Known as the Coconut House, the award-winning contemporaryby Lee + Mundwiler Architects receives its name for a dark exterior casing and crisp white interiors. A two-story atrium forms the core of the eco-friendly home, which incorporates recycled materials and passive solar into the design. Louvers and sliding glass panels invite light while promoting cross-ventilation throughout.

Location: 12918 Short Ave., Mar Vista, 90066

Price: $1.65 million

Year built: 2006

Architect: Lee + Mundwiler Architects

House size: Two bedrooms, three bathrooms, 1,800 square feet

Lot size: 2,500 square feet

Features: Walnut hardwood flooring, pendant lighting, floor-to-ceiling glass, louvers, chefs kitchen, breakfast area, living room with fireplace, atrium/courtyard, patio

About the area: The median sale price in the 90066 ZIP Code for the month of January was $975,000 based on 28 sales, according to CoreLogic DataQuick. That represents a 25% increase in median sales price year-over-year.

Agents: Brian Linder, (310) 592-5417 and Scott King, (323) 828-2049, deasy/penner&partners

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Home of the Day: Peek inside the Coconut House in Mar Vista

Architects - Gravedigger (Live @ Melkweg, Amsterdam 25/2/ #39;15)
Architects closed their set with this monstrous song. Sorry for missing the first seconds of the intro, hehe. Architects headliner tour 2015 with support act...

By: Eric Vellekoop

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Architects - Gravedigger (Live @ Melkweg, Amsterdam 25/2/'15) - Video

Nevada Architects Professional Liability Insurance Policy
Whether your Las Vegas/Clark County, NV architecture firm operates on a large scale basis with multiple projects worth millions of dollars or one of the many small to medium firms in this area,...

By: PJO Brokerage

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Nevada Architects Professional Liability Insurance Policy - Video

Architects - Naysayer C.A.N.C.E.R. (Live Music Hall, Cologne, 26/02/15)
Architects performing #39;Naysayer #39; followed by #39;C.A.N.C.E.R. #39; off their record Lost Forever // Lost Together.

By: GameCoreX

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Architects - Naysayer & C.A.N.C.E.R. (Live Music Hall, Cologne, 26/02/15) - Video

Urban Planning and Development Lancaster PA Community Heritage Partners
Urban Planning and Development http://chpartners.net/ Adaptive Reuse Architects Pennsylvania Preservation Architects Maryland Urban Planning Architects New Jersey Historic Tax Credits Maine...

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Urban Planning and Development Lancaster PA Community Heritage Partners - Video

Doojin Hwang Architects Megacity Network Contemporary Korean Architecture Exhibition
The idea is to offer for the very first time, by means of this presentation of leading architects and architectural studios in South Korea, an insight into the architectural currents and issues...

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Doojin Hwang Architects Megacity Network Contemporary Korean Architecture Exhibition - Video

Architects - Gravedigger BASS COVER

By: Teddy Lee

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Architects - Gravedigger BASS COVER - Video

Out of this world an impression of the Mars One settlement. Photograph: Mars One/Bryan Versteeg

Fifty years from now, says Brent Sherwood, there will be a different kind of honeymoon on offer. Imagine a hotel with a view thats changing all the time, says the Nasa space architect, where there are 18 sunrises and sunsets every day, where food floats effortlessly into your mouth and where you can have zero-gravity sex. Who wouldnt sign up for that?

Born the same year as Nasa, 1958, Sherwood trained as an architect and aerospace engineer. Having spent the past 25 years working on plans for everything from orbital cities to planetary settlements, he is convinced its only a matter of time before space travel becomes a regular holiday option and were living and working on the moon. Theres only one drawback. Nobody knows how to cook in space, he says. Until you can mix a martini or make an omelette, you cant have a space hotel. No one is going to pay $1m a night and put up with microwave meals.

Related: Buzz Aldrin's AMA: colonising Mars and the moon's 'magnificent desolation'

As civilian space travel inches closer, from Richard Bransons troubled but persistent Virgin Galactic ambitions to the plucky Dutch attempt to take reality-TV contestants to Mars by 2024, architects are becoming increasingly important. Until now, says Sherwood, space habitats have been about the bare essentials: Whats the research we have to do, whats the equipment we have to carry, and whats the most cost-effective thing we can stick it all in? But as more people travel to space for increasingly long periods of time, their physical environment and its psychological effects are becoming more important.

Surprisingly, the first space station, Skylab, which orbited the Earth from 1973-79, remains by far the most generous habitat ever launched. It was palatial compared with the current International Space Station (ISS), but only because it wasnt purpose-built: it was recycled out of the fuel tank of a huge Saturn V rocket. Thanks to the insistence of designer Raymond Loewy, a tiny porthole was added which became the most popular feature with the astronauts, who were otherwise trapped inside a grim tin can.

That was the biggest volume weve ever had in space, says Sherwood. Since then, the entire US space programme has had to be squeezed through a 14ft hole. And we still dont know how to make big windows. The diameter of the rockets payload bay limits what can go into space, in the same way that many of the dimensions of buildings on Earth are defined by what can fit on the back of a lorry. And, while a terrestrial building site can have as many deliveries as it likes, space is a different matter: it would cost $500,000 (330,000) to send a single brick to the moon.

As a result, the challenge has always been to develop lightweight materials and kits, a kind of astro-Ikea approach, hopefully without the missing screw. But attention is now shifting towards inflatable structures, allowing entire habitats to be folded up and packed on board. Las Vegas-based aerospace company Bigelow, founded in 1998 by a budget hotel tycoon, now has an $18m contract with Nasa to install the first inflatable on the ISS this year.

It would cost $500,000 to send a single brick to the moon

It might look like a flimsy tinfoil balloon, but the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module is made of one of the most advanced fabrics ever developed: it boasts a layer of bulletproof Vectran, a liquid crystal polyarylate superfibre thats twice as strong as Kevlar and able to withstand micrometeoroids that would penetrate the aluminium shell of the ISS. The company has bigger modules in development and is also making plans for a space hotel though sadly not in the same price range as its Budget Suites of America.

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Let's all move to Mars! The space architects shaping our future

ST. PETERSBURG - Destination St. Pete Pier, the project created by local architects and designers, was he clear winner in the two-week public survey ranking the seven finaproposals to replace The Pier landmark.

The St. Pete Design Groups proposal collected 10,751 votes, 6,306 of which have been verified as city residents, in the voting that ended at midnight Friday.

The Pier Park, by Rogers Partners Architects, finished second with 6,811 votes, 3,999 verfied, and Blue Pier, by W-Architecture and Landscape Architecture, was third with 4,728 votes, 2,700 verified.

In all, 16,797 people participated in the survey, with 9,631 verified city residents over the age of 18.

The results, available online at newstpetepier.com, will be used by the Pier Selection Committee, among other things, to rank the top three proposals to refer to Mayor Rick Kriseman and then to the City Council.

Kriseman is expected to make a final recommendation to the City Council to consider at its meeting April 2. Contracts are expected to be finalized in May or June, and Kriseman has said a new pier should be up and running in 2017.

In a written statement, Kriseman thanked those who participated The key to this process has always been transparency, and that is why it was important to take the pulse of the community and hear their voice, the statement said.

The city has budgeted $33 million for the project, and another $13 million to demolish and repair the pier approach that dates to the original Million Dollar Pier in 1926.

The St. Pete Design Group includes Yann Weymouth, whose work includes the Dali Museum and the renovation and expansion of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Wannemacher Jensen, and architects from Harvard Jolly, founded William B. Harvard who designed the original pyramid more than four decades ago.

The other finalists are: ALMA, by Alfonso Architects; Discover Bay Life, by VOA; rePier, by Ross Barney Architects; and Prospect Pier, by FR-EE, with Civitas and Mesh.

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Destination St. Pete Pier is top choice in survey

Transformed: The original 1920s brick house near Caulfield Racecourse has a new courtyard with a fireplace and a steel staircase leads to a viewing platform of the racetrack. Photo: Architects EAT

Some of the brick houses built along the perimeter roads around Caulfield Racecourse in the 1920s have towers or second level balconies that give vantage of the track. The red brick "Kazoo", named after a champion racehorse, didn't. But now, up a white spiral staircase, it does.

More than a few of these houses also had backyard stable blocks because they were owned by trainers. Kazoo, set on a corner, had a small stable. But now it doesn't.

After a refurbishment and rear addition created by Architects EAT, the stable's bluestone cobbles have been redeployed as a footpath and part of the space the stable occupied has become an open courtyard now partially bordered by a long, high brick wall that wasonce the side wall of the house.

Master suite: A new upper level provides a parental retreat. Photo: Architects EAT

In adding a double-level rear addition, and against the initial wishes of the local council, architect Albert Mo kept the wall complete with its window openings as the ready-made boundary. "It works as protection for privacy and as part of the urban fabric", he says. The new wing migrated across to the south side of site.

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With these and other strategic moves, Mo has made a sanctuary-style home of very interesting geometries, very unexpected features, and with open contemporary amenity combined with graciouslyrestored period rooms with Baltic pine floors, 3.6-metre high corniced ceilings and a wide, arched hallway.

The modern kitchen/master bedroom wing steps dramatically down a flight of concrete stairs that descends a metre to the courtyard level. At this old/new threshold, "the place where everything collides and changes", says Mo, a wide flight of carpeted stairs take off up to the first floor bedroom.

Geometry in motion: The upper level is screened from the sun by powdercoated mesh. Photo: Architects EAT

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Architects EAT transform Kazoo house with geometric connections