Charles and Ray Eames thought of design as serious play and viewed toys as important means of stimulating creativity in adults and children. The House of Cards, best known of the toys they designed, invited players to construct fantastic towers of images of “familiar and nostalgic objects from the animal, mineral, and vegetable.
Check out this very interesting article on the design of the house of cards.
And another article
Recipient of the 1999 Stirling Prize (the highest yearly honor awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects), the Natwest Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, by Future Systems, extend’s the Marylebone Cricket Club’s patronage of innovative architecture. Though, instead of a relatively public structure, like Michael Hopkin’s well-known facing stands, the Media Centre is limited to journalists. But where Hopkin’s structures create space by providing shelter, the Media Centre acts as an object to be seen by the public, either at the grounds or on television. The interior is secondary (though impressive): the strength of the design lies in its unabashed object fetish; a sensual, alien form landed on the grounds at Lord’s.
Future Systems publicized this structure as the world’s first all aluminum semi-monocoque building, utilizing the same technology as boat-, car-, and airplane-manufacturers (actually built in a boatyard). With this construction method the interior is free of columns and provides unobstructed views to the field 15m below. Here form and structure are one and the same, as the skin of the building follows the curves of the structural members. In plan the curve acts as an extension of the cricket grounds, while in section it accommodates the west-faced inclination of the glass (to eliminate glare on the field). Aside from these site-specific and practical concerns the form is arbitrary, and the architects took this knowledge and created a unique, yet simple, design.
Also too the redesigned Mound Stand by Hopkins Architects is a mindblowing piece of modernist work.
I shot this image of what is I think is the restraunt at the other end of the field facing the media center. AMAZING. I am looking into having us take an architectural tour after we return from Paris. If anyone knows what this building is please let me know. I have found plenty of information on the NatWest Media Center, but almost nothing on this structure which I think, in many ways is more interesting. Like something truely out of a Kubrick film. AWESOME.
