We’re hanging out at Design Milk today as part of their Friday Five series. We’ve highlighted five theoretical architecture projects/concepts that have influenced our design processes. Thanks, Jaime!

MAD, a Beijing based arch office, has some pretty ambitious work. And a lot of it is getting built. Like the Erdos Museum. I actually like the way they solved the skin material problem with horizontal striping instead of supersmooth c&c panels. It gives the shape a better texture and you can understand the scale a little better. The only thing is that I wish it could still be in the middle of the Gobi desert and not in Erdo’s new city centre. To encounter this building over a dune would be incredible, like happening upon a spaceship.

MAD via Shanghaiist

Qb is a multi-disciplinary design studio out of Philadelphia. They sent over one of their latest architecture projects – the Split Level House. The Split Level House is sited on a vacant corner in Philadelphia. I appreciate the seemingly solid facade, which has voids carved out of it to allow light into the house. The interior spaces wrap around the three-story glass entry, framing views in and out of the house. The split nature of interior spaces allows for a transparency within the house, creating visual and spatial connections between the different rooms.

Travel with Gehry has a little write-up of a kindergarden in Japan by Tezuka Architects. The plan is a giant doughnut, with a surface serves as roof and play surface to cover the classroom spaces. Everything is open and the central court serves as a focus point for all the rooms. The school is a very cool project that takes a school’s needs for program and makes a form to accomplish it. It’s too bad schools here in the states aren’t more progressive in this way.

via Notcot

The Sports/City Hall in Bale, Croatia by 3LHD has an amazing interplay of surface vs. volume in the stone facade, giving the project both a heavy and light appearance. By day, the shadow cast at the upturned corner conceals the thiness of the stone, while at night, the interior lights extend through the facade to the thin edge of the stone surface.

via Architonic

Stockholm Library Rendering by a team of students at the Architecture School of Paris La Seine. The rendering story on CGI society is written by Olivier Charles, one of the team members. Pretty interesting story and an amazing image. The path of architectural representation is going so highly technical, it’s frightening yet awe inspiring.

The Pope John Paul II Hall in Croatia, designed by Randić & Turato is quite amazing. The skin dematerializes to allow light in and out of the seemingly heavy, solid mass. From within, the sense of the space is very light and open. I also really like the siting and how the portico integrates into the plaza, and how the zone is re-used for confessions. The entire project is really well done.

photos by Robert Les
via Notcot

The new Maxxi museum, located in the northern outskirts of the city center of Rome, is quite beautiful on its own. Visual context is not much of an issue. The museum is mostly inward-facing, light funnels down from skylights above, into the circulation and gallery spaces. Access to the exterior views is limited. The long interior spaces are the most striking, with the fins reinforcing the mobile program of the circulation zones. Zaha’s work has always been about lines, speed and movement and the Maxxi museum is no different. Take a look at the NYTimes slideshow for some more images.

via NYTimes

Great move of pushing into the ground plane and bridging the gap with walkways in the International Centre for Design in Saint-Etienne, France by LIN. Its material and siting really integrates into the plaza site, but the same material and siting make it very distinctly different from the context of the historical buildings. Inside, the scale switches from massive shell to hyperactive framing. Even though the building is massive, the scale of the triangular frame makes the skin feel much smaller.

via AR

How awesome is this house? Y+M Design designed the Stairs House for two teachers and their children. The roof of the house is one giant set of stairs, which allows light into the house, while still maintaining a private interior. It’s a great, playful space – I’m jealous of those kids!

Via Spoon & Tomago.