Hasta La Ideas

This lakeside lodge in rural Ontario was designed by Toronto firm MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects as a weekend retreat for a family of five (+ slideshow).

Clear Lake Cottage has a long narrow body with a metal-clad exterior and a hipped roof. It sits around 15 metres from the edge of the water and is tucked behind a cluster of trees.

Replacing a smaller structure with a tin roof, MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA) was asked to design a residence that would open out to the landscape as freely as it predecessor.

“The goal was to blend with the rural character of the quiet lake community and provide a clean modern environment that engages the landscape and captures a ‘cottage’ feel,” explain the architects.

The building is orientated eastwards to maximise views towards Clear Lake. This elevation is also stretched outward at the corners, giving the building a trapezoidal plan.

Rooms inside are divided into two rows, determined by different privacy requirements. Living rooms and a master bedroom are positioned along the front of the house, where they benefit from lake views, while extra bedrooms are lined up along the rear and include a first-floor loft inserted beneath the peak of the roof.

The smallest of two terraces sits within a recess on the eastern elevation, where it can catch the sun at breakfast time, and the second wraps around the north-east corner to provide an outdoor space beyond the living room.

The architects used Douglas fir to construct the angled roof, then clad the exterior walls in black corrugated metal as a reference to tar-painted fishing shacks. “The result is decidedly modern, but raw and industrial too,” they add.

See more Canadian houses on Dezeen, including one that appears to be climbing up a hill and one with patterned walls of concrete brick.

Photography is by Ben Rahn at A Frame Photography.

Read on more more details from MJMA:

Clear Lake Cottage

A Toronto family of five required a new four-season cottage to replace their existing 1950’s structure. The goal was to blend with the rural character of the quiet lake community and provide a clean modern environment that engages the landscape and captures a ‘cottage’ feel.

The site is located on Clear Lake in Seguin Township, Ontario. The lot has a large frontage and an existing dock. The orientation is predominately to the east collecting warmth and direct light in the morning. The building sits quietly behind trees away from the water.

Outside of their direct program requirements there were two related and compelling goals the clients wanted to achieve. First they wanted all the benefits of modern design: clean lines, abundant natural light, connection with the outdoors; but they also wanted to blend contextually with the character and humility of the surroundings. Secondly, although they requested a winterised facility, they did not want to lose the connection with the land they had come to appreciate in their uninsulated, tin-roofed dwelling.

It was decided a peaked sloped roof would be used. This could achieve an ambiguously modern vernacular feel and was beneficial for snow and water shedding. Termed the ‘Campsite’ [like tents around a campsite]. This approach yielded interesting opportunities to define exterior spaces. To meet the budget a singular and rational peaked roof system was employed – ‘the Bigtop’. A single tent pole supporting a giant hip roof housed the volumes below.

The program was consolidated into 4 logical masses: Master Suite, Bedrooms, Utility/Den and Living Space. These masses we arranged in terms of degree of privacy required; north to south. It was then determined which spaces would have forest views and which would have lake views. The masses were arranged to frame exterior spaces and capture an ambiguous indoor/outdoor condition. The plan was rationalised as a rectangle then skewed to a trapezoidal shape to maximise the lake front exposure.

The resulting formal expression of the building expressed an archetypal ‘house’ quality. Roof and walls merge in a singular streamline form. This form captures within it outdoor spaces creating a spatial continuum inside and out. The massing along the forest side became connected above by an open loft space. This bedroom/utility bar is treated as a stained pine slat ‘Black Box’ and is an extension of the materiality of the exterior.

Punctures to the building envelope, and exposure of the Douglas Fir roof and wall structure capture outdoor space, and create a spatial continuum – a porosity of inside to out.

Taking cues from the client’s fondness for Scandinavian fishing shacks, with their pine tar-painted cedar, the building is clad in black corrugated metal, a cost effective North American interpretation of this shoreline aesthetic. The result is decidedly modern, but raw and industrial too.

This approach to a ‘high and low’ material palette and divergent typologies is a strategy to disarm the precious nature of ‘designed’ space.

The interior is detailed to contrast the exterior black cladding. The interior material palette of Sapelle window frames, retroplate concrete floors, and Douglas Fir plywood works as a visual counterpoint to the dark, textured exterior finish. This conceptual reading reinforces the Scandinavian influence.

Douglas Fir plywood was selected based on the client’s preference for a non-drywall interior shell. Exposed areas of Douglas Fir framing are either open to above (morning terrace) or clad with smoke-tinted corrugated acrylic (arrival spaces).

The rooms along the forest side support an upper open loft space. This bedroom/utility bar is treated as a stained oak ‘Black Box’ and is an extension of the materiality of the exterior – signifying enclosure.

The screened porch has a bi-folding partition opening it to the cottage interior. 50% of the glazed envelope can be left in the ‘open’ screened position allowing for the cottage to be exposed to breeze, fragrances, acoustics, and shadow play – capturing the natural feel of the site.

Location: Township of Sequin, Ontario, Canada
Architect: MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA)
Year completion: summer 2012
Project size: 215 sqm

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Jaunkalns Miller Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

This house in Nagahama, Japan, by Tokyo-based Comma Design Office has half of its body raised above the ground to offer protection to a rooftop terrace (+ slideshow).

Positioned between a residential district and a series of rice fields, House in Nagahama has an approximately square plan with a ground-level floor on one side, an elevated floor on the other side and a semi-enclosed courtyard at its centre.

Architects Atsuhiro Koda and Momo Sano of Comma Design Office lifted the south-west corner of the house to screen the roof terrace from neighbouring houses, as well as to create a sheltered driveway.

“The first floor opens to the neighborhood, while the second floor opens to the distant view,” they explain.

Staircases at two corners create a continuous loop through the building. There are no corridors, so residents must pass through each room in turn, including the three bedrooms occupying the upper floor.

The facade is clad with grey fibre-cement boards that are broken up by stripes of golden aluminium. “It picks up various shades of light depending on the weather,” say the architects.

Most interior walls are painted white, while floors are covered with wooden boards that turn to follow the orientation of the outer walls.

Other houses completed recently in Japan include a residence where rooms spiral up from a courtyard to the rooftop and a plain white house with only one window.

See more houses in Japan »

Photography is by Takumi Ota, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Here’s some more information from Comma Design Office:

House in Nagahama

The house is located in Nagahama city, Shiga, Japan. Nagahama is an old town. There are more active relationships within the neighborhood community than in Tokyo. On the other hand, Nagahama is modernised with cars and shopping malls along the main roads. It is common in any local cities in Japan.

The site is bounded by the residential area on the south west; the road on the west is mainly used for the pedestrians. There is a peaceful landscape on the north east, where the rice fields and open space spread to Mt. Ibuki. However, there is a busy street on the north. The speed of the traffic is completely different from the slow pace living. There are several gaps in scale and difference in speed within the environment.

We planned a space that holds various relationships within the variety of environment. The space was created by providing a “buffer zone” instated of the space directly opens to a particular subject. The one-storey volume with the courtyard fills up the site; the first floor opens to the neighborhood, while the second floor opens to the distant view. The central unclosed courtyard simultaneously opens up to each surrounding environment. By looking at one’s own house over the courtyard, it looks like a house of others.

The facade is covered with the fibre-cement board accented with gold-stained aluminum, which often conveys the anonymous/neutral impression. However, it picks up various shades of light depending on the weather.

Architects: comma design office
Architects member: Atshuhiro Koda, Momo Sano
Structural Engineer: Souta Matou
Structure: Steel frame
Contractor: Nove works (Zainobu Consturuction)

Location: Shiga, Japan
Program: Private Residence
Project Year: 2012
Project Area: 132.58 sqm
Site Area: 201.03 sqm
Total Floor Area: 157.55 sqm

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Comma Design Office appeared first on Dezeen.

Athens studio Tense Architecture Network has completed a concrete house that staggers down a hillside in rural Greece (+ slideshow).

Residence in Kallitechnoupolis is a three-storey building that begins near the top of the slope. As it descends, the building widens to create tiered balconies facing out across the landscape.

Tense Architecture Network describes the structure as a protective shell that shields the house from its neighbours and concentrates views in only one direction.

“The inclined prism of the shell follows the natural inclination and descends towards the ground via the intensely oblique cut of its eastern front,” says the studio.

The base of the building cantilevers outwards, making room for a swimming pool on the lowest level, plus an outdoor staircase climbs down one of the side walls to meet a terrace positioned halfway down.

The architects used concrete for the entire structure, adding a dark tint to the exterior walls so that they contrast with the pale grey interior surfaces.

“Earthly dark at the outside, lighter in the inside, its colouring is aiming at the maximum possible tension of the shell’s introvertedness,” say the architects.

Living and dining rooms can be found on the two upper floors, while bedrooms are located on the bottom floor around a series of curved partitions.

Tense Architecture Network have completed several residential projects recently, including an angular house with a partially submerged body and a house with a boxy concrete upper floor.

See more architecture by Tense Architecture Network »
See more architecture in Greece »

Photography is by Filippo Poli.

Here’s a project description from Tense Architecture Network:

Residence in Kallitechnoupolis

The residence’s view is a slope: a naked attic slope. The site is significantly inclined and is accessed only through its narrow upper side. The declivity of the site faces an equally slanted hill –the predominant point of visual reference. As the residence neighbours with two extrovert residences on both sides, it realises enclosure, concentration of the view and an introvert escalating development of its open spaces towards the east. The opposing landscape of the hill is perceived from a distance.

The inclined prism of the shell follows the natural inclination and descends towards the ground via the intensely oblique cut of its eastern front. The cut opens the residence to the opposed microcosmos: the air, the light, the barberries, the horizontal ridge, the long lonely railing of the opposite side. A swimming pool is comprised in the shell’s lowest point, partly in cantilever. At the level of the access an elongated excision of the prism allows for a walled yet unroofed outdoor space that eventually concludes to the open eastern front and the view.

The exterior cortex is constructed by exposed reinforced concrete: the shell is two-coloured. Earthly dark at the outside, lighter in the inside, its colouring is aiming at the maximum possible tension of the shell’s introvertness. The geometric austerity of the prism is violently ruptured in three areas: the shell is ultimately found broken, the rupture of its boundaries is performed from within, the remote nature is allowed in. Yet, only as Actio in Distans: only as view.

Project Team: Tilemachos Andrianopoulos, Kostas Mavros, Nestoras Kanellos
Structural design: Athanasios Kontizas

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by Tense Architecture Network appeared first on Dezeen.

Climbing plants and vines shoot up over a gridded facade of metal beams and panels at this house in Binh Duong Province by Vietnamese architects a21studio (+ slideshow).

Constructed on a limited budget, the house was designed to both “look green” and fit in with its neighbours. The architects at a21studio used steel beams to construct a basic framework, then clad the exterior with lightweight mesh and corrugated panels, and encouraged plants to grow up around it.

A see-through outer facade functions as a boundary fence. Beyond it, the house has no walls on the front or rear of its ground floor, revealing a simple living room and kitchen with a small garden beyond.

Colourful ceramic tiles cover every inch of the floor and also extend out beyond the shelter of the roof. A kitchen counter runs longways through the room and more tiles clad its sides and surfaces.

A staircase leading up to the two first-floor bedrooms is made from a single sheet of folded metal and uses reinforcing rods as a banister.

To furnish the house, the architects used reclaimed items that include a set of wooden chairs.

“By making the most of abandoned items and using spaces cleverly, people can easily have a comfortable house that is fulfilled by nature and flexible for future needs,” say the architects.

Other low-cost homes constructed in Vietnam include a system of modular houses made from bamboo. See more architecture in Vietnam.

Photography is by Hiroyuki Oki.

Here’s a project description from a21studio:

The Nest

The house is designed for a middle-aged newsman who has been working in years for Vietnam architectural magazines. The site is located at the outskirt of a new city in being urbanism with a variety of housing architecture styles in its surrounding. Therefore, both the architect and client came up with the idea that the new house should be looked green, but not compromise to its comfortable and specially should not much differentiated to next-door neighbours.

Within his constraint budget, a light structure as steel and metal sheets is applied instead of bricks and concrete as usual. Moreover, unused furniture, abandoned but still in good condition, is considered as an appropriate solution for most parts of the house which not only reduces construction cost but also gives the house a distinctive look, the beauty or serenity of old items that comes with age.

Without any doubt, using steel structure not only makes the foundation lighter, but also helps shorten the construction period than normal, and saving cost as well. The house-frame is made by 90×90 steel columns and 30×30 steel beams connecting to metal sheets, then covered or filled in between by plants, so from a distance look, the house is like a green box. Among these “cool-metal” bars, the nature is defined itself.

Typically, the house is structured into two vertical parts; two private bedrooms on the upper floor, while kitchen and living room on the ground floor and opened to nature without any door or window. This makes the bounder between inside and outside becomes blurry. Besides, by diminishing living space to just sufficiently fitted and leaves the rest intended uncontrolled, the architect attempts to convey the sense that the natural environment outside is larger and closer, as at any views from the house, the trees can be observed with its full beauty. In the other words, the trees are used as the building’s walls, and the house would provide a variety of links between trees and people.

Finally, the idea of the house, above the organisation of spaces and flexibility uses of structure, is about a general housing concept for low cost construction, which has been attracted the attention in Vietnam society. By making the most of abandoned items and using enough spaces for living cleverly, people can easily have a comfortable house fulfilled by nature and flexible for any future needs with a limited fund.

Client: Tho
Location: Thuận An city, Bình Dương province, Vietnam
Project area: 100 sqm
Building area: 40 sqm
Materials: Steel bar, metal sheets
Completed: 2013

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a21studio appeared first on Dezeen.

An 18-metre-long window offers panoramic views across Tokyo Bay from the living room of this house in Yokosuka by Japanese studio Tomoyuki Sakakida Architect and Associates (+ slideshow).

“The house is named ‘Seascape House’ as you can admire the view toward the open sea,” says Tomoyuki Sakakida Architect and Associates.

The three-storey residence features three sea-facing terraces on its two upper floors, as well as two more secluded balconies tucked away at the back.

The open-plan living and dining room is located on the uppermost floor, where it spans the entire length of the house.

A top-lit atrium connects this floor with the two lower levels. Bedrooms and other rooms occupy the storey below, while the ground floor contains storage and a car parking garage.

The house has thick concrete walls to protect it from the corrosive seaside environment.

We’ve featured a few residences with views out towards Tokyo Bay. Others include a holiday home with two separate blocks and hostel accommodation in Kyonan. See more architecture in Japan.

Photography is by Shigeo Ogawa.

Read a short description from the architects below:

Seascape House

The site locates on the slope facing the Pacific Ocean and the house fits in the mountain background, it is where you can feel the strong topographical features.

The house is named “Seascape House” as in which you can admire the view toward the open sea. The house is designed to maximise the sequential experience of this particular environment.

Especially the living/dining on the first floor, where is the terminal point of the sequential experience, is characterised by the 18m opening through which you can have a view of the magnificent seascape. In order to have the generous openings and the canopy, it has a combined structure system of void slabs and slender columns, as well as solid concrete walls to secure from the tough natural environment such as the strong sea breeze and the sunshine.

The daily life in this house would go always with the seascape which changes from moment to moment, and we hope it would bless the every event going to happen in the house, in particular the pleasant chat and supper at a party hosted by the gregarious client couple.

Location: Yokosuka, Japan
Function: Private Residence
Design term: 2011.1-2013.3
Design architects: Tomoyuki Sakakida, Yuta Kawai
Structural engineer: Yoshiki Mondo
Contractor: Kikushima

Structure: RC
Floor number: 2 + Basement
Built area: 163.70 sqm
Floor area：326.97 sqm
Site area: 411.34 sqm

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Architect and Associates appeared first on Dezeen.