Debut of Zaha Hadid Architects New Roca London Gallery

Irwin Weiner ASID - What better way to communicate to the public and the trade that your bathroom brand is sculptural, contemporary, and luxurious than to have Zaha Hadid Architects design your new showrooms? That's exactly what Roca did with their new Roca London Gallery, the third project built in London by Ms. Hadid and her organization. Here is how she describes it.

Our work imbues architecture with the intricacy and beauty of natural forms. Using a formal language derived from the movement of water, the Roca London Gallery has been eroded and polished by fluidity, generating a sequence of dynamic spaces carved from this fascinating interplay between architecture and nature.

The space is not only going to be used to display Roca's product lines, which match the sculptural functionality of their new gallery space; this will become a place for many public activities, including meetings, conferences, receptions, seminars, and exhibitions that will afford the public a wider use and appreciation of this thoughtful creation.

Today's featured video shows how the architectural concepts of the Roca London Gallery, derived from the fluidity and motion of water itself.

Next Week

Irwin Weiner and Jay Johnson are in Paris, on assignment for Design2Share, and D2S will feature a week of Paris design and style videos. Don't miss a single moving image! When they return, Irwin and Jay will file regular Paris updates on their style finds.

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Columbus Day Video: Visit to a Fishing Village on the Italian Riviera

Irwin Weiner ASID - As a South African, and essentially a long-term guest in the United States, it's fascinating to me that we celebrate Columbus Day throughout most of the country. Of course Christopher Columbus didn't "discover" America - it was always here, native americans were here first, other explorers may have traveled here long before, and so on. But the holiday has morphed into more of a celebration of Italian American heritage, focusing on the Genovan Cristoforo Colombo, and it's in that spirit that we feature today's design video on the architecture and street scenes of the small Italian fishing village of Camogli, not too far from Genova (near Portofino, on the Italian Riviera). The video is beautifully photographed by noted nautical and sailing photographer Onne van der Wal (Dutch born, he grew up in South Africa, and now lives in Rhode Island).

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New-Look Residential Architecture Crops Up in Rural Areas

Irwin Weiner ASID - I enjoy seeing new home architecture pop up in unlikely places. Rural, farm country is usually a bastion of older vernacular styles, but homeowners and architects are changing the landscape, dotting it with newer homes that fit in with the old, but provide sly twists that give them startling contemporary features.  

OFIS_Architects (Slovenia) designed their Alpine Hut to fit in with other rural buildings. They used local wood and timber. But there are energy- and water-saving features and clean, fresh lines and windows - not to mention a Dwell-like interior that's anything but "rural" - that make this project starkly modern. (And as you can see at top, Dwell magazine showcased a modern Missouri farmhouse style home on a recent cover.) Explore the Alpine Hut project from OFIS in today's featured video.

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Solar Power Panels on Your Roof - It's in Your Home's Future

Irwin Weiner ASID - This election year is bringing lots of talk about Dirty Energy and providing new Clean Energy jobs for United States citizens. I looked into Danny Kennedy and his new business, Sungevity. The former Greenpeace activist is now actively calling on all homeowners to Solar-Up your home. His company has the software to estimate how effective a specific number of solar panels will be to power your home, and with a US Bank homeowners loan, you can install solar panels on your roof for roughly half the cost of materials and labor, enjoy the energy savings "off the dirty energy grid," and pay back your energy loan in easy installments.

Go to Amazon and learn more about Danny Kennedy's new book, Rooftop Revolution.

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