The Self-Sustaining Isoleé House Barely Impacts Its Environment At All.

The Isolée house is an eco-friendly and modern home described as a self-sufficient residence by Frank Tjepkema and Agustina Cociffi. The tiny structure is essentially a 'smart house' which incorporates a unique, solar tree-like device into the functional aspect, meaning very little to no fuel is required. That tree protrudes from the home's roof, containing circular photovoltaic panels which generate energy from the sun into the residence.




The exterior is comprised of long, thick shutters which are controlled by electric motors that are monitored by a computer system run on solar power. They can be opened or closed given the homeowner's preference, but they allow for natural light and can automatically close when a storm is approaching.





A wood burning stove helps to heat the residence while LED lights utilize rechargeable batteries. The designer states "Isolée is anchored to the landscape on just four points, as would a cabinet. The Isolée creates permanence, but with an engineered beauty that is aesthetically inspired by nature and harmonizes mankind's relationship with the world."



Three levels make up the interior, connected by a diagonal staircase. A living room encompasses the first level, while the kitchen area is on the second floor. The bedroom is located on the third story along with a bathroom and terrace.







This house is a new architectural design delivering an ecologically friendly retreat from the modern world. Combining intelligent technology with elegant sophistication, this design creates a habitat that barely impacts its environment.



With massive opening shutters spanning the length of the building, an intelligent heating system integrated within the structure of the house and topped by a solar tree, this home ensures minimal fuel reliance. Applying a minimalized product design ethos, Isolée is anchored to the landscape on just four points, as would a cabinet.



The Isolée creates permanence, but with an engineered beauty that is aesthetically inspired by nature and harmonizes mankind’s relationship with the world.

"On seeing the house, you're bound to be captivated by the design language. 'My approach was the same as if I were making making a piece of furniture,' Frank Tjepkema says. 'Rather than a solid block of concrete for the foundation, for instance, I set the house on an elegant four-legged base, as if it were a cabinet. Minimal footprint.'"



Design team: Agustina Cociffi, Frank Tjepkema

Tjep

Inflatable Pods Pop Up For Commercial and Residential Use: AirClad

With the growing popularity of 'Pop Up' events like fashion shows, art exhibits. concerts, demos, promotional marketing, food fairs and the like, the idea of creating temporary and portable but sturdy inflatable structures that can be furnished, lit and branded is a smart one.




AirClad is the next generation of semi permanent and permanent architectural buildings developed by Inflate, a company that designs and manufactures award-winning, architecturally stimulating stock structures that have been designed specifically to suit the portable and temporary events market.

A dome shaped AirClad structure used for Harper's Bazaar Melbourne Fashion Show

A commercial 12m x 12m AirClad pod with roof terrace to house the Puma Social Club in Spain:


above: rendering for the AirClad structure shown below at Dwell on Design


The AirClad system is, in its simplest form, a structural skeleton with air inflated panels cladding it. The skeleton forms and monoqoque structure support the inflated cladding. The inflated panels offer insulated and structural properties to the finished building and especially allow for a new architectural aesthetic to be achieved. AirClad is a sealed pressure regulated system using very little energy to keep the whole structure in working order.




The AirClad system harnesses a combination of production and performance solutions from the sailing, events industry, contemporary engineering and architecture. The basic system utilises basic engineered ply wood joists, that carry an inflated membrane.




This membrane attaches to the frame via an aluminium extrusion with is fixed to the ply wood and allows the fabric membrane to slide into. The plywood joists have engineered spacers that once the cladding panels are inflated, are compressed with the whole structure being held together and cross braced by the inflatable panels. This basic building system makes for a water tight shelter. This shelter can be upgraded to have doors, or has the ability to be attached to traditional buildings.



The inflated panels can be clear or opaque, to offer solar insulation / heat retentions or just offer a great view. Everything is designed so that the whole structure can be left in place permanently or taken down and moved when finished with. The fabrics used offer a range of warranties from 5–60 years and the all the wood and aluminium elements would comfortably fall within these guidelines as well.

The Black House


The Black House sits on a 4m by 3m foot print, and reaches a max hight of 4m. The outer skin of the building is black to reflect the barn and the inner white allowing the lighting to have maximum reflection at night. The inner beams which we normally have left exposed as natural ply finish are in the case sprayed black also with a PU coating. This coating gives the beams an intriguing rubbery tactile feel to them.




Each end of the Black house is finished off with the AirClad signature float glass flush faces in graphite tint. The whole design just sits on the ground with no need for foundations and has an integral flooring system. In this design we have use an eco recoiled wood and plastic flooring as you may well find in any normal garden. This again keeps with the theme to use ready made materials which are local builder friendly.




The Black House can be installed in a day with a day to dress and fit out the interior. Whilst this project was for an exhibition the end use would see it ideally being used as a garden room, pool house, home office, play room, or best of all in good ole british style as a place to make home made wine and test it with your mates on a long summers evening. The Black Houses are made to order from £16,000.


The Suffolk Pod





The AirClad extension is built in the ground where there was an underground pond discovered when the main barn was being built. For this reason the AirClad is in fact at ground level from outside and required a lot more pre preparation to the site before they could erect the AirClad. In fact this project required 80% to 20% in terms of site to AirClad. This would not normally be the case if they were not needing to tank the pod and build in underground water pumps for high rain fall dispersal. This project cost £25,000 to complete.




All the structures are waterproof and can withstand heavy rain, snow and wind. The air pressure within the structure repels the water away at the seams and allows it to run to the ground.



With AirClad you can integrate many other applications such as lighting, sound, A.C., storage and as you do, the product takes on an even greater sense of space and your personality. You can tailor this to your own personality.



AirClad is not limited to commercial and residential venues and they have designs ongoing for hotels, airport terminals, even a caravan park. More recently they've have been looking at humanitarian applications for disaster areas and war zones.


To learn more about their commercial structures, go here.

Nick Crosbie, Director
info@inflate.co.uk

1938 Space Age Mountain Pod By Charlotte Perriand is Reconstucted by Cassina.

A futuristic mountain pod - or the Refuge Barrel (Refuge Tonneau), as it was originally called- designed by Charlotte Perriand in 1938 has been authentically reconstructed by Cassina.



Mountain lover and designer Charlotte Perriand first imagined the mobile refuge in 1936 and in 1938 she and the designer she often worked with, Pierre Jeanneret, developed it for his space at the Design Village at the Furniture Fair.


above: a maquette of the original Refuge Barrel



above: Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret with Corbusier

The dodecahedral pod, originally designed for Mountain Alps, has an aluminum exterior and a fir wooden interior. Purposely designed to be both lightweight and sturdy, the prefab structure sits on stilts which provide good stability, even on the roughest and steep terrain. The central pole has twelve spokes at the top giving it an umbrella like ceiling.







The stove is located in the central pipe and warms the entire pod:




The structure is divided into a ground floor with four single beds and a loft with two double beds, capable of sleeping up to eight people:



The beds on the ground floor, inspired by railroad cars of the time, fold up with leather straps:



The tiny kitchen has a wooden worktop in which a stainless steel sink is placed to melt snow:







In addition, there are special containers for food staples, a shelf for a small camp stove, a table on which maps of the area are laminated and a storage room for backpacks and ski storage.





Cassina has faithfully reproduced the pod on the basis of original drawings, notes or parts already made by Perriand in other housing projects.


above image, courtesy of Designboom




With this reconstruction, Cassina allows anyone to enter the interior of this visionary structure, otherwise doomed to oblivion.

Images courtesy of Cassina and Dwell