Friday, February 27, 2009
Architect: LAVADesign engineer, Fabrication & construction: MakMax Australia
Client: Sydney Customs House
This is aninteresting installation project in a heritage building, the Sydney Customs House . Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) , the architects for this project was founded by Chris Bosse and Tobias Wallisser in Sydney. 
The ideas behind this project is to explore the relationship between human , nature and technology. This gigantic sculpture is 20 meter high, sit at the center of the heritage building. 
The shape of the pavilion is not explicitly designed; it is rather the result of the most efficient subdivision of three-dimensional space, which can be found in nature in things like organic cells, crystals and the natural formation of soap bubbles,” says Bosse.
Images and infro from indesignlive
Some other projects by LAVA:
images from LAVA
Taken the idea of Tulou , the architect tried to implement the kind of communal residence into low-income housing area. The Tulou prototype includes 245 apartments, an inn, exercise facilities, a library, storefronts, and varied public space.
According to the designer, imitating the form and the style of tulou is not a good solution in design. The new tulou is designed to suit to the urban fabric by introduce green areas, expressways, overpasses and other features. 
Low income residence gained more attention from designer especially on their living environment now.
Interior of the living areas. 
The A-frame house, or known as the Weeks House originally was at 1,656 square feet with three tiny bedrooms and one bath downstairs and a loft bedroom upstairs, was built by Felder Weeks, AIA, as a vacation place, and not somewhere to retire and live year-round.
Paul and Jeannine Weeks bought over the house from his father, Felder Weeks and rennovate it to be a retirement home. 
Rennovation was made by Brian Pittman, Assoc. AIA and the results are a 3,200-square-foot renovation and expansion, including a covered porch and a 544-square-foot guesthouse.
The house was essentially gutted down to the original structure and concrete slab foundation. The recently re-shingled cedar-shake roof was also preserved. The Douglas fir original structural elements were built on and expanded with polished concrete inside and out, local crab orchard stone, cork flooring over the original concrete, cedar siding, fir millwork, a spiral staircase to the loft, and ipe decks outside. (from 
The owner of ths house demand an uncrowded spaces and natural materials. They preserved most of the original furnitures used by his father. 
read more about this project : 
Lift lobby
When we reached Jogja, it started to rain. Lucky we managed to get a car to look for hotel.
The hotel we stay in is Grage Ramayana, a very nice and cosy family room. We take a good sleep in the hotel for rest of the time.
Day 3
This is the entrance to the underground passage. This whole area was previously built under water, the passage is the only way to link to other places.
The feeling in the passage is amazing. A repeating interval natural lighting penetrate into the passage creates a wonderful experience for us.
The repeating structures protuding above the underground passage provides ventilation and natural lighting to it.
The passage leads us to this palace, which are almost destroyed by the earthquake. There are reception room and hall to welcome the guests. The roof of the image above according to the tour guide, is a vault roof mainly built by clay , lime stone.
The view from the top of the palace.
We turned and turned in the mazed area above before we reached the underground mosque. 
Another feature in Taman Sari is the bathing pool. There are 2 pools separated by a 2 storey building. The Sultan watched the women bath at the outer pool from the top, and might ask selected women to accompany him at the inner pool.
Borobudur, the largest Buddha Temple in Ninth century, older than Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It is a ten terrace monument, the first sixth terraces are square in dimension, followed by 2 circular terrace and finally a Buddha Stupa siting westward. This is the first time I got a chance to see a heritage monument temple under UNESCO. 
Unfortunely, the building is not under great care. I saw visitors climbing up the stupas and sratches of name on the stones. It seems to me that tourism is not controlled well in a heritage protected area and it is very unsure how long this great piece of architecture will live.
Walking at the terraces, admiring the relief on the wall. Some of the Buddha stupas are incomplete.
Interesting stone craving, which may carry different stories behind each of them.
The Buddha stupa at the circular terraces.
A view of Jogja city with a lot of flags and flyers of different political parties for the preparation of coming election.
Taking 11pm night train to Bandung. It take 8 hours to arrive at Bandung.
Day 3
At the same day, we went to visit the Tangkungan Perahu, an active volcano at Lembang. There is a strong sulfur smell and extremely cold at the area. This is also my first time to see volcano at this close distance.
Besides that, we also wander around Kampung Daun and the Peak. Kampung Daun is some place similar to Cameron Highlands. Every houses planted flowers and plants at their garden, making a colourful green neighbourhood.
I forgot the name of this place. There are mutiple traditional huts scatter around this whole area with good planning of landscape leading visitors to different spot. You can choose any huts you want for a drink and enjoy the environment.
The views of the city from the Peak.
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