Carolina Tamayo | Looking Out Week 7

It is interesting how wood is automatically associated with nature and the outdoors. Famous stores like REI use wood feature as a way to advertise their stores.  An example is one store here in Pittsbutgh.

Link : http://gearjunkie.com/black-friday-at-rei

Alyssa Hamilton: Looking Out Week 7

This guy legitimately thinks that decimating the all the worlds trees is a good idea. Nahhh. Not really. but he does think wood should be the main component of a skycraper since its more "eco-friendly". I don't agree but it's an interesting interpretation of wood uses. Check out the TED talk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi_PD5aZT7Q

Quresh Tyebji: Looking Out Week 7

We always discuss how to design things that don’t waste space, are efficient, and is flexible. Well, this is literally flexible (as well as the others). Here is the first Dynamic Cantilever Chair called MIESROLO (name maybe inspired by Mies van der Rohe?). Nothing fancy is done with the wood; just simple blocks of wood that are connected together through a synthetic band. The user can essentially create any shape and then fold it right back up for easy storage. This innovative concept by Designer Uros Vitas “placed 1st on the contest of Wood Agency Design Belgrade 2008 and won the Best Scientific-Professional work award in 2006/07 at University of Belgrade.”
(http://www.tuvie.com/miesrolo-a-foldable-wood-chair/)

Candace Ju | Looking Out Week 7

The Finnish designer Jalmari Laihinen created a series of furniture pieces that celebrates the fragility and imperfections in wood, and creates beauty with the cracks and snaps. This series is called "Broken" and is made to show the beauty in the defects of the wood. Usually wood with imperfections are discarded in furniture making but this designer embraces them and uses them to accent his pieces. It's kind of refreshing to see things with imperfect beauty. 

Danielle Lehmann: Looking Out Week 7

  Forty feet above the ground, this conch-shell looking structure high in a redwood tree is "New Zealand's Whimsical Yellow Treehouse Restaurant" only ten meters wide and twelve meters tall. The restaurant seats eighteen people and was designed by the firm called PEL. They were excited to do the project because of its sustainability requirements and the idea of a treehouse was "magical" to them. This intriguing design was built to be sustainable: it was constructed with glulam wood beams which is more renewable resource with less waste and carbon emissions than concrete or steel, plus it blends in with the trees more so than concrete or steel would have.
  This restaurant was a commission by yellow pages to get advertisement - ironically enough. Why ironic? Because of the final paragraph in the article which points out that: "every year in the United States alone 500 million directories are printed—enough for nearly 2 books for every person in the country—that’s 9 million trees harvested, 1.6 billion pounds of paper consumed, 7.2 million barrels of oil spent in processing, and so on. The E.P.A. estimates that directories account for up to 5% of total landfill waste. Should this make a difference to an architect? We think it should." With this point in mind and as we move through architecture school it's something to question. Should architects participate in buildings which are promoting something with a negative effect on the environment? The restaurant in beautiful and sends its own message, but may not be so effective when one realizes who sponsored it. 

Liz Dolinar: Looking Out Week 7

This crazy looking furniture are the work of British designer Anthony Hartley. The chairs are named Mr. Smith II and both pieces feature abstract curves and fun colors. Hartley's furniture is made out of wood and hand sprayed with a high gloss paint (chairs are laminate birch ply, cabinet is oak).

Daniel Ha: Looking Out Week 7

Slide Staircase By Rodney Miller.

     It's a staircase... that also has a 27' long slide. Why would you ever want to walk down a flight of stairs when you could slide down? Doesn't matter if you're six, twenty seven, or fifty two, if you had the option of walking down stairs or sliding down a slide, you would choose the slide (and if you don't, you're just lying to yourself). Not only is it fun, the highly polished dark wood makes the slide look pretty darn nice (and it also makes it look like you can go down twice as fast as a normal slide. I mean look at how it shines and tell me otherwise).

Looking Out Week 7: Gary Li

Do you think your're an awesome architecture student? Well if you do think again... three students from The University of Seoul designed a "rest hole" in what was originally a parking lot. They cut contours through pieces of plywood and spaced them out evenly to allow light through. The spaces undulate to create a feeling of compression and expansion while moving through the space. We can all hope and dream to have the opportunity to one day do something similar to this. LIGHT, SOUND, CONTOUR, SPACE, WOOD 

Looking Out Week 7: Madhura Kharche

This is the Rakvere Summer theatre in Tallin, Estonia. This outdoor theatre is built for various performances. It is built in a way that allows the plants, trees and the pond to become as significant part of the stage. The use of wood allows light construction that creates various types of interesting spaces and dynamic stage lighting.