Hasta La Ideas

A black steel staircase links the six storeys of this townhouse in Tel Aviv by Israeli architect Pitsou Kedem (+ slideshow).

Pitsou Kedem designed the house for a family and added a private terrace and swimming pool on the rooftop.

“The owners wanted to create the experience of life in a private residence, but within the city,” said architect Pitsou Kedem. “The authentic urban skyline reveals Tel Aviv’s rooftops to those in the courtyard and thus realises the urban experience that the owners wanted to achieve.”

All but one of the house’s floors opens out onto a balcony or terrace.

A penthouse with sliding glass doors leads out to the roof deck and swimming pool, which are encased behind a clear glass balustrade.

The fourth floor contains a study, small living space and a spa. A combined kitchen and living room occupies the floor below and is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows.

The parents of the family have an entire floor to themselves, with an en-suite bathroom and extensive closet space, while two more bedrooms and bathrooms are located on the level below, and belong to the children.

A guest suite consisting of a bedroom, bathroom and living space can be found on the ground floor and opens out to a small enclosed terrace.

The black steel staircase ascends through the rear corner of the house, beside a grey silicate-block wall. Exposed timber floors and wooden panelling also feature throughout.

Tel Aviv Townhouse is the latest in a string of residential projects completed by Pitsou Kedem in the Israeli capital, following a renovated house with vaulted ceilings and stone walls and a house with double-height glass walls that slide back across its facade.

Photography is by Amit Geron.

Here’s a description from the architects:

Town House in Tel Aviv

A 270 square metre plot was used as the foundation for a Tel Aviv town house consisting of a basement and an additional 6 floors. The owners wanted to create the experience of life in a private residence but within the city.

The architect Pitsou Kedem designed an urban style courtyard on the roof and, as a result, reversed the usually, permanent, order of things. The authentic, urban skyline reveals to those in the courtyard, Tel Aviv’s rooftops and thus realises the urban experience that the owners wanted to achieve.

The architectural design was based on a cross section of the structure whilst creating a physical and visual relationship between all the floors. Each floor encompasses an area of some 100 square meters with every floor being used for a different purpose. This enables the house’s residents to create common meeting spaces alongside separated spaces that, together, maximise the usage off the space and maximise the privacy that day to day life in a home requires.

Thus, the design incorporates a separate floor for the parents living area which includes a large library, a floor devoted to children’s rooms, a common living floor and the upper floor for the pool. Wooden paneling is used around openings on the ground floor and is also used to disguise the entrance hall and a separate living unit.

The home’s internal stairwell is designed as a dramatic, vertical line. In contrast to the stairwell common in most apartment buildings which is usually designed to be hidden from view, in this design the stairwell is open and runs along a wall covered with grey silicate blocks.

Architects: Pitsou Kedem Architects
Design team: Pitsou Kedem, Hagar Tzvi, Hila Sela
Location: Tel Aviv
Size: 610 square metres
Plot size: 260 sqm
Total floor area: 450 sqm
Design & build : 2009-2012
Program: Single family house

The post Tel Aviv Townhouse
by Pitsou Kedem appeared first on Dezeen.

Double-height glass doors slide back to open up an entire facade of this house in Israel by architect Pitsou Kedem (+ slideshow).

Israel-based Pitsou Kedem placed the open-plan lounge, dining areas and kitchen between two outdoor spaces so they would receive light from both east and west.

“This provides a feeling that the space is constantly enveloped by natural light and the greenery of the trees in the courtyard,” said the architect.

The six-metre-high living area is fronted with giant sheets of glass, which slide open on an electric motor to connect the inside to an expansive terrace.

From the end of the back garden, a long thin infinity pool looks like it extends into the house.

A courtyard at the front of the property is sunk to the basement level, with terraced planters stepping down to the excavated area from the boundary wall.

Floating steps lead up from the front gate to a bridge, which connects to the entrance in the three-storey volume parallel to the street.

The home comprises two perpendicular intersecting volumes and the smaller cuboid housing the bedrooms protrudes into the kitchen space, next to the swivelling front door.

Staircases on the other side go down to the children’s living room and up to a mezzanine balcony.

Apart from heavy concrete and white rendered end walls, all rooms are glazed from floor to ceiling but can be veiled with white curtains. Shutters roll down in front of the huge glass wall for privacy and security.

Pitsou Kedem’s other projects include a family house with timber screens that fold back in all different directions and a furniture showroom inside an industrial warehouse.

See more residential architecture »
See more architecture by Pitsou Kedem »
See more architecture and design in Israel »

Photography is by Amit Geron.

Read on for more information from the architects:

Between two courtyards

A private residence, built between two, central courtyards.

A frontal courtyard excavated to a depth of three meters and the second courtyard at the level of the building’s ground floor.

This topographical interface creates a unique cross section to the building’s mass with each part of the building, even the section constructed as a basement, being open to its own courtyard.

The central space of the kitchen, the dining room and the living room is open in two directions – to the west and to the east. This provides a feeling that the space is constantly enveloped by natural light and the greenery of the trees in the courtyard.

The structure’s central space, set in the centre of the plot, is accessed via a long bridge that crosses the sunken courtyard and leads to the front door.

From the bridge, we can see the children’s living rooms which open into the basement.

The house’s central space rises to a height of six meters and is 17 metres long.

There are no pillars in the space and the entire front is transparent with glass windows that slide apart with the aid of an electric motor.

Thus, the entire interior of the home opens into the courtyard and the border between inside and outside is cancelled.

The swimming pool seems as if it extends into the structure and, when looking into the house from the courtyard, the house in reflected in the pool which strengthens our impression of the building’s mass.

The master bedroom is set on the second floor and opens onto the double space and the courtyard allowing for a view of the entire plot.

The structures two supporting side walls have been emphasised, one was poured from exposed, architectural concrete and on the other a large library reaches to its full height.

Architecture: Pitsou Kedem Architects
Design team: Pitsou Kedem, Nurit Ben Yosef

The post House Between Two Yards
by Pitsou Kedem appeared first on Dezeen.

Windows are hidden behind timber screens that fold back in all different directions at this family house in Israel by architect Pitsou Kedem (+ slideshow).

The louvred panels fold around two of the house’s elevations and sit flush with the white-rendered walls to create a completely flat facade. They screen every window to moderate light and privacy levels inside the house.

Each screen is mounted to either a hinge or a pivot on the side or on the top, forming a mixture of doors and canopies. They can be opened in any combination to open or close different rooms out to the garden.

“We can achieve a composition that is balanced, dynamic, haphazard, closed or open within the same framework,” explain the design team.

Pitsou Kedem designed the two-storey house for a family living in Kfar Shmaryahu, Israel.

Behind the timber screens, the house contains an open-plan living room, dining room and kitchen that wrap around a staircase at the rear. Four bedrooms occupy the floor above.

The rear elevation is fully glazed and recessed, creating a sheltered first-floor balcony and a ground-floor terrace below.

Pitsou Kedem’s studio is based in Tel Aviv. Past projects include a furniture showroom for B&B Italia and a refurbished apartment with a vaulted stone ceiling. See more architecture by Pitsou Kedem.

See more architecture and interiors in Israel, including a house with two matching concrete blocks.

Photography is by Amit Geron.

Here’s a project description from Pitsou Kedem:

The arrangement of objects in a given space or a defined format in order to give meaning to the placement and arrangement of the items, the result of the relationship between the object and the framework of the artistic creation.

A private, family residence in an urban environment. From without, the building does not reveal that it is a home. It resembles a mold or an artist’s canvas or an almost two dimensional frame within whose area various openings have been placed and which are enveloped with a dynamic system of wooden, linear strips.

The planar distribution of the “picture” or, in this case the front façade, creates a non-symmetrical composition which pulls towards the flanking faces in an attempt to suggest that this is, in fact, a three dimensional mass. The arrangement of the objects (the openings) is always fixed and allows for one central and permanent composition.

The ability to reverse the balanced composition into a dynamic one is made possible thanks to the design of a system of smart blinds that allows the blinds to be lifted upwards whilst they are folded into what resembles a roof. All the rails and fixtures are hidden and so, when the façade is closed the dynamic and changing possibilities hidden in the residence’s façade are not apparent.

All the openings open separately and so allow for different compositions. At any given moment and for whatever reason (privacy, protection from the sun) the relationship between the object and the plane can be changed. Thus we can achieve a composition that is balanced, dynamic, haphazard, closed or open within the same framework.

Movement through the house is accompanied (thanks to the flexible blind system) by different views of the outside, some exposed and bare, others undisguised and others framing a section of landscape especially designed for it. This selfsame changeability and flexibility also allows control of the amount of sunlight and natural light entering through the openings and into the homes spaces. These spaces are characterized by a restrained use of materials and form so that the light penetrating the space creates a sense of drama, movement and dynamism which seems to breathe life into the souls of the silent walls.

Thus, in effect, the system of relationships between the street and the structure composed of changing, but two dimensional compositions on a framed and flat plane develops, for the user of the house’s spaces, an open area that incorporates abstract or tangible images with volume.

The relationship between these same volumes (the walls, the stairs, the various partitions and the different elements in the house) and the space, create, through the structures changing façade and the dynamism of the blinds, changing compositions, sometimes controlled and sometimes random with a new and different experience being created each time for the user and those living in the home.

Above: site plan – click for larger image

Design: Pitsou Kedem
Design team architects: Pitsou Kedem, Irene Goldberg, Raz Melmaed
Project: Private home
Plot size: 1500 square meters. Built-up area: 600 square meters

 Above: ground floor plan

Above: first floor plan

Above: section

The post Kfar Shmaryahu House
by Pitsou Kedem appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen in Israel: following our recent visit to Tel Aviv, here’s an entirely white house in nearby Ramat Gan by local architects Pitsou Kedem.

Glass walls are concealed behind the white curtain exterior of the three-storey residence, but can be glimpsed through horizontally slashed openings.

The entrance to the house is located on the first floor, where residents cross a bridge over the garden to enter an open-plan living and dining room that occupies the whole floor.

The building is set into the sloping ground, so while the garden is at the lowest level, an outdoor swimming pool is situated just outside glass doors at the rear of the first floor.

You can see more stories about Israeli architecture and interiors here, or if you’re interested in furniture and product design from Israel you can check out our special feature here.

Photography is by Amit Geron.

Here’s some more text from Pitsou Kedem:

Box? Object? House!

A private family residence situated in an urban environment. In essence, the house is a closed, white box, devoid of any decorative or ornamental elements. Within the “box”, long, horizontal lines have been opened which connected the house to its surroundings and which created, within the structure, a feeling as if an entire life had been frozen in time.

The openings make it possible to look out into the surrounding environment, or look into the house. They allow natural light to penetrate the structure or artificial lighting to seep out, into the surroundings, during the hours of darkness.

In fact, the house constitutes a pure and immaculate bubble which invites those using the spaces into a world of design values that are radically different from those of the surrounding, chaotic, urban world.

The grooved and perforated envelope constitutes a type of polished and minimalistic object which brings out the monastic and minimized language that the designer chose to use. The façade facing the street is remarkable in its restraint and the desire to create an exact and restrained show.
In the direction of the surrounding neighborhood, the other facades are built from large white walls with the random lines opened up in the walls through which the sunlight penetrates the walls, creating drama, motion and dynamism in a space that is otherwise so very meditative.

The polished form, the perfection shown in every detail and the fusion of the different materials, the monastic language, meticulously styled with great care, provides a feeling that we looking at a flat, almost two dimensional and picturesque bedding.

The various levels and the flow of the various shades of white, along with the geometric performance of the light against the horizontal and vertical surfaces, provide the restrained picture a sense of space and depth.

Bands of light and shade create in this oh so quiet space, a harmonious song and lyric that seems to play between the walls of the structure and which breathes life into the spirit of the silent walls.

The pattern of stripes and the seemingly random cadence chosen – almost seem to represent the rhythm of the light’s movement. The designer used the same pattern that is sometimes seem in two dimensional angles, almost like a graphical logo, both in the details and other places in the home’s spaces such as the fence at the entrance and the various items of woodwork.