Hasta La Ideas

A clay-based black paint forms a protective layer across the facade of this woodland cabin in Finland, designed by Playa Architects as the second home for a Finnish family living abroad (+ slideshow).

Finnish architect Tuukka Vuori of Playa Architects designed the house for friends who want to spend their holidays in their home country.

Named Villa Kettukallio, the 122-square-metre house is located on the edge of a lake in Hirvensalmi, on a spot where the family used to take forest walks. It will be visited throughout the year, so needed to be accommodating in all seasons.

“Winters can be very cold, sometimes minus 30, then in summer there’s daylight around the clock, so it had to work in both of these circumstances,” Vuori told Dezeen.

“The main brief was to take in these surroundings, so we added big glazed openings facing towards the lakeside,” he added.

Birch clads the exterior and has been coated with a black distemper paint that is typical of Scandinavian dwellings. This will help to protect the building from ageing.

Living and dining rooms take up around half of the house’s floorspace, encouraging the family to spend more time in communal areas rather than in the bedrooms.

A sauna sits on the north side of the site on the opposite side of a veranda, creating a protected seating area where residents can cool down. An entrance then leads directly back into the house via the shower room.

“Traditionally lakeside homes have separate saunas, but the family didn’t want it to be separate,” said Vuori. “This meant we could avoid building extra shower spaces, which also deals with some environmental concerns.”

A second terrace on the south side of the building gives the family a sunny space for dining outdoors.

Walls and ceilings inside the house are lined with birch and alder. The floors are pine and feature stripes created by the family’s own sawmill.

“With pine you usually get this really strong texture in the wood, these horizontal sections,” explained Vuori.

Heating is provided by a wood-burning stove that sits between the kitchen and the living room. Constructed from brick, this is coated with grey plaster to give it the appearance of polished concrete.

Photography is by Tuomas Uusheimo.

Here’s more information from Playa Architects:

Villa Kettukallio

The villa is the all-year-round base in Finland for a four-person family currently living abroad. The site between cliffs and a fairly steep lakeside beach was chosen during the family’s forest walks. The place overlooks a narrow strait and far out to an open expanse of the lake. In accordance with the site conditions, the building is relatively closed off towards the forest while opening up generously in the direction of the lake.

The house is split by an atrium yard and a covered terrace, on one side of which are small bedrooms and the other more generous living spaces. During the summer the floor layout allows for “complete circulation”. Instead of a separate shoreline sauna building, a sauna was built in connection with the house itself. A covered veranda for cooling off after the sauna separates the sauna from the rest of the building.

In painting the facade with black distemper paint, the building blends with the shadows of the pine forest when viewed from the direction of the lake.

In the interior, the surfaces are mostly untreated domestic wood: birch, pine and common alder. The wood floors are built from vertical-grain pine boards from the family-owned sawmill.

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provides a woodland holiday home appeared first on Dezeen.

This boxy wooden cabin with an assortment of circular and rectangular windows was built by Hungarian studio T2.a Architects in just two days in a forest outside Budapest (+ slideshow).

Bence Turanyi of T2.a Architects designed the Photographer’s House for his friend, photographer Zsolt Batar.

The architect used prefabricated and cross-laminated timber panels to construct the house, meaning it could be put together extremely quickly and easily.

Both the architect and the photographer brought different ideas to the project, but their overall aim was for “a building which looks good and unique, is of excellent quality, and can be built during very short time and for a reasonable price”.

“When two different ways of thinking meet, the result is something completely new,” said Turanyi. “Our conversations about art, architecture and design were brought to life in this house.”

Rectangular windows stretch around each corner of the building, while smaller square and circular windows are positioned along the sides.

There are two floors inside the cabin; an open-plan lounge and dining room make up most of the ground floor, while a pair of bedrooms and bathrooms can be found upstairs.

Wooden panels line walls, ceilings and floors throughout the house, and floor-to-ceiling windows offer views out into the surrounding forest.

Photography is by Zsolt Batar.

Here’s a project description:

The Photographer’s House

Architect Bence Turanyi and photographer Zsolt Batar decided to unify their artistic and professional visions, and the result of their work is an extraordinary house in a forest. The idea behind the building was to create harmony among man, nature and economic aspects. The sustainable wooden house breathes together with the surrounding trees, and its life is documented by the artist who lives in it. The house was one of the favourites of the international jury for Hungary’s Media Architecture Prize 2013.

If I would have to tell one story to define contemporary Hungarian architecture, among the finalists of 2013, it would definitely be the story of Bence Turanyi’s house – this is how Daniel Kovacs, member of the professional jury of the Hungarian Media Prize 2013 commented on The Photographer’s House.

The birth of this exceptional building is the result of the co-operation between an architect and a photographer, which is much more than a traditional client-architect relationship. Owner of the house, renown architectural photographer Zsolt Batar is an old friend of Bence Turanyi. The two brought ideas and ways of thinking from their own areas, and unified them in a common project.

“When two different ways of thinking meet, the result is something completely new. Our conversations about art, architecture and design were brought to life in this house.” – says Bence Turanyi about the crossover experience. For Zsolt Batar, the house is not only a home, but also a source of inspiration. The series about the house has become an important milestone in his artistic career: he records the relationship of the house and the forest day by day, in every season.

Architecture is in a new and challenging situation nowadays thanks to significant changes in the economical and social environment. We still need well-structured, quality houses, but often there is a choice among sustainability, technology and price. The creators wanted a building which looks good and unique, and is of excellent quality, while it can be built during very short time and for a reasonable price. A mere week passed between sending the digital data to the manufacturer and the completion of structural assembly on site, while the House was built in two days. The structural framework of the House is made of prefabricated, cross laminated and glued timber panels (CLT).

The Photographer’s House is a unique example of slow design: you can get your hands dirty while you collect wood from the forest to heat the fireplace, it sharpens all your senses thanks to the vivid presence of the forest, and it creates an emotional bond among man and nature. The House literally breathes together with forest, while in the inside there is the constant smell of wood. And this special smell is part of the living structure of the building. In wintertime, the fireplace heats the house, while during summer nights cool breezes from the woods are let through the open windows.

Architect: T2.a Architects
Location: Pilis forest, near Budapest, Hungary
Architect in charge: Turanyi Bence
Collaborator: Pinczes Eva
Area: 120 sqm
Year: 2012

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in two days by T2.a Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Austrian studio Bernardo Bader Architects sourced pine and spruce from the surrounding slopes to build this picturesque chalet in a village of western Austria (+ slideshow).

Named Haus Fontanella, the house is built between the Glatthorn and Zafernhorn mountains in Fontanella – a village with historical ties to the nomadic Walser people that settled throughout the Alpine regions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Bernardo Bader combined traditional and modern building techniques to build a house that resonates with the typical Walser buildings. A concrete base burrows down into the hillside, while the upper section comprises a pine frame clad with roughly-hewn spruce panels of random sizes.

“Our use of the wood was similar to how it would have been years ago – simple, first-hand and rough,” said Bader, explaining how the spruce was delivered from the sawmill and then installed on the walls in exactly the same condition.

Square windows also come in a variety of sizes and are dotted around the walls in a way that gives no clues about the internal layout.

“The intentional rough planking together with the randomness of smaller and bigger windows generate an exciting facade game and an intimate atmosphere inside, with selected framed views to the exterior,” said the architect.

There are three storeys inside the house, as well as an attic tucked beneath the sloping roof. Silver fir lines walls, floors and ceilings throughout the building, plus most of the fixtures are also made from wood.

The main living and dining areas can be found on the middle floor, opening out to a sheltered terrace, while three bedrooms and a study are located upstairs, and a sauna and storage area occupy the partially submerged basement floor.

A geothermal pump offers a sustainable heating source and extra warmth can be provided by a wood-burning stove.

Photography is by Archive Architects.

Here’s a project description from Bernardo Bader:

Haus Fontanella

Aim of the project: Not far away from the town centre of Fontanella – an old village of Walserpeople – the house is situated on a inclined south-terrace-plane. Not just to benefit from the great view but also to optimise the property’s borders, the building is placed on the upper part of the property and the volume is kept as compact as possible.

The whole facade of the building is a made of differently size sliced spruce boards, exactly how they are delivered from the sawmill.

The intentional rough planking together with the randomness of smaller and bigger windows generate an exciting facade game and an intimate atmosphere inside with selected framed views to the exterior.

The basement is made of concrete, the rest of the house is a whole wood construction. The interior work of the ground floor is also a silver-fir wood construction, the one in the upper floor is drywall.

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a chalet built from pine and spruce appeared first on Dezeen.

The partners of new Vancouver studio Scott & Scott Architects created this remote snowboarding cabin for their own use at the northern end of Vancouver Island.

The Alpine Cabin by Susan and David Scott is lifted off the ground on six columns made of douglas fir tree trunks, which pierce through the rooms on both storeys.

The exterior clad in cedar, intended to weather to the tone of the surrounding forest, and the interior finished in planed fir.

“The construction approach was determined to avoid machine excavation, to withstand the annual snowfall, to resist the dominant winds and to build in a manner which elevates the building above the height of the accumulated snow on the ground,” say the architects.

The majority of the ground floor is taken up by a combined living room and kitchen, but also includes a bathroom and sauna. Upstairs there are two bedrooms with a study in between.

One corner of the ground floor is cut away to create a spacious porch where firewood and snowboarding equipment can be stored.

The cabin is located in a community-operated alpine recreation area 1300 metres above sea level and is accessible by a gravel road for five months of the year, but otherwise equipment and supplies must be carried on a sledge to the site.

The building is completely off-grid, heated by a wood-burning stove and using water that must be fetched from nearby and carried in.

The architects built the project themselves with the help of friends. “The cabin was constructed out of a desire to directly design and build as a singular act, to work with the freedom one experiences when snowboarding, and in a manner which is centered in the adventure and not bound heavily in pre-determination,” they explain.

Susan and David Scott launched their own practice in February after twelve years of working for established firms.

Other winter retreats on Dezeen include a holiday home that Peter Zumthor designed for himself and his family and one that’s been squeezed into the passageway between two farm buildings in northern Italy.

See more winter retreats »
See more architecture in the snow »

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Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Jagged copper balconies emulate the topography of surrounding landscape as they fold around the exterior of this apartment block in north-east Italy by architects Plasma Studio (+ slideshow).

Positioned beside the Dolomites, the three-storey Dolomitenblick building contains six holiday homes that each face north-east towards the mountains.

A diagonal recess slices down the centre of the facade, separating the balconies of different apartments and breaking down the volume of the building.

“This incision becomes the main defining element of the building,” explains Plasma Studio. “From the cut at either side a strip unfolds that forms the balustrade of a generous covered balcony and ends into the surrounding topography.”

The whole facade also slopes backwards to match the incline of the sloping land, finishing with an asymmetric interpretation of a traditional gabled roof, which the architects were asked to incorporate by the local planning authorities.

“Slightly deformed, it merges with our design intention but also with the traditional typology of pitched roofs,” say the architects, explaining how they wanted to explore the “new potentials of a traditional typology”.

Inspired by local farmhouses, the architects used larch to clad the walls behind the pre-oxidised copper balconies, as well as the floors and walls inside each apartment.

They also made various depressions into the ground, adding low-level windows and a tunnel leading into an underground parking area beneath the building.

Above: balconies design concept

Plasma Studio have completed a few buildings in northern Italy, including a hotel with stripy timber cladding and a housing block in South Tyrol. See all our stories about Plasma Studio »

Above: vertical incision design concept

Photography is by Hertha Hurnaus.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

Dolomitenblick

The building is located on a hillside in the Dolomites, at the end of a residential area.

Above: location plan

The volume has been developed mainly from its pragmatic functional request to host 6 independent apartments with one common circulation: through a cut that marks the main access and the division of the units the volume is splitted into 2 halves. Besides its functional meaning this incision becomes the main defining element of the building: from the cut at either side a strip unfolds that forms the balustrade of a generous covered balcony and ends into the surrounding topography. Following the steep natural hillside with each floor the strips and the façade jump back.

Above: site plan

Programme

The building hosts 6 generous holiday homes, all directed to the sun and the panoramic view of the Dolomites. Each private unite is designed to get a maximum of privacy: through the division of the whole building volume into 2 parts, through the stepped balustrades which avoid insight from the above unit and from the passing by street. Each apartment gets an extension of the internal living area by a covered sun and view facing terrace which at each floor ends in a small private garden. Local larch wood defines internal and external living areas. Floor to ceiling glazing allows the maximum view and energetic gain as directed to south, external sun blinds and the overhangs of the above balconies minimize overheating during summertime.

Above: apartments level one plan

The main circulation is very compact and a continuation of the volume defining gap and repeats the use of the local larch wood and the color code of the façade.

Above: parking level plan

Material

Sitting at the edges of a residential area with a very eclectic and non-coherent appearance we focus to contrast these surroundings by simply generating a volume which grows out of its natural surrounding topography and blends again into it, by minimizing the used materials to a very local, almost vernacular code: larch wood and pre oxidised copper. Both the copper and the larch wood are exposed to a natural change of colour by the atmospheric influence of sun, rain and snow. Through the repetition of the colours of old, close-by farmhouses with dark, sunburned larchwood facades this building volumes blends into its natural surroundings.

Above: front elevation

Focus was given to the design of the copper balustrades which start from the natural topography, grow, become balustrades, attach to the building where the gap defines the volume, peel again off and end finally in the surrounding topography. When peeling off, the metal sheets which are divided into horizontal strips describe a curved hyperbolic-parabolic geometry: crafts knowledge is brought to its extreme.

Above: side elevation

The dark copper surrounds the volume from all sides, the strips form a second layer which gives shelter from and insight and finally define the roof as a continuation of the overall façade and volume. The form of the roof itself derives from local planning regulation which allows only a pitched roof in this specific building plot: slightly deformed, it merges with our design intention but also with the traditional typology of pitched roofs by not simply repeating but rather exploring what new potentials of a traditional typology can be.

Above: rear elevation

Project: residential building with 6 units and underground garage
Client: private
Size: 1.050 sq m
Location: Sexten / Sesto Italy
Completed: Summer 2012

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by Plasma Studio appeared first on Dezeen.