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How to Be Environmentally Friendly When Travelling

How to be environmentally friendly is one of the important concerns nowadays and many people are constantly searching for solutions in this way. We’re curious and excited at the same time to discover interesting and many times really amazing design concepts that come to meet today’s needs in terms of environmental protection. The project that caught our attention today suggests a great eco-friendly solution for your nature trips, that in a not so distant future we would like to think it will be a very popular alternative of today’s hotels.

It is called “DROP Eco-hotel” and it’s a removable hotel room featuring organic design and eco-friendly services, which can be installed on natural locations and follows you wherever you want. How does it sound? We guess awesome as long as it’s already an award-winning project, which was submitted by IN-TENTA to a microarchitecture design competition organized by URBAN SQUARE + o-cults and Taller de Arquitectura Ricardo Bofill. With a form inspired by nature, “DROP Eco-hotel” is a quite original and practical solution for the modern nomad who look for protecting the environment, having at the same time the comfort of a home.

Consisting of modular wooden and steel elements, the structure of this portable architecture would integrate perfectly on a variety of terrains, being elevated to interfere as little as possible with the unspoiled surroundings in order to avoid negative impacts on the environment. Guests have the possibility to come into direct contact with nature through catchy spherical transparent windows resembling bubbles, which provide also natural ventilation and abundant daylighting. Surprinsingly comfortable with its minimalist sustainable interior design, “DROP Eco-hotel” really becomes a luxury cottage suitable for everyone who has an inherent yearning for nature. The project is currently in the engineering phase with the urban furniture and microarchitecture producer, URBAN SQUARE, and will be available in the new URBAN SQUARE‘s catalog of microarchitectures for hotels.

CGI Photography by estudibasic

January 8, 2013
Innovative Pavilion Concept by Michael Jantzen

Michael Jantzen, artist and inventor, as he likes to say about him, envisioned some really innovative designs, like this pavilion concept, well known around the world as they appeared a lot in both written and audio-visual media and have also been exhibited at the Canadian center for Architecture, the National Building Museum and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Using architecture as an art form, Michael Jantzen try to show new thinking, firstly through the re-discovery of the built environment in an eco-friendly manner.

This creative and eye-catching wind shaped pavilion is a design proposal for a large fabric edifice either private or public. When you look at the construction, it seems like any other building with a relatively symmetrical shape, but in fact the unique design is dynamic and changes continuously as wind blows. This process is possible due to the fact that the fabric structure, contrary to appearances, is lightweight so it randomly rotates each of the six sections around a central open support framework.

What is more interesting is that this continuous shape’s alteration generates at the same time electrical power for its nighttime illumination. Once started this process, it’s unlikely to return to the original symmetry, but this was the purpose and the resulted building design is amazing. The construction could be transform in a commercial building or an apartment complex if the structure’s materials and scale would change, so the six sections could be rotated by occupants themselves according to their desires and needs. Have a look and use our comment area to express your opinions.

Photos © Michael Jantzen

January 7, 2013
Concrete box house architecture by Olkruf Architecture

Designed by Olkruf Architecture, this modern concrete architecture, located in Schnepfau, Austria, surrounded by a beautiful landscape, represent a modern residential architecture, in shape of a box. (more…)

January 7, 2013
Futuristic Designer Lighting: Mercury

Designer lighting is a wonderful compliment to any space, be it private or public. Simple and functional, fancy or artistic, it’s a fantastic option when you’re making home improvements and you don’t want just a pendant light, but a piece of art that promise to change the whole décor and ambiance of your interiors. Besides it brings together unrivalled quality and styles, designer lighting shows unique and innovative designs which will create the image that you have always desired.

One popular style nowadays is pendant lighting that acts as a great light source for foyers, dining rooms and offices because they hand beautifully over tables and create a magnificent atmosphere for these areas. Today, we want to show you some futuristic pendant lamps that can be blend in with a highly modern decorating style and futuristic interior designing style: Mercury suspension lamps imagined by acclaimed designer and visionary Ross Lovegrove, whose work, which embrace a deeply human and resourceful approach, is considered the new aesthetic expression for the 21^st Century. The lamps are created for one of the world’s most known illumination brands serving the residential illumination sector and high end professionals, Italian company Artemide, which these days is synonym with innovation, design and made in Italy.

Their lighting fixtures are exhibited in modern art museums and design collections, due to the fact that they are internationally recognized as design icons of contemporary design and looking over these photos, Mercury suspensions lamps further confirm this. A very attractive assembly of large peebles resembling fluid substance floats below simple modern aluminium disc, mirroring each other surfaces and the environment around them due to the materials used such as stainless steel, painted steel, chrome aluminium and thermoplastic material with metallic finish. During the day the interesting reflective units acts as a sculptural object reverberating the dynamics of natural light. It is available in the suspension and ceiling versions, great for private residences, offices, hospitality hotels.

Photos ©Ross Lovegrove

January 7, 2013
Modern architecture Tepoztlán Lounge house by Cadaval & Sola Morales

The next project proposed is a wonderful architecture that for sore you’ll love it. Designed by Cadaval & Sola Morales architecture, the project represents a modern architecture with a simple interior design, but the most important is the fact that nature becomes part of this construction. (more…)

January 6, 2013
Atypical Bridge Concept by bureau faceB

Water “At-traction” is the winning design concept of French practice bureau faceB within the International ideas competition “Archtriumph”, “Paris Bridge + Crossing” in 2012, an ingenious concept which can cross the Seine on either side of the Île de la Cité and offer pedestrians a new and unique perspective on Paris. Designed as one of the city’s major attractions, the new bridge in Paris is meant to be radically different from the previous and should be seen as a link through time and space, where people could stroll along the water and really feel this experience.

Photo © François Marcuz

As architect Camille Mourier said, the main objective in designing this project was to allow pedestrians get closer to the water and regain contact with the river as an out of time place, telling us stories and history and enjoy that authentic feeling. Unlike other bridges that make use of technics based on compression, this atypical one embraces the potential of traction as its stretched steel cables, strung between the banks by springs, generate a mesh on which concrete beads are threaded and create a surface that will quiver under the pressure of footsteps.

Thus, its amazing aesthetic reveals fluent “thin roadways” flirting with the water, that offer two different possibilities of crossing: first one is a typical route with direct access to the other side, while the other option, the “perilous” one reminiscent of Himalayan footbridges, seems more like a space for strolling, relaxing along the water. It’s like a waterfront, where you can sit and have a quick lunch while enjoying the proximity of the Seine. Have a look at the bridge plans below for a more detailed insight.

Photos © bureau faceB; source @archdaily.com

Project details:

Competition: International ideas competition 2012, 1st prize winner
Project team: Camille Mourier (architecture), François Marcuz (architecture + design), Arnaud Malras (architecture), Germain Pluvinage (architecture), Arnaud Malras (engineer).

January 6, 2013
Dynamic and Unrealistic Interior Design by Irojekham Architects

Located in Gwanggyo Mountains, South Korea, the Ja Ann Jai house designed by Irojekham Architects is a great architecture, because of its unique design. (more…)

January 5, 2013
Futuristic Coffee Table by Christopher Duffy

Over time coffee tables become one of the important pieces of the interior design, every family having at least one in its living room. If we look closer, coffee tables represent today a piece of history, a part of the rich culture of modern design, adopted by many societies over time. (more…)

January 5, 2013