Hasta La Ideas

This Berlin townhouse by architecture office XTH-Berlin features doors that open like drawbridges, sloping floors that function as slides and nets that cover holes in the floors (+ slideshow).

XTH-Berlin inserted staggered floors throughout the building’s 12-metre height to accommodate various living spaces, with bedrooms housed in slanted concrete volumes at the first and third levels featuring flaps that can be used to slide from one level to the next.

The house’s entrance contains wardrobes, a bathroom and a spare room that can be hidden by drawing a full-height curtain, while a gap in the ceiling provides a view of the zigzagging levels that ascend to the top of the house.

Two concrete-walled bedrooms situated above the ground floor feature sloping wooden flaps that can be raised to connect these rooms with a platform where the piano sits.

A gap in this platform level allows light and views between the storeys and is covered in netting to create a safe play area.

A staircase leads past the two bedrooms to a living room containing a bathroom that can be cordoned off using a curtain.

The third bedroom is connected to this living area by a gently sloping wooden bridge, while another flight of stairs leads to a reading platform.

A final set of stairs continues to the top floor kitchen and dining room, which opens onto a large terrace.

This open-plan level features a skylight that adds to the natural light entering the space through the full-height glazing.

A minimal palette of materials is used throughout the interior, including concrete, pinewood flooring, steel railings and laminated spruce used for dividing walls, stairs and doors.

The house is located beside a park marking the site of the former Berlin Wall. Entrances on either side of the property lead to a multipurpose space for storing bikes, clothes and shoes.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Townhouse B14

The house is all about space and light.

Developed by the section it has a continuous space stretching out over the total height (12 mts), length and width of the building: from entrance hall and playing area to a music level to a living room with an open bath to a reading area to the kitchen with terrace.

This open space is zoned by two concrete elements ‘hung’ between the firewalls. They contain the private (bed) rooms. Due to their slants views are possible through the entire house.

Only few materials determine the interior space: fair faced concrete for the solids, plaster for the firewalls, glued-laminated spruce for dividing walls, stairs and doors, and pinewood planks for the floors, besides steel for the railings, glass for the facades and fringes for filtering views and light. Interiors like the shelves and trunks are designed by us.

According to the site along the former wall – the no-man’s land between East and West – now the Berlin Wall Memorial, the house has a severe outside contrasting the coloured balcony houses opposite in the former West.

The house is built on a trapezoid lot of land of 118 m2 with a small garden in the southeast towards a residential path and the wide side of the house to the northwest facing the plain of the Berlin Wall Memorial which is mainly a park. It’s part of a settlement of 16 townhouses, the two neighbouring houses are by XTH-berlin as well.

The nearly all-over glazed facades are structured by steel girders, which span from one dividing wall to the other and take over the cross bracing. Two lines of fringy draperies in front of the ground and second floor provide screen and cover the window frames.

Technically we use a heat pump (pipes going 80 mts into the ground) with panel heating and rainwater tanks in the garden for use in the toilets.

You enter the house from both sides: From the north beneath the concrete solid in an area with wardrobe, bathroom and the building services room. From the south directly in the living space which opens to the very top of the building. This is the level to put the bikes, do handicrafts, play kicker, a spare room and a storage room can be separated by a curtain.

The stairway leading up crosses the first concrete element with two sleeping rooms inside. Few steps up you reach the music area, a gallery with a horizontal net as a fall protection.

The two sleeping rooms can be opened to this area by the use of 2,5m x 1,5m big elevating flaps (which besides to slide and play are used to ventilate the sleeping rooms to the quiet side of the house). Further up you are on top of the first concrete element: Here you find the classic living space with sofa and oven, but also a bathroom included, to partition by curtain.

Via a bridge you enter the second concrete element, containing another sleeping room. The sloped wall is becoming a huge pillow.

Continuing your way up you come to an intermediate level, which is mostly used as a reading area, looking back down you view the small garden on the back side of the house and the memorial park in front.

Another stairway and you reach the highest level on top of the second concrete element: kitchen and dining area, opening to a terrace. A huge roof light (through which the stack-effect ventilates the to a maximum glazed house) lets the midday sun shine deep down on the lower levels.

Client: private
Completion: 2012
Area: approx. 230m2

The post Slides, nets and drawbridges feature
in Townhouse B14 by XTH-Berlin appeared first on Dezeen.

A playground slide is tucked into the rooftop folds of this children’s centre in a coastal South Korean village by Seoul studio JYA-RCHITECTS (+ slideshow).

The Gangjin Children’s Centre in Maryang was designed as a replacement for another centre that was destroyed during a hurricane in 2012. With the help of national television and radio station SBS and charity organisation Childfund Korea, the town was able to raise enough money to construct a new building in under a year.

JYA-RCHITECTS used sketches made by local children – most of which showed house-shaped buildings – to form the basis for the design. In response, the architects designed the two-storey centre with a zigzagging sequence of gabled roof profiles, then added a rooftop terrace and slide.

“We wanted to find unexpected interesting spaces and scenes being created in the process of design development,” explained architect Youmin Won.

On the ground floor are a series of multi-purpose activity spaces, which can be partitioned with white curtains. One room features wooden bleacher seating that helps to create a makeshift performance area, as well as a row of glazed doors that open out to a playground.

A staircase climbs up beside the bleachers towards a study room on the first floor, while another set of stairs on the opposite side of the building leads up to a second study area beside the roof terrace.

As the building looks out towards the harbour, the architect added a few references to the sea in the design. An assortment of blue cladding panels cover the facade, plus fish-shaped objects hang from the exposed wooden ceiling rafters.

A slide also features in another children’s centre to complete in the last year: the Centro Infantil del Mercado in Spain. Other buildings containing slides include a house in Indonesia, an office in Japan and an airport in the Netherlands. See more slides on Dezeen.

Photography is by Hwang Hyochel, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Here’s a project description from JYA-RCHITECTS:

Gangjin (Sannaedeul) Children Centre

Sannaedeul Children’s Centre was the most precious place for children from low-income families in Maryang, a small seaside village located at the far southeast end of the Korean peninsula. It was the only playground, learning arena and shelter for the children. The centre acted as another home and community in which they shared and grew hopeful dreams with one another.

However, the dreams seemed to have ended when a devastating hurricane hit the village last summer of 2012. The centre was totally destroyed and left with nothing. Only to find the rubble of the building, the children still came to the site everyday after school and played on the ruins of what once was another home of theirs.

Above: photograph is by the architects

Fortunately, the news was heard by Korea’s major broadcast “SBS” and “Childfund Korea” who agreed to sponsor and launched the project of rebuilding the centre. Many other public and private companies also joined the project, giving a momentum to build the children’s dream again.

Above: photograph is by the architects

The clue for design was found among the pictures of a new centre drawn by the children themselves. The strategy had to be clear. It was to create various and plentiful spaces by repeating and transforming a simple “house-shaped” space suggested in the children’s drawings. Necessary programs were to be embedded into that volume. Then, they had to be connected with and divided by one another by the needs as well.

As a result, the centre could have a dynamic-shaped roof by the aforementioned repeated and transformed house shapes. The roof shape has created a plentiful inner space and diverse expressions of exterior at the same time. The overlapped roof has also brought up the image of the sea waves to the children of Maryang, the fishing village. To further stimulate children’s imagination, we also installed fish-shaped instruments and blue lightings under the ceiling, giving the image of swimming fish.

The center was aimed to have bright and warm interiors by getting enough natural lighting of the seaside through wide windows. The multi-purpose hall of a ground floor was extended to open outdoor space. And the study room on the second floor was connected to a terrace with a slide on which the children can play, looking over the most beautiful seaside view of the world. We hoped that there is no border between inside and outside space as well as playing and studying for children in the centre.

Above: site plan

Architects: JYA-RCHITECTS
Location: Gangjin, Jeonranamdo, South Korea
Year: Oct.2012 – Jan. 2013
Area: 223 m2
Structure: HM
Interior: SM interior
Exterior: team of Ra Kwonsu
Window: WIT
Lighting: SAMIL / LIMAS

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click for larger image

Above: roof plan – click for larger image

Above: long section – click for larger image

Above: cross section – click for larger image

Above: front elevation – click for larger image

Above: rear elevation – click for larger image

The post Gangjin Children’s Centre
by JYA-RCHITECTS appeared first on Dezeen.

Slideshow: Spanish architects Miquel Mariné Núñez and César Rueda Boné have transformed an abandoned market hall in Aragon into a children’s centre with a slide connecting its floors.

Rows of existing columns divide the hall as if it were a church and the architects have inserted a two-storey wooden structure around them that encloses classrooms and a kindergarten.

Lime green rubber coats the floor to create a durable surface for children’s games and activities.

This isn’t the first building with a slide we’ve featured – see the others here.

Photography is by José Hevia.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

Refurbishment of the old marketplace as a children´s center in Alcañiz (Spain)

The old marketplace of Alcañiz has not been home to a market for some years, but now it has once again become a part of the town square, an area for socialising, passing time, and education.

The enormous space inside the building has been reconnected to its environment via the introduction of a newly built element. Independent of the existing structure, it is an exercise of occupation strategic, respectful and reversible. Its two levels are enclosed within a homogenous and continuous skin.

The piece acts as the entrance and exit of the main hall, leading to spaces on different levels, facilitating movement between them, and creating secluded spaces in the lateral naves for new educational programmes. The design was guided by the premise of maintaining the old marketplace as a public space; an addition that sought to keep its original spatial qualities intact instead of diminishing them.

The proposal was realised with lightweight construction techniques: the structure is made of metal and laminated wood, the enclosure (both the substructure and the finish) is made of conifer wood and the dividing walls of drywall. The thickness and the finish of the exterior varies according to the space it surrounds: the texture of the exterior is created by the modulation of the different wooden sections, and their placement either parallel to the wall (in the areas with an opaque finish) or perpendicular to the openings (which are latticed.)

Architects: Miquel Mariné and César Rueda Boné
Collaborators: Eduard González Mataró and Cristina Moreta Burch, architects

Building engineer: César P. Rueda Insa
Builder: Multiasistencia Servial s.l.
Owner: Ayuntamiento de Alcañiz
Engineering: BOMA / Carlos Domingo Orona
Installations engineering: AIT