Be Open think tank

Alex Chinneck is a British sculptor known for creating temporary public artwork, called by the media a "master of architectural illusion." From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes is a surreal installation created by the artist back in 2013. It looked like the brick façade was sliding off the front of an abandoned and dilapidated four-storey house in England. While the upper levels of the fire and water-damages building were left exposed as if the frontage had sunk too low, the front door lay perpendicular to the top row of windows, as the façade curved outwards. The eye-catching intervention stayed in place for about a year, before the building was reconstructed for housing purposes.

The focal point of National Library of Israel by Herzog & de Meuron, an architecture practice established in Basel, Switzerland, is a reading room surrounded by exhibition spaces, an auditorium, a bookstore, a youth center, and cafes. Books root the building to the ground and are visible to all in a central book-lined void, which passes through all levels of the library connecting the reading-room, public spaces, and administrative areas to the collection below. The void, described by the architects as “book well,” consists of offset circles and culminates in a large circular skylight. When inside the library, the readers find themselves literally surrounded by books. More extraordinary library buildings in our blog

Designed by local ZJJZ Atelier, The Mushroom guesthouse in the middle of a pine forest in China is composed of two simple volumes – a circular and a rectangular one – lifted above the ground on a steel structure to minimize an impact of construction on the site. The main, circular, part of the building is topped with a large cone-shaped roof clad in pine wood shingles. The rest of the house is coated with granolithic concrete. The cladding materials are chosen for their ability to change colour with humidity and time, which will allow the structure to age beautifully blending in with the surrounding natural environment. Inside, the cone-shaped roof is pure white and rounded at the top, which creates a sense of unbounded extension to the space. More bespoke buildings with cone-shaped roofs in our blog

BE OPEN Art is happy to announce March 2021 Artist of the Month whose works gained a majority of votes from the visitors of the online gallery’s website. Aiming to provide emerging creatives around the globe with an opportunity to be seen by the art world community, every month we invite art enthusiasts to choose the best artist among those featured in our online gallery. This month, our congratulations go to Vorona Ecaterina, artist based in Chisinau, Moldova, who focuses on contemporary expressionist figurative painting. We also take the opportunity to applause all the featured artists and thank everyone who voted! See more of Vorona’s works at http://art.beopenfuture.com/vorona-ecaterina/

Dear Friends, Now that our amazing jury have selected the top 52 entries, it is time for you to decide which project deserves the Public Vote prize of €2,000 in the Design for Sustainable Cities student competition! Throughout April, an online vote will be held at the competition website (go to the VOTE HERE section, or straight to http://my.citydesign2020.com). Please make sure to familiarize yourselves with the selection of top entries, and give your ‘heart’ to the one that resonates with you most and truly deserves your support. You can leave one vote for each of the projects you like. The online voting is officially on, and will last until midnight of April 30th.

Award-winning in-flight tableware for the economy class by Taipei-based product designer Lan Szu-Ting aims to make dining on board a plane more enjoyable for both passengers and flight attendants. The set comes in a meal tray with a green upper tier punctured with holes of different sizes and shapes to keep cups and food containers securely in place, even during turbulence. When the passenger picks up a cup or a bowl, they can find nutritional information about the dishes served. The cover also provides an enclosure for a compact reusable set of cutlery, as well as for napkins, wrappers and other garbage, so that the passenger has a place to tuck all of that neatly away. The neatly packaged cutlery can be taken away from the aircraft and reused by the passengers – a solution that is proposed to address environmental concerns about cabin waste generated on passenger flights. More in-flight meal service reinterpretations in our blog

The avant-garde La Favorite series by Spanish stylist Alexis Ferrer is informed by an artisanal period of France. The collection features models wearing blonde hair extensions digitally printed with romantic Baroque-inspired paintings of flowers, berries, insects, and birds. The delicate floral motifs take cues from the fabrics created by couturiers for the French bourgeoisie during the XVIII century. The way the delicate floral motifs are printed on the hairpieces imitates the texture of vintage tapestries, new technology and techniques recreating the wonderful patterns of the past. More Baroque-inspired headdresses in our blog

When Vietnam-based Landmak Architecture was commissioned to renovate a red brick row house in the expensive New Urban area, instead of keeping the original look, the designers installed a shell of concrete white bricks around the façade, while adding one floor and one mezzanine to accommodate a kitchen block and a terrace for a master bedroom on the second floor. The sleek and modern Cocoon House is now the first thing one notices on the block. Inside the brickwork skin is the green garden-like space for rain, wind and sunlight to shine through. This in a way can be seen as a cocoon, where the occupants still have access to nature, while enjoying privacy as the decorative pattern obscures the view into the many windows and doors of the home.

The proposal submitted by studio H-O-TT for international design competition for SONGDO International City Library in South Korea follows the idea that it was from Nature that humans first obtained knowledge. Therefore, their concept comprises a combination of two different natural landscape – hills and clouds – that represent two different models of the library. According to the architects, “the Cloud” stands for a traditional library as a repository of knowledge, and “the Hills” speaks for a contemporary idea of libraries as social spaces where knowledge is generated through discourse. While the public and experiential topography of “the Hills”, with its looping pathways, accommodates auditoria and event spaces, “the Cloud” is a legible volume perched atop, literally elevating the more intensive activities of the library – reading, teaching, and independent work. More creative entries for the competition in our blog

When Ho Chi Minh City-based architecture practice CTA was approached by a multi-generational family who wanted a two-storey residence, one of the most important parts of the briefing was to design a light and airy house that would be able to 'breathe' 24/7 by itself. The idea of building from perforated bricks, that allow fresh air and natural light to filter in from the outdoors, naturally came to mind to the architects. The square bricks for the Wall House were salvaged from the building sites of properties nearby. The bricks were punctuated to feature four holes, and then arranged in an irregular stacked formation. Burnt and blackened bricks were used to add dark patches of colour into the pattern. More residences with intricate brick facades in our blog