Built on a steep site in Spain, the seventeenth house in our A-Zdvent calendar consists of three intersecting volumes arranged around a central circulation space. Read more about Q-House »
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Q-house by asensio_mah appeared first on Dezeen.
A glazed reading room appears to float over the still waters of a shallow pool at this town library in Maranello, Italy, by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and Italian architect Andrea Maffei (+ slideshow).
The curving glass facade wiggles back and forth to form the building’s perimeter, while study areas behind the glass offer visitors a view out across the water towards the ivy-covered walls that bound the site.
“The volume is mirrored on a body of water that reflects the intense color of the ivy onto the surrounding walls and surfaces,” said Andrea Maffei.
The glass facade straightens up at the building’s entrance, although a semi-circular canopy extends outwards to continue the curved outline.
Beyond the reception, a single reading room occupies most of the ground floor and is filled with white furniture that can accommodate up to 90 visitors at a time.
“In the interior of the building the absolute white resin pavement and white furniture captures the green hues of the greenery that is reflected from the continuous glazed surfaces of the curvilinear façade,” added Maffei. ”The light that pervades the open space of the library is exhibited in a play of reflections that bounce from the white elements of the furniture, the floors and structure, to the water and the continuous transparent glass.”
A local history archive and small playroom are also located on this floor, while stairs lead down to a digital archive, lecture space and meeting room in the basement.
Maffei previously spent several years working in Arata Isozaki‘s Tokyo studio and the pair have since teamed up on a number of projects that are underway elsewhere in Italy.
Other projects we’ve featured by Arata Isozaki include a modular office block in Barcelona and an inflatable concert hall he designed with Anish Kapoor.
See more libraries on Dezeen, including the Folkwang Library where glass walls look like marble.
Photography is by Alessandra Chemollo.
Here’s some more information from the architects:
The new Town Library in Maranello, Italy, designed by architects Arata Isozaki and Andrea Maffei, opened to the public on November 19, 2011. Built near the center of the city, it substantiates the effective synergy between a public administration that of Maranello – which is investing in pursuing an architecture of quality – and the designers: Arata Isozaki, one of the most celebrated masters of contemporary Japanese architectural culture, and Andrea Maffei, Italian architect who worked in Isozaki’s studio in Tokyo for several years and is now co-designing with him several projects in Italy, currently in development.
The building defines a rarefied space that is perfectly placed within the urban fabric. Its sinuous profiles are bound by glass plates that follow its contour: reading becomes an “open” experience by means of the transparent membrane that forms the façade. It manifests as an interaction between knowledge and the contemplation of the landscape that surrounds the library.
The building expresses a dialogue with the urban fabric through the transparency of its body. The objective, on the part of the architects, was to establish a direct interaction with the city. Situated within a residential area, the library takes the place of a pre-existing building whose traces can still be found as the northern, eastern and southern exterior walls. These walls are covered with ivy, which along with the reflecting pools at the foot of the glazed perimeter make up the new natural horizons that are offered to the readers and patrons of the library.
As of today, the new Library in Maranello offers the community an environment in which to read, study, learn and enjoy a space that is suspended over a body of water and enveloped by greenery.
Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image
Above: basement plan – click above for larger image
Above: roof plan – click above for larger image
Above: section aa – click above for larger image
Above: section bb – click above for larger image
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Arata Isozaki and Andrea Maffei appeared first on Dezeen.
A secluded balcony surrounded by timber protrudes from the clean white facade of this house in Osaka, Japan, by architect Ido Kenji (+ slideshow).
The architect planned the three-storey house to cover two thirds of the site, allowing for a driveway in front and a small garden at the rear.
“The client requested a garden on the south side of the site, so I decided to make the building three storeys to secure the required rooms,” said Ido Kenji.
There’s no bedroom, but a traditional Japanese room on the ground floor provides a sleeping area that opens out to the garden.
The living room occupies a double-height space on the middle floor and a study overlooks it from the level above.
Pine is used for flooring, surfaces, doors and bookshelves throughout the house. ”It’s aimed as a quiet, soft space with the wood and the paint-finished walls,” added Kenji.
The frame of the house is also timber and structural beams are exposed around the edges of the rooms.
Kitchen and bathrooms are located above the car port at the front of the building and lead out onto the balcony.
The house was completed in 2010 but was not published at the time.
Other houses we’ve featured from Japan include a house in Nagoya with a stretched facade and a house for an elderly couple in Sendai.
See more Japanese houses on Dezeen »
Photography is by Takumi Ota.
Above: site plan
Above: ground floor plan
Above: first floor plan
Above: second floor plan
Above: long section
Above: cross section
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Ido Kenji appeared first on Dezeen.
Today’s addition to our daily A-Zdvent calendar is a renovated summerhouse in Spain with a spiral staircase leading to the roof. Read more about PC House »
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PC House by XVA appeared first on Dezeen.
This mysterious dark gable facing the Piazzale Roma in Venice marks the entrance to a long narrow courthouse by Italian studio C+S Architects (+ slideshow).
Designed to house the Supervisory Law Courts, the project is positioned amongst the eighteenth century brick buildings of a former tobacco factory and C+S Architects designed the pitched roof profile as a nod to the archetypal forms of this complex.
Above: photograph is by Alessandra Bello
Sheets of pre-oxidised copper clad the exterior so that it is almost black in appearance and were intended as a reference to the historical copper rooftops that can be spotted around the city. “Copper is a traditional material in Venice, used for the roofs of institutional buildings,” architect Maria Alessandra Segantini told Dezeen.
Above: photograph is by Alessandra Bello
At the front of the building, the upper storeys cantilever forwards to create a sheltered entrance to the seven-storey-high reception contained inside. From here, staircases and elevators lead to offices, courtrooms and council chambers upstairs.
There are a few windows on the front and end gables, but there are only vents on the long, road-facing side elevation. “This facade has only a punctuation of windows because it houses all the vertical systems,” said Segantini, explaining how the 1.5-metre-thick walls contain electrical and ventilation services for the entire building.
C+S Architects won a competition to design the building back in 2002.
Another recent addition to the Piazzale Roma in Venice is the Quarto Ponte sul Canal Grande bridge by Santiago Calatrava, which opened in 2008.
Above: photograph is by Alessandra Bello
See all our stories about architecture and interiors in Venice »
Photography is by Pietro Savorelli apart from where otherwise stated.
Here’s some more information from C+S Architects:
LCV. Law-Court Offices in Venice Inhabited infrastructure
The project is a winning entry of an international competition. The building is a graft in the complexity of the Venetian urban system facing Piazzale Roma, the car-entrance space to the city of Venice.
At the same time it becomes the ‘infrastructure’ which brings an existing 19th century complex factory (Ex-Manifattura Tabacchi) to a contemporary use: in fact it houses the technological systems serving the whole.
Above: photograph is by Alessandra Bello
The dimension of the building is measured on the huge void of Piazzale Roma facing the bridge of Santiago Calatrava, on the opposite side.
Above: basement plan
A huge, five level high space acts as a ‘urban entrance’ enlightened by the roof as all the ex-industrial existing buildings.
Above: ground floor plan
This vertical inner space, opened to free entrance during the day, will house, on the ground level, the commercial services which will allow to improve and give back the citizen a big public space, functioning also as an entrance to the sequence of public spaces which will be regained by the future restoration of the existing buildings.
Above: first floor plan
The new volume has a simple, archetypical, compact shape, resulting from the manipulation of the Venetian industrial building typology and the connection to the skyline of the huge parking lots.
Above: second floor plan
A five meter long cantiliver on Piazzale Roma becomes the entrance: a huge shadow which attracts the fluxes of people horizontally in the new urban system and vertically along either a linear stair or elevators which distributes to all the levels.
Above: third floor plan
The linear stair is designed parallel to the elevation facing the parking building San Marco, letting us to design that elevation as a punctuation of small windows designing a special natural light in the inside.
Above: fourth floor plan
The material of the building is a preoxidated type of TECU copper. Copper in Venice is the material with which all the institutional (religious and laic) buildings’ roofs are built with.
Above: fifth floor plan
In this project, materiality and form become a metaphor representing institution: the house of justice is a big monomateric roof which welcome the citizens inside an enlightened space.
Above: roof plan
We always work with materiality and light, instigating, with pro-oxidation, the idea of subtracting material from surfaces and activating them with light, which is what time does. Working with the idea of ‘time’ is archetypical in Venice.
Above: section A-A
Above: section B-B
Above: section C-C
Above: section D-D
Above: section E-E
Above: front elevation
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by C+S Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
Italian architect Andrea Tognon refurbished this L-shaped building in Teolo, Italy, by adding the missing corner and it’s the latest house in our A-Zdvent calendar. Read more about Residence O »
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Residence O by Andrea Tognon appeared first on Dezeen.
Ce double-pont fait parti du projet « De Kanaalsprong » voulant connecter le quartier historique avec la partie moderne de la ville et propose un design intriguant et original pour une telle structure. Melkeweg Bridge est un projet réalisé par Next Architects, situé à Purmerend aux Pays-Bas. A découvrir en images dans la suite.
Pennsylvania-based architecture firm Archer & Buchanan received an unusual commission: The client, an avid J.R.R. Tolkien fan, wanted a Hobbit House built on his property. We’ve seen Hobbit-inspired houses before, but most of them were labors-of-love that looked janky, handmade and amateurish; but Peter Archer proved he was equal to the task by using actual architecture skills and talented, professional craftspeople to execute a beautiful home in its own right.
What most impressed us is Archer’s attention to detail, incorporating unlikely design elements described and/or sketched by Tolkien, and addressed with real-world solutions. For example, how would you hang a circular door? Archer knew it had to be hinged at a single point to work, but a 54-inch-diameter slab of cedar isn’t exactly light. Multiple craftsmen told him it couldn’t be done, but he persisted until he found an ironworker who made it work. And the crescent-shaped flange is beautiful.
Japanese studio Mattch has completed a family house in Nagoya with a sweeping facade that stretches out towards the corner of its plot (+ slideshow).
While the rear and side walls of House H are straight, Mattch designed the roof of the building as an irregular gable that curves up then down as it runs along the length of the building.
“I let the form of the ceiling curve gently to diffuse the light that enters through the slit-shaped top light on the north side of the ridge,” said architect Ryuji Takenaka.
The curved elevation frames the outline of a patio at the entrance, while a row of timber rods screens a sheltered deck that could be used for storing bins or bicycles.
Glass walls slide back to connect the patio with the interior, where a kitchen, living room and dining room occupy one double-height space at the front of the building.
A traditional Japanese room filled with Tatami mats is also located in this space but can be partitioned off when necessary behind folding translucent screens.
A mezzanine floor is positioned above the bedroom and bathrooms to provide a multi-purpose room at the rear of the home.
The owner of the residence works for a paint company, so the interior was decorated using white paint he supplied. “[He] wanted to make a showroom for visitors,” explained Takenaka.
Wooden flooring runs through each room, while exposed wooden columns provide extra support for the concealed steel framework.
House H is one of many projects we’ve published that are named after letters of the alphabet and you can see more by catching up with our A-Zdvent calendar, which is counting down one house every day until Christmas.
Other Japanese homes we’ve featured recently include one that generates all its own energy and heating.
Photography is by Nacasa & Partners.
Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image
Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image
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by Mattch appeared first on Dezeen.
Rectangular windows puncture three layers of walls and ceilings in this house in Japan, the fourteenth window in our A-Zdvent calendar. Read more about House N »
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House N by Sou Fujimoto Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
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