Hasta La Ideas

Huge vertical louvres give a pleated appearance to this family house in Kyoto by FujiwaraMuro Architects (+ slideshow).

The louvred facade curves around the south-east edge of the house to follow the shape of a road running alongside. Two-storey-high windows are slotted between each of the louvres to allowing natural to filter evenly through the wall, casting a variety of shadows across the interiors at different times of the day.

“The movements of the sun can be felt inside the house all throughout the year,” explain architects Shintaro Fujiwara and Yoshio Muro.

The entrance to the house is positioned beyond the louvres and leads into an open-plan living and dining room that occupies most of the ground floor.

A bedroom sits at the rear of this space and is entirely filled by a double bed, but residents can open this room out to the living room with a set of sliding partitions.

A staircase is tucked into the rear corner of the living room and leads up towards a children’s bedroom on the first floor. This floor is set back from the wall at the rear, creating a balcony overlooking the level below.

From this room, another staircase ascends towards the bathroom and washroom, then heads up again to reach a small rooftop terrace.

Shintaro Fujiwara and Yoshio Muro founded FujiwaraMuro Architects in 2002. Past projects include House of Slope, with a corridor coiling around its floors.

See more Japanese houses on Dezeen, including a converted warehouse with rooms contained inside a white box.

Photography is by Toshiyuki Yano.

Here are a few words from Fujiwara Muro:

House in Muko

A mezzanine-floored residence consisting of a single-roomed space, located on a fan-shaped site.

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

The movements of the sun can be felt inside the house all throughout the year. Light coming from the east strikes the louvered boards before entering the house and reaching deep into its interior. Direct sunlight from the south traces a shower-like path of lines as it penetrates into the building. Light coming from the west reflects off the walls of this house with an open stairwell before entering it.

Above: first and second floor plans – click for larger image

Location: Muko, Kyoto, Japan
Principle use: single family house
Site area: 295.67 sqm
Building area: 56.36 sqm
Total floor area: 100.19 sqm
Project architect: Shintaro Fujiwara, Yoshio Muro
Project team: Fujiwarramuro Architects
Structure: timber

Above: long section – click for larger image

Above: cross section – click for larger image

Above: east elevation

Above: south elevation

The post House in Muko by
FujiwaraMuro Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

This house for toy-bear collectors in Thailand was conceived as a scaled-up version of the bears’ display cabinet (+ slideshow).

The Bear House is a renovation of an existing three-storey residence, which has been reconfigured to provide a holiday home at Cha-Am Beach resort for a family who are avid collectors of the Japanese Bearbrick figurines.

The clients requested an exhibition area where they could display 17 of the toy bears, so designers Onion devised a multi-level cabinet filled with miniature staircases and ladders.

“We thought of the bears’ cabinet as the bears’ house,” designer Arisara Chaktranon told Dezeen.

The designers then introduced similar features into the humans’house, such as a ladder that climbs up from a ground-floor lounge area to the uppermost ceiling of a triple-height space.

“The house itself is a replica of the bears’ cabinet,” said Chaktranon. “We enlarged the scale of the cabinet, then applied the same timber material to the cabinet and the house.

More ladders can be found inside the bedrooms. One leads up from the master bedroom to a suspended daybed, while another climbs up beside the bed in the children’s room.

Oak panels cover walls, floors and ceilings throughout the house, and there are windows and hatches between different rooms.

The designers invited Thai graffiti artists MMFK and P7 to decorate the walls of the living room and swimming-pool terrace. The duo painted a series of unique characters, including a one-eyed monster dressed as a sailor and a blue bear with stripy cheeks and eyebrows.

Other residences with integrated display areas include a house with a showroom for a car collector and a house with an integral art gallery.

See more architecture in Thailand, including a house with a bathroom that’s on show to a swimming pool.

Photography is by Wison Tungthunya.

Here’s a project description from the designers:

Bear House

Bear House is on Cha-Am Beach, a famous seaside resort town in central Thailand, three hours drive from Bangkok. The brief is to renovate a three-storey building of eight metres wide and twenty-eight metres long, utilising an area of three-hundred and eighty square metres, turning it into a second home of the Sahawat family. When the interior construction started, in December 2011, the boy of the family was two years old. A baby was expected. In April 2012, Bear House was happily finished.

Bear House belongs to the Thai Be@rbrick collectors. Sittawat Sahawat and Nipapat Sahawat are siblings who are fascinated by various sizes and styles of Be@rbrick toys, produced by the Japanese company Medicom Toy Incorporated. Be@rbrick is an anthropomorphised bear with a simplified form and pot belly. Each plastic figure features nine parts, namely head, torso, hips, arms, hands and legs. It has flexible joints and a swivelled head. Many artists have created decorative patterns for the standard mould such as the British fashion designer Vivian Westwood and Stash who is considered one of New York’s graffiti legends. In the Sahawat family’s collection, the major figures are BAPE camouflage print. They are twenty-eight centimetres high and referred to as 400% Be@rbricks as its actual size, or a 100% Be@rbrick, is seven centimetres high.

Size matters in Bear House. The design process does not start from the house itself but the Be@rbricks display cabinet. It is thought of as a house of seventeen 400% Be@rbricks. It is composed of steps, ladders and voids that fit the scale of twenty-eight centimetres tall figures. It occupies a whole wall of the dining room, linking the house’s entry to the living area which is three stories high. The cabinet is a central piece and a model of the house. It is made of light coloured oak wooden panels resembling the other main surfaces of the house. Bear House is a bigger version of Be@rbricks’ display cabinet.

Miniature fixtures and oversize furniture are the features of Bear House. Lamps and pillows are oversize so that the inhabitants may feel smaller than they actually are. The house has four sizes of doorknobs, customised for different size of doors. They are sometimes too big for a child’s hand and too small for an adult’s hand. The ladder that seems too high is one of the living area’s decorative elements. It leads the gaze high up to square skylights, oversize voids, and windows of different scale. Every room on the upper floors overlook the hall of living area.

An enlarged Be@rbrick’s ladder is placed in the master bedroom. It connects a space between the king size bed and a single day bed in an elevated hole. There are two views from this day bed. Next to the hole is the three stories hall overlooking the living area. The opposite side across the room is the sea view. In front of the master bedroom stands a 1000% Be@rbrick of seventy centimetres high, painted in a pattern of police uniform. It is a special collaboration between French label Paul&Joe and Medicom Toy. This 1000% Be@rbrick can be seen from the living area on the second floor, the bedroom on the second floor, and the landing that links the stair and the ramp towards the master bedroom.

Bear House is bright and humorous. Its living room and swimming pool are the front part of the house. The whole space is coloured by young Thai graffiti artists well known as MMFK and P7. In the living room, behind the oversize sofa, MMFK paints a one-eye monster, dressed up as a sailor, whereas P7 paints a blue bear head with striped eyebrows. Next to the swimming pool, on the wall of eleven metres long, MMFK illustrates the cartoon representation of a bear devouring his iconic one-eye monster. P7 drew a black bear head with the word ‘surf’ on its forehead. These illustrations are customised only for Bear House.

Project: Bear house by Onion
Location: Cha-Am beach, Thailand
Interior Architect: Arisara Chaktranon , Siriyot Chaiamnuay, onion team
Area: 380 sq.m.
Completion year: 2012

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image and key

Above: first floor – click for larger image and key

Above: second floor plan – click for larger image and key

Above: long section – click for larger image

Above: cross section – click for larger image

The post Bear House
by Onion appeared first on Dezeen.

Chunks missing from the sloping roof of this house in Kagawa by Japanese architect Hironaka Ogawa reveal an open-air courtyard at the centre (+ slideshow).

The two-storey house occupies a plot around twice the size of neighbouring properties, so the architect designed a gently sloping roof to play down the scale, then removed sections to create a central void.

“The idea of cutting out a volume from the hipped roof is quite simple,” says Hironaka Ogawa, but he explains that it “gives various volume impressions in different angles and a less oppressive feeling to the neighbours”.

Most rooms are arranged around the perimeter of the courtyard, including a double-height kitchen and living room with a sloping ceiling that follows the angle of the roof. Only two bedrooms are located upstairs and are accessed via a mezzanine corridor.

Square windows are dotted across the walls throughout the house, creating apertures between rooms and out to the courtyard.

Terraces and gardens wrap the exterior of the building, while a tiny courtyard is encased in glass beside the entrance and a wooden deck stretches across one side of the roof.

We’ve recently published several projects from Tokyo-based Hironaka Ogawa, who set up his studio in 2005. Others include a dental clinic in Gunma and a house with indoor trees, also in Kagawa. See more architecture by Hironaka Ogawa on Dezeen.

See more Japanese houses »

Photography is by Daici Ano.

Here’s the full project description from Hironaka Ogawa:

House in Sanbonmatsu

This project is to design a private residence along a driveway in Kagawa Prefecture in Sikoku.

The site was plotted by the town redemarcation project and the construction site occupies twice the size of the surrounding ones.

The neighboring houses are mostly two-storey-high and standing on the small sites. Therefore, 1st and 2nd floor volume are the same and box-shaped design.

In contrast, this house has achieved a well-balanced exterior shape by introducing a long hipped roof. The roof is partly cutout and it is used as a courtyard that lets the sunlight and wind into the house, and the rooms and corridors are placed around it. What is more, the living room, dining room and kitchen are connected vertically and mildly by the voids.

The garden surrounding the house was tilted toward to the house in order to provide better views to all the rooms.

Despite the fact that the idea of cutting out a volume from the hipped roof is quite simple, it gives various volume impressions in different angles and a less oppressive feeling to the neighbours. What’s more, the change of the room volumes provides various views.

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click for larger image

Above: section one – click for larger image

Above: section two – click for larger image

Above: south elevation

Above: east elevation

Above: north elevation

Above: west elevation

The post House in Sanbonmatsu
by Hironaka Ogawa appeared first on Dezeen.

Canadian architect Henri Cleinge built a house for himself in Montreal with concrete walls inside and out.

Seen from the front entrance, La Maison Beaumont comprises two concrete volumes of two storeys each.

Architect and homeowner Henri Cleinge raised one of the concrete volumes on a Corten steel base to create an entrance on the ground floor and an extra storey at the top.

Corten steel was also used to define the window frames and parts of the exterior walls.

The walls are exposed both outside and inside, so rigid insulation was placed inside the concrete during the pouring process.

The cedar ceilings and maple staircase contrast with the walls, while walnut has been used throughout the kitchen.

We’ve published lots of concrete houses on Dezeen, including a two-headed Australian house that can withstand the harshest cyclones and a school outside Lisbon punctuated with bold primary colours – see all concrete architecture and design.

Other homes in Canada we’ve featured recently include a gabled steel farmhouse in a sea of crops and a wooden cabin for two artists in Nova Scotia – see all Canadian houses.

Photographs by Marc Cramer.

Here’s some more information from the architect:

Inspired to create a home to be experienced by all five senses, the Beaumont concrete house evolved as an exploration project. The design, understated, is situated in a mixed use neighborhood where residential duplexes coexist with small to midsize industrial buildings. Despite the project’s integration, a number of features distinguish the project from other buildings in the area.

In contrast to the superimposed typology of apartment units located on the ground floor and second floor, the Beaumont house challenges this spatial composition by creating a modular square plan where one unit is situated on the ground and second floor, and a second unit is located on the second and third floor. This spatial tour de force is a response to the programme and sun movement, allowing each unit exposure to three orientations rather than two and to take full advantage of southern sunlight.

The house most noticeable feature, however, is the fact that nearly all exterior walls are built out of concrete exposed to the interior and the outside, with insulation in the middle. Combining rich primary materials to large modular square volumes filled with an abundance of natural light, the house contains a series of framed experiences.

The central space is the largest volume where a double height living room is defined by concrete and wood surfaces which foil off each other. The softness of the walnut cabinetry and the cedar ceiling contrast the hard textured concrete walls. The pallet of materials is reduced and disciplined. Cedar ceilings and concrete floors are used throughout. Secondary elements such as Walnut furniture with black granite surfaces are also featured.

Data sheet

Project: Beaumont House
Location: Montreal
Client: Henri Cleinge
Architect: Henri Cleinge, architect
Project Architect: Henri Cleinge
Team: Henri Cleinge, Michel Lefebvre
Structural Engineer: César Zelaya
General Contractor: Bâtitu
Area: 3200 square feet
Date of completion: 2011

Above: ground floor plan

Above: first floor plan

Above: second floor plan

Above: side elevation

Above: front elevation

Above: cross-section

The post La Maison Beaumont by
Henri Cleinge Architecte appeared first on Dezeen.

London studio David Mikhail Architects has renovated a nineteenth-century house in London and added a glazed kitchen and dining room at the rear (+ slideshow).

Recent additions and extra staircases were removed to make room for the new rear extension: a larch-framed glass box that stretches along the rear elevation to create an open-plan kitchen and dining room at the lowest ground floor level. This room is double-height on one side to accommodate a staircase and mezzanine library.

As well as using Siberian larch, the architects specified pale brickwork for both interior and exterior walls. Doors and windows are framed by chunky timber surrounds, while balustrades are made from bronze.

“These materials were all chosen to provide texture and scale and to achieve a domestic intimacy, which can so easily be lost with the tendency towards abstract planes and surfaces,” David Mikhail told Dezeen. “They also need to mediate between both the feel and the construction of the new and the older parts of the house, the inside and the outside.”

Other additions include a pivoting wall, which links the study with a billiard room, and a new landscaped garden comprising tiered patios and built-up planting areas.

The house was first constructed in the 1830s at three times the width of most London terraces, resulting in a later conversion into three separate residences. David Mikhail Architects’ job was to restore the original logic of the building so that it could again be used as a single family home.

The architects tracked down early photographs of the building and consulted other architects that had worked on the property in the 1980s to piece together plans of the original design and layout.

In front of the library is the original grand staircase, which winds up between the upper ground floor and first floor of the house. Previously there were no corridors beside this stair, but now residents can walk around it to reach the new rooms beyond.

One of these corridors leads through to a study in the north-east corner of the building. The architects extended this space to add an extra metre in length, creating a top-lit window seat beneath a large skylight. This extension also increased the size of a living room underneath.

“Our philosophy was to give the building back its dignity as a single house, and to be mindful of the likely original plan form,” David Mikhail told Dezeen. “But to combine original features with modern details is a question of both philosophy and detail; it needs an absorption in both to work.”

David Mikhail launched his studio in 1992. Other residential projects in London by the practice include a set of houses with triangular skylights and an extension that is just one metre wide.

See more residential extensions on Dezeen, including a barrel-vaulted addition to a farmhouse.

Photography is by Tim Crocker.

Here’s some more information from David Mikhail Architects:

East London House

Introduction

The East London House is the principle house of a picturesque development built in the 1830s and Grade 2 Listed. At 16m, it is the width of three typical London houses. The original house had been subdivided into three units, with an uneasy relationship to the garden. A glass conservatory to the rear gave the only rear access via an internal spiral staircase. These multiple alterations over time changed what was once a grand home into a jumble of dark, disconnected rooms, with no meaningful access to the large garden.

Client brief

This was to re-establish the elegance of the original, whilst removing the feeling of their being separate dwellings. At the same time, to inject a fresh, modern feel, maximising natural light and harnessing the potential of a large rear garden. The clients have children and other family members often stay. They had several ideas about how the house could function, but guidance was sought on how to connect the various levels and to make sense of the warren of rooms and staircases.

Spatial Strategies

Spatial remodelling has focused on the rear, the basement and the attic. The garden has also been designed by David Mikhail Architects (with planting by Jane Brockbank) and is the other major addition to the building. Much of the remainder of the work was about meticulously restoring the original, with recent works such as staircases and extensions removed. Upper ground and first floors were refurbished to respect the original. For example, one wall has been rebuilt on the upper ground floor to concord with the original plan form, making resultantly smaller, but more usable rooms. (Study/Billiards rooms). The basement and rear garden were excavated to give level access and a sense of openness to the landscape while the gentle terracing of the garden avoids the sense of being underground. The garden forms two spaces, a formal walled garden with water features and raised beds, and beyond it a rougher area for play, with garden sheds and turf.

Upon entering the house the original sweeping staircase is now presented in its original form, with the entrance hallway fully restored. Originally there were no views through beyond the stair, and no real connection to the garden, but now the stair hall is a prelude to the main event. Moving forward either side of the stair, you pass through the rear wall of the main house into a naturally lit double-height library with views to the garden and a bronze staircase down to the dining area. We were keen that this journey from the old to the new was explicitly experienced. The extension itself is a modern open-plan kitchen and dining space giving full views of the garden, with the junction between old and new highlighted through the use of linear flat roof lights.

Planning constraints

Although many original-styled features were present, some were later additions. Unfortunately, many records had been lost. We tracked down the local architects that had worked on the terrace in the 1980s and also used images from the Metropolitan Archive. We were able to use their records to form an understanding of where original details lay, and presented this knowledge to planners in the form of a room-by-room analysis. The extension was designed to clearly differentiate the new from the old, making our own works legible in the future. Even so, the design challenge of such a strategy is to do so in a way that resonates with the scale and sensibility of the original.

Materials and construction

The rear-half of the basement and rear garden was excavated and underpinned to increase head height and accessibility. The extension is a predominately timber and steel structure. Where two-storey, steel gives way to posts and beams of laminated Larch, forming a timber portal frame. The engineering required to achieve such a thin library floor was challenging.

All the timber used in the project is a white-oiled Siberian Larch, including the bespoke sliding doors designed by the architects, the floors the joinery and the external cladding. A white brick with light-grey lime mortar is used inside and out. Metalwork and ironmongery is bronze. A specialist precision metalwork company, where joints are glued rather than welded, constructed the fine bronze stair.

Above: basement floor plan – click for larger image

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click for larger image

Above: second floor plan – click for larger image

Above: third floor plan – click for larger image

Above: cross-section – click for larger image

Above: rear elevation – click for larger image

The post East London House by
David Mikhail Architects appeared first on Dezeen.