Architectural Houses Archives - Page 2 of 8

Northern Lake Minnesota Home

Northern Lake Minnesota Home Project Description:

Combining the active lifestyle and appreciation of modern Scandinavian architecture of a youthful Minnesota couple, this vacation retreat celebrates its natural north woods environment.

Programmatically, the Northern Lake Home is composed of two primary massings separated by a glass core.

Splaying out to the lake beyond and nestled into a natural swale, the public spaces contour along the landscape blurring the distinction between its built and natural environments.

The voluminous living areas feature large walls of glass to welcome in the sometimes scarce northern light and capture intimate lake views through the embankment.

A glass core converts through its operable glass wall to combine the dining and private lounge to allow a sheltered connection to the woods and lake beyond.

The private family area is partially embanked into the landscape and set away from the public area, protecting its sleeping quarters and private spaces from the active lifestyle surrounding it.

With a subtle darkened exterior material palate, the Northern Lake Home blends into the forested landscape, while white oak finishes provide a warmth to the minimal and crisp interior that allows the surrounding natural environment to be the highlight.

Strand Design

Instagram: @stranddesign

Contact Email: mckay@stranddesign.com

Completed in 2017

Built Area: 4,800 sqft

Photographer: Chad Holder Photogaraphy

Design team: David Strand, David McKay

Key Materials Used: Steel wall panels, 2 Stone precast cement tile, Darkend & Natural Cedar, Rift Sawn White Oak, Ground and Polished Concrete.

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FRA House – Single Family Detached Dwelling

FRA House – Single Family Detached Dwelling Project Description

One of the investors’ main design guidelines, something that determined the form and location of the building, was that we ensure maximum privacy without going so far as to construct a fortress.

We sought out to create a building that expressed itself simply, one with a clear division of materials and that respected the investors’ introversion.

Unlike the other buildings in the neighborhood, this house was placed in the northern part of its plot, away from the street. This opened up room on the southern side of the building for a large terrace and garden.

A garage and a high fence provide privacy on the roadside, while neighboring yards are veiled by a wall that also acts as a lattice for the planned vegetation. The plot has a slanted front, a factor which in turn influenced the shape of the terrace.

A footpath runs towards the house along a fence made of granite-filled gabions. We made this the backdrop for a line of plants and lamp posts.

On the northern side of the house, there is an introverted gallery, an area closed off by a wall that is the negative reflection of the house’s northern wall. This is an intimate space, hidden from the neighbors’ eyes.

The house’s form draws on the detached house archetype – it is topped with a symmetrical gable roof covered with flat ceramic tiles.

The building was designed as a play of contrasts – smooth white plaster mixes with the dark ribbed wood of the elevation.

Completing the whole are the anthracite window frames and anthracite roof.

The white body of the building takes on the look of a drawer pulled out of the wooden box that is its western and northern sides.

Despite the investors’ introverted nature, the house was designed to include a large amount of window area – yet this did not lead to reduced intimacy inside, thanks to the presence of an obscuring wall as well as blinds and awnings.

The ground floor contains the common areas – here you find a living room, dining room, and kitchen, a guest room with a private bathroom, a bathroom, technical rooms and closets. In the living room, part of the ceiling has been left open, revealing the open roof truss above the upper floor and the glass bridge leading to the office.

Upstairs there is a master bedroom with a bathroom and closet, an office, a laundry room and children’s rooms with a closet and bathroom.

The common areas and the bedrooms were placed on the southern and western side of the house in order to let in the maximum amount of light.

Like on the outside, inside the house, contrasts are king. The investors made the bold decision of choosing dark wood for the floors and white brick for the walls – we expanded on that contrast consistently by using three colors for the interior: white, dark wood and anthracite.

White appears mainly on the walls and ceilings, dark wood on the walking surfaces and doors and anthracite on smaller furnishings and finishing elements – furniture, door casings, floor moldings, light fixtures, and accessories.

Completing the interior are elements made of black unfinished steel – for example, the hanging interior staircase and the fireplace in the living room.

Upstairs, we designed a glass bridge on a steel construction leading to the office. The openings in the ceiling were closed off with linearly-placed glass balustrades.

The combination of black steel, brick, and exposed infrastructure elements provides a break in the style of the interior and gives it a slightly industrial character.

An important element of the interior is the roof truss. For it, we used prefabricated roof girders painted in a color similar to that of the floorboards.

Opening up the roof truss makes the upper floor feel much more spacious, while careful lighting of the girders makes the roof not only a functional element of the house but a decorative one as well.

Data Sheet

Project name: FRA House – single family detached dwelling
Architect: BECZAK / BECZAK / ARCHITEKCI – Magdalena Beczak, Maciej Beczak, Beata Kiciak
Website: www.beczak.pl
Contact e-mail: beczak@beczak.pl
Project location: Poland, Mazowiecki voivodeship, Piastów
Design: 2013
Construction: 2014-2016
Photo credits: jankarol.com
CAD Software: Allplan FT 2015

Brands / Products

Roof: Braas Tegalit Protegon
Facade: Baumit Nanopor Top + Okoume wood elevation
Windows: Blyweert aluminium Triton HI

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Villa Clessidra

Villa Clessidra is a geometrical and atmospheric sanctuary.

It is a construction of defined proportions and as such, it is also a bet. A bet in designing freedom within confinement.

A bet in allowing continuity with the environment through an austere geometrical structure.

Villa Clessidra is a 200sq.m. 3-level residence of an almost cubic shape, with dimensions 9.7m x 9.7m x 10.4m (LxWxH).

It has no underground or excavated parts and consists of steel frame and bare (foamboard molding) concrete, only as paneling cladding.

Villa Clessidra is hypothetically placed amidst the beautiful pine forest of the Dutch dunes.

The surrounding nature communicates with the residence via the use of glass, water, and mirrors.

The front (South) façade opens up with rotating, sliding windows to allow in the smells, sounds, and images of the sublime forest.

A swimming pool is strategically positioned in the middle of the house, creating a concrete shape cut in half by a transparent zone.

The upper floor of the house constitutes the “night zone”, a space dedicated to sleep and relaxation.

This simply contains two spacious bedrooms with South orientation and en-suite bathrooms.

In addition, the master bedroom has a glazed floor opening allowing direct visual contact with the swimming pool beneath the concrete bed.

In contrast, the ground floor is designed to contain the activities that create the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

It includes the library/living room, dining room, and kitchen, as well as an outdoors, sheltered parking space.

This clear functional division is reinforced by the presence of a middle floor that is in its entirety a swimming pool.

Being required to pass through this aqueous interim distills the daily activities and purifies and mind.

The movement enforced by the aforementioned structural elements resembles that of a grain of sand in an hourglass (=clessidra in Italian / κλεψύδρα in Greek), and it is for this similarity that the project was baptized Villa Clessidra.

But in a more allegorical sense, Villa Clessidra is the place where time stops.

It is a place for thought and contemplation.

It is a place for relaxation and meditation.

The element of nature, abundantly present, invades the house through the large glass facades and is amplified by the water and mirror-clad ceiling of the swimming pool level.

Light penetrates the transparent middle floor of Villa Clessidra, bringing playful caustics patterns in the living room.

The light patterns with refractions and shadows multiply in the mirrored ceiling above the pool.

This creates an optical illusion of a double-height space and simultaneously it offers optical connectivity with the rest of the residence.

Ultimately, the staircase to the upper floor meets its mirrored idol and forms the shape of the hourglass.

Villa Clessidra is a cube.

It needs no frills, vague geometries, violent edges to create a living space.

It is an honest “vessel of life” (quoting Aris Konstantinidis), containing life and interacting with the life that surrounds it.

If it should be described with one word, that would be pure.

Head / Project Architect: Laertis-Antonios Ando Vassiliou

Associate Architect: Michalis Takopoulos,

Renderings: Lefteris Schetakis (lesxet@yahoo.gr)

Scriptwriter/Publication manager: Xanthippi Alexi Vassiliou

Programme 3-level Forest dwelling of 200m² (concept)

BREEAM Pending report Design 2016 Realisation Pending

Interior architect LAAV Architects

Client Concept Phase Project management Arup (Amsterdam) bv

Structural, electrical and mechanical engineer; fire safety, acoustics, and building physics consultant Arup (Amsterdam) bv

Design management and cost consultant Partnership Pending

Landscape architect Partnership pending Main contractor Partnership Pending

LAAV Architects

LAAV Architects is a young Architectural and Industrial Design practice established in 2016 by Laertis Antonios Ando Vassiliou in Haarlem, NL (co-founder and partner of OPA Open Platform for Architecture).

The practice aims to create an expandable network of professionals, including Arup Group Ltd, Mijksenaar Wayfinding, Demco Properties a.o. We are able to take on diverse design projects and deliver high-end products of all scales and typologies.

LAAV Architects believe that life is too short for designs that people will soon forget.

Laertis-Antonios Ando Vassiliou

Was born in 1983 to Greek & Japanese parents.

He grew up in Rhodes until 2001 when he started studying architecture at the Technical University of Athens (NTUA). In 2005 he earned his first distinction at an architectural competition, which allowed him to study for six months at ISA Victor Horta in Bruxelles (2006).

Since then, he has built his first commissioned design in Rhodes (2006-2008), received his MArch diploma (2008) and in 2010, completed his second project in Rhodes.

The same year he left Greece to explore architecture in the Netherlands where he completed his MSc in Architecture & Urbanism at TU Delft (2010-2013), supported with a full scholarship by the Greek Scholarship Foundation (IKY).

During his study, he worked for Mecanoo Architecten (2012) and entered his first professional competitions, with distinctions.

In 2014 he worked for UNStudio (AMS) and by the end of the year established OPA Open Platform for Architecture with a cutting-edge portfolio including the world-renowned designs of Casa Brutale and Lux Aeterna.

Since October 2016 he established his personal architectural practice, parallel to OPA, LAAV Architects to continue the cutting-edge design legacy of Casa Brutale with Villa Clessidra and other projects.

Laertis is a registered member of the Greek (2009) and Dutch (2013) architectural registries.

He is a passionate architect but he dreams of becoming a novelist.

He is a family-guy who loves books, cats, memes, and motorbikes.

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The Mirror Houses Holiday Homes In South Tyrol, Italy

The Mirror Houses are a pair of contemporary high class vacation holiday homes, set in the marvellous surroundings of the South Tyrolean Dolomites, amidst a beautiful scenery of apple trees, just outside the city of Bolzano.

They were designed by architect Peter Pichler. The Mirror houses offer a unique chance to spend a beautiful vacation surrounded by contemporary architecture of the highest standards and the most astonishing Landscape and beauty nature has to offer.

The Architecture

PROJECT: Mirror Houses, Bolzano, Italy
ARCHITECT: Peter Pichler Architecture
STATUS: built

TYPE: residential units
CLIENT: Angela Sabine Staffler
PHOTOGRAPHY: Oskar Da Riz, Nicolò Degiorgis

The client, who lives in a restructured farmhouse of the 60s on the site, asked to design a structure for renting out as luxury holiday units.

Guests have their small autonomous apartment and can fully enjoy the experience of living in the middle of nature.

A maximum degree of privacy for both the client and the residing guest should be taken into consideration.

The new structure is oriented towards east with their private garden and an autonomous access and parking for the guests.

Each unit contains a kitchen / living room as well as a bath- and bedroom with big skylights that open to allow natural light and ventilation.

A small basement serves for temporary storage.

The projects initial volume is split into 2 units that are slightly shifted in height and length in order to loosen the entire structure and articulating each unit.

Both units are floating on a base above the ground evoking lightness besides offering better views from their cantilevering terraces to the impressive surrounding landscape.

The volume opens towards the east with a big glass facade that fades with curvilinear lines into the black aluminum shell.

The mirrored glass on the west facade borders the garden of the client with the units and catches the surrounding panorama while making the units almost invisible.

The mirrored glass is laminated with an UV coating preventing birds collision.

From certain views of the clients garden the old existing farmhouse is mirrored in the new contemporary architecture and is literally blending into it rather than competing against.

Peter Pichler Architecture

About

PPA is a north Italian based architecture and Design firm dedicated to developing an in- novative and contemporary approach towards architecture, urbanism, and design.

Their declared aim is to achieve the highest possible quality, excellent detailing and the creation of an integrated strategy involving the individual needs of the user, regardless of the budget.

In all projects an appropriate integration of the architecture into its surroundings is a priority, all project solutions are determined and informed through sustainability, value engineering, and rationalization.

From an early stage, projects are set up with the ambition to develop intelligent building solutions regarding room layout, structure, building process, and reduction of construction costs.

Services

Profile

Peter Pichler was born in Bolzano, Italy in 1982.

He was studying Architecture at the university of applied Arts Vienna and in the US at the university of California, returning back to Vienna where he graduated with distinction in the masterclass of Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher.

Already during his studies, Peter joined Zaha Hadid in London, where he worked on several competitions covering all scales and on the award winning Nordkettenbahn in Innsbruck.

He spent a while in Rotterdam working for Rem Koolhaas after turning back to Vienna and joining the team of Delugan Meissl, collaborating on an award winning concert hall in Amman, Jordan.

After finishing his diploma Peter went to Hamburg where he worked for Zaha Hadid as a project architect on the new library and learning center in Vienna and on a 150,000m2 mixed used development in Bratislava.

He then returned back to Italy and established Peter Pichler Architecture in Bolzano.

Peter Pichler is a registered Architect in Italy and member of the chamber of architects of the autonomous Province of Bolzano.

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THAT House Melbourne Australia by Austin Maynard Architects

That House In A Nutshell

The site is neighboured by huge houses. The architects were asked to provide the family with ‘just the right amount of space’. By creating large openings and generous connections to the garden they aimed to make this modest sized house feel abundant and broad. The result is a home that is almost half the size of its neighbours without compromising liveability.

The Largest Houses In The World.

Australian homes are the largest in the world. This is a significant problem for Australia. A stable economy, aspirational culture and relatively flat topography have enabled Australians to occupy homes that are far bigger than they require.

Melbourne’s flat landscape, loose topographical boundaries and rapidly growing population have meant that large homes have spread over the food belt and into arid areas. Large homes, and their associated sprawl, are highly problematic.

Services and infrastructure, such as food, water, electricity, communications, health and education are stretched at great expense to the public, both financially and environmentally. Large, deep homes are less responsive to the climates of Australia’s cities.

Therefore heating and cooling demands are radically increased. Large homes, and the subsequent sprawl, place significant demands on private car ownership and associated infrastructure, which is by far the least sustainable transport option.

People who are unable to drive (the elderly, children, people with disabilities, etc) are often left isolated without reliable alternative transport options. Walking and riding become difficult, and often dangerous, in sprawl areas.

In short, large homes are an environmental disaster for our cities, whilst also being a cultural/social disaster for our communities.

Living With Community

“Australians tend to seek those things in a private space rather than going and seeking them in a public space or mingle with others in the community and I think that is a worrying trend,” says Professor Stuart White.

Like many of their wonderful clients, the owners of ‘THAT House’ are keen to open up to the community rather than permanently hiding or fortifying themselves. As Australian homes and culture become increasingly inward looking and protective, AMA is reacting against this trend. THAT House can open up to the outdoors, both private and public.

Importantly a house that can be very transparent needs to be able to adapt to multiple privacy needs. Hence they have installed upwards blinds to give the owners control over their level of privacy. How many times have you seen huge windows with their blinds permanently down?

This happens because of the binary a downward blind creates. A downward blind provides no privacy until it is completely down. An upward blind enables you to cutout almost all view into a home while still being able to look out to the garden, and the street beyond. This gives control over all levels of privacy and intimate control over the light let into each space.

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