Hasta La Ideas

This house near Madrid was designed by local firm Bojaus Arquitectura as a simple white cuboid punctuated by openings that create windows, porches and patios (+ slideshow).

Located in the Las Rozas municipality, the home is flanked by a road and neighbouring properties, so the clients asked Bojaus Arquitectura to prioritise privacy whilst providing light-filled internal and external spaces.

“The proximity of the houses that surround the plot led [us] to develop a system of voids, deep windows and patios which would allow these large openings without neglecting the equally important need of privacy,” said the architects.

Local planning regulations determined the position of the house within its plot as well as its exterior dimensions, which the architects optimised by creating a regular geometric volume.

Windows contained in voids punched into the walls are positioned to restrict views from outside, and in some cases are set back from the facade to further enhance privacy.

The building’s smooth surface is also interrupted by apertures that create outdoor spaces around the perimeter, as well as a small shaded terrace on the top floor.

A large space carved out of the ground floor at the rear of the property acts as a sheltered porch that connects the living space with the garden.

Internally, a void at the centre of the house creates a double-height room with a skylight and window providing views of the sky.

“The main space in H House is an interior patio which, apart from connecting the diverse levels by the stair, organises all the different rooms,” said the architects, describing the space that allows views between the house’s main living areas.

A staircase in this central void disappears through a doorway and leads to the upper floor containing the bedrooms and a series of patios.

The main patio is connected to the master bedroom by sliding doors and features a frosted glass window on the opposite side that lets daylight reach the staircase while obstructing views of the interior.

Practical spaces including bathrooms, closets, storage and toilets are arranged along the building’s northern edge, creating a thick and highly insulated wall that also supports structural beams so the interior walls can be arranged as desired.

Photography is by Joaquín Mosquera.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Casa H

House H is located in a typical suburban area near Madrid, where the houses in small individual plots are often too close to each other. In this situation the challenge was to combine certain degree of privacy with the desire of opening big windows and merging interior and exterior in a continuous space flood by natural light.

The proximity of the houses that surround the plot lead to develop a system of voids, deep windows and patios which would allow these large openings without neglecting the equally important need of privacy.

The volume is the result of the strict application of local urban regulations: maximum occupation, perimeter definition, alignments, maximum height… Then, we subtract the voids, porches and patios, to this maximum volume in order to accomplish the FAR (floor area ratio). The result is a pure simple prism (20x9x9 meters) drilled by big hollow voids which are connected generating and organising the interior space.

The main space in H House is an interior patio which, apart from connecting the diverse levels by the stair, organises all the different rooms. The small pieces, bathrooms, closets, storage, toilet… are aligned in the north facade, building a thick wall with a high level of isolation. At the same time this layout reduces the length of the main beams simplifying the structure of the house and assisting the free organisation of the principal spaces. All of them are related to each other visually through patios and voids, as it can be observed in the longitudinal section.

The program planned by the client was the typical on a traditional house of this characteristics. Nevertheless the conception of the different spaces demanded by the client and the relationship between them aspire to a freer layout where a more open and ambiguous functional scheme could be developed.

The structural layout defines a cross banded scheme of fixed dimensions where the main spaces, living, kitchen, main bedroom, studio, secondary bedrooms group… are equivalent and interchangeable depending on the user’s needs.

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Casa H by Bojaus Arquitectura appeared first on Dezeen.

Iconic works from artists including Piet Mondrian, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Marcel Duchamp and more are reinterpreted as cross-sectional drawings of buildings in this series from Italian architect and illustrator Federico Babina (+ slideshow).

The collection of 27 images, entitled Archist, playfully interprets the styles and themes of some of the world’s greatest artists including Picasso, Salvador Dali and Joan Miro, and imagines them as architectural forms.

Babina explores the symbiotic relationship between architecture and art, and how they would interact with each other.

“Art and architecture are disciplines that speak and lightly touch each other,” explained Babina. “The definition and function of architecture is changing constantly with the development of contemporary art.”

The artist tried to imagine what a house designed by Dali or a museum designed by Miro might look like.

“A sculpture is like a micro-architecture, a facade can become like a painted canvas and a building can be shaped as in the hands of a skilled sculptor,” he said.

Among some of the most recognisable works is Roy Lichtenstein’s comic-book style and block colour schemes laid over a Modernist-style house on stilts.

Sliced images of Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych are spread across rooms decorated in bright colours with two Campbell’s tomato soup cans placed atop the rectangular building.

Damien Hirst’s 2005 piece Wrath of God featuring a shark set in formaldehyde and his colourful dot series Mickey are used to bring a modular building to life.

An eclectic and almost random arrangement of shapes make up the Picasso building, echoing the artist’s dabblings with Cubism.

Marcel Duchamp’s building, meanwhile, draws on the artist’s Roue de Bicyclette, reinterpreting it as a pulley system watched over by the Dadaist’s Fountain urinal.

Salvador Dali’s distorted and surrealist shapes are propped up by wooden stilts and feature windows resembling an eye and nostril in Babina’s interpretation.

Joan Miro’s Dancer is used to liven up a square building with the addition of circular and square windows and a deep blue finish.

“Painting, sculpture and architecture have always been complementary disciplines that influence each other and grow and develop among common paths,” Babina concluded.

The artist is planning on turning this and some of his other work into a book.

Previously, Babina created an illustrated series of film sets in self-contained cross sections called Archiset. He also designed an alphabet of illustrated letters that depict buildings by 26 famous architects.

Here’s some information from Federico Babina:

Can a work of art be a building ?

ARCHIST is a playful interpretation of the expressive language and aesthetic of some of the most popular artists. I enjoyed creating 27 “paintingsprojects” which represented 27 different artists.

There is a Symbiotic Relationship an implicit partnership between Architecture and Art, different art branches meet in many fields.

Art and architecture are disciplines that speak and lightly touch each other, the definition and function of the architecture are changing constantly with the development of contemporary art.

In this exercise of style I took pleasure imagining architecture steeped of art, designed and constructed through the interpretation of an artist’s language.

Art, architecture and sculpture are historically linked by an unbreakable thread, we find examples of paintings and sculptures having a direct influence on architectural design.

It is easy to find the art hidden behind an architectural shape or see reflected a geometry of a building painted on a canvas. It is impossible to conceive of the history of art in exclusion from that of architecture.

Painting sculpture and architecture have always been complementary disciplines that influence each other and feed to grow and develop along common paths.

A sculpture is like a micro-architecture, a facade can become like a painted canvas and a building can be shaped as in the hands of a skilled sculptor.

I like finding the hidden architecture in parallel universes, in this sense, the illustration helps me to explore alternative languages.

I tried to imagine how it would have been a house designed by Dalí or a museum designed by Miró.

These images represent an imaginary and imagined world of shapes that uses the brush to paint architecture.

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in Federico Babina’s Archist Series appeared first on Dezeen.

Photo essay: French photographer Romain Veillon explored an abandoned town that is slowly being consumed by the Namib desert to create these images of once-opulent buildings filled with sand dunes.

The discovery of diamonds at the turn of the twentieth century prompted the establishment of Kolmanskop as a settlement for German miners, but it was abandoned just 50 years later when the diamond fields became exhausted and the value of the stones decreased. Now little more than a tourist destination, the ghost town is gradually disappearing under sand, so Romain Veillon paid a visit to document its remains.

The series is entitled Les Sables du Temps, which translates as The Sands of Time. Veillon hopes it will serve as both a memory of the perishing town and a reminder of the “strength of nature”.

Once rich and opulent, Kolmanskop is now a ghost town invaded by sand and lost in the middle of the Namib desert. But its history stays as short as it is surprising; founded after the discovery of diamonds by German settlers in 1908, Kolmanskop went through a real “diamond rush” and very fastly became the nerve centre of the area, due to its rich deposit of diamond. The legend says that even by night, you only had to go down to find diamonds in the sand, thanks to the moonlight.

Kolmanskop faced a striking prosperity that attracted many adventurers and other prospectors from across Africa, prosperity symbolised by the fact that Kolmanskop inhabitants used to get their clean water from 1000 kilometres away in Cape Town, or that they imported their champagne from Reims!

Kolmanskop emerged from the soil very quickly, as the new immigrants settled in the city. From a German inspiration, you could soon find there a hospital, a butcher shop, a bakery, an ice factory, a bowling alley, a casino, a school, a power plant and even a swimming pool. The hospital there received the first X-ray machine of the entire African continent, although the machine was mostly used to verify if miners had swallowed diamonds. At its zenith, Kolmanskop welcomed more than 1200 people and 700 families.

Unfortunately the drop of the diamond price after the First World War and the discovery of a bigger deposit south buried the last hope of Kolmanskop. Little by little the inhabitants quit the town, leaving behind them their houses and their belongings. By 1954, the city was entirely abandoned. Since then, it has slowly but surely become more and more covered by sand. Nowadays, Kolmanskop is only visited by the few tourists that venture into the isolated area.

With this set of photographs, I wanted to pay a tribute to this particular place and its past. For that, I have decided to underline the strength of nature that always takes back what is her’s, but also the ephemeral aspect of human constructions – symbolised here by the progress of sand and dunes through what remains of the city.

These silted doors are for me the symbol of an inevitable passing of time, reminding us that soon Kolmanskop will be no more and that we should enjoy it while it lasts. The light of the spot is also essential to me because it brings an atmosphere almost timeless and a strange sensation that is almost unreal.

You can lost in those dunes looking for the ghost of an ancient time, or trying to figure out what incredible stories must have taken place there.

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in photography by Romain Veillon appeared first on Dezeen.

This barn-like building in Slovenia by Ljubljana office Arhitektura d.o.o. contains spaces used for dispensing honey, processing dried fruit and hosting family festivities (+ slideshow).

The gabled multipurpose building on the outskirts of the village of Šentrupert was designed by Ljubljana office Arhitektura d.o.o. for a Slovenian businessman and also houses facilities for storing crops and tools.

The barn’s minimal appearance is influenced by the functional integrity and imposing presence of the pitched-roof wooden hayracks that are typical of rural Slovenia.

“The dimensions, appearance, colour and logic of inner division of the building are based on the tradition of the hayrack,” the architects explained. “Even though the building is intended for agricultural activities of the homestead it is also an elegant ‘protocol’ and symbolic architectural creation.”

The building’s exterior is designed to blend in with other farm buildings in the area, while integrating new sustainable technologies.

“The dark facade looks similar to old wooden barns in the immediate surroundings and also allows a discreet inclusion of the photovoltaic roofing into the basic volume of the building,” said the architects.

Located on the crest of a hill, the building’s long elevation faces a lawn around which the owner’s main property, an apiary and a wooden tool shack are also arranged.

A basement partly buried in the hillside contains the main functional spaces for dispensing and storing honey, pressing and storing fruit and keeping tools. A heat pump and bathroom with an integrated sauna are also situated at one end of this floor.

Four load-bearing pillars at the corners of the building allow for the ground floor’s large span, which creates a space reminiscent of the open drying area of a hayrack.

The sparsely furnished room features floor-to-ceiling windows along three walls, which provide panoramic views and can be opened on one side to connect the interior with the lawn outside.

Meetings or family meals can be conducted around a long table in this room, which also accommodates a galley kitchen, a fireplace, an entrance hall and staircase to the basement and first floor.

Upstairs, another mostly empty space is used for tasks related to the farm in summer and as a billiard and fitness room in winter.

The internal profile of the gabled roof is left exposed in this attic area, which is clad in the same ash panels used throughout the rest of the interior.

Photography is by Miran Kambič.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

The Black House – a modern hayrack

The owner is a successful Slovenian businessman who spends some of his spare time in the countryside. The property is situated on the edge of a small village on top of a hill, and consists of farm land, forest, residential building, barn house, apiary and wooden pavilion used as a tool shack. The client decided to replace the broken-down barn house with a new, multi-functional building, a sort of “modern Slovenian hayrack”. The building is intended for dispensing honey, sorting, handling and drying fruit, storage of crops and tools, while the spacious ground floor is intended as a meeting place to host partners from abroad and celebrate family events.

Although the client’s idea of a modern hayrack which would function both as a barn house and prominent protocol house seemed controversial at first, however, the idea revealed a great archetypal and development potential, which is inherent in the architecture of a hayrack in Slovenian cultural awareness. Professor Marjan Mušič compared hayracks with Greek temples due to their architectural purity and antique origin, as well as monumentality, derived from pure form. In terms of size, position and importance, the hayrack was a central structure of a homestead and the source of livelihood in general. This is where their almost sacral character stems from.

The beauty of hayracks should not be sought in luxurious décor but rather in their proportions, harmony of strict lines, functional credibility and installation in space, giving their surroundings a monumental character. This concept originates in the Antiquity and still has the expressive power for the modern times and new tasks.

The building was placed at the end of a ‘pier’, which concludes the site of the small village and from it panoramic views of the picturesque surroundings open up. Together with the residential building and the wooden pavilion this plot of land forms a large inner grassy courtyard of the homestead. The building has a semi dug-in basement, a ground floor and the attic. The construction basis is similar to that of the double hayrack with stone corner pillars. The corners of the new building feature four strong corner pillar structures, with a 12 meter bridge construction placed in between, thus allowing large unified spaces on the ground floor and in the attic. The construction is reinforced concrete with steel roofing.

The basement, accessible via pathway directly from the farm land, is designed for dispensing and storing honey, pressing and storing fruit, storing tools and similar. The basement also features a heat pump for heating and cooling the building, as well as a basement bathroom with a sauna.

The ground floor of the building is almost empty, which is similar to a hayrack. There is also a handy open kitchen, a fireplace, the entrance hall and a staircase connecting all three floors. The ground floor is glazed with large sliding doors which can be open wide and connect the ground floor with the natural environment or the backyard.

The first floor is mostly empty. In the summer the large space is intended for various farm chores, whereas in the winter time it is used as a billiard room and fitness. The first floor also features a mini guest bedroom with bathroom and a storage room.

The dimensions, appearance, colour and logic of inner division of the building are based on the tradition of the hayrack. The dark façade looks similar to old wooden barnhouses in the immediate surroundings and also allows a discreet inclusion of the photovoltaic roofing into the basic volume of the building. Due to the photovoltaics on the roof, the snow guards are replaced by wide jutting roofs placed above the ground floor openings. The interior is covered with bright ash tree panels which gives the impression that the interior is hollowed from a single piece of wood. Furniture is simple and accents clean lines of the spaces.

Even though the building is intended for agricultural activities of the homestead it is also an elegant protocol and symbolic architectural creation. With it the owner wishes to express a respectful attitude towards Slovenian cultural heritage and Slovenian constructional and architectural tradition and to the way in which buildings are placed into the environment. The bold construction of large spans which strikes us with hayracks also gives this new building an air of nobility, in harmony with the picturesque landscape of the surrounding pastoral scenery.

Architectural design: Arhitektura d.o.o. (Peter Gabrijelčič, Boštjan Gabrijelčič)
Co-author: Aleš Gabrijelčič
Construction: 2012-2014
Client: private
Location: Šentrupert, Slovenia

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production of dried fruit and honey appeared first on Dezeen.

A slender steel awning shades artists from the sun on the rooftop of this creative arts space that French-Brazilian studio Triptyque created for drinks brand Red Bull in a São Paulo warehouse (+ slideshow).

Situated on Bandeira Square in the bustling downtown of Brazil’s biggest city, The Cultural Centre of the Red Bull Station is a five-storey space renovated by Triptyque for the creation of art, music and culture.

Formerly owned by the São Paulo Tramway, Light and Power Company, the 1920s building was once responsible for distributing electricity across the city’s tram network. Triptyque was tasked with restoring the listed facade while creating an interior that combined a music studio, ateliers for artists, an art gallery and a roof terrace.

The architects added a black steel staircase down one side of the building, linking its five levels and providing an easy flow of visitor circulation up, down, in and around the building.

Accompanying the stairs is a steel beam which supports the metal awning known as Leaf. This structure provides a covered terrace, which functions as an exhibition space showcasing the history of the city.

The concave design of this canopy also allows the collection of rainwater, which can be used to cool the building.

Visitors enter on the ground floor, where the main gallery is located. Here, a blend of concrete mixes with panels of distressed, stippled paintwork; the result of years of repainting by the previous tenants.

Next to the main gallery is a self-contained music studio. The heavyweight concrete module was inserted into the heart of the building as a free-standing structure, and will house Red Bull’s Bass Camp – an immersive programme for would-be music professionals. There’s also a small cafe selling drinks and food.

Above the ground floor is a mezzanine level containing offices that look down on to the lobby space below, while the basement has been adapted to create a secondary exhibition space and music rehearsal rooms.

“The building was completely renovated respecting the architectural heritage concepts,” explained the team. “A contemporary intervention was carried out in order to adapt the building to its new role as a cultural hub.”

The exposed concrete and old paintwork continues on the upper levels, where six workshops were created for artistic residencies. Around each of the individual workshops, another exhibition space called the Gallery of Transition will temporarily host projects.

“The essence of the historic building has been preserved, and the beauty of its elements has been strengthened,” said the designers.

This isn’t the first time Red Bull has worked with architects to create spaces for artists. In 2012, Spanish studio Langarita-Navarro Arquitectos filled a Madrid warehouse with makeshift huts and a wilderness of plants to provide a nomadic music academy for the drinks brand.

Triptyque is a French-Brazilian architecture office created in 2000 by Grégory Bousquet, Carolina Bueno, Guillaume Sibaud and Olivier Raffaelli. Past projects include the Leitão 653 creative studios, which feature a chequerboard facade made from glass blocks.

Photography is by Pedro Kok.

Here’s a project description from Triptyque:

The Cultural Centre of the Red Bull Station: an island of culture in downtown Sao Paulo

The city of São Paulo is one of the places in the world where urbanity is the most powerful and intense. An area where the beauty of the streets and buildings was forgotten for many years. Through the renovation of a 20 years building, formerly occupied by the electricity company Light , the new architectural project Triptyque, the Cultural Centre of the Red Bull Station, appears as an important player in the rehabilitation centre.

Based on the Bandeira square , the new cultural centre hangs together auditory and visual arts through the production and dissemination of new forms of artistic expression.

The building was completely renovated respecting the architectural heritage concepts. A contemporary intervention was carried out in order to adapt the building to its new role as a cultural hub. The essence of the historic building has been preserved, and the beauty of its elements has been strengthened.

An architectural element was created to accompany visitors throughout their visit, from the stairs to the five floors of the Red Bull Station and numerous spaces. On the roof of the station, flaps a fleet metal called “sheet” that covers the terrace.

On one side of the ground floor is located the main gallery, a space that houses exhibitions of all forms of visual arts , performances and concerts. On the other side, is located a volume of concrete, carefully polished and sculpted that receives a music studio.

The basement has been converted into an exhibition space and music rehearsal rooms. Upstairs, six workshops were created for artistic residencies that will change each quarter. Around individual workshops, the “Gallery of transition” temporarily host projects in their creative process.

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Red Bull arts centre by Triptyque appeared first on Dezeen.