But that doesn’t mean rural architecture has to remain stuck in the past, either, even when it comes to the most basic of dwellings. For instance, the humble cabin is usually associated with rusticity, simplicity, and disconnection from all the distractions and complications of modern life. That usually translates to the use of natural materials in its construction, but when you really investigate the root of a cabin’s purpose, there’s simply nothing as important as the feeling of connection to nature it gives you. Aesthetics are secondary.

Today, it’s really no surprise that many contemporary cabin dwellers seeking that all-important immersion in the natural world are bringing their preferences for contemporary architecture along with them. And sometimes, the contrasts that come out of that are fascinating.

David Coleman Architecture recently completed “Bear Run Cabin” in Marblemount, Washington, a wooded, low-population area along the Skagit River in the northwest region of the state. Describing it as a “striking modern cabin,” the architects explain that they’ve put a lot of thought into how the year-round home interacts with its surroundings. Its angled rooflines are designed to mimic the North Cascades mountains, while the colors and materials make the most of the area’s rainy winters and sunny summers.

But above all else, the cabin’s defining feature is a long, narrow volume lined with green-tinted windows on one side, picking up some of the more vivid tones in the vegetation outside. At night, when it’s illuminated from within, it emits a gentle glow. This ‘studio’ measures 1000 square feet and contains a music room, workshop, and guest loft, while the 890-square-foot cabin holds a great room, bath, and sleeping loft.

The firm explains that the cabin “has a big presence in a big landscape. Surrounded by dramatic, distant peaks, the site slopes gently to the east and overlooks a large woodlot. Our clients wanted a building that had presence in and subservience to the wild landscape. This duality became the thematic tag that informed the design.”

“The building site is marked by a 30-foot by 100-foot perimeter. Two buildings are juxtaposed within this footprint in a yin/yang fashion, leaving a sinuous exterior space that is defensible and varied. The western terrace is carved into the site, stepping down into the earth, leading toward a soaking tub set behind a glass wall. The south-eastern porch and monumental stair, both covered by a soaring roof, rise above the site, offering shelter from the rain and summer sun. Both spaces meet in an interstitial ‘rain garden’ – a place where seasonal rains gather and flow toward the river below.”

The post Translucent Modern Cabin Lights Up the Cascades first appeared on Dornob.

The post Hansgrohe: Efficient, Stylish, Pampering Shower Heads first appeared on Dornob.

Affected by an eight meter change in sea level from front to back, Queen’s Parade has never been an easy site to develop any kind of construction on. Throughout the planning process, FaulknerBrowns had to be extremely mindful of this geographic feature. The architects also had to work around a lot of the area’s already-existing urban and residential developments. Of course, the design team won’t be alone in executing this mammoth task. The revitalization project is the product of a big collaboration between the city council, developer Angelvale Consortium, and a slew of other local organizations and committees.

Among the proposal’s most promising features is the addition of a four-star hotel, which will directly overlook the waterfront and be able to house 80 guests at a single time. The latter point is particularly important to the Queen’s Parade area, whose shortage of suitable accommodations has plagued its tourism industry for decades now. The hotel will be operated by Beannchor, a local group that already runs a number of successful lodgings across Ireland. Guests of the hotel will be able to access an adjoining family entertainment center that has its own virtual reality area, adventure playground, and indoor surf rider. While the kids are busy in the entertainment center, the parents might want to venture into the nearby public square, which will boast a movie theater and a concert venue!

FaulknerBrowns also intends to run a covered courtyard, or “winter garden,” through the revitalized Queen’s Parade, allowing visitors to explore the area without having to worry about potential rainfall. The canopy will be an angled timber structure that keeps people dry while adding a layer of elegance to the commercial premises around it. The winter garden will be lined with tons of easily-accesible shops, restaurants, and cafes, and since it’ll be covered, it can also be used to house temporary attractions like farmers markets, pop-up events, and exhibitions. For added convenience, a 360-space parking lot will be erected near the back of the site.

The FaulknerBrowns proposal is looking to capitalize on and prolong the region’s recent spurts of tourism, which can be attributed to Northern Ireland’s many appearances in the popular TV show Game of Thrones. As a part of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland has also been impacted by the Brexit referendum. Needless to say, these plans arrived at a good time and are sure to bolster the confidence of the city’s inhabitants. When the project is completed, Queen’s Parade will be the perfect place for families to escape to for the weekend. The best part is, they’ll be able to enjoy all of the complex’ recreational facilities rain or shine, and that’s important in a gloomy place like Ireland!

The post FaulknerBrowns to Redevelop Queen’s Parade first appeared on Dornob.

Some of us go to great lengths to forget how drab it is outside our home on a rainy day, but for those who want to celebrate the sunless sky, this device brings the weather to you. Developed by experimental Swiss studio Micasa Lab, the Nebula 12 is a cloud lamp connected to wifi that produces its own puffs of steam to mimic the weather outside.

Of course, it works for daylight-lovers as well, in its way, changing color over the course of our daily solar cycle to the transitions from reddish sunrise to purple sunsets.

“Nebula 12 can, like a natural cloud, change in color and brightness and thus can be used as a variable source of light for romantic evening meals, when doing homework, when reading or just chatting.”

Tapped into the outside world via wifi, The Nebula 12 remixes liquid nitrogen and hot water, then uses suction to keep it in place. And for those who wish to mix things up a bit, it can be manually controlled as well, or tied into the news (good for sun, bad for clouds) and so forth, too.

“In the standard mode, Nebula 12 predicts the weather for the next 48 hours. A threatening low-pressure area is announced by a red cloud, and sunshine is shown in yellow. At the same time, the user can adjust the settings and define the source of information themselves. And the best is: regardless of how dark the cloud is, Nebula 12 never brings any rain. At least, not within one’s own four walls.”

One has to wonder how it affects the feel of your home to have a cloud of liquid nitrogen steam hanging out all the time – could it produce humidity issues? But as a novelty, it’s pretty creative, and a fun way to impress your guests.

The post Lamp Made of Steam Responds to the Weather Outside first appeared on Dornob.

Architectural group Suga Atelier managed to do a rather spectacular thing with a project they call House S: they put a cave in the middle of bustling Osaka.

House S is a beautifully constructed concrete and plywood home that incorporates some of the best parts of nature into its design. From the outside, the home looks rather like a natural cave. Its graceful natural shape brings to mind the face of a stone cliff, interrupted only by a wooden door and a single tall window.

The home was built on a rather unusual triangular lot which is surrounded on all sides by roads. Thanks to the building’s vulnerable position in the midst of all this traffic, the architects bypassed the inclusion of typical windows. Instead, the home’s narrowest point is punctuated with a narrow wall of glass, allowing for a certain amount of natural light to enter from that point.

The main source of natural light, however, is the home’s spectacular central atrium. The void passes from the very top of the house to the very lowest level, providing the perfect avenue for rainwater.

The water collects in a basin in the home’s garage, which is the lowest level of the building. Before it gets there, however, it passes by a pair of benches meant just for resting and watching the weather from the perfect vantage point offered by the atrium.

All of the home’s concrete walls were shaped using plywood forms. After the concrete dried, the plywood forms were used to create other parts of the building, including internal walls, floors and work surfaces in the kitchen. Other surfaces in the home are lined with white plastic panels which were created from recycled plastic bottles.

The home’s plastic surfaces, concrete walls and natural soundproofing all contribute to the cave-like feeling. This feeling is expanded by the open floor plan and lack of traditional furniture. Instead of chairs and tables, the home’s interior is dotted with furniture-like fixtures and plenty of comfy nooks in which to hunker down and enjoy a good book or a great conversation.

The post Cozy Cave-Like Concrete Home with a Rain Atrium first appeared on Dornob.

The post UNbrella? Compact Tube Turns Newspapers into Umbrellas first appeared on Dornob.

It looks like rain – puffy-but-ominous clouds overhead. Simple and to-the-point, this neat little wall-hanging key-ring suspender seems to be pouring shiny metal raindrops (or … could be seen as shooting out some silver lightning).

The equally-simply-titled ‘Cloud’ from UK designer Duncan Shotton is definitely an exercise in fun minimalism – an easy-to-fasten, matte-white, scratch-resistant little puff you can affix inside your doorway to flexibly accommodate your own keys as well as those of guests. It’s a lot cuter on the wall than a regular old hook, and it’s functional too.

The limited-edition piece was shown (and sold) off at the Stockholm Furniture Fair earlier this month, available from the DesignBoom booth specifically – but who knows, the creator could still have one or two hanging out if you ask him. And he’s open to custom ideas, so check out his website and shoot him an email if you like.

Shotton has lots of other pieces available for sale with international shipping at his online store, including fun memo pads cut into shapes like waving hands and bear paws, novelty push pins, rainbow pencils, card cases and stickers. Basically, a bunch of unique gift ideas, next time you’re shopping for someone who likes weird stuff.

Here’s more info about Duncan Shotton from the designer himself:

“British designer, artist and inventor. My work covers product, packaging, graphic and user interface design, and this website serves as portfolio and online shop of my selected works. My mission is to create products that engage users emotionally, promote happiness and ensure people love what they’re doing, wherever they are and whoever they’re there with.”

“Focusing on designing happiness into everyday things, we use themes such as play, wit and illusion to create tools and objects that converge simple ideas with serious product design. As well as our line of studio originals, we work internationally on creative design commissions, collaborations and freelance.”

The post Magnetic Cloud Shaped Key Hook first appeared on Dornob.

From water skis to sports car races and sky dives, these designers (and their fans) are fanatical about demonstrating the potential of this ultimate wind-proof umbrella.

The senz° storm umbrella is shaped to withstand high-powered wind towers and will not invert or break in extreme weather, slicing through the sky in summer breezes and heavy storms alike.

Since releasing their popular original model they have evolved various sizes, shapes, colors and patterns, but all around the same principle goal: surviving 70-mile-per-hour wind forces using nylon, steel, fiberglass in a carefully calculated form.

The post Umbrellas, Fixed: Aerodynamic Design for 70+ MPH Winds first appeared on Dornob.

This work is titled “I Wish You Hadn’t Asked” – presumably the question was: what would it be like were the rain to fall within rather than outside of your home?

Created by The Glue Society (images by Nicolai Lorenzen) for the Sculpture By the Sea Festival in Denmark, this quaint but fully furnished one-story abode was built abroad, shipped in and outfitted with pipes that blast 200 liters per minute into its various rooms.

Most of this impressive torrent is recirculated back within the semi-closed system, sheeting down before being pumped back up from below the porous floorboards … like an endlessly-recycled, never-fixed ceiling link times a hundred thousand or so.

A combination of architecture and installation art, the piece concerns “that moment in a relationship when something is said, or done, that can’t be taken back. And the rot sets in.”

And it will play out as planned- while visitors can walk through now (with or without a raincoat) it will soon become a hostile and then downright dangerous place to occupy, before utterly falling apart. In many ways, it is simply a fast-forwarded look at the life of any human-built structure.

“A seemingly strong and stable relationship can sometimes reach a point where the arrival of a single question can sow a seed of doubt or destruction. This artwork allowed the audience to explore this downfall in a literal way. By entering an ordinary looking house, visitors discovered this one rained on the inside. Continuously. At the beginning of the 30 day experience, it was relatively exciting. But after a few days, the deterioration was palpable. And the rot had set in.”

“The Glue Society’s creative work encompasses everything from experiential and activation projects, entertainment and commercial direction, to art exhibitions, installations and sculpture. In response to its pioneering work balancing art and commerce, Creativity Magazine defined the creative group as ‘the experts at things which haven’t been done before’.”

The post 300,000 Liters of Rain Fall Inside This House first appeared on Dornob.

When it rains, something strange happens … all of those bustling urban pedestrians staring at their feet begin to catch glimpses of the architecture above and around them, turning just a little bit of their world upside down.

Puddling is a minimalistic white photographic tumblog (Tumblr blog) with pictures posted to it by Madeleine Digangi, featuring ordinary scenes as framed by pools of standing water on city streets and sidewalks.

The structures themselves are not extraordinary, and surely it would be hard to find beauty in the muddied rainwater, yellow lines, green bike paths or crumbling curbs alone.

But together, well, the compositions have an ephemeral and collaged quality that would no doubt make a postmodern Narcissus want to look deeper, and perhaps even cause him to fall in.

The post Street Art? Puddle Pictures Frame Buildings in Pools of Rain first appeared on Dornob.

There are good reasons for building large singular structures in many cases – and equally compelling justifications in other situations for breaking buildings into smaller pieces and integrating them systematically in their surrounding environment. The case is reinforced when the building systems themselves rely on small-scale green energy strategies. Take these geometric treehouses, which offer small space living in pods elevated off the forest floor.

This go-green approach builds on the classic cabins-in-the-forest model of conventional nature vacations, with a twist: each individual unit is carefully lofted and connected to a tree. Some will argue that hanging a building from living branches is never truly sustainable, but the same can be said for setting a structure on top of (or into) the earth as well.

The driving idea behind these EcoCoons by Mathier Collos is one of self-sufficiency and sustainability for those who wish to retreat from the world and engage with nature more directly. A family might stay in one, or split off between various modules, each with its own unique configuration and layout based on a combination environmental and residential demands.

This multi-story solution has flat-panel sides with embedded photovalics to capture sunlight, powering each unit independently. Each roof filters water down for natural rain showers and other basic graywater needs. The approach also disperses load requirements, because while the buildings may have no literal footprint they do still have some impact on their organic host.

Still, like any beautifully drawn and idealized design – eco-friendly or otherwise – it has some structural faults that will be difficult to resolve, such as the interior exposure to a physical tree – presumably, some kind of physical separation would be necessary to keep at least some of mother nature’s elements and creatures from slowly creeping inside. For now, it is a cool concept with pretty pictures – someday, hopefully, you will be able to sleep in one of these when it is a well-resolved, real-life built object.

The post Geometric Treehouses Offer Pod Living in the Sky first appeared on Dornob.

Manufacturers have been toying with similar ideas for a while now, but this might be the most elegantly executed version to date: a detachable, handheld component that nests in the middle of a larger showerhead ring.

This is a best-of-both-worlds design by Thomas Baker, keeping the flow of water from above regardless of whether you leave the attachment in – much more comfortable than stopping the main stream (which has a nice, wide, rain-style spread even with a central gap).

Sustainable or not, it is at least a step up from opposed-head shower solutions that often consume twice the water. In both configurations of use, this combo set uses the same amount of liquid.

The catch, of course, is that it is two fixtures in one and requires slightly more complex plumbing in the background. Perhaps you can pay for the extra pipes by the amount of water you would save over a split-sided system with double water output.

The post Double Your Pleasure: Two-Headed Handheld Rain Shower first appeared on Dornob.

The post Rain Rulers: Colorful Rubber Boots Measure Water in Style first appeared on Dornob.

Where is the last place you expect to find rain? Indoors, of course, which makes this massive, intricate and well-executed rain art installation by Stacee Kalmanovsky not only technically impressive but a shock to the senses when you first see it. Making rain isn’t easy – even if you’re making it out of acrylic.

As impressive as the hand-crafted drops strung together by hundreds of strings is the inherent interactivity of such an isolation – it invites people to move through it, brushing the motionless rain into new and unplanned directions and engendering conversations.

Despite the complexity of experience the materials are simple: fishing lines, plastic beads and a good deal of time were the core elements it took to create this. In her words: “Stacee Kalmanovsky’s work is rooted in the uncanny, suggestive, and picturesque. Her urge to invent and exaggerate is tempered by a deep dedication to the medium at hand. She believes in the conceptual process itself, from gathering information and sorting through, manipulating, and qualifying the image, to the indisposable skill to achieve the end result. Like in the alchemic process, the raw matter (sulfur = visual information) is transformed, refined, and persuaded into its purest form (gold = art).”

About Stacee Kalanovsky

“Currently I am on my sixth life.  I live near a lake and some woods and wait for my children to burst through the door.  In my previous life I performed my MFA at the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Art.  Prior to my appearance I lived and died in Florence, Italy from a poisoned fruit.  In my third life I was semi-spoiled and American and rode around in the back of trucks, sometimes dancing.  The life before that I was a mermaid in Rome.  My very first life I was born in the Soviet Union, there people spent life standing in line for some sausage.  In each life I am an artist.”

“Often, I let the objects and materials do the ‘talking,’ and believe in their secret intelligence.   I think of myself as provoking, indulging, and enabling the inanimate to perform.  The materials, colors, and installations all become part of a new kind of visual sentence, that with the sum of their parts transcends their sometimes humble origins. I deflate and inflate a plastic bag until it loosens into a breath, and then hangs like a field of color.  The quotidian detritus is paired with sculptural forms that are the relatives of furniture, pedestals, and amorphous minimalist limbs, creating an uneven intimacy.”

The post The Art of Making Rain: An Amazing Interior Installation first appeared on Dornob.