#6 Tetris Apartments/ OFIS Arhitekti - by Blenda Araujo

For many people, there is an unfortunate stigma attached to social housing. Fortunately, some countries have realized that one of the best ways to combat this stigma is through good design, leading to some striking and unusual social housing blocks such as The Tetris Apartments located in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The Tetris has 650 apartments of different sizes from 30m2 studio flats up to 3 room apartment of 70m2. The given urban plot of the building was 4 floors high, 58 meters long and 15 in width.

Each apartment has view towards its own balcony, sometimes there is also a glazed loggia. On this way intimacy is created and there will be no direct views from ones apartment directly to the others in the opposite block.

The complex was made of economic but quality materials such as wooden oak floors, granite tiled bathrooms and have large windows with external metal blinds. The concept of structure is made in a way, that floor plans are flexible, since only structural walls are those, that separate apartment shell from the rest of the building.

3 Seth Gebhart- Light Cannon House

Light Cannon House: Carter Williamson Architects

The light cannon house located in NW Australia is a beautiful residential home, with tons of natural light entering into the space. This is a great example of housing that uses natural light.

The home is filled with tall forms reaching upward to the sky. Large open windows are there at the peaks of these tall forms to capture adequate sunlight to provide a space that is exposed with light. 

The use of light in housing to me is extremely important and can not see housing with out light. While some take this for granted there are some housing units around the world where light is not used to provide new meaning to space. 

I think that this is a good example of light in housing. I also can relate my own house in Norman to having proper light in housing. While I keep my windows closed at night, during the day, I always open up the blinds of my living room to allow as much natural light in as possible. 

I think that as architects and designers we should always consider the use of light to provide spaces with better living environments, especially in housing. 

2 Seth Gebhart- Habitat 67

HABITAT 67

Habitat 67, located in Montreal Canada is a housing complex made up of several apartment style housing units. The only difference is, it does not feel or look like an ordinary apartment at all. 

The architect, Moshie Safdie designed these buildings as apart of a thesis for his college course, and later developed the idea at the World Fair held in Montreal, Canada. 

The building has been noted as one of the most unusual looking buildings in the world, and definitely a significant piece of Canadian architecture. The building has received many critics, as well as praise. 

The apartment style building holds 354 identical prefabricated forms and reached 12 stories in height. The apartment complex can hold up to 150 residences. The housing apartment complex was a reaction and solution to the new style of living that Safdie believed would be popular and be taking place in the future.\

While this unit has received both critiscm and praise, Safdies idea is out of the box and challenges the way that we often times view and imagine something to look like. 

7 - Shipping Container Home - Hillary Kidd

 

     Using seven recycled shipping containers, architect Bernard Morin and wife Joyce Labelle built this modern residence in St. Adele, Quebec.  The home is the first of many to come for their new company, Maison Idekit, which will help homeowners turn containers into architecturally unique, and inexpensive, homes. 

     This home is 3,000 square feet with four-bedrooms and cost about $175,000 to build.  Rather than feature the exposed containers on the exterior, the containers are exposed on the inside — you can even see serial numbers, dents, and corrugated detail in several places throughout the home.  On the outside, the home has five inches of insulation that is topped by brown wood siding. 

 

Thorncrown Chapel - Simon Ott

In a similar vein to my previous blog, I love the pairing of nature and worship.  So much of our lives today as humans has divorced us from our relationship with the world around us.  Since the industrial revolution we've created more and more of our world around us seperating us from the planet that has sheltered, fed and molded us for millennia.  We tend to forget our roots.  We also tend to forget how vital a spiritual life is as well.  Regardless of our personal belief as individuals the fact that we do and have believed in a higher power has shaped our history and lives and brought us to where we are today.  

Places to remember those fundemental cores of our human experience are vital to our continued existence and thriving.  The Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, AR is a beautiful way to do that in my opinion.  The world around us provides so much beauty and remembrance that there is more to life than buying the next big screen tv or latest smartphone.  I believe that creating architecture that helps us to engage with the greater world around us is the highest form of the craft of architecture. 

The truest architecture creates a space for us to comfortably live safely and thrive on this planet while maintaining our relationship with the planet.  Looking back, everytime we forget that principle we create problems for either ourselves or the planet as a whole forgetting that were so completely linked that the two cannot possibly be considered separate.  Places that we build for the purpose of coming together to remember a higher power helps us to keep our relationships with others and our world as a whole in perspective, especially if it is a place like Thorncrown Chapel.

La Sagrada Familia - Simon Ott

I hadn't heard about La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona Spain until my Architecture for majors class last semester.  I may well have come across a picture or mention of it in passing at sometime during my life but if I had I obviously had no idea what I was seeing.  The church is astounding.  The vision and dream of the architect Antoni Gaudi is a testiment to the desire of mankind to create a true place of worship in which to experience and commune with a higher power.  

I have always enjoyed seeing the old churches and their attempt to "raise the consciousness" of those who visit but the organic nature of La Sagrada Familia takes it to a whole new level.  I have always felt that the natural world around us provides the most sacred of spaces to be within and it seems that Gaudi managed to merge beauty of nature with the constructs of humankind into a shared space for the purpose of communion with the divine.  

I, for one, applaud his vision and hope I can make the trip to see it someday.

#5 Cathedral of Brasilia, Oscar Niemeyer - by Blenda Araujo

One of my favorites Oscar Niemeyer works it is this church. I had the opportunity to visit the cathedral and whole complex designed by Niemeyer when I was in my second year of architecture. 

Outside view. Detail on the columns.

Brasilia landscape. Esplanada dos Ministerios.

 The work comes down to hand-painted tiles that cover the walls of the Baptistery of oval and stained glass with different shades of blue, white and brown that bring natural lighting to the place. Also, upon entering into the Cathedral, there stands a marble pillar with pictures of passages of the life of Our Lady.

Inside view. Entrance.

Inside view. Detail on the stained glass.

I love the only visible structure of the cathedral - -sixteen concrete columns -- because it has this peculiar shape reaching up towards the sky.