The Salagnac cabins | Apolline Terrier

"The Salagnac domain, a beautiful property of 40ha surrounding a 17th and 19th century manor located in Corrèze, is the original idea of a young interior architect, Apolline Terrier. On these gently rolling

Villa Birkeland 1 | Saltsjö-Boo, Sweden

Anne Birkeland, passioned for building, founded her own company, the Birkeboo company, specialised in prefab houses, made in Estonia and assembled on site in a few weeks.  She built her house

Ready to escape? | VIPP shelter

"A 55m2 steel object emerges in a rugged landscape", it is called VIPP shelter and it is a new entry - in a totally different scale - in the collection of the  Danish design brand Vipp. The "industrial object", designed by Morten Bo Jensen reflects the style of the brand: minimal, functional and beautiful. The prefabricated shelter is built to fit any kind of landscape and it is delivered fully furnished in 6 months. Here, specifications and details.

Tim and Hannah's sustainable cabin in Tahoe

La Maison au bord de l’eau | Perriand + Vuitton

La Maison au bord de l’eau  - the house on the water - was originally designed by Charlotte Perriand in 1934 for a competition sponsored by L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui magazine. The plans for the house were recently uncovered by Louis Vuitton Women’s Creative Director Julie de Libran, when

Renzo Piano: Diogene - Vitra’s smallest building but largest product

Diogene is the new design element developed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano and added to the Vitra Campus from June 2013.

Diogene, named after the antique philosopher Diogenes (who is said to have lived in a barrel because he considered worldly luxuries to be superfluous), is a minimalist living unit which functions completely autonomously as a self-contained system and is thus independent of its environment. With a surface area of 2.5 x 3 metres when fully assembled and furnished, it can be loaded onto a lorry and transported anywhere. Whereas Diogene’s exterior corresponds to the image of a simple house, it is in truth a highly complex technical structure, equipped with various installations and technical systems that are necessary to guarantee its self-sufficiency and independence from the local infrastructure: Photovoltaic cells and solar modules, a rainwater tank, a biological toilet, natural ventilation, triple glazing. To optimise the house’s energy, Renzo Piano is working with Matthias Schuler from the renowned company Transsolar, while Maurizio Milan is responsible for static equilibrium.

Diogene is equipped with everything you need for living. The front part serves as a living room: On one side, there is a pull-out sofa; on the other, a folding table under the window. Behind a partition, there are a shower and toilet as well as a kitchen, which has also been reduced to the necessary. The house and furnishings form a single unit. It is constructed from wood with a warm character, which also defines the interior. For the purpose of weather protection, the exterior is coated with aluminium paneling. The overall shape and saddle roof resemble the archetype of a house, but its rounded-off corners and the all-over façade materials also give the impression of a contemporary product. It is no simple hut, but instead a technically perfect and aesthetically attractive refuge. The great challenge lies in planning the complex product so that it is suitable for industrial series production. “This little house is the final result of a long, long journey partially driven by desires and dreams, but also by technicality and a scientific approach,” explains Renzo Piano.

About ten years ago, without a specific client, Renzo Piano began developing a minimalist house. Various prototypes were developed 'till the final version of the project - named “Diogene” - was published in autumn 2009 by the Italian magazine Abitare. Piano needed a client in order to continue developing Diogene. The Italian architect found his partner in Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of the Vitra AG., who had read the issue of “Abitare” and immediately felt attracted to Renzo Piano’s ideas, as Vitra does not regard itself as a manufacturer of individual design objects, but defines furniture as an essential part of the human environment. If we look back at the history of furniture design, it was always about requalifying people’s living space; the living landscapes of the 1960s and 1970s are just one case in point.
After three years of development work, a new Diogene prototype is being presented at the Vitra Campus. It is not a finished project, but an experimental arrangement enabling Vitra to test the potential of the minimalist house.

Diogene is not an emergency accommodation, but a voluntary place of retreat. It is supposed to function in various climate conditions, independent of the existing infrastructure, i.e. as a self-sufficient system. The required water is collected by the house itself, cleaned and reused. The house supplies its own power and the necessary platform is minimised. We live in an age in which the demand for sustainability forces us to minimise our ecological footprint. This postulate is paired with the desire to concentrate and reduce the direct living environment to the truly essential things. Piano also regards his project as “quite romantic” and emphasises the aspect of “spiritual silence” which it conveys: “Diogene provides you with what you really need and no more.”

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WorldFlexHome - Danish sustainable housing in Shanghai

Danish worldFLEXhome develops, manufactures and sells "green" homes  at 0-energy. The architect-designed homes have a modern design and are based on modular constructions. The first prototype will be used for a sustainable housing in the Chinese city Wuxi (East of Shanghai), where the Danish test house will be placed in a large development-project with a total of 45,000 m2.
The homes will be the first prefabricated housing system, that meets the class 1- demands in the international environment-building-standard, Active House and fulfils the Danish 2020-requirements which implies co-opting energy consumption through integrated solar cells.
The project started 2 years ago at the Danish Institute of Technology Projektet Institut, lead by center Director Anders Thomsen, and was developed in collaboration with more than 20 Danish partners – like Velux, Isover, Junckers, Cembrit, HTH og Jeldwen.
”We have solved the modular capability by using a module of steel as basic structural element (equivalent to a 20 or 40 feet container), because of the stability and flexibility in this wellknown construction. The building system can be used for construction of detached and semidetached dwelling, townhouses, rowhouses and not least storey housing”, says architect and partner Mads Møller from Arcgency.
”The chinese municipality in Wuxi has provided 2 exhibition sites for our disposal for five years, that will be our commercial take-off both in Wuxi, and also other places in China”, tells Anders Bach-Sørensen, who is shareholder, together with Jan Sørensen, in worldFLEXhome.

Sources: missdesignsays.tumblr.com + worldflexhome.com
Photos: Jens Lindhe