Alternating cubes of timber and glass cover the back of this Sydney house extension by Australian office Panovscott, offering a balance of light, shade, views and privacy.
Three by Two house was designed by Panovscott for a couple with two young children, who wanted to transform their dark semi-detached Victorian house in an inner-Sydney suburb.
“Their second child was due shortly when they approached us, so they wanted light, air, a place for the family to commune, and they wanted a great building,” architect Andrew Scott told Dezeen.
The two-storey extension gives them a new kitchen on the ground floor, which opens on to the garden. Above, a bedroom and en-suite for the parents is set back slightly from the back wall to create a six-metre-tall double-height space at the rear.
“By pulling the bedroom back, the kitchen-diner below opens up to the light at the edge of the house,” said Scott. “The void also allows the parents to be part of the life of the house when they are in the bedroom, while still giving them privacy. In a constrained fiscal and spatial environment, sometimes an exuberant gesture is crucial.”
The western red cedar and glass sections on the rear facade act like blinkers, framing views of treetops while shielding the family from being overlooked. On the ground floor, glass doors and a timber panel fold back to open the house up to the garden.
Inside, a wall of the kitchen-diner has been covered with floor-to-ceiling cabinets made from kauri pine – a sustainable locally sourced plywood. For the flooring, a structural concrete slab has been polished to expose the aggregate, and then sealed.
“This room is conceived as a ‘great room’, based on the example of a medieval castle, in which a large space accommodated multiple uses at the centre, and more specific spatially constrained opportunities at the edge,” said Scott.
The extension offers a bright contrast to the front of the long, narrow house, which is just over four metres wide and attracts scant light throughout the day.
A long corridor leads from this existing part of the house to the extension at the back. The entrance to the new space is tilted, intended to offer a glimpse of the light on approach but saving the full impact of the large space as a surprise.
An indentation where the extension meets the existing house also allows for a small courtyard, which ensures light comes deeper into the narrow space.
Photography is by Brett Boardman.
Here is some more text from Panovscott:
Three by Two House, Sydney, Australia
This project is the renovation of a house, one of two semi-detached single storey dwellings located in Sydney’s densely inhabited inner west. Broadly speaking it is about the making of a new whole by retention of one half of a structure and reconfiguration of the other.
The environ is an increasingly gentrified subdivision originating around 1880 and characterised by predominantly narrow east-west orientated housing parcels fronting a large public park.
Approach to the house remains via the formal front garden up three generous steps and on to a narrow porch below a low curved corrugated roof. Within, the front rooms have been retained with minimal intervention allowing the continued manner of dwelling.
A long hall leads past two bedrooms. The high ceilings, small windows and wonderfully lean vertical timber construction establish the character typical of a Sydney terrace. Cool in both summer and winter and dark even on the brightest of days, these spaces offer the initial experience of homecoming and become a counterpoint for the character of the rear addition.
At the end of the existing hall a small opening twists to the sky bringing gentle light though the upper level and into the centre of the long plan. The light washes down a 45-degree splayed plywood panel. Visible from the dark front rooms and immediately upon entry, it announces the differing quality of the spaces ahead. Moving towards this quiet light, the thin sliver of a brighter room beyond gradually widens with the shifting perspective. Shunted off the previous axial alignment, and past a discreet bathroom, the great communal room of the house is revealed. Light filled, this is a combined kitchen and dining space of slightly smaller area than the lean-to it replaces. Here the elegant vertical proportions and lean timber construction techniques of the front part of the house are reinterpreted.
Continuing the homecoming journey the room increases to six metres in height reaching upwards at its far end. The number and size of windows also increase gradually to this point allowing the internal space to expand horizontally as well as vertically and for the light levels to approach that of the external environment. Turning 180 degrees and up a narrow stair concealed behind a ply lined wall, the level above contains a master bedroom and en-suite, with a tiny window looking back across the roof to the park. This moment completes the journey within to the most private realm of the house.
This house in the Swedish seaside town of Mölle by Stockholm studio Elding Oscarson has an upper storey clad with roughly sawn Douglas fir and a lower section that is entirely transparent (+ slideshow).
When developing the design for the Mölle house, architects Jonas Elding and Johan Oscarson set out to reestablish the architectural experimentation they say dominated the town at the turn of the last century.
“Experimentation has been overpowered by conservation,” said the architects. “Our ambition has been to recover Mölle’s dormant architectural tradition, extrapolating it into the twenty-first century, while providing a house for generations to come.”
Referencing the nearby Villa Italienborg, which features a striking chequerboard facade, the designers chose oversized planks of Douglas fir to create a cladding unlike any other in the town.
These horizontal boards wrap all the way around the building, punctured at intervals by an assortment of square and rectangular windows.
To contrast, the ground floor level features floor-to-ceiling windows with slender frames, offering residents uninterrupted views towards the surrounding garden and coastline beyond.
“The building expresses both contrast and tenderness in relation to site and context,” said Elding and Oscarson.
The house has three storeys – two above ground and one below. Three wings make up the plan, framing a pair of garden terraces and a driveway at the building’s entrance.
Living, dining and kitchen spaces occupy the entire ground floor. All furniture is free-standing so as not to obstruct views through the glass walls, and includes a kitchen island. Heating is provided by a wood-burning stove in the middle of the space.
A spiral staircase leads to floors both above and below. Upstairs, three bedrooms are arranged around an extra lounge, while the basement accommodates a fourth bedroom and a sauna.
Here’s a project description from Elding Oscarson:
Mölle by the Sea
Mölle is an extreme location with regards to topography and landscape, as well as history and aura. Around the turn of the century 1900, Northern Europeans were migrating to “Sinful Mölle” – where men and women were allowed to enjoy each other’s company at the same beach – leaving a trace of eccentric and experimental architecture from the first half of the 20th century.
However, from that point in time and onwards, experimentation has been overpowered by conservation. Our shared ambition with our client has been to recover Mölle’s dormant architectural tradition, extrapolating it into the 21st century, while providing a house for generations to come suited an open-minded family, presently with one child.
The building expresses both contrast and tenderness in relation to site and context. Its volume has been kept low, without any plinth or pitched roof. Facing Öresund, the terraced site has an ocean view, but the building questions the convention to turn all rooms towards that same view – the site has many qualities all around, with stone and brick walls, vegetation, and an old ice cellar semi-submerged into a hill.
The building’s shape divides the site into different exterior spaces and provides a softly divided sequence to the interior. Not immediately perceptible, the graphic form of the plan results in a building volume that rather reads as a fragmentised whole – from some angles striking, from other angles neat.
On the ground floor, a pilotis space wrapped in low iron glass, with sliding doors and undivided panes of up to almost 7 metres wide, the garden and its stone walls frame the interior space. The upper volume is resting on a slender steel structure in an abrupt collision between glass and saw finish douglas planks in jumbo format – a facade which is the first of its kind, just like Mölle’s most famous house “Villa Italienborg”, with its chess-board ethernite shingles facade, was back in the days.
Architect: Elding Oscarson Project team: Jonas Elding, Johan Oscarson, Yuko Maki, Gustaf Karlsson Textile: Akane Moriyama Location: Mölle, Sweden Client: Private Area: 300 sqm
French architect Noel Dominguez has added a timber-clad residence with an angular penthouse to the former garden of a townhouse on the outskirts of Paris (+ slideshow).
Named Wooden House in Paris, the compact three-storey residence is clad with timber on its two lower storeys, while its glazed top floor is a wedge-shaped penthouse set back from the parapet.
Paris-based Noel Dominguez describes the building as “a periscope” mounted on “a wooden cube”. Its shape was designed to maintain privacy from surrounding buildings, but also ensure it doesn’t restrict the views from any neighbouring windows.
The two-storey base is a timber construction, with deeply recessed windows concentrated onto two elevations, while the upper section was conceived as “a mass of metal and glass” that “contorts and twists to avoid side views,” said the architect.
A large open-plan living room and kitchen occupies the entire ground floor and features exposed ceiling beams and recessed shelving units.
A spiral staircase leads up to a bedroom and bathroom on the middle floor, while the angular penthouse holds the master bedroom.
Due to the restricted nature of the site, construction become a challenge for the design team. Access was through a 1.4-metre-wide passage, meaning that timber had to be lifted into the site with a hand-powered pulley system.
In response to this, the architect built a digital model of the structure, giving each timber component a unique reference number for ease of construction. This enabled the house to be constructed in just three weeks.
Photography is by Fred Toulet, apart from where otherwise stated.
Read on for more text from the architects:
Wooden House in Paris
In the heterogeneous urban fabric of this part of the 20th district of Paris we are asked for a house. At the bottom of what was, before the breakup of the family and the sale of the house on the street, the garden, the client starts a new life.
To make the best use of the qualities of the plot of land allocated, the house is divided into two entities.
The wooden cube – a cube of wood is placed back-to-back against the terraced houses in the site. Four of its faces are open, according to the opportunity for views and illumination offered by the plot of land and the terraced housing.
The periscope – positioned on the wooden cube, a mass of metal and glass contorts and twists to avoid side views while making visual framing and lights of the project.
Ship in a bottle… Over the 18 metres that separate the narrow street from the construction platform site we circulate across passages 1.4m wide, we encounter a porch 2.5m high with a tree across it. The house on the street is inhabited, its garden opens itself on our plot. The project thus looks like a model ship in a bottle.
We choose a technique where small units of wood are assembled on site and placed by hand or pulley, without machinery (no crane !). The entire structure is modelled in 3D, each piece arrives on site with a reference and is part of a very precise mounting process. In order to limit damage to the environment (broadly defined), this technique allows the mounting of the house in three weeks and then the adorning of an insulating wool protection.
Architect: Noel Dominguez Team: Léo Pollard, Zoé Salvaire Structural engineering (foundation): N. Perifan Structural engineering (wood): Rialland TCE: LMP Framing wood, insulation and siding: LS Charpentes Aluminium joinery: FHA Painter: ECRIN Locksmith: La Boite de Fer Carpentry: Francis Bonnet ébénisterie Cost without tax/M²: €2850
This house in the Oxfordshire countryside was designed by London studio The Manser Practice with a Cotswold stone facade and a cantilevered terrace overlooking the woods (+ slideshow).
The Manser Practice created the building for a professional couple, as a place to live and work. Nestled into the woodland, it features a sheltered open-air swimming pool and a Cotswold stone exterior designed to fit in with the surrounding landscape.
“We looked at a wide range of stones and materials to use, but the Cotswold stone offered the best variation between the base tones and some blue hues which reflects the colour of the surrounding trees,” architect Mark Smyth told Dezeen.
Employing a local building technique, the firm worked with nearby quarries to source stones from the surrounding regions to clad the exterior of the house.
“We used a dry stone-walling technique where we back mortared the stone, so from the front it looks like it’s stacked. The stone was actually sorted into different sizes and is angled from the top to the bottom, which creates a camber,” Smyth explained.
A south-facing cantilevered terrace hangs from the steel roof, overlooking the woodland and providing views of an old birch tree on the property.
Photo by Agnese Sanvito
At the centre of the building, a glazed hall and steel staircase divide the two main wings and allow visitors to see straight through to the trees beyond.
Bedrooms are stacked on the north side of the house and face out to the east. The master bedroom opens straight onto the terrace and has an en suite and dressing room, while two guest bedrooms sit below.
“We wanted something to fit with the landscape and built the house up high enough to enjoy the spectacular views of the morning sun over the trees from the master bedroom,” Smyth said.
In the adjacent block, slender columns support an open-plan living, dining and kitchen area on the first floor, while a workshop below provides space for one of the clients – a medical scientist – to work from home.
The swimming pool is also located on this level and can be exposed to the elements by sliding back a glazed canopy.
Photo by Agnese Sanvito
Photography is by Hufton + Crow unless otherwise stated.
Here’s some more text from architect Mark Smyth:
House in Henley-on-Thames , Oxfordshire, England
This private house is set in deciduous woodland near Henley-on-Thames, Oxford and is a 500sqm home for a professional couple. The house is divided into a living wing and a bedroom wing – with a fully glazed stair hall forming the fulcrum of the composition.
The first floor living space and master suite benefit from spectacular views of the surrounding woodland. A cantilevered terrace runs along the length of the south facing façade, extending the living space into the landscape with dramatic effect. The exterior of the building is clad in Cotswold stone affording the house a great sense of solidity. The stone exterior creates an interesting juxtaposition with the buildings modern detailing and slender steel roof.
The house has a complex M+E system. House heating, hot water and pool heating are supplied by air source heat pumps located in the existing stable block. Major plant is also housed here and pumped via super insulated pipework in ducts under the driveway to the main house. A heat exchange system allows energy to be recovered from the living spaces and the pool.
A 100-year-old house in Paris has been renovated and extended by local studio CUT Architectures to frame a garden facing the morning sun and create a shaded terrace overlooking a nearby park (+ slideshow).
CUT Architectures refurbished the existing House in Meudon, which is home to a family of three. The building was constructed by the client’s grandfather and was only 42 square metres in size, so a timber extension was added to create extra room.
“We wanted to keep the sentimentality and feel of the existing house in the new extension,” architect Yann Martin told Dezeen. “It was very much a working house, with rabbits in the garden and wood for the chimney.”
The new extension doubles the size of the building and provides extra space for the parents to work separately from their teenage child.
The architects sourced native red cedar and used it to wrap both the existing structure and extension. They then constructed a south-facing timber terrace at the front.
“We liked the idea that the established house was wooden framed and wanted the new extension to be constructed from steel and wood, with the trees and view surrounding it,” Martin explained. “The use of timber helps to create a continuous surface across the build.”
Raised one metre above the ground to match the original property, the extension contains a large living room with bare white walls that contrast with the black-framed windows.
“It was difficult to build on the soil that was marked from years of clay and chalk digging in the undergrowth, so when we built the new extension, we provided a concrete base that gave the house a strong footprint and two separate gardens,” Martin said.
The terrace sits just in front and features a slatted roof to shade it from the sun, creating a pattern of shadows that filters through the facade.
A master bedroom and bathroom are tucked away at the rear, leading out to a sheltered garden where the owners can enjoy the morning sunrise over breakfast.
In the original structure, a bedroom and bathroom offer separate living spaces for the youngest member of the family.
Here’s some more text from the architects:
House in Meudon, France
The project is the extension and refurbishment of a very small detached house in Meudon, one of the nearest suburbs of western Paris. The location is exceptional; the plot is on the hill offering fantastic views and facing a park. The existing house was in a very bad condition but the owners had a sentimental attachment to it and didn’t want to tear it down.
The extension is twice the size of the existing house including a 20m² terrace. The extension is a wooden structure with a zinc roof almost invisible from the garden. Both the extension and the existing house are wrapped with vertical timber giving a continuous surface to the two volumes.
The living space and the terrace are lifted 1.2m above the garden level to match the existing house ground floor level and turning the terrace into a promontory for the views. The bedroom and bathroom space is on the natural ground level on the back of the plot. The articulation of the extension creates two gardens for the house: the one in the back for the morning sun and the one in front, facing the park and south-west from the terrace.
Australian architecture office Iredale Pedersen Hook has renovated a 1930s property in Perth and added an angular rear extension that contrasts with the traditional street-facing facade (+ slideshow).
Architects Adrian Iredale and Caroline Di Costa of Iredale Pedersen Hook own the house and have been gradually conducting renovations over the past four years to adapt it to the changing needs of their young family.
Mindful of preserving the property’s historic aesthetic while updating its functionality, the architects retained the front facade and based the faceted shape of the extension on the multiple sloping surfaces of the original roof.
“Folding forms developed from the existing roof achieve a reinterpretation of the surrounding streetscape and roofscape, binding old and new [as well as] historic and contemporary,” said the architects. “A Jekyll and Hyde quality, the street appearance remains almost untouched; a silent figure, a backdrop, the rear is the extrovert, complex and challenging.”
When viewed from the adjacent street, the house appears to retain the appearance of the Queen Anne Federation-style properties typical in the city’s Vincent district, which feature details reminiscent of the Baroque style of architecture that gained popularity in England during the early eighteenth century.
A key feature of this style is a sheltered verandah next to the entrance, which was popular with the Italian and Greek immigrants who moved to the neighbourhood following the First World War. The architects reintroduced this element to the building to enhance the connection between the house, the garden and the street.
The faceted extension extends upwards and outwards from the existing sloping roof at the rear of the property, which prevents it from being seen from the street.
Folding doors on the ground floor can be pulled back to connect the dining room and kitchen with a terrace that projects into the garden.
Above the terrace, the upper storey leans forward to shield the interior from the low summer sun and to make the most of views across the surrounding rooftops.
The facade of the extension is covered with fabric panels, which allow light to permeate and display shadows from the branches of nearby trees. Some of the panels at eye level can be opened to provide views of the horizon.
A cooling system that drips water down the fabric panels to chill hot air before it reaches the interior was based on the principle of the Coolgardie Safe – a traditional refrigeration technique employed by Western Australian miners to cool food.
The angular interior of the study and living room on the upper floor is entirely clad in plywood panels. The sloping back wall replaces the tiles of the original roof and provides a surface that Iredale and Di Costa’s two-year-old daughter uses as a slide.
As well as the roofline, the architects retained features including the chimney, which has been converted into a water collector, and a 1950s sliding door with an amber glass panel at the top of the stairs.
A multipurpose pavilion constructed in the garden features a pyramidal polycarbonate roof, culminating in a transparent panel that allows daylight to reach the interior and provides views of the sky.
Here’s a project description from Iredale Pedersen Hook:
CASA31_4 Room House
Conceptual Framework
CASA31_4 Room House re-interprets the role of memory, tradition and social and cultural value in a rich spatial experience that is simultaneous familiar yet unfamiliar. Our architecture preserves and reinterprets the past. History is layered but never erased. Fragments of the past continually remind us that we are only another layer in the rich and unfolding history of this place.
All spaces contain elements of the past, often manifest as objects of intrigue, the sloping floor (the former roof), the barge scrolls on the front fence, the roof tiles creating a musical score along the boundary, the chimney as water collector and the up-cycling of former building elements as decks, gates, architraves and furniture.
A front deck engages with the street, re-introducing the role and value of the front garden as social setting and meeting place, a past tradition by the immigrant Italians and Greeks that has almost disappeared in societies obsession with privacy and security.
Over the last 3 years we have explored our 1936 Queen Anne Mount Hawthorn Federation house scraping, layering, and peeling with 4 primary spatial ideas; the room to the interior, the room to the garden, the room to the horizon, the room to the sky.
The room to the interior explores what existed, years of layering, the art of construction, knowing what to keep, what to reveal and what to remove, knowledge gained from 13 years indulging in the past. Rooms become the embodiment of a city, a microcosm of the qualities that make a great city. The room to the garden focuses attention to the exterior at ground level, it is purposely heavy and grounded engaging with the earth, the section expands to the exterior, a series of folding screens layer the engagement.
A space of deep sensory delight, an architectural palette cleanser, transitions the ground and upper level, the eyes and nose are overpowered by the burnt and waxed plywood walls and the amber light cast by Nan’s 1950’s sliding door.
The room to the horizon filters the suburban roof tops, the screen abstracts the exterior world, the interior is one folded space formed through a play on the one point perspective that intensifies the horizon. Openable screens create a direct view framing the horizon, releasing the interior volume. The space is cooled with an interpretation of the old Coolgardie safe, water is dripped down the fabric cooling the outside air. The newly restored, 1956 Iwan Iwanoff Guthrie residence cabinet finds a new home after 15 years of storage in numerous architect’s garages. The roughly painted ‘I love Linda’ remains on the chimney, a rear window frames the distant Saint Mary’s Church.
The room to the sky creates a vertical spatial experience, a halo of love poems embraces us (former wedding installation) and at night a cross of light abstracted by polycarbonate awakens but unlike St Mary’s Church our little spire opens up to the heavens.
Contribution to lives of inhabitants
After 4 years of renovating it is now time to enjoy the richness and intensity of experience that this renovation has created. Every day is a different experience, one that is tender, unexpected, personal and embedded with history. The design enables our children and us to grow and evolve in a sequence of spaces that encourage engagement with each other and the dwelling and offers new ways of understanding and exploring family relationships and an understanding of space. Our house is simultaneous a memorial, playground, place of celebration, stage set, place of community interaction and most importantly ‘home’.
Program Resolution
The design exploits all areas of the site with an inherent flexibility for not only day to day use but the long term capacity to adapt to evolving and changing requirements as the family grows and ages.
It re-engages with the street and community allowing our children to play in safe environment connected to the street and house. Spaces are specific and flexible, while offering sufficient capacity for personal interpretation and use.
This project includes both a macro and micro approach to sustainability. It also extends the meaning of sustainability beyond environmental to include contextual, social, cultural and economic concerns.
This house will be a case example for the City of Vincent demonstrating the importance of preserving the 1935 Queen Anne Federation home with the capacity to embrace contemporary expectations of living, without comprising the street context or privacy of adjoining properties. The neighbouring house completes the street sequence of ‘twins’ and twins should never be separated.
The removal of material from site is minimised, an attitude of ‘upgrading’ ensures that materials once concealed for structural purposes are now used for furniture, decks, doorframes and architraves.
The upper and lower level spaces are protected from the low, intense summer sun with timber framed fixed and operable screens, the upper level is cooled with a manually operated reticulation system that drip feeds water on to the fabric, hot moving air is rapidly chilled, this is Perth’s largest ‘Coolgardie Safe’, a 19th century low-tech refrigeration system used by the Coolgardie WA gold miners to cool edible goods. Windows are strategically located to maximise cross ventilation or for winter heat gain (north facing highlight window with a deep reveal for shading).
All interior spaces preserve elements of the past, history is layered but never erased. Low energy light fittings, recycled light fittings, low water use and storage, pv cells and solar hot water systems all form part of the sustainable equation but is the focus.
Economy is achieved through re-cycling, restoring, re-interpreting building materials and historic traditions and minimising waste. This project represents a holistic approach to design and dwelling, where memories are preserved, carbon footprint minimised and the concerns of the broader community celebrated.
Folding forms developed from the existing roof achieve a re-interpretation of the surrounding streetscape and roof-scape, binding old and new/ historic and contemporary. A Jekyll and Hyde quality, the street appearance remains almost untouched, a silent figure, a backdrop, the rear is the extrovert, complex and challenging.
A front deck engages with the street, re-introducing the value of the front garden as social setting, a past tradition by the immigrant Italians and Greeks. A mosaic tiled seat offers a place to rest for neighbours. All exterior spaces contain elements of the past, often manifest as objects of intrigue.
As architect owners we were keen to maintain an open line of discussion that enabled details to be developed and refined as the project evolved. This often involved the capacity to re-use building waste. Our structural engineer and builder eagerly entered in to this arrangement in particular the role of the builder extended beyond the traditional role.
Architects: Caroline Di Costa Architect and iredale pedersen hook architects Architectural Project Team: Caroline Di Costa, Adrian Iredale, Finn Pedersen, Martyn Hook, Brett Mitchell, Sinan Pirie, Matthew Fletcher. Structural Engineer: Terpkos Engineering Builder: Hugo Homes Completion: December 2013
Japanese studio Level Architects squeezed this all-black house onto a narrow plot in Tokyo‘s Fukasawa district, adding sloping offset walls around the lower floors to protect residents’ privacy (+ slideshow).
Confronted with a long, narrow site measuring 4.6 by 17.3 metres, Level Architects‘ main concern was to create a sense of spaciousness and introduce natural light to the four-storey interior of House in Fukasawa. But this had to be done without allowing other people to see inside.
“Rather than allowing the constraining width of the plot to be felt, the goal was to create the illusion of an open connection with the surrounding area while still instilling the sense of privacy desired by most home owners within Tokyo,” said the architect.
Privacy is achieved through the windowless surfaces of the two long facades. Walls also extend from the lower storeys on the building’s shorter sides to restrict views of the interior from the surrounding streets.
The sloping roofline at the rear of the property was dictated by local building regulations, while an inclined wall above the garage allows eastern light to enter the open-plan first floor and blocks direct light from the setting sun.
A skylight at the centre of the house creates a bright area over a white-painted iron staircase that extends between all four storeys. Featuring suspended treads and minimal balustrades, it allows daylight to permeate the lower floors.
The house’s living spaces are all located on the first floor. A double-height living room with full-height windows and a terrace deliberately contrasts with the low-ceilings of the space containing the kitchen and dining area.
Bench seating surrounds two sides of the living room, while a stepped unit mounted on the other wall creates a desk and shelving which continues onto the raised level that leads to the kitchen.
The ceiling heights of the two bedrooms above differ due to the changes in the height of the spaces below. One also opens out to a secluded balcony.
A narrow loft creates a quiet study at the very top of the house, while the ground floor accommodates bathrooms, a garage and traditional Japanese room lined with tatami mats.
Here’s some project text from the architects:
House in Fukasawa, Tokyo, Japan
Located in a quiet neighbourhood where the average house is 2 stories high, the site has a narrow dimension of 4.6 meters wide and 17.3 meters long; very typical of a Tokyo city centre lot. Though the site is narrow, the length of the site created a focal point in the design. Rather than allowing the constraining width of the plot to be felt, the goal was to create the illusion of an open connection with the surrounding area while still instilling the sense of privacy desired by most home owners within Tokyo.
In order to create that sense of privacy, a wall design was incorporated on the North and South sides of the home. The southern wall is cut away in a manner which allows the eastern light to fill the interior of the house, but at the same time shield the inhabitants from the harsh rays of the setting sun. The northern wall is utilised as a reflecting board by capturing the southern light and brightening the interior, all the way down to the first floor where light is hardest to reach.
The second floor level, which is completely open and connected, utilises a very high ceiling for the living room and a low ceiling for the kitchen to differentiate space. The living room is also designed with a set of steps running around three sides of the room to create a built-in sofa and activity space where cushions can be placed, amplifying the sense of openness. The centre of the house hosts an iron staircase and top light which allows for light to filter down through the house, generating unique atmospheres which separate the individual spaces.
The third floor is broken up by different room heights as a result of the design of the second level but which is all connected around the staircase. The Master Bedroom incorporates a slanted ceiling, a result of the setback code common around the city of Tokyo, but which adds a unique element to the room. The loft space opens up to the stairwell, exposing the room to the indirect light coming down from the ceiling window.
The design adjustments made in the section planning of the house emphasised the idea of a long house, one which generates a creative use of line-of-sight and height differentiations to create the sense of a house larger than its narrow width.
Architecture studio Piercy & Company has slotted a family house behind a nineteenth-century stable facade in south-west London, creating a pair of rusted gable walls with a glazed stairwell in between (+ slideshow).
Located within a conservation zone near Kew Gardens, the three-storey Kew House was designed by London studio Piercy & Company to respect the scale and massing of its historic surroundings, but also create a generous modern home for a family.
To achieve this, the architect retained the ageing stable wall at the front of the property, then replicated its shape to create a pair of matching two-storey wings behind.
Both of these were then clad with pre-weathered steel, providing a counterpoint to the old brickwork. In some places the steel covers the windows, but is speckled with irregular perforations that allow an exchange of light and views.
“The deep orange tones of the weathering steel and the perforations within this skin echo the dappled light and autumnal palette of nearby Kew Gardens,” said the architect in a statement.
A glazed stairwell connects the two wings, framing an entrance patio at the front of the property and a secluded courtyard at the rear. There’s also a large basement that spans the site to unite the wings on the lowest level.
The interior layout was arranged according to how the family expected to use the space, which the architect says “ranged over imagining the children running about the house, summer dinners spilling outside and the balance of quiet nooks with social spaces, to pragmatic concerns like drying laundry and how to build a boat in the basement.”
Both wings contain living rooms on the ground floor and bedroom spaces upstairs. The kitchen and family dining room is located on the northern side, with a laundry room and pantry, while a lounge sits at the southern end and is sunken below ground by a metre.
Referred to as “the snug”, this room also features exposed brickwork, built-in oak-veneer cupboards and a narrow curving lightwell.
“The [rooms] are intended to be informal but rich with incidental spaces, unexpected light and complex vertical volumes,” said the architect.
The large basement allowed the architects to establish an on-site joinery workshop during the build. This allowed the team to experiment with different construction techniques and put together bespoke panelling and furniture.
The space now functions as a place where one of the residents, who works as an engineer, can focus on personal projects.
Here’s the project description from Piercy & Company:
Kew House
Set within the Kew Green Conservation Area of south-west London, the four bedroom family house is formed of two sculptural weathering steel volumes inserted behind a retained nineteenth century stable wall. The brief evolved through a series of conversations with clients Tim and Jo Lucas, which ranged over imagining the children running about the house, summer dinners spilling outside and the balance of quiet nooks with social spaces, to pragmatic concerns like drying laundry and how to build a boat in the basement. In response, Piercy&Company designed the house as a built diagram of the way the family wanted to use the spaces, with an internal landscape of alternative routes and levels connecting expressive spaces aimed at creating moments of delight for adults and children alike.
First and foremost a family home, the spaces are intended to be informal but rich with incidental spaces, unexpected light and complex vertical volumes. The house is formed of a simple plan to make the most of the constrained site, reduce the building’s mass in the streetscape and respond to the living patterns of the family. Consisting of two rectangles; one slightly smaller, set back and sunken 1m lower, the wings each have living spaces on the ground floor and bedrooms above. Connecting the wings is a glass encased circulation link which allows light to pour into the house whilst providing breathing space between internal spaces.
The two shells housing the main living and sleeping areas are formed of 4mm weathering steel, a hardworking combination of structure and facade. The weathering steel is maintenance free, essential for the enclosed site, and is softened by a patchwork of expressed welds and perforated panels. The deep orange tones of the weathering steel and the perforations within this skin echo the dappled light and autumnal palette of nearby Kew Gardens. Inside, oak veneer panelling and Dinesen flooring are the basis of a light, natural and refined palette of materials.
A list of planning constraints – including a conservation area context, a change of use and no access on three sides – formed a backdrop to the project. To overcome these challenges Piercy & Company inserted the house behind a retained 19th century brick gable end and split the house into twin gabled forms in keeping with local massing. The natural patina of the weathering steel with its marks, stains and perforations giving the surfaces different characters depending on the exposure and orientation, anchor the form into its context and impart a sense of permanence.
Kew House was an experimental build, driven by the architect’s and client’s shared interest in a kit-of-parts approach and the self-build possibilities emerging from digital fabrication. The weathering steel shells were prefabricated in Hull and then craned into place and welded together.
CNC milling and the on-site joinery workshop were used to create bespoke panelling, furniture and cabinetwork that could be fitted by the client and a small team of architecture graduates, testing the theory that digital fabrication can reduce the distance between design and production. The implications of this technology for house building are manifold with bespoke fit-out on a budget becoming increasingly viable.
Client: Tim & Jo Lucas Architect: Piercy & Company Structural Engineer: Tim Lucas (Price & Myers) M&E Engineer: Arup Sustainability Consultant: Price & Myers Key Sub-Contractors: Commercial Systems International (CSI), Estbury Basements
London architect Ben Nightingale has renovated a Victorian property he owns in Hackney, transforming three separate flats into a large family home featuring a double-height library and an attic playroom.
Ben Nightingale, one of the co-founders of Kilburn Nightingale Architects, bought the four-storey house on Greenwood Road to provide a family home for his wife and their three young daughters.
The building had previously been converted into three separate flats, meaning Nightingale had to completely re-plan the layout. This included removing existing walls, creating openings in the floor and rebuilding the original staircase.
“This project shows how a typical Victorian home can be opened up for more flexible use by a family, and also be adapted to positively reduce the carbon footprint,” Nightingale told Dezeen.
“The layout breaks down the traditional horizontal layering of this type of house, and the addition of a number of different types of insulation, photovoltaics and solar thermal panels greatly improve the energy efficiency,” he added.
Like many of London’s townhouses, the building has two storeys accessible from ground level – one that is slightly raised above the street and one that sits in line with a sunken garden. The architect transformed both of these floors into communal family spaces.
The lower ground floor accommodates a large kitchen and dining room that leads straight out to the garden beyond.
The double-height library area is positioned at the back, creating a visual connection with two living rooms on the floor above.
The first of these is a relaxed space facing out over the lawn, while the other is a formal area where the family can entertain guests.
The architect worked with a local joiner to add new sweet-chestnut window frames and cladding to an old extension at the rear of the house, intended to “mask the original poor quality brickwork”.
Five bedrooms and two bathrooms occupy the two upper levels. The attic was also remodelled, creating a playroom for the children that doubles as a guest bedroom.
Here’s the project description from Kilburn Nightingale Architects:
71 Greenwood Rd, London E8 Repair/remodelling and refurbishment of an existing house
This project involves the conversion, repair and extensive remodelling of a semi-detached mid Victorian house in Dalston, Hackney.
The house was purchased by Ben and Jane Kilburn at auction as a freehold building containing three flats. Ben Kilburn is a director with Richard Nightingale at Kilburn Nightingale Architects, an architecture practice based near King’s Cross.
This project presented an opportunity for Kilburn Nightingale (with Ben in the role of architect/owner) to develop a design that would take into account the joint requirements of contemporary family living (with three daughters aged 10, 8 and 5) and the rehabilitation and improvement of a house that had been neglected and interfered with by previous owners.
The renovation was designed to provide a functional home taking into account a need for flexible living space that would allow for a number of different activities to take place concurrently (so that the family could be ‘together’). The arrangement also needed to allow more privacy when required. The design also avoids having the lower kitchen/living area separated from the rest of the house by a formal, underused living area at upper ground level.
To achieve this, upper and lower living areas are connected to each other through a new double-height space at the rear of the property, and also connected to the garden through double-height glazing. This sense of openness is enhanced throughout the house by a number of new windows in the flank wall bringing light into the middle of the house.
The lower ground floor of the house has been remodelled to provide kitchen, dining and living area, with the double-height space at the rear of the house opening up to a flowing living space above. This upper living space is loosely divided into a more relaxed area closest to the balcony and views to the garden, and a slightly more formal living room at the front of the house.
First and second floors are divided into bedrooms and new bathrooms, and the attic has been converted to provide a flexible study/sleep-over/play space. Access to the attic is via a ‘hit and miss’ stair that is designed to take up as little space as possible.
The connection of the lower two floors of the house with the garden is made partly through the large windows/doors at the rear of the house, but also through the construction of a new shed/studio at the back of the garden. The large glazed double doors of the shed face back to the big doors in the glazed screen at the back of the house, with the suggestion that the shed is akin to a piece of the house that has floated out into the garden.
A clay-based black paint forms a protective layer across the facade of this woodland cabin in Finland, designed by Playa Architects as the second home for a Finnish family living abroad (+ slideshow).
Finnish architect Tuukka Vuori of Playa Architects designed the house for friends who want to spend their holidays in their home country.
Named Villa Kettukallio, the 122-square-metre house is located on the edge of a lake in Hirvensalmi, on a spot where the family used to take forest walks. It will be visited throughout the year, so needed to be accommodating in all seasons.
“Winters can be very cold, sometimes minus 30, then in summer there’s daylight around the clock, so it had to work in both of these circumstances,” Vuori told Dezeen.
“The main brief was to take in these surroundings, so we added big glazed openings facing towards the lakeside,” he added.
Birch clads the exterior and has been coated with a black distemper paint that is typical of Scandinavian dwellings. This will help to protect the building from ageing.
Living and dining rooms take up around half of the house’s floorspace, encouraging the family to spend more time in communal areas rather than in the bedrooms.
A sauna sits on the north side of the site on the opposite side of a veranda, creating a protected seating area where residents can cool down. An entrance then leads directly back into the house via the shower room.
“Traditionally lakeside homes have separate saunas, but the family didn’t want it to be separate,” said Vuori. “This meant we could avoid building extra shower spaces, which also deals with some environmental concerns.”
A second terrace on the south side of the building gives the family a sunny space for dining outdoors.
Walls and ceilings inside the house are lined with birch and alder. The floors are pine and feature stripes created by the family’s own sawmill.
“With pine you usually get this really strong texture in the wood, these horizontal sections,” explained Vuori.
Heating is provided by a wood-burning stove that sits between the kitchen and the living room. Constructed from brick, this is coated with grey plaster to give it the appearance of polished concrete.
Photography is by Tuomas Uusheimo.
Here’s more information from Playa Architects:
Villa Kettukallio
The villa is the all-year-round base in Finland for a four-person family currently living abroad. The site between cliffs and a fairly steep lakeside beach was chosen during the family’s forest walks. The place overlooks a narrow strait and far out to an open expanse of the lake. In accordance with the site conditions, the building is relatively closed off towards the forest while opening up generously in the direction of the lake.
Site plan
The house is split by an atrium yard and a covered terrace, on one side of which are small bedrooms and the other more generous living spaces. During the summer the floor layout allows for “complete circulation”. Instead of a separate shoreline sauna building, a sauna was built in connection with the house itself. A covered veranda for cooling off after the sauna separates the sauna from the rest of the building.
Floor plan
In painting the facade with black distemper paint, the building blends with the shadows of the pine forest when viewed from the direction of the lake.
Section one
In the interior, the surfaces are mostly untreated domestic wood: birch, pine and common alder. The wood floors are built from vertical-grain pine boards from the family-owned sawmill.
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