An ancient winery is rehabilitated. Its main attributes are a wide space and thick walls. Though introducing a new program, the universal character of the space remains. Together with the existing wall, a new thick wall houses all of the social functions on the main level.
Plan
Section
Stairs within the thick wall and day lit from above make the light transition from social to private space. The more private areas – bedrooms, bathrooms and a studio– are conceived as habitable volumes in an “impossible” balance, structuring the space. The volumes, articulated by light, modulate the main space of the lower living room, emphasizing its breadth.
It is a house with its exterior wall cut off at an acute angle for the relationship with the surrounding environment. Plants gently define the boundary and link the house with its neighborhood.
The site is located in Oita prefecture, slightly away from the center of Oita city. It is situated at a low ground area coming down from a rise in a dense residential area with many detached houses and public buildings. In front of the site, there is a street in 4m wide, which diverges into the west and east directions and affects the shape of the site. It was necessary to think about the living in a valley-like condition with such surrounding conditions as the narrow yet heavy traffic streets, condensed houses and public buildings in the east and west sides of the site. Considering owner’s privacy, we placed a living room and water section on the second floor as a public zone, while bedrooms and other private spaces were located on the first floor.Openings on the first floor level were minimized for security reason. In addition to the basic plan configurations, we sorted out the conditions of those enriching external elements to be layered, such as openness, day lighting, natural ventilation, and borrowed scenery.
Plan 1
Tall west-side wall is built for privacy against the adjacent house across the street, to the height not to lose the sight of wild cherry tree on the rise. On the east side—since cherry blossom trees line up at the boundary of the public building, and the street on the east is about 80cm lower along the site, opening is provided for the living room on the second floor level to enjoy the view of those cherry blossoms. Daylight can be taken in from the corner of the site facing to the fork road on the south side because there is no adjacent house. By creating a courtyard as a buffer zone, daylight and wind can come into the interior space. We also planted trees at the boundary of the courtyard to connect the house gently with surrounding environment (neighborhood). Those trees are rather a part of the building translated into the element for the expression of the house— in this case, it is a lattice-like element, or used as screen—than typical vegetation of a house
By doing so, this building, with acutely cut off expression, detaching itself from the surrounding environment, can still connect itself with the surrounding environment (neighborhood) in gentle manner, as the expression of the house changes when the trees move or grow. Our aim for the interior space was to create rich spaces through the borrowed scenery with courtyard trees and cherry blossoms trees to be viewed beneath the living room on the second floor.
HASSELL has unveiled a contemporary new addition to the Geelong Performing Arts Centre in Geelong, Australia. Just over an hour south-west of Melbourne, the complex is a significant hub for the growth and promotion of the arts in regional Victoria. Over its illustrious 35 year life, it has built a reputation as one of the premier performing arts spaces in the state, and the $38.5 million upgrade will cement its prominence.
The redevelopment centers around a new entrance and facade, completely redefining the building’s street presence. Contemporary and sleek, the addition sits atop the current building at an angle parallel to the existing roof pitch. The new entrance also provides a crucial upgrade to the building’s accessibility and amenity.
Courtesy of HASSELL
The expansion will also include rehearsal facilities, new dance studios and provision for creative industries offices. As the only state-owned arts centre outside Melbourne, Geelong Performing Arts Centre will not only be a landmark destination it will also service the needs of the growing creative and cultural community, said Mark Loughnan, HASSELL Principal and Head of Design in a press release.
Courtesy of HASSELL
Construction is scheduled to begin in mid-2017 and stage 2 is slated for completion in late 2018.
Studio Gang has been selected to design next year’s installation of the Summer Block Party at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. The temporary exhibition will be the latest in the Museum’s annual series, after this year’s ICEBERGS by James Corner Field Operations, and previous installations like Snarkitecture’s The BEACH in 2015, and Bjarke Ingels Group’s BIG Maze in 2014.
We are delighted to embark on a new collaboration with Studio Gang over the next year, said Chase W. Rynd, executive director of the National Building Museum. With their creativity and impeccable design credentials, they are poised to reimagine the possibilities of this series.
The concept for the new exhibition is currently in development, and will be announced in early 2017.
The installation will open to the public on July 4, and will remain on display until Labor Day 2017.
A proper balance as a goal Two activities: live and work. Its two corresponding spaces, house and studio, have been shaped historically, as two quite clear architectonic typologies.
Our first goal to this project was to combine both in a single small building, firstly keeping their programmatic independence and secondly achieving a proper balance in the whole [not a house with a studio appended, neither a studio with an added house].
It means, we would like to integrate both programs in such a way that both could live together with no conflicts. The studio should not be disturbed when the house is empty. In the same way, the house should not be degraded by an uninhabited studio.
Studio The studio was disposed 1m lower the street level as a strategy to change the typical perception of a full-story building, then its function does not dominate the building.
House At the west plot limit, the house entrance leads to a single-floor house, spread in the second level slab. The bedrooms are situated at the front side and the living room towards the rear. Connecting bedrooms and the living-room are the kitchen and service areas.
The reflecting pool mitigates the severe local weather and multiplies the light in the house patio. In addition, it assures the impermeability of the concrete slab, free of any membrane, and works as thermal insulation for the studio.
Planta
Planta
The house’s design aimed for no evident architectonic elements like doors and windows. Thus, its function is not apprehended at first glance in order to not prevail over the studio.
Two major construction materials Both programs are being built with few major materials: glass and concrete. This conciseness is a strategy to keep construction process and costs under control.
Maison Edouard François, in partnership with ABC Architectes, has won the competition for the requalification of the former Ray Stadium into housing, landscaped gardens, shops, sports facilities, and parking, beating other competing firms like Herzog & de Meuron and Rudy Riciotti.
Located in Nice, France, the project aims to provide its swiftly growing neighborhood with a “new green lung” by mimicking the form of a vegetated hill and incorporating elements of classic Niçois architecture like white stone and wood. The reinvented stadium becomes a bridge between the urban and natural landscapes, linking new constructions of the Boulevard Gorbella with the new Ray Park.
Courtesy of Maison Edouard Francois
Courtesy of Maison Edouard Francois
This new park will additionally be integrated into the city block on one level, stretching over all the buildings and covering the façades and roofs. Furthermore, the façades will host climbing, flowering plants and the rooftops will be entirely planted.
Courtesy of Maison Edouard Francois
A construction in the interior of the city block will be raised and placed on pilotis, in order to broaden and extend the presence of nature. Underneath this garden object, the spaces that have thus been freed up will be accessible and open to the public, for new domestic and leisure activities – explains the architects in a press release.
William McDonough + Partners and GXN have teamed up to develop a master plan for the Agro Food Park (AFP), a hub for agricultural innovation near Aarhus, Denmark. Aiming to serve as a benchmark for future global food industry development, the project will combine urban density with agricultural test fields in a collaboration of academic and commercial business.
Over the next 30 years, the current AFP—which was opened in 2009 and spans 44,000 square meters with nearly 1,000 employees—will expand by an additional 280,000 square meters.
We are privileged to have been chosen by GXN to collaborate on what will become an entrepreneurial ecosystem for addressing the future of food and plant resources, said William McDonough, founder of William McDonough + Partners and co-author of the text, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.
Courtesy of William McDonough + Partners and GXN
Five focus areas have been identified to improve AFP through the new expansion: healthy materials, clean energy, increased biodiversity, healthy air, and clean water.
Courtesy of William McDonough + Partners and GXN
We are in the ecological century. After decades of unthinking destruction of climate, water and land, now is the time to restore and replenish the biological resources of our planet for all of Earth’s species, stated McDonough. A carbon positive city demonstration at the Agro Food Park can be the embodiment of this new century – its clean water, air, soil and energy serving as a continuous source of economic and ecological innovation and regeneration, redefining how we can enact a positive and abundant future.
Courtesy of William McDonough + Partners and GXN
Courtesy of William McDonough + Partners and GXN
In combining urban and agricultural development into one larger concept, AFP aims to create economic value within the urban and agricultural infrastructure.
Courtesy of William McDonough + Partners and GXN
The master plan of the project will be composed of three main elements—the Lawn, a central communal green space, the Strip, AFP’s main street, and the Plazas, which will bind together clusters of buildings with individual neighborhood identities.
From the architect. The plot on which this three-story home is built lies slightly below the level of the surrounding area on the edge of a single-family residential district. The response to this difference in level is an intelligently designed semibasement, above which soar a full floor and an attic. The emblematic facade and the carefully dimensioned saddle roof projecting on all sides add an archaic touch to the building. It’s kind of presented on a pedestal.
The eastern part of the semibasement accommodates car parking spaces, on the western side an apartment is stretching over the entire length of the building. In each the upper and the attic floor, two apartments are located which open to three sides. Well defined horizontal layers dominate the visible sides: the partly hidden semibasement, the wide open upper floor and the elegantly tailored roof. Minimally protruding profiles and small plastic [three-dimensional] interventions accentuate the facades, while the wood of the parquet floors and of the sliding shutters forms a warm counterpart to the fair-faced concrete.
Courtesy of Felippi Wyssen Architects
In the interior, the access areas have been kept to a minimum while the living quarters have been generously conceived. A wide column grid characterises all floor plans and provides for structural affinities between the different levels. The construction volume draws additional suspense from the alternation between loggias and inside spaces. Floor-to-ceiling doors and passages create intriguing perspectives and attractive spatial volumes. Furthermore, the ground-floor flat benefits from the passage to the green external area which is sheltered by its favourable position.
Other Participants : Alexander Kudimov, Daria Butakhina
Courtesy of Ruetemple
From the architect. Tasks We were expected to create a living space in a small 2-room apartment in a new solid-cast building.
The apartment owner is a young man, who shares a similar point of view with us regarding the interior living space, therefore it was very easy for us to find a common ground and create a convenient, functional and modern space.
Diagram
Concept The initial data on the apartment is very convenient: no load bearing elements inside the apartment, the concentration of all wet zones along the wall deep within the apartment, and two large windows along the opposite wall, which provide perfect lighting for the whole area.
Courtesy of Ruetemple
It was important to keep the feeling of air and volume; however, at the same time we understood that it would be impossible to do without a private sleeping zone. Not wanting to construct any solid partitions, resulted in the idea of creating some volume in the center of the apartment, which would be multifunctional, and simultaneously enable the transparency and freedom to be retained. A structure containing the sleeping zone, the zone for watching the projector, a cloakroom, and a sofa in front of TV set has become such a volume. The whole structure is made of wood. We tried to make its form interesting like a sculpture: it has large window areas, which let the light penetrate the lobby; it even has the ladders, the storage racks, and the niches for the bed and sofa. The remaining zones, such as the bathroom and kitchen, have been very compactly located along the wall opposite the windows.
Courtesy of Ruetemple
As wood is a rather active material in terms of color and texture, the remaining space has been designed using calm colors: the white walls, floors, kitchen furniture, and concrete ceiling. It creates an impression of the wooden structure floating among the white walls, floor and concrete ceiling.
Half of the visible structure, is cantilevered by 8 meters. The superstructure is a 16 meter long by 7.5 meter wide concrete box with no columns or beams. The 520m2 land contains this very large house that only has a 64m2 footprint.
This is a house with a strict minimalist approach. 5 main materials were used. Concrete, Steel, Stone, Wood and Glass. The main ambition was to make as much use of the land as possible while creating a variety of wide and open spaces that can be used depending on the wind and weather conditions. The folding/sliding window and door systems, the 8m long cantilever and the pool placement on the side of the house are all design decisions to maximize the living areas. The folding/sliding systems make convertible living spaces to switch between indoor and outdoor. The cantilever was designed to minimize the footprint while maximizing open areas. The cantilever also serves to push the building mass toward the sea view, clearing the adjacent house, to create a large roadside terrace and to provide plenty of shade by the pool and garden.
The steep grade of the land would have created very large, long, narrow and unusable side gardens terminated by very tall retaining walls. So the design team decided to use the building’s side façade and the retaining walls bordering the property as a pool basin, connecting the ends with L shaped wall. This with the cantilever design created a very large pool and a sizable garden.
The building façade is raw concrete which also makes up the load bearing structure, cast in a textured wooden formwork. The shutters are made from wood. Exterior flooring is done with The interior has marble flooring on the common areas and bathrooms. The bedroom floors are rustic oak wood.
The landscaping was done with local plants such as olive, mastic and cypress trees in Cor-ten steel clad concrete planters. The site irrigation is done with an 80 metric ton cistern that collects rain water year-round.
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The house can be used as a main home or a summer home. But since it’s built in the resort town of Çeşme, Turkey, it will likely be used primarily as a summer home.
This house is a real estate development project. It has not yet been sold. The company (Erdil Construction) acquired the land, developed the design and built the house for the intention to sell.
Sig Nordal 