A house designed for two sisters and their families with busy thoroughfare in the front and overlooking the Tama River. The house is built as two separate dwelling units in the single building, yet a few spaces between can be jointed when the occasion fits. The exterior matches the mostly industrial nature of the surrounding area by using zinc siding and perforated steel sheets.

The project seems to do a good job of addressing the contextual problems of the area as well as the programmatic challenge of separate but connected dwelling units for this extended family.

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This bridge finally convinces me that variation can actually produce an interesting variation of program. This project works because of the context in which it is put. Too often projects like this are too isolated from the context, giving them a superficial feeling despite the convoluted plastic form.

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The simple, rectangular steel and glass structures floats above the ground and seems almost parked next to the veranda rather grounded like most buildings. This strong relationship activates the space of the veranda by creating a destination and way station for the busy student.

The cafe itself is glazed on all four sides with a clear glass. The three outside facing sides are shaded with a bris-soleil set between the panes of glass. The interior is organized by a long bar with a few small tables at either end.

The project is amazingly straight forward and simple yet seems create a dynamic and usable space for the everyday needs of the students and faculty of the university. Few buildings can successful address an everyday need without falling into the trappings of overly architectural expression or banal practicality. This cafe avoids both.

Yet what might this hold for the design of Architecture. Surely the practical implications are big enough but the conceptual ones are interesting too. Too often Architecture is thought to be an expression of some conceptual intent, but what might a building that cloaks intentions, expressions and movement be like. What can the idea of an architecture of the invisible teach us.

It is a fascinating idea and sees well thought through. The very idea of a architecture grown from the earth is fascinating and Larsson seems to have thought it through.

Architecture encompasses all of the built environment, from the ordinary to the singular, and both aspects are important. By framing the debate not in a dichotomy but instead as qualities of the larger field we call our culture and environment,, an architecture for the here and now can be more easily balanced between social responsibility and artistic ambitions. Both are needed and in different mixes for different projects.

For my part, I hold with Deleuze and Guttari’s opinion that Art is concerned with precepts and affects and their ability.  This means that Architecture is not necessarily Art, though it certainly can be and certainly the value of Art in Architecture is important.  I am not one to hold that Architecture is only an Art, for Architecture includes much more than Art, both in constraints and in scope, Architecture addresses more than the limited, but very intense, subjects of Art.

This is an interesting example of how everyday objects are beginning to communicate with us in a more direct manner.  I hate the term ‘Smart’ technology but along those lines, what happens when all the potted plants in everyone’s houses can ask for water and tell us how they are doing?

Naha City Gallery & Apartment house / 1100 Architect | Arch Daily – Though very simple, the Naha City Gallery & Apartments by 1100 Architect is an excellent example of an architecture of the ordinary that doesn't compromise becoming the banal. Made of common materials, concrete, aluminum and glass, the building still spatially engages its surroundings. The gallery on the main floor juts out from the rest of the building, pulling in the exterior and the sunken parking beneath gives the building a firm stance on relationship to the earth, something often not thought out in contemporary buildings.

Though perhaps a building designed to closely to my own biases, I can't help but feel that carefully designs like the Naha City Gallery could do more for the urban fabric of our cities than the singular designs of many of the big name architects that gain so much press these days.

Planned Spontaneity – Bojana Vuksanovic argues for new approaches to design and planning that allow for more spontaneity and change rather than the rigid, preconceived approaches that are favored in current architectural practice. While her arguments are strong, I take issue with her unqualified use of the terms organic and complexity.

The organic is not truly opposed to the orderly. Her use of the organic is in line with its commonly conceived usage, but that usage favors too heavily the conception that the organic is somehow special in architecture. Architecture by its very nature is inorganic and though it can be a useful metaphor to compare certain aspects to the organic qualities, the organic metaphor can also be abused when not qualified in its usage. Like many in the architectural community, the term organic is as a judgment rather than a quality or characteristic. It is something that is favored and good for architecture without qualification.

Complexity is a more recent term filled with baggage in architectural discussion, however as in this essay, there is little qualification as to what makes up something that is complex and what does complexity actually do for the design. To state the obvious, complexity isn't a simple subject that many architect's seem to think it is. I am similarly troubled by her use of complexity without a discussion of the very real pitfalls of the “random”. Yes, current architecture can use more spontaneity or noise in the decision making process, but to argue that more complexity improves that process is not necessarily true. As Murry Gell-Mann argues in his book the Quark and Jaguar, effective complexity, that complexity that contributes to the behavior of a system, actually is highest and richest at some indeterminate mixture of order and randomness. Too often today, randomness, which is complex, is thought to be effective. Her example of fluids being more complex than solids falls into exactly this pitfall. Yes, there is more room for the random in a fluid, but its ability to interface with other systems and behaviors are not that much more complex than a solid when you consider all the different ways solids can form.

Despite these few discrepancies, the essay is very good and shows a careful and thoughtful approach to the problem of spontaneity in design. Vuksanovic’s critique of the conventional design practices that sacrifice richness of experience for the safety of certainty is a powerful one. I highly recommend reading the article.

WORLDS APART « LEBBEUS WOODS – Lebbeus Woods argues for the need of the next generation of architect's to take up the cause against the strict orders of design of past generations. He feels that fragmentation, chaos, randomness and complex systems of order can lead architect's to new ways of designing and opening up a new way of living for the inhabitants. Though I agree with him in principal, I can't help but question the results of the projects that currently use those concepts in their designs. As is pointed out in the comments to the essay, too often the designs are only frozen representations of chaos or complexity that claim to embody ideas of freedom and new ways of living when in fact by their very complexity, they require strict controls to finance, construct, and manage, which in the end leaves impotent the very concepts they are attempting to embody. Such concepts can not be a purely formal expression but must be lived through the very act of construction.

Mathematica Founder Developing Search Engine – PC Magazine – Steven Wolfram is developing a search engine that is attempting to make knowledge computable. That is to say, Wolfram is attempting to make a search engine that can understand the relationships between different pieces of knowledge and then can respond to queries against that knowledge. At the moment there is only a place holder for the site at http://www.wolframalpha.com/ but the initial site is set to launch in May 2009.