Hasta La Ideas

Cologne 2012: London designers Doshi Levien installed a vision of their dream home at trade fair imm cologne in Germany last week.

Top: bathing concept visual
Above: courtyard

The Anglo-Indian husband and wife team were given a platform of 180 square metres to present their ideas about the home using their own designs for brands including Moroso, BD Barcelona Design and Richard Lampert, plus other products on show at the fair.

Above: salon. Photograph is by Alessandro Paderni.

Envisaged as part of a dense urban neighbourhood, the model home centres on a courtyard. It includes a workshop/shop where residents can trade with neighbours and an exercise room for activities like yoga.

Above: dining table for Stilwerk Gallery

Rooms are connected so that the bedroom can be used alongside the living room for entertaining guests, and the kitchen and bathroom share a cabinet.

Above: exterior

See all our stories about Cologne 2012 here and all our stories about Doshi Levien here.

Photographs are by Constantin Meyer unless stated otherwise.

Here are some more details from Doshi Levien:

Concept/Das Haus

“It started with a conversation about how you define the home and the vision came together, drawing on a fragmented collage of memories, real and imagined. This is our dream of the perfect home, uniting very plural points of view. This is not a singular, purist approach; we wanted to keep very open to different ideas,” says Jonathan Levien.

Above: concept drawing, plan

Das Haus is all about domestic activity and redefining traditional spaces, structuring the house into functional zones, eating, sleeping, bathing, dressing, socialising and working. The relationship between these spaces is also crucial; making the transitions and connections from each zone was an essential aspect of Doshi Levien’s design. “Its important for us to challenge clichéd notions of what is a bedroom, kitchen or bathroom. Every part of the house connects and redefines,” says Levien.

Above: concept drawing, side view

This is very much an urban space, inspired by cities that team with life like Tokyo or Mumbai and houses that develop over time, absorbing different identities and influences. “This is a very evocative space that will get people thinking. I like the idea that our house is sensual and layered, rooted in reality but closer to the notion of a perfect house, one that is never complete,” says Nipa Doshi. Ultimately Das Haus is an optimistic and positive vision for the future.

Above: exterior, entrance

Exterior

Doshi Levien’s vision of a perfect house is rooted and enmeshed in the socio-economic fabric of its urban neighbourhood. This is not a stand-alone house to be admired as a monument from the outside, but a space that is sandwiched between other buildings and reveals different aspects of itself depending on where you arrive from. In this sense it is inspired from mixed use neighbourhoods of Shanghai, Mumbai, Tokyo or Rome.

“We worked with intersecting volumes of the kind you might find in industrial buildings to create fragmented spaces. We’re thinking of walls of different degrees of transparency and frames with mesh-like coverings, rather like Indian jaalis.”

Above: exterior, shop

Exercise/wellbeing

This more or less empty space is simple; the architecture becomes the props that you need to exercise so a wall is for aiding balance, a floor for stretches. An uninterrupted view out onto the courtyard with its lush greenery adds to the tranquility and space.

Above: exercise/wellbeing

This house is all about a sensual, refined appreciation of our material environment. “The light cast by the jaali (latticed screen) casts shadows with a visual sensuality.” Pieces featured in this space designed by Doshi Levien include: Rangoli cushions for Moroso

Above: dressing

Dressing

This is not just a room for dressing, it is also a space to curate and celebrate clothing and other personal treasures, displayed in a large transparent display box. Central to the space is Doshi Levien’s new dressing table for BD Barcelona, which, like the house escapes the restrictive notion of what should go where. “This is a room for enjoying the ritual of dressing.”

Above: dressing

Pieces featured in this space designed by Doshi Levien include: Dressing table for BD Barcelona Design. Impossible wood chair for Moroso.

Above: dressing

Salon

The Salon is a social room reserved for receiving family and friends in a slightly more formal capacity, the idea here is to play with notions of hospitality and the generosity of sharing. It is equally a room to relax and read or do nothing at all.

Above: salon. Photograph is by Alessandro Paderni.

With this in mind there will be lots of small side tables for food and drink, generous reading chairs and daybeds for lounging.

Above: salon. Photograph is by Alessandro Paderni.

“We love the French ceremony Le goûter, when the afternoon lull sets in and you mark a moment of rest with tea, coffee and cakes.” Pieces featured in this space designed by Doshi Levien include: Paper Planes for Moroso, Capo chair for Cappellini, Camper lamp prototype.

Above: salon

Sleeping

The bedroom is not just for rest, it is also a space for socialising with close friends, of exchanging ideas in a more intimate environment. Inspired by this the bed becomes a combination of sleeping and socialising platform, where you can sit and hold court. The bed is layered with many different fabrics, again celebrating the ritual of preparing a bed, sensual and layered, like the house.

Above: sleeping. Photograph is by Lutz Sternstein.

“We like the idea that the entire bedroom could be a bed, which turns the bed into a kind of platform. And why shouldn’t the bedroom be used during the day as well? Maybe as a place for intimate socialising or laying out your clothes.” Pieces featured in this space designed by Doshi Levien include: Bed for Das Haus

Above: sleeping

Bathing

The bathing space is a personal spa using Ananda designed by Doshi Levien for Glass Idromassagio. It takes inspiration from traditional Moroccan hamams. A cabinet between the bathing area and kitchen celebrates the idea of taking different elements of each room and blending them, grinding salt into scrubs or using yoghurt to cleanse faces.

Above: bathing

“For us wellness is a means to physical wellbeing so that it has to do with bathing and the kitchen as well, and that’s why there is a direct link between these spaces and a shared cabinet.” Pieces featured in this space designed by Doshi Levien include: Ananda for Glass Idromassaggio, Display cabinets for Das Haus.

Above: bathing

Kitchen/Pony wall

The space itself is more like a market kitchen, full of equipment, a bustle of activity and plentiful food. Art is an essential component for Das Haus: a large multi media mural by Pony explores the whole ethos of the house, revealing all the different areas, and illustrating how they come together.

Above: kitchen/pony wall

This visionary screen wall is an exploding hologram of activity and space. It brings together the connected ideas and cultures of Bathroom, Kitchen and Workshop as vital organs of Das Haus. Like day-dreaming through the kitchen window, your gaze is filled with familial memory fragments — from the past and the future — of ancestral knowledge, technological tools and tacit skills. Noisy and comforting, you find yourself in a place full of love and learning, joy and hard work, surrounded by the fecund instruments of wellbeing.Design by Pony

Above: kitchen

Workshop/Shop

Part utility room, part workspace, part shop; this draws on the fluid proximity of all these elements on the streets of Tokyo and Mumbai. So there is room here for home maintenance, to make useful things and encouraging creative engagement. This space is also for selling and buying from passing traders, an opportunity for commercial interaction between the home and neibourhood. This is also a space for children. Unlike other houses, there are no defined spaces for children here, acknowledging that children rarely observe boundaries, instead follow their curiosity.

Above: workshop/shop

“The workshop isn’t necessarily a space for making things, it’s also a place where kids can play and the family can get together to do activities.” Pieces featured in this space designed by Doshi Levien include: Kali wall cabinet and bathroom range for Authentics.

Above: courtyard

Courtyard

Escaping the traditional notion of the dining room, Doshi Levien asked themselves, where do we like to eat? The most important aspect was a good view, so the central courtyard, private and protected from the elements, was the ideal place for eating. Doshi Levien designed a table for Stilwerk Gallery in Germany that appears to be in two parts, responding to the way parallel activities are often carried out in the same location. In the courtyard, plants and herbs provide a link with the kitchen. There is also a pipe for showering outdoors, washing feet and watering plants.

Above: courtyard

“This is an inner world. In this house, you really do face inside from wherever you happen to be, towards the courtyard where the dining table is and all the activities of the house converge.” Pieces featured in this space designed by Doshi Levien include: My Beautiful Backside for Moroso, Charpoy for Moroso, Impossible wood chair for Moroso, Manzai table for Stilwerk Gallery, Children’s Rocker for Richard Lampert, Camper hanging Lamp prototype.

Above: courtyard

The rear facade of this hillside house by Japanese architect Kazuhiko Kishimoto slides opens to reveal a graduated terrace with a sweeping view of the sea.

Located on a sharply inclining slope in Kanagawa, Japan, the three-storey Wind-dyed House appears from the top-floor street entrance to have only one floor.

Louvered shutters surround the glazed exterior walls and a shallow-pitched roof sits over the building on a set of wide timber eaves.

Kitchens and dining areas occupy the uppermost level, while staircases both inside and outside the house lead down to rooms on the middle floor below.

The lowest floor is the smallest and contains just a hobby room and storage area.

Other popular Japanese houses we’ve featured recently include a spiralling house on stilts and one with three layers of walls and ceilings – see them here.

Photography is by Hiroshi Ueda.

Here’s some text from the architects:

Wind-dyed house

A residential building located halfway up a cliff, overlooking the ocean. Thick clumps of trees that grow along the slope of the land surrounding the house cast a series of organic silhouettes that make the slope seem to come alive.

We decided that the appropriate form to build would be as low-lying as possible, while also allowing the architecture to become embedded in the surrounding landscape according to the contours of the terrain. This would allow us to minimize the impact of the building on its environment.

The design of the walls plays an important role in creating the overall sense of presence that a building projects. As such, we also tried to prevent the walls of this house from becoming surfaces that would obstruct or impede movement and sight.

Glass and screens along the enclosed perimeter of the house gives the second floor of this residence a certain transparency. Slender, deep-set eaves cast deep shadows on the facade of the building, softening the impact of the building’s physical presence in relation to its environment.

The various components of the building were structured in order to allow the inhabitants to enjoy a different view of the outside on each level. The first floor features a stone floor and concrete walls finished with plaster, while the Japanese paper screens fitted inside the glass reflect the shadows of plants and trees. The hard-edged surfaces and finishes coexist with the soft, muted tones of the Japanese paper.

The second storey, in contrast, features an open-plan living space, the entirety of which can be opened up towards the ocean. A series of wide eaves stand between the outside of the house and the interior, which is articulated into smaller sections by a row of pillars.

Going down the staircase-shaped terrace allows one to gradually draw closer to the outdoor landscape. The section that divides the two different elevations on this floor provides seating throughout, functioning as a unique Japanese-style verandah (engawa).

A steel-reinforced concrete structure was used for the second floor, and a Vierendeel bridge structure allowed us to float a large, thin roof on top. The pillars consist of square cylindrical poles (measuring 75mm across) made of solid iron arranged in a densely packed formation using wooden modules (900 x 1800mm). By creating several areas of low-level rigidity, we were able to do away with the need for braces.

Location: Yokosuka Kanagawa
Date of Completion: July 2011
Principal Use: Private House
Structure: RC, Steel
Site Area: 454m2
Total Floor Area: 286.93m2 (54.86m2/B1F, 131.22m2/1F, 100.85m2/2F,)

Architecture : Kazuhiko Kishimoto / acaa

Structural Engineer: Takahiro Suwabe

Light floods into this Kyoto house by Japanese studio FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects through a light well in its enormous chimney.

The two-storey residence, named House of Representation, occupies a countryside location and has an off-white rendered exterior.

Rooms on the house’s ground floor surround a central living room with a recessed stone floor.

A staircase with glass handrails leads up to a study on the first floor, as well as a bedroom that opens out to a rooftop balcony.

We’ve published lots of houses by FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects on Dezeen, all with rendered monochrome exteriors – take a closer look at them all here.

Photography is by Takumi Ota.

Here’s a little more explanation from the architects:

House of representation

This house is planned on a site from where there are beautiful views of the country side.

The request from the client was for the creation of intimacy, but with large living area.

The exterior is designed as a monumental form so that it can seem to be a new addition to the countryside scenery.

I created a centripetal plan where each room is connected through a corridor from the multi-level living area.

Around the corridor, walls, which have different textures and shapes, make a sequence inside the space.

The walls and spaces are highlighted by natural, indirect light, so your eyes are drawn to, and focus on, the interior.

By the basic process of manipulating and controlling “light” and “views”, I tried to make the inside space more intimate and deeper.

Rather than doing large gestures of acrobatic space composition, I have instead created what I feel is a space that represent the unusual, by doing small and poetic movements that control light and the viewers eyes.

Architect: Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects
Location: Kyoto, Japan
Client: Private

Construction: 2011
Site area: 355.78 m
Construction area: 213.20 m

Here are some images by photographer Iwan Baan of a house by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, where rectangular windows puncture three layers of walls and ceilings.

Located in Oita, Japan, House N was constructed in 2008 to accommodate a couple and their pet dog.

Openings in the outer wall and roof aren’t glazed, so the patio garden, bathroom and kitchen contained behind are open to the elements.

A bedroom and tatami room are encased behind the second layer, where all window openings are infilled with glass.

The innermost layer closes in around the centre of the house, wrapping around a living and dining room.

See more projects by Sou Fujimoto here, including a stack of four house-shaped apartments.

Here’s some more text from Sou Fujimoto Architects:

House N
Oita, Japan

A home for two plus a dog. The house itself is comprised of three shells of progressive size nested inside one another. The outermost shell covers the entire premises, creating a covered, semi-indoor garden. Second shell encloses a limited space inside the covered outdoor space. Third shell creates a smaller interior space. Residents build their life inside this gradation of domain.

I have always had doubts about streets and houses being separated by a single wall, and wondered that a gradation of rich domain accompanied by various senses of distance between streets and houses might be a possibility, such as: a place inside the house that is fairly near the street; a place that is a bit far from the street, and a place far off the street, in secure privacy.

That is why life in this house resembles to living among the clouds. A distinct boundary is nowhere to be found, except for a gradual change in the domain. One might say that an ideal architecture is an outdoor space that feels like the indoors and an indoor space that feels like the outdoors. In a nested structure, the inside is invariably the outside, and vice versa. My intention was to make an architecture that is not about space nor about form, but simply about expressing the riches of what are `between` houses and streets.

Three nested shells eventually mean infinite nesting because the whole world is made up of infinite nesting. And here are only three of them that are given barely visible shape. I imagined that the city and the house are no different from one another in the essence, but are just different approaches to a continuum of a single subject, or different expressions of the same thing- an undulation of a primordial space where humans dwell. This is a presentation of an ultimate house in which everything from the origins of the world to a specific house is conceived together under a single method.

Architects: Sou Fujimoto Architects
Sou Fujimoto, principal-in-charge;
Yumiko Nogiri, project team

Consultants: Jun Sato Structural Engineers, structural
Structural system: reinforced concrete

Major materials: reinforced concrete
Site area: 236.57㎡
Built area: 150.57㎡
Total floor area: 85.51㎡
Structural Composition: RC; 1 story
Design Period: 2006 – 2007
Construction Period: will be completed in 2008

Design team: Sou Fujimoto Architects
Consultant: Jun Sato Structural Engineer

The stairwell ascending through the centre of this Tokyo house is illuminated from a skylight and glows through translucent glass partitions.

Designed by Japanese firm Takehiko Nez Architects, the three-storey residence has a stark interior of unfinished plywood and streaky white paint.

The house is named Urban Hut and has an open-plan layout on each floor that will accommodate a brother and sister.

You can also see more projects that look like they aren’t quite finished by clicking here.

Photography is by Takumi Ota.

The following text is from Takehiko Nez:

Urban Hut

The young clients, sister and brother, lost parents at their teens, lived in the downtown Tokyo. Modest, rough and tough house to have a strong hold on the changes of the times like weeds is suitable for them.

The house without finish on façade stands in disordered scenery of typical downtown.
It was required maximum floor in the compact box on 30 square meters’ site and basic performance as a private house.

The central staircase with the roof light sends sunlight to each spaces through the studs and stairs rising to the top floor without a landing to the middle floor.

The partitions of translucent glass and plywood give the adequate relationship and privacy in the two completely different rhythm and pattern of life.

It can be called an urban vernacular house that is compactly made by the raw material like a corrugated cardboard house, made with skin and born like a hut, stacked with thin objects and narrow spaces in the tiny lot.

If the house’s magnetism is not greatest at completion but greater gradually for the lifespan, creator’s role of the house should be inherited from architects to residents to accustom itself to their lifestyle.

Tolerance letting residents’ imagination intervene is designed as stacking spaces with half scale, shallow blank gap, and incomplete finishes. It is pleased that clients are managing to live comfortably with unexpected discovery beyond the pre-established imagination.

Architect: Takehiko Nez Architects

Status: completed July 2011
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Collaborators:
Structure: ASA
Contractor: Shinei

Site area: 30.37sqm
Total floor area: 44.26sqm