This week, we check in with Dubai-based Brownbook magazine in celebration of the mix of “legends and underground heroes” included in their current music issue. In addition to a pull-out songbook featuring sheet music from classic Egyptian songstress Umm Kulthum, the informative issue…
Alternating cubes of timber and glass cover the back of this Sydney house extension by Australian office Panovscott, offering a balance of light, shade, views and privacy.
Three by Two house was designed by Panovscott for a couple with two young children, who wanted to transform their dark semi-detached Victorian house in an inner-Sydney suburb.
“Their second child was due shortly when they approached us, so they wanted light, air, a place for the family to commune, and they wanted a great building,” architect Andrew Scott told Dezeen.
The two-storey extension gives them a new kitchen on the ground floor, which opens on to the garden. Above, a bedroom and en-suite for the parents is set back slightly from the back wall to create a six-metre-tall double-height space at the rear.
“By pulling the bedroom back, the kitchen-diner below opens up to the light at the edge of the house,” said Scott. “The void also allows the parents to be part of the life of the house when they are in the bedroom, while still giving them privacy. In a constrained fiscal and spatial environment, sometimes an exuberant gesture is crucial.”
The western red cedar and glass sections on the rear facade act like blinkers, framing views of treetops while shielding the family from being overlooked. On the ground floor, glass doors and a timber panel fold back to open the house up to the garden.
Inside, a wall of the kitchen-diner has been covered with floor-to-ceiling cabinets made from kauri pine – a sustainable locally sourced plywood. For the flooring, a structural concrete slab has been polished to expose the aggregate, and then sealed.
“This room is conceived as a ‘great room’, based on the example of a medieval castle, in which a large space accommodated multiple uses at the centre, and more specific spatially constrained opportunities at the edge,” said Scott.
The extension offers a bright contrast to the front of the long, narrow house, which is just over four metres wide and attracts scant light throughout the day.
A long corridor leads from this existing part of the house to the extension at the back. The entrance to the new space is tilted, intended to offer a glimpse of the light on approach but saving the full impact of the large space as a surprise.
An indentation where the extension meets the existing house also allows for a small courtyard, which ensures light comes deeper into the narrow space.
Photography is by Brett Boardman.
Here is some more text from Panovscott:
Three by Two House, Sydney, Australia
This project is the renovation of a house, one of two semi-detached single storey dwellings located in Sydney’s densely inhabited inner west. Broadly speaking it is about the making of a new whole by retention of one half of a structure and reconfiguration of the other.
The environ is an increasingly gentrified subdivision originating around 1880 and characterised by predominantly narrow east-west orientated housing parcels fronting a large public park.
Approach to the house remains via the formal front garden up three generous steps and on to a narrow porch below a low curved corrugated roof. Within, the front rooms have been retained with minimal intervention allowing the continued manner of dwelling.
A long hall leads past two bedrooms. The high ceilings, small windows and wonderfully lean vertical timber construction establish the character typical of a Sydney terrace. Cool in both summer and winter and dark even on the brightest of days, these spaces offer the initial experience of homecoming and become a counterpoint for the character of the rear addition.
At the end of the existing hall a small opening twists to the sky bringing gentle light though the upper level and into the centre of the long plan. The light washes down a 45-degree splayed plywood panel. Visible from the dark front rooms and immediately upon entry, it announces the differing quality of the spaces ahead. Moving towards this quiet light, the thin sliver of a brighter room beyond gradually widens with the shifting perspective. Shunted off the previous axial alignment, and past a discreet bathroom, the great communal room of the house is revealed. Light filled, this is a combined kitchen and dining space of slightly smaller area than the lean-to it replaces. Here the elegant vertical proportions and lean timber construction techniques of the front part of the house are reinterpreted.
Continuing the homecoming journey the room increases to six metres in height reaching upwards at its far end. The number and size of windows also increase gradually to this point allowing the internal space to expand horizontally as well as vertically and for the light levels to approach that of the external environment. Turning 180 degrees and up a narrow stair concealed behind a ply lined wall, the level above contains a master bedroom and en-suite, with a tiny window looking back across the roof to the park. This moment completes the journey within to the most private realm of the house.
Input Creative Studio has created a New York studio for a children’s portrait photographer with a turquoise playhouse hollowed out of one wall (+ slideshow).
New York-based Input Creative Studio designed a neutral space for Studio Eight Photos, then made a couple of playful additions that keep children entertained both in between and during shoots.
A custom-made playhouse area is integrated into one wall, while a full-height blackboard becomes a giant drawing surface.
“Thinking back to our childhood memories, the idea of using wooden toys as our inspiration surfaced. The simplicity, warmth and nostalgia of the toys in addition with clever engineering gave us the idea to develop a playhouse, called Toto,” the designers told Dezeen.
“The playhouse not only entices the children but also provides them with entertainment; taking them out of the digital world back to analogue as they engage with the space by pushing the chalkboard door and playing in the house,” they said.
The blackboard doubles up as the sliding door for a cupboard, while the rest of the wall integrates a desk space and a line of wooden cabinets, allowing the client to stow away his camera equipment.
The rear wall accommodates several colourful backdrops for shoots, while an orange sofa provides a seating area for parents.
Photography is by Efi Panagoula of Studio Eight Photos.
Here is some more information from the designer:
Studio Eight Photo by Input Creative Studio
Studio Eight Photos’ design is composed of modular and graphic elements in a clean and neutral palette.
Bold black lines outline the space’s vast storage units that have been designed to accommodate a plethora of photography equipment. A modular lounge can be configured in a variety of ways, providing easy staging for different shoots. The studio’s layout is a blank canvas that can be easily transformed, providing an ideal and diverse backdrop.
Scale model
Since Studio Eight focuses on artist children’s portraits, a custom playhouse has been integrated into the design providing both an ideal backdrop for shoots and entertainment for the kids. Flexible, elegant and fun; the overall design is sophisticated yet playful.
L’artiste Amy Woodside, basée à New York, a fait une série de visuels qui confrontent peinture abstraite et typographie. Elle a donc imaginé quelques imprimés de sweatshirts pour une collection de la marque de vêtements AYR. Une collaboration colorée à découvrir en images.
Behind the traditional ceramic-tiled facade of this nineteenth-century building, Portuguese studio OODA has completed a modern renovation to create 14 studio flats (+ slideshow).
The building in Porto dates from 1895 and was originally designed as a home, but was turned into an office and service building in the late 20th century. It lost many of its original features in the process, including wood flooring – now concrete – and a skylight above the stairwell.
It has now been converted back into a residential building by OODA with 14 studio flats and three one- or two-bedroom apartments. The apartments range from 28 square metres to 105 square metres, and are aimed at young people and students.
An automatic pivoting door provides access for cars from the street to the DM2 Building, and OODA clad it in stone to camouflage it among the building’s exterior when the door is closed.
“The client’s objective – which drove the intervention – was to cater for the younger market as the building is near universities, hospitals, the art district and the nightlife area,” architect Diogo Brito told Dezeen.
The apartments all feature contemporary details such as folded metal staircases and built-in storage, and mezzanine levels for sleep or work areas to maximise the small footprint of some of the apartments.
Black floor-to-ceiling cabinets help to differentiate the kitchen as a separate area in the open-plan apartments, and also helps to visually recede them in the room.
The communal corridors are covered in oriented strand board (OSB), which the architects chose partly for its affordability, and to add warmth to the building’s interior.
“We used it because it is a cheap material, and we thought it would be an interesting and warmer contrast to materials such as glass, concrete and light,” said Brito.
At the back, a patio designed for parking has been landscaped using grass and paving with the same triangular pattern found in the ceramic Azulejo tiles at the front.
“In Portugal it is quite common and traditional to use tiles in facades,” said Brito. “Our idea was to make this part of the conceptual process, using its configuration to generate other new features of the building.”
Beneath the patio, a separate, sunken apartment has been built for the client’s son, with a small, private courtyard at its front. A rectangular concrete structure protrudes through the front window, and is designed to serve a range of purposes.
“The client’s first idea was to place a mini-bar there, which then shifted to storage, and then to a place for TV and music devices,” said Brito.
The renovation is part of a wider regeneration taking place in Porto at the moment, which saw construction projects drop significantly following the global financial crisis.
“The recovery of abandoned buildings has become the new major task for the market,” said Brito. “It’s a process that is now in full throttle, but there is still a lot to be done. This building is one of many that our office is doing.”
OODA was co-founded by Brito, who previously worked as an architect at Zaha Hadid, and Rodrigo Vilas-Boas, who has worked with both OMA in Rotterdam and Álvaro Leite Siza in Porto.
Photography is by João Morgado.
Here is some more text from OODA:
DM2 Housing, Porto, Portugal
One of the most demanding tasks in Porto nowadays is the intervention on the major amount of old and historical buildings of Porto’s downtown. This project is a renovation of a 20th century building to convert to a 17 housing unit for students and young people in general.
The DM2 Building, located in downtown Porto (priority intervention zone), in the area of protection of the National Museum Soares dos Reis, is dating the nineteenth century and their original composition the property was intended for a single dwelling taking ornamental and construction of the whole characteristics of the buildings at the time, both in functional layout as an ornamental and aesthetic.
However, a later change occurred in the late twentieth century, the building has undergone a profound change taking place inside caused by the modification of use required.
The property became divided by several independent floors with features framed in services and trade and lower floors have been completely redesigned and trace assets were hidden in part and/or removed from the particular frames original, wood structure of the floors (now concrete) and traditional skylight at top of stairs. Indeed, the draft D.Manuel intended to rebuild the property, returning the initial function of integral housing, recovering traces of hidden identity, reinterpreting traditional elements and giving the building a new sense of contemporary housing program with a set of typologies ace current market needs.
So Manuel II building as a whole distributes 17 apartments T0 and T1 types, ranging in size between 28sqm and 105sqm, spread over 5 floors and are accompanied by a landscaped patio intended for parking.
The rehabilitation now completed, restores the original residential function, underlines the unique formal and constructive characteristics and adapt to a contemporary urban reality of the city of Oporto.
Voici la dernière campagne de Heineken où le protagoniste explore divers établissements cachés au coeur de la ville dans le but de traquer une femme de mystère. Créée par Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam, cette publicité retrace un parcours étonnant, créatif et dynamique accompagnée d’une bouteille Heineken dans chaque lieu.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
