Best New Private Homes:the Shortlist For Wallpaper's Design Awards

Below are the 5 private residences that made the Wallpaper shortlist for Best Home Design. The additional pics seen here are not available on the Wallpaper site.

1. The Bourellec Brothers Floating House:

This experimental floating house (a studio for resident artists and authors invited by French art centre Cneai) proves the genre-swapping Bouroullecs are up for larger-scale architectural work. A collaboration with architects Jean-Marie Finot and Denis Daversin, the playful aluminium and wood structure, moored off an island in the Seine, can be reproduced to different scales.
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2. Ring House, Karuizawa, japan by TNA:

When architects Makoto Takei and Chie Nabeshima (TNA) were asked to design a weekend house 185 miles from Tokyo, they came up with an ethereal, glass and wood mini-tower. Standing three storeys tall amid thick vegetation, it offers uninterrupted 360-degree views, its transparent skin flooded with light during the day and glowing at night when lit from within.
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3. St. Andrews Beach House, Australia by Sean Godsell:

On Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, this retreat is right on the seashore. An outer skin of oxidised steel grating acts a brise-soleil, while the simple design incorporates an unusual feature requested by the client, who wanted to be in constant dialogue with the outdoors: the interior spaces are linked by an exterior veranda, so to move between them, one must exit the house.
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4. Villa Chabrey, Chabrey, Switzerland by Geninasca Delefortrie:

This low-lying, expansive house in Chabrey encompasses two bedrooms, a garage and an indoor pool in a single volume. Reminiscent of an agricultural building or a hangar, its material simplicity allows it to blend into the rural landscape. The external walls and roof are clad in thin slats of wood, and the roof oversails the walls to create a covered walkway.
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5. Villa NM, New York State, US by UN Studio:

These days, UN Studio is better known for its galleries than its houses, but this new Villa harks back to an earlier European project: Mobius House. Set on a sloping site in upstate New York, the house is an extruded box, with two protruding levels forming the upstairs bedrooms. Curved surfaces create cave-like spaces that break open into expansive walls of glass.
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More to come.

Wallpaper's Short List For Best Public Buildings

The Wallpaper Design Award Nominees Countdown Continues...

The Shortlist for Best Public Buildings are shown below with images not found on the wallpaper site. Winners will be announced soon, and of course, you'll hear about them right here.

First, the 5 nominees for Best Public Building Are:

1.Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, Germany:

Peter Zumthor's most recent work proves his ability with different construction methods and traditional craftsmanship. This simple chapel, in Mechernich, southern Germany, is created from layer upon layer of concrete, poured in stages by a team of local farmers over a timber, teepee-shaped frame, which was then burned out to create the final interior, its soot-darkened walls leading up to a skylight.

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2. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, US by Steven Holl Architects:

Comprising five linked pavilions, the Bloch Building, an extension to Kansas City's NAMA, combines Holl's love of the sculpted form with his understanding of working in the public realm. Detailing inside and out is kept to a minimum and the building comes into its own at twilight, when the translucent walls glow from within to create a new beacon for the arts.

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Roland Halbe/Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Above: The exterior of the new Bloch Building Lobby Lens at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. The New York architect Steven Holl designed the Bloch addition and renovated the museum for $200 million. The museum opened on June 9, 2007.
Here's a link to a blog about the design and status of the Bloch Building.

3. New Museum, US by SANAA:

The New Museum is New York's only museum devoted entirely to contemporary art and it owes its cutting-edge new home in the Bowery district to Tokyo-based architects SANAA. The seven-storey building was conceived as a composition of metal mesh-clad boxes, which softly shift off the main axis, creating a dynamic effect as the building rises.

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above: An open stairway, running 50 feet upward along the building’s north side, connects the third and fourth floors.
See more here.

4. Scenic Arts Centre, Spain by MGM:

Jose Morales, Sara de Gilles and Juan Gonzalez Mariscal's new Níjar theatre is a series of grey aluminium mesh-swathed boxes with contrastingly boldly coloured interiors, glimpsed through the few large windows. Set in the arid Andalusian landscape, the simple rectangular plan contains an auditorium, rehearsal studios and gallery space, and extends below ground.

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See images of the design and drawings here.

5. Tama Art University Library, Japan by Toyo Ito:

Ito's new library building in Hachioji City, Tokyo, comes across as a mix of hi-tech transparency and late Louis Kahn, its tiered façade of concrete arches set flush with expanses of glass. The interior spaces are a forest of fanned concrete pillars, showing Ito's delight in exposed structure, and feature curved banks of shelving designed by Kazuko Fujie.

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See a wonderful post on Dezeen about the Library here.

Funky Find Of The Week: Balenciaga's Caged Shoes

Nope, they're not protoypes, they are actual women's shoes from the famous Couture House, Balenciaga.

Described as Caged Sandals and Caged Boots, these shoes from their women's collection take inspiraton from ski boots and bindings.

To see Balenciaga's full women's shoe collection, click here.

If you must simply have a pair of these fugly shoes, contact them here:

US
Balenciaga America Inc.
542 West 22nd Street
N.Y., N.Y. 10011

The Loss of A Legend:Ettore Sottsass, Designer, Dead at 90

Above: Ettore Sottsass at the retrospective held in his honor at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2006.

By ROBIN J. POGREBIN
January 1, 2008, New York Times Obituary

Ettore Sottsass, an éminence grise of postmodern design who helped found the influential Memphis Group and was responsible for the familiar bright red plastic Olivetti typewriter, died Monday at his home in Milan. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by Francesco Rutelli, the Italian culture and tourism minister.

Although trained and active as an architect, Mr. Sottsass secured a permanent place in pop culture with his designs of everyday items, including office cabinets, table lamps, ice buckets and silverware.

“He was truly a giant of design,” said Paola Antonelli, the senior curator in the Museum of Modern Art’s department of architecture and design. “He had a capacity to really feel the times that he was living in and to change with them.”....
Read the complete new York Times Obituary here.

A few of the items Ettore Sottsass introduced to our world:





Above: one of Ettore's more familiar designs for Alessi, 1987

You can see more of his designs online at the Virtual Design Museum.

It's Hammer Time: 2007 's Record-breaking Auctions

Some people shelled out some serious dough for their favorite collectibles this past year. Here are just a few of the record-breaking auctions from 2007.

1. A copy of the Magna Carta sold for $21,321,000.



There are about 20 in the world, but only two outside Britain. The new owner immediately arranged for it to go back on view at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. It was last sold in 1983 by an English family and bought by Ross Perot, who had also placed it on display.

2. The Rothschild family's pink Faberge egg auctioned for $18,500,000.


The Faberge Egg sold for a price of 18.5 million US dollars ($8.98 million pounds or 12.5 million euro).

3. A Philadelphia Chippendale carved mahogany tea table with a piecrust edge was $6,761,000.

Previously unknown, the Fisher Fox family Chippendale mahogany piecrust tea table sold for $6,761,000, an auction record for Philadelphia furniture, to C.L. Prickett Antiques underbid by G.W. Samaha.

4. A Hertford jewel cabinet from England sold for $3,176,000.

John Webb, Hertford jewel cabinet, commissioned by John Rutter in Paris for the 4th Marquess of Hertford, 1855–1857, sold for $3,176,000, establishing a new record for Nineteenth Century furniture.

5. The rare Honus Wagner 1909-1911 T206 baseball card went for $2,350,000.

The Mona Lisa of all trading cards was put up for auction Feb. 27, 2007 and sold for an unprecedented $2.35 million. The T206 Honus Wagner is recognized by collectors and industry experts as the most famous and valuable baseball card in existence.The card was purchased by a private California sports collector.

6. Two decoys by A. Elmer Crowell, a pintail drake and a sleeping Canada goose, each sold for $1,130,000.


Above: A. Elmer Crowell's preening pintail drake decoy, $1.1 million.


Above: Stephen B. O'Brien Jr with antique preening pintail drake and sleeping Canada goose decoys by renowned carver A. Elmer Crowell.

7. "Inverted Jenny" stamp sells for $825,000



One of the famous error stamps, the "Jenny," a 1918 24-cent stamp showing an upside-down biplane, was sold privately to a Wall Street executive for $825,000. It seems like a bargain. The buyer had tried to buy another of the "Inverted Jenny" stamps a month earlier, but it sold to another collector for $977,500.

8. A Santa Barbara art pottery vase by Frederick Hurten Rhead with a stylized landscape sold for $516,000.

A Rhead Santa Barbara pottery masterpiece, an 11 1/4-inch vase with mirror black glaze and stylized trees, auctioned at a Rago Craftsman Auction in New Jersey for the astounding record price of $516,000 on March 10.

9. Vacheron Watch Sets Record For Christie's

Watches sold well; one of the highest was a vintage 18k pink gold Vacheron Constantine wristwatch with the complications of minute repeating, triple calendar and phases of the moon that brought $457,000.

10. A mechanical bank, "Jonah and the Whale, Jonah Emerges," one of dozens of very high-priced banks, auctioned this year for $414,000.


11. A comic book, the Amazing Fantasy No. 15 that introduced Spider-Man, auctioned for a record $227,000.


Publisher: MARVEL
Condition: CGC 9.4 NM
Census Rank: 2nd Highest CGC Graded
Page Quality: Off-White to White Pages
Type of Holder: Universal
Degree Of Restoration: Unrestored
Pedigree or Highlight: WHITE MOUNTAIN PEDIGREE
Item description: 1962, 1st Spider-Man and Original Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko art.

12. The original art of a Peanuts strip by Charles Schulz auctioned for $113,525.


It showed Charlie Brown at a rainy baseball game.

13. The first electric typewriter, the Blick Electric made in 1902 in the United States, set a world record price of $100,000 at a German auction.



World's first electric typewriter, the »Blick Electric« from 1902, (Lot 172) – invented by the world famous American Charles Blickensderfer, Stamford, CT – as part of the 1st Session of auctioning off the traditional »Remington Typewriter Museum« from the OHA-Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, NY – made an absolute world record price of $ 100,000 (Euro 67,600) at world's leading specialty auction of AUCTION TEAM BREKER in Cologne, Germany.

14. A rainbow spatterware Festoon pattern plate brought a record $37,400.