An austere concrete wall screens the transparent lower floor of this house in southern Brazil, while the overhanging upper storey is masked behind a layer of timber slats (photos by Leonardo Finotti + slideshow).
Designed by MAPA, an architecture collective based in Brazil and Uruguay, XAN House is a summer residence located near the beach in Xangrilá, a small town south of Porto Alegre.
The ground floor is dedicated to the family’s communal activities while the upstairs level contains bedrooms, and the architects chose to highlight this difference through the use of different external materials.
A single-storey concrete wall stretches across the site, from the north-west to the south-east, screening the ground floor from the street. Behind it, the rest of the walls feature floor-to-ceiling glazing that allows residents to open their living spaces out to the landscape.
“A summer house is a space full of freedom, a place to enjoy an outdoor life,” said the architect. “This fact conditioned the way the project was faced.”
The positioning of furniture divides the space up into different zones for cooking, dining, reading and relaxing. The ceiling overhead is exposed concrete, while the floor is covered with tiles that continue outside the walls.
Upstairs, large balconies extend the length of the floor, creating overhangs that shelter both the front entrance and a rear patio. One balcony belongs to the master bedroom and en suite, while the other sits alongside two smaller bedrooms.
Both balconies and rooms are surrounded by the timber screen, but sections of it fold open to reveal windows.
“Visual filters in the expansion spaces next to bedrooms allow open-air experiences of another nature,” added the architect.
Laser-cut stainless steel creates an intricately patterned surface on the walls of this upgraded metro station in Amsterdam by architecture firm Maccreanor Lavington (+ slideshow).
Maccreanor Lavington‘s Rotterdam studio overhauled the 1970s Kraaiennest station in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, increasing its capacity and modernising its facilities.
The decorative steel screens surround the new ground-level entrance, allowing natural light to filter inside during the day. After dark, lights glowing from within transform the structure into a glowing beacon that makes it easy for locals to find.
“At night time the design allows the station to be a lantern for the local neighbourhood,” said the architect in a statement.
As well as the laser-cut panels surrounding the base of the station, the opaque upper walls are also made from stainless steel. The architect says this material will age well and need little maintenance.
Unlike the old station, which only offered stairs, the new facility incorporates a series of escalators to transport passengers up to the platform. This will help it offer regular transport to around 100,000 local residents.
The upgraded Kraaiennest station is the latest in a series of infrastructure improvements underway in the 1960s neighbourhood. It follows the 2008 completion of Grimshaw’s Bijlmer Station, which was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize.
Here’s a project description from Maccreanor Lavington:
New €14 million Metro Station completed in Amsterdam
London and Rotterdam based architecture firm, Maccreanor Lavington has completed a major new metro station in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The new 550m² station and 1,880m² platform in the neighbourhood of Bijlmermeer started on site in 2010 and sits on the site of the original station, built in 1970.
The metro station features a ground level entrance with new escalators to take passengers up to the platforms, a major improvement for citizens as the old station only had stairs. The ground level entrance provides the main focal point of the station with an elegant stainless steel facade with a floral design. The laser cut design allows plenty of natural light to flow through the entrance, helping the passenger journey to seamlessly flow from the external surroundings into the station.
At night time the design allows the station to be a lantern for the local neighbourhood, creating a sense of warmth on street level and creating an instantly recognisable feature for the station. The architects’ chose stainless steel for the external facade due to its durability and low maintenance enabling the station not to need constant upkeep.
Since the beginning of the late 1990s the area has seen massive investment transforming it from its previous negative public opinion and now making it a thriving suburb of Amsterdam.
Now completed, the station will be in use by over 100,000 residents in Bijlmermeer, a vast increase on the number of users from when the station first opened and completes one of the biggest urban regeneration projects in Europe in recent history.
The Rainforest Guardian Skyscraper rises above the canopy line to keep protective watch of the Amazon. The designs consists of a water tower, forest fire station, weather station, and scientific research lab. The lotus-shaped tower effectively captures rainwater to prevent fires, provide water to its inhabitants as well as irrigate the land in the dry season.
The lotus-shaped water tower is capable of capturing rainwater directly. The collected water is filtered and store in spare reservoirs. Using capillarity combined with active energy, the aerial roots with a distinct sponge-structure can absorb and store the excess water without disturbing the Amazon’s ecosystem. In the case of fire, firefighters fly to the scene and extinguish the fire with the collected water. In addition, the Guardian Skyscraper provides special scientific research laboratories for scientists to monitor the climate change and the ecosystem stability. The laborites also act as exhibition spaces for tourists to create environmental awareness.
Designers: Jie Huang, Jin Wei, Qiaowan Tang, Yiwei Yu, Zhe Hao
– Yanko Design Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (Guardian of the Amazon was originally posted on Yanko Design)
Bold orange windows punctuate the wooden facades of this angular apartment block that French studio Vous Êtes Ici Architectes has slotted between the existing buildings of a south Paris neighbourhood (+ movie).
The six-storey building was designed by Vous Êtes Ici Architectes to provide 11 social housing units beside a school in the 5th Arrondissement of the French capital, on a site previously occupied by a low-rise warehouse.
Rather than building across the entire site, the architects developed an irregularly shaped block that follows the rhythms of the surrounding architecture and frames a pair of gardens at the north and south-east edges.
These gardens also line up with the main road and pedestrian pathway that frame two edges of the site, helping to the reduce the visual impact of the structure.
“The building is set back from the street, allowing the sunlight to reach the school courtyard set across the street,” explained studio founders Alexandre Becker, Paul Pflughaupt and Julien Paulré. “This setup allows respiration and gives space back to the pedestrian passage.”
While some of the building’s walls are clad with timber planks, others are covered with pre-weathered zinc. At ground level, there are also walls of dark brickwork, which demarcate entrances.
Windows with orange frames add colour to the elevations. This feature is echoed in the building’s stairwells and corridors, where walls, floors and railings are uniformly painted in the same hue.
No more than three apartments are located on each floor and the angular shapes of the building give each home a non-standard shape.
“The created volumes allow different typologies for the apartments as well as creating views for all,” said the architects.
South-facing loggias allow apartments to benefit from sunlight during the peak of the day.
Graphic logos adorn doors to direct residents to bicycle storage and bin stores, while a grassy terrace is located on the roof.
Located in the Mouffetard area, Latin Quarter of Paris, our project aims to de-densify the heart of the city block in which it is located.
The building is set back from the street allowing the sunlight to reach the school courtyard set across the street. This setup allows respiration and gives space back to the pedestrian passage. The roof line is continuous and guaranties the continuity of the facades over the street. The set up on the plot is effective, the street is no longer only functional it has become sumptuous.
The construction is a unique volume that has been hollowed out. The recesses generate a course. They punctuate and follow our movements. The created volumes allow different typologies for the apartments as well as creating views for all. The project is more an architectural device than a sculpture.
The primary concrete structure supports wooden based facades. The envelope is of pre-aged zinc and wooden openwork cladding. The hall, stairs and landings are set up in a unique volume that has no partitions; the different levels are visually linked. Perambulation is naturally illuminated in the common spaces. Apartments have from two to three orientations. Hollow construction elements were refused. The apartments are luxurious.
A compact building, a well-insulated wooden structure, solar panels, double glazing windows, a planted roof terrace and loggias with a southern exposure allow us to respect the requirements of Paris’s Climate Plan and to reduce the ecological impact of the building. It is architecture of an efficient nature.
Developer: ELOGIE Architects: Vous Êtes Ici Architectes (A. Becker, J. Paulré, P. Pflughaupt) General contractor: Fayolle & Fils Technical engineering: FACEA Economist: BMA Environment engineering: ICADE
With all that surface area, it makes perfect sense that our skyscrapers should be doing double duty! A response to environmental pollution in urban areas, the Hyper Filter Skyscraper was designed to inhale carbon dioxide and other harmful gases in cities and exhale concentrated oxygen. The skin of the project is made out of long pipe filters that catch particles and store them for disposal or reuse later.
The glass-walled living areas of this house in Paredes, Portugal, are sandwiched between a top floor wrapped in opaque panels and a basement clad in rugged shale tiles (+ slideshow).
Named 07CBE House, the building was designed by local architecture studio Spaceworkers to create a home for a young family, with communal living spaces separated from the bedrooms and service areas.
The architects based their response on the design of traditional barns that feature a monolithic base for threshing – the process of beating grain to separate it from the chaff. This informed a series of pillars supporting a roof that appears to hover above the landscape.
“In the region, most vernacular buildings that punctuate the landscape are barns supporting agricultural activities, which normally rise from the floor using a pillar structure to create a sense of lack of gravity,” architect Henrique Marques told Dezeen.
“It was this tripartition of a monolithic base, an empty space that turns out to be functional, and a constructed element that stands out in the landscape giving a sense of protection and at the same time structural weakness that fascinated us,” Marques added.
The monolithic structure at the base of the house contains functional facilities including a garage, laundry, storage room and a swimming pool.
This level is predominantly clad in black shale tiles with a raw texture that enhances the rugged and utilitarian aesthetic.
The tiles contrast with the warm ipe wood used to clad the decking, walls and ceiling around the pool, which creates a welcoming space intended as an extension of the interior.
Above the stone-clad base, glass walls reinforce the reference to the open threshing floors of local barns and allow for views into and out of the home’s main family rooms.
“The public floor of the house is exposed to the outside through the huge glass windows which, besides ventilation and light input, allow us to explore the ideas of lightness and structural weakness that we sought,” Marques added.
A living and dining area on this floor is separated from the kitchen by a wall of the ipe wood, which is also used for a section of the north facade to create a contrast between its seemingly natural fragility and the solid mass of the storey above it.
The top floor houses the main private spaces behind an opaque facade punctuated by a series of terraces that allow light to reach the interior.
A pronounced cantilever enhances the impression that the solid volume is floating weightlessly above the ground and reaches outwards to make the most of views from the terraces around its edges.
Insulating composite panels were used to clad the upper storey, creating a seamless surface in the space between the structural concrete beams.
A fireplace contained in a faceted wall creates a focal point between the living area and dining room. Vinyl flooring has been used throughout the interior, while the walls are clad in plasterboard that has been painted white.
The idea of a vernacular architecture (forgotten) and how it seeks to form a clear speech between the landscape and programmatic needs is something that we always admire.
A very successful example of this discourse, are the structures to support agriculture (normally function barns/granary), which in a more or less random would punctuate the countryside, as blocks of ephemeral appearance that levitated on the ground.
It is precisely this idea of “gravitational lightness” that fascinates us and which is based the concept of this project.
Generally, the proposal make reference to the tripartite elements vernacular, the Base, with a static image of monoblock and megalithic, which contain the functions of a nonpublic space, the open area, where are all the public spaces of the house, and that explores the visual and physical relationship with the outside, and finally the Block “gravity” where private spaces are located.
Project: private building Size: 800m2 Address: Paredes Client: Private Author: spaceworkers® Principal architects: Henrique Marques, Rui Dinis Architects: Rui Rodrigues, Sérgio Rocha, Daniel Neto, Vasco Giesta José Carlos Finance director: Carla Duarte – cfo Engineer: aspp ENGENHEIROS, Lda
A motorway sign symbol of a church was translated directly into the structure of this roadside chapel on the outskirts of Wilnsdorf, Germany, by Frankfurt architects Schneider+Schumacher (+ slideshow).
The design for Siegerland Motorway Church was Schneider+Schumacher‘s winning entry to a competition seeking proposals for a chapel to be built on a site overlooking a busy motorway and surrounded by a hotel, petrol station and fast-food restaurant.
The building’s form draws on the visual language of its environs – particularly the standard icon used to depict a church on Germany’s road signs.
This stylised image is visible on two facades on either side of a square nave, which transitions into a long sloping walkway leading to the entrance.
“Whether approached from afar from the Dortmund direction, or from the motorway service area, the church represents a built version of the motorway church signage,” explained architect Michael Schumacher. “Even though its exterior form is abstract, it still signals in an immediate and direct way, ‘I am a church!'”
In a video describing the design process, Schumacher claims the abstract form also suggests other shapes, such as the folded paper of Japanese origami or the pointed ears worn by comic-book character Batman.
The timber structure of the outer walls was assembled from elements produced off site and incorporates laminated timber sections providing extra strength to the roof and towers.
Following assembly, the whole of the church and the entrance passage were sprayed with a white polyurethane damp-proofing material that unifies the faceted surfaces.
Windows on one side of the pointed spire-like towers draw natural light into a nave that features an organic cave-like structure, contrasting with the building’s geometric outer shell.
“The interior was meant to come as a surprise, contrary to the expectations raised by the exterior,” said Schumacher. “The exterior is abstract; the interior is warm, friendly, magical and sacred, transporting you to a different world.”
A structure made from 66 wooden ribs, developed using parametric computer modelling software, opens up from the entrance to create a high-vaulted dome above the altar.
The individual parts required to build the framework were optimally positioned on sheets of chipboard to minimise waste during the cutting process.
The wooden shapes slot together to create a rigid and self-supporting structure, which conceals the sacristy and storage spaces in gaps around its curved edges.
Oriented strand board – a type of engineered chipboard – was used for interior furnishings including simple boxy stools, a lectern and a candle stand.
Daylight from the windows is focused on the altar, podium and cross, which are painted white to give them an ethereal appearance.
Artificial lighting is hidden behind the latticed wooden structure and is designed to illuminate the space in the same way as the natural light that filters through the structure.
Coup de coeur pour cette maison en bois réalisée par l’équipe de Miró Rivera Architects. Cette résidence privée située à Austin, au Texas a été réalisée à l’aide de matériaux locaux et naturels contrastés par des lignes épurées en verre permettant à la lumière d’accéder à l’intérieur de la maison.
Cette maison à Kyoto, au Japon a été conçue par le bureau de conception Alts. En raison de sa faible largeur, la maison apparaît disproportionnée en hauteur. Les architectes ont donc choisi de mettre l’accent sur cette caractéristique en créant des portes et ouvertures à bout pointu.
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