Called Gardener's Cottage in reference to a structure that formerly occupied the site, the house is designed to appear as though it is "organically rising out of the ground" while echoing the traditional architecture in the nearby village. Its owner, who had been living in a six-bedroom manor house on the site but decided to downsize, approached Pad Studio to design a c...
The house is located on a site with challenging bushfire exposure, complex biodiversity overlays, and a rugged cliff-side coastline to the East and South. The exterior of the home showcases a series of mudstone bookend walls. The mudstone walls were chosen as the core material for the home, a selection made collaboratively between the client, architect, and stonemason....
The home, surrounded by the Wasatch Mountain Range, includes a variety of natural materials such as cut limestone walls and wood beams. Stepping inside the home, the outward-leaning glass walls are immediately visible and draw the occupants to the ranchland views. The main social areas of the house are open plan, with the kitchen, dining area, and living room all focus...
Key to the design of the home is the use of deep gray, slatted Accoya wood that covers the exterior. The charred, stained, and sealed accoya wood siding has been installed in a way to enhance the roofscape’s dynamic edges and arcs. The accoya was chosen for its durability, low-maintenance, and distinctly contemporary appearance. Each of the gabled modules has been arr...
The metal screens, with a perforated pattern, start on the front facade of the home, while the entryway includes multiple water features, a sculpture, and hidden lighting. The screens wrap around the house, and on one side, they fold open to allow the sun and wind to pass through, When closed, the metal screens provide privacy and shade. The metal screens also wrap aro...
On a forested edge of the Margaret River townsite, a large block was cleared for development. Interest from prospective buyers wavered due to the perceived smallness of the resulting strata lots, but local designer Ash Stucken of Studio Stooks saw potential in an outlook usually reserved for more expensive and expansive bush blocks. Ash and his partner Miranda Geiger pur...
Blurton Road, an east London house extension project by local studio Emil Eve Architects, reimagines a Victorian home into a modern interpretation of a midcentury dwelling. The commission aimed not only to improve the functionality and wellbeing qualities of the domestic space for the clients – a young family with small children – but also to infuse the historic shell wi...
Part of a Victorian inner city Melbourne property, Pergola Extension by Krisna Cheung Architects is a project that aims to reimagine an existing, historic home and transform it into a dwelling fit for its purpose – a generous, domestic hub for a local family. Taking its cues from the existing house’s translucent polycarbonate rear garage façade, the architecture team, he...
This minimalist dwelling, House Be by Belgian architecture studio A2o architects, is a family home conceived to allow its residents to experience nature at every turn. The house, set in the country’s rich, green countryside, blends structured, mininalist architecture and the fluidity and fun of organic growth, in a result that feels both wholesome and distinctly contempo...
London’s challenging house prices and particular property market means house-hunters – and lovers of contemporary architecture – need to get inventive in order to fulfil their desire for modern, new-build designs. Tucked away in a sleepy, residential corner of north London, Stepped House is such an example. Created by locally based architecture studio vPPR, headed by Tat...
Azabu-juban is located on complex terrain interwoven with plateaus and valleys, and the site is surrounded by steep slopes and retaining walls. For instance, the neighboring Kurayamizaka (Dark Slope) is said to have been so named for the trees that were dense enough to cover the slope, making it dim even in the daytime. From the top of the retaining wall facing the site,...
Called Suspension House, the house emerges as the renovation of an existing house to create more spaces with a new look towards the creek, boasting a waterfall in the back yard. Envisioned as "a man-made object in nature" that may exist in harmony or disparity, the goal of the project "was to reconnect this structure into the environment while best utilizing the excepti...
When a property became available next to their house, a couple living in a hip neighbourhood of Manaus, popular for its interesting architecture and industrial legacy, jumped at the opportunity to buy it. They then called upon local architect Laurent Troost to help them transform it from dilapidated warehouse into contemporary office architecture – a building that is ope...
The cabin, which sits 40 feet (12m) from the ground, is accessed via an enclosed spiral staircase and a 20-foot (6m) bridge. Stepping inside the cabin and there’s a full wall of windows that follow the angle of the roofline, flooding the interior with natural light. There’s also a queen bed, a toilet, a glass-enclosed shower, a heated floor, an integrated sound system,...
The design of the home consists of four areas that are connected by a central hallway. It also includes standing seam roofing, black-stained vertical cedar siding, and single-story gables with identical pitches. Surrounding the home are landscaped gardens with outdoor living spaces. Stepping inside, we see there’s a living room with a fireplace and exposed wood beams....
The front of the house showcases an upper level that’s encased in metal, adding privacy to the home. At the rear of the home, the metal shutters stand out against the vertical siding. The upper floor can be closed 100% to block sunlight, guarantee privacy, and acoustically isolate intimate spaces. The shutters are also featured on the side of the home too, and also hav...
Bypassing a “finished” look, the architects utilized materials, like exposed concrete, steel, and glass, and welcomed their imperfections to achieve the industrial aesthetic they desired. During the design process, they focused on the spatial, the aesthetic, and the adaptation of the place. The layout was kept open allowing the spaces to feel connected as the homeowners...
Looking to the fantasy worlds of Gulliver’s Travels and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the interior plays with scale hoping to inspire the child’s imagination while allowing the parents to live normally. The adults will see chairs to sit on, but the child could see those same chairs as a table, desk, or counter, based on their smaller size. As the child grows up, thei...
With the small houses with a similar appearance, white walls, and red windows, the 600-year history of the Royal New Village can still be felt here. The building is located in an eye-catching position in the northwest of the village. It is a two-story brick-concrete building, originally used as a residential office. Atelier d’More was commissioned to renovate the space, ...
It has little to do with the immaculate, radiant and vaguely ascetic surfaces that often characterise Portuguese buildings, this house with its material and somewhat humble character that does not, however, renounce the usual rigorous and essential volumes typical of the architecture of these latitudes. The building, designed by AM-arqstudio in Braga for a family with a...
Five Six One Pacific blends a rich palette of woods, metals, and greenery to create tranquil interior spaces. In designing the interiors, Ryoko Okada, Principal and Director of Interiors at ODA drew upon the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi – which celebrates what is naturally incomplete. The wood, stone, concrete, and steel found throughout the interiors all have knots and...
Facade is covered with greenery and blended with nature. It consists of an open plan living area, bathroom and storage. Sitting, dining and fireplace areas form an intimate unity in relation to each other. With its wide joinery facade facing the linear pool in front of it, it lets the daylight in in the best way possible. In the place where materials such as wood and co...
In trying to solve both problems lay the challenge of this project. The solution involved a series of turns and a set of volumetric slides. The ground plan movement freed the homes from the yoke of the traditional “parterre gardens” allowing them to enjoy a wide green space for each one of them, also guaranteeing direct solar lighting during the total practice of the da...
A walkway with windows eases the transition between old and new, and includes stairs leading up to the home’s new entryway. The entryway includes a built-in bench with storage that’s located underneath the windows. The entryway hallway opens up to the open-plan dining room, where a wood banquette wraps around the corner of the room, providing an abundance of seating. ...
This simple solution has taken on a whole new look with the Hamilton Passive House Modular Housing. This is a design from Montgomery Sisam Architects that seeks to provide affordable, dignified and high-quality housing. This housing project in Ontario, Canada has been contracted by CityHousing Hamilton. The goal? To design modular, affordable housing that provides a hig...
NOA has created a completely custom interior for Nicolai Paris, located in the former Hotel Nicolai, which serves as a pied-à-terre for an Italian family. The renovation involved designing the layout of the two-level home, then adding playful furniture elements that help to optimise the functionality of each space. "We started by defining the final atmosphere of the fu...
‘Casa Laurel’ is a welcoming dwelling, designed to accommodate an older couple that decided to retire in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. With this project, Miguel Avila architecture sought to meet the owners’ needs which may become increasingly demanding over time. Therefore, one of the main challenges was to avoid changing floor levels —something that can be pretty exhausti...
The floating home lies low to the water and creates a platform from which to enjoy and engage with the surrounding waterway. The galvanized steel structure supports generous roof planes and walls of windows that open to 180-degree views and blur the boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces. Lightly stained knotty western red cedar exterior siding will weather over ...
Casa Un Patio, which roughly translates to Courtyard House, is located near Lake Villarica in central Chile. It sits between the lake and a volcano of the same name, on a remote and rugged site. "The terrain is characterized by its dense and young vegetation and difficult access," said Lucas Maino Fernandez, who is based in the capital Santiago. The architect wanted to...
The house has 230 sqm of construction beyond the outdoors areas, composed by the garden and a pool, this includes a roof garden at the 3rd floor. The land has a privileged location since it is in a rustic area that has a natural slope of approximately 2 meters of unevenness towards the northeast, as a result the view the “El Sombrerito” hill, is the main visual for the p...
Casa Jabuticaba takes the requisite parts of a grand family home and pulls them apart to form an interlinked chain of moments around a planted garden. Designed by Fernanda Marques Architecture and located in the Brazilian city of São José dos Campos, the home has been designed to centre the family’s lives on nature and evolve with them over time. Entering from the stree...
Perched on a verdant hillside overlooking the Zihuatanejo bay in the Mexican West Coast, Casa Acantilado (acantilado means ‘cliff’ in Spanish) is a striking new local landmark – guiding fishermen at night like an unofficial lighthouse, peeking out from the region’s thick flora, rich with native species, birds and animals. The house is the brainchild of Zihuatanejo-based ...
This Cretan retreat takes its cues from its context in more ways than one. Set in the northern foothills of Thrypti mountain on the Greek island’s eastern side, the house was designed by Athens architecture and design studio Block722, which worked with the angled site’s orientation and views to best position the residence. Large openings draw the long, green and blue vis...
A key design element of the house, are the floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding doors that are featured on either side of the great room. Vertical wood siding has been paired with stone accents for a modern appearance. Easily seen on the rear of the home, the black framed windows and doors open the home to the yard, created by landscape design firm Topo. The terraced ...
The transformation included adding a rooftop deck, a hammock, a spiral staircase, and a large garage door. Let’s take a look around… The exterior of the 320 square foot (29sqm) shipping container has been finished in a matte black with matching window frames, and wood accents like the garage door and main door. A spiral staircase provides access to the rooftop deck, wh...
Located in the backyard of a long and narrow lot, the bulbous-shaped Greenhouse replaces an under-utilized lap pool. By keeping the footprint the same, the designers were able to circumvent the need for building permits while increasing usable interior space. The greenhouse, which has a modern and curved design, sits on a concrete base that features drainage and radiant...
