Boy, do those Yugoslavian’s know how to commemorate their country. Smack dab in the middle of the Yugoslav modern art period -or as you art historians like to call it- the socialist modernism/aestheticism, a culture of memorials descended onto the hills. These abstract monuments expressed a forward-looking view for what’s ahead for the war-torn country. Click through to see Robert Burghardt’s amazing flicks.

This is a shout out to our friends at Studio a+i, who just wrapped up their latest project over at the Steven Alan flagship store in Tribeca, New York. Streamlining the store and amping up the post-modern vibe with the urban rustic aesthetic, the shop is on the progressive point. Make the jump for more flicks.

We don’t want to play Nostradamus, but lets make it approachable and enter the world of make believe. If this whole global warming thing isn’t a farce and those crazy liberals are on to something, than we need to decipher a contingency plan for when mother nature decides to spank us.  Thanks to Andrew Kudless and his team over at Matsys, they’ve already mapped out a scheme for a sub-terrain community for when shit hits the fan. Welcome to Sietch Nevada, living in the dessie never looked so cool.

The problem with vacationing or camping in the woods is being vulnerable at ground level to man-eating bears or fighting with your imagination that the next woodsman serial killer is out looking for you. Instead, take those collection of thoughts and throw them over the edge of a camouflaged hotel designed by Swedish architects Tham + Videgard Hansson Arkitekter. Above and away from impending danger blend within the foliage and hope the sound of birds crashing into the walls won’t disturb you.

Christian de Portzamparc’s Musée Hergé feels like an intricately origamied newspaper page from the Sunday funny pages. Laced with beautiful details taken from Hergé’s timeless aesthetic that are both big and small, the museum will “highlight Hergé’s life and work through cultural facilities, permanent and temporary exhibition areas, and a video projection room.”

via Arch Daily.

We used to be able to write the things off that we didn’t like with just one word: hippy. But now, these hippies at Ball – Nogues Studio are doing really cool stuff that we can’t easily dismiss with a blanket generalization. So check out the amazing architectural anarchy these hips are churning out of their environmental design sweatshop. 

“Ball-Nogues Studio is an integrated design and fabrication practice that creates experimental built environments to enhance and celebrate the potential for social interaction through sensation, spectacle and physical engagement while striving to infuse the matter of the built environment with a downstream purpose. To achieve these results, we work with unusual materials, develop new digital tools, and apply architectural techniques in unorthodox ways. We share an enthusiasm for the fabrication process as it relates to the built object both physically and poetically by letting the properties, limitations, and economic scenarios associated with a material guide a structure’s ultimate form while developing methods to extend the intertwined boundaries of a material’s aesthetics, physical potential and lifecycle.” – Ball Nogues Studio

Madelon Vriesendorp – wife to Rem Koolhaus and co-founder of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture – came up with these totally feasible recontextualizations of New York City. 

In theory, it would be AMAZING to work from a 2001 style hobbit villa. For sure. Until, at about 3pm, you realized you couldn’t get any more coffee without taking a zipline from your pastoral forest back to civilization. At this point you’d be all like “no thanks”. But maybe it’s different for Spanish architect, Selgas Cano. 

About the Book
“Here author Geoff Manaugh presents his insights in book form combining history urban exploration science fiction design climate change and city planning with the view that everything is relevant to architecture. With five captivating and colorfully illustrated chapters The BLDGBLOG Book is sure to delight and inspire the builder the thinker and the visionary in all of us. ” (Amazon)