ARCHITECHTURE FOR CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION

While defining a house is usually brought down to thinking if the roof should be flat or not, the beginning of this concept was lifespan and tentativeness that makes it longer. If you think about aesthetics in that way, you start to understand why trees look the way they look, and that maybe in the world of our aesthetics they would no longer be aesthetic if only we weren't used to seeing them every day. Anyway, finding a purpose for architecture is way more inspiring than trying to draw at once. The purpose you find depends on you and what sits in your head, then. These spaces, built in Japan and USA, designed by Arakawa+Gins, help their inhabitants change their perception and their ideas, they invite a constructive cognitive action. Human roots are found in the words 'insecurity' and 'tentativeness' which stimulate immune system of each human. Comfort means death, tentativeness, surprise, beeing on guard means being young forever.

Moreover, every move humans make in their spaces is defined as 'architectural procedure'. Deep understanding of these procedures lets develop what is unexpected. 

HOUSE DESIGN

I completely forgot to write about one of my favourite house designs - Slide House by a Polish artist Bartosz Mucha. I love it mostly for the non-existence of the walls of the neighbouring houses which at the same time allows for the existence of not only any walls but also any roads, any lights, any trees, any places and any surrounging stuff that can be a witness to our home-life as a loop consisting of stress, effort, excitement, fear, joy, exposure, isolation, motion etc. 
I've seen the house last year on an exhibition in Zielona Gora, Poland, but unfortunately it was used as a holder for lealets and books on every stair and stood in a foyer, so I guess it was mostly understood as a permament staircase to show books at the gallery.


image: http://news.o.pl/2011/05/16/bartosz-mucha-52-leniwe-tygodnie-paraarchitektura-projekt-kordegarda-warszawa/bartosz-mucha-09-slide-house/

AND MORE ABOUT KITCHEN

Another cool definition of kitchen by dtile (dtile.nl). Kitchen for unpredictable cooks, variable number of cooks, variable number of guests and unpredicted cuisine. With the semi-defined functions. All can become a preparation area, all can become wet and dirty. The amount of burners is flexible, everything can stand anywhere. Marvellous, as good old days in the sandpit playing kitchen!

TALKING ABOUT THE KITCHEN

It seems that I am stuck to one subject recently. But isn't kichen the very center of life? Or at least, hasn't it become so in the last past years? Kitchen parties, open kitchen, cooking, talking, eating, listening to the news,  leaving notes, collecting memories from places we've been, showing-off designer furniture, growing plants, collecting garbage, becoming living room, large storage space, show-off cooking, shrinking to the size of pantry, filming scary knive-scenes in the movies :) Kitchen is for all that. Can kitchen become anything more?

According to Philips it can become the very, very centre of our healthy universe. 
In the new Philips' "Microbial Home" kitchen concept, natural techniques are used to let the kitchen function as the centre of creating and recycling. 

The waste from cutting vegetables is transformed to methane that is used for cooking, warming up water and for lights. The dining table contains area for growing your own vegetables and storing them, which replaces refrigerator.

All the plastics can be decomposed in a mushroom-enzyme machine, the bees come to our window to make the honey. It is worth, then, making few steps more in the kitchen, for the sake of health and sustainability. Seems like returning to the times of our grandgrand parents, back to basics of the basics, learning from the nature. Huge step back to follow a different path. Exciting.
The only thought, though. If someone gets fascinated, the sales of ordinary kitchen applinances (especially tons of unnecessary applinaces people tend to collect in their kitchens), including Philips, can radically go down. 

IKEA UPPLEVA

Isn´t it just cool that the same day I was writing about design driven innovation, IKEA launched an innovation proposal for home. It doesn't change the way you live, maybe, but yes it is for lazy people who cannot organize their cables and it enhances the meaning of a normal shelf organizing your CDs to the one organizing your cables, too. The great thing about it is that it allows you to play music or movies from different sources and you do not have to worry about different cables, devices and a storage place. The problem is when a new technology will be launched or when part of the technologies used there will get old and unnecessary. I think that it should be more flexible as far as updating, detaching&attaching new stuff is concerned. Let's see what happens and how it develops! Lycka till, IKEA. 

VODAFONE'S SPARK

Vodafone keeps bringing new architecture concepts following the brand's core values which makes me like them. After Portugal's 'life in motion' another short and smart concept was developed, called 'ignition point' or a 'spark' of the new, exciting world.

This is how Fitch, the office behind the concept, explain it:

The stores bring the exciting, rich and colourful world of Vodafone Qatar to the varied and international population of the country, using interactive digital media to communicate changing features on F1, music, sport and exclusive merchandise. Unlike creating a retail space for an existing brand, the focus of this environment, given that it’s a new challenger entering the market, was all about customer acquisition.

To facilitate this, the retail design concept is centred around a focal "ignition point" in the centre of each store which is brought to life with an electric and bold design language that becomes a metaphor for the start of an exciting new world that the customer is joining. Customers entering the store are channelled into the centre of this spark, where they can either be attended to by Vodafone staff or browse the offer, unaided, via a series of touchscreen self-service units providing digital and printed product information.

NOT SO LITERAL ARCHITECTURE

I have started a new blog this week because I feel the need of collecting material evidence of how to build something wisely and creatively in architecture. Smart material use, smart lighting can tell millions of brilliant stories and help us create a unique building with a simple method. Literal things are usually too expensive and not efficient. I named this blog 'not so literal architecture.'

Sometimes it feels that when you've got a general coherent concept for your building or space everything will be easy. It is if you can operate materials as smart as these examples:

http://notsoliteralarchitecture.blogspot.com 

PET ARCHITECTURE

I have learnt today that these little houses in Tokyo are called 'Pet Architecture'! I should have known it before, probably, as there are even some books about it. Nevertheless, I decided to write about them today, because they have always been quite inspiring for me. It is like guerilla housing almost. Let's make the most of the existing city space, let's make the most of the existing technologies, ergonomics and functionalities, let's build an extreme house. Normally, with a master plan made a long time ago it would have never happened, and for me this is just another example of how different cultures can think of different solutions which is good - diversity of approaches is always good! That is why I like those houses as they are for me a very smart reply to some problems in Japanese urban planning. Here are some pics:

OPEN PLANET IDEAS

So, I have started to participate in Open IDEO, but also in Open Planet Ideas. The collaboration, the thinking, the concepting is just wonderful. I wish I had more time for that. I wish I could work on something like this every day. My blog is more about observing what others do and about thinking about our reality more than doing, but I was starving to do something meaningful and to respond to some real brief. That's what these two platforms are encouraging us to do.

So, my first concept for Open Planet Ideas is this: http://bit.ly/ch3XtO It is the app that works on your cellphone, PSP, camera that shows you how the world could look better around you by the use of diminished and augmented reality. It makes you think about it every day. It makes you see what things are bad and how you can change them.

And the second one is here: http://bit.ly/9dKGeX It controls the lights that are in use for nothing and makes them dim whenever there's nobody around to help reduce the use of power.

You can see great ideas by others here: http://www.openplanetideas.com/

TRUTH

What this guy teaches us is a valuable lesson. Unique combination of different types of human activities in his works is causing an avalanche of thoughts in my head. I think he's just brilliant. He is neither directly ironic nor pathetic. It is a pure observation without evaluating any reality. He is a reporter- journalist to me and he shows his reports to us in a very smart way. Take a look here:
http://krystiantruthczaplicki.blogspot.com/