Dornob | Design Ideas Daily

Nature-Loving Bricks Bring Wildlife Straight to Your Walls

Posted: 01 Feb 2013 10:00 AM PST

We share our homes with nature every day by placing house plants, bird feeders and birdhouses in and around our homes – but Brick Habitats let us share our walls in a quite literal sense.

Brick Habitats are the creation of designer Chooi-leng Tan. She invented these ingenious modules to help bring nature back to the places it has been unceremoniously pushed out of: residential neighborhoods.

The suite consists of three different types of special bricks. They can be used alone or in combination to add planters, habitats and feeders for the flora and fauna you would like to support.

Bowl-shaped pieces can be used upright or inverted to create habitats, feeders or perches for birds or insects. A bowl-shaped brick with a ring-shaped piece above it can be used as a planter for herbs, vegetables or lovely flowers to make your own customized vertical garden.

Of course, the Brick Habitat bricks would have to be integrated during new construction because they are designed to be part of a wall itself. The designer doesn’t explain what happens if one of the special pieces gets damaged or broken off. But the design is still in the concept stage, allowing time for plenty of refinement before the idea is ready to be brought into the real world.

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Patchwork Wooden Bedroom Floor is a Ceiling in Disguise

Posted: 31 Jan 2013 04:00 PM PST

Taking something that is old and making it new again, or using familiar materials for a new and unexpected purpose – these are the hallmarks of modern, conscious design. Japanese firm 403architecture took the ceiling of a Hamamatsu apartment and turned it into a unique and wholly amazing floor known as the Floor of Atsumi.

The owners of the timeworn apartment wanted to see their home repaired and updated. The architects began by dismantling the bedroom’s wood ceiling.

Leaving the pipes and ducts exposed overhead, the team then brought the wood from the ceiling a long way down. They created this patchwork floor that is at once unrestrained and sophisticated.

Because the cuts of wood are all of slightly different colors and sizes, the floor takes on a kind of patchwork appearance.

The floor was left unfinished after careful and thorough sanding, unlike the finished wood floors in the rest of the home. Walking on the patchwork pieces of wood, the human foot can feel the slight discrepancies in the elevation of each piece.

The unique floor is something of a substitute for traditional tatami mats. Because the floor is more or less a repurposed ceiling, it manages to be both old and new at once, breathing life into the home while maintaining a traditional Japanese aesthetic.