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Description from the architect:

Split in plan and section, the parti of the house allows for a flood of light to the centre. The house is designed as space for spectacle – the owner is a regular host of a large network of friends and family, and wanted a place that could feel grand. The trick with this was to make a house that could also feel intimate for day to day living. A rich brown wood floor that connects with the ipe deck outside serves as a counterpoint to the high ceilings of the main space, and connects the inside to the outside. This, in combination with the design of smaller more intimate spaces and moments throughout the ground floor make for a house that is equally good for two as it is for 30.

From the interior the house has views of the sky and the neighbourhood, and a strong connection to the landscape and pool out back. The use of a buff coloured brick and ipe siding make for a warm exterior material palette.

Visit the superkül website – here.

Photography by Shai Gil

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Description from mimaristudio:

Turkcell Maltepe Plaza renovation project was led by Turkcell Communication Services Building Managment Department and designed and executed by mimaristudio in a total of 4 months.

Main objective of the project was to provide a new and desirable social/communal areas to improve work conditions and wellbeings of the highly educated young professional employees.

2.100 m2 of works have been carried out in a building with a high end technolgy infrastructure in overtime and in three phases; in the administrative, South and North wings.

The first phase of the project consisted of renovation of the fitness room, locker rooms and public toilets of the adminstrative wing. The second phase consisted of renovation of the break out rooms, coffee station areas, interior landscape areas, toilets and the main restaurant on 4 floors of the South and North wings.

Building management and employees of each department were interviewed early on to help develop unique designs for each department’s needs. A common language of materials has been developed and used throughout the project while variations in accents and loose furniture depict each department’s unique needs.

All communal spaces break out areas and coffee stations, formerly treated as back of house spaces, have been integrated in to the open workspaces with the help of same materials used throughout.

2 existing atriums were also lanscpaed to be in unison with the new 8 communal spaces on 4 floors.  Furniture, lighting design, materials and the new interior layout of the busy restaurant provides a cosy athmospehere for the employees. Public toilets in the premises have been designed and furnished only with functionality in mind.

mimaristudio’s overall intent was to provide multifunctional design elements, such as very specific dining furniture to allow for formal/informal and spontaneous gatherings, breakouts, meetings, hosting guests, banquets and dining in the newly formed communal areas.

mimaristudio custom designed and furnished all millwork, specified all loose furniture and accessories.

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Visit the mimaristudio website – here.

Photography by Gürkan AKAY

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Description from the architects:

The Czech émigré architect, Ladislav Rado’s famous modern house built in 1956-57, provided the original context for its renovation.  Exemplary of its time, the building reflects the simplicity and directness of the relationship to the outside and to the landscape, with influences from Japan. The current clients came to us with a house that had been compromised by a postmodern 1980s renovation.  A half-round stair tower had been added and the original cantilever over the ravine filled in with a bedroom addition.  It was not only gratifying to renovate and respect the original intention, but to also add a more modern program and to build in the flexibility for change.

Challenges included the restriction that only 1,000 SF could be added to the original house and a limited project budget. By utilizing an Architect Led Design Build process, costs were reduced by a third and the budget was met.

The current renovation preserves the ‘floating box’ form by restoring the second floor cantilever, wrapping the whole upper box with a new hi-tech wood cladding.  An expanded palette of materials includes new double insulated glass to update the original rabbeted window frame detail and floor to ceiling glass sliders preserve the existing glass expression which opens up views to the woods from the master bedroom suite.

Visit the Peter Gluck and Partners website – here.

Photography by Magda Biernat

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This exciting renovation and extension of a turn-of-the-century terrace house in Sydney’s Potts Point focuses on a grand and gracefully spiralling stair that forms the pivotal junction of the old and new parts of the house. The staircase, spanning the width of the building, features delicate fan-like steel treads cantilevered from the central steel post and winding their way past six split levels, offset between the old and new sides of the house. The stair was conceived as the element that grafts the contemporary and new minimal structure to the refined, trimmed and formal older portion of the dwelling.

Spacious living areas and private zones open out from each side of the stair with one area per level alternating between the old and new building. Formal living, dining, kitchen and informal living; master suite, guest suite, study and laundry: each zone maintains a natural sense of privacy from the other through the offset in level yet maintains a sense of interconnection in the openness and movement created by the stair.

Internally, finishes in the old portion of the house are contemporary and elegant in a stripped-classical style with deep flush skirting boards, mannered panelled doors and wide timber floorboards, all in gloss white paint and offset by richly coloured set plaster walls. In contrast, the mainly white extension with the same gloss white floorboards, features a black stained timber-boarded joinery element across three levels. Bronze window frames, ironmongery and trims unite both portions of the three-storey home.

Externally, the connection to the outdoors is accentuated through a 13 metre clear span wall of sliding doors that overlooks a pocket garden. An addition to this, the bi-folding doors are concealed by joinery to provide a seamless connection to the tiered rear garden with mature pepper tree. This house offers extraordinary spaces complemented by confident forms, understated design and exquisite detail.

Visit the Smart Design Studio website – here.

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Visit the BELLBOY website – here.

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Designed by Pb Elemental for InHaus Development

Prefab manufacturer: Method Homes

Photography bySeeVirtual

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Description from the designers:

The owners of this prewar apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan wanted to combine two dark and tightly configured units into a single unified space.  StudioLAB was challenged with the task of converting the existing arrangement into a large open three bedroom residence.  The previous configuration of bedrooms along the Southern window wall resulted in very little sunlight reaching the public spaces.  Breaking the norm of the traditional building layout, the bedrooms were moved to the West wall of the combined unit, while the existing internally held Living Room and Kitchen were moved towards the large South facing windows, resulting in a flood of natural sunlight.  Wide-plank grey-washed walnut flooring was applied throughout the apartment to maximize light infiltration.  A concrete office cube was designed with the supplementary space which features walnut flooring wrapping up the walls and ceiling.  Two large sliding Starphire acid-etched glass doors close the space off to create privacy when screening a movie.  High gloss white lacquer millwork built throughout the apartment allows for ample storage.  LED Cove lighting was utilized throughout the main living areas to provide a bright wash of indirect illumination and to separate programmatic spaces visually without the use of physical light consuming partitions.  Custom floor to ceiling Ash wood veneered doors accentuate the height of doorways and blur room thresholds.   The master suite features a walk-in-closet, a large bathroom with radiant heated floors and a custom steam shower.  An integrated Vantage Smart Home System was installed to control the AV, HVAC, lighting and solar shades using iPads.

Visit the STUDIOLAB website – here.

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The project for the new Rural Hotel at Quinta do Vallado fits, as it was proposed for the new winery, in a strategy that balances the need for expansion of the facilities of Quinta do Vallado with the correct integration into the landscape so that the solution, as a whole, has a minimal impact. The two strands linked to wine – production and leisure – are addressed in a single project with a distinctive and contemporary language.

Given the strong impact of the surrounding landscape, characterized by a natural architecture that gives the area a singular character – World Heritage – the resort hotel project focuses on solving the insertion of a new volume conditioned by a long and impressive wall in shale, which draws a sharp curve on the ground. On this relationship, between what exists and what does not exist, lies the tension of the project, confrontational relationship between two realities, between two geometries, between two times.

The program of the wine tourism hotel defines a great restraint, both spatial and formal. The spaces are drawn in function of the uses, of the light, of the sights and, and above all, the well-being.
The hotel decor enhances the local tradition and family heritage of its owners – descendants of the legendary D. Antonia Adelaide Ferreira, “Ferreirinha” – through photographs and sculptures made by the family. Similarly the names of the rooms relate to the names of land ownership.
Of the construction, the materials in the raw – concrete and slate – fix the geometry and appeal to the sensory qualities of its surfaces, becoming the synthesis and the theme of this new hotel, completed in March of 2012.

Visit the Guedes + DeCampos website – here.

Photography by Fernando Guerra – FG+SG

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Gallery House by Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects

Hybrid program
This project proposes a new domestic typology: a ‘gallery house’. It combines a semi-public art gallery and a residence for two prominent collectors who have redefined what it means to live with and look after art. The clients, a virologist and a mathematician, exclusively collect work by female contemporary artists and feel compelled to share and promote their collection, not only with friends but also with the larger art world. They requested a home within which both their extensive collection and visitors could circulate from a semi-public gallery through to the domestic space, each zone offering a different environment for experiencing the work. The street-level gallery hosts exhibitions curated from their private collection as well as the collections of friends. A site for artist and curator talks, the gallery increases public engagement in the arts within the art world as well as at the scale of their own neighborhood. Extending and redefining the exhibition space as it continues up the stairs to the next two floors and the penthouse sculpture garden, the domestic zone includes even the most private spaces in the exhibition circuit by virtue of its open plan.

Figural voids
The site is an infill lot bordering South Park, one of the few figural public spaces in San Francisco. This distinctive urban condition informed the search for an abstract architectural language that explores the interlocking clarity of figure-ground relationships and the liminality of their edge conditions. The design process began by seeing the base condition of the lot as solid poche, already full. The solid mass of the buildable envelope was then incised and subdivided into interlocking elements. The space of the lot was comprehensively partitioned and the interlocking figures identified as solid or void, and assigned various programs. In this manner, the original fullness of the space was articulated and accounted-for, resulting in a perceptible heaviness in the built project.

Soft edges
The solids and voids slide past each other, indifferent to the abstract 4 x 5 x 4 Cartesian framework that informs the structural system. Within the house, the matrix reinforces the divisions of space implicit in the allocation of solids and voids. But at the facade that meets South Park, the orthogonal framework dissolves and reassembles to emulate the organic morphology of the tree-filled park. The tessellations flex to create a volumetric inhabitable space for balconies on the upper two floors. This swollen threshold resulted from an exhaustive taxonomy of parametric interpretations of the Planning Code constraints for allowable projections that trigger the typical San Francisco bay window. The soft geometries of the facade screen reappear in the ‘mathematical-organic’ pavers and succulents at the rooftop sculpture garden.

Sustainability / daylighting
The envelope of the house responds to the temperate but varied climate and weather of San Francisco with a nuanced ability to shelter and protect from the cold fog, then open for full connection to sun and breeze. Radiant floors warm the interior while large operable walls connect the large rooms to the park and trees on the southeast and the city as view to the northwest. In contrast to the horizontal expansion offered by the operable walls on both residential floors front and back, a green roof with drought-resistant plants is pierced with skylights to bring surprising and intense daylight to the deeper interior rooms. Over the 55? high vertical space of the stairs, a sawtooth roof washes the space and art with even north light. In the gallery, the south storefront diffusing glass is coupled with a northern skylight over the back display wall, providing daylight for the art throughout the cycles of the day and the year. The house and gallery track the climatic and sky cycles, from east to west and blue sky to fog, locating the occupants in a building that engages in the city with little reliance on bought fuels and off-site energy.

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Visit the Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects website – here.

Photography by Tim Griffith

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Description from HIVE:

The Boulders Collection offers a juxtaposition of contemporary forms and antique detailing. The polygonal shape is a simple conveyance of modern sculptures while the natural oxidation of metal provides the rustic feel. All planters are offered in neutral rusty shade while the bowls come in white, black and blue.

Visit the HIVE website – here.

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Description from the designers:

Integrating a Premium concept, this new space conveys an innovative and attractive image evidenced by the games of light and different developed environments – Bar, Sushi Bar, Dining area and Japanese Zone. Although with distinct functions, they reinforce the creation of a strong and innovative space. With the intention of escaping from the traditional Japanese image, the restaurant transmits a modern and distinguishing concept, which was functionally conceived in order to provide different sensations and moments of leisure.

Visit the Saraiva + Associados website – here.

Photography by FG+SG

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S House by Tanju Özelgin

Çubuklu Valley is a private residential development located in a forested area of the district of Beykoz in the northern Bosphorus area of Istanbul.  This development features a group of modern homes designed by Istanbul practice Emre Arolat Architects in 2006 integrated into the hilly landscapes of this suburban district.  In this way, the Cubuklu Valley project is an important example of a gated community that has become a popular residential typology in Istanbul’s urban growth.  In contrast to many of the projects in this suburban area using traditional design styles, the Cubuklu Valley design is a decidedly modern and contemporary interpretation of the suburban house and garden type.

The design of the interiors of these homes was left to the individual owners initiatives.  One of the most original of these was the design for the S House by the Istanbul-based product and interior designer Tanju Özelgin in 2011.  Özelgin known for his simple and direct approach to space, form and design in the interior for the S House harmoniously combined the natural setting with the owner’s cosmopolitan lifestyle. The simple, pure and functional architectural style in this residence designed by Özelgin, adopts Emre Arolat’s Çubuklu Valley’s original architectural concept of spaces interacting with nature furthering it through a strategy of using natural stone and wood textures making the interiors an extension of the natural environment.

The S House consists of approximately 400m2 of interior space and 480m2 of landscape and garden area. The owner’s expectation for the interior design was for a modern look integrating natural elements around light toned living spaces.  Modern conveniences and home technologies would need to be subtly weaved into the interiors to create a cosmopolitan urban setting.

Due to the plot situated on a sloped area, the entrance to the house is located in the top floor and in line with the client’s demand; every floor was designed with a different concept. At the entrance floor, three bedrooms were requested, one of them for the owner. The middle floor consists of a kitchen that serves the entire house, whereas the ground floor is conceived as a daily living area furnished with electronic equipment, a steam room and a sauna as required in the client brief.

Bedrooms, located on the entrance floor as per the owner’s brief, are separated and isolated from the entrance by using sliding doors. Located at the entrance floor, guest rooms were organized to meet all visitors’ needs and additionally one of the rooms was also conceived as a study area. One of the most remarkable details on the top floor is the dressing cubicle, which positioned in the middle of the room, is enclosed with a light tulle curtain. In this way, the dressing cube is lit with the natural sunlight coming from the exterior while the need for artificial lighting is reduced to a minimum and integrated with the natural environment. This concept is continued in the shower and washbasin spaces by using substantially opaque and permeable materials, gaining the maximum benefit of sunlight.

In general the middle floor is designed in a more robust approach than the other spaces due to the use of continuous natural surfaces. The walls are covered with natural stone tiles separating the kitchen from the living room, hiding the kitchen without impeding the fluidity between the two volumes. As with the top floor, a sliding door is also used in the entrance of the living room, isolating the room from the elevator and stairwell spaces. The ground floor of the house is designed as a garden floor that opens to the poolside outdoor living areas. There are three different functions of this floor; television and cinema units at one side, bookshelf and dining table in the middle. Steam room, sauna, whirlpool bath and shower also located on this floor. These spaces are separated from the other volumes with tulle curtains and sliding glass doors.

One of most striking characteristics of the S House interior design by Tanju Özelgin is how it reflects the energy of the surrounding natural environment within the house through a combination of stone and wood surfaces. Many of the details throughout the living spaces support this design approach focused on natural textures. The natural stone material used on either the floor or walls of the bedrooms, bathrooms, showers, kitchen and halls completes the all-encompassing pure and light color palette of the house. In other areas this stone treatment enables nature to have a presence especially in the garden floor acting as an extension of the garden. The sandblasted surfaces of the Gray Line marble from Italy are treated to prevent the stone from changing its original color. Especially in the bathroom and shower zones, the natural stone surfaces in 60 x 60 cm and 80 x 80 cm marble panels continue from the ground to the walls to give the material a three dimensional effect strengthening the feeling of the unity of the interior with the exterior environment.

Another material pattern contributes to this feeling are the round natural stones that sit in a bed under the open-stepped staircase. These small round stones create an organic, natural feeling in the house, an untouched territory that is an extension of the garden into the house. Instead of surrounding the sides of the bed of stones with concrete, Tanju Özelgin emphasized the feeling that nature is seeping into the interiors with texture and depth by a using a massive carved wood panel on the rear wall. This wood panel provides a dark and warmer contrast to the hard stone surfaces.  In a similar way, wood is also used as flooring in the garden and pool and in present in the materials for the dining table. Wood surfaces in the bedrooms and living room in the form of oak laminated flooring are also continued into the garden. Similar natural materials complement each other in combinations of stone and wood textures throughout the design, their design character and energy deriving from the natural environment that is present throughout the interiors. Overall there is a harmony of geometry and materials that makes the setting a serene, calm and above in tune with the nature of its surroundings.

The lighting arrangement designed throughout the house is balanced with the materials and surfaces. Artificial lighting was used indirectly to keep the calm and neutral atmosphere in many of the spaces.  However when lighting display units were featured as design objects, a direct lighting element was chosen. In this way, the atmosphere in the living areas is generally dim, with only specific points where it is channeled into light niches and particular areas.

The S House interior design in Çubuklu Valley by Tanju Özelgin’s uses stone surfaces, lighting and an advanced artistic sensibility to create a modern and distinctive interior design style. The context in the forests of Istanbul provides the designer the opportunity to create a space for living in tune with nature but with a high-minded lifestyle aspirations of the client. Özelgin known for his subtle treatment of space has in this interior advanced his design aesthetic into a subtle fusion of nature and form.

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Visit Tanju Özelgin’s website – here.

Photography by Tanju Özelgin

Description by Gokhan Karakus

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Description from the designers:

This house is like a funnel of light, space and sea views. The location is the west coast of the Baltic island of Öland. The white concrete box is “corsetted” in the middle, creating slightly sheared wall and roof angles. This gives the house both its direction and character, while also marking the difference between the rear private two-storey bedroom part and the communal double ceiling-height front part.

Precast concrete is perhaps not the most common choice for a private house at this scale, but was ideal for achieving the ultimate precision in manufacturing tolerance and colour/finish.

The concrete is not painted or surface-pigmented but solid white, which gives it a wonderful glow. The joints between the concrete elements are carefully designed and positioned so that – instead of interfering with – they become part of the building’s geometry and expression. The sealant in between is gray to enhance the graphic effect rather than matching the concrete surface.

Visit the Claesson Koivisto Rune website – here.

Photography by Åke E.son Lindman

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Description from the designers:

Perched high on a ridgeline with sweeping views of the Silverlake reservoirs this custom residence operates as a barrier from the streetside activity while opening up the interior spaces to the panorama beyond. A tiered split level section allows each of the primary areas: the eating, living and sleeping spaces, to have autonomy from one another while giving each a specific connection to the adjacent outdoor spaces and views.

Visit the Space International website – here.

Photography by Joshua White & Steve King

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Description from the designers:

MA&D reconstructed this mid-century kit house, taking advantage of its location by creating a bedroom nestled in the treetops. A glass connector bridge links the bedroom to the rest of the house. This house reflects our focus on play and romanticism. Trees and bridges evoke peace, solitude and memories of the escapes of childhood.

Visit the Metcalfe Architecture & Design website – here.

Photography by Barry Halkin

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Description from the designer:

The ‘Dami’ is named from Korean verb means ‘put in’.

Dami series are consist of basket forms and covers and available for different and various usage depending on form and size. It shows visual beauty as well as the structure of Korean traditional grille which has light and sturdy durability, and the combination of new eco-friendly materials called Valchromat and CNC processing technique make it possible to materialize modern objet with traditional beauty.

Visit Seung Yong Song’s website – here.

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Description from the designers:

The 662 s.f. show suite is a careful study in urban living, its manifest simplicity belying its essential complexity. It embodies the modern impulse for openness, unity, and fluidity, within which functional parts are accommodated effortlessly. The character of the different zones is easy to read though their interrelationship is dense and multi-faceted.

Three distinct yet continuous areas – dine-cook-live – are defined clearly within the spatial totality, linked by an interplay of surface planes in cadence; horizontal and vertical, matte and reflective, transparent and opaque, dark and light. Deep espresso, custom millwork contracts the space, creating intimacy and warmth, while the white lacquer, custom kitchen island provides visual expansion and release. The oak stair on a single stringer behind floor-to-ceiling plate glass is highlighted with LEDs, imbuing it with complexity and dimensional depth.

As part of the overall design discourse, there are few freestanding or decorative furnishings within the suite. The integrity of its interior architecture stands on its own, enlivened with carefully-calibrated artificial and natural light. Sliding veneer panels – for concealed storage, media, and food preparation – maintain the model’s architectonic focus, ensuring clear and extended sight lines. The eye is led through the space where its discrete elements are introduced then fused into a seamless whole.

Visit the Cecconi Simone website – here.

Photography by Joy von Tiedemann

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Description from the designer:

Balance is a wooden LED lamp that only lights up when perfectly balanced. The will to use it must be stronger than the fear of disturbing the balance.

The lamp was designed for the exhibition ‘Untouchables’ by collective Dutch Invertuals and first presented during Dutch Design Week 2011 in Eindhoven. With this exhibition the designers present their responses to the prevailing spirit of insecurity of our times and the downside of freedom. They transposed the theme of vulnerability into contemporary designs. Balance, delicacy, curiosity and transience have formed their inspiration.

Mieke Meijer’s response to the theme was that finding the right balance is a key element of your overall wellbeing. She translated the theme of vulnerability into a lamp that consists of two balancing wooden posts connected by a single wire.

In the past 6 months Mieke Meijer developed the prototype both technically and aesthetically and presented it again during the Salone del Mobile as part of the exhibition ‘Untouchabled Retouched’ by Dutch Invertuals.

LEDs are hidden within the horizontal post. Over the entire length of both posts a brass strip conducts the low voltage current. When the brass strips touch, the electrical circuit is closed and the light turns on. The lamp is adjustable by sliding the horizontal post.

In this design the advantages of LED technology such as low power consumption, brightness, small size and long life are sympathetically combined with tactile materials such as walnut wood and cast bronze.

The lamp is available as table and floor model in three different material combinations. By leaving out unnecessary details, the lamp has an archetypal, almost graphic appearance.

Visit Mieke Meijer’s website – here.

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Visit the Steven Harris Architects website – here.

Photography by Scott Frances

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Description from the designers:

Hijauan is a house in the city of Kuala Lumpur.  Situated on a small plot in a mature residential development, we took the Malay term “Hijau” meaning “green” as our design directive.  Our aim was to avoid cutting a single tree on site.  As such, the house notches its way around the existing greenery, especially the two majestic 50 year old mango trees along the side boundary.

The ground floor of the house is all glass, and can be opened up to the tropical elements.  The 1st floor bedrooms are shielded from the sun with timber screens as well as the tree foliage all around.  The massing of the house has been carved out all around with courtyards that bring in light, air, and green, making for tropical spaces that BREATHE.

Visit the Twenty-Nine Design website – here.

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