Design Elixir: Contemporary Interior Design

Showing posts with label Contemporary Interior Design. Show all posts

I want to go to there

Summer vacation is on my mind, and here is a collection of cool hotels I wouldn't mind spending a few days in. Visit the links to see more images of these well designed hotels.

The Opposite House

The Opposite House

Beijing, China

Bulgari Hotel

Milan, Italy

Remota

Puerto Natales, Patagonia, Chile

Puebla, Mexico

Paris, France

Athens, Greece

Nefta, Tunisia

Designing For Healthcare

Great ideas & great article

Worth the click:Designing for Health: Exploring Collaboration in the Consolidated Interventional Platform-By Allen Buie, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP

Hospitality Design: Blue Frog Acoustic Lounge

For a full narrative about the concept and design of Blue Frog Acoustic Lounge visit this link.

Cargo Shipping Container Offices & Homes

Shipping containers are a basic necessity for distribution of goods throughout the world. In the United States, shipping containers are actually becoming an environmental issue. We have become a society of import rather than export. We export so little, that it actually cheaper for shippers to manufacture new shipping containers than to ship empty or partially filled containers back to their origin.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of empty containers sit litter the landscape of many port cities and areas around inland freight transit terminals.

Port of New York and New Jersey on the New Jersey Turnpike. In the first eight months of 2010, the port saw the equivalent of 700,000 more full 20-foot containers enter than leave.

Container Home in Jakarta

Resourceful people have been turning shipping containers into makeshift homes for years. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest shipping containers from architects and designers. They are modular and can be stacked and connected. And best of all, containers are a relatively inexpensive (some start at $800 a container).

The low cost and modularity makes a shipping container for temporary disaster relief shelters.

Re:START is constructed of colorful, stacked shipping containers.

Re:START by the Buchan Group, 1 year after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand

Container construction is not limited to short term solutions. Containers can be used to build permanent structures.

The original Container City project, located at Trinity Buoy Wharf, in the heart of London's Docklands. Completed in 5 months in 2001, Container City I was originally 3 stories high providing 12 work studios across 4,800 sq ft.

Container structures can be completely fitted out on the interior. Containers can be modified to add modern amenities you would expect from a home or an office (electricity, plumbing, finished interiors).

This is what the inside of a Container home @ Cove Park, Scotland. Not to shabby, eh?

It doesn't have to look like a container on the outside either, the exterior can be clad with standard building materials.

sg blocks harbinger house, west coast green, shipping container prefab, sg blocks prefab, SGBlock House, shipping container house, prefab shipping containers, green building, sustainable architecture, recycled shipping container, recycled materials

The SG Blocks Harbinger Container Home, Composed of five recycled containers.

Shipping containers have been used to build luxury homes and offices, and even a Starbucks.

Starbucks opened its first reclaimed container coffee shop just south of Seattle in Tukwila, Washington on 12/13/11.

The store is also the first LEED-certified structure in Tukwila.

Want to see and learn more about Container structures?

Here are some links to helpful sites:

46 Amazing Homes and Offices Built from Shipping Containers

General Knowledge:

Pre-Fab: a web resource dedicated to tracking developments in the market for ‘modernist prefab dwellings including Container Homes
Habinet -former Habitainer- is a website regarding projects and buildings using ISO shipping containers on design and construction.
How to: Buying, Designing & Building Cargo Container Homes
General Container Specifications

Architects, Designers, Builders & Developers:

Product Love: ASI Lamellux

Showing some product love to the Lamellux Collection of Wood & Resin and Carved Wood Panels distributed by Architectural Systems Inc. The wall panels combine translucent or opaque resins, in a variety of colors, with exotic and domestic wood species, which can be backlit.

Chez Gerard, London, UK
Featuring Lamellux® - Vibrato - WPLMX047

THE DETAILS:

Sheet size is 48" x 102" nominal
Thickness:

Quertec: 10-40 mm
Vibrato: 12-20 mm
Inclusion: 15-30 mm

Finishes:

Satin varnish standard
Species: Oak, Beech, Ash, Sipo Mahogany, Maple-Sycamore, Cherrywood, Bubinga, Walnut, Padouk, Iroko, Teak, Wenge, Zebrano

Edge treatments: Machine-dressed
Applications include tabletops, doors, walls, partitions, furniture, and bar fronts and customized to your specifications. Custom capabilities on all patterns, additional thickness available.Variations in color and texture may occur due to the nature of the material

There are 3 sub-collections:
Inclusion: combining honeycomb, resins and wood

Quertec: linear patterns of bold colors and texture
Vibrato: 11 groups of abstract, kinetic designs (a selection from this collection shown below)

Griffe

Gouge


Alveole

Cric

City

Wave

Mini-Parrot

	I can't wait to get my hands on a sample! But this new product is so popular, they are currently out of samples. Le sigh.

I can't wait to get my hands on a sample! But this new product is so popular, they are currently out of samples. Le sigh.

12 Solid Surface Fabrications That Will Blow Your Mind

Solid surfacing is great for commercial applications, especially healthcare and food industry, because 1) it's non-porous, 2) With proper maintenance, it does not promote the growth of mold, mildew or bacteria, 3) it meets all of the 18 preferred characteristics outlined in the 2006 Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospital and Health Care Facilities as an ideal healthcare surface to help facilitate improved infection control, and 4) it's Class Ι (A) fire rated.

When you think of solid surface, you probably think about countertops, restroom vanities and partitions, and wainscoting and wall cladding. Zodiaq is nonporous and when properly cleaned does not promote the growth of mold, mildew or bacteria.

And you'd be correct, but you're a designer, why limit yourself?

Solid surface can be thermoformed into custom shapes and contours, sandblasted, routed, carved, and laser etched. CNC machines can be used to engrave solid surfacing to the most intricate detail. It can be thermoplastically molded to create raised textures and patterns and three-dimensional shapes. Certain colors and thicknesses of solid surfacing become translucent when exposed to light.

With a little imagination and a great fabricator (the fabricator is key here), solid surfacing has nearly limitless applications.

Check out these amazing projects that prove solid surfacing isn't just for countertops:

Project | Raiffeisen Bank portrait wall panels

Location | Zurich, Switzerland
Design | NAU Architecture, Drexler Guinand Jauslin Architekten

Product | HI-MACS
Fabrication Method | Thermoforming & CNC Precision cutting

Fabricator| Keijsers Interieurbouw Horst
Photographer| Jan Bitter

Wallcovering patterns design: ROK, Rippmann Oesterle Knauss
Wallcovering patterns fabrication: Rosskopf & Partner AG
Wallcovering and joinery: Glaeser Baden AG

See more here.