Organic Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

Located in the municipality of Leogang in the Salzburgerland province, Austria, the Priesteregg Premium Eco Resort resides on a plateau at a height of 1100 meters. Opened in 2009, the resort comprises 15 chalets and three villas, and is surrounded by lush mountain pines, Alpine roses, and bilberry bushes. This setting offers relaxation and breathtaking views of the Leogang Steinberg Mountains, the Steinernes Meer with the Hochkönig, and Kitzbühl Schieferalpen.

The resort's development has been influenced by traditional agricultural land use, leading to a conservationist approach. This includes sustainable energy concepts, support for regional producers, and the use of natural materials in the entire resort. In the three villas, the W2 Manufaktur studio and architect Ulrich Stöckl have curated interiors that blend rustic Alpine style with modern luxury, featuring products from Dornbracht. Each villa uniquely combines natural materials, natural features, and a variety of the brand's fittings and fixtures.

Contemporary architecture's approach to space is fairly linear: enveloping a specified volume within some form of material construct. But if we take a look at humanity's first intentional dwellings, it becomes clear that they were much less premeditated.

Rather than manmade areas to be furnished with pride, our earliest homes were naturally occurring cave lairs that offered hunter-gatherers temporary protection from the elements and potential predators. It wasn't until the appearance of agriculture that our ancestors took permanent, built residences. To this day, troglodytism — or cave living — continues to be connected to ideas of societal disassociation and a hermetic desire to exist outside of orthodox architectural norms. And yet, from Northern China to Western France and Central Turkey, hundreds of millions of people still choose to spend their lives at least partially underground.

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While Egyptian architects were exercising their understanding of modernism in the urban fabric in the 1970s, a “chubby rebellion” in the form of Villa Badran defied the standardized curvilinear forms and rigid geometry. Gamal Bakry dived deep into his imagination to construct this unique piece of architecture that still stands as part of the city of Cairo today. With curving and free-flowing facades, Villa Badran drew inspiration from natural forms. In an attempt to create a living space that was more natural in its essence, the bubbly intervention puts in place a monolithic composition that hosts a two-story detached home for an Egyptian family.

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Architecture office Partisans have recently revealed the design of a new high-rise planned for downtown Toronto, on 15-17 Elm Street. The shape of the tower takes inspiration from the process of cloud formation, more specifically from the cirrocumulus, a meteorological term describing the curl-like shapes that form cloud systems. The 32-storey building will accommodate 174 residential units equipped with personal balconies and necessary amenities.

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Take a second to imagine a building or a room. Chances are you are envisioning flat rectangular surfaces and straight lines. Whether it be walls, beams or windows, most architectural elements come in standard and extremely practical orthogonal shapes. However, the pandemic has shed light on designs that are not only functional, but also that improve our mood and well-being. In that sense, the power of curved, free-flowing surfaces is unmatched, which explains why they have been making a comeback as a modern design trend. Adopting beautiful nature-inspired shapes, organic curls and bends energize rooms and make users feel good. In fact, neuroscientists have shown that this affection is hard-wired into the brain; in a 2013 study, they found that participants were most likely to consider a space beautiful if it was curvilinear instead of rectilinear. In short, humans love curves.

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The "Casa de los Milagros" (House of Miracles), located in the cloudy forest on the outskirts of Xalapa, Veracruz and designed by Mexican architect Danilo Veras Godoy, is a space conceived with organic forms, earth, unexpectedly shaped openings and mosaic glass in different shades. It was designed to meet the needs of Rosalinda Ulloa, a single mother who would live there with her two young children. It was built in stages, starting in 1995, and was completed in 2002, with some changes being made between then and 2006.

Curved shapes have always sparked architects' fascination for evoking nature's beauty, fluidity, dynamism, and complexity. To replicate these shapes, however, is no easy task. From their two- or three-dimensional representation to their execution in their final materials, this represents an enormous difficulty, which requires technical expertise and a great amount of knowledge to achieve strong results. Thinking of new ways to produce organic shapes from natural materials is even more complicated.

In addition to this, working with a natural material such as wood carries its own set of peculiarities. Factors such as the species of wood, where the tree grew, what climate it faced, when it was cut, how it was sliced or dried, among many other variables, largely influence the final result. But it's hard for other materials to compare to the beauty and warmth that wooden surfaces bring to the built environment. If the appropriate processes are used, wood can be curved and remain in the desired shape - and for this, there is a number of known techniques which Australian company, Sculptform, has perfected.

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Modern architecture, in its early days, was based on innovative technologies of construction and a rejection of ornament, which established the use of straight lines in building design. However, thanks to the plasticity of concrete and other materials, new patterns began to emerge, resulting in more organic and curvy lines.

Skyler Dahan, an LA-based photographer, has captured Frank Lloyd Wright's Civic Center, in Marin County. Shot on Kodak Portra film with a Contax 645 medium format camera, the series of images highlight Frank Lloyd Wright's latest commission. Serving as a justice hall, the project was actually completed by Wright's protégé Aaron Green after the architect’s death.

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The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has uncovered the Arizona State Capitol project, a never seen before unbuilt proposal by Wright. An “oasis of democracy in the Sonoran Desert”, the intervention revealed in the latest issue of The Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly, has been digitally remodeled, with photorealistic visualizations by David Romero.

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Question: What does Snoop Dogg, John Cleese, Lucy Liu and Jeff 'The Dude' Lebowski have in common? Simple, they have all, at some point in time, hung out in the living room of the space-age Sheats Goldstein Residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright-disciple, John Lautner.