design | advocate

Dynamic Garden House that Transforms

From the architect Caspar Schols:

This is a dynamic garden house which I built at my parental house. The idea is that the house can be easily adjusted to any weather type, mood or occasion. Mainly built in Douglas wood, it contains an inner shell of double glass and an overarching roof of steel. The space is heated by a small but efficient Norwegian wood stove. The whole project gets its stability from a traditional timber truss structure and is built on 18 pillars of reinforced concrete (150*20*50cm). Excluding terraces, it measures 6 m long and 4 m wide when at its smallest. The length can be increased to nearly 12 m when desired. The majority of the house I prepared as a ‘kit’ in my mother’s garage in about four months. After finishing the kit, friends and family helped putting it together on site in two weeks. Afterwards I worked two more months to finish the project.

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Monotype create Noto for Google: An open-source typeface family for all the world’s languages

With a goal of encompassing every written language, Monotype and Google have released Noto as an open-source typeface for everyone to use.

Noto is one of the largest typographic projects ever undertaken; more than five years in the making, covering over 800 languages with over 100 writing scripts (some never digitised before), each with a harmonious look and feel.

Tofo is the nickname used to describe the blank boxes that appear when a computer or site lacks font support for a particular character. The ambitious brief from Google to Monotype of “no more tofu” which gave rise to the type family’s name. 

“Our goal for Noto has been to create fonts for our devices, but we’re also very interested in keeping information alive,” he adds. “When it comes to some of the lesser-used languages, or even the purely academic or dead languages, we think it’s really important to preserve them.” Bob Jung, Google internationalization expert.  

Intense Research

Rising to this enormous challenge Monotype coordinated an intense research effort, partnering with researchers, designers, linguists, cultural experts and project managers around the world. 

The more obscure scripts required significant research to ensure the scripts adhered to their traditions and rules. Experts were consulted and direct feedback was sought from communities using the scripts. 

For the Tibetan face, Monotype conducted in-depth research into a vast library of writings and then enlisted the help of Buddhist monks to critique the font and make adjustments to the design.

Sketches for Adlam (left) and Tibetan (right)

Using Noto

Not only will the breadth of languages covered by Noto expand the availability of information to more readers and preserve rare writing systems, the typeface is also “a digital workhorse”. It powers the text shown across Android and Chrome devices and importantly because it has been released as a suite of open source fonts it can be used any where.  

Giant Lighted Lucite Map of Gotham City

Brutalist Washington Map

Brutalist Washington Map, Blue Crow Media’s second architecture guide map dedicated to Brutalist architecture, is out now.

The guide features 40 leading examples of Brutalist architecture in and around Washington, D.C., from the Hirshhorn Museum and the J. Edgar Hoover Building (FBI HQ), Dulles Airport and Georgetown’s Lauinger Library to lesser known buildings like the the Woman’s National Democratic Club Annex, National Presbyterian Church and Reston’s Lake Anne Plaza.

The reverse side of the map features an introduction to Brutalism and post-war construction in Washington, D.C. by Deane Madsen along with details for each building, and metro station, including the location, date and the architect or practice responsible.

Perfect for a walking tour or framing, this map measures slightly larger than A2 open, folds to slightly larger than A5 and is protected by a wide band.

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Cabins by Cruschiform

Johnson Square, Savannah

General James Oglethorpe founded Savannah, Georgia in 1733 as a tolerant city composed of wards centered on public squares. The original four squares of his plan were woven together by a grid of streets and alleyways. Ultimately 24 squares were built. It’s as close as America has come to an ideal democratic city.

“If we allow Slaves,” Oglethorpe said,“ we act against the very Principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve the distressed.” . The history of Savannah turned out differently, though. Oglethorpe’s successors abandoned his prohibition of slavery and the city became rich on cotton picked by slaves. His city plan lay beside the Savannah River like a crumpled treasure map.

Pleated House Johnsen Schmaling Architects

This small house for a graphic designer and her husband sits on the heavily wooded eastern shore of Wisconsin’s Door County, a narrow peninsula on Lake Michigan. Embedded in a dense forest of deciduous and coniferous trees, the building’s unassuming volume is quietly nestled in a small clearing at the western edge of the gently sloping site, its low-slung silhouette virtually disappearing in the surrounding vegetation.

The building’s restrained exterior material palette is limited to charred cedar siding from Northern Wisconsin, its textured, somber blackness complemented by varnished clear cedar, dark-anodized aluminum, and glass. Echoing the visual depth and surface oscillations of bark covering the trunks of trees, the charred wood boards were installed over furring strips of varying depths to form a gently folding, undulating building skin, not unlike a pleated curtain – a meandering and highly faceted veil that wraps the house and replaces what could have been a conventional, sharply defined perimeter with a more ambiguous boundary, one that softens the building’s rigorous geometry and moderates the transition from artificial construct to natural context.

REGEN VILLAGES | EFFEKT Location: Almere, The Netherlands Learn More: archdaily.com | www.effekt.dk