Designer Kenya Hara of Muji and Haptic fame, among other things, has curated a collection of small-scale, DIY architecture projects created by the likes of Konstantin Grcic, Shigeru Ban and others. And you can download the blueprints and watch the accompanying videos of each project to learn how to build them yourself. The only thing is, all of the projects are designed specifically to be used and inhabited by...dogs.
Architecture for Dogs, invented by architects and designers, is an extremely sincere collection of architecture and a new medium, which make dogs and their people happy. By looking at the diagrams or pictures or watching the videos, people all over the world can make these themselves.Dogs are people's partners, living right beside them, but they are also animals that humans, through crossbreeding, have created in multitudes of breeds. Reexamining these close partners with fresh eyes may be a chance to reexamine both human beings themselves and the natural environment.
As our first project, we present 13 pieces of architecture. Please take the time to carefully examine the details of these elaborately designed ingenious structures, and because it's free to download the blueprints, if you find one you like, make it yourself for your dog.
Objects range from rocking dog houses to platforms designed to bring short pets up to human eye-level to cooling platforms for hot weather. Some of the project descriptions are filled with that architecture-speak and have concepts that seem a bit of a stretch, while others are outright clever: Torafu Architects' concept solves the issue of dogs that enjoy burrowing in their owner's clothes, by incorporating the master's old shirts into the frame of a furniture piece.
One warning: At press time the website was acting a bit wonky. Grcic's entry, for instance, refused to load. I'm thinking a dog somewhere has chewed through a server cable.
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