ODA’s process, just like their design, is fractal by nature – thinking about how cities are made up of small units of life, that operate independently yet are bound by a shared community. This concept has manifested in an iconic new structure in Washington DC’s Navy Yard. West Half, a newly-completed multi-family residential complex, houses 465 apartments, nearly 1000 people, in a single square block. And yet the internal circulation of the building, the curated multi-level amenities, rich access to outdoor space and the cascading nature of the facade creates a connection at the street level and gives the building a transparent, approachable feel, while the bright yellow underbelly of the cantilevers delivers a subliminal layer of color theory 101: Happiness.
The Soil House explores the contact of people with the floor, soil, the grass. Its irregular shape deviases the trees and embraces the center of the ground reinforcing this relationship with the Land.
HEIM BALP ARCHITEKTEN, the Berlin-based practice founded in 2006 by Michael Heim and Pietro Balp, have completed the Carrer de la Diputació and Carrer de Nàpols residential developments. By conceiving them as urban infills, the architecture and urban design team, whose vision is rooted in a distinct notion of architecture as social incubator, demonstrates its sensitivity to and engagement with the local architectural, cultural, and urban context. These completions, each with its distinct architectural language, will be followed by the Carrer de Gombau and Carrer de l’Aurora projects, also addressing Barcelona’s compact urban sphere through context-specific infills, due to be completed in 2022.
Project Team: Pietro Balp, Michael Heim, Ben Goldstein, Sara Brysch, Andreia Martins, Tommaso Petrucci, Giordana Ghinzani, in collaboration with Derryk Dettinger Arquitecte
In this apartment, we had the experience of adapting a previous project, which had not fully met the owners’ needs. The focus of the renovation was the living room and kitchen space, which also included the integration with the balcony area, little used by the couple.
Located in a crowded shopping area in Tokyo, a simple white volume has been placed for two generations of a family. A void which functions as a terrace in second floor penetrates the volume, providing natural light and fresh air to the whole space.
The terrace is “Void of the light”, creating a small universe around this void of the light.
The building has two stories, and areas are clearly articulated. The spaces for elderly couple are placed in first floor, and the younger family are in the second. Public space in first floor has inner void which induces natural light and air from the void of the light which adjoins the inner void.
Two years two months and two days, the writer Henry David Thoreau lived in a cabin which he built himself in Walden Pond, Massachusetts, his childhood town. In just about a space of 3 m x 4.5 meters lakeside, he developed himself as an individual isolated from society looking for inspiration of the natural and its origins. His time at the cabin, let him valued what it’s really necessary and the respect of life itself which leads him to renovate him as a human and fight on social subjects at the end of his life. Which means, it’s funny how the toad is different when it enters than when it leaves the pond.
The plot was located on a slanted road branching from a lower junction. It was surrounded by greenery and laid opposite to a small park. The plot itself sloped gently at the back, which caused level difference of about 1,5 meters.
The building was designed for a 3-generation family of four (grandfather, parents and son) and was requested to have the master bedroom placed at its center, which therefore offered an overall view to the common space and the grandfather’s room on ground floor.
The project was designed for a young family of 4 people. The house was conceived as a country house with modern planning solutions of high comfort. There is a garage for 3 cars, a utility unit, a rough kitchen, and a large outdoor garden with swimming pool and BBQ area.
The ground floor has a public function and there is a large two light living room, kitchen with dining area and guest bedroom. On the first floor there is an intimate area which includes 2 children’s rooms, a master bedroom with a separate bathroom and wardrobe, and access to the terrace.
The house is located on the end of a sloped neighborhood, on a place that borders a native forest; in contrast, the land where the house is located is flat, with no vegetation or gradients.
With soil extracted from the land itself, the house rises 1.30m high to pass the line of sight over the neighboring grove and take advantage of a better view of the landscape.
The need to configure the new home according to a contemporary, clean and natural language, but not exasperated, constitutes the objective of the renovation of a beautiful penthouse for a couple of Clients for whom a sober and elegant spatiality is thus portrayed, without implementing any kind of distributional distortion, on the contrary respecting the existing arrangement of the day and night areas, only retouched for some specific improvements.
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