The house is built near Krakow, on the southern slope’s building plot with extensive panoramic views on mountains’ range Karpaty and Beskidy. Starting to create a house project in such a place, we wanted to reinterprate the “Zakopianski Styl” (an old architecture style which is assigned to Polish mountains). That’s why we’ve created the expressive, triangle attic block, which goes beyond the outline of the walls. Together with the plinth and openwork railings, it creates the space functionaly comparable to the traditional veranda. Complement to the concept are Canadian Cedar shingle and boards. These natural materials, aging, every year will change the building’s visual reception.
Product Description. Timber elevation and roof (boards and shingle) are perfectly common to a local Polish nearmountain building tradition, which is exacly where the house is built. These natural materials will change during the time, they’ll “live” together with the seasons and wheather. Because of it with every passing month and year the building will blend more and more into the landscape.
The “Rust Belt,” a region of north central United States, is well known as an area where once thriving industrial cities have declined in economic health and population. As a result, many of the region’s cities have been subject to grand proposals that aim to fix these city’s problems–but could such schemes also provide a way to intervene in other serious global issues? In a recent article, Metropolis Magazine’s Web Editor and former ArchDaily Managing Editor Vanessa Quirk argues that refugees could reinvigorate such cities, describing how refugees are “boosting American’s legacy cities,” but simultaneously “encountering resistance from residents.”
In one sense, the proposal is incredibly simple: “Syrians need homes; Detroit needs people.” However, as Quirk explains, there are of course plenty more layers to the situation. What, then, is the role of design when it comes to cutting through these layers, and could it be a way to “reframe the narrative around refugees,” providing a response to those who still harbor a fear of the “other”?
These questions begin to be answered through several case studies across Detroit, Buffalo and Cleveland, where design has already begun to contribute to the new lives of refugees and immigrants, in increasingly healthier, more vital neighbourhoods.
For the full story, read the entire piece over at Metropolis Magazinehere.
For Casa Cor Rio 2016, the most important architectural and interior design event in Brazil, Gisele Taranto Arquitetura was challenged to create six different designs for a dining room. The 26th edition of the event takes place in a house surrounded by Burle Marx gardens in Gávea, an affluent residential neighborhood located in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Ovoo Dining Room by Gisele Taranto –..
The building zone is situated at 5 meters distance of the lateral limits. On the street side, it’s aligned on the advanced parts of the houses on the west. Its depth is 15 meters. The Garden is oriented at the north-northeast.
Designed on the basis of the volumetric language and templates already present in the « Champ », the houses merge very well in the characteristic built environment of the « Champ des Mottes ».
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In order to integrate a contemporary living program in a well-defined environment, the existing volumetric language is re-interpreted with a twist.
The project benefits from a high quality environment. It’s conceived to take profit of the positive aspects of the parcel: environmental frame, garden, views, vegetation and natural daylight.
The houses offer large openings on the garden side and are turned to the south in order to let the sun penetrate generously. With this purpose, a part of the building is scooped out to create a patio, as a south-oriented part of the garden.
The patio is a light receptacle. It invites, punctuates the entry and creates a pleasant distance between public space and home. Located below, it turns part of the basement into habitable space, which can be used according to the residents needs.
The four houses are all unique, interpreting the same ideas in a different way.
The scooped out parts, fulfilling a vital function in the houses, push back partly the street side fronts. Combined with the variable backside facade plans, it reduces the building depth and creates a visual together of alternating volumes and depths.
The partly reducing of the building depth allows creating traversing living rooms combining environmental views, sunlight and direct contact with the garden.
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The staircase treatment reinforces the daylight quota in the central part of the homes.
The volumetric result is offering visual dynamism and permeability to the whole, dialoguing with the environing buildings of the « Champ des Mottes ».
50 Shades of Grey is a residential project designed by Mooseberry Design Group. It is located in Kiev, Ukraine. 50 Shades of Grey by Mooseberry design group: “We name this project “50 shades of grey”. That is true, we used more then twenty shades of grey here, but the flat appears to be very cosy and soft. This flat was designed for young independent woman. She travels a lot, thats..
Attic Apartment is a private home located in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam. It was renovated by Tropikon in 2016. Attic Apartment by Tropikon: “The needs to have a new comfortable space in the old houses are inevitable demands of the residents living in Old Quarter in Hanoi today. With limited investment costs, expensive and time-consuming materials transport in the city, so that the green space solution interspersed proved..
Architects: Daniil Lorenz, Natalia Sidorova, Konstantin Khodnev, Ilya Prezhezhetsky, Elena Serebrova, Maria Kochurkina, Nadezhda Kulikova, Alexander Ivanov, Alexander Krokhin, Andrei Taranukha
From the architect. The house and surrounding landscape form one strong unit. The terrace overhangs the artificial pond. Garage and maintenance building are designed as a hill with a green roof park above. The hill also conceals house and the terrace from the road. All the inner house facades are made from water resistant and super strong merbau wood. The outer contour is of grey Jura limestone. Windows are equipped with sliding wooden jalousie screen. They allow light through and at the same time give sense of privacy. The interior is in the same color scheme as the facade: red wooden and grey-beige stone shades. The architects developed interior and construction elements, starting from the door knobs to sculptured staircase. The upper skylights open the interior to sun beams.
From the architect. This project is located in an abandoned factory campus in a former concession district of Shanghai, surrounded by colonial architectures.
Sketch
The design objective is to take advantage of the city’s heritage to recall the memory of the district, and create an open public office space.
Based on the surrounding old buildings, abstracted prototype units with similar scale are created. Several terraces are provided by interlocking and setback of this units, which provide opportunities for communication, and create a facade with rhythm rather than a dull building edge.
Diagram
Two passages directed to the city landmark went through the lower part of the building and connected the courtyards.
From the architect. The following renovation project aimed to transform a botanical garden located near Lake Ashi in the Hakone area, into a museum / a multi-purpose space.
The site is surrounded by a rich natural environment centering around a lake (Lake Ashi) and a mountain (Mt. Hakone). A large banyan tree, a tree emblematic of the botanical garden, used to stand at the centre of the glass dome serving as the entrance to the existing building. In this environment, precipitation(moisture) from the area would percolate through the site’s soil and collect around the roots , thus creating a natural spring filled with pristine waters.
For the purpose of the museum renovation project, we were tasked with designing a space inside this entrance that could accommodate a kitchen, a dining space, and a stage for temporary exhibitions and performances, such as concerts and plays.
We envisioned a place that would adapt to the museum’s needs by enabling a variety of activities.
First, we poured new concrete over the entire floor and created an octagonal amphitheater at the center of the entrance dome where the banyan tree used to be. A transparent resin was then spread at the bottom of the amphitheater floor to form a spring filled with the profound serenity and mystery surrounding water by acknowledging the memory of the botanical garden’s naturally occurring body of water, as well as the Hakone landmark that is Lake Ashi.
The octagonal amphitheater functions as a multi-purpose venue that can be used as seating for dinning, as a central performance area surrounded by tiered seating for concerts or plays, or as a display area for a temporary exhibition. We considered that layering the ever-changing image of the venue’s daily configurations over the shimmering movement and changing appearance of water filled with memories would be the best approach for this location.
Floor Plan
In the same way that a lake is the accumulation of water droplets brought from various water sources, the transparent resin floor was flooded with elegant and lively elements using different reflective materials, such as mirrors, pieces of glass and fragments of metal, to produce a variety of light shining off the water surface.
Just as changes occur in the flow of water when one stream meets another, the flow of materials blend and interact with each other as individual bundles of light gain momentum and send beautiful ripples traveling across the surface.
The changes created by these reflective materials confer abundant expressivity to the light which glows with the organic vitality of water, thus deepening its poetry while imparting beauty and mystery to the memory of water.
Like the surface of a lake that mirrors the evolving landscape, the changes in natural light, such as that from the morning or evening sun, the seasonal variations in the color of the trees, such as the fresh green leaves of spring or the red autumn leaves, all come together in a signature gradation that spreads throughout the newly built concrete and transparent resin surfaces like a wave of color filled with lively movement.
Furthermore, we applied vivid colors, such as purple and light blue to the steel frame(column and beam) and concrete parts of the dome walls, as if the vibrant colors contained in the lake surface were splashed onto its surroundings, to lend the gloss and freshness of water to the entire space.
The brown walls of the kitchen booth are covered with wood plates shaped like dancing shards of light from the spring. Moreover, the rough grain motif of each of the plates can be perceived as the flow of a waterfall, thus infusing the space with the vitality produced by the resonance between the energy of water, and the trees found in the surrounding mountains.
By bringing unity to the space and reflecting minute changes in its natural surroundings, this spring of memories spreads the image of water to the entire landscape and creates an environment where one can experience the wonder and mystery of natural phenomena while enhancing the fun and joy derived from human activities.
As the building undergoes a transformation from botanical garden to museum, the world ushered by the memory of the spring becomes engraved in our hearts along with the sparkle of flowing water, and its narrative is spun into the future.
The site is located in a cluttered town with busy traffic, surrounded by overflowing people, cars, and bikes. Upon entering the restaurant, away from such bustle of the city, a quiet and comfortable space welcomes the guests as if entering a different world. Our intention was the creation of a space for people to feel “Japan” by eating soba cuisine prepared by a soba master.
The existing building has a narrow shape with about 5m width and 25m depth.
The first floor consists of the bar with a 10m counter made of solid wood from Africa, the soba making area surrounded by glass walls that faces the main street, the kitchen at the back and the counter kitchen connected to it.
In order to provide a relaxing atmosphere for dining, the ceiling height was lowered from the previous 3.6m to 2.4m. The see-through, wooden hanging frame above the counter ensures the openness of the space, while properly dividing the guest tables and the kitchen. The vintage lumber, the painted walls resembling rammed earth, and stone masonry walls create a Japanese atmosphere.
The second floor consists of the tables and private dining room.
In order to efficiently place tables in a 5m wide shop, millimeter-scale fine adjustment is necessary for compromising sizes such as the tables and isle width. Arrangement of the tables and dividing them are of the utmost importance since spacing is directly linked to comfortability.
In order to avoid crossing the lines of vision between customers or an excessive feeling of enclosure, the see-through wooden partitions with various shapes and finishes are used to ensure comfort. The only private dining room is located at the backmost location of the shop, dynamically surrounded by large solid wood boards and granite, creating a uniqueness in the restaurant.
Sig Nordal 