Designer Turns Studio Apartment into 24 Rooms
The Stuttgart City Library
Instantly one of the world’s most stunning libraries, The Stuttgart City Library by Yi Architects is a cavernous gem where the books and visitors provide the color to an otherwise neutral environment. The visual center is its grand atrium, a five-story open chamber reminiscent of New York’s Guggenheim museum.
And The Darkness Shall Give Way To The Sun
Let’s Get Busy Here – Teeny Tiny Hotels
Traveling is awesome. Traveling to the world’s destination cities is even better. Traveling to awesome cities and having to dip into your child’s college fund for a hotel room you only sleep in, not so much. In an effort to save our cash and provide us with the oh-so-photographic novelty of touching all four sides of our hotel room at once, The Arch Group has designed Sleep Box. A mobile cube (2m (l) x 1.4m (w) x 2.3m (h)) made of wood and MDF, SleepBox was designed to “allow very efficient use of available space and, if necessary, a quick change of layout”, making it perfect for places where demand dictates need. The hostel-specific SleepBox features bunk beds, flip-out tables and sockets for computers or phone chargers and not much else.
These tiny cubicles are already gracing the airports and train stations of Europe allowing for a safe and cheap alternative to the big city hotels. They’ve become such a hit that Japanese government officials are in talks to provide all public train stations in Tokyo with a few – proving once again that size doesn’t matter.
Life in 182 Square Feet
By Ike Edeani of Task
Boeing engineer Steve Sauer spent 7 years turning his 182-square-foot basement condo in Seattle into a compact, hyper efficient, three-level loft.
What I really wanted was one place with exactly what I needed and wanted. Quality is more important than quantity for me, and extra space only a problem. I tend to like things in their place.
The space contains two beds, a bathroom with a shower, a soaking tub (set into the floor underneath the entrance doorway), a full kitchen with a dishwasher, dining table, storage for two bikes, and a TV lounge. Sort of a low-tech (and even smaller) version of Gary Chang’s Domestic Transformer in Hong Kong, this type of dwelling might become the norm as more and more people move to already crowded cities around the world.
Architectural Striptease – It’s a Dry Heat
By Erin Feher
For most folks, rain may inspire getting cozy under the sheets with company, but for me there’s nothing like the dry, scorching heat of the desert to get my blood boiling, especially if I was camped out in this gold-plated modernist mansion wearing nothing but 24-karat aviators.
Acido Dorado is the realization of architect Robert Stone’s psychedelicvision. The architecture itself: extra-deep steps that slow your pace,exterior walls that open up completely to the vast nothingness beyond, desert modernism reincarnated with futuristic details toys with the visitor’s state of mind.
But Stone isn’t one for foreplay, so he painted every inch of the structure a glittering gold, instantly hypnotizing anyone who comes upon it. The thing is, like anything wild, willing and completely worth it, it’s not that easy to stumble upon. Located just east of Joshua Tree National Park, the mostly undeveloped land and the architectural jewels Stone continues to construct on it has been dubbed “Pretty Vacant Properties“, by its owner (Sid Vicious would know why).
As you would expect of a house dressed in gold down to its bedcovers, its luxurious offerings extend well beyond its color palette. And, while I may be able to scrape up the cash for the gold aviators, I think I’ll have to hold off on the sweaty, sandy weekend getaway: The house is available for rental (http://prettyvacantproperties.com ) at $440$460 per night.
If you are more leather-and-emo than glitter-and-disco, get dibs on Stone’s other property, Rosa Muerta, Acido Dorado’s black sheep of a sibling.
The World’s Most Expensive Hotel
Brought to you by people who have more money that Scrooge McDuck comes Singapore’s latest $8 billion dollar tourist attraction, The Marina Bay Sands hotel. Three towers standing 55 stories tall and connected at the top by a huge cruise-ship shaped “Sky Park”, the new hotel aims to put Las Vegas excess to shame. Designed by architect Moshe Safdie, the hotel has 2,560 rooms starting at $500 a night, an infinity pool three times the size of an Olympic pool with death-defying views and art comissioned by some of the world’s most well-known artists. The hotel charges $75 a person just for the pleasure of walking around inside and expects to attract an astonishing 70,000 visitors a day.
Artificial Insemination
By Erin Feher
I’ve been getting blasted with images of all the architectural T&A popping up at the Shanghai World Expo, and one in particular has got me riled. At the Seed Cathedral, 60,000 glowing fiber-optic rods jut out at the viewer, displaying a seed implanted in its tip. If you ask me, that’s not a hypersexual metaphor like Jackass isn’t a sado-masochistic homoerotic showdown. And the architecture crowds are simply exploding in their pants over it. Surprisingly, it’s the creation of the usually buttoned-up Brits: design star Thomas Heatherwick conceived it as something of a conceptual Noah’s Ark (the first sex cruise in history).
The seeds were gathered with help from the Millennium Seedbank Project, which is working to collect and categorize the seeds of 25 percent of the world’s plant species by 2020. Something about all this scientific research and architectural inventiveness on behalf of procreation (even if it is between plants) gets me all unexplainably tingly. Like that time I tore the clothes of my high school boyfriend after watching a show about the mating habits of sea creatures on the Discovery Channel. I guess it gives new meaning to the term “design lover.” (When it shows up on Craigslist’s Casual Encounters remember you heard it here first, kids.)