Hasta La Ideas

This narrow house in Osaka by Ido, Kenji Architectural Studio contains hollow white boxes for stairs and a skewed upper storey.

The three-storey house replaces the residents’ former home on the same site, which suffered from a lack of natural light due to its proximity to the neighbouring buildings.

The architects increased the available light by rotating the second floor by 14 degrees, angling a pair of rooms towards a large corner window.

The rotation also creates voids above the staircases, which allow light to penetrate from the roof down to the lower levels.

Angular white boxes cantilever out from the wall to create sets of steps that appear to float upwards.

The main bedroom and bathroom are located on the ground floor, while the living room and concrete kitchen take up the first floor.

The angled second floor contains the children’s bedrooms and has a tapered wall on one side to further open up the space.

The final staircase leads up to a roof terrace which is partially covered.

Other houses in Osaka we’ve featured include a building that cantilevers dramatically over its driveway and a house with a faceted concrete exterior.

We’ve also featured lots of unusual staircases on Dezeen, including one with floating wooden treads and a zig-zag handrail – see more stories about staircases here.

See all our stories about Japanese houses »
See all our stories about Osaka »

Photographs are by Yohei Sasakura.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

House in Tamatsu
The house is designed for 4 members of a family with two kids. The house is placed at urban district and a small plot of only 43.21sqm in Osaka, Japan. Around the site is the mixed-use area where small houses, small factories and small office buildings coexist together without any harmony.

The client’s former house, which stood at this site, was a wooden two-storey house. The adjacent sites were close and natural light didn’t enter into the old house. Therefore the client requested the family room (living area, dining area and kitchen) to be as large as possible without pillars or load-bearing walls, and that natural light that comes into the house, especially into the family room.

First, since the site was narrow, the volume of the building took up as much of the site as possible. According to the lifestyle of the client, the bedroom of the couple and wet areas were placed in the ground floor, the family room was placed in the first floor, the rooms of children were placed in the second floor and the terrace was placed on the roof.

For a structural reason, the large openings were not able to open out on the road side of the first floor of the building. So the architects rotated the volume of the second floor 14 degrees for the axis of the building, and interstitial spaces between the rotated wall and the outer wall of a building became voids.

The skylight was set up in the upside of the void, and is intended to allow natural light to drop on the family room of the first floor.

Site plan

Moreover, one of two walls rotated 14 degrees on the plan of the second floor is also inclined to the verticality, and the part which overlaps with the stairs is turned up and has become like origami or a facet. This inclined wall frees people’s feeling by deviation from the norm, simultaneously the sense of touch of the degree of inclination and the light to reflect of that inclination causes a new physical sense.

Ground floor plan

The building’s white box is completely different from the building of the neighbourhood. It is the appearance which the cylindrical volume of the second floor rotated 14 degrees penetrates into the building. Box-shaped cantilevered stairs are floating in the void.

First floor plan

Project Name: House in Tamatsu
Use: residence
Site: Osaka, Japan
Architect: Kenji Ido / Ido, Kenji Architectural Studio
Design period: March 2011 – February 2012
Construction period: March 2012 – July 2012

Second floor plan

Structural engineer: Masakazu Taguchi / Taguchi Atelier Planning Structure
Structure system: timber construction
Total floor area is 94.46 sqm.
Building area is 32.75 sqm.
Plot area is 43.21sqm.
Building scale: 3 storeys

Roof terrace plan

The post House in Tamatsu
by Ido, Kenji Architectural Studio appeared first on Dezeen.

OMA has won a competition to design a new campus for the École Centrale school of engineering in France by proposing a ‘superblock’ of separate buildings within a single gridded structure (+ slideshow).

Proposed for Saclay, near Paris, the entire complex will be sheltered beneath a square glass roof, creating covered outdoor spaces between each of the buildings.

“The design integrates urbanism with the school, supplanting the homogeneous experience of the campus,” said OMA director Clément Blanchet. “It’s an attempt to define the actual aesthetic of science.”

A long pathway will cut diagonally across the campus, creating a route to a neighbouring engineering school at one end and a proposed metro station at the other.

An additional block will be constructed over the roof, providing a gym, administrative offices and extra classrooms for first year students.

See more stories about OMA here, including a series of movies we filmed with partner Reinier de Graaf at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Here’s some more information from OMA:

OMA Wins Competition for École Centrale Engineering School in Saclay, France

OMA has won the competition for the new École Centrale engineering school and its surrounding urban development in the research and innovation zone of Saclay, southwest of Paris. With the concept of a “lab city,” OMA was selected from four competing international architectural practices. The project is led by Clément Blanchet, director of OMA projects in France.

In contrast to the corridor/room linearity of the typical laboratory, OMA’s design is a low level, glass-roofed superblock containing an open plan grid inside, where various activities can interact and be overlooked simultaneously. The grid offers the freedom to generate a new typology for learning, cultivating collaboration while maintaining the stable conditions of the engineering school’s primary pedagogical function.

A diagonal main street slices through the grid, connecting with a future metro station for Paris at one end, and the existing engineering school, Supelec, at the other. In the centre of the project, a forum rises above the grid, offering a focal point of activity for the school. This platform accommodates a gym, administration center and classrooms for first year students, winding its way up through and above the field. This stack is conceived as a training machine offering a complementary condition to the small, intricate spaces in the horizontal field of “lab city.”

Site plan – click above for larger image

The project was developed in collaboration with Bollinger and Grohman, Alto, DHV, DAL, and D’Ici Là. OMA is currently working on several projects in France, including a masterplan for 50,000 housing units in Bordeaux, a new library in Caen, and a convention centre in Toulouse.

Section – click above for larger image

The post École Centrale Engineering School
by OMA appeared first on Dezeen.

Swiss architect Gus Wüstemann used raw concrete, oak and travertine to create the smooth walls and floors of this home and poolhouse overlooking Lake Zurich (+ slideshow).

“The use of raw materials is essential for our work,” Wüstemann told Dezeen. “It’s that kind of atmosphere we’re looking for – authentic surfaces with character.”

Describing the concrete structure of the house, he said: “It’s about mass and feeling the power. Concrete is a further step in the culture of stony architecture, but it’s still a stone and you can feel all the work of the construction behind it.”

The two buildings are positioned at different levels of a sloping site, with the swimming pool and pavilion at the lowest level, while the house sits above on the other side of a small garden.

Concrete dominates the walls of the house, but the facade is clad with timber to match the pavilion opposite, which is solely clad with wooden panels.

Frameless walls of glass slide open across the facade of the house, connecting living rooms on the ground and first floors with a terrace and balcony that overlook the lake.

Bedrooms are located on the ground floor, while a movie room, gym and wine cellar are housed in the basement.

We’ve featured a few projects by Gus Wüstemann, most of which also feature raw materials – see them all here.

Other Swiss houses we’ve featured include a holiday home in the Alps and a concrete house with folded seams.

See more projects in Switzerland »

Photography is by Bruno Helbling.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

2 Verandas

This is a house for a young South African family in Erlenbach, just outside Zurich along the lake.

The plot is in a suburban context and therefor pretty dense with family homes, typical for the area. The site is on a slope, where on top there are beautiful views to the lake with evening sun and at the lower part there is a group of smaller family houses.

The clients asked us for a solution for a house that made the most of the big plot, wanting a view, but not end up with a house on top of the hill and a rest of a garden down below.

Periphery

Our solution for this plot was to occupy the periphery of the site, with the main house on top of the hill and the pool house at the bottom, both houses connected through a solid stony promenade: 2 verandas.

By occupying the periphery: there is one veranda at the top, the promenade is going alongside the eastern boarder of the plot leading to the south end, there is a park in the middle of the site.

The park can be consumed as nature from all three sides and therefor there is no ‘left over’ land. The stony promenade connects the two verandas, is a site of its own, where you walk or sit and enjoy the view to the lake or the park. With the promenade, the garden moves up to the level of the living room and it connects all levels of the house with the garden.

2 verandas

The main house is a stony, concrete, hammer shaped volume over two levels, that contains the living rooms. In the upper part is the‚ public ‘living room for invitations and dining with a beautiful view over the lake of Zurich. On the ground level is the family lounge with an exterior patio that can be joined as one room with the living room. All the windows disappear and the inside and outside patio become one. That patio connects all bedrooms and is a lounge to sit together privately and watch a movie.

The circulations in and out of that space are controlled by concrete volumes at the ceiling that condense the space through mass and light and slow the circulation.

The two rooms are crossed above each other, at the ground floor level we pull a wooden curtain around the concrete volume to create the private sleeping quarters.

The upper living room has a shark fin like shape, so the space is very high at the back of the space with northern sky lights, and is lower at the front to frame the view.

Mass with no windows

The inside and the outside are joined, as we let all the windows disappear, so there is only the concrete mass left. The inside becomes a covered outside space: Mediterranean feeling in the northern hemisphere.

The absence of the window is the essential instrument to actually unite in and outside space; it is the glass itself that reminds us of the border of in and outside. In many projects nowadays this fact is neglected or simply ignored and therefore glass is used in an extensive way.

Mass and light

We chose natural and raw materials like concrete, travertine or wood. The concrete is formed and communicates with the space through light gaps that give that extra feeling of finesse to the shear mass of the concrete. Throughout the whole house indirect lights are giving directions, and attract the periphery of the spaces rather than the centre. The indirect light is creating the atmosphere.

On the underground floor there is a gym, a movie room and wine cellar all arranged around the light up masses of the concrete that give the house a whole different playful area. There is raw concrete and raw wood and therefore a lot of texture.

Basement plan – click above for larger image

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image

First floor plan – click above for larger image

Section – click above for larger image

The post Two Verandas by
Gus Wüstemann appeared first on Dezeen.

World Architecture Festival 2012: this slideshow of images features the Plaza Espana, a public square above an underground museum in Tenerife by Menis Arquitectos, which won the award in the new and old category at the World Architecture Festival this week.

The space created by the demolition of an old building in the town of Adeje allowed the architects to create the new square, which also opens up a view of the surrounding Barranco del Infierno, or ‘Hell’s Gorge’ ravine.

Sliced indents help rainwater to naturally drain off the surface of the square, while cracked openings around the concrete sidewalls let light penetrate the museum buried below.

We’ve now announced winners for all the awards, including World Building of the Year, Future Project of the Year and Landscape of the Year, as well as all the category winners from day one and day two.

Dezeen is media partner for the World Architecture Festival, which took place at the Marina Bay Sands hotel and conference centre in Singapore. You can follow all our coverage of the event here, including a series of movies we filmed with programme director Paul Finch.

We’re also filming movies with some of the winners, which we’ll be featuring on Dezeen very soon.

Photography is by Simona Rota.

The post Slideshow: Plaza Espana
by Menis Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

News: following this week’s news that the UK government is restricting curved and glass walls on new school buildings, Aberrant Architecture‘s Kevin Haley and David Chambers are urging the Department of Education to look to the standardised schools designed by Oscar Niemeyer for Brazil in the 1980s, which the architects are presenting in the British Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale.

“Learning lessons from school-building in Brazil helps us develop the new ideas that are sorely needed to improve the design and production of school buildings in the UK,” said Chambers, while Haley explained how the pair are ”using the research we have collected to investigate the design potential for a similar approach for the UK.”

The standardised ‘baseline’ templates for primary and secondary schools published this week place restrictions on room sizes, storey heights and building shapes for 261 replacement school buildings planned across the UK, as part of a bid to cut costs.

In response Haley has said: ”In Brazil, the design of the 508 Integrated Centres of Public Education (CIEPs) was not simply standardised to reduce costs. The highly ambitious design, shared by each school, induces a global perception of a standard, a new standard – a standard of high quality.”

Above: Animating Education at the British Pavilion

Like Brazil’s CIEPs, Haley proposes that the UK should “allow our schools to become more open to their context” and suggests that “each region could create its own standardised design, incorporating local cultural and climatic requirements.”

“The idea that every community, from suburb to favela, can take pride in first-class architecture, giving every child the same opportunities, is certainly a compelling ideal, especially today, when modern society in Brazil, as well as increasingly in the UK, is more and more divided between rich and poor,” said Haley.

Above: Animating Education at the British Pavilion

Aberrant Architecture’s initial research is documented in their exhibition “Animating Education” at the biennale, where they are showing models to represent each of the CIEPs completed in Brazil.

Read more about the government restrictions in our earlier story.

See more stories about Aberrant Architecture »

Here’s the full statement from Kevin Haley:

The pressing need in the UK to build new primary schools to address overcrowded classrooms and growing competition for school places thus begs the question: what lessons can we learn from the CIEPs example? Which of the ideas championed by Brazil should we adopt and which ideas can we build upon?

Above: Animating Education at the British Pavilion

In the 1980s, Rio de Janeiro, much like the UK now, had limited money to spend on education. In response to this, Oscar Niemeyer put forward a standardized design for the CIEPs. The strong design of his principle educational building, prefabricated to ensure consistent quality, contained architectural spaces, using strong durable materials that were specifically designed to support, help and enhance the educational curriculum. Architectural additions such as the dedicated sports hall, library, canteen & rooftop housing spaces, supported and enhanced the recreational, cultural, nutritional & residential aspects of the full time program. These standardised elements could be arranged in multiple configurations in order to respond to varying site conditions.

Money saved through standardisation could subsequently be invested into the curriculum. Schools could offer a full time curriculum available from 7am – 10pm. CIEP programs not only respected students’ cultures but also enhanced them. Some subjects were not taught if they were not beneficial to the class of children. Other subjects were therefore introduced, creating a personalised curriculum. Such an idea could no doubt also be used to address the increasingly culturally diverse communities of the UK.

The full time curriculum helped working parents avoid expensive childcare, a very pertinent problem in the UK today. It also gave those from poorer backgrounds access to a wider range of cultural stimuli. Three meals a day, designed by a nutritionist, helped the diets of some of the undernourished children. It could be argued that childhood obesity, rather than undernourishment, is the problem in the UK. But in any case, being offered the option of three healthy meals a day would no doubt make a huge difference in a lot of cases.

Above: Animating Education at the British Pavilion

Each region of the UK could create its own standardised design, incorporating local cultural and climatic requirements. The constant would be the full time education and the commitment to taking care of the children’s individual needs.

In Brazil, it was put to us that the design of the 508 CIEPs was not simply standardized to reduce costs. The highly ambitious design, shared by each school, induces a global perception of a standard, a new standard – a standard of high quality. The high architectural standard on the outside subsequently encourages a perception of high quality education on the inside. The idea that every community, from suburb to favela, can take pride in first-class architecture, giving every child the same opportunities, is certainly a compelling ideal – especially today, when modern society in Brazil, as well as increasingly in the UK, is more and more divided between rich and poor.

Whilst we understand the arguments for standardisation of the CIEPs it would be interesting to see how you could adjust the model school a little bit more, to better suit each individual site. Perhaps this can be achieved by starting with the CIEP model of having a main classroom block and regular CIEP accessories, such as the sports hall, library building or swimming pool, and then being able to add to or change some of these accessories later on.

Above: Animating Education at the British Pavilion

A very interesting strategy would be to allow our schools to become more open to their context. Perhaps these new accessories could create additional openness between the school and its surroundings, placing the School in the context of its neighbourhood rather than as some kind of alien visitor.

Take a covered playground as an example, a more strategic solution could be if it worked more as a city square and brought more people into the schools. This idea starts to become interesting in the UK context because this space could fill the role of a public square, which is often non-existent in many British suburbs.

Since the school is arguably the most important public building in our communities it could start to provide more functions related for the common use. School accessories could include an ‘IT room’ as well as a multi-purpose arts and culture building, which could then be used for theatre, dance and martial arts, as well as provide a space for filming and editing movies. Such a space would not only appeal to the students but also to their parents as well.

The post The UK can “learn lessons from school-building
in Brazil” says Aberrant Architecture appeared first on Dezeen.