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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October 10, 2012
Building: Hydroelectric Power Station Punibach
Architect: monovolume architecture + design
Location: South Tyrol, Italy
Why We Liked This:
Where was this project when we were working on our top five “earthy” dwellings for hobbits? The structure is almost entirely self-effacing, snuggly tucked under the lip of a hillside. The architects call it a “fracture in the landscape”, but the project exhibits none of the violence implicit in that description. Instead, the gentle curves of the concrete shell act as a natural terminus for the flowing lawn, while the pale timber facade casts an organic front to the roaring machines within. When dark falls, the hum and glow of the machinery seep through the wood slats and down to the rolling hills beyond.Read the complete project description here.
You think you’ve got a better project? Submit it for an Architizer A+ Award here!
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September 27, 2012
It’s been a little over a week, but we’re still watching (and re-watching) trailer #2 of “The Hobbit“. The film doesn’t come out for another couple of months (on December 14), so, like the nerdy (creative!) types we are, we got to wondering which real-world spots Bilbo, The Old Took, Farmer Cotton, and the rest of the Shire would find the most palatable. The list of structures we came up was formed with two criteria in mind: (1) it had to be embedded in the earth, and (2) it had to exude style and, most importantly, comfort. If you don’t have either, then it’s not a proper hobbit-hole.
Villa Vals fits the bill (duh), as does an obscure Norway tourist house by Snøhetta. One bare, but surprisingly lush concrete house in South Korea can accurately be described as “a hole in the ground”, while the ”Earth House Estate” wins the award for “Most Likely to Find Hobbits Living Inside”. There’s also Future Systems’ contemporary classic “House in Wales”, cosily tucked within a gently sloping hill. And, there’s also a special bonus waiting for those of you who make it through the whole list…
Click through for the slideshow!
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July 23, 2012
Images: De Matos Ryan via Archinect
It’s a common childhood dream to live in a castle, among ramparts and tapestries, feasts and jousts. Now British firm De Matos Ryan has made this a reality for one family, with a renovation and addition to the Round Tower, a Grade II Listed building.
The tower, situated on a hill overlooking Siddington Village in Gloucestershire, had been left a hollow shell after years of fire and neglect. Due to its prominent location, and in order to leave the tower visible from the surrounding countryside, the addition, which houses the main open-plan living spaces, was built largely underground. Light is brought into this area by means of a sunken courtyard, skylights, and a ‘landscape scoop’ which also houses a swimming pool and patio.
The tower contains several bedrooms as well as the roof deck, from which all the land between Cirencester and Honeycombe Leaze is on view. The Round Tower itself makes for interesting viewing, as well, since over two-hundred years of history are represented in its stone walls and crenellation.
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June 6, 2012
The modernist lairs of James Bond villains were impressive enough to warrant their very own zine (see the bluntly titled “Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films” by Benjamin Critton). But truly progressive villains will know to skip the Lautners, Neutras, and Wrights and hop on the next flight to Scandinavia, where they’ll find choice pickings for a sprawling, subterranean home base. While WikiLeaks has made in a nest in a former silver mine in Sweden, and entrepreneurial hotel-developers have likewise tunneled downwards to offer some of the creepiest lodgings we’ve ever seen, Gizmodo recently alerted the world to the latest underground lair to hit the real estate market: the Olavsvern Naval Submarine Base in Norway, which is selling for a cool $17.5 million. With 13,500 suqare meters of surface buildings, 2,500 square meters of submarine docking space, and a 25,000 square meter mountain resort, you can have ample space for world domination brainstorming sessions (and throw some killer slumber parties) for less than $430 per square foot.
What an unsuspecting above-ground building…nothing to see here!
[All images via Gizmodo]
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May 1, 2012
This past January, after 23 years of construction, Kazakhstan opened the world’s ‘youngest’ subway system to much acclaim, its mix of erstwhile period decor and high-tech gadgetry provoking much internet chatter. While that subway favored opulent surface treatments and smooth vaulted spaces, Stockholm’s underground transit (the Tunnelbana) opts for a more “textured” environment, with rock-hewn arches and ceilings that remind the commuter that they are descending into the depths of the earth.
These “cave stations”–located on the red and blue lines–are part of the metro’s 90-plus stations embellished with art, which are collected in a vast corridor of what is called the world’s longest art gallery. Frescoes, sculptures, and installations are applied or embedded directly onto the bedrock, itself stained with a palette of bright and garish colors that present a totalizing context in which the individual works are inserted. Continue.
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February 3, 2012
The infinite void that is the screen of your iPad just became that much more fascinating: renowned Japanese photographer Hoichi Nishiyama has just released a photographic essay that journeys deep underground into Japan’s tunnels, and these breathtaking feats of engineering are available to explore as a special photography book available for iPads.
Click to see more.
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January 25, 2012
In the 19th century, the concept of an underground tube train sustained itself largely in the fanciful transcripts of science fiction novels. Numerous written fantasies of subterranean transit systems stemmed from the experiments of inventors like Alfred Ely Beach, who demonstrated his newly developed pneumatic transit system to the awe of men in top hats and ladies in corsets.
What was then a spectacular dream has since become grounded in reality, perhaps painfully so when you take a look at some of the world’s earliest subway systems, now visibly worn with age. But just last month, Kazakhstan became home to the newest subway system in the world, and photos of the transit system 23 years in the making show that Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedic portrayal of the country could not be further from the truth. More after the jump.
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December 22, 2011
Spotted on Gizmodo this morning is a prime piece of real estate tucked inside a scenic Norwegian mountain. Built next to a cool water fjord and surrounded by evergreens and lush rock-clinging mosses, the space boasts of bright, airy subterranean halls carved out of natural cave walls and almost transcendental settings above ground. This will be the comfortable new home for many of Norway’s data servers. The Green Mountain Data Center is one of the first pioneering data centers that will greatly reduce its costs by harnessing the cooling power of the environment, namely, the steady flow of cool water from an adjacent fjord. Alas, the grass seems to be consistently always greener in Scandinavia. Read on.
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October 21, 2011
A segment of the London Underground map designed by Harry Beck
Earlier this week at the Talk to Me symposium, Sandra Bloodworth outlined how the MTA is finding its way to better urban design. A recent example we’ve seen is the MTA Weekender website, which features a streamlined interactive map designed under the direction of Massimo Vignelli. As we learned from Fast Co. Design, London too has released an online reinterpretation of the London Underground map. But how did our friends across the pond improve upon an already legendary work of graphic design, a map that already sits tight in the “cartographic pantheon?” Click to find out.
Learning a thing or two from the Brits, the MTA adopts a simplified map, shown in part above, for their Weekender website
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