I’ve recently been working on this project in Berkeley where we’ve abstracted the archetypal house in a modern way. You can see our design for this cottage here shrouded by the palm trees.

Herzog and DeMeuron take this archetypal house to the extreme by extruding the form out like house “logs’ and stacking the logs up five stories as if it were a children’s toy. Simply amazing.

VitraHaus / Herzog & de Meuron | ArchDaily.

I’ve been bored lately with just talking about design objects. I’m an architect, and I’ve recently been obsessed with what I’m calling “temporary architecture”. Temporary architecture , to me, is simply the space created and removed over a short period of time, like for an event.

So I ask you all, dear readers, to tell me if you’ve been somewhere recently that made you feel special in the moment when, normally, you would not consider that space as special.

My first example is a Palio dinner in one of the contrade of Siena. the Palio is an annual horse race that pits neighborhoods against each other. Before the race, a vast dinner is held in each contrada where thousands of neighbors come out to eat in the street. At the head table the guest of honor is the horse.

This example transforms a city street into a dining room for thousands with light, tables, sounds, colors, flags, and people. And although Siena has a natural and man-made beauty that transcends this temporary architecture of the Palio Dinner, I would argue that the temporal experience of the dinner is the basis for falling in love with the city of Siena. the event is fleeting and only a memory, and it’s this intense memory of civic transformation that truly creates the lasting impression of a city rather than it’s day to day stasis.

Temporary architecture also helps resolve what is really important for inhabitation. Is the importance of space derived from a static building’s material quality or sculptural aesthetics? I would say no, and that these qualities only augment an architectural experience which is more based on a memory of a building at that moment. So architecture is just the moments at which we experience it and the temporary elements which affect the static buildings at that time.

Flickr Photo Download: Palio, Onda Dinner.

Most people’s wine cellars have been relegated to the garage, but if you have the cash I would suggest you go for the super sexy trap door wine cellar. Why do this? because you can.

Cool Hidden Spiral Wine Cellars.

I’ve see this beautiful house around the internet, and I know right off that it is one of the freshest combinations of graphic design and architecture that I’ve see in a long time. there used to be a time when graphics went hand in hand with the structure itself such as the sistine chapel’s paintings. OK, today there’s murals, but they aren’t as fully integrated into the design.

Items – Kavellaris Urban Design.

The Puma Store is an inspiration to all architects out there with lots of time and energy and access to a supply of old shipping containers. I consider this store to be a sort of dialogue with some of the past stores Ive seen where the designers have stacked 6 units high by one wide. This one answers the gravity challenge by creating a massive cantilever with no visible support. How’d they do that? Look back at some of Rem Koolhaas’ earlier works to remind yourself ho.

This Just In-box: new Puma VS new Nike VS new Adidas - Core77.

Ping Mag has posted an insightful account of the pachinko architecture industry leading me to believe that I will never be able to know as much as I would want about this world. I could spend a lifetime studying the accuteness of this strnge design style.

PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” » Archive » Tokyo Odyssey: Pachinko Parlour Glitz

I have very little to say about this house. When trying to come up with a reason for including it on the blog, the only thing that came to mind is: "looks cool". This is not the criteria I hoped to use when I started design crack. But what the hell… One funny thing about the house is I saw the image before I saw the location of the house and I thought to myself, " That’s so Oscar Niemeyer". Of course, the house is in Brasilia.

Osler House / Marcio Kogan | Arch Daily

“THE HL23 tower, planned for a site on 23rd Street in Chelsea, is the kind of commission Neil Denari has being waiting for his entire working life. Mr. Denari, a Los Angeles architect who once ran the Southern California Institute of Architecture, has labored on the profession’s periphery for decades. But because of a recent demand for name-brand residential architecture in New York, he is finally getting a chance to test his ideas in the real world. ”

Skyline - Residential Buildings - New York - Architecture - New York Times

Seattle based Pb Elemental Architecture recently sent me a note to let me know that they exist and that I should write about them to let my readers know who they are. Normally, I sort of forget about these types of emails, but when I started to look in the PbEA’s work and found that they were a one stop residence shop of modern architecture I began to salivate with envy. The beauty of their company is that they design, develop, build, and sell all of their work. Some call this ‘work by spec’. We have tons of this type of speculative building done in San Francisco almost all of which is atrocious or at best mundane. The beauty of PbEA is they have a stronger vision and sense of style and won’t take no for an answer because they control the whole process from initial design to marketing the final product.

I would really like to spend more time maybe in a podcast interviewing Pb Elemental because their process, quite frankly, is the the only way that any architect will ever be able to challenge his or her design concepts. PbEA, Email me!