Belgian studio AWG Architecten added pivoting golden cabinets and a golden platform to adapt an old church into a cultural centre in the Dutch village of Leegkerk (+slideshow).
Leegkerk Church dates back to the thirteenth century, but the local community felt that in the present day it would better serve the village as an centre for education, exhibitions and conferences.
AWG Architecten chose to leave the existing interior mostly unchanged, but added a series of interventions to allow flexible use of the church’s two large rooms.
The first addition is a freestanding golden cube, a two-storey metal-clad structure in the centre of the church’s nave that can function as a pulpit, a stage or a viewing platform. Toilets and a kitchen are relocated inside it, while a staircase ascends through its middle to reach the upper level.
Architects Jan Verrelst and Maarten Verdonschot told Dezeen: “The golden colour of the material, a copper-aluminium alloy, grew into the project as a result of the search for a material versatile enough to refer to ecclesiastical architecture.”
The architects also installed glass doors on either side of the cube to enclose a new meeting area tucked behind.
The pivoting golden cabinets were added between the nave and altar, where they double-up as room dividers.
Here’s some more information from AWG Architecten:
Leegkerk Church, The Netherlands: Interior Renovation Completed
Renovation work on the interior of Leegkerk church has been completed. awg architecten has designed a new education and exhibition space, a conference room and polyvalent areas in, on and around a freestanding golden cube inside the monumental church.
The historic Leegkerk church, a national monument, dates from the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was originally conceived as a place for contemplation, assembly and refuge on high ground. Leegkerk church is inextricably linked to the locale and to the people of the province of Groningen.
The foundations “Stichting Oude Groninger Kerken” and “Bijzondere Locaties Groningen” realised that Leegkerk church merited a new function as a centre for appreciation of the environment and their (cultural) history. The foundations saw that the church needed to be integrated into their (super)regional recreational/educational networks. Furthermore it was essential that the church retain its original, “traditional” multifunctional spaces for social, cultural and spiritual activities. The range of facilities and their quality – both technical and ’emotive’ – necessitated preeminent treatment. The architecture firm awg architecten, from Antwerp, designed a new interior to achieve these ends and to add a new layer to the church’s long and significant history.
The aim of the plan was to come up with a design for multiple functionality. Certain (prosaic) additions that are necessary for the church’s infrastructure are now housed in a free-standing volume that was constructed to be as compact as possible: a golden cube, a treasure chest as it were, a shrine.
New (revolving) golden cabinets between the nave and the choir function as rotating room dividers. Ample space for modern pursuits is reconfirmed thanks to these additions. Setting the cube at the centre of the church, detached from any walls, defines functional zones and maximises spatial experience. Placing the education and exhibition space on top of this volume, accessible by an almost monumental staircase, accentuates its broad range of possible functions. From this “balcony/stage” it is possible not only to oversee the church interior but also to overlook the landscape of Groningen from an entirely new perspective.
This family of concrete artist and designers’ studios by Chinese office AZL Architects is located amongst the marshes of the Xixi National Wetland Park in Hangzhou, China (+ slideshow).
Conceived by Zhang Lei of AZL architects as a small village community, the Xixi Artist Clubhouse is a cluster of five similar buildings with translucent walls and branch-like arms that stretch out towards one another.
Each building is designed to house artists- and designers-in-residence and contains a mixture of studios and living quarters within a Y-shaped central plan and two Y-shaped arms.
The two-storey central structures are constructed from concrete and feature glazed end walls. Each one contains double-height studio spaces and staircases that lead up to indoor balconies.
The single-storey arms have a steel-framed structure and are clad with translucent polycarbonate panels to bring light into kitchens, bedrooms and smaller studios.
A pathway winds through the site to connect the buildings and a series of small lampposts help residents find their way around after dark.
Here’s a little more information from AZL Architects:
Xixi Artist Clubhouse / AZL architects
Located in Xixi wetlands in west of central Hangzhou, the Xixi Artist Clubhouse is organized as a village structure with five building units, 800 m2 each as studio for artists & designers in Hangzhou. Each cluster relies on three Y-shaped volumes, one in six by six and two in three by three meters square frameless openings, creating panoramas view of surrounding wetland landscape in different directions. Contrast to cubic outside geometric volume of building, twisting fiberglass installation redefines internal spaces. Walls, floors, and ceilings are integrated in continues surface, refers to different program.
Site plan
The six meter tall structure is in concrete, while two smaller sections in steel structure introduce translucent white PC panels as cladding to diffuse direct sunlight. During dark night, one could see a group of beautiful lanterns floating on the water of wild wetland horizon.
Dutch firm OMA’s proposal to place a hotel on top of the Miami Beach Convention Center is going head-to-head with Danish firm BIG’s plan for the site (+ slideshow + movie).
Both Rem Koolhaas’ firm and rivals BIG are presenting their proposals to the Miami Beach City Commission today.
“The convention centre site is a total aberration in the urban fabric of the city,” says Dan Tishman, chairman of Tishman, in the movie (above). “It just doesn’t live up to the standards of Miami.”
The team’s vision includes building an 800-room hotel on top of the existing convention centre, which is the location for the annual Art Basel – Miami Beach and Design Miami trade fairs.
The convention centre would also be expanded and reorganised, rotating it 90 degrees and placing its main entrance to the south, where it would face a row of new and old buildings, including the renovated Jackie Gleason Theater.
To the north would be a network of shaded green spaces and a large grassy hill covering a loading area for trucks and a parking garage.
Here’s some more information from South Beach ACE:
Sitting on 52 acres within the vibrant and unique community that is Miami Beach, an outdated convention centre acts as an urban blockade – inactive when conventions are not in town, disruptive to adjoining neighborhoods and inhibiting connections to Lincoln Road and surrounding communities. Our masterplan resolves each of these issues through a series of ingenious yet simple moves:
» We conceptually rotate the convention center, reorienting the site to allow for east-west neighbourhood connectivity and a southerly orientation for both convention centre and hotel guests
» We concentrate the density at the centre of the site and make the revamped convention centre and its meeting and ballroom space contiguous with the hotel – a feature that meeting planners love
» We reimagine the area’s existing assets: the Jackie Gleason Theater, the Carl Fisher Clubhouse, City Hall, the 17th Street Garage and 17th Street itself are all maintained and transformed to better engage their surroundings while keeping the character of Miami Beach
» We fill the rest of the site with public amenities and programmed uses appropriate to activate the space 7 days a week, 365 days a year
In short, our plan upgrades the convention centre into a best-in-class facility and weaves the entire convention centre site into the fabric of Miami Beach. It will feel both new and like it was always there.
A large public square is at the heart of Danish firm BIG’s proposed overhaul of Miami Beach Convention Center, home to the annual Art Basel/Miami and Design Miami trade fairs (+ slideshow + movie).
Bjarke Ingels’ firm will present its proposal to the Miami Beach City Commission today, where it will go head-to-head with a rival design by Dutch firm OMA.
Miami Beach Convention Center is currently “a dead black hole of asphalt in the heart of one the most beautiful and lively cities in America,” the team explain. “Our mission is to bring Miami Beach back to the Convention Center.”
The proposal is centred around the creation of a public square, with paths, plazas, gardens and parks connecting the convention centre with the surrounding buildings.
The convention centre itself would be given a green roof, which would function as an event space and a location for annually commissioned artwork.
The Jackie Gleason Theater would be renovated and its street level lobbies, restaurants and cafe made publicly accessible, while a new museum for Latin American culture would be built alongside it. The proposal also includes a hotel and several blocks of apartments.
BIG together with West 8, Fentress, JPA and developers Portman CMC proposes Miami Beach Square as the centerpiece of their 52 acre Convention Center.
Miami Beach is a unique city in so many ways. It is one of the youngest cities in America – and perhaps right now one of the most vibrant and dynamic. Its streetscape is characterised by a lively walkable urban fabric with a friendly human scaled environment under the cool shade of tropical trees and art deco canopies – except at the convention center. It is a dead black hole of asphalt in the heart of one the most beautiful and lively cities in America.
Our mission is to bring Miami Beach back to the Convention Center – and to imagine an architecture and an urban space unique to the climate and culture of Miami Beach.
We propose to roll out an urban fabric of paths and plazas, parks and gardens that forms an archipelago of urban oases throughout the site. At the heart of it we introduce a central square to become the pivoting point of the entire neighbourhood, becoming the front door to the convention centre and the convention hotel, a front lawn to the revitalised Jackie Gleason Theater, a town square for the city hall, an outdoor arena for the Latin American Cultural Museum, and the red carpet for the big botanical ball room.
“We have devised a strategy that combines urban planning and landscape design to create a neighborhood characterised by human scale, pedestrian connections, shaded spaces with public oriented programmes lining the streets and squares. A neighbourhood that, depending on the season, the weekday, or even the time of day can be perceived as a lively downtown neighbourhood or an inviting public park.” Bjarke Ingels, creative director, BIG
The square creates a series of intuitive connections across the site – a diagonal that connects the Soundscape to the Botanical Gardens and Holocaust Memorial. A north-south connection joins the Collins Canal to Lincoln Road and naturally channels the flow of convention visitors to the liveliness of Lincoln Road. A green network of public spaces that stitches together all of the adjacent neighbourhoods – formerly separated by the convention centre – into a complete and coherent community for both visitors and residents. All public programmes old and new come together on the square. All great cities have a great square – this will be Miami Beach Square.
“Rather than scattering all the programme across the 52 acre site we have decided to concentrate it around the center piece of our public realm – Miami Beach Square bringing focus to the renovated Jackie Gleason Theater, the entrance of the convention center and for the first time ever creating a worthy civic presence to Miami Beach City Hall.” Jamie Maslyn Larsen, West 8, Creator of Soundscape Park
Diagram of green roof and surrounding parks and paths
By popular demand we have found a way to preserve and enhance the architecture and programming of the Jackie Gleason Theater. By making it all public at the street level – opening up lobbies, restaurants and cafes on all sides – we make the Gleason a lively centerpiece in this new neighborhood. Towards the Square we propose to extend the fly tower with a performing arts centre with various spaces for rehearsal and offering a visual connection to the public. Adjacent to the Jackie Gleason Theater sits the new Latin American Cultural Museum consisting of a base of public programmes opening up on the square. The building form creates a covered shaded event space on the square blurring the transition between inside and outside.
Today the Miami Beach City Hall is almost like a leftover wedged between random neighbours surrounded by traffic. Our proposal places it right in the middle of the town square with ample space for public expression and at the heart of communal life. The Miami Beach City Hall and Botanical Ballroom bookend the Square making it a natural extension of the civic activities of city hall. To the north the botanical ballroom opens up allowing for beautiful views of the botanical gardens and the memorial. The Ballroom has an entrance to the south and to the north allowing for seamless connectivity to the convention centre – under the shade and shelter of the canopies.
Rather than being the hermetic monoprogrammatic box that the Miami Beach Convention Center is today – a single programme at the size of an urban block – we propose to consider the Convention Center an actual urban block complete with different programmes, grown together to form a continuous architecture. A gradual transition from public to private, cultural to civic, conference to residential turns a stroll around the block into an experience of continuous variation. Along the entire west adjacent to the various gardens and the new square – the main entrances to the Convention Center and Conference Center occupy the ground. The hotel lobby spans the entire south elevation in continuation of the Convention Center lobby. The hotel façade as pulled back, forming a cascade of terraces for the south facing hotel rooms – decreasing the perceived height seen from the Gleason.
The roof of the Convention Center is framed by a green roof drawing the outline of the urban block – framing the hotel gardens and the roof parking interspersed with shade giving landscapes. As a reoccurring annual event we propose to sponsor an art foundation that will deliver a roof art piece to cover the remaining roof surface turning it into a giant ever-changing canvas seen from the air as well as the roof terrace of the hotel. An ever changing giant canvas that will annually challenge contemporary artists with an architectural scale canvas – seen from the roofs and penthouses of adjacent buildings, from aeroplanes and Google Earth.
“Realising that a challenge that seemed to be driven by two incompatible agendas was actually the opportunity to create a convention centre district that is not only for convention-goers but, more importantly, for residents.” Jack Portman, Portman Holdings and JPA
A narrow atrium brings daylight into windowless rooms on four storeys at this renovated house in Hanoi by Vietnamese office AHL Architects Associates.
The existing building was a typical Vietnamese “tube house”, with a long, thin plan and few windows. AHL Architects Associates was tasked with reorganising the plan to make better use of space and to increase natural light and ventilation.
The architects began by relocating the staircase from the centre of the house to along one wall, then added a large skylight overhead. They also removed sections of the floor, creating the four-storey atrium and a series of indoor balconies.
“The staircase and corridors were designed not as a simple and boring path but as a continuous and sequential space which becomes a living space,” explain the architects.
The wall running alongside the atrium is lined with white ceramic tiles, giving it a ridged texture, and all of the balustrades are glazed to let more light through.
Just in front of the staircase, the entrance to the house is set within a recessed driveway at the end of a ramped platform. Once inside, residents can walk through to a kitchen on the ground floor or head upstairs to a double-height living room on the floor above.
Bedrooms are located on the first, second and third floors, and the top storey also features a dedicated worship room and a roof terrace.
This house was designed for a young family with one child and grandmother, located in Van Phu, a new urban area in Hanoi, Vietnam. The existing design is boring (like thousands of other houses in Vietnam): lost of natural lighting and ventilation; simple space with core (staircase and toilet) in the middle and two bedrooms at two sides. Client (young family) needs something different from the existing. They need their own house, their style. This situation requires a smart solution for traffic, thereby creating interesting solutions of space, daylight and natural ventilation.
Based on their requirements, the program is quite simple: garage (for 2 cars), kitchen on the 1st floor, bedroom (for grand mother) and living room on the 2nd floor, master bedrooms on the 3rd floor, small guest room, sky terrace and worship on the 4th floor… but they need the architects focus on the creation of public spaces.
With a simple strategy “traffic creates space and function”, we started by changing the location of staircase. Unique and continuous spaces were proposed based on the new staircase. The staircase and corridors were designed not as a simple and boring path but as a continuous and sequential space which becomes a living space.
Along with identifying new locations for staircase, the voids are also determined for natural lighting and ventilation. An atrium in the middle of house was created to bring daylight to lobbies and all rooms without window to outside. In addition, that allows full connection between the four levels of the house vertically.
The restrained and limited material palette of white painted ceramic tiles, wood, and glass avoids unnecessary ornamentation in order movement through a variety of opening spaces.
Type of development: Renovation of typical tube-house Dimension: 4.5×20 Location: Van Phu New Urban Area, Hanoi, Vietnam Status: Finished Cost: 112,000 usd Date: 2012
Japanese studio nano Architects has inserted a sunken circular living room into a 1960s apartment in Fukuoka (+ slideshow).
The apartment hadn’t been renovated since its construction and contained three traditional Japanese rooms lined with tatami mats. The renovation by nano Architects retains just one of these spaces, while the remaining two are converted into a split-level room with the sunken circle at its centre.
“The design concept is for the coexistence of two styles of different eras,” said studio principal Yasuhiro Shinano. “I believe that the use of a Japanese-style room transplanted with a new design can be given a new value.”
The architect installed a wooden platform around the edge of the room to create the central hollow, which has a contrasting concrete floor. Acid yellow panels wind like ribbons around the floor and ceiling, while a string curtain forms a see-through partition in between.
Four spherical pendant lights are suspended within the room, connected to a grid of cables that snake across the ceiling.
Read on for a project description from Yasuhiro Shinano:
The Times Transplantation Building
Abstract
Sanno apartment was completed in 1967. Since 1967, this room has not been renovated. This room has been renovated only after 45 years.
This room, which was completed in 1967, is a Japanese style. Re-sectioning part of the Japanese-style room, I transplanted the new style in 2012. The design concept is for the coexistence of two styles of different eras. My intention is to make the birth of the room with a new value. I believe that the use of a Japanese-style room transplanted with a new design can be given a new value.
The Times Transplantation
Loss of value of the space left behind the times. Cutting off a part of it and removed, transplanted and compound a different times there. This seems to like a surgical operation, but it is also like a plastic operation. These are classified by 3 parts of lifeline that is, first, “a drainage pipe, a service pipe, and a gas pipe” as vein, and “electric wire” as nerve, at last, that is “oil supply machines” as internal organs. To displace the broken lifeline and transplant new items.
Space left behind the times in 1967. Cutting an incision in the part of the interior that make up the surface like the skin. The same way as the fresh air is brought through the open door, the world of 2012 is transplanted into the world of 1967. It seemed as if value was lost in 1967 by remix of design effect that different times stand in line, new values like a new story were produced. Paralleling of the world of 1967 and 2012, different times and design are born as combination of different times of the space.
The latest building to feature an indoor slide is this South Korean house by Seoul studio Moon Hoon, where a wooden slide is slotted into a combined staircase and bookshelf (+ slideshow).
Named Panorama House, the three-storey residence is home to a family of six in North Chungcheong Province. The clients had asked Moon Hoon to include various spaces where their four children could play, so the architects designed a house where different floors belong to different residents.
The ground floor is dedicated to the children and includes the wooden staircase and slide. Open treads create bleacher-style seating areas for a home cinema, but they also double-up as bookshelves for a small study area tucked underneath.
“The key was coming up with a multi-functional space,” say the architects. “The multi-use stair and slide space brings much active energy to the house. Not only children, but also grown-ups love the slide staircase.”
Two twin bedrooms are located behind the study, plus the youngest children can also use the large second-floor attic as a playroom.
Family rooms are all located on the middle floor and lead out to two separate terraces. Underfloor heating was added to each of the spaces to encourage residents to sit on the floor, rather than on furniture.
A bedroom suite is separated at one end of this floor and features an en suite bathroom and dressing room.
The facade of Panorama House is divided into a basalt-clad base and a white-rendered upper. To accentuate the subtle zigzag of the plan, the architects added angled sections to create the illusion of three cubes in perpective.
Photography is by Huh Juneul, apart from where otherwise indicated.
Here’s a project description from Moon Hoon:
Panorama House
The Client
They have four kids, and that is a big family by contempory standards. They are both teachers in their late thirties. The first and the most important thing they wanted in their new home was a place where their kids could play, read and study. They wanted lower floors for the kids and upper for themselves. They already tried it out with another architect, but it did not satisfy them, that’s when they said that they found about me, who appeared to be more playful and more creative.
Photograph by Huh Juneul
The Site
Irregular and sloped site boasted a great view. It is situated in a nice newly built surburb. The view reminded me of a scene from a movie, LA surburbs at night. Instantly, a name for the house came up – Panorama House – which they nodded with some ambience.
Photograph by Huh Juneul
The Design
The basic request of upper and lower spatial organization and the shape of the site prompted a long and thin house with a fluctuating facade, which would allow for a more differentiated view. The key was coming up with a multi-functional space which is a large staircase, bookshelves, casual reading space, home cinema, slide and many more.
The client was very pleased with the design, and the initial design was accepted and finalised almost instantly, only with minor adjustments. The kitchen and dining space is another important space where family gathers to bond. The TV was pushed away to a smaller living room. The attic has the best view is possible and it is used as a play room for younger kids.
The multi-use stair and slide space brings much active energy to the house. Not only children, but also grown-ups love the slide staircase. It is an action-filled, playful house for all ages.
The fluctuating facade is accentuated by mirrored bottom and top angles. It can bring about some illusion when looked at with some concentration. The various sized windows provide different outlooks. Korean houses are floor heated, which is quite unique and brings users to the floors more than to furniture such as sofa and chairs. So many windows are placed quite low, considering the long living habit. There is no high-legged dining table for the family, only a portable foldable short-legged table. The space kept empty until any specific function arises.
Photograph by Huh Juneul
Architect: Moon Hoon Design Team: Lee Ju Hee, Kim Dong Won, Park Sang Eun Client: Moon Sung Gwang Total Site Area: 570.50 sqm Total Floor Area: 209.14 sqm Construction: reinforced concrete and wood frame
This holiday home in upstate New York by US firm Gluck+ features an elevated living room that hovers nine metres above the ground (+ slideshow).
As the weekend retreat for Thomas Gluck – one of the firm’s principals – and his family, Tower House was designed as a four-storey tower with a “treetop aerie”, affording mountain views across the nearby Catskill Park.
The house is glazed on every side. In some places Gluck+ has fitted dark green panels behind to camouflage the walls with the surrounding woodland, while other areas remain transparent, revealing a bright yellow staircase that zigzags up behind the southern elevation.
Taut vertical cables form the balustrade for this staircase and are interspersed with small lights, intended to look like fireflies after dark.
One of the main aims of the design was to minimise the impact on the landscape. The architects achieved this by lifting the large living areas off the ground and stacking bedrooms and bathrooms on the three floors beneath, creating a base footprint of just 40 square metres.
This arrangement also allows all of the wet rooms to be arranged in an insulated central core. When the house isn’t is use, this core isolates the heating systems, helping to reduce energy consumption.
The three bedrooms are positioned on the north side of the house, where they can benefit from the most consistent daylight, and contain yellow furniture to match the colour of the staircase.
The living room above is divided up into four different zones by the arrangement of furniture and features a 12-metre-long window seat that spans the entire space. There’s also a secluded roof terrace on the next level up.
New York-based Gluck+ was known until recently as Peter Gluck and Partners. The firm is now run by Peter, his son Thomas, and three other principals.
Photography is by Paul Warchol, apart from where otherwise stated.
Photograph by Gluck+
Here’s a project description from the architects:
Tower House
This small vacation house is designed as a stairway to the treetops. Keeping the footprint to a minimum so as not to disturb the wooded site, each of the first three floors has only one small bedroom and bath, each a tiny private suite. The top floor, which contains the living spaces, spreads out from the tower like the surrounding forest canopy, providing views of the lake and mountains in the distance. An outdoor roof terrace deck above extends the living space above the treetops, offering a stunning lookout to the long view. The glass-enclosed stair also highlights the procession from forest floor to treetop aerie, while the dark green, back-painted glass exterior camouflages the house by reflecting the surrounding woods, de-materialising its form. At dusk, mini lights dotting the cable rail of the stair mimic local fireflies sparkling in the woods as day turns to dark.
As a vacation home, the Tower House is used during a few weekends in the winter and most weekends in the summer. The design imperative was to develop a sustainable, energy efficient solution with minimal operating costs and maintenance for a house occupied part-time. The stacked north-facing bedrooms take advantage of light and views with floor to ceiling glass. In order to optimise energy savings for heating and cooling in this part-time residence, a two part sustainable strategy was employed to reduce the heating footprint of the house in the winter and to avoid the need for air conditioning in the summer.
While the house is heated conventionally, by compressing and stacking all of the wet zones of the house into an insulated central core, much of the house can be “turned off” in the winter when not in use. When not in use, only 700 square feet of the 2,545 square foot house is heated. By closing the building down to only the insulated core, there is a 49% reduction in energy use. In the summertime, the house feels comfortable without air conditioning. Cool air is drawn in and through the house using the stack effect. South-facing glass throughout the stairwell creates a solar chimney and as the heated air rises, it is exhausted out the top, drawing in fresh air through the house from the cooler north side.
Architecture and Construction: GLUCK+ (Peter L. Gluck, Thomas Gluck, David Hecht, Marisa Kolodny, A.B. Moburg-Davis) Structural Engineer: Robert Silman Associates P.C. Mechanical Engineer: Rosini Engineering P.C. Façade: Bill Young Environmental Engineer: IBC Engineering Lighting: Lux Populi
Shelves are supported by dowels slotted into pegboard walls at a new store for skin and haircare brand Aesop in the Hamptons, New York (+ slideshow).
Designed and built by New York studio NADAAA, who previously completed another Aesop shop in San Francisco, Aesop East Hampton has pegboard walls around three sides of its interior and a free-standing basin at its centre.
Dowels of different sizes can be slotted into various places on the walls to change the arrangement of shelves for displaying the brand’s signature brown-glass bottles. Walls above and below are painted in a pale shade of blue.
The central sink – a key feature in Aesop’s stores – is made from a Vermont soapstone that is typical in north-American bathrooms, while the taps are fixed to copper pipes.
Aesop is pleased to announce the opening of a signature store in the Hamptons, and to take up residence in an area that has been home to many gifted creative spirits – Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, Frank O’Hara and Jean Stafford among them.
In recognition of the Hamptons’ cultural and maritime heritage, Aesop East Hampton presents a tableau of practical and programmatic objects within a simple installation. Digitally fabricated pegboard panels line the walls, with dowels of varying lengths inserted to support orderly product display. A basin crafted from Vermont soapstone – a material long used for wash sinks in northeast United States – occupies the central space, with taps employing the simple copper valves often seen in the neighbourhood’s carefully constructed gardens. A picture window opening onto the sidewalk allows for abundant natural light.
Walls of Corten steel and timber surround this house by McAllister Alcock Architects on a vineyard in Mornington Peninsula, Australia (+ slideshow).
Entitled Main Ridge Residence, the single-storey house features a central courtyard that is open to the north, as well as a protruding living room that projects eastwards to frame views towards the fields of a neighbouring strawberry farm.
“The site had no clear ‘hero’ views with which to orientate the building,” explains Victoria-based McAllister Alcock Architects. “However there were a series of lovely, albeit modest aspects… The architecture retains the memory of these existing landscape vistas and uses them as an ordering device.”
The house is divided into two main wings. The first stretches along the eastern edge of the site to accommodate a row of bedrooms and bathrooms, while the second wraps around the south-west corner and contains family rooms as well as a small guest suite.
These two sections are visually separated by materials, with the timber cladding lining the eastern side of the house and chunky Corten steel walls framing an entrance on the western facade.
Beyond the entranceway, an enclosed patio leads residents either into the house or through to the courtyard beyond, and is framed by walls of concrete.
Living and dining areas occupy a single space beneath a faceted plywood ceiling. A timber drum divides the space into two and contains a pantry and a spiral staircase, leading down to a wine cellar beneath the house.
Here’s a project description from McAllister Alcock Architects:
Main Ridge Residence, Mornington Peninsula, Australia
The Main Ridge house sits within an established working vineyard located on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. The brief was for a comfortable 4 bedroom family home with a visual connection to the vines and which provided an area suitable for entertaining the international guests who visit our clients’ winery.
We are ‘urban architects’, used to working with the constraints of existing built form and planning regulations and creating architecture in residual urban space. We consider our work to be contextual, an architectural response to the urban ‘found’ conditions. In this case the context for the house was abstract; the site had no clear ‘hero’ views with which to orientate the building. The best northern solar orientation faces away from the vines, while to the west an existing artificial cutting separated the house site from the vines and the view to the east was dominated by a large and visually ‘messy’ strawberry farm. However there were a series of lovely, albeit modest aspects: to the north a view beneath trees full of dappled light and a promise of what lies beyond; to the south a gentle rolling grassy slope terminating at the vines. The architecture retains the memory of these existing landscape vistas and uses them as an ordering device – externally with the form and placement of the new building and internally with the orientation of the inside spaces.
On approach the house is hidden by two 20 metre long angled weathered ‘Corten’ steel walls. On entering through a gap between the walls – reminiscent of the original cutting – the house and site reveal themselves. The residence is comprised of pavilions enclosing three sides of a sheltered, north facing courtyard. The courtyard design maximises northern light to the interior and creates zones within the home: one for more private family living and another that can also cater for entertaining guests. A sculptured limed plywood ceiling provides a horizontal ribbon linking the public and private areas of the main pavilion, and contributes visual ‘drama’ while still maintaining a comfortable residential scale. A pod-like timber ‘drum’ marks the pivot point between the public and private realms and hides a butler’s pantry, the staircase to the wine cellar, and sliding doors to zone the spaces.
At the start of the project our clients were not overly impressed with the attributes of their site and were not fond of the view to the strawberry farm. The design of the residence has changed our clients’ perception of their environs by carefully selecting and ‘framing’ vignettes so that the inhabitants are encouraged to pause, and appreciate the special characteristics of a landscape setting that has more ‘depth’ than just the strong graphic rows of grapevines.
Location: Main Ridge, Mornington Peninsula, Australia Architects: McAllister Alcock Architects Project Type: New House Project Team: Karen Alcock, Clare McAllister, Maria Danos, Brett Seakins, Jack Tu
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