Cool Design News

Cool Design News

Cool Design News featuring great design, architecture, fashion, graphics and innovation from across the globe.

 

Casa Una

In a park in the city of Uberlandia, Brazil stands Casa Una, a community center and gathering space for park visitors and neighborhood residents. In addition to other uses, it has an open auditorium, a food hall, an office for the neighborhood association, and an exhibition space. Built with a laminated timber structure, the building uses energy-saving passive ventilation and thermal comfort techniques. Lastly, the roof is topped with three species of vegetation covered in a geometric pattern, reducing the heat gained from solar exposure and acting as a fifth facade when viewed from above.

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Saint Peter House

Designed from the philosophy of participatory design low tech high customization, this house is conceived from bricks, a material widely used in San Pedro Cholula region in an ancestral way from the knowledge of the local workforce in the construction system. The main skin of the house has 3 formats for accommodating the bricks; double wall, lattice, and spike from where its expressiveness starts, which are distributed in a functional way to close, gain natural light or ventilate the interior spaces with windows in openings and other times through a double semi-solid facade.

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Flowing Cloud Township Villa

Flowing Cloud Township Villa is located in Qinglongwu, a centennial village in Tonglu County, Hangzhou, which is composed of 4 ancestral houses of different ages and 2 new buildings. MDO will create a new rural retreat that celebrates local culture and tradition through the sensitive renovation of the old structures, using local techniques, materials, and craftsmen. Here people can have a closer connection to nature, be able to relax and unwind, free from the distractions of modern life. To see local tradition, to taste local foods.

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Yantai Experience

Mdo imagined the Yantai Experience Sales Centre as a contrast to the homogeneity of the new development, through form, materiality, and relationship with the landscape. Around the main central lounge and discussion area, all the other functions are placed equally accessible from the centre, encouraging more lines of communication and rendering an overall feeling of openness and link with the surroundings. The architecture becomes a unity of positive and negative spaces. Like a snow-crystal structure that can be read as a pattern in its presence or absence of matter.

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The Kaleidoscope

The Kaleidoscope is the living and working building located at a factory site in central Vietnam. Placed between the hill and the sea, it frames diverse (kaleidoscopic) views in directions and times. The project aims at creating a protected space from the tropical climate, and enhancing the user’s contact with nature. Under a roof resembling a Non La, a traditional farmer’s hat of Vietnam, multiple V-shaped walls divide the floors into triangular private rooms and in-between common spaces, allowing for constantly changing natural light and ventilation conditions throughout the building.

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Askianos

Askianos was intended as a family home for summer holidays on the Greek island of Crete. Research into local history and architectural language, along with meticulous site analysis allowed for the project to be developed for its context. A main staircase splits the volumes in two and leads the eye to the mediterranean sea and the summer sunset. Materials and elements of Cretan vernacular architecture meet minimal design, integrating the home into the landscape, and welcoming both indoor and outdoor living.

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