Save water brick

It might look like your typical old red clay house-building brick on one side, but turn it over and there is a shift that hints at a deeper design change – one that is eco-friendly but also expressive in a way that most walls or brick are not.

Designed by Jin-young Yoon to be made from recycled plastic and decomposed leaves, this brick is green from the ground up (so to speak). More than just its composite materials, however, built-in grooves are designed to funnel water for gardening or even long-term underground storage.

In a world where water is becoming the next hot-button resource destined to become scarce, it seems like a good time to start thinking about our most basic building materials and structures (such as bricks and walls) and see how they might shift to accommodate an ever-growing need for homes to have access to nature’s most vital resource.



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Turning waste into architecture

Parasitic Prototype 7
 
By: Sean Hanmer – Canterbury School of Architecture
Kent, United Kingdom

Parasitic Prototype 7 is about the reusing and the cannibalisation of an existing structure, in this situation – the Greenwich Power Station. Using a power station, itself a symbol of profligate use of energy seemed very apt for a project, which stimulates a process of recycling (plastic) waste into architecture. Capitalist demands for urban growth exist but this scheme re-uses of a brownfield site, reduces urban sprawl into the suburban greenbelts. It moves away from this 1 bottle = 1 bottle philosophy and mediating a change in society, towards a more sustainable environment and a more dynamic society. Promoting the recycling of material waste into a new system, which has the capacity to reprocess waste into a product that can perform a superior – longer life-span function, keeps plastic waste away from our landfills and oceans.

The proposed prototype has the ability to print itself using 3D printing technology, taking in all the plastic wastes that were previously deemed too economically unviable for recycling and reprocessing them for fused deposition modelling, printing the external skin and internal components of the skyscraper. The rate at which the prototype reaches its predefined resolution is dependant on the amount of recycled material being pumped into the mechanism and the economic demand for growth.  As a result of this, the intervention has no period of completion date, resulting in an ‘architecture in flux’. Continuous changes in programme will influence the development of construction. Therefore the skyscraper has been designed with adaptability in mind, allowing for the continuous reprinting of its internal floor plans and also allowing for different programmes to occupy the prototype. This is key to the survival of the intervention, supporting economic development through progression, inflation and recession.

Source: http://www.gurroo.com/designart/innovative-minds-architectural-design-competition/

Renovation of a 300+ year old house

Located in the ancient port city of Jaffa, the oldest part of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality in Israel sits this 300-plus year-old house that has been renovated by Pitsou Kedem Architects, already well known for their minimalist approach to architecture and design.

The owner of the house asked the designers to maximize the sea view while keeping the historical feel of the building intact. The project team from Pitsou Kedem, Irene Goldberg and Raz Melamed, achieved this beautifully.

 The residence consists of a 100 square meter (1,076 sq.ft) living area (living, dining and kitchen) plus an additional 80 square meters (861 sq.ft) that includes the master bed room, a study and a guest room.

 

Sources: http://www.thecoolhunter.net

               http://www.thecoolist.com