A Walk Thru of FLW's Robie House

The Robie House, photo by Flickr user ..holes▲

Chicago Tonight recently featured a short piece on the history of Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House in Chicago.

The Robie House and it's neighbor, The Graduate School of Business, by Flickr user Grufnik

The Modular Mansion

I've had the March 4th Metro section of the Washington Post laying on my desk for about a month, with a fantastic cover article on a modular house, or rather mansion, that was recently built in Bethesda, MD right outside DC. The modular boxes were dropped in place in a matter of 32 hours.



The article says the construction process was 4 months as opposed to 10 month stick built process.

A comparison of prefab and stick built homes:

SANAA Wins 2010 Pritzker Prize

Congratulations are in order to Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, principals of SANNA, for winning the Pritzker Prize. The firm was founded in 1995. Below are some of the projects that led the to this achievement.

The Pritzker Prize is funded by the Pritzker family, who own the Hyatt Hotels company. Recipients receive a brozne medallion and a $100,000 prize.

Zollverein School of Management & Design, Essen, Germany

Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
Rolex Learning Center, Lausanne, Switzerland.
New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City
Dior Omotesando Store, Tokyo, Japan

dbd Studio - Rotating Media Cabinet

Our first furniture project of 2010 was commissioned for a modern loft condo in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington DC, directly across the street from Mies van der Rohe’s last building, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. The owner is an avid art collector and wanted a media cabinet to double as an art display piece and act as a room divider between the living and dining spaces. He requested a mix of modern and industrial materials, so we combined stained, finished wood with raw, unfinished steel.

Custom fabricated 3″ steel adjustable lally columns extend floor to ceiling to support the media cabinet and 2 shelves above. The entire left side of the media cabinet is cantilevered for a dramatic effect and minimize contact with the floor. Shelves are 2 layers of 3/4″ stained plywood supported by 2″ square steel tubes bolted to the main supports. The media cabinet box is supported by 2"x3" L-stock steel.

An additional request was to design the TV mount so it rotated to face every room in the condo. The center load bearing lally column had to be heavily modified in order to accomplish this. The guts of a lazy susan (normally used in kitchen corner cabinets) were installed to provide a smooth rotation. All wires and cable are hidden within the steel supports for a clean look.

Our previous furniture install video was well received so we photographed the install of this one as well and put together a video of the design, install and walk through. We commissioned a custom soundtrack for the video from one of the biggest local DJ/Producers in the District, DJ Soundtrax, big thanks to him for providing the music.

For inquiries on custom furniture for your home or office head over to our new website.

Daniel Libeskind - Grand Canal Theatre, Dublin

(photo by Ros Kavanagh)

The Dublin Harbour has recently been graced with a 2,111 seat Grand Canal Theatre designed by Daniel Libeskind. Doors will open for the first time 2 days from now on March 18. The opening production at the Grand Canal Theatre will be a performance of Swan Lake by the Russian State Ballet, featuring star soloists from the Bolshoi Ballet.

(photo by Ros Kavanagh)

HOMB Prefab Homes

Skylab Architecture & Method Homes has come out with a new prefab concept labeled 'HOMB'. The layouts are made up of 100 sq ft triangular modules that can be configured and expanded in any way you can imagine. Exterior choices are natural, blackened, or whitewashed cedar siding.

View a pdf with floor plan concepts here.

They've put together a fun little video showing how the modules are designed to work together.