PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN #GLASS #houses often just had a lot of #bottles around, and in a sort of DIY-Philip Johnson style, constructed a transparent, fragile fortress. From an embalming fluid #bottle #house in Canada to a beer bottle temple in Thailand, here are six of the world’s strangest bottle buildings. Just don’t maliciously throw any heavy stones while you’re around.
A stack of nine frosted glass "ice cubes" atop a pool of water houses this cultural centre in Xinxiang, China, designed by French practice Mathieu Forest Architecte.
The Xinxiang Cultural Tourism Centre was designed as a sculptural icon for a new winter sports tourism district in the city, which will in future include an indoor ski slope.
Mathieu Forest Architecte has created a stacked cultural centre in China
Inside the centre's nine cubes are a restaurant, cafe, shops, reading and children's spaces, with the stacked form used to create a series of open-air terraces that overlook the surrounding plaza and water pools.
"The ambition of the project is to create a strong urban indicator that unites the whole district," said Mathieu Forest Architecte.
It is designed to resemble a stack of ice cubes
"[It] does not look like a classic building – it is not possible to figure out the number of floors, it is a sculpture out of scale, a pure and monumental volume," it continued.
The ice-like appearance was achieved through the use of printed glass panels, which are attached to the concrete structures with minimal metal fixings to avoid the need for any frames.
The building sits beside a pool of water
During the day, the appearance of the glass panels changes depending on the light conditions, revealing certain areas of the interior and concealing others.
At night, illumination from the interior creates a glowing effect, turning the centre into a "lighthouse" for the district.
The ice-like appearance is achieved with patterned glass panels
"The texture of the glass facades is composed of a multitude of tangled translucent ice crystals that filter the light and the vision from the interior," said the practice.
"It is a question of hiding, whilst showing, to provoke mystery and the desire to approach," it continued.
[ 
Each cube is stacked at a different angle, creating a variety of compositions depending on the direction of approach. Some cubes cantilever above the plaza and others are positioned to create small gaps to walk between.
In the central cluster of cubes, a double-height ground floor creates a large, open foyer, leading through to a reading room that opens onto a paved water terrace.
The panels are attached with minimal metal fixings
While this foyer merges the cubes into a single space at the ground floor level, their upper levels intersect and project out into it, creating balcony spaces supported by large white columns.
Two cubes sit away from the central area, connected via paved paths that cross the water pool and containing a shop and restaurant.
The glass facades glow at nighttime
The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics has led to a booming interest in winter sports in China. See the buildings that were used to host the games in Dezeen's guide to the Winter Olympics' architecture.
The photography is byArchExist.
Project credits:
Architects: Zone of Utopia+Mathieu Forest Architecte
Client: Henan Rongshou Xinchuang Culture and Tourism Real Estate Co. Ltd.
Designers: Qiang Zou, Mathieu Forest
Design team: Zeng Teng, Wu Di, Wang Zhuang, Arnaud Mazza, Ma Jia, Xue Qixun
Local Design Architect: Henan Urban Planning Institute & Corporation
Structure: Arup Group Limited
Curtain wall: EDUTH
Landscape design: Hassell Shanghai
Landscape design construction: QIDI Shanghai
Lighting: PROL
Interior design: WU:Z DESIGN
The post Xinxiang Cultural Tourism Centre by Mathieu Forest Architecte resembles a stack of ice cubes appeared first on Dezeen.
#all #architecture #cultural #chinesearchitecture #china #glass #visitorcentres #culturalbuildings #irregularlystackedboxes #xinxiang
Legislation is needed to force architects to prevent the mass slaughter of birds that "didn't evolve to deal with glass", experts have told Dezeen.
"We need broad-scale legislation requiring buildings to be bird-friendly," said Kaitlyn Parkins, an ecologist who is campaigning to reduce bird deaths in New York City.
"Birds do not understand the concept of glass," added architect Dan Piselli, director of sustainability at US architecture studio FXCollaborative, who has worked on reducing bird strikes at several New York City buildings.
"They didn't evolve to deal with glass. They simply cannot see it."
One billion US bird deaths caused by collisions alone
Collisions with buildings cause billions of bird deaths a year. As many as one billion birds are killed this way every year in the US alone while the British Trust for Ornithology has estimated that windows cause 100 million bird collisions in the UK each year. One-third of these are fatal.
Awareness of bird-window collisions, as they are called, is rising. In 2019, New York City introduced Local Law 15, a bill that updated building codes to make new glass structures safer for birds.
The bill requires the surfaces of new glass buildings over 23 metres (75 feet) tall to be patterned to make them more visible to birds.
"It is causing glass manufacturers to take this issue much more seriously and to develop more solutions," said Piselli, who helped reduce bird strikes by 90 per cent at New York City's Jacob K Javits Center by making changes to the glazing.
Glass facades on buildings such as the 3 World Trade Center (centre) and 4 World Trade Center (right) in New York are responsible for millions of bird deaths each year. Photo by Joe Woolhead
Piselli replaced mirrored cladding with fritted glass, helping to turn the convention centre from "one of the deadliest buildings for birds in New York City to perhaps the most hospitable," according to the New York Times.
However, architects continue to make extensive use of bird-threatening glass in their projects. Eight of the world's 10 tallest skyscrapers are wrapped in expanses of glass while glass-clad buildings currently under construction include The Spiral in New York by BIG, the Tour Triangle in Paris by Herzog & de Meuron and the Jeddah Tower by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill.
None of these architects responded to Dezeen's requests for information about measures to reduce bird deaths at their projects.
Mirrored buildings "just as dangerous"
Dutch architecture studio MVRDV recently opened Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, a mirrored glass building in Rotterdam.
"As with all buildings with a glass facade, it is possible that birds living in the museum's park will be adversely affected," the practice told Dezeen.
"A completely transparent building, such as a bus shelter or a greenhouse, is possibly more dangerous for birds, according to experts, than a mirrored building in which the bird can see itself approaching."
However, Piselli said that mirrored surfaces can be just as dangerous to birds as transparent ones.
"I have been consulting with bird experts and ornithologists for a number of years now and what I understand from them is that both [glass and reflective facades] are hazardous," he explained.
"Reflectivity is clearly a problem," he continued. "We've all seen buildings that just reflect the landscape and birds just think that they can go straight through there."
Melissa Breyer found over 200 bird carcasses (above and top image) at the World Trade Center last year following window collisions. Both photos are by Breyer
The impact of tall buildings on birds hit the headlines last year when Melissa Breyer, a volunteer for New York City wildlife charity NYC Audobon, collected the corpses of over 200 birds that had flown into buildings at the World Trade Center in a single day.
Breyer collected 226 carcasses from the pavements around the glazed 3 World Trade Center tower designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and the mirrored 4 World Trade Center tower by Fumihiko Maki.
Many more corpses were "inaccessible, or too mangled to collect," Breyer said at the time.
Most bird strikes occur at low levels
However, Breyer told Dezeen that building height is not a key factor in bird deaths.
"The main culprit is definitely a reflective surface," she said. "But what is really surprising is that it doesn't have to be a skyscraper."
Even low-rise buildings are hazardous, she said. "Almost all of these [bird strikes] are happening at the treeline because that's where the habitat is reflected," she continued.
Breyer, who is editor of Treehugger magazine, added that light pollution from buildings that are illuminated at night creates additional confusion for birds.
Artificial light can confuse birds that fly at night, resulting in disorientation, exhaustion and collisions, said Breyer. She suspects this was partly to blame for many of the deaths she recorded at the World Trade Center last year.
"A lot of people think it's just lights," she said. "A lot of people think it's just glass. But really the two go hand-in-hand. Both things need to be addressed."
"Broad-scale legislation" is required
Unlike humans, who understand that glass surfaces cause reflections, birds get confused by them, according to Kaitlyn Parkins, an ecologist who is campaigning to reduce bird deaths in New York City.
"Birds don't see glass as a solid barrier and can't use the architectural cues humans use to know when glass is present, for example, mullions or door frames," she told Dezeen.
"They see the reflection of vegetation in glass, or habitat through glass, and try to fly to it without realizing there is a solid barrier present."
[ 
](https://www.dezeen.com/2021/09/17/mass-bird-death-new-york-city-skyscraper-collisions/)
Parkins agreed that collisions tend to happen at lower levels. "Birds tend to hit the lower levels of buildings at and below the treeline, where they are most active, the height of the building doesn't necessarily matter," she said.
Initiatives such as New York City's Local Law 15 are welcome, Parkins said, but added:
"In a perfect world, we wouldn't need legislation, because people would always opt for bird-friendly design and make other environmentally-friendly decisions."
"But since we don't live in that world, I do think we need broad-scale legislation requiring buildings to be bird-friendly and to reduce light pollution, which contributes to collision mortality."
The post Glass facades are "the main culprit" for billions of annual bird deaths appeared first on Dezeen.
A glass building designed in 1952 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe has completed at Indiana University in Bloomington, more than 50 years after the German-American architect's death.
Now known as the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, the design was adapted for contemporary use from the rediscovered plans by New York architecture studio Thomas Phifer and Partners.
The Eskenazi School was completed using Mies van der Rohe designs more than 70 years old
It was originally commissioned by the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity at the same time Mies van der Rohe was working on the Farnsworth House.
The 60-foot-wide (18-metre) and 140-foot-long (43-metre) building is two storeys with a profile of white steel, characteristic of the 20th-century architect.
White structural steel exteriors were part of the original plans
The top level is wrapped completely in glass and projects out over the concrete walls of the recessed ground-floor structure. The lower level is mostly open, with a central atrium that extends up through the second storey.
Partitioned interiors have both stark white and wooden walls, with floors of grey limestone and white epoxy terrazzo. Select furnishings by Mies van der Rohe and Florence Knoll were included.
A courtyard sits at the building's centre
Some aspects of the original Mies van der Rohe design were updated to conform to code. These include the addition of a staircase, hydraulic elevator, and expanded mechanical room.
To comply with environmental standards, Thomas Phifer and Partners replaced the single-pane glass with insulated, high-performance glass.
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](https://www.dezeen.com/2021/06/30/buildings-famous-20th-century-architects-realised-after-deaths/)
"There can be no greater inspiration for us than to learn and work in a masterpiece by this titan of 20th-century architecture," said Peg Faimon, dean of the Eskenazi School.
The original project was abandoned due to lack of funds, and the designs were forgotten.
Partitions divide the interior into educational spaces
In 2013, an alumnus and former fraternity member Sidney Eskenazi — for whom the building is named — alerted Pi Lambda Phi of the existence of the original plans, which were among the Mies van der Rohe collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
The design was updated with insulated glass
Indiana University plans to host a panel discussion later in 2022 to celebrate the completion of the school, and the work of Mies van der Rohe – one of the best-known architects of the 20th century and the last director of the Bauhaus school.
The photographs are byHadley Fruits, courtesy of the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design.
The post Rediscovered Mies van der Rohe design completes in Indiana appeared first on Dezeen.
#all #architecture #education #news #glass #miesvanderrohe #usa #universities #thomasphiferandpartners #indiana
"poetic emptiness"
The rules of the game are simple - choose a photo (preferably your own), edit with gimp and tag #sundaygimp on a Sunday ;-) … and follow the tag.
(and also #Sunday-photo-edit )
Note: if you do not use gimp, but still want to play along, just use the tag #Sunday-photo-edit and edit the images with your favorite image editor
#AB, #AB-SG, #AB-02-22, #20-02-22, #photo, #Foto, #gimp, #Sundaygimp, #home, #vide-poétique, #Leere, #poetische-Leere, #Glas, #glass, #verre, #Notebook, #Notizbuch, #Carnet-de-notes, #Kunst, #Art, #Bildbearbeitung, #Bildmanipulation, #manipulation-de-photos, #image-editing, #retouche-d-image, #winter, #myphoto, #mywork (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Instagram's move away from its photographic core has left a spot open for enthusiast-friendly photo-sharing apps like Glass – and now that new contender has brought its glossy, magazine-like experience to iPad.
Glass 2.0 is now available for iPads running iPadOS 14.0 or later, although you'll still need to pay the monthly £4.49 / $4.99 or £24.99 / $29.99 annual subscription to access it. There's a two-week free trial to give you a taster, though.
Salt Lake City architecture studio Imbue Design has built a house outside Zion National Park in Utah with sweeping views of one of the USA's most renowned landscapes.
The Watchman Cabin was completed collaboratively with a nature-loving client who was "captivated" by the area's natural surroundings after visiting. Located in Springdale, the site is near the entrance to the Zion National Park, which is famed for its dramatic rock formations and rugged scenery.
Imbue Design built the house outside Zion National Park
"All around the Watchman Cabin's site rise massive stone megaliths that are the handiwork of water and wind and 150 million years of deposition," explained Imbue Design.
"The client requested that Imbue empathetically design a retreat that would harmonise with its unique environment, capture the essence of the place, and resonate with his deliberate nature," the studio added.
The cabin sits against the Utah landscape
The home is sited at the foot of a hill and divided into three volumes that encompass 1,900 square feet (177 square metres).
These include a garage, a main residence, and a standalone guesthouse with its own kitchen and a small living room.
Floor-to-ceiling glazing faces the dramatic views
Each room is connected by covered, but unenclosed walkways.
"All three are threaded together by a CMU [concrete masonry unit – also known as breezeblocks] retaining wall and organised about a central connecting courtyard for gathering," said Imbue Design.
Weathering steel wraps around openings
Within the shared terrace that separates the main residence from the guesthouse, the architects included amenities such as an outdoor fireplace and a soaking tub.
"Where the retaining wall is the cabin's spine, the courtyard is the project’s heart," said Imbue Design.
[ 
](https://www.dezeen.com/2022/01/02/pine-nut-cabane-daab-design-cabin-france/)
Inside, the facades facing Zion's rock formations are glazed from floor to ceiling, offering expansive views of the landscape, while more private areas were clad in weathering steel.
This earthy tone, as well as the masonry's reddish shade, were inspired by the colour of the soil in the area.
Interior spaces offer views of the landscape
"The weathered steel skin provides privacy and protection from the harsh desert climate, while glass volumes in public spaces act as eyes taking in every magnificent vista," said the architects.
The interiors were completed in a restrained, grey palette that is contrasted by the underside of the overhanging roof, which was finished in wood and visible throughout the home.
The cabins give their nature-loving owner immediate access to the landscape
Utah is famed for its remote, dramatic landscapes and desert climate.
Other properties in the Western US state include a home by Klima Architecture in the mountains and a low-slung gabled retreat by Studio Upwall Architects.
The photography is byMiranda Kimberlin.
Project credits:
**
**Contractor: Fahrenkamp
Engineer: Epic Engineering
Geotech: AGEC
The post Imbue Design completes glass-and-steel home in Utah desert landscape appeared first on Dezeen.
#residential #all #architecture #usa #glass #deserts #weatheringsteel #houses #utah #americanhouses #cabins
Spell for Abundance (2018) + Unified Spell for Trinary Equilibrium (SBH SWH SGH) 2020
#art #glass #sculpture by #L. https://post-punk.com/an-interview-with-los-angeles-darkwave-artist-l/
