Hasta La Ideas

Walls of frameless glazing offer uninterrupted views of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay from this 1970s California house, which has been reworked and extended by local studio Swatt Miers Architects (+ slideshow).

The golden-hued Garay Residence occupies a hilltop site in Tiburon – half an hour’s drive from San Francisco – and enjoys a 270-degree view of the city and its surroundings.

It was originally built in the 1970s but its owners – a couple with two children – wanted to create a better connection with the spectacular setting, so they asked Swatt Miers Architects to rebuild and extend it.

“The family had lived in the house for a long time but it had become too small for them and worn out,” architect Robert Swatt told Dezeen.

“It happens to be in one of the best settings in the Bay Area – on a hill overlooking San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge – so they wanted to create a larger home that befitted that setting.”

The original single-storey house, which was just under 300 square metres, occupied the wing now used for the bedrooms, which is set back from the pool.

The 185-square-metre extension protrudes towards the water, providing space for an open-plan kitchen, living and dining area. Beneath this, a new lower-ground level was also added for a media room, office and gym.

“The master-bedroom wing is essentially the footprint of what existed before, but nevertheless that wing has dramatically changed,” said Swatt. “In the end, very little of the original house was used, although some of the original foundations are the same.”

The entrance on the upper-ground level has walls made from warm-toned Jerusalem stone, custom-cut and imported from Israel, in order to shield the house from the gaze of nearby homes and save the view inside as a surprise.

“We didn’t want to give everything away at the front door,” said Swatt. “We also needed to limit glazing here to reduce the amount of light emitted from the home, which could affect neighbours’ views at night.”

Inside, rooms become gradually taller and more expansive, with a compressed entrance hall that leads to an open-plan living and dining area at the back.

This gradual revealing of the view can be seen in other cliff-side houses completed in recent years, including a copper-clad house with a stepped design in California, and a Vancouver house with a cantilevered dining room at the side.

“There is a sense of drama that is created with the opaque entrance, and the subsequent progression of spaces,” said Swatt.

“It goes back to Frank Lloyd Wright – compressing the entrance so that visitors arrive in a small, low space, which then opens up both horizontally and vertically.”

In addition to the open-plan living space, the upper-ground level of Garay Residence has bedrooms and bathrooms for the two children, two guests, and an au pair, plus a master suite for the parents overlooking the pool and the bay.

A limited palette of materials was repeated throughout the house, with Jerusalem stone continuing from outside to the walls in the living space, and vein-cut travertine used for the all the flooring, as well as the walls in the bathrooms.

“The elegant, simple palette of materials means the home feels expansive, but still tranquil and refined,” said Swatt.

The travertine flooring was also continued out to the terrace to make the internal and external spaces feel more like one, and roof overhangs were added above the glazing to subtly lead the eye outside, and provide shade inside.

The glass walls are made from 2.9-metre-tall panels, which were butt-jointed together to avoid the need for frames and to create unimpeded views. Solid exterior walls were also designed with cavities so that the sliding glass doors can retract fully out of sight when they are open.

The kitchen features walnut cabinets and has a raised roof with clerestory windows to bring daylight deeper into the house.

“We raised the roof as high as we could without blocking views of the neighbours,” said Swatt. “It was the minimum we needed in order to add the clerestory windows, which were needed to bring light into the centre of the house.”

A glass, stone and walnut staircase leads to the media room on the lower-ground level, which features sliding screens so the owners can block out light when watching films or playing games.

Outside, the garden was designed as a series of stepped levels, with a pool at the top that sits flush with the travertine decking, and a court for playing bocce – a form of boules – a few steps below.

“The slope of the site is very gradual, and the building reflects this,” said Swatt. “The progression of spaces on the terraces is done in a subtle, controlled way.”

Low-lying, drought-tolerant plants, including Bougainvillea and Agave, were added to thrive in the dry, rocky terrain, and also maintain views from the house.

“This is one of the few locations in the Bay Area where large trees are not prized, because they block views,” added Swatt. “Slow-growing plants such as succulents and desert trees were more fitting.”

Swatt Miers Architects is based in Emeryville, California. Other projects by the firm include three glass pavilions over the edge of a valley.

Photography is by Russell Abraham.

Project credits:

Architect: Swatt Miers Architects
Civil engineer: ILS Associates
Structural engineer: Yu Strandberg Engineering
General contractor: Jamba Construction

The post California home by Swatt Miers Architects faces out over San Francisco Bay appeared first on Dezeen.

Les designers du studio Material Immaterial, Nitin Barchha et Disney Davis, ont construit des petits immeubles pour rendre hommage à la beauté du béton. Ces 9 maisons miniatures sont appelées Spaces et rappellent que les plus beaux bâtiments de nos jours ont été construits en béton, selon ces designers : de Le Corbusier à Frank Lloyd Wright, Tadao Ando et Oscar Niemeyer.

Amy Walker give  a verbal tour of the United States, providing examples of accents from commonly recognized regions such as New York, the American South, the Midwest and California(Read…)

This timber-clad Copenhagen house was designed by local studio EFFEKT to be flexible for a growing family, but also to match the cost of the country’s cheapest kit homes (+ slideshow).

Named Villa One, the building was designed by EFFEKT for a developer who owned a vacant suburban plot on the outskirts of the city.

His brief was to create a house for first-time buyers that would match the cost but surpass the quality of other prefabricated structures.

“He was looking for a new approach to a private house for a young couple with or without kids,” architect Mikkel Bøgh told Dezeen.

“He felt the available options for starting families had become too standardised in order to make a quick profit, and he was looking to develop an alternative that would be flexible over the long term as the family grew.”

The 136-square-metre house has three wings that radiate out from an open-plan kitchen, living and dining space in the centre.

Two wings contain a bedroom and bathroom each, and the third wing has a sunken living space that can be converted into a third bedroom.

“It is meant to be a library or a TV room, but it can also be sectioned off if needed,” said Bøgh. “We also prepared the foundations of the garage to make the addition of a fourth room very easy.”

The team designed the house without corridors to maximise space inside. It is a tactic often used on low-cost housing designs, including another Copenhagen home by architect Sigurd Larsen and an earthquake-proof residence developed by Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia.

Here, bathrooms and storage sit between the bedrooms and living area to provide buffer zones between the communal and private spaces.

The three-pronged design of Villa One is also intended to make best use of the outdoor space, which adjoins a noisy motorway at the back, but also enjoys views of the countryside beyond this.

“The rear garden could not be used for recreational activities because of the noise from the highway, so this shape creates a protected courtyard at the front, which is shielded from the noise and also has the best orientation for sun exposure,” Bøgh explained.

The curved facade at the back, which faces south and east, is glazed to bring in light, and creates views of the garden and the countryside beyond.

“The glass is the only expensive thing in the house, and the standard flat sections were not that much more expensive than building a solid wall,” said Bøgh. “In Denmark, labour is expensive, so having a single element that can be installed can actually save you money.”

The front facade, which faces south and encloses the main outdoor space, is clad in ThermoWood – a timber that is heat-treated to improve its durability.

“We wanted to create privacy on this facade, so people cannot look into the house from the street,” said Bøgh. “Also, when you sit on the terrace it’s nice to have your back against something that is not glass.”

A small outdoor space at the side, which the architects refer to as “a secret garden”, features a trellis for climbing plants to cover the house.

“The design left a small strip at the north, so to make this space feel bigger we decided to extend the garden up the side wall,” said Bøgh.

Construction for the timber-framed house was completed in six months, and cost 13,000 Danish krone (approximately £1,222) per square metre.

“Denmark and Norway are expensive countries to build in, so compared with other European countries that is probably costly, but it is the same price per square metre as the cheapest standardised houses on the market here,” said Bøgh, before adding that the studio now plans to develop more houses for similar budgets.

“We used conventional building techniques and materials in creative ways to come up with something different for the market,” he said. “Our brief was to prioritise and explore architecture creatively, while keeping the same price point of existing competitors.”

EFFEKT is led by partners Tue Hesselberg Foged and Sinus Lynge. Other projects by the firm include a cancer-care centre made up of seven house-shaped buildings and a street sports facility at an old train engine roundhouse.

Photography is by EFFEKT.

Project credits:

Design: EFFEKT
Design team: Tue Hesselberg Foged, Sinus Lynge, Mikkel Bøgh, Gorka Calzada Medina, Clive Hennessey, Nick Green, Marco Antonio Ravini
Client: Rasmus Blæsbjerg
Collaborators: AF Hansen Construction

The post EFFEKT’s Villa One is a low-cost home designed to suit a growing family appeared first on Dezeen.