From designboom…
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/10948/katsuhiro-miyamoto-architects-bird-house.html

‘bird house’ by katsuhiro miyamoto
all images courtesy katsuhiro miyamoto & associates

located in nayoga – city, japan is ‘bird house’ recently completed by japanese architect
katsuhiro miyamoto. constructed primarily out of wood the private residence was designed
around the natural slope of the property. rather than leveling the slope the architects chose
to insert spikes into the ground, so that it would guarantee to be built securely.

by making use of the site characteristics, adjacent to the roads at the top and bottom of the site,
the foundation forms a zigzag approach just like a mountain trail  – connecting the two roads.
at the landings formed at the turning points of the zigzag, there are three ‘sites’. the name
‘bird house’ was given to the three white houses, as it is nested on the branch like foundation.

the main entrance

inbetween the two roads

the staircase connecting the two houses

floor plan

floor plan

section view

project info:
title： bird house
location： nagoya-city, aichi
principal use： residence
architects： katsuhiro miyamoto & associates 
principal in charge： katsuhiro miyamoto
project team： keishi yamamoto, takenori uotani
structural engineering： masaichi taguchi / taps
general contractor： ido kensetsu
site area： 428.21㎡
built area： 113.74㎡
total floor area： 117.46㎡
（main building / first floor area： 40.27㎡、
second floor area：67.89㎡
annex / first floor area：9.30㎡）
structure：wood: 2 stories
completion date： 2010

Passive houses as type houses

Kjellgren
Kaminsky has produced Swedens first series of passive
houses sold as type houses in collaboration with Emrahus.
Their goal is to make this environmentally friendly building technique
available for all. Villa Nyberg is the first one to get built. The
villa has been customized for the Nyberg family and is situated in
Borlänge, central Sweden.

Passive houses are extremely well-insulated buildings that are
largely heated by the energy already present in the building – people
and the household equipment generate a lot of energy. The energy
simulations show that this villa will have an energy consumption for
heating of only 25 kWh/m²year.

The villa is situated by a lake in a fur forest in central Sweden.
The living room and kitchen open up towards the views of the lake, the
more private areas such as the bedrooms and bathrooms are situated on
the other side of the house with smaller windows overlooking the
forest. The round shape of the villa eliminates coldbridges and reduces
the enclosing wallarea of the house. It also effects the way you live
in the house, during the day one will move from room to room around the
building experiencing different views and daylight conditions.

minale-maeda: rietveld LEGO buffet for droog

gerrit rietveld buffet executed in LEGO

dutch based design duo minale-maeda (kuniko maeda and mario minale)
playfully reprise
gerrit rietveld’s grace to reconsider his de stijl masterwork, ‘buffet’
for dutch design company
droog. the ‘rietveld LEGO buffet’ uses over 25, 000 pieces of LEGO,
updating the de stijl’s call
for simplified materials through the use of the iconic toy building
blocks known to us as children,
creating a re-iteration of one of modern design’s most relevant
historical suggestions.
the buffet comes in a numbered edition of 5.

gerrit rietveld buffet executed in LEGO

details

mario minale working on the construction of the buffet

lego pieces all laid out

buffet production in progress

the rietveld via LEGO, buffet is on show as part of droog’s presentation
at
design miami / basel 2010 from june 15th – 19th, located at booth
G28, hall 5,
messe basel, messeplatz.

the buffet is a continuation of mario minale’s 2004 rendition of
rietveld’s red blue chair,
also done in LEGO.

‘red blue LEGO chair’ by mario minale

this LEGO version of the iconic ‘red blue chair’ by gerrit rietveld is
6% larger because
it is goverened by the LEGO brick size. the chair was produced in the
spirit of rietveld’s
original intention to make the design widely available, however,
copyright laws prevented
this LEGO version from being mass produced.

detail
all images courtesy of minale-maeda studio

How Quiet the Office Life  » Yanko Design

If you spend the majority of your life in the office, you’ve gotta
know what it means to be distracted by sound. You sit in that office
five days a week, the same cube, things that would normally go over your
head become utterly powerful annoyances. Your production time goes
down, your quality of life goes down. How do you stay up? You get inside
your “Cocoon” of sound. That’s right! Block the madness with the loving
glowing loving glow of either white noise or music of your choice.

This lovely pad works by being strapped to whichever seat you use on a
regular basis. You sit down and bam! You’ve got instant comfort with
the pad on your back, then bam! You’ve got your white noise OR music of
your choice via the activated Cocoon. The device gets its power from
batteries that can be charged up through USB, which is where you can
also access the music (or OCEAN SOUNDS, yay!) that you want to project
to you, and only you, helping you work as hard as you can!

It’s important to note, too, that you can use this with any chair
with a back. The Cocoon is good for more than just the office. Check out
that swimming picture below. It’s pretty obvious to me that if Michael
Phelps had the opportunity at the time he won his billion metals to use
the Cocoon instead of that ol’ crappy iPod, he totally would have!
Right?

Designer: Natalia Romanova