Hasta La Ideas

Translucent windows create a glowing frame around the facade of this Tokyo townhouse when the lights are turned on inside.

Designed by Japanese studio Yoritaka Hayashi Architects, House in Nakameguro has four storeys but is the same height as surrounding three storey residences.

Plywood lines the interior walls of the two middle floors, which include a first-floor living room and kitchen plus two second-floor bedrooms.

Built-in plywood furniture is arranged around the edges of rooms on these floors to create flexible open spaces.

A white porcelain-tiled bathroom is located on the top floor and leads out onto a rooftop balcony.

Our readers all seem to love houses in Japan – see more of them here.

Photography is by Takumi Ota.

Here’s some more explanation from Yoritaka Hayashi:

House in Nakameguro / Yoritaka Hayashi Architects

This is a small house standing in a small site in centre of the city.

Most newly-built houses around the site are being converted to three storey buildings.

Planning four storeys with the same volume of three storey buildings allows different perspective which enables this house to have an open interior space.

As a consequence, this building has a annular openings which appears as an abstract and continuous ribbon of light in the interior space. This ribbon erases the edge of the interior space, and makes the outline of the space obscure.

Thus the space has a stretch from the inside to outside.

Click above for larger image

Besides, the furniture arranged on the facade side is opposite to the usual arrangement and is treated as an extension of the building, giving the space suitable scale and enabling us to use the space effectively.

Click above for larger image

Year: December of 2010
Collaborators: Akira Suzuki / ASA (Structural Engineer) , Takasou Takahashi / SESSE-Design (Façade Consultant)

Click above for larger image

Area: Meguro, Tokyo, Japan
Site area: 40.01 m2

Click above for larger image

Building area: 32.17 m2
Total floor area: 99.80 m2
Structure: steel frame

Click above for larger image

Designer Noé Duchaufour Lawrance has fitted out an alpine ski lodge in the French Alps with a trunk-like hearth, curved fir walls and a floating bed.

The chunky fireplace is anchored to the centre of a family living room, located beneath the sloping timber eaves on the three-storey Chalet Béranger’s top floor.

Desks, chairs and other objects by Duchaufour Lawrance are placed around each room alongside other designer furniture pieces.

Wall and floors of both fir and Vals stone surround a Jacuzzi on the first floor, while concrete floors can be found in rooms elsewhere.

We’ve also recently featured designs for a lodge with a sloping roof you can ski over – take a look here.

See also: our story about a Paris gallery with a white Corian interior that Duchaufour Lawrance designed in 2010.

Photography is by Vincent Leroux.

Here’s some more text from Noé Duchaufour Lawrance:

Chalet Béranger

Far from the geometric construction methods of a traditional chalet, the interior architecture of this family home is a domestic landscape whose forms emerge from the ground like small functional mountains rising from a valley.

Resolutely fluid and modern, the result is a set of lines and organic forms composed around a wooden ribbon.

A large, main room is set above the whole construction, defining the central point of the chalet where the family comes together around a warm hearth.

St Martin de Belleville (French Alps)- 2011

Climbing plants grow in the recesses of this mysterious steel fence, which conceals the entrance to a renovated coach house in north London.

Completed by London studio Moxon Architects, Murray Mews is now a residence with an entrance courtyard occupying the coach house’s former service yard.

Glazing behind the fenced facade and courtyard provides a view into the open-plan living room and kitchen, while an extended, projecting entranceway leads inside.

The building’s original concrete ceiling is retained on the ground floor, as are the existing steel joists.

Secure bicycle storage is provided in the entrance lobby, while bin stores are integrated into the rear of the steel fence.

We’ve published a few London extensions on Dezeen – see our earlier stories about a barrel-vaulted conservatory and an extension with a flower-covered roof.

Photography is by Edmund Sumner.

Here’s a full description from Ben Addy of Moxon Architects:

257 MWS / Murray Mews

This modest project comprises the renovation and extension of a coach house on Murray Mews in the London borough of Camden. Murray Mews comprises a uniquely varied and idiosyncratic, but also beautiful, collection of small scale domestic architecture – a concentration of robust one off houses and conversions that nonetheless retains a coherent charm.

The project brings new use to the service space at the front of the property as a private courtyard, while the internal spaces comprise a carefully composed mix of pre-existing and new elements. The utilitarian character of the building’s former function is retained and complemented by new insertions to provide for the requirements of a modern home.

The pre-existing boardmarked in-situ concrete ceiling is retained alongside exposed bolted steelwork and engineering brickwork. New structure and services are incorporated as background elements of volumes and planes.

In order to maintain security and privacy to the living areas, steel screens are used for the street facing boundary of the site. These screens also incorporate a bin storage area to reduce visual clutter at street level.

Behind the boundary screens a single storey lobby extension provides both a secure entrance space and cycle storage. Next to the lobby a private front courtyard space has been created to turn an otherwise disused private car parking space into provide external family / play space.

One of the fundamental characteristics of Murray Mews is the variety of attitudes to the streetside elevations. Proportions, fenestration and massing along the street frontage vary greatly, creating a rich vocabulary of material and structural methods along the length of the street.

The approach to boundaries also varies along the street; some houses are set back creating private courtyards, others built up to the kerb. These extensions are natural developments over time and are informal in architectural massing terms – this informality is what gives the road its identity and ongoing vitality, this project is intended to take its own identifiable place in this context.

The vigorous nature of the mews streetscape is complimented by the tough materiality and direct simplicity of the boundary wall. The monolithic nature of the wall matches the functional approach to brickwork and painted timber screen walls elsewhere in the mews.

The steel used in forming this boundary is stepped in plan to provide structural depth for stiffness while also providing opportunities for planting in the recessed portions of the wall, presenting a green face to the interior of the property.

Client / Private
Budget / Confidential
Stage / Completed

Architects Foster + Partners have attached a 35-storey tower onto the side of two renovated 1920s buildings in Vancouver’s financial district.

Nestled alongside the restored Ceperley Rounsfell Building and the retained facade of the Royal Financial Building, Jameson House provides 23 floors of apartments above offices and shops on the floors below.

The glazed tower’s northeast elevation is articulated as four vertical tubes, which begin at the cornice height of neighbouring buildings.

Other projects we’ve featured in Canada include an interesting canoe store and a set of plywood skating shelters – see them all here.

Photography is by Nigel Young.

Here’s some more information from Foster + Partners:

Jameson House, Foster + Partners first mixed-use project in Canada

Jameson House is a new 35-storey mixed-use tower in the heart of Vancouver and includes the first residential development to be completed by the practice in North America – completed at the end of last year, already the building is now almost fully occupied. The project combines the restoration of heritage buildings with new construction: the lower level offices and shops knit with the existing streetscape to reinvigorate the downtown neighbourhood, while the apartments above face dramatic views of the bay and create a new landmark on the skyline.

Fusing old and new, the site connects the city’s financial centre with its emerging creative hub, and the scheme integrates two 1920s Beaux Arts structures: the entire internal double-height volume of the A-listed Ceperley Rounsfell Building has been returned to its original configuration and the facade of the B-listed Royal Financial Building has been retained.

The development comprises eleven storeys of offices and shops, topped by twenty-three storeys of apartments. The tower’s form articulates these different functions: the first two storeys continue the row of shop units at street level, while the uppermost office floor aligns with the cornice line of the adjacent building. Contrasting with the flush facade of the offices, the residential floors curve outwards in four wide bays, which are staggered to allow daylight to reach neighbouring buildings and oriented to provide uninterrupted views of the landscape.

The tower’s flexible plan supports a variety of apartment types, with interiors by Foster + Partners and living spaces in the deep curve of the window bays. At the top of the tower are two-storey penthouse apartments and landscaped roof terraces.

The design was developed in response to the local climate, seasonal sun paths, prevailing winds, humidity levels, air temperatures and precipitation rates specific to Vancouver.

Foster + Partners’ in-house engineering group – formerly PHA Consult – has been involved in the project from the outset, in a fully integrated approach to environmental engineering and architectural design.

Click above for larger image

This has led to innovations such as chilled floors and a mechanised valet parking system, which reduces the number of parking levels and associated excavation, lighting and ventilation requirements.

Click above for larger image

Lord Foster said:
“Vancouver has a spectacular location, surrounded by mountains and the sea. The design makes the most of the city’s fantastic natural setting, with balconies and deep bay windows looking out towards the landscape. Jameson House further develops a number of key themes that have been integral to our work for many years. The project combines restoration with new construction; it is high-density and mixed-use, offering a sustainable model for urban living; and it demonstrates innovation, both in its evolution of the high-rise building and its progressive environmental agenda.”

Click above for larger image

Nigel Dancey, a senior partner at Foster + Partners, said:
“Jameson House was the result of a team effort: we worked closely with environmental engineers, as well as the city, from the outset. This collaborative approach led to innovations, both in the tower’s design and in our interrogation of the brief – we were able to significantly increase the density of the scheme to create a highly sustainable mixed-use development. And by combining these different functions within a compact footprint, we can further balance energy usage with the mixture of daytime and night-time activity.”

Click above for larger image

Colin Bosa, CEO of Bosa Properties:
“Foster + Partners has created a unique building for Vancouver, which combines high-quality finishes and a strong design sense with a clear commitment to sustainability. We are most pleased with the architectural legacy that Jameson House offers to our city.”

Tokyo architects Naoi have completed a three-tiered woodland summerhouse at Japanese holiday spot Nasu Kogen.

Named Tiered Lodge, the split-level house contains a kitchen and dining room on its lower floor, a living room on the middle level and a mezzanine loft and bedroom above.

Large parts of the facade slide open to help cool the house during the warm summer months.

Residents enter the house across a decked balcony and seating area, which leads straight into the lower floor dining room.

Naoi also recently completed a square house with an off-centre courtyard – see it here.

Photography is by Hiroshi Ueda.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

Tiered Lodge

For this project, we were commissioned to build a second home for a husband-and-wife couple and their young son. The client requested a simple space that would allow him to take a step back from the daily demands of his busy schedule and help to rejuvenate his body and mind.

The site is located in Nasu Kogen, a well-known summer resort area in Japan that lies at an altitude of 1,000m. Dense groves of deciduous trees can be found nearby, making the area a popular retreat during the sweltering summer months. In the winter, however, temperatures drop below freezing point, and snowfall of up to 80cm has been recorded.

Elevation varies a total of 8m across the entire site running from east to west. Making use of this sloping gradient, we decided to design a residence that would create a sense of continuity with the forest around it.

The first step was to configure two volumes lying next to each other that corresponded to the contours of the terrain, and then to shift these volumes along both the horizontal and vertical axes. Through this process, we were able to create a level surface that could bridge the gap between the cross-section of the lodge and the forest outside it, while also prompting an awareness of changes in the topography of the site.

The space that emerged as a result of this elevation difference and shifts in the surface of the floor showcases subtle variations in the size of each volume, the windows, and the quality of the light in each interior. This structure enabled us to endow what is essentially a single-roomed space with remarkable depth and variation.

The dining and kitchen area, which opens directly onto the outdoor terrace and features an open stairwell, is situated in the southwest corner of the site, making it a fluid space with a distinctively bright, open quality.

The living room situated on the far eastern end of the site, on the other hand, is configured as a zone of peace and quiet where the family can gather around the fireplace.

The loft, located on a mezzanine that lies above the living room, is a suspended space lying in mid-air that offers the inhabitants a commanding, elevated view of the trees outside the lodge.

The sliding doors at the corner of the dining and living area, which can be stowed inside the wall, give the boundaries between the interior and exterior of the house an ambiguous character. For the façade, special efforts were made to preserve the integrity of the forested landscape by installing exterior walls covered in cedar boards and a continuous series of slit windows.

By paying close attention to the possibilities presented by a given site, and giving spatial form to its distinctive qualities, we hope to be able to continue creating buildings that showcase the beauty that belongs to the realm of architecture.