Angular zinc-clad volumes fold around a central courtyard and stretch out towards ocean views at this house designed by Australian architect John Wardle on the scenic Great Ocean Road in Victoria (+ movie).
Named Fairhaven Beach House, the three-storey residence is perched on the top of a hill. John Wardle Architects laid out the building with an uneven U-shaped plan to create a wall of windows facing the water and an east-facing courtyard that is protected from coastal winds.
The route from the entrance to a large living room was intended as a dramatic progression through the building, passing by a cantilevered study and through a pivoting asymmetric door.
“It is a dynamic, fluid journey through the house from arrival to the ocean view,” said the architects, whose past projects include a house on a working sheep farm in Tasmania.
“It is choreographed to increase anticipation before reaching the main living space,” they added.
A large kitchen and dining room is positioned on one side and projects even further towards the coastline, plus a secluded balcony provides an opportunity to dine outdoors.
“The house is carefully zoned to allow for privacy and communal gathering,” said the architects.
While the exterior of the house is clad with grey zinc panels to blend in with the tones of the bush landscape, the interior features timber surfaces across every wall, floor and ceiling.
Two bedrooms are located on the ground floor and a wooden staircase leads up to a third on the upper storey.
A garage, wine cellar and informal living room are tucked away in the basement.
Fairhaven Beach House topped the residential category at the Australian National Architecture Awards earlier this month. Judges described it as “a masterful control of form and space, scale, material and detail”.
Here’s more information from John Wardle Architects:
Fairhaven Residence
The Fairhaven Beach House is located on top of the ridgeline above the Great Ocean Road on the Victorian coastline. The site enjoys panoramic views over the southern ocean and surf beach below.
The proportions, orientation and dimensions of windows have been tailored to particular views and to reveal internal spaces. The design process has been one akin to scenography, bringing together sensory and spatial experiences to frame the theatre of inhabitation within.
This beach house coils and steps around a protected central courtyard, which creates an outdoor space sheltered from the harsh prevailing winds. The living area doors and an oversized sliding kitchen window open up and integrate the courtyard with the house during fine weather.
It is a dynamic, fluid journey through the house from arrival to the ocean view; it is choreographed to increase anticipation before reaching the main living space.
As you step beneath a cantilevered study into a dramatic vertical entry space, you become acutely aware of a number of twists and folds along its length that make the transformation into the horizontal living space. Its main window aperture matches the cinematic proportions of the ocean view.
The house is carefully zoned to allow for privacy and communal gathering. The upper level houses a suite of private rooms including a main bedroom, ensuite, study and viewing terrace. The entry level contains a pair of bedrooms and bathroom. The main living and dining space is where the occupants come together. A garage, laundry and informal living space are hidden from view in a basement level.
Materially the house is clad in a green-grey zinc cladding, for both its longevity and natural colouring that merges with the scrub and tea tree landscape. In contrast, the interior of the house is completely lined in timber (floors, walls, cabinetry and ceilings) to form an enclosure for living that its inhabitants become completely immersed within. The eye is then always drawn back to the outlook beyond.
The entire facade of this house in the Japanese town of Ōiso by atelier HAKO architects is clad in fibre-reinforced cement boards and punctuated by a series of scattered windows (+ slideshow).
Photo by atelier HAKO architects
The grey boards are typically used as a standard roofing material in Japanese housing developments but were also applied by atelier HAKO architects to cover the exterior walls.
Designed for a family with two children on a site near the Sagami Bay coastline of the Pacific Ocean, the cement boards also perform a practical role as they are resistant to corrosion from the salty air.
An offset gable gives the roofline an asymmetrical appearance, which helps the building stand out among its more conventional neighbours.
“The house was placed on the north side of the site in order to protect the garden from seasonal wind from [the] north in winter,” said the architects, who incorporated small windows on the north facade and positioned larger windows on the south side of the building facing the garden.
The southern facade also incorporates large sliding windows that open onto a deck reminiscent of an “engawa”, a strip of wooden flooring found between the living space and external storm shutters of traditional Japanese houses.
“[The] internal area was designed with an emphasis on continuity with the garden,” explained the architects, who created an open plan living and dining area on the ground floor next to a kitchen with an aperture in the wall linking the two spaces.
A spiral staircase with a bottom tread that appears to hover above the ground connects the living room with a hallway on the upper floor where the bedrooms, bathroom and children’s play area are also located.
Photography is by Shinsuke Kera / Urban Arts, unless stated otherwise.
Here are some details about the project:
The site is located at the edge of dwelling area close to the sea that is facing the agricultural land spread to the north-east mountain side.
The house was placed on the north side of the site in order to protect the garden from seasonal wind from north in winter.
Internal area was designed with an emphasis on continuity with the garden. In the south elevation, wide window and shallow depth wood deck which is like japanese traditional ‘engawa’ were provided as connect elements of the internal area and the garden, whereas other elevation was designed defensive to outside.
Triangular roof was slightly rotated with respect to the axis of the outer wall, the elevations got asymmetric shapes that offer humorous feeling at glance.
Fiber-reinforced cement board to be used usually as roofing material of mass production house in Japan was used as the exterior wall finishing material resistant to salt damage, thus overall architecture got abstract appearance covered with the same material all.
Name: House in Ōiso Architect: Yukinobu Nanashima + Tomomi Sano / atelier HAKO architects Structural engineer: Shin’itsu Hiraoka / Hiraoka Structural Engineers Completion: March 2010 Location: Ōiso, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan Primary usage: private residence Structure: wooden construction, two stories above ground Site area: 155.31 m2 Building area: 44.86 m2 Total floor space: 89.72 m2
French studio Perraudin Architecture has completed a social housing complex with solid stone walls near Toulouse as part of a bid to prove that “anything that is built today could be built in stone” (+ slideshow).
Perraudin Architecture, which also recently completed a stone house in Lyon, specified huge 40 centimetre-wide blocks of limestone for the walls of the three-storey building located within a new residential district of Cornebarrieu, north-west of Toulouse.
“Stone is the most abundantly available material on earth,” said architect Marco Lammers. “It is an extremely energy-efficient resource […] and, when used with intelligence, it can be cheaper than concrete.”
The studio treated this project as a case study to test whether stone can be used for buildings that need to adhere to both a tight budget and strict energy-saving requirements, and managed to deliver on both counts.
According to the architect, the load-bearing stone walls will provide a natural air conditioning system that absorbs excess heat and releases it gradually.
“The result is a truly contemporary stone architecture, rooted in the economy of simplicity and the pure tectonic art and pleasure of building,” said Lammers.
No paint or plaster was added to the walls, so the stone surfaces are left bare to display traces of the quarrying process. Projecting courses of stone on the exterior mark the boundaries between floors and help to direct rainwater away from the windows.
A total of 2o apartments are contained within the building. Bedrooms are positioned along the northern facade, allowing living rooms to be south-facing and open out to sunny terraces.
Larch was used for doors, window frames and shutters throughout the complex, and are expected to show signs of ageing over time.
Perraudin Architecture is now working on the next phase of the project, which will involve the construction of a larger housing complex using the same materials palette.
Photography is by Damien Aspe and Serge Demailly.
Here’s more information from Perraudin Architecture:
Massive Stone Social Housing, Cornebarrieu, France
Since its rediscovery of stone Perraudin Architecture has come to believe that anything that is built today could be built in stone.
After realising several massive stone buildings – including wineries, single housing and a school campus – the opportunity to build 20 social housing units in Cornebarrieu provided an excellent test case. Is it possible, to truly build in stone within the strictest of economical and energetic restrictions? With a brief featuring both a very limited budget of 1150 euro/m² and the strict demand to be granted the label ‘Very High Energetic Performance’ within the French standard of High Environmental Quality?
The result is a truly contemporary stone architecture, rooted in the economy of simplicity and the pure tectonic art and pleasure of building. An architecture made to age and made to last, searching to exploit to its maximum the great visual, environmental and structural qualities of its used materials.
The building is entirely built up in load-bearing limestone walls of 40 cm. Precise coursing elevations define each stone, to be extracted, dimensioned and numbered in the quarry and then transported to the site. There, they are assembled like toy blocks using nothing but a thin bed of lime mortar.
Each detail is a true stone detail. Large openings are formed by flat arcs with keys stones. Window sills are dimensioned in limestone. All perforations for ducts and for descending the rainwater from the roof are included in the coursing plan and carried out at the quarry. At the height of the concrete floor slabs ‘cornices’ project rainwater free off the building’s walls all the while doubling as guide rail for the blinds.
Construction image
The building is located at the outskirts of Cornebarrieu, a town within the metropolitan area of Toulouse. It is part a new residential neighbourhood extending the town towards its forested western edge.
It is based on a series of simple principles, which we have come to apply and refine over time. All materials are left untreated. As much as possible, all materials are left untreated, with no paint, no plaster. The woodwork is in larch, left to age with time. The stone acts as natural air conditioning, its thermal mass absorbing and releasing surplus heat and humidity. For reasons of comfort and ventilation, the housing units are systematically continuous from facade to facade.
The bedrooms are in the north to take advantage of the summer freshness while on the south side a large terrace extends the living room, with nothing but a glass wall as separation. The staircases remain in open air and to enter the apartment one enters by the loggia. Flexible blinds protect this terrace and allow it to be used as a buffer-space softening climatic variations.
Life within this housing unit moves with the weather, one can activate and deactivate its great thermal mass while spaces change dynamically from being inside to outside according to the seasonal comfort.
The project has been nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe Award 2013, the Equerre d’Argent 2011, and was winner of the Prix Développement Durable – Concours d’architecture Pierre Naturelle 2011.
Furthermore, the building has been finished within budget with its stone construction finishing well ahead of schedule. Due to this success, we are currently building the second phase of the development – 86 collective and individual housing units, partly social – using the same construction method and a budget below 1000 euro/m².
Italian architects Scape have modernised an apartment in one of Rome‘s oldest neighbourhoods by adding faceted ceilings and a boxy wooden staircase.
The residence occupies the uppermost floors of a detached house on Oppian Hill – one of the seven hills that forms the historic centre of the Italian capital city – and is positioned just east of the Colosseum.
Scape were tasked with rationalising an incongruous interior created by numerous extensions and renovations, but were bound by strict planning laws governing the historic architectural fabric.
“Not only was it a situation that was functionally and spatially compromised, but added to this were the difficulties related to intervening architecturally in a city where the law tends to protect pre-existing elements that are easier to control, thus unfortunately often ignoring aspects of quality that might be improved upon,” they explained.
The interior is arranged around a double-height living room, above which the architects have installed a system of suspended ceilings with angular facets, intended to emphasise the joints of the roof.
“The objective of the project was that of reconstructing the interior of the dwelling to produce a spatially coherent and unified entity while taking advantage of and enhancing aspects of the house,” added the architects.
A separate kitchen and dining room is also located on this main floor, alongside a pair of bedrooms with en suite bathrooms.
New wooden storage closets have been added along the walls and match up with the wooden staircase that ascends to a guest bedroom on the mezzanine floor, as well as to a smaller level above.
Located in the building’s turret, this top floor now functions as a study room and opens out to rooftop balconies on two sides.
The transformation of the two top floors of a freestanding house in Colle Oppio is a project that, as is often the case working with the ancient fabric of Rome, involved numerous complex factors.
The apartment, measuring a little over 200 msq, was distributed over three levels; two main floors and a mezzanine, the fruit of numerous interventions that had been carried out in a disorderly and incoherent manner over the last twenty years.
Not only was it a situation that was functionally and spatially compromised, but added to this were the difficulties related to intervening architecturally in a city where the law tends to protect pre-existing elements that are easier to control, thus unfortunately often ignoring aspects of quality that might be improved upon. Finally, the building had static problems that forced the owners to carry out a considerable consolidation of the floor slabs and roofing.
The objective of the project was that of reconstructing the interior of the dwelling to produce a spatially coherent and unified entity while taking advantage of and enhancing aspects of the house such as the high ceilings in certain areas and the presence of several outside spaces, which, although small, are on different levels and provide splendid views of the city.
Two main structural operations dictated the organisation of the various areas of the house: integrating a large body of wood for the internal staircase to connect the various levels and all the cupboard and storage space necessary for the easy running of a house, as well as the homogenisation of the ceilings that were arranged with layered roofing that was interesting but compromised by irrational and disorganised load-bearing elements.
The first operation allowed the redistribution of the various living spaces in the house. On the first floor, the living room takes advantage of the building’s high ceilings and the best views of Colle Oppio.
The sleeping quarters on the other hand are smaller spaces: two bedrooms with their respective bathrooms. Large four-metre high cupboards introduce a connecting element between these two areas of the apartment.
The new positioning of the staircase presented the possibility of introducing visual interaction between the various levels. The mezzanine, which comprises a small area dedicated to the ironing, the guest bedroom and the boiler room, faces onto the living room on one side and the kitchen on the other, bringing to the fore qualities of height and shape in the spaces.
On the top floor, the landing at the top of the stairs links the two upper terraces, one on each side, and the splendid altana or large turret room that will be used as a study.
The second considerable alteration involved the roofing. A new system of false ceilings accentuates the articulation of the joints in the roof, highlighting the movement and interaction with the spaces beneath. It was an intervention inspired by the existing shapes of the roof while strengthening and reinforcing those shapes in a contemporary way.
Oregon architects Works Partnership Architecture converted a warehouse in Portland into a home and studio by punching skylights through the preserved bowstring truss roof and inserting living quarters within timber-clad boxes (+ slideshow).
Bowstring Truss House is a conversion of a 5,000 square foot industrial building into a column-free home with a “pixellated” arrangement of timber-clad private spaces.
“The goal of the design was to maintain the vast trussed ceiling and the open floor plane, while inserting a standard residential program that the clients could live among,” Works Partnership Architecture explained.
“A strategy was adopted for inserting the program into the shell in a loose arrangement of programmed ‘boxes’,” the architects added. “In order to allow a sense of the ‘whole’, a pixellated subset of elements could create a broad spectrum of both public and private spaces while never competing with the recognisable order of the roof.”
A bowstring truss is a structural device commonly used in bridge-building and, less often, in industrial architecture. Used to span wide, column-free spaces, it consists of an arched beam (the bow) joined at each end by a straight beam (the string), with diagonal support beams joining the two.
Bowstring trusses were commonly used in the United States in the early part of the Twentieth Century, particularly for buildings such as car dealerships, auto repair shops and bowling alleys.
This particular example was was originally built as a warehouse and mechanic’s workshop. The conversion includes an internal courtyard that slots between two of the five original timber roof trusses.
The courtyard is glazed at the top to bring light into the interior and surrounded by timber walls at floor level, with glazed openings that frame views of its planted interior.
Knotted timber panelling covers some of the interior surfaces and contrasts with the minimal white walls found throughout the house.
Photography is by Joshua Jay Elliott.
Here’s some more information from the architects:
Bowstring Truss House Portland, Oregon
Works Partnership Architecture announced this month that the firm has completed the Bowstring Truss House, a private residence and studio was adapted from a 5000 sf former warehouse and auto repair shop. The space is clear spanned by a series of five bowstring trusses and exposed roof framing.
The goal of the design was to maintain the vast trussed ceiling and the open floor plane, while inserting a standard residential program that the clients could live among.
The design manages both scales simultaneously: a sense of the expanse of the entire structure as well as scaled discrete living areas—a new environment, a simplified terrain between earth and sky.
A strategy was adopted for inserting the program into the shell in a loose arrangement of programmed “boxes”. The five trusses provided more than enough meter for the space.
In order to allow a sense of the “whole”, a pixilated subset of elements could create a broad spectrum of both public and private spaces while never competing with the recognisable order of the roof. The functionality of the house flows lucidly. A free pattern of new skylights create a constellation of light and discrete pools of sun.
At the centre of the house, the groundscape and the roofscape align to form a central courtyard—a vitrine of nature, and a vessel to capture the elusive Pacific Northwest light.
Project: Bowstring Truss House Land/Built-up area: 5,000 sq ft Location: Portland, Oregon, USA Architect: Works Partnership Architecture Project team: Carrie Strickland, William Neburka, Megan Coyle, Jennifer Dzienis, Ian Campbell Contractor: Don Tankersley Construction
Spanish architects Nook have renovated a small apartment in Barcelona‘s gothic quarter, leaving decorative floor tiles in place to reveal the original layout of the flat (+ slideshow).
Called Roc3, the conversion is the third that Nook Architects have carried out in the same building, following Casa Roc and Twin House.
“We have followed the same conceptual thread in all three projects, highlighting the original envelope,” the architects told Dezeen. “We have retained all original floors as much as possible, and they have been left exactly in the original place, so you can read the old distribution of the apartment.”
Nook removed some of the original internal partitions to optimise space, creating a combined living room and kitchen on the street side of the apartment, and a bedroom and bathroom on the courtyard side.
“We thought it correct to once again incorporate the washbasin in the bedroom to make a better use of natural light and to enlarge the sensation of open space,” the architects said.
The bathroom of the one-bedroom apartment has a second door into the entrance hall, meaning that guests sleeping over in the lounge can access it without disturbing the owner.
Nook used a more industrial palette of materials than in the previous two conversions, in order to save money and create longer-lasting fixtures.
A row of suspended steel storage boxes backed with chicken wire separates the bedroom from the bathroom. The waist-high partition is made of white-painted clay bricks.
Much of the furniture was sourced from a local second-hand store while the dining table is topped with an old door. Walls are left unpainted in places, revealing layers of faded plaster and old tile adhesive.
“In all three projects, we have used modular furniture for the kitchen and the bath, concrete floors, ceramic tiles and translucent polycarbonate for interior doors,” the architects said. “The other furniture, door frames and accessories have been made in steel, not like in the other two first projects which were made of wood. The idea is to use neutral materials which can last and get older in a good way.”
ROC3 | apartment in Barcelona, third intervention | nookarchitects
With ROC3 we reached the end of a cycle, the renovation of three, very similar, but different apartments on a single building in Barcelona’s gothic quarter.
We were recently advised that in times of economic crisis, as architects, we had to look for a formula to obtain products with scalability to optimise our resources. We understood that a product with scalability was the repetition of valid solutions from one project to the other, a difficult approach within the refurbishment industry. In the midst of that search for a common denominator the opportunity to rehabilitate ROC3 arrived- another diamond in the rough on the very same building where we had done two previous interventions: CASA ROC and TWIN HOUSE.
We approached the project thinking that we could apply the same parameters as in TWIN HOUSE due to the fact that it was a very similar apartment in terms of dimensions, orientation and pre-set requirements.
This meant placing the daytime space towards the Street, the bedroom towards the interior courtyard, and placing the kitchen and bathroom against the median Wall in the form of a humid strip. What seemed obvious, however, was not possible due to the fact that the sanitary drainpipe changed its position on this apartment from the one in TWIN HOUSE, so we had to look for a new solution for placing the bathroom.
We thought it correct to once again incorporate the washbasin in the bedroom to make a better use of natural light and to enlarge the sensation of open space. This time we separated it from the rest of the room with a low Wall and suspended iron cubes that allow storage from both sides. These same cubes were also used to create night tables and extra storage space for recipe books and utensils in the kitchen.
The shower and water closet have independent entries, but can be closed using a single sliding door, a solution first use don CASA ROC. The water closet can also be accessed from the main entry through a second door, which gives the option of guests using this space without having to enter the bedroom. This way, boundaries were set between one space and the other without creating a visual barrier.
The building’s structure and closings are very irregular, so we introduced lineal elements that counterpoint these irregularities and set order within the space. Amongst these elements are a close hanger that integrates lighting (borrowed from TWIN HOUSE) and connects itself with the support of the suspended cubes and the sliding door’s guide. Wood was used to set limits on the pavement which regulates the traces of the previously existing partition walls. This was also synthetised on the living room lamp.
ROC3 was about applying new ideas to new challenges, but maintaining the spirit behind CASA ROC and TWIN HOUSE in which we searched for the original spirit of the building and subtly intervened to achieve today’s levels of comfort while harmonising with the building’s history.
Folded steel staircases lead to elevated rooms atop freestanding metal towers inside this old industrial building in Brussels that adn Architectures has converted into an open-plan apartment (+ slideshow).
Belgian studio adn Architectures added the two-storey structures on opposite sides of the space, loosely dividing a living room at one end from a central dining area and adjoining kitchen.
The architects used a mixture of solid and perforated metal to vary the transparency of the more secluded spaces within the towers, which comprise a bathroom and a utility room on the main level, and a bedroom and study on the upper levels.
Cantilevered staircases made from folded steel lead separately to the top-floor spaces and face one another across the dining area.
Describing their intervention as “two volumes and three pieces of furniture,” the architects explained that they wanted to create a simple interior with a limited palette of materials and colours.
The pieces of built-in furniture mentioned are a kitchen counter, a bookshelf and a double-height wall of storage, which stretch along the two long sides of the apartment.
Concrete ceilings are left exposed and three columns come down to the meet the new flooring, which is made up of a polyurethane screed.
Here’s a project description from adn architecture:
Loft FOR
Let’s get straight to the point: an imposed decorum, four walls and a few windows, functional needs to sleep, eat read and wash. Two internal bodies that embrace the envelope without touching it, opaque, translucent, airy, abstract.
A place: An unfinished surface of 96 square meters: walls made of terracotta blocks, raw concrete ceiling, windows on two of the four walls and two technical ducts.
A program: Designed it for a couple who want a loft conversion type of interior design with efficient use of space.
An answer: Seek purity of form and functional simplicity.
Means: Creation of a minimum of two new volumes and use of a very limited set of materials.
Organisation: Two volumes are built and three pieces of furniture are installed to structure the volume.
The two metallic volumes on the ground floor welcome the two functions that require doors that close: the bathroom and the laundry room. The top floors of the volumes conceal a bedroom and an office.
The position of these volumes alongside technical ducts determines different volumes with different qualities.
The three pieces of furniture then structure and give function to the remaining space: a long kitchen cabinet in a narrow space between the entrance and the laundry room, a wall of storage near the entrance and a library in the more intimate space that leads to the balcony.
The materials are polyurethane screed for the floor; solid or perforated metal for the structuring elements, stratified MDF for the furniture, with a paint finish to exacerbate the texture of the various materials. The ceiling is kept as is to remind of the pre-existing unified volume.
French studio Perraudin Architecture has constructed a family house out of solid stone, claiming the material is “cheaper and faster” to build with than concrete.
Architect Marco Lammers said limestone had been chosen for economic reasons. “Stone itself is not an expensive resource,” he said. “Its manufacturing is. Therefore, the greater its mass, the lower its price and the greater its qualities.”
The house is located in Croix Rousse in Lyon – a dense former silk-weaving district – and is positioned in a small backland plot behind an art gallery.
Perraudin Architecture designed the building to match the typical local architecture, which features solid stone walls and windows large enough to fit silk looms through.
“Massive stone – when used with intelligence – allows to build cheaper and faster than ‘classical’ construction methods like […] concrete,” the architects claim.
Lammers told Dezeen that using stone for load-bearing construction is far more efficient than applying it as a cladding material and creates energy-efficient buildings without high price tags.
“When used constructively in its raw massive form, stone is load-bearing, has great qualities of thermal mass, absorbs and releases surplus humidity, does not degrade and thus literally makes timeless architecture,” he said.
“Arguably, the least intelligent use of stone thinkable is to cut it in thin slices and to hang it decoratively on structural walls,” he added.
The two-storey residence has an L-shaped plan that wraps around a small garden and swimming pool. Both floors feature floor-to-ceiling windows, and the stone walls are left exposed on the inside as well as the outside.
Ground floor spaces are arranged in a sequence where large family rooms are broken up by utility areas such as bathrooms and closets. These smaller spaces sit within compact stone volumes that support the flat roof overhead.
The architect added: “As stone is a subtractive rather than additive material, the domestic landscape architecture has a vocabulary of rifts, carvings, cracks and recesses.”
Here’s more information from Perraudin Architecture:
Massive stone house, Lyon – Croix Rousse, France
This single family house finds itself in the hearth of Croix-Rousse, one of the densest neighbourhoods of Europe. The quarter is heavily marked by its thousands of former home-workshops of the “canuts” – the silk weavers of the 19th century Lyonnais silk manufacturing.
An urban tissue of high, massive stone buildings with large window openings carrying heavy oak floor structures that allow for the high open spaces needed for the Jacquard looms that were used for weaving the silk tissue.
Axonometric diagram
Located in a hearth of a housing block at the back of the art gallery it extends, the possibilities to build are strictly limited by complex urban regulations. Therefore, the envelope of the house follows exactly the authorised maximum volume, with its spaces ‘carved out’ of this given envelope.
Exploded axonometric diagram
Within this rigid shell, the spaces are positioned one after the other forming a continuous scenic route. Due to the limited depth of the maximum envelope, the layout is organised as alternating service and served spaces, with the service-spaces (bathroom, storage, stairs, toilets…) forming massive blocks of stone that support the roof. With its reinforced contrast between mass and emptiness, between lightness and darkness, with its pierced and recessing mass, the playful and liberated inner world contrasts strongly with the outer world blocked in regulation.
Axonometric diagram of stone structure
Being closer to physical geography than to architecture, the service blocks arrange themselves in a route connecting and separating one living space from another. As stone is a subtractive rather than additive material, the “domestic landscape architecture” has a vocabulary of rifts, carvings, cracks and recesses.
Isometric detail
The service blocks define by contrast the living voids, orienting them towards the small garden they surround. The freshness generated by the basin completes this architectural geography.
Ground floor plan
Structurally, all floors are supported by the service blocks, with each block uniquely built up out of massive – structural – stone. The large blocks of dimension stone making up its masonry have been sculpted and assembled block by block after being cut precisely in the quarry. Delivered element by element, they were quickly mounted as if it were blocks in a toy building game.
First floor plan
About Perraudin Architecte and the use of massive stone as primary construction material
Perraudin Architecture is an office with a long history in forefront sustainable architecture – with as most notable example the Akademie Mont Cenis (Herne, Germany, 1999, awarded with the Holzbaupreis and the European Solar Prize, Prize for Solar Building and of the first large energy-neutral buildings).
Since 1998 the office rediscovered massive, structural stone as contemporary building material, starting to use a standardised module of large blocks of 2,00 x 1,00 x 0,50 meter of massive stone – or half of the unit size of stone as extracted directly from a quarry – as primary (structural) building material. Since, the office has proved the potential of massive stone as an elegant, sustainable, economical, and widely available local material in numerous of its buildings.
Most notable is the construction of 20 units of social housing in Cornebarrieu (project nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe Award 2013, the Equerre d’Argent 2011, and winner of the Prix Développement Durable – Concours d’architecture Pierre Naturelle 2011). It proves massive stone – when used with intelligence – allows to build cheaper and faster than ‘classical’ construction methods like the use of armed concrete, all the while using very limited energy to extract and place (dry construction!) and having great tectonic and tactile qualities.
As each building we had built so far was based on the rather strict geometric base, this massive stone house in Lyon was the first project to allow us to demonstrate the extreme flexibility of stone, exploiting to the maximum its plastic qualities.
This “bioclimatic” house on the edge of Lyon in France features a timber frame, cladding of larch and composite timber, and a planted roof (+ slideshow).
Lyon architects Tectoniques introduced a range of measures to maximise the environmental and thermal performance of the house -called Villa B – along a north-south axis, with plenty of glazing on the south facade helping with solar gain.
The house is built using dry construction methods and features a prefabricated modular timber frame built on a concrete slab with larch cladding covering the exterior.
Floor-to-ceiling windows on opposite facades provide uninterrupted views through the ground floor of the house and incorporate the doors that lead to patios on either side.
“Consistency is created between the building and the external spaces, which enhance each other,” said the architects. “Thus the living area becomes larger than the space delimited by the walls.”
Adjoining the building’s west facade is a garage covered in black composite timber panels that extends to create a canopy above the entrance to the main living space. Adjustable shutters function as a brise soleil to regulate the amount of sunlight reaching the interior during the warmer months.
An island in the centre of the open-plan ground floor houses utilities including kitchen appliances and units, a bathroom and access to the basement. Built-in storage covers the full length of this room, freeing up the rest of the floor space.
Wood is used throughout the interior, with furniture and storage constructed from pale wood panels. The floors are made from poured concrete and white plasterboard walls keep the spaces bright.
Four bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs are organised around a central circulation space at the top of the stairs.
For architects, designing a house is an adventure, but reality is often not as easy as foreseen. The site is complicated, the neighbours are unhappy, the unforeseen factors are really not foreseen, construction work is not as fast as planned, the ecological goals are difficult to reach, and the contractors are not as qualified as specified, and so on – the list is long. In this situation, the architect will be the arbitrator and the ground-breaker. In the end, the construction seems simple and natural.
The story of the Villa B. follows the classic scenario of construction on a bare site, at the edge of a city, in the middle of market gardens, on a strip of land that is well-oriented.
Averse to the stereotypes of the private housing development on the edge of which it is located, and inspired by the image of F.L. Wright’s Usonian Houses and Case Study Houses, the designers make use of the site’s potential to apply the basic principles of the bioclimatic approach. The house quickly takes the shape of a compact whole that presents a simple timber cube very open to the surrounding landscape. As always, Tectoniques avoided the temptation of designing this scheme with a predetermined form to match a desired image, but instead asserted a principle of “no design”.
The bioclimatic approach, a pure attitude to architecture
Benefiting from a long experience of dry construction and timber frame construction, and well-versed in environmental questions for more than twenty years, the firm chooses to design with a bioclimatic approach. It experiments with several options and technical solutions with which it builds a strategy.
Looking into different options for construction and thermal aspects, the firm investigates different technical possibilities for insulation, heating and air handling, from which it chooses a consistent solution that is appropriate for the family’s ways of life and their ability to adapt to induced behaviour.
Priority is given to a house that serves the users, the idea that they have of it, how they plan to live in it and how to make the site their own. This is the basis of the architect’s work: then the technology follows.
The scheme takes the form of a compact house, well placed in the middle of its site, with a high-performance envelope. Oriented north-south and very open on the south side to benefit from solar gain, the house divided space in two gardens with terraces with very differents and complementary uses and atmospheres.
The plan: through views and transparency, intermediate and multipurpose spaces
The plan is efficient, almost square, measuring 10 x 11m. Along the west of the ground floor is a garage finished in black pannels timber composite, extended by a canopy. Free and open, it is organised around a central core that contains the services: cellar, networks, shower/bath room, and kitchen. All the rooms form a ring around this hub. Uninterrupted through views and continual contact with nature are maintained by using sliding partitions and large glazed areas facing each other.
A strip of ancillary and storage areas runs along the full height of the west wall. The overall scheme creates a multipurpose space, open onto the south and north gardens and the patios. Consistency is created between the building and the external spaces, which enhance each other. Thus the living area becomes larger than the space delimited by the walls.
The house faces due south. Largely glazed, it benefits from solar gain, while being protected by brise-soleil adjustable louver sun breaks to control stronger sunshine in the summer, spring and autumn. Open onto the south and east, its upper floor is closed on the north, and the west side only has small openings for the showers and bathrooms.
Since the local climate is strongly contrasted, with peaks of heat and cold, this plan layout allows maximum occupation of the patios according to the seasons, sheltered from the wind. In the long term, a variety of intermediate and peripheral elements may enhance the existing and vary the spaces, according to the weather and the seasons, such as arbours, canopies, pergolas, etc.
On the upper floor, the system is reversed: the layout organisation starts from the core and opens onto the bedrooms. Following the principle of separation of daytime and night- time areas, the upper floor is occupied by four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The bedrooms face south and east, while the bathrooms open to the west.
In addition to the clearly-identified living areas, the house has intermediate and multipurpose spaces. This is the case on the ground floor, which, with its sliding partitions, can have several layouts; also, some rooms that are not set aside for any specific purpose can be reconfigured according to the time of day e.g. study-laundry-computer room or guest bedroom-study-music room. This adaptability is a response to the need to manage both privacy and communal life within the family home.
Simple structure
The construction is simple. It is a timber- framed house, erected on a concrete slab, with a concrete topping laid on the upper floor. The structure is a prefabricated modular system. The roof insulation consists of 40 cm thick expanded cellulose wadding, and the wall insulation consists of mineral wool with woodwool on the outside, giving a total thickness of 32 cm. The woodwool slows down warming and cooling of the house by a lagging effect.
On the ground floor, three large triple-glazed panels – with a fixed part and a translating (tilting) opener – run along the elevation at ceiling height and frame the landscape. They avoid interrupting the views by door and window frames, and they draw the eyes towards the outside. On the upper floor, in the bedrooms, low tilt-and-turn windows have a fixed window-breast at bed height.
On the facades, perforated larch cladding is fixed to double 5 x 5 cm wall plates to further increase the ventilation effect. The cladding gradually greys naturally, without any treatment, with uniform silvery tinges. Inside, a lining of knot-free, light-coloured polar panels is used with great uniformity for built-in cupboards, furniture and storage elements. Elsewhere, white plasterboard adds to the soft, brightly-lit atmosphere of the house.
South facadeNorth facade
Thermal strategy
Space heating is mainly provided by floor heating on the ground floor and the upper floor. It is supplied by a condensation gas boiler and solar panels. The double- flow ventilation system is connected to a glycolated ground-air heat exchanger laid at a depth of between 2.00 and 2.50 m to the north of the house, which supplies air at a constant temperature of 12°C. When necessary, the exchanger can provide additional ventilation at night. During cold peaks, wood-burning stove covers additional heating needs, calculated for the overall volume and instantaneously, particularly
for the upper floor. Waxed concrete and floor heating provide very pleasant thermal comfort. The concrete topping, which is chosen despite the timber structure, provides uniformity of floors on the ground floor and upper floor, in bedrooms, showers and bath rooms. In addition, the roof is planted with a sedum [stonecrap] covering, and rainwater is collected in an underground tank.
All of these systems require some control to function as well as possible. This is a technical matter that needs a certain degree of mastery, which is acquired empirically and requires the occupants to take an interest in them and to change their habits.
The owner of this Madrid apartment moves between living and working spaces like a character in a computer game, using ladders that connect platforms inserted in a single tall, narrow space.
“[It] leads to an image that looks like those old computer platform games,” said Spanish architects MYCC, who created the live-work space in a 100 cubic-metre volume.
The architects described the volume as “an empty box waiting to be filled,” adding: “The idea of light and simple floors where it could be possible to easily jump from one to another was always in mind from the very first sketches.”
A mixture of ladders and staircases connect each of the platforms in the space, which is just 20 square metres in plan.
“Size, both horizontal and vertical, of every part gives a non-lineal path,” added the architects. “So, moving from one room to another is a kind of small physical effort.”
The entrance lobby steps up to the kitchen, then more stairs lead down to a living area on the opposite side.
A steel ladder mounted onto the side wall can be climbed to access a mezzanine study, while a sleeping area is tucked underneath.
A final set of stairs leads down from the living room into a bathroom located beneath the kitchen.
Walls, floors and ceilings are all finished in white, so the only splashes of colour come from items of furniture and framed artworks.
This singular urban shelter is just twenty square metres and nevertheless is one hundred cubic metres of volume. In such an enclosed space should a single person live and work. He will use his creativity and dynamism to make it his own sweet home.
A longitudinal section defines the project. The space highness has been used to accommodate several pieces, which are limited in volume but at the same time all are visually connected to each other. Even the bathroom is within sight.
The necessity to hold the programmed uses, each of them with specific characteristics and size, leads to an image which looks like those old computers platform games. The idea of light and simple floors where could be possible even easily jump from one to another was always in mind from the very first sketches.
Size, both horizontal and vertical, of every piece gives as a result a non lineal path. So, moving from one room to another is a kind of small physical effort.
Going up to the kitchen or getting down to the bedroom offers a stressed change and different sensation of the space, both any different unit and the apartment as a whole.
The apartment, even with its small size, wants to offer generous spaces and a big quantity of different pieces of use. The pieces that make it up, does not really have a fixed clearly defined use: the kitchen is a walk-through room to get the living. There are stands rather than stairs to go down the living, which is over a cellar-storage room. Then, it is possible to get the ladder to go up to the indoor sunny terrace, a place to be used as a study or a chill out. Also the central living room connects through four steps to the bathroom. This is an oversized kind of luxury room that holds even an in-situ cosy kind of hamman bath.
Construction and finishing are made in a direct and unadorned way and all is full of bright white.
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