18 Weird and Wonderful Places To Live: Churches, Bunkers, Water Towers and Caves Lars Tunbjork for The New York Times The New York Times Magazine did a photo spread of some rather extreme conversions of churches, shipping containers and water towers and even caves, like the happy family shown above with an umbrella over the pool table to control the sand. We do our own roundup of TreeHugger favourites: Churches Chapel Converted to Residence by ZECC Architects ZECC Architects, beloved of their conversion of a water tower into a residence, are at it again with this conversion of a Dutch chapel into a single family residence. Record Houses: A Modest Little Reno Christopher Wren's Christ Church was bombed out in WW2 and is now a roofless rose garden; its tower survived and got into private hands. Church House, Kyloe, England in New York Times One we missed: "Ian Bottomley and his partner, Sally Onions, take in the sun in the graveyard of their home, a converted 1792 church." Church Converted into Bookshop Next: Water Towers, Caves and Bunkers
BaseHabitat Natural Architecture: Home-Grown Artistic Tree Houses Patrick Dougherty is a builder and yet not an architect – he is perhaps best described as an artist and sculptor, a wood craftsman the likes of which most of us have never seen. Rather than cutting, planing, leveling and assembling rectilinear wood structures he shapes living trees into amazing natural tree buildings. What started as simple arbosculptures quickly become inhabitable spaces and entire built environments. Some of the results seem like churches or gazebos, religious or resting places deep in the forest, as shown in the pictures above. Others are more abstract and open for interpretation or mixed-use occupation, changing with seasonal conditions as shown below. Always temporary by necessity, he grows and shapes the constituent sapplings to create playful and interactive forms in all kinds of contexts (with over 150 installations worldwide to date).
Recession Special: Home & Workplace in Ten Feet by Forty Size: 400 sq. ft.Location: East Village, New York CityArchitect: Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture Storage, restraint, and efficiency were key in carving this bachelor’s studio in the East Village into a live-work sculpture for a grown-up. Living and working in just under 500 square feet, Michael Pozner, Head of Retail Development for American Apparel (which is based in LA), had been pushing the limits of what his apartment, in its current configuration, would accommodate. He’d purchased the studio back in 1999, before the boom of the last decade, and wasn’t anxious to move. But between his office needs and his many toys and quirky art pieces, the apartment was jam-packed and nothing had a place. The solution was ultimately about exploiting every opportunity for storage, and then combining those spaces and the kitchen, bathroom, and sleeping loft into an intricately sculpted wood-paneled central service core. The before shot. Michael is always working on several projects at once.
Gutter Gardens Grow Produce Without Taking Up Space If you’d love to do a little at-home gardening but don’t have much space to do your planting, a simple gutter garden might be the perfect option. Alaskan news site Juneau Empire features a smart, simple idea for planting a small vegetable garden with very little space: A windowbox garden built from gutters. In Alaska, this idea solves a few problems for the author: We live near the glacier, so the soil is cold and has very little organic matter, there are lots of big trees shading it, and we have all the slugs and root maggots anyone could want, with porcupines, cats, bears and ravens meandering to boot.There is only one side of our house that gets much sunshine, and, of course, that side of the house has the smallest yard. Even if your garden doesn’t face the same problems, the idea behind the gutter garden could be perfect if you’re low on space but would kill for some homegrown veggies. How does your garden grow?
House in a church | Ruud Visser. Architect. Along the river De Rotte in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) stands a wooden church from 1930. The 1930's church had ended its career as a religious sanctuary and was being used as a garage for fixing and selling cars. The church was totally covered with metal plates and looked like a hangar. With a volume of 3000 cube, the church is as big as six average family houses. Their starting point was to design a ‘luxurious house, of normal measurements’ for a family with two children. The last part of the church is the transept or cross-ship. Situated on the back of the church, directly behind the transept, a smaller volume was placed. Ruud Visser Architects replaced the church-choir with a new modern volume, with exactly the same form as the original choir, but shorter. By this, the new house in the church is opened to the beautiful landscape. Where possible, the architects brought back the front-façade and the side-facades in their original 1930’s state. Design team: Ruud Visser.
Nestrest - Standing lounger - chalk An over-sized bird’s nest offering you a secluded, suspended sanctuary and unusual meeting place: it’s the perfect place for relaxation, meditation and open-air conversations - NESTREST. NESTREST is made of an especially strong DEDON fiber (4 cm wide, instead of 2 cm), guaranteeing a sturdy and solid weave with excellent properties: it shelters those within, allowing them to look out while preventing outsiders from seeing in – a perfect feeling of security! Creators of the NESTREST, an innovative new hanging pod woven from supersize strands of DEDON Fiiber, Daniel Pouzet and Fred Frety are two of Paris’s most intriguing design talents. Close collaborators of Jean-Marie Massaud, with whom they have forged new ways of working and approaching design, Daniel and Fred bring a rich diversity of experience to each project they undertake, alone or in a team.
Tiny House Design | Clothesline Tiny Homes Hello everyone! happy happy holidays and to all a good night. :) I came across a really inspiring small house (not tiny… but still very small!) Nakai House by University of Colorado students – Tiny Living in Style So this house was designed and built by University of Colorado students in collaboration with DesignBuildBLUFF for a client who lives on Navajo tribal lands in Utah. Nakai House by University of Colorado students – Interior The plan is essentially an open rectangle with lots of glazing. Nakai House by University of Colorado Students – ground floor plan and loft plan The bedroom nook is exactly what they talk about in A Pattern Language. Nakai House by University of Colorado students – Interior bedroom nook built into storage wall. The client is a collector of artifacts and memorabilia so one interior wall is entirely composed of shelving used to display her prized possessions. Interior storage wall in Nakai House Nakai House by University of Colorado students - Carrie