Hasta La Ideas

Since publishing a residential extension in Italy by architects Plasma Studio earlier this month, we’ve picked another faceted house from the studio’s archives located in the same South Tyrollean village.

Plasma Studio designed the Cube House on a steep site between two existing properties in the village of Sesto, high in the Dolomite mountains.

Triangular sections of the facade jut out to meet the slope, fusing the building with the site.

Main access to the house is past two parking spaces on the lower level dug into the hillside.

The staircase dog-legs up through the centre of the house, surrounded by the living, dining and kitchen area on the first floor. Bedrooms occupy the top storey.

Generous south and east-facing balconies and terraces double the amount of useable floor space. “We opened the facade as much as possible in order to widen up the tight interior,” said the architects.

The house is wrapped in slanted wooden slats, which help to screen balconies and terraces from the main road while still offering views to the mountains through angled openings.

Facing the hill behind, the back corner of the property is rendered white like the surrounding buildings and punctured with small rectangular windows.

Plasma Studio have designed another project in the area – a hotel clad with similar angled wood panels just down the valley.

See more Italian houses »
See more architecture by Plasma Studio »
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Photography is by Cristobal Palma.

Here’s the project description from Plasma Studio:

The major constraints of this project, its steep site, compressed between existing buildings and very limited allowance of development volume have shaped the form of this house.

It is inserted into the earth with two covered parking spaces to the front from where a small stair case leads up to the main living zones in the first floor and further to the bedrooms in the second floor.

Compact circulation

Because of the limited available floor area the staircase and circulation had to be designed in a very space-saving way – this lead to the continuous organisation in the first floor: the single functions cooking, eating and living are positioned around the circulation core in order to give connectivity and privacy at the same time to the single activities.

The staircase and built-in furniture piece, which is storage, oven and service cavity at the same time, divides and connects as a short cut at the same time. On the second floor the single sleeping rooms are connected to each other in the shortest possible way.

View and shelter

Given prominent location of the site directed towards the south and the Dolomites we opened the facade as much as possible in order to widen up the tight interiors – on both main floors ample balconies and terraces double the available floor area and offer great places to play for the kids and rest for the parents.

In order to provide shelter from the views of the passing by road a layer of wooden sticks was wrapped around the big openings directed to the south – depending on the varying size of the openings they provide different degrees of shelter and intimacy.

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Plasma Studio appeared first on Dezeen.

South Korean architect Moon Hoon designed this home with missing corners for a figurine collector and his family (+ slideshow).

Moon Hoon designed the house for an empty plot beside a lake in Bangdong, an area of South Korea popular with tourists.

“The vacant site seemed to invite some kind of a sculptural object, unhindered by its neighbours, standing rather conspicuously,” said the architect.

Polygonal facades are created by slicing the corners off a narrow cuboid. On each wall these outlines are repeatedly scaled down and recessed until they form windows in the centre.

Conan House, which translates as Toy House, was designed for a local TV producer who wanted somewhere to display his toy collection.

“He is an avid collector of miniature robots and figures,” said the architect, “a hobby that started from an early age that has not stopped.”

Hoon created square niches in the railings that surround the central staircase to display the best objects in the client’s collection.

The staircase spirals up the centre of the building around a skylit atrium, dotted with the display cases all the way up.

More paraphernalia is stored on a wooden bookcase in the basement that nestles in the bottom of the stairwell and wraps around a study area.

Moving up the building, levels are staggered to separate the entrance and living room from the dining and kitchen area.

The main bedroom and ensuite bathroom sit a few steps down from two children’s rooms that share a window.

A red slide cuts across the atrium to join the play areas split over the top floors, which have a yellow ceiling and are lit by windows in the sliced-off corners.

Wooden floors and stair treads run throughout the dominantly white interiors. The entrance is through one of the cleaved wall junctions, easily noticeable from the outside as it’s painted red.

Moon Hoon has also designed a house with a wooden slide slotted between a combined staircase and bookshelf.

Other residences in South Korea include a countryside retreat for a retired couple and villas covered in volcanic rubble. See more houses in South Korea »

Photography is by Nam Goung Son.

Here’s some extra information from Moon Hoon:

Conan House, Moon Hoon

The site

Bangdong is a famous place for sight seeing and leisure for nearby dwellers. It can be quite crowded during the holiday seasons.

The irregular plot of land situated right in front of Bangdong lake boasts a beautiful open view of the lake and a low mountain as a back drop. When visited for the first time, the vacant site seemed to invite some kind of a sculptural object, unhindered by its neighbours, standing rather conspicuously.

The client

He is a producer for a local TV station, with one kid and a lovely wife. His family visited my office one day and asked for a skip-floored house like Lollipop House, which they had seen in the magazines.

He was an avid collector of miniature robots and figures. A hobby that started from an early age, which has not stopped. His father was also an avid collector of natural stones shaped like something recognisable or possessing some abstract qualities. The collector gene was running in the family.

The architect

I am a playful architect. I have met the right client, who has kept his child-like mind intact with him. The design went through two alternatives, one each floor stacked and rotating, the other of a box with small broken floors moving up in a spiral.

Both had their ups and downs. The client chose the latter. The house has a central core that is used as an exhibition space and a railing for his toys.

The spiral and jagged floor levels follow the spiral stair case all the way up to the attic, where you can find a small red slide that traverses the void. The exterior expresses the inner spiral energy in a simplified form.

The space

The spiral staircase is a place for movement, play and exhibition. It plays a central role in the house. the other functioning rooms such as living, kitchen, bedrooms are attached to the system.

The windows are placed in the centre of each wall, mimicking the concept and inviting ample amount of light. The void in the middle gives much vertical depth in a otherwise a compact house.

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by Moon Hoon appeared first on Dezeen.

Delicate glazing fits around a bulky concrete structure at this hilltop house in Toledo by Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza (+ slideshow).

With views stretching out towards the Sierra de Gredos mountains, the two-storey Casa Rufo was designed by Alberto Campo Baeza as “a hut on top of the cave”, with a sequence of ground-floor rooms overshadowed by a long and narrow rooftop podium.

A concrete canopy, described by the architect as like “a table with ten legs”, shelters a small section of the podium and is surrounded by frameless glazing, creating a transparent room that is visible from the surrounding garden.

A staircase leads directly down from here to the living and dining room below, where the architect has placed the entrance to the house.

Rectangular cutaways transform some of the rooms into open-air courtyards. Two bedrooms face in towards these spaces, rather than out through the exterior walls.

Another opening reveals the location of a parking garage, while a smaller void functions as a rooftop swimming pool.

A row of poplar trees was planted behind the house, helping to screen it from views from the north-east.

Alberto Campo Baeza lives and works in Madrid, and also teaches architecture at the Madrid School of Architecture. His other projects include Offices for Junta de Castilla y León, a glazed office block concealed behind a sandstone enclosure.

Other Spanish houses on Dezeen include a converted stone stable and a residence that looks like a cluster of concrete cubes. See more houses in Spain »

Photography is by Javier Callejas.

Here’s a project description from the architect:

Rufo House, Toledo

The brief was to build a house on a hilltop outside of the city of Toledo. The hill faces southwest and offers interesting views of the distant horizon, reaching the Gredos Mountains to the northeast.

The site measures 60 x 40 m and has a 10-metre slope. At the highest point, we established a longitudinal podium, 6 meters wide and 3 meters high, that extends from side to side the entire length of the site. All of the house’s functions are developed inside of this long box, the length of concrete creating a long horizontal platform up high, as if it were a jetty that underlines the landscape with tremendous force.

This long concrete box is perforated and cut into, conveniently creating objects and voids to appropriately accommodate the requested functions (courtyard + covered courtyard, kitchen, living room-dining room-hall, bedroom, courtyard + courtyard, bedroom, garage, swimming pool, bedroom, courtyard).

In this distribution the living-dining room opens to the garden while the bedrooms face onto courtyards open to the sky and garden, affording them the necessary privacy. The stairway connecting the upper floor is situated in the area behind the living-dining room.

On top of the podium and aligned with it, a canopy with ten concrete columns with a square section support a simple flat roof, as if it were a table with ten legs. Under this roof, behind the columns, is a delicate glass box. To protect the views of the house from the back, a simple row of poplars were planted.

Once again, the theme of the hut on top of the cave. Once again, the theme of a tectonic architecture over a stereotomic architecture.

Location: Urbanización Montesión, Calle Brezo parcela nº 158. Toledo
Client: Rufino Delgado Mateos
Area: house: 200 sqm, patios 120 sqm

Architect: Alberto Campo Baeza
Collaborating architects: Raúl Martinez, Petter Palander
Structure: Juan Antonio Domínguez (HCA)
Surveyor: José Miguel Agulló
Builder: José Miguel Agulló

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Alberto Campo Baeza appeared first on Dezeen.

From the outside this house in Nagoya by Japanese architect Tetsuo Kondo looks like a pile of overlapping boxes, but inside it opens up to form one big bright space (+ slideshow).

As the home to family of four, House in Chayagasaka was planned by Tetsuo Kondo as a single space so that residents can always see what’s going on elsewhere in the house.

“As both of the parents work, they wanted to have as many common areas as possible, in order to spend more time together as a family,” said Kondo. “So I decided to build a one-room house, with a lot of subtle balance between connected and separated areas.”

The main body of the two-storey building comprises six cuboidal volumes, with small gardens and balconies squeezed into the spaces between.

A white metal staircase winds up through the centre of house, beginning as a rectilinear form but soon adopting a curved shape.

This staircase leads up from a central living area to two children’s bedrooms and a bathroom, each set at a different level. Two final steps ascend to a terrace in the far corner of the building.

“When making a house for a young family with children that will soon grow up, and the developing area around the house will change fast, it seems to make sense to design a house with very open architecture,” added Kondo.

Glazed screens surround the two small gardens that puncture the volume of the house at ground floor level. One is positioned alongside a dining room at the rear, while the other pushes into the space of the living room.

The floor steps down at the front of the house, defining the boundary of the master bedroom.

Tetsuo Kondo founded his studio in 2006 and previously designed a house where every room leads through to a little garden. Other projects by the architect include a walkway that winds its way around tree trunks and a mirror that becomes cloudy when viewed from the side.

See more design by Tetsuo Kondo »
See more houses in Japan »

Photography is by Iwan Baan, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s a project description from Tetsuo Kondo Architects:

House in Chayagasaka

This is a private residential house for a family of four in Nagoya – a young couple and their two small children. The site is located close to a new metro station, in an area that is developing rapidly. As both of the parents work, they wanted to have as many common areas as possible, in order to spend more time together as a family. So I decided to build a one-room house, with a lot of subtle balance between connected and separated areas.

In this project, I tried to achieve architecture that welcomes a large variety of things, in a state where all the parts are mutually interrelated. This architecture is not one dominated by a strong system or built in a well-ordered manner, but rather one that incorporates various meanings and it seems difficult to understand why it was made that way. When making a house for a young family with children that will soon grow up, and the developing area around the house will change fast, it seems to make sense to design a house with very open architecture, one with balance that can accept diversity.

I designed a strange shaped one-room house by placing ordinary room-size boxes of variable shapes. I tried to deal at the same time with components which might normally not be directly related, such as widths, heights, structures, brightness, functions, shape, circulations, terrace, etc. The relationships between these things are very complex, and if one part would be changed, it would influence the whole building. However, from the perspective of a whole, it can be absorbed.

I think this type of architecture can achieve a new kind of residential comfort, by mixing various things including the present and the future course of life, as well as the history and culture of the location.

It manages to maintain the diversity of a certain state of equilibrium with order. The order should not constrain the system, but it should rather loosely define its relationship. I aimed to create an architecture in such a soft order.

Location: Aichi, Japan
Program: Private house
Completion Period: September 2012
Total Floor Area : 89.55 sqm
Site Area: 97.58 sqm
Architect: Tetsuo Kondo Architects
Structural Engineer: Konishi Structural Engineers

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Tetsuo Kondo Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Playground swings can be hung both inside and outside this Japanese house with a corner sliced off by Level Architects, the firm that previously completed a residence with a slide connecting its floors (+ slideshow).

Located in the city of Kamakura, the three-storey family house was designed by Level Architects with a series of children’s play areas, including a courtyard garden, a rooftop balcony, a large bedroom and a loft playroom.

Metal hooks allow residents to attach a swing to the ceiling in the ground-floor hallway. They can also hang either a swing or hammock across the L-shaped balcony on the middle floor.

From the street, the house appears as a large timber-clad cuboid that appears to have had its western corner sliced away, revealing the location of the courtyard garden and surrounding balcony.

“The cutaway corner of the exterior wall is adjusted so that it comes down to a height of a handrail, creating privacy at just the right level without completely enclosing the [first] floor outdoor terrace,” said the architects.

The building’s entrance leads through to an area that the architects refer to as an “inner terrace”, which is separated from the surrounding rooms by split levels. “The floor level can also be utilised as a bench,” added the architects.

The double-height living and dining room spans the width of the first floor and features high-level windows that bring in natural light without compromising privacy.

Two mezzanine loft rooms flank the space from above and feature internal windows so that parents can keep an eye on children playing upstairs.

Children’s playgrounds have provided the inspiration for several of Level Architects’ projects. The studio completed its house with an indoor slide in 2011 and have also worked on a residence with an indoor skateboarding area.

Other Japanese houses on Dezeen recently include a combined home and dog-grooming salon and a house raised up on pilotis. See more houses in Japan »

Photography is by Makoto Yoshida.

Read on for more details from Level Architects:

House in Ofuna

This design, which cuts away the western corner from this extruded volume of the site, created a focal point within the house, while still enabling a connection to the surrounding exterior environment. The cutaway corner is able to establish a direct view onto the small hills west of the house, as well as retaining privacy from the street below.

The use of natural wood material for the extruded volume itself allowed the design to incorporate a hard edge at the cutaway corner, creating a sharp and distinct separation from the rest of the design. This triangular surface edge also helps to break up the solid aspect of the design and somewhat control its presence onto the street.

The interior planning of the first floor revolves around layers of space; the terrace, inner terrace, and then the private bedrooms, all surround the enclosed symbolic tree planted in the inner garden. Level changes were also implemented to create different opportunities for the children’s room and its relation to the inner terrace; the floor level can also be utilised as a bench, allowing multiple uses to the open space. The inner terrace can also be viewed as a spacious entrance hall, which allows the extensive walls to be enjoyed as large storage areas as well.

The second floor living/dining/kitchen space enjoys a ceiling height of more than 3.5 meters. Looking towards the street you are able to view the triangular cutaway corner framing the hills beyond, as well as the symbolic tree sprouting up from the first floor. This tall ceiling brings in enough light to brighten up the loft, creating a sunny, playful space for the children, while still being connected to the living room below.

The cutaway corner of the exterior wall is adjusted so that it comes down to a height of a handrail, creating privacy at just the right level without completely enclosing the second floor outdoor terrace. The windows placed throughout the east and south side of the house take into consideration the neighbouring buildings and so are located at relatively high locations, controlling both light and the view into the home.

Site: Kanagawa Pref., Kamakura City
Site area: 135.44m²
Building footprint: 66.64 sqm
Total building area: 121.70 sqm
1F area: 66.64 sqm
1F terrace Area: 7.94 sqm
2F area: 55.06 sqm
2F terrace area: 11.43 sqm
Loft area: 10.69 sqm
Loft terrace area: 11.81 sqm
Construction type: Wood frame
Stories: 2 stories + Loft
Completion date: 03/2012

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Level Architects appeared first on Dezeen.