Design

The Black White Residence inhabits the masonry shell of an existing house. Focusing the design concept around ruins and exploring the idea of aperture, the glass temples, black frames, and white stucco provide a stark contrast to the natural surroundings, all the while offering views to the landscape beyond. The design program called for renovations on the first floor level and the addition of a second level with a significantly smaller footprint — via ArchDaily

Working with wood, one learns quickly that flexibility is lost when thickness is added – but strength is lost is you make something too thin. One solution is to try and take the best from both properties, as this ingenious seating system does.

Titled Spring Wood, the series of three pieces shown here each represent hundreds of hours of prototype modeling, building, carving and testing by recent arts academy graduate (and award-winning) Carolien Laro and associates. Each seat itself has about five hundred machined slices made through it — via Dornob

When these architects say defensible space, they mean it in a drastically literal fashion. Centuries old and made to rebel French invaders from the shores of Britain, this defense tower has stood the test of time.

Originally, over 100 such towers dotted the coastal landscape, constructed to defend against a potential invasion by Napoleon. Cannons were mounted atop them, lofted to 30 feet above the ground below. They were abandoned nearly 150 years ago – this one was rediscovered (or rather: re-envisioned) recently, however, by Duncan Jackson and Piercy Conner Architects — via Dornob

The new Richard Mille RM 010 Boutique Special automatic watch is issued in a super-limited edition of 10 pieces and is reserved exclusively for RM`s boutique located at the famous Place Vendome square in Paris — via World Watch Review

Located in Woodside, California the Creekside Residence sits in its own natural world. The site is in a meadow surrounded by western oaks, Douglas fir, and aromatic bays that border two creeks that never meet. Bohlin Cywinski Jackson focused the design of the residence around the surrounding landscape creating cantilevered roofs and views to the environment beyond. This project received a 2009 Honor Award for Design AIA Pennsylvania and a 2009 Wood Design Honor Award. More photographs and sketches following the break — via ArchDaily

The Rechter House in Tel Aviv was originally designed by Zeev Rechter as a single storey home for his family with an orderly arrangement of internally and externally exposed, longitudinal concrete beams which formed the basis for the internal spaces, whilst adhering to the principles of open planning that were prevalent in those years. Over the years, an extra floor and a third wing were added to the building in such a way that its original form was hidden and the modern design principles governing its original design were abandoned. As the project’s designer, I was asked to cope with a situation where the house had been stripped of its original ideas, disconnected from all of its parts and been used by two, separate families — via ArchDaily

Pierobon is an Italian frame-builder that has been supplying components for race bikes for over 50 years. It’s a familiar name around the MotoGP paddock and since the company is based in Bologna, it’s especially associated with Ducati. In 2006, Pierobon created the track-only F042 Supertwin racebike, a light and flickable machine designed to house aircooled Ducati motors — via Bike EXIF

For their latest residence, Japan-based TSC Architects have designed a minimalistic house situated in Hinomiya. Similar to their House in Mukouyama, featured previously on AD, this residence shares the same strategy of a softened aesthetic thanks to a limited, yet thoughtful, material selection and color palette — via ArchDaily

The French jeweler Chaumet has introduced its signature Dandy timepiece equipped with a metronome second hand module.

Naturally, the new Chaumet Dandy Edition Metronome watch is dedicated to the famous Frederic Chopin who, for a time, lived in the same building in Paris where Chaumet’s Salons is currently located.

The French-based brand plans to produce and sell only 100 of these dressy watches crafted of 18-carat white gold — via World Watch Review

The Agora Theatre is an extremely colourful, determinedly upbeat place. The building is part of the masterplan for Lelystad by Adriaan Geuze, which aims to revitalize the pragmatic, sober town centre. The theatre responds to the ongoing mission of reviving and recovering the post-war Dutch new towns by focusing on the archetypal function of a theatre: that of creating a world of artifice and enchantment. Both inside and outside walls are faceted to reconstruct the kaleidoscopic experience of the world of the stage, where you can never be sure of what is real and what is not. In the Agora theatre drama and performance are not restricted to the stage and to the evening, but are extended to the urban experience and to daytime — via ArchDaily

This project was commissioned in 2004 by a young couple who had purchased a piece of land and there planned to build their home. As initial conditions we just had the obligation of designing a single floor house for the lowest cost possible. One thing was obvious the site had a breathtaking view and this turned out to be the core of the whole project — via ArchDaily

The Nicolas Rieussec watch case is 43mm wide and 14.8mm tall. It isn’t a small watch, but it does wear like a medium one. Its height is visually reduced by the highly curved lugs. Front and rear crystal are sapphire (with the front crystal having double AR coating), while it is water resistant to 30 meters — via A Blog to Read

The Gleneagles Community Center is located on a small, gently sloping site adjacent to a public golf course. Patkau Architects organized the program on three levels to minimize the building footprint. By subtly reshaping the cross-sectional topography of the site, the lower level and the intermediate level are both located on grade. More photographs and drawings following the break — via ArchDaily

What a waste. Some furniture makers recoil when they cut open a raw board to discover its insides have been chewed up by invading insects. Others, however, see this as a unique opportunity to turn natural flaws into found treasures.

Riva 1920 has featured fascinating recycling projects like those pictured here, in which weathered and worn materials were transformed into modern and appealing home objects. The timber, in this case, was salvaged from its watery grave (inspired by Venice – a place where water meets land) and turned into a series of creative tables — via Dornob

The new office building of the Synergasias Co-op bank of the villages Kiti, Pervolia, Tersefanou and Meneou is located in Kiti, Larnaca district, in a plot at the north end of the village, next to the commercial facilities of the company and close to the local high school — via ArchDaily

The kiosk is designed to be used for temporary street markets or handicraft fairs. It isn’t thought of as an individual object, but as part of a whole that builds up a small village, a little world of its own fitted into the city. The design is based on archetypical images: town, house, chimney… When closed, the kiosk is a volume covered by a pitched roof, a house in its uttermost minimal expression. The scale and the shape are so basic that at first glance it might even be a toy, a Monopoly house — via ArchDaily

When Tokyo’s bubble burst at the end of the 1980s, building thin remained in fashion but for very different reasons, notably the need for developers to get the highest possible ROI in a buyer’s market. The design for a modern apartment building conceived by Mitsutomo Matsunami is a marvel of simplicity and minimalism: though seven stories tall and offering 10 apartments of varying sizes, the building’s ground footprint is just 1,200 square feet — via Web Urbanist