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While Swedish students may not have to worry about the same tuition bills as their American counterparts enrolled in private colleges, they do have to contend with a small scale housing crisis. A growing number of students are priced out of conventional apartments. So the architects at Tengbom are testing a housing system at Lund University that would reduce each apartment to just over 100 square feet. The studios have 13 foot ceilings and multiple windows to counteract the small footprint, and use lightly colored sustainable wood as a primary building material. The houses are completely independent from one another, but the plan is to build clusters of about 22 units for a kind of modified communal living. [images via Bertil Hertzberg]

The idea is still in the testing phase, but a model of the house concept is on display now at Virserums Konsthall.






Photo by: Josh Lewandowski

Josh Lewandowski has long doodled and sketched in 3D. Lewandowski, the founder of furniture firm Nordeast Industries with a MA in Architecture from Yale, was told "erasing was for wimps" by a teacher when he was young and therefore draws in pen and ink. Lewandowski recently started a drawing-a-day blog for his sketches with no meaning, because he believes that such creations are a useful exercise. His works draw on engineering and architecture as well as LEGO instructions and cereal boxes. 

Read more about the doodles, which are available for purchase at Dezeen.com.

In 1972, architect Kisho Kurokawa designed a residential building in Tokyo to house office workers during the week in small, interchangeable pod apartments. In addition to a uniform circular window, each pod came with a built-in bed, television, heater, and bathroom, and sometimes a stereo with a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

The one-person pods aren't far from Mike Bloomberg's new plan for micro-apartments in New York, but they might have been built about 40 years ahead of their time. The concept of moving the pods for renovations and upgrades didn't catch on, and the building eventually fell into disrepair.

Photographer Noritaka Minami shot a photo series of the soon-to-be-demolished building in 2011, and managed to find a few units that seem to be relatively untouched since their construction. [images via IGNANT]









During their heyday, zines were useful for getting intel on bands bubbling up in your region, sharing outlaw skater folk tales, exposing underground artists, and as a platform for budding literary types flexing beatnik muscles. Despite the advent of blogs—or perhaps because of it—zines have surged once again in the Internet era. Architecture zines, in particular, have livened up the culture.

ARCHIZINES, a project from Elias Redstone, with art direction by Folch Studio, documents, celebrates and promotes zines, journals, magazines and periodicals from around the world as an indie and alternative publishing vehicle for architecture criticism and as a platform for new photography, illustration and design.

ARCHIZINES World Tour touches down in Chicago this fall, opening September 13 at Public Works in Wicker Park. The touring show, curated by Redstone, a collaboration with the Architectural Association, features 100 architecture magazines, fanzines, and journals from over 20 countries. Design With Company, Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer, created the installation.

Archizines are creations of enthusiastic architects, artists, and students and their content can include criticism, commentary, and research into spaces and practice. In the curator's eyes, they are a radical and essential component of the discourse. And what's more, they demonstrate the love and utility of printed matter in our day and age. 

The Archizines opening reception is Friday, September 13, 7-10pm at Public Works.

Archizines LIVE: Public Discussion + Sound Installations are set for September 28 and October 19 featuring panel discussions (6-8pm) and live music (9-10pm)

Saturday, September 28
Kyle May (CLOG Magazine) 
Iker Gil (MAS Context) 
Sofia Leiby (Chicago Artist Writers) 
Brandon Biederman (Fresh Meat) 
Sound Installation by Kyle Vegter & Daniel R. Dehaan of SOUND ROOM with special guest Levy Lorenzo 

 

Saturday, October 19
James Goggin (Practise) 
Ludovico Centis (San Rocco) 
Dylan Fracareta (PIN-UP) 
Matthew Harlan (SOILED) 
Sound Installation by THE–DRUM

 

 

In order to convert a small market in Vienna into a coffee shop or bar depending on the time of day, designer Lukas Galehr of MadameMohr used the humble 10cm x 10cm white tile as the basis for his interior. Using a system of easily concealable or interchangeable shelves, the owner of the small Super Mari' shop can tailor the store for morning coffee crowds, afternoon grocery shoppers, and evening drinkers. According to a statement from Galehr, the owner also requested, "that there should not be any fancy designer furniture nor any modern patterns or materials which would give the impression of something new and stylish." The space's flexibility has an added benefit, concealing the inventory adds some extra security. [via Dezeen]




Photos by Rob Lewis

When designer and artist Till Könneker moved into a studio apartment in Bern, Switzerland with no storage room, he sought a design solution. Könneker whipped up some drawings of a minimalist cube with a shelf for his vinyl collection, space for his flat panel TV, as well as clothes and shoes. He'd stash other odds 'n' ends inside the cube itself. And on top, he placed a bonus guest bed. Carpenter and fabricator Remo of holzlaborbern.ch brought the sketches into the realm of reality. And voila, a beautiful design piece that serves multiple purposes.

Photos by Justin Evidon

During his coursework for a masters degree in architecture, Hank Butitta was frustrated that his ideas never made it past the rendering phase. To satisfy his impulse to work with his hands and actually see a project through to construction, he started designing a cabin for a rural plot of land his grandfather owned. When a pesky building code and a too small budget made that project unfeasible, Butitta realized that a similar structure built inside of a bus would be exempt from the local law and cost much less.

A few months later, when it came time to start his final thesis project, Butitta pulled the bus idea from the back burner and purchased a decommissioned school bus for $3,000. Over the course of the semester he designed and fabricated an interior that could sleep a handful of passengers, and planned a 5,000 mile road trip to test the design. That road trip, which started in Minneapolis, is in progress right now, with the bus somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

Check out the travel log, and see a few photos of the restoration below.












Designer Andy Welsh's Floating Structures series began as a way to look at architecture without context. His manipulations present multiples of the familiar lines and shapes of recognizable buildings in cities like Singapore, Tokyo, and London, in new orb-like forms colored only with fuschia and pale yellow tones. 

See more Floating Structures at andywelsh.com





Somewhere in Italy, there's a very Kubrick-like scene at an abandoned resort as dozens of all-white futuristic cabins sit in disrepair. The cabins, called BANGAs, were constructed with a combination of foam and glass reinforced plastic, and built to house roughly four vacationers at once. The original designer of the cabins is actually unknown. But restoration architect Pamela Voigt has already found a German company willing to take on the restoration project provided they can find an investor




Photos courtesy of Pamela Voigt.

The last thing that comes to mind when most people think about high school gym class is a courtyard designed by Danish architects. But when the administrators at the Gammel Hellerup high school realized the size of the student body had outgrown its current athletic facilities, they commissioned BIG to build a gym below grade that would double as a useable courtyard space above ground. Instead of the boxy high ceilings of a typical gym, BIG used a wave-like ceiling that resembles a small hill from the exterior, one that invites after-class hanging out. The space, like most high school gyms, can work for non-athletic functions as well, and with the included solar panels it reduces the school's carbon footprint. [via Dezeen]