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Showing posts with label Mediterranean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mediterranean. Show all posts

Sunday

Francisco Portugal e Gomes - Casa Milhundos

Francisco Portugal e Gomes
Casa Milhundos

This place is another on my list of great layouts.
Taken from Arkinetia - (Thanks for the dig last week on your blog!!)
Admittedly it looks a little plonked into it's surroundings, but it does have the solar gain sympathetic layout, that I'm into and the pristine white rear structure seems "protected" by the rough black box in front.



Moving through the house in a South - North direction the front one story slate/dark stone covered box contains the living and dining/kitchen areas. below this box is a huge cellar the length of the building. Moving back, through the entrance foyer, you arrive at the stairwell, wet wall with toilet beside the staircase, and a bedroom either side of these. This is repeated upstairs. The daytime and nighttime areas are separated and the Master bedroom could be upstairs away from it all.

It's very minimalist, no doubt in response to the brief, but I think I'd like to open it up a little more to the light (perhaps with shutters to deal with the summer heat). I really dig the separate function of the two units. It'd work well with a south orientated coastal setting as all but one room could have sea views and sunlight from the south facing windows (which could be remedied via a picture window looking through the living room).


The contrasting black and white units also appeals. The use of black is something I've admired in a lot of houses, predominantly wooden numbers from New Zealand, see - Andre Hodgskin Architects Paihia Bach. But my concern is how do you keep the planks on the house? The number of times I've seen black wood warp in the sun and rip itself off a fence or house........ But slate, that's a different story and must make these front rooms SO cozy in winter, and the patio in the same material, great.






































From their site:
The plot is located in the outskirts of the city of Penafiel, in the valley of the river Cavalum in an allotment near the park of Quinta das Lages.
The proposal modifies the implementation anticipated in the original allotment and resumes the duplication rule, not observed in the buildings of the lots L8 and L9, seeking a more articulated solution with the nearest volumes and simultaneously taking the vast ambiguities and disarrangements between the allotment and the lot drawings into account. As for the house itself, it is organised in two functional, though complementary, autonomous groups, to which correspond two distinct volumes. Each one of these volumes has a different orientation to the space outside: one white and plastered seeks the most distant landscape; the other one, made with dark stone has a more direct contact with the surrounding lot.

Via:
Arkinetia & europaconcorsi.com

Monday

Erginoglu & Calislar Architects - House ’Ö’

Erginoglu & Calislar Architects
House ’Ö’





World Architecture News have a great post on a Turkish house that caught my eye this week.

//Additional images -





This house has a great layout, the kitchen is open plan on the ground floor and the bedroom is upstairs. The Toilets, up and down are housed in one block separated by a glass surrounded stairwell from the kitchen and bedroom respectively. The living room and fireplace are at the far end on a mid level, giving the feeling of a cozy elevated nook. All overlooking the pool that separates the house from the surrounding views. I love the use of raw local rocks, capped with white concrete. More interior shots can be found after the jump, showing the opening wall in the bedroom that overlooks the kitchen.

From their site:
House ’Ö’ is located in one of Bodrum’s popular holiday districts, Yalıkavak. The design aims to offer a modern life style approach whilst remaining in keeping with the geography and the scenery of the area. Great importance has been placed on minimising any changes in the topography of the land. And this is borne out through the sitting of the swimming pool between the house and the garden. The building consists of three stone units connected by two clear units. Vision is enhanced through the use of clear glass connectors between units. The interconnectivity and use of light permits the feeling of a single, spacious living area. No separating walls are used within the living space. Instead, using intelligent interior design and appropriate furniture, distinct living areas are created within an open ‘whole’.

Via: worldarchitecturenews

TomaHouse - Prefab Bach

TomaHouse






Recently I've been hunting down a way to ship in a prefab structure to remote locations, without it being a container house. These classy Baches, Bales, Fales and Bungalows are top of my list now. As a Prefab, they don't match MKD's breeze houses, but they do work as small cabins for remote areas.
What particularly caught my attention was their Montserrat project seen below and above left. Which, perhaps in it's tent like nature, reminds me of Christmases in the far north of New Zealand.

I've been "Google-Earthing" (my new verb) to hunt for the right spot and now have the structure to put in. The versatility means I can build individual units in suitable areas and join them using their connecting platforms and additions. The four, four foot deep foundation struts mean minimal impact on the area and the plug and play nature suits me to a tee. The neat bit too is if I want to change the inside or outside one day I can just order up some replacement panels and install. No dust or paint fumes in the process as the wiring and plumbing is fed through the aluminium skeleton. Merbau (need to check if environmentally sourced) and Bamboo flooring options, yum, and shiny stainless fittings, very tasty. I might see if they can source some Brazilian Jatoba or Ipe instead, the Ipe for the outside as apparently it breaks drills and standard saws it's that tough and loves getting wet, good for the beach.

Treehugger have featured these prefabs and the Jericho house made from the same components. "The core of the house is a framework of interlocking struts made of aluminum. These connect using a patented locking system. The basic structure of a TomaHouse is a 4 x 4 grid supported by four foundation columns driven 4 feet into the ground." Treehugger

They are hoping to bring out waste water units, solar power and turbines as add-ons soon - a must.
Hopefully a media pass and some emails will reveal more from their site.


Their Montserrat number in movie form.







Via: TomaHouse & Treehugger

Some additional shots from their website. (09/09/07)




Tuesday

Apparatus Architecture - Lawrence Residence

Apparatus Architecture
Lawrence Residence

The H shape provides an ideal layout for houses, as discussed in my post about Michelle Kauffmann’s Breeze house. Apparatus Architects have a fine H here with dining and kitchen in one wing and then a living area connecting to the bedrooms and study in the other. I’m sure my wife would be well into the traditional crisscross glazed doors and sloped roof, something a lot of the houses I enjoy lack. On a plus side, each room opens to either the front or back courtyard and the kitchen’s back door lead out to a sheltered courtyard for breakfast and the BBQ (unfortunately gas).

The earth construction also appeals to me, not the exposed beams of the roof, but the solidity of the foot plus thick walls and the permanent feel of the structure. Not a classical Rammed Earth structure, this build uses PISE, stabilised earth construction, which is just with a little cement added to hold it together. This house would definitely store heat in the floors and walls. Topping off the thick walls, the rear pond and front courtyard pool would help regulate temperatures in summer.

The colours also work. The subtle shades on the roof, the earthy brown walls that reflect the surrounding colours are complemented by the simply varnished timber doorframes and windowsills. The bathroom also has a unique draining system with black pebbles surrounding wooden platforms, a classy contrast, although probably hard to maintain.
















Via: www.apparatus.com

BP Architectures - House Like a Village

BP Architectures
House Like a Village

Translation - In co-operation with his partner Jean Bocabeille in Paris offices "BP the Architectures" developed the idea. Instead of creating a large volume, why not produce an ensemble of several small cubes, which relates skillfully to Greek regional building traditions with modernistic style. The result: Six lime-white cubes, which group themselves like a tiny village around a central court.





















Fish & Chips

Via: Haeuser

Friday

Nabil Gholam Architecture & Planning - F House

Nabil Gholam Architecture & Planning

F House

High up on Mount Lebanon, away from the hustle and bustle of Beirut, is the F House in Dahr el Sawan. A Mediterranean masterpiece by Nabil Gholam Architecture & Planning.


[Article by Ayssar Arida]

The brief
A high profile young couple with 2 children, the clients organized a competition for a new family residence to live and entertain in as their home in Lebanon. The general program consisted of 5 en-suite bedrooms for family and guests, generous indoors and outdoors living, dining, and recreation areas to complement the couple's social lifestyle, plus the usual amenities. The brief was much less straightforward: while the aim was to have a modern Mediterranean house (“not organic, not monolithic”), the couple brought two very different stylistic expectations into it. He grew up in a family that had been living in modern architecture (including houses by Mallet-Stevens and Niemeyer) since the 1960s, in Lebanon, Europe and the USA, and had a preference for its clean lines and austerity. She came from a background in the hotel and tourism industry, and had a more romantic vision of ornate and plush luxury she recognized in vernacular oriental architectures. In addition to these two seemingly contrary visions that risked making the client-architect relationship a tougher challenge, the clients requested that their house, despite the size of the program, should exude a sense of discretion, and not act as a superfluous social statement of wealth.

The site and context
The site of 11 000m2 sits on a sumptuous pine-covered hilltop, 1200m above sea-level on Mount Lebanon, commanding extraordinary vistas in all directions. The location has excellent year round Mediterranean climate: relatively warm and dry and easily accessible in winter even in occasional snow, breezy and cool in the summer. The strong slope of the land provided many challenges - to set the residence in harmony with the hill, harness the rising sea breezes, the views and the open skies, while keeping a flexible layout, all in an architectural style that is at one with the surrounding nature.

Photos: Richard Saad





The philosophy
The commission came at a very particular point in the history of the firm. After seven years of operation in Lebanon, we were gradually and consciously adopting a more assertive architecture that nevertheless strived for an “egoless” expression. The multiple challenges of this project (the site, the program, the brief and the clients' clashing expectations) provided the perfect opportunity to show the validity of our philosophy. Rooted in a strong desire to satisfy the end user without making concessions to the integrity of our architecture, we developed a position that can best be interpreted as essentialism, or the reduction of each aspect of the brief and context to its most poetic and essential quality, before giving it architectural form. In that sense, we strived to reinterpret the “Modern Mediterranean” house as a dwelling with the following essential qualities:
  • An ecological outlook respecting the site and a use of local materials throughout.
  • A simple, legible massing language that belies a rich collection of spatial experiences and framed views.
  • A powerful and seamless integration between the inner (architectural) and outer (landscape) realms, with a subtle delineation of public (social) and private (family) realms.

The concept and design
A sweeping arched retainer wall holds back the hilltop, allowing a series of orthogonal local sandstone walls to spring out from the land. Cascading down the site, they direct the gaze and frame views of the blue sky, the lush pine forest, the snow-capped mountains, and the eternal horizon of the Mediterranean Sea. From the highest point of the hill, they read as archaeological traces of a timeless structure sunk in a field of indigenous flora.

Photos: Richard Saad





Horizontal planes of cross-cut travertine slabs, cool reflecting water ponds, and cantilevered canopies intersect the walls in dialogue with the slope, generating the living spaces of the house. Careful orientation and sun shading, fifth-façade planted roofs, crawling greenery and obsessive attention to proportion help the house to sink considerately into the hill and respect its ecology (trees were carefully protected and only indigenous species were added). Yet the choices and expressions of material reveal that these walls are very much man-made: a rational layering of horizontal joints overlaps the ashlar construction of the main sandstone walls, which act like horizontal incisions in the landscape.

Effectively, the house has two faces it offers to the world. The first it presents to the visitor is a mute succession of stone walls with occasional vertical slits and trees peeking from behind, hinting furtively at the private world beyond. It is a facade that plays hide and seek, creating a sense of subtle mystery that enhances the clients' desire for discretion while expressing a calm opulence and a safe haven for the family. Passing through these first layers of filters, one goes through a succession of quiet spaces, mirrored by shallow reflecting pools and open to the sky, but already shielded from the hills around.

Photos: Geraldine Bruneel




The second face is more private, yet fully glazed to allow a complete communion between house and nature: the bedrooms open to the views on the upper floor; the gym, pool house, service and playrooms are arranged around the courtyards of the semi-enclosed basement. All are cross ventilated capturing the sea breeze rising from the valley. From within, the views framing the pine woods and the valleys beyond are gradually unveiled and broadened, eventually opening fully to great vistas to the sea.

Light and air cross freely through the living spaces. The passage through the house at ground level is an almost ceremonial procession from a public to a private realm.

The resultant architecture was made possible through a sustained enthusiasm and a very personal involvement in the process on our end, building the clients' confidence as the project took shape. The solid friendship and appreciation that developed between the clients and the architect by the time the house was completed was also helped by the strict respect of the original budget, and the reunion of the couple around what turned out to be a fully consensual design vision.

Plans





Architecture: NGAP - Nabil Gholam Architecture & Planning
Area: 1 200 m² + 1 basement
Date: August 2000 - June 2004
Structural engineer: Bureau d’études Rodolphe Mattar
Electro-Mechanical consultant: Barbanel Liban
3D images: NGAP
Landscaping:Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture
Photos: Richard Saad and Geraldine Bruneel
Google: Satellite Image
Article: Ayssar Arida

via: NGAP Nabil Gholam Architecture & Planning