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Restaurant owner and chef Motonori Hirata was looking for something brand new that felt long-established. “I was asked to design a building as ‘heavy’ as possible,” says Ishigami. “’I want an architecture whose heaviness would increase with time,’ [Hirata] said. ‘It cannot be artificially smooth but rather something with the roughness of nature. Authentic cuisines require such a place.’ He also told me that ‘it has to look as if it has been there and will continue to be there for the longest time.’”

Creating such a structure in the middle of a modern residential neighborhood presented plenty of challenges. Instead of focusing on what he currently had to work with, Ishigami took a subtractive approach, concentrating on what he could have if he removed parts of the existing space.

That line of thinking resulted in an underground cave dwelling that’s every bit as organic and “heavy” as it is practical and functional. Ishigami began with a design that would leave the roof of the new building flush with the ground level. Using state-of-the-art 3D software, he was able to determine the exact points for pile driving. When construction began, workers “dug the holes manually for precision while constantly confirming the position and shape on an iPad.”

Once all the holes were hollowed out, concrete was poured in to create the form of the organically-shaped columns. Then the rest of the space was excavated to create the living and working areas.

Ishigami tried to embrace accidents as they popped up, working the unknown into the process. “Unexpected factors such as growing grass, soil collapsing, or errors due to manual labor were tolerated as much as possible,” he notes. He hoped that the by accepting these “un-precisions,” he would create an architecture that “internalizes natural distortions and uncertainties.”

The original plans called for washing away all the dirt to reveal a gray concrete structure, but Ishigami and his team were so impressed with they way the soil-caked columns looked that they chose to leave them as-is. That decision is what gave the project its cave-like feel and inspired a redesign of the interior spaces, which now include a bedroom, bathroom, industrial kitchen space, and three courtyards that can be filled with dining tables during restaurant hours (or used as living spaces at other times).

Almost imperceptible glass creates walls around the structure to keep it warm and safe from the elements. The flat roof was filled in with concrete except for three skylights, and whitewashed to keep it distinctive from the surrounding topography.

Considered a design wunderkind in architecture circles, Ishimgami started his career with Kazuyo Sejima at SANAA, after graduating with a Master’s in Architecture and Planning from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 2000. In 2004 he started his own firm, junya.ishigami+associates, and has since gone on to win multiple awards, including becoming the youngest-ever recipient of the Architectural Institute of Japan Prize in 2009 for his ultra-thin glass Kanagawa Institute of Technology workshop. In addition to his architectural work, Ishigami also serves as the Kenzo Tange Design Critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The post Junya Ishigami Crafts Cave-Like House and Restaurant in Japan first appeared on Dornob.

Now, the forward-thinking Espacio 18 has turned their exceptional interior design eye toward yet another Oaxaca project. This time, it’s a group of residences in Colonia Reforma, just five short minutes from the city’s downtown area. Dubbed “Pensamientos Residencial” (Residential Thoughts), these four homes add to the studio’s impressive oeuvre with their distinctive focus on unifying architectural aspects. Their alluring apertures and connective patios amplify the structures’ openness and community-minded approach while also showcasing Espacio’s love of natural light and warm neutral tones.

The project addresses a local need for residential development. Rising land and property costs and increasing gentrification have led to more locals seeking housing on the city’s outskirts. Pensamientos Residencial was born as a result of this, commissioned by a real estate agency and catalyzed by the architects’ knowledge of the area and desire to repopulate the city’s suburbs.

The residences are divided into four distinct three-level houses, each with a land area of 120 square meters and laid out in the same way: an enclosed ground level/social area, a first floor including private areas, secondary rooms, and study/TV area, and a second floor that encompasses the main room and other services. While these layouts may seem pretty standard, the spaces are elevated through patios on each level, each with their own high-rise style walls that ensure privacy despite their proximity to other residences. The spaces are designed with flexibility and usability in mind — the template exists as a palette for residents to add their own stamp of originality through personalized interior touches.

The exterior, like many of Espacio’s projects, is deceptively spartan, comprised of clean lines and simple utilitarian touches dominated by neutral tones. Built with finishes made from locally-sourced wood from nearby spots like Huanacaxtle and reinforced with both steel and volcanic stones, the homes are built to last. And if the demand for housing on the outskirts of Oaxaca continues to increase, these structures will no doubt be the first of many in the area.

The post Espacio 18’s Oaxaca Housing Units are Full of Functional Flow first appeared on Dornob.

As part of the £9 billion (roughly $11 billion USD) Battersea Power Station revitalization project, Gehry’s Prospect Place building is the first residential structure the Canadian-American architect has ever created in the UK.

“I love London. It has culture, history, and diversity and the buildings we have created at Battersea Power Station are designed to stand artfully on their own amongst all of that, whilst also framing an internationally recognized icon,” said the 93-year-old starchitect. “It is important we create social places for future generations, and our goal from the start has been to create a neighborhood that connects into the historic fabric of the city of London but also has its own identity and integrity.”

Located south of the power station — which gained worldwide notoriety in 1977 when it appeared on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals album — the complex comprises 308 homes, including a variety of studios, multi-bedroom apartments, townhouses, and penthouses. The open plan units start around £510,000 ($635,000 USD).

The exterior’s white-washed curves and ripples were inspired by the traditional bay window, but their peculiar angles were intentionally designed to allow as many residents as possible views of the adjacent historic power station. Those random-looking twists also ensure that no two homes are identical here, though all of them do have access to either a winter garden or terrace.

Inside, residents have a choice of two color palettes: the “London” or the “LA.” While the London is characterized by metal finishings as a nod to the area’s industrial past, the LA embraces natural wood and light colors for a more relaxed vibe.

Because the entire project was intended to foster community and interaction, the residents of Prospect Place are also allowed access to the neighboring Battersea Roof Gardens, designed by Foster + Partners. The building itself boasts an enormous private Sky Lounge, gym, lounge area, workspaces, sunset bar, and theater room. They also have use of the exquisite rooftop gardens conceived by James Corner and LDA Design.

The 42-acre former industrial site also includes a children’s playground, restaurants, retail spaces, and will soon have a unique tourist attraction called the Battersea Power Station Chimney Lift. Visitors can venture into a glass elevator inside one of the station’s obsolete chimneys for a 328-foot ride up to the top, where they can enjoy 360-degree views of London.

The power station developers had high praise for Gehry’s Prospect Place construction. “Frank Gehry and his team have gone above and beyond in the delivery of world-class buildings at Prospect Place,” said Chief Executive Officer at Battersea Power Station Development Company, Simon Murphy. “It’s an honor that Frank’s first UK residential project is at Battersea Power Station, and its completion marks an important milestone in the development.”

Even though this is his first residential design in the UK, Gehry’s work is well known around the world. He founded his eponymous architect studio in California in 1962 and quickly became famous for his avant-garde style, designing Spain’s Guggenheim Museum, Prague’s Dancing House, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. His firm is currently working on the projects like Facebook Campus in Menlo Park and a new Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi.

The post UK Gets First Frank Gehry Residential Design at Battersea Power Station first appeared on Dornob.

Developed on one of Chicago’s typical 25-by-125-foot residential lots, the 1,300-square-foot Hem House was the brainchild of Ann Lui and Craig Reschke, co-founders of Chicago-based architecture company Future Firm, and real estate developer Joseph Root.

“While there’s a very vibrant art and culture scene in Chicago, there isn’t a lot of bespoke contemporary architecture, and what exists in residential is almost exclusively very high end — so we’re hoping to help change that narrative,” explains Ann Lui. “Because Chicago residential lots are all the same size, it’s easy for people to repeat plans and end up with a lot of underwhelming architecture. We’d like to be a trend in a different direction.”

“We wanted to create a house using a few strategic construction and design ideas to keep costs down, as an idea for Chicago’s vacant residential lots,” adds Craig Reschke.

Joseph Root agrees. “We see a lot of home builders that want to build on the luxury side, million-dollar-plus homes. And then there’s affordable developers,” he says. “When I looked at the numbers, I said this is a great opportunity to meet in the middle.”

While the Hem House is narrower than average for these lots (16 feet as opposed to 20), it makes up for that loss of interior width with more room for side gardens. The dwelling consists of two different-sized rectangular stacked boxes, creating space for three single-sloped roof areas. Those angles, along with the black metal siding, create a modern look full of ultra-clean lines.

Inside, the house’s stacked shape allows for a two-story-tall ceiling over the kitchen, with high, oversized windows letting plenty of natural light in for added sustainability.

From the entryway, residents step into the laundry/mudroom combination space, and then pass by the 220-square-foot main bedroom, the smaller 150-square-foot bedroom, and a shared bathroom. The hallway opens up into the open-concept kitchen and living area, and stairs grant access to the 150-square-foot mezzanine that includes a bedroom and bathroom.

The architects chose to keep all the interior surfaces white or natural to provide an airy, spacious vibe, contrasting the light walls with polished concrete floors.

After buying the land for just $13,000 from the Cook County Lank Bank Authority – an organization aimed at better utilizing vacant lots in Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods — the design and development team listed the house last summer for $399,000. It sold in just four days.

Darlene Dugo, deputy director of the CCLBA, was proud of the final product. “For too long, blight caused by decades of redlining and the 2008 housing crisis has depressed property values and economic investment in Black and Brown neighborhoods,” she said. “By reclaiming vacant lots and building affordable, beautiful community assets, Hem Development is demonstrating what is possible when we enable local architects and developers to resurrect abandoned space.”

Lui, Reschke, and Root have plans to create multiple versions (two-bedroom and four-bedroom models) of the Hem House for reasonably-priced duplication on other vacant Chicago lots.

The post Hem House Brings Modern Charm to Chicago Suburbs at an Affordable Price first appeared on Dornob.

“For nearly 100 years, Disney has shared stories that have touched the hearts and minds of people all around the world,” said Josh D’Amaro, the chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, in a statement. “As we prepare to enter our second century, we are developing new and exciting ways to bring the magic of Disney to people wherever they are, expanding storytelling to story living. We can’t wait to welcome residents to these beautiful and unique Disney communities where they can live their lives to the fullest.”

The first Storyliving by Disney residential association will be located in Rancho Mirage in southern California’s Coachella valley. It’s a fitting spot, considering it’s just minutes away from Walt Disney’s own favorite family retreat in Palm Springs, a getaway he called his “laughing place.” Subtitled “Cotino,” the Rancho Mirage development will include multiple housing options, including estates, single family homes, and condominiums. There will even be some neighborhoods specifically for residents ages 55+.

The entire village will be centered around a proposed 24-acre “grand oasis featuring clear turquoise waters with Crystal Lagoons® technology, enabling crystalline lagoons of any size to be built sustainably, with low water consumption and using a minimum amount of additives and energy,” the company said.

Residents can opt into a club membership for access to the recreational water activities, waterfront clubhouse, and members-only beach area. And of course, the club membership will provide access to all the other Disney lifestyle activities that the community offers. Disney cast members will run the community association and provide their legendary guest service to residents. They’ll also facilitate curated leisure opportunities like live performances, cooking classes, seminars, philanthropic endeavors, and wellness programming.

The master plan also includes a commercial zone with a hotel, as well as a range of shopping, dining, and entertainment options open to the public along the lakefront. There’s a catch though: to use the beach and its amenities, outsiders will need to purchase a day pass.

Disney says it is “exploring other location options in the United States – in the places people dream of living in.” Each community “will take inspiration from the authentic culture and heritage of each region,” with design help from its team of Imagineers.

“Disney Imagineers are exploring the richness of each local region to inspire the theme of Storyliving by Disney communities,” says Michael Hundgen, executive producer of Walt Disney Imagineering. “Distinctively designed indoor and outdoor spaces will offer residents new opportunities to explore, engage, and create the next incredible chapter of their story.”

The idea of Disney living originated with Walt himself. Epcot was inspired (and named) by his idea for the “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow,” an imaginary city built on the newest and most innovative technologies. And the company actually did build an entire Disney town in the 1990s. Celebration, Florida is filled with pastel-colored buildings and palm-tree lined lanes, but Disney sold the municipality to a private-equity firm a decade later, essentially cutting ties with the development.

Cotino is being planned with the help of Scottsdale, Arizona-based DMB Development, a builder with experience creating unique communities in the western United States. No completion timetables have been given at this point, but interested mouseketeers can apply for more information on the Storyliving by Disney website.

The post Disney is Building a Residential Community in CA’s Coachella Valley first appeared on Dornob.

Japanese architecture firm Tomohiro Hata takes every opportunity to do something unexpected without sacrificing practicality. With “House in Shimogamo,” the firm displays a brilliant approach to designing a spacious and dynamic home that makes the most of its corner plot in a dense neighborhood.

Tomohiro Hata sees every space they design as a setting for exploration and movement. Their buildings aren’t simple boxes with floors, ceilings, and walls in all the conventional places – they’re typically stacked and layered spaces with interconnected circulation zones, making use of staggered planes to maximize space and visual interest. In this case, several different volumes are arranged to interplay with each other at various heights, all topped by a cantilevered structure that juts out over a courtyard like a telescope.

Located to the west of the Kamo River in Shimogamo, Kyoto, the home overlooks Mt. Hiei to the east and is surrounded by a combination of deteriorating old-fashioned townhouses and new mansions that have sprouted up in available lots. “I am very impressed with the scenery of this place, where roofs of various ages and sizes are piled up and blend into the mountains in the background,” says Tomohiro Hata, the firm’s founder and lead architect. “Therefore, I wanted to find a way of architecture that would connect and amplify the landscape of these diverse roofs.”

Instead of placing an array of rooms under a single roof, Hata made each room its own unique space. On the ground floor, the tea room and children’s bedroom are connected to the garden, the dining room, and a second-floor terrace. On the second and third floors, the dining room, living room, and terrace lead up to the cantilevered observation room. “I tried to design the grain of the living space and its relationship, such as expanding the air volume and spending it individually or integrally,” Hata says. “In this way, the grains of the space characterized by the roof collide, melt, and overlap, aiming for a dwelling that has multiple individual spaces that relate comfortably to each other.”

A diagram shows how these spaces fit together around open-air terraces, staircases, and ladders. The spaces beneath mezzanine levels are often filled in with glass, providing glimpses of other rooms and the greenery outside. The line between “inside” and “outside” is blurred, allowing for a better dialogue with the scenery. All the various spaces are united by a simple material palette of wood and white-painted walls.

The home achieves a balance of connectedness and separateness, privacy and conviviality. Who wouldn’t want to sit in that observation room, the terrace below it, or any of the other overlooks and patio spaces created by this design and gaze out at the mountains?

The post Cantilevered Wooden House Livens Up a Corner in Shimogamo, Japan first appeared on Dornob.

Architecture firm Archimatika threw convention out the window with Comfort Town Housing, a low-budget residential development in Kyiv, Ukraine. The project’s vivid rainbow of shades dominated by punchy yellows and oranges enlivens an area of town encompassing several city blocks, almost creating a city-within-a-city with its own unique look and feel. It’s divided into two zones: one with streets that allow for motor vehicle traffic, and one with pedestrian-only courtyards, which feature playgrounds, benches, and walkways.

In some areas, the rooflines of the buildings connect in zig-zagging patterns, while other buildings take on elongated gabled shapes with flat facades. Between the colors and the shapes, the development almost looks like a LEGO city from above, adding to the fun (or the weirdness, depending on your perspective). The architects wanted to create three distinct silhouettes with different turns and heights of dual-pitch roofs for an overall effect that’s varied and interesting.

On some facades, they’ve used French balconies to add decorative flair and function. These are the railings attached to the facade that enable double doors to be opened inside rather than spaces you step out onto. Shifting the patterns of the windows also keeps the buildings from looking monotonous.

“The Comfort Town residential complex includes the Academy of Modern Education with a 160-seat kindergarten, a 140-seat elementary school, and a 600-seat high school,” says Archimatika. “The residential complex also includes a 4500-square-meter retail complex with a supermarket, a 4600-square-meter fitness complex with three swimming pools and gyms, a 1.5-hectare complex of outdoor sports grounds, cafés, stores, and offices on the lower floors of the apartment buildings, 22 children playgrounds, and its own maintenance service.”

The firm adds that “a different number of stories of adjacent buildings (ranging from two to 16 floors) forms a picturesque image of every street. There is also a restored park with perennial trees, sculptures, and a fountain. Thus, the former industrial territory has turned into a good living environment and the status of the district as a whole has increased.”

Though unusual for Kyiv, the development isn’t too out of place, and it feels like a vibrant and comfortable place to live, hence the name. All the pains the architects took to give Comfort Town its cheerful, fun, and artsy atmosphere certainly pay off, especially when you compare it to the depressing uniformity of similarly-sized housing projects in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.

The post Comfort Town: Colorful Ukraine Housing Development Looks Like a LEGO Village first appeared on Dornob.

Built in 1950, the 26-story Pirellino Tower hosted the headquarters of Italian tire company Pirelli until 2015, when it was abandoned over concerns about its ability to withstand earthquakes and its environmental performance. The site itself, set in a prime urban location, is currently underutilized and not very pedestrian-friendly. Boeri’s plan aims to revive the area, creating a new hub for events and exhibitions.

While the Pirellino Tower’s renewal champions the value of reusing old buildings rather than demolishing them, it will also become a cultural symbol for a new era of architecture and development that prioritizes meeting current and future environmental and social emergencies over all else. The two towers will be connected by a stunning multi-story glass bridge stretching over the Via Melchiorre Gioia, one of Milan’s busiest roads, and act as an extension of the nearby Biblioteca degli Alberi, a public park and botanical garden.

Stefano Boeri’s residential timber tower will be quite a sight with its layers of trees and shrubs contrasting with the glass and steel of the older tower beside it. Covering a surface area of more than 18,000 square feet, that vegetation will change colors with the seasons, absorb 14 tons of carbon dioxide, and produce nine tons of oxygen every year. It’ll also be covered in nearly 30,000 square feet of photovoltaic panels providing at least 65 percent of the building’s energy needs. And since the tower’s design is predominantly made from wood, another 3,600 tons of carbon dioxide will be saved during the construction process.

The regeneration project, helmed by development firm COIMA, will be the first in Italy to align with the new post-COVID Next Generation EU guidelines to meet the highest standards of sustainability. The collaborative design was chosen from a shortlist of 70 concepts as the winner of a 2019 international architecture competition. While it’s just the latest of many Italian projects for Stefano Boeri, Pirelli 39 represents Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s first time working in the country.

“As much of our work focuses on the future of cities, the Pirelli 39 project presents a great opportunity to develop a new model of mixed-use development and sustainable urban growth,” says Elizabeth Diller, partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, adding that “the project combines the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings with environmentally-responsible new construction, and a vibrant ‘living’ cultural destination devoted to the art and science of plants.”

“In such a difficult period, this project relaunches the vision of a forward-looking Milan and bravely faces the great challenges of the climate crisis,” says Stefano Boeri.

The post A New Stefano Boeri Vegetated Tower is Coming to Milan’s “Pirelli 39” Site first appeared on Dornob.

But if Callebaut is a bit of a utopian dreamer, perhaps he’s also a visionary foreseeing a more enlightened era of humanity we can’t quite wrap our minds around just yet. His designs evoke a sense of hope and possibility that we can overcome climate change and adapt to a more sustainable way of life. Maybe that’s what makes the actual construction of projects like Tao Zhu Yin Yuan (aka Agora Garden Tower), a spectacular spiraling tower in Taiwan, all the more thrilling.

Yes, we are currently four years past the expected completion date, and the tower isn’t quite ready for residents to move in. But what’s remarkable is the fact that this ambitious high-rise hasn’t just come to fruition, it’s done so without losing all the unique beauty of the original concept. Taking inspiration from the double helix shape of DNA and rising to a height of 305 feet, the 21-story tower incorporates green design features like rainwater collection, solar power, and lushly vegetated stepped terraces.

Vincent Callebaut Architectures won a 2010 international competition to design the project for client BES Engineering Corporation in Taipei. Measuring over 452,000 square feet inside, the LEED Gold-certified residential tower aims to improve air quality once all those trees, shrubs, and plants grow to maturity. “Nuclear plant-grade” seismic protection will keep the tower stable in case of an earthquake, including a structural design partially inspired by the body structure of a human skier, with the central core standing in for the human body and the two mega columns on either side acting as stabilizing ski poles.

Regarding the “ecologic philosophy” of the project, Callebaut explains that “in the heart of the urban networks of Xinyin District in full development, the Agora Garden project presents a pioneer concept of sustainable residential eco-construction that aims at limiting the ecologic footprint of its inhabitants by researching the right symbiosis between the human being and nature.”

“Part of the concept of inhabited and cultivated vertical farm through its own inhabitants, this project’s avant-gardist architecture enables a new lifestyle in accordance with nature and the climate. Actually, the Agora Garden tower vertically superimposes wide planted balconies of true suspended orchards, organic vegetable gardens, aromatic gardens, and other medicinal gardens. Much like a living organism, the tower becomes metabolic! It overpasses its energy-consuming passive role (absorbing all the natural resources and rejecting only waste) to produce its own organic food.”

“Finally, according to the Cradle to Cradle concept where nothing is lost, everything transforms itself; all the construction and furnishing materials will be selected through recycled and/or recyclable labels. By imitating the processes of natural ecosystems, it deals thus with reinventing in Taiwan the industrial and architectural processes [needed to] produce clean solutions and to create industrial cycle where everything is reused, either back to the ground as non-toxic organic nutrients, or back to the industry as technical nutrients able to be indefinitely recycled. A biotechnological prototype, the Agora Garden project reveals thus the symbiosis of human actions and their positive impact on nature.”

Though the Agora Garden Tower appears to be mostly complete on the outside, interior work is still ongoing. The final completion date is now expected to be sometime in late 2021.

The post Vincent Callebaut’s Stunning Sustainable Twisting Taipei Tower Nearly Complete first appeared on Dornob.

“Ha Long Villa” is remarkable at first glance not just for its irregular geometric facade, but also for the trees poking out of large apertures on every side, all the way up to the roof. Along with providing a little extra shade, the trees give the home a garden-like atmosphere that helps connect its inhabitants to nature within the rapidly industrializing coastal city of Ha Long.

The architects’ two principle motivations may seem to be at odds: the increasing loss of forests and other undeveloped spaces in the area, and the need to create high-quality sustainable housing that meets Ha Long’s rising standard of living. The result is an airy modern home with almost as much exterior living space as interior, though realistically, it’s a bit oversized as a single-family home to truly be considered sustainable.

“The semi-exterior space connects the interior and the terrace part of the garden, and is a place to promote various living activities,” the firm explains. “It is a multipurpose space which serves as a connection between each space. It is a place for gardening, sightseeing, sitting, [and] walking, and it also connects to the living space. These distinctive spaces offer residents options in their daily lives, like whether to dine inside or outside on a particular day. The various movements in the resident’s lives are also conveyed to the neighborhood through [the] windows in the exterior facade.”

Between the wrap-around terraces and all the plants on the rooftop, the architects have planted more greenery than construction of the home displaced, though of course, public green spaces have a lot more value to the community at large. VTN Architects took inspiration from stones found in the nearby UNESCO World Heritage Site Ha Long Bay for the rough exposed concrete of the exterior walls, which themselves are dappled in shadow by all the greenery. As the trees change along with the seasons, so does the facade.

“Ha Long Villa is one of the prototypes of ‘House for Trees,’ which is a series of residential projects,” add the architects. “The aim of the series is to bring green spaces back into the city, and to design as much greenery as was present in the original landscape to provide a healthier life to people living in the city. Due to the simplicity of the concept, the idea of ‘House for Trees’ can be multiplied almost anywhere in tropical climate regions. As part of the vast landscape, Ha Long Villa harmonizes with the natural environment. And Ha Long Villa aims to be a space where people return to living surrounded by nature.”

It would be cool to see the passive cooling double-facade concept catch on in other hot places, particularly deserts. Can’t you imagine something like this working in a place like Nevada or Arizona with cacti instead of trees?

The post Ha Long Villa: Home in Vietnam Wrapped in an Inhabitable Garden first appeared on Dornob.

A new hotel in Washington’s scenic Columbia River Gorge is a great example of a successful conversion blending a historically significant building with contemporary elements. For Society Hotel Bingen, Waechter Architecture took a beautiful 1930s wooden schoolhouse and used it as inspiration for the rustic modern look and feel of the entire hotel.

Lead architect Ben Waechter wanted to preserve the unique character of the schoolhouse, extending it to the rest of the 20,000-square-foot complex. Today, the wooden schoolhouse serves as a guest room with two hostel-style 24-bunk units and 10 private accommodations. Outside, an additional 30 detached cabins are clad in custom Radiata pine to mimic its appearance.

The cabins are arranged in a ring shape, all facing an inner courtyard, to create a buffer between the hotel and the residences that surround it. In the center stands a cedar-clad spa building with a sauna, hot tub, saltwater soaking pools, and cold-plunge pools. Its layout echoes that of the larger site, with smaller volumes surrounding a pool set beneath an open skylight.

Details throughout the Society Hotel Bingen pay tribute to the original building’s purpose, including long wooden tables illuminated by library lamps, natural slate chalkboards, schoolhouse radiators, and a lounge lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

Located beside the Hood River about an hour from Portland, the hotel offers a “refined off-the-beaten path experience for travelers and getaway-seekers alike,” with each cabin boasting its own kitchenette, private seating area, hammock, and picnic table. The hotel is also in the process of restoring the school’s original gymnasium as an event, activity, and resettable meeting room space.

The Waechter team explains that their design “confronts conflicting contextual drivers, responding with a singular and iconic organization,” adding: “Located along the scenic Columbia River, the project’s site is near the waterfront, yet separated from it by a series of industrial facilities. In addition, it is in a residential area, requiring a sensitivity to the scale and privacy of its neighbors. Attempting to maximize the relationship of the hotel to its natural context while mitigating the industrial aspects of its surroundings, our concept became one of ‘Edited Panorama,’ using the massing of the new hotel to produce a series of distinct outward views.”

“While the project involves an adaptive reuse of an existing school, the primary site of [our] design intervention is a ring of cabins, sharing a single roof [and] defining a courtyard through which the town and landscape become framed. Within this ring, a community building provides additional shared spa amenities for the hotel’s visitors. Defined by four large piers, this central structure offers four key perspectives out through the courtyard and ring.”

The Society Hotel Bingen has a sister hotel in Portland’s historic Old Town Chinatown, simply called the Society Hotel. It, too, features reclaimed architecture, taking shape within a 19th-century cast-iron building that once housed sailors.

The post 1930s Washington Schoolhouse Transformed into a Modern Hotel first appeared on Dornob.

When budget is the most important consideration in designing and building a home, economy tends to outweigh aesthetics and even usability. But with ‘MYZ Nest’, a house inspired by animal nests, Japanese architecture firm no.555 has proven that even small and humble residences can be thoughtful and visually interesting.

The rectangular residence beside a rice field in Matsumoto is low to the ground and partially built into the earth to echo the feeling of a burrow, like that of rabbits. This creates a tunnel effect inside, and the soil built up around one side provides additional insulation.

Inside, the walls are lined with cement-bonded wood chip boards, a material that is common in low-budget housing but often covered with other materials. Here, the texture of the wood chips is left visible intentionally because the designers felt that it calls the compacted twigs of a bird’s nest to mind.

The open space inside, lacking any interior walls, enables residents to divide the home as they see fit, adapting it to their own needs. One large floor-to-ceiling glass wall of this low budget nest house enhances the residents’ connection to the natural environment.

“My initial instinct was to build a structure that captured the feeling of the surrounding natural environment,” says the architect. “Architecture being an artificial construct made this a challenge. Rather than simply imitating forms found in nature I tried to create an abstract representation that still imparts a feeling of nature.”

“The building filled with soil, and low proportions. Levels in each room is a little lower, the animals like to enter in ‘nest.’ Also the concrete wall is like a bird nest of woven grass. I aimed ‘the quiet architecture’ idyllic landscape.”

The post Low-Budget House Inspired by Nests first appeared on Dornob.

The project was commissioned by Swire Properties, who themselves are long-recognized for creating swanky residential structures and had previously worked with Heatherwick Studios on the Pacific Place mall in Hong Kong.

Set for completion in late 2019, this ultra-luxurious apartment building aims to meld with Singapore’s vision of a “city in a garden.” In most of the country’s other developments, the architecture either provides a yard or garden space inside itself or is made extremely compact so as to preserve the existing outdoor space.

“Eden,” as the project is dubbed, is a 20-story complex, with each individual apartment taking up an entire floor. In sharp contrast to typical apartment living, Eden offers both large, well-developed units and outdoor gardening and living space. Plus, each four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot apartment comes with an unobstructed 270-degree view. Situated on a quiet side street in the country’s Orchard Road strip, the view of nearby Draycott Park can be enjoyed from the private hanging balconies that make up the bulk of the building’s facade.

Giving life to the concept of combining urban apartment living with nature, each balcony has its own built-in garden area. The goal was to think outside the confines of typical apartment building design in order to combine upscale city living with private outdoor space, a luxury that is becoming increasingly difficult to find in urban areas.

“Like most global cities, Singapore’s skyline is filled with angular steel and glass towers. With Swire Properties we wanted to create something distinctive that represents Singapore as a city in a garden, and recreate the verdant backyard access once ubiquitous across homes here. Instead of glass-clad edifices with token balconies, each home within ‘EDEN’ will have a lush garden right at the doorstep with organic and generous living spaces achieved by breaking up the traditional boxy floorplate,” Thomas Heatherwick, founder of Heatherwick Studio, explains.

The building’s design resembles a spinal column, with simple vertical rectilinear plains and slim windows forming the foundation and generous garden balconies situated in between to allow privacy in each apartment and a large, centralized living space in the center of each floor. And while it may not be as tall as other buildings in the area, the drapes of greenery that’ll soon be planted on each level will grow to form a stunning vertical garden. More specifically, the designers plan to use torch ginger, elephant ears, heliconias, and split leaf philodendrons to accentuate the garden feel.

While Eden’s balconies bring the private garden experience to apartment living, they’re far from the only extraordinary things about its design. For instance, the building skips the traditional boxy construction and instead embraces curved architecture, quite literally poured into shape from concrete. This concrete has also been imprinted with a topographic map of Singapore as a reminder of the surrounding city island.

Eden has already earned a Green Mark Platinum rating from Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA), with natural ventilation stemming from its well-thought-out window placement and solar shading.

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An oddly-shaped Paris apartment was seemingly a lost cause. It was very tall, impossibly narrow and had no natural light other than some skylights in the ceiling. Clemence Eliard and Marc Sirvin, architects at Agence SML, tackled the challenge and created a cozy four-level home.

According to the architects, the owner of the property acquired different parts of the residence over a number of years, which accounts for the unusual shape of the apartment.

The plan for the apartment centered around turning it into a tower. Each level has its own specific function. The basement holds the bathroom, the second/main level houses the kitchen and living area, the third floor is home to a home office, and the bedroom is in a cozy little loft on the fourth level.

To keep the tower apartment from feeling dark and cramped, the materials are light and airy. The office floor is made of a metal grid to allow light from the skylights to flow throughout the space.

Alternating stairs keep the staircase footprint small, leaving more room for the home’s essential functions on each level. With only 269 square feet (25 square meters) with which to work, creative solutions like this one were important for maintaining the home’s functionality.

The bedroom at the very top of the apartment  is a comfortable nest that takes up nearly the entire loft space. A skylight is situated directly over the bed, providing a gentle natural alarm clock and a comfortable hideaway to unwind after a long day.

From Archdaily:

“The architects envisioned the space as a tower in which each level would have its proper function: the bathroom in the basement, the kitchen-living-room at ground level, the home-office and dressing-room on the 1^st floor and the bedroom higher up on the 2^nd floor. These functions being all linked together by alternating tread stairs, daylight coming through a full height void. The ground floor, located in the back of a courtyard and previously lit in second day, would thus become an illuminated space thanks to the skylights.”

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