crossmedia studio
creative large-scale architectural gesture by big — quite curious to see how it is received. m.
following an international competition launched in 2016, MAD architects has now revealed its renovation proposal for the famed parisian skyscraper, ‘tour montparnasse‘. the shortlisted design transforms the huge black monolithic building — positioned in the city center — into an artistic lighting installation that presents an upside down reflection of the city.
beautiful etherial minimalist studio design. m.
The idea, or rather the problem, of solidity seems a central concern to SO — IL’s approach to architecture. SO — IL is an office born in the week of the Lehman Brothers collapse. For its founders Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu this may have appeared catastrophic timing yet, they now acknowledge that that moment is somehow encoded into their project.
way cool! m.
Two houses originally designed by Walter Gropius for professors at the Bauhaus art school in Dessau, Germany, have been rebuilt as a minimalist arrangement of geometric shapes by Berlin office Bruno Fioretti Marquez.
i’m beginning a new section on bvs called ‘guest writers’. this section will spotlight the best writers, across many disciplines, i feel our global readers will find of interest. this will be directly from the artist, studio etc. unedited! so let’s get this going! first up ‘the minimalists’. thank you for your time joshua and ryan! you have the stage! kind regards. m. [repost 01.02.11]
TITLE
“Why We Embraced Minimalism as a Way of Life”
by Joshua Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus | The Minimalists
CONTENT
Why did we decide to embrace minimalism as a way of life? Well, we were two happy young professionals from Dayton, Ohio, but we were only ostensibly happy. We were best friends in our late twenties, and we both had great six-figure jobs, nice cars, big houses with more bedrooms than inhabitants, lots of toys, and lots of stuff in general.
And yet with all this stuff, we knew that we were not satisfied with our lives, that we were not happy. We discovered that working 70 to 80 hours per week and buying stuff didn’t fill the void. In fact, it only brought us debt, anxiety, fear, loneliness, guilt, overwhelm, paranoia, and depression. What’s worse, through all the chaos and clutter, we found out that we didn’t have control of our own time and thus didn’t control our own lives. We are taking back control of our lives now though, using the principles of minimalism to focus on what’s important in life.
We also love the beauty of minimalism. It strips away superfluous embellishments and leaves the essence of what remains: the essence of design, the essence of relationships, the essence of life.
We started our site — theminimalists.com — to document our journey into minimalism and to help other people become minimalists. Our Vision is to see more people with meaningful, happy, fulfilled, free lives. Our Mission is to contribute to others in a meaningful way by helping people become minimalists, to share the beauty and freedom that minimalism provides.
We were inspired by a handful of minimalist writers and websites when we started our journey. One of those sites was obviously blueverticalstudio.com. We’ve been following BVS on Twitter and via this site for a while now (way before we ever dreamed of starting our own site). We appreciate BVS because it seamlessly marries several aspects of minimalism (i.e., design, architecture, quotes, writing, photography, etc.) in a way that other sites can’t. We’d like to thank Michael and BVS for opening the doors to minimalism for us, for adding value to our lives, and for featuring us on this site.
site: theminimalists.com
twitter: @joshuamillburn
crisp planer design located in montreal. m.
A couple with a passion for cooking acquired a house on Drolet street right by Montreal’s Jean-Talon market. They wanted to do a complete renovation and re-organization of the house and had 2 main demands; firstly they wanted a large kitchen island to be the focal point of the house, and secondly they wanted their living spaces on the second floor where they would benefit from more natural light, while keeping the more intimate bedroom spaces on the ground floor.
blueblog 