Hasta La Ideas

Alternating cubes of timber and glass cover the back of this Sydney house extension by Australian office Panovscott, offering a balance of light, shade, views and privacy.

Three by Two house was designed by Panovscott for a couple with two young children, who wanted to transform their dark semi-detached Victorian house in an inner-Sydney suburb.

“Their second child was due shortly when they approached us, so they wanted light, air, a place for the family to commune, and they wanted a great building,” architect Andrew Scott told Dezeen.

The two-storey extension gives them a new kitchen on the ground floor, which opens on to the garden. Above, a bedroom and en-suite for the parents is set back slightly from the back wall to create a six-metre-tall double-height space at the rear.

“By pulling the bedroom back, the kitchen-diner below opens up to the light at the edge of the house,” said Scott. “The void also allows the parents to be part of the life of the house when they are in the bedroom, while still giving them privacy. In a constrained fiscal and spatial environment, sometimes an exuberant gesture is crucial.”

The western red cedar and glass sections on the rear facade act like blinkers, framing views of treetops while shielding the family from being overlooked. On the ground floor, glass doors and a timber panel fold back to open the house up to the garden.

Inside, a wall of the kitchen-diner has been covered with floor-to-ceiling cabinets made from kauri pine – a sustainable locally sourced plywood. For the flooring, a structural concrete slab has been polished to expose the aggregate, and then sealed.

“This room is conceived as a ‘great room’, based on the example of a medieval castle, in which a large space accommodated multiple uses at the centre, and more specific spatially constrained opportunities at the edge,” said Scott.

The extension offers a bright contrast to the front of the long, narrow house, which is just over four metres wide and  attracts scant light throughout the day.

A long corridor leads from this existing part of the house to the extension at the back. The entrance to the new space is tilted, intended to offer a glimpse of the light on approach but saving the full impact of the large space as a surprise.

An indentation where the extension meets the existing house also allows for a small courtyard, which ensures light comes deeper into the narrow space.

Photography is by Brett Boardman.

Here is some more text from Panovscott:

 Three by Two House, Sydney, Australia

This project is the renovation of a house, one of two semi-detached single storey dwellings located in Sydney’s densely inhabited inner west. Broadly speaking it is about the making of a new whole by retention of one half of a structure and reconfiguration of the other.

The environ is an increasingly gentrified subdivision originating around 1880 and characterised by predominantly narrow east-west orientated housing parcels fronting a large public park.

Approach to the house remains via the formal front garden up three generous steps and on to a narrow porch below a low curved corrugated roof. Within, the front rooms have been retained with minimal intervention allowing the continued manner of dwelling.

A long hall leads past two bedrooms. The high ceilings, small windows and wonderfully lean vertical timber construction establish the character typical of a Sydney terrace. Cool in both summer and winter and dark even on the brightest of days, these spaces offer the initial experience of homecoming and become a counterpoint for the character of the rear addition.

At the end of the existing hall a small opening twists to the sky bringing gentle light though the upper level and into the centre of the long plan. The light washes down a 45-degree splayed plywood panel. Visible from the dark front rooms and immediately upon entry, it announces the differing quality of the spaces ahead. Moving towards this quiet light, the thin sliver of a brighter room beyond gradually widens with the shifting perspective. Shunted off the previous axial alignment, and past a discreet bathroom, the great communal room of the house is revealed. Light filled, this is a combined kitchen and dining space of slightly smaller area than the lean-to it replaces. Here the elegant vertical proportions and lean timber construction techniques of the front part of the house are reinterpreted.

Continuing the homecoming journey the room increases to six metres in height reaching upwards at its far end. The number and size of windows also increase gradually to this point allowing the internal space to expand horizontally as well as vertically and for the light levels to approach that of the external environment. Turning 180 degrees and up a narrow stair concealed behind a ply lined wall, the level above contains a master bedroom and en-suite, with a tiny window looking back across the roof to the park. This moment completes the journey within to the most private realm of the house.

The post Panovscott creates Sydney extension with
alternating timber and glass facade appeared first on Dezeen.

Au fond d’un jardin de Londres, cette maison réalisée par Surman & Deane a été conçue comme une retraite d’écriture pour un auteur. L’architecture du studio permet un éclairage unique baignée de lumière naturelle. Les matériaux sont pour la plupart des éléments de récupération, qui donne à cet intérieur un aspect original.

Gravity keeps the aluminium and timber components of these lamp shades by industrial designer Nick Sadowsky locked together.

The pieces on the Spindent Light don’t use any screws or adhesives, instead relying on aligned component parts that slot into each other and are kept together by gravity and their own weight.

The light’s soft triangular shape features two pieces of anodised aluminium, separated by a thin strip of timber to create a minimal shade for either the home or office. A black fabric electrical cord completes the monochrome look.

“I was originally inspired by the aluminium spinning process and its capabilities,” said Australian designer Nick Sadowsky. “I looked at how I could make something both visually engaging and sustainable.”

The polished sheen of the metal is interrupted by the warm tones of the wood and its rough grain.

“I had a low-impact material and finishing process,” said Sadowsky. “It was then a matter of developing the form and I liked the idea of combining another material I really like, timber.”

The wood element connects the aluminium together, creating a small lip between the two pieces.

“Its qualities are warm and organic and could provide an interesting detail in the form and become part of the assembly, as I was trying to avoid any adhesives or screws,” explained Sadowsky.

The Spindent Lights are available in either black or silver from Sadowsky’s website.

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Sadowsky use gravity to maintain shape appeared first on Dezeen.

A 100-year-old house in Paris has been renovated and extended by local studio CUT Architectures to frame a garden facing the morning sun and create a shaded terrace overlooking a nearby park (+ slideshow).

CUT Architectures refurbished the existing House in Meudon, which is home to a family of three. The building was constructed by the client’s grandfather and was only 42 square metres in size, so a timber extension was added to create extra room.

“We wanted to keep the sentimentality and feel of the existing house in the new extension,” architect Yann Martin told Dezeen. “It was very much a working house, with rabbits in the garden and wood for the chimney.”

The new extension doubles the size of the building and provides extra space for the parents to work separately from their teenage child.

The architects sourced native red cedar and used it to wrap both the existing structure and extension. They then constructed a south-facing timber terrace at the front.

“We liked the idea that the established house was wooden framed and wanted the new extension to be constructed from steel and wood, with the trees and view surrounding it,” Martin explained. “The use of timber helps to create a continuous surface across the build.”

Raised one metre above the ground to match the original property, the extension contains a large living room with bare white walls that contrast with the black-framed windows.

“It was difficult to build on the soil that was marked from years of clay and chalk digging in the undergrowth, so when we built the new extension, we provided a concrete base that gave the house a strong footprint and two separate gardens,” Martin said.

The terrace sits just in front and features a slatted roof to shade it from the sun, creating a pattern of shadows that filters through the facade.

A master bedroom and bathroom are tucked away at the rear, leading out to a sheltered garden where the owners can enjoy the morning sunrise over breakfast.

In the original structure, a bedroom and bathroom offer separate living spaces for the youngest member of the family.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

House in Meudon, France

The project is the extension and refurbishment of a very small detached house in Meudon, one of the nearest suburbs of western Paris. The location is exceptional; the plot is on the hill offering fantastic views and facing a park. The existing house was in a very bad condition but the owners had a sentimental attachment to it and didn’t want to tear it down.

The extension is twice the size of the existing house including a 20m² terrace. The extension is a wooden structure with a zinc roof almost invisible from the garden. Both the extension and the existing house are wrapped with vertical timber giving a continuous surface to the two volumes.

The living space and the terrace are lifted 1.2m above the garden level to match the existing house ground floor level and turning the terrace into a promontory for the views. The bedroom and bathroom space is on the natural ground level on the back of the plot. The articulation of the extension creates two gardens for the house: the one in the back for the morning sun and the one in front, facing the park and south-west from the terrace.

The post Red cedar clads extended Parisian house
by CUT Architectures appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: delicate patterns on this furniture and accessories collection have been created by sandblasting away the soft rings of timber lengths from a single fir tree (+ slideshow).

Dutch designer Lex Pott and online platform and design label New Window have collaborated to produce the wooden Diptych series. To create the patterns on each piece, the team removed the lighter softer rings created while the tree grows during summer by sandblasting and blowing away the material to leave thin gaps.

“In this way this project represents the DNA of a tree,” New Window founder Woes van Haaften told Dezeen. “You can read the climate in the tree because if the gap is big, it was a rich summer because the tree could grow. If it is small then it was a rough winter because it needed all the energy to stay alive.”

The designers used a particular Douglas Fir tree planted in the Dutch Veluwe forest around 1960 and cut down in 2013. Rubber stickers were added to the wood to act as guides during the sandblasting process.

The collection includes a room divider and totem, which both feature vertical patterns.

Cabinets feature a mix of vertical and horizontal patterns in either circular or rectangular shapes on the front of sliding panels. Diptych also includes smaller objects including a set of combs and matches.

“The title Diptych refers to the juxtaposition within each object of geometric and organic shapes, open and closed parts, control and freedom,” said New Window.

To accentuate the grain, the objects are finished using a combination of oil and wax.

Woes van Haaften started New Window in 2013 as an online blog that aims to give an insight into the specialist knowledge of various designers by inviting them to document the process of their work online for public consumption.

The collection was presented in the Ventura Lambrate district at Milan last week and has been collected in a book published by Frame Publishers.

Here is some more information from the designers:

Diptych – New Window × Lex Pott

Every object from the Diptych series comes from the same Douglas fir, therefore carrying the “1”, branded on each product.

This particular tree was planted on the Dutch grounds of the Veluwe around 1960 and cut down in 2013. All the processing of the material took place in the Netherlands, making this a project deserving of the title Made in the Netherlands.

The title Diptych refers to the juxtaposition within each object of geometric and organic shapes, open and closed parts, control and freedom. The patterns are created by covering parts of the objects with rubber stickers during the sandblasting process.

You can see the life of the tree in the wood: good summers give a wide annual ring, harsh winters a thin one. By sandblasting you blow away the soft rings of summer, leaving a wide gap.

Within the wood there are different colours: heartwood has a reddish hue, sap-wood is more yellow. To accentuate the wood markings, the objects are finished with a combination of oil and wax.

The post Lex Pott and New Window sandblast tree rings
to pattern furniture collection appeared first on Dezeen.