Leander Angerer and David Ross’ revamp of this late Victorian staircase introduces subtle modern touches to accentuate the classical style. Tennis racket string sewn into the handrail replaces the banisters while a floating marble plinth replaces the first step. Other extraneous parts were taken away and hand-modified to give it a lighter, renewed aesthetic. Not only nice to look at, the strings can also be plucked, turning the house itself into a giant musical instrument!
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An 18-metre-long window offers panoramic views across Tokyo Bay from the living room of this house in Yokosuka by Japanese studio Tomoyuki Sakakida Architect and Associates (+ slideshow).
The three-storey residence features three sea-facing terraces on its two upper floors, as well as two more secluded balconies tucked away at the back.
The open-plan living and dining room is located on the uppermost floor, where it spans the entire length of the house.
A top-lit atrium connects this floor with the two lower levels. Bedrooms and other rooms occupy the storey below, while the ground floor contains storage and a car parking garage.
The house has thick concrete walls to protect it from the corrosive seaside environment.
Read a short description from the architects below:
Seascape House
The site locates on the slope facing the Pacific Ocean and the house fits in the mountain background, it is where you can feel the strong topographical features.
The house is named “Seascape House” as in which you can admire the view toward the open sea. The house is designed to maximise the sequential experience of this particular environment.
Especially the living/dining on the first floor, where is the terminal point of the sequential experience, is characterised by the 18m opening through which you can have a view of the magnificent seascape. In order to have the generous openings and the canopy, it has a combined structure system of void slabs and slender columns, as well as solid concrete walls to secure from the tough natural environment such as the strong sea breeze and the sunshine.
The daily life in this house would go always with the seascape which changes from moment to moment, and we hope it would bless the every event going to happen in the house, in particular the pleasant chat and supper at a party hosted by the gregarious client couple.
This guest house by American firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson nestles against a rugged stone wall within a coastal mountain range in California (+ slideshow).
Using a palette of pre-weathered zinc, timber and rough stone, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson designed the Halls Ridge Knoll Guest House to fit in with the ambling terrain – a former cattle ranch with views across the San Clemente Mountains and Los Padres National Forest.
“Designed to choreograph movement along the extraordinary ridge-top site, the guesthouse celebrates its magical surroundings,” say the architects.
The shed-like timber frame of the house angles up from the stone boundary wall to create a single-storey building with floor-to-ceiling glazing stretching across most of its frontage.
A wooden deck wraps around the glazed facade. It leads across to a swimming pool on one side, which stretches out to meet the end of the stone wall along its edge.
The zinc-clad roof overhangs the edge of the terrace to provide shade during the hottest parts of the day.
The largest room in the house is a combined living room and kitchen. Positioned beyond a pair of bedrooms and bathrooms, it features an open fireplace at the base of a stone chimney and wooden flooring reclaimed from an old barn.
Halls Ridge Knoll Guest House is the first of three buildings under construction on the site and will be followed by a workshop and a larger residence nearby.
Here’s a project description from Bohlin Cywinski Jackson:
Halls Ridge Knoll Guest House Santa Lucia Preserve, Carmel, California
Halls Ridge Knoll Guest House is located in the Santa Lucia Preserve, a remarkably beautiful, vast landscape that was previously a historic cattle ranch. The rugged and pristine site has a rolling topography, a forest of ancient live Oaks and Manzanita, and offers panoramic views of the San Clemente Mountains and the Los Padres National Forest beyond.
The masterplan for this vacation retreat puts forth a series of buildings that relate to its ridge-top setting. These buildings include a workshop, guest house, and main residence, each anchored to the land with a series of massive stone walls and fireplace chimneys, marking the passage along the ridge and culminating in a stone court at the future main residence.
The first building constructed on site is the guesthouse, which flanks the winding entry drive and is anchored to the sloping site with a massive stone wall, screening the house and pool. A simple timber-framed shed roof springs from the stone wall, supporting naturally weathered zinc roofing over cedar-clad volumes.
The guesthouse is sited to take advantage of passive design elements of the temperate California climate. Expansive windows provide natural lighting throughout the house, while a broad overhanging roof shades from the intensity of the summer sun.
Sliding doors and operable hopper windows throughout the house use the prevailing winds for natural ventilation, while also providing expansive views of the mountain range. Wood flooring in the living space of the house is reclaimed from an old barn structure.
News: construction has started on a major extension to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), designed by Snøhetta to double the gallery’s exhibition and education space.
Outside glass-fronted gallery
Snøhetta’s design will provide SFMOMA with around 12,000 square metres of indoor and outdoor gallery space, as well as over 1000 square metres of public space filled with art.
An admission-free glass-fronted gallery on the ground floor of the new building will entice passers-by inside to explore large-scale installations.
Living wall on sculpture terrace
A double-height box on the fourth floor will host the museum’s programme of live art as well as film screenings and special events.
Exhibition space
An outdoor sculpture terrace on the third floor will be home to a huge living wall of native Californian plants, while a terrace on the seventh floor will offer views across the city.
Glass-fronted ground floor gallery with Richard Serra sculpture
Additional public entrances to the building will increase access, while a street-level pedestrian promenade will open a new route of circulation in the neighbourhood.
Performance space
The new building will be over 15 metres taller than the existing SFMOMA building, which was completed by Swiss architect Mario Botta in 1995.
A huge concrete beam appears to balance on its edge along the roof of this Hawaiian house by Californian architect Craig Steely (+ slideshow).
Constructed on the lava slopes of Hawaii’s most active volcano, the concrete house by Craig Steely is divided into two halves, connected by a long concrete beam that soars overhead.
Timber beams and battons make up the roof, which runs beneath the concrete beam.
The living areas and master bedroom are separated from two further bedrooms by a lap pool and a veranda, which is partially covered by the overhanging roof.
Floor-to-ceiling glass runs the length of one facade, allowing uninterrupted views into the surrounding Ohia forest and out to the ocean beyond.
The architect was influenced by the native vegetation when designing the house. “The Ohia’s brilliant red flowers, called the Lehua, are a striking contrast to the ruddy green leaves and shades of gray of the tree’s bark and the black lava” says Steely. “Like the Ohia, the gray concrete house blends into the existing landscape of lava and trees while splashes of colour in the house mimic the Lehua.”
The house is deliberately long and narrow so as to increase cross-ventilation, eliminating the need for the mechanical air conditioning.
The building incorporates a rainwater catchment system, which provides the house with cold water as well as a solar heating system for hot water.
Named Lavaflow 7, the house is the latest addition to a series of residences by Steely, all of which have been constructed on the rocky slopes of Hawaii.
Located on five acres of dense Ohia forest, this cast-in-place concrete house frames indoor and outdoor living spaces along with views of the forest, the sky, and the coastline on Hawaii’s Big Island. It continues our exploration of a reductive architecture that enhances the experience of living in this compelling environment.
The main feature of the house is a concrete beam, 140 foot long, 48 inch tall x 12 inch wide running the length of the building with only three short concrete walls supporting it along its massive span. Laminated beams and wood planks make up the roof that hangs below it. The concrete beam allows for sizable spans of uninterrupted glass and covered outdoor space, which creates a permeable edge between the man-made and nature. These huge expanses of openness amplify the sensation of living in the Ohia forest.
Ohia trees are endemic to Hawaii. They are the first trees to grow on new lava flows. Lavaflow 7 sits on a 1955 lava flow on the slopes of Kilauea crater. The Ohia’s brilliant red flower, called the Lehua, are a striking contrast to the ruddy green leaves and shades of gray of the tree’s bark and the black lava. Like the Ohia, the gray concrete house blends into the existing landscape of lava and trees while splashes of color in the house mimic the Lehua.
The nature of the house is long and thin, with private and public areas divided by a lanai and bisected by a lap pool. The thinness of the house provides passive cooling through cross ventilation allowing for the elimination of mechanical air conditioning, consistent and diffused light quality in the rooms through out the day, and a view of the forest, sky, and ocean from every room. Other sustainable features include a rainwater catchment system that supplies all water used along with a solar heating system for domestic hot water. A loose distribution of spaces around the few solid walls creates a house that is equally open in all directions and welcomes nature in.
News: architecture writer and founder of BLDGBLOG Geoff Manaugh has been announced as the new editor-in-chief of technology website Gizmodo.
The appointment comes as Gizmodo moves to broaden its focus from gadgets and digital technology towards architecture, urbanism and design.
Under Manaugh’s editorship, which begins in September, Gizmodo will look beyond the traditional definition of technology to analyse its place in the wider world, he told the New York Times.
“We want to push what technology means. It’s not just about gadgets you carry around in your pocket,” he said. “The city itself is the largest gadget that humans have made. You can talk about the ways cities are managed, the way governments function.”
The website will also move away from reviews of consumer gadgets, he said.
“That coverage is being done by so many people today. The idea will be to talk more about the culture of that technology.”
“We’ll also be spinning off the more gossipy stuff about Silicon Valley to another blog, Valleywag,” he added.
Manaugh made his name as a leading architecture blogger with BLDGBLOG, the website he founded nine years ago as a home for his writing on the built environment.
He was previously senior editor at Dwell and contributing editor at Wired UK, and has also taught at the architecture school of Columbia University in New York.
Gizmodo has also named Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan as its new design editor and brought retrofuturist Matt Novak on board, whose Paleofuture blog “looks into the future that never was”.
Le studio japonais de design Nendo a conçu l’intérieur du nouveau magasin de chaussures de la marque espagnole « Camper » à New York. Les équipes ont couvert les murs avec plus de 1000 chaussures blanches. Une création étonnante à découvrir en images dans la suite l’article.
A pitched roof and six walls appear as a single block of concrete around these two residences in Geneva by Swiss architects clavienrossier (+ slideshow).
Named Two In One Villa, the building contains a pair of three-storey apartments separated by a party wall. Both have their own front doors and one is significantly larger than the other.
Grône-based clavienrossier gave the building a hexagonal plan to break down its scale, then used a uniform pale-grey concrete for all six elevations.
“The split geometry of the facades makes it difficult to get a grasp of the real size of the building, giving each individual facade a more domestic scale,” say the architects.
Larch-framed doors, windows and skylights puncture the walls and roof. Many of them are recessed to create balconies and terraces on every floor, but they follow a rectilinear grid rather than the angles of the walls.
Combined kitchen and living rooms occupy the ground floors of both apartments, while bedrooms and bathrooms are located on the first and second floors.
The site is flanked by woodland to the south and fields to the west, but has enough space for a large garden with a swimming pool stretching along one edge.
The site is located on the edge of a residential zone on the outskirts of Geneva, flanked on its southern border by a forest and opening out to fields to the west. It sits right on the line between the city and nature.
The building, backed by a paved access ramp, is placed in the north-east corner of the site. The space between the building and the forest allows for a swimming pool and a large open garden.
The program includes two apartments of differing size, a continuous party wall separates the two.
A pitched roof over a diamond shaped plan, allows each apartment to have its own orientation. This distinct geometry allows for a greater degree of privacy for the residents and when viewed from the outside, gives the impression of a single unit.
The split geometry of the facades makes it difficult to get a grasp of the real size of the building, giving each individual facade a more domestic scale.
The exterior envelope of the building is entirely composed of integrally-coloured concrete, including the roof. Loggias built out of larch, perforate the facade and the roof of the building.
The building conforms to very high energy standards.
News: a 1960s football stadium in Brazil has become the first of several in the country to be equipped with a solar-powered roof in preparation for next year’s FIFA World Cup.
The Mineirão Stadium in the south-eastern city of Belo Horizonte, originally built in 1965, has been fitted with a 1.4MW solar array on its rooftop.
The €12.5 million (£10.7 million) project will see energy fed back into the grid rather than being used directly by the stadium.
The next ground to be converted is the Mané Garrincha stadium in Brasilia, which will be fitted with a 2.5MW solar array providing enough solar energy to power nearly half the stadium.
Organisers had initially hoped to install solar arrays in all 12 of the 2014 World Cup venues, but with just over a year until the tournament starts, that target appears to have been lowered.
Mineirão Stadium, photo by ME/Portal da Copa/Nitro Imagens
David Rockwell has parlayed a knack for creating “immersive environments” into a discipline-shattering firm that can move seamlessly from designing luxury hotels and the set for the Academy Awards to reinventing playgrounds and dreaming up some damn fine rugs. We asked writer Nancy Lazarus to immerse herself in all things Rockwell when the man himself took the stage last week as a keynoter at Internet Week New York.
Treading the boards, on treadmills. The “abstracted collage of a factory” created by Rockwell Group for the musical adaptation of the 2005 British film Kinky Boots.
David Rockwell gave a whirlwind tour of selected design projects during a session at Internet Week in New York. The Rockwell Group founder offered insight into how his firm’s interactive design LAB operates as they solve design dilemmas for clients in the worlds of hospitality, travel, and theatre. He also previewed pending assignments.
Rockwell observed that as his career progressed, technology has taken center stage. “The technology lab is embedded in my firm, and my work now with the lab is the most exciting. It engages technology to connect people more in real-time.” From the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas to the JetBlue terminal at New York’s JFK airport to the set design for the Broadway musical Kinky Boots, Rockwell has incorporated technology and choreography-focused designs. Below are his comments on selected projects.
On the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas: “The promise of Las Vegas is of a place that reinvents itself, but in reality that’s not true, since visitors can’t move freely,” said Rockwell. “The hotel lobby was fourteen feet high and had massive Egyptian-style columns. Our designers worked to dematerialize the walls in an open-source way so people would have a different experience each time they entered. The casino, unlike others in Vegas, was vertical, so we blew a forty-square-foot hole through the podium.”
Rockwell Group used an “environmental choreography system and created a hall of images in the hotel lobby, to allow more personal interaction.” The effect has been “somewhat hypnotic”, though the hotel would prefer visitors to linger in the casino, he noted. continued…
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