Hasta La Ideas

Double-height glass doors slide back to open up an entire facade of this house in Israel by architect Pitsou Kedem (+ slideshow).

Israel-based Pitsou Kedem placed the open-plan lounge, dining areas and kitchen between two outdoor spaces so they would receive light from both east and west.

“This provides a feeling that the space is constantly enveloped by natural light and the greenery of the trees in the courtyard,” said the architect.

The six-metre-high living area is fronted with giant sheets of glass, which slide open on an electric motor to connect the inside to an expansive terrace.

From the end of the back garden, a long thin infinity pool looks like it extends into the house.

A courtyard at the front of the property is sunk to the basement level, with terraced planters stepping down to the excavated area from the boundary wall.

Floating steps lead up from the front gate to a bridge, which connects to the entrance in the three-storey volume parallel to the street.

The home comprises two perpendicular intersecting volumes and the smaller cuboid housing the bedrooms protrudes into the kitchen space, next to the swivelling front door.

Staircases on the other side go down to the children’s living room and up to a mezzanine balcony.

Apart from heavy concrete and white rendered end walls, all rooms are glazed from floor to ceiling but can be veiled with white curtains. Shutters roll down in front of the huge glass wall for privacy and security.

Pitsou Kedem’s other projects include a family house with timber screens that fold back in all different directions and a furniture showroom inside an industrial warehouse.

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Photography is by Amit Geron.

Read on for more information from the architects:

Between two courtyards

A private residence, built between two, central courtyards.

A frontal courtyard excavated to a depth of three meters and the second courtyard at the level of the building’s ground floor.

This topographical interface creates a unique cross section to the building’s mass with each part of the building, even the section constructed as a basement, being open to its own courtyard.

The central space of the kitchen, the dining room and the living room is open in two directions – to the west and to the east. This provides a feeling that the space is constantly enveloped by natural light and the greenery of the trees in the courtyard.

The structure’s central space, set in the centre of the plot, is accessed via a long bridge that crosses the sunken courtyard and leads to the front door.

From the bridge, we can see the children’s living rooms which open into the basement.

The house’s central space rises to a height of six meters and is 17 metres long.

There are no pillars in the space and the entire front is transparent with glass windows that slide apart with the aid of an electric motor.

Thus, the entire interior of the home opens into the courtyard and the border between inside and outside is cancelled.

The swimming pool seems as if it extends into the structure and, when looking into the house from the courtyard, the house in reflected in the pool which strengthens our impression of the building’s mass.

The master bedroom is set on the second floor and opens onto the double space and the courtyard allowing for a view of the entire plot.

The structures two supporting side walls have been emphasised, one was poured from exposed, architectural concrete and on the other a large library reaches to its full height.

Architecture: Pitsou Kedem Architects
Design team: Pitsou Kedem, Nurit Ben Yosef

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by Pitsou Kedem appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch studio Personal Architecture has renovated one of Piet Bloms’ iconic Cube Houses in Rotterdam to create a residence for delinquents in their final stages of detention (+ slideshow).

The Supercube is one of 40 houses in the 1980s housing complex, which features cube-shaped volumes perched atop large hexagonal columns. While some of the buildings contain apartments or hotel rooms, this four-storey block has been mostly vacant since its construction.

Identifying the main problems with the interior as being “the discontinuity between floors, the tedious vertical progress and the dark, inconvenient middle floor,” Personal Architecture decided to insert an atrium to bring natural light through the house and to rationalise the circulation.

“The building was dark, it warmed up quickly and there was no relation whatsoever between the floors,” explained architects Sander van Schaik and Maarten Polkamp.

A new staircase was added around the sides of the atrium to create a coherent route between floors, while small rooms such as the kitchen, bathrooms, and reception were tucked into its sides.

“The void raises the transparency and coherence of the building and adds a great deal of sunlight from the tip to the underlying levels,” said the architects.

This full-height space also helps to regulate temperatures throughout the four-storey structure by functioning as a chimney that draws cool air up to the warmer upper levels.

Bedrooms for 21 individuals surround the atrium on the two middle floors, each with their own en suite.

An open-plan upper floor offers a space for different activities. The kitchen is positioned next to a communal dining area, while computer stations wrap one edge of the atrium and an area beyond functions as a lounge.

Personal Architecture also recently renovated a townhouse in The Hague, adding mezzanine floors, a glass elevation, a triple-height kitchen and a spiral staircase.

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Photography is by René de Wit.

Here’s more information from Personal Architecture:

Living Together in a Giant Cube

Renovation of the ‘Supercube’ into a twenty-room residence for former convicts by Personal Architecture

After thirty years of vacancy the Supercube, being part of Piet Bloms world famous cube complex in Rotterdam, gets its first real destination. Under the guidance of the Exodus foundation the Cube is inhabited by 20 delinquents in the final stage of their detention.

Since its completion in 1982 the Supercube has been mostly vacant, some parts of the building weren’t even fully completed. According to the architects, Sander van Schaik and Maarten Polkamp, this is explicable: ‘the building was dark, it warmed up quickly and there was no relation whatsoever between the floors’. Not the ideal circumstances for the new function either, where transparency, social control and facilitating encounters between its inhabitants are vital conditions for the success of re-integration.

The discontinuity between floors, the tedious vertical progress and the dark, inconvenient middle floor are considered the three problematic issues in the original building. To carry out the proposed program, a twenty-room residence complex, these issues are tackled by means of a single intervention. To this end, a rectangular shaft is inserted into the heart of the building, creating a void of 3×3 meters throughout the entire height. The void raises the transparency and coherence of the building and adds a great deal of sunlight from the tip to the underlying levels. In addition, the element plays a part in thermally regulating the building; the ‘chimney effect’ created by the new shaft, means cool air from the underlying floors rises up and cools the warmer tip of the cube. Several functions such as reception, pantry, laundry / bathrooms, storage and kitchen are located inside the shaft wall. Furthermore, this ‘service wall’ supports the stairs that wind up through the floors.

With the realisation of the nearby Stayokay Hostel in another part of the cube complex, Personal Architecture already upgraded a part of the iconic and world famous cube complex. Placing this new function within a tight community like the cube complex was a daring enterprise but it is expected that the Exodus foundation and its inhabitants will have a positive influence on the atmosphere of the total complex and that the social control and supervision will increase. Cooperations between the Exodus foundation, the inhabitants of the regular dwellings, volunteers and the companies in the surroundings are gradually taking shape.

The post Renovation of Piet Bloms’ Supercube
by Personal Architecture appeared first on Dezeen.

Original floor tiles were relocated to highlight seating areas during designer Laura Bonell Mas’ renovation of this Barcelona apartment (+ interview).

Local designer Laura Bonell Mas completely refurbished the 100-square-metre apartment, located among the grid of buildings in the city’s Eixample district.

She uncovered patterned tiles beneath newer ceramics and reused them throughout the property as they were in good condition.

“All the hydraulic tiles in the apartment were there from the beginning,” Bonell Mas told Dezeen. “Most of them had been covered by a brown ceramic flooring for years, which probably explains why they were in a relatively good state.”

Some of the tiles were kept in their original location, while others were relaid in other spaces to denote seating areas at angles to the walls.

“We put back the tiles in the living room and dining room as they were before, and then we used the ones that had originally been in the corridor and entrance of the apartment for the carpets and paths,” said the designer.

Wooden boards frame the tiled areas and cover the remainder of the floor, except for large black tiles used in the kitchen and bathroom. Ceiling mouldings on the suspended ceilings were also restored where possible, along with the balcony doors.

The rooms by the entrance were reorganised and partition walls removed to make the flat more open-plan. A walk-in cupboard was installed between the bedroom and hall to keep clutter hidden away.

As the front door and hallway are positioned at an angle to the rest of the apartment, a curved shelving unit and desk were installed to remedy the awkward junctions.

After noticing a few apartments in the Catalan capital that feature decorative tiles, we published a slideshow and roundup of our favourites. “Lately their popularity has gone up and when doing a renovation, finding beautiful pieces in a good state is almost like finding little jewels,” Bonell Mas said.

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Here’s our short interview with the designer about the history of tiles in Barcelona:

Dan Howarth: Did you move tiles from elsewhere in the apartment, or were they bought new to match the existing?

Laura Bonell Mas: All the hydraulic tiles in the apartment were there from the beginning, we didn’t have to buy any new ones.

Most of them had been covered by a brown ceramic flooring for years, which probably explains why they were in a relatively good state.

Nevertheless, we had to take them all out in order to reinforce the floor with a thin layer of concrete, as it is an old building, and the floors had some problems – some unlevelled parts and sound isolation in general.

So we put back the tiles in the living room and dining room as they were before, and then we used the ones that had originally been in the corridor and entrance of the apartment for the carpets and paths. In the rest of the rooms, the tiles were not very beautiful – maybe they had already been changed before.

Dan Howarth: Why were patterned tiles used in Barcelona apartments historically?

Laura Bonell Mas: Initially, these tiles were created as an alternative to natural stone for floorings. The fact that they didn’t have to be baked like ceramic tiling probably had an impact in their development.

Despite the fact that they were used in other Mediterranean areas, the hydraulic tiles seems to be found more often in Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia, and that is probably due to the art nouveau movement of Gaudí, Domènech i Montaner, Puig i Cadafalch, etc. In their search for a new architecture, decoration played an important part and hydraulic tiling was very versatile in terms of geometries and colours.

Their use went far beyond the age of modernism though, probably because the industry was already quite advanced by then. It has to be said that the more colours a piece has, the more expensive it is because it takes more time to do it. For instance, you can see that the flooring in the living room and the dining room is more noble or was at least more expensive than the ones in the corridor, which only have three colours and its geometry is far more simple.

Dan Howarth: Why are they still implemented today?

Laura Bonell Mas: Around the 1960s their implementation decreased and most of the factories that produced the pieces do not exist anymore.

But lately their popularity has gone up and when doing a renovation, finding beautiful pieces in a good state is almost like finding little jewels. New ones can also be used, even though they are quite expensive, but they don’t look exactly the same. They don’t look aged and the colours are much brighter. Also, because the colour has a four to five millimetre thickness, unlike painted ceramics, you can polish and lower them a little so that they have an even surface.

Dan Howarth: How do the tiles affect the atmosphere of a space?

Laura Bonell Mas: I think this kind of tiling affects the atmosphere in many ways. They always add colour, so using relatively neutral furniture and walls you still get a joyful result.

Their cold materiality is also important to note. We decided to combine the tiling with wooden floors, especially in the parts of the house that have little natural light, or none at all, to add some warmth. I think, as a result, the atmosphere you get in the bedroom or the study is completely different to that of the living room.

But mainly, I think this kind of flooring gives an aged kind of feeling. It seeks to maintain the old character of this kind of building but with a twist. The combination of old and new gives an interesting atmosphere to the space, and by recycling some of the existing materials, it also allowed us to reduce the expense in new ones.

Read on for Bonell Mas’ project description:

Renovation of an apartment in Barcelona

The project consists in the complete refurbishment of an apartment of about 100m2, in the Eixample area of Barcelona.

The geometry of its original plan layout responded to the building typology of the Eixample, with load-bearing walls parallel to the façade and the distribution of the rooms to each side of a long corridor. At the same time, though, it was partially determined by the fact that it is a corner building, which means that the entrance space is rotated 45º relative to the rest of the apartment.

The main strategy of the project was to enhance these different geometries to allow visual continuity and greater amplitude of space, by defragmenting the excessive compartmentalisation.

Partition walls were removed (bearing walls were not modified in any case) and the bathrooms and the kitchen were redistributed around one of the inner courtyards, so that the spaces or rooms are concatenated and the idea of a long corridor is destroyed. The needs of the client and future user, who would be living alone or with a couple, influenced decision making: less rooms, and bigger.

The presence of the original building components was especially important to preserve the atmosphere of an Eixample apartment. The suspended ceiling, with its existing cornices, was kept where possible, and the wooden balcony doors were restored. The windows that had to be changed and the interior doors that had no use anymore were recycled into the enclosures of a new piece of furniture.

The hydraulic tile floor, which had been covered for years with another ceramic pavement, was recovered and reattached following new guidelines: it is maintained as it was in the living room and dining room, while in the rest of the apartment it is combined with an oak parquet flooring, with the intention to create “carpets” that point out some of the liveable areas and suggest paths.

This old materiality is complemented with some made to measure furniture, which shows autonomy from the original structure with its curved shapes and directs the user through the space. These are various tables made with recycled teak wood and a big piece of furniture situated at the entrance of the apartment, and which has a double function of bookshelves and coat wardrobe on the outer side and closet for the master bedroom in the inner side. Its height emphasises the will of a fluid space as it doesn’t reach the ceiling, which allows the visual continuity of the structure of ceramic vaults and wooden beams, which in this part of the apartment was left uncovered.

The post Renovation of an apartment in Barcelona
by Laura Bonell Mas appeared first on Dezeen.

The front facade of this faceted house in Singapore by Formwerkz Architects is interrupted by a shard of tinted glazing.

Formwerkz Architects were asked to create a family home that retained the owners’ privacy so the building’s public-facing sides are predominantly clad in wood but feature carefully placed apertures.

During the day the tinted glass reflects its surroundings, but at night a warm glow emanates from inside and permits glimpses of the interior.

The architects explain that the angular form was chosen to make the most of the small site and increase the space available for the garden: “The sloping walls at the corners allow for a smaller footprint while expanding the spatial volume at upper levels.”

A glazed entranceway dissects the building and separates the main living and dining spaces on either side.

At the rear, the house opens up as large windows and terraces look out onto a sunken garden and a lap pool surrounded by trees.

A twisting staircase connecting the three floors has an oak-clad handrail on one side to restrict views from the street, while glass is used for the side looking onto the interior.

Previous projects by Formwerkz Architects include a house with a courtyard shielded by a perforated concrete wall and another with an elevated garden that shelters two bedrooms underneath.

Other faceted homes we’ve published recently include a house in Italy with sections that jut out to fit its sloping site and a pair of tapered additions to a nineteenth century house in London.

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The architects sent us the following project description:

Diamond House

The house along Cove Drive in Sentosa sits on a slightly tapered site that faced a man-made lake. Built for a small family that greatly cherish their privacy, the house turns it back on the street and the sides where the neighbours are in close proximity.

Like a monolith resting over the gardens, the single, faceted volume house the main spaces with their primary view to the waterway.

The main entrance brings one into the centre of the house with the living and dining space on the sides.

The upper floors are split in the middle into two volumes that house the daughter and the parent’s bedrooms.

The basement accommodate the guest room, entertainment, services and garage, lit and ventilated largely by the sunken courtyards.

The massing on grade is kept deliberately small to create more garden spaces within the tight site.

The geometry is derived from negotiating with the planning parameters imposed on the neighbourhood and the desire to simplify the building form.

The front and side facades are pared down with openings strategically position to allow optimal daylighting with minimum compromise in privacy.

The sloping walls at the corners allow for a smaller footprint while expanding the spatial volume at upper levels.

Like its simple form, few architectural materials were used. The facades are entirely wrapped in iron wood. The interior adopts a lighter palette of oak and travertine.

At nightfall, fragments of the internal spaces are seen on the facade.

The muted, impenetrable volume gradually gives way to the volumes of internal light, revealing the intricacy within.

Site Area – 6000 Sqft
Gross Floor Area – 5000 sqft
Completion – Jan 2012

Architect – Formwerkz Architects
Team – Alan Tay , Foo Yuet Yee, Cai Xun
Structure – Portwood & Associates
M&E – PCA
Builder – Sinwah-Apac Construction Pte Ltd

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Formwerkz Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

This apartment block in Osaka Prefecture by Japanese studio EASTERN Design Office features recessed corner balconies that become incrementally wider towards the roof.

Named Step Tower, the ten-storey building is located within a shopping district in Ibaraki. Buildings here are typically four to five storeys, so EASTERN Design Office added larger openings at the parts of the building with views across the surrounding rooftops.

“The open space of each floor gets wider as the floor level becomes higher, and you can get a wider sky view,” said architects Anna Nakamura and Taiyo Jinno.

The exterior walls are rendered white and feature smooth edges that give a gentle curve to the corners of the balconies, which the architects compare to the hull of a ship.

“It makes you imagine the wave splashes that occur when the bow heads-on through the sea,” they said.

A shop occupies the ground floor of the building, while tiled walls on the side reveal the entrance to apartments on the nine floors above.

The first three floors each contain four one-room apartments, suitable for single occupants, and the six upper floors contain two- and three-bedroom flats designed to accommodate families.

Other housing projects by EASTERN Design Office include a concrete house with slits for windows and a residence punctured by circular holes.

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Photography is by Koichi Torimura.

Read on for a description from EASTERN Design Office:

Step Tower

A stark white ship that sails in the middle of the bustling sea of colours.

The ship floating on the ocean suddenly appears in a shopping centre. It evokes a feeling not of a resort area, but of an exotic corner of a town in some southern country. A feeling of a ship that comes across this area by chance.

It makes you imagine the wave splashes that occur when the bow heads-on through the sea. It is a pencil building of 9.7 metre width and 21.6 metre depth. Big holds are designed for the balconies at the southwest corner. These holes become bigger as the floors go upwards from the bottom. You can have the same image when you look up the bow from under it.

It is simple, neat and clean. You look up the smooth and pure white exterior wall. This reminds you of a cool lifestyle in some southern country, or of being on a trip, and spending days at a tropical land in a quest of change of air.

It is an apartment house for rent built at Ibaraki-city in Osaka, a town with a population of 270,000. This town is not only a residential one, but it is now calling for the development of industrial areas for research and development facilities of universities and industrial firms. Therefore, the population is also increasing as an industrial town. This architecture is built at the shopping district, the centre of this town, which is located in front of the JR station.

It is a building of 10 storeys of RC structure consisting of a tenant space at the first floor, one room apartment houses for singles at 2-4 floors, and 2LDK and 3LDk for families at 5-10 floors.

The surrounding buildings are 4-5 storeys height. So it is not proper to have a big slit (opening section) for this building. The open space of each floor gets wider as the floor level becomes higher, and you can get a wider sky view. This idea is reflected in the design of this building.

Location: Osaka, Japan
Site Area: 384.38 sqm
Total Floor Area: 1,548.85 sqm
Structural Engineering: IHARA STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS
Contractor: Matsumotogumi Co., Ltd

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EASTERN Design Office appeared first on Dezeen.