Asia travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

Name: 18 kowloon east
Architect: Aedas
Location: Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong, China
Size: 32,400 sq m
Status: Completion 2010

Aedas shared with us their design through a 28-storey mixed-use building which includes housing, offices, retail spaces and a car park. A design with efficient office floor plates and a rational box were requested by the client. With the edifice located in a municipality with dense industrial blocks, instead of providing another work tower entirely wrapped in a coolly glazed skin, the design investigates the possibility of providing an environmentally sustainable form in such an industrial property.

Continue reading Green as a theme

Cafe Kureon is a small cafe designed by Tokyo-based architectural design firm Kengo Kuma and Associates located in Toyama, Japan. It has its own uniqueness with shades amid vacant lots that have a beautiful lawn. The whim was ‘to create a building like a forest by piling up pieces of wood, rather than joining them together’. This beautiful wooden design is a testament to the sophistication of that Japanese architecture.

Continue reading Naturalistic inspired design

This project is modest addition for the small property of Huairou about two hours drive away from the urban center of Beijing, China. The “Liyuan Library” by Chinese designer Li Xiaodong Atelier is encompassed within a mountainous and forested landscape. The absolutely glazed interior contains mild and contemplative reading spaces and a disposal of platforms which integrate shelving since books. After analyzing the region’s characteristics, an exterior screen clad with ordinary sticks was chosen to conceal the glass facade, receding engrossment the surrounding mystique without competing with it.

Continue reading A quiet, relaxing environment for literary study and entertainment

Ubon is a Thai bistro specializes in curries, rice & noodles located in the heart of Kuwait city. It overlooks Fahad Al salim street, a street well prized for its commerce back in the days. The opening program of this bistro requires an efficient design for all of the kitchen, storage, further toilet areas; allowing for a spacious dining place. Thanks to this to be executed, the interior works where to integrated with the existing structural elements network a harmonious manner.

Continue reading A contemporary Thai restaurant

The BOI (Board of Investment) Fair is an important event that aims to demonstrate Thailand’s rebuilding efforts among public and private sectors after last year’s floods. The objective of the Bridgestone Pavilion is to communicate the company’s responsibility to the country in manufacturing, research and investment. With an emphasis on showcasing emerging technologies, Architectkidd had the latitude to contrivance design approaches and features that are relatively distinguished among current standard construction practices in Thailand.

Continue reading The cool eco building

WUHAO The Teahouse is a Beijing-based concept shop, founded upon the five elements of Chinese philosophy (fire, metal, water, wood, and earth) and showcasing the works of over 55 Chinese and international designers. Especially for Beijing Design Week, the company moved into the two-storey building in the city’s historic Dashilar district to host numbers of installations, including plastic yellow canaries disguised as growing lemons and an bent opening lined with green paper butterflies. The design retailer WUHAO  partnered with the socially responsible Chinese tea company Tranquil Tuesdays to display a new vision of this traditional space.

Continue reading WUHAO The Teahouse

Swiss-Danish designer Carsten Jorgensen has designed this cozy and loving interior for smith&hsu – a contemporary tea brand based in Taipei, Taiwan. Its peerless loose teas, collected from around the world, are a testament to its deep rage for both Chinese and British tea culture. Beside its carefully assorted tea collection, smith&hsu offers a huge range of tea tools and homemade gourmet food. Combining wooden furnishings with a concrete floor may seem odd, but Carsten Jorgensen has managed to merge these two seemingly disparate elements into an exotic atmosphere for smith&hsu’s patrons.

Continue reading Jars of tea and second-hand books in stacked wooden cubes at a Taipei teahouse

Architects: Oyler Wu Collaborative
Location: Taipei, Taiwan
Team: Oyler, Jenny Wu, Chris Eskew, Matt Evans, Richard Lucero, Sanjay Sukie
Year: 2011
Photos: Oyler Wu Collaborative

Anemone is an architectural creation designed by Oyler Wu Collaborative aimed at weaving together aesthetic experience again tactile engagement, a combination generally considered off limits within the world of contemporary art.

Continue reading Anemone Installation

Internationally renowned architecture studio UNstudio has completed “Galleria Centercity”, a multi-storey department store in Cheonan, South Korea. Recognizing the current behavioral tendencies in Asia where places of retail also serve a exceptionally conversable function, the project focuses on providing a appealing experience for the shoppers by treating the communal area as a point of cultural exchange. It’s a massive department store that also operates as a social a semi-cultural meeting place

Continue reading Galleria Centercity

The Foster + Partners have completed the first of a cluster of solar powered buildings in Masdar city, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The Masdar Institute is  a graduate level, research-oriented university which is focused on option energy, sustainability, and the environment, that will generate more solar energy than it consumes. The building features a perforated frontage made of glass-reinforced concrete colored with local sand and detailed with patterns found in traditional Islamic architecture.

Continue reading The world’s first carbon-neutral, zero-emissions city