Bone-inspired buildings, MVRDV’s grass carpet rooms, and other updates from the architects of Instagram

At The Architect’s Newspaper, we’re plain addicted to Instagram. Sure, we love seeing Brutalist concrete through “Inkwell” or “Ludwig” filters, but there’s also no better place to see where architects are getting their inspiration, how they’re documenting the built environment, and where they’ve traveled of late.

Below, we bring you some of the best Instagrams of this past week! (Also, don’t forget to check out our Instagram account here.)

Today, the modular design-build company Cover revealed its first unit designed, manufactured, and installed in L.A. The backyard studio is kind of a tiny home and definitely modernist, a fusion of two design trends that define the internet.

Today we reveal the first Cover unit built in our Los Angeles factory and installed in a client’s backyard. It’s a 320 sq. ft. backyard music studio and office situated in the hills of Los Angeles.

A post shared by Cover (@coverbuild) on Oct 12, 2017 at 8:23am PDT

Out in Norway, Snøhetta has designed a new building for the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (UiB) at Bergen with a glimmering metal cassette facade that changes with the light. It’s all flash, in a good way.

The facade at @kmdbergen is clad with 900 seawater-durable crude aluminum elements of varying sizes. The metal cassettes shift according to the weather conditions on the west coast and reinforces the metallic effect of the aluminum. Swipe to see how it plays with the light! #kmdbergen #bergen #norway #architecture #facade #art #school @statsbygg @rambollnorge @unibergen 📷: Trond Isaksen/Statsbygg & @tomaszmajewski.no

A post shared by Snøhetta (@snohetta) on Oct 12, 2017 at 3:37am PDT

While Snøhetta’s newest project sparkles from the outside, Foster + Partners is looking deep within the body for architectural inspiration. The firm has partnered with a PhD candidate at the Royal Veterinary College, London, to “study the relationship between structure and function in bone biology and architectural design at various scales.” To achieve this, Foster + Partners developed a Grasshopper plugin that helps designers create 3D space frames within almost any shape.

Foster + Partners looks at how the study of bone structures can revolutionise architectural design at various scales. Learn more about this piece of research on fosterandpartners.com

A post shared by Foster + Partners (@fosterandpartners) on Oct 12, 2017 at 10:20am PDT

Despite all the talk that digital technologies have killed architectural drawing, there are still many designers who love to render spaces by hand (with a computer assist). KoozA/rch just featured Challenging The Threshold Between Image and Space, a eerily calming pastel computer collage by architect Sven Jansse, founder of Rotterdam’s Image & Space, in collaboration with Alexandra Sonnemans.

Challenging The Threshold Between Image and Space by Sven Jansse in collaboration with Alexandra Sonnemans#art #artitecture #architecture #koozarch To what extent do you agree with the medium is the message – how does the use of collage reinforce the concept behind fragments? Probably the most fundamental concept behind the current work done by Image & Space, is that each visualisation should be able to generate its own value, independently of what they (appear to) represent. They are designed to tell their own story, establish a new truth and present it to the audience to evaluate. The medium is thus even more than the message; the visualisations become the project. They are no longer bound by the physical or economical limits of what they have to make understandable or try to sell, and by presenting the images without their expected context of drawings or a presentation, the spectator gains the freedom to interpret them in a very personal way. In order to stimulate people’s imagination, it’s important that one visualisation never shows the whole building, because it’s up to the audience to connect the different ‘fragments’. In this way, each visitor will ‘build’ a different building, and curate their own spatial experience.

A post shared by KooZA/rch (@koozarch) on Oct 12, 2017 at 12:04am PDT

In meatspace, there’s nothing better than plonking yourself down onto a thick carpet. For a lecture hall at Taipei’s Jut Foundation for Arts and Architecture, MVRDV teamed up with Argentine rug maker Alexandra Kehayoglou to create a verdant greenscape that covers the stepped floors, creeps up the walls, and conceals an exit door.

Jut Group Lecture Hall by MVRDV and @alexkeha #mvrdv #greenliving #landscape

A post shared by MVRDV (@mvrdv) on Oct 12, 2017 at 6:39am PDT