slantsix's Profile

So the point of residential architecture is to be special and unusual? What about comfort? Concerns about environmental damage? (Glass and aluminum have very high rates of embodied energy, and must be shipped to site, etc.)

I think this is one major problem with the state of architecture today - architects creating buildings so they'll look great in a magazine, and that's about it.

There's no doubt that the architects of this home have a lot of talent and do some great work..... but this is what happens when designers take themselves too seriously: installing stickers of trees instead of the real thing, for the sake of some media attention. Really, think about it - this wasn't experimental or creative, it's just done at a large scale. I'm pretty sure everybody knew that putting stickers on windows would make them opaque. It's interesting, but hardly groundbreaking and actually seems to cause more problems than it solves.

The cord-winder thing comes from an old DIY design from Popular Mechanics in the late 70's-early 80's. They propose that you can do it yourself by cutting a couple of holes in a thin piece of metal (aluminum) and bending the large tabs, exactly as the photo above. You could even paint the metal to whatever colour you wanted. It's a good idea but these designers are obviously ripping off a design that's been around for literally decades. Yawn.