Hasta La Ideas

It’s been nearly two years since we checked in on McMansion Hell, the website that scornfully highlights choice examples of suburban architecture. The site’s anonymous author is still at it, tearing through America state by state, with the current target being big-ass houses in Texas. “I’ve been poisoning my brain the last couple of weeks narrowing down 2000 prospective McMansions to 16,” s/he writes. “Instead of ranking them myself like I usually do, I will be doing a bracket at the end of the next post where you can vote for the Most Terrible in Texas!”

Here are the first eight “entrants:”

Round Two is reportedly on the way. In the meantime you can read more details about Round One’s monstrosities here.

While getting out into nature—whether it’s tucked inside the city or in the wilderness beyond—you can support NYC’s parks with this cap. Proceeds from the sale (as with all items in the Only NY’s NYC Collection) go to the City of New York, specifically……

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Recalling the sandbag barricades used in war zones, piles of haphazardly stacked cushions form this public seating installation by French furniture brand Smarin. 

Called La Barricade and designed by Stéphanie Marin, founder of Smarin, the seating is made up of large bean bag-style cushions that can be stacked to create soft walls and towering seating configurations that users can climb up and nest inside.

Designed to be moved around and rearranged, the cushions are made from grey linen fabric, filled with fibres and decoratively stitched at the seams. When immersed inside them, they provide a degree of acoustic insulation.

The cushions were originally designed to be used by the audience at a viewing of Narimane Mari’s film, Le Fort des Fous, during German arts festival Documenta 14.

Located inside the Ballhaus in Kassel, the former residence of Jerome Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, the seating made reference to the film’s subject by referencing architecture that is emblematic of the violence.

Most recently, the Barricade seating was installed at an art exhibition called Halo during last months’ Art Basel.

The immersive show was created by British artists Semiconductor and guest curated by Monica Bello for the 4th Audemars Piguet Art Commission. It took place at the Hadron collider (LHC), at the CERN laboratory in Geneva where visitors were invited to experience particle collisions.

The LHC housed a 360-degree projection of scientific data while simultaneously 384 vertical wires were played mechanically using the same data, to produce a soundtrack.

In this setting, the upholstered seating functioned as a place for visitors to lie back and take in the sounds and projections.

Smarin reports that the cushions will eventually be available to buy in both linen and outdoor fabric finihses.

Smarin weren’t the only ones to bring bean bags to this year’s Design Miami/Basel, designer Porky Hefer also showcased a series of oversized bean bags and hanging chairs that resembled different animals under threat in the wild.

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Architect Delfino Lozano has modernised a house in the Mexican city of Guadalajara by rearranging the living spaces so they look onto a pair of brick-paved courtyards.

Lozano worked closely with the property’s owners to reorganise the house, located in a central suburb of Guadalajara near the neo-gothic Templo Expiatorio cathedral, to create light spaces for their family.

The unassuming building is nestled within a densely packed residential neighbourhood on a plot that extends back from the street and is hemmed in by other buildings.

This typical urban setting necessitated an intelligent strategy to ensure interior spaces receive sufficient daylight.

“The basis of the project is marked by the combination of elements: a central and rear patio that mark the way to cross ventilation and naturally illuminated spaces,” Delfino explained.

The arrangement of the interior around this pair of patio spaces allows the surrounding rooms to incorporate windows that provide light and air.

Porthole-like circular roof lights and clerestory windows ensure the spaces that don’t look directly onto the outdoors also feel bright and airy.

The design seeks to preserve many of the building’s original features and to maintain consistency with the traditional architecture of the area.

The frontage is partially clad in bricks that extend around an arched doorway – a motif that is repeated throughout the interior spaces.

A whitewashed double-height corridor extends between a workshop on one side and a garage on the other and leads towards the first of the two patios.

A door set into a decorative glass screen opens into the courtyard, which is also accessible from a bedroom to one side with a decorative frieze above the door.

The smaller of the two outdoor spaces is flanked on one side by a rough, plastered boundary wall from which the house’s original fountain protrudes.

The patio extends beyond the bedroom and its en-suite bathroom towards the main communal areas at the rear of the house. These spaces incorporate details such as tiled floors and timber joinery that reference the region’s traditional buildings.

The kitchen is lined on one side with folding screens that open onto the second courtyard, which is partly sheltered beneath an overhanging section of the tiled roof.

The patio serves as an extension of the surrounding internal spaces and also contains a staircase that ascends to a studio on the upper storey.

Areas of flat roof outside the studio are configured as a set of stepped terraces that provide additional outdoor space overlooking the patios below.

Lozano’s previous projects include a house with a games room contained in an elevated brick box, and a property he refurbished using standard materials and clever space-saving solutions.

Photography is by César Béjar.

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This angular extension to a typical suburban house in the English town of Weybridge was designed by Soup Architects to make the most of the unusually shaped plot.

Soup Architects, which has offices in London and on the island of Guernsey, was asked to propose a strategy for modernising and extending the existing 1920s three-bedroom house.

The semi-detached property is located on a private suburban close containing other homes of a similar age and style, which feature brick facades and hung-tile roofs surrounded by mature trees and planting.

The house has a long north-facing garden that pivots as it extends away from the street, resulting in a secluded space enclosed by large oak and pine trees. Improving the relationship between the building and this underused outdoor space was a key aspect of the brief.

In addition to planning the rear extension as a container for new living spaces, the architects designed a new master bedroom suite on the first floor and a sunken study situated in a corner of the garden.

The new interventions are clad in light-grey brick and incorporate large openings that are carefully oriented to frame the best views of the garden from inside.

“Our approach has been to stretch a new ground-floor extension across the width of the site, maximising the space to the east as it opens up into the garden,” said the studio.

“A new lower garden studio has been set into the garden to create a stand-alone workspace, giving a different perspective and orientation to the main house.”

Inside the existing building, the architects rationalised the circulation areas to create a more fluid passage between the entrance and the new extension.

The palette of dark, natural materials in the old parts of the house was retained and provides a contrast with the light and bright spaces contained in the new addition.

The extension accommodates an open kitchen and dining space, with a lounge area and reading nook occupying a cranked wing that projects out towards the garden.

The rooms are lined with exposed brick that creates continuity with the exterior. Whitewashed walls, large openings and a wedge-shaped roof light enhance the bright feel of the spaces, as well as providing the desired views of the garden and sky.

The aluminium-framed windows also provide glimpses of a new studio at the end of the garden, which echoes the geometric aesthetic and materiality of the main extension.

The new bedroom, dressing area and bathroom on the first floor look out across the extension’s planted roof towards the garden.

Wild grass also covers the roof of the studio, helping to soften the visual mass of these structures and tying them in with the surrounding landscaping.

The project was included on the longlist for the RIBA House of the Year 2018, along with a house in east London featuring skylights and glazed openings that look onto a courtyard, and a south-London home with a decorative tiled frontage that references neighbouring properties.

Soup Architects has previously completed a pair of matching artist’s studios nestled in a leafy Suffolk garden and a riverside house in the same county featuring a crisp, white upper storey perched on a brick ground floor.

Photography is by Andy Matthews.

Project credits:

Architects: Soup Architects
Structural engineer: BTA Structural Design
Landscape design: Rosalind Millar Landscape Design
Building contractor: Verve Homes

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