Loft House is a residential renovation designed by A+Z Design Studio in 2015. It is located in Budapest, Hungary. Loft House by A+Z Design Studio: “This is an island over the city, abandoned and peaceful environment with special aesthetics. “ No matter that living there is a bit like plunged into the world of the “Sin City” or the science fiction movie “Metropolis” of Fritz Lang. The architect and production..
From the architect. Located at the water’s edge in the Barcelona Port, the interior recreates a wave about to break, embracing the costumers in a marine atmosphere full of reflections and shades.
Briefing and Concept
We were asked to create a space where you could savour some cocktails in an elegant atmosphere while enjoying the virtues of its location by the water’s edge at the OneOcean Club Port Vell yacht area in Barcelona. The building hosting the Blue Wave Cocktail bar has a particular morphology: a long tube form, with its longest facade facing the water, covered with a white lattice enclosure that creates a play of light and shadow at dawn.
The Cocktail Bar
The design of the cocktail interior is conceived as a wave. A wave before breaking creates an embracing tube that generates an aquatic, dynamic and unitary space yet filled with reflections and shades. The vertical water wall spills out, becoming something else, like sea foam. Sunset light breaks into golden pieces floating over the water.
To recreate the wave feeling in the interior we used tiny and reflective elements. The usage of one single material on floors, walls and ceiling unifies the space and strengthens the wrapping sensation of our particular wave. Ceramic tile was the right choice for the preceding qualities and its relationship with the Mediterranean architecture. All ceramic tiles were designed specifically for the project and handmade by a local business of ceramic artisans.
The color range goes from deep blue to white, incorporating the white concrete lattice façade of the building as a finishing of the blue space, like the foam to the wave. Golden elements recall the sun reflections on water.
Terrace
Located at the northern part of the cocktail bar there is a wide terrace. Conceived as a Mediterranean cove, a space of transition between a vegetal, wooded zone and the sea, its stepped topography creates different spaces. A place that invites you to relax, listen to the sea and stare at the horizon.
The wood pavement generates a topography of different levels. It creates a platform hosting the VIP zone and stands out as the back of the benches, where the Mediterranean vegetation shows and helps us draw the limit of our cove, creating a certain degree of privacy for the area .
The lower marble tables have an irregular shape and appear like pebbles on the sand once the wave has broken.
Space, Distribution, Materials and Details
The rectangular and long space of the cocktail bar is organized in a very clear way, with its two short opposite sides open to the entrance area and terrace, and the bar placed in a parallel way to its longest façade.
The glazed façade allows opening and connecting the interior space to the exterior, this way adding the white lattice of the existing building as part of our wave.
The wave continues its curl through the floor, wall and ceiling and takes form through the use of reflective materials, shiny and blueish, such as ceramic tiles, marble slabs, metals and glass. These materials, organized in surfaces and panels, help us create the patchwork of support elements behind the bar, with the bottle display as one of its main features.
The bar is part of the wave, and it is conceived as one more of the marble slabs. But in this case it is hung from the ceiling and floats gently in the middle of the space. On its opposite ends the bar turns into a table around which clients can be.
This range of colourful vessels by Swiss designer Dimitri Bähler is intended to “question the concept of usefulness in our homes”. Read more
Located at the corner of the Street at Villa Meruya residential precinct, The guild shows its introvert side with the solid and high border wall, the solid fence without a gap to peek. As if to withdraw from the noisy Jakarta city and build its own sanctuary, the guild is solid from the outside but open on the inside.
The Building consists of one master bedroom, living room, studio a place to work , a library, one open courtyard and a kitchen. The entrance is introduced by concrete, steel, glass and polycarbonate sheet. The access from public and private is separated by open air corridor. The access to the House and the Studio are separated by 2 x 2 m foyer.
The bedroom is located on the 1st floor while the other program is located on the ground floor. The circulation is interlocked to give ease access for the owner to access the studio below. Living room and also the dining room with total area of 35 sqm located on ground floor, while the more private family rooms are located on the first floor and limited by the void of stairs to separate family area and the studio.
Hot west – east tropical sunlight is blocked by placing solid wall and bathroom while the facade is open to the north-south orientation. Several pyramids shaped form is also introduced to allow sunlight coming to the middle of the building and allowing fresh air circulation through the small gaps in between glass and concrete.
The building system uses an automatic watering system that applies zero greywater runoff and zero storm water runoff. It means the whole water is collected to the retention basin with 8 m3 capacity and 2.75 x 3 m of catchment basin with 1,5 m of depth that also contribute the catchment to the neighbor.
The studio is consist of 6 x 6 m square shape, a small void. The small void has a tapered skylight made of concrete with several small gaps to provide light and air circulation. The library named Omah which is open at the weekend has the size of 3,4 x 12,3 m. It is sunken at perimeter area, half below the height of 0:00 meters considering public access and the needs that require a condition to keep books from the sun and constant temperature with the minimum possible to use the air conditioner. At the heart of the house is a courtyard with a fish pond with a background of the 3.5 m radius circle window with 3.50 m looking through the family room. The Guild is one example of project which exercise the modification of form and program with interlocked circulation in the tropical climate of Jakarta, Indonesia.
Sig Nordal 