Hasta La Ideas

Anemone tentacles moving beneath the surface of the ocean influenced the latticed facade of this student housing block by French studio Atelier Fernandez & Serres at an oceanic observatory in the eastern Pyrénées (+ slideshow).

Atelier Fernandez & Serres designed the International Accommodation Centre for the Oceanological Observatory of Banyuls-sur-Mer, a coastal science facility that forms part of the Paris-based Université Pierre et Marie Curie.

The six-storey building accommodates 74 short-term residences for travelling students and researchers, behind an ornate coral-pink concrete screen that conceals the interiors whilst allowing light and ventilation to pass through the building.

Bedrooms are located on the four upper floors of the building. Corridors run lengthways around the edges, sandwiched between the rooms and the latticed facade.

“The colourful concrete mesh is at the same time a balustrade and a visual filter to the sea,” said the architects. “It provides a wall that guarantees the intimacy of users, bedrooms and walkways.”

Communal spaces and lounge areas occupy the two lower floors of the building. These include a canteen with a long strip window, which is the only interruption to the otherwise continuous facade.

The architects cast the components of the facade onsite then arranged them in irregular patterns to recreate the appearance of coral tentacles.

“We developed the facades using a limited amount of distinct shapes,” they explained. “These strands were then assembled in modules according to a simple mathematical algorithm which creates a vibration in the shadows and the matter.”

The building was one of 14 projects shortlisted for the AR+D Awards for Emerging Architecture 2013 last month.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Read on for more information from Atelier Fernandez & Serres Architectes:

International Accommodation Centre for the Oceanological Observatory of Banyuls-sur-Mer

This project of an accommodation centre consists in a restaurant, working space for scientific research and seventy-four.

The building is part of a complex of facilities which include the oceanological research centre and observatory of Banyuls-sur-Mer, in France. This observatory is located in the middle of the marine natural reserve of Cerbères-Banyuls, in the Pyrénées orientales department. Its purpose, as a European scientific research and training centre, is to accommodate scientists and students from all over the world during short research and experimentation missions.

The building is located on the seaside and continues along the existing topography, be it of the sky, the ground or the horizon. It reinvents the relationship between the view and the landscape, and accompanies the building height plan of the city. It reinvents the relationship between the view and the landscape, and accompanies the building height plan of the city.

Its ochre tones reflect the surrounding hills and the nature of the soil that comprises the cultivated terraces of the hinterlands. These hills covered with vineyards tower above the sea and glint with the deep earthy hues of iron oxides.

The project, a rectangular monolith entirely coated in a gown of pink-ochre coral, faces the marina. It also marks the limits of the shore and the city.

Behind this undulating envelope, access to the bedrooms is provided by large peripheral walkways that also serve as balconies for the accommodations. These walkways are covered with a self-consolidating concrete mesh inspired by a graphic, light and see-through coral design.

We developed the facades using a limited amount of distinct shapes, called strands, that were casted on site. These strands were then assembled in modules according to a simple mathematical algorithm which creates a vibration in the shadows and the matter.

The restaurant is on the second floor. Its presence is highlighted by a large breach in the coral mesh, a window inviting the landscaping inside, and offering a panoramic view of the horizon and the open sea.

The colourful concrete mesh is at the same time a balustrade and a visual filter to the sea. It provides a wall that guarantees the intimacy of users, bedrooms and walkways. It also features openings which offer a subtle variation to the framing of the near and far landscape. The gaze is attracted from the inside to the outside and reveals the landscape. The views become rhythmic, accentuated by the movements and the different uses.

The international accommodation centre of Banyuls sur Mer draws its energy from the Mediterranean Sea. Beyond simple matter, the project falls within a poetic and scientific approach in order to reveal the landscape.

Location: Avenue du Fontaulé, 66 650 Banyul- sur-Mer, France
Cost: 4 900 000 euros HT
Surface: 2980 m2
Program: Residence (74 bedrooms), restaurant, workrooms, parking
Client: Laboratoire Arago – Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris
Architect: Atelier Fernandez & Serres
Office engineering: GRONTMIJ Sudéquip, Aix en Provence

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by Atelier Fernandez & Serres appeared first on Dezeen.

Swiss firm Haberstroh Schneider Architekten has extended a house in Basel by adding a chain of three rooms, creating a new semi-enclosed courtyard that is filled with stepping stones (+ slideshow).

Haberstroh Schneider Architekten removed a number of previous extensions to reduce Haus von Arx to its original size, before adding the new volumes to the western edge of the building to provide a home office and library.

The architects designed the courtyard and stepping stones to allow the family to move between the existing house and the extension.

“We wanted this area, as small as it is, to be a space for contemplation, where movements slow down and one is not able to rush through,” they told Dezeen.

A sheltered porch creates a separate entrance for the extension, leading through to a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and then on into the small office.

The architects also added a guest bedroom and bathroom above the house’s existing garage, as well as a new swimming pool and pavilion on the east side of the building.

The exterior of the extensions is finished in white render, contrasting with the grainy grey-painted facade of the main house.

Existing living rooms and bedrooms were left to their original layout, but a curving staircase with iron balustrades was painted in a deep shade of green.

“We wanted to enhance the very elegant stairs so we decided to paint them a dark green that, besides contrasting with the rest of the house, is a colour used traditionally on the interior of historical, wealthy and important houses,” added the architects.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Haus von Arx

The former building – originally built in 1951 – had been extended, converted and renovated several times over the past years. As a consequence, it presented itself as an accumulation of heterogeneous rooms and styles.

In discussions with the new owner we developed the idea of reducing the building to both its original size and primary qualities.

The dismantling of all the old additional elements called for a controlled addition of new expansions.

These new volumes were clustered at the western side of the plot, touching the old building only in one place.

While the old building had been freed from any disturbing elements and thus restored to its classic elegance, the new cubes present a composition of simple and plastically reduced volumes.

The cubes, according to their different position, spacing and size, create fascinating passageway- and patio-situations with the old building.

To the south-western side of the plot we removed the former winter garden. In its place we constructed a generous, open garden pavilion which works well as mediating element between old building, pool area and the garden.

Architects: Haberstroh Schneider Architekten, Basel
Planners: Proplaning AG, Basel Schnetzer Puskas Ingenieure AG, Basel ProEngineering AG, Basel Stokar + Partner AG, Basel Locher, Schwittay Gebäudetechnik GmbH, Basel August + Margrith Künzel Landschaftsarchitekten AG, Binningen
Place: Binningen BL, Schweiz
Year of construction: 2012

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inside by Haberstroh Schneider Architekten appeared first on Dezeen.

Portuguese studio Belém Lima Arquitectos has perched a pair of gabled cabins on the edge of a dam in northern Portugal to provide a public boathouse and cafe (+ slideshow).

Belém Lima Arquitectos positioned the cabins at opposite ends of a wooden jetty alongside Bagaúste Dam in Lamago.

The new facilities serve the increasing number of tourists travelling past the dam on their way to wineries in the nearby Douro Valley.

“The location was already used in the summer but the facilities were very poor,” the architects told Dezeen.

“The Mayor of Lamego suggested building a new wharf, a bar area and a warehouse for canoes as well as the entire surrounding area,” they added.

The single-storey cabins have sharply pointed rooftops and their exteriors are clad with aluminium panels.

The combined cafe and bar is filled with tables and chairs for customers, which spill out onto a covered terrace.

Glass windows along one side of the cafe offer views out across the dam, while ramps outside lead down to the water’s edge.

The new boathouse sits at the other end of the jetty. Exposed diagonal braces support the walls, interspersed with metal hooks for storing public rowing boats and canoes.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

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Belém Lima Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

A raw concrete interior is contained behind the white limestone facade of this townhouse in Lisbon by ARX Portugal (+ slideshow).

Slotted in amongst a row of traditional Lisbon townhouses, the five-storey residence was designed by local studio ARX Portugal with the same tall and narrow proportions as its neighbours.

The facade of the building is an arrangement of white limestone blocks, broken up by a grid of protruding piers and narrow windows.

“Just as most of Lisbon’s old buildings, it is a flat elevation whose expressiveness comes from its rhythmic nature and the light-and-shade effects produced with the backing-up of its surfaces,” said the architects.

Contrastingly, the rear facade is made up entirely of windows, fronted by steel balconies that overlook a secluded garden.

Walls, ceilings and staircases inside the house are bare concrete. “The precision of the design as well as the inclusion of two doors in most rooms endows the five small floors with a sense of a generous space and gives its dwellers a strong feeling of fluidity and freedom,” added the architects.

The main street-level entrance to the house leads onto the storey above the garden, which primarily encompasses a garage and living room.

The dining room and kitchen are located on the floor below and open out to the paved terrace and lawn.

The first and second floors accommodate bedrooms and bathrooms, while an office occupies the uppermost floor.

There’s also a small roof patio, featuring a small bench and a solitary tree.

ARX Portugal has used bare concrete in the construction of several residences in Portugal. Others include a top-heavy house with a glazed lower storey and a house with gaping chasms that drop down to basement courtyards.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

House in Lisbon

The concept for this house emerges from a reflection on the identity of Lisbon architecture, a recurring type of 6-metre-wide and 15-meter-long deep house, ending in a small garden in the back. It is a 5-storey building with two radically different elevations: one “public” in white lioz limestone (the most used in Lisbon) and the one in the back, in glass, connected by an interior world in exposed concrete, punctuated by birch wood elements.

The elevation obviously follows on the Lisbon tradition, stressed further by the windows’ rhythmic structure, opened in a span system created by horizontal strips and vertical bars – characteristic of the city architecture.

Just as most of Lisbon’s old buildings, it is a flat elevation whose expressiveness comes from its rhythmic nature and the light-and-shade effects produced with the backing-up of its surfaces. This apparatus brings the elevation a sense of time, expressed by the change in the shadows throughout the day: from a more subtle morning light – with no direct sunlight – to the strong contrasting afternoon shadows.

Besides a straightforward concern in aligning the elevation with the surrounding lines, the design stresses an obvious contrast between the block-type bottom, and the more dematerialised crest.

If on the one hand the ground floor responds defensively to the narrowness of the street, combined with the fact that neighbours park their cars in front of doors and windows, on the other hand the top comes out much lighter and dematerialised: it is a space at once interior and exterior – a top patio allowing the transition between the lower building, to the south, and the higher one, to the north. Nevertheless, despite its intimate nature, the space allows a view over the surrounding landscape and to the far-off Christ the King statue to the south, along the street line.

On the back elevation we have explored the extreme transparency which extends the interior onto the exterior and opens up the view to the garden – where a splendid Linden tree takes centre stage – leading the eyes from the top floors over Lisbon’s hills, the Tagus river, and the South Bank. Radically opened to the exterior, the generous morning light that floods in directly is balanced by the grey concrete making up all the surfaces.

Inside, the precision of the design, as well as the inclusion of two doors in most rooms, endows the five small floors with a sense of a generous space, and give its dwellers a strong feeling of fluidity and freedom.

The constructive research for this project provides an example in which the whole structure shapes the space and becomes architecture in itself: the whole concrete structure, built with only 3 planes – two gables and a transversal plan – is set forth and designed to define the essential house space.

At once a natural and staged space, of both contemplation and living experience, the garden is expressed as an archeological site, where all layers of time, since the house was built, are present. Here, one can still see the ancient techniques that have raised thick stone walls (often recovered from other buildings), later brick overlays, mortar or paint, as well as the stones from the demolished house that have become pavement.

Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Project: 2010-2011
Construction: 2012-2013
Gross construction surface: 436 m2

Architecture: ARX Portugal, Arquitectos Lda. (José Mateus, Nuno Mateus)
Work Team: Isabel Gorjão Henriques, Miguel Torres, Joana Pedro, Sofia Raposo, Rodrigo Gorjão Henriques, Paulo Rocha
Structures: SAFRE, Projectos e Estudos de Engenharia Lda.
Electrical, telecommunications and security planning: Energia Técnica – Gabinete de Engenharia, Lda
Contractor: Manuel Mateus Frazão

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by ARX Portugal appeared first on Dezeen.

This house by architect Marlene Uldschmidt has been built into the side of a hill in Portugal and features a vertical light well that links its upper and lower floors (+ slideshow).

Located in the fishing village of Ferragudo, the split-level building was designed by Portuguese studio Marlene Uldschmidt Architects with layers of internal and external glass partitions that allow natural light through each of the rooms.

Interior and exterior staircases link the different levels of the sloping site, leading down from a staggered rear terrace to the two main floors of the house, and then further down to the entrance at street level.

“The difficult topography of the site meant that our concept would need to allow for the design of the internal space to strengthen the visual connection with the rest of the village and beyond,” said architect Marlene Uldschmidt.

Built on a narrow rectangular site, the glass, stone and wooden house is squeezed between a pair of neighbouring buildings on the hillside street.

“The challenge was to create a facade which would be a physical barrier between the public and private areas whilst enhancing the visual connection with the village and the river,” added the architect.

A small wooden door at street level leads into a long entrance hall on the ground floor, then through to the spacious master bedroom and the only two bathrooms in the house.

A flight of white stairs appears to grow out from the surface of one of the walls, leading to first-floor kitchen, dining and living room spaces.

The upstairs kitchen and dining area opens out to the rear terrace, which steps up to various gardens and patios.

A rectangular swimming pool, wooden sun deck and a private solarium complete this garden.

Other Portuguese houses featured on Dezeen include a weekend retreat created from farm buildings and animal pens, a house with its rooftop extended into the hillside and a home with a long stone wall and a folding timber facade.

See more Portuguese houses »
See more houses »

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Living Behind the Wall 

Our studio were excited to take on such an interesting project in the Fishing Village of Ferragudo, Portugal.

The historic centre of Ferragudo is an extremely sensitive area to work in and we believed that our intervention should be balanced harmonious and above all integrate with the surrounding architecture and history.

The studio decided to explore the concept of “LIVING BEHIND THE WALL” ! connection.

The challenge was to create a facade which would be a physical barrier between the public and private areas whilst enhancing the visual connection with the village and the river levels.

The difficult topography of the site meant that our concept would need to allow for the design of the internal space to strengthen their visual connection with the rest of the village and beyond.

The concept we chose was to use the changes of level within the site in order to achieve this goal.

Another challenge of this concept was to create a light and airy feeling within the building.

We created a vertical well of light that links all levels to achieve this.

In order to balance the simple white walls natural materials of wood and stone in earthy tones were chosen.

Author: ultramarino |marlene uldschmidt architects; Marlene Uldschmidt, Arq.a
Collaborating: Maurícia Bento, Arq.a
Location: Ferragudo, Algarve, Portugal
Area: 230 m2
Year: 2010-2013
Structure: Protecna Engineering Team
Carpentry: equipa quatro

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Uldschmidt Architects appeared first on Dezeen.