Hasta La Ideas

The roof of this extended house in Melbourne sweeps outwards to create an exterior canopy and curves steeply upwards over a double-height dining room.

Clifton Hill House was refurbished and extended by Australian architect Sharif Abraham to provide new living areas and bathrooms.

The curves of the roof fold down into the living rooms and are wrapped in striped black and brown veneer.

The bowed ceilings of the new bathrooms are covered in either black or bronze tiles, matching the walls.

A door from the bronze bathroom leads to a decked courtyard, which in turn leads up to a terrace on the roof.

Two other Melbourne houses recently featured on Dezeen are a steel-plated bunker with a lowering drawbridge-like flap and a cantilevering concrete residence that appears to balance on top of a bronze garden wall – see all our stories about Australian houses here.

Photography is by Matthew Stanton.

Here are some more details from Sharif Abraham:

Clifton Hill House

Located on a site with two street frontages, about 5 Km from the central business district, the house is part original and part addition- linked by a corridor and separated by a courtyard.

The original fronts a picturesque street-scape, rebuilt in sympathy with its Art Deco architecture.

The new work, containing the living spaces, is designed to operate as a facade to the rear street and as “sculptural form” to a future garden. It is constructed of a series of dynamic volumes oriented to capture sunlight to the interior.

Conceptually, the interior is an abstraction in black and white- curved black veneer punctuates the space vertically and white walls modulate the space horizontally.

Although the use of curves connects with the natural form of the tree, bending the timber across its grain introduces tension and abstraction not normally associated with “feature” decoration.

The timber is sourced from the trunk of a single tree- allowing the entire variation of natural grain to be represented. The outside of the trunk, where the grain is younger, is located high in the space and it progressively descends to the joinery and intimate spaces where the core is dense and dark.

The exterior is detailed to reflect the finesse of a line drawing. Edges are defined by aluminium sections giving the mass a lightness of tectonic representation. In some instances steel windows are positioned to sit in line with the façade so as to appear drawn on the wall rather than penetrating the wall.

A corridor with a continuous fluorescent beam intervenes the original part of the house, and connects the living spaces with two new bathrooms.

The first bathroom is clad in black tiles. The universal and consistent application of the tiles, which also includes the ceiling, alludes to an idea of cave, whilst its blackness visually magnifies and exaggerates the occupant’s naked flesh.

The other bathroom, finished in reflective bronze tiles, is open to the courtyard. Here the tiles were chosen because of their sensitivity to change in natural light, allowing the “mood” of the exterior to be represented throughout the day.

When one closes the door of these spaces its as if they exist independent of the utility of domestic life, allowing a moment to engage in an intimate dialogue with the new architecture.

Architect: Sharif Abraham Architects
Location: Melbourne Australia
Main Contractor: Rossi Constructions
Structural Engineer: Kennedy Cox

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Cité de l’Océan et du Surf by Steven Holl and Solange Fabião	V-House by GAAGA	Moebius House by Tony Owen Partners

The roof of a cafe pavilion in a German town cemetery is edged with both round and pointed arches.

Designed by German studio Architekten Martenson und Nagel Theissen, the building contains three separate dining rooms for cemetery visitors and funeral parties.

A barrel-vaulted ceiling covers one of the rooms, whilst the second has a tented ceiling and the third is mono-pitched overhead.

Dolomite stone was sprinkled into poured concrete to create a terrazzo-like floor inside the cafe.

Mirrored glass surrounds the facade of the timber-framed pavilion, reflecting the surrounding plane trees during the day.

Two other buildings designed to house funerals have been featured on Dezeen this year – see also a crematorium of circular structures surrounded by granite blocks and a funeral home arranged around four courtyards.

Photography is by Brigida González.

Here is some additional text from Architekten Martenson und Nagel Theissen:

Cafe Pavilion, Düren – A Moulded Space

Site and Commission

The town cemetery in the Eastern part of Düren has taken on the role of a public park. Before, there was nowhere for visitors to the cemetery to shelter nor for large or small funeral ceremonies to take place.

The new cemetery and café pavilion is a space where people can encounter each other when things are out of the ordinary. They can grieve together, exchange memories and look for refuge, which they will find under a multifaceted ceiling landscape.

Diversity in Unity

The architecture of the pavilion unfolds out of a neutral, nondescript, square ground plan. Three closed volumes have been inserted to accommodate the service facilities of the pavilion; they structure the space and divide the ground plan into three areas, without blocking them off from one another. Each of the three areas, which all receive visitors, is characterised by archetypical roof shapes and varying room heights, combining to form one large space.

The barrel vault, the mono-pitch roof and the tented roof of the visitor areas together form a manifold, continuous ceiling landscape, which offers refuge and connects the visitor areas to form a flowing unified space; it also provides richly diverse views into the surrounding park.

The landscape profile created by these roof shapes can be read on the façade; it connects the individual exterior elevations of the building with one another.

Structure and Materiality

The simple materials applied, give this pavilion clarity and uniqueness. Dolomite stone from the Alps was sprinkled into the reinforced concrete floor slab while it was being poured to give the floor of the pavilion a lively, terrazzo-like feeling after it was sanded.

Pre-produced timber elements form the walls and the ceiling landscape, giving the interior spaces a homogenous, monolithic appearance.

The large roof volume, which covers the pavilion and accommodates the ventilation pipes, has been shaped using a timber framework. The façade of the roof is formed by Kerto panels, which also bear largeformat panes of glass; these are highly reflective to give the mourners the necessary intimacy.

During the day, the pavilion interlaces with the surrounding greenery, which is extended by its reflection in the glass façade. This effect is reversed at night when the façade becomes transparent and the interior space dominates the appearance of the building.

The colour scheme of the pavilion is based on the colour of the dignified plane trees, which characterise the cemetery park; this finds expression in silver-glazed timber surfaces, oxidised aluminium windows, and greenish-coloured glazing.

See also:

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Trail House by Anne Holtrop	Faculty Club by Shift architecture	Parking Attendant’s Pavilion by Jean-Luc Fugier

Open-plan rooms of subtly different proportions are created by an off-centre courtyard in this square house in rural Japan.

The single-storey residence by Tokyo-based Naoi Architecture & Design Office has sliding doors in the exterior walls that open the house up to the surrounding garden.

Grass mounds shelter the house and define the limits of the garden.

A cloak of black timber screens the building at the rear, surrounding an outdoor storage area for bins and bicycles.

Other Japanese houses from the Dezeen archive include one composed of four separate blocks clad in black-stained cedar and another that is split into a series of rooms and platforms – see all our stories about Japanese houses here.

Photography is by Hiroshi Ueda.

Here are some more details from the architects:

Doughnut House

This project was a residential building for a husband-and-wife couple in rural Ibaraki prefecture.

The area surrounding the generously-sized plot was not heavily built up, giving the site a calm sense of privacy without too much of the noise, threat of crime and other stresses associated with the city.

The adjacent areas consisted of a mix of fields and houses, many of which were located on plots of land whose boundaries were not clearly demarcated from each other. With these conditions in mind, we decided to create a home that would consist of “an open space with ambiguous borders and boundaries.”

We started by encircling the perimeter of the site with greenery and embankments in order to demarcate the boundaries of the property in a loose fashion, and built a one-storey house that would be covered and hidden by them.

In this way, we were able to create a site that makes no distinctions whatsoever between its interior and exterior, or between the architecture and its surrounding environment. The embankments serve as a catalyst to produce changes in the landscape visible from the interior, as well as the view from the outside of the house.

The flat, level surface of the site gives the residence a functional layout, while the internal courtyard produces a sensation of depth and fluidity within the house.

Situated at a slight distance from the center of the roof, the courtyard also produces variations in the gradient of the ceiling and configuration of the rooms, giving rise to subtle gradations in the overall spatial properties of the house.

A sense of dialogue between the interior and exterior is reiterated in the internal courtyard and various spaces underneath the eaves of the roof, allowing sunlight and wind to pass through the space.

We also used the various fittings, eaves and dirt floor as tools for manipulating the boundaries within the house, which maintained both a sense of distance from its surroundings as well as a certain relationship to them.

By emphasizing the supporting function of the roof and keeping all the sliding doors and other fittings fully open, the interior of the house acquires a certain spatial intensity. The view from the outside, on the other hand, gives the impression of a wide mantle that covers the entire house.

All of these measures allowed us to ensure that the residence would have a sense of spacious comfort where both nature and architecture are accorded equal value.

In the future, we hope to continue building homes conducive to this sort of luxury and comfort, creating a simple sort of architecture that seeks to actively open itself up to changes in the four seasons, shifts in the weather and the passage of time in a symbiotic relationship with nature, all without having to rely on the latest building technologies, machinery and devices.

Location: Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan
Date of Completion: 2010.8
Principal Use: Private House
Structure: Wooden

Building area: 114.56m2
Total Floor Area: 133.27m2
Design Period: 2009.6 – 2010.2
Construction Period: 2010. 3- 2010.8

Architecture and Landscape Design: Naoi Architecture & Design Office
Structural Engineer: Inoue Structural Engineers

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Tree House by Mount Fuji Architects Studio	Belly House by Tomohiro Hata	Duplex House by Hidehiro Fukuda

Pyramidal chimneys perforated by square windows draw light into the playrooms of a Japanese nursery by Archivision Hirotani Studio.

Top: photograph by Archivision Hirotani Studio

The pointed skylights provide the single-storey Leimondo Nursery School with high ceilings in each of the seven playrooms, as well as in the children’s bathroom.

Openings of assorted shapes create windows and doors through the internal walls of the nursery.

A chair has been mounted on the ceiling of one playroom, whilst five differently coloured clocks line the wall of another.

Located in the city of Nagahama, the nursery provides daycare for children up to the age of five.

Other preschools featured on Dezeen in recent months include a Japanese school filled with overlapping arches and an Italian kindergarten split into house-shaped blocks – see all our stories about nurseries and kindergartens here.

See also: a shimmering copper-clad beauty parlour also designed by Archivision Hirotani Studio.

Photography is by Kurumata Tamotsu, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here are some more details from Archivision Hirotani Studio:

The “Leimondo” Nursery School in Nagahama

This nursery school for children, from years zero to five years, stands on the outskirts of Nagahama city in Shiga prefecture.

The school has been planned as a single-storey structure with a feeling of transparency between each of the spaces as well as the exterior landscape and, the “House of Light”,as we call it, has been placed in the main nursery area.

What we mean by the “House of Light” are conical, square light-wells of different shapes, different color and facing different directions in the high ceiling bringing in various “lights” into the interior space, changing with the time and the seasons.

The children may be able to feel the changes of these “lights”, even chase them and play with them, and to enjoy this gift of “light” in their daily activities.

Above: photograph by Archivision Hirotani Studio

Furthermore, the shape of the “House of Light” may be seen from the outside as its unique silhouettes are outlined against the almost unchanging rural scenery, providing it with a little more character.

Project Name: Leimond-Nagahama Nursery School
Location: Nagahama, Shiga, Japan
Use: Nursery School

Site Area: 5625.40 m²
Building Area: 690.99 m²
Gross Floor Area: 600.73 m²

Building Scale: 1 story
Structure: Steel
Maximum Height: 9.055 m²

Design Year: 2010
Completion Year: 2011

Architect: Hirotani Yoshihiro and Ishida Yusaku / Archivision Hirotani Studio
Client: Social Welfare Corporation Lemonkai

Structural Engineers: Umezawa structural engineers
Mechanical Engineers : Azu planning
General Contractors: K.K.Okuda Koumuten

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Alte Schule Winterbach by Archifaktur	Kindergarten Terenten by Feld72	Kindergarten in Rosales del Canal by Magén

This roof of this sea-facing holiday house in Perth jolts up and down to create four irregular gables.

Recently completed by Australian architects Iredale Pedersen Hook, the single-storey house is externally clad in sheets of fibre-cement.

Terraces on the north, south and west elevations provide residents with at least one outdoor area sheltered from the winds at any time of year.

Iredale Pedersen Hook previously designed a house extension with folding surfaces of corrugated metal and glass – see our earlier story here.

Other Australian houses recently featured include a steel-plated bunker with a drawbridge-like flap and a cliff-top house inspired by a Picasso painting – click here to see all our stories about houses in Australia.

Photography is by Peter Bennetts.

Here are some more details from Iredale Pedersen Hook:

Houses

Inhabiting two platforms- one flat and one undulating.

Located at Florida Beach Western Australia, this design emphasises and focuses on the immense Indian Ocean. All space is aligned and extruded through a strict dialogue of plan and section revealing the intensity and variety of this great ocean.

This is a modern day holiday house only one hour from the capital of Western Australia and surrounded by the sprawling Perth suburbia. We are interested in the past and rapidly disappearing holiday homes that once dominated the nearby landscape, houses that embodied the weekender experience designed with restraint, economy and robustness.

This house captures these dying qualities while screening the occupants from the emerging suburban houses and protecting them from the strong winds and storms. A deck is created on each of the cardinal points allowing the occupants to live externally any time of the year.

Our reference point for the design was found in a sketch by the great Danish architect Jorn Utzon, an image of people congregating on the beach under the dense, stormy Copenhagen sky. Uzton translated this in to the section of a church creating a mystical interior; we translated this in to the section of a holiday house that intensifies the experience of the ocean.

The section undulates in relationship to the plan form; each space includes an undulation that is eventually revealed at the beach side as a series of undulations connecting the living, dining and kitchen spaces to the dynamic ocean environment. The section extrudes from the beach end to the street side, those spaces that do not contain a direct view to the ocean maintain the memory of the ocean view through the continuing section.

External cladding is a strictly controlled ribbon of uncut compressed fibre cement sheeting and rough sawn plywood panels, the plywood inhabit the deck spaces and the CFC provides a durable exterior to storm exposed areas. This material restraint references the past holiday homes. While the exterior is tactile and articulated the interior is smooth and sculptured with subtle variations of white paint colour and gloss levels differentiating interior elements and reflecting the exterior.

A continuous band of high performance glass articulates the wall cladding from the roof, the roof overhang is carefully sized to exclude summer sun and admit low-level winter sun. The stretched western overhang excludes the low level sun allowing the occupants to engage in comfort with the setting sun.

The house appears to gently hover above the ground, a recessed concrete platform creates this illusion, the platform connects this house to the remaining holiday houses and the Dawesville Cut bridge, this is first platform that one passes and signifies the beginning of the holiday experience.

Constructed almost entirely of plantation pine timber, prefabricated and transported to Florida, the raw structure appeared like the carcass of a great whale. The use of steel is minimised to a few select areas where thin columns support the dense undulating roof creating tension in the context of the ocean view.

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The hovering platform is finished with recycled Jarrah and continues between the interiors and exterior as one large plane, the holiday experience unfolds on this platform. Finished internally with Whittle Wax and externally with Sikkens oil, this platform will slowly reveal the marks of the beach and holiday lifestyle.

A native landscape garden surrounds this platform, carefully screening the surrounding suburban houses and providing an additional filter to the Western sun and Indian Ocean. The sound of the sea breeze transforms into an eerie whistle as it passes through the Casuarinas (Weeping Beach Sheoaks) reinforcing the complex, intense and delightful relationship to this environment creating a very West Australian experience.

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Riverside Museum by Zaha Hadid Architects	House on the Flight of Birds by Bernardo Rodrigues	Casadetodos by Veronica Arcos