Hasta La Ideas

Architect Matt Nardella has turned an abandoned bodega in Chicago into his home and studio, arranging spaces around a courtyard he created in the centre.

Nardella runs Chicago-based architecture and design firm Moss with his wife Laura Cripe, who oversees the marketing and business development.

The architect and his team transformed the 6,000-square-foot (557-square-metre) grocery store between Diversey and Francisco Avenues, northwest of Downtown, into a complex they named Logan Certified.

It includes a workspace and a showroom for the studio, Nardella and Cripe’s residence, another small apartment, and a furniture and art gallery.

The existing bodega stretches from the street at the front to an alley beside, and abuts neighbouring buildings at the back. Nardella stripped out a chunk at the rear to create a patio between the new offices and the showroom – where Moss displays its custom woodwork – as well as the apartment.

“Being constrained by the configuration and a desire to create outdoor space, we created a courtyard by carving out a portion of the building,” said the studio.

The courtyard provides a central entertaining area for the complex. Bricks saved during the demolition now form a wood-burning pizza oven, and the base of a barbecue used for events and socialising.

New walls are covered with horizontal cedar siding to offer a “nature-in-the-city feel” and feature large windows.

“The studio and the showroom share the courtyard and the large windows bring in plenty of natural light and warmth during the winter,” Moss said.

Two-person desks run down the long and narrow studio, which follows many that architects and designers have completed for themselves. Rough brickwork is paired with white-painted walls to brighten up the space.

A similarly pared-back palette is chosen for the couple’s apartment, again joining a host of self-designed homes inhabited by architects. John Pawson’s minimally styled London house and the skinny Rotterdam residence of Gwendolyn Huisman and Marijn Boterman are among examples.

The main space inside Nardella and Cripe’s residence is open plan, comprising a kitchen, dining room and three different seating areas, including two sculptural wooden chairs that face a wood-burning stove and a reading nook in the corner. A long sofa in the third is accompanied by a table topped with a slab of elm wood, designed by Moss.

The studio also created the custom woodwork in the space, including kitchen cabinets, a dark wooden wine storage mounted on the wall, and sliding wooden doors that open into the master bedroom and en-suite bathroom.

The rest of the ground floor is occupied by the art gallery, located in the northwest corner to face out to the street.

A volume was then added to the first floor to form a small loft apartment that Nardella and Cripe rent out. The studio was able to add the extension after removing the part of the building to make way for the courtyard. This meant the floor area ratio – a correlation between the building’s total floor area and the piece of land it is built on – was kept within limits.

Accessed from the street by a staircase, the one-bedroom apartment has a glazed sliding door that opens onto a private terrace covered in cedar. Custom cabinetry makes the most of space inside the kitchen and living room, with a ladder leading up to the bedroom and bathroom on the mezzanine level.

“We wanted to create a unique rental dwelling space, differentiating from the typical condo and three-bedroom flat apartment layout so prevalent in Chicago,” said the studio.

A mix of oak, walnut, and other hardwoods that has been restored and repurposed from local Illinois barns forms the flooring across the flat.

On the exterior, the south-facing slope of the extension’s pitched roof is fitted with solar panels. The walls are clad in black aluminium composite panels to match the black-painted, cinder-block walls below.

Built in 1910, the structure was previously covered in metal panels that had gradually worn away. Moss stripped these off and left the blocks underneath exposed. The brickwork walls of a second extension added in the 1950s were preserved.

Across the entire building, the team replaced windows and insulation across the entire building, and added a heating system underneath the flooring.

“We preserved as much of the existing building shell as possible, while adding modern materials and energy efficient elements,” said the studio. “The exterior of the building is a mixture of old and new.”

Photography is by Carmen Troesser.

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Broad wooden steps lead from the living space of this Quebec residence, by local architects Bourgeois Lechasseur, down to the shores of Lac St-François.

The L’Accostée home was built above the foundations of an existing chalet that the owners had been using for a long time, but had outgrown.

“They decided to rebuild while preserving the natural surroundings and keeping the open space on the edge of the lake,” said Bourgeois/Lechasseur architectes.

The site slopes down towards the lake, and the entrance is on the middle level of the five-bedroom home, which contains the main living and entertaining areas.

After traversing an entry foyer, floor-to-ceiling glass walls in the open-concept kitchen, living and dining room provide sweeping landscape views.

Wooden rafters of the structure are left exposed, creating a dramatic effect in the double-height spaces. “This contemporary house is distinguished by the expression of the wooden structure,” the architects said.

In the centre of the plan, Bourgeois/Lechasseur laid out a U-shaped kitchen, which allows the owners to interact with each other and their guests while cooking. The master bedroom is also on the same level, occupying the eastern portion of the home.

An expansive terrace occupies the entire southern facade, facing the lake, and is accessible from the living and dining area. From here, a broad set of steps allow the residents to wander down to the water.

“This architectural gesture takes the form of an agora and becomes the cornerstone for the new house,” Bourgeois/Lechasseur said. The steps include some wider landings where residents can hang out and enjoy the waterfront views.

A flight of metal and glass stairs leads upstairs to the three children’s bedrooms, and down to a den, a home gym, and a guest bedroom at on the lowest level.

There is also an indoor pool in the basement, which also has a visual relationship with the exterior. “Natural light sweeps over the wall at the end of the long pool, beckoning swimmers,” said the architects.

Wood is the main material throughout for the home’s interiors, complemented by accents of steel and glass used for the structure. Outside, the architects chose a more subdued approach, with simple white cladding for most of the walls but with some of the wooden accents left visible.

Bourgeois/Lechasseur was founded in 2011, and has offices in Quebec City and an outpost in the Magdalen Islands. The studio has also completed a geometric home designed to withstand its site’s harsh winds and a memorial to seamen that was built on the defunct site of a fish processing plant.

Photography is by Adrien Williams.

Project credits:

Architects: Bourgeois/Lechasseur architects
Structural engineer: Antoine Dorval
General contractor: Constructions des Grands Jardins

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Le sculpteur espagnol David Moreno a créé à l’aide de centaines tiges d’acier et de cordes des oeuvres représentant des bâtiments. On aperçoit également des portes et des escaliers. Le plus ? Les touches de couleurs – rouge, doré, noir – de ces oeuvres. Le rendu est étonnant. David Moreno partage son travail sur Instagram et Behance.

Japanese practice Hibinosekkei has completed a nursery in Yokohama, which features plywood-lined interiors and house-shaped openings set into its dark facades.

MK-S Nursery was designed by local architecture office Hibinosekkei to accommodate a classroom for pre-school children and an after-school childcare centre within a former residential building.

The project was overseen by the studio’s dedicated childcare division, Youji no Shiro, which has designed more than 500 children’s facilities including a kindergarten with a built-in obstacle course, and one with a small wooden playhouse inside.

The nursery in Yokohama is housed in a building that previously contained a residence and shop. The two-storey structure is located close to the main kindergarten facility and functions as a satellite base for the children.

The 40-year-old building had become dilapidated but its exterior was retained as part of a refurbishment that has altered the interior to incorporate two childcare rooms on each level.

New cladding that wraps around the existing exterior helps to update the aesthetic of the dated building. The metal surface is perforated with a pattern that evokes the constellations of a galaxy.

The dark cladding is interrupted by playful windows that echo the gabled forms of typical dwellings found throughout this residential neighbourhood.

“By setting distinctive windows, passers-by can see inside and it makes it possible that people get to know the curriculum of this building’s programme,” said the architects. “It also gives brightness to the inside and a close relationship to the outside.”

The nursery is entered via a covered walkway facing onto a carpark at the rear of the site. A pair of entrances lead directly into the childcare rooms on the ground floor, while two more entrances connect with stairwells ascending to the first-floor rooms.

The interiors are all lined with plywood boards that lend the spaces a utilitarian yet warm aesthetic. Each room features house-shaped openings alongside operable square windows that can be used to provide natural ventilation.

The plywood surfaces incorporate built-in cubby holes, cupboards, audio-visual equipment and blackboards that help to optimise the available floor space.

Photography is by Kenjiro Yoshimi/Studio Bauhaus.

Project credits:

Architect: Hibinosekkei, Youji no Shiro、
Project team: Interior Design Farm, Kids Design Labo

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Ces images intenses de lave coulant d’une falaise du photographe Michael Shainblum résument parfaitement la puissance de Mère Nature. Shainblum décrit ces images prises le Volcanos National Park d’Hawaii, comme «l’une des scènes les plus mystiques que j’ai jamais eu le plaisir de capturer». Depuis le bateau sur lequel il se trouvait, il a été témoin de ce scénario spectaculaire fait de lave et de nuages de fumée. Les couleurs changeantes de la lumière et un magnifique arc-en-ciel double viennent magnifier la scène. Voir plus de son travail, et suivez-le sur Instagram.