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Enter Taylor Swift’s former New York residence, a charming carriage house in Greenwich Village which the songstress rented as recently as 2016. Situated in one of NYC’s most iconic neighborhoods, the five-story former pop palace is perhaps most famous as the subject of her song “Cornelia Street,” in which she refers to the early days of her relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn. The townhouse is situated on the quaint (you guessed it) Cornelia Street near Washington Square Park. At the time of Swift’s living there, it was owned by former Soho House executive David Aldea, who according to Vulture didn’t even know who Swift was when she asked to rent the property while renovations were being made to her own Tribeca apartment.

Upon first glance, 23 Cornelia Street is easily overlooked from the street. With an unassuming brick facade and wooden doors, the property doesn’t exactly scream “glamour.” Swift herself supposedly chose the townhouse because of its private garage, through which she could enter and exit in relative peace (though devoted Swifties naturally discovered where she was staying at the time).

Built in 1899, the historic home is a sprawling 5,500-square-foot dream of luxe grandiosity and glam touches that are very fitting for a star of Swift’s caliber. The basement alone is an airy, seemingly sky-high ceilinged lounge complete with a queenly glass chandelier, a private garden, indoor pool, and gym area. But it’s the townhouse’s living room which undoubtedly holds the most appeal for fans, as it’s featured in a video Swift posted of herself at the time writing the song “King of my Heart.”

During her tenure at 23 Cornelia Street, Swift reportedly used up the entire home, which boasts a total of four bedrooms and six bathrooms. It’s hard not to picture her using the sumptuous primary bedroom, complete with a small terrace and free-standing bath, or spending time on the rooftop terrace with her beau (as she sings in “King”: “With all these nights we’re spending/Up on the roof…”).

The home most recently sold in 2019 for a whopping $11.5 million. Today it’s unoccupied by residents, but instead serves as a “corporate house” for the Italian furniture company Zanotta. Any fans dying to get a glimpse into the pop star’s former abode can still book a tour hosted by the New York Junior League (NYJL). The female-led organization recently hosted a Fall House Tour and is planning another one in Spring of 2023, so make sure to mark your calendar if you’re a Swiftie!

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The Hotel Hubertus is set at the foot of a popular ski and hiking area called Kronplatz in Valdaora’s Puster Valley. “Hub of Huts” gazes out at this serene landscape from a high vantage point, its series of glass-walled structures collectively forming a “zen-like refuge” for the wellness-oriented hotel. It’s located on the southeast side of the complex, at the edge of a glass-bottomed and cantilevered pool noa* added to the hotel six years ago. The beautiful 82-foot-long water feature has since become the hotel’s star attraction, so the architects used it for inspiration when designing the Hub of Huts.

Architect and noa* founder Lukas Rungger explains that the firm thought about all the activities swimmers tend to do in the pool, like standing, sitting, floating horizontally, and diving upside-down. “Each of these positions have a different horizon, and from this interplay of perspectives, the idea of the project came to life.”

Emulating a small village, the huts contain showers, changing rooms, and additional pools on the upper side of the platform. Below, in the volumes that appear inverted, even more pools can be found, along with saunas, showers, and a foyer. The architects also hid a water purification system for the pools and tiered seating for the saunas within the upside-down gables. The warmth of the saunas and protection of the platform overhead make these spaces feel sheltered and almost subterranean despite their elevated position.

The aesthetic of the huts mimics those of the Hubertus Pool and the rest of the Hotel Hubertus, which was extensively renovated by noa* in 2016. In addition to adding 16 new suites, a new kitchen with restaurants, a wine cellar, and fitness and relaxation rooms, the firm created a new facade from native larch tree trunks. This rhythmic, undulating exterior connects the hotel’s old and new volumes and gives them a visual cohesiveness. The same debarked larch trunks are used as pillars for both the cantilevered swimming pool and the Hub of Huts.

The architects add that “the new pool, which imposingly rests in-between the two accommodation wings, seems like a floating rock, come to rest at the site, overlooking the valley. The hidden edges of the pool, kept in anthracite-colored stone, abolish the gap between pool and landscape, creating the impression of the water flowing into nothing, disappearing between pool and landscape. The pool metaphorically reminds [one] of a mountain lake, nestled into the astonishing mountainscape of the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Dolomites…”

Network of Architects is known for its spectacular and imaginative architectural creations, particularly in the areas of hospitality and cultural institutions. Also located in South Tyrol, its AEON hotel uses dramatic color contrasts and ultra-high ceilings to set a contemplative mood. The firm has also recently created a striking “floating” library for Milan based on the Tree of Knowledge, and a modular building system used as the basis for a sustainable community center.

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Commissioned by a homeowner in the seaside town of Javea, Spain, Pantone and his team used over 130,000 one-inch ONIX tiles in just seven colors to create a stunning underwater prismatic pinwheel. Known for his work with light and color, the mosaic spectrum of blues, yellows, and reds showcases the artist’s brilliant way of melding individual pixels into a seamless rainbow of movement.

“Color only happens because of light, and light is the only reason why life happens,” Pantone writes on his website. “Light and color are the very essence of visual art. Thanks to television, computers, and modern lighting, our perception of light and color has changed completely.”

His process begins digitally as he works with various computer software to invent his designs. Then comes the manual manipulation of materials — in this case tiny colored glass tiles — to bring his kaleidoscopic vision to life. Radiating out from the very center of the pool, the colored squares flow over every inch of the floor and up and over the side walls, extending the optical illusion to its fullest degree.

The vibrant pool, which he calls the Felipe Pantone Residential project, is even more dramatic because of its juxtaposition with the starkly white modern home it’s attached to. From above, the tiled pattern appears to shift and gyrate beneath the water’s waves.

Born in Argentina, Pantone and his family moved to Spain when he was 10 years old. It was there he spent the remainder of his youth outside near the seaside stand his parents ran, finding artistic inspiration all around. “I was hanging out on the streets all day, immersing myself in the hip-hop culture, dancing breakdance, meeting graffiti artists,” he explains. Pantone eventually started making his own graffiti for fun before heading to the University of Valencia to get a degree in Fine Arts and unleashing his unique style on the world.

“I grew up as a painter, trained as a painter, and now my biggest goal is to get clear of all the academic training and to be able to make art freely, with the tools that work best,” he says.

Having grown up in a technological age when “kids unlocked life’s mysteries through the Internet,” his art is self-described as “a collision between an analog past and a digitized future, where human beings and machines will inevitably glitch alongside one another in a prism of neon gradients, geometric shapes, optical patterns, and jagged grids.”

Thanks to his bold use of color and geometry, Pantone’s aesthetic has been depicted by Forbes as “the intersection of Blade Runner and PhotoShop.”

Since his first gallery exhibition in 2006, Pantone’s bright optical illusion-like work has received global acclaim, with shows and installations in places like Paris, Mexico City, London, Italy, Palestine, Japan, and Australia. In 2017, he even painted what was at the time Portugal’s tallest mural. He’s since collaborated with international athletic brands like Reebok and Puma.

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Painted black on the outside, the shipping container pool is level with an elevated wooden deck that offers just enough room for a pair of lounge chairs. Measuring the standard 8 feet wide, 8.5 feet high, and 20 feet long, the pool has been fitted with a waterproof liner, built-in bench seating, and underwater lighting. It was professionally made by Modpools, a company that sells shipping container pools all over the United States and Canada, and features an automation system by Pentair that lets you control the lights, pH, and sanitizer performance via smartphone.

Modpools are self-contained portable units, so once you have one, you can take it with you when you move, if you want. All you need is a crane and a flat deck truck. They can be installed above ground, in-ground, or somewhere in between, and they come with an optional lightweight divider wall that turns half of the pool into a hot tub on demand. If you want to try one in person, check out the Casa Cosmos Airbnb in Desert Hot Springs, California, which has a nearly-identical pool to the one at this Joshua Tree residence.

The rest of the home is nothing to sneeze at, either. The renovation was spearheaded by Karen McAloon, former host of the television shows Find Your Style and Design Remix on HGTV and co-founder of design firm X8 Property & Design. McAlool has turned a number of Joshua Tree homes from drab and dated to vacation rental-worthy, and her work on 636 Valencia Drive will have you dreaming of warm arid nights with sage and pinyon pine in the air. The home boasts a Morso fireplace, 26-foot hand-plastered bench, handmade white oak cabinets in the kitchen, and a 45-square-foot white quartz island.

The primary bedroom, which opens onto a private Saltillo tiled patio, features a generously sized en-suite bathroom with a dual walk-in shower. Two guest rooms open to the front patio and share a bathroom with a Roman clay wall treatment. An adjacent garage has been converted to a one bedroom, one bathroom guest casita for even more hosting capabilities.

If you love the idea of a shipping container pool but want to save some cash, it is possible to DIY this project. It can be as cheap and simple as adding a pond liner to a clean, watertight container or more high-end and durable with a fiberglass liner insert. Check out our guide to shipping container pools for more details. For even more of a fun DIY spirit, you can even transform an old dumpster into a swimming pool.

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“Kha-nam refers to the typology of small resting shelters found during the agricultural season in Thailand,” the firm explains. “They’re built using basic construction methods, with local and easily sourced materials.”

As in most vernacular architecture around the world, form follows function in Thai agricultural buildings. They often feature stilts to protect the interiors from floodwaters and large, steeply sloping roofs to provide shelter from the sun and shed rain efficiently. The long, continuous roof of the original pigsty features a traditional overlapped design wherein a secondary roof panel hovers above a vented opening in the lower roof panel. This gives the spaces directly below the vents natural light and air flow.

YangNar Studio arranged the living room, kitchen, and bedroom beneath the vents to take advantage of these features, while the north side of the building hosts a terrace corridor between a workshop and a plant nursery. The family that commissioned this unique adaptive reuse project wanted to create a self-sufficient estate where they could raise plants and train dogs, so the garden has a large area for both purposes.

When choosing materials for the home, the architects retained much of the concrete, steel, and wood from the original pigsty for inclusion in the design, rearranging it for new purposes. Beneath the old roof, the living spaces are elevated, gazing at each other through large windows across a shared outdoor space.

“The materials of this house [have a] way of arranging old into new use with respect to a trace of time,” say the architects. “We can see a lot of buildings’ traces of old material clearly, but architects keep that with an understanding of language to keep this blend in the transition of living. Some parts of the house such as the kitchen’s wall used authentic wooden craftsmanship like ‘Fha-Lai,’ a flexible sliding wall from the northern part of Thailand, to consider an alternative way of ventilation. This authentic construction method is hard to find nowadays.”

“This might look like a simple wooden house found [commonly] in this region, but for us, this house is an architecture that was not made for the aesthetic of living only but was designed from an understanding of the practitioner’s view in forming construction methods to blend old and new things to get a special architectural experience for the owner,” say the architects.

The result feels airy and full of character; particular to this area of the world and its customs and traditions. The texture of the old corrugated roof contrasts beautifully with the new glass and refinished wood, and the covered swimming pool terrace is a tropical dream. You’d certainly never call this recycled home a pigsty now, would you?

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The project fit with the Home and Garden store’s mission to “encourage people to be as creative as possible, develop their own DIY projects, and set themselves no limits.” The project was especially impressive “because the shoe, including the pool, is made entirely of materials that are available from Hornbach,” the company explained in a press release.

“With the help of assembly instructions, anyone could build furniture at home,” it continued. “With the Sneaker Pool, Hornbach is taking a step into the sneaker scene.”

While that might seem like a strange direction for a hardware chain to take, off-the-wall advertising is the norm for Hornbach. “Sneakers and pool don’t go together thematically? We say: Of course it fits! Crazy projects are in our DNA! With the Hornbach Sneaker Pool, we show how far the current love of sneakers can go.”

Earlier this year, the DIY brand teamed up with production agency Heimat on a zany two-minute commercial featuring neglected yard plants that abandoned their native soil to take a raucous joy ride to Hornbach. On the way, they run over garbage cans, compete in streetcar races, and get ticketed by a police officer.

“There’s a bit of anarchy,” Heimat founder Guido Heffels says of the brand’s approach to advertising. “A bit of giving people a good feeling whenever they create, and whatever they work on.”

The company is no stranger to collabs either, having most recently worked with Chinese visual artist Ai Weiwei, “who developed a complete work of art from DIY materials to recreate at home.” Before that, they worked with “Danish designer Sigurd Larsen and Japanese architect Yo Shimada [to design] pieces of furniture purely from DIY materials.”

In addition to working with shoe store 43halb, the hardware brand also enlisted production company Neulant van Exel for help in assembling the enormous footwear fixture. The giant Sneaker Pool was unveiled at an exclusive launch event, garnering comments that ranged from “Sensational!” to “Kinda bizarre” to “Just amazing!” At least a few guests were allowed to try out the pool during the gala.

During the event, the company explained, “The Hornbach Sneaker Pool is a tongue-in-cheek reminder that the outdoor pool season is in full swing and that anything is possible with the wide pool range from Hornbach.”

They added, “For Hornbach, sneakers and DIY are both means of creative self-expression. This playful and colossal project merges the two outlets.”

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A recent Pew Research Center poll of Americans with jobs that can be done remotely found that 60 percent of those working from home want to continue doing so when the pandemic is over. That’s great for the well-being of the workforce, but it also brings up a potential complication. As remote workers flee expensive cities around the world, demand for homes in rural areas is expected to rise, putting pressure on the few remaining undeveloped spaces we have left.

In Argentina, APS/Arquitectos Pablo Senmartin came up with a model for building houses in environmentally sensitive areas, adding to housing density without harming the ecosystem. Located in the picturesque Villa Parque Síquiman in the Cordoba province, “Bioclimatic House” takes advantage of beautiful views on a sloped parcel while barely touching the earth beneath it. The architects completed an in-depth study of current construction problems in natural areas and developed a building style that met the stringent requirements of LEED v4 sustainable housing certification.

The home is set within a mountainous area overlooking Lake San Roque, adjacent to a protected natural area. The area is characterized by extreme environmental fragility, with periods of long drought, wildfires, loss of native forest, and lack of infrastructure. But it also offers a beautiful setting with lots of opportunity for recreation, so it’s caught the eye of many Argentinians looking to relocate.

Instead of building onsite, the architects took advantage of prefabricated elements that can be dry-assembled quickly with minimal impact on the setting. At its base is a section they call “Plinth — the cave,” an earthquake-resistant structure made of reinforced concrete that allows water runoff beneath the building. It functions as a parking area and meditation space beneath a swimming pool. As the foliage grows up around it, it will virtually disappear within the landscape.

The home is accessed by a dock-like pier element at street level, which transforms into a terrace and solarium as it enters the house and terminates at the infinity-edge swimming pool, which visually blends into the lake beyond. The rest of the home is envisioned as a two-level box made of wood, steel, and glass for an overall feeling of lightness. The tightly spaced wood cladding fades into an open screen as the house stretches from the street out to the pool, opening up the views.

The home’s zero-maintenance roof is a single sheet of ventilated metal that collects rainwater in the technical room of the plinth. The home is insulated with washed sheep’s wool, and the floors are made of sustainably sourced pine wood. Local recycled materials were incorporated wherever possible.

“The incorporation of time in the architectural space, through a succession of vertical elements that accelerate the view towards the landscape, this relationship changes during the course of hours and days,” say the architects. “The harmony [and] color of the material represents an abstraction of the color of the surrounding nature [and proves that] in the end, environmental quality is what matters when it comes to living.”

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With ultra-saturated oil on canvas paintings, Southwick shows laborers installing pool tiles, lifting non-native plants into gardens, and climbing ladders on second-story ledges among other scenes that emphasize the messy reality behind luxury houses. As he says on his website, the paintings invite viewers to see these fantasy homes “at an incomplete and less imposing state.”

“At the crux of my work are considerations of ownership, domestic spaces, and the environment,” Southwick said in an It’s Nice That interview. “These three topics tend to be intertwined within my paintings, which, despite appearing on the surface as simple depictions of expensive homes, actually attempt to highlight the disparity that exists between these spaces and the workers who build them.”

Southwick titled his collection “Querencia” after a Spanish word referred to in Ernest Hemingway’s 1932 novel Death in the Afternoon meaning “a preferred locality.”

“Querencia is a Spanish phrase which at its core means a space where you feel most comfortable and draw energy from,” explains the artist. “For example, in bullfighting, a bull will often circle the ring until it finds a place where it feels safe and strong – this is its querencia.”

Humans, and especially the wealthy, spend much of their time trying to create these retreats from the world – but inherent in the friction between the art’s subject and title is the idea that the workers producing these extravagant spaces cannot call such spa-like havens home because of their economic situation.

“Their inclusion in these paintings highlights the disparity in aspiration and needs between worker and owner,” adds Southwick. “The laborers involved in the building projects are often an invisible workforce made up of immigrants, and I play on this invisibility.”

The source material for Southwick’s Querencia series comes from personal and commercial photographs from private-property construction sites in the Balrearic Islands off the coast of Spain. Swimming pools and exotic plants take the stage in many of the paintings, themselves status symbols of luxury and sanctuary. “I wanted to focus on the ideals that pools represent, their relationship to the Roman Empire, and how these classical notions have retained their relevance and prevalence,” the artist says.

In all the scenes, he uses vivid colors and dramatic contrast to depict both the warmth of the climate and also the visual conflict between bright, exciting hues and the actual life conditions of the laborers. Ultimately, the large-scale pieces ask viewers to confront the fact that the “perfection” of social media doesn’t actually exist, and to pay more attention to the real issues of life.

Southwick’s background includes attendance at the Glasgow School of Art, as well as a Fine Art degree with honors from Leeds Art University in 2018. He has showcased his work in over a dozen exhibitions since 2015.

The post Artist Reframes Luxury Homes with Images of the People Who Build Them first appeared on Dornob.

Originally built in 1937, the Knubben Harbor Bath in Arendal, Norway was a community destination spot for aquatic recreation, with a children’s pool and a 33-foot-tall diving platform. It was a center for swimming instruction and diving competitions until 1947. After making a brief comeback in the 1960s as a jazz club, much of the bath structure was demolished in the 1980s after falling into disrepair.

To celebrate the 300th anniversary of the town of Arendal, the harbor bath is being reimagined once again, this time by Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta. To keep the functionalism and “modernist spirit” of the former pavilion (designed by architect Ketil Ugland), Snøhetta has designed a multi-use edifice, including an expanded island in a minimalist style.

“In returning the traditional harbor bath to its original glory, we realized that the volumetric response had to speak a different architectural language to honor the proud history of the 1930s bath,” Snøhetta project manager Marius Hauland Næss says in an interview with Dezeen. “As such, the concept for the addition is a landscape that builds on the existing skerry, which forms the base for the original bath.”

The new structure will emerge from the sea, supported by steel piles and approximating a topography map with its contoured concrete layers building upon each other. As the firm explains on its website, “it will resemble a block of stone shaped during the Last Glacial Period.” The walls will alternate between concave and convex, preserving the first bath’s clean modernist lines.

The stepped levels will provide seating for large crowds to view the open-air stage, the amphitheater, and to relax as they sunbathe and enjoy the surrounding views. The diving towers will be making a comeback, too, allowing patrons to take part in the same entertainment as their forefathers did almost a century earlier. The pavilion will also include a large indoor area built under the stairs, with room for additional performance spaces and a restaurant, allowing the bath to be a year-round attraction.

“The facility has the potential to become a hybrid that fluidly combines culture, recreation, marine biology, and learning, and a very locally anchored food experience,” adds Næss.

Snøhetta also hopes to make the entire project as sustainable as possible. “We have a clear ambition to challenge materials in this project, since the compound sits in a fragile marine environment and finds itself at the mercy of ever-changing, rough weather conditions,” says Næss.

“One of our goals is to infuse the project with other supplemental technologies that focus on the up and recycling of materials, such as but not limited to glass. So far, carbon-neutral and even carbon negative compositions have been achieved, so we are looking at viable options for application in the project, either structurally or aesthetically,” he adds. “As an organism then, the compound works circularly to facilitate a sustainable experiences on multiple fronts.”

The new Knubben Harbor Bath is set to open to the public in 2024.

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Deep Dive Dubai is the latest attraction added to this stunning city’s repertoire of awe-inspiring architecture. More than just a diving pool, it includes a vast, underwater city that just begs to be explored.

The previous title for deepest diving pool was held by Poland’s Deepspot, itself a staggering 45 meters deep (that’s over 150 feet!). But leave it to Dubai to take their Deep Dive spot to the next level. Measuring in at 196-feet deep, it’s so much more than a dive pool.

Currently only open by invitation only, the pool will officially open to the public in late 2021. One of the earliest divers to check out the pool was the crown prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, himself an experienced diver who was keen to share his experience on social media as one of the site’s first visitors.

The pool itself is located inside a large, oyster-shaped structure that nods to the UAE’s prominent pearl diving culture. But while this outer structure is impressive in its own right, it’s just the icing on the cake. What really makes this diving pool so unique is its accompanying underwater city. fashioned to resemble an abandoned civilization with varying atmospheres enhanced by sophisticated lighting and sound systems. Divers can even play underwater pool in the city’s arcade.

Though its the pool’s depth that garnered it the “Deepest swimming pool for diving” title from Guinness World Records, its fabulous underwater city, onsite underwater film studio, and sheer size (the volume of six Olympic-sized swimming pools) make it so much more than your run-of-the-mill diving pool. “It’s…the deepest and largest, but the sunken city effect makes it next world order. There are so many things it’s really not fair to call it a pool,” Deep Dive Dubai director Jarrod Jablonski told CNN in July.

Divers can explore the underwater city on their own after a tour with one of the site’s skilled guides, and Deep Dive also offers courses for both beginners and seasoned divers, all with the aim of keeping the experience as safe as possible. Those who don’t want to go deep will enjoy the on-site restaurant, which allows landlubbers to watch the action via large windows and TV screens.

The Stats

• Contains 14 million liters of fresh water
• Temperature maintained at 86 degrees Fahrenheit
• Contains 56 cameras for safety, and a world-class hyperbaric chamber in case of emergencies
• Has an underwater film studio that is the largest in the region

Dubai has done it again, creating yet another architectural marvel that’s sure to attract and enrapture visitors. Deep Dive Dubai is so much more than a diving pool; it’s a chance for adventurers to explore a hidden underwater city akin to Atlantis — not lost, but brought to life in the depths of the city’s latest stunning attraction.

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One level of the home is for a young family, one is for their parents, and another offers a recreational sports space and gym for the residents and their guests. The third volume rises above the others, jutting out vertically over the cliffside so that one tower-like section feels like it’s hovering in the air. A continuous stairway can also be glimpsed through the windows, making it sort of like an observation tower. Both the son’s house and the parents’ house have their own private backyards tucked somewhat safely against the cliff, and a shaded corridor offers access to the swimming pool from the son’s house.

One of the coolest aspects of this design is its wooden rooftop shades, which can be either closed or opened to let sunlight flood inside (a nice treat in this rainy part of the world). The glass walls facing the water unfold into balconies reminiscent of vertigo-inducing skyscraper platforms like the Skydeck at Chicago’s Willis Tower, the swimming pool features an infinity edge, and if you look closely, you’ll see what looks like the world’s most dangerous swing at the edge of the outdoor terrace. In other words, this residence is for daredevils only, and anyone who’s clumsy or afraid of heights need not apply.

If you think this concept looks unlikely to ever actually become a reality, you may be right, though Iranian architect and interior designer Milad Eshtiyaghi says construction plans are underway and set to begin later this year. It’s a daring project, but not impossible, and it wouldn’t be wildly out of place among the more luxurious homes in British Columbia. You can see short animations of the home’s interiors and various angles of the exterior, including the approach from the top of the cliff, at Eshtiyaghi’s website.

Eshtiyaghi is known for dreaming up incredible architectural concepts that veer into futuristic and fantastical characteristics without losing the sense that they could be real. Anything but ordinary, these projects often reconceptualize what homes and apartment buildings or condos can look like. For instance, the Villa Residential Complex, envisioned for the north of Iran, consists of a bunch of stacked triangles in various sizes ranging from singles to duplexes and triplexes facing both the southern forest and the northern sea.

Another dramatic cantilevered project, Suspended House, takes an ultramodern silhouette in black and dangles over half of it over the edge of a cliff. Cables attach the home to a huge steel mast that bears the weight of gravity while withstanding lateral and upward wind forces. “We designed the mast of the project as someone who has been bended by opposition and is pulling a rope,” says the designer.

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Friedman, a food and beverage venture investor and innovator, decided to rebuild, but not in the Georgian Revival style of the larger dwelling on the southern Ontario property. After becoming friends with Partisans co-founders Pooya Baktash and Alex Josephson, he shared his ideas for a fresher, more nature-oriented edifice.

“Architecture is not just the act of designing a building, it’s a way of seeing, thinking, and making that expands and even revolutionizes our experience of the world,” as the firm says on its website. This build would challenge the idea of how materials perform, requiring more plasticity in the quest for a more biological vibe.

The Partisans team came up with a “shapeshifting structure” to create a new retreat for family and friends. The 4,473-square-foot building incorporates three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a heated pool, and pavilion, as well as common areas like the kitchen and living spaces. But the home’s most dramatic feature is decidedly the “folding” roof line of the pool area, which plunges down at one end and remerges on the other side of a steel staircase that leads to a garden-filled rooftop and connects to the rest of the quarters.

Achieving that type of bend in the structural materials required some cutting-edge engineering feats. Using a technique normally only employed in the construction of musical instruments and furniture, Partisans was able to bend wood into the desired shape using compression, a rare application on a project of this scale. The pool is also encased on one side by a sliding 80-foot by 10-foot glass wall, providing breathtaking views, while the roof is held up by a hidden 90-foot steel beam that gives it a floating appearance from the outside.

The slope of the home mimics the topography of the property, which sits near an escarpment and is surrounded by rolling hills of forest. To create this nature-blending result, the Partisans designers first made a 3D scan of the area, inserting a digital model of the building to check for optimal placement. The firm also chose a green roof to help blur the lines between the organic and manmade features on the property.

For energy efficiency, the windows of the main guest house have been offset checkerboard style to maximize winter sun and limit summer heat. The kitchen was also expanded to serve as a food-testing lab for Friedman’s many culinary business endeavors. His family of five can gather there to taste the latest flavor experiments and give feedback. The Fold House is both reminiscent of the enfolding landscape around it and Friedman’s wholistic approach to life.

“Architecture is … a brand, it is a statement of one’s values manifested into brick and mortar,” the Partisan website says. “This is why we do what we do and why we work for such special people.

The post Partisans’ Groundbreaking “Fold House” Bends Into the Surrounding Geography first appeared on Dornob.

Architects Olivier Ottevaere and Elsa Caetano took an “anti-facade” approach to “Casa Trevo” in Aroeira, Portugal. Designed as a retirement home for a couple relocating to the area, the residence rises from its scrubby open lot like a monument. Only a few pieces of glass can be glimpsed from the outside, and entrance points to the inner areas of the curving shape start to feel especially labyrinthine when you walk up only to see a void in a tall concrete wall.

What you can’t see from the ground are the residence’s primary draws: a rooftop swimming pool and multiple light-catching internal courtyards. These three circular outdoor patios are the axis points around which the layout of the rest of the home revolves. The architects conceived of the two-story house as a series of columns and voids stretching to the crowns of the adjacent pine trees, with the accessible rooftop offering exposure to the salty air blowing in from the nearby Atlantic Ocean.

“The nine-meter high patios also [serve] as main structural voids in the form of three hollowed and semi-open columns,” say the architects. “Together, they support a series of floor slabs ascending at different increments. They also hold a beam of water, serving as a lap pool on the rooftop and whose underbelly is pressing down on the spaces below.”

Inside the house, there’s no shortage of natural light, with various openings and skylights producing glowing shapes on the concrete floors, stairs, and white walls. Mimicking the topography of the slope outside, the home’s interiors can also be said to follow a much more straightforward logic than the strange and irregular exterior. This geometry becomes clear when viewed from above.

The firm adds that “’Casa Trevo’ exerts a peculiar sense of autonomy and monumentality, despite its small size. It is unified by concrete on the outside, subverting the perception of its scale, while serving as canvas for a dialogue between nature and architecture to be projected. It also exudes a solid impression of mass while revealing little of its inside. The house produces its own introverted world facing the sun, with private yet mutable spaces rendered intermittently by Lisbon’s brash light.”

A house like this isn’t for everyone, of course, and it’s fair to ask how well its multi-level layout and unforgiving surfaces will serve its retired owners in the later years of their lives. But it’s certainly unique, and who wouldn’t lust over that pool? Casa Trevo unquestionably has a bit of an experimental feel to it, and frankly, that’s something we could use more of in a world overflowing with residential architecture. The architects’ own past experiments with cast-in-place concrete and novel shapes in everything from architectural columns to viewing platforms have clearly informed the design, and they’re all interesting in their own right, too.

The post Casa Trevo: Monolithic Retirement Residence With a Rooftop Pool first appeared on Dornob.

“This exquisite indoor pool in neoclassical interior designing style perfectly blends with home interiors,” say the architects. “The interior designer resorts to glass mosaic and stone decking for the in-ground pool under a lofty skylight, which not only helps with ventilation but also adds glamor aesthetically as it turns the interior into an enchanting oasis, especially [under] the dramatic night sky.”

It’s definitely dreamy. The walls and pool surround appear to be made of marble, and the rounded shape of the pool itself is even more pleasing. It looks like there’s a built-in hot tub on one end, too, so whether you prefer a hot soak or a cool float, you’ll be able to gaze up at that dramatic tray ceiling and oversized skylight to find some truly spellbinding skies just beyond.

As you might imagine, this palatial indoor pool that “perfectly blends with home interiors” is only going to perfectly blend with IONS’ other designs — but there’s certainly no shortage of those to choose from. If you want to stick with the theme, IONS’ “Palace Architecture in Neoclassic Style” is a perfect match.

The firm describes it as “an enchanting scene from one of our luxurious residential palace exterior and interior designing projects. It opens to an extravagant landscape, with a mesmerizing lake beneath a Palladian-inspired stone bridge as the center of affection. The decorating ideas of gleaming water features, graceful swimming creatures, gentle outdoor lighting, and lush greeneries are a perfect combination for a mesmerizing attraction certain to captures everyone’s heart. This scenic wonder at the home’s entry way echoes harmony, tranquility, and pleasure – a charming welcome to a magnificent home design.”

There’s also an entrance hall taking inspiration from Roman architecture with an elaborate ceiling, ornate walls and geometric flooring patterns, a dome skylight for a “private palace grand lounge” complete with a crystal chandelier, a bedroom fit for royalty, and plenty of alternative mega-mansion concepts in keeping with the rest of these visuals. It’s all very European in flavor, with renderings including impeccably landscaped grounds and cascading fountains.

Here’s another concept, this one simply entitled “Enchanting Architectural Design”:

“Showcasing a concept of luxurious villa design in International style – an architectural design relatively inclined to modernism with an interesting twist of creative touch from IONS Design to kindle an elegant, classy, and timeless spirit. The modern French home design is defined by the enticing volumes matched with artistic exploration of glass, steel, and concrete material, combined altogether in simplified form thus creating a clean and appealing aesthetic with harmonious forms and function. Its landscape of enchanting character is equally as charming [as the home’s] fashion-forward interior designing style.”

So, who actually commissions stuff like this? People in Dubai, the land of obscene wealth and outrageous ideas. The United Arab Emirates is considered the richest place in the world, with a massive, vibrant, diversified economy. Dubai alone is home to around 26,000 millionaires and at least 7 billionaires out of its total 3.33 million inhabitants.

The post Neoclassical Pool by IONS Design Perfect for Palatial Luxury Homes first appeared on Dornob.