© Cosmin Dragomir

• Architects: EXHIBIT Arhitectura
• Location: Strada Hermann Oberth, Brașov, Romania
• Architect In Charge: Johannes Bertleff, Dragoș Oprea, Adrian Ianchiș
• Area: 570.0 ft2
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: Cosmin Dragomir

• Collaborators: Mihai Lambescu, Cristina Matei, Ioana Păvăluca, Răzvan Andrei

© Cosmin Dragomir

From the architect. The fronts of Hermann Oberth street were gradually densified in the last 60 years. A prevailing house residential district in the ’50s, densely built, on small sites with narrow spaces between the buildings, the area was remodeled during the communist with the introduction of the blocks of flats. Nowadays, this narrow street is the border between the row of houses and the compact alignment of the blocks of flats. The client, owner of one of  the houses mentioned above, wanted a larger, continuous living space, bathed in sunlight with large glazed surfaces.

© Cosmin Dragomir

One of the first challenges was harvesting the sunlight amid a neighborhood consisting of blocks of flats.

© Cosmin Dragomir

Plan

© Cosmin Dragomir

Our answer was a translucent house placed over the existing house.The translucent shell is punctured by transparency towards the favorable views of the area.

© Cosmin Dragomir

The structure of this lightweight extension does not overlap with the structure of the old house creating, in fact, its own genuine structural framework.

© Cosmin Dragomir

Section

© Cosmin Dragomir

The proximity of the neighboring houses was a very inciting topic for us. The new house commits to dialogue with the closely neighboring blind walls. Opposing a noble, translucent wall, to a neighboring, indifferent blind wall generates a positive communication between the two.

© Cosmin Dragomir

Leaving aside theory, the inner free living space of the addition mesmerized the owners gives in contrast to old house underneath.

© Cosmin Dragomir

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• Architects: hyperSity Architects
• Location: Weinan, Shaanxi, China
• Architects In Charge: Yang Shi, Shojun L
• Area: 278.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016

From the architect. This house is a renovation project of “wow home” TV series, for the client Ye Liangchen, a Internet star, who lives in the Loess Plateau of Shanxi Province. The original house is one of typical traditional cave courtyard in the village, in disrepair, and almost collapsed condition. 

Site Photo

Site Photo

It included a main cave as the living space in the north, and three rigid side caves as the bedroom space in the eastern part. In an area of about more than 50 square meters and the depth is 11 meters without a kitchen and toilet, the space of main cave was extremely dark and damp.

Given the traditional cave has the advantage of warmness in winter and coolness in summer, the design strategy follows tectonic of vernacular cave dwellings, but ensures that that each room is well ventilated and lighted. The design strategy is to preserve the northern cave houses, and to transform the run-down southwest wing caves into couple of independent spaces oriented to the south, which contain a kitchen, bedrooms, storage room, a dining room and a toilet. 

Diagram

Axon

The preserved main cave is divided into two separated functions, the inner space as grandma’s bedroom, while the outer space as living room for family gathering. Taking into consideration the sunlight and ventilation in the cave, a circular glass light well sized in 1.5-meter diameter is devised in the middle of the cave. The main entrance of main cave is transformed into a wooden grid façade and glass curtain wall, which introduces plenty of sunshine.   In front of the cave entrance is a new semi curved canopy, which prevents the strong wind from the northwestern Mongolia.   

Besides the improvement of living conditions, the prototype of walled structure compound is applied in the new design with more dynamic courtyard sequences. Courtyards introduce the nature to the house. The architect intends to maximize the outdoor space visually and psychologically.  Hence, 5 scattered courtyard landscapes are created within the compound, and connected through a zigzag path similar to the Chinese garden to create a tranquil atmosphere and infinite spatial experience. These areas also enable fresh air and daylight to enter every single house. 

The architect is committed to the integration of new building and local environment. The new houses are strictly controlled within the red line and the original building height. In the aspect of the selection of materials, the new building adopts the technology of traditional rammed earth, which composed of the mixed clay and sands from the top of surrounding mountains. By doing so, this building appear unique texture and color, whereas the effects of rammed earth in other places would appear various because of different origins of the clays. The application of rammed earth not only reflects the local building traditions, but also brings in the strength and permanence of stone with the warmth and simplicity of wood.  It also profoundly helps reduce the budget of project.

Re use the previous furniture for interior space so that people can feel familiar from the old life.

Rural people deserve a modern life and ample modern facilities. However, rural areas should not be the lower versions of the city, and should not be the followers of the city. Instead, it should maintain the intimated relations to the sky and the land.

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© Youngchae Park

• Architects: Hyunjoon Yoo Architects
• Location: 395 Sindaebang-dong, Dongjak-gu, Seoul, South Korea
• Architect In Charge: Hyunjoon Yoo
• Design Team: Jinsung Heo, Jaehong Kim, Daeun Seo
• Area: 465.9 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Youngchae Park

• Structural Engineer: Seum
• Construction: Pureun jongwon construction
• Mechanical Engineer: Min Sung engineering
• Electrical Engineer: Hyeob-In

© Youngchae Park

Rock & Branch

 Janitor’s Shelter for Boramae Park

A Tail of The Hill

The building has such unique program and location. This facility is served as a place where the park janitors rest, wash and store cleaning tools at the same time. Boramae Park has small and large hills within the park. The site is located at the endpoint of one of those hills. The fan shaped area, which is about two-thirds of the site, is in contact with the road and the rest one-third touches the end of the hill. In fact, the site is in-between the last tail of the hill and the road. With the site given, the park required a shelter for the janitors and the storage for the equipment. 

© Youngchae Park

© Youngchae Park

The rock and the branch

First, the initial design concept was to minimize the shape of the site, which results an arc-shaped mass along the road providing a shelter for the janitors. Then, the arc-shaped mass has been elevated from the ground in order to allow the flow of the hill into the inner courtyard of the building. The floating mass is supported by the several storage rooms rather than the columns. Since these storage rooms are the continuation of the land and should portray the rocks on the mountain, they are finished with black exposed concrete and are scattered randomly on the ground. The floating mass, a shelter for janitors, is treated with exposed concrete and layered with the vertical wooden louvers. The width of the wooden louvers are especially thin as the entire building illustrates an image of the rock – storage rooms on the ground – and the branch – floating shelter – in the mountain.

© Youngchae Park

Second Floor Plan

© Youngchae Park

An interactive elevation

The main elevation of the building is about two-thirds of curved surface and one-third of straight line. As the road passes around this elevation, people who walks around the building would experience a visual variation with the wooden louvers arrayed throughout the curved surface. A slightly wide spacing of the louvers allows the observer a visual alteration depending on his or her viewpoint – the exposed concrete surface is much revealed from the front view and it is gradually concealed as the viewpoint changes. By walking around the site, the observer could capture the sequence of elevation in which the finishing material alters between the concrete and the wood. 

The four pine trees

While arranging the building on the site, preserving the existing four pine trees has been emerged as a critical issue. In order to minimize any harmful work to the nature, the building has been set back a few meters from the site boundary and doing so, one of the storage buildings has been digged into the hill. The hill then naturally continues to the terrace above the storage, which further connects to the courtyard. Consequently, the four pine trees has become the key elevation of the building, which enable a gentle flow from the outside hills to the inner courtyard. 

Diagram

Diagram

Diagram

Diagram

An open path

The site is situated where the promenade starts. Furthermore, various circulations through the park is crossing around the site. In order to preserve the circulation flow, the main shelter has been built on pilotis whereas a few storages are dispersed on the ground floor. In doing so, the pedestrian path is fully reserved and also the generous open area below the facility could be used as a public space for special occasion.

© Youngchae Park

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© Su Chen, Chun Fang

• Architects: META – Project
• Location: West Sea, Beijing, China
• Design Team: Wang Shuo, Zhang Jing, Yaping Wu, Yin Cheng, Qianqian Chang, Han Wang, Guowei Zhang, Tian Lan
• Area: 800.0 m2
• Project Year: 2013
• Photographs: Su Chen, Chun Fang

• Lighting Consultant: Xiaowei Han

© Su Chen, Chun Fang

Unlike the introverted quality of the traditional courtyard house, the owner of this site asked for a variety of mix-use program, including tea house, dinning, party space, office, meeting, as well as dwelling and entertainment. The contemporary and sometime “public” program opened up the courtyard to become “extraverted”, so as to induce more human interactions. 

Before . Image © Su Chen, Chun Fang

These required us to break the general understanding of the courtyard as an enclosed typology by introducing the experience of “meandering in the hutongs” into the courtyard, and the interventional approach was derived from the unfolding spatial narrative of hutong life. 

Diagram 1

The cautions with which specific renovation measurements are made demonstrate circumspection. First, we converted the narrow corridor squeezed between two rows of brick building to a mode that is compatible with the hutong-courtyard typology by demolishing the temporary structure to the east and in the middle, so as to introduce cross-sectional changes along the 60-meter long site. 

© Su Chen, Chun Fang

Then by adding 3 different types of “loggia” at the hinge of the expanded spaces, we redefined the layers in the longitudinal depth, thus reconstructed a “three-step-courtyard” in the spatial sense.

© Su Chen, Chun Fang

Here the “three-step-courtyard” is not an imitation of the traditional symmetrical courtyard pattern in the hutongs, but a contemporary reinterpretation of the multi-layer courtyard space and its possible variation along the depth, andhow it will shift the movement of steps and sense of space. The owner’s life – all the mixed programs, were sorted and divided by 3 courtyards full of vegetation, making the daily routine of walking in and out the site a continuous spatial experience full of rhythm. 

Detail

© Su Chen, Chun Fang

Detail

In the process of renovation, one might find some interesting spatial model, but in the end, it all has to integrate with the life it carries. 

© Su Chen, Chun Fang

Further beyond, what interested us in the renovation is how design strategy can appropriately reduce the amount of construction: using existing footprint to make small-scale buildings, using wood, brick, tile…all these local materials, using local craftsmanship but through new tectonic method, to respond to the problem in everyday scale and at the local level, so the users’ lives can unfold in it naturally. 

Plans

Intervention in the hutongs therefore needs to be based on the true understanding of life and culture, the “Aura” of a thing as Walter Benjamin pointed out, instead of rigid protection to its physical appearance.

© Su Chen, Chun Fang

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© Gayle Babcock

• Architects: CannonDesign
• Location: Springfield, MO, United States
• Architect In Charge: David Polzin, Design Principal
• Area: 58000.0 ft2
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: Gayle Babcock, Peaks View LLC

• Landscape Design: CDI
• Civil Engineering: Land3 Studio
• Mep, Fp, Telecom: KJWW

© Gayle Babcock

The O’Reilly Clinical Health Sciences Center is a new teaching and learning facility serving as the third of a trio of buildings that make up the College of Health and Human Services at Missouri State University. Through its careful siting and unique physical presence, the new building creates a micro-campus for the college within the university’s broader campus context. Its bold, angular form cantilevers over the building’s chamfered corner entry, acknowledging its companion buildings and inviting in the students who circulate between them.

Diagram

Public Space Diagram

Programmatically, the center is comprised of undergraduate and graduate curricula in occupational therapy, nursing, nurse anesthesia and physician assistant studies, with each requiring tailored classrooms, specialized skills labs and simulation labs, faculty offices and support spaces. The building cuts back its southwest corner to create a second entry plaza for a ground level outpatient clinic serving the local community.  Housed in an otherwise purely academic building, the clinic is designed to be not only a fully functioning healthcare facility but also provide real-world experience for students.

© Gayle Babcock

Section

© Gayle Babcock

Collaborative spaces for students flow throughout the building, creating an interior “street” in the social sense and continuously connecting all levels by a faceted, undulating wood ceiling. The lobby itself contains a variety of options for student collaboration, from café tables outside the center’s main lecture hall to seating pods for small group interaction. Spreading vertically from the lobby and flowing across level two, additional seating pods, a tech bar and group study rooms adjoin the more formal learning spaces.  The street culminates at the third level in a student lounge with dramatic views back to the main campus and an outdoor courtyard terrace that doubles as both respite and didactic learning space for occupational therapy instruction. Collectively, this variety of collaborative environments connect teaching and simulation labs, and also form community space that brings students from diverse programs together for inter-disciplinary learning.

© Peaks View LLC

Materially, the building reinterprets the campus’ palette of limestone and cast concrete with a fiber cement rainscreen. This material choice helps define the dual character of the building’s expression – it is at once a light structure, barely touching down on the campus, and simultaneously a chiseled mass. In either interpretation, it is a significant addition to the campus’s growing array of contemporary architecture.

© Peaks View LLC

Product Description. Swiss Pearl was selected as the exterior cladding material, as its planar characteristics coupled with a concealed mounting system resulted in the visual emphasis remaining on the chiseled building form.
The glass was selected to be as color neutral as possible, so as to resemble voids nested within the building mass. 

© Gayle Babcock

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