Hasta La Ideas

This house in London by local studio De Matos Ryan sits within a sunken courtyard, surrounded by a secret flower garden (+ slideshow).

De Matos Ryan designed The Garden House for a pair of newlyweds who wanted extra living space for their seven children.

Situated in the garden of their Victorian house in Battersea, the new two-storey building was originally planned as an annex for the eldest children, but was redesigned to be more flexible following the arrival of a new baby.

“Given its location, we wanted the house to be distinctly different from the original house, bringing an element of surprise and delight when you discover it at the end of the garden,” architect Angus Morrogh-Ryan told Dezeen.

“The house is set within a sunken modernist courtyard garden, which allows its owners to escape the dramas of London and relax in a serene and calm setting,” Morrogh-Ryan explained.

Flowerbeds border the house and a canopy of trees offers privacy from the neighbouring properties. A secret raised garden also lies beyond the courtyard and features a hot tub at its centre.

The lower storey and courtyard are sunken below ground level, while a bridge connects the street to the main entrance above.

High-rise courtyard walls protect the property from risk of flooding by the nearby River Thames, framing an outdoor space where the family’s youngest children can play within sight of their parents.

On the ground floor, the outside wall continues into the property and glazed doors slide open to reveal an open-plan living and dining room.

A master bedroom faces the courtyard from this floor, while upstairs bedrooms are filled with natural light from skylights overhead.

“When designing for a family, the role of the architect is to create the right conditions; providing the best structuring of space with ventilation and light and to allow the family and their own personal preferences to flourish, bringing individual character and personality through use,” added Morrogh-Ryan.

Spotlights dotted around the courtyard light up the exterior at night.

Photography is by Hufton + Crow.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

The Garden House, London

De Matos Ryan has completed The Garden House, a new 179 sq m house at the far end of the rear garden of a Victorian house in Battersea, South West London.

A modern family conundrum was the unexpected catalyst for the creation of the new annex – the immediate need of a newly married couple bringing two families together and requiring additional space to accommodate seven children.

The practice was originally briefed to create a garden annex to replace a potting shed and greenhouse that the older children could move in to. The arrival of an eighth child midway through the design stages prompted a rethink of this arrangement and resulted in a change of plan; the calm and convenience of the new annex was deemed to be the ideal retreat for parents with a new baby and younger children whilst the main house would become the older children’s domain.

The design of The Garden House has been driven by three challenges including the clients’ ambitious requirement for increased space, the need to incorporate compulsory flood-proofing measures due to the site’s close proximity to the River Thames, as well as complying with planning restrictions to prevent the overlooking of neighbouring properties.

The new house comprises five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a study and a kitchen/living room. The garden was excavated to create a high-sided watertight concrete courtyard, which increased the floor plate of the property without affecting the single storey appearance at garden level. The living areas are at courtyard level and benefit from full height glazing; the bedrooms are arranged at first floor level in clean white volumes that gently float above the glazing.

A bridge at garden level bisects the white box and marks the entrance to the property. Windows are discreetly located on the side and rear elevations to comply with planning restrictions and frame views out. A combination of internal lightwells and rooflights ensure that the bedrooms are flooded with natural daylight. Top lit hallways and bathrooms connect the volumes.

It is the sunken courtyard, characterised by white pigmented concrete walls and floor that defines The Garden House and lends the house an exotic sensibility. Sliding doors open up the corner of the house offering a seamless transition to a tranquil enclosed landscape.

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nestles in a secret garden appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: French botanist Patrick Blanc, the inventor of green walls, explains how he created the hanging gardens on the outside of Herzog & de Meuron‘s new Pérez Art Museum in our next movie from Miami.

The new Pérez Art Museum Miami by Herzog & de Meuron, which opened last month, features clusters of columns covered with plants suspended from the building’s large overhanging roof.

Blanc explains that the Swiss architects approached him to create these vertical gardens after they successfully worked together on the CaixaForum arts centre in Madrid, completed in 2008.

“We had already covered a wall totally with plants in Madrid,” says Blanc. “Here, for the museum, they asked me: ‘Do you think it’s possible to have the plants on columns instead?’ I said: ‘Yes, of course.'”

Unlike a green wall, which faces in one direction, Blanc had to use different types of plants on each side of the hanging columns.

“For the outside surface, facing the sea, [the plants] have to face full sun, they have to face strong winds, sometimes salt and sometimes hurricanes,” he says. “The side facing the museum is very dark, so [I used] shade-loving plants.”

Blanc claims the key to creating a successful vertical garden is the diversity of species used.

“I use many, many different species,” he explains. “Here, in Miami, I used 80 different species. Sometimes, I use up to 400. When you have so many species, it looks much more natural.”

Vertical gardens are more than just aesthetically pleasing, Blanc goes on to claim.

“Because the roots are growing on the surface, [rather than into the ground], all of the micro-organisms associated with the roots are totally in contact with the air, [which is important] for de-pollution,” he says, “Also, you have benefits of insulation.”

He continues: “And, of course, the target it to use water collected from the roof. With a horizontal garden you lose a lot of water through percolation in the soil. You only have useful water when you have a vertical garden.”

Blanc believes that vertical gardens have become so popular because they provide an interesting and space-efficient way of introducing greenery into cities and claims he doesn’t mind that so many other people have taken on his idea.

“You use vertical space and usually it is empty space,” he says. “I think that is why they have been such a big success.” “Everybody in the world is doing vertical gardens. Of course, 20-25 years ago, I was the only one. But I am happy because with this idea I created a new vision of the interaction between human beings, the town and plants.”

We drove around Miami in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Jewels by Zequals. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

The post Patrick Blanc’s vertical gardens at
Pérez Art Museum create “living walls” appeared first on Dezeen.

Movie: Katrin Schön of garden trade fair Spoga+Gafa shows Dezeen around the Garden Unique section of this year’s show and discusses the growing trend for outdoor cooking in this movie filmed in Cologne.

Garden Unique is a showcase of premium garden furniture at the Spoga+Gafa trade fair, which took place at Koelnmesse in Cologne earlier in September.

“We do this area especially for the furniture traders,” explains Schön, project manager of this year’s show. “In Germany outdoor living is very popular.”

Schön says that the market for cooking and eating outside is growing rapidly and there is now a demand not just for grills and barbecues, but full outdoor kitchens.

“The Germans love grilling, the grilling market is the fastest growing market in recent years,” she says. “It’s a trend to have an outdoor kitchen.”

“Not only the Germans, I think the Europeans like to be outside and here at the fair you have a whole range of products for it.”

One of the brands showing a range of outdoor kitchens at this year’s show was German company OCQ. Nadine Pollex of OCQ says the trend is due to the increasing size and importance of outdoor spaces.

“Outdoor spaces continue to grow, people have big lounges and big tables,” she says. “There are guests and guests like to eat, so you need an outdoor kitchen.”

There were many garden products besides kitchens at Garden Unique, including an array of chairs, tables and daybeds.

One of the more unusual products on show was a shower that you connect to a garden hose by Swedish company Röshults. Tobias Lindberg of Röshults agrees that outdoor living is becoming more and more popular.

“Our experience is that people want to be more outside,” he says. “We see all these new types of modern architectural houses and we want to do products for those types of houses.”

See all our stories about garden furniture »
See all our stories about parks and gardens »

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an outdoor kitchen” appeared first on Dezeen.

Earlier in the week we looked at unconventional seating design and the use of light as themes at Maison et Objet 2013, now we take a step closer to the design process and look back on a few material innovations we saw at this year’s fair. From wall gardens…

Continue Reading…

We’ve been sent an update from Jardin de la Connaissance, the garden of decaying books in Quebec which we featured back in 2010: the books are now sprouting enormous orange mushrooms, and this year the designers introduced moss.

The garden was designed by Berlin landscape architect Thilo Folkerts of 100 Landschaftsarchitektur and Canadian artist Rodney LaTourelle.

Books were piled up to create walls, rooms and seats which are slowly rotting to become part of the forest.

Mushrooms are being cultivated on the books to speed up their decay and now moss has been applied with a wet mixture they call ‘moss graffiti’.

The installation was originally designed for the International Festival des Jardins de Metis two years ago – see earlier photos of its decay here.

See all our stories about gardens »

Here’s some information from the architect and artist behind the project:

The Jardin de la Connaissance was established in June 2010. Since then, the garden has been interacting with the forest. The book structures have decayed in the natural setting, but have also provided various micro-environments for a range of local creatures.

Seedlings and insects have activated the walls, carpets and benches. Mushrooms – those cultivated and those who have come by themselves – have made the garden their home. Many of the originally bright colours of the books have faded. Culture is fading back into nature.

For the third season of the Jardin de la Connaissance, the authors want to extend the garden’s transformation by applying a technique originating in recent urban culture, following a renewed sense of being active in the open spaces of the city. Sampled moss from the forest is applied onto the walls as a paint mixture, a so-called ‘moss graffiti’. While the success of actual growth is somewhat open – as with all good experiments – the cover of moss material will aesthetically expedite the slow disappearance of the garden back into the forest.

Thilo Folkerts, Rodney LaTourelle, 2012

The post Jardin de la Connaissance by Rodney LaTourelle
and 100 Landschaftsarchitektur – update appeared first on Dezeen.