Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has layered wooden boards to create striations inside this workspace and cafe for an online restaurant guide based in Osaka (+ slideshow).
Kengo Kuma designed the interiors of two spaces for Gurunavi: one that’s used as a physical base and information centre for the Japanese restaurant guide and another that serves as a cafe.
Both follow the same design language, with surfaces created using layers of plywood to create a landscape that functions as furniture.
“We piled up pieces of wooden panels to build the interior like topography,” said Kuma. “Various kinds of food-related items are laid out on this wooden ground.”
At the Shun*Shoku Lounge cafe, the wooden boards are stacked from floor to ceiling in one corner and create a counter in the centre plus seating around the sides.
Similarly in the workspace, the strata wrap around the edges of the room and extend out at various heights to form shelving, desks and seating.
Shun*Shoku Lounge
The two spaces are both enclosed by glass walls on three sides and a solid wall at the back. They are separated by a tunnel that leads to further retail units at Osaka’s main railway station.
Founded in 1908, Danish furniture manufacturer Carl Hansen & Son is largely known for using natural materials, relying on refined design and the unblemished beauty of raw wood, wicker and leather to tell each piece’s individual…
Italian office Studio Galantini has upgraded the wooden structure of a 1970s chapel in north-west Italy so that it can be used for summer services, music recitals and theatrical performances.
The Cappella Sant’Anna, or Saint Anna’s Chapel, was first built in 1973 in the Italian hamlet of Torre del Lago, but had been out of use since 2010 after parts of the structure were declared unsafe.
In the summer of 2013 Studio Galantini took up the task of repairing the structure. “We were captured by the structural purity and by the formal simplicity of the chapel, qualities that totally integrate it into nature,” explained architect Marco Biondi.
With help from structural engineer Renato Terziani, the architects replaced around half of the building’s framework, which comprises three triangular frames and a series of supporting crossbeams. They also repaired the old steel fixings.
The original moss-covered roof was retained, revealing the building’s true age. “The substitution of the overlay with new elements would have permanently damaged the harmony with the landscape, created by time going by,” said Biondi.
The two ends of the chapel remain open to expose the interior to the elements – a feature of the original design by engineer Vardemaro Barbetta. Barbetta named the chapel Sant’Anna, after the mother of the Virgin Mary, but also after the name of his own mother who initiated the project.
Photography is by Paolo Del Freo.
Here’s some extra information from Studio Galantini:
Galantini’s Firm: Sant’Anna’s Chapel recovery
Galantini’s Firm in Pisa, with the support of Renato Terziani as structural engineer, was involved in the recovery project of the Sant’Anna Chapel. The work was shaped around the full philological and compositional rightness and sensitivity, paying particular attention to the usage of technology and careful intervention techniques.
The chapel arises in the Lagomare residential complex that is located at Torre del Lago, Viareggio’s hamlet (LU). It stands inside the “Parco Naturale di Migliarino San Rossore Massaciuccoli” area, very close to the sea.
The Church, consecrated to Sant’Anna, was built on the engineer Vardemaro Barbetta’s project in 1973, following the engineer’s mother will whose name was Anna. The architectural work is highly characterised by the structural work: three gantries are settled by two balks that statically frame a three hinges portal. The hinges are made of steel and they are placed at the foot and at the top of the structure, resolving the work architecturally and structurally.
Because of the ageing of the wood in 2010 the structure was considered unsafe and declared not accessible, notwithstanding an offhand and structurally decontextualised past recovery action. A support for the balks, made by steel sections and welded batten plates, set up a mixed load-bearing structure.
The recovery work began in April 2013 and finished the 8th of August. The work was designed with no compromises: the technical complexity of the work was accepted to preserve the compositional integrity of the structure and the physics of the materials. The landscaped value of the overlay was preserved too, because of its integration with the surrounding pinewood.
This accomplishment was reached recreating the wooden parts and recovering the mechanical essentiality of the steel hinges. To accomplish that project, the work was realised suspending the structure using a scaffolding specifically designed for that aim; moreover the scaffolding was able to bear the efforts and the load transmitted during the substitution of the ground bases and of the degraded wooden parts.
Black-painted timber contrasts with clean white window frames on the walls of this cube-shaped weekend home in Normandy, France, by Paris studio Beckmann-N’Thépé Architectes (+ slideshow).
Located on a quiet countryside plot in Bellavilliers, Beckmann-N’Thépé‘s House in Normandy is surrounded by little but woodland and fields.
The architects designed the house as a “minimalist object”, with a simple geometric shape and only one pronounced opening on each side.
Horizontal timber panels clad each wall and are painted black, giving the facade the appearance of charcoal.
“A line diagram cube with a 50 square-metre base on the ground, [the house’s] black-tinted wooden wall panelling responds to the woodland environment,” said the architects.
Small square windows puncture three elevations, while the fourth has glazed doors that lead out to a small terrace.
There’s also a fifth opening – a front door that is camouflaged within the cladding but revealed by a simple canopy.
A combined living room, dining area and kitchen takes up one half of the ground floor and features a double-height ceiling.
One bedroom is tucked away behind, alongside the bathroom, and a second occupies a mezzanine floor above.
The house was completed in 2009 and functions as the holiday home for a family of four.
Photography is by Stephan Lucas.
Read on for more information from Agence Beckmann-N’Thépé:
House in Normandy Bellavilliers, France
The house is located in the Normandy Bocage, surrounded by hedgerows and looking out over Bellême Forest. Set on the first third of a plot of land 150 m long, it stands in an isolated residential area in the Perche countryside.
A minimalist object, a line diagram cube with 50 m2 base on the ground, its black tinted wooden wall panelling responds to the woodland environment. With just one opening on each side judiciously oriented and highlighted with white, the front is made up of a wooden frame lined with high performance thermal insulation.
The double height in the living-room, also lit through a large bay window opening onto the south side, tends to expand the space.
The strict comfort needed is provided – a living space comprising a living-room with fireplace, open-plan kitchen, bathroom and cupboard space; and a night-time area with two bedrooms, one treated as a large open loft space, and a bathroom.
A few trees decorate the driveway and create a filter between the house and the lane outside.
The dormant partners’ requirement, the desired originality in the response, and the €120,000 budget together defined this simple volume, combining a good floor surface area to frontage ratio. The qualitative approach to the project in terms of materials and energy performance was the key here.
Program: Secondary residence for 4 people Architects: Agence Beckmann-N’Thépé (Paris) Client: Private Area: 80 m2 net floor area Cost: EUR 120 000 excl. VAT
Ground floor plan
Project manager: Nicolas Gaudard Architect: Laura Giovannetti Assistant architects: Mathilde Billet, Arthur Billaut, Thimothée Kazmierczak
Coup de coeur pour l’artiste autrichien Mario Dilitz qui imagine de superbes sculptures grandeur nature, entièrement en bois. Avec des représentations impressionnantes, l’artiste questionne la nature humaine et ses contradictions. A découvrir en images et détails dans la suite de l’article.
Paris studio Marchi Architectes layered up timber slats of different thicknesses and proportions to give an irregular texture to the walls of this sunken house extension in Normandy, France (+ slideshow).
Adélaïde and Nicola Marchi designed the single-storey Black House to accommodate a new open-plan kitchen, dining room and lounge for an existing family house, allowing the owners to reconfigure their current layout.
The structure extends from the rear of the property, but is set at the lowest level of the site so that it is barely noticeable from a road running alongside.
Black-stained timber cladding covers the walls and roof of the extension, allowing it to look like the shadow of the main house, while the textured surface was designed to help it blend in with the surrounding woodland.
“The dark timber cladding plays with light and shadows so that the extension disappears in the shade of the forest around,” said the architects.
Shutters are clad with the same material and can be slid across the windows to screen the interior.
Inside, a two-stage staircase folds around one corner to create routes into the extension from different storeys of the house. There’s also an extra door leading straight out to the garden.
The kitchen is tucked into the corner beneath the staircase, while the dining table sits in the middle of the space and the living area is positioned at the far end.
A pair of skylights help to distribute natural light through the room and heating is provided by a wood-burning stove.
Read on for a short project description from Adélaïde and Nicola Marchi:
Black House
The client wanted to move the living spaces to a more open and transparent space, in order to free some spaces in the old house. A unique volume is set up, arranging kitchen, living and dining room. From the interior, wide views are offered to the garden and landscape.
The extension is connected to the existing house as a structurally light volume, as not to overload the foundations. The project is minimal: the volume is integrated in the surrounding, partially recessed in the topography of the ground to stand lower than the street level.
The dark timber cladding plays with light and shadows so that the extension disappears in the shade of the forest around.
Program: Housing Size: 80 m2 Date of design: 2010-2013 Date of completion: 2013
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French office Topos Architecture used timber cladding and a pitched roof to give this kindergarten in Mayenne, France, a domestic appearance that the architects thought would be more welcoming to children (+ slideshow).
Named Maison de la Petite Enfance, which translates as House of the Early Childhood, the single-storey complex provides preschool education facilities for 100 children up to the age of five.
Topos Architecture, whose previous projects include a larch-clad nursery in Nantes, planned the building as three zones. Classrooms and activity spaces are positioned at the rear, while staff rooms and storage facilities run along the front, and a sequence of patios and gardens are sandwiched in between.
Narrow strips of Douglas fir provide a uniform cladding across the outer walls and roof of the structure, and were also used for the perimeter fences. “The use of a wood facade gives a unity and a natural tone to the whole building,” said the architects.
Windows face inward towards the patios and gardens, while the sloping roof is topped with a chimney-like structure that houses an attic filled with ventilation equipment.
“Overlooking the entrance of the building, the roof has a double slope that gives it the silhouette of a house – an architectural line that is also included in the typology of the surrounding urban fabric,” said the architects.
Four large multi-purpose rooms are contained within the building and can be subdivided to accommodate different activities.
Other spaces include a dressing room where children can put on and take off their coats, a sheltered entrance where parents are encouraged to interact and a network of corridors that help to prevent children bringing dirt inside.
Here’s a short project description from Topos Architecture:
Conception and construction of the House of the Early Childhood
The House of the Early Childhood, located in Mayenne, between the city Centre and the new railway station district, is an urban building of a single level.
The architects have imagined a soft and welcoming architecture for children, for parents, but also for nursery nurses.
In this way, the building is based on a domestic and hospitable universe: presence of wood outside but also inside, reception and common spaces user-friendly, roof partially built in double slope, omnipresent natural light, generous vegetation.
The garden (800 m2) is an outside room really private and there are four patios that give rhythm to the common spaces.
This building is emblematic on environmental plan. It has received from Certivéa, the certificate of conformity to the label for High Energy Performance. Certivéa certifies that it’s in accordance with the BBC level and with the requirements of the Effinergie brand.
Location: Mayenne (53) – France Surface: 1 300 m2 Architects: Topos Architecture Children in the House: 90 Project owner: Ville de Mayenne (City of Mayenne)
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