Caja House | Estudio Aire | Architecture

Caja house in Argentina by Estudio Aire, based in Rosario, Argentina.

The project was developed between personal wills and external demands. We enjoy narrating this process without too much theory but with architectural responsibility and enthusiasm instead.

During the first meetings we tried to talk with our clients about architecture itself not specifically a home project. We realised it was our opportunity to develop something different between both parties. We were very enthusiastic for we could have the possibility of reviewing our architectural repertoire. At the beginning there were no specific orders, which arrived as time passed by and started working together.

We had feeling to work as a team, sometimes sharing some points of view concerning design, some others not. Our clients were much concerned with the issue of privacy and intimacy as regards life in private neighborhoods such as Kentucky. We considered it important to be able to appreciate from the inside the decisions taken (morphology, geometry, materials, how to manipulate the natural lighting) rather than the criteria used in such spaces so far.

We started working on a criteria based on a central open space . Little by little it became more radical and the rest of the situations began to subordinate to the yard. We were questioning the modern language leading elements to an almost primitive instance. The concept of continuous space extends beyond the physical limit of covered surface. The Interior unroofed surface regulates the link with the outside world. One of the faces is an opening with two glass doors. Opening completely enabling to redefine the concept of externality and integrating the rest of the area.

The water here incorporates the built mass reflexes. The House becomes its own landscape. Fragmentation in the section cover is another particular moment of thought and analysis which occurs not only to fill the interior of light but to establish a link with nature, incorporating the sky.

In general we usually describe our work as a box with a yard inside it denoting a formal will at first place. However the best is inside, the richer inner space as a result of it. With two photographs from outside the story would be resolved, but it would be impossible from the inside.

The strongest effort was to decide about what not to be done or how to make it simpler.
We came to only four materials. On top “white” dominates all items, aluminum resolves openings to the inner patio , the metal for the perimeter gates and glass for transparent and translucent cladding. This reduction is the reaction to a need to avoid excessive thinking of achieving simplicity as a concept.

We are satisfied for having being able to provide a contemporary answer leaving aside modern language. Now that the work has been completed we have began to look in time to more distant examples of it. The colonial House is the first example that appeared. The potential of the yard, the opening toit, the gallery, tectonics condition, force walls, the dispossession of ornamentation, the height of the Interior.

We are now studying the pompeyana House , which carry this same situations to a more primitive and radical state . All this working under the concept of modern space.We believe that the contemporary does not have to do with a completely new production or with an indiscriminate repetition of recipes. We are interested in reviewing everything that has already been produced and intervene as little as possible. We have very clear it is almost ridiculous since our activity lies in filling free spaces.

This paradox is which obsessively leads us to focus on the space resulting of it through the manipulation of shapes. We love thinking that we produce air.

Architectural photographer Leonardo Finotti

Avelgem Community Centre | Dierendonck Blancke | Architecture

Avelgem Community Centre , Belgium by Belgian architects Dierendonck Blancke.

Dierendonck Blancke collaborated with architects Stefaan Onraet, Tom Callebaut and Jonas Desmyter to design the centre, built on an existing slope on the border of a nature reserve in a small village.

The concrete building consists of a theatre, a multi-purpose hall and a cafe for a local youth organisation, with a large open-air terrace.

The theatre is situated on the first floor and can accommodate up to 305 people.

The foyer and administration is on the ground floor. Seating is located near the irregularly-shaped windows, overlooking the nature reserve.

In the sunken basement there is a hall that holds 700 people and a cafe for a local youth organisation, accessed by ramps cut into the ground.

The project is situated in a small village in Belgium.

The site is on the border of a protected natural reserve on one side and near the village centre and community church on the other side.

Our aim was to construct a compact building.

By stacking the functions and using the existing slope of the site we could do this. In this way the footprint of the building was reduced and space was preserved for open air activities. This also means less foundation on an unstable underground.

The building is positioned on the border of the site to create as much as possible distance between the public building and the dwellings nearby.

The program consists of a theatre (305p) on the first level, a multifunctional hall (700p) and café (150p) for a local youth organisation in a partially sunken basement. Foyer and administration are in between on the ground floor level.

All interventions and design decisions were taken to combine the different parts of the program in one dense building in order to reduce maximally the build surface as the budget was restricted.

We proposed a multifunctional use of different entrances that allow an easy use for the owner. By combining rescue exits and entrances we reduced the circulation. The ratio between circulation and used space is very low.

The building consists of two clearly distinctive parts: a main volume that expresses certain monumentality next to the nearby church and a supporting base integrated in the landscape.

The partially integrated basement is made accessible by two large incisions in the landscape so that it is experienced as an underground construction.

On the upper Floor in the main volume is the theatre, internally designed as a functional black box, in which all attention can go to the play. The basic acoustic comfort is designed so that a polyvalent use is possible.

The foyer on the ground floor provides access to the theatre on the upper floor and the multifunctional hall in the basement. In this in between position beneath the slope of the theatre there is a visual relationship with the multifunctional hall by a large void.

This void also provides the basement of daylight through the foyer and realises an important height under the ceiling in the multifunctional hall The lobby and administration are considered as an acoustical buffer to the outside (nearby housing).

The expensive glazed acoustic buffer was filled program. By day local organisations can use the space without the feeling of being in a underground space, by night techno parties can take place without disturbing the neighbours.

Access and rescue exits for the multifunctional hall and youth café are made possible by two incisions in the landscape.

Photographer Julien Lanoo

The Torres House | GLR Arquitectos | Architecture

The Torres House by Gilberto L. Rodríguez Arquitectos

Description:

Set high in the Sierra Madre mountain range, the Torres House seeks to establish an intimate contact with the natural environment in which it is located. Discreetly open towards the street, the house is accessed by crossing over a fountain from which a huge oak tree emerges, impressive both for its size and its beauty. Once on the porch, a grand mural-like door -constructed of marble, wood and steel- welcomes the visitor.

Inside, the entry hall merges into an area of contrasting materials consisting of Santo Tomas marble and volcanic stone walls. From this area there is a visual continuity with the rest of the house and with the garden that was left in its natural state as a small oak forest.

In the living room, conceived almost as a glass box, one can experience the view to the Sierra Madre peaks in the distance and the garden near by. Owing to its location within the mountain, where winters can get really cold, there is a fireplace for the family to gather around in the evenings.

From the dining room and the media room, one can access the roof terrace and enjoy the splendid views of the Sierra Madre as well as of the city of Monterrey. Here the musical background of the sounds of nature is in sharp contrast to the roar of the city below.

Built Area:5,942 sq ft

Project Team: Bernardo Chapa, Joaquín Jenis, Tomas Güereña, Diana Guerra, Eduardo Fuentes

Photography:Jorge Taboada

Panama House | Marcio Kogan | Architecture

Marcio Kogan’s Panama House is a residence designed for art. Located in São Paulo, Brazil, the house makes a powerful but subdued statement in its low, open, elongated elegance — a hallmark of Kogan’s architecture.

In the past few years, the award-winning, Brazilian-born architect’s Studio MK27 has produced a steady stream of low-rise, boxy work – all with an uncanny intimacy, yet without any of the usual stuffy treatments that supposedly create intimacy.

At the Panama House, there are no cozy nooks, no soft furnishings, no homey touches. And yet, there is a feeling of comfort and livability in this art-gallery-of-a-house that makes you want to move in tomorrow.

All levels of the three-storey house — including the bedrooms, office, gardens and patio — are used to display the owner’s substantial collection of predominantly modern Brazilian art and sculpture.

An uninterrupted connection between inside and out makes the entire space seem unlimited, translucent, as if without walls, although the structure is essentially a wooden box inside a C-shaped concrete cask made of cement slabs and a wall.

The sliding vertical wood lathes that form the brise soleils for each room’s facade, are also an important part of establishing the prevailing openness. The brise soleils also provide comfort and privacy, and enable the control of the artworks’ exposure to direct sun.




Most beautifully, they also create the soft play of light that matches the overall linear shapes — created by creases in window treatments, the floor boards, the rows of pillows on long sofas, the stone work outside — continuing the elongated language of the entire building.

The São Paulo-born architect Marcio Kogan graduated from Mackenzie University in 1976 and created films until the age of 30. His considerable talents of creating drama, understanding a setting and leading the eye are certainly evident in the award-winning Panama House.