Be Open think tank

#BeOpenARCH UK-based studio Lipton Plant Architects has won planning permission to convert an abandoned World War II bunker in Dorset, England, into a two-bedroom holiday rental property. The windowless 76sqm bunker features two bedrooms alongside a kitchen, living space and bathroom. To compensate the absence of windows in the original structure, the studio is planning to create two bomb-blast-shaped windows to allow light into the holiday home. One will be in the living space and the other in one of the bedrooms. The architects hope to celebrate the significant historic yet redundant structure by turning it into a high-tech and sustainable home. More converted bunkers in our blog

#BeOpenARCH Italian architects David Cirocchi and Plinio Vanni has designed a new structure submerged in the water as housing for kite surfers in the Lençois Maranhenses in Brazil. Sand serves as a natural element that unites the three apparently separated fragments. Through a sandy descent the visitors access the level of the seabed before they arrive at the courtyard that lights up the lodgings. These follow one, ending with a covered area that houses the common areas. The path climbs up to the level of the water above a sandy platform from which it is possible to start kitesurfing.

#BeOpenDESIGN Brooklyn-based designer Aldana Ferrer Garcia has developed a retrofit window system that extends like an accordion and can serve as a pop-up microbalcony to enjoy the elements. Named More Sky, the project is conceived to provide visual relief, access to sunlight and fresh air for small apartments in densely populated cities. It encompasses a window with three available configurations that can be custom-fitted to suite the user’s needs – they can lean onto the extension to read, sit there cross-legged to meditate, or peer out into the landscape.

#BeOpenDESIGN The GrOpener is a bottle and can pull-tab opener, developed by US-based designer Mark Manger specifically for single-handed use. The tool makes it incredibly easy for both abled as well as disabled people to open a beverage with just a single hand. The GrOpener (fusion of the two words “grab” and “opener”) sits on a bottle top and pops it open with an unbelievably easy trigger action. The design makes sure the cap is not bent or warped in the opening process, while a magnetic piece strategically placed parallel to the opener’s hook centers the hook automatically and catches the cap as soon as it dislodges from the bottle neck. More design-minded bottle openers in our blog

#BeOpenARCH Designed by the international practice OMA, Audrey Irmas Pavilion is a Jewish temple in Los Angeles that comprises a single monolithic volume wrapped in a graphically patterned façade. The architects began with a box as the all-too-generic model for an event space, which they then shaped with respect to the adjacent historical buildings on the campus. On the west side, the building slopes away from the existing temple, creating a thoughtful buffer and framing a new courtyard between the two buildings. The resulting form is both enigmatic and familiar, creating a counterpoint to the existing temple in both a deferential and forward-looking manner.

#BeOpenARCH Aiming to express the contrast between the nature and architecture, while creating a dialogue between them, Paris-based architect David Telerman has developed an underground pavilion of reinforced concrete in the Southern Arizona desert, near the Mexican border. The geometry consists of an inverted pyramid, digging into the ground, and closed in the middle by a square construction with four extending lines of various lengths, flattened onto the ground. The nature gradually disappears down the stairs, as one enters the central space finding themselves surrounded by concrete. A bench is located inside, facing the door and the light shining through, for the visitor to sit and reflect. Inversely, while climbing up the stairs, one discovers progressively the desert and experiences the view of the ground at the same level as the gaze.

#BeOpenARCH Commissioned to create a durable school building that would protect children from earthquakes and typhoons, Japanese architect Ryuji Fujimura created a volume that merges into the surrounding landscape and echoes the shape of the Hanatate Mountain that can be seen in the distance. He came up with a design that features two gardens, one facing the adjacent sacred grove of a local shrine on the west side, and the other opening up to the vast expanse of rice on the south side. Meandering around the gardens is a sinuous building, with administrative rooms placed at “nodes” for teachers to keep an eye on children activities outside. Using 180mm thick concrete slabs the architects created an integrated structure, where walls seamlessly turn into two metres deep eaves, which are meant to shield the building from the elements, and gently rising three-dimensionally curved roof. More amazing school buildings in our blog

#BeOpenDESIGN The James Dyson Award has recently recognized a team of Malaysian designers for their sustainable desalination pod concept that works on solar distillation to convert seawater into drinkable water. Bennie Beh Hue May, Yap Chun Yoon, and Loo Xin Yang developed the concept in response to a lack of clean, drinking water in Sandakan, Malaysia. Noticing the seafaring community’s reliance on the sea, the team wanted to develop a means for individuals to have access to clean drinking water. Named WaterPod and designed to be floated in the sea, the unit operates as a self-cleaning solar desalination system that absorbs seawater via underwater wicks, inspired by mangrove trees, which then passes through a condensation and evaporation process to remove the salt particles from the seawater. Users can pump drinking water from the storage compartment.

#BeOpenDESIGN The Hidden Collection is a series of add-ons designed by Seoul-based SEUNGHO Studio to hide the usual appearance of mundane household objects, while increasing their utility and giving them new sleek aesthetics. The collection consists of three products – a tissue roll dispenser, a multi-tap wire storage box, and a canon paper cup dispenser, - all of which have been created by simple iron bending, banding, and a slight usage of screws. The tissue roll holder features a central iron plate, which is inclined to prevent the roll from falling out and hold it securely in place, and grooves on both its sides to cut the tissue, so you can pull it in any direction. The cloud-shaped multi-tap wire storage box is designed to perfectly reorganize complicated wires, leaving any home or office space tidy and clutter-free; while the Canon Paper Cup Holder allows to conveniently store up to 22 commonly used 6.5oz cups in a neat and beautiful way.

#BeOpenARCH Local firm Aulets Arquitectes has built the first school in Mallorca, Spain, that is totally made of wood, with trees being a part of the architecture. The project was commissioned by a small group of teachers who started a pedagogical project based on building a more collaborative, empathic and ecological future together. The new Arimuni school is organised around an open communal patio sheltered by trees, which reduces sun exposure and minimizes heat gain. To optimize the site footprint, the building features two floors, with open porches on each of them. Serving as an informal place of intercourse between kids of different ages, the porches also feature transparent shutters that can be opened or closed, thus acting as a thermal regulator. The building is constructed mainly with natural materials, which allows to reduce the added energy by 65% of CO2 emissions. Besides, an offsite timber building system has been developed to allow easy and fast assembly, seamless joints of the different phases enabling possible improvements and iterations in the future. More aspirational school buildings in our blog