Then he forcefully gets it under control, compacting it tightly into packed cubes of stuff, like his Rubik’s Kitchen, shown above. His work was shown at Copenhagen’s ‘Meaning of Void’ at Galleri Christoffer Egelund last month.

In A Stroll Through Space and Time, and his other pieces, he meticulously stacks and interlaces the disparate items to create highly composed, compact volumes and narrative assemblages.

Of course you are not meant to unpack it: how would you ever get it back into this artful form. This is permanent sculpture – to contrast in the most scrupulously minimalist architecture.

His Monochrome Anachron; above, suggests old fashioned travel. Back to a kinder gentler time when the planet was not unburdened by all our stuff?

Perhaps this is the appropriate sculpture for those who have purified their clutter to near nothing and this this is the release for people who have had all the junk and clutter squeezed out of their lives by good design.

In all these pieces, the forceful need to get control of it all is clearly articulated. These pieces of sculpture are like a cry for help from an age obsessed by far too much stuff.

But we still want art. The irony is, art is ultimately just more stuff, too. By re purposing the first into the second, at least he is not wasting more resources.

Source: Daily Tonic

This is a post from Home Design Find

For That Minimalist Interior: a Surfeit of Materialism

It was almost 100% recycled out of the former monastery there. Nine tons of building material were donated to Habitat ReStore, 8,628.6 tons were recycled, including the concrete which was crushed as a base for parking and paths and sculpted into berms, interspersed with porous concrete for capturing runoff rainwater. Only 12.5 tons went to landfill.

The new monastery features a geothermal heating and cooling system with 39 wells, 300-ft. deep, designed by Sustainable Engineering Group LLC. In the winter the heat pumps move heat using a compressor cycle from the earth into the monastery, and in the summer heat in the building is pumped out and displaced in the earth. Radiant floor heat is used throughout the building.

The windows incorporate a customized glass to control glare, eliminating the need for window blinds.

Cost? Just $246 a square foot, made possible by an integrated approach to green planning, architecture and construction by Hoffman. “A second benefit of the certification is educational,” said Neal Smith, executive director at the monastery. “It provides the monastery the credentials to teach others that sustainable design and construction are possible at a reasonable cost.”

A 20 KW solar roof provides 13% of the monastery’s energy needs for now, and as money becomes available will be added to, so that 100% of their energy needs are provided. The panel design is incorporated into the roof design so that it looks beautiful.

If you are a customer of Madison Gas and Electric, you can purchase the Benedictine Womens’ holy power at $0.25 per kwh through the utility district’s Clean Power Partner program. And if you are close by you can visit. The Benedictine Women  teach the importance of nature in daily life as part of their mission, and educational tours are offered to learn about these options for caring for our earth.

“LEED certification is an affirmation that the monastery is fulfilling its mission and vision,” explained Smith. The Sister’s mission is to weave prayer, hospitality, justice and care for the earth into a shared way of life as an ecumenical Benedictine community.

Source: Contractor Mag

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Benedictine Monastery Wins Highest LEED Platinum in USA

If you’re fortunate enough to own a vacation home, you may have already experienced the daunting question of how to decorate it. On one hand, you want your place to be comfortable and stylish. You also want furniture that is of high enough quality that it can withstand punishment from guests but not of so expensive that you’ll be worrying about stains and scratches every time someone sets a glass down. And if you rent out your vacation home, there’s another factor to consider: your decor has to appeal to people other than yourself.

So how do you handle this quandary? A few ideas:

1) Go for hardworking floors. Before you consider anything else, consider what’s under your feet. Whatever you find there will have a big impact on your life forever after.  Floors need to be resistant to spills and accidents, impervious to high traffic, able to stand up to sandy shoes, sea water, slushy snow boots, or whatever you’re most likely to track in from the great outdoors.  Tile and stone floors can be an excellent choice for both beach and mountain settings, as they are both easy to clean and resistant to water. Hardwood floors can also be a good choice. Avoid wall-to-wall carpeting, laminates and soft wood floors which don’t handle water well.

2) Make it personal. A vacation home is an excellent opportunity to indulge in whimsicality — after all, your second home is the backdrop to some of your most memorable times.  Your decor should encourage that feeling of specialness, not detract from it.  (Think of how inviting that generic motel look is.)  Give your vacation home a spark of originality by shopping flea markets, adding in quirky antiques, hanging interesting artwork. It’s a bit  like designing a stage set for a play. You want the design to say something about who you are and to suggest a specific ambiance which will hopefully help foster a relaxing, enjoyable vacation.

3) Keep it casual. Keep things informal by adopting a well-worn look that invites you to put your feet up. Who wants to be worried about watermarks on the coffee table and stains on the rugs? Distressed and weathered furniture alleviate stress as the time-worn look is part of the charm. Mismatched furniture suggests history and the passage of time, which can lend a sense of rootedness to a vacation home. While sleek and highly polished interiors are beautiful to look at, they can rarely stand up to the wear and tear that results from a happy vacation.

4) Keep it simple. A vacation home is not the place to display your collections. You don’t want too much furniture (other than a lot of chairs to accomodate big dinners), nor too much clutter. The goal is a restful feeling that gives you the mental space you need to relax. In addition, if you host many houseguests or rent your home out, less clutter means fewer objects to get broken!

Images: Bravacasa.it

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Design Dilemma: Decorating A Vacation Home

By boldly embracing the inherent qualities of LED, and turning those into the feature, German design firm FSIGN has broken the “buy barrier” for truly energy efficient lighting with its new line shown at light+building this year.

The low construction height of LEDs makes it possible to create lights that seem like magic, they are so thin. At 10 watts each, they are magic.

Each of these individual little planar embedded LED modules take only 1/4 watt to run, this whole light set takes 5 watts.

FSIGN’s entire one.LED lighting family is made with an aluminium bonded body, which helps transfer the thermal energy created into light, for the absolute minimum of waste heat generation.

All LED lighting is far more energy-efficient than fluorescent lighting, and is even is more energy-efficient when compared to incandescent lighting. But till now most has been ugly and cold.

Each of these designs produce warm and crystal clear bright light like halogen lighting, yet each of these clumps of LED cells uses only 9 watts: 36 watts for this unit.

Compare that to a 75 watt incandescent lamp! This very stylish and novel lighting design leverages the sleek profile made possible by the technology.

Typical of the power usage: these elegant wall lights use only 10 watts each, yet they have the “color temperature” of halogen lighting.

They can be rotated to serve as either reading lamps or ceiling washers.

As well as being drop-dead gorgeous, FSIGN’s warm, sharp clean light is like a halogen light, but takes five times less power than halogens to run and cuts energy use 80%, making these LEED certified lighting winners. It is easy being green!

Source: Daily Tonic

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FSIGN’s Energy Breakthrough: Magic, Chic LED Lighting

The planet does not need another gigantic wasteful resort for the rich. But here it is anyway, lording it over the harbor below, out of place, unstable, and frighteningly fragile.

What a terrifying experience to swim in this, so far removed from the ocean it is supposed to suggest below. We humans and our buildings are getting out of the scale of the planet.

This is the architecture of hubris.

“The three hotel towers are connected at the top (200 meters/656 feet) by a 9,941 square meter (107,000 square foot) park that brings together a public observatory, jogging paths, gardens, restaurants, lounges, and an infinity swimming pool”, says the press release.

“This 1.2 hectare (3 acre) tropical oasis is longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall and large enough to park four-and-a-half A380 jumbo jets.”

That’s an image that I’ll remember. Half the last jumbo jet dangling off the edge.

Source: Homedesigning

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Is Scary Resort Architecture What Our World Needs Now?

We’ve written before about the inherent conflict between following decorating trends and living sustainably. It’s really quite impossible to keep up with the latest and newest in home design without trashing the earth. In a previous post, we discussed ways to decorate that are gentler on the planet, including buying secondhand, conducting furniture swaps with friends, and repurposing objects in your home from one use to another. Today we want to explore a slightly different but related concept: choosing  furniture that offers a sustainable design to begin with. This topic has become a hot one in recent years, and was even the subject of a recent manifesto entitled “Time to Rethink Design” by Swedish designer David Carlson. He argues that we are facing a pandemic of ‘designed stuff’ and have reached a “contamination point” which he labels a crisis in design. He calls for a guerrilla war against ‘designerism.’ Part of designerism is designing objects that offer no new solutions (and sometimes even present added problems) to functionality.

As far as consumers on the other end of design go, we can take certain steps to ensure what we buy doesn’t end up in a landfill:

1) Buy simple. The beauty of simple furniture pieces is that they can adapt easily to many different looks. If you’re into country chic one year, but change to an urban sophisticate look later on, there will be a greater probability that simple furniture pieces with classic clean lines can make the transition.

2) Buy functional. It goes without saying that whatever you buy should serve its purpose well. Chairs need to be sturdy, sofas need to be comfortable, beds need to provide adequate support for your back, desks need to provide enough space for your computer and papers.  In general, furniture needs to be easy to clean, able to adapt to varying color schemes and not too cumbersome to use for its stated purpose. If you’ve fallen in love with a gorgeous couch that’s uncomfortable and hard to keep clean, keep looking.

3) Buy with an eye to how things will look in five to 10 years. Sure, everything looks good when new, but not everything looks good with time.  When shopping for new furniture, imagine how the piece will look worn and scratched rather than shiny and new.  Often, this means you will be shopping for natural materials that age gracefully and take on a new alluring patina with time. Think of how beautiful a distressed leather chair, a worn oriental rug, or a scratched up farmhouse table can look. The same does not hold true of particle-board furniture pieces, that look scuzzy — not noble — with a few nicks and scratches.

4) Buy quality. What’s the best way from keeping your furniture from ending up in landfill? Buy high-quality furniture that won’t fall apart after a year or two of use.

5) Change your mindset. We instinctively seek out good deals, and many of us believe that if something doesn’t work out for us now, we’ll just ditch it later. Stop thinking of your furniture purchases as temporary until you can afford something better. Instead, imagine that you will keep what you buy forever and make your purchases accordingly.

This is a post from Home Design Find

Design Dilemma: In Search of Sustainable Design

The two Oregon designers are inspired by the Shaker culture of simplicity and modesty to create a furniture system that exemplifies the waste-not-want-not lifestyle. They would be especially useful in a small space, making a small space adaptable for different uses over time.

As different needs arise, tables or stools of different heights and sizes can be easily created.

For example, for a nursery school in a home, this makes it easy to pack up the work day at night to create space in the same space for different activities.

Magnets at the end of the legs make it quick and easy to store them when they are not in use.

The same connections, at the same angle, in each piece make for a completely adjustable system.  Simple perfection.

I can imagine these painted in a lot of different primary colors.

Source: Dezeen

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A Shaker-Inspired Adjustable Peg Furniture System

But this is public architecture. Albert Campo Baeza has succeeded in creating a modern vernacular for a new kind of cathedral design.

As a public space, its marble floor is just sturdy, simple pavers. As a meditation spot, it succeeds. What surprises, though, is its juxtaposition.

The piece, entitled Between Cathedrals, is, well – between two cathedrals. Two much more pompous cathedrals, both with their backs to the view of the ocean.

Between Cathedrals is sited in what appears to be the tradesman’s area. Shocking in its humility.

But think about this: we live in a different age. Five, six centuries ago, when we built these giant edifices, we were more sure of of our moral imperative to conquer nature. We now live in an age when we have so much ‘subdued the world’ that it can barely support us.

We now have a moral imperative to find a new way to honor creation and to learn to live more lightly on the earth that is our home.

This is a post from Home Design Find

‘Between Cathedrals’ Offers Eco Vision of Religious Architecture

The two separated strands look almost like a Chinese character etched against the night. Indeed, the five oval rings formed by the lines of bridge decks are symbolic of the five rivers that converge at this spot by Xinjin.

One of the strands is for pedestrians, the other; for bicyclists. The charm of the meandering human-scale path elevates both activities to ones that are pleasant in themselves, with varying vistas along their journey, not merely a low-carbon way to get around.

Even a night time wander or slow bike ride would be appealing on its memorable path, that suggests the slow flow of water on the river beneath.

The architects say:

“Xinjin is a historical town that has attracted many residents and visitors over the years. It is geographically centered where five rivers converge, and for centuries poets have exalted its natural beauty.

Our design draws inspiration from Xinjin’s breathtaking landscape and rich cultural history, and reflects the city’s modern prosperity”.

Source: DeZeen

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Human-Scale Bridge Encourages Low Carbon Locomotion

In fact the combination of shiny blue tile and matte-finished lay terracotta tile its itself a traditional Southern Mediterranean color and texture combination widely seen in places like the Cote D’Azure, Algeria and Morocco.

Unlike many building integrated solar products, this one uses traditional solar monocrystalline silicon, not the newer thin film solar (which takes more space on the roof to make the same power).
Even so, it will already take more space to make the same power as these same modules would in a normal panel. It takes about 40 square meters to build a typical European home’s 3 KW system.

One solar power module comprising four photovoltaic cells is installed onto the roofing tile with ceramic body mix. Each 11 Watt module is easily interconnected to ultimately create a real photovoltaic roof, spaced between terracotta in a blend of old and new.

The matching plain clay tiles (that hold the modules) can also be installed as is.  The roof installation is normal once a raceway is installed underneath to connect the wiring between the solar tiles, and from the panels to the inverter or interface panel, making for a strong normal tile roof. Replacements are easily inserted if needed later for any reason.

Source: Solar Lighting

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Red Clay and Blue Solar Make a Powerful, Gorgeous Roof