Wallpaper*: The "It-Architect" List 2009

The Architect's Who's Who List for 2009 is out... The project? To create the ideal model home... For an architect... designing a house is the most basic form of design, yet the most challenging too. It defines all their beliefs, ideas, styles and views by the simple or complex lies they shall draw. Needles to say, Wallpaper did a fine job at selecting the 30 emerging practices of 2009, but only one model called home to us and that is without a doubt... "The Envelope House", by Divercity Architects. This envelope house highlights the flexibility, freedom and involvement that the resident is able to enjoy. The beauty of Divercity Architects' concept lies in the incorporated diversity of uses depending to one's needs. As the designers describe it: "The house can be adapted to the ever-changing needs of the fast-paced contemporary lifestyle". The following design of a private residence in Athens is another example of their inspiring structural and conceptual forms. To view more, click here. 

Development: Nothing Standard about it...

That's why New York is the capital of all cities... It never seezes to amaze its residents, always has something new to its visitors and knows how to work with what it got! In a part of town, the High Line in the Meatpacking district, where any other city would have left it be and forgotten, Andre Balazs, managed to build a luxury hotel. Not only, his opening coincided with the biggest development halt of this century, so all eyes on him, but also his architects - the Polshek Partnership - managed to create a rather "instantly iconic" building compared to the likes of "Le Corbusier and other notable international style buildings, like the locally based Lever House and United Nations". It's presence makes you question if it was always there, with its 13 mm concrete skin covering 28,000 sft, rising from stilts 18 stories above the High Line, a disused elevated rail line that is today one of the city’s hippest parks. The Standard's interiors aren't so bad either... designed by Hollywood set designer Shawn Hausmann and New York based Roman and Williams, they keep a modern simplistic tone, so that nothing can take away the breathtaking views from its guest...

Architecture: Snow White

In the remote desert of Idaho, Tom Kundig of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects, created the perfect heaven for artist and designer Jan  McFarland Cox. Ms McFarland spent the past decade working on her dream project that would serve as a residence and a work studio at the same time. A secluded garden is designed as an oasis, separated from the dry landscape by thick concrete wall. Concrete block, car-decking and plywood are a few of the sustainable materials used to withstand the extreme weather and to integrate with the natural landscape.  

via The New York Times