© Yuya Hoshino

• Architects: B.L.U.E. Architecture Studio
• Location: Guo Zi Jian Jie, Dongcheng Qu, Beijing Shi, China, 100007
• Architects In Charge: Shuhei Aoyama, Yoko Fujii, Jingjing Tang, Lingzi Liu
• Area: 120.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Yuya Hoshino

© Yuya Hoshino

From the architect. This project is a store renovation for the furniture brand “Lost and Found” located in Guozijian  Street, a historic district in Beijing. As nowadays, more and more people tends to live alone, the concept of a traditional family gradually disintegrated, and the city’s public space is  becoming another “home” for people. Under such contexts, the renovation intends to  bring the sense of “home” into the store, and to introduce a new vision for the future commercial space that connects people with urban public space.

© Yuya Hoshino

By adding an alc, the traditional single-storey siheyuan building is transformed to a loK while most of the original wooden structure were retained. The indoor garden in the centre of the building divides the whole space into four independent areas living room, dining room, bedroom and a study. Since all the rooms open up to indoor courtyard, each space benefits from the sunlight that coming through the large skylight above and gets a view of the indoor garden.

© Yuya Hoshino

Plan 1

© Yuya Hoshino

Natural materials are used in all areas such as terrazzo floor, diatom mud wall paint, and wooden furniture. The rough texture and the plain look bring a warm and friendly feeling to people, waking up people’s initial memories and senses of home and family.

© Yuya Hoshino

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Courtesy of ArchSD

• Architects: ArchSD
• Location: Muk Hung St, Kai Tak, Hong Kong
• Architects In Charge: Alice Yeung, Thomas Wan, Tuesday Li
• Area: 11150.0 m2
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: Courtesy of ArchSD

Courtesy of ArchSD

From the architect. A school is a community: a micro-society, a mini city within a city. It is an oasis yet has a direct relationship with the city at large. Our idea is simple; the spatial concept for the Kai Tak Primary School is to bring the students and teachers together with the playground and other spaces and activities, to encourage interactions. Breaking away from the typical densely built 8-storey school building in Hong Kong with the ball court on the ground, this school adopts a low-rise 4-storey design, with the basketball court raised on the first floor, sited in the middle of the school campus, creating a focus, pulling together spaces and activities.

Courtesy of ArchSD

Axonometric

Courtesy of ArchSD

From the school entrance plaza, students follow a staircase route to encounter the covered playground, central ball court and library roof garden, creating a sense of discovery of spaces, to stimulate the passion for self-discovery. This staircase path connects the three major open spaces of the school, setting the orientation of the campus. 

Courtesy of ArchSD

The old tradition of Hong Kong’s walled village is re-interpreted in the design of the school.  In similar way as a village’s ancestral hall, houses, square and lanes would be strategically laid out within the village wall.  Within the wall of the School campus, the assembly hall which reads as the town hall of the school complex, the library and the classrooms are arranged in different blocks around the central ball court, with link bridges, courtyards, street and colonnades, shaping the school as a micro polis, conceived as a whole by using major urban design elements of a city. Courtyards, streetscapes and overlooking terraces bring closer the different spaces and activities, encouraging interactions. 

Courtesy of ArchSD

Gardens and roof gardens are arranged on different levels throughout the campus to provide green scenery for the interiors and attract communications between the indoor and the open spaces. Gardens and vertical greening together with fair-faced concrete, metal and timber screens compose a variety of spatial experiences to be discovered, to stimulate learning. The selection of materials and generous use of greening also create an oasis in the city.

Courtesy of ArchSD

Product Description. Metal screen of weaved mild steel plates was used as window screen of the classroom block close to the main entrance of the school.  Mild steel, along with other natural materials such as fair-faced concrete, timber and vertical greening, creates a variety of spatial experiences to be discovered.  The language of the weaved screen was inspired by the Chinese traditional screen, a common element for windows and partitions in traditional houses of walled-villages in Hong Kong.  By incorporating screens that mediate the outdoor and indoor environments, the design re-interprets the tradition in a contemporary way.

Courtesy of ArchSD

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© Katherine Lu

• Architects: Bijl Architecture
• Location: Mosman NSW 2088, Australia
• Architect In Charge: Melonie Bayl-Smith
• Interior Designer: Vanessa Tang-Lee
• Area: 285.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Katherine Lu

• Builder: Langridge Constructions
• Structural Engineer : Partridge
• Stormwater Engineer: Partridge
• Arboriculturalist : Tree Talk
• Pool Builder: Premier Pools

© Katherine Lu

Set on the edge of a national park, the Burrawong House has undergone a transformation that establishes compelling links between the dwelling and its bushland surrounds, providing opportunities for serenity and retreat. Bijl Architecture was engaged by the owners from the very conception of the project, assisting with identifying an ideal site that captured both tranquillity and suburban amenity.  

© Katherine Lu

Through careful manipulation, alteration and augmentation of the original 1970s brick dwelling, the scheme interacts with its bush surroundings in an interplay of light and shadow. The simple form of the original 1970s dwelling required specific formal responses, with the new additions designed to nestle under and into the existing building form. 

© Katherine Lu

Key design elements such as large picture windows, clerestories, raking ceilings and internal/external spatial flows have been leveraged so as to compete with the shading of the extensive foliage and deal with the difficult bush fire zoning. Utilising this design approach, an equilibrium of spaces come together, making the house work vertically as well as horizontally. 

Floor Plan

A series of careful insertions – under the house to create a music studio, at the side of the house to create a magnificent lap pool that juts into the bush – translates into a multiplicity of soft or transitional spaces for escape and relaxation. The result is a house that bows to the bush, that makes the most of its original, modest form by offering a flexible family home focused on quiet beauty.

© Katherine Lu

Product Description. As the property is in the highest level bushfire planning zone, any new external materials needed to consider not only the aesthetic and form of the original 1970s brick dwelling, but also the ability to withstand stressful bushfire conditions. We also considered how any additions to the existing dwelling would best blend with the highly textured and coloured brickwork as well as the dense bushland surrounds. Thinking about these various parameters, we decided to preserve the original long line of the existing dwelling by placing a ‘pop-out’ addition on the street façade, accommodating a modest extension to the ground floor plane. This addition is clad in Terracade panels, made by Austral Bricks – the terracotta panels comply with the bushfire requirements and allow an efficient wall thickness to be achieved. The panels allow the new addition to make a contemporary reference to the brick ‘units’ of the existing dwelling, while contributing to a slick rectilinear aesthetic. Overall, the box form and its clean, grid-like surface complements the existing building fabric whilst making its own statement as the new street-facing element.

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© João Duayer & Nathalie Ventura

• Architects: Tavares Duayer Arquitetura
• Location: Olho d’Água do Casado – AL, Brazil
• Architects In Charge: João Duayer, Thiago Tavares
• Area: 124.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: João Duayer & Nathalie Ventura

• Collaborators: Diego Curcio, Fred Gomes, Mariana Amoedo e Nathalie Ventura.
• Landscape Designer: Rafael Costa Bastos
• Construction: Equipe Caldeirão do Huck

© João Duayer & Nathalie Ventura

From the architect. The scenery is the backwoods of Alagoas, Brazil, a place so atypical of great beauty and simplicity. It helped us understand that the kickoff should be to enhance local culture by using regional techniques on the design and construction of a home and its interior. The result is a cozy, clear and light environment.

© João Duayer & Nathalie Ventura

Thermal comfort was a priority in the project. We created cross ventilation and holes in the roof so that the hot air could be exhausted, while the cold air was coming in. Translucent roofing tiles and perforated bricks also helped to bring ventilation and natural light to the house interior, almost absent previously.

First Floor Plan

Neutral colored furniture highlighted local craft objects. Works of art from natives as well as the reuse of typical objects in the interior design were some of the actions that nurtured the design.

© João Duayer & Nathalie Ventura

Kitchen has a special treatment in the house, since there is a cook in the family that helps many community institutions. The dining room is integrated to the kitchen in a way that this space is shared intensely by the family. At the rooms, studying was the focus.

© João Duayer & Nathalie Ventura

At the facade, we decided to use mostly white paint so as to talk with the light colours of the local architecture, while the green, the blue and the vegetation in strategic places give life to the project.

© João Duayer & Nathalie Ventura

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Houses in Hardwick "Garden City," a suburb of Chepstow in Wales, that was built in the early 20th century. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2i2TiqK user Ruth Sharville</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2cNSQNM BY-SA 2.0</a>

Yesterday, the UK Government announced plans for 3 new garden towns and 14 new “garden villages” across England, expanding a plan that already includes 7 previously announced garden towns. Explaining the concept of the garden villages, the Department for Communities and Local Government described settlements of 1,500 to 10,000 homes, saying that together the 14 locations have the potential to deliver 48,000 new houses. In order to expedite the creation of these new settlements, the government has set aside a fund of £6 million (US$7.4 million), which housebuilders will be permitted to use in order to accelerate development at the sites.

However, the architectural community in the UK has mocked the proposals and the government’s use of language, highlighting what appears to be a poor understanding of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities concept. Many have also pointed out that the plans are relatively meager in a country that, by many estimates, is falling hundreds of thousands of new homes short of the number needed every year.

@GavinBarwellMP We had New Towns. Then Ecotowns, didn't work. Garden Cities, ditto. Now Garden Towns & Villages. What next? #ebenezerhoward

— Peter Murray (@PGSMurray) January 2, 2017

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We've gone from Garden Cities to Garden Villages. https://t.co/bDaecwtj6k Make no small plans etc.

— Future Cities Salon (@fcp_salon) January 2, 2017

Speaking with ArchDaily, Charles Holland—co-founder of Ordinary Architecture and a former member of FAT—said: “I think the idea of new villages is a very interesting and important one which I have been researching at the University of Brighton. As part of an answer to the current housing crisis, I think new villages offer a plausible model that could reflect changing work patterns and the role of digital culture. This could facilitate a sort of reverse modernity or rural futurism—a migration from urban to rural.”

@edwinheathcote @guardiannews hipster roof gardens

— Cameron Sinclair (@casinclair) January 2, 2017

However, regarding the UK government’s announcement, Holland was less positive: “As for the ‘garden’ bit, well that seems like a lazy, unthreatening way to evoke places like Letchworth minus the radical model of communal land ownership that was an essential part of Ebeneezer Howard’s original vision.”

The garden prefix will not gussy up the same inadequate housing policy, served up in smaller and more lukewarm portions every year

— Matthew Whitfield (@mwhitfield80) January 2, 2017

'Garden' villages – an impotent tweeification of housing policy @mwhitfield80 http://pic.twitter.com/Ghx8M5qJTu

— Catherine Slessor (@cath_slessor) January 2, 2017

Others were also pointed out how the original socialist intentions of the Garden City movement were at odds with the government’s plans, with writer Gillian Darley referring to an article from 2012 which criticized a previous misuse of the term by the government:

Here we go again … a reminder #LRB blog: https://t.co/oFGoYuuZSH via @LRB

— gillian darley (@gilliandarley) January 2, 2017

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© José Manuel Cutillas

• Architects: José Miguel García Pérez
• Location: Ciudad Agroalimentaria, Tudela, Spain
• Architect In Charge: José Miguel García Pérez
• Project Team: Sara Catalán Sesma, Ricardo Martínez Jordán
• Area: 18550.0 m2
• Photographs: José Manuel Cutillas

© José Manuel Cutillas

From the architect. JATA is a company with more than 50 years of experience in the manufacture and marketing of household appliances. With its original headquarters already obsolete, it was decided to build new, larger facilities, which would cover the current requirements of the company and the market. These requirements were mainly a large logistical area and spaces destined to activities of manipulation, recovery, production lines, laboratory, etc. On the other hand a properly administrative area.

© José Manuel Cutillas

With this distribution of the program and under operating guidelines studied by Jata throughout its history, the project was born with two volumes of pure lines and an industrialized construction based on prefabricated concrete elements, as a reference to the company and its production in series, which allowed to reduce the execution time. The largest volume houses the logistics program meanwhile the smaller one embraces the rest of the areas.

© José Manuel Cutillas

The logistic warehouse has 14.6 m of maximum height, 100 m of width and 120 m of length. It is a building with a closed facade of concrete panels placed horizontally, prefabricated structure of concrete sconces of big lights to achieve an interior space as clear as possible, naturally illuminated thanks to skylights and exutorios in deck. The offices, of smaller size and greater complexity, is defined by a facade with prefabricated elements of vertical concrete from floor to deck, with an orientation S-SO that allows to take advantage of the natural light for the whole day, achieving a uniform natural illumination throughout the building, and allowing the best possible views of the open landscape and the Moncayo peak. Light is present everywhere and transparency is intended in all spaces, creating connections between different working areas and achieving greater efficiency and better working conditions within the company.

First Floor Plan

Despite all difficulties, the program has been developed to achieve a project with an architectural value associated to the company, a design that corresponds to the innovative but, at the same time, traditional character of Jata Appliances.

© José Manuel Cutillas

This quality of the building based on repetition, austerity and functionality generates a rigorous piece that is necessary to disrupt in order to mark the access to the interior. Therefore, the entrance to the office building fractures a corner of the main parallelepiped, creating an atrium of double height and broken shape that contrasts with the austerity of the totality.

© José Manuel Cutillas

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© Sebastián Crespo

• Architects: Leppanen + Anker
• Location: Quito, Ecuador
• Area: 15000.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Sebastián Crespo

• Other Participants: Uribe & Schwarzkopf
• Work Team: Sofía Chávez, Caroline Dieden, Alberto Játiva
• Structural Calculation: Patricio Ramos

© Sebastián Crespo

It is a 14 story, 15,000 m2 mixed use building: commercial on the lower floor, offices for the next four floors and residential units on the next nine floors. 

Diagram

The building is located at an important intersection within the city where urban elements converge, such as a new metro stop, an important government building, a commercial shopping center and the most emblematic park of the city. Being the first new construction in this zone and highly visible, the building attempts to combine the many existing and new diverse elements through movements that bring new shadow lines  reflections and points of view.

© Sebastián Crespo

Floor Plan

In the search for spatial wealth elements of the facade were eliminated, this is achieved by a design concept that removes strategic corners of the building. Where double and triple height spaces are generated.  Where panoramic visual connections to the entire city, manage to activate these exterior areas traditionally dead, and replacing them with different social programs.

© Sebastián Crespo

Floor Plan

© Sebastián Crespo

These new exterior areas at the top of the building take advantage of the park’s visual and excellent equatorial climate that prevails throughout the year. Deep perimeter balconies around the building help to reduce solar gain in the interior spaces allowing for the use of larger portions of glass in the façade, without sacrificing passive climate controlled spaces. 

Section

The building contains a large roof garden that makes a visual connection with the surrounding Andes Mountains while creating usable green space for the building’s residents. 

The façade of the building uses a material process known as GFRC (glass fiber reinforced concrete).  Molds were made in close collaboration with the architect’s digital model and the fabricators work shop to provide accurate and a well coordinated process. The concrete material in then sprayed onto the molds to create the final product. 

© Sebastián Crespo

The design and the construction process of the building utilizes a repeatable patterning system to reduce the overall amount of molds used in creating the dynamic building facade. Advantages of this material are efficiency of installation, as panels are fabricated up to 4 meters by 2 meters tall. Molds are also able to be reused, reducing the material used and fabrication time.  Also designed and built into the installation process is a system of adjustable metallic connections allowing the complex forms to align with ease. The final product is a continuous dynamic façade system.

The coordination between the Leppanen + Anker Architects, the developer and builder, Uribe & Schwarzkopf, was vital for the development of the GAIA building, resulting in a new landmark for the city, a new architectural and constructive reference, which is incorporated enriching urban life and local architecture, in the Ecuadorian capital.

© Sebastián Crespo

Detail

© Sebastián Crespo

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Courtesy of Atelier Pierre Thibault

• Architects: Atelier Pierre Thibault
• Location: Chemin du Lac-des-Piles, Shawinigan, QC G0X, Canada
• Architects In Charge: Pierre Thibault, Claudia Campeau
• Area: 3200.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Courtesy of Atelier Pierre Thibault, Maxime Brouillet               

Courtesy of Atelier Pierre Thibault

La Grande passerelle is designed for a young family wishing to enjoy a peaceful lifestyle on the shores of a scenic lake in Quebec, Canada. Two volumes of wood anchored against a gentle slope generate a luminous inner courtyard delimited by the forest. The first, acting as a screen to the street, contains a luminous training room, located under the garage, which overlooks the private courtyard.

© Maxime Brouillet               

© Maxime Brouillet               

Below, a second volume comprising the rooms seems to float above the fully fenestrated ground floor. The connection between the two volumes of wood is made by a large footbridge which penetrates the interior spaces of the house and projects itself towards the lake. The visitors reach the residence by the upper floor to discover step by step the living room, the kitchen and finally the lower level that opens generously on the backyard and the dock. The play of transparency connect the different rooms of the house to the lake that the family can contemplate from all places.

Courtesy of Atelier Pierre Thibault

Floor Plan

Courtesy of Atelier Pierre Thibault

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