S O P H I A  K O K O S A L A K I

Geometry in Black / Yiacouvakis Hamelin architectes

Location: Saint-Hyppolite, Québec, Canada

House Bierings by Rocha Tombal Architecten / Utrecht, The Netherlands

From a basic form, defined by the municipal urban plan, sculptural “eyes” emerge with direct views to the varied countryside landscape. The form and orientation of the building avoid visual contact with the adjacent houses: at the ground floor the angled ceiling of the kitchen accentuates the intensive contact with the garden. On the first floor, the different shaped openings in the roof and façade offer, like “fingers of light”, varied daylight experiences. The routing through the house starts in the hall, a section of the ground floor volume. After experiencing the entrance area and passing the gigantic pivoted door, the visitor arrives at the “heart of the house”, the kitchen. Here he looks through the big glass wall straight into the garden, which suggests being outside again. Behind him, the stair cuts a wooden wall inviting to follow the route towards the first floor. Its angled form and extreme proportions (small and high) and the daylight entering from the ceiling, offer the feeling of walking in a medieval street.

V23K18 / Pasel.Kuenze

Location: Leiden, The Netherlands

  take me to Paris 

Nomiya 

Temporary Restaurant

Architect

Pascal Grasso

Location : Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France

Project Area: 63 sqm

Project year: 2009

The restaurant comprises a glass cabin and a perforated metal screen covering the central cooking area. The 18 metre-long structure was part constructed in the Cherbourg boatyard in northern France and transported to Paris in two parts, where it was assembled on the roof of Le Palais de Tokyo. Coloured LED lighting is placed between the metal skin and the glass core. White Corian furniture populates the dining room.

An architect knows something about everything. 

An engineer knows everything about something.

An architect is a generalist, not a specialist. A conductor of a symphony, not a virtuoso who plays every instrument perfectly. As a practitioner, an architect coordinates a team of professionals that include structural and mechanical engineers, interior designers, building code consultants, landscape architects, specification writers, contractors and specialists from other disciplines. Typically, the interests of some team members will compete with the interests of others. An architect must know enough about each discipline to negotiate and synthesize competing demands while honoring the needs of the client and the integrity of the entire project. Matthew Frederick's words.

our experience of an architectural SPACE is strongly influenced by how we arrive in it. A tall bright space will feel taller and brighter if counter-pointed by a low-ceilinged softly lit space. A monumental space will feel more significant when placed at the end of a sequence of lesser spaces.

floor plans

Q House / asensio_mah + J.M.Aguirre Aldaz _ Location: North Spain

The building is organized in three bands that are arranged around a central circulation core. These three bands maintain a prevailing orientation in the northeast-southwest direction to secure maximum daylight in every room. While the bands configure and organize the different rooms, the circulation core underpins a switchback pattern of shifting orientations with the gradual vertical movement through the house. archdaily

House in Villena / Moho Architects

Boston’s experimental design exhibition space Pinkcomma Gallery has hosted Publishing Practices, an exploration of architectural publishing throughout the last century. 

In the exhibit statement, Michael Kubo says that “architects and critics have exploited the specific combination of publishing and building practices to perform together as a critical double form of architectural practice, as parallel strands of work that are assumed to support each other, but which in reality often reveal a provocative (and in some cases deliberate) misalignment.” 

Through the case studies, it became clear that some architects who have operated just as much as publishers have understood very well the difference between publishing a book and making a project, and they never wanted those two to reinforce each other in a one-to-one matchup—Le Corbusier is one of them, and Rem (Koolhaas) is another one of them. They both used their books to sort of excavate a space in which they could stake out certain kinds of architectural projects, and in their publishing they used their architectural projects to make certain kinds of theoretical arguments, but they were never completely aligned. For example, Corb does a lot of things in his architectural projects that don’t correspond to his theoretical statements, and that’s quite deliberate. On the other hand, he makes certain kinds of general claims in his books that aren’t backed up by anything he does in new architecture. So he kind of exploits the freedoms in each of those two spaces rather than trying to get them to match up exactly, where the books are 100% explanations for the buildings, and the buildings are kind of 100% literal examples of the things he talks about in the book. Eisenman, for example, is somebody who does want that kind of integration—he wants them to be perfectly aligned.

source: ArchDaily _ AD Interviews: Michael Kubo on Architectural Publishing

there is an elephant in my room