design

Contemporary Entertaining-Based Residence with a Cool City View

2012-01-20T10:40:00.000-08:00

Looking at modern houses on a regular basis develops a quite strong relationship with architecture and interior design. Take this next residence as an example of a well-balanced dwelling with lots of space for entertaining, relaxation and comfortable living. The team from Dick Clark Architecture are the creators of this beautiful residence located in Austin, Texas and named The City View Residence. A strong connection was established between the outside and the inside, creating an inviting entertainment space that leads the party on to the deck where a swimming pool awaits the guests and inhabitants to enjoy their free time. The architects tried to explore every option to present the best possible solution for the family who wanted an eco-friendly, entertaining-based home: “We tried our best to have as little impact on the environment as well. The house has a 3kw solar panel system, instant hot water heaters, bio foam insulation, rain water collection that irrigates a good portion of the lot, very efficient mechanical systems, and low e glass. The plan is very open, there are visual connections between living/dining/kitchen. A see through oak screen separates the stair from the kitchen. To separate the public entry hall from the private bedroom wing, we did a floating bookcase/art display millwork piece, we used an ecosmart burner as well, it allowed us to create a fireplace mass that doesn’t touch the ceiling which adds non-partition quality of the house. The siding is cypress, it runs inside and out.”

Tea House In A Peaceful Garden

2012-01-20T10:30:00.002-08:00

When I look at this house, I think about tea ceremony in Japan or about meditations and renunciation of everything perishable. It’s called Hat Tea House and was created by A1 Architects in Ostrova, Czech Republic, but this time there is no modernism as in all other works by them. The area is small, just 1,80 square meters; the house stands in a peaceful garden. The structure is made of oak, clothed in larch under a shingle roof. The exterior is really amazing thanks to the unusual design and the material chosen. The roof reminds of a cap and I really like it inside, it’s very comfortable and peaceful.

Stalking the sand dunes

2012-01-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

The ultimate “beach shack”? Nestled in the dunes on Victoria’s coastline at Fingal is this contemporary interpretation of mid century cool. Definitely not your fisherman’s weekend shack unless of course you are head of a fish canning business. Me? I’d be happy just bunking down on the patio and taking baths in the swim tank! For sale here while the link lasts. Thanks Andrea for doing the stalking for me this time!

Small & Spectacular Family Home Open Towards a Peaceful Rural Landscape

2012-01-20T10:29:00.001-08:00

Corum Residence was designed by Substance Architecture and is a display of modern living at its best. The only aspect that differentiate this house from the majestic residences we commonly display on Freshome is this project’s dimensions. Here is more from the architects: This modest, single family residence on a four acre site was designed for a family looking to “downsize” their domestic lives. The resulting home expresses itself and gestures beyond — to the rural Iowa landscape. The elemental design consists of a galvanized metal clad “tube” gently resting on a cast-in-place concrete “plinth” and pointed toward the view. The home’s simple form and materials reference agricultural buildings prevalent in the central United States.The more-public “living” spaces have direct access to the view. The private “bed and bath” functions are sequestered deep within the metal-clad wedge and concrete plinth. Internally, the home utilizes a system of maple and acrylic shelving, an open-riser stair, and a fireplace mass to vertically organize the section and link its three levels. (Photography by Bob Shimer/Hedrich Blessing)

The Schaffer Residence

19 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment

by ksovreli in Uncategorized

A reader recently emailed me and asked why I’m always posting sterile architecture with cold hard lines. Well, it’s because I happen to like that type of architecture — minimalist, clean, simple… sometimes cold. However, today’s house is IMHO the opposite of cold and sterile.

Located in Glendale, CA, The Schaffer Residence is a warm, inviting cozy space. Not only is it a fully restored and meticulously cared for 1949 mid-century home by John Lautner, it had a cameo in the movie A Single Man. And it’s for sale, so that means you could live here.

Dream Home : CG House by GLR arquitectos

19 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment

by ksovreli in Uncategorized

The CG House rests on a generous 17,250 sq. ft. site adjacent to the Sierra Madre mountains. While the site’s steep slope presented a number of design challenges, the dramatic views it afforded of the city of Monterrey provided the architect with a number of opportunities as well.

From the street, two massive oak tress rise to provide privacy and welcome shade to the swimming pool terrace above. Due to the sloping nature of the site, a massive, exposed concrete wall defines and encloses the swimming pool and garden areas of the house and sets the tone for the design of the house itself, which is clad in brown/black volcanic stone, IPE wood, white stucco and steel.

A wide exterior granite staircase lead to an intimate garden of palm trees. Directly ahead is a 12 feet-high dark oak door whose grand scale offers a hint of the dramatic scale of this 10,650 sq. ft. home that lies beyond, beginning with an entry foyer whose 15 feet-high walls are adorned with silver leaf. A massive sculptural piece of coconut roots, steel and rocks was designed specifically for this space.

The living room, as well as the dining and family rooms, all have large windows with views of the garden, allowing light to penetrate deep within the spaces as well as creating a seamless interplay between the interior and exterior spaces. Also, within the house, subtle level changes between rooms not only add interest to the interior layout but these changes also reflect the site’s topography.

In the private areas of the home, which is articulated through a long corridor, the occupants have access to a second garden, located at the highest point on the building site, which is less formal and more recreational.

Credits :

Project Team: Enrique Salas, Tomas Güereña, Felipe González
Photography: Jorge Taboada

Exceptional Modern Home for a Large Family in Costa Brava

2012-01-20T10:26:00.003-08:00

This next modern detached house situated in Costa Brava was designed by architects Marta Garcia-Orte and Antonio Zamora. Receiving the name of the city it was built in, the House in Mont-ras exhibits a modern version of the surrounding architecture. Choosing to work with different materials and textures – stone, iron, concrete, steel or wood – the architects defined the space as a mixture of modern and traditional styles. Set on over 420 m2, the residence consists of 4 connected buildings that have access to the breathtaking Mediterranean landscape. Used by a large family, the house had to be both roomy and comfortable for each member. This is the reason for creating a large, open living space, surrounded by bungalows that include all the services needed for each family group. The interior design, created by Minim, was carefully connected on all the three floors to form a modern residential building. The ground floor houses the public areas, dining room, kitchen, living room and a double-height library. In the semi-buried basement, a leisure gym and a garage/workshop were placed, while the first floor contains the master bedroom with en suite, study, and direct views of the garden and pool.

Inviting Home in Brazil with an Immaculate Design

2012-01-20T10:26:00.001-08:00

House Carqueija eas designed by Bento e Azevedo Arquitetos Associados and is located in Brazil. As seen on Arch Daily, the residence stretches over an area of about 260,00 sqm and takes advantage of the beautiful natural landscape within which it is integrated. Here is more information on the project’s structure from the architects: With a simple and efficient plan, it is a ground floor house with 2 rooms, a chapel and a large and flexible social area, which integrate living, dining and tv room in a open space, linked to the outside area through a porch. In order to have the best orientation, in a tropical county, the house closes itself from the front street view, which is west, and opens into the backyard, creating a privative and integrated place. That way, on the front facade, architectural elements, as a narrow windows and a pare-soleil was used to protect the house against solar irradiation, while the back facade, on east side, completely integrate the inside with the outside, through large windows, sliding doors and a porch, connecting the house with the green area. This modern home is not just “well organized”. Its beautiful white facade, the generous pool and terrace as well as its interior design make it inviting to say the least.

A Residence with an Ingenious Architecture: Airhole House in Japan

2012-01-20T10:24:00.001-08:00

Airhole House was designed by Masahiro Kinoshita from KINO architects, a Tokyo based architecture company. The unusual looking two-storey home is located in a residential area in Shiga, Japan and features large volumetric gaps in its structure which allow a good natural ventilation. Here is more information from the architects: the main form of the house was dictated by the shape of the site. On the street level, a covered parking spot is generated by carving out an airhole that opens up east to west. The main entrance is also provided through this space. More predominantly noticeable from the main street to the south is the asymmetrical roof line and terrace space on the second level. funneled in form, the open volume accommodates the outdoor veranda and the living/dining/kitchen area. the west wall offers storage while the pie-shaped space to the east houses the staircase, bathroom and washitsu (or Japanese-style room). (Photographer: Daici Ano)

Brockholes nature reserve visitor centre – review

2012-01-20T10:17:00.001-08:00

Brockholes visitor centre, near Preston in Lancashire, designed by Adam Khan. Photograph: Ioana Marinescu

If you turn off the M6, on the ragged edge of Preston, and follow some brown badger signs through a series of truck-filled roundabouts and ramps, you suddenly see a huddle of roofs above a lake, which look like a bronze-age settlement. The view recalls those meticulous yellow-brown reconstructions you get in old, earnest children’s books, and you half expect to see men carrying spears and dead deer, and the smoke of a campfire.
It is in fact a brand-new visitor centre for the just-opened Brockholes nature reserve, and rather than spear-carriers you see citizens of local cities wearing sensible outdoor clothes. It is a complex of buildings with claims on the future rather than the distant past, in that it aims to be extraordinarily sustainable. And it floats.
Brockholes sits on a concrete raft, made buoyant by hollow chambers, held by four steel posts to stop it drifting across the lake. This is the building’s way of dealing with flooding, to which the site is prone. It can rise up to three metres, which would only be necessary in a catastrophe, but will regularly go up and down by 400mm over a year. Whether we are immersed by the effects of climate change or simply persist in our fondness for building on flood plains, floating buildings might come to seem like a very good idea. “People have been in denial about flood risk,” says the building’s architect, Adam Khan.
Brockholes is an overlap of wildness and industry. It has been formed over 10 years out of a former gravel quarry, with a range of habitats added to existing woodlands and water to “create a microcosm of what old Lancashire was like”. It has been “carefully crafted” to attract different species and is aimed less at dedicated bird-watchers and nature lovers than the general public of the big cities an hour’s drive or so away – Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds – and at tourists on their way to the nearby Lake District. The idea is to introduce people to nature who don’t see enough of it.
Its buildings serve the usual needs of such places – cafe, shop, information – but also host a large education space and a series of conference rooms that will be rented out to generate income. Naturally, in such a place, they have to be scrupulously environmental, and so they are designed to achieve the “outstanding” category in the official measure of such things. (The British Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, if you really want to know, or Breeam.) Until recently, buildings could only be “good” or “excellent”; Brockholes is on course to be the first building in its particular niche to achieve “outstanding”, although the final judgment will not be made until it has been in use for a while.
Breeam concerns itself with everything from heating and ventilation to the height of light fixtures off the ground, to the sources of materials, the energy that goes into materials, their durability, their potential for recycling, and the distance they travel to the site.
Often, the pursuit of Breeam’s approval leads buildings to pursue a box-ticking series of technical fixes, and an assembly of products designed to fulfil their requirements without much thought to how they look and feel. At Brockholes, Adam Khan wanted to challenge this “factoid-led” approach, and use the pursuit of sustainability as the means to create more beautiful buildings, not less.
So he designed high, steep-pitched roofs enclosing large volumes (good for air circulation and extraction), clad in oak shakes – rough tiles formed out of tree stumps, which would otherwise be burned as waste. Gutters are in copper (long-life, recyclable), which adds a touch of luxury. Ventilation is entirely natural. The roofs are held up with timber beams made in a precise German process, and arrive on the site “as sharp as pencils”. Insulation is a cheap but effective stuff made from recycled newspapers.
Then, charmingly, the building connects with its natural surroundings in a way that cannot be measured by technical indices. Because it floats, it has an intimacy with the water that it would lack if it were ringed with defences against flooding: the water is turned from an enemy into an ally. Reed beds have been planted around the building so that when they are fully grown the roofs will seem to emerge from them. From within, visitors will – in places – be able to look into the reeds, and into spaces carved out of them “like crop circles”. In other places they will look onto open water.
The complex’s buildings are arranged around a series of courtyards, which provide both a sense of enclosure and openness to views, and one of which is planted with a little orchard. The oak roofs change in the weather, from black in rain to gold in sun. Nor is it a matter of sight alone: the natural materials have distinctive scents, and the newspaper insulation of the cafe gives an echo-less acoustic “like a hay barn”. The wobbly oak and the copper are tactile.
The experience is not one of the building or of nature alone, but of the two together, and comes from a certain openness: to what was already on the site, to its possibilities, to ancient and modern materials, to high and low technology. There is also an interest in what things are as much as what they look like – how they feel and work, and how they combine, rather than in the single glamour shot. It does not strive for effect, but lets the effect grow out of its situation.
There are some clunks: extract flues poke through the roofs; it is on the edge of folksy, and worthy, albeit offset by playful disco moments such as reflective light fittings and, at one point, a mirrored vault; and without the vegetation fully grown, it looks raw. But it is rare that the stuff of a building, as well as its relationship to nature, gives so much pleasure. The interior of the cafe – with its high roof, the big, taut Vs of the German beams, the grey fuzz of the newspaper insulation, the sideways views of water and orchard, its reflected light and touches of colour – offers a rare and delightful balance of energies.
As for the floating, the cost consultants Jackson Coles, who played an active role in making Khan’s ideas possible, found that the expense was reasonable. The costs compared well with building (as is common) on a large amount of concrete set in the ground, making what are known as raft foundations. “If you have raft foundations,” the great architect and thinker Cedric Price once said, “why not have a raft?”
At Brockholes, someone has finally taken up his suggestion.