Casa Sierra Fria is a house located in a residential neighborhood in Mexico City. As the majority of the sites in this neighborhood have regular constructions on three of their four sides, the architectural concept began to explore the idea of the site as a contained void with a structural open grid on top of it. Each quadrant has a different program and a different relationship with the surrounding patio.
This structural grid is intersected in the middle by the staircase and the service units, freeing the surrounding spaces towards the exterior. On top of this light wall-based structure is a solid block that contains the private rooms of the house; these spaces have more restricted openings to outside views.
Team: Pablo Pérez Palacios + Alfonso de la Concha Rojas, Miguel Vargas, Ignacio Rodríguez, Alejandra Pavón, José Hadad, Carla Celis, Johnathan Calderón
“It’s a special opportunity to remodel a house that the clients have lived in for many years. They know the site so well: the best views, the direction of winds, and how the sun interacts with the site throughout the year.” –Jim Olson, FAIA, Design Principal.
A family home originally built over four decades ago, this Fox Island beachfront residence boasts unobstructed views of the Puget Sound and an island wildlife area to the west. Opening up these previously constrained views and integrating the family’s active coastal lifestyle into the home served as the primary directives for the new design. An elevated roofline and a new row of clerestory windows on the home’s water-facing side, along with wall-height windows replacing the original truncated glazing, brighten a previously darker and compressed living area. Hidden pivot points in several of these window walls open the west side of the home to the outdoors, extending the livable area out to the newly remodeled deck.
Project Team: Jim Olson, FAIA, Design Principal; William Franklin, Project Manager; Elisa Renouard and Adam Pearce, LEED® AP BD+C, Architectural Staff; Christine Burkland, Interior Design
The project features a three-apartment urban villa and manages its steep, hilly terrain through retaining walls.
These walls are central to the project, as they define both the internal and external spaces. An entire spatial system of volumes and voids stems from such a perspective. The internal environment is thus extended externally while maintaining definition.
Article source: Martin Mostböck & Pesendorfer | Machalek Architects
The Living Garden project is a residential and apartment house (with commercial use) in the Aspern Seestadt, one of the largest urban development projects in Europe. It is located in the north-eastern part of Vienna. This new district is very well connected to the railway stations, airports and historical centers of the Twin Cities Vienna and Bratislava.
The project Living Garden (J3B) is designed as a green, sustainable building. A central idea of the project is to bring nature as deeply as possible into the city and offer the inhabitants and residents a green lung. In addition to the pleasant climate (oxygen, shading, wind protection), the building is also to be a green building for the residents and the surrounding neighbourhood.
The Haus am Buddenturm is located in the historic city centre of Münster. The street presents three building lines with regard to the plot: the two building lines along the row of houses that border the plot on the east/west and the third that forms the plot boundary. These alignments are perceptible on the building façade. This reveals an urban scale whose typology is collectively rooted in the historic centre of Münster. The façade towards the street has three openings: in the form of a copper façade on the ground floor, as corner glazing with a deep recess in the façade on the first floor and as an opening with a lesser recess on the second floor. These recesses provide a view of the medieval Buddenturm. The staggering of the façade is also visible inside. In the stairwell area, the house increasingly fans out towards natural light which enters the house through glazing in the eave walls and on the ridge of the roof. The house is arranged over four levels. On the ground floor are the entrance, a multi-functional area, the inner courtyard and garage. The living and dining areas, kitchen and a roof terrace with views of the Observanten Church follow on the first floor. Bedrooms and studies along with bathrooms are found on the remaining floors. The texture of the hand moulded bricks fired in a ring kiln creates a link to the historic surroundings. In the interior, the concrete is untreated, the floorboards have been laid on sleepers.
The family residence stands literally on a green field, near a clump of trees, in a pleasant countryside of central Bohemia. The house accommodates three generations of one family. A grandfather, a grandmother, a father, a mother and their two boys – there’s enough space for all of them to spend a summer and a lot of weekends together.
The house consists of several smaller, connected volumes, each of which serves a different purpose. The whole family meets in the central part of the house – there is a living room with a fireplace, a dining room and a kitchen. This area is the true heart of the house, with large sliding windows opening to a garden.
The prefabricated wooden house is built according to the concept of bio architecture in a residential area from where you can enjoy a wonderful view over lake Varese, the Sacro Monte sanctuary and Monte Rosa. Unfortunately enough, this marvelous view (is opposite to south orientation). Bio-climatic solutions helped the architects to reconcile the considerable solar gain (south) with the panorama views (west and north).
For the above reasons, all service spaces (entrance, bathroom, kitchen, and bioclimatic greenhouse), and two staircases (the first leading to the basement, the second from the loggia-terrace to the roof) are located on the south side of the house. The living spaces (living room, studio, and bedroom) are thus located north to enjoy the precious view; however, the large sliding glass doors in the kitchen and the bioclimatic greenhouse mitigate the absence of a direct solar gain. Finally, in the basement are located storage spaces and garage. On the roof are located solar panels, roof garden with wood deck.
Layout – Thanks to the client’s changes, we have altered the original layout design to an open space without many corridors. All the facilities of the flat have been situated into the middle. A kitchen is adjacent to that unit, becoming thus the heart of the living room. We opened bathrooms next to each bedroom more.
Concept / Colours / Materials – We opted for minimalist colours and the whole concept is minimalist, too. The original plan to preserve the uncovered concrete bearing walls in the interior unfortunately failed due to the developer when they plastered them all by mistake. Therefore, we had to set about skim coating to achieve the desired effect. In terms of materials, we accented the central unit of the flat with a black skim coat Betonepox and in the same way we dealt with the surface of the kitchen cabinets which border directly on the central unit. To highlight it more, we put a built-in LED strip of indirect lightening into the ceiling.
the apartment house proposed here lays in one of the representative areas of bucharest, in an area where “the built” is mostly residential and where the two lakes in the neighbourhood lead you towards a possible romantic atmosphere. the importance of the location makes necessary to approach the proposal from the perspective of a possible urban object “landmark”. in a residential theme context the materiality of the façade received a special meaning starting with the concept. thus, the texture coated on wood has the role of creating a sensation of “home”. the volumetry introduces the concept of prismatic compositional hybrid having the role of sugesting the multitude of intimate spaces as being “little houses” belonging to a “mother-house”. the general sensation created by the proposed concept bringing states of: relaxation, intimacy, integrating the perspectives of natural landscape, safety and mental comfort, could create the assumptions of a possible “home”.
“Inspired by the Montessori Theory, an interactive play environment for the child is subtly created in a clean architectural backdrop.” – Kenny Kinugasa-Tsui, co-founder of Bean Buro
“We named it ‘Urban Cocoon’ because we have managed to create an extremely calming and cosy family apartment in the middle of the city.” – Lorène Faure, co-founder of Bean Buro
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
