The Cowboy is certainly a likable personality so it is no surprise that we find it rubbing shoulders with fellow members of the 2009 Canadian Architect Annual Awards of Excellence .  Congratulations to D’Arcy Jones Design and their meticulous attention to detail that earned them the prestigious Award of Merit for everybody’s small scale favorite, the Cowboy.  So it’s now official when you escape to the Cowboy for a weekend you are indeed spending your time in very esteemed company.  Click through for more details on the award and the renderings D’Arcy submitted for the competition.  (more…)

Technorati Tags:   awards, Build a Cabin, Cabin Kits, Happiness, prefab cabins, small cabin plans, small cabins

At Form & Forest we spend a lot of time thinking of ways and means to make prefab architecture more accessible. It looks like Lego has us beat by a long shot with news that they are introducing two Frank Lloyd Wright masterpieces to their architectural lineup. The Guggenheim model has been available since May 15 and none other than Fallingwater itself will be available sometime in July. So there you have it you’ll be able to build Fallingwater on your coffee table for $45 or so. Not so good for living in, but ideal for looking at, and perhaps the perfect excuse to play with Lego under the guise of serious architectural study. So if you want to build a prefab but are still waiting for the perfect lot to come available or the local authorities to approve your plans you can satisfy your immediate needs with Lego. Perhaps a series of Form & Forest Lego kits will be available in the future…. Lego are you listening?

Click through to see the kits. (more…)

Technorati Tags:   architecture, Lego, prefab

Is the cabin an essential component to refining one’s genius? An especially strong argument for this opens in London today as part of the Royal Institute of British Architects Le Corbusier - The Art of Architecture survey. The RIBA is exhibiting a full scale model of Le Corbusier’s Cabanon . The micro cabin he built in Cap - Martin on the French Riviera in 1952. Designed in less than an hour and coming in at a mere 16 square meteres (about 172 square feet) the Cabanon was the only building this master architect of the 20th century built for himself. Corbusier referred to it as both "my castle on the Riviera" and " my smallest machine for living in"…"where not a square cm of space was wasted". The contrast of these statements one from another is equally matched by the contrast of the surprisingly modest shed like appearance of the outside with the extensively detailed interior. An interior that is both laboratory for Le Corbusier’s thesis of buildings as machines for living, and as a sensible place for a man and his wife to spend their summers. (more…)

Technorati Tags:   architecture, Build a Cabin, cabin life, Happiness, modernism, prefab cabins, small cabins