Freshome.com - Interior Design & Architecture Newsletter

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• Concrete, Steel, Wood and Stone Shape the Fabulous Washington Park Residence
• Reinventing Indoor Gardening: Click and Grow Electronic Flowerpots
• Contemporary Home in Mexico Displaying Interesting Architecture Details
• Picturesque Floating House on Lake Huron, Canada
• Imposing Contemporary Architecture: Fray Leon House by 57 Studio
• Sustainable Award-Winning Home: Elamang Avenue by Luigi Rosselli
• A Different Type of Gun Store by Artist Monte A. Smith

Concrete, Steel, Wood and Stone Shape the Fabulous Washington Park Residence Posted: 30 Sep 2011 05:28 AM PDT Washington Park Residence, a modern and light flooded residence in Seattle, Washington, exhibits a fascinating facade made of thick and thermally insulated concrete walls. These walls are “layered and modulated to provide carefully framed views from west facing rooms, add depth and shadow to the facade, and orchestrate the entry sequence through the courtyard to the front door.” Sullivan Conard Architects made sure that the house overlooking Lake Washington and the Cascades captured extensive views without interfering with the much needed privacy. The back garden offers the inhabitants the opportunity of enjoying a fabulous reflecting pool that merges visually with the lake below. From the inside, one can enjoy the views through floor to ceiling steel framed windows and doors. Two concrete chimneys warm up the interiors of the main volume, where the living zones are situated – living room, kitchen and library, while the private bedrooms are located in a separate wing. The garage is topped off with an apartment, completing the collection of living spaces. Click here to connect with Freshome on or on

Reinventing Indoor Gardening: Click and Grow Electronic Flowerpots Posted: 30 Sep 2011 04:10 AM PDT What if you could have a lovely indoor miniature garden, without actually watering and fertilizing the plants you grow? We received and interesting product concept that does just that. Click and Grow is an innovative method of taking care of plants the easy way. Based on clean soil-less growing technology and sensors inside, these ingenious pots measure all the necessary parameters and dose an exact amount of water, fertilizer and air, according to the plant's needs. We were interested in knowing more about the system behind this idea, so we asked Mattias Lepp, CEO of Click and Grow, a few questions that revealed quite a few interesting facts. Freshome: How did you come up with this idea ? Click and Grow: About 6 years ago I read an article about the NASA space program where they grew plants in space without soil, using technologies like aeroponics and hydroponics. I got fascinated by the technology and built many growing systems by myself. One day I realized that many people have problems with plants and I started to develop small systems to use at home. During the development I understood that those technologies don’t fit to modern homes and we moved on with our own growing technology. I must say that our pots are just the first step, the perfect test platform for our goal – to grow fresh food in city environments and at home. Freshome: Tell us more things on how this new product works ( I’m pretty sure people are interested and clueless ) Click and Grow: The process of plant growth is taken care of by sensors, processor and software in the pot, which measures all the parameters and doses an exact amount of water, fertilizer and air, according to the plant's needs. The pot is using our own developed soil-less growing technology which takes best from hydroponics and aeroponics, but is expansion of those two. Click& Grow has two parts: The flowerpot – Click& Grow flowerpot includes electronics, sensors, batteries, a pump and a water reservoir. It does not include seeds, nutrients, a plant or software for growing the plant. The plant cartridge – inside a plant cartridge there are seeds, nutrients and special software for growing the plant in the cartridge. Click and Grow: The flowerpot and the plant cartridge work together like a printer. Just like you can change the empty printer cartridge, you can change the plant cartridge in the Click& Grow pot. If the plant’s natural life cycle ends, you can remove the old plant cartridge and insert a new one. Immediately the flowerpot will start to grow a new plant! For that you don’t have to buy a whole new flowerpot, instead you only have to change the cartridge. After placing the new plant cartridge into the flowerpot, it will install all the necessary data for growing the specific plant from the cartridge and the new plant starts to grow. Freshome: Until now how receptive are people to this new technology ? Click and Grow: As every year, more than 10 billion euros in houseplants are thrown away in the US and EU, most people have killed at least one plant and the problem is very familiar for everyone. More than 20,000 consumers from around the globe signed up even before we started the production. Although people are familiar with the problem they are quite surprised when they see the pot and many (maybe most) of them think that this is a magic. This is difficult to people to understand that plants can grow without soil and without watering but actually the technology is copied from the nature – in tropical climates orchids grow freely in trees and collect nutrients and water from the air. Click here to connect with Freshome on or on

Contemporary Home in Mexico Displaying Interesting Architecture Details Posted: 30 Sep 2011 03:05 AM PDT EV House was designed by Ze Arquitectura and is an impressive contemporary home located in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Here is a project description from the developers: “The concept of the project starts locating a central backyard as the focal point of all interior spaces. On the first floor we located all public spaces such as vestibule, double height living & dining room, library, kitchen, family room and a wood workshop. On the second floor we have a second more private family room, 3 bedrooms (each one with their own walking closet and bathroom) and laundry. Finally on the 3rd floor we have a service room. To create textures and cousiness we used hardwood and marble floors as well as marble stone details on several interior walls and chimney. On the facades we used marble stones and wood looking aluminum screens, all integrated by clean geometries and shapes“. How do you appreciate the overall design of this modern home? Click here to connect with Freshome on or on

Picturesque Floating House on Lake Huron, Canada Posted: 30 Sep 2011 01:56 AM PDT Floating House was designed by MOS Architects and has a privileged location, as it was settled on Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada. However, this brought some serious architecture challenges. According to the project developers, “the location on the Great Lakes imposed complexities to the house's fabrication and construction, as well as its relationship to site. Annual cyclical change related to the change of seasons, compounded with escalating global environmental trends , cause Lake Huron's water levels to vary drastically from month-to-month, year-to-year. To adapt to this constant, dynamic change, the house floats atop a structure of steel pontoons, allowing it to fluctuate along with the lake.The formal envelope of the house experiments with the cedar siding of the vernacular home. This familiar form not only encloses the interior living space, but also enclosed exterior space as well as open voids for direct engagement with the lake. A "rainscreen" envelope of cedar strips condense to shelter interior space and expand to either filter light entering interior spaces or screen and enclose exterior spaces giving a modulated yet singular character to the house, while performing pragmatically in reducing wind load and heat gain“. Enjoy the scenic landscape this place offers, as well as the design solutions that were found in order to adapt the project to its unusual environment. Click here to connect with Freshome on or on

Imposing Contemporary Architecture: Fray Leon House by 57 Studio Posted: 30 Sep 2011 12:20 AM PDT Organized around the imposing old trees on the property, the H-shaped Fray Leon House showcases a complex contemporary architecture that depicts the modern connection between man-made residences and the surrounding nature: “The interior spaces are organized around a native tree (Cryptocaria alba) that accompanies the access from the south. Through the hall, the presence of an enormous avocado tree (Persea americana) is framed towards the north, and a private wing towards the east is delimited by an old macrocarpa cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa) and some crape myrtles. Over the central wing, a second private level extends in all of its length, leaving on one end a terrace at the height of the tree's crowns. On the west wing, the public spaces open towards the northern garden through a porch, and the service areas direct their view towards an ashleaf maple (Acer negundo). The wing of services extends towards the south by means of a roof with an opening that surrounds a native Crinodendron patagua that separates the closed garage from the rest of the house.” Designed by Santiago-based architects 57 Studio, the single-family residence located in Santiago, Chile, displays a modern collection of spaces that occupies three levels. Take a look at the detailed photos to fully enjoy this fantastic residence. Click here to connect with Freshome on or on

Sustainable Award-Winning Home: Elamang Avenue by Luigi Rosselli Posted: 29 Sep 2011 11:29 AM PDT Elamang Avenue House is a fantastic modern home that displays a carefully studied space arrangement fit for a modern lifestyle. Luigi Rosselli Architects were the ones who designed the residence located in Sydney, Australia. The owners asked them to build a comfortable home, so the architects created a balanced, sustainable house explained in the sentences below: “It's not a question of good padding on the lounges but the ability of a building to provide a climatically comfortable environment, a place where you seek refuge from the heat of the day or in the cold nights, without having to barricade yourself behind hermetically shut windows. The rammed earth walls and well located operable skylights, the sun drenched courtyard and the breezy verandah, the green roof and external shutters have all contributed to a most liveable waterfront residence and to win the AIA sustainable design award for 2011“. The exterior is made of three landscaped gardens that offer the best solution for enjoying the property. Water tanks and low energy consumption are also on the list of sustainable facilities of this residence. Beautiful and modern, sustainable and comfortable, the Elamang Avenue House is exactly what the owners asked for. Click here to connect with Freshome on or on

A Different Type of Gun Store by Artist Monte A. Smith Posted: 29 Sep 2011 08:26 AM PDT Guns are always better when completely devoided of their atrocious function. Perhaps this was the message that artist Monte A. Smith wanted to send out when designing The Gun Store, an art installation featuring highly controversial objects on display. Monte A. Smith just recently became interested in interactivity and installation. Outside of digital art and new media she is working with street art in the form of knitted/crocheted coverings of various objects, such as toys, parking meters, bike racks, traffics signs and many more. This is also known as "knitfitti”, an interesting form of art if you ask us. Not at all simple, but with a charm that characterizes most handmade products. The Gun Store is a daring idea, certain to have a strong impact on its visitors. How do you appreciate the artist’s works? Do you find this art installation intriguing? Click here to connect with Freshome on or on

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