your daily fix
Just thought I´d report from well… now I´m in Rio already, but this is a video from Zarate, Argentina, where families live in houses as big as your room and their only water source is a hose coming from the ground. This is what we did, these are our families, our kids and our hopes.
Us beso grande de Ipanema,
os amo y extraño mucho,
Petra.
I love steel and I love Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects more every day, so this project makes me wanna carve their and mine initials in a heart on a tree. The Montecito Residence is a family home located in Toro Canyon, Montecito, CA. The environmental conditions in the area are challenging and a fire can get started in no-time, so the design solution is a house that functions as an umbrella to shield itself from the sun and allows naturally cool offshore breezes to move through the space. So pretty. The steel and concrete work perfectly with the landscape/ environment. What do you mean I haven’t been posting lately?! Stop being silly…
Slideshow: click
.
(via: Noticias Arquitectura, photos: NY Times)
Silvia Mertens and Pieter Peerlings of the Belgian architecture studio Sculp(IT) designed a building for living and working between two existing buildings. In fact, it was made in a 2,4m by 5,5m gap. It is a home for two that is nothing more than a steel frame with double wooden floors. The building has 3 floors (60m2): downstairs is for working, the first floor is for eating and cooking, the second for relaxing and the upper floor is a bedroom/bathroom area. The roof, of course, has a bath tub built in. Once the construction was completed, the staircase was put in place in one piece. The building has some symbolism in it as well – the street used to be a prostitution area of Antwerpen. I do have a slight problem with the bathroom, especially the toilet, but the house is tailored for the couple and is therefore perfect.
Slideshow: click
.
(via: Archinect, all photographies by Luc Roymans)
There isn’t much information about this project but it’s amazing and I’ll post the photos I found. The house is situated in a forest site on the beach of Mar Azul, Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was designed by Martín Fernández de Lema and that’s pretty much all I know. Here’s a slideshow of Archinect photos and a (pretty bad but okay) video. I hope I’ll get to see this baby in person and if not, I’ll have to use my emergency semi-automatic on my non-architectural co-traveler friends *pretty smile*.
Slideshow: click
Video: click
.
(via: Archinect)
Designed by Syntax Architektur and completed in 2007, the H house is now a family owned home in Hadersfeld, Austria, that’s been transformed from an old inn. The inn was renovated and now offers the best views from the house but in addition to the existing building, two new volumes were built by the entrance. The idea of the project was to keep the existing trees and place the new structure around them. That yielded a unique design that makes the house look as though it’s crawling into the nature. The copper roof slowly touches the ground at one point where a private terrace is formed. The white walls were painted that way with the purpose of making contrast between the man-made and the nature. All in all, a project that really respects the site and that’s what it really comes down to.
Slideshow: click
.
(via: Noticias Arquitectura)
This is one of my favourites. Completed in 2005 the Barn House, designed by the Belgian Buro2, used to be an old barn and they decided to make something of it. Rita Huys, the architect for the project, wanted to keep the building in touch with the surrounding landscape. Her aim was to make a residential building without disrespecting the culture, history and land in which it is embeded. She says ‘After all, the house’s best room is, in a way, the outdoors.’ In an era where architects are forgetting about local identities and hardly realize that they are the co-creators of the cultural environment, it’s very refreshing to see that somebody still handles all those things delicately. Check out the slideshow and the floorplan presentation…
Slideshow: click
Floorplan presentation: click
.
(via: Noticias Arquitectura, Wallpaper*)
The Australian Durbach Block Architects designed the elastic Holman House on a cliff in Dover Heights, NSW, Australia in 2004. The concrete walls curve around the surface to form two interesting cantilevers supported by steel columns and a small outside space inbetween from which you can walk down the stairs to the edge (below the edge) of the cliff. Absolutely James Bond. I cannot tell you how much I love cliffs. Whenever I see one my mind goes all: Cliff, cliff. Is it a cliff? I think I see a cliff! It’s a cliff, I see a cliff! What? I’m not suicidal.
Slideshow: click
.
(via: Noticias Arquitectura)
Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine of BêkaFilms made a film called Koolhaas Houselife on the iconic Maison à Bordeaux private residence built back in 1998. They didn’t want the film to be yet another movie about architecture so they left out all the explaining of the building and introduced a new way of presenting architectural projects – more pictures and sounds.
”The work of Bêka and Lemoine offers us a portrait of the real and changing vitality of one of those monuments that we believe are immortal. This is realized through the stories and daily chores of Guadalupe Acedo, the home’s caretaker and housekeeper, and the other people who look after the building. Following and interacting with Guadalupe, blooms an unusual and unpredictable look at the spaces and structure of the building.”
In their Living Architecture series are also films about Richard Meiers Jubilee Church near Rome and Herzog & de Meuron’s Pomerol winery.
Trailers: Maison à Bordeaux 1 | Maison à Bordeaux 2 (scroll down)
.
(via: Archidose)
Located on the dreamy coast of Costa Rica in Cahuita, Casa Kike was designed by Gianni Botsford Architects with a budget of about 70.500€ ”by coupling indigenous techniques and materials with modern design technologies and aesthetics”. Wooden stilts serve as foundations upon which a (local) timber construction is standing. The concept is as simple as it gets – two basic blocks connected by a wooden pathway. One of them serves as a daytime area with a huge library and the other as the sleeping area with a bathroom. The building’s shell is made out of corrugated steel sheeting.
slideshow: click
.
(via: Noticias Arquitectura)
In 1932, the Dutch architect Richard Neutra built this villa in Sliver Lake, LA, California. After some years a garden and a solarium were added along with two new floors on the existing prefab basement structure. The house is in its 70’s now and a campaign is being raised by Cal Poly Pomona College of Environmental Design, The VDL Advisory Board and Dr. Raymond Neutra to help fund the renovation of the building. It is threatened to be closed, possibly sold to a private party and lost for any educational or public cause. Best of luck to the fund raisers.
slideshow: click
official page: click
.
(via: Archinect)
stash pocket 