Open Office Alcoves and Breakout Spaces -- from Forbes

Forbes has a great piece on furniture solutions for quiet breakout spaces and collaboration spaces within the open office concept, along with a slideshow of some products from Vitra. I love the Bouroullec brothers' Alcove sofa!

Image: Forbes.com

Image: Forbes.com

Red Apple Apartment Building by Aedes Studio

I'm freaking out over this building on Arch Daily right now...the texture, the dynamic push/pull effect of the facade, done on a large scale with glass forms and on a smaller scale with the brick itself, the amazing lights-in-cages. I can't even handle it. More photos at the above link to Arch Daily.

Photo: Aedes Studio

US Embassy in Athens by Walter Gropius

Another reason why I'd die and die again to work at Ann Beha...they are shortlisted for a refurb of the US Embassy in Athens. My husband and I actually stayed very close to it when we went there in 2010. It's pretty cool...

Spaulding Rehab Hospital -- Perkins + Will

Great piece in the Globe about the careful attention paid to the new Spaulding Rehab Hospital by Perkins + Will.

Photo: Pat Greenhouse / Boston Globe

Updated Lecture Hall Rendering in Podium

I can't get directional lights to work in Podium...not sure if they are buggy, or what. I had to optical engineer some directional lights by making my own concave reflectors. Optics for the win!

I Clearly Need This Book

How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand.

And the BPL has it. Yes.

MIT's Building 20, the Plywood that Could

Here's a question: when designing facilities for research, what can we learn from a famous, "temporary" plywood building at MIT that wasn't really designed at all? Building 20's long and illustrious history of innovation contains much insight into how occupants and user culture shape space and vice versa.

Read about it here and here.

In Progress...NESAD Redesign for Contract II Studio

The four-hour rendering:

Reception Area -- hand rendering and Photoshop

In which I realize Ruth Bader Ginsberg is the Coolest Lady Alive...

The SCOTUS justice has this (or a variant thereof) hanging in her office:

Josef Albers "Homage to the Square"

Also there's that thing where she fought for equal protection for women under the law for most of her adult life and graduated first in her class from Columbia Law while raising small children. I don't think this woman could possibly be any more awesome. Leslie Knope and I are starting a fan club.

Post Offices on the Market

The NYT reports that these glorious examples of civic architecture are for sale or being considered for sale. Hopefully historic preservationists will be able to do their thing. These buildings could be amazing adaptive reuse projects.

Photo: David W. Dunlap/New York Times

Habitat '67 Apt Seen in Dwell

I die and die again over Moshe Safdie's Habitat '67, an amazing building in one of my favorite cities in the world. And these photos from Dwell, of a gorgeous mod-yet-warm residence there, are feeding this obsession.

Photo: Dwell Magazine

Please wake me when it's time to retire and move to Quebec.

MUJI and Mindful Consumption

Last fall, I attended a talk by Masaaki Kanai, the president of MUJI. I am now writing about MUJI in the first chapter of my thesis as an precedent for the promotion of mindful behavior. At the talk last fall, Mr. Kanai spoke of one of MUJI's guiding principles: "Muji tries to attract not the customer who says 'This is what I want,' but rather the one who says, rationally, 'this will do.'" 

For a retail entity to think this way is rather mind-blowing and seemingly contradictory. I encourage you to check out the full video of Masaaki Kanai's talk at MIT.

Masaaki Kanai  -- http://stinterni.mondadori.com