nader khalili

architect nader khalili, died on march 5 of congestive heart failure.
he was 72 years old.

among his best-known inventions is the'super adobe' earthbag construction system.

born in tehran as one of nine children, khalili studied persian literature and poetry at the university of teheran.he moved to Istanbul in the 1950s, where he studied engineering and architecture at the istanbul technical university.

khalili came to the united states in the early 1960s, settling in los angeles, but became disenchanted with designing high-rise apartments and parking structures there - so he returned to iran, in the mid-1970s, to study rural village homes that were closer to nature. his involvement with earth architecture and third world development lead him, in 1991, to found the cal-earth institute, near hesperia, california, which teaches students learn how to construct
his low-costdome-shaped houses.

huit_sofa

Wallpaper games

by 5.5 designers

Maurizio Cattelan

Residential Complex in Singapore

OMA reveals design for large-scale Residential Complex in Singapore

CapitaLand Residential, a leading developer in Asia, and its partners have commissioned the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) to design a large-scale residential development in Singapore.
The project will be located on an expansive 8 hectare site bounded by the Ayer Rajah Expressway and Alexandra Road, in a central position between the National University and downtown Singapore. With 170,000 m2 of built floor area, the development will provide over 1,000 apartment units of varying sizes with extensive outdoor spaces and landscaping.
Instead of creating a cluster of isolated, vertical towers – the default typology of residential developments in Singapore – the design explores a dramatically different approach to the issues and challenges of living and social space.
32 apartment blocks, each six-stories tall, are stacked in a hexagonal arrangement to form six large-scale permeable courtyards. The interlocking volumes form the topography of a “vertical village” with cascading sky gardens and private roof terraces vertically extending the landscape of the courtyards. Extensive communal facilities which are embedded in the lush vegetation offer multiple opportunities for social interaction in a natural environment. While maintaining the privacy of the individual apartment units through generous spacing of the building blocks and unobstructed views, the horizontal and interconnected volumes create an explicitly social network of outdoor spaces within the green terrain.
The site completes a green belt that stretches between Kent Ridge, Telok Blangah and Mount Faber Parks. The stacked volumetric relationship of the apartment blocks extends the landscape and forms a mount/hill that relates to the surrounding topography.
Beyond the extensive presence of nature and collective space, the project will be designed to respond carefully to the tropical climate and address issues of sustainability through incorporating multiple features of energy-saving technologies.
“We are thrilled with the opportunity to create such an innovative project in partnership with OMA. The design expands our progressive ambition and enables us to add a radically new concept to environmentally-conscious living in Singapore” says CapitaLand Residential Singapore Chief Executive Officer, Patricia Chia.
“This project directly addresses concerns of shared space and community in a contemporary society” says Ole Scheeren, Partner of OMA and designer of the project. “It simultaneously responds to issues of privacy and individuality as well as to social and communal needs by offering multiple types of indoor and outdoor spaces specific to the tropical context”.
The project is lead by Ole Scheeren, Director of OMA Beijing, together with Eric Chang, Associate. Ole Scheeren is responsible for the office’s work across Asia, including the 575,000 m2 CCTV headquarters and TVCC cultural center currently under construction in Beijing, and The Scotts Tower in Singapore. Previous work includes the Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles.

Banksy

Ex libris & Ptolomeo

The italian company MOCO designed Ptolomeo in 2002.Six years later, Ex libris is born, a table obviously inspired by Ptolomeo, with the wisest legs in the world.
“A new way of designing a table is a difficult and fascinating challenge that has been resolved ironically with a light and elegant top, like the page in a book, yet to be discovered, that finds support in overlapping books. Table with metal legs and glass top laquered in black colour.”