That’s what Italian architect Stefano Larotonda of Last Studio decided to do for a home in Rovagnate, northern Italy. The existing structure was a typical two-story Italian country home set into the base of a slope, but the clients wanted a new entrance, additional green space, and a brighter, more usable basement. The only way to grant their wishes was to literally carve out the basement, creating a new sunken courtyard around it.

“That means a new kind of space in the basement and subsequent creation of an outdoor space that is configured as an open-air room,” says Larotonda. “This new environment allows for the lighting of the underground area, which becomes a large hall described by a series of wooden inner partitions that define different spatial configurations.”

Working in collaboration with Andrea Tregnago, Larotonda essentially created a giant trench around the home to expose the basement walls. This new outdoor space is a full story below the grade of the yard around it, its edges defined by new walls made of cast-in-place reinforced concrete. Vertical wooden staves were used as the formwork, imprinting the concrete with their patterns and knots for a more organic appearance. The exposed basement walls were then replaced with the same materials, punctured by circular windows and an oversized sliding glass door.

A large round cutout in the garden wall now acts as the home’s new entrance, beckoning visitors into the light-filled courtyard where Larotonda has installed stepping stones, volcanic rock, and grasses designed to offer proper drainage when it rains. From the driveway looking in, you see an interesting arrangement of diagonal walls sloping toward the lawn above. From the lawn, these walls stick up several feet above grade, looking almost like the prow of a ship.

Inside, the newly renovated basement is suddenly flooded with daylight. The concrete floors were darkened and polished for a slate-like effect, and the interior walls are made of three layers of solid fir stained with green impregnating paints for a sheer, washed look. Together, these colors are meant to evoke the tones of the surrounding mountain landscape. The circular motif is also drawn inside, repeated with cutouts in the wood walls and the shape of the bathroom mirror.

It may not have been the most obvious solution, but excavating the basement level was a clever way to give the clients exactly what they wanted, create a new outdoor space that’s truly private, and make the most of the existing structure instead of wastefully tearing it down and starting anew.

The post Last Studio Turns Unused Basement into Tranquil Underground Patio first appeared on Dornob.

The new “Gallery COMMON” in the Harajuku district of Tokyo will be able to do just that, thanks to the ingenious imagination of Fukoka-based architects CASE-REAL. Known for their transformative minimalist designs that often bear undertones of cleverness, slyness, and even subliminal messaging (see their Aesop store design in Shinjuku), the architects/chameleons have once again subverted expectations with their design concept for this new Tokyo exhibition space.

Like many of CASE-REAL’s past projects, Gallery COMMON is based in an existing structure. A basement room with sky-high ceilings and an abundance of natural light due to its glazed perimeter, the space offered a great palette for the architects’ vision but still needed some minor refinement. As they recently explained, “This feature [the glazed areas around the rectangular space] was appealing as a project space, yet as a gallery, these many glass surfaces were a hindrance to exhibitions.”

Too much light is not normally a problem, but in an art gallery, it may not be ideal (depending on the exhibition). In this instance, the architects decided to concentrate the sunlight on one side, then recreate stark, white walls throughout the rest of the area’s open space. Placing white walls that both work in tandem with and filter out the overabundance of light created an environment with enough space to display the gallery’s many works.

Of course, the use of light is not the only distinctive feature of Gallery COMMON. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the space is its movable walls. Yet another CASE-REAL innovation, the four movable walls inside are attached to H-shaped beams that were already part of the existing ceiling. Easy to store and integrate into the rotating exhibition system, these walls work as foils to their solid, immovable counterparts. This creative touch allows the gallery to not only curate new exhibitions with ease, but also opens the possibility of changing the layout mid-exhibition, an effect that takes interpretive art to the next level.

The natural light also comes into play here. Depending on the display, pieces can be shown in the “spotlight,” the center of the space’s distinctive natural light, or can be shrouded in shadows, mysterious and obscure but no less dynamic.

Despite the seemingly complex inclusion of moveable walls and customizable light, the gallery’s minimalistic touches like a grid-patterned stone floor only serve to enhance the overall simplicity of the basement space. According to the architects, it’s all meant to evoke both rigidity and softness.

Located in the Harajuku area of Tokyo, the new Gallery COMMON is the latest installment of architectural brilliance from the Fukoka-based CASE-REAL. Continuing their tradition of revamping existing spaces into new and exciting forms, the space features movable walls meant to make the gallery experience fluid, immersive, and undeniably distinctive. Once again, CASE-REAL has created something amazing with their movable art space in Tokyo, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “if these walls could talk.” Only this time, they move.

The post Art on the Move: How CASE-REAL Transformed a Basement Space into a Dynamic New Gallery first appeared on Dornob.

In the decades after World War II, many of the older terrace houses were demolished to make way for denser tower blocks, but today, municipalities and private owners are working hard to preserve them. Not only do the quality and lifespan of the original materials used to build these beauties help them last longer than some modern structures, but they’re historically significant, too. One cool trend in updating London terrace houses is the affixing of a glass extension to their rears, by which their interiors are expanded without significantly altering their facades.

As far as the British firm Guarnieri Architects was concerned, a sleek glazed box was just what this Victorian terrace in Clapham Common called for, acting as a light well to flood the interiors with daylight while providing extra room for a newly-altered floor plan. Namely, the clients requested that a new floor be excavated below ground level to create space for wellness facilities, including a steam room, hot tub, and swimming pool. The extension also made room for a few larger open-plan areas.

The architects altered the existing split-level arrangement and added the glass box to accommodate these amenities. A new mezzanine level projects a dining area out into the glassed-in space, resting just above the swimming pool. Both look out onto the back garden, newly hardscaped and walled in by wood and a lush ivy-covered wall at the rear. A ficus tree grows in an oversized pot inside the glazed box, stretching up past the floor of the mezzanine.

Inside, minimalist finishes in white, pale wood, and marble make the space seem larger than its limited 18-foot width. The architects relocated the home’s internal staircases to accommodate the new open-plan layout. The space around the pool, however, is finished in a dark gray slate for cavernous vibes. The stone in these areas is also porous, which allows it to withstand all the moisture produced by the new spa features.

For Marco Guarnieri, the firm’s lead architect, achieving a sense of lightness in the glazed extension was a top priority. The design team sought assistance from structural engineers to construct the box with minimal steel reinforcement in order to enhance its crystalline nature, providing an uninterrupted visual connection to the outdoors.

“We think that the project can be generalized as the alteration of the common 19th century typology, conceived as series of small rooms, by removing rather than adding, to create the open spaces typical of our time contemporary domestic living,” say the architects. “We like to call our project a Victorian Remix, like a DJ rearranging old records into a contemporary music performance.”

The post Victorian Remix: Home Extended with Glass Box first appeared on Dornob.

Mimicking the shapes of the surrounding hills, floors sloping up to strategically located windows let light into a basement room and two other levels of this Japanese home while directing views upward beyond the neighboring structures. Takeshi Hosaka architects decided to work with the buried feel of the site, making the entire home feel as if it’s underground without sacrificing natural light and ventilation.

On the basement level, wood-lined floors curve up to meet high windows on both the east and west sides, bringing in a breeze, with a high ceiling encouraging air flow above the living space. These windows look up at the grassy retaining wall on one end, and a small courtyard on the other.

A similar layout on the first level directs views up toward the sky. A staircase spirals through an oculus cut into each curving wall to get from one level to the next, also functioning as a skylight. The slope becomes more gradual as you rise, with even the roof following the same shape in a more subtle form, collecting rainwater and carrying it to the ground through a slit on the southern wall.

“A house with a basement and two floors above ground was planned in a residential area in Yokohama, which is characterized by rolling hills. The 60-square meter site is sandwiched by existing houses to the south and the north. On the east side, the site faces a 3m-tall retaining wall. In these ways, the site at first looked like it was buried by the surroundings.”

“In response, the design sought to pull in an equal amount of light and wind in section to both the basement and the ground level. Each floor was given the same ceiling height. The slab on each floor was bent near the exterior to give the same window size in section to each floor. When looking at the elevation, the same four sliding windows line up as if to indicate that the house, with a height of a two-story building, is three stories tall.”

“In the basement, a wind unexpected in a room located underground travels from the window on the east to the window on the west. Moreover, the core height of the furniture was set at 300mm below the slab so that the wind would travel above it. The ceiling of the concrete, which gradually rise, invites natural light to the interior. The green of the slope on the east side can be seen at the end of the rising ceiling.”

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