The longitudinal house located in the “La Cañada” neighborhood of the City Bell town arises as a consequence of the analysis of the conditions and the program needed by the principal.
The main feature of the site is a steep slope towards the stream, which resulted in the idea of creating a wagon-shaped house suspended on stilts without altering the topography of the lot, taking advantage of the natural drainage and avoiding leveling that required large amounts of land.
Rammed earth, concrete and timber are celebrated design heroes at this newly built house in Blackburn.
The site presented interesting design challenges due to its location within a Significant Landscape Overlay in a unique urban pocket of Melbourne. Our response was driven by a focus on family living and the use of sustainable materials. Australian timbers were applied throughout the home, whilst rammed earth blade walls form deep reveals to create protected interior living spaces without compromising access to natural light. These walls offer further protection from the western sun due to the inherent thermal mass properties of rammed earth, along with the burnished concrete slab.
The Credit House project corresponds to a single-family home with a continuous facade between dividing walls, located in the Providencia district, Santiago de Chile. The surrounding neighborhood called “Barrio Italia” is made up of heritage and renovated properties with an artistic and bohemian spirit standing out. Art galleries, fashion stores, restaurants and artist workshops are among the highlights.
The NIU project arose as a way to innovate on construction systems, seeking to increase precision in the materialization of architecture and, through these solutions, to improve the quality of human environments, making them more sustainable and healthier.
Project Team: Fran Silvestre, Andrea Baldo, Gino Brollo, Laura Bueno
Project Manager: Francisco Moreno
Architect: Mauro Díaz, Jaime Rabell
Industrial Engineer: Jaime Gorgues
Interior Design: Alfaro Hofmann
Collaborators: María Masià, Pablo Camarasa, Ricardo Candela, Estefanía Soriano, Sevak Asatrián, Carlos Lucas, Jose Manuel Arnao, Miguel Massa, Paloma Feng, Javi Herrero, Angelo Brollo, Paloma Feng, Paco Chinesta, Anna Alfanjarín, Toni Cremades, David Cirocchi, Gabriela Schinzel, Lucas Manuel, Nuria Doménech, Andrea Raga, Olga Martín, Valeria Fernandini, Víctor González, Sandra Insa, Gemma Aparicio, Sabrina D’amelio, Alejandra Ugena, Víctor Roger, Uriel Tarragó, Rubén March, Rosa Juanes
Only a twenty minutes drive from the city center, this house is built on a site that exemplifies the close access of untouched nature not far outside central Stockholm. In this case a large piece of land that reaches from the waterline, where a boathouse sits on the water, up through a steep forested slope to an open plateau at the top of the hill where the main house is located. The access road rises along a steep cliff from the landside which means that the house is approached from below and that the extraordinary position of the house with wide views out over the archipelago landscape can only be fully understood once arrived at the main level.
Team: Ibb Berglund and Gustaf Fellenius (project architects), Jonas Tjäder, Mårten Nettelbladt, Johannes Brattgård, Stina Johansson, Isabelle Easterling, Carl-Fredrik Danielsson, Samuel Vilson, Wilhelm Falk, Andreas Helgesson
Two celebrations for the pioneering SAWA project in one week. At the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the founders of SAWA – Robert Winkel and Mark Compeer of Mei architects and planners and Nice Developers – were proud to be presented with the 8th architectural award for SAWA for best Conceptual Architecture in America’s prestigious Architecture MasterPrize competition. In the same week, during a festive ceremony, the symbolic starting signal is given for the construction of this very first circular wooden residential building of 50 meters high in the Netherlands. With this, the project team proves that SAWA is more than a groundbreaking and award-winning concept, but also a viable and practical reality.
From the top, Casa de los Milagros (House of Miracles) is all earth-colored mosaic glass curves and unexpectedly-shaped windows, the kind of place one might expect to find a caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland smoking a pipe.
The varying heights of the convex slopes that make up the roof bring to mind a large sea creature in motion. Looking at it from ground level, smooth, earth-colored concrete seems to support the top half like a particularly large stem of a mushroom. Finally, the curved base of the house gives it the appearance of a floating, organic creation. Indeed, the house itself is a kind of Rorschach test: like clouds or abstract art, the interpretation of its unique shape is in the eye of the beholder. According to owner Rosalinda Ulloa, it’s been referred to by different people as a mushroom, an octopus, a bat cave, a flower, and even pie-topping meringue.
October saw the completion of The Twins, a residential ensemble designed by KCAP. The project consists of two robust volumes set around a communal courtyard garden. Stepped green balconies, combined with the sturdy materialization and luxurious detailing, makes for a sensorially rich ensemble, like a three-dimensional oasis right in the middle of Amsterdam.
The house sits in a landscape of immense natural beauty, facing the sea and being aligned with many neighboring buildings.
The two key principles that defined the project were the importance of preserving the environment, based on ecological support – and, more specifically, protecting the dunes and the local vegetal species – as well as the need to ensure the inhabitants’ privacy.
The house is located in a 46 meters long parcel, with a width that goes from 7 to 9 meters. The natural ground rises from the East to the West and it has two buildings that sectorize and qualify the outdoor spaces left.
The main building is set back from the street and it is arranged in two floors. The ground floor is the older one, built more tan 150 years ago and presenting 75 cm width stone load-bearing walls. Very altered, this is where the living room and the kitchen can be found. The top floor, where the bedrooms are located, comes from a later intervention. This building is fully adapted to the topography, which results in a 36 cm jump on the middle of the ground floor.