Pebbles lives among the pebbles, as underground garage tunnelled into the steep hillside from the access street at the north-east. It was too steep to build a road to the top of the ridge from where one looks up and down and across the Okanagan Valley and -Lake, so this was the only option. Pebbles is also home to a wine room, kept at the temperature of the earth surrounding it, a foyer, and the geothermal heat pump.
west patio and rusty steel wall, photograph by Martin Knowles
The clients, a middle-aged couple, approached us with one definite request – they wanted to build a house with no stairs, a house that would be equally practical and enjoyable when they get old. The site offered no obvious clues – a flat piece of land in a second line of buildings, in a suburban part of the city of Wrocław, among disappearing traces of a rural past, surrounded by a chaotic mix of houses of all styles, materials and conditions.
The Cabañeros National Park Visitors Center and Interactive Museum is a public architectonic intervention whose main objective is to promote ecotourism in the populations that forms the environment of the park, through information, exhibition, research and care of the main values of this natural space.
Tags: Horcajo de los Montes, Spain Comments Off on Cabañeros National Park Visitors Center and Interactive Museum in Horcajo de los Montes, Spain by Álvaro Planchuelo
The new building of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands by KAAN Architecten has been decidedly integrated into the elegant historic city centre of The Hague. The building, which houses a staff of 350, verges on large: 104 metres long, 22 metres deep and 27 metres tall. These dimensions, with the measured vibrancy of its facades, add some allure to this part of the city centre.
The plane trees and six legal scholars in bronze seated on pedestals make for a wide gateway on the Korte Voorhout, a royal route leading to the buildings from Parliament. The entrance hall seems to have been chiselled from a solid block of marble. It serves as a sturdy base for the superstructure of glass panels and slender latticework. These and other ostensible contradictions seem to reflect the work of the Supreme Court itself. Open and closed, distinguished and functional, hard and ethereal, rough and refined – all exist alongside routine business, on which judgements are passed with great clarity of mind.
Architects: KAAN Architecten, (Kees Kaan, Vincent Panhuysen, Dikkie Scipio)
Project: The Supreme Court of the Netherlands
Location: Korte Voorhout 8, The Hague, The Netherlands
Photography: Fernando Guerra _ FG+SG, Dominique Panhuysen, Sebastian van Damme
Client: Rijksvastgoedbedrijf
Design team: Allard Assies, Luca Baialardo, Christophe Banderier, Bas Barendse, Dennis Bruijn, Timo Cardol, Sebastian van Damme, Marten Dashorst, Luuk Dietz, Willemijn van Donselaar, Paolo Faleschini, Raluca Firicel, Michael Geensen, Cristina Gonzalo Cuairán, Joost Harteveld, Walter Hoogerwerf, Michiel van der Horst, Marlon Jonkers, Jan Teunis ten Kate, Marco Lanna, Giuseppe Mazzaglia, Ana Rivero Esteban, Joeri Spijkers, Koen van Tienen, Noëmi Vos
Contractor: Consortium Poort van Den Haag: BAM PPP B.V., PGGM, BAM Bouw en Techniek B.V., ISS Nederland B.V. and KAAN Architecten
Structural engineering: Arup Nederland
Electrical engineering: BAM Bouw en Techniek
Mechanical engineering: Arup Nederland
Site supervision: KAAN Architecten, BAM Bouw en Techniek
Artwork: “Hoge Raad” (oil on canvas, 400 x 647 cm, 2015) by Helen Verhoeven
Software used: Autodesk, AutoCAD and Revit (more…)
This Grade II listed house in Chelsea had been re-developed several times in recent decades, but had got rather tired. Our clients were looking to relocate to London and appointed us to create a new sense of space and light. We provided a full architectural service which included; obtaining planning and listed building consents and administrating the construction contract.
Article source: OfAA– Office For Appropriate Architecture
‘Suitable Farmhouse’ is a villa for a mid 40 year old couple who decided to return to their hometown to live with their 80 year-old mother. The villa is intended to provide two individual households under one roof because each party has been upholding their own lifestyles for a long time. Two main private spaces are designed as two independent studios and they are located in opposite corners of the house. The mother has an active lifestyle, where she frequently comes and goes, while the couple is more introverted and reclusive, preferring to stay home, cook, and watch movies. The mother enjoys spending the majority of her time tending to the garden, while the couple enjoys inviting guests with whom to cook and entertain. These two varying sets of influence help to shape the design of this farmhouse.
The peculiar topography of the site, its orientation and mountain views of Cuera are the starting points in the design of an artist´s residence/studio + countryside bed&breakfast in the Asturian population La Pereda, in the village of Llanes, Spain. The project takes advantage of a loophole in the law -which requires regional build-pitched roofs of curved ceramic tile- to propose a building that looks forward the integration into the natural beauty of the area more than in the built environment that surrounds it. To reach a level that will optimize the views of the mountains and the forest surrounding the plot, the action takes place in the northern part of the site. The existing hill there is removed to play with a single green roof that shelters the different uses, thereby diluting the boundaries between the natural and the built in a game between the tectonic and estereotomic that refers to the land-art interventions. A curved stone wall leads from the main road and back into the building and gains altitude to become the load bearing wall that supports the concrete deck, while separates the residence/studio area, for the artist private use, from the small b&b open to the public. This central wall, massive and forceful to ensure the privacy of both functions, contrast to the facades oriented to the north and south in the housing area and to the east in the b&b, much lighter and visually permeable, to enhance the views. The cover in continuity with the ground not only integrates the building into the environment and minimizes the height above the ground naturally, but also alows to maximize energy savings.
This house is located in the city of Riyadh, in the heart of Saudi Arabia.
The design of this villa is a contemporary blend of Mexican and Arabic cultures, where knowledge of local traditions, materials, textures, mexican colors, as well as the knowledge of some methods of the building area were important for their development and termination.
Fraser Brown MacKenna Architects designed a classroom suite for Carshalton Boys Sports College in South London. The building is clad in perforated and solid Cor-ten panels and utilised off-site manufacture to meet programme, budget, and sustainability requirements.
Architecture is a project of development; it’s about inquiring, exploring new ground, about experimentation. It’s working with the landscape, trying to find integration with the material, with proportions. It’s about understanding pictures, their impacts and coloring. For us this process starts from the context and is culturally determined.
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