Located on a rocky, wind-swept south facing shoreline; this retreat home nestles into the landscape to harmonize with its surroundings and minimize exposure to weather. The home is a vacation retreat for a family of four, who desired a low-impact home with a strong connection to land and sea. The design solution utilizes a simple ‘wedge’ shape geometry, mimicking the hillside slope beyond, and is tucked into a natural depression in the shoreline in order to diminish its visual impact. Living spaces open up completely on north (garden) and south (water) sides via a custom lift-slide door system. Bedrooms focus primarily on the more private, forested slope to the west and the kitchen opens onto an adjacent a rock promontory to the east. Due to the extreme weather exposure of the site, major openings are paired with rolling wall panels to protect them from punishing winter storms, as well as to provide security when unoccupied. The finish palette consists of local materials including douglas fir (floors, trim), western red cedar (siding, wall and ceiling cladding) and pacific madrone (furniture).
Set in the Coast Mountains of western Canada, Whistler Ski House is a family retreat built to withstand the harsh mountain environment. Elevated ten feet above grade, the main level provides a sense of occupying the tree canopy while also floating above snowdrifts and flood prone lake shore.
Due to the nature of the deep soft soil on the lake shore and the home’s location in a high seismic risk zone, the house is supported on a continuous 2-foot thick raft slab on densified soil, created by a series of vibro-densified rock columns that extend 60 to 68 feet deep into the ground. The raft slab “floats” on the densified soil which allows the house to remain stationary during a seismic event that would cause un-densified soil to slide into the lake.
Situated on a sloping site in the Santa Lucia Preserve, an ecological preserve in Carmel Valley, this house is both responsive and respectful towards its environment in a community that emphasizes living in harmony with nature.
The eastern side of the house burrows into the hillside while the west cantilevers dramatically over the falling topography below. Monolithic walls of board-formed concrete and integrally colored plaster anchor the home to the site, while glass and natural materials such as cedar siding, walnut flooring and ipe decks provide a sense of lightness, serenity, and connectivity to the landscape.
The unique shape of the roof is derived from both performance and context. From the exterior, the roof appears to be a simple shed roof. From the interior, however, the bottom of the roof is sculpted in response to the sun and to the quality and scale of interior spaces.
An increasing number of old houses in rural area are being renovated to resort hotels targeting for city dwellers recently in China. This project is located in Baisha Village, Yunnan Province, where is an idyllic rural area with Naxi traditional houses. The masonry façade of the old houses is made by stacking local Wuhua-stones, and people can take a view of the majestic Jade Dragon Snow Mountain nearby. We were requested to reuse the four existing houses and the main gate, also build new buildings in irregular shaped extended site around them.
Article source: neri&hu design and research office
Situated in close proximity to Yangzhou’s scenic Slender West Lake, the site given to Neri&Hu to design a 20-room boutique hotel was a challenging one, dotted with small lakes and a handful of existing structures. The design brief called for the adaptive reuse of several of the old buildings by giving them new functions, while adding new buildings to accommodate the hotel’s capacity needs. Neri&Hu’s strategy to unify these scattered elements was to overlay a grid of walls and paths onto the site to tie the entire project together, resulting in multiple courtyard enclosures. The inspiration for the design actually originates with the courtyard house typology of vernacular Chinese architecture. As with the traditional courtyard, the courtyard here gives hierarchy to the spaces, frames views of the sky and earth, encapsulates landscape into architecture, and creates an overlap between interior and exterior.
DWELL IN PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPES. Made to maximize new landscape experiences, Retreat in Finca Aguy was prefab-born in a factory near Montevideo and transported 200km to its final destination in Pueblo Edén on the edge of an olive field. Perfect combination of industry and landscape: new kinds of landscapes deserve new ways of dwelling.
As the young professional urbanite decided to move back to her hometown to take up the family agricultural legacy, she asked for a space for grooming, contemplation and delicacy. (Located on a remote agricultural estate in southern Mallorca, this structure was the realisation of her dream.) The project focuses on the ritual of self-cleansing, both mental and corporal. Learning from the importance and formality of horse grooming before and after riding it, the project intends to gain back the time devoted to one self that modern times has taken away. The ceremonial procedure begins with the ritual of the equestrian arrival. The horse is stationed and groomed next to the water tank and manger. Next, a peregrination across the raised wooden walkway leads to the ascension through a hatch into the solemn refuge. The elevated sanctuary does not prioritize to shelter from the environment but rather aims to refuge the urbanite from the social order to remind and applause the conditions of her indigenous surroundings. This fragile fortress, keeps you isolated, but also allows a toned down impression of the surroundings. In contrast to the urban daily life of the client, the presence inside the elevated shrine provides no impulses except the internal. Sited at the center of a barley field surrounded by autochthonous bushes and wild olive trees, the structure grants a panoramic view meeting the Mediterranean sea and senses at the horizon the lush island of Cabrera. The minimal space (3×3 meters footprint), functions as a grooming retreat for one person. The structure, made by local timber frames, elevates the cocoon to have exclusive views whilst giving a sense of translucent privacy to the user. Layers of white netting frames are interlaced throughout the interior to grant different opacities for each specific use. The subtle introvertness of the structure encourages the user to take a break from the multitasking contemporary madness, and centre on individual mental and bodily hygiene. With importance on grooming’s meditative (not cosmetic) qualities, the space inspires the user to devote time to the reconnection of the mind to the shell.
MINIMOD CATUÇABA is a primitive retreat with a contemporary reinterpretation, which more than an object aims to become an every-remote-landscape experience.
MINIMOD presents an alternative to traditional construction: based on prefab plug&play logics, it incorporates the benefits that a newly-born industry has to offer. Quiet but not shy, its unique-in-Brazil CLT Wood-Technology combines industrialized products`efficiency and new technologies` sustainability with the sensitivity of the natural material par excellence.
The Won Dharma Center, USA, is a 28,000 square foot recreational and spiritual retreat in Claverack, New York for the Won Buddhists, a Korean organization that emphasizes balance in one’s daily life and relationship to nature. The center is located within a 500-acre property on a gently sloping hill with views west to the Hudson River valley and the Catskill Mountains. The buildings for the Center, including permanent and guest residences, an administration building and a meditation hall, are sited as far as possible from the highway and are oriented toward the west and south to maximize views and light. The symbol of this organization is an open circle, suggesting both a void without absence and infinite return. The buildings are organized around these dual concepts of void and spiral.
Light spaces, implementations, functional elements, green areas forming retreats are the design parameters that have been defined by analysis and are being rotated to form the structural frame for the development of the roof transformation. The two story duplexes afford views, private retreats sheltered by planted zones acting as filters and collective stopover spaces with terraces and views into the city.
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