Snapchat /add/ Nextarch A Cinematic Palace, No 4. #architecture #architectureschool #architecturestudent

Swamp Castle, Pena National Palace, Sintra, Portugal

Thewolfe Jim window 3, 2011

Big City Lights by Ivo van de Grift

Aluminum House in Madrid

Casa de Aluminio (Aluminum House) by Fran Silvestre Arquitectos sits on a site surrounded by gardens and tall trees within the city of Madrid, Spain. The metallic finish and horizontal proportions help minimize the scale of the house which sits like a jewel in a site bound by nature.

You can also see previous features of Fran Silvestre Arquitectos work following the links:

Casa del Acantilado 

Casa del Atrio

Casa Balint

Casa en la Ladera de un Castillo 

Harold Lloyd puts the cherry on top in Speedy, 1928

Social Housing

I have received a lot of follow up questions and comments to my post about social housing and my opinion that vertical social housing is a dying typology including:

What is Vertical Social Housing? Google didn’t return anything obviously useful.

Hi, different anon, but what impact are you referring to when it comes to vertical social housing?

A dying typology? You are wrong

What is Social Housing? Social housing is affordable housing. A key function of social housing is to provide accommodation that is affordable to people on low incomes. Limits to rent increases set by law mean that rents are kept affordable. 

Vertical Social Housing brings up images of identical towers like the Pruitt–Igoe complex which was composed of 33 buildings of 11 stories each, located on St. Louis. Its demolition was one of the first demolitions of modernist architecture; postmodern architectural historian Charles Jencks called its destruction “the day Modern architecture died." Its failure is often seen as a direct indictment of the society-changing aspirations of the International school of architecture. [via]

In the United States, policies included "urban renewal” and building of large scale vertical social housing projects. Urban renewal demolished entire neighborhoods in many inner cities to accommodate these projects as a solution to the lack of affordable housing; but in many ways, it was a cause of urban decay rather than a remedy.

This type of architecture segregated and isolated its residents from the cities around them. Effectively trapping them in buildings that quickly deteriorated because of poor maintenance and overcrowding. Like in every typology you find some successful examples but many of these projects have been demolished to be replaced by low rise urban infill projects. The idea is to thread social housing into the tapestry of the city instead of creating isolated pockets.

You can read more on how cities have tried to redirect their efforts to provide affordable housing in books like Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival and American Project.

Architecture should not reinforce the old stigma of living in social housing, and architects should find the joy in tight budgets, limited briefs, and seemingly mundane programs.

Here are some recent successful examples of low-rise social housing: 

Le Lorrain – Brussels, Belgium

Honeycomb Apartments – Izola, Slovenia

Monterrey Housing – Nuevo León, Mexico

Vivazz, Mieres Social Housing – Asturias, Spain

Tête en l’air Social Housing – Paris, France

#frozen

Mask House in Ithaca

Mask House designed by WOJR in Ithaca NY is described as a space of myriad sanctuaries. The small home (less than 55 square meters) is meant to be a place of seclusion, peace and tranquility.

Follow the Source Link for more information.

(via St. Johns bridge • Autumn fog | Flickr - Photo Sharing!)

Kyz Kala, a 7th-century CE fortress outside of the city of Merv (in modern day Turkmenistan). Although now off the beaten path, Merv was a central trade city along the Silk Roads because it was near a key oasis in the dry central Asian environment. By the twelfth century, it was one of the largest cities in the world, containing perhaps 200,000 people. When the Mongols arrived in the 1220s, they supposedly slaughtered almost the entire population of the city, and Merv never regained its prominence.

Wannabe