House W: home, by the sea

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House W answers a very challenging issue: the creation of a weekend home on a site stuck between a driveway and a cliff where a small beach can be found below. Also windy coastal towns like Huentelauqueen, Chile present a serious challenge to those who are looking to live near the sea…The solution to this one was based on a pragmatic concept: the patio-house typology. Continue reading

Big & Small House: too big or not too big…

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How can a house be simultaneously big and small? The perfect example of such challenging task is hanging on a hillside of Los Angeles. It’s called Big & Small House because of a simple guideline: what’s apparently missing in square meters is provided by volume. A two-story building with a total floor area of 111sqm presents a clear effort to maximize space while occupying a site around half the size of its neighbors. Continue reading

House M: a folded Japanese architecture

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Do you know what Kura means to Japanese architecture? Kura is a traditional Japanese storehouse. Its typology commonly corresponds to durable buildings built from timber, stone or clay used to safely store valuable commodities. House M works as a modern interpretation of such an ancient building tradition, placed in Ishikawa in a tiny gap between the national road and the city limits. Continue reading

Garden Pavilion: the secret of simplicity

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Sometimes the simplest of projects turns to be the most interesting and challenging of all…Garden Pavilion has this special quality. Located in the Seattle suburbs, this tiny building with a total floor area of 33sqm is positioned at the rear western corner of the main house to maximize the open space between the two volumes. Its purpose was very clear: to serve as a flexible space for several different functions: playroom, office, and guesthouse for visitors with a small kitchenette and a complete bathroom. But how can all these diverse uses fit in such a tiny building? Well, let’s find out the secret behind the simplicity of the Garden Pavilion. Continue reading

Haus Ruscher: architecture follows nature

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Somewhere in the middle of the green mountains of Austria, there’s a modern poetic approach to the ancestral cave houses… Two self-contained concrete buildings erupt from the grassy ground like two inhabitable rocks waiting to be discovered. Their unique mineral appearance allows a very low impact on the surrounding countryside full of sloping fields and woodland thickets. Architecture follows nature in order to merge quietly into the magnificent scenario positioned on a steep incline at almost 1100 meters altitude… Continue reading