A staircase folds around a double-height bookcase inside this wooden family house in Fukuoka, Japan, by local architects MOVEDESIGN (+ slideshow).
Illuminated from all sides by skylights, clerestory glazing and various windows, the staircase was designed by MOVEDESIGN to connect all three floors of House in Nanakuma, creating a well-lit study space that is surrounded by books and other personal items.
“We can see the sky from one window, or the green of trees from other windows,” explained the architects. “These window pictures change with the eye level walking up and down the stairs, making our minds calm and peaceful.”
Internal walls were added sparingly, so the staircase leads straight into rooms on each floor. “The individual spaces are continuous so that the family can have privacy and also feel the presence of each other,” said the architects.
On the ground floor, the staircase opens out to a living and dining room where all food preparation and dining is accommodated by a single wooden island. Translucent panels conceal storage areas behind, while a traditional Japanese room sits off to one side.
A living room occupies the basement floor and opens out to sunken terraces on both sides of the building. A long and narrow window offers a view out to the largest of these two spaces, which is overshadowed by a small balcony on the floor above.
Walls on this floor feature exposed concrete surfaces, contrasting with the wooden walls and partitions elsewhere in the house.
The main bedroom is located on the uppermost floor, alongside a second Japanese room and a small roof terrace.
This house is located in Fukuoka, Japan. Reinforced concrete for basement and wood flame for two floors on the ground.
Three floors are in layers, different generations of this family live in this layered house. The individual spaces are continuous so that the family can have privacy and also feel the presence of each other.
The role of the large staircase is an apparatus to connect three layers. It takes sunlight and connects the air with the house. The stairs are the main traffic line, there are some windows cut outside scenery. We can see the sky from one window, or the green of trees from other windows. These window pictures change with the eye level walking up and down the stairs, making our minds calm and peaceful.
The staircase and windows were planned to control the opening to the outside, cutting the scenery, saving energy, bringing requisite sunlight and a wind through the house. We hope that three people of this family having different generations can have individual lifestyles for their day life.
A perforated concrete wall screens the courtyard of this Singapore house by Formwerkz Architects from low sun and prying neighbours (+ slideshow).
Formwerkz Architects punctured the concrete wall joining the house’s two blocks with a pattern of holes that looks like inverted braille.
“The perforated concrete wall allows for air-flow and glimpses of the garden beyond but shields the western sun and its adjacent neighbours,” said the architects.
The blocks sit either side of a pool in a central courtyard and have gardens to the front and rear, a layout modelled on a northern Chinese typology but adapted for the tropical climate.
“Similar to the traditional courtyard typology, the inner core is a private, secure and well-ventilated outdoor space intended as an extension of the family space,” the architects said.
From street level the house is approached via a flight of stairs that lead up to a decked terrace, which sits on top of a garage next to the staff quarters in the basement.
The ground floor is tiled with travertine both outside and in, divided by the central pool that separates a living area on one side and a dining room and kitchen on the other.
Upper storeys overhang these spaces, protecting them from rain to remove the need for walls that would face the interior.
A spiral staircase leads up to a series of bedrooms, studies and bathrooms on both sides, connected by a balcony that circles the courtyard partly indoors and partly out. This walkway breaches the concrete walls so the residents can amble above the jungle-like garden.
Rooms on the first floor are screened with wooden strips, used either vertically or criss-crossed. A large bathroom, library and outdoor seating area take up the top floor.
The courtyard house is located in a three-storey mixed-landed residential district, on the eastern part of Singapore. Built for a multi-generational family who seeks a communal way of living but wanted a space that are private, screened from the prying eyes of surrounding neighbours.
While inspired by the Si He Yuan courtyard house, the project seeks to readapt the vernacular typology found in the northern regions of China, to a detached house typology in an urbanised tropical context.
The massing, comprising of two blocks in a north-south orientation, delineate the site with a front garden, the central courtyard where all the rooms looked into and a back garden. The public and private realms are layered in a spatial procession from the street. Circulation within the house circumambulate the courtyard on all floors.
The main spaces are organised around this central, outdoor atrium where a lap pool runs parallel to one edge. The ground floor is finished entirely in hone travertine without any drops to blur the boundaries between indoor and outdoor, unifying the entire ground floor as a singular, seamless, communal space. The perforated concrete wall allows for air-flow and glimpses of the garden beyond but shields the western sun and its adjacent neighbours.
The house expresses the relationship between periphery and core. Similar to the traditional courtyard typology, the inner core is a private, secure and well-ventilated outdoor space intended as an extension of the family space. While the periphery is surrounded in dense tropical foliage, the courtyard is tranquil and contemplative.
Through a series of spatial appendixes of bridges, wall perforations, pool extensions, shower stalls, stairs and bay windows that penetrate the two side walls that bound the inner sanctum, the residents gets to experience the tropical garden on the periphery.
Belgian studio Areal Architecten inserted this brick and concrete townhouse into a residential streetscape in Mechelen near Antwerp.
Internally the three floors are united visually by a void topped with a skylight, which brings light down the stairwell to the ground floor.
This internal “canyon” separates the open-plan living spaces from the bedrooms.
“It’s a single family row house in the city but with amazing views and voids, and the use of a combination of raw and refined materials,” says Thomas Cols of Areal Architecten.
The brick facade is sliced and faceted to relate the otherwise austere volume to its neighbours.
Instead of a front door onto the street, the house is entered via a porte-cochère.
Inside, the material palette is restrained, with ribbed concrete soffits, brick walls, timber and concrete floors and large internal single-pane windows.
The staircase is of white-painted steel and features blade-like treads.
The upper floors are of timber while the living quarters and kitchen have fitted timber-fronted storage units.
The open-plan first floor features a living room giving on to a terrace while the kitchen is on the ground floor.
The stone-clad ground floor rises in steps to manage the transition between the street level and the lower garden.
Here’s some text from the architects:
House in Mechelen
By a set of subtle surfaces, the front facade is struggling to blend into the template of the street. It balances between integrating and standing out. Inside a continuous open space made of large and generous rooms, connected to each other by some unexpected views creates a compressed urban-like space.
A “canyon” of light allows to create a dinstinction between the living spaces and the bedrooms while extending itself to the ground floor through a void which receives the staircase.
The traditional spaces of a house are put together here into a single organic space with raw finishing such as a concrete grid on the ceiling and the prominent interior brick wall.
Facade
A difference of level on the ground floor creates a smooth transition between the street and the back of the house which is ended with a longitudinal garden.
Through precise openings and a terrace in extension of the living room, the boundaries between inside and outside in this townhouse are fading.
Seoul architects studio_GAON designed this house in the Korean countryside for a couple who want to retire and grow walnuts (+ slideshow).
The couple, who are in their sixties, required a house where they could live with their parents and daughter.
Located on a sunny hillside near the provincial town of Geochang, the timber-framed house has traditional Korean architectural features including a raised timber “maru” deck offering views of the surrounding countryside.
The daughter and parents are accommodated on the second floor and ground floor annex respectively, sharing the living room and maru with the owners.
The house is designed to engender a sense of tranquility and privacy, allowing the owners to rest after their long careers.
“The scenery is so peaceful that it feels like midday nap soaks into a body as softly blowing wind,” write studio_GAON. “Nobody hinders or prohibits ingoing, but the house is so peculiar located that nobody from outside can see the inside.”
Here’s some more information from the architects:
House in Geochang
House in Geochang is the house built on a sunny hill of Geochang, a Korean provincial city. There is a tall, brushy dogwood in the site, and a spring next to the tree which always provides fresh water. Also there is a small pool at the foot of the hill.
The scenery is so peaceful that it feels like midday nap soaks into a body as softly blowing wind. Nobody hinders or prohibits ingoing, but the house is so peculiar located that nobody from outside can see the inside. Slope of the hill is moderately steep, and wind is blowing quietly. This is an ideal land, which has hill, water, wind and tree.
The house was built by a sexagenarian couple who was going to live with octogenarian parents. The house owner, who devoted his entire life to social movements (labor movements) resembles Prometheus, a Titan in Greek mythology.
The couple helped others during their whole life, and even now they are taking care of others at every opportunity. They are planning to grow walnuts after completing the house. So they wanted a land which is suitable for farming, and a house which can provide true relaxation.
So we wanted a modest and cozy house, which will not wake the Titan, who takes rest after a long time, from his nap. Nap is a temporary sleep, a sleep which provides a clear mind after waking up. Here they will take sleep and rest soundly. For this reason, we decided to call the house as ‘House, where shade rests’.
Required spaces are rooms for the couple, parents and daughter respectively, living room as common space, two restrooms and an attic. The relationships whithin the family is good, but we targeted on keeping discreet distance and protecting private life in order to prevent discomfort due to overly nearness and excessive consideration.
On the East corner, where the dogwood is seen clearly, we put a kitchen and dining room, and on the opposite side, projected the living room to the main approach, and added a wide floor. For this reason, if we see the house from the front, the part of left side is a space for daughter-in-law, and the part of right side is a space for mother-in-law.
The living space for the daughter-in-law is a kitchen and dining room, where the dogwood and spring are very close to. The living space for the mother-in-law is living room and main room, which has a good view of a garden and village. For a daughter, who wants a separate space, assigned a room with a balcony on the 2nd floor, and from there she can have a talk with a person on a deck connected with a kitchen, looking each other.
Due to the form of the site, the house was slightly tilted along East-West axis and took elongated shape. Since the scenery of the hill located on North-West side was so beautiful, they should be seen from the kitchen and living room, and we made windows toward South and North in order to receive warm sunlight from South.
As the house owner wished, we hope the family will remember this house as their new home, as the cozy and comfortable house, receiving consolation from nature. The building, like a farmer who endured storm and eventually collected teemful harvest, will be a permanent living place for the three generation family.
Long brick and wood volumes extend down the narrow plot of this house in Bondi, Sydney, by local architect Fearns Studio (+ slideshow).
While renovating a single-storey Victorian terrace, Fearns Studio filled the thin strip of land behind with a blackened wood cuboid on top of brick ground floor that’s painted white.
Under the pitched roof of the old house, a lounge faces the street and a bedroom behind is connected to a bathroom via a small courtyard.
These rooms are joined by a long corridor that leads from the front door to the large open-plan dining, kitchen and living area.
Ground-floor rooms are lit by skylights, as well as patio doors along the thin alleyway down one side of the house that leads to a courtyard.
“Skylight penetrations bring light into the centre of the plan, helping to define spaces within it,” said architect Matt Fearns.
Stairs behind one wall of the double-height dining space lead up to two more bedrooms, which both have a balcony and share a bathroom.
Kitchen units, tables and cupboard doors match the wooden window and door frames, which warm the neutral interior.
A guest bedroom and ensuite bathroom sit above a garage at the bottom of the garden.
A renovation of an inner city, Victorian terrace house, the Bondi House was conceived as a first floor timber tube above a ground level brick box behind the retained portion of the house.
Skylight penetrations bring light into the centre of the plan, help define spaces within it and protect the privacy of neighbouring dwellings from upper level rooms while large glazed doors open new ground level interiors to unobtrusive garden courtyards.
Warmth is given to the white plaster walls and ceilings and to concrete flooring with oak cabinetry, windows, doors and with blackbutt flooring through the remainder of the house.
These hyper-realistic computer renderings show a forthcoming concrete and glass house in Christchurch, England, designed by London-based Henry Goss Architects (+ slideshow).
Henry Goss Architects designed Staithe End for a site adjacent to a listed building and in a conservation area close to Christchurch harbour on England’s south coast, while the images were produced by sister company Goss Visualisations.
The house will sit right up against the listed property and border another building at a slight angle on the other side, so terraces and garden will also be angled to compensate.
An open plan living, dining and kitchen space will occupy the ground floor, leading out to the series of terraces linked by external staircases.
Two of the four bedrooms including the master suite will be located in the basement, across a sunken gravel courtyard from an artist’s studio topped with a green roof.
The other two bedrooms will be on the top floor, along with another living space at the back with a balcony overlooking the harbour and nearby Hengistbury Head Nature Reserve.
This steel-framed upper storey is to be clad with vertical strips of local larch on the street facade and will sit on top of the concrete ground and basement levels. Strips of glazing will separate these floors and the house next door.
“Pretty interesting job, this one, as the chances of it getting planning [permission] were virtually nil due to the historic environment, listed building, coastal flooding etc,” writes architect Henry Goss.” Somehow we got it through by a narrow margin at comity with full endorsement from the local planning authority”.
Construction is due to start later this year and the architects hope to complete the project in Autumn 2014.
This four bed private house on the banks of Christchurch Harbour represents a real coup and a major precedent for high quality contemporary architecture in the most sensitive of historic environments. Planning approval was gained largely due to the unusually progressive and enlightened planning authority in Christchurch, Dorset who champion all high quality design, contemporary or otherwise.
Sectional perspective
The dwelling is located in the centre of an important conservation area and adjoined to a listed building, part of which requires demolition to make way for the development. The uncompromising contemporary nature of the design was seen by the LPA as a positive aspect as it seeks to distinguish itself from the listed building thus providing a strong contrast in design that compliments and emphasises the design qualities of each.
Further constraints came in the form of coastal flooding. The solution was to treat the entire site as a tanked excavation including basement, courtyards and terraces which fall below the 4m AOD set by the Environment Agency.
A lightweight steel and glass box floats atop the exposed concrete ground work providing views across the harbour to Hengistbury Head Nature Reserve.
Natural light is brought into all parts of the plan at basement, ground and first floor by careful manipulation of levels and openings down the long narrow site. The result is a development which has an ambiguous relationship between inside and out, between built form and nature.
Slender columns support a canopy that sweeps around the front of this family residence in Japan’s Tokushima prefecture by Japanese firm Horibe Associates (+ slideshow).
Horibe Associates raised the single-storey wooden House in Naruto off the ground on concrete foundations to protect it against flooding, a common issue in the neighbourhood.
“The clients requested a design that dealt with the problem, as well as providing security, privacy, good natural light and air circulation, and a space that their children could run around in,” said the architects.
Access to the chunky wooden front door is via steps around one side of the curved facade or a ramp from the other, both covered by the porch.
The entrance leads through to a combined kitchen, dining and living room at the west side of the property, while bedrooms are positioned to the east.
Full-height sliding windows lead from these zones into a rectangular outdoor space.
A single tree is planted in the middle of this central courtyard, which is decked with the same wooden slats that run throughout the house.
“[We] proposed locating a large courtyard in the centre of the house that would let in light and air without sacrificing privacy,” the architects added.
The low window on the north wall leads into a play area with softer tatami flooring so the children can access the room directly from outside.
Storage space and a bathroom are accessed by a narrow corridor that buffers the ancillary rooms from communal space and completes the loop around the house.
This apartment block in Seoul by South Korean designers OBBA has a semi-outdoor stairwell screened behind a section of open brickwork in the centre.
The Beyond the Screen project by OBBA (Office for Beyond Boundaries Architecture) is located on a corner plot in the Naebalsan-dong neighbourhood of Seoul.
The five-storey building comprises two volumes bridged by the stairwell, and its volume is sliced externally by regulations such as setback lines and natural light requirements.
“The outer appearance is a single mass, however, it is actually two masses bridged by a semi-exterior central stairwell with a unique brick screen to the front and back, forming an H-shaped plan,” said the architects.
The upper four floors are divided into 14 residential units in four types, arranged on split levels so that each apartment is accessed directly from a stair landing.
The brick screen allows each apartment to have natural ventilation on three sides.
The pattern continues over the roof and covers selected apartment windows that would otherwise be severely overlooked by adjacent buildings.
“This screen filters the view into the building from the front, while allowing for the right amount of natural light and ventilation, creating a far more pleasant atmosphere in and around a stairwell,” the architects added.
A roof garden at the top provides communal outdoor space tucked behind a parapet wall, while the ground floor comprises a parking place on one side and a cafe on the other.
Seoul studio OBBA was founded in 2012 by Sojung Lee and Sangjoon Kwak, who previously worked at Dutch firm OMA and Korean firm Mass Studies.
Beyond the Screen is a new type of residential complex, located in Naebalsan-dong, Seoul. The existing condition of this residential neighbourhood is no different from most other neighbourhoods, with multiplex housing having held the majority.
The aim of this project was to offer a compact spatial richness for living, while finding new architectural solutions in satisfying the specific needs of the user, client, as well as contributing to the improvement of the typically generic townscape so familiar in Korea.
The building sits at a corner condition and is formed by a cutting and shaping of the volume by influences of the site regulations such as setback lines and natural light requirements.
The outer appearance is a single mass, however, it is actually two masses bridged by a semi-exterior central stairwell with a unique brick screen to the front and back, forming an H-shaped plan, with a skipped floor structure from the east to west.
This five-story building incorporates both residential and commercial functions – the first floor with a café and a piloti parking space, and from the second to fifth floors, four different unit types making up 14 different units in total.
From a user’s perspective, the design took into consideration the following four points:
Courtyard
Upon entering the building, one encounters the courtyard with a semi-exterior stairwell that provides access to each of the 14 units, with a unique brick screen to the front and back. This screen filters the view into the building from the front, while allowing for the right amount of natural light and ventilation, creating a far more pleasant atmosphere in and around a stairwell.
The sunlight that filters through the bricks makes for a lovely courtyard, allowing for an atmospheric transformation throughout the day, every day.
Natural ventilation
By splitting the building into two volumes, it allows all of the units to have three open sides, maximising the natural cross-ventilation throughout.
Roof garden
The roof garden is open to the sky, with a parapet wall at full-floor height, creating a private communal space for the residents.
Privacy
The brick screen walls, in their orderly staggered stacking construction, allows for privacy from the exterior gaze of the adjacent buildings into the semi-exterior, semi-public core of the building. This filter is applied, not only in the central core zone, but at specific moments where the building closely faces adjacent buildings. This adds to the privacy of each unit, while allowing for the residents of each unit the flexibility in ventilation, allowing each unit to breathe naturally.
The design also takes into consideration the client’s point of view, with an attempt to satisfy cost efficiency and profitability through quality design:
Area
The skipped floor structure allows residents to enter their units directly from the stair landings, eliminating unnecessary, dead public hallway space, and maximizing the area for exclusive use.
Cost Efficiency
With a limited construction budget, but aiming to satisfy all of the essentials for living, the design of the building and the units focused on only the absolute necessities, without being superfluous with custom materials and built-in furniture, but with quality materials and fixtures that were economical.
In order to provide the client with something new and different from the monotonous characteristics of the area, their needs were met through a quality of design that allows the building to stand apart within the existing streetscape of multi-family housing, both formally and in function, resulting in a new type of residential experience and use.
As designers, there was a need to find a new architectural solution for the unexpected and unplanned, such as the following:
Equipment
It is quite common for residential buildings to attach and expose air conditioning equipment on the exterior of the building. In order to keep to the intended design of all four elevations of the building, spaces were allotted for such equipment into the overall plan of the building, as well as an application of the brick screen system for ventilation and air circulation for HVAC.
To avoid illegal additions and extensions to the original design of the building in the future, which is a common practice in Korea, especially to buildings lacking a specific logic, there was a great focus in efficient spatial planning and design to allow for longevity in the initial design intentions and the spatial organization of the building.
A unique design calls attention from its surrounding neighbours and residents in sparking an interest in a new design sensibility, and to form and awareness and appreciation for beautiful buildings and well designed spaces for living. Due to the changes of living patterns in the city, the number of single to double occupancy living units has grown. Rather than contribute to the increase of thoughtless and monotonous residential typology, the focus of Beyond the Screen was to provide new architectural design solutions to improve the quality of compact living through and enrichment of spatial qualities and functions.
London-based Moxon Architects has completed a contemporary glazed extension to this Grade II listed town house in south-west London.
Moxon Architects added a new top floor to the house and a rear extension on the lower ground floor to increase the total volume by more than a quarter.
They transformed the property by removing internal partitions and reconfiguring the layout, creating fewer rooms that provide larger open-plan living spaces.
“The driver for this scheme has been to treat the existing structure as a geometric guide for the setting out of new material and spatial interventions,” the architects said.
A two-storey atrium brings natural light into the lower ground floor and contains a limed oak staircase.
The staircase has an inbuilt library, retractable writing desk, secret compartments and library steps.
The lower ground floor opens onto a rear courtyard garden.
Moxon Architects have completed a grade 2 listed house conversion in Chelsea. The driver for this scheme has been to treat the existing structure as a geometric guide for the setting out of new material and spatial interventions.
The space has been radically reconfigured throughout, to provide a fewer number of larger and better rooms, with additions to the top and bottom of the house increasing its volume by over a quarter.
The original structure is retained internally as traces within the new layout – differential materials and finishes follow the extents of the previous structure across the walls, floors and ceilings of the new space.
This geometry sets up a framework for the use of the space: circulation and use has been established within these geometric confines, whilst simultaneously the house has become lighter and more open, reflecting the needs of the client.
The limed oak staircase overlooks a new double height which brings light deep into the lower ground floor and includes a high level library, pull out writing desk, secret compartments and library steps.
This house outside Barcelona by Spanish studio MDBA features a glazed living room that thrusts out towards the descending landscape (+ slideshow).
The three-storey family house is constructed over the edge of a hillside in the town of Sant Cugat del Vallès. Maria Diaz of MDBA wanted to take advantage of the panoramic views, so she designed an L-shaped residence that extends outwards at the rear.
Floor-to-ceiling glazing surrounds each rear elevation, plus a balcony stretches out beside the living room and kitchen.
In contrast, the front of the house has a white-rendered facade with square windows and a wooden front door.
“The form and the position of the house is a response to the shape and aspect of the plot, closed on the street side and open to the city landscape,” says the studio.
Steel I-beams support the weight of the projecting living room and extend up through the floors. A hillside patio is located underneath, while a terrace sits over the roof.
The house’s staircase is positioned next to the entrance, leading to three bedrooms on the top floor and a garage downstairs.
The form and the position of the house is a response to the shape and aspect of the plot, closed on the street side and open to the city landscape. Each level has its own relationship with the external space.
Vertical communication is a backbone that connects spaces on either side, it is closed at the entrance and it opens itself to the landscape in the upper floor.
Windows on the street define the landscape inside wall massivity and towards interior garden, the house opens itself looking to the city, massivity disappears and prevails the volume that looks for the landscape.
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