MINI USA’s exciting MINI Snowman event was held few days ago in Kühtai, Austria. Prototypes of the new MINI John Cooper Works Countryman were previewed and guests had the opportunity to test drive this special vehicle. The event marked the first time MINI has announced that the John Cooper Works Countryman has been built/sold. The MINI John Cooper Works Countryman is a nod to MINI's heritage, which has always been about balancing practicality and efficiency with performance.

The vehicle will make its official debut in an upcoming auto show in 2012 and will be available in the second half of the year.

Image courtesy MINI

Image courtesy MINI

Image courtesy MINI

Image courtesy MINI

Image courtesy MINI

Image courtesy MINI

Image courtesy MINI

The design of the proposal was instinctively developed under basic and determinant assumptions reflected from the local. Water, rurality, urbanity and cultural habits and traditions.

LEEUWARDEN HOUSING - URBAN WATER LILIES, courtesy OODA+OOIIO

LEEUWARDEN HOUSING - URBAN WATER LILIES, courtesy OODA+OOIIO

We have tried to form an interactive balance among all the premises and found in nature a conceptual framework that served as a starting point for the formalization of our urban housing plan. The floating water lilies.

LEEUWARDEN HOUSING - URBAN WATER LILIES, courtesy OODA+OOIIO

This living in water organisms are in their essence specimens that naturally make a "bridge" between water and land world, developing a particular and sustainable ecosystem. Simultaneously the floating water lilies are also a recognizable icon of the Friesland province identity.

LEEUWARDEN HOUSING - URBAN WATER LILIES, courtesy OODA+OOIIO

LEEUWARDEN HOUSING - URBAN WATER LILIES, courtesy OODA+OOIIO

Our proposal design was based in this concept, trying to develop a new parallel urban system.

The need to combine and establish environmental relationships within the study area and the city of Leeuwarden, led us to a cellular organization, created from the abstraction of a water lilies set.

LEEUWARDEN HOUSING - URBAN WATER LILIES, courtesy OODA+OOIIO

Through the juxtaposition , overlap and repetition of the floating cells we were able to organize and develop a unique residential and common environment with high integration of water, green spaces and agricultural areas.

In this way it was possible to bring together all the new residential habits and the natural /rural preexistences, creating a sustainable residential system in harmonious coexistence with the urban and natural environments.

LEEUWARDEN HOUSING - URBAN WATER LILIES, courtesy OODA+OOIIO

All the urban plan was created in a cellular matrix brought by the water lilies abstraction where all the ground floor access housing units, toghether with all the sports, agricultural and public spaces set in water, like floating water lily pad. In this sense all the apartment housing blocks are the exceptional forms with a more vertical assumption, and that are also related with the concept representing the abstraction of the Water lily flower.

+ Project facts

EUROPAN 11 – LEEUWARDEN HOUSING – URBAN WATER LILIES
LEEUWARDEN, NETHERLANDS
EUROPAN 11
Team: OODA: Diogo Brito, Rodrigo Vilas-Boas, Francisco Lencastre, Francisca Santos, Diogo Mesquita, Lourenço Menezes
OOIIO: Joaquín Millán Villamuelas, Jesús Reyes García, Joanna Siejak, Ana Sánchez Torrecilla, Emiliano d´Incecco, Ana Mendicuti, Juan José Ortega López
Result: Settled

+ All images and drawings courtesy OODA+OOIIO

Diaghilev Offices, image courtesy Itai Palti | Photo by Guy Rubinstein

The offices of the Diaghilev is the headquarter of the Boutique Live Art Hotel in Tel Aviv.

Set over 100 Square metres, the office is a hub for the hotel staff, maintenance, call centre, accounting, exhibitions and events department, in-house cafe administration, and general hotel management.

Diaghilev Offices, image courtesy Itai Palti | Photo by Guy Rubinstein

Arranged around a central workspace, the layout physically, and visually links the private rooms of different hotel departments and distributes daylight to spaces that had previously felt disconnected.

Diaghilev Offices, image courtesy Itai Palti | Photo by Guy Rubinstein

The project exposes, in part of the rooms, a previously hidden topology above the office's familiar suspended ceiling. Over 50 individually crafted lights, resembling hanging organisms, cling to the ceiling on adjustable mechanical arms.

A hidden world is revealed by the shedding of the everyday office aesthetic.

Diaghilev Offices, image courtesy Itai Palti | Photo by Guy Rubinstein

+ About Itai Palti

http://itaipalti.com/

Itai Palti currently lives and works in Tel Aviv and London. He graduated with Honours and Commendation in Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. His academic design/research work, The Case for Curiosity has been published and translated into a number of languages.

Itai worked closely alongside the late Jan Kaplicky at the innovative practice Future Systems, on such projects as the Ferrari Museum in Modena (follow its construction here), The New Czech National Library in Prague,
and the refurbishment of Kaplicky's private residence.

In 2011, Itai Palti established an Architecture and Design studio based in Tel Aviv and began work on a number of commissioned works. Alongside design work, Itai is also visiting critic at Tel Aviv university.

+ Photography: Guy Rubinstein

+ All image courtesy Itai Palti | Photo by Guy Rubinstein