The first apartment sales have been closed for the ‘O’, an MVRDV-designed high-rise that – as one of four letter-shaped apartment buildings that together spell out the word HOME – forms one of the standout elements of Mannheim’s Franklin Mitte neighbourhood. The 15-storey building mixes 120 apartments with ground level commercial units and a bar and terrace. With its playful shape, the building also functions as a local landmark, and a key contributor to the character of the neighbourhood at large.
Design Team: Jeroen Zuidgeest, Markus Nagler, Christine Sohar, Philipp Kramer, Johannes Pilz, Mateusz Wojcieszek, Thomas Grievink, Eleonora Lattanzi, Dex Weel, Manuel Magnaguagno, Mikel Vazquez, Magdalena Gorecka
Casa Houlpoch is an old Yucatecan house from the end of the last century that gets its name from a snake from the region that regularly “visited” the property’s ruins.
Behind its colonial facade, this house accommodates four bedrooms and a studio apartment, with a total of 315 square meters of construction.
Upon entering the hall, we are welcomed by an old cast iron lamp (very common to observe in the nineteenth-century houses of the city) that hangs from the original metal beams that together with the white wooden beams embellish the high ceilings of the residence.
The architecture of the house is characterized by concern for natural habitat and the desire to generate a large-span living space to accommodate the residents comfortably. Therefore, the building is cantilevered above the terrain, preserving all pre-existing trees, relief, and based on a long metal frame with a 12-meter column pitch.
The top of the house is flat, but in the central part it forms a bend and turns into a pitched roof, forming glazing for the skylight. The southern wall of the building faces the pine forest and is made of panoramic glazing, revealing a picturesque view of the entire river valley from all rooms in the house. A balcony extends along the glazing and connects to the main terrace at the end of the house, access to the balcony and terrace is possible through sliding aluminum systems from the rooms.
The design for K31 Courtyard marries together two typical residential building typologies; a stepped podium which surrounds a private courtyard, and two towers that face each other diagonally in such a way as to provide the best possible view corridors for all the residents and enable increased daylight for the apartments.
The podium design, with its stepped terraces, is designed to provide sufficient sunlight for the apartments that face the inner courtyard. These stepped terraces also create a unique feature for this residential project, as they can be used for additional amenities for the adjoining apartments.
Jaima is the fourth residence of a series of concrete houses built by the firm Estudio Galera in a small neighbourhood in the south of Pinamar.
A 1700-square-metre plot bordering an ‘urbanized’ forest gives the possibility of settling down in a context of pines and dunes in the shape of a small urban appendix called Constancia Neighbourhood. This peninsula of ‘domesticated’ forest is set inside an un-plotted massif on the edge of Carilo city.
In order to maximize the connection with the natural surroundings, industrialized resources –such as PVC cubes used in the slab- were incorporated. The brief focuses on devising comfortable spaces in which the rusticity of the environment becomes an asset rather than a setback.
Acute House is the transformation of a ‘renovator’s nightmare’ into a compact 21st century family home. The severe limitations of a tiny, very triangular site and the demanding heritage context have resulted in a pointy new wedge of house that is designed to exploit its problems.
The original, and extremely decrepit, Victorian weatherboard cottage had become impossible to inhabit but was well loved by the neighbourhood as well as its new owners.
We tried to retain its weathered character by re-using as much original fabric as possible from warped weatherboards and fence palings to random accumulations such as door knobs, vents and street numbers. Like fragile museum artefacts, these were carefully removed, labelled, stored and re-installed in their original location on a new mount that not only highlights their charms by contrast but allows the house to live again in a new way.
Stacked Dwelling is a weekend house in Igatpuri, standing on a compact 360 sq m linear plot. The narrative unfolds against the majestic backdrop of the Sahyadris. The name is derived from the organisational strategy which orchestrates the interior spaces as two small houses placed on a platform, albeit cohesive in design vocabulary. The home is oriented along the north-south axis, allowing shading through the day. The entrance is marked by a Nilgiri tree. A pool lies on the east; a patio to the west, the latter shielded from direct view by the staff quarters. The ‘stacked’ concept is intensified through chromatic shifts on the elevation the dark grey grounding the form; the whiteness adding buoyancy; and the yellow weaving in vibrancy and adding an architectural expression to the form.
Throughout 12 years of professional practice we have dedicated ourselves mainly to the development of single-family homes within private subdivisions in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara. These gated communities have proliferated due to the constant growth of crime in Mexico. Which causes people to decide to live protected by walls that give them a sense of security.
We are aware that these neighborhoods mean a denial of the city since they are closed to it but at the same time we understand that Architecture must be a reflection of its time (as Mies said 100 years ago) and today in Mexico they are inevitable.
Located in the Isla del Sol district of Tigre, Casa E is implanted and coexists with the regulations of the place.
At the time of projecting it, we are faced with a corner plot, with an atypical typology within the implantations that are normally worked in the studio.
We decided on a design based on an L-shaped bar located opposite the corner, which instead of having the shape of it, configures two gardens, an internal side one that surrounds the bar and an external one.
Located in Saligramam, Chennai, this upscale home is carefully crafted & envisioned to give a serene escapade brimming with earthy luxuriance for a family of 5, despite being situated amidst the dense urban concrete jungle. With roads on both east & north sides, the 14 cents square plot is closely enveloped by residential & commercial spaces.
Entrance to the site was provided from the east side to ensure maximum privacy and easier accessibility. A transitional entryway filled with lush greenery welcomes the user, which is curated to provide a much-needed respite from the chaos outside. The unwinding courtyard, complementing two linear blocks on either side forms the built mass spreading up to 2/3 of the site. This inward-looking courtyard gently veiled from the outer world space, blends the disparate entities, outer and inner, into a harmonious whole and acts as the innermost core of the house.
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