Saturday 24 December 2011

Voido glossy black by Ron Arad



We love the new version ”glossy black” of the famous Rocking chair Voido. Originally conceived in blow moulding, Voido was presented at the 2005 Furniture Fair in a “mould testing” phase under which it suffered greatly. Underestimated by Magis and Arad alike, the latter of whom jokingly wrote on the prototype, “This is not rotation moulding! First attempt in big scale blow moulding. Almost there!” But not a thing could be done to alleviate the technical suffering, as trial after trial made evident. So the Voidoblow moulding combination was given up in exchange for rotational moulding that features new and decidedly superior aesthetics. Now Voido is ready for the market. A sculpture by Ron Arad.

Revolutions Per Hour Sofa by Fabio Novembre

The Twist Chair by Jonas Lyndby Jensen




A backrest, seat or protective shelter, Jonas Lyndby Jensen’s “Twist Chair” is something that would make an amazing accent seat for a bedroom. A creative addition to circular or curvilinear interior themes, the fabric choice, by Morten la Cour, was actually chosen because it echoes the naturalistic, protective design of a bird’s nest. Originally developed for use in a public library, the Twisted Chair is built from a single twisted band and has the added bonus of serving as a sound barrier for people who are interested in stealing away moments of quiet isolation to read their newest books on the Eames design process or check on up Freshome from their laptops.

Dressed-up furniture series






Kamkam is a design collective located in Seoul, Korea that includes Hyunjin Seo, Jaekyoung Kim, and Jaehoon Jung. Their Dressed Up Furniture looks like playful kid furniture but for adults! The idea is to combineclothing and furniture, making the pieces soft and approachable, and also interactive using fasteners such as buttons. The theme of “Dressed-up furniture series” is to combine clothes and furniture. It will make you feel fresh by mixing the familiar elements of normal actions like fastening a button and daily furniture like stool, storage and bench.

"The world biggest hotel, the first 10-star hotel"


Zorlu Ecocity, a Striking Green City within a City









Zorlu Ecocity is a Llewelyn Davies Yeang project located in Istanbul, Turkey. It’s a mixed-use development located at the southern extremity of Buyukdere Street in Istanbul. The plan is conceptualized as a “city within a city” and conforms to the city’s planning strategy to multiply the number of urban centers throughout the Marma region to relieve pressure on Istanbul’s historic core. Zorlu Ecocity will have 588,850 sm (6,338,329 sf) of accommodation, which includes office towers, residential towers, two hotels, apartments, and resort-style elderly units above a three story retail complex. In total, we’re talking about 14 towers ranging from 8 to 26 stories.

Zorlu Ecocity is a Llewelyn Davies Yeang project located in Istanbul, Turkey. It’s a mixed-use development located at the southern extremity of Buyukdere Street in Istanbul. The plan is conceptualized as a “city within a city” and conforms to the city’s planning strategy to multiply the number of urban centers throughout the Marma region to relieve pressure on Istanbul’s historic core. Zorlu Ecocity will have 588,850 sm (6,338,329 sf) of accommodation, which includes office towers, residential towers, two hotels, apartments, and resort-style elderly units above a three story retail complex. In total, we’re talking about 14 towers ranging from 8 to 26 stories.


FUSION VISION: Future New Town of Gwanggyo With Plantations Aroun...

FUSION VISION: Future New Town of Gwanggyo With Plantations Aroun...: The new city center designed by Dutch architects MVRDV for Gwanggyo, a city coming up 35 kms from Seoul in South Korea seems to be some...

Future New Town of Gwanggyo With Plantations Around The Terraces






The new city center designed by Dutch architects MVRDV for Gwanggyo, a city coming up 35 kms from Seoul in South Korea seems to be something taken out of the sci fi movies. Expected to be completed by 2011, the city is sufficient enough to hold 77000 inhabitants and has a design envisioned with two centers which is a mix of housing, culture, office, retail, and leisure and education spaces. Various atriums are created in the towers catering to various categories, with box hedges being planted on the roofs and terraces which in turn improves ventilation and reduces usage of energy and water.

FUSION VISION: The latest from Vincent Callebaut architects

FUSION VISION: The latest from Vincent Callebaut architects: We’re huge fans of conceptual, futuristic architecture. The NASA Ames Research Center’s renderings of space colonies from the 1970’s come to...

The latest from Vincent Callebaut architects

We’re huge fans of conceptual, futuristic architecture. The NASA Ames Research Center’s renderings of space colonies from the 1970’s come to mind. As well, the work of the influential Italian architectural group superstudio. Check out the latest from Vincent Callebaut Architects, a group who regularly produce far reaching architectural concepts. Their latest proposal is an ecological self-sustaining vertical farm to be located on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island adjacent to New York City.

It’s Where Fantasy Meets Architecture






There’s something reminiscent of an alien landscape in the towering silver whorls of architect Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project in Seattle. And, really, who doesn’t see spaceships when looking at I.M. Pei’s Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland?
What could have inspired such famous architects to build structures that look like they belong in a Darren Aronofsky flick? According to architecture futurist Geoff Manaugh, creator of Bldgblog, there’s a not-so-hidden influence on contemporary architects that’s widely acknowledged but rarely discussed: the speculative architectures in fantasy and science fiction movies.
That’s why Manaugh organized an event at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where conceptual designers who make fantasy cities for movies like Star Wars, The Matrix and Minority Report addressed architecture and design students who will be making the real-life cities of tomorrow

FUSION VISION: Architecture and Landscape Digital Arts Challenge ...

FUSION VISION: Architecture and Landscape Digital Arts Challenge ...: Annie at Ballistic Media (no strangers to the blog with their extremely gorgeous books on digital art, which you can see on our webstore...

Architecture and Landscape Digital Arts Challenge winners





Annie at Ballistic Media (no strangers to the blog with their extremely gorgeous books on digital art, which you can see on our webstore here) kindly drops me a line to say that the winners of the NVArt digital art challenge – this year with the theme Art Space: Architecture and Landscape Digital Arts, the second in a worldwide series of digital art competitions – have been announced by NVIDIA and the CG Society. “We invited artists to stand on the shoulders of giants like architect Frank Gehry and gaze into the far reaches of their imaginations,” said Mark Snoswell, president of CGSociety, a global organization for digital artists. “Our artists have created wonderful places that are pure art, where one can wake each day to marvel at the play of light through fantastical spaces and at vibrant fusions of light, color, and texture.”

FUSION VISION: The Three Graces: Dubai

FUSION VISION: The Three Graces: Dubai: Historically in art, The Three Graces have been viewed as a symbol of lasting unity that represent joy, beauty and charm. NOX | Lars Spu...

The Three Graces: Dubai




 Historically in art, The Three Graces have been viewed as a symbol of lasting unity that represent joy, beauty and charm. NOX | Lars Spuybroek has designed a family of towers called The Three Graces in Dubai which emulates that very dynamic. The family of towers, which are currently in progress, will be interconnected by a footbridge that will reduce footprints on the piers. The symbolism of unity will make The Three Graces appear as a gate to the harbor on which it is situated.

FUSION VISION: Lilypad – Floating Ecopolis for Ecological Refugee...

FUSION VISION: Lilypad – Floating Ecopolis for Ecological Refugee...: It’s common knowledge that the planet is warming, ice caps are melting, and water levels are rising. The international scientific...

Lilypad – Floating Ecopolis for Ecological Refugees












It’s common knowledge that the planet is warming, ice caps are melting, and water levels are rising. The international scientific community predicts that a temperature elevation of 1°C will lead to a water rise of 1 meter, resulting in massive land loss and the displacement of millions of people world wide. Vincent Callebaut, a visionary Belgian architect, is responding to this inevitability with his proposal LILYPAD, A Floating Ecopolis for Ecological Refugees.

FUSION VISION: SeaOrbiter – The Sentinel of the Ocean

FUSION VISION: SeaOrbiter – The Sentinel of the Ocean: SeaOrbiter is a unique vessel in the world, developing a new concept for man’s underwater observation, continuously twenty-four hours a d...

SeaOrbiter – The Sentinel of the Ocean




SeaOrbiter is a unique vessel in the world, developing a new concept for man’s underwater observation, continuously twenty-four hours a day. It will permit a better understanding of marine phenomena and a new inventory of ocean wealth for the preservation of its resources, as well as those of our planet. It is at once a revolutionary and indispensable human adventure for future generations.

It is also a true platform of communication, within educational reach, the motor of a new adventure proposed to men around the Mediterranean, Europe and the world to fully understand the ocean and its ecosystems, to respect and to live in harmony with them. SeaOrbiter is today accompanied by a large committee of internationally renowned experts coming from multiple domains of state-of-the-art competence, as well as by numerous manufacturers linked to maritime technologies throughout the world. This project, of great symbolic weight, created by architect Jacques Rougerie, is above all a “gift to the generations to come”. By combining the latest technology and the taste for adventure, we propose to them a maritime adventure unique since Cousteau.


FUSION VISION: Visions of South Korea’s Urban Future

FUSION VISION: Visions of South Korea’s Urban Future: The United Arab Emirates gets all the attention for crazy urban schemes—from zero-carbon cities to kinetic, swirling skyscrapers. South K...

Visions of South Korea’s Urban Future




The United Arab Emirates gets all the attention for crazy urban schemes—from zero-carbon cities to kinetic, swirling skyscrapers. South Korea is lesser known, but it’s also got grand ambitions and tech-crazed urban planners: For example, New Songdo City, currently being developed on reclaimed land 40 miles outside of Seoul, will have a wireless network that connects residential, business, and medical systems and computers studding the houses and streets.

No wonder then that South Korea has an appetite for futuristic architectural schemes. A current show in Ansan, just south of Seoul, displays four pie-in-the-sky schemes for reinventing the city, designed by four buzzed-about architecture firms: BIG in Copenhagen, INABA in L.A., MAD in Beijing, and Mass Studies in Seoul. The big idea is to make architecture made of stand-alone units, which would allow projects to be expanded or scaled back during planning. (One of the big problems with big projects is that developers get stuck with huge buildings just as the economy tanks.)




FUSION VISION: Dubai Building World’s Most Futuristic Arch Bridge...

FUSION VISION: Dubai Building World’s Most Futuristic Arch Bridge...: Dubai may well be the City of dreams in the future. It continues to grow at a pace that surpasses the whole taken as a whole, and Duba...

Dubai Building World’s Most Futuristic Arch Bridge







Dubai may well be the City of dreams in the future. It continues to grow at a pace that surpasses the whole taken as a whole, and Dubai is building up onto its own mini universe. And combine that with an architecture, that is more like its from the next century only adds to the sheer beauty of Dubai.

The bridge that you are seeing in the picture above is going to be the world’s largest and tallest Arch bridge. Envisioned by the New York Architect Firm Fxfowle , it starts construction from next month. Here are some statistics of this amazing masterpiece of Engineering.

FUSION VISION: Dynamic architecture

FUSION VISION: Dynamic architecture: Dr. David Fisher’s Dynamic Tower is the first building in motion that will change its shape and add a fourth dimension to architecture:...

Dynamic architecture






Dr. David Fisher’s Dynamic Tower is the first building in motion that will change its shape and add a fourth dimension to architecture: Time. The shape will be determined by each floor’s direction of rotation, speed, acceleration and the timing; with timing meaning how each floor rotates compared to the other. The rotation speed will be between 60 minutes and 24 hours for one revolution.

Residents, if they own the entire floor, are able to control the speed and direction of the rotation by voice command. One can have breakfast watching the sunrise, lunch viewing the open sea, and dinner overlooking the lights of the city – all from the same place inside their unit. The other floors will be commanded by the architect, by the mayor or whoever will have the password to the computer program that will give the building a different shape at every glance.

According to Dr Fisher, these buildings will be designed by all of us, at any given moment, and will be shaped according to our needs, our present concepts of design and quite importantly, our moods – as an expression of freedom, beginning for the first time in history to control the shape of our homes and cities.

FUSION VISION: Single Hauz by Front Architects

FUSION VISION: Single Hauz by Front Architects: Single Hauz – a specific manifest, a suggestion of a house/shelter for contemporary Western Man. The Wedlock, a fundamental family uni...

Single Hauz by Front Architects







Single Hauz – a specific manifest, a suggestion of a house/shelter for contemporary Western Man. The Wedlock, a fundamental family unit, now ceased to be the only way of life. As a free-standing one-person housing unit it fills a certain gap: lack of such propositions for so-called “singles”. Inspired by a billboard it is designed as an object that can easily fit into almost any place on Earth. Particularly recommended to locations with extra-ordinary landscape conditions: forest, sea, lake, mountains, meadows; yet a sideway of a city thoroughfare.

FUSION VISION: Full Moon Rising – The future hotels in Azerbaijan...

FUSION VISION: Full Moon Rising – The future hotels in Azerbaijan...: Heerim Architects has attempted to reinvent the skyscraper beyond the traditional with two lunar inspired projects in the central Asian r...

FUSION VISION: Full Moon Rising – The future hotels in Azerbaijan...

FUSION VISION: Full Moon Rising – The future hotels in Azerbaijan...: Heerim Architects has attempted to reinvent the skyscraper beyond the traditional with two lunar inspired projects in the central Asian r...

Full Moon Rising – The future hotels in Azerbaijan




Heerim Architects has attempted to reinvent the skyscraper beyond the traditional with two lunar inspired projects in the central Asian republic of Azerbaijan.

The Korean firm has dreamed up Full Moon Bay and Caspian Plus that includes Crescent Place on neighbouring peninsulas in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku that look on to the Caspian Sea – the two projects on opposite extremes of the same bay acting as gateway markers.

Hotel Full Moon is essentially a disc with rounded edges and a hole in one of the top corners that appears radically different to the view depending on the angle it is seen from. The frontage thanks to the bulging centre makes it appear more like a glass death star whilst the side profile is more than a little gherkinesque.