijing will play host to the 2008 Olympic swimming and diving competitions. The structure itself is simplicity at it finest. It's a square, which obviously makes the entire building look like a pool. Bubbles made from a Teflon material surround the entire building. These bubbles are arranged in the naturally occurring formation of soap bubbles and organic cells.
    The transparent bubble material is designed to react to changing light conditions. From the outside, the building glows a beautiful blue (just like a pool). On the inside, light reflecting through the bubble material creates a subtle and ever-changing light show throughout the arena.
    Swimming pools are notoriously expensive to heat. Ninety percent of the solar energy falling upon the Watercube will be trapped inside the building and used for heating the pool and arena.
    Inspired architecture from PTW. See more photos here.

    Via Inhabitat.