Spongebob Squarepants, eat your heart out! The Conch Shell House is a beach lover’s fantasy abode. Shaped like a giant white conch shell, the rather unusual home on the island of Isla Mujeres is constructed of concrete and recycled and found materials from the area. It would be cool if an enormous hermit crab lived inside the home, but it’s actually occupied by famous artist Octavio Ocampo.

The bizarre home, which sits right on the beach, has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a swimming pool. …

New york-based design studio rux has won the ‘design as reform’ competition hosted by traffic,
a dubai-based art and design collective. the architecture category of the multi-disciplinary
competition called for a reinterpretation of the traditional mosque with a variety of requirements
such as an ablution area, a women’s prayer room, and communal spaces. rux’s design proposal,
‘the vanishing mosque’, plays with the idea of liberating the mosque from a building form
and incorporating it directly into the fabric of the city, making it more visible, connected,
and integral to the spiritual and cultural workings of a community.

This cute little prefab is only 220 sq ft and was designed for these unsteady economic times. In other words, it’s cheap! Called the L41 Home and conceived by architect Michael Katz and artist Janet Corne, the prefab home is ultra-compact, built with green materials and energy efficient. Designed to be constructed on piers or a four-point foundation, the home could easily be located on any site with minimal impact. Eventually the designers hope that they can produce it for just $50,000 each.
The …

While it looks a bit like something that Queen Amidala might wear on her head, this incredible tower is actually a concept for a multi-use skyscraper for the city of Yerevan in Armenia. Designed by Vahan Misakyan, the insect-like building consists of “structural geodesics” that link up via habitable bridges. Another interesting feature is that the tower will be clad in an “intelligent” skin equipped with rain water collection systems, photovoltaic cells, and wind turbines.
The tower is based on geodesics — soft …

Capital Gate is a new building forming the entrance to Capital Centre, a major development project in Abu Dhabi and is designed by RMJM Architects.  It is an advanced parametrically designed tower sitting at 160 meters featuring a leaning façade of 18 degrees off horizontal. This technically has given it the title of the most substantial lean to a building in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
The building contains a substantial concrete core slightly off center that carries …

This year’s theme for the London Festival of Architecture, “The Welcoming City”, inspired Superblue Design to create an installation where all could sit together to enjoy the space, but also take an active role in making that place.  Entitled Giant Knitting Nancy, the project is a metaphor for the “interwoven cultures, spaces and places that help make the London a distinctive place.”  By collaborating with sculptor Dan Preston and jewelry designer Holly Packer, the team created a large-scale knitted structure which doubles as …

Green Skyscrapers
In the next few days we will showcase 25 innovative proposals for green skyscrapers. These projects were submitted for the Annual Skyscraper Competition from 2006 to 2009.
We designed a building that provides infrastructure, urban facilities, green zone, office and living space. In our view, the real challenge of Mediterranean self-sufficient skyscraper lies not in their design but in integrating these within congested urban areas. What can be designed without damaging historical centres?
Within a well-known base and in the heart of Barcelona, a four …

As we move toward the year 2040, the demands for energy, mobility and space in Los Angeles continue to grow in a region already overwhelmed with urban sprawl, traffic congestion, scarce open space, and inferior public transportation.  Excessive autonomy of living situations and transportation are at the root of these problems.  The 25-Hour City looks to oppose the Los Angeles urban model of autonomy by creating an urban environment with hyper-density and vibrancy by incorporating everything, everywhere, all the time.  The hyper-mixing of …

Architecture students Kim Lagercrantz and Chia-Ching Yang from SCI-Arc talk about their design for a fashion muesum in Los Angeles, California.
Exploring the 2D&3D qualities of flatness and contemporary pop-culture, we intend to develop systems of color, texture and plastics that will produce multiple affects and various degrees of sensation. Relating to the urban obsession for the Surface, the envelope becomes the prime target for an architectural escape that offers immediate satisfaction. Although our building may appear as a solid from the exterior, …

Throughout history, through his need for civilization, man has created buildings that consume resources. The skyscraper is the epitome of this voracious consumption, its highly dense grouping of activities ie work, play, rest etc has become an ominous harbingers of our ecologically bleak future. As a reaction to the modern skyscrapers and its dilemmas the world’s eminent minds have created many variations of the skyscraper in the form of the antithetical subscrapers, groundscrapers and even depth scraper. Yet still they still struggle to achieve zero input/zero output in terms of …

Yesterday saw the grand opening of the world’s largest tensile structure – the Khan Shatyr in Kazakhstan. Designed by Foster+Partners, the new landmark will include entertainment facilities, cinemas, retail, restaurants and even a water park. The center is covered in translucent ETFE and designed to withstand the region’s brutal winters and hot summers, providing a welcoming oasis for the people of Astana
Weather changes in Kazakhstan are extreme — the climates drops down to -35 degrees Celsius in winter and can reach +35 degrees in summer. The Khan Shatyr is …

The Space-Scraper designed by Mohamed Abdel-Aziz is a mixed-use development proposed for the Maadi neighborhood located in the southern part of Cairo, Egypt.  The project has three twisting towers interconnected by a geo-sphere on the top floors. A commercial area is located in a seven floors podium with restaurants, cinemas, and retail areas. The first tower is used for offices; the second one is a five star hotel while the third one has high-end residences. The geo-sphere is a health center with a Spa, swimming pools and other fitness areas.
One of …