Clever Cell Phone Bracelet: The Dial


Imagine getting a call and whipping one of these super high-tech cellular bracelets right off your wrist to pick it up? Dubbed “the Dial” by its inventor Jung Dae Hoon, this wearable technology is not exactly the greenest gadget, but we think the fact that it serves double duty as an accessory and has a small material footprint is worth mentioning. We also like that it offers the option of several interchangeable skins, so that you can just give your Dial a facelift if you get bored with it instead of buying a whole new phone.



Central Library and Cultural Centre in Dun Laoghaire


Inspired by the connection to the Dublin port and resembling a dismantled hull of a ship, the proposed £30m Central Library and Cultural Centre in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland by Walter Menteth Architects will serve as the anchor for a new public park towards the North Irish sea.

COBE architects have been awarded the design for the new Nørreport Train Station in Copenhagen, Denmark having won first place in the international competition.

In September 2009 the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs announced the shortlist of competitors for the design of the New National Museum in Oslo. The names of the architects behind the designs have not been made public, but you can see the works

A proposal by Suleiman Alhadidi of Mutation studio for a new cycling and pedestrian bridge in Lisbon, Portugal.


Canadian Architects GH3 have revealed via their website a proposed sustainable master plan for the Humber College for a forested site in Orangeville, Ontario.

Designed as a graduate project, the Łódź Public Library by Maciek Grelewicz’ includes alongside a traditional and media library, a cafe, exhibition spaces and a roof terrace, contained in a golden lettered skin.

The design programme for the proposed library in downtown Baton Rouge, Louisiana by Trahan Architects is curtained around the service core resembling an extruded accordion.

The competition entry for the Taipei Music Centre by Italian architects Nabito consists of a simple twist on a rectangular from which visuals are projected and the sun's rays are captured.
more via design boom

Originally designed as a graduate thesis project, architect David Baker built and resided in the Spaghetti House in the 1980s. Built in San Francisco, California the house is actually the renovation of a dilapidated 1911 stucco duplex that used every inch of available lot space. The house smartly and quietly uses alternative energy sources integrated into architecture.

The 45,000 sf Museum of the West is to be located in Scotsdale, Arizona. This proposal by architects Jones Studio draws inspiration from a straw hat filtering the sun and mitigating the heat.

Grand Teton National Park Discovery and Visitor Center | World Achitecture

Completed in the summer of 2007, the Grand Teton National Park Discovery and Visitor Center -- officially the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center -- by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson still racks up the awards, most recently a 2009 AIA Seattle Honor Award and a 2009 Western Red Cedar Architectural Design award. It's easy to see why in the playful yet restrained design that echoes the surrounding mountains of northwest Wyoming.

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[photo by Nic Lehoux]

When I think of a national park visitor center the one overlooking Mount Rushmore, as portrayed in Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest, comes to mind, mainly because I've never been to a national park appointed with such a building. I'm not sure if the cafeteria in the visitor center in the film is modeled on the real thing, but a few things come across in the film set: a spacious interior, a modern/rustic aesthetic, and expansive views of Mount Rushmore. The Grand Teton Visitor Center has all these qualities, though its view is much less focused than the South Dakota landmark.

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[photo by Nic Lehoux]

The main parti of the design is a U-shape that creates an intimate outdoor space and opens up a large perimeter of windows to the mountain views to the north. Services and other ancillary spaces are located on the east and west (an auditorium addition is planned for the west side), leaving the central spaces open with generous light from the south-facing courtyard. [floor plan]

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[sketch and plan by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson]

Further, the sloping section means the north-facing glazing is taller than the exterior walls facing the courtyard. This may seem at odds with the particularly cold Wyoming winters, but it serves more of a symbolic than a practical purpose: the slope and expanse of glass open up the building towards the mountains while the serrated plan echoes their rugged topography.

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[photo by Nic Lehoux | sketch by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson]

In terms of appearances, the building brings to mind the phrase "extreme vernacular," in the sense of "to the extreme!" The Visitor Center recalls traditional wood buildings -- mostly in the courtyard and solid east-west ends -- but it departs sharply from the vernacular by combining the sloping roofs with a highly irregular plan and large expanses of glass.

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[photos by Nic Lehoux]

Even the tree-trunk columns and beams depart from any traditional role in the selective use of them: they are not continuous, only used in an upside-down U-formation when needed at varying angles that echo the exterior wall but do not follow them precisely.

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This last photograph clearly illustrates the expansive views captured with the 30-foot (9-meter) high glass walls. In this large space the Discovery displays get a little lost; I can see people quickly gravitating to the glass walls and benches past them. Remembering North by Northwest, I can see a lovely cafeteria in this space.

The Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower in Tokyo


The Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower in Tokyo



Brandhorst Museum in Munich, Germany

Here are a couple photos of the Brandhorst Museum in Munich, Germany by sauerbruch hutton, 2008. Photographs are by ludd, who has many more photos of the museum.

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