There’s nothing conventional about this second-floor addition to a compact house in the Babylon area of Long Island, New York. Not only does it flout the very modest conventional styling of the existing home, it looks like an entirely different home was just plopped right on top of it. That effect is intentional. The architects didn’t want the home to simply blend in, but rather offer a contrast of past and present, both visually and programmatically. While the original home is clad in light gray vinyl siding, the addition features thick stucco exterior walls. The two volumes are merged together by a splash of pale pink tiling flowing across the facade.

The client didn’t care much about resale value, opening up the potential for the architects to experiment. Instead, he asked them to update the original layout of the existing home and draw down some of the new features to create visual transitions, like a bold sculptural yellow staircase. The circular form of the staircase is echoed by the curves of the addition, including its street-facing facade.

“This prompt set the stage for a design process rooted in extensive research into the cultural history and architectural taxonomy of the surrounding suburban neighborhoods,” the architects explain. “In particular, co-principals Orsini and Roseboro were interested in the home’s proximity to Levittown, NY, a suburban development archetypal of the relationship between race, inequality, and housing in America, in which segregation was embedded in its formation through exclusionary contracts and redlining.”

The firm adds: “In Levittown, African Americans and indigenous communities could not access sales contracts by specific prescription of the Levitt & Sons Company; this was true of similar developments across suburban America and their surrounding neighborhoods. Further inherent in the typology were architectural features and layouts that fostered the isolation and introversion of the nuclear family, rather than the community.”

The original home’s design was identified as mimicking that of the standardized homes made popular by Levittown, which emphasized conformity and a lack of flexibility. The architects identified architectural elements like windows, porches, and roofs that are often found on these suburban homes and “hacked” them to simultaneously reference the neighborhood’s architectural history and defy it.

While most suburban homes are concerned with privacy, the client wanted to challenge those norms, creating big open cut-outs and and terraces that don’t attempt to hide from the prying eyes of strangers. He also requested that the architects eliminate the typical suburban separation of bedroom and bathroom in the upstairs suite.

“House on House” may not be for everyone, but that’s the point. The project questions whether seeing more expressions of personal tastes and preferences in the architecture around us could inspire more people to appreciate the little differences that make us who we are.

The post House on House: An Experimental Way to Expand a Suburban Residence first appeared on Dornob.

Developed on one of Chicago’s typical 25-by-125-foot residential lots, the 1,300-square-foot Hem House was the brainchild of Ann Lui and Craig Reschke, co-founders of Chicago-based architecture company Future Firm, and real estate developer Joseph Root.

“While there’s a very vibrant art and culture scene in Chicago, there isn’t a lot of bespoke contemporary architecture, and what exists in residential is almost exclusively very high end — so we’re hoping to help change that narrative,” explains Ann Lui. “Because Chicago residential lots are all the same size, it’s easy for people to repeat plans and end up with a lot of underwhelming architecture. We’d like to be a trend in a different direction.”

“We wanted to create a house using a few strategic construction and design ideas to keep costs down, as an idea for Chicago’s vacant residential lots,” adds Craig Reschke.

Joseph Root agrees. “We see a lot of home builders that want to build on the luxury side, million-dollar-plus homes. And then there’s affordable developers,” he says. “When I looked at the numbers, I said this is a great opportunity to meet in the middle.”

While the Hem House is narrower than average for these lots (16 feet as opposed to 20), it makes up for that loss of interior width with more room for side gardens. The dwelling consists of two different-sized rectangular stacked boxes, creating space for three single-sloped roof areas. Those angles, along with the black metal siding, create a modern look full of ultra-clean lines.

Inside, the house’s stacked shape allows for a two-story-tall ceiling over the kitchen, with high, oversized windows letting plenty of natural light in for added sustainability.

From the entryway, residents step into the laundry/mudroom combination space, and then pass by the 220-square-foot main bedroom, the smaller 150-square-foot bedroom, and a shared bathroom. The hallway opens up into the open-concept kitchen and living area, and stairs grant access to the 150-square-foot mezzanine that includes a bedroom and bathroom.

The architects chose to keep all the interior surfaces white or natural to provide an airy, spacious vibe, contrasting the light walls with polished concrete floors.

After buying the land for just $13,000 from the Cook County Lank Bank Authority – an organization aimed at better utilizing vacant lots in Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods — the design and development team listed the house last summer for $399,000. It sold in just four days.

Darlene Dugo, deputy director of the CCLBA, was proud of the final product. “For too long, blight caused by decades of redlining and the 2008 housing crisis has depressed property values and economic investment in Black and Brown neighborhoods,” she said. “By reclaiming vacant lots and building affordable, beautiful community assets, Hem Development is demonstrating what is possible when we enable local architects and developers to resurrect abandoned space.”

Lui, Reschke, and Root have plans to create multiple versions (two-bedroom and four-bedroom models) of the Hem House for reasonably-priced duplication on other vacant Chicago lots.

The post Hem House Brings Modern Charm to Chicago Suburbs at an Affordable Price first appeared on Dornob.

Commissioned by a doctor for his two adult daughters, these bold residences are set within Torrazza Piemonte, a neighborhood which principal architect Stefano Pujatti calls “cookie-cutter.” Aerial photos back this up, especially on this particular block. Behind the houses sits a row of near-identical homes in contemporary Italian suburban style, with typical gabled shapes and terracotta roof tiles. Pujatti’s designs are more siblings than twins: composed of mostly the same shapes and materials, but clearly individuals, one more linear and orderly than the other.

To come up with these shapes, Pujatti started with a stack of business cards, cutting slits into them to arrange them into house-like shapes. He was inspired by another project his firm completed back in 2013 in a Sardinian quarry, where the clients asked the firm to invent a new way of using granite that was precision-cut with wire saws. What if, like these cards, he used slabs of this heavy and durable yet breathable material to construct dwellings? Elastico Farm experimented with using the material for load-bearing walls without losing a sense of sculptural expression.

The architects pieced the granite slabs together with prefabricated concrete panels using interlocking cuts, a technique that allowed for both quick assembly and creative arrangements. The granite is naturally resistant to compression and flexure, like reinforced concrete, enabling it to be used as enormous monolithic load-bearing elements. Metal pins hold the slabs together, and timber panels bring in a little warmth and softness.

Pujatti designed each residence, which he calls “Cat House” and “Dog House,” with its own individual formal logic. One is more orderly, the other more dynamic. “Cat House” was an experiment in using orthogonal joints, which the firm ultimately found to have seismic vulnerabilities. They added bracing steel reinforcements to boost its resistance to tremors. “Dog House” is arranged radially around a central patio, giving it a higher seismic rating, so it didn’t need any bracing. The open courtyard brings daylight into the depths of the home, making it brighter than the other.

Inside, the dry-fit panels slot together into each room for a playful effect that looks something like a child’s toy project. The natural texture and pattern of the granite and concrete become an essential part of the interior decor, and the project as whole proves that we could do with a lot more experimentation in contemporary architecture to break up the same old cookie-cutter structures seen all over the world.

The post Houses of Cards: Ultramodern Granite Duo Shake Up the Status Quo in an Italian Neighborhood first appeared on Dornob.

Any casual lover of architecture knows the names Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, and Robert Venturi, but far fewer have heard of Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, or Denise Scott Brown. But that’s not because their work was any less important to the field.

City Dreamers, a documentary directed by Joseph Hillel, sheds light on the work of these four influential women in architecture and design. All now between the ages of 87 and 97, the women broke into the traditionally masculine industry just after the Second World War, when the work to rebuild was plentiful but prominent woman architects were not.

The film’s subjects were chosen because their careers “intersect, resemble, and complement each other,” says Hillel. For starters, their highly original work addressed major societal issues rising at the time, like traffic, population density, green spaces, ghettoization, urban sprawl, and heritage preservation. Sound familiar? We’re still dealing with all these issues today. By examining creative solutions from the past, maybe we’ll be inspired to improve upon them for the cities of the 21st century.

Shot on location in Philadelphia, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, City Dreamers features interviews with Lambert, van Ginkel, Oberlander, and Brown, shows off some of the greatest examples of their respective bodies of work, and includes archival materials illustrating how cities have changed since the mid-20th century.

You may not be familiar with these women, but you’ve almost certainly seen their buildings before. And if it weren’t for the patriarchal glass ceiling they continually had to fight back against throughout their careers, they’d probably be celebrated alongside their most famous mentors and colleagues.

The doc’s official website explains: “Phyllis Lambert, for example, was responsible for the construction of the Seagram Building in New York, in addition to being the founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Heritage Montreal. Blanche Lemco van Ginkel is credited, along with her husband, with saving Old Montreal from being destroyed to make way for an expressway and with helping develop the master plan for Expo 67. Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, for her part, reinvented how we develop urban green spaces and introduced the concept of green roofs in several major cities. And Denise Scott Brown revolutionized the way we think about contemporary architectural and urban heritage, along with her husband Robert Venturi.”

“These women, who are for the most part still active, hold the titles of architect, urban planner, landscape architect, curator, educator and/or activist, and have amassed a long list of illustrious accomplishments, publications, honorary degrees, and other distinctions over their respective careers. But while the credentials and achievements of these great women deserve to be more widely known and celebrated, they are not the only focus of this feature documentary. City Dreamers is above all inspired by what has united these four women throughout their careers: the ‘dream’ of a fundamentally human and inclusive city.”

Nominated for a Canadian Screen Award in the Best Cinematograpy in a Documentary category, the film was released widely in 2019. In Canada, you can watch it on the Documentary Channel. In the U.S., it’s available to stream on Amazon Prime.

The post “City Dreamers” Documentary Highlights 4 Influential Women in Architecture first appeared on Dornob.

The defense is often that there’s no money for an elevator and no room for a ramp. And in crowded urban spaces, building a ramp with the gentle grade required to make it usable can, indeed, take up quite a bit of space — but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s impossible. A recent project called “Song House” by AZL Architects demonstrates a smart approach to exactly that problem.

In China, many rural villages have high populations of elderly people living in places that aren’t well-equipped to meet their needs as they age. Meanwhile, younger generations flock to bigger cities to find work and raise their families. AZL explains that the past 40 years of rapid urbanization in China have caused a “hollowing-out” of millions of old, culturally significant villages. But these rural places still have something to offer all generations of families.

The architects state: “The natural humanistic values of rural settlements need to be reactivated through new production cycles and lifestyles. Shanghai, having the highest GDP in China and being a world-famous metropolis, is also facing difficulties and conflicts between its urban and suburban [populations]. Those living in the city are constantly under the pressure of high living costs, [while] the declining of rural communities and human settlements in suburbs is happening at the same time.”

The answer might lie in redeveloping these suburban and rural communities in a way that makes them appealing and accessible to people of all ages, says AZL. Their client for “Song House,” retired electrician Lao Song, needed to take in his elderly mother, but his apartment in Shanghai just wasn’t designed for it. He and his wife dreamed of moving back to their hometown of Nanson Village to demolish their dilapidated family home and build something new “suitable for both the elderly and the young.”

“In order to help relieve the living pressure of their daughter and son-in-law, Lao Song and his wife thought about inviting the parents of their son-in-law, who are in bad health conditions, to return to the Fengxian countryside together with them and take care of each other in their old ages. For this to happen, the families almost spent all of their savings as normal working-class [people]. This house also embodies the beautiful imagination and anticipation of a relaxed rural life for these families of eight.”

The architects’ solution was a multi-story concrete home arranged around an atrium —an update to the traditional Chinese courtyard house that’s fallen out of favor in recent decades. An external ramp visibly wraps around the outside of the house, reaching each of the three stories so the oldest generation of both families can get around while maintaining a sense of privacy and independence for everyone.

The atrium offers “a center of space and daily activities,” and off of it five bedrooms are splayed, each facing a different direction. Wheelchair accessible restrooms are located next to some of the bedrooms, though all parts of the house have their own small sitting areas. The interiors are designed to promote intergenerational contact and assistance while offering the refuge of private spaces when they’re desired.

This home may be located in a rural area, where there tends to be more space for such constructions, but it’s a beautiful example of thinking outside the box to be more inclusive of anyone who might want to enter. More than that, it turns an accessibility feature into an integral part of the design, and it looks fantastic to boot.

The post Accessibility Gets Graphic with a Cool Wraparound Wheelchair Ramp first appeared on Dornob.

The Goal of the Project

The “Get Pumped” project aims to transform these deserted buildings into one of three unique models, all of which are focused on physical, psychological, and spiritual wellness. Arlyn Vogelmann, a key executive at Gensler, explains: “We love to think about how the world can be healthier, improved, and more wellness-minded. So when we were redesigning Reebok’s headquarters and helping them move from a suburban location to downtown Boston, our two teams got to thinking, what are the way(s) we can revitalize old gas stations to something useful for communities?”

The Logic

Although there are roughly 114,000 gas stations across the US, there’s a good chance many will close in the next couple decades as self-driving and electric-powered vehicles gain popularity. Gensler and Reebok believe they can refurbish these stations to start fueling the population’s bodies and souls instead of their cars and trucks.

The “Get Pumped” Models

The Community Center
Small towns often suffer the most when gas stations close, as gas companies tend to pay substantial property taxes for prime locations and boost the community’s revenues. This model would see them transformed into full-fledged fitness centers equipped with electric car recharging stations. The former repair area would become a classroom where nutrition and other healthy living courses would be offered. The minimart section would only sell locally produced healthy food, while pop-up trucks outside would host Spin and Crossfit classes.

The Oasis
Suburban gas stations are usually larger than those in small towns. These structures would be converted to farm-to-table restaurants or farm share restaurants that support local farmers and food artisans while offering the surrounding residents healthy, affordable, restorative meals. Extra space would house herb gardens, as well as meditation and yoga quarters.
The Network
Instead of relying on caffeine and snack foods to fuel drivers on road trips, “Networks” on major interstates would offer them healthy alternatives, keeping them alert and making their trips less stressful. Gensler and Reebok also envision interstate gas stations becoming easy-access gyms where travelers can drop in on spinning classes, work out in a boxing ring, take a run on a nearby trail, or engage in Les Mills or Crossfit.

An Inspirational Colleague

Another flourishing company in this genre is Cityblock Health, a Sidewalk Labs-inspired company that aims to put up “around-the-block” community fitness centers in New York City. Vogelmann was excited to find out about Cityblock Health, stating: “This is absolutely drawing upon the same inspiration. I love the idea of Cityblock. Easy, convenient, enriching the urban fabric at many different scales. Cars are typically used for suburban commutes, so that is where we’re looking at with our project. The suburbs. But with Cityblock Health, that’s kind of the realm of the urban model. We are companions.”

The post Get Pumped Up at Reebok’s New Gas Stations Turned Fitness Centers first appeared on Dornob.

The suburbs, with their narrow definition of what constitutes a ‘house,’ can be an uninspiring place for poets to live. New York-based firm Para-Project decided to flout arbitrary conventions of suburban architecture with a rectilinear white writing studio squeezed between two typical homes, an unexpected visual for the Syracuse neighborhood. The poet’s studio literally glows at night, transcending its much more traditional setting.

Designed for two poets who own one of those homes, Haffenden House takes its visual inspiration from Ice House II, a 1972 installation by artist Gianni Pettena that achieved a similar effect by coating an abandoned home in water in the middle of the freezing Minnesota winter.

The clients wanted an airy, light-filled space with minimal distractions that could function as an escape from the bland surroundings of their residence. Para-Project covered the structure in a translucent silicon-impregnated fabric skin and created a bowl-shaped division between the second and third levels to let in natural light and provide a curved reading room.

The writing studio includes a garage and breezeway on the ground level and a library and writing space on the second level. An in-ground tub looks out onto the backyard through a large glazed wall for the ultimate relaxing reading experience.

More from the architects

“The project finds itself within the suburban realm, referencing Gianni Pettena’s Ice House from 1972, like a blank spot within the repetitive image of ‘house.'”

“The poet’s studio uses a translucent silicon-impregnated fabric skin for a light-filled writing room without the visual distraction of the suburbs. Inside the blank box, between the second and third levels, the section uses a bowl-shaped division, maximizing indirect light for the second level and avoiding any association with the landscape on the third.”

About Para-Project

“PARA Project is an office for architecture based in New York City. We see each project as a collaborative effort between a wide range of constituents, guided by the specific needs and curiosities of diverse clientele. PARA works on projects of varying scales and media: from commercial, institutional, and residential work, to events and international competitions.”

The post A Modern Poet’s Studio Glows in a Suburban Setting first appeared on Dornob.

Cavernous, curving interiors filled with built-in niches and furniture are more often associated with houses sculpted from cob and other natural building materials than with apartments in suburbia. But design firm The White Room has managed to recreate that sculptural, organic feel in a Mumbai-area apartment with lots of amorphous surfaces.

The result is a bright, airy interior that’s almost entirely white with a few pops of color in the form of wood furniture, a stunning natural dining surface built into the wall and custom tile in a pale blue-green. The ceiling is high and rounded, and nearly all of the doorways are arched.

It’s a fusion of traditional earth-based building aesthetics and modern design, all within a suburban setting. The curves extend all the way to the closets and a creatively tiled bathroom reminiscent of the inside of a sea shell.

“This studio apartment is designed for a young couple and is a composition of twin long vaults,” say the architects. “One housing the living space and the other the master suite. These spaces are connected to each other through smaller vaults and arched openings carving out spaces for kitchen, wardrobe and bathrooms. The spaces flow seamlessly into each other, creating an integrated whole and giving the feel of a sculpted greek cavern.”

“The White room studio is built on the basic principles of exploring the bare beauty of materials. Here the focus has always been on exploring innovative ways of approaching fundamental problems of space, proportion, light and materials. The way in which a wall meets a floor, or how a door fits into a wall, flush or proud, are not mere details, they are as much architecture as the planning of a sequence of rooms in a gallery, or the composition of a facade. We consider architecture, of all the arts, as the one that most depends for its expressive power on rubbing up against the gritty constraints of every day life.”

The post Organic Urban Apartment with Rounded Walls first appeared on Dornob.

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Ever seen one of those suburban mansions and wonder why anyone would want so much space? The Practice of Everyday Design in California has seen excessive (and mostly fake) opulence past the point of saturation … and devised a humorous solution.

“The McNasty Mansion offers a new and more exciting typology of homes, formed off the same principals of the McMansion: more rooms than one can fill, enough mixed styles to ensure complete architectural confusion, and enough faux finishes and cheap materials to keep cost down but dimensions huge.”

It is, in essence, a monstrous medley – a cacophony of confusing details and impossible connections somewhere between Frankenstein’s monster and the reality-defying works of M.C. Escher. Equal parts theoretical parody and applied 3D printing, it was created as follows:

“We entered “dream home” in Google’s 3D warehouse search, a database and community of open source 3D objects built using Google’s free Sketchup 3D drafting software. We collected what we found to be the most popular “dream home” designs and combined them to form the ultimate McNasty Mansion.

Biting sarcasm concludes their humorous description: “As the proud owner of more features and space than you ever thought possible, your significance as a human being could never be more obvious.”

Lest you think the designers are jokesters who are more into sculpture than architecture, you should check out their other work on ArchDaily, which includes full-scale houses.

About the architects:

“The Practice of Everyday Design is committed to forming new design opportunities by merging seemingly irreconcilable ideas. A strong conceptual framework forms the foundation for our explorations in design, each piece stemming from a simple idea or story then taking on a life of its own. We approach each piece with as much rigor as humor, for a playful but deliberate result. The unique challenges of both serial production and one-off pieces provide us with endless opportunities for creative multidisciplinary design.”

The post McNasty Manor: Absurdist 3D Mini McMansion first appeared on Dornob.

In an age of serious reflection on a sobering housing market crash, these rather humorous altered homes take a lighter and more playful tone in tackling the question of what to do with the persistent present and future problem of suburban sprawl. At the same time, there are some seriously thought-provoking pieces even within the most absurd of these eight unique conceptual explorations. Reinventing the average suburban home as giant art installations, these projects all have their own unique messages.

Inspired by 1950s-era sentiments, the House Dress by L.E.F.T takes the idea of architectural garment to intimate extremes. A whole home is wrapped to create both privacy and public spectacle, complete with gaming and gambling inside (note: the house always wins).

The Block Pantry serves a “collective cupboards that encourages homeowners, tenants, and neighbors to trade goods for services.” If you don’t feel like cooking, you can pass along fresh produce from the grocery store and take hot, ready-to-eat meals in exchange.

Urban (and suburban) farms for individual families are hardly new, but what if whole backyards were extensively planted with crops like in this Bright Dawn Farm? And what if you could walk right up to a house’s window like you would a fast-food restaurant or parking-lot coffee shack to pay for what you want?

Rampant fears of foreclosure and underwater mortgages have many worried not just about a single home here or there, but a Detroit-style exodus of entire neighborhoods and ways of life – hence the Domesticity Museum to capture and preserve this history for future generations.

Other projects from this Droog-directed (and Diller Scofidio + Renfro-orchestrated) theater of bizarre Open Houses include a home in which to practice vacations before picking destinations, another that features free lectures for public education and a Monty-Python inspired place where you can pay for some much-needed attention. (Images via Droog, CollabCubed and Rocco S. Cetera)

The post These 8 Altered Homes Have Something to Say first appeared on Dornob.

The Terrestrial Shrub Rover by Justin Shull was inspired by the manned lunar vehicle known as the NASA Rover. While the latter are meant to help humans colonize the surface of the moon, the former was created with far more local aspirations. This portable piece of greenery has a parallel-but-different mission right here on our own planet, as it “presents the opportunity to explore terrestrial and social environments back on Earth from within a manned, foliage bedecked, solar electric powered rover.”

Consider the far-reaching possibilities of this piece, usable for anything from camouflaged hunting cabin-on-wheels (that can actually chase game!) to suburb-oriented homeless shelters that fit in perfectly with the well-groomed shrubbery of a conventional cul de sac. A small camera is the hidden secret to driving this offbeat, plant-bedecked box that lacks an otherwise-vital windshield.

Justin Shull – creator of the Porta Park and Hedge Trailer- is no newcomer to the world of living green on the road via mobile plant life, but as camouflaged ‘green cars’ go this may be his best work yet. It bridges the gap between suburban style and urban mobility in a unique and hilarious way. After all, it can be hard to hide in the suburbs compared to the streets of a big city – but driving around in one of these would make you fit into the scenery far more easily.

For being something so close to a complete farce, this relatively irrational idea manages to touch on hot-button issues of modular living, mobile homes, green design, eco vehicles and throws in a healthy dash of the absurd to bring it all together. Who knows, it is so silly it just might sell – should it ever go into mass-production.

“In the spirit of NASA and its forthcoming 2020 lunar expeditions in preparation for colonizing the moon, the Terrestrial Shrub Rover presents the opportunity to explore terrestrial and social environments back on Earth from within a manned, foliage bedecked, solar electric powered rover. (also in development is an unmanned, remotely controlled, webcam version)”

The post Stealth Solar Vehicle Roams Like a Terrestrial NASA Rover first appeared on Dornob.

The so-called economic downturn has hit here harder than most places, resulting in a remarkable half-constructed community. A grid of barren streets, a cul-de-sac to nowhere and in the middle of it all a nearly-abandoned strip of abnormally nice-looking houses centered on a circular roundabout.

Finding these cheery homes complete and picture-perfect (though unoccupied) is almost stranger than it would be to see this entire set of suburban streets and plots were utterly deserted, photographed here by Justin Sullivan.

This housing development in Rio Vista, California, was set to feature 750 new dwellings – now each home punctuates the home of dozens of others. Street lights ridiculously line each street and pristine concrete curbs wrap sidewalks and medians, serving their normal functions of mediating between streets and residences – only the latter is lacking, and the landscape has been left to return to dust.

It seems hard to believe that there is no one with the motive and means to make something of this would-be set of suburban homesteads, yet everything is in place, the land plotted and ready for development, and yet … nothing is inhabited. Half-finished subterranean wiring and plumbing connects much of the multiple square miles of groomed space. Who knows, maybe someone will at least squat in the deceptively invited model homes at the heart of it all. Nothing short of an economic upturn (or u-turn, if you will) seems able to save this unique and chilling place.

All abandoned places have a sense of eeriness to them, whether they’re beautiful old European estates slowly crumbling into ruin or deteriorating homes slowly being retaken by nature. But there’s something extra disturbing about an entire ghost town in which the houses never even appeared, let alone were occupied. It almost makes it feel as if an alien spacecraft came along and beamed the whole neighborhood into another galaxy. For more photos with this creepy vibe, check out this abandoned village of Disney castles in Turkey.

The post Deserted Dream Homes: Visualizing an Economic Downturn first appeared on Dornob.

Self-proclaimed “suburbanist” Olivier Kosta did not learn to spray-paint on walls as a misdirected urban youth – quite the opposite, he grew up outside the city and was fascinated from afar by urban centers from his suburban home. He’s developed a highly unusual artistic style and medium to create wall and ceiling murals: using fire and soot instead of paint.

His take, as a partial outsider, is both reverent and critical. On the one hand, the work he does is clearly influenced by street culture and urban art. On the other hand, he criticizes some graffiti and street artists for being more obsessed with a look or style than a concept.

These strange ceiling and wall murals range greatly in subject matter, style and approach. Some are highly-organized patterns with near-classical symmetry and floral motifs. Others look like a collection of individual scrawls from underside of a dirty and misused student desk.

If one thing binds the work together it is his obvious repeated use of a single major tool: the unlikely cigarette lighter. In a way, it seems a fitting choice for someone who is not fully ‘urban’ but perhaps a bit more reserved (or even refined?) from a slightly removed suburban lifestyle, education and consequently different perspective.

His works have likewise spanned the gap, decorating the ceilings of dirty urban abandonments but also hanging from the white-washed walls of many art galleries. See more of them at Underdogs or on his website.

About the artist

“Olivier Kosta-Théfaine (b. 1972) is a prolific French artist with a background in graffiti, whose work explores and plays with concepts and referents present in the neglected visual and material culture of the urban and suburban environments that are home to contemporary societies around the world. In order to highlight the brutality of the elements, Kosta-Théfaine resorts to a multiplicity of media, including painting, reliefs, sculpture and installations, interacting and playing with the codes of urban popular culture, manipulating the structure and syntax of its language and offering us, in the end, a new poetic reinterpretation. He has been exhibiting with galleries and institutions in countless countries since 1996, and his work is represented in several prestigious public and private collections.”

The post No Paint in These Murals – Just Fire and Soot first appeared on Dornob.

From skyscraper farms to vegetated towers, green design is definitely going up. A new idea within this theme may reach beyond eco-friendly urbanites and appeal to another demographic: suburban families used to open yards, spaced-out houses and self-contained micro-communities.

Skyburbs, from the imagination of two of Tzannes Associates designers, naturally come equipt with the standard sustainable, from passive solar heat and environmental irrigation systems to green gardens, walls and roofs. What really stands out about this concept, however, is the way in which it captures the spirit of suburban lifestyles yet is also envisioned for the centers of urban areas.

One question is worth asking, though, despite the seemingly visionary idea behind this design: is it anything truly new? Modernists dreamed of cities in the sky a century ago. Was their vision – which likewise included elevated common areas, overlapping gathering spaces, rooftop parks and the like – separated by more than merely a green overlay? And if not: will such urban green mega-structures really work or are they destined to become contemporary cousins of these failed endeavors?

The post Skyburbs: Suburban Skyscraper Living in City Centers first appeared on Dornob.