The Architecture building at the College of New Rochelle, in New Rochelle, New York, completed by Ikon.5 architects are cropping up on college campuses everywhere. The Wellness Center is a paradisaical garden for the exultation of the body, mind, and spirit. Like narrative and pictorial depictions of the Garden of Eden, the Center is a sheltered meditative precinct removed from the urban distractions of metropolitan New York that surround it. In designing the new center, Design Partner Joseph Tattoni looked to the metaphor of a paradisaical garden for inspiration in creating this award winning, Silver LEED certified building that merges building and landscape into a singular statement that speaks to wellness through its siting, program and materials. Read more »

The Openhouse was designed by XTEN Architecture is embedded into a narrow and sharply sloping lot in the Hollywood Hills, a challenging and dramatic site that led to the creation of a house both integrated into the landscape and open to the city below. Retaining walls are configured to extend the first level living area into the landscape and to create garden terraces on the second level. The front, side and rear facades of the house slide away, opening the interiors to gardens, views and the hillside landscape.

Glass, in various renditions, is the primary wall enclosure material. There are forty-four sliding glass panels designed to disappear into hidden pockets and allow for uninterrupted views and access to exterior terraces and gardens. There are also fixed glass walls, mirror glass walls, and light gray mirror glass panels which lend lightness to the interior spaces. Read more »

The Modern House, located in Rye, outside Melbourne Australia, designed by Rob McBride Charles Ryan. The Klein Bottle House is the Winner of 2008 Victorian Architecture Awards, (AIA), Harold Desbrowne-Annear Award. The Klein bottle house is a descriptive model of a surface developed by topological mathematicians. Klein bottle, mobius strips, boy surfaces, unique surfaces that while they may be distorted remain topologically the same. “In principal, it’s like a donut. You can twist and distort it but it will only change topographically if it’s cut. In a sense, there’s no beginning or end,” says McBride. Read more »

Has the design stood the test of time? I should note that the interiors of this project are wonderful. The allusions to Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre are subtle yet powerful. The exterior “ornaments” remind me of the work of Holt Hinshaw Pfau Jones that was being published in the mid-1980′s.

This house was designed nearly 20 year ago. After it was completed it was extensively published in the architectural press, the design won a PA Award. It made the cover of magazines from Japan, the U.S., and Britain.

Ravine House, originally uploaded by livinginacity.

Swiss architecture – old&new-8, originally uploaded by Karl Marx1.

.We usually see the exterior of a building first and it is very easy just to look at this and confine one’s appreciation to the facade. This can lead to a very superficial understanding of buildings, particularly where the discussion is mainly about whether one likes the forms and the decoration. We may love the great outdoors but we find reasons to build structures to encircle our activities or to protect ourselves and our goods from the weather and other environmental elements such as noise. We may need a controlled temperature, security against theft, damage or fire, and privacy. Different activities such as work, recreation, bringing up a family and worship require different kinds of buildings, perhaps in special locations, with varying internal spaces, environments and form.

One of LeCorbusier’s early house designs, in Zurich