Austrian studio Bernardo Bader Architects sourced pine and spruce from the surrounding slopes to build this picturesque chalet in a village of western Austria (+ slideshow).
Named Haus Fontanella, the house is built between the Glatthorn and Zafernhorn mountains in Fontanella – a village with historical ties to the nomadic Walser people that settled throughout the Alpine regions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Bernardo Bader combined traditional and modern building techniques to build a house that resonates with the typical Walser buildings. A concrete base burrows down into the hillside, while the upper section comprises a pine frame clad with roughly-hewn spruce panels of random sizes.
“Our use of the wood was similar to how it would have been years ago – simple, first-hand and rough,” said Bader, explaining how the spruce was delivered from the sawmill and then installed on the walls in exactly the same condition.
Square windows also come in a variety of sizes and are dotted around the walls in a way that gives no clues about the internal layout.
“The intentional rough planking together with the randomness of smaller and bigger windows generate an exciting facade game and an intimate atmosphere inside, with selected framed views to the exterior,” said the architect.
There are three storeys inside the house, as well as an attic tucked beneath the sloping roof. Silver fir lines walls, floors and ceilings throughout the building, plus most of the fixtures are also made from wood.
The main living and dining areas can be found on the middle floor, opening out to a sheltered terrace, while three bedrooms and a study are located upstairs, and a sauna and storage area occupy the partially submerged basement floor.
A geothermal pump offers a sustainable heating source and extra warmth can be provided by a wood-burning stove.
Photography is by Archive Architects.
Here’s a project description from Bernardo Bader:
Haus Fontanella
Aim of the project: Not far away from the town centre of Fontanella – an old village of Walserpeople – the house is situated on a inclined south-terrace-plane. Not just to benefit from the great view but also to optimise the property’s borders, the building is placed on the upper part of the property and the volume is kept as compact as possible.
The whole facade of the building is a made of differently size sliced spruce boards, exactly how they are delivered from the sawmill.
The intentional rough planking together with the randomness of smaller and bigger windows generate an exciting facade game and an intimate atmosphere inside with selected framed views to the exterior.
The basement is made of concrete, the rest of the house is a whole wood construction. The interior work of the ground floor is also a silver-fir wood construction, the one in the upper floor is drywall.
Australian office Tribe Studio has hollowed out the centre of a 1920s house in Sydney to create angular ceilings and a wide entrance to the garden (+ slideshow).
Tribe Studio created House Chapple by retaining the original 1920s frontage of the old bungalow, renovating the interior and replacing a later extension at the rear.
“The challenge of this house was to achieve sun and privacy while appreciating both aspects,” said the architects. “Our client wanted to retain the romantic elements of the house and its sense of humility in a suburb of flashy new builds.”
The architects removed a suspended ceiling in the centre of the house, creating a double-height living space with pyramid-shaped ceiling profiles. They also added skylights at the top and installed pendant lights with long cables.
“We allowed light into the centre of the plan, promoting stack-effect ventilation and reinforcing the unusual order of operation of the house,” they added.
A street-facing sunroom is positioned above the garage, with views out across Sydney Harbour. The room opens out into the main living space that includes a lounge, kitchen and dining area.
Three bedrooms, a TV room and a study are positioned along the sides of the main space.
At the rear, the wide entrance opens onto a wooden deck flanking a garden with a long rectangular swimming pool.
Polished wooden floorboards and white walls feature throughout, while the brick exterior walls have been painted white.
With fantastic harbour views and a northerly orientation to the street-front and a wonderful garden and existing pool to the rear, the challenge of this house was to achieve sun and privacy while appreciating both aspects.
The house has been in our clients family since the 1960s. An important part of our brief was finding a balance between new and old architecturally and sentimentally.
Our client wanted to retain the romantic elements of the house, and its sense of humility in a suburb of flashy new builds. She was simultaneously keen to have a new start in this house and have it feel her own.
The strategy is a modest one: retain the original 1920s bungalow frontage and replace a poor 1960s addition at the rear.
The primary move is to cave out central part of the plan as living spaces with clear views to the front (harbour) and back (garden). The central band of living space is contained on either side by cellular ribbons of bedrooms and utility.
The living space occupies the area underneath the peak of the original roof. The ceiling is removed and a series of distorted pyramid ceiling voids are created within the original geometry, allowing light into the centre of the plan, promoting stack effect ventilation and reinforcing the unusual order of operation of the house.
On the high side of the site, the master bedroom is nestled against an existing cliff-face, juxtaposing its harbour view and a close encounter with mossy sandstone and a cheeky orchid garden.
The intention is modest: a replacement addition that is fully concealed from the street and minimal facelift to the front.
A triple-height gallery housing a collection of prized paintings is concealed behind the wooden shingle facade of this house in Stuttgart by German architecture studio (se)arch (photos by Zooey Braun + slideshow).
Located to the south of the city, the gabled four-storey Haus B19 was designed by (se)arch as the home for a family of five, but the architects were also asked to include a gallery where the occupants could present a collection of artworks by “old masters”.
Three of the house’s exterior walls are clad from top to bottom with handmade Alaska cedar shingles, which will naturally fade from a warm yellow colour to a silvery grey tone. Meanwhile, the south-facing rear elevation is glazed to offer views of the distant mountains.
The lofty gallery is positioned on the northern side of the building and is separated from living areas by a bulky concrete core that contains small rooms, utility areas and the main staircase.
A kitchen is one of the spaces contained within the concrete volume, and it features windows on both sides to allow views between the gallery and a large living and dining room on the southern side of the house.
Sliding glass doors allow the living room to be transformed into a loggia. This design is repeated on the first floor, where three bedrooms open to a balcony spanning the width of the building.
A selection of walls throughout the house are painted with a dark shade of pink, standing out against the exposed concrete of the central structure and the warm brown joinery of kitchen units, doors and bookshelves slotted into its recesses.
Clerestory windows bring light down into the gallery at eaves height, while a narrow skylight along the ridge of the roof lets daylight flood into a master bedroom on the uppermost floor.
The bathroom is on the first floor and includes a window offering residents a view down to the gallery when taking a bath.
The double pitch roof building is located in a peaceful residential area in the south of Stuttgart.
The building houses a family of five and offers living space on several levels and it creates space for a private exhibition area. The client has a collection of paintings with works by old masters and the gallery space is an adequate framework. The floor plan principle consists of a functional bar in the centre of the building. This divides the gallery space and family living. This massive concrete core, which extends over all four floors, includes serving elements such as stairs, kitchen, bathrooms as well as technical supplies.
This also creates an exceptional entree: behind the door, the porch extends into the gallery space, which rises to below the fully glazed roof ridge. The closed, painted in warm brown north face offers a serene setting for the paintings, which will be staged by the interplay of natural and artificial light. In combination with the brittle surfaces of the concrete bar, this dynamic sculpture emerges anywhere in the room and captivates with a delightful interplay.
The living room on the south side is communicative family meeting place, a room with fireplace and dining area. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors open it over the entire width of the building of the offshore loggia and provide a view into the landscape. Similarly, the private retreat rooms on the two upper floors benefit from the beautiful distant view of the Swabian Alb. Picturesque perspectives, however, offers the bathroom on the first floor, which holds a glass eye contact with the gallery. Openings in the serving rail provide visual references and link free gallery and living room together.
Structurally, the concrete core, which results from the massive garden level is covered by a solid wood construction, which describes the outer shell of the building. The outside of the timber construction is covered with wooden shingles. The shingles of Alaska cedar are split by hand and are not only extremely durable, they gradually get a silver-grey patina and envelop the house with its natural environment.
This rectilinear wooden cabin in Hungary by young studio Béres Architects nestles up against the exposed rock face of a former quarry (+ slideshow).
Hungarian architects Attila Béres and Jusztina Balázs of Béres Architects designed Hideg House as the holiday home for a couple and located it on the outskirts of historic town Kőszeg.
A geometric black frame encases the two sections that make up the house, while a sheltered terrace sandwiched between offers view out over the landscape as well as back towards the jagged rock face.
“Natural light and views to the surrounding nature were the most important factors in the arrangement of spaces,” said the architects.
The owner and his wife spent three years building the house themselves. The outer frame was constructed from roughly sawn larch, while the two contained volumes also use larch, but were sanded smooth and left with their natural colour.
“The contrast between the rough sawn larch cladding stained black on the exterior surfaces and the same material with natural finish and smooth surface on the inside leads visitors towards the interior spaces,” said the architects.
The largest side of the house contains the main living spaces, including a combined living room, dining area and kitchen, as well as a bedroom with an adjoining sauna and bathroom.
The smaller western end of the house is a self-contained guest suite. Like the rest of the interiors, it has a plain interior with white walls, plain furnishings and timber-panelled flooring.
Photography is by Tamás Bujnovszky.
Here’s a project description from Béres Architects:
Hideg-ház – Kőszeg, Hungary
Focusing on sculptural cliffs and friendly hillside woods, Hideg-ház is an unusual object in the landscape of the outskirts of Kőszeg, a charming historical town in Hungary.
The site had been used as a quarry a few centuries ago so the exposed rock face was one of the strongest elements of the environment. In order to get enough direct sunlight all-year-long and to stay close to the sculptural cliffs, the building had been placed about 10 meters above the road that runs along the bottom of the valley.
“An abstract footprint of a family’s lifestyle – perhaps these are the best words to describe the floor plan” architect Attila Béres says. The wooden cabin is floating a few steps above the natural terrain. The two parts are tied together with a thick black frame. These units taken apart create space for the covered outside terrace which became the central space of the cabin with its perfect views towards the colourful forms of the exposed rocks and the woods on the south side.
Natural light and views to the surrounding nature were the most important factors in the arrangement of spaces. The solid and open surfaces of the 110 sqm building react to these elements as well – large but shaded openings towards the best views on the south side, glimpses of the rock from accentuated spots on the north.
The contrast between the rough sawn larch cladding stained black on the exterior surfaces and the same material with natural finish and smooth surface on the inside leads visitors towards the interior spaces. The clear white walls in the interior pick up the random colours of the sky and the surroundings.
The building is located in a country with very diverse climate. Hot summers and cold winters desire a smart mix of architectural decisions to keep the cabin comfortable and easy to run in all four seasons. The clients had a clear concept about what they wanted to achieve in terms of building services and comfort. A combination of high-tec and simple ecological solutions resulted in extremely low energy consumption and moderate building cost.
Hideg-ház is the first project realised by Attila Béres and Jusztina Balázs. Their young architecture firm started the design of this building in 2009 when Mr. Hideg noticed Attila Béres in Wallpaper magazine’s Graduate Directory – an annual list of talented young architects. Detailed design and construction of the cabin finished in 2013.
Mr. Hideg and his wife spent 3 years on site to build this precisely detailed and custom-tailored house by hand. They carried out almost every phase of construction from cleaning the cliffs to building custom furniture. Their devotion and insistent enthusiasm had key importance along the process of design and construction of the holiday home.
Walls of dark brick connect the exterior and interior of this mews house in the north London borough of Hackney (+ slideshow).
Located next to the studio of its designers Form_art Architects in a traditional mews street, Blackbox house references the style of its archetypal brick neighbours but introduces light through a glazed courtyard and skylight.
“In contrast to the traditional mews architecture of solid brick enclosures with tiny windows and little daylight, this design is filled with light, but still respects the contextual language of a ‘solid box’,” explained the architects.
From the street, the house appears as a dark facade of slim Belgian brick punctuated with narrow horizontal and vertical windows, with the entrance concealed in an adjoining black wooden wall.
A lattice of wooden battens above the door enables daylight to reach a small brick-paved courtyard containing a birch tree and the entrance to the house.
The masonry that covers two sides of the courtyard continues across the wall that reaches into the open plan ground floor area and can be seen through the double-height glass screen that links the internal and external spaces.
A central staircase with a skylight above it allows light to spill down into the ground floor and divides the main living space and kitchen on one side from the dining room on the other.
A small landing at the top of the stairs leads to bedrooms on either side, the smaller of which is contained in a white box that projects over the dining area.
White walls and a further skylight at the far end of the living room enhance the brightness of the interior, which is intended to act as a gallery space as well as a home.
Form_art Architects sent us the following description:
BLACKBOX: Culford Mews London
The idea of the mews served as the starting point for Blackbox in more ways than just its physical location. In contrast to the traditional mews architecture of solid brick enclosures with tiny windows and little daylight, this design is filled with light, but still respects the contextual language of a ‘solid box’.
The design features of the entrance courtyard and staircase in this instance are key for the purpose of generating light into the heart of the house. As a result of the physical area given over to the courtyard, the ephemeral qualities created are ‘borrowed’ back so to speak.
This essentially refers to the light and views, with the staircase serving as a journey up Blackbox right through to the skylight. This can best be described as the layering of views and the ‘bouncing’ of light within the house.
Simultaneously developed as a house gallery and vice versa, the design is a continuation of Form_art’s work with artists and galleries, namely their current engagement with the Tate. The volume of space carved out by expressing the brickwork enclosure enables the inside to hold a pure white ‘floating’ box, suspended to further express the interior’s language of ‘objects’.
The project serves as a testimony to Form_art’s working ethos of generating work to test and develop ideas. This process provides Form_art with complete artistic freedom as designer and client and hence, there is an uncompromised approach from initial design through to completion.
Architecture studio MAPA borrowed elements and colours typically used on colonial-style Chilean houses to create this bright red residence in a winemaking region near Santiago.
MAPA designed WA House for a single resident, who presented an image of a traditional Chilean home as the starting point for the design.
Typical elements in these colonial-style residences include a central courtyard and an outdoor corridor, so the architects added these to the design and arranged living spaces around them.
They also used red powder-coated metal siding to clad the exterior walls, as red was a popular colour used on this type of building.
Spaces inside the house are separated into three groups, following the client’s request for different spaces for solitude, entertaining friends and accommodating guests.
The main courtyard is positioned between the living room and the guest suite, offering views in two directions. To the west, it looks out over the Valley of Curacaví, while to the east it faces uphill towards the nearby vineyards.
The sheltered outdoor corridor stretches along the western side of the building. Floor-to-ceiling glazing connects it with the living and dining room, and a terrace at one end provides a scenic spot for dining outdoors.
Gabled walls at both ends of the building reveal a pitched roof that runs diagonally across the building, creating angular ceilings throughout the house.
“This operation directly affects the spatial organisation of the house, uniquely setting each area with an irregular relationship between skies and floors,” said the architects.
Wooden floors and ceilings run through the entire building. There’s also a glazed second courtyard that permits views between four different rooms.
This architectural work is located on the outskirts of Santiago in the Valley of Curacaví characteristic within the country for its great wines. The site chosen for the house corresponds to the southern slope of the valley and is oriented toward the northwest in the direction of the distant views framed by the hills and vineyards.
The commission was made by a single man who seeks both the solitude and friends company. As a starting point he brought in the image of a Chilean colonial-style house as a reference for his future home. Both conditions give way to solve the central problems in the project, which added to the site conditions guided the following decisions:
First, develop a program in three areas: private, common and guests, which allows temper the house according to the situation that has its owner, also giving autonomy to use the premises either.
Second, take two primary elements of the Chilean colonial architecture such as the courtyard and the exterior corridor to generate distances and circulations between the three areas mentioned above.
Third, align the views in east-west direction towards the longitudinal valley on one side reaching the containment of the hills and on the other hand the escape of the remoteness of the vineyards.
Fourth, within the game of the rectangular plan the ridge is modified as the midpoint and is situated on a diagonal to the central axis of the house. This operation directly affects the spatial organisation of the house setting uniquely each area with an irregular relationship between skies and floors, which is emphasised by the application of the wood sheathing on both surfaces.
The common use sector which contains living, dining and kitchen increases the maximum height emphasising the relationship with patios and views, avoiding the strong presence of western light by placing the eaves that shape the main corridor, which also constitutes the terraces of the house.
The doors were built on site and in the case of gateways that receive morning sun we added a wicket that acts as a safety enclosure window. All the house has wood floors has been treated naturally in all venues except the living room and hallways, which applies a dark finish. The siding was made in blood red metal, a colour widely used in Chilean colonial style houses.
London architecture studio ShedKM used walls of locally quarried red sandstone to help this concrete house in north-west England fit in with its coastal surroundings (+ slideshow).
Located in an elevated position overlooking an estuary, the Welsh hills and the Irish Sea, Rockmount provides a two-storey home for a family with four children, and features a large garden and an adjoining swimming pool.
“The house aimed to suit a family with progressive views on design, give fantastic views from the living areas and make the most of the topography of the site,” said ShedKM associate Greg Blee.
“In addition, it had to limit its visual impact when viewed from the coastline,” he added.
The house’s upper level stretches west to east, projecting out from the peak of the slope into the garden, while the lower level is slotted underneath and nestles up against the landscape.
Red sandstone walls form the base of the building, referencing the site’s past use as a quarry and functioning as retaining walls to support the tiered levels of the garden.
“Outcrops of red sandstone jut out of the garden in various locations,” said Blee. “This stone became part of the material palette of the new house, as it provided a connection with the local geology.”
The long narrow swimming pool thrusts out from the southern facade, while a garage and master bedroom are contained within a small wing that extends out from the north, giving the house a cross-shaped plan.
A glass bridge connects the master bedroom with the rest of the house, including a large living and dining room with a circular seating area, a piano corner and a surrounding balcony.
Evenly sized children’s bedrooms are arranged in sequence at the eastern end of the floor, and stairs lead down to a playroom and guest bedroom below.
Photography is by Jack Hobhouse, apart from where otherwise indicated.
Here’s more information from ShedKM:
Rockmount
Rockmount is built in an abandoned quarry at the summit of Caldy Hill, a protected landscape of forest and heathland owned by the National Trust. The house straddles the quarry rock face and at one end projects out from the hillside above the estuary of the River Dee.
Photograph by Chris Brink
Local sandstone walls enclose ground floor spaces, but the majority of the living and sleeping areas are at first floor, taking advantage of the spectacular views. The house has a linear plan, with a more private annexe connected by a glazed bridge.
The glazed, open plan living area, containing kitchen, dining and sunken snug contrasts with a massive concrete chimney sitting alongside the house. Upper and lower levels are linked by a double-height void containing a steel and concrete staircase.
Spaces are arranged to allow long views along two axes, the length and breadth of the house, constantly connecting the user with the surrounding landscape. Walls and level changes merge the geometry of the house with the gardens, which have been left predominantly natural to blend into the Caldy Hill landscape.
The house is uncompromisingly modern and striking in form, yet uses a materials pallet of local stone and black painted timber, both found in the local vernacular. This acts to bed the house successfully into the site and its context.
A rooftop swimming pool with a glass floor cantilevers out beside the entrance to this house in Marbella, Spain, by Dutch office Wiel Arets Architects (+ slideshow).
Named Jellyfish House, the three-storey concrete residence was designed by Wiel Arets Architects with a rooftop terrace and swimming pool to allow residents to swim and sunbathe with a view of the Mediterranean sea over neighbouring houses.
The swimming pool projects out across a semi-enclosed terrace beside the house’s main ground-floor entrance, projecting ripples of light onto the ground below.
The rear wall of the pool also features a large interior window, allowing residents in the first-floor kitchen to look out at friends and family taking a swim.
“The searing Spanish sun constantly filters through the pool’s glass wall and floor, creating ripples of iridescent turquoise reflections throughout the entire house,” explained the design team.
Another indoor window creates a view through from the kitchen to a living room below the pool, where glass walls slide back to open the space out to the elements.
The gently inclined slow route spans the length the house, connecting all three floors with the roof terrace, while the adjacent fast stair offers direct access from the exterior to the roof.
Five bedrooms are shared out between the ground and first floor of the building. On the ground floor, two single bedrooms share a central en suite bathroom, while a master bedroom sits beyond.
Two guest bedrooms can be found on the partially submerged basement level, which emerges from the ground at the south-eastern end of the site to offer a secluded extra terrace.
“Taking full advantage of the ever-present Spanish sun, the Jellyfish House is an avant-garde expression of luxurious living,” said the designers. “As most of its facades can be opened and as its staircases are mainly outdoor, the house’s ever shifting boundaries between inside and outside are curiously blurred.”
Other unusual details include a service elevator that allows food and drink to be sent up from the kitchen to the roof, televisions and audio devices that are recessed into the walls, and a first-floor sauna and steam room.
Located in Marbella, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, the Jellyfish House’s neighbouring buildings block its view onto the nearby sea. Appropriately, it was chosen to cantilever the house’s pool from its roof, so that the beach and sea can always be seen while sunbathing or swimming.
The house is organised around two paths of circulation: a ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ set of stairs, which intertwine and traverse the house’s four levels of living. The ‘fast’ stair leads from the exterior directly to the roof; it is enclosed in glass, which physically separates it from the house’s interior, yet it is simultaneously open to the exterior elements, so that sand is not brought into the house when returning from the beach. The ‘slow’ stair – whose long treads and short risers lend it its name – spans the entire length of the house, from ground floor main-entry to roof; it is indoors yet also open to the exterior elements, further amplifying the house’s capacity for ‘interiority’.
The house’s rooftop pool is cantilevered 9 m southwest – toward the Sierra Blanca mountain range in the distance – and weighs nearly 60,000 kg. Equipped with an infinity-edge, its water merges with the sea in the distance. This pool has a glass-bottom floor and a panoramic window at its interior facing edge, both of which are 6 cm thick; the latter allows those in the kitchen to voyeuristically view those swimming, while a third window affords those in the kitchen a glimpse of the living room, whose terrace extends under the cantilevered pool.
The searing Spanish sun constantly filters through the pool’s glass wall and floor, creating ripples of iridescent turquoise reflections throughout the entire house. As such, the pool can be seen and experienced from nearly all areas of the house. Integrated within the pool is an underwater bench, which traces its length and also integrates a pool cover, so that it is out of sight when the pool is in use.
Five bedrooms are located throughout the house, with two guest bedrooms situated on the basement level that face outward and onto an extensive private terrace for the exclusive use of guests. As the ‘slow’ stair leads from the main entry to the guest bedrooms below, this area of the house is able to function as a separate entity.
The kitchen is strung along the southern facade of the house’s first floor, with all secondary appliances built into an adjacent and perpendicular hallway. The first floor is also the location of the sauna and steam bath. A small service elevator also allows, for instance, food and drink to be brought from the kitchen, or any other floor, up to the rooftop pool and terrace. This roof terrace features an oversized and custom-designed concrete table with an adjoining bench, which is contiguous to an angular chair for reclining while sunbathing.
The house’s structure is composed of poured in place white-concrete, supported by one column at the right-rear edge of its pool, and several smaller columns near the rear-dining terrace. All non-concrete walls were constructed with glazing, which allows sunlight to permeate the house. Multiple bedroom closets, whose obverse faces the ground floor hallway, are finished in translucent glazing to compound this sunlight diffusing strategy. Oversized and accordion-like folding panels of translucent glazing adjoin each dining or entertaining space, which, when opened, essentially expands the house’s numerous areas of living by nearly doubling their size.
All of the house’s audio-video equipment – such as its countless Bose speakers – are recessed into its ceilings and walls, which allows them to disappear within their context little noticed. Lighting illuminates all corridors and staircases, as well as underwater within the pool, ensuring the rippling effects of its reflections that shimmer through its glass floor and wall can also be experienced throughout the house at night.
Taking full advantage of the ever-present Spanish sun, the Jellyfish House is an avant-garde expression of luxurious living; as most of its facades can be opened, and as its staircases are mainly outdoor, the house’s ever shifting boundaries between inside and outside are curiously blurred.
Location: Los Monteros, 29600 Marbella, Spain Program: Housing Size: 650 m2 Date of design: 1998-2001 Date of completion: Winter 2013 Project team: Wiel Arets, Bettina Kraus, Lars Dreessen, Dennis Villanueva, Carlos Ballesteros Collaborators: Paul Draaijer, William Fung, Johannes Kappler Client: Private Consultants: West 8, ABT BV, Cauberg-Huygen Raadgevende Ingenieurs BV, Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos S.L.
This black house by German studios Fabian Evers Architecture and Wezel Architektur is raised up over a translucent base where the client’s truck can be stored (+ slideshow).
Located on a busy street near Tübingen, Germany, the building needed to accommodate both a residence and a workshop, so Fabian Evers Architecture and Wezel Architektur decided to lift all the living spaces off the ground and create a garage underneath with a parking space for the client’s Unimog – a cult four-wheel drive vehicle produced by Mercedes Benz.
This prompted the architects to name the project House Unimog.
“The concept was to stack the two different uses on top of each other in order to minimise the footprint on the site and to orient the living rooms from the street towards the landscape,” said Fabian Evers.
Opaque corrugated cladding covers the first-floor walls and roof, while the lower level is surrounded by translucent polycarbonate with matching ridges, allowing daylight to permeate the workshop.
“The workspace is filled with filtered natural light during the daytime, and turns at night into a light box which glows into the neighbourhood,” said Evers.
A staircase extends up along one of the outer walls, leading through to the domestic spaces via a sheltered south-facing terrace that can be used for various activities, from al fresco dining to chopping wood for the fire.
Glass doors connect the terrace with an open-plan living and dining area, with a bathroom and bedroom positioned beyond.
Oriented strand board lines the walls and ceilings of all three rooms, and a wood-burning stove provides heating.
Here’s some more information from Fabian Evers:
House Unimog
The unusual task and the difficult building site was at one hand a big challenge but on the other a big potential. The owner requested a workshop for his Unimog and a small residential unit.
The site is located directly next to a street with heavy traffic and is surrounded by small private houses and farm buildings. A crucial parameter was the very tight cost frame.
The concept was to stack the two different uses on top of each other in order to minimise the footprint on the site and to orient the living rooms from the street towards the landscape. The result is a vertically developed house. The variation of the two different uses reflects itself through the facade: The lower part of the workshop is clad with translucent polycarbonate elements.
The workspace is filled with filtered natural light during the daytime, and turns at night into a light box which glows into the neighbourhood. The living space presents itself with its anthracite facade as a monolithic volume. Precise set windows and a generous south-oriented loggia enables beautiful views into the surrounding landscape.
The chosen materials for the facade and inside the building underlines the pragmatic and reduced design concept: a house which is rather located in the typology of a rational farmhouse or of a workshop than a classical residential house.
Project: low budget house – private house with mit workshop Client: private Period: 2011 – 2012 Floor area: 120 m2 Costs: 170.000 Euros
Site planGround floor planFirst floor planCross section
Black-painted timber contrasts with clean white window frames on the walls of this cube-shaped weekend home in Normandy, France, by Paris studio Beckmann-N’Thépé Architectes (+ slideshow).
Located on a quiet countryside plot in Bellavilliers, Beckmann-N’Thépé‘s House in Normandy is surrounded by little but woodland and fields.
The architects designed the house as a “minimalist object”, with a simple geometric shape and only one pronounced opening on each side.
Horizontal timber panels clad each wall and are painted black, giving the facade the appearance of charcoal.
“A line diagram cube with a 50 square-metre base on the ground, [the house’s] black-tinted wooden wall panelling responds to the woodland environment,” said the architects.
Small square windows puncture three elevations, while the fourth has glazed doors that lead out to a small terrace.
There’s also a fifth opening – a front door that is camouflaged within the cladding but revealed by a simple canopy.
A combined living room, dining area and kitchen takes up one half of the ground floor and features a double-height ceiling.
One bedroom is tucked away behind, alongside the bathroom, and a second occupies a mezzanine floor above.
The house was completed in 2009 and functions as the holiday home for a family of four.
Photography is by Stephan Lucas.
Read on for more information from Agence Beckmann-N’Thépé:
House in Normandy Bellavilliers, France
The house is located in the Normandy Bocage, surrounded by hedgerows and looking out over Bellême Forest. Set on the first third of a plot of land 150 m long, it stands in an isolated residential area in the Perche countryside.
A minimalist object, a line diagram cube with 50 m2 base on the ground, its black tinted wooden wall panelling responds to the woodland environment. With just one opening on each side judiciously oriented and highlighted with white, the front is made up of a wooden frame lined with high performance thermal insulation.
The double height in the living-room, also lit through a large bay window opening onto the south side, tends to expand the space.
The strict comfort needed is provided – a living space comprising a living-room with fireplace, open-plan kitchen, bathroom and cupboard space; and a night-time area with two bedrooms, one treated as a large open loft space, and a bathroom.
A few trees decorate the driveway and create a filter between the house and the lane outside.
The dormant partners’ requirement, the desired originality in the response, and the €120,000 budget together defined this simple volume, combining a good floor surface area to frontage ratio. The qualitative approach to the project in terms of materials and energy performance was the key here.
Program: Secondary residence for 4 people Architects: Agence Beckmann-N’Thépé (Paris) Client: Private Area: 80 m2 net floor area Cost: EUR 120 000 excl. VAT
Ground floor plan
Project manager: Nicolas Gaudard Architect: Laura Giovannetti Assistant architects: Mathilde Billet, Arthur Billaut, Thimothée Kazmierczak
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