Continuing with our emergency shelters theme from not so long ago and for the sake of our friends on the earthquake prone West Coast and now including the East as well, we came across this unique and sophisticated Digital Origami Cave by German architecture firm L-A-V-A. This stylish cave was exhibited at The Emergency Shelter Exhibition in Sydney earlier this month. No, not another one of those exhibitions that feature quirky innovators and their pet peeves but one which featured high caliber designers and architects from around the world including Jean Nouvel (Ateliers), PTW Architects, Tonkin Zulaikha, Koichi Takada Architects and Terunobu Fujimori. Read the rest of this entry »

Have a large garden area? Tried everything from greenery, fountains, and centerpieces to waterfalls to fill up the space? Got some more space left? Allow us to help you make the most of your garden area. If you have oodles of space in your outdoor garden, you may want to consider dedicating a small portion of it for a private room. London based in.it.studios has changed the way you would think about a traditional garden through their eco-friendly, customized studio rooms for ballers who prefer a bit of private indoor space in their garden. You could use the studio for a home office or perhaps even for a guest house. Read the rest of this entry »

We all need a place to rest & relax at home; a sanctuary where we can get away from it all. Sometimes a simple walk in the garden can do the trick, but there are times when the weather has its own plans & we’re forced to stay indoors.

For those times (& those other times you want the visuals of the outdoors, with the luxuries of being inside) there’s OpenSun’s circular set of windows that create a unique patio that can either be closed to protect you against the weather, or opened to integrate your space with the outdoors at the touch of a button.

The OpenSun system features a unique set of curved glass planes on an aluminum frame pivoting on a central axis to enable the glass ‘windows’ to be rotated out of the way, either by hand or by a mechanized system.

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Doors in Motion are a company install automated mechanisms that allow for the automatic opening & closing of your sliding doors & windows.

They do custom installs into new homes or they adapt their devices to suit your current sliding doors, so you can open your doors at the flick of a switch, without the manual labor part.

They have different units available & all integrate with either a touch screen unit or a wall-mounted switch.

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