Hasta La Ideas

American firm Prentiss Balance Wickline Architects has created a dwelling in the Pacific Northwest that consists of timber-clad volumes that step down a rocky hillside.

The Bailer Hill house is anchored to a boulder-strewn slope on San Juan Island, which is part of an archipelago just off the coast of Washington state. The clients – a retired couple – requested an unconventional home that was skillfully integrated into the site and was sensitive to environmental concerns.

“Siting the house was the first challenge,” said Seattle-based Prentiss Balance Wickline Architects in a project description. “Capturing the views while simultaneously integrating the building into the landscape required a creative solution and daring clients.”

The team conceived a home that consists of various sized boxes that step down the hillside and offer generous views of the surrounding terrain. The rectilinear forms shift as they descend toward the water, resulting in exposed rooftops that were turned into grassy terraces.

“Cascading organically down the hill, the house remains firmly rooted to the earth even as it rises high above the ground,” the team said. “It is a complex form with a simple goal: capturing the beauty of this spectacular site.”

Facades are clad in cypress that was charred using the ancient technique of shou sugi ban, and are punctuated with an array of small, horizontal windows that offer glimpses of the scenery. For the sides of the home that look toward the ocean, the team incorporated large glazed doors, which bring in ample daylight and provide a strong connection to the landscape.

The residence, which encompasses 3,228 square feet (300 square metres), has four distinct levels. The first floor contains an open-plan living room, dining area, and kitchen, along with a reading nook and office. The master suite occupies the lowest level, while a guest room and an art studio were placed in the upper two floors.

Earthy materials and a neutral colour palette were deployed throughout the dwelling. Various tones of wood were used for flooring, cabinetry and wall panelling. In the foyer, large grey rocks act as a sculptural element and bring a little of the outdoors in.

Accessible from Seattle by ferry, the San Juan Islands are beloved for their spectacular scenery and impressive wildlife, including orcas, porpoises and sea lions. Other dwellings in the archipelago include the Pierre by Olson Kundig Architects – a concrete and glass home that is nestled between huge boulders.

Photography is by Eirik Johnson.

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Ben Zank est un photographe américain vivant à New-York. A 18 ans, il trouve un appareil photo dans le grenier de sa grand-mère et décide de l’essayer. Tout au long de son apprentissage, il s’impose un rythme effréné, son but étant de publier une photo par jour. Ben Zank est désormais un photographe professionnel au style remarquable, dont le talent n’est pas à remettre en cause.

Sa série Unbalanced Weightlessness, réalisée pour ADER ERROR, une entreprise d’habillement coréenne, nous invite dans un monde fantastique qui semble sortir tout droit de son inconscient. Minimalistes et touchants, ses clichés semblent avoir été pris dans un univers parallèle. Cherchant sans cesse à faire grandir l’imagination de celui qui les regarde, c’est aussi pour le photographe le moyen d’expression qu’il préfère lorsque les mots sont trop faibles. Toutefois, nous ne connaissons pas encore l’adresse exacte pour se rendre dans ce fabuleux pays imaginaire.

French-Lebanese designer Carla Baz has unveiled a collection of marble furniture and lighting, including tables filled with pools of colourful resin.

Debuted at Beirut’s Joy Mardini Gallery during the city’s annual design week, the marble pieces include lights, tables and other items of furniture all made in Beirut.

Called Stratagems, the furniture collection is the result of Baz’s experiments in marble, and in particular, her efforts to showcase the material’s fragility and delicacy by using only thin slabs.

The series of low tables, made from various different colours of marble, feature thin tops with slightly dipped surfaces. By carving away 2 millimetres of the marble, Baz creates recesses which are then filled with colourful resin.

The resin creates a two-tone effect on the surface with the natural pattern of the stone showing through.

“Through our experiments we have sometimes chosen specific natural colours, sometimes decided to use a simple white marble as a canvas for a more audacious approach, tainting it with bolder colors with resin,” said Baz.

“Whether in its pure form or as a result of this series of tests, marble never ceases to offer different possibilities and outcomes, making it a very exciting journey.”

A series of table and floor lamps feature stems lined with semi-circular discs of marble to create flower-like formations, while the shelving units are made up of horizontal and vertical slabs of marble and frosted glass slotted together.

“By decontextualizing the material, we have managed to create a collection of pieces that are gracious while having character, bold while being valuable,” concluded Baz.

“The pieces are an invitation to revisit what we know about marble and to allow ourselves to be more experimental and open, all the while respecting the integrity of the subject.”

Baz is not the first designer to experiment with resin and stone. Italian designer Moreno Ratti has previously cast marble shapes within blocks of transparent resin to create an unusual series of vases, while more recently Italian design studio Alcarol teamed up with Tuscan stone company Vaselli to create a table and stools made from eroded Travertine encased in resin.

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This week, BIG launched a campaign to crowdfund for a huge mirrored sphere at Burning Man festival and Foster + Partners completed a new Apple Store in Macau.

BIG’s Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange began a campaign on crowdfunding website Indiegogo this week to raise $50,000 for a “giant reflective art piece” at Burning Man festival.

The Orb will be erected at the playa of the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert later this year – if the targeted amount of donations is achieved.

The Foster + Partners-designed Apple Centre Cotai was unveiled this week, which features tall shoots of bamboo and an innovative facade made from a composite of glass and stone, that allows light to pass through it.

Leading British architect David Chipperfield joined calls to rebuild the Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed Glasgow School of Art, which burnt down last month, citing the building as a “monument of exceptional importance”.

Engineering studio Close to Bone announced plans to rebuild and enlarge The Vlooyberg Tower in Belgium after it fell victim to an arson attack at the end of June. The practice originally completed the project in 2013 to act as a viewing platform.

German architect Büro Ole Scheeren revealed plans for twin skyscrapers in Vancouver made from irregularly stacked glass boxes that would act as vertical villages.

Renderings were also released of Thomas Heatherwick’s £700 million plans to overhaul west London’s Olympia events centre, which will see the 130-year old venue converted into office space and studios for creative businesses.

In other architecture news, photographs of MAD’s residential complex in California showed that the scheme had topped out. Gardenhouse is the first US project by the Chinese studio.

Iranian architect Alireza Taghaboni was the recipient of the The Royal Academy of Arts’ inaugural Dorfman Award, which aims to highlight talent that “represents the future of architecture”.

In design news, engineers from MIT created a series of soft, 3D-printed structures, that can be magnetically manipulated to transform their shape “almost instantaneously”.

144-year-old Danish lighting company Louis Poulsen was acquired by Investindustrial, an Italian investment firm that also owns Flos, B&B Italia and Oka, for an undisclosed amount from Polaris, subject to regulatory approval.

Popular projects on Dezeen this week included a portable kitchen set for millennials, Marc Goodwin’s photo series showing architecture studios in the Netherlands and Álvaro Siza Viera’s minimalist chapel in the south of Portugal.

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Open living spaces, adaptable furniture and an indoor garden helped Nitton Architects create a homely apartment inside a tightly-packed residential block in north-east Singapore.

The apartment – which is aptly titled House in a Flat – is situated in the town of Sengkang, set within an 800-unit residential development.

It belongs to Liting Lee, founder of local practice Nitton Architects, and her husband Chow Khoon Toong, who live in the apartment with their two children.

Interested in exploring the different ways in which people can live in densely-populated locations like Singapore, Lee and Toong overhauled the property to try and create “a mini house out of a humble flat unit”.

“We wanted a seamless flow of light and space emulating the experience of landed housing that goes beyond the typical confines of apartment living,” Lee told Dezeen.

The pair began by removing all of the apartment’s non-structural walls, forming an open-plan layout intended to counteract the “crowdedness of urban living”.

The apartment’s master bedroom is now only divided by a full height wardrobe, which separates the bed from a small vanity area.

Two beds in the guest room have also been tucked away to give the impression of more space. While one slides out from beneath a timber deck that runs along the apartment’s front elevation, another can be folded down from the wall.

Privacy is provided by panels of laminated plywood that can be slid across to conceal the sleeping quarters. A curtain fixed to a curved track can also be drawn to hide the master bedroom’s ensuite.

The apartment has been finished with white-painted surfaces, pale grey furnishings and a cement-like floor covering. Touches of warmth are provided by timber dining chairs and full-height gridded shelving units that have been integrated into the periphery walls.

“The simple colour palette blends in with the rather abstract, atmospheric qualities of the interiors, and accentuates a sense of calmness,” explained Lee.

A former corridor in the apartment has also been transformed into an indoor garden that features a greenery-filled windowsill planter, offering inhabitants another spot to relax.

Portuguese practice Fala Atelier took a similar approach to Nitton for the overhaul of a cramped flat in Lisbon, where they removed all interior walls and introduced a handful of mirrored and glass doors to create a seemingly more open family dwelling.

Photography is by Sweng Lee.

Project credits:

Architect firm: Nitton Architects
Design team: Lee Liting, Chow Khoon Toong

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