Paper - Parapets and Princes

Tonight my paper post should really be about tissues as I am going through them like crazy with a savage cold but they are a bit gross - I will keep this short but hopefully still sweet.

Here are some paper worlds to explore, get lost in and rule over. How dreamy

Rock My World - New York Park

I really don't need another excuse to visit New York, I have always wanted to go and hope to sooner than later, but if ever I was to be further convinced it was on seeing this park in lower Manhattan. The Teardrop park by Michael Van Valkenburg Associates is a public residential park surrounded by buildings higher than park’s width but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in visual impact.

It has been built using sustainable principles and with the urban child in mind "the park is designed to address the urban child’s lack of natural experience, offering adventure and sanctuary while also engaging mind and body".

I love that so much careful and clever design has gone into this public space - too often I see parks of catalogue ordered furniture and playground equipment just plonked there with little thought to how people will use the space, it is tired looking before the ribbon is cut. This park looks well utilised and will, like nature, develop and age gracefully. It looks like a community and in cities we need more spaces like this to reconnect with each-other and with nature 'a shopping centre is not a community'.

I can't wait to have an itinerary to add it to.

Images via landezine.com/

Rock My World - Bathrooms

The bathroom from yesterday's Cliff Face House post is hard to beat but these two bathrooms featuring  stone and pebbles also caught my eye this week.

Below is Casa San Miguel De Allende in Mexico designed be David Howell architecture and Interior Design. The pebble wall is made all the more special by the ceiling height - impressive, and the stone basins, the larger of which reminds me of an agricultural trough, are unique and tactile.

Reminiscent of the Cliff Face House from yesterday this Swedish villa bathroom was designed by Wingardhs design studio (image via interiorarcade.com) and the entire house has been carved into the solid rock of the hillside with a big chunk featured in the bathroom - another great example of a building having a solid connection to it's place and a bathing space having a real sense of being in nature.

Rock My World - Cliff Face House

I came across this house, called the Cliff Face House by Fergus Scott architects with Peter Stutchbury Architecture, in architectureau.com's announcement of the 2012 NSW Architecture Awards winners. I was checking out the winning entries at the same time as researching all things rock for this week - one of those serendipitous moments.

The house is built on a sandstone cliff face in Palm Beach, Sydney. It is not just built on a cliff face though it is actually built in a cliff face with the rock of the cliff forming one of the walls of the house (and parts of the floor). It is more than aesthetically pleasing as from an environmental position it also contributes to the natural cooling system for the house.

What impresses me most though is it's connection to place - a literal thing sure but also a feeling.

Images via
fergusscottarchitects.com.au
entry.housesawards.com.au/gallery/2012/2/225