KEG Apartments Transform Liquid Container Trucks Into Mobile Houses

Now that shipping container homes are super hip, designers are concocting new ways to upcycle existing materials into dwellings -- say for instance, liquid container semis! Aristide Antonas, a designer from Athens, has a great idea to recycle old trucks into apartments that can either remain stationary or stay attached to the truck and be mobile. His KEG Apartments take a cool new look at how we can reuse just about anything to create low impact domiciles for a more resourceful age.
Read More [link]

Frank Gehry Selected to Design Eisenhower National Memorial

WASHINGTON, DC.- Gehry Partners, LLP, the Los Angeles-based architectural firm headed by Frank O. Gehry, has been selected as lead designer of the national memorial to Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Eisenhower Memorial will be the seventh national presidential memorial in the Nation’s Capital, and the first since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial opened in 1997. ...more from artdaily.org

aspiring city planner?

City Creator

suite sewer

"Each suite of the Park Hotel offers at minimal capacity maximum possible comfort for recreation and relaxation."
These ingenious little rooms are available for rent, and at whatever you can afford. The use of these concrete tubes into temporary housing shelters is inspiring to me, simple and effective. I'd like one in my back yard to hide in once in a while (great place for reading OSHA safety manuals). Of course these are used by campers, hikers (and vagrants?) passing thru for an evening or two. I do enjoy the use of already manufactured and readily available forms as living spaces. Close in the ends, put a door on the thing and roll it into place!

park hotel link

zoomorphic architecture - 'Lucy' the elephant

I went here as a kid, I'd live in it!. I have some plan drawings of the interior around here somewhere, interesting, I'll post them here when I find them.

Lucy the Elephant is a six-story elephant-shaped architectural folly constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1882 by James V. Lafferty in Margate City, New Jersey, two miles (3.2 km) south of Atlantic City, in an effort to sell real estate and attract tourism.

The idea of an animal-shaped building was innovative, and in 1882 the U.S. Patent Office granted Lafferty a patent giving him the exclusive right to make, use or sell animal-shaped buildings for seventeen years. Lucy is the oldest example of zoomorphic architecture, and the largest elephant in the world. more...
...what would happen if we crossed 'Stoorn' the moose with 'Lucy' the elephant? (answer)

Mafoombey

MAFOOMBEY A SPACE MADE OF CORRUGATED CARDBOARD

Mafoombey, designed by Martti Kalliala and Esa Ruskeepää, took first place in the Habitare Fair design competition held in Helsinki in September for the best space for listening to music. The two students of Helsinki Faculty of Architecture, with the assistance of Martin Lucasczyk, realized Mafoombey, the ergonomically and acoustically optimum, as well as beautiful space, made of corrugated cardboard by cutting and piling.

“The initial concept for the design evolved from an ambition to create a strong spatial intensity within the volume of the dimensions given for the competition (2,5 x 2,5 x 2,5 m)”, tell the designers. “It soon developed into an idea of an intuitive freeform space cut into a rectangular stack of material.”
Kalliala and Ruskeepää decided to use corrugated cardboard as their material because of its low cost and strong aesthetic appeal. The interior contours of the cube were carried out mainly by means of computer design. When a pleasing form was found, the 3D model was sliced into horizontal layers in order to produce the cutting files for the computer-controlled Kongsberg cardboard cutter.

Each of the 360 layers of Mafoombey consists of two pieces of cardboard resulting in almost a ton in weight when assembled. Cardboard columns run through each corner of the cardboard cube stiffening the structure. No glue is used. Speakers, stereos and lamps are all integrated within the stack, allowing music and light to seep in through the cardboard structure.

Photo Credit:Stora Enso / Timo Wright Article:FinnishDesignShop

now that's a big moose

"Stoorn" the Big Moose
I'd rather not say much more, you just have to see it.