Nowness presents Charles Derenne's short "A Concrete Life", an ode to the architecture of Paris.

For the real-estate blog network Curbed, Aaron Seward returns to his former hometown Fairfield, Iowa, where the Transcendental Meditation movement is located, to take a closer look at the town's Vastu architecture that has evolved since the 90's.

Maharishi Vastu, also called Maharishi Sthapatya Veda, is the architectural corollary of the practice of Transcendental Meditation. It evolved as part of the TM movement's effort to extend its brand to cover all aspects of life. The movement and its followers have been designing and erecting Sthapatya Vedic buildings for the past 20 years, primarily in Fairfield and its environs, but also in communities throughout the world. My trip last autumn was, in part, to slake a professional curiosity—I’m an architectural journalist. My investigation also had a personal dimension. This was far from my first trip to Fairfield. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I went through one year of junior high and two years of high school at MSAE [Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment]. My parents, practitioners of TM since the late 1960s, taught my brother and me to meditate when we were seven years old. We were one of many TM families who came from large cosmopolitan centers—Houston, Texas, in our case—to be part of this community of spiritual seekers located incongruously in the corn belt of Jefferson County, Iowa.

Traffic sign for Vedic City:

A Vastu home on Heavenly Lane:

Featured image: The Maharishi Tower of Invincibility

During an episode of Channel 4's "Grand Designs", I was mighty impressed when witnessing the perfect machinery of assembling the shell of a prefab house by German house manufacturer Huf Haus. The German builders were efficient, skilled, organized, worked fast, and maintained a high work ethic.

Seen as the Rolls-Royce of kit homes, Huf Haus prices start at about £500,000, before land costs. Once they have planning permission in place, customers are invited to Germany to choose everything from the size and layout of the rooms to light switches and bathroom tiles.

Factory production takes four months, after which the flat-pack home is shipped to the UK along with a team of German builders. Assembly of the shell takes a week or less, with the interiors (including electrics and plumbing) taking a further 12 to 14 weeks.

Watch the full "Grand Designs" episode. The really fun part starts at the 22:00 minute mark:

From French photographer Francois Prost's photo series "Faubourg" depicting suburban architecture of Paris.

Les Choux de Créteil, Val-de-Marne, Paris, by architect Gérard Grandval:

Giralda, Saint-Blaise, 20th arrondissement, Paris, by architecture firm Delaage-Tsaropoulos:

Cité Michelet, 19th arrondissement, Paris, by architects A. Coquet, H. Auffret, D. Auger, P. Hayoit de Bois Lucy, J.P. Cazals and B. Massip:

Les tours Nuages, Nanterre, Hauts-de-Seine, Paris, by architect Émile Aillaud:

Porte de Clignancourt, 18th arrondissement, Paris:

H/t Colors Magazine.

As part of making a trailer for his book "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", Ransom Riggs travelled to Europe to visit abandoned castles and chateaus, in Belgium and Luxemburg. On this roadtrip, he brought along the Dutch guide and urban explorer Martino Zegwaard, and their work is a fascinating travel into the past.

A house in a Belgian neighbourhood:

A house in Luxemburg:

The Park Avenue Hotel in Detroit was once recognized as one of the gems in Lew Tuller’s hotel empire in the beginning of the 20th century. In the 50's, the hotel was owned and managed by the Salvation Army, who used it as a home for the elderly, and then as a rehab center for the homeless and drug addicts until 2003. Since then, the hotel has been abandoned, and plans of turning the hotel into condos or apartments didn't come through. And so it happened, in the summer of 2015, the once so grandiose building, was demolished and imploded (see video below).

The Park Avenue Hotel featured 252 rooms and the latest in hotel glitz and glamor: fancy furniture, hide-away wall beds and built-in dressers. Kamper [architect Louis Kamper] outfitted the building’s lobby in the Tudor style and gave it imitation stone walls (ritzy at the time). In the back of the lobby was a lounge room with wooden paneling, English-style furniture and impressive chandeliers. If you kept on walking past the lounge, you’d come across the hotel’s main dining room and two private dining rooms. The hotel also featured many of the mainstays in hotels of the time, including a barbershop, drug store, cleaners and tobacconist.

But ahead of the Great Depression, it became clear that Lew Tuller had overexerted himself. One by one, he would lose his hotels. The Security Trust Co. seized the Park Avenue Hotel from him in 1928. While the hotels would stay in business, they did not offer the same style and service as they did under Tuller’s leadership.

And just as the 1920s through ’40s were kind to Detroit, the 1960s through ’90s were not.

The hotel in the 60's:

Conference room:

A cross:

An executive chair:

Some furniture:

The demolition:

Detroiturbex.com has a nice set of images of the historic hotel as well.

And for more like this, see the work of photographer Kevin Bauman and his project "100 Abandoned Houses".

Photo credit: Image from the 60's via HistoricDetroit.org. Recent images copyrighted by Alanna St. Laurent. See the rest of Anna's Park Avenue Hotel images here.

H/t to Devour.

This funnel wall (Hof der Elemente) is located in Dresden's student district. It is said that when it rains, music will be created, but after seeing video footage (video link), I can't hear this happening. But I really do love that wall!

The "Courtyard of Elements" is one of the strangest and most enjoyable attractions in Dresden's student district in the new town. It's part of the Kunsthofpassage series of courtyards, which is an art experiment by the tenants of the apartment buildings on which the works are installed. Created by sculptor Annette Paul and designers Christoph Rossner and Andre Tempel, this piece was inspired by Rube Goldberg Machine, converting the mere patter of rainfall into a spectacular orchestral symphony.

Photo credit: Vincent Kwong.

Via Ingenium et ars.

The small town of Palm Springs, was once the creative playground to several great architects such as William Krisel, E. Stewart Williams and Albert Frey.

In the film Desert Utopia: Mid-Century Architecture in Palm Springs by Jake Gorst, we get to see rare archival images and footage from this very special era, together with interviews with some of these great architects, homeowners and historians, and learn more about the preservation issues that face the region today.

Featured image: The Tramway Gas Station designed by Albert Frey and Robson C. Chambers. Via Modern Design Interior.

This is the Apple Campus 2 that after project delays is expected to open in 2016 instead of next year.

Here is footage from the construction captured in August:

Below are screenshots from the official Apple Campus 2 video:

I especially love this project because of it´s environmental focus. As Apple´s Senior Arborist David Muffly so beautifully puts it: "The idea is to bring California back to Cupertino."

Spomenik is the name of the book by Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers. It contains a series of photos of monuments called Spomeniks located throughout former Yugoslavia. Commissioned by President Josip Broz Tito, these were built during the 1960s and ’70s to commemorate the Second World War.

Jasenovac, 2007:

Kruševo, 2007:

Niš, 2007:

Tjentište, 2007:

Via TwistedSifter.

In George Clarke's Amazing Spaces we got to see artist Stephen Turner´s environmental friendly houseboat The Exbury Egg, which took 6 months to build with the use of 8km of cedar:

This giant floating egg on the River Beaulieu could well be Hampshire's quirkiest living space.

It may look like it comes straight from the set of a low-budget science fiction movie, but the giant wooden pod cost £40,000 to build and will in fact be the home and workspace of artist Stephen Turner, 58, for the next year.

Interior and hammock:

The 40ft self-sustaining structure, which is registered as a boat, floats up and down with the tide and is designed to have minimal environmental impact. Stephen hopes to highlight climate change while living there.

Images via FWD Home.

Julien De Smedt, founder and director of JDS Architects, created a living space that makes good use of it´s roof.

Elmegade district is probably one of the most densely populated areas of inner Nørrebro, Copenhagen. The triangular block Birkegade / Egegade / Elmegade has a very high density, turning its courtyard to a close to zero surface. When we were asked to design 3 penthouses on top of one of the block’s co-owned buildings our concept became to use the roof of the newly designed top floor to create the ‘missing garden’ for its community of owners. In order to qualify ‘the missing garden’, we looked at the Copenhagen typology of garden, which characteristically has an associated functionality.

The hedonistic rooftop is reflected in a playground with shock-absorbing surface and a playful suspension bridge, a green hill with varying accommodation backed by real grass and durant vegetation, a viewing platform, an outdoor kitchen and barbecue, and a more quiet wooden deck.

We seek to optimize and fully exploit the situations the site has to offer, and thereby design a potential for the future exploitation of the roof to the delight of all the co-op’s residents. Usually a roof defines a final measure of any construction. We imagine cities where people will be the last measure of the environment.

Here is a segment (video) from German television featuring Elmegade.

I've always wanted to spend some time up north. A stay at the Treehotel located in Luleå, Norrland, would certainly be an odd but memorable experience.

Treehotel offers a unique hotel experience: treerooms with contemporary design in the middle of unspoiled nature. Here you can forget about the time constraints of everyday life, enjoy the serenity, and rejuvenate in a sophisticated yet familiar environment.

Picture via Black Tomato.