Hasta La Ideas

Scottish studio Konishi Gaffney has constructed a wide dormer window to convert the loft of a terraced house in Edinburgh into an extra bedroom.

Konishi Gaffney, which is led by Scottish architect Kieran Gaffney and Japanese designer Makiko Konishi, added the roof extension to a two-storey house in Edinburgh’s Portobello – a seaside community filled with heritage properties.

Entitled Regent Street Dormer, the zinc-clad structure projects out from the rear of the house’s shallow-pitched roof to double the amount of useable floor space within the attic.

“The planners were resistant to the idea of a dormer in this location at all, but following long negotiations a rear dormer was conceded,” explained Gaffney, noting that the property sits within the immediate vicinity of over 50 listed buildings.

“We then made a case for a low profile, long dormer, more than twice as long as is normally permitted, because this had less visual impact than a dormer located near the eaves,” he added.

Pre-weathered zinc gives a charcoal colour to the outer walls of the structure blending in with the existing slate roof.

The west-facing picture window spans one face and sits within a tapered recess. “[It] includes an idiosyncratic splay to let afternoon light in,” said Gaffney.

A timber shutter at one end of the window lets in fresh air. “This is a nod to my favourite window – located at Louis Kahn’s Fischer House – where the glass is fixed and oak window shutters open for ventilation,” the architect told Dezeen.

The new bedroom is painted white and contains enough space for a double bed and a wall of built-in storage. A wooden staircase connects the room with the two storeys below.

Regent Street Dormer is one of 24 projects shortlisted for the AJ Small Projects 2014. The winner will be announced next month.

Photography is by Alan Craigie.

Here’s the project description from Kieran Gaffney:

Regent Street Dormer

The project was to extend a small 1st floor flat into the loft and create a new bedroom with dormer. A simple brief complicated only by the lack of headroom in the loft, the client’s design ambition and conservative planning rules in this conservation area of Edinburgh.

This street has the densest concentration of listed buildings in Portobello (54 in 120m). The planners were resistant to the idea of a dormer in this location at all but following long negotiations a rear dormer was conceded. We then made a case for a low profile, long dormer, more than twice as long as is normally permitted, because this had less visual impact than a dormer located near the eaves.

The project allowed a west facing picture window with an unusual view. It is clad in anthracite zinc by French artisans and includes an idiosyncratic splay to let afternoon light in, a fixed glass pane and a timber door for ventilation.

Completed: July 2013
Budget: £32,000
Architect: Konishi Gaffney
Contractor: Gloss Projects
Zinc: Artisan Roofing
Engineer: Burnt Siena Structures

The post Zinc-clad loft extension by Konishi Gaffney
creates an extra bedroom appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch studio Shift has converted a suburban house in the south of the Netherlands and turned it into a dental surgery with a new zinc-clad wing (+ slideshow).

Located in the small village of Best, the old house follows a traditional vernacular with brick walls and a tiled roof. The extension mirrors the profile of the house, but is clad with zinc across both its roof and walls.

Shift explains: “This strengthens the iconic quality of the archetype and renders the new extension into a ‘contextual alien’ that blends into the rural surroundings and at the same time creates a clear new landmark that expresses its new function.”

A row of four treatment rooms spans the length of the new wing and each one features a pointed ceiling, formed by the ridge of the gabled roof overhead.

Small skylights direct daylight onto the dentist’s chair, while a single long window runs along the rear wall of the four rooms and offers a generous ledge for flower boxes or outdoor seating.

A glazed corridor connects the new wing with the old house, which contains reception spaces, a kitchen and secondary treatment rooms. “The patient enters and waits in a homely and familiar atmosphere,” say the architects.

Shift architecture urbanism is based in Rotterdam and other projects by the firm include a townhouse with a three-storey bookshelf and the stone-clad Faculty Club pavilion.

See more dentists on Dezeen, including one with stripy glass screens.

Photography is by Rene de Wit.

Here’s some extra text from Shift:

Dentist with a View, by Shift architecture urbanism

The task of this project was to transform and extend an historical house in the centre of Best, a village in the south of The Netherlands, into a dental practice with four treatment rooms. The central question was how the extension responds to the existing architecture and how it profits from the green setting.

The four new treatment rooms are situated in a new volume that at the same time mimics and contrasts the existing house. Its archetypical volume is derived from the existing house – it takes over the exact same inclination of the pitched roof – while it is being materialized in a very different material. Both the roof and the facades of the extension are clad with zinc. This strengthens the iconic quality of the archetype and renders the new extension into a “contextual alien” that blends into the rural surroundings and at the same time creates a clear new landmark that expresses its new function.

The new volume provides each treatment room with an archetypical space of a miniature house. Its high ridge and steep ceiling results in a vertical space that connects to the perspective of a patient in the dentist chair. A roof light in each treatment room enables the patients to relate with the outside, even during treatment. A large ‘flower window’, that also serves as a bench, floods the rooms with daylight and provides both the staff and their patients with a framed view of the surrounding green.

All secondary functions of the dentist practice are positioned in the existing house without harming its structure and typical 1930’s details. The patient enters and waits in a homely and familiar atmosphere that, together with the experience of the surrounding garden from the extension, makes the necessary visit to the dentist a (slightly) more comforting experience.

Above: site plan

Above: floor plan

Above: long section

Above: front elevation

Above: side elevation

Above: back elevation

Above: side elevation

Address: Oranjestraat 55, 5682 CA Best
Client: Lisette van Gils & Ruben Timmermans

Design: Shift architecture urbanism, Rotterdam
Project architects: Harm Timmermans, Pieter Heymans
Advisor construction: B2CO, Richard Fielt, Ede
Adviseur installations: Van Delft Groep, Nieuwkuijk

Contractor: Van der Weegen Bouwgroep, Tilburg
Contractor Furniture: Bots Bouwgroep, Deurne
Sub contractor zinc facade: Bax koper en zinkspecialist, Bergeijk
Sub contractor frames: Hoefnagels Groep, Tilburg
Gross surface area: 292 m2
Building costs: €340.000 excl. vat

The post Dentist with a View
by Shift appeared first on Dezeen.

English architect John Glew has introduced new fenestration and a zinc-clad extension to this mock-Georgian house in north London, squeezing the new structure into a wedge of land between the house and its neighbour.

The tapered extension comprises a sitting room and pantry on the ground floor, and bedroom with a bath on the first.

51A Gloucester Crescent’s existing windows have been replaced with frames to match those of the new extension, while the existing facade will eventually be rendered a milky grey.

The extension’s interior has white plaster walls with brass light fittings, and oak skirting boards, picture rails and window reveals.

All photographs are by John Glew & Iris Argyropoulou.

Here’s some more from the architect:

51a Gloucester Cresecent London Nw1
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This addition and remodelling to a 1950s developer’s cottage comprises a two-storey timber-framed extension clad in silver-blue anodised zinc and new, vertically emphasised timber fenestration to the existing house.

We have sought to replace the pretence of a mock-Georgian building with a more credible plainness in order to create a new whole, in the process posing questions above and beyond the client brief; when adjusting or adding to a house of this kind how does one design and address what is appropriate to the ambition and discipline of architecture?

On the cladding of the extension, vertically banded standing seams rising 25mm beyond the building’s face create a secondary, fragile plane, effecting a thin, drawing-like tautness, as though the façade had been traced rather than constructed.

On the existing building –its new windows with their retained stucco frames close to the external brick face– the wall reads more as a surface than a solid mass, rhyming with the fenestration of the extension and reinforcing the effect of one impossibly thin surface over two very separate buildings.

Combined with the blue zinc cladding, the cinnamon-like ginger-brown paint on the new windows evokes a changing illusion of space through the optics of colour –either a flatness or a depth depending on lighting conditions and place of viewing.

An oversized window to the small new downstairs sitting room sits in a thin wall, while above, the smaller scaled-down window sits in a thick wall, forming an asymmetric bay –or bookend– which visually props up the old house. The brickwork of the existing house will eventually be washed with a milky Danish limestone render, intended, like the new fenestration, to complete the effect of a seamless new whole.

Inside, the reconfigured plan has created three additional rooms –a sitting room, a pantry and a bedroom with a bath. The plan form of the new extension has been determined by party wall negotiations and the need to accommodate the length of a double bed, the irregular site geometry creating a distorted and exaggerated horizontal and vertical internal perspective, acknowledged in the design.

The existing interior is transformed by restrained additions and seemingly simple interventions to the existing fabric: new vertically emphasised windows allow more light into the previously dark interior, opening up views to the front and back gardens and beyond, while throughout, brass light fittings and grey zinc-plated ironmongery provide a series of faint dotted elements placed strategically on the plain wall surfaces.

In the new sitting room and bedroom, powdery white plaster walls are bound by oak tri-ply window reveals and tall oak skirting and picture rails which project a mere 3mm beyond the walls. Like the zinc seams on the outside, the end grain of the oak tri-ply looks almost drawn on, a secondary two-dimensional frame around the windows and doors. The insubstantial colour of the plaster enhances the overall impression of fragility.

Click above for larger image

While materials and detailing are consistent throughout, each new room has its own very particular qualities. In the sitting room the low-cilled, over-scaled window frames a view which resembles a traditional Japanese raked garden. In the bedroom, the base of a white enamel bath is sunk into a timber box while its curved rim rests on the lift-up top whose thin, rounded, articulated edges bely its weight and bulk.

Click above for larger image

An unlined rooflight appears to hover just below the curved ridge of the sheet-like ceiling. The sparse aesthetic of the new rooms aims to achieve a calm but intense simplicity. Tempering the facade’s deliberate artifice, restraint is exercised throughout to calibrate the perception of spaces and to ensure that detail is always in support of the whole. Another potent characteristic of this project is the way in which the spaces described cannot be absorbed at once. The transformed exterior is unashamedly new but at the same time the building is a background, its composure and the ambition of its sophistication alluding to but never aping the crescent whose elegant characteristics surround it.

See also:

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Gallery extension by 6A Architects	Matilde House by Ailtireacht Architects	Key projects by Peter Zumthor