Designer Fernando Abellanas has built a remarkable micro-dwelling in Valencia, Spain, that slides into position under a bridge, suspended safely out of sight from the traffic passing by above.

The clever construction of the room’s frame allows it to roll over tilted sections of beam, making its way between a lofted and secluded position and the top of a slope on the other side for entry and egress.

A hand-crank lets the dweller move the enclosure back and forth without any need for an external power source. Furniture and fixtures, meanwhile, stay put, attached to the vertical span of bridge supports where the room docks.

Embracing a minimalist approach and industrial palette, this urban refuge has flexible walls that can form an enclosure and act as privacy screens, allowing the occupant to hiding completely behind raised plywood surfaces.

A light-touch approach means the structure leaves essentially no footprint – it glides lightly around existing infrastructure. And its built-in mobility mechanism assures castle-like protection, vertical space acting as a natural moat.

Indeed, the designs were based on childhood fantasies and real-worldassociations with hard-to-access spaces like tree houses and table forts easy for children to access but hard for adults.

The dull hum of the road is a bit like the buzz of a family going about its business — the buffer of concrete also dampens some of the noise, making the space less loud than it would be to occupy a space alongside the highway.

Abellanas has long been fascinated with furniture as well as forts, and his work with other artists and architects reflects an ongoing interest in paradigm-challenging designs do-it-yourself guerrilla interventions.

Tattoos and tattooists have made their mark on society – pun intended – but what happens to your neighborhood tattoo parlor when the ink finally runs dry?

Sure, drive-thru is a convenient option for those visiting banks and fast food joints but tattoos? Permanent body decoration is something that shouldn’t be rushed, amiright? Obviously someone didn’t think things through before opening the Outlaw “Drive-In” Tattoo parlor in Tucumcari, New Mexico. As if Route 66 couldn’t get much cheesier and/or sleazier… wonder how many drivers got their kicks engraved all quick & easy-like while Outlaw Tattoo was open? Kudos to Todd Longwood of A Love Of Two Brains for chancing upon this remarkable discovery in late 2013.

Jersey Sore

It’s not impossible the infamous Snooki visited this abandoned tattoo parlor in Browns Mills, New Jersey before it bit the proverbial biscuit – one fervently hopes they sterilized the equipment immediately afterwards, ideally from orbit.

OOZ Next?

Flickr user lungstruck snapped the above closed tattoo parlor in Kent, Ohio on March 6th of 2009. Seems even inebriated college students couldn’t keep this colorful operation afloat. Then again, calling your tattoo studio “TATTOOZ” may have been unwise – who wants tattoos that ooze from a place called TATTOOZ? Besides Xzibit, that is.

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While its creators anticipated this stretched plastic surface appealing to local graffiti artists, they were apparently hoping for a higher grade of street art to adorn the Storefront for Art and Architecture gallery facade in New York City.

Architecture studio SO-IL created this temporary surface as an extension of an exhibition going on within the gallery space, but its creators remain somewhat disappointed: “We knew this would happen. Unrestrained, Storefront pushes itself into the public domain. By wrapping it in a white canvas it further provokes a response from the city. It was anticipated, but what a poor quality of the graffiti… We had hoped for something better.”

So far, tags like “ugly kids” and other scrawled messages have been mainly black spray on the white background – nothing layered or time-consuming. Of course, now that the memo is out, perhaps a different kind of artist will take a try at the surface – that, or the statements may backfire, with artists wondering why they should add value to someone else’s surface.

Illuminated and pressed outward by walls and objects from within the gallery, part of the idea was to draw people into the exhibit by creating visual interest along the street and sidewalk – a novel trick for attracting attention. Still, if this kind of impromptu artistic addition was expected, why not simply invite a group of graffiti artists to contribute in the first place? In the end, once one concedes a surface will be defaced, either it will unfold naturally and unpredictably or will have to be controlled by the property owners – there is no real middle ground.

A colorless LEGO kit may sound boring at first blush, but consider the spatial advantages of letting form, line and shadow stand apart from the profusion of colors normally associated with their iconic blocks.

LEGO Architecture Studio‘s pigment-free approach is unusual for the company and intentionally so: it is made to create an experience that is more like pencil or pen sketching in three dimensions, a thinking-through-building process without the complications of shades and hues.

Though the all-white block series contains over 1,200 pieces uniformly absent of color, it also comes with a colorful 268-page book that shows aspiring architects (or simply interested kids) what is possible in the world of built environments.

This companion volume features the work of famous designers and firms including REX Architecture, Sou Fujimoto, SOM, MAD Architects, Tham & Videgård, and Safdie Architects, covering a range of theory and practice, concepts and reality, all from a diverse group of professionals.

From FastCo: “At the end of each chapter, the lead architects will all sit around a table with Lego and play with the pieces! Only then is the reader invited to take part in a hands-on Lego workshop exploring some of the theories and concepts explored in the chapter, which can range from exercises exploring symmetry, mass, density, the use of negative space, modules, repetition, and more.”

The target audience is also ambiguous – the set could be fun for kids, or ideal for teenagers who want to try their hand at architectural concepts and design before deciding on a college major or career path. In the end, perhaps adults will appreciate it the most, or at least best understand and appreciate the aesthetic understatement … then again, children often understand best that a limited palette of props leaves more to the imagination.

Good home design is not just about a perfect product but about process and context, as illustrated in this case through diagrams, videos and photos of how to make a small space work on multiple levels in Madris, Spain (both physically and proverbially).

MYCC (images by  Elena Almagro) managed to fit in a full bathroom, living room, kitchen, bedroom and office into this curiously-shaped urban shelter, narrow yet also relatively deep and tall (approximately: 2 meters wide, 10 meters long and 5 meters high).

A minimal combination of stairs and ladders connect the different platforms within the resulting studio, set out of the way and rendered partially transparent (staircase sans risers) or set off to the side (ladder along the wall) to help leave open lines of sight between various rooms.

A large skylight directly illuminates the work space, and, indirectly, the rest of the unit as well. The lack of horizontal space limited opportunities for plan-level complexity, but opened up spatial options in section as the dimensional diagram outline shows below.

A quirky animated video takes viewers on a short tour of the conceptual design process, starting with the entry level then splitting off to show how the various floors, nooks and crannies took shape.