Faring Road House is a sophisticated modern home fit for its glamorous location in Los Angeles' Bel Air neighbourhood. Designed by East London-based architecture firm Quinn Architects, headed by Laurence Quinn, the house sits on a generous sloped site looking towards the Hollywood Hills. Luscious gardens surround the white-rendered property, helping to shield it from ...
As an architectural relative to a very successful Swedish denim brand, the initiative is called Happycheap and the scheme's first realised villa has made an impact in the Stockholm suburb where it's built. Carlsson's house stands out for its guaranteed competitive price - 1.54 SEK, thanks to its cost-efficient self-supporting sandwich panel construction - but also, for i...
'The whole house, including the roof, is made to blend with the existing topography of the area,' explains project architect Håvard B Olsen, who led the design. 'We focused on getting good sunlight in all rooms, views and floating connections between inside and outside.' To achieve this, the modern building is carved asymmetrically into the land; a clear break from the n...
Set up by artist Bosco Sodi and directed by Patricia Martin (former director and curator of La Colección Jumex), the art foundation is situated on the outskirts of Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, about 500 miles southwest of Mexico City. Sodi 'always admired Ando's architecture' and approached the Japanese Pritzker Prize-winning architect for the design of his foundation's new...
Initially conceived as a weekend retreat, the design - contained within a simple linear volume by British architect Piers Smerin - was so successful, the London-based owners soon made it their permanent residence. The existing 1920s summer house was replaced by Smerin with a design that, per the clients' brief, was practical to live in, easy to run and energy efficien...
Its stained-cedar skin takes its cue from the dense woods that surround it, ensuring a calm presence within the landscape, while its strong composition of two long, overlapping volumes stretches out dynamically to frame Lake Minnetonka. The retreat was designed for a family and is located 20 miles from their permanent home in Minneapolis, within an area peppered by la...
At first glance, the array of differently-sized windows cut out of the building's facade might look haphazard, but each one is strategically placed. Eschewing the convention for large glass elevations, Holmebakk has created smaller openings in the concrete mass that each frame a specific view. As well as offering vistas across the lake towards Hamar and Domkirkeodden, th...
Carved out of concrete and featuring the rough texture and imprints of its timber formwork, the house's textures were also chosen to act as a permanent reminder of its conception, process and creation. Created as a 'single monolithic concrete structure' that discretely unites indoors and outdoors, the six-bedroom house features clever openings, designed to preserve the o...
The clients, an active and eco-minded couple, approached the architects for a house within their plot, which already contained 300 olive trees. Their plan was to make this their second home and split their time between Athens (their apartment in the Greek capital was also designed by TAN) and this, more peaceful, setting. The structure's triangular plan is divided int...
Created for a keen sailor and his family of four, the house is a composition of different parts. The first to be commissioned was the boat shed, which acts as a gateway to the property and marks the end of vehicle traffic. The main house rests 100m uphill from there, split into two distinct parts, which are nestled on a steep natural landfall. A full level separates t...
The paucity of sites, the rigour of planners and the often dubious tastes of clients typically preclude all but the bare minimum of interesting modern houses. This new project in north London by Stanton Williams is a happy exception, thanks to a long and fruitful collaboration between architect and client. ‘Private houses are very sensitive things to do,’ says Paul Will...
A striking, angular new volume balances above the granite walls of a 74 year-old country house in Portugal. Named Casa Taíde, it is the latest offering by local architects Rui Vieira Oliveira and Vasco Manuel Fernandes. The house's striking angular addition - folding to become the volume's walls and roof - replaced the existing wooden structure of the old house, whil...
Built for a Mexican couple and their two young girls, the house plays with contrasts in its design. Nestled amongst native oaks and mahogany trees, the structure appears reserved at first, reflecting the family's desire for privacy. Once inside though, the space spans dramatically outwards, flexing towards the garden to satisfy the client's desire for way of life that co...
Having bought a beautiful plot of wooded land in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, the client dreamt of building a country house that would be in perfect symbiosis with its natural environment. This rugged, sloped site came to a natural plateau just below its highest point, becoming the perfect location to erect the house. The house is characterized by two stacked volumes; ...
The area features a hilly, rural landscape and is covered with beautiful old cork oaks. The climate is mild and dry. The primary intention here is to create a secluded garden. The surrounding walls are up to five and a half meters high to provide the necessary shade and the entire impression created is one of a desert, dry, stony and dusty. Everything is constructed f...
At the edge of the forest, between a valley and a grassy marsh, the Panorama house is a refined interpretation of the traditional cottage, complete with pitched metal roof and dark-stained Eastern cedar shingles. Sitting on a typically rolling Laurentian site, the house is based on a simple rectangular volume. The orange front door leads to the ground floor, where the...
The entry side of the house appears very solid with its thick super-insulated wood clad walls and narrow strip windows enclosing the bathrooms, outdoor showers, stair, and laundry room. Little is revealed until entering the house through a tall glass door that emerges as one approaches the house. Once inside, the living and dining rooms, which occupy the building’s cente...
''Migdia' - meaning 'midday' in Catalan - references the southern position of the sun at noon,' explain the architects, who used the way the light comes into the building as a driving force in the townhouse's design. They add, 'The house is similarly oriented towards the south and plays with qualities of light and temperature.' Located a short drive from Barcelona, th...
The home is 5200 sq ft of exquisite details - such as the tailor-made track guided pocket doors used throughout the house - all meticulously combed over by the client and Casas himself. Based on the idea of a 'permanent vacation', the house is designed to accommodate the owner's needs and lifestyle, as well as his wish for a place of tranquillity. The architect used w...
Vertical Forest connects to the policies for reforestation and naturalization of the edges of the large urban and metropolitan areas ( the Metroboschi ) : two devices of environmental survival , two ways to rebuild a relationship between nature and cities in the area and in the cities of contemporary Europe. The first example of a Bosco Verticale composed of two towers ...
To complete this part of the residential project Porta Nuova, another intervention by Cino Zucchi, who had already successfully occupied the adjacent lot. The layout of the buildings on the lot meets a number of objectives "urban" tied to a reading of the nature of public and private open spaces. The new urban front thus formed on the Via De Cristofori has two differe...
Muka Arquitectura's ribbed concrete residence completes the "first piece of the urban puzzle" for a largely undeveloped area of the Spanish city Ciudad Real The local branch of Muka Arquitectura designed the Fuensanta House for a solitary plot on outskirts of Ciudad Real. With plans for the adjacent plots uncertain, the architects designed a fortress-like block, feat...
Gutiérrez chose to highlight railings, guttering and doorways with vibrant paintwork at Pino Street House – a home with a courtyard at its centre, designed for a family living in the suburbs of Jalisco, México. The 165-square-metre building comprises a series of stacked white blocks, with glazed living spaces facing the brick patio that cuts into one side of the plan....
The Village Health Works Staff Housing accommodates an 18-bed dormitory for the healthcare workers of a medical centre in the 16-hectare village of Kigutu. It was designed by New York-based Louise Braverman as part of a wider masterplan for the area. The building was constructed from locally produced bricks, interspersed with a mixture of timber cladding and brightly ...
The owners of this brick house in the Netherlands, by Reitsema & Partners, can drive their car up a shallow ramp into a sheltered parking area that frames a view of the low-lying landscape. Local studio Reitsema & Partners designed the property called Villa SR for a couple in their 50s, who purchased a plot with a view of the countryside on the outskirts of the Dutch to...
This take on a traditional Slovenian cottage by Dekleva Gregorič Arhitekti features cast concrete walls inlaid with chunks of stone to create a rugged texture (+ slideshow). Ljubljana studio Dekleva Gregorič Arhitekti designed the Compact Karst House for a young family in Vrhovlje, a rural municipality on the Slovenian-Italian border, where it is positioned on a slope t...
– which follows the London home with a combined bookshelf and staircase we published yesterday.Buj+Colón Arquitectos incorporated storage space into plywood structures for its redesign of an apartment interior in the centre of Madrid. The Plywood Trio Apartment renovation comprises three elements made from the engineered timber – a staircase that steps over a row of c...
London-based Zminkowska De Boise Architects made alterations to the ground floor of a two-storey Edwardian terrace, occupied by a couple and their young children. The project is named Rosa and John's home, after the two clients.The architects created a series of large new openings through the existing interior walls, merging the ground-floor living spaces to create an op...
A marble-lined steam room is squeezed below the sloping ceiling of this apartment extension in Lisbon by local studio Camarim Arquitectos (+ slideshow). Camarim Arquitectos remodelled the spaces of what was previously a separate apartment, located above the one that was already occupied by the client. When the previous owner left, the client purchased it so that he c...
Located in the heart of the Beaminster conservation area in West Dorset, the design comprises 3 timber pods, which are linked via glazed connections. Each pod has an external terrace and pergola above, with these external spaces all formed around mature oak trees, which evokes a ‘house in the trees’-feel. The whole site is covered by a Thermoplastic PolyOlefin, but a...
Nestled in an infill site in an 19th century Toronto neighborhood, the Tao Sangha Centre creates a place of healing through the holistic art of Tao Shiatsu. Rooted in the Asian philosophy of the Tao and the Japanese healing tradition of Shiatsu massage, the warm, hand-crafted spaces of the project embody and resonate with the ancient practice. The new two-story, 2,400...
The house was conceived as a container sitting lightly on the land for habitation or the dream of habitation. The intention was to reinterpret the New Zealand building tradition - the crafting of wood - the expression of structure, cladding, lining and joinery in a raw and unique way.The construction is reminiscent of the "trip" or "rafter" dams common in the Coromandel ...
Stage 1 includes the main living space, kitchen, laundry, bathroom and 1 bedroom - enough for the owners to live on site.The original house was designed to be comfortable standing alone, or to be added to in the future. It was a small one bedroom house, located in a small seaside settlement an hours drive north of Wellington City, New Zealand. Resting on gently undul...
The main design concept is to create a house which has close relationship with nature and this is achieved by having a swimming-pool linking the house with the landscape and ultimately visual connections with the sea. The idea of connection is reinforced by having the basement level media-room with a u-shaped acrylic window which allows diffuse natural light in and also ...
Set on the first third of a plot of land 150 m long, it stands in an isolated residential area in the Perche countryside. A minimalist object, a line diagram cube with 50 m² base on the ground, its black tinted wooden wall panelling responds to the woodland environment. With just one opening on each side judiciously oriented and highlighted with white, the front is made ...
Housing project in Tarragona. A steel structure supports lego-like prefab container houses. The building mixes several uses like community centres, local radio station, kindergarten and shops. The public space merges with the private space, proposing a new kind of housing typology for the neighborhood.The building intends not to be a physical nor visual barrier.
