LEBBEUS WOODS

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“The High Houses are proposed as part of the reconstruction of Sarajevo after the siege of the city that lasted from 1992 though late 1995. Their site is the badly damaged “old tobacco factory” in the Marijn dvor section near the city center.

The concept of the project is simple. The houses rise up high into the airspace once occupied by falling mortar and artillery shells fired by the city’s besiegers in the surrounding mountains. By occupying the airspace, the High Houses reclaim it for the people of the city. Balancing on scavenged steel beams welded end-to-end, they are spaces of a new beginning for Sarajevo, one that challenges—in physical terms—the city’s past and present, aiming at a future uniquely Sarajevan. Stabilized by steel cables anchored to the site, the houses, poised like catapults, fulfill the paradoxical desire to fly and at the same time be rooted in their place of origin.

These houses are not for everyone. Indeed, probably only a few could master their challenges. Yet each mastery would manifest a spirit of courage and inventive skill in the name of all who must reinvent a city transformed by destruction.” by LEBBEUS WOODS
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Fearon Hay Architects

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“The mountain retreat is a small structure which is situated high above the ground and facing shores of Lake Wakatipu in New Zealand. Its design is inspired by beautiful landscape views around. Floor-to-ceiling insulated windows in steel frames and roof terrace are things that enhance the ability to see picture-like mountains. The exterior of the building uses the heavily rendered stone to express a cubic form and integrate it into surround landscape.

A main sleeping space opens over the living space and is serviced by a centrally located bathroom. Heating set within the insulated floor slab provides additional comfort when required in the extremes of winter. The house gets the filtered water from a nearby mountain stream. Bottled gas is one of the main energy sources, although there is also electrical power provided.” Fearon Hay Architects
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VMX Architects

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Project Details:
Client: Sylvie Murphy
Architect: VMX Architects
Location: Amstelveen – The Netherlands
Size: 500m2
Design: 2005
Text – Photos: VMX Architects

“In a nature area between Amsterdam, Amstelveen and Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, lies the Kostverlorenkade 1; an island measuring 1200m2. Here, VMX build a 500m2 house. The starting point for the concept was the perception of the landscape, the distant high buildings of the Zuid As and the Rembrandt Tower as well as the view of the aeroplanes travelling to and from Schiphol.

The living room and kitchen are arranged in a loft-like space on the first floor. The more intimate areas (bedrooms and bathrooms) are situated on the ground floor, orientated towards the garden on the backside. The basement contains an additional programme such as a fitness room and a home cinema. The house forms an object in the landscape; the island acts as the plinth.

Nominated for the Gouden A.A.P. 2010 (Amsterdam.Architecture.Prize.)”
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Rocha Tombal Architecten

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“From a basic form, defined by the municipal urban plan, sculptural “eyes” emerge with direct views to the varied countryside landscape. The form and orientation of the building avoid visual contact with the adjacent houses: at the ground floor the angled ceiling of the kitchen accentuates the intensive contact with the garden. On the first floor, the different shaped openings in the roof and façade offer, like “fingers of light”, varied daylight experiences.
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The routing through the house starts in the hall, a section of the ground floor volume. After experiencing the entrance area and passing the gigantic pivoted door, the visitor arrives at the “heart of the house”, the kitchen. Here he looks through the big glass wall straight into the garden, which suggests being outside again. Behind him, the stair cuts a wooden wall inviting to follow the route towards the first floor. Its angled form and extreme proportions (small and high) and the daylight entering from the ceiling, offer the feeling of walking in a medieval street.
At the end of it he discovers the living room, a quiet, north-lighted attic space, from which a big opening exposes the surrounding green like in a framed painting.” Rocha Tombal Architecten
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Iwan Baan

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“Evolution from prototype of Chinese courtyard house, The brick house establish a good relationship with the surrounding environment especially the big lake in the north. The red bricks produced in the neighbor fields were used as main structure & construction materials in the region were introduced as main construction material for this project, so the local construction workers know very clear the idea of building in their familiar way.

The interesting geometric pattern of brick facade reflects the opening logic of elevation. Since all materials & workers are from & close to the site, low budget is the result of this regional solution. Client of brick house, a famous poet in China dived himself into whole process, he worked together with the architect.”
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Y.TOHME/ARCHITECTS

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Project Details:
Y.TOHME/ARCHITECTS
www.yousseftohme.com

AD-Project – Villa in Progress
Design Development Phase, 2010
Location: France, Colmar
Project Total Area: 250sqm
Type: Residential
Architects in Charge: Y.TOHME/ARCHITECTS
Architect: Youssef Tohme
Project Architect: Sonia Tohme
Collaborate Architect: Anastasia Elrouss, Vart Bisanz, Muhammad Mahdi
Consultant Architect: Christophe Hurgon
Contact: info@yousseftohme.com
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amazingideas

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AVELEDA´S HOUSE
The perfect synergy of functionality and experience!

“Designed in Braga, Aveleda´s House is a villa designed to accommodate the light as a source of inner experience of housing.
The basic idea of the project, parts from the concept of being located in Bracara Augustae, where the ancient Roman houses, the Domus, were built around an internal square. Hence all the subtlety of the house is achieved with a careful distribution.

“… We tried to take the most of the land to create a connection with the interior of the building, leaving a view of the valley and the square that exists between the two bodies housing …”, highlights Manuel Ribeiro, architect and author of the project responsible for its implementation.”
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AVELEDA`S HOUSE

The main body which houses the social functions of the house is situated at an elevation of the square, assuming the sloping ground with the Hall high comparatively to the social part and creating a view of all from this same Hall; the social area involves the room in open space, the kitchen and bathroom service.
Down below the architect created the gym´s area and the office.

The private area with 4 bedrooms (1 suite and 3 rooms) and health facility support is at the elevation of the entrance hall, raised highly in comparison to the quota of the external square, without losing the visual field.
On the square that is outside, we can find the pool that reminds us the “compluvium” of a Domus Romana, centered on two areas of housing.
The engine room, the locker room and a kitchen to support the outdoor activities, are located in a lower bound in relation to the square, in a way to create a distinction between the two recreational areas.”
“… The plasticity of the object HOUSE (purpose built) will always be overridden by the phenomenological aspect, giving identity and character to the building and so, it’s able now to provide a center of life, functional and familiar at the same time that explores the pleasure of landscapes, spacious zones and materials.

This will not be only a “home”, but always a Domus. All the project intends to explore the human being as well as it senses: touch, sight, smell, hearing, taste and passion.
These are aspects that never been neglected. On the contrary, they are always present… ”, he concludes.”
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About the Architect:
MANUEL RIBEIRO
-The architect and his language…
Since he was 9 years old, he would stop on the sidewalks to watch the buildings, and redesign their silhouettes with a fingertip.
For Manuel Ribeiro, architecture as an artistic performance is understood as post-modernism, related to the materiality of the spaces, as places of reference. Morphic forms designed by contemporary architects are not
limited to a feature of the artistic product to be used.
The glory years of architecture represents the time when the artist has a profound impact on the design. Here the artist is a necessary tool for the design of the object. The concept is thought of as the art of living and not as certain movements in architecture in which the place becomes a “non-place“.
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Joanna Borek-Clement

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Project Details:
Name: Tafoni Floating Home
Designer: Joanna Borek-Clement
Project Type: Conceptual Project
Client/Cost/Completion Period: Not applicable (Conceptual Project)
Location: Houseboat district in Sausalito, California, USA
(Representing a sample bay or lake houseboat district)
Use: Residential / Recreational
Stories above Ground: One level
Structure: House: Wood – Pontoon: Concrete
Height: Building: ~17’-9” Feet (~5.2 Meters) – Floor to Ceiling: ~13’-0” Feet (~4.0 Meters)
Area: 960 Square Feet (~89 Square Meters)
Parking: Not in the scope of this project
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Introduction

Promoting a New Attitude in Residential Design and Living

The primary goal of this conceptual project is to change the attitude towards living on a houseboat and promote a lifestyle that limits disruption of the environment. Tafoni is spacious, yet compact. Typical houseboats have low ceilings and often feel cramped, which can detract from comfort many residents desire of their homes. In contrast, even though Tafoni has a relatively small floor plate, it is spacious because of the high ceiling and the minimal amount of full-height interior partitions. The partial-height sculptural walls divide the space visually and increase the interaction between people without limiting views. Tafoni is a multi-purpose living pavilion that serves as a permanent house, a weekend retreat, a relaxing summer destination or a place to entertain friends and hold business parties. In the current era of overpopulation and decreasing greenfields, building houseboats is a solution we should consider.
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The exemplary location of this project is the houseboat district in Sausalito, California, which features the beautiful views of San Francisco Bay overlooking neighboring Tiburon. This area serves as a permanent residence for many and is an example of peaceful coexistence between humans and nature. Every respectful and creative design, both modern and traditional, is accepted here; the residents pride themselves in the diversity of this floating enclave, which inspires everyone who comes to visit. Living close to unspoiled nature means being surrounded by beauty that enriches life in a way that apartments and on-land houses do not. Floating homes respond to low and high tide and more intimately connect with the environment than suburban houses with manicured backyards. Tafoni helps one discover the possibilities available with realizing that a living space can be very different than the one we grew up in and are used to.

Sustainable Features and Environmental Design Goals

The substantial damage to the environment in traditional on-land construction happens immediately at the start of the project; plants must be removed from greenfields that, in turn, impacts the natural nesting habitat of wildlife. In urban sites the construction debris associated with demolition and remodel of an existing building typically adds to the global refuse problem. Houseboats, as opposed to traditional homes, have no foundations that permanently impact the land. They can be moved from one dock to another to allow the shaded land underneath them to recover. Houseboats can be disassembled and transported to another location in a different city. The environmental goal of this project is to give Tafoni owners the flexibility and options that are invaluable in an environmentally conscious lifestyle.

Local Inspiration from the California Coast

The natural flora and fauna of the California coast provided inspirations for the project. First among them is a tafoni rock formation.

Tafoni

Tafoni are beautiful naturally occurring sculptures of stone, commonly sandstones. These extraordinary rock formations are hypothesized to be results of salt weathering. It is a unique phenomenon that is common along the Northern California shore in such locations as Salt Point State Park in Sonoma County. Their diversity and simple geometric beauty is astounding, shaping the design of the houseboat.
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Pebble & Wave

Other important inspirations are the simplicity of coastal pebbles and the beauty of ocean waves. The furniture and casework in the Tafoni project are entirely inspired by smooth, oval-like pebbles polished by the water. Also, the sleeping area features an ocean wave wrapping around the bed formed by the additional curved interior wall separating the bedroom from the bathroom area. The floor pattern references the linear graphics found on California coastal pebbles.
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Circulation & Space

The basic spatial concept is simple and minimal; in plan view the sculptural tafoni-inspired exterior and interior feature walls divide the space into three major parts: kitchen, living area and bedroom/ bathroom/closet area.

The middle part consists of a fully glazed sunroom that contains the kitchen, dining area and the main entrance to the boat.

The front part of the houseboat is occupied by a living room and the back part contains a bedroom. Both of these areas feature views of the Bay framed by tafoni-shaped windows. There are no full-height interior walls with the exception of the bathroom and walk-in closet.

Sustainable Structure
The house

The framing of the houseboat consists of the modular repetitive ellipsoidal wooden trusses that can be mass-produced to conserve resources and energy. The ellipsoidal shape of these structural elements allows for a large spanning capacity, thus eliminating the need for additional walls and columns that would cram the space inside affecting the quality of the interior space.

Floating pontoon

The floating pontoon for this houseboat can be made out of variety of materials, including fiberglass or concrete, depending on a specific location of the houseboat. In the exemplary location in Sausalito, the preferred option is a prefabricated concrete pontoon that has a high strength, durability and carrying capacity while requiring little maintenance. One of the characteristics of the San Francisco Bay is a constant change in the water level caused by high and low tide. The pontoon needs to have a sturdy structure and an ability to take the ground. Concrete is a durable and inexpensive construction material utilizing aggregate that can be harvested locally additionally contributing to the sustainability of this project.”
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Y.TOHME/ARCHITECTS
www.yousseftohme.com
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Project Details:
H-Project – Villa in Progress
Design Development Phase, 2010
Location: Lebanon, Yarze
Project Total Area: 1.100sqm
Type: Residential
Construction Fees: 1.300.000 $
Architects in Charge: Y.TOHME/ARCHITECTS
Architect: Youssef Tohme
Project Architect: Anastasia Elrouss
Collaborate Architect: Muhammad Mahdi
Consultant Architect: Christophe Hurgon
Text: More description soon

info@yousseftohme.com
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Marmol Radziner

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“Located in Palm Springs, California, the Kaufmann House was originally designed by architect Richard Neutra in 1946. The restoration returned the residence to its initial form, size, and aesthetic integrity. An important challenge of the restoration was to re-create the dialogue between nature and sculpture, a difficult undertaking in an area that has grown from a rugged desert into a suburban residential neighborhood.

Extensive archival research of Neutra’s original details was undertaken at the UCLA Special Collections Library Department. Julius Shulman’s original photographs of the house were invaluable in determining the original characteristics of this modern monument.”
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Source: Marmol Radziner
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Grosfeld van der Velde Architecten
Text by ArchDaily

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Project Details:
Architects: Grosfeld van der Velde Architecten
Location: Vianen, The Netherlands
Client: Private
Project Year: 2004-2007
Photographs: Michel Kievits
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“The house is situated on the edge of Vianen, a city in the centre of Holland. The view on the southwest side is magnificent and will remain unbuilt. The beautiful view is that of a typical Dutch landscape of open fields with lines of trees.
As a limiting condition for this site the city prescribed a gutter height of 4 meter and a country style of building.
Form and material remind traditional ways of building in the Dutch countryside, although the house has a distinct character as opposed to the prefabricated country-style of the other houses in the street.
The house is designed from the inside out, as a series of connected spaces. Within the whole each space has its own character and its own relation with the landscape.”
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noticias arquitectura

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Project Details:
Project: PLUS house
Architects: Masahiro Harada, Mao Harada / MOUNT FUJI ARCHITECTS STUDIO
Principal use：weekend house
Site area：988.58m2
Building area：232.77m2
Total floor area：279.92m2
Number of stories：2 story + 1 basement
Structure：reinforced concrete structure
Design：2007.5 – 2008.4
Construction：2008.5 – 2009.7
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Project Description:

“The site is located on mountainside of Izu-san, where Pacific Ocean can be looked down on the south. 
The untouched wilderness, covered with deciduous broad-leaved trees such as cherry trees and Japanese oaks, gives little level ground. 
 But we saw faint glimmer of architectural possibility along the ridge. 
The architecture would be used as villa for weekends. 
I didn’t want to just form the undulating landscape dotted with great trees as normal, nor design an elaborate architecture bowing down to the complex topography.
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What sprang to my mind is a blueprint for an architecture which is perfectly autonomous itself, at the same time seems to emerge as an underlying shape that the natural environment has been hiding. 
It’s abstraction of nature, to say.
 The architecture was realized by crossing two rectangular parallelepiped at very right angles. 
The lower one contains private rooms and bathroom, and sticks half of the body out to existing narrow level ground. 
The upper one incorporates salon and kitchen, and lies astride the lower one and the mountain ridge. 
It almost seems like an off-centered cross pinned carefully on natural terrain.
One axis of the cross stretches toward the Pacific Ocean on south, and the other, the forest of Japanese oak and some white birch on west.
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The rooms in the lower structure and terrace on it enjoy broad vista of the sea and blue sky.
And gentle shade of natural forest embraces the space in the upper one.
Water-polished white marble was chosen as interior finishing material. 
It glows softly like Greece sculptures to blend blue light from the south and green light from the west gradually, thus creates delicate continuous landscape of light which suggests the character and usage of the space. 
Exterior is also finished with white marble. 
The surface get smoother as it approaches to the southern/western end till it takes mirror gloss at the ends. 
The southern end of white cross melts into the blue of sky and sea, and the eastern end to the green of forest.
Abstraction is nothing to conflict with nature here.
Carved out of nature, it never stops being a part of nature itself, however highly abstracted. 
Never relativizes the nature with its foreignness, nor generate contradiction to settle for being “artificial nature” by giving up being abstract and mimicking the nature.The abstraction inspired by Mother Nature defines the nature itself, and still, stays natural.
That’s what I wanted from this abstraction and architecture.”

More photos on noticias arquitectura
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Paul Morgan Architects

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Project Details:
Project: The Cape Schanck House
Architect: Paul Morgan Architects
Status: Completed in 2006
Location: Cape Schanck, Victoria, Australia
Project Team: Paul Morgan, Sophie Dyring, Karla Martinez, Yau Ka Man, Timo Carl, Jo Scicluna, Teck Chee Chow
Owner-builder: Paul Morgan
Photographs: Peter Bennetts
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“This house is located in an area near rugged coastline subject to strong prevailing winds and sits within an expanse of native tea tree, on one of Australia’s southern peninsulas. The distinctive pattern of tree growth is caused by light stimulus, or phototropism, which formed a natural ‘tunnel’ at the west of the site, which in turn influenced the design strategies.
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The shell of the house was developed as a result of the analysis of sunlight movement and wind frequency, speed and direction, and the modelling of the wind onto the site, both with computer renderings and wind tunnel tests onto a cardboard model. This modelling was applied with expressive effect to the performance envelope and the resultant form of the house.
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Within the living room the ceiling wraps down to an internal water tank. The tank cools the ambient air temperature of the living room during summer, supplies rain water, and structurally carries the roof load.

In the development of the building envelope the influential intensities are those characteristic of smooth space—wind forces, wind turbulence, phototropism of vegetation, diurnal sunlight movement, rain patterns. The characteristics of striated space such as contours, title boundaries and town planning dimensions were of secondary concern. The effect of the nearby sea is crucial here—the conceptual subtext of the house design is a will to inhabit the smooth spaces of the sea and air, an aversion to gravity. It is worth noting the difficulty in drawing these forces, the wind and the effect of phototropism on the tea trees. Smooth elements resisted striated modes of representation and the spline is a more appropriate mode than the line or vector.
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The modelling of the form produced an aerodynamic external skin and continuous internal skin. The wind scoops on the south elevation are a kind of peeling of the skin. These scoops trap cooling winds during summer whilst providing shading from the hot afternoon sun. Turbulence too is inflicted on the skin. Where the wind modelling showed compression and turbulence around the front entry area, panels are warped as the idea of wind pressure forced into a contained space takes effect. In these instances are not added on, rather the skin is disturbed. Vertical louvers on the rear bedroom have a machine-like quality, and yacht technology was employed in the detailing.”
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Project Details:
Architect: Katsufumi Kubota
Type: Single family residence
Location: Oita City, Oita Prefecture
Construction: March 2009
Materials: Two-story (w/basement) reinforced concrete construction
Site Area: 4,572 square feet
Construction Area: 1,462 square feet
Total Floor Area: 1,925 square feet
Image Credits: Ken’ichi-Suzuki Photo Office
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Source:
What we Do In Secret
Kubota Architect Atelier
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