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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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Located in the province of Cáceres, high on a hill and far from city water or an electrical grid, this home is positioned as it was originally and the material used are also the same as the existing structure.
The original orientation allows for the sun to be the main source of heat during the winter, while a generous eave prevents heat from entering the home during summer. Large wooden shutters that slide closed like a second skin, cover the large windows at night to trap in most of the home's daily solar heat gain.
In the interior nature has been incorporated almost to every room: bathrooms with views of the interior patio and stone water fountain and bedrooms with picture windows overlooking the countryside. Supporting walls were replaced by light metal pillars, the haylofts in the upper area were converted into bedrooms and the enormous central lounge serves different purposes.
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Lauren Moss
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An extraordinary off grid home built with local materials, that fits right into the rural Ontario landscape, the House on Limekiln Line is an extraordinary artifact, addressing a 220 year old heritage, with a modern aesthetic.
From the architects: The House on Limekiln Line, a design-build off-grid house, is sited in a rich agricultural landscape.The house is understood as both a mediator to and a microcosm of its immediate cultural and climatic context. An “observation shed”, the house is composed of a series of scales of spaces, each with distinct vantage points, visual alignments, and framed vistas to the larger context beyond, facilitating stewardship of and respect for the productive landscape in which it sits...
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Lauren Moss
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San Francisco-based Feldman Architecture have designed the Caterpillar House.
The design for the Caterpillar House, sited on the softly rolling hills of the Santa Lucia Preserve, sought to accentuate a connection to the land. Having lived in a Cliff May home, the client came to the project with a love of modern ranch houses and looking for an environmentally-conscious response to a beautiful site. The Caterpillar House implements sustainable elements while exploring a contemporary version of the ranch ideals: massing that is low and horizontal, an open plan with a strong connection between indoor and outdoor spaces, and main living areas which center informally on the kitchen...
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Lauren Moss
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Located in the middle of the sea, opened to the impressive view of Ría de Ares, the first challenge that assumes the projected building is the landscape.
To respond to this challenge, a formal repertoire is used, based on pure volumes that are integrated in the geometry of the dock and representative of typical forms of naval architecture. The location required a high standard in terms of structural strength due to the thrust produced by the wind. Similarly, the high salinity of the environment, led to a study in detail of all building systems to prevent premature degradation of materials..
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Lauren Moss
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The Oakpass Residence in Beverly Hillls resembles a sleek modernist box wrapped in floor to ceiling glass, 12 feet above the ground on 10 narrow columns. The structure was elevated to not only circumvent the stringent setback requirements, but to minimize the impact of development on the beautiful natural site, heavily wooded with oak trees. This resulted in more light for the interior spaces, views from every room, and more privacy. Also it created a space underneath the house- part carport, part Zen garden. The pool is also elevated on 3 columns and the heavy exterior west facing concrete wall acts as a passive solar heat storage element. The interior and exterior spaces blend seamlessly into each other due to the use of frameless floor to ceiling glass and a continuity of materials from the inside to the outside.
View more images of this minimalist, passive and site-responsive home at the link...
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Lauren Moss
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Madrid-based architect Juan Herreros sees this no-frills holiday home in rural Spain as an animal occupying but not transforming the landscape. Casa Garoza – a tiny, elegant shed in the scrubby Spanish countryside near Ávila – sits clearly within the latter camp: a modular anti-villa that is both austere and sophisticated. Derived from continuing research into modular buildings at Juan Herreros’ Madrid-based office, it was commissioned by a city-based designer-artist couple who wanted a no-frills weekend retreat. It’s a pre-fab, but in its modesty and scale, a far cry from the recent American trend for “designer” pre-fabs – reinvented double-wides for the Ikea generation. Sitting on steel legs that are bolted to the rocks on site – without the need for any excavation – the house, Herreros says, is like an animal that occupies the landscape without transforming it. The ground continues uninterrupted beneath the building, suggesting it could be lifted up and leave no trace, and there is no landscaping apart from a simple, raised deck on one side. It comprises eight modules, which took four months to build in the factory (though Herreros estimates this could have been halved), and a day to install on site... Read the complete story on this modular + innovative project at the link.
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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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Located in rolling hillsides of Carmel, California, the Caterpillar House is a 2-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom dwelling that implements sustainable features and strategies for minimal development impact.
Feldman Architecture gave the client a home that connects seamlessly with the outdoors, in the form of a modern ranch with strong horizontal lines. The house is quite literally made from the ground it sits on, with repurposed dirt from the site being used in the building of the walls. The “rammed earth walls” help keep the temperature steady because they act as a thermal mass. The house also utilizes natural ventilation to keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The roof integrates photovoltaic panels that produce all the required energy, and have been carefully integrated into the design...
View more imagery of the first LEED Platinum Custom Home on the California Central Coast and read the project description at Feldman Architecture.
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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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In the South Tyrol province of Italy, Monovolume Architecture has completed a hydro-electric power plant that is elegantly buried into the hills. Functional, contextual, and designed with the environment in mind, it 'converts natural forces into useful energy while maintaining an artfully low profile in the alpine environment. A rather simple solution was found for a space full of loud, bulky machinery while visually making an inconsequential impact of the site. A free-flowing concrete structure peels out of the hills, opening a fissure in the hillside supporting a green roof that camouflages the otherwise industrial building. Thin wood planks of varying sizes are revealed in this split in the ground plane to form a lamellar wall, where the warm light from the interior glows in the pitch-dark surroundings.'
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Lauren Moss
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Fearon Hay Architects envisioned and implemented Storm Cottage house, a residential project nestled on the east coast of Great Barrier Island in New Zealand, located just steps away from the sea. All the materials used to build the black timber box are in tune with the landscape: “The dark exterior palette is completed with a layer of perforated metal screens. This operable layer allows the moderation of light/air and protection both when occupied and alone. Internally walls and floors are clad with oiled oak boards that provide a warm counter to its robust exterior. Care has been made to limit the scale of the building and maintain a sense of ‘cottage’. The building is off the grid, powered by solar panels independent systems for water collection and treatment. This is a retreat that provides shelter, warmth and comfort to engage with the wilderness and isolation of the remote setting“. The layout of Storm Cottage is simple and practical, centered around a beautiful open plan living space. Two bedrooms flank it to the left and right, each of them offering mesmerizing views.
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Lauren Moss
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Part of an ambitious urban regeneration project on land that used to be defined by hydroelectric-powered textile industries, the new Oloron Saint Marie Multimedia Center displays its bold architecture in the town of Oloron-Sainte-Marie, France. French architectural firm Pascale Guédot, in collaboration with Michel Corajoud, took this first step in re-imagining this abandoned beret factory into a wonderful media center built on the existing stone foundation. The design had to capture the natural beauty in the architecture, so the architects designed the 2,700 square meter building as a main wood latticed volume floating on top of a glass level below. This beautifully modern multimedia center was linked to the opposite banks via two walkways uniting in a 1,255 square meter public concourse and creating a necessary connection between river banks. A 44 car parking space ensures visitors are carefree when walking through the Oloron Saint Marie Multimedia Center’s glass entrance...
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Lauren Moss
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It’s a testament to the ebbing tide of starchitecture that some of the most admired new buildings of recent memory are the ones you hardly notice at all. The design brief called for a very low-impact, easy to maintain summer home that provides necessary programmatic functions with minimum distractions from the land and the view. The design response situates the structure among mature fir trees located directly between the beach and an upland meadow, with walls of glass opening out to both. Steel columns minimize visible structure from the interior, while metal-clad wall elements provide a bold form when seen from the exterior. The roof is vegetated, which filters rainwater that in turn is collected and stored for use in irrigation. Potable hot water and hydronic heating are aided by solar collectors on the roof, and PV panel s above the vegetable garden provide supplemental electricity. The home is intended for occupancy from May through October, and systems have been designed to zero out electricity use over the course of a full year.
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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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On the shore of an idyllic white sandy beach on New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula rests an elegant hut. The site lies within the coastal erosion zone, where all building must be removable. This is taken literally and the hut is designed on two thick wooden sleds for movement back up the site or across the beach and onto a barge. The hut is a series of simple design moves. The aesthetic is natural and reminiscent of a beach artifact/perhaps a surf-life-saving or observation tower. The two storey shutter on the front facade winches open to form an awning, shading the interior from summer sun while allowing winter sun to enter. The hut is totally sustainable from its modest size to the use of timber in its cladding, structure, lining and joinery and from its worm tank waste system to the separate potable grey water tanks.
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Lauren Moss
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Architecture company Helhetshus developed a project entitled Arlevagen in Gothenburg, Sweden, consisting of eight similar houses. The landscape surrounding the buildings is defined by giant oak trees and the beautiful lake Sävelången, which partially determined the orientation of each dwelling: “By using the existing conditions of the site and placing the houses halfway over the edge of the hillside; each house got a nice view towards the lake and at the same time it created more space on the sunny side of the plot towards southwest. The boomerang-shaped building leaves an open space towards the street and a more secluded garden space south of the building witch is maximised by placing the buildings as far north as possible on each plot”. Half of each building’s weight is supported by pillars, leaving the ground beneath almost untouched. Green roofs ensure insulation, while adding a great aesthetic factor...
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Lauren Moss
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This small vacation house is designed as a stairway to the treetops.
Keeping the footprint to a minimum so as not to disturb the wooded site, each of the three floors has only one small bedroom and bath, each a tiny private suite. The fourth floor, which contains the living spaces, spreads out from the tower like the surrounding forest canopy, providing views of the lake and mountains in the distance, virtually the entire Catskill Mountain range. The glass-enclosed stair highlights the procession from forest floor to treetop aerie, while the dark green enameled exterior camouflages the house by reflecting the surrounding woods, and dematerializing its form...
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Lauren Moss
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The intermittent use of this structure near the Seine estuary, built as a holiday home, strongly influenced the environmental choices of the project. The challenge was to give priority to passive devices and architecture, offering a gain in terms of energy performance, but also for the comfort of the occupants.
The exposure has been a main priority : East-West orientation, oversized opening to the South, natural shades and solar control strategy, North side blind. Great attention has been given to thermal insulation. Choosing wood slab, and a wood panelling structure insulated from the outside, has allowed us to obtain good levels of insulation and air tightness. Furthermore, the low-thermal-mass building, offered by the wooden structure is interesting in the context of a weekend home, that needs to heat up quickly, for short periods. A wood stove thus is sufficient to heat the home.Finally, the building is based on the dry process framework, with the benefits of prefabrication : quality building, swift assembly, and site protection...
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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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Wind-dyed House by acaa in Yokosuka Kanagawa, Japan
From the architect: A residential building located halfway up a cliff, overlooking the ocean. Thick clumps of trees that grow along the slope of the land surrounding the house cast a series of organic silhouettes that make the slope seem to come alive. We decided that the appropriate form to build would be as low-lying as possible, while also allowing the architecture to become embedded in the surrounding landscape according to the contours of the terrain. This would allow us to minimize the impact of the building on its environment.
The design of the walls plays an important role in creating the overall sense of presence that a building projects. As such, we also tried to prevent the walls of this house from becoming surfaces that would obstruct or impede movement and sight. Glass and screens along the enclosed perimeter of the house gives the second floor of this residence a certain transparency. Slender, deep-set eaves cast deep shadows on the facade of the building, softening the impact of the building's physical presence in relation to its environment.
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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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The country house in the island of Andros sits on a remarkable site of hidden and evident beauty.
With the sloping topography dominant, architects had to follow the path between the trees and to execute a design that would maintain the site as much as possible. The decision was to create a very open house with a protected inner courtyard, designed to maintain privacy and to protect from the elements. The house is situated vertically, with stone retaining walls creating a barrier between the inner space and the country road, allowing views of the city and the sea.
Coming from dense cities, the design highlights the calmness and serenity of the countryside and allows inhabitants to be as close to nature as possible. Large windows bring the outside in, making this beautiful design a house for all seasons...
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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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The site is situated on a bed of rock along the edge of Stockholm’s largest archipelago, and the architecture commands views in all directions, to the water ahead and a thicket of greenery behind. A parallelogram in plan, the home angles towards the coast, with a long west facade that drinks in panoramic vistas of the Baltic.
Glass volumes are staggered in a zigzag formation and inset from the lip of the house footprint, creating a deep, shaded patio. Despite its gun-metal color associated with steel, the structure is entirely of wood, from the exterior frame down to the furniture inside. The simple form and the exquisite details all around come together in a rich, nuanced design that more than fulfills the promise of the site...
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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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The Rock House replaces an older building at the site and had to be well adjusted to the terrain, both in terms of shape, scale, material and color. The house and terraces are partly built upon existing stone walls, the parts of the walls which are new are made of stones from the blasting at the site. The low elongated volume is cut into to allow for wind shielded outdoor areas, embraced by the house itself. These cuts also bring down the scale of the building, and together with the local variations of the section, make the building relate to the surrounding cliff formations. On the outer perimeter of terraces and pool, a glass fence also protects against wind, but allows for maximum view. The house is clad with Kebony wood, a sustainable process of treating the wood to allow for good durability towards the exposure to salt water... View the link for more great images of the Rock House...
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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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Villa 921 is a single-story concrete house designed to protect residents from extreme climate conditions. Located in Japan, at a remote island accessible only by boat, this unique home was designed by Harunatsu-Archi. Architecturally, wood and glass walls slide open across the front and rear of the building, allowing the wind to move through the spaces for natural ventilation, while projecting canopies shade the rooms and terrace from the harsh sun. During typhoons, the house and terrace can be screened behind protective coverings, which fasten onto the protruding eaves... More from the architects: “The usable area of the house only amounts to about 70 square metres,” said architects Shoko Murakaji and Naoto Murakaji. “This is by no means large, but thanks to the amazing views of the landscape, there is never a feeling of narrowness.”
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Lauren Moss
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The Hurst House is a new build one-off contemporary house located on the edge of the village of Bourne End in Buckinghamshire. The clients’ brief was to build a very sustainable and contemporary family home that would have the flexibility to successfully cope with changing family conditions as their children grow up and leave the nest. This lead to a house where they can live in one extended space while family bedrooms can be shut down and left on tick-over. The environmental impact of the house was considered from the outset, and we were aiming to get very close to being a zero carbon home. The building utilises very high levels of insulation. A small highly efficient gas boiler, together with heat recovery ventilation, rainwater recycling, solar water heating, a 10kW wood burner and a 9.9kWp photovoltaic installation, and low energy fittings throughout, ensure the property has an overall near zero CO2 impact rating...
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Scooped by
Lauren Moss
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The sustainable Ice House have a simple eco-consious design focuses on functionality. Located in the beautiful a rural town of Iceland, a low-developed region committed to the preservation of its beautiful natural scenery and resources. Design elements were chosen carefully to maximize passive solar power and cross ventilation, minimizing electricity costs. Conscious effort made to use materials in their most organic form. To improve indoor air quality, no carpet or forced air systems (AC/HV) utilized. The project reduces its impact on the natural ground by raising the structure with elevated decks and floors. Native wood siding materials are locally sourced, which allows for the project to blend in with the surrounding regional landscape. Large and expansive windows and openings are used in living area and bedrooms to provide abundant natural light, frame the beautiful landscape and enable a seamless connection with nature. Master bathroom features a pebble rock wall referencing the surrounding landscape. Exterior spaces designed for maximum indoor-outdoor living. Outdoor shower encourages a closer connection to nature and the elements. An edible garden is incorporated into the exterior design to foster sustainable living...
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Lauren Moss
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Perched on the edge of a wooded cliff overlooking Tate Creek, the North Fork Residence occupies a small shelf of land on the east face of a mountainous site. In response to the harsh environment, portions of the house are sheathed in metal, which will patina with the passage of time and exposure to the elements. The interior is organized along a central circulation spine with spaces transitioning from public to private along its length. A crucial component of the project was the owners’ desire to restore the portion of Tate Creek which flows through their property. After years of abuse and neglect the channelized creek banks were choked with blackberries and other invasive plants. The channel berms were removed and the stream banks cleared of invasive species and restored with native trees, shrubs and perennials. A large meadow east of the creek now provides natural habitat and flood storage capacity relieving pressure on downstream areas...
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Lauren Moss
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A family with one child moved from their apartment in the city to a house at the periphery with plenty of green for children to play in the grass, parents and friends sitting amongst them- all around nothing but green, trees, pure nature. The site is a 500 sq. meter plot, a grassy meadow with trees. Four levels, three above ground and one below, are to yield a total of 300 m⊃2; of living space. In order to retain the character of the original meadow, the ground-floor living and dining area are tied to the garden in a sweeping gesture. This gives the feeling of a living room composed of outdoor and indoor spaces. The end of the form tapers to human scale forming smooth shallow depressions for sitting, curvilinear furniture, a pool and terrace with rounded corners. On the rooftop, the patch of meadow removed from below is woven into the undulating green office landscape, with grassy green fields on several levels interspersed with ephemeral swooshes of space.
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Lauren Moss
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Saltwater Coast is a new housing subdivision near Point Cook which will accommodate around 4,000 residents and appeal to the aspirational second home buyer. The development thematically exploits its proximity to quite a beautiful stretch on the western shores of Port Phillip Bay. The land owners and their landscape architects have put a great deal of effort into the careful reinterpretation of a sensitive local ecology that boasts a very significant bird migration area at the Cheetham Wetlands...
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