Reflections and insights from the design office of RoyalByckovas. A brief digest of news and resources to inspire creative minds.

Archive: Garden Building

A true urban infill project by definition, the Garden Building is situated between the Moore Building and the Mosaic Building and occupies the site of the former Enea Garden Lounge in the heart of the Design District.

To honor of the popularity of the public garden, the Garden Building was conceived as an elevated green space, perched above two levels of commercial space. To maximize the leasable area of these new levels, exit stairs, a new elevator and lobby was carved into the adjacent existing buildings.

royalbyckovas.com

Lech Mountain Mirror

Stepping stones lead across a reflective pool of water at Lech Mountain Mirror, a viewpoint in the Austrian Alps, designed by architecture studio Snøhetta to invite a moment of pause.

Located in a village called Lech in the Vorarlberg region, the installation comprises a shallow pool of water on the roof of the Zugerbergbahn cable car station, across which visitors can walk.

snohetta.com

The Design of Data Centres

With AI driving demand, vast data centres are increasingly in the news as people question the impact on local environments. Can architects help to make these buildings look and function better?

When was the last time that buildings animated the population of the United States as much as the current wave of data centre development? In the past two years, the huge, boxy buildings have provoked backlash across partisan lines as plans have been announced across suburban and rural America.

Housing the servers that power cloud computing and, now, artificial intelligence (AI), data centres are an important part of the infrastructure that supports the internet. Usually located in sparsely populated areas, these nondescript buildings have been largely ignored as architecture, but this is beginning to change.

dezeen.com

The Verity House

There are plenty of reasons why theatregoers will be seduced by Verity, the psychological thriller hitting cinemas soon but architecture and design buffs will be lured in by a different type of eye candy: the striking midcentury modern lake house where the majority of the drama unfolds. The house is actually a real building in Armonk, New York, a hamlet in Westchester County just north of New York. The home was built in the early 1960s by Danish designer Jens Quistgaard for Martha and Ted Nierenberg, the founders of the beloved American homeware brand Dansk. Today, the house functions as a wellness retreat centre called Beckoning Path.

wallpaper.com

Single Family House

On a plot in Aichi in Japan, hemmed by a busy road to the north and two vacant lots slated for building, Ryota Sekiya builds Single Family House in Aichi, a cedar frame that manufactures its own light.

The brief begins with an absence. When Sekiya drew the plans, the lots to the east and south stood empty, waiting on houses whose height and mass no one could yet name. Rather than gamble on borrowed sun that might arrive or might be walled off, he decided to make a daylight the neighbors could not touch. The house shifts south, surrenders the uncertain southeast Light, and turns inward on itself.

thisispaper.com

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