emphasizes the opposition between the natural and the human-made at the same time the co-living space overcomes its own anthropomorphic origin and tries to mimic the surrounding landscape the blend between the architecture and nature is achieved through the use of the project’s main materials – glass and wood rhizome took inspiration from the villa typology an architectural category that has always been linked to a particular sort of escapism the living room pavilion enters into a dialogue with this idea and proposes accessibility and openness to the elitist and isolated character of modernist glass house villa which was taken as an aesthetic model for the project the volume also re-establishes the link between the architecture and its context the architects implemented a structural glazing on the first floor which creates an illusion of a volume dissolving into its surroundings also corresponds with the vertical rhythm of the trees around the pavilion is a part of ‘tochka na karte’s’ hotel complex also designed by rhizome developing the idea of ‘an exploded hotel’ whose functions are spread within separately standing buildings a library and a space for events and board games the interior of the pavilion correlates with its exterior: the inner space has been designed with neutral surfaces and minimalistic the absence of intense colors and radical attributes makes guests not focus on the design but on the pavilion’s atmosphere providing new ways of interacting with the pavilion in any season the terrace can be used as a new viewpoint overlooking the lake ladoga and the neighbouring forest in the summertime the rooftop can be turned into an open-air bar with a perfect area for sunbathing the pavilion’s architecture and versatility makes it an ideal blank canvas project name: living room pavilion tochka na karte architecture firm: rhizome designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here. AXOR presents three bathroom concepts that are not merely places of function but destinations in themselves — sanctuaries of style the birds fell from the sky and lay squawking on the shaken ground until they died their black-feathered bodies circling above as the dust settled on the trees The Polygon Nuclear Test Site VIINearly 25 years have passed since the Soviet Union’s nuclear testing site on Kazakhstan’s eastern border stopped detonating nuclear devices It reveals itself in devastatingly high numbers of local birth defects and landscapes adorned with shuttered cities and crumbling buildings Priozersk II (Tulip in Bloom)It is these cities, shrouded in secrecy and not shown on maps until Google Earth unveiled them, that drew photographer Nadav Kander to document the scarred landscapes of Kazakhstan, and, by doing so, to explore the darkness within the human condition. The Aral Sea III (Fishing Trawler)“That idea of secrecy and people keeping things from other people really ignited me,” says Kander. “I just knew that I would find very interesting things in these areas that were still quite secret and difficult to get into. They seemed perfect for what I like to photograph, which is memories and the landscape, the human traces that can tell us more about ourselves than ourselves.” Graveyard Near KurchatovIn the resulting body of work, “Dust,” Kander uses spacious compositions and a subdued color palette to evoke a sense of stillness. The quiet scenes invite the viewer to linger and contemplate the implications of the hauntingly beautiful devastation before them. “My landscapes are never about the nature,” he says. Instead they’re about the “palm print of man, how we exist on our planet, how we deal with our surroundings.” Kurchatov IV (Telephone Exchange)Through Kazakhstan’s radioactive ruins Kander confronts the central balancing acts of human nature. “You can’t live without dying; there’s no beauty without imperfections,” he says. “If you hide away from that all the time, it’s a perfect recipe [for] unhappiness.” Kurchatov I (Scientific Research Facility)These landscapes––and the stories they represent––may seem too wrecked and barren to harbor any remaining beauty, but it is precisely this uncomfortable tension between their beauty and their cynicism that drew Kander in. Priozersk XIV (I Was Told She Once Held an Oar)One of Kander’s favorite images, “Graveyard Near Kurchatov,” was taken just outside of Kurchatov. The ground is covered in a fresh layer of snow, a graveyard stretches along the horizon, and smokestacks in the background release gray plumes of vapor into the air. Of the juxtaposition of life and death, beauty and fallibility, reflected in the image, Kander says, “It is the inevitable, the yin and the yang … the ‘reality of life.'” “I’m always asking myself if my questioning is being seen in the pictures,” he says I’m just like you; I’m leaving the question open A picture doesn’t hold the script—the narrative is all in the viewer.” are two of the closed cities where Russian military tested hundreds of atomic bombs and weapons during the Cold War. see his eerie images of the radioactive ruins left in the closed cities Source: Study Source: Dark tourism Source: Flowers Gallery Highlights from the London-based photographer’s haunting series of images of the ruins of a Soviet nuclear test site Photograph: Nadav Kander/courtesy Flowers Gallery London and New York Photograph: Nadav kander/courtesy Flowers Gallery London and New York