Bangladesh raises storm danger to highest level as Cyclone Mora batters coastline

Bangladesh was still picking up the pieces after flash floods in April affected millions of people when a cyclone hit. Cyclone Mora just struck the country’s southeastern coast with rain and winds hours ago, and the BBC reports five people have died. Hundreds of homes have been devastated.

As Cyclone Mora approached yesterday, the country increased its storm danger signal up to 10, the highest level, with warnings some coastal areas were “likely to inundated by a storm surge of four to five feet” higher than normal. The country’s Disaster Ministry told authorities to evacuate people along the coast. Hours ago the cyclone finally struck and is already damaging a country that grapples with cyclones every year.

Related: Aussie surfer designs prefab recycled cyclone-resistant homes

Bangladesh is home to around 160 million people, and around 10 million reside in coastal areas. The BBC and Reuters report that one of the areas that’s already been hit the hardest in Bangladesh is Cox’s Bazaar, where hundreds of thousands of refugees reside. Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar came to Bangladesh fleeing violence, but now many of their temporary homes have been destroyed. Community leader Shamsul Alam told Reuters in the Balukhali and Kutupalong camps nearly all the 10,000 thatched huts were flattened.

Cyclone Mora started to form after recent monsoon rains which led to landslides and flooding in nearby Sri Lanka. According to authorities around 180 perished as a result. In Sri Lanka, around 75,000 people have had to leave their homes. Reuters described the Sri Lankan floods as the most widespread disaster the country has seen since the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004.

Bangladeshi weather officials still said the cyclone wasn’t as bad as they anticipated. It’s supposed to weaken and become a tropical storm as it moves towards India, where officials have already warned of heavy rains in five northern states.

Via the BBC and Reuters (1,2)

Images via SSEC/CIMSS, University of Wisconsin – Madison and screenshot

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LEED Silver-seeking Perry World House marries new and old at Penn

The newest building at the University of Pennsylvania also happens to be the oldest. This curious marriage of new and old is the Perry World House, the university’s new hub for international affairs. Designed by 1100 Architect, the academic building merges a historic 19th century structure with a modern new-build into a LEED Silver-seeking research center with open and flexible spaces.

Completed in 2016, the Perry World House is a 17,400-square-foot academic center that combines a historic house built in 1851 with a new limestone-clad structure. As a center for global and multidisciplinary engagement, the building offers a wide range of spaces including classrooms, meeting rooms, 14 offices, a 50-person conference room, and common rooms open to affiliates from the university’s 12 schools. A glass-enclosed atrium called the World Forum occupies the building’s heart and is used as a multipurpose events space.

The historic house was salvaged and its fake limestone stucco referenced in the new addition clad in real limestone. Merging old and new architectural styles has the added benefit of matching both the pedestrian scale of Locust Walk on one side and the busy, urban scale of 38th Street on the other. In addition the project’s adaptive reuse, the Perry World House is on track to achieve LEED Silver certification with its many sustainable design features, such as the maximization of daylighting, stormwater management with a 90% capture rate of the average annual rainfall, energy-efficient fixtures, and use of recycled materials.

Related: University of Pennsylvania’s green-roofed New College House targets LEED Silver

“With its open and flexible spaces, Perry World House reflects and supports the aims of the institution it houses,” says 1100 Architect founding principal David Piscuskas, FAIA. “We have created an environment, filled with natural light, where different points of view can be discussed in different types of settings. Transparency between spaces reinforces an emphasis on cooperation between academic disciplines and different world views, while the dialogue of a 19th-century cottage and a 21st-century building gives form to the timelessness of these pursuits.”

+ 1100 Architect

Via ArchDaily

Images © Greg Benson

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Plastic waste pop-up pavilion rethinks recycling in the Netherlands

Plastic waste takes on new life in the PET Pavilion, a temporary structure that popped up in a public park in Enschede, The Netherlands. Project.DWG and LOOS.FM designed the 227-square-meter ephemeral pavilion to spark dialogue on topics relating to recycling and sustainable building. The experimental pavilion serves as an educational gathering space and can be easily dismantled for relocation within a day.

The pavilion bears draws inspiration from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House with its steel framework and floor-to-ceiling transparent walls. Over 40,000 plastic bottles are sandwiched between the pavilion’s double-walled transparent corrugated sheets, creating a curtain of crumpled bottles that turn the pavilion into an “abstract lantern” at night. The elevated pavilion also includes a staircase and ramp covered with 25,000 bottle caps and a divider wall filled with 8,000 body wash containers.

“It is really confronting when you encounter the huge piles of waste up close,” write the designers. “That’s something we wanted to work with. ‘Something’ became a pavilion with monumental walls of pet bottles. Dismountable and temporary, with the plot in loan. With a temporary structure you bypass complicated regulation. Society is changing. To build for eternity, is an empty claim. Temporality means freedom.”

Related: Dissolvable bioplastic bags from Bali are safe enough to drink

The PET pavilion is currently located in a temporary park on the grounds of the former Robson pajamas in Enschede. The building is used to host events, from talks to galleries, and also includes a bar and winter garden. The pavilion will be moved to an as yet undetermined site at the end of 2017.

+ Project.DWG

+ LOOS.FM

Images via Project.DWG, art by Martin Oostenrijk, Jelle de Graaf, and André Boone

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Passive solar home built of recycled natural materials "floats in the Australian bush

At first glance, the delightfully sinuous roof that tops the Lauriston house makes the building look more like sculpture than a home in the Australian bush. But a closer look reveals that the building truly is a welcoming retreat meticulously detailed with the luxurious comforts of home and more. Designed by Seeley Architects, the Lauriston house is a beautiful dwelling that embraces the outdoors as well as passive solar principles for an environmentally friendly footprint.

Designed for a client who sought intimacy with the outdoors, the 380-square-meter Lauriston house’s rectangular volume is predominately covered in floor-to-ceiling glazing to overlook the landscape of olive groves and gum trees. To protect the glass home from the elements, the architects carefully sited the building and topped it with an undulating roof that protects against rain and sun. The roof’s wavy shape also references the hilly landscape near Kyneton, Victoria.

“The geometrically aligned rows of olive trees set against a voluptuous landscape evoke a quiet, unspoken tension,” wrote the architects, referencing the contrast between the indigenous flora and the structured olive groves. “The house mimics this tension with the relationship of a meticulously detailed and structured frame against a seemingly effortless floating, sinuous roof.” The building’s glazed form is given a heightened sense of lightness with its bold cantilever.

Related: Solar-powered Bush House exemplifies chic eco-friendly living in the Australian outback

Local natural materials and textures give the home a sense of warmth, from the Messmate timber lining to the colonial-inspired French pattern bluestone. The interior is organized around a centrally located alfresco entrance that separates the private areas on the east end from the public spaces to the west. The open-plan living and dining area opens up to the cantilevered deck with stunning landscape views of hills, dams, and olive groves. The home’s integration of passive solar principles and rainwater capture systems ensures a lower energy footprint.

+ Seeley Architects

Via ArchDaily

Images © Peter Hyatt

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Spherical timber teahouse hides in the treetops of Austria

Teatime is served with a side of enviable treetop views at the pod-shaped Teahouse Riedenthaln nestled in an Austrian garden. Architecture firm a-lp architektur designed the curious igloo-shaped timber hideaway as a modern interpretation of the traditional Japanese teahouse. The 10-square-meter elevated space was largely built from recycled oak wood offcuts.

Located in a private garden, the spherical room serves as a place to drink tea, for hosting regression therapy clients, and as a possible sleeping area. A ramp leads up to the low and narrow entrance that opens to a light-filled and surprisingly spacious interior. Natural light fills the cave-like space through a large painted skylight and two rectangular windows.

Related: Cocoon Tree: A lightweight, spherical treehouse for sustainable living

The tiny teahouse retreat is raised on four black-painted pillars, made of tree trunks. Locally chopped oak timber was used as the main material for the teahouse. The wood cladding was recycled from the small timber offcuts of a local wine barrel-maker and assembled in stacks of over forty layers. The furniture, which includes a counter with a sink, window seat, and sleeping area, is also made from oak timber.

+ a-lp architektur

Via ArchDaily

Images by Christine Leuthner

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Extraordinary man builds 25 plastic bottle homes for refugees in Algeria

A Sahrawi refugee in Algeria is rebuilding lives – literally. Born and raised in the refugee camp, 27-year-old Tateh Lehbib Breica is constructing disaster resistant homes using discarded plastic bottles – for himself and others. These recycled homes are built to endure harsh desert conditions.

It’s no easy feat to construct homes in a climate where temperatures can spike to around 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Sandstorms also prey on refugee shelters in five camps near Tindouf, Algeria, where people live after fleeing violence in the Western Sahara War over 40 years ago. But the area also faces destructive rainstorms – in 2015 heavy rains wrecked thousands of homes.

Related: Mayor born in Syria converts abandoned Greek resort into a sanctuary for refugees

Breica may have found a solution in old plastic bottles filled with sand. He has a master’s degree in energy efficiency after participating in a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) scholarship program. He’d intended to build a rooftop garden, growing seedlings in the bottles, but the circular shape of the energy efficient home he was building posed a challenge to that idea. He wondered what he could do with the bottles instead and recalled a documentary on building with plastic bottles he’d seen during his time at university.

The plastic bottle homes can better withstand storms than adobe, mudbrick, or tent homes, and are water resistant. The homes have thick walls, and partnered with their circular shape, stand up better to sandstorms. Breica built the first bottle home for his grandmother, who was hurt while being carried to a community center to hunker down during a sandstorm. Working with UNHCR, Breica has built 25 homes so far.

He’s earned the nickname Crazy with Bottles for his work. Although he’s won awards for his design, he said, “People still see me as the guy obsessed with recycling bottles and building unusual houses.”

Via UNCHR

Images © UNHCR/Russell Fraser

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Anyone can be a designer using this amazing modular system made from cardboard stools

This amazing “spaceship” playhouse can be assembled in an endless variety of combinations – and it’s made entirely from kid’s folded cardboard stools. Noa Haim of Collective Paper Aesthetics conceived the innovative project that allows everyone to become a designer – and he’s taken the concept on tour around the world. It’s coming the Design Pavilion at Times Square from May 18th and 22nd, so swing on by for a chance to experience the interactive installation and create your own designs.

The design team, led by Noa Haim, conceived Spaceship Heart system as a blank canvas like for people to create their own architectural/urban models. They originally designed the project for the Shenzhen and Hong Kong bi-city biennale of urbanism architecture 2011 and then reconstructed for IX Semana de la Arquitectura in Madrid and he Victoria & Albert museum in London.

Related: Tiny Helix Shelter made of laster-cut recycled cardboard is a temporary habitat for one

During the five-day event in New York, visitors will have the opportunity to create their own structures. The project will be among several interactive projects that will bring design and innovation directly to Times Square’s newly renovated plazas.

+ Collective Paper Aesthetics

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