Responding to the threat of rising sea levels and other hazards of climate change, Land on Water envisions a flexible, sustainable solution that totally eliminates the need for environmentally harmful materials like styrofoam. Floating homes, campsites, community centers, small parks, and structures supporting all kinds of other functions rest on flat-pack mesh cages made of reinforced recycled plastic and filled with upcycled flotation materials.

If the needs of the occupants change and they want to expand or increase the weight of whatever the foundations are supporting, they can simply add more flotation materials to the foundations. MAST imagines that such a system could help avoid the waste that plagued the architecture of the 20th century, which was too rigid to support changing needs and lifestyles.

“The system was inspired by gabion construction, an ancient technology which utilizes mesh cages filled with rubble to create extremely sturdy, low cost foundations,” says MAST. “In this case the concept is inverted; and the modular ‘cages’ are filled with locally sourced, upcycled flotation supporting the weight of any structure built on top. They are also much more adaptable than existing solutions since flotation can be added or adjusted at any time if weight is added or shifted around above.”

“‘Land on Water promises a far better underwater environment than existing solutions. While steel and concrete foundations are commonly treated with toxic anti-fouling paints, Land on Water provides an ideal habitat for fish and crustaceans and an anchor point for mollusks and seaweeds.”

MAST says a floating community could be as small as several homes belonging to members of a single family or as large as an entire city. The architects imagine its use everywhere from houses in Seattle to campsites on an Oslo fjord and saunas on the riverfront of Hobart in Australia.

The modules can be assembled into all kinds of configurations, incorporating areas of open water connected by walkways as sheltered places to fish and swim. Large terraced decks can double as outdoor auditoriums and dance floors. The bases are also strong enough to support the growth of mature trees, potentially allowing for the creation of small floating forests.

If any of that sounds unrealistic to you, here’s a great example where a similar floating neighborhood system worked in the real world. Designed by Dutch firm Rohmer, these 75 mixed-income units on Steigereiland on the Netherlands’ IJ Lake are also designed to grow and change. However, this community is made of more conventional materials like steel and concrete. While both concepts have the potential to help us envision a new way of living, MAST’s design improves upon the idea with its focus on sustainability.

The post Land on Water: A Modular Floating Building System by MAST first appeared on Dornob.

The old Bund Post Office was the very first one to be built in the province, giving it considerable significance as the center of the community. But its building had seen better days, and its location was no longer convenient for the largest possible number of local residents. The new facility needed to reestablish its former role and evoke a sense of nostalgia, while also shattering the boundaries “of what is traditionally associated with the concept of the post office,” explains design firm Yatofu.

The firm chose to collaborate with a neighboring business, Nordic Books, to combine the post office and shop as a single attraction. That gave them a bigger budget to work with, more opportunities to create dramatic visuals, and the ability to add some contemporary cultural interests to the mix. Occupying a three-story building, the new Bund Post Office makes use of a rich, evocative color palette that draws from historic references to emphasize its connection to the past.

Passersby are immediately drawn to the building’s exterior, upon which the entrance is framed by soft white illuminated panels. The large glass doors provide a view straight in to an arch-shaped bookcase in vivid red on the back wall. That’s your first sign that this is unlike any post office you’ve ever imagined. All the way at the top of the building, a ring of windows hints at the day-lit space you’ll find when you climb the last set of stairs.

Upon entering the dramatic double-height atrium, you’ll find the postal service counter set among gift and souvenir retail displays. Its fluted counter mimics that of the translucent white metal screens that line the staircase and the graphic shapes on the green floors, which complement the warm pink and clay hues throughout the space. A checkout counter for the bookstore is set into another end of the room, and the stairs sweep you up to a mezzanine lined with crimson bookshelves. The perforated metal mesh triples as a railing, built-in functional writing surfaces, and retail display structures.

Two built-in reading booths featuring green leather and custom lighting are also found on this secondary level, and when you follow the stairs to the top and cross a small bridge, you find a private children’s event and workshop space lined with undulating panels of glass windows. The layout here is inspired by community rooftop gardens.

“The brief from the client was posed as a question: How can we reimagine the role of the post office in the community?” says Yatofu. “The initial research led to the realization that post offices are often seen as most necessary during times of celebration – this means holidays, festivals, birthdays, and of course, the culturally significant Chinese New Year. This led to the redefinition of the brief itself as creating a post office that combined its normal functions with gift retail, cultural events, and a children’s event/play space.”

This captivating interior design was nominated for a 2021 INDE award in the shopping category, which recognizes progressive, innovative projects from 14 countries in the Indo-Pacific, and long-listed in the small retail interior category of the Dezeen Awards 2021.

The post Yatofu’s Festive Palette Makes This Space in Zhejiang the Cutest Post Office Ever first appeared on Dornob.

The installation explores the relationship between place and person through both the language of classical architecture and the transparency of what Tresoldi calls “Absent Matter,” illustrated here by the lack of solidity in his work. The 46 pillars stretch eight meters (26 feet) into the sky within the surrounding 2,500-square-meter (26,910 square foot) waterfront park. “Opera” will be part of one of Europe’s largest public spaces, and what local officials hope will eventually become a new landmark.

For its debut, “Opera” was paired with a sound installation by Italian musician and composer Teho Teardo that’s designed to interact with the site three times a day, at morning, sunset, and night. Italian poet and writer Franco Arminio curated poetry events, including readings by Lara Chiellino, and other performers played live music

“’Opera’ was created to emphasize the character of place through the built element, thus suggesting an additional layer of understanding,” says Tresoldi. “I tried to build a place of contemplation and to investigate the role of public art today, which I believe should be able to embrace the present.”

Visitors are welcomed to explore the site and stand within the colonnade, gazing up at what feels like a phantom echo of lost architecture. Tresoldi’s work uses the transparency of mesh to “transcend the time-space dimension” and narrate a dialogue between art and the physical world. Sometimes it feels like he’s giving us a glimpse of another era, architecture that once was or could have been, or maybe even a vision of a possible future.

With his previous works like “Gharfa,” an experimental pavilion in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh, Tresoldi has offered visitors not just an object to view, but a space to inhabit where they can meet, rest, and meditate. Reality and illusion are intertwined, especially after dark when the structures are illuminated.

“Opera” is modest in form compared to some of Tresoldi’s other works, but it’s a permanent installation, inhabiting its environment in a totally new way. It will be interesting to see how it changes over time, perhaps with nature becoming a part of it in the form of vegetation or bird’s nests.

In an interview with DomusWeb, Tresoldi explains how these eerie and beautiful creations come about:

“I begin with the physical, historical, and social elements of the venue and its territorial and climatic characteristics. I analyze the emotive relationships which are created between venue and person, constructing narrative elements which can be used through this channel. The entire project is created by my studio through a participative process and continuous discussion… I always try not to have a single vision, but rather to identify an emotional fil rouge on a collective level. I structure my story with these colored notes, constructing my intimacy in a public space, imagining to communicate this dimension to whoever experiences that venue.”

The post Opera: New Public Art Installation by Edoardo Tresoldi Opens in Italy first appeared on Dornob.

Now, with his new interdisciplinary lab Studio Studio Studio, Tresoldi takes his distinctive creations in a somewhat new direction. While “Gharfa” is another building made of mesh, it’s partially filled with opaque materials, giving it a new sense of presence and immediacy. Located in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, the experimental pavilion installation is part of the temporary creative project “Diriyah Oasis,” designed and curated by Dubai-based studio Designlab Experience.

Tresodi collaborated with designer Alberonero, musician Max Magaldi, and green designer Matteo Foschi of Odd Garden Studio to create a space where visitors could “meet, rest, and meditate.” Inside the wire mesh structures, visitors find tranquil, otherworldly spaces augmented by greenery, sculptural elements, and soft music. The partial infill of cork defines paths and spaces for them to follow.

One of Tresoldi’s Instagram posts on the installation reads: “Gharfa stages the intimate relationship between man, landscape, and architecture through the reinterpretation of the human relationship with cultural archetypes. Visitors experience a theatrical world where technique, reality, and illusion are all intertwined. Inspired by local ruins, the installation presents itself as a complex sculpture in which Edoardo Tresoldi’s Absent Matter is combined with cork to outline and carve out intimate spaces and narrow paths, inviting the visitor to come in and discover it all.”

The architects add that “by creating a multi-disciplinary environment through the interplay of digital and analog, anthropic and natural, geometric and organic, Gharfa shapes an expressive experience that first shatters and then restores the thin line between collective imagination, individual imagery, and narrative fiction. The result is a narrative of different surfaces, which in turn become a stage for personal perceptions, while highlighting the structure’s backstage anatomy. Each element of Gharfa has a life of its own but was thought and conceived as part of an orchestral composition that interprets cultural contaminations as a reference point for future artistic languages.”

“Diriyah Oasis” is an open-air family entertainment district in Riyadh aiming to establish the city as a cultural hub. The “Gharfa” installation is set near the At-Turaif district, a UNESCO World Heritage Site hosting museums and cultural institutions.

Tresoldi calls his mesh concept “Absent Matter,” which he calls “the representation of a mental projection, filter, and shape through which places, instants, and beings are narrated… It triggers uninterrupted dialogues with space and history, and projects the object’s substance into an unknown temporal dimension: what has disappeared, or never existed, lives again in a different time. The language of transparency weaves the non-existent, transforms the denial of matter into a three-dimensional entity, and reveals the result of a void, therefore the abstraction of reality and its timeless visual identity.”

Check out one of the artist’s previous works, a suspended “Aura” of mesh installed within the Bon Marché department store in Paris.

The post Gharfa: A Ghostly Mesh Pavilion in Riyadh by Eduardo Tresoldi first appeared on Dornob.

The post Parking House Ejler Bille is a Prime Example of Human Scale Infrastructure first appeared on Dornob.

Currently wrapping up an enormously popular Kickstarter campaign, the BioLite FirePit lets you get right up next to it to warm your hands and roast your marshmallows without any fear of inhaling smoke. Its narrow oblong design makes it highly portable, and the “x-ray mesh” along its sides keeps air circulating for a strong fire while providing charming ambiance. You can use either charcoal or wood for fuel, depending on whether your goal is simply to enjoy the flames or to do some serious cooking.

“We know that playing with fire is a touchy subject: why would you want to go and mess with something as classic and lovable as a campfire?” says BioLite. “Well, we’re not messing with it; we’re making it burn the same stuff, just better. This isn’t a weird chemical fuel or a gas flame — it’s wood, being the best it can be. All it needs is some air in the right places.”

The company explains that the smoke that comes off a typical campfire or fire pit is unburnt fuel, full of particulate matter that would’ve combusted inside the fire if it were burning efficiently enough. “Smoky fires are badly tuned fires,” they say. So their solution is a system of 51 air jets and a fan that push oxygen into the fire at strategic points, resulting in a more uniform temperature and mixture of gases inside the flames. Four fan speeds control the intensity of the fire, so you can tune it to low for a chill, low-key campfire or crank it up for extra heat.

The FirePit features folding legs to make transportation a cinch and measures about 27 inches long by 13 inches wide and 15.8 inches tall. With the fan on low, you can get 24 hours of burn time out of a single charge, and it’ll still last you five hours on high. It also comes with a USB-A to micro-USB cord, so you can easily charge it at home before heading out. The fire pit’s Kickstarter backers will receive a free solar carry cover, a handy extra topped with a solar panel so you can charge your FirePit with sunlight when it’s not in use.

The BioLite FirePit’s Kickstarter campaign netted well over $2.2 million dollars on a goal of $100,000, and other backer perks include fun stuff like blankets, beer cozies, lanterns, bike lights, and other BioLite products, including the company’s CoffeePress, KettlePot, and CampStove. Pre-orders for the FirePit are expected to ship in July 2018. Check out all of BioLite’s gear on their website.

The post Flames Without Smoke: New BioLite FirePit Makes Camping More Comfortable first appeared on Dornob.

The post Architecture in Ruins: Edoardo Tresoldi Debuts Haunting Installations in Paris first appeared on Dornob.

One simple and highly effective workaround is the use of transitional indoor/outdoor areas that feature lots of operable windows or walls that open wide on demand. These “rooms” can be fully enclosed when you want to keep them cool and shady or transformed into patios or verandas when you want to brighten them up and let in a breeze. For a recent renovation project in Australia’s Barrington heritage area, Matt Gibson Architecture + Design put an unusual and elegant spin on the standard transitional space.

The architects attached a modern black volume to the rear of a traditional brick villa, continuing the addition’s wooden floor and ceiling right out into the yard. There are no walls to close off this new dining and lounge area, which projects out over the grass. Instead, the space has been equipped with a set of massive, two-story-tall woven steel mesh curtains that filter out sunlight, limit glare from the west-facing direction, and provide privacy when desired. The free-flowing nature of these curtains creates a sense of movement and fluidity that contrasts with the solid brick structure.

The translucent “buffer” enclosed by the mesh curtains makes use of the yard’s extra square footage and helps regulate the temperature inside the rest of the villa. The curtain also functions as a rain screen, and unlike conventional textiles, it won’t ever fade, get dirty, or encourage the growth of mildew.

Drawing inspiration from the traditional Japanese “hiro-en,” or deep veranda, the architects created a seamless series of spaces that bleed into one another and form a threshold between inside and out. Discreet walls can be closed to secure the innermost spaces or left open to make the entire home feel much larger. Now, these living areas can be sheltered from the sun in the summer or bathed in light during the winter for additional warmth.

The architects explain: “The contemporary addition challenges the concept of building low quality, replica additions that attach themselves to the heritage fabric and in effect compromise, confuse, and diminish the integrity of the original. The intervention here is instead contemporary and interactive, activating and opening up the compartmentalized interior to previously under-utilized green space, and at the same time preserving and augmenting the cultural significance of the original building. Spaces and eras are distinguishable, yet able to bleed into each other, allowing subtle connectivity. Each space, whilst unique, continues a dialogue that is integral to the story of the whole.”

The post Melbourne House Extension Uses Steel Mesh Curtain in Place of Walls first appeared on Dornob.

The post The Nest: Modern, Low Cost Home with Mesh Facade first appeared on Dornob.

Generic disposable containers take on new dimensions with a simple twist or touch of decoration. These three solutions show how a little extra time or material can go a long way.

Take the essentially two-dimensional Pimavera Vase, for instance – simply drop in your old bottle and voila, you have a neat receptacle for a single perfect flower.

Cover It does what the title suggests: a net sheath slips around the outside of the container, conforming to it but also transforming it. A do-it-yourself version of this would be oh so easy, too.

The Lace Vase extends the same principle upward, combining a flexible silicon rubber sleeve that snugly hugs the top of the container while opening the neck upward to turn an inwardly-tapered bottle into an outwardly-expanding vase.

The post 3 Lovely Ways to Upcycle Glass & Plastic Bottles into Vases first appeared on Dornob.

Most free-spirited architectural and interior designers dread the confines of code, dictating that they must put this here or that there for safety reasons. Railings are not, however, the only way to keep someone safe on a staircase. This creative solution for loft stairs takes personal security as well as aesthetics, space and style into account, bending the rules (literally, using flexible mesh) in a way that won’t break the occupant’s bones.

A1Architects had to work within the confines of an old attic in Prague, its sloped roof constraining the second-floor footprint of this remodeled top-floor apartment.

Letting light in and views down from this guest loft level was a key goal, accomplished with a combination of skylights and see-through, ultra-slim, fence-like steel to prevent falls without significant visual obstruction.

Meanwhile, wall-side shelving hugging the ceiling and hidden in-stair spaces  along the way up provided maximum storage in this otherwise small-space residence – also reinforcing the space-opening curves found throughout.

None of this is meant to suggest the rest of the loft is anything short of lovely, but this critical design move informs the rest – a combination of light-painted (white) and reflective (steel) surfaces combined with leftover (bugs and) features from the previous configuration.

About A1 Architects

“The uniqueness of our lives is shaped by seemingly insignificant details. In our work, we look for the magic of these little things in the ordinary things around us that inspire us… The first independent projects of members of the a1architects studio date back to 2003. In 2005, the a1architects studio and creative workshop began to form in Prague, the core of which consists of Lenka Křemenová and David Maštálka, originally classmates from the A1 studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. The studio includes architects Tereza Schneiderová and Zuzana Sagitariová and architect Philip Mountain.”

The post Banister? Better! Steel Mesh Replaces Railing on Loft Stairs first appeared on Dornob.

What could be more dull, urban, ugly and utilitarian than wire-mesh fences, right? Wrong – at least when it comes to these crazy and creative patterned fence designs. Beyond merely ornamental, these woven wire wonders are awesome works of welded art.

Dutch designers of Demakersvan (which translates to: “the makers of”) started this idea as a design thesis project but it has since started to go into mass-production for commercial and home use due to popular appeal.

Combining the delicate decorative appeal of lace and the polar-opposite aesthetic of rugged wire fencing, these works of bent steel are like functional and appealing versions of boring large-scale metal artwork you see at office buildings. It can even be used to make ceilings more attractive, or across building facades. It’s gorgeous as garden fencing and balcony railings, too.

Demakersvan have worked on all kinds of industrial, product and furniture products, but this piece in particular seems to bridge gaps between design disciplines – a fence that is more about inviting interaction than it is about diving spaces. So what comes next? One-off conceptual works have already given way to repeating patterns available for retail sale. If they start taking on barb-wire variants or designing electric-shock versions there may be no end to what these innovators can create.

If you want a bespoke lace fence of your own, the process of getting one made for you is fairly easy. Tell them the application, select a lace pattern and they’ll send you a quote.

“Dutch design studio DEMAKERSVAN was founded in 2008. In the same year, they introduced their first product, LACE FENCE. As demand grew, they set up a production facility in Bangalore, India, to ensure the sustainable and responsible production of all its materials. Eventually this lead to the launch of Redfort, an architectural fabrics company that designs and delivers top quality architectural materials worldwide.”

“We are designers who build. We produce architectural fabrics, and each square meter is unique. No repetition. No limitations. We adapt to your needs. We strive to make the world more beautiful.”

The post Decorative Wire Mesh ‘Lace Fence’ Design first appeared on Dornob.