You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the Tree Church in Ohaupo, New Zealand. A heavenly 100-seat chapel set among a 3-acre landscaped garden, the church boasts walls made of living trees planted around an iron frame. In 2011, Barry Cox, who runs a tree relocating business, decided that his backyard was missing an old stone church like the ones he had studied and admired on travels to Europe.
— Slate

Get a glimpse inside the Tree Church in the video below.And here's more tree love and cool churches on Archinect:Tree-hugging in the modern ageIt's official: trees are good for your healthNew photos of E. Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel unveiled to mark 35th anniversaryGreat Synagogue of Edirne in... View full entry »

Todd Conversano never thought he'd be able to enlarge the 1950s ranch-style home he and his wife bought a decade ago. Two previous geological reports on the property north of Beverly Hills suggested that it would cause drainage problems or, worse, destabilize the steep slope above the lot.

Instead, he came up with a smarter, cheaper and less intrusive solution. [...]

"I figured out how to do it without touching the building,"
— latimes.com

Using a "moment frame" as the platform, Conversano was able to lift the new addition to sit just above the existing house without adding any additional load to it. The new master suite was then connected to the rest of the house by a staircase, bridging the two structure's interiors. Conversano's... View full entry »

The construction firm VolkerWessels unveiled plans on Friday for a surface made entirely from recycled plastic, which it said required less maintenance than asphalt and could withstand greater extremes of temperature– between -40C and 80C. Roads could be laid in a matter of weeks rather than months and last about three times as long, it claimed.

The company said the environmental argument was also strong as asphalt is responsible for 1.6m tons of CO2 emissions a year globally
— theguardian.com

Related: Taiwan tests recycling's limits with bus stops out of bottlesAfrica's First Plastic Bottle House Rises in Nigeria View full entry »

“Is there a line between architecture and art?” Sylvia Lavin, the influential architecture critic and scholar, asked Jimenez Lai, the architect-cum-artist, during a “Pillowtalk” reopening of his ongoing exhibit at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles. It’s a question that hovers over the... View full entry »

Libraries tend to house their stacks indoors, which makes FLUX's art project Lacuna something of a first: a series of nook-friendly triangular wooden shelves, lightly canopied by pages suspended on wires, Lacuna was designed specifically for this year's Bay Area Book Festival. Better yet: the... View full entry »

In the first, “Ideation” phase of the initiative, those working in the building efficiency area are invited to submit problem statements describing challenges that need to be overcome in order to promote better engagement with building occupants and to improve the ability to balance energy and occupant comfort objectives in a building. In addition to submitting problem statements, participants are invited to vote and comment on ideas that have already been submitted.
— U.S. Department of Energy

Following Bjarke Ingels Group's wildly successful BIG Maze last summer, one could only wonder how Washington D.C.'s National Building Museum would one-up itself this time around. Enter Alex Mustonen and Daniel Arsham of Snarkitecture, who envisioned the 10,000 square-foot indoor BEACH that opened... View full entry »

Nicholas Korody interviewed Andrés Jacque (of the Office for Political Innovation) about COSMO, the winning entry of this year’s MoMA PS1 Young Architect’s Program competition. Therein he argued "I believe that the architect’s role nowadays can also be providing alternatives, and... View full entry »

Most planners and architects can speak volumes about accessibility requirements [...].Tamara Petrovic and Garner Oh, partners of the architecture and design firm 0 to 1, are intimately aware of such needs. To address their son’s difficulty with balance and motor skills, the pair developed a range of products for the home that transform his living environment into a safe and appealing space for all members of the family and resist the institutional aesthetic often seen in special needs products.
— urbanomnibus.net

The Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX debuted this week three new public art commissions designed to greet departing and arriving passengers and provide a measure of calm and reflection amid the chaos of air travel.

The artists involved all have strong ties to Los Angeles -- Mark Bradford, Pae White and the Ball-Nogues studio each resides or works in the L.A. area.
— latimes.com

Adjaye is overseeing the newest installment of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s “Selects” series, which spotlights the little-known West African textiles in the museum’s permanent collection. [...] It also offers the celebrated architect a chance to explore the surprising connections between textile making and building design.

“What’s interesting to me is this idea of fabric and weaving as a kind of abstraction of making places that people come together in,” he says.
— Smithsonian.com

Related: First Look at the Museum of African American History and Culture View full entry »

Today sees the launch of CNN Style, a new online destination for intelligent, stylish content spanning the worlds of fashion, design, architecture, art, autos and luxury.

Throughout July, CNN Style welcomes renowned Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind [...]. As guest editor, Libeskind has commissioned a series of pieces about architecture to be published through July, given an exclusive video interview to CNN Style and written about the interplay of architecture and emotion.
— CNN

The invitation was cryptic. A small piece of wood with a laser-burned message that read, "June 30, 2015. Please join us for tea and wishes overlooking the city. Sunrise, Griffith Park."
— Los Angeles Times

It's a rather charming story: an anonymous collective of artists have fashioned a Japanese-inspired teahouse out of charred wood reclaimed from the 2007 Griffith Park fire and offered it as a gift to the city. Surreptitiously assembled in parts, the teahouse was inaugurated yesterday morning for a... View full entry »