Hasta La Ideas

This house for two retired lecturers in the Indonesian city of Salatiga was designed with multiple bamboo funnels on its roof to echo the area’s mountainous topography (+ slideshow).

Indonesian studio Budi Pradono Architects designed the house for a retired couple and their extended family in Salatiga, a small city on the island of Java.

The home, which the architects called Dancing Mountain House, features five steep-pitched bamboo roofs topped with skylights, designed to reference the peaks of the surrounding landscape.

“The house is at an altitude of 2,000 metres above sea level on the ridge of Mount Merbabu, and is surrounded by several other mountains,” explained the architects. “We added the form of mountains above some spaces as an interpretation of the surrounding area, and also to bring in as much natural light as possible.”

At the back of the property, a zigzagging roof was also added to suggest a cluster of village houses joined together.

“The project seeks to interpret Javanese houses in multiplication – from a distance, it looks like the houses in the surrounding villages,” said the architects, whose other projects include a curved concrete house and a tilting glass home, both of which feature trees growing inside.

Inside, the house has an open-plan split-level living space that follows the slope of the site. Four bedrooms behind this each have their own bathroom.

The living room has a glazed wall that reaches nearly four metres high, offering views out to an adjacent forest. This panel comprises a patchwork-style arrangement of black-framed windows, some of which pivot open to provide natural ventilation.

Topped with the steep-pitched bamboo roofs, the bedrooms have an internal height of six metres and also feature tall sections of glazing, with pivoting doors to access en-suite bathrooms.

A communal washroom with a curved brick wall was added behind the kitchen to provide a more sociable bathing space where the owners, their children and their grandchildren can wash and still feel connected to the living area.

“The main bathroom is designed as a social area, where people can still interact with others in different areas of the house,” said the architects. “Conceptually, this project is trying to bring back childhood memories of the family, with open, shared spaces.”

In the garden, an oval-shaped pavilion houses a library that can be used by the local community.

“The homeowners are retired lecturers, and they wanted to share their collection of economics and science books,” said the architects. “It has also become a sharing space for young creatives in the region, to help bring them to the next stage of their careers.”

The house was built over a period of two years by a team of novices from the local community, using readily available materials such as bamboo for the frame, roof and bedroom flooring, and stone and bricks for the walls.

“The owners had an appreciation of bamboo structures which had begun to be abandoned in the community,” said the architects. “This project uses the indigenous, low-tech methods of the community, and their expertise in bamboo structural systems and stone construction.”

British architects Invisible Studio took a similar approach when designing a workshop near Bath last year, managing a team who had never built before to construct the building with timber from the surrounding forest.

“From a social point of view, Dancing Mountain House is not built by the professional contractor, but by the local community, so as to provide economic and cultural benefits to the area,” added the architects.

A rainwater harvesting system was installed to store water from the wet season for use during the drier months, and a solar water heater was added to provide hot water for the showers.

“Almost all existing large trees on the site were also kept, and a pule tree was planted in the centre of the garden,” said the architects, who claim the new addition can be used to heal various diseases and so provide an additional benefit for the surrounding community.

Photography is by Fernando Gomulya.

Project credits:

Project architect: Budi Pradono
Architectural assistants: Stephanie Monieca, Arief Mubaraq
Architectural assistant support: Damicia Tangyong, Monica Selvinia, Indrawan Suwanto
Model maker: Daryanto
Interior design: Budi Pradono Architects

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Pascal Rambaud might be an architect, but that hasn’t stopped him from indulging his other passions, like mountaineering and motorsports. Back in the mid-2000s, the latter hobby led him to create an easier way to transport go-karts, which you see here:

That invention, called the DRIV’UP, led to something more complicated that would combine his love of motors with his love of mountains. In 2007 Rambaud began developing a vehicle that was compact, like a go-kart, but which could traverse difficult terrain. Now ready for primetime, he’s dubbed it the SWINCAR, and it certainly seems capable of going where other wheeled vehicles cannot:

The electric-powered SWINCAR can run for four hours on a single charge. But perhaps what’s most notable about it is its unusual wheels and suspension. When you think of off-roading in a vehicle with that small of a footprint, you probably think of ATVs; those position the rider high up and have their suspension down low, close to the beefy wheels. But the SWINCAR’s unique configuration turns this upside down, placing the driver practically at ground level, while moving the mounting points for the suspension far higher, up around where the beltline would be if it was an ordinary car. And the counterintuitively skinny tires seem well-suited to perform the fancy footwork the vehicle is capable of.

Lastly, the SWINCAR boasts a crucial safety feature that your average ATV does not: A rollbar, in case you overestimate the abilities of either the machine or your driving skills.

This is no one-off toy nor vanity project, by the way; Rambaud has partnered with businessman Jerome Arsac and finance/marketing expert Theirry Jammes to form Mécanroc, the company producing and promoting the SWINCAR.

For applications, they foresee uptake by anyone who wants to travel rough terrain without leaving an ecologically-damaging stamp—the electric SWINCAR naturally leaves no emissions and is noiseless—and in addition to those seeking outdoor recreation, the company names both the military and public rescue outfits (think park rangers) as potential target markets.

The company is also seeking distributors, and they reckon the vehicle’s unique configuration may help them find some in the existing personal off-road vehicle market. Their “highly differentiated technology [has] no current competitor in the market,” they write, and the SWINCAR’s unusual design means there’s “not [a] conflict with your other product ranges.”

Le Salin de l’île Saint-Martin is a special place in the town of Gruissan where even locals indulge in snapping a few photos. Located by the Mediterranean coast, the tremendous salt evaporation ponds (over 400 hectares) host the production of la fleur……

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L’agence créative en marketing et communication Clinic 212 a imaginé une signalisation routière miniature pour les petits animaux de la ville de Vilnius en Lituanie. Une déclinaison de petits panneaux et de marquages au sol indiquant un passage piéton pour hérisson, un aéroport pour oiseaux, une aire de pique-nique pour chat ou encore une zone de baignade pour canards. Une idée ingénieuse de street-marketing pour promouvoir l’agence, regroupée sous le hashtag #TINYROADSIGN.

Mizuno Architecture Design has created a concrete office and conference facility for the employees of a tuna processing factory in the Japanese seaside town of Yaizu (+ slideshow).

The Katsuobushi Kumiai Office creates a new home for the Yaizu Katsuobushi Industry Cooperative Association – an organisation that supports the town’s thriving Katsuobushi industry, which involves the drying and fermenting of smoked skipjack tuna.

The site is located at the centre of an industrial estate surrounded by noisy refrigeration units, so the Japanese studio’s founder Yoshiyasu Mizuno created a bulky concrete structure that would offer acoustic separation from its neighbours.

“The highest priority was given to creating a tranquil business space, protected from the noise generated by the incoming and outgoing of large vehicles and the unloading of freight,” explained the architect, whose past projects include a triangular house with a sheltered outdoor cooking area.

The building comprises a series of concrete blocks, connected by a central glazed space. The concrete is left exposed on three of the volumes, while others have surfaces clad in timber, coated in metal panels or rendered gold.

“Boxes are made of reinforced concrete to create a buffer zone from the outside environment,” Mizuno explained. “The reinforced concrete boxes as structural units carry the horizontal forces, while floors and ceilings are composed of wooden slabs.”

“Our design process employed is to distribute features in their required locations in a straight-forward way, resulting in having ragged volumes applied with a variety of materials.”

The building contains two storeys. The lower level accommodates a long narrow office, with areas that can be subdivided if necessary, while the upper level contains a large conference room.

Concrete surfaces are also left exposed inside the building, but are combined with timber details and ceilings to create some warmth in the space.

“Our interpretation of the client’s request is to make these business spaces a pleasant environment by applying appropriate materials to the horizontal and vertical floors and walls to create a safe and comforting ambience,” added Mizuno.

Photography is by Harunori Noda/Gankohsha.

Project credits:

Architectural design: Yoshiyasu Mizuno/Mizuno architecture design association
Constructional design: Masayuki Takada/RGB structure
Construction management: Kinoshita Kensetsu Kogo

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