From the architect. Located in a quiet area of the Eastern Townships in Quebec, the Nook Residence sits in continuity with the landscape in which it is part. Turning its back to the street, it offers a virtually blind facade that encourages discovery and piques curiosity. Strategically located openings and a large gap in the white mass give a hint at the beautiful scenery below as we approach the building.
Inside, the clear sequence of open living spaces on the ground floor successively unveils different views of Lake Memphremagog to the visitor. Separating public from private spaces, a relaxation and contemplation area comes in as a pause in the architecture discovery course. Acting as lounge suspended over the void, this interior balcony between two levels accentuates our appreciation of the site in all its splender.
The steep terrain quickly dictated the first project constraints. The house clings to the steep terrain and seems to be projecting toward the Lake. Like an origami, the two volumes are linked by a dynamic bending ribbon that merges the roofs together. The created projections act as solar shading and protect a huge terrace facing south.
A white painted wood decay uniformly coats all sides and allows a more delicate integration of the building in its environment. Inside, the sobriety of the materials creates a canvas for a space that is both bright and warm. Polished concrete radiant floors, black ceramic tiles and walnut furniture punctuate the space with elegance. Cedar ceilings extend outside in continuity with the roof soffits outside, stretching sights to the Lake. Abundant windows erase the boundaries between inside and outside and a black staircase in the continuity with the upstairs railing leads to the bedrooms on lower level. Two large bedrooms, a bathroom and a dormitory with apparent board-formed concrete walls mainly compose the Ground level.
Acting as a landmark through the lush summer, the house changes with the seasons and its whiteness blends into the winter landscape as a tribute to the great Quebec winters. via v2com
Nowadays the main building materials used in the construction industry are concrete, steel and timber. From the point of view of ecological sustainability, there are four important differences between these three materials: first, timber is the only material of the three that is renewable; second, timber needs only a small amount of energy to be extracted and recycled compared to steel and concrete (but the implementation of its potential is not as developed yet); third, timber does not produce waste by the end of its life since it can be reused many times in several products before decomposing or being used as fuel and; and fourth, timber traps huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere – a tree can contain a ton of CO2 [1] – and the carbon absorbed remains embedded as long as the wood is in use.
Considering the fact that 36 percent of total carbon emissions in Europe during the last decade came from the building industry,[2] as well as 39 percent of total carbon emissions in the United States,[3] the materiality of construction should be a priority for governments’ regulations in the future as measurements against global warming. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the level of carbon emissions of the big economies across the globe are big issues that need to be solved with urgency in order to avoid larger, more frequent climate catastrophes in the future. The current regulation in several countries of the EU, which is incentivizing the use of renewable materials in buildings, is showing the direction the building industry in many other parts of the world should follow. And if these measures are adopted across the EU and beyond – if other countries start to follow this tendency as well – there will be significantly more wood in cities.
However, though the use of wood is one of the most effective mechanisms to decrease CO2 emissions in building construction, there are other considerations that should be made at different scales of the built environment. City density, for example, is directly related to carbon emissions. It is a fact that dense cities are significantly more sustainable than sprawling cities; therefore one path to more sustainable forms of living might be the planning and regulation of compact wooden cities.
But a dense city necessarily requires the construction of high-rise buildings, posing challenges to wood construction technologies, since wood has traditionally been used in small buildings where the structural demands are lower. Also, the durability of wood due to moisture decay and fire has been a problem for timber structures. Fortunately, new timber-based products are being developed which are structurally stronger and last for longer periods of time without any moisture and fire complications. These new products allow us to build high-rise buildings, turning timber into a feasible and convenient alternative to traditional high-rise building materials such as concrete and steel. Wood technology will undoubtedly keep developing along this path, making it possible to build skyscrapers in the future.
Even though material innovation and new technologies have increased the durability of timber significantly, there are still people who argue that steel and concrete are much more durable and, therefore more sustainable. However, the difficulty of reusing these materials is an issue. Nowadays, cities are very dynamic and are constantly changing, and thus the average life span of a building is not as long as it used to be in the past; today buildings die young. A study of residential buildings in the United Kingdom claims that 46 percent of demolished structures were between 11 and 32 years old at the time of their demolition.[4] The same study shows that in Japan, the typical life span of office building is between 23 and 41 years.[5] The data is very similar in many other countries around the world. In the current circumstances, steel and concrete buildings are constantly producing waste – demolished buildings – which means that their durability properties are a disadvantage in light of the “early” demolition of a considerable amount of the built environment. On the other hand, wood is a material that can be easily reused or recycled, or even used as fuel at the end of its use for construction purposes. This energy can be used to heat other wooden buildings or to produce wood-based products. This way, timber can easily become a carbon-neutral material.
High-rise timber buildings will need the development of new structural systems if the industry is pursuing the construction of buildings higher than twelve stories – the highest wooden buildings erected up until today. New structural systems are starting to use a variety of different wood-based products, taking advantage of the qualities and properties of each product for the diverse functions that structural systems require. A skyscraper is a very complex structure and it cannot be built using timber exclusively, therefore in the future the structural systems will probably be mixed, but they should always use as much timber as possible and decrease the amount of steel and concrete.
Nowadays the most widely used wood-based products available on the market are Glued Laminated Timber (Gluelam), Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL), and Parallel Strand Lumber (PSL). Gluelam is produced by gluing together individual planned timber laminations to form continuous timber members, creating a homogenous composite material without limitations of width and length. The individual pieces are joined with finger joints, so there are no potential weak points.[6] Because of this, it is possible to standardize the quality of timber and develop timber structures with engineering precision, therefore providing an ecological alternative to steel and concrete. CLT is a massive panel of several individual plies glued together at 90 degrees to each other. The deformation seen in solid wood due to variations in moisture conditions is practically nonexistent in CLT, and this stability can result in very precise tolerances for prefabrication construction applications,[7] making it possible to build with the same precision as steel and concrete. LVL is produced using thin layers of softwood veneer glued together and usually oriented in the same direction. It can be very strong in the longitudinal direction parallel to wood fibers, and as large dimensions for floors, roofs and walls or as a columns and beams.[8] LSL is similar to LVL but instead of layering thin veneers it is made from layering flakes of wood pressed together with adhesive. PSL is manufactured from strands or strips oriented in the same direction and combined with adhesive to form large format billets. It is used in applications where high bending and/or compression stress is needed, such as long spam beams.[9]
All of the wood-based products available in the market are frequently used for different parts of buildings, fulfilling particular functions according to the specific characteristics and properties of each product. But all of these products require huge amounts of timber, and the concerns of many people regarding deforestation in service of the construction industry are more than justified. The demand for wood in a scenario where timber is the main material of construction in cities could be catastrophic for forests and the environment – if the extraction is not well managed. The practice of logging and re-logging an area, each time taking the best of what has grown there with no provision for the future could be a disaster for the environment.[10] When the eventual regrowth of the forest is based on stunted and malformed trees, the new forest is of lower quality. This is currently a problem in many countries, but forest management in the EU is demonstrating that it is possible to produce more forest than what is being harvested. Therefore, better management is imperative in order to be able to maintain and even increase the area of our forests while still using them intensively for construction. Silvicultural and genetic improvements have been increasing productivity and will even more in the future. Today, an integrated modern operation can convert more than 80 percent of a tree into useful products, with most of the rest converted into fuel.[11] In order to increase productivity, reliance on smaller and younger trees is necessary. Logging trees when they are young essentially means producing smaller pieces in bigger numbers than larger ones. Considering the today’s advanced timber technology this should not be a problem since very stable and strong products can be made from small, lower quality pieces. Using young trees as a material for wood-based products is also more sustainable since trees absorb CO2 faster in their first years, so more carbon will be embedded in timber if we cut young trees and rapidly regrow new ones. If forests are well managed and the technology continues developing, the demand for timber can be covered by the forestry industry without problems.
In conclusion, the challenges of global warming and emissions of CO2 should be solved partially through the densification of cities using timber as the primary material of construction. In order to achieve this, structural systems and timber-based products must continue to develop, and the forestry industry should be prepared to respond to a higher demand for wood in the future, which can be achieved by increasing the productivity and efficiency of the extraction of this renewable resource. Compact wooden cities seem to be viable and effective way of creating a sustainable built environment in which many people live. However, the adoption of wooden construction in cities needs to happen faster than it is taking place at present. This is possible, I believe, only through increasing construction regulations which promote the use of wood as a building material and the development of new and innovative wood technologies, in order to catch up with accelerating global warming.
Mayo, J. (2015). Solid Wood: Case Studies in Mass Timber Architecture, Technology and Design. New York: Routledge, p. 9.
European Commission for Research and Innovation (2016). Challenges Ahead. Retrieved from: http://ift.tt/1XkIu9x
US Green Building Council (2016). Buildings and Climate Change. Retrieved from: http://ift.tt/1IRHDAe
O’Connor, J., & Dangerfield, J. (2004, June). The environmental benefits of wood construction. In proceedings, 8th World conference on timber engineering (Vol. 1, pp. 171-176).
Ibid.
Jeska, S. & Pascha, K. S. (2015). Emergent Timber Technologies: Materials Structures Engineering Projects. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmBH, p. 52.
Mayo, J. (2015). Solid Wood: Case Studies in Mass Timber Architecture, Technology and Design. New York: Routledge, p. 17.
Ibid., p. 15.
Ibid., p. 15.
Hoadley, R. B. (2000). Understanding wood: a craftsman’s guide to wood technology. Taunton press, p. 255.
Team: Michael A. Manfredi, FAIA and Marion Weiss, FAIA, Design Partners, Armando Petruccelli, RA, Project Manager, Justin Kwok, Andrew Ruggles, RA; Paúl Duston-Muñoz, Project Architects
Project Team: Annelie Persson Call, AIA; Will Butler, and Joe Cruz
Associate Architect: Page Milton Powell, AIA, Team Leader; Richard C. Robinson, AIA, FCS
Food Service Consultant: James N. Davella Consulting
Telecommunications Consultant: Datacom Design Group
Contractor: Andres Construction Services
Courtesy of Albert Večerka/Esto
Site Plan
From the architect. The Marshall Family Performing Arts Center is the focus of the performing arts at the Greenhill School. The design establishes a dialogue between building and campus: the building’s configuration creates a sequence of spaces that shape an outdoor courtyard and frame views out to the existing campus. The courtyard is animated by a double-height lobby. Designed to be an ascending gallery of collaborative spaces, the lobby connects all the performance venues and creates a destination for informal performances and spontaneous interactions.
Courtesy of Albert Večerka/Esto
Courtesy of Albert Večerka/Esto
The performance spaces occupy two levels of the building and include a 600-seat proscenium theater, a state-of-the-art studio theater, a dance rehearsal and choral space, a film/video lab, and extensive theater support space. The multi-purpose proscenium theater includes a fly loft, the studio theater seats 150, the dance and choral rehearsal studio seats 80, and the film and video production lab extends the performing arts into new digital territories. Learning environments include theater spaces as well as in classrooms, dressing rooms, a costume shop, and a scene shop.
Diagram
Section
The dramatic profile of the building emerges from the topography of the site and continuously ascends to reach the fly tower for the theater. The exterior brick collaborates chromatically with the materials of the campus. Illuminated soffits and overhangs provide shade and support outdoor teaching. Together these elements shape and give measure to the Performing Arts Center’s commitment to advance teaching, performance, and production across the boundaries of individual performing arts disciplines.
This week’s issue of The New York Times Magazine, the second annual New York issue with a theme of “New York Above 800 Feet,” takes a rather irreverent approach to the magazine’s design. Instead of being viewed in the traditional horizontal orientation, the periodical has been rotated 90 degrees and is meant to be viewed by turning the pages up. The long dimension, which is only 10.875 inches horizontally, becomes 17.875 inches vertically, and according to the magazine’s editor, Jake Silverstein, “‘[It] remains absurdly short for our subject, but it is in keeping with the striving spirit that has given New York City its distinctive skyline: This is as tall as it is possible for our magazine to be.”
Courtesy of The New York Times Magazine
One of this week’s highlights is the magazine’s cover story,Man on Spire by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, which documents a climb to the upper reaches of One World Trade Center’s spire, conducted by adventure photographer Jimmy Chin and safety liaison Jamison Walsh. On the expedition, the two not only worked out the magazine’s cover image, but were also the featured subjects of aerial photographs by George Steinmetz, and a video that documents the climb in 360 degrees. The latter is available to watch in the NYT VR app (a free download in the Google Play and iOS App Stores). In all, Chin and Walsh spent over six hours on the tower’s spire, one waxing lyrical about the importance of safety, the other contemplating the perfect shot, and how 1,776 feet really doesn’t feel so tall when you’ve also climbed Everest. As the two marveled at their surroundings, and the charged context of World Trade Center site, there was consensus about their rarified vantage, with Brodesser-Akner comparing the two to “harnessed King Kongs” and the two high-fiving over “what giants they were.”
House+Home, March 1971 Page 53. Image via Colossus
North Carolina Modernist Homes (NCMH) and Hanley Wood (parent company of ARCHITECT) have partnered to create Colossus: a new digital archive of 20th century architectural publications, reports Architect Magazine. When complete, it will be the largest digital archive of modern architecture magazines, with over 1.3 million pages.
For NCMH, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and documentation of mid-century modernist residential architecture, Colossus is a natural next step. The sizable collections of NCMH have already been uploaded, while Hanley Wood’s collection will be available July 1, 2016.
Finds in the archive can range from informative to humorous to nostalgic. Earlier issues evoke the distinctive aesthetic of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, while ads remind present day readers of the progress in building technology in recent decades. Read more about the project at Architect Magazine here, and see images from the archive below.
Architecture, August 2006 Page 6
Architecture, August 2006 Page 6. Image via Colossus
Progressive Architecture, June 1987 Page 58-59
Progressive Architecture, June 1987 Page 58-59. Image via Colossus
Architecture, August 2006 Page 14
Architecture, August 2006 Page 14. Image via Colossus
AIA North Carolina, May-June 1970 Page 43
AIA North Carolina, May-June 1970 Page 43. Image via Colossus
AIA North Carolina, May-June 1970 Page 4
AIA North Carolina, May-June 1970 Page 4. Image via Colossus
It should be designed a total of five houses in two close sites, being those of a different morphology, with topographic inclines up to four metres, adjacent to other buildings’ dividing walls and orders to several streets. The houses, because of being subisidized housing, should have a limited area of 80 m² usable area and if it is possible, some of them will be developed in just one floor, and they will have sloped roofs as building regulations state taking into account other regulations.
The strong differences in heights would produce important steps between the house, this is the reason why it was had the clear intention of joining and softening those steps with a common surrounding of the building project, considering this as the only one and not as the addition of repetitive elements so common in the detached houses. It was intended as the sloped roofs as the front of the houses, acted as a unique enveloping, using the same colours for their textures (If I had to say with a colour my memory about the houses of Badajoz area, is the white.)
The houses, like in no other way in this environment, have a courtyard, that is conceived as a living and privative element towards most of the rooms of the groundfloor are pointed. It could almost be said that the vision to outdoors does not mind and that their openings are conceived in many cases, only to guarantee the crossed air circulation with the yards.
With the intention of obtaining, on the one hand, they privacy of the froundfloor rooms, and on the other one, to give more importance and clearnees to the with texture, it is conceived a series of covering louvers part of the enclosure behind which different openings are hidden.
The peculiarity of having different perspectives of the edifications and integrated them in the different urban scene of which they are part, preserving in all the proyect a common language.
From the architect. Visitors to the Old North of Tel Aviv would be surprised should they stumble upon a small neighborhood of low-lying family homes possessing just one or two storeys each. These are the remaining relics of Israel’s early urbanism when the English garden city motif populated many of her towns.
It incorporated a rural aesthetic of red-tiled roofs, low construction and spacious, generous gardens – some buildings were constructed by the Ministry of Housing and others were enthusiastically encouraged by it. Their first inhabitants were often new immigrants and many were soon purchased by elites who saw in them the promise of comfortable lives and peaceful surroundings within an ever-growing city.
In the march of time, some were abandoned, neglected, and then rediscovered and renewed. Dense cities developed rapidly and intensively around them causing a sharp desire for these oases of comfortable family homes. Some remained unaltered – modest homes through which waft the romantic scents of their history. Others have been adapted to reflect the modern tastes and desired proportions of their current owners.
Unique is the advent of contiguously built homes – built from the start as linked units with a continuous appearance. Siamese twins bound together by visual and constructive obligations. Their development requires consideration and adjustment. Their environment seeks to preserve their values – their culture and history.
At first glance the clean, bright facade of the house seems alien against the background of the neighborhood. Emphasizing its difference is the additional height of the home and its long, horizontal windows, hidden behind white iron lattice-work. These are in conversation, as it were, with the early international-style homes built in Tel Aviv, some of which displayed similar lattice-work that emulated freedom of form – rendered by indecipherable spatial division.
Viewing the home from the side reveals the preservation of the original slanted roof with its distinct romantic character. Now, however, the roof appears to be resting on the surrounding walls rendering its appearance so subtle it may even be missed. The end result of the side facade is an homage to the image of the “village home”.
Section
Section
A passage runs from the street straight through the entrance into the inner areas – exterior and interior – past and future – a home of modern proportions. The rear facade reveals a large, vitrine window unifying the home to the yard and pool. The passage through the storeys of inner rooms is formed by a floating bridge crossed by a staircase leading up to the roof. There the bleached wood eaves stand out against the wall thinly coated with black cement, as if acquainting the architectural motifs of new and old, identity and exactitude that permeate the structure. Hence – inside and outside – two worlds – two cultural tales are intertwined within the existence of the structure, permitting its existence, breathing into it completely new life.
Get to the point, minimal gym : simple program and tight budget. The problem is clear from the beginning of the story : build an ambitious fitness gym with few ways. Here, no stylistic device, no free graphic effect and, all in all, nothing exceptional. The common sense, and only the common sense, as the line of conduct of conception.
Plan
* Pragmatics, the plan limits circulations, places the various needs carefully and allows the mixing of the program (fitness gym, gym, changing rooms soccer, concession stand, clubhouse).
* Pragmatics, the volume answers directly the request while keeping a strong identity in the respect for the environmental standards (level RT 2012 but with a performance of remarkable airtightness of 0,25 m3 / h.m2 for an objective of 1,7 m3 / h.m2).
* Pragmatics, the choice of the used materials is simple and radical.
The use of bardage isolated 2-in-1 (internal and outside finishes + isolating) coupled with bands of translucent polycarbonate allows quite at the same time a pleasant and dynamic facade, an insured thermal comfort and an important visual comfort (no dazzle, almost opaque south facade and very open north facade) for a mastered cost.
The gym is clearly identified by its canopy wood handled to the black of Falun (very resistant natural treatment often used by the sea) who goes on to in front of the concession stand situated in front of soccer field.
Except the sports ground, the ground of spaces is a simple tiled floor with hardener quartz. No forgery-ceiling, networks are visible and circulate under the roof. Cinder block painted in changing rooms, acoustics treaty with perforated steel ceiling and a just almost monochrome bright atmosphere disrupted by colors “Elmer” of the earthenware of the showers which come to pick the visitors in changing rooms.
Design Team: Wendy Saunders, Vincent de Graaf, Ivan Yu, German Roig, Byungmin Jeon, Liat Goldman, Lily Zhu, Bertil Dongker, Alex Fripp and Zhikun Zhang
From the architect. SOHO approached AIM with a challenge: imagine a shopping centre as a new type of office. 25,000 square metres of blank space, already built for retail. Transform it into a co-working space, part of SOHO’s new 3Q brand that Forbes has called “Uber for offices”. SOHO is known for pure white. AIM is vibrant. Offices are divisive. Shopping centres are built on a massive scale. Bridge the gap.
Diagram
The first consideration was approach. AIM decided it had to be bold. Strong colours and strong patterns would add life to the often-drab mall (and do double-duty as way finding).
The space would be used by ambitious entrepreneurs, start-ups and companies not tied to old models. Bosses looking for more than a corner window in a glass tower.
In one way, the project reflected us: it was not conventional. Re-programming a retail space brought up questions of the use of space in our cities, how interaction works and how to foster communities. This generation of workers was not content with a cubicle. A moot point, really, as filling the massive space would have required all of the cubicles in Beijing. AIM would have to turn that thinking on its side.
Diagram
From this perspective, the constraints of the existing retail design became opportunities: where a shopping centre would say hallway, AIM could say island, a natural place to meet while using the home-style kitchens or sitting at the communal table.
This was a greater challenge with two massive atriums, which carried in daylight but presented their own problems: how to maintain the peace of the open space but make it useful to 3Q’s community of companies?
The answer was in an oversized oak staircase, spilling down from the entrance into the basement floor. The slope of the stairs frames the space as a venue for lectures or events, transforming an area meant for personal consumption into one meant for community development.
A second atrium allowed AIM to re-imagine the built world as a natural community, quite literally. In The Park, the great expanse comes back down to the human scale, with stands of live bamboo and glass meeting rooms that evoke backyard conservatories.
Diagram
Natural, witty, peaceful and considered. Not often the words one associates with an office or shopping mall.
Neither is ‘efficient’. But with more 3,600 desks, 3Q is a small town. And towns have addresses. This idea of neighbourhoods brings community back into a commercial space. Like Shanghai’s lanes or Beijing’s hutongs, the addresses relate to a neighbourhood, where private and public spaces co-exist and networks of people develop naturally.
And this is 3Q at its purest: interaction. The design draws people into shared areas, where the real potential of co-working lays – crossover. When you put ambitious people in the same room (or atrium or kitchen or lounge), new ideas and collective experience can be exchanged, created, rejected, discussed. Ultimately, taken back to the desk for consideration about how to include it in one’s work and how we each shape our own communities.
Landscape Designer: Ayutt and Associates design (AAd)
Lighting Designer: Ayutt and Associates design (AAd)
Construction Area: 450 m2
Diagram
From the architect. PK79 is located on Petchkasem 79 road, Bangkok, Thailand where is known as the suburban residential area. The site location is in the middle of wasteland zone, remotely from the city and low density of population effected directly to the safety issue. The neighborhoods of this area live quite far apart from each other. The security issue becomes the main problem for this area and Thai architecture. Most of households solve this problem by adding the “wrought iron screens” as a protection screen to all doors and windows preventing thieves or other invaders.
Which somehow make the owners feel uncomfortable and ends up being confined in their own residence and also causes negative effects like terrible shape, view blocking, and extra maintenance. Although today world can solve this problem with various technologies, most Thai people still feel insecure to live in a house without these secondary screens. We live in these skins for years and years becoming unconcerned about it. This gives an architect a design question to develop the façade which works as a protector, but at the same time improves living quality by creating space hierarchy and special characteristic. Ayutt and Associates design (AAd)’s result turns out that the house has the special protection screen, which works multi-function as a house feature facade, space divider, a wall, a sun- heat protector, air buffer zone and air ventilation.
AAd also creates the program of this house by dividing the function between daytime area and nighttime area. The daytime area is on the lower floor, Living zones, with full connection to the outside and the garden. This area is designed as “THE WHITE box” with the solid white wall and the white vertical protection screen. These white aluminum extrusion strips are developed and applied from the normal obsolete security curve steel, to disappear and blend with the landscape outside. Most of living areas are directly connected to the garden with sliding partitions allow the air flow through into the double height space to reduce the heat for tropical climate. The location in the middle of two courtyards give rises to the people feel connected between inside and outside. The service function is divided by a kitchen which located in a place where it can serve people in living area and all zones. The guest bedroom behind has been defined by pocket courtyard to increase more privacy, and provide dramatic spatial quality for corridor in the middle.
The nighttime area is on the higher floor, to provide privacy and safety. The main nighttime area or the masterbedroom, is designed as “THE BLACK safe box” by cladding the customized screen panels, of which some can open to make way for the windows behind them. The black protection screen is made from Metalic-dark perforated aluminum panel with the gradation of varying size holes and patterns, from small to bigger, vary to the function inside and level of privacy. These perforated aluminum panels are not only serve as architectural elements, but also help to block the ambient noise, and allow light and air to enter without sacrificing privacy. These folding panels are 100% ventilation and allow the user to take the panorama view of scenery when fully opened, or they can completely closed for privacy, sun-shade control and obtaining security. This Black box is an excellent concept for adding a visually stunning element to interiors and exteriors alike. The result is a constantly changing building facade, almost the feature sculpture.
Apart from the security issue, The layout is designed in response to the tropical orientation. The significant function like master bedroom and working room, has the high ceiling for ventilation and slightly shifted a mass forward to create the cantilever balcony, this also functions as eaves for rain and sun protection to the mass below. These climate protection concepts are applied from the traditional trace of Thai architecture which is the most suitable for rain and tropical condition in Thailand and South East Asia. The house layout is also designed by taking advantage of big opposite green space behind the house. The big trees are placed along the boundary to block the unwanted view from the next door area. Landscape is designed minimally with a privacy concern as well as provide aesthetic aspect.
Sig Nordal 