April 24, 2013
Emilceramica “Stone Box,” using Ceramics of Italy tiles
You don’t have to head to Italy to check out the best in Italian ceramics—or food! That’s because Ceramics of Italy is bringing both those things to Atlanta next week for Coverings, the premiere tile and stone industry show running from April 29 to May 2. Especially for the event, Ceramics of Italy has created an interactive VIP program to supercharge the design industry show experience.
In addition to a pavilion packed with the newest tiles from nearly 80 different tile brands, the Italian tile industry will offer their architect and design guests daily guided trend tours, goodie bags, and (best of all) a traditional Italian lunch. The Ceramics of Italy booth, Piazza Ceramica, designed by New York-based architectural firm e+i studio (through a competition co-hosted by Architizer!), will also include an interactive exhibition of the winners of the Ceramics of Italy Tile Competition for inspiration. Click through to see how to register!
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April 22, 2013
Miele Kitchen by Tamie Glass & Uli Danel
That headline catch your attention? Good. We’ve got an amazing competition for you—and best of all anyone can enter: architects, interior designers, home builders, or just anyone who likes to cook (and has a space in which to do it!).
We’ve teamed up with The German appliance company Miele in search of the coolest kitchens in the world. With its full suite of kitchen appliances that double as objets d’art, Miele wants to see how you use its products to enable the most cutting-edge kitchen design.
Starting today, April 22, Miele and Architizer invite all architects, interior designers, kitchen designers, home builders, developers, interior architects, and home owners to submit their exceptional Miele kitchens for a chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Eurocucina in Milan, along with a visit to Miele’s international headquarters in Gütersloh Germany! The winning designs will be featured on Architizer.com and shared with Architizer’s 1,000,000+ social media fans.
Entries must include at least three Miele appliances, and must be submitted by July 12. For more information and submission guidelines, check out the competition page. Good luck!
Miele Kitchen by Jorge Martinez
Miele Kitchen by Cassie Wyner
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March 22, 2013
This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Popular Vote Award in the low-rise residential category. See the full list of winners here.
Can you imagine a better spot for a vacation home than the Italian Alps? Particularly among the Dolomites: one of the most majestic mountain landscapes in the world, with spectacular pinnacles, spires, and towers mixed in with sand-colored ledges, crags and plateaux rising from a dense network of lush narrow valleys and rolling hills. The problem with such prime real estate? Finding—or fabricating—a house worthy of the such awesome surroundings.
Which is why we’re crazy about Plasma Studio’s Dolmintenblick. Nestled on a hillside in the Dolomites, this jagged, angular wood-and-copper structure combines the firm’s signature funky geometric shapes with the natural beauty of the Italian landscape. With its stepped metal balustrades, sweeping terraces, and pitched roof, the building—inspired in part by the old, sunburnt wooden farmhouses of the region—is at once sci-fi and earthy. Read more!
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March 22, 2013
Project: In the Rock—Fire Brigade Magreid
Architect: bergmeisterwolf architekten
Location: Magreid, Italy
Taking inspiration from the region’s many wine caves, the Fire Brigade of Magreid was inserted directly into an imposing rockface. This novel solution was highly economical for the small town—instead of taking up valuable cultivated land, the firehouse was fit into formerly inaccessible space in the cliff beneath city hall. Using a flexible tunneling technique, three self-supporting vaulted spaces were bored into the face of the rock while another was dug to connect them internally. Due to the rock’s stability, only a thin coat of insulating mortar was applied to the walls. The result? A ‘haptic’ spatial experience connecting the occupant and the ‘building’, almost entirely composed of pure Italian hillside.
Read more about this project in the Architizer database!
Images courtesy Jürgen Eheim and Günter Richard Wett Architekturfotografie
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March 21, 2013
Project: Vyta Boulangerie Italiana Turin
Architect: COLLIDANIELARCHITETTO
Location: Turin, Italy
Italian architect Daniela Colli has taken on quite a difficult set of commissions—designing a chain of high-end bakeries in Italy’s busiest and most iconic train stations from Turin to Naples. The “boutique chain” or franchise is a new territory for architects that demands the creation of a unified brand, without resorting to identical, cookie-cutter design. All locations of Vyta Boulangerie feature warm oak and jet-black Corian interiors, though each store offers a different spatial experience.
Read more about this project in the Architizer database!
Images courtesy Matteo Piazza
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March 20, 2013
Project: Farmstead B
Architect: bergmeisterwolf architekten
Location: Sterzing, Italy
High in the mountains of South Tyrol, a dilapidated farmstead has been masterfully reworked into a sleek, contemporary residence by the architects of bergmeisterwolf. The strongly geometric forms, including a concrete bar with a fantastic planted roof, take inspiration from the existing dry-laid stone walls. The architects chose durable, rustic materials to withstand the harsh Alpine winters and that will weather gracefully, including oxidized metal, concrete, stone, and wood shingles.
Read more about this project in the Architizer database!
Images courtesy Günter Richard Wett Architekturfotografie
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February 27, 2013
Bernard Tschumi has designed projects around the world, including the Parc de la Villette in Paris and the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. But the firm has never worked in Italy–until now. Last week, Bernard Tschumi Architects unveiled its first design for the country, a rectangular cultural center located in the city of Grottammare, on the Adriatic coast. Read more!
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February 27, 2013
Hospitals and good design don’t always mix, and it isn’t hard to see why. Give their large scale and massive overhead, hospitals and healthcare facilities are expensive affairs, with design among the first things cut back from the budget. But we all know how seriously a poorly designed hospital can affect a patient, and that alone should compel architects to develop prototypes and strategies that will breath new life into the typology.
The finalists for the Architizer A+ “Healthcare And Aging” award do exactly that, promoting airy and spatially interesting spaces that aid in the recovery of a patient. Click through to see the projects!
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February 22, 2013
How far would you go to save a Frank Lloyd Wright house? If you’re die-hard Wright fan and architect Paolo Bulletti, you’d go as far as buying the endangered structure and having it relocated to a safer locale—in this case, the quaint hillside town of Fiesole, just outside of Florence. According to a NYTimes report, Bulletti wants to purchase Wright’s 1954 Bachman Wilson House in Millstone, New Jersey, dismantle it and then ship it to Italy. Read more.
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February 19, 2013
In last year’s competition for the Bocconi University campus design, OMA didn’t make it to the top: The preferred solution belonged to SANAA. And it’s no wonder. OMA has released the renderings for its proposal for the Italian university, and the design is baffling. Read more!
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