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This week marked the annual CMJ Music Marathon in NYC—where seemingly every venue in the city is booked with bands from around the US and the world. Though the number of participants are in the thousands, we highlighted a few promising acts (who…

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Installation view of Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor, on view through January 18, 2015 at the Museum of Modern Art. (Photo: Jonathan Muzikar)

“With the sink, only after I was making it as a series did I realize that I had had, years before, a recurring dream about finding a room within my home that I didn’t know existed. That room was full of sinks, but it was very different—there was sunlight pouring in the room, and there was water running in all the sinks. They were functional. So it was an image that I had a recurring dream about, but it’s not like I woke up and I said, ‘Gee, that would make an interesting sculpture.’ It’s after-the-fact. You look back and you see all these different influences: dreams, people you’ve known, things you’ve read.”

–Robert Gober in a 1989 interview with Craig Gholson for BOMB Magazine

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This small house in the French city of Tours by local architecture office Atelier 100architecture features a material palette of zinc panels, plaster and wooden boards that references its historical neighbours.

The house on Rue Losserand was designed by Mathieu Julien of Atelier 100architecture for a couple who wanted to create a rental property in the city’s ancient centre, and takes its visual cues from the materials used in structures nearby.

The sensitive location also necessitated a quick and dry construction so the architect worked with an engineer to develop a timber frame that avoids the use of structural metal and wet concrete.

“We had to make a building that was discreet and the construction process had to be very clean so it didn’t disturb the surroundings,” Julien told Dezeen.

The front wall of an existing single-storey flat-roofed garage was retained at the base of the new residence, which contains three storeys each of 20 square-metres.

The architect added a window in the wall looking onto the street and clad the structure above in zinc panels with a similar tone to the roof tiles of nearby buildings.

Plasterboard panels were left exposed on the gable end of the upper storey, which the architect said was a response to the planning authority’s request for a “less massive” detail than the proposed metal finish.

A section of the street-facing facade on the first floor is covered with pine cladding that denotes the position of the bedroom and continues the building line of the neighbouring homes.

The same pine wood is used to entirely cover the rear facade for reasons of “budget and simplicity” and to create a homogenous surface, which is interrupted only by windows and the home’s main entrance.

The doorway opens into an open-plan tiled living area with a fitted kitchen on one side and toilet on the other.

A staircase rising up one side of the building is built from rough construction planks with pine boards applied vertically to create a simple balustrade.

Large gaps between the vertical boards allow daylight to penetrate the stairwell from a narrow vertical window at first floor level.

The master bedroom and main bathroom are located on the first floor, with two smaller rooms fitted beneath the eaves on the upper storey.

Photography is by Brice Desrez.

Project credits:
Masonry: Cazy-Guillaume (Tours)
Carpenter: Merlot (Richelieu)
Plaster: Plakisodeco
Electrician/heat: Munch-Polge

The post Atelier 100architecture slots contemporary
house into French medieval city centre appeared first on Dezeen.

Waist-high partitions divide up the top floor of this mostly windowless house in Japan, framing different activities without cutting off light to any of the spaces (+ slideshow).

Japanese architect Katsutoshi Sasaki designed the two-storey House in Hanekita for two generations of a family living in a residential neighbourhood in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture.

The lower level of the house has a simple layout, with an open-plan living and kitchen in the centre and narrower rooms along the edges, but the upper level was designed with a more flexible layout, divided up by what the architect calls “spandrel walls”.

“In order to fulfil 13 room demands, while keeping them open to each other, the entire second floor was split into grids, bordered by spandrel walls,” explained Sasaki, whose buildings also include a three-metre-wide house and a triangular house.

According to the architect, the arrangement creates a space that appears to be open-plan when a person is standing up, and simultaneously separated into different rooms when that person sits or lies down.

“It is planned to be a pillar-less space without view obstructions,” said the architect. “Spandrel walls serve as loose barriers, enabling one same space to have a public and private structure at the same time, according to posture.”

The house has very few windows to prevent immediate neighbours being able to see into the building. All of these are located on the lower level, so Sasaki added two large skylights to bring light into the upper level from overhead instead.

Both of these skylights match up with the alignment of the grid below. They sit directly above two indoor planters, allowing residents to grow large plants inside their home.

“Two inner gardens assume the roles of daylighting and ventilation, connecting the interiors to the agreeable exterior environment with the swaying planting and the natural light,” added Sasaki, whose own office is also in Aichi.

This upper level belongs to the younger generation of the family. As well as bedrooms, spaces on this floor include a television room, a dressing room and a multi-purpose room – although the architect expects the uses to change in the future.

“The positioning of all residential rooms along the grids, except the wet area, can be altered with the growth of children,” he said.

On the ground floor, the kitchen for the older members of the family forms the heart of the space, while a secondary kitchen and study area runs along one of the side wall.

Both parts of the family share a large dining space, but this can be split into two using a set of wooden sliding doors.

Floor surfaces vary between wood and concrete on this level, but the surface steps up and down to highlight the contrast between the two.

Pairs of sliding doors on both sides of the building open the interior out to a garden at the back and the street in front, where the family can look out towards cherry blossom trees and a nearby park.

“I wanted to put emphasis on the relationship between the house and the park as an everyday playground for children as well as a borrowing landscape for the house,” added the architect.

Photography is by Katsutoshi Sasaki + Associates.

Project credits:

Design team: Katsutoshi Sasaki + Associates
Structure company: Tatsumi Terado Structural Studio
Construction company: Maruhei Construction

The post Katsutoshi Sasaki’s House in Hanekita
contains a grid of half-height walls appeared first on Dezeen.