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

NOMI Box Garden - North Miami

In collaboration with the City of North Miami, R&B and Wyn-Box propose a new events and entertainment venue that will ignite the new Chinatown Cultural Arts and Innovation District. Check out the R&B website for more information.

www.royalbyckovas.com

Infill Urbanism - Japan

When we saw this project we could not resist sharing to highlight the inventiveness that micro housing projects exhibit. The Love2 House is located in Tokyo, a city where high land cost requires a constant retrospective of the urban condition and its architectural manifestation.

It is rare to find an urban infill project of this scale that sits independently; disconnected and detached from the adjacent buildings. As it rises, the roof of the Love2 House tapers inwards, creating voids between the house and the bounding properties. The resultant form permits light to continue to funnel through the existing windows, preserving the internal quality of the neighboring homes.

The intentional form of the roof creates an opportunity within. Light and shadow become devices that skew perspective; constantly redefining the boundaries and volume of this 190 square foot home.

www.hosakatakeshi.com

Designer Spotlight

“Design is about the integrity of things.”

If you are a fan of the Japanese product design and manufacturer Muji, you have touched or experienced the work of industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa. A member of Muji’s advisory board, Fukasawa has built his creative repertoire around making products that feel gratifying and that are inherently personal.

“I try to design not from the perspective of creating something new, but rather from a viewpoint of helping people realize something that they actually knew already,” Fukasawa writes in Naoto Fukasawa: Embodiment, a new monograph about his work from Phaidon.

Fukasawa’s design philosophy “is to embody things according to form that people are unconscious of, and to produce a thoroughly beautiful product.”

Despite his complexity of philosophy and depth of process, Fukasawa strives to attain the essence – the integrity – of a thing. “At the end of the day,” he shrugs, “a pot has to be a pot.”

www.naotofukasawa.com

Innovation - Rooftop Prefab Living and Farming

The advancement of innovative lightweight, modular building systems are propelling a wave of interest in the forgotten highlands of our cities. Adapting rooftops and creating functional urban farms or live / work units on these vacant plateaus has its challenges but recent projects and articles presented here hint at a new realm of possibility.

Argritecture’s work in the fields of agriculture and urban farming are worth exploring to understand the full breadth of this industry and how it may begin to enhance and inform future development. In the article below, Agritecture highlights the benefits and potential concerns for developing a rooftop farming project.

www.agritecture.com
www.architectsjournal.co.uk

Koto Design - Modular

Scandinavian and Japanese design influences collide and provide inspiration for a collection of prefab homes and cabins. Koto Design from the U.K. are energizing a movement to enhance the potential of sustainable, beautifully crafted modular buildings. If you are interested in modular design and development within the USA, check out the work of our friends and partners at Wyn-Box.

www.kotodesign.co.uk
www.wyn-box.com

Watch - Styx

Out to fulfill a lifelong dream, a dedicated German emergency room doctor and experienced sailor, wants to pilot her sailing yacht from Gibraltar to Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. Navigating through treacherous waters, she finds herself faced with a greater challenge, where she will be forced to recognize that there is no way to counter the cruelties of real life and only chance will save her.

"Evokes classical allusions in a scintillatingly modern, provocative way, pulling a clever narrative taut through the cleats, and ratcheting the human stakes high as the implacable blue sky."
—Jessica Kiang, Variety

www.imdb.com

RoyalByckovas create exquisite, original work
in the realm of architecture, interior design and
exterior environments.