Life in Berlin. Over the past few decades, alongside the daily rat race of real estate sharks, big investors and ongoing gentrification, a popular alternative model – the housing cooperative – has been gaining ground. The Baugruppe D2, consisting of 15 families, was fortunate enough to get hold of one of the last building plots in central Neukölln. Their task for the IFUB* was to design an ecological, friendly, yet modern house that is well integrated into the city surroundings, with plenty of greenery and both courtyard and rooftop communal spaces.
Casa Ocoxal is located in the forest near Valle de Bravo, 160 kilometers from Mexico City, on a 9,000m2 plot of land that functions as a productive microsystem and in which the house is respectfully integrated. The shape of the main house is born from a geometry of superimposed volumes through which the void is inhabited. The formal composition evokes traditional houses in Valle de Bravo, the image of the cabin with a gabled roof, proposes a reinterpretation of this iconography with a contemporary aesthetic achieved thanks to the black sheet on the facade, the concrete and the glass.
The clients for this project live abroad, and sought a Canadian homestead an anchor for their large, young family. During summer and winter holidays, the parents wanted their children immersed in an Ontario landscape like the one in which they were raised.
To this end, they requested a “rustic, modern retreat” for their 100-acre property of forest, wetland, and meadows.
Coliving Interlomas is a student-oriented residencial project on the east side of the Estado de México, which proposes an architecture that brings together life and studying in community, following space optimization principles in a shared living system.
The ensemble features four levels in which the bedrooms and the common-use areas complement each other. The rest of the program is composed of two study rooms, a recreational area, two lounge areas in a roof garden, two integral kitchens, a dining room, a gymnasium and a service area for maintenance.
A spectacular site with a fabled Hollywood history, this project was a unique opportunity to rework a promontory lot to take advantage of the 270-degree views of the entire Los Angeles Basin. The client wanted to build a large home good for entertaining, especially outdoors, for a large Italian family that would use it as a respite from their life in Canada. The lower pad of the parcel inspired the original idea for the project: a glass living space, surrounded by water on three sides, reflecting the surrounding cityscape.
A two-story house with basement, on a corner plot in Kifisia, Athens. Need for privacy, orientation and a large garden were the main factors that defined the design of this “U” shape house. Placed on the northwest edge of the plot, letting free space on the southeast corner, with planting through the boundaries and thickening on the south. The spaces are design to have south and east orientation and view to the large garden. The semi-open spaces protect the house from the weather conditions and help the transition from close indoor the to the open outdoor spaces.
Looking for new ways to traditional barn-house is one of the most common exercises in contemporary architecture practice, and even one of the most applied in the south of Chile.
It takes massive attention in the last internal migration, due to the pandemic of covid-19, which open the door to work from home so a lot of people from big cities, like Santiago the capital, migrate south for a better life. One of the most selected cities, for better or worse, was Puerto Varas, in Llanquihue province.
Exposition Heights is a complete transformation of a 1,800-square-foot Seattle split-level into a two-story modern gable home. Despite a tight budget, the comprehensive remodel almost doubles the square footage of the original 1960s home, accommodates urban density challenges, and demonstrates how older homes can be adapted to meet the changing needs of their owners.
Large plots are not essential for lavish homes, but thoughtful space planning can break the limitations of small plots making it breathable, inviting adequate natural light and ventilation. Cradled in the posh residential area of Ahmedabad, Paldi, this Narrow House is a unique example of balancing the yin and the yang of the architecture as well as interiors incorporating nature within the build forms.
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.
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