We’ve seen the warehouse turned loft, the bunker turned art museum, the garage turned art gallery… In my opinion Bofill has taken it one step further, turning a former cement factory into a multi purpose structure including his architectural office, exhibition space, apartment and more. An absolutely admirable use and reuse of space and structure.

“to be an architect means to understand space, to understand space organized by man, to decipher the spontaneous movements and behavior of people, and to detect the needs of change that they might unconsciously express. It is essential to track down these issues if we want to contribute with our personal work to the history of architecture.”

Well said and well achieved Mister Bofill.

PS: Did I mentioned he had completed this project in 1975.

Who would have thought I’d ever post a kitchen hood/vent… This custom design by Belgium architects Lhoas & Lhoas made me do it! Sculptural beauty!

When visiting the St Michiel Church in Leuven one might overlook that the church has no dome. Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh build an installation that takes this seemingly trivial fact as a starting point and generate the missing dome in a remarkable way.

The installation casts light on the architecture of one of the most prestigious baroque churches of the Low Countries from a contemporary perspective. Using the design technique of the catenary, a new structure emerges in the church. The Upside Dome is a real size scale model, comprised of hundreds of meters of chain, which is literally and figuratively the counterpart of the unfinished dome.

Pieterjan Gijs (1983) and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh (1983) studied both architecture and work together under the name Gijs Van Vaerenbergh in a multidisciplinary practice with an important focus on public space.

D’espresso by Nema Workshop

If you’ve got the cash… they’ve got the crib. Art gallerists Phillippe Menager and Nicolas Hug approach real estate as art. That works for me!
Menager Hug

via Freunde von Freunden

By Kaufmann Widrig Archtiects via designboom

the swiss architects kaufmann widrig designed ‘living house’ located on the southern side of lake geneva. the piece of land was originally an orchard in the grounds of the neighbouring villa. the plot is long and thin and its narrow side meets the shore of the lake.

the building is placed in amongst the shoreline boathouses and reflects their geometry and materials. it is also consistent with the pattern of boathouses and villas that exists along that part of lake geneva by not extending beyond the boundaries of the pre-existing structure.

the volume of the building and the internal organization are influenced by the topography, in particular, the south-sided exposure to the sun and the beautiful north-sided view of the lake.

the outside surface of the building is covered with thick panels of plain steel. the inside surface is covered with larch timber boards, giving the living space a warmth and cosiness. connected to the 2-storey living space, with its large windows looking out over the lake and light coming from the high south facing windows, are the dining area and a gallery with a small, but spectacular, study space. the development within the building is rich in light and space and allows one to experience the whole length and height of the building.

Very close to perfection!

via Konrad Olsson