Thursday, February 19, 2009

bloomframe

I'm never really surprised when I find something beautiful online and it's been designed by the Dutch. The Bloomframe is no exception. In 2007, Hofman Dujardin Architects came up with an ingenious way to change the facades of buildings, old and new.. by designing a window that can be opened into a balcony in just 15 seconds.

The Bloomframe is made of sturdy steel materials, but still offers some degree of flexibility when it comes to size, materials, and appearance. The standard size though, is 250x220cm and from what I was able to find online, the cost for a single install would be around 10,500 euros. This seems a bit steep to me if their aim is to offer this for older facades, where the owner of the building has to have several installed.. but I'm sure it will still appeal to some.

I wasn't able to come up with much in terms of whether this is in production or not. The bloomeframe website still reflects data that is outdated, stating that they will be available in 2008... and because there haven't been posts made by people who have had the opportunity to use this in their home, it's difficult to offer many criticisms. What I did find though, were some comments that your ability to decorate the "terrace" with plants and furniture would be limited, since you'd have to bring it all into your home when you closed the balcony. Also, the floor of the balcony is the interior wall of your home, located below the window when it's closed.. so the issue of dirt and having a patch of wall covered with foot prints was raised.

What came to my mind is the fact that because it is a open/close design, there are no barriers to protect your home (such as doors) from the rain.. so putting this into a large scale building will place the responsibility on all tenants not to leave the bloomframe open while they aren't home. Another consideration, is the fact that this operated by pushing a button. I can see children getting into trouble with this, and wonder if it wouldn't be safer to have key code activation.

Either way, I think this is such an amazing idea and I hope that I see them dotted around the Netherlands this summer...

1 comment:

Dean said...

what a weird idea. I'm not sure I can see the purpose of this, except from a design standpoint. Very interesting though!