House D, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Address: Rožna dolina, SI-1000 Ljubljana
Client: private
Programme: private house
Site area: 627,64 m2
Project team: Bevk Perovic Arhitekti / Matija Bevk, Vasa J. Perović, Uršula Oitzl
Project: 2005-2007
House D, Ljubljana, Slovenia

House D is located the prestigious neighbourhood of single family houses in the vicinity of the centre of Ljubljana. Its concept was defined by the programme required by clients with a specific lifestyle.

A couple without children wanted a house with one living room, one bedroom and a gymnasium. But, despite the simplicity of the brief, the task was complex – there was too much programme demanded for a relatively small plot of land. A large part of the house is therefore hidden in the ground forming an introvert world secluded from the surroundings.

Each floor of the house offers a different level of privacy and relation to the outside space.

The underground gymnasium, containing working space, fitness, sauna, swimming pool, music room and three atriums, forms a vast base of the house which covers almost the entire plot. It is punctuated by atriums establishing continuous relationship between interior and exterior spaces. The rooms and swiming pool are framed by glass walls which enable the natural light to enter the spaces.

The living room with reception area, open kitchen and dining area inhabits the first floor and continues over the external terraces which double the space. The walk around planted atriums which appear as small gardens offers glimpses of the world below. Terrace overlooks the neighbouring wild green area protected and owned by the city, which becomes the extended ‘visual’ garden of the house.

Another smooth transition between inside and outside is on the upper floor where bedroom with integrated bathroom facilities continues onto the terrace of the same size as the room. This terrace offers a broader view, an orientation towards the city and the neighborhood.

The house is organized as a series of carefully planned spatial sequences starting with a front garden. This garden is open, not fenced off as the gardens in the neighborhood, and forms an almost semi public area which simultaneously belongs to the street and the house.

The polished concrete exterior platform – a kind of treshhold – leads to the shallow stairs leading to the living room level. There is a smooth system of circulation within different fields of activity in the house which are also stressed by different use of materials. Terrazzo floors mark more public areas while the private ones have wooden floors in douglas fir.

The house is built in concrete which enabled vast spans and spaces. The concrete has been cast on site, sanded and polished, revealing a sedimental character of the material.

The house’s outside appearance is enigmatic, entirely different from the houses in the neighbourhood. The closed cubic forms with a street facade made of polished concrete reveal nothing of the luxurious world inside.

Hidalgo Hartmann Arqutectura is the designer of this masterpiece, this is an absolutely stunning combination of two distant mediums. The juxtaposition of the modern contemporary structure with the ‘ancient’ medival type castle with moat makes for a very interesting combination. The additional contrast between the two structures in form and material, and the excavated area between is unknown besides what I call a ‘moat’.

Here is what the designer had to say:

Nueva cabaña y accesos de masia.
La Garrotxa. Girona
2000-2004

La intervención tiene como punto de partida el análisis de los diferentes elementos a con-servar, sus conexiones y la reordenación de los accesos para adecuarlo a un uso residen-cial.

La intervención consiste en el desplaza-miento del volumen anexo que consta de planta baja y un piso para crear un vacío entre éste y la casa principal. Este vacío en planta semisótano, actúa como acceso y dis-tribuidor entre las partes que conforman el conjunto de la masia. Se comunica con el exterior por sus dos extremos, uno a cota planta baja y otro a través de un suave talud que permite la entrada de luz de mañana a tarde con la posibilidad de atravesarlo como si de un camino se tratara. La nueva cabaña se concibe como un volumen arquetípico de chapa de hierro, como los cobertizos o caba-ñas que los payeses construyen para almace-nar leña o utensilios del campo, que revisten con las chapas de los bidones de gasóleo previamente rectificadas para convertirse en una plancha lisa.

Your best translation is as good as mine, I will let the pictures speak for themself for this beauty structure and design.

Created by Powerhouse Company located in Netherlands this beautifully designed structure took three years of work and dedication. The final structure is astounding as I’m sure you will agree.

Villa One was the first Villa commissioned by the Powerhouse Company since their founding in May of 2005. The 1 is signified via the Golden 1 which was nailed at the pine tree at the end of the dirt road. Villa One can be found in a manmade forest of Douglas Pines which were planted in the 1950s for the production of straight stems which could be used as beams. During the 1970s the trees became old enough to be cropped during the time that the Dutch passed the ‘building in nature’ regulations which forbade them to actually harvest the trees. The limitations create restrictions on the height limitations and other volumetric restrictions which could be build above ground. The design required for the twice the use of the space allowed by law. Thus the idea of building down was thought of.

The site has a slight incline. It offers beautiful views on the forest and great sun exposure that we wanted to fully take advantage of. We thus came up with the distinctive Y-shape of the house: every wing is optimally oriented on the terrain and to the sun. There are three wings: one wing for work, studying and music making (North-West exposure); one for cooking and eating (East-South-West exposure); and one for living and painting (South and North exposure). In the basement, the Y-shape creates a similar functional clarity: one wing is for the master bedroom, one for cars and one for storage and guestrooms. A patio provides light for the guestrooms.

A singular frame envelopes the house, thus allowing for maximum transparency. The central area where all wings meet is the heart of the house. It is a large space that serves as entrance hall, dining room, bar and music-room. The Y plan stretches the house into the site and provides large panoramic views on the surrounding scenery. On the South and East sides, two large covered decks create sun shading in the summer and smooth the transition from outside to inside. In the basement the Y plan creates a clear division between the private quarters for the guests (with private entry through the patio), the garage and the master bedroom.

To each according to his needs

Every room on the ground floor can enjoy open views onto the landscape thanks to the wide transparent facade contained within the frame. Each wing is spatially organized in a sort of centrifugal manner. All mass is concentrated in a central core: a piece of furniture that contains all services and structural elements and that simultaneously creates different rooms within the entirely glazed space.
These large pieces of furniture allow for a free flowing distribution of functions without creating closed off rooms. It is thus possible to enjoy a pleasant stroll longer than 150 m through a variety of rooms immersed in the landscape.

Counteracting the extreme openness of the ground floor, the basement level shelters the most intimate rooms of the house and takes on opposite spatial qualities, emphasized by the brutal and protective feeling of mass. Here, the scarcity of daylight is complemented by a richness in spatial effects. The rooms are carved out in the mass, creating vaulted ceilings and thick walls as a paradoxical result of the lightness of the vertical structure above ground. In the basement the heavy architecture retrieves the primordial qualities of Roman architecture.
Three

The three furniture pieces on the ground floor are distinctively different in their design, materials, feel and smell. We used wood to the North, slate to the East and concrete to the South.
In the North wing an American nut-wood furniture piece ‘swallows’ a staircase, cupboards, a bed and a small bathroom. The curves of its outer shape create the entrance, a small and a large study and an acoustically sound piano-room.

The kitchen is the second piece of furniture. It is entirely made of Norwegian slate and incorporates all kitchen appliances and storage, a toilet and a bar. It is as solid as a rock, yet gentle in its use – a sort of primordial sophistication.

The third furniture piece consists of two concrete walls that incorporate a fire place, storage and video projector. This element opens up to create a patio bordered by a living room, garden room and atelier.

The glass facade is suspended between window frames hidden in the ceiling and floor. There is no vertical structure, only silicone joints to hold the glass. The only large opening is a huge green marble sliding wall (a sort of mobilized Mies wall) which opens the intimacy of the living room onto the terrace. Although made of marble, the sliding wall is very light as it is mounted on honeycomb aluminum plates (a Chinese invention called stone-veneer now produced in Texas, USA, with predominantly Middle East stones). The marble sliding wall wraps around a cross-shaped column clad with a black rubber skin: this is what we called the “Miessian Gimp”.

Structurally the house is a stack of different industrial building techniques. The basement is cast in concrete. The roof, with extreme cantilevers, is a complex steel structure designed by the audacious structural engineer Gilbert van der Lee. The bookshelf in the North wing is made entirely of solid steel plates and functions as a structural Vierendeel frame stabilizing the structure of the roof.

As a result of its Y shape and architectural dichotomy, the villa provides a wide array of extreme spatial qualities, going from narrow, dark, vaulted corridors to wide-open, transparent garden rooms. The result is a landscape of different spatial perceptions that goes beyond the mere pragmatic diagram of functionality. This house is the result of an involuntary yet conscious choice to radically change a way of living. It is a house for the new life of a man and his new partner. A house that can provide him with a new place to live in, after losing his beloved one with whom he had lived thirty years in an old farmhouse bought in the seventies and which they had remodeled 8 times to fit their changing needs. This house had to be something radically new for him. It had to offer a new balance to a disturbed life. It had to provide a new anchor point. It is a house designed for a family to be re-rooted.

I am delighted to announce the debut of our latest preconfigured home design: the mkHearth™. The mkHearth is a sustainable, modular approach to the modern farmhouse inspired by the natural beauty found in rural structures across the American landscape. This new design is suitable for urban or rural settings in all climates and is ideal for community developments. The simple but graceful design pays homage to our land’s heritage as well as the vital importance of living in harmony with our environment.

With flowing spaces that organically open to one another, mkHearth revolves around a center hearth space, a dual-purpose fireplace/cabinetry unit that circulates up the three stories. Other beautiful and unique features of the home include window seats, screened-in sleeping porches, and sliding wood doors on barn door tracks (to maximize light and cross-ventilation). The loft on the third floor is flexible space for an office, library, bedroom or playroom.

The mkHearth, like all our designs, draws on our 5 EcoPrinciples: smart design, eco materials, energy efficiency, water conservation, and healthy environment. For example, the mkHearth includes:

• Smart Design: Designed for urban or rural settings in all climates, the home includes strategically placed windows, glass doors, and sliding wooden sunshades to maximize daylight and breezes and minimize heat gain. The central hearth and ample outdoor living areas give the home an expansive feeling despite its responsibly-sized footprint.

• Eco Materials: Renewable and recyclable materials are used through out the home, including FSC-certified woods for cabinetry and flooring.

• Energy Efficiency: All heating, cooling, and lighting systems are highly efficient and reduce resource consumption. Solar roof options are also available.

• Water Conservation: The home includes water-conserving fixtures as well as a rainwater catchment system that minimizes the need to use fresh, potable water for landscape irrigation.

• Healthy Environment: Holistically designed for healthy living, the mkHearth uses non-off-gassing materials and paints, air filtration systems, and high-performance insulation.

Visit www.mkHearth.com to learn more about the design, see more images, watch videos featuring it, study more detailed floor plans, and even “test drive” it using Google SketchUp and Google Earth. We hope you’ll love the new mkHearth as much as we do!

A group of young architects in Tucson is studying desert plants and the positioning of primitive dwellings to create new techniques in environmental architecture for hot climates. They are part of a school known as Emerging Material Technologies. In Arizona they are represented by Binary Design, founded by Dale Clifford and Jason Vollen, former professors at the University of Arizona School of Architecture.

Binary Design is founded on Aristotle’s theory of where theoretical knowledge is manifest as practical, hands-on solutions. Through careful observation of programmed natural forces, Binary takes the theoretical or abstract data that emerges from a particular location or building site, and then develops it into a unique kind of architecture that is both sustainable and practical. Binary has created a new genre of Green building for hot desert climates by turning conventional models of architecture inside out.

Their first speculative home called “Mariposa de Acero,” or Steel Butterfly is located on a hillside south of Tucson and will be placed on the market in early 2009. Clifford and Vollen act as architects and work closely with Todd Wilson, the innovative developer and builder of Steel Butterfly. This working relationship is essential to ensure quality design at relatively low cost. By taking binary patterns which they learned from the hillside, then applying them to practical solutions, Vollen and Clifford have come up with some revolutionary ideas. In order to keep disruption of the soil to an absolute minimum the entire structure is mounted on bridgework of steel struts. Cool air comes down from the mountain in the evening then it is “pulled” through the building by an open courtyard that separates the two major elements of the house. This application is based on studies of primitive dwellings sites that were created by the Hohokam who separated family modules by breezeways. Learning from the water-harvesting mechanisms of native plants photo-chromatic coatings , the exterior courtyard surface of the Mariposa home is lined with “passive” cooling blocks, utilizing the same membrane/capillary principles, found in barrel cactus e.g. water trickles down the blocks and draws cool air into the house, similar in principle to an evaporative cooler.

Currently, Vollen and Clifford are involved with Carnegie Mellon University and the Rensselear Polytechnic Institute — pursuing advanced analysis, modeling and testing emerging materials for greater physical efficiencies in home construction. As part of that ongoing process, they are producing ceramic blocks, based on the thermodynamic strategies of barrel cacti and termite mounds. In keeping with Binary’s philosophy of learning through work, Vollen and Clifford will manufacture the blocks themselves. They hope that these materials will soon be available in new homes.

“Contemporary housing strategies in southern Arizona satisfy LEED standards with high insulation and tight construction. The premise is that a highly insulated, tight house will take less energy to mechanically condition,” said Clifford. Binary Design looks to surpass LEED Green Building Council certification, the current standard for the industry. “Our approach is quite different: depending upon a combination of vernacular and high tech strategies that engage a specific site, we might open the house up and bring the outside in, resulting in a home that is sensitive to the changing environment of that particular location, such as we did with the Steel Butterfly. It’s a different way of living. As much as possible, we’re using passive principles like natural ventilation, orientation and overhangs, augmented with the technology and materials that make the building more efficient. As you learn to live in this house, your energy bills will go down. Without a doubt, the same principles could work on production housing. At the outset, the builder would have to pay more attention to orientation, which would get away from monotonous siting, typical of PUD’S.”

Clifford and Vollen not only want to impact the architectural design community, but also to change how we think about living in our homes. Vollen offered some “binary” advice on green construction to local home builders: “The best thing that Arizona builders and developers could do is avoid building with 2×4 lumbers in a place where there are no trees. We are in an area where historically lots of masonry and ceramic products have been produced, but we don’t seem to be taking advantage of that. Perhaps by training new entry-level people in the trades, we could regain some of that skill. It could be 30 to 40 percent cheaper if we build with masonry rather than wood, or a combination of wood and stucco.” Clifford went on to explain that stucco was originally designed to be applied on top of masonry products — not wood.

When discussing ways to save energy, Clifford made some surprising observations: “One thing we notice in stucco production houses is that the openings were designed for locations like Tallahassee or Chattanooga, not the Desert Southwest. By taking more time to manipulate these openings and tune them to the environment, you could have a much better house and achieve significant energy savings. If you have the right view and make the right arrangement, the value of the home is increased both aesthetically and financially.”

The demand for sustainability is not just a builder or homeowner issue but it dictates the core values of half of the world’s 500 largest companies, which say they want to build and occupy real estate that reflects their values, while others are still struggling to define it. To major builders like Pulte and US Homes it is often part of a marketing campaign aimed at “Green” concision buyers, based on the LEED scale. To others, like Al Gore and William McDonough, it has become a moral or political issue. For a snapshot of how big the sustainable vision is, the Brookings Institute says that half of the buildings that we will live in by 2030 don’t even exist today. This translates into a $25-trillion building boom—an opportunity so enormous that the building industry could literally change the face of how and where we live. Nowhere will this be more evident than in the Desert Southwest.

Acknowledging the social contract of architects to serve those in need, Binary has also created small SEED (pods) as an alternative form of affordable dwelling for that segment of the global market that cannot qualify for a traditional home. Essentially is the smallest liveable module that that be added to as the situation or need arises. It is also applicable for those who want to add additional living space at minimal cost while maintaining sensitivity to aesthetics and sustainability. Examples of this for SEED (pod) installations can be seen in Tucson, Arizona.

This residential project by Amsterdam architectural studio i29 is situated by the city’s new cultural hotspot, the Overhoeks area. The 150 sq. meter space is all about long sightlines and maximizing the spatial experience, with an open concept made more intimate when necessary by sliding doors that slide through the width of the house (10 metres). A floor-to-ceiling glass wall sets off the kitchen without cutting down on the sightlines. The same wood is used throughout, adding to the continuity, along with the backdrop of white, punctuated by black pieces of furniture.

Location: Trevesia de Conde Duque Madrid, Espana
Architect: Manuel Ocana
Year: 2006
Price: $107,000

This house’s primary influence is the combination of old and new, built in a house that is over 70 years old in Madrid. The goal was maximum efficiency of space will incorporating the 3 stories available for use. The owners also wanted a loft like setup with maximum use of all the natural light available.

Architects:
Werner Sobek, Stuttgart/Germany

Planning time:
1998 – 1999

Construction time:
1999 – 2000

Tasks completed:
architectural design and overall structural planning

Client:
Ursula and Werner Sobek, Stuttgart/Germany

Photographers
Roland Halbe, Stuttgart/Germany
Josef Schulz, Stuttgart/Germany

Four-storey building which is completely recyclable, produces no emissions and is self-sufficient in terms of heating energy requirement. The completely glazed building has high quality triple glazing panels featuring a k-value of 0.4. Its design is modular.

Because of its assembly by means of mortice-and-tenon joints and bolted joints, it cannot only be assembled and dismantled easily but is also completely recyclable. The electrical energy required for the energy concept and control engineering is produced by solar cells.

Richard Shaw at the Crawford Partnership has just completed a project to extend a house in Camden, London in the UK. The project was to replace an existing dilapidated small lean-to rear extension with a new glass extension at ground floor level and a new timber and glass pod addition accessed off the existing stair’s half-landing. More after the jump.

“The lower level accommodates a new kitchen/ dining area to relocate the tiny original kitchen that was set within the ground floor living room. The clients, an editor for a national newspaper and his wife who works in publishing, occupy the house with their two young daughters. As the daughters are growing up and the couple often both work from home, they were severely in need of extra space.”

The design achieves an open kitchen/ dining area at lower ground floor level that flows into the garden space. It also enlarges the opening in the rear wall of terrace to bring additional light through to what was the gloomy original kitchen area. The level of the new rear extension is over 1m lower than the original level and the small rear garden was also excavated to match. By digging down, the walls of the small garden have been extended and their perceived additional height achieves a greater sense of enclosure to the garden space giving it a room-like quality. The sunken garden bordered by planting also achieves a reduction in outside noise levels within the space and creates a tranquil enclave within this busy part of the city close to Camden Town.

The first floor pod above is a flexible space that can be used as a home office, play room and guest bedroom. It has been clad using the timber veneer material Prodema Lignum, a material chosen over traditional timber cladding to give a sharper finish to the design. The material is also resistant to weathering and retains its colour, which was carefully chosen to complement the London Stock brickwork. The roof of the pod has a sedum covering which not only has an environmental benefit, but also a visual one as viewed from the top storey of the house.”

Architect: Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter Aps
Location: Denmark
Project Year: 2004
Engineer: Moe & Brødsgaard A/S
Area: 200 sqm
Photographs: Torben Eskerod

Sitting in the midst of an expanding landscape, the summerhouse is an open-plan dwelling allowing the inhabitants and its visitors to experience a continual interior/exterior natural environment.

Raised above the ground by concrete pillars, the house extends over the sloping terrain with interior spaces and terraces filtered from the outer landscape by movable fabric screens stretching along the perimeter. The free composition allows the house to open-up as well as close itself yet always maintain a sense of tranquility and connection to nature.

When open, the large windows and sliding doors let the house dissolve into the landscape. When closed, inner terraces bring continual daylight into the house and allow the inhabitants to enjoy the outside in their own privacy.