Failed First

by Fougeron Architecture on August 7, 2012

Ingleside Branch Public Library, San Francisco, CA 


I learned the hard way that buildings, especially the ones you don't like, don't go away.

The good news is, you can bury the incriminating evidence. Before starting my firm in 1986, I worked for and with other architects. And while my name and signature are somewhere on those drawings, drafts and contracts, I've been assured that they are deeply hidden in a storage area of pre-electronic files.

One of my very first moonlight projects was with my good friend Kent Macdonald and it was a remodel. The project included a revamped facade. I'd like to think that the project's final appearance was a result of naivete (I was paralyzed by excitement and fear) and some stubborn clients.

Octavia Court, San Francisco, CA


It has an unfortunate composition that includes two different materials that step, something we would never do today. A clumsy balcony hovers overhead. It has been repainted in the ugliest cold color that emphasize the clumsy composition.

Luckily, for a period of time, the evidence was located on a sleepy San Francisco street. Unfortunately, a popular store opened half a block away and now my abomination is passed by thousands. Worse yet, by the time I opened my own firm five years later, I was living within walking distance to the project. 

When your early work is so close to home, on a now desirable street, you have to reconcile yourself to the idea that you'll be seeing the project far too often.

J F R, Carmel, CA


There are some methods of coping:
1. Ignore the problem and wear dark sunglasses
2. And when it's too overcast, you can move to the other side of the street.
3. Or take a very inefficient shortcut.
4. Then, in a moment of maturity, you decide you can stand to walk by it buy only when you regard the project with cold-blooded cynicism.
5. Or with revelrous wisdom that you are now a better architect.

Nowadays, rather than wallowing in the existence of this design...mishap, I use it as a reminder of the kind of architect I have become, rather than the kind of architecture I design.

It was in the time during and after this building that I learned to stand firm. And every time I am ready to cave in, to acquiesce modern design, I think of that little building on-well, the location isn't important.

Parkview Terrace, San Francisco, CA


The thing about buildings (other then their interminable lifespan) is that it takes a long time to get good at making them. You have to learn to communicate and compromise with a client without letting them steamroll over good design. You have to learn to utilize your space rather than just plop down your design. Oh and, not all your ideas are good ones.

p.s. If you want to know where the building is, send me a $50 bill and a self addresses envelop and I will mail you back the address.

Piero Lissoni at La Biennale di Venezia

Piero Lissoni and his architectural designs, distinguished for minimalist style, high-quality materials, and perfect execution, will be presented as part of the official selection of the 13th Architecture Exhibition at Biennale di Venezia 2012. The exhibitions will open with a press preview August 27-28 and will run until November 25th.















Piero Lissoni is at Palazzo Bembo in the exhibition "Traces of centuries & future steps" with the following project: Maranello Tower.

The project for the city of Maranello makes radical choices with the aim of creating an iconic building with a well-defined geometry. The use of innovative material such a polycarbonate emphasizes the communication function of the building: variously sized cladding panels make up the translucent skin which is interrupted only by windows opening onto the surrounding countryside, while restrained back lighting transforms the building into a luminescent body which at night illuminates the square in front. The quadrangular tower houses the staircase and lift, while the covered panoramic terrace extends perpendicularly along Via Dino Ferrari. This alignment allows visitors to enjoy impressive views which take in the Centro Produttivo Ferrari, the Circuito di Fiorano, the historic centre of Maranello and the distant foothills.

And is at the Giardini della Biennale, inside Padiglione Italia, in the section Made in Italy, with the following projects: the headquarters of Boffi, Living Divani, GlasItalia, and Matteograssi.

Boffi headquarters, photo by Giovanni Gastel

Living Divani headquarters, photo by Giovanni Gastel

GlasItalia headquarters, photo by Giovanni Gastel

Matteograssi headquarters, photo by Giovanni Gastel

Friday Five with Larson Shores

Design Milk






Joshua Larson and Carrie Shores of Oakland, CA architecture firm Larson Shores have been busy. They've recently completed a funky modern, mixed-use coffee bar and Asian furniture gallery, Monkey Forest Road Cafe and Gallery. Now, Joshua is in the middle of a full scale renovation and interiors project in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. Carrie is helping to revive an Oakland institution, the New Parkway Theater, which leases space in an old warehouse in the city, by developing their new floor plans and conceptualizing the transformation of the facade. This week's Friday Five is a mix of what inspires the duo, separately and as a team.

1. DZINE
Joshua and Carrie both love DZINE, a showroom inspired by the great showrooms of Milan. It;s carefully edited; the showroom floor is restricted to a handful of notable manufacturers of high-end contemporary furniture. The placement of furniture, accessories, and art is carefully planned to create vignettes that offer more than mere display; rather, the environment presents a unified design vision-an aesthetic, and attitude, a lifestyle.

2. Axel Vervoordt's Kanaal Gallery
A recent visit to Axel Vervoordt's Kanaal Gallery in Belgium left Joshua speechless and inspired. Kanaal at Wijnegem is a former distillery complex consisting of several large brick-and-concrete industrial warehouses with adjoining grain silos originally constructed in the late 19th century in 2000, the Axel Vervoordt Company purchased the site and transformed the setting into the perfect location for exposition rooms, offices, warehouses, and restoration workshops. In the lofty industrial rooms of Kanaal, Axel Vervoordt furthered his ideas of how we might wish to live in the 21st century: enormous spaces, total purity, lack of decoration-just the necessary architecture and inspiring objects and art. In these rough, empty spaces, an old piece of furniture becomes a contemporary piece of art.

3. Arkanary II iPhone Speaker
In our studio there is always music playing, and Pandora and the iPhone are usually involved. Often when working on residential projects, incorporating the TV and music system can be a battle, because we want to embrace technology, but hide the cords. Carrie recently ran across the Arkanary II, a great speaker that snaps into the iPhone. Like many simple designs, thought and design intent went into this product. The old-fashioned form is set against the new technology, creating an interesting juxtaposition that is really fun. The designer, Sang Lee, set up the perfect angle of the phone so the user can see what is happening on the screen, plus there are no cords!

4. Milena Zu
One of the exciting parts of designing restaurants and retail spaces is that your experiences as a designer are broadened by the creations and products your clients bring to the projects. This is how Carrie came to know the jewelry designer Milena Zu. Originally a native Italian, Milena has lived in Bali for over 13 years. She has developed a technique for hand weaving metal to create an exquisite mesh that she then forms into unique pieces of jewelry. The pieces are surprisingly light, engage beautifully with the body, and organic in form.

5. Pancho
Joshua adores his two-year-old rescue dog, Pancho, who seems to be disguised as a fox.


Find the original article here.

Koshino House

Koshino House, Ashiya, Hyogo, Japan designed by Tadao Ando























Tadao Ando's design for the Koshino House features two parallel concrete rectangular confines. The forms are partially buried into the sloping ground of a national park and become a compositional addition to the landscape. Placed carefully as to not disturb the pre-existing trees on the site, the structure responds to the adjacent ecosystem while the concrete forms address a more general nature through a playful manipulation of light.

The northern volume consists of a two-story height containing a double height living room, a kitchen and a dining room on the first floor with the master bedroom and a study on the second floor. The southern mass then consists of six linearly organized children's bedrooms, a bathroom and a lobby. Connecting the two spaces is a below grade tunnel that lies beneath the exterior stairs of the courtyard.

Ando used the space within the two rectangular prisms as a way to express the fundamental nature of the site. This space reveals a courtyard that drapes over an contours to the natural topography. A wide set of stairs follows the sloping land into the enclosed exterior space and allows the light that penetrates through the canopy of trees into the sunken courtyard. This self-governing space represents the fold of nature that has been bound by the conditional structures and become synthetic.

Narrow apertures have been punched through the facades adjacent to the exterior staircase and manipulate complex crossings of natural light and shadow into the interior spaces. The patterns provide the only amount of ornament to the simple rooms. Other slots are cut from various planes of the two modules to produce the same effect of complexity throughout the entire house.

See the original article here posted by Daily Icon.

5 Signed Tip Tons to be Won!

This month, Vitra will be holding a competition on its Facebook page in which participants will have the chance of winning one of five Tip Ton signed by the designers, Barber and Osgerby.





To join the competition go here. The competition deadline is August 1, 2012.

DZINE is pleased to announce that the "ANDO" vase designed by Tadao Ando for Venini is now on display at the showroom.  An absolute synthesis between shape and chromatism, "ANDO" is the perfect evidence of  the ability in works of glass.

Deco by Philippe Starck - FLOS Soft Architecture

It's all about mixing the art of lighting and interior architecture that results in dramatically lovely effects. Philippe Stark is tireless in changing the realities of our daily life, sublimating our roots and the deepest wellsprings of our being into his changes.  His works span all aspects of daily life from watches to motorcycles, taps to cutlery, and lamps to ash-trays, still determined that his designs shall, as ever, respect the nature and the future of mankind.

With his piece for the Soft Architecture collection, Soft Profile Deco, he does just that.  Creating a piece that revolutionizes the way we look at lighting and using a material that can eternally be recycled.

The Soft Profile Deco is a rippling metallic gold or silver linear wall recessed version of his Long and Hard fixture for Flos decorative lighting.