Hasta La Ideas

This timber and concrete beach house in Victoria by Australian firm Wolveridge Architects conceals all its windows behind louvred shutters and has courtyards tucked into its sides (+ slideshow).

Torquay House was designed by Wolveridge Architects to protect its inhabitants from the extreme weather conditions of its seaside location, creating indoor and outdoor spaces that are screened from powerful winds.

“In coastal conditions buildings must be robust and defy the elements, yet create protective spaces, both internal and external, which allow the occupants to feel safe and comfortable,” said the architects.

The volume of the building is divided into three connected blocks. The first and second have two storeys and feature windowless concrete sides, while the third is a single-storey volume clad entirely with timber.

The small courtyards are slotted into the recesses between blocks and are overlooked by most of the house’s windows, which are generally directed to face north and south.

“It is the private spaces created in between that allow natural ventilation and light, intimate outlooks, and privacy for the occupants – a place to call home,” said the team.

One of the courtyards contains the entrance to the house, while another is dedicated to barbecues.

A combined living and dining room occupies the single-storey rear block and opens out to a swimming pool beyond.

Three bedrooms are located on the upper floor and each have their own private bathroom.

Other Australian residences completed recently include a periscope-shaped extension and a sand dune-shaped house. See more houses in Australia »

Photography is by Derek Swalwell.

Read on for a description from Wolveridge Architects:

Torquay House

This project attempts to challenge our traditional notions of how buildings can exist both in a coastal environment and in this case also the context of an emerging built form and character. In coastal conditions, buildings must be robust and defy the elements, yet create protective spaces, both internal and external which for us allow the occupants to feel safe, comfortable, privacy and enjoyment of good times.

Whether the occupants are full-time residents or weekenders, the beach house is a place to look forward to arriving, whether in the heat of the summer or the winter’s cold.

With excellent views to the north and south and a conscious motivation to avoid the east/west outlooks, this project evolved as a series of interconnected and robustly finished containers. Each prescribed to a rigid set of rules and the relationship and spaces between containers becoming essential to the program and to the life of the building.

The robust mass of the buildings is intended to be offset by the expression of finely considered detail and proportion. It is the private spaces created in between that allow natural ventilation and light, intimate outlooks, and privacy for the occupants, a place to call home.

Project Name: Torquay House
Date of construction completion: 19/04/2012
Building Type: Residential – House

Architect: Wolveridge Architects
Practice Team: Jerry Wolveridge, Sina Petzold, Tjeerd van der Vliet, Courtney Gibbs
Builder and Construction Manager: John Walker Master Builders
Structural/Civil Engineer: Don Moore & Associates
Landscape Consultant: Heather Vincent Landscapes
Cost Consultant: VPL Builders Services
Building Surveyor: Nepean Building Permits

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Wolveridge Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

A chequerboard of glass blocks allows light to flood in and out of these creative studios in São Paulo by French-Brazilian architects Triptyque.

Slotted into a narrow gap between towers and houses in the central Pinheiros district of the city, the Leitão_653 building by Triptyque is just four metres wide but 25 metres high.

Three opacities of glass blocks are dispersed across a grid that covers the top four levels visible above the adjacent buildings to the north-east. “This gigantic panel allows smooth communication between the city and the interior of the building,” said the architects.

The other long facade is hidden against tall buildings, so is simply dotted with small windows and rendered white. Entry is under a canopy on the same side as the patterned facade, while a cafe and other communal facilities are on the other.

The staircase and elevator core sits in the centre of the plan, feeding open-plan studio spaces in the front and back of the concrete structure. Additional staircases link the studios so companies can be self-contained over more than one floor.

A veranda is set into the front of the second storey and balconies stick out from the ends of alternate levels above. The covered roof terrace provides extra outdoor space.

Not long ago we published a housing development located right by São Paulo’s Octávio Frias de Oliveira Bridge. Other designs in the city include a micro apartment with a jumble of wooden boxes for storage and a bookshop with a store-front made of revolving bookcases.

See more architecture and design in São Paulo »
See more office designs »

Photography is by Pedro Kok.

Read on for more information from Triptyque:

Leitão_653 is a building located in the heart of Pinheiros, a popular neighbourhood which combines small traditional buildings and new residential towers. Inserted between two lofty towers, a long and narrow plot, the building is four meters wide and 25 metres high.

The studios occupying the building enjoy a smooth flow between the plates through a central tower. Alternating terraces on the 2nd floor and roof offer living areas and promote exchange and community life.

“Leitão 653” was conceived as a place of inspiration in permanent connection with the city. This connection is provided by a set of transparencies affirmed by the facade. The building draws a cathedral light, completely revisited, like a latticework.

The wall, multifaceted indeed plays to absorb light during the day. As for the night, light radiates as a goldsmith working in a casket. In this urban theatre play scenes carved by a fine lace glass, cut and articulated as a Chinese shadow puppet show.

This gigantic panel allows smooth communication between the city and the interior of the building while providing a real solution to the constraints vis-à-vis. These scenes of transparency, a subtle eroticism, revealing another use of the building, visible from the street.

The uniqueness of this project lies in its layout that encourages emulation, the expansion as a business incubator, an urban incubator.

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Triptyque appeared first on Dezeen.

The arced profile of this charred wooden house by architects Horibe Associates is designed to resonate with the traditional temples and shrines of Yoshinogawa, Japan (+ slideshow).

Horibe Associates chose the bowed shape and dark external materials to help House in Kamoshima to integrate with the forms and colours of the local architecture and landscape.

“With its simple arced shape echoing the shape of the property and its charred cedar exterior similar to that found throughout the neighbourhood, this residence blends seamlessly into its surroundings of peaceful rice fields, temples and shrines,” said the architects.

Charred cedar cladding cloaks the curving wall at the front of the timber-framed property.

This plain facade is only interrupted by a doorway to one side and a small rectangular window in the middle, which looks into a bright central courtyard.

The courtyard features stepped wood decking and can be accessed via patio doors from the main bedroom, the combined kitchen and living area, and a spare room.

“The layout allows the residents to keep an eye on their small children no matter where in the house they are,” the architects said.

The back of the building opens up to extra garden space through more large glass doors from the kitchen and tatami room.

Most of the accommodation is on the ground floor, though a small staircase leads up to a roof terrace concealed behind the top of the curved facade.

The latest projects we’ve published by Horibe Associates include a house with a sweeping peristyle around its entrance and a combined home and dog-grooming salon.

A dazzling white home with a shallow reflecting pool and a residence with a garden that snakes between its cedar-clad walls are the most recent Japanese houses on Dezeen.

Photos are by Kaori Ichikawa.

See more Japanese houses »
See more architecture by Horibe Associates »
See more design and architecture in Japan »

Drawings key:

1 – Entrance
2 – Living & Dining & Kitchen
3 – Tatami space
4 – Bedroom
5 – Storeroom
6 – Free space

7 – Walk-in closet
8 – Lavatory
9 – Washroom
10 – Bathroom
11 – Courtyard
12 – Car parking space

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by Horibe Associates appeared first on Dezeen.

Brazilian studios MMBB and H+F Arquitetos reference tower blocks from the 1960s with this social housing complex flanking the Octávio Frias de Oliveira Bridge in São Paulo (+ slideshow).

The Jardim Edite Social Housing Complex replaces a large favela on the junction between Avenida Berrini and Avenida Marinho, a part of the city that has seen a boom in high-end real estate in recent years.

MMBB and H+F Arquitetos teamed up to design the complex, creating 252 new residences within three 17-storey towers and a pair of adjoining two-storey blocks.

Each unit has two bedrooms and an area of 50 square metres – the maximum permitted size for social housing in the city.

Public services occupy the ground-floor spaces, offering a healthcare facility, a children’s daycare centre and a catering school. There are also communal gardens and rooftop terraces for residents.

The architects deliberately left out any parking provision, which they hoped would deter local office workers from moving in. Instead, many of the favela’s original residents returned to occupy the new homes.

“For us it is a laboratory for investigating ideas for the kind of city we want to build here in São Paulo,” H+F’s Eduardo Ferroni told Architectural Record.

Other recent architecture stories from Brazil include a new art museum and art school in Rio and a concrete photography studio, also in São Paulo. See more architecture in Brazil »

Photography is by Nelson Kon.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

Jardim Edite Social Housing Complex

The Jardim Edite Social Housing Complex was commissioned to replace a favela located on one of the most significant areas of recent growth in both the business and financial sector of the city of São Paulo.

To ensure the integration among the housing complex and its rich surroundings, the project articulated the housing program vertically and occupied the ground floor entirely by public facilities, available for the residential community as well as for the rest of the city, inserting the complex in the economy and everyday life of the region.

The rooftops of the public facilities also functions as a common area for the inhabitants, connecting housing buildings within each block, allowing for a secluded place for social interaction between the residents in the midst of the metropolitan scale of the surrounding area.

The project has a total area of 25.500 sqm, with 252 housing units of 50 sqm, a restaurant school (850 sqm), a basic health-care unit (1300 sqm) and a daycare center (1400 sqm).

Location: Av. Eng. Luís Carlos Berrini with Av. J. Roberto Marinho, São Paulo
Area: 25.714 sqm
Client: Prefeitura Municipal de São Paulo – Secretaria Municipal da Habitação (Sehab/Habi)
Architecture: MMBB and H+F

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by MMBB and H+F Arquitetos appeared first on Dezeen.

This house in Kanazawa by Japanese architect Takuro Yamamoto is punctuated by a series of interconnecting voids, including a terrace with a shallow reflecting pool (+ slideshow).

The client asked Takuro Yamamoto Architects for a simple building with several outdoor spaces, so the Tokyo-based firm inserted holes into the monolithic structure to create a courtyard and covered parking space on the ground floor, as well as the first floor terrace.

“The connection of voids – we call it Cave – is the theme of this house,” explain the architects, adding that the different voids “serve multiple purposes in order to make up for the space limitations.”

The house’s exterior appears as a plain white volume, with one surface interrupted by an aperture that creates the parking space and a covered entrance passage to protect the owners from the winter snowfall.

This void continues around a corner, where it becomes a secluded courtyard visible from the open plan kitchen and living space through full-height windows.

Views of the “cave” change throughout the day depending on the angle of the sun, and the architects added the shallow pool on the terrace “because we thought water is inseparable from white caves.”

The interconnected outdoor spaces also provide a route for snow to be cleared if it starts to build up in winter.

Takuro Yamamoto Architects previously designed a house in Kashiwa, Japan, around an angled central courtyard that divides the surrounding space into smaller rooms.

Other Japanese houses on Dezeen include one with a facade that looks like a picture frame surrounding a courtyard garden and another simple white cube that resembles a block of tofu. See more Japanese houses »

Cave-like structures have appeared before on Dezeen, including a bathroom showroom by Zaha Hadid and a faceted church hall in Austria. See more caves »

Photography is by Ken’ichi Suzuki.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

White Cave House

White Cave House is a massive lump engraved by a series of voids interconnected in the shape of a kinked tube. The connection of voids – we call it Cave – is the theme of this house.

Internal rooms are designed to enjoy the minimum views of Cave characterized by its whiteness. At the same time, this concept is also the practical solution to realize a courtyard house in Kanazawa city known for heavy snow in Japan.

The client’s original request was a white minimally-designed house with many external spaces, such as a large snow-proof approach to the entrance, a roofed garage for multiple cars, a terrace facing to the sky, and a courtyard.

Though a roofed entrance and a garage are desirable for snowy place, it takes so many floor areas away from the internal rooms for the family, while the space and the budget is limited. In addition, courtyard style itself is not suitable to the snowy country because courtyards would be easily buried under snow.

To solve the problems, we proposed to connect these external spaces to one another with a large single tube, or Cave, and have each part serve multiple purposes in order to make up for the space limitations.

We designed Cave unstraight because it prevents passengers outside from seeing through, though it is not closed. By this arrangement, Cave takes a new turn for each part letting in the sunshine while protecting privacy of the courtyard, the terrace, and the internal rooms.

The family inside can enjoy the view of Cave changing its contrast throughout a day under the sunshine. Cave also serves as a route to remove snow from the external spaces in winter, otherwise you would be at a loss with a lot of snow in the enclosed courtyard.

In order to make Cave deserve its name more, we wondered if we could add the reflection of water to the house because we thought water is inseparable from white caves.

We eventually figured out that the terrace was an appropriate site to place it. The terrace covered by white waterproof FRP holds a thin layer of water like a white basin.

On the terrace reflecting the skyview without obstacles, you may feel that Cave has brought you to another world far from the daily life.

Credits: Takuro Yamamoto Architects
Location: Kanazawa
Use: independent residence
Site area : 493.88m2
Building area : 132.68m2
Total floor area: 172.33m2
Completion: June 2013
Design period: February 2011-September 2012
Construction period: October 2012-June 2013
Structure: Wood
Client: a married couple + a child
Architect: Takuro Yamamoto
Structure design: Yamada Noriaki Structural Design Office
Construction: Ninomiya-Kensetsu

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Takuro Yamamoto Architects appeared first on Dezeen.