House Bierings | Rocha Tombal | Architecture

House Bierings

Rocha Tombal Architecten designed a basic form with sculptural “eyes” that emerge with direct views to the varied countryside landscape.

The form and orientation of the building avoid visual contact with the adjacent houses. At the ground floor the angled ceiling of the kitchen accentuates the intensive contact with the garden. On the first floor, the different shaped openings in the roof and facade offer, like “fingers of light”, varied daylight experiences.

The routing through the house starts in the hall, a section of the ground floor volume. After experiencing the entrance area and passing the gigantic pivoted door, the visitor arrives at the heart of the house, the kitchen. Here he looks through the big glass wall straight into the garden, which suggests being outside again. Behind him, the stair cuts a wooden wall inviting to follow the route towards the first floor. Its angled form and extreme proportions (small and high) and the daylight entering from the ceiling, offer the feeling of walking in a medieval street.

At the end of it he discovers the living room, a quiet, north-lighted attic space, from which a big opening exposes the surrounding green like in a framed painting.

Garden Terrace Hotel | Kengo Kuma | Architecture

Kengo Kuma: Garden Terrace, Nagasaki hotel

'Garden Terrace' hotel by Kengo Kuma is situated halfway up mt Inasa, jJpan and offers panoramic views of the port of nagasaki and the city. The hotel consists of windows of various sizes and tower, ocean, garden and japanese style suites, providing views of the landscape from every room.

The Edge House by Jarmund | Vigsnæs AS | Architecture

The Edge House by Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL

The Edge House is located at Kolbotn, a suburb south of Oslo.

The client, a young couple, asked for a spectacular house on a limited budget. They had purchased a challenging site with 8 meters height difference from the access road to a plateau, and they wanted a house that “looked like you could shoot a James Bond movie in it”.

To save the plateau, the building was pushed towards the eastern perimeter of the site, suspended above the slope on slender steel columns. The entrance stair rises along the slope through the house up to the plateau.

This strategy avoids costly blasting, hiding the technical connections in the stair. It saves at the same time the existing characteristics of the site, creating a dramatic interplay between volume and site. The entrance condition and the experience from the inside attempts to underline this interplay.

The compact interior is horizontally organized around the cut for the entrance stair. Bedrooms and bathrooms are effectively organized along a corridor. The main structure is steel, with a polished concrete floor slab. The interior is clad in Birch plywood, the exterior in naturally colored fiber cement boards.

Address: Kolbotn, Norway
Year of design: 2005
Year of construction: 2006 – 2008
Architect: Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL
Assisted by: Claes Cho Heske Ekornaas
Contractor: AS Ventilasjonsservice
Gross area: 160 m²Photography: Ivan Brodey, Nils Petter Dale

Besiktas fish market | GAD Architecture

GAD: Besiktas fish market, Istanbul

Located in one of Istanbul’s most populated and diverse neighborhoods, Besiktas is an eclectic area with a village-like atmosphere that is in the process of urban renewal. The Besiktas fish market is located on a triangular site. It is an iconic venue where many locals and visitors buy fresh fish daily. The construction of the old fish market was in very poor shape and needed to be replaced.

The design solution was to maintain its iconic neighborhood presence, while also reaffirming its welcoming feeling. GAD (global architectural development) designed a triangular shaped concrete shell covering the entire site with large openings at street level. The concrete shell provides a column-free interior space, optimizing the project’s programmatic needs. The new design injects a contemporary and pragmatic solution, at once preserving the fish market’s history.

site plan

C+V house | Giovanni Vaccarini | Architecture

C+V house Giovanni Vaccarini architects

"The idea was to construct a building with an 'inverse' guideline. Instead of being oriented towards the city, looking outward from the hill; the house is completely turned towards the hill", says Giovanni Vaccarini, designer of the C+V house.

Project details
Project Name: C+V house
Client: Francesco Capece, Venanzi Ilenia
Project Type: single house
Principal Designer/s: Giovanni Vaccarini
Contractor/s: Di Ferdinando Michele
Date of commencement of project: 2004
Date of completion of project: 2005
Location of site: Teramo, Italy
Site Area: 450 sq. m
Built-up Area: 280 sq. m
Cost of Construction/Execution: 300,000 Euro

Words from the designer

"House Capece-Venanzi, is a suburban house for a young couple.
Situated in the diffuse Conurbazione of the Adriatic coast, between Ascoli and Pescara, the house is built on an "intermediate" area -- between the plain and a hill. An area that was thitherto seen as being a place unworthy of being built upon."

"Located in the midst of intertwined single-family houses on two levels and a hill, the site is tight, and green -- covered in natural or 'spontaneous' vegetation.

The idea was to construct a building with an 'inverse' guideline.

Instead of being oriented towards the city, looking outward from the hill; the house is completely turned towards the hill -- the hill that acts as a rising 'green sea' on which the house shows itself."

"The planning of the house can be defined across three levels:

• The lowest level is underground. An inner patio acts as the central element around which the spaces are organized; creating an interaction between the buried spaces, roof-garden area, and the suspended volume of the upper level (the ground level).


• The ground floor is the part of the building that holds all levels together. Acting as the border between the uncovered-roof-garden and the covered-day-area, metal (vetrata wall) and glulam surfaces wrap around the spaces; connecting the ground level with the upper one.

The first floor consists of various rooms and private spaces typical of a house (bath/sauna, study etc.)"

"The volumes of the house are metaphors - to the pieces in a game of tetris, albeit at a much larger scale.

The base is covered in stone, juxtaposed with the volume covered in white plaster; the base 'is cut' on the forehead in the west, by a vetrata wall, all the way upto its height; while the overlapping volume is intersected by a wedge of the free shaped circular hall."