San Francisco-based Spiegel Aihara Workshop (SAW) has completed the transformative architectural and landscape design of a 1962 home in Mill Valley for a couple and their two young children. The project, known as The Middle Half, dramatically reconfigures the home’s core to create an open, light-flooded interior and direct connection to the landscape. Raw, textured materials like galvanized steel, rough-sawn cedar siding, and cast-in-place concrete define the project and accentuate its unexpected, layered geometries.
“Often when thinking about preserving a thing a structure, an object, a landscape, a city one talks about preserving its ‘heart’ or it’s ‘core.’ But in this case it was the opposite we were trying to preserve the periphery, while completely reimagining the core,” says SAW co-principal Dan Spiegel.
In the southern part of Malé Kyšice town on the edge of the Křivoklát woods, there is a residential district originally home to weekend cottages. One such cottage on a flat plot of land was replaced by a passive home. The floor plan closely resembles a quarter-circle with walls made of exposed concrete blocks. The rounded wall and the ceilings are made of wood. The building opens up to the southwest into a fully grown garden. The fully glazed facade consists of windows set in anthracite frames, which are shaded by blinds inside the triple-glazed windows. The ceiling beams extend to cover the balcony on the upper floor and the terrace on the ground floor. The architects made extensive use of the contrast between the concrete and wooden building elements in the interior as well. The ground floor is home to a living room, kitchen, and dining room, and an open staircase leads to the four bedrooms upstairs. The bathrooms, service rooms, and storage spaces are located along the concrete walls.
Located in a private subdivision in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, the Bonsai House rests on a 12x22m (39.37×72.18 ft) lot and faces Southwest on a downward slope of 2m (6.56 ft).
The owners, a young couple with children, were looking for a house in which to raise their kids. Among their requests was an indoor pool to be used mainly for exercise and physical therapy.
Inserted in a subdivision located in Quinta da Portela, Coimbra, the land is situated in the middle of the hill. Developing a house in this location becomes a challenge due to the natural profile that the land develops.
As such, the project idea is not to land a volume that becomes a dwelling, but to design a volume that conveys the idea that it was carved in the “site” (thus creating the feeling of union with the place) at the same time as it provokes the sensation that it is the volume that holds the hill itself.
For this extension, Studio Kloek came up with spacious solutions, despite the clients wishes to place the new kitchen out of sight. The architect aimed for openness and clarity in the rather narrow terraced house.
The kitchen is placed centrally in the house, with the dining room on the garden side and the lounge in the existing house on the streetside.
For NIO, Kokaistudios established innovative design principles for the electric vehicle brand’s signature NIO Houses. Recently realized in Jinan, the resulting space comprises dedicated areas for all users, and an altogether different take on conventional car showrooms.
For electric car brand NIO, Kokaistudios transformed the corner unit of a shopping mall in central Jinan into a landmark NIO House. Centered on themes of family, community, and home, the resulting space features innovative twists on conventional car showroom elements, such as interactive and mobile displays, as well as strategic material choices. Moreover, the Jinan venue incorporates key design principles for a new design template for the next generation of NIO Houses.
Pleasing Interiors is all about the right proportions of material and textures along with balancing client’s requirements & an effective program. This is a 4-member family apartment having a total carpet area of 2200 sq. ft. The initial brief of the client was that it should be stylish, subtle & under-stated luxury but at the same time it should have its separate functional value.
Inspired by another mid-century modern home the client owned, this new residence represents a much larger 21st-century version built into the gently sloping hillside to take advantage of the sprawling hilltop views of the Sonoma valley. The quiet front facade leads guests into a formal entry that divides the house into private and public spaces. Rounding the corner into the great room, one is immediately hit by the breathtaking view that extends outward beyond the infinity pool and deck through a continuous wall of glass. In the opposite direction, each of the three bedrooms was designed with its own seating area and bathroom, creating private suites for family members and guests alike.
A challenging garden apartment in the center of the big city has become a wonderful home and an island of silence in the urban environment around it.
The project at is led by architects Amir Navon and Raz Melamed, in collaboration with Mentoring project studio 6Bwith the designers who graduated with honors, Netta Tanenbaum and Nitzan Yachimowitz.
Gaîté Montparnasse, the MVRDV-designed transformation of a city block just a short walk from Paris’ Tour Montparnasse, is now open. The project has rationalised the existing uses of the mixed-use block – which included a hotel, shopping centre, office space and a library – and densified the area by adding social housing and a kindergarten. In doing so, the building has become more welcoming and accessible to pedestrians, while reusing significant parts of the previous structure from the 1970s following circular economy principles.
Completed in 1974, the original design of the “Îlot Vandamme” by Pierre Dufau was a landmark in its time, with the strong vertical lines of what is now the Pullman Hotel tower creating an unmissable presence in Montparnasse. At the same time, the plinth of rough textured concrete, boxy reflective glass, and red steel lattices epitomised the foibles of its era: surrounded by wide boulevards, the block was dominated by cars, and when viewed from the street looked introverted and unwelcoming.
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