FLOORNATURE - ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN NEWS

Chipperfield Museum Folkwang Essen, Germany

Floornature Team — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:15:14 +0100

David Chipperfield’s expansion for the Folkwang Museum in Essen has opened. The reopening of the museum is a key event in the initiatives celebrating the Ruhr region as one of Europe’s cultural capitals in 2010.

Pasel-Kuenzel home V23K18 Leiden, the Netherlands

Floornature Team — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:00:00 +0100

A private home designed by the studios of Pasel Kuenzel Architects in Leiden is characterised by a larch wood sunshade that shelters its walls while ensuring the necessary privacy.

Bofill's Hotel W, Barcelona, Spain

Floornature Team — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:01:19 +0100

The new hotel designed by Ricardo Bofill for the international Starwood Hotels&Resorts chain is part of a wider-ranging urban renewal project for the Barcelona waterfront.

Mendini at the helm of DOMUS

Floornature Team — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:47:28 +0100

DOMUS will be directed by Alessandro Mendini once again, for 11 issues starting in April 2010.

Makoto Tanijiri Lodge, Hiroshima, Japan

Floornature Team — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:25:54 +0100

A mirror strip suspended level with the head of a seated man characterises the Lodge salon designed by Makoto Tanijiri in Hiroshima.

SANAA Rolex Learning Center EPFL, Switzerland

Floornature Team — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:41:40 +0100

February 22 saw the opening of the Rolex Learning Center, a project by Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / S A N A A for EPFL, École Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne. Financed by the Confederation and by prominent Swiss enterprises, the centre has one of Europe’s most important libraries with an imposing collection of scientific works.

The winners of D3 The Housing Tomorrow 2010

Floornature Team — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:48:29 +0100

An exhibition coming up in Monterrey, Mexico March 2 through 4 will showcase the winning entries in the D3 The Housing Tomorrow 2010 competition.Promoted by the Unversidad de Monterrey as the opening event in the international UDESIGN congress, the exhibition will be part of one of Latin America’s most important annual congresses on art, architecture and design.

Pachacamac house by Longhi Architects, Peru

Floornature Team — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:50:24 +0100

Pachacamac is an ancient city in Peru, one of the country’s most important archaeological sites where pre-Inca artefacts have been found. This is the context of the home designed by the studios of Longhi Architects.

Seniors’ social centre in Pukkila, Finland

Floornature Team — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:00 +0100

Arkkitehtitoimisto L&M Sievänen Oy designed the Seniors’ social centre in Pukkila (Finland) as a complex of built volumes to house different functions with its own square linking the centre with the life of the town.

Italian architecture overseas

Floornature Team — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:00:00 +0100

Giuliano Gresleri and Pier Giorgio Massaretti are the authors of an atlas published in Italian and English containing numerous illustrations and documents, organised in a rigorous synthesis, telling the architectural history of the Italian colonies.

Ceramics: a possible new identity

Floornature Team — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:18:15 +0100

Ceramic formats which perform the same function and have similar properties, but with different appearances and attributes, can be considered part of the same identity in the new contemporary system.

Not really tiles any more

Floornature Team — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:28:42 +0100

Nowadays we ought to call them modules with a design identity of their own, because in contemporary culture they sum up the principle of objects which are diversified yet standardised, even while maintaining the properties and image of reproducible, interpretable manufactures.

ASTM Test

Floornature Team — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:34:33 +0100

Founded in 1898, ASTM International is a not-for-profit organization that provides a global forum for the development and publication of voluntary consensus standards for materials, products, systems, and services.

Active Clean Air & Antibacterial Ceramic™

Floornature Team — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:34:34 +0100

ACTIVE, OUR COMMITMENT TO A BETTER WORLD
Fiandre and Iris Ceramica, within the framework of their research and innovation activities, have developed a new production method geared towards materials whose active principle helps to improve the quality of the environment.

Urban benzene and population exposure

Floornature Team — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:34:30 +0100

People aren't just at risk from carcinogenic benzene when they are out on city streets: sadly, the air is polluted also inside of buildings. Scientific research has demonstrated that, among all the materials for inside walls and floors, technical ceramics are the least pollution-prone.

Perrault and the Ewha Womans University in Seoul

Floornature Team — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:29:26 +0100

A monumental project in the heart of Seoul for the campus of Ewha, the historic women’s university. Dominique Perrault translates the city’s need for symbolic reference points into a symbol surrounded by greenery which is not only a landmark but a reconciliation of internal comfort with conscious use of environmental resources.

Gmp and the Grand Theatre, landmarks for Chongqing

Floornature Team — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:31:55 +0100

A theatre ship sails over the Chinese metropolis of Chongqing where the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers flow together. German architectural practice Gmp, which designed the imposing glass structure, wanted it to be not only a landmark but a symbolic plaza in which citizens could meet.

David Chipperfield and the image of Justice

Floornature Team — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:31:48 +0100

Barcelona’s new City of Justice designed by David Chipperfield breaks up a large lot into a series of separate buildings facing onto a plaza that channels the flow of users. The rhythmic alternation of windows on the façade has the value of a decoration which serves to lighten the building’s impact on the outside and let light into the interior.

Museum of Kanayama Castle Ruin: Kengo Kuma

Floornature Team — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:16:30 +0100

In Japan’s Museum of Kanayama Castle Ruin, Kengo Kuma weaves a decorative motif of stone to lighten the building’s cement volumes. The geometric composition of the modules embraces the outer walls, inner walls, ceilings and dividing walls to give the architecture an identity of its own.

Blumenhotel

Floornature Team — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:02:20 +0100

The Blumenhotel is a four-star hotel with 110 rooms in St. Veit an der Glan, the City of Flowers near Klagenfurt, capital of Carinthia in Austria.

Design team: Spado Architects & Ogris.Wanek Architects, grafic art: Gernot Steindorfer
Hotel management: Vienna International Hotelmanagement AG
Supervision of construction: GPM Ropac & Partner GmbH
Materials employed: Eiffelgres Porcelain Stoneware Floor Tiles