Be Open think tank

#BeOpenDESIGN Local architecture office Fábrica de Espacios has designed Casa Bosque Sereno, a house in the city of Aguascalientes in Mexico, that is centered around the theme of blending of indoor and outdoor spaces. While the pared-back material palette includes nude concrete floors and white-painted exposed brick walls, the interior design is defined by open-plan elements. One of them – and the house’s main standout feature – is one of its floors that is partially made of net. According to the architects, the textile net allows communication between two floors, while also acting as a big hammock for the family to watch a movie on.

#BeOpenARCH The 3Become1 House in the small Vietnamese city of Soc Tang designed by the local practice Space+ Architecture got its name for its merging of three separate tube houses that boast a whimsical convergence of architectural elements representing Chinese, Vietnamese, and Khmer styles. The walls between the old houses with their small and impractical bedrooms were removed, bringing large and connected spaces. The redundant staircase was replaced with a large skylight, which lets enough natural light in to forgo using electric lights during the day and allows trees grow naturally. It is in the façade where the perfect combination of old and new can be witnessed at its clearest. The gable roof and curved arches evoke familiar memories of the old houses and blend in with neighboring buildings, while the contemporary pattern of zigzagging reused baked bricks creates a strong visual identity that makes the structure stand out.

#BeOpenARCH What is your idea of “urban green”? That is the name of our new Instagram challenge that celebrates the power and beauty of plants and greenery in the cityscape. We invite you to join and share your visuals on the topic via Instagram. Get closer to winning €300 by just adding #BEOPENUrbanGreen to your post! Pictures of the 1,000 Trees development by the London-based Heatherwick Studio, which has recently opened to the public in Shanghai, could make a great entry for the challenge. Aiming to integrate planting into the structure as a visual extension of the nearby park, the architects have developed two tree-covered mountains, using the tops of the structural concrete columns as large planters for approximately 25,000 individual plants and 46 different plant species including shrubs, perennials, climbers. More than half of them are evergreen to ensure a lush green building throughout the year.

#BeOpenDESIGN Czech designers Atelier SAD and Mmcité1 has teamed up to design a mobile pinecone-shaped pavilion to be used as a place for children to play or as an outdoor classroom in public spaces. Aptly named Siska (Czech for “pinecone”), the self-supporting structure is formed of 109 waterproof plywood scales connected together with galvanised joints and angled so as to shelter and shade the occupants from wind and rain. Each scale is covered with weather-resistant coating to prevent it from degrading over time. Slots between the scales provide natural ventilation, while a skylight in the roof allows smoke to escape in case the structure is used to light a campfire. More portable pavilions in our blog

#BeOpenART Using his skills as a restorer, Dutch artist Bouke de Vries repurposes broken and imperfect ceramics into fragmented porcelain sculptures that celebrate ‘the beauty of destruction’. Disheartened by the fact that although ‘The Venus de Milo’ is venerated despite losing her arms, even a hairline crack or a tiny rim chip renders a once-valuable porcelain object practically worthless, he finds ways to breathe new life into Meissen, Worcester, Kang-xi or Sevres piece. He emphasizes their new status, instilling new virtues, new values, and moving their stories forward. De Vries’ deconstructed porcelain artworks align very well with the centuries-old Japanese philosophy of kintsugi that considers damage to be a part of a piece’s history and celebrates it as an integral part of the object rather than hiding it.

#BeOpenDESIGN Seoul-based product designer Songhwa Park has developed a portable coffee maker for those who would like to enjoy a cup of coffee at a camping site. Inspired by the iconic Matryoshka, or Russian nesting doll, Nesting Café is a portable coffee kit made up of a capsule coffee machine, a steel tumbler and removable wooden cup. The user can choose to sip freshly brewed coffee straight from the tumbler, where the coffee from the capsule is poured into, or use the cup. All items can be used separately depending on drinking habits or types of coffee, and easily arranged into all-in-one structure after use. The appliance’s carrying case also includes a leather strap for easy transportation and the compartment for pods to brew your coffee. More outstanding portable coffee brewers in our blog

Berlin-based Dutch designer Hella Jongerius proposes to use new three-dimensional weaving technologies to revolutionise architecture and lead to lighter, more flexible buildings. This technology, also known as multiaxial weaving, has already been used to create medical implants from polyester and to form aircraft bodies from carbon fibres. It lies on advanced looms that allow fabric to be woven along multiple different axes as well as creating 2D textiles that can then be unfolded into 3D objects. According to Jongerius, it has the potential to replace concrete and cement in the building industry, leading to a new type of “pliable architecture.” She predicts that 3D weaving could be used to interlace building materials with photovoltaic solar yarns and further scaled up to create solar-powered, carbon-fibre balconies that respond to the weather automatically unfurling on sunny days.

#BeOpenDESIGN London-based practice Mizzi Studio has designed a family of nine kiosks on behalf of artisan café brand Colicci for prominent locations around the British capital’s Royal Parks. The flagship Horse Shoe Bend kiosk in St James’s Park, in view of Buckingham Palace, is clad in tubular brass and mirrors the ornate precious metals that adorn Sir Thomas Brock’s Queen Victoria Memorial, while the choice of timber cladding for the rest of the family of kiosks rests on the relationship with the park environment. The studio has used sustainable quality materials and traditional craft techniques to make the kiosks to feel organic – an extension of the parks' own ecosystem. For this reason, they take on a natural, bulbous shape, with a canopy that curves up and outwards like a tree’s crown creating a recognisable silhouette.

#BeOpenARCH To respect their clients’ memories of their old home, Vietnamese studio CTA, short for Creative Architects, has clad their new two-storey 2HIEN house in Tay Ninh, a provincial city in the south of the county, into scallop shaped clay tiles preserved by the owners after their old home was pulled down. Designed for a family of four, the design aims to allow their traditions to continue into the future. The recycled fish-scale tiles clad large sections of the facade and roof, as well as walls within the house. They not only give a sense of rustic and intimacy that a new tile colour could hardly provide, thus bringing a feeling of familiarity, but also help reduce the amount of new materials needed for the construction, which has both environmental and cost benefits. More projects using salvaged tiles in our blog

#BeOpenARCH In Shanghai’s Baoshan Wisdom Bay Science and Technology Park, the team of Professor Xu Weiguo of the School of Architecture of Tsinghua University has unveiled a 3D printed Book Cabin that can accommodate 15 people for various activities. The irregular curved shape of the cabin was conceived by Professor Xu Weiguo, then modelled using MAYA software and printed on site by two sets of robotic arms out of fiber concrete developed by the team, which does not require steel bars or formwork. The hollow wall structure of the Book Cabin are then filled with thermal insulation mortar. The building surface has two kinds of texture, one is a layered ribbed surface formed by laminated printing, another is a more sophisticated woven pattern on the sidewall in front of the entrance. Credits: archdaily.com